History YMMV / DRACULA

* UnfortunateImplications: Of all the characters they could've [[RaceLift made black]], they went with Renfield. ''Renfield.'' The guy Dracula makes his servant!

* AllFirstPersonNarratorsWriteLikeNovelists: Pretty blatant example. The novel is presented as a collection of diaries, telegrams and newspaper clippings, the diaries being kept by characters like Jonathan (a lawyer), Mina (a lady of society), Seward (a psychiatrist), etc. Not only do all of them write in very much the same style, but all of them make use of [[SesquipedalianLoquaciousness florid, poetic language]], despite none of them being professional writers. They also include long pages of dialogue that any real journal keeper would simply summarize.

** According to several feminist and post-colonialist critics, ''this'' was indeed the appeal and subtext of the story. The appeal of vampires as the foreign "other" out to seduce innocent Victorian women, and so needing men to be ever vigilant to protect women from ''their'' desires or weaknesses. This attitude is best conveyed in [[http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=285 this comic]] by [[Webcomic/HarkAVagrant Kate Beaton]].

** Nearly every adaptation turns Lucy into a sexually promiscuous and flirty girl. In the novel she's a downright PuritySue but this gets turned into her lusting after all her potential suitors. It's shown as a huge character flaw that her sole ambition is to marry before she turns 20. An upper class Victorian woman wouldn't be expected to have more ambition than that. The novel makes a point that Lucy cares and possibly loves all her potential suitors - but that normally gets lost in adaptations that portray her as a shameless flirt. It seems an attempt at DeathBySex though one must realise that Lucy died before her wedding, therefore as a virgin while Mina married Jonathan and was presumably ''not'' a virgin by the book's end. Kate Beaton, author of the Web comic cited this incident, noting:

* HoYay: Mina sure likes describing how pretty Lucy is...

* PuritySue: Debatable but Lucy.

** According to several feminist and post-colonialist critics, ''this'' was indeed the appeal and subtext of the story. The appeal of vampires as the foreign "other" out to seduce innocent Victorian women, and so needing men to be ever vigilant to protect women from ''their'' desires or weaknesses. This attitude is best conveyed in [[http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=285 this comic]] by [[Webcomic/HarkAVagrant Kate Beaton]].

** Nearly every adaptation turns Lucy into a sexually promiscuous and flirty girl. In the novel she's a downright PuritySue but this gets turned into her lusting after all her potential suitors. It's shown as a huge character flaw that her sole ambition is to marry before she turns 20. An upper class Victorian woman wouldn't be expected to have more ambition than that. The novel makes a point that Lucy cares and possibly loves all her potential suitors - but that normally gets lost in adaptations that portray her as a shameless flirt. It seems an attempt at DeathBySex though one must realise that Lucy died before her wedding, therefore as a virgin while Mina married Jonathan and was presumably ''not'' a virgin by the book's end.

* FairForItsDay: Mina is actually quite a feminist character. Throughout the novel, the men behave foolishly, while Mina is the only one to be consistently intelligent throughout.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Some readers often wondered why Dracula never brought his brides with him to London. Wouldn't that have given the heroes more of a challenge. Likewise him never biting Lucy's mother and changing her into a vampire as well.

* CompleteMonster: Dracula himself keeps Jonathan Harker in his castle, trying to [[DrivenToMadness drive him mad in the process]], turns Renfield insane, ''kidnaps a baby to feed to the other vampires'' and then sends the wolves to kill the baby's mother, drains Lucy of her blood, attacks her and her mother as a wolf, resulting in Lucy herself as a vampire, and turns Mina into a vampire in order to know what the gang is doing to get him. He is accorded no sympathy, and portrayed as the undead abomination that he is.

** taken UpToEleven in the BBC version (the most faithful adaptation of the novel yet made, despite the following change) where she's Lucy's sister.

* GreyAndGrayMorality: Neither side has clean hands. Even Van Helsing is morally questionable, having [[spoiler:been responsible for bringing Dracula back to life in the first place by killing his tomb-raiding partner and letting his blood drip down on the dead vampire's dessicated face]].

*** Sadly, this element takes a ''critical'' hit in most movie adaptions. most notably, in the Bela Lugosi version, she's portrayed as nothing more than a wimpering child in an adult body. This aspect is returned though in Creator/FrancisFordCoppola's ''Film/BramStokersDracula'' which portrays a romantic attraction between Mina and the Count.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Some folks actually wouldn't have minded seeing ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' actually beat the main characters. The book goes out of it way to make vampirism seem like the worst thing in the world. But outside from never seeing the sun again (well the book never really stated that. Drac actually moved around in the daylight, only with limited powers) and the inhuman hunger for blood, receiving the powers of the night and immortality didn't seem like a bad trade-off. Well, at least for themselves; other people ''might'' not be so happy with the "being drained of blood" thing.

* CriticalResearchFailure: Historical accuracy obviously isn't what this series is interested in, but oil wasn't discovered in the Middle East until 1908, twelve years after the events of the series. Grayson acts as though its existence in the Ottoman territories is common knowledge.

*** Sadly, this element takes a ''critical'' hit in most movie adaptions. most notably, in the Bela Lugosi version, she's portrayed as nothing more than a wimpering child in an adult body.

!!The 1931 film:
* DracoInLeatherPants: More so than the original novel.
* HilariousInHindsight: The actors who play Dracula and Van Helsing are named (respectively) [[Literature/{{Twilight}} Bela and Edward]].
* MoralEventHorizon: Dracula crosses this when kills Renfield.
* {{Narm}}: It's atmospheric, the villain is great... but man, most of it hasn't aged well and it's unintentionally hilarious.
** For decades, the sounds of Renfield screaming while being strangled and Dracula's dying moans were censored out, so for most of the film's existence, we just get a short "Huullchk!" when Dracula is staked.
* NightmareRetardant: Armadillos in Dracula's castle? Shiver!
* SpecialEffectFailure: It's blatantly obvious that the bats seen in the film are just rubber puppets on fishing lines. This contrasts with some of the film's other effects, like the glass matte shots which are quite convincing.
* SignatureScene: It's either Dracula welcoming Renfield to his castle, or the brides walking through the catacombs.
* UncannyValley: An odd auditory version. Bela Lugosi spoke very poor English, and learned his lines phonetically. This naturally resulted in Dracula sounding perhaps like he isn't quite used to speaking at all.
** This is actually something that's been debated. For many of Lugosi's early American stage roles he did learn this way, but by the time Dracula was made he was probably a good enough English speaker to speak fluently. Compare Lugosi's speaking to Dracula, which he had played on stage previously, to Murders in the Rue Morgue a couple of years later and you can hear a more natural-sounding if still accented English.

* CompleteMonster: Dracula himself, who has no sympathetic traits, preys on women, feeds a baby to the wolves, and kills Renfield once he has [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness outlived his usefulness]].

* LesYay: Interviews with a cast have already more-or-less confirmed that Lucy has a crush on Mina.

* RonTheDeatheater: Van Helsing tends to be portrayed as this in re-tellings from Dracula's point of view, where he's seen as radical and clueless; he particularly gets flak for the transfusions that, admittedly, ''could'' have killed Lucy in real life - leading to said re-tellings claiming that Dracula turned Lucy in order to 'save' her life - but at the time the book was written, neither he nor the author would have known that.

*** Sadly, this elemant takes a ''critical'' hit in most movie adaptions. most notably, in the Bela Lugosi version, she's portrayed as nothing more than a wimpering child in an adult body.

* RootingTheEmpire: Some folks actually wouldn't have minded seeing ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' actually beat the main characters. The book goes out of it way to make vampirism seem like the worst thing in the world. But outside from never seeing the sun again (well the book never really stated that. Drac actually moved around in the daylight, only with limited powers) and the inhuman hunger for blood, receiving the powers of the night and immortality didn't seem like a bad trade-off. Well, at least for themselves; other people ''might'' not be so happy with the "being drained of blood" thing.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Renfield and Lucy emerged almost instantly as the fandom favourites.