Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride Has A Heartbreaking Real-Life Inspiration

The Corpse Bride original story is inspired by an Ashkenazi ghost story with tragic connections to real-world events. The Tim Burton 2005 dark fantasy film is based on a story of a living person accidentally marrying the specter of a murdered bride-to-be. However, Corpse Bride’s bittersweet narrative added significant expansion to its plot and changes to its setting and characters. Both Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and the Jewish folklore that inspired it, unfortunately, have origins in turn-of-the-century Russian pogroms in which weddings ended in tragedy.