The Midwich Cuckoos - Allusions/references From Other Works

Allusions/references From Other Works

• The Stepford Cuckoos, a group of New X-Men characters were partly inspired by the Midwich Cuckoos.
• The Golden in The Establishment were a trio of characters who looked like adult Midwich Cuckoos.
• In The Simpsons episode, 'Wild Barts Can't Be Broken', the children go to see a film entitled 'The Bloodening', a parody of Village of the Damned. The children in the film look like those from the film adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos.
• The Befort Children from the anime Fantastic Children were also inspired by The Midwich Cuckoos.
• "1440 Cuckoo" is a song written in 2006 by British singer/songwriter Pete Doherty and was inspired by the serial number of the Penguin edition of the novel which Doherty read while in rehab at the Priory in London.
• In Smallville, episode 9 of season 3, entitled "Asylum" (2004), one of the characters is reading "The Midwich Cuckoos," which proves to be prophetic about that character's nature.
• In Catherine Jinks's book, Evil Genius, teachers of the main character, Cadel, speculate about the possibility of his physical resemblance to the children in The Midwich Cuckoos.
• The plot of Beetle in the Anthill, a novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, has some similarities. Authorities of Earth have a great fear about the group of foundling children, alleged to be Wanderers' spies and probably even non-human. These children were moved out of Earth by a secret order of government, but later one of them came back to Earth and was killed by Earth's security service.
• The weekly webcomic FreakAngels, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield, is also loosely based on The Midwich Cuckoos. It portrays characters of a similar type who have grown into adulthood.
• In Elizabeth Bowen's 1964 novel, The Little Girls, a character notes another's unease at the impending birth of his grandchild; she notes that the man is terrified of children, and ruefully regrets having loaned him The Midwich Cuckoos to read: ‘Frank's terrified that some Hostile Race, which will go on to drive everyone else out, is at any moment going to begin to be born’ (The Little Girls, 229). This passage has been interpreted as reflecting the anxieties of the Cold War.
• In the videogame Silent Hill, the local elementary school is called Midwich Elementary School.

• Silent Hill: Shattered Memories introduces Midwich High School. The school's football team is called the Cuckoos, and its founder is named John Wyndham.

• In Hearts in Atlantis, a Stephen King novel, the film based on the novel is referred to by Bobby Garfield, one of the protagonists of the novel.