History WesternAnimation / TheGreatMouseDetective

* FourFingeredHands: All the non-human cast members have four fingers; exceptions being Fidget (a bat with wings), the octopus clown that appears in the bar scene, and Ratigan, a rat with five-fingered hands (though oddly, in some scenes he has a four-fingered hand as well; for example during the finale, where he alternates between four and five fingers).

* ShownTheirWork: At the end of the episode, the newspaper's date says "Monday, June 21, 1897". That day was indeed a Monday.

* EverybodySmokes: Both the hero and the villain are smokers. Basil, being a Franchise/SherlockHolmes {{Expy}}, smokes a pipe, whereas Ratigan smokes cigarettes on a holder. {{Justified}} by the movie taking place in the Victorian era, and so many other minor characters are seen smoking as well, especially in the Rat Trap saloon.

A 1986 Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon film (Number 26) with no MedievalEuropeanFantasy setting, no TrueLovesKiss, and no princesses (although there ''is'' a [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed mouse version]] of UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria). Initially a side project developed concurrently with the significantly more ambitious (and, ultimately, more poorly-received) film ''WesternAnimation/TheBlackCauldron'', the film experienced a significantly tighter and smoother production period than the latter film and became enough of a critical and financial success (though it was dethroned by its competitor by Don Bluth, ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'') to persuade the new senior management of Walt Disney Pictures (namely Michael Eisner and Creator/JeffreyKatzenberg) that the studio's animation department remained capable of producing profitable and audience-pleasing output following the failure of ''Cauldron'', leading them to re-evaluate their earlier plans to shutter the department (and, unwittingly, enabling the impending occurrence of the Disney Renaissance).

--> '''Fidget''': Ow ! My foot ! My only foot !

* AlternateSpeciesCounterpart: Basil of Baker Street and Dr. David Dawson are the mouse counterparts of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, who also exist in the same universe (there is one scene where Holmes and Watson make a brief appearance as silhouettes).

* ArtisticLicensePolitics: Ratigan apparently has free rein to change the law however he likes once he's the queen's royal consort. Parliament might have a word to say about that, though as established by the Bill Of Rights Act of 1689, and the Petition of Right.

* BarBrawl: Gets kicked off by a DeadlyDodging of a patron swinging for Dawson but hitting another mate.

* {{Homage}}: "Elementary, my dear Dawson". The entire movie, really, especially one scene where the silhouettes of two men who are obviously Holmes and Watson are visible discussing a case. The Holmes expy even shares a name with probably the most famous actor who played Sherlock. (So would that make this a [[JustForPun Holmsage]]?)

** In real life, the mechanism is still large, but smaller than depicted in the film, comparatively less complex, is surprisingly silent, and its frame is bolted to a masonry floor, rather than affixed to the walls of the tower, as the movie suggests. (If its gears were to be scaled compared to both Basil and the size of a human, then the largest gear's diameter would be in the range of the height of an average house ceiling!)