Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here!
Pixar's seventeenth feature film Finding Dory is stuffed to the gills with easter eggs.
The usual suspects are all in there: A113, the Pizza Planet Truck, the Luxo Ball, previous
and upcoming Pixar movies, as well as Star Wars, Disney, and other classic movie references.
So, in this video, I'm going to look at all the easter eggs, references, and cameos I
found in the movie.
Ok, just before I wade in, I've got a really special "The Art of Finding Dory" book to
give away from my friends at Abrams & Chronicle.
It's packed with beautiful concept art, sketches, and information that give a glimpse into the
making of the movie.
For a chance to win, all you have to do is subscribe and leave a comment on this video
about your favourite egg or reference in Finding Dory or let me know about one I missed.
And of course, there are spoilers ahead, so if you're not ready for that, check out my
non-spoiler review of the movie right here!
There are some nice Pixar easter eggs hidden in the quarantine lab.
Stuck to the wall behind the fish tank is a picture of Darla the fish-killing niece
of Dentist Sherman in Finding Nemo.
The lonely volcano from the short film Lava, which played before Inside Out, also appears
on a fridge magnet to the right of the scene.
And there's an easter egg for Piper, the beautiful Pixar short which played before Finding Dory.
The cute sandpiper hatchling gets a visual shout-out in a poster behind Hank as he scoops
Dory out of the fish tank with the coffee jug.
Pixar's movie WALL-E gets a well-hidden reference in the scene where Hank is about to drop Dory
into the huge fish tank at the aquarium.
There's a calendar with WALL-E written on it in the background of that scene.
The turtle Crush, of course, appears again in Finding Dory helping Marlin, Nemo and Dory
get to Morro Bay, but a model of him also hangs from the ceiling in the aquarium at
the Marine Life Institute.
A113 appears twice in Finding Dory.
The first time it flashes on and off the screen very quickly on the back flippers of sea lions
Fluke and Rudder, which are tagged A1 and 13.
By the way, those sea lions are voiced by Idris Elba and Dominic West, who starred in
The Wire together.
The second time A113 appears is much easier to spot as it's on the license plate of the
truck transporting Hank, Marlin and Nemo to Cleveland.
The license plate reads CAL-A-1-1-3.
The A113 easter egg has appeared in every single Pixar movie to date and is a homage
to the classroom at California Institute of the Arts where the likes of Pixar's John Lasseter
and Finding Dory director Andrew Stanton studied.
There's a really sneaky Luxo Ball easter egg which you can spot very briefly in the centre
of the steering wheel as Hank is driving off with the transport truck.
And interestingly, the way it appears also looks rather like Captain America's shield
too.
The Luxo ball goes back Pixar's very first animation, a short film called Luxo Jr, which
features both the Luxo ball and two desk lamps, one of which appears in Pixar's logo.
Director Andrew Stanton's confirmed that the Pizza Planet truck appears early in the movie.
And recently when I spoke with the movie's Director of Photography, Ian Megibben, he
told me it's around the sequence that features what he called 'the movie's monster'.
And actually what that means is it's hidden among the objects scattered in the shipping
lanes before Dory, Marlin and Nemo meet the giant squid.
And in the highway scene where Hank commandeers the truck, there are also glimpses of various
cars on the road which look quite a bit like the Pizza Planet truck.
Oh, and Ian Megibben also told me that there's an easter egg to Pixar's next movie Cars 3
"close to where we see the Luxo Ball" in the movie.
So, look out for that!
There's another sneaky easter egg on one of the pipes at the Marine Life Institute which
says "Seawater Supply TL59" on it.
That phrase actually appears on a pipe above the line for the Submarine Voyage attraction
at Disneyland, with TL standing for Tomorrowland and 59 being the year the ride was opened.
Interestingly enough, that attraction was actually re-purposed in 2007 with a Finding
Nemo theme!
The number 3181 on the tag Dory gets at the Marine Life Institute is a triple Star Wars
and Pixar easter egg!
The Stormtrooper FN-3181 appears in director JJ Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
And that Stormtrooper just happens to be played by regular Pixar composer Michael Giacchino,
who's also composed the music for many of JJ Abram's other productions.
And on top of that, his Stormtrooper number 3181 can be rearranged as 1138, making it
a hidden nod to George Lucas' 1971 film THX 1138.
The touch pool scene at the aquarium has a horror movie feel about with the fish cowering
in fear when the children's hands start plunging into the water.
And it's actually reminiscent of two moments in the Toy Story movies.
There's the time the children run rampage with Woody and his friends in the playroom
in Toy Story 3, and the children's hands smashing in to the touch pool are also evocative of
the giant claw game Sid plays in the original Toy Story.
Marlin's line that "crossing the ocean is the kind of thing you should only do once"
is a meta-reference to the filmmakers' decision to keep the journey from the coral reef to
California just a short scene as they didn't want Finding Dory to be another road movie
like Finding Nemo.
And when Hank fills the touch pool with ink and then apologises, it's a call back to how
the baby squid in Finding Nemo inks itself when one of his friends pretends to push him
off the Drop-off.
There's a nod to the moment where Dory calls the baby jellyfish "Squishy" in Finding Nemo
when she's searching for her parents in the kelp forest and says she likes sand because
"sand is squishy."
Pixar itself gets an easter egg in the form of the numbers 1200 and 86 both of which appear
on the side of the speedboat that picks up Dory.
The numbers are a reference to Pixar's address at 1200 Park Avenue, Emeryville and to the
year that Pixar was founded, 1986.
Disney's VW Beetle Herbie which has featured in a number of movies over the years looks
like it may have sadly ended up rusting on the bottom of the ocean floor in Finding Dory.
A funny moment in the film occurs when Dory swims to the surface near the Marine Life
Institute and says "Hello" and she hears a voice respond "Hello, I'm Sigourney Weaver".
Dory then has an hilarious discussion with the (automated) voice of Sigourney Weaver
playing over the tannoy at the Institute.
This is a clever nod to Weaver's role as the voice of the ship's computer in Pixar's WALL-E.
And there's a really neat reference to one of Weaver's most iconic movies, Alien, in
the scene where Bailey sees what he thinks is Dory getting eaten alive by another huge
fish in the pipes.
The way Bailey sees this happen using his echolocation is an homage to the scene from
Alien where the character Dallas get taken by the alien while stuck in a ventilation
shaft.
The pipes sequence may also be one of the two references the filmmakers have said they
made to Die Hard in Finding Dory after they saw a spoof of how all the Pixar movies are
connected to the Die Hard movie franchise.
And the second Die Hard reference comes up when Dory is looking for Hank in the touch
pool.
The other fish shout out "Hands, Hands" to warn her the kids are coming, but Dory misunderstands
and replies, "No, not Hans, I'm looking for Hank."
Hans Gruber is, of course, the villain from the first Die Hard movie.
After the movie's credits have rolled, the Tank Gang from Finding Nemo makes their return!
It's a funny moment when Nemo's old friends roll up in front of the rock where sea lions
Rudder and Fluke are sleeping.
The gang are all still in the plastic bags they were in last time we saw them, but everyone's
bag has turned green with algae except for Jacques.
It's a fun call back to the first movie when the Tank Gang deliberately made their fish
tank go green by sabotaging their water filter and had to stop Jacques' natural inclination
to clean the tank.
Sadly, Jacques' original voice actor Joe Ranft died long before Finding Dory was made, but
his brother Jerome, who also works at Pixar, stepped in to the role for this movie.
There are a bunch of cool cameos in Finding Dory including Pixar's lucky charm John Ratzenberger
who plays the husband crab Bill who you see cutting grass while Dory asks his wife for
directions to the quarantine lab.
Alexander Gould, who voiced Nemo in the original film 13 years ago, cameos as the voice of
the truck driver.
Bill Hader, who was the voice of Fear in Inside Out, plays the voice of Stan the husband fish
who appears at the beginning of the movie when baby Dory is lost and looking for her
family.
The fact Hader's character and Dory are talking about short-term memory loss seems nicely
appropriate not only for Dory's situation here but also because of Hader's role in Inside
Out, which was all about memory.
By the way, Hader's wife fish is voiced by his SNL co-star Kate McKinnon.
Director Andrew Stanton is back voicing Crush the sea turtle again, but he also lends his
voice to the clam that Marlin and Nemo encounter after they escape from the fish tank at the
gift shop.
And there's an air of Little Shop of Horrors' bloodthirsty flytrap-like plant in the look
of the rather talkative clam.
Other Pixar crew cameoing include film editor Torbin Xan Bullock as the sea lion Gerald.
Curiously Gerald is the same name as the pelican who chokes on Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo,
and both Geralds have a similar comedic function as the butt of jokes.
And co-director Angus Maclane is the sunfish "Charlie Back and Forth" who was also in Finding
Nemo.
So, were there any cool easter eggs or references you spotted that I missed?
And who was your favourite new character in Finding Dory?
I'd love to know in the comments below!
And don't forget to subscribe and comment for your chance to win this stunning The Art
of Finding Dory hardback book!
For bonus ways to enter the giveaway, check out the Gleam link in the video description
below.
If you're a Pixar fan, I'll have more Finding Dory videos soon including a video on some
amazing deleted scenes and concepts from the movie and you can also check out more of my
easter egg videos for Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur in my Pixar playlist below.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time!
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!