Despite being kids movies, Disney films have a reputation for including dark elements like
the death of a parent or villains hiding behind a pretty face.
But the original stories many Disney movies are based on are even darker and more gruesome
than what makes it into the final animated feature.
We've already gone over the twisted tales behind Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and
other popular animated films, but we've got even more dark stories that inspired Disney
movies.
Stick around until the end for a link to our other video about Dark Disney Stories!
Here is Screenrant's Dark Disney: 10 REAL Stories Behind Popular Disney Films Part 2.
Peter Pan
In addition to the 1953 Disney movie, the studio released a sequel in 2002 and spun
the story off into an entire franchise surrounding Peter Pan's pixie friend Tinkerbell.
However, the one question Disney's Peter Pan skips over is what happens to the Lost Boys
when they decide they want to grow up.
Maybe Peter sends them home?
According to the original novel by J.M.
Barrie, that isn't the case, instead, "when they seem to be growing up, which is against
the rules, Peter thins them out."
It may not explicitly say Peter kills the Lost Boys when they get too old, but the phrasing
is too menacing for it to mean anything else.
So Neverland isn't just fun adventures and avoiding responsibilities, after all.
Pocahontas
Borrowing the basic story structure of star-crossed lovers from Romeo & Juliet, Disney's Pocahontas
tells the story of colonist John Smith and Native American Pocahontas who fall in love
despite their different beliefs and a language barrier.
When Pocahontas' father captures and plans to execute John Smith, Pocahontas saves him
and manages to unite the Native Americans and colonists.
Of course, according to history, that's not how it actually went.
When John Smith arrived in America he was in his mid 30s while Pocahontas was around
10 or 12 and they never had a romantic relationship.
Instead, Pocahontas was kidnapped and forced to marry the Englishman John Rolfe as well
as convert to Christianity and change her name to Rebecca.
She died in her 20s from unknown causes.
We may like the version of this story that includes learning to paint with all the colors
of the wind, but history wasn't as kind to Pocahontas.
Beauty and the Beast
The third film from the Disney Renaissance, Beauty and the Beast stays close to the original
text of the fairy tale about a beautiful and kind young woman who falls in love with a
prince that has been transformed into a beast.
However, some changes were made from the original story, like the inclusion of Gaston, and Belle's
father being portrayed as an inventor rather than a merchant.
Another big change is the exclusion of Belle's two wicked sisters.
In the original story Beast allows Belle to return home to visit her family for a specific
amount of time, but when her sisters see that she's well-dressed and well-fed they ask her
to stay longer hoping the Beast will be so angry with Belle that he'll eat her alive.
And you thought Cinderella's stepsisters were wicked.
Although the sisters are successful in keeping Belle away from Beast, she finds out that
staying with her family has caused the Beast to nearly die of heartbreak.
She returns and they live happily ever after.
The Fox and The Hound
Disney's film about a fox named Tod and a hound dog named Copper is a tale of friends
who grow up to be enemies because of their own natural animal instincts and the pressure
of their owners.
This Disney movie doesn't necessarily have a happy ending, but it is much less sad than
in the original novel by Daniel P. Mannix.
In Disney's version Tod saves Copper from a bear, then when Copper's owner, a hunter,
tries to kill an exhausted Tod, Copper protects his old friend and the two live happily, if
separately ever after.
In Mannix's book, the Hunter trains Copper to track Tod after the fox cased the death
of another of the Hunter's dogs.
Copper ends up chasing Tod until the fox collapses from exhaustion and dies.
Then, when the Hunter moves into a nursing home a few years later, he kills Copper with
a shotgun.
If you thought Disney's version of The Fox and The Hound was sad, at least they changed
the original ending of the story, which is so much worse.
The Jungle Book
Disney's The Jungle Book is the tale of an orphaned boy raised by the friendly bear Baloo
and panther Bagheera.
After a series of trials in the jungle and being pursued by a man-eating tiger, Mowgli
returns to civilization in a nearby human village.
However, in Rudyard Kipling's original books that's not where the story ends.
Mowgli is introduced in Kipling's The Jungle Book, a collection of stories, but one short
story in The Second Jungle Book sees Mowgli banished from the village after he's accused
of sorcery, with the villagers planning to torture his animal family.
To get revenge, Mowgli enlists the animals of the jungle to destroy the village's fields
and food supply before eventually setting loose a herd of elephants that destroy all
the village huts, sending the villagers fleeing.
He didn't even leave the bare necessities.
Mulan
The story of the Chinese heroine Mulan dates back centuries and each version follows roughly
the same storyline: when the army calls on a member of each family to serve, Mulan takes
her father's place because he is too old and her younger brother is child.
Mulan fights as a warrior for 12 years and only reveals herself as a woman to her comrades
after being welcomed home by her family.
However, one tale features a different ending in which Mulan returns home to find her father
has died and her mother remarried.
Although that's bad enough, it gets even worse: Mulan is summoned by a foreign ruler to be
his concubine and instead of going, she commits suicide.
Not the happiest ending for such a renowned warrior, but fans will be happy to know this
ending only appears in one version of the Mulan legend.
Tangled
The most famous version of this tale was written by the Brothers Grimm, which was violent enough
since it featured the Prince in the story going blind after falling into some thorn
bushes.
However, the villain in this tale, Dame Gothel, gets a fairly tame comeuppance compared to
Basile’s 17th century telling of the story.
In this version, the girl is taken as retribution for her mother stealing parsley out of an
ogress's garden.
The rest of the story is similar to the one we all know but in this telling, the girl
- named Parsley for the plant her mother stole - escapes using three enchanted gallnuts.
As Parsley and the Prince are running away, she throws each gallnut in an attempt to distract
the ogress and they transform into three animals.
Though the ogress outsmarts the first two beasts, the last one, a wolf, swallows her
whole.
So, by comparison, Mother Gothel had a much more Disney-fied death scene - with no animal
violence involved.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame isn't exactly known for being one of
the studio's lighter films since Quasimodo's mother is murdered by Frollo on the steps
of a cathedral and the minister of justice later sings about being damned to hellfire.
However, Victor Hugo's original story is notably darker, which shouldn't surprise anyone since
Hugo also wrote Les Misérables.
In the original novel, Esmeralda is charged with the attempted murder of Captain Phoebus
and sentenced to death.
Although Quasimodo is able to offer her sanctuary in the cathedral for a time, Frollo eventually
hands her over to the authorities.
When Frollo laughs while Esmeralda is hanged, Quasimodo pushes him off of Notre Dame, then
finds Esmeralda's body and stays with her until he dies of starvation.
Again, this is a Victor Hugo story so the fact that everyone is dead or miserable by
the end shouldn't be too surprising.
Hercules
Disney's take on the Greek mythological figure of Hercules focuses on the demi-god's transformation
from zero to hero (in no time flat).
For his love interest, Disney adapted Hercules' first wife Megara into a spunky but conflicted
heroine who won't say she's in love.
But, by the end of the film, Hercules and Meg ride off into the sunset to live happily
ever after.
In the original myth, though, Megara's love isn't won over by the hero, she's given to
him as a gift for saving Thebes.
Plus, in an even darker turn to their story, Hercules kills their children during a temporary
god-induced madness and in some versions kills Megara as well.
In general, it's not the kind of material suitable for a Disney movie.
The Princess and the Frog
The Disney version of the classic tale of a princess and a frog is changed significantly
from the original to be set in 1920s New Orleans and instead of changing the prince back, a
kiss turns Tiana into a frog herself.
Though true love's kiss does the trick in the end, the original folktale of The Frog
Prince sees a number of other methods used to turn the frog back into a prince.
In the Brother's Grimm version, the princess throws the frog against a wall, while other
tales see the princess chopping off the frog's head or burning its skin, both of which trigger
the prince's transformation.
We don't want to tell the storytellers how to do their job, but a kiss is definitely
a much more kid-friendly way to break a spell.
So what do you think of our list?
Did we miss any other gruesome stories that inspired your favorite Disney movies?
Let us know in our comment section and don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more
videos like this one.
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