Cars 3 Renews Conspiracy Theorists' Deep Dive Into The Pixar Universe

Pixar die-hards are at it again, but who can blame them? With the release of Cars 3, the AV Club points out that the tinfoil-hat crew is already drawing new conclusions and adding new questions to the already murky Pixar universe.

While some macabre makeshift historians have already decided that the Cars universe exists after humans have evacuated Earth (and live on in the film Wall-E), leaving automobiles to somehow become sentient, the new film has renewed an inkling that a car WWII may have happened.

According to New York Magazine, Pixar theorists are pointing to the fact that in the direct-to-DVD film Planes, the character Skipper recounts losing all of his friends during a flashback to the Pacific Theater. That memory lead many internet conspiracy theorists to conclude that there had to be a version of WWII that involved cars, planes, and other living machines. That means Axis Powers, Allied Powers, and everything else associated with the human version of history.

Add to that the fact that the Cars universe has always had a militant Jeep named Sarge who has mentioned very specific details, like the Battle of the Bulge. It's enough to pull together a very dark timeline.

Deactivated Tumblr user fspookfitzgerald lays it all out:

"In Planes Skipper is a retired navy plane. Therefore there are wars in the cars universe. In fact, in his confession to Dusty he mentions that he only flew one mission, in the Pacific, where he and a squadron of trainees were killed- PLANES were KILLED- during an attack on the Japanese Navy. At what point does a plane die? Can a plane be rebuilt from its salvaged parts and retain its sentience and memories?"

Furthermore, there's evidence of other real-life historical events happening in the Cars timeline. In the franchise's second film, the characters have to go through the equivalent of a TSA checkpoint — does that mean that there was a 9/11-type event? Cars 2 also includes an automobile Pope, which leads some viewers to believe that there has to be some sort of cars biblical origin story — a car Jesus, basically.

Let's hope that Pixar's animators and writers are taking note, because fans are going to need a pretty thorough explainer if these theories are accurate.