History Headscratchers / Hercules

* Why is it that everyone seems to treat this movie as fact? I have seen classmates turn in research papers with information from this movie, the worst adaptation of mythology ever, without losing credit.
** Wow. Because they're morons. If they did the paper on the film as an adaptation then that would work but, yeah. Honesty, anyone who thinks the movie is true to the myth is a moron. Second Rule of Disney: The story's gonna be changed up ''somehow''.
* Who at Disney thought that this would be acceptable for a Disney movie? The Myth involved Herakles going crazy and killing his wife and kids, and that's not even the worst of it!
** Same people who thought Hunchback would be a good kids movie? :D
** And Little Mermaid. And Oliver Twist/Oliver & Co. It's Disney. They'll turn it into a children's movie no matter what the original content.
*** Third Rule of Disney: Anything is acceptable source material.
** And the story was apparently presentable to children back then. . .

* If you've read TheIliad, you know that Hercules lived before Achilles. No matter what Phil might say.

* If you've read TheIliad, you know that Hercules lived before Achilles. No matter what Phil might say.

* About Herc's contract with Hades. If Meg was injured in any way ("he promised I wouldn't get hurt"), Herc gets his strength back. Why couldn't Meg hurt herself in some small way to give Hercule's strength back? Like tripping down the stairs or something? If any kind of pain, big or small, counts as "getting hurt", it didn't have to be as drastic as a [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill a giant pillar]]! We could have avoided the whole drama, and then Herc could go and kick the fat brown Titan's ass like KABOOM!

** This troper recalls that he fought all the monsters he had to fight. (They left the stables out.)

** This one can be justified -- in the original myths he did the Labors to atone for killing his wife and children in a fit of Hera-caused madness. Since the Disney movie wasn't going to go anywhere near any of that, they left some hints in as a GeniusBonus and took the plot elsewhere.

* So did Hercules actually do any of the Labors in the original myth? The most we see is that he tames Cerberus for a moment and he kicks what's presumably the Nemean Lion over a goalpost in the Zero To Hero montage, but otherwise, he doesn't perform any of the labors that made him famous.

** I totally agree with the complainer on this one. It's one of the most argued points in the movie. Yes, lots of people pass through the Underworld, but this is Hercules, son of a god and the guy who could bust up a plan for total global domination. You'd think Hades would have been paying attention for his death. Also, Zeus (who seems fairly pally with Hades, even if it's not returned) mentions that the gods DID search for Hercules. He would surely have asked his brother Hades to help out? And sure, Hades wouldn't be looking very hard, but surely that would mean he would find out through the grapevine, as they say, that Hercules was alive but mortal.

*** I haven't watched an episode of the series in quite some time, but maybe he thought it was a different kid? Didn't Ares - as in, one of the gods living on Olympus who would have knowledge of the fact Hercules was alive - not reconize him until it was pointed out by Athena (I think)?

** This is an even bigger issue if you attempt to regard the spin-off midquel TV series (set while Hercules was still in-training with Phil) as cannon - there, he and Hades encountered each other in just about every episode.

** Hades is just administration. He oversees the underworld but doesn't know the name of every single person in there. Sort of like the top administrator at a hospital doesn't know the name of every single patient in his building. Multiply that times the millions of people who have already died plus the thousands that die every single day and Pain and Panic [[BlatantLies could just]] ''[[BlatantLies tell]]'' [[Blatant Lies him Hercules was dead]] (which they did) and he would just go with that.

** Hades is just administration. He oversees the underworld but doesn't know the name of every single person in there. Sort of like the top administrator at a hospital doesn't know the name of every single patient in his building. Multiply that times the millions of people who have already died plus the thousands that die every single day and Pain and Panic [[BlatantLies could just ''tell'' him Hercules was dead]] (which they did) and he would just go with that.

** Hades is just administration. He oversees the underworld but doesn't know the name of every single person in there. Sort of like the top administrator at a hospital doesn't know the name of every single patient in his building. Multiply that times the millions of people who have already died plus the thousands that die every single day and Pain and Panic -[[BlatantLiescould just ''tell'' him Hercules was dead]] (which they did) and he would just go with that.

* How the fuck does Hades not know Hercules isn't dead? HE'S IN CHARGE OF THE UNDERWORLD!

* How the fuck does Hades not know Hercules isn#t dead. HE'S IN CHARGE OF THE UNDERWORLD!

* How can Zeus not find his son? He's the freaking KING OF THE GODS! Why the BigNo when all you really needed to do was cast a "Find Hercules" spell?

*** And to be more specific, a Cyclops is not a Titan.

** Because the constellation and the recognition ("That's Phil's boy!") was his dream - yes, he trained the other yeuseus, but no one recognized them as Phil's students, and the one who they knew of had become a laughingstock because of that furshlugginer heel of his. The heroes got the recognition while the person who trained them to be what they became winds up living in a hovel in the middle of nowhere having to resort to spying on nymphs. The constellation would mark them as someone so important that learning about the origins of that hero would result in recognition of him as their teacher.