- Warning: Spoilers ahead for Disney’s “Frozen 2.”
- The new sequel to “Frozen” is packed with small details and references you might not have noticed.
- From Disney Easter eggs of other characters and movies like “The Little Mermaid” to neat costume parallels, here are all the things you might have missed.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Disney’s new animated sequel, “Frozen 2,” has several key moments you might not see upon your first viewing of the movie. We watched the film twice to try to catch all the best Disney references (like nods to “Big Hero Six,” “The Little Mermaid,” and more) plus cool examples of foreshadowing.
Keep reading to see 22 details you might have missed in “Frozen 2.”
In the opening flashback, Anna and Elsa are playing with small snow figurines, including a little Dumbo.
The two young princesses have an array of little snow people and creatures, and there were some Disney characters among them.
Elsa is holding a small elephant that looks like Dumbo the elephant, but the two others on the floor might have been harder to spot.
One of the other figures is Baymax, the lovable robot from Disney's 2014 animated movie "Big Hero Six."
There's also a little "Bolt" dog among the snow figures.
"Bolt" was a 2008 Walt Disney Animation Studios movie that marked a new phase for the studio's direction in animated feature films that led to "Frozen" in 2013.
Both "Bolt" and "Big Hero Six" were codirected by Chris Williams, the same man who voiced Oaken in the "Frozen" movies.
Williams is used to wearing many different hats at Disney Animation: He's an animator, story artist/screenwriter, director, and actor.
When Anna and Elsa hear the story of the enchanted forest for the first time, there's a small horse figurine sitting on Elsa's bedside table.
Later in the movie, it's revealed that the water spirit is a mythical horse called the Nokk, which Elsa tames and rides to Ahtohallan. The horse's presence in her childhood flashback was a neat little bit of foreshadowing.
Our first hint that Queen Iduna was the one who saved King Agnarr came when little Anna reacted to her father's story.
"Whoever saved you, I love them!" young Anna cries out before falling into her mother's lap.
Upon a rewatch, this seems like a pretty direct foreshadowing of the reveal that Iduna played a key role in saving Agnarr's life.
Starting in those flashbacks, we see a lot of important patterns.
The most important of these is, of course, the four-sided diamond pattern on Iduna's scarf, which is later revealed to show the four spirit symbols and the "fifth spirit" sign.
We saw that diamond pattern — which was also on Agnarr's coat trim — in the first "Frozen" movie.
The diamond pattern, which later becomes the foundation of Elsa's new "fifth spirit" symbol, appeared frequently throughout the first movie, usually in connection with Elsa.
The new symbol was shown in the very first poster for "Frozen 2."
When the poster and teaser trailer debuted, fans speculated about the meaning of the small symbols in the middle of each diamond.
But it turns out the real clue was the entire four-sided "fifth spirit" design.
Anna and Elsa's first dresses and necklaces seen in "Frozen 2" were hints about how they'd separate by the end of the movie.
Throughout "Frozen 2," Anna is the only one of the two sisters who has distinct Arendelle iconography on her clothes. The small detailing on her dress and the bronze necklace she's wearing at the beginning of the movie matches the Arendelle flag.
In contrast, Elsa is wearing a necklace with her signature half-snowflake design. Her dress has little pieces of the "fifth spirit" design on it, too.
You can see the Arendelle sigil clearly on Lieutenant Mattias' shield here.
The little floral design is everywhere in Arendelle and used in the detailing of Anna's clothing, but it's never seen on Elsa in "Frozen 2."
Anna was always more connected to Arendelle, both emotionally and literally (through her costuming), so it makes sense she winds up being the queen.
And her costuming in "Frozen 2" is inextricably linked to Elsa's journey too.
Anna's traveling cloak also tells part of the story about her relationship to Elsa and Kristoff.
When they set out on their journey to the enchanted forest, Anna wears a magenta cape over her black-and-gold outfit.
The color of the cape Anna wears for the first two acts in "Frozen 2" is similar to Elsa's cape from the first movie.
Anna's matching cape in "Frozen 2" shows a link between her and her sister - and how much Anna is trying to hold on to a way of life that is increasingly untenable.
It's only when Elsa literally pushes Anna away and onto a different path that the younger princess stops wearing the magenta cape.
After Elsa decides to go find Ahtohallan alone, Anna and Olaf find themselves in a dark cave. Anna's cape is lost when they fall into the dark river, revealing her black-and-gold outfit underneath.
When Anna was wearing her traveling cloak, she was more visually connected to Elsa.
Anna was more focused on Elsa than Kristoff for the first part of the movie.
The side story of "Frozen 2" is all about how Anna and Kristoff are having trouble communicating and getting on the same page, largely because of Anna's codependence with her sister.
But once the cape is gone, we can see clearly how Anna's outfit actually matches the one Kristoff had been wearing the whole time.
Their synchronicity was hiding beneath the surface the whole time. There were just some communication problems that needed to be sorted out.
Now onto some fun Easter eggs. When Kristoff is singing in "Some Things Never Change," you can briefly see little statues made in the likeness of two Disney animators.
As Insider learned during a press event for the movie, two "Frozen 2" creators - Mike Giaimo, the production designer, and David Womersley, the art director of environments - were turned into wooden statuettes for the background of this scene.
Giaimo and Womersley had no idea they were in the film until just a couple of months before it premiered.
You can spot the two statues in the background a little over halfway through the song at the beginning of the movie, when Kristoff and Sven meet up with Anna on the streets of Arendelle.
It looks like Elsa's silhouette is on Arendelle's money.
This little detail also crops up during the "Some Things Never Change" song when Kristoff pays for his carrot-patterned handkerchief.
The silhouette on the coins looks exactly like Elsa's profile from the days she was coronated as Queen of Arendelle.
There's a hidden Mickey in the scene when Olaf sings "When I Am Older."
"There's one Mickey Mouse hidden in there," the head of animation of "Frozen 2," Becky Bresee, told Insider. "You have to find it though."
We believe we spotted it in the above moment when Olaf falls into a large dirt hole.
You might have noticed that a scene shown in the trailer for "Frozen 2" never appeared in the movie.
The first teaser for "Frozen 2," released in February, ended with a dramatic moment showing Anna grabbing a sword from Kristoff and swinging it toward the camera.
That scene had already been cut from the movie by the time the teaser premiered, but the fan reaction persuaded the directors to add it back in somehow.
Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, the film's codirectors, told Insider that people's love for that moment made them rework it into the movie again.
The scene was in the movie "at one point, and then it was out," Buck said. "We were like, 'Uh oh, people love that scene.' So we made it work, but it's different."
The final version shows Anna grabbing an ice sword from a statue instead of a real sword from Kristoff.
You can read more about this moment and people's reactions to it here.
Kristoff's song "Lost in the Woods" was invoking lots of '80s rock ballads and gave a nod to "Bohemian Rhapsody."
At one point during "Lost in the Woods," we see Kristoff surrounded by singing reindeer in the same arrangement as in the music video from Queen's seminal hit "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Jonathan Groff was singing the voices of 18 reindeer for "Lost in the Woods."
As revealed in a Vanity Fair feature by Joanna Robinson, the actor brought to life close to 20 reindeer for his big ballad.
When Elsa sees all the snow memories in Ahtohallan, there's a reference to "The Little Mermaid."
Elsa sees young Iduna ask young Agnarr what he's reading, and he replies, "Some new Danish author." On the cover of his book, you can just make out the silhouette of Ariel from "The Little Mermaid."
Hans Christian Andersen was the Danish author of both "The Little Mermaid" and "The Snow Queen."
This could be a hint about what year "Frozen" takes place.
"The Little Mermaid" was published in 1837 and "The Snow Queen" in 1844.
If young Agnarr was reading the "new" book by Andersen in 1837, that means the time frame for the "Frozen" movies could be around the late 1860s or 1870s.
When Olaf "dies," his snow is gathered by Gale and dotted with purple flowers.
This is likely a reference to the scene at the end of "Frozen" when Olaf is finally experiencing warm weather in Arendelle and smells two buckets of purple flowers.
When Anna is revealed as the queen of Arendelle, her hairstyle perfectly mirrors Elsa's original coronation style.
Anna has a whole new gown (again, dotted with the Arendelle insignia), but her hair is distinctly mirroring the updo Elsa had for her coronation. And both queens' looks also happen to match their mother's style we saw in both movies.
In the post-credits scene we see that the snow goblin has Elsa's crown — the one threw away while singing "Let it Go" in the first movie.
During the post-credits scene, we get a quick look at Elsa's snow goblin as he listens to Olaf retell the events of "Frozen 2." Perched atop the goblin's head is the little crown Elsa tossed away at the end of "Let It Go" during the first movie.
- Read more:
- The directors explain why Elsa doesn't have a love story, gay or otherwise, in 'Frozen 2'
- What the cast of 'Frozen 2' looks like in real life
- How the fan response to the first 'Frozen 2' teaser wound up saving Anna's sword-swinging scene
- What the 'Frozen 2' creators think about making a trilogy