Magic Mirror

Once Upon a Time
From the Once Upon a Time Wiki. Before he became the Magic Mirror, he was the Genie, a powerful magical being who was imprisoned within the confines of a magic lamp; granting wishes to all who happened to come across it in their travels. One day, while taking a stroll through his kingdom, King Leopold came across said lamp by the side of a river. After curiously rubbing the lamp, the Genie appears to the king, granting him three wishes; with the warning that once a wish is fulfilled it cannot be undone. After realizing that King Leopold desires no wishes because he has everything he wants and seeks only the happiness of those in his kingdom, the two sit by the river's edge and the Genie tells the king of his sorrowful life, and how he has never found happiness while granting wishes for others over the years. When asked by Leopold what the Genie would wish for, he tells the king how he would wish for nothing more than to be free. Wanting to make the genie truly happy, King Leopold uses his first wish to release the Genie from his chains, giving his second wish to let the Genie have his third wish. The genie is both surprised and worried, as over the years he has watched a thousand and one wishes be made only to have them all turn out bad in the end, which is why he vows never to make his final wish. Seeing the Genie as a wise confidant, Leopold invites him back to his palace where he meets the king's daughter Snow White and his second wife Regina, with whom he falls in love at first sight under the queen's apple tree. During a birthday party for the king, the Genie sees Regina alone and unhappy, while the king, his daughter, and their subjects are all enjoying the king's speech about his daughter and how she looks like his first wife, her mother, who was the "fairest of them all". When Regina is alone outside, the Genie follows, giving her a mirror to show her how beautiful she is as he sees her as the fairest in the land. Some time later, the king finds the mirror and discovers written in her diary that she has found another love and asks the Genie to find the person who gave her the mirror. As the Genie stood under Regina's apple tree, the queen's father, Henry, delivers a box asking him to take it to his daughter as he isn't allowed inside the castle. After telling Regina that he has successfully killed the king and that they can now be together, Regina tells him that she never loved him and only used him to kill King Leopold for her. His heart broken, the genie wishes to be with her forever and to look upon her face always. With this wish and much to his dismay, he becomes trapped as the Magic Mirror, now, ironically, able to look upon Regina forever. After his imprisonment in mirrors, Regina uses him for spying on her enemies. In Storybrooke, he is Sidney Glass. He is first seen gathering information on the newcomer Emma Swan under the mayor Regina Mills' orders. However, he is unable to get anything from her. Regina threatens him, and he leaves. Sidney then publishes many articles about Emma's messy past, trying to make the townspeople begin to hate her. However, this tactic is unsuccessful. Some articles on Emma's past include how Henry Mills was born, and that she was drunk when she hit the Storybrooke landmark by the side of the road. After Sheriff Graham's death, Regina appoints Sidney as the new sheriff. However, Emma challenges this. He makes a speech at the debate that occurs prior to the election, something that was clearly created by Regina. However, due to Emma revealing that the fire at the mayor's office was Mr. Gold's doing, he lost. This caused Regina to fire him from The Daily Mirror. Many days after the election, Regina has an argument with Emma. After the mayor leaves, Sidney slides into the opposite end of the booth Emma was at and tells her that he can help her expose Regina for who she really is. However, when they try to expose her at the town meeting, the "house" that Regina was building was actually a modern playground for the children of Storybrooke. Ashamed and embarrassed, Sidney retreats to Granny's Diner in order to have a drink. Emma joins him there, and the two pledge to become allies.

Voice
In order to produce the Slave in the Magic Mirror's 'wierd voice', actor Moroni Olsen spoke his lines with his head in a frame covered with old drumheads.

Animation
Animator Wolfgang Reitherman found the task of animating the Magic Mirror difficult, particularly as the animator favoured animating characters such as Goofy, who expresses himself by moving his entire body; the face in the mirror does not move about and has no pupils, so Reitherman was only able to animate its eye and mouth shapes to accompany the dialogue. In order to make the face completely symmetrical, for each extreme pose Reitherman drew one half of the face, folded the animation paper in half, and traced the other half. This, symmetry, to an extent, was lost in the final film, as special effects, including smoke, fire and ripples, distort the features. Reitherman animated the Mirror nine times before he and Walt Disney were satisfied.