The Lion King/Trivia

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• And You Thought It Would Fail / It Will Never Catch On: Most of the top animators went working on Pocahontas instead of The Lion King, as they thought that would become Disney's next critical darling/box office hit.
• Refitted for Sequel: The Lion King originally had a scene where Timon refused to go help Simba and Pumbaa trying to encourage him. This features a scene that relates to Timon's overall "dream home" subplot.
• Word of St Paul / Word of Gay : Timon and Pumbaa's VA's consider them to be a gay couple.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Shenzi was originally supposed to be voiced by Tommy Chong, and would have reunited Chong with his former comedy partner, Cheech Marin. Chong turned down the part, and the character was changed into a female, with Whoopi Goldberg performing the voice. Cheech and Chong finally did reunite, however, in 2008.
  • In 1990, Nala had a younger brother named Mheetu, there was fox character named Bhati, there was supposed to be a Meerkat character early in the film named Tesma, and Simba's early cub designs looked different; Scar was unrelated to Mufasa at first, but they decided it was more emotional if he was family instead of a rogue. Pumbaa was originally named "Harold" and Nala was "Nadra". Nala's father was supposed to be a character and Sarabi was supposed to have a sister. For the sequel, Kovu was meant to be Scar's son until they realized the implications.
  • Kiara was originally named Aisha, but Power Rangers beat Disney to the punch.
  • The original ending was very different. Originally, the battle between Simbah and Scarr was to end as follows: Scarr would break down and plead for his life; naturally, this was a trap, and Simbah would fall for it, offering his uncle a hand, only for the villain to hurl him over the cliff into the fiery abyss. Miraculously, Simbah survives by hitting a tree branch, but Scarr fails to see this; thinking he'd won, he laughs like the madman he is, not noticing the flames consuming Pride Rock are rising around him until they envelope him and burn him alive. The sequence would then end with a touching scene where Simbah rescues a young lioness from the flames. Why the cut? Well, probably not because it was a dark ending (Scarr being mauled to death by the hyenas wasn't much better) but the idea of Simbah winning by dumb luck rather than his own ability might have stroked someone the wrong way.
• Working Title: Before it was released, the film was originally called "King of the Jungle."
• Cut Song: Plenty. A song for Mufasa to sing called "To Be King", a song for Sarabi titled "The Lion In The Moon", a reprise of "Be Prepared" and "Warthog Rhapsody", which was the original Hakuna Matata.
  • Warthog Rhapsody made it into the musical, as did the best known cut song, "Morning Report", a song which was also restored to the later DVD releases
• A "work in progress" trailer that was attached to the beginning of one of Disney's "The Fox and The Hound" video had a snippet of a different version of 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight'.

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