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Cultural significance

Velociraptor is commonly perceived as a vicious and cunning killer thanks to their portrayal in the 1990 novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and its 1993 film adaptation, directed by Steven Spielberg. The "raptors" portrayed in Jurassic Park were actually modeled after the closely related dromaeosaurid Deinonychus. Paleontologists in both the novel and film excavate a skeleton in Montana, far from the central Asian range of Velociraptor but characteristic of the Deinonychus range. Crichton met with the discoverer of Deinonychus, John Ostrom, several times at Yale University to discuss details of the animal's possible range of behaviors and appearance. Crichton at one point apologetically told Ostrom that he had decided to use the name Velociraptor in place of Deinonychus because the former name was "more dramatic." According to Ostrom, Crichton stated that the Velociraptor of the novel was based on Deinonychus in almost every detail, and that only the name had been changed. The Jurassic Park filmmakers also requested all of Ostrom's published papers on Deinonychus during production. They portrayed the animals with the size, proportions, and snout shape of Deinonychus rather than Velociraptor.

Production on Jurassic Park began before the discovery of the large dromaeosaurid Utahraptor was made public in 1991, but as Jody Duncan wrote about this discovery: "Later, after we had designed and built the raptor, there was a discovery of a raptor skeleton in Utah, which they labeled 'super-slasher.' They had uncovered the largest Velociraptor to date and it measured five-and-a-half-feet tall, just like ours. So we designed it, we built it, and then they discovered it. That still boggles my mind." Spielberg's name was briefly considered for naming of the new dinosaur in exchange for funding of field work, but no agreement was reached.

Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park were released before the discovery that dromaeosaurs had feathers, so the Velociraptor in both films were depicted as scaled and featherless. For Jurassic Park III, the male Velociraptor was given quill-like structures along the back of the head and neck, but these structures do not resemble the feathers that Velociraptor would have had in reality due to reasons of continuity. The Jurassic World sequel trilogy ignored the feathers of Velociraptor, adhering to the designs from Jurassic Park. However, the dromaeosaur Pyroraptor was feathered for Jurassic World Dominion, along with other changes such as stiffening the tail to account for ossified tendons and de-pronating the hands.