Happy Easter, fellow Animation fans! I thought it’d be fun to talk a little about Pixar’s Easter Eggs today. As most fans know, the studio’s films are full of little in-jokes, references and hidden details for the eagle-eyed fans. You can have fun trying to find them all when you rewatch their movies! Here are some of the ‘biggest’ Pixar Easter Eggs so you can go on a hunt looking for them!
-A113: This one is not Pixar exclusive. Many animators have referenced the famous classroom at CalArts, where many of the Disney Animators studied. Brad Bird was he first one to use it back in 1987 in an animated segment of the show Amazing Stories.
Notable examples include Andy’s mom’s car in the Toy Story trilogy, and the most obvious one in Wall-E: the directive Auto was given so the ship wouldn’t return to Earth.
-Luxo Ball: It’s the ball Luxo, Jr was playing in Pixar’s first short film. Since then, it’s appeared in most of their productions. You can see Andy’s friends running after it in the first Toy Story or in Boo’s room in Monsters, Inc.
-Pizza Planet Truck: You know that truck Woody and Buzz use to get to Pizza Planet? It’s been in every single Pixar movie (except The Incredibles). The obvious ones are the first two Toy Stories where the toys actually are in it or even drive it. Eve scans it in Wall-E and it’s featured in Brave as a wood carving in the witch’s cottage.
-John Ratzenberg: He’s the voice of Hamm and the Abominable Snowman. In fact, he’s voiced at least one character in every Pixar film and is considered their good luck charm. My personal favorite is his cameo role at the very end of The Incredibles as The Underminer who declares “war on pace and happiness”. He then was featured in a video game called The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer.
-Pixar films: Every film references the next one but most of them also include plenty of references to past Pixar films. So you can see Dug in Ratatouille but you can also see Andy has a postcard that says ‘Carl and Ellie Fredricksen’ in TS3.
You can read all about the Pixar references and in-jokes right here. And make sure you pay the attention when you go watch Monsters University. The internet will be waiting to see where the Easter Eggs were hidden!