WMG / Pixar

All the movies take place in the same universe

With the exception of Cars, The Incredibles, and Brave, which just can't be tied in, all of the movies take place in one universe. This is the reason characters continue appearing in each other's movies.

• Jessie becomes Boo's toy after Andy gives her up—this is why we see her in Boo's room.
  • It's another Jessie doll. Sid tries to steal it in one of the Monsters, Inc. comics to prevent what happened to him from happening to anyone else.
  • The witch in Brave can use magic to animate inanimate objects, this could be the origin of the magic behind the living toys in Toy Story.
• In Jessie's memories of her owner in Toy Story 2, they play by a tree that looks suspiciously like the one in A Bug's Life.
  • Except that one was on an island in the middle of a riverbed and the other is in top of a hill.
    • Landscapes change over time. Maybe a flood washed away part of the Toy Story hill, and the river changed its course before A Bug's Life.
• Monstropolis is in a dimension tied to the other Pixar characters', or in a place hidden very well. This is why the trailer home Randall is banished to is also in A Bug's Life.
  • Negroni also suggest that the monsters in Monsteropolis are actually mutants descending from the intelligent animals of the present-day movies (like Nemo and Ratatouille) living in the future and not traveling to another dimension but time-traveling to the past.
• Buy n Large is clearly a big manufacturer during the events of Toy Story 3.
• You could even fit Cars in there. Timeline: Starts with Ratatouille, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo and Toy Story all in modern day, just in four different areas. The Axiom leaves Earth in the near future. In the 600 years that it's in space, humanity dies out and sentient cars become dominant. How can cars with no limbs or hands build anything? Simple; they didn't, the robots that were on Earth did. Sometime during those 600 years, the cars all die out (I imagine reproduction is slow, if existent at all). After that, the rest of the events of WALL•E take place. The reason there are still trees and plants in the Cars time is because the Cars, after becoming sentient, did some cleaning and replanting of some areas with the help of robots, but once they died off, things went bad again.
  • You could fit Cars in another way: 700-or-so years only passed on board of "The Axiom",while on Earth,it's been around 20,000 years before humans returned. This time was probably long enough for the cars to come to life,put WALL-Es away for a while and reboot the civilisation.
  • Or, perhaps, the cars are the distant, possibly even techno-organic offshoots of the Axiom robots who helped restore Earth. The humans went back to space, presumably to colonize/explore the universe, and the "children" or WALL•E and EVE essentially inherited the planet.
• Boo is Bonnie. Its Kind of plausible.
  • Well, Bonnie would clearly be the older version if so. And they moved at some point, probably because the poor girl wouldn't quit talking about her recurring hallucinations of a giant, blue Kitty. She took a liking to Woody immediately because it reminded her of the Jessie doll she used to have, and then when she gets a new Jessie doll back from Andy, she likes it for the same reason. Personally, though, I can't imagine Monsters, Inc. taking place in the same universe as Toy Story. While the toys actively and effectively hide their secret lives from humans, monsters only hide theirs from adults, if anyone. Plus, kids in Monsters Inc. are said to be getting harder and harder to scare, which most likely means the children of previous generations still remember that monsters are real and humanity is accustomed to their presence. It at least explains why the kid at the end didn't question why a one-eyed green ball was telling him jokes. and belching in his face. So, in a world where humans are aware that monsters sneak into their children's rooms at night, and don't care, what reason is there to hide the existence of Living Toys? Makes me wonder if the upcoming Monster's Inc. 2 will approach this issue of human-to-monster relations.
  • Regarding your mention of "children getting harder to scare", that was explicitly shown to be the result of scary movies being easily available to kids and numbing their sense of fear. Also, the kid at the end is employing the Rule of Funny. The entire movie of Monsters Inc is a play on if the monsters in closets that kids are scared of were real, but it never says that this isn't our universe. It's just one with a single surreal element added.
  • Alternatively, as Jon Negroni suggests, Boo is the Witch turned Merida's mother into a bear, having time travelled using wood, of all things.
  • Another alternatively, Boo is a descendant of the Witch.
• Two words: Pizza Planet.
  • One more: Dinoco.
• Another way that Cars can be made to fit into the proposed Pixarverse comes from a throwaway line in Toy Story 2, when Hamm mentions speaking to the lawnmower next door. This suggests, if not outright declares, that appliances are sentient as well as toys, and maybe that includes cars. After humanity dies out or moves on, the cars stop pretending to be inanimate, and they inherit the Earth. Appliances being sentient could also place The Brave Little Toaster in the same universe, but I'm not even going to start on that x)
  • Lawn gnome. He spoke to the lawn gnome next door.
    • Oh my, I'm most dreadfully embarrassed. Are you sure?
    • Either way, it still sounds like a pretty nice bet. :)
  • Alternativly, Cars might just be in a parallel universe like Monsteropolis.
• It's too early to make a solid theory yet, but to start the brainstorming for Brave's placement is that it takes place in the the Dark Ages when magic was more abundant with spirits and magical creatures existing alongside humans. But to a due an event, possibly Merida's major blunder that is hinted at, The Magic Goes Away to an extent. The magical creatures leave Earth and settle in another dimension, which would eventually be called Monstropolis (They in turn lose their ties to magic as well), while magic has lost much of its power and presence on Earth, only manifesting itself in animating toys, giving sentience to animals, and granting certain people superhuman abilities.
  • Or could be: Brave in the long past makes toys alive with magic and turns some people into animals that reproduce causing the existence of animal descendants equally intelligent than humans. The events in Toy Story, Up, Monster Inc., Ratatouille, A Bug’s Life and Nemo all happen in the present, humans leave Earth eventually because of pollution and I.A. machines are left behind, the events on Cars happen (a world run by artificially intelligent machines) and then they died out and the events in WALL•E happen.
• The world of Cars is on another planet and the cars were created by Syndrome from The Incredibles. He travelled to another planet at some point to experiment with ideas to give everyone special powers and created sentient cars that would let humans not have to drive themselves around anymore, but something went wrong and he abandoned the cars.
  • Europe and Japan are mentioned in Cars 2, so is not another planet.
• On the contrary, Brave is the easiest to shoehorn in because it takes place in Medieval Scotland. If nothing else makes sense, Merida could easily be a distant ancestor of Andy, Boo, Carl, Russell, the Parrs, et al?
• Cracked suggested that all of Pixar's movies are simply setting up the timeline for the Robot Apocalypse. All of the sentient toys and cars eventually get tired of mistreatment at the hands of the humans, leading to the Cars rising up and forcing the humans off the planet and onto the Axiom. However, they subsequently badly pollute it with all of their exhaust, leading it to become a wasteland. After several hundred years, the humans on the Axiom became conditioned to following directions from a robotic authority, at which point, WALL•E arrives to lead them back to Earth, becoming their messiah.
• Who says The Incredibles can't be tied in?
  • It can. Sometime after college Andy Davis went on to create the popular comic book "The Incredibles".
  • The Incredibles are the hardest to tie in because there’s nothing in the other movies suggesting that something as notorious as superheroes exists in the worlds of Up, Nemo, Toy Story, Ratatouille, etc. In these movies people actually react as normal people would if finding an unusual behavior from an animal or a toy (like Sid when he sees the toys moving) and no mention of superheroes is ever hear in the news for example, so it seems to be a regular world very similar to ours, other than having sentient toys and animals hiding their intelligence.
• The Pixar Theory ties all of the movies together
  • Now with an official Pixar Theory website.
    • Of course, The Pixar Theory also has its debunkers like Bobsheaux and Channel Frederator
• Alternatively. We will eventually be getting a new movie about the Pizza-Truck and the star-ball. And Luxo Jr.. will be a main character.
• The Pixar Theory is the reason why animals in Pixar movies can do things that they can't in our timeline. For example, in our timeline, octopuses can't spend much time out of water, and in the Pixar timeline, Hank from Finding Dory is able to spend an extremely long amount of time out of water.
  • That only proves that the animals in that movie work under Toon Physics, if that's the case then every single movie with intelligent animals acting out of their nature happens in the Pixar Universe?
  • Not animals in every movie. I mean, the Pixar Theory could explain why animals in Pixar movies have abilities, or at least variations of, they don't have in our timeline. The Pixar Theory only accounts for Pixar movies, not all movies involving intelligent animals.
  • Fine. Though is weird how animals in Toy Story and The Incredibles act perfectly like normal animals in our world and seem not to be sentient or anormally inteligent. Of course that's only one of the many inconsistencies of the Pixar Theory.
  • It's because the Pixar Theory places Toy Story and The Incredibles chronologically before the movies with the talking animals. Animals started achieving sentience sometime after Toy Story but before Finding Nemo and Ratatouille.

Alternately, all the movies take place in the same universe...

But it's an Toon Town - like universe, where everyone is an Animated Actor. It explains why Woody's doing the clapper in the Bug's Life outtakes and why Flik and Heimlich show up in the Toy Story 2 outtakes- they like to help out on each other's projects. Likewise, when characters show up in other movies, they're actually cameos by the actors. The reasons settings look familiar from one film to the next (like the Ant Island tree showing up in Toy Story 2) is because they reuse the sets to save on their budgets. (Well, it's certainly a more cheerful theory than the above...)

I actually agree with both of these theories. Brings a nice unity to the Pixar universe.

Cars is a fictional Movie in the Pixar universe

Why not?

• Which has fictional Pixar movies within its universe? "Yo dawg, I herd you like Pixar..."

Pixar is purposely making bad and mediocre movies like the Cars series and Brave to discredit CGI animation, and set in motion a resurrection of Traditional Animation.

• That would explain Pixar's 2D-3D crossover, Day & Night.
• They've openly stated that they are ashamed that they are the ones who inadvertently killed Traditional Feature Animation by doing too good of a job. If they want to save 2D, what better way than to discredit the very medium they helped perfect?
  • They've never said they were ashamed. They have, however, said that being blamed for the demise of 2D feature animation has severely pissed them off, as their efforts were to make computer animation an option, not a replacement.

Brave's tagline is retroactive and ironic

Change your fate, eh? This could be the tag for three reasons. In-movie: It's about defying tradition. From a whole Pixar series perspective: after the debacle that was Cars 2, it's up to Brave to change their fate and show that they can reverse their critical fortune. Meta perspective: this is their 13th film. Therefore, they're trying to make it their best film to fight the unlucky 13 rule.

• Seeing as how some are predicting that DreamWorks Animation will rise and lead to the fall of Pixar, it could also be seen as trying to defy that prediction.

The Pixar Film That Takes You Inside The Mind will be an homage to other Journey to the Center of the Mind films

Much like how The Incredibles was an homage to superhero and James Bond movies, and A Bug's Life was an homage to The Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai, TPFTTYITM will be an homage to films like Inception and Paprika, filled with lots of Deranged Animation, and Mind Screws.

• Oh, and Dark City.

Geri of Geri's Game plays against his split personality.

It's why he feels as though he's in deep competition, despite it being against himself.

The two as of yet unnamed films will have two specific ShoutOuts.

The Pixar Film That Takes You Inside The Mind will include a subtle cameo or shout out to Psychonauts and The Pixar Film Set in the World of the Mexican Holiday of Dia de los Muertos Will have a cameo or shout out to Grim Fandango.

• The Good Dinosaur seems to be one Jurassic Park, obviously.

Pixar will eventually make a planned trilogy.

And it will be awesome.

• It is... Cars 3. YAYYYYYY!
  • It's unlikely Cars was planned to be a trilogy from the start, though.

The credits shown to reveal the whole movie as an act (for example: The Monsters Inc. credits), was just a one-strip gag. It never was an act. AKA it never happened.

The Pizza-Truck easter egg is some form of time-machine. Made to record specific events in the Pixar universe.

OR. It is a time-machine patrolled by Boo from the future. See the Pixar theory.

The Pixar Star-Ball is just a toy ball from a popular toy brand in the Pixar universe.

This is why it is normally around kids in the universes.

The Luxo Jr. Short is secretly about the government testing with sentient objects.

The lamp jumping on the letter "i" in the Pixar logo represents the suppression of individual thought.

Thanks to Luxo, there is no "I" in Pixar.

• Well, most of their films are great thanks to such tremendous teamwork.

The company is secretly owned and operated by the Brain.

In the episode "Brain's Song," Brain (inspired by a certain scene in The Lion King (1994)) formed the following plan to Take Over the World: "We shall produce the saddest Tear Jerker ever, broadcast the movie worldwide, and leave the planet steeped in such depression, they’ll be putty in our hands." He failed at the time, but he's apparently improving. No one produces bigger Tear Jerkers than Pixar — what could motivate someone to make such successful masterpieces of emotional manipulation?

One of the announced upcoming movies isn't just what it appears to be.

There'll be an unexpected switch within them for their story. The possibilities include:

• Cars 3.
  • The first one focused on Lightning in Radiator Springs, the Second on Mater in many different cities. It has been stated that 3 will be on California's Route 99. The twist is that the hero of Cars 3 will be Sally, who is visiting family and will be trying to reconnect with them in spite of her aversion to a big city lifestyle. Of the two Cars movies, the original is the one with better reception, so it would make sense to emulate it. But there is another twist that really is more of a twist: No Races. Lightning has no competition in the movie, a race isn't a major plot point, he doesn't get challenged to one.
  • The twist could that Lightning's new younger rival, Jackson, is not a Jerkass like his previous ones. Instead, Jackson is a character who is similar to how Lightning was; a young rookie on the rise to the top who is blinded by his desires and views Cruz as the Chick Hicks of his story. Lightning will help show him humility and friendship in the end.
• Coco.
  • Miguel is a child who goes to the land of the dead, presumably. But not only does he not know his deceased relatives due to the purported mystery plot, but he ends up learning about hardships his family have with one another such as being estranged enough for his parents to not celebrate them on Dia de los Muertos. With the added twist being that he also travels through time to meet them while they were alive.
    • Or he doesn't travel anywhere at all and the film is rooted in reality, with the focus being learning things kept hidden from him about his ancestors.
  • One of Miguel's parents will be estranged from one of Miguel's grandparents, which causes Miguel to want to find the grandfather or grandmother he never met, find out what happened between them, and reunite their family in time for them to all be able to honor their deceased kin together on Dia de los Muertos. However, it turns out said grandparent is deceased, leading the more fantastical elements of the plot and setting.
    • The guess is actually not far off from the actual movie. The estranged relative is Miguel's great-great-grandfather, already deceased, that Miguel believes is Ernesto de la Cruz. However, Miguel wants to meet him for selfish reasons (wanting to become a musician like him) rather than for the sake of the family.

A future original Pixar movie will follow a detective or private investigator

To add flavor to the film, it will be set in an Alternate History and/or Constructed World that will be the ultimate example of Anachronism Stew and Ambiguous Time Period.

• Pixar did not release such a film yet, but Disney did: Zootopia takes place in a Constructed World inhabited by anthropomorphic animals and follows a police inspector, Judy Hopps, investigating a crime.

Onward is deliberately made to joss the Pixar theory.

• Alternately, the world of Onward takes place in a parallel universe.
  • Pretty sure having Onward take place in a parallel universe josses the Pixar theory. The whole point of the theory is that all feature films exist in the same universe. Saying "All Pixar films exist in the same universe. Oh...errr...except for this one film that's just kind of in its own little parallel world just chilling...whatever." kind of defeats the whole point.

Onward does not joss the Pixar theory.

• It's actually an in-character depiction of a satirical Urban Fantasy LARP scenario that Andy takes part in at college, which paired off its participants, gave them some clues and "spell cards" for use against obstacles, and tasked its teams to roam all over campus in search of a fake "Phoenix Stone" hidden in a college landmark. Andy plays Ian, his roommate plays Barley, and their father - the subject of their particular pairing's game mission - is played by half a mannequin on a string. Laurel and Corey are played by their college girlfriends.

Luca and Turning Red will both throw a major wrenches in the Pixar Theory.

Think about it;

• The main characters in Luca are explicitly stated to be sea monsters. Monsters who are noticeably different in nature from those from the Monsters, Inc. franchise, in that they exist in the same setting as humans, can change into human guises, and are actively living among humans. It would a lot of complex theorizing to explain how they could be linked to the Monsters, Inc. species of monsters. We can also assume that Luca and Alberto are also (normally) ocean dwelling creatures. If they really exist in a world where their kind exist alongside the actual sea life in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, the Theory would have to be altered to explain why no members of their race are seen or hinted at.
• Turning Red will feature a human turning into an animal in a way that's completely different from those affected by the Witch in Brave; Elinor and the prince who became Mor'du were fairly realistic black bears, were stuck in those forms, and lost their humanity the longer they stayed as bears. In Turning Red, Mei becomes a very anthropomorphic seeming red panda that is far, far bigger than a real one and changes back and forth based on her emotions (excitement, in this specific case), meaning she likely is still very much herself when in red panda mode, which suggests that even if the source is magic, it's a very different magic from the Witch's. While this may not outright contradict the idea that the Witch is the source for animal-based anomalies in this hypothetical Pixar-verse, it does make it a tad muddier and throws in some variables.

Lightyear will be an in-universe movie to the Toy Story characters.

Perhaps the movie will Bookend with Andy and his college friends seeing it in theaters. The movie is a Live-Action Adaptation in their universe. The book-ends will focus on how much Andy loves it because he used to have the toy (and likely saw the cartoon).

• Conformed, although it claims to be the film Andy watched as a child.

Pixar will make a comedy movie based on the COVID-19 Pandemic and the characters are comedic cartoony talking Coronaviruses.

• The Movie will star cute funny talking viruses enjoying their fun infecting billions and billions of people (complete with the humans dying of infection comedically) until the end of the film with all of humanity became extinct in the future with the pandemic still going on.
  • Sounds a bit too dark for Pixar. I'd say it's more Sony's realm. And even then, only several decades into the future.
  • There is no way any film studio would think of making a children's film about sentient Coronaviruses.

Eventually Pixar's gonna make a film with a full-on Downer Ending

The characters in it will fail to fix the problem they have or even started and it ends with them having to live with the consequences as everyone is left miserable. It will be the ultimate Tear Jerker Pixar has ever created.

Pixar will make a Crossover movie featuring Nickelodeon and Nintendo characters

what?

For Pixar's 100th anniversary, there will be a short celebrating the occasion akin to Once Upon a Studio

The short would feature practically all of Pixar's characters celebrating the anniversary, with them all singing "You've Got a Friend in Me" at the end.

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