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Fridge Brilliance
- During the lines "Reminiscin' this and that and havin' such a good time" in "Oo-De-Lally", Robin Hood and Little John are each urging the other to go first when crossing a river by log. The brilliance? In the original tale, the two meet when Little John prevents Robin Hood from using a log to cross the river; they fight over the right of way and Little John wins, but Defeat Means Friendship. That's what they're remembering.
- Also in this film, Prince John decides to order the execution of Friar Tuck to lure Robin out, a suggestion by which even Sir Hiss is horrified. However, there is historical context to this. John and Richard's father, King Henry II, had Thomas à Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated. Where do you think Prince John got the idea?
- Sir Hiss' horrified reaction is historically accurate. At the time, the Church was a powerful political entity,note and a noble didn't have the right to judge a priest (for whom the canon law was applied). Of course, Hiss knows that. And he knows the dangers of upsetting the Pope. But John and Historically, John was actually excommunicated, and England placed under interdict, by the Pope during his reign.
- While Robin is daydreaming while cooking, Little John tries to get his attention by calling increasingly extended forms of his name: first Rob, then Robin, and then Robert, using the French pronunciation (sounds like Ro-bear). It's easy to assume that this is because Little John is a bear in the film and that Ro-bear is a nickname. When you think about it further, the French pronunciation is because they live under and speak the language of the Plantagenet dynasty, who are French and the language spoken in England at the time would have been an iteration called Anglo-Norman French. Not to mention that in the legend, Robin's birth name is Robert Fitzooth.
- "The Phony King of England" is as close as Disney could get in a family flick to the real-life Bawdy Song "The Bastard King of England", which is similarly a disparaging song aimed at Prince John.
- Also in "The Phony King of England": all the world will sing of an English king a thousand years from now/and not because he passed some law. King John's main (possibly only) achievement was to sign the Magna Carta, pretty much at gunpoint precisely because the nobility despised him and his policies so much they decided they needed to put restraints on the power of the throne.
- "Phony King of England" also has some merit as well - since Richard is still alive, John's not the actual king. (At least, not yet)
- A kid might not realize it at first, but the fact that Alan-a-Dale the Rooster is in jail too is a hilarious fourth wall-breaking. You can make the case that Prince John was so enraged and hell-bent on putting everybody in jail, he somehow even managed to put the narrator in there, even though he isn't part of the story. Seen in that light, the way we first hear his voice saying the beginning of his line, in a typical narrating, and seeing it being ended by a living character on-screen, is hilarious. The gag is not helped, of course, by the fact that said Alan-a-Dale has already been physically seen earlier. He even warned us at one point that it's his job "to tell it like it is - or was, or whatever," which already implies that his relationship to the story is closer than that of a normal narrator.
- Almost all commoners in the film are domestic or wild animals native to Europe (apart from a few raccoons seen in the background, and a warthog at the archery competition), but Prince John's entourage consists almost entirely of African wildlife apart from the wolves. The brilliance here is that the rhinos, elephants, crocodiles, and vultures can be mercenaries that John hired from abroad. This can double up on funny if you think about it. It could be that Prince John had to hire foreign bodyguards because no one in England is willing to protect him. The only way he can get anyone to guard him is by paying strangers who don't know him and therefore have no reason to hate him!
- Alternatively (since as King Richard is also an African lion), it could represent the nobility of this era being descendants of the Norman invaders, the commoners are native English. The Norman Conquest only being a century earlier, the Norman nobility were still ethnically separate from the English people during the reigns of Richard and John.
- A lot of the animal "casting" is brilliantly appropriate: the mice who live in the church are, well, as poor as church mice; the rabbit family have the most children, Alan a Dale the narrator and bard is a rooster...
- The final straw that gets Tuck to attack the Sheriff is when the Sheriff takes money from the poor box. While this is understandable, Tuck also may have reacted as he did because the Sheriff is taking a long step over the bounds; Church taxes had been a hot topic political debate in Europe for centuries (unlike the US, the debate is mostly over and most western European churches pay tax), but at the time the movie was set, the Church was exempt from taxes. Like the attempted execution of Friar Tuck, this was blatantly illegal. Naturally, this is another case where a member of The House of Plantagenet would come into conflict with The Church if it were a real-life situation.
- Some of the Punch Clock Villains appear at Robin and Marian's wedding at the end. This was likely part of the nature of Norman England at the time, where quarreling sides in civil conflict end up making up eventually. Although not seen in this film, Prince John was eventually forgiven for misadventures during Richard I's real-life reign, and was maintained as his heir.
Fridge Horror
- Prince John and Sir Hiss mention that they hypnotized King Richard and "sent him off on that crazy Crusade". The Third Crusade (led by Richard the Lionheart) led to the slaughter of tens of thousands in the Middle East. So while the Robin Hood movie is playing out on screen before the audience, Prince John's and Sir Hiss' attempt to take control of England is not only causing widespread misery to England's animal population, but has led to the mass slaughter of thousands of innocent anthropomorphic animals.
- The Rabbit family scrimped and saved to give Skippy a birthday present of one farthing - the smallest denomination of currency at that point. That's like having to save up to give someone a penny nowadays. Now imagine the economic hardship that would create that kind of situation.
- Money used to be expensive in and of itself. What you could buy with a penny 50 years ago was much more than what you can buy now, even more so in the time of King John. At this time people more rarely ever bought anything with cash, so cash was pretty much always for luxuries.
- Robin is an outlaw because he shot a deer in the King's forest. In this film, animals are sapient people.
- In other versions, Robin Hood was outlawed for killing another man, usually in self-defense.
- On that note, there's at least one version where Robin is an outlaw for accidentally killing another man who was trying to arrest him for having shot a deer in the King's forestnote .
- It could be that Robin in this movie is a outlaw because he rebelled against tyrannical rule of Prince John. Notice how he has his outlaw status removed once King Richard returns to England.
- Robin and Marian drive off in a carriage. Little John sits at the front with a whip. It is never shown what animals are pulling the carriage, but again, animals are sapient in this universe, and the heroes are making them perform manual labor and whipping them when they go too slow (though this becomes less disturbing if one considers draft horses as equivalent to pedicab drivers or rickshaw pullers or sedan chair bearers).
- The cemetery outside the church seems fairly large and unkempt... could the casualties of Prince John’s greed be greater than we assume?
