User blog comment:Buccaneer Blue/PotC Been Ripped Off?/@comment-3106883-20170402144329

The Flying Dutchman's crew looking like sea creatures isn't part of the original myth. All other supernatural elements of Pirates of the Caribbean are centuries old or more. As noted in the film, the Kraken comes from Norse mythology. They had stories of giants and trolls hiding their hearts outside their bodies so that they could not be killed unless the heart was found and destroyed. Medieval stories bring in men doing that. It might be even older than that. The dead coming back due to curses or improper burial is millennia old, past the Egyptians and the Chinese to their predecessors.

And those stories obviously have enormous power and appeal, considering we are still telling them without much change.