Aladdin (1992 Disney film)/Headscratchers

Disney's Aladdin

• If the people in Aladdin believe in Allah then why did Jafar go to the Greek Underworld when he died?
  • Just because they believe it doesn't make it true.
  • Its a huge Continuity Snarl to facilitate the crossover. The Aladdin film establishes the time period as being medieval nwith the presence of Islam but the series backdates to the pre-roman period to be contemporary with Hercules. I can't remember if reference was made to religion in the Aladdin series, but either way the series characters are rendered non-Muslim.
    • In the song, "Prince Ali", Genie mentions 'galloping hordes', easily Huns, making it circa 300-400 AD, ripe time for Greek/Roman Mythology, pre-Islam, no Continuity Snarl.
  • It could be that in the underworld, time doesn't actually exist. Therefore, someone who dies years after Hercules' time would still be there to be glimpsed, like Jafar.
    • Several characters in the first Aladdin movie mention Allah.
    • Saying "Allah" doesn't make them Muslims. It's the Arabic word for God, and in fact is used by Arabic speakers of other religions, particularly Christianity and Judaism.
    • Not that big a deal. The real Arabian Nights similarly anachronistically puts the word "Allah" in the mouths of characters from ancient folktales that pre-date Islam, or stories from other countries that weren't Muslim. This is common practice for authentic written collections of folklore, just like the anachronistic use of Catholicism (and everything else) in the original King Arthur legends. The * original* original Aladdin was supposed to be a * Chinese* boy, meaning that the Arabian Nights' use of terms like "Allah" and "djinn" throughout is thoroughly out-of-place.
    • Not necessarily; there has long been a large Muslim population in China and the character does have an Arabic name. Also, some Muslims speculate that "Allah" is not really an Arabic word. They say instead that it is the special name by which God likes to be called and they claim it was used by all the prophets, from Adam to Muhammad.
    • And to make things more confusing, one of the Delhi Sultans, by the name of 'Alah ad-Din' actually financed his army and rise to the throne using the treasure he gained from a Deccani Sultan's underground treasure chamber, making this bit at least Truth in Television. He also married the Deccani Sultan's daughter, thus gaining Treasure and a Princess by journeying to the 'Cave of Wonders'
  • As for the "real" universe of Disney's Aladdin, isn't it pretty clear by now that Agrabah takes place in a fantasy universe only thematically related to the real world and the real Islamic empire? All of this is to some degree moot -- the fact that the Genie has been trapped for "ten thousand years" at the beginning of the first movie and yet we get flashbacks to his earlier masters still existing in a recognizably "Arabian" civilization means this universe * can't* take place in historical time.
    • This Troper's knowledge of Islam and Greek religions is shaky at best, but he would put money on the idea that Jafar would not go to Heaven. Just for the sake of speculation, we might assume that Islam's Hell and Greek's Tartarus are, if not the same place, at least concurrent in some way. Thus, when Jafar gets what's coming to him, he could gain the attention of Hades, more easily than perhaps normally given Jafar's tendency to stand out in a crowd.
  • It could just be like the South Park where it turns out, to many people of various faith's chagrin that "the correct religion was Mormonism". "It turns out the Greeks were right", perhaps?
  • You guys, he was an evil sorceror. This more than just disqualifies him as an observant Muslim -- occultists tend to develop their own weird theologies if they're religious at all. Even if everyone else in the movies is Muslim, it's possible that he did believe in the Greek underworld, or that he just got shunted into it due to the nature of his occult dealings.
  • I happen to be a Muslim and nothing in Aladdin implied the characters were Muslim at all, it is much more likely it was of the theories above, they simply used the Arabic term for God.
  • Who what now? When does Jafar go to the Greek underworld?
    • An episode of the Hercules animated series, "Hercules and the Arabian Night", has Jafar showing up in Hades. The two villains wind up teaming up in an attempt to defeat Hercules and Aladdin by getting them to fight each other.
  • Maybe there are multiple underworlds and Jafar applied for a transfer.
    • Could be--the Norse pantheon was shown to exist in the |Hercules animated series.
  • This troper hasn't seen said crossover, so edit this off if need be, but last time I checked Jafar was a genie and thus immortal, thus can't die.
    • Jafar is killed at the end of Return of Jafar when his lamp is destroyed by Iago. Prior to that, he was indeed immortal.
• Since Aladdin is supposedly so clever, why didn't he wish to, say, have all the powers of a genie without any duties that he might consider negative? That doesn't violate any of the rules given.
  • There's a difference between being clever and being a Rules Lawyer-ing Munchkin. One is endearing to the audience, and inspires them to root for him, the other is an annoying git that you want to get a slap in the face.
  • He could also just have wished to become an omnipotent god. Something Jafar should have thought of at the climax of the movie.
• Why did Razoul go along with Jafar's attempt to get rid of Prince Ali? Even if he did somehow recognize Al he still would have basically went behind the Sultan and Jasmine's back in order to kill off a important guest who is also the guy currently in line to be Jasmine's husband. I'm amazed nobody got on Razoul's case about it.
  • I think Jafar, being the Grand Vizier, was tasked with handling justice in the kingdom. The guards were answering directly to Jafar. In the Marketplace scene where the guards arrest Aladdin, Jasmine demands they let her go but apparently Jafar's orders override even the commands of royalty. Jafar would just have to make something up and the guards would never even consider the Sultan's thoughts on the matter.
    • As the Grand Vizier, the only person who could override his orders was the Sultan himself. The guards would obey his orders without question as the will of the Sultan.
      • Yep. Razoul directly states this in the movie.
  • It's also worth noting that Razoul doesn't like Aladdin, even in the TV series, Return of Jafar and King of Thieves this trait seems to emerge, he jumps at every opportunity to get Aladdin out of the palace, into the dungeon, or better yet onto a guillotine. He tolerates Aladdin, and works with him because he knows Aladdin is a good guy, but he's never liked and likely never will like him.
    • Actually, at the end of King of Thieves, when Razoul catches the bouquet, it's implied that he's warming up to him
• Wouldn't it be kind of uncomfortable to be soaring around on a romantic magic carpet ride with a metal lamp bouncing around in your hat?
  • Yes. The guy's homeless, I'm sure some slight discomfort wouldn't bother him much.
    • It probably isn't nearly as uncomfortable as riding on a magic carpet while sporting a raging woody.
  • And the turban is really spacious.
  • Turbans, which use about ten feet of cloth, properly wrapped are very firm.
  • Also, MAGIC!
• How come it took so long for Jasmine, Razoul, and Jafar to find out Ali's true identity? It's not like Aladdin bothered to disguise his face.
  • Neither do the Sailor Senshi or Superman.
    • Jasmine knew who he was immediately, but he claimed that his "street rat" persona was just something he did to amuse himself (seeing how the other half live and all that). Jafar also knew who he was, but realised he must have the genie and was unwilling to openly act against him. He eventually gets hold of the lamp through scheming. If Razoul ever got close enough to positively identify him, he still would have been unable to do anything without insulting an important guest (and Al would probably have humiliated him).
      • • Razoul probably chases down 2 or 3 "street rats" on a slow day, even if he did get a good look at Al on the street it is not implausible that he simply does not remember exactly what street rat #558 looks like when he is not dressed in peasant clothes.
          • Did Razoul ever even meet Aladdin? When Jasmine ran away, she didn't take her tiger with her.
            • Razoul is the guard. Rajah is the tiger.
      • No, Jafar saw "Prince Ali" as a rival: after he failed to get the lamp, he changed gears and schemed to marry Jasmine so that he'd become Sultan by succession. He didn't realize that the "Prince" was Aladdin until he spotted the lamp.
  • I sorta operate under the "Aladdin was pretty dirty (although it didn't show) and the prince transformation includes a bath" theory. Besides, Jafar only looked at him at night, and why would this guy want to pay attention to some nobody who only exists to be a pawn for him?
  • Nobody knew that "Prince Ali" had the lamp, and both Jafar and Jasmine thought that Aladdin was dead at the point, so neither of them would have been inclined to recognize him beyond possibly "he looks vaguely like that street rat guy." Aladdin for his part was deliberately trying to act like a completely different person, which would have made recognition harder. Jasmine starts off by thinking that "Ali" is a pompous fool, but then when she sees him without his hat she begins getting suspicious... and when he begins acting like Aladdin and asks "do you trust me?" she smiles like she just had her suspicions confirmed. Jafar, on the other hand, doesn't suspect that Aladdin survived the trip to the Cave of Wonders until he finds out about the lamp... and then he immediately puts two and two together.
• Why didn't Jafar wish he was the most powerful Sorcerer first, then taken over the Kingdom using his vast power? That way he would have 2 wishes to spare.
  • Because his first wish followed what he originally believed in. He thought that status alone grants a person power over others, which is why he wanted to be Sultan so badly. However, once he realized that his status meant nothing to Jasmine, he decided to gain power the old-fashioned way: through fear and brute force.
  • Jafar's lust for power had overruled his cunning.
• When Aladdin met Jafar when he was disguised as a old man in the dungeon and Jafar said he'd show him the way out why didn't Aladdin ask "Um if you always knew the way out old man, why the hell are you still in this dungeon??"
  • Because he needs "a pair of strong legs and a strong back" to go after his treasure.
  • But then why wasn't he suspicous when said old man whiped out a handful of RUBIES?
    • Because it's easy to draw the conclusion that the "strong legs and strong back" would be needed in order to carry the treasure. Far as Aladdin knew at the point, the old man had found the treasure, found he couldn't carry it, and just grabbed a few rubies to show to someone who could help him carry the treasure.
  • So why did he come back to the dungeon instead of hiring some random guy off the street?
    • Maybe Jafar doesn't want to spend cash when he can work an elaborate prison con. Loyal henchmen are sometimes more valuable than mercernaries and freedom=loyalty. Also, Jafar had seen in his crystal ball that Aladdin was the one he needed.
  • Aladdin probably just thought "Screw it, whatever this guy wants is probably better than being killed/imprisoned for life/whatever."
    • Aladdin living in the streets his entire life knows about conning e.g. "sadly yes, she is my sister." Being the honest thief he wouldn't turn down the opportunity for money, and is probably street smart to follow a lead. Having a new royal love interest cinches the deal.
• How come it took until the sequel for Jafar to get his own full Villain Song? "Prince Ali Reprise" doesn't count.
  • Two songs were recorded Humiliate The Boy and Why Me both were rejected for being allegedly to evil. You can see them both on the DVD
  • TOO EVIL? That's pretty idiotic if true.
  • Sad but true. I don't see any reason why the song known as "Prince Ali Reprise" can't count though. It doesn't seem like a reprise, does it? Except for the repetitions of "Prince Ali" and the rhythm.
  • Have you guys even heard Humiliate The Boy? It would really have cut down on the climax of the movie if they put the song in the final cut of the movie. Not to mention the whole entire song doesn't really make sense considering how Genie can only grant 3 wishes, and yet Jafar seemed to be able to get a crap load of wishes in order to screw with Aladdin in the song.
    • Humiliate The Boy was cut early in production, before a limit to the wishes was added. Hell, considering how early it was cut, it was probably cut before Aladdin was aged from his original TWELVE to about 18 like he is in the final cut. (Of course, his aging was late - you can still see his boyish self in the final version of Friends Like Me... and now I'm rambling) --Tustin2121
  • Humiliate The Boy and Why Me? were rejected for being too long. Not for being too cruel or evil.
  • There were other songs made for Jafar. My Time Has Come where Jafar recounts how hideous his life has been and how he is going to make everyone else miserable (It was axed due to being too slow and introspective). And My Finest Hour where Jafar pulls the earth into a ball and bats it around with the Genie (Cut because the directors felt it was too late in the movie for an extended showstopper for the villain).
    • ...Isn't the world already ball-shaped?
      • Yes, but not baseball-sized.
  • A bit off topic, but "Why Me?" was included in MTI's "Disney's Aladdin Junior", a play adaptation of the film.
• How come both the SNES and Genesis Aladdin games have Aladdin getting sucked into Genie's Lamp as a way to cover the "Never had a friend like me" scene?
  • I can think of at least two possibilities. One, they meant to do that in the movie and changed their minds during production. Considering when the games were released relative to the movie, it's not implausible that the movie wasn't complete yet when the games were being made. Two, they did it simply because it would be cool, which it definitely was.
• I may be the minority here but I honestly feel it would've been better if they stuck with the original plan for the ending. Which is that the Peddler from the beginning of the story would have revealed himself to be the Genie in disguise.
  • Because that would contradict the events of Kingdom Hearts 2.
  • Watch the other two movies. Especially "Aladdin and the King of Thieves".
  • They decided to scrap that idea so they could make spin-offs if it was successful. Which it was.
• When Jasmine figured out that Prince Ali was Aladdin, why didn't she wonder why he wasn't dead? Jafar told her that he had executed Aladdin.
  • Possibly she was wondering about the more important things, like why he has a flying carpet and is now a prince?
  • Still, supposedly being dead and not turning out to be is a pretty big deal. Especially when you think she would realize Jafar's treachery after a few seconds.
  • I always wondered about that, too. I'm guessing she assumed a lot: Jafar said he was dead, but he's obviously not dead, so that part's fine. If she actually cared more about it all making sense, she might've wondered how he got out of being beheaded. "Well," she might've thought, "the guards recognized me after I revealed myself, maybe he was able to prove his identity, too. And maybe Jafar just didn't know the guards hadn't killed him." Of course, Jasmine was too busy being butt-crazy in love to do anything but accept Aladdin's BS. Silly broad....
  • I always thought that Jasmine still thought that Jafar wasn't a totally bad man. Maybe she assumed he agreed to cover up the Prince being in disguise by "Doing away with him".
  • Well, Jafar was revealed to be a traitor about two seconds after Aladdin admitted who he was, so that doesn't give Jasmine a lot of time to think it over. Besides, it seems she was always suspicious of Jafar anyway, so the idea of him being up to no good wouldn't really have been news to her. Maybe she was planning to question Jafar about it in the morning.
• Is there an official explanation as to why Genie Jafar is stronger than Genie in The Return Of Jafar? I've seen a lot of supposition (freed genies have less power than enslaved ones, Jafar stacked his Sorcerer wish onto the Genie one). But has Disney said anything on the subject?
  • Remember when Genie returns and says that his powers are now "semi-phenominal, nearly-cosmic"? That's the case here. Jafar, on the other hand, has full phenominal cosmic powers. The "freed genies have less power than enslaved ones" supposition is 100% supported by the dialogue, and explains why Genie had a lot of moments of uselessness on the animated series (since it's difficult to have nail-biting adventures when you have a living Deus Ex Machina as one of your best friends).
    • That's probably the only explanation. I wasn't aware of it since I haven't seen the movie in years. However, I still have issue with that explanation. Jafar (if memory serves) wanted Abis Mal to wish him free, if freed Genies are weaker couldn't they have let Abis Mal make the wish? Why were they dead set on destroying Jafar?
    • A freed genie may be weaker, but is still a Genie. One who'd be much more ruthless and creative than the friendly Genie ever was when it came to attacking. Jafar being bound to the lamp limited what he could do.
  • A genie while more powerful in terms of brute strength also has more limitations. Specifically the inability to kill anybody. Though that particular weakness raises A LOT of questions particularly in the sequel.
  • Jafar made the wish with the intention to become more powerful than Genie, and explicitly wished to become an 'all powerful genie'. This might have made Jafar mightier than Genie and/or made some of the rules not affect him.
• There shouldn't really have been angst about Aladdin's "final wish" at the end, since in actuality the Genie never granted his first wish! Aladdin's wish was "Genie, make me a prince!" Result: Genie tricks people into thinking Aladdin is a prince. Even a Literal Genie would presumably have arranged for Aladdin to be adopted legitimately as the heir to some kingdom (or less benevolently, simply created another prince, in a reversal of the "make me a sandwich" gag.) Al got rooked.
  • Refutatio: Since Aladdin gets officially exposed by Jafar magically (and musically) stripping him of his raiment, one could theorize the Genie did somehow make him a legitimate prince, until Jafar forcibly broke that spell. But that theory seems to conflict with Jafar's climactic third wish, which establishes that genie magic trumps even the world's most powerful sorcerer (especially, one would think, in terms of abstract reality manipulation).
    • Jafar changing Aladdin's clothes doesn't mean Jafar actually deprinceinated him.
    • The only evidence in the movie that genie magic trumps sorcerer magic is Aladdin's word, and he's trying to trick Jafar into impulsively imprisoning himself.
  • Additional Refutatio: Since the second Direct-To-Video sequel reveals that Aladdin's father is Ali Baba, the King of Thieves, that means that Aladdin is technically a prince. Specifically, the prince of thieves.
    • • Actually, his father was Kaseem, not Ali Baba (who, despite misconception, wasn't the leader of the Fourty Thieves), though in the stories Kaseem is the name of Ali Baba's brother (who is killed by the thieves)
      • No, Ali Baba wasn't the "King of thieves", in the story "Ali Baba and the Forty Theves", all of them were actually against him. (Or at least the version I read...which sort of had Ali Baba's maid-daughter kill all but one of them with Olive oil)
        • Yes, that's how it happens in the original story (well, the version I read had the girl be his slave, which he set free and made his daughter-in-law after she killed the thieves and their leader, respectively). In the direct-to-video sequel, though, Ali Baba doesn't appear. Kaseem appears as the king of thieves and Aladdin's father.
    • Additional Refutatio #2: Then that means that Genie's first wish actually made Aladdin into something he already was, meaning, the wish wasn't technically granted (because you can't give something to someone who already has it.) Therefore Genie still owes Aladdin his first wish!
      • Now now, can you find any evidence in the films that establishes Aladdin as the Prince of Thieves before he makes the wish? Genie really did grant the wish, altering history in the process.
        • (^ That's brilliant. :D )
          • Indeed!
      • In the official comic, Genie explains that sorcerer magic and genie magic can do different things. For example, sorcerer magic can actually negate a wish when Genie magic can't; even though it can do everything else. Jafar really wasn't thinking that far ahead when he wished to be a genie, especially with the Lamp limitation.
      • Um, even in the Arabian Nights, a prince was an heir to huge tracks of land (and all that occupies it.) Sometimes ruling over a portion (called a principality). Jafar notes this by querying what domain does Abooboo govern. Aladdin doesn't know, and tries to bluff, but this is not to say the territory doesn't exist.
        • In fact, the fact that he didn't tell Jafar doesn't even mean he didn't know. It's quite possible that Genie warned him that Jafar had political connections in that place, and could have staged a coup against Abooboo.
          • Oh come on guys. Ababuah. Abobwah? Naybob?
      • Even in the real world, "being a prince," or any nobility, is as much about people believing you're nobility than actually having political, bureaucratic control over so many acres of land. The Genie really does give Aladdin everything he needs to be a prince, including a shot at marrying into the Princess's family.
  • The genie was in the process of making Aladdin a genuine prince... by arranging for his marriage to Princess Jasmine. Jafar interrupted this process when he exposed Aladdin for what he truly was. However, the genie can still claim to have made a good-faith effort to grant wish #1 before his magic was dispelled, and so, Aladdin's still down a wish.
    • Since they backed away from the Literal Genie ploy (which is, incidentally, typically of the actual 1001 nights), the Genie knew Aladdin needed to be a prince (i.e. landed) in order to legally marry Princess Jasmine. Hence the wish would only be granted if Aladdin qualified as a prince before the marriage.
    • A "good faith effort"? When did Genie say, "I'll make a good faith effort to grant your wishes?" He very clearly states, in song no less, you get three wishes. What you wish for will come true. Not "I'll try," but will happen.
  • Well, if no one accepts what I assumed, that the wish to make Aladdin a prince was fully granted with a purely superficial display of genie magic -- his ability to create gold, clothing, servants, etc., and if need be, some lame "proof" of his identity -- then how about this: If Genie really wanted to go to the trouble of making Aladdin a real prince, he could've fudged reality and memories somewhere and made Aladdin the son of a real king ala Buffyverse: Angel has Wolfram & Hart make his son Connor a member of the Reilly family by changing everyone's memories. Sidira (sp?) did it in an episode of the television show when she changed places with Jasmine while still remaining Sidira. She looked and sounded like herself, and "everyone" knew her as Sidira. Also, if Jafar's magic could turn Abu back into a monkey, it might've been able to turn Aladdin back into whatever he was before the wish, if not, Aladdin is still the missing prince of wherever-the-hell. Ta-dah. Also, there might've already been a Prince Ali and Genie could've just committed identity theft and told Aladdin the guy's social security number, but that would be EVIL!
  • If Genie didn't make Aladdin a prince, where'd that big parade come from in the song "Prince Ali"?
    • Going by the cut song "Humiliate the Boy" the servants, animals, etc. were all made from things like rats, insects, etc. Hell if we discount it due to said explanation being from a cut song then there's the fact that Genie has shown he's capable of making life out of nothing.
    • Um, no. The instant the musical number is over and Jafar slams the big door, all that stuff is gone, never to be seen again. The people and animals were just elaborate puppets, controlled by Genie. I daresay the only thing in the entire parade that was not an intricate illusion was the gold and jewels that was given to the people. And that would easy enough to carry out from the Cave of Wonders.
    • If they had gone with the explanation of the cut song, it would have meant that Genie's magic worked a lot like that of Cinderella's fairy godmother. In a way, it made perfect sense.
  • Maybe he did. Perhaps there's a kingdom out there somewhere that's sitting around going, "Where the fuck is Ali? He's been gone for AGES!"
  • Maybe, when Aladdin made the wish, a secondary effect(Or primary) was to make Aladdin's father a King. He became the King of Thieves.
• Why does Genie have bracelets in Return of Jafar and the TV series? Isn't he free?
  • Because he thinks they're cool. He explains in an episode of the TV series, "The only thing I'm a slave to is fashion." Sometimes a bracelet is just a cigar ... er ...
  • Genie might be free-lancing, in effect he became his own master, (and therefore also his own slave). This lets him still be a proper genie and magically help out Aladdin but on a purely voluntary basis.
  • After wearing them for so long, Genie is uncomfortable without them. Do you wear a watch regularly enough that you don't feel quite right if you're not? Same principle.
    • Or like taping up your wrists before a tennis match. Magic might be more focused by using the bracelets.
  • The animators thought he looked weird without them.
    • He did.
  • For deflecting bullets. Also, as a reminder of his former captivity... genie law stipulated that he'd lose his powers if he allowed a man to bind them.
• Aladdin tricks the genie into granting him a wish that doesn't count (getting out of the cave). But when he's drowning, the genie has to use his official second wish to save his life...even though Aladdin's unconscious at the time, and doesn't say "I wish." So why did the second wish count when the "prologue" wish didn't? And why couldn't the genie just save him rather than wasting a wish, since he can do a lot of magic outside of wish granting?
  • Because when he said "No more Freebies, he possibly bound himself with it, that anything he does for Aladdin has to be taken in the context of a wish (i.e. part of a previous wish, or a new wish, or nothing. Thus, he even had to effectively trick Aladdin and himself into accepting the second wish by putting him in a position that his drooping head could be interpreted as a nod.
  • I think it was because Genie couldn't knowingly cheat the system. If he could, everyone could get infinite wishes and Genie could've even been freed by the first guy who got tired of the lamp. I'm sure the dude who sentenced him to the lamp/created him/set the rules would've thought of that. Just three wishes and no freebies means that no one (except Aladdin) would've set him free if all they got was three wishes. Also, handy for the rest of the mythical world, the pagan gods and, of course, the writers if a character with the power to conrol the universe is a slave to very constricting rules.
    • Going by Islamic mythology, the dude who sentenced him would be king Solomon, who was supposedly one of the wisest men in history, so I think it's safe to say that he could have covered those loopholes.
    • But wouldn't Genie's little... embellishments during the Prince Ali number have counted as knowing freebies? One was presumably, like the drowning one, to save Aladdin's life (he just had ten guys fall on him and needed to lift them off), and the other was purely cosmetic and unnecessary (temporarily enlarging his pecs while the dancing girls were watching); for some reason neither of them counted.
      • I think we can tell by the Genie's very first showstopper that the embellishments are not "Extra wishes" but there for effect. There must be a Drama-Clause in the Genie contract.
      • It's Genie. It's in his character to be over the top. The wish to make Aladdin a prince could be taken as a subjective matter (if they weren't going by legal definition then Genie was possibly just giving Al the stuff he believes is what a prince needs) so the "embellishments" could just be something that Genie thought was necessary to the wish. Just because he grants any three wishes, doesn't say he's limited to a time frame in when to be completed with granting a wish. His job is to grant the wish. So who's to say that if he hadn't been freed, and given more time in Aladdin's possession, if there were someting amiss about his status as a prince that Genie couldn't have performed more magic to "fix" it so that he was sure to have fully granted the wish rather than only half granting it and leaving Aladdin in a whole lot of trouble? We don't particularly know to much else and are left to assume the rest. Although I can be certain with this, Genie is over the top with many of the things he does, and it's honestly difficult to pinpoint him being simplistic or unbothered with a task if he's in a good mood or enjoying the task. He didn't seem at all displeased with granting this wish, and if anything he probably enjoyed it because it gave him an excuse to use as much magic he could after long years of being stuck in a lamp inside the Cave of Wonders.
  • Allow me to muddy the clarity of this IJBM a bit: Genies can't kill, as evidenced by Aladdin 2. So, the moment the Genie was 'summoned' by Al rubbing the lamp underwater, if Genie hadn't assumed Al wanted to wish for his safety, the Genie would have left Al to drown, effectively killing him. But, Genies can't kill, so, he'd have been forced to save Aladdin... So, are Genies 3-Laws compliant?
    • 1. A genie may not injuremurder a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harmbe killed.
    • 2. A genie must obey any three orders given to it by human beingsits master, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    • 3. A genie must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
    • They are now.
    • Granted these laws are purely theoretical, but this would conflict with the first Kingdom Hearts game in which Jafar orders Genie to attack Sora and co and the Genie obeys. Even if he drops HP orbs after attacking, he's still harming them.
      • Nowhere in the canon does it say "a genie can't harm a person", or even that a genie cannot, through inaction, let a person die. All it says is that a genie can't kill someone. If you count sequels as part of the canon, it even explicitly says in Return of Jafar that a genie can harm someone, or arrange for someone to die as an indirect result of their actions, just that they can't directly kill. But even if you discount the sequel, it still never says anything about the ability of a genie to "harm".
      • So, then, Genie saving Al by 'wishing' for him, doesn't count as a wish?
      • Edits in bold have been made for proper genie compliance with the laws.
      • Edits in italics have been made for proper Genie's Three Rules compliance with the laws. Using the implication that Aladdin could have drowned despite the Genie's presence or frozen to death as an indirect result of Jafar's wish being granted, and the arguably canon fact that Abis Mal could have died as a technically indirect result of his first wish, the second half of the first law must not apply to genies. Therefore, overwhelming odds exist in favor of Genies being compliant with the |Nestor 10 edit of the First Law ("A robot [genie] may not harm [murder] a human being"), as well as the second two (edited for genie-compliance) laws. I submit as a name for these laws, "The Three Laws of Djinnetics".
• If the Sultan was having so much trouble finding a prince that Jasmine would marry at the required deadline of the marriage law, why didn't he just change the law like he did at the end? Wouldn't it be easier to to just change the deadline date, or the requirements, or really anything that would have not put him in such a damn easy position to be manipulated by Jafar?
  • Character development. In the beginning of the film, the Sultan is too weak-willed to challenge tradition and ancient law, just as he can't challenge Jafar's control. It takes inspiration from the young hero, and seeing with unclouded eyes the truth of his daughter's life, for him to grow a spine.
  • Because the law is there for a reason, it's meant to strengthen the kingdom. Any player of CK2 knows that the right royal marriage at the right time can make or break your kingdom, it creates familial bond. If you study history you will realize that king's (or sultan's for that matter) position is much less secure than it may appear, a few powerful nobles banding together can easily overthrow the Sultan and install one of their own choosing, so it's vital to secure strong alliances. Apparently Sultan thought Aladdin's unique set of skills is worth passing over this opportunity (and obviously Jasmine was not exactly keen on marrying either way so it was complicated), but such instance is almost unheard of in actual history, and there is also the issue of what the nobility of the realm would think about Sultan giving his only daughter to the commoner, it may well erode his authority. Make no mistake, the Sultan is taking a big risk here.
• What's the deal with the Cave of Wonders? Why is there a humongous treasure in it if the only thing someone can touch safely in it is the lamp? Who put it and the lamp in the cave? And why does it seem at least semi-sentient?
  • Dude, it's a magic cave designed to protect the lamp from unworthy dudes. The rest of it is all just window dressing. Probably some sorcerer ages ago made it to ensure the lamp was granted to a worthy dude.
    • There's a lamp in the middle of a cave. Are you a worthy enough dude to take it?
      • Er... Maybe more like "There's a lamp in the middle of a cave. Are you a worthy enough dude to take it?- And not touch anything else even though it's really really shiny?
  • So, why is it that the first dude Jafar sent into the Cave was killed upon crossing the threshold instead of being allowed to wander around to test his mettle? The cave makes it very clear that it won't let anyone except the chosen guy in (and that it can tell who that guy is on sight), so having the treasure there as a "test" of that person's worthiness seems rather redundant.
    • The cave could detect the 'diamond in the rough' as being essentially good hearted and worthy of a shot at the lamp, possibly the treasure was to insure that that worthiness wouldn't evaporate when faced with direct temptation.
      • Or it could just be to prevent unworthy dudes from manipulating the worthy dude to let them in. After all, the cave didn't eat Abu. Jafar could probably have gone in as well if he had wanted.
    • You saw what happened when Abu took that ruby, the cave melted! The treasure was clearly a booby trap.
      • • Still doesn't explain why the dude Jafar initially sends in was chomped up automatically after setting foot across the cave's threshold. The cave made it very clear that it only allowed the "Diamond in the Rough" to enter, and Jafar had to specifically get the Sultan's ring to find the exact dude who fit that profile, which just happened to be Aladdin and only Aladdin. If it was just some good-hearted but impoverished street rat, then Jafar couldn't have narrowed it down to one so quickly. Obviously the "Diamond in the Rough" was one person and one person only, and only he could even enter the cave without being eaten by the sentient tiger golem thing. So, again, why have a huge treasure there that the "Diamond in the Rough" cannot touch or be doomed to tiger golem acid reflux, if only the Diamond in the Rough is allowed to go gallivanting around in the tiger golem's intestines, in the first place?
          • Your standard sadistic magical temptation test. C'mon, this is one of the oldest ones in the book. Garden of Eden, anyone?
            • That explains the treasure, certainly, but the question the world wants answered is why that other guy couldn't even get inside without getting chomped.
              • Because he just plain wasn't worthy to begin with. The one who was worthy would be let in, but then would be FURTHER tested by the treasure and such to ensure his worthiness remained. See above.
                • Uh, I explained this already. It was to prevent unworthy dudes from crossing the threshold with the worthy dude and getting the lamp. Abu isn't worthy, but the tiger guy didn't chomp down on him, did he?
                  • As to Abu being allowed in... isn't he kind of like Aladdin's really smart pet? Maybe the cave didn't care about letting him in for that reason. Granted, the cave didn't seem to care about the person grabbing treasure being human, but Aladdin could've just as easily told Abu to snatch it, and the cave likely didn't differentiate between them when considering that possibility.
                  • It's possible that as soon as he stepped into the cave he started picking up treasure. Always possible that he's just that greedy.
          • YMMV on whether the Garden of Eden was a sadistic situation, but the Cave of Wonders is literally the exact opposite. Garden: don't eat fruit from tree in center of garden; EVERYTHING else is fair game. Cave: don't touch any of the tons of gold in the cave; only touch the lamp. That one, at least, is enough to drive anyone crazy.
      • The cave couldn't eat Abu without killing Aladdin too. Giving the DitR a shot at the lamp apparently trumps munching the unworthy.
  • The entire thing is a test of character. It's like the classic fairytales; if you shut up and listen to the wise old hag, and do whatever she says, no matter how crazy, you'll get a reward. If you don't, you end turned into an animal or get killed in some unplesant manner. Those who are worthy enough to enter the cave have to also prove they're smart enough to listen to warnings, and won't be tempted by treasure. If they listen, they'll get a creature with the power to create all the treasure they've ever wanted. Maybe it's to prove they won't abuse the power of the lamp? Listening and not being tempted are two very good qualities when you're in charge of a practically-omnipitent being.
  • Who says there is a treasure? It could just be an illusion.
  • So the cave as a whole was designed as a test to find a worthy person to wield the lamp, and the cave's test came in two parts. The mouth of the cave (no pun intended) would test a person's inherent goodness, hence "the diamond in the rough." Whereas the treasure portion of the cave tested a person's responsibility and self-control, as both should be qualities of a "good" lamp-wielder
  • Another question, was a new Diamond in the Rough born every time the old one died? Or was there only one person in the history of the world that could take the lamp? Which would mean that Jafar was obscenely lucky to have him exist in his time period and not on the other side of the world.
    • Perhaps "Diamond in the Rough" denotes a certain set of characteristics, and the tiger god counts up the number of people who qualify each time he's awakened. In this case, Jafar was unlucky, since he lived in an unworthy time, and there was only one DitR available. Had he lived in a worthier time, the cave might have said, "Know this: Only twenty-seven can enter here--Oh, wait, that one guy just died, so make that twenty-si--Ah, there's a street rat in Montreal who just had an epiphany, so we're back up to twenty-se--Wait, dammit, alright, only twenty-odd can enter here..."
      • Or simply, Jafar finds the nearest "Diamond in the Rough". Split screens and folder-queues are hard to implement in your daily sorcery, so sorting the most easy candidate is just sensible.
      • Well, it's just fun writing that expresses thematic unity in literal terms and forces the characters to interact with and challenge one another, (Thanks Ted and Terry!) but I'll give rationalizing this a shot anyway: Number One, The treasure test might be to see how the DiTR would react to fortune once it was in his grasp. Do you really want to give cosmic power to a guy who was so stupid/greedy as to take treasure once being told by a magic cave to not touch it, even though he was getting a lamp anyway? Also, I'm betting the cave or the guy who created it wants to consume the wicked as much as reward the good. Number Two, as far as Jafar finding the guy who could enter the cave in his own time and even his own city, it could've very well been Aladdin's fate to enter the cave, and the sands of time responded accordingly. Ted and Terry do love that touch of destiny. Number Three, it's entirely possible that the cave didn't count Abu, either because he was hidden and didn't answer when the cave asked, or because he was just a dumb animal going in with the guy who could enter, not just a pawn sent in by someone who couldn't. (Of course, when I was a kid, I assumed it was because Abu also met the cave's criteria, being that he was a criminal in a low station in life, but with a good and noble heart, just like Aladdin. And I'm guessing the cave requires that criteria because whomever put the lamp there and enchanted the cave wanted the disenfranchised to get wishes, and not people who already had advantages or would cause misfortune.
      • I was under the impression that many different people can enter the cave, to gain a single object. When the Tiger-Golem said that "Only one may enter." it was implied that only one may enter to claim the lamp. The first dude couldn't enter because none of the artifacts were meant for him. This may be wildmadguessing though.
      • Why was Aladdin able to use Carpet? Wasn't he part of the booby-trap treasure?
        • In a feat of Fridge Brilliance I suddenly realized that Al didn't 'use' it. Neither he, nor Abu didn't touch it and the carpet itself was very careful not to touch them, since that would indeed break the condition of the Cave Guardian. Only after shit hit the fan and nobody cared about the rules anymore did they actually rode the carpet. As for asking the carpet for directions, the Guardian never forbid that.
        • Maybe, being sort-of-sentient itself, the carpet was a kind of mini-judge, to get up close and inspect the chosen one more thoroughly? Note that it clearly dislikes and mistrusts Abu at first, and only saves him from the boiling lava when Aladdin panicks and drives it down to scoop him up.
        • No, Carpet is not part of the trap. He was just a friend of Genie. Genie is imprisoned in the Cave of Wonders and Carpet has no place in particular to go, so why not wait for somebody else to find the lamp?
          • On that subject... If Carpet was Genie's friend, why didn't it grab the lamp and hang around the entrance for someone to open it, then make like a loom and bolt so they wouldn't have to spend the rest of time waiting for a Diamond in the Rough? Heck, even rub the lamp to play cards or charades for a few thousand years, if tassels count as well as hands (if not, only the last point is moot).
            • Well, he's a carpet. Maybe spending ten thousand years in an underground cave with nothing particular to do is his idea of a good time.
            • And we've already seen Genie losing to a rug Carpet before, maybe 10k years is too much loss to bear to a single opponent.
  • Has no one considered the possibility that it might have been that the Dit R would have been offered a choice of the treasure if he left without taking anything? Perhaps it was all a Secret Test of Character. Since Abu took that jewel, we'll never know.
  • I always thought of it as a sort of recursive aesop. Aladdin looks like a common street-rat, but he's better and more noble than he appears. Similarly, the cave is filled with appealing treasure and an old beat-up lamp that would never be impressive in-universe even in pristine condition (Aladdin even comments on this). The cave has the wisdom to know that the Diamond in the Rough is more than he appears, but will the Diamond have the same wisdom to perceive the truly worthwhile treasure from the traps?
    • Not unlike the "true" grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
• At the very end, Aladdin refuses to wish for himself to be a prince, so he can free the Genie. But they have two other people (3 if Abu counts) and another genie, so that means they collective have either 9 or 15 wishes left.
  • I'm playing the "It's the principle of the thing" card. The Sultan changed the law so that Jasmine could marry Aladdin, and the Genie was wished free, everyone goes home happy, plus having Aladdin wish himself a prince again would ruin the Aesop.
  • He felt obligated to keep his promise. He promised the genie his third wish would be to set him free, so This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself.
    • He still could've let Jasmine make some wishes before making the 'free you' third wish. But I guess that's my inner Rules Lawyer talking.
      • The whole point is that Jasmine loves Aladdin for being Aladdin, thus having her change him would, again, ruin the aesop.
        • So she could have wished for something else then. Why not end poverty or bring about world peace, or something like that?
          • Because she was just plain stupid at that point for some reason. (Maybe Jafar mind-woogled her or something)
            • Perhaps Aladdin didn't want Genie to be forced to grant any more wishes... especially after the ordeal with Jafar.And besides, do you know how stupid it would have been for them to stop the story, which at this point has five minutes left, to play hot potato with the lamp? Just let the story have it's happy, and concise, end...From a filmmakers standpoint it's all about pacing, you don't want your movie to drag... Why do you think we have the reprises of One Jump Ahead and Prince Ali instead of a full blown "I Want" Song and Villain Song? And why do you think Arabian Nights (Reprise) was cut out?
    • I think the point wasn't whether or not Aladdin could wish himself into a prince-seeming guy. First of all, they all already knew he was "just Aladdin," the sultan didn't even want someone of Jafar's station to marry her, so money and power wasn't really the criteria for marriage. The point was not only for him to accept himself the way he was, he also had to stop lying to everyone, stop cheating, and stop using his friends and breaking his promises just to cover his own ass. Plus, just freeing the Genie when he'd asked to be freed would've saved them the entire ordeal with Jafar at the end. Most of all, it's a Disney film, so the right thing to do would be to keep the promise you made to a good friend, rather then break it for selfish, dishonest gain.
      • Oh, and it would also mean that Aladdin didn't care that his new blue friend was a FRIGGIN SLAVE.
        • There are several degrees of "slave" I'm not sure that my all powerful best friend counts as a slave. The only reason this might be in effect would be because he who holds the lamp is master and Aladdin had just gotten a lesson in how dangerous that fact was. Which still doesn't explain why they didn't pass the lamp around and get a few goodies out and THEN freed the Genie.
      • Because they're not selfish jerks. Why is that so hard to understand?
  • If you were the heroes, would you trust Genie Jafar to grant any wish you could think of? See "The Return of Jafar" for reasons not to.
    • Actually, he has to grant them, the law of the lamp says so. However, Jafar tends to grant wishes in a way that they bite you on the ass.
  • Perhaps in the heat of the moment after defeating the villain the main characters simply did not think to have everyone present make three wishes. No doubt later that evening they felt really stupid
    • On the other hand, if they had gone and done it, Aladdin would have come across as a phenomenal jerk. "Yeah, I know I said I'd free you with my third wish, but before that I need you to grant some wishes for my girlfriend first, and my girlfriend's father could use a wish or two, and Abu, and, hey, I had this good friend once who'd like a wish, and..." At one point you have to stop and actually go do the right thing.
• If the Genie was freed in the first movie, why do some people in the series still act like he's a possession of Aladdin, or one of his powers? Mozenrath was jealous of Aladdin for getting magical power the easy way (by "having" a genie), for instance. And when Chaos created an evil copy of Aladdin, it came with an evil Genie, to which Chaos reacted with mild surprise, then realized was a logical consequence of copying Aladdin (whereas his pet monkey was apparently an independent enough entity to not be copied).
  • Maybe that's not because he's a "genie" but because he's the designated goofy Sidekick-slash-bodyguard of The Hero. He's part of The Hero's package.
    • Ewww.
    • "Is that a lamp in your pocket, or..." *gets coat*
  • In the Aladdinverse, you normally have to pick out three carefully-worded wishes to get anything from a genie. Aladdin has a genie sidekick who does all sorts of fun things for him without being Bound By The Rules Of The Genie (tm).
  • Considering how awed Genie was that Aladdin set him free, it's probably a rare (if not unique) thing in their world. Most people would therefore assume that any genie has a master. For that matter, given how powerful Genie is, believing that he's being controlled by a human is probably a comfort to many people: this particular specimen might be harmless goofball, but genies in folklore were dangerous, and didn't have a can't-kill-anyone rule to keep their behavior in check.
  • On Abu not being copied, I'm actually going to argue storyline here. I'm not sure which aired first, but the series did have a two-part episode that, among other things, gave Abu a backstory (as well as adding significantly to Aladdin's). Makes sense to me that that version of Aladdin would never have met Abu, or wouldn't have cared enough to initiate the events that led to Abu and Aladdin teaming up. Of course, this is Chaos we're talking about, so it may be pointless to try to apply logic to this...
  • Well, if we're taking the evil Aladdin's previous actions into account, then there's a good chance his third wish was "I wish you were my slave." In that case, the evil Genie might be considered a piece of equipment. As for Mozenrath... He obviously just doesn't understand The Power of Friendship.
    • Slight problem . . . would the Chaos version of Aladdin still be considered a diamond in the rough, the primary criterion for obtaining possession of the genie in the first place?
      • In his own twisted and evil universe he would've been the paragon of evilness just as the real Aladdin is a paragon of rightousness, so yes.
    • One of the big rules the Genie laid down in the beginning was you can't wish for infinite wishes.
      • Not quite true. In an episode of the TV series, the orphan girl master of Genie's grilfriend accidentally wishes she and her genie could "always be together". The genie is bound to serve and look after the girl until she dies.
        • Which was most likely done out of desire for a parental figure, and is less servitude than it is filling an emotional gap. It's also adorable.
      • Chaos copy could use different rules, as far as we know. Or, Evil Aladin being a polar opposite, is smart and worded an iron-strengh wish that traslate as "Make every wish of mine true from now to eternity".
  • On the show, most people assumed that all of Aladdin's non-human friends belonged to him; one non-villain even referred to Abu, Iago, and the Genie as Aladdin's "pets," which understandably pissed them off. Also, I to remember the episode where Chaos made an evil Aladdin, and guess how Aladdin stopped him? He used the copy's lamp, having guessed correctly that an evil Aladdin would've never freed his Genie. Ha! I is answers!
    • Indeed, the evil Aladdin never freed his genie, and never met Abu. Evil Aladdin probably just saved up his wishes, and used them sparingly.
  • You don't need to use infinite wishes or anything like that to make a Genie stick around and help you. You just need one or two open ended wishes. Wish for something along the lines of, "Protect me from any unnatural death/future attack," and "Help me defeat my enemies, both present and future." Any spells the Genie slings from then on would simply be counted as part of those two wishes, and you hold the third in reserve so it doesn't close out the contract.
• How does the Genie do impressions of people who won't be born for a thousand years?
  • A genie did it.
  • Because It's Robin Williams.
    • According to the third Aladdin movie Genie can travel through time.
  • It's not just Genie. At one point in the series, the crew finds a female genie whose name escapes me. When she's freed, the first thing she asks is if she missed the Gold Rush of 1849, implying that Genies have some sort of omniscience.
    • Her name's Eden. And yes, the Genie can apparently see into the future, at least in broad strokes. Remember? "Al, you're never gonna find another girl like this in a million years. Believe me, I know, I've looked."
      • Did Genie just imply that Aladdin would live for a million more years?
      • Not sure if serious, but Genie was talking how he (Genie) looked for true love for over a million years but never found.
  • There is one episode of the show that explicitly shows him in another time.
• In "One Step Ahead", Aladdin steals a loaf of bread. (A loaf that looks suspiciously like a French baguette, but ignore that for now.) The guards and even the merchants seem pretty cavalier about doing things like hacking swords into support beams and chucking fruit and vegetables at him. Is it really worth causing all that damage to arrest a petty thief?
  • The bread being a French Baguette is more than likely a reference to Les Miserables. As well as Aladdin's line in the beginning.
  • Don't know if they would've gone this far, but stealing in such a marketplace -- especially in the Middle East -- has always been a very serious offense. Also, this isn't the first time he's stolen food, and he's recognized by a lot of people, so ...
    • Indeed. Consider the line which was later replaced in the song "Arabian Nights": 'Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey - it's home!'
    • It's probably not a matter of the bread, but of catching him.
  • He's a severe repeat offender, and personally embarassed and/or annoyed probably every guard in the squad. My guess is that anyone who didn't have a personal vendetta (if any of them didn't) stopped chasing before the "tear down the scaffolding" bit.
• Near the beginning, Iago suggests that Jafar should marry Jasmine so he can become sultan. After that they can push the current sultan and Jasmine off a cliff. Jafar seems to consider this a very good idea, with no qualms about the messy ending bit. At no point is it ever indicated that he feels any particular desire for Jasmine herself. Say what you will about him, but lechery never seemed to be one of his character flaws. Yet, at the end, he traps Jasmine in Go-Go Enslavement and tries to get the genie to make her fall in love with him - despite the fact that he's now already sultan by virtue of his first wish.
  • I always chalked that up less to lechery and more to simple sadism, since there weren't any puppies available for kicking. He had pretty much everything he wanted at that point. Wouldn't have put it past him to just get a good laugh out of Jasmine fawning over him (and the Sultan having to suffer through it), and pushing them both off a cliff afterwards.
  • Exactly, it was more about making her his servant. And, if you look around, that's apparently what servant girls wore around there.
  • And she's The Hero's girl, which he didn't know at the time he made the plan to throw her off a cliff. Getting her would just be another way of telling his ego "I beat Aladdin,".
• So, the Genie pops up some sultry dancing girls in "Friend Like Me", who proceed to grind with Aladdin. Am I the only one who his hands as positioned in a full-on ass-grope when they disappear (didn't need to slow it down, either)? Prior to that scene there was nothing in the movie that suggested lechery was one of Aladdin's character flaws.
  • Sorry, I did slow it down. You can clearly see his knuckles. His hands were facing inward, not outward when the girls went poof.
  • It's not like he asked the genie to do that. But as long as he did...
  • Come on, look at those girls, and the way they were acting, you know you would do it too, even if you're not lecherous. He's wasn't being lecherous, he was just being male human.
  • Well, considering that in the Norwegian dub, the Genie sings "but you don't get to see them without clothes on" (where his English-speaking counterpart sings "make the sucker disappear"), it seems likely that you weren't the only one who noticed...
• Unless imprisoning him in the lamp counts as overthrowing the government, Jafar is still the legitimate ruler of Agrabah, having used his first wish to become Sultan.
  • Well--maybe he's "really" the ruler, but does anyone care? After all, rulers don't just get their power from nowhere--they get it from people (including the military and police) doing what they say. So if he's the ruler, but nobody acknowledges it, does it matter?
  • Having a genie as the head of state in any city doesn't seem like a really good idea, does it? What with the servitude, tendency to be buried in lamps for centuries, etc... probably a rule or two against that. Genies serve humans, not the other way around, hence no genie sultans.
  • Is he, though? The fact that he's no longer a free being probably trumps his 'right' to the throne.
  • Jafar wished to become Sultan, and he did. He never said anything about for how long. So the people get together, have themselves a revolution, and overthrow Sultan Jafar, who's conveniently stuck in the lamp and unable to defend his throne. May they'll try him in absentia for crimes against the people and strip him of his title, or whatever. Or the court will declare him effectively deceased, since as a Genie he's no longer human, and proceed to crown his "successor", the former Sultan, Sultan again.
  • I might remember wrong but all that genie did was move the palace outside the city and did something to the sultan so Jafar could take his place. It left it a little vague how "legal" this actually was. If he could have made him the legal sultan, what was with all that capturing the palace and all?
• Couldn't Jafar just as easily have wished to be all-powerful, while leaving the "Genie" part out? Aladdin sure took a big risk there.
  • That probably counts as "wishing for more wishes".
    • If that was the case then he wouldn't have been able to turn Jafar into a genie or a sorceror, would he now? Anyway, Aladdin was playing with Jafar's ego, and it was his only choice anyway.
  • I'm not absolutely positive, but if I recall correctly, according to the old legends a genie can't grant a wish that exceeds their own power. A genie itself isn't all-powerful without restriction, and therefore cannot grant that power to its master.
    • That's true. For example, in the original Arabian Nights story of Aladdin, Aladdin has two genies, the genie of the lamp and the genie of the ring. The villain steals the lamp by trickery, and uses it to steal the palace Aladdin had the lamp genie build for him. The genie of the ring can tell Aladdin where his palace went, but can't bring it back, because the genie of the ring is less powerful than the genie of the lamp.
    • In fact, this was a normal restriction on the Three Wishes trope back in the day. The wish wasn't an abstract magic that fulfilled your desire. It was a supernatural being doing a favor they owed you. If the being wasn't powerful enough to do the favor you wanted, you couldn't get what you wished for.
• Where do all the people Genie summons (for example, when "making Aladdin a prince") come from? Do they just spring into existence as adults with fake memories of childhood (or, even more freakishly, without them)?
  • A cut song showed Genie making them out of rodents and bugs.
  • I figured they were constructs when I was a kid, and would eventuallly disappear when nobody was looking, but thinking back it could be that they were from whatever country "Ali" was prince of, with altered memories, assuming he had actually been made a prince and not a fraud. So they aren't standing around wondering "Where the heck is Ali, anyway?", they're being paid out of the treasury to smile and throw a parade.
  • I always thought they were just extensions of Genie. It'd certainly explain their synchronity. And where he found llamas.
• How did Jafar get Genie to move the palace to the top of the mountain in the film? He's never seen wishing for that to happen, and he gets three other wishes.
  • The Genie may not have been a Literal Genie, but Jafar certainly seemed to enjoy literalism--witness his Hurricane of Puns during the final confrontation. Therefore since the exact words of his first wish were "I wish to rule on high as Sultan!", and his innermost desires were to make this become literal, the Genie was compelled to pick up the palace and place it on a mountain. QED.
• What's with the law that she has to marry a prince by her 18th birthday? If it was tradition that'd be one thing, but law? He's the sultan for gods sake, what would happen if his daughter broke that law anyway? What, someone's gonna toss the princess in jail for failure to find a husband by the time she turns 18?
  • First of all, a nitpick: it was her 16th birthday, not her 18th. Second of all, maybe the meaning of the law is that if the princess is not married by that age, she can't ever get married, for some obscure reason that probably made sense 500 years ago. What with Jasmine being the Sultan's only child, it would be Very Very Bad for the succession if she missed her deadline, so it's understandable that he's a bit frantic.
    • Actually, which birthday it is is never specified - the Sultan just says 'by your next birthday', which is not very specific.
      • He also said she only had 3 more days UNTIL her birthday, but we don't see anyone wishing her a happy birthday while Genie is lifting the palace up and placing it crooked on a mountain. (Sorry, kinda random)
    • This Troper hasn't seen the movie in ages, but I seem to remember the Sultan saying the line "But you're almost 16!" a little before the "by your next birthday" line.
    • Aladdin and Jasmine are assumed to be around the same age, and according to the creators Aladdin himself is eighteen in the film.
    • At the end of the movie the Sultan changed the laws so not only does a potential suitor for a princess not need to be royalty, they can be of any social class, even homeless street beggars. If the sultan has the power to change that law, why not the law dictating that she needs to marry by a certian age.
    • He certainly could have, and apparently did; they don't get married until the third film, which appears to take place after the animated series, which can be presumed to have taken place over a couple years, while in the original film, Jasmine's birthday was coming up really soon. His character development in the film included him changing from a sultan who is bound by the rules to a sultan who is strong willed enough to change them if they need changing.
• This is a bit complicated, so let's see if we can follow it. (it's also somewhat related to a point above, but distinct enough to be separate I think.) Okay, in the (first) movie, Aladdin defeats Jafar by tricking Jafar into wishing to be a Genie, right? And what happens? Jafar, now bound by the law of the lamp, is now imprisoned. And why does this work? Because earlier in the movie, Genie says that "(being bound by the law of the lamp) is part and parcel of the whole Genie gig. PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER, ITTY BITTY LIVING SPACE!" This means that Aladdin assumes that Genies, by definition, are bound by the law of the lamp. This is Aladdin's operating premise. Are you starting to see where I'm going with this? Aladdin's plan requires that, BY DEFINITION, Genies are bound by the law of the lamp. What does this suggest? If a Genie is NOT bound by the law of the lamp, then he is not, BY DEFINITION, a Genie. And that can be restated as, "There are no such things as free Genies." Now, after Jafar is defeated, Aladdin frees Genie. So the movie is saying, basically, there IS such a thing as a free Genie, or can be. If the right conditions are met, there can be a Genie who is not bound by the law of the lamp. And Genie is one. Now let's go back to Jafar's wish. Remember how I said that it required that "There is no such things as a free Genie?" okay. When Aladdin tricked Jafar into making the wish, Genie had NO IDEA why Aladdin was doing that. To Genie, Aladdin's suggestion seemed REMARKABLY STUPID. That is to say, he didn't know Aladdin's plan. So he wouldn't have known to go along with it. okay, so what I'm getting at is this: Aladdin is wrong: there are free Genies. So what if, when Jafar made is wish, Genie turned Jafar, not into a slave Genie, but into a free Genie, because, remember, there are such things as free Genies, and Jafar didn't specify. To me, it always seemed like Aladdin's plan shouldn't have worked.
  • A definition of a Genie is A supernatural creature who does one's bidding when summoned. Once a Genie is freed he is no longer a Genie much like a freed slave is no longer a slave.
  • Or put another way: All Genies are born into slavery and remain slaves forever unless freed by a wish. A Genie can not be "born" free, only freed.
  • I seem to recall Genie saying that the only way a Genie can be free is if they are wished free. In other words, the only free Genie is a Genie who has been wished free. Since Jafar hadn't been wished free, it was a slave genie.
  • This is only in the movie canon, by the way. In pretty much everything else, it takes some pretty powerful magic, sometimes actually divine intervention, to seal a genie in the first place, so Aladdin was just being stupid all over. The possibility does exist that genie-Jafar's Mind Made It Real, though it indicates a pretty big Critical Research Failure on his part to take blame away from the writers.
  • One possibility is that, if the whole "Genie can't grant someone powers greater than his own" thing is true, when Jafar wished to be all-powerful, the closest Genie could come to fulfilling his wish was to make him a duplicate, abilities-wise, of himself. Making Jafar a free genie (a freenie?) in addition to this would have made him more powerful than himself, so Genie could only grant him his own power, not the freedom as well.
  • There's yet another way to look at this. After Aladdin freed Genie, his powers greatly diminished, presumably to prevent him from acting like Aladdin's pet Deus Ex Machina. If this by necessity happens to all free genies, then perhaps Jafar's wish to specifically become an all-powerful genie compelled Genie to also make him lamp-bound.
  • When Genie became free, he was no longer considered a genie; from that point on, Genie is just his name, not his function. Genies can have names other than "Genie"; the genie Eden from the animated series not only proves this, she herself notes that Genie's name isn't very original. So what is Genie? Well, broadly speaking, he's a kind of sorceror, human-like but not exactly human. The reduction in power is a natural consequence of not being a genie - you have freedom, and full control over your powers, but you don't have "phenomenal cosmic power" any more.
  • I seem to recall,though it is very possible I am wrong, that when Genie is speaking of freedom, he uses Djinn to refer to freed genies, so at the end of the film he is a Djinn named Genie.
• When Jasmine meets her first suitor, we're led to believe Rajah has bitten the Prince in the trousers. You can see through the back of his pants to some red-spotted underwear. But Rajah has fragments of the spotted underwear fabric in his mouth, not the fabric his pants were made of. Amusingly, this leads me to assume that he had his pants down and somehow gave Rajah the chance to attack the rest of his underwear. Maybe there's a reason Jasmine didn't like him... attempted sexual harassment. Or maybe he took off his pants for some other reason?
  • • Maybe he wears two pairs of the same underwear, like Earl.
• It's the ancient middle east and Jasmine is free to strut around everywhere dressed like some sort of harem girl?
  • It's Disney. They have never been historically accurate (see Mulan for another example).
  • In Islamic societies, women typically only have to wear hijab (Arabic for "modest dress") in public. Even in places where hijab is interpreted very strictly, women can usually show their hair and faces to men in their family and other women when at home. Sure, a massive palace is a pretty loose definition of "home", but if she mostly has female servants and the only man she sees on a regular basis is her father, she's probably not breaking any laws.
    • That actually makes sense. Possibly her father isn't a devout Muslim (since we never see him pray or practice his faith in any way) and he doesn't care as long as she's not indecent to his standards. Her suitor, being from another land, might not be Muslim, so her clothes don't bother him. But when she escapes to the market, she's wearing a very modest dress with a head scarf. It was possibly to disguise herself, but more than likely it was to follow the dress codes. If she's been in the palace her whole life, the populace wouldn't have recognized her.
      • Also, Razoul may be a member of the family, which is why she takes off the scarf instead of simply pulling it back to show more of her face. Or it could just be an act of spite, since she's mad at him.
      • Solving all of this, Aladdin achually takes place BEFORE Islam. Before Islam some women would had worn very covering clothing, but Jasmine could have worn whatever before Islam if she wanted.
  • Putting aside the question of Islam, how about that Jasmine is rebelling by dressing that way, like most teenagers. It shows up somewhere else here that the Sultan is a bit spineless, and that might have something to do with it (although it seems Jasmine is his only child, so his spinelessness might be irrelevant). Also, remember that she briefly dresses a little more formally for when the Sultan introduces Prince Ali as his daughter's (official! FINALLY!!) suitor - she only wears the "blue mist" when she's inside the palace and not expecting a public guest (presumably the Sultan surprises her with the suitors - he's obviously concerned, but it's not helping). And this all takes place in a dessert - the question might just as well be "why's everyone so overdressed?".
• Near the end... when Jasmine is trapped in the hourglass, why doesn't she just climb the sand?
  • Because even if the opening above her was big enough to fit her head and shoulders through, there was no way to stop the falling sand from plugging it up. Climbing the sand would give her a few extra minutes at best.
    • Not to mention that loose, dry sand is hard to get purchase on, and she couldn't tamp it down enough to support her with more sand constantly pouring in overhead at that rate.
• What would Genie do (before he was freed) if he was told, "Create a stone that you cannot lift"?
  • He'd create a stone that he couldn't lift. Disney's Genie already has limitations that he mentions, so it's plausible that he could make any future wish about lifting said rock impossible (though to be fair, the movie isn't totally clear whether his limits are just things he refuses to do).
    • If Jafar could kill anyone or make them fall in love, he'd have done it, so those two genie rules seem pretty legit.
    • Of the three (technicly four) rules Genie named, only two have been shown to be actual rules that no Genie can break, they not killing anyone, and the no false love one, the other two could have just been things Genie didn't want to do and so said he couldn't, why not tell someone they are not allowed to wish for more wishes to prevent them from doing so even if they could? Also he flat out says he doesn't like bringing people back from the dead, which could be taken as meaning he has done it before and so can.
    • Following from the above, Genie would create a stone under an unusual set of circumstances whereby if he were to lift the stone, it would kill someone, or somehow initiate a romance.
  • The genie never said his physical strength is infinite, and the only way it would ever become so is if he needed it to be in order to grant a wish. There's no reason why there couldn't be a stone he couldn't lift. And if the genie were as powerful under ordinary circumstances as he is when granting wishes then he would already be free, wouldn't you say?
• Near the end of Return of Jafar Abysmal refuses to free Jafar so he could instead spend his third wish on tresure. Jafar ends up conjuring some, which Abysmal pretty astutely suspects to be illusional, and as villains quarrel heroes get a shot at Jafar's lamp. What buggers me is that how in the world could Abysmal neglect the fact that he currently resided in THE SULTAN'S PALACE!!! Which just happend to house THE (appropriately) SULTAN'S TREASURY!!! Come on, that must be like a pipe dream of every thief in the world. And he had it right beneath his feet and apparently never even bothered to peep inside. Well, even he did chose that moment to grip the Idiot Ball even tighter than usual, how come Jafar (who used to LIVE in the palace) didn't think of that opportunity?
  • Given that Jafar always wanted to be Sultan, he probably wasn't keen on emptying what was potentially going to be his own treasure chambers (the fact that he could easily get more was beside the point; it was his) -- and Abis Mal was just smart enough to realize that stealing from an angry genie probably wasn't the best idea.
    • But as a Genie he then had cosmic powers! Control ower matter and energy and the very fibre of existence! Why would he still be preoccupied with such puny down-to-earth affair as gold? Not to say that he only needed to convince Abys-Mal to free him and then he could just take it all away. Perhaps he wanted to astound Abysmal with the sight of treasures appearing out of thin air?
• Jafar in the second movie in general. Isn't there quite a lot for a Genie, that he undertakes on his own accord and powers he uses without even an excuse of his master's wish?
  • Moreover, he spares Alladin's life in the waterfall, because there are "things much worse then mere death". Indeed, there are, but Jafar's idea of those seems rather confusing and surpisingly not evil. So, Alladin gets falsly accused of murder by Razoul who hated him anyway. Big deal. Then he gets sentenced to death by "Jasmin" which is a big deal or would be if Jafar didn't blow his cover right before the oncoming execution. And...that's it? Jafar wouldn't torture his friends in front of him, he wouldn't have Aladdin killed in a slow and painful manner, he wouldn't even stay and witness the destruction of his nemesis in person and gloat? Why is he suddenly all Dr. Evil?
    • Finally, wouldn't his actions in the Final Battle classify as a murder attempt? Making a person drown in lava could in no way be get around with his usual "surprised what you can live through" mantra. And since Carpet is sentient didn't Jafar technically murder it?
      • • Genies cannot kill, directly. All he did was change Carpet into something very brittle and gravity did the rest. Like eden said, Genies can't kill anyone but they can make it's ridiculously easy for other things to do it for them
      • It doesn't seem like Carpet actually died at any point. Genies can't kill, and can't bring the dead back to life, but Carpet is flying around happily as you please after the spell is broken and he's back to normal -- so he probably wasn't dead in the first place. It seems to take more to kill a magic carpet than just breaking it into pieces.
      • To answer the gloating part, I assume it's because Jafar IS just that nasty. If Aladdin had died at the waterfalls, he wouldn't have known it was Jafar. Just sort of a final mocking bit, I guess. Plus, the image of Jafar's face on Jasmine's body is pretty gross.
      • I always thought that the rules were that powerful that they warped reality to keep themselves from being broken.
• Why isn't Abysmal apprehended in the end of the second movie?
  • Because he's the villain's goofy sidekick, and the standard contract for them includes a "get away scot-free at the end of the movie" clause. Little-known fact.
    • Also, no one knew he was still in the garden hanging from the tree. I assume he later scampered off, sans pants.
• "Arabian nights, are hotter than hot, In a LOT of GOOD ways..." Meaning...? Is the peddler suggesting there are sensual things going on behind the scenes?
  • Aladdin wound up stumbling into a harem during his opening number. So yes.
  • It's called Getting Crap Past the Radar.
  • Also a You Fail Meteorology Forever. Deserts are cold at night.
    • Cold desert nights imply that "hot" does not refer to physical temperature.
  • The show appropriated this song for the intro, and this phrase in particular was synced up with Jasmine twirling in front of a mirror.
• The three rules and upper limits of Genie powers just bugs me.
  • First, because the rules as they are formuled are incredibly easy to bypass. "Can't kill", big deal, well I'll just wish for a weapon to kill him then, or I could wish for the power of the grim reaper. I can't kill everyone through simple wishing, but who's gonna stop me from wishing for the moon to drop on Earth? And what if I wish for the Genie to give me the power of ressurecting peoples? Similarly, I could wish to become the man she would fall deseperatly in love with at first sight.
    • The "can't kill" rule means that Genie can't kill someone directly, but you can get creative with your wishes and kill someone indirectly(Much like The Fairly Odd Parents). Wishing for a weapon? The Genie doesn't kill it, you did. The Moon dropping on Earth? The Moon killed everyone, not the Genie. Same with the resurrecting(Unless there is a cosmic rule about no bringing back the death) you would be the one creating the zombies, not him. The Love one is more or less the same. Unless you can't make someone love you with magic(Or Genie Magic) you can bypass it wishing for the right kind of magic... or chemicals... or you can make a wish for becoming the most irresistible person to the person you're after.
      • I don't think the Genie could fulfill a wish of dropping the Moon onto the Earth since the direct and unavoidable result of that wish would be lots of dead people. By that reasoning, the Genie could just shoot someone with a gun and say "It was the bullet, not me!" Someone might be able to wish they had giant rockets that could push the Moon into the Earth, but it's not the Genie's fault whether or not the person actually uses them.
    • There's also no rule against paralyzing them from the neck down while you go in and finish the job.
      • (I really hope that you're referring to using paralysis to get around the "no kill" clause, not the "love" clause.)
      • Hell, you can be even MORE mean and wish for them to be paralized, then wish them to be immortal and make both wish un-wishable
      • "Minions, kill him! Bring that lamp over here and rub it on my cheek. Genie, I wish for a magic headless golem controlled by my thoughts. Minion, chop my head off at the collarbone and put me on its shoulder. Muahahahahaha!" (Assuming, of course, that you wouldn't have to wait a while for the genie's now-former master and any minions who know what the lamp does to die of old age to keep the minions from somehow double-crossing you and stealing the lamp. Hiring a Super Thief and telling them the lamp kills any nearby people on contact with human skin should be sufficient.)
        • Maybe I wasn't clear enough... REALLY paralyzed, as in, you can't move ANY muscle, not the cartoonish one when you can talk just fine.
          • I was following the "from the neck down" precedent set above, and now understand.
        • Or they could just wish the person to be in unspeakable mental and physical agony for all eternity, rather than blowing 3 wishes on someone you don't like.
        • As mentioned above, it's possible that the rules are that powerful that they change reality to stop themselves from being broken. Therefore, every plan to get around the rules would be doomed to fail. (i.e the moon would miss or Jafar spontaniously deciding to stop Aladdin from going over the waterfall)
  • The rule seems to be that you can't say stuff like "I wish X person(s) were dead", but you can wish them in situations that would kill them (Like Jafar himself did to Abis Mal in the second movie, transporting him to the bottom of the ocean.
  • And then, what would happen if Jafar had a burst of genre saviness, and wish to become a GOD instead of a genie?
    • Do gods even exist in this setting?
      • They *do* make a crossover with Hercules... and Chaos is pretty much god-ish.
    • Jafar was already on par with little-g gods when he wished to become the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Presumably if he asked to become big-G God, Genie either wouldn't be able to grant that wish because it's beyond his own power, or if he did, Jafar would suddenly find himself with perfect empathy for all living beings due to knowing all their thoughts and feelings simultaneously as well as experiencing them himself, and not be evil anymore since tormenting people would also be tormenting himself.
• During the Final Battle Jago sweeps at the lamp, snatches it and then attempts to pass it to Aladdin so he could drop it into lava that...surrounded them all. Uh? Why the hell did Jago go for a precise drop, when he could just topple the lamp into lava right away, exactly like he did later?! Yes, I know, the scene with a near-dead Jago kicking the lamp was intence, allright, but what was the point? Oh, and on the Jafar's part, I know he was an all-powerful and deranged Genie and all, but seriously, leaving his prescios lamp lying on a tiny islet in the middle of a lava lake? WTF?! It's not like he couldn't just, you know, pick it up and take it away from danger!!!
• I don't think there was really any point in all of Jafar's costume changes at the end. He starts in his traditional villain outfit, then steals the Sultan's style, then goes back to the first outfit. Erm, why? Do the clothes represent his powers or something?
  • The final outfit had a different hat.
  • And it was pointier.
  • They could sell more action figures.
• It bugs me why Razoul wasn't fired after the first movie. He and his guards tried to kill Ali! Yes, they were doing it under Jafar's orders, but it disturbs me how much Razoul appeared to be enjoying it (notice how he laughs as Aladdin plunges into the sea).
  • Jafar most likely hypnotized the sultan into giving the order. After the treachery was revealed and Jafar was defeated they just wrote off all the wrongs at his accord (fair enough) and moved on. As for Razul's glee, the only reason I can think of besides him being a terrible murderous asshole (you know, for kids!), is that he recognized Ali as Aladdin and was glad to get rid of the hated street rat.
    • Since the Sultan seemed surprised in the scene where Aladdin leveled his accusations I don't think the Sultan played any part in Prince Ali's assault. You'd think Al or Jasmine would have confronted Razoul over what he did.
  • And on that same note, what happened to those other two guards we saw once in the scene where they try to arrest Jafar. I figured that the Sultan had a more elite group of guards in the palace, but we never see anyone dressed like that in the rest of the films or series.
• Could you reach the Cave of Wonders if you tunneled underground? After all, Iago managed to get the lamp to the surface so the layer of rock around it must have a weak part.
  • The rules prevent entering. Nothing is said about leaving.
• In the beginning, the Sultan got upset that Jafar ordered the decapitation of a street rat. Ok, it's understandable Jasmine got upset, but why does the Sultan care? To him, Aladdin is nothing more than another criminal, and Aladdin isn't a prince, so it's not like he'd allow Jasmine to be with him anyway. Yet the Sultan was quite angry with Jafar for essentially just doing his job.
  • Jasmine probably didn't pitch it to her father as, "I loved him and want to marry him!", but she was clearly very upset about it for some reason and so therefore the path of least resistance was to yell at Jafar about it and then go, "See, darling? It was just Jafar being dumb, and it's dealt with. Now, about this marrying a prince business..."
  • The Sultan, was angry that Jafar had A): Executed a guy who was innocent of the crime he was accused of (kidnapping the Princess), B): Done so before all the evidence could be gathered (Jasmine didn't even get to explain that he hadn't kidnapped her), and -- possibly most important -- C): Not bothered to inform the Sultan of any of this. The Sultan directly says that for the future, Jafar is to discuss the prisoners' fate with the Sultan personally before they are excecuted, so he probably didn't like the fact that Jafar had gone behind his back.
  • Like the above troper said. What Jafar should've done was had Aladdin arrested, brought before the Sultan and have the Sultan informed of all the evidence against Aladdin. Then the Sultan (by his own divine right of being...well...a sultan) would mull over it and decide the punishment. Jafar didn't do this. That's why the Sultan was so pissed off.
• When Al was in the Cave of Wonders and went across the lake to get to the hill with the lamp, why did he leave Abu on the shore? It's not just that Al knew how impetuous Abu was around treasure and thus that leaving him unattended was dangerous (I wouldn't be surprised if that statue with the huge gem wasn't there when he left and then appeared to tempt Abu but still). What was the point of leaving him there anyway? Was it to keep watch?
  • The Cave of Wonders and the Lamp Sanctuary were vaguely reminiscent of a Temple of Doom. Aladdin even approached the lamp with same cautiousness of a certain archaeologist. There's a good chance that Al was preparing for a trap and wanted to avoid having to save Abu when the shit hit the fan. His preparedness was futile.
• What if there was a guy on the edge of a cliff, a Genie shoots a bolt of lightning at the ground in front of the guy, it crumbles and he falls off the cliff. Would that work?
  • Yes. The fall killed the guy, not the Genie.
  • No. No more than if the Genie shoved him off the cliff and said, "The shove didn't kill him, the fall did." I understood the rule as the Genie can't directly or deliberately kill anyone. As long as another being's free will is not involved, the Genie can't kill. Though I suppose he could try to trick the guy into jumping off the cliff, scaring him with the lightning bolt so much he accidentally leaped off. But since the rock crumbling underneath him would not have been a result of the guy's free will the Genie would have to either save him or make sure the cliff doesn't crumble.
  • That's basically what Jafar does in the second movie when he learns that "Street rat...is still alive?!!!!!!" He hurls a fireball at Al, the explosion throws both him and Abys Mal to the edge of the balcony, the balcony crumbles, and they fall. Al is saved by Genie, Abys Mal is caught on a tree. Whether these were happy coincedences or indeed the aforementioned probability-warping on the part of the First Rule is not clear.
• The genie's anatomy bugs me. Yes, I know, it's a cartoon, and he's a shapeshifting genie, so the normal rules of anatomy don't apply to him. But one thing really gets me. Alright, Aladdin is drawn with a normal chest, and has two pecs. Genie on the other hand seems to have one big pec. What's up with that?
  • It looks to me like he is supposed to have two pectoral muscles, they just aren't very well-defined. What it actually looks like, though, is that he has a really short ribcage, so that his abdomen goes right up to the bottom of his pecs instead of stopping where the sternum would be for a normal person. I don't really have any reason as to why his stomach is really skinny while his chest and arms are either rather fat or muscular with a layer of fat over, unless he really was sensitive about gaining weight in the last few thousand years, and magicked the gut away since he cared about it more than anything else.
    • Genie's character design is supposed to be soft, goofy, and not intimidating to kids, so the animators only added the barest suggestion of muscles to give his body form.
• Anyone want to explain why Jafar tried to bother with his third wish to hypnotize Jasmine when he had a perfectly good hypnotizing snake staff in his hand at the time? He'd have probably won right then and there had he simply raised it up and forced her into eye-contact with it.
  • If you're talking about the last scene when he's got her dressed in her flattering red outfit, didn't Aladdin smash the thing several scenes ago? Since he's an all powerful sorceror, I guess the better question would be why didn't he just conjure up a new hypnotizing wand? Or simply zap her? Jafar was on a psycho mad-with-power high at this point, so it's not likely he'd be thinking things through too clearly.
  • Well, he DOES create a new one right before his big Villain Song, but perhaps the hypnosis effects are only temporary (he seems to have to re-zap the Sultan several times in the movie) and he wants the Genie to finalize it.
  • I always interpreted it as Jasmine being too strong-willed and temperamental to be hypnotized in that way. The Sultan, while he does have his Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass moments, is for the most part weak-minded and easily manipulated (not to mention, he trusts Jafar for the majority of the movie, while Jasmine openly despises him), and as such, the Sultan is easily controlled while Jasmine wouldn't be.
  • All mootpoints considering by that time Jafar was the most powerful sorcerer in the world, and had spells of every type of power level and for every occasion (we saw him conjure objects out of nothing and transport a tower across the world; guy was already all-powerful). I assumed that not only could he cast the same mind-control spells, but they would be more diversifed and greatly enhanced. He could indeed have simply cast a permanent love spell on Jasmin (or in the very least a permanent lust spell) powerful enough to overcome even her strong-will, and he wouldn't have had to waste a wish.
    • Perhaps, until that moment, he had just contented himself with having her chained, thinking that soon she would surrender, as he believed that he had managed to kill Aladdin. However, one or two days after, which is when Aladdin manages to get back, when he forces Jasmine to take the apple and raise it so that he can eat it without moving much, he realises that, even as he holds the chain, she will always be the same rebellious girl, the one who is in love with Aladdin. Thus, he decides to take the last shred of her will and make her fall completely in love with him, and how to do it better than to use his last wish to force the Genie to do this? Besides, it is another way to hummiliate Genie, because he knows he likes Aladdin and Jasmine, and them together, and forcing Jasmine to fall in love with Jafar would be another way to twist the knife.
    • Or perhaps it's impossible to force people to fall in love with any kind of magic--the inherent power of true love fits a Disney film. Jafar just forgets or doesn't know that genie magic can't make people fall in love any more than sorcerer magic, or he thinks Genie just wasn't normally willing to make people fall in love.
• The Genie seems to imply that he CAN bring people back from the dead, but that he's just decided not to do it - 'It's not a pretty picture - I DON'T LIKE DOING IT!' For a genie who secretly yearns for freedom and who gripes about his enslavement when asked, he seems to be taking a pretty big liberty already with the death proviso.
  • Presumably if someone ordered him to bring someone back from the dead, he'd have to do it anyway.
    • Aladdin is in Disney Universe, meaning that to resurrect someone, you need to fool Hades (if the dead one has been bad, even if it was NOT how it worked in the original mythos), or get it back from Paradise if he has been a good guy. Now, if I remember correctly, no one ever went go from Paradise in Disney continuity, as it would be bad for some reason I don't get (to me, Disney's view of Paradise seems lame). To summarize, resurrect people is way to hard for the Genie.
    • Considering his helpful visual aid during the "no resurrection" rule is himself, zombified, maybe he's warning Ali that Genies make people Came Back Wrong?
    • Given that he had just explicitly said it's something he cannot do, I always took the comment as a mere joke.
    • Probably something of a warning. When someone says "I wish so-and-so came back to life," they tend to mean, "Just the way they were before they died." Genie can't do that. What he likely can do is reanimate the body (he makes other inanimate objects move at points, if I'm not mistaken), so he's saying, "If you wish for that, I can't give you what you're really asking for. I can give you something, but neither of use is gonna like it."
    • Also, does "people" quite literally refer to human beings, or to all beings? Could you, say, wish for your dead dog back?
      • It's a Disney film, any animal with a personality is basically a person.
• Was Jafar a sorcerer of lesser power before his second wish? Or did he just possess intimate knowledge of how to use or build mystical objects (his staff, the storm machine, the ancient version of google that told him that Aladdin was the diamond in the rough, the vial of smoke that allowed him to ninja escape)?
  • I think he was just your your everyday sorcerer who could only do "little" pieces of magic like hypnotize people, but until he got his second wish he couldn't do "big" things like, say, launch a tower into the Arctic. At least that's what I always assumed.
• Obviously Genie had a vested interest in not being a literal/asshole Genie to Aladdin, but when Jafar became his master...he's clearly not enjoying serving Jafar, so why not 'misinterpret his wishes' a little bit? For his first wish (rule on high as Sultan) you could make him Sultan of a tiny patch of desert land or somewhere on the other side of the planet. Second wish (most powerful sorcerer in the world) just make every other sorcerer in the world powerless and give Jafar a tiny bit of power. There's some room her for misinterpretation.
  • He's just not that type of genie.
  • Seeing how Aladdin was able to outsmart him into facilitating his escape from the Cave of Wonders for free, I'd say it's more likely that the Genie simply didn't think of it. In the second movie, Jafar had no compunctions about subverting Abis Mal's wishes (when Abis Mal wished for a legendary sunken treasure, he teleported him underwater and made him waste a second wish to escape); nothing was stopping Genie from doing the same but his own imagination.
• This doesn't "bug" me so much as interest me, but when Aladdin and Jasmine first meet, she impresses him by vaulting over the rooftops with a pole, then throws it back to him, saying "I'm a fast learner." So...what's the deal there? Did she get special princess training in high jumping, or did she actually just pick that up from watching him?
  • She's a natural risk-taker, athletic (note that she's thin while her father is portly; she exercises, he doesn't) and fairly fearless. Didn't she have to climb the palace walls in order to get to the marketplace?
  • The sequels, and specially the series play more with this, with some episodes portraying her as a Action Girl whose abilities can easily rival with Aladdin's
• The rules for the Oracle from King Of Thieves seem to be contradictory. When Iago asks why anyone would want it, not knowing what it was, she appeared and answered his question. This would seem to imply that any question spoken by anyone touching the staff qualifies for a formal appearance and answer. But during the first fight with Cassim Al asks him "Do you have an invitation?" while holding the thing, and nothing happens.
  • And later on Cassim asks a question when someone else is holding it! So what, now it's any question asked within earshot?
  • To be fair, the Oracle is fully sentient, and, among other things, actually guided Aladdin on asking the right question. Presumably, since it is a all-knowing Oracle, it would know which people are worth of helping, and which ones are better if tricked out of their questions.
  • Or maybe, if you ask a question that isn't directed at anyone in particular while near the Oracle / if you ask the Oracle directly, then it will answer you. If however you ask a question that you were directing toward someone specifically, the Oracle doesn't answer that question, so that's maybe why the invitation question didn' get answered.
  • Simple explanation: Iago is the series' designated Butt Monkey. Of course he would be the only one not to be given a fair chance to save his question for when he actually needed it.
• "Oh, no, I never actually wished to be out of there..." *snap* "Okay, well, I never actually took you out of the cave..." ?
  • Again, He's not that kind of Genie, and since Aladdin was his master he goes where Al goes and thus would be stuck back where he started.
• The original story of Aladdin (from Arabian Nights) had the genie give an unlimited amount of wishes. Now when they were writing the story for this Disney movie, they originally had that as a part of their adaptation - that the wishes were unlimited. Then they changed it so that there are only three. This leaves me with two questions. One: Why did they change it to three wishes? What did this add to the plot? Aladdin having unlimited wishes would have made more sense to me - it would explain why keeping the Genie enslaved would help him (what's one remaining wish really going to help?), it would remove the get-out-of-the-cave inconvenience, and it would eliminate questions about how the entire 'Ali' parade goes under one wish. Furthermore, with unlimited wishes, Aladdin could STILL have decided to be himself and to free the Genie like he promised. So honestly, can someone tell me how the three-wish rule adds to this movie whatsoever? The second question I've got is, seeing as how this movie switched over from an unlimited wish concept to a three-wish concept, is this Disney movie RESPONSIBLE for the iconic pop culture concept of a genie giving you three wishes? We see it everywhere now, movies/advertising/television. Did this movie BEGIN that idea, or is it older than we think? (PS I love this movie. This only made me curious)
  • While there are other genies and wish-granted creatures before this movie that gave 3 wishes, it does seem that Disney made it into pop culture. The main reason would be to create less plotholes(Why Aladdin didn't wish to be all powerful/immortal/filthy rich etc.etc) it also gives Al more cunning, as he has to save and think carefully on his wishes, while Jafar, being a wizard himself, solves most of his problems by magic/brute force
    • Maybe, only I feel like Aladdin's first goal, even given unlimited wishes, would be to spruce himself up for Jasmine in any way possible - his character would have little reason to go for anything else, being so infatuated with her. About the cunning thing, yea maybe, I guess that adds a little bit to the character, only it seems to me like they could have sacrificed that to make a lot of the other ideas clearer/more convenient.
  • Unlimited wishes would make Aladdin/Genie a Boring Invincible Hero. He could literally wish for anything, and it would've created way too many plotholes (like why didn't Aladdin wish himself out of situation X or situation Y). This way, there's an explanation. He only gets three, so he has to think them out carefully.
• if you don't need to wait for someone to make all their wishes, and whoever is holding the lamp is it's master..why didn't jasmine just grab it when she was all chained up? she was standing right next to it, so she could have reached for the next apple,grabbed the lamp and before Jafar says anything, shout really loudly something like.." I wish jafar had no powers?" or, " I wish Jafar was a daisy?" something like that.
  • That wouldn't have done anything. Jasmine would have had to rub the lamp and summon the Genie first. Only Jasmine doesn't know how to use the lamp, because (obviously) Aladdin didn't make any wishes in front of her, and the only wishes Jafar did in front of her were after he had already summoned the Genie (and so didn't do the lamp-rubbing part).
• Jafar should've been sick with monkey rabies. Abu bit him hard.
  • But there was no blood, so the bite didn't seem to pierce the skin. And even more importantly, Jafar couldn't have caught rabies from Abu because Abu clearly isn't rabid. Monkeys aren't born with rabies, they have to get infected like anyone else, and Abu is obviously quite healthy.
• When did Aladdin learn how to read? For that matter, why is there writing on the super-old lamp in Arabic? Wikipedia says the Arabic alphabet wasn't created until about 400 C.E.!
  • He never said the writing was in Arabic. Maybe the reason he can't read it is that he doesn't know the language and only briefly mistakes it for Arabic.
  • Why did the Sultan say "Praise Allah!" before, as stated, Islam was founded? Answer: if they'd been historically accurate (with regard to linguistics and the religious beliefs appropriate to the setting), people would have thought something was wrong. So, rather than give their viewers something to look up, they went with what they thought most people would expect. (Either that, or they themselves Did Not Do the Research.)
    • "Allah" is just the Arabic word for "God", just as "Dieu" is the French word for "God". There are modern, Arabic Christians and Jews who refer to God as Allah because that's the word for it in their native language. Before Islam was founded, people in that region would refer to their God or gods with that word. Simple as that.
• Since when did Iago become a regular character in the series and had a Heel Face Turn? I remember in the first movie He was trapped in the lamp with Jafar. How did he become Aladdin's ally?
  • Watch the second movie.
• Why didn't Jafar ever consider marrying Jasmine before? He didn't even think about it until Iago mentioned it. Wouldn't that have been the easiest way to become sultan, rather than spending so much time and energy searching for a genie to make him one? Well, considering his character, there is one potential reason why it might be unappealing to him, but really, you'd think that he would have at least thought of it before.
  • Because you had to be a prince to marry a princess. He says as much in the film, and he's gotta go through a couple little-known loopholes to make it legal.
    • But he created that loophole pretty easily as soon as he got the idea to marry Jasmine. Why didn't he do that earlier?
  • Also, really? What, if anything, gave you any indication from the movie that he was gay? Was it him putting Jasmine in the skimpy outfit? Or perhaps him getting thoroughly distracted when she seduces him? Yeah, he totally found her unappealing.
    • I was mostly joking about the gay thing, but Jafar can be seen as a negative gay stereotype, what with his mannerisms, voice, and design (see Scar for the same thing). And I saw the whole "skimpy outfit" and slave thing as a way for him to have power over her. Someone else on this page talked about how him wanting Jasmine to fall in love with him was just him being a sadist. And I wouldn't exactly say that he was Distracted by the Sexy... he was pleased that she was submitting to him, and during her diversion, what he wanted from her was for her to "tell me more about myself," which she did. He's egotistical, not lecherous.
• A small thing perhaps, but when Aladdin first sees Jasmine it's in the crowded marketplace and she clearly has her disguise hood down, revealing her crown. Why did no one notice the obvious shiny princess crown that was in stark sunlight, when she was surrounded by people? Especially Aladdin, who had his gaze focused intently on her for a good minute.
  • I don't remember her having any crown. But anyway, they may have noticed it then thought "nah, it couldn't be". Or they didn't know what she looked like in the first place.
  • Anyway why would the commoners know what the princess' attire looks like? They just assumed she was some random rich lady. Which, by the way, brings up another point. You'd think her jewels would've been enough to buy that whole apple stand (or maybe that whole marketplace) together with the vendor. Ok, she panicked and didn't think of it. But why would the stall-dude completely ignore the opportunity for the best bargain in his life?
  • Because he was too angry at this apparent peasant girl stealing his goods, that he didn't notice? It happens.
• Genies apparently have "Itty bitty living space", so how come the DVD comes with a tour of Genie's lamp? Any place you can give a tour of isn't itty bitty.
  • I don't think that's supposed to be canon.
  • The lamp itself is tiny, and though it does seem to be Bigger on the Inside, any living space you're confined to would seem itty bitty when you know there's a great big world out there that you're dying to explore... but you're not allowed to because you're confined to that one living space. I'd say the Genie's comments are perfectly justified here.
• Why in the world did the Genie start granting Jafar's wishes when Aladdin hadn't finished using all of his yet?
  • Because Jafar was holding the lamp. Whoever holds the lamp gets his wishes, simple as that.
    • One would think that was information important enough for the Genie to tell Aladdin about at some point.
      • Why bother. The plan was 'Make Al a prince, whatever the second wish turned out to be (in this case saving him from drowning) and then setting Genie free'. It was only going to be a short partnership while nobody knew he had the lamp so no need to share ever little rule.
• How did Jafar know that he got only three wishes, when he didn't give the Genie the opportunity to give him the same orientation as he'd given Aladdin?
  • Jafar very obviously knew about the lamp before he ever sent Aladdin in there. You don't think he would have done some research into how it works?
    • If he did that kind of research, you'd think he would know that he can't wish for Jasmine to fall in love with him, though.
      • He knows, he just doesn't give a shit about some stupid "rules".
    • Maybe it's something you "just know" once you become a genie.
      • He wasn't a genie at that point though.
• He was only there for a few minutes, but I find it hard to believe that Aladdin could have lasted as long as he did in the swirling snow of... Canada, Siberia, Antarctica or wherever the heck he was.
  • Well, we couldn't exactly have a good Disney film if poor Aladdin froze to death. Remember, this is the same movie with an otherworldly creature (Genie) and a talking parrot.
    • Assuming Agrabah is somewhere in the Middle East, and it didn't take Aladdin that long to rush back (hours at most?) then I assume Jafar golf'd him to Siberia.
    • I always assumed he was somewhere in the Himalayas.
  • That's whom we call The Determinator.
• I've heard that in an alternate ending the peddler turned out to eb Genie, and I've also heard (from this page actually) that they cut it so they could make sequels. How exactly would making Genie the narrator make them unable to make sequels?
  • I don't think they cut it so they could make sequels. I think they just cut it, and then when they made a sequel, they just made the peddler a separate character.
• In the scene where Jafar is hypnotizing the Sultan into allowing him to marry Jasmine, why would he snap out and say, "But you're so old"? The previous suitor, whom Raja dispatched quickly, had to be at least thirty if not older, and he was CHOSEN by the Sultan. Why worry about age now?
  • We have no idea how old the previous suitor was, and Jafar was probably much older than him whatever his age was.
    • It's hard to tell with animation but Jafar looks a couple of decades older than Prince Achmed to me.
  • Also, Rule of Funny :P
• From King of Thieves: irrelevant, but why exactly is Sa'luk gray?
  • Even more headscratchingly, he's normal flesh colors on the VHS cover.
• Ok, it might have said this somewhere in the film, I'm not sure, I only watched it once recently, but how did Jafar know about the lamp in the Cave Of Wonders in the first place?
  • Given Jafar's line "At last, after all my years of searching, the Cave of Wonders!", presumably through years and years of boring research. The specific steps he took to find out where the lamp was and discover the cave don't really matter anyway. It's just irrelevant backstory.
• Aladdin just sets Genie free, no questions. I understand the movie makes out the Genie to be a nice guy and deserving of freedom, but... damn good thing there wasn't a valid REASON genies are bound...
  • Going by what happens to Jafar at the end. I'm going to guess that genies are born, bound to a lamp as their very nature. Regardless of how good they actually are.
• What kind of pathetic sorcerer can't come up with a love potion or spell? Especially since it's been shown he can already hypnotize people.
  • It was disruptable. Jafar would have to watch behind his back all the time least he'd found a dagger plunged into it.
• Why would the sorcerer ever allow the ring to leave his possession, let alone lending it to someone without telling them what it is?
• So Jasmine doesn't realize she can't take stuff without paying for it, but she knows enough to play along with Aladdin's insanity plea? Huh?
  • She's just plain not used to paying for things herself. She's a princess, remember? There has probably literally never been a time when she's had to actually hand someone money for goods or services. And what, exactly, is so mentally strenuous about following the instruction of "act weird so they think you're nuts"?
• Couldn't Jasmine have payed for the apple with one of her earrings? A piece of solid gold jewellery's got to be worth a few bits of fruit...
  • She didn't have time to think about it. In a manner of seconds, the merchant guy had a sword out ready to chop her hand off, she panicked, and was begging him for mercy when Aladdin swooped in to stop him.
• When Jasmine is trapped in the hour glass and everyone has been incapacitated, why isn't the Sultan helping her? We aren't shown that anything traumatic has happened to him such as being turned into a toy or unravelled, he's just in a Jester's costume. I mean jeez it is his daughter.
  • He was suspended in the air by puppet strings earlier. He may have been floating off screen at the time and there wasn't any good one liners for Jafar to say to him. Plus that would make four rescues being defeated in a row, people don't like that.