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  • Echo.

  • Fairytales are wonderful, magical stories that capture children's imaginations and delight and entertain them.

  • Well, maybe today, at least, but in some of the original versions of fairytales, recorded by guys like the Brothers Grimm, fairytales play a little more like installments from the Saw franchise.

  • Listen.

  • You know that Cinderella has a magical encounter at the ball with the prince, right?

  • And, she leaves her glass slipper behind, which he later uses to identify her.

  • Well, in the Brothers Grimm version of the story, which they recorded in 1812, it's a little darker.

  • Cinderella's wicked stepsisters try to get in on that glass slipper action by carving off some of their feet so they can jam it in there.

  • Luckily, some pigeons that happen to be hanging out nearby point out all of the blood, and the wicked stepsisters are found out.

  • Later on, those same pigeons poke out Cinderella's wicked stepsisters' eyes at her wedding.

  • Cinderella's not the only fairytale that features step-family, brutal revenge action.

  • At Snow White's wedding, the partygoers force Snow White's wicked stepmother to put on searing hot iron shoes and dance around until she collapses and dies.

  • What?

  • In the 1940 Disney version of Pinocchio, the little wooden rascal gets into a little bit of trouble with some shallow vices like gambling and fibbing.

  • But in the original version, written in 1883 by Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio turns totally Patrick Bateman.

  • He bashes his good friend, the cricket, with a hammer, killing him.

  • You're familiar with the contours of the Rapunzel story.

  • There's a girl who's trapped in a tower by a crazed witch.

  • She has freakishly long hair that a prince climbs up and hangs out with her.

  • Well, in the early version, Rapunzel's hair is climbed up upon by the prince, sure, but while he's up there, he apparently gets her pregnant.

  • After the crazed witch finds out, she goes berserk, cuts off Rapunzel's hair, banishes her to a desert and forces the prince to jump from the tower.

  • He, apparently being unaware that he's in a Grimm fairytale, fails to cover his eyes on the way down and lands in a thorn bush.

  • His eyeballs are, of course, gouged out.

  • If we're going with the 1827 Hans Christian Andersen version of the Little Mermaid, no one in their right mind would want to be Part of Your World.

  • In this telling, the sea witch traps the Little Mermaid's voice by cutting off her tongue and putting it in a shell for safekeeping.

  • At the end, the mermaid is given a choice of turning back into a mermaid by stabbing the prince in the heart and bathing her feet in his blood after he splits on her for somebody else.

  • What's your favorite grizzly fairytale?

  • Let us know in the comments section below, and head on over to howstuffworks.com to read ten fairytales that were way darker than you realized as a kid.

  • And, don't forget to subscribe to What the Stuff.

Echo.

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