Mickey, Donald, and Goofy All Appeared in 'The Little Mermaid'

It’s funny to think about the history of hiding Easter eggs in animated movies. Before the days of VHS, if an animator slipped something into the background of a film, it really was an in-joke that quite possibly very few people could ever find out about. Once home-video came into play — and the slo-mo features that came with it — fans could pore over every frame of a movie. But even if fans found something, they could only spread it through word-of-mouth. You had to be dialed in with the whole world of fans IRL before the information could come to you. Now, there are streaming services, there are screen-shots, and there’s the whole internet that can help a fan get the word out about a clever hidden joke — so filmmakers have to bring their Easter-egg game to the next level.

These Disney Easter eggs — which span nearly four decades — run the gamut. There are some that are delivered with a wink, as if the animators expected fans to notice and be delighted by them right away. Older ones, though, were even hard to spot on a streaming service — you really needed to find an old-school, frame-by-frame way of watching it to find the hidden surprise. How many of these Disney Easter eggs did you know about before the age of VHS, before the dawn of the internet, or before Disney+? Test yourself to see if you’re a true, eagle-eyed Disney fan.