A little theory I had about Simbas guilt over mufasa.

[Elton John]

http://i.imgur.com/FhYspWm.jpg

So, apparently walt disney might have had a lot of guilt over the death of his mother, blaming himself over it. I was thinking that the creators of the film knew this and this is how we got simba feeling a lot of guilt over blaming himself for the death of his dad. Keeping sarabi alive as a reverse of what happened.

[Kiana]

That does seem a reasonable explanation

[Alexterri1]

I didn't know that before. That does sound like a good explanation.

[TheLionPrince]

I read multiple biographies of Walt Disney over the years, and knew that he felt guilty over the death of his mother. And I always found a comparison of his guilt to that of Simba's guilt of thinking he killed his father. However, I cannot say for sure this inspired the story team. As for the lack of mothers in some Disney animated films, they particularly aren't included because they become superfluous to the storyline and it's necessary to the character development of the protagonist if they are absent or killed off; in the case of Aladdin, Aladdin's mother was originally in the story, but she was cut from the film following the "Black Friday" storyreel at the demand of Jeffrey Katzenberg.

When promoting Maleficent back in 2014, Don Hahn was questioned about the lack of mothers in some Disney animated films:

Glamour: Maleficent felt like one of the first Disney movies where you had a motherly presence that’s usually missing. Ariel didn’t have a mother in The Little Mermaid; Belle only had her dad in Beauty and the Beast. Why is that?

Don: I’ll give you two stories that are the reasons. I never talk about this, but I will. One reason is practical because the movies are 80 or 90 minutes long, and Disney films are about growing up. They’re about that day in your life when you have to accept responsibility. Simba ran away from home but had to come back. In shorthand, it’s much quicker to have characters grow up when you bump off their parents. Bambi’s mother gets killed, so he has to grow up. Belle only has a father, but he gets lost, so she has to step into that position. It’s a story shorthand. The other reason—and this is really odd—Walt Disney, in the early 1940s, when he was still living at this house, also bought a house for his mom and dad to move into. He had the studio guys come over and fix the furnace, but when his mom and dad moved in, the furnace leaked and his mother died. The housekeeper came in the next morning and pulled his mother and father out on the front lawn. His father was sick and went to the hospital, but his mother died. He never would talk about it, nobody ever does. He never spoke about that time because he personally felt responsible because he had become so successful that he said, "Let me buy you a house." It’s every kid's dream to buy their parents a house and just through a strange freak of nature—through no fault of his own—the studio workers didn't know what they were doing. There’s a theory, and I’m not a psychologist, but he was really haunted by that. That idea that he really contributed to his mom's death was really tragic. If you dig, you can read about it. It’s not a secret within their family, but it's just a tragedy that is so difficult to even talk about. It helps to understand the man a little bit more.

[SimbasMate]

How would that even make sense if Walt Disney died in 1966 and TLK was made in 1994

[Lynx]

How would that even make sense if Walt Disney died in 1966 and TLK was made in 1994

My thinking is because Disney movies til lately would follow a near identical formula, with the setting and characters making the difference.

[Captain Cupcake]

Simba's guilt was just a natural result of what he thought had occurred after the stampede, and a necessary element to make the second half of the film's plot work. It's unlikely that there was any inspiration for that aspect of the character. When you're playing with the idea of a father's death being blamed on the son, the immense guilt that person is going to feel is practically required in such a story arc.

[Rollo]

^ I agree completely. I don't think Walt Disney's guilt would've been a direct influence on the writers, even if they had known about it. Just because they work for Disney as a company doesn't mean they'll automatically know these sort of things, especially since it's quite a personal issue for Walt that he clearly didn't want to discuss. And also, it's too broad of a theory. It's like saying that every Disney parent death that came after Walt's own passing was influenced on his own trauma.

Simba's guilt was a natural reaction that Scar took advantage of, especially since it was heightened because he was only a cub and he knew Simba would be distraught. If Simba hadn't have been guilty after that, he probably would've been worse than Scar. Seems like a pretty big warning sign of a villain to me.

That being said, I never knew about this. It's a very interesting find.