Lion King "Sex Cloud"

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About

Lion King "Sex Cloud" is an urban legend that the word "sex" appears in the night sky in one scene of the 1994 Disney animated film The Lion King. In 2020, Disney tacitly acknowledged its existence by edited the film for its Disney + release.

Origin

On September 1st, 1995, the Washington Post^[4] published the article "Disney's Lion King? Group Sees Dirt in the Dust." In the article, they state that the American Life League, an antiabortion organization, claimed that a woman called them when her 4-year-old son saw the word in the film (screenshot from the film below). They wrote:

ALL says it first learned about the "Lion King" scene in July when a New York woman called to say that her 4-year-old son caught the message. The group -- which began a boycott of Disney films in April to protest the movie "Priest," saying that it misrepresented the Catholic Church -- claims the company has a long history of sneaking "sexual messages" into its animated films.

Spread

The story became a national news item. The following day, the New York Times reported on the controversy.^[1]
, author Peter M. Nichols that " after a Virginia-based anti-abortion organization complained that the word "sex" appeared spelled out in a cloud during the Disney animated film "The Lion King," a spokesman for the organization said yesterday that the word was so difficult to detect that it might not be construed as a word at all."

The article states that the league "called for the Walt Disney Company to remove the best-selling videocassette of the film from stores because of the scene, which, Mr. Miller said, was noticed by a 4-year-old boy whose aunt reported his observation to the league."

On December 31st, 1996, Snopes ^[2] rated the validity of these claims as a "Legend." The wrote "Whether the image of the word “SEX” was deliberately planted in this scene or is merely a product of the power of suggestion is indeterminate." They also published a series of images of the scene in question (shown below).

Snopes also reported that "One of the film’s animators, Tom Sito, has since confirmed that yes, there was a word intentionally spelled out in the dust." According to Tom Sito, the letters spelled "SFX," a reference to the film's art and special effects (SFX) department.

References to the moment continued over the next two decades. For example, on September 2nd, 2019, Redditor ^[3] RayInRed posted an edited frame from the 2019 remake of The Lion King that included the "Sex Cloud." The post received more than 29,000 points (94% upvoted) and 230 comments in less than one year (shown below).

Edits

According to Reclaim The Net,^[5] the current version of the film available on Disney's streaming service Disney+, the sky in the scene features no text and has been scrubbed of any shape that the stars may create (screenshot below).