In The Frozen Theory, I explored the connections that ‘prove’ Frozen, Tangled and The Little Mermaid all take place in the same world.
I loved how it challenged the concept of a single unified Disney world (and also how it connected to Tangled, The Little Mermaid and The Disney Princess Theory) but there was one little detail that I found even more fascinating than the possible family links between Anna, Elsa and Rapunzel.
That detail was Wreck-It Ralph…
How Wreck-It Ralph Breaks The Disney Theory
Ralph was not a fan of The Disney Theory.
At first it seemed like a trivial detail, but there is a scene in Frozen where Anna stands next to a dessert that looks just like Wreck-It Ralph‘s land of ‘Sugar Rush’.
Could this dessert hint at a shared world?
As you probably know, Wreck-It Ralph is a Disney movie released in 2012, where Ralph plays the villain of the ‘Fix-It Felix’ arcade-game. In the film, Ralph longs to be the hero of his story, and and so he leaves the world of his game to find a better one. One of the worlds he visits is Sugar Rush, where he meets a special little girl called Vanellope (we’ll hear more about her later).
Obviously the idea of multiple worlds is a problem for The Disney Theory, which aimed to unite all the movies of Walt Disney in one single world. And a few similarities to a dessert in Frozen are far from enough to base any kind of theory on, but it did make me wonder if there were any connections between Wreck-It Ralph and movies that already featured in The Disney Theory.
And of course there were. Which lead to one very difficult question:
How does Wreck-It Ralph fit in to the Disneyverse?
Coincidentally, Wreck-It Ralph, Vanellope, Elsa, Anna and Rapunzel are now all Disney Infinity characters.
Wreck-It Ralph is so packed with videogame references, trying to find Disney cameos amongst them is like looking for needles in a haystack full of pins.
Which isn’t to say it’s impossible…
There are three Disney characters in this shot. Can you spot them?
Take this scene in Wreck-It Ralph‘s ‘Game Central Station’ for example.
Avid gamers will probably easily spot icons like Bowser from Super Mario, but what might be less obvious are three cameos from established Disney characters.
The two most significant cameos are both from a movie which Frozen is already closely linked to. They are Maximus the horse and Vladimir the pub thug from Tangled.
Maximus the horse (left) and Vladimir the thug (right).
Let’s take another look at that shot of the station:
Maximus leaving the station to the left and Vladimir entering it to the right.
Maximus and Vladimir’s appearances provide strong evidence that the worlds of Wreck-It Ralph and Tangled are somehow linked.
We can even see that as a knight is riding Maximus, which tells us this scene is before the events of Tangled, where Maximus begrudgingly partners up with Flynn Rider.
Interestingly, the other cameo in this scene is Tiny the Dinosaur from Meet The Robinsons – a film that previously remained unconnected to the Disneyverse.
Meet The Robinson‘s Tiny the Dinosaur enters Game Central Station.
The final notable Disney cameo in Wreck-It Ralph involves a ‘Lost Dog’ poster in Ralph’s ‘Bad-Guy Anonymous’ support group which seems to depict a white dog called ‘Bolt’.
Hopefully Bolt was reunited with Penny soon after this scene.
So Wreck-It Ralph can be connected to Bolt, Meet The Robinsons and Tangled (with the last film providing a strong link to Frozen and the rest of the Disneyverse). But does this mean all Disney movies are actually set in Disney games? How can a film set entirely within videogames make sense in the same world as magical powers and fairy-tale villains?
To explain that, we need some help from Vanellope.
Vanellope’s story
Vanellope the glitch.
When Ralph first meets Vanellope she’s a troubled, unpopular kid who seems to have the ability to ‘glitch’ out and appear in different places and magically transport herself. The other inhabitants of Sugar Rush shun her because they believe that a glitch taking part in the game could lead to the arcade machine being switched off.
As Ralph explores the world of Sugar Rush he learns that Vanellope isn’t a bug in the game, she’s actually the game’s hero. Once upon a time, a rogue videogame character called Turbo took her place in the game, turning her in to a glitch. Now Turbo rules over Sugar Rush as King Candy, while Vanellope glitches out and becomes more and more confused and erratic.
With Ralph’s help, Vanellope eventually defeats King Candy and takes her rightful place as Princess Vanellope.
So how does this explain Wreck-It Ralph‘s place in the Disneyverse?
Because glitching is magic.
99 problems but the glitch ain’t one.
Vanellope shares all the characteristics of magical characters in the Disneyverse. She has the distracted, erratic mind of Disney magician like Princess and the Frog‘s Mama Odie, the ability to transport herself and other objects like Aladdin‘s Genie, and her ‘magic’ can be unintentionally triggered by strong emotions, like Frozen‘s Elsa.
If the Disneyverse indeed shares its world, then Wreck-It Ralph teaches us that it’s a world where there is no need for true ‘bad-guys’. This is why every Disney movie ends ‘happily ever after’ with the evil power being vanquished.
Because the evil power was never supposed to exist in the first place.
Just like Turbo, they have taken the place of a benevolent ruler or benign antagonist and brought discord where there should be harmony.
‘I am bad and that is good, I will never be good and that’s not bad, there’s no one I’d rather be than me.’
This could even be what gives erratic magic users like Genie and Mama Odie both their magic and their madness. They have been supplanted by powerful evil forces like Jafar and the Shadow Man and so made purposeless. They know they are supposed to help the hero bring order to the world, but they are a confused and chaotic good, and often their actions don’t help as much as they have the power to. Like Vanellope, they need an external – often unexceptional – force, to readdress the balance.
The Problem
There is one obvious problem with my theory: Wreck-It Ralph makes it quite clear that a glitch can’t leave it’s own ‘game’. Yet we know that Genie seems to have met Pocahontas, and Merlin in The Sword In The Stone goes to Bermuda – how do we explain that?
When Vanellope is still a glitch, she can’t leave her game.
Well, because once the evil-powers of their universe have been vanquished they are no longer glitches and are free to travel where they want. It’s no coincidence that Genie decides to go travelling after Jafar is defeated, and Merlin disappears right after defeating Madam Mim. Once order is restored in their worlds, they are free to leave, and it appears in the Disneyverse that only the magic users and side-characters are aware that you can leave these worlds. You never see Simba or Aladdin appearing as a cameo in any of these movies so maybe the Disney characters who visit other worlds are just like Ralph, looking for a world where they can be the hero.
Once Turbo is defeated, Vanellope is free to leave Sugar Rush.
Game Over
In short, Wreck-It Ralph obliterates The Disney Theory.
Instead of a single world being used for alien experimentation, it’s an inter-connected hub of movies like Game Central Station (Lion King‘s Cross?) where characters can (usually) come and go as they please.
Incidentally, this also means that all 30 Disney movies mentioned in The Disney Theory can be linked to every game referenced in Wreck-It Ralph; from Pac-Man to Mortal Kombat. For some exploration of this, read:
Disney Have Secretly Connected
The Disney And Marvel Universes
For now, I’m far more interested in another cameo in Wreck-It Ralph that addresses by far the most popular question in relation to The Disney Theory…
Two moogles from Final Fantasy/Disney-crossover game, Kingdom Hearts.
DisneyTheory.com 
Is it me or does it also look like peter pan might be in the station when you wee pointing out the characters? In front of the yellow sunshine wearing black pants with a red tied bow on the right hand side?
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It does look like it!!
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Yeah it does look like him but there is an actual video game character that looks like that. I don’t remember their name. To me that looks like Link with red hair, you know from Zelda.
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Nah, I think that’s Cami from Street Fighter, you can see her iconic red beret
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Maybe they are just Easter Eggs. Just simple cameos.
Maybe most of the Disney movies are connected, but others are not.
Or maybe, the characters that appear in this were/are so famous in the Disneyverse that a video game was made about them.
Maybe video games in the Disneyverse, are just worlds within worlds.
Like in “Horton Hears a Who.” Worlds within worlds.
Not seperate, but connected.
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that idea is most like what i would suppose as well, it seems reasonable enough under the ideas that he has books of certain movies, or movies of certain characters. video games are just another storytelling device, and if they have a book traveling/time/space ability within their own sub straights, it may just have to apply a multi dimensional spread to the existing disney verse concept. onioned
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As you noticed some movies take place in “now” and future times. Maybe the players of the video games are just other characters from other future possible movies. Like, how you see Boo from Monsters Inc. in Toy Story 3. So maybe the players of the games are like Boo and Bonnie. Just a theory 😛
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Is that not mike from monsters inc?
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OF COURSE NOT????
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Is it just me or does the dress that vanellope’s glitches out of looks like the red queen’s dress?
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i found 2 other characters that may be characters but im not sure, in one of the seats it looks like Boo in her purple monstor costume, and the man with the red hair and the fire torch near it looks like Merida’s father. and the guys in the bottom right corner, i thought those were the brothers from tangled. the bad guys who helped mother gothel. but thats just me i dont know. lol. love your theories by the way.
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Your theories on the Disneyverse are great and they make perfect sense to me!
But with the Wreck it Ralph theory you state : “and it appears in the Disneyverse that only the magic users and side-characters are aware that you can leave these worlds. You never see Simba or Aladdin appearing as a cameo in any of these movies so maybe the Disney characters who visit other worlds are just like Ralph, looking for a world where they can be the hero.”
Still we see Belle walking (and reading) the Streets of Paris in The Hunchback of the Notre Dame, and Belle isn’t a magic user or side-character. This would make sense in a Disneyverse since both stories take place in France.
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Love your take on this!
As you point out, both Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are set in France so Belle would not have to leave her ‘world’ to go to Paris. Would be interested to know if there are any cameos that do break this theory though…
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The link to the Kingdom Hearts article isn’t working. Can you fix it?
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Apologies! This has now been fixed.
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I personally don’t like the idea of everything being a video game. Maybe the characters you see were made into a game or just look similar.
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i also see a monster from monsters inc in the station
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YEAH! And i see a group of the guys from monsters inc that get rid of the sock
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I don’t like this theory.
I like the Disney Theory a lot more.
A single world used for experimentation is much more exciting and alluring than they all being just video games.
So I choose not to believe this theory, and there has to be a way to further prove the Disney theory.
There has to be a cameo somewhere of a main character leaving their world.
Maybe the unknown princess in Oliver? If she’s really either Aurora or Cinderella walking in New York, then the Disney Theory has more credibility.
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Doesn’t it look like boo from monsters inc is in the central game station in the bench in the bottom left corner. And again in pic related to KH bushes seems to be in the middle of the pic walking in her purple monster suit
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I think it looks like Dora the Explorer
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I saw bowser from super mario bros sitting in the meeting with wreek it Ralph. It’s very clear
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on the 3 disney characters in the shot if you look you can see the dino from meet the Robinsons
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Big hero 6; Any chance that honey lemon and mrs.robinson(the older one) are connected? just seen their eccentric character the same…
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I like the Disney theory but I have made my own adjustments to it. All the stories are all one big experiment, but who is experimenting? To answer this you have to have played Epic Mickey. In the prolouge of this game it is suggested that a wizard has magically created a perfect world inside a book, called wasteland, until Mickey shows up and screws up their whole world by spilling thinner into the book. Now, if you realize that this wizard is really Yen Sid (Disney spelled backwards btw) from the famous sorcerer’s apprentice sequence in Fantasia, you would know that this isn’t the first time mickey has gotten into trouble. So my improved Disney theory, if you will, is that all the interconnected stories of heroes, princesses, monsters, and the occasional Greek god are all Yen Sid’s attempts at a perfect story. But, yet again, mickey gets involved and messes everything up which explains easter eggs that don’t make sense such as Aurora appearing in New York or Bambi’s time traveling mother. This would also explain how Mickey, Donald, and Goofy wound up in Atlantica. But then again this is just my theory.
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But if main characters never apear outside their stories, how do Rapunzel and Flynn Rider end up in Arendalle?
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Something interesting: One of Disneys planned future projects is also an adaption of “the king of the elves”, a Philip K. Dick story. And Philip K. Dicks worldview, described in his Exegesis and in many of his novel, is based on the main idea that the whole world is in fact inside a sentient computer. And Dick also elaborated on the idea of glitches inside the computer.
So, maybe, this is also true for Disney Movies: The empire never ended. 😉
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I don’t think that that is Maximus. The knight is wearing full plate armor. That went out of style before the Hundred Years War. They were replaced when gun powder was able to be made strong enough to penetrate armor. With the advent of shrapnel, infantry started wearing breastplates again. So, between the 17th and 19th centuries, most soldiers didn’t wear armor.
The soldiers in tangled only wore breast plates and helmets, so they were probably in the late 18th to mid 19th centuries.
The 19th century would also account for the style of dress in both Frozen and Tangled.
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Eve from walle is in the station! Right between browser and the purple dragon!! So what’s the theory now ?
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My brain has exploded.
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So does this mean there is a Disney Matrix, and that all the movies and characters are just different iterations?
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Here is a loopback: since all known physical laws are computable according to the Universal Turing Machine (the mathematical abstraction of a computer) theory, that is, in laymen’s terms, the entire universe as we know it can be simulated using a computer, our entire universe itself can be part of a simulation running in a computer.
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But what about Rapunzel’s cameo on Frozen? She’s not a side character…
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Maybe since she is related to the characters in a deeper way such as “code” to the sisters she would be able to jump the game or maybe she found out about it and since she is also a magical character (her tears and her hair ) she would be a part of this classification in character creation
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And no one is going to mention Tron? That they went into a game??
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Welp, congratulations. You basically called the sequel
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