History Trivia / TheSecretofNIMH

** The film's second draft had a scene involving Mrs. Brisby saving a beached sea bass, which impressed the rats. The climax originally had Brisby's children enter the abandoned lair of the rats--Mrs. Brisby runs off and saves them, only to be [[DisneyDeath seemingly crushed by a cave-in.]] Jeremy, the children, and Mrs. Shrew would mourn her loss, but it turns out Mrs. Brisby is alive--the [[ChekhovsGunman sea bass she rescued earlier]] helped her find a secret exit from the lair inside a pond. Surprisingly, the ending also implies that the Rats of NIMH never actually existed (neither the children nor the humans can find any evidence of their presence), and were a self-improving hallucination Mrs. Brisby was having; according to the writers, they meant it to be an [[AmbiguousSituation ambiguous ending]] that could go one way or the other.

* AcclaimedFlop: The first film received positive critical reception, but fizzled out at the box office. To be fair, it was up against ''Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial''.

** In the sequel, Ms. Brisby (in the handline of lines she gets) is voiced by Creator/DebiMaeWest. This is justified, as Brisby's original actress, Creator/ElizabethHartman, [[ActorExistenceFailure committed suicide in 1987.]]

* FanNickname: Elizabeth, as Mrs. Brisby's never-revealed first name, in tribute to her voice actress Creator/ElizabethHartman (who committed suicide). Some even go so far as to call her "Elizabeth Hartman Brisby".

** According to [[http://www.cataroo.com/DBnimh.html Don Bluth's biography]], NIMH originally had a screenwriter write a draft for it that stuck closer to the book. Another early draft by Steven Barnes had considerable differences from the final film; the scientists of NIMH also had a bigger role in the earlier drafts, with the story cutting back between them and the animals--the idea of making one of the scientists be a main villain, counterbalanced by other "good" scientists was discussed (the film reduced their role to a flashback and off-screen presence), Mrs. Brisby was supposed to be even more emotional. There was also a scrapped new character, a female rat named Isabella. There was also going to be a scene where Dragon the cat attacked the Brisby home, and after the rats drove him off, Mr. Ages and Justin would explain to Brisby's kids and what happened to their father. A climax would have involved NIMH gassing the den, with Brisby and the other rats trying to escape it. There was also no amulet; the only true challenge in the climax was Brisby making a "Leap of Faith" jump over a deadly chasm with her kids, only making it because of encouraging words previously spoken to her by Justin.

* RenamedToAvoidAssociation: The film changes Mrs. Frisby's name to Mrs. Brisby because the original name sounded to similar to "Frisbee", the name of a popular toy in the 1980s.

* AuthorExistenceFailure: Creator/ElizabethHartman, the voice actress of Mrs. Brisby, was tragically DrivenToSuicide in 1987. While she finished up the film long beforehand, this means [[TheOtherDarrin she was replaced]] in the film's sequel, ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfNIMH2TimmyToTheRescue''.

* WriteWhoYouKnow: Jeremy being re-written as a hopeless romantic was loosely based on the staff cook who repeatedly tried flirting with Bluth while he and his crew were working on the "Don't Walk Away" segment on ''Film/{{Xanadu}}''.

** Paul Shenar recorded his reads of Jenner prior to seeing any of the artwork. After seeing Jenner's character design, he asked to rerecord parts of his dialogue to get them right. This during a time when AnimationAgeGhetto was strongly in play.

** After the council meeting, Mr.Ages and Justin take Mrs. Brisby to wait in the library. This led to a scene cut from the final film where Mrs. Brisby meets a young rat named Isabella, which is drawn straight from the book. Curiously, the storyboard illustrations for the scene are included in the end credits.

* VindicatedByCable: Due to its very limited release (see TroubledProduction), the film only really became popular when the premium cable company HBO, which had just begun offering 24-hour, 7 days a week viewing, picked it up and aired it regularly.

* VindicatedByCable

* TroubledProduction: The film was made in Bluth's garage with a budget so small that the last quarter of production was funded by Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy mortgaging their houses. The high-quality animation Bluth was aiming for required the animators to work 16 hours a day, sometimes even taking work home with them. It was then ultimately given too small of a release to profit on even its meager budget, not helped by the fact that it was competing with freaking ''[[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial ET]]''! Though the film did actually outperform "Poltergeist", ''Film/RockyIII'', "Firefox" and ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' in it's opening week in the few theaters it was released in, so one can only imagine how much better the film could've performed had MGM had more faith in it.

** The film's second draft had a scene involving Mrs. Brisby saving a beached sea bass, which impressed the rats. The climax originally had Brisby's children enter the abandoned lair of the rats--Mrs. Brisby runs off and saves them, only to be [[DisneyDeath seemingly crushed by a cave-in.]] Jeremy, the children, and Mrs. Shrew would mourn her loss, but it turns out Mrs. Brisby is alive--the [[ChekhovsGunman sea bass she rescued earlier]] helped her find a secret exit from the lair inside a pond. Surprisingly, the ending also implies that the Rats of NIMH never actually existed (neither the children nor the humans can find any evidence of their presence), and were a self-improving hallucination Mrs. Brisby was having; according to the writers, they meant it to be an ambiguous ending that could go one way or the other.

** After the council meeting, Mr.Ages and Justin take Mrs.Brisby to wait in the library. This led to a scene cut from the final film where Mrs.Brisby meets a young rat named Isabella, which is drawn straight from the book. Curiously, the storyboard illustrations for the scene are included in the end credits.

* PopularWithFurries: And how! Be sure to leave the safe search on when cruising fan art unless you don't mind that sort of thing, since a cast full of anthropomorphic animals acted as a ClosetKey for an entire generation of that fandom.

* PlayingGertrude: Creator/DerekJacobi was only in his forties when he voiced the elderly Nicodemus.

* TroubledProduction: The film was made in Bluth's garage with a budget so small that the last quarter of production was funded by Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy mortgaging their houses. The high-quality animation Bluth was aiming for required the animators to work 16 hours a day, sometimes even taking work home with them. It was then ultimately given too small of a release to profit on even its meager budget, not helped by the fact that it was competing with freaking ''[[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial ET]]''! Though the film did actually outperform ''Film/Poltergeist'', ''Film/RockyIII'', ''Film/Firefox'' and ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' in it's opening week in the few theaters it was released in, so one can only imagine how much better the film could've performed had MGM had more faith in it.

* TroubledProduction: The film was made in Bluth's garage with a budget so small that the last quarter of production was funded by Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy mortgaging their houses. The high-quality animation Bluth was aiming for required the animators to work 16 hours a day, sometimes even taking work home with them. It was then ultimately given too small of a release to profit on even its meager budget, not helped by the fact that it was competing with freaking ''[[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial ET]]''! Though the film did actually outperform Film/Poltergeist, ''Film/RockyIII'', Film/Firefox and ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' in it's opening week in the few theaters it was released in, so one can only imagine how much better the film could've performed had MGM had more faith in it.

* TroubledProduction: The film was made in Bluth's garage with a budget so small that the last quarter of production was funded by Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy mortgaging their houses. The high-quality animation Bluth was aiming for required the animators to work 16 hours a day, sometimes even taking work home with them. It was then ultimately given too small of a release to profit on even its meager budget, not helped by the fact that it was competing with freaking ''[[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial ET]]''! Though the film did actually outperform ''Film/Poltergeist'', ''Film/RockyIII'', ''Film/Firefox'' and ''Film/StarTrekIIWrathOfKhan'' in it's opening week in the few theaters it was released in, so one can only imagine how much better the film could've performed had MGM had more faith in it.

* TroubledProduction: The film was made in Bluth's garage with a budget so small that the last quarter of production was funded by Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy mortgaging their houses. The high-quality animation Bluth was aiming for required the animators to work 16 hours a day, sometimes even taking work home with them. It was then ultimately given too small of a release to profit on even its meager budget, not helped by the fact that it was competing with freaking ''[[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial ET]]''!

* CreatorBacklash: One of the films animators, Ken Cope, felt that the film put too much emphasis on polished animation and suffered from a lousy story.
-->"What can you say about a movie in which the emotional climax is a brick house rising up out of the mud with a spooge a palooza SFX fireworks display, because Rats took drugs that made them mystically intelligent? Meanwhile, all animals already talk, why shouldn't the Owl eat the mouse? Oh, and let's let drugs in paper survive immersion in water. Looked real purty. Story sucked."

* AuthorExistenceFailure: Elizabeth Hartman, the voice actress of Mrs. Brisby, was tragically DrivenToSuicide in 1987. While she finished up the film long beforehand, this means [[TheOtherDarrin she was replaced]] in the film's sequel, ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfNIMH2TimmyToTheRescue''.

* DoingItForTheArt: Several of the staff members had to work 110-hour[[note]]That's approximately 15-16 hours a day![[/note]] weeks during production, and Bluth and a few other higher-ups had to ''mortgage their houses'' to pay for the film.