You can always count on finding a tonne of Easter eggs and connections to previous Pixar Animation films whenever a new film from the computer animation studio enters theatres. Finding Dory is no different, and despite the movie’s recent release, there are already a number of Easter eggs that you might not have seen.
A portion of the Finding Dory
Easter eggs are very simple to spot, such as the customary A113 reference to the California Institute of Arts classroom where many Pixar and Disney animators first started. Some are a little trickier to pick up on your first viewing, such as nods to Wall-E and the brace-faced Darla from Finding Nemo. Additionally, there are a couple Easter eggs in the film that we know are there but aren’t quite sure where they are.
A113
After the jump, find a list of the Finding Dory Easter eggs that we are currently aware of, but beware of spoilers.
Longtime Pixar viewers are aware that the letter and number combination A113 appears in each and every one of the animation studio’s films. As stated in the introduction, many Disney and Pixar animators began their careers in this California Institute of Arts classroom. This classic Easter egg actually makes two appearances in the movie.
Pixar’s Address and Year of Incorporation
Due to the fact that A113 first shows as two distinct tags on the sea lions Rudder and Fluke, it can be challenging to identify. Rudder’s tag reads “13,” whereas Fluke’s tag says “A1.” To miss its second appearance on the front licence plate of the aquarium truck that is delivering all the fish to Cleveland at the movie’s climax, however, you would have to be blind if you missed the first one, which was too quick to see. In one particular image, the licence plate is briefly displayed, making it impossible to miss.
Disneyland’s Submarine Voyage
The number A113 isn’t the only one that appears in Finding Dory with a deeper significance. You’ll see that the numbers 1200 and 86 are printed on the Marine Life Institute boat that pulls Dory out of the ocean. The fact that Pixar is located at 1200 Park Avenue in Emeryville, California, and that Steve Jobs bought the animation firm in 1986 meant that those numbers weren’t just made up.
Darla from Finding Nemo
Unbelievably, there’s still another numerical Easter egg that, if not for the explanation, you probably wouldn’t even notice. There is a water pipe marked “Seawater Supply TL59” in one of the scenes that takes place in the Marine Life Institute’s back rooms. Actually, this is a direct allusion to the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage attraction from Disneyland, which is a reference to Disney history in and of itself. The attraction originally went by the name Submarine Voyage and debuted in 1959 as a component of Tomorrowland (TL) without any Finding Nemo branding. What do you say?
Piper Poster
All right, enough with the numbers; this isn’t a math class. Here is a brief allusion to a character from Finding Nemo. You can see a picture of Darla, the young child with braces who was notorious for killing fish in Finding Nemo, if you look through Dory’s fish tank and into the background to the left of where she is alone in quarantine at the Marine Life Institute. Does another member of Darla’s family reside in California, a long way from her Australian home?
Lava Magnet
Finding Nemo’s short film, Piper, follows a cute little sandpiper bird as he learns how to forage for himself in the face of the ocean’s wrath. A poster of Piper can be seen in the background when Hank removes Dory from her quarantine tank and places her into a coffee pot, suggesting that Piper may not be too far from the Marine Life Institute.
WALL-E Calendar
Finding Dory gives recognition to other short films in addition to Piperi. A magnet with a familiar volcano from the short film Lava that preceded Inside Out last year can be seen on a tiny refrigerator in the same scene where the Piper poster can be seen. The identical picture of the volcano from the teaser poster is on the magnet, which is holding up some papers. However, Uku, the singing star from the short, has been given the title Lava’s place.
Luxo Jr.’s Star Ball
We have yet another Easter egg, which would take keen eyesight to find on your first viewing of Finding Dory. You probably wouldn’t notice this one, even if you were squinting for it. You can notice a WALL-Ecalendar tacked to the wall in the background on the right when Hank is going to drop Dory into the huge exhibit to find her parents while he is suspended over the Open Ocean display. If you think all the Pixar films take place in the same universe, this begs the question of whether Finding Dory takes place around the time that Buy N Large began producing WALL-E units.
The Wire’s Enemies Become Sea Lion Friends
The arrival of the bouncy ball with the red star on it is one of the more trustworthy Pixar Easter eggs. The ball first appeared in Luxo Jr., Pixar’s first short, and has since been seen in practically every one of the studio’s productions, including its shorts. Hank is afraid to enter the Kid Zone for fear of being poked, yet it appears that you can find the ball somewhere in there. But if you blink, you’ll also miss the iconic star pattern in the centre of the aquarium truck’s steering wheel from the movie’s climax. Once Hank starts operating the truck, you will notice it.
Finding Nemo Voice Actor All Grown Up
There is another amusing little Easter egg in The Incredibles 2 that you might not have noticed if you haven’t seen The Wire. We have already discussed the typical Pixar Easter egg offered by the sea lions Fluke and Rudder. Idris Elba and Dominic West provided the voices for Fluke and Rudder, although this isn’t a Pixar Easter egg. They play antagonists in the HBO crime series The Wire, despite the fact that they are closest buddies on this seaside rock in California’s bay. It’s just a cute little tidbit that makes the actors’ coupling even funnier.
John Ratzenberger, Pixar’s Good Luck Charm
One of the originalFinding Nemovoice actors made a cameo that you might not have noticed—we already covered this in a different story, just in case you missed it. Alexander Gould was the kid responsible for voicing the fish Nemo in the original 2003 movie. But it’s been 13 years in real time since then, and only one year in the timeline of the movie, so Gould was too old to voice the still young Nemo in the sequel. Instead, the grown up actor can be heard voicing one of the two aquarium truck drivers in the climactic sequence.
Pizza Planet Truck
Cheersstar John Ratzenberger has had a voice role in every single Pixar film, and he’s become the animation studio’s good luck charm. His trademark voice is a little more difficult to spot inFinding Dorythough, because it’s been turned up to a slightly higher pitch. He’s the grass-clipping crab Bill that Dory talks to before she heads back into the pipes after realizing her parents aren’t in her childhood home.
Volkswagen Beetle from Cars 3 or The Love Bug?
It should come as no surprise that the Pizza Planet Truck that first appeared inToy Storymakes an appearance inFinding Dory. But the question is where? I and several others could have sworn that they spotted the truck during the chase sequence on the highway at the end of the movie. However, director Andrew Stanton has indicated that you should be able to spot it much sooner,within the first 20 minutes. Maybe it’s among all the sunken junk, just like the…
Nemo’s Fish Tank Friends Return
Honestly, this doesn’t appear to be a real Easter egg. But we wanted to point it out since people think that it’s either a vehicle that will be seen inCars 3or Herbie from the classic Disney filmThe Love Bugand the contemporary sequelHerbie: Fully Loaded. However, in aninterview with our own Peter Sciretta, Andrew Stanton confirmed that it’s just a VW Beetle stuck at the bottom of the ocean.
Even though it’s not a Marvel movie,Finding Doryhad a scene at the end of the credits to add a couple great details to the end of the story. While the scene concludes with the sea lion Gerald finally sneaking back on the rock without Fluke and Rudder noticing, before that we see all the escaped aquarium fish fromFinding Nemostill inside the plastic bags in which they escaped. We’re not sure how they survived for a whole year in those plastic bags, or made it all the way to California from Australia in them, but we’re glad they’re getting a better home in the Marine Life Institute.
The Ultimate Pixar Easter Egg
In addition, you may notice that Jacques the Shrimp has a totally clean bag, empty of any algae dirtying up the place he’s called home for the past year. Aside from that, the inclusion of this character is a little bittersweet. The character was voiced by Joe Ranft inFinding Nemo. Sadly, he passed away in 2005, but Jacques has been kept in the family as his brother Jerome Ranft, a sculptor at Pixar, provides the voice for this quick scene. He also voices Red in theCarsfranchise now in place of his brother.
Die Hard References
This isn’t exactly a real Easter egg, but it’s actually a funny little April Fool’s Joke from earlier this year. Hank the septopus can camouflage himself in nearly any environment, and it turns out that he’s actually been hiding in every single Pixar movie. Even though this is just a joke, I actually had to do a double take with that shot fromMonsters University, because I thought Hank might actually be disguised as that monster’s backpack, since it looked like the shape of his head.
There’s a lot of theories online that all of the universes are connected, so somebody made a spoof of how we put Die Hard in all of our movies, and it was very funny, we thought it was tongue in cheek. So we said, ‘Alright, let’s do it,’ so we made two Die Hard references in this movie.
Finally, we have an assignment foryouto find two big Easter eggs. After the unifying Pixar Theory became a popular train of thought that connected all the movies from the animation studio, a parody video was created that explained how Pixar movies alsoexisted in the same universe asDie Hard. Well, a bunch of people at Pixar saw that, including Andrew Stanton, so they decided to make two references that actually made the fake theory true. Stanton toldCollider:
The only problem is we haven’t determined what those Easter eggs or references may be, and as far as I can tell, no one online has yet either. So if you head out to theaters to seeFinding Doryagain, keep your eyes and ears peeled to see if you can find theDie Hardreferences.
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