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Fantasia is a 1940 animated film from Walt Disney collaborating with celebrated conductor Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra and the third entry in the Disney Animated Canon as well as the first film in the series of the same name. It's a surreal, yet classic blend of animation and Classical Music, often considered to have been ahead of its time back in the day. Another way to describe it as is Silly Symphonies: The Movie.

The film consists of animated sequences synchronized to classic pieces of music. They are as follows:

• Toccata and Fugue in D minor, attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. This sequence features abstract images, shapes and forms moving in time to the music.
• The Nutcracker Suite, composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Surprisingly, this features no characters from the Nutcracker ballet,^note As host Deems Taylor points out, "Incidentally, uh, you won't see any 'nutcracker' on the screen; there's nothing left of him but the title." but original sequences based on the Seasons featuring dancing fairies, fish, flowers, leaves, and even mushrooms (not a samba, however).
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice, composed by Paul Dukas. The most famous scene in the entire film. This sequence features Mickey Mouse as a sorcerer's apprentice, who borrows his master's enchanted hat and decides to try out its powers. He finds out, however, that the magic is a little too much for him to handle.
• The Rite of Spring, composed by Igor Stravinsky. This sequence showcases the evolution of life on Earth, from the formation of the planet to the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to the theories of the time. invoked
• "Meet the Soundtrack": An entr'acte after intermission in which host Deems Taylor interacts with a line that is supposed to resemble the soundtrack on a film reel that makes various abstract shapes whenever different instruments are played.
• The Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 6), composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. During this part of the film, mythical creatures such as centaurs, cupids, satyrs, unicorns, and Pegasi prance around, and attend a festival for the god Bacchus/Dionysus, only to have it interrupted by Jupiter/Zeus and Vulcan/Hephaestus.
• Dance of the Hours, composed by Amilcare Ponchielli. In this comedic sequence, ballet-dancing anthropomorphic animals (ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators), representing the times of day (morning, noon, evening, and night) dance in time to the music in a loose adaptation of its original ballet, La Gioconda.
• Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, composed by Modest Mussorgsky and Franz Schubert, respectively. The first half of this sequence is probably the most frightening sequence in Disney animation, featuring Chernabog (who is essentially the Devil, instead of an actual Slavic Pagan deity ^note  In the film the character is more or less explicitly identified as Satan; he only started being called "Chernabog" decades later for business reasons. The word "chernabog" in Russian literally means "Black God" ) raising the dead from the grave. The sequence leads to a contrasting sequence to the calm tune of Ave Maria, featuring a procession of pilgrims walking through a forest, with the rocks and trees evoking a cathedral, to witness the dawn.

In 1999, nearly sixty years after the release of the original film, Fantasia would be followed up by Fantasia 2000.

The original 1940 film contains examples of:

• Acrofatic: The elephants and the hippos in the Dance of the Hours segment are particularly light on their feet and athletic.
• Actually Quite Catchy: While the orchestra tuning in their instruments at one point a bassist slowly builds up a swing tune and the rest turns it to a brief jam session.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: The introduction to the Pastoral makes reference to "Pegasus and his family." The traditionally white Pegasus is instead portrayed as black with the white coloration going to his mate.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: The ostriches, hippos and elephants flirt a bit with the gators, despite the implication the gators want to eat them.
• All There in the Manual: A lot of the characters' names are only known from supplementary material: namely Jackus the donkey/unicorn, Yen Sid the sorcerer, all the named characters in Dance of the Hours, and Chernabog (unless he is, as Deems Taylor identifies him, Satan after all.) A lot of the less familiar-looking animals from The Rite Of Spring are only named in concept art as well, such as Troodon^note The creature chasing the Archaeopteryx, portrayed as a predatory ornithischian , Hallopus^note  The small bipedal reptiles that flee when the T. rex approaches, Kannemeyeria^note  The fat, beaked animal digging for clams, and Hypsilophodon^note The small green tree-climbing dinosaurs.
• Arcadia: The Pastoral Symphony was composed by Beethoven as a love letter to the countryside of central Europe. Fantasia transplants the setting to an ancient Greece populated by satyrs, centaurs, cherubs, pegasi, unicorns, and deities, but it is still set in an idyllic countryside of meadows, forests, streams, and lakes.
• Anachronistic Animal: The film features a Dimetrodon, a creature that lived before dinosaurs evolved. The famous fight between the Stegosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus rex is another example, given that the T. rex and Triceratops (which is also present in the sequence) existed in the Cretaceous, millions of years after the Stegosaurus (in fact, the T. Rex lived closer to today than it did to when Stegosaurus did).
• Ancient Grome: The Pastoral Symphony sequence shamelessly muddles together Greek and Roman mythology. Deems Taylor's introduction names Zeus and Artemis alongside Bacchus and Vulcan (Dionysus & Hephaestus, respectively).
• Animate Plant: The Nutcracker Suite has flowers and mushrooms dancing.
• Aquatic Hadrosaurs: The "Rite of Spring" segment features several species of hadrosaurs, namely Parasaurolophus, Corythosaurus, Edmontosaurus, and Kritosaurus. They are depicted as swamp animals feeding on aquatic plants and run away in the water when a T. rex approaches.
• Aquatic Sauropods: In "The Rite of Spring", sauropods are depicted as living in swampy environments and eating aquatic plants. Notably, the Brachiosaurus are shown completely submerging themselves in the water to escape from the T. rex.
• Art Evolution: Freddy Moore completely redesigned the Mickey model sheet for this film (particularly changing the eyes), giving the appearance that is still used today.
• Artistic License – Biology: A flagellate protozoa in an early part of the Rite of Spring sequence is shown using its flagellum as a feeler rather than a propulsion organ. The animator may have only looked at microscopic still photos, though.
• Artistic License – Ornithology: The ostriches in the "Dance of the Hours" sequence are clearly supposed to be female, with bows on their heads, ballet shoes, and girlish eyes and eyebrows. However, they have the black-and-white plumage of a male ostrich. Female ostriches are brown.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Rite of Spring, filled with dinosaurs from different Mesozoic periods and sometimes-questionable anatomy. In fact, Tyrannosaurus lived closer to when humans live today than he did to when Stegosaurus lived. According to commentary on the Blu-Ray release, the fight was originally to have been between the T. rex and a Triceratops, but the Stegosaurus was switched in as the animators felt the thagomizer would make the battle more interesting. Going by the 1940s understanding of dinosaurs, however, it's pretty accurate (apart of course from the Anachronism Stew)—in fact, the "T. rex" was drawn with three fingers, making it look more like an Allosaurus, which did live in the Jurassic alongside Stegosaurus, and at the time when Fantasia was being made, there was still debate over the T. rex had two fingers or three (a T. rex fossil with two intact fingers was not discovered until 1988, and Walt Disney opted for giving the T. rex three fingers because he thought it looked scarier that way). On the other hand, it is too bulky and lacks the brow horns Allosaurus is also known for having. There is also a glimpse of the vastly out of place Dimetrodon, a synapsid^note The dinosaurs were sauropsids; the synapsids were the group of amniotes that eventually gave rise to mammals, the only living members of the clade. living a good 100 million years before the dinosaurs evolved. But this creature has a tendency to be mashed up with dinosaurs anyway. In 1955, an educational version of the Rite of Spring segment was made for the Disneyland TV series, with narration providing accurate (for the time) facts about the animals in it. The opening to it states that "in the interest of dramatic storytelling, certain liberties have been taken with chronological progression".
• Ascended to Carnivorism: In the Rite of Spring sequence, Plateosaurus and Kannemeyeria (both herbivorous) are portrayed eating clams. Becomes a case of Accidentally Correct Writing in the case of the plateosaurs, since primitive sauropodomorphs are believed to have been at least somewhat omnivorous.invoked
• Astronomic Zoom: The Rite of Spring goes from floating balls of gas in outer space all the way down to single-cell organisms.
• Badass Arm-Fold: Chernabog's awakening. Seriously, that's what criminals see when Batman emerges from the shadows.
• Ballet: Three of the segments are based on famous ballet scores - The Nutcracker Suite, featuring dancing fairies, flowers and, most famously, mushrooms; The Rite of Spring, which depicts the evolution of life on Earth in a realistic fashion, with no dancing whatsoever; and Dance of the Hours, starring a dancing troupe consisting of ostriches, hippos, elephants and crocodiles.
• Battle in the Rain: The fight between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus in The Rite of Spring.
• Bat Out of Hell: Chernabog, though it may take some time for you to notice. He's not just your average, bat-winged demon. His facial structure too is reminiscent of that of a bat, notably his mouth.
• Belly Flop Crushing: In the last movement of the "Dance of the Hours" section, a hippo leaps into the arms of her alligator lover, only to squash him because she's more than he can handle. The filmmakers said that the entire "Dance of the Hours" section is meant to suggest a performance by an amateur ballet company, i.e. it might have funny moments due to the dancers' limited skill, but isn't being played for laughs.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Hyacinth Hippo, whom Ben Ali Gator falls for almost instantly. The other hippo ballerinas count as well, considering how eager the gators are to dance with them.
• Birds of a Feather: The centaurs and centaurettes in the Pastoral Symphony sequence all pair up with a partner of the same color.
• Bloodless Carnage: In the Rite of Spring sequence, dinosaurs fight and kill each other with their teeth and spiked tails, but not a single drop of blood is apparent. Admittedly, the T-Rex seems to kill the Stegosaurus by twisting and breaking its neck (Truth in Television for many large carnivores even today), but there still should have been some blood.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Zeus unleashes a bolt, mostly because he's bored. This is not out-of-character for him as depicted in most of the original myths, either.
• Bowdlerize:
  • All of the home video releases censor the Pastoral Symphony sequence to remove the presence of Sunflower, who is depicted as a very stereotypical African American (rat tail hairs, subservient to another centaur, and being stylized as a donkey instead of a centaurette). The home video releases worked around her by digitally zooming in on the footage of the centaurettes she was near, and slightly rearranging one scene to cover up that they excised a brief scene with her that was impossible to pan away from. For other shots where it was both absolutely impossible to pan away from her and too crucial to remove, they digitally edited her out altogether, resulting in oddities like a red carpet that she pushed now magically rolling out on its own. The only way the original footage can be seen now is by finding bootlegs of very old TV recordings of Fantasia.
  • Whereas the original Fantasia segment has Yen Sid swatting Mickey with the broom after his little stunt, at least one of the storybook adaptations avoids this. The sorcerer simply tells Mickey not to start what he can't finish.
  • The animators actually storyboarded the scene where Mickey chops the broom to pieces with an axe. In the final film, it happens off-screen and the viewer only sees it via a Shadow Discretion Shot.
  • The name "Chernabog" itself was this; while the main character of Night on Bald Mountain was originally conceived of as Satan and the name Chernabog is nowhere to be found in the movie itself, publicity materials and any later works where he makes an appearance, like House of Mouse, use the name to dodge the controversy of having Satan as such a prominent character, even one who retreats in the face of holiness.
• Casting a Shadow: Chernabog uses shadows of his hands to summon his minions.
• Classic Carnosaurs:
  • The "Rite of Spring" segment features a Tyrannosaurus rex as the main dinosaur villain hunting the other dinosaurs. But this is not obvious at first glance because the T. rex in question has a smooth, lizard-like head and large forelimbs with three claws instead of two. The fact that the T. rex in question fights a Stegosaurus rather than the contemporary Triceratops led many to assume that it was an Allosaurus instead. But Walt Disney made it clear that it's supposed to be a T. rex despite the generic carnosaur design: he believed that three fingers made it look better.
  • During the extinction event segment of "Rite of Spring", several Ceratosaurus prey upon the trapped dinosaurs stuck in the mud. These theropods are depicted similar to T. rex with bird-like feet, lizard-like head and tridactyl hands, but are depicted with their iconic nasal horns and ostoderm ridges along their backs.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The female centaurs are paler shades of their male mates' colors.
• Conspicuously Light Patch: Nicely averted in Rite of Spring, when chunks of rock that look like any other part of the background get loosened and carried away by lava.
• Crashing Dreams: Mickey dreams of waves crashing against a cliff, only to awake to the watery doom around him.
• Dainty Little Ballet Dancers: An example of this trope being inverted for humorous value, which depicts hippos in tutus dancing to Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours."
• Dance of Romance: With hippos and gators.
• Dangerously Garish Environment: To some extent, Bald Mountain. At the climax of the infernal festivities, numerous demonic minions dance maniacally against rainbow-colored flames from hell, with some even mutated by Chernabog himself or being set on fire alive for his amusement.
• Dark Is Evil: In the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, everything connected with Evil and Death is portrayed by the darkness, fires of Hell etc etc. during a dark and gloomy night.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Pegasus father from "Pastoral Symphony" is black in color, with a gothic and almost sinister appearance. He is, however, kind and caring.
• The Day the Dinosaurs Died: The Rite of Spring sequence ends with the dinosaurs all dying out. Since the film was produced more than forty years before the idea of an impact event being the cause was proposed, it shows them all perishing of dehydration in a massive drought.
• Defanged Horrors:
  • The "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence depicts demons and ghosts celebrating to the classic strains of Modest Mussorgsky. It helps that, aside from dancing around, they don't actually do anything, and there's never any threat of innocent people being hurt. Additionally, the sequence ends with the tolling of a church bell, and the rebuked demons returning to sleep as a procession of churchgoers with lanterns walk by while Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria" plays, signaling the restoration of order and the triumph of good over evil.
  • To a lesser extent, the earlier sequence set to Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" features a ferocious battle between a Stegosaurus and a Terrifying Tyrannosaur, and then a sequence of all the dinosaurs dying out in an arid desert. Not quite horror movie imagery, but still a lot more intense than most kids are used to.
• Deranged Animation: Night on Bald Mountain gets very trippy with the evil spirits summoned by Chernabog zooming through the screen.
• Desert Skull: The 'Rite of Spring' segment shows the last of the dinosaurs shuffling into the desert dust - after which the camera pans to and closes in on the skull of the mighty T-Rex.
• Dog Walks You: During the storm in the "Pastoral Symphony" sequence, Dionysus/Bacchus is trying to drag his unicorn/donkey, Jackus, toward shelter, but Jackus is resisting. One flash of lightning later, Jackus is the one dragging Dionysus/Bacchus along behind him.
• Door-Closes Ending: The "Dance of the Hours" segment ends with the palace doors slamming so hard they're knocked off their hinges.
• Double Take: An elephant does one when she realizes that the bubble she just blew has a goldfish in it.
• Downer Ending: The Rite of Spring. If it hadn't been for the executive meddling, Walt Disney would have kept the happier ending where a band of early humans start a bonfire and dance in celebration of their discovery.
• Earthquakes Cause Fissures: At the end of the "Rite of Spring" segment, a massive earthquake strikes. One of the first things to occur is the ground ripping apart to form a canyon like two hands grabbed the earth and pulled in opposite directions.
• Editorial Synaesthesia: Every scene is a representation of the images that the music invokes in the artists' minds. The segment that is the purest example of Editorial Synaesthesia is the one of "The Soundtrack", as abstract forms flowing into each other. Other segments are full stories that the music evoked for the artists.
• Epic Movie: Quite possibly the most ambitious film project ever executed by the Disney Studios, both technically and conceptually. Contains some of the most beautiful, striking animation sequences ever, accompanied by some of the most epic compositions in all of music — brought to audiences in glorious Fantasound, the first ever stereophonic movie sound system. Plus, at the time of its release it was the longest animated movie ever made and held this record for decades.
• Epic Tracking Shot: The closing shot was languid camera track through a Gothic-looking forest at dawn. It was so hard to pull off that it wasn't finished until hours before the world premiere.
• Episode Discussion Scene: The movie begins in live-action with the conductor explaining the premise and structure of the film: a series of animated shorts set to classical music.
• Expy: In "Dance Of The Hours", all the main dancers are expys for the main characters from the opera La Gioconda.
• Fairy Sexy: There are lengthy segments of tiny, (non-detailed) nude fairies who bring dew, Autumn, and frost during the Nutcracker suite.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: "Rite of Spring" shows the extinction of the dinosaurs (or rather how they believed it went at the time) in all of its brutal reality. But they are realistic-looking, non-anthropomorphic ones, so it's okay.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: "Rite of Spring" features an extremely brutal fight between a Tyrannosaurus and a Stegosaurus, ending with the Tyrannosaurus killing and eating the Stegosaurus.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Chernabog is naked and muscular, but he's a demon with a horrifying face.
  • Chernabog's nude female minions have their faces twisted in agony.
• Fatal Forced March: The movie portrays the extinction of the dinosaurs as a desperate march through a land ravaged by drought. With the only watering hole having dried up, both carnivores and herbivores alike have no choice but to walk on, the herd slowly dropping dead one after the other as dehydration sets in; even the Tyrannosaur collapses seconds into the march and is left behind as the other dinosaurs march onward. None survive.
• Fauns and Satyrs: "Pastoral Symphony" features a few cutesy satyrs, playing pan flute music while frolicking around.
• Finger-Snap Lighter: Chernabog creates flames in his hand, which he then twists up into demons.
• Floating in a Bubble: The elephants in the "Dance of the Hours" segment blow bubbles with their trunks. One is shocked to find a fish floating inside one. Another ends up getting a bubble stuck to her foot. And yet another (or possibly the same one who got her foot stuck) gets completely trapped in one.
• Flourish Cape in Front of Face: In the "Dance of the Hours" sequence, the alligators cover their faces with red capes when they sneak into the palace.
• Forging Scene: In the "Pastoral Symphony" sequence, Vulcan/Hephaestus forges thunderbolts for Jupiter/Zeus to hurl at Bacchus/Dionysus.
• For the Evulz:
  • Everything Chernabog does is purely to have fun.
  • Zeus and Vulcan breaking up the celebration in "Pastoral Symphony" for no apparent reason also counts.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: As is typical for Disney, the Pastoral is a huge aversion. They make no effort to hide intoxication, or the fact that Dionysus/Bacchus and the unicorn he is riding are drunk.
• Ghastly Ghost: The "Night on Bald Mountain" segment plays this trope completely straight. You have hordes of spirits that ride skeleton steeds and some flying shrouds with glowing eyes on the inside.
• Ghibli Hills: The Pastoral Symphony is set among verdant hills and gentle streams.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: A total solar eclipse triggers a huge tide at the end of the "Rite of Spring" segment.
• Gone Behind the Bend: During the "Dance of the Hours" segment. Ben Ali Gator is chasing Hyacinth Hippo, who hides behind a column that is far too narrow for her to hide behind. Ben runs around the column a couple of times but can't seem to find her, until she comes from behind and tramples him.
• Good Hurts Evil: The mountainous devil Chernabog and his army of spirits are driven away by the light of "the sacred" at the beginning of the Ave Maria section.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The camera pans up right as the T-Rex is leaning down to tear into its kill.
• Grapes of Luxury: A couple of centaurs enact this trope during the Pastoral Symphony scene while being fanned by cherubs. Later, during Dance of the Hours, the ostriches fight over a bunch of grapes before one of the hippos eventually gets it.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: The Elephant scene in "Dance of the Hours" features them floating in bubbles - staying afloat until the bubble pops.
• Green Gators: Ben Ali Gator and all of his cohorts are dark green alligators.
• Happily Ever Before: Originally, the "Rite of Spring" segment (which is more of a documentary about life on the planet), was actually going to extend into the Cenozoic era after they show the dinosaurs going extinct, complete with appearances of different extinct mammals such as wooly mammoths and saber-toothed cats, before finally ending with the appearance of mankind and their discovery of fire. However, due to executive meddling, all of this was actually cut from the final version of the film, and as a result, all of this was replaced by a scene where the entire Earth gets lashed by earthquakes before finally being flooded by a massive tidal wave caused by a solar eclipse. Not quite a happy ending for the dinosaurs but at least a "Ray of Hope" Ending for life as a whole.
• Harping on About Harpies: There are some hideous-looking harpies among Chernabog's minions during the hellish party.
• Harp of Femininity: The film's orchestra solely consists of men... save for the harp players, who are women.
• Hellish Horse: In the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, some of the skeleton knights raised by Chernabog ride some of these. One of them looks an awful lot like the Horned King! Funny enough...there was some recycled footage from Fantasia in The Black Cauldron.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The "Night on Bald Mountain" segment. The narrator informs us that the demons and ghosts are celebrating Walpurgis Night.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Twice near the end of Rite of Spring, as the Tyrannosaurus rex is walking with the other dinosaurs tired and dehydrated then roars weakly and collapses down a sand dune, then a minute or so later as the camera pans across the dinosaur skeletons. When it come to the skeleton of the T. Rex, it suddenly zooms in on it as the music descends mockingly. Not even the once terrifying predator could escape death.
• Hot as Hell: A rather literal example in Night on Bald Mountain. Chernabog holds a flame in his hand, and turns it into three naked women, made of fire, who proceed to dance. It then gets immediately subverted horrifyingly as Chernabog turns these women into increasingly horrific forms including a pig, a goat, a wolf, a group of pale aquamarine imps with yellow eyes and blue tinted very male demons with horned heads with beaked mouths.
• Huge Girl, Tiny Guy: The hippos and the alligators in Dance of the Hours.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: The male and female centaurs in the Pastoral Symphony.
• Inconsistent Coloring: The animators never seemed to agree on the number and colors of the many baby unicorns and pegasi in the Pastoral Symphony segment; at one point near the end of the first movement, as the pegasus foals fly down to a lake, several of them enter the water one color and emerge a different color, begging the question of just what is in the water.
• Intermission: The original roadshow version included one. Later versions re-edited the footage of the orchestra leaving for intermission and then returning for the opening and closing of the film. Modern releases starting with the North American DVD and all Blu-ray releases restored the original intermission footage.
• Jerkass Gods:
  • Zeus, in the Pastoral Symphony, disrupts Bacchus' party with a storm and deliberately threw lightning bolts at them. It's even worse if one goes by the myths, in which Bacchus is Zeus' son.
  • Chernabog incinerates or crushes his demonic minions simply for a moment's amusement.
• Knight of Cerebus: While more antagonists than outright villains, the appearance (and build-up) of Vulcan and Zeus in the Pastoral Symphony changes the tone from whimsical to dramatic. Justified, as their sequence accompanies the fourth movement of the Symphony which depicts a violent thunderstorm.
• Large Ham: Chernabog is a rare non-speaking example, with an overly dramatic body language.
• Lava Pot Volcano: In the section of "The Rite of Spring" depicting the Hadean Period, the primordial Earth is covered in constantly-erupting volcanos—with a particularly massive one being shown overflowing into the ocean, which boils up and engulfs the land.
• Light Is Good: Ave Maria, being a contrast to the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, has this as one of its main themes. Sunlight and glowing candles are depicted as being associated with Heaven and all things holy.
• Limited Animation: The Ave Maria sequence has barely any animation at all—most of the movement is done by the multiplane camera.
• Long Take: Ave Maria ends with a 160-second one. This is a multiplane camera shot, and ended up having to be reshot twice; on the first take the camera was inadvertently fitted with a wide-angle lens, causing unwanted peripheral details to be visible; on the second, an LA earth tremor shook the planes out of alignment. Third time was the charm.
• Lower Half Reveal: The Pastoral Symphony sequence opens with a panning view of young women bathing waist-deep in a natural pool. Then one of them walks up out of the pool, revealing that she's a centauress.
• Ludd Was Right: In The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the magical "robot" broom Mickey made to do his chores for him turns out to be uncontrollable.
• Mama Bear: The mother Pegasus flies out in the middle of a storm in order to rescue one of her children.
• Mushroom Man: The dancing mushrooms in the Nutcracker's Chinese Dance segment, whose caps resemble Asian rice hats.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: "Dance of the Hours" plays with this. The alligators are used to represent Night, and they often seem to be acting antagonistically, but at the same time, the short makes it clear that it's all a show and the other animals aren't really in danger.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Promotional art for Fantasia often seems to imply that Mickey as the Sorcerer's Apprentice faces off with Chernabog. The two appear in different segments and do not interact. Critics in 1940 actually complained about this.
• Nipple and Dimed: The original actually did this in a few scenes, with some very brief flashes of naked breasts that they could not get away with today. Specifically, Chernabog's rather ugly harpy minions flash their breasts at the audience a few times. Left uncut on all re-releases and on Disney+.
• Old-Fashioned Fruit Stomping: In the "Pastoral Symphony" segment, a group of satyrs dance around in a vat full of grapes, pulping them with their hooves while preparing for a festival honoring the wine god Bacchus.
• One Off Sync: During the "Nutcracker Suite" segment, a group of Chinese mushrooms dance to the "Tea" movement, with the littlest mushroom (named Hop-Low) always out of step.
• One-Word Title: Fantasia.
• Open-Door Opening: The "Dance of the Hours" segment starts with the opening of stately palace doors. It ends with the same doors falling off their hinges.
• Opposites Attract: The Pegasus mother and father. The father's coloration makes him look very gothic, almost sinister, while his wife's coloration makes her look angelic.
• Orwellian Retcon: Sunflower, the little black centaur servant, has been cut from modern releases due to being a racist caricature. Even the version of the movie made available on Disney+, which opens with a content warning about Values Dissonance, doesn't show Sunflower.invoked
• Our Centaurs Are Different: In the Pastoral Symphony scene, there are both female and male centaurs with rather good-looking, non-beastly human halves. A duo of African centaurs with zebra-like horse parts also show up. The original release also featured a small black centaur servant, but she was cut from later releases starting in the late 60's due to Values Dissonance.invoked
• Our Gargoyles Rock: Chernabog. Just look at him and try to tell us he wouldn't blend in on a church roof.
• Painting the Frost on Windows: The fairies in the Nutcracker Suite segment are shown changing leaf colors and putting rime frost on plants and water surfaces to change the seasons.
• Pale Females, Dark Males: In "Pastoral Symphony", the Pegasus family has a black father and a white mother. The male centaurs usually have somewhat darker tones than the females, as well.
• Pegasus: Several appear in "Pastoral Symphony".
• Perilous Prehistoric Seas: Tylosaurus appears in the Rite of Spring section, where they are pack hunters. They're shown hunting and killing a Pteranodon when one makes the unfortunate decision of descending too close to the waters.
• Punny Name:
  • Bacchus/Dionysus' unicorn/donkey in the "Pastoral Symphony" sequence is named Jackus (i.e., jackass).
  • The lead ostrich in the "Dance of the Hours" sequence is named Mademoiselle Upanova (up and over).
• Random Events Plot: The Nutcracker Suite. Fairies creating morning dew ("Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"), dancing mushrooms ("Chinese Dance"), blossoms on a flowing river ("Dance of the Reed Flutes"), long-tailed goldfish ("Arabian Dance"), dancing thistles ("Russian Dance"), and fairies ushering in the changing colours of autumn and the first frosts and snow of winter ("Waltz of the Flowers")... it's just one thing after another.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • The T-Rex in Rite of Spring, with good reason - it is the top predator in the age of dinosaurs, killing a Stegosaurus on-screen.
  • Averted with the father Pegasus, however, whose red eyes bely a protective personality.
• Ride the Rainbow: After the storm in "Pastoral Symphony", the goddess Iris flies by, leaving a rainbow behind her. Cherubs and baby pegasi play around the rainbow and slide down it.
• Ribcage Ridge: Near the end of the "Rite of Spring" section, there is a desert littered with dinosaur bones.
• Saved by the Church Bell: In the penultimate segment, the church bell prompts the retreat of Chernabog the Dark God and his ghouls; the bell denotes his doom.
• Satanic Archetype: Night On Bald Mountain was originally introduced as starring Satan himself when Fantasia first premiered. His name was later changed to Chernabog (an obscure Slavic Pagan deity) in what was a reverse Jesus Taboo, but the change was not pulled out of thin air (see Shown Their Work).
• Scary Skeleton: Some of the spirits raised by Chernabog in Night On Bald Mountain are ghastly and ghoulish skeletons.
• Sensory Abuse: Rite of Spring, true to its original composition, features many sudden loud noises and beats that can be quite jarring to audiences not in the know about it.
• Shipper on Deck: The cupids from the Pastoral Symphony play matchmaker for a lonely centaur and a lonely centaurette. They both hit it off.
• Shoe Shine, Mister?: Sunflower is a Blackface centaur shining hooves for white ones.
• Shown Their Work:
  • At the time Fantasia was made, the only well-known version of Night on Bald Mountain was the one streamlined and rearranged (the All Music Guide says "bowdlerized") by Rimsky-Korsakov. However, it was the third version. The first version by Mussorgsky ("St. John's Eve at the Bald Mountain") was about a witches' sabbath on St. John's Eve^note  June 23rd in the Western Calendar, July 6th in the Orthodox Calendar, and, like the Eve of All Saints (Hallowe'en) and the Eve of St. Walburga (Walpurgisnacht), a traditional time for the grand Sabbat of the witches, mentioned Satan explicitly and was rejected by the organizer of the festival for which it was written. The second and most obscure version of the music was heavily reworked, called "Dream of the Young Peasant Lad" and intended to be part of an opera which he never finished. According to the All Music Guide, "as a boy dreams on a hill, he is threatened by inhuman voices and finds himself mocked in the realm of shadows. The voices warn of the Devil and the "Black God" Chernabog; as the shadows fade, both appear. Chernabog is glorified, a Black Mass is sung, and a Witches' Sabbath breaks out. As a church bell intones, Chernabog disappears and the demons writhe in agony. A church choir sings, the demons fade away, awakening the boy." Sound familiar?
  • For the Dance of the Hours sequence, the animators studied hours and hours of ballet footage to be sure to create an accurate parody.
• Sinister Nudity: Among the various demons that Chernabog summons to serve him during "Night on Bald Mountain" include harpies, which are all topless and can be seen tossing damned souls into the flames.
• Solid Clouds: The cupids from the "Pastoral Symphony" segment sleep on clouds. Also, Zeus and Vulcan are seen working on them. After Zeus has some lightning-chucking fun, he wraps himself up in a cloud and takes a nap.
• Stock Dinosaur Archetypes: The Rite of Spring segment includes all of the usual dinosaur types, taking their traditional roles: pterosaurs swooping in the air to catch fish (only to be caught in the jaws of a Tylosaurus), duckbills swimming and eating water plants, sauropods grazing for food, Triceratops traveling in herds, and finally a Tyrannosaurus that shows up to terrorize the herbivores before picking out a Stegosaurus that fights back quite effectively, but in the end isn't amatch for the predator. It's one of the earlier examples of dinosaurs being given very particular roles that they'd become quickly identified with.
• Swans A-Swimming: Not swans per se, but the Pegasi from the "Pastoral Symphony" evoke their imagery when they land on a lake and glide along its surface.
• Swing Low, Sweet Harriet: One centaurette is pushed on a swing by her mate.
• Tail Slap: In the "Rite of Spring" segment, a Stegosaurus uses its spiked tail to defend itself against a T. rex.
• That Russian Squat Dance: Performed by thistles.
• That's No Moon: In the segment Night on Bald Mountain, the peak of the mountain itself is formed by the demonic Chernabog's enormous folded wings.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Hyacinth Hippo is comically obese whereas her partner Ben Ali Gator is very slim, short, and flexible. He can't even lift her over his head while they're dancing without great difficulty.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: The Rite of Spring section includes a total eclipse happening at the end. When it nears totality, a huge earthquake happens with mountains forming and tsunamis wreaking havoc on the desolate land, coinciding with the music. By the time it reaches totality, the eclipsed sun sets over the barren Earth, so who knows how long the eclipse would have lasted. Likely Truth in Television, as the moon was closer to Earth 66 million years ago.
• Two Girls to a Team: Due to sexist hiring practices of the time, there are only two women in the orchestra, both playing the harp.
• Unicorn: Some little technicolour ones are among the first creatures we see in the Pastoral. When Bacchus shows up later, he's riding on a unicorn donkey.
• Victorious Chorus: Notably the only vocal music in the film, there's Franz Schubert's serene Ave Maria, which plays immediately after the horror of Night On Bald Mountain.
• Vile Vulture: A sinister-looking vulture appears at the beginning of the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, where it appears perched on a gallow and has probably sustained itself on a condemned criminal's corpse.
• Villain Protagonist: Chernabog is the central character of the "Night on Bald Mountain" short.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Chernabog, although the rest is covered by the mountain peak.
• Weakened by the Light: Chernabog is interrupted when light shines on him, causing him to wince and shield his eyes.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Chernabog and his minions vanish when the churchbell rings.
• Zebras Are Just Striped Horses: The "Pastoral Symphony" sequence features a pair of African centaurs whose equine half is that of a zebra.