Plot hole: Joy and Sadness are stuck outside of the control center. They are trying to figure out how to get back, and encounter maintenance workers who are discarding old memories. The maintenance workers show that they have the power to send memories back up to the control center to be played. Why couldn't they send the core memories that Joy had back up the same way? Better yet, why not use that method to send Joy and Sadness back up to the control center? The director of the film is even aware of the plot hole, and said "Yeah, well then we wouldn't have a third act," before explaining how the idea of recalling memories was added in later, "box[ing] [the screenwriters] in a corner a little bit."
Inside Out (2015)
Directed by: Pete Docter, Ronaldo Del Carmen
Starring: Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones
Continuity mistake: Whenever young Riley is pulling the wagon around the house, Fear stops her at a white cord in an outlet. In the next shot, it is a black cord.
Continuity mistake: At the very beginning of the movie when Riley is born, the shot from behind shows the mother wearing the glasses. In the next shot the glasses disappear.
Trivia: Riley is the only character in the movie with both male and female emotions.
More trivia for Inside Out
Sadness: You could get lost in there!
Joy: Think positive!
Sadness: Okay, I'm positive you will get lost in there.
Dad's Anger: Uh-oh, she's looking at us. [Turns off TV] What did she say?
Dad's Fear: Uh, sorry, sir, no one was listening.
Dad's Anger: Is it garbage night? Uh, we left the toilet seat up! What? What is it, woman, what?!
Bing Bong: Take her to the moon for me. Okay?
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.
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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.