History Literature / Bluebeard

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory:
** Some believe that the fairy tale has its origins in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conomor Conomor the Cursed,]] known for murdering his wives as soon as they got pregnant.
** Bluebeard may also have been based on 15th century serial killer UsefulNotes/GillesDeRais (or de Retz). When you can say that an adaptation in which someone has a roomful of dead wives and a basin full of blood in their [[TortureCellar locked-away torture room]] is LighterAndSofter...
** Of course, there is also UsefulNotes/HenryVIII. ''Anime/GrimmsFairyTaleClassics'' lampshaded this.

* The Caster class of Servant in ''Literature/FateZero'' is UsefulNotes/GillesDeRais (the inspiration for the story), who refers to himself as Bluebeard.

* In the horror novel ''{{Literature/Dove Keeper}}'', the villain, UsefulNotes/GillesDeRais, is constantly compared to Bluebeard because of his crimes, which is appropriate, given that he likely inspired the fairy tale.

** Bluebeard may also have been based on 15th century serial killer [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_de_Rais Gilles de Rais]] (or de Retz). When you can say that an adaptation in which someone has a roomful of dead wives and a basin full of blood in their [[TortureCellar locked-away torture room]] is LighterAndSofter...

* The Caster class of Servant in ''Literature/FateZero'' is Gilles de Rais (the inspiration for the story), who refers to himself as Bluebeard.

* In the horror novel ''{{Literature/Dove Keeper}}'', the villain, Gilles de Rais, is constantly compared to Bluebeard because of his crimes, which is appropriate, given that he likely inspired the fairy tale.

* Russian folktale "The Cat with the Golden Tail" replaces Bluebeard with a ''bear'', who kidnaps girls and forces them to live in his house as his wife and housekeeper. He murders them for entering a forbidden storehouse with kegs of magic liquids (that can turn anything to gold, to silver, [[HealingSpring resurrect the dead]] or [[GrimyWater heal wounds but kill the patient]]). He also ends up storing the corpses next to kegs.[[note]] The third girl resurrects her sisters, tricks the bear into carrying them all home and arranges the accident that kills him.[[/note]]
* A Russian cartoon exists that toys with the story. Bluebeard's first wife was a dopey party girl who accidentally set herself on fire. The second wife was a snob who starved Bluebeard, and accidentally poisoned herself by eating a toadstool that Bluebeard was going to eat (believing it to be a mushroom). The third (and presumably final) bride was an adulteress and had her secret lover kill Bluebeard when he accidentally walked in on them (Bluebeard seems to have survived, however, as he is telling this to the narrator). Presumably, she made up the fairy tale to save face.

->''"At first she saw nothing, for the windows were closed, but after a few moments she perceived dimly that the floor was entirely covered with clotted blood, and that in this there were reflected the dead bodies of several women that hung along the walls. These were all the wives of Blue Beard, whose throats he had cut, one after the other."''

** The text itself also makes it clear that the lady has a {{gut feeling}} that something is ''off'' about Blue Beard, but allows [[TheSociopath his courtly graces]] to convince her she should discard these instincts and marry him anyway. And when he first gives her the key, she has another {{gut feeling}} that something is ''wrong'', and she ''has ''to open the door to find out what it is. Doing so saves her life in the long run. The obvious moral seems to be, "Trust your instincts," yet the stated moral at the end seems to take the opposite view.

* PeekABooCorpse: Several of them. This ''is'' the story of Blue Beard and the corpses of his many murdered wives in the closet.

* TheSociopath: Implied. Blue Beard is superficially charming in public (known for his generosity and courtly graces), but behind closed doors he rather coldly and casually murders his many wives over the smallest disobediences or missteps, then stuffs their rotting corpses in a single room in the main manor in front of his next wife.

* {{Bowdlerize}}: One version of the tale from the Indian comic "Tinkle Digest" changes Bluebeard's wives to his maids, and instead of being killed they are changed into statues. The main characters are sisters who are worried that their sister Elsa went missing after going to work for Bluebeard for a month; they decide to take the job to find out what happened to Elsa. Their older brother goes to get help from the army, and will arrive back in a month. He arrives just in same to save his little sisters, and when Bluebeard dies all of his statues turn back into normal women.

* BigBad: Bluebeard, serial wife murderer extraordinaire.

* TheBluebeard: TropeNamer.

* The story ''The Bloody Chamber'' in British author Creator/AngelaCarter's fairy tale anthology of the same name is based on the story of Bluebeard, with the heroine's rescue coming at the hands of her [[MamaBear formidable mother]].

* {{Bowdlerize}}: One version of the tale from the Indian comic "Tinkle Digest" changes Bluebeard's wives to his maids, and instead of being killed they are changed into statues. The main characters are sisters who are worried that their sister Elsa went missing after going to work for Bluebueard for a month; they decide to take the job to find out what happened to Elsa. Their older brother goes to get help from the army, and will arrive back in a month. He arrives just in same to save his little sisters, and when Bluebeard dies all of his statues turn back into normal women.

* UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming: Charles Perrault tries to paint the wife as being in the wrong for looking into the room. Though it's possible he was being [[SarcasmMode sarcastic]].

* VictimBlaming: Charles Perrault tries to paint the wife as being in the wrong for looking into the room. Though it's possible he was being [[SarcasmMode sarcastic]].

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Some versions of the text mentions that the wife invites friends over and is having a party when she goes down to the cellar and discovers Bluebeard's secret. During the climax the friends inexplicably disappear from the castle and don't appear in the story again despite the fact they were there when the wife went downstairs.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The text mentions that the wife invites friends over and is having a party when she goes down to the cellar and discovers Bluebeard's secret. During the climax the friends inexplicably disappear from the castle and don't appear in the story again despite the fact they were there when the wife went downstairs.

** In some versions, the wife discovers the secret room while throwing a party. So why doesn't she leave with her friends when they depart or at the very least ''tell them'' what she saw?

* RememberTheNewGuy: The wife's sister, Anne, randomly shows up at the castle during the climax to call for their brothers to comes rescue them despite the fact she was never mentioned previously in the story.

* UglyGuyHotWife: Bluebeard's blue beard puts people off. But his wealth and apparent generosity keeps getting him young, beautiful wives from time to time.

* IdiotBall: Good lord, why would the murderer give his wife a ''key to the room that he's desperate to keep a secret?''

* [[OffWithHisHead OffWithHerHead]]: In some versions of the story, the wife doesn't find the ''bodies'' of her predecessors, but only their [[DecapitationPresentation severed heads]], all lined up in the cupboard.

* InterplayOfSexAndViolence: In some versions, instead of the wife's making increasingly feeble pleas for Bluebeard to hold off murdering her a little longer (and his inexplicably granting her a respite each time long enough for the DeusExMachina to occur), the tale has the more clever device of having her ask him to wait while she puts on various parts of her wedding dress. Due to an ancient version of this trope, this tricks Bluebeard into thinking that she's preparing for an imminent marriage to Death, i.e. that she's resigned to dying and just insists on doing it with ''[[FaceDeathWithDignity honor]]''; which he decides to allow because he's rather WickedCultured that way.