WALL-E

"An employee at a garbage dump abandons his job to pursue a woman he's just met."

- John Scalzi

WALL-E, Pixar's 9th film, is a Science Fiction love story.

Around seven hundred years in the future, humans abandon the now-inhospitable Earth so it can be cleaned up by a small army of "Waste Allocation Load Lifter" robots (WALL-Es - the E stands for Earth) whilst they enjoy a five-year vacation cruise in space. The plan doesn't really work; seven centuries later, the last of those robots to still be running -- the titular WALL-E -- is still collecting junk and living with his pet cockroach. One day, WALL-E is going about his business as usual when a spaceship carrying a much more modern robot arrives to drop her off. Her name is EVE, and WALL-E is smitten at first sight. When the ship comes back and picks her up, he stows away.

Oh, and it's got Awesome Art CGI.

For information about the DVD short, BURN-E, check the Pixar Shorts page.

""A" is for Axiom, your home sweet home. "B" is for Buy 'N' Large, your very best friend..."
 * Acme Products" BnL makes everything humanity uses (and makes it to last, apparently).
 * A BnL logo appears after the Disney/Pixar logos in the ending credits, hinting that the film could very well be one of their products as well.
 * North, the direction, is a brand of theirs. They call it "Directional Marketing". Has the Carmen Sandiego company been absorbed so they can actually do that?
 * Action Girlfriend: EVE.
 * Adam and or Eve: The latter.
 * Advert-Overloaded Future: BnL adverts are everywhere, from the screens on the dead Earth to the nurseries on the Axiom. And, as mentioned above, they own and license north. There also appears to be an ad in the Sea of Tranquility. You know, the site of the first Moon landing.
 * After the End
 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot: AUTO the autopilot program. Averted with ... well, every other robot in the movie. Though outside of the main robot cast, most of the other robots are mostly content with doing their job and so don't really display much personality.
 * Its not so much that AUTO is crazy. He is following orders to the letter, as that last order is what drives him . He's just doing his job like the rest of them.
 * The robots in the repair ward however... most of them are crazy and some are violent.
 * Actually played straight with WALL-E and the various robots he recruits to his cause: They save the day because they are not operating as intended. Tropes Are Flexible.
 * All Animals Are Dogs: A cockroach is made adorable. WALL-E even commands it to sit in one scene. It doesn't work. Though he does it a second time and it DOES work. For the rest of the film.
 * All There in the Manual: A significant amount of the backstory is provided by the Onion-esque Buy 'N' Large website.
 * A little more information is covered on the DVD. For example, Buy N Large started out as two companies. The BUY part sold frozen yogurts. The LARGE part sold Tall and Large clothing. They combined forces after realizing eating one made you need to buy the other.
 * Also Sprach Zarathustra: See Theme Music Power-Up below.
 * Alternate Robot Affection
 * Amusing Injuries: WALL-E during the first half of the movie,
 * Anti-Mutiny:
 * Apocalypse How: Subverted in one sense, played straight in another. Earth appears to be barren at the start of the film, but in reality, the humans simply left the planet. Class 1, though the evacuation of humans makes it a technical Class 4.
 * Apocalyptic Log:
 * The Ark: The "Axiom" and all the other ships that left Earth. Although they're pretty depressing Arks.
 * Arm Cannon: EVE.
 * Artificial Gravity: It's mentioned that the Axiom's artificial gravity is weaker than the Earth's, which caused the humans to lose bone mass (the excessive blubber, though, was obviously the result of them lounging on flying couches for 7 centuries).
 * "We have a jogging track?" -The Captain, upon listening to the instructional video on how to return to Earth.
 * Art Shift: The humans of the past, such as the BnL CEO, Shelby Forthworth, are live-action. The humans of the future are computer-generated. Word of God is that redoing all the "Hello Dolly" scenes in CGI would've been too much trouble, so they just went with this route. This is later lampshaded in the scene of the portraits of the various Axiom captains, which shows the captains shifting from photo-realistic to cartoonish over time.
 * The credits also use this trope, showing a series of vignettes in progressively more recent artistic styles, going from cave-paintings and hieroglyphics to straight-up imitations of Seurat and Van Gogh. This is to show how humans relearned the skills they had lost on the Axiom, such as artistry. And then? It goes to not-quite 8-bit sprites.
 * The 8-bit sprites could be how the robots remember the story - the sequence of events that awakened them to self awareness would probably be very special to them, and what's one way an intelligent computer could record historical events?
 * Alternately ... the 8-bit sprites would be the next art style.
 * Which means that the humans would have re-discovered technology and could be heading down the same path as before. This turns into a huge Mind Screw when you start to wonder how many times the human race has failed before....
 * That assumes that humans abandoned technology at some point, which they clearly haven't since they work alongside robots.
 * Astronomic Zoom: Out there, there's a world outside of Yonkers...
 * Badass: The Axiom's captain, although it takes a while for it to shine through.
 * WALL-E himself is pretty awesome, considering his size and general run-down nature compared to the Axiom robots.
 * Berserk Button: M-O: Foreign Contaminant.
 * Beta Couple: John and Mary.
 * Big Bad: Auto, though he is actually just doing his job.
 * The Big Board: Sigourney Weaver.
 * Big Fat Future: All of the passengers of the Axiom are obese.
 * This is explained by the differences in gravity from the cruise ship and earth. Plus people being lazy.
 * Big No: EVE gets one of these when.
 * And again later when
 * Also when WALL-E accidentally fires her Arm Cannon in the repair ward.
 * AUTO gets one.
 * Blithe Spirit: WALL-E, albeit inadvertently, towards all the other robots and humanity itself.
 * Butt Monkey: M-O, unintentionally caused by WALL-E. WALL-E himself could count as well, especially in the first half of the movie.
 * Came Back Wrong: after being repaired..
 * Character Development: EVE learns to embrace her "defects" by the end of the film. While she had sentience at the beginning, she was forced to keep it hidden because of her directive. Her voice also evolves into something more feminine and emotional when it was originally robotic and distant. There's a very interesting interpretation of her emotional development here.
 * Also, upon planetfall she is somewhat trigger-happy, blasting anything with her Arm Cannon if it offers the slightest sign of threat to herself. By the end of the movie she uses it only to help or defend others.
 * Even a minor encounter with WALL-E seems to cause this in everyone. John and Mary break out of their normal routines and discover each other after meeting him once each, the Captain starts the Wiki Walk that leads to his determination to return home after scanning some dirt WALL-E got on his hand, M-O stops following his designated lit up paths on the ground in frustration so he can clean up the mess WALL-E leaves behind, and even a robot receptionist starts enthusiastically waving to people after witnessing WALL-E do it once. See Blithe Spirit, above.
 * Chatty Hairdresser: Any of the PR-Ts (beautician robot). Even if the person they're working on is silent, or asleep.
 * Chekhov's Gun: Andrew Stanton even talks about the concept of this trope, without naming it, during the DVD Commentary.
 * The Axiom's docking port, which WALL-E rolls past at the very beginning and onto which the Axiom lands at the very end. Stanton quotes Chekhov directly in the commentary when mentioning it.
 * Also, WALL-E's little hand gesture.
 * When AUTO makes his first appearance and scans EVE, appears over his eye. Additionally, WALL-E uses laser to cut open a wall and find the plant. He later uses this laser to . For one more, when the Captain is waking up, he accidentally hits WALL-E instead of his alarm clock, and it starts playing music from Hello Dolly. He later hears the same song while watching EVE's video footage of Earth, and
 * FOREIGN CONTAMINANT. At first, it causes M-O much consternation as WALL-E leaves a trail of it throughout the Axiom. But in the end, it
 * Also subverted, in that Wall-E never ends up using the wedding ring box (which seems like an obvious way to go for a romance).
 * At the beginning of the movie, before we really get a scope of how developed WALL-E's has become; he makes an innocuous distinction when deciding whether to place a spork with his collection of spoons or knifes, to place it in between both. Computers are incapable of recognizing anything between a distinct On/Off parameter (that's how they're coded), WALL-E comprehending a state in between two options demonstrates how he's advanced beyond his programming.
 * Chekhov's Gunman:
 * There's also
 * Chekhov's Skill: WALL-E
 * Also, First referenced
 * Not to mention.
 * M-O's ability to identify "foreign contaminants"
 * Coat Cape: The Captain wears his coat like this, presumably because he's too out of shape to wear it normally.
 * The Collector of the Strange: WALL-E keeps a wide assortment of random trinkets that catch his fancy. The items he collects don't seem to have any particular theme.
 * They all tend toward the "interesting," though. Things he wouldn't interact with every day, things that aren't usually considered trash. Rubik's cubes, shoes, cutlery, other things like that.
 * Although, in this instance, "Interesting" is a definition we never see, as it's entirely without pattern within WALL-E's head (see when he finds the diamond ring, and finds the ringbox more interesting).
 * That one's not that hard to comprehend if you think about it. WALL-E has no concept of value or wealth, so while the ring might just be some sparkly thing, the box would be infinitely more interesting to him (since it opens, closes, and makes a clicking noise when it shuts) once he got done giving the ring a once-over. Most of the stuff he finds interesting would probably be the sort of thing you'd find a young child collecting before they pick up on concepts like money and value.
 * Also, diamond and gold in a relatively pure form is something unextraordinary (it's a rock that had value because we give it value) where as the ring box demonstrates skill and intelligence. Those are things Wall-e seems to enjoy.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience: Heroine EVE and Battle Butler both have tractor beams of sorts; EVE's is blue and  is red.
 * Also humans who switch their clothing from blue back to red are the ones who have been "awakened." See Shout-Out.
 * Comic Book Adaptation: A prequel series by Boom! Studios following WALL-E's exploits as he collects his various trinkets while his friends around him gradually begin to all die out.
 * And now, there is a fan-made one, only with the robots as humans.
 * Computer Voice: The filmmakers deliberately sought out Sigourney Weaver to voice the Axiom's computer as a Shout-Out to Alien.
 * Context Sensitive Button: The amount of damage EVE's Arm Cannon does varies, mostly in inverse proportion to the distance of the target. In one scene, she fires at an electromagnet holding her, which only deactivates it, then immediately fires at the ship below, causing an enormous explosion.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Well, technically 'no radiant heat'. WALL-E has no problem on the outside of a ship while it's buzzing the sun. In fact, he just takes the opportunity to charge his solar-cells pretty much instantly. He apparently was able to endure very high temperatures as evidenced by when EVE's ship lands on top of him.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: The BnL CEO, especially once it's revealed that he ordered all the, and to never tell anyone about said order.
 * Forthright didn't even have to make a secret conspiracy of it, but he did anyway, to keep the Muggles placated.
 * Let's face it, almost everybody in charge of BnL during most of its history would count, considering how epically they messed up the planet. As a point in their favor, though, they also built a massive fleet of spacecraft to shuttle mankind off-world and accommodate their every need and whim indefinitely, all presumably on the company's dime. It's weird.
 * The Axiom was an executive cruise ship that had advertisements running for it. BnL was more than happy to save lives, just not for free. Also, given that they call the Axiom the "jewel" of the fleet, the other ships would have to be at least a little bit worse than it. Most likely the mass of ships meant for poor people, if there were any at all, would be in absolutely terrible condition.
 * Not necessarily. Signage in various places on the Axiom indicates that part of the ship was Economy (indicating that there were classes among the passengers aboard) but there's no obvious difference between the levels.
 * Although from all indications (and more importantly all exterior shots of the ship and navigational maps) the Axiom is the ONLY SHIP left of the BnL fleet. Which depressingly means that all that is left of humanity now resides there.
 * The end credits prove that this, at least, is untrue. One of the images is of other lifepods arriving on Earth to join the Axiom's passengers, suggesting that there are other humans out there and that they do eventually come home.
 * Crap Saccharine World: The Axiom. The humans seem to lead a cheerful and carefree life, if it isn't an incredibly confused and often boring one, but the utter disregard for responsibility on part of the humans and the history regarding Earth's decay and the plans behind the Axiom is depressing.
 * Crapsack World: Earth, though thanks to WALL-E and his ilk it's become a crap-cube world.
 * Creative Closing Credits: The credits start with a series of vignettes depicting the Axiom's passengers readjusting to Earth life represented by evolving art styles (cave paintings -> Egyptian -> Greek -> mosaic -> Da Vinci-style sketches -> Monet-style Impressionism -> Pointillism -> Van Gogh-style), then shifts to various scenes of the characters running around with faux 8-bit video game graphics.
 * Creepy Monotone: AUTO, who speaks using the old MacInTALK "Ralph" voice. While M-O also has a monotone voice to announce the presence of "Foreign Contaminants", he primarily communicates with cute beeps and hums, as do the other nice robots.
 * Creepy Monotone: AUTO, who speaks using the old MacInTALK "Ralph" voice. While M-O also has a monotone voice to announce the presence of "Foreign Contaminants", he primarily communicates with cute beeps and hums, as do the other nice robots.

"Mary: Get ready for some kids!"
 * Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The Captain and, more subtly, Wall-E.
 * Cue the Sun: Literally aboard the Axiom: when the captain awakens somewhere around afternoon he rewinds everything, including the sun of course, back to morning so he can give his morning speech.
 * Cute Machines: The title character as well as most of the other robots in this movie.
 * Cyber Cyclops: Yet another thing that makes AUTO an Expy for the HAL 9000...
 * Death Glare: "That's an order!" *hesitation* *Death Glare* *cue video*
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: EVE.
 * Desolation Shot: The first five minutes of the film.
 * Disney Death:
 * A straighter version happens when . EVE thinks he's dead for a few moments, until.
 * Disney Villain Death: gets kicked out a window and smashes on to the deck, but they do show the impact, making this an aversion--maybe even a subversion, since it had such a clear setup.
 * Even more of a subversion because some people might think
 * Either way,
 * Dogged Nice Guy: WALL-E.
 * Dojikko: WALL-E becomes one when EVE arrives and he is too busy watching her to look where he's going.
 * Downer Beginning: We open to a vision of Earth as an apocalyptic wasteland.
 * The Dragon:.
 * Dude, She's Like, in a Coma: Sorta. Like other examples, it's only creepy if you over-think it. And WALL-E probably doesn't understand what's going on, and definitely has just had his only chance to ever have a friend suddenly disappear. In any case, WALL-E doesn't do anything particularly inappropriate (not that he really could), which turns out to be a good thing since EVE was recording everything and recalls it later.
 * Dying Like Animals: The people of Earth blissfully allowed their own destruction.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending
 * Earth-That-Was: The premise of the film, as humanity departed Earth 700 years before the film began. Emphasized by the Captain suddenly spending hours and hours bringing up articles about the earth of the past and later relating his glee over planting pizza.
 * Emotional Torque: The whole damn film.
 * The End of the World as We Know It: Humans destroyed the future Earth with rampant consumerism and incompetence.
 * Eternal English: Well, the whole issue with the Axiom crew is stagnation, anyway..
 * Eureka Moment:
 * Everything Is an iPod In The Future: See Product Placement below.
 * Eye Lights Out
 * Fake-Out Opening: For the first 30 seconds or so, it appears to be a typically optimistic Disney flick. Then you see Earth. The music is so loud and surprising it serves as a Scare Chord.
 * False Camera Effects: What seems to be a focus pull error, when WALL-E is trying to escape an avalanche of shopping carts.
 * The DVD commentary points out here that legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins was brought in to teach the animators how to make the camera act more like a real camera instead of a virtual one, and to deliberately insert anomalies like this. Who was amused that Pixar would spend loads of money and time trying to create effects that cinematographers have spent loads of money and time trying to get rid of.
 * Family-Unfriendly Death:.
 * Finger-Twitching Revival:
 * : The ending, though the moment is somewhat diffused by.
 * Food Pills: It's actually more like Food Smoothies than pills. "Sep-tu-a-cen-tennial cupcake in a cup!
 * Word of God is that BnL was originally a yogurt company.
 * The Fool: All WALL-E wants to do is hold hands with a girl-bot and groove to the old-time Hello Dolly. Without being the slightest bit aware of it, every human (and most robots) he meets (even if it's just a Crash Into Hello) gets knocked out of their hum-drum daily existence maintaining the status quo and learns how to not just "survive, but to live," and he gets really, really lucky regarding survival.
 * Fictional Counterpart: Buy n Large to Wal-Mart, though on a much more massive scale.
 * Flaw Exploitation: The Captain to AUTO's lack of depth perception. First he uses an image of the plant to pretend he has it, and then he hides in front of a picture of himself
 * Friend To All (Remaining) Living Things: WALL-E. That cockroach didn't have to follow him.
 * Friend to Bugs: WALL-E regards said cockroach as a pet, but most people in real-life consider them disgusting pests.
 * Gaussian Girl: Played straight with EVE, and her sleek shiny design seems to exist to make this happen as much as possible.
 * On close inspection she seems to emit a diffuse white light from her (shiny, white) skin, essentially making her a self-generating, in-universe Gaussian Girl.
 * Genre Busting: IMDb has this movie listed as an Animation-Adventure-Comedy-Drama-Family-Romance-Sci-Fi.
 * Heroic Comedic Sociopath:
 * He's a Friend: EVE, don't blast that roach!
 * Holding Hands: How WALL-E and EVE express their love for one another.
 * Hope Sprouts Eternal
 * Humans Are Special: Humanity was fully responsible for Earth's sad state, and aboard the Axiom, they live a very confusing but often boring life of endless consumerism and reliance on high-technology.
 * Indestructible Edible: WALL-E's pet cockroach can still eat a 700-year-old Twinkie, though that's more of an homage of the traditional post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland: Nothing left but the cockroaches and twinkies.
 * Initialism Title
 * Inspector Javert: M-O, who relentlessly hunts the one who would tarnish his germ-free domain. Then makes friends with him.
 * Intertwined Fingers: Several times between WALL-E and EVE. The first time it happens, it's an awkward moment.
 * In the Future We Still Have Roombas: Practically all the non-human characters.
 * Kids Prefer Boxes: WALL-E is captivated by a jewelry box, but doesn't care for the diamond ring inside it.
 * Last of His Kind: WALL-E has outlasted every one of the other robots in his series; Word of God says it was because
 * Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone:
 * Let's Get Dangerous: The Captain and also John and Mary.
 * Let's Get Dangerous: The Captain and also John and Mary.

"AUTO: "Not. Possible.""
 * Little No: EVE whispers "No...no..." after the escape pod WALL-E is in self-destructs.
 * AUTO has a flat, but firm "No." as well.
 * Load-Bearing Hero:
 * Lotus Eater Machine: The human spend their lives in a Lotus Eater Spaceship... sort of. Unlike most examples of this trope they're perfectly aware of the fact.
 * Love At First Sight: WALL-E for EVE. The pickings have been pretty slim for him.
 * For a mostly non-anthropomorphic robot, she is beautiful.
 * John and Mary too, though substitute "love at first physical contact with a human being in their entire lives."
 * Lucky Charms Title: Situated by the interpunct WALL•E.
 * MacGuffin Escort Mission: EVE's mission is.
 * Made of Iron: The cockroach survives being shot by EVE's Arm Cannon and stomped flat twice, and outruns WALL-E. A lot.
 * WALL-E himself takes a heck of a lot of punishment during the movie (and surviving his backstory is no mean feat either).
 * Well, he is made of iron.
 * Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: WALL-E is a shy, lonely, curious little robot, while EVE is determined, forceful and all-around forward.
 * Meaningful Echo: "Directive".
 * Meaningful Name: EVE; Shelby Forthright.
 * Axiom: a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true. By this point in time, people have stopped questioning their situation and accepted their lives as they are.
 * John and Mary, who get a lot of kids from nowhere.
 * Also, WALL-E's pronunciation of EVE ("Eevuh") could be discerned as Eva, the name for the Biblical Eve in certain other languages.
 * Medium Blending: The live-action segments.
 * Mega Corp: Buy-N-Large
 * The Messiah: WALL-E. Check the Wild Mass Guessing page for more.
 * Misfit Mobilization Moment:
 * Moe Anthropomorphism: Nearly every robot in the movie has a piece of humanization fanart lurking on deviantArt somewhere.
 * M-O, whose name should already be a direct indication about this. Andrew Stanton even admitted that they "turned up the cute dial too much" with this character.
 * Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: Surprisingly hard, right up until the moment EVE shows up with her internal anti-gravity drive.
 * Monochrome Casting: Try and find a non-white character with a speaking role. Go ahead, try. And let's not be obtuse and use the robots as examples.
 * In their defense, find anybody other than Mary, John, Captain, and the live-action Buy n' Large guy that actually talks. There is one black guy talking on the inter-person communication screens, and he gets the same amount of talking as pretty much anybody other than those four mentioned.
 * Mood Whiplash:
 * After
 * Neat Freak: M-O.
 * Note that before he shakes WALL-E's hand, he cleans it.
 * Never Trust a Trailer: Anyone else remember the trailers presenting this as "WALL-E vs. humanity for EVE?"
 * No Endor Holocaust: Purposefully invoked to avert the previously mentioned Inferred Holocaust of test audience invention.
 * No Flow in CGI: Granted, there isn't a lot in this film that does flow.
 * Non-Action Guy: WALL-E.
 * Not a Morning Person: WALL-E himself, by virtue of being low on solar charge in the morning.
 * No Waterproofing in the Future: The robot that supervises the swimming pool is not waterproof. Note that John and Mary were the only two people actually using the pool. And it doesn't seem to do much besides say rules.
 * Off the Rails: After a mustering of willpower, M-O jumps off the floor guideline to chase after WALL-E and his trail of foreign contaminants.
 * Oh Crap:


 * One-Wheeled Wonder: M-O
 * Only Sane Man: The Captain seems to be the only one aware of the pointlessness of this existence at first.
 * Open Sesame: A machine requires voice authorization from the Captain (parodied when all he can say is "uhh" and the machine accepts it).
 * Pac-Man Fever: Some how, an 830-year-old Pong console has survived the apocalypse. The humans on the Axiom are seen playing tennis with robots controlled by a variation of Pong, although it might have made more sense if they used a more current device made for the purpose of sports. Then again, that would take more physical effort on the part of the humans.
 * Post-Kiss Catatonia: WALL-E completely freezes the first time EVE "kisses" him..
 * Power Glows: Not only does EVE glow very faintly (the better to invoke a Gaussian Girl), her presence and touch cause electrical lights to glow as well.
 * Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: "You want it? Come and get it blinky."
 * Pre-Mortem One-Liner: ", you... are relieved of duty!"
 * Precision F-Strike: BURN-E delivers one of these (albeit in a mechanical tone) in the bonus features when he realizes he's cut through the new light he's supposed to be installing after being shocked by WALL-E and EVE flying by.
 * The transcript lists BURN-E's reaction to being locked outside the ship as "Crap."
 * Product Placement: WALL-E's makeshift television is an iPod with a magnifier in front of it.
 * EVE was designed by Jonathan Ive - product designer for Apple responsible for the design of the iMac, their laptops, the iPod and iPhone. Not coincidentally, Steve Jobs used to be both CEO of Apple and CEO of Pixar, until they merged with Disney, when he became the single largest shareholder of Disney/Pixar.
 * WALL-E's Boot-Up noise is also the noise a Mac makes when you turn it on.
 * AUTO is voiced by MacInTalk, the voice read-back program of Macintosh.
 * In-universe, Buy 'n' Large itself. Their logo even appears after the film credits alongside the Disney and Pixar logos, implying that the film itself is partly theirs.
 * Punny Name: Buy 'n' Large = By and large, also Buying large (amounts of products).
 * And "Wally" (definition 2 is probably the most apt).
 * All the robot's names are puns: EVE (obviously), Otto, Bernie...
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The malfunctioning robots from the repair ward.
 * Red Eyes, Take Warning: AUTO has a red eye. And he's the villain.
 * Reflective Eyes: The lens that make up WALL-E's eyes naturally do this.
 * Ridiculously-Human Robots: WALL-E teaches other robots human traits, and learned them himself from old recordings, but they all seem to have a really strong baseline to begin with.
 * Robo Cam
 * Robo Speak: The only one really guilty of this is AUTO, as the other robots can only say a few words, or use voice samples. They mostly communicate through beeps, hums, etc.
 * This fact allows for a few cases of Getting Crap Past the Radar - EVE seems to be the primary offender here. For example, when she makes a sound that is suspiciously similar to "crap!" Later, when she, it sounds rather like she sets off a literal Precision F-Strike (she makes a noise that sounds like 'Faaaah!').
 * There is another good example of this earlier when WALL-E is chasing EVE through the ship, on the way to the bridge. One of the robots he cuts off beeps something sounding very much like "Asshole".
 * The above examples may not count as getting anything past the radar. Robot speech is meant to sound completely random, so when these sounds were used, the people behind them probably weren't even thinking about how they sound a little like profanity. What matters is if the people MEANT for them to sound that way, so Your Mileage May Vary on whether it's coincidence or not since only those people know.
 * According to the closed captions, WALL-E says "pathetic" while he's hiding behind the towel cart.
 * Robot Names: Of the backronym variety:
 * WALL-E = Waste Allocation Load Lifter -- Earth Class, a global Earth-cleaning bot. He later meets his larger cousin, WALL-A, which of course, is Axiom Class.
 * EVE = Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator.
 * BURN-E the repair-bot locked outside the Axiom gets his own DVD bonus feature.
 * Many others. BRL-A (umbrella-bot), D-FIB (defibrillator-bot), M-O ("Moe"), PR-T ("pretty"), HAN-S (the massage bot), VAQ-M (vacuum-bot), VN-GO (the painter bot)...
 * M-O is stated in the DVD bonus material to stand for Microbe Obliterator.
 * Rule of Cool: The main reason for the 700 years.
 * Running Gag: M-O's never-ending quest to clean WALL-E (or, failing that, to clean up after him).
 * Saharan Shipwreck
 * Say My Name: Most of the robots' dialogue.
 * Say My Name Trailer: Following naturally from the above.
 * Scenery Gorn: Many loving shots of the ruined, abandoned, and frankly extremely bleak-looking megacity at the beginning of the film.
 * Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The first space sequence.
 * Self-Destruct Mechanism: In the escape pods, for some strange reason.
 * "Save The Last Bullet For Yourself"; in some situations, it would be wiser to kill oneself in an escape pod than have it captured by enemies for interrogation or whatever. But this really only means anything for military duty... And the Axiom isn't a battleship...
 * Possibly an option if rescue or recovery is an impossibility. Though both dying in a fiery explosion and starvation are both rather painful ways to die, explosions are at least quick...
 * Short Distance Phone Call: The first two humans WALL-E meets.
 * Shout-Out: Tons, see WALL-E Shout Outs.
 * Slow Electricity: The Hard Light barriers in the holding cells fail sequentially instead of all at once.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: Oh yeah. In the very first minute,
 * Space Clothes: Mostly monochromatic jumpsuits and no shoes. When people want to wear another outfit (to wit: 'blue is the new red') the clothes change without being taken off. This is apparently an attribute of the chairs they ride in, as the suits quickly change back to red once the chair's functions are disabled or the person gets out of it. Since the humans are never shown off their chairs we can also assume the jumpsuits are very ...hygienic.
 * Subverted with the Captain, as his nonelastic jacket is shown hanging off his shoulders, impossible to close.
 * The PR-Ts are said to help with hygiene as well as beautification.
 * Space Clouds: The Axiom is parked next to a nebula which initially hides its presence as the Earth-ship approaches.
 * Space Does Not Work That Way: Again, the first space sequence. But who cares, it looks really friggin' cool.
 * Space Is an Ocean: The part of the climactic sequence when the "Axiom" tilts in space and everybody slides to one side. This would make sense if the "Axiom" was a ship listing in the ocean, but it's in space. There is no external gravitational field. So there's no reason for everybody to slide to the side when the ship tilts, since the Artificial Gravity inside the ship is working fine. How the ship is oriented in space doesn't matter.
 * To be fair, we have no idea how the artificial gravity works. It's possible that there is some kind of gyroscopic effect that causes the force to be exerted in a constant direction, regardless of the orientation of the ship.
 * AUTO was also doing this intentionally to prevent the plant from getting to the Holo-Detector. Since he controls the whole ship, presumably he controls the gravity.
 * Space Is Cold: Averted. The robots function perfectly well in space, and the plant is unharmed from a brief stint in the vacuum before being sealed back into EVE's presumably airtight compartment.
 * Space Is Noisy: ...yeah, we'll repeat it again, who cares?
 * Space Sailing: The Axiom was definitely reminiscent of a sea-going cruise ship.
 * Turning the steering wheel too sharply even causes the ship to list.
 * Spanner in the Works: Now let's see what happens to this perfectly planned community in space when we add one robot not built for the community's function...
 * Stalker with a Crush / Stalking Is Love: WALL-E. You don't even have to think about it. They brought it up on the Blu-Ray geek track. "He's got stalker charm!"
 * While we're on the subject, Dude, She's Like, in a Coma. (Although nothing really happens. They're robots.)
 * Stand in Portrait: How the Captain is able to hide from Auto, as well as convince him that he has the plant. Makes sense, though, since we briefly see through Auto's one eye and he has little depth perception.
 * Stealth Pun:
 * Super Powered Robot Vegetation Scout: EVE, whose laser arm is capable of destroying dedicated guard robots. Possibly justified considering she probably surveys planets which may have hostile life.
 * WALL-E himself. He's amazingly heat resistant, capable of enduring buzzing the sun and Eve's ship's thrusters to no ill effects. He's also equipped with cutting laser (for cutting pieces too big for him to compact) and a music player (god only knows why). Not bad for a trash compactor.
 * But the prize goes to HAN-S. This massage robot curb stomps an entire squad of guard robots.
 * Synthetic Voice Actor: AUTO being voiced by MacinTALK, as noted above.
 * Technology Porn: In addition to all the robots and gadgets on the Axiom, there's the various loading/unloading/folding/rotating arms and waldos during EVE's expedition.
 * Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: EVE is sleeker, more slender, has a lighter color scheme and larger eyes then the more masculine WALL-E.
 * Theme Music Power-Up: When the Axiom's captain gets out of his hover-chair in order to turn off AUTO. This is accompanied by the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey (the opening for "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss).
 * Theme Tune Cameo: A slight aversion, since there's true "theme music", but, if you listen closely during the titular robot's first appearance, you can hear WALL-E whistle and chirp the tune of "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" as the camera focuses closer and closer on the devastated Earth, and as the first couple verses of "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" fade away.
 * They Should Have Sent a Poet: Once WALL-E boards the space craft. Or when he's viewing the universe. Woah indeed.
 * This Cannot Be!
 * Time Passes Montage: Several, some more subtle than others. WALL-E's initial courtship with EVE, EVE's hibernation upon finding the plant, WALL-E's trip through space, and the credit sequence. Interestingly, none of these montages provide any cues as to how much time is passing. They could take place over anything from a number of days, to many years or even centuries. Because the robots are functionally immortal, there's just no way to tell.
 * Although the plant that EVE is carrying doesn't grow at all, and between her picking it up and arriving on the AXIOM it is only just starting to dehydrate. In real life that would take less than a week, but the film implies that several seasons have passed just waiting for EVE's dropship to return... probably a built-in stasis field.
 * Tinman Typist: The Axiom is full of them. Especially notable is AUTO. Whereas the others could maybe be excused by being separate mobile units, AUTO is built into the bridge itself.
 * SUPPLY-R from the BURN-E short does this for the one thing that seems to be his entire function.
 * Trash of the Titans: Earth is covered with garbage, including a layer of defunct satellites in the upper atmosphere which spaceships have to plow through.
 * Trigger Happy: Upon arriving on Earth, EVE shoots pretty much anything that moves. She does learn to calm down.
 * True Love's Kiss:
 * Tsundere: EVE. Well, she's a girl with a temper that falls in love, anyway.
 * Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Well, a worn, rusted trash compactor and a sleek, futuristic robot, anyway.
 * Invoked Trope.
 * Understatement: "We're having a slight malfunction -- [SLAM!] -- with "
 * Unusual User Interface: In the future, even advanced robots like COM-T will use keyboards and the hunt and peck method of typing... but the buttons will be nothing but Zeroes and Ones.
 * AUTO even uses the standard human approach of "If it doesn't work, press harder."
 * In his defense, it would have worked,
 * Counter to that, applying pressure enough to break the button while giving it a massive electric shock should have just shorted out the button's attached circuit completely and caused it to stop functioning.
 * Used Future: Played as straight as it gets with Earth, but adverted aboard the Axiom, which looks just as clean and shiny as when it was launched 700 years ago.
 * Villainous Breakdown: Upon realizing that WALL-E and EVE are very close to, begins to subtly lose his cold, logical demeanor, sending . When WALL-E tries to prevent the platform from descending, a clearly-panicked jabs the button increasingly rapidly. Then presses it so hard the glass cracks. Then tasers it.
 * Visual Pun: When EVE wakes up in the bowels of the Axiom, she's covered in strange oval machines that scamper away, clicking. Yeah, they're mice.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: AUTO, arguably. Either that or he was afraid of becoming obsolete upon returning to Earth.
 * He was probably just aggressively following his program.
 * A program ordered by another Well-Intentioned Extremist, the CEO of Buy-N-Large, Shelby Forthworth.
 * White and Grey Morality: There are no clear villains in WALL-E. The humans of the story, once jolted out of their reverie,
 * Wiki Walk: The Captain becomes entranced by the encyclopedia of Earth life. We leave him at the entry for "Sea" and come back at the entry for "Hoedown".
 * Wingding Eyes: EVE. Full stop.
 * Wiper Start: WALL-E's attempts to cancel the escape pod's self-destruct sequence activate just about every other gadget it has, including, yes, wipers.
 * A World Half Full
 * The World Is Just Awesome: The humans' reaction when they first actually notice their surroundings, having been so immersed in their luxuries that they failed to notice everything around them.
 * Worthless Yellow Rocks: WALL-E finds a diamond ring in a box, and tosses the ring aside to play with the box. And walks on a carpet of dollar, er, B&L bills.
 * Reiterated in the 2009 Oscar's Animation Yearbook montage, where WALL-E finds an Oscar statue and a battered tape of said montage inside the plant's fridge. He naturally tosses the statue and takes the tape back home to watch. Ironic in that WALL-E had just won Best Animated Feature.
 * X Meets Y: Fallout meets 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Portal, if Aperture Science was owned by Steve Jobs.
 * X Meets Y: Fallout meets 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Portal, if Aperture Science was owned by Steve Jobs.