39 facts you didn’t know about Disney

We love an animated film and Disney is something that we enjoyed as an animated classic and now as live-action films! Here are 39 facts about the wonderful world of Disney...

1. Walter Disney's original moniker was d'Isigny, showing his French roots. While d'Isignyland might not have such a ring to it, Walt d'Isigny might have lent Paris-set animations like The Aristocats and Ratatouille a certain je ne sais quoi.

2. Everyone's favourite rubbish-compactor, Wall-E, was named after Walter Elias Disney.

3. The sorcerer in Fantasia is called 'Yen Sid', which may ring a bell if read backwards.

4. For a couple of years Disney held the patent for Technicolor, making him the only animator allowed to make colour films

5. The voice of Lilo, from Lilo and Stitch, is Daveigh Chase - the same girl who haunts our dreams as Samara Morgan in The Ring. Lilo and Stitch also features more Elvis Presley songs than any of his own films. Talk about treading on his blue suede shoes!

6. Those Disney animators are tricksy folk, and love to hide classic characters in the background for newer films. For example, in the opening scenes of the Little Mermaid the eagle-eyed may spot Goofy, Mickey and Donald Duck in the audience at King Triton's concert.

7. If you thought Ariel and Belle's perfect proportions were too good to be true, think again, because they're based on real-life model Sherri Stoner, a writer and producer for animations including Animaniacs and Caspar the Friendly Ghost.

8. Joss Whedon was part of a team of writers brought in to perk up the Toy Story script, and came up with the character of Rex, the cowardly dinosaur.

9. To capture the movement of Aladdin's low-cut baggy pants, animator Glen Keane watched M.C. Hammer videos. That was his excuse, anyway.

10. Sulley from Monsters Inc. has more than 2.3 million individual hairs, which are all carefully animated. This explains why a single frame of the big blue fella took an average of 12 hours to produce.

11. Clarence Nash, aka the voice of Donald Duck, created the dog barks for 101 Dalmatians. While we're on the subject of animal noise, tiger roars were used for the Lion King, as lions weren't deemed loud enough.

12. Jodi Benson (the voice of Ariel), Paige O'Hara (the voice of Belle), and Judy Kuhn (the voice of Pocahontas) all had cameos in Enchanted.

13. The Hunchback of Notre Dame features tiny 'cameos' from Belle, Aladdin's magic carpet and even Pumbaa, who is trussed up ready for cooking.

14. While we know him as Prince Charming, the dapper chap who steals Cinderella's heart (and slipper) is never actually named during the film.

15. Simba is Swahili for 'lion', while Bhalu (Baloo) is Hindi for 'bear'.

16. Dumbo is an elephant of few words - none, in fact - which makes him the quietest central character of them all. Hot on his heels is Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, who gets a mere 18 whole lines of dialogue, and just 18 minutes of screen time in her own film.

17. It's rumoured that Walt Disney had a phobia of mice. While this is hard to prove, it is a fact that his big-eared creation was named 'Mortimer', until his wife persuaded him that 'Mickey' had a better ring to it…

18. Walt Disney was presented with one normal-sized honorary Oscar and seven little Oscars for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1938.

19. Wayne Anthony Allwine, who was the voice of Mickey Mouse for 32 years, got hitched to Russi Taylor, who played Minnie, in 1991. The two remained happily married until his death in 2009.

20 Tasked with creating the Beast, supervising animator Glen Keane took inspiration from the zoo, blending the mane of a lion, the horns and head of a buffalo, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the tusks of a wild boar, the upper body of a bear, and the legs and tail of a wolf to create the rather likeable Beast.

21. Mickey Mouse was the first animated character to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We imagine he'd rather have had a cheese wheel, but you can't always get what you want.

22. In Monsters Inc., Boo's real name is Mary, after her voice actress Mary Gibbs. You can see it written on a drawing in her room.

23. Walt's final words - written rather than spoken - were, rather cryptically 'Kurt Russell'. No-one, including the actor himself, has any idea why.

24. Walt Disney once played Peter Pan in a school play.

25. Mickey was also the first animated character to talk. His first words, in 1929 cartoon The Karnival Kid, were 'Hot dog!'

26. The two-minute storm in The Little Mermaid took 10 special effects artists over a year to finish.

27. The Hunchback of Notre Dame features tiny 'cameos' from Belle, Aladdin's magic carpet and even Pumbaa, who is trussed up ready for cooking.

28. Walt Disney's personal favourite character was tie-wearing dog Goofy.

29. The ideas for Wall-E, Monsters Inc., A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo came from a single lunchtime brainstorming session in 1994, before the first Toy Story film was even finished. What did you accomplish over sandwiches today?

30. Bruce, the 'vegetarian' great white shark of Finding Nemo, was named after the mechanical shark used in Jaws, which, in turn, was named after Steven Spielberg's lawyer!

31. The final film Walt personally oversaw was The Jungle Book, before his death from lung cancer in 1966.

32. Several doggy characters from Lady and the Tramp appear in a pet shop window in 101 Dalmatians. According to someone with waaay too much time on their hands, the film also contains 6,469,952 black spots.

33. Billy Crystal may be immortalised in the Disney cannon as Mike Wazowski, but prior to that he turned down the role of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story, a role that eventually went to Tim Allen. After watching the finished film, he described his decision as one of his biggest regrets, but has said that Mike is his favourite ever role.

34. Though commonly referred to as seven 'dwarves', the films actual title is Snow White and the Seven 'Dwarfs'. This is because in 1938 when the film was released, 'dwarfs' was the accepted plural. Blame JRR Tolkien for the change.

35. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was make-or-break for Disney, costing his studios $1.4m to make. It was widely derided as Disney's Ruin, by people subsequently proved non-psychic. Adjusted for inflation, it's one of the ten highest-grossing films of all time. To achieve a natural skin tone for Snow White, real rouge was applied to the animated cells.

36. Mickey only has four fingers on each hand because animators thought he looked strange with five. The fact that he's a clothed mouse apparently didn't seem strange to them at all.

37. Bully boy Sid from Toy Story has a hallway carpet which has the same design as the nightmarish corridors of The Shining. Chalk this one up to Toy Story editor (and Toy Story 3 director) Lee Unkrich, who adores the Kubrick film.

38. If sections of classic films give you a sense of dèjá vu, you're not alone. The company recycled much of its early animation in a technique called rotoscoping, invented in 1915, in order to cut costs. Large parts of the 1973 film Robin Hood were taken from Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Jungle Book (1967) and The Aristocats (1970).

39. The Lion King was originally called 'King of the Jungle', before some bright spark noted that lions don't tend to inhabit jungles.

Here are the faces behind the voices of Disney lead characters...

Disney have been bringing their classic animations back to the big screen as live-action films. With The Lion King due out soon and Aladdin and Dumbo already smashing it at the box office, here's a list of all the dates you need to know for Disney's live-action remakes.

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Read 90 facts you didn't know about Disney on Empire