In many of her appearances, Oliver – and her feelings toward Hjerson – reflect Agatha Christie's own frustrations as an author, particularly with the Belgian Hercule Poirot (an example of self-insertion).
In Cards on the Table, there is a reference to Mrs Oliver's book The Body in the Library; this title was used by Christie six years later, for a novel featuring Miss Marple.
In a short piece in John Bull magazine in 1956, Christie was quoted as saying: "I never take my stories from real life, but the character of Ariadne Oliver does have a strong dash of myself."
The author of the article went on to state: "It is perfectly true that sometimes she works at her stories in a large old-fashioned bath, eating apples and depositing the cores on the wide mahogany surround.
On the surface, Christie appears to use Oliver mainly for comic relief or to provide a deus ex machina through her intuitive or sudden insights, as in Third Girl, in which she furnishes Poirot with virtually every important clue, or in The Pale Horse, where she inadvertently tips the investigators off about the type of poison used to kill the murder victims.
In Dead Man's Folly, Oliver creates a murder hunt and specifically tells Poirot that she has hidden "six clues" to the solution in the game.
A 1986 television film adaptation of Dead Man's Folly starred Jean Stapleton as Ariadne Oliver, opposite Peter Ustinov as Poirot.
In the last shot episode of the series (but not the finale), Oliver is helpful to Poirot in an adaptation of Dead Man's Folly, filmed on the Christie Estate.
Tina Fey portrays Oliver in the 2023 film A Haunting in Venice, based on Hallowe'en Party, opposite Kenneth Branagh's Poirot.
In the eight-part series, combining Christie's stories with Nordic noir, the characters speak Swedish, and is set in contemporary time, with partial filming in Åland.