History Main / FracturedFairyTale

* {{MAR}} takes the "character as a Fractured Fairy Tale" idea to its logical extreme. Nearly every minor to important character is a parody of at least one fairy tale. Ginta [[GenreSavvy always takes the time to make note of this]], because he's obsessed with the stories. Justified by the fact that Mär Heaven is the world of Märchen, or fairy tales. Just on Ginta's team, we have:

* RevolutionaryGirlUtena is this trope incarnate.

* ''{{Hoodwinked}}''. Mixed with {{troperiffic}} AffectionateParody to some other genres, but still based on fairy tale.

** It's not as though they're mutually exclusive.

* The {{Discworld}} novel ''Witches Abroad'', where the witches are a disrupting influence in the TheoryOfNarrativeCausality, trying to stop a HappilyEverAfter that is nothing of the kind. The scene where [[spoiler: we see [[MindRape what it takes]] to make a "Big Bad Wolf" and [[MercyKill what Granny Weatherwax does about it]]]] is a total TearJerker.

* NeilGaiman's short story ''Snow Glass Apples'' is a retelling of Snow White with the stepmother as the good guy.
* This is the basic concept of MercedesLackey's ''Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms'' series. Playfully subverted in that the ambient magic in the land tries to make a fairy tale play out straight (no matter how the characters might feel about it), and the only way to get out of it is to shift the situation to that it fits another tale better.

* The "politically correct" fairy tales by James Finn Garner.

* The short stories in Andrzej Sapkowski's earlier Witcher books are all or almost all this [[UpToEleven pushed up to eleven]]. The Beauty and the Beast? [[spoiler: The Beast likes his transformation, whereas the Beauty is so much more monstrous than he is.]] Don't even ask about [[{{Grimmification}} what he did]] to [[{{Tearjerker}} Snow]] [[AlasPoorVillain White]].
* GregoryMaguire's books practically /run/ on this trope. His most famous? ''{{Wicked}}''.

* In Jim C. Hines' ''The Stepsister Scheme'' Cinderella'stepsisters kidnap her Prince and she, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White (who are nothing like one would expect) have to go save him.

* ''Beastly'' is pretty much a modern-day adaptation of ''Beauty and the Beast'', told from the guy's perspective.

* Since it's by the author of EllaEnchanted, ''Fairest'' also falls under this. The Snow White character is actually ugly (or at least HollywoodHomely), and her singing, while popular at first, eventually forces her to flee the kingdom because the townspeople think it makes her an inhuman seductress. She does wind up living with dwarves (or rather, gnomes), and it turns out she's probably [[spoiler: descended from gnomes herself]]. The Wicked Queen is still a bit of a {{Yandere}}, but she and Snow White are friends first, and it turns out she was mostly being manipulated by the [[spoiler: CompleteMonster inside the magic mirror]] all along. And the story is actually ''set'' in a country where people sing most of the time.

* The game Fairytale Fights has four Fairytale protagonists (Jack, Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Emperor of The Emperor's New Clothes) attempt to regain their former glory via killing everything in their way in as violent a way as possible.
* Although ''technically'' Alice's Adventures In Wonderland isn't a fairytale, ''[[AmericanMcGeesAlice American McGee's Alice]]'' shows Wonderland as twisted and violent after Alice's parents die in a fire and she's sent to a mental institution.

* MarthaSpeaks: "Martha Spins A Tale"
* [[WinnieThePooh The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh]]: "Three Little Piglets"

* The Franco-belgian comic ''Garulfo''.

* Parodied in ''CalvinAndHobbes'' -- after all, if you read a tale to six-years-old, it may as well have [[http://www.s-anand.net/calvinandhobbes.html#19860202 a happy ending]].

* It's hard to tell in KingsQuest if the writers are going to play their fairy tale tropes straight or veer into one of these.

* {{Nodwick}} runs through a whole series of these, all of which go OffTheRails very quickly.

[[caption-width-right:350:The Papa Bear went to the second little piglet who lived in... a house of cards?!]]

* ''Beatly'' is pretty much a modern-day adaptation of ''Beauty and the Beast'', told from the guy's perspective.

* ''{{Shrek}}'', which makes the ogre the main character, the damsel anything but in distress, and the Prince Charming the villain, even coming with a subversion of TrueLovesKiss.
** When you think about it, Shrek may possibly be the TropeCodifier - more of these types of stories and films came out during the peak of Shrek's popularity.

* ''TalesFromTheCryptkeeper'' had two episodes, "The Sleeping Beauty" and "Chuck (and Melvin) and the Beanstalk", both starring a set of twings, one an idiotic MilesGloriosus and the other his more praticall nerd brother.

Virtually every Fractured Fairy Tale features one of perhaps a dozen fairy tales that are considered common knowledge in the culture. This is because they don't work without the audience recognizing the original and so being able to appreciate the divergences. When the Fractured Fairy Tale sticks to, and warps, one specific tale, it is a form of the TwiceToldTale.

* One of Bruce Coville's Book of... short story collections (specifically, one of the two Book of Magic collections-I forget which specifically) features a story by PatriciaCWrede which sets up fairy godmothers and bad fairies and the like as part of the same organization, and is told from the point of view of a fairy godmother explaining why she wants a transfer to the curses department; namely, her last case, which was the straw that broke the unicorn's back. It sounds like a pretty standard Cinderella story; girl wants to go to ball, stepmother said no, fairy godmother is thus determined to see that she does, in fact, go. The problems start from square one: Cindy is tall, gangly, big-footed and not the prettiest thing ever. Her stepsister is the gorgeous waif the godmother has come to expect her clients to be, and is helpful, sympathetic, and wants nothing more than for Cindy to be happy. Then it turns out "Cinders" was the client's idea in the first place, and it's a stage name. She's not interested in the prince, she wants to play the fiddle as a musician at the ball. The godmother makes the best of things (she manages to save Cindy from getting roped into a "standard 10-percent contract" with a talent agent who looks like an encroaching mushroom and, when he's too drunk to lie, shamelessly admits that it means she forks over all but 10 percent of whatever she earns), but she's pretty despondent by the time the night's out (not least because the not-remotely-ugly stepsister ''does'' end up in the prince's arms) and after a case like that, her superiors will probably understand if she wants to transfer.

* ''Chivalry is not dead''

* This was pretty much the point of the British television series ''Wolves, Witches and Giants''.

* Jim Henson's ''Frog Prince'' contains traces of this. ''Hey, Cinderella!'' very cleanly fits the bill, between the ridiculously over-the-top [[LargeHam hamminess]] of the stepmother, the [[TheDitz dippiness]] of the Prince, the running gag of how bad the fairy godmother is at magic, and Kermit's GenreSavy nature [[CassandraTruth being ignored]]. Oh, and there's the ball itself, which features a large number of Muppet monsters (and Santa Claus) and basically serves as a precursor to the ballroom dancing sketches from ''TheMuppetShow''.

The TropeNamer comes from a ''RockyAndBullwinkle'' segment of the same title and overall premise. Compare and contrast IronicNurseryRhyme. Subtrope of ExternalRetcon.

* {{Rugrats}} has a few examples. An episode revolving around Angelica telling Chuckie his Step-Mother must be evil resulting in him imganing himself as "Finster-Ella" and a DTV with a number of these comes to mind.

[[caption-width-right:350:The Papa Bear went to the second little piglet who lived in... a house of cards!?!]]