Trivia: Because Robin Williams ad-libbed or improvised so many of his lines, the film was ruled ineligible for the Adapted Screenplay category at the Academy Awards.
Trivia: When the tiger kitten transforms, if you watch it frame by frame its head bears a striking resemblance to Mickey's head. There is a long standing tradition for Disney to put 'hidden Mickeys' in their movies.
Trivia: When the Sultan is idly building a tower of miniature animal figures, one of the figures is the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Also, the king crab the genie pulls out of his cookbook is Sebastian from The Little Mermaid.
Trivia: The director allowed Robin Williams to ad lib through most of his voice recordings, as long as he stuck to the script where it was necessary. He was free to make his own jokes - the art crew then animated the Genie based on the best cuts of Williams' recordings.
Trivia: Sultan is zooming around the throne room on the Magic Carpet. Sultan swoops down, barely hitting Aladdin and Jafar, but does hit Iago. Step frame by frame throughout the scene and as Sultan enters the shot on the left, Aladdin's face "Morphs" dramatically for two frames into a gigantic, Mickey Mouse-like head, three times normal size. This was an inside animation joke, only noticed at frame by frame speed.
Trivia: In the original theatrical release of Aladdin, the opening song, "Arabian Nights" was different. American citizens of Middle Eastern descent took offense at the line referring to the Middle East as a place where, " They cut off your ear if they don't like your face, It's barbaric, but hey, It's home". This version still survives on the original music cassette release of the Disney Music, "Songs from Aladdin" tape, as well as on the movie soundtrack. The cassette was released the week of the movie in retail stores. The written lyrics are also in the various original Disney Music Publishing "Score from the Movie Aladdin", sheet music books. In the video release, the song was looped in with new lines" Where it's hot and immense and the heat is intense, It's barbaric, but hey, It's home".
Trivia: The first part of the theme of 'Prince Ali', the parade song, is (unintentionally, I'm sure) almost chord for chord and note for note the same as 'To Life' from "Fiddler on the Roof." Duplicated chord structures are extremely common, and similar themes certainly aren't rare, but this is an unusually blatant example.
Trivia: Disney created the fictitious Agrabah for the film because the story is traditionally set in Baghdad. This was done because of the notoriety of Iraq (whose capital is Baghdad) in the Persian Gulf War a year before the film's release.
Trivia: When Aladdin initially meets Princess Jasmine in the marketplace, a bushel of apples make up a "Hidden Mickey" at one of the vendor's fruit stands.
Trivia: Near the end of the film the Genie wears a Hawaiian shirt and Goofy hat - this is a tribute to Robin Williams' outfit in the 1989 short "Back To Neverland" that was filmed for Disney's MGM Studios.
Trivia: The opening scene with the street merchant was unscripted. Robin Williams was asked to stand behind a table that had several objects on it that were covered by a bed sheet. Williams had no idea what was underneath the bed sheets, so when he took it off, the animators asked him to take objects from the table and describe it into a character. Much of his lines were considered inappropriate for a Disney film.
Chosen answer: The cave has some level of sentience. It is aware of who is entering the cave, and decides whether to allow them to enter. It is able to tell that Abu is with Aladdin. It seems to keep a watchful eye on the person in the cave, and when it says "touch nothing" what it means is "don't try to take anything. It seems it was fine with them interacting with the carpet, and only had an issue when Abu was attempting to actually take something.