Popular Culture

Ravana has been depicted as a cybernetic being possessing great powers in the Virgin Comics series Ramayan 3392 A.D.. In this series, Ravana is shown to be devoid of any human feeling and only embodies pure evil.

In an animated television film named after the Ramayana, Ravana is a luxury-loving, arrogant emperor who kidnaps Sita (as suggested above) to punish Rama for the mutilation of Shoorpanakha. He is mostly shown as an ordinary man, albeit with pointed ears and the ability to change shape. When he is angry or combating Rama, he assumes the commonly perceived features of multiple heads and (except in the first such scene) twenty arms.

Ashok K. Banker, a novelist who wrote a series of books featuring the Ramayan's basic storyline and characters, depicted Ravana as a dark lord capable of projecting himself into inanimate objects, of demonic possession, and of other feats of magic. Nearly all the legends described above are ascribed to him, but his character undergoes some significant changes throughout the series. He is at first depicted as an archvillain, but evolves gradually into a thing of smaller scale, ultimately to the point of seeming fully human despite his ten heads. When he goes to face Rama for the last time, Ravana is fully aware that he will die in this battle and seems to know the histories of all of his own previous incarnations. He is shot down dramatically and dies with elegance.

Rama has also been depicted in the original(but non-canon) "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" novel, "Resurrecting Ravana" by Ray Garton. In the novel, Gile's old foe Ethan Rayne cons the granddaughter of Benson Lovecraft out of a statue of Ravana, planning to resurrect the God with the aid of the Rakshasa, lesser demons which induce close friends to argue and eventually brutally kill each other.

Ravana appears in Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga as a powerful boss and is only one of dozens of references to Hindu mythology.