History YMMV / TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen

* BrokenAesop: The first volume opens with a joking SpoofAesop where the narrator declares that a message the reader should take away is that "the Chinese are brilliant but evil"--implicitly declaring that the {{Orientalism}} of the book's time period is wrong. The volume then proceeds to take every single YellowPeril trope and play it straight as an arrow, with [[TokenHeroicOrc only one sympathetic Chinese character]] among a horde of hideous caricatures that the heroes casually mow down. According to Moore, his objective when writing Literature/FuManchu was to try to divorce the character from his racist origins by depicting him as so inscrutably evil (even moreso than his original counterpart, who was cleanly a NobleDemon) that [[AmbiguouslyHuman the reader would question if he was even human]]--apparently not realizing that depicting someone as an inhuman "other" is the entire ''point'' of racial stereotyping. Additionally, at one point, it's declared that ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'', one of the foundational Chinese texts and one of the only Chinese stories mentioned in the series, was really total nonsense ([[ArbitrarySkepticism the character saying this is an immortal gender-switching knight who met the actual King Arthur]]). In all, while the story mocks the racist views of colonial England, it also seems to verify them at every opportunity.

-->'''Willett and Manheim's translation:'''
-->''What keeps mankind alive?''\\

-->'''Moore's translation:'''
-->''What keeps mankind alive?''\\

* BrokenAesop: The first volume opens with a joking SpoofAesop where the narrator declares that a message the reader should take away is that "the Chinese are brilliant but evil"--implicitly declaring that the {{Orientalism}} of the book's time period is wrong. The volume then proceeds to take every single YellowPeril trope and play it straight as an arrow, with [[TokenHeroicOrc only one sympathetic Chinese character]] among a horde of hideous caricatures that the heroes casually mow down. According to Moore, his objective when writing Literature/FuManchu was to try to divorce the character from his racist origins by depicting him as so inscrutably evil (even moreso than his original counterpart, who was cleanly a NobleDemon) that [[AmbiguouslyHuman the reader would question if he was even human]]--apparently not realizing that depicting someone as an inhuman "other" is the entire ''point'' of racial stereotyping. Additionally, at one point, it's declared that ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'', one of the foundational Chinese texts and one of the only Chinese stories mentioned in the series, was really total nonsense ([[ArbitrarySkepticism the character saying this is an immortal gender-switching knight who met the actual King Arthur]]). In all, while the story mocks the racist views of colonial England, it also doesn't do much to question those views.

** Moore has used the series as a means of [[TakeThat performing mean-spirited hatchet jobs on characters he doesn't like]] since the beginning. The very first volume featured [[Literature/TheInvisibleMan Griffin]] raping both [[Literature/RebeccaOfSunnybrookFarm Becky Randall]] and [[{{Literature/Pollyanna}} Pollyanna Whittier]]. In both cases it's BlackComedyRape; the former is given an insulting portrayal as a dumb country bumpkin too stupid to fully understand what'd happened to her and the latter [[ThePollyanna is completely unfazed]]. This is the Victorian equivalent of taking pot-shots at ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' and just as [[ShallowParody shallow]]. But, unlike his treatment of [[spoiler:''Harry Potter'' and ''James Bond'']], the characters in question were old-tyme enough that they didn't have strong fanbases to be offended at their treatment. And, ''also'' unlike them, the hatchet-job was a side-note within the plot rather than a central part of the narrative.

** Moore has used the series as a means of [[TakeThat performing mean-spirited hatchet jobs on characters he doesn't like]] since the beginning. The very first volume featured [[Literature/TheInvisibleMan Griffin]] raping both [[Literature/RebeccaOfSunnybrookFarm Becky Randall]] and [[{{Literature/Pollyanna}} Pollyanna Whittier]]. In both cases it's BlackComedyRape; the former is given an insulting portrayal as a dumb country bumpkin too stupid to fully understand what'd happened to her and the latter [[ThePollyanna is completely unfazed]]. This is the Victorian equivalent of taking pot-shots at ''{{Literature/Twilight}}'' and just as [[ShallowParody shallow]]. But, unlike his treatment of [[spoiler:''Harry Potter'' and ''James Bond'']], the characters in question were old-tyme enough that they didn't have strong fanbases to be offended at their treatment. And, ''also'' unlike them, the hatchet-job was a side-note within the plot rather than a central part of the narrative.

** Moore has used the series as a means of [[TakeThat performing mean-spirited hatchet jobs on characters he doesn't like]] since the beginning. The very first volume featured [[Literature/TheInvisibleMan Griffin]] raping both [[Literature/RebeccaOfSunnybrookFarm Becky Randall]] and [[{{Literature/Pollyanna}} Pollyanna Whittier]]. But, unlike his treatment of [[spoiler:''Harry Potter'' and ''James Bond'']], the characters in question were old-tyme enough that they didn't have strong fanbases to be offended at their treatment. And, ''also'' unlike them, the hatchet-job was a side-note within the plot rather than a central part of the narrative.

* EvilIsSexy: Ayesha, Queen of Kor and the main antagonist of the ''Nemo'' spinoff.

** There's a question of whether Moore's ''really'' TruerToTheText than most other adaptations, or whether he's really just [[DarkerAndEdgier pushing for the darkest possible depictions]] [[AuthorAppeal for his private enjoyment]]. There is a lot of contention that Moore doesn't care about a lot of the characters' textual qualities as long as it fits what he felt the book was about. In the worst cases these can have some of Moore's attempts at SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome, such as Mina's scars, [[FridgeLogic retroactively cause massive plotholes]] if assumed to be true in the source material. The divisiveness isn't helped by the fact that Moore is evidentially easily angered by how adaptations of his work alter his characters, which, given the laundry list of examples people point out, makes this look pretty hypocritical. [[note]]A summary of some of these incldude but are far from limited to: Mina Murray being a divorced woman when she was HappilyMarried to Jonathan Harker in the original novel, Allan Quatermain, who took a drug for vision quests, becoming an off the wagon louse, Captain Nemo working for the empire he spent his first book bad mouthing and wanting dead, Mr. Hyde raping the Invisible Man, James Bond as an incompetent misogynist psychopathic traitor instead of being a loyal, competent ProfessionalKiller, and Harry Potter as a whiny, self-pitying, school-shooting chav strung out on anti-depressants who becomes the Antichrist, which is pretty far off from his actual character, etc.[[/note]]

** Moore's stance that art had higher expectations in the Victorian era compared to the modern stuff he's apathetic towards at best and utterly hates at worst is debated heavily by fans ''and'' academia. There are examples of many of the things Moore decries about modern fiction (LongRunner series, [[MoneyDearBoy low-effort cash-grab sequels]], fiction without higher themes intended purely for entertainment) in that time, much of which had to be rehabilitated via DeathOfTheAuthor, or deliberately and politely ignored in favor of focusing on counter-examples. Victorian authors were also no less prone to [[TrollingCreator baiting their audiences]], [[HePannedItNowHeSucks getting into feuds with critics, academics, and each other]], or [[OldShame questioning their younger works as they got older and more thoughtful]]. Moore portrays all of these things as worrying new trends and/or symptoms of something deeply diseased about the process of writing modern fiction. Some see this as Moore essentially siding with academic consensus, at least to the extent Moore can see himself as an intellectual for doing so. Moore's social anarchist cues may also play into this worldview. Others are more prone to call this as age old academic snobbery, arguing that OlderIsBetter and [[NoTrueScotsman arbitrarily excluding older works from the same criteria used to judge modern ones]]. In the very process Moore seems to uphold obstacles to a wider literary acceptance, and which, ironically, has led to academia pushing away many of the fictional works used to build the comic's world in the first place.

** When he's captured in Paris, Hyde's outfit inexplicably includes a ''giant top hat''. Did Hyde seriously walk into a shop to have it comissioned? Sawyer even channels the audience by picking up the hat while making a face that just screams, "Where the hell did he ''get'' this?"

* JustHereForGodzilla: At this point it's evidently clear there's a chunk of people following these comics only for the curiosity of seeing what works Moore chooses to reference. Many of these people are openly critical of Moore's creative choices but considering how large in scope these comics are they still want to see who's going to show up. [[spoiler:Hell, even Franchise/{{Godzilla}} himself gets a mention in The Johnson Report of ''Nemo: The Roses of Berlin'', when Janni talks about burns on her arm caused by the radioactive exhalations of a "huge bipedal saurian" which the ''Nautilus'' engaged in waters off Japan]].

* {{Squick}}: [[spoiler:Griffin's death by rape at the hands of Hyde]] in Volume 2.

* UncertainAudience: The League throughout its entire run ran with this trope rather than an actual target audience. Many people who were general Alan Moore fans followed it but openly admitted much of it required annotations by Jess Nevins to be able to follow and be appreciated. The comic also got the attention of people with wide tastes who love crossovers, but as this page shows many of these readers are openly in complete disagreement with Alan Moore's opinions that went into building the world of the comic. Up until the very last issue the comic never really aimed itself in favor of one or the other and left many readers interested but never without heavy complaints. Even fans tend to celebrate the ambitious achievement as a crossover rather than its artistic merits as a comic.

* HarsherInHindsight: In ''Century: 2009'', Creator/JudiDench's M from the Franchise/JamesBond films, who in this universe is [[Series/TheAvengers1960s Emma Peel]], is made [[spoiler: immortal. A few months later, she was killed off in ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'']].
* HePannedItNowHeSucks: A big part of the reaction towards ''Century: 2009'' comes from the fact that a big part of the last leg of the story boiled down to a mean-spirited hatchet-job directed at [[spoiler: Harry Potter]]. Whether fans' reactions were just this trope in action, or whether it was legitimately poorly-done and damaged the work from a literary standpoint is up for debate.

** Moore's GrandFinale for ''Century: 2009'' involves an epic face-off between [[spoiler: Harry Potter and Mary Poppins]]. Just a few months after he wrote that scene (and almost exactly a month after the comic hit the stands) a battle between [[Franchise/HarryPotter Voldemort]] and a swarm of Mary Poppinses turned out to be part of the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games.

** A 2005 episode of ''Series/{{Extras}}'' featuring Creator/DanielRadcliffe mercilessly hitting on Dame Creator/DianaRigg suddenly became HilariousInHindsight when ' featured [[Series/TheAvengers1960s Emma Peel]] leading the fight to take down [[spoiler: a deranged Literature/HarryPotter]]. Maybe she wanted revenge on him [[ItMakesSenseInContext for flinging that condom at her head]]?

** Creator/AlanMoore has long been well-known for practicing ceremonial magic and being an avid student of occultism and the mystic arts, and he (in)famously claimed in 2003 that he worships Glycon, a Roman snake god that was once the center of an ancient pagan cult. In 2011, he attracted a bit of controversy for portraying [[spoiler: Literature/HarryPotter]] as a thoroughly unsympathetic {{Antichrist}} figure who's also supposedly the epitome of everything wrong with the 21st century. In other words: Moore is an occultist who talks to snakes and has an [[ItsPersonal intense personal hatred]] of [[spoiler: Harry Potter. Voldemort? Is that you...?]]

* JustHereForGodzilla: At this point it's evidently clear there's a chunk of people following these comics only for the curiosity of seeing what works Moore chooses to reference. Many of these people are openly critical of Moore's creative choices but considering how large in scope these comics are they still want to see who's going to show up. [[spoiler: Hell, even Franchise/{{Godzilla}} himself gets a mention in The Johnson Report of ''Nemo: The Roses of Berlin'', when Janni talks about burns on her arm caused by the radioactive exhalations of a "huge bipedal saurian" which the ''Nautilus'' engaged in waters off Japan]].
* LesYay: [[spoiler: Mina has no use for Orlando when he's a male.]]

** [[spoiler: Allan's]] death. To elaborate: he gets electrocuted by lightning coming from [[spoiler: Harry Potter's]] dick. And then [[spoiler:Potter]] gets destroyed by [[spoiler: Mary Poppins.]]

** The movie's EvilPlan involves a mysterious bad guy (who's eventually revealed to be [[spoiler: Professor Moriarty]]) trying to start UsefulNotes/WorldWarI a few decades early. ''Film/SherlockHolmesAGameOfShadows'', which came out almost a decade later, was about the same thing. [[spoiler: In this film, Moriarty even references the Reichenbach Falls as being where "that man died." Perhaps he got some plastic surgery, and tried to start his EvilPlan all over again, but went more ambitious by using the League?]]

** [[spoiler: Dante's Hyde transformation]] may not be a good effect, but he's basically stuck in in one of Hyde's mid states, except even larger, so his skin is stretched out and bright red.

** In general, [[spoiler: Moriarty]] spends most of his screen time running away from fights he started. He claims to have been reborn, but it was evidently into someone far less impressive.

* OlderThanTheyThink: Another point of contention about Moore's LostInImitation takes on characters (and the NeverLiveItDown and CharacterExaggeration that follows) is that some elements which ''are'' TruerToTheText and which he did not invent are often forgotten about or sometimes mistaken for his own invention.
** Captain Nemo's Indian origin was made by Creator/JulesVerne himself in ''Literature/TheMysteriousIsland'' and partly foreshadowed in ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea''. However thanks to many adaptations turning him British, some are surprised to learn Moore has restored something rather than changing it.
** In ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' Mina and Jonathan Harker's marriage is presented fairly happy by the standards of the time. It is, however, the boy's club attitude he and the other male characters share that helps Mina get turned into the DamselInDistress. The book ends with a happy epilogue for them, which "League" doesn't use. Moore isn't the first to suggest that Mina Murray's marriage with Jonathan Harker would hit the rocks after the supposed HappyEnding; many critics and Creator/FrancisFordCoppola suggested that subtext before him and Moore has clearly drawn heavily on the latter's film version.
** There's one line in Robert Louis Stevenson's story that mentions Hyde "grew in stature" as time goes on. Some interpret this to mean physically, and this is the interpretation Moore ran with to essentially make Hyde a Hulk-like beast. The opposite view says that in the beginning of the book Jekyll is described as hearty while Hyde was smaller and sickly, and suggests this line meant Hyde grew to be the more healthy, stronger-looking one instead of actually growing to Hulk size. Either way this discussion happened long before Moore.
*** Hyde's possible homosexual attraction has been suggested as a subtext idea within the narrative before Moore's comic had Hyde rape Griffin.
** On a meta level, Moore's use of Oliver Haddo as an Creator/AleisterCrowley {{Expy}} was hardly new. It was known to everybody, including Crowley himself, that he was an Expy from the publication of the novel. Crowley even used the name as an alias for a scathing review of the same novel.
** The idea of {{Flanderiz|ation}}ing ''Literature/{{Pollyanna}}'' into her most basic trait is something that even long since inspired her to TropeNamer for ThePollyanna, so despite the poor taste of Moore's joke about her lack of emotional trauma after Invisible Man tries to rape her, he is hardly the first to ignore the rest of her character.
** Likewise for making ''Literature/DonQuixote'' live up to his daydreams. People such as Creator/VladimirNabokov have long observed that Don Quixote is not really [[BunnyEarsLawyer all that bad]] as a KnightErrant, famously pointing out that he wins more fights than he loses, and [[Theatre/ManOfLaMancha Broadway]] was interrogating whether Don Quixote is better seen as a pathetic loser trapped in the past or a gallant idealist too bright for modern cynicism to snuff out long before Moore.

** A bit meta but almost all of Alan Moore's choices for ''Century: 2009'' were recycled clichés about millennials. Millennials are overly reliant on pharmaceuticals, have no culture, aren't involved in politics or society, the list goes on. For all of Moore's supposed counter-culture tendencies, it's very easy to picture him complaining about today's big civil rights movements in the same way Louise Mensch might. How bad is it? The closest Moore comes to approaching what today's generation has to deal with is observing that row after row of houses are empty but quickly backpedals from this and tries to frame it as being the fault of Millennials! [[spoiler: That the entire Harry Potter plot line boils down to a Dark!Harry Manipulative!Dumbledore fanfiction is really just the least of Moore's poor choices.]]

* AccidentalInnuendo: Reed has this gem in his conversation with Quartermain: "Stories of your exploits have ''thrilled'' English boys for ''decades''."
* AngstWhatAngst: Quartermain doesn't seem that all broken up when the Fantom's men killed his friend impersonating him, or when they blew up his clubhouse at Kenya with his other friends supposedly still inside.

* HesJustHiding: For those who like the others at Quartermain's club, it can be nice to hope they went out in time to not be blown up, especially since it's never outright said anyone died in there from the film.

* OneSceneWonder: The BadassBystander hunter at Quartermain's club who comments on the unsporting nature of the automatic rifles and is convinced that it must be the Belgians attacking them.

** Reed, the man who recruits Quartermain, could have been an addition to the team, [[spoiler:possibly as TheMole given how The Fantom was apparently the one who set him up there.]]
** The other patrons and staff at Quartermain's club. It isn't even made clear if they survive the explosion when they could have showed up later in a ChekhovsGunman role if the league needed help somewhere, or at least [[spoiler:Given a little extra presence and emotion to the funeral at the end.]]

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: The Beatnik novella from the ''Black Dossier'' reads like this, which, given the source material, isn't surprising. If one takes the time to actually decipher the text, the plot seems to involve Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty's descendants ([[Literature/OnTheRoad Dean Moriarty]] and [[Creator/JackKerouac Doctor Sax]], respectively), with the latter kidnapping the former in order to continue the family feud by infesting him with an ancient Aztec linguistic virus made from centipedes, which turns the victim into the gate for Lovecraftian {{Eldritch Abomination}}s and spreads memetically. [[HoistByHisOwnPetard It doesn't end well.]]

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Due to the integration of ''Theatre/TheThreepennyOpera'' into ''Century: 1910'', characters derived from the play sing versions of its songs (and act like they're living in a musical in contrast to everyone else). There's no music provided per se, the readers have to fill that in themselves, but the lyrics are singable and often work in their own right as decent English translations/adaptations of the original German due to having less or no references to the comic's plot.
** For instance, from "What Keeps Mankind Alive?"

* TooBleakStoppedCaring: ''Tempest'' is basically a massive AuthorTract against modern-day superhero media, and unilaterally portrays them as fascist-coded cash cows with no redeeming qualities as an attempt to indict comic-book readers... you know, the people who read Alan Moore's work.

** Moore's stance that art had higher expectations in the Victorian era compared to the modern stuff he's apathetic towards at best and utterly hates at worst is debated heavily by fans ''and'' academia. There are examples of many of the things Moore decries about modern fiction (LongRunner series, [[MoneyDearBoy low-effort cash-grab sequels]], fiction without higher themes intended purely for entertainment) in that time, much of which had to be rehabilitated via DeathOfTheAuthor, or deliberately steering counter examples to be less focused on. Victorian authors were also no less prone to [[TrollingCreator baiting their audiences]], [[HePannedItNowHeSucks getting into feuds with critics, academics, and each other]], or [[OldShame questioning their younger works as they got older and more thoughtful]]. Moore portrays all of which as worrying new trends and/or symptoms of something deeply diseased about the process of writing modern fiction. Some see this as Moore essentially siding with academic consensus, at least to the extent Moore can see himself as an intellectual for doing so. Moore's social anarchist cues may also play into this worldview. Others are more prone to call this as age old academic snobbery, arguing that OlderIsBetter and [[NoTrueScotsman arbitrarily excluding older works from the same criteria used to judge modern ones]]. In the very process Moore seems to uphold obstacles to a wider literary acceptance, and which, ironically, has led to academia pushing away many of the fictional works used to build the comic's world in the first place.

** [[Franchise/JamesBond "Jimmy" Bond]] is a boorish, sex-obsessed thug who ultimately attempts to nuke the Blazing World (after already having done so to several places on Earth); a far cry from the flirtatious but ultimately heroic figure of cinema.

** The idea of Flanderizing ''Literature/{{Pollyanna}}'' into her most basic trait is something that even long since inspired her to TropeNamer for ThePollyanna, so despite its usage here was long older than Moore's Invisible Man tries to rape her joke.

* UncertainAudience: The League throughout its entire run ran with this trope rather than an actual target audience. Many people who were general Alan Moore fans followed it but openly admitted much of it required annotations by Jess Nevins to be able to follow and be appreciated. The comic also got the attention of people with wide tastes and love crossovers, but as this page shows many of these readers are openly in complete disagreement with Alan Moore's opinions that went into building the world of the comic. Up until the very last issue the comic never really aimed itself in favor of one or the other and left many readers interested but never without heavy complaints.