Disney movies are a world in themselves. Princes and princesses falling in love in the most absurd ways possible.
And despite so many hurdles, everyone finds their happily ever after.
Didn’t we all grow up watching Disney movies and believing that we’d also get our happily ever after? Well, I know I did.
Disney films taught us a lot of things. From the importance of family to the power of true love.
And most importantly how good always wins over bad.
Even though the characters were somewhat twisted and questionable, we could never imagine Disney movies to be dark.
But this is where we’re all wrong.
Because despite a fairy tale ending, Disney movies have very dark and horrifying origin stories.
Here are 8 Disney movies with horrifying origin stories.
Beauty and the Beast.
If you ask me, Belle is actually my favorite Disney princess. She is smart and very different than other princesses.
Well, we all know how the Disney version of the story goes.
Belle’s beloved father is kidnapped by the Beast. So in order to save him, she sacrifices herself and rescues him.
The Beast holds her hostage. But as time passes, the two starts falling in love but the villagers tries to kill the Beast.
The petals of the forbidden rose, fall off before the two kisses. But with the power of love, the Beast is saved and turns into the real prince that he is.
But the original story comes with a twist.
Instead of being the only child, Belle has two sisters. They’re jealous of her as she is now a princess living in a castle.
So they try sabotaging her new life with the Beast in hopes that she’ll get in trouble when she returns and the Beast will eat her.
Instead of angry villager trying to kill him, the Beast is dying of a broken heart because Belle doesn’t return in time.
She cries over him as she returns and her tears transform him to a real prince and bam! they live happily ever after.
Frozen.
The Disney version of Frozen is such a powerful story that it empowers little girls to be as strong as Queen Elsa and Princess Anna.
But we just can’t let go of the fact how dark and twisted the original version is.
Loosely adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen story, “The Snow Queen,” the original story isn’t as happy as the Disney version.
Instead of Princess Anna, the story has a character named Gerda.
She is in on a mission to find her best friend Kai who is abducted by the Snow Queen.
The Snow Queen embeds a piece of troll’s ice mirror into Kai’s heart and eye. For which he is transformed into a cold and cruel person that doesn’t see or appreciate beauty.
Reindeer and magical witch-like creatures help Gerda find Kai. And as Gerda shares the “true love’s kiss” with Kai, it melts the ice inside him.
Mulan.
The Disney version of Mulan is also based on Chinese myth where a woman named Mulan disguises herself into a man and in order to save her father recruits herself into the Chinese army and becomes a fighter.
But the Mulan from the Chinese myth is very different and a lot darker.
In one version Hua Mulan continues being a man as no one ever finds out she is a woman.
However, in another version, people find out that Mulan is a girl. And instead of being sent away, she is made the Khan’s concubine and a sex slave to the men in the army.
Snow White.
The Disney version of the German fairy tale involves the Evil Queen ordering the huntsman to kill Snow White and bring her heart in a box.
As the plan fails, she transforms herself into an old woman and feeds Snow White poison apples to she falls asleep until a prince comes and saves her.
But the original version is a little different.
The queen actually asks the huntsman to bring her liver and lungs instead of her heart, to eat for dinner.
The Queen then goes to sell laces for her corset so she could make her unconscious by tying the laces too tightly.
But as the plan fails she feeds her poisonous apple as she falls asleep.
When the prince finds her, she is actually dead. But he falls in love with her and carts her coffin away.
As this is happening, the piece of poisonous apple gets removed from her throat and she wakes up.
The two get married and as a punishment to try to kill Snow White, she makes the Evil Queen dance wearing a pair of glowing-hot iron shoes on her wedding day.
This eventually kills the Evil Queen and the two live happily ever after.
Tangled.
Tangled or Rapunzel as we know it is a story of a princess with extremely long hair who is kidnapped by a with and placed in a tower with only one window.
And you know the rest.
But in the original story, just like the Disney version, a prince does arrive at the tower.
But instead of helping her escape, he gets Rapunzel pregnant with twins and disappears.
When the witch realizes this, she cuts off her hair and forever banishes her from the tower.
The prince comes back to check up on Rapunzel. But the witch gets him instead and she pushes him off the tower resulting in his eyes gouged out by thorns.
Rapunzel meets the prince and her tears restore his blindness and they live together.
Cinderella.
Listening to or watching Cinderella, I know we all believed in fairy tales. And we all believed that we’d also one day find a prince that will fall in love with us and will come to find us under any circumstances.
Boy! were we a bunch of fools.
We all know how the story of Cinderella begins and ends, right?
Well, the original version is, however, a little too dark than what we all witnessed.
After all the events, the Prince comes to Cinderella’s house looking for the foot to match the shoe.
Cinderella’s stepsisters, in order to make sure their foot fits, cut off their toe and heel.
But neither of them could fool the prince.
And when the Prince and Cinderella finally get married, she makes her birds peck out their eyes.
Cinderella than slams the lid of a trunk on her stepmother’s neck and kills her.
Hercules.
The story of Hercules the brave comes for Greek mythology. We were told that our beloved her is the son of Zeus and is probably the strongest and bravest of them all.
But according to the original myth, Hercules is actually a bastard son of Zeus and a mortal Alcmene, who Zeus tricked into getting into bed with him.
Hercules kills his music teacher when he is a child.
He does marry Megara, but when she leaves him he goes insane and kills all of their children.
His second wife kills him by tricking him into putting on a poison cape. But the Gods later revive him and gives him a kidnapped girl to be his third wife.
And the craziest of them all, Hercules had countless male lovers.
Sleeping Beauty.
In Disney’s version, Princess Aurora gets cursed by the dark fairy Maleficent to die on her 16th birthday.
But her guardian fairies reverse the curse and instead of death, she falls into a deep sleep. The catch is, she can only wake up after being kissed by her true love.
Prince Phillip eventually comes to rescue the Sleeping Beauty and after kissing her she wakes up.
But, the original story by Giambattista Basile, however, is very different.
The princess’ name is Talia in the original version and she isn’t rescued by any prince.
The princess pricks her finger with a splinter of poisonous flax and as she is in a deep sleep, she is placed in one of her father’s estates.
A king (not a prince) passing by the estates wanders in and sees the princess sleeping deeply.
The king goes to wake her up but she doesn’t move a bit. So, the King rapes her and escapes.
The princess gets pregnant and gives birth to twins all the while still unconscious.
One of the babies suck the splinter out of her finger and wakes the princess up.
And if it’s still not messed up, she ends of marrying the king that raped her. The king then burns his first wife alive as she finds out about it and tries to kill and serve the twins for the king to eat.
