Mufasa: The Lion King was released in cinemas last week as a family-friendly Christmas adventure with FSK 6. Building on the success of the photorealistic animated remake The Lion King (2019), the film tells the backstory of Simba’s father. However, Mufasa first has to find his way to the king’s rock and, incidentally, even one clears up old Rafiki mistake that the animated classic made 30 years ago.
Mufasa knows: This famous monkey from The Lion King is not a baboon
Anyone who saw Gladiator II this year should know that baboons look different than the character of Rafiki from The Lion King. Disney’s 1994 animated film made a mistake: Nala refers to the wise monkey shaman as a baboon, even though he is a mandrill. While baboons have a uniform brown color, only the mandrill, with its grayer fur, also has Rafiki’s striking red-blue facial coloring.
Here you will find external content from Twitterwhich complements the article. You can display it and hide it again with one click.
Over the last 30 years, the mix-up in The Lion King has been discovered and addressed by numerous fans and biologists. Moonlight director Barry Jenkins not only gave his lions in Mufasa more facial expressions, but thanks to screenwriter Jeff Nathanson, he even made a tongue-in-cheek reference to the silly misstep from back then… by within the plot one Explanation for the Rafiki faux pas delivers.
Rafiki the Mandrill: This is how Mufasa eliminates the baboon mistake from The Lion King
As the narrator of the story of how Mufasa became the Lion King, Rafiki can finally do some educational work: we get to know him as an outsider. He is the only mandrill in a tree full of baboons. It’s apparently a kind of surrogate family after he lost his brother. However, because his dreamy nature and visions of the future supposedly endanger the pack of monkeys, he is banished by them. Alongside Mufafa, Taka, Sarabi and Zazu, he sets out on a journey to a new home: Milele.
Before the unlikely animals become friends, Rafiki is on the move repeatedly referred to disparagingly as a “baboon”. – especially from lioness Sarabi (probably in reference to Nala’s misnomer in the cartoon). Rafiki makes it clear several times that he is actually a mandrill, but the lioness only says that a monkey remains a monkey in the end. For a big cat there is not much difference in potential food.
With it The film appropriates Mufasa the old Lion King mistake in order to explain it away: Apparently the initially incorrect species assignment later stuck with the royal advisor. Since Rafiki has always been “a little crazy,” it’s easy to imagine that he eventually adopted the baboon title as a nickname and simply stopped correcting the ignorant animals around him.
Only Rafikis monkey tail drawn too longwhich was more like the length of a baboon’s tail in the Lion King cartoon, Mufasa can’t quite erase this explanation. When Mufasa’s advisor returned in the 2019 remake and was officially made into a mandrill, the remake had already shortened the body extension to a lifelike length.
If you want to check: Mufasa has been running in cinemas since December 19, 2025. All other Lion King films stream on Disney+ *.
Review podcast: The 10 best streaming films of 2024 on Netflix, Disney+ and Co.
In the annual review of the year at Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+ and Co., we discuss which streaming films are a must in 2024 and give you 10 recommendations.
At this point you will find external content that complements the article. You can display it and hide it again with one click.
The selection of the best streaming films of the year ranges from action surprises and thrilling adventure films to intense dramas. But there are also comedies and documentaries.
*This link to Disney+ is an affiliate link. By taking out a subscription via this link you support Moviepilot. .