Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. It is loosely based on the 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf. Combining live-action and animation, the film is set in an alternate history Hollywood in 1947, where humans and cartoon characters (referred to as "toons") co-exist. Its plot follows Eddie Valiant, a private investigator with a grudge against toons, who must help exonerate Roger Rabbit, a toon framed for murder. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released through Disney's Touchstone Pictures banner in the United States on June 22, 1988. The film received critical acclaim for its visuals, humor, writing, performances, and groundbreaking combination of live-action and animation. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Trivia

• This movie is the first (and only, as of 2023) time cartoon characters from Walt Disney and Warner Bros. have appeared together on-screen.
• Since the movie was being made by Disney's Touchstone Pictures, Warner Bros. would only allow use of their biggest cartoon stars, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, if they got as much screen time as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. For that reason, they were always in pairs, such as the piano battle between Daffy and Donald and the parachute scene with Bugs and Mickey. This was continued with Porky Pig and Tinkerbell at the movie's ending.
• Bob Hoskins said that, for two weeks after seeing the movie, his young son wouldn't talk to him. When finally asked why, his son said he couldn't believe his father would work with cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny and not let him meet them.
• When Eddie takes Roger Rabbit into the back room at the bar where Dolores works to cut apart the handcuffs, the lamp from the ceiling is bumped and swinging. Lots of extra work was needed to make the shadows match between the actual room shots and the animation. Today, "Bump the Lamp" is a term used by many Disney employees to refer to going that extra mile on an effect just to make it a little more special, even though most audience members will never notice it.
• The first test audience was mostly 18- and 19-year-olds, who hated it. After almost the entire audience walked out of the screening, Robert Zemeckis, who had final cut, said he wasn't changing a thing.
• With an estimated production budget of $70 million ($180,114,833.67 in 2023 adjusted for inflation), this was the most expensive film produced in the 1980s, and had the longest on-screen credits for a film.
• During production, there was disagreement over the way the Looney Tunes characters should look. Warner Bros. wanted the filmmakers to use the characters as they appeared in their merchandising at the time, while the producers insisted on having the characters looking the way they had looked at the time period where the film is set, the mid to late 1940s. Dummy footage using the modern designs was sent to Warner Bros. for approval, while the animators used the period-appropriate designs in the actual film.
• Tim Curry auditioned for the role of Judge Doom. Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Eisner found his performance quite terrifying.
• Jessica Rabbit's speaking voice was performed by Kathleen Turner, and her singing voice was performed by Amy Irving. Only Irving was credited.
• Every frame of the movie that featured a mixture of animation and live-action had to be printed up as a still photograph. An animator would then draw the particular illustration for that frame on tracing paper set on top of the photo. The outline drawing then had to be hand-colored. Once that was done, the drawing had to be composited back into the original frame using an optical printer.
• On the Special Edition DVD, Robert Zemeckis recounts that he had stated in a newspaper interview that Bill Murray was his and executive producer Steven Spielberg's original choice for the role of Eddie Valiant, but neither could get in contact with him in time. Murray, in turn, has stated that when he read the interview, he was in a public place, but he still screamed his lungs out, because he would have definitely accepted the role.
• Bob Hoskins claimed that Jessica Rabbit was not yet sketched by the animators when filming wrapped, and he had no idea what the character would look like. Robert Zemeckis told Hoskins to imagine his ideal sexual fantasy. Hoskins claimed that his mental image was less risqué than what Jessica looked like in the completed film.
• Although the film's title is a question, no question mark appears in the title because this is considered bad luck in the industry.
• The movie's line "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way”. was voted as the #83 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
• When Judge Doom's eyes are visible, he never blinks.
• Several voice actors make cameos as the voice of the character(s) they have played before. These are Tony Anselmo (Donald Duck), Wayne Allwine (Mickey Mouse), and Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, and Tweety Bird). But most noticeable is Mae Questel as Betty Boop. Mae did Betty's voice from 1930 until the character was retired in 1939. Mae Questel then became Popeye the Sailor's girlfriend, Olive Oyl.
• For this movie, animation director Richard Williams set out to break three rules that previously were conventions for combining live-action and animation: first, move the camera as much as possible so the Toons don't look pasted on flat backgrounds; second, use lighting and shadows to an extreme that was never before attempted; third, have the Toons interact with real-world objects and people as much as possible.
• To give Jessica's ample bosom an unusual bounce, her Supervising Animator Russell Hall reversed the natural up-down movements of her breasts as she walked. They bounce up, when a real woman's breasts bounce down and vice versa.
• The truck full of bowling balls, pianos, etc., into which Jessica Rabbit and, subsequently, Eddie Valiant crash in Toontown is labeled "ACME Overused Gags".
• John Cleese expressed interest in playing Judge Doom. Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis refused, thinking nobody would take a former member of Monty Python seriously as a sadistic villain. However, Steven Spielberg was still impressed by his audition and gave Cleese the role of the villainous Cat R. Waul in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991).
• Animation director Richard Williams strove for three things while creating this film's animation: Looney Tunes-type characters; Disney-quality animation, and Tex Avery-style humor, "but not so brutal".
• During filming, Charles Fleischer delivered Roger Rabbit's lines off-camera in full Roger costume including rabbit ears, yellow gloves, and orange cover-alls. During breaks when he was in costume, other staff at the studios would see him and make comments about the poor caliber of the effects in the "rabbit movie".
• The gag of the toon pelican falling off his bicycle came about by accident. Originally, the pelican would have ridden straight past the camera, but the effects technicians were unable to keep the bike upright. The filmmakers decided to let the bicycle fall and animate the pelican losing his balance.
• Jessica Rabbit was based exactly on four movie femme fatales. Writer Gary K. Wolf had based Jessica primarily on the cartoon character Red, Tex Avery's vixen from Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), who performs a musical number in Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) as Jessica would do at the Ink & Paint Club. In addition, animation director Richard Williams said he based Jessica mostly on Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Veronica Lake for the peek-a-boo hair, and, at the suggestion of Robert Zemeckis, "the look" trademark of Lauren Bacall. Vikki Dougan has also been named as inspiration for her "look".
• To get the feel of acting with cartoon characters, Bob Hoskins studied his three-year-old daughter playing with her imaginary friends.
• The Ink & Paint Club's policy of only letting Toons onto the premises as entertainers and employees, not as customers, is a reference to numerous "segregated" venues during the mid-twentieth century, such as Harlem's Cotton Club. The venue was located in an African-American neighborhood, the performers and staff were African-American, and the shows often had pandering jungle themes, but only white people were allowed in as customers. The racial segregation between humans and toons was much more prominent in the novel the film is based on, with Jessica suffering from self-loathing issues and trying to suppress her toon traits, and there being bars that would only serve either humans or toons.
• The song at the film's ending, "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile" was recorded by most of the film's animators doing their best character voices.
• Christopher Lloyd compared his role as Judge Doom to his previous role as Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), both being overly evil characters he considered "fun to play." Lloyd avoided blinking on camera, to perfectly portray the character.
• During production, one of the biggest challenges faced by the makers of the film was how to get the cartoon characters to realistically interact with real on-set props. This was ultimately accomplished in two different ways. Certain props (such as Baby Herman's cigar or the plates Roger smashes over his head) were moved on-set via motion control machines hooked up to an operator, who would move the objects in exactly the desired manner. Then, in post-production, the character was simply drawn over the machine. The other way of doing it was by using puppeteers. This is most clearly seen in the scene in the "Ink & Paint Club". The glasses held by the octopus bartender were in fact being controlled by puppeteers from above, while the trays carried by the penguin waiters were on sticks being controlled from below, the wires and the sticks were simply removed in post-production, and the characters added in.
• 326 animators worked full-time on the film. In total, 82,080 frames of animation were drawn, including storyboards and concept art. Animation director Richard Williams estimates that well over one million drawings were done for the movie.
• At the movie theater where Eddie tells Roger his backstory, the short being played is Goofy Gymnastics (1949), which came out two years after the film takes place. Crew members claimed to have chosen this particular short, despite its anachronism, because it was the zaniest thing they could find in the Disney Vault.
• Robert Zemeckis used the "Benny the Cab" go-kart during the production of Back to the Future Part III (1990). In some shots for the scene where Marty is dragged by the horse, Michael J. Fox was actually being dragged by the Benny go-kart.
• Judge Doom originally had a vulture on his shoulder, and seven weasels accompanying him, rather like the Seven Dwarfs. He ended up only having five. He was also to have a jury of kangaroos, as in "Kangaroo Court". These elements were all dropped, because animating these extra characters would be too costly.
• Roger Rabbit is described (design-wise) as having a "Warners face", a "Disney body", a "Tex Avery attitude", Goofy's overalls, Mickey Mouse's gloves, and Porky Pig's bowtie. Richard Williams says he based his Roger color model on the American flag (red overalls, white body, blue tie) so that "everyone would subliminally like it".
• Full-size rubber models of Roger Rabbit were used as stand-ins, so that the human actors and actresses could get a feeling for the size and shape of their imaginary co-star.
• In the original VHS and laserdisc release, when Eddie and Jessica are thrown out of the car, you can see for a few short frames that Jessica was not wearing any underwear. There was nothing to see but flesh-toned paint, but there was a fair amount of talk about it. In a later versions this was switched to white paint, thereby restoring her underwear. After this it was changed again, with a series of frames replaced with new ones to completely eliminate this. The original VHS and laserdisc also featured a very brief single frame of Betty Boop's dress slipping down and exposing her breasts, which Robert Zemeckis had insisted on including as tribute to the classic Betty Boop cartoons where the animators would slip in the occasional single lewd frame, and this too was cut out in future releases. One frame of Jessica's breasts being exposed during the Booby Trap gag was animated but never made it into any version of the film.
• Benny the Cab drives across a bridge while being pursued by the Weasels. It's the "Hyperion Bridge", which crosses a freeway near the old Disney Studio down in Hollywood, which they occupied before they built the one in Burbank (around 1939).
• The piano duet between Donald Duck and Daffy Duck was storyboarded by Richard Williams and Chuck Jones, who was working as a consultant. Williams drew Donald, while Jones drew Daffy.
• Initially, there were to be seven weasels (Greasy, Sleazy, Wheezy, Smartass, Psycho, Stupid, and Slimy) to parody the seven dwarfs.
• The case where Valiant keeps his cartoon gun is inscribed "Thanks for getting me out of the Hoosegow - Yosemite Sam".
• The weasel's names are not mentioned in the film. They are Smartass (who is the leader with the hat), Psycho (in the straight jacket and spiky hair), Stupid (in the striped shirt), Greasy (the "suave" one in green with the Hispanic accent and dark skin), and Wheezy (the blue smoker).
• An elaborate funeral scene for Marvin Acme, set at the famous Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, was discarded from the shooting script shortly before filming began. The scene featured many cartoon characters who did not appear in the film Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto, Wimpy, Tom and Jerry, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Superman and Lois Lane, Pepe le Pew, Hippety Hopper, Petunia Pig, Chip and Dale, Dick Tracy (who had a cameo in the original novel), Little Lulu, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Herman and Katnip, Baby Huey, Screwy Squirrel, Crusader Rabbit, Tubby the Tuba, Jerky Turkey, Little Audrey, Cinderella, Alice, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, Peter Pan and Wendy, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Piglet, Junior and George, Tex Avery's wolf and hound dog amongst others. The scene would have featured Goofy, Popeye, Bluto, Herman, Felix, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam acting as the pallbearers (only to descend into chaos when Popeye makes an ill-timed joke), Foghorn Leghorn delivering the eulogy, and the Harvey Toons jack-in-the-box logo springing out of Acme's casket to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel", with a giant funeral wreath attached. Eddie would spy on Jessica speaking with R.K. Maroon, giving him more reason to suspect that Maroon was the mastermind. The scene would end with Casper asking the various mourners to be his friends, resulting in them all screaming at the sight of a ghost and fleeing. This scene was cut because they were not able to get the rights to feature characters such as Tom and Jerry, Casper or Felix the Cat (due to the production of Felix the Cat: The Movie (1988) at the time).
• One of the photos in Roger's wallet is of him and Jessica dining at the Brown Derby. The caricatures on the walls are of some of the filmmakers, including Robert Zemeckis, Richard Williams, and Steven Spielberg, as well as one of Mickey Mouse.
• In the original novel, Baby Herman is thirty. In the film however he states "I got a fifty-year-old lust and a three-year-old dinky", making him twenty years older.
• Before he was the official voice of Goofy, Bill Farmerhad his first job as a voiceover artist singing ensemble for the closing song "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!" He snuck in the voice of Goofy during this song.
• Joel Silver's cameo as the director of the Baby Herman cartoon was a prank on Disney chief Michael Eisner by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. Eisner and Silver hated each other from their days at Paramount Pictures in the early 1980s, particularly after the difficulties involved in making 48 Hrs. (1982). Silver shaved off his beard, paid his own expenses, and kept his name out of all initial cast sheets. When Eisner was told after the movie was complete who was playing the director, (Silver was nearly unrecognizable), he reportedly shrugged and said "he was pretty good."
• Disney's animated series Bonkers (1993) is believed by many to have been created by Disney because Amblin Entertainment, co-owner of all of the characters created for this movie, refused to allow Disney to produce a television series incorporating characters from the film. At the time, Amblin was working with Warner Bros. on the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures (1990) and Animaniacs (1993). However, several people who worked on Bonkers have denied that this is the case, such as Greg Weisman who was involved in the show's development early on.
• The tunnel through which Valiant drives to reach Toon Town is the same tunnel used for Back to the Future Part II (1989)'s hoverboard versus Biff's Ford chase. Robert Zemeckis directed that film in which Christopher Lloyd starred, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) composer Alan Silvestri composed the music.
• Lena Hyena, the hideously ugly toon whom Eddie mistakes for Jessica Rabbit in Toontown, is based on the creation of the same name by artist Basil Wolverton. She was first conceived in 1946 for a contest by Al Capp to depict "the world's ugliest woman" to be featured in his "Lil' Abner" comic strip.
• To convince the Disney and Amblin executives that they could make the movie, the filmmakers shot a short test involving Roger bumping into some crates in an alley and then getting picked up by a version of Valiant played by Joe Pantoliano (this test can be seen in the Behind the Ears: The True Story of Roger Rabbit (2003)documentary on the Vista Series DVD). After viewing the test, several of the Disney executives were convinced they had seen a traditional "man-in-a-suit" gag with added animation. They couldn't believe it when they were told that it was one hundred percent animation.
• There were over forty drafts of the script, including drafts that had either Jessica Rabbit or Baby Herman as the villain.
• Judge Doom picks up a record and reads its label: "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down". Then he says, "quite a loony selection for a bunch of drunken reprobates." The song "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" is the familiar theme song for the Looney Tunes cartoons.
• Bob Hoskins had to do a lot of his acting in front of a greenscreen, only visualizing the cartoon characters that were added later. In a 1988 interview for Danish television, he said, "I had to learn to hallucinate to do it. After doing it for six months, for sixteen hours a day, I lost control of it, and sort of had weasels and rabbits popping out of the wall at me." Hoskins didn't take another job for a year.
• The Red Car trolley is still sitting in the boneyard at the Florida Disney Studio in 2010.
• This film and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) are the only films under the Touchstone Pictures label that are considered official Disney films.
• Eddie Valiant's initial thirty second stroll through Maroon Cartoon Studios was so complex, involving over one hundred eighty individual elements, that when it was assembled with the film pieces it created stacks eight feet in height.
• According to Robert Zemeckis, a nameless major brewing company offered to pay him and the filmmakers one hundred thousand dollars to have their name visible on the liquor bottle from which Roger drinks early in the film. Zemeckis reminded them that Roger "turns into a steam whistle" after taking a shot, but the brewing company replied that they didn't care, apparently figuring that the publicity they would receive would be priceless. Ultimately, this product placement could not be included, as the film was being distributed by Touchstone Pictures (Disney).
• Given the extraordinary process of making this film (shooting the live action first, then the animation, which took twice as long), there were few options in the editing of the final composite. This, coupled with the fact that animation could not begin until all of the dialogue was recorded, practically meant finishing the film before it was finished. This ruled out alternate takes or re-shoots, since the animation for alternate scenes would have been too expensive, and the animation had already been completed for any scenes that the filmmakers might have wanted to film again. As such, cutting even part of a scene for timing meant that the entire scene had to be taken out, animation and all.
• Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, who briefly appear in the final "roll call" shot, actually had not been created at the time the movie was set (1947). The characters were given a small cameo anyway at the insistence of Steven Spielberg.
• Screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman first adapted the Gary K. Wolf novel, "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?", in 1981, with a view to making it with up-and-coming director Robert Zemeckis. However, when Disney viewed Zemeckis' two feature films, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) and Used Cars (1980), they felt that he wasn't talented enough to pull off the movie. But after he made Romancing the Stone (1984) and Back to the Future (1985), Disney reconsidered, and the movie was green-lit.
• Graffiti in Toon Town bathroom: "FOR A GOOD TIME CALL ALLYSON "WONDERLAND" THE BEST IS YET TO BE."
• Richard Williams jokingly described the Ink & Paint Club (which has never existed) as the place Walt Disneydiscovered the penguin waiters to use in his film Mary Poppins (1964).
• The tunnel leading to Toontown is the Mount Hollywood Tunnel in Los Angeles and is frequently used in movies, and for television, as a generic tunnel.
• One of the scripts called for Eddie to become a toon for the Toontown sequence. The scene was produced, but not used, causing the animators given the scene to waste a reported seven weeks of work. (They still got paid for it, though).
• Screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seamanadmired Chinatown (1974). There were two sequels planned to that film; the first was The Two Jakes (1990), which was eventually made; the second was to be called 'Cloverleaf', and dealt with corruption in Los Angeles undermining the streetcar system, so that freeways could be built to replace them. Although it is an animated comedy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)pretty much tells the story that would have been covered in the never-filmed, post-noir sequel (with 'Cloverleaf' becoming the name of a company), combined with elements from the book "Who Censored Roger Rabbit" by Gary K. Wolf.
• The piece played by Daffy Duck and Donald Duck, in the Ink & Paint Club, is the Second Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt, a piece featured in numerous cartoons, including the Oscar winning Tom & Jerry cartoon, The Cat Concerto (1947), and the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Rhapsody Rabbit (1946).
• Sir Christopher Lee, James Earl Jones, Roddy McDowall, Jon Voight, F. Murray Abraham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Woods, Tim Curry, and rock star Sting were considered for the role Judge Doom.
• A prequel with the working title "Toon Platoon" was considered, where Roger and several fellow Toons are drafted into the army during World War II (since Toons cannot be killed by conventional weapons), and go on a mission in Nazi Germany to save Roger's fiancee Jessica (whose maiden name was revealed in the script as Krupnick). The project never got out of the developmental stage, reportedly because producer Steven Spielberg was uncomfortable satirizing Nazis after making Schindler's List (1993).
• Producer Steven Spielberg was able to convince Warner Bros. studios to let Robert Zemeckis include several of their Looney Tunes characters within this film, a Disney production. Warner Bros. agreed providing certain quality control and screen time conditions were met and that their characters were treated with respect by the animators. Several years later, Warner Bros. were in the pre-production planning stages of live action/animated crossover movie Space Jam (1996) and asked Disney if they would return the favor and let them include a major Disney character appear at the final game of the movie as a 'special guest'. Disney (by then under a new management regime) flatly refused. This resulted in Warner Bros. angrily accusing Disney of breaking an almost decade old gentleman's agreement and saying they will never co-operate with Disney again. As a result, and despite initial threats of legal action, the Warner Bros. film had several barbed jokes written into the script that are pitched directly at the Disney Corporation.
• Some scenes in the taxi actually contain an animated Eddie Valiant instead of live-action footage of Bob Hoskins.
• Richard Williams fell in love with the character of ("adult") Baby Herman, and insisted on animating practically every frame of this character himself.
• This film and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters (1988) were the last appearances by Mel Blanc, as he died a year after this film's release.
• In addition to a negative test screening that unfazed Robert Zemeckis, an "experimental" teaser trailer was test-marketed several months before its release to similarly dismal response. Bob Levin, President of marketing at Buena Vista, was so horrified to overhear one audience member compare the teaser to Howard the Duck (1986) that the trailer was discarded without evaluation of the scores.
• An elaborate funeral scene for Marvin Acme, set at the famous Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, was discarded from the shooting script in pre-production. The scene consisted of Foghorn Leghorn delivering the eulogy, and the Harvey Toons jack-in-the-box logo springing out of Acme's casket to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel", with a giant funeral wreath attached; also in this scene, were many cartoon cameos that were eventually cut, including Casper the Friendly Ghost (who eventually sends everyone fleeing), Tom & Jerry, Elmer Fudd, Pepe le Pew, Screwy Squirrel, Superman and Lois Lane, Felix the Cat, Chip and Dale, Baby Huey, Mighty Mouse, Crusader Rabbit, Little Lulu, Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto, Wimpy, Heckle and Jeckle, Cinderella, Alice, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Peter Pan and Wendy, Herman and Katnip, and Little Audrey amongst others.
• When panning over the newspaper articles on Eddie's desk of past cases he and his brother worked on, one heading reads "Mayor Mouse Awards ..... Toontown", indicating that Mickey Mouse is the mayor of Toontown.
• Unusual for an optical effects-heavy production of the 1980s, this film used no matte paintings. Robert Zemeckis comments, "You name an effect, and we have it somewhere in the film. When we realized we were missing only one type, we thought maybe we should do a matte painting just for the hell of it, but in the end, we decided against it."
• To create the animation, over 85,000 hand-inked and painted cels were created and composited with the live-action backdrops, live-action characters, and hand-animated tone mattes (shading), and cast shadows using optical film printers. No computer animation was used in creating the animations. Some scenes involved up to one hundred individual film elements. Any live-action that had to be later composited was shot in VistaVision to take advantage of the double-area frame of the horizontal 35mm format. The finished film thus does not suffer from the increased grain that plagued previous live-action and animation combos, such as Mary Poppins (1964).
• Surprisingly very little merchandise was made for this film. Only a few small plastic figures of Roger, The Weasels and Baby Herman were made, able to be purchased from selected video rental stores at the time of the movie's release on home video. Stuffed animals of Roger and Benny were available, as were clothing and accessories.
• The shape of Baby Herman's cigar is a "double perfecto" (double refers to a large size, perfecto the shape - a curved taper on both ends). Most real-world cigars these days are cylindrical (e.g. Churchills), but 'toon cigars are typically perfectos.
• The proposed route for Judge Doom's freeway is Highway 110, which as Doom says, runs all the way to Pasadena.
• Eddie Murphy revealed on Inside the Actors Studio (1994) that he turned down the role of Eddie Valiant because he felt that the film's chances of being successful were quite slim and there were too many things that could go wrong. He regrets that decision, regarding it as one of the worst mistakes he ever made.
• Because Mel Blanc was in his late 70s during production, he was no longer able to properly perform the voice of Yosemite Sam, which was provided by Joe Alaskey. This makes Alaskey the only credited voice actor to have replaced Blanc as a Looney Tunes character during Blanc's lifetime, and Alaskey would later become a recurring Looney Tunes voice actor, until his own death in 2016 (none of those times reprising Yosemite Sam). Blanc's co-star June Foray, who voiced Wheezy and Lena Hyena in this film, died a year later, two months before her 100th birthday.
• A list of the classic cartoon cameos in the film (which is supposed to be set in 1947, though quite a few post-1947 characters appear), grouped by studio: Warner Bros. (Looney Tunes): Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marc Anthony the bulldog from Feed the Kitty (1952), Sam the Sheepdog from Don't Give Up the Sheep (1953), and Speedy Gonzales. Max Fleischer and Paramount: Koko the Clown (Out of the Inkwell (1919)) and Betty Boop. Walter Lantz: Woody Woodpecker. MGM: Droopy.
• A brief sequence was prepared to test the techniques used to combine live-action with animation. The footage, which showed Eddie Valiant (played by Joe Pantoliano) walking in an alley with Roger Rabbit, touched on all the challenges expected of the production: shading on the cartoon characters, interaction with the live-action cast members and environment, matching with the constantly moving camera, et cetera. The brief, one-minute film, budgeted at one hundred thousand dollars, convinced the filmmakers that the effects could create the illusion of cartoons and live cast members occupying the same reality.
• HIDDEN MICKEY: Before Eddie begins to juggle, he holds the three black bombs in a manner that mimics Mickey Mouse's head.
• The photograph that Eddie takes of Marvin Acme and Jessica playing "patty-cake" was created during pre-production, and features an earlier design of Jessica than the one that is used in the final character animation. The one shot that was re-done to incorporate the new Jessica design was the insert shot of the picture after it is first developed. The early design of Jessica, as well as much of the early concept art of her, noticeably looks more human than her final appearance. This may be because in the original novel, Jessica was secretly ashamed of being a toon and desperately wanted to be a human, going to great lengths to appear less toon-like.
• Felix the Cat's face appears as the masks of tragedy and comedy on the keystone of the entrance to Toontown. In fact, Felix was originally going to appear in this film but sadly the filmmakers could not borrow the rights for him in time.
• The crowd scenes at the beginning of the Toontown sequence consist mostly of animation from previous Disney films. (Re-using animation was a common practice for Disney up until the early 1990s.)
• Kathleen Turner was nine months pregnant when she recorded the voice of Jessica Rabbit.
• Exteriors of the Maroon Cartoon Studios were shot at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, California, formerly the home of Desilu Productions.
• The bottle of chili sauce falling in the opening cartoon had to be re-animated several times, as British animators used the UK spelling "chilli".
• Robert Zemeckis wanted to use the Robert Clampettversion of Daffy Duck, but Chuck Jones wanted to use his version of the character, and had personally disliked Clampett. Zemeckis had his way, and this was one of the main factors in Jones' stated distaste for the film. Coincidentally, Zemeckis and Clampett have the same first names.
• A list of the classic cartoon cameos in the film (which is supposed to be set in 1947, though quite a few post-1947 characters appear), grouped by studio: Disney: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pegleg Pete, Horace Horsecollar, Clarabell Cow, the merry dwarfs from The Merry Dwarfs (1929), the flowers and trees from Flowers and Trees (1932), the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf from Three Little Pigs (1933), Peter Pig from The Wise Little Hen (1934), Toby Tortoise, Max Hare, and the girl bunnies from The Tortoise and the Hare (1935), Mickey's orphans from Orphan's Benefit (1934), Little Red Riding Hood from The Big Bad Wolf (1934), Jenny Wren from Who Killed Cock Robin? (1935), Elmer Elephant from Elmer Elephant (1936), Snow White, all seven dwarfs, and the Old Hag/Witch from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Wynken, Blynken, and Nod from Wynken, Blynken & Nod (1938), Ferdinand the bull from Ferdinand the Bull (1938), Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio (1940), the broomsticks, the cupids, the baby Pegasuses, an ostrich, and a hippo from Fantasia (1940), the Reluctant Dragon and Sir Giles from The Reluctant Dragon (1941), Dumbo, Mrs. Jumbo, Casey Jr., and the crows (as Jessica's backing band in the Ink & Paint Club) from Dumbo (1941), Bambi from Bambi (1942), Chicken Little from Chicken Little (1943), Jose Carioca from Saludos Amigos (1942), Monte the pelican from The Pelican and the Snipe (1944), Peter from the "Peter and the Wolf" segment of Make Mine Music (1946), Br'er Bear, the groundhogs, and the Tar Baby from Song of the South (1946), the singing harp from the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" segment of Fun and Fancy Free (1947), the animals from The Legend of Johnny Appleseed (1948), Danny the lamb from So Dear to My Heart (1948), Mr. Toad and his horse Cyril from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), Tinker Bell from Peter Pan (1953), Maleficent's goons from Sleeping Beauty (1959), and the penguins from Mary Poppins (1964).
• At the end of the piano duel sequence with Daffy Duck and Donald Duck, Daffy's "woo hoos" were provided by animator David Spafford who animated the sequence, he worked closely with Mel Blanc and due to old age he couldn't do the "woo hoos" as energetic as he used to so Spafford stepped in for him.
• The film's original budget was projected at $50 million, which Walt Disney Productions felt was too expensive. The film was finally green-lit when the budget decreased to $30 million. However, when the film's shooting schedule lasted longer than originally expected, the budget escalated until it reached $70 million.
• Richard Williams, the animation director, also provides the voice of Droopy Dog. In the Roger Rabbit short films, he was replaced by experienced voice actor Corey Burton, who for a limited time took over a number of animated characters that the late Bill Thompson voiced during his lifetime.
• Orginally, during the piano duel between Donald Duck and Daffy Duck, animator David Spafford snuck in a frame of Daffy using a dead baby as a prop with which to play the piano, in addition to the rubber chickens. The baby was later removed at Richard Williams's insistence.
• Judge Doom was originally going to have an animated pet vulture named Voltaire that sat on his shoulder, but that idea was dropped in the interest of saving time. However, the vulture later resurfaced with Judge Doom, when a bendable action figure was produced.
• In the documentary Behind the Ears: The True Story of Roger Rabbit (2003), Bob Hoskins refers (jokingly) to Charles Fleischer as "completely nuts". This is likely due to Fleischer's insistence upon wearing a Roger Rabbit suit while voicing the character live on the set, despite reminders that he would never be on-camera himself.
• The password ("Walt sent me") to enter the "Ink & Paint Club" refers to Walt Disney.
• Steven Spielberg's first choice for Eddie Valiant was Harrison Ford, but his price was too high.
• First live-action and traditional animation hybrid Disney film to be rated PG by the MPAA, mainly due to its adult based content and situations. It would have been PG-13 if it came out after the 1980s, when the MPAA got more strict about the themes that this film has to offer.
• An exposure sheet (a chart for keeping track of the drawings to be shot for animation) can be seen in R.K. Maroon's desk. The exposure sheet can also be seen clinging to Eddie Valiant as Roger jumps up screaming after drinking scotch in Maroon's office.
• Baby Herman walks under a woman's dress and she screams and jumps. If you watch it frame by frame, he extends his middle finger before going under the dress and emerges with drool on his upper lip.
• Joanna Cassidy, a natural redhead, dyed her hair brunette so that she wouldn't compete with Jessica.
• Originally, when Lena Hyena caught Eddie in her arms, as she kissed him, she was to stick her tongue in his ear and it would come out through the other ear, it was cut, because they didn't want too many cartoonish things happening to him.
• The second time Marvin Acme appears on-screen, there is a piece of paper in front of him on the table, presumably the will, that has disappeared by the third time he appears on-screen. Consistent with the ink stain on Eddie's shirt, the ink on the will returns at the same time.
• The weasels named Greasy and Smartass are wearing zoot suits; an exaggerated style with extremely wide brimmed hats, exaggerated lapels and bling. They were very popular among the L.A. Latino population. In 1943 the Zoot Suit Riots took place in which gangs of zoot suiters clashed with servicemen who had singled them out for abuse. As a result, certain sections of the L.A. population associated zoot suits with the criminal element.
• The Pacific Electric "Red Cars" are actually rubber-tired replicas of an original electric car from the Orange Empire Railway Museum. The "tracks" were simply metal strips added to the pavement.
• While the film was very well received by critics, it has not been without detractors, especially, and surprisingly, among actual Golden Age veterans and fans. Chuck Jones, in particular, who worked on the film, ended up loathing the final product. He called it an obnoxious, witless misunderstanding of the old cartoons it set out to honor, and he even accused Robert Zemeckis of robbing Richard Williams of any creative input, and for apparently ruining the piano sequence that he and Williams had planned together. Cartoon historian Michael Barrier derided the animation direction as "disastrous", and Frank Thomas of Disney's Nine Old Men was strongly disappointed in Richard Williams' failure to have any actual pathos come from the main character himself. John Kricfalusi has also not spoken highly of it, thinking that it had "great animators" but was "misdirected", "filled with takes and zany movement, but no character or wit."
• Although Eddie and Dolores are in love, they are never seen sharing a kiss. On both occasions, they are interrupted by Roger; in the cinema where he and Eddie hide and near the film's ending in the Acme factory. The second time if you pay attention, Dolores looks annoyed for a brief moment.
• This was Stubby Kaye's final film before his death on December 14, 1997 at the age of 79.
• While most of Donald Duck's lines were recorded by Tony Anselmo (the character's official voice since 1985), an archival recording of the late Clarence Nash was also used for the beginning of the scene where Donald competes with Daffy Duck. Only Anselmo is credited in the finished film.
• Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner also appear silhouetted on the elevator door as it goes up.
• The animation production was done mostly in England at Richard Williams' studio. Some fill-in work and production on the "Toontown" sequence was done in Los Angeles.
• The live action shoot took five months.
• In the original take for the scene where Eddie and Roger run from Judge Doom and the Weasels at the bar, Roger said "Come on Eddie, we've got to get the hell out of here!" This was to be the only time Roger cursed in the film. For unknown reasons, in the final cut, the line was changed to "Come on Eddie, we've got to get out of here!"
• Ideas for a sequel were tossed around, but none materialized for many years. J.J. Abrams was working on a story in 1989 at the behest of producer Steven Spielberg, but his treatment was abandoned and Spielberg eventually lost interest in the project. One story idea that came close to being produced in the late 1990s was 'Who Discovered Roger Rabbit', which would have been in the 1950s' style of filmmaking. Over the years, Robert Zemeckis repeatedly stated that he had a script that was "more a continuation than a sequel", but the rights resided with Disney who were not interested in making it, since "there's no princess in it" and they were uncomfortable with the risque character Jessica Rabbit. A sequel, Who Framed Roger Rabbit 2, was finally announced in the late 2010s.
• Bob Hoskins was cast as Eddie Valiant largely due to his acclaimed performance in the crime drama Mona Lisa (1986). Ironically, the previous film includes a scene where Hoskins buys a white rabbit in a pet shop, to give to his boss, played by Michael Caine.
• Before Richard Williams was selected as the animation director, Steven Spielberg considered Don Bluth and Phil Roman for the animation direction.
• One of two films released in 1988 in which the main villain is run over with a steamroller and survives, the other being A Fish Called Wanda (1988).
• Paul Reubens, Eddie Deezen and Dom DeLuise were considered for the role of Roger Rabbit.
• Chuck Jones received a credit as "animation consultant", but disavowed the movie forever after, complaining that there was something wrong with a movie where the live-action hero got more sympathy than the animated-cartoon star did.
• EASTER EGG: On the DVD Main Menu, press the down button four times and Benny's speedometer lights up. Press Enter and watch the original trailer.
• The stove in the animated opening has the brand name Hotternell, a play on the phrase "hotter than hell".
• Lou Rawls was the original voice for Benny, until Charles Fleischer, who voiced Roger, Greasy, and Psycho, got the role.
• When Valiant first enters his office, he puts his hat on a black bird statue, an obvious reference to the book and movie The Maltese Falcon, a big detective staple.
• Peter Renaday auditioned for the role of Eddie Valiant. In the test footage with an animated Jessica Rabbit (animated by Darrell Van Citters), he resembled Eddie as he appeared in the books: slender and with a beard.
• Originally, during Roger's song-and-dance number at the bar when he says Who's your tailor, Quasimodo?" he was to do an impression of a hunchback, but the editors cut the scene.
• June Foray's first time voice acting in a live action film. Her next three films in the next two decades would later be Space Jam (1996), The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000) and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003).
• In 1944, the popular radio program Dick Tracy aired an episode about a "J. P. Doom" who was illegally trying to secure real estate because the land would be used for a super highway. This Doom is also described as a "shady character mixed up in politics," and the mastermind directing a gang of cocky but foolish criminals. Even if only a coincidence, the J. P. Doom in Dick Tracy and Judge Doom still share several parallels, including murder.
• This film was where April Winchell did her first voice, performing the roles of Mrs. Herman and the movie version of Baby Herman in the cartoon shoot at the start of the film. She is the daughter of Tigger's original voice actor Paul Winchell
• Leslie Nielsen, Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Ed Harris, Martin Short, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Charles Grodin, Chevy Chase, Danny DeVito, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Kurt Russell, John Travolta, Tom Hanks, Mickey Rourke, Richard Gere, Robin Williams, Michael Keaton, Dudley Moore, Rowan Atkinson, Michael Biehn, Gene Hackman, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro were considered for the role of Eddie Valiant.
• When Judge Doom writes on the chalkboard, the chalk creates a terrible squeaking. A type of blackboard chalk was developed that integrated wax into the mix that reduced the squeaking but until then, squeaky chalk was the norm. To experience the extreme spine-tingling effect of squeaky chalk as seen in this film, one can take the type specifically for sidewalks, and use it on a chalkboard.
• The scene in the theater with the organ was shot in England, specifically the State Cinema (a Grade II listed building) in Grays, Essex.
• The character of Baby Herman is directly inspired by a scene in the film Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). During the Gold Diggers "Petting in the Park" number at 36:52 a baby in a carriage pulls out a pea shooter and shoots at a park patron. The baby was played by nine-year-old Billy Barty, whose career would span 73 years and over 200 films and TV shows.
• This is the first Disney live-action/animated hybrid films to be rated PG by the MPAA.
• In 2016, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
• Marks the second live action film to feature experienced voice actor Jim Cummings voice acting in a live action film. His first one was The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) released one year prior, and his next six in the next four decades would later be Babe: Pig in the City (1998), Cabin Boy (1994), Small Soldiers (1998), Christopher Robin (2018), Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021), and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022).
• Terry Gilliam was initially offered the job of directing this movie, but turned it down because he considered it "conceptually inauthentic to use the Looney Tunes genre/character stable as a springboard for a variation on the Howard the Duck (1986) story."
• Bob Hoskins (Eddie Valiant) and Charles Fleischer(Roger Rabbit) voiced the character "Boris Goosnivov" in the Balto film trilogy. Hoskins voiced Boris in the original, and Fleischer voiced him in the sequels.
• The distinctive five-note upright bass riff at the film's beginning was inspired by the soundtracks of late-era film noir of the Fifties and Sixties. One prominent example could be heard in the seedy romance scene at the one-hour mark in the film In Cold Blood (1967).
• This was Alan Tilvern's final film before his death on December 17, 2003 at the age of 85.
• Eddie is able to save Roger and Jessica by acting like a clown for the weasels. Near the start of the movie, the camera moves past a photo in Eddie's office of him and his brother performing as clowns in their youth, explaining how he learned to do that.
• Despite the fact that this was filmed in VistaVision, and in the standard spherical format, "Filmed in Panavision" is listed in the end credits.
• The Singing Sword character is representative of old blue-eyes himself, Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). While the movie is set in 1947, the song "Witchcraft" was not released until late 1957.
• Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
• There was a small controversy due to some people mishearing Donald Duck's banter with Daffy, as some believe he had called the black duck a racial slur in the dueling pianos scene. The subtitles makes it clear Donald did not say it.
• Bill Murray and Robin Williams were both considered to play Eddie Valiant before Bob Hoskins got the role. Hoskins later collaborated with Murray in Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006) and Williams in Hook (1991).
• Eddie Deezen, who worked with Robert Zemeckis on I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), was to do the voice of Roger Rabbit before Charles Fleischer got the role.
• Included among the American Film Institute's 2000 list of the 500 movies nominated for the Top 100 Funniest American Movies.
• Much of the plot is an homage to Chinatown (1974), in that an infidelity case quickly escalates to reveal corruption involving a major piece of infrastructure (water in the former film, road in this one). One scene that plays out almost exactly like Chinatown (1974) is the scene where Roger is shown the photographs of Jessica playing pattycake. In Chinatown (1974), Jake shows similar photographs to an aggrieved husband played by Burt Young who, like Roger, takes to banging on the Venetian blinds before accepting a drink.
• When Valiant confronts Maroon and sprays him with a seltzer bottle, a Roger Rabbit poster can be seen in the background.
• Invisible ink appear in this film and another Steven Spielberg production, Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). Also, both films have a scene where the lead character or characters go to a club or tavern and someone behind a grill or slot reluctantly admits them, and then violently ejects them. The exotic clientele also recalls Spielberg's Indiana Jones films. Also, Sherlock Holmes and Eddie Valiant get almost an exact same line, "I'm/we're on the verge of wrapping up/cracking this case”.
• In 2010, an updated take on "Why Don't You Do Right?" sung by Jessica Rabbit in the Ink & Paint Club, was released by Serbian DJ Gramophonedzie. It's called "Why Don't You" and samples Peggy Lee's 1947 version, of the 1936 song "Why Don't You Do Right?". Interestingly the year Jessica covered the song, was in the same year as Peggy Lee did exactly the same thing, the year in which Who Framed Roger Rabbit was set, 1947.