Fanfic Fuel in Films — Animation.
- The Show Within a Show in Bolt could spawn dozens of fan stories.
- The Book of Life:
- How Chakal got the medallion from Xibalba was glossed over, so are the details of how the Lands of the Remembered and Forgotten work. In fact, just the Land of the Forgotten itself.
- The reveal through Word of God, that there are a few other afterlives, like the Land Of The Unknown and the Land Of the Cursed as well as revealing that La Muerte has a twin sister, La Noche, who rules the Land of The Unknown, and that Xibalba has an older brother, who rules the Land of the Cursed, a hell like domain. Can probably fuel fics, for a long time.
- All of the information that Jorge shared through Twitter could be this.
- The Boss Baby: At one point during his visit to Baby Corp, Tim asks the titular Boss Baby why he doesn't remember his time at the company, and the Boss Baby mentions that all babies who work there forget all about it once their company pacifiers are taken away. This provides fanfic writers plenty of opportunities to explore what Tim's time at the company might have been like before the events of the movie.
- In Coco, even though Ernesto de la Cruz is exposed as a murderer, who's to say that he doesn't have at least one Loony Fan who'll put up an ofrenda for him and enable him to cross over?
- Frozen:
- The cameo by Rapunzel and Eugene during "For the First Time in Forever" has launched a number of Tangled crossovers.
- Elsa and Anna are canonically Royals Who Actually Do Something, a higher proportion of Frozen fanfics are Government Procedurals compared to most other fandoms, with the sisters and Kristoff tackling inner workings of Arendelle's government.
- The questions that the movie leaves unresolved:
- Where did Elsa's powers come from? Does having a ruler with magical powers affect Arendelle's international relations?
- Is Hans the Black Sheep of his family, or are the rest of the princes from the Southern Isles Always Chaotic Evil?
- Are there others like Elsa, and if so, will she ever meet them?
- Word of God revealed the reason for Elsa's powers was going to be included in the film (being born during a millennium of a certain alignment of Saturn) but was cut for time and plot relevance. While the canonicity of this proto-canon can be considered debatable (could be related to the winter solstice birth thing or may even be retconned in the sequel), this is even more Fanfic Fuel, such as the possibility of others with magic powers being born at certain year intervals and/or alignments, or even who the cryokinetic "previous-1,000th year Saturn alignment" before Elsa was — perhaps the original Snow Queen from the original fairy tale? The sequel gave some more explanation for how she got her powers (it's implied they were a reward for her Northundra mother saving her Arendellian father's life), but it's still open for further exploration.
- Given the fact that both Elsa and Anna are separated from each other for 13 years and have now just been reunited at the end of the movie, a story about how the two sisters adjust their life together and rebuild their strained bond is a very common premise for many post-movie fics.
- An Extremely Goofy Movie:
- As seen in Goof Troop, Goofy, Pete, Max and PJ tend to get into wacky misadventures together quite often, while Max and PJ have grown a lot more chummy with Bobby since A Goofy Movie, turning their dynamic duo into a power trio. All five characters share one scene at the start of the movie, where they seem to be pretty well-acquainted with each other, so one can only imagine the sort of wacky misadventures these characters had during the gap between the two movies, with Bobby as their new fifth wheel.
- Due to their absence without mention, fans frequently hypothesize and discuss where Roxanne and Stacey were during the events of this film, and whether they still keep contact with Max and his friends.
- One can only imagine how Pete would react if PJ chose to introduce him to his girlfriend, as well as seeing the confident adult his son has grown into.
- Even though Sylvia doesn’t become Goofy’s official love interest after this, her potential interactions with Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck are quite interesting to think about.
- In Home (2015), now that Humanity has a fellow population of aliens both on Earth and the Moon who are likely sharing all their advanced technology such as interstellar space capability, what happens to Earth's society now (especially with all other aliens coming to Earth to party as well)?
- Inside Out:
- The premise of the movie, with everyone's minds being some sort of control center manned by five characters representing five emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust), poses a question, what would the inside of your favorite fictional character's mind look like while following the movie's rules? Who would their dominant emotion be? What would their core memories be?
- For the movie itself, we have how Riley's emotions carry her through her teenage years.
- Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda has gotten plenty of fanfics about what happened to his real parents and how he ended up adopted. Po got the same treatment until Kung Fu Panda 2 revealed his origins.
- The Land Before Time VII: The Stone of Cold Fire: The rainbow faces are strongly implied to be aliens who came to blend in among the dinosaurs. There are many fanfics that explore what their civilization and culture may be like, and what their motivations are.
- Lilo & Stitch:
- Long before there was ever a series to take up the idea, writers had 623 blank spacesnote to fill in with fan characters, a vaguely-described laboratory for them to be born in, and a universe for them to explore. They made sure to take advantage of this.
- Considering that, one, most of the canonical experiments remain yet to be seen to this day, and two, experiments after Stitch have been made in the franchise's canon, there are still going to be plenty of fan experiments for years to come.
- The Lion King has a lot of this.
- For starters, the movie's Leitmotif, the neverending Circle of Life, means that you can write sagas of the royal lion family. Then, there are lots of characters that were introduced but not developed in comics or books, like Ni, Tama, Tojo. Also there are many story gaps that fanfic writers love to fill, like the years of Scar's reign (or his supposed relationship with Zira), or where the Outlanders from the second movie came from.
- Then there's the fact that Scar's Gory Discretion Shot shows him going down fighting, forecasting He's Just Hiding with a chance of Evil Cripple.
- Minions: The prologue shows just a few examples of who Minions served in the past. What other historical figures did they serve as well?
- In Moana, what did Maui mean by “not since I ripped off (Tamatoa's) leg”?
- The Mulan sequel did nothing to curb this. In fact, there was enough Fan Wank generated for several attempted rewrites. The first movie itself contains a Training Montage covering countless little interactions, Mulan's family dealing with their only daughter out of sight in the army, the Huns moving in to massacre the Chinese Army at that village, and of course that one line:Mulan: (to Shang) Would you like to stay for dinner?
- Once Upon a Studio: As the biggest crossover in Disney history since House of Mouse, the doors are now wide open for fans to write their own stories and interactions between the vast ensemble of characters of Disney’s pantheon, not just including those who appeared in the short, but also those from the The Disney Afternoon, Disney Channel, One Saturday Morning, Pixar, The Muppets Studio, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, and 20th Television/20th Television Animation. After all, they couldn’t exactly do every character interacting with each other or the short would’ve been 100 years long in itself!
- The Lucasfilm crossovers would be particularly interesting and could lead to some hilarious interaction with characters from both Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
- Crossovers with The Muppets Studio may also include characters from other Jim Henson shows such as Fraggle Rock, Bear in the Big Blue House, Mopatop's Shop and even The Hoobs.
- At least one fanfic has given Cinderella, Rapunzel and a number of other characters a larger role in restoring the morale of the other characters after Goofy's unfortunate accident, not only through starting up the new rendition of When You Wish Upon a Star themselves, but also by preceding it with a Rousing Speech, assuring everyone that their hope and courage will always prevail, even at desperate times like this. Other fanfics may soon follow suit and shed more of a spotlight on other characters.
- Tooth's line from Rise of the Guardians that the guardians were all someone before they were chosen gives rise to fics about their origins that may incorporate or disregard their backstories from the books the movie is based on.
- Toy Story:
- Though the finer details were left intentionally vague, plot points in Toy Story 2 seem to establish that Woody has "lived" for around fifty years, leaving a huge gap in his backstory that could explain how a coveted antique toy wound up in Andy's possession (or, for that matter, why Woody doesn't seem to be aware of the fictional character that he's based on).
- Speaking of Toy Story, what would your toy collection coming to life be like?
- Turning Red:
- Ming Lee's childhood, the early days of her relationship with Jin, and her struggles with her red panda form has been the subject of several fanfics.
- What kind of adventures Mei will get up to post-movie now that she's permanently a red panda shape-shifter is quite popular to write about.
- Though the idea of animal-based shapeshifting isn't explored beyond Mei and her family, the concept is popular enough that fans have expanded upon it by introducing OCs with similar abilities to Mei or giving Mei's friends their own animal forms.
- Lots of fans love to speculate on precisely why Ming is so adamant that Miriam is "odd" and a poorly chosen friend for Mei, with reasons ranging from Ming being unconsciously racist (believing Miriam's "oddness" stems from her race or religion) or classist (assuming Miriam's dress habits derive from a lack of familial funds, which could make her a potential platonic Gold Digger) to resenting Miriam for being Mei's first friend and thus "stealing" her away from Ming; some of these also have Miriam assume that her race or religion is the reason only for Ming to respond with shock at the idea and reveal the reason to be something else entirely.
- Wreck-It Ralph:
- How many other video game bosses also attend Bad-Anon, and what problems are they having?
- For Ralph Breaks the Internet: What do the websites on the Internet look like from the perspective of Ralph and Vanellope that weren't shown in the movie, and what goes on within them?
- Zootopia:
- Given that Nick becomes Judy's partner on the force at the end of the film, there are a HUGE number of Police Procedural Fics that have the two of them solving various crimes around the City. And given the Maybe Ever After relationship they had at the end of the film, it's not at all uncommon for these to also involve heavy amounts of Shipping.
- The titular city is inhabited only by terrestrial mammals. Lots of fans have had fun coming up with other cities in the same world to accommodate birds, reptiles, amphibians, and marine mammals.
- The film also has plenty of scrapped concepts that fanfic writers use in different ways:
- Originally the film was to centre on a spy rabbit called Jack Savage. Now, Savage has no end of fan art, and appearances alongside Nick and Judy in various capacities in fanfics. Frequently seen in many of these fics is a fox character named Skye, who originated from a bit of art from the "Jack Savage" draft, and is often used by fanfic writers as a partner or love interest of Jack's.
- After the Jack Savage draft was dropped, the creators moved on to a considerably Darker and Edgier version of the final film that had Nick as the protagonist, and had predators forced to wear shock collars. Naturally, fanfic writers have been keen to make AU fics about what this version of the film might have been like. Some other fics try to find ways to bring either specific concepts from this version (like the shock collars) or characters that didn't make the final draft (like a Conspiracy Theorist badger named Honey or an antagonist pig Mayor named Swinton) into the same universe as the final film.
- Then there's Nighthowler and its effects, especially with the revelation that prey can be affected by the toxin.
