Hi, everybody.

My name is Jonas Rivera.

I'm a producer and the senior vice president of production

at Pixar Animation Studioses

and I'm talking to you today from my home office

and I'm here to talk to you today about Pixar's Easter eggs.

[upbeat instrumental music]

It's an old tradition at the studio,

something we're very proud of.

It's kind of appropriate that I'm talking to you

from my home office 'cause my home office is sort of a

living Easter egg, I suppose.

So every since A Bug's Life,

Pixar filmmakers have hidden at least one Easter egg

from an upcoming project in our films.

Now, some of these are fairly obvious,

some of them are a little more subtle

and there's lots of different reasons why and how

we've done that.

And so we're gonna walk through every single one

from the beginning.

[sweeping instrumental music] [bugs clapping]

So A Bug's Life was our second film.

It came out in 1998.

It was the follow-up to Toy Story

and I love that film, I worked on that film.

I was the art department coordinator

so I was really involved in the minutiae

and I'd say this is kinda where the Easter egg tradition

sort of began, right.

We were just very scrappy and putting anything we could

in that movie and the specific one to talk about here,

'cause it sort of is a subtle nod to Toy Story 2,

which hadn't come out yet,

was putting Woody in one of those

funny little outtake scenes at the end

as a nod to Toy Story 2.

[upbeat instrumental music] Oh yes, Princess Abba.

Abba. [laughs]

Where are my platforms?

Let's go disco.

[crew laughs]

Let me try it again, all right.

[Director] Okay, tail slate.

[slate clacks]

But one of the things about A Bug's Life that's cool

is it's also the first place other than Toy Story 1

where you see the Pizza Planet truck.

And that's sort of been this long running tradition

in terms of the Pixar Easter eggs.

We get a lot of credit for being clever on it

but the truth is, in that film,

we were just more scrappy than we were clever.

We just didn't have a lot of modeling budget

to build all these props we needed for this world

and so I just remember someone pulling

the Pizza Planet truck over from the,

we call the digital backlot,

and using it in a shot kinda thinking no one would notice.

People noticed and that became part of our tradition.

So, and I think, A Bug's Life is sorta the point of origin

of this whole conversation.

[cheerful instrumental music] Boo.

[monsters scream] [dishes clink]

It's another one that's near and dear to my heart.

I was the art department manager on this film

and working with Pete Docter kinda for the first time.

We had so much fun putting stuff in this film

and the film that came out after that was Finding Nemo

so what we did is we kinda snuck three little nods to Nemo

somewhere a little more subtle, more obvious in this one.

The first one, if you remember the Harryhausen's restaurant,

which of course Harryhausen's itself

was a little Easter egg,

a nod to one of our favorite animators of all time.

Inside the restaurant there's murals

and we used kind of the clown fish motif

on one of those murals which was fun.

There's a scene in the movie where Randall is banished

out into the world, thrown into some little trailer

and on the wall inside that trailer is--

We used the clown fish model on the wall,

like it was caught, like a fisherman caught it.

By the way, that's double prizes because that trailer

is the trailer from A Bug's Life,

where parked next to the Pizza Planet truck.

So that's an Easter egg within an Easter egg.

But my favorite one was at the end of the movie

where Sullivan comes back into Boo's room

and he's kinda putting her back, saying goodbye.

And he hands her a bunch of toys, one of which is Jessie,

but the other one was

literally Nemo. [toy squeaks]

We took the Nemo model that hadn't even been finished,

if I remember correctly.

I think the model was done but it hadn't been articulated

and made ready for animation.

I think the character people had to build,

one little control

and squeeze him [toy squeaks]

'cause you squeeze him to make a little squeezy toy sound.

Audiences none the wiser 'cause of course,

they hadn't seen Finding Nemo yet, but we knew

and we thought that was pretty fun.

And that really was the modern first step

of the modern tradition of putting an upcoming film's

character or Easter egg in a current one.

Maybe he only speaks whale.

We need--

Ah, Dory? To find--

What are you doing? His son.

What are you doing?

Finding Nemo, which came out in 2003.

This was a fun one because it's two for one Easter egg

snick into this film.

The first is in the dentist office.

If you look really close there's a family

where there's a little boy reading a comic book

and the cover is an Incredibles comic,

so it's a little nod to what would be The Incredibles

and Mr. Incredible is on there.

It's sort of a two-D graphic done in the art department

which we thought was really cool.

Mr. Incredible was added in, it was pretty early,

I think we were still working on The Incredibles

and the design was probably still being finessed,

but Mr. Incredible and probably the whole family

wasn't quite ready for prime time but I think

the graphics and the drawings were.

So that's why they're kinda a comic book version

in Finding Nemo, 'cause I don't think--

We usually, especially in those days,

we didn't have time to go in and tweak

and make a lot of additions for these things.

They're just kinda fun ways to make a nod to the next film.

Here's another bonus one I'm gonna give you

that's not a nod but while I'm here,

in that dentist office I remember they wanted--

You know in dentist's office how you have

kinda funny fake plants.

They needed to put some plant set dressing

in the dentist's office and they took some of the palm trees

from Monsters Inc that we used in the world,

like the weird monster trees, scaled them way down

and put them in little pots. [chuckles]

So the plants in the dentist's office

were actually monster trees from Monsters Inc.

But I'm off the topic, let's get back to future Easter eggs.

[rocket whooshes] [Mr. Incredible groans]

[rocket clings]

[robot creaks]

[robot thuds]

[people cheer]

Just like old times.

The Incredibles, 2004's Pixar film.

[bell rings] [upbeat instrumental music]

If you blink, you might miss Red,

the fire truck from the future film Cars,

actually shows a brief cameo in The Incredibles.

Red, I think, sort of fit Brad's vision

of The Incredibles,

which is in this kinda 1950s blurry era,

very romantic designed world,

so that's why he's there.

[singing in a foreign language]

Thanks, little chef.

This one was a lot of fun.

I was working on the film Up at the time

and they needed a dog in one of the montage scenes.

So the idea was they wanted to sneak Dug from Up.

My name is Dug.

I have just met you and I love you.

What I love about this one is they did it

in a very clever way because unfortunately we weren't

finished with Dug at the time.

His shading and his fur and groom and so forth weren't done,

so they took Dug and they just used the model

and they lit it to create the shadow

of Dug [Dug barks]

quickly barking, as the character runs through.

So it's kinda because of that clever approach,

it's really one of my favorite ones so look close,

you'll see the shadow of Dug in Ratatouille.

Also, in the apartment, if you look close,

we snuck in Hal, the little cockroach from Wall-E

just kinda running by really quickly.

We figures poor Linguini's apartment might [chuckles]

be the right place for Hal to make an appearance.

So it's a little nod to who you'd meet later in WALL-E.

[cheerful instrumental music] [ball taps]

[WALL-E growls]

WALL-E's literally a treasure trove of Easter eggs.

I mean, if you look at WALL-E's trailer,

it's full of stuff.

It's a little like the Toy Story 4 antique mall

that we did years later

but one of the favorite ones of mine in WALL-E,

again 'cause I was working on Up at the time,

was they took Carl Fredricksen's, you know,

his cane with the tennis ball things on the floor,

they took his can and they set dressed it around there.

And you can kinda see it in there twice,

once when WALL-E takes the magnifier,

puts it on front of the ipods when he's watching the film.

If you look just above that

you'll see Carl's [chuckles] walker.

And again, it falls off the ceiling of his truck

after it's knocked there by EVE later in the film.

WALL-E actually collides with it there.

So, that walker is important to us and important to Carl.

Apparently, it's important to WALL-E.

[upbeat instrumental music] [house thuds]

Up is very near and dear to my heart.

It's the first film I produced

so I'm very, very proud of that film.

Our fun Easter egg in that film,

my favorite scene it's when Carl lifts up

and all the balloons fly his house.

He goes away and he's kinda crashing things

and going through town.

We cut to a little girl in her room

who's playing with toys as the house goes by her window

and if you look closely, kinda near her bed,

almost under her bed,

you'll see a sweet, little cute pink teddy bear.

Turns out that's Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear,

who we'd meet later in Toy Story 3.

The audience doesn't know yet that he's actually

a pretty bad guy but in that one shot

in that sweet little girl's room,

he's just a cute little Easter egg that we snuck in.

I actually got in trouble on this one

because it came up in some conversation, some interview,

not unlike this, talking about when we were getting ready

to launch Up people were asking, you know,

What kind of things have you snuck in?

Even back then they were asking

and I said, Oh, you look close in the little girl's room

you'll see a little terry bear

and turns out that's the villain in 'Toy Story 3'.

On camera, like six months, maybe even a year

before Toy Story 3 came out,

I revealed and spoiled that Lots-o' was the villain.

Lee Unkrich wasn't happy with me but anyway,

Didn't hurt the movie, I guess,

but I felt bad nonetheless.

[upbeat instrumental music] [Jessie gasps]

[toys clack]

[toys squeak]

[door squeaks] Can I have your computer?

No.

In 2010, we released Toy Story 3

and in Andy's room, he's got a lot of stuff in there.

He's a teenage boy now so there's posters

and chachkies and things like that

and if you look really close you'll see one of this posters

is Finn McMissile, who you'll meet later in Cars 2.

Also, this is a really interesting one.

This is a deep cut because also in Andy's room

is a little street sign that says Newt Crossing.

That sign is a reference to a film we were working on

at the time, a film we decided to actually

not put into production for various reasons,

but that little sign is a nod to a film

that was never even made

so that's a real deep-cut Easter egg.

That happens.

We develop these films and there's so many ideas

that never kind of make it through the creative process

and Newt was one of them.

We all really loved it and so we're kinda happy

that it lives on a little bit in Andy's room.

There's anywhere from three to six films

in various stages of development at Pixar

at any given time and half of them come through

and half of them evolve into other ideas.

Part of the creative process,

actually something we're really proud of,

you know it's not a one-to-one process.

We kind of pride ourselves in working on these stories

and concepts until we feel the movie worthy

and for whatever reason they don't kind of

make it to that level, we move on and get to the next thing.

So it's just part of our creative churn.

McQueen is very sad.

I will beat his cry baby bottom today.

And there's the insult we were missing.

Roxy.

Cars 2 came out in 2011

and while we were working on that film,

we were also working on Brave,

which would come out in 2012.

So this was a challenge

because how do you take something from

the highlands of Scotland and put it in the world of Cars?

But we did it.

If you look close in Ye Left Turn Inn, in London,

during the race, there's the DunBroch family tapestry

that you'll see later in Brave,

only it's a Car-ified version.

You know, 'cause everything in the world of Cars,

even the clouds, are somehow Car-ified.

So this tapestry was no different,

which is a kinda cool little nod to Brave.

[dramatic instrumental music] [arrow whooshes]

[arrow thuds]

Brave was tricky because obviously it's such a specific

era and locations but yet we worked hard.

So with Monsters University in mind,

we had this scene in the witch's hut

with all the wood carvings

so if you look closely, you'll see Sullivan.

And even though Sullivan from Monsters appeared

in the original Monsters,

this was our nod to Monsters University.

Also, special points, you look close

you'll see a wood Pizza Planet truck kind hidden away.

So we had to keep the tradition alive

and Brave was a special challenge.

Argh!

[child screams]

[buttons beep]

[machine pop] [upbeat instrumental music]

[crowd cheers]

2013, Monsters University.

We had these scare games.

That was kind of our opportunity to hide something in there

and this in fact was The Good Dinosaur.

Good Dinosaur gets two of these.

If you look closely, we've got toy versions

of some of the dinosaurs hidden in the scare games scene,

which is kind of fun.

They sort of seem to fit the world

and again we had to keep that tradition alive.

This is an interesting one 'cause this is two years

before Good Dinosaur comes out.

You'll see these little characters show up as toys

in Monsters University,

which is a little bit or a reminder at how glacial

our process is in animation.

I mean, it takes about anywhere from four to six years

to make one of these films so we usually have a long runway

which gives us the ability to kinda put things

in previous films.

As a matter of fact, on Good Dinosaur,

it covers two films 'cause if I jumped ahead

to Inside Out--

[Riley slurps]

Ah!

Brain freeze.

Ah! Ah!

Ah!

Another film near and dear to my heart.

That's the second film I produced.

We had this idea of this scene in Inside Out

where Riley and her family were driving from Minnesota

to San Francisco and they needed a couple of places

to stop along the way.

We thought about that kinda classic roadside

weird California dinosaur out in the desert

and we thought, oh my gosh, that's perfect.

So we took a couple of the dinosaur characters.

They weren't entirely shaded but that was fine

'cause we reshaded them as like these kinda crummy-looking

concrete things that you'd see at a roadside

and that's where mom and dad and Riley park

and in fact, poor dad let's the brake off

and it goes right through--

You know, the tails goes through the window.

So The Good Dinosaur got to be Easter eggs in two films.

[dinosaurs roar]

The Good Dinosaur came out in 2015.

We were working on Finding Dory

so we had to find a way to keep the tradition alive

with Finding Dory.

So if you look close at the bottom of the water

in The Good Dinosaur, when Arlo is learning to swim,

you'll look down there you'll see Hank,

Hank the octopus from Finding Dory.

Hank is a really complex character and we love him so much

so he got to be our little nod to Finding Dory

the year later.

So Hank is an example of kinda what all these are.

It's a little bit of using an existing model

or existing character but, more than that,

it's sort of a fun look

at what might be ahead for the audience.

[upbeat instrumental music] I remember my family.

[water splashes] They're out there somewhere.

I have to find them.

Guys, you gotta help me.

Guys, guys, hello?

2016 we released Finding Dory,

the follow-up to Finding Nemo.

This one's really fun because [chuckles]

it's maybe one of the more subtle ones.

The driver of the truck that's heading for Cleveland

at the end of the film,

driver has a bandaid and on that bandaid,

and you gotta look close,

it's like a kid's bandaid and image of Lightning McQueen.

That's how it is at my house.

Every time I need a bandaid it's got some character,

Pixar character on it.

So this driver's the same.

So the Lightning McQueen bandaid on his hand

is our nod to Cars 3

that was coming out the following year.

It's fun 'cause I think, I don't know if it's a mix of

it gets harder and harder to sneak these in

or if it was just we try to make it harder.

I don't know.

EVeryone's gonna probably give you

a different answer on that

but nonetheless, it's a really fun one

'cause it's so subtle.

[engines roar] Good luck out there, Champ.

You're gonna need it.

In Cars 3 there's two really cool ones.

One is Cruz Ramirez, who I love, puts up an image

on her display to motivate kinda the homesick trainee

and that image is the Santa Cecilia grave site

that you'd see later in Coco, to remind them of home.

Santa Cecilia, [speaks in a foreign language].

Win for them.

We just love that set in Coco

and it would seem like that would be a place

that you yearn for so it was kind of a two for one.

It really worked for the story

but it was also kept our tradition alive

by showing a little nod to Coco.

There's also the guitar.

We snuck the guitar in, which maybe begs the questions

of how cars might even play a guitar but nonetheless,

they're in the little bar, the Cotter Pin,

and there's a band playing.

So if you look on the wall, you'll see Miguel,

the famous silver guitar from Coco.

So it's kinda two nods

to the next year's film Coco in Cars 3.

[upbeat instrumental music] ♪ Remember me ♪

♪ Though I have to say goodbye ♪

♪ Remember me ♪

In 2017, we released Coco,

a film we're tremendously proud of.

This one's really fun 'cause this one has a couple in it.

There's a scene when Miguel and Hector are on their way

to the land of the dead for the first time

and the city and all the sets in Coco are so lush,

they're so detailed.

There's a lot of room to kinda put stuff in and set dress

and if you look really closely

there's an Incredibles poster on one of the walls,

which is clearly a nod to The Incredibles 2

that was in production.

But also in production during Coco was Toy Story 4

so if you look closely towards the beginning,

I think when Miguel is kinda running into the plaza

for the first time after he says hi to Donte,

there's a rack of pinatas up on the one

of the little storefronts.

There's a Buzz and Woody pinata up there.

Those pinatas are a good example of how you can't just throw

something from one film into another.

You have to honor the era,

you have to honor the art direction,

the tone, the setting of the film

and so making pinatas out of Buzz and Woody

were sort of the perfect example of how that could work.

[dramatic instrumental music]

Evelyn, she's escaping.

Well, go after her.

2018, we released Incredibles 2 and at that time

we were working on Toy Story 4

so we wanted to make sure

there was a couple little nods from Toy Story 4.

One of them is in a scene with Elastigirl

kinda swinging through the city.

There's a billboard that showcases Woody's hat.

We had to honor Sheriff Woody,

sort of the epitome of Toy Story,

so that was our way to do that.

Actually, I think one of the coolest ones

was a new character.

It's a scene with Jack-Jack, he's in his crib,

in his room there and we took Duke Caboom,

the model of Duke Caboom that no one had met yet

'cause no one had seen Toy Story 4

and he ends up being a little toy in Jack-Jack's crib.

It's a little quick shot but we were really happy

to see Duke in there 'cause we love Duke so much.

I think Duke also sort of fit the world and era

of The Incredibles 'cause in our minds,

Duke is sort of a late '60s, early '70s kinda toy

that we might've had and so I think Brad felt

he was a good fit for little Jack-Jack.

So you think you meet him in Toy Story 4

but he actually shows up in Incredibles 2 first.

Let's talk about the theory that comes up

when we often talk about this

and I think the Duke Caboom Easter egg in Incredibles

helped amplify this.

People ask us is the fact that Jack-Jack

has a Duke Caboom toy proof that all the Pixar films

take place in one universe.

You know, it comes up enough.

I once asked Andrew Stanton,

What's you take Andrew, with the all the films

take place in one universe?

He said, Are you kidding?

You think we're that smart.

There's no way that we would be that clever to do it.

Let the fans think it

and kind of draw their own conclusions.

And so that's kind of our take.

It's really just us being scrappy

and having a little bit of fun

but we kinda like that it's grown into its own thing.

[dramatic instrumental music] Meet Forky.

Hi.

[Group] Hi.

Ah! [thuds] [Woody gasps]

2019 we released Toy Story 4

and I'm very proud of that film

'cause it's the third film I got to produce

and work with an amazing crew.

And it was really fun on that picture

because you had these amazing sets

that were just ripe for Easter eggs.

You had the antique mall, which has everything in it.

Something from every single Pixar film, even the shorts,

and then you had the carnival

and that's where we decided we should have

our forward-facing Easter egg.

So one of the things we did,

'cause down the hall they're working on Onward.

We loved Onward so much and we loved that van,

Barley's van with that amazing Pegasus painting.

We asked if we could take that painting

and we transposed onto the bounce house

that's part of the carnival,

you know, where the toys are in the third act there.

So if you look close, you'll see Barley's van painting

on a bounce house for whatever reason

we thought it should be.

Once we put these Easter eggs in,

we have to deal with the fact that our films

continue to change and you cut and add in things,

and so forth, and so.

Yeah, once they're in, it doesn't mean they're locked in.

We still have to roll with the creative punches

on these things but we always have made sure

that they show up one way or another.

Of course, it started in Toy Story 1,

you know, the Pizza Planet truck

and so we obviously had to put it in Toy Story 4,

but we didn't want it to be so obvious

because it just felt like it somehow found itself

into every film so we had to really rethink it.

So we came up with this, I think it was Josh Cooley,

I don't remember who came up with this idea,

but the Toy Story 4 version of the Pizza Planet truck

is actually seen on a really ugly calf tattoo

on the carnival worker that is manning the carnival booth

where Ducky and Bunny are from.

And it's really quick but, for some reason,

that carnival worker has a tattoo

of the Pizza Planet truck on his leg.

We were really proud of ourselves

with that one, for some reason.

The character's name was Axel, after our editor Axel Geddes.

He's voiced by Bill Hader, which is funny

because he barely even has a line.

We basically hired Bill Hader, who we love

and is a friend of ours from Inside Out, to say--

I don't know, what's the line?

The line's like, Huh.

Rad.

[chuckles] You know, or something.

He says nothing but it's Bill Hader

The spell brings him back.

Dad will be back.

What? Back, like back to life.

That's not possible.

It is with this.

While we were making Onward, of course the film

that's in production down the hall is Soul.

It hasn't even been released yet

but we had to make sure we had

a little bit of Soul in Onward.

So in the family kitchen, if you look closely,

when Colt kinda comes in and knocks everything down

and sits down there,

there's some records on the table that if you look close,

that's Dorothea Williams record and everybody knows

Dorothea Williams is the famous jazz singer

that everyone loves in the movie Soul.

So it's a forward nod to the world of Soul.

I think the truth about all of these Easter eggs

that point forward is they're really

just a fun wink at the audience,

something that they don't even know they're seeing.

But what we hope, with all of our films,

is that people watch them multiple times over,

over, over time and people grow up with them

and families enjoy them.

And so what's fun is it helps them age well, in a way,

is that you'll go see Soul

and you'll see Dorothea Williams,

you might, once you're rewatching Onward,

our hope is you go, oh my gosh, look at that little--

That it deepens the experience in some way.

It's not necessarily anything that we put a ton

of storytelling around.

It's not like we're leaving clues

to what the narrative is going to be.

It's more just a fun wrapper for the audience

and something fun for our crews to put into these pictures.

[upbeat instrumental music]

There are more future-facing Easter eggs

and we're pretty sure if you look, you'll find them.

That was about every future forward-facing Easter egg

in a Pixar movie that I could think of.

That's a lot of 'em.

I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you stay tuned

because we got a lot of new movies coming out

with a lot of new forward-facing Easter eggs

and they're going to be fun to keep looking.

I promise we'll keep the tradition alive.

So thank you so much for watching and enjoy.