Trivia / Coco

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: When the family finds out that Miguel’s cursed, there’s a joke about a skeleton being allergic to a hairless dog. It’s actually possible to be allergic to dogs with little-to-no hair because it’s actually the dog’s saliva that sets it off, not the fur.
• Acting for Two:
  • Original version:
    • Lombardo Boyar voices the mariachi in the plaza and Gustavo.
    • Luis Valdez provides the voices for both Tío Berto and Don Hidalgo.
    • Christian Lanz voices many minor characters, but some of the standout ones include the man at the beginning who persuaded Miguel to enter the talent show, as well as the man who interviewed Ernesto de la Cruz when he was alive.
    • The Land of the Dead's departure agent as well as Tía Gloria are both voiced by Carla Medina.
  • Latin American Spanish dub:
    • Ángela Villanueva voices one of the dead people in the gravesite where Ernesto is buried, as well as Tía Chelo.
    • The talent show supervisor and the complaining lady from the Department of Family Reunions are both played by Xóchitl Ugarte.
  • Japanese dub:
    • Koichi Sakaguchi plays the plaza mariachi as well as Gustavo.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Like his character, Anthony González had goals of becoming a famous singer and actor and he succeeded.
  • Since the setting has a Mexican influence, Miguel, Héctor, as well as most of the Rivera family are played by actors of Mexican descent.
  • Hector's birthday is November 30, as is Gael García Bernal's.
• All-Star Cast:
  • As with every Pixar film, the English version features famous actors and singers, not only from the United States, but also from Mexico and Latin America.
    • Miguel: Latin American actor and singer Anthony González.
    • Ernesto de la Cruz: Benjamin Bratt, whose previous works include Doctor Strange (2016) and Traffic (2000). He has also voiced and portrayed Latin American characters, given his Peruvian ancestry.
    • Héctor: Gael García Bernal (voicing the character both in English and Spanish).
    • Mamá Imelda: Actress, voice actress, and singer Alanna Ubach, who is of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent.
    • Mamá Coco: Mexican television and film actress Ana Ofelia Murguía whose career spanned nearly 50 years at the time of the film's production.
    • Abuelita Elena: Actress Reneé Victor, who played Lupita in Weeds and Laverne in the Latin American Spanish dub of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
    • Papá Enrique: Celebrated Mexican actor and singer Jaime Camil. Americans might know him as Rogelio in Jane the Virgin.
    • Mamá Luisa: Actress, writer and producer Sofía Espinosa, also voicing the character in English and Spanish.
    • Tía Rosita: Mexican actress, comedian and burlesque performer Selene Luna, known for her diminutive stature.
    • Tía Victoria: Mexican actress and comedian Dyana Ortellí, whose acting credits include ¡Three Amigos! and Rocket Power.
    • Tío Oscar and Tío Felipe: Comedian and playwright Herbert Sigüenza.
    • Papá Julio: Director and actor Alfonso Arau, whose previous directorial credits include Like Water for Chocolate and A Walk In The Clouds; as with García Bernal and Espinosa, Arau voiced the character in English and Spanish. You may also remember him as El Guapo from ¡Three Amigos!.
    • Frida Kahlo: Mexican actress Natalia Cordova-Buckley, whose credits include Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
    • Chicharrón: Actor and director Edward James Olmos, who played Gaff in Blade Runner.
    • The desk clerk who is allergic to Dante is voiced by "Fluffy" Mexican comedian Gabriel Iglesias.
  • In addition to García Bernal, Espinosa and Arau reprising their roles, the Latin American Spanish dub includes well known Mexican actors, singers and even writers for every voiced character no matter how minor the role:
    • Miguel: Up-and-coming singer Luis Ángel Gómez Jaramillo, who appeared on the Mexican version of The Voice.
    • Ernesto de la Cruz: Mexican singer Marco Antonio Solís.
    • Mamá Imelda: Angelica Vale, actress, comedienne and singer.
    • Mamá Coco: Award-winning journalist and writer Elena Poniatowska.
    • Abuelita Elena: Actress and singer Angélica Maria from the Golden Age of Rock and Roll in Mexico during The '70s.
    • Papá Enrique: César Costa, a famous actor and former singer from the '70s.
    • Tía Rosita: Mexican actress Cecilia Suárez, whose credits includes the movie Spanglish.
    • Tía Victoria: Famous Mexican actress Ana de la Reguera (who also voiced Carmen Sánchez on The Book of Life).
    • Tío Oscar and Tío Felipe: Celebrated actor Héctor Bonilla.
    • Frida Kahlo: Actress, singer and screenwriter Ofelia Medina had previously played Kahlo in the 1983 Mexican film Frida, naturaleza viva, making this also a case of Role Reprise.
    • Chicharrón: Comedian, voice actor and political commentator Víctor Trujillo, who was the dub voice of Lion-O in ThunderCats (1985) and played Brozo in La Caravana. In addition, he voiced James P. Sullivan in Monsters, Inc. and Bob Parr in The Incredibles, which were both produced by Pixar.
    • The Land of the Dead's desk clerk is voiced by actor Andrés Bustamante, who was the dub voice of Mike Wazowski in Monsters, Inc. alongside Trujillo.
  • In the Japanese dub, Ernesto de la Cruz is voiced by the theater actor Satoshi Hashimoto, better known for many gamers as the previous voice of both Terry Bogard and Kim Kaphwan. Also, the Japanese version of the song "Remember Me" is sung in this version by the Mexican-Japanese singer Kafka Shishido.
  • In the Norwegian dub, Ernesto de la Cruz is voiced by famous actor Kåre Conradi, while Imelda is voiced by actress Mari Maurstad, making "La Llorona" her first singing work for Disney/Pixar in 30 years since she sang the opening theme to the original DuckTales series and Georgette's "Perfect Isn't Easy" in Oliver & Company.
• Author's Saving Throw: The first news of this movie was that Disney wanted to trademark the title "Día de los Muertos" for it, which drew a huge backlash from Mexican audiences, including Mexican cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz. Disney quickly retracted the trademark idea...and decided to go with the Hire the Critic approach by getting Alcaraz involved as a consultant. The backlash made a complete 180° turn as the movie became the biggest box office success in Mexican history and Mexican audiences loved it to bits. Disney/Pixar succeeded in turning the backlash into an amazing example of Germans Love David Hasselhoff.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Edward James Olmos called his single scene in the film "a career highlight" and accepted almost instantaneously as soon as Pixar offered him a job.
• Breaking Old Trends: Normally one of the curiosities that Pixar uses to distinguish their films from the Disney Animated Canon is not making musicals, but this film is the first to be such, though as a Music Story rather than a full-on, randomly-bursting-into-song musical like a typical Animated Musical.
• The Cameo:
  • A bonus for the Mexican audience. When Miguel arrives at Ernesto's house and introduces himself as Ernesto's great-great-grandson, many personalities of Mexican culture appear, including El Santo, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Cantinflas, María Félix and Dolores del Río.
  • The maestro for de la Cruz's Sunrise fiesta is the film's composer Michael Giacchino.
  • Christian Lanz, the voice of Esteban in Elena of Avalor, provides miscellaneous lines, including de la Cruz's interviewer in "Much Needed Advice".
    Interviewer: Señor de la Cruz, what did it take for you to seize your moment?
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Miguel was originally just going to play guitar, rather than sing and play together. When the director discovered Anthony González was in fact a talented singer, it was therefore decided Miguel would do both so Anthony could share his talent in the film.
  • Likewise, Mamá Imelda's voice actress, Alanna Ubach, is a singer in real-life.
• Children Voicing Children:
  • All of the child characters are voiced by child actors regardless of any language, most notably Anthony González as Miguel in the English version. Curiously enough, both González and his character were around the same age during production.
  • The same goes in the Japanese dub, at least for Miguel's voice actor, as he is voiced then-13-year old Hiiro Ishibashi, who also makes his debut as a voice actor as well.
• Clean Dub Name: The movie's title was entirely renamed in Brazilian Portuguese to "Live: Life is a Party" (Viva: A Vida é uma Festa) due to "coco" sounding too close to "poop" - "coco" also means "coconut", but with a diacritical sign, "cocô" becomes "poop".
  • Additionally, Mamá Coco, the character, was renamed as Inês.
  • Mamá Imelda was renamed as Mamá Amelia, because "Imelda" sounds like "merda" (shit), as pronounced by someone having Elmuh Fudd Syndwome.
• Company Cross References: In Turning Red, while Mei makes her frantic escape from school, she bumps into a blonde man and a hijab-wearing woman. On the upper left, papel picado skull designs can be seen.
  • Also from Turning Red, the goth student Carter wears an Escápula t-shirt.
• Completely Different Title: The Japanese title of the movie is "Remember Me"^{Title in katakana}リメンバー・ミー. The change was likely done as the Japanese pronunciation of "Coco" ("ここ") means "Here".
• Contest Winner Cameo: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Miguel's cousins Rosa and Abel are respectively voiced by Denisse de la Fuente and Luis Ángel Rodríguez Sedano, the winners of a contest held by the Mexican theater chain Cinépolis.
• Creator Couple:
  • Real-life husband-and-wife Ricardo Tejedo and Cristina Hernández provide different roles in the Latin American Spanish dub: Tejedo voices the "What did I miss?" spectator from the Sunrise Spectacular and Hernández voices the entrance announcements in the Land of the Dead.
  • "Remember Me" was written by a married couple, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez,
• Cross-Dressing Voices: While it's played straight with the Arabic dub, where Miguel is voiced by the female Hoor Tamer, it's averted in all other foreign dubs and the original English version.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: For the Latin American Spanish dub, many of the cast recorded their lines at Taller Acústico in Mexico City, while Gael García Bernal, Sofía Espinosa, Carla Medina, Luis Valdez and Salvador Reyes recorded their lines at Igloo Music in Los Angeles.
• The Danza: The Latin American Spanish dub of the film features Cecilia Toussaint as Ceci, which is a derivative name of Cecilia.
• Deleted Scene:
• In "Family Fix", Ernesto calls Miguel a nobody who will rot in the Land of the Dead and destroys Héctor's guitar to prevent him from returning home, but Imelda knocks Ernesto out with her shoe. While Miguel reconciles with Héctor and Imelda, the rest of his family repairs the guitar using their knowledge of shoe making.
• In "To the Bridge", Ernesto takes the chance of trying to cross the marigold bridge to stop Miguel when Dia de los Muertos has ended. And unfortunately for him, he pays the price for it when he gradually (then exponentially) starts to dissolve away into dust.
• Descended Creator:
  • Writer/co-director Adrian Molina voices the man discovering that Ernesto de la Cruz's guitar was "stolen".
  • The "What did I miss?" spectator at the Sunrise Spectacular is voiced by director Lee Unkrich.
• Directed by Cast Member: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Ricardo Tejedo is the co-ADR director as well as the unsuspecting spectator at the Sunrise Spectacular.
• Enforced Method Acting: In the scene where Miguel tries to get Coco to remember Héctor and sings "Remember Me" for her, Anthony Gonzalez was actually in tears.
• Fake American: Played straight with Héctor; Guadalajara-born Gael García Bernal had to tone down his Guadalajara accent for his voice in the US release. Averted in the Mexican release, since he kept his regular accent.
• The Foreign Subtitle: The German title is "Coco — Livelier than Life!" (Coco — Lebendiger als das Leben!).
• Hire the Critic:
  • Pixar hired cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz to work on the movie, even though he has been critical of Disney in the past over their treatment of Latinos and Latino cultures. Unfortunately, this actually caused many people to be angry at Alcaraz, thinking he's been bought out.
  • Adrian Molina's promotion to writer (and later, co-director) is a case of Promote the Critic. It came about as a result of Molina rewriting scenes he disagreed with on his own and mailing them to Lee Unkrich in full script form.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Subway sold a set of six backpack clips; Miguel, Dante, Alebrije Dante, Pepita, Hector, and Ernesto de la Cruz.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Target sold the 3-Disc Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital HD combo pack with an exclusive digipack^note the front cover of foregoes the standard combo pack's image for the same poster artwork shown on This Very Wiki's Coco page, as well as a book containing a storybook on one side, and an abridged version of The Art of Coco on the other. Some other Disney-owned movies released on home video from 2018-2020 later received similar Target exclusives.
• Meaningful Release Date: The movie was released the day before Thanksgiving in the US and the weekend before Dia De Muertos in Mexico.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Quite a few actors in the original version provide the same voices in the Latin American Spanish dub:
  • Gael García Bernal as Héctor.
  • Subverted with Luis Valdez. Even though Valdez voices Tío Berto, Don Hidalgo's voice is provided by Francisco Colmenero.
  • Sofía Espinosa voices Mamá Luisa.
  • Alfonso Arau voices Papá Julio.
  • Salvador Reyes and Carla Medina, in their English-language debut, voice the security guard and departure agent in the Land of the Dead's entrance, respectively.
  • Rosalba Sotelo, Constanza Lechuga and Óscar Bonfiglio provide additional voices in both English and Spanish.
• Non-Singing Voice:
  • Subverted in the original version. Even though Benjamin Bratt does some of his own singing as Ernesto de la Cruz, some of his Spanish singing was provided by Los Angeles-based Latin-American singer Antonio Sol, who is also one of the choir singers on the soundtrack. Most notably, Sol appears on "La Llorona".
  • Played straight in the Latin American Spanish dub: Elena Poniatowska voices Coco, but in Miguel's duet with her for "Remember Me", Coco's singing is provided by Rocío Garcel.
• No Dub for You: A very interesting case happens for Spaniard viewers: Unlike other Disney films with specific voice acting for both Latin America and Spain, the Spaniard version features only the Latin American Spanish dub, instead of using one specific for Spain. This is due to the film's very Mexican setting, as a European Spanish dub would sound incredibly out-of-place for a Spaniard viewer in this particular situation. For a better comparison for English-speaking readers, that would be equivalent of a Mexican animated movie set in the United States being dubbed in both American and British English, resulting in British accents coming from the clearly American characters for the UK release.^note Interestingly enough, this is not the first time Disney has used Mexican voice acting in Spain. All Disney products arrived to Spain with Latin American dubs up until the early 90s due to financial reasons. After that, since Spain had become a more viable market, it started to get its own dubs to match the preferences of the country better.
• Permanent Placeholder:
  • In a repeat of Toy Story, "Coco" was a temporary title before it was made definitive.
  • Anthony Gonzalez was originally a temporary voice for Miguel, but the crew loved his performance so much that he was officially cast as Miguel for the movie.
• Playing Their Own Twin: Herbert Sigüenza voices Tío Oscar and Tío Felipe, who are twins; this is carried over to the foreign dubs.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • In the Spanish dub, Angélica Vale and Angélica María play a mother and daughter. However this is inverted as the real life daughter (Angélica Vale) plays the deceased matriarch Mamá Imelda while the real life mother (Angélica María) plays her granddaughter Elena. This only makes sense as it appears Mamá Imelda passed away at a younger age while Elena is still alive and has lived longer.
  • Also, Víctor Trujillo, who voiced Chicharrón in the Latin American Spanish dub, is the brother of Rubén "Trujo" Trujillo, who provides additional voices in his English-language debut.
  • Gael García Bernal's daughter, Libertad García Fonzi, is credited on the soundtrack for the lullaby version of Remember Me.
• Role Reprise: Ofelia Medina, the actress who voices Frida Kahlo in the Latin American Spanish dub, had previously played Kahlo in the 1983 Mexican film Frida, naturaleza viva and in the Mexican play Cada quien su Frida.
• Saved from Development Hell: In 2011, it was announced that Pixar was creating a film based off the Day of the Dead. After years of no news, many fans thought it had been quietly cancelled due to another animated film based off the holiday coming out. In 2016, the film was finally unveiled as Coco.
• Short Run in Peru: The film was released in Mexico a little under four weeks earlier (October 27) before its set release (November 22) in the United States. Justified, since Día de Muertos is November 2 and being released long after the holiday would make little sense.
• Similarly Named Works: There's a 2009 French comedy film titled Coco, starring Gad Elmaleh as an eccentric Nouveau Riche named Simon "Coco" Bensoussan who wants to throw the biggest party possible for his son's bar mitzvah.
• Spoiled by the Merchandise: Lots of the toys made for the film include Dante's alebrije form.
• What Could Have Been: The movie spent six years in Development Hell during which the plot and characters changed drastically. Has its own page.
• Word of God:
  • These two posts have Unkrich confirm that Imelda was born in 1899 and died in her early 70s, and the people in the Land of the Dead appear how they are at the age they died.
  • Unkrich confirmed in this post that Héctor wrote his song, "Un Poco Loco", for Imelda.
  • From this first post of Unkrich's confirmed answer:
    • Héctor's guitar was given to him by Imelda as a gift.
    • Both Óscar and Felipe died at the same time.
    • The Land of the Dead was inspired by his and his peers' visits to Guanajauto.
    • The name of Miguel's baby sister is Socorro, after her great-grandmother.
    • Miguel gave Dante his name because in one of Ernesto's movies, he had a horse named "Dante".
    • Even though Ernesto would later try to kill Miguel, his reason for saving Miguel from nearly drowning was because of "common decency".
    • When Miguel and Héctor are on the trolley and the former states that Ernesto the "best songwriter ever", the latter sarcastically responded, "maybe the best eyebrows ever".
    • Héctor had the picture of himself when he died.
    • Héctor originally planned to return home after his tour with Ernesto.
  • From this second post of Unkrich's confirmed answers:
    • It's unknown how Imelda died.
    • Miguel wrote "Proud Corazon".
    • It is a mystery of why Héctor needed Cheech's femur.
    • Ernesto was born in 1896.
  • According to this post, Héctor was 18 when Coco was born and she was around 3-4 when he left.
  • Imelda was 19 when she had Coco and Imelda herself was born in the year 1899.
  • From this Q&A post:
    • To be given a blessing, it doesn't have to be a blood relative, just someone you think of as family.
    • You would have to ask Ernesto about his favorite food.
    • Héctor had a few broken bones due to a combination of his rough time in the Land of the Dead and being forgotten.
    • It's up to fan interpretation on what Chicharrón did while alive, but Unkrich states he was a musician, but that may have been a hobby.
    • Miguel's design was inspired by two real-life kids — Emilio Fuentes (original scratch voice for Miguel while the movie was in development) and Adriel Arriaga (the son of a character designer).
    • Miguel's older cousin, Rosa, is 13 or 14-years-old.
    • Miguel's older cousin, Abel, is 19-years-old.
  • Unkrich confirmed that even though Ernesto is crushed by a bell in the end, he's not permanently dead.
• Working Title: The first planned title was Día de los Muertos, but the developers dropped it like a hot potato after the PR nightmare caused when Disney tried to trademark it. In fairness, they weren't trying to trademark the name of a centuries-old Mexican holiday but just the title, like how Compass Pictures trademarked the title Halloween.

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