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Disney fairy tales have left most of us with fond memories of watching them as a child, but many of us don’t actually know the origins of these stories. Some of these origins are a lot more disturbing than we might realize and are in fact quite adult in nature. Read on to find just how horrifying your favorite Disney fairy tale stories are.

Beauty & The Beast

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The Disney Story: The Beast falls in love with a girl and ends up kidnapping her. Although this is a little dark, the girl, Belle does end up falling in love with the Beast and they both live happily ever after.

The original story: In this story, Belle’s sisters end up jealous of her as her new life with the Beast is full of luxury. The sisters then try to sabotage Belle’s relationship by angering the Beast just enough to eat her. In the end, the sisters fail in their plot and Belle doesn’t get eaten.

Pinocchio

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The Disney Story: Pinocchio is seen as a cute puppet with a dream of becoming a real boy. Although he sometimes lies, we see him do this in a lovable way side-by-side with his friend Jiminy Cricket. After a memorable adventure, we know that Pinocchio ultimately lives out his dream of becoming human.

The original story: The original story was called the Adventures of Pinocchio and it was written by Carlo Collodi. In this story, Pinocchio was portrayed as a horrible little puppet who lied and cheated his way through life often laughing in the face of his creator Gepetto. Pinocchio’s side-kick and confidant Jiminy Cricket is actually Pinocchio’s rival and at one point in the book, Pinocchio kills him by bashing him to death with a hammer. The author actually wanted to end the story by hanging Pinocchio, but the books publishers wouldn’t allow it, so Pinocchio lived on.

Mulan

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The Disney Story: Despite disguising her identity and fighting a war in place of her father Mulan ends up living happily with the soldier she falls in love with on her return from the war.

The original ending: The original story was actually written in 5 AD and has been changed and adapted over the years. In the original, Mulan returns home from the war to find that her beloved father has died and her mother has married again. Mulan is then ordered by Khan, the ruler of Northern Wei to become his concubine and servant. Horrified by the idea, Mulan decides instead to commit suicide.

Sleeping Beauty

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The Disney story: Sleeping Beauty is a classic love story where we see an angelic prince who comes to rescue his damsel in distress before they both ride off into the sunset together.

The original story: The original story is much darker than the Disney depiction. In it, our Prince Charming is, in fact, a king. When finding Sleep Beauty or Talia, the king decides not to try waking her with a kiss but instead he decides to “gather the fruits of her love” which translates to raping Talia as she slept.

Nine months after this, Talia gives birth to twins and one of them sucks a splinter from her finger ultimately waking her up. Talia then ends up falling in love with the king who happens to already be married. His wife, the queen becomes jealous of her husband’s wandering eye and decides to have Talia’s twins kidnapped and killed. The queen then secretly cooks and feeds the twins to the king bringing the story to a disturbing end.

Cinderella

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The Disney Story: Cinderella finds her Prince Charming and then gets to live happily ever after in a perfect fairytale of love and happiness.

The original story: Like many of Disney’s classic movies and stories Cinderella comes from the Brothers Grimm. In this story, the fate of Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters leaves a bad taste in the mouth. During the scene where each sister tries to fit Cinderella’s slipper, the sisters actually cut off parts of their feet, which leaves the slipper bloody and stained. After this, some doves fly in and take the slippers to Prince Charming telling him how the blood got there. Toward the end of the story when Cinderella marries her prince the same doves end up pecking out the stepsister’s eyes leaving us with a Grimm ending

Snow White

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The Disney Story: This story is actually very similar to the original Brothers Grimm tale. Snow White is able to live happily ever after with her prince even after the evil queen tries to kill her twice.

The original story: The original is mostly the same as the Disney remake but the ending features a dark twist. The prince and Snow White hey married but the evil queen tries to intervene and crash the wedding. Knowing it was her who tried to kill Snow White, the prince orders the evil queen to put on a pair of iron-hot shoes and dance around for the wedding party. The queen then dances around until she dies from the excruciating pain.

The Little Mermaid

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The Disney story: In this story, we see Ariel turned into a human by her father so she can marry the love of her life Prince Eric and live happily ever after.

The original story: The original story was written by author Hans Christian Andersen. While this story does have a happy ending, the path to it is a lot more disturbing than the famous Disney story. Much like her Disney counterpart, the Little Mermaid is given legs by her father. However, in the book, the Little Mermaid has to sacrifice her voice becoming mute in the process. The prince finds her washed up onshore and is initially mesmerized by the Little Mermaids beauty. This is short-lived, however, as the prince ends up falling in love and marrying his true love who is a different princess. For the Little Mermaid to turn back into a mermaid, she must kill the prince as he lies with his new bride. Instead of killing him, the main character decides to plunge the knife into herself committing suicide and falling back into the ocean.

The story does then go on to end happily but I’m sure you’ll agree that the original story is much more shocking than the Disney remake.