100 Fun Facts About WALL-E

In WALL-E, where does the robot make his home on the abandoned Earth?

In a transport truck. It was built to carry WALL-E units to work; now the last one still running uses its racks to shelve the treasures he rescues from the trash.

In WALL-E, which find makes EVE shut down?

Seedling. EVE was sent to look for life, so she stores it in her chest and goes dormant until her ship collects her: it is proof that Earth, abandoned 700 years earlier, can support life again.

In WALL-E, how do the Axiom's passengers get around the ship?

In hover chairs. They were sold as a luxury so that nobody had to walk; seven centuries on, the passengers can barely stand, which is why the captain rising to his feet is such a triumph.

What is WALL-E's pet?

A cockroach. His skittering is really the sound of police handcuffs being clicked apart and snapped back together, recorded by the film's sound designer.

What does WALL-E stand for?

Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class. He is the last of thousands of them still working, and he keeps going by scavenging spare parts from the units that broke down.

Which musical does WALL-E watch on video cassette?

Hello, Dolly! Stanton stumbled on it while skipping through show tunes for his opening, and heard in 'Put On Your Sunday Clothes' two naive boys longing to see the world, just like his robot.

In WALL-E, which megacorporation evacuated humanity from Earth?

Buy n Large. Its boss sold the exodus as a five-year cruise while robots tidied up, then quietly gave up on the clean-up and told the ships to stay in space.

In WALL-E, what is AUTO's secret order to stay away from Earth called?

A113. It is the number of the CalArts classroom where many Pixar animators trained, slipped into the studio's films as a running joke; here, for once, the plot turns on it.

Which comedian plays Shelby Forthright, the live-action CEO in WALL-E's old videos?

Fred Willard. Stanton cast him as "the most friendly and insincere car salesman I could think of", the right face for a boss whose cheerful promises all fall apart.

In WALL-E, which robot saves WALL-E and EVE from being ejected into space with the garbage?

M-O. The little Microbe-Obliterator has chased WALL-E across the ship to scrub off his dirt, and that obsession carries him into the closing airlock doors at just the right moment.

Which sound designer provides the voice of WALL-E?

Ben Burtt. After his last Star Wars film he told his wife "no more robots", then took a job inventing voices for a whole cast of them.

Andrew Stanton said EVE's eyes in WALL-E were partly inspired by which classic toy?

Lite-Brite. Her eyes sit on a display screen that can redraw them in any shape, which gives a sleek machine the squash and stretch of a cartoon face.

Which speech synthesizer, credited in place of an actor, provides AUTO's voice in WALL-E?

MacInTalk. Stanton wanted the autopilot to have no human element at all, "cold, zeros & ones, calculating, and soulless", so a computer's synthetic voice got the part.

Which actress voices the Axiom's computer in WALL-E?

Sigourney Weaver. In Alien her character battled Mother, the ship's computer, so making her the voice of one was the filmmakers' sci-fi joke.

Who voices the Axiom's captain, B. McCrea, in WALL-E?

Jeff Garlin. His captain has spent a whole career letting the autopilot run the ship, so taking it back means hauling himself out of his chair and onto his feet.

In WALL-E, which gesture does the robot learn from his favourite film and long to share with EVE?

Holding hands. Stanton had read that it is the most intimate public display of affection, and saw that it let a robot who cannot speak say "I love you".

Which short film was paired with WALL-E in theaters?

Presto. The comedy about a stage magician and the rabbit he forgot to feed played before the feature; BURN-E, which stars a robot from the film itself, was only made for the home release.

Which was the only win among WALL-E's six Oscar nominations?

Best Animated Feature. Many critics had argued it belonged in the Best Picture race too, and when it was left out, the Academy's voters were accused of backward thinking.

At the end of WALL-E, what finally restores the robot's memory after EVE rebuilds him?

A spark from a goodbye kiss. New parts and sunlight only restart him as a blank trash compactor who crushes his own treasures; a tiny jolt as she touches her forehead to his brings him back.

Which Pixar feature joined the National Film Registry before WALL-E did in 2021?

Toy Story. Films must wait ten years to qualify, and the Library of Congress took Pixar's first feature in 2005, the first year it could.

Which of these Pixar films was first pitched at the same 1994 lunch as WALL-E?

A Bug's Life. With their first feature nearly finished, four Pixar writers met to plan what came next; Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo came out of the same lunch, but the lonely robot waited 14 years.

In WALL-E, what does the robot use to jet through space on his dance with EVE?

A fire extinguisher. NASA engineers later nicknamed a Mars-bound mini-probe WALL-E because it steered the same way, with the compressed gas used in fire extinguishers.

Which Pixar boss disliked the title, then spelled "W.A.L.-E."?

He and Lasseter were impressed enough by a 2003 story reel to green-light development anyway.

In an early WALL-E draft the Axiom's jelly-like aliens discovered they were human, a twist modelled on which film?

Planet of the Apes. Stanton made the passengers so devolved, wobbling blobs of jelly with a language of their own, that viewers would take them for an alien race, then dropped the idea as too bizarre.

Time's critic named WALL-E the best film of the 2000s; which trilogy did he rank second?

The Lord of the Rings. Richard Corliss put Pixar's robot romance first and Peter Jackson's trilogy next, arguing that animation had given the decade's cinema its greatest measure of joy.

WALL-E's end credits show Earth's recovery in a string of changing styles that retrace the history of what?

Art. The pictures move from cave drawings through one painting style after another to computer graphics, and as they advance, humans and robots rebuild and the planet turns green again.

Why did Pixar's designers paint WALL-E yellow?

To emulate a tractor. Designer Ralph Eggleston said yellow reminded people of working machinery, which suited the robot's job, and it kept him easy to see against a brown, dusty Earth.

Which live-action cinematographer came to Pixar to advise on WALL-E's lighting and camerawork?

Roger Deakins. Pixar wanted the grit and imperfection of real photography instead of a clean cartoon look, so it asked the Coen brothers' regular cameraman how a live-action crew would light and shoot it.

WALL-E's live-action scenes were a stepping stone to which film Andrew Stanton planned to direct next?

John Carter of Mars. Stanton was already writing the Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation, so filming real actors for WALL-E's old videos doubled as practice; it reached cinemas in 2012 as plain John Carter.

WALL-E's eyes were inspired by what, which his director fiddled with at a baseball game?

A pair of binoculars. Stanton spent a whole inning tilting them to look sad, then happy, then angry, and saw that a face could be nothing but a pair of eyes.

Which designer advised Pixar on EVE, WALL-E's sleek white probe?

Jonathan Ive. Stanton called the visit a "lovefest", but said Apple was so secretive that its design chief could do little more than nod at Pixar's ideas for her.

In WALL-E, the autopilot AUTO is a conscious homage to which movie computer?

HAL 9000. Stanton owned up to the homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the film underlines it by playing that movie's fanfare, Also sprach Zarathustra, as the captain fights his autopilot for control.

Andrew Stanton said he was shocked when viewers likened WALL-E to which earlier movie robot?

Johnny 5. Stanton said he would own up to any homage, but that Short Circuit never crossed his mind; he put the likeness down to both robots having stereoscopic eyes.

Which two silent comedians' films did WALL-E's crew watch at lunch, day after day, to master wordless storytelling?

Keaton and Chaplin. Stanton saw his robot as a blend of the two: Keaton's unchanging "great stone face" on the outside, and Chaplin's soft-hearted romantic within.

In WALL-E, Andrew Stanton designed the Axiom's pampered passengers to look like big what?

Babies. A NASA adviser had told him that years without proper gravity wither bone and muscle, so he drew people who had never needed to mature, their flesh modelled on sea lion blubber.

In WALL-E, which vintage video game does the robot try to play with the shut-down EVE?

Pong. He sets up a television on his roof and plays the old Atari game beside her as she floats there, blank and unresponsive, one of a string of dates she sleeps through.

In WALL-E, what has the robot built from the cubes of trash he compacts each day?

Skyscraper-high towers. The opening shots play a trick on the audience: what looks like a city skyline through the haze turns out to be centuries of his neatly stacked rubbish.

What sound signals WALL-E's battery is fully recharged?

The Macintosh startup chime. The screenplay simply calls it the Apple "reboot" sound; Stanton said his whole crew were Apple fans who thought it made the best-designed machines around.

In WALL-E, the Axiom's autopilot, AUTO, takes the form of what?

A ship's steering wheel. Its single red lens sits at the hub, and when the captain finally rebels he has to grab the wheel and hang on like a sailor in a gale.

In WALL-E, how does the robot follow EVE when a rocket carries her off into space?

Clinging to its hull. He climbs the outside as the engines ignite and hangs on for the whole voyage, trailing a hand through the ice of Saturn's rings as they pass.

Which composer wrote the music for WALL-E?

Thomas Newman. With almost no dialogue in the opening act, his music had to carry far more of the storytelling than a film score usually does.

Which rock star co-wrote and sang "Down to Earth", the song over WALL-E's end credits?

Peter Gabriel. He wrote the words to a melody from the film's composer and sang them with South Africa's Soweto Gospel Choir; the song went on to win a Grammy.

Which film's 1930s-style French swing made Andrew Stanton drop the same idea for WALL-E's opening?

The Triplets of Belleville. Stanton loved the wordless French cartoon and its swing score, but it reached cinemas first, and he did not want to look like a copycat.

Whose recording of "La Vie en rose" plays as WALL-E tries to impress EVE?

Louis Armstrong. His version plays while WALL-E trails EVE like a stray puppy, only to be chased down a ramp by an avalanche of runaway shopping carts.

In 2008, WALL-E missed out on a cinema release in which of these countries?

China. Only a limited quota of foreign films is imported each year, and a Chinese newspaper reported that June that WALL-E had not made the list for 2008.

In WALL-E, which one-word question does EVE keep putting to the robot when they first talk?

Directive? He answers by proudly crushing a cube of trash to show his job, but when he asks for hers, all she will say is "classified".

Which film swept the 2009 Annie Awards over WALL-E?

Kung Fu Panda. DreamWorks' martial-arts comedy took a best-feature prize that usually went to Pixar, plus awards for its music, design and voice acting, and WALL-E went home empty-handed.

WALL-E beat which superhero film to the Los Angeles critics' best-picture prize for 2008?

The Dark Knight. Batman finished runner-up, and in a twist the same critics gave their separate animation prize not to their film of the year but to the war documentary Waltz with Bashir.

Which boutique home-video label released WALL-E in 2022, its first Pixar film?

Criterion Collection. Andrew Stanton made the first overture himself, Disney agreed to license the film out, and the label issued a new 4K master that he approved.

Pixar animator Angus MacLane's own model of WALL-E became an official set from which toy maker in 2015?

Lego. MacLane built his blocky robot while he was animating the real one, then submitted it to the Lego Ideas site in the hope of seeing it sold, and the company picked it from the fan designs under review.

Which toy was struck with a timpani stick to create the blast of EVE's cannon in WALL-E?

A Slinky hung from a ladder gave the zap its metallic twang. The film's sound man called it a cousin of the Star Wars blaster noise.

In WALL-E, which planet does the robot reach out and touch in passing on the ride to the Axiom?

Saturn gets the cameo as he trails a hand through its rings: in a spin-off short, a pebble he knocks loose becomes a meteor that smashes one of the starship's running lights.

The crunch of WALL-E compacting garbage in his body was recorded at what kind of motor event?

A demolition derby supplied the noise of cars being wrecked, which became the robot squashing rubbish into cubes. A car's self-starter gave the whirr when he speeds up.

In WALL-E, which piece of cutlery does the robot struggle to sort into his hoard of human relics?

A spork stumps him because it is neither fork nor spoon. Archaeologist Ben Marwick likened the scene to his own trade's dilemma of classifying everyday artefacts.

Andrew Stanton kept naming which Star Wars droid as the benchmark for the robots of WALL-E?

R2-D2 was his model of a machine built for a job rather than a human in metal skin. Viewers project feelings onto such robots, he said, just as they do with pets.

When WALL-E missed a Best Picture nomination, which was the only animated film ever to have one?

Beauty and the Beast had stood alone since 1991. Disney pushed for the robot romance to join it, but the film's six Oscar nominations all came in other categories.

In WALL-E, what does the robot rely on to recharge himself on the deserted Earth?

Sunlight keeps him going, which is why he sets the dormant EVE on his roof, assuming she runs on solar power too. He even tops up in space once he is within range of the sun.

WALL-E co-writer Jim Reardon spent over a decade directing episodes of which animated TV series?

The Simpsons kept him busy from 1990 to 2004 and won him five Emmys. He later co-wrote Disney's Wreck-It Ralph.

In WALL-E, the probe robot EVE's name is an acronym in which the V stands for what?

Vegetation is her whole mission: EVE is an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, sent to check that the planet can support life before the humans come home.

Which actor, a voice in each of Pixar's first 22 films, plays an Axiom passenger in WALL-E?

John Ratzenberger, Cliff from Cheers, voices a passenger who shares his first name and falls for a fellow traveller, Mary. Pixar treated him as a lucky charm from its first film onwards.

Andrew Stanton wanted WALL-E to be a box, so which simple shape did he choose for EVE?

An egg gave EVE a seamless body with so little to bend that animators had to pose her like a drawing. Her floating form also reminded them of a manatee or a narwhal.

In WALL-E, how does the Axiom's captain, once he is on his feet, finally end AUTO's mutiny?

By switching to manual, he shuts the autopilot down in an instant. In early drafts the captain was a dimwit who wore his hat upside-down until this showdown.

Andrew Stanton began rewriting WALL-E in 2002 while finishing which Pixar film as its director?

Finding Nemo persuaded him that Pixar could fake real-world physics: having simulated the sea, he wanted to do the same for air and space.

In WALL-E, what does the robot chase across the ground moments before EVE's spaceship touches down?

A red dot zips away each time he grabs at it, because it is a light from the descending ship. He survives the landing only by digging a hole to hide in.

A Pixar employee likened EVE fetching a plant for the Axiom in WALL-E to which Bible story?

Noah's Ark has a dove that returns with an olive branch to show the flood is over, and the script was reworked so EVE's find calls humanity home the same way.

Which runaway objects in WALL-E did the sound designer record by letting one tumble down a hill?

Shopping carts come crashing down on the fleeing robot. For the clatter, the sound man and his daughter put a recorder in a supermarket cart and rammed it around the parking lot.

Which objects were taken apart and reassembled to make the skittering of WALL-E's tiny pet?

Handcuffs clicking open and shut became the patter of tiny feet. It was one of some 2,500 sounds recorded for the film, a career record for its Star Wars veteran designer.

Which blubbery animals were a model for the Axiom's human passengers in WALL-E?

Sea lions lent the passengers their soft, rounded bulk. Their feeble limbs follow a physiologist's briefing on how long spells of weightlessness weaken the body.

WALL-E's tank treads were inspired by an inventor's tread-driven version of which everyday object?

A wheelchair fitted with treads caught the animators' eye. His boxy body, meanwhile, came from the garbage compactors Pixar studied at recycling stations.

WALL-E's arms slide on tracks modelled on which office equipment, designed by an animator's father?

Inkjet printers gave animation director Angus MacLane the fix after elbows looked wrong on a machine built to scoop garbage. Lowering the arms on the track became a way of showing nerves.

Who developed WALL-E with Andrew Stanton in 1995 before leaving to direct Monsters, Inc.?

Pete Docter still shares the film's story credit, and in 2009 he shared its Nebula Award for best script with Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon.

Under which working title was WALL-E first developed at Pixar for two months in 1995?

Trash Planet was shelved over story problems. The idea sat untouched until its director picked the script up again seven years later.

Which Sister Act and Hocus Pocus actress voices Mary, an Axiom passenger, in WALL-E?

Kathy Najimy plays a passenger so absorbed in her screen that she never notices her surroundings until the robot jolts her out of it. She then falls for a fellow traveller.

Which repair robot do WALL-E and EVE accidentally lock outside the Axiom after their dance in space?

BURN-E is left hammering on the door, and got his own short film about the bad day that led up to it. The short was directed by the feature's lead animator, Angus MacLane.

In WALL-E, which first-mate robot hides the plant in an escape pod set to self-destruct?

GO-4 is the captain's first mate yet takes his orders from the autopilot, who wants the proof of life on Earth destroyed. He is smashed in the fight for the bridge.

Which Strauss waltz plays in WALL-E as the Axiom's captain goes through his daily tasks?

The Blue Danube is a wink at a classic space epic that set the same waltz to drifting spacecraft. A fanfare from that film returns for the captain's showdown with the autopilot.

Which summer blockbuster knocked WALL-E off the top of the US box office in its second weekend?

Hancock, with Will Smith as a boozy superhero, took the top spot as the robot's takings fell to $38 million. The Pixar film had opened to $63 million a week earlier.

WALL-E tied with which film for the Boston Society of Film Critics' best-picture award of 2008?

Slumdog Millionaire shared the Boston honour. Critics' groups in Chicago and Los Angeles gave the robot their top prize outright, the latter a first for a cartoon.

Which was the only 21st-century animated film to enter the National Film Registry before WALL-E?

Shrek got there first. The Library of Congress adds films it judges culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, and the robot romance made the list in 2021.

In WALL-E, what does the robot build from spare parts on Earth to show his love for EVE?

A sculpture of her, pieced together from scrap, fails to win her over. One essayist compared it to the Greek legend of a maiden tracing her lover's shadow on a wall before he left for war.

In WALL-E, what kind of storm does the robot rescue EVE from on the deserted Earth?

A sandstorm sweeps the dead city, the kind he regularly rides out at home. To record it, the film's sound designer ran around a hall with a canvas bag in the air.

To study real machines for WALL-E, Pixar borrowed a bomb-detecting robot from which organisation?

San Francisco's police lent the machine, one stop on a research tour that also took in recycling plants and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lesson was to keep robot movement simple.

The wind on WALL-E's desolate Earth came from recordings made on a 1987 trip to which landmark?

Niagara Falls recordings had sat in the sound designer's library for some two decades before they became the wind of a dead planet.

WALL-E's sound designer had sworn off robot films after finishing which Star Wars episode?

Revenge of the Sith was meant to be his last brush with robots, as he told his wife. He changed his mind because swapping voices for pure sound struck him as fresh and exciting.

Which 1950 device, bought unused on eBay, makes the sound of WALL-E trundling around on his treads?

A hand-cranked generator caught the sound designer's ear while he was watching the film Island in the Sky, so he hunted down an identical one still in its packaging.

Which city did WALL-E's designers visit to study artificial lighting for the Axiom's interior?

Las Vegas taught them about artificial light, and they studied Disney's own cruise liners as well. The finished interior was meant to resemble Shanghai and Dubai.

In WALL-E's stylised on-screen title, which symbol takes the place of the hyphen?

A raised dot, properly called an interpunct, separates the L from the E. The spin-off short and the tie-in video game style their titles the same way.

Why were Disney's promotional WALL-E animatronics kept from meeting children at its theme parks?

They might crush a foot: each robot weighed 318 kg, so its builders insisted on knowing exactly what it would meet. Fans who wanted a photo had to settle for a cardboard cutout.

Andrew Stanton laid out WALL-E's script in the terse, haiku-like style of which film's screenplay?

Alien, written by Dan O'Bannon, stacks its visual descriptions in short lines of a few words each. The robots' beeps were scripted as ordinary dialogue, only set inside brackets.

Which South African vocal group sings on the song that plays over WALL-E's end credits?

Soweto Gospel Choir comes in on the bridge and the outro. The song won a Grammy, though its singer pulled out of performing it at the Oscars on learning he would get only a minute.

Besides Chernobyl, which European capital did Pixar study to create WALL-E's ruined Earth?

Sofia came up because art director Anthony Christov, who is from Bulgaria, recalled its capital once struggling to find room for its garbage.

Which architect's futuristic buildings were the basis for the Axiom's design in WALL-E?

Santiago Calatrava's architecture shaped the ship, as did 1960s NASA paintings and early concept work for Disneyland's Tomorrowland, chosen for that era's optimism.

In an early WALL-E draft, the robots rose against their masters in a rebellion styled on which epic?

Spartacus was the model for an uprising against the Gels, cruel boneless green creatures who then ruled the ship. The director scrapped them as too bizarre.

Which 1972 film, whose service drones are named Huey, Dewey and Louie, influenced WALL-E's robots?

Silent Running earned the director's credit because its drones never speak, which made them forerunners of the chirping droids in later space films.

Which instrumental from WALL-E's score won a Grammy for its arrangement in 2009?

Define Dancing took the Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement, and the end-credits song won a second Grammy that year as the best song written for a film.

Which effects house handled the live-action shots of the megacorporation's CEO in WALL-E?

Industrial Light & Magic did the shots, the first live action in a Pixar film. Real actors were used so viewers would grasp how far the ship's humans had since declined.

Which Pixar employee, recorded only as a temporary placeholder, ended up voicing EVE in WALL-E?

Elissa Knight never read the script and prepared little, since a cast actress was meant to replace her. The producers liked her performance too much to redo it.

Which filmmaker, called a hopeless romantic by Andrew Stanton, helped inspire WALL-E's personality?

Woody Allen joined an unlikely list of influences that also took in The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf, two films with sound that barely lean on dialogue.

Which radio-controlled model, some ten feet long, was recorded for EVE's flying sound in WALL-E?

A jet plane supplied the rush of her flight. For her hum, the sound designer wanted a musical quality, a contrast with the hero's clanking motors.

In WALL-E's original ending, the hero revived EVE by replacing her power unit with which item?

A cigarette lighter was the fix until a 2007 test screening. The director then swapped the roles so that EVE would put repairing the hero ahead of her mission.