Elio's Chipper Space Slug Glordon Is A New Contender For Pixar's Cutest Character

Boo from "Monsters Inc.," Baby Dory from "Finding Dory," Jack-Jack from "The Incredibles," Dot from "A Bug's Life," Squirt from "Finding Nemo," the titular "WALL-E" — these are just some of the cutest characters to come from Pixar Animation. But when "Elio" arrives in theaters this summer, we'll be adding Glordon the chipper space slug to this list.

Pixar's "Elio" follows the titular 11-year old boy (Yonas Kibreab), who has always felt a little out of place on Earth. After his parents died when he was young, he was placed in the care of his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), an Air Force Major who put her astronaut aspirations on hold to care for her nephew. Though she loves him to the moon and back, Elio still feels like a burden, and his only reprieve is the hope that one day he can be abducted by aliens and find a place where he feels a sense of belonging. 

So, you can imagine Elio's excitement when he's abducted by aliens and taken to an interplanetary space station known as the Communiverse, an otherworldly locale in space that had Pixar using new technology to bring it to life. Of course, Elio gets in a little over his head when he pretends to be the leader of Earth and tries his hand at standing up to Grigon, the warlord rule of the planet Hylurg, who has just been denied membership to the Communiverse (largely due to his aggression and hot temper). But that's also how he meets his new best friend: Glordon.

Glordon may look like a terrifying lamprey with no eyes and a mouth full of seemingly endless rows of teeth, but he's the cutest, squishiest, most tender little guy, and he's made all the more adorable by young voice actor Remy Edgerly. Delightful, friendly, and eager to be used as a bargaining chip, even though he may not fully understand what that means, Glordon is certainly going to be a fan favorite character, and bringing him to life was a little bit of a challenge.

First, just take a look at Pixar's latest "Elio" trailer above to see how adorable Glordon is, especially when he excitedly identifies himself as a bargaining chip before pretending to be scared of Elio in front of his father.

During a presentation at Pixar Animation's campus in Emeryville, California, where we saw around 25 minutes of footage from "Elio," production designer Harley Jessup stated:

"Glordon was a character in the story from the very, very beginning, and he's one of our absolute favorites. We loved the idea of taking a classically horrifying alien creature, something that humans would instinctively run away from, and give that creature the sweetest, gentlest personality. With Remy's amazing voice, Glordon is unforgettable."

As for what inspired Glordon's appearance, Jessup explained, "Glordon's design was influenced by our study of larvae insects and amazing micro-biotic creatures like the tardigrade. Finding the right balance of disturbing and adorable was certainly a challenge, but I love that one of the creepiest looking characters is the one who puts the biggest smile on our faces."

What you might not immediately realize is that Glordon is missing one key trait that most characters have: eyes. So, how is Glordon still so expressive? 

Visual effects supervisor Claudia Chung Sanii noted, "Glordon's facial animation is very expressive, despite the fact that he has no eyes, a real challenge for the animators."

Instead of eyes, Glordon has a big, expressive mouth, and he also has these little flaps on the back of his head that add another layer of emotional expression. Animation supervisor Jude Brownbill explained how those became a bit of a challenge to animate:

"[Glordon] has these little flaps on his back, and we kind of used those to indicate maybe his mood, so they would flicker when he was excited but also when he hears a sound, they would also react. Because he doesn't have eyes, we kind of played with the idea that he was using, like, echo location to know where he was in the room and to know where the sounds were coming from. That was a little extra thing that the animators added."

Though that added to Glordon's personality and expression, it also eventually became too much to keep track of. Animation supervisor Travis Hathaway explained:

"There were a bunch of tests to see how much should we try and push this in the movie, the idea that, 'Oh, I'm listening, where are you? Here you are!' And we found that the more we called attention to it, the more it was like, 'I don't need to know this stuff." And the more we just let those things be tiny details that would give you more information without necessarily calling it out. You just bought immediately that this character has no eyes, but he's an alien. He has all sorts of predator vision or whatever that helps him interact with the world, and we don't have to explain down to the detail [how it works]."

Plus, audiences are going to be so caught up in how cute Glordon sounds, and how squishy and adorable he is when bouncing around the Communiverse with Elio, that they're not going to be worried about such tiny details. If audiences are paying attention to such a tiny thing, then the movie probably isn't doing its job well.

You'll get to see how irresistibly wonderful Glordon is when "Elio" hits theaters on June 20, 2025.