I will compare the plots of all three movies, and prove that The Emoji Movie isn’t a ripoff.

The Emoji Movie

Textopolis is a digital city run by the famous emoji, Smiler, whose job is CEO of an emoji company, the Cube, inside the phone of a boy named Alex. There are old emojis, new emojis, fat emojis and skinny emojis.

Gene is an emoji, the son of two "Meh" emojis, Mel and Mary. Despite his parents attempts at raising him to be a "Meh", Gene is able to make multiple expressions. At first, his parents, especially his father, are hesitant of him going to work, but Gene insists, claiming that he will finally be normal and useful to society.

In the human world, upon receiving a text from his crush Addie, Alex decides to send her an emoji. When Gene is selected, he panics, which makes his odd facial problems spring to life. After making a confusing expression before wrecking the text center, Gene is called in by Smiler, a smiley emoji, the self-claimed first emoji, and leader of the text center, who concludes that Gene is a "malfunction" and therefore must be deleted.

Gene sinks into depression, going up to the top of the company building, where his parents, concerned for his safety, tell him that he should lock himself in their apartment until everybody almost forgets about what happened. Gene then accuses them of being embarrassed of him and, in a fit of anger, tells them that he isn't going to run away from what he did, instead going down to try to reason with the Board.

He gets there as the board meeting ends, and nobody will tell him what was decided. Smiler calls him in, telling him that he doesn't have to worry about making that mistake again because he will be deleted. After calling the bots to delete him, Gene distracts them and manages to escape, but he is chased by Anti-virus bots.

Hi-5, an emoji that has been demoted from the favorites, rescues Gene from the Anti-virus bots, but thinks they're after him for sneaking back into the Favorite's Lounge. After being taken down to the "Loser's Lounge, Gene explains that it was him the bots were after, not Hi-5. When asked why, Gene reluctantly tells the hand that he is a malfunction that Smiler wants to delete. Hi-5 tells Gene that he can be fixed if they find a hacker, recommending one named Jailbreak. Convinced he can become a favorite again, Hi-5 accompanies him.

When Smiler finds out that Gene has left Textopolis, she sends more bots to look for Gene, having some tail his parents, who go searching for him when they've realized that he skipped town. Meanwhile, Gene's actions have caused Alex to think that his phone needs to be fixed, prompting him to schedule an appointment with the phone store to have his phone wiped.

Gene and Hi-5 come to a piracy app where they meet Jailbreak, who wants to reach Dropbox so that she can live in the cloud. The trio is attacked by Smiler's bots, but manage to escape into the game Candy Crush. Jailbreak reveals that Gene can be fixed in the cloud, and the group goes off into the Just Dance app. While there, Jailbreak is revealed to be a princess emoji who fled home after tiring of being stereotyped. They are once again attacked by bots, and their actions cause Alex to delete the Just Dance app. Gene and Jailbreak escape, but Hi-5 is taken along with the app and ends up in the trash.

Mel and Mary go searching for Gene and have a very lethargic argument. They make up in the Instagram app when Mel reveals that he, too, is a malfunction, explaining Gene's behavior, while Smiler betrays Poop and the other emoji while being hired as CEO of the Cube and ruling with an evil smile and while traveling through Spotify, Jailbreak admits that she likes Gene just the way he is, and that he should not be ashamed of his malfunction. They make it to the trash and rescue Hi-5, but are soon attacked by an upgraded bot. They evade it and enter Dropbox, where they encounter a firewall.

The gang get past it with a password being Addie's name and make it to the cloud, where Jailbreak prepares to reprogram Gene. Gene admits his feelings for Jailbreak, but she wishes to stick to her plan of venturing into the cloud, unintentionally causing Gene to revert to his apathetic programming out of heartbreak. The upgraded bot takes Gene, and Hi-5 and Jailbreak race after them on a Twitter bird summoned by Jailbreak.

As Smiler prepares to delete Gene, Mel and Mary arrive and are also threatened. Jailbreak and Hi-5 arrive and disable the bot, which falls on top of Smiler. Alex has since taken his phone to the store and asks to have his phone erased to fix the problem. Out of desperation, Gene prepares to have himself texted to Addie, making numerous faces to express himself. Realizing that Addie received a text from him, Alex stops his phone from getting erased, saving the emoji and finally getting to speak with Addie. Gene accepts himself for who he is and is celebrated by all of the emojis while Poop returns to his job as CEO of the Cube after arresting Smiler.

In a mid-credits scene, Smiler is arrested in the "loser lounge" with the other forgotten and unused emotions for her crimes, wearing numerous braces due to her teeth being cracked by the bot, and playing and losing a game of Go Fish.

Wreck-It Ralph

At night, when Litwak's Arcade closes, the various video game characters congregate in Game Central Station, through the power cables. In the game Fix-It Felix, Jr., the characters celebrate the game's titular hero, but shun its villain, Wreck-It Ralph. At a support group for video game villains, Ralph reveals he doesn't want to be a bad guy anymore. Returning to his own game, Ralph finds the other characters celebrating their game's anniversary and that he was not invited. Felix reluctantly invites Ralph to join them, but the others shun him, saying he'd have to win a gold medal, just as Felix does.

While visiting Tapper, Ralph meets Markowski, a soldier from the first-person shooter game Hero's Duty, who tells him the game's winner receives a medal. Ralph enters the game and encounters Sergeant Calhoun, its no-nonsense leader. He goes through the game session and is the one to end it. Meanwhile, Ralph's absence has not gone unnoticed, as a girl outside the game tells Mr. Litwak that Fix-It Felix, Jr. is malfunctioning, he puts an out of order sign onto the game's screen. Q*bert travels to Fix-It Felix, Jr., and tells him about the dark turn of events. This causes alarm for Felix, because if a game becomes broken, Litwak will have to unplug the game, leaving any characters in the game homeless. So, Felix sets out to find Ralph. After the arcade closes, Ralph climbs the game's central beacon, which happened to be filled with the eggs of Cy-Bugs (bug-like enemies) and collects the medal. However, he accidentally hatches a Cy-Bug that clings to him. During his panic to get the Cy-Bug larva off, he stumbles into a nearby escape pod that launches him out of the game.

Ralph crash-lands in Sugar Rush, a kart-racing game. As he searches for his medal, he meets Vanellope von Schweetz, a glitchy character who makes off with the medal, planning to use it to buy entry into an after-hours race. However, King Candy and the other racers refuse to let Vanellope participate, saying she's not really part of the game. The other racers pay her a visit while she is building her own cart and destroy it, disabling her from racing. Ralph witnesses this and scares the racers off. Ralph then berates her, but she insults him right back. This angers him to the point that he smashes a jawbreaker in half. Because of his amazing strength, Vanellope gets an idea. She explains to Ralph that the medal can be won back if she gets first place in a race. She then offers to make a pact that if he can help her win, she'll give Ralph the medal back. Ralph reluctantly accepts her offer. After making said pact, they head off to the cart bakery, where the racers make their carts, and they build a cart together. However, a security guard notices the unauthorized activity, and the authorities are sent out, along with King Candy. After a long chase, they give King Candy's party the slip by hiding in Diet Cola Mountain, an incomplete extra race track. It is discovered that this is Vanellope's home. From there, Ralph teaches Vanellope how to drive her new cart.

Back in Hero's Duty, Felix meets Sergeant Calhoun, the tetragonist of the film, who explains that the Cy-Bugs can control any game, and can then destroy everything in said game. As the two search for Ralph and the Cy-Bug in Sugar Rush, Felix explains that he is searching for Ralph, who had probably "gone Turbo". When Calhoun asked Felix about this term, he then explains that a long time ago, there was an old racing game called TurboTime starring a self-obsessed racer named Turbo. One day, a RoadBlasters arcade cabinet entered the arcade and gained more popularity than TurboTime. Out of jealousy, Turbo interrupted the game. He traveled to the other game and crashed into the main player of the new racing game. By doing so, he crashed both games, which led to both of them being unplugged. As Felix and Calhoun progress, they fix the pod Ralph was in and fly off to search for the lone Cy-Bug. Felix later falls in love with Calhoun. However, Calhoun's past comes back to haunt her when Felix refers to her as a "dynamite gal", something that her fiancé, who was murdered by a Cy-Bug on their wedding day, would call her. Distraught, she forces Felix to leave her ship. A heartbroken Felix walks to King Candy's castle and meets Sour Bill, King Candy's assistant. He locks up Felix after he realizes he should have locked up Ralph. After a long search, Calhoun soon discovers the Cy-Bug has laid hundreds of eggs underground.

Before the race, King Candy finds Ralph in the absence of Vanellope and offers Ralph his medal, which King Candy has dug into the game's code to retrieve (through the use of the "Konami Code"). The only condition was that Vanellope couldn't race. When Ralph asks why King Candy and the other racers hate her so much, he explains he really doesn't. Vanellope is a glitch, and so, this would cause her to act abnormally (such as teleporting and jumping around, sometimes through objects). If she won the race, she would become an official part of the racing roster. He goes on to explain that her glitching would give gamers the impression that the game was broken, and the game would be unplugged. While everyone else could be evacuated from the game, Vanellope could not leave, as she is a glitch. As a result, she would die along with the program. So King Candy leaves Ralph with that and exits. When Vanellope returns and gives Ralph a medal that says "You're my hero", he explains to Vanellope that she cannot race for her own good. But she notices that Ralph has the Medal of Heroes and doesn't believe him, threatening to race on her own. Ralph stops her and hangs her by her jacket on a nearby lollipop tree. He then reluctantly proceeds to destroy her kart into pieces. Vanellope tries to stop Ralph, but it was no use. She falls off, says "You really are a bad guy!" and runs away, sobbing.

Ralph goes back to Fix-It Felix, Jr., and sees that the entire game is deserted, save for one lone citizen, Gene. Gene explains that the game was set to be unplugged in the morning, and that everyone has evacuated, and that he has stayed behind to enjoy one last martini. Gene did say that he will not dishonor his bets and gives Ralph the key to the penthouse since he acquired a medal as agreed. Ralph did not realize the extent of this, saying he was sick of being alone in the dump, to which Gene retorts that is over, for "now you can be alone in the penthouse". Alone, Ralph goes to the balcony and throws his medal at the screen that sits above the game. This causes the poster that previously covered the screen to un-stick and starts to fall off, revealing the side of the Sugar Rush arcade cabinet in front of Ralph's game. He discovers that Vanellope is on the cabinet and wonders why she is on the machine's artwork if she is a glitch. Ralph suspects something foul at play and returns to Sugar Rush.

He comes across Sour Bill and places him in his mouth as a form of torture until he confesses. Sour Bill explains that King Candy changed Vanellope's code on purpose. When Ralph asks about his motives, Sour Bill says he doesn't know why, and in fact, no one knows why. He explains it is like this because King Candy locked up all the characters' memories and says that if Vanellope crosses the finish line, the game will reset and she won't be a glitch. Upon locating Felix, Ralph begs Felix to fix the wrecked kart so Vanellope can race. He agrees to do so after discovering how hard of a life Ralph has had. After also freeing and making amends with Vanellope, they start the race, and as the race proceeds, the hatched Cy-Bugs attack Sugar Rush. Felix, Calhoun, and Ralph then battle them. Vanellope catches up to King Candy mid-race, but Candy tries to ram Vanellope off the track. When Vanellope tries to escape, King Candy instantly gets impatient and viciously attacks her with his cane. Vanellope's glitching interferes with King Candy's code and reveals that King Candy is actually Turbo in disguise, having somehow escaped his game before it was unplugged. Turbo rams his car into Vanellope's, causing her to be dragged in front of the car while approaching a walled fork in the road. Vanellope finally takes control of her glitching to escape from Turbo, and drives away, yelling at her victory. An enraged Turbo tries to pursue, but suddenly, a Cy-bug appears on the track and devours him alive.

The group attempts to flee the doomed game, but Vanellope cannot pass through the exit due to her status as a glitch. Calhoun says the game can't be saved because there is no beacon in the game; the beacon in Hero's Duty attracts and kills the Cy-Bugs. Ralph, in a last-ditch effort, heads to Diet Cola Mountain, where he plans on collapsing its Mentos stalactites into the cola at the bottom, causing an eruption that would attract the bugs. While on top of the mountain, he pounds the mentos into the diet cola below from the top. However, before he can finish, Turbo, fused with the Cy-Bug that devoured him, arrives and stops him. Turbo declares that he has become "the most powerful virus in the arcade" and plans to take over all the other games using his new powers, but not before getting revenge on Ralph. Ralph and Turbo battle, but Turbo quickly overpowers Ralph, carrying him above the mountain and sadistically forcing him to watch Cy-Bugs close in on Vanellope. Ralph breaks free and dives toward the mountain, hoping his impact will start the eruption. Seeing Ralph dive towards the mountain, Vanellope, in turn, uses her glitching abilities with the goal of catching Ralph. Ralph breaks through the roof of the mountain, but before he is killed in the eruption, Vanellope catches him in Crumbelina's cart. The eruption shines a bright light, which in turn draws most the Cy-Bugs, to their destruction. Turbo, being more powerful than the others, is able to resist for a short time, but his Cy-Bug programming overwhelms him and he flies into the lava as well, killing him. Because video game characters who die outside their own game are unable to regenerate ever, this means that the Cy-Bugs and Turbo die permanently.

After Turbo and the Cy-Bugs are defeated, Felix restores the finish line, and Vanellope crosses it, restoring her memory as the game's lead character, and restoring the ruins of Sugar Rush. The gamers favor her as a character, despite her glitches (it's likely her ability to teleport short distances is perceived by gamers as a special power, rather than a glitch), Turbo had been destroyed forever (Sour Bill, Wynnchel and Duncan and the Sugar Rush Racers, never again heard about him).

Felix and Ralph return to Fix-It Felix, Jr. in time to show Litwak the game works, and they also give Q*bert and Co. a new opportunity to work with Ralph and crew in a "bonus level," sparing it and also giving its characters a new respect for Ralph's work as the villain. Felix later marries Calhoun, with Ralph being the best man and Vanellope as the maid of honor.

Inside Out

A girl named Riley is born in Minnesota and, in her mind, at different points in her life, five living emotions are created: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Each emotion has a defined purpose in Riley's life: Joy attempts to keep her happy, Anger keeps her life fair, Disgust keeps her from being poisoned both physically and socially and Fear keeps her safe. Sadness, however, doesn't think she has a purpose in her mind or that of the other emotions and is ignored as a result.

Riley's memories are housed in glass spheres known as Memory Orbs. The most relevant memories, known as core memories, power up five "islands" in Riley's subconscious, each reflecting a different aspect of her personality: Family Island, Friendship Island, Goofball Island, Hockey Island, and Honesty Island.

When Riley is eleven, her family moves to San Francisco after her father starts a new business. However, the new house is horrible, the only pizza they serve is California pizza (which is pizza topped with broccoli), and the moving van won't arrive for weeks. The emotions try everything in their power to make the moving process a pleasant experience, only to turn on Sadness when she turns a happy memory orb into a sad one by touching it and accidentally causes a core memory to fall out. Aware that memories cannot be changed back once turned sad, Joy decides to keep Sadness occupied by having her read a stack of mind manuals the entire day.

On Riley's first day of school, Joy orders Sadness to stay in a chalk circle and let the other emotions do their job. But Sadness touches a memory that makes Riley cry in front of her new class which creates a new, sad core memory. Joy desperately tries to dispose of it by using a vacuum tube that leads to the mind world, but a struggle with Sadness leads to the core memories being knocked out from the container. Before Joy can put them back, she and Sadness are carried off with the core memories, leaving Disgust, Fear, and Anger to deal with Riley.

Joy and Sadness venture the various islands and a labyrinth-like place called Long Term Memory, where Riley's past memories are restored. They are soon assisted by Riley's childhood imaginary friend Bing Bong, a scrappily-dressed pink cotton candy-elephant-cat-dolphin creature. Bing Bong was hoping to reconnect with Riley via a Memory of his song-powered wagon "rocket". Although initially, Bing Bong is happy and cheerful, the pair discovers that he is secretly miserable, having been out of a job since Riley was four. He desperately wants to feel loved again, reasoning that, if he has no purpose, he will cease to exist. Although Joy attempts to keep this revelation positive, Sadness comforts a crying Bing Bong (which leaves Joy more confused than ever as to how being sad could help Bing Bong).

Bing Bong discovers that his rocket had already been dumped into "the Memory Dump", a seemingly never-ending pit of darkness beneath headquarters where obsolete memories go to be erased from existence for good. Meanwhile, in Riley's mind, Anger, Disgust, and Fear are doing their best to guide Riley through her new surroundings. Anger accidentally instigates a confrontation with Riley's friend Meg when video chatting her, which causes the island which controls this part of her personality, "Friendship Island" to collapse into the Dump. The emotions realize that tampering with Riley's personality will cause it to further be erased, with potentially disastrous results.

Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong hatch a plan to ride the Train of Thought back to Headquarters, and begin their trek through various parts of Riley's mind in order to reach the loading dock (areas such as Imagination Land, Dream Productions, and so on). Meanwhile, with Disgust, Anger, and Fear in control, Riley's life begins to crumble. She alienates her former friends from Minnesota, fails to connect with her parents, and struggles in the new school. As Joy and company close in on their destination, Anger, Disgust, and Fear finally reason that, if Riley was only happy in Minnesota, there is no choice but to tell her to return there and prepare to run away from her own family.

At night, Joy and her fellow emotions finally reach the loading dock, although it is now so late that the Train of Thought will not arrive until morning. They give Riley a nightmare by awakening a monstrous clown named Jangles, from her Subconscious and Fear, being on dream duty that night awakens her, jump-starting her Train of Thought. Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong are nearly at Headquarters when the other bunch of emotions put their plan into action, instructing Riley to steal from her mother's bag and pack it to run away to Minnesota. This action causes Riley's "Honesty Island" to crumble, derailing the Train of Thought. Joy finds a way back to Headquarters through a broken recall tube, but after Sadness almost turns the core memories sad, Joy decides to leave her and Bing Bong behind. She starts up the tube, but as Riley gets on the bus, Family Island begins to crumble, destroying the tube and causing Joy to fall into the Memory dump. Bing Bong tries to get her, but the ground he was standing on crumbles, while Sadness barely escapes the same fate.

It seems that all hope is lost, as in a matter of minutes Joy and Bing Bong will be forgotten and cease to exist. Joy, in despair, starts to gather the core memories and reminisce about happier times, stating "I just wanted Riley to be happy." Looking at one of the memories, she realizes that when Riley was sad, it caused her parents and friends to comfort her, in turn making her happy again. Joy realizes that Sadness's main role in Riley's personality is to tell others when she needs help, and by preventing Riley from feeling sad, she was also preventing her from feeling true happiness. This revelation energizes Joy and Bing Bong, who sees his rocket in the dump. They decide to use it to return to the top but are dismayed when it falls short every time no matter how loudly they sing. Bing Bong figures out that they're too heavy together and starts the rocket one last time, then jumps off as it begins to fly. Joy looks back on Bing Bong in the memory dump as she realized Bing Bong's act of selflessness. Bing Bong cheers on Joy to go save Riley. As he starts to fade away, Bing Bong lastly asks Joy "Take her to the moon for me, okay?"

Joy sorrowfully watches Bing Bong fade away and promises that she will try to fulfill his last wish. Joy grabs the bag full of Riley's core memories and attempts to reconcile with Sadness but discovers that Sadness has run away from her, hopped onto a cloud, and flew away, believing that she only makes everything worse and that Riley is better off without her. Using various tools from Imagination Land, Joy launches herself from the trampoline on Family Island, grabbing Sadness and sending the two flying towards HQ. However, a thick window separates them from the other emotions, and Anger desperately tries to break it using a chair. When this fails, Disgust has an idea. As Anger gets frustrated, Disgust insults his intelligence, making Anger furious and causing his head to go up in flames. Disgust uses him as a blowtorch to melt the window, allowing Joy and Sadness to return.

Although the other emotions beg her to stop Riley from running away and fix the relationship between her and her parents, Joy turns control over to Sadness, which surprises the others. Sadness successfully removes the idea of running away from Riley's mind, which fixes the control panel and makes Riley give up on running away, and she decides to return home to her worried parents. Joy gives Sadness the happy memories and they turn into sad ones. Sadness takes control of the panel and Riley finally reveals her true feelings to her parents as she begins to cry, telling her parents that she hates San Francisco and misses her old life in Minnesota and that she had been pretending to be happy because she was afraid they'd be mad if she stopped being their "happy girl." Riley's parents admit they share her sadness and begin to comfort her. Sadness and Joy press the button together, making Riley cry tears of joy, creating a new core memory — only this one is a mixture of yellow and blue; both Joy and Sadness. It creates a new "Family Island" that is visibly more complete and allows for the various aspects of her personality to return in full.

Several months later, Riley has recovered. She now has new Personality Islands, all created by mixed core memories (Anger notes that he likes how Friendship Island has expanded with a new "friendly argument section", suggesting that that Island is powered by a Joy/Anger core memory). Meanwhile, Sadness is finally treated as an equal among the other four emotions, and Joy solemnly remembers Bing Bong's sacrifice as things begin to return to normal and Riley, now twelve years old, adapts to life in a new city. Finally, the five emotions now have a larger, more complete console with which they can act at the same time and help Riley better. Disgust also notes a large red alarm labeled "Puberty" and questions what it does; however, Joy dismisses it as "not important". Meanwhile, at a hockey game, Riley picks up a water bottle belonging to a boy, and inside his mind we see his own emotions freaking out, with a large klaxon alarm blaring "GIRL!", possibly hinting at what is to come for Riley's own emotion in the coming years.

The credits also show scenes of what the emotions of other characters are like, such as Riley's teacher, the worker in the pizzeria, the cool girl, Jangles the clown, Gary the bus driver, a dog, and a cat.