12 Horrifyingly Dark Tales Behind Your Favourite Disney Movies

8. Pocahontas

Disney's animated movie Pocahontas is loosely based on a real life Native American. Well, loosely is probably the best way to describe it. Disney did quite a good job of changing some of the key points.

Rather than being a teenager, Pocahontas would have only been around 12 years old at the time that John Smith and his men arrived. There was never an indication that there was any romance between the two and John Smith's tale of Pocahontas saving him are believed to be false.

Pocahontas was later married to John Rolfe, converted to Christianity and taken to England where she became something of a curiosity. She was given the Christian name Rebecca and died in her early 20's. No one quite knows how she died. There are suggestions that she was poisoned, whilst other accounts suggest smallpox or pneumonia.

It seems that real life can be just as cruel as fiction.