Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5014911-20140914181822/@comment-24674051-20141017170431

And let's face it. When it comes to Fairy Tales, Disney has successfully spun a fair number of them into stories that, while divergent from the original source material, are good stories in and of themselves. and, for better or worse, many people are more familiar with the Disney spin than the original.

I think it is clever that OUaT uses the familiar to take us back to the original then spin it in a totally different direction. Look at the Frozen Arc. They are using Frozen (and I must admit they are doing it very well, imo), but with the introduction of Elizabeth Mitchell's character, they are going to delve more into the HCA version, or at least take a completely different spin on that.

And let's face it, ABC is owned by Disney. and Disney is known for their animated (and now even some non-animated) spins of the fairy tale genre. So no matter what, people are going to see Disney in the stories.

However, I agree that we can do without the Kingdom Hearts references in OUaT. That's much better just kept on it's own.