15 fun facts about “Toy Story”! (List)

Learn here 15 unknown fun facts about the movie “Toy Story” according to mtv.com!

1. Without “Nightmare Before Christmas,” there would be no “Toy Story.”
We can all thank Jack Skellington (OK, and Zero too) for Disney’s willingness to give “Toy Story” a shot. Prior to Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas,” no animated film bearing the Disney name had ever made outside of Disney Studios. But Burton’s madcap stop-motion feature opened the studio’s minds to the possibilities of collaboration. “Because of ’Nightmare Before Christmas,’ ’Toy Story’ happened,” Lasseter said during the “Toy Story” 20th anniversary panel at D23 in August. (Fun fact: Lasseter and Burton were classmates at CalArts.)

2. Pixar tentatively titled the film “You Are A Toy.”

3. Woody used to be a huge jerk.
This may sound crazy, but the lovable protagonist of “Toy Story” was originally a total effing jerk. In early storyboards, Woody was relentlessly cruel to the other toys. This may sound crazy, but the lovable protagonist of “Toy Story” was originally a total effing jerk. In early storyboards, Woody was relentlessly cruel to the other toys.

4. Tom Hanks’ brother Jim voices Woody when he’s too busy.

5. Woody was originally a large ventriloquist dummy.
Several notes from Disney criticized Woody for being too creepy, so Lasseter eventually decided to make Woody a pull-string toy (inspired for his own love of one as a child) instead of a dummy. In the end, Buzz was scaled to 12 inches and Woody to 15 inches.

6. The animators actually turned themselves into toy soldiers for a day.
In order to better study the toy soldiers’ movements, animator Pete Docter decided to nail his own sneakers to a wooden board. He unfortunately nailed them from the bottom on his first attempt, but once he got it down, Docter later made these prototypes for the entire team and they spent an entire day moving around with their shoes nailed to wooden planks. Docter also sewed together his own Woody doll during the production.

7. Buzz was originally very ~meta~.
After Tim Allen had recorded all of his dialogue, it became very clear that the it didn’t quite match who Buzz was, initially. This was especially hard for Docter, who voiced Buzz for all of the early treatments. “Originally, we thought Buzz was aware of the TV show from which he came from — it was very meta,” he said. But once they listened to Allen’s take, they rewrote Buzz’s dialogue and instead, made it so that Buzz didn’t know he was a toy from a TV show, and therefore, his identity issues became the film’s running bit.

8. Buzz Lightyear was originally named Tempest.
Buzz was originally named Tempest, after the animators’ obsession with the Atari game Tempest, and he was only six inches high.

9. Buzz’s iconic spacesuit was originally red.
In early storyboards for the animated feature — back when Buzz was a wee, 6-inch toy instead of his normal 12 — his suit was red. After deciding to model it after real spacesuits, the team decided on white with lime green and purple accents. Why those colors? “Lime green is my favorite color and purple is my wife Nancy’s favorite color,” Lasseter said. “Just like she and I, they go really well together.”

10. Joss Whedon wrote the most memorable line from the film.
After reading a early draft of Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie that never was, Lasseter was so impressed that he brought the young writer into the writers’ room to help with the script.
Whedon eventually came up with one of Lasseter’s favorite lines in any Pixar movie: “You’re a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.”

11. Some of Woody’s most memorable lines were improvised by Hanks. (Tom, not Jim.)

12. The movie saved Etch A Sketch.
When Disney met with Lasseter and co. well into production on “Toy Story,” they brought along a few (read: “about six or seven”) songs for the film. When Lasseter broke the news to the poor guy that “Toy Story” wasn’t going to be a musical, “his face went completely white. I think he thought he was going to be fired,” Lasseter recalled. Of course, “Toy Story” did need a song, and Lasseter and his team knew from the start that there was only one guy suitable for the job: Randy Newman. “There was so much sincerity in his insincere delivery — and that was what ’Toy Story’ was all about,” said Stanton. And just like that, “You’ve Got A Friend” in me was born.

13. Billy Crystal was the first choice to voice Buzz Lightyear.
Crystal was originally asked to voice Buzz Lightyear in “Toy Story,” but the actor declined. “It’s the only regret I have in the business of something I passed on,” he later told ABC News.

14. It was the highest grossing film of 1995.
It grossed over $191 million at the box office, making it the highest grossing film of the year.

15. The movie saved Etch A Sketch.
Ohio Art Company, the company that makes Etch A Sketch, was nearly bankrupt before “Toy Story.” After they allowed Etch to be in the film, they saw a 20-percent sales increase that saved the company.