History Headscratchers / Tarzan

** I always assumed that he was unable to grow facial hair (which, although improbable, is not impossible, even given his British background and his father's [[CoolMoustache sweet mustache]]), and that his body hair is too faint to see.

*** That's not how it's described in the book. But as a thought experiment: Slightly more likely but not much more. He would still miss cultural context, and picture books tend to be extremely culture dependent. Some easy examples: How would he recognize what a house looks like in England with only in jungle experiences? How would he recognize the nuclear family as that's not really a unit in Gorilla society? Can apes count? Also he only knows animal language which is extremely unlikely to have anything in common with human languages and even those can be extremely diverse (for an English speaker Japanese or Hungarian or anything not Indo-European is completely alien and weird in logic, figuring out their grammar from books not in a language you know... good luck). Well except if ''ape speak'' is [[CipherLanguage cypher English]] and somehow those apes are {{Civilized Animal}}s with a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture society eerily similar to England's]]. (Also you can actually give this a try: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undeciphered_writing_systems here]] is Wiki/TheOtherWiki's list of undeciphered writing systems. Choose one. Google scans, photographs of relics using it (the more th better). And you're set... you might have less to work with but have access to much more background information and resources than Tarzan had which evens it out. Good luck.)

* Well this movie is released in the 90s, when kids used to violent and scary imagery. thanks to the success of violent and gory games like ''VideoGame/Doom'' and ''[[VideoGame/MortalKombat1 Mortal Kombat]]''.

* To this day, I'm genuinely surprised (and a bit horrified) the fact that ''this'' movie even got a G rating, considering, you know.....Tarzan's parents' dead bodies, Sabor's corpse, Kerchak and Kala's baby's death, Clayton getting hanged, instances of blood, etc etc. I know this is Disney but still, I'm questioning how the hell did they get rated G instead of PG in some way. Nothing against this movie or the content itself by the way, just that I take issues with its MPAA rating.

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* Why would a biologist like Doctor Porter need what seems to be a full chemistry set just to study gorillas in the jungle? The clothes, silverware, and tea set are all justifiable to have on an expedition like this, but all those beakers and weird glass tubes don't seem very useful for a trip like this.

*** "Hear the animals" as in hear them speak English. "Tarzan" is not just a vocalization he came up with to identify himself, the Tantor and the apes call him that throughout the movie. Kala even says "I'm gonna call him Tarzan". If he can't hear them speak English, how did he know that the animals were calling him "Tarzan"? By the movie's logic, he would've just heard "ah ooh" whenever an ape said "Tarzan".

*** "Hear the animals" as in hear them speak English. "Tarzan" is not just a vocalization he came up with to identify himself, we hear the other animals call him that throughout the movie. Kala even says "I'm gonna call him Tarzan". If he can't hear them speak English, how did he know that the animals were calling him "Tarzan"? By the movie's logic, he would've just heard "ah ooh" whenever an ape said "Tarzan".

*** "Hear the animals" as in hear them speak English.

* In the Creator/{{Disney}} version, how can Tarzan be clean shaven? They never show him cutting his hair or anything. This is especially questionable since nearly every other human male in the movie has facial hair.

** Well, in the books, it's mentioned he shaves his facial hair with a knife to distinguish himself from the Mangani, after having discovered his human origins. Yeah, I know they are different universes, but perhaps he shaves the same way…
** He found the cabin. Did his father have a beard?[[note]]No, seriously, I can't remember.[[/note]]
*** His father had a pretty bitchin' mustache, but his chin was clean-shaven.

*** Disney put a lot of effort into making Tarzan anatomically correct. They brought in a professor to make sure all of Tarzan's muscles were in the right place.

* What I never understood is Tarzan's loincloth. Theoretically, a boy raised by apes would see no need for modesty. Unless he was made fun of because humans are roughly four times as "big" as gorillas.
** Because no one wants to see a nude cartoon boy running around? That's why Disney's WesternAnimation/{{The Jungle Book|1967}} had Mowgli run around in what amounts to red underwear.
** Not sure if this makes ''any'' sense, but creatures tend to grow when aroused, so I can see that being an issue.

** In the novel, Tarzan learns from the books in his parents' cabin that he is not an ape, but a man. As far as he can tell, the main distinctions between an ape and a man are that men wear clothes, and they also shave. So he takes some clothes off a native hunter, then discards most of them.
*** Except that it's implied that his interaction with Jane was his first encounter with anyone of his species.
*** He has examples from the picture books in his father's cabin.
*** There's no picture books in the Disney Movie, and he doesn't know about the cabin until after he meets Jane in the movie.
** I wonder where exactly he GOT the loincloth in the first place.
*** In the books, the first humans Tarzan ever saw were Gomangani -- black men, hunters from the local village. When he reasoned he was human and not an ape, he started killing the hunters and wearing their clothes and jewelry. That's where he got his loincloths. The villagers thought at first that a particularly nasty ghost was responsible.
*** At least in the Disney movie, when Kala first found him, he has a diaper on. Maybe they thought he had to have a piece of cloth around him for some reason based on that? Don't ask where they got the loincloth, though.
*** He was found in a diaper. [[FridgeHorror Maybe he was never changed out of that diaper. Ever.]]
*** The shipwreck washed up on the beach right? Maybe there was some cloth on the vessel- or that's just a really, REALLY dirty piece of a sail.

*** Tarzan bests and kills Sabor, a rogue leopard who had long menaced his family. Perhaps an early script draft called for him to don his fallen foe's pelt, but the suits at Disney thought it a bit too gruesome or vainglorious for a DesignatedHero to do such a thing (and besides, he wouldn't have the tools necessary to remove the skin or properly tan the hide, I wouldn't think).
** FridgeBrilliance: In the scene where Kala finds baby Tarzan, she ends up catching him by his diaper to keep him from falling into Sabor's clutches. Possibly ''she'' made sure to keep a cloth tied around his waist as a handle in case he needed to be saved that way again, particularly given that he can't cling with his toes well like a gorilla infant. By the time he was a competent enough climber not to need it, he'd realized it was useful to hang stuff like fruit and, later, tools from, so he kept it.

* [[ViewerGenderConfusion Dear God, did Disney want us not to know what Terk's gender was?!?! Seriously?!]]
** I came on the page and the first thing I saw was 'female ape Terk', and you should have seen the epic {{double take}}.
** Did ''everyone'' miss the fact that her mom calls her "young lady" and Tantor calls her "missy"?
*** In the Disney film, 'Terk' is actually short for ''Terkina''. Her mother calls her that at the beginning of the movie, after she calls Tarzan "freaky-looking".
** Gotta face the facts, I wasn't always sure what gender Rosie O'Donnell is.

** It's pretty obvious to me that what we hear throughout the movie when there are no humans besides Tarzan is Tarzan and the animals imagining themselves talking in English. Some real life gorillas actually hear themselves saying the words that they're signing.
** Perhaps "Tarzan" is the closest thing to a word his name is.
*** In the book I'm pretty sure it says the apes (which are more of a mishmash of gorillas, chimps, and extinct hominids) can speak, and "Tarzan" is his name in their language.
*** Specifically, it means "white skin". Mangani is the word for ape, but also for human: Tarmangani are white men, Gomangani are black men. Tarzan knows he is a Tarmangani years before he ever sees one, because the other apes have seen them and tell him about them.

** Tarzan is taught to learn English by Jane and her father yet speaks with an American accent. Having been taught by two British people, shouldn't he pronounce words the same way as them?
*** Maybe an American accent is closest to the accent an ape speaking English as a foreign language would have…
*** Except that if you speak Spanish, Japanese, or any other language, when they teach you English you would try to imitate the accent of the person teaching you. You could have your own accent thrown in, but British English and American English right out say words differently since vowel are not pronounce the same, he would had said the word coffee as "coh-feh" instead of "co-fy" in American English.
*** What's interesting about this is that when he's deliberately mimicking Jane and Clayton, he actually ''does'' put on an English accent, but when speaking as himself he does not.
*** Which would be believable if it wasn't for the fact that Tarzan said his name in English BEFORE Jane and her father taught him how to speak.
*** He didn't say his name "in English". He just said his name—the noises that conveyed his identity. Would've been a different story if he'd said "Tarzan", and followed it up with "which means 'White Skin' in the language of the apes", like some bar-hopping popped-collar douchebag pompously telling you that "Keith means 'forest' in Gaelic."
*** But the gorillas don't make sounds that resemble English, or any other language, in any other way. How would he pronounce "Tarzan" if all the others only hoot and grunt when outside the TranslationConvention?
*** They have a full language in the books.
*** We are not talking about the books.

** On a related note, why is Sabor even still ''alive'' when Tarzan grows to manhood? That cat was no cub when Tarzan's parents were attacked, and wild leopards are lucky to live halfway into their second decade. At the very least, Sabor should've been run off the territory by a younger, stronger leopard by the time Tarzan was grown enough to challenge one.

** We saw most of them being herded, for lack of a better term, into the cages they'd been using for the gorillas by the jungle animals; thus, it can be presumed that the crew members who ''hadn't'' mutinied simply carried the cages back to the boat and took them out to the ship, where they were kept that way until they got back to London.

* Was Terk ''into'' Tarzan?
** If you pay attention to the dialogue, Terk calls Kala "Aunt Kala" or "Auntie K." That makes her and Tarzan [[NotBloodRelated adopted]] [[KissingCousins cousins.]] She's also a good bit older than him, since she's old enough to walk and talk while he's still an infant and gorillas mature faster than humans. She also thinks he's unattractive, like the rest of the pack.
** I always assumed that Kerchak, as the alpha silverback of the gorilla group, was the father of most of the infants, including Terk. This would make her and Tarzan adopted half-siblings.
** Or quite possibly she thought he was ugly. They ''ARE'' two different species after all. It's like a parent adopting a chimpanzee and you growing up with it. Doesn't mean you're interested in boinking it. Because it's a ''chimpanzee''.
** In a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3ectXIOb8I deleted scene]], Terk specifically describes Tarzan as "a skinny, hairless, ugly guy." So, yes, even though Terk is Tarzan's best friend, she apparently doesn't think he's much of a looker.
** In one TV interview, [[WordOfStPaul Rosie O'Donnell]] did describe Terk as having "a little crushy crush" on Tarzan, though.
** Even with the potential crush built by years of friendship, Terk is aware Tarzan's not really an ape, and so he's not an option for mating, which is the reason Gorillas have sex. And Tarzan's the male anyway. If there's anything there at all, it would be Tarzan whose job it is to get the ball rolling. As an adult, Tarzan seemed aware that he's not an ape like the rest of them, but he just wasn't sure what he really was.

* What happened to Tantor's mother, and the other elephants? We see them stampeding off into the jungle after they mistake Tarzan for a pirahna, and then "Son of Man" starts to play, and then for the rest of the movie Tantor is all grown up and pretty much living with the gorillas. Did the rest of his herd ever come back for him offscreen, or are we to assume they just abandoned him or got lost?
** Tantor's a rogue. It's actually pretty common for adult male elephants to leave their old herd and live away from other elephants until they encounter potential mates.
** Ah, yes ... upon watching the movie again, I've realized that other elephants appear back in the water during "Son of Man". My mistake.

* Let's talk about something commonly referred to as "his father's clothes"; the decision of the creators to have Tarzan wear that suit when he decides to leave to England are pretty much unknown (could've been to cause a bigger impact when he bids Kala farewell, and/or to force him to get captured when he tries to escape from the thugs on the ship... perhaps just for the sake of having the jungle hunk clad in a suit too!), especially because no one tells him to do so; it's quite the enigma, but the real question here is: WHERE did it really come from? His parents weren't carrying any clothes besides the ones they were wearing (and doubt they could've elaborated them while stranded), it's nonsensical to think they'd be in such optimal state after 20+ years anyway, let alone fit Tarzan like a glove, and he certainly didn't get them from Jane and co.!
** If I'm remembering correctly, Tarzan comes across the blue blanket he'd used as a baby inside that house, and it looks to be largely intact. If the clothes were kept in something like a suitcase or chest of drawers or something, I could imagine them still being in largely the same condition, if not even more pristine despite so many years passing. And consider that his parents might've tried gathering whatever supplies they could get their hands on as they worked to escape the fire on the ship, or they might've walked along the shore and collected what they could find and use as it washed up on shore - if you were trapped on a deserted jungle island, I'd imagine cloth would be a pretty valuable resource. And as for why Tarzan donned the suit, it was basically his ways of showing that he was leaving his jungle home and family behind so he could go and live alongside other humans. (Albeit temporarily, as he later decides.)
** Really, the "why" is blatantly obvious: as far as Tarzan knows, every single human wears clothes. Therefore, if he's going to be a human and go to England, he has to wear clothes too. Mimicry is a pretty huge aspect of his character, after all. As for where he got them, the ship his parents jumped from washed up on the beach. It's possible some supplies and clothes washed up too, and they regularly went to the beach to scavenge them, thus having clothes in the treehouse. And as the above troper said, if they were kept in a chest they'd be fine. If they ''are'' his father's clothes...well, of course they'd basically fit him. Fathers and sons generally share common body-types (unless one of them does something to specifically alter their shape). And they actually ''don't'' fit him perfectly. If you look, you can see that the shirt and trousers are slightly too big.
** FreezeFrameBonus: When the corpses of Tarzan's parents are shown, they're wearing a fresh set of clothes that are not tattered, heavily implying that they did salvage what they could from the supplies that happened to wash up on shore.

* What happened to Clayton's hunged up corpse years after the events of this movie?

* What caused Tarzan's parents' ship caught on fire at the beginning of the movie?

* What made Sabor's paws stained with blood, thus leaving bloody pawprints after killing Tarzan's human family?
** RuleOfScary. In real life, big cat kills are pretty quick and bloodless (usually by either breaking the neck of crushing the windpipe). Sabor's pawprints are bloody to show that she has killed Tarzan's parents.
** That, and considering the echo of gunshots we hear when Kala discovers the bodies, and the likely-hood of it in general, Tarzan's parents probably put up a fight, which would've made it more possible for Sabor to swipe or bite at least once or twice, and then it would've been all too easy for Sabor's paws to get bloody. That, or considering what is said elsewhere on this work's Trope page about Sabor considering the helpless Tarzan a part of her kill, she might've gotten bloody paws from eating parts of his parents we don't see, [[FridgeHorror then, at least once, stepped over to his cradle to inspect the rest of the "food" she had in reserve...]]

* Why didn't it ever occur to the apes to use the typewriter to communicate with the humans who can't hear what animals are saying?

*** It's been years since I've seen any of the TV show episodes, but from what I remember, leopards can often be found among their own kind. Sabor might be a term used for a leopard that's so ferocious being on its own makes it a serious threat.