{"slug":"coco","type":"movie","title":"Coco","year":2017,"releaseDate":"2017-11-22","franchise":"pixar","genres":["Animation","Family","Music","Adventure"],"creators":["Lee Unkrich","Adrian Molina"],"url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco","hook":"The Land of the Dead is full of real people — Frida Kahlo, Cantinflas, El Santo — plus an axe Lee Unkrich modelled on The Shining and a barrel that spells REDRUM.","intro":"*Coco* hides two completely different kinds of thing, and they barely acknowledge each other. The first is cultural: the Land of the Dead is populated with real, identifiable Mexican icons, and spotting them is closer to reading a history of twentieth-century Mexican popular culture than hunting studio in-jokes. **Frida Kahlo** gets a full sequence. **Cantinflas**, **El Santo**, **María Félix**, **Pedro Infante** and **Jorge Negrete** are in the crowds. Ernesto de la Cruz is built out of the last two.\n\nThe second layer is **Lee Unkrich's** long private obsession with *The Shining*. Unkrich has put a Kubrick reference into every Pixar film he has directed, going back to editing Sid's Overlook-carpeted hallway into the first *Toy Story*, and *Coco* carries at least three: an axe he has confirmed was modelled on the one from the Overlook, a red storage drum beside it reading as **REDRUM**, and a canvas in the Land of the Dead bearing two unmistakable blue silhouettes where the Grady twins should be.\n\nUnderneath both sits the research. The **alebrijes** are drawn from a real folk-art tradition invented by **Pedro Linares** in the 1930s; **Dante** is a Xoloitzcuintli, the Mexican hairless breed that Aztec belief held guided souls across the water to the underworld. And then, after the credits, the film does the one thing nothing else in Pixar's catalogue does — it turns its own dedication into an ofrenda.","identifiers":{"tmdbId":354912,"tmdbUrl":"https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/354912","imdbId":"tt2380307","imdbUrl":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380307/"},"counts":{"eggs":11,"confirmed":6,"community":5,"theory":0,"sources":10},"postCredits":{"status":"no","verdict":"No — Coco has no post-credit scene.","scenes":0,"description":"No story scene, no gag, no sequel tease — but stay anyway. After the credits, Coco displays a note about Día de Muertos and then an ofrenda: a mosaic of real photographs of the deceased relatives who inspired the people who made the film.","detail":"**Coco has no post-credits scene in the ordinary sense.** There is no extra story beat, no joke, no Dante gag and nothing setting up another film. If you are waiting for a stinger, there isn't one.\n\nThere is, however, something after the credits, and it is arguably the most affecting thing Pixar has ever put there.\n\nOnce the names have rolled, a card appears reading roughly: *'Día de Muertos is a Mexican heritage tradition with roots in indigenous culture. To learn more, visit your local library.'* Then the screen fills with an **ofrenda** — a photo mosaic assembled from real photographs of the dead relatives of the people who made the movie. Crew members submitted pictures of their own grandparents, parents and great-grandparents, and the film ends by putting them on the altar.\n\nThe reason this lands so hard is that the entire film has just spent ninety minutes establishing the rule that governs its world: the dead persist only as long as someone living remembers them and puts their photograph on the ofrenda. Forget them and they fade. So the closing mosaic is not a dedication in the usual credits-crawl sense. It is the film's own mechanic, applied by the filmmakers to their own families, in public — the movie doing the thing it just told you to do.\n\nSo: no scene, and yes, stay.","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco/post-credits"},"eggs":[{"id":"a113-bureau-of-family-grievances","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-a113-bureau-of-family-grievances","title":"A113 is the office number at the Bureau of Family Grievances","description":"Pixar's CalArts signature is stencilled on a door in the Land of the Dead's bureaucracy — the office of the **Bureau of Family Grievances**, where Héctor's paperwork problems live. It is a well-chosen home for the joke: a department that exists to adjudicate whether the dead are remembered, filed under a room number that only exists because a group of animation students remembered each other.","scene":"The Department of Family Reunions in the Land of the Dead — the office door","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["visual","reference"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"CalArts — Vulture Video Tackles the Meaning of 'A113'","url":"https://blog.calarts.edu/2016/05/24/vulture-video-tackles-the-meaning-of-a113/"},{"label":"CinemaBlend — 11 Coco Easter Eggs And References To Look For","url":"https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1729789/11-easter-eggs-and-references-to-look-for-in-coco"}],"motifs":["a113","recurring-hidden-signature"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"shining-axe-and-redrum-barrel","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-shining-axe-and-redrum-barrel","title":"The axe is the Overlook's, and the barrel beside it spells REDRUM","description":"Tucked into the background of the Land of the Dead is an **axe** that **Lee Unkrich** has confirmed was modelled on the one Jack Torrance swings in *The Shining* — and beside it sits a red metal storage **drum**, which is to say a red drum, which is to say **REDRUM**. Unkrich has planted a Kubrick reference in every Pixar film he has directed since cutting the Overlook carpet into Sid's hallway on the original *Toy Story*, and this is the most elaborate of them: a visual pun that requires you to say the object's name out loud.","scene":"Background dressing in the Land of the Dead","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["reference","visual"],"difficulty":5,"difficultyName":"White Whale","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"SlashFilm — Pixar's 'Coco' Is Filled With 'The Shining' References","url":"https://www.slashfilm.com/556600/the-shining-references-in-coco/"},{"label":"Mental Floss — 9 The Shining References Buried in Pixar Films","url":"https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/541362/the-shining-pixar-easter-eggs"}],"motifs":["room-237"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"grady-twins-on-a-canvas","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-grady-twins-on-a-canvas","title":"The Grady twins are painted on a canvas in the Land of the Dead","description":"During a fast shot of Miguel running through the Land of the Dead in his skeleton makeup, a canvas in the background carries two blue silhouettes standing side by side — the **Grady twins** from the Overlook's hallway, rendered as a painting rather than a haunting. It is the second of the film's three *Shining* plants and the hardest to catch, because the camera never slows down for it.","scene":"Background canvas during Miguel's run through the Land of the Dead","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["reference","visual"],"difficulty":5,"difficultyName":"White Whale","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"SlashFilm — Pixar's 'Coco' Is Filled With 'The Shining' References","url":"https://www.slashfilm.com/556600/the-shining-references-in-coco/"},{"label":"ScreenCrush — 'Coco' Has a Bunch of References to 'The Shining'","url":"https://screencrush.com/shining-references-in-coco/"}],"motifs":["room-237","restaged-famous-shot"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"real-mexican-icons-in-the-crowds","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-real-mexican-icons-in-the-crowds","title":"The Land of the Dead is populated with real Mexican icons","description":"The crowds are not generic skeletons. **Frida Kahlo** gets a full comic sequence as an avant-garde stage director, complete with her monkey alebrije and repeated unibrow gags — Héctor is at one point busted for *falsifying a unibrow*. Elsewhere in the film you can find the masked wrestler **El Santo**, the comedian **Cantinflas**, the actress **María Félix**, and singers **Pedro Infante** and **Jorge Negrete**. Unkrich has said there are more hidden than the ones people have found.","scene":"Throughout the Land of the Dead — the crowds, the departures hall, Frida's rehearsal","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["cameo","reference"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"Slate — Alebrijes, ofrendas, and more Mexican cultural traditions in Coco, explained","url":"https://slate.com/culture/2017/11/alebrijes-ofrendas-and-more-mexican-cultural-traditions-in-coco-explained.html"},{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Coco Trivia","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Coco_Trivia"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"ernesto-is-infante-and-negrete","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-ernesto-is-infante-and-negrete","title":"Ernesto de la Cruz is built from two real Golden Age superstars — who also appear","description":"The film's charming, murderous idol is assembled out of **Pedro Infante** and **Jorge Negrete**, the two great singing film stars of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema — the charro costume, the cinema-idol career, the tragic early death. The clever part is that both men also appear in the film **as themselves**, which quietly makes Ernesto a fiction standing among the real thing, and lets the movie critique celebrity worship without libelling anyone.","scene":"Ernesto's design and film clips; Infante and Negrete appear separately in the Land of the Dead","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["reference","cameo"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Coco Trivia","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Coco_Trivia"},{"label":"Slate — Alebrijes, ofrendas, and more Mexican cultural traditions in Coco, explained","url":"https://slate.com/culture/2017/11/alebrijes-ofrendas-and-more-mexican-cultural-traditions-in-coco-explained.html"}],"motifs":["character-name-homage"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"alebrijes-are-a-real-invention","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-alebrijes-are-a-real-invention","title":"The alebrijes come from one man's fever dream in the 1930s","description":"The luminous spirit creatures are drawn from a real folk-art form with a documented inventor: **Pedro Linares**, a Mexico City papier-mâché artist who in the 1930s fell seriously ill and hallucinated a landscape of impossible hybrid animals shouting a nonsense word — *alebrijes*. He built them when he recovered. Worth knowing that the film takes a liberty: alebrijes are not traditionally tied to Día de Muertos or to spirit guides at all. *Coco* borrows the form and gives it a new job.","scene":"Every alebrije in the film, from Dante's transformation onward","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["reference","trivia"],"difficulty":3,"difficultyName":"Freeze Frame","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"Slate — Alebrijes, ofrendas, and more Mexican cultural traditions in Coco, explained","url":"https://slate.com/culture/2017/11/alebrijes-ofrendas-and-more-mexican-cultural-traditions-in-coco-explained.html"},{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Coco Trivia","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Coco_Trivia"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"dante-is-a-xolo","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-dante-is-a-xolo","title":"Dante's breed is the one Aztec belief said guided souls to the underworld","description":"Dante is a **Xoloitzcuintli** — the ancient Mexican hairless breed, which Frida greets in the film as *the mighty Xolo dog*. The casting is doctrine, not decoration: in Aztec belief the Xolo accompanied the dead across the water to Mictlan. So the film's clumsiest comic-relief character is, by tradition, exactly the creature that is supposed to be escorting Miguel, and the movie is telling you his function the first time it names his breed.","scene":"Dante throughout — and Frida's line naming his breed","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["reference","foreshadowing"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"confirmed","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"Slate — Alebrijes, ofrendas, and more Mexican cultural traditions in Coco, explained","url":"https://slate.com/culture/2017/11/alebrijes-ofrendas-and-more-mexican-cultural-traditions-in-coco-explained.html"},{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Coco Trivia","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Coco_Trivia"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"pizza-planet-truck-in-santa-cecilia","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-pizza-planet-truck-in-santa-cecilia","title":"The Pizza Planet truck drives through Santa Cecilia","description":"Pixar's most-travelled vehicle turns up early, driving past during Miguel's opening narration about the ancestor who banned music from the family. It is the standard placement — background, one pass, no comment — but getting it into a village scene set in a film with essentially no modern traffic takes more care than dropping it into a city.","scene":"Santa Cecilia, during Miguel's opening narration about the family music ban","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["visual","callback"],"difficulty":4,"difficultyName":"Deep Cut","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"CinemaBlend — 11 Coco Easter Eggs And References To Look For","url":"https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1729789/11-easter-eggs-and-references-to-look-for-in-coco"},{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Pizza Planet Truck","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Pizza_Planet_Truck"}],"motifs":["pizza-planet-truck"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null},{"id":"finding-dory-on-the-alebrije-stall","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-finding-dory-on-the-alebrije-stall","title":"Marlin, Dory and Destiny are carved into an alebrije stall","description":"Among the carved wooden creatures on an **alebrije** table Miguel runs past are three familiar shapes: **Marlin**, **Dory** and **Destiny** the whale shark, from *Finding Nemo* and *Finding Dory*. Rendering other Pixar characters as folk-art carvings rather than plastic toys is the smartest version of this gag the studio has done — the cameo is translated into the world's own visual language instead of being dropped into it.","scene":"The alebrije stall Miguel passes while running through town","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["cameo","visual"],"difficulty":5,"difficultyName":"White Whale","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"CinemaBlend — 11 Coco Easter Eggs And References To Look For","url":"https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1729789/11-easter-eggs-and-references-to-look-for-in-coco"},{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Coco Trivia","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Coco_Trivia"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":"finding-nemo","referencesWork":null},{"id":"incredibles-poster-at-the-talent-show","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-incredibles-poster-at-the-talent-show","title":"An Incredibles poster hangs on the route to the talent show","description":"Miguel and Héctor sprint past a poster for **The Incredibles** on their way to the Land of the Dead talent competition. Pixar's cross-film advertising usually happens in bedrooms and toy boxes; putting one of its own films on a poster wall inside the afterlife is a slightly stranger proposition, and the film simply does not stop to think about it.","scene":"The corridor Miguel and Héctor run down heading to the talent show","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["visual","reference"],"difficulty":5,"difficultyName":"White Whale","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"CinemaBlend — 11 Coco Easter Eggs And References To Look For","url":"https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1729789/11-easter-eggs-and-references-to-look-for-in-coco"},{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Coco Trivia","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Coco_Trivia"}],"motifs":[],"referencesSlug":"the-incredibles","referencesWork":null},{"id":"luxo-ball-in-coco","url":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco#egg-luxo-ball-in-coco","title":"The Luxo ball turns up in the Rivera household","description":"The yellow ball with the blue stripe and red star from *Luxo Jr.* (1986) makes its obligatory appearance. It is the studio's most-planted object — it has now been found in Andy's hallway, Boo's bedroom, a girl's floor in *Up* and 22's quarters in *Soul* — and *Coco* keeps the streak intact without drawing any attention to it.","scene":"Among the household objects in Santa Cecilia","timestamp":null,"episode":null,"types":["callback","visual"],"difficulty":5,"difficultyName":"White Whale","verification":"community","spoiler":false,"sources":[{"label":"Mental Floss — 30 Pixar Easter Eggs to Look for Next Time","url":"https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/55812/30-pixar-easter-eggs-look-next-time"},{"label":"Pixar Wiki — Pixar Ball","url":"https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Pixar_Ball"}],"motifs":["luxo-ball"],"referencesSlug":null,"referencesWork":null}],"faq":[{"question":"How many easter eggs are in Coco?","answer":"We have catalogued 11 documented easter eggs and hidden details in Coco, including the A113 office at the Bureau of Family Grievances, three references to The Shining planted by Lee Unkrich, real Mexican icons such as Frida Kahlo, Cantinflas and El Santo in the Land of the Dead, Finding Dory characters carved as alebrijes, and the Pizza Planet truck in Santa Cecilia."},{"question":"What are the Shining references in Coco?","answer":"There are at least three. An axe in the background of the Land of the Dead was modelled on the one from The Shining, and the red storage drum next to it reads as REDRUM. A canvas elsewhere carries two blue silhouettes standing side by side — the Grady twins. Co-director Lee Unkrich is a lifelong Kubrick obsessive and has hidden a Shining reference in every Pixar film he has directed, starting with the Overlook carpet in Sid's house in Toy Story."},{"question":"Which real people appear in Coco?","answer":"Frida Kahlo has a full sequence as an avant-garde stage director. The crowds also include the masked wrestler El Santo, the comedian Cantinflas, the actress María Félix, and the singer-actors Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete — the last two of whom also supplied the template for the fictional Ernesto de la Cruz. Lee Unkrich has said more are hidden than have been found."},{"question":"Are alebrijes a real Mexican tradition?","answer":"Yes, though the film adapts them. Alebrijes are a real folk-art form invented by Mexico City artist Pedro Linares in the 1930s after a fever dream of impossible hybrid creatures. They are not traditionally connected to Día de Muertos or to the idea of spirit guides — Coco borrows the form and gives it a new role in its afterlife."},{"question":"What plays after the Coco end credits?","answer":"A note explaining that Día de Muertos is a Mexican heritage tradition with indigenous roots, followed by an ofrenda made of real photographs of the deceased family members of the crew who made the film. It is a dedication rather than a scene, and it applies the film's own rule about remembrance to the filmmakers' own families."}],"publishedAt":"2026-08-19","updatedAt":"2026-08-19","source":{"name":"The Things You Missed","page":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/movies/coco","api":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/api/titles/coco","methodology":"https://thethingsyoumissed.com/about"}}