Aside from my actual parents, I’m pretty sure Disney movies were responsible for my entire upbringing. When I was really little it was all The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Beauty and The Beast and then as a tween I was all about Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and other Pixar gems. In my later teens I frothed High School Musical and now I’m a Marvel geek so basically, I have been a Disney tragic since day dot, and always will be. So it’s nice that the kind and generous folks at Stan are now streaming more Disney movies than you could poke a stick at.
Since it’s all there for the re-watching, I plan on bingeing a lot of it over the Xmas period, and let me tell you, one of the fun things about revisiting these movies as an adult is picking up all the jokes that went straight over your head when you were a kid.
While there’s probably literally hundreds of these spicy little inclusions in Disney flicks, I’ve picked out some of the best for you to have a chuckle over next time you’re watching a Disney cartoon with your 4-year-old cousin.
Cars
This 2006 film about a racecar named Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) features a couple of subtle lil’ references. The first is this proof that in the world of cars, strip clubs with topless waitresses do exist:
Another is this moment where two groupies approach Lightning to proclaim their undying fandom, and “flash” him in the process. (And he’s into it.)
Toy Story 2
I remember being in Year 8 and watching this movie and totally getting this joke. It’s when Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) has an encounter with the extremely cute and sassy Jessie (Joan Cusack), and gets a little involuntarily excited:
SCHWING!
Bambi
Okay so this weepy classic may have been made in 1942, but that didn’t stop the sneaky folks at Disney from slipping a boner reference into this movie too. It all goes down when Flower the skunk gets his pash on, and like ol’ Buzz he gets all het up, even going so far as to become engorged with blood and go as stiff as a… let’s say “board”:
U ok hun?
A Bug’s Life
I never really warmed to this movie because I am terrified of all bugs, even cute animated ones (see also: Wall-E). But there is a pretty blatant sexual reference when one of the skeevy Fly Brothers, mistaking Francis the ladybug (Denis Leary) for a lady, cat-calls him with the crude: “Hey cutie! Wanna pollinate with a real bug?” Most kids wouldn’t know what pollinate means but all the adults watching sure do.
Frozen
Frozen is one of the biggest Disney/Pixar films of the past few years, and most parents who have been forced to watch it 10 million times would be glad for the little adult references thrown in. One of the most obvious is this bit, where Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and Anna (Kristen Bell) are chatting about a bloke named Hans and Disney manages to work a dick joke into the convo:
Toy Story 3
Now this moment could be seen in an entirely innocent way, but it can also be seen in an extremely oral sex way. Make of it what you will, but when Mr Potato Head (Don Rickles) says this I can never help but giggle:
Fine, maybe he just means only he can make her stop talking, but my mind is always in the gutter and I make no apologies for it.
Ratatouille
Where that Toy Story one was seemingly innocent, I reckon this Ratatouille moment is deliberately dirty. After Linguini (Lou Romano) is caught chatting in the pantry to Remy (Patton Oswalt) by Chef Skinner (Ian Holm) he covers it up by saying he’s “familiarising himself with the vegetables and such”. Skinner boots him out, screaming:
Surprised that reference was left in, tbh.
The Lion King
There’s a couple of not so much jokes as sexy subliminal messages in this classic movie, which eagle-eyed viewers have noticed over the years (not me, I swear I’m not this much of a perv!). The most famous one is probably “sex” written in the sky:
Apparently it’s supposed to be “SFX” as in “special effects”, but it’s a little suss imo. The other one that I found while researching this yarn is these very horny-looking sand dunes:
Okay but those are actually boobs and no one can tell me otherwise.
The Little Mermaid
For real, no one on earth over the age of 13 can sing the lyrics “darling it’s better/down where it’s wetter” without snort-laughing. It’s a scientific fact.
