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.