Hey guys, it's Jan here. Part of the fun of a new Pixar movie is spotting
all the Easter Eggs and references that the animators have cleverly packed into the film.
So, I'm happy to say that the studio's latest flick, The Good Dinosaur, has plenty to keep
us Easter Egg-hunters entertained! With the movie out now, I've collected as
many eggs and references as I could spot in this video.
I know your eagle eyes will have noticed other fab ones too, so share away in the comments
below! Just a quick reminder there are spoilers ahead,
so if you're not ready for that, check out my non-spoiler review of the movie right here!
After eating some rotten fruit they found on the ground, Arlo and Spot start laughing
and hallucinating. As well as floating through the air and swapping heads with each other,
they also see multiple eyes pop up on each other's faces, giving them a look similar
to "Squishy" aka Scott Squibbles, a character in Monsters University, who just happens to
have been voiced by The Good Dinosaur director Peter Sohn!
Oh, and by the way, The Good Dinosaur was originally meant to be released before Inside
Out and after Monsters University; so it's no surprise that Monsters University had a
little Easter Egg for this movie in the shape of a toy Arlo on a bedroom floor.
Of course, Arlo and Spot aren't the first animated characters who've been drunk or under
the influence of other, er, substances! For example, in Disney's Dumbo, Dumbo and Timothy
Q Mouse get drunk on champagne and start hallucinating pink and multi-coloured elephants. And, more
recently, in Big Hero 6 Baymax behaves like he's drunk when he's low on battery.
When the Styracosaurus Forrest Woodbush and Arlo compete to see who gets to keep the little
pooch-like human, they have a naming match, with each of them suggesting names. One of
the name's Arlo comes up with is Spike, which also happens to be the name of the slug-like
employee Augustus Jones at Monsters, Inc! And, interestingly, Spike was also the real
name of the dog who played Old Yeller in the classic 1957 Disney movie, which director
Peter Sohn has said was an influence on The Good Dinosaur.
Oh, and I think I also heard Arlo suggest the name Grumpy, who of course is one of the
seven dwarves in Disney's Snow White And The Seven Dwarves!
When Arlo and Spot are running away from a bunch of pterodactyls, they see what looks
like the silhouette of an adult Apatosaurus in the distance, which is an easter egg for
the Dinoco sign in Toy Story, although as they get closer they see the silhouette is
actually made up of two T-rexes.
The Good Dinosaur also has a whole bunch of easter eggs to the Jurassic Park movies.
When Arlo and Spot duck down behind a rock in the middle of a plain as a herd of longhorns
run around them, it's a definite call-back to the scene in Jurassic Park where the Gallimimus
run through the valley as a flock, and Dr Grant and the kids hide behind a tree trunk.
And when Spot tries to hide inside a tree trunk from the pterodactyls trying to attack
him, it calls to mind when Julianne Moore hid in a tree trunk from a stegosaurus in
The Lost World and Omar Sy hid inside a tree trunk from a raptor in Jurassic World.
Also, there's also a little Lion King reference in the scene where three raptors approach
Arlo and Spot, ready to attack them, which feels very similar to when the trio of hyenas
did the same to Simba and Nala. But there's actually a fourth raptor in The
Good Dinosaur; and just like the scenes in Jurassic Park where raptors are shown working
together, one of them distracting you, while another attacks you from a different side;
three raptors take Arlo and Spot's attention from the front, while a fourth one tries to
pounce on them from the back. Oh, and the raptor who sneaks up on Arlo from
behind is called Earl and he's voiced by none other than Pixar's lucky charm himself, John
Ratzenberger. And when the raptors jump on Butch's back
and attack him, it calls to mind the scene in Jurassic Park where the raptor attacks
the T-rex in the Visitors' Centre. When two raptors go to attack Arlo, T-rex
steps in and saves him by scooping them up in his jaws and tossing them away, just like
at the end of Jurassic Park. And when the T-rexes and Arlo roar after defeating
the raptors, it's a nice nod to the T-rex's roar at the end of Jurassic Park and Jurassic
World. Oh, and by the way, the scenes with Arlo and
the chickens are a reminder that birds are the closest modern-day descendants of dinosaurs.
And they're also a nod to palaeontologist Jack Horner who consulted on all the Jurassic
Park movies and whose research focuses on dinosaur evolution and includes reverse-evolving
a dinosaur from a chicken. And on another dinosaur-related point, I kind
of felt like the asteroid belt at the start of the movie resembled a dinosaur skeleton
with a long tail, with one of the asteroids looking like a dinosaur skull.
The phrase 'the storm provides', which Thunderclap, the pterodactyls' leader, says over and over,
has a definite ring of the line 'the Dude abides' from The Coen Brothers' movie The
Big Lebowski, which as well as starring Jeff Bridges in the lead as Jeffrey "The Dude"
Lebowski, also featured actor Sam Elliott, who's the voice of Butch the T-rex in The
Good Dinosaur.
And there's a nice nod to the movie Jaws when the pterodactyls return later, and we see
the bottom bit of their wings sticking out from beneath the clouds, like up-side-down
shark fins! And given that Jaws is one of the favourite
films of The Good Dinosaur director Peter Sohn, it's no wonder that there's another
Jaws reference in the movie too. The scene where the T-rexes sit round the campfire at
night swapping tales of how they got their battle-scars is really reminiscent of the
scene in Jaws where Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw's characters Hooper and Quint do the
same.
Oh, and could this be an ancestor of the blue-footed protagonist of the lead character in Pixar's
cancelled feature film Newt?
I was looking for a Finding Dory Easter Egg and I noticed a rock formation that looked
rather like Crush, the sea turtle from Finding Nemo. And although I don't think Crush will
be a major part of Finding Dory, wouldn't it be awesome if he had a little cameo in
the film! By the way, in the rocks just above Crush, it looks like there's the image of
a sloth, which could be a shout out to Flash the sloth from Disney's next animation Zootopia?
Now, you'll be wondering where the regular Pixar easter eggs like A113, the Luxo Ball,
and the Pizza Planet Truck are. As you can imagine in a movie set almost entirely outdoors
during the prehistoric era when there was no modern-day writing, toys or machinery,
these easter eggs don't seem to be anywhere obvious, so I think the filmmakers have used
creative techniques to include them in the film.
I found a possible A113 easter egg in the gopher scene. When Arlo goes to blow a gopher
out of its hole for the first time, a single gopher emerges slowly and the shape it makes
is a bit like an A. Then Spot blows out 2 more gophers, one on either side of him which
could indicate a "one" and another "one". And then Arlo blows out 3 gophers sitting
on top of each other, which, of course is the "3". All of which adds up to A-1-1-3!
Another possibility is the stick scene where Arlo puts out 5 sticks each one representing
one member of his family. The A in this case would be A for Arlo, one-one would be the
first 2 sticks, his mother and father, and three would be the last 3 sticks which are
their three children. So there you have my best theories at the
moment for possible A113 easter eggs. Let me know what you think and if you spotted
it anywhere else in the movie. I didn't see an obvious Luxo ball, but look
carefully at this shot of the sun in the sky above the T-rexes and you'll see a big blue
ring of light around the sun with the sun itself representing the star in the Luxo ball.
And in this close-up shot of red berries, there seems to a five-pointed star shape in
the white reflection on some of the berries. I also scoured the film for the pizza planet
truck. The closest I've found so far is this cloud formation which as far as cloud formations
go, doesn't feel like a normal-looking cloud. The shape is a little blocky, a bit like the
pizza planet truck and there's a dark blob on top which might suggest the rocket.
I was hoping to see A113, the Luxo ball, and pizza planet perhaps on a rock carving somewhere
but I didn't spot them. Let me know if you noticed them anywhere else or if you've got
any theories on where they're hidden! And what about the tree with the berries that
Spot takes Arlo to? It seems to have some similarities to the Pixar tree which we first
saw in A Bug's Life and later in Toy Story 2 and Up.
So, guys, what other Easter Eggs and references did you see in The Good Dinosaur? And which
ones did you like best? I can't wait to read your comments below!
If you're a fan of Pixar, you might want to check out my videos here, 25 Things You Probably
Didn't Know About Inside Out, and my Top 10 Easter Eggs in Inside Out.
Do subscribe for more of my Easter Eggs videos, things you didn't know, movie reviews, and
tons more! Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!
Now I was hoping to spot an Easter Egg for Finding Dory in the river scenes, but what
I did notice was a rock formation that looked quite a lot like Crush, the sea turtle from
Finding Nemo. And although I don't think Crush will be a major part of Finding Dory, wouldn't
it be awesome if he had a little cameo in the film! By the way, in the rocks just above
Crush, it looks like there's the image of a sloth, which could be a shout out to Flash
the sloth from Disney's next animation Zootopia?