Since 1991, there has been a pretty common, shared idea of what Belle and the Beast look like.
But the stars of our ~tale as old as time~ didn't always look like this. Let's take a look at some of the ways in which they were depicted throughout history...
1.Here they are in the 19th century as a warthog-looking beast and a classy lady with lavender hair and a fancy hat:
2.Here, from the same illustrator, is a different fancy lady and another (better dressed) warthog who is about to pleasantly say, "Well, it is what it is..."
3.Here's straight-from-a-music-festival Belle offering tea to a pretty run-of-the-mill bear:
4.Here we see a ginger Belle and a bear that looks pretty darn adorable:
5.Here's a thoroughly unimpressed Belle sharing a platter of oranges with what happens if a beaver bangs a walrus:
6.Moving on! In 1908, Le Theatre gave us this fabulous feathered Belle and the skunk-lion-man who kept her prisoner:
7.In this 1921 illustration, the beast is a lion who doesn't understand why his hostage won't cut him a freaking break:
8.This 1940s beast looks like the University of Arkansas mascot decided to go to the Renaissance fair and perform stand-up comedy:
9.This beast, from the 1946 film La Belle et la Bête, has the exasperated look of a man who just wishes his wife would stop saying she's fine and tell him what's wrong...
10.Let's take another look at that beast...
11.This 1975 beast is wearing tights, flats, a hot lil' mini, and a drugstore Halloween mask. Belle, meanwhile, appears to have come straight from the set of the Little House on the Prairie TV series.
12.And, finally, here's a TV show version of Beauty and the Beast that starred an '80s high school mean girl Belle who has fallen for her captor, a woman who has had way too much plastic surgery:
