Trivia for
WALL·E (2008) More at IMDbPro »

• The teaser trailer contains part of Michael Kamen's score for Brazil (1985). Michael Kamen was going to score another Pixar film, The Incredibles (2004), but died before he could.
  
  
• Jim Reardon left his position as supervising director of "The Simpsons" (1989) television series to do animation on this film. On the DVD audio commentary for "The Simpsons: Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo (#10.23)" (1999), Reardon finally confirmed the title of the film he was working on - prior to that he would only say that it was due in 2008. In the film, the name of the first captain of the Axiom is Reardon, who piloted the ship from 2105 to 2248.
  
  
• The main character's name is actually an acronym, standing for "Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-class." EVE stands for "Extraterrestial Vegetation Evaluator" and M-O stands for "Microbe Obliterator."
  
  
• Most of the predominantly robot cast of characters is voiced by Ben Burtt through mechanical sounds of his creation.
  
  
• First instance of a Pixar feature-length film using live-action.
  
  
• The makers consulted with a live-action director of photography, Roger Deakins, to learn how Deakins would light and shoot a scene if it were a live-action movie.
  
  
• The film contains numerous references to Apple computers: -when WALL-E is fully charged by the sun, he makes the same "boot up" sound that most of Apple's Macintosh computers have made since circa 1996. -WALL-E watches his favorite movie every night on the screen of an iPod -The villainous Autopilot's voice is provided by Apple's text-to-speech system, MacinTalk -EVE's sleek design as an evolution of WALL-E's parallels the sleek iMac design having evolved from the boxy, beige Apple IIe. Steve Jobs, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Apple Computer, was CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney in 2005, and as a shareholder and member of the Disney Board of Directors is still actively involved with the company.
  
  
• Niagara Falls provided the wind sounds for WALL•E 's world.
  
  
• The logo on Eve's chest that appears after she obtains the plant is the same logo used by Disney Epcot's The Land pavilion up until 2005.
  
  
• The last piece of debris that clears away from WALL-E as he leaves Earth's atmosphere is the Russian satellite Sputnik I, which in 1957 was the first man-made object to be placed in earth orbit.
  
  
• The protocol that AUTO is programmed to follow is A113, a reference to the animation room at the California Institute of the Arts, where many of the Pixar animators studied. A113 can also be seen on the front of the train Lightning McQueen charges past in Cars (2006), is the room number Mr. Incredible is instructed to go to in The Incredibles (2004), and is the license plate number for the car owned by Andy's mother in Toy Story (1995).
  
  
• The end-credit montage traces artwork from the past, in historical order, starting with cave paintings, then progressing through Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Renaissance, then mimicking certain Impressionists (such as Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Auguste Renoir ). It finishes with depictions of the main robots in the style of early computer games.
  
  
• The film has a dedication to Justin Wright, a 27 year old Pixar animator who died from a heart attack.
  
  
• The name of the ship that the humans are living on is "Axiom." In logic and math, an axiom is something unquestionable or taken for granted.
  
  
• Sound wizard Ben Burtt recorded many of the sounds for this film in a junkyard.
  
  
• The sound of insect clicks was the actual sound of locking handcuffs.
  
  
• The cockroach chirps were created by speeding up the sounds of a raccoon.
  
  
• Within the first 5 minutes there is monologue via the holographic billboards. The first dialogue between WALL·E and EVE begins 22 minutes into the movie. The first human dialogue begins 39 minutes into the movie.
  
  
• Film shipped to some theaters under the name "Sundaye".
  
  
• In the Captain of the Axiom's cabin, there is a lit curio cabinet with a 1980's era white NASA Space Shuttle launch helmet with red and blue pin striping.
  
  
• 'Andrew Stanton' and the Pixar team watched every single Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton movie (the short films and the features) every day during lunch for about a year and a half. This was to inspire the possibilities of pure visual storytelling.
  
  
• Famed cinematographer Roger Deakins was brought on to consult on the film's highly sophisticated lighting schemes. Much of the film's first half bears an atmospheric, sepia-hued look that characterizes much of Deakins' film work.
  
  
• EVE was co-designed by Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonnathan Ive, the man responsible for the design of the iPod.
  
  
• The autopilot of the Axiom, Auto, shares much with HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). One example is the large red light in the middle. He is also in complete control of the ship and, like HAL, has been given conflicting and secret orders and tries to do the best he can to execute them. The orders cause him to do more harm than good and ultimately he has to be shut down.
  
  
• The right arm of the sculpture that WALL·E makes for EVE after she powers down for the night, is Luxo Jr., Pixar's logo.
  
  
• When WALL-E first enters his truck home and turns on the lights, Rex from Toy Story (1995) can be seen in his collection.
  
  
• In previews for the movie, and at the end of the DVD, the Pixar intro features WALL-E fixing the broken light bulb in the bouncing Lamp. He replaces the older style round incandescent bulb with a newer energy-friendly spiral tube fluorescent light bulb.
  
  
• The vacuuming robot that follows WALL-E and EVE has a robotic version of the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" (from the film Hello, Dolly! (1969) that WALL-E watches on his iPod) as it's voice. It's the first two lines of the song's chorus in electronic form.
  
  
• As described in a special feature on the film's DVD and Blu-ray releases, the inhabitants of the Axiom were originally going to be aliens led by a royal family with a penchant for mistreating its robots. Andrew Stanton eventually scrapped the alien idea, and the design of the Axiom's passengers changed from gelatinous green blobs to more-solid grey blobs to the final "big baby" concept.
  
  
• Director Andrew Stanton explained why he used excerpts from Hello, Dolly! (1969) in an interview: "When I got to 'Hello, Dolly!' and I played 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes', and that first phrase 'Out there...' came out, it just fit musically... I finally realized, 'You know what, this song is about two guys that are just so naive, they've never left a small town, and they just wanna go out in the big city for one night and kiss a girl. That's my main character.' And then my co-writer, 'Jim Reardon', said, 'You know what, he could actually discover an old tape in the trash, and that's how he got inspired by it, and it's a great way to show that he's got a romantic slant.' So we started looking at the movie, and when I found the other song, 'It Only Takes a Moment', and saw the two lovers holding hands, I realized, 'That's a perfect way for my main character to express the phrase 'I love you' without being able to say it.'"
  
  
• Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter outlined the film before Toy Story (1995) was completed, but production would not resume until after Stanton completed Finding Nemo (2003).
  
  
• WALL-E's shelves contain several figurines of gnomes, designed by Dutch artist Rien Poortvliet.
  
  
• Ground paths in the Axiom are color coded; light-blue for humans, white for robot workers, red for stewards.
  
  
• When EVE First speaks to WALL-E (shortly after blowing the shipyard to bits) she cycles through various languages. One of those languages is Huttese, spoken by Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983).
  
  
• The seats on WALL-E's earthbound space pod has pull-down restraints just like a Disney ride.
  
  
• According to the DVD extras, the Axiom is a "General Dynamics Type Three Hull configuration" which is similar in name and shape to the "General Products Number Three Hull" featured in the classic science fiction novel, "Ringworld" by Larry Niven.
  
  
• The screen magnifier that Wall-E uses on the iPod is a reference to Brazil (1985).
  
  
• The People Mover transportation system is an homage to the old Disneyland attraction "The Goodyear PeopleMover," which was located in Tomorrowland from 1967 to 1997. It was eventually replaced by a short-lived attraction called Rocket Rods, but today the original PeopleMover track is still standing vacant. The PeopleMover was also built for Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom park, and while it is still in operation, it has since been renamed the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (TTA).
  
  
• The span of years listed for each of the Axiom's previous captains is ambiguous about whether it denotes each captain's lifespan or the number of years in which he or she was captain of the ship. It should be noted that there is no overlap in the years for each captain. This leans towards the possibility that each person's time as captain lasted an average of 135 years. Regardless, whatever each captain's span of years denotes, they just happen to total out to 666.
  
  
• Sigourney Weaver as the voice of the ship's computer may be a reference to her role in Galaxy Quest (1999), where it is constantly joked that her character's only purpose was to repeat what the ship's computer said. Also, in Alien (1979), "Mother" (the ship's computer) served as secondary antagonist to Weaver's character.
  
  
• According to Andrew Stanton's director's commentary, the pictures of the Axiom's captains as seen in the captain's quarters are photos of Pixar employees some of which have been edited to show the physical development of the humans. The names of the captains are also the names of WALL-E's story team.
  
  
• In the scene where WALL-E is standing watching the sunset with the 'sleeping' EVE, he nudges the street lamp to his right and the bulb falls out. This may be a reference to Disney's extra efforts on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), a movie which coined the phrase 'bumping the lamp' after a scene was produced with shadows from a lamp which Roger the Rabbit bumped into, causing it to move.
  
  
• WALL.E collects numerous objects from the 1960s-1980s including a VCR tape of Hello, Dolly! (1969) (featured prominently in the film), a Rubik's Cube, and even an Atari 2600 with the game Pong (1972) (VG). Despite the film taking place over 800 years after these objects were created, all the objects are still in working condition.
  
  
• When WALL-E first wakes up, the camera zooms in on him to show his low battery sign. You can see a figurine of Mike Wazowski from Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (2001) over WALL-E's left shoulder.
  
  
• WALL-E is the first Pixar film to be nominated for 6 Academy Awards. This ties it with the only other animated film to garner this many nominations: Beauty and the Beast (1991).
  
  
• Both classic pieces "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss and "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauß are a direct reference to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a movie quoted to on several occasions.
  
  
• All robots in WALL·E follow the Three Laws of Robotics, originally conceived by sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov. Several bad bots have dilemmas in following those laws.
  
  
• The actual year the movie takes place is not specifically mentioned in the movie itself, but in the animated short movie BURN-E (2008) (V) (about another robot and takes place at the same time as the events of this movie) which was included as a DVD extra, it mentions that this movie takes place in the year 2805 A.D.
  
  
• EVE completes the Rubik's cube in a little bit more than 3 seconds.
  
  
• When EVE is first scanning the planet, she scans the "Pizza Planet" delivery truck from Pixar's Toy Story (1995).
  
  
• The survival of both the Twinkie and the cockroach perpetuates the urban myth that even should the world end, both will survive indefinitely.
  
  
• Other objects seen in WALL-E's room are a Buzz Lightyear lunch box, and the Bean Jar from A Bug's Life (1998).
  
  
• Sigourney Weaver has voiced a ships computer once before as the Planet Express ship in "Futurama: Love and Rocket (#4.4)" (2002). Both times the ship's computer had a visual representation that resembles HAL (another talking computer) from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
  
  
• Director Andrew Stanton went to great lengths to create a "filmed" rather than "animated" look. Hence the film contains a number of animated lens "artifacts", (visual distortions that can occur when using actual lenses.) As an example, in the scene where Wall·E is crushed by all of the shopping carts, there is a "focus-pulling" error during the zoom, resulting in the entire screen briefly blurring. There are also numerous field depth changes, where focus appears to move between a foreground and a background subject.
  
  
• As the Captain portraits are being shown, you can see Auto developing from a small light from the first Captain, and becoming brighter and brighter as each succeeding Captain takes charge (and subsequently grows more obese), showing a correlation between the reliance on autopilot, versus actively moving.
  
  
• Andrew Stanton is a big fan of Peter Gabriel, who was very enthused to write the song "Down to Earth" because he loved Finding Nemo (2003).
  
  
• When EVE tries to send WALL-E back to Earth on one of the Life Pods, the deck that she goes to is 1.9 12, or 1912. The Titanic sank in 1912 and thousands lost their lives because there weren't enough lifeboats aboard.
  
  

• SPOILER: WALL·E, as a character, is a perfect example of the Ship of Theseus paradox. It's hinted that every single piece of the original WALL·E, except his main chip, has been replaced by himself prior the story. By the end of the film, EVE replaced WALL·E's main chip, revealing that the original WALL-E is gone until she restores his "mind".
  
  

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