Top 10 Disturbing Disney Film Realizations

Growing up, chances are you identified with Ariel and her dreams of being part of the human world. Now that you’re older, however, you probably identify more with King Triton, especially if you have children of your own. While Triton could occasionally lose his temper, in retrospect he had a good reason for being so strict. When your kid is only sixteen, they’re NOT old enough to make life-altering decisions. If your teenage daughter told you that she wanted to run away and marry a guy she just met, firmly telling her, “no,” would be a perfectly reasonable response. In reality, Ariel’s fate likely would’ve been much closer to Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairy tale.

We all know the setup: Cinderella loses her glass slipper, Prince Charming has every maiden in the kingdom try it on, the shoe fits Cinderella’s foot, and our love interests get hitched. This might make sense through the eyes of a child, but adults can point out several problems here. If the slipper was a perfect fit, why did it fall off in the first place? On top of that, Cinderella is the only woman in the entire kingdom with this precise shoe size? REALLY? What if it had fit someone else? Would the Prince have married her instead? This plot point is so absurd that they actually poke fun at it in “Cinderella III.”

As the opening narration tells us, an Enchantress turns the Prince into a beast because of his cruelty. He can only break the spell if he learns to love another and earns her love in return by his 21st birthday. But wait a minute! During the “Be Our Guest” number, Lumiere mentions that they’ve been rusting for ten years. Does that mean that the Enchantress cursed a ten-year-old? Well, the Prince looks much older in his portrait and various stained glass windows. So either he went through a huge growth spurt or this is just a massive plot hole. To the 2017 live-action remake’s credit, the filmmakers do correct this error by changing the dialog.

For a movie about embracing the spirit of youth, “Peter Pan” isn’t as innocent as you might think. For starters, it encourages kids to run away from home with a stranger who wears tights. Then there’s Peter’s relationship with Tinker Bell, a fairy who obviously has the hots for her human companion. When Peter grows closer to Wendy, the jilted Tink tricks the Lost Boys into shooting her competition down. This isn’t the only time Tink puts Wendy’s life in jeopardy, as jealousy drives her to give away Peter’s location to his archenemy. Tinker Bell is often viewed as a lovable sidekick, but she has the complexity of a Shakespearean villain.

“Seeing pink elephants” is a phase attributed to drunken hallucinations. You wouldn’t think a concept like this would have any place in a Disney movie, but it plays a significant role in “Dumbo.” After Dumbo and Timothy accidentally consume an alcoholic beverage, they’re suddenly bombarded by a parade of pink elephants. While the ensuring musical number is a highlight of the film, most children likely overlook the fact that the under-aged Dumbo got totally wasted. Well, this movie did come out in the 1940s. It’s not like Disney would do something like this in one of their modern movies… right? Kids and dinosaurs tripping on mushrooms, you know… fun for the whole family!

For the most part, “Pinocchio” wraps things up in a tidy little package. The wooden puppet becomes a real boy and everyone lives happily ever after… everyone except for the boys back on Pleasure Island that is. Lampwick and the other kids are all transformed into donkeys. Where some of these boys can still talk, the rest are virtually stripped of their humanity and sold off into slave labor. We never see what happens to any of them after Pinocchio escapes. So it’s safe to assume that they lived out the rest of their days in misery. The cheerful ending might distract kids from this unresolved plot point, but parents are left wanting closure.

Ever notice that we never see Nala’s father in “The Lion King?” Come to think of it, outside of Simba, the only male lions on Pride Rock seem to be Mufasa and Scar. Hold on! Does that mean Mufasa is Nala’s father, making her Simba’s half-sister? While Mufasa appeared to be in a monogamous relationship with Simba’s mother, all of the lionesses sleep in the same den as their king. Isn’t that a bit um… suggestive? Granted, Scar could also arguably be Nala’s father, making her Simba’s first cousin. Either way, though, Simba would’ve married into his own bloodline and conceived a cub of incest. Is this a Disney movie or “Game of Thrones?”

When you’re a kid, love at first sight may seem like a natural phenomenon. At a certain age, however, it becomes clear that romantic relationships are much more complicated than Disney couples make them out to be. Snow White falls in love with her prince after one encounter and rides off with him following their first kiss. It doesn’t take much more than an enchanted evening together for Cinderella and Prince Charming to commit for life. The same goes for Aurora and Phillip. Ariel gives up everything for Eric, even though they’ve never even had a conversation. Of course Disney is becoming more self-aware with this trope, as demonstrated in movies like “Enchanted” and “Frozen.”

Disney introduced a generation of children to historical figures like Pocahontas and mythological figures like Hercules. Once you start reading about these people in school, however, you’ll realize that Disney took some serious liberties with their film adaptations. In real life, Pocahontas was only around ten years old when she met the fully-grown John Smith. There’s also little to no historical evidence to back up the claim that these two were romantically involved. As for Hercules, the filmmakers understandably omitted the part where our titular hero kills Megara and their kids. Seeing how most Disney movies have dark, twisted origins, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they have no problem with rewriting history.



Before we get to our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:



Mermaids Eating Other Sea Creatures

“The Little Mermaid” (1989)



Mrs. Potts & Chip

“Beauty and the Beast” (1991)

Disney has been around for almost 100 years and the company’s age REALLY shows through sometimes. Just go back and watch a few of their earlier feature films. The jive talkin’ black crows from “Dumbo” definitely wouldn’t fly in today’s PC world. It’s also easy to see why the Siamese cats from “Lady and the Tramp” aren’t exactly considered culturally sensitive. Speaking of cats perpetuating Asian stereotypes, what’s up with this scene from “The Aristocats?” “Peter Pan” doesn’t portray Native Americans in the most respectful light either. Oh, and don’t even get us started on “Song of the South.” Let’s just be glad that Disney’s taken a major step forward with movies like “Zootopia.”