Since The Lion King first hit theaters 23 years ago, most people have understood that King Mufasa and his killer, Scar, are brothers.
But according to the creators of the 1994 animated hit, most people understood wrong.
In a new interview with Hello Giggles, director Rob Minkoff and producer Don Hahn revealed that they never meant for the two characters to be biologically related at all — in fact, they even insisted that that point is made in the film.
Roar! The creators of The Lion King revealed in a new interview that Mufasa ans Scar weren’t meant to be brothers
Most viewers think Mufasa and Scar are family because, first and foremost, they call each other that. But Minkoff and Hahn both say warn not to pay too much attention to those words.
‘[While making the movie] we talked about the fact that it was very likely [Scar and Mufasa] would not have both the same parents,’ Hahn said. ‘The way lions operate in the wild… when the male lion gets old, another rogue lion comes and kills the head of the pride.
‘What that does is it causes the female lions to go into heat [to reproduce], and then the new younger lion kills the king and then he kills all the babies. Now he’s the new lion that’s running the pride.’
So, in real life, Simba wouldn’t have naturally succeeded Mufasa by birthright.
The mane event: Director Rob Minkoff and producer Don Hahn made the surprising declaration about the 1994 film
Circle of life: They said that in the wild, when the leader gets old, a younger lion will kill him and take over
‘There was always this thing about well, how do you have these two [male] lions?’ he went on. ‘Occasionally there are prides that do have two male lions, in an interesting dynamic because they’re not equals. One lion will always kind of be off in the shadows.
‘We were trying to use those animal truths to underpin the story, so we sort of figured Scar and Mufasa couldn’t really be from the same gene pool. In fact, that’s what [Scar] says. There’s a line, he goes, “I’m from the shallow end of the gene pool.” When he’s talking to Mufasa, when Mufasa gets mad at him for not coming up to the coronation of Simba.’
Despite citing that quote, though, the pair seem to have ignored other quotes in the film — specifically, the ones in which the characters call each other ‘brother’, ‘nephew’, and ‘uncle’.
Nants ingonyama bagithi baba! However, in the film, Simba calls Scar ‘Uncle Scar’, Scar calls Simba ‘nephew’, and Mufasa calls Scar ‘brother’
When little Simba visits Scar in the film, he repeatedly calls him ‘Uncle Scar’. ‘Hey Uncle Scar, when I’m king, what’ll that make you?’ he asks.
‘A monkey’s uncle,’ Scar answers, later telling him, ‘I’m only looking out for the well-being of my favorite nephew.’
‘I’m your only nephew,’ Simba answers.
Later, when Mufasa is hanging on by his paws before falling to his death, he calls out to Scar for help, calling him ‘brother’.
Many fans and moviegoers over the years have also pointed out that Lion King seems to be loosely based on Shakespear’s Hamlet, in which the King is killed by his brother, Claudius, who replaces him as king and pushes aside the rightful hair, Prince Hamlet.