Dumbo/Trivia

Trivia

 * At only 64 minutes, Dumbo is the shortest single segmented Disney animated feature.
 * A number of the strikers from the 1942 strike at the studio are caricatured into this film as the clowns who want to put Dumbo at risk for their own gain and go to "hit the big boss up for a raise".
 * Many of the artists who worked on the "Pink Elephants" segment were the younger artists at the studio who joined the picket line in May 1942 and eventually would become the nucleus of United Productions of America, the most influential animation studio of the 1950s.
 * The "Pink Elephants On Parade" sequence depicts Dumbo and Timothy's drunken hallucinations. The sequence was the first venture into surrealism for a narrative Disney film, taking its cue from the experimental Fantasia. The sequence essentially breaks all of the "rules" that the Disney animators had lived by for creating realistic animation over the previous decade: pink, polka-dot, and plaid elephants dance, sing, and morph into a number of various objects. The design of the sequence is highly stylized.
 * While trying to comfort Dumbo, Timothy says, "Lots of people with big ears are famous!" That's a joke with Walt Disney himself, who did in fact have big ears. Also, according to animation historian John Canemaker on the commentary track for the 2005 DVD release, audiences of 1942 recognized it as a humorous reference to actor Clark Gable.
 * The name of the circus (seen on a sign as the train leaves the winter headquarters) is WDP Circus (Walt Disney Productions).
 * Dumbo was a summon in the game Kingdom Hearts. While riding Dumbo, Sora was invincible and could fly on Dumbo. Dumbo could also shoot water at enemies (equivalent to Blizzard magic).
 * When the movie was released, there was a concern that exposure to bright colors for prolonged periods of time might make the audience ill. The film was unfortunately set in the world of a circus and bright colors were essential to capturing the mood of the circus. To remedy this, Disney alternated sequences of bright colors with those of a darker tone, to give the audience a chance to recover.
 * The sequence called Bathtime for Dumbo was one of the most memorable in the film. To create this scene and Dumbo's behavior, Bill Tytla got inspiration from his own infant 2-year-old daughter, Susan. He didn't base it on elephants as he claimed, "I don't know a damn thing about elephants".
 * In The Great Mouse Detective, Dumbo appeared as a little toy blowing bubbles.
 * Dumbo has no spoken dialogue lines, much like Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
 * Dumbo's mother, Mrs. Jumbo, speaks only once when she says Dumbo's original name, "Jumbo, Jr."
 * The human characters in the film are marginalized most of the time to lend greater credibility to the animal characters. Circus workmen are kept in shadow, and the clowns are seen as silhouettes when not in the circus ring. The spare story and concise characters inspired a style in Dumbo that is predominantly visual.
 * Dumbo is the first Disney animated feature set in the present day (1942 then).
 * There are no actual villains in this film.
 * A large portion of Steven Spielberg's film 1942 involves some of the main characters watching Dumbo on a DVD.
 * Dumbo II was in the process of being made, but was never finished and will probably never be.
 * The scene where Casey Junior struggles up the hill saying "I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can" is a tribute to the children's story The Little Engine that Could.