LOS ANGELES, Aug 21 — If you’re a major fan of The Lion King, this secret about Scar and Mufasa just may blow your mind.

The director and producer of Disney’s 1994 critically acclaimed animated film, Don Hahn, recently revealed in an interview with Hello Giggles that Mufasa and Scar aren’t actually brothers.

In the movie, Mufasa, the king of Pride Lands, was killed by Scar so he could claim the title. According to Hahn, it was "very likely” that the two lions are not brothers because that is not how a pride operates.

"[While making the movie] we talked about the fact that it was very likely [Scar and Mufasa] would not have both the same parents. The way lions operate in the wild, when the male lion gets old, another rogue lion comes and kills the head of the pride.

"What that does is it causes the female lions to go into heat [to reproduce], and then the new younger lion kills the king and then he kills all the babies. Now he’s the new lion that’s running the pride.”  

Hahn continued: "There was always this thing about well, how do you have these two [male] lions? Occasionally there are prides that do have two male lions, in an interesting dynamic because they’re not equals [since they don’t have the same parents].

"One lion will always kind of be off in the shadows. We were trying to use those animal truths to underpin the story so we sort of figured Scar and Mufasa couldn’t really be from the same gene pool.”

Hahn also revealed that the movie does hint that Scar and Mufasa are not directly related: "In fact, that’s what [Scar] says. There’s a line, he goes, ‘I’m from the shallow end of the gene pool.’ When he’s talking to Mufasa, when Mufasa gets mad at him for not coming up to the coronation of Simba.”

While it’s not clear if the subject will be brought up in the forthcoming Lion King live-action remake, fans are certainly going to look at the Disney classic in a new way. Hakuna Matata!