Disney Pixar fun facts

Disney Pixar have hundreds of in jokes in each of their movies with some as obscure as the address of their studio popping up in etch a sketches. Here are just a few film facts.

Toy Story and Toy Story 2

• Voices include Tim Allen, Tom Hanks, Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer and Pixar favourite John Ratzenberger
• The story about the lives of toys and the friendship between an old fashioned cowboy doll and a new fangled space hero, was inspired by the Pixar short Tin Toy which is about a little tin wind-up one man band.
• The inspiration behind Toy Story 2 was the notion of toys as collectables brought about by John Lasseter’s reluctance to let his children play with his office collection. The story centres around quite a mature existential question. Is it better to live a long life without joy or just a few years of absolute happiness?
• There are several in jokes in Toy Story 2 among which are the bugs from A Bugs Life being chopped of a clump of leaves by Buzz and all of the images on the channels flicked through by Hamm when looking for a particular advert being images from Pixar adverts or shorts.

Monsters Inc

• Voices include John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Tilly and of course… John Ratzenberger
• Monsters Inc was based, unsurprisingly, on director Pete Docter’s childhood fears about monsters in the closet. Unlike his childhood views however these monsters scare only because it is their day job and are actually frightened of children themselves. It is therefore a disaster when a human child escapes into their world.
• So much attenton was put into the movie that the animators created back stories for each of the buildings, most of which we barely see. Each one was designed to support a wide range of monster heights and weights.
• In an earlier synopsis it was planned that Sully was the janitor not the top scarer
• Sully has 2,320,413 computer generated hairs which are animated to all move individually. In Boo’s bedroom look out for the Nemo soft toy and a Jessie doll from Toy Story 2. At this time Finding Nemo was just in post production so this was a well planned future joke.

The Incredibles

• Voices include Craig T Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L Jackson, Jason Lee and yes John Ratzenberger
• Mr Incredible and his family were super heroes until being a super hero was discouraged due to insurance claims from botched rescues. Mr Incredible is bored and unhappy in his “normal” life but things soon get interesting when a super villain starts to pick off ex super heroes one by one.
• This movie was inspired by writer-director Brad Bird’s desire to balance his home life and kids with the demands of his work life and the two not always sitting well together.