Line #15 Trivia/TheGreatMouseDetective


1	* ActingForTwo: Quite a few of the principal actors had secondary roles. For example:
2	** Barrie Ingham voices both Basil and the unlucky Bartholomew. Interestingly, that makes two out of the three characters in the movie who call Ratigan a rat (the other being Olivia), and one out of two that live to tell the tale.
3	** Val Bettin voices both Dr. David Q. Dawson and one of Ratigan's thugs.
4	** Surprisingly, Candy Candido voices both Fidget and the bar patron.
5	** Eve Brenner voices the Mouse Queen and her robotic counterpart.
6	* AwesomeDearBoy: Creator/VincentPrice called Ratigan his favorite film role, and was especially thrilled to have two songs written specifically for him.
7	-->"''I do adore Ratigan. I did it because one should never stop. That’s the first rule. Keep going. Do everything, even cartoons. If you don’t, you stop. And stopping stinks.''"
8	* BilingualBonus: The Dutch dub has Basil, Dawson, and Olivia singing the reprise of "Goodbye So Soon" offscreen during the end credits, with Basil remarking beforehand, "Dawson, how did that terrible song go back in the basement? You know when we were tied up?"
9	* CareerResurrection: Thanks to the massive failure of ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'', Walt Disney Animation Studios had been in a very dire situation and was on the brink of closure, with this film effectively being their last chance. Fortunately for them, this film's timely critical and financial success has succeeded in proving to Disney executives that animation was still a viable medium to invest in, which saved the animation department and would later pave the way to ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid\|1989}}'' and the Disney Renaissance.
10	* CelebrityVoiceActor: Creator/VincentPrice as Ratigan, naturally. Interestingly, an effort was made to maintain this in foreign dubs:
11	** In the Latin American Spanish dub, Ratigan was played by the famous Mexican actor Narciso Busquets.
12	** In the Japanese dub, Ratigan is voiced by veteran film actor and singer Akira Takarada, best known for his work in the ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' franchise.
13	** In the French dub, Ratigan was voiced by Gerard Rinaldi, not only an acclaimed comedian but also a popular singer and songwriter.
14	* CompletelyDifferentTitle: "Basil, Private Detective" in French.
15	* CreatorsFavorite:
16	** After the film's release, Candy Candido viewed Fidget as his personal favorite role.
17	** As aforementioned in AwesomeDearBoy, Creator/VincentPrice considers Ratigan to be his favorite film role.
18	* DirectedByCastMember: Besides directing the Latin American Spanish dub, Francisco Colmenero voiced Bartholomew as well as some minor roles including one of Ratigan's thugs.
19	* DuelingMovies: With ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'', another animated movie about mice coming out the same year (though it didn't come out until a few months afterward). While ''GMD'' still made a profit, ''An American Tail'' was the highest-grossing animated feature ever made at the time. Despite all this, ''GMD'' remained financially and critically successful in receiving more critical acclaim than ''An American Tail'' did, which received mixed reviews. Both of these things would factor into Disney deciding to re-beef their animation department.
20	* ExecutiveMeddling:
21	** Jeffrey Katzenberg demanded the title of this film be changed from ''Basil of Baker Street'' to simply ''The Great Mouse Detective'', a move that inspired an infamous fake memo that stated Disney was changing all the titles of its films to more generic ones, such as "[[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs Seven Little Men Help a Girl]]", "[[WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}} The Wonderful Elephant Who Could Really Fly]]", "[[WesternAnimation/{{Cinderella}} The Girl with the See-Through Shoes]]", and "[[WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967 A Boy, a Bear, and a Big Black Cat]]". The memo later became a category on ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}''. Two of the four directors have since said they've always hated the new title. However, those directors may have had some solace in the title being changed to "[[MarketBasedTitle Basil the Great Mouse Detective]]" in some countries.
22	*** A reason given for the title change was that ''Film/YoungSherlockHolmes'', the movie Paramount had positioned as its tentpole film for Christmas 1985, had been a box-office disappointment -- suggesting a title that hinges on a Holmes reference would not have an inherent draw to families, hence a more generic but accurate title.
23	*** Ironically, years later, this would become the norm for Disney, when "Rapunzel" would become ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'' and "The Snow Queen" would become ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen\|2013}}''. As with ''The Fox and the Hound'' and ''The Black Cauldron'', this was in response of an underperforming prior film sparking the studio in finding more mass-appealing titles, as the relative box office failure of ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' had Disney scampering away from movie titles that sounded like they were aimed exclusively at young girls. ''Frog'' also finished the job ''The Black Cauldron'' nearly accomplished 25 years prior, as the beginning of the end for 2D theatrical movies from Disney.
24	** A positive example: Co-director John Musker has stated that the famous Big Ben sequence was not in the original script or storyboards. Ratigan's ship would have still crashed into it, but Ratigan would have been killed from the crash while Basil and Olivia [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat would have survived]]. Katzenberg insisted there needed to be some kind of showdown between Basil and Ratigan, and thus the fight inside and out of Big Ben was conceived.
25	* FakeBrit: Missouri-born Creator/VincentPrice voices Professor Ratigan.
26	* IAmNotShazam: The lead dancer at the bar is listed in the credits as "Miss Kitty Mouse," but, {{Fanon}} aside, this doesn't actually appear to be her name. Rather, it's a description of her. She isn't "Miss Kitty Mouse," but "the Miss Kitty mouse."
27	* LateExportForYou: The film was finally dubbed into Hungarian, Hebrew and Czech in the mid-2010's, nearly 30 years after its original release.
28	* MagnumOpusDissonance: The film was produced concurrently with ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'', which was Disney's most expensive film ever made at the time, and which Disney marketed at the time as being their most revolutionary film since ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs''. By contrast, ''Great Mouse Detective'' was treated as a much smaller affair, and was relegated to the sidelines for most of its production. Despite this, ''The Black Cauldron'' would nearly kill Disney's animation department due to its poor critical reception and [[BoxOfficeBomb disastrous box office performance]], while ''The Great Mouse Detective'' would go on to remain a financial and critical success, saving Disney animation and laying the groundwork for their eventual Renaissance a few years later.
29	* OneBookAuthor: Olivia was Susanne Pollatschek's only voice role. After completing her studies in Scotland, she moved to Switzerland.
30	* PostReleaseRetitle: The 1992 theatrical re-release expanded the title to ''The Adventures of The Great Mouse Detective''. Home video releases from the 1992 VHS and Laserdisc, to the 2002 VHS and DVD, used the shorter name on the packaging, and the longer one in the opening credits. The remaster struck for prints from the 2010 DVD onwards reverted the title to the shorter version, by swapping the '92 credits back with the ones used in 1986.
31	* ProductionPosse: Fidget was voiced by Candy Candido, who played bit characters in several previous Disney films, with Fidget being his final Disney role but also his most prominent one, and Mr. Flaversham was voiced by Creator/AlanYoung, who had already played Scrooge [=McDuck=] in ''WesternAnimation/MickeysChristmasCarol'', and would be brought back for his [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987 most famous outing as the character only a year later]]. Furthermore, two of Ratigan’s thugs were voiced by Creator/WayneAllwine and Creator/TonyAnselmo (Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck).
32	* SwanSong: This was Candy Candido's final film appearance before he died of natural causes in 1999.
33	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
34	** Music/{{Madonna}} was considered to voice Miss Kitty and perform the song "Let Me Be Good To You". This isn't as far-fetched as it may seem when one listens to Madonna's jazzy showtunes on the ''Film/DickTracy'' soundtrack.
35	** Olivia was originally planned to be older, acting as a potential love interest for Basil, but it was later decided she should be a child to make her more sympathetic.
36	** Creator/JohnCleese was the first choice to voice Basil. Creator/PeterCook and Creator/MichaelPalin were also considered.
37	** Creator/PatrickMacnee was considered for the voice of Dawson.
38	** Ratigan's original design was [[LeanAndMean very thin and frail-looking]]. They changed it after Creator/VincentPrice was cast [[InkSuitActor to reflect Price's larger build]]. Glen Keane also says that he based it partially on Disney's CEO at the time, Ron Miller, who was an ex-football player and had an imposing and muscular physique.
39	** Originally, Ratigan was a very ugly mouse ''mistaken'' for a rat, instead of a rat ''willingly'' passing for an ugly mouse.
40	** Michael Eisner wanted Music/MichaelJackson to voice a character who would enter the saloon, confront Basil, and sing a song at the tavern.
41	** Back in the early 2000s, there were originally plans for a StealthSequel to the film titled, ''The Search for WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse'', which would've had Basil team up with [[WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts Minnie, Donald, and Goofy]] and go on a globe-trotting quest to search for the titular mouse after he was "mouse-napped", all while encountering a wide array of [[MassiveMultiplayerCrossover Disney characters]] along the way. Unfortunately, the film would get canceled after the animators decided that incorporating the insanely large number of Disney characters into a feasible 90-minute script was deemed too difficult.
42	* WorkingTitle: ''Basil of Baker Street''.

Context Trivia / TheGreatMouseDetective