The Hound: The hidden detail in "Flushed Away" (2006)

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		Flushed Away's Hidden Detail (17.05.12) You know, Aardman/DreamWorks' Flushed Away is piped full of in-jokes and hidden detail. And sometimes a dawg has too much time on his paws so, ladies and gentlerats, The Hound at Toonhound has (belatedly) revisited Ratropolis with Roddy and Rita via his HD TV to bring you a timecoded rundown of some of that fab DVD detail. Seriously, there's lots of hidden stuff to enjoy, so get your pause button ready!...

		00.30 - We've barely started and already there's an Aardman reference in the background of Piccadilly Circus. It's a big neon advert featuring a stylised "G" for Gromit , as in "Wallace & Gromit" Aardman's stop-motion stars. Quite what it's advertising is hard to pin down, but it's there (1), and we've spied it... There's a "Flushed" sign there too (2). And a Katzenburger Lager ad mocking DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenburg (3). It's expanded upon at 06.02, so we'll leave it for now. Incidentally, that Chunky Choc middle-top pre-empts Roddy's snickering encounter with a chocolate bar en route through the drains to Ratropolis, in a wee while... 00.50 - Now we're in Tabitha's bedroom. And Tabitha's quite the cartoon fan, with characters from several Aardman and DreamWorks productions on show in her room. How many, exactly? Well... 01.17 - This is a good widescreen shot, so we'll add them all up... There's a large Gromit soft toy on the floor for starters, and two Captain Cuddlepuss plush toys from "Creature Comforts"(2003), two Alex the Lion plush toys from "Madagascar"(2005) and an amazing twelve plush toy bunnies, straight out Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)... There's a bunny in a pink dress on her bedside stand, left of frame. We've previously spied four more in a storage box beneath the window. Another Bunny is on the floor, to the left of the shelving unit. Number seven is on the first main shelf, to the right of the books. Four more are in another storage box on the shelf above. And one last dress-wearing bunny resides at the top... That makes 17 different Aardman/DreamWorks plushies. We see one or more of them throughout these bedroom scenes... 01.50 - When Roddy is rummaging through his penthouse wardrobe, he pulls out a spotty shirt, a sailor suit ('ello, sailor!), and then, a clothes hanger sporting a green tank top and red tie, made famous by our inventor friend Wallace of Wallace & Gromit fame... Next there's a little sleight of hand. Most folks see the Caveman costume that follows on and they think it's a Fred Flintstone reference. But there's no famous blue tie. This viewer reckons it's part of a looser Mr Benn reference. When he's in his famous Costume Shop Mr Benn dresses up as a Caveman, Wizard and Deep Sea Diver, and he holds them up to his person when he's transformed, just like Roddy... Roddy concludes his search with a choice between a Wolverine costume and an Elvis costume, and the in-joke is rather more obvious. Hugh Jackman, who voices Roddy St. James, is perhaps most famous for his role as the former character in those live-action "X-Men" comic adaptations.... 02.02 - Oh, look! - Roddy sits on a Jack in his car, moments before Hugh Jackman's credit appears on screen. Jack - Jackman - geddit?... 02.39 - There's a photo of Shaun the Sheep on the living room bookshelf... 02.41 - And now it's DVD time, and that shelf really is stuffed-to-busting with material to savour. The lineup includes a number of previous DreamWorks animated and live-action releases (1), some fake titles referencing folks associated with the "Flushed Away" production crew and their production babies (2), and a slew of titles spoofing classic films (3). We'll work from right to left, with Roddy. Legitimate film titles have their release date in brackets: (1) Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) The Road to El Dorado ( 2000) Prince of Egypt (1998) Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) Madagascar (2005) Antz (1998) The Last Castle (2001) Shark Tale (2004) Over the Hedge (2006) Shrek (2001) Shrek 2 (2004) Red Eye (2005) Peacemaker (1997) Paulie (1998) Old School (unrated) (2003) Mouse Hunt (1997) The Love Letter (1999) Just Like Heaven (2005) Galaxy Quest (1999) Forces of Nature (1999) (2) Kira - Queen of the Schedule* Z is for Zaneta Macy & Owen's Day Out Madeleine's Mayhem The Chaos of Charis Nicky & Dylan The Weisberg Chronicles* The Adventures of Courtney & Brendon The Julianos of Boca * Kira Shea Smithson and Larry Weisberg were Production Office Co-ordinators on the film! (3) A Fistfull of Dullards My Big Fat Greek Bottom In the Heat of the Fridge Goon With the Wind Piddler on the Roof Puckered Lips Now Ratman Ratman Returns Ratman Returns (Again) All the Presidents Own Teeth The Mancunian Candidate Death in Venice II - Zombie Once Upon a Time in a Vest You Only Live 9 Times The Maltese Budgie (a Dicky Bird film) Brief Incontinence The Curse of the Daddy A Few Good Puns 12 Angry Folks Die Again Tomorrow A Clockwork Potato (4) Chicken Run (2000) To cap things off the DVD shelf is completed with a framed photograph of Wendolene, the stop-motion heroine from Aardman's Academy Award-winning short film A Close Shave. And of course, in the end, Roddy chooses the James Bond spoof spy film "Die Again Tomorrow" for his movie premiere... 05.15 - We're in the kitchen now, and when Roddy first meets Sid we catch a glimpse of a wall calendar in the background, featuring some familiar Aardman penguins. It looks like they're playing draughts - a take on those famous images of dogs playing poker, painted by CM Coolidge in 1903.... 06.02 - The TV broadcast features pitch-side adverts for Lord's Bank (1) and Katzenburger "The Official Lager of English Blokes" (2). These are references to the UK's famous High Street bank, Lloyd's Bank, and to Carlsberg, a renowned Danish brewery. They've been mashed up to poke fun at Aardman cofounder and producer Peter Lord, and DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenburg... 08.26 - Really, if you don't get this one, you must have been living under the sea all your life. The goldfish asks if Roddy has seen his Dad. That's a reference to Pixar's blockbuster "Finding Nemo" (2003), in which the titular character (a young clown fish) searches for a way back home to his father... 09.20 - The slugs in the film are practically carbon copies of Gary and Nigel, the slugs from Aardman's "Creature Comforts" TV series... 10.36 - Roddy tumbles into Ratropolis, and lands upon a chalk sketch of "London From the Sky" by Rodint = Rodent = Augste Rodin, the renowned French sculptor (1840-1917)... 11.16 - Here's our first glimpse of a fab advert for Melvin Grime underpants, as sported by a sullen male rodent, spoofing Calvin Kleine, of course... 11.17 - And one brief pause away, as Roddy flies through the air, there's a vest top on the washing line with a Aardman's doggy star Rex the Runt emblazoned upon it... 11.46 - That's Aardman's infamous diamond thief Feathers McGraw and robot dog Preston you can see dueling on a console screen, behind Roddy and Harold the toast-wearing Prophet... 15.42 - This one may be a bit tenuous, but Whitey's brass jacket button is very similar to the stylised "V" on Viktor's tomb, in the film "Underworld" (2003). If you know your monster movies, you'll know that actor Bill Nighy, who voices Whitey, also plays Viktor the vampire lord... 18.17 - Here's another great spoof billboard ad. It's promoting a rap album by 40 pence called "Fur-vent Ro-dent". 40 pence = 50 cent... 19.23 - Hmm. Toad has a strange porcelain statue with a face resembling Aardman's most famous inventor Wallace. It's labelled as "Bower's", which presumably means it's an in-joke, mocking director Dave Bowers? 20.01 - Take a look at that portrait in Toad's abode, hanging left of his fireplace One of the dogs looks suspiciously like Trixie from Aardman's "Creature Comforts" series... 20.04 - Oh, the joys of Toad's Royal Collection. In the heart of all those naïf knick-knacks is a tin of Slade's Caramel Toffy. Now Slade are in fact a UK glam-pop band from the 70's. Their stacked soles and mad shiny outfits kicked up the charts, back in the day, and they and their front man Noddy Holder are revered as quintessential Britpop rockers... 20.46 - And what's this? - A tin of Lord's Blend Tea? - That must be referring to Aardman's Peter Lord again! 22.07 - Toad's camp cry of "Shut that door!" is a very particular British television in-joke. This was the favourite catchphrase of the late comedian and game show host Larry Grayson who was hugely popular back in the late 'seventies/early 'eighties, presenting the BBC's peak-time ratings hit "The Generation Game"... 22.14 - That rat in ice behind Roddy and Rita is obviously supposed to be Han Solo from the original "Star Wars" trilogy, frozen in carbonite!... 23.06 - We've seen Toad's freezer before, but this is our first good look at at the door where we can see there's a fridge magnet of Aardman's star inventor Wallace in his football kit (1), from the "Soccerama" episode in Wallace & Gromit's "Cracking Contraptions" short film series (2002). There's also a head shot of that big green DreamWorks Animation star Shrek (2)... 26.10 - Yoiks. The sweetcorn on that fruit 'n' veg stall is "Hardly Used"... 27.47 - We're below decks on the Jammy Dodger, and that's Shaun the Sheep frollicking on Rita's big tin... 28.46 - Time for another Gromit appearance. He's presented as a pencil-topper atop of Rita's big yellow pencil, on board the Jammy Dodger... 31.11 - Now here's a sly bit of detail. Amongst the newspaper headlines plastered to the Malone family houseboat is a headline and article referring to a "Mysterious Veggie Monster". That's our old friend, the vegetarian Were-Rabbit, from Aardman/DreamWorks' "Curse of the Were-Rabbit"... 31.35 - Inside the house boat now, and one of Rita's bouncing brothers is wearing a Gromit T-shirt... 32.52 - And here's Rita's brother Shocky wearing his own Rex the Runt t-shirt... 33.32 - That roach is reading a copy of "La Metamorphose" by Kafka... 34.45 - The family's dinner table is actually made up of three books. The blue one has been stamped by Southwark Public Library. The title? - "Bleak Mouse"... 37.02 - If you look closely at that anatomical diagram of a squirrel pinned to the wall behind Toad's henchmen, you'll see it's labelled with the spoof Latin name Squirrellious Aardmanoius... 37.04 - And that book in the background is "Chilling Tale" by I C Chambers... 37.19 - It doesn't get more obvious than this nod to the original live-action "Batman" television series, starring Adam West... 42.22 - The pencils on the electric whisk that gets swamped with Instant Dessert are stamped with Peter Lord's name... 46.25 - Toad's bookshelf includes "A Brief History of Slime", "Unfinished Verse" by Long Tung, "Wart & Peace" by Leo Toadstoy, "Hop and Glory" and "The Tragic History of the Great Great Toad - Vol. I" followed by Volumes II through VI... 46.36 - The first illustration in Toad's book features a line-up of royal pets, several of whom have a "Creature Comforts" feel to them. But more specifically, that's Bunty the hen from Chicken Run (2003) on the right of the line-up... 58.30 - And here's our last discovery for now. When Roddy returns to Tabitha's bedroom in Kensington, we can at last get a good look at the titles on her bookshelf behind the Were-Rabbit bunny, and we can see it includes a Wallace & Gromit book next to a copy of Aardman's popular studio history "Cracking Animation"... Phew-ee! - That's a lot of detail, and no doubt it's not everything. If you spy a great in-joke that's missing from this rundown get in touch and share it with the world. Meanwhile, this viewer is waiting eagerly for the film to get a big bright BLU-RAY release, which will enable us to get an even better look!... headlines » older news » news archive »
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