Riley Andersen

Riley Anderson is a major character from the Pixar film Inside Out. She is an 11-year old girl who loves hockey and other sports. Riley 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 are Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger, who help her through this tough time. She is voiced by Kaitlyn Dias.

The Places in Riley's Mind

 * Emotions' Headquarters - The main center where Riley's emotions operate.
 * Long Term Memory - All of Riley's lifelong memories, where it's easy to get lost.
 * Imagination Land - A theme park where Riley's imagination exists.
 * Dream Productions - A studio where Riley's dreams are made.
 * Train of Thought - A train that leads to any area in Riley's mind.
 * Cloud Town - Where Riley gets her head in the clouds.
 * Goofball Island - Where Riley is funny and goofy.
 * Hockey Island - Riley's island representing her love of ice hockey.
 * Friendship Island - Where Riley values friendship.
 * Honesty Island - Where Riley is honest.
 * Family Island - The island about Riley's family.
 * Abstract Thought - A dangerous building where Riley's abstract thought is located.

Personality
Riley's emotions contribute to her primary behavior in the film. Overall, Riley is upbeat, honest, and goofy when she is content. However, at adolescence, Riley becomes more sentimental and uncertain of herself as her other emotions begin appearing. 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. As time goes on however, and when some emotions become absent to keep her functional, Riley becomes emotionally vulnerable and fickle. Her desire to return to Minnesota comes to the point where she becomes completely indifferent towards herself and the risk she is taking. But it is here she realizes she had almost forgotten the things that matter most to her in life and what they mean to her. From there, she (with the guide of her emotions) resolves to be thankful of what she has and quickly adapts to her new home.

Physical Appearance
Riley is a young girl who has a slender body structure, shoulder-length dirty-blonde hair, blue eyes and gap teeth.

Riley is seen wearing a different outfit on a daily basis. When first shown in the teaser trailer, she wore a long-sleeved shirt with thin horizontal red, yellow, and green zigzag lines, brown pants, and red sneakers. When Riley arrived to her first day of school, she wore the same outfit, but with a yellow jacket. When Riley suffered a brain freeze, she wore a solid pink short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and green sneakers. When jamming to "More Than a Feeling" in the second official trailer, she wore a long-sleeved rainbow shirt, blue jeans, and pink socks. Riley's pajamas consisted of a green short-sleeved shirt with blue trim featuring a koala or bear on front, and dark blue sweatpants.

Role in the Film
Riley is a major character in the film. Her mind is the main location of it and the main priority of the movie.

When Riley is first born, Joy, her first living emotion is conjured up with baby Riley is smiling right at her parents. A few seconds later, another emotion, named Sadness appears and makes Riley cry. Joy pushes Sadness out of the way and makes Riley happy again.

Over the years, Riley starts to grow up in Minnesota and her other emotions, Disgust, Anger, and Fear are born. Riley becomes happy and jolly pretty much all the time and hardly sad at all. Because of her happiness and joy, Joy unintentionally mistreats Sadness. Riley also becomes one of the best players on her hockey team.

When it is time for Riley and her parents to move to San Francisco, Riley becomes sad and misses her life in Minnesota. When school starts, Riley starts to go from joyous and happy to sentimental and a bit depressed, on account of she misses the good old days in Minnesota. Not to mention, their new house is horrible and the only type of pizza they serve is California pizza. Riley becomes even sadder, Joy does all she can to prevent this from happening. Things go from bad to worse when Sadness accidentally humiliates Riley by making her sob in front of the class while telling her class about the good old days in Minnesota.

This causes a new core memory to be created, which is a sad one. Joy doesn't want Riley to ever be sad so she decides to get rid of it. But during an argument, Joy and Sadness literally get lost in Riley's mind, the others try to keep Riley's head on straight, but it causes Riley to become reclusive, rude, and cantankerous.

The next day, Riley video chats with her old friend, Meg from Minnesota. Things go well until Meg tells Riley all about the wonders of her new best friend and Riley gets so angry, that she hangs up on Meg.

Riley figures that since everything in San Fran is horrible and she is so nostalgic about Minnesota, she decides to run away back to Minnesota. She steals her mother's credit card and skips school to go to the bus back to Minnesota.

When Joy and Sadness finally make it home, Riley finally realizes what she is doing is wrong and decides to run back home. When Riley returns to her worried sick parents, she confesses she was pretending to still be happy and that she misses the good old days in Minnesota. Her parents confess they miss Minnesota as well and Riley finally lets her feelings out.

Soon enough, things are finally looking up for the Anderson's. Riley is part of a brand new hockey team and there are new islands in her mind.

Trivia

 * Riley is the first Pixar character to be a location.
 * Riley is the fourth Pixar character to have her posterior shown. The first three are Harris, Hubert and Hamish from Brave.
 * In the teaser trailer, Riley with her mom and dad are eating from Chinese food boxes of the same type as the one seen in A Bug's Life and several other Pixar films.
 * In said teaser trailer, the playground seen in Riley's Memory Orbs is the playground from Sunnyside Daycare in Toy Story 3.
 * Her last name is based off of Pixar employee Darla K. Anderson and the Toy Story 3 character Bonnie Anderson.
 * Both of Riley's parents have brown hair and brown eyes, suggesting her blonde hair and blue eyes were inherited recessively.
 * Riley is the only character in the film to have emotions of different genders. Her mother's emotions are all female, the teacher's emotions are female, and her father's are all male.
 * Riley's yelling after refusing to eat her broccoli when she was two is actually a re-used recording of Boo's shouting from Monsters, Inc.
 * Coincidentally, both of these films were directed by Pete Docter.
 * Riley's original home in Minnesota might be a reference to director Pete Docter, who was also originally from Minnesota.

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