10 Things You May Not Know About Anna and Elsa

1. Did you know that Elsa has her own snowflake? When the animators were dreaming up Elsa’s different abilities, they came up with a signature snowflake just for her. You can see this snowflake when she slams her foot into the ground to create the floor of her ice palace, as well as in the pattern on the doors of her ice palace balcony. Most noticeably, it is the snowflake inside the “o” in the word “Frozen” as seen on the title screen of the film.

2. Elsa has the ability to change the color of ice to match her emotions; blue when she’s happy, red when she’s frightened, purple when she’s sad, and amber when she’s angry.

3. During the 2013 D23 Expo, writer Jennifer Lee offhandedly suggesting that Elsa and Wreck-It Ralph would make a good couple. In Disney INFINITY, if Ralph and Elsa are introduced to one another, Ralph will tell Elsa that she’s “really pretty,” and Elsa will reply “…and you have a warm heart.”

4. The reason that Elsa possesses the magical ability to control ice is never explained in the film. However, according to Jennifer Lee, the source of her magic may have been caused by a 1000-year alignment between Saturn and other distant planets (similar to how Rapunzel got her blonde hair from the Sun).

5. Early in the story’s development, Anna was going to be a peasant who would ask the Snow Queen to free her frozen heart, and she had no relation to Elsa. However, as the filmmakers struggled to make the two characters mesh, they hit upon the notion of making Anna and Elsa sisters, thus providing them with a believable, and emotional, relationship.

6. Anna was also going to originally be named Greta, after the original heroine of The Snow Queen, Gerda.

7. Even though Elsa sings the film’s signature song “Let It Go,” Anna does the most singing of all the characters in Frozen.

8. When Elsa is in her guise as the Snow Queen, she wears her hair in a loose French braid tied with a crystal-like hairband. Her hair appears especially thick, and it’s no wonder since her hair is composed of 400,000 strands (four times more than an average person).

9. Speaking of hair, Anna, being the younger sister, has two braids in her hair, one more than Elsa.

10. Anna and Elsa were originally intended to join the Disney Princess lineup as the twelfth and thirteenth Princesses respectfully. However, since the pair has proved to be so popular on their own, it was decided they would instead be the stars of their own franchise based on the film. Even though they are not official Disney Princesses, they can often be seen with the other princesses, and were also referenced as Disney Princesses in Sofia the First.