I'm a child of the 90s, so even though my parents made a point of introducing me to every Disney movie ever made, the ones that came into theaters in the 90s are the ones that have stuck with me the most. I still have the VHS tapes of all my favorites. (I know, I sound elderly with my talk of Video Home Systems, but I can't help being an old fogey.) Now, I don't think I'd be wrong in saying that the 90s comprised some of the best Disney movies ever made. It was a bit of a golden age. We had The Lion King, Aladdin, and Toy Story. You can't tell me that those aren't classic Disney movies. And they are just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, even though 90s Disney movies are the pinnacles of achievement in cartoon movie-making, they aren't without their flaws. Many of them, even the greats, have gaping plot holes or unanswered questions regarding plot points. If you're even the smallest fan of Disney movies, a lot of the entries on this list will surprise the hair off of your head. I only caught a few of these myself, and when I pondered on the truth of the others, my mind was blown. However, never fear. Despite the mistakes, I still adore these movies.
The 90s were most definitely home to the best Disney animated films. I, and many others, love these movies, flaws and all. Read on if you want to go over the most mystifying of moments in the most wonderful of Disney movies.
25 If You Want The Job Done Right
The passing of Mufasa became a nightmare to my father. My dad was always eager to show me and my sister movies when we were younger just so he could watch our reactions to things. He liked watching us discover new stories. This took a turn for the worse when we watched The Lion King. Young Simba has to watch as his father, Mufasa, plummets into a herd of stampeding wildebeest. The whole event was orchestrated by Simba's evil uncle Scar. If eradicating his own brother was not enough, Scar also sent his hyena henchmen to deal with Simba. My father was horrified that my sister and I had to witness such an atrocity. Little did he know that my young mind was puzzling over the logic of Scar's actions.
Scar was the bad guy. I knew that without a doubt. He wanted to take over Mufasa's place as the king of the lion pride, and in order to do that, he needed both Mufasa and Simba out of the way. But what I couldn't understand was why Scar didn't just "take care" of Simba himself, immediately after the two of them discovered Mufasa. Why did he send his incompetent hyena friends after Simba? They did a horrible job of ending Simba's life (in point of fact, they didn't). If Scar had just deigned to get his claws dirty, Simba would not have survived and Scar would have been king without anyone contesting his rule. Needless to say, I did not tell my father about this plot hole I had discovered.
24 Princes Gone Wild
We all know the story that begins Beauty and the Beast. A haughty, spoiled little prince refuses shelter and aid to a poor, old woman who was passing by his castle in the rain. After casting her out to the inclement weather, the prince is embarrassed to behold the woman transforming into this golden, magical sorceress. She curses the prince and his castle for his cruel behavior. She set the curse to become permanent after ten years, when the prince turned twenty-one. That would mean that the prince was eleven years old when he displayed such unseemly behavior.
All children have the capacity to be little beasts, but the prince just had the misfortune of acting the beast in front of a magic-user. While he was acting spoiled, I wonder where his parents were. As a prince, I'm assuming the Beast was the son of a king and queen. Where were they while he was behaving rottenly? If his parents had passed away before the sorceress came to the door, does that mean that the young prince was ruling by himself, as an eleven-year old? And what kind of sorceress bestows a ten-year curse on a spoiled child? The Beast was only eleven. (Note: The live-action Beauty and the Beast answers this mystery with its own version of events, but I'm only referring to the animated film.)
23 Daddy Issues
When Mulan's father is drafted into the army to fight the Hun invaders, Mulan decides to take his place. Her father had suffered an injury to his leg fighting in a previous war. Mulan was afraid that her father would not survive a battle if he went off to war a second time, especially given his wound. Better a fit daughter enter the fray than a limping father. Honestly though, given the rigorous training that Mulan had to go through, I'm not sure that Mulan's father would have seen any fighting if he had joined the troops. While Mulan was training, she had to work out harder than she had ever worked out before. She had to learn how to use cannons, shoot a bow and arrow, and trek through the mountains with stones on her back.
It was during this trek that Mulan got kicked out of the army.
While hiking with the rest of her group, she falls behind and collapses in the middle of the exercise. Shang, the captain of her group, picks up her fallen stones and tells her to pack up and go home. Okay, so let me get this straight. If you can't hike up a mountain while carrying stones, you can't fight in the war. Doesn't that mean that Mulan's father would have been sent home after failing training? No way would he have been able to make that hike. Doesn't that also mean that it was unnecessary for Mulan to take his place if he was just going to be kicked out anyway?
22 Ungrateful Snots
The rules governing the gods of Olympus are a bit nonsensical. Even though Hercules had no choice in the matter of leaving Olympus and losing his godhood, he still has to earn his way back. In order to reclaim his status on Mount Olympus, Hercules must prove himself a true hero. Only then can he get golden glowing skin and immortality. Hercules' definition of a true hero, however, seems a bit arbitrary. Zeus only seems pleased with Hercules' actions after he gives his own life to save Meg's. Zeus tells Hercules that this act of sacrifice done with no thought for his well-being is what earned back Hercules' godhood. But if you think about it, Hercules decision to save Meg was based on his love for her. True, it went beyond himself, but it was only centered on her.
Think back to one of Hercules' first feats of heroism, when he saved Thebes from the Hydra. The Thebans were entirely dismissive of Hercules, but he put his life on the line to save them anyway. If you ask me, that was a greater show of heroism than him offering to trade his life for Meg's. I mean, it's one thing to save the person you love at the cost of your own life. It's another thing to save people who made fun of you and laughed you out of town. If that's not being a true hero, then I don't know what it means to be a true hero.
21 A "Cup-ple" Of Problems
This is one plot hole that I found out years after I first watched Beauty and the Beast. It totally blew my mind right out of the water. Okay, so we know that the enchantment laid on the Beast's castle by the sorceress was set to expire on his twenty-first birthday. We also know that the enchantment was cast ten years prior to his twenty-first birthday. If that's the case, then the existence of Chip, Mrs. Pott's young son who was turned into a teacup, is a huge problem. As evidenced by the ending, Chip is a very young boy, still able to be held by his mother, which, I believe, limits him to a single-digit age.
If that's the case, how was Chip even born?
If Chip is under ten years old, that means that he was born after the curse was already placed on the castle. Was he born a teacup? (I have no clue how that would work, and I don't want to hear any theories about how it could work.) Obviously not, since I believe he speaks of a time when he was a normal boy. This is one huge plot hole that I had never before considered. The problem of Chip stupefied me. Of course, the live-action Beauty and the Beast movie came along and covered for this plot hole by saying the enchantment froze everyone in time. Not much of a "twenty-first" birthday for the Beast if he's been stuck at twenty for ten years, though.
20 King Of Amnesia
Of all the movies I talk about on this list, The Lion King is my favorite. That said, it's not without it's fair share of mystifying moments. When the wildebeest herd first begins to stampede, Scar goes to warn Mufasa and Zazu that Simba is in the herd's path. It's all a trap though, so when Mufasa wades into the rush of stampeding creatures, Scar does nothing to help him. Zazu, meanwhile, flutters around Scar's head, panicking about what to do. He finally decides he is going to fly back to Pride Rock to bring even more help, but Scar can't allow Zazu to do that.
Scar whacks Zazu against a rock, and Zazu falls to the ground insensible.
We don't actually see what happens to Zazu immediately after he passes out, but we do see him sadly comforting the lionesses when Scar lies to them hours later about Mufasa and Simba's passing. (Well, he wasn't exactly lying about Mufasa not being among the living, but Scar definitely wasn't truthful about the cause of Mufasa's demise.) Did Zazu not remember that Scar had knocked him unconscious during the stampede? Even if he didn't see Scar do it, couldn't he put two and two together and figure out that Scar orchestrated the entire catastrophe while Zazu was out of it just so that Scar could take over Pride Rock? Apparently, Zazu just accepted the fact that he was "mysteriously" knocked out when Mufasa's life was in danger.
19 The Undo Button
Jafar was a slinking royal vizier who ended up posing a major threat to the Sultan he served when he got his hands on a magic lamp. With the power of Genie behind him, Jafar became a threat and not just a joke. And perhaps he became even more of a threat than he should have. The first wish that Jafar makes from the Genie is to become Sultan. The change happens suddenly, with the skies darkening to an ominous red and clouds swirling over Agrabah. How in the world did a simple wish to become the ruler of a nation automatically alter the weather? That's besides the point.
The actual problem comes when Jafar wishes to be a sorcerer.
Once Jafar obtains magical abilities, he's quick to use them for sinister motives. He even changes Aladdin's appearance from the Prince he was pretending to be to the street rat he always was. There's the rub. How was Jafar able to undo the magic Genie had used to make Aladdin a prince if, supposedly, the Genie is more powerful than Jafar? Both Jafar and Aladdin come to an agreement near the climax when they state that the Genie can utilize tremendous amounts of power, more power than Jafar can use as a sorcerer. (Shackled power, but it's still power.) So were Jafar's sorcerer abilities stronger than Genie's magical might in the end?
18 Tree Hugger Power
Oof. This plot hole is more of a plot contrivance, but I caught it when I first saw Pocahontas. It irritated me then, and it irritates me now. If you haven't seen Pocahontas, let me catch you up to speed on what it's about. Settlers from England looking for gold in the New World find that there are no riches there, but plenty of natural wonder. Needless to say, they don't appreciate the natural wonder. They spend a lot of time digging for the nonexistent gold. Explorer John Smith is the only one who takes the time to appreciate the vistas of the New World, and that leads him to meet Native American Pocahontas.
Sparks fly between the two despite the differences between their two groups.
And that's when the most inane moment happens. Smith and Pocahontas are struggling to introduce themselves to each other in their respective languages. Then the wind blows around Pocahontas' hair, and suddenly, she can speak perfect English. I understand that cartoons meant for children can't necessarily include the miming that might be needed in overcoming a language barrier. But seriously?! A magic wind blew over Pocahontas, and suddenly, she can speak a language she had never heard before that day? The young me who first saw Pocahontas was suitably unimpressed at this.
17 Just A Trim
Hair is a funny thing. It is simultaneously considered a beautiful thing, to be cared for and treated accordingly, and a disgusting thing that you wince at when you find it in a shower drain. Either way, I want to say every human on the planet has to contend with dealing with their hair. In Tarzan, a young baby and his parents are marooned in a jungle after their ship is destroyed at sea. The baby's parents are slaughtered by Sabor, a vicious leopard, after which the baby is cared for by friendly apes. He is given the name Tarzan and he grows up knowing nothing about his human heritage. Without human role models to follow, Tarzan is more ape than man.
However, there's a glaring plot hole here that I noticed while watching the movie a third time through. Tarzan is unaware of human practices, and yet his face remains cleanly shaven throughout the whole movie. True, some men don't grow beards, but after getting a look at Tarzan's human father, who had a luxuriant mustache, I just know that it's within Tarzan's genes to grow facial hair. And even if we ignore facial hair, what about arm or leg hair. Clayton, the villain of Tarzan, has more hair on his arms than Tarzan does, and he isn't a wild-man who has never heard of a razor.
16 A Christmas Getaway
The Nightmare Before Christmas was the first stop-motion animated film that I fell in love with. Several other great stop-motion films have been made since, but I don't think I would be remiss in saying that The Nightmare Before Christmas was a classic that got everybody's attention. While slightly on the creepy end of kid films, it told a sweet story about a lonely skeleton named Jack who lived in Halloween Town and only wanted to have more love in his life, and he thought he could find it by taking the Christmas holiday for himself.
Jack sends three notorious trick-or-treaters to capture Santa Claus so that he can't get in the way of Jack's plans. These trick-or-treaters are called Lock, Shock, and Barrel, and those three are the scariest critters in the movie, scarier even than Oogie Boogie. They travel to Christmas Town and capture Santa Claus (or, as they call him, Sandy Claws). However, a singing montage occurs between the time they nab him and the time they make it back to Halloween Town. During this montage (the song is called "Making Christmas"), days elapse. The montage even shows all the citizens of Halloween Town preparing for the coming holiday in front of a clock that shows the passage of the days. Why did it take the trick-or-treaters so long to return with Sandy Claws? Um...what were they doing with Sandy Claws all those days it took them to come back?
15 It Ain't Rocket Science
The invading Huns in Mulan are a force to be reckoned with, but given the intelligence of the troops Mulan was training with, I find it hard to believe that they could have ever hoped to defeat them. Mulan was a woman disguised as a man, and initially, she did a poor job of concealing it. Thanks to Mushu's awful advice, she behaved like the weirdest man imaginable. Her mock-man voice was hideous; her normal voice would have sufficed. Even her walk into camp was horrendous, with her chest puffed out, her knees together, and her shoulders straightened. She waddled into camp like a duck. It's funny as heck, but I still cringe whenever I think about the time she spat in front of Captain Shang and Chi-Fu. It's like I was embarrassed on behalf of Mulan.
All of these moments point to a person who is desperately trying to pretend to be a man. Anyone who seriously thought she was a man was fooling themselves. (Yes, I'm including Shang in this censure.) And I haven't even talked about her monthly troubles. (Of course, since this is a Disney movie, her Aunt Flo is never directly mentioned, but if we assume she was training for months, we can assume she had to suffer through these womanly toils.) Either everyone is really blind, or she had to go to extreme lengths to hide her monthly visitor.
14 To Reality And Beyond
Okay, I know I said earlier that The Lion King was my favorite Disney movie of the 90s, but I had temporary amnesia when I said that. Toy Story is (for sure) my favorite Disney movie of the 90s. I fell in love with Woody, Slinky, Buzz, and all of the other toys in Andy's room the first time I saw the movie. I was a major toy-playing kind of kid myself, so it was extremely relatable. After seeing Toy Story, I began to believe that my toys could talk to each other while I wasn't around, so I made a habit of leaving them out on the floor and leaving the room so they could talk. Unfortunately, no matter how quietly I sneaked back to check on them, they never moved or spoke in my hearing.
Speaking of the toys' penchant for freezing up whenever a person was around, our next plot hole has to do with exactly that. One of the conflicts between cowboy Woody and spaceman Buzz Lightyear is that Buzz refuses to believe that he is a child's plaything. Try as he might at the beginning, Woody can't convince him otherwise. However, if Buzz truly believes that he is a space ranger, why does he still freeze up when Andy is around? If he thought he was actually a space ranger, wouldn't he treat Andy like a giant alien or something like that and try to shoot him with his laser? Instead, Buzz becomes immobile, just like every other toy that Andy plays with.
13 Long Live The Sultan
More often than not, Disney parents are not the most helpful of characters. They can be wise figures that try to guide our main characters to make smart choices (like in Hercules or The Lion King) or they're just not around (like in Tarzan or The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Jasmine's father, the Sultan, is one of those parents who, while kind, is not the brightest bulb on the chandelier. I mean, just look at who he selected for his Royal Vizier; Jafar just looks evil. All of Jasmine's problems in Aladdin stem from the fact that she does not want to marry someone she hasn't chosen herself. All of these suitors have been visiting the palace in Agrabah, but none of them are a person that Jasmine can see herself with.
The Sultan constantly reminds her that the law of the land states that she must marry a prince before her sixteenth birthday. First of all, yikes, she has to get married at that age. Second of all, at the very end of the movie, after the Sultan sees how cool Aladdin is and how much Jasmine likes him, he decides to change the marriage law. He is, after all, the Sultan. That's great, pops, but why couldn't you do that before? You were just as much the Sultan at the beginning of the movie as you were at the end of it. If you had given Jasmine the choice to pick who she wanted to pick, this whole mess would not have happened. (I hope the Sultan also changed the law for how old the princess has to be before she marries.)
12 Frollo Childcare
The Hunchback of Notre Dame took Disney down dark paths. I remember watching the movie once when I was a kid and just being generally awed by the action, but when I saw it again as an adult, I was flabbergasted. There were so many dark undertones that I had no idea were there before. In the very beginning, we saw Frollo kick a poor woman from his horse. She collapsed down some stone steps, never to breathe again. Not only did Frollo slay a defenseless woman who was holding a baby, he did this in front of a church. See what I mean about The Hunchback of Notre Dame being very dark?
And that was just the beginning.
After dispatching the woman, Frollo picked up the baby, took one look at its deformed features, and wanted to drown it in a well. Luckily for baby Quasimodo, a priest exited the church and stopped Frollo from giving an infant premature swimming practice. The priest then admonished Frollo for his actions and suggested that since he had disposed of the mother, he had an obligation to care for the child. I get that the priest saying this to Frollow saved Quasimodo's life, but I think the priest should have hesitated before giving a man like Frollo charge of a baby. I mean, the priest just saw Frollo trying to drown the infant. Is this the man he was entrusting to care for a child? Also was this priest just okay with Frollo raising Quasimodo in the attic of a church as well?
11 I Suffer From Long-Term Memory Loss
Despite being a large and forbidding edifice, the Beast's castle is not too far from Belle's village. Her father gets lost and ends up there, and Belle is able to track him there in a single day. Not only that, but when Gaston riles up the villagers against the Beast, it only takes him a single night to reach the castle and attack it. So upon review, that's not too far of a distance. With such magnificence so close by, you would think that the villagers would have known that a prince used to live there. But it's like everyone forgot that a castle is so close by. Belle and her father clearly had no clue that the castle was there. They were both surprised when they walked along the empty hallways of the castle.
Since the Beast was a prince, you would think he wouldn't be forgotten.
People tend to remember their monarchs. Once again, the live-action Beauty and the Beast answered this little plot hole themselves. When the sorceress who cursed the Beast laid those enchantments on the castle and everyone in it, she made it so that everyone would forget that the Beast and his servants ever existed. (This opens its own set of problems because no one in the castle aged, but the people outside it did. Mr. Potts sure looked older than Mrs. Potts when they reunite in the end.) This explanation was never offered in the original animated film, so the plot hole remains.
10 Thank Your Lucky Daisies
Mulan's plan to eliminate the Hun army was brilliant. She and her fellow soldiers only had one cannon with which to take on hundreds of Huns, but using sound strategy, Mulan took their cannon, aimed it at a nearby mountain, and demolished every Hun using the ensuing avalanche as a weapon. Sure, she nearly took out her own side too, but it all worked out in the end. Unfortunately for Mulan, simple plot complications made it so her plan didn't work completely. Through some miraculous plot contriving, Shan Yu, the main guy menacing all of China, survives the avalanche. Not only does Shan Yu make it, but his entire command crew does as well. We had met these guys briefly, during short scenes that showed them conferring with Shan Yu before battles.
It was always Shan Yu and these four other guys talking about their evil plans.
And it is exactly Shan Yu and these four guys who survived the rushing chunks of snow and ice that plowed into them. Awfully convenient for the top men in the Hun army to be the ones who made it. A little too convenient for my taste. And somehow, even though Shang and his troops left the Tung Shao Pass first, the small group of Huns managed to reach the Imperial City first. I'm beginning to think that Disney movies sometimes mess with logic in order to have more dramatic endings.
9 Picture Of You, Pictures Of Me
As I complained about earlier (I am such a nitpicker), the Beast was cursed ten years before his twenty-first birthday. That would mean he was eleven years old when the spell that changed his princely self into a more animal-like version of himself was laid on him. We already wondered about where his parents were during this whole debacle, but I also want to know what Beast was doing with a portrait of his adult self in his room. When Belle is exploring the castle against the Beast's wishes, she finds her way into his room. She sees a painted portrait of a man that has been slashed; the canvas within the frame is dangling in tatters.
Later on, when the Beast transforms back into his human self, we can all observe that he is the one whose face was captured in that ruined painting. Plus, when he turns around to face Belle in all his human glorious-ness, the lighting on his face looks exactly the same as the lighting that lit his face in his portrait. It's got to be him. If that's the case, why would someone have painted him to look exactly like he does as an adult? That's some pretty insightful art right there. No way could I paint a picture of an eleven-year-old the way he will look when he's twenty-one. (Not that I can paint period, but still.) I smell a plot hole.
8 You Are Feeling Very Sleepy
Jafar was more or less already ruled Agrabah before he got his grimy hands on the lamp. He was the Royal Vizier, which meant he had the ear of the Sultan, and he could literally sway the Sultan to do anything he wanted. Part of Jafar's signature look was this copper-colored staff with the head of a cobra. At first, you think it's just this decorative item that Jafar carries around with him in order to look like a blatant villain. Turns out it has more than stylish uses. Jafar can use the snake staff to hypnotize people.
He does it to the Sultan several times. He pulls the poor guy aside, holds the staff in front of his eyes, and then begins uttering instructions. The snake's eyes glow red, and the Sultan's eyes glow in the exact same way. In this manner, Jafar got the Sultan to give him the family ring and almost got him to marry his daughter to Jafar, even though the Sultan didn't want to each time. If his staff was this powerful, why didn't Jafar use it more often? He could have hypnotized Jasmine herself into marrying him. He could have hypnotized all of the palace guards and had them stage a coup against the Sultan. I mean, he had the power of mind control at his fingertips! Why was he wasting his time chasing after magic lamps when he could have just gained control the good old-fashioned way? And by the good old-fashioned way, I mean using a hypnotizing snake staff, of course.
7 Office Management Skills
A delightful habit that most villains in Disney movies have is acquiring hilarious henchmen. It's a trope almost as old as the heroes having a quirky animal sidekick. In Hercules, Hades, the God of the Underworld, has two such henchmen. Pain and Panic are these little demon creatures that can shape-shift into different forms. Hades gives these two klutzes the assignment of stealing baby Hercules from Mount Olympus. Once they had him out of there, Pain and Panic were supposed to make Hercules drink a potion that would drain him of his immortality.
Once mortal, the two were free to off him.
Unfortunately for Pain and Panic, Hercules doesn't drink every drop of the potion, and they are unable to get rid of him so easily, even as a baby, because he still has his godlike strength. They have to return to Hades without having accomplished their task. Of course, since they're cowards, they don't tell Hades they failed. They just hope he'll never notice. Hades believes them for the longest time, but there's a huge plot hole. Hades is the God of the Underworld. Knowing when people have passed away is kind of his thing. He could have (and should have) checked to see if Hercules' life had been snipped. So Hades has no reason to be so angry at Pain and Panic later on. Simple oversight could have corrected the whole situation.
6 Swift Removal Of This Armor
I'm actually okay when heroes don't appear to change their clothes. This happens on cartoon shows like Scooby-Doo all the time. The members of Mystery Inc. wear the same outfit every gosh-darned episode. I'm totally fine with that. I'm a little less fine with the abrupt wardrobe change that occurred in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. So Phoebus is the captain of the guards working for Frollo. Even though Frollo is a bad guy, we all know that Phoebus is a heroic character. Case in point, when Frollo orders Phoebus to burn a farmhouse with a family still inside, Phoebus refuses to do so. Frollo doesn't take this disobedience lightly. He orders archers to shoot Phoebus down. Phoebus leaps on a horse and tries to gallop away, but the archers' aim is just a tad too good. They shoot him down while he's riding over a bridge, and he plummets into the water below.
Luckily for him, Esmeralda the gypsy was watching the whole encounter with Frollo, so she's able to dive into the water after Phoebus and save him before he drowns. The absolute worst mistake ever occurs just then. Phoebus falls into the water with all of his armor on. But when Esmeralda pulls him out, he is only wearing a plain, white shirt. There's no way she could have removed all of his armor from him in such a short amount of time. Did the water melt away his armor? What happened to it?!