| 1 | [[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fracturedfairytale.png]]]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:The [[Literature/GoldiLocks Papa Bear]] went to the [[Literature/ThreeLittlePigs second little piglet]] who lived in... a house of cards?!]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''The stories in this book are almost {{Fairy Tale}}s. But not quite. The stories in this book are Fairly Stupid Tales. I mean, what else would you call a story like 'Goldilocks and the Three Elephants'?'' |
| 5 | -->-- ''[[Literature/TheStinkyCheeseMan The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales]]'' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | OnceUponATime, there was a beautiful DamselInDistress, a [[PrinceCharming handsome prince]] on an epic [[TheQuest quest]], his [[FairyCompanion magical sidekick]], and [[CurseEscapeClause a spell they needed to break]] before [[WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve the stroke of midnight]]. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | But wait! The damsel's [[DamselOutOfDistress not distressed]]! The [[PrinceCharmless prince is charmless]]! The homely comic relief sidekick is the KnightInShiningArmor! The WickedStepmother is an angel and the 'mistreated stepdaughter' [[BrattyTeenageDaughter is just a brat]]! The [[Literature/LittleRedRidingHood sweet little girl in the red cloak]] is a HeroicComedicSociopath! And just about everyone's ridiculously GenreSavvy! And all of that is before you get to the ending, which will probably go ''entirely'' OffTheRails. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | What you have here is an example of a Fractured Fairy Tale, a story with [[FairyTaleMotifs all the basic elements]] of a classic FairyTale, but all of them [[PlayingWithATrope broken, rearranged and re-presented]] with [[SettingUpdate modern-day sensibilities and morals]]. It may also be a {{parody}} of fairy tales, a {{Deconstruction}} of these tales' settings, morals and sensibilities, or a PerspectiveFlip (for instance, retelling it from the villain's point of view, often suggesting that the better-known version had an UnreliableNarrator). In all these instances, [[ExtraordinaryWorldOrdinaryProblems mundane aspects of the real world can pop up]] to further [[SubvertedTrope subvert tropes]] related to the genre. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Virtually every Fractured Fairy Tale features (at least) one of [[SmallReferencePools 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. Combining stories into a FairyTaleFreeForAll is also possible, though it, too, sticks mostly to the best known tales -- perhaps even more so, since the characters have shorter periods to make their character known. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | These are a lot more common than the naive observer would be led to believe. In fact, just about any myth or folktale presented to any older child or adult is bound to contain subversions of some sort, to the point that a completely non-ironic fairy tale itself feels like an irony. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | It's somewhat common for these to overlap with FeministFantasy, satirizing the original story's gender politics. For instance, a popular twist is to have [[WarriorPrincess the brave princess]] rescue [[DistressedDude a knight in distress]], or object to the idea of the suitor being [[EngagementChallenge awarded her hand in marriage]]. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | May contain elements of {{Grimmification}}. NurseryRhyme elements and characters frequently also appear. Literature/AesopsFables are somewhat rarer but not unknown. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | The {{Trope Namer|s}} comes from a ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'' segment of the same title and overall premise. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Compare and contrast IronicNurseryTune and DerailedFairyTale (when the listener or the teller takes the story OffTheRails). A SubTrope of ExternalRetcon, and often a WholePlotReference to an existing fairy tale. A SuperTrope to DystopianOz, BeanstalkParody, CinderellaPlot, and LittleRedFightingHood. Often overlaps with DarkParody. |
| 24 | ---- |
| 25 | %% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them. |
| 26 | !!Examples: |
| 27 | |
| 28 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder:Advertising]] |
| 31 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDGrfhJH1P4 This]] award-winning ad for ''[[UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers The Guardian]]''. Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs are arrested for wolf murder (they boiled him alive, for mercy's sake!) and prosecuted. Who is the real victim here? The pigs whose houses were burnt down? The wolf? Did the pigs go too far? [[spoiler:The pigs actually committed an insurance fraud because they were unable to pay their mortgage payments, and they try to frame the wolf for the "accidents". People came to blame banks and big corporate institutions for the whole mess.]] |
| 32 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drCWcLnWGP8 This]] ad for Symbicort takes a different spin on the Three Little Pigs. Apparently, the poor wolf had COPD. With the right medicine, he can spend time with his happy wolf family--and blow the piggies' house down. |
| 33 | * Some of the Advertising/{{GEICO}} "Short Stories and Tall Tales" ads for the department that does stuff like renters insurance are this, such as retelling of "Ba Ba Black Sheep" in which a guy doesn't have any wool because all of his wool sweaters, as well as his flat-screen television and other stuff were stolen by some hooligan. Fortunately, he had the renters insurance, so they replaced it all and later the guy whole stole the stuff was caught selling it online and arrested. |
| 34 | * The UsefulNotes/McDonalds ad "Mixed-Up [=McStory=]" has Ronald roll his eyes at the [=McNugget=] Buddies putting on a play where all of them play the parts of famous fairy tale characters while unable to agree which story they're performing or even get the details of the story right. |
| 35 | -->'''Ronald:''' You're ''all'' in the wrong story.\ |
| 36 | '''[=McNugget=] Buddies:''' But the right ''sauces''. |
| 37 | * A UK advert for Rustlers hamburgers has Red Riding Hood arriving at her grandmother's house and seeing the wolf ...and then it turns out the wolf ''really is'' her grandmother. |
| 38 | * Some Weetabix adverts from the UK have these kinds of treatments to classic stories: the three bears flee in fear after discovering the intruder in their house has eaten their Weetabix, the giant fearfully leaves Jack alone after seeing him have his Weetabix and the wolf sucessfully blows down the brick house [[DownerEnding and eats all the pigs]] because he... you get the idea. |
| 39 | * "Advertising/AmericanHondaPresentsDCComicsSupergirl": As learning about seat belt safety, ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} and her young wards run into parodies of fairy and children's tales characters: Humpty Dumpty is a -terrible- taxi driver, the Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything is reimagined as an elementary school teacher, and the Three Little Pigs are two reckless yuppies and his more grounded and careful older brother. |
| 40 | * A UK advert for Sky Secure security and insurance has the Giant and Mother Bear explain how their new security systems helped them deal with Jack and Goldilocks, respectively. |
| 41 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDus3r1d6ik A 2002 animated ad]] for the Toronto-based eating disorder clinic Sheena's Place has Literature/HanselAndGretel happily eating the gingerbread house when suddenly Gretel [[WeightWoe remembers triggering comments their parents made about her weight and eating habits]]. The ad ends on her [[VomitDiscretionShot inducing vomiting offscreen]]. |
| 42 | [[/folder]] |
| 43 | |
| 44 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 45 | * ''Manga/BeautyAndTheBeastOfParadiseLost'': Belle is a BrokenBird who believes she is ugly because she grew up hearing her father saying that. Beast is an AntiHero who fights the monsters created by the same witch who cursed him [[WomanScorned because he was going to marry someone that wasn't her]]. Said witch is obsessed with beauty ''a la'' [[Literature/SnowWhite Evil Queen]] and captures young women to steal their faces. And there are other fairy tales mixed, too. |
| 46 | * ''Manga/The100GirlfriendsWhoReallyReallyReallyReallyReallyLoveYou'': Chapter 82.5 is a collection of these mashed together: |
| 47 | ** "Literature/{{Thumbelina}}" - the truest to the source material, with "Shizulina" being stolen by a toad and a beetle, before meeting a mole who wants to marry her. |
| 48 | ** "Literature/HanselAndGretel" - "Kurutel" eats the breadcrumbs that her brother drops to help them find their way out of the woods, so he abandons her, leaving her in danger of being eaten by the witch after she devours the entire gingerbread house. |
| 49 | ** "Literature/LittleRedRidingHood" - "Little Red Riding Kusuri" thinks that her grandmother drank a "makes-you-wolf-like" drug and is nearly eaten by the wolf. |
| 50 | ** "[[Literature/AesopsFables Hermes and the Woodcutter]]" - "Haharmes" offers the woodcutter a choice between a platinum axe and a diamond axe, and is then attacked by the second woodcutter. |
| 51 | ** "Literature/TheRedShoes" - "Ikaren" puts on the red shoes and finds herself cursed to dance day and night, but is too masochistic to even try to remove them. |
| 52 | ** "Literature/TheTaleOfTheBambooCutter" - "Princess Naddya" decides to go to America instead of the Moon, and has to be forcibly dragged to the Moon by the messengers. |
| 53 | ** "Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland" - "Momice" chases the White Rabbit intending to grope him, then is sentenced to execution as punishment for groping the Queen of Hearts. |
| 54 | ** "Literature/{{Cinderella}}" - "Meiderella" leaves the ball before midnight, and doesn't leave behind her glass slipper. |
| 55 | ** "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urashima_Tar%C5%8D Urashima Taro]]" - "Princess Yakuhime" rejects Urashima Taro when he proposes to her, explaining that she's really 89, so he uses the treasure box to age himself, then tries to cancel her on Twitter after being rejected again. |
| 56 | ** "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuru_no_Ongaeshi The Crane's Return of a Favor]]" - "Omeme" becomes so embarrassed when the old man tries to see her eyes that she pulls off her NinjaLog technique. |
| 57 | ** "Literature/SnowWhite" - "Mimi White" dismisses her stepmother's desire to kill her, but still eats the poisoned apple. |
| 58 | ** "Literature/TheLittleMatchGirl" - "Chiyona" finds herself unable to light any of the matches, considering it "embezzlement". |
| 59 | ** "Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet" - "Hakariet" accidentally drinks too much of the "induces-death-like-state" drug and nearly dies for real. |
| 60 | ** "Literature/SleepingBeauty" - "Aumame" refuses to let anyone cut or burn the brambles, as they are "living things too". |
| 61 | ** "Literature/{{Rapunzel}}" - "Nanonzel" refuses to let down her hair, as she doesn't want to risk falling to her death. |
| 62 | ** "Literature/TheLittleMermaid" - "Kariel" tries to tell the prince that she saved him, but her {{Tsundere}} personality makes it difficult for her to do so. |
| 63 | ** In the end, "Prince Rentaromeo" obliterates all the problems, and everyone lives HappilyEverAfter. |
| 64 | * ''Manga/AssassinationClassroom'' features a play of "Literature/{{Momotaro}}," written by the class {{Chuunibyou}} and "starring" [[OctopoidAliens Koro-sensei]] [[PlayingATree as the peach]]. This version is all about the elderly couple's divorce and legal battle over the miraculous peach, and ends with the old man plotting revenge by training the dog, pheasant and monkey to attack his ex-wife. Momotaro himself [[AdaptedOut does not appear]], and the island of demons is a metaphor for the human heart. |
| 65 | * The world of ''Manga/AkazukinChacha'' seems to function this way. |
| 66 | * ''Manga/DrStone'' has the 100 Tales, a set of stories passed down by the natives of post-petrification Earth. The only one we specifically see is their take on ''Literature/{{Momotaro}}'', who looks like [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar Kenshiro]] and has a bear, lion, gorilla, and crocodile as his companions (instead of the dog, pheasant, and monkey from the traditional version); Senku, who knows the original version, is flabbergasted by this "overly wild" take. [[spoiler:Later on it's revealed that the 100 Tales were written by Byakuya Ishigami, Senku's astronaut father, who avoided petrification because he was on the International Space Station when it happened. He used classic folklore as a way to preserve as much of humanity's scientific knowledge as possible via oral tradition, hoping that future generations could use the knowledge to try and rebuild society.]] |
| 67 | * ''Manga/DragonBall'' started out as this regarding how it tells its take on ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'' (even lampshading it at the end of the first Chapter). Among other changes, the Monkey King is now a country boy who has to pat people's crotches to tell their gender, he and his friend travel the land on motorbikes that can be stored in pocketable Capsules, the first Chapter ends with the female lead pissing herself in fear, the owner of the flying cloud is a LovableSexManiac, and the handsome rogue gets paralyzed with shock every time he sees a pretty lady (this not even mentioning the extremely raunchy humour on display in this portion of the story). |
| 68 | -->'''Narrator''': Remember your Chinese fairy tales? You don't? Not even the impish Monkey King and his magic staff, the Nyoibo? Oh well... |
| 69 | * ''Manga/FairyTail'' managed to slip one into their [[BreatherEpisode play]]. It begins with a knight setting out to rescue the princess from an evil villain, but aside from said knight's stage fright, he doesn't even find that villain. The man he does find summons an evil dragon... that he then teams up with the knight to defeat for no apparent reason, and they both happily flee when the princess somehow unties herself and claims she'll hold the dragon off. [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext It Makes Even Less Sense In Context]]. Later on, Natsu compares Lucy's battle victories to "The Tortoise and the Hare", with Lucy as the hare; the hare only lost the ''first'' race, learned his lesson, and beat the tortoise the next hundred times. |
| 70 | * ''Manga/{{Freezing}} Vibration'': In the 3rd OVA, Julia Munberk wrote a fanfiction based on ''Cinderella'', casting Cassie Lockheart as Cinderella and herself as the fairy godmother, and asks Satellizer and Rana to critique it. It starts out normal at first, but when the fairy godmother appears to help Cinderella, instead of giving her a dress, she [[TheNudifier erases her clothes]], then forcibly gives her a bath while groping her. Then the story abruptly ends. Satellizer and Rana realize Julia let her lesbian fantasies go out of control. |
| 71 | * In ''Manga/FruitsBasket'', the main characters' homeroom class quickly realizes that everyone has been woefully miscast for their SchoolPlay of ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}''. The scriptwriter rewrites it so that the roles better suit the actors playing them, but this results in a ''very'' different version of the tale. A stoic and [[TheComicallySerious comically serious]] Cinderella (played by [[{{Goth}} Hanajima]]) is impervious to her WickedStepmother ([[BetaBitch Minami]])'s demands, but she loves her sweet and innocent stepsister ([[AllLovingHero Tohru]]), who suffers at her mother's hands because she wishes to [[ArrangedMarriage marry her off]]. While the Fairy Godparent (Yuki, who's [[CrosscastRole male]]) succeeds in getting them to the ball (after Cinderella asked him to ''burn the palace down''), and the not very charming prince ([[{{Tsundere}} Kyo]]) does find her (though Cinderella can tell he's more interested in the stepsister), in the end Cinderella and her sister open a yakiniku shop. The play is renamed "Sorta Cinderella". |
| 72 | * One of the ''Literature/FullMetalPanic'' short stories is a complete parody of Cinderella. Cinderella (played by Kaname) learns the moral that "depend on your own hard work and initiative rather than relying on fairy godmothers", sells the glass shoe for ludicrous profit to a wannabe princess, and goes into the wandering merchant business with the fairy (played by Sousuke). |
| 73 | * In ''Manga/HayateTheCombatButler! Season 2'', there is a part in an episode where ''Alice in Wonderland'' Hinagiku version is shown. You can guess it wasn't very close to the original. |
| 74 | * ''Anime/JuuniSenshiBakuretsuEtoRanger'' uses the fracturing of fairy tales and classic literature as a plot point, thanks to the interference of the evil Jyarei monsters. Some of the examples of the results include Literature/{{Momotaro}} [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE]], Literature/TheTortoiseAndTheHare as gangster drag racers, and a Literature/PeterPan who's afraid of heights. It's the Eto Rangers' job to fix these stories, or else the worlds they take place in will be fractured [[EarthShatteringKaboom very literally]]. |
| 75 | * ''Manga/LudwigRevolution'', written by Kaori Yuki, deconstructs, spoofs and {{Grimmificat|ion}}es all at the same time. appropriately enough all the tales portrayed are based on the Brothers Grimm Version, in which the 2 main characters get their names from. |
| 76 | * ''Manga/{{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: |
| 77 | ** Princess Snow. From her name, we have a play on "Literature/SnowWhite" (she even fights a character who has a magic sword ask her "who is the fairest one of all"). Her introduction is more Snow White stuff combined with a bit of Sleeping Beauty (DamselInDistress is in a death-like state, awakened with a kiss... sort of), and she runs away from her wicked stepmother, like Cinderella. |
| 78 | ** Jack, who is a young farmer who lives in semi-poverty with his mother. His dream is to one day grow a beanstalk so tall he can see the world from it. |
| 79 | ** Alviss, who is followed about by a jealous fairy named Bell, and who goes on to defeat a Chess Piece named Mr. Hook. |
| 80 | ** Dorothy, who is a huge ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'' reference: she is a "good witch" named Dorothy, and her guardians include a scarecrow, a metal knight, a lion, and a dog named Toto. |
| 81 | ** And the team itself was formed by a fortune teller prophesying that Snow would have to gather "the Seven Dwarves" to defend Mär Heaven. The Chess Pieces have even more, considering how many of them there are. |
| 82 | * A lot of ''Anime/PrincessTutu'' revolves around playing around with fairytale tropes (and ''Theatre/SwanLake'' in particular) and subverting them, while also staying within the MagicalGirl genre. The knight's armor [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold isn't exactly shiny]], the Prince [[spoiler:ends up marrying the DarkMagicalGirl]], and several fairytales are mentioned and commented on. For example... |
| 83 | ** The main character and the prince end up trapped in a woman's restaurant while she keeps bringing them more and more food, and Ahiru thinks it's Literature/HanselAndGretel and they're being fattened up for her to eat. In reality, the woman is just very lonely and trying to make them stay. |
| 84 | ** The opening narration at one point questions whether Sleeping Beauty really ''wanted'' to wake up, or if she wanted to keep dreaming. |
| 85 | ** In an episode titled "Cinderella", the main character loses the pendant that allows her to become the MagicalGirl, and it's found by one of the male characters. He spends the rest of the episode trying to find her... because he considers Princess Tutu an enemy and wants to attack her. |
| 86 | ** The main story is one for its own original fairytale, ''The Prince and the Raven'': For example: in the "original", a helpful minor character dies tragically after confessing her love. In the series, the main character ''is'' that helpful minor character, and she's not too keen on dying to preserve the story. The Prince is still a heroic, but in-series he serves as a DistressedDude for a time and [[spoiler:even becomes an antagonist via possession]]. The story's author is a recurring character that wants the stories to be played straight, but since the stories he loves have tragic ends, the characters do ''not'' like where their fates are headed and seek to change it. Some plot beats remain the same though: in the end, as in the story, [[spoiler:"Princess Tutu" is gone for good -- that is to say, the human girl. The little duck who became her continues to peacefully live as a duck.]] |
| 87 | * Used in ''Manga/{{Monster}}'', where elements of fairy tales are brought together to inspire MindRape and nightmares. |
| 88 | * ''Manga/MoonlightAct'' is literally about fairy tales folklore from all over the world that have gotten fractured by the light of the blue moon, resulting in characters going berserk and needing to be pacified (by force). |
| 89 | * All the characters, and many of the episodes, in ''Literature/OkamiSan'' are fairy tale analogues, which in most cases are warped nearly beyond recognition. Particularly funny is the version of Literature/{{Cinderella}} where the "prince" (a popular tennis player) falls for a mysterious girl who accidentally kicked him in the face. So he has all the girls in school line up to kick him until he recognizes who clobbered him from her shoes. Turns out he's [[FootFocus really into it]]. |
| 90 | * The "Delivery Skit" segments in ''Anime/OsomatsuSan'' are usually done in this style, ranging from a variety of stories to spoof. Of particular note is the HonestAxe skit where a fisherman drops his fishing pole, is asked if he dropped two ''statues'' in return, and receives a human man. |
| 91 | * ''Anime/PrettyCure'': |
| 92 | ** Shibiretta's modus operandi in ''Anime/YesPrettyCure5GoGo'' involves trapping the Cures in these. |
| 93 | ** There's a whole bunch of these in ''Anime/SmilePrecure'', as expected from a fairy tale themed season. It features villains and their abilities based off from fairy tales and Japanese folklore. The first episode has Cure Happy retreating behind a house, believing Wolfrun would give up because the wolf in the Three Little Pigs couldn't blow down a brick house but Wolfrun laughed it off and just turned the house into an Akanbe. Another episode involves Miyuki and the others reenacting Cinderella with the Bad End Generals posing as the wicked stepmother and stepsisters. |
| 94 | *** This is taken to extreme in the season's movie. Nico rewards the Cures for saving her by letting them be the characters of any story of their choosing. However, they all ended up getting their stories and characters mixed up [[spoiler: as this is a set up by Nico]]. |
| 95 | * ''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena'' is this trope + {{Grimmification}}. |
| 96 | * Episode 3 of ''Literature/SasamisanAtGanbaranai'' re-imagines a version of the "Hare of Inaba" story, where Sasami is the "rabbit" and her {{brother|SisterIncest}} is the shark. |
| 97 | * In one episode of ''Manga/{{Science Fell in Love So I Tried to Prove It}}'', Himuro and Yukimura decide to analyse popular stories to see if they can shed light on the nature of [[{{WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove}} love]], which leads to them rewriting fairy tales with [[{{Self Insert}} themselves in the lead roles]]. ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}'' and ''The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter'' mostly follow the same beats as the source material, except the leads are science nerds. ''The Crane Returns A Favour'', on the other hand, ends up going completely off the rails (but has a much happier ending). |
| 98 | * In ''Ugly Duckling's Love Revolution'', Hitomi and Souta are trying to pick out a fairy tale play to perform for the kindergarten class, and Souta latches onto "Literature/HanselAndGretel". He even writes his own script, which involves Hansel and Gretel being found by The Sweets Fairy, who is actually a princess under the witch's spell. A prince falls in love with her and by eating sweets together, she returns to her true form. |
| 99 | * ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'''s Dark Tournament arc has a combat team ''named'' Fractured Fairy Tales[[note]]in the English translation/dub only; the direct translation of the Japanese name, ''Uraotogi'', is "Reverse Bedtime Stories"[[/note]]. All of their members are based on characters from Japanese folktales. Reverse Urashima claims that they are fighting to get better endings for themselves, but he himself thinks that the stories are educational, and is thus willing to lose to Kurama. It turns out that he's not only lying about throwing the match, but the fairy tale origins of the team members may also be false. |
| 100 | [[/folder]] |
| 101 | |
| 102 | [[folder:Asian Animation]] |
| 103 | * ''Animation/HappyHeroes'': The whole point of the six-episode "The Fairy Tale Adventure" {{story arc}} from Season 4 is that Big M. and Little M. go into the fairy tale world to ruin the stories, and the Supermen must stop them. The children of Planet Xing are not amused by the ruined versions of the stories, needless to say. |
| 104 | -->'''Preschool teacher:''' ''[reading from a book to a bunch of children]'' "Once upon a time, there was an ugly duckling. Later, [[DownerEnding it turned into a roast duck]]."\ |
| 105 | ''[the children start crying]''\ |
| 106 | '''Preschool teacher:''' Why didn't it become a swan? ''[grabs another book next to her]'' We'll change books. ''[starts reading again, with the children's crying stopping as she does so]'' "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful duckling. Later, it turned into a bleached roast duck."\ |
| 107 | ''[the children start crying again]'' |
| 108 | [[/folder]] |
| 109 | |
| 110 | [[folder:Comedy]] |
| 111 | * [[PolishMedia Kabaret Potem]] has gained notoriety with an entire program of these. Included are: Cinderella (whose evil sister marries the prince, cause the shoe fits her); Little Red Riding Hood who gets eaten by the wolf, a little bit; Kay's song (TheSeventies style); a princess who loves a frog and a prince who kisses frogs, trying to find one that's actually an enchanted princess |
| 112 | [[/folder]] |
| 113 | |
| 114 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 115 | * ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'' does this. For starters, PrinceCharming is actually a scoundrel and total womanizer who's been married and divorced three times, and cheated on his first wife Snow White with ''her own sister'', Rose Red. TheBigBadWolf is a werewolf who did a HeelFaceTurn when he and the others were threatened by a common enemy, and although "Bigby" is still frightening, he proves to be [[spoiler:a sweet and loving husband to Snow White and father to their "cubs"]]. Cinderella is a secret agent, the three little pigs start a rebellion, Goldilocks is a gun-toting revolutionary who's sleeping with Baby Bear, and Snow White [[spoiler:splits Goldilocks' head open with an axe]]. |
| 116 | * ''ComicBook/MonicasGang'' usually has many comics that are parodies of fairy tales, and sometimes there are mutliple different parodies of the same tale. If [[HairTriggerTemper Monica]] or [[BigEater Maggy]] are playing the princesses, expect them to act as bratty as they usually are in canon, but of course [[DesignatedHero the story treats them as the heroines]]. Jimmy Five usually becomes the PrinceCharmless, and since most stories end with this character marrying the princess, he treats it as a FateWorseThanDeath, ''specially'' if the princess is Monica. |
| 117 | * ''ComicBook/NightmaresAndFairyTales'' loves this. Virtually every story is some sort of fairy tale variation, with twists. For example, Little Red Riding Hood has a love of wolves [[spoiler:and later turns out to be a werewolf herself]]. Cinderella's prince is a cruel man who she has no desire to marry and the stepmother [[spoiler:summons demons]]. Snow White [[spoiler:becomes a zombie after her stepmother rips her heart out and uses it to be beautiful]]. And Belle is a lesbian [[spoiler:who is beaten and locked in the basement (and presumably raped) on her religious father's orders before he finally hands her over to the Beast, who just so happens to be her lesbian-lover under a curse]]. |
| 118 | * In Issue #54 of ''ComicBook/TarotWitchOfTheBlackRose'', Raven finds herself skipping from fairy tale to fairy tale--in order, "Snow White", "The Little Mermaid", "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Cinderella". She proceeds to screw with the usual order of events and deliver feminine empowerment speeches... while stripping the girls naked and Gothing them up. Because to be a confident woman you have to show your tits and/or dress like a stripper. On the plus side, she inadvertently turns Red into [[VideoGame/{{Darkstalkers}} B.B. Hood]]. |
| 119 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Nodwick}}'' [[http://comic.nodwick.com/?p=1036 runs through a whole series of these]], all of which go OffTheRails very quickly. Partially, this is because [[DumbMuscle Yeagar]], [[DeadpanSnarker Artax]] and [[OnlySaneMan Nodwick]] are forced into the roles of the tales' main characters and begin breaking character [[spoiler:as they start building a resistance to the [[LotusEaterMachine mind-affecting spell affecting them]]]]. |
| 120 | * Fairly common in some early Creator/DCComics villains. A prominent example is the Franchise/{{Batman}} classic Scarecrow, whose backstory is pretty similar to Ichabod Crane's from ''Literature/TheLegendOfSleepyHollow'' (bookish, gangly, fearful kid who gets rejected by the local AlphaBitch and humiliated by the local JerkJock) but with a dark turn. |
| 121 | * The French comic ''ComicBook/{{Garulfo}}'' runs on this, starting with the titular hero, a frog who wants to become human because he idealizes mankind. The Princess is a SpoiledBrat, the Ogre is lonely [[spoiler:and never ate children]], and the dragon-hunting Paladin is horribly near-sighted. |
| 122 | [[/folder]] |
| 123 | |
| 124 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 125 | * ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': |
| 126 | ** [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] -- Hobbes is a predatory animal and Calvin often sees things from a tiger's point of view, so [[http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/02/02 inverting the ending]] makes it happier than they would have found the original version. |
| 127 | ** Calvin (and Hobbes) ''wrote'' their own called [[http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/12/07 "Goldilocks and the Three Tigers]] and Calvin requested that his dad read it. His dad was disgusted by the story and quit halfway through, disappointing both Calvin (who lamented that his dad didn't even look at the illustrations) and Hobbes (who complaint was "Now I'm all hungry"). |
| 128 | ** Ironically, that version of ''Literature/LittleRedRidingHood'' is actually closer to the ''original'' version that the [[{{Disneyfication}} standard version]], seeing as there was no hunter in the original story, and the wolf just plain ate her in the end. |
| 129 | * Often in ''ComicStrip/FrankAndErnest'', like the Hood family feud: Literature/{{Little Red Riding|Hood}} can't believe that Myth/{{Robin|Hood}} robbed Granma and gave it to the poor. |
| 130 | * ''ComicStrip/MadamAndEve'': Mother Anderson often tells these to Thandi, to the consternation of Gwen. Such as in [[http://www.madamandeve.co.za/cartoons/me007578.jpg this example.]] |
| 131 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Mutts}}'': Doozie decides to recreate ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' with Moochie, believing that the cat will become a prince if they'll dance together and fall in love. They dance dressed (in her imagination) as Belle and Beast, but she is disappointed to see that Moochie is still a cat. Later, he tells Earl that [[BeingHumanSucks he loves happy endings]]. |
| 132 | * In ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', Lucy retells "Literature/SnowWhite": she was having a horrible time sleeping until she got this apple from a witch to help, and then, just as she was settling down to a good night's sleep, this prince came and woke her up. |
| 133 | [[/folder]] |
| 134 | |
| 135 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 136 | * The world in ''Anime/TheCatReturns'''s AU fanfic ''Fanfic/ToKnowOneself'' is made of this trope combining with Folklore and myths. As the main character Haru/Bearskin travel, she met Literature/SnowWhite, [[Myth/RobinHood young!Robin and Marian]], Literature/{{Rapunzel}}, [[Myth/GreekMythology Medusa, Hercules]], Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast, etc... Also, her companion is Baron the cat who later becomes Literature/PussInBoots. This is not to mention that [[spoiler: Haru herself is the daughter of the princess from All Kinds of Fur and granddaughter of Cinderella]]. |
| 137 | * ''Fanfic/PinkieTales'' is a series of voiceover animations of Pinkie Pie retelling classic fairytales to Pound and Pumpkin Cake with her and her fellow characters from ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' filling the roles. Each story has an InteractiveNarrator, who constantly bickers and is annoyed with Pinkie reeking havoc by BreakingTheFourthWall and shifting characters and story elements to work to her own amusement. Changes to the stories include: one stepsister recognizes Literature/{{Cinderella}}, but is ignored by her family; the Big Bad Wolf wanting to eat apples rather than Literature/LittleRedRidingHood; the Wolf blowing down the houses of Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs due to them not meeting proper architectural standards; everybody ''but'' Literature/SleepingBeauty falling asleep; and Literature/{{Rapunzel}} becoming a rising supermodel and fashion designer hopeful. |
| 138 | * ''[[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/175137/trixie-white-and-the-seven-fillies Trixie White And The Seven Fillies]]'' is a retelling of Snow White, but with ponies. With the questionable casting choices of having the innocent Fluttershy as the evil queen and the egocentric Trixie as Snow White, as well as several other mixups. And a narrator who's repeatedly talking to the other characters and making fun of them, or lampshading the FridgeLogic of the source material. |
| 139 | * In the ''Fanfic/SkyholdAcademyYearbook'' installment ''The Memory Band'', [[VideoGame/DragonAgeII Hawke]] writes one of these called ''The Adventures of Dodo and Ick,'' in which characters based on Varric and [[VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition Dorian]] get sent on something of a ChainOfDeals through several different fairy tales to help their other friends resolve assorted issues. |
| 140 | * ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/26853349/chapters/65517889 What's Wrong With Being a Little Bad?]]'' takes various Creator/{{Disney}} fairy tales and replaces the villains with their counterparts in ''VideoGame/TwistedWonderland'', resulting in fairly different stories. [[WesternAnimation/AliceInWonderland Alice]] helps Riddle's friends break him out of the mindset his abusive mother drilled into him; Leona becomes something of a reluctant mentor to [[WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994 Simba]], who is inspired by him to try and end discrimination in his home; Azul ends up sympathizing with [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Ariel's]] desire to become human and gives her a better deal than she got in canon; WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} gets an offer to become Jamil's assistant so he can climb through the ranks and become someone worthy of Jasmine's hand in marriage; Vil trains [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs Snow White]] to one day take his place as the fairest in the land; [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} Megara]] ends up becoming the platonic Persephone to Idia's Hades (and it's noted that Idia never really paid attention to Hercules, outside of sending him a baby shower gift); and an uncursed [[WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty Aurora]] invites Malleus to her wedding as an apology for her parents driving him away (not realizing at the time he’d been secretly helping their kingdom). |
| 141 | [[/folder]] |
| 142 | |
| 143 | [[folder:Films -- Animated]] |
| 144 | * Despite most folks thinking of it as a return to form for Disney, ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' has some elements of this. For one thing, the kiss between the princess and the frog prince, instead of turning the frog back into a prince, turns the princess into a frog too because she isn't an actual princess. It should be noted that the movie isn't actually based on "The Frog Prince" fairy tale, but ''[[Literature/TalesOfTheFrogPrincess The Frog Princess]]'', a 2002 book by E.D. Baker that does a lot of the same deconstruction; the main change for the movie is Disney setting it in 1920s UsefulNotes/NewOrleans. |
| 145 | * ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'': It has many of the classic Disney elements; the {{Plucky|Girl}} [[WideEyedIdealist Idealist]] Princess who believes in LoveAtFirstSight, the [[AnIcePerson Powerful]] [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Sorceress]] who curses the land and/or protagonists, a RaceAgainstTheClock to save the princess (with TrueLovesKiss no less) and a PrinceCharming waiting in the wings. The main difference is, Elsa didn't curse the land on purpose; it's just a case of PowerIncontinence. Anna's naive belief in LoveAtFirstSight proves to be disastrous, as [[spoiler: Hans turns out to be the BigBad, and was manipulating her naivete to get the throne]]. Finally, the curse is ''not'' broken by TrueLovesKiss, but instead [[spoiler:a HeroicSacrifice, on Anna's part. We never find out if the kiss (from Kristoff) would have worked]]. |
| 146 | * Another Disney example, albeit as a short film, was ''WesternAnimation/ReduxRidingHood'' which is set after ''Little Red Riding Hood'' and features The Big Bad Wolf who, after being unable to cope with failing to catch Red, builds a time machine to help his past self succeed in that goal. Things only get worse for him and the multiple past selves he acquires throughout each attempt. |
| 147 | * ''WesternAnimation/GuillermoDelTorosPinocchio'': To start of the movie is set in the Fascist Italy and Pinocchio is meant to be a replacement for Geppetto’s dead son. The Cricket only becomes Pinocchio’s conscience for selfish reason (at first) [[spoiler: and spends most of the movie with Geppetto.]] The Fox and The Cat are replaced by a human circus master and his abused monkey sidekick, while Coachman is replaced by Fascist officer and Land of Toys with a ChildSoldier camp. [[spoiler: Most notably, Pinocchio never becomes or even expresses the desire to be “a real boy”, instead learning to embrace himself as he is.]] Oh, and Mussolini shows up. |
| 148 | * ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'', 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. The beginning says it all, really, starting with a generic fairy tale storybook that almost immediately gets used as toilet paper. The sequel ''WesternAnimation/Shrek2'' ups the ante by making the Fairy Godmother a villain as well, who is bound and determined to undo Shrek and Fiona's happy ending because [[FantasticRacism "ogres don't live happily ever after."]] [[spoiler:And we are sure that the fact that Prince Charming was her son did not sway her in the least.]] |
| 149 | ** The Shrek franchise and its spinoffs play with this concept as a whole for most of its characters. The character of Fiona is a parody of the tale of ''Literature/SleepingBeauty'', The FairyGodmother and PrinceCharming are stock tropes of old, ''Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}}'' is a major antagonist of the fourth film, and both the story of ''Literature/GoldilocksAndTheThreeBears'' and the nursery rhyme ''Little Jack Horner'' have their characters featured as an AntiVillain and a [[ItsAllAboutMe selfish villain]] respectively in the movie ''WesternAnimation/PussInBootsTheLastWish''. |
| 150 | ** However, ''The Last Wish'' also has the only subversion in the entire series: [[spoiler:Death is not only played dead seriously, but his pursuit of Puss for his hubris fits Death in fairy tales as a cautionary tale against vice.]] |
| 151 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Hoodwinked}}''. Mixed with {{Troperiffic}} AffectionateParody to some other genres, it's basically Literature/LittleRedRidingHood crossed over with ''Film/{{Rashomon}}'' elements and made into a cop drama. |
| 152 | %%* ''WesternAnimation/HappilyNEverAfter'' |
| 153 | * ''Animation/{{Hofeher}}'', a Hungarian animated film by Creator/PannoniaFilmStudio, is more or less a direct parody of ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs''. |
| 154 | * In the bonus section of the DVD of ''WesternAnimation/HomeOnTheRange'', Mrs. Calloway tries to tell the story of The Three Little Pigs, but everyone keeps interrupting the story. Maggie and Jeb eat the first and second pigs' houses, Gracie calls the third pig paranoid, Buck tries to take over the story, Audrey spoils the ending, Maggie adds a science fiction twist to the story, Buck tries to take over the story again by calling himself Buckzilla and even challenges the Big Bad Wolf to a fight. Needless to say, Mrs. Calloway has had enough and tries to tell them off, but the piglets love the changes. Even Mrs. Calloway has to admit it's pretty fun to add your own take on a story everyone's heard. |
| 155 | * ''WesternAnimation/ChickenLittle'' twists up the namesake fable by having the falling sky actually be a camouflage piece of a UFO and Chicken Little saving his hometown from an alien invasion. |
| 156 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicRiddle'', an Australian film features elements of fairytales including Literature/{{Cinderella}}, Literature/SnowWhite, Literature/TheUglyDuckling, Literature/LittleRedRidingHood, Literature/SleepingBeauty, Literature/{{Pinocchio}} or Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs. |
| 157 | * ''Animation/RedShoesAndTheSevenDwarfs'' applies this to the original ''Snow White'' tale. The titular character is a chubby, relatively plain-looking young woman who ends up in possession of a pair of shoes that make her look like a more conventional Disney princess; the dwarfs are a team of heroes who were cursed into their current form, and they need Red Shoes' help to break the curse. [[spoiler:The end credits also apply this to a couple other well-known fairy tales -- Arthur falls for a version of Little Red Riding Hood who turns into a werewolf under the full moon, and Hans awakens Sleeping Beauty completely by accident when she smells his cooking.]] |
| 158 | * ''WesternAnimation/Nimona2023'': The trailer opens with a story by Nimona about a princess in a tower who insults Nimona in her bird form, only for Nimona to set her on fire and destroy her kingdom. |
| 159 | [[/folder]] |
| 160 | |
| 161 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 162 | * ''Film/{{Enchanted}}'' spoofs and satirizes many common elements of Disney fairy tale films, notably subverting LoveAtFirstSight and TrueLovesKiss. The prince is stuck-up and rather dimwitted, SpontaneousChoreography occurs on the streets of New York, and when Giselle enlists "forest creatures" to clean Robert's apartment, they're [[AdoringThePests rats, pigeons, and cockroaches]]. When PrinceCharming is searching for Giselle, he knocks on an apartment door that is answered by a weary-looking pregnant woman with three small children [[note]]a CelebrityCameo by ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' voice actress Judy Kuhn[[/note]]. She glances at him with only mild surprise and deadpans, "Sorry. You're too late." |
| 163 | * ''Film/{{Maleficent}}'' deconstructed much of the traditional fairy tale tropes. The {{Fairy Godmother}}s, being fairies, have no experience raising a ''human'' baby and nearly get her killed. Repeatedly. LoveAtFirstSight and TrueLovesKiss [[spoiler:fail to break Aurora's curse, because you can't have true love with someone you've known for a day; what really breaks it is Maleficent's maternal love, also showing that love doesn't have to be romantic to be true]]. Charging a forest full of powerful, magical and (to the [[FantasticRacism humans]]) evil creatures gets you [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomped]]. |
| 164 | %%* ''Film/HanselAndGretelWitchHunters''. It's ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin as the title speaks for itself. |
| 165 | * ''Film/InTheCut'': Though this dark film is not a fairy tale itself, it is very much a [[DeconstructedTrope deconstruction]] of fairy-tale idealizations of romance and HappilyEverAfter myths. The engagement ring, long a symbol of romance and love, [[spoiler: is literally turned into a death sentence here, as it is part of the serial killer's MO]]. |
| 166 | * ''Film/ThePrincessBride'' is a story about a handsome prince who sets out to save his beautiful fiancée when she is kidnapped before their wedding. He finds her in the clutches of a pirate king, rescues her, and imprisons her captor. Alas, the prince is a scumbag, the princess is only marrying him because she must, and the pirate is her actual true love. Also, the kidnapping of the bride was planned (and since the pirate foiled it, the prince is plotting her ''murder''). Lastly, the hero saves his lady without even crossing swords with the villain. (They still manage to fit a climactic swordfight in, but it's between two members of the supporting cast). |
| 167 | * ''Film/TheFall''. Although a lot of fairy tale elements are played entirely straight. |
| 168 | * ''Film/IfYouDontStopItYoullGoBlind'' (an R-rated blackout sketch film) has Little Red Riding Hood get stopped by the Big Bad Wolf: |
| 169 | -->'''Wolf:''' I'm going to eat you!\ |
| 170 | '''LRRH:''' Eat eat EAT! Doesn't anyone fuck anymore?? |
| 171 | * Due to AdaptationExpansion, the live-action version of ''Film/HowTheGrinchStoleChristmas'' essentially becomes this to the original Dr. Seuss story, with the Grinch being a misunderstood, bitter loner who was ostracized by [[AdaptationalVillainy the Whos]] and [[FreudianExcuse hates Christmas for that reason]]. In the end, he's not the only one to learn the lesson that "Christmas doesn't come from a store." |
| 172 | * In ''Film/TheTeddyBears'' (1907), Goldilocks meets UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, who takes her bear problem into his own hands. |
| 173 | * ''Film/AboutTheLittleRedRidingHood'' is a ContinuationFic that at the same time deconstructs a lot from the original story – the hunter is a GloryHound who cares more about presenting himself as a hero than about the lives of people (or wolves), while the members of the wolf pack have different fleshed-out characters rather than being AlwaysChaoticEvil, are deeply sympathetic, [[spoiler:and ultimately decide against taking revenge on Little Red Riding Hood]]. |
| 174 | [[/folder]] |
| 175 | |
| 176 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 177 | * ''Literature/TheBookOfLostThings'' by Creator/JohnConnolly follows a boy named David as he enters a CrapsackWorld of warped fairy-tales managed by a failing FisherKing. While some are mostly harmless ([[Literature/SnowWhite the seven dwarves]] are court-ordered to protect Snow White [[ComedicSociopathy after their failed attempt to murder her]]), others are far more dangerous, such as the [[HalfHumanHybrid cannibalistic children]] of [[Literature/LittleRedRidingHood Red Riding Hood]] and a wolf, or [[WouldHurtAChild The Crooked Man]]. |
| 178 | * Creator/GregoryMaguire's ''Literature/ConfessionsOfAnUglyStepsister'', the stepsisters aren't wicked in the slightest. Ruth is slow-witted and Iris is quite practical and is the main character. The Cinderella character, Clara, is initially bratty but the three become good friends. While the stepmother is prone to greed (as is Clara's father), she is not evil so much as concerned about the well-being of her daughters and certain that Clara will ruin their chances to financially secure themselves. There are no magic elements. |
| 179 | * There's an entire genre of ''Literature/LandOfOz'' deconstructions and grimmifications known by many names. The ''Oz'' Wikia refers to it by its most well-known title, "[[http://oz.wikia.com/wiki/Alternate_Oz Alternate Oz]]", while this site calls it "DystopianOz". Examples include: |
| 180 | ** Gregory Maguire's ''Literature/{{Wicked}}'', the [[Theatre/{{Wicked}} musical adaptation]], and [[Literature/TheWickedYears the book's sequels]] tackle the Land of Oz, presenting the young Wicked Witch of the West as an AmbiguouslyEvil WellIntentionedExtremist rebelling against the tyrannical Wizard. |
| 181 | ** ''Literature/{{Was}}'' presents Baum as having been inspired by a "real life" girl he knew named Dorothy Gael. Unlike Dorothy Gale, Gael had a troubled childhood and grew into an unhappy woman. |
| 182 | %% * Gregory Maguire's ''Literature/MirrorMirror2003'' retells "Literature/SnowWhite". |
| 183 | * Simon Hawke's ''Literature/TheReluctantSorcerer'' trilogy is so directly inspired and informed by the original Fractured Fairy Tales that you can ''hear'' Edward Everett Horton playing the role of the Omniscient Narrator. |
| 184 | * The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/WitchesAbroad'' has the witches as 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. It also mentions a WickedWitch who, rather than [[BewitchedAmphibians turning people into frogs]] and [[Literature/HanselAndGretel having a house made of gingerbread]], turned people into ''gingerbread'' and had a house made of ''frogs''. |
| 185 | * The short story "The Glass Slip-up" by Louise Cooper (published in ''The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy'') is set after the events of "Literature/{{Cinderella}}", where we find out why the not-so-wicked stepmother kept her hidden away: Cinderella ("Rell") is a complete social disgrace with bad table manners, a love of raunchy jokes, a fancy for certain... odd practices in the royal bedroom, and many other disastrous details that make Prince Charming very determined to track down the Fairy Godmother so she can correct her mistake. |
| 186 | * Creator/RoaldDahl's ''Literature/RevoltingRhymes'' turns up on banned book lists for the [[{{Grimmification}} dark turns]] it steers classic fairy tales into, like Cinderella discovering her Prince Charming [[spoiler: is a sociopath who chops off women's heads at the slightest provocation]], or Goldilocks getting eaten by the Three Bears for breaking into their house. The teen-oriented ''Rhyme Stew'' has several more fractured retellings, though they tend to steer the stories in ''bawdier'' rather than bloodier directions. |
| 187 | * Creator/NeilGaiman is very fond of this trope: |
| 188 | ** ''Literature/{{Stardust}}'': Both straight-up and fractured; the hero is successful on his quest, but instead of winning the girl for whom he went questing, by the time his quest is over he's fallen for someone else. |
| 189 | ** The short story "Literature/SnowGlassApples" is a retelling of Snow White with the stepmother as the main heroine, who realizes her stepdaughter is [[OurVampiresAreDifferent not quite human]]. |
| 190 | ** "[[http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/The_Case_of_the_Four_and_Twenty_Blackbirds The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds]]" mashes up several nursery rhymes into a PrivateEyeMonologue as HardboiledDetective Jack Horner tries to solve the murder of Humpty Dumpty. |
| 191 | ** In ''Literature/TheSleeperAndTheSpindle'', a grown-up Snow White investigates Sleeping Beauty's castle, making use of her prior experience with evil sorceresses and enchanted sleep. There's a twist to Sleeping Beauty's curse: [[spoiler:the sleeping beauty in the castle is the sorceress, leaching the life force out of her surroundings to regain her youth and beauty, while the old woman Snow White encounters is the princess, cursed to stay awake and keep the sorceress from harm]]. |
| 192 | * The book ''Caperucita Roja y Otras Historias Perversas'' (Red Riding Hood and other Vicious Stories) of Triunfo Arciniegas, is all about this. |
| 193 | * This is the basic concept of Creator/MercedesLackey's ''Literature/TalesOfTheFiveHundredKingdoms'' series, in which the ambient magic in the land tries to make all fairy tales 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 so that it fits another tale better. |
| 194 | * ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Magic II'': ''The Cinders Case'' 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 "[[ExactWords 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. |
| 195 | * ''The Merry Spinster'' from Daniel M. Lavery has darker takes on such tales as The Little Mermaid in ''The Daughter Cells'' where instead of a standard mermaid, the creature is essentially a sponge or anemone person and has few humanoid characteristics - the creature also ends up slashing the Prince and his bride's throat and storing their souls to get their "eternity". Another one is ''The Rabbit'' where the Velveteen Rabbit is a vengeful sociopath that never forgets any slights (including the Boy temporarily losing interest in it) and becomes "real" by slowly parasiting the Boy's life force making it seem like he has an illness. |
| 196 | * The children's book ''Literature/TheStinkyCheeseMan and Other Fairly Stupid Tales'' presents a series of derailed stories that often get fractured [[BreakingTheFourthWall by the characters themselves]]. Examples include "Little Red Running Shorts" and "Cinderumplestiltskin." |
| 197 | * ''Literature/TheTrueStoryOfTheThreeLittlePigs'' by the same author as ''The Stinky Cheese Man'' retells the Three Little Pigs from the Big Bad Wolf's point of view. He claims to have been a NiceGuy who just wanted a cup of sugar from his neighbors, but he had a cold that caused him to blow the houses down whenever he sneezed. |
| 198 | * The ''Literature/PoliticallyCorrectBedtimeStories'' series by James Finn Garner satirically presents fairy tales as mangled by PoliticalOvercorrectness. In the first story, for instance, Literature/LittleRedRidingHood accuses the "woodchopper-person" of being sexist and speciesist for "assuming that womyn and wolves can’t solve their own problems without a man's help!" |
| 199 | * ''Literature/HowlsMovingCastle,'' for the most part. While not necessarily a "fairy tale" overall, it does {{subvert|edTrope}}, {{lampshade|Hanging}}, and otherwise mess with many a fairy-tale trope. |
| 200 | * The short stories in Andrzej Sapkowski's earlier ''Literature/TheWitcher''. 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]]. |
| 201 | * In ''Beauty'' by Creator/SheriSTepper, based on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, Beauty [[spoiler: tricks her half sister into being pricked by the magical spindle. Once escaping the sleeping curse, Beauty travels through different eras in history and unwittingly causes other fairy tales to happen]]. The book's version of ''Snow White'' is told almost "straight"-- except for the character motivation. The prince is clearly insane, while Snow White is essentially brain-dead: "Tell me, why did you accept the old woman's apple after we particularly told you not to take any food from strangers?" "Because it looked good and I was hungry." |
| 202 | * In ''The Storyteller'' by Saki, a man on a train is being annoyed by some little children whose aunt can't keep them quiet by telling them boring normal stories, so he tells them one with a SpaceWhaleAesop [[spoiler:(don't be too well-behaved, or you'll be awarded medals that will clink against each other at an inopportune time, leading you to be eaten by a hungry wolf)]]. |
| 203 | * The ''Literature/EnchantedForestChronicles'' is full of these. The first book, for example, starts with a princess running away from home in order to work for a dragon. |
| 204 | * ''The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig'', where the wolves are the ones constructing houses, and the pig the one knocking them down. It's a case of SequelEscalation as the first house is made of bricks, the second of concrete, and the third of [[RuleOfThree barbed wire, steel plates, and heavy metal padlocks]]. |
| 205 | * Creator/TanithLee has written many of these. One of her anthologies ''Red as Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer'' is a collection of fairy tale retellings, most of them much darker, one with a science fiction twist. The Snow White retelling has [[GoodWitchVersusBadWitch Snow as an evil sorceress while the Stepmother is a good witch]] trying to stop her evil and finally kills Snow with an apple that has a Eucharist hidden in it. The Beauty and the Beast retelling has the Beast as the last member of its alien species except that sometimes the spirits of these aliens are reincarnated as humans and a female reincarnation is genetically compatible enough to have children with the Beast. |
| 206 | * In Creator/JimCHines' ''[[Literature/ThePrincessSeries The Stepsister Scheme]]'' Cinderella's stepsisters kidnap her Prince and she, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White (who are nothing like one would expect) have to go save him. |
| 207 | * In Creator/JohnCWright's ''[[Literature/TheGoldenOecumene The Golden Age]]'', Phaethon explains the "true" myth of Phaethon: obviously the claim that he burned the earth while riding the chariot of the sun, so that Jupiter had to strike him down with a thunderbolt, was false, because the earth had not been burned up, and so the likely story was that Jupiter had struck him down to ensure that mortals would not succeed at it, and the moral is that beings who think they are gods should not be allowed near thunderbolts. |
| 208 | * In ''The Golden Transcedence'', Pandora explains her own name: it's not because of her [[ConstantlyCurious spate of questions]] or her being a plague, but because what Pandora really received was foresight, which allowed women to foresee all the plagues that would harm their children, but also to avert them, which gave them hope. |
| 209 | * In Creator/AaronAllston's ''Literature/GalateaIn2D'', the characters Red and Penny are [[ArtInitiatesLife a painting of Achilles and Pentheselia]], but they do not match the myth and are indeed a BattleCouple. Which means that he didn't kill her and (for in-universe {{Squick}}) [[spoiler:didn't rape her corpse]]. |
| 210 | * For that matter, GRRM's, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' sometimes strayed into fairy tales that are exactly as twisted as you'd expect in Westeros. Like the story of Falia Flowers, a bastard girl whose family forced her to do chores... until she was swept off her feet by a brutal pirate king who took her as a lover and forced said family to wait on his crew in the nude. Cersei Lannister also has quite a lot in common with Snow White's stepmother, and gets back at her "Snow White" in a deeply disturbing way. |
| 211 | * Since it's by the author of ''Literature/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: magic mirror]] all along. And the story is actually ''set'' in a country where people sing most of the time. |
| 212 | * Angela Carter's ''Literature/TheBloodyChamber'' is a collection of short fantasy stories for adults based on reinterpreting and subverting common fairytale themes - often based on the moral and adult subtext of the original itself, in order to pick apart their gender stereotypes and social ideas. Enter a Little Red Riding Hood who ends up "knowing" the wolf after he's killed her grandmother; a Snow White who is created as a product of the father's desires, dies at the prick of a rose's thorn and is subsequently deflowered by him; a Beauty who finds that she is far more comfortable becoming a Beast rather than for her Beast to become a human... fascinating, if slightly disturbing, reading. For the intrigued, it can be found online [[http://www.angelfire.com/crazy4/lesadoreyl/carter_bloody_chamber.html here]]: though the experience is undoubtedly better when it is read in physical form. |
| 213 | * ''Literature/{{Melisande}}: or, Long and Short Division'' by E Nesbit is a highly inventive and somewhat tongue-in-cheek retelling of "Literature/{{Rapunzel}}", or is it "Literature/SleepingBeauty"? Just to start, the king knows better than to throw a christening party that will inevitably leave one fairy out and piss her off, but it doesn't stop the princess from being cursed to be bald. Fortunately, the king has a spare wish from his fairy godmother, but the princess's careless wish for golden hair that will grow faster the more it's cut leads to predictable problems, and it takes several attempts and the logic of a wise prince to make her hair stop growing without making ''her'' [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever grow into a giant]] (ItMakesSenseInContext; read [[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/rapunzel/shortstories/melisande.html the online tale]] for the full story!). |
| 214 | * ''Twice Upon a Time'' re-tells "Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}}" from the point-of view of the girl's father, who gets into tax-trouble, and all the "PrinceCharming gets the girl" stories from the point of view of the prince. He eventually turns into the [[Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast Beast]], jaded and nearly insane, and ends up with Beauty because her pets don't sing (She's only got the horse, silent as the grave, by the way), she doesn't do fancy fixtures (Literature/{{Cinderella}}, who drained the treasury), have a blood/ sharp stuff fetish (Literature/SleepingBeauty, whose "thing" got way out of hand), or like groupsex (Literature/SnowWhite, whom he executed for cheating-with all seven dwarves). Literature/HanselAndGretel have a different ending, they get adopted by Rumpelstiltskin and his wife. |
| 215 | * Several of Creator/JamesThurber's ''Fables for Our Time'' start out as normal fairy tales or Literature/AesopsFables, but then veer into more cynical or absurdist territory. His version of Literature/LittleRedRidingHood, for instance, ends when the little girl, recognizing that "even in a nightcap a wolf does not look like your grandmother any more than the Metro Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge," produces a handgun and shoots the wolf dead. ''"Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be."'' |
| 216 | * ''The Rumpelstiltskin Problem'' is a collection of short stories that aim to correct the FridgeLogic and {{Plot Hole}}s of the [[Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}} original fairy tale]] (why did the king believe so readily that a poor miller's daughter can make gold out of straw at will? Why did Rumpelstiltskin agree to spin straw into gold for a ridiculously small payment for the first two days? Wouldn't marriage to a king who threatened to kill you if you didn't make enough gold for him be a tad problematic? etc). The twists vary with each retelling: one of them has Rumpelstiltskin as the true hero who the miller's daughter falls in love with and eventually runs away from her unhappy marriage with the king to be with him, for example. |
| 217 | * In Creator/KateDiCamillo's ''Literature/TheMiraculousJourneyOfEdwardTulane'', a character tells a story where the princess, as an animal, ends up killed and stewed because she was unloving. |
| 218 | * The anthology ''My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me'' is a book filled with stories based on screwed-up fairy tales. It includes short stories by Creator/NeilGaiman and Joyce Carol Oates, and a brilliant retelling of "Donkeyskin" by Aimee Bender. |
| 219 | * The novel ''Snow White'' by Daniel Barthelme is an all but unrecognizable SettingUpdate of the fairy tale written in a stream-of-consciousness sort of style designed to irritate the reader. |
| 220 | * ''Literature/TheLunarChronicles'' by Marissa Meyer is a retelling of several classic {{fairy tale}}s in the CrapsaccharineWorld of the distant future. Each book in the series is a take of a different fairy tale: |
| 221 | ** ''Cinder'': A retelling of Cinderella. In it, Linh Cinder is a cyborg and Prince Kai (Prince Charming) is the prince of the Eastern Commonwealth (aka east Asia). In this retelling, Prince Kai is actually charming as opposed to being PrinceCharmless like in many others. |
| 222 | ** ''Scarlet'': A retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, where Scarlet (Red Riding Hood) is a French farm girl who meets with an enigmatic street fighter named [[TheBigBadWolf Wolf]] and enlists his help in a search for her kidnapped grandmother. [[spoiler:Despite his name, Wolf ultimately plays the role of the Huntsman, saving Scarlet from the real Big Bad Wolf, [[CainAndAbel his little brother]]]]. |
| 223 | ** ''Cress'': A retelling of Rapunzel. Rapunzel is cast as Cress, a young hacker trapped in a satellite (rather than a tower) by her abusive guardian, and is rescued by LovableRogue Carswell Thorne, who plays the role of the prince. [[spoiler:[[MeaningfulName Thorne]] even goes blind like the prince in Rapunzel, though as a result of a traumatic brain injury rather than falling into a thorny bush]]. |
| 224 | ** ''Winter'': A retelling of Snow White. Winter takes the role of Snow White, a beautiful young woman whose life is threatened by a jealous queen, in this case the BigBad of the series and her own WickedStepmother, Queen Levana. Her [[ChildhoodFriendRomance childhood friend]] and [[BodyguardCrush personal guard]] Jacin Clay plays the roles of [[CompositeCharacter the Huntsman and the Prince]], [[spoiler:being ordered by Levana to kill Winter and faking her death, and then reviving her when she is put into a coma after being poisoned by Levana]]. |
| 225 | * ''[[http://maderr.com/?page_id=584 Deceived]]'' is a loose retelling of "Cinderella" that not only [[QueerRomance turns the "Cinderella" male]] but depicts the prince as a [[PrinceCharmless lazy, spoiled womanizer]] who the Cinderella most definitely does ''not'' fall in LoveAtFirstSight with and attends the MasqueradeBall solely to seduce him and humiliate him afterward. Things still end quite happily though, after a good dose of BecomingTheMask and SlapSlapKiss. |
| 226 | * In Jessica Day George's ''Princess of Glass'', Cinderella is a FallenPrincess and SpoiledBrat desperate to regain her former wealth and status, her fairy godmother an evil witch who cons her into making a DealWithTheDevil, and the true heroine one of the princesses from the "Literature/TheTwelveDancingPrincesses" tale who's grown to hate dancing after her traumatic experience from ''that'' tale but finds herself forced to do so to save the man she loves. |
| 227 | * Creator/EDBaker's ''Literature/TheWideAwakePrincess''. Perhaps most obvious in that [[ThresholdGuardians the old woman who asks Annie for food]] neither blesses nor {{curse}}s her; she gets cursed herself for not appreciating what Annie hands over. |
| 228 | * In Creator/TomHolt's ''Snow White and the Seven Samurai'', a cyberspace fairy-tale land is literally fractured by three mischievous kids who mess with the Wicked Queen's magic mirror, resulting in such chaos as the Three Little Pigs building a heavily-armed concrete bunker, which turns out to be useless when the Big Bad Wolf [[ForcedTransformation turns into a frog]]. |
| 229 | * ''Literature/ThePaperBagPrincess'' reverses the "hero rescues girl" story. After a dragon steals Prince Ronald, Princess Elizabeth (who is forced to wear a paper bag because the dragon destroyed all her clothes) sets out to save him. She does by appealing to the dragon's vanity, challenging it to fly around the world twice, which tires it out and lets her sneak past it. However, Ronald turns out to be an UngratefulBastard who tells her to return when she looks more like a princess. As such, she decides she's better off without him. |
| 230 | * The "Literature/MythOMania" series does this to Myth/ClassicalMythology. The narrator of these stories is Hades, who claims that Zeus falsified the ancient Greek myths to make himself look good. Hades is presenting the (supposedly) ''real'' stories of ancient gods and heroes. |
| 231 | * ''Sleeping Ugly'' by Creator/JaneYolen deconstructs the fairy tale by having the prince kiss an unattractive girl first as practice before waking up the beautiful (but AlphaBitch-y) princess, only for him to fall in love with the plain girl based on her kind personality. |
| 232 | * Instead of the standard Knight rescues Damsel from Dragon, in ''Literature/DragonInDistress'', the Knight has to rescue the Dragon from the Damsel! |
| 233 | * ''Rump'' is the story wherein Rumpelstiltskin's mother died before naming him in a world where names have power and so goes only by Rump and he is cursed with his Gold Spinning power to be forced to accept any payment offered for the task. He didn't even ask for the baby. The miller's daughter just assumed. |
| 234 | * In ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', the NurseryRhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" is ''de''fractured by way of ExternalRetcon. When tavern patrons in Bree ask Frodo for a song, he sings "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late". The narration explains that Bilbo wrote the song, but "only a few words of it are now, as a rule, remembered." In this longer version, every element that is complete nonsense in the nursery rhyme gets explanation and context. Because this kind of deadpan humour is a little unusual for ''The Lord of the Rings'', and because of Tokien's scholarly reputation, some readers are left confused as to which is the true original version. |
| 235 | * Literature/TheSchoolForGoodAndEvil took place in a world where children of Good and Evil are studying for 3 years before going on their fairy tail. One of main girl's 3 roommates is a descendant from Gaston (Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast). |
| 236 | * Babette Cole's ''Literature/PrinceCinders'' Gender Flips Cinderella and makes Cinders a spotty skinny fellow, who is turned into a swimsuit-clad gorilla by an IneptMage of a fairy before losing his trousers at the royal disco. |
| 237 | * ''Literature/OctoberDaye'' is full of fractured fairy tales. The most notable are |
| 238 | ** Snow White is not the hero, [[TheSociopath she's the wicked witch, fairy, and stepmother]]. [[spoiler: She's Firstborn and her special gift is she's ''very'' hard to kill, even compared to other Firstborn. [[OnlyMostlyDead People think they've killed her but she's just sleeping]].]] |
| 239 | ** The [[Literature/TheLittleMermaid Sea Witch, a.k.a. the Luidaeg]], [[spoiler:a.k.a. Antigone of Albany, a.k.a. Myth/TheLadyOfTheLake]], is exactly the person in the stories, but she only did it because they asked [[spoiler:and because her aforementioned step-sister (and step-mother, Titania) cursed her to be this way]]. |
| 240 | * Literature/{{Indexing}} is themed around an agency dealing with faery tales in the modern day and staffed by faery tale characters who are not currently following their [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality Narrative]] because they tend to be somewhat resistant to [[CapitalLettersAreMagic Narrative]] influence. Defying their Narrative is a constant battle and almost impossible to do permanent [[spoiler:short of sex reassignment surgery]]. |
| 241 | * ''Kill the Farm Boy'' manages to combine three different fairy tales (including one of the Disney spins on them) as part of its backstory. After a witch fails to be invited to a noble girl's birthday party (she was, actually, but didn't get the mail), she casts a curse that will result in [[Literature/SleepingBeauty her pricking her finger on a rose and dying]]; though the Earl bans all roses, the court bard (who didn't get the memo) gives her one she finds and the castle falls into slumber, complete with giant thorns. Likewise, [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast the rose becomes a magical heart of the castle]] and the still-awake bard becomes a Beast--specifically, an adorable anthropomorphic bunny girl. Finally, after sleeping so long, the sleeping lady's hair (all over her body) has grown long enough that [[Literature/{{Rapunzel}} a braid of it can be used as a rope to enter the tower]]. Of course, the book [[DeconstructorFleet subverts every fantasy trope known to man]]. |
| 242 | * This is the premise of the ''Literature/NurseryCrime'' series. In the books, characters from nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and other works in the oral tradition are real and live in the modern world. The events of these stories play out in the books, but are treated as crimes investigated by the police. Most of the nursery stories roughly have the same outcome, but with humorous and modern twists. The first book details the murder of Humpty Dumpty, and the second book weaves the stories of Goldilocks and the Gingerbreadman into a gritty crime thriller. |
| 243 | * A chapter book based on the ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'' animated series, ''Raven's Secret'', saw the Teen Titans get trapped in a fractured fairytale world thanks to a combination of Raven and Jinx's powers hitting a book Raven was reading at the time. Starfire became a Fairy Godmother-type character, Cyborg was stuck in the role of [[Literature/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio Pinocchio]], Beast Boy was Literature/TheFrogPrince, Robin was trapped in a golden goose egg at the top of [[Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk a giant beanstalk]], and Raven had to locate and save them all while trying to remember what her catchphrase incantation was (it was the key to getting them out, but she got hit with LaserGuidedAmnesia). |
| 244 | * PlayedForDrama in the novel ''Literature/BriarRose'' by Creator/JaneYolen. Gemma's retelling of Literature/SleepingBeauty breaks from the original in several key points, leading her granddaughter Becca to investigate what happened in Gemma's past that gave her the idea to change the story. Turns out the reality was [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust even more disturbing than fiction]]. |
| 245 | * Ironically, if you were to tell the oldest versions of fairy tales today, they'd come off as fractured. For example, in one of the original tellings of Snow White: she wasn't asleep, she was dead; she wasn't awakened, but stayed dead; the king who found her didn't ''kiss'' her; her corpse had the king's children. Cinderella's step-sisters often mutilated themselves in their desperate greed, and get ready to be shocked by the violent anti-Semitism everywhere. |
| 246 | * ''Literature/SpinningSilver'' features a retelling and deconstruction of Rumpelstiltskin. In Miryem's world, the story is that a Jewish moneylender gave a woman jewels to help her marry, but she wanted to keep them, so she rallied a mob to kill him. The other people in the town [[DeliberateValuesDissonance take it as a lesson that Jews are untrustworthy]], while Miryem sees it as someone refusing to pay what they owe. Miryem herself takes on Rumpelstiltskin traits when she successfully turns silver to gold through good business deals, forces the townspeople to pay their debts to her family, and demands a man's daughter as payment for his debt, but really to save her from her father's abuse. |
| 247 | * ''Literature/TatuAndPatu'': "Tatu and Patu's Weird Sleep Book" features two: "The world's most boring bedtime story", called "Silver Hair and Six Bears" that ends with Silver Hair leaving before the bears even arrive, and "The Story of the Prince who Couldn't Sleep" which is a version of "Princess and the Pea" that has the prince stay awake because he's constantly worried and not even noticing the king dressed as a pea under his mattresses. |
| 248 | * ''Literature/{{Momotaro}}'' has been subject to this. As early as 1918 within Japan, shifting societal views began looking at the story from different angles where the oni were victims of random violence. While Momotaro is still a beloved folk tale, there are some adaptations of the story where Momotaro is rewritten as simply speaking to the oni and talking them down rather than outright attacking or killing the oni. These stories try to [[NotEvilJustMisunderstood imply the oni aren't bad]], and either need to be told their actions are causing strife, or Momotaro realizes they aren't actually hurting anybody and are left alone. These versions have not overtaken the original tale by any means, but have become influential towards other media and have managed to give the story an aesop about not judging by appearances and looking for diplomatic solutions, or about how history is WrittenByTheWinners who may make themselves look better than they actually were. Some versions, albeit more rare, even rewrite the story implying Momotaro and his companions were AntiVillain bandits (and even some further rewrites drop the "anti" and just make them [[VillainProtagonist villains]]). Despite these rewrites, the original tale is still considered an important part of Japanese folklore, and is commonly known to grade-school children. |
| 249 | [[/folder]] |
| 250 | |
| 251 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 252 | * ''Creator/MontyPython'': FairyTale sketch, featured in one of their German TV specials and on an album. Ya de buckety, rum ting fadoo... [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKbWdgW6sD8 Their version]] of "Literature/LittleRedRidingHood"... The girl looks nasty and eats the food for her Grandma on her way. The vicious bad wolf looks as the most adorable thing ever. And so on and so forth. |
| 253 | * A famous episode of ''Series/TheMonkees'', "Fairy Tale", plays with this trope with many a humorous twist, including Creator/MichaelNesmith [[{{Crossdresser}} in drag]], playing a hilariously obnoxious princess. |
| 254 | * The miniseries ''Series/The10thKingdom'' places a couple of contemporary New Yorkers into a world where all the fairy tales took place centuries before, and plays fast and loose with fairy tale tropes. An interesting variation in that the New Yorkers are familiar with the modern versions, but it's the darker Grimm versions that actually happened in this universe. This leads to natives having to explain the differences to them and the audience. |
| 255 | * The final episode of ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'' retold "Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs" as a [[DarkerAndEdgier bloody tale]] where the wolf messily eats the first two pigs, then frames the third for the murder, resulting in a trial in a KangarooCourt. |
| 256 | %% * ''Series/TheGoodies and the Beanstalk'': "Based on the traditional fairy tale ... 'Literature/SnowWhite'." |
| 257 | * The fairy tales in ''Series/OnceUponATime'' are quite fractured. For example, Literature/SnowWhite was a forest bandit who met PrinceCharming by robbing his carriage, [[Literature/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio Jiminy Cricket]] was a man [[{{Animorphism}} turned into a cricket]] to serve as ''Geppetto's'' guide, Literature/{{Cinderella}} made a DealWithTheDevil to go to her ball, and Literature/LittleRedRidingHood is unknowingly a werewolf that terrorizes her village on full moons. The chief point of fracture seems to be Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}}, who in this continuity is a major BadSamaritan and who has so far appeared in nearly every fairy tale portrayed to change either its backstory or its ending, to the point where he [[HijackedByGanon ends up]] [[CompositeCharacter becoming]] [[spoiler:[[Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast the Beast]] and [[Literature/PeterPan the Crocodile]]]]. |
| 258 | * Pretty much the premise of ''Grimm''. Though this show utilises some of the lesser known Grimms Fairy Tales, in contrast to ''Once Upon A Time'' which goes for the more famous ones. |
| 259 | * The ''{{Series/Charmed|1998}}'' episode "Happily Ever After" uses this trope. Fairy tales are actually re-tellings of ancient battles between Good and Evil - and a WickedWitch seeks to use them to destroy the Charmed Ones. Paige eats Snow White's poisoned apple, Phoebe is turned into a pumpkin by putting on Cinderella's glass slippers and Piper is nearly eaten by a shape-shifting wolf. |
| 260 | * ''{{Series/SCTV}}'' - on the kiddie show "Mrs. Falbo's Tiny Town", guest G. Gordon Liddy (Dave Thomas) plays Goldilocks in a little story that focuses on the use of firearms when breaking into a strange house. |
| 261 | * ''Series/ElChapulinColorado'' did a few of these, the most notable having been [[Literature/SnowWhite "Blancanieves y los Siete Churinchurinfunflais".]] |
| 262 | * ''Series/TobyTerrierAndHisVideoPals'''s rendition of The Three Little Pigs goes off-the-rails when the third little pig builds his house out of aluminum siding. Then, when he builds it out of bricks like he's supposed to, he doesn't use mortar and the wolf blows the house away. Luckily, the three pigs then blow the wolf away. |
| 263 | * The ''Series/YediYuz'' episode "Hayatın Musikisi" loosely adapts plot points from Literature/{{Cinderella}}, only to subvert them at the climax. A young woman, who is an outcast among her peers, receives help from a mystical figure, who gives her a seemingly magical solution to her problems. The only difference is that her "fairy godfather" is actually a con artist, the "magic spell" is simply the PlaceboEffect at work, and the "ball" was never worth attending in the first place. She does end up getting her "prince", however: he's the only person at the "ball" who accepts her for whom she really is. |
| 264 | * The children's show ''The Toy Castle'' did a Cinderella episode, with the Ballerina as the titular character, the Soldier as the prince, the Sailor as stepsister #1 and the fairy godmother, and the Strongman as stepsister #2. While it's a fairly straight retelling for the most part, the Strongman was upset with his role and retaliated when he could with PetTheDog moments (throwing his dirty socks at the other stepsister instead of Cinderella, leaving Cinderella his pet cat for company when he leaves to go to the ball, and helping the prince identify Cinderella as the one he danced with). He also shows up as a "pumpkin taxi service" and gets into an argument with the fairy godmother over who's taking Cinderella to the ball (she decides to go on foot, figuring their argument wouldn't end anytime soon). |
| 265 | [[/folder]] |
| 266 | |
| 267 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 268 | * The first part of Cole Porter's song "Two Little Babes in the Wood" is Creator/HansChristianAndersen's fairy tale played straight. The second part, "for the tired businessman," has the orphaned girls go from RagsToRiches and move to New York. |
| 269 | * The music video of Kanon Wakeshima's "Lolitawork Libretto ~Storytelling by solita~" features the J-Pop singer running around as in a storybook populated by living cut-outs from old illustration and basically messing around with various fairytales, such as cutting down Rapunzel's tower with a pair of giant scissors, turning the wolf chasing after pigs into a domesticated cat, shrinking Cinderella's glass slipper and waking up Sleeping Beauty/Snow White with an alarm clock. Also features other random shenanigans often associated with fairy tales like playing cards, giant fauna, wild animals willing to listen to a cello performance, gothic lolita clothing (which is a standard for Kanon, anyway) and ticking clocks. |
| 270 | * Music/{{Paramore}}'s song Brick by Boring Brick is about a naive little girl who lives in a fairy tale-and the narrator's trying to pull her out into the real world. |
| 271 | * There's a song by Green Jelly called "Three Little Pigs", a twisted, modern version of [[Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs the story]] about the pigs taking safety in shelters while trying to protect themselves from TheBigBadWolf... and then they call Franchise/{{Rambo}} near the end of the song. Also, the music video for the song is a claymation video, with a scene of the band with puppets for a few seconds. |
| 272 | * Speaking of "Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs", Music/InsaneClownPosse completely fracture the story in the rap song "Piggie Pie", about [[PayEvilUntoEvil hunting down]] "piggies" (crooked/evil/racist cops whose houses are made of wood, bricks, and gold, rather than straw, sticks and bricks) in order to make a "piggie pie". |
| 273 | * The Music/OingoBoingo song "Cinderella Undercover": |
| 274 | -->''The cartoon animals on Old [=McDonald=]'s farm\ |
| 275 | Are nodding off in hotel rooms with needles in their arms\ |
| 276 | The seven dwarves, ha!, there's only four alive today\ |
| 277 | Cinderella's working for the CIA'' |
| 278 | * ''Music/EvilliousChronicles'': The story of Hansel and Gretel is fractured in the song "Abandoned on a Moonlit Night", where the twins abandoned in the woods--Hansel and Gretel--are able to find their way to the witch's house and defeat the witch and her henchmen immediately -- [[spoiler:the witch and henchmen who were actually the parents who abandoned them in the first place.]] The franchise as a whole makes a habit of drawing on several classic fairy-tales and their archetypes with its songs. |
| 279 | * Laura Janssen's song 'Wicked World' is about this. She alludes to the Big Bad Wolf and the WickedWitch not being that bad, Red Riding Hood and Jack (as in Jack and Jill) being TheTease. The music video's setting is a bar full of fairy tale characters. Alice takes ecstasy, Tinkerbell and Dorothy get into a CatFight, Belle and Cinderella fight over a prince, Hansel and Gretel are implied to be an incestuous couple and Sleeping Beauty is passed out at the bar. |
| 280 | * ''Pied Piper'' by Heather Dale is a retelling of ''Literature/ThePiedPiperOfHamelin''... in which the children ask the Pied Piper to take them away and come up with the whole plot. |
| 281 | * Music/{{BIGMAMA}} has a couple songs with this theme: |
| 282 | ** In "Keisandakai Cinderella" ("Calculating Cinderella"), the Cinderella manipulates everything to turn out in her favor; she wears the glass slipper even though it makes her foot bleed and cooks and eats her pumpkin carriage. Her ambition and cunning impress the prince, and he ends up falling for her anyway. |
| 283 | ** In "Nidonesuru Nemureru Mori no Bijou" ("Sleeping Beauty Goes Back to Sleep") the prince finds Sleeping Beauty and kisses her, but when she doesn't wake up, he wonders if she's dead. Turns out, she did wake up, peeked at the schmuck that interrupted her sleep, decided he wasn't her type, and feigned sleep until he left her alone. |
| 284 | * ''Cendrillon'' by Hatsune Miku twists the classic Cinderella story, by making Cinderella an assassin sent to kill the prince by her fairy godmother, but after falling in love with him, doesn't want to go through with it. Different interpretations vary on whether she actually goes through with the murder or not. |
| 285 | * ''Cinderella: Another Story'' by Rin and Len Kagamine features Cinderella being turned into a cat for not leaving at midnight, leaving the prince heartbroken. While she continues to watch over the prince in her cat form, they're eternally separated. |
| 286 | * The ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' album ''Arthur's Really Rockin' Music Mix'' includes the track "Goldilocks and the Bears Trio (As Told by Sue Ellen)," which is a twisted version of the ''Literature/{{Goldilocks}}'' tale which includes TheBigBadWolf as a part of the plot (he's a musician.) |
| 287 | * Discussed in the Gabby Sophia song "fairytales", where she applies AlternativeCharacterInterpretation to various fairy tales -- for example, she wonders if Literature/TheLittleMermaid stole her voice from someone else before the sea witch took it, and if Prince Charming was the one who poisoned Literature/SleepingBeauty because she rejected him. |
| 288 | * Music/ElioELeStorieTese's "Burattino senza fichi"/"Puppet on a Swing" is a retelling of Pinocchio where he is tired of his BarbieDollAnatomy and asks Geppetto to give him a wooden member. Geppetto complies and so he indulges in all the vices like getting horny about the Blue Fairy, picking up lots of girls at the club, jerking off and ejaculating sawdust, blackmailing the Fox and Cat and other weird stuff. |
| 289 | * Music/TwoLiveCrew's "Dirty Nursery Rhymes" takes well-known rhymes like "Jack and Jill" and fairy tales like Rapunzel, and [[IntercourseWithYou rewrites them to be far more sexual]]. |
| 290 | [[/folder]] |
| 291 | |
| 292 | [[folder:Puppet Shows]] |
| 293 | * ''Series/SesameStreet'': |
| 294 | ** Kermit's News Flashes tended to be these. For example: |
| 295 | *** TrueLovesKiss turns Sleeping Beauty into a frog who goes off with Kermit. |
| 296 | *** TrueLovesKiss makes Prince Charming fall asleep. |
| 297 | *** Prince Charming breaks Cinderella's glass slipper. |
| 298 | *** The glass slipper fits Kermit. |
| 299 | *** Rapunzel "lets down her hair" by letting it fall off her head. |
| 300 | *** Little Miss Muffet sits on a water bed, eats granola and, unlike Kermit, isn't scared of spiders. |
| 301 | *** The king's horses (and cow) and men ''do'' put Humpty Dumpty together again, then Kermit slaps him on the back and [[ShaggyDogStory he falls back off the wall]]. |
| 302 | ** In Episode 0500, Gordon is about to tell some kids a story, when S.A.M. the Robot comes by, offering to do it himself. S.A.M.'s story features elements from different fairy tales, such as ''Little Red Riding Hood'', ''Jack and the Beanstalk'', ''Hansel and Gretel'', ''Goldilocks and the Three Bears'', ''Rumpelstiltskin'', and ''Cinderella''. After Gordon corrects S.A.M., the robot admits that for the first time, he made a mistake... [[ComicallyMissingThePoint he neglected to tell the part where the Seven Dwarfs slid down the beanstalk]]. |
| 303 | * The educational special ''The Muppets on Puppets'' includes a skit where Rowlf attempts to narrate a fairy tale for the other Muppets to act out, but the story keeps getting changed on him. Cinderella's stepmother sends her to take a basket of goodies to her granny, and in the middle of the wood she meets Hansel, who is taking Gretel the cow to market... |
| 304 | * ''Series/TheMuppetShow'' had a few sketches based around fairy tales and folk tales. One such notable sketch has Sam the Eagle telling the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper, only after winter arrives, [[spoiler:the grasshopper drove his sports car to Florida and the ant got stepped on.]] |
| 305 | * On ''Series/BearInTheBigBlueHouse'', Shadow's stories are often based on traditional [[FairyTale fairy tales]] or NurseryRhymes, but with various pop-culture references, or characters that are more hip or off-the-wall than their traditional fairy-tale counterparts. For example, in the story of ''[[NurseryRhyme Little Bo Peep]]'', Little Bo Peep dials up a "lost sheep hotline" and a criminal crook is at first shown during the line "And then she took up her little crook." |
| 306 | [[/folder]] |
| 307 | |
| 308 | [[folder:Radio]] |
| 309 | * One episode of ''Radio/JohnFinnemoresSouvenirProgramme'' features a version of ''Snow White'' when the Evil Queen's chancellor realises there are much more interesting applications of a magic mirror than asking who the fairest is, including espionage and insider trading. He'd have thought of it sooner, but as long as the only question the mirror was asked was "Who is the fairest of them all?" and it responded by showing the Queen, everyone in the kingdom except the Queen had assumed it was really just a normal mirror. [[spoiler:Oh, and he sends a sniper to assassinate Snow White, just to keep the queen happy.]] |
| 310 | * German satirist Hans Scheibner was the host for a program where fans sent in their own tales. One memorable highlight (argueably) was the [[Literature/TheUglyDuckling Ugly Popperling]] raised by Punks. Until at the end [[Music/KimWilde Kim Wilde]] dropped in and [[HappyEnding they happily popped after.]] [[note]]We won't withhold the unfortunate second meaning of "to pop" in German: having sex.[[/note]] |
| 311 | [[/folder]] |
| 312 | |
| 313 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 314 | * ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': This is the guiding idea behind the plane of Eldraine. For example, the card "[[https://scryfall.com/card/eld/178/tall-as-a-beanstalk Tall as a Beanstalk]]" has Jack mistakenly ''eating'' the magic beans... [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever and the name says it all, really]]. While the ''Throne of Eldraine'' focuses mainly on Arthurian legend elements, ''Wilds of Eldraine'' leans much more heavily into the plane's fairtyale aspect. |
| 315 | * ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': |
| 316 | ** The second edition campaign ''A hero's Tale'' includes the adventure ''The Mistake'' which is a take on a Snow White tangentially tied to the main story. In it a group of evil gnomes ambushes travelers to sell them to slavery until in a carriage they find an unconscious woman who won't wake up no matter what. Once they take her to their lair she wakes up with the sunset, turning out to be a vampire, who promptly takes over their operation and makes them her bodyguards. |
| 317 | ** The fifth edition adventure ''A Fomorian Who Would Be King'' from ''Through the Veil: Tales of the Feywild'' anthology is another, similar take. Snow White equivalent is once again a vampire, who was trapped in a coffin deep underground by her sister and was discovered by a group of Duegar, enslaved and forced to mine gold for a Fomorian giant. The player characters can try to free her and seek her help in dealing with said Fomorian. if they play their cards right she may even become a long-term ally. |
| 318 | [[/folder]] |
| 319 | |
| 320 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 321 | * ''Theatre/CinderellaLloydWebber'': The story is still about a girl named Literature/{{Cinderella}} with a WickedStepmother who is transformed to go to a ball and gets with a prince. But Cinderella's now a goth rebel, the prince Sebastian is an unpopular nerd, the fairy godmother is a plastic surgeon, [[spoiler:Cinderella's dance with the prince is the lowest point of their relationship]], Prince Charming [[spoiler:is gay and marries a man]], and finally, rather than [[spoiler:become Queen at the end, Cinderella runs away with her prince]]. |
| 322 | * Music/StephenSondheim and James Lapine's musical ''Theatre/IntoTheWoods'' combines several well-known fairy tales, initially playing them straight but then gradually {{deconstructi|on}}ng them. |
| 323 | * The musical ''Theatre/OnceUponAMattress'' is a cheeky retelling of "Literature/ThePrincessAndThePea" with a mother-henpecked prince, a song based around the princess (originally Carol Burnett!) wryly commenting on "Happily, Happily Happily Ever After", and much more. |
| 324 | * Jacques Offenbach's ''Theatre/OrpheusInTheUnderworld'' is a warped retelling of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, where Orpheus' marriage is on the rocks. Eurydice has a lover, Aristaeus, who turns out to be the god of the underworld who sees to it that she dies of a snakebite so she can be with him forever. Orpheus is then spurred on to make his JourneyToTheUnderworld by an AnthropomorphicPersonification not of Love (as in Gluck's ''Theatre/OrfeoEdEuridice'', a specific target of the parody) but of Public Opinion. |
| 325 | * Theatre/RedTheRedRidingHoodMusical starts out as a fairly normal, if somewhat [[AdaptationExpansion expanded]] musical retelling of Literature/LittleRedRidingHood, as told by her Gypsy descendants. However, each of them has a favorite version of the story, and they all try to make the reenactment end to match their version. This all comes to a head with the song "The Endings," which basically amounts to each of the Gypsies rapidly and forcefully directing the others to reenact their preferred ending, while the others protest that the ending doesn't make sense. By the end of it, "all" of the characters (except Blue Boy) have been killed in one ending or another. |
| 326 | [[/folder]] |
| 327 | |
| 328 | [[folder:Toys]] |
| 329 | * ''Toys/EverAfterHigh'' has this as its premise. It stars the children of famous fairy tale characters who are destined to follow in their parents' footsteps...except this generation's [[Literature/SnowWhite Evil Queen]], Raven, doesn't ''want'' to be evil, and inspires other characters to choose their own destinies. And then we get to the fact that [[spoiler:Red Riding Hood ''married and had two daughters with'' her Big Bad Wolf...]] |
| 330 | [[/folder]] |
| 331 | |
| 332 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 333 | * ''VideoGame/BrownDustII'': The Character Pack "Rou's Labyrinth" takes place in one, being a [[FairyTaleFreeForAll melting pot of fairy tale rejects]] including an obese Cinderella, an insomiac laden Sleeping Beauty, a [[BrutalHonesty straight-forward]] Pinnochio among others. Most of their problems can be traced back to the Magic Tree wilting and weakening their fantasys, to which Red Riding Hood sets out to fix with her friends the paranoid Snow White, enigmatic Robin Hood, and the sadistic Alice by going to the alleged Wicked Witch's gingerbread house to get her to undo her curse, except she isn't even the bad guy of the story. |
| 334 | * ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilVillage:'' The FramingDevice of the game's narrative, foreshadowing the villains that Ethan are about to confront, was ''literally'' a Gothic Fairy Tale Storybook, told in paper-cut-out stop animation like the nightmares of ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica.'' And sure enough, as Ethan enters the nightmare-proper of the village itself, he is confronted with the Gothic Caricatures of the Vampire (Lady Dimitriscu), Gepetto the Puppeteer (Donna Beneviento), The Merman (Moreau), Black Knight (Heisenberg) and the Wicked Witch (Lady Miranda) archetypes; all to the backdrop of a deep black forrest ''filled'' with Big Bad Wolves (The Lycans) that would ''not'' be out of place from the pages of ''Creator/TheBrothersGrimm'' |
| 335 | %% * ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'': While the game plays it a usually straight, and is based on Japanese folk tales rather than European ones, it does feature quite a few fractured fairytale elements. |
| 336 | * In ''VideoGame/AmericanMcGeesGrimm'', you play an ugly little dwarf who goes around messing up "cutesy" fairy tales, [[{{Grimmification}} making them dark and violent again]]. |
| 337 | * 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. |
| 338 | * Flash RPG ''VideoGame/DragonFable'' has elements of this trope, including some major Deconstructions. It's all for the RuleOfFunny of course. |
| 339 | * Although technically ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'' isn't a fairytale, ''VideoGame/AmericanMcGeesAlice'' shows Wonderland as twisted and violent after Alice's parents die in a fire and she's sent to a mental institution. |
| 340 | * It's hard to tell in ''VideoGame/KingsQuest'' if the writers are going to play their fairy tale tropes straight or veer into one of these. |
| 341 | * ''VideoGame/LittleRedRidingHoodsZombieBBQ''. Little Red fighting a zombie apocalypse is only '''a fraction''' of how fractured it is. |
| 342 | * Also dealing with Little Red Riding Hood is ''VideoGame/ThePath'', an indie game dealing with six different girls each named after shades of red. Each one of them deals with their individual "Wolf" in the most horrifying of ways. |
| 343 | * Creator/EmilyShort has written a number of InteractiveFiction games that fit this trope: |
| 344 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Alabaster}}'' bills itself as a "fractured fairy tale" of "Literature/SnowWhite". Not only does ''Alabaster'' follow in Creator/NeilGaiman's footsteps of heavily implying Snow White to be a vampire or something else not quite human, but it has a PerspectiveFlip of the huntsman being the PC and having more than one dark secret of his own. [[spoiler: Snow White is possessed by Lilith, Queen is insane witch, Mirror houses wicked ghost, and you're actually the missing King who voluntarily blood-sundered yourself in a [[DealWithTheDevil infernal bargain called blood-sundering]] to atone for the terrible war you brought upon your kingdom at the cost of losing all memories about your former life. You can undo this blood-sundering in one ending.]] |
| 345 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Bronze}}'' is a fractured retelling of "Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast" that makes the Beast more morally ambiguous, fills his castle with numerous secrets that the PC of Beauty/Belle has to uncover herself, and even gives her the option to kill the Beast if she wishes to do so. [[spoiler: Whole game is centered around [[DealWithTheDevil demonical ''contracts'']] and [[CycleOfRevenge long spanning revenge]] that started with first king defeating demon Mephistopheles and taking his pen he (Devil) used to create aforementioned contracts. This however turned to be [[BatmanGambit trick]] as it corrupted royal family, who used pen to bind demons and people to serve them in life and death. After that, one of future kings married Devil's [[HalfHumanHybrid daughter]] Lucrezia, who brought new magics and binding ways from Medici-Credenza. Last king-Beast-used to kidnap girls and force them to serve him. Last before Beauty, Yvette, turned out to be Lucrezia's great-great-granddaughter. Beast stole her away and [[RetGone got rid]] of her marriage contract. Her father was as result, financially destroyed. She became pregnant,feared that child will be monster too, and using her magic girdle, transformed king into Beast before taking her own life.]] |
| 346 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Glass|2006}}'' retells "Literature/{{Cinderella}}". The story gives Cinderella a secret that causes the Prince to have her executed in one ending, and even the happy ending is quite atypical in its treatment of the Prince and Cinderella's relationship. Additionally, all the plot happens in one room, and you a play pet parrot that is [[FunnyAnimal trying to]] [[ShipperOnDeck match up]] the classic pair. [[spoiler: Cinderella is actually a natural enchantress, but lives in a kingdom where most people are [[TheFundamentalist overly]] [[WellIntentionedExtremist religious]], believing magical powers to be [[DealWithTheDevil the result of a compact with demons]] despite this being untrue. The Prince couldn't recognise her because of an enchantment which is restored when she puts on the slipper. Her family regards her with a mixture of fear, repulsion and pity, hiding her because they're both ashamed of and wish to protect her-the stepmother is even implied to experience a CrisisOfFaith. Depending on your decision, the stepmother either switches slippers and the Prince marries a stepsister, realizes the use and leaves, executes Cinderella or destroys the slipper and evidence of her magic, eventually finding reason to court her and marry.]] |
| 347 | %% * ''VideoGame/MySims Kingdom'' has elements of this, especially on Capital Island and Cutopia. |
| 348 | * ''VideoGame/TheSimsMedieval'' has the quest "Legend of the Talking Frog," a fractured Frog Prince that, depending on your approach, involves either kissing the frog or finding out the frog was an evil prince in his human life and serving his legs to the King. |
| 349 | * The 2014 yearly familiars from ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' are themed around fractured fairy tales. The Grim Brother drops "spleen items" that relate a random [[{{Grimmification}} dark fairy tale]], and the Grimstone Golem drops masks that let you enter a {{Perspective Flip}}ped fairy tale (like one where you help the Hare beat the Tortoise, who tried to cheat by bringing a motorcycle to a foot-race; or where Rumpelstiltskin runs an orphanage and tries to get kids out of lousy homes by bribing their parents). |
| 350 | * ''[[http://philome.la/Citrushistrix/magical-makeover-fixed/play Magical Makeover]]'' is a quirky, light-hearted [[{{Gamebooks}} Choose Your Own Adventure]] game that starts with the protagonist getting ready to go to a grand ball...except that since she's no Cinderella, she has to make herself beautiful through the application of dubiously legal/safe magical cosmetics. All of which turn out to have unexpected side effects like turning into a plant-person, becoming a butterfly vampire who wants to eradicate the entire human race, or discovering a hives-inducing allergy to fairy dust. Also, instead of wanting to go to the ball to find her PrinceCharming, she has the goal of freeing a mystical bird from the ball host's chambers to get a wish granted by it -- but depending on your choices, she can instead spend her evening helping an extradimensional alien being fulfill a dragon's prophecy, being unceremoniously kidnapped by a giant owl who claims to be a princess under a curse, or becoming the unwitting victim of a season-changing ritual. |
| 351 | * The premise of ''VideoGame/{{Bubsy}} in: Fractured Furry Tales'' is that Bubsy goes around "humbling" the bad guys from storybooks like ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'' and ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''. |
| 352 | * This is pretty much the point of ''VideoGame/Revolve8EpisodicDueling''. Some examples include social media star Red Riding Hood (where the whole wolf encounter at her grandma’s was just a misunderstanding), a bodybuilding Naked Emperor, a motorcycle riding pop star Cinderella, and a Japanese themed Snow White with seven ninja dwarves. |
| 353 | * Parodied and Played for Laughs in Korean mobile EndlessRunningGame, ''Princess Rush''. The beginning shows Snow White recently having a date with PrinceCharming, hoping he can return for her another date. Until she saw some news: Not just Snow White The Prince Charming dated with, but he also dated with Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, and other fairytale princesses. In fact, they dated with the same prince, who is actually a HaremSeeker! This, of course, make her consumed in fury and wields her HyperspaceMallet to kick Prince Charming's butt. |
| 354 | * Played with in ''VideoGame/WeHappyFew''. During the nighttime hours, Uncle Jack reads the citizens of Wellington Wells bedtime stories based off classic fairy tales. However, since this is a town where everyone spends their time taking a mood-depressant drug called Joy, and those who don’t are subjected to ostracism, beatings, and murder, the stories are changed to become quite macabre. |
| 355 | * ''VideoGame/LiesOfP'' is a SoulsLikeRPG video game centered around a DarkFantasy take on ''[[Literature/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio Pinocchio]]''. Set in a dark, [[TheGayNineties Belle Époque]] city called Krat, players control Pinocchio, here a “[[RidiculouslyHumanRobot puppet mechanoid]]”, as he sets off to find his creator, Mr. Geppetto, fighting through countless enemies to do so amid the ruins of a city overrun by mechanical monstrosities. |
| 356 | * In ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3WildHunt Blood and Wine'' DLC, the Land of a Thousand Fables was originally created as a wonderland for a magician's children. Unfortunately, it was eventually abandoned and, without the magician to maintain the magic, suffered entropy that caused everything to deviate quite heavily from the script. The Little Matchstick Girl sells drugs, prince Charming died in an accident, and Rapunzel hung herself with her own hair, among many other horrors. |
| 357 | * ''Cinderella Escape'': Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters are abusive as usual, but they actually allow her to accompany them to the ball. At the ball, Cinderella witnesses the Prince murdering his father the King, but he immediately frames her for it and has Cinderella, her stepmother, and stepsisters arrested and thrown in a dungeon. The Fairy Godmother empowers Cinderella with glass slippers that give her incredible kicking and leaping ability so she can try to escape. [[spoiler:It is eventually revealed that Cinderella murdered her original family.]] |
| 358 | ** ''Cinderella Escape 2: Revenge'': The Fairy Godmother again empowers Cinderella so she can get revenge on the Prince for framing her. Along the way, she crosses paths with other fairy tale characters like Snow White, who is trying to reclaim her kingdom. |
| 359 | * ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'': |
| 360 | ** The Pokémon Bombirdier is essentially a fractured take on the DeliveryStork. It bears a strong resemblance to common depictions of the bird, with long feathers acting as a makeshift bag, but instead of delivering babies it prefers to drop rocks at random (not caring whether or not they'll hit someone) for seemingly no reason besides being a {{Jerkass}}. Appropriately, it's part Dark-type. |
| 361 | ** ''The Teal Mask'' (the first half of the DLC for ''VideoGame/PokemonScarletAndViolet'') introduces the Pokémon world's take on ''Literature/{{Momotaro}}'', with Pecharunt being Momotaro, the Loyal Three (Okidogi, Munkidori, and Fezandipiti) being based on the heroic dog, monkey, and pheasant, and Ogerpon being based on the villainous oni. However, the player quickly discovers that the true story is far different: [[spoiler:Pecharunt and the Loyal Three were the ''villains'', a group of thugs trying to steal masks inlaid with valuable crystals from the innocent Ogerpon and her human partner, possibly killing said partner in the struggle. Ogerpon then killed the Three in revenge and injured Pecharunt until it retreated into its shell for ages, but that was the only part that the villagers saw, which led them to believe that the Three [[HeroicSacrifice heroically sacrificed themselves]] to save the village from the rampaging oni. Fortunately, the player, Carmine, and Kieran manage to set the record straight at the end.]] An equivalent to Momotaro in the form of the mythical Pokémon Pecharunt would be revealed later; following the trend, it's [[spoiler:an ObviouslyEvil poisonous creature who corrupted the Loyal Three, but the lore video released alongside it implies Pecharunt did everything it did for the adoration of its human parents (who were also partially under the influence of his poison), making it AmbiguouslyEvil]]. |
| 362 | * ''Fairest'' mashes different stories together in interesting ways. For example, the hero of "The Three Feathers" has an unkind stepmother and two stepbrothers, while the woman his feather leads him to is the evil queen from "Snow White", who was sent off to live in poverty. |
| 363 | [[/folder]] |
| 364 | |
| 365 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 366 | * ''VisualNovel/{{Cinders}}'' is a visual novel that takes most of the plot elements from Cinderella and [[PlayedForDrama plays them for drama]]. The stepmother, Carmosa, does what she does because she wants her daughters to end up well off. The stepsisters, Gloria and Sophia, aren't inherently bad people; most of their actions are driven by their desperate desire to please their mother. Cinders can befriend any or all of them throughout the game; it's even possible for Cinders to replace Carmosa as head of the household if she can prove that she's the right person for the job. The Prince himself is hardly a presence compared to Cinders' family and isn't the only available love interest; Cinders can even marry him for the money and power while carrying on an affair with either Tobias, her childhood friend, or Perrault, a member of the King's guard. The fairy godmother is an ominous figure that repeatedly implies that [[DealWithTheDevil her help comes with a price]], and there are implications that [[spoiler: she had a hand in the death of Cinders' mother]]. The traditional tale of Cinderella itself is even lampshaded: at one point, Cinders mentions having recently read a book about a girl who suffered at the hands of a wicked stepfamily but was eventually saved from her situation by a handsome prince after years of waiting around and doing nothing; she decides that the book is dangerous to girls and that it might give them a "martyr-like attitude". |
| 367 | * ''VisualNovel/CinderellaPhenomenon'' features several characters who suffer from the Fairytale Curse, a witches' enchantment that takes a well-known fairy tale and twists it into a curse for the victim. The main character is cursed to experience the exact reverse of "Literature/{{Cinderella}}": instead of being a kind girl with a cruel stepfamily who goes from RagsToRoyalty, she's a cruel princess with a kind stepfamily who goes from RichesToRags with almost everyone forgetting that she was ever royalty. Other Fairytale Curses include the [[Literature/PeterPan Neverland]] Curse that traps its victim in the body of a child, the Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}} Curse that gives its victim LaserGuidedAmnesia about their name and identity, and the Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast Curse that makes its victim irresistibly beautiful to the opposite gender but [[spoiler:transforms them into a beast when they fall in love with someone else]]. All of these curses have a CurseEscapeClause, but there are witches who intend to make sure they'll never be broken or manipulate the curses for their gain. |
| 368 | [[/folder]] |
| 369 | |
| 370 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 371 | * ''WebAnimation/FiftyWaysToDieInMinecraft'': The entire Fairy Tale edition is this trope, PlayedForLaughs of course. And in ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}''. |
| 372 | * Dirty Doll's Creations's ''[[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/299838 Red Riding Hood]]'' is this trope on the Little Red Riding Hood story. |
| 373 | * ''WebAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeastPhelous'' is a cynical, BlackComedy-filled retelling of Beauty and the Beast in which almost everyone is an AdaptationalJerkass. It ends with [[spoiler:the villain, Wabuu, [[TheBadGuyWins killing the Beast and marrying Beauty]] like he wanted.]] However, the ''primary'' target of the parody is actually Creator/DingoPictures, a company known for making low-budget animated movies sometimes based on fairy tales. |
| 374 | * ''WebAnimation/DarkSecretsOfGarrysMod'': In a ''Literature/ThreeLittlePigs'' retelling the three pigs build houses for themselves where they would have sex with a female pig. It got deleted but [[http://youtu.be/yoLXGjgMy_E?t=403 it is reuploaded into a compilation]]. |
| 375 | * The ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'' TV episode "[[Recap/HTFDunceUponATime Dunce Upon a Time]]" has this trope as its gist. It's basically a grisly retelling of ''Jack and the Beanstalk'', though it also includes elements of ''Rapunzel'' and ''Rumpelstiltskin''. |
| 376 | * ''WebAnimation/IfDisneyCartoonsWereHistoricallyAccurate'', as the name implies, is a {{Disneyesque}} music video full of all the gross and gory things about the Middle Ages that Disney cartoons tend to ignore. |
| 377 | * Being a series with heavy FairytaleMotifs, ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' has more than a few of these. |
| 378 | ** One of the main villains is based on ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}''. Her back story is a retelling of the tale with a dark twist. [[spoiler:Abused and enslaved by her step-mother and step-sisters, her version of "Prince Charming" is a Huntsman who requires her to endure seven years of abuse while he trains her in secret to be able to legally escape her guardian when she turns 17 years old. However, Cinder cannot endure it for so many years, snapping and killing them when they discover her weapon; she then kills her mentor when he tries to arrest her, and goes on to develop into a manipulative, power-hungry villain with an [[BigBad evil Fairy Godmother]], who has "gifted" her with the ability to steal the power of the Four Maidens.]] |
| 379 | ** The truth behind the in-universe fairy tale "[[GirlInTheTower The Girl in the Tower]]" is a subversion of ''Literature/{{Rapunzel}}''. The fairy tale is that the maiden is locked in a tower until rescued by a hero; they fall in love and live happily ever after. In truth, he actually dies, leaving her alone in the world and unable to cope with her loss. She takes dire measures to try and bring him back, leading to catastrophic consequences. [[spoiler:She clashes with the gods, and triggers an apocalypse that sets off a chain of events that leads her to becoming the BigBad.]] |
| 380 | [[/folder]] |
| 381 | |
| 382 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 383 | %%* ''Webcomic/ThePrincessPlanet'' combines this trope with SpaceOpera. |
| 384 | * ''[[http://www.jinxville.com/comics/frog/ The Tourist and the Frog]]'', a little gem by Diana Nock -- ''Literature/TheFrogPrince'' with extra... local flavor. |
| 385 | * ''Webcomic/NoRestForTheWicked''. Stars the Sensitive Princess (also the Girl Who Spoke Frogs), Puss in Boots, Red Riding Hood, the Girl with No Hands, and the Boy who Set Out To Learn Fear, all trying to Resurrect the Moon. They run into PrinceCharmless, the Wicked Witch (and rescue Hansel and Gretel from her), Literature/{{Bearskin}}... |
| 386 | * ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': |
| 387 | ** We don't get to hear the whole story, but [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20110502 one strip]] sees a tale being concluded with "...And thus the evil princess was defeated, and the wizard saved!" |
| 388 | ** [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081121#.XCGnw2hKjnE A bonus story]] saw the cast do an adaptation of ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}''. Aside from the MadScience twist, Gil and Tarvek both end up with the role of Prince Charming and fight over Cinderella (as played by Agatha, who barely minded), Maxim sweet-talks the costumers into giving him a beautiful wardrobe despite his role as an ''ugly'' stepsister, Cinderella initially decides to just relax at home during the ball/science fair before her fairy godmother intervenes, and the story ends with [[spoiler:Cinderella taking over the kingdom with her army of giant MechaMooks]]. |
| 389 | * ''Webcomic/CopperRoad'': [[http://www.precociouscomic.com/archive/copperroad/2010/06/24 We have to save the dragon from the princess!]] |
| 390 | %% * ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'': |
| 391 | %% ** [[http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=749 Booty and the Beast]]. |
| 392 | %% ** [[http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2203 Crimney is reading the myth of Icarus when Seymour plummets into the lake next to him, and says it was great and he'll do it again. Crimney thinks they left that part out.]] |
| 393 | * ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' book ''Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tails'' features Jack and the Beanstalk as told by Elan and Little Red Riding Hood as told by Haley. |
| 394 | * ''Truck Bearing Kibble'' has [[http://web.archive.org/web/20120502105937/http://truckbearingkibble.com/comic/2007/12/14/sweet-talker/ its own view]] of "Literature/HanselAndGretel". Presumably, they'll have to tracepath the witch now. Hey, at least it wasn't an [[Website/SomethingAwful IRC-loving hungry grizzly bear]]. |
| 395 | * ''Webcomic/VGCats'' occasionally did such retelling. In [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=8 this case]] the net result is roughly the same, however. |
| 396 | * In ''Webcomic/DresdenCodak'', [[http://dresdencodak.com/2010/06/03/dark-science-01/ one director goes for really warped retellings -- of works he's never read.]] |
| 397 | * ''Webcomic/{{Rumplestilskin}}'' is a modern take on… well, ''Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}}.'' It does the usual subversions, like [[{{Xenafication}} Xenafying]] the female lead, giving the whole country a DarkAndTroubledPast and having [[SchizoTech the fully-armoured knights ride around on motorcycles,]] but the greatest twist is turning Rumplestilkin into an AntiVillain by being ChildhoodFriends with queen-to-be and hiding his identity with a CoolMask. |
| 398 | * ''Webcomic/{{Polandball}}'' translates rather well into fractured fairytales. |
| 399 | ** [[http://i.imgur.com/q9lvgPP.png The Outlaw]] points out that the "Robin Hood" method of taking from the rich and giving to the poor is reminiscent of communism. |
| 400 | ** "[[IntentionalEngrishForFunny Mirror mirror is hang by me]], [[http://i.imgur.com/GHnGRfe.png who to best is prettiest countrey?]]"[[note]] [[BlackComedy Contains gore.]][[/note]] |
| 401 | ** [[http://i.imgur.com/1sbVKbo.png Pinocchitalia]]. [[PedophilePriest Vatican]] wishes that Italy is a real boy too. |
| 402 | ** [[http://i.imgur.com/9pefdbV.png Lil'Jam and the Voodoo Beans]]. [[TheStoner Jamaica]] certainly has SkewedPriorities. |
| 403 | ** [[http://i.imgur.com/w7pGooW.png Three Countryballs Gruff]] has [=USSR=] as the troll under the bridge and Poland, Finland and [=USA=] as the goats. |
| 404 | --> [=USA=]: [[spoiler: [[{{Punchline}} "Damn European engineering!"]]]] |
| 405 | * ''Webcomic/FilthBiscuit'' features the story [[http://www.filthbiscuit.com/a-punch-in-the-head/ A Punch in the Head]], in which the whimsical tale of a mischievous puppet and his creator is subverted to be about an amoral sociopath and his sadistic master. |
| 406 | * ''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'': Llewellyn's bedtime stories are a bit... unusual, such as [[https://ozyandmillie.org/2002/09/17/ozy-and-millie-988/ the time]] the prince and princess died of a horrible, incurable disease. |
| 407 | -->''Well, I really can't forgive what the prince did to that poor dragon.'' |
| 408 | * ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' has [[https://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=1890#comic this take]] on "Literature/TheUglyDuckling." Though in the bonus panel, the artist argues that it's actually a better moral than the original. |
| 409 | [[/folder]] |
| 410 | |
| 411 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 412 | * Lubrican's [[http://www.asstr.org/~lubrican/fairy_tales Twisted Fairy Tale]] series, although it's mostly twisted (in a humorous way) into PornWithPlot. |
| 413 | * ''Toys/EverAfterHigh'' has this in spades. Granted, it's [[BabiesEverAfter the children of the original characters]] doing the fracturing, [[HighSchoolAU in high school,]] no less. [[spoiler:Well, except for the original Red Riding Hood and Big Bad Wolf.]] |
| 414 | [[/folder]] |
| 415 | |
| 416 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 417 | * My Damn Channel's ''WebVideo/FairyTaleFriday'' features often NSFW retellings of fairy tales, with questionable messages, depraved sex, and frequently [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist unsympathetic protagonists]]. Specifically: |
| 418 | ** Thumbelina is a pretentious vegan hippie who bakes weird gluten-free food for no apparent reason, and was nicknamed "Cockchafer" in college. |
| 419 | ** Literature/{{Alice|sAdventuresInWonderland}} is a gullible spoiled brat who is too insecure to say no ([[ReallyGetsAround making her popular with the boys at school]]). |
| 420 | ** Red Ridinghood is extremely obsessive compulsive, and is afraid of going into the woods because she thinks bugs will crawl up her legs and into her vagina. In the end, she has the wolf [[GroinAttack savagely neutered]] by the Village Idiot, turning up the music on her iPod to drown out the wolf's agonized screams. |
| 421 | ** The Beast is a graphic designer who hires Belle as an assistant. The transformation occurs after they hook up in a public bathroom. He fires her, and she sues him for sexual harassment. Moral of the story: Don't dip your pen in the company ink. |
| 422 | ** A [[CrossesTheLineTwice very]] squicky retelling of Rapunzel where the witch posts videos of Rapunzel on a fetish website for men who like really long hair. The Prince is a StalkerWithACrush who has sex with her hair, and leaves her after the witch cuts it off. The story ends with Rapunzel going into the adult film industry. |
| 423 | ** Cinderella is a lesbian who doesn't really care about the ball, or the Prince, and ends up marrying his sister. The Prince ends up on a talk show for Princes who get dumped by their lesbian girlfriends, and the two stepsisters are still douche-bags. |
| 424 | * ''WebVideo/LegendyPolskie'' retells several stories TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture. |
| 425 | * The "Rex Mohs Cruci-fiction Special" segment of the ''WebVideo/ScottTheWoz'' episode "The Gifts of Gaming" is essentially a bizarre amalgamation of various fairy tales and Bible stories told from the perspective of Rex Mohs as Jesus Christ. |
| 426 | [[/folder]] |
| 427 | |
| 428 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 429 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicKey'': In “Master Hansel And Miss Gretel”, the titular story ends up being fractured pretty badly, due mostly to the interference of Kipper, who keeps trying to be GenreSavvy but failing due to not remembering how the story goes. |
| 430 | * The trope namer is the "Fractured Fairy Tales" segment from ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle''. In each episode, a different fairy tale was retold with a humorous effect, changing part of the plotline. It even got a [[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1111756.Fractured_Fairy_Tales book]] in 1997, and one was made as a theatrical lead-in for the 1999 live-action version of ''WesternAnimation/DudleyDoRight''. |
| 431 | * ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' shorts did this a lot, to the point that a whole disc in one of the DVD box sets focuses on them. "Literature/LittleRedRidingHood", "Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs", "Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk" and "Literature/{{Goldilocks}}" were particularly popular targets, with different versions to fit various characters and their shticks (Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety, etc.). |
| 432 | ** These shorts would either focus on one story ("WesternAnimation/LittleRedWalkingHood" and "WesternAnimation/CinderellaMeetsFella"), while others contained many short stories ("WesternAnimation/AGanderAtMotherGoose" and "WesternAnimation/FoneyFables"). |
| 433 | ** One of Creator/ChuckJones' last WB cartoons, "WesternAnimation/IWasATeenageThumb", a blithely absurdist telling of "Literature/TomThumb", was light-years apart from one of his first, the maudlin, Disney-esque "WesternAnimation/TomThumbInTrouble". |
| 434 | %%* Same with the early Hanna-Barbera comedy shorts through 1965 or so. |
| 435 | * Creator/TexAvery's ''WesternAnimation/RedHotRidingHood'', which turns Red Riding Hood into a torch singer at a night club. |
| 436 | ** Also ''Little Rural Riding Hood'' and ''Swing Shift Cinderella'', the latter of which has Cinderella as a wartime factory worker and the Fairy Godmother trying to seduce the big bad wolf. |
| 437 | %% ** Then there's his Droopy cartoon ''The Three Little Pups'', featuring a Wolf even more deadpan than Droopy himself. The Wolf was a dog catcher. |
| 438 | * The Creator/JimHenson Company's ''WesternAnimation/UnstableFables'' direct-to-DVD films ''Three Pigs and a Baby'', in which a wolf is raised by the pigs in an ObliviousAdoption; ''Tortoise vs Hare: The Rematch of the Century'', in which the original characters' kids get dragged into their rivalry; and ''The Goldilocks and the 3 Bears Show'', a fake RealityShow in which pop star Goldilocks has to spend a month living with an ordinary family of bears. |
| 439 | * ''WesternAnimation/MarthaSpeaks'': "Martha Spins A Tale" spoofs everything from ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'' to ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'', complete with characters from the show. |
| 440 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' did this in the "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS12E1TreehouseOfHorrorXI Treehouse of Horror XI]]" segment "Scary Tales Can Come True"; Bart and Lisa are [[ParentalAbandonment left behind in the forest]] a la Literature/HanselAndGretel. Armed with a book of [[Creator/TheBrothersGrimm Grimm Fairy Tales]], they're able to [[GenreSavvy recognize various tropes]]. They don't cross a certain bridge, [[Literature/ThreeBillyGoatsGruff knowing there's a troll under it]]. They realize they're in a house belonging to three bears, and lock the door to keep the bears in (too bad for {{Literature/Goldilocks}} though). Bart and Lisa later stumble upon a GingerbreadHouse where a WickedWitch lives, [[IdiotBall though they trust her against their better judgement]] (unsurprisingly, she plans to eat them). Homer also likewise tries to free {{Literature/Rapunzel}} from her tower... with bad results. |
| 441 | * The ''{{WesternAnimation/Disenchantment}}'' episode "[[Recap/DisenchantmentS1E5FasterPrincessKillKill Faster, Princess! Kill! Kill!]]" revolves around a [[BlackComedy dark parody]] of ''Literature/HanselAndGretel'', in which [[AdaptationalVillainy the titular siblings]] ([[AdaptationalHeroism but not the witch]]) are actually a pair of [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalistic]] {{serial killer}}s who like to lure unsuspecting travelers into their {{gingerbread house}} to [[InvitedAsDinner have them for lunch]]. Oh, and the aforementioned Witch? She didn't kidnap Hansel and Gretel nor tried to eat them, she was actually just a [[CoolOldLady nice old lady]] who let them live in her house, [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished which turned out to be a big mistake]]. |
| 442 | * ''Franchise/{{Rugrats}}'': |
| 443 | ** Defied in one episode of [[WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991 the 1991 series]] that's a WholePlotReference [[CinderellaPlot to Cinderella]]. Chuckie (as Finsterella) answers the door to Phil and Lil as Hansel and Gretel, looking for directions. He replies: "You're even more lost than you think; you're in the wrong story." |
| 444 | ** A minor one when Angelica believes she is a princess in another episode of the 1991 series. To test, they use elements from different fairy tales. First the babies try to climb up her hair. Secondly they try to see if she can feel a pea through a mattress (Chuckie eats the pea so they use a fork instead). Finally they see if a slipper fits her foot. When it fits (because it's from her own closet), Angelica declares that she has passed and expects the King to pick her up any day. |
| 445 | ** The DTV "Tales From The Crib" plays this straight, featuring two episodes based around fairy tales - one on ''Snow White'' and the other on ''Jack and the Beanstalk''. |
| 446 | ** The second season of [[WesternAnimation/Rugrats2021 the 2021 series]] has a four-episode story arc where Susie tells the babies stories to help pass the time while their parents paint the mural at Angelica's preschool: |
| 447 | *** "[[Recap/Rugrats2021S2E15TheClimbWolfAtTheDoor The Climb]]" has Susie tell the babies the story of ''[[GenderFlip Jackie]] [[BeanstalkParody and the Beanstalk]]'', with her in the role of Jackie, Angelica in the role of the Bean Dealer, the babies in the roles of the Giants, and Dil in the role of the Golden Goose. |
| 448 | *** In "Wolf at the Door", Susie tells the babies the story of ''Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs'', with Phil, Lil, and Tommy in the roles of the title characters, Angelica in the role of TheBigBadWolf, and Chuckie in the role of a skunk who makes the best cookies in the world. The pigs' three houses are made of flowers, mud, and Click N' Pops. All three houses get knocked down and Angelica succeeds in getting Chuckie's cookie recipe, but she only ends up making cookies that are hard as bricks. She and Chuckie form an alliance and start a successful brick-making business. |
| 449 | *** "[[Recap/Rugrats2021S2E16ChuckieLittleWhatsYourWish Chuckie Little]]" is a ''Literature/ChickenLittle''-esque story with Chuckie in the role of the title character, who believes the Sky to be falling after an acorn hits him on the head, and various characters trying to sell falling sky-proof products. |
| 450 | *** In "What's Your Wish?", Angelica takes on the role of "[[CinderellaPlot Cinderangelica]]", and tries to make herself look more sympathetic then she actually is. Her stepsiblings are actually very nice to her, and she purposely turned down her invitation to the ball so the Fairy Godmother would grant her wishes. Angelica also purposely runs away from Begley, who takes on the role of the prince, and ends up putting the glass sneaker she left behind on Tommy. |
| 451 | * ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'' had an episode where Rocko and Heffer attempt to tell Filburt the story of Hansel and Debbie, in which they get captured by a witch and then a giant, have their genders switched around, and then the witch feeds Cinderheffer a mint that turns him into a wooden puppet. [[spoiler:Don't worry, Rocko revives him/her by putting the witch's shoes on him.]] |
| 452 | * This was pretty much the point of the British television series ''WesternAnimation/WolvesWitchesAndGiants''. |
| 453 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}'' provides some InUniverse examples: |
| 454 | ** [[TheSnarkKnight Daria]] and Jane tell these to a pair of kids they're babysitting. For example, in their version Cinderella has the Fairy Godmother make her the first female president, while the Prince realizes that the monarchy is obsolete and opens a video store. |
| 455 | ---> '''Jane:''' And the dish ran away with the spoon, but Hawaii was the only state that would recognize the union as legal. |
| 456 | ** In one episode Daria's family is camping and telling scary stories, and Daria picks "Literature/HanselAndGretel," delivering it in her usual monotone: |
| 457 | ---> '''Daria:''' So the witch tore Hansel's arm off, popped it in her mouth, said, "Hey, pretty good," and within minutes had devoured the rest of his body, leaving only the lower intestine for fear of bacteria. Gretel she decided she wanted to hold onto for a while, so she crammed her into the freezer the best she could. |
| 458 | ** [[TheFashionista Quinn]] also took this route, with FauxHorrific results: |
| 459 | --->'''Quinn:''' So Literature/{{Cinderella}} said, "I can't go to the ball in these rags." And her FairyGodmother waved her wand and behold, she was wearing a gown of silver and gold. Big, ''clunky'' silver and gold sequins, like you wouldn't wear to one of those 70s nostalgia proms, much less a formal party at a ''palace!'' And when she went to check out herself in the mirror, the one that usually made her look thin? Instead, she looked ''bloated!''\ |
| 460 | '''Helen:''' Quinn, honey, is this ''really'' a scary story?\ |
| 461 | '''Quinn:''' Wait! I haven't gotten to the ''shoes'' yet! |
| 462 | * ''WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies1984'' examples include "Slipping Beauty", "Snow White and the Seven Muppets", "Pigerella" and "By the Book." |
| 463 | * ''WesternAnimation/PinkyElmyraAndTheBrain'': |
| 464 | ** A pre-Elmyra episode of ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' called "Brainy the Pooh" riffed on ''[[WesternAnimation/TheManyAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh Winnie The Pooh]]'', casting Brain as Pooh, Pinky as Piglet and Creator/ChristopherWalken as Christopher Robin. |
| 465 | ** One episode has Brain, against his will, telling Elmyra the "real" story of Literature/{{Cinderella}}, in which the actual protagonist is an intelligent mouse (played by Brain and named Cranky Mouseykin by Elmyra) who invents leather shoes for the people in the kingdom of Fairyland and has "Cinderelmyra" wear them to the prince's birthday party. |
| 466 | * ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': Once, there was an [[JustForFun/TheUglyBarnacle ugly barnacle]]. He was so ugly that everyone died. TheEnd. |
| 467 | * The series finale of ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfSonicTheHedgehog'', "Sonically Ever After", involves Robotnik turning expies of some more famous Grimm's Fairy Tales into this trope. HilarityEnsues. |
| 468 | * Two episodes of ''WesternAnimation/TalesFromTheCryptkeeper'' had [[PrinceCharmless handsome but self-absorbed]] HeroicWannabe Chuck and his [[BeleagueredAssistant nerdy sidekick/fraternal twin brother]] Melvin getting caught in a fractured fairy-tale, "The Sleeping Beauty" (where what they think is a typical GirlInTheTower is actually a vampire trying to make them her prey) and "Chuck (and Melvin) and the Beanstalker". |
| 469 | * The whole point of ''WesternAnimation/OnceUponATime1995'' is retelling classic fairytales with varying degrees of twistedness: |
| 470 | ** In the retelling of ''Little Red Riding Hood'', the story is set in Africa, with humanoid mice as Africans and a hyena in place of the wolf. [[spoiler:Also, Red Riding Hood is a LiteralManEater from a CannibalTribe who seduces hyenas to lure them to her grandmother's hut, where instead of them trapping her, she traps them so she can eat them and steal their goods.]] |
| 471 | ** In the ''Donkeyskin'' episode, it's implied that Donkeyskin isn't a princess forced into poverty, but a genuine peasant girl who is pretending to be a fallen princess so that she can secure a rich husband with the aid of her fairy godmother. |
| 472 | ** ''Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs'' are the ''[[AdaptationalVillainy antagonists]]'' of the episode, bullying a poor wolf by forcibly evicting him from various squats until [[BullyingADragon he realizes they are pigs and he is a wolf, so he tries to eat them]]. |
| 473 | ** The ''Goldilocks'' episode has her moving in with the bears and helping them to become extremely wealthy as a rap group. |
| 474 | ** The episode retelling ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'', depicted Jack as a poor boy in a grimy miner's town and replaced the giant with a millionaire who owned assorted magical money sources. It went for a very HardTruthAesop by having Jack's efforts to bring money to his poor widowed mother be foiled by her honesty, up until the millionaire offers her a check so that Jack will stop knicking stuff (he didn't care that the boy pinched a few things, but bringing them back all the time is ruining his reputation)... and then ending with Jack watching in disdain as his mother weeps in the kitchen because they've used up the check money and are now as poor as ever. Cue the narrator declaring that [[HardTruthAesop being honest does not keep you from starving to death and principles are a poor substitute for money]]. |
| 475 | * ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'' has "[=DeeDee=]-Locks and the Ness Monster"; Dexter's mom convinces (read: forces) him to read [=DeeDee=] a story because she's sick, which leads to Dexter reading her from a complicated science textbook. Bored to sleep, [=DeeDee=] takes over and makes up her own story, taking a bit of everything from old fairy tales with her own twists; such as three pigs made of Straw, Sticks, and Bricks, a Big Bad Wolf with the stature of [[TheNapoleon Napoleon]], and a [[MultipleHeadCase three-headed]] bag-pipe monster named the Ness Monster (each head with its own personality and PunnyName: Silly Ness, Grumpy Ness, and Sleepy Ness). Dexter interrupts halfway and {{lampshade|Hanging}}s the lack of story structure, but was ignored. |
| 476 | -->'''Dexter''': STOP! This is ridiculous, I don't even know what's going on! There's no kind of structure, no plot... |
| 477 | * ''WesternAnimation/BlazingDragons'' has several examples of fairy tales being fractured. One example of this is the depiction of Sleeping Beauty as TheThingThatWouldNotLeave, being a loudmouth, eating the inhabitants of Camelhot out of house and home, etc. This goes to the point that several of them want Beauty to go back to sleep, and try methods ranging from hypnotism to dancing. Beauty eventually goes back to sleep with help from one of Flicker's inventions. The series itself can be considered this to Myth/ArthurianLegend. |
| 478 | * ''Toys/EverAfterHigh'' is a school for fairy tale characters who add their own odd quirks to the stories, but some of them are [[ScrewDestiny rebelling against the system]]. Raven, who is supposed to become the evil queen like her mother from "Literature/SnowWhite", doesn't want to be evil, and spends an episode looking for another character to take her place. |
| 479 | * ''WesternAnimation/MagicAdventuresOfMumfie'''s "Scarecrowella" episode was this. Brought about as a dream after Scarecrow read the story and drank 3 cups of hot chocolate, the characters are going to The Queen of Night's Royal Ball, but Scarecrow doesn't want to go after Mumfie says he must believe in fairytales. Then, strange things start to happen. |
| 480 | * ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'': The episode "Aku's Fairy Tales" [[VillainEpisode stars the main villain Aku]], appropriately enough, who has realized that the people of his empire [[ZeroPercentApprovalRating aren't extremely fond]] of their evil conqueror, and decides to endear himself to the local children by telling fairy tales. He tells stories like ''Literature/LittleRedRidingHood'' and ''{{Literature/Goldilocks}}'', except they all star [[AdaptationalHeroism Aku as the hero]] and [[AdaptationalVillainy Jack as the villain]]. The kids have an understandably hard time believing that their hero, [[LawfulGood Jack]], could be as cartoonishly evil as Aku paints him. |
| 481 | * One episode of ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'' provides its own take on "Jack and the Beanstalk". Uncle Grandpa is Jack, Mr. Gus is the Giant, and Pizza Steve is the Golden Goose. Oh yeah, and the Giant Realistic Flying Tiger is a princess. Surprisingly, the plot of the original tale is kept for the most part. |
| 482 | * The ''WesternAnimation/YogisTreasureHunt'' episode "Snow White and the 7 Treasure Hunters" definitely qualifies. |
| 483 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': |
| 484 | ** In the episode "Let's Play Once Upon a Time", Kaeloo tries narrating the story of Literature/LittleRedRidingHood to the others as a bedtime story. Eventually, [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Stumpy]] takes over the narration and turns it into a bizarre story featuring aliens, superheroes and teleporters. |
| 485 | ** Episode 122, designed to be a sequel to that episode, has Kaeloo try to narrate more bedtime stories, but Mr. Cat keeps making them more realistic, for example by having Cinderella call the police and report the stepmother for abuse. |
| 486 | * The entire concept behind ''WesternAnimation/AlfTales'' an animated series based on the fairy tales re-imagined by Series/{{Alf}}. |
| 487 | * On ''WesternAnimation/GoldieAndBear'', the main characters, who have made up following the chair-breaking incident from ''[[Literature/{{Goldilocks}} Goldilocks and the Three Bears]]'', adventure in "Fairytale Forest," a hodgepodge featuring a lot of major traditional fairy tale characters. However, TheBigBadWolf is an IneffectualSympatheticVillain who mainly just has a big appetite, Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs are given names and work together as builders, and the Giant at the top of the beanstalk is friendly. And that's just the tip of the iceberg... |
| 488 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh'' episode "Three Little Piglets" (which provides the page image) has Pooh try to narrate the story of the Three Little Piglets (i.e. pigs), only for the story to keep on going OffTheRails due to [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Pooh's]] tendency to constantly think of honey and [[LargeHam Tigger's]] tendency to butt in and make changes to the story like turning the Big Bad Wolf into the Big Bad ''Bunny'' and conjuring up the house of cards that can be seen in the above page image. And then somehow Rabbit ends up doused in honey at the end of it. |
| 489 | * ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' had various segments centered around the characters telling fairy tales, mostly in the ''ComicStrip/USAcres'' segments; often, these fairy tales end up messed up somehow. |
| 490 | ** "Hansel and Garfield" sees Garfield tell Nermal the story of Hansel and Gretel. He's forced to make it LighterAndSofter at Nermal's request; instead of getting shoved in the oven, the witch has her house foreclosed on because it's made of gingerbread, and even then she gets a happy ending afterwards. |
| 491 | ** "The Ugly Duckling" has Booker and Sheldon make up their own version of the titular story, in which the titular character (played by Wade) tries to have a wizard fix his ugly face. |
| 492 | ** "Bedtime Story Blues" has Orson attempt to tell the story of ''[[CinderellaPlot Cinderella]]'' to Booker and Sheldon, who make numerous changes to it. These include [[GenderBender making Cinderella and her stepsisters boys]] (and the latter ninjas), having Cinderella work at a pet store, making the king's messenger a rap master, making the fairy godmother the richest guy in the world, and having the characters get attacked by dinosaurs. Orson eventually becomes so annoyed with the twins' changes that he reads the story the right way [[MotorMouth very fast]]. |
| 493 | ** In "Hare Force", Orson tells Booker and Sheldon the story of ''Literature/TheTortoiseAndTheHare''. They find it boring and decide they can tell a more interesting version of it, so they reimagine it as a science fiction epic where the turtle is a space hero and the hare is an intergalactic villain. |
| 494 | ** In "The Name Game", Orson tries to read ''Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}}'' to Booker and Sheldon. The twins keep asking Orson to change the characters into things like ninjas or monsters, but Orson puts a stop to that for the most part. Then Wade (who played the miller's daughter) butts in and [[GenderBender has the daughter be changed to a son]], and as a result, the price to be paid becomes the son's VCR. Things devolve into a SummonBiggerFish duel when the miller's son is about to say Rumpelstiltskin's name because Roy (a Super Hero-style Rumpelstiltskin) tried to alter the ending in his character's favor, much to the protests of both Wade and Orson. |
| 495 | ** The two-parter "Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarfs" sees the ''U.S. Acres'' cast try to re-enact the story of Snow White, again with Wade in the title role. Instead of seven dwarfs, there are seventy-seven, each with an adjective for a name (leading to a WhosOnFirst-style running gag); additionally, the story ends up going OffTheRails when Roy (playing the prince) initially refuses to kiss Wade to wake him from his enchanted slumber. |
| 496 | * The episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'' aptly titled "Nursery Crimes" is about the kids telling messed up versions of the fairy tales because Billy's too hyperactive to let them sleep. Mandy starts off with a telling of Humpty Dumpty that morbidly says his remains splattered the entire kingdom, keeping them fed on eggs forever. Then Billy tells a completely made up story about a fat wizard that's as bizarre as he is. Grim concludes the episode with a magic fairy tale book that sucks them into a telling of Hansel and Gretel that he warns them to stick to. Billy being Billy wanders off and meets Pinocchio, whose obsessed with becoming a real boy per usual, but with the twist that he can become one by [[BlackComedyCannibalism cooking and eating the flesh of a real boy]], which he tries to do with Billy. The episode ends with them both still stuck in the book because Grim fell asleep reading. |
| 497 | * ''WesternAnimation/ToucheTurtleAndDumDum'': |
| 498 | ** "Red Riding Hoodlum" finds Touché and Dum Dum pressed into service to help out Literature/LittleRedRidingHood. |
| 499 | ** The poem "The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe" and the story ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'' get mashed up together in the episode "The Shoe Must Go On." |
| 500 | * Creator/TerryToon's 1939 short ''WesternAnimation/TheThreeBears'' turns the bears into an Italian family and Goldilocks into a jazz-loving scamp, but neither group is portrayed as actively malicious, and Goldilocks even happily stays with the bears for a while. The real antagonist of the short is an EgomaniacHunter whom Goldilocks helps the bears outwit, and even lampshades what an atypical retelling of the story this is by saying "Well, I guess this ain't in the book!" when he corners the bears. |
| 501 | * The premise of the ''WesternAnimation/TalesFromTheGooseLady'' shorts on ''WesternAnimation/OhYeahCartoons'' is that an anthropomorphic female goose and her talking magic wand Juanito continuously pester two children named Dot and Randy by forcing them to listen to bizarre versions of famous fairy tales, with some examples being a version of ''Literature/HanselAndGretel'' where the witch is the innocent victim of her gingerbread house being repeatedly devoured by two fat and greedy children who pull a WoundedGazelleGambit to get a woodsman with feminine mannerisms to cut her in two with his ax (requiring her to sew herself back together each time), a take-off of ''Literature/TheUglyDuckling'' where the titular character takes advantage of [[MirrorCrackingUgly his ugliness breaking stuff]] to save lives before eventually getting plastic surgery to look handsome after an accident, a retelling of ''Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs'' that reimagines the porcine trio as a jazz band and the Big Bad Wolf as their crooked agent and a send-up of Humpty Dumpty where he aspires to become King of Fairy Tale Land, but has his reign end when his subjects are so fed up with his laziness that they [[ProducePelting throw vegetables at him]] and knock him off his wall when he [[GroinAttack takes a tomato to the crotch]]. |
| 502 | [[/folder]] |
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