Remember the polyps in Ursula's cave? How they grabbed onto Ariel? They were trying to SAVE HER.
In Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ursula the Sea Witch angrily refers to Ariel as "the little tramp" because she almost got Prince Eric to kiss her, even though she can't speak. Well, Charlie Chaplin, the brilliant silent movie star, was most famous for his "Little Tramp" character, who of course was never heard speaking. Dendarii Dame
In the beginning scenes of the movie, the sailors and Eric are commenting on the perfect sailing weather, and the sailors say that it must be because Triton is in a good mood, letting Eric know that Triton was, in legend, king of the sea. While they were either joking or being superstitious, Triton was in a good mood: he was about to watch his youngest daughter's musical debut. When she didn't show up and he found out that she went to the surface instead, he was furious at her and later got upset over how harshly he spoke to her. So maybe it is the sailors' superstition, but Triton happened to be in a bad mood when Eric and his men got caught up in the storm at night.
Ursula is supposed to be half-octopus, but she has six tentacles instead. That is, unless if you count her arms as limbs, which means that she actually indeed has eight limbs from the start.
During the chanting part of Ursula's song, one of the words she says in the is laryngitis aka a disease that makes you lose your voice!
Ursula's human alias is Vanessa. Vanessa is a genus of butterfly. Butterflies are well-known as the masters of metamorphosis and mimicry.
In Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ursula's first appearance has her lamenting that she's "wasted away into nothing," and "practically starving." At first, you laugh at it, seeing how, er—big, she still is. But wait... if she genuinely believes she's wasted away and feels starved...how big was she beforehand??? Oh God, please don't tell me her One-Winged Angel form was her previous true form, oh God, please...
In the same speech she mentions the days when she "lived in the palace". One missing and unmentioned mother for Ariel and her sisters, plus one bitter and vengeful woman who once lived in the palace, equals what?
Rewatching the movie years later and realizing the connotation of signing a contract, sealing your fate over to someone who you know is evil but is very persuasive, only to be rescued by your father, who takes the punishment upon himself...
YMMV. I don't think that's Fridge Horror, I think that's just plain AWESOME Fridge Brilliance.
By that same token, who says the humans stop eating fish at all? Yes, their new princess is a former mermaid and one would hope she would tell them to not eat her (sentient) friends, but it's a coastal village. Unless they've got some serious farms farther inland—with lots of unseen cattle—there's really no way for Eric's people to just go cold turkey on the fish. So Ariel gets to watch her new subjects eat her old ones on a daily basis.
This troper believes that there's just varying levels of sentience in fish. Some, like Flounder, are straddling the border between friend and pet, whereas others, like the fish shown during the opening sequence, are not intelligent. They kinda avoid this issue since it's a kid's movie.
Then think about the life cycle of the sea. Almost all fish eat smaller fish. Exactly what else would the mer-people eat in the ocean? Seaweed and Plankton alone? With a half human body, that would make life pretty difficult. Chances are that she eats some of her subjects herself. (Also, in most mythology, mermaids are fairly vicious little creatures, and do not hesitate eat other fish... and other humans.)
So Ursula is supposed to have an octopus lower torso. But if you consider the fact that in real life, that's where the octopus' mouth is supposed to be, what is supposed to be the octopus' mouth in real life becomes's Ursula's anus!
A conversation of the creepy things Disney gets away with in kids movies brought me to the sudden realization that the Little Mermaid is, at heart, a watered down version of Faust. Both protaganists feel they've reached the heights of their current lives, both make a Deal with the Devil to pursue a life they believe will bring them more happiness, both fixiate on a love interest which leads to them messing up royally, ruining the lives (permanently or temporarily) of a bunch of people, both end up being redeemed at the end. The original Hans Christian Anderson version of the Little Mermaid even more strongly parallels this, as much of the mermaid's motivation was to receive a soul, and at the end of the story she did, sort of. After suffering and dying, instead of just being dead, she is made into a spirit and given the chance of eventually earning a soul. Faust's soul (in later versions) is eventually redeemed after he goes to great lengths to make up for the guilt of ruining Gretchen. In fact, Anderson could have drawn from elements of Faust, as he was well educated, and the legend of Faust predated him by at least 200 years.
