Covers Always Lie / Animated Films

Inaccurate covers of animated movies.

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• The covers of the 2016 DVD rereleases of Anastasia, Thumbelina, FernGully: The Last Rainforest, A Troll in Central Park and The Care Bears Movie all depict the leading characters as if they were modern CGI animation, not the traditional 2D animation they are.
• The 3 Little Pigs: The Movie: Some covers show the pigs in a more Disneyesque art style. Additionally, Beemo’s shirt is often mistakenly coloured in as yellow instead of green, and Felix the mouse is shown to be grey instead of brown.
• An American Tail:
  • The original poster and VHS cover shows Fievel walking down the gangplank of a ship with a suitcase, between the feet of two human immigrants. In the actual movie, Fievel falls overboard at sea and floats the rest of the way to shore in a bottle.
  • The DVD cover shows Tanya as she appears in Fievel Goes West, looking older and prettier with her hair in an uncovered ponytail, as opposed to her younger, babushka-wearing appearance in the original film.
• The poster for the 1954 Animal Farm portrays Napoleon as the main character, showing him posing beneath the headline "He's got the world in an uproar!" while Benjamin the donkey (the actual protagonist) is shown below with a comically shocked expression. It also quotes a review saying "you'll have the laughs of your life!" which makes the film out to be a comedy.
• The DVD for Atlantis: The Lost Empire for some reason (possibly censorship) shows Princess Kida wearing a dress (her left arm is covered by a sleeve). In the actual movie, she wore an outfit that was very revealing throughout most of the film, and she only wore a dress at the end.
• The Chinese animated film Back to the Sea has a cover very reminiscent of Shark Tale, yet the actual animation is a jagged, stylistic, clearly 2-D style.
• The DVD cover◊ of Balto depicts Balto as black and gray in contrast to the movie, where he's brown and cream. Ironically, the real Balto did have black and white fur, so the poster is more historically accurate than the movie. The cover of the reissue tried to fix this by giving him a more accurate color scheme, but also slips up by showing him with white sclerae (he actually has yellow) and giving him a too broad muzzle and nose.
• This seems to be a staple for most covers of Barbie movies, which tend to depict Barbie's characters with accessories she never wears in the film and make her outfits seem much more detailed than they actually are. It can probably be chalked up to the covers advertising the dolls (which tend to look different from the characters) first and foremost.
  • Barbie as Rapunzel depicts Rapunzel on the cover with roses on her dress and a fancy tiara, none of which she has in the film. Her dress on the cover also lacks the gold trim it has in the movie.
  • Barbie of Swan Lake: Odette's dress is depicted as purplish blue (more like her doll's), whereas in the film it's more pink and blue. She does wear the tiara on the cover, but she only wears it for the ending scene and with her hair up in a bun, not long and loose as on the cover.
  • Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper: Contrary to the cover and advertising, neither Anneliese nor Erika ever wear chokers. Erika also never wears the band of flowers in her hair shown (she has roses in her hair at her wedding, but they look completely different).
  • Barbie Fairytopia: Elina is depicted with a long ponytail and a flower barrette she lacks in the film. In the actual movie, she wears her hair in a bun and has her hair down for all of one scene.
  • Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses: Genevieve never wears the tiara on the cover with her main dress, and said dress on the cover has yellow tulle instead of light pink lace like in the film. It's especially jarring because some of her sisters are also on the cover, but look accurate to their film models.
  • The cover for Barbie as the Island Princess shows Ro in her blue peacock dress, but her hair is long and loose, and she is wearing a Cool Crown, when in the movie, her head is bare and her hair is up in an elaborate bun.
  • The cover of Barbie In Rock N Royals depicts Erika as a black woman, when she is in fact Latina.
• The second Beano video, Beano Videostars, included Roger the Dodger on the original VHS cover, even though he's not on the actual video. Possibly because his checkered jersey made him too hard to animate.
• This poster◊ for Beauty and the Beast shows Belle in a pink and purple version of her blue and white peasant dress, the castle has blue shingles instead of red, has the servants be outside castle grounds (which only Chip does late in the film), and the Beast's placement on the cover makes him look like the villain. It also features rose bushes, where the only roses seen in the film is the enchanted one.
• The 2003 DVD cover of Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World showed Belle wearing her yellow ballgown, even though she never does so in any of the shorts. Averted with the original VHS and 2011 DVD covers, which properly show Belle in her village dress which she wears the entire film.
• The poster for Beavis and Butt-Head Do America shows them riding motorcycles, which they don't even come close to doing in the movie.
• Beyond Beyond, a rather slow-moving Danish CGI movie with heavy themes of grief and death, is not an entirely kid-unfriendly movie, but one that could be hard to sit through for younger audiences. So having a cover like this◊, excising any of the film's darker elements and making it look more like a Nick Jr. show is very, very misleading.
• The BIONICLE Miramax trilogy mostly has very mild cases:
  • The titular artifact on the Mask of Light movie's poster differs from how it appears in the film. It looks exactly like the real LEGO piece, whereas the film uses a heavily stylized, simplified design.
  • The Coliseum is featured prominently in Legends of Metru Nui and Web of Shadows, and both films' posters place it in their backgrounds. However, the Coliseum on the covers is from Bionicle's promotional CG artwork. In the actual movies, the building has a different design, most notably, it's missing the two huge triangular side-structures.
  • Web of Shadows shows Vakama heroically leading his team while blasting a beam of fire from his tool. The film is actually about Vakama betraying his team and trying to kill them, while the others fight to bring him back to his senses. And his tool never shoots fire as spectacularly, it just emits a small heat blast.
• As revealed by director Jorge R. Gutiérrez on Twitter, in character posters for The Book of Life, the arms and hands are depicted more flesh-like, as opposed to having disjointed pieces like in the actual film. This is because the studio felt audiences would be turned away by a movie about living dolls. When Guitierrez brought up Toy Story, he was met with blank stares.
• On the original DVD cover and VideoNow PVD cover of A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Lucy clutches Charlie Brown's arm and stares up at him adoringly, but her tormenting of him is the whole point of the movie, and she isn't nice to him for a second. The Laserdisc cover made more sense, featuring the same image, but with Lucy having a thought bubble over her head showing a dressing room door with her name on it. Anyone who knows Lucy's character knows that she'd be willing to be nice to someone for the sake of fame & fortune.
• The Bratz Babyz' outfits presented on the cover of Bratz Super Babyz◊ are vastly different (and more modest) from the ones they wear in the film◊.
• The Brave Little Toaster:
  • Probably one of the bleakest kids' films ever made, was marketed in pretty much the same way as a very kid-friendly movie, with super-happy cover artwork full of bright colors and smiles. This goes so far that the screencaps on the back of the VHS/DVD are not even from the film. One of them shows the toaster high-fiving its master, despite the fact that they are alive always being kept a secret, a la Toy Story. The back cover also depicts a very serious scene with the title character inappropriately having a goofy smile on his face. Oddly enough, the original poster◊ shows three darker screencaps from the film.
  • To top it all off, the European cover◊ shows the main five characters and the younger master skipping down a road, surrounded by twinkling stars.
• A UK-exclusive Cinderella slipcover, one of several spotlighting Disney Villains, depicts Lady Tremaine wielding the Fairy Godmother's magic wand, which she doesn't obtain until the third movie.
• The DVD cover◊ for Cinderella (Golden Films) is very misleading, with Cinderella drawn to look very much like her Disney counterpart in a puffy sleeved white gown, and with the Prince likewise shown with dark brown hair and wearing a costume that looks like the Disney Prince's. In the actual film, Cinderella has much bigger, poofier hair and her ballgown is sleeveless and pink, while the Prince dresses more simply and his hair is light blondish brown.
• On the DVD cover◊ for The Christmas Tree, the tree depicted is not the eponymous Mrs. Hopewell, but a different one located indoors that the children never interact with. The VHS cover shows Mrs. Hopewell outside, but the children look pretty cute with soft facial features, unlike the Elmer Fudd-like faces the kids have in the film proper.
• Some Coco movie or soundtrack covers show Miguel and Héctor crossing the marigold bridge together, even though the latter can't cross it unless someone in the Land of the Living has his photo on their ofrenda. His picture doesn't end up on one until after Miguel has left the Land of the Dead.
• The 2021 Disney+ adaptation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and its 2022 sequel Rodrick Rules each have a promotional◊ poster featuring the character Holly Hills, who does not actually show up in either film at all.
• Dingo Pictures:
  • Their movies often have misleading covers. Usually, their German covers are more accurate, but the dubs' distributors usually repurpose artwork that bears only vague similarities to the disc's contents.
  • Animal Soccer World has multiple cases of this:
    • Phoenix Games packaged the movie as a PlayStation 2 game. If you're expecting a football/soccer simulator featuring teams of animals, you're sadly mistaken. What you get is a generic activity center with coloring pages and sliding puzzles, and an animated movie about animals organizing a soccer game.
    • The back cover to the French version gives a completely different plot from other versions, stating that the soccer match is being organized as a way to settle tensions between wild and domesticated animals. Aside from the fact that one team consists of jungle animals and the other contains dogs, the rivalry between one dog and one panther is just part of the motivation for organizing the match.
  • Die Weihnachtsüberraschung has a cover depicting two rabbits and a wolf. The movie's main character is a human child.
  • The Dalmatians:
    • The cover for Dalmatians 2's PlayStation port shows a pair of Dalmatians and their puppies. Only two Dalmatian puppies appear in the movie, and their parents (who don't appear) are a Dalmatian and a cocker spaniel.
    • The cover for Dalmatians 3 ^note a repackaging of Dalmatians 2 for the PlayStation 2 shows a woman that heavily resembles Cruella de Vil. No such character exists in the movie.
• The theatrical poster◊, VHS◊, and DVD◊ covers for DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp all feature Scrooge McDuck wearing an Indiana Jones-style fedora, and while he does have a few other hats in addition to his usual top hat, he never wears a fedora once in the entire film.
• One of◊ the covers for Earwig and the Witch is doubly incorrect, in that not only Earwig/Erica never actually sings in a band, the other band members depicted looked like that in their youth, way before she was even born.
• Elena and the Secret of Avalor combines this with Never Trust a Title; the DVD cover and poster for features Elena flying Skyler front and center with Sofia on Luna barely visible in the background. In reality, it's Sofia who's the main star of the show, and Elena doesn't play a part until about halfway through. It should be noted the special was originally called Sofia the First: Journey to Avalor, but because they decided to air the spinoff early, it was vastly reworked.
• The notorious Foodfight! has Mrs. Butterworth, the Vlasic stork, Twinkie the Kid, and Charlie Tuna front-and-center on its cover, and all of them are minor characters at best. The actual main character is depicted as a tiny figure in the lower left.
• Almost all the promotional material for Frozen (2013) feature the main cast (Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff, Sven and Hans) standing together and smiling cheerfully, making it seem as though the movie is going to be about a team of plucky characters having a fun and magical winter adventure together. The film is actually consistently dark and melancholic, with several arguments amongst the characters; one of the six, Elsa, is depressed and acts out in increasingly desperate ways, making herself the antagonist for much of the movie, and another of the six is actually an outright villain.
• The poster for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio shows Pinocchio's nose growing leaves, while in the movie he's made of pine, which grows needles.
• The DVD cover of Happy Feet depicts baby Mumble with the Adeile gang. In the movie, he doesn't meet them until he's an adult.
• The American DVD cover◊ of Help! I'm a Fish, with its ugly 3D graphics, seems like it was designed to make the film look like a Mockbuster of Finding Nemo or Shark Tale, when it's actually a decent, Don Bluth-esque, mostly 2D film. Even weirder, the American cover flatly says "Alan Rickman" above the title (the original cover said "Featuring the voices of Alan Rickman and Terry Jones"), making Rickman seem like the lead role. To make matters worse, Rickman's character isn't even shown on the U.S. cover.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney)
  • The Gold Collection cover for the movie makes what is widely considered the darkest and most adult-oriented Disney film look like a much more lighthearted film than it actually is.
  • This early movie poster◊ has the entire cast (arguably even Frollo) dancing in a conga line.
• In The Incredibles, contrary to all the promotional material, Jack-Jack is never shown in the super suit designed by Edna Mode. He only wears the eye mask, and not until literally the last fifteen seconds of the film.
• One double feature pack of Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie and An Easter Carol uses a render of Khalil in his Cricket costume from Pistachio: The Little Boy That Woodn't on the back cover and the disc. He actually wears a turban and red vest with diamonds in the film.
• On the VHS/original DVD cover for The Jungle Book (1967), Baloo is seen grasping Kaa by the throat, despite the fact that the two characters never interact. Also, the original poster depicts Baloo as brown, while he's gray in the movie.
• The Legend of Sarila is a Canadian film which was renamed Frozen Land in America. Its cover makes it look like a blatant mockbuster of Frozen (2013), when in reality the films are completely unrelated besides both featuring snow and female protagonists. The film was reverted to the original title after Disney complained.
• The Land Before Time:
  • One of the early posters for the first movie shows baby Littlefoot having just hatched out of his egg, with Cera, Ducky, Petrie and Spike all gathered around and smiling at him, making at look as if he's the youngest of the group and the others all see his birth. In the actual movie, he's about the same age as Cera, Ducky and Petrie, none of whom are present when he hatches at the beginning, and the real youngest of the group is Spike, who only hatches midway through the movie.
  • The DVD cover of the first movie features a reworked version of the original poster with brighter, more saturated colors and less emphasis on the villain, Sharptooth. This gives the impression that it is more like its Lighter and Softer sequels than the dark, often frightening film it is.
• Lilo & Stitch:
  • The back of the home video cover features a picture of Stitch (in his red suit) messing with stoplights and one of Stitch scaring off the pilots of a plane, which come respectively from a Deleted Scene and the pre-9/11 version of the finale^note The finale originally had Stitch and the others hijacking a Boeing 747 to chase Gantu's ship, but after 9/11 it was reworked to have them use the ship Jumba and Pleakley used to come to Earth.
  • The front of said cover (also used for digital distribution services), as well as the theatrical release poster, both show Stitch wearing a red dog collar with a gold diamond nametag with his name on it. At no point in the film or in later works does he wear such a collar. He does eventually wear a red necklace that looks like a collar in Leroy & Stitch, but that has a tiki instead of a nametag.
• The cover and other promotional material for The Lion King II: Simba's Pride features Kiara and Kovu as cubs. They're only shown as cubs for the first twenty or so minutes of the film; the majority of the movie focuses on their adult lives.
• One VHS cover◊ for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1979) shows Lucy and Edmund riding on Aslan's back, with the White Witch smiling benevolently at them like a good fairy. Yet another shows the four children, Aslan, the Witch and Mr. Tumnus all standing together and also has the Witch smiling benevolently. The Witch is actually the villain and a deadly enemy to Aslan and the other characters, only briefly pretending to be friendly to Edmund early on. Nor does Edmund ever ride on Aslan's back: Lucy and Susan do.
• The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree: The artwork and the character designs on the posters and home media covers look slightly better than the film itself.
• Magic Gift of the Snowman: Snowden looks nothing like he does on the cover. The cover also suggests the film will have much higher quality animation.
• Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors: The poster shows Ghost-Spider among the cast, despite her not appearing in the actual movie.
• The theatrical poster◊ of Meet the Robinsons gave the impression that Lizzy (the little goth girl) is a member of the Robinson family in the future when she's actually just a classmate of Lewis in the present who is only on screen for under a minute in total. Also, the T. rex doesn't become the Robinson family's pet until the movie's ending.
• Monsters University: The blue and white MU jackets that Mike and Sulley wear on the film's main poster do not appear at all in the film. Sulley does wear a similar jacket in the first act, albeit one in the gold and red ROR colours, and later switches to a green OK sweater.
• Promotional material for the movie Mosley often feature the title character with his son Rue as if they take on the adventure together. In the actual movie, Mosley sets off by himself while Rue stays at the farm to aid his pregnant mother.
• The cover of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Magical Movie Night (and its title) imply that the girls are going to have a Slumber Party watching movies. Nothing like that happen in either of the three specials. (The cover also features Princess Twilight instead of human Twilight Sparkle, but that's rather common for Equestria Girls material.)
• The back of the DVD and Blu-ray cover◊ of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) describes a dark force threatening Ponyville, while in the actual film, the location is Canterlot being threatened by said force which is the Storm King's army.
• The scene from the DVD cover of The Night Before Christmas never happens in the film: Jeffrey doesn't meet Santa until the end and it's on the streets when he does.
• The DVD cover of Open Season depicts the dam flood/log ride scene, but Mr. Weenie is among the animals. In the movie, he doesn't join the forest animals until long after that scene is over.
• Padak: This South Korean animation has this poster◊, which can easily lead you to think it's going to be a lighthearted fish movie in the vein of Finding Nemo. In truth, it's a very bleak and adult story of fish trapped in a sushi restaurant's aquarium awaiting their eventual demise, with a lot of disturbing imagery of fish getting painfully turned into meals. The fish characters are even savage to each other, showing they're more like wild animals than cute critters. ZWUtNDg2NS00MDk1LWE2ZmEtYjkzYjgxNzhhMzQwXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzI1NzMxNzM@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,699,1000_AL_.jpg This other poster shows main character Padak being seemingly friendly with a clownfish, but in the movie she actually eats several baby clownfish alive when she's put in a tank with them.
• In the holiday movie Pixi Post & the Gift Bringers, the titular character wears a skirted orange jumpsuit with dark brown gloves and boots. The DVD cover and Hulu banner for the English dub Pixi Saves Christmas shows her wearing a more Christmas-themed green jumpsuit with black gloves and boots and candy cane-style sleeves and leggings, but she wears no such outfit in the movie proper.
• The poster for Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw gives virtually no clue as to the content of the movie. It features several of the characters together on a cool car from The '50s (the license plate even says COOL, so you know it's a cool car), and... that's about it. Most of the film's major players don't appear at all, and two of the characters shown in the grouping haven't even been born at the time of the film's main story; they only appear in the framing device.
• The poster of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish depicts the Wolf with purple eyes. He actually has red eyes in the film.
• The Korean animated film Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs drew accusations of body-shaming thanks to its marketing, which compared the two forms the heroine would take (one a chubby young woman, the other more conventionally princess-like) and claimed that the chubby one was ugly. This actually misses the entire point of the movie, which criticizes society's standards of beauty; before her transformation, no one is willing to give the heroine the time of day, and after her transformation, they only care about her because she's beautiful and pay little attention to anything about her besides that. The lead also hates how she looks in her transformed state and only chooses to stay in it so she can get help finding her dad.
• One of the posters for Santa's Magic Crystal shows the Christmas Elves with human skin, while in the movie they have blue skin.
• Scooby-Doo
  • In Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!, Velma, Daphne, and Freddy never snowboard once in the entire movie, only Scooby and Shaggy do that.
  • On the original VHS art for Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, the girls are depicted as present when the Mirror Monster emerges from the mirror, with Scrappy challenging him while Shaggy and Scooby watch in fear. In the movie itself, the girls are only "present" at that scene insofar as being in the same castle (though elsewhere), plus Shaggy is sucked into the mirror while the Monster takes his place. Likewise, the later VHS cover, also used for the DVD, depicts Shaggy wearing his green shirt when he wears his red shirt and jeans in the movie, and him mixing a cauldron with Scooby, Tanis and Elsa ^note the latter of whom has a greenish skin tone on the cover, contrasted with her flesh-colored skin in the movie; on the DVD disc, her father has a green skin tone and a different clothing skin tone, while Elsa is depicted with the correct one - in the actual movie, nothing gets mixed in a cauldron.
  • The cover for Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island features a castle in the background...that only appears briefly at the beginning of the movie. Most of the movie takes place on a plantation. Additionally, an earlier cover design◊, which was also used for the Scholastic children's book adaptation, depicts zombies that look nothing like those seen in the actual movie.
• The two-disc special edition DVD of The Secret of NIMH makes it look like a cheerful light-hearted animated film, while it does have a few lighthearted comedic moments they're far and few between, the rest of the film is very dark, dramatic, and has several frightening scenes.
• The 50th Anniversary poster◊ for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for some reason has Snow White wearing a pink dress in place of the iconic yellow, blue and red outfit. While Snow White was meant to have a pink dress originally, this was changed in development.
• Due to the mediocre sales of Wonder Woman, the cover artist for the DVD of Superman/Batman: Apocalypse was barred from showing Supergirl in her iconic costume. Instead, an image of a Brainwashed and Crazy Supergirl clad in a Stripperific slave outfit was used. The film's female director was not pleased.
• The UK DVD cover of The Swan Princess 2: Escape from Castle Mountain (or rather, The Swan Princess and the Secret of the Castle, as it's retitled in Europe) shows Odette's father King William standing beside Queen Uberta in the background, even though he was killed by Rothbart early on in the first film.
• While the cardboard diorama packaged with the DVD of The Thief and the Cobbler has the eponymous cobbler sharing a Magic Carpet ride with the princess, the two of them never do so in the movie.
• The video cover to Tom and Jerry: The Movie, which depicts Tom chasing Jerry as he usually does (which they barely actually do in the movie) with Droopy in the background and none of the movie's Spotlight-Stealing Squad anywhere in sight, looks like it could be the cover to any Tom and Jerry video. Although the poster showed Aunt Figg storming in the background.
• The original poster, VHS and DVD covers for Toy Story, along with the cover of its Disney's Animated Storybook tie-in, show Buzz Lightyear flying into the air in Andy's bedroom, dragging Woody with him, while the other toys watch in awe from the bed. In the actual movie, it's a plot point that Buzz can't actually fly. Even when he does "fly" at the climax, it's achieved by using a rocket strapped to his back to launch himself and Woody into the air, then dislodging the rocket and slowly gliding down – in the character's own words, "falling with style."
• Transformers:
  • The 20th Anniversary Special Edition DVD cover to The Transformers: The Movie does this intentionally to avoid the movie's most infamous spoiler. However, it came with an alternate cover depicting the '86 cast who actually play a significant role in the film.
  • The cover art of the Transformers: Prime movie Predacons Rising depicts Optimus Prime facing off against Predaking. The two never even meet in the movie.
• Turtles Forever: the original poster◊ has Tokka and Rahzar, who turn out to be Advertised Extras.
• Turning Red: Several posters and covers depict Mei's panda form wearing an ID badge which she never does not even in human form in the film. There is also promotional material that alters the character relationships such as showing Tyler as member of Mei's group, when for most of the film, Tyler is variably antagonistic towards Mei and her friends.
• The child-friendly cover◊ of the animated Watership Down. (The original cover showed a silhouetted rabbit◊, which in fact is an altered version of the scene where Bigwig is snared.)
• The Wild:
  • The posters for this movie seem to imply that the sewer alligators are the villains. In the movie, they're actually friendly characters who don't really play a big part of the movie other than leading Samson and his friends to the Statue of Liberty.
  • To add, on most of the advertising prominently features the characters in New York. They are only in the city for the first half of the movie, and they spend less time there than at the zoo, boat, and jungle.
• Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree:
  • Piglet and Tigger are shown on the poster, but they don't appear in the film (though Piglet has a cameo in the opening song). They also had designs that are much closer to the original book illustrations, and they ended up getting redesigned for their appearances in the next short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.
  • Some early VHS releases of this short showed Pooh completely inside the honey tree. This doesn't happen until the end of the short, but even then, he only goes in halfway.
• The cover of Wreck-It Ralph features video game characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog, M. Bison and Neff pretty prominently - in fact they're all cameos and have almost no screentime - Sonic features as Mr. Exposition, Bison asks about "going Turbo" and Neff doesn't actually have any lines at all.
• The poster and VHS/DVD cover for The Year Without a Santa Claus shows Santa riding in a sleigh pulled by a red-nosed reindeer. But in the actual special, Rudolph doesn't appear; the reindeer in the picture is just a recoloring of a regular black-nosed reindeer.

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