Trivia / Castle in the Sky

• Completely Different Title: The word "Laputa" was dropped from the title in the Spanish and US releases because it reads almost like "the whore" in Spanish. Miyazaki took the name from Gulliver's Travels, likely without even realizing that Jonathan Swift had chosen the name for that very reason. However, most international releases of the film kept the word anyway. It is even exclusively called Laputa in Australia.
• Creator's Oddball: Of all the antagonists created by Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli, Muska is distinguished by being the only one so far that is totally evil with absolutely no redeeming qualities.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The dub distributed by Streamline Pictures only appeared on home media in Japan - on the 1996 "Ghibli ga Ippai" laserdisc set from Tokuma Shoten (which featured every Studio Ghibli movie up until that point) and on the 2002 DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment. The 2014 Japanese HD remaster uses the Disney dub, as do streaming releases.
  • The uncut version of the Disney dub has never seen another release since its 2003 DVD premiere. All releases onward use the 2010 edit which dials out the extra lines (with either option to hear the rescore).
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Joe Hisaishi has gone on record to prefer his rescore over the original more synth-heavy and miminalist score and even Hayao Miyazaki has gone on to approve of the new score. Many hardcore fans of the Japanese version at the time, however, thought otherwise, disliking the new score and preferring the original instead. Some critics, however, did indeed echo Miyazaki and Hisaishi's sentiments, and while some people still do detest it, today, there are many who like the rescore.
• No Export for You: Ironically, the soundtrack of the US score is only available for purchase in Japan. The English dub with said soundtrack was admittedly included as a bonus feature on the Japanese Blu-ray. The rescore is also on the Australian and UK Blu-Ray releases, while GKIDS' Blu-ray and DVD releases contain both scores.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Among Japanese fans, a popular rumor exists purporting that a supposed alternate ending to the film was once broadcast during one of the film's annual airings on Japanese TV. This rumor started from a number of low-quality screenshots posted online in 2007, all of which contained shots not seen in the final film and some of which include credits superimposed onto them. While Ghibli themselves debunked the claim that an alternate ending exists, a number of fans are still trying to prove that it does by hunting down TV airings without any publicly available home recordings, with one even offering ¥50,000 to anyone who can find footage of the alleged alternate ending alone and ¥70,000 to anyone who can find a full recording of a broadcast containing the ending, with commercial breaks intact.
• Recycled Script: From a certain anime series whose concept was created by Miyazaki in The '80s as a proposed sequel to his work Future Boy Conan. Like Castle in the Sky, it featured blue skies, ancient civilizations, flying machines, a brave boy and his more mystic female friend from said civilization who carries a blue magic gemstone, a small clan of robbers led by a woman who eventually become allies, and a paramilitary order of villains whose leader is also related to it. The rejection of Miyazaki's pitch by Toho led him to recycle this script in his own film, Castle in the Sky, but the anime would end up being produced too some years later (ironically, under the direction of an old colleague of Miyazaki's, Hideaki Anno) under the name Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
• The Red Stapler: The film caused an increase in Asian tourism to Italy because of a building that resembles the eponymous location.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The English dub was supposed to be released to video sometime in 1999, but was changed to a theatrical release after the good sales of Kiki's Delivery Service on video. However, the failure of Princess Mononoke caused by fierce competition from Pokémon: The First Movie caused them to change plans again and leave a release date undecided for the film. It finally was released in 2003.
• Stock Sound Effect: While Pazu and Sheeta's glider is swept through the storm clouds around Laputa, there's a roaring sound frequently used with numerous Kaiju monsters in Japanese films and TV series. Also, at the end of the film, after Laputa's collapse, the the chained together gliders of the Dola gang give off a sound effect that is stolen from Hanna-Barbera. This stock effect was often used to depict machinery that was going "wonky" and breaking down.
• What Could Have Been: Early posters for the film included the Daiei (of Rashomon and Gamera fame) logo, as Tokuma Shoten owned both Daiei and Studio Ghibli at the time, indicating the film was supposed to have been distributed by the struggling Daiei. The film would eventually be distributed by Toei, which also distributed Hayao Miyazaki's previous film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

---