During the production phase, Hayao Miyazaki and his artists traveled to Sweden to research the film. The photographs they took of Stockholm and Visby formed the basis of the fictional city of Koriko. The city also contains elements of Lisbon, Paris, San Francisco, and Milan.
The story takes place in an alternative 1950s Europe where WWI and WWII never happened. Hayao Miyazaki has been quoted saying that the fictional city of Koriko has one side on the shores of the Mediterranean and the other on the Baltic Sea.
Hayao Miyazaki didn't want to bore the audience during the film's end credits by using just the names. He set it up to be like a mini sequel so that the audience would leave the cinema feeling happy.
Originally panned by fans of the original Japanese version, Disney later re-released a second version of their English dub. Unlike the original 1998 dubbing, this 2010 re-vision has gone back and removed several ad-libbed lines from American sound effects and added soundtracks and several comedic lines added by Phil Hartman. This revised dub is considered more faithful than the original 1998 English dubbing, but the sound mix is noticeably more "filtered," with moments like Kiki's screams sounding like they're passing through a fan.
The actor who did the voice work for Jiji in the Disney dubbed version is Phil Hartman. He was murdered before the new dub was finished and that version of the film is dedicated to his memory.
Hayao Miyazaki: can be seen for a moment in the scene when the street sweeper says, "That's my broom she used." He's in the upper-right corner of the picture.
Hayao Miyazaki: [flying] Kiki can fly using a broomstick. The plot revolves around Kiki setting up a flying delivery service. An airship also features prominently in the last segment of the film.
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