The Dark Origins of Disney

The evil queen is forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she drops dead at Snow White's wedding. She also originally wanted to eat Snow White's lungs and liver.

The stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to fit into the glass slipper. Blood fills the shoe. At the wedding, birds peck out both their eyes as punishment.

The mermaid does NOT get the prince. He marries another woman. Every step on her human legs feels like walking on sharp knives. She's given a chance to kill the prince to save herself, but refuses. She turns into sea foam and dies.

In the earliest versions, the princess isn't woken by a kiss. A king finds her unconscious, assaults her, and leaves. She wakes up after giving birth to twins while still in the cursed sleep. One baby sucks the splinter from her finger, breaking the spell.

Pinocchio kills the Talking Cricket by throwing a hammer at its head (the cricket later returns as a ghost). Pinocchio also gets hanged from a tree and dies. The story was originally serialized and ended there - Collodi only continued after readers demanded more.

Esmeralda is publicly hanged. Quasimodo crawls into her tomb, embraces her corpse, and starves to death. Years later, their intertwined skeletons are discovered - when someone tries to separate them, Quasimodo's bones crumble to dust.

The prince falls from the tower and lands in thorns that pierce and blind him. He wanders the wilderness blind for years. Rapunzel is banished to a desert wasteland. They eventually reunite and her tears restore his sight.

A boy named Kai gets shards of an evil mirror in his eye and heart, making him cruel and cold. He's kidnapped by the Snow Queen. His friend Gerda journeys through terrible dangers to save him. The story has strong religious themes about good vs. evil and redemption through love.

Nearly everyone dies. Hamlet's father is murdered by his own brother Claudius, who then marries Hamlet's mother. Hamlet feigns madness, accidentally kills Polonius, drives Ophelia to suicide by drowning, and is poisoned by a blade in a duel. The play ends with Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius, and Gertrude all dead.

The novel is far more brutal and philosophical. Animals are constantly hunted and killed in graphic detail. Bambi witnesses his mother's death (shown), but also sees friends shot, watches a hunter gut a dead deer, and encounters animals dying of starvation. The book is an allegory about persecution and survival in a hostile world.

Oliver is born in a workhouse, his mother dies immediately after birth. He's starved, beaten, sold to an undertaker, and forced into a gang of child thieves. Nancy, who tries to help Oliver, is brutally murdered by Bill Sikes who beats her to death. Sikes later accidentally hangs himself while fleeing. Fagin is executed.

Arthur is conceived through deception when Uther Pendragon uses magic to impersonate another man and sleep with his wife. The saga includes countless battles, beheadings, adultery (Lancelot and Guinevere), and betrayal. Arthur eventually kills his own incestuous son Mordred in battle, but is mortally wounded. The tale ends with death, not triumph.

Plato's Atlantis wasn't a fun adventure - it was a cautionary tale about divine punishment. The Atlanteans became corrupted by greed and power, losing their virtue. Zeus gathered the gods to punish them, and Atlantis was destroyed in a single day and night of catastrophic earthquakes and floods, sinking beneath the ocean with all its inhabitants.

In many traditional versions, after Mulan returns home victorious, she discovers her father has died and her mother has remarried. In some versions, the Emperor demands she become his concubine. Rather than submit, Mulan commits suicide. Other versions have her executed when her true identity is discovered.

The story heavily implies Ichabod Crane was murdered by his romantic rival Brom Bones, who dressed as the Headless Horseman. Ichabod disappears completely - his saddle is found trampled, a shattered pumpkin nearby. He's never seen again. The locals believe he was "spirited away by supernatural means." Brom marries Katrina and laughs knowingly whenever the story is told.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge deeply disturbing scenes: people celebrating his death, servants stealing from his corpse, his body lying alone and unmourned, and the grave of Tiny Tim who dies from his illness. Scrooge sees himself dead and despised, his belongings sold by thieves who stripped his deathbed.

The villain Milady de Winter is executed by beheading - the musketeers hire an executioner and hold a midnight trial before cutting off her head. Earlier, she had been branded as a criminal and her first husband hanged himself. The book features numerous duels to the death, poisonings, and political assassinations.

Peter Pan is far more sinister in the original. He "thins out" the Lost Boys when they get too old - implied to mean he kills them. Peter also switches sides during battles to keep things interesting, killing indiscriminately. He forgets everyone - when Wendy returns years later, he doesn't remember her at all. He's essentially a sociopathic eternal child.

The Queen of Hearts constantly screams "Off with their heads!" and orders mass executions throughout the story. The original book is full of existential dread - Alice repeatedly fears she's going mad, experiences terrifying size changes, and encounters characters who speak in maddening riddles. The trial is a kafkaesque nightmare of injustice.

The original tale is far longer and darker. Belle's wicked sisters are punished by being turned into statues, forced to witness Belle's happiness for eternity. The Beast's backstory reveals he was cursed as a child after his mother left him with an evil fairy who tried to seduce him when he grew up - when he refused, she transformed him.

Kipling's stories are far more violent. Mowgli kills Shere Khan by stampeding buffalo over him, then skins the tiger himself. He's eventually driven out of his human village when accused of witchcraft. The book explores colonialism, law, and survival with a much darker tone - death is frequent and described in detail.

Heracles (his Greek name) was driven mad by Hera and murdered his own wife Megara and their children. His famous twelve labors were penance for this infanticide. He later died in agony when his second wife gave him a poisoned cloak, and he threw himself onto a funeral pyre to escape the pain.

Pocahontas was approximately 10-12 years old when she met John Smith, who was in his late 20s - there was no romance. She was later kidnapped by English colonists, held hostage, converted to Christianity, and married to tobacco planter John Rolfe. She died at age 21 in England, likely from disease, never returning home.

In the novel, there is no friendship - the hound is trained specifically to kill Tod the fox. The hunter shoots Tod's first mate and their cubs. Chief the old hound is killed by a train. Tod dies of exhaustion after being relentlessly chased. The hunter is forced into a nursing home and shoots Copper rather than leave him behind.

In the original Grimm tale, the princess doesn't kiss the frog - she throws him against a wall in disgust and rage after he demands to sleep in her bed. The violent impact breaks the spell. Some versions have her beheading the frog. The moral is about keeping promises, not true love's kiss.

The original Tarzan is extremely violent. He strangles his ape foster-father Tublat to death with a rope. He kills countless men throughout the series and at one point eats human flesh (a cannibal he killed). The books contain heavy racism, portraying Africans as savages. Tarzan also abandons Jane to return to the jungle in the original ending.

Long John Silver is a cold-blooded murderer in the original. He kills multiple people including stabbing an unarmed man through the back. The pirates are genuinely terrifying, not misunderstood rogues. Men die of disease, drowning, violence. The book shows the brutal reality of piracy and the moral corruption of greed.

Early Robin Hood ballads portray him as a violent outlaw who beheads his enemies. In one tale, he kills Guy of Gisborne and mutilates his corpse by cutting off his head and disfiguring his face. Robin dies through treachery when his cousin, a prioress, bleeds him to death while pretending to heal him.

The original Aladdin is actually set in China, not Arabia. He's lazy and irresponsible, not a "diamond in the rough." There are two genies - one of the lamp and one of a ring. Aladdin has the genie kill the sorcerer, and later has him assassinate people in their sleep. The princess is also more complicit in the murders.

The book series is far darker and more complex. Characters die permanently with real weight. Prince Ellidyr, driven mad by jealousy and despair, sacrifices himself violently. The Horned King is more terrifying and his undead army (the Cauldron-Born) are corpses of actual dead warriors, described in horrifying detail.

While the book is relatively close to the film, it's more explicit about Cruella's intentions - she wants to skin the puppies while they're still alive because she believes it makes better fur. The book describes her as genuinely terrifying, with the dogs understanding they will be killed and skinned for coats. The horror of animal cruelty is more visceral.