YMMV / Pirates of the Caribbean

Works in this franchise with their own YMMV pages:

• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom

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Other:

Ride

• Broken Base:
  • The ride's Slow-Paced Beginning through Dead Man's Cove: riders either see it as padding on an already lengthy ride, or an ingenious way to acclimate riders to the world of the pirates before throwing them in the thick of the chaos. One factor to this is how important the worldbuilding and symbolism in Dead Man's Cove is to the individual rider.
  • Refurbishments to the Disneyland Paris and American rides revised the auction scene from a male pirate selling wenches into forced marriage to male and female pirates selling chickens and stolen rum. Some riders have thanked Disney for removing a scene that seemed to make light of human trafficking, for allowing the redhead wench to level up from eye candy to piracy, and even giving her the name Redd in a nod to her original nickname "the Redhead". Other riders see the change as an overreaction to an attraction that never seemed to encourage human trafficking, especially since it was implied "the Redhead" was actually a prostitute who merely saw the pirates' invasion as a profitable night. Another camp suggests that Disney could have compromised by showing Redd actively fending off the men who objectified her, which wouldn't have required replacing all of the dialogue.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The ride takes some time before it gets to where the pirates actually are (Puerto Dorado on Isla Tesoro, where they're causing chaos). Beforehand, riders are sent down the quiet waters of Louisiana, before being dropped into a cavernous area where the remains of deceased pirates lay.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: For three decades in a row, the many versions of the ride have undergone significant changes that are to the ire of park fans, though eventually those who grew up with the changes see them as fine:
  • First was the 90's, where numerous scenes in the town were significantly toned down in how the pirates treated women. The posterchild for these modifications was now the women chased the pirates rather than the other way around. During a decade where political correctness was a hot topic, many found the changes to be insulting, along with many Disney Parks purists hate messing with Walt's original vision in general. Many stated that the pirate's decisions are supposed to be abhorrent, with them being punished at the end of the ride's narrative, so taming their actions made these monsters more sympathetic.
  • The 2000's saw the addition of elements from the movies, including music cues, a Davey Jones appearance on a waterfall before the drop, and multiple animatronics of Jack Sparrow. Longtime fans saw this as cynical corporate synergy, feeling the new elements did not match the tone of the rest of the ride, along with fearing that it would date the ride as well. Because of the continued cultural relevance of the film series, at least the latter did not end up sticking, though the Davy Jones waterfall disappeared from the Disneyland version in 2018.
  • The 2010's saw the ride completely rework the iconic and large auction scene, changing it so that the pirates are selling livestock rather than women, complete with a women pirate named Redd leading the crew as further distancing from the original scene. Plenty of longtime fans, yet again, found it as messing with Walt's original vision with similar points brought up considering the 90's modifications.

Franchise-Wide

• Adaptation Displacement: The original theme park rides, which were always among Disney's most popular attractions, were modified to include elements from the films after complaints from patrons wondering where Jack was. In fact, Disney purposefully tried to invoke this with the marketing for the original film by making almost no mention that it was a Disney film, as they were worried that the Disney connection would make older demographics not take the movie seriously and avoid seeing it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Norrington is seen by some as a bastard Inspector Javert who was only trying to save his own hide and honor, and others see him as The Woobie who got way more punches than he deserved and did what any other reasonable human would have done in his situation.
  • Captain Jack Sparrow may be a Lovable Rogue, rebel and Genius Ditz, or a deceptively evil man who manipulates the goodwill of others and is merely the lesser of two evils when compared to someone like Barbossa. One of Beckett's mooks in the third film even asks out loud, "Do you think he plans it out or does he just make it up as he goes along?"
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was expected to be a flop by many entertainment writers. The film was conceived by Disney as the second of three Disney park ride adaptations, along with The Country Bears and The Haunted Mansion (2003), at the time considered a bizarre concept to base a film upon. The pirate subgenre had also seen numerous costly flops, with Cutthroat Island being one of the biggest money losers ever. Eisner also hated Johnny Depp's eccentric performance of Captain Jack Sparrow, at one point yelling on set that Depp was "ruining the film." The film took off at the box office, buoyed by positive reviews and word of mouth and ended up becoming one of the highest grossing films of 2003, and Depp himself was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. The second film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, was an even bigger hit, setting the North American opening weekend record and was the highest grossing film of 2006.
• Arc Fatigue: Jack's relentless attempts to get the Black Pearl continue across every film. He lost it to Barbossa in a mutiny prior to the films. The first film ends with Jack getting the ship back after being separated from it for 10 years, but in the second, Davy Jones uses his kraken to take the Black Pearl (and Jack) down to Davy Jones' Locker. The ship returns to the sea in the third movie as a flagship of the Brethren Court and commanded by Barbossa until he abandons Jack again, putting Jack back to where he started in the first film. Blackbeard initially claims he sank the Black Pearl before the fourth film before it's revealed that he actually shrank it into a bottle as a trophy. Jack finally gets it back, but it can't be sailed like that. The Black Pearl finally returns to its normal size in the fifth movie... and is taken by Barbossa yet again while Jack is still a prisoner. Jack ending the film with the Pearl doesn't feel triumphant or satisfying after dragging on so long.
• Award Snub: None of the film scores received even a nomination for Best Original Score from the Academy despite being iconic and widely praised.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann as a pair receive polarized reactions. They are each beloved by their fans who are glad they get more focus and Character Development in the second and third movies, miss them in the fourth movie, and think they help balance Jack's wackiness and antics. Fans of both characters tend to consider the couple their One True Pairing. Detractors think Will and Elizabeth take attention away from more interesting characters and are a Romantic Plot Tumor when together; these fans were glad Will and Elizabeth were both absent from the fourth movie.
  • Jack Sparrow is an increasingly divisive character as the sequels progress. He began as the Breakout Character of the first movie and became a protagonist in the last few movies. Some fans like this since he's the most popular character of the franchise and they prefer him as the primary protagonist over Will and Elizabeth. Other fans feel like he and the films are less interesting when the focus is on him, that he's the Spotlight-Stealing Squad to the rest of the cast, and that the increased focus on him led to Sequelitis.
  • Jack Sparrow's father Edward Teague and his Uncle Jack are both cameos from notable rock stars (Keith Richards and Paul McCartney). While some like their appearances and find their cameos hilarious, others think they are pointless and distracting detours in movies that are already overloaded.
  • Captain Barbossa was a highlight of the first movie for many fans, but his return divided the base. Some cheered for his return and others disliked how he became an Anti-Hero when he was previously the Big Bad. His turn as a privateer for most of the fourth movie was disliked by some for turning a pirate trying to gain his freedom into a privateer in service of the Crown, and enjoyed by those (including Geoffrey Rush) who feel this was a new and interesting facet of the character that explored how Barbossa would handle that particular situation. The fifth movie made him even more of a base-breaker by turning him into Carina Smyth's lost parent who made a Heroic Sacrifice for her, with some finding it added depth to him and others considering it out-of-character.
• Broken Base:
  • Part of the fandom likes how the plots become more and more complicated, and feel like this turns the franchise into something more interesting than your average adventure-fantasy franchise. Other fans prefer the more adventure-based style of the original and the fourth movie, and feel like the franchise became needlessly complicated instead of focusing on the fun parts; they consider the plots of the movies their weakest aspect.
  • Regarding the first three films, fans disagree about who is the overall protagonist. Jack becomes a protagonist in the second and third, but some fans say they've been about Jack all along. Other fans and Word of God say the story starts to be about Elizabeth, or the series is about Will.
  • Fans disagree over whether the film series should return to the storylines and characters from On Stranger Tides, move forward with sequels to Dead Men Tell No Tales, revitalize itself with an entirely new set of characters and stories, or simply end. The fan base had polarized responses to On Stranger Tides, often based on whether or not they enjoyed the focus on Jack and the absence of Will and Elizabeth.
• Cargo Ship:
  • Jack and his jar of dirt.
  • By the fourth film's end it is made very clear that though Captain Jack Sparrow may love rum, the company of women (and men), and the freedom to do whatever he damn well pleases... there is only one thing that truly, genuinely, has his heart...and that...is his beloved Black Pearl.
• Character Perception Evolution: Some viewers who didn't care for Will and Elizabeth, found their love story to be a Romantic Plot Tumor, and wished the films would ditch them to focus solely on Jack Sparrow found themselves displeased and missing Will and Elizabeth's presence when both the fourth and fifth movies that did just that still failed to engage with them, as it was felt that Jack on his own without other main characters to serve as an anchor for him and Straight Man to his antics didn't work out so well, and the Replacement Scrappy lover pairs (Philip and Syrena in the fourth film, Henry and Carina in the fifth film) weren't even as convincing in their romances as Will and Elizabeth were.
• Complete Monster: Lord Cutler Beckett (in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End), Blackbeard, Armando Salazar, Jolly Roger and Ian Mercer. See those pages for details.
• Contested Sequel: You will have a hard time finding any consensus about any of the sequels among the fanbase. Are Dead Man's Chest and At World's End epic and ambitious followups that naturally progress the story and characters of the original movie or narrative disasters that don't capture the charm of the original movie and are trying too hard to be taked seriously? Is On Stranger Tides the best sequel for sticking closer to the tone of the original or the worst sequel for hardly trying anything challenging? And then there's Dead Men Tell No Tales which is either a refreshing Soft Reboot and a major Salvaged Story for the flaws of the last three movies or a complete betrayal of everything the franchise has done until now. And that's not even getting in the Broken Base around which pair of sequels was in the right direction to nail the tone the franchise should have, with some fans prefering the Darker and Edgier story-driven first two sequels while other fans prefer the Lighter and Softer simpler latter movies.
• Continuity Lockout: While you can watch the first and the fourth movie as standalone movies, the second, third and fifth movie have interconnected storylines that only make sense if you have watched all of the previous installments and tons of characters that are constantly re-introduced as a big deal which would be rather confusing unless one remembers them from previous installments. The third movie is probably the biggest example of this, which is pretty much incomprehensible if you hadn't watched the first two.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Both Captains of the Black Pearl get a lot of this. Jack's father too. It's in the genes.
    Lord Cutler Beckett: You're mad!
    Captain Jack Sparrow: Thank goodness for that, because if I wasn't, this would probably never work.
  • And then Barbossa steers his ship deeper into a maelstrom while singing a pirate song. Pure Crazy, Pure Awesome.
• Critical Dissonance: The sequels have received progressively worse reviews, yet fans were much kinder to Dead Man's Chest and to a lesser extent At World's End, which both received a decent 72% user score on Rotten Tomatoes. The fourth and fifth installments received much more mixed scores.
• Cult Classic: Pirates of the Caribbean Online and The Price of Freedom. See those pages for more details.
• Death of the Author:
  • The writers are firm on Elizabeth being the true protagonist of the movies with Jack Sparrow being a supporting character to Will and Elizabeth's story. Fans are divided how much should we take their word for granted, given, Jack Sparrow is always the central character in the posters, Johnny Depp's name is always the first in the cast list and the overall concensus that the character becomes more prominent per film.
  • Likewise the Word of God statment that the Captain of the Flying Dutchman could be freed upon the end of his ten year service as a captain if someone remained faithful to him is often ignored, given there's nothing in the movies that support that idea and make a lot of the tension in the story rather pointless. Unsurprisingly, the fifth movie completely ignores it in favour to having Will still as part of the Dutchman.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Hector Barbossa is responsible for a number of atrocities in the first film, but many of his fans are willing to overlook it, partly because he's not quite as vile as some of the later antagonists. It helps that he comes Back from the Dead at the end of the second movie, and becomes the Token Evil Teammate.
  • Some fans see Cutler Beckett from the second and third films as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who goes to the lengths he does in order to eliminate the threat of piracy. While it's had to deny that most pirates are evil, Beckett, who's responsible for atrocities such as hanging children and killing Governor Swann when he's no longer useful, all in the name of ensuring that the East India Company remains powerful, is arguably worse than the pirates.
  • Davy Jones gets this due to his deliciously hammy villainy and Cry for the Devil backstory, resulting in fans ignoring that he has quite a large body count, even when he isn't under Beckett's thumb.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gibbs is loved for his hilarious lines and his Undying Loyalty to Jack Sparrow. Even the writers consider him the most virtuous character of the series.
  • Pintel and Ragetti, the pair of pirates who captured Elizabeth in the first movie and become accidental members of the Jack Sparrow's crew in the sequels, are beloved for how funny they are thanks to their general incompetence, their bizarre personal quirks, their hate for the parley, and their dynamics together.
  • Murtogg and Mullroy, the heroic counterparts of Pintel and Ragetti, are very popular despite only appearing in 3 scenes in the entire trilogy. Their scene in The Curse of The Black Pearl is one of the most quoted scenes of the series.
  • Lieutenant Groves for his Hero-Worshipper moments to Jack and having one of the most memed quotes of the series ("That's got to be the best pirate I've ever seen."). He also seems to be one of the few decent human beings in both the British Navy and the East India Trading Company, showing many times uncomfortable when Beckett or Barbossa do horrible things.
  • Cotton the mute pirate and his parrot have gained fans for the bizarre way that the parrot somehow speaks for the tongueless Cotton.
  • Lieutenant Gillette, Commodore Norrington's second-in-command, is very popular among the Yaoi Fangirl population.
  • Jack the Monkey fans love his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis relationship with Jack. The monkey is clever and one of the few who can actually make the pirate angry, especially since We Named the Monkey "Jack".
  • Scarlett and Giselle, the strumpets who always slap Jack in Tortuga, are so beloved that they got their own Short Film.
  • The Prison Dog for his Noodle Incident nature of returning no matter what happened the last time we saw him.
  • Tia Dalma, the mysterious voodoo woman who helps the Black Pearl and is secretly the sea goddess Calypso and Davy Jones' ex-lover, is a fan-favorite.
  • Jack Sparrow's father, Edward Teague, only appears in two scenes in the entire franchise, but is the only pirate everyone respects and fears. He's played by Keith Richards, who inspired Depp's mannerisms as Jack.
  • The comedic pirate musician Scrum was popular enough to be the only character introduced in the fourth movie to return to the franchise.
• Evil Is Cool: Barbossa and Davy Jones are widely regarded as the best characters in all of the movies, right next to Jack Sparrow. Their acting, their CGI, their complexity, their badassery...what's not to like?
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Some fans prefer to just ignore all the sequels for either feeling that the quality steadily decayed or the characters getting treated to repeated Happy Ending Overrides, preferring the happier conclusion of the first movie instead of any of the sequels.
  • Fans who liked the way Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ends often ignore Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Reasons range from feeling like the latter two ruin the conclusion of the trilogy, don't contribute enough to the franchise to justify their existence, or are just of lesser quality and entertainment value.
  • Fans of the novel The Price of Freedom ignore the Jack's flashback scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (if they don't ignore the entire movie) for contradicting the novel's backstory, which they prefer as the one true backstory of Jack Sparrow.
  • Some fans don't ignore any of the movies but prefer to ignore the death of some of the Ensemble Dark Horses like Norrington, Gillete, Groves, etc.
  • With the announcement of the franchise getting a reboot, some fans had started to ignore The Stingers of both the fourth and the fifth movie, given it seems those cliffhangers would never be solved, so the original continuity can end in a happier note.
• First Installment Wins: The first film is the most well loved film among both fans and critics. Some go as far as to say it's the only good film in the entire series.
• Friendly Fandoms: Many Pirates of the Caribbean fans tend to like One Piece due to similar pirate theme and the bizarrely funny nature of the series.
• Ho Yay:
  • Even one professional movie critic saw it:
    [The first movie] so wraps you — okay, me — up in its aching yearning for the rash and the adventurous and the romantic that you — okay, I — let out a little gasp of frustration every time Orlando Bloom fails to kiss Keira Knightly, or Johnny Depp fails to kiss Keira Knightley, or Johnny Depp fails to kiss Orlando Bloom. God, somebody kiss anybody, I just can't stand the anticipation anymore.
  • Jack and Beckett was rather blatant, especially in the extended version of their "The Thing You Want Most" scene in AWE. Beckett sounds more sad than angry, which hints that it was something a bit more than a betrayal against the company. Beckett also, several times, tries not to laugh, or laugh too hard at Jack's antics, almost like he doesn't want to be lulled into the sense that everything is still okay between them. In addition, this is one of the only scenes were Beckett spends the majority of it not looking at the person he's talking to.
  • Pintel and Ragetti. Even the latter's actor during the second movie stated he thought the characters were a gay couple. It must be the pink shirt.
• Iron Woobie: Norrington, who is beaten a lot in a trilogy-wide Trauma Conga Line before being killed.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Pearl pitched Jack against a crew of undead pirates. Chest pitched Jack against a crew of underwater monster pirates. End pitched Jack against vicious pirate hunters. Tides pitched Jack again against a crew of undead pirates. Tales pitches Jack against vicious, undead, underwater monster pirate hunters.
• Jerkass Woobie: Davy Jones. He's ruthless, but only got that way due to a broken (and later removed...) heart.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Many viewers couldn't care less about Will, Elizabeth or the overall story of the movies, and just want to enjoy Johnny Depp's performance as Jack Sparrow.
  • With the pirate genre becoming more and more rare as time passes, the film series has become one of the few modern pirate-related properties and attracts many viewers who see it as an alternative to more popular and over-saturated genres.
  • Detractors of Dead Man's Chest and At World's End would still admit to check them thanks to Davy Jones being an awesome villain.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Captain Jack Sparrow has being shipped with pretty much any major character throught the franchise no matter age or gender, this includes his canonical love interests (Elizabeth, Angelica, Esmeralda), his mortal enemies (Barbossa, Norrington, Salazar, Beckett and even Davy Jones), members of his crew (Arabella, Gibbs, Anamaria, Scrum) and every generation of the Turners (Bootstrap, Will and Henry)
• Magnificent Bastard: Those navigating and sailing the harsh seas and finding success and victory, ye best be smart and on top o' yer game like these here!:
  • Captain Jack Sparrow, one of the nine "Pirate Lords" and the most famed pirate of the Caribbean, lured Capitán Armando Salazar to his doom at the start of his pirating career with little but his wits. Later escaping the clutches of the wicked Cutler Beckett and the mutiny of his treacherous crew, Jack dreams of recovering the Black Pearl and uses the begrudging William "Will" Turner to do so. Performing a series of elaborate double and triple crosses to manipulate both the Navy and cursed pirates against one another, Jack ends up on the side of good to defeat his traitorous former First Mate Hector Barbossa. When Beckett emerges and the feared Davy Jones is after him, Jack bargains for time from Jones to steal his disembodied heart. Returning from death, Jack makes Elizabeth Swann the King of the Pirates' Brethren Court while setting her and Will up to escape Beckett and allow Jack to take Jones' place, a dream he abandons to save the mortally wounded Will. Later forced to assist Edward "Blackbeard" Teach in a quest for the Fountain of Youth, Jack tricks the feared pirate into sacrificing his life for his daughter Angelica and later provides a way for his old rival and sometimes-friend Barbossa to give his life to save Barbossa's daughter Carina. Rarely at a loss for words or plots, Jack routinely comes up with plans on the fly, so talented that some wonder if he has things planned out or makes them up as he goes along.
  • Hector Barbossa was once the First Mate to Captain Jack Sparrow aboard the Black Pearl until instituting a mutiny to take over the ship and being cursed as an immortal skeleton with certain human senses gone being cursed as an immortal skeleton with certain human senses gone. Seeking William "Will" Turner to break said curse, Barbossa incites an invasion of Port Royal and abducts Elizabeth Swann thinking she's the descendant he needs and uses a lot of double-talk to arrange circumstances to his liking at each turn. Barbossa then uses Elizabeth as leverage to get Will in his possession, distracting the British Navy with an attack and nearly succeeds in sacrificing Will in order to restore his humanity, only to be killed when the curse is broken. Resurrected not long after, Barbossa seeks to bring Jack back from Davy Jones's locker` while also fighting Lord Cutler Beckett and the East India Trading Company and releasing the Goddess Calypso "from [her] human bonds" to get her assistance. Eventually taking down Blackbeard for his ship and power and then seeking to protect his capitalization on all things piracy, Barbossa willing chooses to finally give it all up for the sake of the survival of his own daughter Carina, his true "Treasure".
  • Elizabeth Swann, daughter of Governor Weatherby Swann, helped saved William "Will" Turner from drowning, hiding his pirate connection from her father's men. When the Black Pearl attacks Port Royal, Elizabeth uses her knowledge of the "Pirate Code" to get an audience with Barbossa, tricking him into thinking she is the Turner child he is looking for. When she is marooned on an island with Jack Sparrow, Elizabeth uses its hidden rum bottles to build a signal fire to alert the Navy as to where they are and later aids Jack's escape attempt by pretending to faint. When imprisoned by Lord Cutler Beckett, Elizabeth uses her father's failed rescue attempt in order to take Beckett himself hostage, forcing him to sign the pardon papers for Will and using a fake ghost to scare an entire ship into taking her where she needs to go. Later Elizabeth uses Jack's feelings for her to trap him on the ship as the Kraken attacks. Being made captain of the Empress and voted the Pirate King, Elizabeth leads the fight against the East India Trading Company and the Flying Dutchman, before settling down to raise her and Will's son, reuniting with her husband years later.
• Misaimed Fandom: The franchise clearly goes for Grey-and-Grey Morality in therms of the entire conflicts throught the movies with neither the pirates nor the navy nor the bystanders like Will and Elizabeth being completely innocent or evil (besides some of the more evilish villains like Beckett and Blackbeard), that doesn't stop some fans to twist the narrative of the movies to pull a Draco in Leather Pants portayal in Jack Sparrow as some sort of Ideal Hero and acting like everyone else are cruel monsters that keep betraying him for no reason or alternatively acting like Jack Sparrow is a unredeemable Villain Protagonist and everyone who goes against him is unambiguously good.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • I've got a jar of dirt...
  • Chartman.
  • Why is the rum gone?!
  • My Peanut.
  • "STOP BLOWING HOLES IN MY SHIP!" has become something of a meme on Tumblr, because, well...
    • "Part of the ship, part of the crew"
  • Savvy?
  • It's Captain, Captain Jack Sparrow.
  • "There was a fourth one?" ^note A common Take That! to the franchise is to joke about how the third sequel, On Stranger Tides, is considered so mediocre that people forget it existed.
  • See? Disney can go dark! ^note A common Take That! towards people that believe current day Disney is too kid-friendly is to point them in the direction of Davy Jones strangling Mercer to death with his beard tentacles.
  • That's got to be the best pirate I've ever seen.
  • Starting in The New '10s, people have been using "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!" and/or "Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free! You are a pirate!" as a way of saying they're resorting to digital piracy because they're fed up with overpriced streaming services and/or TV shows that are impossible to find online.
• One True Threesome: Jack/Will/Elizabeth is quite popular, and supported by the film's Love Triangle.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Gore Verbinski is seen as this by many fans, especially by those who consider the fourth and fifth movie as Sequelitis, with many going as far as stating that his departure from the franchise is the main reason for the decay in both popularity and quality. If you look for fan forums about the future of the franchise, chances are at least one fan mentions that he should return. Incidentally, he was offered the chance to direct the fifth one, but refused because he saw no reason for it to exist other than money, and directed At World's End with the intent of it resolving everyone's stories so that there wouldn't be another movie.
• Replacement Scrappy: Shansa and Scarfield suffer this to some degree for being Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Tia Dalma and Norrington respectibly, two of the most popular characters of the fandom without having enough screentime to make them feel unique enough to justify it. Shansa got it worse since she only had two scenes and fulfill the same role on Tia Dalma in DMC (give some advice about the enemy and an artifact that can help them in their adventure), while Scarfield at least is shown to be more of a Jerkass and having the role of the Hate Sink instead of The Woobie without redeemable qualities, it still follows the same role that Norrington had in the original movie but without getting any significant action sequences,which make many feel his character was redundant to the plot.
• Retroactive Recognition: Anamaria. Hey, kids! It's Neytiri! Or Nyota Uhura! And Gamora!
• Romantic Plot Tumor:
  • It is rumored that Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley's decisions not to reprise their respective roles for On Stranger Tides, as well as their Creator Backlash toward the characters, stem from the romance story which took over the trilogy, rather than the characters themselves.
  • The subplot between Philip and Syrena in On Stranger Tides grinds the film to a stop each time they appear. To its credit, it remains a subplot.
  • It happens again with Henry and Carina in Dead Men Tell No Tales. This franchise clearly doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to this trope. (Though to their credit, their chemistry is more natural, and it leads to some of the movie’s best laughs).
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • Given that they're in the title and all the focus is on them, the fans can be forgiven for cheering for the pirates and wanting them to win. While granted most of them are Lovable Rogues and very little piracy is actually shown, they are still pirates, who were obviously quite nasty people. In Curse of the Black Pearl, Norrington and the Royal Navy are at worst anti villains, making it easy to cheer for them instead of (or at least along with) Jack and Will.
  • There are quite a few people who sympathize with The East India Trading Company. Many of their fans forget that Beckett fighting against pirates wasn't Order Versus Chaos; it was removing the competition, as he did a lot of piracy and murder himself.
  • The film's writers mention they intentionally wrote Captain Barbossa as an Anti-Villain throughout the first movie, given his singular goal is to end the ten-year-long curse that has plagued him and his crew. Throughout the film they wanted to give the audience the impression that despite being the antagonist, he might not actually be a bad guy. This is why Barbossa's scene where he explains the torment of the curse to Elizabeth was constantly being rewritten and added to by both the writers and Geoffrey Rush to get it perfect. It definitely shows.
• The Scrappy:
  • Philip the missionary and Syrena for being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to the couple of Will and Elizabeth, Many people thought they feel out of place with the rest of the cast (a priest in a pirate ship) and like Flat Characters who just slow down the plot even more.
  • Between the villains, Barbossa and Davy Jones are some of the most popular characters of the franchise, Beckett and Mercer had some fans too and Salazar and Angelica are base-breakers. But you will hardly find anyone who is fan of Blackbeard, for being uninteresting in comparison to the rest of the villains gallery and suffering a severe Badass Decay after his introduction (being introduced as the pirate all pirates fear, having a powerful ship and sword who can control fire and zombies and then not doing nothing anything really cool the rest of the movie). The fact that he changes from a Loving Dad to a Manipulative Bastard to Angelica depending the scene doesn't help.
• Sequelitis: Zigzagged. General critical consensus is that the series has gotten worse with each passing film. Among audiences is a bit more divided but each of the sequels has some defenders.
• Spiritual Successor: The overall concept of the franchise bears a strong similarity to the seafaring horror stories of William Hope Hodgson.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Anamaria, a Pirate Girl portrayed by Zoe Saldaña, ended up as this due to the character only appearing in Curse of the Black Pearl. This is despite the fact that the movie ended with Anamaria still as a part of the Black Pearl crew after stepping aside to let Jack Sparrow become the captain again. It was later explained by Saldana herself that she chose not to come back to the franchise because she didn't have a good experience working on the pirate sets.
  • Technically it's a ship, but the Queen Anne's Revenge counts. Blackbeard's (later Barbossa's) flagship, it has a massive flamethrower and can be magically controlled with the captain's sword. The flamethrower is used twice in On Stranger Tides for relatively mundane purposes and not at all in Dead Men Tell No Tales. Despite being one of the most epic ships in the series, it has yet to be used in a naval battle.
  • The Brethren Court are a major example. They are hyped up as some major goverment of pirates, each of them are given unique designs, ships and crews and the main plot of the third movie revolves around their meeting being a huge event that both the Pirates and the East India Trading Company regard as a End of an Age-kind of event. You will think that any of them could have served as potential allies or villains and the overall Shipwrech Island's mythology could have being used in later installments. Yet, as individual characters are barely explored, don't get to participate in the final battle and become an Sequel Non-Entity in the following movies, they are not being used as The Worf Effect folder even when the latter villains should have encountered the Brethren Court by logic.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Will and Elizabeth are probably two of the most infamous example in film history to the point some even forget they were meant to be the protagonists instead of Jack Sparrow, althought is less that they aren't interesting characters as much as every single character around them stealing the show.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The effects for all supernatural people are pretty spectacular, but the standout is Davy Jones; an entirely mo-capped CGI character so realistic many reviewers genuinely thought Bill Nighy was wearing absurdly elaborate prosthetics.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: It's telling that The Curse of the Black Pearl is the first movie ever produced under the Disney label to be rated PG-13. The series as a whole is full of sexual innuendos, ranging from subtle innuendos to euphemisms (i.e. "pleasurable company" as a substitution for "whores") to characters who are all but said to be prostitutes such as Scarlett and Giselle. There's more than one occasion of Family-Unfriendly Violence, such as Davy Jones strangling Mercer with his tentacles and Jack shooting Barbossa in the heart, which is detailed and bloody enough that it would arguably earn the movie an R-rating today. One scene in Curse depicts a near-gang rape and a near-suicide within seconds of each other. All this said, the movie series was very popular with children in its heyday and received shiploads of merchandise including toys and bedsheets.

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