[quote="TGB!":a2a40]Same reason Sher Kahn was a suave business man, and the Monkey King a retard club owner. . .just cause. oOo: [/quote:a2a40]

I guess Disney just wanted to use some characters that were already drawn, so animators didn't have to make up new ones and people would identify the old characters. There were quite a few original characters in that show too, so who knows what the reason was.