Kafka in Pop Culture: From Severance to Breaking Bad—and Now, the Biopic Franz

In this episode of Breaking Bad, Jesse vents about his soul-crushing fast-food job—actually a front for dealing meth—during group therapy. The leader listens, nods, and says: “That sounds… Kafkaesque.”

Jesse doesn’t get the reference—but unknowingly embodies it. It’s bureaucracy, dread, and absurdity all rolled into one. A pitch-perfect (and unintentionally hilarious) pop culture nod to Kafka.

Interestingly, this isn’t the only time “Kafkaesque” has been used for comic effect in pop culture. The term also shows up in the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle and Woody Allen’s1977 film Annie Hall—often as an added layer of humour and satire.

Severance is a dystopian workplace thriller where a mysterious corporation, Lumon Industries, offers employees a surgical procedure called “severance.” This procedure splits a person’s consciousness in two:

• “Innie”: the work self, who has no memory of life outside the office.
• “Outie”: the personal self, who has no memory of what happens at work.

What begins as a radical attempt at work-life balance slowly unravels into a psychological nightmare—exposing the cost of corporate control, memory manipulation, and lost autonomy.

This isn’t just a clever sci-fi twist—it resonates deeply with the themes in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. Like Josef K., the characters in Severance are trapped in a system they cannot question or escape. Their experiences echo Kafka’s hallmark style: cold bureaucracy, surreal isolation, and existential dread.

The show’s use of doors as recurring symbols is particularly resonant. In Kafka’s writing, doors often act as thresholds—between reality and illusion, between autonomy and control. In Severance, each door marks a shift between identities, reinforcing the unnatural divide imposed by the procedure.

No Smoking is a 2007 Hindi psychological thriller directed by Anurag Kashyap, widely noted for its Kafkaesque narrative style and thematic exploration of addiction, autonomy, and authoritarian control. Loosely adapted from Stephen King’s short story Quitters, Inc., the film centers around a chain-smoker named “K” who enrolls in a bizarre rehabilitation program overseen by the enigmatic Baba Bangali.

What unfolds is not a linear journey of recovery, but a surreal descent into a bureaucratic labyrinth. K’s reality begins to fracture as he navigates shifting dreamscapes, claustrophobic settings, and increasingly absurd consequences for seemingly minor infractions. The protagonist’s mounting anxiety, inability to escape or fully understand his circumstances, and loss of identity resonate deeply with Kafka’s portrayal of existential dread and systemic entrapment.

Kafka’s influence extends beyond literature, serving as a lyrical and thematic muse for musicians like Robert Smith of The Cure and David Bowie.

Smith’s first Kafka-inspired track was “At Night”, featured on The Cure’s 1980 album Seventeen Seconds. Borrowing its title from a Kafka short story, the song reflects on one of Kafka’s watchman characters. Years later, while working on Wish (1992), Smith revisited Kafka’s world in “A Letter to Elise”, a song named after Kafka’s Letters to Felice.

David Bowie also drew from Kafka, particularly The Metamorphosis. His iconic song “Changes” echoes Gregor Samsa’s transformation, with lines like “Time may change me, but I can’t trace time”, paralleling the helplessness of Kafka’s protagonist.

Before we close, it’s worth turning the lens toward Kafka himself—not just as an influence on cinema and pop culture, but as an early admirer of it.

Kafka held a personal fascination with the cinema of his time. As captured in Kafka Goes to the Movies—a book and later a film essay by Hanns Zischler—Kafka was entranced by the novelty and absurdity of early 20th-century films. Despite their sensational and sometimes crude nature, these moving pictures thrilled him. Diary entries and letters reveal scattered entries: “Afternoon, Palestine film,” or “This evening... Cinematograph at the Landestheater.”

Kafka’s cinematic curiosity now circles back to the screen in full force. Acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland recently unveiled the trailer for Franz—a long-anticipated biopic that promises not a linear biography, but a fragmented, impressionistic portrayal of Kafka’s life. Scripted by Marek Epstein, the film mirrors Kafka’s own layered writing, tracing the author’s journey from his birth in Prague in 1883 to his final days in Berlin.

In the end, Kafka’s world—with its inescapable systems, dream-logic drift, and quietly unravelling selves—doesn’t just survive in literature. It flickers on, refracted through songs, films, and stories that continue to echo his unease. His influence lingers like a shadow at the edge of the frame—silent, searching, and enduring.