10 things you didn't know about the movie "The Lion King"

In honor of the re-release of the Disney classic in 3-D, I thought I would put together some lesser known trivia facts about the movie.

1. The wildebeest stampede took Disney's CG department approximately three years to animate.

Also the most traumatizing scene ever. 

2. The first Disney cartoon to be dubbed into Zulu for its African release.

3. Elton John and Tim Rice were a little shocked when they saw that the producers originally intended to have their (eventual) Oscar-winning love ballad "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" as a duet between Timon and Pumbaa.

4.When Mufasa tells Simba about the Great Kings of the Past if you look at the stars in the wide shot you can see Mickey Mouse.

5. Originally, the hyenas Banzai and Shenzi were supposed to be voiced by Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin. But the directors couldn't get hold of Chong, so they cast Whoopi Goldberg as Shenzi instead.

6. The animators were so impressed with Jeremy Irons's performance that they worked Irons' features into Scar's face.

7. Originally, Scar was going to send adult Nala away from Pride Rock because she ignored his romantic approaches, after which she finds Simba alive and well with Timon and Pumbaa. This idea was ultimately abandoned, as sexual harassment was considered improper in a family movie. However, the stage musical adaptation includes this plot development as part of director Julie Taymor's efforts to expand the female characters' presence in the story.

8. The team working on the movie was supposedly Disney's "team B", who were "kept busy" while "team A" worked on Pocahontas, on which the production had much higher hopes.

9. The groundhog that pops up after Simba's pouncing lesson (the song "Morning Report" in the special edition) was originally going to be a naked mole rat, but the animators couldn't get him to look right. One of the directors said, "We would've lost our G rating!"

10. Nearly twenty minutes of the film were animated at the Disney-MGM Studios. Ultimately, more than 600 artists, animators and technicians contributed to The Lion King over its lengthy production schedule. More than one million drawings were created for the film, including 1,197 hand-painted backgrounds and 119,058 individually colored frames of film.