Snow White
If you ask us, even Disney’s version of Snow White is pretty dark. The Prince kisses Snow White, who — for all he knows — is deceased, and he’s never even met her! These days, if some guy kissed a girl who’s passed out, it wouldn’t be seen as romantic.
Anyway, for some reason, the Queen is the villain of this story rather than the Prince. Well, in the original version, she’s forced to wear fiery shoes and dance in them, until she eventually dies from exhaustion.
Beauty and the Beast
Those who say Beauty and the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome are actually kind of right! The original tale was written as a critique of arranged marriages that were commonplace at that time. In those days, girls as young as 13 would be forced to marry wealthy adult men.
Later versions of the story did the exact opposite of the original intent and actually tried to teach women “good manners”
and how to accept being in such a marriage.
Sleeping Beauty
After hearing what Sleeping Beauty was originally about, we kind of wonder if the King was the Prince from Snow White all grown up.
The story goes that a wandering King impregnated Aurora while she was asleep, and she gave birth while still in a coma.
Eventually, Briar Rose woke up to find that she was the mother of twins. Of course, by then, the King was nowhere to be found.
Little Red Riding Hood
The OG Little Red Riding Hood was anything but a sweet girl trying to care for her grandma. Little Red Riding Hood is a story of a young girl and the Big Bad Wolf who work together to eat the grandmother.
Then, Red unclothes and lies beside the wolf on her grandma’s bed. To be fair, the Wolf did coerce Red in the original tale as well. But, come on, could you be convinced to eat your grandmother?
Rapunzel Is the Only Princess With Green Eyes
When you think of all of the princesses that the world of Disney has to offer, they all seem to have qualities that make them unique from each other.
While Rapunzel certainly can separate herself from the rest of the pack for various reasons, there is one feature that is unique to her and no one else.
The rest of the Disney princesses tend to have either brown or blue eyes, while the Tangled heroine is the only one who has green ones!
Tiana Is the Only Disney Princess With a Real Job
The fact that Tiana from The Princess and the Frog was the first African-American princess in Disney history is interesting enough as it stands. However, there are plenty of other fascinating little tidbits surrounding this movie.
If you think of most of Disney’s heroines, you will notice that they are usually either princesses or unemployed nobodies.
Tiana is pretty much the only one who had a real job – a waitress aspiring to be a chef.
Tom Cruise Inspired Aladdin?
You might look at certain Disney characters and think to yourself, “wow, that character sure does look familiar. Where have I seen them before?”
The reason for this is that Disney will often model their characters on famous people that they believe have star power.
Take Aladdin, for example. The fact that he is a short daredevil who loves to do his own stunts around the city of Agrabah is because the character was modeled after Tom Cruise.
Remy “Foreshadows” Dug the Dog From Up
It’s not just past movies that Disney movies will refer to. There have also been cases where their recent flicks will have easter eggs hinting at what’s to come in the future. A great example came in Ratatouille.
In a scene where Remy the rat is sneaking around, he ends up getting freaked out by a shadow that looks a lot like Dug the dog from Up, which had not even been released at that point.
Pocahontas Is the Only Heroine Who’s Based on Historical Events
Believe it or not, but Pocahontas is practically the only Disney heroine who was actually based on a real historical figure.
The real Pocahontas was a Native American woman from the Powhatan people, who was captured by Colonists in 1613.
She was forced to convert to Christianity and got married and had a child in the subsequent years. Some dispute though that Mulan was also a real person.
However, others would argue that she was merely a character in an old Chinese poem.
Frozen’s Hans Can Be Seen in Big Hero 6
There are plenty of easter eggs to be found throughout the Disney movies, especially in the more recent ones.
The Mouse’s flicks tend to be a lot more self-referential these days, often using callbacks to previous movies or dropping little nuggets to hint that all of these films are based in the same universe.
Take Big Hero 6, for example. In a brief scene, a “wanted” image showing Hans from Frozen can be seen in the background.
Disney fairytales may seem sweet and innocent, but the truth is that the majority of them are based on folklore created by the Grimm brothers, and they didn’t exactly intend for those stories to turn into kids’ movies.
The original versions of these classics were actually pretty dark. If you’re ready to have your childhood ruined, read on to see what these fairytales were initially about!