Inside Out Trivia

Cameos, in-jokes, re-used animation and other trivia from Inside Out.

Cameos

• A113 is visible as graffiti on a background wall when Riley receives a phone call from her mother. "113" is also visible on the Train of Thought when Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong jump into it after waking up Riley, though no "A" appears to be seen. Also, according to CinemaBlend, Pete Docter has said that Riley's classroom in her new school is room A113. However, the film makes it impossible to verify this claim, as the classroom's door is never seen from the outside.

  

  A113 on the graffiti in the background.

  

  "113" seen on the Train of Thought.

• The Luxo Ball appears in Riley's house in Minnesota in one of the flashbacks of Riley playing tag with Bing Bong.
• The Pizza Planet Truck has been found in three different scenes of the film. In all known instances, the truck appears in a golden memory orb, and seemingly recycles a shot from Toy Story 2 (a three-quarters view from behind). According to Victor Navone's wife on Twitter, the truck is also in the background of China Town and San Francisco, although this claim has not been substantiated in any way since.
  • The Pizza Planet Truck appears in a golden memory that briefly shows up in the foreground when Bing Bong knocks it off as he runs away from Joy on their first encounter.
  • A memory of the truck appears in three shots when Riley goes to the hockey tryouts:
    • When Disgust says, "Luck is not gonna help us now," the truck briefly appears in a memory orb just behind her.
    • When Fear says, "We did it, gang! It's working!", the truck appears in a memory orb just next to Disgust.
    • The truck appears in a memory orb on the right side of the screen after Riley falls and Anger takes control of the console.
  • A memory of the truck appears when Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong successfully get onboard the Train of Thought.

    

    The truck's second appearance in Inside Out when Bing Bong, Joy and Sadness successfully depart the Train of Thought.

• Riley and her family are eating from Chinese Food Boxes of the same type as the one seen in A Bug's Life and several other Pixar films.
• Some of the background memories contain images from the "Married Life" sequence from Up.
• The birds from For the Birds appear during Riley's family's trip to San Francisco on a telephone wire.
• One of Riley's classmates is wearing a camouflage pattern made up of Toy Story characters.
• Another of Riley's classmates wears a shirt with the same skull motif as Sid's shirt in Toy Story.
• The stars from the Buzz Lightyear aisle in Toy Story 2 are reused for Riley's bedroom stars.
• Models from Cars 2 are reused as background cars. These include the model of the Hugo Lemons crime family, as well as a type of micro car used for many backgrounds characters in Cars 2 (such as Cartney Brakin).
• Some of the background cars in San Francisco bear bumper stickers from Cars.
• The globe in Riley's classroom appeared in Andy's room, in all three Toy Story films.
• A box in Imagination Land features a clownfish, along with the title "Find Me", an allusion to Finding Nemo.
• Some of the board game boxes in Imagination Land are reused from Toy Story That Time Forgot, including one with the title "For the Birds", an allusion to the 2000 short of the same name.
• The playground in one of Riley's memories in Minnesota is taken from Sunnyside Daycare in Toy Story 3, with one difference being that the slide is not coiled but straight.
• Colette from Ratatouille appears on a magazine cover when Riley pretends the floor is lava in the living room of her Minnesota house.
• When Riley falls asleep after the first day of living in San Francisco, her dream turns into a nightmare and the score from Disney's The Haunted Mansion attraction plays in the background.
• In that same nightmare, the bear serving pizza resembles Queen Elinor in her bear form, and the talking pizzas have the same arms as Mr. Potato Head.
• When Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong are about to board the Train of Thought in Imagination Land, a portrait of Figment from EPCOT's Journey To Imagination can be seen in the foreground on the right.
• While entering Dream Productions, Dream Workers dressed as Emperor Zurg can be seen.
• The giant legs of Ted from Monsters, Inc. can be seen in Dream Productions as giant props.
• The dead mouse that Riley sees bears a resemblance to Remy.
• Some of young Riley's cries and squeals are recycled from Boo in Monsters, Inc. The credits list Mary Gibbs as an additional voice because of this.
• During the scene where Riley fails to play hockey properly, if you look closely in the background, there is a banner that says: "Tri-County Youth Hockey". The Tri-County area is where the Toy Story franchise takes place.
• In Riley's classroom, there is a poster with stars, a nod to the short film, La Luna.
• Forrest Woodbush and Arlo from the film The Good Dinosaur can be seen as statues at the dinosaur park when Riley and her mom are talking about their favorite part of the trip to San Francisco. This was based off a real-life dinosaur park in Arizona.
• When Bing Bong empties his bag, he is seen removing the boot containing the plant from WALL•E.
• The cloud that Bing Bong sneezes away in Imagination Land resembles one of the clouds from Partly Cloudy.

Cameos Gallery

The playground from Sunnyside Daycare in one of Riley's memories

Chinese food box from A Bug's Life

Cars based off Hugos and a micro-car from Cars 2

A box alluding to Nemo, a deck of cards with Riley's family, and boxes recycled from Toy Story That Time Forgot

Comparison of US version (top) and international version (bottom) of the first trailer

Collette from Ratatouille can be seen on the magazine.

The resemblance to clouds in Pixar's short Partly Cloudy

The Pixar ball can be seen while Riley is playing with Bing Bong

Resemblance to For the Birds

Forrest Woodbush from The Good Dinosaur

Arlo from The Good Dinosaur

In-Jokes

• One of Riley's contacts on her messaging app is "DocPete", an allusion to director Pete Docter. Another one is "Ronnify", a likely allusion to co-director Ronnie del Carmen.
• One of the stores in San Francisco is named "Krause", an allusion to supervising animator Shawn Krause.
• In Imagination Land, we see a tower of cards. Riley is on the Jack (which has an R rather than J), her mom is on the Queen and her dad is on the King.

References to non-Pixar movies

• The "Sure Locks for Homes" poster (see below) is likely an allusion to Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), the first movie in which Pixar did animation work (the stained-glass knight).
• In Dream Productions, the poster for "I'm Falling for a Long Time Into a Pit" echoes the design of the poster for Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock.
• In the Cloud Town section of Imagination Land, just after Bing Bong runs through and disperses one of the inhabitants, one of the cops who were interviewing her starts to pursue him; the other restrains him and says, "Forget it, Jake, it's Cloud Town." This pays homage to the ending of Chinatown (1974).
• When Joy asks Sadness to tell something funny, the latter says, "Remember that funny movie where the dog dies?" This is a reference to Old Yeller.

Other trivia

• This is the second Pixar movie to have a female protagonist. The first is Brave.
• Like WALL•E before it, this film does not have a traditional villain. The closest it gets is Joy, who like AUTO in WALL•E, is just doing what she believes to be her job, oblivious to the harm she is causing. Unlike AUTO, Joy comes to realize her mistake and puts things right.
• The film's teaser trailer features clips from all previous Pixar movies except Toy Story 2 and Cars 2.
• Whereas in the original version the emotions of Riley's father are watching ice hockey during the dinner table scene, in most international versions, they are watching a soccer match. This can be seen when comparing the first US trailer with the corresponding UK trailer. A few international versions do retain the hockey match memory, like the Russian and French-Canadian ones.
• Pete Docter has worked as an animator on another project which explored the brain (although on a less metaphysical and more physiological level): the Cranium Command attraction at Epcot.
• Riley's hockey rink is located where the Walt Disney Family Museum is situated in San Francisco.
• This movie took five years to complete.
• The British comic The Beano made a reference to the film with "The Numskulls" having a story where Edd goes to watch Inside Out, only for Brainy to comment about it being similar to themselves, referencing the fact that some UK fans noticed some similarities between the two. The comic's editor-in-chief Mike Stirling explained: "We had people from all over the world pointing out the similarities, which is very flattering, but the Numskulls is a very British comic and we want to point out the differences." Ronnie del Carmen was also told about the comic during an interview with Den of Geek, which he said about the Numskulls: "I'm not familiar with it all."
• The title does not appear until about 7 minutes into the movie. This marks the longest time the movie's title has taken to appear.
• The puzzle box dinosaur world may be a reference to The Good Dinosaur.
• The locksmith Krause has a notice in the window advertising: "Sure Locks for Homes," a reference to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
• The dog-grooming salon is called "Penny and Rita", a likely reference to two classic Beatles songs from 1967.
• Jordan's memory orbs are monochromatic (each has only one color) in both Inside Out and Riley's First Date?, implying that he's still emotionally immature.
• Inside Out is the first PG rated Pixar film to have a non-human protagonist.
• One of Riley's contacts on her messaging app is Shion4U, which is a possible reference to Shion Todo, a character from the Japanese anime series PriPara.
• In the Family Island flashback, Riley can be heard muttering, "I'm gonna be Rapunzel!" when giving cookies to her family. This is a possible reference to one of activities that the Disney version of Rapunzel enjoyed was baking. However, this is an anachronism, as the scene clearly takes place when Riley is 2 or 3 (which, given that the movie takes place in 2015, would be either 2006 or 2007), and Tangled, Disney's version of the story, wouldn't come out until 2010.
• Just before Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong are trapped in and nearly destroyed by the Abstract Thought Chamber, one of the Mind Workers who closes the door and turns on the chamber says, "What abstract thought are we trying to comprehend today?", and the other replies, "Loneliness." Judging by this, Riley's joy is nearly destroyed by loneliness.
• The dinosaur park Riley and her family visited was inspired by a real one in Arizona.