Development for the 1989 hit Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, actually started way back in 1939 after Snow White. Wanting to continue telling the fairytale stories of the early 1800s, it was shelved for fifty years due to other projects at Disney and largely forgotten about.

Interestingly, the team that revived the idea in the 1980s (without having seen the original suggested changes Disney wanted to make to differ his retelling from the original Hans Christian Andersen tale) made the same script change suggestions - making the musical accompaniment an important component of the storytelling, following a Broadway-like model.

The character Ursula was based on a famous drag queen of the 1980s (Divine), and Ariel's body was based on Alyssa Milano (although the lead animator for her character swore he designed her to look like his wife "without the fins!") while her flowing underwater hair was based on Sally Ride's hair as it moved during her journey into space. Pretty cool.

The movie was a smash hit and kicked off what became known as Disney's golden age of animation.