History Literature / Bluebeard

* BrokenAesop: Perrault tries to explain that the curiosity is a flaw...but the lady finds out her husband is a serial murderer, escapes him and ends marrying a better guy.

* CaptainColorbeard: Bluebeard isn't a captain, but his beard is colored.

** Of course, there is also Henry the VII. GrimmsFairyTaleClassics lampshaded this.
*** Do you mean Henry the VIII? As far as I know, Henry VII had one wife.

* AffablyEvil: The title character, though this demeanor quickly disappears when his wife betrays his trust.

* Hungarian opera ''Blubeard's Castle'' (or ''Duke Blubeard's Castle'') by Bela Bartok and its TV and cinema adaptations stray rather far from the original into symbolism bordering MindScrew. Blubeard shows his fourth wife the rooms of his castle, one by one, uncovering depths of his psyche. The doors may just as well be [[TeleportersAndTransporters portals]] to someplace else and from the last room emerge three previous wives -- still alive and well -- who take the new one with them.

* Kurt Vonnegut's 1987 novel ''Bluebeard'' takes the fairy tale as inspiration.

* A villain named Bluebeard appeared in the 1949 PorkyPig short "Bye Bye Bluebeard", where he was wolf-like and did, indeed, have a blue beard. (He was [[VileVillainSaccharineShow far more evil]] than most ''LooneyTunes'' villains, tying poor Porky up and building a guillotine to use on him. Fortunately for Porky, this version is a VillainousGlutton who is saved when a mouse tricks him into eating bombs disguised as popovers.

* {{Captain Colorbeard}}: Bluebeard isn't a captain, but his beard is colored.

* DistressedDamsel

* "The White Road" by Creator/NeilGaiman is a version of the "Mr. Fox" variant, with a twist - [[spoiler: Mr. Fox may be innocent, having been framed by a {{kitsune}}.]] (That said, it's [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation very]] [[EpilepticTree ambiguous]] if you read the story closely.)

* "The White Road" by Creator/NeilGaiman is a version of the "Mr. Fox" variant, with a twist - [[spoiler: Mr. Fox may be innocent, being framed by a {{kitsune}}.]] (That said, it's [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation very]] [[EpilepticTree ambiguous]] if you read the story closely.)

* "The White Road" by NeilGaiman is a version of the "Mr. Fox" variant, with a twist - [[spoiler: Mr. Fox may be innocent, being framed by a {{kitsune}}.]] (That said, it's [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation very]] [[EpilepticTree ambiguous]] if you read the story closely.)

* Bluebeard is a darklord in the ''{{Ravenloift}}'' setting for DungeonsAndDragons, and featured in the first anthology. Mr. Fox also appears as a bogeyman in the ''Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends'' supplement.

** FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: Perrault ends the story with the moral that the woman ruined her marriage with her curiosity. In other words, a woman should keep her nose out of her husband's affairs, even if said affairs are brutally murdering scores of women (and, in all likeliness, her as well).

* "The White Road" by NeilGaiman is a version of the "Mr. Fox" variant, with a twist - [[spoiler: Mr. Fox may be innocent, being framed by a {{kitsune}}.]] (That said, it's [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation very]] [[EpilepticTree ambiguous]] if you read the story closely]].)

* "The White Road" by NeilGaiman is a version of the "Mr. Fox" variant, with a twist.

* AnAesop

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Was almost a Disney film!
** It would have presumably been based on a Basque version [[http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0311.html#cobbler in which the heroine ends up a princess.]]
** Though if you think about it, doesn't the whole forbidden room and key sound like it was borrowed by "Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast"?
*** Which is ironic, since "Beauty and the Beast" and "Bluebeard" ultimately tell opposite morals: Bluebeard warns women not to take charming men by their first appearance, and trust their instincts to protect them from bad men; B&tB tells women to give scary men a chance, since they can be good on the inside (though they need to prove it first). In fact, Disney's ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast'' seems to take the best elements of both stories, and merges it into a beautiful tale that develops both leads, rather than focusing on just the girl's story.

An old French Folktale ([[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bluebeard/index.html online version here]]) written as ''La Barbe Bleue'' (''The Blue Beard'') by CharlesPerrault in 1697, which later found its way into [[TheBrothersGrimm the Grimms']] first edition of 1812 as ''König Blaubart'' (''King Bluebeard''). (In various versions of the fairy tale the eponymous man is a king, sometimes a knight or other rich person.) The story starts with a rich gentleman, who is a widower, asking for the hand of a fair young maiden in marriage. After the wedding, he gives her a key-ring with the keys to all the doors of his mansion (or palace), with the request that if she loves him she must never, ever, ''ever'' use the golden key to open a certain door in the house.

A second Grimm variant, ''Fitcher's Bird'', indicates that the woman was only wrong insofar as she got caught. The heroine in ''Fitcher's Bird'' also "betrays his trust" to find the bodies of her sisters, but does so in a manner that he cannot detect, and therefore ultimately comes out on top.

An English version of the story, ''Mr. Fox'', has the heroine witness the villain murdering a previous bride, and confronting him at the wedding breakfast with the severed hand of the unfortunate lady. Shakespeare, in ''MuchAdoAboutNothing'', makes a reference to the recurrent rhyme in this version:

** Though if you think about it, doesn't the whole forbidden room and key sound like it was borrowed by ''BeautyAndTheBeast''?
*** Which is ironic, since BeautyAndTheBeast and Bluebeard ultimately tell opposite morals: Bluebeard warns women not to take charming men by their first appearance, and trust their instincts to protect them from bad men; B&tB tells women to give scary men a chance, since they can be good on the inside (though they need to prove it first). In fact, Disney's ''BeautyAndTheBeast'' seems to take the best elements of both stories, and merges it into a beautiful tale that develops both leads, rather than focusing on just the girl's story.

* AffablyEvil: The title character, though this demeanor disappears when his wife betrays his trust.

An old French Folktale written as ''La Barbe Bleue'' (''The Blue Beard'') by CharlesPerrault in 1697, which later found its way into [[TheBrothersGrimm the Grimms']] first edition of 1812 as ''König Blaubart'' (''King Bluebeard''). (In various versions of the fairy tale the eponymous man is a king, sometimes a knight or other rich person.) The story starts with a rich gentleman, who is a widower, asking for the hand of a fair young maiden in marriage. After the wedding, he gives her a key-ring with the keys to all the doors of his mansion (or palace), with the request that if she loves him she must never, ever, ''ever'' use the golden key to open a certain door in the house.