History Literature / HanselAndGretel

* ColdEquation: Attempted by the stepmother, as the family is running low on food during a famine. With the story often considered to take place during the Great Famine, crop failures led to ''astronomical'' food prices across a shockingly wide region of Europe, and it obviously hit the poor especially hard.

They wander around for a while, and then they find a GingerbreadHouse. They are very hungry, so they start eating. The owner of the house, a WickedWitch, calls out that she knows ''someone'' is eating her house; Hansel and Gretel don't reply. [[RuleOfThree The third time]], the witch goes out to meet them. She seems surprisingly friendly, and gives them a huge feast.

The next day, Hansel is in a fattening pen, and Gretel is a servant. It seems that the witch [[ImAHumanitarian eats children, once they are properly prepared]]. Hansel stalls for a while -- the old witch can't see well and pinches his finger to test his plumpness and he is able to trick her by holding out a bone -- but eventually she gets tired of waiting, and decides to roast him and eat as he is, along with Gretel to compensate for the supposedly measely meal. She orders Gretel to crawl in to check the oven (intending, of course, to shove her in and cook her as well), but Gretel can tell what she has in mind, and pretends she doesn't know how. When the witch bends over to demonstrate it to her, Gretel [[HoistByHisOwnPetard shoves her in and slams the door]].

The two siblings then take all of the treasures and valuables from the late witches house and return home. With the stepmother now dead and all the valuables they took from the witch, Hansel and Gretel live prosperously with their father from then on. Found in many variants across many cultures; [[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/hanselgretel/other.html a list of some can be found here]].

* FaceOnAMilkCarton: In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS10E12AboutABoy About a Boy]]", the witch no longer abducts children because of the Amber Alert system. Instead, she deages adults with a hex bag, fattens them up, and eats them.

* GingerbreadHouse: TropeMaker ''and'' TropeCodifier. Although in some versions, it's made of bread, and in others, it's simply a house that the siblings recognize as occupied by smoke from the chimney, and are attracted to in an effort to beg for food, only to be caught.

* HappilyEverAfter: The children escape the witch and take all her treasures and jewels home with them, and find their stepmother has died and their father is overjoyed to see them. They live like kings from then on.

* LaserGuidedKarma: In some versions, the children's step-mother dies for no apparent reason besides this.

* TheLostWoods: The kids parents attempts to dump them in one so they won't have to worry about feeding them anymore.

** In the best known versions of the tale, the plan to abandon Hansel and Gretel in the woods is put forward by their stepmother, and the father only complies because of her pressuring. The trope does not appear in the first edition version recorded by the Grimm brothers (and in occasional retellings of the story, such as Paul O Zelinsky's), where the woman is the kids' actual mother, and the father also desires to abandon the children.

* WickedWitch: The antagonist is a child eating witch.

* TooSmartForStrangers: Except they weren't.

* An episode of ''Series/Grimm''.

* RelatedDifferentlyInTheAdaptation: Later versions of the tale got this treatment; rather than Hansel and Gretel's biological mother it's their stepmother who plots to abandon them in the forest.

* WickedWitch

The tale may have originated during the medieval period of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315–1317 Great Famine]] when people were driven to desperate measures. Children were abandoned to fend for themselves, and there were many reported incidents of cannibalism.

The tale may have originated during the medieval period of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315-1317 Great Famine]] when people were driven to desperate measures. Children were abandoned to fend for themselves, and there were many reported incidents of cannibalism.

The 19th century composer Engelbert Humperdinck adapted the fairy tale into an {{opera}} (premiered 1893). The opera in turn was adapted into a 1954 stop-motion animation film.

* ''Film/Whoever Slew Auntie Roo''
" One episode of ''Series/GRimm''.

* ''Film/GretelAndHansel'' (no relation to the above-mentioned game)

* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretel_%26_Hansel Gretel and Hansel]]'' (no relation to the above-mentioned game)

* NoNameGiven: The parents and the witch. Though in Humperdinck's opera, the parents are Peter and Gertrud and the witch is Rosine Leckermaul (literally, "Rosina Tastymuzzle").

** In VERY early versions of the story, the witch's house is not delectable, frosting-covered gingerbread and candy. [[MundaneLuxury It's just normal bread,]] which both ramps up the famine's severity AND the witch's evilness.

* {{Oktoberfest}}: In illustrations, Hansel and Gretel are almost invariably depicted wearing traditional Bavarian costumes.