Ratigan was originally designed to look thin and weak, but when Vincent Price was chosen to play the role, his appearance was changed accordingly.
During the recording of Vincent Price's lines, animators sketched his exaggerated Shakespearean gestures and worked them into the animated poses for Ratigan.
Vincent Price realized a life-long dream with this film. He had always wanted to be the voice of a character in a Disney film.
The clock tower scene is the first major use of computer animation (the clock's gears) in a feature-length animated film. The same scene was also the first time traditionally-animated characters were put inside a computer-generated background.
It was ultimately Vice President of Walt Disney Feature Animation, Peter Schneider who made the decision to change the title of the film from "Basil of Baker Street" to its current title. On February 13, 1986, an inter-office memo was sent out to Disney employees in Schneider's name announcing the renaming of the studio's most beloved classics. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) would be called "Seven Little Men Help A Girl", Fantasia (1940) received the title "Color And Music", The Jungle Book (1967) was getting its title changed to "A Boy, A Bear And A Big Black Cat" and so on in that fashion. Schneider was furious over the memo and attempted to find the author (animator Ed Gombert) so he could fire them. All the other employees found it a harmless joke and kept quiet. A copy of the memo eventually landed in the pages of the LA Times and all the "new" names were incorporated into the "What's In A Name?" category on Jeopardy! (1984). Schneider eventually came to regard the memo as it was intended and in 2009 reminded Don Hahn about the clip during production of Hahn's documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009).