Trivia / Cars 2

• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Crabby the Boat, voiced by Sig Hansen of Deadliest Catch fame, is based on Hansen's boat, the F/V Northwestern.
  • Much like Jeff Gordon, Jeff Gorvette moved from Vallejo, California to Indiana to be closer to the racing world—a move that Gordon's family made when he was in his teens.
  • Lewis Hamilton is described as British and Grenadian. His father was the son of Grenadian immigrants to England, while his mother is white British.
• Acting for Two:
  • Fillmore and Tony Trihull are both played by Lloyd Sherr.
  • Jason Isaacs voices Siddeley and Leland Turbo.
  • Vladimir Trunkov, Ivan and Victor Hugo are voiced by Stanley Townsend.
  • Mama Topolino and the Queen are voiced by Vanessa Redgrave.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The Italian dub features actor and comedian Alessandro Siani as Francesco Bernoulli.
• The Character Died with Him: The film indicates early on that Doc Hudson has passed away between films, reflecting the real-life passing of his actor, Paul Newman, in 2008.
• Character Outlives Actor: Because of the death of Joe Ranft, Red the firetruck actually lost his voice permanently and does not speak in the sequel. Not that he spoke much in the previous film anyway.
• Creator Couple: The European Spanish version featured a track, "Mucha gente", performed by El Sueño de Morfeo, whose singer was involved to Fernando Alonso, who makes a cameo in the version.
• Creator Killer: The film's critical failure more-or-less caused John Lasseter to step down from the director's chair, giving the director positions in Cars 3 and Toy Story 4 to Brian Fee and Josh Cooley, respectively (it might have been a blessing in disguise considering Lasseter immediately went on to help build what would become the "Revival" over at Disney). With the news of Lasseter's sexual misconduct allegations in 2017 resulting in his resignation from Disney and Pixar, this will likely end up being the last film Lasseter ever directed.
• Cultural Translation: As in the previous installment, Spanish Formula On champion Fernando Alonso has a cameo in the film on a re-designed character, in this case replacing Jeff Gorvette.
• Development Gag: In Paris, Mater encounters a car whose eyes are placed where her headlights should be, and drives off in horror. In the first Cars film's early development, the characters were originally designed with their eyes placed on their headlights, but the creators found these designs unintentionally scary and decided that putting the eyes on their windshields looked more expressive and visually appealing.
• Distanced from Current Events: For most of the film's development, Allinol's weakness that caused it to explode was planned to be nuclear radiation. Following the nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima during production, the weakness was changed to electromagnetic radio waves instead (as shown in John Lasseter's "Day in the Life" documentary).
• Dueling Movies: In a way with Kung Fu Panda 2. While both were very successful, DWA was able to clearly K.O. Pixar on this one when Cars 2 was critically-panned and hit hard by Sequelitis, starting Pixar's first Audience-Alienating Era, while Kung Fu Panda 2 became a major hit for DreamWorks... though that studio would end up in their own more severe Audience-Alienating Era shortly thereafter.
• Early Draft Tie-In: Petrov Trunkov is a a lemon thug who is very prominent in the toyline, but makes no identifiable appearance in the movie. This is because going off of concept art, he would have been one of the prominent lemons chasing after Mater. One piece of art even shows him in place of Grem in the airport chase.
• Executive Meddling:
  • It's generally assumed that Disney forced Pixar to make this sequel for merchandising purposes. Not so; the Cars universe is John Lasseter's pet project. It's also noteworthy that the executives at Disney really couldn't have forced John Lasseter to do anything, since, at the time, John Lasseter was the executive at Disney. So ultimately it's more Auteur License than Executive Meddling, with The Merch being more of the reason nobody at Disney objected to making it.
  • Lasseter did note there were some objections when it came time to create the lemons; "What was interesting is that a lot of car companies didn't want us to use their cars as bad guys, so we were kind of limited." Notice more famous lemons like the Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega are entirely absent, yet cars from long-defunct companies like AMC are prevalent.
• Fake Nationality: Brooklyn-born John Turturro voices the Italian Francesco Bernoulli. Though Turturro himself does have Italian ancestry.
• Fake Russian: Dublin native Stanley Townsend as Vladimir Trunkov and Ivan.
• Inspiration for the Work: John Lasseter said that he was convinced of the sequel's story while traveling around the world promoting the first film. He said:
  I kept looking out thinking, 'What would Mater do in this situation, you know?' I could imagine him driving around on the wrong side of the road in the UK, going around in big, giant traveling circles in Paris, on the autobahn in Germany, dealing with the motor scooters in Italy, trying to figure out road signs in Japan.
• Money, Dear Boy: Many questioned why Pixar would make a sequel to its worst-rated (though not exactly panned) movie. Put simply: the original had merchandising success on the level of Star Wars. Making a sequel not only helped Pixar's bottom line, it likely helped other movies get produced. To put this into perspective, the first film grossed $462 million on a $120 million budget, not bad right? The merchandise made $10 billion dollars in the five years between the first and second film in the series. Additionally, Cars is John Lasseter's pet franchise, with the film itself having been initially conceived on the press tour of the first film.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor:
  • Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave voice Uncle Topolino and the Queen, respectively, in the English and Italian releases.
  • Thomas Kretschmann voices Professor Zündapp in the German dub, as he usually does with his original English-language roles.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Lloyd Sherr replaced George Carlin as Fillmore following the latter's death from heart failure.
  • While most of the cast reprised their roles for the tie-in game, four did not:
    • Martin Jarvis replaced Michael Caine as Finn McMissile, and would later go on to voice the character in every other piece of media he appears in.
    • Keith Ferguson replaced Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen.
    • Dave Wittenberg replaced Suzy Eddie Izzard as Miles Axelrod.
    • Eric Stitt replaced Michael Keaton as Chick Hicks.
  • The Latin dub has at least four changes from this sequel onwards.
    • Rosalba Sotelo replaces Kate del Castillo as Sally after dubbing her in both the first film and the short film Mater and the Ghostlight.
    • Simone Brook takes the reins from Roxana Castellanos in the part of Flo.
    • Carlos Segundo does not reprise his role of Darrell Cartrip and is replaced by Idzi Dutkiewicz.
    • For unknown reasons, Yadira Aedo and Romina Marroquín Payró did not return to dub Mia and Tia, as they had no problem whatsoever reprising the roles in the Mater's Tall Tales shorts. Instead, they were replaced by Angélica Villa.
• Real-Time Timeskip: It's mentioned that Lightning won 4 Piston Cups after having lost one in the first movie. If one cup is given out per year, that covers the five year gap after the original.
• Refitted for Sequel: Finn McMissile was originally intended to appear in the first movie as the main character of an in-universe spy film Lightning and Sally would watch. For Cars 2, the character was reworked into being a real spy in-universe, and having a substantial role in the film's plot.
• Sequel in Another Medium: The Cars 2 game takes place at some point after the movie, featuring Mater and the rest of the cast competing various spy missions at C.H.R.O.M.E, the spy organization Finn and Holley worked for in the movie.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• You Sound Familiar: In the Canadian French dub, Miles Axlerod is voiced by Alain Zouvi, who previously reprised his roles as Woody and Mike Wazowski in the first movie's end credits scene.

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