Let's Watch This: "Rolie Polie Olie: The Great Defender of Fun" (2002)

Do you remember Rolie Polie Olie?

There's a very good chance that you do. Produced by Nelvana and created by children's book author William Joyce, the show ran on Playhouse Disney from 1998 until 2004, taking place in a world that would've felt right at home in a Fleischer Studios cartoon - except it was in CGI and all the characters were robots. I loved this show when I was younger - I was lucky enough to be in its target audience during the time when Playhouse Disney had a lot of really great shows. Bear in the Big Blue House, Stanley, The Book of Pooh, Out of the Box... fortunately, you can find all of these shows on Disney Plus now, but it's not quite the same.

Rolie Polie Olie was a pretty popular show, if not to the same level of popularity as Bear in the Big Blue House. But it did have one thing that Bear didn't have - a movie. In fact, it got TWO movies! Both of them straight-to-video, but still, a movie's a movie. 2002 saw the release of the first Rolie Polie Olie movie, Rolie Polie Olie: The Great Defender of Fun.

I remember watching this movie when it came out on DVD, and liking it well enough, but I haven't seen it in years. Does it hold up? Well, I found the film on YouTube (which is convenient, since it doesn't seem to be on Disney Plus and I no longer have the DVD), so why don't we find out?

The movie begins in a galaxy full of sentient planets and stars, triumphant music playing in the background, before we come across... what I could only possibly describe as nightmare fuel.

Seriously, that clown head with the purple skin alone is gonna appear in my
nightmares, I just know it...

This, a narrator tells us, is the faraway "Galaxy of Goofs", and it's been invaded by a dark force. The master of gloom, the pirate of pleasure, the worstest, baddest bot in the universe (the narrator's words, not mine)... Gloomious Maximus! He's nasty, he's diabolical, and worst of all, he's voiced by James Woods! AAAAAAAAAAAUGH!

...uh, is that blood on his chin?

With his "Un-Funarators", which kind of look like the speaker horns from gramophones, he can suck the fun out of EVERYTHING! In other words, he's the Rolie Polie Olie equivalent of those guys who complain about cartoon mascots being used to advertise sugary cereal to kids. Y'know, the people we have to blame for the Trix Rabbit being out of a job?

Gloomious uses his "Un-Funarators" to suck the fun out of the Galaxy of Goofs' residents. Fortunately, who should show up to save the day but Spaceboy and Spacedog, who are basically Rolie Polie Olie and his dog Spot but blue and dressed in chrome. They will defeat Gloomious by... laughing at him. Apparently this villain's weakness is laughter. Ah well, it's better than being defeated by SNEEZING...

"Astro Boy can suck it!"

All of this is just a TV show that Olie, his sister Zowie, and his square-shaped friend Billy Bevel are watching. The narrator tells them to help Spaceboy and Spacedog by laughing as well. It works, the creatures of nightmares are filled with fun again, and even Gloomious' minions are yukking it up. Gloomious is all "DRAT! I've been foiled by LAUGHTER!" and leaves.

Olie and Zowie's mother enters the room and reminds them that it's Zowie's birthday party tomorrow (plot exposition!), then on TV, Spaceboy tells the audience that Gloomious has a new weapon called a "Super-Powerful, Ultra-Gloomerator Glum-Beam" and to call the "Spaceboy Hotline" if they get in a jam. I assume this is more exposition. Also, Blogger's spell-check is getting a pretty good workout from this post.

I'm guessing Billy wouldn't be offended if you were to call him a "blockhead".

Olie, Billy, and Zowie send out invitations for Zowie's party via tiny rockets, because why not? One of the rockets leaves their planet's atmosphere and goes into space - and it's heading right towards a ship that looks a lot like the one Gloomious Maximus was piloting in the show Olie, Billy and Zowie were watching...

Hmmm...

And guess who's piloting that ship? Why, Gloomious Maximus, of course! He's not just a character in a TV show? Does he play himself in the show and then just go out to do evil stuff? Or is the Gloomious Maximus in the show an imposter? I wonder if he's ever considered suing for defamation of character.

Anyhow, the rocket winds up aboard the ship, and when Gloomious reads the invitation inside he makes it his goal to ruin Zowie's birthday party. But first, he's going to sing an awful song about how much he hates fun.

I believe this song is called "The Karens' National Anthem".

Back on the Polies' planet, Olie and Billy have invented what looks like a Nerf gun that shoots bubbles (SpongeBob would love that). Olie's dad and his Uncle Gizmo show up with an invention of their own - a handy-dandy energy refibulator, which can synthesize anything's energy into a powerful ray. For instance, it can take the yummy taste of cookies (does something's taste really quality as "energy"?) and make a yummy ray.

Question: how come some of the robots in this show have hair and others don't? Does Olie
ever feel self-conscious about being bald?

Olie explains that he wants to give the bubble-blowing gun to Zowie for her birthday, but he was hoping it would be a special super-silly ray instead. "Maybe you just haven't got enough silly in it yet," his dad suggests. Perhaps they could use the energy refibulator to refibulate the energy of them being silly and create an actual silly ray.

You're probably wondering why Uncle Gizmo is an Elvis impersonator. I'm wondering that too. Do robots in outer space even know who Elvis is? We never see any humans in this show, but the planet Olie lives on isn't supposed to be Earth (at least I don't THINK it is), so I doubt we're supposed to assume that humanity went extinct or anything.

Anyway, the robots all act silly, and the energy refibulator does its thing and turns the bubble-blowing gun into a gun that blows bubbles that make people act silly. I really hope such a device doesn't fall into the wrong hands...

"Spider-Bot, Spider-Bot, does whatever a Spider-Bot does
Can defy, gravity, when he acts, real silly
Look oooooooooout, he is a Spider-Bot..."

"It works! This is gonna be the A-Number-One-bestest present I ever gave Zowie!" Olie declares. When he and Billy bring up Gloomious Maximus, Olie's dad and Uncle Gizmo reveal that they know about Gloomious Maximus too. When they were small, they watched Gloomious on a show called The Willy and Wally Jolly Hour. Who are Willy and Wally Jolly? Why, only the greatest Defenders of Fun ever. They also looked much more human than any of the other robots we've seen. In fact, they kind of look like prototypes for Rodney Copperbottom, another William Joyce-created robot character.

Wow, Gloomious Maximus hasn't aged a day since then.

...wait a second. DO robots age?

Meanwhile, Gloomious fires his Glum Beam at Olie's hometown of Polieville, which will put everyone to sleep, leaving them powerless to stop him from sucking the fun out of their lives. It doesn't seem to have any effect on Olie, Billy, Zowie, or Spot, but Olie's dad and Uncle Gizmo turn blue and become very, very tired. "It's like they've been... Gloomerated," Olie points out. "Time to call the Spaceboy Hotline!"

Olie calls up the hotline and tells Spaceboy - who ALSO exists and isn't just a TV show character, apparently - about what's going on. He tells Olie that he, Billy and Zowie weren't affected by the Glum Beam because they were wearing party hats, which deflected the beam's power. "Try to keep your chins up! I'll be there as fast as I can!" he declares. Until Spaceboy gets there, Olie decides that they'll have to be Great Defenders of Fun just like Willy and Wally. Oh yeah, and Olie and Zowie's goofy grandpa Pappy shows up, but he's been "Gloomerated" too.

Becoming "Gloomerated" is what happens when you spend too much time on Twitter.

Boy, these jokes are just writing themselves...

Pappy might have been "Gloomerated", but his seemingly sentient dentures haven't for some reason, which is a good thing because Olie, Billy, Zowie, and Spot are gonna need all the help they can get - especially since Gloomious' ship has arrived! Zowie decides to cheer up the "Gloomerated" bots by tickling them, and Olie, Billy, Spot, and the dentures head to the park to stop Gloomious from sucking the fun out of everything.

They use the silly bubble-blowing gun to make Gloomious' minions act silly, but it doesn't work on Gloomious himself. After a rousing game of Keep-Away and the dentures biting Gloomious' posterior, Spaceboy and Spacedog show up to help, as do Zowie and the remainder of the Polie clan, now de-Gloomerated. "We'll laugh you right out of Polieville, Gloomious Maximus!" Mrs. Polie declares.

Gloomious' one weakness - jokes about his weight. When he sits around the house,
he SITS AROUND THE HOUSE.

"Too many laughs! Too much happiness!" Gloomious says, but then he manages to get his hands on the silly ray/bubble blowing gun. Remember what I said about hoping that device didn't fall into the wrong hands? Well, as Gloomious heads back to his ship with the gun, he makes it clear that he has eeeeeeeeeevil plans for it. Olie is bummed that he doesn't have a present for Zowie now, but Zowie says, "Me no need present. Me want Olie happy." Then Mr. Polie gets bitten on the butt by the dentures (they must be very powerful dentures if they can bite characters made of metal).

Olie, Zowie, Billy, Spot, and the dentures are heroes, and Pappy is so happy that he starts tap-dancing. But he winds up busting his "happy gear", which means he can't dance. To make matters worse, they're being interviewed on TV, and Gloomious is watching them, so when he sees this he gets an idea... an awful idea... Gloomious has a wonderful, awful idea...

Curse you, movie, for making me crave cake at 9:16 in the morning.

While Mrs. Polie is finishing up the cake for Zowie's party, Dr. Geary the Gyropractor shows up to help Pappy. He fixes the happy gear, and Pappy can dance again. So, pointless conflict - torpedoed. Let's celebrate with a musical number!

Be warned - once this song enters your head, it will never leave.

I wonder what the mindset was behind making the Polies' house a giant teapot.

Alas, Pappy's happy gear starts acting up again, but all sorts of mail comes in to help fix the problem - a new Happy Gear, a can of oil, etc. None of it seems to work, though. At least until they try the hyperactive giggling pickle (yes, that's in the movie. I did not make that up).

Gloomious' minions drop off another rocket at the house, and when they open it up, out pops a tiny storm cloud that zaps Pappy with lightning and messes up his happy gear once again. Why don't they just use the pickle again? It worked the first time.

Instead, Olie decides that they have to get the silly ray back - then they can just ZAP Pappy back to being happy. Or, y'know, just use the pickle again. But considering that Gloomious' minions are sabotaging the party, culminating in them sending Zowie and Pappy flying away with a giant balloon, maybe it'd just be easier to take down Gloomious once and for all.

"Ground control to Major Tom..."

Mr. and Mrs. Polie hop into their flying car (which looks suspiciously similar to the one George Jetson drives) and go after Pappy and Zowie. They'd better hurry, because Gloomious' minions are on their tail. Eventually, Pappy and Zowie wind up floating right into the clutches of Gloomious, and thanks to his minions' messing with a directional signpost, Mr. and Mrs. Polie are sucked into a wormhole - which, amusingly, is actually shaped like a worm.

Olie, Billy and Spot head into space themselves in a rocket ship they've constructed, followed by Uncle Gizmo on his flying motorcycle. Olie, Billy and Spot make it into Gloomious' ship, and when Gloomious is all "You aren't going anywhere!" Olie reveals their secret weapon - the hyperactive giggling pickle!

"NO, PLEASE, I'M ALLERGIC TO PICKLES!"

While Gloomious is dealing with the pickle, they manage to swipe back the silly ray and fix Pappy for the third time. Everybody heads home, including Mr. and Mrs. Polie who finally make it out of that wormhole. Birthday party time!

So, the day is saved, Gloomious is defeated, Zowie has a great birthday... but wouldn't you know it, the film STILL isn't over. Gloomious has now decided to PULL THE ENTIRE PLANET THAT OLIE LIVES ON TO THE GALAXY OF GLOOM. Dude, know when to throw in the towel. Fortunately, he pulls the planet by a little green planet where two... alien robots, I guess, called the Littlegreens live, so Olie calls them up to ask them if they know what's going on.

Oh, look, there's a beautiful full Gloomius Maximus head in the nights sky...
wait a minute.

Next, Olie calls up the Spaceboy Hotline, but Spaceboy's busy at the moment. So then Mr. Polie gets the idea to pull the planet back to its original spot with his car and Uncle Gizmo's motorcycle. Unfortunately, Gloomious' ship is much more powerful. Fortunately, Spaceboy and Spacedog see what's going on and fly over to help Mr. Polie and Uncle Gizmo. Unfortunately, Gloomious manages to knock Mr. Polie and Uncle Gizmo out by pelting them with bowling balls. Fortunately, the planet that the land on is the very same planet that Willy and Wally Jolly call home. Huzzah!

How does a robot grow a mustache?

The effects of the Galaxy of Gloom are already taking effect, and the Polies are starting to turn into a bunch of Eeyores. But then they get a call from Spaceboy, who tells them that they need more turbo power. Then Mrs. Polie gives Olie another idea - if they get Gloomious' happy gear going again, maybe his heart would grow three sizes. In the meantime, Mrs. Polie and Pappy enlist the help of everyone in Polieville to get the planet away from the Galaxy of Gloom, and Olie and Zowie enlist the help of various Polieville kids to act silly so the energy refibulator can add more silliness to the silly ray. Once it's nice and silly, they give the ray to Pappy just as he's about to take off into outer space.

So now it's basically a tug-of-war for the planet Polie.

If a planet actually WERE pulled to another location in the galaxy, would the clouds
come with it? I legitimately have no idea, I'm not a science expert...

"Cheer up, Gloomious!" Olie says, channeling his inner action movie hero, as he, Billy, and Zowie arrive in Gloomious' ship with the silly ray. Gloomious threatens to suck the fun out of Billy if they don't hand over the ray, but Billy urges Olie to blast him with as many bubbles as possible. Gloomious is overwhelmed, and despite his best efforts winds up being scrubbed of all gloomy thoughts. He even starts LAUGHING, and agrees to let the Polie planet go.

Then Zowie invites Gloomious to her birthday party, and - I know I already made this joke, but it fits the situation perfectly - Gloomious' heart grows three sizes. Or rather, his happy gear starts working. He's so happy he starts singing.

The movie ends with everybody dancing in a conga line to the moon. Make up your own joke here, I've got nothing.

What's the Verdict?

I'm glad I rewatched this. It's hardly Oscar-worthy, but it's a fun little movie. My only complaint is that it's needlessly long. There's a lot of padding that could have easily been taken out - like, did we need to be tricked into thinking that Pappy's happy gear was fixed TWICE before it got messed up again? Also, the songs were kind of weak. Still, it has everything that makes the show good - likeable characters, decent animation, and a cheeryness about it that, in today's more bitter and cynical world, is desperately needed. If you have kids, show 'em Rolie Polie Olie - start with the show, then this movie. They'll probably like it. As for the OTHER Rolie Polie Olie movie, The Baby Bot Chase, we'll look at it another time.

This review is brought to you by... a stick.

It's a stick. You can go outside and find one. And there's so many things you can do with a stick! You can poke things with it, you can feed a beaver with it, you can throw it for your dog to fetch... look, not EVERY review on this blog can be brought to you by something funny.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Danny Phantom"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

Danny Phantom is one of the most, if not THE most, popular Nickelodeon shows of the 2000s. It certainly seems to be the most well-liked of Butch Hartman's shows as well. What are MY thoughts on it?

Well, I... think I watched one episode with the sound off. I might've watched another one at some point, I don't know. I knew the theme song at least. I saw ads.

Yeah, sorry. I was never a huge Danny Phantom fan. I generally prefer comedic cartoons to action-based ones. I'm sure shows like Young Justice and Avatar are just as great as everyone makes them out to be, I've always just been more into comedy. Or maybe I just wasn't watching Nickelodeon when they happened to be airing an episode of the show (this was the pre-TiVo era, so you either had to watch it when it was on or wait for a DVD or iTunes release).

Okay, so what is Danny Phantom about? The theme song explains the show's premise: Danny Fenton (voiced by David Kaufman) is a fourteen-year-old boy living in the town of Amity Park. One day, his ghost hunter parents Jack (voiced by Rob Paulsen) and Maddie Fenton (voiced by Kath Souice) built a machine called the Ghost Portal to bridge the human world and the Ghost Zone, a world populated by ghosts. It didn't work. When Danny went inside the Ghost Portal, he inadvertently pressed the "ON" button and it infused his DNA with ectoplasm. Now Danny has ghost powers! He can walk through walls, turn invisible, possess people, all that stuff. And when you get cool powers, what else can one do with them than protect humanity from evil? Problem is, most of his town is afraid of ghosts, so he has to keep his identity and ghost powers secret.

Danny even appeared on boxes of Cap'n Crunch. Even SpongeBob never did THAT...
probably because he had his own cereal.

Has there ever been a superhero with ghost powers before? I'm sure there was and some huge Marvel or DC fan will tell me about it in the comments section of this post. But still, this is a really cool idea for a cartoon show, so I'm not surprised it became such a hit.

The first episode of Danny Phantom aired after the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards on April 3rd, 2004. Alas, a huge fanbase didn't stop Nickelodeon from basically sabotaging it, giving the third season an erratic airing schedule and then cancelling it outright in 2007. Fans organized petitions and small organizations to get the show renewed, but Nickelodeon would not be swayed. The good news is, the whole series was released on DVD in 2014, and you can watch episodes on Paramount Plus and Apple TV if you have either of those streaming services.

I suppose I might as well do my part to help raise awareness of the show, even if I wind up not liking it. I suppose I probably should've saved this review for the Halloween season since it's about ghosts, but nah, I'll post it now. We'll be watching the third episode of the show, "One of a Kind", to see if Danny Phantom lives up to the hype or if... uh, insert ghost joke here.

The episode starts off with Danny fighting the Box Ghost, one of his most popular and least threatening recurring bad guys. His shtick is that he has "power over all containers cardboard and square". He's also voiced by Rob Paulsen doing sort of a fusion of Carl Wheezer and Mark Chang, which automatically makes him an amusing character.

I wonder if he's related to that crazy box-obsessed guy from Channel Umptee-3.

Danny, for obvious reasons, does not take the Box Ghost very seriously. Especially not when he has his best friends Sam and Tucker to help him. For those unfamiliar with the show, Sam (voiced by Grey DeLisle-Griffin) is a goth obsessed with protecting the environment who may or may not have been intended to be Danny's love interest (though this doesn't stop most folks online from shipping him with every other female cartoon character in existence... seriously, check out DeviantArt if you don't believe me). And Tucker (voiced by Rickey Collins) is a techno-geek who thinks that chicks dig him but is wrong. Basically, they're this show's equivalent of Jake Long's two friends.

"Good night, everybody!" Tucker says, apparently believing that he's Yakko Warner, before he opens a magic thermos that sucks the Box Ghost inside. Good guys: 1, Box Ghost: zilch.

"Phenomenal cosmic powers... itty-bitty living space."

Danny complains that Sam and Tucker aren't very focused for superhero sidekicks. Sam is supposed to be helping him study for a big test tomorrow and Tucker is supposed to be helping him catch ghosts so he HAS time to study. So, he's studying and fighting ghosts at the same time? Woof, talk about multitasking.

Then Tucker demonstrates that maybe Danny SHOULDN'T be taking him on his ghostbusting missions by dropping the thermos, which releases all of the ghosts. Or at least all of the balding sharp-toothed business suit-wearing ones.

Way to go, Tucker. Now some office building is going to be haunted.

Little does Danny know that he's being watched. Say hello to Skulker (Matthew St. Patrick), a ghost who's obsessed with hunting other ghosts for sport. And when he sees the half-human half-ghost being that is Danny, he decides that he'd make an excellent addition to his collection.

"Be vewy, vewy quiet. I'm hunting my own kind. Huhuhuhuhuhuh..."

We get a look at Skulker's "collection", and honestly, I'm beginning to wonder how exactly ghosts work in this world. You have the Box Ghost and those ghosts we just saw flowing out of the thermos, who looked like transparent blue-skinned humans. But then you have these ghosts, which are green and look like residents of Monstropolis. Heck, Skulker's pretty different-looking from the other ghosts too. He looks like a skeleton with green flames for hair.

According to TV Tropes, Butch Hartman claimed that the ghosts in Danny Phantom aren't the spirits of once-living people, but rather monsters from another dimension who create backstories for themselves because they want to be human. This just raises further questions.

Are these guys the ghosts of ALIENS? Did Skulker fly to Mars to capture these guys?

The next day, while Danny and his parents are having breakfast, in runs his big sister Jazz (Colleen O'Shaughnessey) excited about how "they said yes". "Who said 'yes'? The person you asked if you were a conceited snob?" Danny asks. Nope, a magazine that Jazz wrote a letter to asking if they could put Maddie on the cover: Genius Magazine, made FOR women geniuses BY women geniuses. The perfect magazine, Jazz claims, to prove to everyone that she has "normal" parents instead of "ghost-hunting freaks".

Jack and Maddie don't seem too annoyed by their daughter calling them freaks. Instead, Jack takes out a new device called the Ghost Gabber, which takes the mysterious sounds that ghosts make and translate them into English. For example, "Boo!" is translated into "I am a ghost. Fear me." Neat, huh? As for the magazine, Jack and Maddie believe that they should BOTH be on the cover. After all, they're a team. "The world needs to know that the Fentons are a family of geniuses!" Jack declares.

"I bought a giant American flag just so I could pose in front of it at random! Even when what
we're talking about doesn't really have anything to do with the United States!"

When Danny heads to his school, Casper High (get it? CASPER?), he discovers that he got a D on his most recent test. All of the ghost-hunting is taking away from his study time. "So much for the Fentons being a family of geniuses!" Tucker quips, presumably because he felt like being a tool. Sam suggests that he do an extra credit biology assignment to boost his grade, such as a report on the extremely rare purple-back gorilla (scientific name Magillius Violetstainonitsbackius).

It's got white fur... I think now we know what species of gorilla Bubba from Chop Socky
Chooks is!

According to Sam, the purple-back gorilla is extremely rare. There are only two left in existence, both of them male, so I guess the only chance of saving the species is for at least one of them to be set free, meet another gorilla that doesn't have white fur or a purple back, and hope that the babies take after their father. Danny tells Sam that he doesn't have time for extra credit or Sam's animal rights agendas, but Tucker says that he just needs to learn how to manage his time better.

"I've decided to become your time manager. It's the least I can do after Sam made me let all those ghosts out," Tucker continues. "It'll be my job to keep track of your schedule so you can do your schoolwork AND catch all those ghosts that Sam let loose." You see, the joke is that it was actually Tucker's own stupidity that led to the ghosts escaping from the thermos.

And now Sam's making an angry expression because Tucker is acting like it's all
her fault. Nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck.

Danny, Sam and Tucker run out of the library, and as soon as they do, Skulker shows up and takes a look at the computer and the image of the purple-back gorilla on the screen. Some poor kid makes the mistake of asking Skulker if he's finished with the computer, and winds up like this:

"AUGH! I'VE GOT TASTY PASTE IN MY EYES!"

After school, Danny and his compadres head to the Amity Park Zoo, where one of the purple-back gorillas, Sampson, is conveniently living. Sam makes them spend six hours watching the gorilla scratch its butt because she thinks they'll eventually find something out about it that nobody's ever learned. Instead, Danny and Tucker wind up falling asleep - and cuddling, too, which prompts Sam to take a photo of them because she thinks it's funny. Never would've suspected that Sam was a homophobe.

Sam thinks people being gay is funny, huh? Did she go on to write for Lilo and Stitch: The
Series?

Sam goes to the gorilla's enclosure, and it attempts to tell her that there's something going on in the nearby tiger exhibit. Unfortunately, Sam doesn't speak gorilla and thinks it's trying to tell her that it wants out. So she runs over to the big button that opens the door to its cage... I don't know why the zoo just has such a button out in the open, seems like that's just asking for trouble... and frees the majestic beast. Alas, by that point Skulker has already beaten up the poor tiger and trapped it in a net, but he is no match for the raw power that a purple-back gorilla possesses.

"CALL ME 'DONKEY KONG' ONE MORE TIME! I DARE YOU!"

This is, quite possibly, the most awesome part of the entire episode, mainly because it's always cool seeing an animal triumph over an evil person. Eventually, the gorilla sends Skulker flying into the tower where Danny and Tucker are having their cuddling session, but before he can get his filthy hands on Danny (is it possible for a ghost to have filthy hands? I'm not sure), the gorilla shows up again and scares him off.

Danny and Tucker wake up screaming - both because of the gorilla and because they're hugging each other. But guess what? There's nothing wrong with two males hugging each other.

"...don't move. There's a big hairy spider crawling towards us."

"I'm going ghost!" Danny says, transforming into Danny Phantom (a registered trademark of Nickelodeon!) and then lifting up the gorilla and carrying it back to its enclosure. Then he and Tucker start chewing out Sam for letting the gorilla out, only for Sam to take out the photo of them cuddling to shut them up.

The next day, an interviewer from Genius Magazine pays a visit to the Fenton household. To Jazz's dismay, all Jack and Maddie want to talk about is ghost hunting... I guess the majority of people in this world don't believe in ghosts. Danny, Sam, and Tucker show up, and when Maddie sees how disheveled Danny looks she says that she doesn't quite think she likes this "overnight zoo research". What does she think Danny is doing, mating with the wolverines?

"So, from what I can gather, you two are ghost hunters and your son is a Furry? Is your
daughter the only normal one in this family?"

Danny heads upstairs, opens the door to his room, and finds... Skulker standing in the doorway! How did he find out where Danny lived? Maybe he checked the phone book, I don't know. He traps Danny in a net and drags him into his room. Oh, no, how will Danny get out of this? We'll just have to see... right after a word from our sponsor!

My Personal Favorite Songs From "Schoolhouse Rock"

Let's be honest, everybody... we probably learned a lot more from Schoolhouse Rock than we did from our actual schools. No disrespect towards my teachers, of course, but I don't even remember anyone even saying the word "conjunction" at any point when I was in school. The only thing school taught me that Schoolhouse Rock didn't was how disturbing having to use a public bathroom was.

What's that? You've never heard of Schoolhouse Rock? Well, I suppose I could sing a catchy song to help you learn about it, but A) this is a written format so you wouldn't be able to hear it and B) I'm not much of a singer anyway. So instead, I'll just explain it to you the way I usually do: in the 1970s, advertising executive David McCall noticed that his son had difficulty learning multiplication tables but could memorize Rolling Stones songs with ease (I think we can all relate to that). So David hired musician Bob Dorough to write a song that would teach multiplication, a song that would eventually become "Three is a Magic Number". Tom Yohe, an illustrator at David's agency of McCaffrey and McCall, created visuals to accompany the song, and then television producer Radford Stone suggested that David pitch the idea to ABC as a TV series. At the time, the vice president in charge of programming at ABC was Michael Eisner, and when they pitched the idea to him he liked it - as did Chuck Jones, who Michael had brought with him to the pitch meeting. At the time, Chuck had a TV show on ABC for kids called Curiosity Shop, and so the pilot episode of that show included "Three is a Magic Number", making it the television debut of Schoolhouse Rock.

Schoolhouse Rock wasn't a series per say - it was a bunch of shorts that aired as part of ABC's children's lineup, which also included Time For Timer and The Bod Squad. In total, seven "seasons" of Schoolhouse Rock were produced - the original "Multiplication Rock" in 1973, "Grammar Rock", "America Rock", "Science Rock", "Computer Rock", "Money Rock", and the most recent one; 2009's "Earth Rock". I don't think Schoolhouse Rock was still airing on ABC when I was born, but my parents made sure I knew about its existence by buying the DVDs and at least one of the soundtrack albums. I also vaguely remember watching at least one short in school. Now, kids can discover Schoolhouse Rock for themselves by going on YouTube or Disney Plus.

Since this is a blog about animation, I think it'd be ridiculous not to do at least ONE post about such a big part of animation history. I was originally going to rank all sixty-six of the songs, but I quickly discovered that some of them I didn't have a whole lot to say about. So instead, I'm doing a top twenty list (ten seemed like too little) - with my favorite songs from the show listed in no particular order. I'm sure lots of other people online have already done that, but who cares? Let's get started!

"Fireworks"

I think the songs of Schoolhouse Rock that I'm the most familiar with are the ones from "America Rock" - my family had the soundtrack album and listened to it in the car, especially around the Fourth of July. Who doesn't love swingin' jazz music? And what is the Fourth of July without fireworks? Well, it'd probably still be the Fourth of July, but we still want to see fireworks. And we associate fireworks with Independence Day so much that it seems only natural to use 'em as a metaphor for what our ancestors did to gain freedom.

"Shot Heard Round the World"

Yeah, you can expect to see a LOT of "America Rock" songs on this list (I listened to the soundtrack album so much it's kind of jarring to hear the versions of these songs with sound effects!). Hamilton wishes it covered the Revolutionary War as well as this song does. This is also the first song on the list to feature the voice of Bob Dorough, whose folksy voice brings a lot of personality to these songs.

"I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College"

This song came out in 2002 as a response to the 2000 Election. Bob Dorough and Jack Sheldon are both featured, but it's Jack who gets the most to do as the voice of Boothy. You've gotta love the Dixieland-esque big band music, and the song takes us back to a simpler time when a new president might've actually been something to be happy about, as opposed to us being horrified by the fact that Donald Trump is in the White House AGAIN (seriously, WHY?).

"Walkin' On Wall Street"

You've heard of the Wolf of Wall Street, but do you know about the Pigeon of Wall Street? Neither do I - to be honest, until I gave this song another listen while going through songs from "Money Rock", I didn't remember watching this one at all. But I'm glad I rediscovered it! This song really nails the vibe of a trip to New York, even if you DON'T visit Wall Street. David Frishberg brings a nice amount of zest and laid-backness (that's a word, right?) to Lester the Investor. And I like how, if you remove the lyrics, the song sounds like elevator music. That's a nice touch.

"A Tiny Urban Zoo"

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6qa0yb (the video of the song, for some reason, isn't on YouTube, so I had to use a Dailymotion link)

I should admit that the main reason I'm putting this one on the list is because it was animated by Kurtz & Friends, one of my favorite animation studios. Fortunately, the song is pretty good too. If you don't recall this song, that's because it's from the 2009 Schoolhouse Rock video "Earth Rock", which my sister and I received for Easter that year. The songs featured in it aren't quite as iconic as the ones from the show's original run, but they're still worth seeking out. This is a nice little ditty shedding some light on the smaller members of the animal kingdom who we can get a glimpse of without going to a zoo (or to Africa), the ones we generally see whenever we step out the door and usually take for granted: birds and bugs (and one lizard). After listening to it, perhaps you too will be inspired to build a tiny urban zoo of your own, instead of sitting here reading my crummy blog. The fresh air would do you good.

"Rufus Xavier Sasparilla"

This is one of those songs where I remember the visuals more than the song itself. But there's a lot of things that stand out about the song: the overly-long names, the animals that could easily make for great cereal mascots, the fact that the pets of Albert and the Sasparillas are the same colors as their clothes, the characters jumping on pogo sticks, and of course, Jack Sheldon's lively performance. Much like Bob Dorough, Schoolhouse Rock just wouldn't be the same without Jack Sheldon. My only complaint is that it's a little weird having the aardvark actually be in love with Rafaella. What would the children look like?

"I'm Just a Bill"

This is one of two Schoolhouse Rock songs that I basically HAD to put on the list somewhere. There's a reason why poor Bill is for all intents and purposes the mascot of the series. Even if you've never been an avid watcher of Schoolhouse Rock, there's a very good chance you at least know about Bill, how he's just a bill, and how he's sitting there on Capital Hill waiting to become a law. Bill has been spoofed on Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and even Johnny Bravo. Because of that appealing design and (of course) Jack Sheldon's voice, we find ourselves sympathizing with Bill and hoping that he'll become a law... even if we still don't quite understand how this whole law-making thing works.

"Energy Blues"

Oh, look. That's three Jack Sheldon songs in a row.

There aren't a lot of songs from "Science Rock" on this list - to be honest, I didn't watch that one a lot. Probably because it features the song "Them Not-So-Dry Bones", the one song from Schoolhouse Rock that scared the heck out of me. This was the OTHER song I remember the most from Science Rock. The one with the exhausted-looking Earth singing about how much energy we waste. And you think YOU don't have a lot of energy in the morning. "Energy Blues" does seem to be more about the environment than science per say, so it's not surprising that they featured the song in "Earth Rock" as well (Mr. Sentient Earth also appeared alongside the four polar bear hosts in interstitials between the songs).

"My Hero Zero"

A salute to the most unsung of numbers, this song feels almost like a lullaby between Bob Dorough's soothing performance and the gentle guitar music. And you can't tell me that little boy in the superhero costume isn't really cute.

Yeah, that's the main reason why it's on the list. I think the boy is adorable. Shut up, it's MY list.

"Busy Prepositions"

This 1993 addition to Grammar Rock, featuring both Bob Dorough and Jack Sheldon, I always found pretty funny. Just the visual of these little green bugs marching around amused me, as did the "Over the raaaaaaaaaaaaaaain-booooooooooow" parts. That was enough for me to (hey, that's a preposition!) put it on (another preposition!) the list. Despite being made in the 1990s, it feels a lot like something from the 1980s. The prepositions would be right at home alongside the Smurfs or the Care Bears.

"Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here"

Three Bob Doroughs sing about a store that sells adverbs. How come real ads for stores on TV aren't as much fun as this? Even if you still aren't sure after listening to it just what adverbs are, you'll certainly remember the main chorus... or the way they sing "Indubitableeeeeeeeeeee!" at the end. It will never leave.

"Tyrannosaurus Debt"

Perhaps the only good thing to come out of America being in debt. It's kind of strange that Tyrannosaurus Debt isn't a more iconic character - he's a giant dinosaur decked out in the colors of the American flag! Who WOULDN'T want a Funko pop of that?

Well, anyway, this song somehow manages to be upbeat, comedic, and a little ominous at the same time. And it features a cameo from Bill! I always loved how it featured a cameo from Bill.

"Unpack Your Adjectives"

A girl, accompanied by a gigantic knapsack and a turtle who can walk on two legs, explain just what the words we use to really describe things are. Blossom Dearie lends her Prairie Dawn-esque pipes to this song, which I'd use the following adjectives to describe with: catchy, bouncy, gentle, funky, and charming. Never before has hearing about somebody's lousy camping trip (which involved fog, rain, and angry bears) been this much fun.

Y'know what the best thing about this song is? It has a cover performed by Kermit the Frog. Take a listen to it - heads up, though, it's Matt Vogel's Kermit, and I'm in the minority of folks who like his take but I know there's still a lot of people who don't.

"This For That"

Hey, you got your B.C. in my Schoolhouse Rock!

Much like "Walking on Wall Street", I initially didn't remember this one. But then when I actually started watching the video, I thought, "Oh yeah, I think I remember watching this before..." I think it was the design of the Neandrethals that clued me in. I don't think there are any other Schoolhouse Rock songs done in calypso (if there are, please let me know), and that helps the song stand out. It doesn't help that it's incredibly catchy!

"Mother Necessity"

Were Thomas Edison, Samuel Morse, Elias Howe, and all the other famous folk mentioned in this song really inspired to invent their inventions by their mothers? We might never know. But they do say that necessity is the mother of invention. One neat thing about this song is that ALL of the usual Schoolhouse Rock singers get to contribute to it - Jack Sheldon, Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, and Essra Mowhawk all on the same track, a rarity for the show (although according to IMDB, they recorded their parts separately). Depicting Mother Necessity as the literal mother of all these inventors was a very clever idea, and there's a lot of great rhymes and wordplay ("Elias, how?" deserves a mention in particular) in the lyrics. I also like how the STYLE of the song keeps changing with every new inventor brought up... one minute the instrumental is a folksy banjo, then it's a bluesy piano, then it's a frantic rock song! It's like a jukebox in song form!

"Interjections"

Performed by Essra Mohawk, this song is the reason why we know what words like "Darn", "Hey", "Ouch", and "Crap" (which obviously isn't mentioned in the song) are considered. Sort of a halfway point between pop and a march, there's just something so upbeat about "Interjections" that it's hard not to like it. The song also features the voices of Tom Yohe's children Tom Yohe Jr. (as Reginald) and Lauren Yohe (the cheerleader girl), as well as Lynn Ahrens (as Geraldine and the girl who gets an A Plus) and co-producer Radford Stone (the guy who shouts "AW! You threw the wrong way!"). Neat, huh?

"Lucky Seven Sampson"

For years, even though I didn't remember how the song went, I remembered that rabbit. That happy-go-lucky rabbit, perhaps a relative of Brer Rabbit and Bugs Bunny, who helped us figure out how to multiply by seven. Bob Dorough's folksy voice really shines here (and according to a book I recently got about Schoolhouse Rock, Bob considered Lucky Seven Sampson to be sort of an animal caricature of himself). In school, we used a different song to learn about multiples of seven. We took "Happy Birthday To You" and gave it the lyrics "Seven, fourteen, twenty-one. Aren't we having fun? Twenty-eight and thirty-five, isn't it great to be alive?". With apologies to my teachers, this song is much better.

"The Rainforest"

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6qa1ci

Here's another one from "Earth Rock", and one that stands out amongst the other songs from the show. Not only does it use a slightly different art style, reminiscent of a painting, but it has a more eerie, almost tribal sound to it. And it's performed by Tituss Burgess, one of the few celebrities that have participated in a Schoolhouse Rock song. I actually find it reminiscent of the songs from Really Wild Animals.

According to Candy Kugel, the sequence's director at Buzzco Associates, "Phil Kimmelman had moved to South Florida and, coincidently, I had planned a trip to Fort Lauderdale and was able to meet with him in person.  He played a demo of “The Rainforest”, a song written by the very talented Lynn Ahrens.  I was immediately hooked, and I started drawing and photographing the Floridian tropical plants and trees. The Schoolhouse Rock team asked me to design something very different from the wonderfully traditional cartoony Tom Yohe design. In fact, the producers were interested in Buzzco’s independent films - specifically the neon color on black (like A Warm Reception in L.A.) and the painterly Fast Food Matador (what could be more different?).  I drew a colored storyboard in time for the final recording, sung beautifully by Tituss Burgess, who was performing in The Little Mermaid on Broadway.  Encouraged by the reaction from Phil Kimmelman, the Schoolhouse Rock team and ABC/Disney, we threw ourselves into production!" This song does a great job of describing the Amazon Rainforest and why it's so important. You'd think people who participate in deforestation would get the hint!

"Three is a Magic Number"

The one that started it all! Since it's the first Schoolhouse Rock song ever written, I knew I had to put it on the list. I like how the song manages to be both upbeat and soothing at the same time. It also brings up a good point - three kind of IS the perfect number, not too much and not too little. Maybe. I just like the song. And I like the visuals that go along with it (especially that freaked-out octopus).

"Conjunction Junction"

This is the OTHER one that just HAD to be on the list. We have this song to thank for us knowing what conjunctions are. Conjunction Junction is such a memorable character, with his blue clothing and his Dr. Bunsen Honeydew-esque face - not to mention the pipes of Jack Sheldon. When you hear that voice, chances are you think of either Conjunction Junction or Bill. Plus, there's something weirdly charming about the janky animation of the train cars moving around. And that swingin' music... there's nothing NOT to love about this song!

And in the words of the girl from "Interjections"... darn! That's the end. What are some of YOUR favorite Schoolhouse Rock songs?

Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "Finding Nemo"

Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, this series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.

Let's talk about Finding Nemo.

Finding Nemo is one of PIXAR's most iconic films. It was a massive success at the box office, was beloved by critics, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I don't know what it was about the movie that made people flip out. But it's certainly one of PIXAR's best, and if you haven't seen it yet, I would recommend doing so right now (oh, and thanks for crawling out from under that rock to read my blog).

Why was the film such a big hit? Many assumed it was because people just really, really liked fish, and started making their own animated movies about fish in a desperate attempt to cash in (which is how we got Shark Tale). If you ask me, though, I think it was a combination of things - likeable characters, funny jokes, great animation, and just the right amount of sentiment and sincerity. But what do I know?

There's a lot of interesting facts that I'd like to share with you about this movie. You probably already know that the film's writer is also the voice of Mr. Ray. We already talked about the planned direct-to-video sequel that Disney was going to make without PIXAR but didn't get off the ground. And I don't need to tell you that Nemo makes a few cameos in Monsters Inc. But did you know any of THESE things?

NOTE: This post is long. I would recommend getting a snack. Unless it's fish sticks, that just feels wrong to eat when you're reading this (for obvious reasons).

1) Usually, when a PIXAR movie is first thought up, the story treatment is written AFTER the film is greenlit. But in the case of Finding Nemo, Andrew Stanton already had a script completed BEFORE the film was greenlit.

Concept art featuring Nemo.

John Lasseter said, "I remember when we were working on A Bug’s Life, Andrew had this great little drawing that he did over his desk which showed two small fish swimming alongside a giant whale. And I always liked that. He told me it was something he was thinking about but I didn’t hear anything more about it until the pitch. I’ve been a scuba diver since 1980 and I just love the underwater world. When he pitched this idea, I knew that it was going to be amazing in our medium. We always pride ourselves at Pixar on matching the subject matter of our movies with the medium. I really did know when he said ‘fish’ and ‘underwater’ that this film was going to be great."

2) How did Andrew come up with the film? It was a number of things, really. One of them was a 1992 visit to Marine World that got him thinking about the possibilities of recreating the undersea world in computer animation. Another was memories he had of a fish tank in a dentist's office and wondering if the fish inside would ever try to escape back to the ocean. And another was his relationship with his son - he was acting particularly overprotective on a trip to the park and "became obsessed with this premise that fear can deny a good father from being one".

Andrew said, "Telling a story where the protagonist is the father got me excited. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an animated film from that perspective. It made me interested in wanting to write it because I knew I could tell that story. I also thought that the ocean was a great metaphor for life. It’s the scariest, most intriguing place in the world because anything can be out there. And that can be a bad thing or a good thing. I loved playing with that issue and having a father whose own fears of life impede his parenting abilities. He has to overcome that issue just to become a better father. And having him in the middle of the ocean where he has to confront everything he never wanted to face in life seemed like a great opportunity for fun and still allowed us to delve into some slightly deeper issues."

More concept art.

3) A lot of research was done by the animators working on the film. They visited aquariums, went diving in Monterey and Hawaii, studied the fish in a tank at PIXAR, and even attended in-house lectures from an ichthyologist. They also rewatched animated Disney movies that had underwater scenes in them, such as Pinocchio, The Sword in the Stone, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and The Little Mermaid. But the one Disney film that inspired them the most was one that didn't take place underwater at all - Bambi. According to Andrew Stanton, "We kept coming back to Bambi because of the way the filmmakers adhered to the real nature of how these animals moved and what their motor skills were. They used that as the basis for getting as much expression, activity and appeal. We wanted our characters to work in that same way. We thought of it as Bambi underwater."

4) Jess Harnell mentioned in a video on YouTube that he read for Crush before Andrew Stanton decided to voice the character. He recorded all of Crush's dialogue while laying back on a sofa in Lee Unkrich's office. In addition to Crush, Andrew Stanton also voiced the lobster who tells his friends about Marlin's journey (he has a Massachusets accent because there are a lot of lobsters in New England) and some of the Seagulls.

Before Jess, however, PIXAR's initial choice for Crush might have been, believe it or not, Sean Penn. They did an animation test of Crush speaking in Sean Penn's voice (kind of like that animation test they did of Buzz Lightyear speaking in Billy Crystal's voice).

Concept art of Nemo's Dad... I mean, Marlin.

5) To animate the characters' expressions, the film's animators studied... dogs. Yes, dogs. Fish don't have as big a range of facial expressions. Speaking of dogs, they also wanted Bubbles (the yellow fish in the tank who's obsessed with bubbles) to be like a puppy dog.

6) Dory was originally going to be a male character. Then Andrew Stanton watched an episode of Ellen and realized that Ellen DeGeneres was perfect for the role. The intent was for Dory to be a surrogate child for Marlin, someone he could work out his parenting troubles on.

In turn, Gill is intended to be sort of a surrogate father for Nemo. He was originally going to be the anti-Marlin, the sort of father that Nemo would love to have eventually realize that Marlin was better. In fact, they were originally going to have Gill tell Nemo about his life in the ocean, only for Nemo to eventually find out that Gill is a liar who took all of this from a storybook in the dentist's office waiting room. This was cut because otherwise the audience would probably hate Gill for being a lying liar from Liarsburg.

Concept art for the sharks.

7) Why is the fish tank where Nemo winds up in a dentist's office? According to the filmmakers, it just seemed like a good place for potential gags and "odd juxtapositions of things" - having it be in a kid's room or an apartment would've been a bit too obvious. When crafting the personalities of the fish in the tank, they liked the idea of it sort of being like a Loony Bin, and rewatched films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to get ideas. Bob Peterson also reached out to his hygienist to make sure the steps of the root canal that Dr. Sherman performs on somebody were correct.

8) Here's another fun fact about the dentist - when he goes to the bathroom, he doesn't wash his hands. Reminder: he is a DENTIST.

9) Bruce was named after the great white shark from Jaws - I haven't actually seen Jaws, so I don't know if the shark's name is ever mentioned in the movie, but the shark models they used were all named "Bruce" after Steven Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Raymer.

There's also a theory online that Bruce is actually the son of the shark from Jaws. No, really. Look it up.

More concept art.

10) According to supervising animator Dylan Brown, "Each film has its own unique set of challenges and we always begin by trying to figure out what they are and how to solve them. With Nemo, we had an entire cast of fish characters with no arms or legs. Since they didn’t have the traditional limbs to allow strong silhouettes, we had to invent a whole new bag of tricks. In the beginning it was a bit daunting and frustrating. We began analyzing what was appealing in terms of posing fish. We put a lot of work into the face and getting the facial articulation just right. We didn’t want them to be just heads on sticks like in a Monty Python sketch. Their faces had to be integrated with the entire body language. Where a human character might just turn his head to look at something, a fish might turn his head just a little and the entire body would pivot along with it. Another big factor for us was timing. With characters like Buzz, Woody or Sulley, you have an earth-based gravity. But fish underwater can travel three feet in a flash. You blink and the thing is gone. We were wondering how they did that and studied their movements on video. By slowing things down, we could figure it out. Our timing got very crisp as we learned how to get our fish characters from one place to another in the course of a frame or two. We always tried to incorporate naturalistic fish movements into the acting. By putting things like one-frame darting and transitioning from one place to another into our acting, the characters became very believable.”

11) Adam Summers, a noted professor in the Ecology and Evolution Department at the University of California at Irvine, helped out when it came to animating the fish. He said, "I remember speaking with character designer Ricky Nierva about a fish character and he asked, ‘Where would the eyebrows really be?’ I told him fish don’t have eyebrows. They don’t have any muscles in their face except for jaw closers. Ricky said, ’Adam, fish don’t talk but talking is going to be a requirement for the movie. So we’re going to have to be taking artistic license with science all the time.'"

12) This was the first PIXAR film to not have Randy Newman composing the score. His cousin, Thomas Newman, did the honors. On a more morbid note, Finding Nemo is also the first PIXAR movie to have blood in it.

Concept art of a terrifying-looking Dory.

13) Gill is a Moorish Idol. Apparently, these fish are difficult to keep in captivity, so him being the one most obsessed with escaping the tank makes sense... although I don't think real Moorish Idols come up with elaborate escape plans.

14) For the scene with the jellyfish, PIXAR created an entire new system of shading called "Transblurrency"... it's see-through but blurred, like a frosted bathroom window. The scene contains no less than 74,472 jellyfish. That's a lotta jellyfish.

15) If there's one thing you should keep an eye out for in PIXAR films, it's references to their other movies. For example, that Pizza Planet Truck from Toy Story that's made a cameo in every PIXAR film since (with the possible exception of The Incredibles) appears during the scene where Gill is describing his plan to escape the fish tank.

That's not the only Toy Story reference. Notice anyone familiar among the toys in the dentist's waiting room?

Speaking of the waiting room, that boy who sees the chaos going on through the fish tank near the end of the film is reading a Mr. Incredible comic book.

A more subtle reference to another PIXAR film can be found in the dentist's office. That mobile hanging from the ceiling is actually the same mobile Boo from Monsters Inc. has in her bedroom.

Luigi from Cars makes a cameo just before we see that the Tank Gang succeeded in escaping from the fish tank (sorry, spoiler alert)...

And quite possibly the best reference to another PIXAR film in the whole movie...

16) Animators were sent to aquariums, sent on oceanic dives, given lectures by an ichthyologist, and had study sessions in front of the gigantic fish tank in PIXAR's production office before they started work on the film. It worked a bit too well, as the initial animation the did of the ocean was deemed too realistic.

17) Michael Eisner expected the film to be a box office bomb. Boy, was HE wrong!

18) According to the diploma hanging up on the wall in his waiting room, the dentist graduated from the "PIXAR University School of Dentistry".

That's one of the little green aliens from Toy Story on the seal.

19) The hardest scene in the film for the PIXAR animators to do was the scene with Marlin and Dory inside the whale, due to a combination of lighting issues and having to deal with all of the water splashing around inside the whale's mouth. The original plan for this sequence was to have Marlin and Dory inside the whale's STOMACH as opposed to its mouth. There was just one problem with this, as Oren Jacob put it - "There were only two ways out."

20) Pearl, one of Nemo's classmates, is a flapjack octopus. And that is a species that doesn't live in the Great Barrier Reef. Also, their mouths are under their tentacles, whereas Pearl's mouth is just under her eyes. This is another one of those Artistic License things.

Another example of Artistic License: y'know that joke where one pelican thinks his buddy farted after the underwater submarine blows up? Birds actually can't fart.

Concept art for Nigel and his pelican pals.

21) William H. Macy was originally cast as the voice of Marlin. However, after a test screening, the filmmakers decided that his performance was too dramatic and lacked the warmth needed for Marlin, so they replaced him with Albert Brooks, who Andrew Stanton claimed saved the movie. While Albert enjoyed working on the film, he was disappointed that he didn't get to record his dialogue with the other cast members, unlike when he lent his voice to The Simpsons, because he couldn't ad-lib off the other actors.

22) Dory muttering "Sea monkey's got my money..." in her sleep is a reference to the live action films Disney made in the 1950s and 1960s, like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Apparently, most of those had a character say something along the lines of "The monkey's got my money!".

23) Gerald, the pelican who attempts to eat Marlin and Dory, was initially going to have a larger role. He and Nigel were to be an Odd Couple-esque comedy duo, with Gerald being the sloppy, messy slobby one and Nigel being the neater and more finicky one. Apparently, it didn't work out because it was "as stereotypical as it sounds" and each scene with them brought the movie to a halt.

24) Megan Mullaly was supposed to voice a character in the film at some point too, but she was fired because she refused to do the same voice she did for Karen Walker in Will and Grace. She didn't think it made sense for a fish who lives in a fish tank in a dentist's office "to be a fictious character from an NBC sitcom".

Concept art for Gill.

25) The names of the boats we see in Sydney Harbor are "Sea Monkey" (maybe the owner of the boat is the one who has Dory's money!), "Major Plot Point", "Bow Movement", "iBoat", "Knottie Buoy", "For the Birds" (a reference to the PIXAR short that was shown in theaters before Monsters Inc), "Pier Pressure", "Skiff-A-Dee-Do-Dah", and "The Surly Mermaid".

26) There was originally going to be a scene after Nemo gets flushed down the drain where he travels through a bunch of filtration machines, which is more accurate to how the sewage system works in real life. It was cut because it put too much focus on Nemo - Marlin is the actual main character. And also because it was basically just a repeat of the filter scenes earlier in the movie. Apparently, however, there is a level in the tie-in video game based on the scene.

27) How do you animate a sea anemone? The animators used the very same technology used to animate Sulley's hair in Monsters Inc. However, some strands were animated by hand.

Concept art for Jacques.

28) Darla is named after Darla Anderson, a PIXAR employee who was also the producer of Monsters Inc. Over the years, she's played a lot of pranks on Andrew Stanton and she thinks that this was his way of getting back at her.

29) At a test screening for the film, a mother who was part of the audience suggested cutting or toning down the scene with the anglerfish because she felt it was too scary for kids. Others disagreed - one brainy kid refuted, "If you tone down the anglerfish, it's like you're toning down nature itself."

30) It takes a lot of time to animate a gigantic school of fish. To make this easier, PIXAR created a tool called "Pisces" - fitting, since that sign is commonly represented by two fish circling each other.

Concept art for Crush, dude.

31) Each frame of animation took four days to render due to the complexity of animating underwater environments. According to supervising technical director Oren Jacob, "This film is far more complicated than Monsters, Inc in that almost every shot involves some kind of simulation program or simulated movement. On average, there are more things going on per frame in this movie than we’ve done before by a pretty significant amount. There was more interdependency between the various departments than ever before and we often went back and forth to make sure the lighting and other components looked just right."

32) The three tiki heads in the fish tank are caricatures of PIXAR employees Peter Sohn, Nelson Bohol, and Ricky Nierva.

33) The baby sea turtles' shells are modeled after Hawaiian shirts.

Y'all remember the Finding Nemo ice cream? I ate this!

34) The climax was inspired by an actual event. According to Andrew Stanton, he wasn't sure how to end the movie at first - he wanted something that would test Marlin and Nemo and what they've learned throughout. "But when you've already gone through jellyfish and sharks and all these other set pieces, you're like 'What's left?'," he said. Then he read an article in the back of the paper about some fishermen in Norway who were trying to pull up a whole net of codfish, but the fish weren't having any of that and swam down in unison, capsizing the boat. He found it fascinating and thought it'd be a great climax. Not only would the power of what Nemo and Marlin have learned save them, but also save a hundred others. This is also what led to the earlier scene where the tank fish swim down to help Nemo escape the net that Mr. Sherman is holding. When they pitched the idea to Roy Disney, he asked them to do him one favor - don't capsize the boat.

35) Even though the film mostly takes place in the Great Barrier Reef, Andrew Stanton didn't want EVERY character to have an Australian accent. That allowed them not to have to somehow locate an entire cast of Australians, which is difficult when a film is made in the United States. But he did think it would be funny if the three sharks felt like "guys who have been out in the outback and sort of separate from society a little bit", so all three of them are voiced by actual Australian actors.

36) A year before Finding Nemo was released in theaters, a self-published book by French author Franck Le Calvez came out called Pierrot Le Poisson-Clown. Here is the book's cover:

In yet another case of somebody assuming that the idea of an extremely popular animated movie was stolen from them, Franck sued Disney and PIXAR because he thought Finding Nemo plagiarized his book. The case was thrown out.

In 2021, a YouTube channel called The Film Theorists did a video about the case, suggesting that maybe it was Franck who copied PIXAR - even if the book was released before the film, advertising for the film had already started by the book's release in November 2002 (besides, production on animated films takes YEARS, making the idea that PIXAR and Disney stole from Franck even more unlikely). It's not like that sort of thing has never happened before, even with PIXAR's work... but that's another story for another post.

37) There exists a fish and chips place in Yorkshire, England called "Frying Nemo". It is obviously not a Disney-licensed place. I guess the owners heard Marlin's "Why don't we fry them up now and serve them with chips?!" line and got inspired.

38) Finally, the movie's popularity had two different effects on the pet fish population. On the one hand, demand for clownfish as pets skyrocketed. On the other hand, that resulted in a decline of there being a lot of clownfish in the ocean thanks to so many people capturing them to sell them as pets.

In addition, people also took Gill's "Fish aren't meant to be in a box" comment to heart. Many pet fish found themselves flushed down the toilet. There are two problems with this. One, this doesn't automatically mean that the fish is going to wind up in its natural habitat, so this wound up causing some ecological imbalance. Two, Nemo was really lucky that he actually survived his trip down the drain. Many organizations like JWC Environmental and Australia's Marine Aquarium Council released public service announcements warning people that flushing your fish wasn't a good idea.

Sources:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20100123232221/http://www.pixartalk.com/feature-films/nemo/finding-nemo-production-notes/
- The film's DVD commentary

Remember: fish are friends, not food. Except stinkin' DOLPHINS.