In choosing the name "Morlocks", Wells may have been inspired by Moloch, the Canaanite god of child sacrifice, with the Eloi analogous to children.

Alternatively, he may have also been inspired by the Morlachs, an ethnic group in the Balkans which attracted attention from Western travellers as a perceived archetype of barbarism and backwardness.

They are described as apelike, with dull grey-to-white skin, chinless faces, large greyish-red eyes with a capacity for reflecting light, and flaxen hair on the head and back.

They are stronger than the Eloi, but smaller and weaker than the average human (the Time Traveller hurt or killed some barehanded with relative ease), but a large swarm of them could be a serious threat to a lone man, especially unarmed and/or without a light source.

Unlike the Eloi, the Morlocks retain some of their human curiosity, initiative, and aggression: they are intrigued by the Time Traveller and band together to attack him when he invades their dwelling.

With time, the roles altered – the surface people grew apathetic and helpless to the point that they were no longer masters of their subterranean counterparts.

However, the Morlocks must have continued to tend to the Eloi (the protagonist guesses this may at first have been out of tradition or intrinsic habit) and at some point began using them as livestock.

[citation needed] When the "Sleeper" encounters these (apparently) proto-Morlocks, he notes that they seem to be turning paler, as well as developing their own dialect of English.

In its wide-ranging narrative, the Time Traveller attempts to return to the world of tomorrow but instead finds that his actions have changed the future: one in which the Eloi have never manifested.

Nebogipfel's name comes from the main character of H. G. Wells' first attempt at a time travel story, then called "Chronic Argonauts".

Some authors have adopted the Morlocks and adapted them to their works, often completely unassociated with The Time Machine, or were named in-universe in homage to H.G.

In the story, the Time Traveller takes some of the regular League characters into his future world, where he has made a base out of the Morlock sphinx.

They appear as a subhuman alien race living in the caves in one region of Wunderland, which is one of humanity's colonies in the Alpha Centauri system.

In the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, Morlocks are the elite warriors of the Iron Hands chapter of space marines and feature in several Horus Heresy novels where they act as bodyguards for their primarch Ferrus Manus.

He reasoned that the Lilliputians are merely diminutive humans, whereas the Morlocks and Eloi are significantly different from us, and "live far away in an abyss of time so deep as to work an enchantment".

Elsewhere in his essay, Tolkien warns against separating fantasy readers into superficial categories, using the Eloi and Morlocks as a dramatic illustration of the repercussions of sundering the human race.

[9] The 1960 film version of The Time Machine directed by George Pal features Morlocks designed by Wah Chang.

In the television film The Time Machine directed by Henning Schellerup (1928–2000) and first broadcast on US television on November 5, 1978, the protagonist Dr. Neil Perry (played by John Beck) travels with his time machine into the future to tell his company Mega Corporation, for which he developed an Antimatter bomb, about its future destructive impact on humanity.

In the future, he witnessed the destruction of civilization, but also learns that nature has been revived from the wasteland and that some of the people who had previously sought refuge underground, the Eloi, have returned to the surface.

Here, he also meets the Eloi girl Weena (played by Priscilla Barnes) who, unlike the other film adaptations, now has a brother named Ariel.

The movie displays three of these races: As explained by the Über-Morlock when Alexander is brought to him while trying to save the Eloi Mara, the Morlocks originated from humans that sought shelter underground, after operation demolitions for constructing a colony on the Moon sent some of its fragments crashing to Earth.

The plot sees a time machine open a portal to the future allowing Morlocks to travel back to the present and wreak havoc.

[11] These Morlocks are descended from a patient with terminal cancer whose father used the military time travel project to look for technology in the future as a cure.

When the Legion of Doom arrived and encountered the Barlocks, Lex Luthor formed an alliance with their leader (voiced by Ted Cassidy) and came up with a trick to take over the domed city.

However, it has since been revealed that the Morlocks in the show are not simply foot soldiers; they comprise the entire group of enemies of the Power Rangers that have been led by Octomus.

His viewpoint changed drastically though, after he experienced a series of episode-ending dreams, all featuring the infamous cannibalistic Morlock species from the classic H. G. Wells book.

In the 2014 episode of Regular Show titled "Journey to the Bottom of the Crash Pit," Mordecai, Rigby, Muscle Man and Hi-Five Ghost travel to their cave in search for a video camera, they find it in possession of the "Carlocks" instead of Morlocks, who are the first and last of the mighty underground race and refuse to give it back, forcing them to steal it and escape in a worn-out car.