Trivia: When Carl's house begins to lift and the little girl looks out her window, the Luxo ball from Pixar's other films is seen in her room.
Trivia: June 2009, 10-year-old Colby Curtin from Huntington Beach, California, was suffering from the final stages of terminal vascular cancer. Her dying wish was to live long enough to see "Up". Unfortunately, Colby was too sick to leave home and her family feared she would die without seeing the film. A family friend contacted Pixar, and a private screening was arranged for Colby. The company flew an employee with a DVD copy of "Up", along with some tie-in merchandise from the film. Colby couldn't see the screen because the pain kept her eyes closed, so her mother gave her a play-by-play of the film. Seven hours after viewing the film, Colby passed away.
Trivia: Nicknamed Pixar's lucky charm, John Ratzenberger is the only actor with parts in all of the studio's films. In Up, he voices the construction foreman who urges Carl to sell his home.
Trivia: The Pizza Planet truck can be seen waiting at a stoplight when Carl's house first begins floating over the city.
Trivia: If Carl's house was approximately 1600 square feet, and the average house weighs between 60-100 pounds per square foot, it weighs 120,000 pounds. If the average helium balloon can carry .009 pounds (or 4.63 grams), it would take 12,658,392 balloons to lift his house off the ground. (20,622 balloons appear on the house when it first lifts off.)
Trivia: This was the first animated film to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture since Beauty and the Beast in 1992.
Trivia: Jordan Nagai, who eventually got the part of Russell, showed up to an audition with his brother, who was actually the one auditioning. However, the director realized Nagai behaved and spoke non-stop like Russell and chose him for the part. A similar situation happened with the casting of Short Round for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, whereby Jonathan Ke Quan was cast when it was actually his brother auditioning for the part.
Trivia: The ambulance's license plate is 1934 - the year Disney began production on its first animated film, Snow White.
Trivia: In the Pixar tradition of having characters from the next Pixar film, Lotso from Toy Story 3 appears briefly. When the little girl looks out the window to watch Carl's house, a purple bear in her room in the corner down by her bed.
Trivia: A scene in the airship of the dogs playing poker is a homage to the same named series of pictures painted by C.M. Coolidge. A further detail is that instead of having an ace up his sleeve, one of the dogs has the ace hidden in his collar.
Trivia: The plateau of the lost world Carl and Ellie want to visit is a replica of the plateau used in the 1925 Willis O'Brien stop motion animation movie "The Lost World."
Trivia: The "Hidden Mickey" is found on Dee, the little girl who watches the house float past her bedroom window. Check out her hair and head.
Trivia: This was the first Pixar film to be produced in 3-D.
Trivia: Ellie Docter, who provides the voice of young Ellie, is the daughter of the film's director, Pete Docter.
Trivia: Charles Munoz was named after Charles Mintz, the man who sold the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit over to universal.
Chosen answer: Carl and Ellie have two dramatically different personalities. Carl is more conservative, more reserved, a tender heart covered by a tough exterior which Ellie is able to break through, but which seems to recalcify after she dies. Ellie, on the other hand, is the sweet free spirit, rambunctious and adventurous. Throughout the film, each one conforms to the other until they ultimately blend into one beautiful unit. I think the makers of the film were trying to show that their respective personalities were a product of their upbringing, and reflected in the reactions of their families - hers larger, more fun, and more "hick" (we hear gunshots, for Pete's sake), and his more reserved, formal and patrician.
Michael Albert