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Fairytales are wonderful, magical stories
that capture children's imaginations
and delight and entertain them.
Well, maybe today, at least,
but in some of the original
versions of fairytales,
recorded by guys like the Brothers Grimm,
fairytales play a little
more like installments
from the Saw franchise.
Listen.
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You know that Cinderella
has a magical encounter
at the ball with the prince, right?
And, she leaves her glass slipper behind,
which he later uses to identify her.
Well, in the Brothers
Grimm version of the story,
which they recorded in 1812,
it's a little darker.
Cinderella's wicked stepsisters
try to get in on that glass slipper action
by carving off some of their feet
so they can jam it in there.
Luckily, some pigeons that
happen to be hanging out nearby
point out all of the blood,
and the wicked stepsisters are found out.
Later on, those same pigeons
poke out Cinderella's
wicked stepsisters' eyes at her wedding.
Cinderella's not the only fairytale
that features step-family,
brutal revenge action.
At Snow White's wedding,
the partygoers force Snow
White's wicked stepmother
to put on searing hot iron shoes
and dance around until
she collapses and dies.
Wha?
In the 1940 Disney version of Pinocchio,
the little wooden rascal gets
into a little bit of trouble
with some shallow vices
like gambling and fibbing,
but in the original version,
written in 1883 by Carlo Collodi,
Pinocchio turns totally Patrick Bateman.
He bashes his good friend, the cricket,
with a hammer, killing him.
You're familiar with the
contours of the Rapunzel story.
There's a girl who's trapped
in a tower by a crazed witch.
She has freakishly long
hair that a prince climbs up
and hangs out with her.
Well, in the early version,
Rapunzel's hair is climbed
up upon by the prince, sure,
but while he's up there, he
apparently gets her pregnant.
After the crazed witch finds out,
she goes berzerk, cuts
off Rapunzel's hair,
banishes her to a desert
and forces the prince
to jump from the tower.
He, apparently being unaware
that he's in a Grimm fairytale,
fails to cover his eyes on the way down
and lands in a thorn bush.
His eyeballs are, of course, gouged out.
If we're going with the 1827
Hans Christian Andersen version
of the Little Mermaid,
no one in their right mind would want
to be Part of Your World.
In this telling,
the sea witch traps the
Little Mermaid's voice
by cutting off her tongue
and putting it in a
shell for safe keeping.
At the end, the mermaid is given a choice
of turning back into a mermaid
by stabbing the prince in the heart
and bathing her feet in his blood
after he splits on her for somebody else.
What's your favorite grizzly fairytale?
Let us know in the comments section below,
and head on over to howstuffworks.com
to read 10 fairytales that were
way darker than you realized as a kid.
And, don't forget to
subscribe to What the Stuff.
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