Dracula: 10 References And Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

On Sister Agatha waking up to take control of the situation on board the Demeter in Episode 2, she upbraids the vampire Count's cunning plan by telling him "the purpose of an alias seems to have eluded you."

Here she is referencing the fact that Dracula personally selected his fellow passengers on the ship through making arrangements as their silent business partner "Mr Balaur". Balaur, as Sister Agatha points out, is a Romanian term for a dragon, much like Dracula which originally meant "son of the dragon." So not the most creative of pseudonyms, then.

Dracula, however, has never really committed to an alias that would actually do much good at hiding his identity. In fact, his history with an inept epithet goes right back to Stoker's original novel in which the name that he uses for his business dealings is "Mr de Ville", a name which only becomes less subtle when you observe that "dracul" in modern Romanian means "devil".

The iconic bloodsucker has only got worse at concealing his identity behind a clever name across his appearances on screen. Alucard (literally just his name backwards) remains a favourite alias ever since its introduction in the 1943 film Son Of Dracula.

In the light of that, maybe Mr Balaur isn't the worst nom de guerre imaginable. At least you have to speak another language to see through it!