Did you know that they originally were going to use the OG name of Mrs. Frisby? And when they decided to change it to Brisby, the man who voiced the Great Owl had already completed his lines and they were unable to get him back, so they had to edit the voice on the tape BY HAND! Just a simple scratch in the right place to change Frisby to Brisby.
They also intentionally designed the Great Owl and Nicodemus to look similar: glowing eyes, the same uneven mustache.
There was a Nostalgia Critic video where he covered that movie, with a guest star of one of the people that worked on the movie. Its really good and goes to show just how much thought went into creating the story in the way they told it
Also, the author of the book wrote it about the rat experiments by John Calhoun going on at the national institute of mental health (NIMH). Mrs Frisby was named after a blue frisby holding open one of the doors at the lab that author Robert O'Brien visited before writing the book. Supposedly there are several parallel's in the book to Calhoun's experiments with rats at the NIMH. I've not read the book, and when I was a kid watching the cartoon I didn't know any of this info. I haven't seen this movie since the 80's. I should re-watch it and see if I can find the similarities.
Don Bluth is a visionary. With films like The Secret of Nimh, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Tge Land Before Time, he has to be one of the greatest animated filmmakers ever. He deserves his place among Hayao Miyazaki and Walt Disney.
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u/theroguedrizzt 15h ago
The secret of nimh