The Emotions are the main characters of the 2015 Disney/Pixar animated feature film Inside Out, its upcoming sequel, and the franchise of the same name. The Emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust) are in charge of running the mind of the person or animal they inhabit.
Formation and Leadership[]
Each Emotion is created at a different moment, usually early in someone's life. They seem to appear from nowhere.
Each person has a central Emotion that acts as the unofficial leader of the group. The central Emotion is usually positioned in the center of the group, and controls most of the person's actions. In Riley Andersen's mind, Joy is in charge, while her father's mind is controlled by Anger, and her mother's mind is run by Sadness.
The film suggests that the first Emotion to appear is the one who is in charge, as Joy appears first in Riley's mind.
Residence[]
The Emotions reside in the mind of each person and they live and work in Emotion Headquarters.
Appearance[]
The Emotions tend to take on the appearance of the person they reside in. For example, Mr. Andersen's Emotions all have a mustache and wear a suit like he does, and Mrs. Andersen's Emotions all have brown hair in a ponytail and wear red-framed glasses. Various other characters' Emotions resemble them in some form, like having dyed hair or multiple piercings. Riley is the only character to have Emotions that do not resemble her. This may have been done to have her emotions stand out from the rest that are seen in the film.
The look of each emotion is also based on other things. Joy is based on a star and a burst of energy, Anger is based on a firebrick, Disgust is based on broccoli, Fear based on a raw nerve, and Sadness as a teardrop.
Trivia[]
- While some people's Emotions are the same gender as they are (for example, all of Bill Andersen and Jordan’s Emotions are male, and Jill Andersen’s Emotions are all female), or a woman can express that emotion in a more masculine way (Riley's explosive Anger).
- There are several occasions when the emotions are seen happy, frustrated, or sad, proving that emotions can express more feelings than their own representation.
- Animals are shown to have the same five emotions as humans. However, unlike taking the appearance of shapes, the emotions take the form of the animal they inhabit.
- The emotions can feel the same things their host feels, such as smell, taste, pain and temperature. This is the reason the Emotions hate broccoli and keep Riley away from it, and why Sadness knew that Riley squirting milk through her nose while laughing felt painful.
- In psychology, there are actually six classified emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The emotion Surprise was cut because Pete Docter considered the emotion to be too similar to Fear.
- Each original emotion matches one of the Five Stages of Grief - Denial (Fear), Anger (Anger), Bargaining (Disgust), Depression (Sadness), and Acceptance (Joy).
- Notably for the Bus Driver, his emotions all represent Anger in different colors,