Aladdin (1992 Disney film)/WMG

Genie was originally a human
About 23 seconds into [[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CBsQtwIwAQ&url=http
 * One of my co-workers is named Gene. Genie is just an extension of this. --Tustin2121
 * Troper's grandfather's name was Genie (spelled differently) but still. You don't have to explain the name.

Aladdin never wished for anything except Genie's freedom
Aladdin's wishes are, in order, "I wish to be a prince", "I wish you would save my life", and "I wish for your freedom, Genie". However...
 * The first wish doesn't seem to count; Aladdin has nice clothes and a procession in his honor, but he's constantly concerned with the fact that he's lying to Jasmine. Alternately, Cassim was already king of thieves at that time, so he was, technically, "prince of thieves", and the wish was null.
 * The second one doesn't count; it was a forced nod interpreted as a wish by Genie.
 * At the end of the film, Aladdin uses his first wish to free Genie.

Why Genie REALLY returns in the sequel

 * The first wish was either negated or never granted in the first place and the second wish was essentially a "freebie". After being freed by Aladdin Genie found out on his world travels that "by Genie rules" he was bound to serve Aladdin until his two wishes were satisfied. Note that on the day of (and the days leading up to) his wedding in the film Aladdin and the King of Thieves Genie seemed more powerful (and actually voiced by Robin Williams). This is because part of his duties have been fulfilled. Since Genie "wasted" one of Aladdin's wishes to save him from certain death the second wish will be satisfied when Aladdin's dead.

Sentient beings are exempt from the Cave of Wonder's "Touch nothing" rule.
Aladdin touches the carpet but the carpet can think for itself, just like the lamp can.
 * Someone on the Headscratchers page stated that Aladdin/Abu never actually touched the carpet, or visa versa, until the cave was collapsing anyway. Not counting stepping on it (It would be kinda cheap if Aladdin accidentally stubbed his toe on a gold chest and the cave collapsed due to it).

Cassim was not the king of thieves until the first film
First, we must assume the Genie is a bonafide Reality Warper, and his wishes are 100% guaranteed to come true.

Now, a prince is not defined by riding an elephant or wearing nice clothes; a prince is defined by his royal family. When Aladdin wished to become a prince, the Genie gave him the clothes and parade, but he also (perhaps unknowingly) gave him a royal family.

At the same time, Cassim became the king of thieves. He either legitimately became the king of thieves at that moment, or the Genie Ret-Conned him into having been the king of thieves for years.

The Genie was once exactly like Jafar
The blue of the Genie shows that he is completely reformed. One day, Jafar will be blue as well! Or he would've been if he hadn't been destroyed.

Aladdin and the Prince of Persia are on the same family tree
Why not?

In the first game, the Prince was from a "foreign land" and has to face an Evil Vizier named Jaffar--maybe this is some kind of multi-generational blood-feud.
 * There are such things as evil viziers NOT named Jaffar?
 * * coughpalpatine cough*
 * In the first game on the Xbox, there seemed to be expies of all the Aladdin characters. The vizier looked almost exactly like Jafar; he even had a staff and skill with magic. The Sultan/king in the game looked a lot like the one from Aladdin. The Prince himself dresses like Aladdin, except a bit more fancy -- after all, he has the advantage of not being a street rat.

The Genie is from Atlantis
He says that he's been in the lamp for 10,000 years. Since Aladdin takes place some time in the 9th or 10th Centuries A.D., that would mean the Genie and the lamp were either born or created some hundred years before the sinking of Atlantis, which is said to have happened in 9,000 B.C.

And who would have the ability to put an incredibly powerful being in a seemingly ordinary object? Why, the Atlanteans.

The lamp is supposed to look like an ordinary object at first glance, but it's still too artistic to have been made by some Stone Age hunting/gathering Average Joe.
 * He is blue and glowing, too...
 * Clearly he was bottled in an effort to shore up power before the Exarchs opened up the Abyss and sundered the Supernal and Fallen Worlds. A spirit of the Genie's caliber would be the perfect tool for sidestepping Paradox, as numina don't trigger disbelief in Sleepers.
 * He helped Cosmo drown Atlantis, that's it! (Of course, he was sealed in Smoof shortly after.)
 * Alternate theory: He wasn't really trapped in the lamp for 10,000 years. That's how long he's been in the wish-granting business. One of his previous masters appear in the TV series, even though he wished for immortality, he doesn't seem to resemble any cro-magnon man.

The Genie is Dr. Manhattan
Blue. Reality. Warper.

He created the lamp and the "3 wishes" in order to study humanity's desires.
 * Except Osterman is the ANTITHESIS of Robin Williams.
 * See WMG/Watchmen, under the " guess (spoilered for content). Dr. Manhattan is Robin Williams' Genie because society is much more relaxed about that sort of thing in the year 10300, even more than the difference between the 1980s and the 2000s. That's why Jasmine gets away with prancing around in a particularly Stripperific harem girl outfit, aside from being the Princess in charge post-first movie.
 * It also explains how he can bring so much stuff that doesn't belong in that place and time period. Guns, artifacts, types of arts, foods, and many many others. He is also goofy because Dr. Manhattan decided to try out being a tricker/humorous character.

The Merchant is The Genie
This might be All There in The Script, but the Merchant who opens the first movie and closes out "King of Thieves" is CLEARLY The Genie. Think about it: he has the lamp, his clothes are the same color scheme as the Genie's natural form (light blue with a red belt), and he's voiced by Robin Williams.
 * The Genie was supposed to be the Peddler, but the idea was trashed in the end.
 * Per filmmaker commentary: the original idea was for the peddler to reappear occasionally and provide ongoing narration for the story (in the form of more verses to the song) finally revealing himself at the end to be the genie. As stated, it didn't make the final cut. They decided it just was one too many endings to the movie.
 * The Peddler's final verse appears at the end of the "King of Thieves" movie - implying that he has been telling the entire story from the first movie, on to the sequels and TV series, over the course of the evening while you should have been at the wedding ceremony.
 * Not necessarily the animated series - the general point of said series was that it was the stuff the Peddler left out of his three-film epic. But the part about the Peddler being the Genie makes sense, and Kingdom Hearts isn't canon.
 * Just watch this!
 * Huh, Aladdin's dad looks suspiciously like David Xanatos...
 * But he sounds more like Macbeth....

Genie and Al Gebraic are former companions of the Doctor
It explains how a lamp that couldn't have been designed more than a few centuries before Aladdin's time could have been sitting around for ten thousand years. It also explains Genie's anachronisms.

Agrabah is under a curse that causes disaster to occur on a near-weekly basis if the princess is unwed by her birthday
This is why the marriage law existed in the first place. The Sultan never knew the real reason behind the law, since he seemed to be in no hurry to get Aladdin and Jasmine married after their engagement.

Once Aladdin and Jasmine tied the knot in "King of Thieves", the curse was rendered powerless again, enabling the couple to settle into a slightly less hectic life and giving Aladdin much-needed time to learn more about being a future Sultan.
 * Agrabah didn't seem plagued by all these random magical events before the series. This theory explains why it happened so suddenly and seemingly ended when they got married. In other words, you are a genius!

Jafar Is The Evil Younger Brother of the original Jaffar from the Arabian Nights
His scheming nature is due to lifelong jealousy that he could never be as successful as his brother.
 * Hmm, usurp your kingdom and get stuffed in a lamp but be technically alive, or be killed along with your entire family because you slept with the caliph's sister that he told you to marry in the first place? Yeah, gonna say neither one of them were all that successful.

Jafar is the younger brother of ZigZag from The Thief and The Cobbler
Jafar just hasn't been doing magic as long, hence the still-normal skin coloring and regular number of finger joints.
 * No, no, their mother just drank blue elixir before she had Zig-Zag and straightened herself out by the time she had Jafar.

The poor quality of the sequels was caused by a curse
Jafar cursed the franchise in revenge of Disney not giving him a full-length Villain Song.
 * Close. But it was someone else who cursed the sequels, and for a different reason.
 * Wait, what are you talking about? The sequels were nearly as good as the first one! (For once!)
 * They're some of the few Disney movies that fans enjoy and stick with for an entire trilogy!

Genie is a Twilight Archon.
Also, Jafar at the end of the movie may turn into a Dark Archon, but we see him only in a stage just before the merge. When he is sucked into his lamp, he takes Iago with him because he knows that he needs another being to merge with in order to complete the transformation into a Dark Archon.

The reason he as a human can become an Archon is debatable; either it has something to do with Genie, o the Xel'naga have been to earth too at some time.

The magic carpet was a former master of Genie.
They clearly had history together -- the Genie greets him as soon as he leaves the lamp. The rug is also clearly sentient and, judging from what the Genie said, several millennia old.

When the rug was human, his third wish was for immortality. The Genie couldn't figure out a way to give him conventional immortality, and so he simply turned him into a form that would last forever; a sentient flying carpet.
 * Perhaps... But we would need to assume some things, such as once upon a time Genie had more of a Jackass streak about him. Perhaps the rug, as a human, wasn't much of a prize either. (There were always clues that certain of Genie's rules he self-imposed because he doesn't like granting certain kinds of wishes, like bringing people back from the dead.) Heck, Carpet Guy could have asked Genie to bring someone back, inadvertently causing a zombie apocalypse that they used the second wish to end, (thus, forcing Genie to "kill people," even if they were undead and sort of didn't count.) Then the guy asks for physical immortality, And Genie, fed up, makes him a flying carpet. Still, after thousands of years of imprisonment, the two patched things up and became friends. Yeah okay, that could work.
 * Yes because when I think "form that will last forever" I think aerial rug.

The magic carpet was always with Genie.
Genie's lamp needed a guard other than the Cave of Wonders itself. An immortal flying carpet was created for that task. The two became friendly, and the carpet would accompany Genie and his master whereever they went. After all three wishes were granted and Genie returned to the lamp, Carpet would fly the lamp back to the Cave of Wonders.

One of Genie's old masters wished for a sentient carpet.
When he died, Genie kept it.

The Carpet was an unfortunate thief who found the Cave of Wonders
It was turned into a rug as punishment for trying to take the treasure.
 * Alternately...

The Carpet is the unfortunate thief who Jafar sent into the Cave of Wonders at the start of the film
Obviously not true, due to the Genie having known him back in the day, but still notable for being This Troper's personal WMG back when he was a kid.
 * ....Hmm. He was squashed flat by the tiger's head, so he was turned into a carpet. Y'know, I can actually see the logic there!

The Carpet was once a greedy carpet merchant.
One fateful night, in the gloomy light of an oil lamp, he made an unholy pact with an evil wizard seeking the powers of the gods themselves. When said wizard got cursed into being forever the slave of the lamp, the carpet merchant received his own ironic punishment. He would no longer step on others.

Aladdin is Sikh.
But if Genie gives him some chicken soup, he'll be all better! OK, pun out of the way.

Aladdin's father left him a fancy ceremonial dagger that Aladdin could've sold when he was a poor street rat, but didn't. Aladdin espouses many of the philosophies of Sikhism. Examples: Slavery is wrong. Marriage is a partnership that must be entered willingly. All people, from the highest Sultan to the lowest street rat, are beloved children of God and are to be treated as such.
 * Only problem with that theory is one line in the song Prince Ali: "He's got slaves, he's got servants, and flunkies!" Granted, Genie might have conjured the slaves for Aladdin without his knowledge.
 * Aladdin's hair is also far too short to be a Sikh. It's a religious requirement that they not cut their hair ever. If Aladdin was a Sikh, his hair would be long enough to touch the floor and it'd be wrapped up in a turban. In order for Aladdin to be a Sikh, he'd have to have been a very recent convert.
 * Also he never sold his father's dagger because it was the only thing he had left from either his father or his mother. It's literally his entire past and not something anyone would be willing to part with for a few coins to buy some bread.

Aladdin is set in the future.
In one scene, Genie notes that Aladdin's clothes are "so third century". Considering that the Genie most likely doesn't know about fashion trends while in his lamp, while also considering the Genie has been trapped in his lamp for 10,000 years and makes references to 20th century entertainment, the setting for Aladdin must be at least 10,989 AD. This not only explains Genie's constant impressions, but also why people praise Allah but show no other signs of Islam (degeneration of the religion after thousands of years). Agrabah is simply Arabia after an apocalypse, having lost all modern technology (except for talking parrots and magic carpets) and maintaining some Greek culture. This also accounts for the existence of bras and heart-print boxers, new world monkeys, and new world fruits.
 * One word: Brilliant.
 * Jossed by a line in the TV series where Aladdin says all of Genie's references are things that don't exist yet, similar to Merlin, so he mostly ignores them.
 * Which episode was that?
 * Mozenrath's gauntlet is fueled by nuclear power. The reason the flesh fell off his arm and he's so sickly is because of radiation poisoning.
 * This is also why Thundra and Malcho have Latino accents.
 * And a genie is actually a highly sophisticated Artificial Intelligence, either using holography and force fields for its appearance and powers, or actually being a swarm of Nanomachines with a Hive Mind.
 * The Egyptian man isn't actually an ancient Egyptian; he's a future Egyptian and Kemeticist (an adherent of reconstructed ancient Egyptian religion) trying to restore the Sphinx. Likewise, the Parthenon shown in the film was rebuilt by future followers of ancient Greek religion.
 * Alternatively, it's set in a world where humans have colonized space and Earth now serves as a tourist trap, with everywhere being a literal Theme Park Version of its most iconic historic era (which would also explain why Aladdin can travel to Classical Greece and ancient Egypt despite Arabian Nights Days being centuries later). The characters are presumably ignorant of their status as tourist attractions.
 * The SNES video game out right shows the Genie circling the carpet at the beginning of "A Whole New World," so it's possible that he might have been helping Al show Jasmine the world.

Iago is a fully fledged "Familiar"
Jafar is a sorcerer. Making Iago his familiar would explain a lot of the animated animal aptitude and his ability to speak. It even helps explain his feather fingers, depending on how much you're comfortable ascribing to magic.

It would also explain his general distaste at being treated as a pet.
 * Jafar was not a sorcerer until the end of the first film. Before that point, he was somewhat more like a chemist with really good hypnotism skills.
 * ...and secret lab accessed by hidden panel and machinery, with magical hourglass complete with electrical storm machine. Com'on, if he wasn't a low-level sorcerer, at least give him credit for being a halfway decent Mad Scientist!! I personally really like this "familiar" theory. :)
 * Sure he was already a sorcerer. His second wish was to be "the most powerful sorcerer in the world!" So the Genie gave him a few more levels.

The whole story is a clever sales pitch for an ordinary lamp, and the viewer's viewpoint at the beginning is Antoine Galland
You have to ignore the sequels for this one, but that's no big loss.

The peddler at the beginning is trying to sell a lamp as a fabulous object. He can't say that when you buy it you get a genie because that's obviously not true. So he spins a tale about a lamp that USED to hold a genie but then the kind-hearted individual who found it let the genie free.

The peddler has a gift for voices--he's Robin Williams, and so he can do all the voices Genie does plus all the other characters'. So far so good.

The original story of Aladdin did not appear in any Arabic manuscripts of One Thousand and One Nights. French translator Antoine Galland claimed to have heard it from a storyteller. The version we saw was the original version--from a storyteller/peddler looking to make some dinars off a foreigner with an interest in stories. The later differences in the written versions are a result of Galland's garbling of the clever peddler's tale.

Jafar transforms the palace to be held into place by the undead
When he turns into a genie, he loses the power to kill people or resurrect the dead. Thus, all his life-ending spells (including destroying the magic carpet and transforming Abu) were undone, and his undead were redeadened, thus returning the palace to its place. So no illogical no ontological inertia.
 * Jafar wished to become an almighty Genie, which implies that he will not be limited to the restrictions the original Genie has faced concerning wishes.
 * If Jafar becomes literally omnipotent, how can he be bound to a lamp anyway?
 * Jafar wished to become "the most powerful genie," not an "almighty genie." The second film makes it clear that he was bound by the rules.

Mozenrath is Aladdin's brother.
This one's been floating around for a long time: Mozenrath is Aladdin's brother, and was going to be the "family member" that would be revealed in the third movie. This may have been confirmed by one of the producers; but even if it hadn't, there's still some evidence.

If you darken Mozenrath's skin and thin his lips, he looks just like Aladdin.

Mozenrath was going to do a Heel Face Turn and get together with Sadira in the end.
Sadira and Mozenrath were both going through character development regarding their relationship with Aladdin. Sadira started out as the Stalker With a Crush antagonist but eventually grew into a valuable ally. Mozenrath, on the other hand, started out using Aladdin as a pawn and ended up having a particular desire to spite him (and later, Jasmine as well).

Mozenrath was being set up for an epic showdown with Aladdin or Jasmine (and possibly later a Heel Face Turn) while Sadira was being set up as his eventual love interest. (Sand-related powers, anyone?)


 * Now, while Mozenrath turning good is more debatable, him and Sadira would kind of make sense. Mozenrath knows a lot about magic, so it'd be safe to assume that he knows about the witches of the sand, and since they took their secrets with them to the grave, he doesn't have the specific knowledge of their spells. Now, if he found out that there is one last sand witch left in the world, that she's very close by to him, and that she's a beautiful girl his own age who got her heart broken by his worst enemy... he would definitely know how to turn that to his advantage.

Genie CAN bring people back from the dead...and has.

 * The way he words it when he's laying down the rules to Aladdin suggests that Genie can bring back the dead- but only as shambling zombies. (It's not a pretty picture. I DON'T LIKE DOING IT!) It's likely that at some point Genie had a master who wished for someone to be brought back from the dead. The result was so horrific that the master used his second wish to send it back. And probably used the third wish to erase his mind of the traumatic event.
 * That second wish would be invalid. Genies can't kill.
 * Can you kill them when they're already techinally dead?
 * Possibly he was SO repulsed that his third wish was "Genie, I wish for you to lose the power to resurrect the dead."
 * The Genie did bring people back from the dead- that was where the entire skeleton army in The Black Cauldron came from! Notice when Genie impersonates people rising from the dead- he's got the green stringy things that the Black Cauldron skeletons have!

Abu is a girl.
Note the lack of tusks in Abu's elephant form.
 * Nice job, man.
 * I am officially making this part of my personal canon for this movie.
 * Alternatively Abu was TG'd, in his elephant form (and maybe the horse form too).
 * So Abu's territorialness might be because "he" had a heterosexual inter-species crush on Aladdin, or possibly saw Aladdin as his- erm, her male, and didn't like Jasmine taking her exact place? I like this guess. However, it's possible that Abu was designed to look like a Nerfed elephant, since I doubt that even trained bull elephants are alowed to wander around rich peoples while still possessing tusks.

Jafar is a crypto-pagan.
That's why he ended up in the underworld of Greek Mythology after his death. He pretended to be a Muslim, because only this way it was possible for him to gain an influential government position in an Arabian sultanate. (This bears Unfortunate Implications, with Jafar fitting the "idol-worshippers are amoral" stereotype, but you have to admit that it doesn't sound too out of place for a story supposedly from a medieval monotheistic society.)
 * Then again, being Jafar, it wouldn't so much genuine faith as merely wanting beings to bargain with. Seeing as Disney's version of the greek pantheon is not the type of deity who would bargain with people like Jafar, he wouldn't be a proper hellenic pagan either.

Aladdin was the Diamond in the rough because his father is the king of thieves
So because he is the son of the king of thieves, that makes him the diamond in the rough; a thief who is capable of stealing one of the greatest treasures in the world, the lamp.

Genies do not use base 10.
10,000 is only 16 in base 2, so theoretically, the Genie could have been in the lamp less than two decades.
 * Highly unlikely. He actually uses the word "thousand".

Destane was planning to take over Mozenrath's body.
Just like Mozenrath attempted to do with Aladdin, Destane was going to exchange bodies with Mozenrath in order to keep on living.

Ali Baba is Aladdin's uncle
The movies and series takes place in an alternate version of the Arabian Nights where Ali Baba was killed by the forty theives but Cassim survived and eventually joined their number.

Iago used to be human
He's a parrot who can talk. I prefer the idea that he was a human turned into a parrot rather than him always being a parrot. My personal favorite theory is that he got hold of the lamp long ago, and he was a Jerkass then too. Because Humans Are Bastards. His third wish was to be able to fly, and the Genie turned him into a bird. Eventually he was bought by Jafar. That's how Jafar found out the lamp was more than a myth. He doesn't talk about it now because he's ashamed.
 * To quote Jafar: "If it weren't for me, you'd still be in the cage at the bazaar, squawking Polly want a cracker!" Given that Iago apparently hates crackers, why would he exclaim that if he was human-turned-bird? Are we going by the assumption that Jafar was simply mocking Iago, or that Iago temporarily lost his human intellect until Jafar somehow reawakened it? Furthermore, given that the Genie heavily implies that he's been inactive for ten thousand years, why would Iago still be alive by the time Jafar bought him? Is this also assuming that he was cast far into the future, or that a previous wish was a variation of immortality?

Genie's first two rules are to prevent him from treading in the realm of God/Allah/other synonyms.
Only Allah has the power to give life, and to take it. It is not the place of a lesser being to choose the fate of a man ("man" as in "human-type mortal". The same goes for women and children), with the semi-exception of humans, who somehow get both free will (which leads to the third rule) and predestination.

Genie can't kill anybody because a much more powerful djinni announced that human lives are collectively under his/its protection.
Just like the djinni of the ring (in the earlier Arabic/Chinese/Tibetan Kitchen Sink story) couldn't do anything forbidden by the djinni of the lamp, or undo anything that the djinni of the lamp did, Genie can't go against the more powerful djinni's protection of human life.

Genie didn't go complete on the "Make me a prince" wish because of Aladdin's "freebie" wish to get out of the cave.
Aladdin is hardly a price - he doesn't rule anything, he's just dressed like one. This was Genie's making up for the first wish swindle.

CHILDHOOD SHATTERING CONSPIRACY THEORY!

 * How is that meant to shatter one's childhood, exactly?
 * Because it's not just the big blue lovable genie but also the sexy princess and Aladdin himself, and everyone else voiced by an insane actor/comedian so hairy I have issues looking at him. In retrospect doesn't that make your childhood favorite disturbing?
 * Hmmm... Nah.
 * Nope. Why should it?

The material of a genie lamp in this world reflects the genie's heart
Genie's lamp is gold, which could go with him having a heart of gold. When Jafar is turned into a genie his lamp is black, which could mean he has a heart of onyx or jet.
 * Or coal.

Aladdin takes place in the Assassin's Creed universe

 * Genie and the Oracle from the King of Thieves movie are Those Who Came Before
 * The Hand of Midas is actually a Piece of Eden
 * Cassim is a Master Assassin who wants to teach Aladdin the ways of the Order, his dagger was the weapon that he left his son.
 * Aladdin actually is a skilled enough Assassin who prefers not to kill (Case in point, in the third movie he would have killed all the guards while pretending to be the King of Thieves quite easily)
 * The Forty Thieves are an order of Assassins that were easily turned by Sa'luk (who is a secret Templar looking for the Piece of Eden)

There was originally just one genie.
But as time went by, people started wishing to become genies themselves. Their motives were varied; Some wanted phenomenal cosmic power (and either didn't know or didn't care about the consequences), others just wanted to help people.

The REAL reason Cassim was after the Hand of Midas.
"Cassim believed that, with the Hand, he could return to his family and give them the life they deserved instead of one living out in the streets, and had instigated the raid so he could capture the oracle's staff and question the seer as to the precise whereabouts of the artifact." Apparently, he left the family for this. This one artifact. Which is shaped like a hand. And was supposed to give his family "the life they deserved". We also know that Cassim has a tendency, like John Silver, to completely put his family on hold when there's a quest afoot. Because who leaves his son(s) behind just to go get one silly treasure without more of an explanation than that? Crazy Cassim, that's who. Also consider that Cassim DOES NOT RECOGNIZE Aladdin at first. So he is capable of completely forgetting about a family member while on a quest to get something that was supposed to fix things for them.
 * Warning: Long post. OK, so common rumor among fans: Aladdin and Mozenrath were supposed to be brothers (which makes a heck of a lot of sense). This obviously makes Cassim their father (I guess when you're an antivillain, having twins, one good and one evil, is genetically obvious?). And then I thought about the Forty Thieves and their big goal to get the Hand O' Midas. From Wikipedia:

So let's try this. Cassim went to find the Hand--THE HAND--of Midas, not to turn things into gold and buy his wife and son(s) a beautiful life, but to get the life they deserved by RECONCILIATION. Reconciliation because the family was torn apart, and Cassim wanted to reunite them.

So Cassim was on a different treasure hunt (where he picked up his band, including Sa'Luk, who is important, especially combined with Cassim's "I forgot my son because of this adventure" tendency), when ol' Whatsherface back at Agrabah dies. The two boys are cast out on the street. Aladdin...well, we know what happened to him. On the other hand, Mozenrath (who was probably the least liked of the two; Cassim probably preferred the more athletic and outgoing Aladdin to his brooding, intellectual counterpart) knew he wanted power and set out for the Land of the Black Sand, where he met Destane, who, for the purposes of this theory, we will assume is the Archmage from Gargoyles, because that's the only way I can accept that a) someone without a name is more powerful than Xanatos in the Gargoyles continuity, and b) Destane could possibly SCARE Jafar. Because please. Jafar fears nothing, except what that Archmage could do with his 3 artifacts. Also, we'll assume Destane/Archmage left Agrabah alone because it wasn't magical, and that's why Jafar felt free to turn it into his stomping ground (if not for Archmage Destane, he would have gone for the whole Seven Deserts and moved his palace to the Black Sand).

Once you've bought these ridiculous assumptions about Destane, you can figure what happened next--Mozenrath becomes his apprentice, realizes he needs to find a source of power, attains the extremely dangerous gauntlet, decides randomly that it's a GOOD idea to enchant an eel so it can fly and talk, and then deposes Archmage Destane, making him into the first zombie/Mamluk. By this point, he's consumed by the desire for power.

Now Cassim is distracted by the sidequests, and he's like, "Oh yeah, I had a family...should probably get back to them." Goes back--they're all missing. So he sets out on a quest to go find them, probably becomes distracted AGAIN because CASSIM, and then eventually ends up trying to rob the Black Sands (either his idea or Sa'Luk's). But what is this? One of his estranged sons! It takes Cassim freakin' forever to remember Mozenrath was his son (and then a bunch of profuse apologizing for playing favorites), but by this time Mozenrath is too far gone--he refuses to accept Cassim's outreach for love, and probably tries to kill him. Somewhere during this whole brawl Cassim recognizes the gauntlet (he probably tried to steal it once, heard about what it did to a person's body, and dropped it like a hot potato), gets Mozenrath to take it off, and sees what it's done to his hand.

And so Cassim sets out with vigor to find a new artifact--the Hand of Midas. Not only will it turn everything to gold and perhaps bring greater power to the bearer than, say, the gauntlet of Doomy Dooms of Doom (OK, it doesn't have a name anywhere), but since it isn't a flesh-and-blood appendage, someone could conceivably replace one's hand with it, wear the gauntlet, and no longer suffer the gauntlet's effects.

Long story short: Cassim, eager to reconcile with Mozenrath, set out to REPLACE HIS MISSING HAND.

But then, on the way to get the Oracle, OH MY GOD I HAD ANOTHER SON!!! THAT'S RIGHT!!! Cassim meets Aladdin. And Cassim being Cassim, he COMPLETELY FORGETS ABOUT HIS OTHER SON AND THE WHOLE POINT OF THE HAND. At one point, he probably turned to Sa'Luk and asked, "Why are we after the Hand of Midas again?" And Sa'Luk, seeing his opportunity, replied, "BECAUSE IT TURNS THINGS TO GOLD, YOU FOOL!" Cassim's train of thought: "Hmm...I must have wanted this to get a better life for Aladdin, since he's the last guy I met that I told myself I wanted to remember no matter what sidequest got in my way!"

And then he lets the hand drop. But it's OK. Because all he's really done is trade in some useless power and a distrustworthy henchman for his son, who's got a good life anyway, and a new parrot.

Except that one of these days, Cassim is going to sit up in bed and yell "OH SH*T! I HAD ANOTHER SON AND I WAS GOING TO BRING HIM THAT HAND!"

OK, the lot is unlikely, but I was just thinking about why in particular Cassim was going after a FREAKIN' HAND. The connection is just sitting in front of my face...begging to be made...


 * It's an interesting theory, I'll admit, and a good connection with Mozenrath's missing hand, as well as the plot point that he and Aladdin were supposed to be brothers... but I don't know if I can buy Cassim being so much of a scatterbrain that he completely forgets why he's after the Hand of Midas in the first place, much less that he actually has two sons. I always pretty much took it for granted that the reason that he hadn't returned to his wife and son before was that he hadn't struck it rich, not because he'd forgotten them... besides, that freakin' hand could turn stuff into gold. Seems like a pretty legit reason for wanting to find it to me.

Mozenrath is the son of Cassim and Mirage.
Going with the theory that Mozenrath is either Aladdin's brother or half brother.I was thinking before Cassim married Aladdin's mother,he had a fling with a disguised Mirage who then took off without a trace.Then nine months later she gave birth to Mozenrath and she placed her son into the care of Destante in order for him to make her son into a powerful soccerer.

Jafar's snake staff is Kaa.
Sometime after the events of The Jungle Book 2, Kaa was captured and sold at the same market Jafar found Iago. Jafar bought both the snake and the parrot, then after putting a spell on the parrot so he could speak perfect English, he turned the snake into gold. However, even as a gold statue, Kaa was still able to hypnotize, which Jafar could use to his advantage. The reason why the staff has a cobra hood when Kaa is a python? Well, Jafar probably added it because it looked cool. If this is true, then this results in some major Fridge Horror when you remember and realize that Kaa was alive and conscious in there the whole time!

Mapping out locales from the TV series.
I've been trying to see if I can at all map the various locations in the TV series as parallels to real-world places. This isn't all of them, but it's a start:
 * Agrabah: central Saudi Arabia. Obviously.
 * Quirkistan: going back and forth on whether this is Libya or Afghanistan. The people and houses look more African (and they can't be the Sudan because that's somewhere else), but the "-stan" implies, well, that it's a "-stan".
 * Getzistan: Pakistan. Because it's the other nearby "-stan".
 * The river area in "In the Heat of the Fright": Sudan. It's a long river the Sultan wanted charted, which makes the Nile a likely candidate. It's near enough to Egypt to be plagued by Mirage, an Egyptian-style goddess, but the houses and people look more Sudanese than Egyptian.
 * The village struck with the Golden Plague (it had some Incredibly Lame Pun for a name, but I can't remember): Turkey, or what would have been Hittite ground. Aladdin had to walk from Agrabah to here to Mechanicles' home, and the quickest way from Saudi Arabia to Greece without taking an extensive boat ride is through Constantinople (though you'd have to ferry across the Bosphorous).
 * Mechanicles' lair: Macedonia, on the border near Constantinople. See above.
 * Land of the Black Sand: Iran, then called Persia. Weak connection, but "Xerxes" is the name of an infamous Persian king.

Genie isn't much of a genie.
When Jafar wished to be the most powerful sorcerer, Genie could have used that as the perfect opportunity to twist his wish and save everyone... but he didn't. All Genie had to do was turn Jafar into the person who currently was the most powerful sorcerer, in mind and body. As the most powerful sorcerer had not taken over the world, we can assume that he is not evil, and thus everyone would be saved. Genie just was a little too rusty at intentionally misinterpreting wishes.