Trivia

Was edited into Fantasia 2000 (1999) as a musical sequence under the same name.

The construction worker is named Duke, after Duke Ellington. The man who needs a job is, appropriately, named Jobless Joe. The little girl is named Rachel, after Eric and Susan Goldberg's youngest daughter. The portly fellow is named John, sometimes referred to by the animators as "Flying John," and he is named after animation historian John Culhane.

The character Rachel is named for, and modeled after, the youngest daughter of Eric and Susan Goldberg. Rachel's real-life sister Jenny was the model for a character in Rachel's scenes, the girl with blue hair that can perform all the actions that Rachel can not. At the time the segment was being produced, the real Jenny had blue hair.

The character of Flying John was originally based on Al Hirschfeld's caricature of writer Alexander Woollcott. The final design is a caricature of film historian John Culhane, who was also the inspiration for the character Mr. Snoops from The Rescuers (1977).

The recording of "Rhapsody in Blue" on the Fantasia 2000 (1999) soundtrack is an alternate version conducted by James Levine, instead of the Bruce Broughton version heard in the short.