10 Heart-Breaking Pixar Backstories You Probably Missed

7. The Missing Adventurers - Up

If there was a prize for the quickest tear-jerk in cinematic history, Up would probably win it twice for the opening montage, but even when the film leaves that beautiful bleak sequence behind for a more intrepid spirit it is a surprisingly haunted film. The past plays a major part in the film's narrative themes: not least in Carl's love of Ellie, but also in everything that goes into the character of Charles Muntz.

Haunted by the ghosts of his past ridicule and his continued failed attempts to discover and capture the snipe (despite the fact that the creature apparently wants nothing more than to be discovered when Carl and Russell turn up) he is a dangerous shut-in who has crafted a bubble of protection for himself. And when he lets his mask of sanity slip, he lets on that he's basically a serial killer having "disappeared" several other explorers he saw as threats, whose only crime was basically being exactly the same as Carl and Russell. That's pretty grim.

And not only that, he also mentions the countless lost dogs he's suffered over the years, which has a faintly sinister edge to it. Especially since he's serving meat that seem so readily available to him...