theme music plays Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory. The show where I go to Hades and back to unearth the hidden truth behind movies made for children. Speaking of Hades, today we turn to an often overlooked but in my opinion tragically under appreciated Disney classic: Now granted, when it first came out in the late 90s, I didn't go to see it because I was at an age where I was like, "Psh I'm too old for Disney movies. All the cool kids are into Digimon!" Actually that's a complete lie... I never thought I was cool... *sad piano music* Anyway! Finally getting around to watching this for the first time, I was really excited about the cool powers and the Titans and Meg's killer "princess song". I gotta admit though, I was a bit disappointed not to see Sora and Sephiroth running around. Anyway, something in the back of my head kept niggling away "Niggle, Niggle" it went. Something just felt off... "Niggle, Niggle" it continued, but then it hit me: the moment I saw that fun and oh so obvious Scar Easter egg: Hercules' is dad is Zeus, right? Zeus! Gad! Zeus! And that one single and obvious fact has HUGE ramifications for literally every Disney movie you know and love. Because if you thought Pixar had a connected universe? Well then get ready because Disney has been doing it for decades. And it all starts with good ol' Herc. Because the man who put the 'glad' in 'gladiator', is a literal blood relative to perhaps the most popular Disney princess of all time... I'm talking 'Fish Girl', Ariel. They are cousins. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, my dear theorists. Tighten up those togas because you will never look at the wonderful world of Disney the same way again. First: to show you how some of Hercules' is immortal blood is also running through Ariel's gills, we have to go a few branches up his family tree. According to the movie, Hercules is the son of Zeus and Hera, and if we're going by classical mythology standards that's only partly right. First off, Hercules is his Roman name. If we're going off of Greek mythology, Like literally everyone else in the movie, his name technically should be Heracles. But that name just doesn't roll off the tongue quite as nicely. So for simplicity's sake I'm just gonna call our hero by his Roman name Hercules, and the rest of the Gods by their Greek names like they do in the movie. and the rest of the Gods by their Greek names like they do in the movie. (My apologies to any classics majors with sensitive ears) (Just trying to spread the good word.) The other problem is that Hera is definitely not Hercules' loving mother as shown in the movie. You see, Zeus was up on Olympus when he saw and fell in love with a mortal woman named Alcmene. So, he did what any rational person would do in such a situation... and disguised himself as Alcmene's husband who was away at war, went to Alcmene's house shouting "Honey! I'm home!" and quickly made himself a little demigod... This got a bit awkward when the real husband came home *literally* the next night, and his wife was like: "Whaaat? You weren't... here last night?" So... yeah. Hera wasn't a big fan of the half son whose existence was a constant reminder of her husband's infidelity. You know those two snakes we see baby Hercules strangle in the movie, and it's all totally cute? Well, according to legend, those weren't minions of Hades, they were sent by Hera herself to murder baby Hercules in his crib. (Awkward...) I get that Disney doesn't want to tell you that story... for several reasons. But is it really better for Zeus to father Hercules with Hera? Who, according to mythology, is technically his sister... *puking noise* You'd think I'd seen enough Game of Thrones at this point not to throw up in my mouth a little when I think about that, but NOPE. Hercules in the movie is on par with 'Prince Prick' himself. At any rate, the important bit here is Hercules' father. Which is Zeus both in the movie and in the myths. Zeus is the son of the Titans Cronos and Rhea the same Titans which the muses tell us that he overthrew at the beginning of the movie. Cronos and Rhea had three sons, who ended up ruling the three major realms of the world: Zeus, who ruled over the heavens, Hades, ruler of the Underworld, and Poseidon, ruler of the sea. In Hercules, we get a lot of the first two, but not so much about Poseidon. But rest assured, he's definitely there if you look closely. According to myth, Poseidon isn't quite as active on tinder as his brother Zeus. But he has a number of notable children himself. Like Theseus, the hero who kills the Minotaur, and Triton, the Merman who serves as Trumpeter of The Sea. And some of you may be ahead of me at this point, But if you haven't seen The Little Mermaid in a few years, let me connect the dots for ya: Ariel's father, the guy who looks like mermaid Santa Claus, is named King Triton. Therefore, Ariel's grandfather is Poseidon, and her great grandfather is Cronus - the Titan who is grandfather of Hercules himself. Put it all together, map out that family tree, and we have Hercules and Ariel as cousins. Now prepare yourselves for the twist. The twist is that there is no twist The twist is: that there IS NO TWIST. *dramatic drums* It's cut dry. This isn't a film theory, this is a film FACT. A mythological fact. Some might argue that we have no idea that this Triton is the same Triton who is nephew of Zeus, but his depiction in Little Mermaid matches pretty well the image we get of him in classical mythology: A bearded half-man half-fish who lives in a golden palace under the sea. No word on whether that golden palace has the same... Um... *clears throat* tower as we got on the original VHS cover of The Little Mermaid, but having seen my fair share of Greek arts I wouldn't put it past them... Now this is the point in the episode where you're probably tempted to subscribe. So you should totally do that. STAB that subscribe button down below with your giant POSEIDON FORK, and leave a comment letting me know what your favorite Disney movie is in the next five seconds. I'm not gonna do the five-four-three-two-one thing, but you know, time it out yourself. We'll go on the honor system here. This is also the point in the episode where a lot of you are probably like: "Yeah you stupid dinglehopper who cares? It's not like this random little Easter Egg means anything for Disney as a whole." and you know what for as much as it hurts me to be called a fork, I respect your desire for the deeper meaning of things. And in this case, the deeper meaning is that once you start connecting Hercules and Little Mermaid, lots of other dominoes start to fall. We've already covered some surprising Disney connections before, like how Elsa from Frozen and Rapunzel from Tangled would technically genetically be twin sisters (click right over here if you missed out on that one) But even if you don't believe that theory, at the very least, we see Rapunzel in the final scenes of Frozen meaning that those two worlds are connected both in time and place. And what we've covered in today's episode means that we can now link those two to Hercules as well. In that past episode we mapped out how the king and queen from Frozen, Agnarr and Iduna, were killed when their ship capsized on their trip from western Norway to Germany. We don't get the clearest look at the ship that's carrying Agnarr and Iduna, but from the shape alone, it looks like it could be the same sunken ship Ariel is looting at the beginning of Little Mermaid. And geographically it makes a lot of sense. Assuming Agnarr and Iduna were taking a direct route from Arendelle in western Norway to the northern coast of Germany, their ship likely sank somewhere off the west coast of Denmark. Can you name where the fairy tale The Little Mermaid is based on comes from? Survey says... *ding ding* Denmark! Number one answer! and literally the only answer because it's a just a fact It's just a... one answer fact. The Little Mermaid is originally from the works of Hans Christian Andersen, a 19th century Danish author of children's books and fairy tales. Now, that doesn't outright prove that Disney's Little Mermaid is set in Denmark, but we do have other clues... remember Prince Eric's crusty caretaker Grimsby? Well, Grimsby is a Danish name coming from the name that the Nordic god Odin would take when he disguised himself as a human to hit on women. Side note! What is with the gods dressing up his people to mack on human beings? You know what the best pick-up line in the world is? "I'm a god. I literally control some giant element of nature." You know what if she's not impressed with that, Hey, she wasn't worth your time buddy. You were too good for her to begin with. Now astute bridge viewers might argue that Grimsby is also the name of a town in northeastern England, which is definitely true, but it's also true that this town was established in the 9th century A.D. by... Danish. Vikings. So with all these clues in place, we could be like 99% confident that Hercules connects with Little Mermaid, Tangled, and Frozen. And if you think this is as far as the connections go, You ain't seen nothing yet. The Little Mermaid also features a couple of important characters we've seen in one of Disney's all time classics. Late in the movie, Prince Eric is about to marry Ursula in her human disguise, when Scuttle and the other sea creatures crash the wedding. In the chaos that ensues, we see Eric's dog, Max, run across the screen. And for a split second behind him, we can catch a glimpse of two wedding guests who should look pretty familiar: The King and the Grand Duke from Cinderella. But now we're just connecting these movies in one long chain by saying that Hercules is related to The Little Mermaid and that The Little Mermaid is related to the rest. Surely there's nothing to suggest that a movie like Cinderella can be connected back to Hercules, a movie about Ancient Greece that was released almost 50 years later, right? We-e-e-elll, Check this out: In an early scene of Cinderella, The King is complaining to the Grand Duke about how his son won't settle down and give him grandchildren. For a brief moment, we see that the king has three books on his desk: One by the French Renaissance author, Francois Rabelais, which makes sense given that the original version of Cinderella was by a French author, another by the Greek philosopher, Plato, And the last by the Greek poet, Homer. In the modern world, only two epic poems are attributed to Homer: The Iliad, about the Trojan War, and the Odyssey, about Odysseus' journey home from the Trojan War. And guess who shows up in both of those poems And guess who shows up in both of those poems: Hercules. Well, actually it's Heracles because Homer was Greek, but we've been over that already. Hercules' ghost meets Odysseus when the latter travels to the Underworld in Book Eleven of the Odyssey, and although Hercules doesn't actively do anything in the Iliad he's mentioned by name several times regardless of which book in particular this is, the connections we talked about today prove that Cinderella is set in a world in which the stories of Greek mythology actually exist. And based on the connections we talked about today, we know that those stories aren't just stories... They're not just myths! They really happened in the past, and if we can connect stories seemingly as unrelated as Hercules and Cinderella, I'd say it's likely that we're just scratching the surface here. Could Elsa's ice powers have come from an Ancient Greek ancestor? Could Rapunzel's healing hair have any relation to Hercules? Is the existence of magic in the wonderful world of Disney somehow tied to all of these mythological allusions? Everyone has known for a long time the careful attention to detail Disney puts into its animations. But if we can put Hercules, The Little Mermaid, Tangled, Frozen, AND Cinderella all into the same universe, can we really say that any other Disney movies are outliers? There is no telling how deep this rabbit hole goes. And you can bet that this is a topic we're gonna continue to explore in upcoming episodes. So again, if you enjoyed this episode make sure you spear that subscribe button. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few more questions to get answered. Like if Triton is Ariel's father... What happened to her mother? I think I may have spotted her in Never Neverland. But hey, that's just a theory, a film theory! Aaaaaaand cut! Hey if you enjoyed this theory amidst the Tangled-Frozen episode I mentioned earlier, make sure you click on that one. Find out how Anna and Elsa aren't technically sisters. Or if you're looking for some more classic Disney action, click the box to the right which will tell you the truth behind Snow White's sleeping death. It will literally blow your mind. Now if you'll excuse me, it's really hot in my recording closet because it is just sweltering in California. So I need a drink of water before I pass out.
So the Disney Connected Universe is actually a theory that's been floating around for a little while and in fact I've been working on fleshing it out myself. Mat, if you're reading this here's some freebies and a jumping off point for some more connections:
Hercules and Lion King
As mentioned in the video, there's an Easter Egg of Scar from the Lion King in Hercules, and while many people would just write that off as an easter egg, there is actually an explanation of how that could actually be Scar's pelt. At first it doesn't seem possible as Scar dies in Africa in The Lion King and it's implied that Hercules killed this lion in Greece, but it is possible they are one in the same. See, the pelt that Hercules is wearing is supposed to belong to the Nemean Lion, a giant lion he fought as part of the 12 trials and seen briefly in the montage during "Zero to Hero". In the Disney version of events the lion is sent after Hercules by Hades in an attempt to defeat him. This is where Scar comes in. It's very possible that Hades used his abilities to bring Scar back to life as the Nemean Lion. Why do we know he could do this? Because Hades has already brought back another famous Disney villain before to try to beat Hercules!(more on that in a sec) It makes sense that Hades would bring back one of the evilest and smartest lions to ever exist in order to take down Hercules. Eventually Hercules beats him and that explains how Scar could have been killed twice and how his pelt could end up around our Grecian Hero.
Hercules and Aladdin
This one is just a gimme. Hercules and Aladdin are not only connected, they had a full blown crossover. In an episode of Hercules: The Animated Series, named Hercules and the Arabian Night, Hades meets the ghost of Jafar after he was killed in "Return of Jafar". Hades agrees to bring back Jafar AND defeat Aladdin if Jafar takes care of Hercules. Eventually this causes Hercules and Aladdin (post King of Thieves) to meet and team up to beat Hades and Jafar. You can find the whole episode online.
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Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast*
Speaking of Aladdin, a case can be made that it takes place in the same universe as Beauty and The Beast. In Aladdin there is a scene of the Sultan making a little tower out of toy animals. However, amongst all the other animals one figure looks very familiar. A clear figurine of The (or A) Beast appears in the middle of the stack. While not necessarily the same Beast (Adam) we know from Beauty and the Beast, it at least confirms that that same kind of beast has appeared in the world of Aladdin. It's entirely possible that Prince Adam was not the first person cursed into a Beast, just one of many. Maybe the curse also explains the origin of the sentient flying magic carpet seen in Aladdin. Maybe the carpet used to be a normal person like Lumiere and Cogsworth that became permanently stuck as an object.
Princess and the Frog and Aladdin
There are actually two Easter Eggs in Princess and the Frog that confirm it's tied to Aladdin. The first is in an establishing shot of New Orleans that shows the same kind of carpet as the magic carpet from Aladdin and later in the film during the song "Dig a Little Deeper" Mama Odie discards of a now empty Geanie lamp.
Princess and the Frog and The Little Mermaid
Just in case you weren't convinced yet or you wanted to tie it back around, King Triton appears on a float during the parade near the end of Princess and the Frog.
Beauty and the Beast and Tarzan
This one is pretty obvious, but I thought I'd include it because there's a little bit more to add. One of the items that Jane porter and her father bring to Africa in Tarzan is a tea set that includes the iconic kettle and teacup forms of Mrs. Potts and Chip. Now while this is all fine on it's own this has started a new theory among fans that perhaps The Porters (Jane and the Professor) are the descendants of Belle and Adam. Jane and Belle do share many similarities. Both highly value books, reading, and knowledge, both show a fondness for yellow dresses, both have eccentric scientifically minded fathers, and both have a taste in "wild-er" men. This also could explain how the Porters have so much money, they descend from French royalty, and how they came into possession of the former forms of Mrs. Potts and Chip, they were family heirlooms.
Lilo and Stitch is NOT connected to any of the other main Disney films
I want to take a second and point out some connections that at first glance seems like an easy tie in, but upon further examination don't pan out. In Lilo and Stitch, Nani has a movie poster in her room for the movie Mulan. In addition Lilo has a plush toy of Dumbo. Now, you may try to say that the movie poster in Nani's room is for a movie based on the actual historical events of Mulan and that Lilo has a plush of a famous circus elephant, but the main reason Lilo and Stitch can not exist in a Disney Cinematic Universe is because it's already part of another shared Disney Universe, the Toon Disney Shared Universe, along with Kim Possible, Recess, Proud Family, and American Dragon Jake Long. Adding in the complex continuity established by these 4 additional properties would conflict too much with the already complex continuity needed for the Disney Cinematic Shared Universe. Thus, the most likely solution to the Mulan post and Dumbo plush in Lilo in Stitch is that Disney also exists in that universe and the merchandise is for the same movies we received in the real world. Now that that tangent is over, back to the movies that DO connect.
Aladdin and Little Mermaid
While not as strong of a connection as some of the previous ones, I thought I'd touch on it. In Aladdin, when Genie is going through his book of spells, he makes a joke about the Little Mermaid and flicks Sebastian off his finger. Later, in Return of Jafar, Genie disguises himself as a mermaid on the front of a ship that is a clear nod to Ariel. In an episode of Aladdin the animated series Genie makes himself look like King Triton and Iago look like Ariel. Now Genie based connections are harder to use because the argument could be made that he has the ability to break the 4th wall, however I'd argue he's just using his vast knowledge of events from all over the past, present and future to make these references.
Aladdin and Pinocchio
Like above, because Genie is the one making the connection it's harder to argue this one, but I thought I'd include it nonetheless. Right before Genie turns Aladdin into Prince Ali he briefly turns his head into Pinochio's.
Moana and Aladdin
When Maui grabs his hook from Tamatoa's back, you can see the empty Genie lamp as part of Tamatoa's collection.
Moana and Frozen
A picture of the giant snow monster from Frozen, Marshmallow, appears on a tapestry in the opening of Moana. In addition, when Maui regains his hook and starts transforming into the wrong creature for a brief moment he turns into a reindeer that looks identical to Sven from Frozen.
I could go on but in addition to the fact that I have other stuff I need to go do, I'm running close to the character limit for a comment. There's a lot more connections out there and I might post more later, but I hope you found these helpful or at least interesting.
Tbqh i found it a bit weird that his Connection between Frozen-Tangled to Hercules-Arielle was that the one ship that sunk in one movie kinda a bit looks like the shipwreck in the other movie. (And that it both happens in danish waters) That's a bit flimsy.
Otherwise an okay video. I enjoyed the bit about the Family tree.
We could always talk about Apollo being the God of the Sun and Healing in this family tree. We know a certain princess granted healing powers from a drop of sun. And Rapunzel's iconic sun imagery is not a coincidence. Not to mention, Apollo has a history of putting magic into flowers (see the history of the hyacinth).
Yeah, duh they're related. Hercules is the son of Zeus and Ariel is the daughter of Triton, who is the son of Poseidon, who is the brother of Zeus.
So Hercules is Ariel's great uncle.
Anyone who knows two things about Greek mythology would be able to tell you that.
Don't know if this is as relevant but on ABC There is a show named once upon a time. This show is made by ABC and Disney owns ABC. In the show, we run into all the fairy tale people along with some of Disneys own IPs(aka Frozen's Ana and Elsa) and characters from other stories like the wizard of oz, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyl and Mr Hyde. . But in the show, as you reach season 5, they travel to the underworld and meet the God Hades. Since we know that the fairy tale characters like Cinderella are in the town of storybrooke and that the god Hades travels to storybrooke. We can see that Disney(through ABC) acknowledges the connection of the fairy tales and the Greek/Roman Gods(In their Universe
MatPat...you really need to start structuring your evidence better. It seems like a good chunk of your recent theories have ended with some of the weakest evidence brought up in the entire video. That's not how you're supposed to do things. Save something good for the end. You've heard of the primacy/recency effect, right? You want to throw that circumstantial stuff in the middle, so you can begin and end on a strong note.
The family tree at 5:00 shows that Hercules is the uncle of Ariel not that they're cousins.