Trivia / Ice Age

• Channel Hop: Before it was given to Blue Sky, Fox actually offered Disney the chance to make the film, but they turned the project down. If Disney had said yes then not only would Ice Age be entirely different, but Blue Sky Studios as we know it most likely wouldn't exist. Ironically, Ice Age technically is Disney now as a result of Disney buying Fox in 2019. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild has the Disney logo instead of the 20th Century logo.
• Creator Backlash: While Alex Gradet, the story/editorial production assistant, doesn't quite think of the movie as a bad movie as a whole per se, in this podcast, he's admitted to having a "love/hate relationship" with it as he's said he can't help but cringe at some things the movie did like some of the more politically incorrect elements^note for instance giving the villains Latino names like Soto and Diego, making the female sloths rather sexist stereotypes, or having slightly homophobic jokes, the rushed way Diego was brought back from the dead, and having Toilet Humor in an admittedly dark story. That being said he does say there were a lot of great sequences and the movie as a whole, to him, picked up in the second half, especially during the montage scene^note a scene he helped come up with.
• Deleted Role: The movie was originally going to feature a female sloth named Sylvia, voiced by Kristen Johnston (Sally on 3rd Rock from the Sun), a Clingy Jealous Girl whom Sid was trying to get rid of. She was cut for various reasons, mainly because she made Sid come off as a Jerkass. Deleted footage with her can be found on the DVD release. For instance, the scene where Sid provokes Diego into pretending to bite him to scare off the two rhinos Carl and Frank used to involve Sylvia instead. Interestingly, Sylvia still turned up on some of the hanging mobiles and other promotional items for the film, cluing viewers in to her existence long before the DVD release.
• DVD Commentary: With director Chris Wedge and co-director Carlos Saldahna.
• Focus Group Ending: Diego was going to die at the end of the film, but he survived in the final cut because it was too depressing for the kids in the test audiences. Denis Leary actually warned the producers that this would happen. When it proved true, he got his wish and Diego remained alive.
• Follow the Leader: Aside from the already recognizable woolly mammoth and Smilodon, a lot of the animals featured in the first movie also appeared (and gained notoriety) just a year prior in Walking with Beasts; brontotheres, Moeritherium, Macrauchenia, and Doedicurus (and this extends to some scrapped ones such as Andrewsarchus and Leptictidium). The first sequel also brings in Gastornis.
• Genre-Killer: If Monsters, Inc. and Shrek weren't enough to make studios believe that 2D animated films were unprofitable, this movie would pound the belief further. Its huge success was the signal to other animation studios that traditional animation was no longer profitable (for instance, Disney cited this film after Treasure Planet bombed big time), leading to the art form almost entirely disappearing from American feature films. The fact that this movie was made by a studio other than Pixar or DreamWorks Animation did not help matters, as it showed that studios other than those two could create successful CGI movies.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Burger King had a set of ten toys. They could be used separately or connect to each other and run simultaneously. They consisted of Soto, Scrat, Sylvia, Resham, Diego, the Dodos, Carl, Manfred, and two different toys of Sid. In addition to the toys, there was a vanilla and blue cherry frozen float drink.
• Real Song Theme Tune: Rusted Root's "Send Me On My Way", which was used rather prominently in the film during the Travel Montage. Chances are if you know the song you've heard it from either this movie or Matilda.
• Spared by the Cut: Diego originally died near the end of the film. This caused the test audience of children to burst into tears, so it was re-done.
• Throw It In!: John Leguizamo tried about thirty different voices for Sid. After viewing a documentary about sloths, he learned that they store food in their mouths; this led to him wondering what he would sound like with food in his mouth. With this, along with seeing the character model, he developed the lisp and decided that it was the perfect voice for Sid.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The movie was originally going to be directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, and would have been traditionally animated and more of a full-on drama. After Titan A.E. bombed, however, Fox Animation Studios was disbanded, and the film was given over to Blue Sky (who had worked on AE, specifically the scene where New Earth is created) and turned into a Dramedy.
  • Before this film was in production, the first CGI animated feature by Blue Sky was meant to be "Santa Calls" based on the children's book by William Joyce, but due to production problems, the project was scrapped. They would later work with Joyce again on Robots and to adapt The Leaf Men into Epic (2013).
  • The original cut had a character that was completely removed in the final cut, Sylvia, a female sloth voiced by comedian Kristen Johnson. She was cut very late in production with one scene that would have involved her altered, that being Sid's fake death, which in the final product involved him (successfully) fooling Carl and Frank instead of (unsuccessfully) fooling Sylvia. This also means that Carl and Frank originally had only one scene in the movie.
  • In this original ending, Diego actually dies and does not return to Sid and Manny, leaving Sid and Manny to travel South alone. They reach the beach where all of the mammals have ended up in, and Sid meets Sylvia (the scrapped character) there. Sid grows more mature after witnessing the death of Diego, and acts much nicer to her, asking to be her mate. This idea was scrapped when the voice actor who played Diego (Denis Leary) said this was a bad idea to kill off the character, So the ending was changed to have Diego live and scrap the rest of what would have been character development for Sid mainly due to time restraints.
  • James Earl Jones and Ving Rhames were considered for the role of Manny, but they sounded too obvious and Wedge wanted more comedy.
  • Albert Brooks was offered the role of Manny.
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman was considered to voice Diego.
  • One of the scrapped creatures shown in concept art for the first movie is the hoofed carnivore Andrewsarchus, shown in its classic giant mesonychid form, and unlike other scrapped creatures, it was never used in the sequels. This did help avoid Science Marches On though, as Andrewsarchus is no longer considered a mesonychid.

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