Finding Nemo hidden details: Easter eggs, film references and production secrets

Finding Nemo hidden details: movie references in the reef

Bruce's big line, Here's Brucey, echoes Jack Nicholson's Here's Johnny from The Shining. Whenever Darla, the dentist's niece, appears, the soundtrack plays Bernard Herrmann's shrieking strings from Psycho. The seagulls who chant Mine were modelled on Feathers McGraw, the penguin from the Wallace and Gromit short The Wrong Trousers.

Pixar Easter eggs in the dentist's office

The dentist's office is the film's busiest spot for in-jokes, and the A113 code turns up elsewhere.

• A113, a nod to a CalArts classroom used by many Pixar artists, appears as the model number on the scuba diver's camera.
• A Buzz Lightyear toy sits among the toys in the waiting room.
• A boy in the waiting room reads a Mr. Incredible comic, a year before The Incredibles was released.
• The Pizza Planet truck drives past outside the office.
• The mermaid from the Pixar short Knick Knack appears in the office.

The voices behind the fish

William H. Macy was the first actor cast as Marlin and recorded most of the dialogue, but Stanton felt the character needed a lighter touch and recast Albert Brooks, a change he said saved the film. Dory was originally male; Stanton cast Ellen DeGeneres after watching an episode of her show where she changed the subject five times before finishing one sentence.

Stanton voiced Crush the sea turtle himself. He recorded the part for the story reel, expecting to hire an actor later, but test audiences loved it, so it stayed. He recorded the lines lying on a sofa in co-director Lee Unkrich's office. Crush's son Squirt was voiced by Nicholas Bird, son of director Brad Bird, after Stanton heard a tape of the boy around the studio.

How Pixar researched the ocean

The animators took a crash course in fish biology and oceanography, visited aquariums, went diving in Hawaii and attended lectures from an ichthyologist. Artists also took scuba lessons to study coral reefs. Production designer Ralph Eggleston made pastel drawings so the lighting team knew how every scene should look.

Unusually for an animated film, Finding Nemo began production with a complete screenplay, which Unkrich called very unusual. Stanton had started writing during the post-production of A Bug's Life.

Scenes that changed along the way

Stanton first planned to reveal how Marlin's wife Coral died through flashbacks, then realised nothing would be left to reveal by the end, so he put her death at the start. A deleted scene had Gill lying to Nemo about coming from Bad Luck Bay. Gerald the pelican was once meant to be a scruffy foil to the neat Nigel before his role was cut back for pacing. The film is dedicated to Pixar animator Glenn McQueen, who died in October 2002.

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