What do Edgar Rice Burroughs and Hans Christian Andersen have in common? They both wrote classic stories that were made into Disney animated films. And now they’ve been linked even further, with a theory that Tarzan is Anna and Elsa’s younger brother they never knew. Chris Buck, who co-directed both Tarzan and Frozen, told MTV News:
“When you’re working on a feature, you have a lot of time to think about stuff because it takes four years to make one,” Buck, who’s read all of your fan theories, told MTV News at a special screening of the Walt Disney Animation Studios Shorts Collection on Sunday (August 9). “I think Jen [Lee] and I were walking to a meeting, and I just start to tell her the entire story.”
“I said, ’Of course Anna and Elsa’s parents didn’t die,'” he added. “Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas. So in my little head, Anna and Elsa’s brother is Tarzan — but on the other side of that island are surfing penguins, to tie in a non-Disney movie, ’Surf’s Up.’ That’s my fun little world.”
The connection was also mentioned in a reddit AMA last year. Never mind that the original Tarzan was identified as the child of Lord and Lady Greystoke of England. This is the Disney movie universe we’re talking about! -via Buzzfeed