35 "Encanto" Details That Are Brilliant, But You Probably Missed Them The First Time Around
🚨There are BIG spoilers ahead for Disney's Encanto!🚨
1.The first great Encanto Easter egg is actually from the movie's poster, where you can see Bruno hiding in the background.
2.These three children who Mirabel sings "The Family Madrigal" to are all named after people who are important to creating Encanto: Alejandra, Juancho, and Cecilia.
Director Jared Bush explained on Twitter that Alejandra is named after Alejandra Espinosa, who helped the creators with the Colombian history, "Pumped" Juancho is a nod to Jose "Weecho" Velasquez, one of the artists who stitched Mirabel's dress, and Cecilia is named after co-director Charise Castro Smith's daughter.
3."The Family Madrigal" is inspired by "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast. Both songs introduce the audience to the characters and town.
Lin-Manuel Miranda explained, "We wanted to get the complexity of a family on screen. And that means getting our arms around them, not letting them get winnowed away in the story process where you tend to focus on the main character and their quest. We have to be super clear about who it is, how they’re related, what they can do, and how that relates to our main character."
4.Abuela Alma's verse in "The Family Madrigal" has the exact same melody as "Dos Oruguitas," which tells the story of Alma and Pedro.
5.The outfits each of the Madrigals wear are filled with hidden details. First, Mirabel's skirt features small nods to all of her family members. You can spot a candle for Abuela, animals for Antonio, flowers for Isabela, a sun for Pepa, a chameleon for Camilo, and more.
6.The butterfly pattern on Mirabel's blouse is a nod to the Madrigal family. Not only do butterfly patterns appear throughout The Casita, but there is also one on the candle. This goes with the theme of the movie being about important transformations.
7.The butterfly pattern is even shown on the walls of the nursery, which is an important room for Mirabel in The Casita.
8.Also, Mirabel's green glasses could be seen as a nod to Bruno, who wears green and whose eyes turn green when he sees his visions of the future. Both Mirabel and Bruno are seen as outcasts in the family.
9.Similar to Mirabel, Agustín's outfit reflects the most important people in his life: his three daughters. He wears a flower for Isabela, one sock has Luisa's weight symbols, and the other sock is embroidered like Mirabel's outfit.
10.On the bottom of Abuela Alma's dress, you can spot a pattern that resembles the mountains where The Casita is.
11.And keeping with the butterfly theme, you can spot one on the keychain that Abuela Alma carries around, which includes a watch and a key.
12.Julieta's outfit includes a mortar and pestle, which is used to grind ingredients for cooking. Julieta's gift is healing people with her cooking.
She also keeps a bunch of herbs in her apron pockets.
13.On Dolores's blouse, you can spot that the pattern looks like sound waves, since her gift includes enhanced hearing (and knowing everyone's gossip).
14.Isabela's dress includes a gorgeous flower pattern, since her gift includes making flowers bloom everywhere.
15.The hem of Luisa's skirt features a design that looks like weights, which goes with her gift of being incredibly strong.
16.Meanwhile, Pepa wears sun earrings throughout the movie, which is a nod to her ability to change the weather.
17.Camilo's poncho includes a design that resembles that outline of a chameleon, which relates to his gift of shapeshifting.
18.Bruno's cloak has hourglasses along the edges, which is a nod to his gift being the ability to see through time and into the future.
19.And while he doesn't wear it in the film, in his official poster you can see that Antonio's vest includes animals, which is a nod to his gift of being able to talk to them.
20.The gift Mirabel gives Antonio to coax him out from under the bed is decorated with a lot of the animals he meets after getting his special gift, which is the ability to talk to animals.
You can even spot a bird that looks like Pico on the box.
21.When we get a flashback to Mirabel walking down the aisle to get her gift, you can see that the style at the top of her dress matches the blouse she wears in present day.
22.When the children enter Antonio's room, they remark how it's bigger on the inside, and I really hope this was a purposeful nod to the iconic phrase that is often used to describe the TARDIS on Doctor Who.
23.Before we meet Bruno and his rats, Dolores mentions that the rats in the walls are worried about the magic. It's just a great detail that showcases how Dolores was hearing Bruno the whole time.
Dolores also mentions hearing Bruno while singing "We Don't Talk About Bruno" too.
24.In the credits, you can see that the woman who asks Luisa to re-route the river is voiced by Sarah-Nicole Robles, who is best known for voicing Luz on The Owl House. In fact, Sarah-Nicole provided a lot of the "scratch dialogue" for Mirabel during the early production days.
Director Jared Bush explained that before a film gets animated, "scratch dialogue" is recorded — often by the filmmakers themselves — just so there are voices to hear. Before final casting occurred, Sarah-Nicole was used as Mirabel and recorded "scratch dialogue" for years.
25.Luisa mentions Hercules fighting Cerberus, and in Disney's Hercules we see Hercules tame Cerberus when he enters the Underworld in order to save Meg.
26.Also during "Surface Pressure," there's a nod to Titanic, and we even see three donkeys playing music during the crash, a reference to the musicians who continued playing until the ship sank.
27.In the nursery, you can see a drawing Mirabel made of a capybara as a unicorn. I just love that both Mirabel and Luisa envisioned animals as unicorns in this movie.
28.During Dolores's verse in "We Don't Talk About Bruno," you can actually see Bruno (or Camilo shape-shifting, who knows) sneaking around on the second floor behind Dolores and Mirabel.
29.While her name is never mentioned in the film, director Jared Bush revealed that the name of the woman whose goldfish dies is Señora Pezmuerto, meaning Mrs. Dead Fish.
30.If you pause quickly, you can see that Bruno is growing a plant inside a shoe, which is similar to how WALL-E keeps the plant alive in WALL-E.
31.The soccer match Bruno recreates with his rats is from Colombia's 1990 FIFA World Cup match against West Germany, where Freddy Rincón scored a goal and allowed the game to end in a draw.
32.A heartbreaking detail, but according to director Jared Bush, when Abuelo Pedro crosses the river, he is the exact same age as Sebastián Yatra was when he recorded "Dos Oruguitas," aka the scene at the river.
33.The yellow butterflies, like the one seen in Bruno's vision and at the very end of the movie, are thought to symbolize happiness and imagination, and it means good fortune is coming.
34.Also, in the book One Hundred Years of Solitude written by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, yellow butterflies appear. The book tells the story of a multi-generational family, whose patriarch founds a town. Sound familiar?
His books often included magical realism, which is also seen throughout Encanto.
35.And finally, when Bruno sings his apology to Pepa about ruining her wedding day, he sings "Let it go," and then the opening notes of "Let It Go" from Frozen can be heard as part of the song.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who wrote "Let It Go," are even given a credit in the end credits of Encanto.
