25 Things You Didn't Know About Bram Stoker's Dracula
10. The Real Dracula
Stoker took inspiration for Dracula from Vlad The Impaler, yet Coppola took that inspiration one step further. In the sweeping prologue, Dracula is depicted as the Prince of Transylvania, replete with his armies repelling the Ottoman invasion of the 15th century.
Hopkins' Van Helsing recounts the tale to Harker: "Here occurs the shocking and frightening history of the wild berserker, Prince Dracula, how he impaled people and roasted them, boiled their heads in a kettle, how he skinned them alive and hacked them to pieces and then... drank their blood." While obvious artistic licence is used, the events are not that far from the historical truth (just without the fangs).