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YMMV / Frozen (2013)

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Return to the main film page HERE or the franchise page HERE

Click here for the franchise's overall YMMV and here for Frozen II.

This page contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned!

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    A-F 
  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • In the Arabic version of "Let it Go", the part where Elsa originally sang, "Let it go/Let it go/That perfect girl is gone" translates to, "It's not coming back/It's not coming back/I've lost my innocence," with the masculine version of "it".
    • This lyric from "For the First Time in Forever". This video takes the innuendo and completely runs away with it.
      Anna: For years I've roamed these empty halls / Why have a ballroom with no balls?
  • Adorkable:
    • Anna is very clumsy and says awkward things, but she is so nice and plucky that these traits only add to her charm.
    • Olaf runs on adorable dorky antics.
    • Kristoff when he subs the words for Sven, or when he falls for Anna.
    • Sven is this when you mix in his clumsiness, love for carrots, and facial expressions.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Hans raises lots of questions due to the way the plot twist is formatted. Does he genuinely like Anna before turning evil at a chance to seize the throne, or is he just using Anna as a pawn the whole time and throwing her away when her use was over? Is he actually being a good person by giving the civilians blankets during the winter, or was it a way to build himself up a reputation as a good guy and hide his true intentions? Does he mirror Anna's Adorkableness to woo her in, or is he truly Adorkable and just happens to be evil? Making the conundrum worse, a lot of people seem to be Distracted by the Sexy and ignore his complete sociopathy, insisting that all he wants is to be a beloved king.
    • When Hans points the crossbow up, does he not want Elsa dead yet, or does he just know her ice would grab the bolt, and figured a falling chandelier would be a lot more effective? The quick glance he makes at the chandelier an instant beforehand suggests the latter, but still...
    • Elsa's sexual orientation isn't clarified in canon. Her lack of a love interest throughout the entire movie and avoidance of others for most of it (Hans says no one was getting anywhere with her) lend themselves to an interpretation of her as a Celibate Heroine or asexual/aromantic. On the other hand, the way she hides a secret her whole life, finally embracing it and revealing it to the world in her big song, and being happier afterwards is often read as a coming-out metaphor, and a lot of viewers like to think she's gay. Then, many ship her with various male characters. Co-Director Jennifer Lee gives a Shrug of God on the matter and even encourages different interpretations:
      We know what we made. But at the same time, I feel like once we hand the film over and it belongs to the world, so I don't like to say anything and let the fans talk. I think it is up to them. Disney films were made in different eras, different times, and we celebrate them all for different reasons, but this one was made in 2013 and is going to have a 2013 point of view.
    • The Duke of Weselton. His desire to kill Elsa could be interpreted as either religious fanaticism, or maybe it's just his way of protecting the kingdom. On one hand, his remark "Sorcery! I knew something dubious was going on here" when looked at alone sounds as if he distrusts magic in general. On the other hand, when he said it, he had just witnessed her magic actually endangering people and his "dubious" remark may not be referring to magic in general but how it was being used. Many people seem to think that his concern for the wealth of the Kingdom makes him evil, but upon hearing that Anna has been killed by Elsa, he is clearly horrified that she did such a thing. In the end, he's nothing more than a sneaky businessman, and how flawed or prejudiced he may be is left up to viewers.
    • Is Elsa showing wisdom in telling off Anna for becoming engaged so quickly, or after years of loneliness is she just (somewhat understandably) envious of Anna's chance at happiness and freedom with someone she loves? A big selling point of the movie for many fans is that Elsa and Kristoff actually call Anna out on how crazy it is to marry someone she's just met, and Hans did turn out to be Evil All Along. But is it really crazy, under those circumstances? Considering the fact that Elsa is deadset on returning to the status quo as soon as Coronation Day was over, forming a deep, permanent relationship with an outsider may have been Anna's best chance to avoid a lifetime of loneliness in a big, empty castle. Her instant relationship with Hans definitely smacks of desperation, but it seems a little less crazy if it was a practical decision as well as an emotional one, and although it does end badly, the way in which Elsa reacts comes off as more condescending than concerned.
      Anna: And I know it is totally crazy
      To dream I'd find romance
      But for the first time in forever
      At least I've got a chance
    • A very popular opinion is that Elsa knows Hans is about to strike her down with his sword while grieving over Anna's supposed death and is willingly letting it happen either because she feels like she deserves it or that it wasn't worth living without Anna.
    • Is Elsa's response to the Duke and Hans at the end of the film magnanimous, prudent, vengeful, and/or misguided? The Duke's men attempted to solve the Endless Winter by killing her, and a lack of response could possibly signal to other countries that Arendelle is not very defensive of its government, but she also seems very nonchalant, at least based on Kai's delivery of her announcement regarding it, about cutting off all trade with Weselton, which is said to be their largest trading partner. Does she not understand the economic ramifications of this, including the harm it will do to people who produce exports, or work as merchants?
    • What exactly is Anna thinking when she acknowledges she "was wrong" about her previous claim that Elsa wouldn't hurt her? Does she lose faith in her sister, if only for a little while? Or does Anna realize that her sister hitting her in the heart was an accident, and is acknowledging that if Elsa has this little control over her powers, ending the winter won't be as simple as having a heart-to-heart talk with Elsa?
    • Why does Olaf like the idea of heat so much? Is it because he likes "warm" hugs and so doesn't know the difference between emotional and literal warmth? Is it because at the time he was created, it would have been summer if not for the artificial winter, so he has the sense that it's supposed to be summer? Did he just think it sounded exciting because he'd never experienced it before?
    • Why did Marshmallow pull a Heel–Face Turn? Is it because he was created when Elsa was nervous and territorial, and now he's good because she's no longer feeling that way? Or is it because he wanted to be alone, so now he's happier because he's alone?
  • Alternative Joke Interpretation: The trolls' song has the lyric, "So he's a bit of a fixer-upper; so he's got a few flaws, like his peculiar brain, dear, his thing with the reindeer. That's a little outside of nature's laws!". Some people think that they were referring to the fact that he uses a reindeer named Sven as a horse, when he can just use an actual horse, but others think the writers sneaked a bestiality joke in, and still others think they're just referring to how Kristoff speaks for his pet reindeer Sven.
  • Alternate Self Shipping: Shipping Elsa with her earlier design with the (usually black haired) spikey short haired Elsa—dubbed "Evil Elsa" or just "Onion" by fans—is very common.
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees:
    • Many people who viewed the movie were surprised to find that ice harvesting was an actual thing in the 19th century that was especially common in Norway and many other parts of Europe and North America, and was exported to countries as far as the Philippines and the Caribbean. Blocks of ice were put into icehouses to store food before modern refrigerators existed.
    • There was some audience confusion over why some of the ice appears blue, instead of being limited to the more common white and translucent forms. In real life, blue ice is rare but not unheard of, usually forming when the ice is particularly dense.
  • Americans Hate Tingle:
    • Frozen was ironically not received well in Norway. Initial reviews gave it very low ratings, the general consensus among critics being that of "generic plot and characters" and "forced and obnoxious musical numbers", while one particular review criticized the setting for "not really looking like Norway". It did better with smaller magazines, however, giving it an average 4/6 rating. note  Meanwhile, its general target audience, including the president of the Sámi Parliament of Norway, Aili Keskitalo, seemed to like it fine, in the end making it more a case of Critical Dissonance. note  In 2016, some Disney employees visited Norway for classified reasons. When Aili heard of this, she quickly contacted said employees to make sure that if Disney were planning any more Sámi-related content in future projects, they would let her give advice this time on how to give a more proper representation.
    • It's been further exacerbated when the Norway pavilion at Epcot replaced their former ride with Frozen Ever After in 2016. Park purists and Norwegians are displeased that an attraction meant to honor a real-life country is being replaced with something based on a fictional country.
    • It may also be because Elsa and Anna are reminiscent of Alk and Ilke respectively from the Norwegian fantasy bookseries Phenomena with Elsa with Ilke's powers. And it even has multiple story elements from all the current main books. So even though Phenomena has reached Stage 6 A, some people remember it in the backs of their heads.
    • Many also strongly dislike its portrayals of the trolls. Trolls according to some fairy tales are supposed to be humanoid monsters who eat people, which makes them being the surrogate parents of a human just silly to some. They would fit better as Dwarves/Dark Elves in Norse mythology.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • Averted with Elsa for the majority of the movie, but then played straight at the end and in some of the spin-off material, although averted in Frozen Fever and Olaf's Frozen Adventure. Despite Elsa having accidentally frozen Arendelle and seen Anna frozen solid right before her very eyes, as soon as Elsa discovers that love is the key to controlling her powers, she is somehow okay with using her powers in front of the other citizens and her sister despite of what happened right before the thaw. This even applies to her isolation issues because as soon as she thaws Arendelle from winter, she is completely okay with touching people and becomes far more cheerful than before, in spite of the fact that she spent 13 years away with limited human contact, 9 of which she spent avoiding physically touching others.
    • Deliberately invoked on Anna. Anna also was isolated for 13 years, was never given a reason for it, had her sister shoot ice spikes at her during an argument about said unexplained isolation and would've died or at least been injured if she hadn't jumped out of the way, realized that her family had been keeping a major secret from her for as long as she can remember, had sister immediately run out of the room and the country upon shooting those spikes and set off an Endless Winter in the process, tried to reassure a bunch of frightened dignitaries and citizens that their mysterious and reclusive new queen who had just run off was not actually evil and that the Endless Winter and ice spikes in the courtyard were all an accident and big misunderstanding despite having no proof other than her own faith in her sister, set off on a journey through a blizzard to save both the kingdom and her sister, was struck in the heart by said sister (while the audience knows this was an accident, she has no indication of that), was told by the only person who she thought cared about her that no one loves her, and then died after throwing herself in front of that person's blade as he attempted to murder her beloved sister. She's perfectly cheerful afterward, in both the movie's epilogue and much of the spin-off material, and aside from a moment of Heroic BSoD after her supposed True Love's betrayal, while slowly freezing from the inside out because of a curse her sister placed on her without Anna having any way to tell whether it was intentional or not, and knowing her beloved kingdom is in danger spends most of the film with a positive attitude.
  • Applicability:
    • "Let It Go" can easily be seen as representing any number of personal secrets, and the relief of not having to hide them anymore, with being gay/trans being the one most often brought up. Not surprisingly, several young LGBTQ+ fans reportedly came out after hearing the song, which helped them cope with depression.
    • Some people see Elsa as representing people with an eating disorder. She has a secret which isolates her from her family, and is never seen eating. Most notably standing out in "Frozen Fever": Elsa has organized the treasure hunt she puts Anna on, such that Anna gets (and is seen eating) a sandwich — but where is a sandwich (or anything else to eat during this day-long event) for herself? Much of the short involves Anna trying to get Elsa to take care of herself, while Elsa pretends to both others and to herself that everything's fine in her desire to see the day as "perfect." The short ends with Anna finally convincing Elsa to let her help after Elsa nearly gets herself killed with this attitude, and how do we see Anna taking care of Elsa during this ending? Feeding her.
    • People in the Autism Spectrum community often identify with Elsa and her "Let It Go" song, like in this article. She was just born different, the majority of people who weren't born different react negatively to it, and she has terrible difficulty maintaining relationships. On the metaphorical side, people perceive her as cold, and her personal motto is about masking instead of expressing emotions. She saw solitude as the solution to all her social problems.
    • Additionally, Elsa's entire Character Development has been written about, whether intentional or not, as a metaphor for mental illness, especially in its impact on her and Anna's relationship.
    • Others see the story through a Christian lens, with Elsa as the human who is flawed but full of potential saved by unconditional, sacrificial love. John 15:13 (NKVJ) mentions "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." When Anna, who has been hurt deeply by Elsa, sees Hans about to execute the Snow Queen, she steps in front of Hans, shattering his sword, and Elsa recognizes how much her sister unconditionally cares for her by laying her life on the line for her. This love helps Elsa realize her potential learn how to harness her power for good. At least one sermon has been given on the topic.
  • Ass Pull: Hans being Evil All Along causes a Broken Base. Some viewers believe the twist isn't properly foreshadowed (there is indeed some Foreshadowing, but not a lot) and his actions contradict his goal (his smile when he fell into the fjord, during which there was nobody around to fool, is a notable point of controversy). Others, however, argue that The Reveal is meant to shock the audience as much as Princess Anna, and Hans being able to fool the viewers is what makes him one of the best villains Disney's made.
  • Award Snub:
    • The song "Let it Go" lost the Best Original Song Golden Globe Award to U2's "Ordinary Love" from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
    • Frozen only scoring Grammy nominations in the film-related categories. Especially because the songs nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year didn't have near the popularity that "Let It Go" did, and same goes for the soundtrack not being nominated for Album of the Year. Some fans cried foul on this and felt the Grammy voters had an "anti-Frozen" bias.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Prince Hans. Fans are highly divided as to whether Hans is one of the best or worst villains Disney's made. Those who think he's one of the best generally argue that he's an excellent depiction of a manipulative sociopath and that his reveal is jarring and scary as hell, while those who think he's one of the worst argue that his true nature makes absolutely no sense when some of his previous actions in the film are taken into account, and his characterization upon his reveal becomes reduced to a cliche cartoony supervillain. It doesn't help that The Reveal doesn't occur until the last fifteen minutes of the movie, giving him little time to flesh out his true nature or have as many memorable moments as other Disney villains before him. There's also a notable faction that dislikes the reveal because they felt he and Anna had more chemistry than Anna and Kristoff, which then gets thrown out the window for the sake of a twist.
    • Olaf. Mentioning him is sure to elicit either expressions of delight at his humor and heart and the sweetness of his symbolism as the representation of the childhood love between the sister leads, or grumblings of annoyance from people who see him as a cynical attempt to sell toys. Olaf is an odd case where people who were clearly expecting to hate him in the runup to the film actually mostly liked him when the film came out, and then found him much more divisive with time.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Olaf’s song, "In Summer." Olaf sings this apropos of nothing and it never comes up again. It may have been a way to explain why Olaf would agree to help Anna and Kristoff end the eternal winter, since doing so would inevitably kill him. But the song doesn't move the story forward in any way and is never really referred to again.
  • Catharsis Factor: Anna is responsible for a particularly satisfying moment when she comes face to face with Hans, the man who left her to freeze to death. She tells him he's the one with the frozen heart and sends him into the fjord with a single punch in the face.
  • Common Knowledge: While Elsa did spend a lot of time cooped up in her room, she most definitely was not literally imprisoned in it 24/7 like some think. For example, she's shown bidding her parents farewell by a grand staircase, with a servant nearby not looking surprised about her being outside her room.
  • Critical Backlash: All the Hype Backlash this film has received has caused a smaller backlash to pop up with people defending it as a good film despite all its flaws and overexposure.
  • Crossover Ship: The cameo by the two leads from Tangled has led to many Rapunzel/Elsa or Rapunzel/Anna, and Eugene/Elsa or Eugene/Anna ships. The theory that Rapunzel is Anna and Elsa's cousin doesn't seem to stop the fans. After Tangled: The Series started airing, Elsa/Cassandra has become a big ship for fans of the show.
  • Die for Our Ship: Kristoff, unfortunately, suffers from this by Elsa/Anna shippers, even if his relationship with Anna tends to be moved to friendship. A good number of Elsa/Anna fanworks portray him as a gross slob that makes Anna only notice how much "better" Elsa is.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Prince Hans gets a lot of this. A good portion of his sympathizers ignore the fact that his plans had originally been to woo Anna and kill Elsa so he could be king, as well as his Kick the Dog actions in The Reveal scene. They also tend to play up his childhood trauma. Sympathizers also tend to point at his earlier actions and adorkableness, ignoring that a key ability all sociopaths share is being able to fake emotions as well as being able to switch between them rather easily, and that he all but admitted he took the adorkable route because Anna was adorkable and she would thus be able to connect and relate to him all the easier if he played himself that way. This was not helped when a writer for Frozen said that she sees Hans as "a tragic figure because he's a consequence of being raised without love."
    • The book A Frozen Heart (which isn't even confirmed canon!) only adds to this, showing first-hand how abusive his family is, and implying that he may actually be clinically depressed. There's even a scene with surprisingly blatant self-harm, and that's just in the first chapter!
    • It's even more complicated than that. There are fans who want him to be Easily Forgiven and brush over the bad things he's done, but there are also fans who fully acknowledge his horrible actions but still see potential in him and think he should get a redemption arc, arguing that worse characters than him have ended up making a successful Heel–Face Turn note . Then there are the fans who think he should have never been a villain in the first place and blame the writers for making him that way because they "needed a bad guy", arguing that the story could have still worked without him being evil or even with No Antagonist. To top it all off, there are rumors that he might be getting a canon Heel–Face Turn in the sequel - as said by Santino Fontana, no less - making the whole thing even more complicated.
  • Dry Docking: There are fans who wish Elsa and Anna to be single because they prefer to ship themselves with one of them.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Oaken appears briefly early in the film but his design, humorous personality, and ambiguous homosexuality made him popular with fans.
  • Epileptic Trees: Some fans theorize that Hans wasn't Evil All Along, but was instead put under some kind of spell by the trolls as a form of In-Universe Die for Our Ship. After all, The Reveal led directly to Anna and Hans' break-up and Anna getting together with Kristoff, just as the trolls wanted. This would also explain why Hans' love for Anna seemed so genuine prior to that point: because it was genuine until the trolls intervened. Of course, there's absolutely no evidence that the trolls are capable of that sort of thing.
  • Fandom Heresy: Don't ever say you like Demi Lovato's version of "Let It Go". If you say you like it better than Idina Menzel's version, the fandom will burn you at the stake.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • Fans of Frozen seemed to have a rather fiery one with fans of The LEGO Movie when the latter debuted a few months after the former. And later, How to Train Your Dragon 2, especially since people thought that would be Dreamworks' billion-dollar film and it under-performed big-time, at least initially.
    • The Frozen fandom tends to be at odds with much of the Disney fandom overall, partially due to many Disney fans being frustrated with the continued presence the film has in pop culture and feeling that it's overshadowing almost every other Disney film, including the ones that came out after Frozen. In particular, fans of Frozen seem to have a very rocky relationship with the fandoms for Big Hero 6, Sofia the First, Zootopia, Moana and particularly Coco, for previously said reasons.
    • People often competitively compare Frozen with Mulan when it comes to feminist themes.
    • Frozen and Tangled had this early on due to early images of Elsa and Anna had them looking suspiciously like Rapunzel (they are designed by the same artist after all). Once later material made it more noticeable that they weren't Rapunzel clones, much of the arguing died out. They even became Friendly Fandoms after Rapunzel and Eugene cameoed in Frozen. Still, some animosity still exists between the two fandoms, with arguments over which one is the better film persisting.
    • Frozen fans and Rise of the Guardians fans often accuse Disney or DreamWorks Animation of stealing the idea of a movie focusing on An Ice Person. Neither invented the concept: in fact, each studio have been very open about both Elsa and Jack Frost being based on pre-existing characters that predate both films, Elsa being inspired by a nineteenth-century tale written by Hans Christian Andersen and Jack Frost originating in folklore. Disney had been working on a film based on the Snow Queen on and off for decades, since the days of Walt himself, and leaked pre-production art was already online by 2008, the year Dreamworks purchased the film rights to William Joyce's The Guardians of Childhood book series, which united the variety of folkloric characters seen in the film, including not just Jack Frost, but other well-known childhood staples such as the Sandman and the Easter Bunny.
  • Fanfic Fuel:
    • The cameo by Rapunzel and Eugene during "For The First Time In Forever" has launched a number of Tangled crossovers.
    • Since Elsa and Anna are canonically Royals Who Actually Do Something, a higher proportion of Frozen fanfics are Government Procedurals compared to most other fandoms, with the sisters and Kristoff (and sometimes Hans if he's included) tackling problems with Arendelle's politics.
    • Other kingdoms (Weselton and the Southern Isles) are named within the film, and interkingdom relations affect the plot. Spin-off material name drops more countries and in a few cases they even appear (such as when Elsa and Anna visited Eldora in an Anna & Elsa book). Naturally, fans who know of the kingdoms can expand upon them in fanworks.
    • The questions that the movie leaves unresolved: Where did Elsa's powers come from? Does having a ruler with magical powers affect Arendelle's international relations? Is Hans really the Black Sheep of his family, or are the rest of the princes from the Southern Isles Always Chaotic Evil? Are there others like Elsa, and if so, will she ever find them? Word of God revealed the reason for her powers later that was going to be included in the film note , meant to be explained in the film itself but was cut. While the canonicity of this explanation was considered debatable and then was overridden by Frozen II, this is even more Fanfic Fuel, such as the possibility of others with magic powers being born at certain year intervals and/or alignments, or even who the cryokinetic "previous-1,000th year Saturn alignment" before Elsa was — perhaps the original Snow Queen?
    • In the ending, is Elsa really Easily Forgiven by her people? It seems people of Arendelle in the ending are impressed with her ice powers and they enjoy seeing her display the good side of her powers. But many a fanfic has gone on to expand on the idea that even if Elsa stopped this winter by herself, there will be people who share the Duke of Weselton's prejudices against those with magic and try to kill her as a result.
    • A lot of the development cycle for the film is known. This gives fans a lot to work with in fanworks. The most popular pre-release version of Elsa is the Elsa with the spikey hair that was used right up until it was decided to retool her role (though, despite her popularly being black-haired that design wasn't the design the film was going to use; 'onion Elsa' was a platinum blonde like current Elsa).
    • They Never Found The Bodies of the King and Queen. This has fueled many fanworks where they somehow survived. Frozen II spoiler
  • Fan Nickname:
    • The Fortress of Solitude for Elsa's Ice Palace, both being ice castles rising up from the ground in the north and a place for solitude.
    • 4chan's /co/ likes referring to the Duke of Weselton's bodyguards as "Weselbiggs" and "Weselwedge". (Weselbiggs is, of course, the one with the mustache.)
    • Elsa's original design with the spiky black hair is sometimes called "Onion Elsa".* Also, "Evil Elsa".
    • Elsa's hair braid tends to jokingly be named "Jerry" as a running gag on many Tumblr pages.
    • Some fan communities gave the name "Countess Claire" to the woman in the blue dress who sits next to the Duke of Weselton during the coronation ceremony.
  • Fan-Preferred Cut Content: While Queen Elsa is far from unpopular, there's a significant population of fans who'd prefer to see her original concept based more directly on The Snow Queen, where she was the film's flamboyant villain deliberately freezing Arendelle rather than suffering from Power Incontinence. This is largely due to her original concept designs, which are seen as more dynamic and striking than her final outfit.
  • Fanon: Has its own page.
  • Fanon Welding: Some mostly tongue-in-cheek theories connect the film to a wider Disney Shared Universe: Elsa and Anna's parents are also the parents of Tarzan, or their ship is the one Ariel explores.
  • Faux Symbolism: Some fans (particularly Scandinavian ones) have taken to wonder if Hans and the Duke of Weselton were jokingly meant to represent Denmark and Sweden respectively, both wanting to "take over Norway", which historically Denmark did for more than 400 years before giving the rule over to Sweden for nearly a hundred years. This is also supported by Hans' own name being a Shout-Out to The Snow Queen's Danish author, next to him coming from the "southern islands", while the Duke is Arendelle's "closest partner in trade", the way Sweden is closest to Norway. Whether or not this is an intentional comparison, however, is unknown, though it doesn't stop said fans from having fun with the idea.
  • Foe Yay Shipping:
    • Hans/Elsa pairing has a very large fanbase. The fact that the D23-Exclusive Doll Set for Frozen puts the two together certainly helps. Made especially funny now that Elsa is the official 13th member of the Disney Princess lineup, and Hans is the 13th Prince of his kingdom.
    • Elsa was originally meant to be unrelated to Anna, just like in The Snow Queen. Prior to the leak of their finalized designs, a small amount of concept art was published. The white/blue haired proto-Elsa with long hair was quite popular and some fanworks existed of her and Anna together. After more concept art was released post-release, fans really took a liking to the spiky haired design for Elsa. It's not uncommon for Elsanna fans to ship that incarnation of Elsa with Anna as some twisted Cain and Abel couple.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • Frozen shares many fans of Wicked, due to the similarities between Elsa and Elphaba including both being played by Idina Menzel and having a touching "I Am Becoming" Song, and also fans with Tangled due to being attempts to modernize the princesses and The Cameo for Rapunzel and Flynn in Frozen.
    • It shares many fans with Kill la Kill.
    • There is friendship between this fandom and that of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with Anna and Elsa being frequently depicted as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes respectively.
    • The Frozen fandom additionally appears to get along with the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom relatively well, with there being a lot of crossover art.
    • The fandom has formed a bond with the growing Inside Out fandom, including outright sharing many fans, possibly due to both movies containing similar themes.
    • With Tangled due to Rapunzel and Eugene's cameo implying a bond between the kingdoms (though, Tangled takes place at least a century before Frozen).
    • Even before its release, Frozen has been popular among the Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons fandom, Elsa and Anna having paired off to every character involved and the movie being considered the Sixth Ranger of the fandom.

    G-M 
  • Genius Bonus: At the beginning of the bridge of "Let It Go", Elsa turns clockwise while saying "My power flurries through the air into the ground", with the circular floor beneath her briefly flashing orange to symbolize the formation of a magic circle. She finishes the bridge by saying "I'm never going back; the past is in the past", casting her tiara over her left shoulder, and spinning counterclockwise. People familiar with any of the pagan traditions of northern and western Europe should recognize the core elements of a banishing spell; in this case, Elsa is banishing herself and relinquishing her crown.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • This trope applies to the movie in general. While Frozen has been a huge success in the US, it's thanks to international audiences that it ended up the fifth highest-grossing movie of all time when it left theaters. In its home country, it was in 19th place, and wasn't the highest-grossing animated movie, or the highest-grossing Disney Animated Canon movienote  or even the highest-grossing 2013 movienote .
    • The movie held the top box-office spot in Japan for sixteen weeks straight in 2014. By the time it relinquished the top spot, it was the highest-grossing Western-animated film and the third highest grossing film ever in the country, below only Spirited Away and Titanic (1997). In addition, it became the top-selling Blu-Ray of all time in Japan on its first day of sale, surpassing previous record-holder Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance in one day.
    • Frozen is also big in France. It is not uncommon to search for pictures on Google or see bootlegged merchandise of the film, such as fake phone cases and clothing, with the French title of the film printed on it. Their Disney theme park, Disneyland Paris, also hosts many events related to the film each year, such as when they added Anna, Elsa and Olaf to their Disney Dreams of Christmas event, as well as the annual Frozen Summer Fun event.note 
    • Frozen is bigger in the United Kingdom than it is in the United States. To put this into perspective, it reached #1 twice, and it took until summer 2015 for the supply and demand situation involving the merchandise to be solved, when it took only until the fall of 2014 in its home country. Also there, the film tends to be re-released there around Christmastime in select cinemas, usually as a double bill with The Muppet Christmas Carol.
    • It's done really well in South Korea, where it came in right behind Japan in box office numbers and "Let It Go" peaked at No. 1 in Korean music charts.
    • It was successful in Canada as well. It's shown and rerun on Canadian TV regularly as well as hugely advertized. It is still talked about in Canada as well as Frozen II. It is one of the biggest film franchises in Canada in general.
  • Girl-Show Ghetto:
    • The advertisements anticipated this reaction, and focused heavily on the two male Plucky Comic Relief sidekicks, and not the sisters the film was actually about. The teaser featured Olaf and Sven exclusively, without a hint that the film featured any female characters at all. Just like Tangled, this is part of the reason for the film's title not being "The Snow Queen" like the original source material or "Anna and the Snow Queen" like the working titlenote  and for making Kristoff a major character. However the film was spectacularly successful at the box office, well-received by critics, and earned many awards including Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song at the Oscars, with the Breakout Character being Snow Queen Elsa.
    • In yet another similarity to Titanic (1997), quite a few uninitiated male moviegoers (especially fans of traditionally male-oriented and Rated M for Manly media) resent Frozen's success due to it being a Disney princess movie, assuming its female leads and popularity with girls and women somehow meant its success was necessarily undeserved.
  • Gotta Ship 'Em All: Perhaps exacerbated by the small size of the cast, fanfictions can be found for every pairing, including large amounts of Anna and Kristoff, Anna and Elsa, Kristoff and Hans, either Anna or Elsa with Hans, and even some involving Olaf, Sven, and Marshmallow.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In-universe: "Love is an Open Door," in its first viewing, comes off as a triumphant "I Am Becoming" Song about The Power of Love to heal. Particularly poignant is the line, "Say goodbye to the pain of the past/We don’t have to feel it anymore." Subsequent viewings, after learning about Han’s true colors, instead reveal the song to be a Villain Song disguised as a love duet. Anna and Hans’ exchange of "We finish each other’s—Sandwiches!—That’s what I was going to say!" goes from being Adorkable to evidence of Hans’ manipulative prowess. The paired singing of "You and I were just meant to be" becomes especially emblematic of the film’s Deconstruction of Love at First Sight. Later viewings demonstrate the song’s wit, but also make it less enjoyable.
    • In the sequel, Elsa abdicates the throne and Anna takes over as queen. If Hans had genuinely been a nice guy (or if he was just a bit more patient), he would have gotten exactly what he wanted.
    • The sequel also puts Pabbie's vision of Elsa being attacked by people who feared her powers in much darker light by revealing it wasn't a mistaken Self-Fulfilling Prophecy but rather something that could easily happen with the revelation that King Runeard, Elsa's grandfather, feared magic and went to war with the Northuldra because he was scared of how close they were with the magical spirits of nature. Even worse is that Elsa's mother, Queen Iduna, was a Northuldran who hid her ethnicity out of fear of racial discrimination.
  • He's Just Hiding: Elsa and Anna's parents were killed at sea. Since it's implied they never retrieved their remains, many theories exist that they survived. Why they have been missing for three years varies, with two popular choices being either they are on a desert island or they have amnesia. The director of both movies, Chris Buck, jokingly said they washed up on an island with their new baby, Tarzan.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Elsa's "The cold never bothered me anyway" became funnier when a lot of fans whom the cold did bother jokingly blamed the extraordinarily cold winter of late 2013/early 2014 on Elsa's powers. That, or telling Mother Nature that when Elsa said "the cold never bothered me anyway," it wasn't supposed to be taken as a challenge. Never mind that it was mostly the United States and eastern Canada where 2014's winter was exceptionally cold, whereas it was nothing out of the ordinary in Elsa's native Norway. Naturally, a local CBS news show did a parody of Let It Go about the harsh winter of 2013-2014. And in February 2015, the city of Harlan, Kentucky chose to cash in on the joke by making a fake warrant in Elsa's name.
    • Seeing an entire kingdom/country getting buried in snow with Scandinavian-themed environments and Anna wishing Elsa had "tropical magic" will probably make players of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze giggle.
    • Olaf is a white inorganic creature that likes warm hugs. One year later, Baymax is a white inorganic creature that gives warm hugs.
    • During the Oaken scene, when Kristoff is complaining about Oaken's price gouging, Oaken says he's got a big supply and demand problem. One month after the film's release, the merchandise for the film suffered from this problem for almost half a year.
    • From "Love is an Open Door," Hans' line "I love crazy!" Santino Fontana later played the Hopeless Suitor of the titular character in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
    • It can get pretty funny seeing this film make such a big deal about Olaf melting, after "Olaf's Frozen Adventure" casually revealed that he can survive it and will go back to normal when he's re-frozen.
    • The Cut Song "More Than Just A Spare" is about Anna feeling like second best compared to Elsa and bemoaning that she's just a spare to the throne. Frozen II ends with Anna being crowned queen.
    • The anime of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! has main character Catarina uses an axe to force herself into the room of her brooding cousin-cum-stepbrother, Keith, who isolated himself after accidentally injuring her by his magic. This prompted fan comments: "Disney should take notes. An axe works a lot better than a musical number."
  • Hype Backlash:
    • The popularity of the film has managed to kick up a lot of backlash. Incidentally, Disney themselves tried to head this trope off at the pass by deliberately underselling the movie. Frozen has become The New '10s version of Titanic (1997) in this regard, right down to the overexposed Award-Bait Song. It's mainly due to some moviegoers considering the film So Okay, It's Average and can't see why the film's so popular. So it's considered overrated because of overexposure, and simultaneously over-hated because many consider it to be overrated. The fact that children in particular absolutely adore the movie and its ensuing franchise doesn't really help in that regard.
    • "Let it Go" itself had a cycle of this, or rather an "Overexposure Backlash". At the time the song won the Academy Award, it was impossible to enter in a video provider (be it YouTube, Blip, Daily Motion, etc.) and NOT find a bajillion versions and covers of the song. This brought some people to end up hating a song that they considered cute at first, or even great. Think "My Heart Will Go On" all over again 17 years later. Being in a movie marketed toward kids (who love to play things over and over again) increases this effect. It has also attracted some backlash due to its use of a certain four-chord progression well-known for its overuse. The backlash at how overplayed the song got became an Ascended Meme in Frozen II, where in one scene Elsa cringes at the memory of herself singing "Let It Go".
  • Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Pairing Hans and Elsa has been called "Iceburns", since she has ice powers and he has sideburns. (If you want to get meta about it, the fandom sometimes likes depicting him as having fire powers in contrast to Elsa's ice powers so that could also represent "burns". Plus he's a bad guy and he hurts people, and burns hurt.)
  • I Knew It!: Considering how Kristoff was the first male character shown in promotional material, many fans at first felt that one way or another, Anna would end up with him.
  • Incest Yay Shipping: Anna/Elsa; given the nature of the story they have both this and Les Yay. It's not really that surprising. The "Frozen Fever" short, "Olaf's Frozen Adventure" Christmas Special, and Frozen II fanned the flames further.
  • Iron Woobie:
    • Princess Anna has been isolated in the castle and been shut out by her sister for 13 years without any explanation as to why and upon losing her parents, is left to mourn them alone. Despite this, she continues to love her sister and never gives up hope on reconnecting with her. Even when she is struck in the heart to a painful death by her sister, not having any way of knowing it was an accident, and betrayed by the man she thought was her true love, she retains her caring and optimistic attitude to the point that when given the opportunity between getting a True Love's Kiss to save her life or saving Elsa from being killed by Hans, she immediately rushes in to save her sister instead. In the end, in spite of all the odds against her, her selfless Act of True Love has not only saved everyone including herself but also allows her to finally reconnect with her sister after being separated for so long.
    • Elsa. She's lonely and has deep self-esteem issues, but damn, is she awesome.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Due to both having similar art styles and the trailers giving an emphasis on comedy, many assumed that the film would just be a rehash of Tangled, despite no one having seen the film at that point. On the contrary, the film was shown to have a plot and characters that had little in common with Tangled, although a cameo of Rapunzel and Flynn shows that they may take place in the same universe.
  • It Was His Sled: The movie's popularity and the Memetic Mutation of Hans' Wham Line on sites like Tumblr have destroyed the spoiler that is Hans being evil.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Prince Hans is cruel but can still invite sympathy if his childhood of being treated as invisible by three of his twelve older brothers is genuine. Which, according to Word of God, apparently is.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Some people watch it solely to see Elsa or Olaf, or specific sequences like "Let It Go".
  • LGBT Fanbase:
    • Elsa has quickly garnered a large gay and asexual fanbase, mainly because her powers and the need to hide them from society makes a great metaphor. Then there is Idina Menzel'snote  already sizable gay fan base from her roles in Wicked and RENT. "Let It Go" instantly became adopted as an iconic LGBT anthem.
    • Prince Hans, due to the fact that he's not really in love with Anna and shares Elsa's motif of a hidden identity, as well as the fact that he is named after The Snow Queen's author Hans Christian Andersen (who identified himself as bisexual) and is pretty.
    • Oaken only appears for one scene, but has one. This is due to the theory that the family in the sauna are his partner and their kids.
  • Love to Hate: Prince Hans seriously earns his villain chops with The Reveal, and many admire his ruthless, cold-hearted bastardry.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • According to the fandom, Elsa can easily beat Gandalf and Voldemort in a fight. And according to certain crossovers, Smaug as well. And fandom could consider Elsa capable of taking on ten or even a hundred men singlehandedly. Something that is considered in Frozen Wight when an angry mob storms the castle. They try to Zerg Rush her, and she single-handedly defeats every last one of the rebels.
    • While Anna has no shortage of badassery in the film, it's a common practice to make Anna a Deadpool-esque Crazy Is Cool hilarious badass (who also provides comic relief, in Olaf's absence). This is particularly evident in the Pacific Rim crossover Arctic Rim. This is also the approach taken by Once Upon a Time, in which Anna is established to be a sword fighter and even the one who first taught Prince Charming.
    • The straight-out-of-Game of Thrones-comparison is often applied to Hans for his ruthless behavior, including leaving Anna to die and preparing to chop Elsa in half with his sword. He does this all while manipulating events so that he will become the ruler of Elsa's kingdom. Fans have characterized him as a brilliant chessmaster.
  • Memetic Loser:
    • Character Exaggeration tends to cast Elsa as a socially inept, awkward NEET in modern day fanfics.
    • Fanworks such as Constable Frozen like to portray Hans as the Chew Toy who is more than often on the receiving end of some misfortune where he ends up getting brutally maimed, killed or both.
  • Memetic Mutation: Here we go into a snowstorm of them...
  • Memetic Psychopath: Due to the fact she was conceived as a villain and due to the multiple ways she could be portrayed as one even in more canon-complacent works (for example, her undergoing a Sanity Slippage after Anna is Killed Off for Real and becoming the Snow Queen), works that depict Elsa as this are a dime a dozen.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • People like to view "Let It Go" strictly as an empowerment anthem while overlooking the more complex context in which it's sung: Elsa trying to solve her problems by running away from them and shutting herself off from the world. Most of her Hero Antagonist nature comes from recovering from what she did, and realizing that abandoning everyone she loved was exactly the opposite of what she needed to do. Though just like "I'll Make A Man Out Of You", it still works at face value. And because of Pandering to the Base, this has become an Ascended Meme - even Disney themselves treat it as her Moment of Awesome. Dolls and costumed Elsas at Disney itself will happily lead crowds singing it, often cutting out most of the lines about isolation, and the few that stayed I.e. "Here I stand/And here I stay", "I'm never going back/The past is in the past" could express a refusal to resume living in fear as easily as they do a refusal to return to Arendelle. It's kind of a mixed package. It's clear that holding onto her fear and self-hatred caused a lot of Elsa's problems, and "Let It Go" is a step toward learning how to embrace herself and let go of fear. However, abandoning responsibility was not the solution. She needed a balance.
    • It's also gotten a misaimed backlash by people who realize that Elsa's decision is problematic but don't realize that the movie wants us to realize that as much as it wants us to sympathize with her and that Elsa learns a better way of dealing with her problems in the end.
    • "Love is an Open Door" has similar problems. Like "Let It Go," it's a complex moment showing an isolated and traumatized young woman making a flawed but sympathetic decision that's neither entirely right nor entirely wrong, but people tend to focus on one part or the other.
      • The song is entirely one-sided, since Hans was faking his love for Anna from the start. However, there are a lot of people who use it unironically, usually by pairing it up with videos of their favorite couples.
      • There are also a lot of people who both praise and criticize it as being a mean-spirited attempt to parody earlier Disney movies and heroines, and the ones who criticize it point out that it appears to be engaged in Victim-Blaming and/or it's a Shallow Parody that seems hypocritical of the writers in context of how most Disney movies actually go. The writers actually expected audiences to realize that most Disney movies don't have their romances progress that quickly. The movie also shows Anna not as a shallow parody, but as a three-dimensional and dynamic character finally making a connection after years of isolation but also rushing into a relationship and marriage due to her lonely upbringing and childhood of rejection. Throughout the film (and franchise), she gains a better understanding of what a healthy relationship looks like. She gets it wrong here, but gets it right later on.
    • Elsa and Anna's closeness resulted in the sisters being oft subjected to Incest Yay Shipping. This is despite one of the points of their relationship being to show there are other kinds of love than romantic and such familial/platonic love is just as important and powerful.
    • Frozen got a lot of praise and criticism in general for "mocking" previous Disney movies and heroines. While the film does deconstruct many tropes, it's not meant to mock them, other fairy tales, or characters, and the movie's characters very much aren't meant to be either "better than" or parodies of other Disney ones. Co-director Chris Buck explained the film team simply wanted to "tell a classic Disney story" with well-rounded characters who were relatable and imperfect:
      Co-director Chris Buck: What Jen and I wanted to do with Frozen was tell a classic Disney story only with characters that weren’t up pedestals. I mean, if you really look at Anna and Elsa, they’re contemporary characters with flaws. These two sisters are just like the rest of us. So it’s this mix of Disney classic and the contemporary that I think audiences have really been responding to.
  • Moe: Anna, as part of her Adorkable and Cute Clumsy Girl appeal. Elsa also gains moe appeal from her Stoic Woobie qualities. This is naturally more evident at the beginning of the film, where Elsa and Anna play together as kids.
  • Moral Event Horizon: If Hans using Anna and lying to her the entire time isn't bad enough, then there's him closing the curtains, putting out the fire with water to speed up Anna's freezing, and shutting the door on her, leaving her to die.

    N-S 
  • Nightmare Retardant: To some, Marshmallow's two lines "Go away!" and "Don't come baaack!" make him sound more like a disgruntled teenager than an intimidating bodyguard.
  • No Yay: Other than the fact that it's, well, incest, many who dislike the Anna/Elsa pairing feel that shipping the two ruins what is generally regarded as one of the main messages of the film, that platonic/familial love is as strong and wonderful as romantic love. Shipping the two ignores that, looping back to "romantic love is the only love that matters" or is "stronger" or "more" than familial love.
  • Older Than They Think:
    • 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 (Brave). All of those have been done in previous Disney Animated Canon movies, often multiple times. While Frozen has perhaps been most commonly praised for, on the grounds of being "fresh" and "subversive", demonstrating that true love can be more than just romance and that an Act of True Love doesn't have to be a True Love's Kiss, even that has been shown already in previous Disney films, such as in Pinocchionote , The Little Mermaid (1989)note , Beauty and the Beastnote , and Aladdinnote .
    • Neither is it the first to explicitly question or deconstruct the Love at First Sight trope (Enchanted), despite the idea that it was being so popular as to inspire a meme. A particularly interesting example in that while many fans talk about her being "the first" to question the trope, not only is Elsa not the first character in Disney history 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 a commitment with the pressure of the deadline closing in.
    • The film attracted quite a bit of talk for its decision to portray the Snow Queen sympathetically, with some people assuming Disney must have taken inspiration from specific other Adaptational Heroism and Perspective Flip stories for other fairy tales like Wicked. However, Shelly Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre version of "The Snow Queen" seems to have been an influence on the film. The Snow Queen is also portrayed as being on the side of good, rather than a Wicked Witch like most adaptations, and also makes the Summer Witch her sister (which makes for a similar contrast between Anna/Elsa). Anna herself even bears a resemblance to Melissa Gilbert, who played Gerda.
    • 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 (Pocahontas) or to not have a love interest (Brave), 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.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Oaken, the merchant with the store/sauna. His only real significance in the plot is so that we can be properly introduced to Kristoff, but it's a hilarious sequence.
    • A blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Rapunzel and Eugene in "For the First Time in Forever" became a massive Fanfic Fuel of possible crossovers between the two movies.
  • Padding: "Fixer Upper" doesn't move the plot forward and primarily serves as Ship Tease for Anna and Kristoff, with some thematic musings and foreshadowing tossed in.
  • Periphery Demographic: Just like many other female-led Disney movies, Frozen has a ton of male fans who can appreciate the story, characters and songs, and Elsa in particular is considered by straight male fans to be one of the most attractive Disney characters. Of course, it led to things like this cover of "Let It Go" sung by a man impersonating 22 different Disney and Pixar characters (which even landed him a job at Disney itself at one point during the production of season 3 of Tangled: The Series in a guest role), as well as the U.S. Marines' aforementioned singalong.
  • Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Elsa and Anna's bond is a platonic, familial sisterly bond; one of the film's messages is that "romantic love isn't the only type of love" and that "familial love can be just as strong and important." However, some viewers think the coronation scene where Anna tries to compliment Elsa and her reaction to Elsa's new appearance when they reunite come off more as romantic than sisterly, Kristoff and Hans both fall into Strangled by the Red String in different ways due to neither of them getting as much screentime with Anna as her sister Elsa does, and some very awkward merchandise almost seems to portray Elsa and Anna as a couple.
  • Rainbow Lens: Elsa has magical powers that she was born with. Her parents hide her away and pressure her to try to control them until she's afraid of them and of herself. This leads to her being outed in front of a crowd of people and then fleeing as those around her suddenly turn on her. She only gains some control over her powers once she's alone in the wilderness and is finally able to be herself (after singing a song with lyrics like "Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I've tried," "I don't care what they're going to say," and "that perfect girl is gone"). She later learns that the key to controlling them is love, but not before they cause her to be sentenced with a crime and nearly killed.
    Elsa: Don't let them in. Don't let them see. Be the good girl you always have to be. Conceal, don't feel, put on a show. Make one wrong move and everyone will know.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Judging him by the previews, people assumed Olaf would simply be an annoying side character but when the movie was released, many of the critics highlighted Olaf as one of the best characters. It helps greatly that he provides some levity during dark times, gets scarce in the more dramatic moments, and has relatively little screen-time, avoiding "Jar-Jar Binks" comparisons. Olaf's willingness to sacrifice his life for Anna makes him more comparable to Ray the Firefly from The Princess and the Frog; it's just that unlike Ray, he doesn't die. Also, rather than taking the obvious route of having him be the Kid-Appeal Character via silly antics, the film playes his Nigh-Invulnerable snowlem nature for Black Comedy every chance it gets. "Oh, look. I've been impaled."
  • Ron the Death Eater:
    • Elsa and Anna's parents. While it can't be denied that their efforts to help Elsa with her condition ultimately do a lot of harm, the movie also clearly shows that they are nevertheless well-intentioned devoted parents who are trying their best to protect both of their daughters. Many fan portrayals, however, depict them as straight-up evil Fantastic Racist parents who treat Elsa as the The Un-Favourite and plan to lock her in her room forever because they're embarrassed of her, despite this outright contradicting what's on-screen.
    • Unlike in The Snow Queen, the Trolls in Frozen are benevolent; still, they are made the true villains of the story in quite a few fanworks and fan theories. Some accuse them of intentionally stoking the fears of Elsa and her parents. Then, there are suggestions that Hans is genuinely a good guy and in love with Anna; the trolls, however, want him out of the way so that she can be with Kristoff instead, so they brainwash Hans into becoming evil, at range and without ever meeting him. A Film Theory video and a Cracked post also support this idea, and it's gained traction among a portion of the fans who see the plot twist as poorly foreshadowed.
    • Hans, when not given the leather pants treatment, often gets his evilness exaggerated to the point that he becomes a cackling, Obviously Evil psychopath like most Disney Villains. This is ignoring the fact that what made Hans such an interesting and terrifying villain was the fact that his villainy wasn't obvious from the start and that part of his appeal is that he isn't like the standard Disney villain.
    • Elsa/Anna and Hans/Anna pairings initially morphed Kristoff from his canon characterization into a Jerkass as a pretext for a breakup with Anna and her subsequently becoming available for new relationships. This has not been universal, and, when the character became popular, many authors chose to make them friends instead.
  • Ships That Pass in the Night:
    • Kristoff/Elsa is supported by a minority of fans, even though they don't interact with each other at all in the original movie. Kristoff says "Ice is my life!" and is awestruck by Elsa's ice palace, and what leads him to his first encounter with the sisters (as well as to his future "family") is fascination with the ice track left by Elsa's passage.
    • Kristoff/Hans are the designated Ho Yay pairing, largely for those who want to ship Anna/Elsa or keep both of them single, even though their only interaction is Kristoff threatening to punch Hans, and we never got to see Hans' reaction.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Most of the combat is between completely non-canon ships that literally can't happen in canon as fans are heavy on Incest Yay Shipping, Foe Yay Shipping, and Crossover Ships.
    • The main issue is Elsa and Jack from Rise of the Guardians versus Elsa and Anna versus Elsa and Hans.
    • Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons adds in the ships of Jack and Rapunzel from Tangled along with Elsa and Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. There are also minor ships such as Elsa and Merida from Brave. There is heavy warring between fans who prefer Jack with Rapunzel or with Elsa. The low-age of many of the shippers (with Elsanna being popular with adults while the others are most popular with preteens and early teens) especially provokes Die for Our Ship behavior. Quite a number of shippers seem to think that their preferred ship is actually canon and get very mad at the existence of fan content feature ships other than their personal favorite. This has gone as far as fans spamming comment sections of "Helsa" or "Jelsa" pages on deviantArt about how their ship is "the true ship."
    • As of the releases of both Frozen shorts (Frozen Fever and Olaf's' Frozen Adventure), the Jelsa ship in particular has become the target of Hype Backlash. This has gone from hate fanart on deviantArt to fandom attacks on the creator of Jack Frost, William Joyce. During an Instagram Q/A, Joyce was asked about the ship and said "It would be delightful if they could be together", while also acknowledging the impossibility of it as the two are owned by rival studios. While met with approval, he was also on the receiving end of some not so favorable comments and he hasn't touched the subject ever since at least on a public forum (especially as he had to defend Rise Of The Guardians, which came out approximately a year before Frozen's release, from being seen as riding on Frozen's bigger success).
    • It doesn't help that many fans have different interpretations of both the film and of Elsa's character and often insist that theirs is the only valid one, to the point that some fans believe that certain ships - or shipping Elsa with anyone - are an affront to the movie and the character. Attempts to get a confirmation of a canon orientation for Elsa have resulted in Shrug of God, scriptwriter and codirector Jen Lee saying she wants to leave it up to viewers. Despite the creators encouraging viewers to all bring their own interpretation, shipping her with a woman often angers people who assume she's straight, shipping her with a man often angers portions of her LGBT Fanbase who believe that her story is an intentional metaphor for being lesbian, and shipping her with anyone at all will bring about the ire of the fans who believe she's supposed to be aromantic/asexual. Shipping her with a controversial character will also bring accusations of "insulting" Elsa's character by writing her as falling for someone some fans consider beneath her.
  • Signature Scene: The "Let It Go" sequence is the most well-known, beloved, and parodied scene of the film. It being legally freely available to the public on YouTube helps its ability to be mass-shared a good bit. Heck, this scene was recreated for the Arendelle level of Kingdom Hearts III without skipping a beat, an unprecedented move by any Kingdom Hearts game when featuring a Disney-themed world; clearly a testament to the financial success of the film, that the scene itself was just too iconic not to include.
    Honest Trailers: From the studio that finally learned how to make Pixar movies, and the songwriting duonote  behind "Hasa Diga Eebowai", comes the feature-length music video for "Let It Go".
  • Slow-Paced Beginning: To some, the film takes a while to get going, as the first half is basically setting up the conflict with Elsa. Not that this is a bad thing, as we get to know the characters some.
  • Spiritual Successor: As this pic◊ shows, to the 90s anime version of Sailor Moon R.
  • Squick: Kristoff habitually eats a carrot after Sven has already taken a bite out of it, a big slobbery bite, already contaminated with reindeer saliva.
  • Stoic Woobie: Elsa, whose emotionless, reserved, and introverted behavior is contrasted with her genuine desire to be a better person.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
    • Go listen to "Let It Go", then go listen to "Defying Gravity". Heck, the song was actually written with Idina Menzel in mind.
    • As pointed out by Deadpool in Deadpool 2, "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?" sounds suspiciously similar to "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" from Yentl.
    • "Return to Arendelle" has a motif that sounds like Danny Elfman's Batman (1989) theme.

    T-Z 
  • Tainted by the Preview:
  • Tear Dryer: Elsa accidentally puts Anna into a state where she will turn into ice forever unless she finds an "act of true love." Everyone assumes this will be a classic True Love's Kiss, but Anna gives up her chance to get one from Kristoff when she throws herself in front of a sword to protect Elsa, freezing completely in the process, and it seems like she's a goner... until she turns back to normal because that was done out of love.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Hans's villain reveal was a very interesting concept that unfortunately only happened toward the end of the film. His potentially interesting motivations and backstory are not explored, leaving him feeling more like a last-minute villain than a legitimate Evil Counterpart to Anna.
    • Despite being a major driving point of their isolated childhood and the reason why the main plot of Frozen started in the first place, Anna has never regained her memories of the accident, nor received any explanation or reason as to why Elsa is isolating herself from her sister. In the spin-off Anna & Elsa books, an attempt to restore her memories fails, so Elsa tells her about memories she's lost, but it's never addressed in canon proper.
    • Even though Elsa has managed to figure out how to mostly control her powers, it doesn't mean that her depression and anxiety will go away overnight. However subsequent materials never explore this beyond a few references.
  • Tough Act to Follow: A lot of movies across the world (e.g. Maleficent) were waylaid by Frozen's success. It might partly count as "Tough Merchandise To Follow", given how Disney's next entry in the Animated Canon, Big Hero 6, which received great reviews and currently holds an equal rating with Frozen on Rotten Tomatoes (while exceeding Frozen's rating of 7.7/10 on IMDb with a score of 8.1/10), was sometimes seen as being neglected by Disney themselves post-release in terms of promotion and merchandise while they're still keeping a commercial focus on Frozen (though Big Hero 6 would eventually get its own animated series that helped restart its merchandise line).
  • Trailer Joke Decay: "It's like a little baby unicorn..." when Olaf gets his nose for the first time but only a little is sticking out. Almost every trailer shows it.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The trolls are ostensibly good guys, but they erase Anna's memories and she never gets them back. Later, they disregard her agency repeatedly, shrugging off the fact that she's engaged to someone who isn't Kristoff and even mocking her for it ("Her quote 'engagement' is a flex arrangement") right in front of her.
  • Unnecessary Makeover: While important to the story in an Expository Hairstyle Change sort of way, there is a minority of the fanbase who prefers Elsa's Prim and Proper Bun and Coronation Gown to her iconic appearance, so it's seen as "not as appealing" more than "unnecessary".
  • Vocal Minority: Backlash to the movie's hype has reached about as far and wide as the movie itself, even on this very site, but it's far more likely to find someone who is either a fan of it or is neutral towards it.
    • Frozen has gathered many detractors on Tumblr such as groups like "Melting Frozen" and "Anti-Freeze Team", but the vast majority of those who don't like the movie or are neutral to it have no such attitude and will be perfectly respectful.
    • This applies for the other extreme just the same - early 2014, posts went around saying how it was apparently the first Disney movie to have strong female characters, to play with/avoid the concepts of Love at First Sight and Fourth-Date Marriage or to focus on non-romantic love. Everyone, especially the rest of the fandom, mocked this.
  • Win Back the Crowd: In a sense. Though Disney had already been steadily doing this right around the time of Bolt and The Princess and the Frog, there was still a lingering feeling amongst many that it was still caught under the shadow of Pixar. After more or less finishing the job with Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph; it's here that what little doubts remained were blown away, and just about every critic out there is on the bandwagon that Disney is indeed back, and they're finally catching up with today's kids.
  • The Woobie:
    • Anna has been isolated under the castle and being shut out by Elsa for 13 years without any explanation as to why and upon losing her parents, is left to mourn them alone. It's implied that she receives little attention growing up, and though played as a quick joke, the idea of a child being so lonely she starts talking to the castle portraits is pretty sad. Is it any wonder the happiest day of her life is simply being able to socialize with others and why she fell for Hans so quickly? Despite this, she continues to love her sister and never gives up hope on reconnecting with her. When Anna gets struck in the heart to a painful death by her sister and betrayed by the man she thought was her true love, she retains her caring and optimistic attitude to the point that when facing the choice between getting a kiss to save herself or saving Elsa from being killed by Hans, she chooses saving her sister. In the end, in spite of all the odds against her, her selfless Act of True Love has not only saved everyone including herself but also allows her to finally reconnect with her sister after being separated for so long.
    • Elsa. From the age of eight, she lives in fear that her powers will spiral out of control and because of this, she is isolated her from the outside world in fear that her powers may hurt others or that others might hurt her. When she gets older and her powers get exposed, she accidentally causes an Endless Winter to hit the kingdom, and she runs away in order to protect everybody. She does get better at the end though. After Anna performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save her and the The Power of Love saves Anna, Elsa finally learns to love herself and control her powers and reconnects with her sister in the process.
  • Woolseyism: This being a Disney movie, you can expect to find lots of great adaptations of the script to most languages, often coupled with a Superlative Dubbing for good measure.
    • European Spanish:
      • The first time she meets Hans, Anna lets slip a "You're gorgeous. Wait, what?". The Spaniard scripts goes a tad further and translates it as "¡Estás cañón!",note  which is Spanish kid-friendly slang for "You're smoking hot!"... Yeah, you can see where this is going.
      • Olaf's "Oh, look. I've been impaled." line, which was sightly changed as "Eh, mirad. Soy un pincho moruno." (Hey, look. I'm a brochette.) However, this was made so it rhymed with Olaf's previous line, which coupled with the delivery of Olaf's Spaniard voice actor Miguel Antelo, made the line absolutely hilarious.
      • Marshmallows aren't very well known in Spain, so they changed the giant snowman's name to the better-known word "Merengue" ("meringue"), which is perfectly fitting.
    • "Fixer-Upper" is an English turn of phrase - a polite way of implying that something or somebody needs a lot of fixing, not just a little bit, while insisting it can still be amazing with some effort. Some languages use their own slang instead.
      • The Hebrew dub of "Fixer-Upper" uses Hebrew slang with no direct English translation — the noun "Kombina", adjective "Kombinator". The noun can mean a quick scheme to cheat the system, a quick but unreliable solution to a problem, or slang for making something good but ironic — the adjective can mean somebody who makes kombinas (who would be a bit of a crook) but also a person who can make his way out from every hard situation against a system, or a person who knows how to manage things well and can help others to get out of problems. With the addition of the verb "kombine" — which would be used in the context of "To kombina" — there is a lot of Hebrew wordplay throughout the whole song.
        Translation: "So he's kind of a kombinator and there's no pride in it, Kombine this kombinator with a little bit of love"
        Translation: "So she makes kombinas herself, but in matchmaking"
      • In the Turkish translation the Trolls call Kristoff a "Kelipir Oglan". "Kelepir" means "Bargain" or "Second-Hand", and the slang "Kelepir Oglan" means "Snip guy" - this is Turkish slang for a man who doesn't finish what he starts, can be a bit unreliable, but more literally is a 'bargain-buy guy'. They also call Anna "Kelepir Olan" (gender neutral) and say that "There's some "Kelepir Oglan" in all of us, That's the deal"
        Turkish: "O da suphesiz Kelepir Oglan"
        Translation: "Without a doubt he's one of those snip guys."
        Turkish: "Hic da suphesiz Kelepir Olan"
        Translation: "Without a doubt she's one of those snips."

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