Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust aren't just four of the five emotion-based characters that resided in a young girl's head in the 3-D-animated Pixar hit “Inside Out,” they're feelings Walt Disney Co. executives might find coming to the surface as well.

Disney and Pixar were hit with a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Tuesday on behalf of Minnesota child development expert Denise Daniels, who claims studio executives used her original ideas to create the 2015 film, which was a critical, box office and awards hit.

It was third animated hit created by Disney or Pixar in the past three years to be slapped with copyright suits seeking millions of dollars — “Zootopia” and “Frozen” were the other two — and this one asks for unspecified damages to be determined by the court.