When moviegoers flocked to the theaters to see The Lion King in 1994, little did they know that they’d be watching something truly historic.
As you’ll no doubt recall, after Simba gets rescued by Timon and Pumbaa (as voiced by Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella), they perform the song “Hakuna Matata” for him. “He found his aroma lacked a certain appeal / He could clear the savannah after every meal,” Timon says of his friend Pumbaa. Pumbaa takes it from there, singing, “I’m a sensitive soul, though I seem thick-skinned,” but before he can get to the next line, he lets loose with a fart so wicked it kills the grass standing behind him:
Reflecting on the legendary moment in 2024, Lane told Entertainment Weekly how it all came about. According to him, he and Sabella were appearing in Guys and Dolls on Broadway at the time, so they’d record their lines in the morning, when they were both a bit sleepy. “While [Sabella] was doing his dialogue, he would make fart sounds to make me laugh,” Lane explained. “And they eventually incorporated that into the character and the song.”
The ‘Lion King’ Fart Joke That Accidentally Made Disney History
Sabella remembered the gag coming about following a five-show weekend with Guys and Dolls. The Lion King recording session was earlier than usual, so to get the ball rolling, Sabella decided to interrupt Lane’s dialogue with some fart noises. The more Lane asked him to stop, the more he kept going with it. “That’s the story of how Pumbaa became the first and only Disney character with flatulence,” said Sabella.
But Sabella and Lane weren’t just responsible for the farting; as it turns out, Timon and Pumbaa were actually created specifically for them. You see, the pair had originally auditioned to play a couple of hyenas, but their improvisation with one another left director Roger Allers speechless. Sabella and Lane walked away thinking they’d blown their chance at being in The Lion King because of the strange reaction. However, a few months later, they were informed that their performance inspired the filmmakers to develop two new characters for them to add some comic relief to the movie.
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