Easter Eggs

I've been waiting to tell ya'll about this easter egg for a while! When I was coming up with my story I wanted to sneak "easter eggs" (non-obvious messages or tributes usually found in small details in many popular TV shows or movies). In order to craft the best easter eggs, I conducted some research into Pixar's use of easter eggs to connect ideas, themes, storylines, and even other franchises to their movies. I also researched some of the best easter eggs in movie history according to Time.com.

Pixar's Use of Easter Eggs:

When I want to learn about storytelling I turn to the masters, Disney has been leading the world of entrainment for a LONG TIME, since Mickey Mouse's premiere in 1928 to be exact! The company had always had an amazing eye for detail, best exemplified by the thousands of hidden mickeys hidden in plain sight throughout the company's media portfolio. Disney assets like Pixar are no exemption to the brilliant use of details & easter eggs hidden in their productions. In fact, Pixar movies have so many easter eggs that fans have been able to connect all movies to the teacher in what's called "The Pixar Theory". The youtube channel Super Carlin Brothers ran by influential long-time Disney fans and Pixar enthusiasts, Jonathan and Ben Carlin, has published many videos pointing out many unknown easter eggs and using them to create theories about Pixar storylines (some of which have become so popular that Pixar and/or the movies' director has had to publicly respond).

Although it's fun to make theories about a possible master plan Pixar had when creating every movie, making them all interconnect into one universe, the truth is easter eggs are a storytelling method that Pixar primarily uses for 3 things:

1) Paying homage

In many occasions, easter eggs are just a way to pay homage to something. For example, one of the directors for "Toy Story 3", Lee Unkrich, is a big fan of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining"; according to The Insider, he even runs the "film's fan site", The Overlook Hotel. Being a director he got to make a lot of stylistic choices, he used the opportunity to subtly include a nod to the shinning in the form of Sid's carpet. Can you see it? 

Another famous homage included in nearly all Pixar movies is A113. John Lasseter explained that this actually is the number of the animation classroom at the California Institute of the Arts. For years animators included this as a way to immortalize the place in which they learned their craft and where many of them met
each other. Even now, A113 is a recurring easter egg in Pixar movies. 


2) Saving Time


In a scene from finding Dori, you can spot Riley from Disney • Pixar's "Inside Out" (Disney confirmed the appearance). This type of guest appearances are added primarily as a way to save time, animating is a very time-consuming process, creating a whole brand new character from scratch in order to use it for seconds of screen time takes time and it's an experience. Pixar creates great fan experience and saves production time by reusing characters molds, backgrounds, background objects, and even entire scenery. 

For example, The screen capture above is from the 1998 film "A bug's life", the one below is from "Monsters INC" which premiered 2001. 


3) Fandom

Although not every Pixar movie may be linked to each other, some certainly are. In a bonus-feature-style scene at the end of "Toy Story 2" you can see Flik from "A bug's life" (click on the hyperlink and forward to 2:59), he even has lines in the "blooper"! In the very short appearance, Flik thinks his filming the sequel to "A bug's life", creating comedic irony, and gets accidentally smacked as Buzz Lightyear cuts through some plants. Regardless of this scene being a "blooper" if fuels fandom! These easter eggs help channels like "The Theorizer" make theories about the "Pixarverse" and other youtube channels like "Seamus Gorman" continue gaining traction enough to get interviews with people such as director Brad Bird. 

Super Carlin Brothers crossover with Seamus Groman 

TIME Magazine "Best Easter Eggs":

Times magazine online wrote an article presenting that they consider the "best" easter eggs in movies. The article presented 10 Easter Eggs, 6 being from Disney or Pixar Movies (2 more being from other Disney assets). Most of the listed easter eggs are subtle character crossovers like R2D2 appearing as space debris in "both the 2009 Star Trek reboot as well as the 2013 sequel Star Trek Into Darkness." Others include the Pizza Planet Truck form Pixar appearing in almost every Pixar movie and Pacman in Tron. Some of the listed Easter Eggs surprised me, like the R2D2 one above because in today's highly sensitive world, IP is very well protected and arranging crossovers is a time consuming, length, and costly process. 

My very own Easter eggs! :

After presenting this research into easter eggs, I'm ready to reveal one of my own! The very name Y7Y given to the experiment in my film is an easter egg! The 7 is the key to unlocking its meaning! If you go to a keyboard you'll notice that the 7 falls on the same key that "&" does, so... replace 7 for & and you've got Y&Y! It's not very obvious at first but it stands for Ying & Yang, which's simple is black and white! Have you gotten it yet? Black and white like what the experiment's subjects were! It's hard to spot without me pointing it out, but it makes perfect sense that a top secret and highly unethical experiment would carry a code name. After making this one it was game on! I've been incorporating easter eggs into my production design as nods to many people, movies, and personal experiences! It's been a fun way to in a way to subtly incorporate a piece of me into my project. I say that because even if the story is my idea and I control everything the audience will see, this story isn't about me, it's about unity, logic, and it's about race... the human race. 

The 1964 "Y7Y" folder.