10+ Disney Movies With Dark Fairy Tales Behind Them

But that's what adventure is all about, right?

Let's go!

Disney made a lot of changes to the character Aladdin to make him likable.

That's because, in the real story, he's actually the son of a tailor.

When he finds the genie, he uses his wishes to wish for all sorts of lavish, materialistic things.

In the original version, things are also ridiculously pornographic...

Yep, childhood ruined.

If you thought the stepsisters in the Disney flick were bad, think again.

In the original story by the Grimm brothers, the sisters are so desperate to fit into the glass slipper so that they can marry the prince, that one cuts off a toe and the other slices off pieces of her heel...

Each time, she wore an even more extravagant gown than the last one.

And, instead of a fairy godmother, there is a bird in a tree above her grandmother's grave who grants her wishes.

In the Grimm brothers' original story, the queen didn't just want the huntsmen to take Snow White into the woods to kill her.

She wanted to eat Snow White's liver and organs to obtain her beauty!

In the Disney version, Snow White and her Prince Charming dance into the night.

But in the original Grimm fairytale, the evil queen attends Snow White's wedding.

She's spotted and forced to dance in a pair of burning-hot ironclad slippers until she collapses.

Oh, boy. Buckle up for this one.

In the original story, the hunter finds the princess locked away in the castle in a comatose sleep.

Instead of kissing her with true love's kiss... he sleeps with her while she's unconscious. So messed up.

The hunter doesn't just sleep with her; he winds up getting her pregnant! With twins no less!

How twisted is that?

As you can imagine, she didn't take too kindly to his "other family".

Upon hearing the news, she ordered that the children be boiled alive and served for dinner.

In The Frog King by the Grimm brothers, it has nothing to do with opening a restaurant.

Instead, the princess's father urges her to let a frog dine with her and sleep in her bed for three nights...

There's a happy ending, at least, as the two marry.

The Stockholm syndrome in the original fairy tale is soo real.

Since the Beast wants to marry Belle so bad, he starves himself for three months just so that she'll stay and be with him. Talk about emotional manipulation!

In the Disney film version, The Beast turns into a human after "he learns to love another and has that love returned."

In the original fairytale by Villeneuve learning to "love another" is taken much more literally.

In the original Rapunzel, she was traded — not kidnapped — since her parents couldn't stop stealing ingredients from the witch's garden.

Wow, and I thought my parents were hard on me...

But when Rapunzel is not there, he jumps off the tower and becomes blind when thorn bushes gouge his eyes out.

Frozen is based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen.

In it, she is super frigid and evil, as she kisses an underage boy and kidnaps him to live in her castle. When Kay's sister finally finds him, he's a shell of a man.

The story also explains how The Devil made a magic mirror designed to reflect the evil and ugliness inside us all.

The mirror is shattered, sending tiny splinters into the eyes and hearts of people around the world. And as a result, it freezes their hearts.

In the animated movie, it stays true to the original story in the beginning: Ariel sees Eric, falls madly in love, and goes to the Sea Witch, Ursula, to get legs.

But that's about where the similarities end.

Also, since Eric marries a maiden, this means that Ariel will die and turn into sea foam.

To prevent this from happening, her sisters get a knife from Ursula and tell Ariel to plunge it into his heart.

She refuses to do it, though, and becomes "among the daughters of the air" for eternity.

Disney's Hercules is based on the Ancient Greek myth of Herakles.

The film does a fairly decent job of incorporating elements of Herakles' mythos but overall many elements were fabricated.

Herakles was the bastard son of Zeus. His stepmother Hera always blamed Herakles for his father's infidelity.

From the time he was a baby, Hera was determined to kill Herakles.

According to legend, Hera sent him into a fit of uncontrollable madness, which caused Herakles to murder his wife and children with his own hands.

Mulan was Disney's first foray into the world of Asian literature. The film is based on the ancient Chinese tale of Hua Mulan.

Disney did their best to stay true to the source material, but there were some things they just had to leave out.

Soon after, her identity as a woman is revealed.

As punishment, Mulan is forced to become a concubine. Instead, she chooses to take her own life.

Pinocchio was one of Disney's first success stories. It taught us all to follow our conscience and that, to make our dreams come true, we need only "Wish Upon A Star".

Unfortunately, things weren't so pleasant in Carlo Collodi's original version.

Not only does he kill his conscience, but Pinocchio falls asleep on a hot stove, burns off his feet, and is then hanged by a masochistic talking cat.

Oh yeah - and Gepetto spent two whole years rotting in the belly of that stinking whale before finally being rescued by his "real boy".

While modern tales of Goldilocks are a lot more family-friendly, there was a time, in the 1800s, when that wasn't the case.

But unlike the modern version, Goldilocks doesn't escape to the forest unharmed.

In Southey's version, it's worse.

Yes, it's true.

The modern short films corrected that disturbing origin story.

Are they from fairy tales? Myths? Legends? Or novels?

Let us know below in the comments!