Everything we need to know, we learned from Pixar: Our toys talk when we aren't around, monsters are actually soft-hearted performance artists, consumerism will indeed end humanity and a gaggle of balloons could carry our houses off to strange lands. The studio's newest lesson informs us that the voices inside our heads are real -- and they have distinct personalities.

"Inside Out ," the latest from "Monsters, Inc." and "Up" director Pete Docter, is set largely inside the mind of hockey-obsessed 11-year-old Riley Anderson (Kaitlyn Dias) as her family moves from Minneapolis to San Francisco. Stationed in a command center inside Riley's brain are five anthropomorphized emotions who drive her decision-making: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). They experience the world as she does and act according to their respective attributes. But when Joy and Sadness lose some of the small globes that house Riley's core memories, they must travel to track them down, leaving Fear, Anger and Disgust at the helm.

Nestled throughout the clever universe that "Inside Out" creates are big ideas about how various emotions drive our identity. For every sight gag that makes kids chuckle, there's an eye-opening meditation for adults -- and that's just what Docter and his frequent producer, Jonas Rivera, intended. The Huffington Post interviewed several involved with the film for a look at how it was made and why its themes resonate.

Pete Docter, writer/director: This was about watching my daughter go from a little, happy, hyperactive kid to a little more reserved and quiet, and that change as a father where youre sort of like, Oh, I liked you as a little, quirky, happy kid. And now, of course, shes a beautiful young woman and I love her, but the childhood part wont come back and theres something kind of tragic and sad -- and beautiful and necessary and all those things. So thats what we were talking about in this film.

Jonas Rivera, producer: Our character, Riley, not unlike Petes daughter, Elie, who Ive known her whole life, is a kid that seemed born happy.

Docter: I felt pretty strongly it should be a girl, and that was cemented when we did some research. Talking to psychologists, they told us theres no one on earth more socially keyed-in than an 11 to 17-year-old girl.

Rivera: There were some scientists we talked to and some books we read that quote 26 clinical definitions of emotions. And some say three. One of the gentlemen we worked with, Dr. Paul Ekman, whos in San Francisco, put forth six at the beginning of his career. Five of them we have, plus surprise, which is interesting. We put Joy at the center, because shes the character who represents that childhood joy thats going to be crushed.

Docter: We wanted them to be clear and gettable. We wanted them to have a great diversity, and, weirdly, I dont remember if this was a purposeful thing or not, but four out of the five are fairly negative. So Joy, then, is the lone positive. She has a tougher job. She has to soldier on not only through life, but also past these guys who are putting up a stink. That just made for her to have to work harder.

Bill Hader, Fear: I stalked Pixar and said, I want to work with you guys. I flew to San Francisco and did a tour of Pixar because I was a big fan, and then I met a lot of the people there. Then what happened was they said, "You should come out to Pixar and just write with us for a week." So, I hung out in the story department and I wrote. That was May of 2011. The movie was about a little girl and the emotions in her head, but the story was totally different. It wasnt about her moving and there was no hockey. At the end of that week, they put me in a recording studio and said, Why dont you just improvise as these different characters? Lets just do different voices. So I did all the emotions. And then I went home and a couple months later Jonas called me and said, Hey, you want to play Fear?"

Phyllis Smith, Sadness: They flew me up to the Pixar campus. ... There was quite a roomful of people and they presented their idea to me. It was a lot of information and I was trying to absorb it. They had all the drawings wrapped completely in a circle around the room and they went through them and theyd talk about the story. They said, "Weve considered you for this character of Sadness," and they had some preliminary drawings of what they thought she might look like. She was more of a teardrop shape in the beginning, or what I saw of her was. I think at that point in the process, Lewis Black had already been presented the idea. Same with Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling. Amy Poehler came on board later.

Mindy Kaling, Disgust: The difference between this movie and some of the other Pixar movies was that the world was completely made up. If you take, for instance, "Toy Story," those toys are all toys that many of us have seen. Theyre the classic, iconic toys and its what a kids room would look like. When the interior is inside of a girls mind, its very hard to tell what that would even look like until you see it.