YMMV / Captain Sabertooth

• Alternate Character Interpretation: The franchise has been going strong for quite some time, pretty much all the characters have been played by several actors in various different media, and the various actors have chosen to interpret their personalities a little differently, causing a ton of this.
  • Captain Sabertooth: While it's pretty clear that he's not as quite ruthless and evil as he likes to portray himself, does he put on a performance in order to fool everyone else, or to fool himself? The three actors who have played him have approached it differently: Terje Formoe's Sabertooth is almost childish and gleeful in his boasting and is probably trying, but not quite managing, to fool himself into thinking he has no softer side. Svein Roger Karlsen's Sabertooth is more cartoonishly pompous and bombastic like he actually has fooled himself and totally believes in his own ruthlessness. Kyrre Haugen Sydness's Sabertooth, by contrast, is more subdued and seems to have accepted himself more as a Noble Demon, though he's still quick to threaten and present himself as worse than he really is.
  • Longfinger: He's both utterly loyal to Captain Sabertooth and a protective father figure to Pinky, but which of the two is most important to him? In some productions, especially when he's played by Håvard Bakke, he's mostly the father figure and threats to Pinky's safety is the only thing that can make him go against Captain Sabertooth's orders, but in other productions he mostly the loyal first mate who will abandon or sell Pinky out if Captain Sabertooth commands him to... though he may be reluctant about it.
  • Wimp: Is he really The Ditz that he appears to be, or is he actually the smarter of the twins but is just too spineless and dominated by the more forceful Wally to show it? Most productions seem to assume the former, but some seem to imply it's the latter.
• Awesome Ego: Captain Sabertooth, in spades. When you title yourself "King Of The Seven Seas," sing boastful songs about how awesomely gruesome and dangerous you are, and play up the mythical parts of your origin where you hint that you were "born from an eternal fire"... yeah, humility is not exactly your strongest suit. Thing is, though, most often the Captain can actually back up his boasting. True, he isn't quite as dangerous and invincible as he likes to present himself, and he can be prone to childishness and hamminess in that certain way that a villain in a kid's franchise often is... but he is a genuinely good swordfighter and competent ship's captain, he's got a good head on his shoulders and is good at reasoning and deduction. What really qualifies him for this trope, though, is the fact that his ego refuses to ever let him give up. He's a Determinator to the extreme; even when all the odds are against him, even when it's clear to everyone else that he's lost the battle and everyone else would have given up all hope, Captain Sabertooth is still at it, fighting to turn the tables in his favor and taking it for granted that everyone knows he'll manage. This is probably why, while it's fairly rare for him to score a total victory in his stories (he doesn't get the treasure he wanted, or it turns out to not have the value he thought it did), he almost never outright loses either. At the end of the day, he'll at the very least have won some small victory, and he can always sail off for new adventures in the firm knowledge that he's still the King of the Seven Seas.
• Awesome Music: A staple of the franchise, as the stage plays and movies are all musicals, and it was the music that really made Captain Sabertooth popular.
• Ho Yay: Some of the stage plays have a certain tone between Benjamin and Tully; on more than one occasion they disguise themselves as a married couple (with Benjamin in drag), and Tully gets more than a little gleeful at the prospect of sharing a bunk with Benjamin.
• Jerkass Woobie: Jon Bowie/Boneless from the TV series. He's a bit of a bully and a scoundrel, and notoriously unreliable in a pinch, but he's also the franchise's most obvious Butt-Monkey who Cant Get Away With Nothing — and with the glimpses we see of his domineering mother who keeps pestering him to become a pirate (when he clearly doesn't have what it takes to become one), it does seem like much of his jerkishness is a coping mechanism.