Charles Marlow
Marlow's name may be inspired by the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Conrad's father was a translator of William Shakespeare who doubtless would have known of Marlowe's work as well. Some intertextual interpretations of "Heart of Darkness" have suggested that Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" may have influenced Conrad. Charles Marlow describes a character as a "papier-mache Mephistopheles", a reference to the Faust legend. Marlow's and Kurtz's journey up the Congo River in "Heart of Darkness" also has similarities to another work by Marlowe, "Dido, Queen of Carthage", in which Aeneas is stranded on the shore of Libya and meets the African queen Dido.
Shinya Kogami
The character has also been the subject of analysis by Anime News Network. The site compared him with the character of Charles Marlow from the novel "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. Like Marlow, Kogami's obsessive hunt draws him closer to his prey both inside and out to the point one of episode of the first series he is seen reading the book. Across the story, Akane wishes her partner to follow her ideals while Makishima instead wishes Kogami to embrace the darkness. While Kogami kills Makishima, he still decides to remain in the darkness and parts different road with Akane. In the book "Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Duelling Pocket Monsters", Kogami's character is noted for how surprised he is by Akane's thoughts in regards to whether or not his partner views the Sybil System, as Kogami's exclamation explicites that while the status quo is approved by her, Akane still does not value the Sybil System that monitors the world of the series.