Films: Original film | Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch | Stitch! The Movie | Leroy & Stitch
TV series: Lilo & Stitch: The Series | Stitch! anime | Stitch & Ai
Video games: First GBA game | Lilo & Stitch: Trouble in Paradise | Stitch: Experiment 626 | Stitch Jam games
Other media: Stitch's Great Escape! | Stitch & the Samurai
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Are Lilo's eccentricities possible signs that she's neurodivergent? Or are they just her ways of coping with her parents' deaths? Or both?
- Lilo's classmates have been interpreted either as a bunch of Jerkasses who cruelly reject her friendship over petty reasons or as a regular group of children who simply lack the maturity to understand her odd ways of coping with her parents' deaths and avoid her as a result.
- Some fans see Nani as a responsible guardian who deeply loves her younger sister and thus is very much deserving of her custody. Others picture her as an imprudent young woman whose lack of parenting skills and poor decisions throughout the movie make her unsuitable for such a task.
- Awesome Art: It's a Disney Animated Canon film, so naturally it would feature this, but what makes this film stand out is its art style with interesting character designs, unique yet fluid animation (including what has to be the best water in traditional animation), and gorgeous watercolor backdrops.
- Awesome Music:
- The two original songs made for the film, "He Mele No Lilo" and "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride", both encapsulate Hawaii very well.
- There are also the Elvis Presley tunes used in the film and soundtrack, and Wynonna Judd's cover of his "Burning Love", for that Rock & Roll flavor that gives the film a bit of an edge.
- Alan Silvestri's score brings in the right kind of mood for the various scenes.
- Tia Carrere's (the voice of Nani) a cappella performance of "Aloha ʻOe" is as beautiful as it is sorrowful, just as it originally was when Liliʻuokalani, the last ruler of the Hawaiʻian Kingdom, wrote it.
- A few fans would also throw in A-Teens' cover of "Can't Help Falling in Love" here, despite its early 2000s bubblegum pop production values.
- The "Inter-Stitch-al" trailers use AC/DC's "Back in Black".
- Best Known for the Fanservice: The reason there's so much online fan art of that blonde lifeguard girl… Nani and David are no slouches in this department either.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Lilo using Stitch as a speaker for a record player makes no sense in the context of Stitch's abilities and never comes up again in the film.note
- Character Perception Evolution: In the 2000s, Mr. Bubbles was seen as somewhat of a villain because he "wanted" to take Lilo away from Nani. Not only is this not true, but people are more sympathetic towards him nowadays after some of its younger viewers learned just how thankless Mr. Bubbles's job truly is.
- Common Knowledge: Mr. Bubbles was often villified for "wanting" to take Lilo away from Nani. This ignores a scene in which he clearly doesn't want to. He tells Nani that he has to make decisions on what's best for Lilo, even if it means having to separate the two. He's also very lenient, giving Nani way more chances than she likely deserved.
- Diagnosed by the Audience: Among neurodivergent fans of the film, Lilo herself is frequently interpreted as being autistic, due to her difficulties with socializing, her niche and unusually strong interests (e.g. Elvis Presley and photographing fat people), and her character arc of seeking acceptance among peers and family members who don't fully understand how she thinks and acts. This interpretation is so popular that Lilo has ended up becoming a makeshift mascot for various "autistic headcanon" blogs.
- Fandom Rivalry: To some extent, fans of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet don't care for this film because it's too "kiddy" in comparison to those "more mature" films. The fact that this film succeeded and spun off a successful franchise while Atlantis and Treasure Planet both did not aside from video games doesn't help.
- Fanon: A popular theory is that Lilo always fed Pudge a sandwich before her parents died, but the day they died she forgot to feed him, thus leading to her belief that Pudge controls the weather.
- Fourth Wall Myopia: Some of the criticisms of Mr. Bubbles for having to "lean on" Nani for Lilo can be chalked up to this. His job is to have to make call(s) based off of what he himself sees, and Nani does not paint a good picture of truly being ready and able to take care of Lilo.
- Genius Bonus: Nani sings "Aloha ʻOe" right before Cobra Bubbles plans to take Lilo away. While "Aloha ʻOe" was composed as a love song, it's more commonly seen as a symbol of the loss of Hawaii when it was annexed by the United States. Nani sings the song as her sister is about to be taken away by a literal agent of the U.S. government. Bonus points for the opening song "He Mele No Lilo" invoking Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last monarch of Hawaii before it was annexed and the composer of "Aloha ʻOe".
- Girl-Show Ghetto: The film was able to avoid it and make a big profit during an era in which Disney movies weren't normally doing so well. But to do so, the marketing focused on Stitch, the male lead character. Lilo was even excluded from the film's theatrical release poster.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- This line Lilo says when Stitch leaves after the "Aloha ʻOe" scene: "ʻOhana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind. But if you wanna leave, you can. I'll remember you, though. I remember everyone who leaves." In one timeline, Stitch would do just that later in her life.
- In the ending montage, one scene shows Lilo, Stitch, and the girls dancing. In the background is a sign advertising the fictional airline Tsunami Air. A little less funny after the "Boxing Day" tsunami of 2004.
- Lilo feeding Pudge the fish peanut butter sandwiches every day because she believes he controls the weather seems like a throwaway gag at first glance. Then you find out that her parents died driving in the rain.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- One version of The Lion King (1994) "Inter-Stitch-al" showed Timon—in the crowd below Pride Rock riding on Pumbaa's back—pointing out that Simba wasn't the one being lifted into the air, even though Those Two Guys were not shown to have been at Pride Rock during the beginning of the 1994 original film. Come 2004, however, and it turned out that the meerkat-warthog duo were at Simba's unveiling after all.
- The scene in which Stitch acts like a giant monster in a model scale of San Francisco. Legendary Pictures made a movie of a certain well-known Kaiju fighting in both Honolulu and San Francisco with other monsters in 2014. Doubly so when Stitch & Ai shows that Stitch was actually meant to become a giant monster when he's in a large city and does so in that series (even though Chris Sanders never envisioned
giving Stitch that ability). - In one scene, Pleakley indignantly yells "Educate yourself!" to Jumba when explaining the endangered status of the mosquito species. In The New '10s, "Educate yourself!" has since been adopted as a catchphrase by politically active bloggers on websites like Tumblr, and it is now something of a Stock Phrase associated with the "Social Justice Warrior" stereotype.
- Jumba says he would "never make... more than one" creature. In The Series, it's revealed he had already created other 625 illegal experiments before Stitch. This also applies to Pleakley asking if Stitch has a relative who could be tasked to hunt him down. One of the types of relatives Pleakley asks for is a "cousin", which is how the other experiments are referred to in the sequels.
- David's line: "So you're from outer space? I've heard the surfing's choice." Disney's next movie, Treasure Planet, involves a protagonist whose main hobby is skysurfing in outer space.
- The Grand Councilwoman has been noted to look remarkably similar to a member of the Duros species from Star Wars, right down to the wrinkly lipless mouth and jagged fangs. Furthermore, the planet where the film begins and where the Federation is based, Turo, sounds similar both to Duros and their own homeworld of Duro. Fast-forward to the 2010s, when Disney bought Star Wars itself—the joke writes itself.
- Ho Yay: Jumba and Pleakley start their "relationship" in the film. They pretend to be husband and wife after reaching Earth while wearing poorly-crafted disguises, although they initially treat all this as nothing more than just an act. They decide to move into Lilo and Nani's house and live together at the end of the film.
- Memetic Mutation:
- The scene of Lilo praying for an angel as Nani listens in, then cutting to Stitch's evil laugh after crashing on Earth, has been adapted in fan art to any other number of oddly positive relationships.
- "My friends!" (fearful screaming) Explanation
- "This is your badness level. It's unusually high for someone of your size". Generally used for whatever evil/villainous character of a short stature one could think of.
- The scene where Lilo puts Stitch's claw on a vinyl record and opens his mouth for him to play "Suspicious Minds" like a speaker. It's been replaced with many other songs you can name.
- Nausea Fuel: The handful of scenes that feature Stitch playing with his own saliva. And, later, sticking his tongue up his own nose to eat a booger.
- Older Than They Think:
- Did you think this movie was the first animated work to have a girl befriending an alien as a plot? Meet Katie and Orbie, created (as a series of books) over a decade before the movie was released, and which incidentally was seen on Disney Channel in the United States (and ended production in the same year the movie was released). However, as that series is aimed at a preschool audience, is Lighter and Softer, and doesn't have anything in common storyline-wise.
- The scene edited from Lilo hiding in a clothes dryer to her hiding in a wooden cabinet with a pizza box as a door was from the UK home video release of the movie before it was used in all regions for Disney+ and later a 2022 re-release of the 2-Movie Collection Blu-ray.
- Once Original, Now Common: As this film's fans are fond of pointing out, it did several things that were considered pretty daring and unconventional for a Disney film back in 2002—but most of those things have since been done by more well-known Disney films, making it a bit harder to appreciate this one in hindsight. Case in point: it featured a modern working-class protagonist of color before The Princess and the Frog did, it featured a female protagonist without a love interest before Brave did, it focused on the unconditional love between two sisters before Frozen did (Sanders did get frustrated over this one), it did a science-fiction plot before Big Hero 6 did, and it featured a central cast of native Pacific Islanders before Moana did.
- One-Scene Wonder: The blonde lifeguard girl who Nani talks to on the beach. Mainly due to being incredibly buxom and curvy.
- Realism-Induced Horror: While the movie's plot about a girl befriending an alien is heavily fantastical, the fact that a cause of conflict is Nani having to prove to social services that she's capable enough to take care of Lilo when she's only nineteen years old. This is a very realistic trope.
- Ships That Pass in the Night: The lifeguard only appears in one brief scene where Nani tries to get a job from her, and she actually leaves Nani in anger (denying her a job in the process) when Stitch scares away all the beachgoers, never to be seen again after that. This has not stopped people from frequently shipping the two in Rule 34 art.
- Signature Scene:
- The end of the "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" sequence where Lilo, Stitch, and Nani ride through a huge wave, all smiling. It's this scene that's represented on the original DVD and VHS releases' (and later digital releases') Detail-Hogging Cover.
- Lilo finding out that Stitch's body works as a phonograph, with his nail acting as the needle, and his mouth as a speaker. The scene has no plot significance but is remembered by everyone due to being heavily featured on promos, to the point of Trailer Joke Decay. Years later, it would also originate a meme, where fans replace Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" with other songs (usually an explicit one, to contrast Lilo's nonchalance and Nani's astonishment).
- Slow-Paced Beginning: The first 15 or so minutes of the film are dedicated to political affairs within the United Galactic Federation, and even once Stitch himself is introduced, it still takes a good 7 minutes for him to be properly launched out to Earth. Luckily, as soon as Lilo is introduced, the pace picks right back up.
- Sweet Dreams Fuel: "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" captures the joys of "lingering in the ocean blue" so perfectly.
- Tear Dryer: The Grand Councilwoman comes to take Stitch back to space. Stitch, who has truly come to care for Lilo and Nani, starts to say goodbye. However, Lilo shows the Grand Councilwoman his adoption certificate, meaning that if Stitch is taken from Lilo, then that's technically stealing. As such, the Grand Councilwoman decides to let Stitch live with Lilo, making this double as a Surprisingly Happy Ending.
- Values Dissonance: Minor case. By The New '10s, Lilo hiding in the dryer early in the film can actually cause cases of fear in older viewers, due to an uptick of reports of young children dying doing just that. This was noticeable enough even back when the film was first released that the UK forced Disney to have the scene edited so that she was sitting under a large laundry folding table and using an old pizza box as a "lid" to hide, with Disney+ years later using that edit for their version of the film, much to the confusion of those who either grew up with the original theatrical cut of the movie or hadn't heard the stories involving dryer-related deaths.
- Values Resonance: A deleted scene showcases Lilo being asked for directions to the beach by tourists; this is still relevant years later where people who live in Hawaiʻi (especially the indigenous people) are oft treated as tour guides.
- The Woobie:
- Lilo. The poor girl has no friends, has lost her parents, she's about to be taken from her sister, and her "dog" runs away. And she just copes with it all somehow. Why does she get cursed so badly?! It doesn't stop there, though, as Lilo gets captured by Gantu and before Stitch rescues her, she starts crying because she thinks she'll never see Nani again.
- Nani, who's forced into parenthood after her parents' deaths, can't hold a single job to support her and her little sister and now suddenly had to deal with Stitch and the threat of Lilo being taken away by social service. The way she sobs when Lilo is captured by Gantu is simply heartbreaking.
- Stitch himself, after he is unable to fulfill his programming. Jumba comments at one point that Stitch must be so lonely without friends or family or even memories to look back on. The only person who is kind to him when he makes an effort to help out is Lilo, which also means that Stitch later deals with the guilt of knowing that his antics and presence are putting a ton of strain on the family and leading to their breakup. It gets even worse for him in Stitch Has a Glitch, where he starts to revert back to his old destructive programming and will eventually die. He gets better at the end.
