Line #18 Trivia/AnAmericanTail


1	!!The entire series:
2	* DawsonCasting: Tanya, save in the first film.
3	* FakeRussian:
4	** Fievel's voice actor wasn't even remotely Russian or Eastern European, and neither was Tanya's. And Papa's voice actor, Creator/NehemiahPersoff, was born in Tel Aviv, Israel (then Palestine). Though he and Fievel's voice actor Phillip Glasser were Jewish, so they were halfway there. The name "Persoff" itself suggests he had ancestry in the Russian Empire.
5	** Mama's voice actresses (Erica Yohn, Creator/SusanSilo, and Jane Singer) play this trope straight, not to mention Lloyd Battista and Pat Parris respectively as Papa and his kid sister Sophie on the TV series.
6	* FakeNationality: Christopher Plummer plays a French pigeon, as well. And Creator/GerritGraham voices the British-sounding Cat R. Waul on the TV series.
7	* RealitySubtext:
8	** Fievel was the ''Yiddish'' name of Steven Spielberg's immigrant maternal grandfather Phillip Posner. Also why Fievel is renamed to Phillip ("Philly") in the film.
9	** Bluth's decision to direct the first installment came from how he related to Fievel being separated from his family, as his career took time away from seeing his own family or starting a new one.
10
11	!!''An American Tail''
12	* AdoredByTheNetwork: Many kids from the 2000's were introduced to this film (along with Bluth's other works) through HBO Family, which aired the movie every other day in the mornings.
13	* BreakawayPopHit: "Somewhere Out There," which has since become a staple wedding song.
14	* CompletelyDifferentTitle: ''Fievel and the New World'' (''Fievel et le Nouveau monde'') in French.
15	* CrossDressingVoices:
16	** Tony Toponi is actually voiced by a woman, Pat Musick.
17	** Ditto in the Japanese dub, where he's voiced by Creator/MayumiTanaka.
18	** The European French dub voice of Fievel was a girl, Sauvane Delanoë.
19	* CutSong: Fievel was supposed to have another song in the sweatshop.
20	* TheDanza: It's quite possible that Fievel's nickname 'Philly' was chosen because of the name of his voice actor, Phillip Glasser. Although since Creator/StevenSpielberg's grandfather was also named Fievel but renamed Phillip in America, it could have just been a very fitting coincidence.
21	* DuelingMovies: With ''WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective'', which came out the same years, is also set in a MouseWorld and has a child looking for his/her parent(s).
22	* ExecutiveMeddling:
23	** This film and ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' were the only examples of this ''[[Administrivia/TropesAreTools not]]'' [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools being a bad thing]] for Bluth. Creatively, it was always Spielberg's word over his, which he was not happy about, but then again, it ''was'' Creator/StevenSpielberg, although Bluth claims that Spielberg at least gave him the space to do his job properly. Both parties, however, were victim to Universal's lack of funding, as the higher-ups had no way of knowing whether or not it would be successful, resulting in several unfinished scenes and a somewhat choppy plot. Spielberg, who had never worked in animation before, was also frustrated by how notoriously slow and expensive it was to create even a single scene.
24	** The studio was concerned that kids wouldn’t be able to remember Fievel’s name, and asked to make it something more familiar to Americans. This also ended up being a good thing, as they agreed to a compromise where Fievel would be nicknamed Philly, in reference to the real practice at the time of immigrants having their names Anglicized, and left it up to the kids themselves which name he would be popularly known by, with the original winning out.
25	* FakeIrish: Bridget's voice actress.
26	* KidsMealToy: UsefulNotes/McDonalds released a set of four storybooks in their Happy Meals, as well as a set of four Christmas stocking ornaments during the 1986 holiday season, [[MisaimedMarketing despite Fievel obviously being Jewish]]. The Anti-Defamation League was not pleased.
27	* NonSingingVoice: During the song ''Somewhere Out There'', Betsy Cathcart replaces Amy Green as Tanya's voice actress.
28	* UncreditedRole: Many of the incidental roles go uncredited in the film. In particular, neither the original or [[TheOtherDarrin replacement]] voices of The Orphan Alley Bullies are credited in any release.
29	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
30	** When David Kirschner came up with the idea for this, it was originally intended to be a half-hour television special, but thought it would be better as a full-length animated feature. He decided to turn to Disney, but the studio turned it down on the grounds that a story about a Jewish mouse was not commercial, leading to Kirschner relying on Creator/StevenSpielberg and Disney exile Creator/DonBluth to make the magic happen. One wonders how much of an impact it would have made for pre-''[[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Little Mermaid]]'' Disney if they actually trusted the audience enough in not feeling alienated by the hero's religion!
31	** The movie's plot was originally meant to be a [[FramingDevice flashback story told by 107-year-old Fievel to his great grandkids in present day.]] The likely reason the idea was scrapped is because it felt really unnecessary. There's also the utter impossibility of a mouse becoming a centenarian (and even if Fievel aged like a human, he'd be close to the equivalent of one of the world's oldest; not impossible, but not very believable) [[note]]It does happen in the book adaptation, though. Also, one wonders if this idea was not ripped off in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfTheTitanic'', also starting off with an old mouse recounting an event when he was young to his family.[[/note]]
32	** Fievel's nickname "Philly" wasn't in the original script (and therefore, neither was the ChekhovsGun of Tanya's name being changed to Tilly when the Mousekewitz's arrive in New York City -- after all, "if it's not essential don't include it in the story".) The nickname was added because Bluth thought that "Fievel" sounded too foreign, and audiences wouldn't like it," so Spielberg and Bluth agreed to have him be called "Fievel" by his family, but "Philly" by everyone else. Bluth was ultimately proven wrong.
33	** In the original script, Gussy was going to make an announce that Fievel was looking for his family at the big meeting of all the New York mice to discuss what to do about the cat problems (besides paying Warren T. Rat for ''no'' protection). Unfortunately, Fievel's family was sitting in the very back and when Gussy announced Fievel's name, a ship horn drowned it out for them. It might have been cut because of how unneccesarily cruel it seemed.
34	** Music/JerryGoldsmith was considered to compose the score, but was too busy with other projects and was replaced by Music/JamesHorner. Had things turned out differently, it would have been the second collaboration between Bluth and Goldsmith, after ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfNIMH''.

Context Trivia / AnAmericanTail