Pinocchio
Disney’s 1940 movie Pinocchio was based on an 1881 serial penned by Carlo Collodi. As you might have guessed, the screenwriters took the general premise of the Italian’s story for their animated feature film, though of course they left out a few choice elements. The end result was a tale missing some of the darker details of the original version – unsurprisingly since Disney were out to make a sweet morality tale for children rather than scare their young viewers.
Again, the general premise of the modern version is the same as that of the original: Gepetto makes a puppet who slowly transforms into a real boy. However, while Pinocchio might be mischievous in the Disney movie, in the original stories, he is downright villainous. Most notably, Jiminy the Talking Cricket, a key character in the movie, is killed in one of the opening chapters. Tired of his moralising and advice, an angry Pinocchio hurls a hammer at Jiminy, killing him outright. What’s more, the boy-puppet doesn’t even show the slightest remorse for murdering his father’s insect friend.
Other dark details understandably omitted in more recent versions of the Pinocchio story include the bit where the puppet’s feet are burned off soon after he runs away for the first time. And then there’s the bit where Pinocchio steals some gold coins, gets caught and is hanged for his crimes. Indeed, Collodi originally intended for his story to end with the puppet hanging from a tree dying, seeing his work as a powerful morality tale for young readers. His editors, however, had other ideas and forced him to write a happier ending.