[citation needed] The typeface was popular in the 1980s, due to its futuristic design, and even today is used to signify the future; it has been used in the credits of both Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as well as the logo for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the menu text for the 2000 Nintendo 64 game Perfect Dark.

Handel Gothic was widely used in the 2001 video game Halo: Combat Evolved, especially in its title screen and UI.

[citation needed] The Elsner+Flake, Linotype and URW++ versions use a curved leg on uppercase R (like that of Helvetica), a horizontal tail on the uppercase Q (like that of Univers), a curved lower leg on the lowercase k, and a trident-like lowercase w.[2] The Bitstream and Tilde SIA versions, however, use a thicker 1, a straight leg on the uppercase R (like that of Akzidenz-Grotesk), a straight lower leg on the lowercase k, and a double-v w. Christian Schwartz designed the Simian Display typeface, inspired from the Handel Gothic typeface, used by American science fiction media franchise Planet of the Apes and available in 3 weights named after primates ("Orangutan" for Regular, "Chimpanzee" for Bold, "Gorilla" for Black).

It is a version of ITC Handel Gothic for Arabic, Persian and Urdu languages, designed by Nadine Chahine of Monotype Imaging, based on Kufic script.

A slab-serif counterpart to URW++ Handel Gothic with three weights (Light, Medium, Bold) and obliques styles to complement them.