Mahabharata and Disney Lab Rats

Within Mahabharata - one of the greatest Sanskrit epics - there is a verse that describes the epic itself:

"Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here, is nowhere else."

While surfing through channels I came upon the Disney program Lab Rats - Episode "Bionic Showdown" (per Wikipedia). The key premise of the story is about a billionaire who has three bionic kids - one with intellect, one with strength, and one with agility/speed - and a regular kid who is the traditional "good-at-heart but full-of-pranks" Disney staple. In this episode there is an extra bionic - who is later revealed to have the combined skills of all three - built by the billionaire's evil brother and is used to try to destroy the other bionics.

As the plot unraveled, I realized the strong similarities with the good old Mahabharata. Here are the key ones just based on this episode:

1. The three bionics are similar to Yudhishtra (intellect), Bhima (strength), and Arjuna (speed/agility)
2. The billionaire and brother are akin to Pandava and Dritharashtra (good and evil fathers) - technically the evil brother can be compared to Duryodhana instead of Dritharashtra, but we will set that aside for now.
3. The android is equivalent to Karna - having strength of all the good bionics combined, but sides with evil
4. As a bit of a stretch, the goofy kid can be compared to Krishna - he doesn't fight by himself but assists/helps/boosts morale of the bionics and is there at the pivotal moment to turn things around

Now, I am not necessarily suggesting that the writers based the characters off of Mahabharata or were 'inspired' by it - I don't even know if they know that an epic called Mahabharata exists. I am also aware that it is easy to draw similarities in hindsight where none exist - like a Nostradamus 'prediction' of things that happened in the past.

However, what I do want to bring attention to is the notion that a seemingly unrelated story still seems to have strong similarities to aspect of Mahabharata - keeping true the quote at the beginning.

What also interests me is the possibilities that can arise if we were to do it the other way around. One of the most common complaints against the new readers of Mahabharata, or any other Sanskrit literature for that matter - is about how dated the situation, text, plot, and characters are. New generation of kids don't relate to names like "Yudhishtra" or "Yajnavalkya" or "Nachiketas", even though each name has been carefully crafted to provide insight in many cases to the character itself. Nor do kids relate to the story of kings of bygone era talking about caste and arrows and chariots (even though they interestingly don't have issues with similar concepts around Disney characters). Nor do kids relate to the complex moralities embedded within each story.

Imagine that if instead of finding similarities from a Disney story back to Mahabharata and then vainly posting in Facebook about the greatness of Mahabharata, this can be made more constructive. What if one is more proactive instead and read the epic carefully and then translate it to the modern world in a way that relates to kids without losing the story or the plot? If a minute component of Mahabharata can lead to a successful multi-season episode in Disney, imagine the number of episodes that can be created from all of Mahabharata! Truly, it will be endless.