The legendary Pixar screenwriter and animator Joe Ranft, whose life was taken by a car accident in 2005, has a small role in the new Disney streaming film Soul—though you may missed it if your eyes focus too much on the more famous names in the scene. Like so many Pixar films that came before it, Soul is full of easter eggs, whether they appear in the background like the Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story or as objects in the rooms characters inhabit, like the bouncing ball from the original Luxo, Jr. animated short.
One of the most striking easter eggs comes about a third of the way into the film, when Tina Fey’s character 22 shows Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) her wall of mentors who have failed over the decades and centuries to give her a spark, despite their collective, obvious creative genius. Ranft, who wrote Toy Story and who himself was mentored by the legendary Disney animator Eric Larson, makes the wall, alongside the likes of Jack Kirby, Amelia Earhart, Johnny Cash and more.
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The list of experts, creatives and inspirational visionaries who mentored 22 over the years before Joe gets his shot in the narrative of Soul is long, varied and representative of many different time periods and nationalities. Here we’ve zoomed in closely to compile a list of every mentor we could make out.*
- Vincent van Gogh
- Nellie Bly
- Copernicus
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Marvin Gaye
- George Orwell
- Joe Grant
- Babe Ruth
- Joe Ranft
- Jack Kirby
- Harvey Milk
- Marie Černá
- Maya Tsosie
- Stephen Hawking
- Herman Jakobs
- Nelson Mandela
- Johannes Gutenberg
- Jan Kowalski
- Abraham Lincoln
- Catherine the Great
- Joan of Arc
- Thomas Edison
- Amelia Earhart
- Confucius
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Ts’ai Lun
- Marie Antoinette
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Johnny Cash
- Harriet Tubman
- Grace O’Malley
- Anna Kowalczyk
- Pawet Jankowski
- Balogh Tamás
- Marie Curie
- Prince Rogers Nelson
- Aretha Franklin
- Petar Jankovic
- Muhammad Ali
- Albert Einstein
- María Izquierdo
- Jiří Svobada
- Archimedes
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Pablo Picasso
- William Taylor
- John Wilson
- Emine Demir
- Mary Johnson
- Mike Oznowicz
There are plenty more we couldn’t read or verify the full names of, for one reason or another, but what’s most striking here, in my opinion, was how personal some of the selections like Ranft’s felt. Alongside hugely popular and well-known names like Gandhi or Da Vinci, the creative team behind Soul chose to include the likes of wildly influential comics artist Jack Kirby and the puppeteer Isidore “Mike” Oznowicz — father of Frank Oz. In the film, the scene serves to show Joe how intimidating a challenge it will be to get 22 a spark for herself. Like the best of Pixar’s work, the background is proof that the details matter.
