How's this for a children's movie character, action figure, coloring book model, lunch box icon, and celebrity spokesperson? Our "hero" murders his children in a fit of insanity, then blames his dysfunctional family. After all, Mom is furious with Dad's multiple affairs—of which our hero is a result—but doesn't want to say too much since he killed and ate his first wife! So she bumps off the son's wife, "Meg," and sentences him to perform twelve heroic deeds.

No chance in Hades, you say? Not for the those wacky Walt Disney writers and product developers. If you remember studying mythology in high school, you know the real story of Hercules! Call me paranoid, but I feel a bit uncomfortable with a psychotic child killer peering out at me from the toy aisle.

Mickey's movie makers not only mutate mythology, but history and theology as well. Pocahontas looks more like Native American Barbie (the original, silicon-enhanced version, of course) Meets Dashing Adventurer Ken at a New-Age Convention.

But according to The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captain John Smith, she was twelve and he was pushing thirty when they first met, and there's no record of any statutory romance between the two. And contrary to the video version, Smith didn't turn to the Indian culture's belief in tree, water, rock, and root worm spirits, but Pocahontas was baptized as a Christian when she married colonist John Rolfe. I don't think she'd approve of her revised history.

Victor Hugo would be feeling no "les miserable" with Disney's deformed Hunchback of Notre Dame. In his book, Quasimodo is an insane, would- be murderer who pours molten metal on the crowd below the belltower with premeditated intent to murder, mame, and cause bodily injury. And Esmeralda really does come to the end of her rope—on the gallows.

What's next? Adolph, the heart-warming musical of a tortured artist who finally receives world-wide fame as a motivational speaker? Let's all sing, "It's a Small Reich After All."

Okay, okay, maybe I'm expecting too much realism from a company whose official spokesperson is a disease-carrying rodent. And there's nothing wrong with a talking mouse for 100 percent pure fantasy fun. Nobody does make-believe better than Mickey and company!

But you have to admit that Disney puts the "dis" in distorted when it comes to literature, history, theology, and even mythology. So, maybe we should be cautious of the company's views on morality, as well.