One of the most marketed aspects of Marvel Studios' She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is how meta the show will be. In fact, the titular MCU character even breaks the fourth wall quite often throughout the course of the series—a trait reminiscent of Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool.
These moments include Tatiana Maslany’s lead character directly looking at the audience and even addressing them in conversation. But while interacting with the audience is something, one meta aspect of any story that many viewers often wonder about is if certain things exist in these fictional worlds like they do in reality.
Do the heroes in the MCU read comics about themselves? Are big-name franchises such as Star Trek or Harry Potter a part of their world’s pop culture?
While there may not be an answer regarding those specific examples, She-Hulk’s first episode does reveal one set of movies that exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Pixar’s tearjerking masterclass in storytelling.
Jennifer Walters is a Pixar Fan
Warning - The rest of this article contains spoilers for Episode 1 of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
She-Hulk officially released its first installment on Disney+, and the opening episode quickly introduces audiences to Jennifer Walters and how she got to be a giant green lawyer.
But there was a bigger, completely not gamma-related reveal hidden within all of her training.
The big moment occurs as Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is talking about how her “transformations are triggered by distress and emotional states” and that they “need to know the exact threshold that causes it for [Jen].”
In response to her cousin’s exposition, Jen says, “Ooh, put on a Pixar movie. When Bing Bong jumps out of the wagon in Inside Out.”
This means that future Avenger She-Hulk is not only a Pixar fan, but it would seem that 2015’s Inside Out is among her favorites.
Pixar Joins Star Wars & Superman
This is far from the first time Marvel Studios has made outside franchises canon to the MCU. What If…?’s penultimate episode potentially showed Mustafar from Star Wars, and Eternals confirmed that Superman exists within fictional works in-universe.
It’s always fun when a project has fun referencing these other worlds. It makes the world these characters are inhabiting feel more genuine and close to ours. These are things an everyday person would likely reference normally in the real world, so it’s only right that everyone’s favorite superhero knows all about them.
Now, if only people in zombie movies knew that the concept of flesh-eating monsters was a thing.
When it comes to Jennifer Walter’s adoration for Inside Out, those feelings are completely understandable. What elevates the fun reference more is how the entire animated movie is about understanding one’s emotions, which is exactly what Bruce is attempting to do with his cousin.
Maybe he should take her up on the movie night offer?
She-Hulk is now streaming on Disney+.
