Warning: minor SPOILERS for Incredibles 2 are ahead!
The superhero-filled world of The Incredibles is definitely anachronistic, but for the most part, the 2004 movie and its just-released sequel, Incredibles 2, has a 1960s aesthetic, the time when the Silver Age of Comics was at the height of its popularity. To further prove this, at one point during Incredibles 2, the Parr kids are watching an episode of Jonny Quest, one of the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons. It's not the first time that a Pixar movie has featured footage from a non-Pixar movie or TV show, but for those wondering why a Jonny Quest clip was shown, it's because director Brad Bird was a big fan of the show as a kid, citing that it was one of the reasons he wanted to make The Incredibles in the first place. Bird reminisced:
When I was a kid, just seeing the opening titles of Jonny Quest had every single thing a young boy could want in entertainment. All represented in the opening titles, it has jet packs, it has mummies, it has robots, it has spies, it has lizard men and komodo dragons and Yetis and guns and bodyguards. It's just insane! Judo and karate and levitation! It's just, like, this salad bar of craziness.
Debuting in 1964, the original Jonny Quest series only aired for one season, but it was followed by The New Adventures of Jonny Quest in 1986 and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest in 1996, which aired for one season and two seasons, respectively. As far as the original show goes, Brad Bird declared that it's "one of the tragedies of the world" that Jonny Quest ended after just one year, noting that because it originally aired during primetime rather than Saturday mornings, there were actual stakes. So while Jonny Quest might not be as well known as other Hanna-Barbera properties, clearly the show meant a lot to Bird, hence why he threw that "cameo" into Incredibles 2.
Along with talking about his fondness for the original Jonny Quest cartoon, Brad Bird told EW that if he were to ever write or direct a Jonny Quest movie, he'd keep it animated, as well as stressed the importance of keeping Jonny a kid and the action set in the early 1960s rather than move it to the present day. Alas, the only Jonny Quest movie that's in any kind of development is the live action project that reportedly once had Robert Rodriguez attached, and there's been no word on its progress for years. So for now, we'll just have to enjoy Incredibles 2 quickly showing that footage, and who knows, maybe those few seconds will be enough for some kids in the audience to want to learn about that cartoon from yesteryear.
As of today, Incredibles 2 has made nearly $236 million worldwide and shows no signs of slowing down at the box office. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for all the latest movie updates, and don't forget to look through our 2018 release schedule to find out what's hitting the silver screen later this year.
