Laputa: Castle in the Sky/Trivia

Trivia

 * Many believe that characters from Miyazaki's 1978 series Future Boy Conan were prototypes for the characters of Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Moreover, according to Hideaki Anno, the original bill of the project of this movie was what Miyazaki had presented to NHK in the broadcasting station as the following work while producing Future Boy Conan. Illustration "Pazu, the child of the sea, 海の子パズー" collected to "Hayao Miyazaki image board collection, 宮崎駿イメージボード集" (issued in November, 1983) might be it (the composition that the boy who resembled Pazu looks up at the girl in the water tank in a dark room). In the plan, the original bill was SF novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" of Jules Verne, but when making it into a film, Miyazaki might have changed it to Jonathan Swift's novel "Gulliver's travels". In addition, Miyazaki's plot outline for Castle in the Sky was also re-imagined by Toho as a TV series. The result was Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, a 1990-91 TV series aired on NHK, made by the Gainax studio and directed by Hideaki Anno (who reportedly considers Miyazaki one of his idols) and Shinji Higuchi (the predecessor to the same team's hugely successful Neon Genesis Evangelion).
 * It is thought by some that the setting of "Castle in the Sky" is possibly the same setting as another of Miyazaki's movies, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, but in an earlier period of history.
 * Jamie Hewlett, the artist behind the band Gorillaz, said on a South Bank Show special about anime that he found inspiration from the film for his art.
 * In the part where the robot comes back to Pazu and Sheeta, it shows four of the same animals that Nausicaa had befriended running & playing on the robot.
 * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii and GameCube home video game consoles contains several elements inspired by Laupta, including a puzzle featuring two ancient robots covered in foliage, as well as the final level featuring a sky castle.