You call him "the Frankenstein monster" and he answers with "please, just call me Frankenstein, the monster was my father"

Mary Shelley was also the daughter of famed feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, who died of puerperal fever 11 days after giving birth to her. Shelley read all of her mother's work and was heavily inspired by them.

Describing Victor as the kind of guy who'd have a podcast is frighteningly accurate and truly a brutal dig 😭

The reason why the weather was so catastrophic that Mary Shelley and her friends stayed inside of Lord Byrons's house the Villa Diodati that was loacted near Lake Geneva in Switzerland most of the time is because it was 1816 better known as the "Year Without a Summer" because of the eruption of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora and by the way the villa still exists to this very day so if and of you are interested in visiting the birthplace of science fiction

This is such a sad potential allegory for parents who wanted a particular 'type' of child (e.g. good at sports, blonde, heck a girl) and basically abandon them for not being who they expected

I don't know why he always gets forgotten, but a young man named John Polidori was also at the writing party, and he would write Vampyre, the first major modern vampire story and establish a lot of traits we think of for the subgenre.

Ultimately the lesson you can draw from the novel isn’t just “don’t play god” it’s also “don’t abandon the life you created as their god.” Otherwise you’ll risk the angel becoming the very demon you ran from.

Interesting Fact:
The weather was so horrific on that fateful writers retreat because that summer was known as "the year without a summer" in the UK due to the eruption of Mount Tamobra. It effected weather patterns all over the globe, causing abnormally cold temperatures, famines, and political unrest. It may be responsible for more than just the writing of Frankenstein.

The harsh winters that followed also happened to coincide with the formative childhood years of one Charles Dickens, which may have painted his memories of Christmas in London as always being a bitterly cold and snowy affair (despite London generally having fairly mild winders), and why we see such backdrops in many of his famous stories like A Christmas Carol.

8:20 - Covering it's tragic descent into being a monster = learning French

26:38 Production designer - "So, Guillermo, how big do you want the father's hat to be?" Guillermo Del Toro - "Yes."

"The scientist is the real monster, not the monster" gets thrown around so much. Like, no! Both are monsters. Hurt people may hurt people, but an abuser doesn't stop being an abuser just because he was once abused. Victor is a cruel cruel man. But the monster willingly murders a lot of people for revenge, including kids. And by that point he is well aware of what he's doing. He just doesn't care because he's angry and hurt.

Frankenstein is the monster of the story. Both of them. The father and the son.

When we studied Frankenstein at school, they just had us analyse/repeatedly read the bit where Victor sees the creature in his bedroom, and then they showed us the Kenneth Branagh film. During lockdown, there was a youtube channel that posted productions of different theatre shows and they did two airings of the same production of Frankenstein, but in the second version they switched the actors (Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller) playing Victor and the Monster around. I can't remember how loyal it was but it was really interesting seeing how differently the two actors played the roles

I remember the interviews talking about how Oscar Isaac and Del Toro were taking inspiration from Telenovela acting. When I heard that and I went "That's why it was so familiar!"

“You don’t hire Charles Dance to be a good father,” sir, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies would like a word.

Setting aside the father/son angle,  another reason it's okay to call the monster Frankenstein, scientists love naming what they created or discovered after themselves

What really gets me is just how unbelievably stupid Frankenstein is in the book! The monster TELLS him that it's going to make him pay for abandoning him after already having killed his brother and his girl friend. The monster then kills his best friend right after Frankenstein destroys the monster's bride, and for some stupid reason, Frankenstein thinks it's going to kill him next and NOT the woman he's about to marry! Like, it never crosses his mind!

Damn, your costume of Frankenstien's creation was genuinely unsettling while being pretty book accurate. Good job! It's actually hard to look at XD

In DC comics lore Frankenstein did indeed take the name of his creator. Some people online also brought up the idea that since he hates his creator, tainting  his name and knowing that when people hear it they think of the monster he created before they if ever think of the scientist would make him at least a little happy.

"Abby... something. Abby Normal."

Braunaugh's version is worth its existence for the Bride of Frankenstein scene alone.
The idea that now that he has the power to create life, he will use it to his own benefit by bringing his wife back as some twisted monster who would rather be dead. Makes Victor far more untrustworthy rather than arrogant naive, that he will ultimately use his knowledge in bad ways when his back is against the wall.