Hercules and the Arabian Night


"Hercules and the Arabian Night" is a crossover episode of Disney's Hercules: The Animated Series. It aired on February 10, 1999, featuring characters from Disney's Aladdin franchise including, Aladdin, Princess Jasmine, Jafar and Abu.

Summary

As Hades goes through his usual job of bringing fresh souls in, Pain and Panic tell him that one of the souls is not cooperating. The soul in question, Jafar, approaches Hades and demands to be sent back. Hades is at first unconcerned, but they find a common ground: Jafar tried to overtake Agrabah, Hades is trying to overtake Mount Olympus, and they both have been defeated by "upstart boys". They make a bet that they can defeat each other's respective nemesis, and Hades gives Jafar a new snake staff, which turns him into a mortal as long as it remains in his possession. Then he orders Jafar to attack Hercules while he's training on Philoctetes's island.
At said island, Phil is trying to teach Hercules not to use just his strength, but also his brains from time to time. Jafar appears and summons several monsters to go after Hercules. Jafar initially gains the upper hand until Hercules picks up Phil's "statue head" house, bashes the beasts and proceeds to smash it on Jafar, who gets knocked back to the Underworld. Hades then decides to send Pain and Panic to Agrabah to take Aladdin out. When the minions arrive in the Arabian city, they first mistake Abu for Aladdin, but the real Aladdin, along with his wife Jasmine, arrives on Carpet. After a scuffle, Pain and Panic are about to finish Aladdin off, but Aladdin convinces them to look into his lamp, and Genie's hand punches them all the way back into the Underworld.
With this humiliating double defeat, Jafar offers the idea of getting Hercules and Aladdin into fighting and killing each other. Hades likes the idea and puts the plan into motion by kidnapping Abu from Agrabah and Icarus from Prometheus Academy. When Hercules can't find Icarus, an old man fools him by telling him that a "young rogue named Aladdin" kidnapped him. Later, in Agrabah, Aladdin and Jasmine are led to believe by Pain and Panic that Hercules kidnapped Abu.
When Hercules, Phil and Pegasus arrive in Agrabah, Aladdin, Jasmine and Carpet engage them. Aladdin gets Hercules to chase him through the alleyways of Agrabah to an old abandoned building and to punch enough holes in the walls to bring most of the house down on top of Hercules. While Hercules holds it up, Aladdin demands to know where he hid Abu; Hercules responds by wanting to know where Aladdin took Icarus. This leads Aladdin to realize they have been tricked, but before they can work it out, the building collapses on both of them. While Jafar and Hades believe that the heroes have been destroyed, Hercules gets himself and Aladdin out of the rubble. They piece together that they were set up and that Hades and Jafar are holding Icarus and Abu in the Underworld. Aladdin wants to charge in to rescue them, but Hercules thinks of another way.
As Hades tells Jafar of his plans for Olympian domination, Pain and Panic yell alert them to Hercules and Aladdin's impending arrival. Jafar is sent to stop them; but acting on an idea by Hercules, he and Aladdin have swapped their identities, fooling Jafar into engaging them with the wrong countermeasures. Jafar is unable to stop Aladdin from nabbing the snake staff and tossing it to Hercules, who snaps it in half. This effect turns Jafar back into a soul and pulls him down into the River Styx for good. Icarus and Abu have in the meantime escaped and begin punching Hades, until he threatens to make them "permanent residents".
Hercules and Aladdin congratulate each other before Aladdin takes Jasmine, Abu and Carpet back to Agrabah, telling Hercules that he'll make a great hero someday. Icarus, having bonded with Abu, asks Hercules if they can get a monkey.

Cast

An unusual aspect of this episode is that it indicates that Aladdin and Hercules existed around the same time, though one would logically conclude that they lived at least a millennium apart. On the other hand, some of Aladdin's enemies, such as Mechanicles, Queen Hippsodeth and Dominus Tusk, could easily be the same vintage as Hercules. Also during the "A Whole New World" part in the original 1992 film, Aladdin and Jasmine can be seen riding through what could be Greece. Another thing to note is that in The Return of Jafar, Genie states that he raced with Hercules.
Princess Jasmine mentions that she and Aladdin are married, indicating this episode takes place after the events of Aladdin and the King of Thieves, which would explain Iago's absence in this episode and also explain why Aladdin has the same outfit on which he wore in Aladdin and the King of Thieves, this is additionally backed up by the fact that Aladdin appears physically older than his last appearance. This is a bit strange, though, since the episode seems to indicate that Jafar died recently, though there was an entire movie, and indeed a TV series, between his death in The Return of Jafar and this episode. It is possible that time passed differently in the underworld and that Jafar had to go through a waiting line before meeting up with Hades, as it is mentioned in many ancient texts that souls have to wait a long time to cross the river.