In "A Bug's Life Suite," that phrase is in the flutes at the beginning, and - with a slightly different rhythm - it's also present at ~1:00. The brass phrase at the very beginning of "Did You Do This?" starts out the same, although it differs near the end (click on the image to enlarge it):
[I should note here that I did the notation myself, so it's likely that I might have some of the note values wrong. I also have suspicions that the phrase from "A Bug's Life Suite" actually begins on a downbeat. I'm fairly certain of the pitches though.]
Before writing this post, I listened to both soundtracks again (to confirm the track titles), and I found an-other similar phrase:
[Of course, the same disclaimer as above applies to this too.]
The menacing figure in the strings in "Hopper and His Gang" from A Bug's Life appears (again in the strings) in "Field Trip" from Monsters University.
Randy Newman composed the scores for both A Bug's Life and Monsters University, so it's not a huge surprise that there are similar phrases. Pixar is well-known for hiding visual references to their films in other films, so I'm wondering if these are instances of Newman's doing the same thing in his scores or even if these phrases in the score indicate a corresponding visual reference in the film.
