False Facts About Pixar You Thought Were True

Everyone loves Pixar. For the most part, the studio has been a bastion of clever, original, emotionally affecting storytelling and technological wonderment ever since that cute little desk lamp first hopped across our screens two decades ago. Adults and children alike have been spellbound by the studio's output — not to mention usually reduced to gross blubbering messes by the third act — and the quality has rarely waned. All this while enjoying the kind of box office success and Oscar glory that makes competing studios drool like a Parisian rat preparing a gourmet meal from beneath a chef's hat.

But the story of Pixar's inception, its journey, and all the associated bits of trivia have been the source of much curiosity and intrigue over the years and, naturally, misconceptions and misquotes and outright falsehood abound. A lot of the interesting facts cited about Pixar and its films aren't actually facts at all.

The interconnected universe is a popular conceit in fiction. You have your Marvels and DCs and all their derivatives. Kevin Smith did it. The Pixar Theory — the suggestion that each movie takes place in the same fictional universe and falls somewhere into a convoluted and meticulously constructed timeline — became very popular after blogger Jon Negroni laid it all out in 2013. The theory includes such bonkers claims as Boo from Monsters, Inc. being the same character as the witch in Brave, and the cars from Cars living in a near-future Earth after all the humans have left. It's not like Pixar hasn't been stoking the proverbial flames from the beginning, dropping in subtle references to other films all over each new release, and naturally the internet has continued to run with it.

Every new movie gets the same treatment as fans try to shoehorn it into the timeline somehow, while others are just content in the belief that all the movies are vaguely connected in some undefined way. But when asked about it at a 2015 press conference in the Philippines, director Pete Docter popped that balloon with one swift pinch. He said each movie takes place in its own separate world, and all the Easter eggs are just plain old Easter eggs. Pixar's Jay Ward and Mark Andrews have agreed. Any further speculation is just going to have to be done purely for the gosh-darned fun of it all.

A lot of people assume the Cars movies did gangbusters at the box office, and when Mater the tow truck's gaping maw greets you on T-shirts and toys at every corner of any kid-heavy area in the country, it's not hard to see why. But as Wired's rundown of the studio's box office earnings over the years indicates, all three movies are actually on the lower end of the Pixar scale in terms of earnings, and the third was actually considered an outright flop.

The perceived success of Cars is almost entirely rooted in its merchandising dominance. The franchise has amassed over $10 billion in merchandising revenue, according to the BBC, which is around 30 times the first film's total box office gross. Cars 2 had a much bigger budget than the first, and its box office gross was only marginally higher. And it was the first Pixar film to receive mostly negative reviews, making it a critical flop if nothing else.

Then there's poor old Cars 3. It was actually greeted with a respectable critical response compared to its predecessor, and the consensus is that it boasts a lot more substance than either of the other two movies, but the numbers didn't reflect any of that. Despite the corporate behemoth the franchise became, it just went to show that kids were much more interested in hoarding Lightning McQueen toys and throwing them at restaurant staff than actually going to see the movies in theaters.

Working at Pixar has often been portrayed as something of a dream job in the press: recreational facilities, very flexible work schedules, a collaborative environment, and plenty of positive vibes in general. There's even a hidden speakeasy bar. When can you start, you say? Well, don't start planning your move to Emeryville just yet. The company's record of employee satisfaction is less pristine that most seem to think.

Case in point: Pixar's higher-ups spearheaded an illegal industry-wide wage-fixing scheme back in the '80s, whereby the wages of animation workers were artificially capped to prevent them from seeking higher salaries at other companies. This went on for years, a number of lawsuits eventually followed, and a $100 million settlement was paid in 2017. Then, perhaps most infamously, there's the company's ugly culture of sexism and sexual harassment, which came to light in a big way when allegations of misconduct were leveled against co-founder John Lasseter in late 2017. Around the same time, Toy Story 4's original writers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack left the project due to the company's habit of undervaluing the contributions of women and minorities.

Lasseter's actions encouraged toxic behavior in other men at the studio, according to one former employee's account, and it became a company-wide issue. Even from the outside, it's not difficult to see the cracks — of Pixar's 20 films, Brave was the only one helmed by a woman (Brenda Chapman) and she was ultimately replaced by another dude. Suddenly that hidden bar doesn't sound all that great.

It feels like Pixar comfortably takes up residence at the top of the box office with each new release, enjoying a nice long spell in theaters before sauntering casually into a streaming and home video sales gold mine. Toy Story was the highest-grossing film of 1995, and 23 years later The Incredibles 2 became the highest-grossing animated film of all time in North America, according to Forbes. It's widely assumed that the studio simply can't release a financially unsuccessful film. Well, they actually have already, as it happens. Twice.

Remember The Good Dinosaur? Not many people do. Plagued by production woes, numerous delays, and a tepid critical response, it was Pixar's first proper commercial flop. Inside Out came out a few months earlier and cleaned house, so Dinosaur could essentially just be shoved aside and forgotten like the black sheep of the family while the golden child performed a flawless ballet recital to an adoring crowd of proud, preening parents. A minor bump in the road, but then Cars 3 fared almost as poorly in 2017. Pixar's name alone wasn't enough to get butts in seats and ensure box office glory, clearly, and financial success was no longer something they could count on.

When Pixar first started making waves in the '80s with a string of technically astounding short films, from the outside it looked like the studio had emerged almost fully formed from the chrysalis, dressed to the nines and ready to party. But before staking their claim as the most commercially and artistically fruitful film studio of its day, the company existed in a much more modest form; paying the bills and only dreaming of the success they'd soon enjoy. It'd be a few years before they could even call themselves a movie studio.

Before Pixar was Pixar, the company was affectionately known as The Graphics Group of Lucasfilm's Computer Division. Headed by the New York Institute of Technology's Ed Catmull, they developed computer technology to enhance other people's movies from 1979 to 1986 — responsible for the Genesis effect sequence in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, for one. John Lassetter joined in 1984 as interface designer, and then along came some guy named Steve Jobs, recently ousted from Apple and hungry for a new venture. Jobs bought the company for $5 million in 1986 and christened it Pixar. It was still primarily a hardware company around this time, and folks were honing their craft working on short films, commercials, and TV spots before Disney came a-knocking in 1991. They struck a deal "to make and distribute at least one computer-generated animated movie" together. Infinity and beyond was waiting just around the corner.