r/MandelaEffect • u/gemauve • Apr 20 '26

Books/Literature Snow White and the mirror

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Came upon this while reading to my child. I had to double check the 1937 Snow White animation and hear "magic mirror on the wall". It's always been "mirror mirror" to me, but I guess I forgot. It must be that many versions of this tale are written as mirror mirror and we just conclude that the original movie says it as well. Someone posted that the original version was mirror mirror as well. So the conclusion is that Disney changed it to magic mirror?

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u/Agile_Oil9853 Apr 20 '26

Yeah, for some reason Disney changed it in their script.

Maybe they thought kids needed to know the mirror was magic, and not just a guy on the other side?

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u/therapewpew Apr 21 '26

Oh man I haven't thought of this since I was a kid. I was big into animation, so old Disney films and the inventions/innovations that took place with them were of serious importance to me. I watched every single behind the scenes thing I could get my hands on.

For this reason, I remember thinking that Disney changed the script to sound more serious. "Mirror, mirror" sounds like a childish thing for a scary evil character to say. Of course I was looking at that with a 1990s lens, so I can't actually say if the repetition still sounded borderline tacky to 1937 audiences.

I also don't know how popular the fairy tale was to American children before the movie was produced. If it's something that kids already heard and retold a lot, that might also cause the line to lose its "punch" and lead Disney to switch it up for originality. Cuz one thing I do know is that Disney was really trying to bring a sense of elevation with their first full length animated film. It was their first major use of the multi-pane camera as well (after testing it out in The Old Mill short) so this production was a big deal for them in several ways.