There used to be a very vocal faction at the IMDb forums which reckoned that "all of DreamWorks' ideas were stolen from Pixar" (yes, all of them). At least two of their favorite examples were shown to be nonsense, as they were in production years before and only bore a superficial resemblance, and in any case one of them (Flushed Away) was actually an Aardman Animations movie — the DreamWorks involvement was minimal.
Some people are under the impression that the "HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FROM ALL OF US TO YOU!" song originated in The Emperor's New Groove and was subsequently defictionalized by various restaurants and kid's entertainment venues. It's actually the other way around: The lyrics to "Happy Birthday to You!" were under copyright for years (yes, someone demanded royalties for just the lyrics until a judge finally invalidated their claim), forcing establishments to come up with new, public-domain birthday songs for their customers. The most popular and common of these was "Happy, Happy Birthday" thanks to its loud and energetic style, which is why it was used in the film.
Everybody knows Aladdin was the first ever cartoon to have a Celebrity Voice Actor. Except Disney has been using celebrities in their films as far back as Pinocchio, which had Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket; he would reappear shortly thereafter in Dumbo as Jim Crow and then reprise Jiminy’s role in other works. Though Aladdin could be the Trope Codifier for this.
The Jungle Book is another good pre-Aladdin example, having a nearly All-Star Cast thanks to Phil Harris (Baloo), Sebastian Cabot (Bagheera), George Sanders (Shere Khan), and Louis Prima (King Louie).
And two decades before that, Judy Garland lend her voice as the main character of Gay Purr-ee.
It would be much quicker to list the Disney movies that are not based on an earlier fairy tale, book or legend. That will not stop some viewers from thinking Disney thought of them first, especially if it was not based on a fairy tale.
Disney's animated take on "Beauty and the Beast" isn't the first adaptation of the work to feature Animate Inanimate Objects — they can be seen in Jean Cocteau's legendary live-action film from 1946 and a Russian animated featurette from the same decade, both of which were adapting the detail in the source fairy tale that the castle seems to have no residents aside from the Beast, yet it's always meticulously maintained, food is plentiful, etc. The main difference, and it is significant, is that Disney's Enchanted Objects are fully-developed characters. The 1946 film is also the first adaptation to have a character who is a romantic rival for the heroine, and who tries to loot the castle and destroy the Beast in the climax, although Gaston is a much more developed and diabolical character than Avenant. Disney doesn't make a big point of acknowledging this film's influence on their version, but they occasionally do; they once considered doing a Direct to Video sequel to their version that would have had Gaston's brother, who would have been named Avenant as a direct reference, as the villain.
Walt Disney choosing the fairy tale as the basis for his first feature-length production goes back to his being impressed by a 1916 silent film version that adapted a 1912 Broadway play based on the story collected by the Brothers Grimm. The play and silent film share several details with the later Disney version:
Snow White is forced to work by her stepmother as a maid, in hopes of playing down the girl's beauty.
The prince and Snow White meet and fall in love before the Queen sends her away to be killed by the Huntsman, unlike in the original tale where he only appears at the end.
Snow White is led by a bird to the dwarfs' cottage, just like Disney's Snow White is led there by her animal friends.
The play is probably the first adaptation of the story in which the Queen's disguise as a peddler woman is the result of a magical transformation rather than Wig, Dress, Accent.
In the play, the youngest dwarf is a mostly silent character, though unlike Dopey he does have two lines. This particular dwarf never washes either, so when they realize there's a girl in their house, the others forcibly give him a bath just like Disney's dwarfs do to Grumpy.
The Disney version also seems to borrow a few details from Alexander Pushkin's 1833 poem ''The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights," a Russian version of the tale retold in verse. Pushkin's poem also introduces the prince early on, has the princess clean the seven knights' house instead of eating their food the way the Grimms' Snow White does, and omits the queen's first two murder attempts, leaving only the poisoned apple.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is not actually the first full-length animated film. It is only the first color one. The first was the Argentinan political satire El Apóstol ("The Apostle") from 1917 by Quirino Cristiani. Peludópolis, another animated film by Cristiani, was released in 1931 and the first animated film with sound; it had songs synced to the action using sound-on-disc syncing. Both films and the sequel to 'El Apóstol', Sin Dejar Rastro, are lost films due to the only copies—and the soundtrack to Peludópolis—all being destroyed in a fire. Of films that are known to still exist, 1926's The Adventures of Prince Achmed predates Snow White by eleven years. It's a silent feature that uses cut-out silhouettes against painted, colored backdrops. Disney's film is the first full-color and cel-animated feature, with a full music-and-dialogue soundtrack.
Jiminy Cricket is the sidekick in Disney's animated feature, Pinocchio, but his name isn't original — it's a pun playing off of a then-common expression that turns up in this one. When they first realize a stranger is in their cottage, the dwarfs whisper "Jiminy crickets!" in unison.
The Incredibles has a multiple dose of Older Than They Think on this very wiki; on the Headscratchers page, one troper claimed that Pixar got the idea of zero-point energy from Half-Life 2. Another then pointed out that The Incredibles came out first (albeit by only a few days), a third claimed that he had first come across the idea in a story in 1980, and a fourth pointed out that the idea was far older even than the latter story, having been devised by Albert Einstein and Otto Stern.
The cars in Susie, the little blue coupe (from Disney itself) and One Cab's Family (from Tex Avery) bear a certain striking similarity to the cars in Cars. Thing is though, both shorts are actually from 1952.
Toy Story has a cute and creative idea, the thought that toys actually come alive while their master is away. What many people don't know however is that the idea first appeared in several earlier children's classics:
Raggedy Ann premiered as a doll in 1915 and in storybooks in 1918. On a related note: Buzz Lightyear not realizing he's a toy? They already did that gimmick with Babette the French Doll in Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure - made in 1976 and released in 1977.
The Velveteen Rabbit, published in 1922. The book's climax shows its age, as it revolves around the rabbit's little boy owner contracting scarlet fever.
Jim Henson's 1986 The Christmas Toy not only uses the same basic "toys coming to life" scenario, but also revolves around a child's favorite toy worried about being replaced, and his new competitor is a space-themed action figure who doesn't realize she's a toy!
For more info on this trope, read When Toys Come Alive by Lois Rostow Kuznets. She has the whole history.
Unrelated to the above, Buzz's catchphrase "To infinity and beyond!" did not originate with him - it comes from the groundbreaking sci-fi novel The Mightiest Machine.
Many claim this is the first Disney film to teach girls to avoid the Love at First Sight trope (Beauty and the Beast), not to rely on a man to save you (Mulan), emphasize sisterly love (Lilo & Stitch), or have a strong-willed princess or female lead (Brave). All of those have been done in previous Disney Animated Canon movies, often multiple times.
It's not the first to explicitly question or deconstruct the Love at First Sight trope (Enchanted), either, despite the idea that it was being so popular as to inspire a meme. A particularly interesting example in that while many fans claim her to be "the first" Disney character to question the trope, not only is Elsa not the first Disney character to do so, she's not even the first Disney princess in the same film to do it. Anna and Hans refer to their engagement as "crazy" even as they're forming it, but because the gates are going to close soon and "it all ends tomorrow, so it has to be today," Anna's willing to agree to it with the pressure of the deadline closing in.
It's now common to compare any "I Want" Song or "I Am Becoming" Song to "Let It Go," never mind that such songs have been a staple of Disney films and have appeared throughout musical media for decades.
Elsa is not Disney's first positive major female character, or Disney Princess, to end the film single or to not have a love interest, despite many, many reviews assuming such, even for the sequel.
A popular Tumblr image featuring a screencap of Hans raising his sword preparing to deliver a killing blow to Elsa seems to indicate that this is an unprecedentedly heinous act for a Disney film. Whether the character is a great villain is a matter of taste, but there's no denying that he's comparatively smalltime compared to some previous Disney villains, such as the genocidal Frollo, to give just one example) and in fact the character would be in a very distinguished minority among Disney villains if he went the whole film without making a direct, purposeful attempt to kill somebody.
Arendelle being multiracial in Frozen II is predated by Corona being equally so in Tangled: The Series. It's also been previously implied Arendelle had a few non-white residents during Elsa's coronation in Frozen.
Elsa has been cited as the first Disney character with heavy LGBTQ symbolism behind their story. Despite this, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Mulan to a lesser degree are all commonly analyzed as featuring queer metaphors. The main difference is just that Elsa isn't implied to be straight— she's a Celibate Hero with no canon interest in anyone, making the applicability of her character more obvious than with Ariel or the Beast.
Disney is often mistaken as being the first adaptation to Race Lift Esmeralda into Romani (rather than being Switched at Birth with Quasimodo). Almost every adaptation has done this, dating back to at least The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).
Ah, The LEGO Movie from 2014, the first LEGO feature film! But have you heard ofBIONICLE: Mask of Light from 2003? It even had two prequels and one distant sequel, produced between 2004 and 2009. Even when discussing strictly LEGO System-inspired animated films, featuring the classic yellow-skinned Minifigures, LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers from 2009 was the first one. The LEGO Movie's true claim to fame was being the first LEGO theatrical feature, though some of the older BIONICLE films were also intended to be so and in certain international territories they were given very limited theatrical screenings during children's matinees.
Many things fly over the heads of casual audiences that were actually in the comics, but the most notable is the idea of an adult Peter Parker given how every project before hand portrayed him as a high school or college student. Peter was actually a teenager for about two years in the comics, while most modern day adaptations simply focus more on him when he's younger.
Some people also seem to think that the idea of a pig version of Spiderman came from the “spider pig” scene from The Simpsons Movie, in actuality there were Spider Ham comics dating back to 1983.
A fair amount of first-time watchers have gone into UglyDolls thinking it's an entirely new franchise made to sell toys, or simply a cute rip-off of the Fugglers toyline. The movie itself is based on a 2001 toyline that was fairly popular in its heyday, only reviving in full for the movie.
Spies in Disguise: A few sources (including the actor himself) are saying this is Tom Holland's first animated film. In fact, before his Star-Making Role as MCU Spider-Man, Tom Holland had a role in the UK dub of Arrietty as Sho.
The Great Mouse Detective is said by both Disney and fans to be the first Disney animated movie to use computer animation. However, The Black Cauldron was really the first to use computer animation in the movie, predating it a couple of years. This may have more to do with The Black Cauldron being an Old Shame to the studio than anything else.
When The Killing Joke was adapted into Batman: The Killing Joke, the movie got flak for inserting a relationship between Batman and Barbara Gordon, many people thinking Barbara Gordon being a librarian was an Actress Allusion to Tara Strong's role as Twilight Sparkle, and that the movie having Barbara Gordon retire being Batgirl before she's shot undercuts the tragedy of what happened. Except that one: a relationship between Bruce and Barbara was part of Batman Beyond's backstory (though that got flak, too) and was the backstory of the alternate Batgirl in Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! (though in that case, the mainstream universe's Bruce's reaction to this piece of info was the same shock and horror fans had to Beyond and the animated TKJ), two: Barbara was already a librarian when she was introduced, and three: a one-shot published shortly before TKJ, Batgirl Special No. 1, ended with Barbara deciding to hang up the cowl, so she was retired in the comic, too.
Few people know that Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is NOT the first Animated Adaptation of Dav Pilkey's work. In 1998 and 2004 respectively, The Dumb Bunnies and The Dragon Series, two other popular kids' books by Pilkey, were made into cartoons by animation studios in Canada, airing mainly on Canadian kids' networks (incidentally, the animation for the Captain Underpants movie was actually outsourced to a Canadian studio).
One defense about the film's "inappropriate" puberty themes is that there's incredibly mature and/or dark topics in previous Disney and Pixar movies (e.g. genocide, murder, among other things).
Another complaint is that the movie "encourages" children to rebel against their parents, which numerous Disney films before it already portrayed kids defying their parents in a positive light, such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Mulan, and Moana. Likewise for Pixar movies like The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Coco.
(from Disney itself) and One Cab's Family