Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as an inhabitant of British Colonial India, "is an inhabitant of an oppressed country". Verne took the name "Nautilus" from one of the earliest successful submarines, built in 1800 by Robert Fulton, who later invented the first commercially successful steamboat. Fulton's submarine was named after the paper nautilus because it had a sail. Three years before writing his novel, Jules Verne also studied a model of the newly developed French Navy submarine "Plongeur" at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, which inspired him for his definition of the "Nautilus". The breathing apparatus used by "Nautilus" divers is depicted as an untethered version
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne in possession of powerful technologies, and other ideas—Zeman also opted to include themes and elements of other Verne novels. For example, the undersea sequences include references to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", and the aircraft "Albatross" from "Robur the Conqueror" also makes an appearance. Another Verne novel, "The Mysterious Island", may also have supplied some details. The film also pays tribute to the style of the pioneering early filmmaker Georges Méliès. Zeman likely saw Méliès's work at the Czech National Film Archive in Prague, where hand-colored prints were available of "The Impossible Voyage" (1904), "The Witch" (1906), and "The