YMMV / Alcatraz

• Anvilicious: "Clarence Montgomery," for racism in the 1960s.
• Cry for the Devil: It's hard not to feel for some of the 63s when you realize how brutally the prison authorities treated them. Others it's hard, if not impossible, to feel any sympathy for...
• Complete Monster:
  • Kit Nelson is a savage child-killer who is despised by all the other hardened inmates in Alcatraz. He murdered his younger brother when they were both kids by strangling him to death. Then he placed a flower on his brother's bed, adopting this method for all his subsequent murders. He breaks into young boys' bedrooms at night to abduct them at knifepoint, threatening to kill their families if they don't comply. He forces them to take part in his late brother's favorite hobbies for a few days, before strangling them to death with murderous glee. Afterwards he drops off the boys' bodies back in the place he abducted them from.
  • Paxton Petty plants mines in public places and enjoys watching people get blown to pieces. During The Korean War, he planted mines in the local children's playgrounds to eliminate potential Child Soldiers, for which he was arrested and sent to a military prison. After escaping Alcatraz, he starts to plant more mines around San Francisco—including in elementary schoolyards—to kill as many random civilians as possible. He traps Agent Hauser on one of these mines, but modifies the bomb in such a way that the bomb disposal expert who rescues Hauser would inevitably be killed during the dismantling procedure no matter what they did.
• Ensemble Dark Horse
  • Pinky Ames and Garrett Stillman are both single episode characters, but their popularity equals or eclipses that of recurring, better-developed '63's like Jack Sylvane, Tommy Madsen and Ernest Cobb.
    • Pinky's popularity comes from his being a Genius Bruiser with an elaborate plan to steal the warden's secret gold stash and an Unstoppable Rage Big Brother Instinct moment when his brother and accomplice is hurt.
    • Fans love how Garrett is a suave, competent chessmaster who might be the only 63 in the show not to kill any innocents.
  • Emmitt Little is another particularly popular one-time character, partly for the novelty of his being a former prisoner who wasn't one of the 63's and partly for being a Handicapped Badass who defends the Wrongfully Accused Clarence Montgomery.
• Retroactive Recognition: Rami Malek, whose biggest role at the time was in the Night at the Museum franchise, plays inmate Webb Porter in episode 11.

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