Oliver Twist/YMMV

• Complete Monster: While Fagin is the better-remembered villain, Bill Sikes plays this role in the book. Everyone is terrified of him and he performs the only deeds of true brutality in the story. None of the other villains (Fagin, Monks, or what have you) come close to matching him in being an utter bastard.
• Crowning Moment of Funny/Crowning Moment of Awesome: The Artful Dodger in court.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Numerous.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: The Artful Dodger is generally considered the most popular character in the story.
• Iron Woobie: Nancy.
• Moral Event Horizon: Bill Sikes' murder of Nancy definitely counts.
  • Also, Nancy, Charley and The Artful Dodger grabbing Oliver and bringing him back to Fagin's clutches. Nancy, however, ends up excused for this through virtue of having a Heroic BSOD when she fully realizes how screwed up this was, and openly calls Fagin out before collapsing out of stress.
  • Monks's biggest one is arranging to have his 12-year-old half-brother Oliver's life completely destroyed without real reason other than pettiness and jealousy. Specially marked when he takes the Orphans Plot Trinkets from Bumble and Corney and tosses them into the Thames so no one will ever be able to prove that Oliver is the son of Agnes and Edwin Leeford.
• Purity Sue: The whole Maylie family. Don't remember them? That's probably because they're among the first things to get cut from most adaptations.
  • To make matters worse, they seem to exist merely for Author Appeal, and the sections involving them can be almost entirely excised from the story without hurting the plot one bit.
• Tastes Like Diabetes: The description of how Oliver started to live with the Maylies. A more sinister twist on this is how the parish people (Mr. Bumble even) openly play this trope to the hilt to seem caring to the outside world, and in truth are cold blooded assholes in private who'd just rather watch the poor die off in droves.
• The Woobie: Dickens' bread and butter was this trope. Oliver and Nancy are both examples.

The various adaptations contain examples of:

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Chafing at the antisemetic portrayal of Fagin, Will Eisner created wrote a comic in which Fagin is a misunderstood antihero.
  • Or, to be more precise, in which Fagin has gone Then Let Me Be Evil to the world combined with what, if it had been published at the time Dickens wrote in, would have been rather pointed social commentary about the ill effects of limiting the career paths of an entire group.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: In the 1997 adaptation, Dodger is sent to prison instead of Australia, presumably not to offend Australians. Dodger's talk about all the things he'll learn in prison becomes less funny and more disturbing the older you get.