Frankenstein Is the Doctor, Not the Monster — So How Many Are There?
Here’s the thing almost everyone gets wrong: Frankenstein is the scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who builds the creature. The monster has no name at all in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. So “how many Frankensteins are there?” has two answers — one in the book, and hundreds on screen, where a century of films quietly handed the doctor’s name to his creation.
Film tallies are rounded estimates across studios and eras — the point isn’t the exact number, it’s how fast “one doctor in a book” becomes “a monster in everything”.
The most famous mix-up in literature
For 200 years, people have called the monster “Frankenstein”. It is so common that dictionaries now grudgingly accept it. But in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein is the surname of Victor, the ambitious young scientist who stitches together a body from dead matter and shocks it into life. The being he creates is never named — Shelley calls it “the creature”, “the daemon”, “the wretch”.
The scientist. A Swiss student of natural philosophy who assembles and animates the creature, then abandons it in horror. He is the only “Frankenstein” in Mary Shelley’s book.
Victor’s creation — articulate, lonely and never named in the novel. Called “the creature”, “the daemon”, “the wretch”, and once, by himself, “the Adam of your labours”. Not “Frankenstein”.
So how did the name jump from maker to monster? The 1931 Universal film is the usual culprit: it was simply called Frankenstein, the monster dominated the posters, and audiences fused the title with the face. There’s even a defence for the slip — the creature is, in a sense, Victor’s child, and children take their father’s surname. Call it Frankenstein’s monster and everyone’s happy.
Seven things the creature gets called
Shelley never settled on one name — which is part of why the wrong one stuck.
The Frankenstein principle: 10 stories it still powers
Strip Frankenstein down and it isn’t about a monster at all — it’s a set of engines for stories about making something you can’t control. Here are ten of those engines, each turned into a brand-new tale. Tap a card to flip from the principle to an original story.
None of these is a Frankenstein retelling, yet every one runs on Shelley’s original circuitry. That’s why the book never dates: she didn’t write a monster, she wrote a pattern — and the pattern keeps finding new bodies.
Frankenstein vs Dracula: the two monsters from one storm
Both of horror’s greatest monsters trace back to the same rainy 1816 holiday at Lake Geneva, where Byron set a ghost-story contest. But they’re opposites — and the contrast is the clearest way to see what Frankenstein is really about.
Dracula is something to be destroyed. Frankenstein’s creature is something to be answered for. One is a predator at the window; the other is a child at the door. That’s why only one of them makes you feel guilty.
The Frankenstein quiz
Eight questions on the doctor, the creature, the book and the films. Can you keep the maker and the made straight?
How the monster escaped the book
The creature left Mary Shelley’s control almost immediately — and not first through cinema, but on stage. Within five years it was a hit play; within a century, a movie icon; and by now it’s a sitcom dad, a cereal mascot and a verb. Each leap stripped away a little more of the book and added a little more of the myth.
"Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein" opens in London — only five years after the book. It already renames the creature "—————" (a literal blank) and adds a comic servant. Mary Shelley saw it and was amused.
Boris Karloff’s flat-headed monster fixes the image forever — and locks in the public’s wrong name for the creature.
Herman Munster turns the creature into a loveable sitcom dad. The horror is fully domesticated.
From video games to cereal mascots (Franken Berry) to a thousand Halloween costumes, the bolt-necked monster becomes pure visual shorthand.
"Frankenstein" is now a verb and a prefix — to frankenstein something together; Frankenfood, Frankenstrat. The maker’s name has escaped the story entirely.
“Frankenstein” in everyday language
The final proof that the maker’s name has fully escaped the story: it’s now ordinary English. We “frankenstein” things together — cobble a working whole from mismatched parts. The prefix Franken- attaches to anything stitched or unnatural: Frankenfood for genetically modified crops, Frankenstrat for the guitar Eddie Van Halen built from spare parts. A “Frankenstein’s monster” is any creation that turns on its creator — a phrase you’ll read in articles about software, finance and politics that have nothing to do with Mary Shelley.
Notice that every one of these uses the name correctly, in a sense — they’re about the act of making, which was always Victor’s domain, not the creature’s. The language kept the part of the story most people forget: that the horror was in the assembling.
Frankenstein on screen, 1931 to 2025
The monster is one of the most-filmed characters in cinema. The milestones: Boris Karloff’s flat-headed icon in Universal’s Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935); Hammer’s bloodier Cushing cycle from 1957; Mel Brooks’ perfect spoof Young Frankenstein (1974) with Gene Wilder; and the latest serious return — Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) on Netflix, with Oscar Isaac as Victor and Jacob Elordi as the Creature.
🎬 Every Frankenstein film, ranked and counted →Universal, Hammer, Young Frankenstein, Lisa Frankenstein and del Toro’s 2025 version — the full filmography with the timeline.The book that started it all
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus when she was just 18, during a wet, storm-bound summer at Lake Geneva in 1816 — the same ghost-story challenge that also produced the first modern vampire tale. Published in 1818, it is often called the first true science-fiction novel: its horror comes not from a curse but from a scientist’s choices.
📖 Inside the novel: Mary Shelley, 1818 and the Modern Prometheus →How an 18-year-old invented science fiction, what the book actually says, and why the creature is the most misunderstood character in fiction.Maybe calling the monster “Frankenstein” was right all along
Purists love correcting the mistake. But there’s a darker reading where the slip is the truest thing about the story. Shelley’s real horror was never the creature — it was Victor: a man who makes a life, recoils from it, and refuses all responsibility for what he made. The monster only becomes monstrous because of how its maker treats it.
So when the public looks at that lumbering, rejected figure and calls it “Frankenstein”, they’re accidentally pinning the maker’s name on the consequences of his choices. Del Toro’s 2025 film leans hard into exactly this — a character tells Victor to his face, “you’re the monster.” Two centuries of “getting it wrong” may have landed on the right answer.
The book has one Frankenstein. The culture has thousands. And the most unsettling possibility is that they were the same thing the whole time.
Frequently asked questions
Is Frankenstein the monster or the scientist?
The scientist. Victor Frankenstein builds the creature; the creature itself is never named in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. Calling the monster “Frankenstein” is technically wrong, though so common it’s now widely accepted.
What is the monster’s real name?
It doesn’t have one. Shelley calls it “the creature”, “the daemon” and “the wretch”. The creature compares itself to Adam — the first man — but is never given a name of its own. “Frankenstein’s monster” is the accepted compromise.
Who created Frankenstein’s monster?
Within the story, Victor Frankenstein. In real life, the author Mary Shelley, who began the novel at 18 in 1816 and published it in 1818.
Is the 2025 Frankenstein on Netflix?
Yes. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein premiered in late 2025, with a limited cinema run in October and streaming on Netflix from November. Oscar Isaac plays Victor and Jacob Elordi plays the Creature.
How many Frankenstein movies are there?
Hundreds of screen appearances across a century — from Universal’s 1931 classic to del Toro’s 2025 film. Our full filmography breaks them down by studio and era.
Sources
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) — the creature is unnamed; “Frankenstein” is Victor.
- Netflix Tudum & Wikipedia, “Frankenstein (2025 film)” — Guillermo del Toro, Oscar Isaac as Victor, Jacob Elordi as the Creature; Venice Aug 2025, Netflix Nov 7 2025.
- Universal Pictures history — Frankenstein (1931, Boris Karloff), Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
- Mel Brooks, Young Frankenstein (1974), starring Gene Wilder — the definitive parody.
Related
One doctor in a book; a thousand monsters on screen — all wearing his name. Mary Shelley would have appreciated the irony: the creation outgrew its maker, exactly as written.