Question: How come Sadness was the only one who could change the emotion of the memory orb? Don't we sometimes look back at things we thought we were scared of or sad about, and laugh at them? How come the other emotions can't change them the way Sadness can?
Question: When Joy is in the dump of forgotten memories, she sees a probe containing the sad memory of when Riley lost a hockey game after missing the winning shot. The probe shows that after Riley felt sad and has been cheered up by her parents, she is cheered on by her old team mates. Joy knows that since that probe is blue, it was a memory represented by Sadness. She begins to realize that Sadness helped Riley to ease her conscience. How come Joy didn't see that before when she would have been at the control panel in headquarters just when the event occurred?
Chosen answer: Joy must have seen the event. Since Joy was so focused on Riley's happiness and thought Sadness brought nothing to the table, she didn't realize that Riley needs to be sad at times to help her cope and move on to get to the happy times.
Question: After Riley quits hockey practice, Fear decides to abandon Headquarters by letting himself get sucked into the tube for transports memory orbs. Fear, along with several orbs is nearly sucked in, but he is suddenly ejected from the tube. How come the tube doesn't suck Fear in like it did to Joy and Sadness?
Chosen answer: Look carefully and you'll see that Fear gets stuck in a bunch of memories, then the tube bursts.
Question: Near the beginning, in the new house, when Disgust, Fear, Anger, and Sadness mess with the panel, it turns into their colors including Sadness' color, then orbs came out with the colors of Disgust, Fear, and Anger, but why not of Sadness because she touched the panel too?
Question: Riley runs away from home in the morning, not going to school, but the bus only leaves San Francisco in the evening. Where was Riley all day?
Chosen answer: We don't see Riley's day after she leaves home. One can only assume that she wandered around the city all day long until it was time to go to the bus station.
Question: It is stated that it was originally Fear who was supposed to get lost in the mind with Joy rather than Sadness. After Riley quits hockey, while Anger and Disgust are frustrated by the disaster without Joy at Headquarters, Fear tries to abandon Headquarters through the same tube Joy and Sadness get sucked into. Is that a reference to the early concept of him getting lost with Joy?
Answer: Yes.
Question: How does the blue core memory end up in the dump?
Answer: Because Riley didn't want to remember it.
Question: Joy says if she's not in headquarters Riley can't be happy. But Sadness isn't in headquarters either, and Riley is sad throughout the movie. Is there a logical explanation for this, or is this a plot hole?
Chosen answer: Riley isn't sad. She's depressed. They are different states of emotion.
Question: After Sadness is shown typing on the console, why does a core memory form instead of a normal memory?
Answer: Core memories are formed when an event has a profound impact on a person's life, shaping their very personality going forward. Riley crying in front of her class on her first day of school was intensely embarrassing, thus a core memory was formed instead of a normal memory.
Question: When Sadness creates her sad core memory of Riley, why does it roll its way to the core memory chamber instead of appear on the shelf?
Question: It is stated that it was originally Fear who was supposed to get lost in the mind with Joy rather than Sadness. After Riley quits hockey, while Anger and Disgust are frustrated by the disaster without Joy at Headquarters, Fear tries to abandon Headquarters through the same tube Joy and Sadness get sucked into. Is that a reference to the early concept of him getting lost with Joy?
Chosen answer: Unlikely. More likely it's in character for Fear to try to run away.
Question: It makes sense to me how Joy, Sadness, Anger, and Disgust's colors represent the emotions they are. Here's what I don't get though. How does Fear's color (purple) represent the emotion he is?
Chosen answer: The filmmakers noticed that the traditional color for cowardice (Fear) was yellow, but Joy was already yellow (not because she was cowardice). Purple was then used for Fear, primarily because Joy was already chosen yellow. Docter states that "Fear was kind of, frankly, the leftover color. We tried to design them in a nice ensemble group so they looked good together."
Question: Did the emotions know that Riley missed Minnesota before she admitted it? Was the sad core memory a possible clue?
Answer: The other emotions are certainly aware that Riley misses Minnesota, Anger especially. He complains quite a bit about how much he hates San Francisco. What the emotions don't seem to realise is that missing Minnesota is making Riley incredibly sad. Because Joy works so hard to suppress sad feelings, the other emotions don't seem to understand that by not allowing Riley to acknowledge her feelings they are causing her to become depressed.
Answer: Sadness can change the memories because of Riley's current situation: she has left the home she loved to move to a new city. This makes her happy memories more susceptible to being changed to sad memories. As she remembers things that used to make her happy they now make her sad because she hasn't accepted her new house as home yet. Presumably under the right circumstances the other emotions could do the same thing, just not all the time.