While brainstorming ideas for a blog post that’s Pixar themed, I like to scroll through the list of Pixar movies and see what pops out at me. For some reason, I was drawn to Cars this time, and started to read about the film. To my surprise, I found out that Lightning McQueen had a first name, Montgomery. Then I started down a rabbit hole of Pixar character names, finding out things I didn’t know before, and who some characters are based on. Below is a list of Pixar characters and who they are based on, as well as fun facts about the development of their final name.

Montgomery “Lightning” McQueen

The character of Lightning McQueen began with the name Mustang McQueen. As time went on, he got more characterization and personality, and thus was given a more “human” name. Though it was rumored that he was named after Steve McQueen, he was actually named after Glenn McQueen, a supervising animator at Pixar Studios. He passed away 4 years prior to the release of Cars.

Early sketch of Lightning McQueen from Pixar. Image from: https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/cars

Sir Tow Mater KG

While doing research for the movie Cars back in 2001, director John Lasseter met NASCAR fan Douglas Keever at a racing track one day. Keever introduced himself almost exactly as Mater does in the Cars film to Lightning McQueen:

“My name’s Mater,... like tuh-mater, but without the tuh.”

— Douglas Keever

Lasseter kept this encounter in mind when developing the character of Mater, and brought Douglas in to be a part of the film. Though he didn’t voice the role of Mater (Larry the Cable Guy did), he was featured as a cameo cheering McQueen on in the first film. Pixar reimbursed him for the use of his name, for being the inspiration, and always sent him promotional toys and other materials from the film.

Sheriff Woody Pride

Though never really mentioned in the movies, Toy Story director Lee Unkrich confirmed on Twitter that Woody’s full name is Woody Pride. He’s named after Woody Strode, best known for being one of the first Black American football players in the NFL during the post-war era. He was also an actor, primarily acting in films throughout the 1950s. A lot of the films he was a part of were Western films, which is where the inspiration of Woody Pride came from.

Buzz Lightyear

During the process of creating the bold character that Buzz is, he went through many changes. He started as red, small, named Tempest, and then named Lunar Larry. Eventually, Toy Story creators decided to pay tribute to Buzz Aldrin, an astronaut who landed on the moon in 1969 with Neil Armstrong. You can read more about Buzz’s origins and Aldrin’s contributions in my post about Buzz going to the international space station.

Andy Davis

Ralph Guggenheim, one of the producers for Toy Story, once said that on the search for the perfect name for the child in the film, they went through the names of the Pixar employee’s children to get ideas. That’s when they finally decided to give tribute to Pixar’s 5th employee ever, Bud Luckey. Bud joined Pixar in 1990, his first project being the character design for Woody in Toy Story. He continued on to work on A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and more. In later years he even provided his voice for characters in movies like The Incredibles and Toy Story 3. Andy Davis is named after his son, Andy Luckey.

“John gives me credit with designing Woody, but I did 200 Woody’s and he picked the right one.”

— Bud Luckey

Mike Wazowski

I wasn’t able to find many credible sources about this one, but I do find it to be believable. One of Pete Docter’s role models is Frank Oz, one of the driving forces behind The Muppets. Frank came onto the movie Monsters Inc. to play the role of Fungus, and is said to be the creator and inspiration behind Mike’s final name. Oz’s father, Isidore Oznowicz, was a puppeteer in his lifetime as well. He went by the nickname “Mike”.

Charles F. Muntz

This is one of the more obvious ones because all Pixar did was change one letter, but the villain in the film Up is named after Charles Mintz, a man who changed Walt Disney’s career. Charles Mintz was a film producer and distributer, and he worked for Winkler Pictures with his wife Margaret J. Winkler. When Walt was looking for a production studio to play his cartoon shorts back in the 1920s, Mintz made him a deal, and asked him to create a unique character to sell to Universal to star in his short films. Unfortunately, due to contractual reasons, Mintz owned the rights for anything Walt made, including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Mintz also took most of Walt’s animation team from him. This event is what made Walt create Mickey Mouse and branch off into distributing films on his own. Mintz is painted as a villain in the Disney universe, thus Muntz was born.

Charles Mintz, middle. Image from: https://www.scrappyland.com/blog/2012/08/12/dick-huemer-on-scrappy-the-lost-interview/

Jack-Jack Parr

I’ve seen a few different theories about where Jack-Jack’s name comes from. I’ve seen people say they thought it was because he was a “jack of all trades”, especially in the first movie when they didn’t quite know what his power was yet. I’ve also seen people compare Jack-Jack’s name to John F. Kennedy’s son, because his nickname was John-John. All of these rumors were put to rest when Brad Bird took to twitter in 2018 to say:

“No. Named after our middle son Jack, who we called Jack-Jack (among many other nicknames) and who was a baby when I first had the idea for INCREDIBLES. ”

— Brad Bird