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In the 1992 Disney adaptation of Aladdin, by my count, at least two wishes get revoked without explanation.

  1. Aladdin becoming a prince gets revoked. Somehow. The answer here suggests that Jafar zapped him back to being a peasant, but I'm not sure that makes sense. It looked like Jafar was just revealing Aladdin to be a peasant--not transforming him back. Keep in mind, at this point, Jafar is still less powerful than the genie, and it took the genie several minutes to do the forward transformation.
  2. Jafar's wish of being Sultan gets revoked. And, in this case, there isn't any explanation I can think of. After Jafar wishes to become Sultan, he wishes to become the most powerful sorcerer. He never gives up being Sultan. Yet, somehow at the end of the movie, the real Sultan has his clothes back (how did that happen, anyway?), and he's Sultan again!

The question is: what justifies these?

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The script is very clear on the first point. Jafar doesn't just remove his Aladdin's fancy clothes, he fully reverts him to being a peasant: He literally zaps [Prince] ALI back to [commoner] ALADDIN:

Yes, meet a blast from your past
Whose lies were too good to last
Say hello to your precious Prince Ali!

(JAFAR zaps ALI back to ALADDIN.) - Aladdin Disney Script

In the second case, Jafar doesn't just wish to become the most powerful sorcerer in the world (which he already is, courtesy of wish #2) but to literally become a genie. Now, I appreciate that there's no logical reason why you couldn't be both a sultan and a genie but the phrasing of the wish suggests he no longer wishes to be merely the sultan, he now wants to be a genie instead

JAFAR: Slave, I make my third wish! I wish to be an all powerful genie!

GENIE: (Reluctantly) All right, your wish is my command. Way to go, Al.

If we assume that Jafar stops being the Sultan, then the rightful Sultan would then resume his title and position (and because people need to see this visual change, get his clothes back too).

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    Zapping 'Ali' back to 'Aladdin' seems even more confusing! Does this mean that in fulfilling the actual wish, Genie had actually swapped Aladdin with some existing Prince in the minds of people who knew that Prince? Or conjured up a princedom/kingdom full of folks who thought Aladdin was their very own Prince Ali?
    – Shisa
    Commented Oct 10, 2014 at 8:25
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    I'm fairly sure that it's the latter. He turns up with a retinue of followers.
    – Valorum
    Commented Oct 10, 2014 at 9:07
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    Just because someone makes you a prince doesn't stop someone else from taking it away. Just because I might give you $100, doesn't stop the guy around the corner from mugging you and taking your $100.
    – BBlake
    Commented Oct 10, 2014 at 12:46
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    Hey, I have a logical reason you can't be both a sultan and a genie: genies are slaves stuck in lamps. Can't rule the sultanate if you can't exercise that PHENOMONAL COSMIC POWER without enslaving yourself to anyone who rubs your lamp to get you out of your itty bitty living space.
    – user40790
    Commented Mar 30, 2017 at 13:26
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I always interpreted it like this:

Aladdin's wish is granted, he becomes a prince. The wish is now complete and everything else is up to him. As a prince now, Aladin can mess up and get exposed and lose his "prince-status" (just like in real life).

The other one, where Jaffar is no longer sultan when he becomes a genie, it's the same thing. He was made sultan, but he neglected his sultan duties (and then disappeared into a lamp) so no one knew where the current sultan went. The country needed a new leader, it makes sense to just reinstate the old one (even though he seems to have the mind of a 5 year old).

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