Big Bad Wolf

The Big Bad Wolf is a term used to describe a fictional wolf who appears in several precautionary folkloric stories, including some of Aesop's Fables and Grimm's Fairy Tales.

In both Little Red Riding Hood, and The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, the theme of the ravening wolf and of the creature released unharmed from its belly is reflected in the Russian tale Peter and the Wolf, but its general theme of restoration is at least as old as Jonah and the whale. The Theme also appears in the story of the life of Saint Margaret, where the saint emerges unharmed from the belly of a dragon.

The dialog between the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood has its analogies to the Norse Þrymskviða from the Elder Edda; the giant Þrymr had stolen Mjölner, Thor's hammer, and demanded Freyja as his bride for its return. Instead, the gods dressed Thor as a bride and sent him. When the giants note Thor's unladylike eyes, eating, and drinking, Loki explains them as Freyja not having slept, or eaten, or drunk, out of longing for the wedding.^[1]

Folklorists and cultural anthropologists such as P. Saintyves and Edward Burnett Tylor saw Little Red Riding Hood in terms of solar myths and other naturally-occurring cycles, stating that the wolf represents the night swallowing the sun, and the variations in which Little Red Riding Hood is cut out of the wolf's belly represent the dawn.^[2] In this interpretation, there is a connection between the wolf of this tale and Skoll or Fenris, the wolf in Norse mythology that will swallow the sun at Ragnarök.^[3]

Ethologist Dr. Valerius Geist of the University of Calgary, Alberta wrote that the fable was likely based on genuine risk of wolf attacks at the time. He argues that wolves were in fact dangerous predators, and fables served as a valid warning not to enter forests where wolves were known to live, and to be on the look out for such. Both wolves and wilderness were treated as enemies of humanity in that region and time.^[4]

• The Boy Who Cried Wolf
• The Dog and the Wolf
• The Crane and the Wolf
• The Wolf and the Lamb

• Little Red Riding Hood
• The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids

• Three Little Pigs

Big Bad Wolf
Disney's version of the Big Bad Wolf.
First appearance	Three Little Pigs (May 27, 1933)
Created by	Larry White
Voiced by	Billy Bletcher (1933-1941) Jim Cummings (2001-2003) Tony Pope (1988)
Alias	Zeke Midas Wolf (real name).

The Big Bad Wolf, also known as Zeke Wolf or Br'er Wolf, is a fictional character from Walt Disney's animation Three Little Pigs, directed by Burt Gillett and first released on May 27, 1933. The Wolf's voice was provided by Billy Bletcher. As in the folktale, he was a cunning and threatening menace. The short also introduced the Wolf's theme song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", written by Frank Churchill.

The Wolf normally wears a top hat, red pants, green suspenders and white gloves. He wears no shirt and is barefoot. The Wolf has a taste for disguising himself, but both the audience and the Practical Pig could easily see through the Wolf's disguises. With each successive short, the Wolf exhibits a fondness for dressing in drag, and even "seduces" Fiddler and Fifer Pigs (who become more and more clueless as to his disguises with each installment) with such disguises as "Goldilocks the Fairy Queen", Little Bo Peep, and a mermaid.

The short was so popular that Walt Disney produced several sequels, which also featured the Wolf as the villain. The first of them was named after him: The Big Bad Wolf, also directed by Burt Gillett and first released on April 14, 1934. In the next of the sequels, Three Little Wolves (1936), he was accompanied by three just-as-carnivorous sons. (These three sons were later reduced to just one who, in contrast to his father, was full of goodness and charm and a friend of the three little pigs.) The fourth cartoon featuring the Three Little Pigs and the Wolf, The Practical Pig, was released in 1939. During World War II, a final, propaganda cartoon followed, produced by The National Film Board of Canada: The Thrifty Pig (1941).

At the end of each short, the Wolf is dealt with by the resourceful thinking and hard work of Practical Pig. In the original short, he falls into a boiling pot prepared by the pigs. In The Big Bad Wolf, Practical pours popcorn and hot coals down his pants. In the final two shorts, Practical invents an anti-Wolf contraption to deal with the Wolf, who is shown to be powerless against the marvels of modern technology. The "Wolf Pacifier" in Three Little Wolves entraps him, chases him with a buzz-saw, hits his head with rolling pins, kicks him in the butt with boots, punches his face with boxing gloves, and finally tars and feathers him before firing him out of a cannon, all accomplished automatically and in time to a version of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?". In The Practical Pig, the Wolf falls into Practical Pig's trap and is subjected to the Lie Detector, which washes his mouth out with soap, whacks his hands with rulers, or pulls down his pants and spanks him when he tells a lie. The machine's punishment grows harsher and harsher the more he lies, until it is finally spinning him around, smacking his head and scrubbing his bottom. When he finally tells the truth, the Wolf is ejected out of the house with a rocket.

The Wolf also appeared in Mickey's Polo Team, directed by David Hand and first released on January 4, 1936. The short featured a game of Polo between four of Disney's animated characters (one of whom was the Wolf) and four animated caricatures of noted film actors.

In 1936 Disney's Wolf came to Sunday newspaper comics, which were reformatted and reprinted in the monthly Walt Disney's Comics and Stories in 1941. They were popular enough there that a demand for new Wolf comics arose. From 1945, the original WDC&S series Li'l Bad Wolf nominally starred Big Bad's good little cub, but "Pop" repeatedly stole the spotlight. Carl Buettner, Gil Turner and Jack Bradbury were among the noted creators to work on the series in its early years, with Buettner giving Big Bad his proper name of Zeke (1946) and Turner supplying his middle name of Midas (1949).

In the comics, Big Bad generally wants his son to become a bad guy like himself; but, unlike the three little wolves who appeared in the shorts, the gentle Li'l Bad Wolf does not live up to his father's expectations. Indeed, Li'l Bad is friends with the Pigs, Thumper, and other forest characters whom the comics portray as Zeke's intended prey. Today, new Disney wolf comics continue to be created around the world. A running gag in the comics typically comes when in trying to catch the Pigs, Zeke runs afoul of Br'er Bear, who ends up pounding "Br'er Wolf" for one offense or another.

The Wolf made a couple of brief cameo appearances in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (in one instance, he was wearing a sheep costume and mask which he instantly stripped off to reveal his true wolfish features). He was voiced by Tony Pope in this one (who was perhaps well-known for providing the voice of the original Furby).

In Magical Tetris Challenge, Zeke is one of Pete's henchmen, along with Weasel and is the boss you fight before Pete, the final boss. His levels theme seems to be a disco remix, with him wearing a purple top hat with a matching tailcoat, white dress shirt, red bow tie, purple trousers and brown Oxfords.

In recent years the Big Bad Wolf has been a recurring character in Disney's House of Mouse, where he is voiced by Jim Cummings. His first appearance on this show featured him as a jazz artist called "Big Bad Wolf Daddy" (a parody of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy), performing a swing version of his song with the Pigs as his backup band (they are under a contract that states he will eat them if they do not play for him). In this episode, his tendency to destroy houses by exhaling is shown to be an allergy-like reaction to the sight of a door. Later appearances on House of Mouse, however, returned the Wolf to his more traditional role; one episode even featured a newly-made short starring the character, based on the aforementioned Li'l Bad Wolf comic stories.

Apart from TV appearances, Zeke Wolf was one of the villains in the direct-to-video Mickey's House of Villains; he also appeared in Mickey's Christmas Carol, dressed as a streetcorner Santa Claus, and in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As a walkaround costumed character, Zeke also appears at the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts for meet-and-greets, parades and shows.

Li'l Bad Wolf (or just Li'l Wolf as referred to by his friends) is Zeke 'Big Bad' Wolf's son. In spite of his name, Li'l Bad Wolf wants to be a good little wolf; badness is really the domain of his father. Zeke wants his son to be just as bad as he is, but the kindhearted (or, at worst, naive) Li'l Wolf, despite wanting to please his father, cannot bring himself to do others harm. Even worse for Zeke, Li'l Wolf's best friends are the Three Little Pigs themselves, and he constantly saves them from his father's appetite. Despite disappointing his father, Zeke Wolf was shown to be very fond of his son, and Li'l Wolf of his father.

Li'l Wolf debuted in his own self-titled series, beginning in the comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #52 (1945). The feature ran regularly through 1957, when it temporarily moved to the back pages of Mickey Mouse. Li'l Wolf returned to Comics and Stories in 1961, after which he continued to appear there frequently through 2008. Li'l Wolf has in fact starred in more issues of Comics and Stories than any other character except for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

Apart from Comics and Stories and Mickey Mouse, Li'l Wolf has also appeared in many different Disney anthology comic books, including a number of giant-size specials and a series of one-page text stories in Donald Duck.

From 2003-2008, reflecting a trend initiated in European Disney comics, Zeke Wolf increasingly often featured as the title character in new stories himself, although Li'l Wolf continued to play a major role.

Li'l Wolf's first animated appearance was in the Raw Toonage short "The Porker's Court". However, he later appeared, in a more traditional role, in a self-titled short on Disney's House of Mouse. The voice for the animated Li'l Wolf in House of Mouse was provided by Andrew Lawrence. Li'l Wolf is not to be confused with the Three Little Wolves, Big Bad Wolf's three mischievous sons who appeared in the cartoon shorts The Three Little Wolves and The Practical Pig, although he closely resembles them.

Created by animation director Tex Avery, this variation of the Big Bad Wolf's cartoons included many sexual overtones, violence, and very rapid gags, and never became as popular as the Disney incarnation, but was more popular with an older crowd (especially soldiers in World War II).

After debuting in Blitz Wolf (1942)—as Adolf Wolf, the Three Pigs' Hitler-like foe—the Avery Wolf returned as a Hollywood swinger in Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), memorably aroused by Red's song and dance performance. Further girl-chasing roles came to the Wolf in Wild and Wolfy, Swing Shift Cinderella and Little Rural Riding Hood; simultaneously, the Wolf was used as foe against Avery's Droopy Dog, a role he would keep into the 1950s. Later, he would reprise the role in the "Droopy and Dripple" segments of Hanna-Barbera's Tom & Jerry Kids (1990).

The Avery Wolf was voiced by Frank Graham in Red Hot Riding Hood and throughout most of the 1940s, with famed voice actor Daws Butler providing the howling. Throughout most of the 1950s, Butler and Paul Frees switched off at providing the Wolf's voice. In modern-day appearances, the Wolf was voiced by Frank Welker.

The Avery Wolf's actual name has varied over time. In the 1940s it was seldom given, but a 1945 studio announcement called him Wally Wolf.^[5] In modern-day appearances, the Wolf's name is often given as Slick Wolf or Slick McWolf.

The Avery Wolf was referenced in the movie The Mask (1994), when Stanley/The Mask (performed by Jim Carrey) briefly transforms into him while watching Tina Carlyle perform in a Red Hot Riding Hood-like performance, howling and whistling at her and then banging his head with a mallet. The Mask also changes into his wolf-like form on occasion in the spin-off animated series of the same name, particularly in the animated crossover featuring Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

In the Soviet animated series Nu Pogodi, the wolf, commonly translated into English as Volk (Russian: Волк), is portrayed as a hooligan who eagerly turns to vandalism, abuses minors, breaks laws and is a heavy smoker. His adventures revolve around constant failures to capture a Hare. On the other hand, many of Wolf's attempts to catch Hare are often characterized by uncanny abilities on his part (including figure skating, ballet and waltzing) which demonstrate his more refined side. Wolf can also play the guitar very well and ride the powerful rocker motorbike, making his character more sophisticated than a normal hooligan.

In the first episode, while climbing a high building to catch Hare, Wolf whistles the popular mountaineer song, "Song of a Friend" (the signature song of Vladimir Vysotsky). In spite of these talents, most of Wolf's schemes eventually fail or turn against him. The character was originally voiced by Anatoli Papanov.

Several versions of the Big Bad Wolf have appeared in Warner Bros. Animation's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, particularly those of director Isadore "Friz" Freleng. The first one is Little Red Riding Rabbit. In two Bugs Bunny cartoons directed by Robert McKimson (the second of which, False Hare (released in 1964), was the last cartoon of American Animation's Golden Age to feature Bugs Bunny), the Big Bad Wolf had a cheerful nephew.

Gmork in the film The NeverEnding Story is a werewolf and the servant of the power behind the Nothing.

Big Bad Wolf is also the name for an Arrow Dynamics suspended swinging coaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. It was one of the first successful suspended roller coasters from Arrow Dynamics, and features a signature drop towards the Rhine River.

Kiefer Sutherland played a (human) character representing the Big Bad Wolf in the 1996 movie Freeway.

The band Cartoons released an album in 2001 called Toontastic!, in which there is a song titled "Little Red Ridinghood". The Big Bad Wolf is the song's narrator, and he is telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood in the first person form.

The 2005 series of Doctor Who on the BBC contains many references to "Bad Wolf", and this is carried through in the websites the BBC has set up to accompany the series. The various references in the television series have been listed at the BBC's Bad Wolf website (along with many inaccurate references to folklore and mythology; some are blatantly intentional, such as a "French folk song" that's a French translation of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf", albeit one with an Easter Egg hidden inside). The 2008 series also contains references to Bad Wolf in the episode Turn Left where the Doctor associates these references with the end of the universe.

The Big Bad Wolf is a card used by Leonhard Wilson, whose deck is mostly composed of fairy tale monsters, in the second series Yu-Gi-Oh! anime. This card does not appear in the real Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.

The name of one of the bosses in the Karazhan Tower in the World of Warcraft universe is "The Big Bad Wolf". This boss is a werewolf-like being whose special ability is to transform one player into Red Riding Hood on which the wolf will focus his attacks.

In a dark webcomic called "Everafter," the Big Bad Wolf is the name given to a sentient and polymorphous mass of "Grimm" energy that roams the island on which the story's asylum is built—aptly so because of the creature's notable likeness to a gigantic black wolf, which can morph into a whole pack of identical wolves. This being, just like most of the "Everafter" characters, is much darker and seemingly immensely more powerful than his fairytale counterpart. Its appearance is more similar to a demon or ghost than an actual wolf and the mere sight of it can drive a human being insane.

Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods features the Big Bad Wolf as a lustful and well-endowed character whose appetite for Little Red Riding Hood is more sexual than victual.

On KGS a popular Go server there is a 9d player by the name BigbadWolf

Several recent interpretations of the Big Bad Wolf show him as being a character with relatively good intentions, mostly considered "Bad" due to a misunderstanding. Arguably, this practice started with the 1989 children's book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. However, the best well-known "good" adaptations are from films, where it is mostly used for a comedic effect.

The popular computer-animated Shrek film series reversed many conventional roles found in fairy tales, including depicting the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood as a friendly misunderstood crossdresser (apparently still wearing her grandmother's clothes) and on good terms with the three little pigs. This depiction, along with a seemingly transgendered bartender (who the crew deny on the DVD commentary as having any sort of gender confusion) and Pinocchio's expansive nose in Shrek 2, raised the ire of some groups who objected to the film's sexual content, in what is billed as a children's film. However, the wolf is no longer in drag in the video games.

In the fighting game Shrek SuperSlam, released 2005, Big Bad Wolf is a playable character and appears as "Huff n Puff Wolf".

The Weinstein Company's computer-animated 2006 film "Hoodwinked!" which was a spin-off from Little Red Riding Hood, features the wolf from that story, as a misunderstood Fletch-type wolf. He goes undercover with his squirrel companion, Twitchy, and they record stories for the newspaper called The Once Upon a Times. Along with Red, Granny, and the Woodsman, he is a suspect of the recipe-robbing crime, which is wreaking the forests he lives in. He is voiced by Patrick Warburton.

The comic book series Fables by Bill Willingham features a reformed Big Bad Wolf as a major character, commonly referred to as "Bigby". In order to pass for human (the other animal fables want nothing to do with him), he has been infected with lycanthropy, making him, in essence, a werewolf. He acts as sheriff for the Fable community, going by the name of Bigby Wolf. He is often portrayed as a typical film-noir-style trenchcoat-wearing detective. In the context of the series, he earned the name "Big Bad" after his (much larger) siblings sarcastically noted his drive to be ferocious, particularly after his father, the incarnation of the North Wind, left his mother due to being bored with the relationship. Due to his unique parentage, his infamous "huff 'n puff" is a form of wind control that has been shown to be powerful enough to smash trees down, blow out an army of flaming animated puppetmen, and Bigby once conjectured that even a brick house would most likely be blown to bits by it.

In the 2000 eight-hour movie (broadcast as a mini-series) The 10th Kingdom, Scott Cohen plays a character called Wolf, which is based on the Big Bad Wolf and there is some speculation to whether he may even be the Big Bad Wolf's descendant (mainly owed to the fact that most other characters in the mini-series are descendants of many well-known fairy tale characters). Wolf recognizes he has a sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder towards eating lamb meat, rabbit meat, or little-girl meat, which he tries to overcome when he falls in love with Virginia, the main character. (Note that her married name would be Virginia Wolf.)

The Big Bad Wolf has become a regularly recurring puppet character on Sesame Street, appearing usually in purple fur (although he originally had blue shaggy fur, as he was a variant of Herry Monster). He is generally puppeteered by Jerry Nelson (particularly the blue version) and occasionally by Kevin Clash and Marty Robinson.

In the animated series Drak Pack, Howler, the werewolf, has super-breath powers, apparently derived from the Big Bad Wolf's "huffing and puffing" to blow the pigs' houses down.

In the Swedish cartoon and television short films, Bamse, The Wolf is, as his name suggests, a black wolf who had a thing for pulling pranks on the protagonist as well as his friends (he even won a diploma as "the master of evilness"). He eventually turned out to be a nice guy at heart and was only "evil" because of a problematic life where the only way for him to gain recognition from others was to do bad things.

In the Netherlandic series 'De Fabeltjeskrant', was the role as the Big Bad Wolf portrayed by the short tempered Bor de Wolf. He was, however, very bad at being bad since he wasn't really bad, as explained by the owl, Jacob: The other animals were afraid of Bor because he always got so mad, that's why he was always left out, and that's why Bor got so mad. After being well met by the host at Martha Hamster's birthday party, he got remarkably nicer, but had still some problems with his short temper.

An uncomfortable deconstruction of the "big bad wolf" archetype occurs in Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. In this novel, a rogue fairy godmother, intent on making stories come true, has magically molded a little girl's life to follow the plot of Red Riding Hood. As part of the tableau, a wolf is reconditioned to act as humans perceive it, its mind clouded with human motivations to murder and destroy. Upon being found by the novel's heroines, a trio of good witches, the wolf begs for release from its madness, whereupon it is mercifully killed.

Another interesting interpretation of the Wolf can be found in The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley. In the books, the Wolf is the alter-ego of Mr. Canis, an elderly caretaker for the two heroes and their grandmother. Canis fights with the monster for control over his body and as the series progresses the war is a losing one. Mr. Canis continues to become more wolf-like and in the most recent books is on the verge of losing his identity entirely to the savage beast.

The Big Good Wolf from Timothy Groen's cult short animated film series (16mm, very rare) The Little Pigs and the Big Good Wolf is another example. In this ironic retelling and its sequels, a philanthropist wolf donates money to the town of the pigs in order to develop a central housing authority and safety standards. It is eventually revealed that the big good wolf is actually the brother of the Big Bad Wolf, and is only exacting revenge against his brother for an unsettled debt. The safety standards he develops and implements end up turning the town into a locked-up pigfarm for his own exclusive use, but he has in the meantime developed friendships with the pigs and ultimately becomes their sworn friend and protector.

The Big Brain Wolf from the eponymous game is actually a vegetarian, asthmatic genie-in-training.

In the Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup, a sequence involves Harpo Marx activating a music box that plays "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", which he accompanies on the harp.

In the Frank Capra movie, It Happened One Night, Clark Gable sings the song to Claudette Colbert.

A James Patterson novel in the Alex Cross series is named "The Big Bad Wolf", though it only minimally references the Disney character.

Edward Albee's Tony award winning play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is an obvious play on words of the song title. It was turned into a film, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, with Taylor winning an Academy Award for her performance as Martha.

In the M. Night Shyamalan movie Lady in the Water a girl sings "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?"

The 1966 hit song "Lil' Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs takes the wolf's point of view.

In 1996 the German band Die Toten Hosen released an album called Opium Fürs Volk that included a song named "Böser Wolf". It was translated in English and added the album Crash Landing (1999) under the name "Big Bad Wolf". The song relates the story of a young girl that is abused but does not say a thing because "the big bad wolf whispered in her ear that no-one else must know what happens here".

• 
  Illustration by L. Leslie Brooke, from The Golden Goose Book, Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd. 1905
• 
  Illustration for Charles Perrault's Petit Chaperon Rouge from Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé: Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye(1697). Gustave Doré's illustrations appear in an 1867 edition entitled Les Contes de Perrault. Second of three engravings
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  19th Century French painting
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  "The better to see you with": woodcut by Walter Crane

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