50 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.