As happy as they were to give us the occasional nightmare, Disney's favorite way to misshape our world view was to coat classic stories in a suffocating saccharine wrapper, damning us all to a lifetime of naivety.
But all you have to do is look at these (very real) original endings to tales Disney sanitized to be thankful for their protection, and baffled that they chose to adapt such horrifying stories to begin with ...
7.The Jungle Book: Everybody Dies
The film follows Mowgli, a baby who winds up in the jungle and is befriended by talking predators. After avoiding the human world for years and spending most of his childhood being awesome in the jungle, Mowgli stumbles upon a village and is instantly smitten with some doe-eyed floozy. The girl bats an eyelash and Mowgli disappears into the village forever, living happily ever after with his own people and leaving Baloo the Bear and Bagheera the Panther in the dust. Roll credits!
"Y'know, in hindsight we probably should've just eaten him."
The original "Jungle Book" was a short-story by Rudyard Kipling, a man with surprisingly little tolerance for anything resembling Disney bullshit.
His mustache would not allow it.
In response, Mowgli recruits Hathi the Elephant for help. But the thing is, the book's Hathi isn't the cuddly, forgetful old Major of the film.
"LEAVE NONE ALIVE!"
6.The Little Mermaid: Blood, Heartbreak, Death
After an entire movie of trying to turn from a mermaid into a human girl so she can marry a prince, things aren't looking good for Ariel. Due to cunning contractual stipulations, the evil witch Ursula winds up with Ariel and Triton's magical crown and trident.
Really, she has all the ingredients for a prog-metal album cover.
The Original Ending:
After having her tail split in two by the evil sea witch's potion, the mermaid goes upon land and proceeds to bleed absolutely everywhere.
The prince, finding this delightfully amusing, commands her to dance for him while she grins and bears the excruciating pain.
"And maybe later I can choke you while we have sex!"
Instead of descending upon his sleeping body with an X-Acto knife, she instead chooses to believe in the power of love.
Damn, Old Yeller probably tacked on about 500,000 years alone
5.Pinocchio: Chewed Up by Dozens of Ravenous Fish
Pinocchio is a tale about the humanity of a little wooden puppet as he is led through the trials and pitfalls of growing up. He learns many important moral lessons along the way.
Such as how to deal with assholes like Lampwick.
Along with some aliens. Because in case you forgot, A.I. was stupid.
After Pinocchio is turned into a donkey, he gets bought by a musician who wants a new drum head made out of donkey skin and tosses Pinocchio into the sea to drown him, presumably because there were no knives or heavy rocks available at the time. Fortunately, Pinocchio is saved by a school of fish that proceed to devour his flesh, reducing him to wooden bones.
In five seconds this is going to get bloodier than a GWAR concert.
4.The Fox and the Hound: Everybody Dies (Again)
Despite it being a story of unlikely friendships and insurmountable obstacles, Disney nevertheless finds room in The Fox and the Hound for a happy ending and a kickass bear fighting sequence.
And eating cat poop from the litter box.
The Original Ending:
Daniel P. Mannix, the author of the original story, probably hadn't met a child before writing The Fox and the Hound. In his version, the Hound is a bloodthirsty killer out for revenge against the Fox for the accidental death of another hound on a previous hunt. Once he discovers the Fox's lair, his master proceeds to gas the hell out of it, killing both the vixen and her cubs. At this point, the author obviously didn't think the book was depressing enough, so he threw some rabies into the mix, and then a child dies from an infected bite.
Not the obvious choice for a children's film.
And they all lived happily ever after.
3.Hercules: Murders His Children
In the Disney version we have our hero Hercules versus Hades, who tries to take out Hercules by sending Meg, a woman whose job it is to find Hercules' weakness. As she is a moderately attractive 18- to 25-year-old woman, she falls in love with him instead as required by Disney law.
He seemed like a decent guy.
The Original Ending:
First of all, the Greeks depicted Hercules as a rampant sexual beast, taking whatever woman he liked before hitting a mid life crisis and being told to settle down. He got married to Megara, but without the help of Hades, a Cyclops or a Motown-inspired soundtrack. They do live happily ever after, right up until he gets driven insane by the goddess Hera and heroically murders the shit out of Megara and all his children.
"Do you see this arm? They didn't stand a goddamn chance."
2.Tarzan: Doesn't Get the Girl, Everyone is Miserable
The evil Clayton, out for some good old fashioned monkey-snatching, locks up Tarzan and Jane on his ship. But Tantor the Elephant crashes through and rescues them, both from Clayton and from the fact that a five-ton animal probably couldn't safely trample all over the deck of a rickety 19th century boat.
We can spot at least three glaring inaccuracies in this picture.
In the end, the prim and proper English girl Jane is on her way back to Victorian Britain when she has a change of heart and dives into the ocean. She reunites with Tarzan where we can safely assume she feeds him tea, makes him wear an ascot and claims the island under the Queen's rule. Chalk another one up for the Empire.
"And here's the part where we annex India for 200 years!"
Jane is surrounded by plenty of potential suitors (including Clayton himself) who aren't hulking ape men, yet she still falls for Tarzan. Before she can admit it to herself, though, she leaves for America and considers marrying another man to pay off her father's debts.
Meanwhile, Tarzan suits up and follows her across an entire continent to rescue her from a forest fire that was presumably waiting around until the plot required it. Afterwards, he confesses his undying love for her, and Jane admits she feels the same way. But by this time she's engaged to Clayton, and because this is the 19th century there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.
1.The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Necrophilia
Children learn an important lesson in the actions of the celibate antagonist, Frollo: If you are sexually frustrated by a wayward gypsy, just set her on fire and everything will work itself out.
There's no way he doesn't have a boner right now.
The Original Ending:
Like Kipling, Victor Hugo wasn't big on that Hollywood bullshit.
In the original, Esmeralda has three potential suitors waiting to bump uglies, while Quasimodo is just some deaf, ugly retard watching her from his tower. She makes it very obvious to our hero that she finds him a hideous mess but he's smitten. One of the suitors, Phoebus, shows up and has his way with her. He then gets stabbed in the back by Frollo, who pins the attack on Esmeralda.
Instead of setting her on fire, Frollo arranges to have her hung in the public square. Then at the last minute she is rescued by...
...Nobody. She just dies.
Romance!
