Big Bad Wolf in the context of "Tex Avery"

A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, household tale, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. Prevalent elements include dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, merfolk, monsters, monarchy, pixies, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches, wizards, woodwoses, magic, and enchantments.

In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy-tale ending" (a happy ending) or "fairy-tale romance". Colloquially, the term "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story or tall tale; it is used especially to describe any story that not only is not true, but also could not possibly be true. Legends are perceived as real within their culture; fairy tales may merge into legends, where the narrative is perceived both by teller and hearers as being grounded in historical truth. However, unlike legends and epics, fairy tales usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and to actual places, people, and events; they take place "once upon a time" rather than in actual times.

"Little Red Riding Hood" (French: Le Petit Chaperon rouge) is a French fairy tale by Charles Perrault about a young girl and a Big Bad Wolf. Some later versions include a woodsman. Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th-century European folk tales. It was later retold in the 19th-century by the Brothers Grimm.

The story has varied considerably in different versions over the centuries, translations, and as the subject of numerous modern adaptations. Other names for the story are "Little Red Cap" or simply "Red Riding Hood". It is number 333 in the Aarne–Thompson classification system for folktales.

"The Three Little Pigs" is a fable about three pigs who build their houses of different materials. A Big Bad Wolf blows down the first two pigs' houses which are made of straw and sticks respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house that is made of bricks. The printed versions of this fable date back to the 1840s, but the story is thought to be much older. The earliest version takes place in Dartmoor with three pixies and a fox before its best known version appears in English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs in 1890, with Jacobs crediting James Halliwell-Phillipps as the source. In 1886, Halliwell-Phillipps had published his version of the story, in the fifth edition of his Nursery Rhymes of England, and it included, for the first time in print, the now-standard phrases "not by the hair of my chiny chin chin" and "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in".

The phrases used in the story, and the various morals drawn from it, have become embedded in Western culture. Many versions of The Three Little Pigs have been recreated and modified over the years, sometimes making the wolf a kind character. It is a type B124 folktale in the Thompson Motif Index.

William Norman Ferguson (September 2, 1902 – November 4, 1957) was an American animator for Walt Disney Studios and a central contributor to the studio's stylistic development in the 1930s. He is most frequently noted for his contribution to the creation of Pluto, one of the studio's best-known and most enduring characters, and is the artist most closely associated with that character. He is also credited for developing Peg-Leg Pete and the Big Bad Wolf. Ferguson, known at the studio as "Norm" or "Fergy", was the primary animator of the witch from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first in a long line of great Disney feature villains. He was also a sequence director on the film.