Like any other Pixar movie, Turning Red has a variety of references to past Pixar movies, and one linked to Coco reveals a secret tragedy in the Pixar universe. Although the world of animation now has different studios that bring a variety of stories and characters to the big screen, Pixar continues to be the biggest name in it, and it keeps treating its audience to at least one movie per year. 2022 will see two movies from Pixar, beginning with Turning Red, directed by Domee Shi (writer and director of fan-favorite short Bao).
Set in 2002 in Toronto, Canada, Turning Red follows Meilin "Mei" Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a confident, dorky 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who one day discovers that, whenever she gets too excited or stressed, she turns into a giant red panda, but she can turn back if she becomes calm and manages to control her emotions. This “quirk” is linked to her ancestors, who have a shared history with the species as a family curse, but it can be contained by performing a special ritual on one specific night. Unfortunately for Mei, that night coincides with a concert of her favorite boy band, 4*Town, and to further complicate everything, Mei also has to deal with her overbearing mother, Ming (Sandra Oh).
The early 2000s setting gave the writers and animators of Turning Red a lot of pop culture references to add, and in addition to those, it follows the tradition of featuring Easter eggs related to past Pixar movies (which, in some cases, end up fueling the famous Pixar universe theory). Turning Red has Easter eggs related to Onward, Luca, and Coco, and from the latter, there are actually two references: the most noticeable one is the “papel picado” in the streets as Mei runs through the city, and there’s another one hidden in plain sight when Mei arrives at school and sees her crush walk by, and the kid is wearing an “Escápula” t-shirt.
Escápula is a heavy metal band in the Pixar universe that made its first appearance in Coco, specifically in the Battle of the Bands scene in the Land of the Dead, where even though they gave their all in their performance, they didn’t really impress the audience. Back to Turning Red, the boy Mei is crushing on has an emo vibe going on with his black hair combed to one side and wearing dark eye makeup, so it makes sense that he would be into the music of Escápula, but it has also made viewers wonder about the backstory of the band. While many have pointed out that it’s obviously possible that the kid is into old heavy metal and the band has been dead for years, others believe the band could have been alive in 2002, and sometime between the events of Turning Red and Coco, they passed away.
Even if it was the case that the band died prior to the events of Turning Red, there might be a tragic story to how Escápula died and ended up in the Land of the Dead, as the heavy metal genre developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so at least some of the members of Escápula should still be alive. It’s to be seen if Escápula will make an appearance in future Pixar movies or if the writers of Coco or Turning Red will shed some light on what happened to the band, but until then, it’s up to viewers to decide what could have happened to them and if they were still alive in 2002 or not.