Trivia
Dedicated to the memory of Glenn McQueen (1960-2002), a Pixar animator who would later be honored as the namesake of Lightning McQueen in Cars.
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Cameo (1)
Pixar's characters are often planned years in advance. Nemo first appeared as a stuffed toy on a couch in Boo's room in Monsters, Inc.. This movie introduces the main characters of post-2003 Pixar films. A boy in the dentist's office is reading a "Mr. Incredible" comic book, anticipating The Incredibles. Luigi the car is driving by the dentist's office, anticipating Cars.
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According to the DVD, the names of the nine boats seen in the Sydney harbor are: Sea Monkey, Major Plot Point, Bow Movement, iBoat (a reference to iTunes, the company created by Pixar CEO Steve Jobs), Knottie Buoy, For the Birds, Pier Pressure, Skiff-A-Dee-Doo-Dah (a reference to Song of the South's most famous song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"), and The Surly Mermaid.
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The coloration of Gill's face simulates the characteristic lines around the mouth of voice actor Willem Dafoe.
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Afraid that kids would try releasing their pet fish by flushing them down a drain, a company that manufactures equipment used by water filtration and sewage treatment plants released a warning the Thursday after the film came out saying that, even though drains do eventually reach the ocean, before it got there the water would go through equipment which breaks down solids, and went on to say that in real life the movie would more appropriately be called "Grinding Nemo".
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The waiting room in the dentist's office was modeled after the waiting room in a real dentist's office in Emeryville, California, where Pixar Animation Studios has its headquarters.
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One of the boats is named Jerome's Raft, after Jerome Ranft, a Pixar art department sculptor.
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Albert Brooks was always Andrew Stanton's first choice to voice the part of Marlin. Although Brooks had done several episodes of The Simpsons, he found voice work for a feature length cartoon to be substantially different in that he had to do it in isolation, and not alongside any other actors. He didn't particularly enjoy the experience.
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Work first began on the movie in 1997. Physical production actually began in January 2000 with a crew that ultimately comprised 180 people.
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The waving strands on the anemones on the seabed move about using the same computer program that animated Sully's hair in Monsters, Inc..
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The look and feel of the underwater world was essential to the film's success. To that end, the production crew were all exposed to visits to aquariums, diving stints in Monterey and Hawaii, study sessions in front of Pixar's own 25-gallon fish tank and even a series of in-house lectures from an ichthyologist.
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Andrew Stanton pitched his idea and story to Pixar head John Lasseter in an hour-long session, using elaborate visual aids and character voices. At the end of it, the exhausted Stanton asked Lasseter what he thought, to which Lasseter replied, "You had me at 'fish'."
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For the jellyfish sequence, Pixar's Ocean Unit created an entire new system of shading which they called "transblurrency" - see-through but blurred, much like a frosted bathroom window.
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As "research", the key figures of the production crew had to get SCUBA certification and go to the Great Barrier Reef on the insistence of John Lasseter.
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One of the dentist's patients is "little Davy Reynolds", a reference to David Reynolds, one of the film's writers.
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To see how realistic they could make it appear, the art team were asked to make exact copies of actual underwater and above-water shots. Ultimately the results were simply deemed "too realistic" for a cartoon.
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According to the DVD, there are some references to Massachusetts in the film as one of the creators is from Rockport, Massachussetts. While various sea creatures are relating Marlin's quest across the ocean, one step is a group of lobsters that speak with Boston accents and slang ("wicked daahhk").
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In the tank gang in the dentist's office, the germophobic purple and yellow fish is the only one never mentioned by name. His name was later revealed to be Gurgle.
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Claimed the all-time first day USA record for home-release sales with 8 million copies sold (80% of which were on DVD).
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As of January 2005, it is the bestselling DVD of all time in the world with 22 million copies sold.
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Though never mentioned in the film, it is revealed by the directors in the commentary that Crush and his crew of thrill-seeking turtles are headed for Hawaii. Also mentioned in the commentary is that the young turtles' shells are modeled after Hawaiian shirts.
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Rendering a frame which lasted about 1/24th of a second in the film could take up to four days because of the complexity of the underwater environment with sunlight coming through the water and hitting fish scales.
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One musical theme that Thomas Newman composed for the score did not end up in the final film but still appeared both in one of the trailers and on one of the DVD menus.
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Dory Lane and Marlin Drive are intersecting streets in the Bay Area suburb of Redwood City, just across the bay from Pixar's home.
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The names of the two main Turtles are also the names of citrus soda brands popular in the United States: Crush and Squirt.
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Director Andrew Stanton originally planned to reveal the fate of Marlin's wife gradually through flashbacks seen periodically as the story unfolded. After a few early in-house screenings, he found that Marlin came off as too much of a worrywart, and decided to reveal the entire back-story up front, thus making Marlin more appealing by establishing the reason for his over-protectiveness.
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In the original cut of the movie, the whale that swallows Marlin and Dory approaches them from the front. This version of the scene appeared in an early trailer. The final version, with the whale coming from behind, was inspired by an early animation test showing a whale emerging from the murk of the ocean behind a small fish.
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Animators studied dogs' facial expressions, paying particular attention to the eyes, to animate the expression of the fish.
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John Lasseter considered Danny Elfman to score the film. When he turned it down Hans Zimmer was asked, but he turned it down as well.
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Pixar developed a very realistic look of the surface water, but had to make it look more fake so people wouldn't think it was real footage of the ocean surface.
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In Latin the word nemo means 'nobody' or 'no one'. It is also a reference to Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's novel "20,000 leagues under the sea".
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EASTER EGG: On the Bonus Features menu on disc 2, highlight the return symbol, then press down, and a green fish will appear. Select this to see a commercial for the Aquascum 2003.
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William H. Macy was originally cast as Marlin and recorded all of his dialogue. He was ultimately replaced with Albert Brooks.
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Jacques' character is partly based on actor Fritz Feld, whose trademark was to "pop" his mouth by slapping it with the palm of his hand to indicate his "superior" annoyance.
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Ranked #10 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Animation" in June 2008.
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When Dory is comforting Marlin in the whale, the animators used the same sequence earlier in the movie when Dory meets Marlin for the first time.
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Nigel's line, "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta eat" is a reference to the line "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly," in the song "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" from the Broadway musical 'Show Boat'.
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In order for it to sound like Nigel had Marlin and Dory in his mouth, Geoffrey Rush held onto his tongue as he said his lines.
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The great white shark's name in the movie was Bruce. "Bruce" was the nickname given to the models used for the shark in the original _Jaws_, named after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer.
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Per the DVD extras, Albert Brooks spent an entire day in the recording studio improvising badly mangled versions of the anemone joke; no two tellings were fumbled in the same way. He had the recording technicians in stitches for the duration.
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When Gil is thinking ahead about how he and the fish will escape, as the camera pans toward and out the window, the Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story can be seen on the outside.
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The dentist's camera's model number is A-113, a number which appears in all Pixar movies as a reference to the California Arts University room where the animators of Pixar Studios attend.
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On the bottom of a tank is an algae-coated model boat, on top of which is the mermaid from Knick Knack.
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Among the toys in the waiting room are the jack-in-the-box and Buzz Lightyear and, on a shelf, the plane he used to "fly" in Toy Story and Pixar's trademark ball from Luxo Jr..
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Surpassed The Lion King to become the highest-grossing animated film at that time. The Lion King producer Don Hahn called director Andrew Stanton to congratulate him and said, "It's about time".
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Dory does get Nemo's name right a total of 7 times, 4 of them without being corrected first. Of course some of these times are in quick succession. She also calls him Chico, Fabio, Bingo, Harpo, and Elmo, in that order.
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Megan Mullally revealed that she was originally doing a voice in the film. According to Mullally, the producers were quite disappointed to learn that the voice of her character Karen Walker on the television show _"Will and Grace" (1998)_ wasn't her natural speaking voice. The producers hired her anyway, and then strongly encouraged her to use her Karen Walker voice for the role. When Mullally refused, she was fired.
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Cameo
Rove McManus:
the crab threatened by Dory. Rove was the biggest late night talk show host in Australia at the time, with his show Rove Live.
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