History Trivia / ThePrinceOfEgypt

* FakeNationality: Most of the voice actors are American or British, and none are Egyptian. It's sort of {{Justified|Trope}} since modern Egyptians speak Arabic, not Egyptian (which has been extinct for millennia sans a notable exception of Coptic which is solely a liturgical language for Egyptian Coptic Christians), so having Rameses and Moses be voiced by Egyptian and Jewish actors speaking Arabic and Hebrew would only make a bit more sense than having them be voiced by native English speakers. Thus an accurate casting would be a hyper niche category of Egyptians and Jews that speak Coptic.

* FakeNationality: Most of the voice actors are American or British, and none are Egyptian. It's sort of {{Justified|Trope}} since modern Egyptians speak Arabic, not Egyptian (which has been extinct for millenia), so having Rameses and Moses be voiced by Egyptian actors would make no more sense than having them be voiced by native English speakers.

* FakeNationality: Many of the voice actors of the film are American or British, not Egyptian. It edges on JustifiedTrope since the type of Egyptian spoken during the time of Ramses II is extinct, and having Ramses II and Moses speak Arabic (the language most modern Egyptians speak) makes just as much sense as them speaking English.
* FollowTheLeader: The movie's success as the then-highest grossing traditionally animated film not produced by Creator/{{Disney}} led to a wave of theatrical Christian movies in the late 90's and early 2000's. Among them were two record-breakers of their own: ''Film/ThePassionOfTheChrist'', which became the then highest-grossing R-rated film of all time (the record is currently held by ''[[Film/Joker2019 Joker]]'') and ''WesternAnimation/JonahAVeggieTalesMovie'', which was the highest-grossing film based on a PreschoolShow for 17 years until ''Film/DoraAndTheLostCityOfGold'' surpassed it.

* DoingItForTheArt: The film was a truly sincere effort by Creator/DreamWorksAnimation to make a great movie, hence why there was little merchandise made for the film. Over a hundred religious leaders were consulted for the sake of authenticity.
** Of the merchandise there was, even that is more elegant and mature than one would expect for an American animated feature. The coloring book, designed to double as a straightforward storybook, presages the adult coloring books that took off in TheNewTens in its detailed illustrations and text. The read-along-book-and-tape (narrated by Creator/JeffGoldblum -- Aaron, himself) is also longer and more elaborate than similar Disney efforts. And neither glosses over the movie's darker plot points -- not even the deaths of the firstborn.

* ActingForTwo: Val Kilmer does the voice of both Moses and the Almighty (though Kilmer's only ''credited'' as Moses). Charlton Heston had done the same in ''{{Film/The Ten Commandments|1956}}''.

* TalkingToHimself: Val Kilmer voices both Moses and God, much like how Creator/CharltonHeston played Moses and voiced God in [[Film/TheTenCommandments1956 the Cecil B. DeMille version]]. In fact, more or less every version of the movie has Moses and God sharing the same voice actor.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: [[WhatCouldHaveBeen/ThePrinceOfEgypt Has it's own page]]

* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** It was planned to combine the voices of a man, a woman, and a child for the voice of God. But they had Kilmer voice God instead because it was thought some might have problems with God sounding female. That and the fact that their synthesized composite voices apparently sounded much more [[VoiceOfTheLegion demonic]] than Godly. There are elements of this in the film itself, as the backing chorus of "The Plagues" are from His perspective.
** Originally there was a servant that would serve as a major character where Moses and Rameses would talk to their staff in the same way the characters in Series/DowntonAbbey would, The character was scrapped to focus more on the relationship between Moses and Rameses. Though the character was scrapped he does appear in a few brief scenes and is humorously referred to by the film's staff as “You There”.
** A scene with a talking camel was scrapped and Rameses was originally supposed to have two evil cats. Granted, these and the camel would have run counter-current to the mood of the film as a whole. Curiously, the camel did eventually show up in the form of a piece of merchandise for the film, as a little beanbag doll. Bizarrely, there is some historical evidence since Ramses II was an avid cat person -- he had hundreds imported from other countries to Egypt and had a lion as a personal pet who fought alongside him at Kadesh.
** Moses also originally had two dogs as his side-kicks. Though they were later scrapped from the film as a whole, you still see them two times, first when Moses finds them and one of the servants tied up in his room, and again during "All I Ever Wanted." Ironically, the dog and cat ideas would be used in the MockBuster "WesternAnimation/MosesEgyptsGreatPrince".
** Jeffrey Katzenberg pitched this idea to Disney several times during his tenure there, but CEO Michael Eisner kept rejecting it (their relationship was starting to crumble, plus the idea did not fit Disney's animated MO at all; they have never really been comfortable with material involving God also bearing the Disney name outside of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'', which didn't push it too heavily).
** Rameses was much more sympathetic in the original script, until the crew realized this made Moses look like a jerk for refusing to work with him to help the situation.
** At one point, Miriam was going to be the Hebrew slave beaten by the taskmaster whom Moses accidentally kills, in order to give Moses a more [[ItsPersonal personal]] reason for defending her. But eventually the writers realized it would be more meaningful for Moses to defend a stranger, so a random man took Miriam’s place.
** During the moment in which Rameses shoots Moses a DeathGlare during the aftermath of the tenth plague, he was originally going to also reach for a knife. There was also meant to be a scene of Rameses preparing his army to chase after the Hebrews. Both scenes were cut due to being too cliche.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrV_3AVsSKU This early test animation reel]] shows early designs of some characters.
*** At the 0:10 to 0:24 mark shows an early design of both Moses and partially Rameses.
*** It also shows an early design of Seti at the 1:51 to 2:08 mark
*** An early design of Hotep and Huy at the 2:10 to 2:24 and 2:33 to 2:46 mark.
*** And an early design of Jethro at the 2:26 to 2:32 mark.
** Creator/DanielDayLewis was considered for the role of Moses, but a deal was never reached.
** Creator/JamesEarlJones, Creator/KeithDavid and Creator/VernonWells were considered for the role of Jethro.
** Creator/JeremyIrons and Creator/IanMcKellen were considered for the role of Seti.
** Creator/MichaelJFox, Creator/DaveFoley and Creator/ScottBakula were considered for the role of Aaron.
** Creator/EllenDeGeneres, Creator/JulietteBinoche and Creator/MaryMcDonnell were considered for Miriam.
** Creator/JenniferAniston was considered for the role of Tzipporah.
** Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio, Creator/DennisQuaid and Creator/MarkWahlberg were considered for the role of Moses.
** Creator/RichardSchliff and Creator/CheechMarin were considered for the role of Hotep.
** Creator/TomWaits and Creator/TommyChong were considered for the role of Huy.
** Creator/RobertDeNiro and Creator/GaryOldman were considered for the role of Rameses.
** Creator/CarolBurnett was considered for the role of Tuya.