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.
Shadow Hearts (video game)
The main protagonists of "Shadow Hearts" are Yuri Hyuga, a Harmonixer capable of absorbing the souls of monsters and shapeshifting into them; and Alice Elliot, a young exorcist who helped her father banish harmful spirits. On their journey, they are joined by the sage Zhuzhen Liu, an expert in the magic of Yin and yang; Margarete Gertrude Zelle, an infamous spy and bomb expert; Keith Valentine, a centuries-old vampire who isolates himself from the outside world; and Halley Brancket, a street urchin and gang leader from London who possesses powerful magical abilities.