The Love Bug filming. The car was later given the name "Herbie" from one of Buddy Hackett's skits about a ski instructor named Klaus, who speaks with a German accent as he introduces his fellow ski instructors, who are named Hans, Fritz, Wilhelm, and Sandor. At the end of the skit, Hackett would say "If you ain't got a Herbie (pronounced ""hoy-bee"), I ain't going." Herbie's trademark "53" racing number was chosen by producer Bill Walsh, who was a fan of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player Don Drysdale (Drysdale's jersey number, later retired by the team, was 53). Walsh also gave Herbie his
The Gold-Bug the main characters are searching for treasure, and he asks them if they have been reading Edgar Allan Poe. The title of Richard Powers' 1991 novel "The Gold Bug Variations" is derived from "The Gold-Bug" and from Bach's composition "Goldberg Variations", and the novel incorporates part of the short story's plot. Jewish Russian author David Shrayer-Petrov published "The House of Edgar Allan Poe" in "2011 Prose", with "The Gold-Bug" serving as a major influence. Shrayer-Petrov includes a beetle, also tied to a string, which finds treasure in the basement of the house of Sarah Helen Whitman, Poe's love interest who