WALL•E contains tons of shout-outs, mostly to other sci-fi films, and most obviously to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- Through the movie, WALL•E listens to songs from the 1969 film adaptation of Hello, Dolly!.
- Sigourney Weaver is the voice of the Axiom PA system, referencing Alien, Galaxy Quest, and perhaps the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket".
- WALL•E's "fully charged" and reboot sounds are the same as the iconic Apple start-up sound.
- AUTO has that Creepy Monotone because he's voiced by MacinTALK, Apple's text-to-speech program. M-O's "FOREIGN CONTAMINANT" directive is synthesized by the same.
- There are at LEAST three visual references when WALL•E is traveling in space. The solar flare before going to the ice rings references the opening of Star Trek: Voyager. The drones flying out of the shuttle bay reference the runabouts from the opening of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and during the approach to the Axiom, the music sounds like the approach to the Death Star in Star Wars.
- The scene where COM-T and WALL•E wave to each other seems similar to Chihiro's encounter with the Radish spirit in Spirited Away. It should be noted that whenever Pixar staff encounter problems with their movies, they watch Hayao Miyazaki's films for inspiration.
- AUTO was explicitly designed with HAL-9000 in mind. AUTO not only looks like HAL-9000, but has a similar character arc, including being set up by the movie as malfunctioning and later revealing that he was in fact just carrying out orders. The famous 2001 classical soundtrack is also evoked in two separate scenes with the Axiom's captain; the "Blue Danube" waltz by Johann Strauss II plays when the Captain gets the daily status report from the ship's computer, and, fittingly, for a movie about the near-future evolution of humanity, in what is possibly the first non-parodic use of the song in a dramatic context since 2001, Also sprach Zarathustra plays when the Captain becomes the first person on the Axiom in nearly 700 years to stand up and walk.
- There's another 2001 reference in the BURN-E short. When the ship goes into hyperdrive, it mimics the light show that Dave sees when he goes though the Monolith. It even reflect on BURN-E's visor like it did on Dave's.
- There's also the A-113 reference found in every Pixar film, although here it's actually given plot relevance; it's the name of the directive AUTO follows to ensure the ship never returns to Earth.
- A-113 can be seen as the license plate number on the back of the mother's car in the first Toy Story movie as they are going to Pizza Planet.
- WALL•E crashes into Sputnik 1 while leaving Earth for the first time. Although in Real Life it burned up in the atmosphere years ago.
- To say nothing of the numerous references to other Pixar films:
- The pizza delivery Toyota from Toy Story comes to mind.
- Those little mouse robots nibbling around EVE in the vast trash room? They're called REM-Es.
- In the mosaic section of the credits, one large turtle, two smaller turtles and an orange fish swim by.
- The captain trying to reattach the plant's leaf looks exactly like Al doing the same to Woody's arm in Toy Story 2.
- WALL•E has a Rex toy in his collection, as well as a garden gnome that Pixar has confirmed is a model from Half-Life 2: Episode 2, used with Valve's permission for the Easter Egg.
- The fact that WALL•E's TV is made up of a small iPod screen and a big magnifying glass would appear to be a shout out to Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The first trailer for WALL•E even has the song "Aquarela do Brasil", which Brazil is named after, in the teaser trailer
. - WALL•E himself bears a strong resemblence to Johnny-5; though Word of God states this was unintentional, he admitted it may still have influenced the design.
- A rather odd one: when the computer is defining "Earth" to the Captain, the Early Films classic A Corner in Wheat is briefly visible on the screen.
- The roach is named Hal, after both HAL 9000 and silent film producer Hal Roach.
- The previous captains of the Axiom are, in chronological order, Reardon, Fee, Thompson, Brace, and O'Brien, every one of them named for one of the film's story artists: Jim Reardon, Brian Fee, Derek Thompson, Max Brace, and Kevin O'Brien.
