Pixar's brilliant coming-of-age movie Turning Red is packed with easter eggs
and deep-cut references to other Pixar and Disney classics like Luca, Toy Story, Coco, and Mulan,
plus the upcoming Lightyear, among many others. Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this
video I'm revealing the very best easter eggs and crucial details
you might have missed in Turning Red. Some mild spoilers ahead, so take care.
The Pizza Planet Truck is one of Pixar's most popular easter eggs and debuted in
the studio's first feature, Toy Story. In Turning Red, watch carefully as Red
Panda Meilin charges through the streets of Toronto on her way to the 4*Town concert,
speeding past a parked Pizza Planet Truck with its distinctive white and red rocket.
And there's more easter eggs to the famous animated food brand
including numerous Pizza Planet boxes scattered around Tyler's house during his birthday party,
and an ad for Pizza Planet at the SkyDome stadium where the 4*Town concert takes place.
The Luxo ball, also makes its appearance at Tyler's birthday party.
You can see the iconic yellow, red and blue ball floating in his swimming pool.
The ball first appeared in the short film Luxo Jr. and interestingly in Mei's room
there's a desk lamp with a similar design to the famous lamp from that short.
Another recurring Pixar easter egg, A113,
appears on screen for just a split second during the stadium scene.
When Mei's dad uses a chalk machine to draw a circle around his wife's enormous red panda,
look very closely at the chalker because it's a "Professional Model A113".
And there's another A113 on the 4*Town tickets in the credits.
The presence of A113 in Pixar films is a tribute to the CalArts classroom where many
of the studio's animators studied. When Meilin finds herself suddenly
crushing on a boy at school, as he walks by you'll notice his T-shirt reads "Escápula",
which is a deep-cut reference to Coco and the heavy-metal band of the same name who performed
in the Land of the Dead's Battle of Bands. "Escápula" means shoulder blade in Spanish,
making it a perfect name for a band of dead, bony musicians.
And speaking of bones, Kevin from Up makes an appearance as a skeleton in a school classroom.
In another scene, you can see some Mexican papel picado decorations like we also saw in Coco.
Another nice detail in this scene is how Mei raises her paws in the air while standing up,
similar to how real-life red pandas will rise up on their back legs when
they're scared in order to look bigger. Every Pixar movie includes an easter egg to
the next one on the studio's schedule, and next up is Lightyear, Buzz's origin story.
In Turning Red, Meilin's friend Miriam is an avid skater and if you look at her skateboard
very closely you can spot a sticker of Sox, Buzz's robotic cat companion in Lightyear.
Hello Buzz. I am Sox, your personal companion robot.
Turning Red tips its hat to Luca, another coming-of-age Pixar story,
when Meilin is fantasising about Devon and draws him as a merman in her notebook,
a reference to the dual human and sea monster nature of characters like Luca and Alberto.
Mei also has visions of Devon as a fish during her nightmare when
she first transforms into a red panda. In Luca, the Turning Red easter egg was
craftily hidden in Giulia's room via the record titled "4 Star Villaggi".
The Italian word "villaggi" means "villages", similar to the word "town",
making the vinyl record a reference to Turning Red's boy band 4*Town.
And there's another fishy Pixar easter egg via the Finding Nemo sticker on a stall
in the school bathroom. Prior to directing Turning Red,
Domee Shi was best known for her short film Bao,
about a Chinese mother living in Toronto and a dumpling that comes to life.
Given, as Shi says, dumplings are "a huge staple in Chinese culture", it's fitting to find them
repeatedly in Turning Red, Are you hungry?
And there even sign for a restaurant called Bao. Oh, and there's also the exact same Chinese
decoration on the wall of Meilin's home as there is in Shi's Oscar-winning short.
When Ming makes MeiMei a bowl of porridge with eggs and a smiley face,
it's a little tribute to the happy porridge Mushu makes for Mulan in the Disney animated movie.
Look, you get porridge, and it's happy to see you.
And actor James Hong who plays Mr Gao in this movie was also the voice of
Chi Fu in Disney's much-loved 90s film. The number of the Lee family home is 234,
a likely reference to the address of Andy's second house, as revealed in Toy Story 3.
Where's home? Elm Street.
234 Elm. There's an easter egg to the Pixar short film
Purl in MeiMei's bedroom via the little pink ball of yarn with eyes hanging just above her desk.
Similar to Turning Red, the theme of Purl is about learning to accept who you really are
rather than what others want you to be. The rabbit sticker on Meilin's notebook
is the bunny from Burrow, the Pixar short about a young rabbit who wants to dig the
perfect burrow but ends up embarrassed as she keeps digging into her neighbours' homes.
When we first meet Priya, she's reading a romantic fantasy novel
called "Nightfall: The Final Chapter". The book's cover, complete with a vampire,
feels like a homage to the Twilight Saga with the central couple giving
off strong Bella Swan and Edward Cullen vibes. Fun fact, director Shi says Priya and her deadpan,
goth-like manner represents how she and her friends were into "vampires, punk rock and
emo" around the end of middle school. Turning Red continues the trend of Luca
with a striking and sometimes exaggerated animation style, and
Shi "infused the film with details from anime". So, whenever a character gets especially excited,
their eyes become "super-dilated with sparkles and stars", a very popular effect in anime.
All of which is intended to communicate and signal the emotional roller coaster of adolescence.
This shot and pose of Mei leaping across the sky feels like a specific shout-out to the Japanese
animation "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time". I love the style of this shot with Meilin set
against the red moon and as she soars through the air you can also spot a billboard for Air
Canada with a particularly fitting tagline for Mei in this moment, "Fly With Us".
A running joke and theme in Turning Red centres around the number four which
in many East Asian cultures including China is frequently viewed as an unlucky number.
Four is the worst number. You know,
Vivian was due on the fourth, but I held her in until the fifth...
It might also be an extra, subconscious reason for Ming's dislike of the boy band 4*Town.
Why are they called "4-Town" if there are five of them?
The gag continues at the end of the movie when we discover Meilin's grandma had to put her panda
spirit in a 4*Town medallion. So unlucky.
And notice how her losing hand consists of an ace and four cards with the number four.
Red Panda Mei's reaction to spotting Devon at the Daisy Mart,
Awooga! (GASPS)
is a hat-tip to the "Awooga!" meme which drew on Tex Avery's cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood
which features a thirsty wolf watching a nightclub singer.
And intriguingly, opposite the convenience store, there's a Café Mémé, a play on Ming's
nickname for her daughter Mei-Mei, but also a visual pun on the word meme.
Turning Red is set in 2002 and there's some fun noughties references in the
movie such as the "Jokia" phone that Mei uses, a reference to how Nokia phones
dominated the cellphone market in that period. There's also some "whassup" graffiti on one of the
stalls in the school bathroom, a reference to the Budweiser ad campaign that ran from 1999 to 2002
and became a viral sensation. Whassup!
Whassup! And Meilin's
flute case has some stickers referencing trends from around the turn of the millennium such as
Save The Whales and Y2K A'OK referencing the millennium bug and the Y2K Scare.
The inspiration for Turning Red's boy band is the likes of Backsteet Boys and NSYNC who were
particularly popular at the time the movie's set and whose tracks appeared in the film's trailers.
Like 4*Town, NSYNC's name also includes an unspoken asterisk.
The all-white outfits worn by 4*Town during their concert tour channel the cover of the
Backstreet Boys' album Millennium and possibly Take That's Everything Changes album.
While the fictional boy band's angelic look could well have been influenced by the Backstreet Boys'
role in the apocalyptic comedy This Is The End which featured them in heaven, all dressed in
white, complete with halos, singing Everybody. There's a pop culture reference to Marvel comics
and movies when Mei cries Besties Assemble!
a twist on "Avengers Assemble", and of course, Marvel is owned by Disney.
And there's a nod to another franchise now owned by Disney, The Simpsons, via the two
red panda statues who Meilin refers to as Bart and Lisa outside the ancestral family temple.
When Abby discovers Red Panda Mei, her reaction is hilarious:
You're so fluffy! Which really reminds me of Despicable Me's
Agnes and her obsession with unicorns. It's so fluffy!
Alternately it could be a nod to this moment in Disney's Zootopia.
So fluffy! Hey!
You can't just touch a sheep's wool! The unicorn sticker on Mei's flute case
with its multi-coloured mane and tail could be a little nod to Rainbow Unicorn from Inside
Out who Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong meet when they visit Dream Productions.
When Ming turns into an enormous red panda and stomps through the city on the way to the concert,
I got some real Godzilla and King Kong vibes, especially this scene of her
roaring silhouette on a Toronto skyscraper. And the way Red Panda Ming grabs Meilin in her
giant paw is a nod to the classic moment when King Kong grabs Ann Darrow up in his giant hand.
There's also a ton of Canada-specfic easter eggs and references in the movie.
Some are easier to spot like Toronto's CN Tower or this one
$200? Who do they
think they are? Celine Dion?
But others are less obvious like this sign for milk sold in bags, or this student's T-shirt
"Loons Unlimited", which is a play on the fact that the Common Loon is the provincial
bird of Ontario where Toronto is located. On top of that, the nickname for the Canadian
Dollar is the "loonie" and the single dollar coin has a Common Loon design on the reverse.
Another Canadian symbol you'll see a lot of in Turning Red is the maple leaf, however,
a few are particularly well hidden such as the maple leaf pattern in the toque, that's the
Canadian term for a knitted hat, that Mei wears to cover up her red hair;
there's also a maple leaf love t-shirt in the background of this shot, and a maple leaf badge
on the front of Ming's car, which also has a bobble-head moose on the dashboard!
In the aftermath of the destruction at the SkyDome, a little blue bird comes into view.
The inclusion of this bird next to the stadium is a sneaky easter egg to the
Toronto Blue Jays baseball team which plays its home games at the stadium.
And a very similar blue jay design appeared in the Pixar TV
series Dug Days set after the events of Up. The doughnuts that Jin isn't allowed to eat at
the breakfast table... Hey!
No sugar. ...are Timbits from
the multinational Canadian chain Tim Hortons. Another Toronto easter egg that you might have
missed is on the sticker in Miriam's locker. SK8 stands for skate as we know she's a skater,
but YYZ is the airport identification code for the Toronto Pearson International
Airport which is named after the Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson, who also lends his
name to Mei and Miriam's school. Stores in the movie's version of
Toronto include the humorously named "Chai Kovsky", presumably a tea shop punningly
named after the famous classical composer. And there's also Dee's Vintage Fashion which
could be named after Dee from Up, the little girl who watched Carl's house float past her window.
When the Lee family perform the ceremony to separate the red panda spirit from Mei's body,
Mr Gao explains they're opening up a door to the astral realm.
For as long as the red moon shines, the astral realm will be open.
And this circle is the door. And there's an interesting parallel
here with the Astral Plane from Soul, an area between the Soul World and Earth where Moonwind
opened up a portal that sent Joe's soul into the body of a cat and 22 into Joe's human body.
In both movies, this Astral realm appears to be a place where spirits or souls can enter or depart
human bodies which surely conjures up some interesting possibilities for Pixar theories.
Let me know any ideas, theories or connections you might have about the two films.
If you didn't sit through all the credits, you might have missed the funny little bonus
scene at the very end of the movie featuring Jin dad-dancing in the basement to a 4*Town song.
You know it's us, yeah. I absolutely loved Turning Red, so
for my next video I'm doing a deep dive into all the clues that predicted the ending of the movie.
I'll add a link here and in the description so you can watch it as soon as it's ready.
So, who's your favourite character in Turning Red?
And if you spotted any other easter eggs let me know in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this don't forget to leave a thumbs up and subscribe, I really appreciate it.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time. Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!