YMMV / Hansel and Gretel

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Why is the stepmother dead (or otherwise gone) by the time Hänsel and Gretel return? That could be because she succumbed to the hunger after all, despite sending the children away to save food for herself. Or because the father had a My God, What Have I Done? moment and killed her (which would fit nicely with the generally dark atmosphere of the story). Another interpretation is that she actually was the Witch all along.
• Awesome Music: Humperdinck's opera. Thanks to it, Humperdinck is nicknamed "Wagner for children", and his style is indeed a nice introduction to German Romantic opera for the younger viewers.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy includes a bizarre and silent scene in which the Witch stares Gretel down while disrobing in front of her.
• Complete Monster: The Wicked Witch is the archetype for the evil witch in the woods. Described as wicked and godless, she lays a trap with her edible house for children, whereupon she captures them, kills them, butchers and cooks them for her feasts. Upon capturing Hansel and Gretel, she attempts to fatten up Hansel, before growing tired of his seeming inability to gain weight. Intending on burning Gretel alive before eating her brother, the witch proves to be one of the most terrifying and evil monsters in any of the Grimm brothers' stories.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The idea of a house made entirely of candy sounded ludicrous for centuries. While not exactly the same? We now have access to a sugar cane form of concrete used in building houses.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In the stop-motion Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy, the siblings hear an ominous chorus ("Children, children, are you not afraid?"), then they see something moving through the trees, and a brief blinding light. While trying to find their way home, they see what looks like glimmering eyes on a birch tree staring at them, a willow stump grinning at them, a Will-o'-the-Wisp fluttering through the woods (Gretel thought someone was carrying a lantern who could help them), and then Gretel sees ghosts ("shadowy women") coming towards them.
  • In the Cannon Movie Tales version, as Hansel and Gretel got lost deep into the woods, they hear mock laughters and then an eerie shriek. They hear their names whisper in the dark and a witch's cackle as they sit near a camp fire.
  • What is the only meaningful difference between this story and the plot of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)? In that movie, the kids' own parents didn't leave them in the wild to die.
• Ron the Death Eater: Some modern readings of the original fairytale tend to give the two main characters an Adaptational Villainy treatment, portraying them as cruel murderers of a poor old lady. Never mind that the "poor old lady" in question wanted to eat them and the only act of violence from the siblings was made in self defense.
• Woolseyism: In some localised versions of the tale, (Specifically those in Eastern Europe) the witch is sometimes made to be Baba Yaga.

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