15 Secrets From Frozen That We Still Can't Let Go Of

Frozen became one of those rare movies that seemed to take over everything, from the songs people could not stop singing to the characters showing up on shirts, toys, and Halloween costumes everywhere. Even if you never watched it closely, chances are you still know the music, the snow, and the whole Elsa-and-Anna phenomenon.

What made it stick was not just the hype, but how polished it all felt, from the animation to the soundtrack to the way the story landed with kids and adults alike. Years later, people are still curious about how the movie came together and what changed behind the scenes.

Some of those details are surprisingly different from the version everyone remembers, and a few of them make the movie even more interesting. Here are the Frozen secrets that still stand out.

It wasn't always meant to be "Frozen"

1. Before Frozen, there was an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's 1845 fairy tale The Snow Queen that was in development over at Disney for almost over a decade.

The first modern attempt was in 2002, then again in 2003. More attempts followed over the years, however, Frozen didn't really start coming together until Christopher Buck, the director of Tarzan, came aboard the project in 2008.

The film wasn't commissioned until after the box office success of Tangled, however, and in 2012, Jennifer Lee who initially signed up as a screenwriter was named co-director making her the first woman to direct a Disney animated film.

2. The original title of the film was The Snow Queen after the original fairy tale, however, the filmmakers decided to change it to Frozen. "To us, it represents the movie. Frozen plays on the level of ice and snow but also the frozen relationship, the frozen heart that has to be thawed," producer Peter Del Vecho explained to Bleeding Cool

Disney

They were just meant to play the part

3. Menzel and Bell met and auditioned with the producers of Tangled for the role of Rapunzel but the role ultimately went to Mandy Moore.

Bell, whose dream it was to voice a Disney character ever since she was a little girl was the very first actress to audition for Anna. Of that, Lee said, "We did audition a lot of people for that but she was the first and the best. We just fell in love with her."

4. Menzel's audition, on the other hand, was a table-read with Bell before they had both been officially cast. "They read the whole script and at the end—we didn't have any songs written yet—and what they did was sing a duet and they sang 'Wind Beneath My Wings,' but they sang it like sisters and what you mean to me," Lee said. "And there wasn't a dry eye in the house after they sang...that is when they knew, that was the whole potential and understanding the power of music and of what this emotional story can be."

Michael Buckner/Variety/Shutterstock

She wasn't supposed to be a hero

5. In the early versions of the film, Elsa wasn't supposed to have her redeeming moment. In fact, she was actually the villain of the story according to former Disney animation designer Claire Keane who released the early concept art designs inspired by Bette Midler and her showgirl stage presence.

"Originally, she was much more villainous," Buck told Nerdist. "It's very easy to go in that direction for that type of character, but as the time went and we evolved the story, she became much more three-dimensional. Before I thought she was one-dimensional but a very fully fleshed-out character."

When they watched earlier cuts and realized it wasn't working though, they decided to go in another direction. "Someone came up with the brilliant idea...' what if the protagonist, Anna, and Elsa were related?'" art director Michael Giaimo revealed. "Because they weren't always siblings, they weren't always related, and that was the beginning of finding these characters."

Disney

Olaf wasn't supposed to be all so innocent and Hans wasn't even supposed to be there

6. Another character the Frozen team had a hard time nailing down was Olaf who was originally supposed to be the the-villainous Elsa's first guard. "She created these snowman guards and Marshmallow was kind of a holdover from that because he was this scary snowman guard. Olaf was the very first guard she created," Buck explained

It was only after they changed Elsa's character completely and sat down with Gad that they found the Olaf we knew now. "Josh adlibbed the line 'it's like a baby unicorn' and there was something about that innocence," Del Vecho told Kidz World. 

7. Has,Anna's suitor-turned-villain wasn't also supposed to be in the film. "Hans was never originally in the story in older versions...Kristoff always was in the story or a version of the Kristoff character and Anna," Glaimo explained. "And then Hans was brought in at one point but he wasn't always a villain who turned initially, and then someone came up with the idea of him turning. He was always potentially a villain, but we gave it away much sooner."

Disney

And if you think secrecy always backfires, this AITA story about telling your cousin your sister’s secret wedding plans will hit different.

Adele + Avril Lavigne + nature = Frozen's most iconic song

8. Anna's "Wait, what?" catchphrase was ad-libbed by Bell.

9. The scene that took the longest to create was the one where Elsa was walking out onto the balcony of her new palace. It took over 132 hours to render.

10. After the first few songs they created didn't make it in, songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson Lopez were feeling pretty beat down so they went for a walk in Brooklyn's Prospect Park while listening to Adele and Avril Lavigne songs and being surrounded by nature.

" We were in this kind of emo place of imagining what it would be like to be this perfect person who messed up once, and was chased away from everything she has known and all the people she has been sacrificing for," Anderson-Lopez said.

Within the day, they were able to write the film's most iconic song which went on to sell over 10 million copies and win the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Disney

Shaping Elsa's character

11. After listening to "Let It Go" for the very first time, Lee said she knew they had to rework Elsa's character.

"Half of us were crying. And then I just went, 'I have to rewrite the whole movie,'" she said on the Scriptnotes podcast. "I really, it was—I was just like I'm going to go lie down for a couple minutes. But it was the best thing. We knew we had the movie."

12. On the same podcast, Lee also admitted there was a lot of push and pull when it came to Elsa's look and how sexy to make her after her awakening.

"Everyone was seduced by her. And so there was this tug of war I think, a bit, of letting people have a little—people who wanted to have that a little and not be afraid of it, but not make it a sexual statement," the co-director explained. "It's more a moment of, for me, it was like you strut and you say nobody is looking, this is what I'm going to — I'm not going to be afraid of my sexuality. I'm not going to be afraid of who I am. I'm not going to be afraid of anything about myself."

Disney

Eagle-eyes

13 One of the many easter eggs spotted by eagle-eyed fans in the film is Tangled's Rapunzel (post haircut) and Eugene during the morning of Elsa's coronation. It also helped fans form a pretty compelling argument that Frozen, Tangled, and Little Mermaid were all connected.

What if Anna and Elsa's parents died when they were on their way to the Tangled pair's wedding? And what if the sunken ship on Little Mermaid was the ship they were sailing on?

14 However, that theory only works if you believe that the kind and queen of Arendelle did die in that shipwreck, something Buck speculated about on Reddit. He said that in his mind, the king and queen as well as their newborn baby boy didn't actually die but washed up on the shore of a jungle where they built a tree house before being eaten by a leopard.

That baby boy? Tarzan and nobody else.

"That's my fun little world," he later told MTV. While that theory isn't official, Buck said, "Whatever people want to believe, go for it. If you want to tie them all together, then do it."

Walt Disney Company

A drastically different ending

Given that Elsa was initially the villain, the ending of the film was drastically different as well. In fact, the film would have revolved around a prophecy about "a ruler with a frozen heart will bring destruction to the kingdom of Arendelle."

Viewers would then learn that Elsa became the Snow Queen after she was left at the altar and decided to freeze her own heart. By the end, Anna would convince Elsa to use her powers to protect Arendelle from an avalanche caused by Hans with the ultimate reveal being the prophecy was actually about the two-faced prince.

Elsa's heart would then unfreeze making her capable of loving again.

"The problem was that we felt like we had seen it before," Del Vecho told EW of the original ending. "It wasn't satisfying. We had no emotional connection to Elsa—we didn't care about her because she had spent the whole movie being the villain. We weren't drawn in. The characters weren't relatable."

YouTube

Honestly, if they went the way they initially planned to with Frozen, we don't really think it would be as big of a hit as it was plus, we don't really think it would resonate that much with the young audiences who loved the movie so much. Thankfully, they decided to go on a much better route and one that made the movie a lot more memorable.

What were your favorite facts about Frozen?

That alternate version would have changed everything.

Want more Disney-level drama, read about the cousin feud over keeping a secret dance routine off-limits.