In Shtum, Ben tries to read Heart of Darkness, but finds it too light-hearted for his current tastes.
In Tomorrow, When the War Began, Ellie finds part of a hardcover copy among the Hermit's belongings. The copy turned out to be a two-in-one with another Conrad story, Youth.
Kit from What to Say Next procrastinates on her homework, which includes reading fifty pages of Heart of Darkness.
Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson ends with a reference to Heart of Darkness:
It had been a bad trip ... fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epigraph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz's comment from the heart of the darkness: 'The horror! The horror! ... Exterminate all the brutes!' It seemed appropriate, if not entirely just ... but after getting such a concentrated jolt of reality I was not much concerned about justice.
Mistah Leary — He Dead, also by Thompson, takes its title from "Mistah Kurtz — he dead," a line in the novel.
The plot of Spec Ops: The Line is heavily inspired by Heart of Darkness. The name of John Konrad, the protagonist's former commanding officer and a major figure in the narrative, is an apparent reference to Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad's name.
