8. Sebastian Almost Gets Cooked
As we've already said, not all Easter Eggs dedicated to The Little Mermaid can necessarily be found in the film itself: since the mermaid's tale was clearly one of the animation house's favourites, there are a number of references to it in other Disney films. The most famous of these references - and certainly the most noticable comes in Aladdin, when the Genie magics Sebastian the crab out of a cookery book, briefing uniting two of Disney's best loved and most enduring side characters on screen for one funny little moment. It's a fairly high-profile in-joke, but it's pleasant all the same, and the impact is increased by the opening bars of "Under The Sea" playing as Sebastian appears. According to viewers of the earlier versions of the film, Sebastian was actually due to get a line - a simple "Ariel?" - but it was dropped from the final film, probably because it reinforced an already very obvious in-joke somewhat unnecessarily.