Trivia for
Aladdin (1992) More at IMDbPro »

• Animator Eric Goldberg based the Genie on the drawings of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
  
  
• The opening scene with the street merchant was completely unscripted. Robin Williams was brought into the sound stage and was asked to stand behind a table that had several objects on it and a bed sheet covering them all. The animators asked him to lift the sheet, and without looking take an object from the table and describe it in character. Much of the material in that recording session was not appropriate for a Disney film.
  
  
• Some of the Genie's imitations were cut from the film, including John Wayne, George Bush and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
  
  
• Robin Williams provided the voice for the Genie, at union scale rate (the lowest legal pay rate a studio can give an actor), on the provisos that his voice was not used for merchandising (i.e. toys and such) and that the Genie character not take up more than 25% of the space of a poster, ad, billboard, or trailer. When these wishes were not granted, he withdrew his support for Disney and the film. As a result, his name was not included in "The Art of Aladdin" book (it makes constant references to "the voice of the Genie"), and he was not available for the direct-to-video sequel The Return of Jafar (1994) (V) or the "Aladdin" (1994) TV show (Dan Castellaneta filled in as the voice of the Genie for these productions). In an attempt to get back on good terms with Williams, Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner apologized to him with a peace offering of an original Pablo Picasso painting. Still angered and feeling betrayed by Disney, Williams would not accept the gift. It was not until Jeffrey Katzenberg was fired and a new producer hired did Williams return to Disney. Through this new producer, a public apology was given (by the producer). Promises were made to right wrongs, and Williams was so touched that he came back as the Genie for the second direct-to-video sequel, Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1995) (V). Disney was so thrilled that they threw out the previously completed recording sessions with Castellaneta.
  
  
• This film became the 14th (and the first animated movie) to gross more than $200,000,000.
  
  
• The most successful film of 1992, earning over $217 million at the US box office and over $504 million worldwide.
  
  
• This was the first major animated film which was advertised on the strength of having a major movie star providing one of its voices (Robin Williams in this case). This has since become the norm with animated features.
  
  
• John Candy, Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy were all considered at one point to provide the voice of the Genie.
  
  
• Robin Williams recorded most of his scenes in between filming breaks on Hook (1991) and Toys (1992).
  
  
• Eight other songs were written for the film but were later removed.
  
  
• When the film was first released on VHS in October 1993, it sold over 10.8 million copies in its first week and went on to sell over 25 million in total. This record stood for only two years when it was beaten by the release of The Lion King (1994).
  
  
• An IMAX version was planned but never released.
  
  
• Linda Woolverton, who had written the screenplay to Beauty and the Beast (1991), did a first draft screenplay for "Aladdin".
  
  
• Howard Ashman and Alan Menken originally conceived the opening song "Arabian Nights" to be recurrent throughout the film, acting as narration. This idea was dropped when the visuals and storytelling proved strong enough in their own right.
  
  
• The color design of the film was inspired by old Persian miniatures and Victorian paintings of the Middle East.
  
  
• Layout supervisor Rasoul Azadani traveled to his hometown of Ispahan in Iran in 1991 to get a feel for the look of the film. He took nearly 2000 pictures there. The artists videotaped capuchin monkeys at the Los Angeles Zoo to give them an understanding of the physical characteristics of Abu.
  
  
• To capture the movement of Aladdin's low-cut baggy pants, animator Glen Keane looked at videos of rap star M.C. Hammer.
  
  
• Alan Menken had tentatively written a love song for Aladdin and Jasmine's magic carpet ride called "The World at Your Feet". When lyricist Tim Rice came on board, he changed it to "A Whole New World".
  
  
• The genie appears in the following guises: - a nightclub entertainer - a Scotsman - a Scottish terrier - Arnold Schwarzenegger - Ed Sullivan - a slot machine - Groucho Marx - a boxing trainer - a fireworks rocket - a French maître d' - a roast turkey - a pink rabbit - a dragon - a certificate - a pair of lips - Robert De Niro - a flight attendant - Carol Channing - a sheep - a hammock - a muscle man - Pinocchio - a magician - a Frenchman in a beret and striped shirt - a chef - Julius Caesar - Arsenio Hall - a tailor - a game-show host - a drum major - Walter Brennan - a little boy - a fat man - TV parade hosts - a tiger - a goat - a harem girl - Ethel Merman - Rodney Dangerfield - Jack Nicholson - a teacher - a talking lampshade - a bee - a submarine - a one-man band - a script prompter - a ventriloquist - a Fantasia (1940)-like devil - William F. Buckley - Jafar - cheerleaders - a baseball pitcher - a tourist with a Goofy hat - and the moon. - a zombie which strongly resembles Peter Lorre - For release in India, Disney replaced the game show host with a cricket commentator.
  
  
• In early visual development, Aladdin resembled Michael J. Fox. As the film developed, Jeffrey Katzenberg didn't think Aladdin had enough appeal to women, so he asked that Aladdin be beefed up a bit to resemble Tom Cruise.
  
  
• Jasmine's appearance was influenced by Jennifer Connelly, as well as the sister of her animator, Mark Henn.
  
  
• The stack of wooden toy animals that Jasmine's father plays with is sitting on a toy of the Beast from Beauty and the Beast (1991), another Disney animated movie. Sebastian from The Little Mermaid (1989) and Pinocchio (1940) can also be spotted.
  
  
• When the Genie changes Abu into a car, the license plate reads "ABU 1".
  
  
• The two men in the crowd that Aladdin pushes through are caricatures of a couple of the directors (John Musker and Ron Clements); the original plan was to use film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, but they couldn't get permission.
  
  
• A rumor circulated in late 2001 that during Aladdin's balcony scene he says, "Take off your clothes." He is talking to Raja at the time, and his exact words are, "Nice kitty, take off and go, go on." This has been cut in the DVD version.
  
  
• The idea of adapting the Aladdin story as a Disney animated musical was first proposed by Howard Ashman in 1988 at the time that he and Alan Menken were still working on The Little Mermaid (1989) and before work had begun on Beauty and the Beast (1991). Ashman wrote an initial treatment for the project and collaborated on six songs with Menken. When John Musker and Ron Clements finished directing duties on The Little Mermaid, they turned their attention to writing a first draft of this film's script, and eventually became its directors.
  
  
• WILHELM SCREAM: As the villagers flee in terror when the Genie (under Jafar's control) lifts the palace into the air.
  
  
• In the first draft, Aladdin had three friends (Babkak, Omar, and Kassim), a magic ring and two genies.
  
  
• Some of the original songs before the story was rewritten and half of the characters were cut: "Proud of Your Boy" (suppose to be sung by Aladdin to his mother - later removed from the story - while she was sleeping); "Call Me A Princess"; "Omar, Babkak, Aladdin, Kassim"; "Humiliate The Boy" (sung by Jafar, cut as it was considered too cruel for the film); "High Adventure"; "Count on Me" (which was something Aladdin sung to his friends and family, then it was changed to "A Whole New World").
  
  
• Not only is the plot similar to The Thief of Bagdad (1940) but character names Jafar (Jaffar) and Abu were apparently borrowed from the 1939 script by Lajos Biró. The characters in the silent original, The Thief of Bagdad (1924) were not given names.
  
  
• In the original folktale, Aladdin is actually Chinese.
  
  
• During the course of recording the voices, Robin Williams improvised so much they had almost 16 hours of material.
  
  
• Andreas Deja based Jafar on Marc Davis's design for Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty (1959). The two villains share more than just looks: both carry a staff which they use to execute evil magic; both have bird henchman (Maleficent's is a raven, Jafar's a parrot), and both turn themselves into gigantic animals in their respective films -- Maleficent as a dragon, Jafar as a snake. UltimateDisney.com featured Maleficent and Jafar in their Top Villain Countdown at #1 and #2, respectively.
  
  
• Bill Plympton turned down a seven-figure offer to work on this film, because any ideas and concepts he developed for his other projects while under contract with Disney would become their intellectual property.
  
  
• While filming this movie, Robin Williams frequently received calls from Steven Spielberg who at the time was working on Schindler's List (1993). He would put him on speaker phone so he could tell jokes to the cast and crew to cheer them up. Some of the material that he used was material that he was using for this film.
  
  
• Originally, the peddler who introduces the movie would be revealed to be the Genie at the end - hence the fact that Robin Williams voiced him, too. Notice the similarities in the design of the two, especially the eyebrows, the beard and the four-fingered hands. (All the other human characters have five fingers.)
  
  
• Jafar at first was more hot-tempered, while Iago was a cool, haughty British type. The filmakers felt that having Jafar losing his temper too much made him less menacing, so the personalities of the two characters were switched around.
  
  
• Production designer Richard Vander Wende devised a simple color scheme for the film, inspired by its desert setting. Blue (water) stands for good, red (heat) for evil, and yellow (sand) is neutral. For example, the villainous Jafar is clad in blacks and reds, while the virtuous Jasmine wears blue. Another example is in the Cave of Wonders, where the lamp's chamber is blue, and the ruby that tempts Abu is bright red.
  
  
• The fire walker in the "One Jump Ahead" number is a caricature of T. Hee, a former Disney story man who later taught caricature at CalArts, where many of the film's artists studied.
  
  
• Crazy Hakim, the "discount fertilizer" salesman in the opening chase, is a caricature of animator Tom Sito.
  
  
• Whenever Aladdin tells a lie, the plume on his hat falls and covers his face.
  
  
• The fireworks seen at the end of the film are reused special effects from The Rescuers (1977).
  
  
• When Howard Ashman began work on the movie, he developed the story as a fast-paced comic adventure about a young boy trying to prove his worth to his parents. But, in 1991, Ashman died, and the story problems stalled the movie. So, the plot was reworked to be about a teenager, Aladdin, seeking self-respect instead of the approval of others.
  
  
• In the original recording for the opening song "Arabian Nights", part of the song originally went "where they cut off your ear, if they don't like your face". After the movies release Arabic Americans took offense so the line was changed to "where it's flat and immense, and the heat is intense". If you listen closely, you can hear a distinct vocal change when he sings, "it's barbaric, but hey, it's home!"
  
  
• There are 513 people listed in the credits.
  
  
• In the throne scenes, the decorations at the top of the columns are the same designs used for Mrs. Potts and her teacups in Beauty and the Beast (1991).
  
  
• During script and storyboard development, the writers were already considering Robin Williams for the role of the Genie but had not approached him for the project. In order to convince Williams to do the role, Eric Goldberg animated the Genie doing several minutes of Williams's stand-up routines and screened it for him. Williams was so impressed that he signed almost immediately.
  
  
• This is (as of 2006) the only traditionally animated film to be nominated for the MTV Movie Award for best picture.
  
  
• When Aladdin asks Genie if he can make him into a prince, and Genie consults his "cookbook", one of the things he pulls out of the book is Sebastian from The Little Mermaid (1989)
  
  
• Scheduling conflicts with "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987) forced Patrick Stewart to turn down the role of Jafar. He has said in interviews that this is his biggest regret.
  
  
• In the preview screenings for the movie, nobody applauded after the big song numbers. The animators wanted applause and so somebody stuck the Genie with an "Applause" sign at the end of "Friend Like Me". The joke worked and the sign was kept for the movie.
  
  
• Because Robin Williams ad-libbed so many of his lines, the script was turned down for a Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award nomination.
  
  
• The second Disney animated feature to use fully rendered and textured 3-D CGI moving backgrounds in combination with the traditionally animated character animation, a technique that was expanded upon in the Disney short Off His Rockers (1992) and previously in Beauty and the Beast (1991). This led to the creation of "Deep Canvas" a brand-new technique created by Disney 7 years later for use in Tarzan (1999), which allows 2D hand-drawn characters to exist seamlessly in a fully 3D environment.
  
  
• On what came to be known among the Aladdin animators as Black Friday, then Disney head Jeffrey Katzenberg told the team to scrap virtually everything they'd been working on for months and start all over again. He also refused to move the film's release date. Directors John Musker and Ron Clements were able to completely turn around the film's new plot and screenplay in just eight days.
  
  
• Aladdin's personality and, initially, his look, were based on that of 'Michael J. Fox'. In the film, Aladdin is chased by burly, unintelligent louts, who end up falling into a large pile of manure, which was much the situation of Fox's Marty McFly in 'Back to the Future (1985)'.
  
  
• The Islamic cultural setting of the film is directly referenced to several times throughout the film. Such examples include when The Sultan yells "Praise Allah" when he realizes that Jasmine wants to marry Prince Ali/Aladdin, when The Sultan says "Allah forbid you have any daughters!" when he is frustrated with Jasmine, and when the thief in the beginning says "By Allah" when he sees The Cave of Wonders.
  
  

• SPOILER: When Aladdin puts Jafar back into the lamp, the spell on the other characters is broken - the Magic Carpet gets returned to normal, and Jasmine's dress turns back from red to blue. Start watching when Jasmine's tiger cub jumps into the Sultan's arms. When the cub hits his arms and starts to grow back into a tiger, just before he becomes normal, the tiger's face appears as Mickey Mouse for one frame.
  
  

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