In Popular Culture
In the Nintendo/GameFreak video game franchise "Pokémon", there are three creatures in the same evolutionary chain named Abra, Kadabra, and Alakazam (the third of which is also an alleged magic word used by stage magicians).
The incantation "Avada Kedavra" is known as the Killing Curse in the "Harry Potter" novel series. During an audience interview at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 15 April 2004, series author J. K. Rowling had this to say about the fictional Killing Curse's etymology: "Does anyone know where avada kedavra came from? It is an ancient spell in Aramaic, and it is the original of abracadabra, which means 'let the thing be destroyed.' Originally, it was used to cure illness and the 'thing' was the illness, but I decided to make it the 'thing' as in the person standing in front of me. I take a lot of liberties with things like that. I twist them round and make them mine."
Abra Kadabra is the name of a DC Comics villain, who originally uses futuristic technology to create effects that appear magic to present-day people, and later gains actual magic powers.
In Sergio Aragonés' Groo comic series, two witches who are sometimes allies or enemies of Groo are named Arba and Dakarba.
Mr. Kadabra is a member of the 13th floor witches, in Vertigo's Fables series.
Read more about this topic: Abracadabra
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Vodka is our enemy, so let’s finish it off.”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“... there are some who, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and that to-morrow is necessarily better than to-day, may think that if culture is a good thing we shall infallibly be found to have more of it that we had a generation since; and that if we can be shown not to have more of it, it can be shown not to be worth seeking.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)