TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open
Tropes Media Reviews Popular Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Browse Tools
Cut List Image Fixer New Edits New Articles Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug Terms Of Service
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

Anastasia (1997)
34 Following

Go To

Anastasia (1997) (Western Animation)
“Although the Tsar did not survive, one daughter might be still alive...”

One step at a time, one hope, then another
Who knows where this road may go?
Back to who I was, on to find my future
Things my heart still needs to know
Yes, let this be a sign, let this road be mine
Let it lead me to my past
And bring me home... at last
— Anya, "Journey to the Past"

Anastasia is Don Bluth's 1997 very loose adaptation of a 1956 film, which itself was inspired by the mystery/conspiracy theories surrounding the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia after 1918note . It was produced by Fox Animation Studios, and the screenplay was written by Susan Gauthier, Bruce Graham, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White. Through its success, the film marked a brief resurgence in Bluth's animation career following a series of critical and financial failures in the early-mid '90s, re-establishing him as a viable competitor to Disney.

In 1916 Tsarist Russia, the Romanov family's 300-year reign is ended after they were cursed by the evil Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd) and their people revolted against them thanks to his demonic influence. All of the Romanovs apparently died in the attack except the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna Romanova (Angela Lansbury), Tsar Nicholas II's (Rick Jones) mother, who escaped the palace with one of the Tsar's daughters, the eight-year-old Anastasia (Kirsten Dunst), thanks to the help of a young kitchen boy. Rasputin dies trying to pursue them, but Anastasia and Marie are separated when the young girl falls from a train and (presumably) dies.

Ten years later, Anya (Meg Ryan), an eighteen-year-old orphan making her way in the world, decides to head for Paris. She hopes to find her family there, guided by the message "Together in Paris" inscribed on the necklace she was found with in an amnesiac state as a child. Lacking the appropriate travel papers, she locates a young forger called Dimitri (John Cusack) and his partner Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer) in the old palace. For his part, Dimitri is planning on running a con; rumor has it that Anastasia may have survived the attack, and the Dowager Empress has offered a huge reward to anyone who can reunite Anastasia with her. Dimitri and Vlad notice that this young woman who has come to them for travel papers looks strikingly like an older Anastasia. The two men put to Anya the idea that she may actually be the Grand Dutchess without mentioning that they are seeking a reward.

In the meantime, Rasputin is in limbo until all the Romanovs are dead. His animal sidekick, a bat named Bartok (Hank Azaria), is pulled into limbo by Rasputin's mystic relic, which confirms that Anya is Anastasia. As Dimitri and Vlad travel to Paris with Anya and teach her how to act like a royal, they must also avoid Rasputin calling upon the power of hell to try to kill her.

The film also stars Bernadette Peters as Sophie Stanislovskievna Somorkov-Smirnoff.

Got a Direct-to-Video Spin-Off prequel Bartok the Magnificent, also directed by Bluth, and notably the only sequel to one of his movies he's been involved with in any capacity.

For tropes specific to the 2017 Broadway musical adaptation of this film, see Anastasia (2016).

This film provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 

    #-F 
  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: This is the first movie where Don Bluth swapped out his almost-trademark "oh, let's just build a small model of this horrifically hard-to-draw-and-animate thing and rotoscope it" special effect for computer generated imagery, and it definitely shows, especially with the following:
    • The crashing chandelier looks like it comes from a different movie entirely.
    • Ditto the boat and the music box.
    • Rasputin's reliquary.
    • The train!
    • The Pegasus statue (minus the mane which is obviously 2D, creating an odd effect overall).
  • Accidental Truth: Con artists Dimitri and Vladimir plan to pass off a homeless orphan as the long-lost Anastasia to get the lucrative reward the Dowager Empress is offering to anyone who finds her. Little do they know that the orphan they choose to train to act as Anastasia is the real Anastasia who lost her memory as a child.
  • Act of True Love: Dimitri chooses not to accept the reward money for returning Anastasia to her grandmother, knowing that he did so for the wrong reasons (the whole thing having been a con, with Dimitri unaware that the girl he was delivering was the real Anastasia all along). What makes this an Act Of True Love is that he chooses not to tell Anastasia that he's rejecting the reward money, wanting to give her the chance to make a clean break from him and fully embrace her role as Grand Duchess.
  • Actor Allusion:
  • Adaptational Intelligence: The Romanovs in real life easily fell for Rasputin's con ways and Snake Oil Salesman policy because he was able to prevent Alexei's death by exsanguination (the prince had hemophilia, potentially lethal; one theory says Rasputin disallowed giving him aspirin, at the time considered a panacea; in reality, aspirin is a blood-thinner, making bleeding more profuse; another theory was that he simply got everyone to calm down). Nicholas and Alexandra refused to listen to a word against him, firing ministers and becoming estranged from family members who said anything bad about Rasputin. Here, Marie explicitly calls him "a fraud, power-mad and dangerous". Nicholas apparently banished him for an unknown act of treason.
  • Adaptation Name Change:
    • Dimitri's counterpart in the 1956 film was General Sergei Bounine, who was also very different from Dimitri in terms of appearance, personality, and backstory. In fact, organizing the con and falling in love with Anastasia are about the only things they have in common at all.
    • Sophie's 1956 counterpart was Baroness Elena von Livenbaum.
  • Adapted Out: Prince Paul von Haraldberg, Anastasia's Disposable Fiancé in the 1956 film, has no counterpart in this version. Although he was the closest thing the 1956 version had to a villain, so maybe his counterpart is Rasputin.
  • Advertising by Association: The first American Blu-ray cover, reused from one of the Vanilla Edition DVDs, has "From the director of Thumbelina" written above the title.
  • Age Lift: Anastasia is portrayed as just 8 years old when her family is killed, when actually she was 17, and 18 in 1926 when she would really have been 25 if she had lived that long.
  • Age Without Youth: Rasputin gets hit particularly hard with the short end of the stick. He never even explicitly wished for immortality in the first place, he just made a vow that he "would never rest until the Romanov line is no more!". The evil forces that he bargained with for his soul took him at his word: so long as at least one Romanov survives, he cannot die even though his body is rotting apart.
  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When she finally meets the Dowager-Empress, Anya begs her to identify her, either as a commoner or as Anastasia. She doesn't care if she is royalty and doesn't want money. Anya just wants to know if she's part of a family or if she has family. Marie dismisses her, calling it another trick, only to give her a chance when Anya has a memory about the peppermint oil Marie uses for her hands.
  • Airplane Arms: Anya tends to walk like this, especially during "Journey to the Past".
  • All for Nothing: Both a literal reading of the letter of the trope and an example of Tropes Are Tools. Anya wants to find her family, Dimitri wants the money. In the end, they both find and leave it behind... for each other.
  • All There in the Manual:
    • According to the concept art, the bug-like creatures that follow Rasputin around have names. They're called "Pincher", "Wormette", "Sad-Sac", "Stinger", and "Hank".
    • The part during the train escape where Anya and Dimitri lock hands and look shocked at each other for a moment was them briefly recollecting that they had met before.
  • Amnesiac Resonance: Anya doesn't remember her real identity but picks up very quickly during Vladimir's and Dimitri's coaching her to impersonate Princess Anastasia and even begins to recall details from her childhood before they tell her.
  • Anachronism Stew:
    • Petrograd militsyia (police) on horseback are clearly modeled after Soviet cops... from the Seventies, complete with modern uniforms.
    • The Spirit of St. Louis is seen flying over Paris, even though Lindbergh made his historic flight in 1927, a year after the film is set.
    • The Paris song features Auguste Rodin carving The Thinker, with a conflicted Dimitri as his model. Not only was The Thinker finished in 1902, Rodin died in 1917.
    • The group attends a performance of Prokofiev's Cinderella ballet, even though it premiered in 1945, nearly twenty years after the film's setting.
  • And the Adventure Continues: The movie ends with Anastasia and Dimitri eloping. Sophie says it's a perfect ending but Marie tells her it's a perfect beginning.
  • And This Is for...: Anastasia does a rundown of the trope when she destroys Rasputin's reliquary, thereby killing him.
    Anastasia: This is for Dimitri! This is for my family! And this... this is for you! Do svidaniya!
  • Angel Face, Demon Face: Bartok the bat starts out a little sinister, but is downright cute by the end of the movie when he's given up on serving Rasputin.
  • Animation Bump: In addition to having significantly better funding than his previous indie features, this was also Don Bluth's first film to use digital ink and paint, making this one of his slicker-looking films.
  • Arc Symbol: Ballroom dancing, which crops up repeatedly on Anya's journey to discover who she is. She's introduced dancing with her family at a ball when Rasputin enters disrupting her idyllic childhood, she dreams of ballroom dancing in the Catherine Palace when she reconnects with her lost past for the first time, she and Dimitri waltz on board the Tasha as they start to realize their feelings for each other, her public reintroduction as Grand Duchess is meant to take place at a ball but she hesitates on entering and the film ends with her and Dimitri dancing together as she's finally discovered where she really belongs. Even her Memento MacGuffin is a music box with a dancing couple inside.
  • Artistic License – History: On serveral levels. The film is loosely based on the story of Anna Anderson, whom we now know falsely claimed to have been Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova after escaping the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Although the movie has the excuse of being made before Anastasia's remains were conclusively found and identified in 2007 using DNA testing, other inaccuracies aren't as excusable:
    • The film begins in winter 1916, and depicts Anastasia as an eight-year-old princess at the time. In reality, Anastasia was 15 years old and had she been eight at that point, she would've been younger than her real-life younger brother Alexei.
    • At the beginning (1916), the Dowager Empress narrates that the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty's rule over Russia was celebrated. In Real Life, this anniversary was in 1913. Relatedly, Nicholas is portrayed in the film as The Good King who was unjustly overthrown, when in fact he was a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary autocrat who was quite despised in Russia by the 1910s and had already faced an armed uprising in 1905.
    • While Grigori Rasputin actually being a sorcerer rather than a religious mystic (and having a talking bat sidekick) is presumably an intentional departure from history, other details about him don't match up with his historical counterpart either: Rasputin died months before the Russian Revolution at the hands of a few young aristocrats resentful of his influence over the Imperial family.note  Although he wasn't even remotely a saint by any measure, Rasputin considered himself a Christian and would never have deliberately indulged in any occult practices. Furthermore, he was a monarchist who never harbored any ill will towards the Tsar nor his family (beyond generally wanting to gain power and profit off of their faith in his supposed psychic abilities). Notably, in an attempt to preserve what little historical accuracy there was, the musical adaptation removes Rasputin from the plot and replaces him with a more realistic antagonist.
    • Additionally, Rasputin's curse (see below) states that the Romanovs would die within a fortnight of the curse being set. In reality, the Romanovs were arrested in February 1917 at the start of the February Revolution, and were executed a year afterwards (when Anastasia was 17).
    • The film appears to conflate the February or "White" Revolution, when Nicholas was deposed by his court over his mishandling of World War I and general ineptitude, with the October or "Red" Revolution when the Whites were overthrown by Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks ("Reds"), who later executed the Romanovs to keep royalists from using them as a rallying point.
    • Also the Reds hated Rasputin just as much as the Whites did, so it's hard to see how they could have any connection.
    • The main plot is that Anya/Anastasia is trying to get to Paris to see the Dowager Empress (her possible grandmother). In Real Life, the Empress lived in her native Denmark after the Revolution.
    • Diminutives are not being used correctly (or not used at all). For example, Vlad is a diminutive of Vladislav, not Vladimir (although it has started to be used that way after the fall of the USSR). The diminutive of Anastasia is "Nastya", not Anya. And the proper way to address someone twice your age is using their name and patronymic (Vladimir Nikolayevich). As for Dimitry, whom she cares for, she should be calling him "Mitya" (this diminutive has since been replaced by Dima in the 20th century and only among the commoners).
  • Artistic License – Linguistics: In Russian, the name "Anastasia" is pronounced ah-nah-sta-SEE-yah. Both this movie and the stage adaptation use the English pronunciation.
  • Art Shift: While most of the movie sets are drawn realistically, the background for Paris is done with very Impressionist-style art, most obvious in the "Paris Holds The Key" sequence.
  • Ascended Extra: The villain's Non-Human Sidekick bat Bartok got a movie.
  • As You Know: When Rasputin crashes the Tsar's party, he reminds Nicholas that he was the Romanov confidant. Nicholas retorts that he banished Rasputin for being a traitor, stuff they both know already.
  • The Atoner: Dmitri becomes this after he realizes Anya really is Anastasia, and his motivations quickly evolve from greed into a genuine desire to see that she's reunited with the only family she has left. Upon succeeding, he refuses the reward money and opts to leave Anya, who he feels he isn't good enough for. And then he comes back to her rescue once Rasputin attacks.
  • At the Opera Tonight: The ballet in this case, and it's for "Cinderella". It's used as the setting of a few important revelations and fights.
  • Award-Bait Song:
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: Sure, the communists have taken over Russia and Anya runs off with Dimitri in the end, but she still gets a sparkly crown. She gives it back before leaving with her commoner husband-to-be, though.
  • The Backwards Я: The train's speedometer reads SPEEФОШЕТЕЯ ("sreyefosheteya").
  • Badass Driver: Dimitri is able to navigate his way through the streets of Paris at top speed without any concern for safety.
  • Barely Changed Dub Name: Bartok the bat is renamed Bartek in Hungary so that his name doesn't get confused with the famous Hungarian composer Béla Bartók.
  • Based on a Great Big Lie: Historically, the Imperial family of Tsarist Russia was executed in 1918 during the Russian Revolution. However, a persistent urban legend lived on that the youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia, somehow escaped, and several women came forward claiming to be Anastasia. The plot of the movie follows a scoundrel named Dimitri trying to train a young woman (known to the audience but not herself to be the real Anastasia) how to act like royalty and return her to her surviving grandmother for a reward. In the years since the film, improved technology has verified that yes, Anastasia died with the rest of her family. Notably, they took great care to market the film in Russia as a "historical Fairy Tale".
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Rasputin gets a Historical Villain Upgrade here, and rather than just be a conman claiming to have holy powers, his very real dark magic is responsible for the downfall of the Romanov dynasty and thus the rise of the Soviet Union.
  • Being Good Sucks: Dimitri as a child and as an adult. As a child he risks his life to save Anastasia and Marie, only to get pistol-whipped. As an adult, when he realizes that Anya is Anastasia, he decides to let her think he was a conman and to reunite her with Marie without any benefit to himself.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Quintessential example between Anya and Dimitri, starting as soon as they get on a train together. Vlad knows exactly what's really going on, even when they don't.
    (Anastasia has left the train cabin after an argument with Dimitri)
    Vlad: (gleefully to Pooka, Anastasia's dog) Oh no! An unspoken attraction?
    Dimitri: Attraction?! To that skinny little brat? Have you lost your mind?
  • Beta Couple: Vlad and Sophie are happily in love (the thought of her makes Vlad deliriously joyful). It's a fine contrast to our bickering Alpha Couple.
  • Big Bad: Rasputin, whose quest to avenge himself on the Romanovs caused their downfall, and is still out to kill Anya in the present day.
  • Big Beautiful Woman: Sophie is very fun and kind-hearted, as well as really big. Vlad refers to her as "a decadent pasty filled with whipped cream and laughter".
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: The denizens of Rasputin's lair primarily consist of bugs (caterpillars, beetles, scorpions, cockroaches) that are twice as large as Bartok, a bat.
  • Big Damn Reunion: While the real story was more tragic, the animated adaptation of the missing Grand Duchess Anastasia has the title character happily reunite with her grandmother, Dowager Empress Marie, towards the end of the film.
  • Big "NO!": Rasputin screams this after his second attempt to kill Anya by hypnotizing her into sleepwalking off the side of the ship fails.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Anya's pet dog is named Pooka (пука). A 'Pooka' (or Phouka) is also a mischievous fae-creature that often takes the form of a dog, though the dog is usually scary and black. Still, considering the mysterious origin of Anya's pet... It also sounds similar to the Russian for "farting", "pukat' (пукать)," but this presumably was not intentional.
  • Birds of a Feather: Anya and Dimitri are both snarky, gutsy, resourceful and outwardly confident orphans with a lot of hidden insecurities, troubled pasts and deep-seated loneliness.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Though it lends more on the happier side, Anastasia leaves Marie again, but to elope with Dimitri. And even though she's leaving, Marie is nothing but content with her granddaughter's decision and knows that she will see her again. Plus, Bartok apparently becomes a couple with a female bat.
  • Bookends: The film opens with Anya laughing as she dances with her family at a grand ball and ends with her dancing and laughing with Dimitri. Likewise, Dimitri's second and penultimate appearances both have him getting knocked out protecting Anya. (At the beginning when he's beaten unconscious after helping her escape the soldiers and at the end he's knocked out helping her fight Rasputin.)
  • Brainwashed: Rasputin uses magic to make Anya sleepwalk off the side of the ship she's on in a storm. Dimitri, fortunately, stops her and wakes her up before she can jump.
  • Break Her Heart to Save Her: Dimitri deliberately lets Anya believe he did take the reward money and is still a selfish conman, so she'll hate him and return to her royal status without getting dragged down by a former kitchen boy. Thankfully Marie tells Anya the truth, and Dimitri rethinks his decision and comes back to her in the end.
  • Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Between Anya and Dimitri, after she finds out he was only using her as part of a con. The "make up" part starts when she learns he didn't take the reward money for finding her and is solidified when he comes back to try to save her from Rasputin.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: Right before meeting with the Dowager Empress, both Anastasia and Dimitri act like they want to confess their feelings to each other, but both back out.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Rasputin gets a few lines in "In The Dark Of The Night" that indicate that he knows that he is evil. He refers to his curse as a "dark purpose", and he tells his minions to "let their evil shine".
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: Anya and Dimitri don't let little issues like exploding trains and being attacked by giant statues stop them from dishing out the snark.
    Dimitri: (After Anya hands him explosives) "What do they teach you at those orphanages?"
    Anya: (After pulling Dimitri out of the way of oncoming debris) "And to think that could have been you."
  • Character Development:
    • Dimitri goes from a dishonest conman planning to trick Marie for her money to a selfless and principled gentleman who refuses the reward even if it means returning penniless to Russia, and walks away from Anya because he believes she'll be better off without him.
    • Anya starts out as insecure and unsure of what she wants or who she is, and becomes much more confident and secure in herself by the end.
    • Bartok finally stands up to Rasputin and leaves his evil-sidekick days behind him.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Anya gives Dimitri a budding rose during the "Paris Holds the Key" sequence. It turns up later when Dimitri is leaving Paris and finds the rose fully bloomed in his pocket, which prompts him to go back and save Anya from Rasputin in the nick of time.
  • Childhood Home Rediscovery: Anya goes to the abandoned Winter Palace in search of Dimitri so he can help her get an exit visa. Due to her amnesia, she doesn't know that she spent much of her childhood as the Grand Duchess Anastasia in this palace. But as she explores it, she feels as if it's "like a memory from a dream," then sings the song "Once Upon a December" (which unbeknownst to her, was a lullaby her grandmother used to sing) and has a fantasy/flashback of a grand ball with her family.
  • Chorus Girls: The "Paris Holds The Key" number features French Chorus Girls who Squee, bare their shoulders, and ruffle their skirts to make Toulouse-Lautrec proud.
  • Clothing Damage: Happens to Anya during the battle with Rasputin, and it was her pimped out princess dress too!
  • Coming of Age Story: After the prologue Anastasia sings a song about wanting to find out who she is and where to find her future. She finds both over the course of the journey. As the audience knows all along, she's the Grand Duchess, but she decides her future is with Dimitri.
  • Composite Character:
    • Rasputin as he appears in this movie is a mix between the historical character and a character from Russian folklore called Koschei the Deathless.
    • Vlad fills the role of two characters from the 1956 version, Petrovin and Chernov.
  • Compressed Hair: Anya appears to have a small ponytail for most of the movie, but when she lets her hair down later when she's all dressed up, her hair is much longer than the ponytail would account for. If you look closely, at the small "ponytail", though, you can see that it's actually a small ponytail tightly braided around by the rest of her hair.
  • Cool Big Sis: It's implied Anya was this at the orphanage to the kids younger than her, given they give her loud goodbyes when she's leaving to find a job. She returns the friendly farewell with a large grin when not talking to the orphanage head.
  • Cool Crown: Anya wears a gorgeous sparkly diadem with her princess dress. Though she returns it by the end of the story.
  • Copycat Mockery: As Phlegmenkoff tells Anya how she took care of the her as she was growing up, Anya can be seen mocking her behind her back.
  • Costume Porn: Several dresses worn by Anya, such as her yellow silk Dream Sequence dress, the svelte navy and sparkly Parisian Opera dress, her blue court dress at the beginning of the movie, and her yellow court dress at the end of the movie.
  • Cry into Chest: Anya cries into Dmitri's chest after waking up from her Rasputin-induced nightmare.
  • Damsel out of Distress: Anastasia at the climax. Though Dimitri arrives and attempts to save her from Rasputin, the latter sics a giant, animated horse statue on him that keeps him from interfering. Anastasia ends up fighting Rasputin all by herself and, with some help from Pooka fetching her the reliquary, ultimately defeats and kills him.
  • Dance of Romance: Anastasia and Dimitri on the Tasha, while Vladimir lampshades this with a brief song. They have another one at the end when they're eloping.
  • Dances and Balls: Rasputin curses the royal family during a ball to celebrate the Romanovs' multiple centuries of rule over Russia. It works, because shortly afterwards not-Lenin and the not-Bolsheviks raid the palace and Anastasia barely makes it out of there. Near the end of the film, Anastasia is going to be presented at an equally fancy ball but ends up fighting Rasputin and then leaving with Dimitri instead.
  • Dark Is Evil: Rasputin is the darkest-coloured character, says he obtained his powers by selling his soul to "the Dark Forces", and his musical number is called "In The Dark Of The Night". Then for some reason, his powers often manifest as green light.
  • Dated History: The bodies of the missing Romanov daughter and her brother Alexei were found ten years after the movie came out in 2007 which was later confirmed via DNA testing so we now know definitively that Anastasia died with the rest of her family.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Anya and Dimitri both spend most of the movie snarking at either each other or the trouble they find themselves in.
  • Deal with the Devil: At the beginning, it is made clear that Rasputin has sold his soul in exchange for doom unto the Romanov line. This deal apparently also included being turned into an immortal undead corpse until his revenge is completed or his reliquary is destroyed, although Rasputin might have inadvertently caused that to happen when he swore "I will not rest until I see the end of the Romanov line forever!" Some of the dubs, like the Russian dub, even outright say he gained his powers from Satan.
  • Designated Team Pet Fight: During the final confrontation, Anastasia fights with Rasputin over the reliquary while her Animal Companion Pooka takes on Rasputin's familiar Bartok.
  • Did Anastasia Survive?: The movie was conceived as a very loose (and very Disneyfied) remake of the Ingrid Bergman film and thus distantly adapted from the Marcelle Maurette play. It further fictionalizes the story with the inclusion of supernatural elements, adding in Rasputin the Mad Monk as an undead sorcerer who is trying to kill off Anastasia in order to complete a curse he cast on the Romanov family
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • Rasputin really didn't think through the wisdom of jumping from a bridge onto a frozen river to catch Anastasia and Marie. The ice holds up just long enough for him to grab Anastasia's leg, only to crack so that the freezing current sucks him under.
    • Dimitri when deciding to hide the con from Anya doesn't consider that eventually she'd find out that they were meeting Sophie, or that other conmen would have the same idea. Marie also reveals that she heard about his Anastasia auditions.
  • Disney Acid Sequence: "Once Upon a December", where Anya half-remembers, half-imagines a ball in the Imperial Palace, complete with Pimped-Out Dress.
  • Disneyfication: Of the play and history itself. Bluth has admitted he never intended it to be accurate.
  • Doomed New Clothes: Out of all of Anastasia's outfits that Rasputin could destroy, it had to be the fancy one commissioned for her debut ball.
  • Downer Beginning: The movie begins with Rasputin having most of the Romanovs killed, Anastasia and Marie getting split up, and Marie fearing that she'll never see her granddaughter again.
  • Dramatic Irony: The audience knows from the beginning that Anya is the real Grand Duchess Anastasia and that Dimitri was her servant, which fact is repeatedly Played for Drama on the unknowing characters, especially Anya, who on top of everything else also has no idea that Dimitri's plan to reunite her with her family is intended to be a con.
  • Dream Ballet: The "Once Upon A December" number, where the portraits in the imperial ballroom come to life and dance for Anya.
  • Dream Melody: "Once Upon a December" is sung during the Dream Ballet.
  • Dub Name Change: Two of the characters:
    • Bartok the bat is renamed as "Bartek" in the Hungarian dub, to avoid any association with Hungarian composer Béla Bartók.
    • In the Russian dub, "Anya" has been replaced with "Nastya", a correct Russian shortened/diminutive form of "Anastasia" (while "Anya", in turn, is one for "Anna"). While the confusion is partially intentional (so that other characters don't deduce her true identity too quickly), it's still very noticeable to any Russian viewer.
  • Easy Amnesia: Or at least, it was easy for her to get it... The bump to her head caused no other damage, and as far as we can tell, only made her forget who she was. As pointed out by the manager of the orphanage, Anya never stopped behaving like a princess.
  • Eldritch Location: Limbo very much counts as one, being a vast space of darkness where various orbs made of stone and bones are floating around endlessly. This is the place where Rasputin ended up after the first fight against Anya. Outside of him and the demons he summoned, it's appears to be inhabited by various bugs-like beings.
  • Elopement: Anastasia and Dimitri at the end. They're certainly not having a grand public wedding.
  • The End of the Beginning: At the end: "It's a perfect ending!" "No. It's a perfect beginning."
  • Everyone Can See It: Vlad definitely can, Sophie appears to share his suspicions, and the Dowager Empress figures it out pretty quickly. Even random people at the opera think Anya and Dimitri are a couple having a spat.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Pooka always begins to bark or notice the reliquary's demons just before each of Rasputin's attempts on Anastasia's life.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Rasputin was so blinded by his hate for the Romanovs that he really didn't think his deal with the dark side through. Swearing "not to rest until the last Romanov is dead" unwittingly turns him into a decaying lich, then when his Soul Jar gets wrecked, the dark forces immediately intervene to claim him and he dies horrifically, with his soul likely in their possession for all time.
  • Evil Is Petty: Rasputin is an enormously powerful magician who fomented the Communist Revolution simply to kill Nicholas II and his entire family, and the lichdom he endures as a result of his bargain with the forces of darkness is treated as an odious curse. He returns to the land of the living not to Take Over the World, but simply to settle his score with the last of the Romanov family. Bartok even calls him out on this.
  • Evil Overlooker: As shown in the poster above, Rasputin is shown glaring down at Anya and Dimitri. In fact, other posters have the same effect, such as the teaser poster.
  • Evil Plan: Everything is kicked off by Rasptutin's desire to kill the Romanov family. He continues with this plan after the time skip once he realizes Anastasia's still alive.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Rasputin, even before he sold his soul, is known as a nasty mystic.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Vladimir has this when Dmitri reveals that he figured out Anya was the real Anastasia, because he was the boy in the palace who "opened a wall" that she mentioned. At first, he's ecstatic because it means Anya has found her family, and they can fulfill her Humble Goal to find out who she is. Then, he says, "And you..." to Dmitri, having seen them bond over the trip, and Dmitri says that he needs to walk out of Anya's life, forever. Vladimir protests, because he can see how much Dmitri loves Anya, but as Dmitri puts it, "Kitchen boys don't marry duchesses." It breaks his heart to admit Dmitri is right, that to restore Anya to her family means letting go of her.
  • Expy: Vlad is basically Papa Mousekewitz as a human.
  • Fake Aristocrat: Dimitri's plan is to set Anya up as one — not knowing that she's not a fake aristocrat at all.
  • Falling Chandelier of Doom'': Rasputin sends a chandelier crashing to the ballroom floor in the party scene at the beginning of the movie, but everyone steps out of the way.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: Rasputin's death was another offender. Screaming in agony while being shocked by green electricity, his body parts melt into nasty green ooze and his cloak collapses to the ground. And then his skeleton emerges, and crumbles to dust. His final death comes as a relief.
  • Fictionalized Death Account: Rasputin is depicted as dying during the February Revolution when in real life he died several months before it occurred. Of course, he also comes back to life as a lich, something which didn't happen in real life either.
  • Fiction 500: The Romanovs, and Marie included, which is Truth in Television. She's able to commission a music box with a locket key for her granddaughter and intends it as a present so that she and Anastasia can handle their separation.
  • Fiery Redhead: Anya/Anastasia. She has auburn hair and spends much of the movie in a Slap-Slap-Kiss dynamic with Dimitri.
  • Final Girl: Anastasia, as the only member of the Romanov family to survive Rasputin's curse.
    Rasputin: My curse made each of them pay, but one little girl got away!
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Anya and Dimitri eventually become this thanks to Rasputin's schemes. First, Dimitri realizes that Anya can keep a cool head in a dangerous situation when their train is sabotaged; she points out they can't jump from the train because the fall would kill them, hands him a stick of dynamite to disconnect the engine car, and gives him a chain and anchor by which to brake their car before it crashes over a broken bridge. Anya also shows admiration for Dimitri's latter idea by following his orders without question. Then Dimitri saves Anya from sleepwalking off the ship and gives her a Cooldown Hug when she wakes up in terror.
  • The Flapper: Some Fanservice Extras during the "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)" number, with Anya herself also wearing flapper fashions during the same sequence. It is The Roaring '20s, after all.
  • Flowers of Romance: Dimitri and Anya give each other budding roses during the "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)" sequence. Anya later throws hers away when she discovers his original con. Dimitri finds his — now full bloomed — in his pocket just as he's about to leave for Russia which prompts him to go back to Anya.
  • For Doom the Bell Tolls: Heard faintly in the very beginning of Rasputin's Villain Song.
  • Forgotten First Meeting: Dimitri worked as a servant in the Catherine Palace when he was a boy, and he was the one who saved Anya and the Dowager Empress from being captured in the Revolution. By the end, both Anya and Marie remember him and what he did.
  • Freudian Excuse: Adult Dimitri is a manipulative con man planning to trick a heartbroken old woman into believing a random girl is her beloved granddaughter and run off with the reward money. But given what he must have lived through under the oppressive government since the revolution and that he's been living in near-poverty his whole life, you can't help but sympathize with him wanting to find a way out. (And there's the question of exactly how well he was treated as a 10-year-old kitchen boy at the Romanov palace, especially after defying the revolutionaries). The movie also builds sympathy by showing he was much less self-serving as a child and risked his life to save Anastasia, and you see more of his past self coming through during the story.
  • Freudian Slip: Used in a literal sense when Sigmund Freud, singing along with "Paris Holds the Key," slips on a banana.
  • Funny Background Event: A subtle penis joke is made in a scene involving Sigmund Freud slipping on a banana peel.

    G-L 
  • Gag Echo: Dimitri and Anya promising to thank each other in the midst of dire situations.
    Dimitri: [While on the careering train] "If we live through this — remind me to thank you."
    Anya: [While fighting Rasputin] "Dimitri! If we live through this remind me to—"
    Dimitri: "You can thank me later!"
  • "Gaining Confidence" Song: In "Learn to Do It", a very overwhelmed Anya is lectured by Vlad and Dmitry on proper royal etiquette. Halfway through the song, Anya starts not only meeting the men's expectations but exceeding them beyond what was thought possible, which is shown musically with Anya leading the second to last chorus.
  • Game Changer: Dimitri schools Anya with every fact regarding the lost Princess Anastasia that he can think of. When Sophie asks something he hadn't thought to tell Anya about, he thinks the con is blown — until Anya describes, vaguely but correctly, how it was she managed to escape the riots at the palace. This is something that only Grand Duchess Marie, Dimitri, and Anastasia herself could possibly have known about. Only then does Dimitri realize that, rather than a lookalike, he's found the real Anastasia.
  • Gay Paree: The song "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart" shows off the swanky, fashionable and romantic aspect of Paris.
  • Girliness Upgrade: Anastasia and her outfits become progressively more refined and feminine during the story as she gets closer to becoming a princess again. In Russia, she's dressed in a ragged peasant tunic and her hair is thrown in a scruffy knot. During the journey, she changes into a simple blue dress and lets her hair down. In Paris, she wears fashionable flapper and opera dresses and gets her hair done properly. Once she regains her title, she is decked out in an elaborate court gown and tiara. When she leaves with Dimitri at the end she keeps the court gown, but it's damaged and ripped from their battle with Rasputin and her hair is messy again.
  • Give Me a Sign: When Anya prays for a sign, a dog steals her scarf and runs over to the path to St. Petersburg.
    Anastasia: Oh, great! A dog wants me to go to St. Petersburg. (gasps) Okay, I can take a hint!
  • Gonk: Even before he became a rotting corpse, Rasputin, what with his bone thin physique, pale skin, skull like face with bulging eyes, a pointy nose and ears, messy hair and grotesquely large hands with pointy nails, was not a pretty sight.
  • Grand Staircase Entrance: Anya makes her debut as a princess by going down one of these. Dimitri is certainly amazed.
  • Gratuitous Princess: The real Anastasia was recognized as "Grand Duchess", but is more often referred to as a "Princess"note  in the West. Thus the movie uses the terms "Grand Duchess" and "Princess" interchangeably, although in a Russian context 'princess' is a noble, not royal, title. It's even Lampshaded when Anya says, "If I don't remember who I am, then who's to say I'm not a princess or a duchess or a whatever she is, right?"
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The Dark Forces that Rasputin sold his soul to and gained most of his powers from to get revenge on the Romanov family. The deal he made with them spectacularly backfires; first he's reduced to a decaying zombie stuck in limbo after he drowns and stuck like that until the last Romanov dies, and when his reliquary is destroyed, they immediately claim him, and he dies a rather horrific death.
  • Halfway Plot Switch: Well, two-thirds plot switch, as the story is originally focused on Anya uncovering her lost past and finding her grandmother. After they arrive in Paris, the focus switches to the new social barriers between Anya and Dimitri, him struggling against his feelings for her, and whether she wants to return to her life as Grand Duchess. Rasputin's plot to kill her lasts throughout the whole film though.
  • Hammer and Sickle Removed for Your Protection: Very little is mentioned in the way of politics after the fall of the Romanovs (as well as before, for that matter). The original script for Anastasia inverted this; during the scene where Anya attempts to get train tickets, several of the people waiting in line were going to be refraining from making complaints about the Soviet government in case they were being watched. One guy later would, and was going to be abruptly abducted and taken away. There are several 'blink-and-you-will-miss-it' moments though:
    • Vlad complains when the colour of the ink for travel papers changes from blue to red, blowing his forged ones: "That's what I hate about this government, everything is in red!"
    • We see (presumably) Mensheviks or Bolsheviks storm the palace, but rather than having diverse public grievances, it's indicated to be the result of Rasputin's rabble-rousing and Deal with the Devil. One revolutionary even refers to another as "comrade", a form of address popularly associated with communists.
    • When Anya tries to get a ticket, the man at the ticket counter does in fact have a hammer and sickle on his hat.
    • On the train, the camera momentarily looks over one of the character's shoulders at his tickets. One can make out 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' with the attendant emblems.
    • The song "Rumor in St. Petersburg" has the line "since the revolution, our lives have been so gray" and shows workers in a factory, a possible reference to the rapid industrialization that occurred under the new regime. Though St. Petersburg, at that time, was called Leningrad.
    • When Anya comes to the fork in the road, her options are to "go left" and accept the life that's been assigned to her, or to "go right" and follow her heart. Communism is a far-left regime, which is symbolised here.
  • Happily Ever After: In the movie, Anya is reunited with her grandmother but decides to stay out of the spotlight and elopes with Dimitri.
  • Headdesk: Before they meet Anya, Dimitri and Vlad are holding an audition for girls to play Anastasia. One prospect is a middle-aged woman, who says in a sultry voice, "Granmama! It's me, Ana-STASIA!" Their reaction is a combination Head Desk and Face Palm.
  • The Heavy: The entire plot kicks off because Rasputin used his newfound dark powers to trigger the revolution against the Romanovs, which indirectly causes Anastasia to get separated from her grandmother. It also bears noting that he and Anastasia only encounter each other for a very brief moment at the very beginning, and during the climax — the rest of the time, Rasputin is trying to kill her with his demons while he's stuck in Limbo to get revenge and fulfill his curse, but the heroes are completely unaware of his presence until the climax.
  • Held Gaze: Two happen between Anya and Dimitri during the Almost Kiss scenes and another one happens before The Big Damn Kiss scene at the conclusion.
  • A Hell of a Time: Actually Limbo, but it's really boring rather than torturous. The only thing that's really hell-like about the place is being underground and all the bugs, but they're actually OK guys — y'know, for sapient, supernatural beetles...
  • Heroic BSoD: Dimitri hits this hard when he discovers Anya is the real Grand Duchess and realizes he'll barely be able to associate with her anymore, let alone act on his feelings. He quickly gives up on all his hopes for the future; refusing the reward money, pushing Anya away because she can do better and returning to impoverished, oppressive Russia even though there's no life left for him there. Thankfully he snaps out of it by the end.
  • Heroic Bystander: In the past, Dimitri was this as a child. During the siege on the palace, he realized that he could get the Dowager-Empress Marie and Anastasia out through the servants' quarters when the regular entrances were being stormed by revolutionaries. Dimitri pushed them into the passage and told them to run for it before closing the "wall". Then he bought time for them by tossing a vase at the revolutionaries, which led to them knocking him out and leaving the room. As Marie puts it ten years later, Dimitri saved her life, and Anastasia's.
  • Heroic Russian Émigré: The titular protagonist who had to escape the execution of the Romanov family is portrayed very sympathetically. The main antagonist is Grigory Rasputin who used his dark magic to cause the October Revolution.
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: The secret passage to the servants' quarters. From the way Anya describes it, the boy who saved her life "opened a wall".
  • High-Class Gloves: Both Anya and Marie wear long gloves to the opera, as was the fashion at the time. Marie scenting hers with peppermint triggered Anya's memories.
  • Historical Domain Character: Everyone except for Dimitri, Vlad, Pooka, and (obviously) Bartok.
  • Historical Fantasy: All the complaints about the movie's historical inaccuracies seem a little weird when you stop and think that it also includes an undead wizard and a talking bat.
  • Historical Hero Upgrade:
    • The Romanovs have a very small role in this film. All we see is Nicholas telling Rasputin to leave his party, and given how Obviously Evil he looks, Nick looks good in comparison. In reality they were infamously bloody rulers and criticised for it both nationally and internationally. The story also starts in 1916, but their mismanagement of World War I is not even mentioned, nor are such massacres as "Bloody Sunday". All this is omitted to focus on the glamour of royalty and Anastasia's journey back to it instead.
    • The film's Anastasia is essentially Anna Anderson, who was a fraud in real life. Her claim to being Anastasia was debunked before this movie was made. Notably, Anastasia is actually referred to as "Anna" in the 1956 Ingrid Bergman version, which was made at a time when Anna Anderson's story still seemed vaguely plausible. This version refers to her instead as "Anya", perhaps to distance itself from the Anna Anderson legacy.
  • Historical Ugliness Update: While Rasputin wasn't considered to be an attractive man in real life, he was certainly not a bony figure with warts and long clawed nails from the movie. And keep in mind, the animated Rasputin looks like this even before he sold his soul to get his revenge on the Romanov Royal Family.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade: While many things have been said of him, the real Rasputin wasn't an evil undead warlock who sold his soul to the forces of evil for revenge on the Romanovs. Rasputin was an enigma but undoubtedly an ally of the Romanovs; the important ones, anyway. Several relatives kinda hated him and plotted his death like Prince Felix Yusupov. In one of the older drafts for the film, Rasputin only became a bad guy after surviving the historical assassination attempt against him, leading him to orchestrate their downfall out of a genuine desire for revenge (this is referenced in his Villain Song by "When the royals betrayed me they made a mistake"). He would also justify this trope in a later scene by revealing his lying low over the years meant historians never realised how connected he was to the fall of the Romanovs.
  • Hobo Gloves: Anya's purple fingerless gloves in snowy Russia.
  • Hope Spot: In the climax, Dimitri knocks down Rasputin with one punch and goes to pull up Anastasia from the falling bridge. Rasputin recovers, unfortunately, and uses an animated horse statue to knock out Dimitri.
  • "I Am Becoming" Song: Anya is actively seeking out her long lost family and reject her previous Amnesiac Hero state in "Journey to the Past".
  • Inconsistent Spelling: Dimitri's name is also spelled as "D'mitri" in the film. In cell drawings and models, his name is also spelled "D'mitri", but fans have gone with using the non-apostrophized spelling that appears in the film's credits.
  • If We Get Through This…: There's literal examples in dialogue, one being an echo of the other:
    • The first:
      Dimitri: If we live through this, remind me to thank you.
    • Anastasia's echo of the first, before Dimitri cuts her off:
      Anastasia: If we live through this, remind me—
      Dimitri: You can thank me later!
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: In the end, Anya decides to live a private life with former servant Dimitri rather than return to her old royal lifestyle, which it's implied she was uncomfortable with.
  • Ink-Suit Actor:
  • I'm Not Afraid of You: Anastasia uses this line verbatim near the end when Rasputin is attempting to drown her in the river.
    Rasputin: I can fix that!
  • Impoverished Patrician:
    • After the revolution, Anastasia became Anya and was sent to live in an orphanage. She can't do more than vaguely dream of her lost wealth, though, thanks to Trauma-Induced Amnesia.
    • Count Vlad lost his status and his wealth, through he regained both in Paris.
  • Inhuman Human: Rasputin Came Back Wrong and is rather narked about it.
  • In Name Only: The film was supposedly "based on" the play by Marcel Maurette. Don Bluth turned it into a musical with Rasputin as an undead sorcerer with a talking bat sidekick, among other changes (the play had already been faithfully adapted to a 1956 film starring Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman).
  • Innocent Inaccurate:
    • Subtly used for Anya and Dimitri. First case: When Marie gave Anastasia her gift before returning to Paris, Anastasia wondered if it was a jewelry box. Young Dimitri, who was eavesdropping on them, got scolded and hauled back to the kitchens before he could hear Marie tell her that it was a music box instead. Ten years later, Dimitri keeps referring to it as a "jewelry box."
    • When escaping from the Ruling Family Massacre, Dimitri takes Marie and Anastasia through a hidden doorway to the servants' quarters. Ten years later, Anya says that the servant-boy "opened a wall," which makes Dimitri realize she's the real Anastasia.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: During the train scene, Dimitri says the train will eventually coast to a stop. But the track up ahead was destroyed by Rasputin's minions.
    Anya: You were saying?
  • In the Past, Everyone Will Be Famous: A few historical characters show up in the song "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart": Maurice Chevalier, Sigmund Freud, Charles Lindbergh, Josephine Baker, Claude Monet, Isadora Duncan, Auguste Rodin, and Gertrude Stein. All of them are going shopping on the same night in the same street and all happen to know the words to the song. The movie features a singing Gertrude Stein. This might be the most historically correct part of the movie as both Hemingway and Bennett Cerf wrote of Gertrude's inability to walk by someone playing a piano without sitting down and singing along.
  • I Owe You My Life: Marie becomes much warmer towards Dimitri when he not only refuses the reward after bringing the real Anastasia to her, but she discovers he also was the boy that saved her from the Revolution. As she points out, he got her and Anastasia out using the Secret Passage, risking his life for theirs.
  • I Remember It Like It Was Yesterday: Used for irony: a young woman claiming to be Anastasia uses the stock phrase before rattling off a list of facts about Anastasia's childhood in an effort to prove her identity to Dowager Empress Marie. The viewer of course already knows that she's lying, and furthermore that the real Anastasia doesn't remember anything about her childhood. Marie finishes the sentence for her in a bitter tone, suggesting she's heard the same lines before.
  • Ironic Echo:
    • "Do svidaniya!" Said first by Rasputin as he's about to kill Anya, then repeated by her when she's breaking his reliquary.
    • Also "All men are babies" which Anya tells Dimitri when he complains about her hitting him when they were squabbling. He repeats the line after they've defeated Rasputin and she thought he'd been killed. It's also a sign of how far their relationship has come and how differently Anya views him.
    Dimitri: [gasping] "Yeah, yeah I know — all men are babies." (Anya hugs him)
  • It Has Only Just Begun: When Sophie refers to Anya and Dimitri's elopement as 'the perfect ending', the Empress corrects her, saying 'No, it's a perfect beginning.'
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
    • Dimitri, shown most clearly when he refuses the reward money for reuniting Anastasia and her grandmother.
    • The Empress after realizing that Dimitri saved Anastasia and refused the reward because he loves her granddaughter tells Anastasia that no matter what she decides with her life or where she decides to go, the Empress will be content knowing Anastasia is alive. Hence she gives a bittersweet smile after Anastasia returns her crown.
  • "I Want" Song:
    • "Journey to the Past", sung by Anya as she dares to travel to Paris, to find a real family. Then "Once Upon A December" where she struggles with her empty past.
    • Some of the verses from "A Rumor in St. Petersburg" are this for Dimitri and Vlad. They're singing about how soon all their troubles will be over and they're going to get rich... by tricking an old woman into believing she's been reunited with her dead granddaughter.
    • "In The Dark of the Night" could also qualify for the Villain Song version of the trope, In which Rasputin sings about eliminating the protagonist, who is the last Romanov, thus finally completing his curse.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
    • Dimitri is a snarky con-artist who is perfectly willing to manipulate a young orphan in order to scam an old lady out of her money... but also risks his life numerous times to protect Anya, is increasingly uneasy about the con and when it comes down to it he does the right thing.
    • Bartok comes across as this too. He teamed up with Rasputin and helped him out a bit with his evil deeds but he he’s not all that bad of a bat. He got away from Rasputin in the end so he wouldn’t have to hurt anybody.
  • Karma Houdini: Vlad had zero problems with helping Dimitri scam the Duchess out of her money and, unlike Dimitri who goes through a change of heart borderline Heel–Face Turn and at least gets a beating from Rasputin's magical minions near the end, never suffers any kind of repercussions or learns a lesson. If anything, his life only improves after setting out on such a cruel scheme!
  • Keep the Reward: After Dimitri returns Anastasia to her grandmother, he refuses the reward and leaves without telling Anya what he did, so as to draw her contempt and hoping to sever any ties so that she could live happily without him to drag her down.
  • Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: In the climax, Anya defeats Rasputin decked out in a ball gown, royal sash, and crown jewels. Granted, the dress ends up rather more ripped and bedraggled than it started out, but still. Despite the state of her dress, crushing that reliquary beneath her high heels still qualifies.
  • Kirk Summation: Marie to Dimitri after his Keep the Reward moment: "Young man, where did you get that music box? You were that boy, weren't you? The servant boy who got us out. You saved her life, and mine, and you restored her to me. Yet you want no reward... why the sudden change of mind?"
  • Large Ham: Rasputin loves shouting and gesturing with his Soul Jar. Considering his voice actor, this isn't surprising. Bartok, Vladimir, and Sophie all qualify as well, particularly when compared to the much more grounded performances of Anya, Dimitri, and Marie.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Dimitri plans to take advantage of an innocent girl and a heartbroken old woman by making Anya pose as Anastasia to get the reward money for himself. He ends up falling in love with Anya and then discovers that she is the real Anastasia, meaning that his actions have placed the woman he loves out of his reach and actually reunited the people he tried to con. Luckily karma works both ways because his change of heart, refusing the reward money and walking away so Anya will be happy, results in her choosing to marry him anyway.
  • Leave Me Alone!: Dmitri tries to make Anya listen by telling her she is the actual Anastasia and he was the one who helped her and her grandmother escape, but she shouts this when she has had enough.
    Dmitri: Anya, please. When you spoke about the hidden door on the wall opening and the little boy. Listen to me. That was-
    Anya: No! I don't want to hear about anything that I said or remembered! You just leave me alone!
  • "Leaving the Nest" Song: "Journey to the Past" deals with trying to gather up the courage to leave one's old life and enter into the new.
  • Lessons in Sophistication: Orphan Anya gets schooled in all things mannerly and urbane by Lovable Rogue Dmitri and Count Vladimir, because the men aim to pass Anya off as the missing Romanov princess, Anastasia. She's coached in ballroom dancing, dining etiquette, complete royal genealogy, and much more.
  • Literal Metaphor: Most people, if they described their physical condition with a lamenting "I'm falling apart!", would expect you to understand that they're only claiming to be in a bad state. Rasputin, on the other hand, is referring to the fact that his limbs are literally detaching from his body.
  • Lost in Translation: A section of the "Paris Holds the Key" song is built on the pun of "can" (the verb) and "can-can" (the dance). English is practically the only language in which this works, so the pun is lost in practically every foreign dub.
  • Lost Orphaned Royalty: Anastasia is revealed early on to have survived the curse meant to "end the Romanov line forever".

    M-R 
  • Mama Bear: Grandmother Bear, rather; when a young Dmitri tells them to use the servants' quarter, Marie makes Anastasia go first and takes up the rear. Later, she engages in a tug-of-war with Rasputin to save her granddaughter. As she tells the con artists and Dmitri, they ought to know better than to anger her with lies.
  • Match Cut: When Anastasia tries on her tiara and looks in the mirror, her reflection changes to her wearing her princess gown.
  • Meaningful Echo: During the "Paris Holds the Key" sequence, the main chorus is "Paris holds the key to your heart" but Dimitri uses "Paris holds the key to her heart" instead. (Referring to the fact that the city is the key to Anya finding her past and family, but the luxury and life Paris represents is inaccessible to him so he's actually lost her heart.)
  • Meaningful Name: In a fair coincidence from real history, Anastasia is Greek for resurrection.
  • Memento MacGuffin: Anya's "Together in Paris" necklace key and matching music box which her grandmother gave to her so they could be together even when separated. In a twist, while Anya has the necklace half, her grandmother doesn't have the music box half; Dimitri does. Which foreshadows the fact that her grandmother isn't the only person to help Anya discover who she is and where she belongs.
  • Memory-Restoring Melody: Anya has lost all of her memories save for a melody that she doesn't know the origin of, along with the lyrics "Once Upon A December." This song was sung to her by her grandmother, who Anya was separated from after the attack on the Tzar and his family. Once Anya realizes that she's the missing Anastasia Romanov, she tracks down and eventually reunites with her grandmother, who then sings the song to her again.
  • Memory Trigger: Dowager Empress Marie has a Signature Scent of peppermint oil because she dabs it on her opera gloves. The scent triggers a memory in Easy Amnesia orphan Anya of spilling peppermint oil on the palace carpet. No matter how much servants scrubbed that spot, it continued to smell of peppermint. This statement convinces Empress Marie that Anya is, in fact, her long-lost granddaughter Princess Anastasia.
  • Minion with an F in Evil: Bartok is not particularly evil for serving such a dark master, and not very competent either; he almost kills Rasputin when he tries to break his phylactery on a whim.
  • A Minor Kidroduction: Both Anya and Dimitri are shown as children in the intro.
  • Misplaced Retribution: Combined with needing to kill the last Romanov, Rasputin seeks to only kill Anastasia and not her grandmother. He drowned when trying to grab the child, while it was Marie who made the decision to leave him. Rasputin leaves Marie alone at Anastasia's debut ball and plans to drown Anastasia in the nearby river.
  • Mistaken for an Imposter: The Dowager Empress Marie is thoroughly convinced that "Anya" is someone impersonating her long-lost granddaughter, even noting that "You're a very good actress." Her disbelief is understandable, since she has by this point already interviewed several girls claiming to be Anastasia. Justified in-universe since Anya is working with others to fool the Dowager, not realizing she actually IS Anastasia. So Anya herself thinks she is an impostor at first.
  • Mood Whiplash: The "Paris Holds the Key (To Her Heart)" sequence alternates between Sophie and the crowd taking the main characters around Paris with zany antics, and Dimitri brokenly reflecting on how he's lost Anya forever.
    Sophie and the Can Can Girls: "Everyone can can can! You can can can too!"
    Dimitri: "Paris hold the key to her past. Yes, Princess, I've found you at last. No more pretend, You'll be gone, that's the end..."
    Crowd: "Paris holds the key to your heart!"
  • Mr. Fanservice: Dimitri. When they originally animated him, they thought he was too "obviously cute" — so they added the bump on his nose to tone it down. It backfired.
  • The Musical: There are many songs in this movie concerning things like character motivation, cultural appeal, young love.
  • Musical Exposition: The first song, "A Rumor in St. Petersburg", picks up after the prologue and a Time Skip. It introduces two of the main characters, Dimitri and Vlad, and establishes their plan and motives.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Vlad when he has Anya and Dimitri dance and realizes they're falling in love. "Vlad, how could you do this? How will we get through this? I never should have let them dance."
  • Natural Spotlight: Anya's lit face. The eyes are the ones in focus, which makes one wonder whether or not she notices; most people would certainly be blinded by such thing.
  • Never Recycle a Building: The entire Catherine Palace has been abandoned and boarded up in the ten years since the Revolution. Despite a lack of security, the building remains full of art and furniture that one would think would have been looted years ago.
  • Never Wake Up a Sleepwalker: Defied. When Pooka warns Dmitri that a sleepwalking Anastasia has walked up to the deck, he rescues her just as Rasputin's nightmare compels her to jump into the ocean. As soon as he gets Anastasia on solid wood, he wakes her up. Dmitri is horrified that a nightmare nearly drove her to drown, and gives her a Cooldown Hug.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Rasputin tries to torture Anastasia in the climax by sending demons to tear up her outfit before pushing her off the bridge. It turns out it was an Impractically Fancy Outfit and a ballgown; by getting rid of the extra layers and heavy fabric, Anya is able to charge at him when she climbs up the broken bridge and grapple more effectively.
  • No Body Left Behind: Rasputin's body turns to dust and blows away as soon as his Soul Jar is destroyed.
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Bartok the bat for Rasputin and Pooka the dog for Anya. Bartok talks, Pooka doesn't.
  • No OSHA Compliance: During the end of the song "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart", Anya and company take the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower. They're standing on the exterior roof of the elevator.
  • No Place for Me There: Dimitri says this to Pooka when the dog and Vlad both object to Dimitri leaving, but Dimitri insists he doesn't belong in Anastasia's world of royalty that Anastasia had rejoined.
  • Nostalgic Musicbox: The music box given to the young Anastasia as a gift. It ends up in the possession of Dimitri, while the accompanying locket functions as an Orphan's Plot Trinket for the amnesiac Anya.
  • Not Afraid of You Anymore: Anastasia says this to Rasputin at the end right before killing him again.
  • Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Realistically speaking, every character in this movie should have had some kind of European accent, but in the main cast, the only ones who made any attempt were Kelsey Grammer, who honestly does a pretty good job making Vlad sound Russian, and Angela Lansbury, who uses her natural British accent as the Dowager Empress. (The real Marie Feodorovna was born Princess Dagmar of Denmark.) The background Russian characters however, have Russian accents.
  • Not My Driver: Dimitri hijacks the Dowager Empress's car in order to force her to see Anastasia and be convinced that she's the real deal.
  • Not Using the "Z" Word: Three examples with Rasputin, one of which gets bonus points for involving the Trope Naming creature:
    • Though he gets progressively more gruesome throughout the film, "zombie" is never used, nor even "undead".
    • It's said that he sold his soul but the Devil is not brought up, he only ever refers to those he sold his soul to as "the dark forces". Some of the foreign dubs do make it explicitly Satan.
    • Back to the undead part. He's portrayed as an undead wizard, so that makes him a lich, complete with a phylactery. The movie never calls him that, either.
  • Nurture over Nature: Alluded to as Anya seems to feel uncomfortable with the old, royal lifestylenote  after spending most of her life as an ordinary citizen, and chooses to leave with Dimitri to live privately instead. Her grandmother indicates she's realized her situation as well.
  • Oh God, with the Verbing!: Bartok's response when Rasputin's phylactery's starts to react to Anastasia's presence, whom the undead sorcerer swore to kill.
    Bartok: "Okay, okay, I get the message! Enough already with the glowing and the smoke people!"
  • Old-Timey Bathing Suit: In Anya's dream sequence on the ship, her family is wearing these.
  • Ominous Chanting: During the prologue's recapitulation of the coup set off by the curse, the chorus is singing in Russian pretty ominously. It happens again in the finale during Rasputin's death scene.
  • Ominous Pipe Organ: Heard just before the beginning and during the final melody of Rasputin's Villain Song.
  • Orphan's Plot Trinket: The "Together in Paris" necklace, which the viewer knows from the start of the movie is a key to a music box the Dowager Empress had commissioned for Anastasia as a child. And of course Dimitri has the music box that goes with the necklace.
  • Our Liches Are Different: Rasputin is a pretty straightforward example, except for lacking a real drive for immortality or power above all else, which were more a byproduct of his quest for vengeance than his main objectives. He was already a powerful sorcerer before he made his Deal with the Devil, but he became undead upon selling his soul (not after he went to Limbo; he loses all his flesh when he gives up his soul, and restores it with the powers he gains).
  • Outliving One's Offspring: The Dowager Empress Marie outlives her son, Tsar Nicholas, and four of his five children. Truth in Television — the real-life Dowager Empress was in Paris at the time of the Russian Revolution, and thus survived it.
  • Parental Abandonment:
    • Anya's entire family got decimated in the revolution, and ten years later she seeks to reunite with whoever is left, guided by a cryptic message. Unusual for an animated film in that this is a driving force behind her journey throughout the film instead of just being there for the sake of it.
    • Also Dimitri who was an orphan even at the beginning of the film when he was working as a kitchen boy, and in the intervening years Vlad is clearly the closest he had to a parental figure.
  • Parental Favouritism: Or rather, Grandparental Favouritism as Anya seems to be the Empress's favourite grandchild, which makes it all the more heartwarming when they reunite.
  • Parents Know Their Children: Subverted. Marie has been searching for her granddaughter and set up a reward for anyone to find her. She gets beaten down on seeing so many impostors and identifying them as such, telling them off for breaking her heart just to get her money. Dimitri has to kidnap her to make her talk to Anya, and even then the Empress isn't convinced when Anya begs her to identify her either as family or not as family. It's not until Anya has a memory about Marie's peppermint oil — something that an impostor wouldn't know about because it's too personal for historical records — that Marie stays in the room, sits with Anya, and realizes she's Anastasia when the latter shows her locket, winds the music box, and sings along.
  • Pet the Dog: When Dimitri does his Keep the Reward moment and tells the Empress that what he wants is something she can't give him, she comes to realize that he saved her and her granddaughter during the siege as the kitchen boy, and reunited them because he loves Anastasia. Thus when Anastasia plans to enter the grand ballroom, she tells Anastasia that Dimitri didn't take the money, and that knowing Anastasia is alive is enough for her.
  • Pig Latin: Dimitri tells a terribly lovestruck Vlad this: "Ix-nay on the Ophie-say!"
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Three! Though only two figured prominently in the marketing — the yellow silk Dream Sequence dress and the svelte navy and sparkly Parisian Opera dress. They made an Anastasia Barbie with the blue sparkly dress, as well as the Disney Acid Sequence dress, AND a line of dresses that didn't appear in the movie at all, but they were 'inspired by' it and made to fit the Anastasia doll.
  • Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Rasputin. Of course, he was never much of a villain in real life, but even the movie treats him like an afterthought. This has gone to the point where the stage adaptation removed Rasputin and Bartok from the plot altogether. The movie makes it clear that there was serious unrest in Russia's citizens before Rasputin's sorcery incited them into killing the Romanovs, making it seem as though an uprising was going to happen anyway, for reasons unexplained by the movie. The protagonists were already planning to bail out of the train, which Rasputin used his magic to destroy, in order to avoid being arrested for having the wrong passports. Furthermore, most of the drama in the movie doesn't come from Rasputin's plot to kill Anya, but from Anya reuniting with her grandmother, and her relationship with Dimitri.
  • Post-Nightmare Comfort: Rasputin almost convinces Anya to jump off of the ship via a dream (turned nightmare) about her family. Dmitri is able to wake her up before she does, with both of them thinking she was simply sleepwalking. Anya breaks down crying into Dmitri's arms as she laments that she's confused by these suddenly reappearing faces and that she can't remember her past.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: By Anastasia right before destroying Rasputin's reliquary.
    Anastasia: Do svidaniya!
  • Pretty in Mink: A few, like the fur-trimmed coat Anya wears to the opera, and her grandmother's fur wrap.
  • Princess Protagonist: The film focuses on Anastasia, a princess in exile discovering her secret royal past. While the real Anastasia was royalty, she is recognised as "Grand Duchess" rather than princess.note  But the film frequently refers to her as a princess just to avoid confusion. In a twist, she also gives up the title and chooses to elope with Dimitri.
  • Product Placement: Sophie takes Anastasia shopping at a Chanel store during the Shopping Montage in Paris.
  • Production Throwback: Look closely, and you'll see little visual Shout Outs to other movies from Don Bluth's history. (The squirrels look like they've walked right off the set of Sleeping Beauty (1959), Bartok is sucked into Hell just like Charlie, there's a spooky thorn bush near the end that Brutus might be guarding, and so on).
  • Protagonist Title: The movie is named after the main character.
  • Purgatory and Limbo: Rasputin is stuck in Limbo thanks to a) his curse on the Romanovs being incomplete and b) him selling his soul for the power to cast said curse. Here, Limbo is portrayed as being in the center of the earth, with not much to offer except talking bugs.
  • Pygmalion Plot: Two con-men, Dimitri and Vlad, style an orphan to pass for the Empress's long-lost granddaughter, and the younger, Dimitri, is smitten when he sees his creation succeed. Unbeknownst to all of them, she really is Anastasia. Though, of course, he loved her all along.
  • Quest for Identity: Anastasia goes to St. Petersburg in the hopes of finding her original self, i.e. her past.
  • Rags to Royalty: Inverted, played straight and then averted as Anya goes from Royalty to Rags back to Royalty and to presumably fairly comfortable but not royalty. The ending is rather ambiguous as Dimitri refuses the reward, but it's possible Anya may her have own income or inheritance now or the Empress could be providing her with money. (As the ending established Anya and her grandmother were going to remain close). If nothing else, Dimitri and Anya are more than capable of supporting themselves, especially now they're out of impoverished Russia.
  • Rasputinian Death: Rasputin 'dies' three times in the movie, and only the last one sticks. (The real Rasputin's death was an aversion of this trope, ironically.) The first time he is stripped to the bone due to his soul trade, but he restores himself with the powers he gains. His second death includes one element from the apocryphal real life story. He falls through some ice and drowns. The third and last involves Anastasia smashing his phylactery. What results from this is itself pretty Rasputinian; see Family-Unfriendly Death above.
  • Reaction Shot: While Anastasia is explaining how she escaped the palace the night of the attack the camera cuts to Dimitri, showing him going from believing his con was over to Jaw Dropping Stunned Silence as he realizes he found the real Anastasia (since he was the boy who helped her escape).
  • Real Event, Fictional Cause: The movie shows that the Russian Revolution was caused by Grigori Rasputin making a Deal with the Devil as vengeance against the Romanovs for trying to assassinate him.
  • Really Royalty Reveal: Anya, Dimitri, and Vlad spend most of the movie having Anya learn to act like royalty, only for them all to discover she really is the Grand Duchess and the last member of the Russian royal family. True to this trope, Dimitri immediately thinks he's not good enough for her.
  • Red/Green Contrast: Rasputin's reliquary is normally surrounded by a Sickly Green Glow. When Anastasia begins to crush it near the climax, it glows red until she completely smashes it.
  • Red Sky, Take Warning: Twice. First seen during the attack on the Royal Palace and later during the climax where Rasputin confronts Anastasia.
  • Reduced to Dust: When Princess Anastasia crushes the Artifact of Doom beneath her heel, the villain Rasputin falls to the pavement and begins aging rapidly, until his skin, flesh, and clothes melt and dissolve. This leaves only his jittering skeleton, which disintegrates into dust that disappears completely in the wind. "Dasvidaniya," indeed.
  • Reformed, but Rejected: Dimitri is rejected by The Dowager Empress and "Anya" once they learn about his "Anastasia Auditions". Even after he tries to make up for it Anya still rejects him, thinking he was Only in It for the Money and then the climax happens. The Empress, however, realizes that he did it out of love for her granddaughter.
  • The Remake: The film is officially a Disneyfication/fantasticization of the 1956 Ingrid Bergman film (itself a play adaptation).note 
  • Remaster: In 2025, this became Don Bluth's first movie to receive a digital 4K release, sourced from a restoration supervised by Bluth and Gary Goldman.
  • Roadside Wave: On her way to St Petersberg, a carriage passes Anya and covers her with a wave of snow.
  • Road Trip Romance: Dimitri and Anya travel from St. Petersburg, Russia to Paris, France and by the time they arrive they are deep in Belligerent Sexual Tension. Then they elope and leave Paris.
  • The Roaring '20s: "Paris Holds the Key" is a montage of this era.
  • Rotten Rock & Roll: Rasputin's Villain Song, "In the Dark of the Night", has a rocking tune, complete with electric guitars.
  • Royal Blood:
    • Anastasia is the last of the royal Romanov bloodline, although there's no throne to reclaim since the revolution. This is why Dimitri is so devastated when he realizes the woman he's in love with is a genuine royal rather than a fake as he knows there's no way a former servant could marry into the Russian royal family.
    • The Dowager Empress Marie and her cousin Sophie are also of royal blood.
  • Rule of Symbolism:
    • By Word of God, the reason for the seeming Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart", is not merely to show off Bernadette Peters, nor 1920s Paris, but a reflection of both cultural progress at the time and Anastasia's Character Development. On the one hand, by the '20s the Soviet republics were reeling from the White Army and foreign invasion, something Europe did not contend with, with much of this renaissance based in Paris; on the other hand, this ties into Anya leaving a dead world for one vibrant and alive, paralleling her leaving behind an empty, soulless existence for one where she could bloom, grow, and begin a new, happy life.invoked
    • During the same song, everyone is wearing perfectly-tailored outfits that frame their figures perfectly... except for Dimitri, who's wearing a boxy suit almost a size too big for him, showing how he no longer feels he fits into his own scheme and feels further from Anastasia than ever before.
    • A more contained example with Anastasia's tiara: After she's defeated Rasputin, she and Dimitri go to kiss, only for Pooka to interrupt them to give her the crown so she's holding it between the two of them — not so subtly symbolizing how her princess status is separating them. In the final scene, the tiara is gone and they can kiss with nothing coming between them.
  • Runaway Train: Complete with a graphically-explosive crash to top it all off, and Dimitri commenting afterward "I HATE trains! Remind me to never get on a train again."

    S-Y 
  • Satellite Love Interest: Taken to its logical extreme. Bartok the Bat abandons Rasputin near the end, and is rewarded with a pink bat who flies in and kisses him. Averted with Dimitri who is remarkably fleshed out for a Princess love interest in this period of animation.
  • Save the Villain: Subverted; when Rasputin drowns in his attempt to grab a young Anastasia, Marie pulls her away and they keep moving to get to the train station. He sinks under the water, with only his reliquary remaining. Rasputin holds this against Anastasia, planning to drown her in the same way when they confront each other.
  • Say My Name: The prologue ends with Dowager Empress Marie screaming Anastasia's name as the train pulls out of the station leaving Anastasia unconscious on the platform.
  • Scenery Porn: The usage of CinemaScope really shows off some great views of St. Petersburg, Paris, and the interiors of palaces.
  • Sealed with a Kiss: Ends with the main couple kissing and dancing on their elopement.
  • Searching for the Lost Relative:
    • Orphaned Anya doesn't remember her family, but her Orphan's Plot Trinket necklace that reads "Together in Paris" leads her to search for them once she's old enough to leave the orphanage. When Dmitri and Vlad present the possibility that she might be the long-lost Princess Anastasia, whose grandmother resides in Paris, she agrees to go with them in hopes of finding her lost family (which, happily, she does).
    • On the flip side, Anastasia's grandmother, the Dowager Empress, has spent 10 years searching for her by the time of the film but has become so jaded by the long string of imposters claiming to be her granddaughter for the reward that she's ready to close up shop by the time Anya comes along.
  • Secret Path: One saves Anastasia and her grandmother; when the siege happens, she runs back to her room for her grandmother's music box despite the revolutionaries with guns outside that will kill them all. Marie screams at her to come back but follows. While they're in Anastasia's room and the castle doors break down, Dimitri comes out through the servants' quarters entrance and shoves them inside after she drops the music box.
  • Sexual Karma: Rasputin's bat sidekick abandons him at the climax and is awarded a female bat at the end with no explanation.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
    • Subverted when Anya starts packing her bags after learning about Dimitri and Vlad's con. Before she can leave, Dimitri kidnaps the Empress and convinces her to meet Anya and give her a chance.
    • Subverted again when Dimitri after claiming to Anya that he won't miss Russia prepares to go back after the Empress identifies her long-lost granddaughter. After smelling the rose that Anya gave to him, he decides to go back and saves her in the nick of time from Rasputin.
    • Played straight with Bartok as he realizes Rasputin is going full throttle with his desire to kill Anastasia despite being reunited with the Empress. He ultimately tells Rasputin "You're on your own, sir. This can only end in tears" and departs. Bartok indeed survives and is rewarded with a female bat companion of his own.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: As far as Dimitri knew, he saved Marie but not Anastasia despite his best attempts. Subverted when he realizes that Anya is Anastasia, and thus he did save both of them, as Marie summarizes during Dimitri's Keep the Reward moment.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Yes, Dimitri, that elegant lady in the Parisian Opera dress you're ogling is the "skinny little brat" that trekked across Europe with you.
  • Sickly Green Glow: Rasputin's soul reliquary glows a sickly green and creates greenish smoke-imps. When it's destroyed, Rasputin is liquefied into a greenish ooze.
  • Skewed Priorities:
    • Anastasia during the siege runs back to her room for her music box, even though she and her grandmother could die at any moment. When she drops it while going through the servants' quarters passage, she's still worried about it. Dimitri has to shout at her to run and close the door on her for Anastasia to get moving.
    • Vlad discovers that his forged travel papers are an outdated color, and he's more upset that the new color is red.
    • After their train car breaks off from the ones behind, Vlad is more concerned about losing the dining car.
  • Shipper on Deck:
    • Vlad catches on pretty quickly that Anya and Dimitri have a Slap-Slap-Kiss thing going. He also gets the two to dance and sings a song about this on the ship to Paris. It's also fun watching his face in the background as the two interact.
    • The Empress gets on board pretty quickly after realizing Dimitri was the boy who saved them at the palace, and he refuses her reward. She even encourages Anya to be with him rather than becoming a princess again.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Just before the final confrontation, Bartok decides he's had enough of Rasputin obsessing over murdering an innocent girl, and abandons him.
    "You're on your own, sir! This can only end in tears!"
  • Shopping Montage: When Anya and co. get to Paris, Dowager Empress Marie's cousin Sophie takes them shopping while "Paris Holds The Key (To Your Heart)" is sung. They also go sightseeing during the song.
  • Shown Their Work: Despite the historical liberties taken (some for the sake of the medium and length, some to spare children the grisly truth about the Russian Revolution, and some for simple poetic license) and myths bought into (aside from the urban legend about Anastasia herself, nods are given to Rasputin's alleged exaggerated death), a great deal of work was done to otherwise display geographical and biographical accuracy.
    • Photography, including aerial shots, enabled startlingly true-to-life likenesses of St. Petersburg and Paris and the inside of the Catherine Palace;
    • Period costumes and trains were duplicated, as well as historical figures living in Paris at the time;
    • Actual relics of the Romanovs were scanned into the computers and inserted within the movie, including photographs of the family shown on Marie's wall and the drawing Anastasia made when she was eight years old, which was drawn by the real Anastasia...
    • All of the bathing suits worn by Anastasia, her father, and her sisters during the dream sequence, and the sailor suit worn by her little brother, are also reproductions of the actual suits worn on their frequent family vacations.
    • Even the notion of Rasputin cursing the Romanovs is based off of an anecdotal account that, on one of the few occasions Nicholas and other nobles became worried about the influence he had over Alexandra and foreign policy, Rasputin threatened the family with a pox if he were dismissed from court.
    • In the number "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart", the backgrounds all look very Impressionistic, referencing the popular painting style at the time.
    • Pooka bears some resemblance to Anastasia's real dog, a springer spaniel named Jimmy who died with the family in 1918. You can see Jimmy in the painting during Marie's opening narration.
    • Rasputin, already seemingly undead, comes to the Royal Palace on December 31, 1916, and vows vengeance on the Imperial Family. Makes sense, since in real life he was murdered the previous day, by the Emperor's (distant) relative no less.
  • Shout-Out: Anastasia is a princess who thinks she's a commoner and goes by the name "Anya," and Bluth revealed that Audrey Hepburn was a big influence on her character design. In Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn plays Princess Ann, who pretends to be a commoner and goes by "Anya" as a pseudonym. Both "Anyas" also share a romance with a commoner man, with their true class difference as a barrier between them, although in Roman Holiday they bittersweetly part ways in the end, while here Anastasia gives up her title to elope with Dimitri.
  • Show Within a Show: Anya, Dimitri, and Vlad are treated to the Parisian ballet by Marie's assistant (and Vlad's "cream puff"), and the ballet in question is Cinderella — what do you mean, there's no parallel? Quite fittingly the first act of the ballet ends with the prince chasing after Cinderella after the ball and holding her slipper.
  • Simple, yet Opulent: Anya's blue dress for the opera looks simpler than her other ones but is no less elegant.
  • Sins of Our Fathers: One really nasty example of a one-man vendetta is Rasputin, who obsesses over murdering the title character despite her having done nothing to earn his ire. Unlike other cases, he wasn't even victimised and there was no justification for his hatred. He took his anger at her father the Czar for offending him and denying him power, to the extent that he wanted to end his bloodline and annihilate the Romanov dynasty. Disproportionate Retribution at its finest. This also applies to Anastasia's real-life inspiration in a way.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: Literally at the end, where Anya accidentally smacks Dimitri in the face, and then cradles his face in her hands for an Almost Kiss.
  • Snark-to-Snark Combat: Anastasia and Dimitri start at it from basically the minute they meet and keep going through the emotional near-death finale.
  • Something Only They Would Say: During Anya's interview with Sophie, Sophie specifically asks how she escaped the siege on the Winter Palace. Vlad and especially Dimitri think the jig is up since they never prepared her for that question, only for Anya to remember a servant boy who "opened a wall". Dimitri immediately recognizes this because he was that servant boy, and realizes she's the real princess because she's one of only three people who would've known that. This happens again when Anya does finally get a chance to talk to Marie. Marie initially brushes her off as an actress, albeit "the best one yet". It's not until Anya recalls an intimate memory about spilling Marie's peppermint oil on the carpet and lying on that spot whenever Marie left the country that gets her to reconsider. Bringing out the matching necklace and music box and singing their lullaby seals the deal.
  • "Somewhere" Song: "Journey to the Past". Anastasia dreams of going to Paris, which she believes holds all the answers to her mysterious childhood.
  • Soul Jar: Rasputin's reliquary was already a powerful magical weapon before it became this, but he turned it into a phylactery as part of his devil bargain, as well as the source of his magic. Whether or not it siphons off his soul's power is up for debate.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: Sadly, Anastasia herself — it was confirmed in 2007 that the real Anastasia did in fact die with the rest of her family and the Empire that night.
  • Standard Female Grab Area: Defied for most of the movie. Anya is established as having strong hands due to her orphanage upbringing, as shown when she shakes with Dmitri.
    • During the nightmare sequence, Anya hesitates when she hears Dmitri calling out for her, just as she's about to jump off the railing. Her dream-father then turns into a demon and tries to physically pull her overboard. Anya screams and grapples with him long enough for Dmitri to grab her waist, lower her onto the deck, and wake her up. Justified since it's a nightmare.
    • When Dimitri grabs Anya's arm after she's realized what his intentions were and is trying to storm out, she takes one look at his hand, and then raises her other hand and slaps him, which causes him to let go.
  • Stealth Pun: One of the historical cameos is Sigmund Freud, who slips on a banana peel.
  • Stripped to the Bone:
    • Rasputin has his flesh torn off as a result of his deal with the dark forces. He is forced to restore it with his phylactery.
    • Subverted during Rasputin's death scene. He melts down to the bone and writhes briefly, but he then decays further into dust.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: The film loves this trope, mostly for the effects animators to show off (such as the Runaway Train violently exploding in a large, stereotypical Hollywood explosion with sparks flying upward!).
  • Suddenly Suitable Suitor: Inverted. Rather than Dimitri taking the reward money or trying to become a suitable husband for a Grand Duchess, Anya chooses to leave her wealthy world and elopes with him to live an ordinary life.
  • Symbolically Broken Object:
    • Not so much broken as separated. Throughout her childhood at the orphanage, Anastasia keeps the necklace that doubles as a key to her music box, while Dimitri is the one that carries around said music box, knowing that it once belonged to the lost princess. When the two pieces are brought together, it's when Anya finally remembers who she is, opening the box with the help of the key and singing its lullaby with her grandmother.
    • That Dimitri has one-half of this lost gift for all those years also symbolizes his connection (and eventual relationship) with Anya, and that he gives it up to the Dowager Empress (after treating it as an intrinsic part of his con) demonstrates his Character Development.
  • Take My Hand!:
    • During Anastasia's and the Empress's escape from St. Petersburg, the Empress gets on a moving train, and tries to grab hold of Anastasia's hand. She fails, and Anastasia is left behind.
    • Twice between Anastasia and Dimitri. First she offers her hand to pull him up to safety when he almost falls off the runaway trains, and he later returns to the favour by grabbing her hands when Rasputin tips her off a bridge.
  • Technicolor Death: Rasputin decomposes in flashes of green light after the title character steps on his talisman.
  • That Russian Squat Dance: Appears rather prominently with the crowd during "A Rumor in St. Petersburg."
  • Thinker Pose: Dimitri does one of these next to the actual sculpture during a musical number in Paris.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Before the final confrontation between Anastasia and Rasputin, Bartok abandons his master, saying, "This will only end in tears."
  • Tongue-Out Insult: Anya sticks her tongue out at Dimitri behind his back at one point during their bickering on the train.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Do you know why they say never walk on a frozen river or body of water in the dead of winter? The opening sequence demonstrates why; Anastasia and Marie are using the snow-covered river to flee from the palace, and Rasputin ambushes them by jumping from the bridge. He has a tight grip on the lightfooted Anastasia's ankle...and the ice cracks where he landed from a great height, beneath his legs. Marie and Anastasia were very careful to keep moving so that they wouldn't drown and freeze as well. They also don't bother to save him since they're fleeing for their lives.
  • Took a Level in Cynic: Somewhat justified in that trying to be a good person got Dimitri severely injured as a child, but by the time the main plot starts, he decides he's going to con the Empress by using the music box Anastasia left behind.
  • Track Trouble: Rasputin's goblin minions try to kill Anya first by detaching the train car she's in, then by destroying the bridge up ahead.
  • Tragic Dream: Downplayed. Anya’s dream and driving motivation for most of the film is to be reunited with her family, whom she cannot remember. Although she does regain her memories, finds her grandmother and gets with Dimitri, technically, she is never reunited with her whole family, because most of them were killed in the Revolution.
  • Training Montage: "Learn To Do It", where Anya has Dimitri and Vlad tutor her on how to act like royalty, as part of their scam to present her as the lost princess and get ten million rubles. Predictably, she's unsteady for the beginning, but all of a sudden, it does a 180 and everything starts coming absolutely natural to her, and she learns even faster than Dimitri and Vlad expected. That's because she actually is Anastasia: the training started to break through her amnesia.
  • Trampled Underfoot: Rasputin steps over a drinking glass that a guest at the ball had dropped as he makes his Ominous Walk through the crowd. Given a nice Call-Back later at the end of the film, when Anastasia destroys his reliquary by stepping on it multiple times, dedicating the blows to her family, Dimitri, and to Rasputin himself — "Da svidanya!"
  • Triumphant Reprise: "Journey To The Past" is reprised instrumentally in a celebratorial manner when Anastasia is dressing for her reunion ball upon regaining her memory as princess.
  • Tuck and Cover: Gender inverted. Anya throws herself over Dimitri to shield him from a disintegrating Rasputin because he's been injured and knocked unconscious.
  • Twirl of Love: Combined with a Bridal Carry. In what is nearly the final scene of the film, Anya and Dimitri's Dance of Romance turns into a Twirl of Love when Dimitri lifts her off the ground and spins her around.
  • Unlimited Wardrobe: Anya/Anastasia, counting the clothing she wears as a child, has thirteen different outfits during the course of the movie (although two are completely hallucinatory): a blue court dress, nightgown, overcoat, peasant outfit, yellow Dream Ballet ball gown, blue short-sleeved dress, pajamas, Dream Sequence sailor bathing suit, two flapper dresses during a musical number, blue evening dress, pink pajamas, and a court dress. This is especially remarkable in comparison to other animated film heroines at the time, who have less than ten outfit changes each.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Between Anya and Dimitri. Dimitri might have even been in love with her since they were kids, but they lost each other due to the revolution.
  • Uptown Girl: Anastasia for Dimitri. A rather heartbreaking example as for most of the movie they're equal penniless vagrants, despite their past lives as Grand Duchess and servant. When Dimitri finds out the truth, he immediately feels inferior and cut below her.
    Dimitri: Princesses don't marry kitchen boys.
  • Very Loosely Based on a True Story: To levels rivaling Disney's Pocahontas. We should mention that it's not intended to be accurate... which is why the focus in on the undead sorcerer and a con that has nothing to do with Russia's politics.
    • The real Anastasia was just shot alongside her family in July 1918 at the age of 17. After this movie was made, the actual Romanovs were dug up and DNA typed. All the Romanov children were in the graves, including Anastasia.The Other Wiki has the details. Two of the children were discovered in a grave near Ekaterinburg, apart from the original discovery site in early 2008: Alexei and one of his other sisters, either Marie or Anastasia.
    • Rasputin was an ally of the Romanovs and was murdered before their own demise. He was also (probably) neither a lich nor powered by demons. And bats can't talk.
    • A very, very small one: In the Rasputin-created dream sequence where Anya sees her family swimming, her father greets her by calling her "Sunshine." In the actual Romanov family, this was the nickname of Anastasia's little brother, but since her little brother was standing in front of her during the dream sequence, it's likely her father was talking to him and not her.
    • As noted above, Anya is kind of based on Anna Anderson, who (of course) wasn't Anastasia. Not only that, but while some members of the family did believe her claims upon meeting her, she and the Dowager Empress never even met, because Marie firmly held she was a fraud. In fact, Anderson's supporters would claim that any Romanov who didn't believe her claims was being pressured by the Dowager.
  • Vamoose from the Vehicle: Anya, Dimitri and Vladmir find themselves having to save the passengers on a runaway train caused by Rasputin's demons, one heading towards a broken bridge. After using a stick of dynamite to decouple the train cars from the main engine, the trio have to jump off the train and onto the snow before the train dives off the broken bridge.
  • Visual Pun: During "Paris Holds the Key", we see Sigmund Freud slipping on a banana peel.
  • Villain Song: "In The Dark of The Night" is Rasputin talking about the return of his powers and how nothing will stop him from killing the final Romanov.
  • Vocal Dissonance: The "Ooh-ah-ooh" bugs and the "Doom Her"/"Find Her" Bug both have a super deep voice for such a tiny creature.
  • Was It All a Lie?: Anya asks Dimitri this as soon as she overhears he was planning to con the Dowager Empress.
    Anya: You used me? I was all part of your con to get her money?!
  • Weapon Stomp: Rasputin's Soul Jar rolls away and Anya catches it under her foot, stomping on it with an "And This Is for...…" with each one.
  • Welcoming Song: In the song "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)", Vlad's Love Interest Sophie and other Parisian icons welcome Vlad, Anya, and Dmitri to the city.
  • Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Even though they just think she's impersonating a princess at first, Anya and Dimitri have this dynamic.
  • Wham Line: Two in a row: the second one to clarify the first.
    Anya: And I recall (Count Sergei's) yellow cat!
    Vlad: I don't believe we told her that...
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: It's unclear what became of the train's engineer and fireman when the locomotive was set aflame by Rasputin's mooks. In the ice show Rasputin pulls him off and lets him skate into the curtains.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Anya to Dimitri when Vlad accidentally lets slip that Anya has to "convince Sophie," the Dowager Empress's cousin, that she is Anastasia. Up until this point, Anya's understanding of their plan was simply to get in contact with the Dowager Empress and see if Marie recognized her as her granddaughter or not; since Anya grew up in an orphanage and has no memory of her childhood, presenting herself to Sophie as the real thing seems no different to her than outright lying. She reacts in a very similar way when learning that Dimitri and Vlad were running a con and using her to get the Empress's reward money.
  • What You Are in the Dark: The Dowager Empress offers Dimitri the 10 million rubles as a reward after he reunites her with Anastasia (even knowing he originally planned to con her). At this point, Anya believes he's a cheat and liar, and he's returning to Russia and never going to see her again so no one would know if he took the money or not. Dimitri refuses it anyway. In the following scene he even implies to Anya that he did take the money so she wouldn't want anything more to do with him and can live the life she deserves. Eventually it's the Empress who tells Anya the truth. To a lesser extent, he could have used the money to make himself a socialite and become fit to marry a Duchess. Dimitri refuses to do so, because all the rubles in the world would not win Anastasia's heart.
  • Would Hurt a Child:
    • The revolutionaries kill all the Romanovs they find, including Anastasia's siblings — her older sisters are between the ages of 10 and 14, and her little brother, Alexei, is 5. They also pistol-whip Dimitri for tossing a vase at them.
    • Rasputin tries to kill Anastasia as an eight-year old when seeing her and her grandmother flee across the frozen river.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Or rather, your princess doesn't belong in a castle. In her quest to discover where she belongs, Anya actually uncovers her past and lost family about three quarters of the way through the film. However, the last part of the movie has her wondering if her old, royal world really is her true home and realizing she's fallen in love with a former kitchen boy. She ends up not reclaiming her title and status in favour of marrying Dimitri, though she does remain close to her grandmother. That said, the Rasputin storyline spans the whole film.
Bartok: So long, everybody!

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Once Upon a December

Anya, the amnesiac Anastasia, imagines the portraits in the imperial ballroom coming to life and dancing for her.

Example of:
Dream Ballet

★★★★★ 5 (10 votes)
(Leave a comment)

Journey to the ...

Rasputin (Anast...

Together In Paris

Paris Holds the...

Rasputin

In The Dark of ...

Rasputin's Death

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Browse Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top

Once Upon a December

Anya, the amnesiac Anastasia, imagines the portraits in the imperial ballroom coming to life and dancing for her.

(Leave a comment)

How well does it match the trope?

5 (10 votes)

Example of:

Main / DreamBallet

Media sources:

Report

2:24

Once Upon a Dec...

 2:30

Journey to the ...

 2:26

Rasputin (Anast...

 1:05

Together In Paris

 2:30

Paris Holds the...

 0:30

Rasputin

 2:26

In The Dark of ...

 1:15

Rasputin's Death