Pop Culture Urban Legends / Animated Films

• An urban legend claims that Aladdin contains the line "Good teenagers, take off your clothes". It's actually "Good kitty, take off and go!" There is even a mixed version, claiming that Aladdin says "Good kitty, take off", and an unidentified, older-sounding actor adds "your clothes".
• A popular urban legend about Bambi – so popular that it's considered a case of the Mandela Effect – is that in its original release, Bambi's mother was shot and fell lifeless to the ground onscreen, and that this was cut from rereleases for being "too dark." Yet while the animators did consider showing her death onscreen, in the finished film it's always been conveyed by an offscreen gunshot.
• The Black Cauldron:
  • Before being debunked in this video by Yesterworld Entertainment, it was claimed by some sources that the deleted scenes infamously removed from the film to bring it down to a PG rating featured incredibly violent scenes of characters being messily killed or hacked apart by either the Cauldron Born or monsters (with some of the most frequently rumored scenes being ones that allegedly featured a villager being sliced clean in half by a Cauldron Born or ones showing that the Horned King's demise was originally much more violent and gruesome). According to the original storyboards, however, no such scenes with this level of violence ever existed outside of one scene showing one of the Horned King's human henchmen being melted to death by a toxic mist coming out of the Black Cauldron, and the Horned King's death was no more violent than it was in the final product.
  • Similarly, it was rumored that Taran originally killed the soldier who attacked he and Eilonwy with his magic sword instead of scaring him off, and an animation of him jumping with his sword in glee as he leaves with Eilonwy was originally meant to be him jumping over the man's dead body while following Eilonwy out (but the body was edited out at the insistence of then-Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg). The original storyboards (made before Katzenberg began removing scenes) likewise show that Taran was always meant to have simply run the soldier off instead of killing him.
• Among Japanese Studio Ghibli fans, a popular rumor exists purporting that a supposed alternate ending to Castle in the Sky was once broadcast during one of the film's annual airings on Japanese TV; the rumor started from a number of low-quality screenshots posted online in 2007, all of which contained shots not seen in the final film and some of which include credits superimposed onto them. While Ghibli themselves debunked the claim that an alternate ending exists, a number of fans are still trying to prove that it exists by hunting down TV airings without any publicly available home recordings, with one even offering ¥50,000 to anyone who can find footage of the alleged alternate ending alone and ¥70,000 to anyone who can find a full recording of a broadcast containing the ending, with commercial breaks intact.
• Rumors exist that Disney modeled both the titular lead of Cinderella and Tinker Bell from Peter Pan after Marilyn Monroe. These rumors are unfounded. Marilyn Monroe wasn't even a star yet when Cinderella was in production. The rumor likely spread because someone within Disney supposedly complained that Cinderella was "too voluptuous" and Monroe was a well-known celebrity from that era who was voluptuous.
• Some rumors speculate that Filipino chieftain Lapu-Lapu had a larger role in earlier versions of the Spanish animated movie Elcano & Magellan: The First Voyage Around the World, but most of his screentime was cut after a poster depicting him in a villainous light sparked a backlash in the Philippines (Lapu-Lapu is regarded as one of the greatest Filipino national heroes). Thus far, however, no evidence has surfaced to prove these claims.
• There's a debunked rumor that Frozen II originally ended with Elsa staying dead, instead of her undergoing a Disney Death, and the ending was only edited within a year of release. The rumor seems to stem from much of the film's story getting edited and changed after test screenings. But in actuality, the ending was one of the first things decided, a fact that's been repeatedly confirmed both after the movie's release and well before it.
• Hercules: In Spain, it is claimed that one of Herc's groupies yells "¡Quiero follarle!" ("I wanna fuck him!") in the dubbed version. She actually says "¡Voy a desmayarme!" ("I'm going to faint!") - and quite clearly, at that.
• It's commonly cited that Word of God has said Lady from Lady and the Tramp was in heat during the film. The reason the strays attacked her is that they wanted to rape her, and Tramp got Lady pregnant during their night together. This, however, is not true. Disney has never mentioned Lady being in heat and Lady's pregnancy would have lasted too long for a dog if Tramp got her pregnant that night.
• There's a common claim that The Lion King (1994) started life as a Kimba the White Lion remake, but they were declined the rights and instead opted to "rip off" the series. There's no proof of such an agreement ever being attempted. Concept art of a white cub exists, but it is from the King of the Jungle stage of development where none of the other Kimba similarities existed. It doesn't help that Matthew Broderick agreed to be in the movie expressly because he thought it was a Kimba adaptation (which is frequently misinterpreted as him being told it was a Kimba adaptation, rather than a misunderstanding on his part).
  • The supposed similarities between Lion King and Kimba are themselves an example of this. Anybody who's ever watched both can tell you that the similarities are surface-level and superficial at best. While it's possible that some people who worked on Lion King were consciously or unconsciously influenced by Kimba, the idea of there being enough similarities to call the former a ripoff of the latter stems from ignorance and flawed, biased sources.
  • Additionally the urban legend didn't actually start in Japan, contrary to what even some published authors have claimed, but in the United States. The Tezuka estate and production group were both adamant since the first release of Lion King that any similarities between it and Kimba were harmless coincidences due to both series drawing from some of the same pool of African wildlife and tropes.
  • The stars infamously spelling "SEX" in the sky of one night scene. Or so the legend goes. They actually read "SFX" and are a nod to the digital animators who drew the sky.
• There's been a hoax going around associated with Monsters, Inc.. It involves a screenshot of a scene showing that Boo drew a drawing of her mother and "Uncle Roger" having sex. The picture is photoshopped, the original photoshopped image was part of a contest on a popular website. Despite this, people still claim the ratings board missed it or that it was on the first edition before later being censored.
• A rumor centering around Officer Specter in Onward went around post-release, namely, that Disney deliberately hyped her up as their "first gay character" to disguise the fact that she was actually a minor character, then censored the dialogue referring to her girlfriend in dubs. While there is a precedent of censorship happening in properties owned by them, it wasn't part of Onward: the "first gay character" hype came from other media outlets reporting on Specter's presence (not helped by the fact that she was used in a lot of the promotional material), and the discrepancies in dubs came from the fact that Lena Waithe ad-libbed the line (the script had her referring to a boyfriend instead).
• The Princess and the Frog: There is a rumor online that Disney tried at some stage of development to make Tiana less overtly Black by keeping her curly hair tied up. The assumed concept art is actually fan-art by a French artist on what he imagined Tiana could look like.
• There's a rumor that in the original script for The Road to El Dorado, there were strong hints that Miguel and Tulio were a gay couple and Executive Meddling resulted in hints of homosexuality being removed and Chel being added, but the fact that Chel is included in rough model sheets and early test footage casts some doubt on this.
• Don Bluth:
  • Despite Bluth himself debunking the rumors, many fans still believe there is an unused storyboard for The Secret of NIMH where Justin and Mrs. Brisby kiss.
  • Many claim that Don Bluth hated cats, due to them being featured as monstrous antagonists in films such as The Secret of NIMH and An American Tail. In fact, during production of NIMH, Bluth had a pet cat named Missy who was brought to the studio while suffering from cancer so the crew could spend time with her, and was even credited as a cel painter, showing that Bluth did care for her greatly. And that's without bringing up the fact that Bluth's first non-Disney production was Banjo the Woodpile Cat, a television special starring a Cute Kitten. It's more likely the reason those films had antagonist cat characters is due to them starring mice, and cats being the natural enemy of mice in fiction.
  • After The Land Before Time was heavily cut by the studio to make it less frightening, rumors persisted for decades that Don Bluth secretly had an uncut film print in his possession. Bluth himself debunked this rumor in his autobiography, stating that any cut footage was more than likely destroyed.
• Ratchet & Clank (2016): Something that consistently makes the rounds (and that was perpetuated multiple times on This Very Wiki) is the 'fact' that Kevin Michael Richardson was originally brought on to reprise his role as Chairman Drek, having recorded all of his dialogue for the film before ultimately being replaced by Paul Giamatti (being a bigger name and all). While hypothetically it would make sense that Rainmaker (the animation studio behind the movie) and Universal Studios (who distributed the film through Focus Features and Gramercy Pictures) would have gotten him back seeing as they got James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Jim Ward, and Armin Shimerman back to reprise their roles as Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark, and Doctor Nefarious respectively, there is no source that has said he was even considered for the role, let alone that he recorded lines for it. The only acknowledgement that Richardson got from the production staff is a lone tweet from the film's official social media saying they're a fan of him (which is in no way confirmation he was actually involved). An additional piece of info that tends to get tacked onto this is that Universal accidentally sent Paul Giamatti's paycheck to Kevin Michael Richardson's address, which also has no record of having happened despite such a mistake being newsworthy, or at the very least worth mentioning by either actor. The origin of these claims can seemingly be traced back to a piece of trivia submitted to the film's IMDb page.
• There was a rumor that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had another Polish dub apart from the 1938 one. It was supposedly made in 1947 and starred famous Polish actors Jadwiga Smosarska and Adolf Dymsza as Snow White and the Prince. This was proven untrue as Smosarska moved to the USA soon after World War II broke out and only came back to Poland in 1958, while Dymsza was banned from acting in Warsaw for five years after the war had ended^note according to the article on polski-dubbing.pl. In reality, no other Polish dub other than the 1938 one was made until 2009.
• A rumor was started for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut about a deleted character named "Flower" who allegedly sends herself to Hell to let Kenny be freed in the end. While some fan wikis still circulate it and believe it to be true, it was actually based off of a fake "deleted scene" theory made by a fan to "fill in the gap" of how Kenny could wind up in Heaven at the end of the film despite not being a Mormon. ^note The episode that established only Mormon end up in Heaven aired after the movie implying the creators simply hadn't thought up that rule yet. The same fan site had come up with other similarly wild fanon theories to explain the presence of commonly reused background characters in both the series and film. In the end, it could be best summarized as someone's Wild Mass Guess that was taken a little too seriously by portions of the fanbase.
• It's commonly claimed that Disney lost the rights to Tarzan, hence why they no longer make merchandise of it. Disney still owns the rights to the film (plus, the original character is in the public domain in selected territories, so it'd be very difficult for the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs to take the rights back); more likely the reason there isn't any merchandise of it is simply because the film isn't very popular compared to the rest of the Disney Renaissance.^note These rumors likely stem from the fact that Tarzan hasn't gotten representation in any Kingdom Hearts entry after the first; it's yet-to-be-determined whether that's a matter of any rights issues. The characters appear in the short Once Upon a Studio, debunking this rumor at last.
• Thomas and the Magic Railroad: There are numerous rumors about the film, largely due to its troubled production:
  • The nature of cut villain P.T. Boomer. Originally he was only known from a Missing Trailer Scene and brief mentions in a tie-in product. One rumor was that he would try to tear down Shining Time Station to build a highway, and some sources corrupted his name as "Pete Boom". A lot of these misconceptions were cleared up once the screenplay was found.
  • Whether or not scenes from the script including George the steamroller and Cranky the crane were ever filmed.
  • The existence of a finished "director's cut" from before the film was re-edited.
  • According to a Reddit user, he said that he remembered seeing an earlier Thomas the Tank Engine film when he was a kid. He mentioned that the film was similar to Thomas and the Magic Railroad and had the Kylie Minogue version of the song "The Locomotion" at the end of the film. It is unknown if this film is true or not, but it did sound like he was telling the truth. If this film is true, then it might've fallen into obscurity and might've been easily forgotten. A possible theory to this might've been that either he was one of the test audiences that watched the director's cut of Thomas and the Magic Railroad, or he saw a screening of the 1997 test footage that was edited into one whole film, and the original cut used the Minogue cover instead of the Atomic Kitten one that was used in the final product.
    • Another user from a reply saw the exact same film with his mother in theaters once, and was traumatized by it, which makes it seem like that the film the Reddit user was talking about was Darker and Edgier.
  • There is a rumor that David Mitton (the director of the main Thomas and Friends show as well as the director of the Sodor scenes in the film) had his own pitch for a Thomas the Tank Engine film that was rejected in favor of Magic Railroad, with the pitch allegedly being a crossover between Thomas the Tank Engine and its sister show TUGS that was far closer to the original show. However, no evidence points to this rumor being real. This likely stems from the (genuine) fact that the characters from TUGS were planned to make a cameo in the film, until it was scrapped due to legal circumstances and a feud between Mitton and Allcroft (who allegedly hated TUGS at the time) over their usage.
• The Transformers: The Movie:
  • Fans often speculated about an alternate cut that featured even more Family-Unfriendly Violence and character deaths than the final film. One of the more wide-spread rumors claimed that Optimus Prime originally turned to dust on his deathbed, but the scene was removed due to being too traumatizing for children. While many deleted scenes were written and storyboarded, none were ever fully animated. The alternate death scene for Optimus is assumed to have originated from young fans mixing up his death with Starscream's, who does turn to dust after being shot by Galvatron; since both turn gray when they die, confusing the two deaths is understandable.
  • One oft-circulated claim is that Orson Welles died before he could record all his dialogue, so another actor (most commonly said to have been Leonard Nimoy) had to step in for Unicron's remaining lines. Despite being debunked repeatedly (including by Susan Blu and Wally Burr, both of whom should know), this one still pops up from time to time.
  • Some fans have claimed that the movie was never released in Japan and that the Scramble City: Mobilization OVA was a replacement for it. While it's true that the movie wasn't released in Japan in 1985, it ultimately made its way to Japanese theaters in 1989. For that matter, the OVA has nothing to do with the events of the movie and never contradicts it in any significant capacity; it was more an advertisement for a subline than a significant turning point in the continuity.
• There's an urban legend for Treasure Planet that the original theatrical version contained a shot of Amelia looking down on her blood-covered hand after being injured, but it was considered too graphic and was censored upon home release. No proof of this scene exists. In the final film, Amelia does get injured, but there's no blood.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Mario not being in the movie has nothing to do with Nintendo asking too much money for a cameo. He's not in it because the writers didn't know how to properly incorporate him, though he is mentioned. Mario was going to be in the sequel, but (different) legal reasons prevented it.
• For a long time, it was believed, even by the users on This Very Wiki, that since the newscaster moose in Zootopia was changed to a different animal in other foreign versions, the UK version made him a corgi. Many were skeptical, since screencaps of the other animals existed online, but not the corgi, and there was no evidence of domestic dogs or cats existing in the Zootopia world. Eventually, web users who were actually from the UK stepped in to correct this, pointing out he was still a moose in their version.

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