10 Most Satisfying Disney Villains Deaths Of All Time

Given the family nature of many of Disney’s films, death plays a surprisingly important part. Classics like Bambi and more recent entries to the canon like Finding Nemo can serve as an early introduction to mortality for the studio’s young audiences, and more often than not, Disney films treat death with the seriousness it deserves.

Sometimes, though, they give you a villain that you really want to see meet a sticky end. Disney have come up with some memorable ways to dispatch their characters, from poetic justice to a hoist on one’s own petard, from hard fought battles to the plain gruesome. The House of Mouse have boasted some of animation’s best ever villains, so it’s only right they come up with cool ways to kill them off.

It can be surprising at times that their more savage deaths have been carried out without parental protest, as they don’t shy away from having their creations meet truly horrible ends. It’s a testament to how well designed their villains are: when you act that bad, you get what’s coming to you.

The sea-witch villain of The Little Mermaid has a particularly convoluted aim: to usurp the king of Atlantica and seize the throne (fair enough) so as to transform the mermaid population into decorations for her garden (weird). There’s voice theft, disguise and subterfuge - the whole thing gets seriously complicated.

After Ariel’s love interest Eric becomes engaged to a heavily disguised Urusla (by means of hypnosis) it seems all is lost, but the heroine isn’t about to give up that easily. She chases the villain down and busts up the wedding. Good stuff, except that Ursula responds by becoming absolutely massive through the convenient powers of the magic trident. With the power of the ocean at her fingertips/tentacles, she whips up a storm, and is ready to lay waste to her foes until Prince Eric rams the sharp end of a boat straight into Ursula kamikaze style, which pretty much does the trick.

While it would have been even better had Ariel slayed the monster herself, the animation here is second to none, with every gorgeously rendered frame a painting. The film was a shot in the arm for Disney, and the final battle its crowning achievement.