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*uses a fire extinguisher to fly through space*
In Finding Nemo, Nemo's dad takes an epic trip across the ocean to find his missing son. In reality, baby clownfish sometimes trek hundreds of miles across the open ocean to reach other clownfish populations. Want to know something even cooler? Researchers think that the clownfish also ride ocean currents to help them make the journey. So Marlin riding the EAC has some grain of truth to it. No word yet as to whether or not they take on the jellies during their trip.
Called tipperary biscuits, the food in Brave that Merida and her brothers kept trying to steal are a classic Scottish dessert. They're made of several different spices, strawberry jam, and a maraschino cherry on top. P.S. They look just as good in real life as they do animated.
In Medieval Europe, fugitives could "claim sanctuary" to avoid punishment by the law. This process involved staying within a church after committing a crime to avoid prosecution. From then on, you had a certain amount of time to leave the church, hop on a boat, and never come back. To signify that you were a criminal who claimed sanctuary, you were dressed in a simple tunic with no hat or shoes, much like Phoebus and Esmeralda's outfits at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I mean, you don't have glass orbs or ornate shelves storing your memory, but your memories are a connection of neurons that are all triggered simultaneously with audio and visual cues. So, they function a lot like the glass balls in Inside Out.
There's a lot of technology in Big Hero 6 that seems more fiction than science. However, Wasabi's laser plasma that he uses to slice paper thin apples isn't far off. Scientists and doctors alike have just recently started using plasma-needles to make surgery bloodless. These plasma needles have just 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters of collateral damage. While we don't have plasma apple cutters yet, plasma today has proved to cut thinly and precisely.
Also in Big Hero 6, GoGo Tomago's roller blades use magnetic levitation to help her go fast and friction-free. This technology is currently being used in high-speed railways, where magnets with opposing poles repel each other and force the train to levitate above the rails, moving them frictionless at enormous speeds (375 mph). There is currently a maglev (magnetic levitation) train in Japan, and should the day come when one is built in the United States, it could get you from New York to Los Angeles in seven hours. Hopefully, one day your roller blades could do the same.
According to Greek mythology, Hera had it out for Hercules, not Hades, so Disney may not have gotten that part right. In the real legend, to gain immortality, Hercules had to complete 12 heroic labors. In the Disney version, you can see most of the beasts that Hercules conquers in "Zero the Hero" are taken straight from the labors he had to complete in the legend, such as the defeat of the Nemean Lion (which looks an awful lot like Scar), the Erymanthean Boar (pictured above), and the Stymphlaian Birds.
Studies have found that those who experience social exclusion and loneliness can literally feel colder. Warm foods or hot baths can sometimes stand in for that feeling, but only to an extent. Because Elsa was in her room with little to no social contact, that could've been a scientific reason why she was cold, aside from the fictional reason of, you know, being an ice queen.
In A Bug's Life, Hopper and his crew of insects take advantage of the ants' hard work gathering food. This isn't too far off of real life. In the insect world, it isn't grasshoppers, but butterfly larvae that take advantage of an ant's work ethic. They emit the same smell as ants do to trick the ants into feeding and taking care of it. The larvae also make the same noises that a queen ant does, fooling the ants into treating it better and saving it first if harm should come to the colony. Butterflies are the real life Hoppers.
Disney doesn't get a lot right about Pocahontas, but one thing it does is the pug. Percy, Governor Ratcliff's dog, is a lot like the dogs that British nobles carried around with them. According to Pedigree, during the Victorian era, "it was perceived as a link with the natural world, which itself was no longer seen as threatening. It also allowed a visible demonstration of man's domination over nature." Hmm...sounds like a lot like Governor Ratcliff.
French chefs and critics praised Ratatouille for it's accurate depiction of a working kitchen, from the way they cook veggies to the way they chop them. “When Colette teaches the young cook how you cut onions, how you cook vegetables in a pan, how you season everything — that’s it, that’s how we do it!” celebrity chef Cyril Lignac said after watching the film. Pixar spent time monitoring the sounds and movements of French kitchens to research the film.
You know that flower that turns all of the animals "savage" in Zootopia? It's a real flower. In reality, a "night howler" is an autumn crocus. The autumn crocus (which is also the same color as night howlers in the movie) is highly toxic. According to the Nova Scotia Museum, consumption of the leaves, stem, berries, or especially the bulb can result in reduced blood pressure and cardiac arrest in humans. For other mammals, such as dogs, the result from ingestion is much more serious, such as bloody vomiting, multi-organ damage, and bone marrow suppression. In real life, you may not go savage, but you'll definitely have a bad time.
In The Little Mermaid, we see a shipwreck that Ariel explores where she famously finds a dinglehopper. Atlas Obscura asked the director of the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University to watch that clip from the movie to see what parts of the scene were historically accurate. He was instantly surprised that the ship was a pretty accurate Spanish galleon. With the sails and ropes still intact, he estimated that it probably sank a month or so before Ariel made the discovery. Following this timeline, it isn't unreasonable that Flounder found a skeleton under the ship. Since saltwater deteriorates the body quickly and the body was trapped below deck, Flounder's scary encounter with the bones makes sense.
In The Incredibles when Elastigirl is flying the plane to track down Mr. Incredible at Syndrome's lair, Holly Hunter learned the real aviation terms while talking over the radio. In the movie, she says "Island approach, India-Gulf-Niner-Niner checking in. VFR on top." According to the FAA, air traffic controllers "may clear an aircraft to climb through clouds, smoke, haze, or other meteorological formations and then to maintain 'VFR-on-top,'" or visual flight rules on top of clouds. She also says, among other jargon, "India-Golf-Niner-Niner is buddy-spiked," meaning that friendly missiles have accidentally locked onto her target. Director Brad Bird said in the movie's commentary that Holly Hunter thought it was important to learn the proper lingo.