Informed Species / Animated Films

Informed Species in Films — Animation.

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• Aladdin: Jafar's parrot Iago is supposed to be a scarlet macaw-How a South American bird ended up in Ancient Persia is anyone's guess-but his short stature and the color of his feathers make him look more like a red lory or a-female-eclectus parrot.
• While the Wolf Man didn't look much like a wolf already, his animated design in Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman looks even less so. He has a shorter muzzle, a thinner nose, and a mane around his head, making him more resemble a lion than a wolf. He also has only three toes in each foot, unlike in the original where he has four toes like a wolf.
• A few of the reviews for An American Tail when it first came out complained about how un-catlike Tiger looked. The Cossack Cats in the beginning scene could easily be mistaken for weasels, wolverines, or even wolves.
• The art-style of The Aristocats makes it impossible to distinguish what breed Duchess and her kittens are. They're supposed to be Turkish Angoras.
• The Bad Guys (2022): Diane Foxington is a mild example. She's meant to be a fox (if her surname wasn't a giveaway) but her incredibly bright orange fur, shorter muzzle and the way her ears stand up make her look more like a Welsh corgi than a fox. It doesn't help that her bushy tail (another physical trait popular among foxes) disappears halfway through the movie.
• Bolt is supposed to be a white German Shepherd (also known as a "White Shepherd") and, from the looks of it, an adult as well. However, he's way too small—barely larger than a cat, in fact. He looks more a Hinks Bull Terrier and there is even some concept art of him with a slightly curved head. There's concept art◊ of him looking much more accurate than in the final product, but the final film opted for an unusually small White Shepherd instead.
• Dinosaur:
  • Kron and Bruton are supposed to be Iguanodon like Aladar and Neera, but Kron looks more like an Altirhinus and Bruton looks more like a Muttaburrasaurus since real Iguanodon do not have nose crests like they do.
  • The Ichthyornis from the beginning look more like ducks rather than seagulls.
  • The Carnotaurus are at least recognizable with their horns, but they're buffed up to T. rex size, have their osteoderms turned into Spikes of Villainy and and have way broader heads than the real animal, which was more of a mid-sized, lanky, speedy hunter than a large tyrannosaur-like brute.
• The Sarco Brothers from Dino Time are supposed to be Sarcosuchus as their name suggests, but they look more like mutated crocodiles instead.
• The large theropod featured in the "Rite of Spring" segment of Fantasia is supposed to be a Tyrannosaurus rex, but it looks more like an Allosaurus instead, with a blocky head, prominent pointed brow ridges and three claws on each hand. Amusingly, it's shown fighting a Stegosaurus, which lived millions of years before the T. rex but indeed coexisted with Allosaurus, so having simply made it an Allosaurus to begin with would have been more accurate.
  • From the same sequence, there is a small theropod dinosaur with a domed head, shown chasing an Archaeopteryx. It's often believed to be an Ornitholestes (which was commonly shown attacking Archaeopteryx in contemporary paleo-art), a Compsognathus (because of its small size), or even a Velociraptor. What is it meant to be, according to the script? A Troodon. This one actually makes sense if you know that, at the time, Troodon was considered to be a pachycephalosaur, which explains its oddly-shaped head.
• Dog Gone Trouble: Rousey is a Pitbull, but she looks more like a large Boston Terrier.
• Felidae:
  • As noted by many YouTube commentators of Felidae, Kong is decidedly dissimilar to the more anatomically correct cats that populate the movie, looking more like a bear/bulldog hybrid than an actual cat.
  • In the books, most of the cats are purebred. Felicity is a Russian Blue, Pascal is a Havana Brown, etc. The stylized nature of the film makes it harder to tell everyone's breed. It doesn't help that the film features characteristics not associated with the breeds (for example, Felicity is long-furred despite Russians Blues being short-furred).
• Horse the stray cat from "Footrot Flats: A Dog's Tale" barely looks like a domesticated cat, instead looking like a cross between a cougar, a bulldog, and a jaguar.
• The Good Dinosaur:
  • Arlo and his family are supposed to be Apatosaurus, but they more closely resemble Brachiosaurus in that they have longer forelimbs and shorter tails. This is especially evident with the father, Henry.
  • Forrest Woodbrush is stated to be a Styracosaurus. While he does have the distinctive spiked frill, he also has long brow horns and a short nasal horn like a Triceratops.
  • Thunderclap. His crest would indicate he's a Nyctosaurus, but since he also has teeth and wing claws (Nyctosaurus had neither of those) his exact genus is impossible to clarify.
• Remember the fact that Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective actually hates being called a rat? Word of God confirms that he is indeed a mouse, but for some reason he looks like a rat.
• Ice Age:
  • Cretaceous and Maelstrom, the main villains of Ice Age 2: The Meltdown are apparently a pliosaur and an ichthyosaur respectively, but neither look like the real animals. Although Ice Age Village identifies Cretaceous as a Metriorhynchus, which he more closely resembles, but not quite.
  • And the aardvarks look more like big-eared giant anteaters with mouths at the base of their snouts.
  • The Triceratops from Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs have overly large frills and shorter horns, which make them look more like Chasmosaurus. Also, the Troodon are featherless and look more like Coelophysis or scaly Pelecanimimus.
  • Despite being claimed by the creators to be a Baryonyx, Rudy, the Big Bad of the third film, doesn't look all that much like this genus. He exceeds Spinosaurus in size (in Real Life Baryonyx was only about 7 or 8 meters long, although Rudy may just be overgrown), and has several exaggeratedly crocodilian features such as bony scutes down his back and nostrils at the end of his snout. He would actually make a pretty good Suchomimus, a fairly close relative of Baryonyx that approached Spinosaurus in size.
  • Silas the petrel from the fourth film has feet like a blue-footed booby.
  • Sid the Sloth is supposedly a ground sloth of some kind. While identifiable as some form of sloth, Sid looks fairly different from any known species. He does look somewhat like a modern sloth, though, and Word of God says that he was based on one. Although his nose looks more like a koala's, and his head is bizarrely shaped with his eyes placed on the side of his head like a hammerhead shark's. Overall, he looks like a weird-looking otter.
  • Orson from The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is supposedly a Protoceratops. Aside from having a large frill on his head, he looks nothing like one— he's bipedal, with tiny arms, sharp teeth, and a spiky tail.
• Baloo from The Jungle Book is supposed to be a sloth bear, but he doesn't even look like one at all! The only indication that he's a sloth bear are of course, the long, sharp claws unique to that animal.
  • The Jungle Book (2016) goes even further by depicting Baloo as looking a Himalayan brown bear, even though Bagheera calls him a sloth bear. Although that might have been a Pun on Bagheera's part considering how lazy Baloo is.
• In Katy La Oruga, the three chameleons whom Katy encounters in the forest look more like geckos with multicolored skin and googly eyes, and the salamanders are generic cartoon lizards. Also, when Katy herself becomes a butterfly at the end, she looks way too anthropomorphized to the point she resembles a standard fairy more than a butterfly.
• The animals of Kung Fu Panda are pretty easy to identify, even when their features are changed or exaggerated for artistic license. But there are a few that are different matters. For example:
  • Unless you've read the guidebooks you might guess Shifu is anything from raccoon dog (face, tail) to lemur (hands, ears) ^*non-native to China. Dustin Hoffman, who plays Shifu, went for, "I don't know... some kind of raccoon?" He's officially a red panda, but since red pandas look like this and Shifu looks like this◊, you can understand his confusion. Shifu has huge round ears, more whitish orangey fur, and dark brown hands, while red◊ pandas◊ have medium sized, rounded triangular ears and are more reddish with a black underside and legs.
  • The Chameleon is supposed to be, well a chameleon, but while she has a head crest and a very long tongue like the real deal, she's missing the distinctive eyes that real chameleons have (instead having typical reptilian eyes) and has unusually long spines along her tail (more akin with the spines of an iguana).
  • Her komodo dragon guards look little like the real deal, and look more like huge iguanas due to having dark green scales rather than golden-brown scales like real komodos, and also have long spikes along their heads and tails and on their chins, which real komodos lack.
• The Land Before Time:
  • Cera is hardly recognizable as a Triceratops since she only has one horn, though as her family are three-horned it's implied that this is due to her young age. Dinah and Danah from the sequels, though, are much younger yet have their brow horns. We now know that baby Triceratops actually grew in their brow horns first, which makes Cera having just one horn inaccurate.
  • Poor Ducky. Sources can't decide if she's a Parasaurolophus, an Edmontosaurus, or a Saurolophus since she doesn't really look completely like one or the other. Some sources even say that she's a platypus! (Though the latter is obviously a mistake since platypuses are not dinosaurs.)
  • Likewise, Hyp and his father from the third film don't really look much like Hypsilophodon, and Mutt looks more like a Gryposaurus than a Muttaburrasaurus.
  • The main sharptooth villain of the fifth film is apparently a Giganotosaurus, but looks more like some kind of abelisaurid (aside from the arms). The fourteenth film introduces proper abelisaurid Carnotaurus...which looks more like a generic large carnivorous theropod with horns, a short snout, and armor.
  • Elsie from the fifth film is supposedly an Elasmosaurus, but she has a head-crest resembling a shark's fin and a Tooth Strip for some reason.
  • The Secret of Saurus Rock had an Allosaurus which looked more like a T. rex, to the point of having two fingers instead of three (though it's sometimes shown with three fingers).
  • The Styracosaurus that appear starting in The Stone of Cold Fire have short nose horns, and their spiky frills barely resemble what the real dinosaur had.
  • The "Tinysauruses" are apparently Mussaurus, but they look more like generic sauropods the size of mice.^note Mussaurus was initially thought to have been mouse-sized (hence the name meaning "Mouse Reptile") based on the first specimens discovered, but these turned out to be infants and the adults were quite big albeit still one of the smaller sauropodomorphs.
  • Guido from The Great Day of the Flyers is supposed to be a Microraptor, but with his toothless parrot-like beak, lack of claws (including its raptorial claw), and more humanoid frame he barely looks like the real animal.
  • The Beipiaosaurus (Yellow Bellies) from The Wisdom Of Friends hardly look like the dinosaurs they're supposed to be either, looking more like Muppet-esque Dodos instead. And the Baryonyx from the same film don't remotely resemble the real animals, having too broad skulls instead of the crocodilian jaws of spinosaurs and lacking the huge thumb claw.
• Leo: Leo is supposedly a tuatara, despite looking more like a strange iguana-chameleon-gecko hybrid. It's also unusual because tuataras are not kept as pets anywhere; the only thing that the film gets right is its extraordinarily long lifespan.
• The Lion King (1994):
  • Rafiki is stated to be a mandrill, but he looks slimmer and more bluish gray than a real mandrill and has the tail of a baboon in an odd inversion of Inexplicably Tailless. Gets odd when The Lion Guard introduces his apprentice Makini, who actually looks like a real mandrill.
  • Zazu is supposed to be a red-billed hornbill. And, while he does look like a bird with a reddish beak, he doesn't look much like the bird he's supposed to be◊.
  • Mild Example: Pumbaa is supposed to be a warthog, but he looks a little more like a tanned domesticated pig with a mane and tusks than an actual warthog. Though he looked more like a warthog in early artwork. Averted in the CGI remake, where Pumbaa looks like a real warthog.
    Pumbaa: They call me... ...MISTER PIG!!!"
  • Timon looks almost nothing like a meerkat either, having peach-yellow colored fur (real meerkats are usually sand colored), bigger, downturned ears and a head full of red hair like a human would have. Plus, they walk on all fours and have black eyes.
    • And the worst part is, it seems that only Timon's colony looks like him. Other meerkats shown during the Circle of Life sequence look like actual meerkats.
  • The hyenas are supposed to be spotted hyenas (they have the spots and the matriarchal social structure), and they are made such in the CGI remake, but have coloration and other body traits which more closely resemble the striped hyena (and a Furry Female Mane which matches neither).
• Flounder in The Little Mermaid is portrayed as a large yellow fish with blue fins and stripes and nothing like actual flounders (which are large, flat brown fish whose eyes are both on one side of its face) at all. However, that could just be his name, not his species. A possible identity for him may be the Manini, a tropical fish also known as Convict Tang, but even then the ressemblance is vague at best. Also, many of the species described in the song "Under the Sea" look nothing like their real-life counterparts.
• Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole: Gylfie is supposed to be an elf owl, and in the books, she does look like one. The movie, however, makes her look more like a pygmy owl instead.
• Osmosis Jones: In-universe, Drix mistakes Chill for a virus, and figures they should arrest him, until Ozzy informs Drix that he's a flu shot, to which he replies "That's funny, he doesn't look fluish."
• Padak: Bream was said to be a rockfish, but looks more like a barred knifejaw as seen by his black and white stripes.
• Drake, the villain of The Pebble and the Penguin, doesn't look much like a penguin, with his musclebound physique and massive teeth.
• Pinocchio:
  • Jiminy Cricket is so heavily anthropomorphized that he looks more like a little green man with a rabbit nose and no ears. Animator Ward Kimball, who designed him, admitted that "he's a cricket because we say he's a cricket." And then the live-action adaptation actually had him as a tiny green human. (Contrast the Cricket in the stop-motion Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, who is far more accurately cricketlike in design, down to retaining six limbs.)
  • Monstro is clearly supposed to be some kind of whale, but he doesn't resemble any real species. He most closely resembles a sperm whale with wide shovel-jaws and the belly lining of a baleen whale.^noteHe actually resembles the extinct whale species Liviyatan melvillei, which was similar to the sperm whale but with broader jaws as well as teeth on the upper jaw, which sperm whales lack. Though it's coincidental, as the species hadn't been described yet at the time Pinocchio was made.
• Rango:
  • Priscilla is supposed to be an aye-aye, but she actually looks more a mouse instead. This has led to conflicting info on her species — logically, she can and should be a cactus mouse, but Word of God on the DVD commentary says aye-aye.
  • Rango's love interest Beans is supposed to be a Desert iguana, but she looks more like an... alien... thing...
• Chirin's adult form at the end of Ringing Bell is supposed to be a ferocious ram, but he vaguely resembles more of an antelope or a goat instead and nothing like the other sheep in the film, not even himself as a lamb. As a result of this, at the end of the film, he ends up being chased out of his own farm!
  Narrator: ...but to them, he was neither ram nor wolf, but a monster...
• The characters of Rock and Rule are, according to the American version's opening narration, mutated dogs, cats, and rats. However, for many of them, it's pretty much impossible to tell who's meant to be what. The lead character Angel looks pretty much completely human aside from her nose and ears (which aren't visible except in a few shots).
• Shark Tale:
  • Oscar looks much less like a bluestreak cleaner wrasse and more like a miscolored Will Smith on a vertically-oriented fish body.
  • Lola is supposed to be a lionfish, but it's hard to tell, as the signature trait of lionfish is their long, stiff spines, which she doesn't have. Your first bet would probably be "stylized woman in a dress."
• Strawinsky and the Mysterious House: The title character is supposed to be a mole, but he looks just like any other generic cartoon rodent. If anything, he resembles an otter more than he does a mole.
• The Aracuan Bird from The Three Caballeros is pink, unlike its real world counterpart the Plain Chachalaca, which is more of a dull brown. Even more so, plain chachalacas don't have red crests.
• Tarzan:
  • The baboons that chase Jane are the same sort of mandrill/baboon hybrids as Rafiki himself. The animated series has a trio of mandrills that are more accurate to their real-life counterparts.
  • The "lovebirds" from the "Strangers Like Me" sequence have body shapes more like a macaw's.
• Toto in Tom and Jerry Meets The Wizard of Oz doesn't really resemble the original Toto from the film. While Toto is a Cairn Terrier, the Toto from the cartoon looks more like a Scottie.
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie:
  • Frankie the flea for some reason actually looks more like a large green mosquito than an actual flea. Also, fleas aren't the same size as mice!
  • Similarly, the largest member of the Singing Cat Gang actually does not look like a cat at all and looks more like a gorilla instead.
• You Are Umasou:
  • The Chilantaisaurus barely looks like the real animal in that it has bull shaped horns and a short, rounded snout (which led to some viewers mistaking it for a Carnotaurus). At least it's the same size as Tyrannosaurus and retains the huge arms and claws.
  • Most of the dinosaurs in the movie don't really look like their real-life counterparts, especially the Tyrannosaurus and Maiasaura. The Triceratops, Protoceratops, and Parasaurolophus are exceptions, however.
• In the spanish animated film El Bosque Animado (The Living Forest) and it's sequel "Espiritu del Bosque" (Spirit of the forest), the main characters are suposed to be moles, but they hardly look like them. Instead, they have big black snouts, blue fur, no visible claws, a rabbit-like tail, and apparently good eyesight. They can't be identified with any other living creature either.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Toon Patrol are said to be weasels, but they look more like dogs instead. Justified, though, as they're Toons as opposed to actual in-universe animals.
• In The Hobbit, the Company's mounts are referred to as "ponies," just like in the book. They are pony-sized, sure enough—but their heads are the heads of mules.
• Vivo from the film of the same name is supposed to be a kinkajou, but really doesn't look anything like one other than being the right general colour and having a prehensile tail. If you missed the few lines that state his species outright, you could be forgiven for assuming he's some kind of generic monkey.
• Winniethe Pooh:
  • Rabbit looks more like a hare than an actual rabbit.
  • Both Kanga and Roo look more like quokkas than actual kangaroos.

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