17 Facts You May Not Know About Disney’s Villains and Their Movies

Disney movies are an intricate part of our childhood. However, they also had characters that made the story more complex and, at the same time, more entertaining. When they made life impossible for the protagonists of the stories, we just wanted them to disappear, but the truth is that without them, the adventure would not have been the same.

At Bright Side, we love remembering the characters we watched as kids and getting to know them better. That’s why we compiled some of the least known and most surprising facts about villains.

1. In The Little Mermaid, Ursula is the evil sea witch in charge of making things difficult for Ariel, but she is also the sister of King Triton.

2. Gaston was the cocky villain of Beauty and the Beast. However, this character does not exist in the original story: he was inspired by the one in the 1946 film.

3. Disney’s first film also featured the first female villain, the wicked evil queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). By the way, her name is Grimhilde.

4. Green is usually associated with nature or health, among other things. However, in Disney, this color takes on a different meaning as it is almost always associated with the villains.

5. Purple, red, and black are colors that also appear together with the most perverse Disney characters.

6. The peculiar costume worn by Maleficent is inspired both by the devil (horns) and by Czech medieval designs (the flame-shaped cape).

7. Scar, the antagonist of The Lion King and one of the evilest villains, was not always called this way. He was once called Taka, which means “waste” in Swahili.

8. The youngest Disney villains are Hans from Frozen, at 23, and Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, at 25.

9. In The Jungle Book, Kaa was super evil. However, in the original story, the snake helps rescue Mowgli from the monkeys.

10. The Adventures of Bernardo and Bianca has a very, very evil villain called Madame Medusa. However, originally, Cruella de Vil was supposed to be the villain here.

11. Until 1991, all Disney princess films had a female villain.

12. The first male villain in a Disney princess film was Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, and he was followed by Jaffar in Aladdin.

13. In Tangled, Gothel wears very different clothes than Rapunzel. Her outfit is from the Renaissance, which started in 1300, and the movie was set in 1700, so.... she’s about 400 years old!

14. Hades is Hercules’ villain, his antagonist, but he is not the only evil character to appear. If we look closely, we can see Scar from The Lion King.

15. The sweet villain of the film Wreck It, Ralph!, King Candy, has an appearance that may remind us of another character and is inspired by the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.

16. In 2016, Zootopia introduced us to a cute little sheep named Bellwether. At first, she seems nice, and her glasses are brown, but when she shows her true intentions, the color of her glasses turns purple and bluish.

17. Most Disney movie antagonists were reunited in a 2001 television movie called Mickey’s House of Villains.

What is your favorite Disney movie villain? What other facts do you know about them?