Films: Original film | Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch | Stitch! The Movie | Leroy & Stitch
TV series: Lilo & Stitch: The Series | Stitch! anime | Stitch & Ai
Video games: First GBA game | Lilo & Stitch: Trouble in Paradise | Stitch: Experiment 626 | Lilo & Stitch 2: Hämsterviel Havoc | Stitch Jam games
Other media: Stitch's Great Escape! | Stitch & the Samurai
- Acting for Two:
- Lots of them, including Jeff Bennett, Nancy Cartwright, Grey DeLisle, Tress MacNeille, Rob Paulsen, Chris Sanders, Tara Strong, and Frank Welker.
- Both Mrs. Edmonds and Aunt Stacy are voiced by April Winchell.
- Actor Allusion: In one episode, Pleakley claims he and Jumba are "Canadians from Canada." Kevin McDonald is Canadian.
- Adored by the Network: From April to around July of 2018, Disney XD loved playing Lilo & Stitch: The Series, airing around eight episodes a day, despite the show ending in 2006.
- Better Export for You: In the show's native United States, a few episodes of the show were only featured as bonus material on DVDs relating to its parent franchise, including a DVD game called Island of Adventures and the Leroy & Stitch DVD, and as part of Game Boy Advance Video paks featuring other Disney Channel shows, before being fully available on Disney+ at launch years later. In Japan, however, where Stitch is huge, they got the entire series in DVD box set format.
- Bonus Episode: "Link" was a bonus on the DVD release of Leroy & Stitch, and it aired as the last episode of The Series a month later.
- Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The Dish Network summary for "Dupe" misgenders Stitch, stating that "she has cloned herself".
- Creator's Apathy: "Apathy" might be a bit too strong to describe this, since Chris Sanders is still proud of what he started, but he had to make it clear to the fans that he had no intentions of following up his film with a TV series. He will acknowledge things that happened or were established in this series, such as Tantalog being the name given to Stitch's gibberish language or Phantasmo having possessed Scrump at one point, but he will also make it clear how he was basically hands-off with this show (i.e. he only did voice acting and that was it).
- Creator's Favorite Episode:
- Jess Winfield stated on his TV Tome Q&A thread (partial fan archive here
) that his favorite episode was "Yin-Yang", saying that the episode's experiments, story, and theme worked well together. "Angel" and "Bonnie & Clyde" were also his other favorites. However, he stated this in December 2004, during the early days of the second season, so it's unknown if his opinions have changed afterward. - Series screenwriter John Wray commented on the Lilo & Stitch subreddit that he believed "Ace" was his best script, although he clearly stated that it was the original version of the script he wrote that he prefers before it was converted into the final Clip Show version that was produced.
- Jess Winfield stated on his TV Tome Q&A thread (partial fan archive here
- Creator's Pest: Keoni Jameson was mandated by Disney execs as an audience avatar, much to the chagrin of the writers.
- Cross-Dressing Voice:
- Tress MacNeille, Tara Strong, Dionne Quan, Nancy Cartwright, and Frank Welker for several experiments.
- The Kids in the Hall cast members Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch voice Pleakley's mother and sister Pixley, respectively.
- Development Gag: Experiment 258 (Sample) was an early pitch idea of Stitch himself where he was an alien living alone in a forest in the Midwest and having the ability to imitate natural sounds.
- Distanced from Current Events: Both involving the 2004 Indian Ocean Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami:
- Re-runs of the episode "Cannonball" were pulled because said episode revolved around the titular experiment causing tsunamis. It was put back in rotation two months later.
- According to Jess Winfield, the episode "Ace" was supposed to have a scene where Lilo, Stitch, and some of the experiments create a tidal wave to impress the head of E.G.O. with Pleakley playing a victim until, thanks to the episode's titular experiment, he unintentionally becomes the victim. Winfield and his staff thought it was insensitive to the victims of the tragedy, so they turned the episode into a Clip Show in which Jumba shows the head of E.G.O. videos of the experiments. You can view the storyboards here or retrieve them from the Internet Archive over here.
- Executive Meddling:
- The executives did not like Angel and didn't want her to appear again. After finding out about her popularity among fans, they relented, but only for the last episode. Of course, nowadays, Disney is all too willing to give her some regular promotion and merchandise, and they made sure to make up for screwing her out of this show by giving her several more appearances through the following Stitch! anime. She's even a meetable character at the Disney Theme Parks (notably at Tokyo Disney Resort and Disneyland Paris, as well as the Aulani resort on Oʻahu).
- On the other hand, Keoni Jameson was mandated by Disney execs as an audience avatar, much to the chagrin of the writers.
- The show was originally conceived as an action-adventure series with a similarly somber tone as the film, but Disney Channel wanted something Lighter and Softer. One could even possibly tell from watching the pilot Stitch! The Movie, as there are some elements of the original film's melancholic tone in a few scenes.
- The show makers had to push for the Recess crossover because execs didn't want to use a series that had been canceled for five years.
- God Does Not Own This World: Chris Sanders did not create this show, did not create his film with the intention of making any TV shows out of it, and was not involved in the creative process outside of voice acting.
- He Also Did: Executive producer Jess Winfield is a co-founder of the Reduced Shakespeare Company.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: As detailed under No Export for You below, only a handful of episodes received some form of home video release in the United States. A petition exists on Change.org to give the show a DVD (and possibly Blu-ray) release in the West, but it's never even reached 1,000 supporters. Digitally, illegal uploads of the show usually used the 4:3 standard-def versions; the high-definition originals were not as easily accessible and usually came from PAL region-based recordings, which meant that just like with most illegal uploads of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, episodes were slightly sped-up and are higher-pitched compared to the normal NTSC versions. Eventually, The Series was finally made legally available to watch online in the United States nearly twelve years after it ended, first in 2018 for a four-month run on DisneyNow, then on Disney+ when it launched the following year with the show available on day one, finally putting an end to this trope for American Lilo & Stitch fans.
- Missing Episode:
- The crossover episode with Recess never aired on Disney Channel, possibly because the network was worried that the kids that were into Lilo & Stitch would have no idea what Recess is.
- The last three episodes of season one ("Slugger", "Bad Stitch", and "Drowsy") were mistakenly left off Disney+ at launch but were later added shortly thereafter.
- No Export for You: The Series has been fully released on DVD, but only in Japan. Some episodes were also released on DVD in other regions, but not in full, and there has never been a Region 1 (the United States and Canada) DVD release of The Series. In those two countries, "Mr. Stenchy" and "Clip" were released on a DVD game called Lilo & Stitch's Island of Adventures, "Slushy" and "Poxy" were released on separate Game Boy Advance Video cartridges,note and "Link" is a bonus feature on the Leroy & Stitch DVD.
- The Other Darrin:
- In the episodes where Cobra Bubbles appears, Kevin Michael Richardson voiced him. Ving Rhames does voice the character though, but only as one of Experiment 300's shapeshifted forms in "Spooky" and not for the actual Cobra Bubbles.
- Dee Bradley Baker replaced Jason Scott Lee as the voice of David in The Series.
- Chris Sanders did not voice Stitch in every episode even though he was credited in the voice casts for all of them; the character's official soundalike, Michael Yingling, did the actual voice acting for Stitch in a few episodes, including "Finder", "Bonnie & Clyde", and "Angel". Yingling also did most of the initial voicework for Stitch during season two, while Sanders recorded over them in ADR.
- Screwed by the Network:
- Subverted, sort of. Some fans believe that Disney canceled the show, but the show was actually planned to be a 65-Episode Cartoon from the start. Never mind the fact that Disney did produce a finale film for the show.
- Disney did botch the airing of new episodes throughout its second season, however. There were some months-long hiatuses between airings of new episodes during that season, taking nearly two years to get through season two as a result, despite it having one-third fewer episodes than season one.
- Technology Marches On: VCRs and videocassettes were shown or referenced a few times in the show. Those things were already in decline by the time The Series debuted and would become completely obsolete in just a few years.note Other episodes also showed some older Earth-based computers, including an early 2000s desktop in the Pelekais' living room, and "Splodyhead" had Jumba mentioning that his hi-tech camping tent has a DVD player, which was the highest quality home media standard during the show's run.
- Trolling Creator: To some extent; that pod of Experiment 628 seen at the end of "627"? That was just a joke added in.note
- Unspecified Role Credit: The show primarily used a "With the Voice Talents Of" list throughout its run, not identifying the voice actors with their characters. Season two does credit the main cast with their specific roles but still didn't identify voice actors for minor roles.
- What Could Have Been:
- The aforementioned original version of "Ace".
- Precious (Experiment 400) was meant to have her own episode as a parody of The Lord of the Rings where she would be thrown into an active volcano where the extreme heat from the lava would defeat her but alas, the idea was scrapped due to copyrights. Now why they couldn't use Yang for a lava source is beyond anybody's guess.
- Spot (Experiment 099) was supposed to appear in "Spike", but the experiment wasn't added to the episode and remains unseen to this day.
- Working Title: The show was first announced as Stitch! The TV Series, which explains the title of Stitch! The Movie.
