Disney Reveals How All Those Cameos Happened in ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’
The Disney princesses are easy to spot, but did you know that the 'Fantasia'-era Mickey Mouse also makes an appearance?
One of the joys of 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph is seeing beloved video game characters, everyone from Q*Bert to Sonic to Bowser, together on screen. For the sequel, last year’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, the filmmakers decided to up the ante with Oh My Disney, a fansite populated by Disney characters.
Oh My Disney is a bustling place, with plenty of characters from The Muppet Show, Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar in attendance. So many, in fact, that pausing the film and trying to spot them is a rewarding experience.
That’s basically what a new clip from How We Broke the Internet, a behind the scenes feature on the upcoming home video release, shows. Dave Komorowski, head of characters and technical animation, says that “I don’t think there’s a single shot in that whole sequence that doesn’t have some special little thing in there for the viewers.” He and some of the other filmmakers share some of their favorites in the clip.
One of the wide shots we see of Oh My Disney shows a giant version of the Mickey’s sorcerer hat from 1940’s Fantasia. Kira Lehtomaki, one of the animation heads on the film, points out that, on the top of the hat, Mickey in his complete Fantasia outfit is twirling around and casting spells much as he did in that film.
That’s one example, but it’s far from the most obscure. Lehtomaki also points out that Humphrey the Bear, an obscure character featured in the 1956 animated short In the Bag appears briefly in a crowded shot. He’s picking up trash as he moves along, a reference to the plot of that film, which involves the bears cleaning up the park where they live.
Even more well-known characters are included in interesting ways. One shot shows Grumpy sitting on a chair, eating some soup, before Vanellope runs in and he starts yelling at her. That culinary choice was intentional, a reference to a song, “Soup Song,” that didn’t even make it into Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but that the filmmakers, animation nerds that we assume them to be, wanted to wink at.
The clip is only a minute and a half long but, much like Oh My Disney, it’s packed with interesting tidbits. We can’t wait to watch the complete featurette when Ralph Breaks the Internet come out on digital on February 12 and 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on the 26th.
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