Trivia: The Little Mermaid

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  • Disney artists had considered an animated film of "The Little Mermaid" in the late 1930s, and illustrator Kay Nielsen prepared a number of striking story sketches in pastels and watercolors. For this film, the artists received inspiration from the Nielsen story sketches that were brought out of the Archives for them to study, and they gave Kay Nielsen a "visual development" credit on the film.

  • Another first for recent years: Live actors and actresses were filmed for reference material for the animators. Sherri Stoner acted out Ariel's key scenes. Not all of Disney's animators approved the use of live-action reference; Glen Keane, the co-supervising animator of Ariel said in an interview with the Orange County Register that one artist quit the project rather than work with live-action reference.

  • This film was the most effects-animation heavy Disney animated feature since Fantasia (1940). The two minute storm sequence alone took 10 special effects animators over a year to finish. Effects animation supervisor Mark Dindal estimated that over a million bubbles were drawn for this film, in addition to the use of other processes such as airbrushing, backlighting, superimposition, and some flat-shaded computer animation.

  • The directors insisted that every one of the millions of bubbles should be hand-drawn, not Xeroxed. The sheer manpower for such an effort required Disney to farm out most of the bubble-drawing to Pacific Rim Productions, a China-based firm with production facilities in Beijing.

  • Ariel's treasure cave includes the painting "Magdalene With the Smoking Flame" by 17th-century artist Georges de La Tour.

  • The story "The Little Sea-Maid", by Hans Christian Andersen, was slated by Walt Disney to be a "Silly Symphonies" short. However, another Andersen classic, Ugly Duckling (1939), replaced it.

  • The character of Ursula was based on Divine. Her personality and some of her actions were also largely inspired by a previous Disney villain, Madame Medusa from Disney's The Rescuers (1977).

  • When Ursula first shows Ariel the contract, it quickly scrolls through the body of the text. This is the actual text shown on the scroll: "I hereby grant unto Ursula, the witch of the sea... , one voice, in exchange for byon once high, Dinu*gihn thon Mueo serr on Puur-qurr I rehd moisn petn r m uenre urpti m srerp monk guaki ,Ch rich noy ri imm ro mund for all eternity. signed," All other instances clearly say: "I hereby grand unto Ursula, the witch of the sea... , one voice, for all eternity. signed,"

  • When Ben Wright got the part of Grimsby, Prince Eric's butler, the current Disney folks had no idea that he had been the voice of Roger in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). He had to tell them.

  • In Greek mythology, the God of the Sea is Poseidon. Triton, however, is one of his sons.

  • This was the first Disney film to receive an Academy Award since Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), though other films had been nominated.

  • A few of the backgrounds used during the "Kiss the Girl" scene are taken from The Rescuers (1977).

  • Originally, Sebastian was to have an English accent. It was lyricist/producer Howard Ashman who suggested he be Jamaican. This opened the door to calypso style numbers like "Under the Sea", which won the Academy Award.

  • There are several shots of Ariel, forlornly sitting on a rock, in a pose reminiscent of the "Little Mermaid" statue that sits in Copenhagen harbor.

  • CASTLE THUNDER: Heard a few times during the storm that wrecks Eric's ship in the beginning. It's also briefly heard for a second during the middle of the second storm when Ursula becomes gigantic and powerful, and is the last Disney movie to use the sound.

  • 'Jodi Benson (I)' sang 'Part of Your World' in the dark to get that 'under the sea' feeling.

  • When Scuttle is providing "vocal romantic stimulation" to Eric and Ariel while they are rowing in the lagoon, he is actually squawking his own version of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet".
    • Click here to listen to Tchaikovsky's piece. (Around 7:25) You'll recognize it.

  • Ariel was quite deliberately made a redhead in order to distinguish her from Daryl Hannah's character in Splash.
  • "Part of Your World" was nearly cut; Jeffery Katzenberg felt that it was "boring", as well as being too far over the heads of the children for whom it was intended. At a test screening children were restless during the song which did not have finished animation - in particular one child that sat in front of Jeffery Katzenberg and spilled his popcorn and was more interested in picking it up than watching the sequence.

  • A scene was cut that explained Ursula is Ariel's Aunt.

  • The shot of Ariel reaching out through the skylight of her grotto was the last shot to be completed. It took four tries to get the optical effects just right.

  • Before recording "Poor Unfortunate Souls", Pat Carroll asked Howard Ashman to sing the song one more time to get it right. He obliged, and as he sang he added little spoken ad-libs that Carroll then incorporated into her performance. These included Ursula saying "Pathetic" at the mer couple she conjures up as an example, and the line "Life's full of tough choices, innit?"

  • At the beginning of "Kiss the Girl," the reeds blowing in the wind are taken from The Old Mill (1937).

  • The idea to give Ursula a pair of sneaky, identical pets as henchmen was inspired by Madame Medusa's two alligators (also identical and with similar personality traits), Brutus and Nero from Disney's The Rescuers (1977).

  • Carlotta, Eric's maid at the castle who bathes Ariel and serves dinner is wearing the same outfit from Cinderella (1950), except for the scarf on her head.

  • Ben Wright's final film.