Ralph Breaks the Internet, the official title for Wreck-It Ralph 2, is now in theaters. One of the strangest films released by Disney Animation — and that includes Brother Bear and the Chicken Little adaptation starring Zach Braff — Ralph Breaks the Internet trades the original movie’s video game nostalgia for a gauntlet of internet references.
Your family or friends might convince you to join them on a trip to the theater to see this oddity. Odds are, you will have some questions about what exactly you witnessed. What follows is an FAQ for questions you might have — before or after. And yes, we’ll talk about that end credits scene.
Late in the film, Ralph acquires a black market “insecurity” virus, a Matrix-like creature that scans nearby people for their “insecurities,” then replicates those anxieties in the environment. When Ralph first unleashes the virus, it spots Vanellope’s anxiety about her glitch, then rapidly zaps glitches into the world of Vanellope’s favorite online racing game, causing it to phase in and out of existence.
When the insecurity virus escapes that game, it discovers Ralph and his neediness for companionship and validation, then spews that desperation into the world of the internet, converting the materials of the world into tens of thousands of lurching, red Ralph clones that murmur mindlessly about abandonment and how nobody loves them.
Mega Ralph lumbers through the internet, toppling various companies’ office complexes, causing DDoS attacks on their corresponding sites. You can actually spot the impact of Mega Ralph on the real world in the film’s trailer, when Miranda Sings loses her internet connection.
