Ocean View, Delaware bypassed the area where Ocean View now lies because of the poor quality of its sandy, salty soil and the salt air that blew in from the Atlantic Ocean; they preferred to settle a few miles farther inland, where the land was higher and drier and the soil richer. Would-be settlers also faced a legal complication in obtaining land in what is now Ocean View, because Lord Baltimore claimed the area as part of his Maryland colony, while William Penn asserted that the area belonged to the Delaware Colony; settlers opted to look elsewhere for land to which they could
In the Penal Colony point, when giving a tour of the facilities to a condemned prisoner, the head of the guild describes a device identical to the one presented in the short story. The episodic video game Resident Evil Revelations 2 contains many references to Kafka. Along with being set within an island colony, the first episode is named "The Penal Colony" after the story, and a file found within the game contains an excerpt from "In the Penal Colony." In Haruki Murakami's novel "Kafka on the Shore" the protagonist, a boy who calls himself Kafka, admits that "In the Penal Colony" is his