When Disney turns an old fairy tale like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" into a movie, you can probably guess that they water down and dress up the original story to make it more friendly to modern audiences. What you may not realize is that stories like "Snow White" and "Beauty and the Beast" are actually ancient tales that have traveled across cultures and languages like a game of telephone. Or that along the way, the tellers put their own little twists on the tale.

5 In Germany's "The Tortoise and the Hare," the Hare Dies Horribly

Laura Valentine

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The Version You've Heard

In "The Tortoise and the Hare," which some of you may only know from one of its many cartoon adaptations, a humble tortoise and a pompous hare have a race. The tortoise is so slow that the hare decides to taunt him by showing off and fucking around for the entire race, but he ultimately gets too distracted by his own dickitry and ends up losing.

The moral of the story: A steady, diligent, hard worker beats a naturally talented asshole every time.

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"Woooh, diligence!"

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But when the German authors Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm adapted the tale, they decided it should take a darker turn.

But in the German Version

First off, it's a hedgehog instead of a tortoise, and the pair agree that whoever wins the race gets a bottle of brandy and a gold coin. So right out of the gate, the writers decided that both of these woodland creatures needed to have reached the stage of alcoholism where they treat liquor as currency. SPOILER: All of this is going to culminate in the hare bleeding profusely from the neck. This is not a joke.

After the bet, the hedgehog runs home to his wife and dresses her up so that they look exactly alike, which says all sorts of things about their marriage, and then takes her with him down to the racetrack. Mrs. Hedgehog hides herself at the finish line, while her husband lines up on the starting point next to the hare. When the race starts, the hare easily dusts Mr. Hedgehog, but when Mrs. Hedgehog hears him approaching the finish line, she hops out and crosses it before him, presumably while asking what the hell took him so long.