Roddy the mouse is all about luxury, living the high life in a fancy London apartment. But everything changes in the movie Flushed Away when a belching, stinky sewer rat named Sid decides he’s moving in. Sid flushes Roddy down the toilet and into an underground city in the sewer. Will Roddy make it back to his posh pad, or has he gone down the drain for good? National Geographic Kids goes behind the scenes to reveal secrets about this new flick.

 

Fashion Statement

Guess what Sid the rat is wearing under his jacket? A pair of upside-down red underpants! “We first had him in a tank top made from an old dishcloth,” director David Bowers says. “But it didn’t look good on-screen.”

 

Quiet on the Set

The actors read their lines alone in a soundproof recording booth to make sure only their voices were recorded. At least, that’s how it was supposed to work. But when the actor playing the evil Toad read his lines, the microphones kept picking up swooshing sounds. Turns out it was noise from the actor’s silk shirt rustling, so he changed into a T-shirt for the rest of the recording session! The actor playing Roddy had to record his lines in bare feet. Why? “His shoes were making little squeaky mouse sounds when he moved,” Bowers says.

 

Sewer Tour

The sewers of London, England, in the United Kingdom, aren’t on most tourist’s must-see list. But the movie’s directors wanted a guided tour to get inspiration for the underground city. Wearing special suits and face masks to protect them from disease-causing germs, the crew climbed down a 60-foot (18.3-meter) ladder. Bowers was expecting to see signs of, well, what you flush down the toilet. “But mostly it was just rainwater,” he says.

 

Scrap Heap

Moviemakers wanted the underground city to look like a place where real rats might live. So they built mock sets using objects such as desk lamps and soda cans they found at actual junkyards. Then they recreated the sets on the computers—the desk lamps became the sewer’s streetlights, and the cans became boats. “We built a city out of junk, but we made it look really beautiful,” Bowers says.

 

Down the Drain

It would make sense for directors to study rodents so that they could correctly animate the critters. But studying toilets? “We watched endless hours of videotaped toilet-flushing,” Bowers says. What’s so hard about animating flushing toilets? Well, water flushes differently in the United Kingdom, where the directors live, than in the United States. But because the directors made the movie with an American audience in mind, they wanted the toilets to flush U.S. style.

 

The Real World

• Sid wouldn’t need a sewer backup to be blasted out of the kitchen sink. Real rats can make their way up the pipes on their own. And Roddy wouldn’t have much trouble getting out of the sewer. He’d just squeeze through a crack wide enough for a pencil to poke through, like real mice can.
• Sid would have made a better pet than Roddy. Rats are incredibly smart and easily trained.
• Both Roddy and Sid would have lots of brothers and sisters. Female rats can have as many as 84 babies a year; mice can have 105!
• Roddy’s very cultured, so he probably enjoys fancy cheese. But real mice could take it or leave it, preferring seeds or dry pet food. Rats, on the other hand, will eat anything!