Executive Meddling/What Could Have Been: Verne originally wrote Nemo as a Polish nobleman, who lost his family to the Russians. Verne's publisher was wary of portraying the Russians (France's ally at the time) in a negative light, and didn't want to lose sales in Russia, so he persuaded Verne to make Nemo's nationality a mystery note at least until the sequel novel, The Mysterious Island, where Nemo is revealed to have been an Indian prince who lost his family to the British. Also an example about Tropes Are Not Bad: Revealing Nemo's Back Story left him only a menace against a single nation, but leaving Nemo's nationality anonymous not only defines him (Nemo means Nobody) but also makes the reader realize that any nation, even the reader's nation, could have committed the alleged crimes against Nemo and his family. Even more, it implies that no ship of any nationality was safe for navigation. The new backstory also approved to modern readers more interested on racism and cultural diversity and lent Nemo more sympathy, so recent adaptations have pretty much embraced the image of Nemo with a turban and an awesome beard.
In 1880, only ten years after the novel was released, Spanish engineer Isaac Peral deployed the first prototype of a war submarine with electric propulsion and capability to launch torpedoes, actually performing a successful test attack on a cruiser by night without being noticed. As of the 1890s, the Navy of Verne's homeland, France, had also builtat least 4 functionalsubmarines with similar electric propulsion, out of which Gustave Zédé could successfully fight large surface vessels with torpedoes.
In 1898, the inventor of the first functional American submarine, Simon Lake, was caught in a storm, and recalled a moment in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea where the Nautilus dives a few feet underwater to avoid the storm. He then repeated the technique and survived, and sent Verne's great grandson a telegraph thanking him.
The world's first nuclear-powered submarine, which would become the first submarine to transit the North Pole while submerged, also bore the name Nautilus. While it wasn't the first ship in the U.S. Navy to bear the name (it was already a long-standing tradition to name submarines after sea creatures), the choice probably wasn't entirely coincidental.
The book is famous for also inspiring Ernest Shackleton, William Beebe, Robert Ballard and Jacques Cousteau.
Final Fantasy III names the third airship acquired by the player Nautilus, and not coincidentally this is the only airship that can double as a submarine.
The North Pole is placed in the Arctic Ocean. The South Pole is placed in Antarctica, a sheet of ice thousands of feet thick, and most of it on a solid continent. The Nautilus could have reached the North Polenote and indeed, the USS Nautilus (America's first nuclear sub and namesake of the vessel in this book) did reach the Pole by travelling under the Arctic Ocean, but not the South Pole.
The other Wiki notices that Physiognomy (see Beauty Equals Goodness) fell from favor in the 20th century, but is now being revived once more.
Electricity being presented as an amazing source of energy, these days it's commonplace.
Most of the high-level taxonomic terms used by Aronnax to describe Nemo's marine-life collection and the species the Nautilus encounters are obsolete, e.g. we now know that humans are more closely related to echinoderms than corals are, and that sponges are as distantly akin to all-of-the-above as life can get while remaining an "animal" at all.
Verne's depiction of the "Arabian Tunnel" is predicated on similarities in sea life between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. Continental drift is now the accepted explanation for this.
The Nautilus was supposed to make 50 knots on Bunsen batteries. The only modern submarine which could approach 50 knots needed 30 000 kW for the main engine. To get 30 000 kW from Bunsen cells their combined size would exceed the Nautilus' entire hull in size by a few orders of magnitude.
Also, an in-universe example of Schizo Tech: despite the usual rotating electric motor with brushes being known and used in the 1860s, Nautilus' main engine is an oscillating electric motor ("where large electromagnets actuate a system of levers and gears that transmit the power to the propeller shaft") - less efficient and a royal waste of space.
The new technology of the double hull seemed to solve most problems in an age when most vessels were still wooden sailing ships, so Verne become enthusiastic about Nautilus' double hull able to withstand the pressure "in the deepest ocean trench". No double hulled submarine can go below 1300 meters, specialized deep-diving vehicles are small craft with 5-inch thick shells.
The Nautilus' primary armament being a ram was typical of naval thinking at the time: this was right after Monitor versus Virginia, and it was thought that since ironclads could not hurt each other with cannon fire, the only option would be ramming one another. At this point breech-loading heavy guns were new and untested, nobody had yet worked out how to fire a high-explosive, high-velocity shell without blowing it up, and nobody had fired a self-propelled torpedo in combat. It would not be until World War I that the submarine's role as a torpedo-carrier was cemented.
Rather funnily, the modern torpedo got patented and tested in 1866, before the book was even written, sunk the first warship in 1878 and got launched from an electric-driven submarine in 1890, when Verne was still active. This was a case of art not keeping pace with technological evolution.
Nautilus crew diving suits are an autonomous version of the heavy helmet of Verne's lifetime, yet all these had been used only to very shallow depths. To use them hundreds of yards deep with no decompression stops would only make the divers succumb to decompression sickness. Illustrations, including the original's, however, show them as having air tanks rather than tubes that could break.
Arronax deplores the dwindling numbers of oceanic herbivores because without them, certain kelp and algae species become overabundant. However, he couples it with a 19th-century understanding of disease and says it's a problem because yellow fever breeds in stagnant algae; it's now known that it's a viral disease spread by mosquitoes. (That said, there are such things as toxic algal blooms and they can be disastrous, so he wasn't far off the mark.)
Film Version
Channel Hop: Originally a 20th Century Fox project, Fox studio manager Sid Rogell personally sold the film rights to Walt Disney, who apparently returned the favor by having some scenes filmed on Fox's backlot. This became Hilarious in Hindsight when Disney acquired Fox in a March 2019 merger between the two companies.
Creator Cameo: Art designer Harper Goff appears as a priest in San Francisco.
Deleted Role: Although Percy Helton was billed in the opening credits, his role (as a coach driver) was almost entirely eliminated; in the release version, he appears in just two shots and has only one line: "Yes, sir."
Dueling Dubs: The film had three Japanese dubs. The first dub premiered in 1987 as part of Fuji TV's "Golden Screen Theater" programming block. The second was produced in 1988 for a VHS release by Pony Canyon. In 2006, a third dub was produced by Disney for a DVD release; it was eventually carried over to the Blu-ray release and Disney+ streaming service.
Fake Nationality: Arronax is French, and Paul Lukas is Austrian-Hungarian-born. The same goes for the German Peter Lorre, who plays the Flemish Conseil.
Hostility on the Set: In the supplemental material on the DVD mention is made that there was great camaraderie between most of the actors with the exception of Paul Lukas, who held himself aloof seeming to consider himself too sophisticated to mingle. It may have also been that, because of his age, he was having trouble remembering his lines and was embarrassed.
Mid-Development Genre Shift: Walt Disney originally considered making this film as an animated feature; the detailed pre-production sketches by artist Harper Goff, as well as Goff's enthusiastic suggestion that it be done as live action feature, convinced him otherwise.
Prop Recycling: Nemo's pipe organ later found service at Disneyland's Haunted Mansion.
Throw It In!: When filming the scene where Ned and Conseil get in the boat to row away from the cannibals, Kirk Douglas expected the boat to be low in the water. He didn't lower the oars far enough to catch the water, and when he started to row, he fell on his back. Director Richard Fleischer thought the shot was so funny he left it in the film. When Ned starts to row, he clearly tips back, and his legs shoot up in the air.
Wag the Director: The scene at the beginning of the film where Ned Land strolls up with a beautiful girl on each arm to the lecturing sailor and the ensuing fight was added at the suggestion of Kirk Douglas, who wanted to preserve his image as a macho action lead.
The first tests for the final battle took place against a beautiful sunset, on a calm sea. The first Giant Squid had stuffed tentacles held up on wires; these grew heavy and hard to control as they took on water, and the bright sunset made the wires painfully obvious. Disney himself was appalled at this first footage, and demanded a reshoot. This, and a fully redesigned giant squid, nearly forced the studio out of business, but proved worthwhile when the film earned a nomination for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards, and the giant squid scene is still, almost seventy years later, considered one of the greatest scenes in movie history.
of a war submarine with electric propulsion and capability to launch torpedoes, actually performing a successful test attack on a cruiser by night without being noticed. As of the 1890s, the Navy of Verne's homeland, France, had also built