Disney•Pixar’s Finding Dory marks the return of everyone’s favorite forgetful blue tang Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), who’s living happily in the reef with Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) and Nemo (voiced by Hayden Rolence). When Dory suddenly remembers that she has a family who may be looking for her, the trio goes on an adventure across the ocean to find her mom (voiced by Diane Keaton) and dad (voiced by Eugene Levy), making new friends and reuniting with old ones, along the way.

During press conferences at the film’s press day, actors Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence, Ed O’Neill (who voiced the cantankerous octopus Hank), Ty Burrell (who voiced Bailey, a beluga whale who is convinced his biological sonar skills are on the fritz) and Kaitlin Olson (who voiced Destiny, a near-sighted whale shark), along with director Andrew Stanton and producer Lindsey Collins, talked about returning to this world after 13 years, the importance of Dory’s self-acceptance, that no one should be defined by their flaws, blending the previous cast of characters with the new, how Sigourney Weaver got involved, and whether or not there really is a lesbian couple in the film. We’ve compiled a list of 25 things that you should know about Finding Dory.

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    Image via Pixar
    Finding Dory comes 13 years after Finding Nemo, and director Andrew Stanton said that’s because he just wasn’t expecting to ever go back. “Four years with fish is a long time to work on a movie, and I thought Nemo was a closed circuit. I finished the picture and moved on. And then, suddenly I was watching the movie again in 2011, when I had to see the 3D version, and I walked out very worried about Dory and couldn’t stop thinking about how she needed closure.”
  • Ellen DeGeneres, who first voiced Dory for Finding Nemo, campaigned for years for a sequel, never realizing that the sequel would turn out to be Dory’s story. Because a lot of kids will likely be seeing Finding Dory first, they didn’t want to rely on the history of Finding Nemo. You can watch the films in either order and still have an enjoyable experience.
  • Stanton always knew that the film would be about Dory’s self-acceptance, but it took a long time to nail down the specificity of that. The premise ultimately became, you’re not at peace until you can truly accept who you are. She was always going to be unsettled until she experienced what it was like to succeed on her own, completely. She had learned how to survive in the wild by being the best co-pilot, ever, but that meant she was always dependent on somebody else to be successful. The only way she would feel completely fulfilled would be if she could do it all by herself.
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    DeGeneres loves Dory and everything she stands for, and would love to have all of her traits. She said, “I try to have as many traits of hers as I can, as far as optimism, perseverance, non-judgement, not having any resentment, not holding onto anger, and not feeling like a victim. I think that’s why she’s such a lovable character. She just thinks everything is possible. She never, for a second, thinks anything is wrong with anyone else or herself. She just keeps swimming.”
  • “Just keep swimming” is a mantra that is such a genuine, lovely sentiment in the film, and it seemed so important to who Dory is, so they wanted to make it personal to her and connected to “What would Dory do?” The power is in those two things combined together. And then, there is also the more subtle theme of “Rescue, rehabilitation and release.”
  • The kelp forest was something held over from Finding Nemo. They couldn’t find a spot for it in Nemo, but were able to use it in Dory, and that led them to her backstory and the aquarium. Said Stanton, “It’s so unique. It’s like redwood trees underwater, and there’s nothing else like it. Literally, that was the problem. There was nothing like that in the Great Barrier Reef. So, when I could make Dory’s past be from anywhere, we decided to start there because it’s a cool environment. Now, I can look back and see that there’s more meaning behind it. With Nemo, I was in open water, traveling and searching for Nemo, all over, which was very much like traveling the desert. With Dory, it’s like the forest in a fairy tale. In fairy tales, secrets are hidden in the forest and things are discovered in the forest, and that put us right by the coastline. Once we looked back at Dory’s unintentional bread crumb trail, and her odd, eclectic knowledge, we realized she had to have been around humanity.”
  • In an early script, there was a moment where Dory was revisiting her exhibit and everything she had ever said had an association on the wall, like Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects. It was funny in the moment, but they decided not to use it because you would need to be an expert on Finding Nemo.
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    Image via Disney
    Dory’s specific disability is meant to represent everyone, whether you have a handicap or you’re just trying to overcome your flaws. Nobody is perfect. We just are who we are, and you have to embrace and enjoy that, good and bad. Dory doesn’t define anyone by their flaws.
  • DeGeneres has her own memory problems, but not as bad as Dory’s short-term memory loss. Instead of any special tricks to remember, she just tries to live in the moment and enjoy the moments that she has.
  • When deciding who to bring over from Nemo and how to balance that with new characters, the filmmakers let the story tell them what will work and what the story is asking for. They have four years to work on the movie, so they spent a lot of time making sure characters wouldn’t take away from Dory’s story.
  • Everybody in this cast that was new was Stanton’s first choice. Because this was technically the sequel for a hit movie, all of the actors took his phone call.
  • Hank (voiced by Ed O’Neill), the octopus, is the Dory, or sidekick, of this movie. Ed O’Neill didn’t realize just how influential and appealing Hank would be until he saw the first footage at D23.
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    Image via Disney
    Hank was a very challenging character to animate. An octopus has no skeletal structure and can move around anywhere, smush down and expand. It took two years to animate the first shot of the animal, compared to the usual six months.
  • For Albert Brooks, returning to voice Marlin, Nemo’s father, was easy for him. He said, “You create a character, and as long as your voice is the same and your health is the same, you’re back into it. It happened so quickly, it was scary. In 30 seconds, it was like no time had passed.”
  • Hayden Rolence was a big Finding Nemo fan, long before he came to be voicing Nemo, this time around. He was a bit nervous to take over a role that was so beloved by people, and he wanted to be sure to do the character justice.
  • Eugene Levy, who voice Charlie, Dory’s father, most loved the family element of the story because it’s about such human feelings. It keeps things tangible and real.
  • Kaitlin Olson, who voices Destiny, the whale shark, learned that hers is the largest fish and they have no teeth, so you can swim with them.
  • Ty Burrell, who voices Bailey, the Beluga whale, said he over thought his role a bit and came in with a specific voice. Because the character looked congested to him, he did a voice to fit a whale with a cold, but then was told just to use his own voice for the character.
  • Olson and Burrell got a brother-sister vibe from their characters, Destiny and Bailey. And the relationship they had with Dory at the Aquarium resulted from the desire to take care of each other.
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    Image via Disney
    Idris Elba and Dominic West were cast as Fluke and Rudder, two sea lions, because Stanton wanted his own personal The Wire. He loved the idea that they got to just be themselves and be mates.
  • The use of Sigourney Weaver was initially a joke that the filmmakers included, since she is the David Attenborough of this country, doing narrations for nature. With each screening of the film, it kept becoming a bigger and bigger part of the movie, and it just never got taken out. Then, they called Weaver to see how she felt about it, and she was up for it.
  • Stanton voiced Crush, the turtle, in both Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. He also voiced the loud-mouthed clam.
  • Marlin and Dory have two very different approaches to problem-solving and life. Marlin is very analytical and a planner, and Dory works with what she has and just goes with the flow. DeGeneres, O’Neill, Brooks, Rolence, Burrell and Olson all admit to being planners, while DeGeneres like a balance of planning and being spontaneous.
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    Image via Disney
    “Unforgettable” was always going to be at the end of the movie. It was just a matter of who was going to sing it. Eventually, they ended up with Sia recording the song.
  • There’s been much talk about whether or not there is a lesbian couple in the film, but Stanton says that he truly doesn’t know. They just populate the world the way they see the world, but since it’s not a main character, they really don’t know the background of those characters. Added DeGeneres, “I didn’t know anything about it until I heard the rumor. It appears that there are two women, and one woman has a very bad, short hair-cut, which I find very offensive. If that’s the definition of a gay woman, then how dare you? Just ‘cause someone has a short, bad hair-cat doesn’t mean the person is gay. They just have a bad hairdresser. So, I don’t know that that’s the case. But if you see the movie several times, which I recommend, there are some gay fish in the background that you’ll notice. A lot of them look very gay to me, but it’s not obvious until you see it a few times.”

Finding Dory opens in theaters on June 17th.

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Image via Disney
finding-dory
Image via Disney

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