The film explores issues of prejudice between the different species and the hardships they endure in their journey as they are guided by the spirit of Littlefoot's mother and forced to deal with a "Sharptooth" ("Tyrannosaurus rex"). This is the only Don Bluth film of the 1980s in which Dom DeLuise did not participate (instead, he starred in Disney's "Oliver & Company" that same year), and the only film in "The Land Before Time" series that is not a musical, as well as the only one to be released theatrically worldwide.