Shark Tale/Trivia

Trivia

 * The second DreamWorks Animation film to not feature any humans, after Antz.
 * The second DreamWorks Animation film to be released in October, after Antz.
 * The fifth DreamWorks Animation's original full-length feature film of the 2000s, after The Road to El Dorado, Chicken Run, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.
 * The sixth DreamWorks Animation film of 2000s to be produced in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, after The Road to El Dorado, Chicken Run, Shrek, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Shrek 2.
 * The fifth DreamWorks Animation film of 2000s to be rated PG by the MPAA, after The Road to El Dorado, Shrek, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Shrek 2.
 * The first DreamWorks Animation computer-animated film to not be co-produced with Pacific Data Images.
 * The original title for the movie was "Sharkslayer," but it was changed to "Shark Tale" about a year before release, because Jeffrey Katzenberg thought the title might scare families away (the title still appears in some early promotional material). The change is clear in the movie, as in the song before the credits, the singers interlock between calling the movie "Sharkslayer" and "Shark Tale."
 * When Don Lino is clearly seen for the first time (when he looks up from the aquarium), a mole can be seen near his right eye, a distinct facial feature of Lino's voice actor, Robert De Niro.
 * According to Hans Zimmer, he told Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg that he could not deal with any more epic films, but wanted to do a fun animated movie instead, and so he got the chance to compose for this film.
 * When Oscar (Will Smith) goes to the time clock, there is a note on the wall saying, "If you don't come in Saturday, don't bother..." This is a reference to a famous memo Jeffrey Katzenberg sent to executives while he was with Disney.
 * Some of the "fishified" products are: "Coral Cola" (Coca-Cola), "Gup" (GAP), "Fish King" (Burger King), "Old Wavy" (Old Navy), and "Newsreef" (Newsweek).
 * During the end credits, Crazy Joe, the hermit crab, taps on Head of Artistic Development Frank Gladstone's name and yells out, "What! You see this guy? He hardly worked on the movie at all! Always on the phone yakking yakking yakking."
 * In the scene where Sykes is fired, he is thrown against the drawing of Rose that Jack drew in Titanic (1997).
 * Ernie the Jellyfish (Ziggy Marley) sings the song "Three Little Birds", a song written by Ziggy's father, Bob, with the small difference of Ziggy changing "birds" to "fishes" in keeping with the film's aquatic theme.
 * In the racetrack sequence, there are more than sixteen thousand computer animated 3-D characters in the stands.
 * LOGO GIMMICK: The fisher boy in the moon throws his line (worm attached) into the ocean, where the worm encounters Lenny (Jack Black).
 * Some of the cast members, most notably Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, Will Smith and Jack Black, and Will Smith and Renée Zellweger, recorded their lines together.
 * There are nods throughout the movie that sharks' den is the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. However, the outside and interiors of the shipwreck are based on the S.S. Normandie, a French ocean liner of the 1930s. Particular examples are, the scenes at the bar, when Don Lino (Robert De Niro) and Sykes (Martin Scorsese) meet for the first time, and the dining room, where the sitting is set.
 * The plot has some resemblance to "The Reluctant Dragon," a short story from 1897 written by Kenneth Grahame.
 * Anthony Anderson was cast as a sperm whale, but the role's suggestive dialogue got his character cut down. Anderson had only a few non-risqué lines, when the whale meets Angie, and when Oscar cleans the whale's eye.
 * The American Family Association, a Christian conservative organization, raised concerns about this movie, suggesting that it was designed to promote the acceptance of gay rights by children. Primarily, by having Lenny, who is a vegetarian shark, and his struggles, as an allegory for the struggles gay men go through with their homosexuality.
 * Classifying the characters in terms of species, Oscar (Will Smith) is a bluestreak cleaner wrasse ((which explains his whale-cleaning status) despite looking more like a dolphinfish), Angie (Renée Zellweger) is a marine angelfish, Sykes (Martin Scorsese) is a porcupinefish, Lola (Angelina Jolie) is a lionfish, Don Feinberg (Peter Falk) is a leopard shark, Don Lino (Robert De Niro), Frankie (Michael Imperioli) and Lenny (Jack Black) are great white sharks, Giuseppe (Lenny Ventino) is a scalloped hammerhead shark and Crazy Joe (David P. Smith) is a hermit crab.
 * For Australian audiences, Katie Current is voiced by renowned Australian channel 9 news anchor Tracy Grimshaw.
 * Don Feinberg (Peter Falk) was originally called Don Brizzi. Bowing to pressure from the Italic Institute of America, an organization protesting Hollywood's stereotyping of Italians as mobsters and gangsters, DreamWorks agreed to change the name of the character to Don Feinberg just before release.
 * Some of the scenes from the trailers that didn’t end up in the film where Don Lino tells Sykes that he tells him his boys are gonna pay him a little visit.

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