The story you know is the one that survived.
What appeared was not the direct-to-video Lion King 1½ she remembered from childhood. This was the ur-version . The one the directors, Bradley Raymond and others, had sketched before Disney’s "meta-humor" mandate took over. The timecode in the corner read 1999-02-31 —a date that never existed. lion king 1 1 2 internet archive
Elara watched, transfixed. The Archive’s metadata had a user comment from 2001, left by an anonymous Disney Burbank employee: "Test screening. Kids cried. Eisner said 'too dark, more pop culture jokes.' Raymond fought for the 'Rafiki's Grotto' sequence. He lost." The story you know is the one that survived