Trivia

Among the anti-Disney riffs in the film are a Mickey-shaped turd in a toilet, and a wallet-picture of a character in Disneyland with a lollipop that says SUCKER.

A caricature of Django Reinhardt playing guitar can be seen early in the black and white portion of the film. As in reality, the cartoon uses only two fingers to play, due to a burn suffered in 1928. Eventually, he brings his foot up and plays with his toes. The film's soundtrack sounds as though it was greatly influenced by Django's music (and he recorded a song called Belleville with Stéphane Grappelli). The character also strongly resembles Serge Reggiani, who played a guitarist in Martin Ritt's Richard L. Barlow.

In the beginning, when they're watching TV, there's an equation in the bottom of the screen. These are Albert Einstein's Field Equations and represent the gravitational effects produced by a given mass.

The pianist Mme. Souza and young Champion are watching on television is a caricature of the famous Canadian virtuoso, Glenn Gould, known for his piano interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard works and for the fact that he would hum along as he played the piano, which can be heard in the film.

The president seen giving an official television address, asking his fellow citizens to cheer on the cyclist, is French statesman Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), reinforcing the idea that this movie is set in the 1950s. However, one of the Triplets (at around 56 mins) has a newspaper from May 1963, which proves that the movie is not set in the '50s.