Dracula is destroyed by contact with sunlight

The story behind the answer

False: In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, daylight does not destroy the Count. It only weakens him—by day he loses powers like shapeshifting and vanishing, but he can still walk abroad; characters even spot him in London in daylight. In the novel he dies at dusk from a kukri slash to the throat and a Bowie knife to the heart, not from the sun; staking is used on Lucy, not on Dracula.

Why the confusion? Later films changed the lore. F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) made sunlight lethal to vampires, and Hollywood popularized that rule. Memory tip: Stoker—sunlight saps; Nosferatu—sunlight slays.