For years people on the internet have tried to explain the Pixar universe, from breaking down a chronological timeline of all the movies to explaining the ramifications of crashing sentient, oxygen-breathing automobiles into walls in Cars. So far no one from Pixar has confirmed or denied these claims, likely because they’re currently working on the next five emotionally taxing releases that will only continue to confuse animation conspiracy theorists throughout the internet. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t giving us clues.
The weekend release of Cars 3 reopened the can of worms with the question prompted by every family-friendly movie: How does the Holocaust play into this? Since the beginning the franchise has included a World War II-era Jeep named Sarge, and the 2013 Disney spin-off Planes featured a full-on flashback to the Pacific Theater. Naturally, these details have lead some on the internet to ponder whether or not a Car Hitler did exist. As New York points out, a string of text has popped up repeatedly around the internet extrapolating this line of thinking: the rabbit hole.
This leads to so many important questions, like: were the Cars Little Boy and Fat Man nukes sentient? Was it a suicide mission? Are ALL Cars nuclear weapons sentient? Did Tsar Bomba have a personality?
What kind of car was Car Hitler? A VW? A forklift?
Was there a Cars 9/11? Were the planes hijacked, or were the planes themselves radicalized?
New York traces this line of thinking to a Tumblr exchange in 2013, which ponders, at length, the existence of fascism and communism in the Cars universe.
This new information does, however, mess with the original Pixar Theory, implying that the Cars movies take place after humankind has left Earth for their WALL-E fate. Are humans also somehow a part of the Cars movies? Did World War II happen again, proving that history always repeats itself and there is no way to escape a vicious cycle of evil and destruction no matter who or what populates the planet? Does any good we do in this life even matter while a truck with the voice of Larry The Cable Guy makes fart jokes?