Referenced By / Franz Kafka

Anime & Manga

• Gregory, an anthropomorfic cricket from Dragon Ball Z, is named after the main character of The Metamorphosis.
• The works of Kafka are a major influence on Tokyo Ghoul and its sequel, Tokyo Ghoul:Re. Near the beginning of the series, Kaneki compares his transformation into a Half-Human Hybrid to The Metamorphosis. It is also mentioned that oft-mentioned novelist Sen Takatsuki titled her first work Dear Kafka, hinting that she was influenced by his work. In the sequel, Kafka's short story A Crossbreed is discussed briefly and seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between Half-Human Hybrid Sasaki and his Parental Substitute, Arima.
• In Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, the main female character is named Kafuka Fuura, whose comedy stock plays with Kafka's usual cynical works; Kafuka has a very depressing family life, the usual staple of Kafka's stories, but Kafuka herself is absurdly optimistic. However, Kafuka's Dark and Troubled Past makes her usual brand of optimism very twisted (she several times creates cults and wishes to be a god, for example). It turns out that "Kafuka Fuura" is a pen name; her real name is later revealed to be An Akagi, and her classmates gave her that pen name because The Metamorphosis was her favorite book, clutched in her hand as she died from being hit by a car by her father. An donated her organs into several depressed teenagers, who would discover that she took over their bodies once in awhile in an attempt to search for closure and become her classmates to soothe her spirit. "One morning, when Kafuka Fuura woke up, she had become (classmate's name)," indeed.

Comic Books

• Robert Crumb made an analytical comic book / book about Kafka's life.
• In Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Johnny's cockroaches (although he believes them all to be one constantly regenerating cockroach) are named "Mr. Samsa," after the character from The Metamorphosis.

Films — Live-Action

• Congo. Peter and Richard are being grilled by local military thugs. Being primatologists rather than adventurers, they're not taking it well. Richard mutters "This is pure Kafka..." causing the interrogator to get right in his face and shout, "WHO'S KAFKA?! TELL ME!"
• Kafka himself is the protagonist of Steven Soderbergh's 1991 film Kafka, where he's played by Jeremy Irons.
• In The Producers, while looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads the first line from The Metamorphosis, and rejects it as being too good.

Literature

• In Bride of the Rat God, set in silent-movie-era Hollywood, one of the characters is a Prima Donna Director who is only working on popular action flicks until he can get together the funding for his dream project, a film version of The Metamorphosis. The protagonist is bemused when she overhears him assessing an actor's capacity to play a cockroach.
• Jorge Luis Borges' short story "The Lottery in Babylon" - about a city governed through an inscrutable system of gambling that is indistinguishable from fatalism - mentions that it is rumoured one of the few ways that the lottery authorities may be contacted is in a place called "Qaphqa".
• There's a Shout-Out to In the Penal Colony in The Shadow of the Torturer where the head torturer shows a prisoner an apparatus designed to carve slogans into someone's flesh and mentions that it isn't working properly. In the original story, there is such an apparatus, which malfunctions and carves a slogan into the guard's flesh.

Live-Action TV

• Kafka was played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Alan Bennett's 1986 BBC TV drama The Insurance Man.
• Israeli skit show The Jews Are Coming, satirizing Jewish / Israeli history and lore, featured a skit in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning something, randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... Which turns out to be Kafka's medication prescription for his tuberculosis. Kafka dies that day.
• Kafka appears in a historical / flashback episode of Northern Exposure, played by the series' star Rob Morrow. Yes, the show set entirely in Alaska.
• In the series finale of The Wire, Walon gives Bubbles a quote from Kafka's Zurau Aphorisms ("You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid"), in order to convince Bubbles to let a profile about him be published in the Baltimore Sun.
• The young Indiana Jones meets Kafka in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, in an episode featuring a Kafka-esque struggle with bureaucracy.

Music

• The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of The Trial, The Castle, and A Dream.
• Frank Zappa advises buyers of his album We're Only in It for the Money to read Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" before listening to the last track.
• Joy Division's "Colony," from Closer, was also inspired by "In the Penal Colony."

Tabletop Games

• Eclipse Phase has samsas, semi-robotic insect bodies primarily used for combat. The default is cockroach-like.
• The Samsa from Werewolf: The Apocalypse, artificially-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of The Metamorphosis.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy VI's main villain is a Monster Clown named Kefka Palazzo, a corruption of Kafka, and his ascent to godhood is accompanied by a theme called "Metamorphosis." He's also a Straw Nihilist who views all life as meaningless ("Why create when it will only be destroyed?") and derives his joy and purpose in life from destroying everything like a god game player setting off disasters. This attitude may have been inspired by Kafka's own Black Comedy.
• Quite a bit of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 takes cues from Kafka. The general plot of the game is about people trapped in an oppressive world where all the mean-spirited terrors are never explained while being watched over by an uncaring watcher. The main antagonist is a noted fan of Kafka and bases her plans off his works, each level is named after one of his works, and each level is proceeded by a quote from Kafka.
• Skullgirls has a parasite named Samson, who has an attack called Gregor Samson, of which are both references to The Metamorphosis which has a main character named Gregor Samsa.

Web Comics

• Girl Genius: While Tiktoffen is listing why the sparks he's killed deserved to die, he mentions that Franz "liked turning people into beetles."
• Third Shift Society: Elle and Ichabod are hired to find a missing man named Greg Samson right after a bunch of sightings of a "giant insect" had made it into the local tabloids. Savvy readers who were familiar with The Metamorphosis figured out what had happened to Greg pretty quick.
• Hark! A Vagrant: In one of her "Books by their Edward Gorey Cover" strips Kate Beaton included an edition of Amerika. It takes its humor from the spelling of the title.

Web Original

• The Onion ran a video about how Prague's Franz Kafka International airport is the most alienating, dehumanizing airport in the world.

Western Animation

• The "Director's Cut" episode of Home Movies features a plotline where teenage metalhead Duane attempts to persuade Brendon to film his Rock Opera of Kafka's ''Metamorphosis,'' which Brendon is unwilling to do, preferring to direct a film called Louis, Louis depicting a fictional encounter between Louis Pasteur and Louis Braille.
  "A, rock opera, based on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis... I don't think so."
  "HE! IS! FRANZ! KAF! KA! FRANZ-KAF-KA!"

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