In music:

• Desperate (Daphne Khoo album), a 2007 album by Daphne Khoo
• Desperate (Divinyls album), a 1983 album by Divinyls
• Desperate Bicycles, an English punk group
• Desperate Straights, an album by British avant-garde rock groups Slapp Happy and Henry Cow

In film:

• Desperate (film), a 1947 suspense film directed by Anthony Mann
• The Desperate Hours (film), a 1955 Humphrey Bogart film
• Desperate Hours, a 1990 remake
• Desperate Living, a 1977 film by Baltimore, Maryland, United States filmmaker John Waters starring Liz Renay
• Desperate Measures, a 1998 action thriller starring Michael Keaton

In literature:

• Desperate Remedies, a novel by Thomas Hardy
• The Desperate Dan Book, a DC Thomson publication

In other fields:

• Desperate Dan, a wild west character in the British comic The Dandy
• Desperate Housewives, American television series