FILM 1390: INSIDE OUT
TRIVIA: According to director Pete Docter, each emotion
is based on a shape: Joy is based on a star, Sadness is a teardrop, Anger is a
fire brick, Fear is a raw nerve, and Disgust is broccoli. He noted that he
likes broccoli very much, however.
Some of the memory balls in Riley's
mind contain scenes from other Pixar movies, such as Carl and Ellie's wedding
in Up (2009).
The writers considered up to 27
different emotions, but settled on five (Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger)
to make it less complicated. Some of the major emotions that ended up being cut
included Surprise, Pride, and Trust.
Psychologists and other experts
were consulted so the writers could make the way Riley's mind works
scientifically accurate. For example, it is believed that short-term memories
made during the day are converted into long-term memories during sleep, which
is what happens in Riley's mind.
In Riley's classroom (No. A113), a
map at the back of the room has pins plotted at different places all over the
world. They are references to where all the Pixar movies are set.
When Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera pitched the
film to Mindy Kaling, she was
moved to tears and said, "I think it's great that you guys are making a
film that shows it's difficult to grow up and that it's okay to be sad about
it." According to Pete Docter,
they exclaimed, "Quick! Write that down!".
For the voice of toddler-age Riley,
the producers simply recycled old dialogue of Mary Gibbs, who provided
the voice of Boo in Monsters,
Inc. (2001). She is even listed in the credits under additional
voices.
"Yeast of Edin" is based
on a bakery located near Pixar Studios. It only serves one kind of pizza each
day, and broccoli is one of the toppings.
In the middle of the control console,
the top three buttons form Mickey Mouse, otherwise known as a hidden Mickey.
PIZZA PLANET TRUCK: Director Pete Docter confirmed that
the truck indeed appears at least three times in the film, but it is hard to
find.
This film marks the fifteenth time John Ratzenberger has made
an appearance in a Pixar film, and a second time as a construction worker. He
also voiced a construction worker in Up (2009).
There is a scene in Dream
Productions where a camera filter called the "reality distortion
filter" is added. This is a direct reference to former Pixar CEO Steve Jobs, where he would
do anything to convince his employees they could get the job done: they called
it Steve's "reality distortion field."
The scene with the two guards
discussing whose hat belongs to whom while guarding the Subconscious is a nod
to the hat-swapping scene between Vladimir and Estragon from Samuel Beckett's
play "Waiting for Godot".
Riley's classroom is No. A113.,
sharing the same number as the room at the California Institute of Arts where
many animators, including John Lasseter
and Brad Bird, graduated from.
A113 is a common Easter egg in Pixar's films.
When Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong are
in Cloudtown, A talking "memory cop" references Chinatown (1974) by
saying, "Forget it Jake, it's Cloudtown".
The long-running British children's
comic The Beano has, since the sixties, featured a strip called The Numskulls,
which revolves around little people living inside a "real life"
person, and being responsible for all his functions, both emotional and
mechanical. After the release of Inside Out, The Beano issued a tongue-in-cheek
reaction in which the Numskulls (inside their "host") watch the film
and criticise it.
Both Riley's mother and father have
brown eyes, but Riley has blue eyes. There is only a 25% chance that a baby
will have blue eyes if both parents carry the recessive blue-eye gene. But if
only one has a recessive blue-eye gene, and the other has two brown, dominant
genes, then there is a less than 1% chance of the baby having blue eyes. Riley
has her first memory shown in the film, so she was not adopted.
The memory balls are based on
George Rhoads' "Kinetic ball sculptures"
One of the various aspects of Riley's
mind that was cut from the film was a department called "Faces &
Names". This was the department in charge of pairing up names of people
Riley has met with their respective faces, but the leaders of either department
dislike each other and do not speak (which explains the lapse in memory people
get when they cannot remember someone's name).
As of Summer 2015, it holds the
distinction of owning the largest opening weekend gross without taking the #1
spot on the box office charts. It took in a respectable $90 million its first
weekend of release, falling short of the $106 million grossed by Jurassic World
which set a new U.S. record the previous weekend with over $208 million in
tickets sales.
