Hey Brother!
Ben way back in 2012, we made
a video called
The Pixar Theory
and it would change our
lives and this channel forever.
Since then any time a new Pixar movie has come
out we've made a full video explaining
how it fits into the greater Pixar
universe but it's been six years since
then and it's getting a little hard to
keep track of everything.
So today, we're simplifying things and making a new
updated Pixar theory covering everything from Toy Story through The Incredibles 2
This is the Pixar Theory
*Super Carlin Brothers Intro*
Hey brother!
Now if you love Pixar movies as much as
we do,
you know that Pixar loves to leave Easter eggs in each of their movies
as little nods to their other projects, but
what if they weren't just little nods
what if instead they were clues?
Clues that every movie actually takes place in the same universe?
*That* is the Pixar Theory
The idea that every Pixar movie
is actually taking place on
one giant timeline and telling one huge story
and as ever I want to point out up front that we did not invent the Pixar theory
It was introduced to the world by a man named John Negroni
who has even written a book about it now.
And since then of course the Internet has gone crazy with it
and there are tons of different versions and interpretations
of the Pixar Theory out there but what you're going to
hear today is simply our version what we
have come to accept as canon for the
Pixar universe here at Super Carlin
Brothers
Let's begin
Now it is a lot to cover so we're gonna go about it in two
ways
First we're gonna tell the entire story of the Pixar theory
And then we're going to talk about how it works
and get to the bottom of why it even exists
Now the movies don't come out in chronological order.
We have to figure that out after the fact.
But the first one's pretty easy
It happens way back in
time, prehistoric times with The Good Dinosaur
which immediately offers us an
explanation for why the Pixar universe
which is so similar to our very own,
is just ever so slightly different
and it's right here, when the asteroid that should have wiped out the dinosaurs misses.
And as a result the dinosaurs don't go
extinct, we can see some primitive
looking dinosaurs see the asteroid miss
right here but then millions of years pass
and we're introduced to a bunch of
characters who have evolved out of that
primitive state and have started
developing things like agriculture and ranching
But as we will soon learn in
Brave, the dinosaurs don't have a witch
to help them change their fate and so
fate eventually catches up with them in
the form of crazy crazy weather, which
wipes them all out.
And when the story starts you can see it's already been happening for a while
I mean Arlo goes on this grand journey
but he really doesn't run into that many characters
I mean life is pretty scarce, the
pterodactyls used to hunt well but now
have to follow the storm because
it's killing everything in its wake
The T Rexes which should
just be hunting everything have
started ranching things for food
and their herd is so valuable it's under
constant threat of theft by Raptors.
Even the pet collector, a Styracosaurus
which typically travels in herds is now
all alone and obviously quite terrified
[Pet Collector] It's terrifying out here
[J] Meanwhile though, even the smallest of
humans is doing well surviving the storms
proving their intelligence and resourcefulness early on.
But what The Good Dinosaur really helps us establish here
is that if you were the kind of animal
that can survive for millions of years
without human intervention
like I don't know,
rats or pelicans or anything underwater
you are probably going to
develop some kind of intelligence
in the Pixar universe
But that's not the only way you might gain intelligence
You also might be a human who was turned into a
giant bear like in our next movie, Brave.
This takes place centuries and centuries
later in medieval Scotland,
where a young princess is trying to change
her fate by not getting married.
[Merida] I'll be shooting for my own hand!
[J] Which leads her to follow a path of will-o-wisps into the forest
where she meets a very interesting character indeed a witch
And the witch's workshop is by far the
most curious thing about this movie
especially as it relates to the Pixar theory.
For one, it introduces us to magic which is
the first example in the Pixar universe of
things not behaving the way they're
supposed to.
Her crow can talk to humans, her door doesn't work the way I've known doors to work,
and the witch herself even seems adept at wielding magic,
although she's obviously not the source of the magic.
For example all the knives and other various sharp objects in the shop
quickly turn on the witch when she's
about to refuse Merida generous offer,
suggesting they do have some sort of
mind of their own.
And we'll dive into that a lot deeper later but for now the other important piece of magic we see
the witch do is the ability to change
someone's fate.
[Merida] That will change my fate?
[J] And Merida even gives a pretty good
description of how fate works:
Some say our destiny is tied to the land
much a part of us as we are of it,
others say fate is woven together like a cloth,
so that one's destiny intertwines with many others.
It's the one thing we search for,
or fight to change.
Some never find it but there are some who are led.
Now as it relates to Brave, Merida is just offering us
a little bit of foreshadowing about herself
but as it relates to the greater Pixar Theory,
it is actually giving us a very interesting clue about the witch
So just bear that in mind as we move forward,
but so far we've established that humans 
and animals are both capable of intelligence
but as we get to our next movie, we'll
introduce the third player to the game
The Machines
And the power struggle between these three groups, animals, humans, and machines,
will pretty much define the middle section of the theory.
And I use the word "power struggle" pretty
loosely here,
because no one's really ever trying to be in power,
it's just the different groups rise into it often at  the cost of the others
And honestly for the animals their ship sailed with the dinosaurs
They are never really gonna rise back up
For now, let's focus on the introduction of the machines, which
happens in The Incredibles
taking place somewhere in the 1950s or 60s.
Here, we are introduced to the Supers,
the peak of human existence,
who live in a world of constant crime endangered,
who do their best to fight it,
until one day they're outlawed.
But not before Mr. Incredible, the very best of all of them, offends his biggest fan,
Buddy Pine, aka Syndrome
He does not take it well and spends the
rest of his life developing technology
that will help him kill the Supers,
so that he can pretend to be one.
Slight hiccup however,
the AI he creates to defeat the Supers,
also turns out to be smart enough to defeat him.
And although the Incredibles step in and defeat the Omnidroid and kill Syndrome,
the damage has been done.
Syndrome has introduced artificial
intelligence into the world
And this will mark the end of the humans in terms of power, but it will take quite some time
because the machines won't take control right away.
Instead for the next few movies in the timeline we're going to see that animals continue to get smarter
while the humans remain in the driver's seat,
well except for that one time Dory drives a truck off a cliff
(Screaming)
Next up are the Toy Stories, Inside Out, Up,
Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, and Finding Dory
Finding Nemo gives us a glimpse
back into the world of the animals
and especially undersea, they have been
left alone for quite some time,
and as a result have developed quite a bit of intelligence.
I mean they have school systems, traffic lights, and a real estate market, I guess?
[Coral] A lot of other clownfish had their eyes on this place
[Marlin] You better believe they did
[J] And not only that, we see a lone fish successfully circumnavigate in the ocean to locate his son
and a separate group of fish successfully overpower a human
while another human looks on reading his Incredibles comic book
I mean obviously he missed out on that Buzz Lightyear on the ground.
What are you doing kid, jeez?
But not all the animals are out to fend off the humans.
Remy the rat in Ratatouille becomes the greatest chef in the world,
which is pretty significant because up until that point cooking was exclusively a human activity.
Although to be fair Remy is sort of the exception to the rule.
His father sees humans as the enemy and even names them as such
and he's not wrong. Eventually
that's going to be very true
But the information about Remy being a
spectacular chef, while mostly kept
secret from the public is known by four
people at the end of the movie.
Collette, Linguini, Anton, and Chef Skinner,
who promptly blabs to the press about it.
And while most people are obviously
grossed out by the rats in the kitchen,
a clever person may have noticed that it
coincided with renowned critic's Anton Ego
stunningly wonderful review of Gusteau's and put two and two together.
So hmm, do we ever see anyone else being
served food by animals?
[Muntz] Epsilon is the finest chef I've ever had
[J] Ah, Charles Muntz, the man literally waging war
on animals in the Pixar universe or
maybe just a single animal to be more
specific.
A prehistoric animal, I might add which per the Pixar Theory, you'd expect to be extremely intelligent and
indeed Kevin is successfully evading
capture for 70 plus years.
And Kevin's not just evading anyone she's evading Charles Muntz,
a guy clever enough to realize the potential of his dogs and invent collars that let them talk to him.
And again this totally fits.
Animals like fish or rats or Kevins have gone
largely ignored by humans and as such
have developed intelligence naturally.
Whereas dogs like Buster we see in
Toy Story have not
But Muntz has found the bridge between the two groups and as a result has, like, hyper intelligent dogs
capable of, as we said, cooking food or I
don't know piloting planes.
Man, Up a weird movie sometimes
I guess mostly I don't notice it because
I'm watching the movie through so many tears.
But Up does introduce some other
important aspects of the Pixar Theory
most importantly BnL, the faceless face
of the machines
let me explain BnL, aka Buy 'n Large, is the company at the beginning of the movie
forcing Carl to move out of his house.
They are the faceless brand, that's the word I was looking for,
of the machines on their rise to power.
Yes for now they have physical humans working for them,
but I mean do you think it's any coincidence that
this guy looks like an agent from the matrix?
[Bernie] Coincidence? I think not!
[J] Exactly Bernie you get it
And BnL shows up a lot in Pixar movies most notably in Wall-E which we will get to,
but also in some other places like on the batteries of Buzz in Toy Story
which is not the only connection between Up and Toy Story
you can also see Lotso and the little girl from the daycare in this room right here
Buzz witnesses a grape soda commercial which happens to
have produced the badge Carl wears as
the Ellie badge
and then of course there's the post card on Andy's bulletin board from the mysterious Emma Jean,
who I do not have time to get into right now,
but if I want to see the whole video
about her please click the card.
But let's pause on Toy Story for a second
because it's our first great example of
how humans are used in the Pixar Theory
which is to say, as batteries
How and why the toys are able to come to life
and why they fear dying or being
forgotten is an interesting question
that's been around as long as Toy Story
and which has only really gotten a good
answer last year in Coco
But we'll get to that for now just know that humans are batteries
and their energy is required for life in the Pixar universe
Where they are, there is life. Where they
are not, there is not.
At least when it comes to inorganic things like toys or
machines or cars
Buuut when it comes to animals,
humans aren't always so great for life
and we see this at the beginning of Finding Dory
after Dory, Marlin, and Nemo arrive in California
They are immediately in the middle of a
vast underwater junkyard
full of all sorts of trash and shipping containers
and a giant bioluminescent squid
which sadly isn't as relevant.
It's super cool, but just not relevant
What is relevant is we start to see a glimpse
of what is beginning to happen worldwide
Trash
and even though animals have been
on the decline for a while this is
really where they start to drop off
because trash is just not good for animal life
well unless maybe you're like
I don't know rats or something
Which hey, wouldn't you know that's the very next movie in the Pixar timeline
It's like they're planning it
But we've already talked about rats, let's talk about what happens when pollution gets out of control
This is the set up for Wall-E
that the tiny little city-building battery company
Buy 'n Large has now become so big and so powerful they have literally taken over the planet
and polluted it so bad that humans have to leave while little Wall-E trash compacting robots clean up the mess
So the humans leave for some seven hundred years,
all the animals are dead and what is left?
Cars
Now you might be thinking ah, wait Cars doesn't take place on earth right?
It's obviously an alternate reality or something, right?
But no, it is definitely the same planet Earth
the humans were on.
For one, it has all the same places that
our planet Earth has
and we get to visit a lot of them in Cars 2.
But so the question is why are the cars coming to life?
Why are their names so similar to
people we know from our time?
Why do they have their own time line?
Like if the cars movies take place during the seven hundred years of the humans are gone
then how on Earth did they have things like the 1950s?
I mean even if they started their own time line, that's way too many years.
Are they still artificial intelligence?
Are they products of Buy 'n Large
No
BnL's goal is never to create a race that inhabits the planet
instead their goal is to control the humans with consumerism and capitalism
and that means treating them
as comfy as possible at any cost
I mean just look at how
they're treating everyone on the Axiom.
It's an interesting shift from the AI's first encounter
with the humans with the Omnidroid
it's like they realize the better way to control them is just to pamper them into death
hashtag pampered to death
And of course what the machines get
from it is the human energy
which again we're going to talk about later.
Which brings us back to the cars which aren't coming to life via AI
instead it's very similar to the way the toys come to life or the monsters will later fuel their cities
with human energy.
It's similar to the toys but with a few key differences
obviously the cars aren't coming to life 
while the humans are still around
and unlike toys they are still cars,
so they do need fuel to operate.
Also unlike toys, cars are not designed as something to be brought to life by a child's imagination.
It's easy for a child to give personality
to a cowboy or a slinky dog
or a walking rearrangeable potato
but it's less obvious for cars and
thus they don't have built-in personalities
so instead the cars are actually taking on the personalities of their old owners
complete with their memories but
remembered through a car-ified lens.
It would also appear that the cars "wake up" if you will in the same order in which they were cared for
which helps explain why there continues to be new generations of cars as the series progresses.
In fact we even get a hint as to when the 
"real" Lightning McQueen must have been alive
based on the band-aid this driver is wearing in Finding Dory.
But the real big important note from Cars 3 that helps draw Cars into the entire Pixar Theory
is one little line from Cruz when she's driving on the beach
[Cruz] I didn't want to hit a crab
[J] Ah I'm sorry, what?
[Cruz] What? It was cute!
[J] Is this an animal that isn't a car in this world?
I thought all the animals had died off
but no there's crabs? Okay
It's seriously like you're planning this stuff because this fits perfect
Do you remember back in finding
dory that junkyard scene?
Well guess what happened to be
thriving amongst all the trash?
Crabs. So it should be no surprise that even though
the humans have vacated the planet
they have survived through the pollution
and into the world of cars.
But wa wa wait I hear you saying,
when we start out in Wall-E, the planet is way more polluted than we see in cars
There's tons of plant life for the EVEs to be going down and reporting back with.
Agreed two excellent points, but both are actually pretty easily explained
first of all the humans may have had to leave way before the planet looks like the way we see it in Wall-E
And second it's possible that the EVE drones are specifically being sent to areas that have been
vastly polluted to see if life has returned 
and is capable of being lived in again
but really it doesn't matter because the AI
is determined not to return home
even if the earth was 100 percent clean and the
Eve drones were coming back time after
time with vegetation,
they're just not going back
That's directive A113, stop the captain's
from knowing the earth is safe.
It's possible that in Wall-E this is not even
the first time that this has happened
that Auto has just been intercepting
all sorts of plants and sending them off
into space and as for the planet getting
as brown as we see it at the beginning
of Wall-E well I think that's what might
happen if the only inhabitants of the
planet for centuries were nothing but
cars
But of course the cars died off too
because like we said without humans
there can't really be life
The cars can survive on fuel alone for a while but
even by Cars 2 - there's already an energy crisis.
But that brings us back to Wall-E
where one super human-obsessed little
robot finally manages to get a plant
delivered to a captain of the Axiom
and they come sky rocketing back to the
planet and everything is great... mostly
After all they are still returning to a
planet that has been subject to a ton of
pollution for a very long time and it
seems to have an interesting effect on
the humans over the next few thousand years
which is that they eventually evolve into monsters
which I know
sounds crazy but actually it's not the
first time we've seen a human transform
into a monster in the Pixar universe
Jack-Jack anyone?
Now Jack-Jack can of course do it on
denied cookie demand but
it does reveal that humans have the potential to make this kind of change under the right circumstances
But guess what the monsters are suffering from guys?
Say with me - an energy crisis
and so what are they having to harvest to run their cities on?
Human energy or more specifically human emotions or even more more specifically human memories
All right here we go, finally we're gonna get to how humans work as batteries
And it starts with the scare shortage which if you ask me makes no sense I mean we hear all throughout
the movie is that both Sully and Randall
are so close to breaking the all-time scare record.
The two best scarers of all time are working at tandem next to each other and there's a scare shortage?
[Waternoose] Kids these days,
they just don't get scared like they used to
[J] hmmm indeed Waternoose indeed
In the movie the solution to this problem
is discovering that laugh energy is
10 times more powerful than scream but I
submit to you that this does not make sense
because of the point I just made
if the talent is at an all-time high
why scream at an all-time low and the answer is because of how the scare floor works
which is to say time travel
Dazjfic Stay with me, Stay with me.
I promise it makes sense
When the monsters go through the doors
we see them enter the human world
but as we've established the human world is their world
They are just accessing a point in history when
humans were still around
because they need their energy to run their cities.
Which means when they travel back in time matters
In Monsters Inc, in the kids rooms we see a
lot of posters for the newly opened Tomorrowland
And boo even has a Jessie doll on the floor of her room suggesting
the time frame is around the 50s or a
little after,
aka the time of the supers and remember in that time crime was everywhere
so it makes sense for fear to be high.
So the idea is that when time moves forward in the monster world
it also moves forward at the same rate
in the human world
They're just traveling parallel to each other
so as times change in the human world
so does what kind of memory is valuable
to the monsters
And post-Incredibles AI is introduced to the world which starts making things super easy for the humans
until again they eventually are being
nearly papered to death
So it makes sense that after AI is introduced Joy
and not Fear becomes the valuable memory
because it is now the dominant memory.
Which is exactly what we see in Inside Out,
by the time Riley comes around a majority of her memory orbs are Joy
there's literally just more for the
monsters to harvest
and I mean memories specifically and not emotions because emotions simply color the memories
Inside Out also offers an explanation for why kids specifically are better targets for the monsters
because as kids their memories are only colored by a single emotion but even by the end of the movie
Riley has started to develop a little
bit more and so her memories are
starting to be colored by multiple emotions at once
which would obviously be harder to harvest
and it makes sense that of all things they're using a memory as a power source in Pixar
because memory might be the most important aspect of everything it might be the reason the Pixar Theory exists
it's the message they're trying to tell
you
In Inside Out we are introduced to Bing Bong
and his death is quite powerful
because Riley remembers him as an actual being and not just as a single memory
he is preserved as a being in her mind and 
not contained into a single orb
And he spends most of the movie in this state as a memory that isn't forgotten
but one that has also never called upon so instead he's just allowed to roam
freely throughout her mind
until of course he falls victim to the memory
dump and so not so oddly this exact
phenomenon is the driving force behind
the entire plot of Coco
which is why it should come as no surprise then that the
City of the Dead looks like a much
grander version of the human mind
because rather than looking at just the single mind of a little girl now we're looking at the collective memory
of the entire country of Mexico.
But the rules are pretty much the same sure once a year if your family puts your picture on the ofrenda
you can cross back over and
accept an offering from them
but either way as long as a single person remembers you
as long as one memory orb of you
exists somewhere in someone's mind
you are allowed to continue living in the
land of the dead
But if you are completely forgotten much like Bing Bong at the end of Inside Out you then suffer the final death
and this is the point of the Pixar theory:
To actively remember those who came before you ; to look back as a guide to the future because
those who are not forgotten aren't really gone
and this theme permeates every Pixar franchise I mean Bob Parr is afraid that if people forget the old ways
that Mr. Incredible will truly die
his true self then will really die
in Toy Story Wheezy is sick because Andy has forgotten him
In Ratatouille Gusteau's memory is being 
tarnished and Remy is out to set it straight
Carl can't let Ellie's memory die and carries it around as literal baggage
until he finally realizes that instead of remembering her he needs to live the
way she wanted him to live
Dory's whole character is about memory and she shows
us tragically how terrible forgetting can be
I mean without the ability to remember she could have swam right up to her parents
and not even realized who they were
Arlo was controlled by guilt and memory of his father's death
and fears he'll never make him proud until his dad's ghost literally appears to him and says
[Poppa] You are me and more.
[J] The cars on the other hand as
machines and not humans are starkly not
concerned with legacy both Lightning and
Doc Hudson both scoff at it
But then there's the adorable little Wall-E also a
machine but one who actively cares about
remembering humans and as such what
happens to grow right next to him?
A little plant
And remember the brown Earth?
Well another explanation might be that all of humanity
has literally forgotten Earth.
Even the captain has to ask the
ship to look up what Earth is
But once he starts to remember well...
and finally this brings us all the way back to where we started
Brave - inside a little witch's hut where the most important memory of them all lives
An image that has no business existing in medieval Scotland and yet is there all the same
It is a carving of none other than Sully because
this is not just some random witch
This old lady is Boo
(brain explosion noises)
Oh you need more proof?
Well for one she's obsessed with bears which
Sully himself kind of resembles and it
might be how you remember him if you
only ever saw him as a little girl
Two she has a carving of the Pizza Planet truck
right here and that's like huh what cars
don't even exist yet how would she even
know what that is if she's not actually
from the future?
And three where did Sully come
from when she was a little girl?
A magic door
And what does the witch happen to have on her hut?
a magic door
But so why does Boo become a witch?
Well the theory goes that she spends
pretty much the rest of her life trying
to track down her best friend from the
closet but could never find him
but personally I think she figured it out
She obviously learned about time travel at some point
but for some reason has decided to stay in Scotland but my question is then why there?
and the answer is again memory because she never wants Sully to suffer the final death
She never wants him to ever really be forgotten and how do you fight that?
By living in the past and remembering something from the future effectively creating a permanent loop
As long as she stays here and ensures the events of Brave happen, she ensures the future that
she will always go on to be a little
girl who meets Sully and that grows up
trying to find him again and eventually
come back to this point
Always keeping the memory alive
And that is the Pixar Theory
Ben, my question for you and everyone else is
What is your favorite Pixar movie?
Let me know in the towel section down below
Thanks to the Pixar theory for the last six years
YouTube has been our playground
and to celebrate we've made brand new
YouTube is our Playground hoodies
Available now at SuperCarlinBrothers.store
Guys thanks for watching as always please remember
to leave a like on this video if you haven't
and subscribe you don't miss
any future Pixar action from us
If you want to see the truth about Andy's dad
you can check out this video right here
or if you want to see how theIncredibles might actually be living in Syndromes house in Incredibles 2
you can check out this video right here
but Ben that's all got for you today man
I will see you in another life brother
Oh also there was a colony of ants at some
point pretty much put them in wherever
you want cuz they don't make a huge
difference the overall story
