A secret on the Northuldra camp scene in Frozen 2

Let’s spot a hidden secret in Frozen 2.

After meeting the Northuldra people in the enchanted forest, Elsa and Anna were going to spend their night in their camp. However, the sudden appearance of the earth giants forces them to leave early. In this part, Elsa is already determined to leave immediately, and Anna looks around the Nordldra Camp for a while to find Kristoff.

Now, here’s the interesting part: the scene where the Northuldra people stare at the earth giants who have just left their camp. There’s a hidden secret in this scene. Maybe you might have already noticed it.

The answer is that, the right and left on this scene is deliberately reversed.

How can we say the right and left are reversed? If it is, why deliberate? From now on, I’ll elaborate on them.

Northuldra camp

As a first step, we need to understand what the Northuldra camp looks like.

We should focus on the shape of the hut they live in. Among them, take a closer look at the shape of the door. On that door, we can see a Z-shaped wooden ornament. The point is that it is not a straight Z, but reversed Z shape.

We can see the same door in other scenes. In the scene where Elsa and Honeymaren are chatting, we can also spot the Z-shaped door. Not that this place is different from the previous one.

Let’s check out one more scene. The above image is from the epilogue.

First, take a look at the door on the center spot. It’s a bit blurry, but we can clearly see that the door is again Z-shaepd.

Now move to the left one. At first glance, you might think this door is Z-shaped, not reversed one. However, you can see that this door is open. So if you close the door, you would again see the Z-shaped door.

Another evidence of this argument of Z-shaped door is to look over the motif of Northuldra people. The Northuldra is inspired by the Sámi people, and the Sámi people have traditionally lived in a hut named Goahti. The actual shape of Goahti looks above, and we can spot the Z-shaped door.

Based on the observations, we can defintely say the all the huts in the Northuldra camp have Z-shaped door.

The problem

Now let’s go back to the first scene where Anna looks at the camp. We can spot two doors in this scene, as marked in the above figure.

It’s a bit dark and tiny, so hard to recognize during the movie, but if you look at the door on the right side, after color correction, we see a straight Z-shaped door, not the reversed one.

Now, move on to the door on the left side. This might seem as a Z-shaped door, but taking a close look tells us that the door is open, which means the it would be Z-shaped if we close the door.

In other words, this is the only part of the entire Frozen 2 movie that the shape of the door of the Northuldra camp was depicted as straight Z-shape. Why is the door on this part described in this way? Did the team use another door modeling when rendering this part? I don’t think so.

Horizontal flip

One of the plausible explanations for this problem is to think this scene is horizontally-flipped.

This means that the correct image of Northuldra camp seen by Anna should be the one below in the figure, the horizontally-flipped one. That is, the animators originally had rendered this scene with Z-shaped door (not-flipped one, the actual Northuldra camp), but by any change, they decided to put the flipped version on the final film.

There are three reasons supporting this argument.

Reason 1. shape of the door

As I mentioned, the first evidence is that all the doors of Northuldra huts have Z-shaped ornament. It only takes 2~3 seconds when Anna stares at the Northuldra camp, and I don’t find any reason they would use other models for huts. Having observed the horizontally-flipped door, we can assume that the whole scene is horizontally-flipped.

Reason 2. Elsa chasing Bruni

The next piece of evidence is more direct.

Before Elsa gets to Northuldra camp, there’s a scene of Elsa chasing Bruni.

In this scene, Elsa chases Bruni across the Northuldra camp.

If we compare backgrounds between two scenes, it is noteworthy that the background of the Nordldra Camp exactly matches to the one with horizontally-flipped scene with Z-shaped door (not the original scene). The details of Elsa’s path will be covered in the following article. Still, considering the arrangement and shape of the camp, only the flipped one seems to be the correct image.

Reason 3. Outfit of Northuldra

The third reason concerns the outfit of the Northuldra people.

The outfits of the Northuldra show quite a contrast between men and women. Particularly pay attention to the direction of tools men and women are carrying. As shown in the concept art above, women carry knives on their left-side and men to the right-side. This difference between men and women is also observed in the outfits. For a more detailed analysis of outfits, see the previous article.

Equipped with this idea, let’s go back to the original scene.

If we look at the original scene, we can observe two Northuldra women carrying knives on their right side. Unlike other Northuldra women in all the other scenes, the outfits of Northuldra are also horizontally-flipped. This means that the whole scene would be flipped, so their outfit also looks flipped.

With these observations, we can indeed say this whole scene is horizontally-flipped. In other words, the animators first rendered this scene correctly, and for any reason, they put the flipped one in the final film.

Why flipped one?

Then why on earth do they use the horizontally-flipped one?

Of course, we don’t know the truth, but one possible scenario is as follows.

In this scene, we know that the earth giant is headed to the right looking for Elsa. This means that the Northuldra people, after this scene, should be looking at the right side of their camp since that’s the direction where the earth giant is headed.

However, suppose that the animator accidentally created this scene in the way people are looking left-side as above. And suppose that animator didn’t notice the problem and later found that the people should be looking right-side when finally combining it with another scene. That animator can re-render the scene from scratch to match the flow, but since it takes time and is actually not a very important scene, we can just flip the whole scene and use it. It is dark and difficult to notice the details, so there would be almost no problem.

The exact reason is unknown, of course, but what is certain is that this scene was made as it was, and then got horizontally-flipped and inserted into the final version.

Summary

1. The Northuldra camp seen by Anna when she is about to leave the camp is horizontally-flipped.
2. Comparing to other scenes suggests that the whole scene is flipped.
3. One possibility of this scene-flip is that the animator initially made a wrong direction design. When combining this scene with the final version, they just flipped this scene to save the production time.