Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea/YMMV

• Acceptable Targets: The British, the author being a Frenchman.
  • Somewhat ironic because Verne was far more pro-British than most of his countrymen (through that might not have been saying much, with the Napoleonic Wars in living memory at the time). And before them, it was the Russians.
    • Verne wanted it to be the Russians, but his publisher balked at the idea, since France was on good terms with them, at the time.
      • Not only that, but the sales as well. Russia always was a huge market for Verne's books, at one point being the largest of them all, and Hetzel didn't want to lose all that money by offending and alienating the readers. He managed to persuade Verne to change Nemo's nation, and he, ever the pragmatic,^[1] agreed.
• An Aesop:
  • Technology Is Evil because Humans Are the Real Monsters: Just Think of the Potential to do good a Cool Boat like the Nautilus! But before that, It will be used for Submarine Pirates as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
  • A Weapon of Mass Destruction is an Artifact of Doom. No Man Should Have This Power and if he does, he becomes an Ubermensch.
  • No matter what a wholesome Nice Guy you genuinely are, if you become an Ubermensch because you have a Weapon of Mass Destruction, for a time you will be The Anti-Nihilist, but slowly but surely you will become a Nietzsche Wannabe.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: After Ned Land and Conseil tried to give The Professor Aronax some precious oxygen, they converse More Expendable Than You:

"Good lord, Professor," Ned Land answered me, "don't mention it! What did we do that's so praiseworthy? Not a thing. It was a question of simple arithmetic. Your life is worth more than ours. So we had to save it."

"No, Ned," I replied, "it isn't worth more. Nobody could be better than a kind and generous man like yourself!"

"All right, all right!" the Canadian repeated in embarrassment.

• It Was His Sled: There's no sea monster. It's a submarine.
• Values Dissonance: The crew spend an entire chapter killing sperm whales for no particular reason, except that Nemo doesn't like them.
  • He appears to be killing them to protect a pod of baleen whales, much as a farmer of the time would hunt wolves. Still counts though.
    • But, sperm whales don't eat baleen whales...
    • Nemo's not supposed to be completely sympathetic, and this episode seems to be demonstrating the "Extremist" part of Well-Intentioned Extremist. Even Ned Land, a passionate hunter, was shocked at the killing.
  • The crew also treat Papuan natives who attack the Nautilus like savages instead of people; they don't even stop one from wandering onto the (electrified) staircase of the ship.
    • However, also Ned Land, Counseil and Aronnax treat them as savages. Maybe could be said that it was Fair for Its Day? Captain Nemo lampshades that "savages" can be found at any part of the world, and even when the papuans wandered on the electrified staircase, it's implied it was only capable of repelling them and not kill them. Nemo said:

"Well, sir, let them come. I see no reason for hindering them. After all, these Papuans are poor creatures, and I am unwilling that my visit to the island should cost the life of a single one of these wretches."

• Harsher in Hindsight / Not So Crazy Anymore: Since the beginning of his career as a writer, Verne has being accused by critics of being only a HardScifi writer that paid little heed to the social ramifications of technology. But with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Verne wrote in 1869 about Captain Nemo, a man from an oppressed country who had training in the west, and has enough money to pay a country’s national debt, whom decides to create an organization strong enough to fight an entire Western country through terrible acts of violence, and therefore is chased as a menace by all established countries in the West. After Osama Bin Laden, 9/11 and The War on Terror, we must admit that Verne really knew much more than anyone ever suspected about how the world will turn in the next 130 years!
  • A lot of the descriptions of whaling and fishing and the beauty of the sea becomes this due to modern pollution problems, rampant overfishing, and climate change. Not to mention some species described in the book are outright extinct.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The Captain Nemo is a truly, Wicked Cultured, Affably Evil Nice Guy who constantly crosses the Moral Event Horizon and hardly even notices when he Kick the Dog. An Aesop of the novel is to show that no matter how good or charismatic are you, Technology Is Evil and to have a Weapon of Mass Destruction means that With Great Power Comes Great Insanity as Nemo’s Villainous Breakdown takes him and his entire crew to the Maelstrom. However, Misaimed Fandom always forget the Aesop because Nemo is the poster boy (Out and In-Universe) for Affably Evil, Cry for the Devil, Dark and Troubled Past, Troubled but Cute, Well-Intentioned Extremist and even Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.

1. ↑ Perhaps surprisingly, but he was. In his youth, when his father withdrew his financial support after learning that his son is dabbling with literature instead of studying the law, Verne had to earn his living by being a stock broker. He hated it with passion, but was quite successful, becoming financially independent even before breaking out in the writing field.