The animation studio Pixar is intensely beloved by its fans, its best movies speaking to experiences and feelings that are as relatable to adults as they are to children. The studio has amassed a significant and active fandom over the years, its talking toys and lost fish permeating our culture, and its animation technology changing its parent company Disney forever. One way Pixar keeps its fans busy is with Easter eggs, devilishly sneaky homages to its own films that the animators place into every movie. Whether it’s the Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story or the “A113” reference to the California Institute for the Arts animation classroom, the real heads know what to look out for, and can usually spot them every time.
Then, in 2012, everything changed. YouTuber John Negroni, inspired by a video he saw on Cracked.com that suggested all Pixar movies are connected in one universe, as evidenced by all these Easter eggs, made a second, much more in-depth video explaining exactly how the movies would be connected, and exactly where they each fit into one timeline that spans from prehistory all the way into the future. He has since collected the timeline into its own website and published a book, and the “Pixar Theory” has lived on in the minds of Pixar fans who endlessly debate where each new movie from the studio fits into the proposed timeline.
Though the Pixar Theory is the most famous and wide-ranging theory about these movies out there, there are plenty more even weirder ones circling the internet. For this list, we’ve selected ten of our favorites that overexplain otherwise random aspects of these movies, offering an even deeper appreciation of Pixar storytelling. (We’ve decided not to include the classic “They were dead the whole time” stuff everyone tends to say about Up and Toy Story 3 and even Finding Nemo, because, frankly, those are just too easy.) Read on for the weirdest Pixar movie theories out there, and prepare to watch all these movies again with new eyes.
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