- The first Alpha and Omega film is different from its sequels in three ways. The first is that Kate and Humphrey's pups, who are the stars of the sequels, are absent, since this film shows how their parents met and fell in love. Second, the characters are voiced by celebrites (with it even serving as Dennis Hopper's final film role prior to his death) and not the voice actors in the sequels. Lastly, the first film's animals are less anthropomorphized than in the sequels.
- Barbie in the Nutcracker, being the first in the Barbie movie line, has some elements that make the film a little out of place with the later installments.
- This is one of the few Barbie movies not to feature any animal sidekicks. One could make an argument for Marzipan, the horse that pulls the heroes' sleigh, but she only appears twice and doesn't speak.
- Most of the main characters are male, contrasting with the subsequent movies that give Barbie's character at least one relevant female friend, villain, or animal sidekick.
- Clara and Eric share a kiss at the end (if a short, chaste one). Although the movie after this one followed suit, pretty much every later film refrains from showing Barbie's character kissing her love interest and sticks with hugs, Holding Hands, Longing Looks, dances, and the like instead.
- Castle in the Sky, being a very early Studio Ghibli movie, has its moments:
- The movie starts a trend in where the story focuses on two young leads, one of each gender, but this one has Pazu (the boy) as the lead character while Sheeta (the girl) is a supporting one. In most of Ghibli's later outputs with a girl-boy duo (Kiki and Tombo, Shizuku and Seiji, Chihiro and Haku, Haru and the Baron, Sophie and Howl, Arrietty and Sho — San and Ashitaka being one of the few exceptions) - the story would have the girl in the lead role instead.
- The movie depicts the Would Hurt a Child trope in a surprisingly graphic manner, opening with Sheeta getting caught in the crossfire of a shootout (one side has grenades), Pazu nearly getting shelled by cannons and narrowly falling a thousand miles from the titular castle, and the Big Bad actually trying to outright murder both Pazu and Sheeta by shooting at their faces from a handful of meters away. Later movies tend to tone down such moments with violence towards minors (if the Kid Hero is in any danger at all) depicted in slapstick manners bordering on Amusing Injuries (case in point, Kiki slipping off her broom before crashing through trees, Chihiro getting dragged a mile by Yubaba and falling flat on her face) without suggesting their lives are actually being threatened.
- Despicable Me:
- The animation looks much less smooth than in future films, given that it was Illumination's first project ever made. The lighting is also noticeably sunset-ish than usual.
- The soundtrack features a song called Minion Mambo
that's credited as being sung by The Minions. However, instead of Pierre Coffin doing the voice of the Minions, they're voiced by Lupe Fiasco (with his voice being sped-up) and they're speaking English instead of Minionese. The song also has a verse that says "we don't die, we multiply", something that has been disproven in later entries. - Surrounding the Illumunation Vanity Plate, this was the company's only film to have a fanfare play during it's logo, which all films released by the company after this one would lack.
- The filmmakers' explained origin for the Minions states that they are genetically modified corn kernels, which was later retconned that the Minions are actually Really 700 Years Old, having been around since at least the Paleozoic.
- There are also several moments in the film that imply the Minions aren't natural, as several characters are weirded out by their presence. E. G., Later entries in the franchise would have them portrayed as Mundane Fantastic, with no one really questioning their existence other than mistaking them for children.
- DreamWorks Animation:
- Amongst their first films, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas were traditionally animated instead of the now-omnipresent CGI. Also, Prince and Spirit were serious dramas, and Road and Sinbad were adventure films that contained many comedic elements, both in stark comparison to the zaniness the studio developed by Shrek (even if later franchises like Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon showed that they could still be a little more serious when called for, and Trolls having a similar genre to the aforementioned adventure films, despite being vastly different).
- On the CGI side of the library, their very first release, Antz is clearly aimed more towards older audiences, featuring mature themes and petty swearing, among other things, while later DWA films are clearly aimed toward family audiences.
- Ice Age:
- The first film featured humans and portrayed all of the animal characters more realistically (they usually walked like actual animals and could not speak to humankind). In the sequels however, the tone turned Lighter and Softer, all of the humans are written out of existence, and all of the animals are now the main inhabitants of the world.
- The original movie had David Newman to compose the score, while John Powell composed the score for all the sequels (until John Debney replaced him for the 5th installment). As a result, this makes the original movie's soundtrack stick out from the sequels like a sore thumb.
- The first film heavily implied that Manny had recently lost his wife and child to human hunters, thus explaining his very dour attitude and reluctance to be in a group. This is never mentioned again, even once Manny has a child with Ellie in the third film. He's portrayed as utterly new to the concept of having a family.
- The first film is the only film in the franchise in which "Manny" is specifically shown to be a nickname for Manfred, later movies simply have him go by Manny without the longer name being mentioned.
- The dub of Kiki's Delivery Service was Disney's first English dub of a Studio Ghibli film and it noticeably takes a lot more liberties with the film compared to their later dubs, such as adding new voice lines for scenes that were originally silent, changing a decent chunk of the film's music, including the opening and ending themes to new themes composed by Sydney Forest, amongst other changes. While there are many fans who don't mind and even prefer the changes made to the film, it can be a bit jarring to see the amount of liberties taken with this film in hindsight, considering Disney's later Ghibli dubs stayed largely faithful to the original Japanese releases with very few changes made. Disney would later reverse a lot of these changes for their 2010 re-release of the film in an attempt to be more faithful to the original Japanese release.
- The first film in The Land Before Time series is the only one that is not a musical, and it has a much darker tone. Also, hadrosaurs are called "bigmouths" instead of "swimmers".
- Madagascar 1:
- In the first film, Melman the giraffe is slightly less neurotic than he is in later installments. He also speaks with a slight Brooklyn accent, and in some scenes even shows hints of a Brooklyn attitude.
- The three penguins that aren't Skipper (who's voice is much more inconsistent between scenes than in later franchise installments as co-writer/co-director Tom McGrath was only planned to do the scratch take before becoming the permanent voice of the character after Robert Stack, who was meant to voice him, passed away shortly before production began) are clearly different from each other in the first film, but as a whole act more as goofy slapstick secret agent parodies. It wasn't until the second film (no doubt thanks to their show on Nickelodeon) that their personalities started to get fleshed out more and Skipper's voice becomes much more consistent.
- Shrek/Puss in Boots, being a series that has spanned multiple decades and spawning the latter as a separate franchise that has existed for over a decade, has had some of this.
- Shrek 1: The first film had more adult humor, more swearing, and was somewhat more satire-based (with Lord Farquaad looking like then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner). Also, since they weren't created at the time, it was the only installment where neither Puss in Boots nor Far Far Away appear.
- Shrek 2: Downplayed. Puss in Boots is slightly more cowardly and less heroic than he would be portrayed as in later installments of the Shrek series and his own spin-off material, even begging to Shrek for his life and attempting to hunt him down despite knowing little about him. However, after the initial fight, he is pretty much always portrayed as the heroic archetype he became well-known for being especially after Shrek 2, and the previously mentioned Weirdness could possibly be due to him still recovering from the betrayal of Humpty in the first Puss In Boots and sheer desperation to receive money for San Ricardo while not knowing about his Lives power and thus being unable to take on more dangerous and outright heroic but well-paying tasks.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has a couple compared to the rest of the Disney Animated Canon:
- The film has extended sequences of Snow White cleaning the house, the dwarfs searching downstairs, a song and dance scene, etc., and is overall quite light on plot compared to the films that followed.
- There's less Adaptation Expansion than Disney would later be known for. It's pretty much a feature length straight adaptation of the original fairy tale, only removing the two extra attempts by the Queen to kill Snow White. The only additions are that the prince comes into the story earlier and the dwarfs have more defined personalities. Contrast the next fairy tale Cinderella (1950), which was much more obviously a Disney created interpretation.
- The dialogue often has a more poetic quality than in later Disney films, and the characters, particularly Snow White and the Queen, often speak in rhyme. Afterwards, starting with Pinocchio (1940), more naturalistic dialogue would become the norm.
- The movie presents a caption towards the end, right before the kiss scene, which tells the audience that the dwarfs put Snow White in a glass coffin because they couldn't bear to bury her, and thus they kept mourning the girl until the prince's arrival. No following Disney movie would use a midway caption to sum up a plot passage like that.
- Tamagotchi: The Movie: Tanpopo stretches Memetchi's curly hair when she sees her for the first time. Had this been later in the OLM Incorporated Tamagotchi anime continuity, particularly in the 2009 series, Memetchi would have treated this as an insult; nothing like that happens in the film.
- Toy Story 1:
- While the composition of the elements is still impressive, watching the original Toy Story thirty years later it's noticeable how certain textures (hair and fabric) are left rather ambiguous and that the faces of human characters other than Sid are often out of frame. This was due to the technology not yet being at point where it could render organic things realistically: it wasn't until The Incredibles 1 that they took the plunge and made a film about people, and then highly stylised. It also wasn't until six years later Pixar got certain textures (hair and fabric) right starting with Monsters, Inc..
- The first Toy Story film is noticeably a lot darker and more adult in tone compared to its three sequels, relying far more on frightening imagery, Black Comedy and character conflict; Woody in particular is noticeably quite arrogant and aggressive in the original film, and at times, physically violent. Even small things, such as sound effects, are a lot harsher than its sequels, and the film contains some pretty grotesque and unnerving visuals (in the United Kingdom, it's the only Toy Story film to receive a "Parental Guidance" certificate). The third film does bring back some of this darkness, however.
- The film is also remarkably low-key compared to the bombastic flourishes of later films in the series.
- Toy Story doesn't have Pixar's Vanity Plate shown before the film (although it does appear after the credits). Instead, the Walt Disney Pictures logo, rather than fading to black, actually transitions into the movie proper, by having the camera pan away from the castle until it fades into the wallpaper of Andy's room. Retconned with the 3D re-release in 2009, as it opened with the current Disney logo and the Pixar logo.
- Plot-wise, conditions for toys coming to life and staying put in the presence of humans seems somewhat more lax in the first movie compared to later films. Notably, the second film has Woody allowing himself to be stolen in order to prevent the discovery of toys being alive (and later, Jessie reverting to being motionless even as she's being loaded into a plane bound for Japan), while the third film has the toys subjecting themselves to being abused by toddlers and remaining as toys no matter what happens. As such, the original movie's iconic moment where Woody and the mutant toys publicly come to life to scare Sid seems to contradict rules in the sequels. Justified, however, as Woody does say "Now, we're gonna have to break a few rules." to the mutant toys before they discuss their plan to scare Sid.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Super Adventure:
- This movie, which is also the first of the Western Zodiac-themed Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf movies, doesn't have the designated zodiac animal (the bull) featured as a character like the later ones. Instead, they simply give the bacteria kingdoms a bull motif in their names (White Bull Kingdom, Black Bull Kingdom, and Yellow Bull Kingdom).
- This movie does not feature the goats and the wolves forming a team, something that the later films would become known for.
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