Fry and Lewis were so sure Hillary Clinton was going towin the 2016 US Presidential election.
The May 31, 2018 strip depicts the cast watching the Roseanne reboot. Two days earlier, ABC had canceled the series over Roseanne Barr's racist tweets.
Technology Marches On: A 1996 strip has RJ and Verne pointing out that a neighbor's computer has a 140 megahertz processor, a three-gigabyte hard drive, 36 megabytes of RAM.
What Could Have Been: Michael Fry's original pitch for a Funny Animal comic was The Secret Life of Pigs, which was essentially Over the Hedge but with farm animals instead of suburban wildlife. The syndicates thought said strip was funny but insisted that readers wouldn't be able to relate because "nobody lives on farms anymore," prompting Fry to change the setting and title.
Movie trivia:
Accidentally Correct Zoology: In the film where Hammy and RJ are stealing cookies from girl scouts, Hammy threatens a reflection of himself on a car bumper. In real life Squirrels are territorial animals and would growl and attack another squirrel and most don't even recognize their own reflections so his reaction to his own reflection is pretty accurate.
Actor-Inspired Element: Penny and Lou's "super duper" catch phrase, as well as the Midwestern accent to go with it, was an inside joke from Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara's youth. The two of them grew up in Ontario, so most of their television broadcasts came from the American Midwest, and one American ad they'd frequently see was for a supermarket called The Super Duper Store.
All-Star Cast: Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carrell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Thomas Haden Church, Avril Lavigne, and Allison Janney.
Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese and Korean dubs, Heather is voiced by the Korean singer BoA.
Dueling Movies: With Open Season, which came out four months later. Both CGI family films were about talking Woodland Creatures and emphasized how they are taking revenge on the humans for destroying their life, and both feature songs from former frontmen of alternative rock bands, Ben Folds for this film and Paul Westerberg for Open Season. This film did better critically and financially than Open Season, though disagreements with the IP holders of the Over the Hedge meant that the former never received any follow-ups while the latter had three Direct to Video sequels.
Fake American: The characters are all implied to be native to the American Midwest. Four of them (Lou, Penny, Ozzie and Heather) are played by Canadians (Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, William Shatner and Avril Lavigne, respectively).
Fake Nationality: Subverted with Tiger, the Persian cat, played by the British-Iranian Omid Djalili.
Wendy's had a set of five toys in the US. There was a plush of Verne, an RJ wristwatch, a maze game, a Hammy balancing roller, and a two-sided wagon puzzle.
In Australia, Red Rooster released figures of RJ, Hammy, Verne, Ozzie, and Stella.
Reality Subtext: Stella (Wanda Sykes) gets upset when Penny tells her to find "a good man". She also happens to be voiced by a lesbian.
Science Imitates Art: A cosmic phenomenon similar to the aurora borealis that occasionally lights up the northern hemisphere was nicknamed STEVE, after the name the animals give to the hedge. The name was chosen because, in the movie, the animals are a lot less scared of the giant hedge after naming it.
Stillborn Franchise: The movie is unique among DreamWorks' films in that it actually did well both critically and commercially, but disagreements that the studio had with United Media (who at the time owned the rights to the franchise) ultimately resulted in the cancellation of Over the Hedge 2 as well as a Pearls Before Swine movie.
Those Two Actors: Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara have played opposite each other multiple times over four decades, but Levy says that it was Over the Hedge that caused people to incorrectly assume that they're married in real life. In reality, they were regulars on SCTV, and often paired during and after their tenure.
20th Century Fox planned to adapt the comic into a traditionally animated film before their 2D unit closed in 2000. The rights were then picked up by DreamWorks when Fox put the film in turnaround.
Gene Wilder was approached for a role, with the character in question being Norbert the Owl, but he turned it down and the character was dropped.
According to Ben Folds, his first draft of "Family Of Me" began with the line "Oh, I'm an asshole." After picking themselves up off the floor laughing, everyone present quickly decided it was inappropriate for this kind of movie.
Some of the fictional brand names were changed prior to release. One example is that Spuddies potato chips (the Brand X version of Pringles) used to be referred to as 'Jingles', where the logo was the Pringles logo with a court jester's cap, which is likely what the "scary clown" balloon Vincent comes down from before the climatic fight was based off of.
The character designs were originally going to resemble the comic designs, but when live animals were brought to the studio for reference, the designers saw just how cute they were and redesigned them as such.
Rather than get chased by a Rottweiler, Verne was going to get swallowed by a poodle named Waffles, and the gang would have to help him get out of the dog's stomachnote This was to have been taken from an arc from the comic strip. Jeff Katzenberg vetoed it, saying he didn't want children with a fear of dogs to be frightened.
According to some theories, Heather was initially meant to be a love interest to RJ.
Written by Cast Member: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Eduardo Giaccardi is one of the ADR writers as well as Tiger's voice actor.
The Other Darrin: With the exception of the porcupine triplets, none of the actors from the movie reprised their roles for the tie-in game.
Role Reprise: All of the porcupine triplets were voiced by their actors from the movie.
Sequel in Another Medium: The first four levels of the console game are directly taken from the climax of the movie. The rest of the game is a straight sequel where the animals raid houses and battle Dwayne the Verminator.
