History Trivia / TheRescuers

* AuthorExistenceFailure: Joe Flynn (Snoops) died unexpectedly in 1974, three years before this film was released. The voicework for the film was done around 1973.

** Had Penny not been replaced with Jenny, ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany'' would have instead been Disney's first sequel/spin-off in the canon, preceding ''Down Under'' by two years.

** Also, before it was completely retooled, the movie's antagonist and villain was originally going to be Cruella [=DeVille=]. In fact there is a bit of a DevelopmentGag there - Madame Medusa not only drives ''very'' similarly to Cruella, but also her jet ski looks to be inspired by Cruella's car.

* CreatorBacklash: Animator Creator/DonBluth was said to have finally had enough of Disney repeatedly falling short of their reputation with this film and, shortly thereafter, lead an infamous mass exodus of animators to his garage-based studio. He later said that he was especially livid about the main characters' eyes not being colored in.

** Brutus and Nero were initially going to be alligators according to [[https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/85/5e/fd/855efd4f96ec14db887bab4f5a056bde.jpg the concept art]], before the film officially identifies them as crocodiles (Bianca refers to them as "crocs"). More accurate too, as Brutus and Nero have interlocking teeth and are greenish in color, rather than overlapping jaws and darker coloration like an alligator would.

** In the planning phase, Orville the albatross was originally a pigeon.

** The movie was originally a very different movie than what was released. It was going to be a vehicle for Louis Prima (King Louis of ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967''), playing Louie the Bear, and, according to the video in the link, to be about a Bear using a pair of mice to help him escape from the zoo and to save his friends at the North Pole. This version was scrapped shortly before Prima lapsed into a coma and it was {{Retool}}ed into the movie we know today.[[note]]Prima never regained consciousness from his coma, and died the year after the finished film was released.[[/note]]

** Early drafts of the movie involved saving a polar bear from a tyrant penguin. Not sure how the finished product would have been.
** Yet another draft would have been rescuing a depressed poet from a prison in a frozen wasteland, which follows the book "The Rescuers", but in the end they followed the sequel "Miss Bianca" more closely.

** Even after it was {{Re Tool}}ed away from being a vehicle for him, Louis Prima was still going to be in the movie with his intended character reworked. In the original draft, Bernard and Bianca were going to talk to Louis the Bear about Penny where he revealed she came to the zoo often. He also sang a song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnHCbe24fjo "Peoplitis"]]. It may have been cut for time as Prima did record the song and, presumably, his lines.

** The movie was originally a very different movie than what was released. It was going to be a vehicle for Louis Prima (King Louis of ''Disney/TheJungleBook''), playing Louie the Bear, and, according to the video in the link, to be about a Bear using a pair of mice to help him escape from the zoo and to save his friends at the North Pole. This version was scrapped shortly before Prima lapsed into a coma and it was {{Retool}}ed into the movie we know today.[[note]]Prima never regained consciousness from his coma, and died the year after the finished film was released.[[/note]]

** Had Penny not been replaced with Jenny, ''Disney/OliverAndCompany'' would have instead been Disney's first sequel/spin-off in the canon, preceding ''Down Under'' by two years.

*** Less a development gag and more the result of one animator's insane jealousy. Milt Kahl, one of Creator/DisneysNineOldMen, had been insanely jealous of his colleague Marc Davis's animation of Cruella and Medusa was his attempt to finally "outdo" him.

** Yet another draft would have been rescuing a depressed poet from a prison, which follows the book "The Rescuers", but in the end they followed the sequel "Miss Bianca" more closely.

* {{Bowdlerization}}: In two frames of the movie in its theatrical release, when Bernard and Bianca are riding Orville, going down from the building they were on, one building next to them has an image of a live-action naked woman in one of the windows. Disney found this out prior to the film's initial VHS release and had the images removed (all subsequent home video releases, except the early prints of the 1999 VHS and Laserdisc, feature the edited version). According to animator Tom Sito, on his Facebook page, the image was put in by background artist Annie Guenther.
** A late-70s/early-80s episode of ''The Wonderful World of Disney'' about flight featured an excerpt from the scene in question, complete with topless woman. This episode aired when [=VCR=]s were starting to take off, and was rerun in syndication in the late-80s after [=VCR=]s became common, so the fact that it took nearly ''20 years'' for the public to find this out is an oddity.

* PostumousCredit: This was Joe Flynn's last film. He recorded his lines as Mr. Snoops only a few weeks before his untimely death from drowning in July 19, 1974. The film was released three years later.

** A late-70s/early-80s episode of ''The Wonderful World of Disney'' about flight featured an excerpt from the scene in question, complete with topless woman. This episode aired when VCRs were starting to take off, and was rerun in syndication in the late-80s after VCRs became common, so the fact that it took nearly ''20 years'' for the public to find this out is an oddity.

* {{Bowdlerization}}: In two frames of the movie in its theatrical release, when Bernard and Bianca are riding Orville, going down from the building they were on, one building next to them has an image of a live-action naked woman in one of the windows. Disney found this out prior to the film's initial VHS release and had the images removed (all subsequent home video releases, except the early prints of the 1998 VHS and Laserdisc, feature the edited version). According to animator Tom Sito, on his Facebook page, the image was put in by background artist Annie Guenther.

* ActorAllusion: Eva Gabor is from Hungary, which happens to be the country Bianca represents at the Rescue Aid Society.

* Seldom-Seen Species: Or in this case, heard. When Bernard walks into the zoo and before he is startled by the "grumpy ol'lion", a deep hooting sound can be easily mistaken for an owl's call; in reality, it's an African Ground Hornbill.

** Originally, ''WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers'' was supposed to be a Rescuers TV series. Consider the {{expies}}:\\

* Joe Flynn (Snoops) died unexpectedly in 1974, three years before this film was released. The voicework for the film was done around 1973.

** Brutus and Nero were initially going to be alligators according to [[https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/85/5e/fd/855efd4f96ec14db887bab4f5a056bde.jpg the concept art]], before the film officially identifies them as crocodiles.

** Even after it was ReTooled away from being a vehicle for him, Louis Prima was still going to be in the movie with his intended character reworked. In the original draft, Bernard and Bianca were going to talk to Louis the Bear about Penny where he revealed she came to the zoo often. He also sang a song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnHCbe24fjo "Peoplitis"]]. It may have been cut for time as Prima did record the song and, presumably, his lines.

* Joe Flynn died unexpectedly in 1974, three years before this film was released. The voicework for the film was done around 1973.

* CreatorBacklash: Animator Creator/DonBluth was said to have finally had enough of Disney repeatedly falling short of their reputation with this film and, shortly thereafter, lead an infamous mass exodus of animators to his garage-based studio. He later said that he was especially livid about the main characters' eyes not being colored in.