Even though Scott Weinger (Aladdin) and Linda Larkin (Jasmine) are pretty decent singers, they did not sing for their respective characters, the latter joking that she wouldn't have even auditioned if she'd known Jasmine had a song. Brad Kane did Aladdin's singing while Lea Salonga did Jasmine's singing (Liz Callaway in the sequels).
One that was oddly used for someone who did do his own singing in all other scenes—Robin Williams of all people. Even though Robin Williams also voices the Merchant (who was going to be revealed in the end to be the Genie before the scene was cut), he does NOT sing for him. Bruce Adler does the Merchant's singing.
Jasmine keeps the same speaking voice (Linda Larkin), but her singing is done by Lea Salonga in the first film and Liz Callaway in the sequels.
In Japan, after voicing him for years, Akira Kamiya retired from the role of Iago in 2001 (about the same time he retired as Kenshiro). He's now voiced by Tōru Ōkawa.
In LEGO Disney Princesses: The Castle Quest, Barrett Leddy takes over from the late Gilbert Gottfried as Iago.
In Spain, Josema Yuste was replaced by professional voice actor Pep Antón Muñoz in the TV series and The King of Thieves, probably because of Yuste's Celebrity Voice Actor status. Also, Rubén Trujillo (who has always dubbed the Genie himself) replaced his fellow Mexican voice actor Hectór Lee as Iago in the series but imitating Lee's accent. Sergio Zamora, who is much well known as a voice actor than for his singing, and for voicing Simba and Hercules for Disney, temporarily replaced Miguel Morant as Aladdin's singing voice in The Return of Jafar. Juan Antonio Gálvez replaced Joaquín Muñoz, who retired in the early 2000's, as Jafar since House of Mouse and would voice him again in Kingdom Hearts II. Jordi Boixaderas briefly voiced Jafar in one of Disney Channel's Quiz Show shorts. However the entire cast was darrined in Kingdom Hearts II with Madrid established voice actors (the films and series were originally recorded in Barcelona).
In Poland, Aladdin had two different voice actors: Paweł Tucholski (who later voiced adult Simba in the first TLK movie) and Jacek Sołtysiak. Tucholski voiced him in the first and third movie, while Sołtysiak did in the second (and was also a Non-Singing Voice, unlike the previous VA; the singing was performed by Kacper Kuszewski). As for the TV series, Aladdin was dubbed by Tucholski when it first aired in 1995 and later by Sołtysiak when a redub was made. This is also the case with Jasmine: she was voiced by Katarzyna Skrzynecka in the first movie and then by Olga Bończyk in all her other appearances.
Ability over Appearance: Jasmine was first envisioned as having a huskier, Lauren Bacall-sounding voice. Linda Larkin's higher pitch however won them over.
When he heard that Disney was doing an adaptation of Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp,Howard Ashman, a huge fan of the story and who had starred in a production of it at his homegrown black box theater, dropped everything he was doing for Beauty and the Beast and wrote a pages-long outline and some template lyrics just so he could be involved (Ashman had already been diagnosed with HIV at this point and knew he was going to die soon, so time was of the essence).
The Trope Codifier for animated films, with Robin Williams getting star billing (and much marketing push was made on his name, all against his wishes).
In the Japanese dub, the titular hero was originally voiced by movie actor Kenji Haga, who many Anime fans can recognize him as the voice of Ken Masters in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. However, Haga was arrested and convicted of fraud and extortion later on, so he was later replaced with Shin-ichiro Miki, who already voiced him in the Kingdom Hearts games, the TV series and the direct-to-video sequels, as well as in the 2008 remaster of the film in Japan.
Creator Backlash: Robin Williams has gone on record prior to his death stating that he hated how the marketers played up him being Genie, as he specifically requested his presence be downplayed, and hated how he contributed to A-List actors taking jobs away from professional voice actors.
Cut Song: Tons. By both songwriters. Many were reinstated in the stage adaptation.
Died During Production: During the early stages of production, Howard Ashman died in 1991 of AIDS complications. Tim Rice wrote new songs with Alan Menken after Ashman's death. Three of Ashman's songs, specifically, all three song sung by a character played by Robin Williams, remained in the final film and were credited to Ashman ("Arabian Nights", "Friend Like Me", and "Prince Ali"; the rest were written by Rice). Aladdin is the last project Ashman had any involvement in.
Doing It for the Art: Robin Williams signed on to the film immediately because he loved cartoons and jumped at the chance to be part of an animated film from Disney, whom he called the "Rolls Royce of animation." He even tried to enforce this by taking a much lower salary than he could have and requiring in his contract that Disney limit the use of his performance in the marketing and not use it at all in merchandise (a rare case where it stuck was the official artbook, which features no pictures of Williams and only refers to him as "the voice of the Genie" and such). Disney, of course, had other ideas, and skirted around or blatantly ignored these requests, angering Williams and causing a rift between him and Disney for a few years.
One of the most convoluted examples ever with Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler, which had been in production for over two decades when this film's production started and was not released until long after this movie was completed and became a big hit, by which point the movie had been taking out of Williams' control, shipped off to overseas studios for rushed completion and drastically re-cut to be an Aladdin knockoff. This has led to some dispute amongst animation fans as to whether Disney plagiarized Williams' film or if it only borrowed some ideas as homage. Williams had shown footage of Thief to the animators on Roger Rabbit in hopes of recruiting them, which obviously backfired. According to some of his collaborators, when asked about it, Williams just shrugged and said "It is what it is."
With FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Robin Williams was recording for the role of Batty Koda at the same time Aladdin was in production, and Jeffrey Katzenberg was not happy with this. He begged Robin to turn the role of Batty down as he was already cast as Genie, but Robin refused. Katzenberg had already broken his promise to Robin about not using his voice to market the film, so he was already mad at him as it was, so trying to sabotage a movie Disney had nothing to do with made matters between them worse. Robin finally put his foot down and basically told Katzenberg, "It's my voice and I'll do what I want with it."
While Virgin Games developed their tie-in game, Capcom still had a deal for Disney games on Nintendo consoles and released a whole different game for theSNES (years later ported to the Game Boy Advance), with both being by very prominent designers, namely David Perry (Earthworm Jim) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil). The former is the best remembered one, hailed for translating the movie's atmosphere, the buttery-smooth animation which had help from Disney's animation team, and overall fun if oft-punishing gameplay. The latter is technically proficient and fun, but it doesn't push the console's limits or redefine the state of video game animation, so it's not on anyone's top SNES games list. (If anything, the 90s were over-saturated with platformers... and the Virgin version at least offered more than a Goomba Stomp by having Aladdin wielding a sword, something even Mikami agreed was an advantage.) This is compounded by the Sega GenesisAladdin being included along with Virgin's The Lion King on the 2019 compilation Disney Classic Games (although the re-release Disney Classic Games Collection: Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Jungle Book included the Capcom version for players to properly compare both). And unrelated to both, SIMS developed an Aladdin game for Sega's 8-bit consoles Master System and Game Gear, which combined endless running with Prince of Persia-style cinematic platforming, as well as graphics that looked pretty good for 8-bit.
Executive Meddling: In exchange for working for union scale, Robin Williams had a few contractual agreements. The biggest one, outside of not using his voice for merchandise, was that they not make a big deal about him being in the movie (Toys was coming out the following month, and he didn't want this film to overshadow his friend Barry Levinson's pet project), which included the requirement that they not use his lines in commercials and the poster not have the Genie take up more than 25% of merchandise. Studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg either ignored the stipulations (talking Genie dolls were made) or used Loophole Abuse (as seen on the main image, Genie doesn't technically exceed the maximum allowed amount of space, but he's still by far the most obvious character). Robin Williams was livid and vowed never to voice the character again. CEO Michael Eisner went as far as to purchase an original Picasso for Williams as an apology, but Williams still refused. After Katzenberg resigned and was succeeded by former 20th Century Fox production chief Joe Roth in 1994, Williams and the studio patched things up and he returned for Aladdin and the King of Thieves (as well as other Disney projects such as Flubber).
Fake Brit: Cleveland-born Jonathan Freeman as Jafar, who, like everyone else in the movie, is technically supposed to be Arab or Persian, but was portrayed a villainous British accent anyway. Amusingly, Douglas Seale, who voiced the Sultan, actually was British.
Harpo Does Something Funny: Parts of the script would just say "Robin says something like this:" to allow Robin Williams to improvise. This led to over ten hours of Williams riffing as Genie, much of which couldn't make it into the finished film. Some of it ended up on Blu-ray.
At McDonald's, it had special edition character toys situated on flying carpets.
At Burger King, there were action figures of Aladdin, Jasmine, Abu, Genie, and Jafar.
Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Disney sold the 2004 2-Disc Platinum Edition DVD both by itself, and as part of a Collector's DVD Gift Set. Both contain such extras as deleted scenes, two audio commentaries, and the almost-two-hour documentary A Diamond in the Rough: The Making of Aladdin. The Gift Set also includes a companion book, sketches autographed by the animators, and a reproduction of a film frame.
The Other Marty: Aladdin himself: Aladdin was originally drawn as a scrawny 12-year-old. (Or thereabouts.) It was only after animation had begun that they realized they needed a more buff look for their hero. However, it was too late to re-do the animation that had been done already, and the 'scrawny' Aladdin can be seen in the "Friend Like Me" sequencenote Pay attention to Aladdin during the lines "You gots power in your corner now" and "you ain't never had a friend like me" just before "yes, sir, we pride ourselves on service", where it's particularly obvious. In fact, Aladdin's original design was based on Michael J. Fox, which would make him an Other Marty for the original Other Marty.
Promoted Fanboy: Will Finn is the self-proclaimed world's biggest Gilbert Gottfried fan and was ecstatic to have him working on the film, which meant he got to meet his hero. He and Gottfried remained close friends after the film finished.
Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Jeffrey Katzenberg's reckless actions in promoting Aladdin was one of a few factors that led to his resignation from Disney in 1994, with another factor being the "Black Friday" cut of Toy Story.
Screwed by the Lawyers: Disney began arranging plans for a live-action Genie prequel as an origin story which would take place before the Live-Action Adaptation of the film, but it got canceled thanks to a clause in Robin Williams' will. His estate informed the company the clause bars any further usage of voice recordings and likenesses that had not been already made available to the public for 25 years after his death, meaning Disney cannot move forward with using Williams' likeness until August 11, 2039. Plus having Will Smith portraying the Genie in the 2019 live-action adaptation makes it useless to have a prequel with him being portrayed by Williams, anyway. Disney also had plans to make a third sequel with unused Robin Williams recordings, but it ended up being scrapped for the same reason.
Screwed by the Network: The IMAX re-release of The Lion King (1994) had a preview for a large-format edition of Aladdin attached to its run. Unfortunately, the low grosses of IMAX DAC moviesnote before TLK, Disney released Treasure Planet, the Beauty and the Beast Special Extended Edition, and Fantasia 2000 in this format prompted Disney to cancel Aladdin's engagement (the remastered animation was eventually used for the DVD release). Similar circumstances later turned it into the only one of the Renaissance's four most famous movies without a 3D conversion; while Disney never actually announced one in the works, the failures of those of Beauty and the Beast and some Turn of the MillenniumPixar moviesnote They failed so badly, that the Little Mermaid conversion, which Disney did announce, went straight to Blu-ray 3D. guaranteed that Aladdin wouldn't get one.
So My Kids Can Watch: At first, Robin Williams refused to voice the Genie, since it was a Disney movie, and he did not want the studio profiting by selling merchandise based on the movie. He accepted the role with certain conditions:
I'm doing it basically because I want to be part of this animation tradition. I want something for my children. One deal is, I just don't want to sell anything—as in Burger King, as in toys, as in stuff.
As stated in Exact Words, the 'Applause' sign on the Genie's back after "Friend Like Me". This came up due to Jeff Katzenberg, then creative head at Disney, wanting the audience to clap after every musical number. So the animators put the sign in, and just for good measure, made the Carpet clap (The Sultan claps at the end of "Prince Ali" as well).
Many scenes are Robin Williams ad-libbing, particularly the opening one with the Peddler. Gilbert Gottfried also did it at times, a notable example being the line "gotta pack up the guns, the weapons, the blades, and how 'bout this picture, I don't know, I think I'm making a weird face in it." line shortly after Ali Ababwa/Aladdin unveiled Jafar and Iago's treacherous ambitions to the Sultan.
There was so much ad-libbing, Aladdin was disqualified from any screenplay Oscars.
Word of Saint Paul: According to Jonathan Freeman, Jafar's obsession with power came from being a neglected Child Prodigy forced to spend his youth in a boarding school and then tend to a none-too-bright sultan.
Write Who You Know: Jasmine is heavily based on Mark Henn's (the leading animator) younger sister.
Writer Conflicts with Canon: In 2015, the film's co-directors said the revelation that Peddler was Genie, despite being cut from the final version, was still canon. They were either ignoring or just unaware of the end of Aladdin and the King of Thieves, where the two are shown to be separate people, although Genie splitting himself into multiple people at once has always been an established power of his.
Vaporware: Disney announced a Myst style game set for release on October 17, 1997 called "Aladdin: The Fate of Agrabah" but for some reason was never released despite having a trailer appearing on one of their demo samplers (with a demo of Hercules - The Action Game and Nightmare Ned) as well as box art appearing on the back of the instruction booklet for Nightmare Ned.
and screened it for him. Williams thought it was hilarious and accepted the role on the spot.