Hoppers confirms fandom's Unified Pixar Theory in a terrific Easter egg

It's the Easter egg to end all Easter eggs — the studio itself admitting that its movies might be connected in one big timeline

There’s a gag late in the animated movie Hoppers that Pixar fans should be aware of before they go in. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, not really designed for theatrical viewing — it’s more of a tidbit meant for later screencapping and analysis when the movie hits streaming. Still, if you’re paying close attention at exactly the right second, you’ll catch the moment where the Disney-owned studio fully leans into the Pixar Theory (sometimes known as the Grand Unifying Theory of Pixar Movies): the popular fandom idea that all Pixar movies are linked in a single, interconnected timeline.

Pixar animators have placed more than 100 Easter eggs throughout their movies, linking all of the studio’s output with small details. Versions of the Toy Story toys show up in other movies’ play areas, the chain restaurant Pizza Planet gets nods in everything from Cars to Brave (which features a carved wooden Pizza Planet delivery truck), and the designation “A113” (a CalArts classroom reference) crops up as everything from a license plate number in Cars to a mission-critical code in WALL-E. Those Easter eggs are part of the reason some fans claim all of these stories are part of a single universe. But they’ve always been just as easy to explain away as visual in-jokes, the kind of little details animators have always added to their work.

The Hoppers reference goes much further in overly buying into a unified Pixar timeline, and suggesting one lynchpin that holds certain movies together.

[Ed. note: No movie spoilers ahead, but we do get into the details of the gag, and where to find it.]

Hoppers centers on a 19-year-old environmental advocate, Mabel (Piper Curda), who’s trying to save a forest glade from being destroyed for a highway project masterminded by her town’s mayor (Jon Hamm). For much of the movie, she pursues this by transferring her mind into a robot beaver via a process called “Hopping,” created by a researcher at her college, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy).

Toward the end of the movie, after the plot is largely resolved, Mabel visits Dr. Sam’s lab, and Dr. Sam mentions that she has ideas for a bunch of other projects. She very briefly whips out a chalkboard covered with sketches and notes. (If you want to know where to look in the film, but you want to experience the details for yourself, you can stop reading here.)

That chalkboard has sketches for several future ideas, all of which link to specific Pixar movies. One shows a “talking dog collar,” with a little sketch of Dug (Bob Peterson), the energetic golden retriever who vocalizes his thoughts through an electronic collar in Up. Another sketch shows a “cat companion,” an artificial feline which is clearly Sox (Peter Sohn), the therapeutic robot cat from Lightyear. A third is labeled “cleaning robot of some kind?” with a little sketch of WALL-E. (There may be a fourth — as I said, the chalkboard is only on screen for a second, so we’ll have to check in later viewings, or wait for streaming.)

Is Dr. Sam the single mastermind behind all of these technologies? Not necessarily — she does have lab assistants working with her on the Hoppers tech, and other creators might have carried on or developed her ideas, especially since Hoppers seems to take place in the modern world, whereas Lightyear and WALL-E are far-future stories. Up is a slightly more complicated case, since it already has an explanation for the thoughts-to-speech dog collars — famed explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) supposedly invented them.

Still, that information comes directly from Dug, who isn’t the brightest or most sophisticated character, and who mostly sums up his other thoughts on Charles as, “He is good and smart!” Dug turns out to be wrong about Charles being good, so he could be iffy on the collar detail as well. Charles certainly might have expanded on Dr. Sam’s work or gotten his hands on one of her prototypes, since Up is also a modern-day story that could fairly easily exist contemporaneously with Hoppers.

Regardless, as Pixar Easter eggs go, this one’s a doozy — a clear acknowledgment of a fairly silly theory that fans have latched onto and have been justifying, revising, and iterating on for more than a decade now. It may feel a bit like an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” moment, but it’s still fun to see Hoppers’ team fully participating in a fandom obsession.