YMMV / Sharpe

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Lord Pumphrey really think Astrid and Skovgaard were a threat to British interests, or did he want to murder a potential romantic rival for Sharpe? It is probably both.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In his historical notes, Cornwell frequently lampshades those aspects of 18th and 19th century life that seem far-fetched to modern readers, including:
  • The purchase system in the British army, which allowed officers to buy their way up the promotion ladder, regardless of military experience, or lack thereof.
  • In Sharpe's Enemy: an army of deserters living wild in the Portuguese mountains, and a "Rocket Troop" armed exclusively with William Congreve's Awesome, but Impractical rocket artillery. Both existed.
• Author Avatar: Sharpe's Fury features a Spaniard named Benito Chavez, a "chronicler" (writer) whose clothes are covered with broken tobacco leaves and whose fingers are permanently stained with ink.
• Award-Bait Song: The official soundtrack features Broken Hearted I Will Wander and The Spanish Bride.
• Can't Un-Hear It: It isn't possible to read any of the novels and not hear all Sharpe's dialogue in Sean Bean's accent. Especially since Cornwell Ret Canoned in that Sharpe spent some of his teenage years in Yorkshire.
• Complete Monster:
  • Sharpe's Company & Sharpe's Enemy: Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill lacks any of his book counterpart's redeeming qualities, however minor, while still maintaining his heinousness. Sharpe's Arch-Enemy, Hakeswill was a Sociopathic Soldier who was responsible for sentencing Sharpe to a flogging he knew would be a death sentence, before Sharpe was saved after receiving 200 lashes. An abusive bully to his men, Hakeswill regularly subjects soldiers to floggings to extort sexual favours from their wives and tries to rape Sharpe's wife Teresa. When Sharpe's best friend Harper stops him, Hakeswill frames him for a theft, resulting in his brutal flogging. Murdering one of his own soldiers to use his body as cover in the heat of battle, Hakeswill kills another soldier and tries to rape Teresa again. Hakeswill deserts the army before raping and murdering Sally Clayton, an innocent woman he's lusted after. Becoming the leader of a group of vicious bandits, Hakeswill waylays a group of noble women and is only stopped from raping them by warnings that it will damage the ransom value. When he learns Sharpe is bringing the ransom, Hakeswill doubles it at the last minute and allows his men to rape the non-noble women and tries to rape the nobles anyways. When Teresa stops him, Hakeswill fatally shoots her before being captured and facing the firing squad for his crimes.
  • Sharpe's Mission: Colonel Brand is a double agent who starts his career by personally killing an injured British officer, then carrying him back to the British lines and being hailed as a hero for trying to save him. This is the first of several acts of so-called heroism arranged by his handler French Colonel Cressan, who wants Brand to lure Sharpe and Ross into a trap. Brand murders a Gypsy couple who saw him meeting Cressan, then slaughters a Gypsy camp in a failed attempt to kill the couple's daughter, who also witnessed the meeting. He leads his men in massacring a group of French ex-deserters set up by Cressan and given faulty gunpowder so they were effectively unarmed, making a point of sadistically garroting the one who ran furthest. Despite giving them the self-aggrandizing name Brand's Boys, he has no loyalty to his men, calmly telling Sharpe that he abandons anyone who is injured. Even after being exposed and arrested, he tries to convince Sharpe to let him and his men massacre a fort garrison who have also been set up Cressan.
  • Sharpe's Challenge: William Dodd, a traitor to the British army, massacred a full contingent of soldiers to turn warlord in India. Years later, Dodd manipulates a Maharajah as his chief commander to start a war, slaughtering an entire village—which is something he has done in the past—to ensure all his enemies will fear him. Dodd ensures every British soldier dies a torturous death, and when British lady Celia Burroughs is kidnapped, Dodd expresses his desire to painfully rape her. Intending on slaughtering the British military and murdering his benefactor, Dodd attempts to flee when he has lost and murders his lover Madhuvanthi before facing Sharpe himself.
  • Sharpe's Peril: Colonel Count Vladimir Dragomirov is a cavalry commander in India, who also has a foothold in the opium trade. To cover his tracks, Dragomirov slaughters the village that had been growing the plants needed to make opium, as well as a garrison of British soldiers, leaving their commander tied up naked and Exposed to the Elements. Dragomirov and his men "save" a baggage train led by Colonel Richard Sharpe, but only to make scapegoats of a group of bandits opposing them. When Sharpe is separated from the baggage train along with Marie-Angelique, the fiancée of Dragomirov's dragon Major Philippe Joubert, Dragomirov threatens to have her gang-raped by his men unless Sharpe gives up the train, then has Sharpe tied up in a pit of snakes. When Sharpe and Marie-Angelique escape, Dragomirov pursues them to a village where the train has stopped, murders a priest that tries to dissuade him while telling the man "God does not work on a Sunday", and attacks the village with the intent of murdering everyone there. Greedy and treacherous, Dragomirov didn't care who he murdered as long as he gained something from it.
• Fight Scene Failure: Any time the sabers come out, it tends to lead to a wholly unconvincing fight scene. With the actors dropping like stones from being lightly tapped on the jacket.
• Genius Bonus: When McCandless quotes part of Matthew 8:9 as an Ironic Echo to Hakeswill, the full line fits the situation even better (and, ironically, may be a misquote)^{The line...}While the exact line is different depending on which version of The Bible you read, the closest is probably the King James Bible, which says "For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth." He misquotes it by saying "I say to a man", rather than "I say to this man", though it could be that the version he was quoting from isn't online
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Sharpe's Eagle, Sharpe gets into a fistfight with Lt. Berry, played by a young Daniel Craig, so we have future Bond villain Alec Trevelyan sparring against a future James Bond, respectively.
  • In Sharpe's Battle, Sharpe's adversary, General Loup, has an Animal Motif of a wolf. Then Sean Bean plays a nobleman, Eddard Stark, whose family has a wolf as their Animal Motif.
  • At the end of Sharpe's Battle, Colonel Runciman is made a Baron. In Dune, Ian McNeice would play another Baron - Vladimir Harkonnen.
  • In Sharpe's Challenge, Sharpe battles against the evil William Dodd, played by Toby Stephens, meaning the first and last villains from the Brosnan-era James Bond-films went head-to-head, with Alec Trevelyan coming out on top.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: In his historical note to Tiger, Cornwell notes that later generations of Indians have lionized the Tippoo Sultan as a forerunner of the Indian Independence movement, simply because the largest battles fought by Mysore under his rule were against the British invaders. But Cornwell notes that the Tippoo was a Muslim ruling over a potentially rebellious majority Hindu population, and that his goal was never independence from British rule for all Indians, but rather Mysore's dominance over the other Indian kingdoms, "which was a very different thing." Cornwell then adds that no upgrade should be necessary because, regardless of his motives, the Tippoo was undoubtedly a brave man.
• Ho Yay: In universe, invoked and discussed with relation to Pumphrey and Sharpe:
  Sharpe: He's not...stuck up.
  Hogan: Richard, there is nothing Lord Pumphrey would like more than to be stuck up with you.
• Memetic Badass: Sharpe is already ridiculously badass, but any discussion of his abilities on forums will inevitably result in all agreeing that the English and Spanish didn't really need the rest of their armies, they could have just sent Sharpe himself and had done with it.
  Richard Sharpe: The man so badass being played by Sean Bean couldn't kill him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Tied in with Memetic Badass. It's generally agreed by fans that the reason Sean Bean dies so much is the universe balancing itself out because of Sharpe's inability to die.
  • From the series: "X, now that's soldiering" or "X. That's soldiering."
• Moral Event Horizon: Hakeswill murdering McCandless after the Battle of Assaye was over. All so he could 'arrest' Sharpe.
• Narm: Sharpe's rescue of La Marquesa from a convent in Sharpe's Honour is supposed to be daring and dramatic, but it's hard not to laugh at him getting pelted with loaves of bread and plucked chickens by a pack of angry nuns and unable to fight back because of his chivalrous nature.
• Newer Than They Think: While 'Over The Hills And Far Away' is a legitimate traditional song and the chorus originated in 1706, the verses sung in the show were written by John Tams.
• Retroactive Recognition: To give a few:
  • Daniel Craig is Lt. Berry in Sharpe's Eagle.
  • Emily Mortimer as "Lass" in Sharpe's Sword.
  • Mark Strong is Colonel Brand in Sharpe's Mission.
  • Paul Bettany is the Prince of Orange in Sharpe's Waterloo.
  • Alice Krige (best known as the Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact) as La Marquesa.
  • Alexis Denisof is Lord John Rossendale.
  • Elizabeth Hurley is Isabella, Lady Farthingdale in "Sharpe's Enemy".
  • Edward Atterton (Atherton Wing, to most tropers) plays Peter D'Alembord.
  • Philip Glenister, in his pre-Gene Hunt days, plays labour organizer Matthew Truman.
  • James Purefoy is Jack Spears.
  • And, of course, Sean Bean himself, whose only role of real note at the time filming started was IRA terrorist Sean Miller in Patriot Games
• Signature Scene: Sir Arthur Wellesley's brutal dressing down of Sir Henry Simmerson in Sharpe's Eagle is a commonly quoted scene.
• Tear Jerker:
  • After Hakeswill kills Theresa in Sharpe's Enemy:
  "You told me you didn't speak French"
  "I lied. My wife taught me. She taught me many things. Above all, how to say goodbye."
  • Sharpe's Battle with the death of young Perkins, after he is stabbed in the stomach by a supposed ally. Begging first for a tune from Dan, then for his mum and finally apologising to Sergeant Harper for not being a good enough soldier and letting him down. All whilst his hardened comrades break into tears around him. Harper desperately tries to comfort him:
  "Your mother's with you, lad! Mothers never leave ya!"
  • Near the end of Sharpe's Waterloo, Harris and Hagman in the farmyard. Harris spots that Hagman is about to be shot and shouts his name, but isn't quite fast enough to stop it happening... and then is himself bayoneted in the back. He crawls the few yards to grab his friend's hand and then dies. This is topped off by Sharpe audibly choking up on learning of their deaths.
    "They were my men! I chose them!"
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Cornwell himself has stated that he regrets killing off Hakeswill, as he's had difficulty coming up with an equally depraved and personal arch-nemesis for Sharpe.

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