Pale Fire created by Kinbote, features an entry for a "Botkin, V.," describing this Botkin as an "American scholar of Russian descent"—and referring to a note in the Commentary on line 894 of Shade's poem, in which no such person is directly mentioned but a character suggests that "Kinbote" is "a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine". In this interpretation, "Gradus" the murderer is an American named Jack Grey who wanted to kill Judge Goldsworth, whose house "Pale Fire's" commentator—whatever his "true" name is—is renting. Goldsworth had condemned Grey to an asylum from which he escaped shortly before mistakenly killing Shade,
A Whiter Shade of Pale is also referred to humorously in the 1982 play "The Real Thing" by Tom Stoppard and in the 1991 film "The Commitments". Other writers have noted similar “family resemblances” to other works by Bach: the Sinfonia which opens the cantata "Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe", BWV 156, the organ chorale Prelude "O Mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde groß" (O Man, Lament Your Sin So Great), BWV 622, from the "Orgelbüchlein" (Little Organ Book) and the Cantata "Sleepers Wake", BWV140. The music also borrows ideas from "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge. Procol Harum recorded "A Whiter