The Lion King/Headscratchers

Scar's pride
I think if Scar truly had a pride they would have played a bigger role in the film's climax (IE some lionesses who helped the hyenas fight Mufasa's lionesses). Though he was a big wimp, we surely would have heard about Scar's elder son. I think the fact that he was ALWAYS around and controlling the hyenas meant he was compensating for the lack of lions around.
 * To be fair, I don't think they were planning a sequel. You'll have probably noticed movies that announce they'll get sequels right after they've been released, tend to have ambiguous endings, or lay things down for the next movie. This one doesn't. Apart from the fact that Simba and Nala have a cub (which seems to be more of a reminder about that whole "Circle of Life" thing) all loose ties have been dealt with.
 * Though, aside from the no plan for a sequel thing, it could be easily explained that Scar was jealous of Mufasa and his pride for how it dominated the region, finding his own pride unsatisfactory. He chose to take Mufasa's place entirely, leaving his old pride behind, not wanting any memories of his "failure". Of course, being the blind followers that they were, they never thought that Scar had abandoned them, thinking that he would eventually let them come live with him. The hyenas were only allowed to come live with him because he had to hold up a promise he had given them.
 * As for the climax, there's the apparently fairly common idea floating around here that, at that time, Zira was either just about to give birth, or had just recently given birth, to Kovu. Thus, this could explain why they're not around at that time. No clue for where they are during the rest of the movie, other than the first response listed here...
 * It could be that they were off searching for food like Scar ordered the lionesses to. His pride only came back after the fight was over and Scar was dead.
 * There's also the implication that Scar lived on or near the pridelands; such as when Simba visited him and he told him about the Elephant graveyard. His the Hyenas (and his pride according to the sequel) lived in the "shadowy" place. Now the Hyenas apparently hated Lions but thought that Scar was one of them.

How did no one notice Scar singing "Be Prepared"?
Since the elephant graveyard is established as within visual range of Pride Rock, plus all the noise and lights, shouldn't someone have noticed?
 * Musical numbers aren't really happening.
 * Um, yeah they are. Remember, Simba attacked Zazu in the middle of his.
 * Which, I'm sure, really involved that fifty-foot swaying pyramid of random animals as well.
 * That was a wonderful moment because it was so intentionally surreal—once the musical number "disappears", Zazu is still somehow trapped under a rhino, with no explanation of how the rhino "really" got there, and the story just moves on.
 * Any songs are actually happening unless the movie says otherwise. Or are you telling me that Simba just magically ditched Zazu in some scene we never see? And that the hyenas just read Scar's mind to mind out about his plan to kill Mufasa? And that Scar's hyena army just appeared out of nowhere?
 * I dunno, are you telling me that they were singing "Hakuna Matata" for that entire timeskip? I won't say, as that other one did, that the musical numbers don't happen, but they are an extremely over-the-top dramatization of actual events.
 * It could just be we are seeing perfectly synced segments of them singing the song over the years. For it to be the group's motto you wouldn't think it was sung only once.
 * Point conceded. The musical numbers are a bit over-dramatized. I don't want this to turn into a Flame War Thread Mode.
 * It's not really the same but in Aladdin 2, Jafar explicitly captures the Genie during "You're Only Second Rate". So Disney Animated Canon songs being 'real' does have some basis.
 * In this case, as with the Genie's songs "Never Had a Friend Like Me" and "Prince Ali", magic is involved, so we can say A Wizard Did It
 * Chalk it up to "your basic Disney Acid Sequence" and let it go.
 * Are people here not familiar with the unwritten but well-established rules of how a musical works, and the idea of how a musical sequence works? The rule is that a musical sequence by nature is a metaphor for what's really happening, the emotional states of the participants (because, y'know, in real life people don't really spontaneously burst into well-written songs they make up on the spur of the moment to describe how they feel). As a metaphor they represent both what the people are feeling and things that are happening, even if what happens doesn't * actually* happen precisely the way it's portrayed in the song (i.e. in a well-choreographed dance sequence). So in the "rumble" scene in West Side Story there really is a gang fight going on, yes, the gang fight isn't "imaginary"; but nor are we to understand that the gangs really are actually fighting by dancing around each other in circles singing the name of their gang.
 * I'd argue that the canon just doesn't clarify which Musical World Hypotheses it falls under.
 * "in real life people don't really spontaneously burst into well-written songs they make up on the spur of the moment to describe how they feel" Improv Everywhere disagrees
 * That was awesome. Pretty sure that song wasn't made up "on the spur of the moment," though; looks rehearsed.
 * Actually, they could really be happening in this case. If the future king wants to have a musical number, you can either show up and do your part in the dance or you can put your species on fast track to extinction. Your choice.
 * The elephant graveyard is visible from pride rock, but by far not close enough to tell what is going on within it. The magnitude of distances on the savanna is misleading due to the medium; lions can smell who is about for miles, long before they achieve visual contact, so the pride might have been aware of activity in the graveyard, but not its nature. And activity, in and of itself wasn't particularly unusual. In fact, the geothermal activity within the graveyard, assuming it is anything like yellowstone, would easily mask the smells within.

After killing Mufasa, why did Scar not just kill Simba himself right then?
It would have been as easy, as sending the hyenas after him, and more successful, since they had already messed up the job once? And when they failed to kill Simba, why didn't they tell him?
 * I had the impression that the hyenas considered driving him out into the barren desert was as good as killing him—it's not like a canny meerkat is going to show him how to survive or anything.
 * Still, they could have at least mentioned that they had driven him into a desert and not seen the body. And that still doesn't answer the question of why Scar didn't just kill Simba himself when they were alone together right after the stampede.
 * The physical evidence there'd be pretty incriminating, no?
 * Have the hyenas eat the corpse. Tell lionesses Simba died in the stampede. Problem solved.
 * The hyenas weren't willing to confess to Scar that they'd botched the job, so they convinced themselves that driving him into the desert was as good as killing him. Scar's only mistake was in figuring that even those idiots couldn't botch as simple a job as eating one measly lion cub with three-to-one odds in their favor. Which is still a mistake, but not a blatant one.
 * The hyenas didn't tell him just because they were (probably correctly) afraid he'd pull a You Have Failed Me... on them. He'd have sent them back out into the desert or else killed them and sent others out to eliminate Simba.
 * There's a simple answer beyond "there wouldn't be a movie": Scar is evil and overconfident. He no doubt thought it would be far, far better vengeance on Mufasa to have his son feel crushing guilt and run away scared before dying in the wilds (and as the above poster points, no blood on his claws for the lionesses to smell). In fact, if it hadn't been for the lioness friend finding him, Simba would never have thought of bothering Scar. So effectively, Scar had killed Mufasa and destroyed his son's spirit (well, responsibility anyway).
 * So, um, why order the hyenas to kill him immediately after passing up a chance to do it himself?
 * Just in case. Besides, it makes the hyenas happy. Happy = less likely to rebel.
 * As demonstrated later in the movie, he doesn't care about their happiness. He refuses to deal with it when they are hungry. And despite that maltreatment, they don't rebel until he blames them for his crimes. They even fought against the lionesses at significant risk to their lives and if he hadn't blamed them for what he'd done, the hyenas would have gone on working for Scar, since he, unlike Mufasa, at least let them into the Pridelands.
 * I blame power-tripping, myself. As Shego once said, "The Supreme One Always Delegates." Scar was probably too busy enjoying his success and planning his Oscar royalty acceptance speech to wrap up the loose end himself.
 * Perhaps, and this will probably be a less-than-popular idea, he honestly couldn't actually bring himself to kill his young nephew. Even Evil Has Standards, after all.
 * How about this theory: Scar doesn't like to get his hands dirty. He could have killed Simba in their first scene together, but instead tricks him into going to the badlands and sets the hyenas after him. The most we see him do is push his brother off a cliff, perhaps he's repulsed by the idea of snapping the neck of a fellow lion. By the end of the film, he's gone nuts.
 * this troper always thought he didn't want to do it himself because he was like 'big stampede = big chance some one saw that'... Don't you think any lionesses seeing/hearing such a stampede would investigate WHY there is such a stampede? It would have looked very wrong had they seen him slay Simba. Some hyena's however...
 * Scar's biggest wish is to be a king, and what's more kingly than to proclaim the murder of your inferiors as beneath you and get your mooks to do it? It's simply one of the many times his narcissism gets the better of him.
 * In the original draft, Scar was going to try to catch Simba himself, him managing to escape in the end, but in that draft Scar was designed as a bigger, more brutish (I think) lion. Scar in the movie is a planner; he doesn't get his hands dirty. That's what his henchmen are for. My opinion, any way.

What did Scar do that made the Pride Lands so desolate?
He seemed to be rather intelligent, and just how can a lion make the grass dry up along with all the lakes and rivers?
 * Magic. The land itself was rejecting the dominion of a fratricide. Note that the restoration of the land happened even faster: everything was nice and green by the time Simba's cub was born.
 * Did anyone else think Macbeth?
 * Quite a stupid reason. it isn't Scar's fault that it won't rain, he can't do anything about that.
 * It was just symbolic... Word of God says so... just like it starting to rain when Simba took the throne, they're just stylistic choices.
 * Similar to both of the above reasons, it could've been like the Discworld book Wyrd Sisters where the land didn't care who the ruler was, as long as the ruler liked the land. The issue in that book was that the mad lord who took over hated the kingdom of Lancre. Scar's arrogance and disdain for everything around him counted as this.
 * This is awesome.
 * Part of Scar's deal with the hyenas was they could eat as much as they wanted once he was king. I imagine they took him up on that offer and started over-killing in the Pridelands (leading to the "the herds have moved on" comment). Humans aren't the only ones who can wreck local ecology.
 * One of my high school teachers claimed the entire thing is basically the myth of Osiris done with lions. The supreme ruler is killed by his brother and usurped. The injustice causes the principle of ma'at, or order and morality, to be lost. World descends into chaos. Son of supreme ruler defeats his uncle and becomes the new ruler. Ma'at is restored.
 * That still wouldn't account for the lack of water. That was just adding insult to injury.
 * On top of everything else, over-hunting a biome's herbivores leads to more grass, not less.
 * Let's assume the magic of Pride Rock ties the rain amount to the worthiness of the King; therefor, the draught was caused by Taka being a self-centered Jerkass.
 * It's a Disney movie. It's not realistic. It makes no sense that the rivers would dry and the grass wither just because Scar is the king, but he is the bad guy, so they use that to make his reign seem worse. For an in-universe explanation... maybe he was just unlucky enough to rule during an extended drought? And the other animals, not knowing anything about meteorology, made it to be Scar's fault one way or another.
 * Possibly Mufasa delegated control of the hunting to Sarabi, while using the other adults to keep hyenas off the land. Since Disney presents the hyenas as gluttons, it's not a large stretch to assume their presence meant that the lionesses didn't have enough food for themselves. Droughts happen in the Serengeti fairly regularly, and at the end of the dry season clouds do build on the horizon.
 * Alternately, maybe Nala and a few other rebels actually drove the herds away as an act of resistance. There have been cities in history who decided to prevent themselves from having children to spite their captors. It's not impossible the lionesses would have preferred to go hungry rather than submit to Scar.
 * It's inferred in the film. There is a drought that affected the Pride Lands. This caused the plants to die, causing the herds to, as Sarabi says, move on. Scar is shown as a bad ruler because he would rather stay in the Pride Lands than follow the food.
 * Yeah, given how savannahs are fairly dry to begin with, it's not unlikely at all that the second half of the movie just happened to coincide with a drought. A bit unlucky for Scar, yes, but not entirely unrealistic.
 * Scar went completely insane during his reign as king, that's canon. When your mind is slowly deteriorating over the years, your capacity for exactly how bad you can be as a leader will quickly reach Serial Escalalation levels.

Why, oh why, did Scar stop to tell Simba that he killed Mufasa rather than just tossing him off that cliff?
I thought Scar was absolutely brilliant up until this point.
 * Pride comes before a fall? Considering that Simba was precariously hanging over certain death, Scar couldn't have predicted that this revelation would give Simba the Heroic Resolve / Unstoppable Rage necessary to pull himself up using only his forelegs.
 * I always thought it was based on Hamlet.
 * But come on, telling him that you killed his father can only make things worse. It was of no benefit to him to tell Simba, while it would have been very beneficial to just throw him off the cliff just like he did Mufasa.
 * Scar was a bit of a genius but as the various examples of his great 'kingship' show he's carrying some serious psychological impairment. From the start he's obviously insecure and dealing with low self esteem, the guy is a prime candidate for bond villain gloating because proving himself better than everyone else is pretty much the only reason he took the job.
 * So kill Simba, then gloat over the corpse to your henchmen and horrified lionesses. It feels just as good and it's a lot safer.
 * It most definitely does not feel just as good. As someone who used to toy with his badly losing enemies in RTS's and board games (before I read the Evil Overlord List and became more Genre Savvy), I can say, speaking from experience, that gloating over your opponent after you've won, even if it's the exact same opponent you just defeated, isn't as much fun as doing it while they're losing.
 * Two points: Scar paused to gloat when he killed Mufasa: "Long live the king." And while he was ruling securely over the Pride Lands, with no challenges to his rule whatsoever, he couldn't bear to hear people even mention Mufasa's name; He was clearly unbalanced. Pausing to gloat before killing Simba wasn't the smartest thing, but it wasn't blatantly stupid, and it's consistent with his prior behavior.
 * It was extremely stupid, gloating before a victory is a guaranteed way to lose.
 * No it's not.
 * If Scar broke the fourth wall on a regular basis, this would be a decent criticism.
 * That's about as meta as you can get for a villain like Scar, and only the most Dangerously Genre Savvy ones would have that knowledge.
 * He's a lion. Hands up anyone who knows a cat of any description that doesn't like to torment things before they kill them? It's established early in the film just before he attacks Zazu that he torments mice before trying to eat them. Of course he's going to tell him, just like he told his brother "long live the king" before tossing him of a cliff. Otherwise he wouldn't get to see the look on his face.
 * I just looked back at the second response to this question. Pride comes before the fall.
 * Don't forget, the fact that Scar taunts his food before eating it was established as a specific character trait at the beginning of the movie.
 * Scar clearly lived in his brother's shadow. He'd spent his whole life being the spare, the only reason for his born in case Mufasa kicked it (which is probably the reason why Mufasa and Simba didn't have more than one kid). That's gotta be a self-esteem crusher. Then he becomes king. Considering how he acts after that, he's proved power makes him mad and his ego has gone up like 80%. If you think about it, it's not very out of character for him to want to gloat over Simba. Stupid and out-of-character are not the same thing people.
 * Put yourself in Scar's shoes (uh, paws) for a moment. You've spent your entire life being bested by your brother. Now, in one shining moment, you have not only dominated him, you've completely eliminated him. It's everything you've ever dreamed of, you've finally proven yourself, and now... you must never reveal it to anyone. Ever. Not even to gloat a little. Goddammit.
 * Really, it fits with his actions. Scar is on top of the world, he has the hero right where he wants him, with Scar's accusation of "Murderer!" tearing down Simba's initial resolve quite handily. The way I see it, he saw one last chance to break Simba mentally, mere seconds before breaking him physically, and decided to take it. Unfortunately, he wound up dealing with Unstoppable Rage rather than a Heroic BSOD.

In the stampede scene, why do the wildebeests run off a friggin cliff to get away from three hyenas, but charge head-on at a full grown lion?

 * Truth in Television. Anything that gets in their way is going down, after all it's not as if they could stop. No one ever said stampeding is sensible.
 * Yeah, once a stampede gets going, the ones in front better not stop or they'll get trampled by the ones in the back.
 * Still, since they're sentient in this movie, why don't they try charging towards the hyenas?
 * This Girl Genius comic sums it up.
 * It's not established that the wildebeest are sentient. Just because many animals in the movie are sentient doesn't mean they all are.
 * Maybe they easily noticed the hyenas but failed to see the lion. Brownish lion in brownish canyon may just look like another rock. They were also running in blind panic, so they probably didn't see so clearly ahead.
 * Further, everything seen after the first reason for panic is pretty much irrelevant - those who see the hyenas in front of them are most likely incapable of seeing over the entire rest of the herd. So they'd stampede in the direction of the lion, with everyone not going along with this developing a case of spontaneous crushedness.
 * The film seems to establish that there are varying degrees of either sentience or intelligence, and even that can be disrupted by instinct. Consider the scene where Nala attempts to kill Pumbaa. Nala is acting in the manner of a predator and Pumbaa instinctively panics (rather than, say, try to reason with her, since he knows lions aren't all bad, living with Simba, who is a lion). Nala then gets into a fight with Simba, which only ends when Simba identifies himself to her. He then introduces Pumbaa as a friend, and she suddenly has no desire to harm him, and he seems quite forgiving of the fact that she wanted to eat him. The fact that all manner of animals gather for the "baptism" of the newborn heir to the kingdom, who will inevitably eat some of them, suggests that the animals accept that they have instinctual urges which they can't fully override or be blamed for. The fact that the lions ruler-ship seems to be based on them using their strength and wisdom to maintain balance and stability, and the things Mufasa teaches Simba (who considered the antelope only good for eating), further reinforces this.
 * "...suggests that the animals accept that they have instinctual urges which they can't fully override or be blamed for." Unless, of course, you have the misfortune of being born a hyena, apparently.
 * Except that a Hyena DID almost fall for it's instinctual urges, barely being able to resist eating one of the "lil' sick ones" when the Hyena Trio was awaiting Scar's signal.
 * You have an entire herd of wildebeests and one lion. Most of them probably wouldn't see Mufasa and keep running. So, some of the wildebeests probably did see him, but it was either keep running straight ahead or get trampled by all the ones behind you who didn't notice.
 * Keep in mind that when Mufasa jumped down to rescue Simba, the wildebeests were swerving around the two perfectly fine (save for an accidental tackle or two). It was when Mufasa was DROPPED IN THE MIDDLE of the stampede did he get killed. So what you have is some random wildebeest running full-tilt, and then BOOM! Lion falls from the sky an inch in front of it. Obviously no time to go around, the wildebeest hits Mufasa, along with the one behind it, and the one behind that. It wasn't the wildebeests just not thinking, or not caring, it's a matter of having to hit something you wouldn't be able to dodge anyway.
 * Lions don't hunt 24/7, and male lions don't hunt much at all. A single male lion isn't likely to scare off a whole herd of wildebeest, which could easily drive him off by sheer weight of numbers; it's whole packs of predators—like, say, a trio of hyenas, which are probably working in tandem with a bunch of yet-unseen sisters—that they'd have cause to be afraid of. Indeed, large herds of herbivores regularly intimidate lions into moving away from waterholes, when they outnumber them sufficiently.

Does anybody else find it slightly odd that Scar is named Scar?
While it is a cool name, I seriously can't picture anybody naming their child after the result of an injury. I suppose it could be argued that he renamed himself, but I just find it odd to picture Mufasa and Scar's parents naming one of their children Scar.
 * He did rename himself, according to a tie-in book. He was born with the name "Taka," which is Swahili for "trash." Not much better, is it?
 * Yeah, I'd be pretty bitter too if my parents named me "trash"...
 * Perhaps he was The Unfavourite and that's the reason he killed his brother.
 * I figured he was born a runt, and though his brother always tried to show him sympathy and kindness (by allowing him to stay with the pride for protection) Scar took this as an insult and became increasingly bitter at his own physical weakness.
 * Scar says something early on in the film which is along the lines of "As far as brains go, I have the lion's share. But when it comes to brute strength, I'm afraid I'm at the shallow end of the gene pool.", That sounds like an admission of runthood to me. Granted, a runt with a tendency for bad puns but still...
 * At least it's not as bad as "Simba" which literally translates to "lion."
 * I'm not so sure about that... personally I'd rather be named "Human" than "Garbage." Of course, neither option is all that great, but still, the former isn't exactly an outright insult... at least, provided you're not of the opinion that Humans Are the Real Monsters.
 * Well, about "Human" not being a great name: considering that the fairly common name Adam is Hebrew for "Man"...
 * Actually unless my anthropology tutor is lying its tolerably common in parts of Africa (I think the example was Madagascar) to give new-borns derogatory names like "Filth" or "Afterbirth" to confuse evil spirits and prevent them from recognizing week targets and then re-name them with a proper name when they are older and better able to cope. No clue if the Disney writers knew any of this of course...
 * In addition, there is a name in Luo (a language spoken in Kenya) that literally means "thrown away", but in the context of a child who was born prematurely.
 * Considering there are no humans in the film, it's unlikely that the animals would have a concept of "trash" as being modern-day human garbage. Possibly "trash", to the lions, would be the inedible bones and horns left behind after a carcass is eaten, making "Taka" more of a morbid name than a refuse-related one.

Did nobody notice that all the good lions were golden and light and all the bad ones were brown and dark?
I mean, its set in Africa too.
 * Dark manes are a sign of a healthy male and are one of the things lionesses look for in a mate in the wild. Anyway, Kovu and the other Outsiders turned good, and they were dark colored.
 * Disney villains are often dark. Dark-skinned, dark-furred, etc. It's lingering racism, and the same reason why the evil hyenas are modeled after black youth. I wish I was making this up.
 * Those "black youth" would be Cheech Marin and Jimming Cummings, I guess. They couldn't have chosen better. To be fair, Whoopi Goldberg is black, but I don't think that was the intention.
 * Are you aware that both Mufasa and Sarabi and the actreess playing younger Nala are played by black actors, right?
 * Lingering racism or convenient color coding? Think about it - Disney movies are aimed at kids. How do you tell kids who the bad guy is? You dress him in black. Nothing racist about it, the color black (as in, literally black, not dark brown skin) has ominous connotations in most Western cultures.
 * There is no Disney villain that has darker skin than the hero of the movie (no, not even Jafar.) In fact, a great deal of them are extremely pale. The black clothes is just a traditional villain thing.
 * And since lions don't wear clothes... You can finish this, right?

I know it's a sequel, and I shouldn't be thinking about it too hard, but... where all those evil lions that appear on Lion King 2 were during the events of Lion King?
Things only get even more awkward when you consider that, apparently, Scar did have children...
 * In the canonical movie verse, Scar didn't have cubs, although: he made it clear he wanted them in the musical; in Fanon, Kovu is considered Scar's biological son; and logically, he would have to be. But as to the question of the evil lionesses... They must just be Les Collaborateurs, subjects who were loyal to Scar and see Simba as an usurper. The only question is why? Zira, obviously, because she was his mate. Maybe the rest are her sisters and cousins.
 * Well, Scar told the lionesses to go hunt and Simba's mom was refusing. Perhaps Zira and co. were doing that when the final battle took place.
 * You missed the point. The question is where were they the whole first movie? As far as I knew, Scar was only supported by the hyenas.
 * Zira not being there might be justified if you assume that, at the beginning of the first movie, she was taking care of Nuka (who may or may not be younger than Simba and Nala, but is clearly quite a bit older than Kovu and Vitani), and at the end of the first movie, she was taking care of Vitani and had either just had or was about to have Kovu. As for the other lionesses... Well, nobody ever said that all of them came from Mufasa and Simba's pride. Some of them could be friends/relatives of Zira who joined up with her later.
 * They were hiding. Behind Pride Rock. In other words: 1. The sequel wasn't originally planned and only came into existence when The Lion King was so popular, and/or... 2. The movie was too short to allow them screen time, and in any case, did you really want all the little kids to believe that there might be lionesses out there who supported the Big Bad?
 * We do see a lot more lionesses when Scar is telling the pride about the stampede than we do when Simba returns.
 * I figured there was almost a generation between Mufasa's death and Simba's exile. The first movie, the Outcasts were normal lionesses. It became clear in the second movie Simba was not a flawless king. Those lionesses who grew up with Scar as king, any who preferred Scars rule over Simba's, and those that became dissatisfied with Simba's rulership left and became Outcasts. Malnutrition lead to the physical differences.

Exactly what is going on with the Arranged Marriage between Simba and Nala?
As hinted at on the main page for the Lion King, it is never specified exactly how closely or distantly related they are, and Mufasa and Scar are the only male Lions shown in the film (sequels don't count as canon; look at 1 1/2).
 * In the play Zazu says it's a tradition going back centuries, without actually mentioning why. Maybe Nala's dad was from the mysterious pride that abandoned Kovu?
 * It's also not an uncommon practice for female lions in a pride to experience affairs with wandering rogue lions, or bands of wandering male lions (yes, sometimes they band together for protection), so long as the alpha isn't around. So it's not a complete stretch that Nala's mother simply had a fling with an outsider lion before Mufasa told him to shove along.
 * Sequels most certainly do count as Canon, or are you in fact Walt Disney and DO have the authority to make that claim?
 * How does that play when the sequel contradicts the original (the presentation scene is different between the two movies)?
 * I'm pretty sure Walt Disney has nothing to do with the canonicity of anything after his death in 1966...

How exactly did Simba get a full grown mane and those muscles by eating bugs?
Sure they're high in protein, but honestly... shouldn't he have been a little more scraggly?
 * Standard procedure for main characters is to give them 'heroic proportions'; muscular, well-built, handsome. Translate this into a lion and you wind up with individuals built like Simba, Mufasa, and even Kovu. Thinness, meanwhile, is associated with treachery and thievery, meaning that if a character is considered scrawny or otherwise thing, particularly in an archetypal story such as this one, they are playing an archetypal role and pointing themselves out as being dangerous and untrustworthy. Basically, it's stylistic.
 * Alternatively, Simba ate a lot of bugs.
 * He certainly did in Lion King 1 1/2. But I can't help but wonder if he was sneaking a little antelope on the side every now and then.
 * I always figured he ate bugs until he was big enough to hunt and then he brought in game. Or he used his greater size and strength to get fruits and vegetables which Timon and Pumbaa couldn't have harvested.
 * One Fanfic, "Chronicles of the Pride Lands", actually addressed this issue fairly realistically by having young Simba become violently ill because he had been living only on bugs and not the meat his body needed, and once he recovered he was then shown to go hunting along the edges of the jungle, that way able to feed himself without Squicking Timon and Pumbaa. The fact he was aided by spirit lions from the Other Side, and that they even gave advice to Timon to prevent it happening again, is where reality and the story part ways, but the point is valid. And I still believe this is what happened: Simba did hunt to get the meat to grow that big and muscular, we just never saw it. (Timon himself even points this out in one episode of the Timon & Pumbaa show: after something starts killing animals in the area, Timon suspects Simba because, paraphrasing, 'there's no way he got that big just eating bugs.')
 * He probably did what any solo lion who can't hunt would do: hijacked kills from smaller predators. We didn't see much of jackals, wild dogs, cheetahs and so forth, but presumably they're around.
 * When he was older maybe; when he was younger he'd have had to rely on Timon and Pumbaa to do the muscling for him.
 * Lions prefer to dine on...larger creatures, but will gladly eat bugs when herds are too scarce or too difficult to take down. Like red meat in a human diet, large mammals are instinctively preferred (and a dearer source). But a diet of bugs won't create a nutrient deficit.
 * Heh, DEERER source.
 * Heh, DEERER sauce.

Why do people keep saying that Scar and Mufasa are the only male lions in the first film so this means they are the only male lions in the pride?
Just because it's not onscreen doesn't mean it doesn't exist! They could have just decided not to show them as they had nothing to do in the film. I've only ever seen one Chinese man, but that doesn't mean I assume all the women in China mate with him.
 * Having even two full-grown male lions in a single pride is seriously unrealistic. Also, Scar wasn't very strong or athletic lion. He only took the title of the king by the virtue of being the only male around. He wouldn't have survived many challengers.
 * Exactly. If there were any other male lions around, they would either have to have Scar plotting to get rid of them, or we probably would have seen them trying to challenge Scar later. Given how crappy of a ruler Scar became, if there were any other male lions, even if they weren't Mufasa's cubs, then the lionesses would probably prefer even them over Scar.
 * Not unrealistic at all, if the males are brothers. Two or more brothers working together have a far better shot at taking over, and holding onto, a pride than even the most Badass solitary male; there's a pride in Ngorongoro Crater that had six brothers take it over, at least for a while.
 * Indeed, although coalitions usually top out at 4, something to do with being difficult to keep together.

When there's the stand-off between Zira and Simba and the lionesses after Kovu and Kiara first meet, Zira gets pretty close to Simba and Kiara.
Even with as fast as everyone could move, she could have done something to at least cripple Kiara, if not kill her or injure Simba, so why is there no threatening growls or orders of "Get back!"?
 * Because if Zira had attacked Kiara, Simba would have killed her and Kovu right there, and her plans for revenge would have been lost. And if she had attacked Simba instead, the other lionesses, including Nala, would have attacked her and killed her. It was to her advantage to not make any movements right there and instead, wait for the right moment to attack (that is, for Kovu to grow up, get close to Simba and then kill him).
 * Actually, Zira was quite eager to attack Simba in that scene until she noticed the other lionesses there. I think both parties were well aware Zira was too smart to launch an attack when she was outnumbered.

Simba acknowledges that Kiara is like him and he got into a lot of trouble.
So why does he send Timon and Pumbaa after her, since (a) they can't really fight so well, and (b) they're probably going to do something to get noticed? Why not send one of the lionesses, who could probably stay hidden and could put up a fight against anything that might harm Kiara?
 * Perhaps he's willing to let her get into just a little bit of trouble. He knows from experience that an attempt to completely restrict her will not work, so he just sends those two to keep her out of real danger as opposed to mere mischief.
 * But how could they keep her out of real danger? I mean, they obviously couldn't catch up to her if she just took off, and they can't really fight (except for Pumbaa's special ability), so what would happen if, say, an Outlander was trespassing, saw her, and decided to attack or something?
 * Excuse me, in the first movie Pumbaa lays out a couple of hyenas, and that's without his stench, he can fight if he has to.
 * Simba trusts them: Timon and Pumbaa are his closest friends and were somehow able to keep him alive to adulthood, so the have to have SOME kind of survival skill. They've got Honorary Uncle status for Kiara so they might be able to talk her out of something really stupid. If nothing else, they'd be able to find him if she got in over her head.
 * Mundane solution: the audience knew Timon and Pumbaa, so the filmmakers decided to allow them more screentime in this manner as opposed to using a background character. Kind of a shame, as giving one of the lionesses greater characterization would have given the pride as a whole more life in the eyes of the viewers.

== The scene where the hyenas capture Zazu and use the birdie-boiler on him could come right out of Looney Tunes: if it was meant to be realistic, there would at least be serious burns (and why wouldn't they have held him down until he died?). == Does anyone else see that as odd, in a cartoon that's generally meant to be realistic? We might as well have had Scar hit Mufasa with a giant mallet. (Granted, given that Timon breaks the fourth wall in Hakuna Matata, I guess we shouldn't take it too seriously, but...)
 * The line "not in front of the kids"... bugs me, because it could've just as easily been "Not in front of the kid" and made perfect sense.
 * At what point were the sentient animals speaking English meant to be realistic?
 * Oh, right, and the whole IJCWTBK and Be Prepared scenes are realistic? If you want to complain about unrealism creeping in try the whole head-in-the-clouds scene.
 * That we have a trope for Acceptable Breaks From Reality implies that perhaps some breaks aren't so acceptable. One place to draw the line is wherever the break interferes with the internal consistency of that which the audience is supposed to care about. In the case of the hyenas "boiling" Zazu, the question is, was his life "really" at risk or not? The problem is that the writers could have worked it out such that the hyenas "get" Zazu without subjecting him to the device that's (presumably) meant to actually kill him (such as by holding him threateningly close to it). It's almost as though they beheaded him, then his head "cartoonily" reattached itself. Well, maybe not that bad — but if all breaks from reality are okay, why not that one? Too violent? So is boiling someone alive.
 * Zazu's a Butt Monkey. Just as a Badass warps to follow the Rule of Cool, a Butt Monkey warps reality toward Slapstick Comedy. Therefore, anything that would lethal and dramatic to anyone else instead affects him in the most ludicrous way possible.
 * My take on it was that they didn't intend to kill him; it was just for laughs. You kill the bird, you run out of fun things to do with his corpse, you eat him, and that's it, but making him fly away and yell comically in pain is fun you can have again and again...
 * If the birdie-boiler bothered you, then Timon's hula dance must have sent you over the edge. Though honestly, that's one of my favorite scenes - even to this day I crack up at it.
 * Scar did the exact same thing to the hyenas in Be Prepared, and they weren't injured either. The geysers are mostly harmless, and since they live in the elephant graveyard the hyenas should know this (if nothing else, Ed has almost certainly attempted to drink from one at some point in the past). If they were trying to kill Zazu, they could have just bitten his head off. However, it's possible that they either intentionally let him go because he wasn't their target (if, as in the play, Nala's mother killed Banzai's father they would have a motive for killing her), or they used him as bait, luring the cubs into a position where they could be driven deeper into the elephant graveyard, keeping them on the hyenas' home turf.

When Simba comes back with Timon and Pumbaa, why didn't any of the lionesses seize and eat them?
Everyone was starving at that point. They didn't know that they were Simba's friends, at first at least.
 * A) They were all too busy fighting the hyenas to notice or care; B) they saw Simba didn't attack them either; C) they saw Timon and Pumbaa save Zazu.
 * Because Simba tells them not to (presumably), and he's the king.

The fact that Simba doesn't, you know, see Scar throw Mufasa off the cliff, from the ledge he's perched on, is fridge logic in itself -- what else would he have been looking at, at that moment?!
Even if we assume that he couldn't see them from where he was(and if he hadn't known Scar was there, he probably would have gone all the way to the top of the ledge), he would have seen Mufasa being thrown up into the air, rather than merely falling. But even worse, in Simba's Pride, Simba dreams that that scene is being recreated with him and Kovu, implying he had seen, or at least known, what had happened all along. What?
 * This can partially be answered by Simba figuring it all out when Scar says, "This is the way your father looked before he died..." Although that still doesn't explain why he was never able to put the pieces together before.
 * Watching the scene again could clarify this, adding what the above comment says: Mufasa rushes in and saves Simba, and puts him on a ledge. He then falls back in, Simba tries to spot him in the stampede. He sees Mufasa jump out onto the cliff, where he starts climbing. Simba then climbs up by a small, different route that's nearby, presumably to meet his father at the top. While he's climbing, Scar makes Mufasa fall, but all that Simba sees is his father screaming down to his death. Watch here starting at 2:35. He's very young at that point, but he could figure it out when he got older.
 * Since the response above me, I think, explains fairly well how young Simba could have failed to see what happened and thus not known Scar killed his father, I'll only answer the second point—first in meta fashion, then in-universe. On a pure storymaking level, it makes sense for the creators of Simba's Pride to depict the exact positions of Simba and Kovu to mirror Mufasa and Scar: it's both a Continuity Nod to the first movie and it makes the scene more dramatic and freaky. Within the movie world, there's the fact it's a nightmare where things don't have to make sense... and the fact that, once Simba figured out from Scar's confession what had really happened, his imagination filled in what he didn't get to see. The fact this happened to be so close to reality is just "coincidence". Though note that, either due to the lower budget for TV animation or perhaps the animators not having full access to the original sequence, it actually isn't identical to Mufasa's last moments. This could, again, be chalked up to creative license or to Simba imagining what had happened without actually seeing it himself.
 * And another thing: Mufasa wasn't thrown off the cliff. He fell, caught himself, and then Scar dislodged his grip while he was hanging onto the ledge.

What was Scar hoping to gain by attacking Simba after being given a chance to run away and never return?
His kingship couldn't have been too pleasant at that point. Aside from the fact that the lionesses had pretty much withdrawn consent for his rule before Simba even got there and the hyenas were getting pretty hungry and angry as well, he had just revealed to all the lionesses that he had killed Mufasa, betrayed the hyenas to Simba, and the kingdom was literally burning down around him. Not to mention how old and weak he should have been at that point, compared to Simba. Even if he had killed Simba, he would have been devoured immediately afterward.
 * He had nowhere to go and nothing left to do, and that wretched youngster had just come and bereft him of everything he had and, worst of all, he reminded him of Mufasa!!! Also, perhaps, if he killed Simba, he could have claimed the throne again, this time by the club law.
 * It was Simba telling Scar to run, run away and never return that caused Scar to attack. These are the exact words Scar uttered to Simba after Mufasa’s death, Scar followed up this line by ordering the hyenas to kill Simba. In Scar’s mind, Simba is going to allow Scar to start running and is then going to sic the lionesses on him. You can see this idea form in Scar’s mind when Simba utters the line to him, his entire demeanor changers and he gets a look of desperation on his face, in Scar’s twisted little head, attacking Simba is his last chance to get out of his mess alive.
 * I've supported this theory for years.

How could Scar have hand-picked Kovu to be his heir when he (assumedly) wasn't born until after Scar had died?
During the confrontation after Kovu and Kiara meet, Zira says Kovu was hand-chosen by Scar AND the last kitten to be born before her group was banished. Now, this implies that they left after Scar was killed. Kovu is obviously the same age as Kiara, within a few months, since he's the same size and cats - lions - grow at a fairly different rate after the first few months, depending on gender. I'm guessing Simba took a few months to get the Pride Lands back to normal before he could focus on taking care of any possible treachery within the pride - this is assuming that at the end of the first movie, the Pride Lands going back to being green takes a few months after he becomes king, and the fade is just a time-skip shown in one shot. So, how could Scar have hand-picked Kovu to be his heir when he (assumedly) wasn't born until after Scar had died?
 * Scar could have said, 'The next cub who is born will be my heir' and Zira is exaggerating, or Zira could just be flat-out lying (to herself, even).
 * Alternatively, none of the disloyal lionesses gave birth after Simba took power. Kovu may have been born not long before Simba's return.
 * Maybe Nala and Simba really did Feel the Love that Night and Nala was already pregnant by the time they got back. Kovu could have either been just born or Zira was nearly due (in which case Scar had told her that this baby would be heir). Either one is a good reason why we didn't see her in the fight; in the former she couldn't risk leaving Kovu alone, in the latter she couldn't risk the baby getting hurt.
 * As far as Simba and Nala "feeling the love that night" goes, it wouldn't be the first time Disney implied something like that.
 * The directors' commentary actually does confirm that Simba and Nala were "feeling the love that night" during that scene. While it isn't confirmed she actually got pregnant their first time, the fact we see a cub at the end of the movie would seem to suggest she did. In which case, if Zira was indeed already pregnant when Simba returned to overthrow Scar, she and Nala would have had their cubs close together (Kovu being born first would explain why he was a little bigger and bulkier) and the passage of time would allow for the dry season to end, the herds to return, and the land to recover. In which case, Scar could indeed have said her next cub would be his heir before he died.

Why are TERMITES bothering Nuka? Shouldn't it be fleas?

 * Since he lives in a termite mound, they just happen to be crawling over him all the time.

Who was Kiara supposed to hook up with if she hadn't met Kovu?
Okay, so... There's no male cubs shown in the Pride Lands pride during the second movie. Ever. Not even in the background. So... who would ensure more cubs if Simba died?
 * Well, that was a lucky break then, wasn't it?
 * Well, another thing I just realized. There's no other cubs shown at all. It's no wonder she's so Rebellious Princess - she never really had any friends besides Timon and Pumbaa, who were more her babysitters than anything.
 * A Rebellious Princess who never had any real friends, huh?
 * I always imagined matured male lions who weren't in line for the kingship would go off to find prides in this very situation. Or, if they were too old for the queen-to-be, they'd mate with one of the other lionesses and the first son to be produced would marry the queen.
 * Given how there's the relatively common theory that Nala was a "gift" from another pride, Simba could have gone and found a pride that had a lot of male cubs in it and arranged a marriage for Kiara.

Aside from sentience and the ability to talk with other species, most of the animals are not very anthropomorphized - except Rafiki.
He paints, carries a complex (by animal standards) tool, and has religious beliefs. They could probably have made Rafiki an actual human shaman, and it wouldn't have changed much. In short, Rafiki is smarter because Baboons are smarter than lions and hyenas and so on.
 * Yes, it would. It would have spawned more questions. Such as: where are all the other humans? Where did he come from? How come he can talk with other animals(okay, shaman, I got it...)? And so forth... Also, putting a human in a furry movie would instinctively call forth the matter of Humans Are the Real Monsters.
 * It's a movie about animals. While humans are technically animals, most people don't think of them that way. Also, Simba and Mufasa both have religious beliefs; they think the kings of their past live on and watch them and guide them from the stars (and if Musafa's cloud appearance is anything to go by, those beliefs are correct).
 * My theory on this is that the animals in Lion King have a specific boost of what they are compared to real life. If that was hard to understand, picture this: animal' intelligence is a number. let's have Monkeys be a 6, lions a 5, and antelope a 2. In Lion King, We'll add 3 to the intelligence. Monkeys, like Rafiki, become 9, which would be religious belief and whatnot. Lions would then be 8, which is talking, drama, an so on. Antelope become only 5, which is simple.

Do Nala's eyes change colors or was it a coloring mistake?
Minor irk, but I re-watched the original movie and Simba's Pride the other day out of boredom, and I noticed Nala had green eyes in the original but has blue eyes in Simba's Pride.
 * Definitely a mistake. Simba's Pride had some notable differences in coloring compared to the original—Timon, for example, looks like he's spent too much time in the sun and gotten an impressive tan after the original movie.
 * Simba's nose also changed color. In The Lion King it's orange, but in Simba's Pride it's turned purple-pink. I know that a lion SHOULD have a pinkish nose, but couple it with the gradient on his muzzle and it makes him look like he has a cold.
 * Much of the color palette of LK 2 is pinkish. Not a change of which this troper is fond.
 * Looking at some screenshots, Simba's nose is pink in the original film and a darker purple-pink in the sequel, which leads to some Fridge Brilliance as lions' noses in real life do get darker as they age. If Disney was going this consciously, Simba's nose would be close to black a few years down the line.
 * Even in the first movie, sometimes it looks like Nala's eyes are blue instead of green. Maybe it was just a mistake at first, but then the animators decided to just go with it for the second movie.

Just a bit of Fridge Logic regarding the wildebeest stampede.
The large number indicates that the area was experiencing the annual migrations, which, in real life, is pretty much party time for African predators. Why, then, did the hyenas listen to Scar's food promises when they could easily sneak off enough prey to keep them going for months?
 * Hyenas are stupid (in this film anyway) and probably didn't think about the plan longer than five seconds. They just heard "You'll never go hungry again" and were like "Awesome!!" Besides, weren't the hyenas being oppressed by the lions other than Scar?
 * WHAT?! That would mean that Mufasa and his people were MEAN! They are the heroes' family! Obviously, the hyenas are poor hunters and couldn't fend for themselves without Scar.
 * Or that the hyenas were just lazy. After all we did see them receiving meat from Scar (which begs the question of where he got it from—is he a better hunter than we think, or did he make use of the male/ruler prerogative to take his dinner before the lionesses and cubs?). Maybe they became so dependent on Scar that they wouldn't hunt any more. Also, by the time they may have realized they should have snuck food from the migrating herds, those herds were already gone. Scar's promises would have made them wait if they believed the herds would come back—it's not like they had any more indication a drought was coming than anybody else. As for the other lions...I'm not so sure 'keeping hyenas out of their territory' and 'keeping them from taking their food' counts as oppression. There were surely other places the hyenas could go for food...and while it may be true the lions had taken the choicest lands and herds, if the hyenas fixated on that to the exclusion of all else simply because they couldn't have it, well...
 * The Pridelands, which are controlled by the lions, are the only fertile grasslands seen in the area. You have the elephant graveyard, which is devoid of any vegetation and a desert bordering the Pridelands, neither of which any herds would want to go to. Thus, the herds are only going to stay in the Pridelands. The hyenas are forbidden from the Pridelands and the mere sighting of one of them is enough to send Mufasa charging off, so hunting there was out of the question unless they wanted to get mauled by a lion out of sheer principle.

What kind of freaky canyon is Be Prepared taking place in?
First it's glowing green like Half Life radiation or something, and then it turns red. The rocks rising and the fissures and such can be said for dramatic effect, and I guess the red light could be classified as that too. But what was the green stuff? That around a while before the song started. Are there places in Africa with geysers that shoot out streams of glowing, green water?
 * Well, think about it. Has any Disney Villain Song included special effects that are completely realistic? Besides, without all that, Scar's song wouldn't be as catchy and/or creepy.
 * Don't forget, it turns yellow in between being green and red. Though that looks like it could just have been fire...
 * C'mon guys! Scar was calling in a favor Dr. Facilier owed him!
 * The movie could be taking place along the African Rift Valley, which is seismically and volcanically active as a result of the African plate and the one beside it slowly moving apart. As for the green water, ya got me.

This Troper just realized something that's less an IJBM and more a I want to make sure I'm not crazy thing.
It appears that Scar doesn't live in/on Pride Rock in the first movie, even if he is in the Pridelands. Now, the only reason I can think of for this is that it helps keep any males besides the king away from any in-heat females. So, does it make sense to anyone else that, aside from the king and cubs, any male lions have to live away from Pride Rock itself to keep the lionesses from having anyone else's cubs? It would also explain why we never see any other male lions, too, somewhat. Also, just to clarify some points I just thought of. The king, as a ruler, has more control over his instincts than other males, which could explain his being allowed to share a cave with the lionesses. This could also help prevent anyone taking advantage if there's a queen but no king yet, as would've been Kiara's case if not for Kovu. I still think that the lions in The Lion King are monogamous, just that males outside the leadership have some control problems. This also possibly brings up Unfortunate Implications about Scar's actions during his time as king, when you consider some lines from the second movie, so try not to think about it too hard.
 * That...is a very interesting theory! And entirely possible. Although for the record, in a Fanfic I originally intended to write but abandoned telling Scar and Mufasa's cubhood, I was going to say Mufasa banished Scar to the kopje where he lived after some nefarious doings. (One reason I nixed it was because I realized it didn't make sense—even if Scar had never done anything to make Mufasa think he'd actually resort to murder to get what he wanted, whatever nefarious things he did would make Mufasa not trust Scar—certainly not enough to let Simba visit him). A more plausible alternative is Scar chose to live on that kopje so as to not have his muzzle rubbed in Mufasa's kingship all the time. Out of sight, out of mind...
 * Scar was a loner, he 'wanted' to be alone. Also, I fail to see how much good Scar would be against a rogue lion, he's not exactly heavily built.

Why was the reprise of "Be Prepared" cut?
I thought it was badass... the hyenas sound scarier singing in chorus there than they do at any point during the final cut.
 * Because it'd mean a delay from when Mufasa dies to the lionesses accepting, and then rejecting Scar to the point he has to let the hyenas in. In between, you'd have the questions of why the lionesses let Scar take over without question and what the hyenas thought of Scar seemingly dropping their end of the deal. Badass as the song was, of course.
 * They'd have to accept him because he was the only male around. Hell, this could happen withing weeks or months, it doesn't have to be years afterwards.

When Scar became king and took over the pride, why didn't he kill all of the cubs?
That's what male lions do when they take control of a pride, to ensure that all the children in the pride will be theirs and propagate their genes, but Scar clearly didn't do it because Nala is still alive years later.
 * He's got less of a compulsion to kill ALL of the cubs, since Mufasa was his brother, and all. Could also give credence to the idea that Nala was his daughter.
 * In addition, the males try to kill all the cubs, but the females don't go along with it. The mothers try to protect their cubs, regardless of who their father is, and the lions usually don't go looking to pick a fight with the lionesses unless they must, so they'll wait until mom is out getting dinner before trying to kill the cubs - this seems like it would absolutely be the case with Scar, who was more brains than brawn. It's possible that Nala just had the magic combination of being lucky, very good at hiding, and a mom who was very good at keeping her alive.

In the end of the midquel, when Simba hugs Timon and Pumbaa after the fight with Scar, did he somehow have a huge bruise across the top of his nose showing through his fur?
I always thought it was shadow from the rocks above, or didn't notice, but it was really purple (far more than any other shadows there) and moved with him.

Scar lets dozens of hyenas move into the Pride Lands after he takes power, but only three of them actually helped him in any way.
He didn't have a 'debt' to any of the others, and if he hadn't brought them along, most of the problems in his reign would never have happened.
 * I assume Shenzi was their leader, and the other two were her two bodyguards/goons/brothers who "go where she goes" so to speak. Scar gave all his plans to Shenzi, who related them to her pack, but whenever possible she liked to be the one doing the dirty work herself.
 * Brothers? Unlikely, at least with Banzai. (Mufasa-Mufasa-Mufasa...) There are reasons they get a lot of Minion Shipping.
 * He needed the hyenas to keep the lionesses from protesting his rule, and to help him keep any roaming pride-less lions from taking his throne.
 * Seeing as Mufasa charged off into battle at the mere mention of "Hyenas have been sighted in the pride lands", it would seem that they had to stay low and out of sight. Having any more than three hyenas would get them noticed.

Male lions with darker fur and manes are healthier than golden colour lions (it takes alot to grow manes dark), but the dark furred Scar is supposed to be weaker than Mufasa. Huh?

 * Truth in Television. The lions of the Ngorongoro Crater are especially well-fed due to the abundance of water, vegetation and game, and practically all of the male lions have dark manes. In the rest of Africa, light-colored manes are much more common because the lions have to work harder and don't get as much food. Also, lionesses are drawn to lions with dark manes because they show that the male is fit and healthy and well-fed.
 * So, according to the above statement, light colored manes means the lion has to work harder, while a black mane basically means they are well fed. Mufasa is hard working, while Scar is lazy and mooches off all his food.

During the Hakuna Matata sequence, when the trio are diving into the lake, Timon leaves a bigger splash than Pumbaa does.
Pumbaa barely leaves one at all... That just doesn't make any sense. There's no way the large warthog wouldn't even ripple the water while the tiny meerkat does.
 * It's supposed to be absurd, it's a deliberate visual joke from the moviemakers: Pumbaa, despite his vast bulk and non-aerodynamic form, is such a graceful diver that he barely makes a splash at all.

When Simba said "Well when I'm king that'll be the first thing to go" and Zazu replies "Not so long as I'm around" What exactly did Zazu mean?
I mean when Simba is king he can get rid of that rule if he wants, why does Zazu make it sound like he can stop Simba?
 * It doesn't nesessary mean Zazu can stop him, just that he will keep trying to stop him "as long as he is around". So the only way to get rid of that rule is to get rid of Zazu as a king's adviser too.

The time period of the films.
Obviously they meant it to be ambiguous, as it could be anywhere from the dawn of time to present day, and the Timon and Pumbaa animated series was kind of a one off joke they did, but was it ever revealed if the film was set in a certain time period?
 * Nope. Like you said, it was made so you could pick any period for it to be set.

Why didn't Scar just kill Nala before she went off into the jungle?

 * Why would he?
 * He would probably be suspicious of her and not want to take any risks.
 * Why be suspicious of her? There's no reason for Scar to think Simba's alive, or that she's randomly going to run into him while she's, you know, out hunting for food. Did you forget that's why she was out there, to find food since the Pride Lands were all but barren? Killing her would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
 * Good point, but Scar wanted nobody to leave the Pride Lands.
 * He probably didn't even realize she'd gone off anywhere. Given the state of the Pride Lands, he may have just assumed that Nala was making an extra effort to find food, however long it took.
 * If you consider the cut sequence of "Be Prepared (reprise)" to be canon, Scar banished Nala from the Pridelands for refusing to be his queen. This did not go over very well with the pride. Killing her would have probably reduced his lifespan to the next thirty seconds. In the musical, something similar happens, but Nala just decides to leave rather than being forced to (by Scar, anyway). Even if you just stick to the film itself, Scar not bothering with Nala is not so surprising. He seems to barely keep track of the situation in the kingdom, as shown by its multiple problems. If the hyenas didn't report her missing it is doubtful Scar would have known Nala ever left. The hyenas themselves would not have been very enthusiastic about hindering Nala's departure, even if there were a standing order to stop any and all attempts to leave the Pridelands. A small pack could probably subdue or even kill Nala, but she would probably take at least one or two of them with her. No one wants to be the one that dies, hence they'd leave just creatively reinterpret their orders, just like Banzai, Shenzi, and Ed did when pursuing Simba.

Why do the zebras and other prey animals bow down to and apparently revere the lions when it's made clear that the royal family regularly kills and eats them?
It had to be asked.
 * Lions are probably seen by the other animals as guardians of the Cycle of Life, and therefore they are respected by all other animals. Also, keep in mind that zebras, wildebeest etc are actually quite calm around lions whenever these aren´t hunting.

Where did the Hyenas go?
It's vaguely mentioned that they ran away after Scars fall from power, but where did they go? Presumably such a massive population cant just dissapear into the wilderness.
 * Maybe they dispersed into smaller groups? Hyena clans often do that.
 * During the battle from pride rock, a large group is seen fleeing so those are the Hyenas that ran off. Bunzai, Sheenzi, and Ed however perished in the fire with the ones that remained after killing Scar. Come on, you don't honestly think Disney would allow them too live after
 * They ate Mufasa's corpse?
 * It's unlikely the hyenas were killed in the fire given that it started raining only moments afterward and the fires were extinguished very quickly. Sure they might have gotten singed a bit, but there's no evidence that they all died. And yes, Disney commonly does allow the lesser villains to live.
 * The hyenas most likely left the Pride Lands for good in search of new territory. They probably realized things weren't going to get any better for them staying there, and also they feared the lions might retaliate against them some time in the future.

Hyenas are an aberration from the Circle of Life?
I just rewatched this movie today, and find it kind of odd that Mufasa has achieved a perfect order of harmony in the universe by simply kicking out all hyenas. Is there simply nothing that eats them, or nothing to provide to nature in the generational cycle? Obviously, Scar brought too many in and set no limits to hunting, but the effect of changing a habitat that dramatically isn't exclusive to hyenas, either.
 * I think there may be a simple explanation; the seemingly endless and magnificent Pridelands may actually be a limited fertile territory in the middle of a nasty desert; kind of like an oasis in the middle of a wasteland. That could explain why Mufasa and the lions are so determined to keep the hyenas away and why the delicate balance of this limited land is disrupted when the hyenas (who are much more numerous than the lions) are allowed into it. We tend to think of the Pridelands as an infinite place but, what if it's in the middle of the Kalahari or something like that?

Why does Scar have a British accent?

 * I know it's a tradition for Disney villains to be British, but when the rest of his family is American? Also, I don't see much of a family resemblance.
 * You know the story takes place in Africa, right? They are African, not American nor British. Presumably they all speak Swahili, while using Englsh here is a Translation Convention.

In the unused concept for the first movie, how was Mufasa supposed to die? In a flood or stampede?

 * I've read how Mufasa was supposed to save Mheetu and Simba from a wildebeest stampede but I've also read that Mufasa was supposed to save Simba from a flood.

Also about Mheetu but how could Nala's mother have two cubs so close in age?

 * Why does it matter if he was cut from the movie?
 * Twins. Simple as that.
 * Mheetu is noticeably younger than Nala though.
 * Lionesses normally have more than one cub at a time. Whether more than one survives to adulthood, however, is another story.
 * Maybe it was cut for that reason, but then again, lionesses have more than one cub at a time. Where are Simba and Kiara's fraternal twins then? The Lion King biology doesn't always make sense.

When do the stories take place?

 * I've seen a lot of people say it takes place early in human history but I always thought it was set in modern times.
 * Is there any indication one way or another?

Just how freaking big is that herd??!

 * If you look carefully, the stampede lasts for about 10 to 20 minutes. These wildebeest look like they're doing 20, maybe 30 miles per hour.that would imply the herd is anywhere from 5 miles to 10 miles long!
 * Maybe they're "really" going at a different speed, or... the herd is just that big. Given how it took Mufasa and Scar at least several minutes to get there, after the stampede had already been going on for a few minutes, and we still see plenty of wildebeest, I'm inclined to say, yes, the herd really is that big.
 * The stampede only lasts for 3 minutes. I did some inspection, and there seems to be about 25 wildebeest per row, and 4 rows pass the screen every second. So 100 wildebeest per second, and the whole scene is 180 seconds, so... 18,000 wildebeest. According to here, an nomadic wildebeest herd can reach up to a thousand. Maybe they were Occupying that day.

In the sequel, did Vitani really expect Kovu to attack Simba right on the Pride Rock, in front of the cave where all the dozens of his pride's lionesses were?

 * I guess she would if Kovu was trained to the point he could have just jumped and snapped Simba's neck in a second before the lionesses would even have known, but judging by how ridiculously easy he got defeated when trying to defend Simba from Zira's pride, it doesn't sound very likely.
 * Even if he could have killed Simba instantly, which is unlikely no matter how skilled he is, Kovu would have almost no prayer of getting away alive. As Zira's plan, as far as I understood it, involved Kovu becoming king after a successful assassination, doing something suicidal would put Zira's followers in a very precarious position. Nuka, the only adult male in the group, besides Kovu, that we know of is not exactly a model lion. He'd be an easy kill for a rogue. Should Zira and her followers drive off the rogue or kill him, they would then be without a king, more or less dooming the pride. In short, Vitani was not thinking very clearly at all.