Oh sure, how original.

If you’re lucky enough to walk by Brandon’s desk in the Salt Lake City, Utah Regional Center, you will surely catch a glimpse of Maui, his 10-month old Golden Retriever curled up by his feet. 

Maui is Brandon’s service dog and helps make his daily tasks easier, providing much-needed pressure therapy and stress relief.  But what makes Maui even more unique is that he’s one of the first service dogs to get his own Fidelity ID security badge. Maui’s badge number is “k9k9k9” and the title on his badge reads “Relationship Specialist.” He proudly wears it on his blue service dog vest when he accompanies his human to work every day.   

For Brandon, having Maui by his side has changed his life, both personally and professionally. Aside from providing silent comfort, Maui keeps Brandon on task and reminds him to take his medications as well as much-needed breaks.   

“Maui is namely here to help me keep focus on work and stay healthy without having to resort to more drastic measures, such as taking more leave or time off from work,” said Brandon, an Inheritor Service Specialist. “Fidelity has been amazing to work with when it comes to having a service dog. They just asked for some standard paperwork, and very quickly got it processed." 

Giving Maui his very own Fidelity ID badge was Mark’s idea. As the Senior Manager of Security at the Salt Lake Regional Center, Mark registers ID badges to new employees all the time. He said that creating a special badge for Maui was a positive way to raise badge awareness among associates. 

"Seeing a dog strutting around happily and proud with their own badge will be a quick reminder to always have your badge prominently displayed for our personnel,” he said. 

In The Lion King, unlike the other lions, Scar’s claws are always displayed throughout the movie.

In The Little Mermaid (1998) when King Triton is introduced, you can see Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Kermit the Frog in the crowd, underwater.

In Cars, the flies are actually tiny cars with wings.

In Hercules (1997) the Fates tell Hades all the planets will align but only show 6 planets aligning. These are the 5 planets plus Earth that the ancient Greeks were aware of and could see with the naked eye.

In Zootopia, while Officer Judy Hopps is ticketing cars around the city, she never crosses the street illegally. She always uses a crosswalk and looks both ways before crossing.

In monsters inc, sully’s chair has a hole in it to accommodate his tail.

In The Brave Little Toaster, all of the walls in the cottage are cleaned only as high as Blanky can reach.

In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, during the food storm the president’s of Mount Rushmore get pied in the face but Abe gets hit in the back just like his assassination.

In Cars the truck stop advertises “convertible waitresses” i.e., topless.

In Finding Nemo, Bruce the shark starts crying when Marlin starts talking about Nemo, saying “I never knew my father”. Male sharks mate with the female then leave, so baby sharks never actually meet their father.

The Magic Carpet from Aladdin makes an appearance in Moana.

In UP, there are craft supplies on the table by Ellie’s hospital bed when she gives the Adventure Book to Carl.

The hold up scene in the Incredibles is actually an homage to a similar scene from Die Hard with a Vengeance, which also starred Samuel L. Jackson.

In Toy Story 3 (2010) Buzz Lightyear’s batteries are exposed showing the Buy n Large brand, the same company responsible for making WALL·E.

In Ratatouille (2007) Anton Ego’s typewriter resembles a skull and his office a coffin.

In Monsters, Inc. (2001), there are multiple sizes of coffee cup for each of the different sized monsters.

In Toy Story 2 (1999), as the restorationist is going through his equipment, he opens a drawer filled with chess pieces. This is a reference to the Pixar short “Geri’s Game” where a similar looking man plays a game of chess against himself.

In Inside Out (2015) while going through Imagination Land a game box can be seen in the background with Nemo on it called Find Me.

In Cars, you can spot Sully and Mike in cars form!

At the end of Ratatouille (2007) Anton Ego is a little bit fatter. This is especially poignant since he states, “I don’t like food, I love it… if I don’t love it I don’t swallow.”

In Coco we can see The Incredibles poster.

Insuricare, the company that offers “car life insurance” to the cars in Cars 2, is the same company Bob Parr works for in The Incredibles.

In Inside Out (2015) two of the memory orbs on the shelves contain scenes from Up (2009). One features Carl & Ellie’s wedding, while the other shows their house.

In Toy Story Woody is trapped in a crate which is stuck under a ‘Binford’ tool-box. Binford is the fictional tool company in the TV show Home Improvement which starred Tim Allen, the voice of Buzz Lightyear.

In The Incredibles, in Bob Parr’s home office, there’s a photo from a fishing trip where it appears he caught Bruce from Finding Nemo.

In Cars 2 (2011) while in a pub in London there is a tapestry on the wall that is the DunBroch family tapestry from Brave (2012), except they are portrayed as cars.

In “Ratatouille” (2007), Linguini has to hide Remy before his second day of work. He offers to hide him in his pants, revealing his briefs covered in The Incredibles logo.

After the plane is blown up in The Incredible, Helen (Elastigirl) knows the plane debris is going to fall on them due to seeing the reflection in the water.

Here it is, canon evidence that Salazar Slytherin was NOT a racist bigot. He was concerned for the well-being and safety of the magical community, which could have been compromised by letting the “common people” know that wizards and witches existed.

The conservationist and history nerd in me feels a pang whenever I think about how much of a loss that basilisk was. I know it was being used for murder and that it needed to be stopped, but it’s a knee-jerk reaction to such a huge loss of knowledge. That thing was alive a thousand years ago. It knew one of the original founders of Hogwarts. Any parselmouth could have spoken to it and asked it what things were really like in those days and gotten a first hand account, but unfortunately the only person to speak to it in a millennium was an idiot who only thought about killing people. Did he even think to ask its name? Nagini clearly had a name, but he never refers to the basilisk by name. That’s just… really sad to me.

Imagine that Slytherin was afraid of a scenario where Hogwarts was betrayed by some (not all) muggleborns—or by their muggle relatives. Say you’re a 10th century muggle & you find out your child is a witch–how supportive are you likely to be? Keep in mind we’ve already seen how quick, even now, 1,000 years later, too many families are to betray and even kill their own kids for not being ‘normal’ (think of lgbtqa+ youth, for instance). And in this scenario, these muggles were a danger not only to their muggleborn kids, but to the entire Hogwarts community. What was to stop a bigoted relative of a muggleborn from gathering up an angry mob and invading the castle, beauty and the beast style? 

Well, we know Hogwarts has certain protections from muggles. Muggles can’t see or access the castle, for example, at least in modern day. So theoretically, muggles would need magical assistance to invade Hogwarts. And since the only magical beings they knew in the first place were muggleborns….

Imagine that Slytherin was motivated not by bigotry but by serious concern for the school’s safety in the case of being betrayed by a muggleborn student. Now ‘betrayal’ could mean a muggleborn being pressured or outright forced by muggles to help with an invasion. We’ve seen plenty of times in the books characters being forced to choose between loyalty and fear, between friends and family, between what they know is right and what they are pressured to believe. To put it in a familiar way: to choose between what is right, and what is easy. And we saw characters makes the wrong choices, and the great costs that followed. 

So what if “those who are unworthy to study magic” never meant muggleborns? What if it meant those who would betray Hogwarts (muggle, muggleborn, or otherwise), or (more relevantly) those who would fail to protect it when protecting it came at the cost of their lives, or the lives of their families. An unfair, impossible situation to be in. But a situation that 10th century muggleborn students were very likely to be put in, far more likely than their magicborn peers.

For Slytherin, the best solution was the safest one: don’t risk letting them get into that position in the first place. Don’t risk making muggleborns choose between the magical and non-magical world. By not giving them the choice in the first place. Let them stay in the non-magic world, where they could be safe, and where they could not endanger others. This would come at great cost—to the muggleborns who would never receive their Hogwarts letter, would never receive their birthright, and to the magical world who would never receive the gifts and talents and wonders all the muggleborns had to offer.