Michael Pedler writes that "Superman's Kryptonite remains a kind of pop-cultural shorthand" for an "Achilles' heel".

Brian Holmes, Jeremy Bolen and Brian Kirkbride use the word in a different scholarly context in "Born Secret (Cash for Kryptonite): A field guide to the Anthropocene mode of production", an article on art, technology and political ecology that examines the Tennessee Valley, hydroelectric modernization and the Manhattan Project. The title uses the term "kryptonite" to represent hidden vulnerability, exposure and destructive