Anime and Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Chapter 82.5 (a collection of Fractured Fairy Tales), Chiyo plays the titular character, and finds herself unable to light any of the matches due to considering it "embezzlement".
- A Certain Magical Index: Theodosia Electra performs spells by lighting matches that only last as long as the match burns. She claims her powers come from drawing on the story of The Little Match Girl, but she is lying and her power really comes from the Norse Mythology story of Skírnir's Staff, which channels flames for a variety of effects.
- Crayon Shin-chan has a Fractured Fairy Tale spoof that gives the match girl an Age Lift as a teenager employed by a Megacorp who sells... matches. And Shin-Chan is her colleague. It gets increasingly silly culminating in Shin-Chan and the Match Girl partaking in a contest for "most boxes of matches sold", which they won the first place and the cash prize from the contest breaking them out of poverty.
- Date A Live: Isaac Westcott traps the heroes in the roles of several fairy tales and stories. Kotori plays the little match girl, but finds the effects of lighting the matches are permanent, allowing her to give herself and her allies new clothes and supplies.
- Referenced a couple of times in Doraemon.
- One of Doraemon's many gadgets is a box of "Desire Matches", where anytime a match is lighted it will display a hologram showing what the user truly wants or wishes to have. Said gadget was also the inspiration behind the fairytale - according to Doraemon, a time-traveller left a box of Desire Matches in the past and was picked up by the match-girl.
- The 1979 anime have Shizuka playing the match girl in one episode, before waking up and revealing the whole thing to be All Just a Dream.
- Isekai Quartet: Yunyun performs a School Play of the story all by herself.
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Parodied when the main characters attempt to put on a play based on the story for the benefit of some old people, but get carried away and add elements of several other stories and make it almost incomprehensible. The old people like it anyway.
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Parker Cerise writes his own version of the story. Instead of her dying, she gets saved by imagining the demonic seal of Marchosias (a Noble Wolf who breathes fire) and helps her get revenge on the abusive father and step-sisters that forced her to die by selling matches.
Literature
- Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, which asks why an angel didn't turn up with a warm blanket before the Little Match Girl died, and in which Death himself saves hernote , because there's no better Christmas present than a future.
- In Sophie's World, at one point Sophie ends meeting the Little Match Girl and Ebenezer Scrooge. The Little Match Girl sets Scrooge on fire, after what she claims to be a communist.
Music Videos
- The BMS of Fighters song "Burn"
by NceS (featured in Phigros, Muse Dash, and some other Rhythm Games) features a background animation that is based on this story, although instead of matches it's cigarettes. And then the girl does a dance with a roasted duck and her late grandmother.
Tabletop Games
- The Unhappy Maiden card from Yu-Gi-Oh! appears to be based in this fairy tale.
Video Games
- In Lobotomy Corporation and its sequel, Library of Ruina, an Abnormality based off this tale appears, named Scorched Girl. Unlike her book counterpart, she accidentally burnt herself to death with her own matches instead of freezing to death overnight, and rather than entering heaven she's forced to walk the Earth as a charred and ghastly spirit, still desperate for affection but is fated to eventually burn to ash and scatter into the wind someday. She's also an irritable Action Bomb who can easily deal a similar death to victims who provoke her into hysteria.
- Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: While Touka Satomi's magic lets her use energy from the environment without any drawbacks, her Doppel, Pennen Nolde cannot. Instead, it pulls matches off of its back to grant her a "what-if" wish by lighting it. When all the matches are used up, she would die.
- It's turned up in Yakuza and Yakuza 5 under the exact name as substories that the player can go through. The one in Yakuza 1 is doing it more to buy a gift for her boyfriend while in 5, it's played much more straight, though the girl gets spared.
Western Animation
- Robot Chicken: One sketch had the grandmother give the girl a plan to escape poverty. She uses a match to burn her father to death, then finds her grandmother's jewels that her father had been hoarding, then sells them so she can go to a tropical island.
