How many ‘Easter eggs’ can you spot in new movie?
Pixar films renowned for their animated ‘inside jokes’
When you’re watching Cars 3, don’t forget to keep an eye out for those Pixar Easter eggs. Not the coloured kind, of course.
These Easter eggs are intentional inside visual jokes slipped into the background by Pixar animators. The term Easter egg was first coined to describe a hidden message in the Atari video game Adventure that led Atari to encourage further hidden messages in later games, treating them as Easter eggs for players to find.
Here’s a look at some of the Easter eggs that have appeared in the first two Cars films.
A113
A113 is an Easter egg that pays homage to a classroom at CalArts, the alma mater of Pixar/Disney executive John Lasseter and director Brad Bird, among others.
In Cars, it’s displayed as the number on the freight train that almost crashes into Lightning McQueen while he is first on his way to Radiator Springs. It is also Mater’s license plate in both the films.
In Cars 2, A113 is the number on Siddeley’s tail, and is part of the image number on the spy photo of Miles Axelrod’s engine.
John Ratzenberger
Lasseter calls actor John Ratzenberger ‘Pixar’s good luck charm,’ as Ratzenberger has played a role in each Pixar feature, including car transporter Mack in all three Cars movies.
At the end of Cars, there is a drive-in theatre that shows Ratzenberger as some of the parts of the movies, which are car-versions of Toy (Car) Story, A Bug’s Life, and Monster (Trucks) Inc.
Pizza Planet
Pizza Planet is a fictional pizza restaurant that appears in Toy Story. In Cars, there is a Pizza Planet truck at the stadium. In Cars 2, the truck is attending the Radiator Springs Grand Prix, and also appears in the background of a poster of the movie in front of Buckingham Palace.