History Headscratchers / SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs

** Alternatively, who's to say they didn't think she was alive? It's not like that would have affected anything.

** In the comic book adaptation, it's said he arrived because he heard of Snow White's beauty. Could he be looking for a wife not unlike the Princes who visit Agrabah in ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' aside from not being a jerkass?

* What was it about the Prince that made him so much harder to animate the other characters? Yes, I can see the difference in design between him and the 7 dwarves, but how does that make him harder to animate? Especially since the two characters he resembles more, Snow White and her stepmother, both seem to get ample screen time.
** They found out that animating a realistic character was tricky, because a character who looks like a real person but behaves like if he was made of rubber is [[UncannyValley at best weird and at worst ''creepy'']]. They could not animate him freely, they had to respect a very strict code. A male moves a very different way from a female. For Snow White and the Queen, the animators got trained at animating charming woman characters, because it was worth it — what was the point of making a princess movie if you can't animate a princess? But spending the same amount of time and money for a secondary character was impossible, unless they wanted ''Snow White'' to suffer the same fate as ''The Thief and the Cobbler''.
* Why exactly does the queen use this complicated "sleeping death" potion, when she could just use regular poison for the same purpose? Besides, in real-life the main interest of poisoning rather than murdering more "actively" is that the murder can be set hours prior to the victim's death itself, which reduces chances of being suspected for the murderer, since the poison can very well act while the person is among a crowd. But if giving the poison to Snow White already required the Queen and the princess to be alone together, she could just have strangled or stabbed her. (Alright, stabbing would have been storywise dumb, because we already saw a stabbing earlier and we don't want to see that twice, but my point still stands).

* So ThePowerOfLove that breaks the spell is a SacredFirstKiss. That begs the obvious question of why the Queen didn't just kiss Snow White after she "died".
** Not quite sure exactly what you're asking, but the antidote was specifically listed as "Love's first kiss," and it's pretty clear that the queen had no love for Snow White. So even if she tried, her kiss wouldn't have stopped the Prince's kiss from working, if that's what you're suggesting.
*** It's more the emphasis on the ''first kiss'' than anything else.
*** Not necessarily - the book only referred to "Love's first kiss," with no say as to which part of it was most important. Plus, if the emphasis was on "first kiss", then why would the queen want to kiss her anyway? Since love wouldn't have been a requirement, that means it would've woken her up again!
* As Snow White kisses each of the Seven Dwarfs as they leave for work, for some reason, Happy is not just the only dwarf who doesn't get kissed, but he is NOWHERE TO BE SEEN AT ALL. Where did he go? Did he leave first before the other six?

* Since the Queen has Dark Magics, couldn't she have made a Spell that would find Snow White and then either put her to sleep or kill her like [[WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty Maleficent]]? Why did she need the disguise and the apple? She could've just made an incantation that would just do what the Apple did, or worse. It's not like she wants to specifically kill her, she just wants Snow White gone, so I doubt it was an ego boosting "only I can kill her" thing.
** A part of it ''was'' somewhat personal, in that she'd already sent someone else to do the job who had been unable to manage it, and so doing it personally was the only way she would ensure it got done. As to why not use a spell or curse, it's just how she chose to have it play out - you may as well ask why she didn't try springing a knife on Snow White once she had her alone.

* The Queen's plan to kill Snow White was doomed to fail either way, even without the intervention of the dwarves. First of all, the Sleeping Death isn't a real death; Snowy's still alive. So, even if the Queen's plan succeeded and the Dwarves buried Snow White alive, she'd STILL be the fairest in the land...just, in a box underground. Suffocation? Seemingly not an issue, since she "sleeps" in that glass coffin in the woods for months and turns out just fine.
** Bit of Fridge Brilliance there. The Queen asks the mirror "Who is the fairest in the land?" Since she expected Snow White to have a normal burial, she'd be ''under'' the land, not in it.
*** Or would ''Snow White'' be ''in'' the land, while the queen was just ''on'' it?
*** Even if SW could've stayed alive underground, if she had an average burial, she would've had insects and other critters eating away at her until she was nothing but bones. Not too pretty.

* Snow White, you DO know that when you are a princess and someone is after you and would do anything to find you, that it's really stupid to give someone your real name/let them know your true identity, RIGHT? I mean, someone tried to KILL you; and not just ANY someone, but someone hired by the QUEEN. Why on EARTH would you tell the Dwarves your name and confirm that you are the PRINCESS? You don't know those dwarves at all; for all you know, they would want to turn you in to the Queen if they knew who you are. The Queen is THE QUEEN. If she put a bounty on your head, she could pay well. She's got the money. You're lucky that the dwarves (with the exception of Grumpy) had no interest in throwing you out, because if Grumpy got his way, you'd be SOL. You'd be out on your own, with the Queen's assassin--and god knows who else--after you, with not one but SEVEN people who know where you are and who would probably be able to point the Queen's men in your direction.
** FridgeBrilliance - This didn't occur to her because she's a naive, trusting, ''14-year-old'' girl!
** Also, I'd be more surprised that the dwarfs ''did'' know that much about the queen, let alone that she was an evil witch. They live out in the middle of the forest -- what would make Snow think they were that concerned with the goings-on of her kingdom? And they obviously don't know Grimhilde is trying to kill Snow until after Snow tells them, which is only after Grumpy insists that they throw her out anyway. (And after she's had enough of a conversation with them to surmise that they're all good and kind people who won't likely turn an innocent girl over to be killed.)
* After her first plan failed, why didn't the Queen just ask her all-seeing, all-knowing Magic Mirror how to become fairest in the land again? Surely the Mirror would have been able to come up with a better plan?
** She was furious. That the Huntsman had lied to her, that she had thought she had won and now she hasn't. She made a rash decision to take matters into her own hands. Maybe she wanted to punish Snow White herself for somehow "escaping".
** Seems like the Queen wasn't the one to ask for help. She's used to commanding and ordering the world as she sees fit.
** She also didn't really ''need'' help. Her desired endgoal was pretty simple: to kill her stepdaughter. Her plan to use the Huntsman only failed because the Huntsman had some standards to him, and her plan to use the Poisoned Apple failed because she chose a plan of such needless complexity out of spite. It wasn't a lack of good ideas that did her in, just her choosing to go with really bad ones.
* After the Queen arrived at the dwarfs' cottage, the animals all ran off to warn the dwarfs. At one point, the birds attacked the old woman as she was offering the poisoned apple to Snow White. A problem, though: all the animals left the cottage. Why didn't some of them stay? That would have been more thoughtful. There were so many that some could have stayed at the cottage with Snow White to make sure nothing went wrong while the rest left to get the dwarfs. It really wasn't very smart to leave Snow White alone with an old woman who was obviously up to no good. The Queen was able to succeed in poisoning Snow White because the dwarfs couldn't return fast enough. But if some of the animals had stayed behind this could have been avoided. They could have held the Queen back long enough for the dwarfs to catch up.

** I still think at the very least, two or three of the birds should have stayed behind. But I understand there was only so much they could do, and they couldn't have known the apple was poisoned so for all they knew it wouldn't have done any good to wait until the old woman offered it to Snow White to hold her off. But Snow White really should have caught on that the animals were trying to tell her something when they attacked the old woman, as they had never done that to anyone before, and they had been keeping her safe through much of the film.

** We don't know for sure that Snow White's father is dead and that the Queen was actually ruling the kingdom (as opposed to just running a magic/alchemy lab). When the Queen was killed, her husband may still have been alive (BTW, Snow White's father ''is'' alive in a stage play based on the film). Even if this was not the case, it's very questionable whether Snow White would have become queen. Supposedly this kingdom is one of the small German states. In feudal Germany/The Holy Roman Empire, the various states it comprised tended to follow the so-called "Salic Law", which did not allow women to inherit the throne, or rather a semi-Salic rule whereby a woman could only inherit on the extinction of the male line. If Snow White was an only child (a fact which is actually never established), she might still not have inherited her father's kingdom, but the closest male relative would have. If in the end her father was indeed dead, AND Snow White had no older brother, AND her kingdom allowed her to inherit the throne, Snow White might have become queen; given the time period, the Prince would almost certainly have become King ''de jure uxoris,'' and Snow White would either have been only his consort with him holding all power, or the two of them would have shared power as co-monarchs.

** More mundanely, he could have gone to a butcher and bought a heart there.

** In the original story, it was specifically the heart of a wild boar that was given to the Queen; Humbert went and killed one after Snow had run off. It wasn't shown due to it not being necessary, and also a bit too grisly to subject movie-going audiences to on the fly.

** We don't know for sure that Snow White's father is dead and that the Queen was actually ruling the kingdom (as opposed to just running a magic/alchemy lab). When the Queen was killed, her husband may still have been alive (BTW, Snow White's father ''is'' alive in a stage play based on the film). Even if this was not the case, it's very questionable whether Snow White would have become queen. Supposedly this kingdom is one of the small German states. In feudal Germany/The Holy Roman Empire, the various states it comprised tended to follow the so-called "Salic Law", which did not allow women to inherit the throne, or else a semi-Salic rule whereby a woman could only inherit on the extinction of the male line. If Snow White was an only child (a fact which is actually never established), she might still not have inherited her father's kingdom, but the closest male relative would have. If in the end her father was indeed dead, AND Snow White had no older brother, AND her kingdom allowed her to inherit the throne, Snow White might have become queen; given the time period, the Prince would almost certainly have become King ''de jure uxoris,'' and Snow White would either have been only his consort with him holding all power, or the two of them would have shared power as co-monarchs.

* Where did the Huntsman got the Pig's heart so The Queen could think its proof that he had assassinated Snow White? did he killed a pig at a farm without getting caught by the farmer? also why we don't get to see the pig heart when the Queen shows it to the Magic Mirror?

** As to the kingdom, I assumed that it and Florian's kingdom became united once he and Snow were married, essentially like what happens in Sleeping Beauty. As to the castle, I recall there being an alternate ending or something where Humbert (the huntsman) rallies the people to storm the Queen's castle and it ends up being destroyed somehow. Even if it remained standing, I don't think it's unusual for a kingdom to have more than one castle within its borders. Snow and Florian could just use it as a summer home or something if they'd like to continue using it.

** They found out that animating a realistic character was tricky, because a character who looks like a real person but behaves like if he was made of rubber is at best weird and at worst ''creepy''. They could not animate him freely, they had to respect a very strict code. A male moves a very different way from a female. For Snow White and the Queen, the animators got trained at animating charming woman characters, because it was worth it — what was the point of making a princess movie if you can't animate a princess? But spending the same amount of time and money for a secondary character was impossible, unless they wanted ''Snow White'' to suffer the same fate as ''The Thief and the Cobbler''.

* What happened to Snow White's original kingdom after she left with the Prince to marry him? Due the Queen's recent death she should be the successor to the throne as the King died long time ago, but she leaves with the Prince in the end to marry him, so what happened to the castle where she used to live? It's still her property or she just left it abandoned?

* What happened to Snow White's original kingdom after she left with the Prince to marry him? Due the Queen's recent death she should be the successor to the throne as the King died long time ago, but she leaves with the Prince in the end to marry him, so what happened to the cstle where she used to live? It's still her property or she just left it abandoned?

** In addition, in the original fairy tale, Snow White's name came from a wish her mother made before she was born -- she wanted a child with "lips red as blood, hair black as ebony, skin white as snow". If we assume that's still the case in this version, it's certainly plausible that Snow's father explained the meaning behind her name to Grimhilde after he married her, and thus, she recognized who the mirror was referring to when it used [most of] those exact words.

** Maybe he headed off to the mine early, for reasons unknown. Or maybe the animators intended for him to get his kiss while offscreen, and they just forgot to include him

** Also, suffocation would still very much be an issue. Surviving for a few months inside a glass coffin that clearly isn't airtight, going by how easily it can be opened, is not the same thing as spending a much longer time locked in a box buried six feet under.
* Why did the Queen bother to put Snow White in suspended animation when she could have actually killed her?
** Death might be too nice for someone that's pissed her off that much. BuriedAlive was just the handiest FateWorseThanDeath that she could think of.
** [[WildMassGuessing Maybe she had hemophobia]], so she tried to kill Snow White bloodlessly (or make someone else kill her)
*** Hemophobia? Seriously? She asked her huntsman to bring her Snow White's HEART in box!
*** And she clearly didn't examine it closely enough to realize that it was not a human heart.
*** Pig hearts are rather similar to human hearts anatomically, and who's to say that she knew what a human heart looked like?
** In the movie, the Queen was suddenly concerned with killing Snow White in a way that no one would suspect her. It's not made clear why she cares about that later and not earlier (she may have always been concerned about being caught, but previously assumed the Huntsman was loyal enough to keep her secret. Afterall, if she wasn't afraid of people knowing, she could've had Snow White killed in her courtyard instead of the deep woods). Anyway, she needed a disguise, and the old hag form was perfect, except that the hag wasn't strong enough to kill Snow White with her bare hands. She had to trick her. Notice, she was so wary of interference that she had to make sure the dwarfs were away first.
*** And yet when the dwarfs confront her, she nearly manages to dislodge a giant boulder right on top of them.
*** Nearly. And with a great deal of effort. In fact, the cliff crumbled beneath her just as the dwarves reached her - we've no idea whether she would've succeeded in toppling the boulder.
*** Even if she had succeeded in toppling the boulder, she certainly didn't plan on it being there from the get-go -- on the contrary, it was her last resort once she realized they had her cornered. ''And'' using a stick to dislodge a boulder doesn't mean she had the strength necessary to overpower the dwarfs on her own, or else she would've...y'know, done it herself and not used the boulder?
** By that point, the Queen was furious enough at Snow White that she relished the idea of making her stepdaughter's new friends believe she's dead, causing them to bury her alive, a far grislier fate than a simple stabbing (especially if Snow White is at least somewhat conscious during her magical slumber).

* Someone on Website/YouTube pointed out that Queen Grimhilde was able to create a potion that turned her into an ugly, old hag. This person points out that if the Queen can do this, then surely she could make a potion that would truly make her the fairest one of all! This would fall under the category of JustEatGilligan.
** Wouldn't Snow White STILL be the fairest if the Queen used a potion to become more beautiful, because unlike the Queen she's beautiful INSIDE and out?
** But before Snow White grew up the Mirror called the Queen the fairest of them all. What, was there no woman in the world who'd happen to be beautiful in appearance, and to be better inside then a witch who is ready to kill a child just because said child is prettier then her?
*** Fairest in the '''land'''. Not world. Also, while Snow White's niceness might've added to her looks, I don't think the mirror was concerned with inner beauty that didn't show up on the outside.
** [[WildMassGuessing Maybe the potion wasn't able to turn her into anything she wants, but only age her for a time. Maybe she only can brew potions that make her look like herself, but in different periods of time. But whatever age she looks, Snow White would still be prettier than her.]]
*** In the end, the Queen wanted Snow White dead because the Queen was a jealous heel, not because there wasn't a more pragmatic solution. But while we're guessing, maybe the hag potion doesn't last very long.
* If the Queen wants to be the most beautiful in the 'land', why does she turn herself into an old hag? Did she plan on... turning back?
** Well, duh.
** WordOfGod : She didn't think of it. There is a whole comic sequel by Italian Disney comics artist Romano Scarpa that's set just after the movie. Grimhilde manage to escape the boulder, and is only slightly injured by the fall… except that… she discovers that SHE CAN'T TURN BACK INTO HER BEAUTIFUL FORMER SELF, and that SINCE NO ONE RECOGNIZED HER SHE CAN'T GET BACK IN HER OWN CASTLE. Beyond being a FateWorseThanDeath, it is also an explanation for all those 40's comics and strips with the Dwarves battling the Witch without even addressing that it's only a disguise from the queen, and also a starting point for the main plot of the story, which is that the Queen attempts to switch bodies with Snow White using a spell.
* If the Queen had a potion that would turn the drinker ugly, why didn't she just trick Snow White into drinking it?
** The Mirror did say "rags cannot hide her gentle face". The Queen knew she couldn't hide Snow White's beauty because hers was both inside and outside. And the hag potion was a ''disguise'' and not a permanent transformation. Plus she might not have known about the spell until she read the book.
* For that matter, why didn't she just arrange to ''disfigure'' the girl instead of order her killed? She had Snow working as a scullery-maid; setting up a convenient "accident" with lye or some other nasty cleaning compound couldn't have been ''that'' difficult.
** Probably because that wouldn't have been ''enough.'' The Queen isn't a rational and calculated villain who's concerned about what's practical and what isn't; she's consumed by jealousy and anger. Snow White's "crime" of being the prettier one was so great that mere "accidental" disfiguration wouldn't have been an adequate punishment. The only thing that would satisfy the Queen's seething hatred was for Snow White to die.

** Women with those features and beautiful enough to rival the queen would be very few in number. The pale skin alone would pretty much require her to be nobility as otherwise she'd have a tan from being out in the sun working.

* How did the Queen immediately peg Snow White as the "fairest"? (Granted, the Mirror does identify who she is later on) Are there no other women in the land with red lips, black hair and white skin?

** In the comic book adaptation, it's said he arrived because he heard of Snow White's beauty. Could he be looking for a wife not unlike the Princes who visit Agrabah in ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'' aside from not being a jerkass?

* Since the Queen has Dark Magics, couldn't she have made a Spell that would find Snow White and then either put her to sleep or kill her like [[Disney/SleepingBeauty Maleficent]]? Why did she need the disguise and the apple? She could've just made an incantation that would just do what the Apple did, or worse. It's not like she wants to specifically kill her, she just wants Snow White gone, so I doubt it was an ego boosting "only I can kill her" thing.

* How did the Queen immediately peg Snow White as the "fairest"? (Granted, the Mirror does identify who she is later on) Are there no other women in the land with red lips, black hair and fair skin?

** I still think at the very least, two or three of the birds should have stayed behind. But I understand there was only so much they could do, and they couldn't have known the apple was poisoned so for all they knew it wouldn't have done any good to wait until the old woman offered it to Snow White to hold her off. But Snow White really should have caught on that the animals were trying to tell her something when they attacked the old woman, as they had never done that to anyone before, and they had been keeping her safe through much of the film.

** The more animals go to collect the dwarfs, the faster they can get them back to the cottage. But there's only so much the animals can do to hold off the old woman, especially since they don't know what her actual goal is and were already shooed away for attacking her once before. Odds are they wouldn't be able to stall for very long before Snow shuts the window to keep them outside. And then what do they do?

* After the Queen arrived at the dwarfs' cottage, the animals all ran off to warn the dwarfs. At one point, the birds attacked the old woman as she was offering the poisoned apple to Snow White. A problem, though: all the animals left the cottage. Why didn't some of them stay? That would have been more thoughtful. There were so many that some could have stayed at the cottage with Snow White to make sure nothing went wrong while the rest left to get the dwarfs. It really wasn't very smart to leave Snow White alone with an old woman who was obviously up to no good. The Queen was able to succeed in poisoning Snow White because the dwarfs couldn't return fast enough. But if some of the animals had stayed behind this could have been avoided. They could have held the Queen back long enough for the dwarfs to catch up.

** She also didn't really ''need'' help. Her desired endgoal was pretty simple: to kill her stepdaughter. Her plan to use the Huntsman only failed because the Huntsman had some standards to him, and her plan to use the Poisoned Apple failed because she chose a plan of such needless complexity out of spite. It wasn't a lack of good ideas that did her in, just her choosing to go with really bad ones.