Coco hidden details: Easter eggs, Shining nods and how Pixar built the Land of the Dead

Coco hidden details: Pixar Easter eggs in Santa Cecilia

The living town is muted by design, which makes it a good place to hide things. Unkrich said Pixar wanted as much contrast as possible between the two worlds: because the holiday and its iconography demanded a vibrant Land of the Dead, the team deliberately designed Santa Cecilia to be more muted. Production designer Harley Jessup said the town is based on real Mexican villages, and set supervisor Chris Bernardi said it was kept small so Miguel would feel confined. Art director Bert Berry added that aged building materials make it read as an older, charming town. All of that makes the bright Pixar in-jokes easier to miss.

• The Pizza Planet truck, renamed Pizza Planeta, drives past near Miguel's house.
• Piñatas of Woody, Buzz and Mike Wazowski hang in the market Miguel runs through.
• Alebrije carvings in one scene resemble Finding Nemo characters.
• An axe in a tree stump is a reference to The Shining, alongside other nods to the film.

How the story changed

Unkrich first pitched the idea in 2010. The early version was about an American boy learning about his Mexican heritage while grieving his mother. The team decided this was the wrong approach and refocused on a Mexican child; Unkrich said the original reflected the fact that none of them were from Mexico. Pixar made several research trips to Mexico and formed a cultural consultant group. The film also drew inspiration from Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and, unexpectedly, John Wick.

The trademark controversy

In 2013, Disney applied to trademark Día de los Muertos for merchandise. Mexican-American cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz drew a poster called Muerto Mouse showing a giant skeletal Mickey, and more than 21,000 people signed a petition against the filing. A week later Disney withdrew it, saying the film's title would change. Alcaraz was later brought in as a consultant.

Voices and cameos

Anthony Gonzalez first auditioned for Miguel at nine and was cast two years later. The boy originally cast, Emilio Fuentes, was replaced when his voice broke, but he still voices a tourist offering a dead man a ticket. Benjamin Bratt described Ernesto de la Cruz as the Mexican Frank Sinatra and studied Mexican screen idols Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante. Alanna Ubach based Mama Imelda's voice on her own aunt. Frida Kahlo appears in a cameo voiced by Natalia Cordova-Buckley.

Animation tricks you might not notice

Miguel's guitar playing is accurate because animators filmed musicians with GoPros strapped to their guitars. Mama Coco's wrinkles were not modelled one by one; her face used layered detail added through a shader on a high-resolution model. Dante was based partly on Xolo dogs, and his tongue reused a tentacle from Hank in Finding Dory. For the Land of the Dead skyline, the team found a way to introduce a single light with a million points, so the renderer saw one light while viewers saw a million. Skeletons were difficult because they have no muscles, so they had to be animated differently from humans.

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