Pixar has made a habit of including Easter eggs and references to their movies in each new release, and that is no different with Hoppers. The sci-fi film follows Mabel as she transfers her mind into the body of a beaver robot to try to save a special glade by bringing other animals back to the habitat.
And while it might be hard to catch them all upon a first viewing, the Easter eggs are there to spot on repeat watches. Here's all of Hoppers' Easter eggs spotted so far.
13 Crush From Finding Nemo
Hoppers wastes no time giving viewers a reference to another Pixar movie. At the beginning, a young Mabel is shown trying to free her class turtle, along with a host of other animals. It's during this sequence we learn that the turtle is named Crush.
That's an obvious reference to Finding Nemo. The film includes a sea turtle named Crush, who, along with his son Squirt, befriends Marlin. He was also featured in Finding Dory. It's quite clear Hoppers' turtle is named after the fan-favorite animal, dude.
12 Pizza Planet Truck
The Pizza Planet truck has become a staple of Pixar movies ever since it was included in Toy Story. It's common for the vehicle to be in the background of a shot or creatively modified to fit into imaginative worlds.
For Hoppers, the Pizza Planet truck can be seen in an alternate form. When Mable is trying to escape from her school with the animals, a small model version of the truck is seen in a display case. While there were opportunities to include a proper version of the truck elsewhere, it seems Pixar's team wanted to make this reference less obvious to spot.
11 Mable's Phone Case References Up & Toy Story
While Mabel spends most of Hoppers in her robot beaver body, her time before that transformation brings two more references. Her phone case includes connections to Up and Toy Story.
There is a Wilderness Explorers Badge on it, referencing Russell's participation in the group in Up. There is also one of the green aliens from the Toy Story franchise.
10 We Bare Bears
Another of Hoppers' Easter eggs has nothing to do with Disney or Pixar but has everything to do with director Daniel Chong. Before he made this movie, he was behind a three-season animated series on Cartoon Network called We Bare Bears.
Chong has confirmed that there are three bears modeled after the lead characters from We Bare Bears featured in Mabel's bedroom. They are briefly seen on a windowsill in a quick scene and were included as a surprise for the director.
That's not where the connections to We Bare Bears stop, either. The show's three main cast members all have voice roles in Hoppers. Panda's Bobby Moynihan voices King George, and Ice Bear's Demetri Martin voices a flock of birds. Grizz's Eric Edelstein provided additional voices, but for which characters is yet to be confirmed.
9 A113
While Pixar loves Easter eggs to its past (or future) films, there is also a history of highlighting the animation studio's origin. It's become tradition for viewers to see "A113" in the studio's releases, which is a reference to the classroom at the California Institute of the Arts where many of the most prominent members of the studio studied, including John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Brad Bird.
A113 is used in Hoppers as the room number for Dr. Sam's lab. Considering the lab is found at Beaverton University, the reference is quite fitting. A113 has come full circle to being a college room.
8 Avatar
The least subtle reference in Hoppers comes for Avatar. James Cameron's sci-fi franchise gets a direct name drop in the movie from Mabel as she comes to understand how Dr. Sam's "Hoppers" technology works. She directly compares it to the Avatar films, a similarity that Dr. Sam rejects, saying, "It's nothing like Avatar!"
Despite Dr. Sam's rebuttal, the similarities between Hoppers and Avatar are quite clear. Both feature plots where a human protagonist's brain is transferred into a different body in the hopes of connecting with a different lifeform. It's the Na'vi for Avatar but all animals for Hoppers. There are even themes of environmentalism and critiques of capitalism.
These comparisons would have come with or without the Avatar reference, but at least now Hoppers is self-aware enough to try to address it.
7 Thumper & Flower From Bambi
After Mabel enters her robot beaver body for the first time and makes it to the wilderness, she suddenly encounters all types of animals. And while she runs around in amazement that she can understand them all, Hoppers sneaks in a Bambi reference.
There are deer in Hoppers, but none that look directly like Bambi. However, we do see a skunk and a rabbit together. This seems to be a nod to Flower and Thumper in the 1942 Disney animated classic.
6 Up's Talking Dog Collar
The very end of Hoppers is loaded with Easter eggs in the form of a chalkboard in Dr. Sam's lab, showing her other ideas for inventions after the Hoppers program is shut down.
The easiest one to spot is a reference to the talking dog collar from Up. Featured right in the middle of the chalkboard with a giant circle around it, "Idea #113" (possibly another clever reference to A113) shows Sam's idea for a collar that translates a dog's barks into speech. It's identical to the one Dug and other dogs wear in Up.
If the Pixar Shared Universe Theory is true, this suggests Sam was partially responsible for inventing this technology. Dug explained that Charles F. Muntz created the collar in Up, but perhaps he was mistaken or did not know the full story.
Chong and producer Nicole Paradis Grindle previously confirmed to ScreenRant that Hoppers' Up connection is as legitimate as it seems, saying:
Daniel Chong: I mean, the movie certainly suggests it.
Nicole Paradis Grindle: She did the basic research, necessary. We can say that.
5 WALL-E
The earliest idea on Dr. Sam's chalkboard is Idea #8, which is for some sort of cleaning robot. The design of this cleaning robot is a direct match for the titular robot in WALL-E.
Taking the Pixar Shared Universe Theory into account here, this would imply that Dr. Sam is the one who created WALL-E. It's possible she creates the patent and sells it to Buy n Large for mass production.
There is also a second robot shown as Idea #12 with a polishing bar. And while the purpose is different, one figure looks somewhat like EVE.
4 Sox From Lightyear
After tackling robotic animals with the Hoppers program, its no surprise that another of Dr. Sam's ideas is of the same line of thinking. Featured on the bottom left of the chalkboard, Idea #92 is for a robot feline companion that looks identical to Sox from Lightyear.
Sox is a robotic cat used by Star Command in the film, making it a companion to Buzz Lightyear. Depending on how you want to interpret the chalkboard's importance, this could mean that Dr. Sam invented a real version of Sox, only for the concept to then be incoporated into the movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toys.
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