Disney has been planting easter eggs into their movies for almost as long as they've
been making them, and fans have always enjoyed attempting to untangle this truly bizarre
connected universe.
Here are a few of the weirdest and most wonderful Disney crossovers.
The Disney Television Animation studios had its heyday back in the mid-to-late '90s after
Duck Tales skyrocketed in popularity, and Aladdin and Hercules were apparently ripe
with enough material to each warrant their own spin-off series.
Eventually, someone at Disney clearly decided the two should meet.
The Greek Hero and Prince Ali team up in the episode "Hercules and the Arabian Night,"
which aired for the first time in February 1999.
In this crossover, the two are tricked into fighting each other by Hades and Jafar as
part of a nefarious plot to take over Olympus.
Obviously, Hercules and Aladdin quickly figure out they've been set up, and turn their attention
to kicking the villains' butts.
All in all, it's a pretty fun episode starring two of the Disney Renaissance's biggest stars
working together to save the day.
Sadly, as Disney's TV animation has moved more towards independent properties, it's
unlikely two Disney icons will team up like this anytime soon.
Big Hero 6 might take place in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo, but there are actually
a fair few references to Frozen's kingdom of Arendelle hidden throughout the movie.
For example, statues of Frozen characters Hans and Olaf can be seen in the movie, with
the former ending up being blasted to bits by Baymax.
"Whoa!"
"Rocketfist!"
You can also see an Arendelle ship docked at the San Fransokyo marina.
And while Disney has actually revealed these easter eggs themselves on the movie's Blu-Ray
extras, there's one left that has yet to be confirmed.
Namely, that fans have speculated that it's possible to spot a wanted poster for Hans
in the background of the police station.
Of course, that wouldn't be too surprising, considering Hans is a dangerous criminal in
Arrendelle's estimations; still, if this easter egg is anything to go off, it looks like the
Prince of the Southern Isles is making quite a name for himself in the dark underbelly
of the Disney universe.
Here's an easy one to miss: did you know Beauty and the Beast's Mrs. Potts and her son Chip
are in Tarzan?
Well, kind of, at least.
In one scene in the movie, Terk and the other gorillas mess around at Jane's camp, and Terk
starts tapping away on a tea set that will look suspiciously familiar to fans of the
1991 animation.
In this appearance, however, Mrs. Potts and Chip don't appear to be sentient.
Interestingly, this is one of the few Disney crossovers that you can actually go out and
experience in the real word.
In 1999, Disneyland re-themed their Swiss Family Treehouse attraction into Tarzan's
Treehouse.
The idea that visitors walked through the treehouse remained the same, but the decorations
were changed to fit the film's story.
And sure enough, if you enter the campground near the end of the attraction, you can clearly
see Mrs. Potts and Chip tucked away on top of some boxes.
True to its name, the trailer for Ralph Breaks the Internet, well, it kinda broke the internet.
More specifically, everybody got talking about the Disney crossover scene in which Vanellope
ends up hanging out with all the other Disney princesses.
Pamela Ribon, who wrote the scene, later told The Washington Post about the process it took
to get it made, and in particular how nervous she had been that directors Rich Moore and
Phil Johnston wouldn't let her do it.
Luckily, however, they were fully on board with the idea.
She told the Post:
"The idea of satirizing Disney is the greatest gift we have been given."
During this scene, the princesses and Vanellope lampoon a number of typical Disney cliches:
their endless singing, their reliance on male characters, and their weird tendency to figure
things out about themselves after staring into a pool of water.
"Do you have daddy issues?"
"I don't even have a mom!"
"Neither do we!"
Director Phil Johnston told the Post:
"It's like when I make fun of my dad.
Yes, I can do that, I love my dad and I love his foibles.
We are coming at this from a place of love."
If you watch closely during King Triton's entrance at the beginning of The Little Mermaid,
you might just spot iconic Disney characters Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in attendance as
the King floats above the crowd.
Gamers in particular might find this easter egg amusing, since it seems to have inadvertently
predicted the Kingdom Hearts series over a decade before the first of those games was
released.
Speaking about these particular cameos, director Ron Clements told Insider:
"It was one of those things that you could almost never ever possibly notice in the movie,
seeing it in a theater...It would only be on home video, where you could kind of look
at it over and over and go back and forth, that anyone would ever even have noticed it."
Lilo & Stitch: The Series never really crossed over with any other Disney movies, which might
seem a little odd considering those early trailers for the movie in which Stitch crashed
into classic Disney movie scenes.
But the character did have some run-ins with other Disney favorites.
For example, Kim Possible was called in to help Lilo find Stitch in the episode "Rufus."
Meanwhile, the characters of The Proud Family dropped in for some vacation time in the episode
"Spats," which featured a wrestling match between the series' big bad Gantu and The
Proud Family's Suga Mama.
The gang from Recess even showed up in the episode "Lax".
Turns out, all those Disney cartoons of the early 2000s share the same universe.
Who knew?
This might be one of the most well-known sightings in Disney history: Eugene and Rapunzel from
Tangled can be seen walking into the castle's gates for Queen Elsa's coronation in Frozen.
This particular Disney crossover has led fans to speculate that there might be some kind
of a connection between Rapunzel's family and Elsa and Anna's.
Some even speculated that Elsa and Anna are not sisters at all, and that Elsa is actually
Rapunzel's twin.
Hey, you never know.
Anyway, if there is some kind of massive conspiracy connecting the two princesses, the directors
aren't in on it.
Co-director Nathan Greno found out about the cameo on Facebook after the film had premiered.
After confirming that the two characters at the coronation were indeed Eugene and Rapunzel,
he posted:
"I guess I missed that when I watched the film."
Remember Carl and Ellie?
Of course you do, honestly, who could forget them?
Well, turns out they're in Toy Story…kind of, at least.
It was BuzzFeed writer Billy Lorusso who pointed out that Andy's cork-board in Toy Story 3
has a postcard with the names and addresses of the couple from Up.
But you won't spot that postcard if you go back to check your own copy of Toy Story 3,
because this easter egg didn't quite make it into the final film.
"No!
No!
No!"
"Oh!
You almost had him."
Despite not appearing in Toy Story 3, the easter egg does show up in one of the trailers
for the movie.
It seems that for whatever reason, the postcard didn't survive the various edits and revisions
the film went through before finally hitting theaters.
Why?
Nobody's really sure.
The appearance of The Lion King's Scar in Hercules isn't much of a secret.
In fact, his hide is very clearly worn by Hercules and then thrown onto the floor at
Phil's feet, plain as day.
This connection probably exists because artist Andreas Deja was a supervising animator for
both Scar and Hercules, but there are still so many morbid questions that this scene raises.
After all, Scar's end in The Lion King was...well, it wasn't clean, that's for sure.
So how did he end up in Hercules' hands?
Who came along and, uh, scooped him up in the first place?
And is this all a morbid reference to Zazu's quip about Scar early on in The Lion King?
"What am I going to do with him?"
"He would make a very handsome throw rug."
"Zazu!"
Of course, this is probably also a reference to the Nemean Lion, a creature that the real-world
legend of Hercules had to overcome.
Funnily enough, the Nemean lion can be spotted in the song "Zero to Hero," and he does look
a little bit like Mufasa's nefarious brother.
Maybe he's some kind of ancestor to Scar and the rest of The Lion King's royal family?
Moana has more than its share of hidden references, including Flounder from The Little Mermaid
and a Baymax mask on one of the kakamura that attacks Moana and Maui.
And when directors Ron Clements and John Musker discussed these Disney crossovers with ScreenRant,
they revealed that the movie also featured another hidden cameo: Flash the sloth from
Zootopia.
Musker said: "Yeah, Flash, the very slow-talking sloth [from Zootopia] is in there, in a disguise
of sorts."
"Ha!
Ha!
Ha!"
Flash can be seen when Moana enters the realm of monsters and is greeted by a creepy-looking
masked creature.
If you look closely enough, you'll see that it's Flash, something that becomes immediately
obvious once you recognize those long claws of his.
Of course, Flash was last seen at the end of Zootopia getting pulled over for speeding.
Is this where Zootopia puts its criminals?
It might seem a little drastic, but think about it, Tamatoa is a giant crab…
"Shiny, I'm so shiny.
Didn't help me, though, did it?
Still upside-down, here."
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is probably the black sheep of the Disney canon, mostly because
it features some of the darkest scenes in all of Disney's history.
And sure, the movie throws in those gargoyle characters in a pretty desperate attempt to
lighten the tension, but all they really end up doing is coming off as a little tonally
dissonant.
At the end of the day, The Hunchback of Notre Dame just isn't very kid-friendly.
It's also a Disney movie that isn't based on a fairytale, but rather on a truly macabre
novel by Victor Hugo.
So that makes it all the more weird that Belle from Beauty and the Beast can be seen in Hunchback's
streets of Paris.
The fairytale on which Beauty and the Beast is based is the French tale La Belle et la
Bête, so the animators probably thought it would be fun to connect the two French stories
with a Disney crossover.
Of course, it's pretty amusing to think that, at the same time that the townsfolk are gleefully
singing and prancing around their village, Judge Frollo is skulking around singing about…well,
something much less wholesome.
"I'll find her.
I'll find her if I have to burn down all of Paris."
Let's just hope that Belle was able to get out of Paris before things really started
heating up.
One legendary Pixar-Disney crossover involves Toy Story's iconic Pizza Planet delivery truck.
The truck may have seemed like any other mangy rundown delivery truck during its initial
appearance in Toy Story, but little did audiences know, this truck has really seen some things.
A lot of things.
In fact, the truck has been spotted in every single Pixar movie, barring one exception:
The Incredibles.
Of course, how Pizza Planet can deliver to Paris but not to the Parr family is anyone's
guess.
"Oh, I seriously doubt he's getting this kind of mileage."
The car has been seen parked at Monsters University, rolling around inside Riley's memories in
Inside Out, and even gained sentience in the Cars films.
And this particular easter egg even transcends the movies themselves.
In 2012, a group of college students built a replica of the truck and drove it around
the country.
At the time, the team told Pixar Post:
"The response to the truck in person and online has been amazing.
With people slowing down on the freeway to snap a picture or even just giving us a thumbs
up as we pass on the street, we can tell that people recognize it and love the final product."
See?
That truck gets around.
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