The Most Bizarre Disney Crossovers

Disney crossovers are nothing new. There's been so much online discussion about all the hidden secrets and messages supposedly hidden within the popular films. Particularly when it comes to the animated features, there have been plenty of well-documented Easter eggs showcasing some of Disney's other films. Ron Clements and John Musker have directed several Disney movies, including many of favorites from the Disney Renaissance.

Clements told Insider that Easter eggs often come from the animators who like to make a "little inside joke" now and again. "We don't as directors, John [Musker] and myself, we don't tend to put those things in ourselves, and, again, it tends to come from the animators, the layout artist, or the background painter," Clements shared. It comes from an animator having a little fun, and that's what it's all about — fun. So, it's best to take these little Easter eggs with a grain of salt and just enjoy them. Here are the most bizarre Disney crossovers.

The Disney Television Animated studios had its heyday back in the mid to late '90s after Duck Tales skyrocketed in popularity. Aladdin and Hercules were apparently ripe with enough material to make their own spin-off series, albeit three years apart from each other. Nevertheless, once the potential was there, why not have the two meet?

The Greek Hero and Prince Ali teamed up in the episode "Hercules and the Arabian Night," airing for the first time in February 1999. In the Disney crossover, the two are tricked into fighting each other by Hades and Jafar (another fabulous duo we might add) in a plot to take over Olympus. Hercules and Aladdin figure out they've been set up, and turn their attention to kicking the villain's butts. It's a cute, fun episode with two of the biggest childhood crushes of the Disney Renaissance working together to save the day. It's a shame that as the Disney Television Animated studios has moved more towards independent properties, we might not see two Disney protagonists meet up like this for quite a while.

Big Hero 6 might take place in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo, but there's quite a lot of Frozen's Arendelle hidden throughout the movie. Disney helpfully pointed out many of them in a video. Statues of Frozen characters Hans and Olaf can be seen in the movie, with the former being promptly blasted to bits by Baymax. Plus, you can see an Arendelle ship docked at the San Fransokyo marina.

There's one Disney crossover that was not confirmed, though. Fans have speculated that in the background of the police station there's a wanted poster for Hans. For sure Hans is a criminal of Arendelle, but what could he have possibly done in San Fransokyo? Maybe he's wanted for smuggling all those Arendelle statues into the city... 

Looks like the Prince of the Southern Isles is making quite the name for himself in the dark underbelly of the Disney universe.

Did you know teapot Mrs. Potts and her teacup son Chip from Beauty and the Beast were in Tarzan? Well, kind of. In one scene of the movie, Terk and the other gorillas mess around at Jane's camp, and Terk starts tapping away on a tea set that looks suspiciously familiar during the sequence, though Mrs. Potts and Chip didn't appear to be sentient in the film.

Interestingly this is one of the few Disney crossovers that you can actually go out and experience in the real world. In 1999, Disneyland re-themed their Swiss Family Treehouse walk-through attraction into Tarzan's Treehouse. The concept of walking through the treehouse remained the same, but the decorations were changed to fit the film's story. If you walk into the campground near the end of the attraction with all the pots and pans, you will clearly see Mrs. Potts and Chip from Beauty and the Beast tucked away on top of some boxes.

True to its name, the trailer for Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck it Ralph 2 sort of, well, broke the internet. Everyone was talking about the Disney crossover scene in which Vanellope ends up in a room with all the Disney princesses. The characters poked fun at some of the old Disney story clichés. The writer of the scene, Pamela Ribon, spoke with The Washington Post about her process. She was incredibly nervous that directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston wouldn't let her do it, but instead they were all on board. "The idea of satirizing Disney," Moor said, "is the greatest gift we have been given."

The princesses and Vanellope lampoon the singing, the reliance on a male character, and the "staring into important water" tropes. "It's like when I make fun of my dad," director Johnston told the Post. "Yes, I can do that — I love my dad and I love his foibles. We are coming at this from a place of love." 

Let's go back to the beginning of the Disney Renaissance. If you watch closely at King Triton's entrance at the beginning of The Little Mermaid, you can see that the iconic Disney characters Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are in attendance as the King floats above the crowd. It's best not to think too hard about how they're breathing under the water in this Disney crossover. Gamers might find it amusing that the Easter egg inadvertently predicted a world of the Kingdom Hearts series, in which Donald and Goofy swam in The Little Mermaid's underwater kingdom.

Regarding the characters in the film, Ron Clements, one of The Little Mermaid's directors, told Insider, "It was one of those things that you could almost never ever possibly notice in the movie, seeing it in a theater. It's interesting because that was a time when Mermaid was one of the first new films to go onto home video and it would only be on home video where you could kind of look at it over and over and go back and forth that anyone would ever even have noticed it because it would be almost imperceptible."

Lilo & Stitch: The Series might not have crossed over with other Disney movies, which is a little odd considering the Lilo & Stitch film's trailers in which Stitch crashed classic Disney movie scenes. But the character did have some run-ins with other Disney favorites. Kim Possible was called in to help Lilo find Stitch in the episode "Rufus." While Lilo teaming up with the amazing Kim Possible was pretty great, it was just one of four Disney crossover episodes the series had. The characters in The Proud Family dropped in for some vacation time in the episode "Spats: Experiment #397," which featured a wrestling match between the series' big bad Gantu and The Proud Family's Suga Mama.

Then, the American Dragon himself, Jake Long, skateboarded in and helped capture a shape-shifting alien. The gang from Recess showed up in the episode "Lax: Experiment 285." Turns out, all the Disney cartoons of the 2000s could share the same universe. What a small world.

This is possibly one of the most well-known sightings in Disney history. Eugene and Rapunzel from Tangled can be seen walking into the castle's gates for the coronation of Queen Elsa in Frozen. The Disney crossover has led fans to speculate that there might be more of a connection between Rapunzel's family and Elsa and Anna's. Some even speculated that Elsa and Anna are not sisters at all and that Elsa is actually Rapunzel's twin.

Well, if there is some sort of intentional conspiracy theory connecting the two princesses, the directors aren't in on it. Co-director Nathan Greno found out about the cameo on Facebook after the film had premiered. After confirming that the two characters at the coronation were indeed Eugene and Rapunzel, he posted (via Cartoon Brew), "I guess I missed that when I watched the film." Kudos to the animator working on that shot for sneaking it past the directors!

It's time to talk about the postcard from Up characters Carl and Ellie. BuzzFeed writer Billy Lorusso pointed out that Andy's corkboard in Toy Story 3 has a postcard with the address and names of the couple from Up. The thing is, you are not going to see the postcard if you watch your copy of Toy Story 3. Apparently, the Easter egg didn't quite make it into the film.

Josh Lant of The Opinion Arcade did some sleuthing and was confused about why the postcard was not in the final version of the popular Disney movie. It was, however, in one of the trailers for Toy Story 3. It seems that for whatever reason, the postcard didn't survive the various edits and revisions Toy Story 3 went through before finally hitting theaters. That just makes this bizarre Disney crossover all the more mysterious!

The appearance of The Lion King's Scar isn't a hidden Disney crossover. His hide is worn by Hercules and then thrown onto the floor at Phil's feet in the movie Hercules, plain as day. The connection is probably because artist Andreas Deja was a supervising animator for both characters Scar and Hercules, but there's so many morbid questions that pop into one's mind upon seeing the scene. Scar's end in The Lion King was... less than clean. Who came along and scooped up his remains? Or maybe this is all just some reference to Zazu's quip that Scar would make "a very handsome throw rug."

It could also be a reference to the Nemean Lion, a creature that the real legend of Hercules had to overcome. Funnily enough, the Nemean lion can be seen in the song "Zero to Hero," and he looks a little bit like our usurping feline friend. Maybe the Nemean Lion is some sort of ancestor to Mufasa and his family.

Disney princess film Moana has its share of hidden references, including Flounder from The Little Mermaid and a Baymax mask on one of the kakamura that attacks Moana and Maui. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker shared hints of these Disney crossovers with ScreenRant, and laid some hints for another friend in hiding, Flash the sloth from Zootopia. "Yeah, Flash, the very slow-talking sloth [from Zootopia] is in there, in a disguise of sorts," Musker said.

He wasn't joking either. Flash can be found when Moana enters the realm of monsters and is greeted by a creepy-looking masked creature. If you look closely enough, you'll see that it's Flash. The easiest way to recognize him is by his slow-typing claws. Flash was last seen at the end of Zootopia getting pulled over for speeding. Hopefully, this isn't where Zootopia ends up putting its criminals. Then again, Tamatoa is a giant crab....

This one is definitely a bizarre Disney crossover. The monsters in the movie Monsters, Inc. are afraid of children because they believe them to be dangerous. Naturally at the end, all is resolved by realizing this is simply not the case, and it'd seem like everything is neatly tied up. But then, in the trailer for one of the Toy Story Toons, you can clearly see that there's a toilet seat cover in Bonnie's bathroom that has Sully's fur print on it.

Considering that an older Boo was allegedly seen in Toy Story 3, there are clues that the two movies are connected. In fact, Disney has shown clues that connect Pixar movies together. There's also, of course, the infamous "Pixar Theory" by writer Jon Negroni that explains all the connections and theorizes that Boo is the old woman in Brave. In any case, let's just hope that Boo never visits Bonnie's house and seeing the suspicious cover.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the black sheeps of the Disney canon. It has some of the darkest scenes in all of Disney's history, though it tries to make the tonally dissonant gargoyles lighten the tension, perhaps in some attempt to make the film a little more kid-friendly. It is also a Disney movie that isn't based on a fairytale, but rather on a macabre novel by Victor Hugo. That's why it's more than a little strange that Belle from Beauty and the Beast can be seen in the streets of Paris in Hunchback.

The fairytale that Beauty and the Beast is based on is the French tale La Belle et la Bête, so the animators probably thought it would be fun to connect the two French stories with a Disney crossover. It's amusing to think that, while the townsfolk are singing "Belle," Quasimodo is having his own Disney ballad with "Out There." Then again, it's not likely that Belle's "poor provincial town" would be Paris of all places. Hopefully she was able to leave Paris before things really started heating up.

One Pixar-Disney crossover involves the good old Pizza Planet delivery truck. The truck seemed like just some mangy rundown vehicle used to deliver pizzas in its initial appearance in Toy Story. Little did audiences know, this truck has seen some things. The truck has been spotted in every Pixar movie, barring The Incredibles. Yep, somehow Pizza Planet makes deliveries to Paris, France, but not to the Parr's driveway.

The car has been seen parked at Monsters University, rolling around inside Riley's memories in Inside Out, and even gaining sentience in the Cars films. Some people might have even seen it in real life, as a group of college students built a replica of the truck and drove around the country in 2012. "The response to the truck in person and online has been amazing. With people slowing down on the freeway to snap a picture or even just giving us a thumbs up as we pass on the street, we can tell that people recognize it and love the final product," the team told Pixar Post.