Kraken in popular culture

Comics

DC Comics

Marvel Comics

Film

• In silent films of the 1910s and 1920s, the Kraken was often portrayed using stock footage of an octopus in a bathtub attacking a toy ship. This footage first appeared in Georges Méliès' 1906 film Under the Seas and was recycled in many other films.
• The Kraken appears in the film Clash of the Titans as a giant, four-armed humanoid with scales and a fishtail; it is said to be "the last of the Titans".
• * In the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans, the Kraken is again featured as a weapon of the Olympian Gods. This version of the creature has a humanoid head, torso and arms but also boasts a number of tentacles. Instead of a tail, he is depicted with crab-like legs. He is given a new backstory as the creation of Hades that was used to overthrow the Titans, and was later used by Hades to get revenge on Zeus for tricking him into the underworld. "Release the kraken", as said by Liam Neeson's Zeus, has become an Internet meme.
• * The Kraken from Clash of the Titans makes an appearance in The Lego Batman Movie.
• Even though it isn't the kraken, a giant octopus menaces ships and eventually the city of San Francisco in the Ray Harryhausen film It Came from Beneath the Sea.
• The Kraken appears in Jack the Giant Killer, leprechaun summoning gold was Good Creature head lizard, Six-Tentacle arms/legs.
• The Kraken appears in ', where it is shown to be telepathic.
• A telemovie called ' features the Kraken as its main antagonist.
• In the film ', the Kraken is an enormous cephalopod-like sea monster. It does the bidding of Davy Jones by pursuing the souls of men who bear the black spot, a mark that appears on men who are overdue on their debt to Jones. It appears in ', where it has been beached and killed.
• The Kraken makes an appearance in the 2018 animated film voiced by Joe Jonas. He sings to the other monsters on the vacation to Atlantis, and he later gets brainwashed by Van Helsing in the climax to attack the monsters. Jonathan eventually breaks the Kraken out of his brainwashed state by playing Macarena.

  Literature

• In 1830 Alfred Tennyson published the irregular sonnet The Kraken, which described a massive creature that dwelled at the bottom of the sea.
• In Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick the crew of the Pequod encounter a "vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length". Starbuck calls it 'The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it.' Narrator Ishmael attributes this to Bishop Pontopiddan's "the great Kraken," and concludes: "By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe."
• Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea mentions the kraken and features a group of giant squids that attack the submarine Nautilus.
• In Anatole France's 1908 novel L'île des Pingouins, Kraken is the name of a character that plays a monster, depicted as, among others, a dragon.
• H. P. Lovecraft's novel The Call of Cthulhu, written in 1926, according to Cthulhu Mythos scholar Robert M. Price, has been inspired by Alfred Tennyson's sonnet. Both reference a huge aquatic creature sleeping for an eternity at the bottom of the ocean and destined to emerge from his slumber in an apocalyptic age.
• John Wyndham's 1953 novel The Kraken Wakes features the sonnet written by Alfred Tennyson called The Kraken, which described a massive creature that dwelled at the bottom of the sea; the story itself refers to an invasion by sea-dwelling aliens. The title is a play on Tennyson's line "The Kraken sleepeth".
• Jack Vance's 1966 science fiction adventure novel The Blue World, based on an earlier 1964 novella The Kragen, depicts a world where natives must beware the kragen, giant, semi-intelligent squid-like predators which roam the ocean.
• In Richard Adams' novel The Girl in a Swing, the main female character is stalked by the Kraken to punish her for the crime of murder by drowning.
• Terry Brooks' 1985 novel The Wishsong of Shannara features a Kraken as a giant sea creature summoned by "dark magic" to join an assault on a Dwarf fortress.
• In the children's book Monster Mission by Eva Ibbotson, the Kraken is a force for good who has the ability to clean and heal the oceans.
• Kraken appear in as enormous, peaceful creatures that stay in the same spot for centuries feeding on algae, doubling as islands. They are described as being conical in shape, although there is a tubular shaped one on the coast of Ireland. In this book, Kraken shed their shells explosively, igniting a layer of methane under the old one and sending it flying. A comparison is made between the Kraken, and a barnacle.
• In Ken MacLeod's trilogy Engines of Lights, the giant squids or kraken are one of the five intelligent species from Earth that colonized the Galaxy, the others being one species of saurs and three species of hominidae, including the Homo sapiens. The krakens are the most intelligent of the space colonizers, and the ones who created the technology which made interstellar travels possible,
• In Michael Crichton's posthumous 2009 novel Pirate Latitudes the sailors call the large sea creature that terrorizes the protagonist's ship "the kraken".
• China Miéville's 2010 novel Kraken features a cult devoted to the worship of the creature.
• In the A Song of Ice and Fire saga, by George R. R. Martin, the sigil of House Greyjoy of Pyke is a golden kraken. Krakens are also said to be stirring in the wake of the War of Five Kings, drawn by blood in the waters.

  Music

• "Kraken" is a song by filk songwriter Leslie Fish, based partly on the Tennyson sonnet.
• "Kraken" Is a song by Knife Party featured on their 2015 EP, Trigger Warning.
• "Release the Kraken" is a song by Ninja Sex Party about a comedically harmless Kraken featured on their 2018 album Cool Patrol.

  TV

• The television series Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell has a kraken character who lives in a closet on the set and is occasionally released by the character Sir Bobo Gargle, where he dances to "Mickey".
• The Big Bang Theory character Sheldon Cooper mentions krakens in the episodes, "Release the Kraken" and "The Date Night Variable"; in "The Hofstadter Insufficiency", Sheldon dreams of Leonard being grabbed by a kraken and pulled off the research ship he was on.
• The television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea featured an episode called "The Village of Guilt", in which a failed experiment creates a giant octopus that terrorizes the population of a Norwegian fjord.
• In a 2015 commercial for the U.S. insurer, GEICO, a "kraken" emerges from a golf course water hazard during a televised tournament, its tentacles writhing and grasping a golfer and his caddy, as the commentators intone with characteristic understatement that the sea monster looks like a kraken.
• The kraken appears in an episode of Lost Tapes called "Kraken".
• The sixth-season episode "A wonderous place" of the ABC series Once Upon a Time features a kraken, which attacks Aladdin and Jasmine. It is during this episode that Captain Nemo explains that kraken blood can open portals to other realms, which Captain Hook requires to return to Storybrooke.
• The Kraken is featured imprisoned by magic in the deep sea, guarded by magician whales in the Season 5 episode 6 episode of The Magicians , the release of which serves as a time loop plot device similar to Groundhog Day .
• The Kraken makes a brief appearance in an episode of Family Guy called "Fighting Irish" when Peter Griffin thanked him for previous aid.

  Video games

• Age of Mythology
• Battlefield 1 : In the Turning Tides DLC, the Royal Marines assault trooper has a tattoo of a Kraken on his left arm.
• '
• Conan
• '
• Darkfall Online
• Donkey Kong Country Returns
• EarthBound
• Evolve : One of the monster classes is named Kraken.
• Fable: The Lost Chapters
• Final Fantasy
• Final Fantasy ARR
• Forge of Empires added Kraken to the Oceanic Future age in 2017
• God of War II Set in the world Greek mythology, the Kraken is the final barrier between the player character Kratos and the temple of the Fates
• Golden Sun
• Heroes of Newerth
• Hitman : the second episode contains a redacted challenge called Unleash the Kraken in which a sailing boat is consumed by a sea monster.
• Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb
• Kerbal Space Program : A floating-point bug in this space flight simulator which caused vessels at high speed and/or far away places to be disassembled and destroyed was named "Space Kraken" by the community. This name was adopted by the developers, who named the fix for this bug "Krakensbane". Various other game-breaking or ship-destroying glitches have since been found, which are also referred to as the Kraken.
• ' features a space kraken.
• '
• One Piece: Grand Cruise features the crew taking on a kraken.
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Risen 2
• Sea of Thieves
• Secrets of the Deep for Pinball FX 2
• Shamu's Deep Sea Adventures
• Shining Force II
• SimplePlanes
• '
• Smite : Kraken is the name of Poseidon's ultimate ability. A game achievement involving this ability was called "Release the Kraken"
• Splatoon : the Kraken is a special weapon obtainable in a match that allows the player to temporarily become a giant squid and move with reduced speed and impunity across the map.
• The Ocean Hunter
• '
• '
• Vainglory
• Wonder Boy in Monster Land : Kraken is a boss monster: a blue giant squid that floats.
• '
• World of Warships : One of the in-game achievements is named Kraken Unleashed, and is awarded to players who destroy 5 or more ships in a single battle.
• : The Kraken appears as both an enemy, and a friendly, monster in some campaign missions. It can be unleashed by Poseidon for those missions where Poseidon is an opponent god, but where the player can build a Sanctuary to Poseidon, it will defend the player's city from attack.
• Wizard101'' : The Kraken is a boss as well as a spell and pet in the game.

  Miscellaneous

• In Greek mythology, Perseus defeats a monster called Ceto, represented by the constellation of Cetus.
• In 1990, a set of four postage stamps displaying legendary Canadian animals was released. One stamp in the set featured the kraken.
• features the kraken as a creature type. Alongside their aquatic brethren leviathans, krakens are typically among the largest creatures available to summon with blue mana.
• Dungeons and Dragons features the kraken as an end-game challenge boss.
• Kraken was the name of a marine biological supply house in the United Kingdom from 1968 to 1978. A historical website exists.
• The Kraken is a steel floorless roller coaster manufactured by Bolliger & Mabillard. It opened in 2000 and is located at SeaWorld Orlando, in the United States.
• The Kraken Rum is a 94 proof rum manufactured in Trinidad and Tobago; it was released in the United States in 2009.
• The Cassini probe has detected a huge body of liquid on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It has since been named the Kraken Mare.
• Greg Hardy, defensive end for the Carolina Panthers, is called "The Kraken" by himself and his fans. "The Kraken's" School has been listed as Hogwarts.
• The Razer Kraken is a gaming/music headphone range created by Razer Inc.
• Filipino basketball player June Mar Fajardo of the San Miguel Beermen is often called the "Kraken" during broadcasts of Philippine Basketball Association games and the Philippines men's national basketball team. The term was first used in 2010 by members at the forum Interbasket.net.
• New York Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez has been referred to as the Kraken since joining the team in 2016.
• "Kraken" is a modern make of twin-hose regulator for scuba diving.
• The Seattle Kraken are a National Hockey League expansion team based in Seattle, Washington.