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This Protagonist was Headlined on November 2021. | ||
Riley Andersen is the overarching protagonist of Disney/Pixar's Inside Out franchise.
She is an 11-year-old girl (later 12 in the epilogue as well as Dream Productions and 13 in the sequel) who loves ice hockey. She was uprooted from her happy and simple life in Minnesota, and taken to San Francisco, California, where she experiences various changes in her life. Her emotions (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger) help her through this tough time, ensuring her well-being. After reaching puberty, Riley gets a new set of emotions: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, Ennui, and Nostalgia.
Personality[]
Riley's emotions contribute to her primary behaviors in the film. Overall, Riley is an upbeat, honest, and goofy person when she is content. However, in adolescence, Riley becomes more sentimental, shy, and uncertain of herself as her other emotions begin to appear. By the time her family moves to San Francisco, she starts to be more troubled, irked, and lonely. Her emotions at this point try to help her get adjusted to the new life. Riley can second-guess herself, but she doesn't always repent her actions.
Riley really misses Minnesota and is unable to cope with the transition. However, Riley is afraid to tell her parents her true feelings as they want her to accept the new home and because she has always been their "happy girl".
As time goes on, however, Riley becomes emotionally vulnerable, entering a sort of numb state of mind and coming to the point where she tries to run away, almost losing herself in the process. But it is here that she realizes that she has almost given up on the things that matter most to her in life, and realizes the risk just in time. Returning home and admitting to her parents that she's greatly depressed, Riley learns to accept San Francisco when her parents comfort her over the personal loss, and Riley (with the guidance of her emotions) eventually adapts to her new home in San Francisco.
With Riley's emotions now working all together and without one superseding the other, it would seem she had reached emotional stability. However, once she reaches puberty, she starts to feel her emotions more deeply, with even the smallest emotional stimuli being amplified. After learning her best friends wouldn't go to the same high school as her, Riley's behavior suffered a sudden change, with her usual upbeat and happy demeanor becoming anxious, as she tries desperately to make the hockey team of her future high school and be friends with a new crowd so she wouldn't be alone to the point of abandoning her old friends and feeling embarrassed whenever she tries to express her true feelings.
Her desire to become friends with the popular girls caused her anxiety to become even worse, as she started to change everything about her to better blend in, even if that meant to do things she didn't like. After learning the coach deemed her not ready for the team, Riley started to project everything that could go wrong, leading her to have the idea to outdo Val, the best player, when she was a freshman. However, that caused Riley to feel like she was not good enough, leading her to act selfish during the final game and accidentally hurt one of her best friends. Eventually, Riley's anxiety culminated in a big anxiety attack. Only when she vented her worries to her old friends and they reassured her they would never stop being friends, Riley was able to finally find her joyful self and let go of her anxiety.
Appearance[]
In the first film, Riley is an 11-year-old preteen (later 12) with a slender figure. She has shoulder length dirty blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. Both her parents have brown hair and brown eyes, implying that both the dirty blonde hair and cornflower-blue eyes are recessive traits. She has very faint freckles around her nose, and she also has a noticeable gap between her two front teeth. In the second film, Riley is now 13 years old. Her hair becomes sandy blonde and has grown longer, and she puts it up in a ponytail, just like her mother. She also has prominent braces on her teeth and an acne mark on her chin to signify her transition into puberty.
Riley is seen in a variety of outfits throughout the film. In the teaser trailer, she wears a long-sleeved shirt with thin horizontal red, yellow, and light green zigzag lines, brown pants, and red Converse sneakers. On her first day of school, she adds a yellow jacket to this outfit. When Riley experiences a brain freeze, she changes into a solid pink short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and green Converse sneakers. Upon arriving in San Francisco, she dons a long-sleeved rainbow shirt, blue jeans, and pink socks. During her period of depression when her Personality Islands break down, Riley's outfit becomes a black hoodie, black shirt, black jeans, and dark shoes. For pajamas, she wears a green short-sleeved shirt with blue trim featuring a koala bear on the front and dark blue sweatpants. In the second film, her pajamas changed to her father's old 'Brang' t-shirt and black sweatpants.
In the book, Don't get Angry!, she's seen wearing a large-sleeved pink shirt.
In the second film, her wardrobe currently consists of an azure blue zip-up sweater with a hood over a mint green t-shirt mixed with pastel blue, purple, and light yellow, black leggings, white socks with yellow and purple stripes, and black Chuck Converse-style sneakers with white soles. A flashback of how her sense of self is formed shows her being her 12-year-old self where she wears a blue jacket with the Foghorns logo and some blue jeans. She now has a seafoam green hair clip for her bangs. By the final scene before the titles, her wardrobe was replenished with a blue plaid shirt with pink and green stripes over a white t-shirt.
Biography[]
Inside Out[]
Riley plays a significant role in the movie. Her thoughts are its primary focus and place. Riley's first living feeling, joy, is imagined when she is born, and she smiles directly at her parents. Riley starts crying a few seconds later as another feeling called Sadness shows up. Riley's happiness returns as Joy drives Sadness aside. Riley begins to mature in Minnesota over time, and she begins to experience additional feelings such as disgust, anger, and fear. Riley hardly experiences any sadness at all and is almost always joyful and upbeat. Happiness and delight allow delight to inadvertently treat Sadness badly. Riley excels as a player for the Prairie Dogs, Riley's hockey team.
Riley becomes depressed and misses her life in Minnesota when it comes time for her and her parents to relocate to San Francisco. Riley's mood shifts from upbeat and cheerful to emotional and melancholy as she longs for her Minnesotan past, not to mention how awful their new home is and how the only pizza offered at a restaurant is broccoli pizza. Joy tries all in her power to stop Riley from getting even sadder. As Sadness tells Riley's class about the good old days in Minnesota, she unintentionally makes her cry in front of the class, which makes everything worse. This results in the unfortunate creation of new core memory. Joy chooses to eliminate it because she doesn't want Riley to ever feel depressed. However, Joy and Sadness physically disappear from Riley's consciousness during a fight, leaving the others to attempt to reason with Riley but ultimately making him irritable, withdrawn, and violent.
Things start to get worse from that point on. Riley has a video conversation with her old buddy Meg from Minnesota the next day. Everything is going great until Meg tells Riley about her new best friend's miracles. Riley feels betrayed and becomes so enraged that she hangs up on Meg. She struggles to do well in the hockey tryouts, in part because anger controls her. Riley is upset after his great slap shot misses the goal.
Riley resolves to flee and return to Minnesota because she finds everything in San Francisco to be awful and because she misses Minnesota so much (a notion that Anger came up with, thinking it would be best for her). She leaves school, takes her mother's credit card, and boards a bus to return to Minnesota. Riley experiences internal conflict and eventually loses interest in life due to her severe depression. Riley ultimately decides to escape back home after realizing what she's doing is wrong after she and Sadness return to Headquarters. Riley admits that she was acting as though she was still happy and that she misses the good old days in Minnesota when she returns to her anxious parents. Riley at last expresses her sentiments once her parents acknowledge that they also miss Minnesota. Before long, things are beginning to improve for the Andersens. Riley has new islands in her head and is playing hockey with the Fog Horns, a brand-new team, a year later. At last, she's come to terms with San Francisco as her new home.
Inside Out 2[]
Riley's emotions are happily tending to her during a hockey game and preparing her for high school. As they work in tandem, the emotions have created a sub-basement in Headquarters called the "Sense of Self" where they place the memories that help build Riley's character. This results in the creation of a ball of strands that voices Riley's inner self; "I am a good person". Joy has also built a pipe that shoots out terrible memories that they want to forget to the "back of the mind". Riley wants to try out for her high school's hockey team, the Fire Hawks, and the emotions make sure that Riley feels her best self.
In the middle the night, the emotions are awoken by the sound of the puberty alarm. Headquarters is suddenly swarmed with workers who proceed to take apart the place and make additions to the control board. They leave without having finished, but warn them of new people coming in. The emotions quickly learn that their effect on Riley is much more unstable with her overreacting over minute details. Riley gets ready to go to hockey camp with her friends Grace and Bree. She calms down when she voices her intent for the three of them to make the Fire Hawks together, but Grace reveals that she and Bree are actually going to another high school, much to Riley's worry.
Upon arriving at camp, the emotions are shocked to be greeted by Anxiety, a new emotion who constantly concerns herself with the worst case scenario in Riley's future. They also meet Envy, who is constantly jealous and amused at the other's traits, Embarrassment, who rarely speaks to the others, Ennui, who chills out on her couch and alters the control board with her phone, and Nostalgia, who constantly reflects on the past, but remains downstairs throughout the majority of the film.
Riley runs into her idol Valentina "Val" Ortiz who became a Fire Hawk during her freshman year. Anxiety and Envy ensure that Riley comes off as assured in front of Val, though they manage to make it incredibly awkward. When Riley struggles with either going with Val or her friends, Anxiety forces Riley to ignore her Sense of Self. While in the locker room, Joy gets Riley to goof off with Grace and Bree, however Coach Roberts catches them and orders everyone to give up their phones and has them do exercises, making Riley embarrassed.
Anxiety continues to push Riley to look cool in front of Val and ignore Grace and Bree. To accomplish this, she takes her Sense of Self and launches it to the back of the mind. Anxiety tells Joy that she needs to reinvent Riley for the future and has Embarrassment literally bottle up Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, and Fear and send them all the way back to the vault along with Riley's other hidden beliefs and emotions. In the meantime, Anxiety gets Riley to get back on Val's good side and motivates her to practice extra hard and to look good in front of her and Coach Roberts.
While in the vault, the emotions meet Bloofy and Pouchy, characters from a cartoon show that Riley still likes, Lance Slashblade, a video game character that Riley and Disgust have a crush on, and Deep Dark Secret, a large being that hides Riley's most terrible secret. Deep Dark Secret breaks them out of their bottle while Pouchy produces a stick of dynamite to help them get out. Lance manages to defeat the security guards (by rolling into a ball and inadvertently knocking them into each other) and the emotions escape. They find the stream of consciousness and Joy plans for them to find Riley's Sense of Self at the back of the mind and coerces Sadness to go back up to Headquarters so that she can recall them back via walkie talkies.
Anxiety continues to have Riley alienate her friends in favor of Val and her group. During this time, she has her sarcastically quip about a band she likes, has her eating a protein bar that lacks flavor, and pushes her to constantly overwork herself, making her act out. Joy, Anger, Disgust, and Fear's journey to the back of Riley's mind is blocked off by the Sar-chasm, forcing them to go the long way around through the aisles of Riley's long term memory.
After Fear, Disgust, and Anger voice their frustration with their predicament, Joy admits that she does not know what to do and that she feels hopeless and pushed to her limit over constantly having an upbeat attitude. The others apologize and proceed to venture further. They eventually get to Imagination Land, but find that everything is being rearranged, save for "Mount Crushmore". They find that the massive pillow fort has been converted into a studio that creates future anxieties for Riley. The emotions convince the workers to envision positive ideas for Riley. While this causes Riley to be put at ease, this upsets Anxiety as she finds them unrealistic. The workers start ignoring Anxiety and the emotions flee from security.
The emotions run into a literal parade of future jobs and capture a balloon of Riley as a judge and fly away. Back at Headquarters, Sadness has holed herself up in a corner trying to read through the manuals for an answer. She is found out by Embarrassment, but he chooses to keep quiet about her existence. Anxiety decides to pull ideas, portrayed as light bulbs, so that she can make Riley change her mind. They call upon several, causing a brain storm to form and hindering Joy, Disgust, Anger, and Fear's adventure. They ultimately escape the storm, but a giant light bulb is brought back to Headquarters.
Anxiety has Riley get out of bed and head to Coach Roberts' office so that she can see how well she is doing at camp. Sadness manages to get Ennui's phone to prevent her from going through with it, but she is found out and captured. The emotions discover that Riley is "not ready yet", causing Anxiety to suggest completely devoting themselves to making themselves look better than everyone else. Riley's new Sense of Self forms, created entirely with Anxiety's emotions, and now utters "I'm not good enough", though Anxiety insists that it will go away eventually.
Joy, Disgust, Anger, and Fear finally reach the back of the mind and climb the mountain of abandoned memories. They found the Sense of Self and contact Sadness who managed to escape thanks to Embarrassment. She is too late to save the other emotions as Anxiety tears apart the pipe back. Joy finally breaks down as she is incapable of trying to put together how to save Riley who has grown into a self-conscious, self-hating individual. Anger calls upon Pouchy who gives them a lot of dynamite so that they can ride a flood of memories back to Headquarters.
During her hockey game, Riley injures Grace and is sidelined, causing her to have an anxiety attack, caused by Anxiety rapidly attempting to fix Riley and creating a wind storm in Headquarters. The rest of the emotions return with the memories imbuing themselves into the threads of Riley's Sense of Self. As they make it back to the top, Joy reaches out to Anxiety telling that everything will be okay and that she needs to let Riley go, freeing her from her own anxiety.
Joy places the original Sense of Self on the pedestal, but it is not enough to stop the storm. Realizing that pushing her mistakes to the back of her mind limited Riley's world view, Joy removes the Sense of Self and allows the flood of memories to create a new one, making Riley complex and emotional. Grace and Bree check on Riley who admits that she was upset over them going to different high schools and wanted to prove herself to make up for it. She apologizes for how she behaved and Grace and Bree forgive her, promising her that they will always be friends. The control panel willingly calls Joy to make Riley happy now that she is better.
Riley continues to warm up with Val and the rest of the Fire Hawks while still keeping tabs on Grace and Bree. Anxiety now has a corner for herself so that she can relax, Embarrassment becomes more open, though he is still shy, and the rest of the Emotions embrace their expanding family, though Nostalgia still remains in the basement. Riley, now having an ever changing Sense of Self, continues to live her life as she gets a text about her possible Fire Hawks recruitment. She opens it and smiles.
In the mid-credits scene, Riley's parents ask her how hockey camp went. The emotions grow worried, but Ennui simply has her say it was alright. Mom's emotions start to wonder what Riley meant by that, then Mom's Anxiety appeared when she looked at her red locks and wondered if she joined a band. And Mom's Sadness welcomed Mom's Anxiety back to Headquarters while Dad's Anxiety appeared and wondering the same thing that Mom's emotions wondered, and Dad's emotions affirmed that it's exactly what Riley said. Then they to go back to watching the game.
In the post credits scene, Joy lets Deep Dark Secret out and asks what his secret is. He admits that Riley was the one who burnt the hole in the rug, with Joy admitting that she thought it was when she peed in the pool. This causes Deep Dark Secret to lock himself in the vault again.
External Links[]
- Riley Andersen on the Neutral Characters Wiki
- Riley Andersen on the Pixar Wiki
- Riley Andersen on the Disney Wiki
- Riley Andersen on the Inside Out Wiki
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 Protagonists
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Animated Features Live-Action Features Animated Television Live-Action Television Video Games Shorts Comics See Also | ||
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Humans Riley's Mind | ||
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