Fridge / Mulan

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

• The whole "Strength and Discipline" trick has a very interesting discussion on the movie's Headscratchers page. Essentially, not only are the weights Strength and Discipline needed to climb, but without actual strength and discipline, it'd be impossible to figure out the trick and reach the top.
• If you watch carefully, the reason Mulan was almost kicked out wasn't just because she seemed unable to withstand the physical training, but also because she (well, technically Mushu, but Shang's didn't know about him) resorted to trickery. He doesn't say "you are too weak", but "you are unsuited for/ the rage of war" (because an undisciplined soldier can result in many dying). He believed she lacked both strength and discipline. By passing the test, she proved him completely wrong.
  • There's also the metaphor behind it all: Mulan was only able to succeed when she stopped viewing Strength and Discipline as obstacles pulling her back and started using them as tools to aid her.
• Towards the end of the movie, Mulan's secret is revealed. Before Shang almost kills her, she says "I did it to save my father." What makes this line so meaningful to Shang is that he recently lost his own father in battle. This might have been an intentional low blow to help gain sympathy from Shang.
  • Additionally, filial piety is one of the greatest cultural values of China. She had endangered her own life, risking a most shameful death, to respect that value well beyond what anyone would deem possible. It helps explain why Shang spared her.
• Take a look at Khan (Mulan's Horse) and Shang's Horse — the feminine dark Yin and the masculine light Yang. Or the opposite.
• Mulan's Character Development is possibly signified by the only two times in the movie we see her take a bath: In the beginning, during "Honor to Us All", Mulan has to be pushed in (representing how she can't act for herself due to being a woman), she falls in rather gracelessly, and she fusses over how cold the water is. When she goes into the river after "I'll Make a Man Out of You", Mulan simply jumps into the water (representing her independence), she's much more coordinated and doesn't fall, and she savors her bath despite the river almost certainly having a frigid temperature.
• As awesome as "I'll Make a Man Out of You" is, there's a secondary message to it. The continual background chant "Be a man" is actually parodying the stereotype of men. It's an affirmation that the new recruits must train for war despite having no experience in it, because "that's what men do". Mulan is seeing firsthand that, although she's not the most experienced soldier, the others are struggling like she is, and also have to bear the social pressure of being strong and battle-hardened. Even if they do bully her in the beginning, they're in the same boat as she is.
  • There may even be a third meaning. Sure, Shang is singing to encourage his battalion to reach their full potential. But he could also be singing to himself. We see pretty clearly from his first scene that Shang is pretty shocked to have been promoted to captain so soon, and it's clear that he doesn't believe he's ready for such a responsibility. And it just gets worse when he sees how inexperienced the new recruits are. So the song doubles as a way for Shang to cope with his "Well Done, Son" Guy syndrome.
• It's very easy to dismiss the subplot involving Cri-Kee in Mulan as simple Rule of Funny. Everyone believed he was lucky when he truly wasn't, thus explaining why so much went wrong when people depended on him for luck — case in point, Mulan's session with the matchmaker. However, unless Grandma was really lucky on her own, there's no way she could have made it across that road without Cri-Kee's luck. But if Cri-Kee really is lucky, then why did he cause so much trouble with the matchmaker? Sure, he may have just been trying to escape, hated being taken advantage of, was just a little troublemaker, or believed himself to be so unlucky that the thought of him being there to help Mulan terrified him... but think about it: if Mulan had passed the matchmaker's assessment, she would have become "a perfect porcelain doll", married some rich man the matchmaker or her parents chose for her... and then all of China would have fallen to the Huns, and she would never have proven she could bring honor by her own individual merit instead of through marriage. Therefore, even though it didn't feel like that to her at the time, being humiliated before the matchmaker was the luckiest thing that could ever have happened, for her or for China.
  • The letter that Mushu gave Chi Fu was exactly what was needed for Shang's troop to arrive in time to save the day. Now think about who actually WROTE the letter for a second... That is one lucky cricket.
  • On the subject of Cri-Kee, note that in war, good fortune for one side is terrible fortune for the other. Now consider what all the good fortune Cri-Kee brought to his keepers cost everyone else: the good fortune Mulan's grandmother had with her reckless test brought terrible misfortune to all the people driving those carts and rickshaws, the matchmaker suffered a lot of Amusing Injuries and Clothing Damage for the sake of Mulan's fortuitous change of career path, and the barbaric Huns (or Xiongnu) suffered a catastrophic defeat at Mulan's hands. His "lucky" letter that brought Shang's forces to the front lines saved China, but also introduced the entire unit to the very "unlucky" horrors of war. That cricket is actually The Jinx — the good fortune he brings his keepers comes at the expense of a great many others' misfortunes. Perhaps this is why Cri-Kee tearfully declares (as translated by Mushu) that he is not a lucky cricket during the scene in the mountains after Mulan's secret is discovered.
• A lot of people were annoyed that Eddie Murphy was cast as Mushu, the disgraced Chinese Dragon sent to help Mulan. Everyone else in this movie was Asian-American, so why not Mushu? Look at what he is: he's selfish, lighthearted, joking, obsessed with regaining his reputation, and willing to pull a few strings in order to get what he wants - all of which are Western-centric values. Additionally, he breathes fire, which is normally a Western Dragon trait. No wonder Mushu's out of place - the whole reason Eddie Murphy was cast as him was to amplify the idea of throwing Western values into Chinese society.

• During Mulan's preparations for meeting the Matchmaker, one of the women getting her ready sings that she'll turn "this sow's ear into a silk purse". The thing is, the proverb specifically states that it can't be done, just like Mulan could never be the perfect little doll that everyone expected her to be. Nevertheless, the woman was stating how she knows it's impossible and is accepting the challenge.
• Why didn't the Great Stone Dragon wake up to the gong? Well, Mulan sat under that very statue when she made her decision to run away to the army and take her father's place. Mushu couldn't wake the dragon up because its spirit had already left with Mulan, inspiring her to courage!
• Mulan is considered as an official Disney Princess despite not being royalty by either birth or marriage. Had she ended up marrying the wrong guy at the end of the sequel, she would have actually become a princess herself! Additionally, in the first movie she can be considered a princess because of the crest her country's emperor gave her and the fact that everyone, including the emperor, bowed to her; being bowed to was a big honor... especially since it came from the emperor himself.
  • Things were a bit more meritocratic in the Chinese social structure. To start with, how you got placed in social classes was primarily based on your academic performance, which meant that a peasant could not only rise through the classes via performing well in state-sponsored tests, but the aristocracy of Chinese civilization was primarily well-educated scholars - and scholars had to maintain their reputation for intelligence as required by their social classes, even after passing the test and being accepted into the equivalent of nobility. Even non-academic positions like CEOs and politicians were required to show the intelligence expected of the scholar classes to even be considered. The fact Shang was already a Captain at the start of the film and his father was a high-ranking general (with implications that Li's family line was military) signaled that Shang's family had been in the equivalent of royalty for generations. So in a sense, Mulan did become a Princess by marrying someone from the (scholarly) aristocracy.
  • While not strictly the scholarly castes, Mulan's father was a war hero and given a parcel of land that was pretty big even by the standards of European nobility. Going by his reputation and his assets, Zhou was probably made into the Chinese equivalent of a knight, which was considered lesser royalty in Europe. So while technically not a princess, not even an aristocratic daughter, Mulan had a position that would qualify as a "minor princess". This also explains why Mulan's maternal relatives were so obsessed with her marrying a man (even by the standards of the culture) and were upset Mulan had to do hard labor outside the kitchen - they wanted to maintain the image that they were a noble family.
• Shan Yu's lack of humiliation at being defeated several times by a woman makes sense: most steppe people have had warrior women and up to the 12th century, and the Huns, in particular, were very accepting of women hunting and going to battle. To him, Mulan was just another warrior to defeat!
• Mulan uses a fan, an object that is a symbol of femininity, to defeat Shan-Yu. More brilliance comes from the fact that the move she uses is an actual Wushu move.
• The Emperor's statement, "Though the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it," may come directly from "The Taming of the Shrew", act II scene I's "To the proof/As mountains are for winds/That shake not though they blow perpetually".
  • Additionally, the Emperor bows to Mulan but refuses to bow to Shan-Yu. The mountain doesn't bow to a simple strong wind like Shan-Yu's demands, but Mulan impresses the Emperor through several heroic deeds, the way a mountain is gradually eroded by consistent winds.
• The entire training sequence might just seem like typical slapstick comedy, but upon further examination — of course everyone sucked at first, they were all recruited from their respective villages and had probably never held a weapon in their lives. However, due to them not being nobility, they would still have had to be pretty fit to work in their respective occupations, which explains why they are able to complete the running exercises and why they improved so quickly. This also explains why Mulan has such a hard time fitting in and keeping up, eventually washing out of training because of those same running exercises; she's only used to chores around the house and farm, not hard labor.
  • Similarly, why did Mulan adapt so quickly, especially in a time women would be out of shape? She may not have been used to backbreaking jobs such as mining or chopping trees, but she still had to do both hard household chores (at least, for a woman at the time) and farm work. Even jobs that don't require physical strength such as feeding the rooster can be exhausting and help build up endurance. It's shown that her prime difficulties were with strength and the actual skillsets of war, like using rockets - in parts such as stretching, aerobics, martial arts sparring, and running without weights, she did quite well and was even outperforming some of the less competent soldiers in the camp. A typical Chinese girl would have likely only done easy labor such as doing the dishes, and as such would not have lasted even the less intense activities of training. Mulan merely needed to get used to handling weapons and build up strength to carry heavy military equipment.
  • Mulan not only keeping up but outrunning everyone at the end of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" can be explained by her extremely good horsemanship. Even from the start of the movie, she could ride Khan bareback at a gallop. This builds up plenty of endurance but little strength (since Khan would have carried everything heavy), not to mention she is infantry, so her riding skills may have been noted but not utilized. All she needed was a little time to get used to carrying packs.
  • Adding onto her horsemanship, how could Mulan discover the trick to going on top before everyone could? Rather than relying solely on her arms, she wrapped her legs around the pole in a modified bodily posture for riding. The strength horsemanship would have given to her legs was essential for her making it to the top of the pole and getting the arrows before everyone else could. If she was a normal Chinese peasant, even with the shown month or so of training, she would not have been able to complete the pole climbing exercise so quickly.
  • Also, she is shown to do quite well in leg-based activities like running, even beating other men. While this could be because of her horseback riding, women also tend to have the most strength in their legs, due to them having different muscle mass distribution than men (who typically have more upper-body strength). So the fact that she's actually a woman helped her succeed in the task.
• The analogies that Fa Zhou and the Emperor use to describe her are awesome Book Ends. Near the beginning, after the disaster with the matchmaker, Fa Zhou compares his daughter to a late-blooming flower. Towards the end, the Emperor implies to Shang that she's the "most rare and beautiful" of flowers because she "blooms in adversity". The moment she hits her stride is during the mountain attack up north - where the movie goes out of its way to point out that the battle with the Huns was not easily won (it took cunning and risk to pull it off), so she did bloom in adversity.
• It's been pointed out in several places that Mulan could have simply gone home after being kicked out of boot camp, but she chose to stay because of her pride and sense of personal honor. While that's true, it's also quite likely that with his child unsuitable and the troops still close to town, Fa Zhou probably would have been compelled to join. Of course, he could have been dismissed too, but he still would have been hurt from either boot camp (which would have been bad for his health) or Shang acknowledging his poor health and requesting him to serve in an advisory capacity (which meant that he would've faced the Hun army anyways) unless Mulan found a way to stay in.
• The Emperor is surprised and rather amused when Mulan hugs him. Besides being a father figure to China, we find out in the sequel that he has three daughters roughly Mulan's age. Normally, you are not allowed to hug the Emperor, but seeing as he's a doting father and "has heard a great deal about" Mulan (which could include the story about her father), he probably cut her a little slack. By bowing to her, he also very publicly forgives her "crime" of pretending to be the Fa family's nonexistent son (because otherwise, her deception would technically be considered "treason against the crown" and Chi Fu could've easily had her and her entire family executed).
• One thing that has circulated around the various pages are questions regarding the small size of Shang's unit which, upon close examination, is barely platoon strength (by modern force organization standards). His father, a General, leads a much larger unit of Mounted Infantry ^note Infantry that only uses their horses for travel, but fight on foot. However, there is a reason for this: Shang, a captain, is leading a support contingent of this larger force. What's the evidence? Watch the training sequence and notice how the trainees are basically getting lots of practice in with cannons and bows, but very little with close combat (beyond some basic hand-to-hand training and calisthenics). During the mountain battle, Shang orders everyone to save the cannons, as well as ordering everyone to get out of range of the arrows, which is something regular line infantry NEVER do when attacked (they usually close the distance or seek cover). Support units are trained to fall back and avoid direct contact when possible, but once they get set up, the party begins. In short, and in modern terms, the unit that Mulan is part of is basically a Mortar Detachment of Shang Sr.'s Mounted Infantry Brigade... all of which is going up against a Hun army of ten thousand strong.
• Shang's decision to have Yao try to kill Shan-Yu. In real life, the Huns and other similar groups were literally held together by the will of their leaders. When those leaders died, the people usually fell into infighting to decide who should succeed them. Thus, even though the Chinese would have been wiped out in that battle, it's possible China would have been saved anyway because the Huns would be too busy fighting each other.
• During the climax, Mulan and the others use disguises to take out the Hun soldiers, who had left Shan-Yu alone to threaten the Emperor. Once the Huns are beaten, Shang — who'd been hiding further back until now — rushes in to face Shan-Yu directly. While Mulan is still the one who defeats Shan-Yu in the end, it makes perfect sense to have Shang be the one intended to fight Shan-Yu for two reasons: firstly, Shang is the only professional soldier present (all the others are just conscripts), so he has the best chance of fighting Shan-Yu and either defeating him or getting out alive if he can't properly defeat him, and once the Emperor is safe they (either all the major characters or the entire capital city) can easily stop Shan-Yu just by sheer weight of numbers, even if some of them die in the process. Secondly, it looks better for Shang to be the one to save the Emperor — he's a decorated soldier, the son of a famous general, the leader of the forces who wiped out the Hunnic horde, and is a strong masculine figure, fitting in with Ancient China's gender roles.
• Mulan being prepared in a rush to see the matchmaker wasn't just an Establishing Character Moment to show how she would be a terrible bride; it also set up her ability to disguise Ling, Yao, and Chien-Po with minutes to spare. What's more, she rushed through the steps so that they only had to do their hair, makeup, and clothes, skipping the waist-tightening.
• Why does the disguise plot work better than battering down the palace doors? Because the Huns are prepared to slaughter any of the men who would charge in, and in that time of the battle the emperor could be killed. Deceiving the Huns and taking them down was much faster, especially with how Shan Yu is demanding that the Emperor bow to him.
• The Hun guards falling for the Concubine disguises seems silly, especially since they look more like male drag queens than actual women. However, the Huns were knocked unconscious and buried under snow after the avalanche, and they still had to march to the capital and feign under disguise to capture the emperor. Prolonged exposure to cold weather is known to not only distort people's state of mind but also cause hallucinations and other weird effects - and that's just the warmer levels of cold temperature. When you couple that with the fact that the Huns were under the snow for hours in freezing weather (along with them having to sprint to the city and wear disguises in order to kidnap the emperor, which likely spent up a decent amount of their energy), it makes sense they'd legitimately think the disguises were actual "ugly concubines".
• One line in the opening song says that a girl can bring honor to her family by "striking a good match". This could be a very subtle Stealth Pun that doubles as foreshadowing - Shan Yu is eventually killed by a rocket, which requires a different kind of match to be struck in order to work.
  • Or that she found her match during her training with Shang...by successfully striking him.
• There really was a "girl worth fighting for", though not the kind that the soldiers expected. It was the little girl whose doll was "returned to her" by Shan Yu.
• It might seem odd that Shang, after putting up a pretty good fight, is subdued rather quickly by Shan Yu. Most assume that this is due to Shan Yu's height and more experience, but there could be another reason. Shang was wounded by an arrow in the mountain battle, and it has been a whole day, clearly not enough time for the wound to heal. So Shang's injury meant he was not at the best of his abilities, and whatever adrenaline rush he briefly got had faded out and meant Shan Yu barely had to do any fighting at all.
  • There's also the fact that Shang while shown to be a capable swordsman is mostly shown using archery and finesse (such as deflecting rocks with a staff) more than pure brute strength. He'd be a poor match up in a direct slug fest for Shan Yu who exclusively uses a sword and is strong enough to smash pillars and slice through armor and sure enough he gets creamed pretty easily. Mulan only beats him through trickery herself and as a slim woman would have fared even worse trying to fight Shan Yu head on. Nobody on the good guys side really could have matched him in a head on battle.
• There is an actual justification why Shan Yu is one of the Disney Villains without a Villain Song. He's a Blood Knight Hun general, so he's more interested in a good fight and slaughter rather than wasting time on pointless musical numbers. This is supported by the fact that his massacre of the village literally stops the musical part of the film in its tracks. In fact, there are no songs at all until the end credits, pretty much telling the soldiers, and the audience, that war isn't some cartoon musical: War Is Hell.
• Chi Fu isn't just a Jerkass; he's also right in regards to the odds that Shang and his men face. That explains why Mulan has to break typical rules of combat to turn the tide:
  • Chi Fu points out that the men aren't ready for war. When the Huns attack them, all of the soldiers are outmanned and outgunned. Shang tried his best, but he had no idea what the soldiers would face. Mulan ends up saving them with a creative solution, by using the environment as a weapon rather than brute force.
  • He also says that Shang is an academy student who hasn't actually fought in a real battle. This ends up proving correct: Shan-Yu delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown which nearly kills Shang. Again, Mulan changes the rules by drawing Shan-Yu's wrath so that he doesn't murder her captain, drawing him to the roof, and defeating him with a fan and fireworks as an Improvised Weapon.
  • When Mulan is exposed as a woman after the battle he demands her execution for high treason... Because by joining the Imperial Army as a woman and under a fake identity she had indeed committed high treason, and the punishment is death. He's in fact being generous, as the actual punishment for high treason was to kill the criminal's parents, grandparents, all children and grandchildren over a certain age (if they were too young they were instead enslaved) plus their spouses, any sibling and their spouses, all cousins up to third grade, the spouse, and the parents-in-law while they watch and then execute them, but he's skipping to just have her executed.
    • This likely plays in how Shang was able to convince him to let Mulan live: Mulan may have committed high treason by joining the army under a false identity and as a woman, but she had also destroyed the Hunnic horde and saved dozens of legitimate Imperial soldiers (including an officer) and a high-ranking bureaucrat (himself) at high personal cost (she almost died and was exposed), she had already atoned for her crime against the state through service to the state and earned mercy.
  • Chi Fu also has reasons to be so dismissive of Shang and object to Mulan being made an advisor: the Imperial Examination system meant that he had to pass multiple hard exams to get to the lowest rank of the court bureaucracy before starting to work his way to the top. He'd obviously be resentful to Shang, who had recently completed his training and became a captain through apparent nepotism, and the very idea of Mulan becoming an advisor without taking even the basic exam would have driven him mad had anyone but the Emperor himself suggested it. If Shang had earned his rank he'd not have dismissed him until proven otherwise, and offering Mulan a reward that did not include such a job in the bureaucracy would have been acceptable to him.
• The fake message from the general is delivered to Chi Fu, a bureaucrat, rather than to Shang, the actual commander of the troop, for two reasons: if Shang had come out with a message ordering them to the front Chi Fu could have suspected a fake, and Chi Fu, being the Emperor's counsel, is Shang's superior^note Excluding the Emperor, the most important men in China were the Commander of the Armed Forces, this being general Li, the unseen Prime Minister, and the members of the Emperor's Counsel. As a member of the latter, Chi Fu is effectively the fourth most important man in China and is the one actually in command until relieved or battle is joined.
• While Khan refusing to help Mushu with delivering the fake message may seem like her not wanting to help with the dragon's scheme or simply not being fond of the dragon, Chi Fu could've very well noticed the horse the "fake" General was on is one of the army's, blowing their cover.
• One of the tests for Mulan at the Matchmaker's is to pour tea. This makes a lot of sense, because some traditional Chinese wedding ceremonies involve the bride pouring tea to her in-laws to symbolize her marrying into their family and having to respect and listen to them like she does her own parents. In other words, if she couldn't pour tea with the appropriate etiquette, she wouldn't even make it past the wedding banquet if she were to be married off.
• So we know how Mushu's last act as Guardian got Fa Deng killed, but we don't exactly know the circumstances that led to that. However, consider that Mushu is quick to respond to any insult hurled at Mulan ("Chicken boy?! Say that to my face, ya limp noodle!"), it's not hard to guess that Mushu ran his mouth off at the wrong person who decapitated Fa Deng in response, believing that he insulted the guy with a sword.

Fridge Horror

• The soldier in the opening sequence. He knows he is going to die but he fights as hard as he can to use his last few seconds of life to set off the Great Wall's warning-torch-system, and then stands up to the scary Shan Yu before his death. Thanks to him, Shan Yu fails. Without his warning, the Huns' entry into China would have gone unnoticed, and the entire country would have likely fallen to invasion due to being completely unprepared for war.
  Soldier to Shan Yu: Now all of China knows you're here.
  • Shan Yu basically says this is what in wants, partially so that he can draw China's army into a field battle and destroy them (further enforced by how he burns at least one village likely with this intent), which is exactly what ends up happening with General Lee. Does this mean that his huge army could have infiltrated China with no one being the wiser if they had wanted to?
• Hearing the Matchmaker's song as an adult, the line "Scarier than the undertaker/ we are meeting our matchmaker" makes a lot more sense. On another note, to the women who wanted to find a husband, this was the woman who held their entire future in her hands. If they made a good impression then they would get a good husband. If they did poorly then they would get a bad husband (if she even matched them up at all).
• Mulan admits to herself that she partially went off as to prove to herself that she was worth something; had she passed the matchmaker's test, she might not have left... and all of China would have fallen to the Huns.
• Considering the patriarchal-to-the-point-of-misogynistic nature of Chinese culture at the time, if Mulan's father had gone to war, the matchmaker would have been the only choice for survival she would have left.
• Mushu scares the firework men from the tower and they jump off... at least six stories.
  • It's a Disney film, and they aren't the bad guys. Probably just got a few bruises.
• Mushu is sent to wake up the Great Stone Dragon guardian. Instead, he accidentally shatters him. Congrats, Mushu. You just murdered a family friend (unless you buy into the theory that Mulan is, in fact, already possessed by the Great Stone Dragon.)
• When Mushu tries to tell the Family Ancestors that he could go and be Mulan’s guardian, one of them points out that the last time he was left to be a guardian, an ancestor named Fa Deng died from getting beheaded. Later on, when Mulan is discovered to be a woman by Shang, she is almost executed for going against the law. It even seems as if Shang was going to aim for Mulan’s head. Had Shang not spared Mulan’s life for saving his, Mushu would have almost gotten another member of the Fa family beheaded. Demotion would be the least of his problems if the ancestors found out about this.
• Shang finds out "Ping" is Mulan, freaks out, spares her life - and then leaves her alone to find her way back home, in the snow, during a war. She still had her clothes and horse and other items, but she's alone and a long way from home. The soldiers didn't have much with them in the first place; their primary objective was speed, so they took little in terms of extra clothing. And Mulan's armor was damaged when she was struck by Shan-Yu; even if she had been left with it (which she likely wasn't, as she had had to change out of it when she was treated), she would have still succumbed to cold quite quickly, given that it was winter. Result: had she not spotted some of the Huns were still alive later on, she likely would have frozen to death where the unit left her. And that's before we get to the issue of her one basket of dumplings, and total lack of fodder.
• If Mulan hadn't heard the Huns, even if she was getting herself ready to go home, there is the possibility that she would have been found/crossed paths with them. Even if he was close to the city and his objective, Shan Yu would have noticed how strange it was for someone to be walking around in freezing weather and would have then realized that Mulan was the soldier from the mountains.
• At one point during "I'll Make a Man Out of You", Shang grabs Mulan (disguised as "Ping") and scolds him. However, if he had glanced down into the shirt... let's just say the movie would have ended a lot sooner.
• The fact that Shang's entire army is able to fit behind a single boulder obviously has some horrifying implications as to what happened to the rest of the soldiers...
  • Considering that Shangs' forces were not classified as ready for combat before Mushu's message was sent to them, it's likely that Shang decided to leave camp with only the most-prepared of his forces which was enough to field a small Mortar Team by modern day standards, it's likely that the rest of their platoon not seen had probably left to return to the Camp following the village massacre to call-in any reinforcements that was left behind for support at the Capital. As such, they aren't aware that their C.O. had actually engaged with Shan Yu following this or that Ping would collapse a mountain on the Hun invaders: ending the threat for good.
• The song "A girl worth fighting for" is all about the various characters singing about their ideal bride, but at the end of the song they find a girl actually worth fighting and sacrificing their lives for... an unknown little girl, murdered by the Huns, whose only proof to having existed in the first place is a lost doll left in the snow.
• If Chi Fu hadn't promised Shang that the men would never see war, and Mushu hadn't overheard, there would have been nothing stopping the Huns from marching to the capital. The Huns would have won without anyone in their path.
• The sudden attack on Shang's army from above by Hun archers perched on the mountains adds an element of horror for Shang because it's nearly a repetition of the way his father likely died. The Huns probably ambushed the General's army in the same manner, used arrows to both thin the ranks and force the Chinese to use all their cannons, and then Shan Yu and his cavalry would have swept in to mop up the survivors.
• When Mulan took the last cannon from Yao to aim at the mountain rather than at Shan Yu, Shang isn't just screaming for "Ping" to come back because they were defying orders - he didn't know what the soldier was planning. As Shang saw it, Ping was doing a Suicide Mission to take out Shan Yu at a closer range and spare her comrades before they'd go down fighting. No wonder he's screaming "Stop!" and charging after Ping.
• Mushu had a point when he saw that Mulan aimed the cannon at the mountain: "He was three feet in front of you!" Shan Yu stops because of the cannon's fiery trail, and turns to see where it lands. In those seconds Mulan could have slashed at his horse or got up to mount a defense, rather than standing there with a smirk. As a result, she gets slashed, which outs her later.
• When Shang and the recruits find the decimated village and the massacred remains of the imperial army, the only thing left to be found of the General was his helmet. Easy way to avoid showing an actual body, but warriors from the northern steppes were known to collect defeated enemies' heads as trophies (Timur the Lame, a notorious Turkic-Mongol warlord, was particularly infamous for constructing whole pyramids of human skulls). If there was a body to be found, perhaps Chien-Po couldn't bring himself to show Shang the headless corpse of his father and thought his helmet would be the less traumatic option.
• The ending of the sequel is infamously mentioned several times in both Esoteric Happy Ending and Inferred Holocaust.

---