by Jon Favreau. Development Conception and creation Screenwriter Linda Woolverton conceived Nala "as part of a gradual progression ... which have driven recent public conversation about what young girls should be able to expect from their cinematic role models." In early versions of the screenplay, Nala has a younger brother named Mheetu, who enjoys accompanying her and her best friend Simba on their adventures. Pronounced "me too", the character's name is a reference to this personality trait. Simba was intended to save the cub from a wildebeest stampede, and Nala would eventually become responsible for protecting Mheetu from Simba's tyrannical uncle Scar. Nala also had a fox friend named Bhati. According to Woolverton, Mheetu and Bhati were eventually written out of the film because their stories were beginning to distract from Simba's, in addition to the Mheetu-Scar subplot making the film too dark when combined with the death of Simba's father Mufasa. At one point, Nala also had a named father; the character was similarly abandoned. In addition, in another script, Sarafina (then named Naanda) was Sarabi's younger sister, and Mufasa was implied to be her mate, and thus Nala's Father. This implication was censored in the final draft as it would lead to incest between Simba and Nala as half siblings as well as first cousins. Because The Lion King was originally conceived as a much more mature and adult-oriented film, Nala was intended to have been banished from the Pride Lands as punishment for rejecting Scar's romantic advances. This idea was to have been further explored in Scar's song "Be Prepared (Reprise)", during which Scar demands that Nala become his queen, but the musical number was ultimately cut from the final film because the scene was considered too "creepy." Matthew Roulette of TheFW believes that the scene was abandoned because of the significant age difference between Nala and Scar. The character has a mother, whose name is never mentioned in the film; however, she is credited as Sarafina during the film's end credits. Candice Russel of the Sun-Sentinel believes that Nala contributes to the film's love story – "an indispensable factor in Disney cartoon features" – in addition to convincing Simba to return to Pride Rock. It has been observed that, unlike Disney's three previous animated efforts (The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992), the romantic relationship between Nala and Simba is not