“Many people call her an octopus and I'm so knowledgeable I have to correct them,” Carroll explained in the documentary “Treasures Untold: The Making of Disney's 'The Little Mermaid. '” “She's not an octopus, she's a squid. … She has six tentacles instead of eight.”
“There's so much you can do with tentacles. They give a creepy feeling,” supervising animator Ruben Aquino told Premiere magazine in 1989, adding the team ultimately decided to make her look like an octopus.
Ariel kills the Sea Witch at the end of the movie.
At the end of the 1989 animated film, Eric saves the day and kills Ursula. But in the new movie, Ariel is no longer the damsel in distress. She takes matters into her own hands and kills Ursula herself.
Technically, Ursula is NOT a mermaid, as her aquatic half is NOT like a porpoise or fish…but is like an octopus, instead! Although Ursula has but six tentacles…she IS an octopus…for if you add her two human-like arms…she DOES have eight limbs!
Ursula's original design was inspired by many different sea creatures, including scorpion fish and manta rays, before director Ron Clements decided to base the character on an octopus. However, to make the animation process cheaper and faster, her tentacles were reduced from eight to six.
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What kind of fish was Ursula?
Octopus – “Ursula”
Ursula, the wicked sea witch, is a devious octopus with a penchant for power and dark magic in Disney's “The Little Mermaid.” Ursula's octopus nature allows her to be a master of disguise and manipulation, using her many tentacles for both dexterity and deception.
In the animated film, Ursula was a villain who enjoyed messing with people and getting what she wanted. In The Little Mermaid live-action, however, Ursula's backstory gets an adjustment — she is upgraded to Triton's sister and Ariel's aunt, making her revenge and motivations all the more sinister.
While it is known that her mother perished, there is no story attached to the event. However, much later, in 2008, an animated The Little Mermaid prequel revealed that Ariel's mother was crushed by a pirate ship during an altercation between humans and merpeople.
Ariel makes this deal because she falls in love with Prince Eric and desires to be with him. Ursula specifically targets Ariel because she sees an opportunity to exploit her curiosity about the human world and her fascination with Prince Eric.
But in a desire to re-market these ladies to a chic clientele, it appears that they decided to shave more than a few pounds off of Ursula the Sea Witch and Alice in Wonderland's Queen of Hearts. Because in order to be fashionable, you must be thin. The fact is, Ursula was fashionable.
In the past, Ursula was a resident of King Triton's palace, before being banished and exiled by order of the king. Scorned, she has since vowed to exact vengeance by harnessing the power of the king's trident and installing herself as ruler of all the ocean.
Queen Athena was the wife of King Triton, and the mother of Ariel and her six older sisters. She was the Queen of Atlantica, and beloved by her family and subjects.
Lettie is finally able to do away with Ursula when she learns the monster's real name—Skarthatch of the Keep—and what Ursula is afraid of: the hunger birds. Ursula reappears briefly after the hunger birds eat her to torment the narrator, making him feel friendless and alone.
The original character in the 1989 movie was inspired by the triple threat drag queen, actor, and singer Divine, a fact that was mere speculation at first, but has since been confirmed by those involved with the film. Divine catapulted to cult fame after appearing in Pink Flamingos, John Waters' filthy 1972 comedy.
One theory is that each of Ariel's sisters represents different oceans that are home to various cultures and ethnicities. It's pretty problematic to have mermaids who all look the same representing such an expansive underwater world.
The backstory of Ariel and Eric's daughter. Let's break. down the tale of a princess who was half human and. half mermaid: the adventurous, kind, and brave.
In addition to being the god of the sea, Once's Poseidon is also the father of Merrin Dungey's Ursula, a concept omitted from Disney's The Little Mermaid in 1989, though later included in the Broadway musical.
In The Little Mermaid remake, Scuttle plays a bigger role than in the original. Instead of Scuttle being a male seagull, Scuttle is a northern gannet which is a female seabird. This allowed Scuttle to be included in the underwater scenes which ends up being an important change from the original movie.
Ursula's real target, however, is Triton. (In this version, she's explicitly presented as his sister.) Bearing unexplained grudges and a craving for power, she intends to get at the king through her possession of Ariel and become, herself, the dictator of the deep.
Morgana is a villainess who appears in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. She is the infamous younger sister of Ursula and the older sister of Ulyana, but Ursula is worse than Morgana.
Flotsam and Jetsam are Ursula's minions. They're widely agreed to be moray eels. Real life moray eels might look a bit sinister to some, with their unblinking eyes and their mouths nearly always open.
“Ursula is still [considered] a octopod. Six [tentacles] plus two arms equals eight.” This debate is particularly timely, since another animated movie is about to hit theaters that actually (allegedly) portrays Ariel's doppelganger as a villain and portrays a kraken (which is not dissimilar to a squid) as a hero!
