Since the initial release of The Pixar Theory, there have been countless changes and updates to the Pixar Theory timeline. Since it can get a little complicated (and nutty), I put together a new and improved outline that follows the book and includes all of the recent and upcoming Pixar movies. Enjoy!
Keep in mind that this is not the full theory. There’s plenty I don’t go over here and there are many missing connections between movies I don’t bring up, so if you want the full Pixar Theory experience with connections, Easter eggs, and explanations for what’s going on, click here to check out the book.
Otherwise, enjoy this full look at the Pixar Theory Timeline, starting with The Good Dinosaur.
BEGIN PART 2
And that’s the Pixar Theory timeline. In a nutshell. A very very very long nutshell. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much I did laying it out, and if you have any questions, confusions, or frustrations, feel free to hit me up in the comments or dig into the full book, which does a lot more to explain what in the world is going on in this timeline.
The only thing that baffles me is that at the end of Wall-E, the humans come back to earth. During the credits it shows them rebuilding cities and planting trees and crops, etc, etc… If a bugs life and Monsters Inc takes place after the events of Wall-E, then shouldn’t humans also be in those movies?? I understand that theirs a possibility that humans could have not survived after coming back from space, for something as simple as a virus could have wiped them off, but I don’t see any evidence to support it…. Maybe future Pixar movies will shed some light on this.
cars took place during the time the humans were gone and a bugs life after they returned.
Well basically there are humans in bugs life and by the time monsters inc happens humans were wiped out
There were probably very few humans by the time a bugs life takes place. I think with the progression and evolution of the species of animal, they morph and evolve into the monsters of monsters inc. What runs the entire monster universe though is humans. Human screams and laughter fuels their society. So the monsters either have to be going back in time like this guy proposes or, how the movie proposes, they are existing in two different universes making his whole theory bunk. It is bunk though.
There is no evidence that the monsters are going back in time. They are traveling back and forth between universes. I don’t remember the monsters going to scare ancient Egyptian children or roman children. That leads me to believe that the universes are different.
Maybe the door technology only allows travelling certain amount of time. So they started scaring ancient Egiptian Children. But as time passes and they move forward in the future, so does their destination point. They cannot travel more than certain amount of years. Yes, eventually the monsters will be in a threshold. They will be able to travel back in time only to find an abandoned planet. So maybe well see monsters trying to reach space to find another energy source, or maybe trying to find the humans left in space (so maybe the humans that returned to earth after Wall-E could not adapt and retuned back to space.
Well if you remember it is said ” It’s harder and harder to scare children these days.” If it takes energy to time travel then they can only go back as far is it produces a profit in energy. So the further back they go the more energy it takes to get there.That’s why they can’t go back as far and why kids become harder to scare and why there is an energy crisis.
I like to think that the Monsters are in another universe, but that everyone else is in one universe.
Maybe humans returned back to space, where they will be found by the monsters when they try to find another source of energy.
or they made the same stupid mistakes
In toy story (1st film ) Sid the bully is seen playing by the bins outside Andy’s house.. Well in toy story 3 look closely at the garbage man… It’s Sid grown up he even has the skull t shirt on
DOES ANYONE REALIZE THAT SULLY REPRESEMTS BIG FOOT IN MONSTERS UNIVERSITY???
No, monsters inc takes place in the 1000’s, they are traveling to the ‘wall-e’ time and using their screams as power since it hasn’t been created yet . Also while the humans in wall-e are out in space for 2000 years, machines take over bringing the cars in
I agree with you but I think that the animals/bugs were to powerful for the humans so then the humans were wiped out by them.Finally in Monsters inc. the bugs evolved into monsters just from evolution and that they truly were monsters that just looked like bugs. This is just a theory though so I don’t know if it is true.
I understand the whole animals getting smarter by finding nemo but there are still unintelligent animals in that movie like the seagulls who seem to still have very animal instincts as they are only seen sitting around waiting or chasing food. Also unintelligent birds are seen on the power line in cars ( from “For the birds”). Finally there’s the somewhat unintelligent birds in a bugs life. Because of these instances I theorize that after that sort of animal-machine war, intelligent animals, due to their participation in the war, dwindled to very small numbers, but the less intelligent animals (ie: the birds) survive due to them bieng uninterested in the war. Finally the machines, seeing that the only animals left surviving were, for lack of better words, stupid, they left them alone for the rest of the timeline. This is why in A Bugs Life, every one of the bugs predators ( birds and snakes) are not as smart as the bugs, this also supports the bugs bieng so smart. With no natural predators and no competition with humans or A.I., the bugs where able to survive and evolve. In summary, the animals were still there in the polluted world of Cars, they were just to dumb and had no competition or reason to get smarter until after Wall-ee and A Bugs Life
In Bug’s Life, everyone tells Flik not to be an inventor. Could this be a reaction to de fact that it were machines (inventions) which polute the earth as we see in Wall-E? Maybe is because of this fear that everyone fear Flik ideas.
I think that UP should be set a few more years in the future. All this would mean is that Ellie and Carl were younger when they sent the letter to Andy. This would also support the idea that Chef Skinner is the creator of the dog collars and the primary antagonist of UP. Allowing him more time to age.
Wow, you put great effort in this theory. I love you the idea you put forth, but I can see at least one issue in this time-line: in the end credits of Toy Story 2 we see characters from a Bug’s Life.
that is because when Boo is traveling through time she could have gone to the bugs life world to look for sully and she brought bugs back with her through time.
Also the credits were ‘bloopers’, so I don’t think they count towards this Pixar universe theory.
The bloobers count. You Have to count the movie in it’s entirety. If she had gone that far in the future and would is her source of time travel. That one tree would be all she could use therefor it is logical that some bugs could have come back with her
But in the bloopers they’re talking about being in different movies. Like, with Flick he said he was going to be in a ‘2’ movie, just not ‘A Bug’s Life 2’. I don’t understand how that would fit into the ‘real’ Pixar universe.
I don’t see any problems with Boo bringing bugs back with her, I just don’t see how bloopers fit in the Pixar universe.
I also don’t think that the bloopers (or the during-after credits animation) fit in the pixar universe, because how would you explain mike at the end of the credits in finding Nemo?
what if the monsters are made by a failed cloning experiment by joining human and machine so they still need human interaction because they are part machine
Dinoco The Gas For The Cars In Cars 1 & 2 Is n Toy Story 1 When There In The Pizza Planet Car And It Stops At A Dinoco Gas Station 🙂
my life makes complete sense now.
In Toy Story 2, Mrs. Potatoe Head is reading A Bug’s Life story?
I think the pizza planet truck belongs to boo, ’cause we see it in all the movies
I just want someone to explain the tree part one more time the tree in a bug’s life, up, and toy story. That tree appears in these three movies
Have you considered adding Darla to the theory? The demon child from “Finding Nemo” that always killed her fish by shaking the bag could be evidence in supporting your idea of animals rising up and combating mistreatment by humans?
Jon, I will forever be in awe of your creative genius.
so you saying boo is a time lord…but what about her at the daycare? was that her playing with the kitty and sunflower dolls…..
It’s a possibility. At that young age, Boo wouldn’t have begun to time travel yet. So if that is her, a plausible explination for her appearence is simple; the monsters would have traveled to a time before that when she was a little younger.
It would also explain why she was playing with the blue kitty. She calls sully (Kitty)
The story line for the movie Newts that you talked about, sounds a lot like the movie Rio. Could there be any connection there?
I had a similar thought, sadly you can’t add dreamworks to the pixar theory, which is a shame, there would have been plenty of example of things that could fit there.
To bad I did. The remake of the Lorax is where we see the last of the human race’s efforts to remain alive and attempt to save themselves from dying off and where you see the full extent of the resource depletion. Gnomeo and Juliet would probably occur during the time of the Toy Story trilogy considering how the lawn gnomes come to life and display intelligence and emotions. Movies such as Over the Hedge, the Nut Job, Rio, Happy Feet 1 and 2, Bolt, Barnyard, and Animals United among others show the time when animals start to gain higher sentience and shows how the world deals with it in varying degrees. The animal uprising could in turn be tied into Bee movie and the first Open Season movie. The trouble is the uprisings fail due the animals fighting among themselves due to shrinking territory and resources as depicted in Alpha and Omega and Open Season 2. In turn with the humans and animals ultimately go extinct except for the ones that escape into space. Thus we are lead to the events of the Cars, Cars 2, and 20th Century Fox’s film Robots. Though the robot and car their ultimately collapses due to lack of energy resources. In turn this leads to the events of Wallee. When the humans return to Earth in Wallee they start to reestablish civilization. In turn it leads into the events of Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2, Monsters University, and Monsters Inc. Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2 is much pretty after the point the descendants of the humans from Walle have mutated and began developing certain animal traits intermixed with their human attributes. Over time the mutations vary to the point of creating almost Chimeric like beings as seen in Monsters University and Monsters Inc. Put that in your fanfiction crack pipe and smoke it.
You are f ing geniuses all who contributed and a lot of hard work put in thanks
In ‘Monsters inc.’ Boo has a Jessie doll from ‘Toy Story 2’ in her room. I know that there were probably more than one Jessie doll made, but the guy who steels Woody tells us that he was really rare (that’s why he was so excited to find him), therefore, Jessie was probably pretty rare too. Is it a possibility that Boo is Emily, Jessie’s old owner?
Not likely. It is actually theorized that Andy’s mom was her owner.
Yeah I know. I read about that just after I typed that 🙂
I don’t think Boo discovered magic. It seems more plausible that she is a Great-, Great-Great, or Great-Great-Great- granddaughter of a Super. It make since because all of the Supers weren’t killed, they just went into hiding which makes it plausible that she has inherited Super Genes that she didn’t discover she had until she tried to find Sully. It would also explain how she was able to go from stall to stall without being scene while playing with Sully. She holds the teleportation Superpower. To be honest she does look a little like Violet.
Hey I have a question the old man in bugs life I think the one playing chess with his self he’s the same old man who fixed woodie in toy story2 how does he fit into the time frame plus he has to be extremely old if he lived in toy story and survived the whole pollution and machines and wall-e all the way to bugs life what’s with that
In Ratatouille near the beginning when he finds out he’s in Paris, he runs into a room where it shows a dogs shadow. The shadow of the dog is Exactly like the dog in up.
Maybe it’s from the same breed?
I just noticed that the trailer in “a bug’s life” and “monsters inc” has the pizza truck outside of it. Its shown that the witch or boo is carving it. What would you say about that?
Just a little detail that may support even more your theory:
In Cars, there’s a moment when you can see a Wall-E (Not The Wall-E) walking in the background
Wouldn’t Andy’s postcard be TO Carl and Ellie, not FROM Carl and Ellie? I wonder why he has it??
Okay there are a couple of things that don’t make sense:
The Incredibles: If that was based in the 1950s-60s then why is it that the ‘past them’ fit more of the late 60s early 70s? From the outfits, to the cars, and the guns. this would also better fit the ‘working woman’ image of elastic girl as well as the hints of being more open about sex…making the 15 years later in the late 70s early 80s. (Then there is E who also has a resemblance to both boo and the witch.) All though that is besides my point and just an observation. I just don’t see how this explains where the AI robots go? Say they did kill out their only threat within a short amount of time for the next event on the time line, what did they do? Did they just disappear from humans until around the time of…well WallE? Also does The Brave Little Toaster not come into play at all? Most of Pixar member were involved in making this. If only the ones under the Disney banner, then what about the other Disney movies?
Bugs Life/Toy Story 2: the same old man playing chess is the same one who fixes woody. Though it is possible to say they are relatives it would be very hard to explain away why they look identical
the bugs life takes place in the time of toy story and not in the future and you know this because if you watch the bloopers for both movies they show the bugs in toy story and woody in bugs life. and they show rex in monsters inc bloopers