The Adventures of Baron Munchausen they approached the person again when they were done, he was met with the reply, "I'm not gonna pay you, because I don't want to seem to be doing anything that could benefit Terry Gilliam." "Munchausen" is the third entry in Gilliam's ""Trilogy of Imagination"", preceded by "Time Bandits" (1981) and "Brazil" (1985). All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible." Gilliam explains that, "The one theme that runs through all three of these pictures is a consistently serious battle between fantasy and what people perceive as reality."
Baron Munchausen the first version of the text in which Munchausen appeared as a fully developed literary character, had a circuitous publication history. It first appeared anonymously as "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia", a 49-page book in 12mo size, published in Oxford by the bookseller Smith in late 1785 and sold for a shilling. A second edition released early the following year, retitled "Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages, and Sporting Adventures of Baron Munnikhouson, commonly pronounced Munchausen", added five more stories and four illustrations; though the book was still anonymous, the new text was probably by Raspe,