In Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers, animated characters stay alongside live-action people — and never simply Disney characters. The film follows the two cartoon chipmunks, voiced by John Mulaney and Andy Samberg, as they reunite years after their present Rescue Rangers was canceled. As they seek for a lacking co-star from the present, their journey takes them throughout Hollywood, the place they meet cartoon characters from all through animation historical past. Practically each screenshot of Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers is full of Easter eggs and visible references, from Seth Rogen’s Pumbaa from the “live-action” CG Lion King remake to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic’s Mane Six working throughout a conference ground.
But one among the director’s favourite cameos — and definitely the one he’s proudest of — is a smaller hat-tip that may get misplaced amid the greater, flashier references. It additionally pays homage to one among the unique creators of the Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers tv present, Tad Stones.
“He co-created with another guy named Alan Zaslove back in the ’90s,” explains director and Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer. “Alan was much older, like the mentor, and he has since passed away at an old age. Tad is still alive and well. And I got to Zoom with him a bunch and ask tons of questions.”
In addition to creating Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Stones additionally wrote and produced Darkwing Duck and produced different Disney exhibits, like Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and the Hercules and Aladdin animated TV spinoffs. He’s labored on quite a lot of direct-to-video Disney sequels, equivalent to Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar and Aladdin and the King of Thieves.
Stones doesn’t make a bodily look in the film. Instead, his cameo is available in the type of a cellphone name, a tiny little reference that may go unnoticed except you’re intimately conversant in the voices of late-Eighties and early-Nineteen Nineties animators.
“In the movie, there’s a moment when [Chip and Dale] are in [their] young Hollywood times and they’re trying to get their career started, and they get the phone call,” Schaffer tells Polygon. “And there’s a voice on the other end that’s like a Disney executive saying Chip, Dale, how would you like your own show? And that’s Tad [Stones]’s voice.”
Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers is out on Disney Plus on May 20.
