Referenced By / Othello

Film — Animated

• In Aladdin, the villain's parrot sidekick is named Iago. Which, considering it's set centuries before Shakespeare was even born, is just another ingredient of the Anachronism Stew that Aladdin serves up. The reference is also continued in the animated series, where Iago mentions having a brother named Othello.

Film — Live Action

• It's a Wonderful Life: When George first sees Mary at Harry's graduation dance, it's Love at First Sight (they'd met as kids, but he didn't recognize her right away), to the point George steals her away from her date, Freddy. When Freddy is sulking, his friend comes up to him and calls him "Othello".
• Baron Sardonicus and Sir Cargrave bring up Iago while discussing about evil characters in Shakespeare's work during dinner in Mr. Sardonicus.
• In The Punisher, the title character's plan for revenge against the man who killed his family is very similar to Iago's plan against Othello.

Literature

• Curtain: Poirot makes repeated reference to Iago as the perfect criminal, since he only induces other people to do the murdering for him, leaving his hands clean, and that Shakespeare had to introduce the handkerchief just to ensure Iago's downfall. The murderer is not only twisting people's minds to commit murder, they think of themselves as removing an Asshole Victim from the world (including Hastings, if Poirot hadn't been watching him).
• In Dom Casmurro the main character watches it in the theater.
• The titular character of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf quotes Othello when she thinks to herself that "if it were now to die 'twere now to be most happy."
• In Remnants, the Token Evil Teammate is named Yago, and like the play's Iago, he often tries to prod his "friends" into working against each other. The fact that he picked that name himself hints that he's a Card-Carrying Villain. Though for a bit of irony, he's (part) black himself.

Live-Action TV

• Angel's "Soulless" includes Angelus comparing Gunn and (Wini)Fred to Othello and Desdemona, respectively, and Wesley to Cassio. They were involved in a love triangle for over a season, in which Fred chose Gunn over Wes, but Wes and Fred had feelings for each other at this point and Gunn recently walked in on them kissing. This is also a reference to Angelus pitting the team against each other (like Iago) and Gunn who is the black guy and feels as though his skills are going unrecognized.
• Key & Peele have a sketch about two black theatre-goers being excited that there's finally a black hero after seeing the first act but are infuriated after seeing what happens to Othello in the end. They confront Shakespeare about it and coerce him into writing a new play with a happier ending for its black protagonist... said play being Shafte.

Music

• On Kate Bush's third album, Never for Ever (1980) the third song, Blow Away (for Bill) quotes Othello, in particular the line, "Put out the light, then put out the light" the line Othello says to Desdemona before killing her. The song itself was dedicated to her friend and lighting technician Bill Duffield, who tragically died in a freak accident right before her first concert, The Tour of Life, was ready to commence. A subtle reference to Bill and Desdemona's premature deaths by snuffing out their lights (souls).

Theatre

• The father in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night professes a love for Shakespeare, and for Othello in particular. The reason for this is because he "bought the play," meaning that he'd make a lot of money but he would have to do the same play for the rest of his acting career.
• In one scene in The Man From Mukinupin by Dorothy Hewett, a group of travelling actors perform an abridged version of Othello in the Mukinupin town hall. Among other things, it's one of the places where Hewett was poking at the commissioning body's rules about representation of colored people (the actor playing Othello is white and does the role in blackface, which was apparently more acceptable to the commissioning body than having an actual person of color in the play).
• Tosca: In his first scene, Scarpia explicitly compares himself to Iago, apparently for no other reason than to make sure that the audience knows who the bad guy is from the start.

Video Games

• Iago from Fire Emblem Fates is very much like his namesake from Othello, being an adviser who hates the main character and tries to make them as miserable as possible.

Web Original

• One of the Dino Attack agents in Dino Attack RPG is named Desdemona.

Western Animation

• On Gargoyles, "Coldstone" is a Frankenstein cyborg gargoyle with three different souls Sharing a Body; by gargoyle custom, they don't have names. However, someone on the staff noted that their dynamic fits Othello, so the script referred to them as Othello, Desdemona and Iago. Goliath is the Cassio in this setup, while Iago's motive is wanting Desdemona for himself.

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