Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this video I'm explaining how Pixar's new
movie Soul proves the theory that all the studio's films take place in an interconnected
universe.
I'll also show you how Soul explains the Toy Story movies, where the Incredibles get their
powers, and the origins of the magical doorways in Monsters Inc and Brave.
Plus I'll explain how the new film fits in with Inside Out and Coco.
Of course, there'll be some spoilers, so take care.
Jon Negroni first introduced the idea of a single Pixar timeline, and it's in Soul's
The Hall of Everything where we can find especially compelling evidence to confirm Negroni's theory.
The hall is overflowing with specific objects and locations which often recur in Pixar's
films, from the iconic Pizza Planet truck to the blimp from Up, and even the weirdly
shaped rock, called Wille's Butte from the Cars movies.
And that's a huge pointer that the films exist in the same universe.
But Soul goes even further than this, because even though the film appears to be set roughly
in the present day, which I'm basing on the look and feel of New York City and the cellphone
Joe uses, the Hall of Everything even has objects from
the future such as the Axiom from Wall-E, one of a fleet of giant starliners that wasn't
used until 2105 when Buy N Large arranged for the evacuation of Earth.
This implies that The Hall of Everything may even contain blueprints or at least the inspiration
for events that are still to come in the future of the Pixar universe.
Soul also demonstrates one of the most important concepts at the heart of Negroni's Pixar Theory,
that humans are batteries.
The idea is that human beings are a source of energy to sentient objects such as the
toys in Toy Story which is why they crave the love of their owners;
otherwise, it's suggested that if the toys end up stored away they lose their life.
And in Monsters Inc, we know that technology exists that can harvest energy from human
emotions such as fear or joy.
And there are several moments in Soul that strongly support this idea of humans as an
energy source.
When Joe is on the elevator that leads to the Great Beyond, he notices that as the souls
of the recently deceased float up into the big bright light, they fizzle and crackle
like an electrical charge.
[electrical crackling sounds] As if to reinforce this idea that a soul is
a form of energy, there's also an electrical crackle sound effect whenever we see Terry
counting souls on her abacus.
[electrical crackling sounds] Joe also discovers in the Great Before that
before new souls can take their place on Earth, they not only have to acquire a set of personalities,
but they also need what the movie calls a "spark" to complete that personality.
Without this spark, theoretically a soul isn't allowed to go to Earth and live a human life.
Twenty-two does end up on Earth by accident, but the general rule is that a "spark" is
needed to complete the Earth Pass which a soul needs to live a life.
The word "spark" can, of course, mean a number of things such as a burst of electricity or
an intense feeling or emotion, which again points to this idea of human beings as a form
of energy or batteries even.
Another crucial element of Negroni's Pixar theory is the idea that Boo from Monsters
Inc travels back in time to become the Witch in Brave.
I'll get to how Soul supports this idea shortly, but first let's quickly recap what the theory
says about time travel.
Brave is set in 10th-century Scotland whereas, given the monsters' advanced technology, Monsters
Inc takes place in the future.
The clearest evidence which suggests time travel is the wood carving of Sulley that
the Witch has in her cottage.
She's also obsessed with bears which could be her way of expressing the strong friendship
she made with Sulley in Monsters Inc.
On top of that, the Witch has carvings of the Pizza Planet truck which should be impossible
given motorised vehicles most definitely did not exist in medieval Scotland
and she has carved parodies of famous art by artists from the future like Michelangelo.
The door to the Witch's cottage is also magical and can transport her into an alternate interior
version of her hut, and it can also make her disappear.
This is because Boo learned how the technology of the portal doors at the Monsters Inc factory
worked, which is how she travelled through time and space.
Crucially in Soul, we can see this same technology in the You Seminar.
After souls are paired up with their mentor, Jerry conjures up a door and sends them through
it, instantly transporting them to another location.
And when Jerry gives Joe his second chance to return to Earth, he passes from The Great
Beyond through a door and emerges on Earth through another door.
Given The Great Before existed at the beginning of time, it suggests that the technology for
magical portals in the Pixar Universe was originally born there.
Soul also makes a sneaky possible reference to Boo's time-travel shenanigans in what initially
appears to be a throwaway line by one of the Jerrys.
When Terry turns up to complain that the count is out by one soul, Jerry replies:
"I seriously doubt that.
The count hasn't been off in centuries."
This is a vital piece of information for Pixar theorists because it tells us an anomaly similar
to Joe escaping the elevator that was taking him to the Great Beyond has happened previously,
several hundred years ago in fact.
To understand what may have happened all those centuries ago, let's look at what happened
when Joe's soul accidentally fell into the body of Mr Mittens.
"Why am I in a cat?"
"I don't know!"
"Meow."
It seems that Mr Mittens' soul was sent off to The Great Beyond.
So, what if Boo did a similar thing when she time-travelled to medieval Scotland?
Could she have landed in the body of a Scottish woman and displaced her soul sending it up
to the Great Beyond?
That would mean there'd be an extra soul in the afterlife without a corresponding dead
body on Earth, which could be the reason for the count being off as Jerry said.
Interestingly, when Joe returns to his old body in Soul, Mr Mittens appears to regain
his original soul too as we see him reunite with his owner,
so if my theory about Boo and the Witch's soul is correct, it makes me wonder whether
Terry did anything about the anomaly that occurred in the soul count hundreds of years
ago.
By the way, it's worth pointing out that there's also a Brave easter egg in Soul during the
video at the You Seminar when we see a soul find its spark after it successfully shoots
an arrow into the centre of one of three targets, referencing Merida's demonstration of archery
skills when she fired arrows into three targets.
And there are, of course, many more Pixar easter eggs in Soul including the Chinese
takeout box, A113, and the Luxo Ball, all of which I reveal in my full easter eggs video.
Now, there are two Pixar movies, Inside Out and Coco, which on the surface seem to contradict
Soul and maybe pose a problem for how smoothly it fits into the interconnected universe of
the Pixar Theory.
The first issue is to do with personality.
In The Great Before, we discover that every soul acquires a set of personalities before
they go to Earth.
"This is where personalities come from?"
"Of course!
Do you think people are just born with them?"
However, in Inside Out, personalities are formed whenever a new core memory is made.
"Each Core Memory powers a different aspect of Riley's personality.
The Islands of Personality are what make Riley...
Riley!"
While these ideas about personality may appear to be at odds with one another, they can be
easily reconciled if we think of a new born soul as having a baseline personality at birth,
some of which adapts and changes as that person grows up and has different experiences.
In fact, in Inside Out we see that Riley loses her personalities when she experiences a traumatic
event, however, these are later restored and new ones are also added as she grows up;
so an individual's personality is clearly not something static or unchanging.
Likewise, Soul also shows us how Twenty Two's personality changes as she experiences life
on earth.
Something else we need to reconcile is how Coco's Land of the Dead fits with Soul's depiction
of The Great Beyond.
In Soul, the afterlife is a relatively simple place with an escalator that leads souls to
a giant white light in the sky.
This representation may be alluding to the idea that many people who report near-death
experiences describe a tunnel with a bright light at the end that draws them towards it.
Coco's spirit world, on the other hand, is complex and bursting with colours, with the
Marigold Bridge forming a connection between the Land of the Living and the elaborate and
complex Land of the Dead.
Fear not though, because we can resolve these differences by turning to Pixar's official
The Art of Soul book, which describes The Great Beyond as
"a place beyond all that can be known […] represented by a brilliant white light in
a vast space […] What lies beyond the light is all up to interpretation."
As the book suggests, we can interpret what is beyond the bright light in our own way,
and so we can see the Land of the Dead in Coco as a culturally-specific vision of what
the afterlife is unique to people of Mexican heritage.
This would also explain how Coco can have its own specific rules for its spirit world,
such as allowing the dead to cross over to the Land of the Living one day each year.
What's common to both Soul and Coco though is that the dead souls all retain the appearance
and age they had at the time of their death, whereas in the Great Before, all the souls
look more or less similar, likely because they haven't yet taken a human form yet.
The sparks that a soul acquires may even explain where the Supers in The Incredibles got their
powers.
Could it be that the souls that ended up as superheroes were supercharged with extra powers
by the spark they received in the Great Before?
There is, after all, a statue of what looks like a caped hero on a plinth in the Hall
of Everything.
Maybe that statue was responsible for sparking the unfortunate idea of caped superheroes.
"No capes!"
And this is just a fun idea, but could the soul that's being interviewed here for the
You Seminar training video be the soul of Buddy Pine, aka Syndrome.
"I'm a manipulative megalomaniac, who's intensely opportunistic."
"Oh ho!
This one might be a handful, but that's Earth's problem."
Perhaps Syndrome got his spark from that statue, because after all it was his cape that proved
to be his ultimate undoing.
And yes, Syndrome wasn't born with powers, but that statue might have inspired him to
seek glory in whatever way he could.
Or could that soul be Evelyn Deavor, the master manipulator and evil tech genius from the
second Incredibles movie?
The soul's possibly female-sounding voice might also suggest this, although we know
from Twenty Two that a soul can change their voice to sound like any type of person.
"I can sound like this if I wanted to.
Or sound like this instead.
I can even sound like you."
If you like either of these ideas, leave a thumbs-up or comment below with which other
Pixar character you think this troublemaking soul could be!
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Now, do you have any more ideas on how Soul fits into the Pixar Theory?
And if you enjoyed any of my Soul theories, a thumbs-up is hugely appreciated.
You can also tap left to discover where all the other Pixar easter eggs are in the movie
or tap right for something else you're sure to like.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!