Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-24018644-20150228155751/@comment-5106672-20161204174816

8Rob wrote: They said they had to go to a lot of meetings to get the permssion to use the characters, and they weren't totally free to write to storylines because Disney was "helping" them

And that's exactly my point. Disney is clearly involved in this show. No, it's not. As others and I said over and over again, the Frozen and Brave characters are direct adaptations of the Disney characters, which isn't true for any other character in the show.

The thing with the Frozen arc is, Frozen is a currently active, incredibly financially succesful franchise for the Disney company. So successful in fact that any plans for Anna and Elsa to join the official Disney Princess franchise was put on hold because they make so much more money on their own than they would marketed as a group with the other princesses. THAT is the reason why Disney meddled with OUAT when directly lending them those very same characters. This is why Elsa, Anna, Kristoff and Hans were severely regulated by Disney, not even allowing a change in the outfit, in order for OUAT to use them. And why they went back to square one when the arc was over. But other than that, OUAT could still take a lot of liberties with their surrounding – see how twisted and dark their family tree turned out to be. In the case of minor, background characters they went as far as changing their names: Queen Gerda is actually called Iduna (although it's not 100% official) in the movie.

So, financially succesful franchise loans not withstanding, Disney has nothing to do with OUAT other than owning the network it runs on, and being referenced mostly through easter eggs throughout the series.