Raccacoonie is one of the more memorable characters in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and his origins, like the movie, are more touching than they appear on the surface. Everything Everywhere All at Once is not the easiest movie to explain. On the surface, it’s an absurd multiverse adventure with a kitchen sink of goofy ideas and gags thrown at the wall for maximum randomness, but when taken as a whole, EEAAO is a touching portrait of generational angst and sadness that carefully uncovers the difficulties of life, love, and family.

The natural culmination of the multiverse movie boom, Everything Everywhere All at Once uses the language of the multiverse, with its many worlds and creative combinations, to tell a story that’s actually fairly small in scope. It’s about a mother learning to improve her relationship with her family. Her journey of self-discovery takes her to dozens of different universes, each stranger than the last. One of these worlds sees Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) working as a hibachi chef. Cooking alongside her is a chef with a secret under his toque: a sentient raccoon named Raccacoonie.

Raccacoonie Is A Character In An Alternate Everything Everywhere All At Once Universe

Evelyn Thinks Ratatouille Is Called Raccacoonie

Raccacoonie begins as a joke in Everything Everywhere All at Once. After being sent around to several universes and meeting different versions of her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), Evelyn does her best to explain what’s happening to her confused family. She tells them that it’s as if they are being controlled like puppets, just like “Raccacoonie”. Of course, she means Ratatouille, the Pixar movie about a rat that guides a cook’s hand in the kitchen by pulling on his hair like a marionette.

It’s a moment of levity that’s one of the funnier moments in the film, but it goes from being a one-off quip to a legitimate sub-plot. Evelyn is later transferred to a universe where she’s a hibachi chef, but she notices one of her talented co-workers, Chad (Harry Shum Jr.), has a long furry tail sticking out of his chef’s hat. Evelyn confronts Chad and reveals he has a talking raccoon under his toque who’s guiding his hands in the restaurant. Voiced by none other than Randy Newman of Pixar music fame, Raccacoonie is a helpful, if slightly violent, chef.

Evelyn reveals Raccacoonie to the world, and he’s taken by animal control. Realizing how important Raccacoonie was to Chad, Evelyn accepts her mistake and decides to help him. First, she gets on Chad’s shoulders, controlling him just like the raccoon, but when he tires, she puts Chad on her shoulders and goes after the animal control car. The scene ends with Evelyn launching Chad onto the truck in a bizarre and funny sequence, and we’re left pondering what becomes of Raccacoonie and Chad.

A Producer’s Father Was The Inspiration For The Gag

The Daniels Could Not Stop Thinking About The Joke

Raccacoonie was inspired by an anecdote from the EEAAO producer, Jonathan Wang (via Vulture). Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert explained how that one joke actually took some time to develop, and took on a life of its own,

“Our producer Jonathan Wang, his dad was Chinese and an inspiration for the movie. He loved movies but never could remember the names of them… One time he was like, ‘Oh I saw a very good movie called Shooky Shylock.’ They were like, ‘What is Shooky Shylock?!’ He was like, ‘It’s like Iron Man but he’s a detective and he solves crimes in London’; it was Sherlock Holmes. His favorite one was Outside Good People Shooting and it took him a while to figure out that he had seen Good Will Hunting. So early days, we thought Evelyn could be similar. Then the idea that whatever she got wrong was real was a very exciting way to explore the multiverse.”

It’s a very relatable experience, particularly for those whose parents grew up speaking a different language. Even native speakers can recall times their parents or even older siblings misremembered or mispronounced the name of a celebrity or a movie. It’s a moment that rarely fails to get a laugh, and it’s always fun to see just how many clues it will take to figure out who or what someone is talking about. Kwan said about the idea,

“We realized there has to be a scene in which Michelle rides the guy and controls him like Ratatouille. That whole thing becomes its own arc. That’s always when we know a joke is going to be worth pursuing — when first the idea is so ridiculous that we can’t stop thinking about it.”

The joke would have been perfectly fine if the Daniels had left it with the first mention of Raccacoonie, but that’s not the style of the directing duo. The Daniels’ movies are filled with jokes taken far past the point you would expect them to be. It goes from being funny, to too much, to even funnier. With their unique sense of humor and ability to squeeze emotion out of the oddest places, it’s actually not a total surprise that they turned a pronunciation error into an important moment of character development for Evelyn.

How The Filmmakers Brought Raccacoonie To Life

The Daniels Wanted Raccacoonie To Look Under-Designed

Once the idea was hatched, it then fell on makeup and effects supervisor Jason Hamer to bring it to life, which was a taller task than it seems, as Hamer recalls (via TheRinger),

“The first thing is, how the hell are we going to do this?”

While Hamer was familiar with Ratatouille, creating an animated rodent that controls a chef is a lot easier than doing one in live-action. There’s more to figuring out Raccacoonie than you may have guessed. Hamer had to decide how they would mount the raccoon to Shum’s head, whether puppet arms or animatronics would be better, and more. The Daniels also wanted a specific, and surprisingly difficult, look for the animal. Hamer said,

“The guys [the Daniels] were like, ‘Think cheap. We don’t want it to look good. It should look goofy, like a bad taxidermy.’ That was one of the challenges. The guys [were] going, ‘Cheap and quick and dirty.’ And I’m going, ‘No. Cool and beautiful and funny!'”

There is a raggedy appearance to Raccacoonie that makes the reveal that much funnier. Not only do raccoons talk in this universe, they also look like crudely taxidermied props. The creature looks homemade; it’s a bit creepy because of how uncanny it is, but that adds to the humor of the whole situation. Hamer and his team eventually used an animatronic for the puppet, with some impressive internal machinery hidden by the purposefully rough outside.

To make sure Shum didn’t have to carry a 15-pound robot on his head, the special effects team made a specialized backpack with a supporting structure that redistributed the weight. Hamer even had hair extensions added to Shum’s do to allow Raccacoonie to pull and twist on Chad’s scalp.

Raccacoonie Is More Than Just A Joke In Everything Everywhere All At Once

Evelyn Shows Her Character Growth In The Raccacoonie Scene

Raccacoonie is, for the most part, a funny gag that turns into a hilarious visual later in the movie. Everything Everywhere All at Once does not pivot on this hibachi cooking raccoon, but the minor plot is a bit more important than it seems on first watch. Like everything in EEAAO, this bit weaves its way back and forth through the film, juxtaposing heightened emotions and real feelings with absurd visuals. While an ugly raccoon swinging a knife at Evelyn is laugh-out-loud funny, her realization that Raccacoonie was a friend is surprisingly moving.

Just because she doesn’t understand something, or thinks that something is “wrong,” doesn’t make it so. Evelyn has trouble understanding what’s under the surface of the people she knows. She doesn’t see the fractures forming in her daughter and husband because she doesn’t stop to ask. But she does ask Chad, and she learns Raccacoonie meant something to him, and she made a mistake. Instead of digging in her heels, she apologizes and helps Chad. It’s an example of her slowly changing heart throughout Everything Everywhere All at Once​​​​​​.