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.
Star Trek Into Darkness
Originally conceived as a retelling of "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, Kurtzman and Orci defined the main theme of "Into Darkness" as "how far will we go to exact vengeance and justice on an enemy that scares us. How far should we go from our values?" They added that running from personal values is a personal struggle, where "the enemy’s blood is within us; we are the enemy. We must not succumb to it; we are the same."