The homogenizing effect of mass media is a mixed bag. It’s certainly handy for owners of intellectual properties that their fictional characters be immediately recognizable to audiences worldwide. It’s also a small shame to see imaginations have such rigid guidelines on the appearances of characters. How fun it is to imagine the ways different cultures depict figures from books, mythology, etc before cultural juggernauts like Disney made the most familiar character designs.
For the purpose of the list, all art included needs to have been published for public consumption. After all, practically every character featured in mass media went through a development process. In these cases, imagine the thousands, and perhaps even millions of people who had a wholly different vision of famous characters for decades, from how we picture them now…
10. Zorro
As unlikely as it is that you’re familiar with Joseph McCulley’s characters Broadway Bab or Captain Fly-By-Night, it’s about equally likely that you’ve heard of the masked sword fighter in black. That said, you probably know of Don Diego de la Vega’s alias from years of movies and TV shows rather than the 1919 story in which Joseph McCulley originated the character in The Curse of Capistrano. McCulley didn’t have any idea what vein of gold he’d struck with this story of a noble who fought for the people, as he had Zorro give away his secret identity by the end of the story, something surely Batman and all the other Zorro derivatives would never do anywhere near their origin story.
The cover illustration for All-Story Weekly which introduced him to the world reflected just how far the original vision of Zorro is from the one millions later experienced. First off, the clothing is much more generic rather than all-black. Second, the mask is hardly the taut bandana tied over the head with holes punched in it, but a piece of cloth hanging like a curtain. It was Douglas Fairbanks and the founders of the movie studio United Artists who gave Zorro a makeover, with his now iconic mask and the all-black clothing that Fairbanks wore for the 1920 hit film The Mark of Zorro.
9. Frankenstein’s Monster
It’s pretty common knowledge how much the 1931 Frankenstein changed the public perception of Victor Frankenstein and his monster from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. There’s no Igor in the book, there’s no Captain Robert Walton’s Arctic Expedition framing device in the movie, etc. Less known is just how far the portrayal of the monster shifted. The angular forehead and neck bolts of the Boris Karloff makeup job are nowhere to be found in Mary Shelley’s original.
More than a century before makeup designer Jack Pierce decided how we’d all envision Frankenstein’s monster, Mary Shelley wrote about how the eyes of the monster were yellow. That might have been hard to communicate on black and white film (though ironically it was the original color of Pierce’s makeup: The iconic green look came from posters). But what would have been easier would have been to match Shelley’s description of long black hair for the monster. It’s an understandable change, as long hair was unfashionable in 1931. It’d be like if Freddy Krueger had an afro for Nightmare on Elm Street.
8. Dracula
Speaking of 19th Century horror icons, it’s a testament to the staying power of Tod Browning’s 1931 extremely loose adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel that after most of a century of reimaginings and recastings, it’s still probably Bela Lugosi people think of when you mention Dracula. This would likely have caught Stoker by surprise, and we can say that with a sound basis. While Stoker passed away 19 years before Browning’s film in 1912, he lived to see and approve the first illustration ever used to sell copies of his vampire story.
In the illustration by an unfortunately forgotten artist, Dracula’s hair is white, he has a mustache, and his hairline is receding far past the point Lugosi’s was. This is because the scene takes place during a portion of the story where he is decrepit from lack of human blood before drinking from Jonathan Harker rejuvenates him. Despite being illustrated repeatedly (such as also for the 1916 edition) the scene does not appear in the movie and thus is not part of the popular Dracula perception.
7. Bugs Bunny
A big screen figure and household name for going on eighty years now, the public got to see the development of the character over several years in a couple of short films. The generally agreed first appearance of the original version of the character was in 1937 where his nemesis wasn’t Elmer Fudd but Porky Pig of all characters in Porky’s Hare Hunt. The first cartoon where the character had all the trademark characteristics (named Bugs Bunny, gray fur, an antagonist who wanted to shoot him, tall and slim, Bronx accent, etc.) was 1940 for A Wild Hare.
The most interesting cartoon during those years of development was 1939’s Prest-O Change-O. There the setup is that two non-anthropomorphized dogs enter a supernatural house to evade a dog catcher and get tormented by proto-Bugs Bunny, This version of Bugs is all white (a top hat with gloves on a table in the background implies he’s magical because he’s a magician’s rabbit) and has no dialogue besides a mocking guffaw. For a modern viewer, it can be jarring to see Bugs Bunny as both an antagonistic figure and to “lose” by the end of a cartoon. It’s also the only cartoon with a Bugs Bunny character currently in the public domain.
The magic Proto-Bugs Bunny enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity in 2023. A scene from the cartoon was shown looping on a TV for a scene in the ultra-minimalist horror film Skinamarink. In the looped clip, the rabbit disappears by pressing its hands together on its head and feet, which inspires the villain of Skinamarink to do something implicitly very grisly to one of the children it imprisoned. The juxtaposition between the benign cartoon and the horrific recontextualization inspired, among other things, very vivid fan art.
6. Cinderella
Probably no single entity profited more than the Disney company, which raked in hundreds of millions from the 1950 and 2015 movies. Not to mention all the movies related to the Cinderella story, such as 2004’s Hillary Duff film A Cinderella Story or 2014’s Into the Woods. You know the story, of course: A slave has one of her shoes stolen by a bird, who then drops it on an Egyptian king, who sets out to find the one-shoed girl to marry her.
Oh, that doesn’t sound familiar? Well, that’s because it’s the story of Rhodopis, a story of a Greek courtesan forced into slavery in Egypt who is raised to royalty by losing her shoe which dates back to 600 BC. There was an attempt to portray it as a history among several authors by attributing it to Greek Historian Strabos, but the efforts have been thoroughly debunked. While there have been literally hundreds of stories that follow the broad contours of the Cinderella story from folklore from countries as distant as China, Rhodopis’s story has a more direct lineage to modern Cinderella in that the story was translated for European audiences by Giambattista Basile in 1634 for Charles Perrault to adapt into the familiar version in 1697. Rhodopis hardly fell into obscurity even as the Cinderella story’s story became ubiquitous. For example, the image featured above, featuring Rhodopis with her handsome prince Psammetiucus, was rendered in 1783, so Rhodopis was clearly a popular figure more than a century after Basile introduced her to Europe.
5. Aslan
Is C.S. Lewis’s classic fantasy series that was first published in 1950 better known for the 120 million books sold in 47 languages, or for the film trilogy that grossed $1.5 billion worldwide? Either way, undoubtedly the single most recognizable character from it is Aslan, the lion who is such a paragon of virtue that he is often considered an equivalent of Jesus Christ, complete with a resurrection arc. As familiar as the character is, there likely are many fans who don’t picture something very similar to the work of Pauline Baynes.
Baynes was an icon of children’s fantasy story illustrations and was introduced to C.S. Lewis based on her work doing the initial illustrations for The Hobbit. While in correspondence with her, Lewis was generous with praise, in private he was critical of the use of anatomy in her art, with special attention being given to how he felt she couldn’t draw a lion. Certainly one of her 1950 illustrations of Aslan playing with Lucy and Susan looks very far from subsequent versions. The fur on the body is darker, the mane has large amounts of black in it. He looks more like Scar from The Lion King than how he was rendered in the 1979 or 2006 movies.
4. Santa Claus
One of the more common misconceptions of this holiday icon is that the depiction we’re familiar with is a creation of the Coca-Cola company. The truth is much more benevolent, and from an American perspective, much more patriotic. It also predates the creation of the Coca-Cola company by about 30 years.
In January 1863, spirits for the Northern states fighting to preserve the Union were low. The Army of the Potomac had recently been defeated at the particularly grueling Battle of Fredericksburg. So Nast drew one of his characteristic pieces of propaganda for the January 3 issue of Harper’s Weekly, featuring Jolly St. Nick distributing presents to Union troops. He’s wearing a coat of blue with white stars. In the spirit of the times, he’s offering a puppet with a rope around its neck to the nearest Union soldier. This is a reference to the lyric from the song “John Brown’s Body” that Confederate president Jefferson Davis should be “hang(ed) from a sour apple tree.” So for those who think modern grim parodies of Santa Claus such as a slasher villain or as a profane sleazy figure are corrupting an innocent figure, it turns out modern Santa always had a bit of an edge to him.
3. Robin Hood
When you think Robin Hood, you probably imagine Kevin Costner, Errol Flynn, or if you’re a member of a certain online community, a fox. What you probably don’t imagine is the first woodcut of the legendary outlaw. Dating to the 15th Century, about a century after the first known reference to him in 1377 AD by William Langland in Piers Plowman.
If you’re wondering why this version of Robin Hood, or “Robyn Hode” as the woodcut was labeled, has his hat tied to his head instead of the familiar dashing cap, it’s because of contemporary slang. At that point in British history, some independent landowners were not part of the feudal hierarchy (i.e. not lords, knights, etc), and were known as yeomen. People who lived independently as foresters were often called “yeomen of the forest.” So portraying Robin Hood with yeomen garb was essentially a visual pun. Unsurprising that the look was replaced by sleeker adventurer costumes.
2. Gollum
Swedish illustrator Tove Janosson’s portrayal of the most famous corrupted figure in fantasy may be the most jarring on the list. As illustrated in the 1960 Scandinavian edition, Gollum was a towering figure, very far removed from any of the animated or live-action depictions where he and the “halfling” Bilbo are roughly equal heights.
While the bulbous eyes are fairly similar to the frog eyes that he had in the Rankin-Bass cartoon, the wreath of leaves on his head is singular, though a staple of fantasy figures of the region. The character more closely resembles Treebeard from the 1978 Ralph Bakshi cartoon. Fans of Tove Janosson’s iconic series The Moomins will also likely be reminded of the fearsome figure the Groke.
1. Jesus Christ
Now you’ll know we didn’t say that the figures in this list were “fictional” or “characters.” Whatever your beliefs about Jesus Christ, the facts of the matter are that there were no cameras in Jesus of Nazareth’s day and the New Testament is vague on Jesus’s appearance. About the most detailed it gets is Isiah 50:6 when Jesus said he offered his cheeks to his Roman executioners as they “plucked the beard”. So everyone will have to content themselves with speculation.
During the height of the Roman Empire, it was fashionable for the nobility to be clean-shaven. Thus surviving early depictions of Jesus follow suit. For example, a 6th Century depiction in Shivta, Syria found in 2018 has no beard. The 360 AD mosaic found at the Hinton St. Mary Church in Dorset, England was claimed to have been modeled off Roman coins as an explanation for why he has no beard, Roman laurels, and pomegranates around his head, a reference to the Greek goddess Persephone. That’s the sort of localization to be expected without a central hierarchy to establish a consistent canon.
Dustin Koski wrote very unfamiliar versions of familiar characters for his book Robin Hood Vs. King Arthur.