Olaf (Frozen)

Olaf is a fictional character in Disney's Frozen franchise. He first appeared in Walt Disney Animation Studios' animated film Frozen (2013). He later appears in other related Frozen media, including the sequel Frozen 2 (2019), and serves as the central character in the featurette Olaf's Frozen Adventure (2017), the short film Once Upon a Snowman (2020), and the series of shorts Olaf Presents (2021). In the Frozen filmography he is voiced by Josh Gad.

At the beginning of Frozen, Olaf is an inanimate snowman created by Elsa and Anna in their childhood. He then reappears in the film as an anthropomorphic snowman created by Elsa's ice powers, and helps Anna and Kristoff in their journey to find Elsa.

Olaf is an optimistic character; he is obsessed with summer and heat and loves "warm hugs". Originally designed as one of Elsa's henchmen, Olaf's character was rewritten in the final version of Frozen as a sweet character that represents the innocent love between the two sisters. With his ability to break his body apart and childlike personality, Olaf provides much of the comic relief in the franchise.

Critics have been polarised by the character, with some finding Olaf adorable while others describe him as annoying. He quickly emerged as a fan-favourite character, making him one of the breakout characters of the franchise. For voicing Olaf, Gad was recognized with two Annie Award wins in 2014 and 2020.

The Disney studio made their first attempts to adapt Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, "The Snow Queen", as early as 1943, when Walt Disney considered the possibility of producing a biography film of the author. However, the story and the characters proved to be too symbolic to translate into film. Later on, other Disney executives had made efforts to translate this material to the big screen, however these proposals were all shelved due to similar issues.

In 2008, Chris Buck pitched Disney his version of the story called Anna and the Snow Queen, which was planned to be traditionally animated. This version was "completely different" from Frozen; it had a storyline that stuck much closer to the original material and featured an entirely different Olaf character. However, by early 2010, the project was scrapped again. On December 22, 2011, Disney announced a new title for the film, Frozen, which would be released on November 27, 2013, and a different crew from the previous attempt. The new script, which employed "the same concept but was completely rewritten", finally solved the long-term problem with Andersen's story by depicting Anna and Elsa as sisters.

In early versions of the film, Olaf was written as the first of a legion of snowman guards that Elsa created at her castle. Buck likened Olaf to a pancake that Elsa had created while learning her powers before throwing away. Jennifer Lee said that Olaf's odd shape came from thinking about the imperfect shapes that children make out of snow when building a snowman. Once Josh Gad was on board, the creative team realised that Olaf's part as a henchman in the film was not working and spent two weeks discussing how to integrate the character into the plot. With the aim of giving him more fun and making him a part of Elsa and Anna's childhood, they arrived at the idea that he loves summer and this was an ideal way to emphasise the theme of innocence. This concept was then developed into the song "In Summer", which was written by the songwriting team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez for Gad's vocals to illustrate Olaf's naivety.

The core element of the story was the love between the sisters. As children the girls build a snowman that represents the love between them. This became the core concept for Olaf. Lee said that the character began to take shape once the team had established what he meant to the girls. Lee explained that Olaf represents an innocent form of love. When Elsa sings "Let It Go" she recalls her last happy moment when she and Anna created Olaf in childhood. Thus, Olaf is imbued with that innocent love and some characteristics of Anna as she was as a child. Olaf also provides a significant amount of comic relief in the film, which Lee described as a "kids-state-the-obvious kind of way".