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The Legend

Fridge Brilliance
  • In some of the ballads, it is mentioned that Robin is particularly devoted to the Virgin Mary. Back in Medieval times, this form of worship became known as the Cult of Marian, so it is rather apt that his one true love happens to have the same name.

The Movies

Fridge Brilliance

2010 Film

  • King John swears on his mother's life that he will sign the charter (Magna Carta). However, this oath loses a lot of its importance when you realize that King John DESPISES his mother and probably wouldn't hesitate to have her killed given the chance.

1973 Animated Film

  • During the lines "Reminiscin' this and that and havin' such a good time" in "Oo-De-Lally", Robin Hood and Little John are each urging the other to go first when crossing a river by log. The brilliance? In the original tale, the two meet when Little John prevents Robin Hood from using a log to cross the river; that's what they're remembering.
  • Also in this film, Prince John decides to order the execution of Friar Tuck to lure Robin out, a suggestion by which even Sir Hiss is horrified. However, there is historical context to this. John and Richard's father, King Henry II, had Thomas à Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated. Where do you think Prince John got the idea?
  • Sir Hiss' horrified reaction is historically accurate. At the time, the Church was a powerful political entity and a noble didn't have the right to judge a priest (for whom the canon law was applied). Of course, Hiss knows that. And he knows the dangers of upsetting the Pope. Historically, John was actually excommunicated, and England placed under interdict, by the Pope during his reign.
  • While Robin is daydreaming while cooking, Little John tries to get his attention by calling increasingly extended forms of his name: first Rob, then Robin, and then Robert, using the French pronunciation (sounds like Ro-bear). It's easy to assume that this is because Little John is a bear in the film and that Ro-bear is a nickname. When you think about it further, the French pronunciation because they live under and speak the language of the Plantagenet dynasty, who are French and the language spoken in England at the time would have been an iteration called Anglo-Norman French. Not to mention that in the legend, Robin's birth name is Robert Fitzooth.
  • "The Phony King of England" is as close as Disney could get in a family flick to the real-life Bawdy Song "The Bastard King of England", which is similarly a disparaging song aimed at Prince John.
  • Also in "The Phony King of England": all the world will sing of an English king a thousands years from now / and not because he passed some law. King John's main (possibly only) achievement was to sign the Magna Charta.
  • A kid might not realize it at first, but the fact that Alan-a-Dale the Rooster is in jail too is a hilarious fourth wall-breaking. You can make the case that Prince John was so enraged and hell-bent on putting everybody in jail, he somehow even managed to put the narrator in there, even though he isn't part of the story. Seen in that light, the way we first hear his voice saying the beginning of his line, in a typical narrating, and seeing it being ended by a living character on-screen, is hilarious. The gag is not helped, of course, by the fact that said Alan-a-Dale has already been physically seen earlier. He even warned us at one point that it's his job "to tell it like it is - or was, or whatever," which already implies that his relationship to the story is closer than that of a normal narrator.
  • Almost all commoners in the film are domestic or wild animals native to Europe (apart from a few raccoons seen in the background, and a warthog at the archery competition), but Prince John's entourage consists almost entirely of African wildlife apart from the wolves. The brilliance here is that the rhinos, elephants, crocodiles, and vultures can be mercenaries that John hired from abroad. This can double up on funny if you think about it. It could be that Prince John had to hire foreign bodyguards because no one in England is willing to protect him. The only way he can get anyone to guard him is by paying strangers who don't know him and therefore have no reason to hate him!
    • Alternatively (since as King Richard is also an African lion), it could represent the nobility of this era being descendants of the Norman invaders, the commoners are native English. The Norman Conquest only being a century earlier, the Norman nobility were still ethnically separate from the English people during the reigns of Richard and John.
  • The final straw that gets Tuck to attack the Sheriff is when the Sheriff takes money from the poor box. While this is understandable, Tuck also may have reacted as he did because the Sheriff is taking a long step over the bounds; Church taxes had been a hot topic political debate in Europe for centuries (unlike the US, the debate is mostly over and most western European churches pay tax), but at the time the movie was set, the Church was exempt from taxes. Like the execution of friar Tuck, this was blatantly illegal.

Fridge Horror

2010 Film

1973 Animated Film

  • The Rabbit family scrimped and saved to give Skippy a birthday present of one farthing - the smallest denomination of currency at that point. That's like having to save up to give someone a penny nowadays. Now imagine the economic hardship that would create that kind of situation.
    • Money used to be expensive in and of itself. What you could buy with a penny 50 years ago was much more than what you can buy now, even more so in the time of King John. At this time people more rarely ever bought anything with cash, so cash was pretty much always for luxuries.
  • Robin is an outlaw because he shot a deer in the King's forest. In this film, animals are sapient people.
  • Robin and Marian drive off in a carriage. Little John sits at the front with a whip. It is never shown what animals are pulling the carriage, but again, animals are sapient in this universe, and the heroes are making them perform manual labor and whipping them when they go too slow (though this becomes less disturbing if one considers draft horses as equivalent to pedicab drivers or rickshaw pullers or sedan chair bearers).
  • The cemetery outside the church seems fairly large and unkempt... could the casualties of John’s greed be greater than we assume?

The Series

Fridge Brilliance
  • A minor thing with the first series episode titles: episode 1's title is the question "Will You Tolerate This?" Episode 13's title then provides the answer to that question: "A Clue: No".

Fridge Horror

  • Maid Marian's death in the show was already a punch in the guts, but the real kicker comes when you realize that she died in order to save the life of King Richard. The same King Richard who eventually gets back to England, only to bugger off to Normandy and get killed there, giving Prince John the opportunity to ascend the throne and become King. So Marian died for absolutely nothing.
  • Every adaptation of the Robin Hood legend which casts Prince John as the ultimate villain because he's "not the true king" runs into the Foregone Conclusion that he's going to end up being the true king anyway. The real Richard never had children, and when he died, the throne went right into his little brother John's hands.

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