1,097 thoughts on “The Pixar Theory Timeline”

1. If boo is the witch and she is older in brave which is where you start the timeline how do you explain how in her room there are plastic toys even Nemo that she tries to give to sully in her room it’s an updated room if she was the witch don’t you think her room would be with wood toys and in an older building even more so than in brave look at what they play with compared to what boo had played with in her room the toys and building type just don’t add up to the theory of boo being a witch

   • Obviously she wasn’t the witch at the time she met Sully. Because she went to the future and saw what happens, when she grew she discovered how to travel in time and that’s the reason why she was at the Brave’s time. Not because she has born in that time, but because she traveled in time to go to that period

     • I just realized this… If Boo is the cause that monsters happened, wouldn’t the monsters not have existed?

       • Yes that’s possible if she is the catalyst that started the evolution that would eventually result in Monsters if she never set things in motion they might never exist.

   • The Pinocchio effect I guesss…

   • She goes back in time and then becomes the witch

   • i just remember that boo appeard in toy story 3 wich is before monsters inc. in this timeline wich means is wrong

     • No it doesn’t mean the time line is wrong. If Monsters go through doors that send them back in time they can be in the future well after boos time. So sully going to her room is going to the period in time where she is the age we see her. Just because she is in Monsters Inc does not mean she can’t be in toy story 3. Boos life will continue linearly and she will grow up to the age we see her in toy story 3. Just because we see her in Monsters Inc does not mean the place where she comes from is the same time period as where the monsters are. You need to remember this time line is based on time travel. The time line is fine. You’re looking at it as sully goes and finds boo and the room he finds her in is the same year as where the monsters are. But in the time line theory the doors are time travel devices hence sully travels to a past time when he finds boo. And essentially he would be able to use another door to visit her when she is however old in toy story three.

   • Sorry to be a Naysayer but anytime you have to use “Magic” and then “Time Travel” as a basis to validate a theory, well you know do I really gotta say it?

2. I have a doubt, it´s about bug’s movie, you wrote that there’s no evidence that shows humans during this time, but i remembered a scene whe Flick arrived to the “city” the movie shows to flys flying around a LIGHTED lap that is holding from a roof, a human must light the lamp. I think!!

   • Also this: http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130623171732/pixar/images/4/40/Cricket_.jpg

     • this pic is just the short version. in the full one, it is mentioned that there are probably humans around already, but only a few, for their population hasn’t blossomed yet. but insects reproduce much more quickly thus why insects are dominant in the place where the movie takes place

       • Would one necessarily consider a panhandling wino cricket’s sign to be truthful?

   • Actually, he said there were humans, and bugs either haven’t noticed or don’t see them as a threat.

   • If you read the full article you would know that he said that there were humans, just not very many, since humanity had just gotten off of the Axiom.

3. I see only one problem with the timeline: in Ratatouille there’s a paper with front page headline “Bomb voyage returns”

   • well ratatouille takes place decades after the incredibles. bomb voyage likely could have been released from prison by then, or have escaped and gone into hiding, plotting his next bombing fiasco

4. the theory of the doors might be the reason why the movie are released in a certain order, out of order of which time period they appear.

5. THERY’RE JUST MOVIES GUYS. CALM DOWN!!!!!!

6. Thanks for the article, is there any way I can receive an email whenever you publish a new update? bckecfcecdce

7. I really enjoyed reading both the timeline and the detailed version but there’s something buzzing my head here…
   Everything starts with Merida and the Witch in Brave and also it ends up with the Witch as Boo. Isn’t this some kind of paradox? Cuz she goes back in time so she relives her timeline and sees her younger self going back on time just like she did which means that she would only exist cuz she initially started all of this which would meant she was the one “creating” the monsters race so she’s the one that makes her young self to see Sully. So this means she needs to go back in time to the Dark Ages so she can become the Witch on Brave in order to bring Sully and the “war” between animals, humans and A.I to life.
   So basically: Boo personifies the animals, installing the beggining of the great war. This ends up years after with a race of mutated animals which we call monsters. Boo meets Sully. She ends up wanting to see him again which will led her to the wood and the magic. Boos goes back in tim to the Dark Ages and becomes the Witch.
   Please tell me if you can explain this cuz I got really confused here 😛
   Anyway… had a lot of fun reading this and you got me looking at a different perspective at Pixar 😀

   • No, its not a paradox really. If you think of boo’s existence as a circle instead of a line. each of us has a timeline of our existence, but boo, in this theory, would have a timeline that starts at point A (her baby and kid years) and would go forward until the time when she’d be able to travel in time. Lets say this is maybe when she’s 30 (not a guess, just an arbitrary age- when she’s learned magic or gains the ability to time travel- which ever side youre agreeing with here.). She travels in time, while still 30 years old, to the past and the 1400’s or whenever youd like to date the time of Merida (but before Merida is born) or even before if youre thinking she, as a witch, has now lived much longer than a normal lifespan. So, from the time she arrives in the 1400’s, she is then progressing forward in age. As in the many “going to the past movies” like back to the future, marty only does whats already been done, by himself or others. he is not interfering with the important events that change his and their history- like his parents first kiss. It doesn’t much matter if he’s the one playing the music there or if he takes his mom to the dance, as long as the “future defining moment” of them kissing at that dance occurs. Boo/the witch, would then only be doing what she or another had already done. Its counter intuitive. To me, I like to think that she was making bears, from wood or with her spells, as a way to try to make another sully. She had a friend, and a very cool one at that, that she then tried to travel to and somehow got lost or couldn’t get back, Id like to think she’d probably see if she could make another talking friend or maybe some friends so that he’d have company if sully would stay with her in the past. Perhaps she can move about freely (is not lost/stranded) and is trying to find out about the original magic that’s making him possible. Isnt that essentially science? trying to discover our world and what makes it tick? So, to me, paradox-no.

   • Well, i suppose there is a paradox somewhere, but that doesn’t mean time repeats itself. Sully remembered Boo, and visited her later in the same movie. Surely this gives more opportunities to visit, over the course of, say, six
     or seven years. This gave enough time for Boo to develop the ability to speak and to think better, therein allowing her to ask questions. Sully eventually leaves, for some reason, and maybe misses her. He then devotes, theoreticaly, his life to finding Boo. Surely his work gets passed down to a predecessor, therefore allowing his work to continue. Maybe more evidence, say, a sequel to Monsters Inc will appear. Think about this. Yes, there is a paradox, and yes, this will keep going, but that all might change due to Sully wanting Boo back. But thats just a theory. If anyone wants to back me up, please do. We need all the support we can get

8. I think its important to note that most of the movies were thought of in one lunch back in 1994. Frankly, as a collaborative creator myself, ideas don’t tend to come one after another that are 100% separated. I think its much more likely someone said, “what if we do more inanimate objects stories or with things that don’t normally talk” and “how did the toys get this way”. I would tend to think that since they made the tinker soldier short first, and that’s kind of how toy story evolved, that was easily the first idea to create a full world around, but once nearly finished, the ideas turned to the larger world and the timeline that allowed this. Now that I’ve seen the “Pixar theory” I fully agree that its perfectly logical for each of these movies exist in a timeline. I think things that don’t 100% fulfill every tiny detail, like the lamp or the newspapers, are probably used to help sell the individual movie and its realistic aspects. Would a bugs life be as fun if you thought all the humans were gone? I don’t think so. So they add a few signs of life (while allowing for educated doubt) to take some of the morbid, sad, ‘buy n large’ squeamishness out of an otherwise cute kids movie. It still needs to appeal to adults a tad too, and I think the underlying timeline, that is hinted at, is an excellent way to keep adults coming back as well. (the link is to an article and clip of a Pixar guy speaking about that fateful lunch)

   http://www.slashfilm.com/trivia-cafe-pixar-bugs-life-monsters-finding-nemo-walle-shuts/

9. This theory is amazing, but I was just wondering if you could explain a short in the credits of Toy Story 2. It features Flik and Heimlich from a Bug’s Life in some leaves, when a few of the toys slash through them on their way to Al’s Toy Barn. Would this be explained as the bugs being ‘actors’, as the shorts are made to seem like a blooper reel, as though the toys are actors as well? Thanks!

10. I found a picture that shows the little girl from toy story three and ‘boo’ from Monsters Inc next to each other. THEY LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. Admittedly the one from toy story looks a little older. If this theory is true, maybe they are the same person and Sully went back a little before Toy Story three to when she was a little younger?

    • Yeah, all that means is that when Sully travels back in time to see Boo in Monsters Inc, he’s travelling back to roughly a year or two before the events of Toy Story 3. So Boo’s present is 2010 where she grows up and you can assume learns time travel well after the events of Up but before the destruction of the planet

    • I noticed that the girl in Toy Story 3 was also playing with a blue-ish/purple-ish cat toy and a gir toy. This could be another hint that the girl is Boo, because she was always calling Sully Kitty.

11. How did this all happen if the witch (Boo) wasn’t there in the first place. I know she is in the movie Brave/ Monsters inc., but if she didn’t know how to travel through time via doors before she meet Sully, then how did all the intelligent animals exist in the fist place? Because if she didn’t meet Sully (because he doesn’t exist in the future if she doesn’t travel back in time to Brave) how does she learn to travel through time? So although I like the theory, I think Frozen is the missing gap. There was magic in frozen and they even made aware objects out of snow. So I think Frozen should be before Brave in the Pixar theory. Even though I think Boo is the witch, I think that if Frozen is in the calculations, then Brave doesn’t add much to the theory besides Boo time traveling. If we don’t count Frozen then I don’t think any of this would happen because if all the aware objects were created by the witch and she learned how to use magic to time travel and create aware objects from the monsters, how did the monsters exist in the first place?

    I had difficulty explaining that, I hope it makes sense.

    • Frozen is a Disney movie and not part of this timeline whatsoever.

      Boo was born in roughly 2003-2006 because we know that she exists and is still a child in Toy Story 3. Therefore when Sully goes through the door he’s traveling back to roughly 2006 to see Boo. Boo then grows up and somehow discovers time travel and heads back to the dark ages during the events of Brave.

      • Where is boo alluded to in Toy Story three, I didn’t catch that.

        • At the daycare. If you don’t want to follow the link, you can Google Boo Toy Story 3 🙂 http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4cp3z5Iew1qbglheo1_500.jpg

    • If I remember correctly, the witch in Brave used will-o-wisps as one source of power (I could be wrong on the exact detail but I do know will-o-wisps were magic). So either the will-o-wisps caused objects to become animate and humans into bears on their own without the witch (the first time around). Causing similar events to the timeline to fall in place. Or perhaps the will-o-wisps turned humans into other kinds of animals but by accident. Or it was another person that did this before until Boo travels to that time period and starts doing it herself. Nonetheless, animals and machines gaining a consciousness could have been inevitable. It would have happened one way or another. But all we see is when Boo (or rather the witch) using the will-o-wisps to do what she does, and the events in the timeline occur afterwards. What if Boo rewrote history after she goes to the 1400’s and what we see are the events from the rewritten history. Let’s use the Back to the Future example used earlier in the comments as well as the theory behind BioShock Infinite. In BioShock, when DeWitt did the coin toss, it would almost always land on one side. This shows that no matter how many times you go through an event, the details may be different, but the big picture surrounding the event will most likely remain the same. In Back to the Future, the initial kiss (that we don’t see) shared between Marty’s parents would most likely happen no matter how many times you go through it. Sure it could occur in various ways, but what we saw was one possible scenario when Marty himself is involved. And notice how when he gets back, the future is essentially the same, but the details in their life are different. Apply this to the Pixar universe. The initial rise of machines and animals could have started in some other way. Without the witch/Boo. Then Boo goes to the 1400’s and finds a way to make animate objects and conscious animals thus rewriting history. The history she creates is similar to the initial one, but she makes it her own. Therefore, the Pixar universe is in fact Boo’s universe.

12. i have a problem with the position in the timeline where “Up” is. According to this visual timeline, “Up” takes place around 2011-2016 but after watching the movie and looking through the end credits, i stumbled upon a picture of Russel and Carl in front of a movie theater that clearly reads “Star Wars”. And if this is the first movie of the series that was specifically and bluntly named “Star Wars”, then it occurred in 1976-1977 . That’s a 35 year difference. Small and maybe unnecessary in the big scheme of it all but i think a lot could happen in that 35 year span with the BNL uprising.

    • Or, it was a hint that Disney was planning on buying Star Wars or that BnL was going to send people to space,

    • it could have been one of the newer star wars movies. there are still new movies coming out. or it could have been a rerun or a movie made in 3D and rereleased into theatres again like they did for some old movies

    • The new Star wars movie that Disney is making is called just “Star wars” But episode 7 and is being relised in 2015.

13. How do people not understand Boo traveling back in time. So many people keep saying her room is so modern, you don’t start out old then grow younger as time progresses. How hard is it to understand that the time period she was a child in was some what of a modern time and as she aged and traveled through time searching for magic that might create something along the lines of Sully. So the. She TRAVELED BACK TO THE TIME OF BRAVE WAY BEFORE THE TIME PERIOD SHE WAS A CHILD IN. and then whatever happens to her after this whether she is stuck in the time period of Brave or stays there because she attained her goal of discovering magic that can create or eventually aid in the evolution of monsters. She DIDNT start out in the time period of Brave as an old woman and get younger by the time of the events of Monsters Inc. The time period she is a child in during the events of the movie is not the time period of Brave so the conflict if her toys or room being modern not being possible if she was a witch in the time period of Brave. It’s not that hard to follow what he is saying. It’s time travel. She traveled back before her time of creation as an older woman. Either these people aren’t paying attention while reading or just can’t grasp that concept. But there is nothing conflicting about that theory in terms of her traveling through time and being the witch in Brave and the toddler in Monsters Inc. Just because she is older in a period before her childhood doesn’t mean her childhood took place before Brave.

14. In the timeline, it says that “Up” takes place 2011-2016, but in Wall-E, it is said that the Axiom left earth in 2012. So the events of the BnL take over and the Axiom departure would have had to happen much earlier.

15. There’s a kid in toy story 3 with McQueens logo on it:( this messes with the theory. Also the pizza planet truck being in bugs life… If BnL had taken over completely wouldn’t it be very unlikely a truck from the small time company pizza planet would have survived and been being used by those in the trailer?

    • Boo might have dropped the Lightning McQueen toy when she was time travelling.

    • the McQueen symbol is just a lightning bolt and could have come from anything like the flash or harry potter. as for the pizza planet truck, it could have been an old truck left over from the cars time period, or boo could have left her wooden pizza planet truck toy while travelling through time. thus humans, who had just gotten off axiom and LOOVE pizza (as stated by the pilot at the end of wall-e) could have found the toy and started up the company again once humans got back on their feet, since BNL was no more.

16. I was just wondering, and i do REALLY believe the theory is true here, but if the tree Wall-e planted was all after humans were eradicated or there are very few, than how is the tree on the hill in UP there? It shouldnt exsist if it takes place BEFORE Wall-e’s spot in the timeline, just wondering about that ^·^

    • Why shouldn’t the tree in UP exist if it takes place before? I don’t see the reasoning here.

    • it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same tree. at the time up takes place, pollution wasn’t an issue yet and humans weren’t shipped off on axiom, therefore many trees could have grown during that time peiod

17. I’m confused. The timeline begins and ends with Boo as the Witch, but I don’t understand how she could have started it all AND went back in time. How could she have created the course of events that she went back in time to discover? Dang, I wish I understood the physics of time.. XD

    • I think it’s like the coexistence of her and the whole course of events. the course of events couldn’t have happened without her, therefore it created her so she can travel back in time to ultimately create it.

18. Also to Contribute with the whole A.I. idea with BnL thing going back to the incredibles, Syndrome close to his attack on the city and i’m talking about right before he leaves tells the incredibles and I quote “and when I’m old and I’ve had my fun I’ll sell my inventions so everyone can be super and when everyone’s super nobody will be…..” the thing that sticks out the most is 5 words “i’ll sell my inventions” now correct me if i’m wrong but isn’t BnL supposed to be the Walmart of the future so ergo he tried to start BnL but he died and so who did that leave to become the first CEO of BnL? thats right his assistant Mirage

19. Just a thing i noticed. There is a car next to trailer from A Bugs Life and from Monsters Inc. here is a link. http://www.pixartalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/monsterspp.jpg Does it look familiar? It should. Its the Pizza Planet Truck. Any idea how that might fit, if it even does?

20. Maybe Sully is the reason that Boo the witch is obsessed with bears because he kinda looks like a bear mixed with a dinosaur

21. could it be possible that boo was jesses owner?

    • Emily was Jesse’s owner.

22. Guys keep in mind that time is a measurement in which we use to mark events as they occur. So when questioning when the events on this timeline occur, keep in mind it won’t be right on the nose. The order could be correct but the time in which they occur may or may not. The gap between these events may be closer together or farther apart from each other. The time in which this all happens isn’t important. What is is recognizing the order in which they occur, and how they all connect. Use the years given as a suggestion, not something set in stone.

23. This might already have been said in a comment. Too many to read trough. But never the less a lot of holes, but one that I’m going to ask about is the two pictures of the trailer from bugs life and monsters inc. One picture is during the night and one during sun set/sun rise. And both have the pizza delivery car from Toy story in them parked at the exact same spot. Wich leaves me to think that indicates that the “light” one is most likely sun set and the at “night” one is just after dark at that same time and year. Wich puts bugs life Toy story and monsters inc in the same time period. Pixar and Disney call it hidden “easter eggs” to give us a feeling of connection and also like an autograph for them as creators.

24. “WHAT DO YOU THINK? COMMENT HERE”

    I think your a freaky genius and that if it is for some reason not true Pixar should thank you for making their epic movies 10x more epic.

25. In A Bug’s Life, you said that the bugs have evolved to have a longer lifespan. However, the flies at the circus near the beginning of the movie say “I’ve only got 24 hours to live, and I’m not wasting them here!” If they are supposed to have a longer lifespan, how come they still have 24 hours to live, while the ants have years to live?

    • Great catch! I bring this up in the book, and it’s kind of a complicated question to answer. The main point that I’ll leave you with is that “time” is a far different concept to these bugs than it is to us. And the evidence for that is incredible.