A Bug's Life Trivias
The film's original title was Bugs. The title was changed to distance it from the other computer animated film about ants, Antz.
The film's title is a play on Charlie Chaplin's 1918 silent film A Dog's Life.
The names on the boxes that make up the City are all the names of the writers' kids. A few examples are: JuJu's Litter, Hannah's Bananas, and PJ Pop.
The face of Geri from Geri's Game (a Pixar short) can be seen modeled in the tree above the ant colony.
During the fake bird attack, Manny the praying mantis, voiced by Jonathan Harris, cries out "Oh, the pain!", a phrase often uttered by Harris's character Dr. Zachary Smith in the TV show "Lost in Space".
This is the first full-length Pixar film not to have a human character.
As Hopper is flying away carrying Flick, Tuck & Roll pull off his right antenna. Just as Hopper ditches Tuck & Roll, you see him flying away with both antennae still intact. Then scene flashes to Tuck & Roll holding removed antenna.At the very beginning, the sun is glinting off the water to the left of center, but when the view pulls back to show the island the shadows are all falling to the left, as if the sun is to the right of center.
The sun is sufficiently far away that moving the outline of the bird a few feet higher in the air wouldn't appreciably alter the size of the shadow it casts.Rosie disappears briefly from Dim's back as they fly to Ant Island.When Flick is leaving Ant Island, the two boys who follow him are making fun of him. One boy says, "My dad says he is going to die." When Flick left the Island, the same boy says, "Your dad is right. He's gonna die."
When the fly paper lands on P.T Flea and catches fire, he is standing near the top of the fly paper. After it burns, he is standing in the middle of the burn patch.When Flick goes to the bar to try to hire some warrior bugs, he watches a mosquito order a "Bloody Mary - O+". The mosquito clearly is a male, while in reality only female mosquitoes drink blood.Flik couldn't reach the back of his invention when he tried to get a seed for Dot. Later, he is caught by a blade of grass and is flung backwards, and all the seeds fall out of his invention. Then we see him running toward the offering stone with his invention full of seeds. He couldn't have put them back in, because he can't reach his invention when it is on. How did the seeds get in there?
Before the "royal huddle" decides to send Flick away, if you look closely at Princess Atta's mouth when she says "He can't mess anything up" you'll notice that the word "screw" is what was animated as opposed to the word "mess".About 20 minutes into the movie, in Rosie and Dim's "lion tamer" scene, we clearly see that Rosie accidentally whips Dim's left foot. A few minutes later, as she's getting a bandage for him, he's whimpering and holding up his right foot for her.While most of the other insect characters have the correct number of legs, Flik and the rest of the ants only have four limbs.
There is a drink cup from Pizza Planet (from Toy Story (1995)) on top of the restaurant can in Bug City; it falls off the top of the rolling can when the circus bugs try to escape from the flies.A poster for Disney's "The Lion King - On Broadway" can be seen in the upper right-hand corner of the screen when Flik walks through the city traffic in Bug City.'Dave Foley' , who is Flick, originally tried out for the Slim, played by David Hyde Pierce.
The tunnel in a tunnel joke was made in reference to Steve Jobs' (CEO of Pixar and Apple) plan for Apple's "store in a store".For the 1.33:1 video transfer, rather than pan-and-scan the original 2.35:1 theatrical image, Pixar actually re-used the original computer images, re-framed some scenes, and even to the point where they'd place characters to a different spot in the scene to fit into the 1.33:1 frame.
During the fake bird attack, Manny the praying mantis, voiced by Jonathan Harris, cries out "Oh, the pain!", a phrase often uttered by Dr. Smith, Harris' character in the TV show "Lost in Space" (1965).Manny (Jonathan Harris) wears Dr. Smith's sweater from "Lost in Space" (1965).The two mosquitoes trapped in the light of the bugzapper ("Frank, don't go towards the light!" "I can't help it - it's so beautiful!") are the voices of the co-directors, John Lasseter and 'Andrew Stanton' .
The Pixar short film Geri's Game (1997) was shown before this film in theaters, at least in the United States.The original "teaser" trailer for this film was made up of animation made specially for the trailer and not appearing in the final film. This became a Pixar trademark.The hand gestures made by Hopper were modeled after gestures made by Steve Jobs.When Dim scares Thumper away, his roar is the same as the T-Rex in Jurassic Park (1993).
Ashley Tisdale tried out for the part of "Dot".WILHELM SCREAM: "The third scream" rather, can be heard when the grasshoppers take over Ant Island.WILHELM SCREAM: A worker ant screams when the grasshoppers invade the colony.CASTLE THUNDER: Heard twice in the rain storm.In the home video release there were 5 covers to pick from (Hopper, Flick, Dot, Francis, and Heimlich.).The names on the boxes that make up the City are all the names of the writers' kids. A few examples are: JuJu's Litter, Hannah's Bananas, and PJ Pop.
The pickup truck to the left of the mobile home when the bug flies into the bug light is the same pizza delivery truck that Buzz and Woody climb into at the gas station in Toy Story (1995).The restaurant at Bug City is a can of "Low Fat Lard".The cookies from the box that that Flea's circus travels in contain 92 grams of protein per serving!
Roddy McDowall's final film.DVD version is first ever all-digital video transfer.The face of Geri from Geri's Game (1997) (a Pixar short) can be seen modeled in the tree above the ant colony.
Woody from Toy Story (1995) appears holding the clapper in the second set of "outtakes".In the outtakes at the end, there is a scene where Flik yells "To infinity, and beyond!", which is Buzz Lightyear's trademark quote from Pixar's previous movie, Toy Story (1995).According to the commentary, the character "Dim" was based on the character in A Clockwork Orange (1971) with the same name.
When Hopper tells the ants why they should gather food for the grasshoppers, he mentions that it is a "circle of life thing". This is a reference to The Lion King (1994).The otherwise-unintelligible pill bugs, Tuck and Roll, shout "Reuben Kincaid!" while building the bird. It's barely understandable, but shows up in the captions. Reuben Kincaid was a character in "The Partridge Family" (1970).The circus "train" is made of boxes of animal crackers called Casey Jr. This is also the name of the circus train in the movie Dumbo (1941).
The boxes in P.T. Flea's circus train have the name "J. Grant" on them. 'Joe Grant' wrote Dumbo (1941).Atta is a genus of leaf-cutting ants.This was the first computer generated feature film to be presented in a scope ratio of 2.35:1
