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Disney Animated Canon / Tropes B to H

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Disney Animated Canon Trope Examples
A | B - H | I - P | Q - Z
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    B 
  • Beauty Is Bad: Specifically in The Evil Queen, Vanessa, Gaston, Mother Gothel, and Hans' case.
  • Big Bad: See this page for the entire list.
  • Big Good: See this page for the entire list.
  • Bittersweet Ending: At least a few of the films are notable aversions of the franchise's movies having happy endings:
    • Pinocchio: The main protagonist gets reunited with Geppetto and becomes a real boy, but most of the villains, especially the Coachman, are never punished. And those hundreds of innocent children who were taken from their families, turned into donkeys, and sold into slavery? They're still donkeys and no one comes to save them.
    • Make Mine Music: In the final segment Willie the Whale is harpooned, but now he's in heaven, free to sing to his heart's content.
    • Melody Time: Happens in two segments. Johnny Appleseed dies, but has left a huge legacy in his wake and is off to grow apple trees in heaven; while Pecos Bill gives up being a cowboy after the death of his fiancée Slue-Foot Sue, but Texas is implied to be a much safer place because of him.
    • The Fox and the Hound: Nobody dies in the movie except for the bear, and Tod and Copper go their separate ways, but they remember what good friends they used to be. And Tod lives happily with his mate Vixie.
    • Pocahontas: Ratcliffe is defeated and is tied up by his own men to be taken back to England, but John Smith takes a gunshot from the former to protect Chief Powhatan, forcing him to also return to England to be nursed back to health, meaning he and Pocahontas don't get to stay together. But they and their people are better for the experience.
    • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Quasimodo didn't win Esmeralda's heart. But she survives, Frollo is defeated and the people of Paris finally accept Quasimodo as one of their own.
    • The Princess and the Frog: Ray is Killed Off for Real, but he is Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence, as he's seen appearing as a new star next to his star lover Evangeline. And at least Tiana and Naveen get together.
  • Black-and-White Morality: In the bulk of the movies in the canon, the line between good and evil is very clearly drawn, hence why Disney has frequently relied on Obviously Evil, hammy villains back in the 20th century.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: In the more mature films.
  • Black Magic: Several of the villains are Evil Sorcerers, and Sleeping Beauty has an evil fairy.
  • Bookends: On a meta example; the first and the last releases in the original Walt Disney "Black Diamond" Classics video line were Dark Age Disney movies (Robin Hood (1973) in 1984, The Fox and the Hound in 1994, and these movies have similarly designed characters and Pat Buttram in them; in addition, the first (1985) and last (1993) movie made under Walt to be issued in the line is Pinocchio). This trope also applies to the Platinum Editions; Snow White and Pinocchio are the first and last titles in this line, and they are the early Golden Age since they're the first two installments in the canon. The Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection is a minor example because the first and last new releases in that line were two films Walt supervised; his original animated classic Snow White in 1994, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad in 1999.
  • Bowdlerise: The company has been known to edit some of their films.
    • All of the home video releases of Fantasia censor the Pastoral Symphony sequence to remove the presence of Sunflower, who is depicted as a degrading African-American stereotype (rat tail hairs, subservient to another centaur, and being stylized as a donkey instead of a centaurette). The home video releases worked around her by digitally zooming in on the footage of the centaurettes she was near, and slightly rearranging one scene to cover up that they excised a brief scene with her that was impossible to pan away from. For other shots where it was both absolutely impossible to pan away from her and too crucial to remove, they digitally edited her out altogether, resulting in oddities like a red carpet that she pushed now magically rolling out on its own. The only way the original footage can be seen now is by finding bootlegs of very old TV recordings of Fantasia.
    • The first DVD release of Saludos Amigos edited out the cigarette Goofy was holding. The second printing included as an extra on Walt and El Groupo uses the uncut print.
    • The US DVD release of Make Mine Music removed the entire opening Martins and the Coys segment for excessive gunplay. The PAL DVD has the whole sequence intact. The All the Cats Join In segment also makes some small edits to the shower scene.
    • One of the DVD releases of Peter Pan makes a color timing edit to the Indians to make them look less, well, red.
    • The Rescuers originally had a topless woman photo in a background as a Freeze-Frame Bonus, but it was removed from almost all home video releases of the film.
    • The opening song of Aladdin, "Arabian Nights", had a line changed from "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home" in the original theatrical version to a more acceptable "Where it's flat and immense, and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home." for the home release when Disney received complaints that the ear-cutting part was offensive to those living in Arabic countries (despite that punishments like that do exist in Arabic countries). The original version made it to the early pressings of the soundtrack on CD, but later versions used the less offensive version. MTI's junior musical of the movie uses the less offensive version, but "It's barbaric" was replaced by "It's a furnace!"
    • Treasure Planet has one scene where Captain Amelia is injured and clutching her side. Her hand is covered in blood in the theatrical version however this was cut from home video releases of the film.
    • A developmental variant happened with Tangled. Early in the film, Rapunzel confronts Flynn with a frying pan when he hides in her tower. Originally she was meant to confront Bastion (the character Flynn replaced) with a crossbow.
  • Brains Evil, Brawn Good:
    • Especially in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Emperor's New Groove (the brainy lead character selfish and the brainy villain character is evil, the brawny lead character is warm and fatherly and the brawny villain sidekick who gets his own movie outside of the canon is not actually evil), Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen (The brawny Kristoff is good and the calculating Hans is evil), but it might be apparent in other Disney movies too.
    • Though it's averted or inverted in Atlantis, Beauty and the Beast (the protagonist Belle is the brains, and the villain Gaston is the brawn), Meet the Robinsons, The Great Mouse Detective, and Big Hero 6.
    • And it's actually reversed in The Sword in the Stone.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • Lady and the Tramp talks about the difference between rich and poor, or upper and lower class within the context of dogs. In the beginning the Tramp is seen as a scoundrel for not having a dog collar and being a stray dog. After having a romance with Lady and going out scaring chickens Lady is captured by the dog catcher, where she finds out the Tramp has had many lovers before. When freed again she refuses to see him again and the others dogs with a collar also look down up on him... until the Tramp saves the day by killing a rat that tried to get in the baby's room. At first this seems to be a decent aesop: "don't judge others for their appearance or poverty". But when you really think about it: no sane human would just accept a stray dog in their midst, certainly not in the presence of a baby. And the fact that he, within the context of the story, is only rewarded and accepted when he does something that benefits the rich people (saving the baby from a rat) is actually rather cynical.
    • The Sword in the Stone: The film tries to have a "Knowledge is the real power." message delivered by Merlin to Wart both throughout the film and in the ending, but almost nothing in the film supports it because Wart is a Pinball Protagonist who has no control over anything that's going on around him, and his problems are almost always solved by Merlin's magic anyway despite Merlin saying magic can't solve all his problems (even if they do unwittingly tend to cause as many hardships as they solve, Merlin is basically doing the real work for Wart, even if he sincerely is trying to make a point to him) and he doesn't even get his happy ending by using anything he learned from Merlin — in fact, Wart ends up doing the exact opposite of what Merlin wanted by willingly accepting a degrading position as Kay's squire instead of focusing on an education. It was by sheer luck that he ends up going to London and turns out to be the one worthy of pulling out the sword, making him King of England right then and there.
    • The Lion King (1994): In what is probably one of the most infamous cases, Simba the lion thinks he killed his own father and runs off to another land. Eventually people tell him to confront his fears and he goes back to challenge Scar, who took over his kingdom in his absence and turned it into a tyranny. Yet when Scar again puts the blame on him for causing his fathers' death Simba starts to doubt himself again and the other lions doubt him too. It's only when Scar has Simba in a situation where he will probably die that he confesses that he was the actual murderer. This gives Simba the confidence to finally defeat Scar and when he does this, all the others finally accept him in their midst.
    • Meet the Robinsons is particularly Anvilicious about its Aesop: don't worry about making mistakes because you can always learn from them and fix them later. The movie contains two plot-stopping lectures and a musical number to hammer it in. So, when confronted with DOR-15, Lewis solves the problem by declaring he will never invent her, causing a Temporal Paradox and removing her from existence. A quick and easy way to end the movie, but at the cost of undermining its Aesop. Right from the beginning, DOR-15 was still fully-functional, if only disobedient. The movie's solution prevents a viable third option: Instead of writing DOR-15 off as a failed invention too early, Lewis could remind his future self to either correct DOR-15's behavior or outright build a better one, allowing him to dispatch DOR-15 while still having his Helping Hat invention. Lewis also never demonstrates that he learned his roommate had needs and would be more conscientious about it. Meanwhile, the two characters who DO follow the Aesop's advice don't exactly get rewarded for it: Wilbur scrambles around trying to fix his careless mistake but only ends up making things worse and is eventually punished by his mother when he admits to it, while the Bowler Hat Guy keeps trying new schemes when the old ones fail and is consistently chewed out for his incompetence by DOR-15 and everyone else around him. The short version: The film's Aesop is about getting better through learning from your mistakes. While Lewis laments that he makes the same mistakes over and over again, he ends up solving his problems by denying his mistakes (and potentially repeating them), rather than identifying and improving on them. Conversely, when Wilbur and Bowler Hat Guy do try and learn from their own mistakes, they end up making things worse for themselves.

    C 

    D 
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • The Black Cauldron and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are frequently considered unusually grim story content for Disney.
    • While The Black Cauldron features animate skeletons and self-sacrifice, it doesn't quite touch on the darkness that is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, since that film has a scene with an older man lustfully sniff a young woman's hair and then singing about his uncontainable lust.
    • Atlantis: The Lost Empire does away with the color, Non Human Sidekicks, and songs of previous features, and replaces them with action, explosions, and the death of many a background character.
    • Pocahontas is one of the few without a complete resolution for the main characters. The villain has admittedly been defeated but John Smith's fate is left uncertain. The Direct to Video sequel (not part of Disney Animated Canon) was created to elaborate on this, though even then there isn't a perfectly blissful resolution.
    • Zootopia is a more recent contender for one of Disney's darker animated movies, not so much for what is shown onscreen but for the fact that it is a disturbingly realistic depiction of how bias and cultural prejudice can impact society.
  • Darkest Hour: Most notably occurs in Aladdin, The Lion King and Hercules.
  • Deal with the Devil: How Ursula from The Little Mermaid, Hades from Hercules and Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog all work. Is it telling that all these share the same directors?
  • Decon-Recon Switch: This along with subversions have become a growing trait of the newer films, what with Disney having been around for so long that telling something completely and entirely new gets understandably difficult. As such, they've begun taking what's been done and ...toying with it. Heavily prevalent in the three most recent princess-centric films: The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, and Frozen.
  • Denser and Wackier: Several of the films tend to be much more wacky and comedic than the typical Disney movie. Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, Hercules, The Emperor's New Groove and Home on the Range are most notable for this. The large majority of Disney's xerox-era films in the 60s and 70s were both cosmetically and thematically wackier, with more bumbling villains, a more nominal death count, slapstick emphasis, and jazzier upbeat soundtracks in place of the usual atmospheric orchestra.
  • Disneyfication: Disney, being the Trope Namer, frequently takes massive creative liberties for movies in the canon that are based on a pre-existing story, and they are by far the most well known examples of doing this, to where they have their own page for examples of it.
  • Disney School of Acting and Mime: Trope Codifier.
  • Disney Villain Death: Trope Namer. See "Killed Off for Real" below; it's easier to list villains who didn't die this way.
  • Double-Sided Book: "My Side of the Story" is a series of books in which one of its films is told from different points of view; one side of the book is for the hero, and the other side is for the villain, with the story ending in the middle. These include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Snow White and Queen Grimhilde), Cinderella (Cinderella and Lady Tremaine), Peter Pan (Peter Pan and Captain Hook), Sleeping Beauty (Princess Aurora and Maleficent), 101 Dalmatians (The Puppies and Cruella De Vil), and The Little Mermaid (1989) (Ariel and Ursula).

    E 

    F 

    G 

    H 
  • Happily Ever After: Most of the movies end like this. Averted with The Fox and the Hound and Pocahontas, however.
  • Hate Sink: Given how large and varied the canons Rogues Gallery is, there's plenty to go around.
    • Dumbo generally does not have a central villain. The Ringmaster, though admittedly responsible for locking away Dumbo's mother, was not aware that she was trying to protect her son and believed that she was a public menace which could result in his circus being closed for good and many other animals there no longer have a job there. Even the four elephant bullies who made fun of Dumbo for his large ears occasionally have a point in being angry at him (especially when he screwed up their climax and wounds them greatly). Key word is occasionally, but outside that, they are actually competent circus elephants that kept the normal circus going. But good luck finding fans of that one kid that bullied Dumbo and incited the wrath of Mrs. Jumbo, triggering a chain of events that resulted in Dumbo's misery. Most people use him as a prime example of the show's Kids Are Cruel and Humans Are the Real Monsters.
    • Lady Tremaine is an absolutely despicable person who is cruel and petty in every scene she's in, and has no likable, sympathetic or humorous qualities to her at all. It says a lot that a Lady with no magical powers, evil henchservants or ambitions beyond social climbing manages to be one of the most vile characters in the entire Disney rogues gallery based on her personality alone.
    • The Lion King (1994) gives us Scar. Given that he's a ruthless, cruel bastard who killed his own brother in cold blood and blamed Simba in the process, it's not hard to imagine that Scar was meant to garner much of the viewers' hatred as possible. It backfired, however, as Scar ended being a Love to Hate example for his awesome charisma.
    • Pocahontas has Governor Ratcliffe. A racist, elitist asshole who is motivated entirely by greed and his social status, looks down on his men as expendable tools, is willing to commit genocide as part of his agenda, and has no sympathetic qualities at all.
    • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: The reason why Judge Claude Frollo was so monstrously cruel was because Disney wanted to avert the Evil Is Cool trope, which was common among Disney villains at the time (and continues to be so). Just like Scar, Frollo ended being a Love to Hate example.
    • Chi-Fu from Mulan is a misogynistic, obnoxious, snooty Obstructive Bureaucrat who constantly irritates the other characters with his arrogance. He is even told to his face by the emperor that he can easily be replaced by the heroine. The reason for his presence is that Mulan, as a war movie, has a villainous faction that is difficult to personalize, even once the Hun army is stripped down to five members, and Shan Yu, the movie's resident Big Bad, is a Lightning Bruiser who regards Mulan as a Worthy Opponent, as well as one of the few people in the movie who never cares about her gender.
    • Emperor Kuzco from The Emperor's New Groove is a rare example of the protagonist being this, and (almost) all of it is Played for Laughs. Kuzco, while charismatic, is a completely unsympathetic character at the start who is only a hair's breadth away from being as bad as the actual villain Yzma, being a cruel, narcissistic, and selfish jerk, and is basically a protagonist solely by designation who is asking for pretty much everything bad that comes his way—until the third act, where he finally starts mellowing out into a nicer, if still foolish and flamboyant, person.
    • Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. At first coming off as a Reasonable Authority Figure, once he's revealed to be the villain, Rourke goes out of his way to become as unlikable and despicable as possible, with the flimsiest of excuses, even when it's not wise to do so, and has the most transparent of motives, all while acting like an insufferable jackass who thinks he knows better. His bad sense of humor is tasteless, he is completely unreasonable, and his actions and attitude are so repulsive that most of the cast immediately turn on him. And he didn't hesitate to throw Helga off the blimp in order to lighten its load. Milo also mentions that the most probable buyer for Kida and the crystal, in terms of who has enough money in the world for it, is the Kaiser.
    • Mertle Edmonds from Lilo & Stitch is a bullying Alpha Bitch who repeatedly kicks the dog by insulting and excluding Lilo, and also making harsh comments about her mother (even though Lilo happens to be an orphan who is being looked after by her sister). She exists because the real antagonists, Jumba, Pleakley and Captain Gantu, have sympathetic motivations and the former two eventually decide to move in with Stitch and Lilo as part of her ʻohana allowing them to be a whole family again. She's made more sympathetic in the series when she adopts one of Jumba's experiments much as Lilo did with Stitch, though she otherwise plays this straight, such as in "Checkers" in which she sends numerous people to the dungeon for things such as giving Lilo (who is queen in this episode thanks to the title experiment) helpful advice.
    • Bolt is, at its heart, a Road Trip Plot with no real villains; even the slightly insane director and the snarky network representative are doing what they believe is best for the Show Within a Show. That's why we have Penny's horribly obnoxious agent, who by contrast is doing what he thinks is best for himself, with no regard for the feelings or well being of the child he's supposed to be looking out for or her mother.
    • Frozen: After Prince Hans revealed his deceptive nature, Elsa, Anna and Kristoff do not have a good opinion of him, knowing that he never truly cared for Anna at all, but was instead using her naive infatuation for him to get Arendelle's throne and callously abandoned her to die to further his own fiendish schemes. And the book The Secret Admirer confirms that Olaf is aware of Hans' actions against Anna and Elsa, and dislikes for the prince as a result.
  • The Heavy: The bulk of the films have their conflict driven in whole by an overarching villain setting things into motion, with the protagonists getting dragged into it.
  • Held Gaze: Has been used in several of the romance-focused movies to imply the underlying UST of the characters. Notable films that use this trope are Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Tangled.
  • The High Queen: At the end of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, where its princess becomes Queen by the end of the movie. Frozen also features one of the two princess characters become a queen by the beginning of the movie and be good.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade:
    • Robin Hood (1973) portrays Prince John as an effeminate Large Ham who is prone to childish tantrums upon mention of his brother and always begins sobbing at the mention of his mother. He also taxes Nottingham until most of the citizens are in jail because they invented a song that insulted him and plans to have Friar Tuck hanged to lure out Robin Hood.
    • Governor Ratcliffe from Disney's Pocahontas. The real John Ratcliffe seems to have been more foolishly trusting than villainous, as he wanted to trade with the Native Americans, not to rob them or commit genocide on them. He was eventually captured and tortured to death (flayed alive, actually) by the Powhatan Indians, who seem to have received a bit of a Historical Hero Upgrade in the movie.
    • Granted, the Huns weren't all that nice, but Disney's demonic portrayal of them in Mulan (complete with inhuman yellow eyes) is pretty extreme. They shouldn't even have been Huns. The tribe that Mulan fought against were the Xiongnu, a similar but distinct tribe.
  • Humans Are Bastards: Played with on several occasions such as in Bambi, The Little Mermaid (1989) or The Jungle Book (1967).

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