All There In The Manual / Animated Films

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• Many "Art of" Disney books contain information that wasn't mentioned in their films.
  • The Lion King spun off a mini-series of storybooks that revealed some of the backstory of the characters, most notably Scar's real name, Taka (unfortunately, no one told this to the guy who wrote Disney Dossiers).
  • Treasure Planet: A Voyage of Discovery, the art book for Treasure Planet, reveals an almost insane amount of information not included in the film, such as the name of Jim's father (Layland), Jim's relationship with him, the species and backstory of Silver, how Treasure Planet came to be, and even the names and personalities of the crewmembers.
• The BIONICLE animated movies were intentionally made to be incomplete, encouraging kids to go read the books and comics to understand the details of what's going on and fill in plot holes, like (as pointed out on one DVD extra) why the Toa Metru don't use their Elemental Powers in the 2nd film until the end. Further info was given in fan correspondence with author of said books and comics. Also, all the film DVDs contained character bios and other insight to flesh out the world.
• BoBoiBoy: The Movie: According to answered fanmail in the official magazines◊, the reason why Fang doesn't use his Perforation power in the movie (since the series finale reveals that he always had that ability) is because he had completed his mission, so he gave it back to his older brother Kaizo when he needed it for a different mission. Since the movie released before the series concluded 3 months later, that ability would've been a major spoiler for The Reveal of Fang being a Human Alien on an undercover mission.
• The Book of Life:
  • We learn Manolo's grandmother's name, Anita, from one of Jorge Gutierrez's tweets.
  • Word of God states that General Posada's full name is Jeronimo Guadalupe Posada.
  • Chato’s name isn't stated at all in the actual movie, rather, its by the credits and novelization.
  • The Detention Kids’ names and ethnicities.
  • The fact that Xibalba and La Muerte are married is stated on the website and in other supplemental materials, but nowhere in the film itself.
  • The security guard that Xibalba disguises as is, his name is Guicho.
• The origin of Elsa's ice powers in Frozen was explained in an interview by Jennifer Lee, as a child is born with ice magic 1000 years after an alignment of Saturn (with what was never stated, or possibly never figured out). This was meant to be detailed in the film through narration by a troll with a Brooklyn accent, but it was left out because they figured that the more was explained, the more questions there would be about the rules of magic. They don't exactly have 7 books and 8 movies to explain it, after all. This explanation actually makes a lot of sense if you happen to know that Saturn's rings are part ice, and as for one of its moons, Enceladus...
  • Also, the removed songs go into great detail about a "Troll Prophecy" about Arendelle being plunged into eternal winter, going a long way to explain why Elsa's parents are so afraid of her magic and force her to hide it, as well as explaining the apprehension of everyone. Incidentally, the Prophecy winds up coming completely true anyway, just not as everyone expected.
  • Hans' last name, Westergaard, was only mentioned in a deleted scene from an early draft in which Elsa was still the villain. Word of God later confirmed via Twitter that, even though that scene never made it into the canon, Hans's name was kept. A Frozen Heart reveals the actual spelling of the name; previously, it had been thought to be Westerguard or Westergard as per the original asker on the Twitter post.
• The Gate to the Mind's Eye is about a robot that, when the future goes to hell, travels back in time to cause a reverse Big Bang and restart the universe and let humanity go through the paces again in order to save the world. The video doesn't feature any dialogue to support this, and since it's composed of segments of animation from different producers, it is very hard to infer this just watching the video. The basics of the "plot" are only found on the VHS or DVD case.
• According to one of the bonus features for the home video release of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, the offspring of Toothless (Night Fury) and the Light Fury are known as "Night Lights."
• Detailed profiles of other Supers that are only briefly mentioned in The Incredibles (if at all) in the Extras section of the DVD. The comic book also fills in some holes the movie may have left open.
• Justice League: Doom assumes the viewer has at least some knowledge of the DCU, as not much of the members of the Legion of Doom's backstory is detailed outside of how Vandal Savage became immortal. While the viewer is left with the impression that Metallo, Bane, Cheetah, and Mirror Master have fought Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash respectively before, the full details of Green Lantern's relationship with Star Sapphire aren't explored and the fact that the Martian Manhunter and Ma'alefa'ak are brothers isn't even mentioned (and adds a whole lot of creepy subtext to Ma'alefa'ak posing as a sedcutive blonde woman to lure J'onn into a trap and continuing to act that way after J'onn figures it out).
• According to the artbook for Kubo and the Two Strings, the names of the sisters are Karasu (the chain sister) and Yukami (the pipe sister; name later reconfirmed as Washi) and that Washi's magical pipe contains a fire demon.
• The Art of Kung Fu Panda has all kinds of intriguing easter eggs: scrapped character designs and whole characters, like Po's mother and all the Mooks who originally worked for Tai Lung before he was deemed more frightening all by himself as a one-man army; the latter included the Wu Sisters (three snow leopard assassins), wolves and crocodiles and goats (who appear in Po's Dream Sequence), and a four-armed yak god demon on fire. Also, explanations as to how Oogway came to the Valley of Peace, why all the villagers are pigs and sheep, lost locations (like an alkali flat, a bandit inn, and two immense statues of a snow leopard and panda kung fu masters on which Po and Tai Lung were to fight), and much more.
  • The Wu Sisters made it into the Kung Fu Panda video game, as did the wolves and crocodiles, though they're not so much subservient to Tai Lung as they are trying to win his favour. The game also features Tai Lung's training arena, though this may or may not be a Dream Sequence.
  • The two animated shorts included in the DVD releases greatly expand upon the backstories of the Furious Five and the Kung Fu Council, respectively. The latter also includes the first canonical appearance of the Wu Sisters.
  • The official website for Kung Fu Panda 2 gives additional info on the backstories of Lord Shen and the Kung Fu Council that wasn't brought up in the film (though the latter was Retconned by one of the aforementioned animated shorts). There's also The Art of Kung Fu Panda 2, which serves pretty much the same purpose as the first.
• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Sweet Mayhem's first name is never actually spoken in the film, only being used in the credits and promotional material.
• The DVD and Blu-ray releases for Monsters, Inc. feature a brief origin of monsters featurette explaining that monsters were a race of ancient hominid that came into conflict with early humans and were driven away to an enchanted island where the plant life they consumed gradually turned them into inhuman creatures of different shapes and sizes. Upon discovering this, they decided they could take revenge on the humans by scaring them and have continued ever since.
  • In the tie in book Monsters, Inc.: The Essential Guide, it foreshadows how Mike and Sully became partners in Monsters University. According to the book, scare assistants are either monsters that want to be directly involved in extracting scream power, but don't want to go into a door, or monsters that for one reason or another tried to be scarers but couldn't make the cut and settled for the next best thing.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: The last track on some prints of the soundtrack is a spoken word epilogue where Santa goes to visit Jack a few years later, and we learn Jack and Sally had a few kids.
• A fair amount of information on Titan A.E.'s world is only given in the two prequel novels.
• Right before the release of the 2007 TMNT movie, the writers put out a five-issue comic book mini-series that served as a prequel to the movie and basically bridged the gap between it and the previous movies.
• Lampshaded (a bit more literally) in Toy Story 2, when Rex discovers the player's guide to a video game he's been trying to beat. He cries indignantly, "They make it so you can't defeat Zurg unless you buy this book! It's extortion, that's what it is." Later in the film, the tip on how to beat the game (enter the villain's lair through a secret side entrance) is used in the real world when the toys sneak into their own villain's apartment.
• The novelization of Turning Red reveals that the "OMG" girl's name is Stacy Frick.
• Up: The credits list the construction worker who Carl strikes with his cane as being named "Steve".
• Wreck-It Ralph:
  • Hero's Duty is an in-universe example. It has an extensive backstory and Calhoun at least has a fleshed-out character, but the actual game is just a light-gun rail-shooter. The first time we meet a character from the game, he's having a breakdown over this.
  • The Sugar Rush racer bios on the official Wreck-It Ralph site reveal information about them that is not present in the movie, such as Crumbelina being an Upper-Class Twit.

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