Sunday, January 9, 2011

"The Raven" in Popular Culture: Other

Poe lived in Baltimore for a considerable time and is buried there. Residents of the city elected to honor Poe by naming their National Football League team the Baltimore Ravens after the poem. Furthermore, the three mascots for the team are three ravens, appropriately named "Edgar," "Allan" and "Poe." For many years, pre-game introductions of the Ravens' starting lineup would be preceded by a stanza from the poem, usually one which ended with the word "Nevermore," referring to the opposing team's putative inability to score when facing the powerful Raven defense. In 2000, when the Ravens were on their way to winning their first Super Bowl primarily on the strength of that record-setting defense, Chris Berman of ESPN's NFL PrimeTime would often punctuate highlights of the team's results that day by saying, "Quoth the Ravens, Never score!". Another example is the all-haiku 2008 NFL season preview of ESPN.com columnist Gregg Easterbrook (who often calls the team the "Nevermores" in his column), which reads: "Awk! No offense. Awk! / Quoth the raven: "No offense." / Bal-a-mer Ravens".

RavenCon, an annual science fiction convention in Richmond, Virginia, was named in honor of Poe, who grew up in Richmond.

The Raven is the first of three wooden roller coasters in the Holiday World theme park, which opened in 1995.

One of the most popular custom scenarios for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Defense of the Ancients, contains a hero called Nevermore.

The original version of Epcot's Journey Into Imagination included an open book with the shadow of the Raven in the Tales of Terror sequence.


The Raven Society, founded in 1904, is the University of Virginia's most prestigious honor society, combining requirements of high-level scholarship, service, leadership, and "promise of further advancement in the intellectual field." New members must supply a parody of the poem for initiation, which takes place in the room where Poe lived when studying at the University, now under the curatorship of the Society. The Society also maintains several other Poe sites, including the grave marker of his mother Eliza Poe in Richmond, Virginia.

Lord Buckley recorded a "hipsemantic" version of "The Raven" in 1956 ("It was a real drugged midnight... dreary.").

Computer scientist Guy L. Steele, Jr. wrote a parody entitled "The HACTRN" about a hacker haunted by a phantom process.

Professional wrestler Raven (Scott Levy) takes his stage name from the title of the poem, and often quotes from the poem in interviews, ending with "...Quoth the Raven...Nevermore..."

The background for Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 miniatures wargame gives the last word spoken by Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard Space Marine Legion, as 'Nevermore'. Corax is the Latin species name of the common raven.

The comic strip Shoe ran a strip in which a large, strange, black bird was sitting at Roz's bar, uttering random words starting with "never-" or ending in "-more" (e.g., "Livermore!"; "Nevertheless!"), when one of the regular characters announced that the raven was bombed.

The opening splash screen of the video game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem quotes: "Deep into that darkness peering, Long I stood there, Wondering... Fearing... Doubting..."

The online computer game Kingdom of Loathing includes a raven familiar which can be equipped with a "tiny bust of Pallas".

People who cannot attend Centre for the Talented Youth of Ireland (CTYI) because of their age are known as 'Nevermores'.

In the PC Game My Sims, when the user visits their own garden either alone or with friends, there will be a tree in a large empty field close to the railway station. In a tribute to the poem the tree is dark and spooky looking and has Ravens hanging off it. The Ravens can be planted or used to produce a spooky essence to the town and much like the other contents of the Garden may be taken back to the user's own town and planted.

In another PC game, Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships, if you find pieces of paper in the bottles while sailing, they will be automatically pieced together to form a passage from "The Raven", the one just before the raven appears. Certain letters in red will tell you to go to and dive to one of the sunken ships where the sharks are, and, using the metal detector from Johnny Rolle, you will find an Easter egg. This is also a reference of the next game, Warnings at Waverly Academy, as Corine mentions that she is a Poe fan, as well as Leela having the missing Poe book, "The Black Cat and Other Stories", which includes "The Raven" and other works, as well as the pendulum challenge, a reference of "The Pit and The Pendulum, which is also in Leela's book.

In the official guide to Soulcalibur 4, a quote from "The Raven" was used to describe Tira's creepy personality.

In the game Fallout 3 (Add on Pack Point Lookout) when the character enters The Bank of Point Lookout and enters the vault room, the character will encounter a voice activated password system. After searching for the password, it is revealed that the password is "Nevermore" and the voice recording that contains the password says "Nevermore" in the same type of creepy voice that is often used when quoting this part of the Raven.

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