Frozen’s co-director has revealed that she wanted to kill Olaf the snowman, a character that would go on to become one of the film’s most beloved characters.

Jennifer Lee said at an awards show in Los Angeles this weekend that when she came aboard Frozen mid-way through development, her first suggestion was to get rid of Olaf.

“My first note was, ‘kill the snowman,'” she recalled, as reported by Variety.

That obviously did not happen. Lee said a “sneaky” animator working on Frozen developed a three-page treatment for Josh Gad as Olaf. Lee was impressed and the rest, as they say, is history.

The original Frozen does have a song, “In Summer,” in which Olaf sings about having a good time when the weather warms up in summer. The joke of the song is that he would die in summer.

Frozen earned more than $1.3 billion at the box office and won two Oscars. A sequel, Frozen II, was released in 2019 and was a bigger box office smash with $1.45 billion worldwide.