Cast Incest: Gregory Snegoff and his late wife Lisa Michelson played Tatsuo Kusakabe and his eldest daughter Satsuki, respectively, in the Streamline dub.
Cash-Cow Franchise: Well, okay, "franchise" is a stretch, given that the only works in the franchise consist of the original feature film, a novel adaptation of that film, a short film sequel exclusive to the Ghibli Museum, and a live-show adaptation. However, there is no denying that My Neighbor Totoro is Ghibli's biggest moneymaker, with Totoro having made $1.46 billion dollars as of 2019 thanks to its box office gross ($41 million), home video sales ($277 million) and merchandise sales ($1.142 billion). After all, he is Ghibli's mascot for a reason.
The Danza: The London stage production has Mei Mac as Mei Kusakabe.
Dawson Casting: The 2022 stage adaptation in London has adult actors playing all the child characters. This is similar to the Spirited Away stage play, which also cast adults as the adolescent leads.
Dueling Works: The American theatrical release was this with A Troll in Central Park, another movie with the same premise. Since A Troll in Central Park was released opposite Pulp Fiction and was only shown in very few theaters (not to mention being the biggest box office bomb by percentage of budget lost), Totoro was the winner.
Early Draft Tie-In: The film's original theatrical poster features the original sole protagonist, instead of Satsuki and Mei, as is the case in the final film. The poster was later reused by Disney and GKIDS for their North American DVD/Blu-Ray releases of the film. While this was popularly assumed to be the result of miscommunication, according to Miyazaki, the inclusion of the original protagonist was actually deliberate on his part, as he couldn't find a way to include both Satsuki and Mei on the poster without ruining the poster's composition.
He Also Did: The initial US release was handled by 50th Street Films, a general-interest division of Troma. Yes, that Troma.
In the Japanese version, Mei and Satsuki's father — Tatsuo — is voiced by Shigesato Itoi, who is a well-known essayist and copywriter in the region. Westerners probably know him best as the creator of the Mother trilogy.
Incestuous Casting: Gregory Snegoff and his mother Alexandra Kenworthy played Tatsuo Kusakabe and his wife Yasuko Kusakabe, respectively, in the Streamline dub.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Thanks to the Disney dub becoming the primary English dub, the Streamline dub licensed by Troma and FoxVideo in the United States has been out of print since 2004, leading some to go so far as to distribute it on file sharing sites, extending its reach to new viewers. The Streamline dub was included on the 1996 Japanese "Ghibli ga Ippai" laserdisc set and the 2001 Japanese DVD release, but not many know that the dub was released that way as well.
Mid-Development Genre Shift: My Neighbor Totoro was originally developed to be a children's picture book in the mid-1970s, before Miyazaki decided to turn it into a film in the early eighties shortly before founding Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki's original plan would eventually come to fruition a couple of decades later, however, as My Neighbor Totoro would be adapted into a novel by Tsugiko Kubo in 2001.
Posthumous Credit: Lisa Michelson is given a credit in the Streamline dub, since she finished all of her dialogue two years before her fatal car crash on September 14, 1991.
Reality Subtext: Miyazaki's father was an academic and his mother was treated for tuberculosis in a rural sanitarium. In an interview published in Starting Point: 1979-1996, Miyazaki mentioned he made the main characters girls so it wouldn't be too close to his own life.
Screwed by the Lawyers: When Disney acquired Totoro, they had to wait for Streamline's rights to expire before releasing their own dub in 2006.
Sleeper Hit: The film wasn't very successful in its initial release and even took two years to become profitable. It’s technically only ever made $45 million at the box office as of the end of 2019. However, once it hit home release and started producing merchandise, it took on a new life. Between the initial release, various home releases, and merchandise, it’s made about $1.5 billion in 2019 dollars in lifetime revenue.
Vindicated by Cable: My Neighbor Totoro initially wasn't a theatrical success in Japan and had the worst opening box office among Ghibli's output. The film wouldn't start to become as successful as it is now until it started airing on TV via Nippon Television a year later. Every summer, two or three Ghibli films are broadcast as part of the "Friday Roadshow," and Totoro always pulls a large audience.
Early posters for the film included the Daiei (of Rashomon and Gamera fame) logo, as Tokuma Shoten owned both Daiei and Studio Ghibli at the time, indicating the film was supposed to have been distributed by the struggling Daiei. The film would eventually be distributed by Toho as a double feature with Grave of the Fireflies, which would later become Studio Ghibli's regular distributor.
The film was originally developed as one of the first drafts of Princess Mononoke way back in 1981, featuring a little girl and a large cat-like creature in ancient Japan. At some point, these plans were revisited as a starting point for My Neighbor Totoro, while the concept for Mononoke would continue being revised over the years until eventually being released as the infamously Darker and Edgier final product in 1997. The original concept art for the draft would later be compiled into a children's book by Miyazaki in 1993, which was later translated into English a decade later in 2014 by Viz Media, under the title, Princess Mononoke: The First Story.
Early concept art for the film shows that there were originally meant to be multiple giant Totoros. However, the final film keeps it to just one. The idea would be revisited in the film's short film sequel, Mei and the Kittenbus.
Write What You Know: This film was based on Hayao Miyazaki and his three brothers' childhoods in post-World War II Japan. Their father, Katsuji Miyazaki, was an academic like Tatsuo Kusakabe, while their mother, Yoshiko Miyazaki, was chronically ill with spinal tuberculosis and spent a lot of time at a rural sanitarium like Yasuko Kusakabe. Further paralleling the film, the Miyazakis moved from the city to be closer to Yoshiko, who was eventually able to be cured and got to come home note Though she was rendered bedridden and wheelchairbound because of the disease's spinal damage, something that would inspire the characters in a later work. Miyazaki cut down the number of siblings from four to two to save time and made them sisters instead of brothers to keep the film from hitting too close to home.
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