Western Animation / Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

aka: Snow White And The Seven Dwarves

"His First Full-Length Feature Production."

"~♫Some day, my prince will come,
Some day, we'll meet again,
And away to his castle we'll go,
To be happy forever I know...
Some day, when spring is here,
We'll find our love anew,
And the birds will sing,
And wedding bells will ring,
Some day, when my dreams come true...~♫"

While Disney itself may have all started by a mouse, if there is one thing we should never lose sight of, the Disney Animated Canon was all started by a princess and seven dwarfs.

Walt Disney made "Snow White" into an animated movie in 1937, the first full-length animated feature film in the English-speaking world ("English-speaking" being an important disclaimer, though it was at least definitely the first cel-animated one) and the first entry in the Disney Animated Canon. Using a number of new technologies and animation techniques, the film set high standards for future projects and can be considered a defining moment in animation history. Disney adapted the story by The Brothers Grimm fairly closely but allowed Snow White and her prince to meet earlier in the story (removing some of the Squick), and made the dwarfs into individual characters. He condensed the three assassination attempts into one and gave the queen a much more family-friendly Disney Villain Death (though, all things considered, it's arguably more violent than the original one.)

Part of the reason Snow White was made was for the purpose of economics — despite the ambitious art and extreme popularity of the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies shorts, Walt came to realize that no matter how successful his shorts were, they only earned a fixed revenue from their screenings, regardless of their popularity. Realizing that venturing out into making a feature-length animated film could not only net him more profit in the long run, but also progress the medium of animation as an art form, he began work on his daring project. Around four years were spent by Disney trying to get this mammoth project off the ground — first, there was the obsessive attention to the story — Walt had the savvy to realize that a feature that played out like a traditional short cartoon comedy would never work, resulting in a focus on the characters' personalities, their interactions, as well as their development in the context of the tale. The most prominent example of this character development would be the character of Grumpy - arguably the most important character in the film aside from Snow White herself - whose arc was shouldered and elevated by the masterfully solid and nuanced animation of Bill Tytla, then a comparatively-recent addition to Disney's expanding roster of animators.

Another obstacle was ensuring that the body language, implied physics and facial gestures of the film's animated characters could compete with the expressiveness of live-action actors. Despite the substantial innovations of animators such as Norm Ferguson, even the best Silly Symphonies and Mickey Mouse cartoons of the early 1930s continued to suffer from rigid, slow-paced motion and a lack of facial construction. As a result, life-drawing classes and frame-by-frame studying of live-action film took place, in an ambitious attempt to get the most life-like animation possible. The breakout of two significant talents circa 1933 further aided Disney's ambitions. Creator/Fred Moore, assigned the opening sequence of the Silly Symphony The Three Little Pigs, conceived an animation principle later dubbed "squash-and-stretch", in which characters' bodies distort and compress in space while retaining a consistent mass, thus opening Disney's output to more plausible and expressive modes of movement and visual characterization. Albert Hurter, meanwhile, was promoted to a concept artist, enabling the studio to shed the crude black-and-white rubberhose designs indigenous to contemporary animation in favor of a more expressive and elaborate aesthetic resembling Germanic storybook illustrations. Both men's talents would prove instrumental to Snow White (with Moore in particular designing and animating many of the titular dwarves). The Silly Symphonies began to be used as testing grounds for the work that would go into Snow White — from advancements in story and character animation to major special effects discoveries. The studio also had to expand considerably to complete the film — from a measly few hundred to nearly 1000 staffers by the film's completion. At one point, Walt almost ran out of money during production and was lucky enough to receive a bank loan by showing what footage had already been finished. During production, the film was derided by critics, as well as Walt's own wife, as "Disney's Folly", the notion that Walt had gone over his head with this project. But upon debut, Snow White was a smash hit — at the time, it was the highest grossing film of all time, and was universally praised by critics, setting the stage for the future Disney films to come, and proving that animation could compete with live-action films.

As for the plot, we're not even going to bother summarizing it, since everybody knows about this film and its story by now. (Just kidding, we did it anyway.)

Filmation made an unofficial sequel called Happily Ever After. Unsurprisingly, Disney took offence and sued Filmation, demanding that the film should not bear any similarities to the 1937 film.

The Snow White character herself eventually appeared in the Kingdom Hearts series as a Princess of Heart, one of seven iconic Disney heroines with a pure heart free of darkness. A version of the film's setting and plot would later appear in 2010's Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep as the Dwarf Woodlands, with some changes to fit the series, such as the original character Terra standing in for the huntsman. The Disney Press Perspective Flip novel series A Tale of..., meanwhile, gives the Queen a backstory in Fairest of All.

A Disney live-action remake is currently in production, directed by Marc Webb and with a screenplay written by Erin Cressida Wilson and Greta Gerwig, with Rachel Zegler as Snow White and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.

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The film contains examples of:

A - G

• Accidental Art: Dopey gets an awesome drum solo during the Silly Song; he was trying to smash a fly with drumsticks at the time.
• Accidental Truth: The Evil Queen, under disguise as an old apple peddler, convinces Snow White that the poisoned apple is a "wishing apple". The princess buys into the hag's deception, biting the apple after wishing for the prince to come to her, and is knocked out cold as a result. Turns out that the laced apple did lead her to the prince she so desired, but not in a way she expected.
• Actionized Adaptation: An action sequence of the dwarfs chasing down the wicked Queen after she poisoned Snow White wasn't in the original tale.
• Adaptation Distillation: Sticks very close to the original story, but the things it cuts out (the two other ways Snow White was going to be murdered: by a poisoned comb and by being strangled from a tight corset) and things it adds in (personalities for the dwarfs) usually work to the story's benefit. The other failed assassination attempts were going to be there, but were scrapped due to time and budget constraints. (It also makes Snow White look like less of an idiot if she only falls for one trick instead of three.)
• Adaptation Expansion: The 2019 comic book adaptation of the film by Dark Horse Comics further fleshes out Snow White's character and adds several new scenes of her interacting with the Evil Queen (who she doesn't directly interact with before her witch transformation in the film) and the Prince (who she only interacts with once before the ending).
• Advertising by Association: The 1993 re-release trailer promotes Snow White as "The animated motion picture that started it all," including clips of later Disney animated classics spanning Pinocchio to Aladdin. The 2001 DVD received promos hailing Snow White as "The one that started it all," each one including Disney clips (taken from a time frame spanning Cinderella to Mulan) themed around either magical items, villains, or the Princesses.
• All-Natural Gem Polish: The dwarfs' mine has a huge variety of gems that come out of the earth already perfectly cut and glittering like stars. Doc's evaluations aren't even really about their carats, but whether they "sound" good via tapping them.
• All There in the Script:
  • The Queen's real name, according to comic strips and old press material, is Queen Grimhilde.
  • The Huntsman's name, Humbert, is also not given onscreen.
  • There is some uncertainty over the Prince's real name: while it is commonly believed to be Ferdinand, Disney has never officially confirmed any name for the character; the Ferdinand myth came from a speech by Shirley Temple who thanked Walt Disney for creating characters "like Snow White, Ferdinand, the Dwarfs, Mickey..." during the 1938 Academy Awards. Temple was actually referring to Ferdinand the Bull. Expanded universe media refers to the Prince as Florian, however.
• Anti-Sneeze Finger: Given that Sneezy, as his name indicates, sneezes a lot, especially during inconvenient moments, the dwarfs put their fingers under his nose to stop the sneeze from happening. When Dopey stands on Sneezy's shoulders for the dance with Snow White, Sneezy begins to sneeze right before they go out, and Dopey uses his foot to stop his sneeze, and it works. When Sneezy begins the sneeze interrupting the dance, Dopey tries the Anti-Sneeze Finger on himself. It doesn't work. Sneezy himself provides the page image.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The titles of the books in the Evil Queen's dungeon are as follows: Black Arts, Alchemy, Witch Craft, Black Magic, Disguises (which is used), Sorcery, Poisons, and Astrology.
• Art Shift: The book in the Book Ends is filmed in live-action while most of the movie is hand-drawn.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: The Dwarfs angrily chase the Queen to the top of a cliff during the climax. The Queen then turns the tables and starts to dislodge a giant boulder, forcing them to evade, until the storm takes care of her a few seconds later.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Grumpy has been the most vocally opposed to Snow White staying, and to her trying to boss the others around. Then he tells her gruffly to not let any strangers into the house, and she thanks him for caring with a kiss. Despite himself, Grumpy realizes he liked the kiss and waves to her. Then when the dwarfs realize Snow White is in danger, Grumpy shouts, "The Queen will kill her! We've gotta save her!" and takes charge when Doc is too panicked to do so. He also shows this to Doc: he often gets into fights with him, but the first thing Grumpy does after it's revealed that Snow White was alive is hug him.
• Badass Adorable: Those little birds that famously accompany Snow White, to the point they often appear in parodies. They end up attacking the Evil Queen.
• Bat Scare: When Snow White runs through the woods she passes near a small cave where some bats dwell and she wakes them up, causing them to flee. She's startled and scared by them.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Technically played straight with Snow White, although Disney intentionally made her "cute" instead of ravishingly beautiful. Averted with the Queen, who is the second fairest in the land, and rotten to the core.
• Black-and-White Morality: Literally and figuratively, in that White is predominant among Good characters (right down to Prince Charming's horse) while the Queen wears Black.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: The Queen could have just actually killed Snow White instead of betting on her sleeping forever. Especially since she would just retain her beauty that way. Subverted as the actual film has her laughing at the thought of Snow White being buried alive and killed that way, just to give her a Cruel and Unusual Death. It was the dwarfs not having the heart to bury her that kept Snow White alive but comatose.
• Book Ends: The movie opens with a shot of a book opening by itself to give out exposition and ends with the same book closing itself.
• Bootstrapped Theme: Ask anyone what song they associate with this movie and it's either "Someday My Prince Will Come" or "Heigh-Ho" — the latter being the theme used during Disney advertisements of DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Either way, no one will think of the actual title theme — "One Song".
• Botanical Abomination: When a truly terrified Snow White escapes into the woods, the trees around her looks like horrible humanoid creatures with angry faces, clawed hands, and glaring evil eyes. Turns out it's just her imagination running wild.
• Boulder Bludgeon: The dwarfs corner the evil Queen at the top of a cliff. Enraged, the Queen tries to dislodge a nearby boulder onto the dwarfs. It nearly works, until a bolt of lightning strikes the Queen from her perch to her death.
• Brick Joke: A slapstick sequence involving Dopey eating a bar of soap returns in the deleted "Music in Your Soup" scene.
• Butt-Monkey: The Queen's unnamed raven. He almost gets blown away by a blast of wind the Queen summoned for her potion's ingredients, gets scared by the old witch appearance and he's offered the poison apple as a cruel joke.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: Played for Horror. When the title princess runs in panic into the forest, some yellow glowing eyes seem to stare at her. They actually belong to friendly cute animals, but Snow White's imagination makes them look evil and demonic.
• Call-and-Response Song: "I'm Wishing," between Snow White and her own echoing voice in the wishing well.
• Cape Swish: The Queen manages a particularly impressive one when rushing down from the Mirror Room to her secret spell-chamber.
• Circling Vultures: Two vultures follow the Queen in her Wicked Witch disguise, as she goes to the cottage to get Snow White, and their presence alerts the Woodland Creatures that there is something seriously wrong about the "peddler woman" with her basket of apples. In the end, the vultures were not after Snow White at all, but after the Queen, and as she falls to her doom, the vultures slowly circle down after her.
• Climbing Climax: The dwarfs and animals chase the transformed queen to the top of a cliff.
• Comically Cross-Eyed: Dopey, very frequently. One example is in the washing scene, as the look in his eyes rapidly alternates between determined anger and aimlessly rolling and crossing when overwhelmed by hiccups he got from eating a bar of soap.
• Cool Crown: The Queen wears a crown with spikes evoking the rays of the sun.
• Creepy Crows : The Queen's pet raven in the dungeon. Though while sinister-looking he's just the Queen's pet and doesn't seem to be evil like her mistress by whom he seems to be very intimidated.
• Cross-Cast Role: For the 1979 Radio City Music Hall stage production, actor Charles Edward Hall portrayed the Queen in her Wicked Witch disguise.
• Cuckoo Clock Gag: The Dwarfs have two: one at their mine to sound quitting time, with two little dwarfs playing a bell; and a larger, more elaborate one that has a frog sound the time.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • The Magic Mirror — he has a creepy face and a weird voice, but he's not evil and he's not a Queen's henchman, he just does his job answering questions. In other Disney material later on, it was shown that the mirror was now owned by Walt Disney (or in one children's book, by Snow White herself), and only used for good purposes.
  • The vultures that followed the Queen. They were initially presented as a sign that she's Obviously Evil, and Snow White's animal friends take it as such. In the end, it turns out that they were just looking for a meal.
  • Bats fly past Snow White during her escape in the forest. Though bats are dark-coloured and usually seen as scary, and on the surface the bats in this scene appear as frightening, they're ironically just as scared as she is since she startled them by waking them up, and they don't mean any harm to her.
• Darker and Edgier: This movie was Disney's darkest work by far when it was created. It focused far more on drama than comedy, had quite a few legitimate scares, and its antagonist was a very evil, very dangerous character played completely seriously.
• Dark Reprise: When the Dwarfs learn from Snow White's forest animals that the witch is preparing to give Snow White a poison apple. The Dwarfs alongside the forest animals rush as fast as they can to the Dwarfs cottage. During this sequence, a fast-paced and urgent variation of the "Heigh Ho" song is heard as the movie intercuts to Snow White seconds away from eating the apple as the witch gleefully watches on.
• The Darkness Gazes Back: During Snow White's run in the forest, the animals' eyes glow in the darkness. Because of Snow White's fear and confusion, they look inhuman and demonic.
• Dead-Hand Shot: After Snow White eats the apple, we see her hand flopping to the floor to show that she's unconscious. For added bonus she drops the apple she was holding.
• Death by Irony: Cornered on a cliff by the dwarfs, the Queen/Hag tries to knock a boulder loose and bellows "I'll fix ya! I'LL CRUSH YOUR BONES!!" She cackles madly... when suddenly a bolt of lightning shatters the ledge she's standing on, sending the wicked Queen falling into her doom, shortly followed by the boulder falling after her. Don't even guess whose bones got crushed...
  • Doubly ironic in the sense that the Queen's desire was to kill Snow White in order to be the fairest in the land, yet she dies as a hideous old hag.
• Death Glare: When Snow is running through the forest, she hallucinates monsters in the trees glaring at her evilly. The Queen also shows one when talking to the Huntsman.
• Deranged Animation: The dark forest sequence — while a terrified Snow White flees through the woods, the wildlife seems to come to life to terrorize her. It ends with dozens of malicious-looking eyes glaring down at her from the darkness (though these turn out to be the friendly forest creatures.)
• Deus ex Machina: A very straightforward example. The Queen is about to kill the Dwarfs by rolling a huge boulder down at them, when a bolt of lightning suddenly destroys the ledge she's standing on, sending her toppling to her doom (with the boulder rolling after her for good measure).
• Didn't Think This Through: The hunter. Snow White staying would be sure death, but sending a young little girl with no hunting experience to the forest isn't a good option either.
• Dinner Deformation: When a bar of soap slides down Dopey's throat, it distends into a a rectangular bulge as it reaches Dopey's rear before settling in his stomach, where pressing it with his palms still reveals the soap inside.
• Disappeared Dad: Snow White's father is not in her life. It can be assumed he died, seeing as her stepmother seemed to be running the kingdom.
• Discretion Shot: Snow White's death, the pig's heart, and the Queen getting pecked by vultures after falling off the cliff are all never shown directly.
• Disney Death: In one of the earliest examples, Snow White herself! Downplayed in that she's technically in an enchanted death-like sleep, but most of the other characters believe she's simply dead, and the time they spend mourning her makes it feel like she really is dead until the Prince wakes her up.
• Disneyfication: The first example, although not quite as much as later entries. The biggest change is the death of the Queen — who falls off a cliff while trying to kill the dwarfs instead of being forced by Snow and her prince to dance in red hot shoes at their wedding. The film also makes Snow a Friend to All Living Things with a beautiful singing voice.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • Replaced a Family-Unfriendly Death in the source material. The death is in some ways more extreme than the pre-Disney versions — it follows the Rule of Three! But it is only implied, not shown. And since it was nature killing the Queen, none of the good guys had to — which makes it more family-friendly that way. Quite fitting, considering she's the first Disney Animated Canon villain.
  • Some comics subvert this; since the death is No One Could Survive That!, they show that she survived.
• The Dissenter Is Always Right: Grumpy is ridiculed for his fears that Snow White will lead the Queen right to them. Turns out he's bang on the money on that one.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Well, no, you can. Unless you usually jump at shadows or you're scared enough to imagine things as hideous monsters, giant bats, log-alligators etc.
• Don't Touch It, You Fools!:
  • Word-for-word by Grumpy when the dwarves react to the soup bubbling, even going as far as calling it "witch's brew".
  • Grumpy has this reaction to the bar of soap.
• Dope Slap:
  • Doc gives one to (who else?) Dopey for goofing around while they're working in the mine.
  • Also, Dopey thinks that The Queen has somehow hidden herself under Happy's beard; Happy bops Dopey on the head for trying to investigate.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Regarding the Storybook Opening, which shows the book closing to the back cover at the end. Later instances of this would have the book close back to its front cover instead.
  • There’s no narrator to read the book, which was changed for all future films presumably because the movie makers realized their target audience wasn’t good at reading.
  • As far as Disney Villain Deaths go, the Queen's is a little different from later instances of the trope in that there's no Plummet Perspective when she falls from the cliff. The camera remains focused on the ledge. Although, that was likely done so we'd see the boulder come tumbling after her.
  • As far as Disney's other fairy tale adaptations go, this one has very little Adaptation Expansion. The only thing making this different from its literary counterpart is that the prince appears earlier, the Queen only disguises herself once and the dwarfs have more fleshed out personalities. Compare to Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and the Renaissance films, which do considerably more in the adaptation.
  • Unshaved Mouse noted that the film was like a series of the Disney shorts edited together — the extended bits of Snow White exploring the house, Snow White and the animals cleaning the house, the dwarfs finding it clean and searching for the intruder, the whole scene and song with the dwarfs' washing themselves, and the forest animals trying to warn everyone about the Queen. Starting with Pinocchio the Disney films became much more cinematic, with every scene written to advance the plot rather than as set-pieces showcasing comic gags.
• Empathic Environment: As soon as the Queen leaves the cottage after poisoning Snow White, it's suddenly dark and stormy outside.
• Epic Fail: The Queen's plan to kill Snow White and be the fairest one of all. Instead, she dies a horrible death as the ugliest person of all, and the "wishing apple" she gives Snow White really does end up granting Snow White's wish.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While it's not clear exactly how "evil" the hunter is, it is implied that he has killed people for the Queen before, or at least done dirty deeds. Doesn't mean he has the stomach to brutally murder a young girl for no good reason.
• Everybody Cries: All of the dwarfs and forest animals are crying over Snow White's apparent death; even Grumpy is in Manly Tears.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Queen, the Prince, and the Huntsman are only known by their titles.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: The dark forest sequence where seems like everything comes to life to catch Snow White.
• Evil Laugh: The Queen does several once in hag form.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: An interesting example. The Queen turns herself ugly so that she can better perform an evil deed.
• Evil Overlooker: Some posters and cover art since the 1993 reissue place the Queen on the top.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Everything except the very last scene takes place within two days.
• Extreme Omnivore: Dopey manages to swallow both a bar of soap and a spoon (in a deleted scene) with one gulp each. Granted, both times were by accident, and eating this kind of stuff often gives him the hiccups. The aforementioned deleted scene also has Dopey eventually regurgitating both of these.
• Fade Around the Eyes: In what may be the Ur-Example, the Evil Queen does this when she transforms herself into a witch. An unusual example in that by the time the screen fades to black, the eyes have almost completely faded away, but you can still see them for a second.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Grumpy storming out and walking straight into a door.
• Foreshadowing: At one point Grumpy refers to the Queen as an "old witch". She later becomes a literal one. Before that, he stops Happy and Dopey from eating the food Snow White cooked because he mistakenly thinks it's a poisonous witch's brew. Guess what the Queen makes in a brew.
• Floating in a Bubble: Happens to Dopey's hat after he eats the bar of soap.
• Food Porn: Invoked with the poisoned apple — the Queen commands it "turn red to tempt Snow White, to make her hunger for a bite", making the apple look more appetizing so that Snow White will be more willing to bite it without hesitation.
• Forced Bath: Snow White tells the dwarfs to wash up or they won't get anything to eat. Grumpy is the only one who refuses to wash, so the other six dwarves promptly drag him to the tub and roughly scrub him down, while tying ribbons into his beard and draping a flower crown around his head to embarrass him.
• Fourth Wall Psych: There are several moments in her evil monologue about her plan to poison Snow White where the Queen as a hag seems to be addressing the audience directly, but camera cuts show she's addressing her bird.
• Full-Name Basis: It's not necessarily a full-name basis. Snow White is a translation of the German name Schneewittchen, which is one word. Germans love compound words.
• Funny Background Event: It's tricky to spot and certainly unintentional, but when Snow White enters the dwarfs' house for the first time, her forest friends creep in with her. The animators apparently forgot which animals they were drawing, because one rabbit hops behind another and comes out a squirrel.
• Good Princess, Evil Queen: The film is a straight adaptation of the fairytale, starring the good and innocent princess Snow White and her vain Wicked Stepmother Queen Grimhilde.
• Gone Horribly Right: Doc's one order to Dopey as Grumpy is being washed? "Get the soap!" Dopey struggles with delivering it without slipping out of his hands, but he finally catches the soap... by swallowing it. Dopey's victory is short-lived as the soap keeps him stuck in place while hiccupping bubbles.
• Gonk: The Queen's hag disguise is far more stylized and grotesque than her true appearance. The dwarfs are also drawn like this but in a much cuter way.
• Grief Song: "Chorale For Snow White", which plays as the dwarfs grieve for the seemingly dead Snow White.

H - Y

• Hallucinations: Snow White's run in the forest where she imagines it's inhabited by monstrous tree creatures.
• Happily Ever After: Snow White marries the prince, and the wicked queen dies as an ugly old crone.
• Have a Gay Old Time: Doc tries to say, "who are you and what are you doing?" and comes up with "what are you and who are you doing?"
• Hellish Pupils: The Queen in her hag form has a pair of green ones. Also the scary trees who scares Snow White (in her imagination).
• Hell Is That Noise: Among the ingredients of the Queen's potion there's the Scream of Fright which is a white liquid that releases a cloud-like ghost who lets out a terryfing femine scream.
• Herbivores Are Friendly: When Snow White gets lost in the woods, a bunch wild animals take sympathy on her and take it upon themselves to try to help her. Except for a couple of raccoons, nearly all of these are herbivores.
• Hiccup Hijinks: During the washing scene, Dopey is trying to get a bar of soap, but he ends up swallowing it by mistake, which causes him to continuously hiccup out bubbles.
• High Collar of Doom: The Queen wears a high white collar with her black robe.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Near the end the Evil Queen (in hag form) is trying to roll a boulder down on the dwarfs to crush them. After lightning destroys the cliff under her she falls and the boulder rolls down and crushes her offscreen.
• Hollywood Costuming: As a minimum, Snow White. It's set in medieval Germany according to behind-the-scenes information, yet her dress has short sleeves and a lower neckline than would be accurate. Oh and she has a 1930s hairstyle as opposed to the long hair she would probably sport.
• Hollywood Kiss: The kiss between Snow White and the Prince, which brings her back to life.
• Holy Pipe Organ: "Chorale for Snow White", which plays during the scene where the dwarfs mourn the sleeping Snow White, is a somber organ solo that evokes the mood of a funeral.
• Hypocritical Humor: "Now I'll be fairest in the land!"... after transforming herself into a hag. Presumably, there was a way to change back, because otherwise this makes no sense, and the Queen does refer to it as a "disguise".
• I Ate WHAT?!: Dopey's (eventual) reaction to having eaten a bar of soap; he pats at his stomach in disbelief after finally realizing he swallowed it.
• Ill-Timed Sneeze: Sneezy always seems to sneeze at the worst possible times, like ejecting Dopey from the top of a Totem Pole Trench, blowing Dopey's chance of getting a kiss from Snow White, and putting him and his brothers at risk of getting caught by a burglar.
• Imaginary Enemy: The monster-trees Snow White sees during the forest run sequence along with the alligators-logs are actually just the fragments of her imagination caused by her anxiety and fear after the Huntsman confessed to her that the Queen wants her dead.
• Incoming Ham: How the Queen's hag form introduces herself:

  "My voice! My voice... (becomes rough and old) Ha ha ha ha ha! A perfect disguise! Eh he he he!

• Indirect Kiss: Snow White kisses a dove, who then flies down to kiss the prince.
• Insubstantial Ingredients: The peddler disguise contains ingredients such as "an old hag's cackle" and "a scream of fright", which she actually stores in her laboratory. It seems "black of night" comes in a vial and shrieks of fright come in kegs. Who knew? The shot of the recipe in the Queen's Disguises Book provides the page image.
• Irony:
  • Of the dramatic kind, when the audience knows that the apple is poison, but Snow White does not and believes it to instead be a "wishing apple."
  • Of the situational kind, when the apple that the Queen intended to be Snow White's downfall actually led to Snow White becoming reunited with her prince and so, in a way, DID made Snow White's wish come true.
• "I Want" Song: "I'm Wishing" and "Someday My Prince Will Come".
• Jerkass Has a Point: When the dwarfs are going to work in the mine, Grumpy tells Snow White don't let anyone inside the house. She assumes he's just being concerned for her and gives him a goodbye kiss. Yeah, she should have listened when the Queen comes.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Grumpy is initially opposed to having Snow White live with them, but he eventually warms up to her. When the dwarfs hear that Snow White is in trouble, Grumpy is the first to jump on a deer and yell "C'mon!" and leads the way. And at Snow White's funeral, notice that he is the one who puts flowers on top of Snow White's glass coffin.
• Jeweler's Eye Loupe: In the mine scene, Doc is shown using a loupe to inspect the gems the dwarfs have mined.
• Job Song: "Heigh Ho" is a song sung by the Seven Dwarfs about their job in the mine.
• Jumpscare: The witch appears in the cottage window, scaring Snow White, the forest animals, and the audience.
  • Before that, the Queen, now in her hag status, silently searches in his book for a "special sort of death" for Snow White until she shouts "AH !!" when she finds it causing her raven hidden in a skull to jump behind a desk.
• Karmic Transformation: The Queen gives us a rare case of a voluntarily self-inflicted version of this. A woman obsessed with beauty turns herself hideous as a disguise, but she spends the rest of the movie (and is most often remembered) that way.
• Kick the Dog: The Queen kicks a jug of water into a skeleton reaching for the jug, presumably someone she imprisoned and allowed to die of dehydration.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After spending the whole movie on an obsessive quest to become the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, the Queen ends up dying as an elderly deformed hag.
• Left the Background Music On: Downplayed near the end. The One Song reprisal begins during the coffin-building montage, then the Prince shows up, and if you look closely, you can see his mouth moving in sync with the lyrics.
• Leitmotif:
  • Dopey is accompanied by an odd little theme most of the time (it can be heard most easily in the soap scene, and there's a pretty catchy piano rendition as part of the deleted bed-building sequence).
  • Grumpy has a comically moody bassoon-based theme of his own for when he saunters about. This theme is perhaps heard most prominently when he storms out and sits on the barrel just outside the cottage after Snow White tells the dwarfs to wash up.
  • The Queen's theme makes use of a descending chromatic scale, making it sound dark and menacing. You can hear it mostly when she's in her hag status, and it features prominently in the score accompanying the climactic chase.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The dwarfs are generally comic relief, spending their days finding diamonds and being befuddled that a strange girl would have cleaned their house and cooked for them proactively. Then they find out in the climax that the Witch found Snow White, and they all leap into action with the forest animals' help. Given they're all wielding pickaxes and mining equipment, it wouldn't have been pleasant for the Queen if they had caught up with her.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: The Queen holds the glass of potion up to the window so that a thunderbolt will mix the potion well.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: The Queen has long black hair under her wimple, but refreshingly averted with Snow White, a Princess Classic with short hair.
• Lost in Imitation: The film was inspired by the 1916 film adaptation. It shows. For example, both films have the dwarfs being named, Snow White with short hair, and the Wicked Stepmother forcing Snow White into servitude.
• Loud Sleeper Gag: Grumpy is kept awake by the other dwarfs' snoring. Each dwarf's snoring is distinct — Sleepy inhales water dripping from the faucet, causing him to gurgle; Bashful sleeps inside the cupboard, opening and closing the drawer doors as he snores; and Dopey whines like a sleeping dog.
• Love at First Note: The prince falls in love with Snow White when he hears her singing "I'm Wishing," which leads to the Love Theme "One Song".
• Love Theme: "One Song." The song Snow White sings talking about how she wishes for her prince charming to arrive. And at that very moment said prince charming arrivevs, and starts singing a duet.
• Magic Mirror: Possibly the Ur-Example here; this one has an ominous, evil-looking face.
• Make a Wish: Snow White starts out singing to a wishing well, hoping for a prince to come.
• Malaproper: Doc when he gets flustered. This was a specialty of comedian Roy Atwell, who voiced the character for the film.
  • When they find Snow White in their cottage and the other dwarfs urge Doc to question her, he comes out with:
    "What are you and who are you doing?"
  • This gets Exploited when the dwarfs let Snow White sleep in their bedroom for the night. When Doc assures her that they'll be comfortable, Grumpy interjects "In a pig's eye!" This throws off Doc to the point where he calls the cottage a "pig sty".
• Manly Tears: All seven dwarfs cry over Snow White's Disney Death. That includes Sour Supporter Grumpy, who leads the attempt to rescue Snow White and therefore is easily the manliest of them. This scene may also have invoked a meta example of this trope at its first showing; after months prior to the release of people calling the movie "Disney's Folly," saying that an hour and a half of color/animation would drive people mad, etc., a bunch of grown celebrities, men as well as women, burst into tears over the sight of a dead cartoon character.
• The Marvelous Deer: The first creature that plainly reveals itself in the forest is a fawn.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The dwarfs are confused about why the animals are swarming them and frantically chirping in the climax. Sleepy then suggests, "Maybe the witch found Snow White." Everyone goes Oh, Crap! as they realize this must have happened, with Grumpy saying they have to go back and save her and taking action as Doc starts stammering, "what will we do?!"
• Meaningful Names: The dwarfs. Except Doc, all of them have names describing their personalities.
• Men Can't Keep House: The dwarfs' house was trashed and untidy until Snow White came in and cleaned it.
• Mind Screw: All of Snow White's run in the forest. Seems like the forest has come to life to catch her.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • While the story is supposed to be in medieval Europe, we see raccoons, chipmunks, grey squirrels, California quails turkey vultures, and deer with antlers resembling a white-tailed deer, all of which are North American species.
  • Averted in the "Silly Song". Bashful sings "I chased a polecat up a tree/Way out upon a limb". How many North American viewers know what a polecat is?^note It's one of several Old-World members of the weasel family, though the term is sometimes also applied to the American black-footed ferret.
• Modest Royalty: Snow White's dress is pretty simple for a princess, and she knows how to cook and keep house for the dwarfs. Justified by that her Evil Stepmother forced her to wear plain clothes and work like a servant.
• Mood Whiplash: Any time the film changes from a scene with Snow White and the Dwarfs to a scene with the Queen or vice versa, especially the transition from the Queen's transformation scene to the musical number "The Silly Song".
• Musical Chores:
  • Early in the film, Snow White sings "I'm Wishing" while drawing water from the well — what she is wishing for is a lover to take her away from her life of drudgery.
  • "Whistle While You Work" is one as well, as is obvious from the title.
  • The Dwarfs also sing a song, "Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum" (an onomatopeic reference to blowing bubbles underwater), as they wash themselves for dinner.
  • The first half of "Heigh Ho" is sung by the dwarfs as they work in the mines.
• Musical Number Annoyance: Most of the dwarfs are enchanted by Snow White singing "Someday My Prince Will Come", save for Grumpy, who calls it mush.
• Natural Spotlight: Beams of sunlight focus on Snow White in her glass coffin.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: As Snow White flees in the woods she slips and falls in a pond imagining the logs who float there to be aggressive alligators snapping at her. Luckily it's all in her head.
• Nightmare Face: The close up of the Queen the first time she reveals her old witch face (a perfect disguise). Also the gnarled faces on the trees Snow White imagines during the dark forest sequence.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: The Queen, especially in her terrifying hag disguise.
• Nightmare Hands: As Snow White runs terrified through the forest, she imagines tree branches snagging on her skirt as claws clutching at her.
• Noble Demon: The Huntsman is portrayed as being extremely loyal to the Queen. Nevertheless he cannot bear to kill Snow White and ultimately defies the Queen so she may live.
• No Name Given: The Queen, the Prince, and the Huntsman.
  • If you happen to meet them at a Disney Theme Park, you'll find that the Queen and the Prince simply autograph their names as "The Queen" and "The Prince". Though apparently she's named "Grimhilde" in Disney mythos.
  • The closest thing he has to an "official" name, believe it or not, is "Prince Buckethead". He self-deprecatingly called himself that during his Meet Cute with Snow White in an earlier screenplay of the scene, as well as the comic strip adaptation of the movie.
• No Song for the Wicked: The Queen doesn't have a Villain Song.
• Nothing Is Scarier: During the movie's climax, the dwarfs chase the Queen up a mountain where she ends up on a narrow precipice. We never do see the summit from her vantage point; its surroundings remain off-camera via strategically-restricted shots. So what exactly that rocky ledge is overlooking, or how high up it is, is left to our imagination...
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Snow White reasons that if she cleans the dwarfs' house while they're away, they'll be grateful and let her stay. However, the dwarfs are understandably completely freaked out when they come home and realise that someone has been in their home.
• Obviously Evil: The Queen in disguise isn't exactly the most subtle of all the beasts of the field.
• Odd Name Out: Doc (whose name, unlike the others, isn't an adjective describing his personality). Then again, he does seem to be the brains of the group. In many translations his name is altered to some variation of "Wise".
• An Odd Place to Sleep: When the Seven Dwarfs let Snow White sleep in their beds, they all have to find new places to sleep. A reluctant Grumpy sleeps in a stewpot, Bashful sleeps in a drawer, Happy sleeps in a cupboard, Doc sleeps in the kitchen sink, Sneezy and Dopey sleep on a bench (with the former using the latter's rear end as a pillow), and Sleepy sleeps on a pile of logs.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The newly awakened Snow White riding sidesaddle on Prince Charming's white horse, while he leads them on foot toward his golden palace in the distance.
• Offstage Villainy: It's implied the Queen committed other horrendous crimes before trying to kill Snow White — there are a lot of skeletons in her dungeon...
• Oh, Crap!: Dopey when Sneezy, beneath him on the Totem Pole Trench, is about to sneeze.
• Ominous Opera Cape: The Queen. She's actually wearing two capes, in that her sleeves are one wide piece of fabric connected across her back, under her main cape.
• Ominous Owl: During Snow White's escape in the forest an owl screeches at her from a tree before flying away.
• Only Sane Man: Grumpy's response to Snow White suddenly becoming their disciplinarian is arguably the closest to reasonable. Grumpy's displeasure of having her around stems from the fact that she's essentially a fugitive and he correctly predicts that the Queen will be able to find her thanks to her use of black magic. His anger at her being a disciplinarian could very well be the fact that they're doing each other favors (the dwarfs house her and she cooks for them) yet Snow White still bosses them around. But when the dwarfs realize the witch found Snow White, he's the first to jump on a deer and shout they need to save her.
• Out of Focus: The Prince. Only appears in two scenes for a total screen time of around 10 minutes, has a grand total of three lines of dialogue (all in the first scene), and only serves to be Snow White's love interest (thus causing the Evil Queen's jealousy to reach boiling point) and to wake Snow from her Sleeping Death. The animators found it necessary to pare his role down to the absolute minimum because they didn't know how to animate him as well as the others.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The climax has this for a few of the dwarfs after the animals notify them that the queen found Snow White at their cottage:
  • The normally-calm Doc absolutely panics and stammers, being unable to lead his family. A deer has to scoop him onto its back as he runs and shouts for the motley group to wait for him.
  • Grumpy of all people takes charge and declares, "The queen will kill her! We have to save her!" When Doc panics, Grumpy leaps onto a deer and says they need to move and NOW!
  • You can see Dopey with a serious expression as he holds onto a deer by the tail since he was unable to mount, but he keeps running anyway.
• Overly Long Gag: The montage of the dwarfs sleeping downstairs goes on for several minutes.
• Painful Transformation: The Queen turning into the old woman is not shown as pleasant to her.
• Palette Swap: Downplayed with the dwarfs. Disney gave each of them a distinct personality and with that gave them each a unique face, but all seven wear the exact same clothes, just in different colors.
• Parting-Words Regret: Grumpy visibly feels this while mourning Snow White, as evidenced by his My God, What Have I Done? expression. The last thing that he said to her was to gruffly order her to not let anyone into the cottage, for her safety. Snow White sweetly told him, "Oh Grumpy, you do care" before giving him a goodbye kiss. You can see him break down while looking at her still body with clear regret, that Snow White thought that he didn't like her for most of their time together.
• Pimped-Out Dress:
  • Snow White. Like all of the princesses, she gets more fancy designs of her movie dress. Her merchandise particularly focuses on collar and skirt when it pimps her out.
  • The Queen wears a black and purple dress with white ermine trimming (although the animation doesn't make that clear) and some gold decorations.
• Plot Parallel: The Queen is preparing a delicious-looking poisoned apple from a magical recipe book at the same time (in movie time) Snow White is baking pies from a cookbook.
• Poorly Lit Pareidolia: The dark forest sequence has the fleeting Snow White envisioning trees, logs and scenery in the dimly-lit environment to be ogres and monsters coming out to get her. Apparently it worked a little too well — during the film's initial showing at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, many of the seats had to be replaced because children in the audience would wet themselves in fear at the scene.
• Power Of Hate: A step in making the potion that transforms the Evil Queen into an old peddler woman is calling forth "A blast of wind to fan my hate."
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Dropping the too-tight laces and poisoned comb murder attempts was done because Walt knew they would kill the momentum of the story. Indeed, while there is a good amount of Disneyfication in this film, the changes are arguably beneficial in terms of pacing and interest.
• Prehensile Tail: The rabbits, squirrels, and at one point a deer all use their tails as sweepers and dusters while cleaning the Dwarfs' cottage with Snow White. Another instance is when the fawn uses its tail to operate the sink's water pump.
• Product Displacement: This movie originally premiered when RKO Radio Pictures distributed Disney's movies and shorts. Consequently, it ended with RKO's "Thunderbolt" Vanity Plate, overlapped by the words "A Walt Disney Feature Production in Technicolor". When Disney re-released the movie themselves, starting in The '50s, they replaced the Thunderbolt with a standard "The End" card. Eventually, the 2009 restoration of the movie had RKO's Vanity Plate reinstated.
• Production Foreshadowing:
  • The dwarfs exclaims "Jiminy Crickets!" when they find out Snow White had snuck into their cottage. Jiminy Cricket is a main character from the next Disney animated feature, Pinocchio.
  • Another instance occurs when Snow White mournfully wonders whether their cottage's occupants are orphaned children without a mother, with the shot panning to a fawn nuzzling its mother.
• Proud Peacock: The Evil Queen, who is vain and becomes jealous of Snow White for being the fairest in the land, has a throne topped with a sculpture of a peacock.
• Punctuated Pounding: During the "Heigh Ho" number, when Sleepy accidentally whips a deer's bottom (he was aiming for a fly), it rapid-fire kicks his cart in response, in perfect time with "dig-dig-dig-dig-dig-dig-dig"!
• Purple Is Powerful: The Queen's dress heavily features purple, although it's overshadowed by all the black.
• Rags to Royalty: Trope Maker and Trope Namer of the second type, "Snow White Style". She is born royal but lives as a beggar due to the queen's wrath for a while and is implied to return to a royal lifestyle when she is reunited with the prince.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin:
  • Snow White. "Lips red as the rose. Hair black as ebony. Skin white as snow."
  • The Queen fit that description too; at least before she drank the potion.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: The magic mirror is effectively omniscient, and could provide the Queen with a wealth of information about any number of subjects, but she chooses to use it to look for any women that are prettier than her.
• Remaster: In 1993, this became the first movie to undergo a digital restoration.
• Rhyming Wizardry: The Evil Queen, when preparing the poisoned apple.
  Queen: Dip the apple in the brew... let the poison death seep through.
  Queen: When she rips the tender peel to taste the apple from my hand... her breath will still, her blood congeal, then I'll be fairest in the land!
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The dwarfs when they realize the Queen has (apparently) killed Snow White and furiously chase her down.
• Rotoscoping: All the human characters are rotoscoped, aside from the Dwarfs (who arguably aren't truly "human"). The Queen's witch form avoids rotoscoping. There is one scene where Grim Natwick, Snow White's designer and one of her head animators, ditched the rotoscope and animated Snow White running down the stairs and checking the soup on his own. Walt himself praised that moment, and wished for all of Snow White's human animation to be that good (although no one bothered to tell him it wasn't rotoscoped).
• Rule of Seven: Takes the fairy tale's "seven dwarfs" and kicks it up a notch.
  Queen: Magic mirror on the wall, who now is the fairest one of all?
  Mirror: Over the seven jeweled hills, beyond the seventh fall, in the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs, dwells Snow White, fairest one of all.
  • This example is uniquely also a Rule of Three.
• Running Gag: Sleepy is often bothered by a fly throughout the film.
• The Runt at the End:
  • The turtle among Snow White's animal friends. Turtles are slow, naturally.
  • Dopey when they leave the mine. He tends to go a bit slower than the other drarves, and has to keep having to catch up while they march.
• Sacred Hospitality: Zigzagged. Snow White rightly intuits that "children" in a cottage may not want her to stay unless she earns her keep, so she spends the afternoon tidying up and making a meal for them. The dwarfs are shocked that someone got all the dust and cobwebs, as well as the dishes. On realizing a child is in their room and not a monster, the dwarfs try to keep their voices down so she doesn't wake up. When she does, they introduce themselves to her, and Doc argues with Grumpy about making her leave since she's their guest and in trouble. This at least convinces the dwarfs to let her stay the night, and they say she can stay as long as she likes when Snow White promises to make their favorite foods while cleaning for them. Grumpy doesn't admit it, but he's happy to have her as much as the others are.
• '20s Bob Haircut: While set in the distant past, Snow White's hairdo reflects the era her film was released, as exemplified by the likes of Loretta Young and Vivien Leigh.
• Satellite Love Interest: The Prince. One of the video releases said that the original intent was for the Prince to be captured by the Queen while looking for Snow White and have scenes involving his imprisonment and breakout. They were dropped in favor of the climax focusing on the dwarfs. Prince Phillip later gets to do all these things, though.
• Scavengers Are Scum: Surprisingly subverted with the vultures. They start out seeming like evil minions of the Queen (being essentially Evil Counterparts to Snow White's cute little songbirds), but in the end, it turns out that they're unaffiliated — they knew that in the final confrontation someone was gonna die, so they were quick to follow both the Queen and the dwarfs just waiting for one party to off the other. When the Queen kicks the bucket, they're quick to swoop down to eat the (thankfully unseen) remains.
• Screen-to-Stage Adaptation: Several over the decades, most elaborately a 1979 production at Radio City Music Hall in New York City complete with Adaptation Expansion (several new songs, Snow White's father being a supporting character, etc.). That version was filmed and was an early Disney VHS release under the title Snow White Live.
• Shoo the Dog: The Huntsman shouts at Snow White to run into the woods and never come back to the castle, so she may live.
• Sidekick Song: "The Silly Song" is sung by the dwarfs to entertain Snow White after dinner.
• Silence of Sadness: During Snow White's Disney Death, none of the dwarfs say a single word. They all just have tears streaming down their faces and the last sound to come out of them is Grumpy and Dopey sobbing. (Dopey doesn't normally talk anyway, but it's significant for the rest of them.) Same goes for the final scene, where the dwarfs are completely silent.
• Simple, yet Opulent: Snow White and the Queen both wear grand but simple dresses.
• Skeleton Motif: When the Queen dips the apple in the Sleeping Death potion, the potion dripping from it forms a skull, "a symbol of what lies within".
• Sleepyhead: Sleepy, naturally. He always looks like he could fall asleep at any moment.
• Sneeze of Doom: Sneezy's sneezes could produce gale-force winds, strong enough to send several dwarfs flying across a room.
• Solo Duet: "I'm Wishing" is a duet between Snow White and her own echo.
• The Something Song: "The Silly Song".
• The Speechless: Dopey, according to Happy, has never spoken and has never tried to.
• Spell My Name With An S: It's "dwarfs", not "dwarves". Tolkien's spelling change hadn't quite kicked in by then.
• Spoonerism: Doc makes a few, the funniest being the aforementioned "what are you and who are you doing?"
• Stock Sound Effect:
  • The Evil Queen's death scream would become one, being used as Maleficent's death scream in Sleeping Beauty, as Witch Hazel's scream when a jack o'lantern scares her in the Halloween cartoon Trick or Treat, and in the intro for the non-Disney series Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids.
  • Dopey's sobbing over Snow White's Disney Death would also become one, being used for Sasha's sobbing over Sonya's Disney Death in Make Mine Music and for the second time Aurora cries in Sleeping Beauty.
• Storybook Opening: The Trope Maker. The story begins with a book opening and ends with the book closing, leaving a view of the back cover as "The End" screen appears.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: The monster trees who scares Snow White in the forest scene have glaring and scary-looking yellow eyes.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The movie starts quite happy and lighthearted. Then there's the dark forest running sequence where Snow White imagines being threatened by fearsome monsters who wouldn't be out of place in an horror movie.
• Take Our Word for It: When Snow White succumbs to the Sleeping Death from the apple, we never actually get to see her pass out and only the Queen is onscreen during such as she watches. All we see of Snow White after this shot is her hand on the floor dropping the apple, and her whole body is not seen until the ending when the Dwarfs mourn her.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: The Queen laces the apple with the Sleeping Death potion.
• Team Mom: Snow White to the dwarfs; scarcely have they agreed to let her stay then she starts taking charge of the place.
• Tempting Fate: Snow White tells the dwarfs that the Queen would never find her at their home. This turns out to not be true, as the Magic Mirror does know her location, and tells the Queen that Snow White is in the dwarfs' cottage, and the disguised Queen finds the cottage and Snow White there.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: Cleaning up the house and hearing the birds sing leads Snow White and the animals into "Whistle While You Work".
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Let's see: First, the ledge the disguised Queen is standing on in the climax gets struck by lightning, which sends her falling to her death...and if that wasn't enough, the boulder she was trying to dislodge (to kill the dwarfs who were chasing her) falls right in the direction of where she was falling, just in case...oh, and the implications of her body being devoured by the vultures that were following her.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: A tragic example; Snow White was making personalized gooseberry pies for all the dwarfs, spelling out their names in cursive. Before she can put them in the oven, the disguised Queen appears and does the apple routine. Understandably, the dwarfs are in no mood to finish the baking process after they take care of the witch.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: In the scene where Snow White first meets the prince, one of her bird friends blushes, going completely pink from the neck up.
• Through His Stomach: Snow White's cooking is what really sells the dwarfs on letting her stay with them. She says she can make apple dumplings and gooseberry pies.
• Totem Pole Trench: During the party that the dwarfs throw for Snow White, Dopey gets on Sneezy's shoulders and puts on a long blue coat so that the two of them can provide Snow White with a height-appropriate dance partner.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Snow White. Seriously, you'd think she'd know that taking candy from strangers was a bad idea.
  • Also, the disguised Queen, who tries attempting to kill the dwarfs by pushing a boulder from the ledge of a cliff... a terrible place to pick during a thunderstorm.
• The Trees Have Faces: When Snow White is fleeing through the dark depths of the forest, the trees appear to take on monstrous, menacing faces, leering down at the frightened girl and seeming to reach for her with gnarled, arm-like branches. As the forest becomes much more sunny and idyllic at the end of Snow White's flight and once she meets the forest animals, this seemingly represents a young girl's panic and confusion when lost in the forest at night turning her surroundings into horrifying parodies of themselves.
• True Blue Femininity: The sweet Snow White's grand dress has a blue bodice and sleeves.
• True Companions: Snow White forms a motherly bond with the dwarfs, who all adore her in turn (even Grumpy, in his own way).
• True Love's Kiss: Replaces the jolting of the coffin to wake Snow White up. In a case of Unbuilt Trope, "true love" doesn't come into it: the kiss in question is instead designated "Love's First Kiss".
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: A Disney staple. The Queen takes her jealousy to dark extremes, treating it like an act of war. She is content with either having her rival's heart torn out of her corpse as trophy or be buried alive when a poisoned apple turns out to be a deep sleep curse. She's also a potential sorceress and an implied torturer, and the scene where she transforms into her old hag disguise is, even today, still considered one of the scariest moments in film. This jarringly contrasts with the rather whimsical vibe of the rest of the film.
• Vile Vulture: Initially used with the vultures that follow the Queen around while she's in her elderly beggar disguise as a sign of her being Obviously Evil to the point that even Snow White's animal friends take their presence as such, only to then be subverted when they ultimately turn out to be simply ordinary animals unaffiliated with the Queen and are merely keeping their eyes open for a potential meal which is ultimately provided for them when the Queen herself ends up killed.
• Villain Opening Scene: The first proper scene is of the Queen consulting her Magic Mirror.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Queen suffers this, but initially a rare cold-blooded one once she realizes Snow White is still alive. Then after she transforms herself into an old witch, she definitely loses her sanity and lets her emotions run the show.
• Voices Are Not Mental: Justified; when the witch is creating her potion, she adds in an old hag's cackle to make sure her voice is disguised as well. It works.
• Waiting Skeleton: As the Queen is leaving the castle to kill Snow White, she walks past a prison cell containing a skeleton on the ground, reaching for a jug just out of its grasp. When the Queen sees it, she laughs and says "Thirsty? Have a drink!" before kicking the jug over so that it hits the skeleton and shatters it.
• Wham Shot: The Queen drinks a potion, to turn herself into a hag. Even so, it's very easy to overlook her words about "looking old," white hair, and a cackling voice. Then the Transformation Trauma completes, and we see her disguised face, wart and all. No wonder the crow jumps back in fright.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • In the scene where the dwarfs wash up for supper, Dopey accidentally swallows a bar of soap, causing him to hiccup bubbles. This was eventually resolved... in the deleted soup scene, in which he also swallows a spoon.
  • Also, we never get to see how the huntsman turned out, although it's apparent from how immediately the queen left to deal with Snow White that she didn't have time to deal with him. In some adaptations, he gets imprisoned with the prince, busts him out, and burns down the witch's castle.
  • What did happen to the queen's magic mirror, anyway? A couple of adaptations actually address this:
    • The French novelization has the Queen destroy it before her transformation
    • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the slave in the mirror is freed after the Queen dies.
    • The children's book "Dopey Gets Lost" (from the "Disney's Wonderful World Of Reading" line), set post-film, shows that Snow White now owns the mirror; she consults it to discover where Dopey has gotten himself off to.
  • One of the forest animals who helps Snow White is a tortoise, who has trouble doing anything due to being so slow. The last time we see it, it's been knocked over by the dwarfs as they hurry back to the cottage — it doesn't even appear during the scenes of everyone mourning.
  • We never see the Queen's pet raven again after she leaves in her old hag form.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Possibly the Ur-Example for animated films. The "cute" forest animals' only purpose for most of the film is to make Snow White seem kind and pure ^* Well, that and giving Snow White a sounding board for her to talk to when she's alone, between fleeing into the woods and the dwarfs' return home. The "dark" animals, like the ravens and vultures, are reserved for the Queen.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: For the production team, they had a difficult time trying to do dramatic scenes with the characters because they were worried that audiences at the time would find the concept of one drawing trying to kill another drawing to be silly. Before this movie there was never really any attempt to make the audience really sympathize with a cartoon character.
• When He Smiles: After Snow White kisses Grumpy on his way to work, he turns around and gives his first smile. It is absolutely adorable!
• When Trees Attack: Subverted. The trees appear alive and menacing, but it's just Snow White's imagination.
• White Stallion: At the end of the movie, the Prince takes Snow White away on his white horse.
• Wicked Witch: One of the very first, in the form of the Evil Queen. She dons the more stereotypical "witch" look once she takes the potion that transforms her into the Hag.
• Wicked Stepmother: This version establishes that the Queen is Snow White's stepmother, not her mother. Even so, Snow White knows her as the only parental figure she has.
• Wishing Well: Snow White wishes for a prince at one of these.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The Hunter can't bring himself to kill Snow White, even on the threat of death. He drops the knife, begs her forgiveness, and tells her to run into the woods and never come back to the palace.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Some picture book adaptations, and a deleted scene from the actual movie, show the dwarfs making a proper bed for Snow White since she needs several of their mattresses to lie down comfortably. They think it would be a great surprise. Just as they finish, the animals come and frantically alert them that the witch found the princess. Snow White never sees the bed, but instead lies on it in death.
• Younger Than They Look: Walt Disney was aiming to make Snow White look to be around 14 years old, though she still seems a tad older than that. Later Disney Princess merch leans into it much harder, with the Ultimate Princess Celebration artwork that shows the princesses as friends with each other making her out to be The Baby of the Bunch.
• You Dirty Rat!: The Queen's dungeon is inhabited by some slimy and ugly rats.

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