Lion King 1½ is Timon and Pumbaa embellishing their story.
Really, it's the only way half of the movie could make sense. The other half just being
Rule of Funny. Obviously Timon is pulling stuff out of his hind end, and Pumbaa is either playing along, or
just not in one of his more lucid moments.
For example, Timon and Pumbaa could have been present at Simba's presentation, but it's highly doubtful that even one of Pumbaa's legendary farts could start off that kind of chain reaction. And Timon and Pumbaa could've spent the night at the watering hole and left the next day due to the crowds, but there's no way Simba could've grown into a juvenile cub overnight. And being present at the Graveyard, during Be Prepared and the Stampede? Typical Timon making up BS.
- What if they stayed there for Simba's whole early childhood?
- DUH!!!!! This isn't Wild Mass Guessing. This is stating fact!
The Lion King 1½ is partly true, and partly made up and exaggerated by Timon and Pumba (but mostly Timon)
Timon and Pumba's childhoods, and the fact that many of the homes they tried to move into were places Simba had been were true, but they weren't always in the same place at the same time. The whole thing with the hyenas and meerkats at the end was also made up to make Timon and Pumba seem more heroic.
The hyena attack on the meerkat colony was not actually serious.
Look at that scene again. The hyenas aren't even
trying to eat the meerkats. They just bat them around for a bit and
talk about eating them, but even when they have the perfect opportunity to kill one, they don't — they get the drop on Timon, and just bat him over towards the other meerkats so that there'll be a panic — and then when he stops and cowers they run right past him to chase the rest of the meerkats. When they've got Uncle Max, they do no worse to him than eat the fur off his tail and then apparently let him escape, while they walk away and laugh about the entire thing. Because their goal here wasn't to eat, it was just to scare the meerkats and get in a few good puns while they were at it. Lucky for Uncle Max that the hyenas weren't hungry that day!
- Shenzi licks Uncle Max, lifting him into the air in the process. If that's not being hungry, I don't know what is.
- Yes, she licks him. She doesn't eat him, even though she could easily have done so with no extra effort. She's just toying with him because it's funny when meerkats panic.
- This especially makes sense seeing as spotted hyenas don’t usually prey on animals as small as meerkats.
There will be a sequel called "The Lion King II ½"
Much like this film, it will try to integrate
Kion and his friends into the events of the 1998 Lion King sequel.
- Unlikely, with how the final season of The Lion Guard was dedicated to exploring where Kion and friends were during the movie — they were on a journey to find the Tree of Life to heal Kion and Ono, and didn't return until the events of the movie were over.
The reason why the movie doesn't line up with the events of the original Lion King
- Considering that 1½ is to the Lion King as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet, it's possible that Timon and Pumbaa are simply going through the script of the original movie as its written. This could explain why Simba magically ages from a newborn to a young cub for the "Just Can't Wait to be King" number, and why Timon & Pumbaa head to the gorge right after "Be Prepared."
Uncle Max is related to Timon's father.
Based on a deleted scene that featured Timon's father, he and Max behave in very similar fashions. They're both paranoid and give the same "Feared by no one and eaten by all" speech. That may mean that he's either the brother or uncle of Timon's father.
All of this is a story for Kiara.
Expanding on the above theories, Timon and Pumbaa are babysitting Kiara one day and she asks them about their past. Since Timon is a huge drama queen, he immediately starts telling the story with Pumbaa occasionally objecting when he strays too far from the actual truth. Most of their narration is just them telling the story. It is even
Lighter and Softer than what actually happened since she is still a young cub.
Since Simba doesn't tell Kiara what actually happened, she grows up with a warped understanding of Scar's rise to power leading to her naive in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
"Fearless Buzz" from the deleted "Digga Tunna" lyric was Max's father and Timon's grandfather.
According to the lyric, Buzz was tired of his meerkat brethren having to hide and run from the hyenas and tried to fight one off when he saw it...only to get jumped by a whole pack of hyenas and devoured. Now what other meerkat in the colony has that same mindset of "meerkats deserve more than digging and hiding?" The major difference however is Timon's more interested in a better life for himself initially (though he does eventually bring the whole colony into his and Pumbaa's dream home), and Buzz wanted a better life for all meerkat kind.
Piggybacking on this, Max and Timon's Disappeared Dad were most likely very young when their father was eaten. Timon's father likely inherited Buzz's fearless personality and tried to fight/face off against the hyenas, only to meet the same fate as Fearless Buzz when his son Timon was young. The reason Max is the way he is, is because he's trying very hard to keep himself and his nephew from meeting the same fate as his father and brother.
