Trivia / Up

• Acting for Two:
  • Bob Peterson voices both Dug and Alpha.
  • Besides providing the vocal effects for Kevin, Pete Docter voices Strauch, the camp master.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Edgar Vivar originally auditioned for the role of Carl Fredricksen in the Mexican Spanish dub, but ended up losing it to Tito Reséndiz. Vivar was cast as Dug instead.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • The European and Canadian French dubs feature the late singer Charles Aznavour as Carl. The Canadian French dub also has comedian Rachid Badouri as Dug.
  • The Brazilian Portuguese dub has late comedian Chico Anysio as Carl. And adequately, his dubber son Nizo Neto is in the cast as Dug.
• Completely Different Title: Called Kāru-jiisan no Soratobu-ie ("Old Man Carl's Flying House") in Japanese.
• Copiously Credited Creator:
  • In addition to directing the film, Pete Docter was a co-writer, a story artist, and the voice of Strauch and Kevin.
  • Bob Peterson co-wrote the screenplay in addition to serving as a story artist, as well as providing the voices for Dug and Alpha.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting:
  • Charles Aznavour (Carl) and Tom Trouffier (Russell) voiced their characters for the European and Canadian French dubs.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub features mostly Mexican voice actors, but also includes veteran Argentinian actor Roberto Carnaghi as Muntz and Peruvian singer-songwriter Gian Marco as Beta.
• The Danza: Young Ellie was played by Pete Docter's young daughter Elie.
• Defictionalization:
  • Though it lacks the balloons and has a basement, someone built a real-life copy of Carl and Ellie's house, complete with a painting over the fireplace. In Herriman, Utah.
  • Still, a group of people actually did manage to float a house using helium-filled balloons — appropriately enough, for a TV show called How Hard Can It Be?
• Dub Name Change: In the Swedish dub, Russell's name is Oskar and Kevin's name is Kenneth.
• Early-Bird Release: Before the film's worldwide release, Pixar granted a 10-year-old girl's dying wish to see the movie at her home. She passed away several hours afterwards.
• Easter Egg: On the Blu-ray menu, pressing the Left arrow on your remote control reveals "The Egg", a short piece in which the film makers discuss the abandoned plans to make Kevin's eggs into the elixir of youth.
• Inspiration for the Work: Pete Docter developed the fantasy of a flying house on the idea of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating, which stemmed from his difficulty with social situations growing up. He selected an old man for the main character after drawing a picture of a grumpy old man with smiling balloons.
• Posthumous Credit: Some of the actors who played Carl in the various foreign dubs died, but were still given a credit:
  • For Latin American Spanish viewers, this movie could be hard to watch if you know that Carl's Mexican voice actor (Tito Reséndiz) died of lung cancer a few months later after dubbing this movie to Spanish and 9 days before its release; it was his final film performance.
  • The Norwegian actor of Carl (Helge Reiss) also died shortly after dubbing the film.
  • The Japanese dub is quite a bizarre example: Shōzō Iizuka died many months ahead of the dub of Carl's Date, which was shown in Japan in August 2023.
• Real-Life Relative: Pete Docter's daughter Elizabeth voices Ellie as a child.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Originally, Russel's epic failure of a tent was supposed to just collapse where it stood, but the timing didn't translate well enough from storyboard to animation, so they came up with the much more sadistic (and therefore funnier) gag of one of the misplaced poles launching the tent over a cliff.
• Shrug of God: Russell's mention of a Phyllis was written to be ambiguous whether she's just his dad's secretary (meaning he's busy at work) or his father's second wife.
• Similarly Named Works: Up shares its name with albums by Peter Gabriel, R.E.M., and Right Said Fred, as well as a Russ Meyer film.
• Swan Song: The Latin American Spanish dub was Tito Reséndiz's final film before he died of lung cancer on May 20, 2009.
• Throw It In!: The "That's not gonna work" gag started out as a joke ending to an early version of a scene, where Carl really did try to get Russell out of the house on a rope. They kept it.
• Underage Casting: Christopher Plummer, who played the 92-year-old Charles Muntz, was 79 when the film was came out.
• What Could Have Been:
  • See Easter Egg above. Scrapped due to teetering into a sudden genre shift to horror.
  • The original opening involved young Ellie and Carl constantly out to punch each other due to a childish rivalry until they fall in love in their teen years. Then, one of Ellie's last acts in her hospital bed is to throw Carl an affectionate punch in the chest. Pete Docter said he got funny looks from test viewers.
  • Initially Carl would make a balloon animal of Kevin to lure Muntz into its labyrinth home, then abandon him there. This piece of Alas, Poor Villain was done away with due to Pete Docter feeling that it made the ending more about Muntz than Carl and Ellie.
  • Several other endings for Muntz were considered: including one where Muntz would redeem himself after talking to Carl; one where he got his foot tangled in the balloons and was pulled up into the air; and one where he ran into the house to grab what he thought was Kevin (actually just another balloon) and was followed by his dogs, their combined weight causing the house to fall.
  • Kevin was originally introduced with Carl and Russell finding her in one of Muntz's traps and freeing her. Then Docter realized it wouldn't make much sense after she'd been dodging his traps for decades.
  • The first draft was set against the background of a war between a sky kingdom and a terrestrial kingdom. The heroes were two brothers who fell to the ground and found a magic bird.
• Word of God:
  • It was speculated by Disney fans that the name of Charles Muntz was a jab at producer Charles Mintz, who infamously screwed over Walt Disney when he was working on the silent Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. This rumor was shot down by Pixar staff, who claim the similarity in names was a complete coincidence.
  • The Silence Is Golden montage has a scene where Carl and Ellie decide to have a baby, then we cut to the two in the hospital as the doctor explains something we can't know, and Ellie is crying. According to the creators, Ellie suffered a miscarriage and is infertile, and therefore cannot have any children.
• Write What You Know:
  • Pete Docter was inspired to do a film about an aggressively antisocial character based on his own social anxieties that came with being an artist.
  • Dug's line "I have just met you and I love you" came from Bob Peterson's experiences as a camp councilor, when one of his campers said this to him.

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