Barabas

Facts

Name origin

Barabbas

Barabbas (from BibleGateway.com)

A prisoner released by Pilate (Matthew 27:16-26; Mark 15:7-15; Luke 23:18-25; John 18:40;)

A further reference to that episode is found in Acts 3:14 :

You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you.

And that's about it. The complete biblical reference. There was a Barabbas movie starring Anthony Quinn.

The Jew of Malta

It's a theater play by Christopher Marlowe. Sorta like a pseudo-historical drama. The name of the protagonist, Barabas, is clearly chosen intentionally, with the biblical reference in mind, so that he is "automatically" antipathic to the audience.

Karabas Barabas

The main bad guy in Zolotoi Klyuchik a.k.a. the adventures of Buratino, the russian remake of Collodi's Pinnochio.

Karabas Barabas is a puppet master. The puppets of his theater are alive, so he doesn't actually animate them with strings : it's more like he's a tyrant and they are his slaves. The protagonist, Buratino the puppet, finds a golden key that unlocks the door to a hidden, "parallel", much better world, helps the other puppets to run away from Karabas Barabas's theater, and eventually leads them to that other world (narrowly escaping Barabas's pursuit) where they live happily ever after.

Karabas Barabas's appearance is close to that of an ogre : a giant with a very long black beard. His disrespect of puppets (he wants to throw Buratino into the fire as fuel) enhances this aspect. In that he's close to the Buddhist Oni which are somewhere in between ogres and imps.

The book itself (and the movies) are morally lighter than Collodi's original, being aimed at young children. Since the book and movies were produced during the Soviet era, they could have ended up ideologically heavy. Of course the tyrannic Karabas Barabas can be seen as the embodiment of capitalism, and his puppets can represent the working class, but on the whole it's just a regular (quite entertaining) book for children. Big bad guy, little good guys, domination of evil, escape, happily ever after. With many good moments in between (both in the movies and in the book), references that made it into the Russian culture, popular soundtrack, etc.