The Count of Monte Cristo (novel)/YMMV

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• Alternate Character Interpretation: Although he's presented as/intended as an Anti-Hero, for a large part of the book, the Count is, arguably, a Villain Protagonist. He does manipulate a greedy wife into poisoning almost every single member of her family, including one Kick the Dog moment outside the count's immediate control where she poisons her nine-year-old son.
  • Affably Evil
  • Anti-Hero: Type IV or V
  • Villain Protagonist
  • Aristocrats Are Evil
  • Evil Is Sexy
• Complete Monster: Benedetto crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he burns his foster mother alive.
• Magnificent Bastard: One of the oldest and best.
• Nightmare Fuel: the Depardieu film has a moment where Danglars' wife (in the movie, they're childless) starts ranting that she did have a son, with Villefort, the one Monte Cristo was ever so subtly hinting at earlier, staring at him the whole time while wearing a kind of weirdly happy grin.
• Older Than They Think: Among other things, the book is one of the first to introduce invisible ink and the treasure map as concepts, and the scheme employed to bankrupt Danglars is not only a version of the con known as the wire, but is essentially the same trick done in the Eddie Murphy movie, Trading Places. Also, although invisible ink was used earlier by Edgar Allan Poe in his story "The Gold Bug", this novel is one of the earlier uses of the idea before it became a cliche.