Sympathy for the De Vil far about Cruella de Vil—that once upon a time, she was an innocent, wide-eyed blonde completely at the mercy of her wicked, ultra-controlling mother—just seemed a little, well, familiar. Give or take a flapper dress and a pair of Dalmatians, her past looked remarkably like Regina's and Ursula's, for that matter. (Once does love its daddy/mommy issue stories, doesn't it?) Which meant that one of two things was happening: Either the show was really repeating itself almost to the letter, or things were about to take a right turn into Crazy Town (Not that one). Thankfully for everything, Once went
Cruella de Vil demon). In the French translation of the Disney's animated movie, she is referred as "Cruella D'Enfer" (Literally, Cruella of Hell or from Hell). In Dutch, the name remains "De Vil", while by coincidence the Dutch verb for skinning is "Villen" and "Vil" is the conjugation of this verb for the first person singular. In Portuguese, Cruella is known as "Cruela Cruel", which straightforwardly stems from "cruel". The name "de Vil" is also a literary allusion to Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897). In the novel, the realty firm Mitchell, Sons & Candy write a letter, dated 1 October, to Lord Godalming, informing