You’ve seen Inside Out, right? You know what we mean – that Pixar film about emotions as little people inside a young girl’s head and which was spectacularly successful with critics and audiences and at box offices around the world.
If you have seen it, as is likely, you might have been too thoroughly engrossed by the story to notice many of the following quirky little touches in the background. And if, amazingly, you haven’t yet seen the movie – well, here are a few things to look out for when you do.
A113
Many especially dedicated Pixar fans will know the significance of this apparently innocuous code – it’s actually the old signifier of the classroom at the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, where veteran Pixar boys John Lasseter and Inside Out director Pete Docter honed their skills.
In this film, A113 appears on the door of the young girl Riley’s classroom, and also in graffiti on a building. Docter mentions the A113 Easter egg in the following interview with Philippines-based social news network Rappler.
For the Birds
When Riley’s family are taking the car to their new residence in San Francisco, they pass a telephone wire on which some purple birds are perched. It’s a real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but some people who don’t miss it could recognize those birds as the stars of one of Pixar’s previous short films, For the Birds.
That film was first released in 2000 and accompanied the theatrical release of Monsters, Inc. the following year. You can still watch it on the DVDs of Monsters, Inc. and Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1.
Do Inside Out and Toy Story share a universe?
The Toy Story movies take place in a fictional part of North Carolina called Tri-County. It turns out that Inside Out is set in this area, too – look closely at the hockey arena which Riley visits for her tryouts. There are some hung up banners referring to triumphs of the Tri-County youth hockey league.
Hang on a moment – does this mean that some characters from the Toy Story franchise could have inadvertently appeared in Inside Out, too? We are not aware of any who have – but, in Riley’s classroom, we do see a girl wearing a skull outline much like the one on the t-shirt of Sid from the first Toy Story.
There has even been at least one claim that this girl is actually Hannah, Sid’s sister. Watch the following video and decide for yourself before hunting for the innumerable other creative Easter eggs in Inside Out!
