the dance to death thing is probably from snow white..in the original the stepmother is made to wear red hot shoes and dance to death in them..a lot of original fairytales are like that, mostly coz they were originally folk tales which are similar in their violent nature..they were not meant as children's bedtime tales but rather were moral tales told in an oral format..if you have ever heard local tales from different cultures you can see the similarities..even the 1001 arabian nights (original version not the weak severely watered down version) is actually quite R-rated..the grimms brothers (if im recallin this correctly) collected german folktales into a book and later edited all the really serious content out of them to make them more suitable for children...so really Disney didn't start the trend
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