Trivia / The Jungle Book 2

• Billing Displacement: Just like its predecessor, Mowgli is placed second in the cast list with Baloo up first.
• Creator Backlash: On Facebook, Marc Wielage said he had to "work very hard not to puke" during production of the film due to how horrible it was.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's released different Happy Meal tie-ins depending on the region:
  • The North American promotion featured six different detachable jungle-themed playsets that could be built separately or together. Each of them came with an articulated figure of one of the film's characters; Mowgli, Shanti, Baloo, Kaa, Shere Khan, and Lucky.
  • In most of Europe, a set of eight different pieces of a tree were released. They could connect to each other and perform actions when their buttons were pushed. These consisted of Mowgli, Ranjan and a monkey, Kaa, Hathi Jr., Shanti, Bagheera, Baloo, and Shere Khan.
  • The German promotion offered six plush keychain character heads that made different animal sounds. These consisted of Baloo, Bagheera, Shere Khan, Kaa, Colonel Hathi, and Lucky.
  • The Asian promotion offered four wind-up toys. These consisted of Mowgli, Bagheera, Baloo and Ranjan, and Shanti and Colonel Hathi.
  • The Australian promotion is interesting, as it offers Mowgli, Baloo and Ranjan, and Shanti and Colonel Hathi from the Asian promotion, as well as Bagheera, Ranjan and the monkey, and Hathi Jr. from the European promotion.
• The Original Darrin: After being replaced by Roger Storm for the Swedish dubs of TaleSpin and Jungle Cubs (as a adult) Olof Thunberg returned to voice Shere Khan in the Swedish dub, despite being 77-years old at the time.
• The Other Darrin: It's most obvious with Shanti, who sounds nothing like she did in the first movie. Sadly, none of the original voice-actors reprise their roles as most of them are long deceased, or were too old for the parts. Shanti aside, the new voice actors do their absolute best to imitate the original actors with various levels of success.
  • The same case also applies to the foreign dubs, due to many of the dub actors from the first movie's 1968-1979 era foreign dubs (Brazilian Portuguese 1968, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin Spanish, Slovak, Swedish) also either deceased or too old to reprise their roles. In French, Richard Darbois replaced the late Claude Bertrand as Baloo.
  • While the Swedish dub had Olof Thunberg reprising his role as Shere Khan, Hans Lindgren did not reprise his role as Kaa, and he was replaced with Guy de la Berg, despite the fact that the former was still alive at the time.
• Recycled Script: The sequel is frequently criticized for its similar plot to the original film.
• Role Reprise: Tony Jay, who provided the voice of Shere Khan, previously voiced a different variation of this character on The Jungle Book spin-off TaleSpin on top of having voiced this role (adult version) in Jungle Cubs. Jim Cummings, who provided Kaa's voice, voiced his younger self on Jungle Cubs. On the Latin Spanish dub, Francisco Colmenero reprise his role as Dizzy (the vulture with the mop top).
• Sequel Gap: Released 36 years after the first Jungle Book movie.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Amy Mebberson, one of the animators, there were ideas that were pitched for a Jungle Book 3. One idea was about Baloo and Shere Khan getting captured by hunters and sent to a Russian circus, Mowgli and Shanti going after them to save Baloo, and Shere Khan possibly getting over his desire to kill Mowgli through the course of the film.
  • Long before The Jungle Book 2, development for a sequel had already been planned in 1968. It was initially pitched as a record story (entitled More Jungle Book) however it was rejected as an animation due to poor sales and out of respect for Walt's dislike of sequels. The record featured original tunes provided by Phil Harris and Louis Prima (who reprised their roles as Baloo and Louie respectively), a snippet of which can be found here.
  • The actual sequel itself went through several script ideas, one of which involved Baloo trying to save a female bear from some poachers. One contributor mocked the fact that, after all their rewrites, the final was essentially just a rehash of the original.
  • According to an issue of Disney Adventures, The Jungle Book 2 originally had a pie fight scene that was cut from the final film.
  • A bit after the release of The Jungle Book 2 there was originally a pitch for a sequel series from Disney Television Animation called Mowgli and Baloo's Jungle Jams that would've focused on the duo's Denser and Wackier antics both around the jungle and human civilization.

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