Embedded in popular folklore as they are, kitsune have made appearances in many contemporary Japanese works. A few Western authors have also made use of the kitsune legends. In anime, kitsune are sometimes depicted in a manner similar to non-furry catgirls, usually as female, seductive, and fond of alcohol. Other depictions of kitsune include:

• Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Dream Hunters is a short story featuring a kitsune protagonist, lushly illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. Gaiman also mentions Kitsune briefly in his novel American Gods.
• The series Crescent Moon by Haruko Iida and Stuart Hazleton has a demon fox named Misoka Asagi as the unofficial leader of the Moonlight Bandits.
• Two Pokémon, the Vulpix and the Ninetales, are derived from the mythical nine-tailed fox. One episode even had a Ninetales who created an illusion of a human woman, but she had no reflection, like a vampire, and attempted to 'seduce' Brock because he looked like her old trainer from hundreds of years ago. She also guarded a ball similiar to the Kitsune's Hoshi no Tama.
• he digimon Renamon and her Digivolved forms from the third season of the Digimon anime (known in Japan as Digimon Tamers) was inspired by the kitsune.
• The SNES/Super Famicom game Shadowrun features a female shaman named Kitsune. She can transform into a fox, which is also her totem animal, and is an extensive magic user.
• In some Legend of Zelda games, Keaton is a yellow 'ghost fox.' In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, we get to see a mask that is based on the Kitsune. Also in the latter game, a real Kitsune appears. The name of Kitsune was renamed to Keaton for releases outside of Japan, however.
• In Mega Man X Command Mission there is a set of secret bosses named OneTail through NineTails, and each looks like an anthropomorphic fox with the described number of tails.
• In Mega Man Zero 3, there exist one super-effeminate male character going by the name Kyuubit Foxtar, and he can creat some sort of 'tail', as many as 9 of them.
• In Ragnarok Online, the kitsune is featured as a powerful monster called a ninetails, and as a boss named Moonlight Flower.
• Shippo from InuYasha. As a nod to the shapeshifting abilities sometimes attributed to kitsunes, Shippo is capable of taking many forms through use of a green leaf on his head, in the manner of the tanuki.
• Ryutarō from Pom Poko.
• A shapeshifting kyūbi no kitsune named Sakura is one of the main characters of the anime/manga series Hyper Police. She is already technically a nine-tailed fox, but her ninth tail is very shrimpy and unnoticable. Both her parents were nine-tail foxes.
• The spirit of a kyūbi no kitsune, called the Nine Tailed Demon Fox (Kyūbi no Yōko), was sealed within Uzumaki Naruto, the main character of Naruto (Note: "yōko" is another name for the mythical fox creature). Naruto has fox-like whiskers on his face and has a prankster personality, one of such pranks involves his "Orioke no Jutsu"("Sexy Jutsu"), in which he transforms into a beautiful naked girl.
• Shuichi Minamino - the human alias of Kurama, a main character of Yu Yu Hakusho - is a reincarnated bandit or thief kitsune named Youko Kurama.
• Konno Mitsune of Love Hina is almost exclusively referred to as Kitsune due to her sly prankster nature, her fondness for alcohol, and her almost always closed eyes, which make her appear fox-like.
• The story of the nine-tailed fox is told by Shuri Kurogane in Ran, Akira Kurosawa's epic retelling of King Lear.
• Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo features a female fox character with the stage name "Kitsune," who is a trickster and master thief.
• One of the two main characters of Andi Watson's comic Skeleton Key is a transplanted kitsune with a sweet tooth named Kitsune.
• The protagonist of Kij Johnson's novel The Fox Woman is likewise a kitsune named Kitsune.
• White Wolf Game Studio's Werewolf: The Apocalypse roleplaying game features a race of shapeshifting fox-men known as the "Kitsune."
• In the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game, the kitsune appear in the Champions of Kamigawa block as a race of noble, plains-dwelling anthropomorphic foxes. The kitsune who live on the plane of Kamigawa are not spirits or kami as they are in traditional Japanese mythology, but rather flesh and blood creatures who take up the roles of clerics and samurai. Several different kitsune characters are mentioned by name on the cards and in the fiction based on the cards, including the legendary fox cleric "Eight-and-a-Half-Tails."
• Fantasy author Mercedes Lackey introduced kitsune characters in her Serrated Edge novels.
• An issue of the Psycho Circus comic book, starring the members of the band KISS as cosmic beings, featured a story where a feudal-era samurai is trapped in a traveling circus populated by kitsune.
• Miles "Tails" Prower, the sidekick of Sonic the Hedgehog, is a fox born with two tails that enable him to fly.
• In the hit anime Rurouni Kenshin, Takani Megumi is nicknamed "Kitsune" and even portrayed as one in some episodes by Goro Fujita (Hajime Saitou).
• In the series Angel Tails (Tenshi no Shippo) there are two kitsune: Akane is a young benevolent guardian spirit, while her mother seeks to become a nine-tail fox and throw humans into a pit of fear.