History WesternAnimation / TheSwordInTheStone

Notably, this film was Creator/WaltDisney's penultimate animated film and the last one to be released during his lifetime; he would die three years later during the production of ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'', which wouldn't see release until ten months after his passing. The film likewise established the xerography process introduced for ''WesternAnimation/101Dalmatians'' as a de facto visual standard for Disney's feature output, as opposed to a finite aesthetic choice; due to both diminishing staff and Walt Disney's contemporarily-declining interest in his animation department, this may have stemmed from labor and budgetary limitations.

Notably, this film was Creator/WaltDisney's penultimate animated film and the last one to be released during his lifetime; he would die three years later during the production of ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'', which wouldn't see release until ten months after his passing. The film likewise established the xerography process as a de facto visual standard for Disney's feature output, as opposed to a finite aesthetic choice; due to both diminishing staff and Walt Disney's contemporarily-declining interest in his animation department, this may have stemmed from labor and budgetary limitations.

Notably, this film was Creator/WaltDisney's penultimate animated film and the last one to be released during his lifetime; he would die three years later during the production of ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'', which wouldn't see release until ten months after his passing.

* BrokenAesop: The film tries to have a "Knowledge is the real power" message delivered by Merlin to Wart both throughout the film and in the ending, but almost nothing in the film supports it because Wart is a PinballProtagonist who has no control over anything that's going on around him, and his problems are almost always solved by Merlin's magic anyway [[{{Hypocrite}} despite Merlin saying magic can't solve all his problems]] (even if they do unwittingly tend to cause as many hardships as they solve, Merlin is basically doing the real work for Wart, even if he sincerely is trying to make a point to him) and he doesn't even get his happy ending by using anything he learned from Merlin--in fact, Wart ends up doing the ''exact opposite'' of what Merlin wanted by willingly accepting a degrading position as Kay's squire instead of focusing on an education. It was by sheer luck that he ends up going to London and turns out to be the one worthy of pulling out the sword, making him King of England right then and there.

* HeroesWantRedheads: Inverted with Wart's encounter with the female squirrel who, according to Merlin, is a redhead. In Great Britain, a red squirrel is considered native wildlife and a gray squirrel is considered vermin.

* MayDecemberRomance: Subverted. The poor girl squirrel who is at best a teenager in squirrel years has no idea that the squirrel she has fallen for is actually a prepubescent ''human'' boy.

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: Merlin and Arthur's argument over Arthur becoming a squire. On Merlin's side, he's right that Arthur is basically choosing a lowly career and reducing himself to being a lowly stooge for a jerk like Kay, but as Arthur points out, as an orphan, he doesn't have anything else ahead for him[[note]]as far as he knows[[/note]] and it's ultimately better than nothing.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Merlin gives one to Wart when he's given the position of Kay's squire in the climax, sarcastically congratulating him and clearly bitter that Wart is basically throwing away his chance for an education for a dead-end career. Arthur calls Merlin out for not putting himself in Arthur's place for one second and tells him that he should be glad that he is ''something'' than ''nothing''. A quick shot of Archimedes shows that even he thought Merlin's words crossed the line during the heated argument.

* {{Catchphrase}}:
** Whenever Wart stumbles or falls it's accompanied with the same "Whoa... what? WHOA!" This happens seven times during a fairly short movie.
** Archimedes has "Who? Who? What?" whenever he's woken up.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Kay is a dismissive jerk to Wart, but he ''does'' have a point about testing the sword ("Anyone can pull it once it's been pulled."). Fortunately, Kay is InstantlyProvenWrong - once re-inserted, the sword is as immovable as ever, until Wart tries again.

* MonsterInTheMoat: The moat of Sir Ector's castle is inhabited by an enormous and very aggressive [[PikePeril pike]]. Merlin, having transformed himself and Arthur into small fish to explore the moat, initially uses it to teach Arthur a lesson on out-thinking his opponents, but [[SuperPersistentPredator when the pike doesn't take the hint]], Arthur ends up having to be plucked out of the water entirely by Archimedes the owl. It's a {{downplayed}} example, though, since the pike is only dangerous to Arthur in his fish form.

* ExactWords: "No mineral or vegetable, only animals," and "No make-believe things, like, oh, pink dragons and stuff." So saith Madam Mim, who turns into a ''purple'' dragon instead of a ''pink'' one. This is a blatant violation of the ''spirit'' of the rules, but by this point Mim doesn't care. Then Merlin one-ups her by turning into a germ, which also strictly abides by the stated rules (Mim tries to call him out on violating the "no disappearing" clause, but as he points out, germs are only very very small, not strictly invisible).

** The film recites the age-old myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat. In reality, the Ancient Greeks discovered that the world was round thousands of years before.

* BigFriendlyDog: The castle hounds, Tiger and Talbon. When Wart is brought home by Merlin, they run over to him, tackle him, and lick his face happily.

* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Wart is naive and innocent, but has a good heart that allows him to pull the sword from the stone.

* RecycledAnimation: Disney was suffering financially while this film was being made, so there's a substantial amount of recycled animation. For instance, Kay trips in the exact same way when chasing Wart at the climax that he does when chasing him into the woods at the film's beginning. Merlin's "pack all the house in the bag" spell is recycled for his "clean the dishes" spell, and Kay's eating a chicken leg during Merlin's arrival is repeated thrice in the same scene. The scene of Wart being mobbed by the dogs was in turn reused by Disney in ''The Jungle Book'' as Mowgli getting mobbed by the wolves.

* AllWomenAreLustful: The female squirrels immediately pursue Merlin and Wart as mates, while Madame Mim even sort-of attempts to seduce Wart of all people. The only female character in the film who doesn't deliberately attempt to seduce someone is the scullery maid.

** In the Bird Scene, Arthur and Archimedes encounter a hawk before Arthur crash-lands into the lair of Madame Mim, who attempts to kill him when she finds out that he is Merlin's ward.

** Madame Mim certainly believes this, as illustrated in the below quote:
--->'''Madame Mim:''' I suppose Merlin sees some good in you.\\

'''Madame Mim:''' Yes, and in my book, that's ''bad''!

** In a political related one, the European Spanish release of the film during the its original release in the 1960s was forced to change its name to "Merlin el encantador" (Merlin the Enchanter) for some reason, and it also it forced Disney to keep the original credits in English, rather than using the ones from the Latin American version.[[note]]Both Spain and Latin America used the same Latin American dub, as [[NoDubForYou Spain never dubbed the film with their own dialect]].[[/note]] This is because Madame Mim's voice actress, Maruja Sen, was a Spain-born voice actress who moved to Mexico as a result of the Spanish Civil War, and the Francisco Franco's regime refused to gave her a credit in a movie dubbed by her in her own homeland.

* DisneyVillainDeath: Subverted. Madame Mim plummets screaming off a cliff and into a bog to her apparent doom, trapped inside a tree with seemingly no hope of escape, to similar effect as the Evil Queen falling off the cliff in Snow White, but instead she pops up moments later having turned herself into a purple dragon.

* EvilCounterpart: Madame Mim is this to Merlin; evil magic user.
* EvilIsHammy: Madame Mim sings a VillainSong about herself complete with dancing and shapeshifting. Merlin is far more restrained.

* ExactWords: "No mineral or vegetable, only animals," and "No make-believe things, like, oh, pink dragons and stuff." So saith Madame Mim, who turns into a ''purple'' dragon instead of a ''pink'' one. This is a blatant violation of the ''spirit'' of the rules, but by this point Mim doesn't care. Then Merlin one-ups her by turning into a germ, which also strictly abides by the stated rules (Mim tries to call him out on violating the "no disappearing" clause, but as he points out, germs are only very very small, not strictly invisible).

* FauxAffablyEvil: Madame Mim is cheerful, amiable, and pretty friendly when Wart blunders into her house, and while he can tell she's unpleasant, he doesn't even realize she's dangerous until she tells him she has to kill him which she says with about as much fanfare as someone saying it's suddenly started raining.

* ForTheEvulz: Madame Mim commits evil [[CardCarryingVillain because she herself is evil]]. There is no EvilPlan.

* ImpossibleHourglassFigure: Madame Mim's beautiful form is mundanely impossible because she used magic to achieve it.

* MagicVersusScience: {{Defied|Trope}}. Merlin is a wizard, alright, but he is quite knowledgeable about science; special mention goes to him using his knowledge of germs and disease to infect Madame Mim (which weren't widely accepted to be the cause of disease until the 1850s!). He even outright tells Wart that magic can't solve everything. In the end, it seems that a combination of the two can give one an advantage in life.

* NeverTrustATrailer: The 1983 trailer for the movie makes the movie seem like Merlin and Wart are actively seeking The Sword in the Stone and that Madame Mim is driving the conflict. The sword doesn't even come into the plot until just near the end, and the bulk of the film is just Merlin and Wart partaking in episodic adventures. Madam Mim technically is the villain of the film (Ector and Kay are the main source of the film's conflict for marginalizing Wart, but calling them villains is a big stretch, since they're both jerks at worst) but she's a side character that Wart unwittingly encounters late in the picture--she is not the film's main source of conflict.

* PrefersTheTrueForm: Played straight in Mad Madame Mim's case because [[BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad the uglier she becomes in her regular form, the better it is]]. This is demonstrated in her VillainSong, during which she turns her face into a pig's and tears her maiden form apart, which is only "skin-deep". Both Merlin and Archimedes are aware of her behavior and the former tells her that, after healing from her post-battle fever, she will hopefully become uglier than ever before ([[InsultBackfire the reason being she takes these remarks as a compliment]]).

* TakeThat: Some see the character of Madame Mim (who hates sunshine) as one to critics who disliked the light tone of Disney's films.

* TenPacesAndTurn: During the Wizard Duel. Madame Mim proceeds to break this protocol like she does nearly every other rule she made for the duel such as "no disappearing" and "no cheating".

* ThroughAFaceFullOfFur: Or rather through a face full of scales/skin in her case as a dragon and then in her normal form, Madame Mim. One of the side effects she has is changing into various colors (including red from hot flashes and blue from chills) before stopping at green and breaking out in red spots, thanks to Merlin infecting her as a germ.

* TransformingConforming: The whole point of a Wizards Duel. Each wizard or witch chooses a form to transform into, and their opponent tries to choose a form to exploit the other's weaknesses. e.g., Merlin becomes a rabbit for speed, Mad Madame Mim becomes a fox, a known predator of rabbits. Mim breaks her own rules about transforming into fantastical creatures through LoopholeAbuse, becoming a large, fire-breathing dragon. Merlin counters by becoming a germ, meaning, ironically, that ''catching him'' was exactly the last thing she wanted.

* VillainSong: "The Magnificent, Marvelous, Mad Madame Mim."

* WickedWitch: Madame Mim lives in a cottage in the woods brewing up trouble. When she hears coughing, she hopes that it's a serious illness.

* WizardDuel: Merlin vs Madame Mim.

* MuggleFosterParents: Sir Ector, to Wart/Future King Arthur.

* CanonImmigrant: Madam Mim is mistaken as one of these by those who have only read ''Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing''. Her part was eliminated from that edition, but she is present in the original.

** Whenever Wart stumbles or falls it's accompanied with the same "Wha...wait! Whoa!" This happens at least five times during a fairly short movie.

** Wart himself starts to CryCute when [[spoiler:standing up for Merlin costs him a chance at being Kay's squire. He then cries again when he finally gets the squire position by luck and Merlin sarcastically congratulates him, pointing out he's nothing.]]