My Lion King Forum

Okay, during the stampede scene, the wildebeests are going in a certain direction, however, after the stampede, when that one wildebeest just randomly appears and leads Simba to Mufasa's body, it comes from the opposite direction, meaning, Simba would have run away back past where he was when Scar told him to stay on the rock.

For one thing, you don't really know which exact direction that lone wildebeest is running off too. To me, it always looked like it ran towards the same direction as the herd before it, and that's not to mention that it can run in any direction if it's lost.

But most likely, Simba didn't exactly run back to where he started as much as he would run to where he last saw Mufasa fall to - which explains why he was so close to the body even without the wildebeest's help - just that all the dust blocked all visibility and scents further than a few feet away.

Another clue that he didn't run back to where he started was that he found Mufasa's body under the same dead branch he was previously dangling from:





The dead tree look approximately similar in those screencaps, and the wildebeest didn't just randomly appear. It was the same one that Mufasa knocked over when he was rescuing Simba in the stampede. I assume it look awhile for it to get back up, and run in the direction the stampede was previously going.

[quote="TheLionPrince"]and the wildebeest didn't just randomly appear. It was the same one that Mufasa knocked over when he was rescuing Simba in the stampede. I assume it look awhile for it to get back up, and run in the direction the stampede was previously going.[/quote]

Of course the wildebeest survived being trampled.

I never actually saw it that way, before. I assumed that one was just a straggler.

I always thought that the last wildebeest you see was also a straggler. How stampedes go - if you trip and fall, you are dead, because just as people have pointed out in the topic for what killed Mufasa: even if the fall didn't kill him, the stampede certainly trampled him to death in the event that he survived the fall.

By extension, that wildebeest that Mufasa knocked over would also have been trampled to death, so it couldn't have been the same animal that emerges from the dust and "leads" Simba to the body of Mufasa. I just think that animal was a straggler looking for the rest of the heard.

Yeah, I`ve always assumed that wildebeest was a straggler struggling to catch up with the herd. Looks to me like it came running from the same direction the others came from.
Regarding the wildebeets Mufasa knocked over, I always assumed it got up again and kept running (there are no dead wildebeest lying around in plain sight anyway) or else it was just a dramatic way to cut to a different camera angle (as the wildebeest slides up so its head fills the lense)