10 Times Doctor Who Appeared In Movies

8. Cars 2

Encanto Doctor Who TARDIS
Disney

A much more subtle reference now, one found during the finale of Pixar's Cars 2.

Here, British spy cars Holley Shiftwell and Finn McMissile are captured and tied up inside Big Ben. To escape, Holley determines that she must change the direction of the clock (or "turn back time", as she puts it), and while she's struggling to do this, she also states "if I can just reverse the polarity".

"Reverse the polarity", as Who fans will know, is one of the most famous phrases in the show, spoken by many Doctors across the classic and modern eras - though it's most associated with Jon Pertwee's Third incarnation.

Considering the timey-wimey context of this Cars 2 scene, there's no way the line was anything other than a nod to Doctor Who. And with Disney now involved in Doctor Who directly, it's fun to look back on this in retrospect!

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.