Atlantis: Milo's Return is a 2003 sequel to Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The movie consists of three shorts from a cancelled Recycled: The Series cartoon called Team Atlantis.
After the original film, Kida and Milo are living as the Queen and King of Atlantis. Together, the two are attempting to restore the kingdom to its former glory, but are interrupted when Milo's old comrades return unexpectedly with news of strange happenings on the surface.
Embarking on a journey that takes them across the globe from the glacial fjords of Norway to the arid Arizona desert, Milo and his friends race to discover the origin of the strange events, before whoever is behind them brings about the End of the World as We Know It.
This movie contains examples of:
- All Animals Are Dogs: Despite being some kind of magma-dwelling six-legged purple reptilian, Oggy behaves very much like you would expect a domestic dog to. He's even called a lava dog.
- Art Evolution: Inverted. Despite being released after The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, due to the movie originally being intended to be an animated TV spinoff that got cancelled after The Lost Empire flopped, Milo's Return noticeably features far more inferior animation than the original movie. Most noticeably, Kida, who gained more tattoos on her face at the end of the first movie no longer has them in this movie.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: While approaching Hellstrom's castle, Audrey questions the idea that the storm they're flying through is caused by the power of the old gods. Immediately lampshaded by Vinny, who points out that they have already encountered arguably as many as three gods previously.
- Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: The team is driving through the Arizona desert when they pick up a mysterious Shoshone man who they appear to pass several times. Turns out he is a Wind Spirit guarding a mass trove of ancient artifacts, and his search for a stolen pot is what's causing the mess in the southwest.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: When the heroes find the pot Carnaby took from McKeane's shack and he claims to have found it, Kida comments it's called stealing, while Carnaby retorts that it's called commerce.
- Blade Brake: When the heroes get lost in a fog and fall over a cliff, Mole uses two small pickaxes to halt his descent, and then everyone else but Audrey fall on him and cling to him.
- Brick Joke: During their desert adventure, Kida fails to grasp the point of keeping items in glass cases to keep them safe. When they get back to Whitmore's and find out Gungnir has been stolen, what's her reaction?"What you needed was a glass case to protect it."
- Chekhov's Gun: Gungnir can be seen on the wall of the Whitmore manor before the team heads off to New Mexico.
- Compilation Movie: The film is three shorts in one.
- Continuity Nod:
- Milo delivers the phrase "two for flinching" when he gives Audrey a second hug after the first.
- Mole whispers something to three Atlantean women which causes them to beat him up for the remainder of the scene. You'd think he'd have learned his lesson the first time.
- Cookie serves the slop from the first expedition again with the line "I told you it'd keep and keep and keep, now it's yours to eat and eat and eat". It gets fed to Oggy the moment Cookie isn't looking.
- When describing the size of the locks Kida should use to secure an all-powerful Atlantean spear, Vinny says "Locks, big ones" and uses the same gesture as when he described large paper clips.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Erik Hellstrom, under the belief that he is Odin's reincarnation, steals Gungnir from Whitmore's mansion and attempts to use it to bring about Ragnarok. To be honest, Hellstrom's view of Ragnarok is a bit warped, since it mainly involves Surtr setting the sky ablaze and Þrymr freezing the surface of the earth as they both hold Gungnir.
- Foreshadowing: While at Mr. Whitmore's mansion following Kraken's demise, Kida asks Milo how they can tell there still aren't Atlantean weapons scattered around. While she says this, there's a clearly standing out spear in the background. The third adventure reveals that said spear actually is a powerful Atlantean weapon. Erik Strom's pair of ravens can also be spotted several times lurking around the manor, or through the window during the conversation.
- Genre Shift: The film has a Paranormal Investigation theme (and Atlantis itself only appearing at the beginning and the end, though its legacy is apparent throughout the film).
- Harmless Freezing: In part three, our heroes are all frozen by Ymir's frost breath. They're later thawed out by Hellstrom, all of them totally fine and ready for a chat.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: When the heroes question Carnaby about Sam McKeane's missing crate, he claims it's not his problem "if McKeane lost a crate of pottery". This makes him look suspicious, for no one told him the crate contains pottery.
- Karmic Transformation: Carnaby sought to profit off of the ancient Atlantean settlement found in the Arizona Desert and intended to kill off Milo and the others to keep them from getting in his way, only for the Dust Coyotes that have been pursuing both groups that had the pottery taken from the settlement arrive and forcibly transform Carnaby into another Dust Coyote: keeping him trapped in the city he "Discovered" but unable to tell anyone else about it.
- Mistaken for Flatulence: When the group finds the Atlantean settlement in the Arizona Desert, they get assaulted by fumes. Mole apologizes and says he's to blame for the stench, but then he takes a sniff himself and takes his word back. The fumes turn out to be the homemade sleeping gas Carnaby made out of a prairie grass mixture.
- Napoleon Delusion: Erik Hellstrom believes he is the god Odin, destined to bring about Ragnarok, and interprets Milo as Loki and Kida as his daughter Brunhilde.
- Ominous Floating Castle: Hellstrom uses the power of Gungnir to make his mountaintop castle float in the air above the mountain itself, as befits someone who considers himself king of the gods. It's heavy enough to obliterate even world-destroying elemental giants when dropped on their heads.
- Public Domain Artifact: Gungnir,
- Sanity Slippage: Erik Hellstrom lost his grip on reality after the stock market crash. He now believes that he's Odin.
- Spell My Name With An S: The mythical Norse spear Gungnir is refered to as "Gunokneer", presumably as a result of being described by Atlanteans.
- Team Pet: Oggy, the only new addition to the team, is an Atlantean "lava dog", a non-sapient six-legged purple reptile.
- Time Skip: While the original film took place in 1914, this one is implied to occur soon after World War II. Of course, the longevity provided by the Atlantean crystals means this isn't much of an issue for our protagonists.
- The Unmasqued World: The movie ends with Kida deciding to raise Atlantis from the deep, letting its people rejoin the surface world for the first time in millennia.
- You Don't Look Like You: Kida's face is structured differently than in the original film.
