History YMMV / TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea

* ValuesDissonance: Nemo's heritage was a little vague but he was eventually revealed to be of South Asian ancestry. Nemo being portrayed by a white actor would nowadays be derided as whitewashing. [[note]]The Disney portrayal of Captain Nemo seems to be closer to how Jules Verne had originally imagined him. He initially wrote Nemo's character as a dispossessed Polish aristocrat, but because of the diplomatic awkwardness between France and Imperial Russia at the time of writing, Verne's editor asked him to reconsider.[[/note]]

* ValuesDissonance: Nemo's heritage was a little vague but he was eventually revealed to be of South Asian ancestry. Nemo being portrayed by a white actor would nowadays be derided as whitewashing.

* RaceLift: Captain Nemo is portrayed in this adaptation of the story as an unspecified European who is fighting an unnamed "hated nation." In the final drafts of Jules Verne's books that feature him, Captain Nemo is revealed as a Southern Asian prince who lost his ancestral possessions to the British Raj and is waging war against them. However, it should be noted that Jules Verne originally wanted Nemo to be a Polish aristocrat who was fighting the Russian Empire, but Verne's publisher talked him out of the idea because tensions between Russia and France were strong at the time.

* RaceLift: Captain Nemo is portrayed as an unspecified European in this adaptation of the story who is fighting an unnamed "hated nation." In the final drafts of Jules Verne's books that feature him, Captain Nemo is revealed as a Southern Asian prince who lost his ancestral possessions to the British Raj and wages war against them. However, it should be noted that Jules Verne originally wanted Nemo to be a Polish aristocrat who was fighting the Russian Empire, but Verne's publisher talked him out of the idea because tensions between Russia and France were strong at the time.

* FridgeHorror: Even as the island of Vulcania is exploding and the three protagonists are rowing away from the ''Nautilus'', there is still an intact warship from the hated nation off the coast. It is probably the only ship around for hundreds of miles, and since the marines were indiscriminately shooting at them before, the heroes will most likely be enslaved or killed for knowing too much. Unless, of course, no one ever finds the heroes and they die at sea.

* FridgeHorror: Even as the island of Vulcania is exploding and the three protagonists are rowing away from the ''Nautilus'', there is still an intact warship from the hated nation off the coast. It is probably the only ship around for hundreds of miles, and since the marines were indiscriminately shooting at them before, the heroes will most likely be enslaved or killed for knowing too much.

* FridgeHorror: Even as the Island of Vulcania is exploding and the three protagonists are rowing away from the ''Nautilus'', there is still an intact warship from the hated nation off the coast. It is probably the only ship around for hundreds of miles, and since the marines were indiscriminately shooting at them before, the heroes will most likely be enslaved or killed for knowing too much.

* Fridge horror: Even as the Island of Vulcania is exploding and the three protagonists are rowing away from the ''Nautilus'', there is still an intact warship from the hated nation off the coast. It is probably the only ship around for hundreds of miles, and since the marines were indiscriminately shooting at them before, the heroes will most likely be enslaved or killed for knowing too much.

* WriterInducedFanon: Nemo's ethnicity as an Indian, a Sikh Prince to be exact, was made explicit in the novel's sequel, ''Literature/TheMysteriousIsland'' but was left ambiguous by Verne in the first novel. There are many in-text hints such as when Captain Nemo rescues an Indian sailor and admits that he sees him as belonging to the country of the oppressed and considers him a countryman but it's still quite cryptic. Most adaptations made Nemo a European. Verne ''did'' intend him to be Polish originally although he was adviced against it by his publisher. Still, it was Verne's own idea to eventually make him a non-European.

* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The battle with the giant squid. Even today it looks awesome. Which is kind of funny, as the battle as it was initially shot (in daylight with calm seas) was the inverse of this trope. A little darkness and splashing water to cover the obviousness of the huge puppet, and you have a classic. Compare [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO5LLQ0nG-I this]] to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMF_G_Jn3zc the finished product]].

* ItWasHisSled: The ''Nautilus'' is a giant, secret submarine. This is meant to be a twist reveal, but is one of the most famous things about the story nowadays.

** The title refers to the distance that the ''Nautilus'' travels while under the sea, not the depth that it dives to (20,000 leagues is actually about twice the circumference of the Earth). There was actually a ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' sketch where Creator/KelseyGrammer as Nemo vainly tries to get the others to comprehend that they're not that deep.

* FairForItsDay: The depiction of the Papua New Guinea natives is no better than you'd expect it to be for a book written by a European in the 1800s, but the book nevertheless has an anti-imperialist slant. Along with Nemo's sympathy and assistance towards people in oppressed nations, Arronax himself refers to the likes of Cortez as conquerors and oppressors.

** Captain Nemo is the antagonist of the novel, not the protagonist. Though he's certainly the most famous character in the novel, he's an Antihero at best, and a full-on villain at worst. This misperception is probably because [[StockholmSyndrome Aronnax]] is the UnreliableNarrator who idolizes Nemo before he fully understands what's happening.

** The ''Nautilus'' crew didn't have an epic showdown with a giant squid, they had a prolonged battle with an entire school of giant (but not as large as the one seen in the film) squid. The Disney film contributes a lot to this misconception, since (presumably) the studio only had enough money in the budget for one giant animatronic squid. That, and/or it was Disney's way to cash in on the 1950's [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant monster]] movie craze.

* AcceptableTargets: The British, the author being a Frenchman. Somewhat ironic because Verne was far more pro-British than most of his countrymen (through that might not have been saying much, with UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars in living memory at the time). And before them, it was the Russians. Verne wanted it to be the Russians, but his publisher balked at the idea, since France was on good terms with them, at the time. Not only that, [[MoneyDearBoy but the sales as well]]. Russia [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff always was a huge market for Verne's books]], at one point being the ''largest'' of them all, and Hetzel didn't want to lose all that money by offending and alienating the readers. He managed to persuade Verne to change Nemo's nation, and he, ever the pragmatic[[note]]Perhaps surprisingly, but he was. In his youth, when his father withdrew his financial support after learning that his son was dabbling with literature instead of studying the law, Verne had to earn his living by being a stock broker. He hated it with passion, but was quite successful, becoming financially independent even before breaking out in the writing field.[[/note]], agreed.

* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: The squid battle.

* SignatureScene: The entire awesome battle with the giant squid.

** The crew spend an entire chapter killing sperm whales for no particular reason, except that Nemo doesn't like them.

** The most common image of the ''Nautilus'' has her equipped with a huge saw-like raking blade, and this is often said to be Verne's original idea. In fact, this was designed by Harper Goff for the Disney movie. Verne's ''Nautilus'' was said to be cigar-shaped and have a ramming prow (in fact, it's description is almost identical to modern military submarines, complete with conning tower and dive planes).
** Also due to Disneyfication and [[Creator/JamesMason James Mason's]] memorable portrayal, many people's image of Captain Nemo is as a dark-haired/bearded Caucasian man of presumable East European heritage rather than the AmbiguouslyBrown character in Verne's novel. Understandably, this leaves viewers/readers of Film/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen scratching their heads, since both the film and the comic series it's based on stay true(r) to Nemo's literary depiction.

** Related to the above: it's somewhat debatable whether Verne actually meant his famous monsters to be squid; in the original French text, he referred to them as ''"poulpes"'' ("octopuses") rather than ''"calmars"'' ("squids"), and many early English translations likewise called them "poulps" (an archaic English term for octopi). This may have been [[ScienceMarchesOn in the interest of greater scientific accuracy]]: in the years since the book was published, zoologists have become mostly certain that RealLife octopi don't actually grow to the gigantic proportions seen in the book, though RealLife squid ''do''.

** Also due to Disneyfication and [[Creator/JamesMason James Mason's]] memorable portrayal, many people's image of Captain Nemo is as a dark-haired/bearbed Caucasian man of presumable East European heritage rather than the AmbiguouslyBrown character in Verne's novel. Understandably, this leaves viewers/readers of Film/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen scratching their heads, since both the film and the comic series it's based on stay true(r) to Nemo's literary depiction.

* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The battle with the giant squid. Even today it looks awesome. Which is kind of funny, as the battle as it was initially shot (in daylight with calm seas) was the inverse of this trope. A little darkness and splashing water to cover the obviousness of the huge puppet, and you have a classic.

* OlderThanTheyThink: People often forget that there other film adaptations of the book made around ''fifty years'' before this one, when the motion picture business was still in its infancy. The earliest one was a silent short film made in 1905, but there were other adaptations made in 1907, 1916, and 1917.

** Since the beginning of his career as a writer, Verne was being accused by critics of being ''[[ScifiGhetto only]]'' a HardScienceFiction writer that paid little heed to the social ramifications of technology. But with ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea'' Verne wrote in 1869 about Captain Nemo, a man from an oppressed country who [[MajoredInWesternHypocrisy had training in the west,]] and has [[{{Fiction500}} enough money to pay a country’s national debt,]] who decides to create an [[NGOSuperpower organization strong enough]] to [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters fight]] an [[TheEmpire entire Western country]] [[MoralEventHorizon through terrible acts of violence]], [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and therefore is chased as a menace by all established countries in the West.]] After UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden, 9/11 and UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, we must admit that Verne really knew much more than anyone ever suspected about how the world will turn in the next 130 years!