A Bug's Life Trivia

Cameos, in-jokes, re-used animation and other trivia from A Bug's Life.

Cameos

• The Pizza Planet truck appears next to the mobile home when a bug flies into a bug zapper.
• A cereal box in Bug City bears the code "A113-1195". It marks the appearance of Pixar's in-joke A113, while 1195 represents the release date of Toy Story (November 1995).
• A drink cup from Pizza Planet can be seen on top of the restaurant can in Bug City.
• One of the boxes in Bug City is marked Darla. This is most likely a reference to Darla K. Anderson, a Pixar employee.
• A poster for Disney's The Lion King: On Broadway can be seen amongst the posters in Bug City at the 0:26:49 mark in the film.
• In one blooper that plays during the end credits, Flik yells Buzz Lightyear's line "To infinity and beyond!" as he is about to take flight.
• In one of the additional bloopers, Woody from Toy Story enters the frame as a crewman, holding a clapper-board upside down, to mark the end of a scene gone wrong.

Cameos Gallery

The Pizza Planet Truck near the trailer.

A113 and 95 are visible in the back.

The Lion King logo and Darla's name among the cereal boxes

The drink cup from Pizza Planet

Woody's cameo in one of the alternate outtakes in "A Bug's Life"

Other Trivia

• The circus wagons are made of boxes of animal crackers called Casey Jr. Cookies. This is also the name of the toon circus train in Disney's 1941 animated film Dumbo. And the bakery that makes Casey Jr. Cookies according to the box is the J. Grant Bakery, named after Joe Grant, one of the storyboard artists on Dumbo.
• The ant's tree is used again in other Pixar movies. For example, in Toy Story 2, it is the tree in Jessie's flashback and in Up, it is the tree Carl Fredricksen and Ellie go to.
• A Bug's Life used almost 10 times the computing power that Toy Story required. On average it took 3 hours to render each frame of the film. Compare this to the average of 17 hours it took for each frame of Cars. This may seem counter-intuitive given the large increase in computer processing power between the two movies. But it demonstrates how much more detail is going into the film. In addition, computers are being used to do things that the animators used to do by hand such as ray tracing (for reflections).
• This is the first Pixar movie with bloopers at the end, followed by Toy Story 2.
• This movie bears many similarities to Antz (both films feature a colony of ants with a member who thinks differently to the others and wishes to gain the feelings of the princess), a movie released by DreamWorks Animation a month beforehand. This was due to Jeffrey Katzenberg leaving Disney due to a bitter dispute between himself and the company. Katzenberg then co-founded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen and, knowing that Disney was making an movie about ants, instantly started production on Antz (although Katzenberg claimed that the film came from an independent pitch that had nothing to do with Disney). When Pixar scheduled A Bug's Life to be released in the same week as DreamWorks' first feature The Prince of Egypt, Katzenberg was furious. In retaliation, he brought forward the release date of Antz by five months to ensure it was released ahead of A Bug's Life (with a rumor that was never confirmed that he offered 'rich financial incentives' to the production team to get their film out first despite Pixar's head start). In the end, A Bug's Life made $200,000,000 more at the cinema thanks to better promotion and being more aimed at kids, although both films were praised by critics and audiences.
• This is the first Pixar film to released on DVD.
• This is the first Pixar film promoted by McDonald's.
• This is the first Pixar film to receive a fullscreen home release. Unlike most fullscreen viewings, which cut off huge portions of the image to make it fit on a smaller screen, A Bug's Life actually has many scenes in the film completely reanimated (such as minor tweaking of certain characters, props, and even entire scenes) so that its quality remains true to the widescreen release even on a smaller TV screen. The process would continue until 2006's Cars. It should also be noted that the fullscreen version is exclusive only to the US original home releases, all of the international versions contain only the widescreen version.
• In a game of "Props" on an episode of improv-show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, regular performer Wayne Brady, held a big V shaped figure that looked like the antenna of a bug, put the figure on top of his head and said, "Maybe you've seen me in Bug's Life," referring to Flik.
• The story of the film is based on the Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. Also, the plot has references to The Seven Samurai.
• This is the first Pixar film to both use the "normal" customized Walt Disney Pictures logo which used until 2007 film Ratatouille and to have the Pixar logo appear at the very beginning.
• This is so far the only Pixar film where John Ratzenberger voiced more than one character, not counting Cars, where he voiced car-ified versions of the characters he voiced in other pixar films as the inside joke.
• This is the only Pixar film to actually retain its widescreen viewing format in its Blu-ray release.
• Atta, the elder ant princess, is named after the scientific genus name for the leaf-cutter ants of Central and South America.^{[citation needed]}
• This is the first Pixar film to be produced in anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio (2.35:1); all of that company's previous films were produced in 1.85:1/1.78:1, followed by The Incredibles (2.40:1).
• This is the first Pixar film not to feature any humans, followed by the Cars series.
• This is the first Pixar film to have a music closing logo, followed by Toy Story 2 (2005 DVD only), if not Monsters, Inc.
• In the UK, the attached short Geri's Game was absent from the theatrical release but was added onto the end of the VHS.
• This is the first Pixar film to have "The End" word, followed by Finding Nemo.
• This is the only Pixar film released before Disney's acquisition of Pixar that has not received a prequel or sequel.