All the fart jokes in The Lion King are Ernie Sabella’s fault

Disney’s 1994 animated classic, The Lion King, is a gorgeous, heartrending movie with a soaring soundtrack. It has one of the most devastating deaths in kids’ movie history, a compelling story about rising up to take responsibility, and a heartfelt love story. And it also has fart jokes.

Those fart jokes are mostly centered around Pumbaa, the bumbling warthog who makes up one half of the movie’s comedic duo. The other half is Timon, the wise-talking meerkat voiced by Nathan Lane. According to Lane, the reason Pumbaa is such a gassy character is because his voice actor, Ernie Sabella, kept making fart jokes.

“We go in to record very early and we’re tired,” he said. “And so I’d be having coffee and we’re going to start and Ernie would just start making fart noises in the middle of, you know, he’d say, Timon [fart noise]. Just to make me laugh, get me going. And then they put it in the movie, which is why Pumbaa is the first flatulent character in a Disney film.”

The gassy gags weren’t the only improvised moments that made it into the final film. The two comedic actors bouncing off each other — Sabella doing a voice that was a hybrid of character actor Wallace Beery and The Godfather’s Michael Gotso and Lane “just doing a Brooklyn Jewish meerkat” — naturally lead to some hilarious lines.

“That was screwing around,” said Lane. “I don’t even remember half of it, but, apparently I said, what do you want me to do, dress in drag and do the hula? for some reason. It must have been a long day. And then they made it a song.”