The first teaser trailer for Pixar's Elemental features a number of hidden Easter eggs. The animated feature revolves around the Earth’s elements — fire, land, water, and air — as characters. They all live together despite their reactions to each other. The movie focuses on the love story between Ember (fire) and Wade (water), who fall for each other but cannot touch each other.
The animation studio behind Elemental is celebrated for its Easter eggs, subtly placing references to other Disney movies, including other upcoming Pixar movies, as well as inside jokes that fans have long been let in on, into its stories. Easter eggs are plentiful in Pixar movies, and Elemental’s teaser trailer is no different.
The Most Clever A113 Yet
The Elemental trailer features a popular recurring Pixar Easter egg: a shout-out to A113. That was the number of a classroom at the California Institute of the Arts, where many of Pixar’s directors and animators studied. Because of all the alumni starting out in that room, A113 appears in every Pixar movie. Examples of its appearances include a license plate in Toy Story and part of a camera in Finding Nemo. A113 can be harder to spot in the Elemental trailer, but it’s there.
For one of the better A113 Easter eggs, look to a sign on the wall of the subway that Ember rides. It says, "Now Approaching Elemental City." Underneath those words are symbols for the subway lines A, AH, and Al. To get this Easter egg, the periodic table is needed. A is just A, but H stands for the first element, hydrogen, and Al is the 13th element, Aluminum. When put together, it’s decoded as A113.
The Cloud Characters Look Like Gus From Partly Cloudy
In 2009, Pixar released an animated short film called Partly Cloudy. It depicts happy, fluffy clouds creating babies, and storks delivering those babies to their parents, from the sky down to the Earth. Yet the short’s main cloud, Gus, creates babies who aren’t so friendly. He has a hard time creating lovable babies and becomes sad as a result. In what is now considered one of the best Pixar shorts of all time, when his stork doesn't come back for more babies, Gus cries so hard that he creates a thunderstorm. Eventually, though, his stork comes back but is dressed in protective gear to deal with all the rude babies.
The clouds in Partly Cloudy seem to pop up as Easter eggs in Elemental's trailer. When Ember enters the subway, cloud characters are shown floating around among the other elements. This could once again give weight to the theory that Pixar movies take place in the same universe.
The Water Characters Share The Same Design As Pixar's Souls
While the clouds resemble characters from Partly Cloudy, the water-based characters in Elemental have the same design as characters in Soul. That 2020 animated feature shows the connection between humans and souls, with the latter portrayed as blue, Jelly Bean-like figures who are transparent until they enter the body.
In the trailer for Elemental, a few of the characters representing the element water look like the soul characters in Soul. They're all different sizes and similarly transparent. While the water-based characters aren't souls, their design could be a small nod to the Academy Award-winning movie.
The Subway Schedule Looks Just Like The Periodic Table
Another Easter egg in the Elemental trailer is the subway schedule that appears on the wall. With the characters being based on elements, the subway's schedule amusingly mirrors the periodic table. With 118 elements, there are rows and columns in various colors to organize them by their properties. In the trailer, the subway schedule is designed similarly.