Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-24674051-20160625215037/@comment-4453062-20160724221505

Hmcooper4 wrote: I think the times that the characters did NOT get code names, the character being portrayed was already known to be appearing (such as Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff). But we saw with Merida's casting that they tried to throw us off (and did a reasonable job) by redirecting to Rumple's mom. Since a redirect like that would likely not work a second time, they redirected to characters that would be believable to be on the show (and ones that some of the fans wanted on the show). had they gone with just generic names, I think people would have picked up on them being Al and Jas sooner than they did.

this approach actually did something else in favor of the show's casting. We know now (if we didn't already know) not to trust ANY name that is placed with a casting call, so the next time, they might actually use the real name, and we might or might not believe them. and since the goal is to sow confusion and misdirection, then they are almost guaranteed to achieve that goal. I gather the main reason they chose "Sinbad" and "Scheherazade" were because those are characters from "One Thousand and One Nights", the collection of stories that Aladdin happens to be a part of. "Morpheus" turned out to not just be a code name, though that could just be because they didn't feel the need to hide him. A big reason for hiding Aladdin and Jasmine were to hold off on announcing them til SDCC, just like Merida last year. I agree that Adam and Eddy have caught on to the fans correctly guessing characters from casting calls, so the old standard of simpling using generic codenames is no longer sufficient enough. They needed to change their tactics, and it's not like they haven't worked. Sure some of us did think that "Sinbad" and "Scheherazade" were just codenames for Aladdin and Jasmine,but plenty of others leaned towards them not being codenames. Another way they misdirected us recently was with the "Jacob" and "Nathaniel" casting calls, which described the two as brothers. That misdirect worked very well, because we hadn't concluded that they were Jekyll and Hyde until the name "Jekyll" was leaked on set. Had that leak not happened, we very well would have continued guessing aimlessly up until the Season 5 finale's airdate.