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By now, many people have heard various theories that entwine several Disney classics with the world-domineering story of Frozen (2013). But if you have not, or if you have only heard some part of them, here is the lowdown on how Elsa and Anna may be mixed with various stories of the past.

In the first few minutes of Frozen, Elsa and Anna’s parents set off on a voyage and never return. Where they are going is not mentioned, nor is their fate. Death is implied, but the story doesn’t dwell on the parents’ disappearance. Instead it moves forward quickly to focus on their two surviving children.

The first link comes in the form of Tangled (2010), as we see the trimmed-hair version of Rapunzel and her beau Flynn in the crowd at Elsa’s coronation ceremony. That ceremony takes place several years after the parents had disappeared at sea, and the widespread assumption is that Elsa and Anna’s folks were sailing off to attend Rapunzel’s coronation (the final scene of Tangled) when they were lost en route. This would explain why Rapunzel and Flynn come to Elsa’s coronation. The animation styles of Tangled and Frozen are also distinctly similar, as if they come from the same family/universe.

Disney fanatics use architecture and clothing clues to estimate that Tangled would align with the styles of Germany or Poland’s coastal regions during the 16th-18th centuries. Frozen is established as Norway, making the two lands just across the sea from one another. All this Frozen / Tangled business could just be obsessive Disney fans trying to find meaning in something that Disney put into the film as one of its famous (and extremely common) easter eggs, but it’s still valid logic.

Here’s where it stretches a bit…

The Little Mermaid (1989) was based on Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, and he’s a Danish fellow. Denmark is just south of Norway, so speculation has it that the shipwreck where Ariel spends her time playing is, in fact, the sunken ship of Anna and Elsa’s parents.

The next theory spawns from something that came out of Frozen directors/writers Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck’s own mouths (or, well, fingers).

In a Q&A on Reddit, someone inquired for a definitive answer on where the parents were heading when they were lost at sea. Lee replied, “a wedding,” confirming many people’s suspicions about the Tangled connection. But Chris Buck took it one step further and said they didn’t die on the boat - they “got washed up on a shore in a jungle island. The queen gave birth to a baby boy. They build a treehouse. They get eaten by a leopard.’”

Anyone who knows anything about Disney lore knows what that means: Chris Buck is inferring that Anna and Elsa’s parents are Tarzan’s parents.

Tarzan (1999) took place in the African jungles, so if that’s the story that Lee and Buck want to go with, it means The Little Mermaid isn’t set off the coast of Denmark as many assume (the navigational path just doesn’t make sense). It also means the Frozen ship went hella off course, as it had to blow really far away from Europe to end up anywhere around Africa. As DisneyTheory says:

“This would explain how the ship looked so time-worn in The Little Mermaid. It wasn’t because so much time had passed, it was because the ship had been on a much longer voyage than the theory suggested.”

It’s also possible the Tarzan theory was completely made up by Chris Buck to connect the bunch of films because, as DisneyTheory points out, he directed all three. It never hurts to call modern audiences back to the Disney Renaissance films.

What do you think? Are they really connected, or is this just a Disney employee capitalizing on rumors for marketing purposes? Here’s a link for an even deeper look at the theory of the connections.