The Little Mermaid (1989 film)/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Brilliance

  • Remember the polyps in Ursula's cave? How they grabbed onto Ariel? They were trying to SAVE HER.
  • In Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ursula the Sea Witch angrily refers to Ariel as "the little tramp" because she almost got Prince Eric to kiss her, even though she can't speak. Well, Charlie Chaplin, the brilliant silent movie star, was most famous for his "Little Tramp" character, who of course was never heard speaking. Dendarii Dame
  • In the beginning scenes of the movie, the sailors and Eric are commenting on the perfect sailing weather, and the sailors say that it must be because Triton is in a good mood, letting Eric know that Triton was, in legend, king of the sea. While they were either joking or being superstitious, Triton was in a good mood: he was about to watch his youngest daughter's musical debut. When she didn't show up and he found out that she went to the surface instead, he was furious at her and later got upset over how harshly he spoke to her. So maybe it is the sailors' superstition, but Triton happened to be in a bad mood when Eric and his men got caught up in the storm at night.
  • Ursula is supposed to be half-octopus, but she has six tentacles instead. That is, unless if you count her arms as limbs, which means that she actually indeed has eight limbs from the start.
    • Octopuses are one of those animals that mutate horribly easily - they've been found with less than eight, right up to dozens of tentacles.
  • During the chanting part of Ursula's song, one of the words she says in the song is laryngitis aka a disease that makes you lose your voice!
  • Ursula's human alias is Vanessa. Vanessa is a genus of butterfly. Butterflies are well-known as the masters of metamorphosis and mimicry.

Fridge Horror

  • When Sebastian sees the stuffed crabs in the palace kitchen. It's Played for Laughs, but how would you feel if you encountered roasted human corpses torn open and stuffed with herbs and breadcrumbs?
  • In Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ursula's first appearance has her lamenting that she's "wasted away into nothing," and "practically starving." At first, you laugh at it, seeing how, er--big, she still is. But wait... if she genuinely believes she's wasted away and feels starved...how big was she beforehand??? Oh God, please don't tell me her One-Winged Angel form was her previous true form, oh God, please...
    • It could be taken metaphorically - when she lived in the palace she was wealthy and powerful and respected - probably the equivalent of the court magician - and now she's become a nobody.
  • Ariel signing that contract is effectively her signing away her soul. And without your sould you become a polyp. When I was young, I always figured that was what people look like without souls. When I heard about the sad ending of the original where the Little Mermaid dissolved into foam at the end because mermaids apparently don't have souls, it just made even more sense.
  • So Ursula is supposed to have an octopus lower torso. But if you consider the fact that in real life, that's where the octopus' mouth is supposed to be, what is supposed to be the octopus' mouth in real life becomes's Ursula's anus!
  • This may not be fridge for some of you, but it just occurred to me recently: Ursula is probably gay. Her design is based on a drag queen, her voice actress, who already has a low voice, lowered her voice for the role, she's extremely flamboyant, and she has a creepy amount of sexually suggestive scenes/comments regarding Ariel, as well as a growing obsession with her. With that all in mind, watch Poor Unfortunate Souls again, you know, the scene where the villain takes the helpless young girl into her shady lair, molests her with her tentacles, and finally takes her voice, thus removing her ability to say no and ultimately puts Ariel directly in her power? Not as obvious as Hellfire, but chilling nonetheless.
  • Their mother's name is Athena. The goddess Athena had a problem with the god of the sea, Poseidon. The mother is never shown. Um, wait, what?
    • But the mother is shown in the prequel and I'm not sure what the Fridge Horror of that is anyway.


Fridge Logic

  • A conversation of the creepy things Disney gets away with in kids movies brought me to the sudden realization that the Little Mermaid is, at heart, a watered down version of Faust. Both protaganists feel they've reached the heights of their current lives, both make a Deal with the Devil to pursue a life they believe will bring them more happiness, both fixiate on a love interest which leads to them messing up royally, ruining the lives (permanently or temporarily) of a bunch of people, both end up being redeemed at the end. The original Hans Christian Anderson version of the Little Mermaid even more strongly parallels this, as much of the mermaid's motivation was to receive a soul, and at the end of the story she did, sort of. After suffering and dying, instead of just being dead, she is made into a spirit and given the chance of eventually earning a soul. Faust's soul (in later versions) is eventually redeemed after he goes to great lengths to make up for the guilt of ruining Gretchen. In fact, Anderson could have drawn from elements of Faust, as he was well educated, and the legend of Faust predated him by at least 200 years.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid_(1989_film)/Fridge?oldid=2018910"