This I didn’t know. Certainly the story-breaking idea is the reason he’s given, so you could easily be right.
Certainly coughAslancough.
I’ve been wondering about that since Aslan. The Lone Ranger and Tom Mix and Roy Rogers countless games of ‘cowboys and indians’… and, just for the heck of it, Optimus Prime, who may be new, but has countless stories about him, these days.
First off, this thread needs a great, honking spoiler warning.
Second, the origin of ‘fableness’ is obscure. While it seems likely that the stories come into play somehow I’m uncertain whether the stories create the fables or the fables create the story. It could just as easily be that the archtype stories are so strong that they bleed into the creative process in this and other worlds.
Certainly we’ve seen Ichabod Crane in flashback FAR before he was ever written down by Washington Irving.
Never mentioned by name, and could just as easily have been King Noble, from the same suite of stories as Reynard the Fox.
Willingham also mentions that he’s gotten away with some ‘single mention’ appearances by copyrighted characters. But nothing that would either impact the storyline or get him in trouble.
There’s also an alternate, early take of the storyline where the adversary is Peter Pan, all grown up, but it was abandoned fairly early for what I believe are story and copyright reasons.
As others have mentioned, Willingham never mentioned Aslan (or Narnia) by name or showed him directly. The series referred to him as “the Great Lion”.
Also said something like ‘he was always a little holier-than-thou so no one was too upset’ when Aslan got speared or somesuch.