Brad Bird drove his teams hard to be as creative as possible, insisting on greater attention to details and characters for The Incredibles than any other previous Pixar production. The teams responded by pumping the film full of references and in-jokes, one of the most noticeable being the villain Syndrome being modeled on Bird himself.
Syndrome’s unusual way of walking was supposedly inspired by a Pixar employee who someone had noticed had a very strange walk and commented on it. His or her attempts to curb the strange walk were the basis of Syndrome and his purposeful walking style.