A post on social media has been going viral with the claim that Disney paid $60 million to a German artist to “paint stripes” in their old movies. According to the post and accompanying video, this is an attempt to “make you believe” lines in the sky (implied to be chemtrails) have always existed and are a normal part of daily life.
“Chemtrails” are a long-running (oft-debunked) conspiracy theory centred around the belief that lingering condensation trails (also known as “contrails”) in the sky left by aircraft are actually chemical agents or other dangerous substances. The motive for this varies even within the conspiracy, with some believing the trails are causing increased illness to enforce population control and others believing it is part of weather manipulation or weapons testing. Despite being debunked by multiple scientists and experts, this conspiracy has nonetheless remained a long-running and popular one.
In the claim video, a man is giving a talk while describing the claim in detail – saying that a Disney producer was tasked with “putting stripes in the sky.” However, notably, neither the video nor the post give examples from any Disney movie, nor any further information about the Disney producer or where the information is from.
We conducted a few basic searches to find the origin of the claim, but initially could find no English-language sources even mentioning it – almost like this recent claim sprouted from thin air. However, carrying out a reverse image search on the video led us to a post from July 2024 on Facebook in Georgian where the same claim is being made.
From this post, we identified the man in the video as Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt – a German doctor working in the USA with a rather controversial reputation surrounding his homeopathic and holistic therapeutic protocols for chronic illnesses. From what we could find, he has created a great deal of video and written content about various conspiracy and niche health theories.
After combing through hundreds of videos on YouTube and other platforms where Klinghardt makes appearances discussing chemtrails in a similar way alongside other controversial medical issues, we found the original source of the clip from the main post. It was posted in 2016 and seems to be a lecture in German that is also being live-translated into English. Based on the video, this claim stems directly from Klinghardt, who says this information was given “by a patient” – supposedly the one given the task of painting in “stripes” or “trails.” 
It appears that he has taken this second-hand information and retold it to a large crowd without substantiation or even any supporting evidence. This has subsequently been clipped and spread on social media by those wishing to push the chemtrail conspiracy. The $60 million figure does not come up in the Klinghardt video and instead seems to be an additional flourish added by whoever clipped and reshared the claim.
Further, while Disney has regularly remastered and cleaned up their old film catalogue in step with new technologies (from VHS to DVD, and now Digital HD) it very rarely adds new elements to the original. Rather, the main difference being pointed out (and sometimes bemoaned by fans) are centred around visual issues such as tweaked lighting and loss of detail. Analysis of these different film versions by fans, film critics, and animation historians are numerous and widely available – with none mentioning new additions of chemtrails or line in the sky.
Therefore, the claim that Disney paid $60 Million to update their old films with lines in the sky as a way of normalising chemtrails is unsubstantiated and comes from a controversial figure who appears to strongly believe in the conspiracy. There is also no evidence of added trails or lines in actual remastered Disney films. We give this claim a rating of false.
