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Plot
The Queen of the Mice controls only a small chunk of land.
It's quite obvious that the Mousedom of Britain is mimicking the actual, humanBritish Empire; it wouldn't be a stretch to say there are thousands of British[insert species here]doms and such.
The other mooks were deliberately leading that one drunk mouse into pressing calling Ratigan "the world's greatest rat" during the villain song.
They got to the line ending in "that's that" while near him and stopped for a second, hoping he'd try to finish the rhyme and be drunk enough to make the wrong choice. If a villain song does ensue every time Ratigan has a new plan, which is likely, then maybe it's a secret tradition among the mooks to pick a noob they find particularly annoying and try to get him to press Ratigan's Berserk Button in song.
- They sure seemed pretty upset when he got eaten, though — they take off their hats, and one can be seen wiping away tears. Afterward, they're noticeably reluctant to start the song again.
- Ratigan wrote the song himself and choreographed the dance routine as a deathtrap. His intention, beyond simple ego-stroking, is that someone would mess up and say Rat. It's a symbol of his control over his mooks and continually provides him with victims. Ratigan is just that much of a sociopath.
This Mouse World is full of Fantastic Racism.
Mice are the privileged species, held to a higher standards than the other sapient animals seen in the movie, such as rats, bats, lizards, toads and octopuses. This explains why Ratigan insists on being called a "big mouse", and we only see the other species in lowly professions such as bar performers and criminals. Characters
Olivia Flaversham is a robot.
This WMG came from her line: "I don't have a mother". While the implication is that her mother is dead, Hiram Flaversham obviously has a great talent for building incredibly lifelike clockwork mice. She doesn't have a mother because she wasn't born, but rather, built.- Let's add a great deal to this: somebody figured this out. Not one somebody, two somebodies. The two most intelligent characters in the movie: Basil and Ratigan. First, Basil. I'm not the first one to point out that Basil, throughout the whole movie, is misnaming Olivia on purpose. Wanna be sure ? He calls Mr Faversham by his correct name. So the idea would be that he knows Olivia is not "truly" Mr Flaversham's daughter and is accentuating it by not naming both of them the same way. As for Ratigan, for some reason, he attempts to kill both Dawson and Basil, but not Olivia. That's because he knows it's useless.
Ratigan sings his Villain Song every time he has a new plan.
Basil knew Olivia's last name at the end.
Him getting it wrong at the end was an affectionate joke, because the sentence right before that was him reciprocating Olivia saying she'll never forget him. His tone is more warm than dismissive like before, and Dawson seems to back it up by replying with "whatever" in an equally warm tone, an Ironic Echo to Basil's earlier dismissiveness.- This troper has always, even as a child, thought that was exactly the filmmakers' intention.
The mouse stripper is the Basil of Baker Street version of Irene Adler
Irene is implied to be a dancer/performer, and is a sexy femme fatale. She is also American, and the mouse's song has a clear American accent. There is no Irene Adler counterpart in the film, so this is possible. Miss Kitty, the mouse stripper at the pub, is Olivia's real mother
Miss Kitty married Hiram some years prior to the events in the movie, and became pregnant with Olivia. At first she was content, but as the pregnancy progressed, she became bored and depressed with her "simple" lifestyle. So soon after Olivia is born, she leaves her husband and daughter and goes off to become the singer we know and love. Don't believe me when I say this? Look up pictures of Olivia and Miss Kitty and compare them. The owner of the Toy Shop is Hiram Flaversham's human counterpart
Since The Great Mouse Detective has a parallel universe (with mice) existing within the same universe. There is probably one mouse to each human. So it may make sense if Hiram's human counterpart was the Toymaker for that store. Yet the store if not simply closed, seemed abandoned? Why? Maybe Moriarty kidnapped him ;D
Ratigan has a point
And the point is - rats are heavily intolerated by mice due to Black Plague. Ratigan wants just to change that.
- With Ratigan's Card-Carrying Villainy and insane-looking behavior as the queen's "consort", it seems unlikely.
Ratigan grew up in an orphanage.
And was ostracised while there, because he was the only rat. He does seem to have a hatred for orphans in particular- possibly because they remind him of his childhood, and remembering orphans reminds him of the fact he's insisting on being a "big mouse" because of the stigma attached to his species. It seems likely he was probably bullied and/or widely feared while there. Then he probably killed them all.
Basil is a harvest mouse
Looks just about right to me. If he is, then it means he also has a fully Prehensile Tail. Basil is asexual
He wasn't attracted to Miss Kitty, and even seemed annoyed by her performance. Basil and Ratigan are gay
Ratigan is heavily queer-coded and has a noteworthy amount of Ho Yay with Basil, who somehow obsesses over him. Maybe they had a thing that went sour, or it's just Unresolved Sexual Tension.Note that there isn't anything stopping Basil from being both gay and asexual, because romantic and sexual orientation are different things.
Crossovers
Toby is Watson's oft unmentioned bulldog
Blame Disney for mistaking a bulldog for a bloodhound, but otherwise it fits. I believe the name Toby is even mentioned in some versions of Sherlock Holmes.A bloodhound named Toby is borrowed in Sign of the Four. That exact dog does appear. If you look, you can tell what Sherlock Holmes story takes place during the movie (I once knew, but have since forgotten).- If Toby was a bulldog in the original Sherlock Holmes stories, Disney might have changed it to a bloodhound because of the negative stereotype associated with bulldogs.
Hiram Flaversham is a spark.
Every animated movie involving a Mouse World exists in the same universe.
The Great Mouse Detective takes place in the same universe as An American Tail, The Secret of NIMH, Ben And Me, Once Upon a Forest, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, The Rescuers, Cinderella, and possibly Tom and Jerry.- They are somehow connected to the mice from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- For some fans, it may apply that at least the mice in The Nutcracker Prince are also maybe connected to the Mouse World too, but this is this troper's guess.
- The author and fellow troper Surenity has three stories with this same idea, Basil's American Tail and Olivia Goes West (which moves GMD up about ten years), and Abigail and the Rats of NIMH, which is in the 80's.
The setting of the movie will be featured in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]
- Imagine the possibilities!
- Jossed. It wasn't in Dream Drop Distance, but it's still possible that it will show up in a future Kingdom Hearts game.
Basil is a Time Lord
- Win.
Ratigan is the Giant Rat of Sumatra...
...that Sherlock Holmes mentions in the Conan-Doyle short story The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. Ratigan claims to be a 'big mouse' because not only is the world not ready, but he himself isn't either. Basil, Dawson, and Ratigan are the daemons of Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty respectively.
That would explain how they can exist in the same universe and yet have nearly identical personalities and backstories. In this particular universe, daemons can be a much greater distance from their humans, and same-gender daemons are more common. Expanding on this, the death of Ratigan drove Moriarty to suicide in the Reichenbach fall incident. Origin of The Rescue Aid Society.
A semi-retired Basil, with the assistance of Dawson, Professor Flaversham and his daughter Olivia, would found an organization devoted to protecting the innocent and upholding justice; The Rescue Aid Society. Ratigan is an ancestor of Verminious Snaptrap
Gray fur? Check. Yellow eyes? Check. Leader of an underground/sewer criminal gang? Check. Highly intelligent? Check (sort of). The only question is of how Snaptrap became the size of the dog and cat characters rather than the size of a regular rat, though I chalk that up to one of Ratigan's grandchildren falling into a vat of toxic sludge and mutating into a Rodent of Unusual Size.