16 details you might have missed in 'Soul'
- Pixar's newest movie "Soul" is packed with small details and references you might have missed.
- One animated background poster even references Pixar's upcoming 2021 movie, "Luca."
- From the Pizza Planet truck to references to "Inside Out" and more, see all the Easter eggs here.
"Soul" is the latest Disney animated movie to come out of Pixar's studio, and as usual the film is packed with Easter eggs and references.
The Pizza Planet truck from "Toy Story" made an appearance (just as it does in every Pixar movie), but there were also references to "Inside Out," "Wall-E," and possibly even "Fantasia 2000."
The movie also referenced real-life historical icons, and one of the movie composer's band, Nine Inch Nails.
Keep reading to see the best details you might have missed in "Soul."
After Joe lands the jazz club gig, he passes by a hardware store selling 9-inch nails. This is a sneaky reference to the movie's composers.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are a composing team, who have created scores for major movies like "The Social Network," "Gone Girl," "Bird Box," and HBO's limited series "Watchmen."
They did the main musical score for "Soul," while jazz artist Jon Batiste composed all of the jazz music heard throughout the movie.
Reznor and Ross are also both members of the rock band Nine Inch Nails, hence the small hardware store sign's meaning. It's barely seen as Joe barrels down the sidewalk, but if you pause the movie at the right time, you'll see the little Nine Inch Nails reference.
In the You Seminar, one of the Jerrys introduces soul number 108,210,121,415 — which is close to the exact number of people who have ever lived on Earth.
This was a detail that one fan on Reddit picked up on. According to the Population Reference Bureau, studies of the human population's history estimate that the number of people ever born is 108,760,543,790.
Not only does that make soul number 108,210,121,415 fit closely into our current population estimate, but the inclusion of the detail really highlights that 22 has been existing in the Great Before for basically all of human history.
The "Luxo, Jr." lamp from Pixar's very first animated short is in the Hall of Everything.
"Luxo, Jr." was the groundbreaking animated short film created by Pixar in 1986. Now you see the little hopping lamp from that short in the logo intro for every Pixar movie.
The familiar figure in the Hall of Everything was a no-brainer.
Read more: All 20 of Pixar's short films, ranked
There are many more Pixar-related Easter eggs in the Hall of Everything, including the "A113" reference on a street sign.
In a minuscule background shot, you can make out "A113" on a street sign behind 22. This group of numbers and letters has been featured in nearly every Pixar movie for years now.
It's a reference to the California Institute of the Arts, a college attended by Pixar writers and directors such as John Lasseter ("Toy Story"), Andrew Stanton ("Wall-E"), and Pete Doctor ("Soul").
A113 was the classroom number where animation was taught, and now Pixar fans will find a reference to that special room in the studio's animated movies.
Read more: 99 details you may have missed in every Pixar movie
Other Pixar and Disney-related objects in the Hall of Everything include the spaceship from "Wall-E" and the Pizza Planet truck from "Toy Story."
In the far distance of the great hall, you can see the silhouette of a spaceship that looks just like the Axiom in "Wall-E."
Then there's the parked Pizza Planet truck, which first appeared in the narrative of "Toy Story," and then popped up as an Easter egg in every Pixar film made afterwards.
There's also what looks like a humpback whale and two smaller, baby whales hovering in the sky. This might be an extremely subtle reference to Disney's 1999 movie "Fantasia 2000," which included an animated sequence showing a pod of humpback whales who eventually take to the skies and fly through the air.
Animation writer and director Brenda Chapman is credited with the original concept of that sequence, set to the music "Pines of Rome." Chapman is also the writer and director of "Brave," so perhaps that link to another Pixar movie is why a whale was animated into this "Soul" scene.
Read more: Every time the Pizza Planet truck has appeared in a Pixar movie
When Joe tries to get 22 to like pizza in the Hall of Everything, a familiar looking topping option is on the top shelf.
The small, green-topped pizza in "Soul" was likely a small nod to codirector Pete Doctor's other movie, Pixar's 2015 film, "Inside Out."
That film had featured a scene where young Riley and her mom try to get pizza in their new San Francisco neighborhood, and were disappointed when the only spot nearby sold nothing but broccoli-topped pizza.
Read more: The director of 'Soul' says that initially the movie had a completely different ending
While Joe is helping 22 conduct scientific experiments to find their "spark," the chalkboard behind them has a real chemical compound written on it.
The formula C7H8N4O2 makes up a chemical compound called theobromine, and it's found in cacao plant.
It means that 22 was effectively testing to see if science was her spark by putting together a small aspect of chocolate.
Joe pauses to look at the wall of nametags left behind by 22's former mentors, and you can see several notable names there.
In the movie, 22 lists off some of their previous mentors like Mother Theresa and Muhammad Ali. But the wall of stickers show even more famous names in the mentor-roster.
Here are just some of the most famous ones we spotted: Albert Einstein, Aretha Franklin, Confucius, Harriet Tubman, Harvey Milk, Jack Kirby, Joan of Arc, Johannes Gutenberg, Johnny Cash, Leonardo Da Vinci, Martin Luther King Jr., Nellie Bly, Nelson Mandela, Pablo Picasso, Stephen Hawking, and Vincent van Gogh.
There are also the names of two famous Disney and Pixar animators: Joe Grant and Joe Ranft.
Grant, who died of a heart attack in 2005, started working for Disney's animation studio in 1933, and helped create movies like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Fantasia."
Ranft attended the California Institute of Arts with some of Pixar's other creatives in the '70s. He went on to help create Disney movies like "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast," and was in the middle of codirecting the first "Cars" film when he died in a car accident in 2005.
Another "Luxo, Jr." reference was tucked in the background of 22's secret box.
In the original "Luxo, Jr." short, the little lamp jumps up and down on a toy ball with a star insignia. That same ball is sitting in 22's secret lair between the Great Before and the Zone or "the space between the physical and spiritual [worlds]."
When Joe (trapped in the body of a cat) passes a rat carrying pizza, "Soul" was making a reference to the viral video of a rat dragging a slice of pizza down New York City stairs.
Dubbed simply "Pizza Rat," the video made the rounds online as people reveled in the small creature's ambitious meal plan, as well as the very "New York City"-ness of the entire incident.
"We are all this rat," Gothamist writer Nell Casey said. "In some situations, this rat is aspirational."
The Pizza Rat might have wound up being a hoax, according to some reporting, but it lives on in "Soul" now.
Tangentially, some fans online think the graffiti behind the rat in "Soul" looks like another "A113" Easter egg.
Every Pixar movie contains a small hint about the next film planned by the studio, and "Soul" is no different. A travel poster Joe and 22 pass by is a tease for "Luca."
The background setting of New York City in "Soul" is packed with a lot of fictional companies and brands. But one poster might have stood out: A travel ad that says "Visit Portorosso."
The next movie in Pixar's slate is called "Luca," directed by Enrico Casarosa. A copyright register filed by Disney (and noticed by blog sites like The DisInsider) in 2020 appeared to reveal the main character's name in "Luca" as Luca Portorosso.
A recently released image from the movie also makes it clear that the setting will be a small Italian coastal town, just like the one seen in the travel poster in "Soul."
"Soul" codirector Pete Doctor's 2001 movie "Monsters Inc." also gets its own Easter egg in this film.
When 22 and Joe head down to the subway platform, the first train to arrive is #2319.
In "Monsters Inc.," 2319 was the code number that the CDA (Child Detection Agency) used to alert monsters of a child-related threat in the area.
Inside the subway, you can get a partial look at ads for the fictional startup company called Brang — which was featured in "Inside Out."
In "Inside Out," Riley's family moves to San Francisco so he can get a startup company called Brang off the ground. In one scene, he wears a T-shirt that sports the Brang logo and tagline "What did you brang?"
When Joe and 22 get onto the subway car in "Soul," you can spot a couple of Brang ads in the background. They even feature the same tagline of "What did you brang?"
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