In Which Original Grimm Story Do You Belong?

How you thought It ended: The prince defeats a dragon, kisses the sleeping maiden, then dances with her awakened self as her dress changes colors.

How it really ended: In Giambattista Basile’s 17th century tale “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” the prince didn’t kiss Talia when he found her sleeping — he was a king, and he raped her. She woke up months later with twin babies, Sun and Moon, then was reunited with the married king (who came to rape her again). She got her happily ever after, but only after the current queen tried to make the king eat his own babies. He threw her in a fire and married Talia as punishment.

How You Thought It Ended: Ariel was turned into a human permanently by her father, and lived happily ever after with her husband, Prince Eric. How nice.

How It Really Ended: Hans Christian Andersen played with some deeply spiritual themes in “The Little Mermaid” — for example, his Mermaid didn’t only wish for legs to get the boy, she wished for legs because Mermaids don’t get to go to heaven like humans do. Also, in this version of the tale, she felt like she was walking on sharp knives every time she took a step.
She also failed in her mission to get the prince to love her — if she succeeded, his kiss would breathe part of his soul into her body, allowing her to have an afterlife — and on the day of his wedding, she flung herself into the sea and died.

However, there was a somewhat happy ending in store, as instead of becoming sea foam she became a “daughter of the air” who could eventually earn her way to a soul if she did enough good things. Yeah.

In the tale of snow white that we are all familiar with, the Queen asks a huntsman to kill her and bring her heart back as proof. Instead, the huntsman can’t bring himself to do it and returns with the heart of a boar. Now, fortunately disney hasn’t done too much damage to this tale, but they did leave out one important original element: in the original tale, the Queen actually asks for Snow White’s liver and lungs – which are to be served for dinner that night! Also in the original, Snow White wakes up when she is jostled by the prince’s horse as he carries her back to his castle – not from a magical kiss. What the prince wanted to do with a dead girl’s body I will leave to your imagination. Oh – in the Grimm version, the tale ends with the Queen being forced to dance to death in red hot iron shoes!

How You Thought It Ended: In the 1950 Disney movie, Cinderella and her Prince were married, and lived happily ever after.

How It Really Ended: In the “Grimms’ Fairy Tales” version of the story, Aschenputtel and her prince also lived “HEA”… but her stepsisters met a bloody, horrifying end. The movie version of the sisters just kind of had to live with their jealousy and rage over Cinderella getting her prince, but the real story left them horribly disfigured. One of them cut her toes off to fit in the golden slipper, while the other sliced off her heel.
But that’s not even the worst of it — during Aschenputtel and her prince’s wedding, doves flew down from Heaven and pecked the sisters’ eyes out. Rough.

In the Brothers Grimm version, Rapunzel gets knocked up by the prince before they escape, and the evil sorceress figures it out. The sorceress cuts off Rapunzel's hair and throws her out into the wilderness. When the prince shows up to see her, the sorceress dangles Rapunzel's cut-off hair to lure him, and tells him he will never see Rapunzel again. He jumps out the window in despair and is blinded from the thorns below. He wanders around aimlessly (he is blind). Rapunzel gives birth to twins. He is eventually guided back to her when he hears her voice. Her tears restore his sight. They return to the prince's kingdom and live happily ever after.

Disney's "Pinocchio" came from Carlo Collodi's 1883 Italian classic "The Adventures of Pinocchio." You might think Pinocchio was mischievous in the movie, but he is far more so in the book. In the book, he runs away as soon as he learns to walk. He is found by the police, who imprison Geppetto because they believe Pinocchio was abused. Pinocchio returns home, where he kills a talking cricket (sorry, Jiminy) who warns him of the dangers of hedonistic pleasures and obedience. Geppetto is released, and insists that Pinocchio goes to school. Pinocchio sells his school books for a ticket to the Great Marionette Theatre. He encounters a fox and a cat, who steal his money and unsuccessfully try to hang him. Luckily, after saving Geppetto from the terrible dogfish (you might know it better as the gigantic, angry whale from the film), Pinocchio shapes up and eventually becomes a real boy (and, you know, all that stuff about boys getting turned into donkeys and then sold to evil circuses did end up making it into the movie, surprisingly).

How You Thought It Ended: Quasimodo doesn’t exactly get a happily ever after with Esmerelda, but he does accept the fact that she does not love him like that. Also, he finally enters society after he defeats the villainous Frollo, and the people love him!
How It Really Ended: “Hunchback” was originally written by Victor Hugo — the same guy who wrote Les Misérables — so you knew it was going to end badly. Basically, Frollo hangs Esmerelda, Quasimodo kills Frollo, then Quasimodo mourns by Esmerelda’s discarded corpse and starves to death.

In the widely known version of Hansel and Gretel, we hear of two little children who become lost in the forest, eventually finding their way to a gingerbread house which belongs to a wicked witch. The children end up enslaved for a time as the witch prepares them for eating. They figure their way out and throw the witch in a fire and escape. In an earlier French version of this tale (called The Lost Children), instead of a witch we have a devil. Now the wicked old devil is tricked by the children (in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel) but he works it out and puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on to bleed (that isn’t an error – he really does). The children pretend not to know how to get on the sawhorse so the devil’s wife demonstrates. While she is lying down the kids slash her throat and escape.