You know how bears look fluffy and huggable but you know better than to actually try to hug one? (If not friend, why friend-shaped, right?) Similarly, some things or stories seem wholesome at first, but at their core, they are actually not that fluffy—scary, even.
Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community recently discussed such deceitful phenomena, sharing stories about things that are widely considered wholesome, yet to many people’s surprise, have rather disturbing backstories. The thread featured everything from the Drifters’ song “Save the Last Dance for Me” to the beloved mascot Chucky E. Cheese, whose origin story is apparently not all flowers and butterflies. So, if your curiosity has been awakened and you feel brave enough to shatter the wholesome exterior that some things bear, scroll down to find netizens’ stories in the list below and feel free to add more in the comments if you’re familiar with something that looks wholesome, but isn’t.
#1
Pugs and other similar dog breeds suffer all their lifes because of selective breeding, leading to the deformation of their faces, legs, bodies and skin, plus cardiac and respiratory issues.
I really hope they get extinct some day, I can't bear watching such an aberration of nature due to human vanity, no thing must suffer their entire life only to look "cute" or "adorable" or "luxury".
Image credits: Medium-Fan-6407
#2
Most fairy tales. Disney has scrubbed all the grim out of the brothers Grimm.
Image credits: theelleharlow
#3
Sherman Kelly wrote the lyrics to Dancing in the Moonlight while recovering from a violent assault carried out on him and his girlfriend by a youth gang. He envisioned an alternative reality where people just dance and be happy all the time. It was his way of dealing with the trauma.
Image credits: TheBoomExpress
#4
Valentine’s Day. St. Valentine was k*lled for being the priest to marry people so men could get out of war. For this he was beheaded.
Image credits: UrMomsSideDish
#5
Scottish folds. Those cute cats with the folded ears. They have those ears beacause of osteochondrodysplasia. It causes joint, cartilage, and skeletal deformities. There is no treatment only pain management. Those poor cats are in constant pain :(.
Image credits: AnnualLychee1
#6
Canonically,Chuck E Cheese is an orphan who never knew when his birthday was so he celebrates other people’s birthdays to fill the terrible painful void of his abandonment.
Image credits: PoppinsFresh
#7
Dole (the company) overthrowing the queen of Hawaii.
Image credits: SuttonSmut
#8
Hello Kitty was made as part of a national movement to cute-ify Japan to distract from the abominable war crimes they committed in the second world war.
Image credits: Reddit_Am_I_Right
#9
The creator of Monopoly actually intended it as a warning about the dangers of capitalism, not a celebration of it.
Image credits: EsmeFlashor
#10
The Wizard of Oz could have its own behind the scenes movie with the amount of s**t that went down.
Image credits: sucobe
#11
The little girl who played Matilda, in the movie Matilda, mom died before the movie was released of cancer. I believe the director showed her a rough cut before she passed but jeez that made me sad to learn as an adult
Image credits: lovelessjenova
#12
Voice actor for classic Disney Peter Pan died alone of a d**g overd*se in an abandoned warehouse after years of being unable to get work in Hollywood later in life.
Image credits: FunctionBuilt
#13
The reason cats and dogs like squeaky toys is not because the noise is funny, it's because the sound is similar to the death screams of their prey.
Image credits: Flyinpotatoman
#14
A bride having her father "give her away" comes from property transfers.
Only men were full people. They owned their wives and children. Girls and women were property, and had little choice in the matter.
This was a transfer of ownership from the father to the husband.
Image credits: sezit
#15
Amish people are supposedly these honest farmers eschewing modern ways. Amish run gigantic puppy mills for big profit. They stack cages floor to ceiling, treating the mom and dad dogs with abject cruelty, never a kind word or a touch - the dogs rescued from Amish pupoy mills are the most traumatized and a**sed dogs I have ever fostered ( we fostered over 220 dogs) One sad fearful dog would not let me touch him for 3 weeks (!) Another had to be euthanized because of chronic untreated ear infection for YEARS caused end stage ear growths, which plugged his ears snd made him deaf and in constant pain. F the Amish, cruel greedy animal a**sers.
#16
Candyland was invented during the polio epidemic by retired school teacher eleanor abbott who herself was recovering from polio. she invented the game to keep children entertained during their hospital stays who themselves were affected.
Image credits: sheerduckinghubris
#17
The song “Save the Last Dance for Me” by the Drifters was written by a man who was crippled by polio and in a wheelchair watching his new wife dancing with other men at his wedding to her because he couldn’t.
ETA: Did not expect this to start such a discussion! As was mentioned below, in the song he’s saying that he’s the one taking her home, not them. I don’t think he’s angry, he’s just saying that no matter who she dances with, she’s his wife and will be taking her home at the end of the night.
Image credits: gottriplets
#18
In the animated film, "All Dogs go to Heaven", The little girl who plays Anne-Marie was m*rdered by her father prior to the film being released.
Burt Reynolds struggled hard to finish recording his scene where Charlie says goodbye to the little girl one last time before going to heaven.
It's a tear inducing scene without knowing the backstory, but you can absolutely hear the pain in Burt Reynolds' voice. It's generally considered a very loving and touching moment, but knowing what happened, makes it really hard to listen to that without getting emotional.
Her Father was a vi*lent and ab*sive alcoholic, who m*rdered both her, and her mom, and then committed s***ide. She was 10 years old.
Edit: Oh man, I just realized more people commented about this here. I also didn't realize she voiced Ducky from "The Land Before Time" too.
Image credits: Plastic_Still1401
#19
The kids book Love You Forever by Robert Munsch (as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be) was written in the wake of the stillbirth of the author and his wife’s 2 babies.
Image credits: sloth-nugget
#20
Everyone thinks the ugly duckling is a story about how it's okay to be ugly. But it's actually a story of about how you can be pretty too one day.
Image credits: fivedogit
#21
I met a writer named Thomas Disch when I was in college. He wrote “The Brave Little Toaster.” He told us Disney hired him to write a movie about lions.
He wanted to do King Lear with lions bc the plot mirrored how lion prides operate: old lazy but powerful male, dangerous daughters. But Disney said they wanted a young hero. So he changed it to Hamlet with lions: uncle k*lls father, kid runs away, ghost of dad visits and calls for revenge, etc. but with a happy ending. (Timon & Pumbaa are Rosencrantz & Guildenstern).
Wrote [a treatment] turned it in. They said thanks but no thanks and fired him. Movie comes out: they took his idea and didn’t pay him. He said Disney was notorious for doing this to creators.
I read years later that he took his own life. Never think of the Lion King without thinking about him. They made so much money off his idea and he got nothing.
Edit: Apologies for using the word “script” in my original post. There’s a 9-page treatment online that I had never seen until it was linked here.
Disch’s story that he told our class was his perspective, and I tried to relay it the best I could remember. I’m not diving deep into big authorship questions, just passing on the story how I remember it as he told it to us (it was 25 years ago). All movies are collaborations. I don’t think this defined his life or that his suicide was an outcome of Disney’s poor treatment of him. He told my creative writing class that story to teach us about the perils of writing creatively for corporate clients. He wasn’t super angry about it, just annoyed. He was a great writer and was still struggling financially.
The larger point is that he felt exploited, and it sucks when big corporations don’t share their profits with those who contribute.
Image credits: n8ertheh8er
#22
Milo and Otis is a cute, wholesome film about a cat and a dog on a crazy adventure, Homeward Bound style. But many, many animals were k*lled in making the movie. There’s one scene where a cat falls down a waterfall in a box, and apparently that had to shoot that scene multiple times because the cats kept dying.
#23
For a while, neopets was owned and operated by Scientologists. They wanted to add religion to it while they had it.
Image credits: TheRealGongoozler
#24
Bananas. You thought c*caine was a blood-soaked cartel and war driven commodity? The banana trade makes c*caine look like a farmer's market.
Also chocolate, coffee, tea, spices and most tropical fruits. And meat. And seafood. Basically everything we eat, wear, and use.
Image credits: WaterChestnutII
#25
Nintendo started as a card company in the late 1800s. It probably would have gone defunct, were it not for the Yakuza.
Image credits: Alternative_Fill2048
#26
I always prided myself on my ability to stay calm in an emergency and problem solve about the next, best action to take, especially because I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety my whole life. Like, this was an area I knew I could count on myself and other people could count on me too. Friends, family and colleagues have often commented on it.
Then a few years back when I found a really good therapist to help me deal with PTSD from growing up in an a**sive, alcoholic household, she explained that “being good in a crisis” is a type of trauma response. I’m always in hyperarousal, on the lookout for danger. I’ve dealt with scary, unpredictable, dangerous situations since I was a kid. Of course I know what to do.
I’m still proud of this ability, it just makes me sad to think how I came to have it.
#27
The song 'pumped up kicks' is catchy and was used in things like commercials and children's parties years ago. It's also pretty clearly about committing a school sh**ting.
Image credits: FrodoCraggins
#28
When I was 10 or so, my sisters and I were doing a common counting rhyme to pick something (maybe who went first in a game):
Eeenie meenie miney moe
Catch a tiger by the toe
If he hollers, let him go
Eeenie meenie miney moe.
My dad walked by and quietly commented "when I was your age, that word wasn't 'tiger', but we didn't know better back then.".
Image credits: Alexis_J_M
#29
"Resusci Annie" - the rubbery anatomical model we learned CPR on. The face is modeled after the death mask of an unidentified and unclaimed woman who drowned in the Seine River in the late 1800's. Toymaker Åsmund S. Lærdal chose to use the woman's face on the mannequin as he thought male trainees might be reluctant to kiss a man's face. The face was sculpted by the Norwegian-Danish sculptor Emma Mattheisen.
Image credits: psilome
#30
The snake that’s k*lled in Friday the Thirteenth was a real snake. To make matters worse it wasn’t some wild snake they found in the woods. It was somebody’s pet snake that had to watch his snake get k*lled. He apparently had no idea and had to be held back from punching the director.
Image credits: AltruisticAbroad709
#31
Canadas food guide was created by ab*sing and starving native children in residential schools.
#32
The data, which is used for calculating the chances of naval rescue missions, comes from human experiments in concentration camps. They threw inmates in water tanks of different temperature and measured how long it took until they froze to death or drowned.
#33
The guy who started the black and blue/white and gold dress debate from 2015 was charged with trying to strangle his wife.
Image credits: Any_Acanthocephala18
#34
Best Friends Animal Society was founded by Scientology members who formed their own cult spin-off, The Process Church. They associated with Charles Manson and David Berkowitz, with the author of Helter Skelter postulating that Manson was heavily influenced by Process.
The rescue was originally a grift to keep their church going. They eventually moved to rescue full time after realizing how incredibly lucrative (and like their church, tax-free) it could be.
With $200,000,000 in assets, $314,000,000 in 2024 revenue, and 2 private jets, you can see just how well their grift has paid off.
#35
Went to a community event last night and, 32 years later, Macarena still fills the dance floor. A bunch of teens learned the dance for the very first time.
The lyrics are, of course, in Spanish... and about the titular Macarena having a thr**some with her boyfriend's friends while he's swearing off swearing his military oath.
Also interesting is that the band played traditional music primarily and this was their first pop release, in their 50s. They went back to traditional music after.
Image credits: 314159265358979326
#36
Alfred Nobel, the creator of the Nobel Prize, was the inventor of dynamite, and amassed his wealth by developing, manufacturing and selling explosives — the “weapons of mass destruction” of his day. A French newspaper mistakenly published an obituary for his death when another arms manufacturer died, calling him “The Merchant of Death”. Seeing what his legacy was, and how he and his family name were going to be remembered, he changed his will to found the Nobel Prize.
#37
Mormonism’s got a closet of nearly all skeletons and no garments.
#38
Kellogg 100%.
#39
Henry Ford promoted square dancing in public schools, starting in the 1920s. Sound wholesome? He did it because he hated Jews and thought they invented jazz. He wanted to get America back to "traditional" (white and Christian) music and dancing.
#40
The song "My Sharona" by The Knack was about the lead singer perving over a teenage girl...... it's still a very catchy song on the surface, but it's still about wanting an underage girl.
#41
Love languages were made by a man who wanted his wife to clean for him and him to have s*x with her, so he said his love language was physical affection but hers was acts of service.
Image credits: TwincessAhsokaAarmau
#42
"Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind, the chorus of which was used by commercials and movie trailers in the 90s, is actually about being a d**g addict.
#43
Free school lunches in America started because the military complained that during world war II that many 18-year-old Men were too skinny to serve in the military. Free school lunches were added afterwards to make 18-year-old men strong enough to be drafted into the next war.
#44
Ghyslain Raza (The Star Wars Kid) had his video posted onto KaZa without his permission by his schoolmates to prank him and as a result, he was bullied at school, people made fun of him online, gave him d**th threats, told him to k*ll himself all for pretending to be a Star Wars character which is totally normal things kids do. He also had to go to a mental hospital and his parents sued the kids who uploaded the video.
Luckily, he returned to school to finish his senior year, went to McGill University in Montreal, got a law degree and became president of his city’s heritage society.
#45
Yogi Tea is owned by a cult (allegedly).
#46
The song “Marry You” by Bruno Mars is NOT romantic. It’s about something fun to do while drunk.
“It’s a beautiful night, we’re looking for something dumb to do
Hey, baby, I think I wanna marry you
Is it the look in your eyes, or is it this dancing juice?
Who cares, baby? I think I wanna marry you
Well, I know this little chapel on the boulevard we can go
No one will know, oh, come on girl”
Who cares if we’re trashed? Got a pocket full of cash we can blow Shots of Patrón and it’s on, girl
If we wake up and you wanna break up, that’s cool
No, I won’t blame you, it was fun, girl”
I laugh every time people use this in proposals or as wedding songs.
#47
Alexander Graham Bell was a eugenecist against disabled and Deaf people, which motivated his work for the telephone. He wrote an entire manifesto about preventing a “Deaf race”.
#48
The guy that lost 300 lbs by eating subway didnt lose weight by eating subway.
He lost weight by walking daily to a particular subway that wasnt even the nearest one, just so he could see an underaged girl that worked at subway.
#49
This is often mentioned in threads like "what lively catchy song has dark lyrics?", but "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees, the immortal disco anthem, is about how life in New York in the 1970s ***sucked*** and people often felt lost with no purpose ("life goin' nowhere, somebody help me"), and the only thing they had to fall back on was dancing at the club ("feel the city breakin' and everybody's shakin' and we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive...").
#50
Both shoe brands Puma and Adidas are German. They were started by the brothers Rudolf and Adolf Dassler. They owned Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory (1924) and then separated to create two companies Puma and Adidas in ‘48.” The name Adidas comes from Adolf’s nickname “Adi”.
Side note, when the company Nike was trying to launch in 1964, Adolf Dassler did everything in his power to prevent Nike from becoming successful. Now there is a very long standing and very significant hatred of Adidas by Nike.
#51
I know Bob’s Burgers isn’t SUPER wholesome but it’s generally agreed that it’s pretty wholesome and tear-jerker-y for an adult cartoon, and it started out being pitched as a burger restaurant run by a cannibal family 😂.
#52
A.A. Milne based the stories on his son, Christopher Robin, but the real Christopher grew to resent the fame it brought him. Bullied and feeling exploited, he distanced himself from both his father and the beloved books. A tale of innocence, built on a child’s unhappiness.
#53
OJ Simpson, the beloved football player and actor, was surprisingly problematic. Go ahead, look it up.
