Movie: Cinderella
Even if the glass slipper had been magically designed by the Fairy Godmother to fit only Cinderella's foot, the King would not have known that. Why did he expect to find the mysterious young woman with whom the prince had danced at the ball by having the Grand Duke try the shoe on every maiden for size? It would have fit many girls.
Movie: Aladdin
Was the Genie able to see or travel into the future? How else could he have known about gameshows, submarines, celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and movies like Pinocchio?
Movie: Alice in Wonderland
In the movie, the Mad Hatter poses this riddle to Alice, but the answer is never revealed. Lewis Carroll, the author of the 1865 book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", originally intended the riddle to have no answer, but in 1896, he proposed the following: "Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front."
Movie: Frozen
Anna and Elsa's parents, the King and Queen of Arendelle, were tragically lost at sea. Elsa was crowned Queen three years later when she came of age. Who ruled the kingdom during those three years?
Movie: Frozen
In one of the most talked-about scenes from the movie, we see Rapunzel and her new husband Eugene among the crowd at Elsa's coronation. Was Rapunzel invited because the kingdoms of Arendelle and Corona are allies? Or could there be a familial connection between her and Anna and Elsa? Are they perhaps cousins?
Movies: The Little Mermaid and Hercules
Ariel is the daughter of Triton, who rules as king of Atlantica, and Hercules is the son of Zeus, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. In Greek mythology, Triton is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and brother of Zeus. This means that Triton and Hercules are first cousins, making Ariel and Hercules first cousins, once removed. But is it so in the Disney canon? We'll probably never know.
Movie: Beauty and the Beast
The enchantress gives the cursed prince a rose that would bloom until his twenty-first year. By the time Belle enters the picture, the rose has lost most of its petals, which indicates that the prince is around twenty years old. By the end of the movie, the last petal falls. In the song "Be Our Guest", Lumiere makes it clear that the castle and its inhabitants have been cursed for ten years. Was the prince really not yet eleven when he was cursed? If so, why does he look older in his portrait? Did an enchanted object paint it long after he was cursed, guessing at what he would look like as a human? So many questions...
Movie: The Little Mermaid
Speaking aloud to her darling eels Flotsam and Jetsam, the sea witch reveals that she once lived in the palace, before she was banished and exiled. So what crime did she commit to deserve such a fate? Did she attempt to ursurp King Triton's throne, or worse?
The beagle we know and love as Pluto was first introduced in 1930 in the cartoon "The Picnic", the same year the planet (now dwarf planet) Pluto was discovered. So was he named after the planet, which was itself named after the god Pluto, ruler of the underworld? This seems very likely, but there is no way of knowing for sure.
Movie: Sleeping Beauty
In a classic scene from Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the kings Stefan and Hubert sing "The Skumps Song" (also known as the Drinking Song), in which they congratulate themselves on their children's impending nuptials and look forward to a "bright future".
The kings clearly use the word "skumps" as a drinking toast. But what does it mean? Does it come from the Finnish "skumppa", meaning "sparkling wine"? Or is it simply a nonsensical invention, like Cinderella's "Bibidi-Bobidi-Boo", The Sword in the Stone's "Higitus Figitus" or Mary Poppins' "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"?