Contributions by Steven Miller, Thomas E. Phillips, Jr., and Anita Cheng
SCENE: Mushu studies the picture of Chi Fu and the Emperor.
NOTICE: In the lower right hand corner of the picture there is a single Chinese character "zhun." It means "permit or allow," and was used by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft to approve character model sheets for the film.
SCENE: Cri-Kee writes the forged letter.
NOTICE: When Cri-Kee jumps, there is an obvious typing sound. When Mushu rips the letter from under him, it sounds like a cash register ringing (the "return" of the typewriter). (How creative!)
SIDE NOTE: Anyone else reminded of archy?
Noticed by Anita Cheng
NOTICE: Capt. Li Shang is never ever in the entire movie seen wearing a helmet! All the warriors do, and his father the general does too. Wouldn't it be as important for the Captain to have a helmet as the warriors?
Noticed by Amy Wingfield
SCENE: The song "A Girl Worth Fighting For."
FUN FACT: Mulan composer Matthew Wilder provides the singing voice for Ling.
SCENE: The song "A Girl Worth Fighting For."
NOTICE: The music near the end musically quotes from Tchiakovsky's "1812 Overture."
SCENE: Mulan finds the doll in the burned-out village.
NOTICE: This scene is a tribute to the Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's animated film Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, which opens with a similar scene.
SCENE: The burned-out village scene/Battle with the Huns
NOTICE: Honey, I shrunk the army. In the beginning it looks like Shang is training 50-60 soldiers; during "A Girl Worth Fighting For" there appear to be about 30-40; by the time they head to the Imperial City, there seems to be about 15 of them.
EXPLANATION: First, some soldiers could have been kicked out of the army (which almost happened to Mulan), which might explain the initial reduction in number. Shang's soldiers could have been all scattered throughout the field. (He does tell them to spread out at one point.) Disney only shows dead bodies when it's important and unavoidable, but obviously some soldiers were killed. Also, we don't know how many of them managed to escape from the avalanche.
Explained by Jeffrey Y. Sue & María Jos?Díaz Sámano.
The directors and producers acknowledge the shrinking army (mostly for production reasons) in their audio commentary on the special edition DVD, joking they hoped nobody would notice.
SCENE: The burned-out village scene/Battle with the Huns
NOTICE: The disappearing sword trick. At many points throughout the battle scenes, Shang's troops will have or not have swords on their left side depending upon the convenience of the situation. You can't see the hilts when they are walking or running (except for Mulan when she is running to place the cannon). But the hilts are on their left side when they are standing at the base of the mountain when they draw them preparing to fight.
EXPLANATION: The animators are lazy. Or perhaps the armor hides the hilts when they are not wanting to use them.
Noticed & explained by Barry Adams.
NOTICE: Shang's horse. I've gotten a couple of e-mail saying that it has three grey spots which form a Hidden Mickey. These spots are on the horse's neck and rump.
Noticed by Julius Elefante & Rex Huang.
SCENE: Mulan, Mushu, and Cri-Kee are sent flying by the cannon cart explosion.
NOTICE: After Mushu retorts, "Oh sure, save the horse!" he falls forward into the snow. If he were in the same position when Mulan picked him up, his behind would be in the air. But it isn't. Somehow or other his head ended up where his tail should've been. (It is impossible that Mushu flipped around, considering the time between his falling and her picking up AND that there was snow all around him)
Noticed by Anita Cheng
SCENE: Battle with the Huns
NOTICE: Mulan's helmet flies off her head during the explosion of the cannons, yet when she is left behind on the mountain, the helmet reappears next to her. (Hey, what happened to the rest of her armor?)
EXPLANATION: 1. While Mulan is being attended to, the soldiers go off into the avalanche area and find her helmet. 2. Maybe she found a helmet (that may or may not have been hers) or someone left one close and Mushu gathered it thinking they would have to leave anyway. And about her helmet at the end of the story...In my opinion, Shang was only looking for an excuse to see her
again, so it could be her helmet or not again.
Noticed and explained by Barry Adams & María Jos?Díaz Sámano.
SCENE: Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po run to help Mulan, then stop and make a hasty retreat.
NOTICE: Look closely at the style of their swords, especially Yao's. They're accidentally drawn as scimitars (curved blades) in that scene. Elsewhere, they are straight swords.
EXPLANATION: Possibly the metal alloy in the swords is swollen, bloated and deformed in reaction to the severe cold weather on the mountain.
SCENE: The avalanche.
NOTICE: One thing I always notice in the movie is how the horse, Khan, manages to "leap" through the avalanche against the snow coming down, as if he were swimming or leaping through water. I am a horse owner and there is no way a real horse would be able to do this against the onslaught of the snow coming down. A horse would be knocked off balance and buried under the tons of snow just as a person would. Also, it would be the very rare horse who would continue to respond to his rider in the face of such a natural disaster. We know, of course, that Khan is an exceptional horse, but it bears saying that a normal horse would panic and run as fast as he could away from the disaster - in this case, probably over the cliff.
Contributed by Kristen Fowler
SCENE: Mulan, Shang, Khan, Mushu, and Cri-Kee plummet over the cliff.
NOTICE: I admire Mulan being level-headed enough to shoot the arrow (with rope attached) back up into Yao's hands. But how exactly is the rope supporting all of those characters while they're hanging over the cliff? And how was Mulan able to tie it that way? (When Khan climbs back up, we can see the rope wrapped around his middle several times.)
EXPLANATION: During the avalanche scene after Mulan recovers the
arrow with the rope attached, the first thing she does is start tying the rope to Khan. That is why her bow-shot came so late in her fall; she wasn't going to make the same mistake Yao did! (The rope must have amazing tensile strength!)
Explained by Thomas E. Phillips, Jr.
In their audio commentary on the special edition DVD, the directors and producer admit this scene definitely relies on the suspension of disbelief ("Yao must be strongest man in the world to hold onto that rope...plus it must be a steel cable their hanging off of...")
SCENE: Mulan, Shang, Khan, Mushu, and Cri-Kee all hang from a rope over a cliff during the end of the avalanche sequence.
NOTICE: Mushu's tail. That lovely purple color is not a mistake. Early on in development one of the directors wanted him to have a purple tail, but most people wanted a red tail (which is what won out). But as a joke the purple tail was put in this scene just for him.
SCENE: Mulan is attended in the medic's tent.
NOTICE: The tent has a Rising Sun flag on it...Japan's flag--not China's.
EXPLANATION: I haven't been able to come up with a good explanation for this. I have heard suggestions that maybe this was a substitute "Red Cross" symbol or a historical mix-up.
Noticed by Linda Szeto and Stephanie Timmerman.
In their audio commentary on the special edition DVD, the directors and producer states that character designer Chen-Yi Chang found out this symbol of the red circle was an ancient medical symbol.
SCENE: Mulan's injury and recovery.
NOTICE: She seems to recover very quickly from her wound, considering all the riding, climbing, and fighting she does later.
EXPLANATION: (This is nothing new, if you recall Phoebus's injuries in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.) Right after she was injured, her body produced lots of adrenaline, which blocks pain. And when they were safe, she finally gave in to the pain and thus collapsed. (Maybe from the sight of blood?) Also, perhaps Mulan's wound may not have been as serious as it looked and/or that medic really knew what he was doing.
Noticed by Barry Adams; explained by María Jos?Díaz Sámano
SCENE: Mulan is discovered/Mulan goes to the Imperial City.
NOTICE: The scabbord on Khan changes places. When Shang pulls the sword off Khan after Mulan is discovered, we see him take it from the scabbord on Khan's right. When Mulan puts the sword back in the scabbord on Khan, the scabbord is on Khan's left.
EXPLANATION: Notice during the "cookout" that Khan gives his blanket to Mulan, he has no bridal or scabbard on him. Later after we see Shan Yu pop out of the snow the scene comes back to Mulan getting ready to go home. When she got ready to go home she probably put the scabbard on the other side of Khan.
Noticed by Barry Adams; explained by Jolin Stickney
SCENE: Mulan is discovered.
NOTICE: When Shang and the rest find out Mulan is a woman, the snow is bluish pink color. As the troop leaves Mulan, the snow
graually turns green. According to The Art of Mulan, this was done intentionally because you never really see any other movie with green snow. However, as the falcon swoops down, the snow is blue again. And when Mulan gets ready to leave for the Imperial City, the snow is still blue. I wonder what happened to the green?
Noticed by ShdwRlm
SCENE: The Huns break out of the avalanche.
NOTICE: As soon as an avalanche stops moving, the snow is like CONCRETE. If you aren't on top when the snow stops, you will suffocate (unless maybe somebody is immediately there with a drill or jackhammer). No one, not even a Hun, could crack through that snow through brute strength. And even if they could, they'd have to do it REALLY FAST, before they ran out of air. It looks like at least twenty minutes go by before the Huns break free -- they should be dead or at least trapped and dying.
EXPLANATION: The surviving Huns all thought really fast and curled up to create large air pockets for themselves. They were thus alive twenty minutes later, and really, really mad -- so mad that they possessed superhuman strength...
Contributed by Laura Smith
SCENE: The parade in the Imperial City.
NOTICE: One woman (probably more) appear on both sides of the parade route. If you look closely, you will see one woman with her hair in a bun and one curly bang in the middle of her forehead. The same woman is also seen looking with surprise as she sees Shan Yu come out of the shadows.
EXPLANATION: She's a ham and very fast. More likely, the animators didn't want to spend time coming up with too many distinctive faces in the crowd. To save time, a set of extras were drawn and then randomly duplicated in the crowd scenes. It works most of the time, but "twins" do show up.
Noticed by Barry Adams
SCENE: Shang presents Shan-Yu's sword to the Emperor.
NOTICE: How did they manage to find Shan-Yu's sword after the battle? (I guess it was sticking out of the snow, but it didn't look like that happened when he got buried.) And how did they know that it was really Shan-Yu's sword?
EXPLANATION: Shan-Yu's sword is the only one with a wiggily blade. All the other swords are either straight (Chinese army) or scimitars (Hun army). Shan-Yu's is the only sword with that unique design.
Noticed by Albert Yang; explained by Barry Adams
SCENE: Imperial City
NOTICE: When Shan Yu appears in the shadows, Shang pulls out his
sword. But Shang had left his sword at the burned-out village with his father's helmet. Where did the sword come from?
EXPLANATION: Shang likely started off with one sword, but when his father made him captain, Shang received another sword from his father. To honor his father after his death, Shang puts the sword he received from his father into the snow, then went back to using his original sword.
Noticed by Mariellen Kennedy; explained by Jeffrey Y. Sue
SCENE: Shang & Co. attempt to ram down the doors.
NOTICE: How come they couldn't get into the palace using
that statue, considering that Shan-Yu was able to punch his way through door and knock columns over with his sword?
WHY: Perhaps the front doors were made of iron and all the inner doors, columns, and roof beams were all made of wood. Also, the front doors are "outside" doors, and look very thick on screen, while the other doors are "inside" doors and are much thinner.
Noticed by Albert Yang; explained by Jeffrey Y. Sue
SCENE: Shang and platoon try to ram open the big palace doors
NOTICE: The statue that eight of them are hefting is stone and 15-20
feet long, so its volume is vaguely about 500 cu feet, at around 160
lbs/cu foot is about forty tons.
WHY: These are very strong soldiers, e.g. we saw Shang carrying two
lots of weights in the training scenes!
Noticed and explained by Jonathan McColl
SCENE: Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po help Mulan rescue the Emperor.
NOTICE: Mulan observes that by ramming the door, the soldiers won't get to the Emperor in time, so she comes up with this plan to dress her friends up in drag. But in real life it takes a long time to "apply the face," plus they had to get the makeup, dresses, and wigs from somewhere!
EXPLANATION: Hey, it is a funny sequence. Even if it did take a while to get the guys dressed, it was worth it since the Huns were watching for soldiers and not women. Second possible explanation: It *did* take a long time for the Gang of Three to change. However, it took just as long for the Huns to find their way around the palace (assuming they weren't casually bashing through walls as Shan-Yu did later). I don't know how labyrinthine the real building is, but it would be just another "flexibility" for the film.
Noticed by Julius Elefante. Explained by Phillip Thorne.
SCENE: After Chien Po recues the Emperor
NOTICE: After Mulan sends Chien Po down the rope with the emperor, Mulan gets ready to slide down that same rope. The scene cuts back and forth (quickly) between the horrified Mulan watching Shan Yu hurt Shang, and she is still holding the scarf. Somehow, Yao and Ling slide down the rope while she is standing there.
EXPLANATION: Mulan was only *holding* the scarf so Ling and Yao could slide down.
Contributed by "Anya."
SCENE: Mulan cuts the rope that the Chien-Po carried the emperor
down on.
NOTICE: She leaves Shan-Yu's sword in the column and goes to revive Shang. Why did she leave the enemy's sword somewhere he could reach it?
EXPLANATION: Mulan clearly SLAMS the sword into the column with all her strength, and even Shan Yu has to WRENCH it free. I'd
assume that Mulan either QUICKLY tried and failed to move it (remember that Shan-Yu leapt up to grab at the falling rope giving her very little time to get out of the way) or that she simply guessed that she could not wrench it free in time and did not try.
Noticed by Albert Yang; explained by Thomas E. Phillips, Jr.
SCENE: Mulan runs from Shan Yu.
NOTICE: The incredible shrinking hallway. Mulan takes a left turn and proceeds down the hall while talking to Mushu. She runs for quite some time till she stops in front of a window where Mushu jumps a kite and flies to the fireworks tower. Seconds later Shan Yu turns that same corner and the window is right there.
Contributed by Dana Stickney
SCENE: Mushu and Cri-Kee invade the fireworks tower. Mushu: "Citizens, I need fire power!" Attendant: "Who are you?!" Mushu: "Your worst nightmare!"
NOTICE: First, Mulan directors Barry Cook (the one with the sideburns) and Tony Bancroft make cameos as the fireworks attendants. Next, Mushu's fighting stance comes from Batman (hence the wings). Finally, the dialogue. I've heard a couple of good suggestions here. The lines might either come from or be highly similar to dialogue from the Batman animated TV series and/or movies, one of the Rambo movies, or the Eddie Murphy movie 48 Hours. It's also possible Eddie just improvised the lines.
Info from Rex Huang, Barry Adams, Marc Hairston, and Geoffrey Miller.
SCENE: Shan-Yu is ready to kill Shang, but Mulan distracts him.
NOTICE: If Mulan made a bad move in letting Shan-Yu get his sword again, then Shan-Yu also made some bad decisions. Why didn't he kill Shang first and then go after Mulan, instead of potentially dealing with a situation of fighting against both Mulan and Shang at the same time? Also, how come Shang didn't chase after Shan-Yu?
EXPLANATION: Shan-Yu got so furious and humilliated that a woman had defeated his army, that he wanted vengeance and forgot about anything else. And when Shang somehow came to his senses (he was still probably somewhat dazed at this point), Mulan had already taken Shan-Yu away.
Explained by María Jos?Díaz Sámano
SCENE: Mushu rides on the featherless falcon.
NOTICE: The bird resembles the chocabos in the Final Fantasy video games. Visit the site and decide for yourself.
Noticed by Ara.
SCENE: Mulan battles Shan-Yu.
NOTICE: When Mulan first fights the Huns guarding the door, she is carrying a blue fan. When she faces Shan-Yu on the roof, she whips out a yellow fan.
EXPLANATION: After the fight with the five Huns, Mulan somehow got a hold of Ling's yellow fan.
A THOUGHT: "I'm pretty sure it's NOT Ling's fan. If you look at the 'handles,' Ling's fan
has light brown handles, but Mulan's yellow fan has black/dark brown handles. Besides, Mulan looks pretty surprised when she whips it out, so she couldn't have picked up Ling's fan."
Noticed by Barry Adams; comment by "ShdwRlm"
SCENE: Mushu blasts off.
NOTICE: The characters on the rocket translate as "The Big Bamboo," the name of a bar in Kissimmee, Florida where some of the Mulan film crew like to hang out. The characters "wei xian" (danger) are also on the rocket.
Translation by Tangming Fong.
SCENE: The Emperor comes down the stairs and says, "That is enough..."
NOTICE: Why did he appear from inside the castle not outside the castle? (Remember, Chien Po saved him by lifting him to out of the castle?)
Noticed by Fani
SCENE: The Ancestors celebrate at the end of the movie.
NOTICE: A suite of John Travolta dances. Watch the first two ancestors shown. The one on the left is doing the dance from Pulp Fiction. The other one is doing the Hand Jive from Grease. A few seconds later, another ancestor is doing a dance from Saturday Night Fever.
A CAMEO IN DISNEY'S TARZAN...
SCENE: The apes hold and shake Professor Porter (Jane's father) upside down, spilling various items from his pockets.
NOTICE: A bean bag doll of Little Brother (the dog) from Mulan is one of the items that falls out.
And two in LILO AND STITCH!
SCENE: Lilo shows her older sister Nani what Stitch, a record player, and an Elvis album can do.
NOTICE: On the bedroom wall behind Nani, look for the Mulan movie poster (the red one with Mulan riding Khan). The poster is sometimes visible in other scenes in Nani's room.
Thanks to Marc Hairston for the note and the screen capture!
Possible Reference in SHREK
This may just be coincidence, but the scene where Mulan compliments Shang and then gazes admiringly after him seems to have an echo in Shrek. Then again, it just might be the Eddie Murphy wisecracking sidekick.