Toy Story 2 Borrowed A Location Straight From A Bug's Life

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In the studio's creative prime, Pixar made some of the most delightfully inventive films of all time. But for as much joy as they've provided, many of these movies contain scenes that evoke melancholy if not outright sorrow. I'll never forget being in an audience for a preview of "Up," where they showed the opening sequence. The animation wasn't even finished yet, but the entire theater echoed with sniffles and weeping. Given that these are four-quadrant family films, you can be certain that everything will work out in the end. But those first 10 minutes or so, where Carl and Ellie Fredricksen grieve the latter's miscarriage (upon which they learn she cannot have children) and experience financial strain, are surprisingly rough. Then Ellie dies, leaving Carl to live alone in a house being squeezed out by redevelopment. Cue waterworks.

It's hard to beat that sequence's pulverizing sadness, but the "When She Loved Me" scene, where we learn how Jessie (Joan Cusack) came to be abandoned at the flippin' roadside by Emily, the now grown-up woman who played with her as a little girl, is heartrending in the extreme. It doesn't help that Sarah McLachlan's accompanying song (written by Randy Newman) is precision-engineered to make you ugly cry; throw in shots of Emily frolicking with Jessie on a tire swing and the final image of Emily driving away, and it's positively traumatic.

That tree with the tire swing is actually an Easter egg that references "A Bug's Life." As eagle-eyed Disney fans noticed, it's the location for the ant colony where Flik (Dave Foley) and Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) reside. How did this come to be?

In the book "Disney/Pixar The Art of 'Toy Story 5,'" story supervisor Jason Katz revealed the process behind recycling the tree. "The tire swing and tree represent both immense joy and deep sadness for our main character," he said. "It was the spot where Jessie and her first kid, Emily, played together. It was also the place where Jessie had to watch Emily drive away forever."

The reason for reusing the tree was largely a matter of convenience. Per Katz:

"In the mid-1990s, 'A Bug's Life' and 'Toy Story 2' were both in production at the same time, and when the 'Toy Story 2' team came up with the idea of a flashback to Jessie's first kid, someone suggested we use the ant colony's tree, but add a tire swing for the characters to play on. This seemed like a perfect romantic visual to ground Jessie's memory of Emily with an unforgettable location."

You can see the concept art for both below.

Pixar

Pixar

"A Bug's Life" has long been considered a lesser Pixar effort, but I love it as an animated rendition of "Seven Samurai." It might lack the pathos of "Toy Story 2" or "Up," but it's a rollicking adventure with a fun array of heroes (most notably the voracious caterpillar Heimlich voiced by the late Pixar co-founder Joe Ranft). And it might contain my favorite Newman score for the studio, particularly in the way he captures the spirit of Elmer Bernstein's score for John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven."

In any event, keep your eyes peeled for Easter eggs in "Toy Story 5," and hope that they're not eye-rollingly obvious.