The August 1993 issue of Playboy cited 43 instances of violence and other unfavorable behavior in this film, including 23 instances of battery, nine acts of property damage, three slang uses of the word "jackass," three acts of violence involving animals, two shots of male nudity, and one instance of implied death.
The Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (as well as the prince in Snow White) was created by using the rotoscope technique.
The first animated film to win an Academy Award in a competitive category. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs won an honorary Oscar two years earlier.
The pool hall at Pleasure Island is in the shape of a giant eight ball with a tall cue-shaped structure standing nearby. This is a neat takeoff on the Trylon and the Perisphere at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
The theme song from Pinocchio, "When You Wish upon a Star," was ranked #7 in the 2004 American Film Institute's List of the Top Movie Songs of All Time, the highest-ranking song on the list among Disney animated films.
This was originally intended to be the studio's third film, after Bambi, but given the long, tedious process for that film, it eventually got bumped down in favor of this one.
This was the first Disney feature available on DVD.
When J. Worthington Foulfellow attempts to coax Pinocchio to go to Pleasure Island, he gives the little puppet a card with an Ace of Spades on it, calling it his "ticket". In popular myth and folklore, the Ace of Spades is referred to as "The Death Card".
When Pinocchio is changed into a real boy, his hands are transformed from three-fingered and white-gloved Mickey Mouse hands into four-fingered (plus thumb) human hands sans gloves. Woodcarver/dad Geppetto, however, sports a full compliment of gnarly digits throughout the film.
With the exception of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (where he only provided the voices of the Warner Bros. cartoon characters), this was the only time Mel Blanc contributed a voice to a Disney film.
Working models for all of Geppetto's cuckoo clocks were built as guides for the animators.