There is now a legal strategy called the Matrix defense, which has been an effective form of insanity defense. The film evidently had a part in inspiring Lee Malvo, the Washington D.C. sniper, and it has been mentioned in connection with the Columbine High School killings, which happened less than a month after the release of The Matrix.

The Flower and Dean St rookery had been home to many of those who lived at least partly by street crime.

She yapped and yarred and ran in foolish circles, as though quarrelling with her own tail.

[…] Morris's banjo and banjouke improvisations pulse along with William Parker's basslike zintir and Hamid Drake's drumming for an avant-garde Moroccan hoedown.