YMMV / Hindu Mythology

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Every single story, play or dance dealing with the epics has an alternative character interpretation.
• Badass Decay: Indra is a badass in early Vedic text, notable for killing the great dragon Vritra. He does much worse in later text.
• Complete Monster:
  • King Kamsa/Kansa, the tyrant ruler of the Vrishni Kingdom, who overthrew his father to get the position, uses his power to punish those he sees as lesser. When he hears of a prophecy that the 8th children of his cousin Devaki will kill him, Kamsa imprisons her and her husband and murders all their children, as well as any child born within the past 10 days. Hearing of Krishna & Balarama's survival, Kamsa sends out multiple demons in various attempts to kill them, each resulting in several other deaths. When the two of them try and stop Kamsa, he says he'll have everyone in Mathura killed if Krishna doesn't surrender.
  • Putana, the "Killer of Infants", is a Rakshasi known for killing infants by poisoning her breast milk and killing them when they feed, having done this to countless infants in the past. When King Kamsa summons her to kill the infant Krishna, Putana disguises herself as a beautiful woman in an attempt to kill him. After Krishna sucks her life force out, Putana reveals her demonic form and attempts to destroy the town of Vraj, managing to turn the surrounding forest to dust before being slain.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Kali is probably one of the most famous, if not the most famous, Hindu deities in the West. This often comes with the perception of Kali as a bloodthirsty monster who demands human sacrifice, which is entirely inaccurate (though somewhat understandable, given the imagery and trappings associated with her). This image was popularized by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, though it was present well beforehand. Still, if you ask a person in the West to name a Hindu deity, odds are they will name Kali if they don't name Vishnu or Shiva first.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Skanda, who was a minor Vedic god, became so important in the South that he forms a major part of the Saivite pantheon.
• Moral Event Horizon: Guru Drona asking for tribal boy Ekalavya's thumb as a guru dakshina, so that Ekalavya is no longer the best archer and Arjuna could surpass the former. It's hard to sympathize with Drona after that, especially when he refuses to teach lower-caste boys like Karna for fear of history repeating itself.
• Newer Than They Think: Santoshi Mata is a Hindu goddess known as the Mother of Satisfaction and is the daughter of Ganesha, the supreme god of the Ganapatya sect. From a foreigner's perspective, one would be led to believe that Santoshi originated from ancient times around the same period when Ganesha first debuted (circa 1st century BCE — 2nd century CE), but her origins date back to the early 1960s and later gained prominence in 1975 from a Bollywood film titled Jai Santoshi Maa.

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