YMMV / Treasure Island

• Anti-Climax Boss: Do you think there will be an epic final battle between the heroes and the pirates? Nope. At the climax, the heroes kill two pirates and the remaining three flee. This is changed in several adaptations, though.
• Common Knowledge: Long John Silver does not have a peg-leg in the novel, unlike in most adaptations—he is one-legged, but gets around using a crutch instead.
• Evil Is Cool: Long John Silver is one of the most iconic villains in literature and is known for his charisma and amiable personality. It's been believed that Robert Louis Stevenson may have deliberately invoked this both with Silver and with Blind Pew as he was a physically frail man, so he must have had some inspiration to create villains who were a threat in spite of their impairments.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • A rare villainous example. When Long John Silver and Pew were written as a cripple and a blind man respectively, it was to show that they were threatening, capable, badass pirates in spite of their disabilities. These days though, they're often used as the prime example of the Evil Cripple stereotype.
  • John Silver's black wife isn't shown or even given a name, and the book sometimes calls her epithets that would be unacceptable to use these days; however, the narrative doesn't consider their marriage to be a bad thing, with Jim imagining at the very end that Silver would eventually reunite with her after his escape. And although we don't learn much about the relationship between Silver and his wife, he trusts her enough to run the Spyglass Inn while he's gone and he tells his fellow pirates that he plans to spend his share of the money to retire with her, with no indication that this statement was one of his lies.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The book is beloved in many countries, but it had a huge following in the Soviet Union countries that it had two animated movies from Bulgaria in 1982 and another from Russia/Ukraine in 1988.
• It Was His Sled: Long John Silver is the leader of the pirates. Some adaptations don't even bother hiding this twist and portray him as a villain in their advertising.
• Magnificent Bastard: Long John Silver shows why he was the only man the ruthless Captain Flint ever feared. Getting himself hired by young hero Jim Hawkins, Silver converts the crew to his side and launches a mutiny, personally disposing of the only members who refused to join him. Silver proceeds to twist the events of the novel to his advantage to obtain the treasure he craves, while genuinely bonding with young Jim and becoming a mentor and father figure to the boy. When things go wrong and the crew betrays him, Silver promptly switches sides to the heroes and comes out on top, escaping their custody with a fortune to return to his wife a wealthy and free man. So charismatic and complex is Silver that even the heroes who have been under threat from him can almost hope that Silver will indeed escape justice.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • In a meta-level sense, the portrayal of pirates in Treasure Island has leaked into popular culture, such that even Space and Sky Pirates tend to emulate some of the piratical behaviours as portrayed in this story.
  • Dr. Livesey from an animated 1988 Soviet adaptation became a meme in 2022 due to his resemblance to George Washington. At least one variant of the meme is a spoof of Traumatized Mr. Incredible.
• Once Original, Now Common: People who read this book and find it full of clichés from start to finish probably don't know that it was this book that created all the clichés of the pirate genre.
• Rooting for the Empire: A feeling shared by the heroes themselves regarding Long John Silver, who is such a complex, charismatic and amusing character that makes the reader hope that he can escape alive.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Squire's three Red Shirt servants, Joyce, Redruth and Hunter have the potential for some good Battle Butler moments and have the potential to drastically change their lives if their party finds the treasure, but they get little characterization and die quickly in the book.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: A minor case; Long John Silver's Pirate Parrot is usually referred to as male in adaptations, but in the book, Silver claims that she's female. To be fair, it's usually hard to tell the sex of a parrot at a glance so it's possible that Silver is just guessing. (Or he's seen the parrot lay an unfertilized egg, which would be fairly conclusive evidence.) The fact that the parrot has the masculine name of Captain Flint only adds to the confusion.

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