Acting for Two: For the Latin Spanish dub, Braian Pavón provided the voices of both Ben and Harry in the sequels.
Actor-Shared Background: Carlos is shown to be at least half-black (as Cruella is played by African-American actress Wendy Raquel Robinson), like his actor, the late Cameron Boyce.
The Character Died with Him: It's heavily implied in the Royal Wedding animated special that Carlos died at some point since the third movie, reflecting how his actor Cameron Boyce succumbed from a fatal epileptic seizure in 2019.
Creator Backlash: Annie Rojas, the actress who dubbed Lonnie in the Latin Spanish version, openly declared that she disliked the film as she thought it was a rehash of Ever After High.
Dawson Casting: The teenaged cast is played by actors ranging from 19 to 22. Cameron Boyce was the youngest in the cast at 16 years old, which helps with making the 14 year old Carlos seem like the baby of the group.
Edited for Syndication: The first film ends with Video Credits set to Shawn Mendes' "Believe"; in later airings of the film on Disney Channel, this was removed and the beginning of the credits were moved to the beginning of the film.
Fake Nationality: Arabian Jay is played by the multiracial Native American, European, and Asian Booboo Stewart.
Fan Community Nicknames: The main one in use is Descenders, though a couple others are being batted around.
This is Disney's answer to the Monster High and Ever After High multimedia franchises, which deal with the offspring of mythical/literary monsters and fairy tale characters respectively. Descendents ended up overshadowing the two to the point that both franchises were killed by the end of 2018, then only Monster High getting a reboot in 2020.
This series is also another attempt by Disney to ride on the coattails of High School Musical, and arguably their most successful one to date. It helps that the two trilogies share a director.
In Memoriam: Descendants 3 is dedicated to Cameron Boyce, Carlos' actor who died of epileptic seizure on July 6, 2019. A dedication was added before the film began and the end featured various footages of him from both Disney projects and his personal home life.
Missing Trailer Scene: The beginning of the "Good to Be Bad" music video features an advertisement for VK Day as the residents of the Isle of the Lost get their applications ready. That scene was not present in the movie itself.
Sergio Zaldivar returned as Lumiere in the Latin Spanish dub of the second film, after previously dubbing him in the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast (2017).
In The Rise of Red, Brandy and Paolo Montalban reprise their roles as Cinderella and Prince Charming from the 1997 film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.
Romance on the Set: Dove Cameron (Mal) and Thomas Doherty (Harry) became a couple when filming Descendants 2 and dated for around four years.
The Cast Showoff: All four main villain kids sing/dance throughout the movie, their actors are singers/dancers in real life. And then there's Kristen Chenowith and her showstopping number.
Voice-Only Cameo: In the second movie, Whoopi Goldberg played Ursula. However, she's only heard shouting at Uma from off-screen in one scene, and never seen beyond a single tentacle.
Fans of The Blue Fairy from Once Upon A Time will recognize Keegan Connor Tracy as Belle in Descendants. Apparently before getting the role of Belle, she auditioned for Maleficent, the dark fairy, instead. Fans of her character in Once Upon A Time have long speculated her as being a secretly evil master manipulator fairy in disguise. Imagine the rejoicing if she'd gotten the part.
The film was originally not intended to be a musical, with the songs being added after Kenny Ortega officially took over as director.
There was originally going to be a character named Aziz, son of Aladdin and Jasmine but was cut out for unknown reasons. It seems Jordan takes his place in Wicked World due to being the daughter of Genie.
This Aziz character is also a bit of casting gag. The actor who played him also played in the spinoff of Once upon a time, "Once Upon A Time In Wonderland", another Disney live action shared universe show, where he played the brother of (presumably) Aladdin's genie, who was the boyfriend of Alice from Alice in Wonderland, who were fighting against the likes of Jafar. Perhaps his scenes were cut to not have people be confused to whether the television series and Disney film were apart of the same world. Belle's actress was also in the show as the blue fairy.
It's pretty clear from the staging of Maleficent's big song around statues of the other villains that never do anything, that it was originally going to have all four of them involved, but then powerhouse singer Kristin Chenoweth was cast, which demanded she get a number of her own.
Miscellaneous trivia:
In a tragic case of Book Ends, the first film was the first DCOM that Cameron Boyce had a role in, while the last film would be his last DCOM before he passed away.
, Dove Cameron says that Kristin Chenoweth has been a longtime heroine of hers, so playing her daughter in Descendants was a major plus in her book.