Stealth Pun / Animated Films

Stealth Puns in animated movies.

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• In Antz, the two main characters come across two insects by the names of "Chip" and "Muffy" who talk with Thurston Howell III-type accents and act in other ways consistent with the stereotype of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (or WASP). While never specifically named, it's obvious from their character models that they are in the order hymenoptera, specifically wasps.
• Atlantis: The Lost Empire At the end of the film, Kida is last seen climbing up a large rock structure wearing a long, flowing dress and a tiara with pink and blue feathers coming out of the back, making her a High Queen.
• In The Book of Life, Pancho Rodriguez says he and his brothers ran into four bars... right before running into a bar. Ouch!
• Brave: At the end, Elinor says that she's like a "wee baby" after transforming back into a human. The pun is that she is bear naked.
• The Brave Little Toaster: In "It's A B-Movie," the line "It ain't home on the range!" is sung by a stove, or range.
• In Cars, Sally Carrera, the female lawyer car, is a Porsche. The term Portia is a slang term for a female lawyer; it was lifted from the female lead from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, who impersonated a lawyer to defend Antonio against Shylock.
  • In a later scene, Lightning notices Sally (who used to be from Los Angeles) has a decal just above her bumper, the car equivalent of a tattoo on the small of the back, which is sometimes known as a "California license plate".
  • In another scene, Lightning claims Doc Hudson is a famous racing car, the Hudson Hornet, who "won three Piston Cups!", causing Mater to Spit Take and say "He did what in his cup?"
• The writers behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs claim they had to turn one of the opening lines into a version of Stealth Pun #2. To wit:
  Flint: (narrating) But when all seemed lost, I stared at da feet and found hope.
• In Coraline, the seats of the theater are filled with small dogs — Scotties. Later, when the world shows its dark side, the dogs become skeletons... Night Terriers?
  • The toy tank in the Otherworld bedroom resembles the British Mark 1, which nickname is... Mother.
• In Corpse Bride, the bar where Victor first arrives is called the "Ball and Socket", making it the Ball and Socket joint. And the bar is a popular place, or a "hip joint."
  • The head waiter is a head who happens to a waiter.
  • While looking for Victor, Emily passes by a second-hand store that sells hands for people that lost the first one.
• In the first Despicable Me, the elderly Mad Scientist Dr. Nefario is apparently a bit hard of hearing: one of his inventions is a gun that, when fired, produces a flatulent noise and a cloud of foul-smelling gas that knocks out a Minion, to which Gru angrily tells Nefario "No, no, no, I said dart gun!"
• Toward the end of the "Pomp and Circumstance" sequence from Fantasia 2000, a female dove bursts into tears after Donald Duck throws her mate over the railing of Noah's Ark so that he can find the olive branch. Mourning dove.
• At the very beginning of Finding Nemo, just right before the divers take him away, causing his father to go after them, Nemo can be seen attending school with several other young fish. A group of fish is called a school.
• In The Great Mouse Detective, Basil and Dr. Dawson walk into a bar to find information on Ratigan, who lures them into his lair and into a gigantic trap. The name of the bar they enter? The Rat Trap.
• One of the lyrics from the song "Topsy Turvy" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame is "...every clown's a king and every king's a clown...". The song is question is actually sung by Clopin, a colorful and enigmatic character who constantly refers himself as the king of the Gypsies, and dresses up in a clown suit.
  • A Stealth Shout-Out: there's a horse with two rear ends in the crowd.
• The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible gets through a wall of lava to get to Syndrome's private computer. What's it called when a program on a computer is used to keep malicious outside forces, well, outside? Is it or is it not called a firewall?
• Inside Out: Anger's head erupts whenever he loses his cool. In other words, he's a hothead. Also, he's the shortest of the emotions; Riley has a short temper. And he wears a stereotypical manager outfit. Might be "anger management."
• In The Iron Giant, Dean, the artist, directs the Giant to make a mobile, a hanging children's toy, out of cars. "Automobile".
• Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie contains — without comment — a bunch of city guards whose weapons are long poles with fish on the ends of them. In other words, pikemen.
• In Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole, there is a Training Montage/Good-Times Montage which involves various shots of Ga'hoole—a vast city full of owls. (Well, vast if you're an owl, anyway.) Over said montage, there's a cheerful song called "To the Sky." The song itself is not a pun on the action happening... until you realize what band is performing it.
• In Moana the tattoos that show Maui's Backstory appear on his back.
• In The Nightmare Before Christmas, when Jack was trying to understand Christmas, he wrote down a number of unconventional equations on his blackboard. One of which was "Roasting Chestnuts/Open Fire".
• Planes: Fire & Rescue has several tractors with distinctive green livery acting like deer. To further drive the point home, one of the tractors has a set of roof lights that evokes antlers.
• Pitch's Nightmares in Rise of the Guardians take the form of horses, making them night mares.
• In Disney's Robin Hood (1973) a scene specifically depicts Friar Tuck, who is portrayed as a badger, cheering during a fight scene, while the music playing in the background is the fight song of the University of Wisconsin Badgers.
• Sausage Party:
  • The movie concludes with a massive orgy between all types of food. In other words: Food Porn.
  • The film has a character named Firewater who's an anthropomorphic bottle of alcohol who acts like a Magical Native American; the latter are known for their deep connection with "spirits", and Firewater is no exception, in fact, he's also literally one (a drink).
  • The Nuts in the movie have a strong hatred of the Fruits. Homophobes are nuts!
• In Shrek 2 the potion given to the King to make Fiona fall in love with the first man she kisses is labeled "IX". It is not mentioned then that it must be Love Potion Number 9.
  • In the scene where Shrek and Donkey (in human and horse forms) are in a bar after their plan fails, the barmaid says to Shrek "Why the long face?", while Donkey is standing right next to him.
• In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Sheila is an crazy Moral Guardian whose actions end up causing Satan to rise and about bring Hell on Earth. So, I guess you could call her a hell-raiser.
• In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the Peter Parker from Miles's universe is young, rich, handsome, famous, popular, good at his job, Happily Married, in close contact with his still-living aunt, mostly at peace with his uncle's death, and has a cool secret lair containing a ton of cool gadgets and vehicles. Compared to Peter B. (a depressed wreck reduced to bingeing on pizza and crying in the bathtub after his aunt's death and his sabotage of his relationship with Mary Jane), Miles (an absolute rookie who has no idea what he's doing), Gwen (who's so messed up from losing a friend that she's trying to cut herself off from all the others), and Spider-Man Noir (a Hard Boiled Detective who deliberately burns his fingers on matches in order to feel something again), it's like Miles's universe's Peter is the ultimate Spider-Man. Miles Morales was introduced in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie:
  • The Jungle Kingdom's karts have an army of Kong mechanics assembling them. Since the Kongs are monkeys, one could call these mechanics grease-monkeys.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Plumbing commercials is mentioned to have cost Mario and Luigi their life savings to air. Later in the film, the commercial gives Mario the push he needs to defeat Bowser, thus literally saving his life.
• In Tarzan the song "Strangers Like Me" sets up Tarzan and Jane's romance. At one point during the song, we see the two "lovebirds" sitting together in a tree...surrounded by a flock of literal lovebirds!
• Toy Story:
  • In Toy Story 2, Woody has a nightmare about Andy throwing him away. In Toy Story 3, Woody tells the other toys he needs to get to Andy's house, which is on Elm Street. Woody had a nightmare on Elm street.
  • Woody is the leader of Andy's room — in the first movie, we see that Slinky is (or used to be) the second-in-command. A cowboy... and a "long little doggy"...
  • During his "Mrs. Nesbitt" rant in Toy Story, Buzz calls the two headless dolls seated with him "Marie Antoinette and her little sister". Marie Antoinette and her little sister by marriage, Élisabeth of France, were both beheaded by guillotine during the French Revolution. This reference leaves Buzz, the sole male guest at Hannah's tea party, standing in the place of Élisabeth's brother and Marie's husband, King Louis XVI, who was also beheaded. Buzz has Gone Mad from the Revelation that he really is just a toy. He's lost his head.
  • One of Sid's mutilated toys is a fishing rod on two Barbie doll legs, a.k.a. a "hooker".
  • In 3, one of the toys at Sunnyside Daycare is a blue stuffed kitten. Who gets played with by a little girl that tells it "Boo!"
• Turning Red:
  • The film takes place 20 years in the past and isn't shy about its central premise being a metaphor for puberty. It's a Period Piece! This was allegedly what Bob Iger said when the film was first pitched to him; whether he figured out the pun immediately is unclear.
  • Most of the movie takes place in May, the month that is pronounced the same as the main character's name. Additionally, the film's promotion prominently features the song "It's Gonna Be Me" by *NSYNC; Justin Timberlake's delivery of the refrain sounds like "It's gonna be Mei", so not only does the chorus of the song accurately sum up the mother/daughter relationship at the core of the film, it shouts out the protagonist by name.
  • The school security guard who Ming confronts is wearing a turban and has a beard, implying he's Sikh. He's a Sikh-curity guard.
• In Up, there is a scene in which several dogs pilot fighter planes, making them... dogfighters.
• WALL•E: When EVE comes back with a plant, activating the centuries old recolonization protocol, a manual pops out, which the captain orders to relay its information. AUTO shows him that the pages must be turned by himself; i.e., it is Manual.
  • WALL-E's name. It's actually A113 (a common running gag featured in many Pixar films, such as "Directive A113", also from this movie), but written in Leetspeak and with a "W" added to the front.
  • WALL-E (with the E standing for Earth-class) eventually runs into an Axiom-class version of himself named WALL-A. Actually, he runs into two of them. Which of course means that they're... WALL-A WALL-A. *rimshot*
  • WALL-E's only companion on the deserted Earth is a cockroach named Hal. Get it?
• In Yellow Submarine, Ringo pulls two stealth puns in the same discussion, as he and Old Fred come across Frankenstein's Monster lying strapped to a laboratory platform:
  Old Fred: Frankenstein?
  Ringo: Oh, yeah. I used to go out with his sister.
  Old Fred: His sister?
  Ringo: Yeah, Phyllis. (the pun: "Phillistine".) Hey. I wonder what'd happen if I pulled this lever.
  Old Fred: You musn't do that.
  Ringo: Can't help it, I'm a born lever puller. (for "Liverpooler")
• In Zootopia:
  • There's a scene where a trio of officers are given an undercover mission. The hippo wears a mustache, the polar bear wears a hat, and the timber wolf...puts on a sheep costume. Yep, he's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
  • Similarly, the villain of the movie, Bellwether, is a female sheep. In other words: A Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.

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