Film Theory: Ariel is RELATED to Hercules?! (Disney’s Connected Universe)

The theme song plays Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory. The show where I go to Hades and back to discover the hidden truth behind movies made for children. Speaking of Hades, today we turn to an often overlooked but, in my opinion, tragically underrated Disney classic: I admit that when it first came out in the late '90s, I didn't go see it because I was at an age where the one that "Psh, I'm too old for Disney movies. All the cool kids like Digimon!" Actually that's a complete lie... I never thought it was cool... *sad piano music* Anyway!

I finally got to see this for the first time and was really excited about the cool powers and the killer "princess song" of the Titans and Meg. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed not to see Sora and Sephiroth running around. Anyway, something in the back of my head kept bothering me. "Niggle, Niggle," he said. Something just felt wrong... "Niggle, Niggle," he continued, but then it hit me: the moment I saw that funny, oh-so-obvious Scar Easter egg: Hercules' father is Zeus, right? Zeus! My God! Zeus! And that one obvious fact has HUGE ramifications for literally every Disney movie you know and love.

Because if you thought Pixar had a

connected

universe

? Well get ready because Disney has been doing it for decades. And it all starts with good old Herc. Because the man who put 'content' in 'gladiator' is a literal blood relative of perhaps the most popular Disney princess of all time... I'm talking about 'Fish Girl', Ariel. They are cousins. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, dear theorists. Tighten those togas because you'll never look at the wonderful world of Disney the same way again. First: To show you how some of Hercules' immortal blood also runs through Ariel's gills, we have to run through a few branches of her family tree.

According to the movie, Hercules is the son of Zeus and Hera, and if we go by the standards of classical mythology, that is only partially correct. First of all, Hercules is the Roman name for him. If we go away from Greek mythology, like literally everyone else in the movie, his name should technically be Heracles. But that name just doesn't roll off the tongue as well. So, for the sake of simplicity, I'll call our hero by his Roman name Hercules and the rest of the gods by their Greek names, like they do in the movie. and the rest of the Gods by their Greek names as they do in the movie. (My apologies to classical music students with sensitive ears) (Just trying to spread the good word.) The other problem is that Hera is definitely not the loving mother of Hercules as portrayed in the movie.

You see, Zeus was on Olympus when he saw and fell in love with a mortal woman named Alcmene. So, he did what any rational person would do in such a situation... and he disguised himself as Alcmene's husband who was away at war, he went to Alcmene's house shouting "Honey! I'm home!" and quickly became a little demigod... This got a little awkward when the real husband came home *literally* the next night, and his wife was like, "What? You weren't...here last night?" ?" So yes. Hera was not a big fan of the half-son whose existence was a constant reminder of her husband's infidelity.

You know those two snakes we see strangle baby Hercules in the movie, and they're totally cute? Well, according to legend, those were not Hades' minions, they were sent by Hera herself to murder baby Hercules in her cradle. (Awkward...) I understand that Disney doesn't want to tell you that story... for several reasons. But is it really better for Zeus to father Hercules with Hera? Who, according to mythology, is technically her sister... *vomit noise* You'd think I'd watched enough Game of Thrones at this point to not throw up a little in my mouth when I think about that, but NO.

Hercules in the

film

is on par with 'Prince Prick' himself. In any case, the important thing here is Hercules' father. Which is Zeus both in the movie and in the myths. Zeus is the son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, the same Titans that, the Muses tell us, he overthrew at the beginning of the

film

. Cronus and Rhea had three children, who ended up ruling the three main kingdoms of the world: Zeus, who ruled the heavens, Hades, ruler of the underworld, and Poseidon, ruler of the sea. In Hercules, we find a lot of the first two, but not so much of Poseidon.

But rest assured, he is definitely there if you look closely. According to myth, Poseidon is not as active on Tinder as his brother Zeus. But he himself has several notable children. Like Theseus, the hero who kills the Minotaur, and Triton, the Triton who acts as Trumpeter of the Sea. And some of you may be ahead of me on this point, but if you haven't seen The Little Mermaid in a few years, let me connect the points for you: Ariel's father, the guy who looks like the mermaid Santa Claus, is called King Triton. Therefore, Ariel's grandfather is Poseidon and his great-grandfather is Cronus, the Titan who is the grandfather of Hercules himself.

Putting it all together, tracing that family tree, we will have Hercules and Ariel as cousins. Now prepare for the turn. The twist is that there is no twist. The twist is: there is NO TURN. *dramatic drums* It's cut short. This is not a film

theory

, it is a film FACT. A mythological fact. Some might argue that we have no idea that this Triton is the same Triton who is the nephew of Zeus, but his depiction in The Little Mermaid matches the image we have of him in classical mythology quite well: a bearded half-man, half-fish. , who lives in a golden palace under the sea.

It's not known if that golden palace has the same... Um... *clears throat* tower that appears on the original VHS cover of The Little Mermaid, but having seen my fair share of Greek art, I don't know. would say. Pass them on... Now, this is the point in the episode where you'll probably be tempted to subscribe. Then you should totally do that. Stab the subscribe button below with your giant POSEIDON FORK and leave a comment letting me know what your favorite Disney movie is in the next five seconds. I'm not going to do that five-four-three-two-one thing, but you know, time yourself.

We'll follow the honor system here. This is also the point in the episode where many of you are probably saying, "Yeah, stupid grasshopper, who cares? It's not like this random little Easter egg means anything to Disney as a whole." and you know what, as much as it hurts me to be called a fork, I respect your desire for the deeper meaning of things. And in this case, the deeper meaning is that once you start connecting Hercules and The Little Mermaid, many other dominoes start to fall. We've covered some surprising Disney connections before, like how Elsa from Frozen and Rapunzel from Tangled would technically be genetically twin sisters (click here if you missed that one).

But even if you don't believe that

theory

, at the very least, we see Rapunzel in the final scenes of Frozen, which means those two worlds are

connected

in both time and place. And what we covered in today's episode means that we can now link those two to Hercules as well. In that previous episode, we mapped out how Frozen's king and queen, Agnarr and Iduna, died when their ship capsized on their journey from western Norway to Germany. We don't get a clearer look at the ship carrying Agnarr and Iduna, but from the shape alone, it looks like it could be the same sunken ship Ariel is looting at the beginning of The Little Mermaid.

And geographically it makes a lot of sense. Assuming that Agnarr and Iduna were taking a direct route from Arendelle in western Norway to the northern coast of Germany, their ship probably sank somewhere off the western coast of Denmark. Can you tell us where the fairy tale The Little Mermaid is based on comes from? The survey says... *ding ding* Denmark! Answer number one! and literally the only answer because it's just a fact. It's just a...fact of an answer. The Little Mermaid originates from the works of Hans Christian Andersen, a 19th-century Danish author of children's books and fairy tales.

Now, that doesn't outright prove that Disney's The Little Mermaid is set in Denmark, but we do have other clues... remember Prince Eric's grumpy caretaker, Grimsby? Well, Grimsby is a Danish name that comes from the name that the Norse god Odin would take when he disguised himself as a human to flirt with women. Marginal note! What about the gods who dress their people to attack human beings? Do you know what the best pickup line in the world is? "I'm a god. I literally control some giant element of nature." You know what happens if she's not impressed with that?

Hey, she wasn't worth it, dude. You were too good for her to begin with. Now, astute bridge watchers might argue that Grimsby is also the name of a town in the northeast of England, which is definitely true, but it is also true that this town was established in the 9th century AD. by... Danes. Vikings. So, with all of these clues in place, we could be 99% sure that Hercules connects to The Little Mermaid, Tangled, and Frozen. And if you think that's as far as the connections end, you haven't seen anything yet. The Little Mermaid also features a couple of important characters we've seen in one of Disney's all-time classics.

At the end of the film, Prince Eric is about to marry Ursula disguised as a human, when Scuttle and the other sea creatures crash the wedding. In the chaos that follows, we see Eric's dog, Max, run across the screen. And for a split second, behind him, we get a glimpse of two wedding guests who should look quite familiar: the king and the grand duke from Cinderella. But now we're just connecting these movies in a long chain by saying that Hercules is

related

to The Little Mermaid and The Little Mermaid is

related

to the rest. Surely there's nothing to suggest that a film like Cinderella could connect to Hercules, a film about Ancient Greece that was released almost 50 years later, is there?

We-e-e-elll, look at this: in one of the first scenes of Cinderella, the King complains to the Grand Duke that his son is not settling down and is not giving him grandchildren. For a brief moment, we see that the king has three books on his desk: one by French Renaissance author Francois Rabelais, which makes sense given that the original version of Cinderella was by a French author, another by the Greek philosopher Plato. , And the last of the Greek poet Homer. In the modern world, only two epic poems are attributed to Homer: The Iliad, about the Trojan War, and The Odyssey, about Odysseus' journey home after the Trojan War.

And guess who appears in both poems. And guess who appears in both poems: Hercules. Well, actually it's Heracles because Homer was Greek, but we've already talked about that. The ghost of Hercules encounters Odysseus when the latter travels to the underworld in Book Eleven of the Odyssey, and although Hercules does not actively do anything in the Iliad, he is mentioned by name several times, regardless of which particular book it is, the connections we talked about. about today prove that Cinderella is set in a world where the stories of Greek mythology really exist. And based on the connections we talked about today, we know that those stories are not just stories...

They are not just myths! They really did happen in the past, and if we can connect stories as seemingly unrelated as Hercules and Cinderella, I'd say we're probably just scratching the surface here. Could Elsa's ice powers come from an ancient Greek ancestor? Could Rapunzel's healing hair have any connection to Hercules? Is the existence of magic in the wonderful world of Disney somehow linked to all these mythological allusions? Everyone has long known the careful attention to detail that Disney puts into its animations. But if we can put Hercules, The Little Mermaid, Tangled, Frozen and Cinderella in the same

universe

, can we really say that other Disney films are outliers?

It is unknown how deep this rabbit hole is. And you can bet this is a topic we'll continue to explore in upcoming episodes. Again, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few more questions to answer. As if Triton was Ariel's father... What happened to his mother? I think I saw it in Never Neverland. But hey, that's just a theory, a film theory! Aaaaaaand cut! Hey, if you enjoyed this theory in the middle of the Tangled-Frozen episode I mentioned earlier, be sure to click on that one.

Find out how Anna and Elsa aren't technically sisters. Or if you're looking for some more classic Disney action, click on the box to the right that will tell you the truth behind Snow White's sleeping death. It will literally blow your mind. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's very hot in my recording closet because it's stiflingly hot in California. So I need a drink of water before I pass out.