This detail you missed in the ‘The Little Mermaid’ totally connects Prince Eric to another classic Disney family
When was the last time you watched The Little Mermaid? Not just watched it as background noise while you cleaned the living room, but really, truly watched it for all sorts of crazy little details? The folks over at BuzzFeed recently watched it, and combed through it for some of these little details and turned up a pretty crazy one. Prince Eric might have a connection to Prince Philip.
As you’re probably well aware, Disney loves to slip in little Easter eggs for their other movies. Disney Easter eggs have been a big thing this last decade, but they weren’t a widely known and discussed in 1989, when The Little Mermaid came out. So what we’re seeing here in The Little Mermaid could be a totally conscious choice to put Prince Philip in a background image, thereby linking the two princes together, and creating one really impressive royal lineage.
The Easter egg-containing scene in question is the dinner scene with Eric, Ariel, and her dinglehopper. But before the magic of Ariel brushing her hair with a fork happens, we see a big wide shot of the dining room, and hanging on the wall are three pictures. The first and end pictures are of boats (Prince Eric loves boats, you know). The MIDDLE one appears to have two people in the picture, and after zooming in and enhancing, the painting appears to show Prince Phillip and Aurora, AKA Sleeping Beauty.
The man in the image has Phillip’s signature swoop and his princess is wearing Aurora’s blue dress from the movie, so the theory that they’re intended to be the Sleeping Beauty leads seems legit. I’m totally buying this, anyway. I totally believe that Prince Eric and Price Phillip (or Princess Aurora) are either related, or totally have the other’s painting hanging on the wall. Nothing has ever said they’re not connected. And if Elsa and Anna can be related to Tarzan, then Eric can definitely be related to Phillip or Aurora.
That said, I have to admit that the guy in the picture kinda looks a little bit like Peter Pan, too. But it’s hard to tell, and this means we should take a field trip to Prince Eric’s seaside castle to check it out with our own eyes. To be certain, of course. All in the name of being 100% accurate about the pictures he has hanging on his walls, and not at all just trying to hang out at his seaside castle and meet Ariel and play with Eric’s dog, Max.
(Images via Disney.)
