Olaf

Olaf is a snowman who lives in Arendelle. He made a small cameo in the It's Christmas Time music video. It is unkown whether or not he will get a proper role in Crotoonia yet.

## Personality

Olaf is an excessively benevolent snowman—optimistic, outgoing, and welcoming to all of whom he meets. The living embodiment of the bond between Anna and Elsa, and the memories of their youth, Olaf retains the childlike whimsy that surrounded the girls during their earliest days together, prior to their enforced separation. As such, he is childlike, far from a deep intellectual, innocent, and a hint too naive for his own good at times. Nevertheless, his imbued nature and devotion to the two sisters play an instrumental role in rekindling their broken relationship. The circumstances of his creation also result in the snowman harboring aspects and traits both sisters give off. Like Elsa, Olaf is selfless, constantly putting his safety at risk for the sake of those he cares about; most notably Anna, whom he immediately attaches himself to, upon their first meeting. Like the younger sister, Olaf is an extreme optimist, often remaining relatively calm in perilous situations, or giving words of encouragement during the darkest hours.

## Trivia

* In the film, Olaf represents the happiness Elsa and Anna shared as young children. His desire to experience summer is symbolic of how Elsa wants to return to the old days of her childhood with her sister as her best friend.
	+ Olaf's very creation is an expression of how hard Elsa's self-imposed isolation from Anna was on her. The first voluntary act she performs with her power (as soon she decides to "let it go"), is to build the snowman that Anna spent those long years begging her to make with her. As she creates him, she sings the words "Can't hold it back anymore", revealing how dearly she always wanted to go play with her sister whenever she asked her to. It is possible that the sheer intensity of this long held desire was what brought Olaf to life, and if so, Elsa's later surprise when she discovers Olaf is alive may indicate that she never even admitted to herself how just badly she wanted to rekindle her friendship with Anna.
	+ The destruction of the original Olaf marked the precise moment that Elsa and Anna's happy childhood friendship came to an end. Also, original Olaf, much like Anna and Elsa's friendship, was destroyed by Elsa's power running amok due to her internal personal distress.
* Olaf may have been inspired by "The Snowman", another Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, where the eponymous snowman falls in love with a warm stove, but cannot be with it because he would melt from it. As a result, he does not enjoy the cold weather. Eventually, the weather changes, causing the snowman to melt away.
* In the film, Olaf's elbows were specifically animated to never move with the exception of his fantasy sequence during "In Summer".
* Olaf was specially designed to appear as if a child had created him, with an uneven shape and such, which is a reference to how Elsa models him at the beginning of Frozen when she and Anna are young.
* The animation and staging of the scene between Olaf and Sven during the epilogue of the film is similar to the teaser trailer's animation and staging, right down to Olaf's exclaiming, "Hello!"
* Early on in the film, when Anna and Elsa were seen as kids, Anna tells Elsa "the sky's awake." Olaf would later say this to Sven when they enter the Valley of the Living Rock. Also, as kids, Elsa helped Anna ice-skating with Olaf. Then by the end of the film, Olaf helps Anna ice-skating with Elsa. These are likely to reflect the childhood Anna and Elsa once shared.
* His role resembles that of the sparrows that assist Gerda in "The Snow Queen".
* Olaf's name came from an old Norse name "Aleifr", which means "ancestor's descendant" (referring to the fact that Olaf is Elsa's "descendant"), and is Nordic for "treasure". It is also pronounced "oh, laugh", referring to his role as comic relief.
	+ Coincidentally, "Olaf" was the name of five kings of Norway, the country where Frozen takes place.
* Before "In Summer", Olaf had a song titled "Hot Hot Ice", which was eventually scrapped.
* Olaf makes a cameo in Homer Simpson's video for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
* In Frozen Fever, it is revealed that Olaf cannot spell or read.
	+ However, in Olaf's Frozen Adventure, it is shown that Olaf wrote notes of the various traditions in the Kingdom of Arendelle; but since this happens during Anna and Elsa's first Christmas since the latter became Queen, so before Frozen Fever, which is set during the following summer, it's not clear how much illiterate Olaf is.
		- It is also possible, however, that Olaf was not really writing, but that he was simply making scribbles that made sense to him, as when in Frozen Fever, he had badly assembled the letters of Anna's birthday's banner.
* Olaf cannot feel pain - when he walks onto an ice spike, resulting in the spike passing through his mid-section, he merely looks down and says "Oh, look at that. I've been impaled." and giggles. However, he can feel some pain, shown when Anna accidentally pushed in his carrot nose too hard. He seems to be ticklish when Kristoff pushed him away from Sven. Despite being made of snow, Olaf has human abilities, such as sleeping, eating (despite lacking a digestive system), breathing, and senses of smell, taste (despite not having taste buds), sound, touch, and sight.
* John Lasseter, the Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, was used as a performance reference for Olaf's line "He's craaazy..."
* In order to accurately animate Olaf's walk cycle to mimic the way a child would move, Olaf's supervising animator, Hyrum Osmond, used his son as a reference during production.
* Olaf is the only Frozen character that did not appear on Once Upon a Time. The reason for this is because the creators of Once felt he would not fit into the story they were going to tell on the show.
* Olaf is the first guest Disney character that was not a princess to appear in the show Sofia the First, as well as being the first male summoned by the Amulet of Avalor.
* During renovations of the Walt Disney Animation Studios building, beginning in 2014, Olaf was one of the character silhouettes featured on the wall mural.
* In 2017, an Olaf balloon was featured in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade—designed by Chris Buck.
* Olaf's personal snow flurry only appears on warm days. It does not appear when it's cold outside.
* A book titled The Secret Admirer confirms that Olaf is aware of Hans' actions against Anna and Elsa, and has been noted to have a dislike for the prince as a result.