Common Knowledge: There are those who believe Sweeney Todd to be a 19th century myth or Urban Legend. He actually originates from a penny dreadful serial that began serialization in 1846 and ended serialization in 1847. To be fair, there is a documented similar Real Life case, the Rue des Marmousets affair in 15th centuryParis, in which a barber killed his customers and handed the bodies over to his baker accomplice who made them into pâté. The similarities are so striking that there's a chance the story was based off this.
Complete Monster: Sweeney Todd himself from the original penny dreadful stories that began with The String Of Pearls. While later given sympathetic qualities in some retelling of original story, the original Sweeney Todd was a monster whose only motivation was cruelty and greed. Sweeney would lure customers into his barber shop and proceed to drop them down a tunnel to break their skulls or necks, before 'polishing them off' with his straight razor if they still lived. Coming up with another plan to make more money, he and his partner Mrs. Lovett cooked the bodies into meat pies to sell with a hefty profit. Hundreds of corpses are seen in the preparation room, and Sweeney also keeps a kidnap victim to work the furnace to keep the meat coming, with full knowledge that he'll eventually join the pies when Sweeney decides he's been there too long.
