It sometimes happens that an image representing a character or idea is used in a movie that was not inherent in the original idea or source material, but which gets picked up by practically everyone because it has become a useful “shorthand” for that idea.
The classic one is the Frankenstein Monster. as described by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, he’s big, with parchment-white skin and black lips, shaggy black hair, and is incredibly ugly. People depicting him onstage sorta tried to follow that, but sometimes he actually looked kinda good.
It wasn’t until the 1931 Universal film that they came up with an image of the monster so different and unique that it has been widely copied and has become emblematic of the creature – the flat-topped head with bolts in the neck and a few scars on the head to show his origin in being pieced together from other bodies. At first color depictions of him showed him with flesh-colored skin (although Karloff was reportedly made up with bluish makeup, which photographed as unnaturally pale in black and white), but soon that changed to his being colored green, the better to emphasize his inhuman nature.*
Nowadays, the sight of a green head with a flat top and neck bolts inevitably screams “Frankenstein”
Another is representing the cyberworld and, especially, Virtual Reality with columns of vertical characters in glowing green on a black background. The green characters are an almost inevitable consequence of the green phosphor screens in almost universal use in CRTs. You can see the motif of green-on-black in the VR movie Tron, for instance. But the vertical lines of incomprehensible characters (many inspired by Japanese characters) was a creation of the Wachowskis for The Matrix, and it’s been very heavily copied ever since (of course, they used it in the Matrix sequels and spinoffs, which helped cement the image). But it’s shown up in the posters and sometimes the actual films for many other VR films and books (The 13th Floor)
Arguably another example is the Tuxedo, high-necked cape, and slicked-back hair of the vampire. Although Dracula was, indeed, depicted once in the book as wearing a cape (along with the suggestion of similarity to a bat), this wasn’t his normal appearance there. The film Nosferatu (1922) very significantly does not resemble this image at all. The 1927 vampire film London After Midnight has Lon Chaney sr. as a vampire who wears a tall beaver hat, has a set of teeth all sharpened to points, and has weird round eyes. It was the play Dracula written by Hamilton Deane (1924 in England, but not hitting London until 1927, and New York after that, in a rewrite by John Balderston) that gave us the slicked hair, evening dress Dracula. As David Skal remarks, the play made the story into a drawing-room drama, which meant that Dracula had to be turned into someone you’d invite into that drawing room. The high-necked cape was made necessary by the requirements of stage magic that let Dracula transform onstage into a bat. But they kept it in the Universal movies and the Columbia imitations so long that it became iconic itself.
In none of these cases were the images a necessary or obvious part of the original. They were created as part of the motion picture (or stage) adaptation and either by intent or continual use became the standard and shorthand to imply a particular creation.
Any others?
*There have been various suggestions and speculations about who was responsible for that flat top on his head, all of them lacking corroboration. The most convincing is a series of sketches done by Universal artists suggesting ideas for the creature, one of which – obvious inspired by the connection to robots – shows a metallic head with a flat top and the iconic neck bolts. It’s reproduced in David J. Skal’s book The Monster Show.
