Most Toy Story fans will remember the dreaded incinerator scene from Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3. This heavily emotional scene, which took over a year to animate, showed Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the rest of the gang all sinking to their fiery doom, hand in hand, believing that was the end. At the time, it seemed like Pixar would actually go for it and kill off the toys, ending the trilogy for good.
That, of course, was never going to happen, but can you imagine such a dark ending for a kids’ movie? Theaters around the world would be flooded with tears, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Who knows how much trauma that would have caused. Fortunately, Woody and the others made it out alive.
The first time we see a toy’s brush with death is in the first Toy Story. Woody and the gang watch as Sid straps an M80 to the back of a Combat Carl. Carl explodes, with his pieces scattering everywhere. Did he die? The assumption could be yes. Though later, Woody finds severed Combat Carl heads in Sid’s room and zombie Combat Carl’s rise up from the sandbox as well. Wow, sometimes it’s easy to forget Toy Story can be morbid.
