Acting for Two: Verna Felton voiced both Mrs. Jumbo (who, granted, only has one line) and the Matriarch of the elephants.
Creator Backlash: Walt wasn't a fan of the movie, as he produced this and The Reluctant Dragon on a whim to recover money from 1940's failures, and there was also the fact that it was made during the devastating 1941 studio strike—Walt also left to travel during South America during the bulk of the movie's production, giving him less hands-on involvement with the movie than the one he had with his previous films. He sent it to television rather early, and this was why Dumbo, along with Alice In Wonderland, were the only single-story animated films to be released on video prior to the 1984 management shift that saw Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells arrive at Disney. Ironically, Dumbo is one of the most popular Disney Animated Classics with both audiences and critics.
Cross-Dressing Voices: Casey Jr. is actually voiced by a woman, but used a vocoder to alter it into a male electronic voice.
Deleted Scene: Storyboards and concept art exist of Timothy explaining to Dumbo why elephants are so terrified of mice. It's because an elephant never forgets, and back in prehistoric times, mice were giganticKaiju-level creatures that always used to play, tease and torment the helpless pachyderms. It was cut due to running time constraints, and that it made Timothy out to be a little too antagonistic, when he's developing a Big Brother Instinct over the outcast baby.
Development Hell: Dumbo II began concept stages in 2001 with interviews and teasers released on the 60th Anniversary rerelease of the original film. It was left on hiatus since then, and supposedly shelved with the other remaining Direct-To-Video sequels after John Lasseter's restructuring in 2007.
Dueling Dubs: The film has been dubbed in Swedish a total of three times. The first dub was released in 1946 and the redubs were released in 1972 and 1997, respectively.
Japan has no fewer than four different dubs: two for theatrical release (1954 and 1983), a third for TV broadcast (1978 on the TBS network), and a fourth for home video release (1985). The 1983 version was also later broadcast on Japanese satellite TV, and the TBS TV dub was later rerun on Fuji TV and NHK.
Late Export for You: The film wasn't released in Finland until 1948 (7 years after the original US release) due to the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet union in 1941-1944. Additionally, the film hasn't received its own Finnish dub until 1997.
Japan had to wait another six years after Finland for a release of Dumbo, as the movie had not been released in Japan in 1941 due to mounting tensions between the U.S. and Japan (indeed, the attack on Pearl Harbor took place about a month and a half after the original U.S. release date).
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Shortly before Disney+ launched, many news articles reported that the streaming version of the film would edit the crows out due to Values Dissonance, which caused quite a bit of uproar on the internet, as despite their polarizing nature, the crows are still a major part of the film's story, and editing them out would make the last third of the film near-impossible to follow. It later turned out that the film would be available unedited with the crows intact, albeit with a content warning at the beginning as with Disney's other films with outdated stereotypes in them.
Playing Against Type: Normally Bill Tytla animated large imposing and often villainous characters, however for this film most of his animation was for the titular character, a cute baby elephant. He reportedly did this to show his colleagues that he could do characters other than big scary villains.
Sleeper Hit: Disney didn't expect this movie to be particularly successful, and intended it to be a low-budget "filler" movie after the initial financial failures of Pinocchio and Fantasia (which have since been Vindicated by History). It would go on to be Disney's biggest hit since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and their most financially successful movie of The '40s.
Stillborn Franchise: A Direct to Video sequel began production in 2001. Dumbo II would have involved Dumbo and the other baby animals of the circus getting stranded in New York City and having to find their way back to their travelling home. The project went into Development Hell and was supposedly canned, but not before having teasers in the 60th Anniversary rerelease.
Tribute to Fido: It is implied that Dumbo's father is Jumbo, a famous African Bush elephant that appeared first at the London Zoo then at the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Dumbo was supposed to be named Jumbo Junior, but ended up being known by a mocking nickname instead.
Troubled Production: This was Disney's first seriously problematic production. They had to make it on a lower than usual budget due to the studio's financial troubles, and then things really hit the fan when most of the studio's animation staff went on strike over atrocious working conditions, resulting in a lot of the film being completed by junior animators who weren't financially secure enough to go on strike, plus a few more experienced animators who crossed the picket lines knowing that the studio would more than likely be forced to close down if they didn't get Dumbo out on time, though even then only produced work that met the bare minimum standard that Disney would accept. Like Fantasia and Pinocchio, this film did not come close to as a big hit at the box office, but the end product was the biggest critical success Disney had since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; however, Walt Disney himself looked back on it with disdain afterwards, and to really stick the boot in, reported all the animators who had gone on strike as potential communists, resulting in more than a few careers being put on hold, if not ending permanently.
The film was supposed to be just a short subject—but got expanded to a full movie because Disney was suffering a budget crisis and desperately needed money to stay afloat.
The filmmakers considered having Dumbo talk, with Dickie Jones (the voice of Pinocchio) providing his voice.
The ending was originally going to be longer, with Dumbo having his ears massaged by beauties as his mother knits him a sweater, Timothy sits at a big desk signing contracts for Dumbo and the train heads for Hollywood.
Dumbo was going to appear on the cover of TIME magazine. Unfortunately, the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese overshadowed him.
There was originally supposed to be a scene where Timothy spins an elaborate tale to Dumbo about why elephants are afraid of mice.
Storyboards exist of Dumbo and Timothy having interactions with Casey Jr, suggesting he was meant to have a larger role in the movie.
During production of the "Bongo" segment of Fun and Fancy Free, at one point, some characters and elements of Dumbo were to be carried over into the segment, including the gossipy elephants.
The clowns singing "Hit the Big Boss (For a Raise)" was based on the Disney Animators' Strike in 1941.
Bill Peet based a lot of Dumbo's characterization on his infant son. He also drew on his childhood love of the circus when helping develop the film's story.
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