The animators took a six-hour kung fu class to get an idea of the movie's action.
Dustin Hoffman's contract included a stipulation which allowed him to do additional voice recording sessions without hindrance, should he be unsatisfied with his performance. Beyond the contract, Hoffman also tutored Jack Black on his performance in the nighttime stairway argument scene.
The individual fighting styles of the Furious Five members (Crane, Mantis, Tiger, Monkey, and Viper) are actual Kung Fu styles modelled after the particular animals. Po's fighting style is modelled after bear-style Kung Fu.
To get the ambiance of the movie, production designer Raymond Zibach and art director Heng Tang spent several years researching Chinese art and Kung Fu movies. This effort, combined with the rest of the crew's extensive research and knowledge of Chinese culture, so impressed the Chinese that there were meetings by official government cultural bodies to discuss why their own country has not produced animated movies of such quality themselves.
According to his online diary, Jackie Chan recorded his voice-overs during a single five-hour recording session in Los Angeles on October 15, 2007. He also recorded his lines for the Mandarin and Cantonese versions.