You probably all know this, but I find it really really interesting.
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The Lion King
Kimba the White Lion Controversy
The Lion King was originally advertised as being the first animated Disney film not based on an already-existing story. However, elements of the film bear a resemblance to a famous 1960s Japanese anime television show, Kimba the White Lion.
One similarity between the two is that the protagonists' (Kimba and Simba) names are very alike. Other coincidences include that most characters in Kimba have an analogue in The Lion King and that various individual scenes are nearly identical in composition and camera angle. Early production artwork on the Lion King Platinum Edition DVD even depicts a white lion. Disney's official stance is that any resemblance is coincidental, and directors Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff stated that they were well into the development process before the Kimba similarity was identified. Despite the resemblances between the film and the series, neither Disney nor the family of Osamu Tezuka, Kimba's creator, has filed a lawsuit.
In addition, in 1993, a person asked Roy Disney in a Prodigy session that whether there would be any nice motherly figures in future Disney animated films, and Disney replied that Kimba's mother in the following year's The Lion King will be lovely.
Matthew Broderick stated that he understood he was being hired as a voice actor for a Disney remake of Kimba The White Lion.
The character designs and scenes are the only thing that are presumably taken from Kimba, the story from the anime and the Lion King story are quite different.
The filmmakers, however, admitted that the story of The Lion King was inspired by the 1942 Disney animated film Bambi, the Joseph and Moses stories from the Bible, and William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, described Disney's request that he suggest how to improve the plot of The Lion King by incorporating ideas from Hamlet.
The plot also bears a resemblance to the Ancient Egyptian myth of Osiris and Set. According to the myth, Set murdered his brother, Osiris, out of jealousy. Horus, Osiris's son, later battled and defeated Set in a fight for the crown of Egypt. In addition, the plot also is noted as sharing some striking elements with the west African Epic of Sundiata.
Alleged Subliminal Message
In one scene of the film's original VHS and LaserDisc releases, it appears that the word "SEX" was embedded into several frames of animation, one where Simba flops down and dust swirls into the word sex, and another when Mufasa comes to see Simba, the word sex can be seen in the swirls of clouds which conservative activist Donald Wildmon asserted was a subliminal message intended to promote sexual promiscuity. However, the films' animators have stated that the letters spell "SFX" (a common abbreviation of "special effects"), and was a sort of innocent "signature" signed by the effects animation team to the work they did.
Due to the controversy it caused, the image has been edited out of the 2003 DVD and VHS editions.
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
The use of the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" in a scene with Timon and Pumba, has led to disputes between Disney and the family of South African Solomon Linda, who composed the song (originally titled "Mbube") in 1939.
In July 2004, the family filed suit, seeking $1.6 million in royalties from Disney. In February 2006, Linda's heirs reached a legal settlement with Abilene Music, who held the worldwide rights and had licensed the song to Disney for an undisclosed amount of money.)
Alleged Racism
Upon its release, some critics complained that the hyenas in the film depicted negative racial stereotypes of urban blacks and Hispanics.
It has been argued the "despicable hyena storm troopers speak in racially coded accents that take on the nuances of the discourse of a decidedly urban, black and Latino youth".
In the movie, the lion kingdom is shown to fall into disrepair when the evil Scar allows the hyenas and lions to live side by side.