Trivia tropes for The Prince of Egypt
Trivia With Their Own Pages
Trivia for the film:
- Acting for Two: 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 The Ten Commandments. More or less every version of the movie has Moses and God sharing the same voice actor.
- Actor-Inspired Element: The exaggerated walk away that Tzipporah does after dropping Moses into the well was Michelle Pfeiffer's idea.
- All-Star Cast: Including Val Kilmer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Glover, Helen Mirren, Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Patrick Stewart.
- Banned in China: The film was banned in the Maldives, Malaysia, and Egypt. In the former two countries, it was because of Islamic custom of never portraying the image of the prophets, which includes Moses, his brother Aaron, and his father-in-law Jethro. In Egypt, it was mostly because of the villainous portrayal of Pharaoh Rameses, a well-respected historical leader whom the Egyptians hold to be separate from the Pharaoh of Exodus.note Malaysia has since rescinded the ban in 2001, allowing the film to finally be sold on DVD and air on Pay TV.
- Creator Cameo: One of the directors, specifically Simon Wells, provides the pained cries of the slave that Moses defends. The crew at first got several old men to fill the part, but none of them made the cut because they ironically didn't sound old.
- Director Brenda Chapman also provides both the exhaling heard during the plague of the firstborn sequence and Miriam's river lullaby. It was originally intended to have Miriam's Non-Singing Voice Sally Dworsky re-record Chapman's scratch recording, but the filmmakers all agreed that the scratch recording sounded good enough to keep in the final film.
- DVD Commentary: The DVD for the film includes a commentary track from the three directors: Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells.
- Fake Nationality: Most of the voice actors are American or British, and none are Egyptian. It's sort of Justified since modern Egyptians speak Arabic, not Egyptian (which has been extinct for millennia sans a notable exception of Coptic which is solely a modern -comparatively speaking- liturgical language for Egyptian Coptic Christians, and completely different from the ancient Egyptian spoken during Rameses' reign), 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 a more accurate casting would be a hyper niche category of Egyptians and Jews that speak Coptic.
- Follow the Leader: The movie's success as the then-highest grossing traditionally animated film not produced by 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: The Passion of the Christ, which became the then highest-grossing R-rated film of all time (the record is currently held by Joker) and Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, which was the highest-grossing film based on a Preschool Show for 17 years until Dora and the Lost City of Gold surpassed it.
- Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Ofra Haza, the voice of Yocheved, sang her part of 'Deliver Us' in 18 out of the 21 different languages that the film was dubbed in, even going so far as to pronounce her parts phonetically for some of the languages she didn't speak.
- Non-Singing Voice: Oddly enough Val Kilmer did not do his own singing, even though he has a really good voice and has sung in other movies he has made (as well as, coincidentally, when he played Moses in the stage musical The Ten Commandments.). Sandra Bullock provides the speaking voice for Miriam, but Sally Dworsky is the character's singing voice.
- Permanent Placeholder: Director Brenda Chapman did a scratch recording of Miriam singing the River Lullaby that was then supposed to be re-recorded by Miriam’s Non-Singing Voice, Sally Dworsky, for the scene where Moses meets Mirian and Aaron. Chapman’s recording was the one that ended up in the final film.
- Playing Against Type: It is a bit unnerving to hear Patrick Stewart (as Pharaoh Seti) justifying murdering thousands of innocent Hebrew babies in that soothing Team Dad voice.Seti: Oh, my son, they were only slaves...
- Playing with Character Type: And he'd been portrayed as a Reasonable Authority Figure and a stern, yet kind father up until this point.
- You'd think that Hotep and Huy, the two high priests, would be comedy sidekicks in the vein of Aladdin's Iago or The Lion King's hyenas. Steve Martin and Martin Short do voice them, but Egypt is a rare instance of two comic legends playing their roles absolutely straight. They are humorous, yes, but their biggest laugh (trying to demonstrate how the water could turn to blood) is but a counterpoint to a horrifying situation.
- A particularly jarring example comes from the Portuguese dub, where Rameses is voiced by the same actor who did Goku.
- Similarly Named Works: Should not be confused with Prince of Egypt by Dorothy Clarke Wilson, one of the four works that served as the basis of The Ten Commandments. With that film leaving a long shadow and influencing later screen adaptations of the Exodus, it is not unreasonable to presume the film might have gotten its title from that book.
- Write What You Know: Moses dropping a water balloon on Hotep and Huy was based on the fact that Jeffery Katzenberg did the same thing as a teenager.
Miscellaneous Trivia for the film:
- There's a scene of Moses tending to the sheep right before he meets the burning bush. According to the directors, the animators realized too late that they mistakenly made him barefoot in this scene, making a noticeable continuity error since he has to have sandals to take off at God's order. Their solution was to cover his feet by adding more sheep because it was easier than reanimating what they already had.
- There are seven million rendered locusts in one of the shots of The Plagues.
- The slave that flung mud at Moses in one scene went by the production code H8.
- DreamWorks Animation was developing this and (a prototype of) Shrek at the same time. Animators who weren't turning in a satisfactory job on the former would be sent over to work on the latter. The consensus of those condemned to this punishment describes it as a Fate Worse than Death. And the practice of such became known as getting Shrekd.
Trivia for the stage musical:
- Cut Song: "Playing With the Big Boys Now" no longer appears. However the chanting of the Egyptian pantheon is used as a leitmotif for Hotep.
- Filmed Stage Production: A professional taping of the West End production was released in select theaters, and is currently available on digital.
