It’s almost a tradition at this point that animated movies, which are largely targeted at children, hide little jokes in the margins for the adults in the audience. Considering some films that appeal to a younger audience can be kind of mindless for grown-ups, it’s a nice gesture on the part of the filmmakers to make sure the person footing the bill has a good time, too. This can take a few different forms, with animated titles in the 1990s like Aladdin leaning into Robin Williams’ improv comedy to give the animation a unique visual gag, or Mulan utilizing the character’s secret to make some innuendo about her fellow soldiers.
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Though animated movies have been a part of feature films since the beginning of the form, this practice of jokes for adults in kids’ movies wasn’t common when the likes of Walt Disney were still calling the shots. In fact, it didn’t really evolve into a bedrock of the genre until after Shrek, which kicked down the door of animation with its subversive and irreverent take on fairy tales. By the time we get to the 2010s, though, animated movies are barely even hiding their adult jokes.
6) The Angry Birds Movie
Released in 2016, maybe a few years removed from the popularity of the games, The Angry Birds Movie is filled with innuendo. Given that the plot of the film is all about pigs stealing their eggs, there are plenty of sexual references that fly over kids’ heads that are peppered throughout the movie. One scene in particular shows Josh Gad’s Chuck shaking his hips and saying, “Ladies, get busy, we’re going to be laying some eggs tonight.” That’s not all that contributes to the filthy meter, though, as The Angry Birds Movie also brings in bird-themed puns to mask profanity. The most famous instance of this comes after Red is sentenced to anger management classes, answering: “Pluck my life.”
5) The Boss Baby
The Boss Baby, combining corporate structure with babies, naturally comes with a few sly winks and nods for the grown-ups in the audience. Throughout the film, there are references to alcohol by the Boss Baby himself, done in a Mad Men-style reference to drinking on the job or right at the end of the shift. The absolute naughtiest bit in the film, however, is a scene where the Boss Baby offers a pacifier to his older brother. It would be one thing for this sequence to just have the implications of an ayahuasca trip used within it, but the sexual innuendo reaches unmatched levels, with lines like, “I want you to suck it,” “It’s not where it’s been, it’s where it will take you,” and “C’mon faster.”
4) Cars 3
Despite a sequence where one car says, “No cursin’. It’s family night,” that doesn’t stop Cars 3 from pushing the boundaries of language in a kids’ movie. At one point, Lightning McQueen is taking part in a training montage on a beach, delivering the line “Life’s a beach and then you drive!” In context, it’s a remark that makes sense and which the kids in the audience may find funny, but for every adult, it’s very clearly a play on the phrase, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
3) Rango
Rango may be a PG animated movie from 2011, but the western genre and the filmmaking conventions within it make it pretty distinctly not a “kids movie” in the most basic definition of the genre. Though it may be filled with jokes for adults that reference the likes of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Rango‘s secretly filthy gags are also abundant. A reference to “Thespians” draws the reply, “Thespians? But that’s illegal in seven states!”, while others come out of nowhere, like, “It’s a puzzle! It’s like a big old mammogram!”
2) Toy Story 3
Like most Pixar movies, Toy Story 3 is pretty squeaky clean; it wouldn’t be able to have a “G” rating if it weren’t. That said, in keeping with the studio’s other work, there are a few choice line readings that manage to fly under the radar, the kind that mostly the adults will notice. In one instance, Barbie says to Ken, “Nice ascot,” in a clever bit of wordplay. A much dirtier instance, however, is a sequence where Mr. Potato Head says to Lotso, “Nobody takes my wife’s mouth except me.” Luckily for kids, that line can be read literally; gutter-dwellers, though, will hear it otherwise.
1) Zootopia
Given that one of its anthropomorphic lead animals is a rabbit, Zootopia naturally does not waste much time getting to the expected jokes about their breeding capabilities. This is seen in the opening minutes as Judy Hops’ extensive family size is shown multiple times, but reiterated in a moment where Judy delivers the math joke, “I am just a dumb bunny, but we are good at multiplying.”
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