Pixar's Soul launched on December 25th, inviting viewers into the Great Before: where souls receive personality traits before going to Earth. Souls also receive guidance from mentors as part of their time in the Great Before. Mentors help unborn souls find their Spark, and they are often the souls of accomplished figures whose work was celebrated on Earth.
Jazz pianist and teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) ends up in the Great Before by accident, where he becomes mentor to 22 (Tina Fey), a soul who has never wanted to live life and never found her spark. 22 has had several incredibly famous mentors, including President Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Gandhi, but none of them have managed to inspire 22 to live. To get back to his life, Joe will have to help 22 find her spark, a decidedly hard task based on the lives led by 22's former mentors.
Soul is full of Easter Eggs and cutaway gags about 22's former mentors, including how she tormented all of them in their attempts to help her. She gets President Lincoln to admit he's not happy with being on the penny while President Andrew Jackson is on the $20 bill. Mother Teresa, a nun and missionary who was canonized as a saint, states she has compassion for every soul apart from 22. Nicolaus Copernicus, who first posited that the Earth revolved around the Sun, tells 22 that the Earth doesn't revolve around her. Even famed boxed Muhammad Ali tells 22 that she is the greatest... at being a pain.
Each of these jokes, which also include quick references to Marie Antoinette, former queen of France, and Carl Jung, a highly influential psychologist and psychiatrist, both pay tribute to and poke fun at each mentor's life on Earth. However, the mentors shown in the cutaways are not the only mentors 22 has ever had. At one point during Soul, 22 takes Joe to her hideaway, which features a display of all the name tags of her previous mentors - which, according to 22, actually number thousands. The name tags are written in many different languages, demonstrating how 22's mentors have come from all over the world. They include the names of well-known people like Nelson Mandela, Joan of Arc, Vincent van Gogh, and Harriet Tubman.
The name tags also pay tribute to key Pixar figures who have passed away. Among them are Mike Oznowicz, puppeteer and father to Frank Oz, as well as the name inspiration for Mike Wazowski; Joe Grant, a Disney legend, who worked on several films including Monsters, Inc.; and Joe Ranft, who came up for the story for classics like Toy Story. Each reference to these artists and writers in the name tags is a lovely way to honor Pixar greats, as well as the lives of other influential figures throughout history, including scientists, civil rights leaders, artists, writers, and more.
Here's every mentor shown in Soul plus every name-tag visible (and legible) on 22's wall, starting with those shown on screen...
- Abraham Lincoln
- Mahatma Gandhi (mentioned only)
- Mother Teresa
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Muhammad Ali
- Marie Antoinette
- Carl Jung
- George Orwell (mentioned only)
Mentors shown on labels:
- Vincent van Gogh
- Nellie Bly
- Copernicus
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Marvin Gaye
- Joe Grant
- Babe Ruth
- Joe Ranft
- Jack Kirby
- Harvey Milk
- Marie Černá
- Maya Tsosie
- Stephen Hawking
- Herman Jakobs
- Nelson Mandela
- Johannes Gutenberg
- Jan Kowalski
- Catherine the Great
- Joan of Arc
- Thomas Edison
- Amelia Earhart
- Confucius
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Ts’ai Lun
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Johnny Cash
- Harriet Tubman
- Grace O’Malley
- Anna Kowalczyk
- Pawet Jankowski
- Balogh Tamás
- Marie Curie
- Prince Rogers Nelson
- Aretha Franklin
- Petar Jankovic
- Albert Einstein
- María Izquierdo
- Jiří Svobada
- Archimedes
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Pablo Picasso
- William Taylor
- John Wilson
- Emine Demir
- Mary Johnson
- Mike Oznowicz