Pixar Reveals 'Toy Story 4' Easter Eggs Referencing 'Up,' 'The Incredibles,' 'The Shining,' And More

Pixar films are always chock full of Easter eggs — whether in reference to their own films, or upholding a long tradition of making nods to director Lee Unkrich's favorite film, The Shining — but Toy Story 4 has a unique setting that allowed the team to fill the film to the brim with Easter eggs. Much of the action in Toy Story 4 takes place in an antiques store, which production designer Bob Pauley had to populate with thousands of items. Luckily, Pixar has 33 years worth of objects on archive to fill out Second Chance Antiques. Read on to learn about the Toy Story 4 Easter eggs to everything from Pixar films like Coco and The Incredibles, to the requisite Shining nod, to a possible reference to the video game Kingdom Hearts.

Second Chance Antiques was one of the hardest locations for the Toy Story 4 team to create, because of the breadth of items that had to fill out the cramped second-hand store. "Fortunately, at Pixar, we have a big 'backlot' of objects from all of our feature films," production designer Bob Pauley told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was a big treasure hunt because we have a lot of interesting history, and we also took the opportunity to plant some fun Easter eggs." Added supervising technical director Bob Moyer:

"There are awards cases from Gusteau's office from Ratatouille, furniture from The Incredibles, props from Coco. We worked with the art department and set dressing lead to figure out what they might need."

Meanwhile, the references to The Shining — a time-honored tradition that happens in many Pixar films — are a little more subtle. "Lee Unkrich is a huge fan of The Shining. I'm a huge fan of "The Shining. I mean, the movie is insane," Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley said at the film's press junket (via ComingSoon.Net). There were two total nods to The Shining in the film, Cooley revealed: A record player in the antiques store that plays "Midnight, the Stars and You," the old-timey song performed by Ray Noble and His Orchestra that played at the end of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film; and a reference to Room 237 in a major scene. Cooley said of the record player Easter egg:

"So just the fact that we were going to be in a creepy place, having the old record player, that was essential. And we put that in as scratch at first, and just temporary. And I loved—it just made me happy. And then, we were able to actually use it and I just went over the moon. I just loved it so much."

Here's some of the easter eggs that Pixar planted in the film.