Hiro Hamada is a 14-year-old robotics genius in the futuristic fictional city of San Fransokyo. Raised by his aunt Cass and older brother Tadashi after the death of his parents, he spends his time participating in illegal robot fights. To redirect Hiro, Tadashi takes him to the robotics center at his university, where Hiro meets Tadashi's friends: GoGo, Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and Fred, as well as Baymax, the inflatable healthcare companion robot Tadashi created. To enroll in the school, Hiro signs up for the school's science fair and presents microbots: swarms of tiny robots that can link together in any arrangement imaginable. Professor Callaghan, the head of the university's robotics program, is impressed, and grants Hiro entrance to the university. Alastair Krei, renowned entrepreneur and president of Krei Tech, offers to buy the microbots, but Hiro follows Callaghan's warnings about Krei's questionable business practices and declines to sell them. When Tadashi and Hiro later arrive at the university to find it engulfed in flames, Tadashi rushes in to rescue Callaghan, but the building explodes moments later, killing him.
The story is set in the Valley of Peace, a fictional land in ancient China inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. Po, a giant panda, is a kung fu fanatic who idolizes the Furious Five — Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper, and Crane — a quintet of kung fu masters trained by the red panda Master Shifu. As he helps his goose father Mr. Ping in his noodle restaurant, Po is unable to pursue his dream of becoming a kung fu master himself.
"Supers" – humans with superpowers – are forced into civilian relocation programs after facing several lawsuits from peripheral damage caused by their crime fighting activities. Fifteen years after relocation, Bob and Helen Parr, formerly Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl respectively, and their children Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack live as a suburban family. Bob is dissatisfied with suburban life and his white-collar job and longs for the glory days. On some nights, Bob and his old friend Lucius Best, formerly Frozone, perform vigilante work. One day, Bob loses his temper when his supervisor refuses to let him stop a mugging, causing Bob to be fired. Returning home, Bob finds a message from a mysterious woman named Mirage, who convinces him to become Mr. Incredible again and gives him a mission to destroy a savage robot called the Omnidroid on the remote island of Nomanisan, promising a substantial reward. Arriving on Nomanisan Island, Bob is able to find and defeat the Omnidroid by tricking it into ripping out its own power source.
Remy is an idealistic and ambitious young rat, gifted with highly developed senses of taste and smell. Inspired by his idol, the recently deceased chef Auguste Gusteau, Remy dreams of becoming a cook himself. When an old woman sees his clan, they are forced to abandon their home; Remy is separated from them as a result of the woman's gunshots. He ends up in the sewers of Paris and eventually finds himself at a skylight overlooking the kitchen of Gusteau's restaurant.
Five years after the Viking village of Berk made peace with the dragons, they now live among the villagers as helpful companions. Hiccup goes on adventures with his dragon, Toothless, as they discover and map unexplored lands. Now 20 years old, he is being pressed by his father, Stoick the Vast, to succeed him as chieftain, although Hiccup remains unsure if he is ready for this responsibility.
As a cub, Alex the Lion was called Alakay and was the son of Zuba, the alpha lion. Though Zuba tries to teach Alakay to be a hunter, the cub is more interested in dancing, and is captured by poachers when Makunga, Zuba's rival, challenges Zuba to a fight for the position of alpha lion. Alakay is forced into a crate, and taken away despite Zuba's attempts to rescue him. The crate falls into the ocean where it drifts to New York. There, Alakay is renamed Alex and sent to the Central Park Zoo where he grew up, meeting Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe, and Gloria the Hippopotamus. Most of the events of the first film are then described through a series of news flashes.
Long ago, a drop of sunlight became a golden flower capable of healing illness, decay and injury. For hundreds of years the flower is used by Mother Gothel to retain her youth until it is discovered by soldiers of a nearby kingdom. They use the flower to heal their ailing queen, who soon after gives birth to Princess Rapunzel. Gothel discovers that Rapunzel's hair has the flower's healing properties but that attempting to take just the hair by cutting it destroys its power, so she kidnaps Rapunzel and raises her as her own daughter in an isolated tower. Once a year, the King and Queen release sky lanterns on Rapunzel's birthday, hoping for their daughter's return.
A cave family called the Croods survives due to the overprotective nature of their stubborn, stern patriarch, Grug. The only one who questions the family's sheltered life is his teenaged daughter Eep who frequently disobeys her father's orders out of curiosity, which he finds dangerous. After stealing an egg for their meal and running afoul with a carnivorous cat; Grug and Eep, along with her mother Ugga, her grandmother Gran, and her younger brother and sister Thunk and Sandy face time sheltered in their cave home.
The parallel city of Monstropolis is inhabited by monsters and powered by the screams of children in the human world. At the factory of Monsters, Inc., employees called "scarers" venture into children's bedrooms to scare them and collect their screams, using closet doors as portals. This is considered a dangerous task because the monsters believe children are toxic and that touching them would be fatal. However, production is falling as children are becoming harder to scare and the company's chairman Henry J. Waternoose III is determined to find a solution. The top scarer is James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, who lives with his friend and assistant Mike Wazowski and has a rivalry with the ever-determined chameleon-like monster Randall Boggs. During an ordinary day's work on what is known as the "Scarefloor", another scarer accidentally brings a child's sock into the factory, causing the Child Detection Agency (CDA) to arrive and cleanse him. Mike is frequently ridiculed by the company's clerk Roz for never completing his paperwork on time.
As the Smurfs get ready for the Blue Moon Festival, Papa Smurf sees in his cauldron a vision of Clumsy Smurf reaching for a dragon wand and the Smurfs in cages while Gargamel laughs. Not wanting this vision to come true, Papa Smurf disallows Clumsy to pick Smurf Roots. Clumsy disobeys Papa and ends up unintentionally leading Gargamel and Azrael to the village. The Smurfs all flee for their lives while Clumsy unknowingly runs towards the Forbidden Falls, with Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Grouchy, Brainy and Gutsy running after him. They find him at the edge of a cliff, and while trying to help him up, they are sucked into a gigantic vortex that spirits them to present day New York City. To make matters worse, Gargamel and Azrael follow and the Smurfs end up in the apartment of Patrick and Grace Winslow, a married and expectant couple and their Basset Hound Elway. After clarifying things, the Winslows befriend them and allow them to stay in their apartment. The next day, needing to find a "star gazer" (a telescope), the Smurfs follow Patrick to his work place at Anjelou Cosmetics, misunderstanding the previous explanation of his job as fortune-telling. He calls Grace to pick them up.
Finn McMissile, a British spy infiltrates the world's largest untapped oil reserves owned by a group of lemon cars. After being discovered, he flees and fakes his death.
Puss in Boots is a talking cat named for his wearing boots and is a fugitive on the run from the law, looking to restore his lost honour. He learns that the outlaw couple Jack and Jill have the magic beans he's been looking for most of his life, beans that can lead him to a giant's castle holding valuable golden goose eggs. When Puss tries to steal them from the outlaws' room, female cat Kitty Softpaws interrupts, and both fail. Kitty is allied with Humpty Alexander Dumpty, a talking egg and Puss' long-estranged childhood friend from the orphanage where he was raised. Puss tells Kitty his origin story and of his feelings of betrayal for a youthful misadventure when Humpty tricked Puss into helping commit a bank robbery in his hometown of San Ricardo; Puss has been on the run since. Humpty convinces Puss to join them in finding the beans and retrieving the golden eggs.
Gru, a supervillain, has his pride injured when an unknown supervillain steals the Great Pyramid of Giza, an action that is described by his colleague Dr. Nefario as "making all other villains look lame." Gru decides to do better, with the assistance of Dr. Nefario, by shrinking and stealing the Moon, an idea based on his childhood dream of being an astronaut, which was always disparaged by his mother Marlena. The plan is expensive and Gru seeks a loan from the Bank of Evil, where the president Mr. Perkins is impressed by the plan, but will only provide the money if Gru can obtain the necessary shrink ray first.
At the Central Park Zoo, Marty the zebra is celebrating his tenth birthday, but longs to see the rest of the world from outside his pampered life at the zoo, believing that he can find wide-open spaces to run around in, like in Connecticut. Marty's best friend, Alex the lion, attempts to cheer up his friend by singing Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" with him. Still unsatisfied, Marty gets some tips from the zoo's penguins: Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Private. The penguins are similarly trying to escape the zoo. Marty's friends — Alex the lion, Melman the giraffe, and Gloria the hippopotamus — realize Marty's folly and try to follow him. The four, along with the penguins and the chimpanzees Mason and his silent friend Phil, eventually find themselves at Grand Central Station, but are quickly sedated by tranquilizer darts when Alex's attempt to communicate with humans is mistaken for aggression. The zoo, under pressure from animal-rights activists, is forced to ship the animals, by sea, to a Kenyan wildlife preserve. During their travels, the penguins escape from their enclosure and take over the ship, intent on taking it to Antarctica. Their antics on the bridge cause the crates containing Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria to fall off the boat and wash ashore on Madagascar.