YMMV / Little Red Riding Hood

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: While many think of this story as about avoiding strangers, some contemporary readers might see the Aesop as, "Have discretion and be mindful of what information you give." Further points to that interpretation, if Red paid more attention to what she was saying, the story might not have the happened the way it did. Her biggest mistake isn't talking to the wolf, in and of itself, but telling him where her grandmother lives.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: The Big Bad Wolf. While people know him to be a predator who tricks a little girl into telling him about her grandmother, other versions have a more disturbing take on him. The song, "Little Red Riding Hood", has him be a Stalker with a Crush who just wants to walk with Red through the woods. Other darker versions have him be a sexual predator who tries to take Red by force—this was, indeed, the original interpretation.
  Charles Perrault: From this story one learns that children, especially young girls, pretty, courteous and well-bred, should never talk to strangers, for it is not unheard of for a wolf to provided with his dinner this way. I say "wolf", but not all wolves are of the same type; there is one kind with an amenable disposition— neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, who follow girls in the streets and even into their homes, and it is these gentle wolves are most dangerous of all.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In some versions where the wolf tricks the girl into eating some of Grandma's dead body and blood, a cat suddenly comes to call her a slut because she eats her grandma ... then the cat is never heard again. Clearly, Grandma lives in a very strange neighborhood.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Red/Wolf, which is rather frequent in adaptations. May technically also be in early forms of this tale, albeit in the squickiest way possible.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: This fairy tale alongside The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids and Alice in Wonderland are very popular in Japan. Both the Wolf and Little Red are frequently parodied or adapted in numerous Japanese media and children's shows.
• I Am Not Shazam: The wolf is sometimes mistakenly called the Big Bad Wolf, which is the title of the wolf from The Three Little Pigs and not the wolf from this story. It doesn't help that some adaptations and parodies (like the Silly Symphonies short "The Big Bad Wolf" and Shrek) do make them the same wolf.
• Memetic Molester: The Wolf is one of the most well-known in fiction. He wants to literally eat Little Red Riding Hood, but he's typically seen as an allegory for sexual predators.
• Memetic Mutation: "Granny, what big (X) you have!"
• Moral Event Horizon: The wolf crosses it in the versions where he feeds Red her dead grandma's remains.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Perrault kills off Grandma, then has Little Red tricked into becoming a cannibal, and then she too meets a gruesome end in the wolf's jaws. Sleep tight kids.
  • Pretty much the interaction between Little Red and the Wolf, especially in the older versions, reeks of this when one considers the sexual predatory undertones.
• Popular with Furries: As shown on the Hotter and Sexier page, this fairy tale has long-since been popular with the less SFW side of the fandom. It's largely due to the common interpretation that the story is a symbolic metaphor for puberty and sexual predators. Red is usually aged up, though.

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