Elemental includes Easter egg tribute to late Pixar animator

If you scrutinize the background of scenes in Pixar films, chances are you'll find some clever Easter eggs. Elemental (in theaters this weekend) is no exception.

"What's fun for me is that the crew will put in Easter eggs that I don't even know about," director Peter Sohn tells EW in an interview. "I was just told a character from Up is hidden in the film. They earthified, I think, Doug the dog. I think they replaced his fur with grass. He's somewhere in the film. I don't know where he is."

Amid the fun Pixar callouts, including an Easter egg for the studio's next movie, Elio, is a small but very personal tribute to Ralph Eggleston, the Oscar-winning Pixar animator, art director, and production designer who died in 2022 at the age of 56 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. "He got me my first job [at Pixar] on Finding Nemo," says Sohn, who served as a story artist on that 2003 film.

Elemental is set in Element City, a vibrant metropolis inspired by New York that's populated by anthropomorphized elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Ember, voiced by Leah Lewis (The Half of It, Nancy Drew), is a fiery woman who encounters the emotionally sensitive water resident Wade, voiced by Mamoudou Athie (Archive 81, Jurassic World: Dominion). Wade's arrival as a city inspector threatens to shut down the convenience store owned by Ember's father, but when the seemingly opposing elements work together to save the business, they find more than just a spark of friendship.

"We made a little sign: 'Eat at Ralph's. Two cents,'" Sohn explains of the Easter egg tribute. "The joke is that Ralph was such a film encyclopedia. He just knew every movie. And if you asked him about a new movie, he would sort of complain about it and say, 'That's just my two cents.' And so we have that little love in there for him."

While the movie overall is a love letter to Sohn's parents, who died during production on Elemental, the filmmaker included smaller homages to his father as subtle Easter eggs.

"There were a lot of details from my dad — his handwritten signs of, 'We have the right to refuse service.' He always wrote it wrong, and then you always have to correct it. That's in the film," Sohn says. "His idioms were always awful. The idea of 'he's lying through his feet' was always something that my dad joked around with. He just didn't know how those should be said."

Elemental opens in theaters this Friday.

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