Trivia / The Jungle Book

Tropes for the Original Book

• Science Imitates Art: Bagheera kiplingi is a species of jumping spider, the genus name of which is a reference to the panther character from the book and the species name to the author, Rudyard Kipling.

Tropes for the Anime Series

• Children Voicing Children: In the English dub, Julian Bailey was just a kid while voicing Mowgli.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Mowgli is voiced by Urara Takano in the original Japanese.
• Fake Brit: Some of the characters in the English dub have British accents, despite the entire cast being Canadian.
• Follow the Leader: In the English dub, Shere Khan is given a deep, refined baritone, similar to his Disney counterpart.
• International Coproduction: Between Japan and Italy.
• Screwed by the Network: Averted. This is actually a case of a series' run getting extended despite the ratings being poor: it was originally planned for 26 episodes but at the insistence of the sponsor, Sumitomo, it was doubled to 52.

Tropes for the Video Game based on the 1967 Disney Animated Film

• What Could Have Been:
  • Many concepts for the game didn't get past pencil sketches:
    • One early concept would let Mowgli get extra jumping power by catching and then riding a giant frog.
    • Another concept was a giant fish that could half-swallow Mowgli, who would need to escape by hammering the fire button while inside the fish's mouth.
    • One concept would have rhinos lifting their heads up out of the water and attempt to skewer Mowgli as he jumped over them.
    • Baloo's trip down the river would have been more dangerous in an early concept, in which the bear would be sucked into a whirlpool, and Mowgli, riding his stomach, would have to time his jumps to avoid drowning. Other dangers for the Floating Baloo level would have included hungry hippos, whom Mowgli could pacify by throwing a banana inside their mouths when open.
    • One type of enemy that was cut from King Louie's level was living monkey skeletons.
    • One idea that was rejected very early in the design process was to have Mowgli lose his loincloth when he ran out of energy and have to collect new ones for extra lives and fig leaves for extra continues.
  • Early demos of the game featured a snake as Mowgli's life bar, which would get shorter as he took hits from enemies. The Sega Master System and Game Gear versions retained this concept, but it was cut from every other version of the game.
  • In an early demo of the game, an armadillo which would roll on its back playfully then launch itself when Mowgli got close to it was the main enemy in the first level. It was removed entirely from the Sega Genesis version, but does make a single appearance in the SNES version.
  • The original concept for the opening Disney logo was to have Mowgli hang down from a vine and put the dot on the letter "i" in "Disney". Early demos included a similar concept, in which Kaa would dangle Mowgli from his tail. This was eventually replaced with the final animation featuring Tinkerbell, although Kaa's head still dropped down over the Sega logo in the Genesis version.
  • While the final games included red and/or green gems for Mowgli to grab, an early pixel art set showed a variety of diamond-colored gems.

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