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Literature: And Then There Were None
"Ten little Indian boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys traveling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Indian boys going in for law;
One got into Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Indian boys were out in the sun;
One got all frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone;
He went and hanged himself and then there were none."

Any serious mystery fan knows this one by heart: Ten people, strangers to each other, are summoned to an island. There, a mysterious recording accuses each one of being the cause of another's death, and one by one, murders start cropping up among them, each one executed in a fashion similar to those in the "Ten Little Indians" rhyme. The remaining ones come to the only possible conclusion: the murderer(ess?) must be one of them. Paranoia and suspicion run high, as each person tries to outwit the killer at his or her game. Which one of them cannot be trusted? And how long will it be before the next Indian is offed...?

The ten victims are, in alphabetical order:
  • Dr. Edward Armstrong, a doctor. Accused of causing the death of a patient by operating on her while drunk.
  • William Blore, a former policeman who tends to be too bold for his good. Accused of causing the death of an innocent man by planting false evidence and landing him in prison where he died.
  • Emily Brent, a dour and staunchly religious woman. Accused of causing the death of her maid Beatrice by firing her and turning her out of the household when she became pregnant and thus driving her to suicide.
  • Vera Claythorne, a young former governess, now gym teacher and secretary. Accused of causing the death of her lover Hugo's little nephew, Cyril, by encouraging him to swim out to sea alone and drown, so that Hugo could inherit his brother's (Cyril's father's) estate. Hugo actually adored the kid like a son; he broke up with Vera and almost went insane with pain and guilt, finding solace in booze.
  • Colonel Philip Lombard, a cool-headed and intelligent man. Accused of causing the death of 21 natives by abandoning them in his brief career as a mercenary in Africa.
  • General John MacArthur, a retired World War I general. Accused of causing the death of his wife's lover by sending him on a war mission that virtually guaranteed his death.
  • Anthony Marston, a handsome and vain youth with little concern for others. Accused of causing the deaths of two children by accidentally running over them with his car.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, the couple who accommodates the other eight guests. Both accused of causing the death of their former employer, an old and sick American lady, for monetary gain.
  • Judge Lawrence Wargrave, a retired Hanging Judge with a no-nonsense attitude. Accused of causing the death of an accused murderer by steering the jury into sentencing him to death, despite evidence supporting his innocence; he claims that the preponderance of the evidence pointed toward the guilt of the accused, and he only kept the jury focused on the facts of the case.

Of course, one of them is the killer. But which one?

Written by Agatha Christie and later made into several play and film adaptations, all of which revised the ending. (Which makes sense once you know the book ending.) There also was a videogame featuring an additional character as an investigator that has Multiple Endings, one of them the same as the movie, as well as the original ending as lockable content after finishing the game. The original title was actually Ten Little Niggers, which was later renamed to Ten Little Indians or alternatively, And Then There Were None. So it goes.


This book contains examples of:

  • Acquitted Too Late: The Trope Namer.
  • Adaptation Decay: The book undergoes this with nearly every film adaptation. The 1945 version is fairly well regarded, but the three versions by Harry Alan Towers- especially the 1975 version- are all considered to be messes.
    • And then there's the game which added a new character for the sake of gameplay, created a love triangle between said character, Vera Claythorne, and Philip Lombard, changed a few character's deaths, and the culprit's identity.
  • And Then There Were None: Trope Namer, obviously.
  • Asshole Victim: None of the victims is exactly an innocent, though a few are sympathetic to varying degrees.
  • Anyone Can Die: And they do. Subverted in The Movie, where the last two remaining characters barely survive.
  • Ax Crazy: Vera, and to a lesser extent Wargrave.
  • Beware The Nice Ones: Vera, just...Vera.
  • Brainless Beauty: Anthony Marston.
  • Chekhovs Gun: The hook on the ceiling in Vera's room. To a lesser extent, the rhyme when it is first introduced may also count.
  • The Chessmaster: The killer with an elaborate Xanatos Roulette.
  • Darwinist: Philip Lombard.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: A plot twist not in the book but in the many movie versions reveals "Philip Lombard" is really Charles Morley who came in Lombard's place after the real Lombard committed suicide upon receiving UN Owen's letter. And in the game, you have two dead person impersonators; one is Morley, the other is Gabrielle Steel masquerading as Emily Brent, whom she did away with earlier as part of her plan.
  • Downer Ending: There's a reason why only the Russian movie adaptation uses it. Highlight the spoiler in Anyone Can Die.
  • Driven To Suicide: Beatrice Taylor, Emily Brent's 'victim', and also Vera Claythorne.
  • Fan Hater: You are not allowed to like the play's ending or the Lombard/Vera pairing. Ever. Because true art is angsty.
  • Fan Service: In the 1965 adaptation, Shirley Eaton, in the role of Vera, gets quite a few scenes in her underwear and at least one modesty towel. In the Russian version, Vera also gets a scene in her black underwear, which is followed by a bareback shot minutes later with Lombard...as he begins to rape her. Er, yeah...
  • Fingertip Drug Analysis
  • Fridge Logic: Part of why Christie changed the ending for the play is that she caught on to a fairly large hole in the killer's plan.
    • You mean what would have happened if Vera had missed when she shot Lombard? One of her other reasons was it would have been difficult to simulate a hanging on-stage without Vera's actress getting injured or even killed.
  • Getting Crap Past The Radar: In the play, Emily Brent makes various comments on Vera Claythorne not wanting to appear flashy to her hostess right before making a nasty comment on how tight her dress appears (with Vera, of course, being utterly naive as to what she really means). And then there are the various instances of Lombard flirting with Vera, which include Lombard's line about being regretful he and Vera did not wake up at the same time because they could've gone down to the ocean to "have a bathe" together.
  • Hanging Judge: Wargrave.
  • Heroic Sociopath: Philip Lombard, to some degree.
  • Holier Than Thou: Emily Brent.
  • Hotter And Sexier: The 1965 version changed the elderly spinster character to a glamorous actress solely to allow another beautiful woman to be cast (a change that would be retained in both the 1975 and 1989 versions). It was also the first adaptation of a Christie work to contain a sex scene (which had not been present in the original novel). Christie was not pleased.
  • Ironic Nursery Tune
  • Karma Houdini: Cruelly subverted with the victims. Played straight with the murderer though, depending on whether or not you think their actions are justified.
  • Kill Em All
  • Knight Templar: Wagrave, who was a borderline Blood Knight but still retained some morals and preferred to use the law and what he considered justice to get what he wanted..
  • Large Ham: Every actor who has portrayed the Anthony Marston equivalent in the Hollywood adaptations. Mischa Auer in particular could be said to the worst offender.
  • Lighter And Softer: The play and 1945 movie version fall under this, as do the Harry Alan Towers adaptations.
    • In contrast, the Russian version is darker and edgier. The first victim crashes through a plate and gets the glass stuck in their face for crying out loud!
  • Locked Room Mystery: All that is left at the end is a bunch of dead bodies on an island. The times and manners of death are completely contradictory and baffle the police.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Wargrave
  • Message In A Bottle: Discovered at the end.
  • Mind Rape: The "mundane" version, that is. Every single victim goes through it, thanks to Wargrave, and the one who takes the worst part is Vera Claythorne.
  • Misaimed Fandom: Let's just say that if the internet existed when the book was first published, or if Agatha Christie had lived long enough to see the internet, she would have done a lot of head-desking at the discovery of how fans found some of her most intentionally despicable murderers to be sympathetic.
    • Christie was fond of having a sympathetic character turn out to be a murderer, because these types of characters tend not to be suspected by the reader. However, the notion that fans would still find these characters sympathetic after their guilt is clear beyond a doubt would certainly make her mind boggle.
    • Philip Lombard seems to be gaining himself a bit of a fandom in recent years, if the artwork pairing him up with a Mary Sue on Deviant Art is any indication. Hmm...Lombard in leather pants, maybe?
  • Mis Blamed: Rene Clair, director of the 1945 film version, received a lot of criticism for changing the ending of the book. A lot of people did not realize that the film's ending came from Christie herself, having changed it upon adapting the novel for the stage in 1943.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Arguably, what all the guests' crimes basically are. Emily Brent is the one fans vilify the most for her crime. Agatha Christie possibly knew about this and made her even more horrifying in the play by giving her a monologue where she admits she completely and totally broke poor Beatrice down by more or less implying she's a slut whom no one will ever take in and that the father of her child would never dream of marrying her. Even Vera Claythorne is horrified, and that's saying something, considering what she did. Interestingly enough, fans don't give her as hard of a time as they do Miss Brent, as she is mildly sympathetic, but of course, not everyone feels the same way.
    • And then there's Philip Lombard, who is something of an Anti Hero in the book regardless of what he did. The Russian film version, however, changes that. He ceases to be even a semi-likeable character when he rapes an already mentally unstable Vera Claythorne, and it is subtly implied this plays a part in her breakdown at the end.
  • Narm: Anthony Marston singing the poem in The Movie.
  • The Perfect Crime
  • Poetic Serial Killer
  • Psycho Lesbian: The 1989 adaptation had Emily Brent replaced by Marion (Brenda Vaccaro), an actress who killed her lesbian lover when she started blackmailing her.
  • Psychological Thriller: The book has elements of this. The Russian movie version expands on this and it works very, very well.
  • Red Herring: Referred to in the poem; one character points it out, but with the wrong interpretation.
  • Red Herring Mole: While every single character is a suspect (right up until they die), the one who gains the most suspicion in the latter half of the book is Doctor Armstrong, who of course turns out to only have been a pawn in the serial killer's game.
  • Revised Ending: When Agatha Christie adapted her own novel for the stage, she felt that the ending wasn't dramatically satisfying for the stage, so she altered it so the novel's most sympathetic characters were innocent, survived, and fell in love. In turn, the ending was used for nearly all the adaptations. This was surprisingly averted in both the Russian move version and Kevin Elyot's 2005 stage adaptation, both of which kept the novel's original ending.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Averted in the original novel, and to a certain degree in Agatha Christie's stage version and the 1945 movie as well, but the Harry Alan Towers adaptations put much more focus on the romantic subplot between the two survivors than on the actual mystery itself.
  • Serial Killer
  • Steven Ulysses Perhero: U.N. Owen is the given name of the owner of the island, and the alias of the killer.
  • They Just Didnt Care: All three Harry Alan Towers films changed the locale of the story, as well as most of the character names, for no identifiable reason.
    • Some of the character names were changed to accommodate the nationality of the actor playing the role; for instance, Anthony Marston became Prince Nikita Starloff when Russian-born Mischa Auer was cast in the 1945 version. However, for many of the roles, no discernible reason for the change exists. (Why was Vera Claythorne's name changed to Ann Clyde in the 1965 version?) Lombard's first name was changed to Hugh in the 1965 version as a nod to actor Hugh O'Brian, but it inexplicably remained Hugh in the 1975 version, which featured Oliver Reed in the role. William Blore is the only name to remain consistent through all the adaptations.
  • True Art Is Angsty: So say the fans who prefer the novel's ending, though this can be somewhat justified in that many of the adaptations did not handle the play's ending very well. It does get fairly annoying when daring to admit you like the play's ending.
  • Uriah Gambit: MacArthur's method of killing his wife Leslie's lover.
  • Values Dissonance: The controversy resulting from the original title.
  • Whack A Mole
  • What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome: In The Movie:
    "U.N.Owen...is one of us." *cue dramatic thunder and lightning*
  • Why Did It Have To Be Snakes: Or wasps and bees, in Miss Brent's case.
  • Wouldnt Hit A Girl: Played straight with Philip Lombard and Vera Claythorne with disastrous results, as she shoots him to death.
  • Xanatos Funeral
  • Xanatos Roulette Which works in the book... but fails with the final two characters surviving in The Movie
  • Yamato Nadeshiko: Vera Claythorne completely deconstructs it, becoming a...
    • Yandere: Less in the movie adaptations, but very much in the book.
      • That's because it may or may not be her sister who fits the role in the Hollywood adaptations. The Russian version is fairly faithful towards keeping her character as the Yandere.
  • You Look Familiar: Herbert Lom played Dr. Armstrong in the 1975 version and General MacArthur (renamed General Romensky) in the 1989 version.