YMMV / Hannibal Lecter

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Hannibal's motivation and state of mind, especially in the films. While he denies having a Freudian Excuse and claims he ‘happened’, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising explain that he did experience the horrible trauma of his sister being murdered and eaten, but passages in Hannibal and the twist in Hannibal Rising imply that he was to an undetermined degree resentful towards her, and the act he witnessed actually inspired him by showing him how deep evil can get. He has a somewhat strange relationship with these understandings, alternating between accepting and rejecting either or both, calmly denying that he resented his sister when Clarice asks him about it near the end of Hannibal and breaks into a huge cry of despair when he is reminded that he ate his sister too in Rising.
  • Was Chilton really just being a jerk, or was he just throwing a fit about not being as useful to the FBI in Silence Of The Lambs as he was in Red Dragon.
• Can't Un-Hear It:
  • Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal. Or possibly Brian Cox.
  • Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Hannibal Lecktor; Mason Verger (book and film); Vladis Grutas (book and film); Verger, Wells, Ingram.
• Fanfic Fuel: In the novel Red Dragon, it is mentioned that two of Lecter's victims survived. One is in a sanitarium and the other is on a respirator. The latter turns out to be Mason Verger but nothing more is known about the former, leaving fans to fill in the gaps.
• Jerkass Woobie: Dr. Hannibal Lecter. He's a murderous cannibal, but his parents were killed while he was at an early age, right before he saw his sister butchered and eaten in front of him and he was made to eat some of her remains herself. After getting revenge on the men who caused him so much suffering, he was abandoned by his aunt whom he loved, and, after his arrest, was placed in an institution where he was subjected to cruel punishments.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • The films: Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself is a brilliant, soft-spoken psychiatrist who it turns out is the cannibalistic "Chesapeake Ripper". In his first chronological appearance, Lecter, when he grows into a young man, hunts down and kills the Nazi soldiers who murdered and ate his younger sister when he was a child. In his next chronological appearance years later, after being caught by FBI Agent Will Graham and renamed "Hannibal the Cannibal", Lecter reluctantly helps track a new serial killer called "The Tooth Fairy" while also trying to undermine and get revenge on Graham by making him and his family targets and years after that, Lecter helps FBI trainee Clarice Starling do the same with serial killer "Buffalo Bill", using his vast knowledge and mental skills on both occasions. Legitimately caring for Starling, Lecter promises not to go after her after taking out guards and others while escaping from prison and about a decade later, Lecter avoids capture and bounty from child molester Mason Verger while also keeping Starling from harm and holding strong on his personal mantra "to eat the rude" all along.
  • The show: Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself maintains a sense of charm and genteelness that is unmatched in other portrayals, despite being a cannibalistic Serial Killer. Hannibal delights in nothing more than "winding others up to watch them go" and manipulates events, gaslighting people and driving them to insanity or horrible deeds simply to watch what will unfold. Manipulating the FBI perfectly, especially Will Graham who Hannibal fixates on, he manages to elude suspicion for a frighteningly long time, even triggering one captured FBI agent with a trigger to shoot Dr. Frederick Chilton, whom he has a special contempt for. Hannibal also manipulates the dysfunctional Verger siblings until their relationship is at a bloody head before he mutilates and paralyzes the sadistic Mason Verger solely due to dislike of him. Hannibal does rouse himself to save the life of Will from a vengeful Mason later, and in the series finale proves his care for Will and desire for them to become a murderous couple when he rescues Will from the Red Dragon killer. A murderer with a god complex and Satanic Archetype, Hannibal is nevertheless an audacious manipulator with a captivating presence on the screen, ever joyful to string people along to his whims.
• Sequelitis: On both the page and the screen, Hannibal is commonly felt to be severely flawed, but not completely lacking in merit, while Hannibal Rising is regarded as being just flat-out terrible. Not really surprising in the case of the latter, as Dino de Laurentis has claimed that he pressured Harris into writing Hannibal Rising in order to sustain the franchise. Harris himself has remained mum on the matter.
• Squick: Oh, lots.
• The Woobie:
  • Reba McClane, particularly as played by Emily Watson.
  • Crawford as well, in the original novel version of Silence.
  • Margot has some woobie-ish tendencies as well.
  • Clarice a bit as well, in the first half of Hannibal, after the press has smeared her for the way the way the DC drug bust went, even though she and John were the only people actually doing their job right.
  • Averted by Catherine, who defies Gumb at every opportunity, and is depicted less as helpless than simply overpowered. She's almost an Action Girl, and despite using Gumb's beloved poodle as a hostage against him, she quietly whispers to the dog that she'd never hurt it. She even keeps the dog in the end of the movie, taking it with her into the ambulance. (How much of an aversion this is can be contested, though, as she's pretty clearly traumatized for life after all of this.)
  • Both in and out of universe, Buffalo Bill's victims, particularly Frederica Bimmel in the film, and the girl who was too flat-chested for Bill to use in the book. Part of Clarice's motivation is her sympathy for the victims.

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