Gremlins director Joe Dante brought up in a recent interview that Grogu, better known as Baby Yoda, was “completely stolen” from the character of Gizmo in the 1984 movie.
“I think the longevity of (the films) is really key to this one character (Gizmo), who is essentially like a baby,” Dante told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Which brings me, of course, to the subject of Baby Yoda, who is completely stolen and is just out-and-out copied. Shamelessly, I would think.”
While Grogu and Gizmo share some similar physical features, it’s also worth noting that the former is an infant version of Yoda, who first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, four years before Gremlins hit theaters.
The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau told Deadline last year that E.T. served as an inspiration for the creation of Grogu, but it was a sketch from collaborator Dave Filoni that really got the ball rolling. “Dave had done a sketch of kind of a Michelangelo/E.T. moment, and that was a source of inspiration,” Favreau recalled. “Then, Doug Chiang and the whole art department started generating drawings of it, and the Legacy [Effects] people built it.”
An episode of the Disney+ show Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian details how the team went through a number of sketches, ranging from too cute to too ugly, before settling on the look that we now know and love.
“Finally there was one image that Chris Alzmann did that had him wrapped up in what looked like a piece of a flight jacket,” Favreau said. “His eyes were a little weird, and he looked a little out of it, there was something a little off with it. But we found it charming, and that became the rallying image that we said, ‘This is good.’ And it developed from there.”
