The tragic theory surrounding Woody from ‘Toy Story’
Pixar has given fans many iconic characters since its first feature-length film, 1995’s Toy Story. However, the Toy Story franchise contains a higher volume of cherished characters than any of their others, from Buzz Lightyear to Mr. Potato Head, with none as loved as the central character, Woody. Voiced by Tom Hanks, Woody is a pull-string cowboy doll that is the favourite toy of Andy Davis at the start of the series.
As fans are well aware, the arc across the four Toy Story films evolves, with the toys’ position in the world changing as Andy gets older and goes to college, with them eventually coming into the possession of his younger sister, Bonnie. Despite Andy handing Woody down to his sister, he still has a special connection with him that he does not have with the other toys.
According to one theory, this is because Woody previously belonged to Andy’s absent father. Andy’s dad never appears or is directly addressed in the Toy Story movies. Of course, a few theories have emerged to explain this, with a popular one claiming that Andy’s parents are divorced.
However, another more fascinating one posits that Andy’s dad passed away before the first film following a lifelong battle with polio. This account is attributed to Mike Mozart, who revealed it during an appearance on the Super Carlin Brothers YouTube channel in 2017. Mozart was a friend of Joe Ranft, one of the series’ creators.
Mozart claims that Ranft once told him that Andy’s dad was also called Andy, and that it was he who carved his name into Woody’s boot in the 1950s. However, he then caught polio, with his toys burned, save from Woody, who he hid from that fate. Eventually, Davis Sr. recovered from his illness, married Andy’s mum, and had two kids. Nevertheless, shortly after Andy’s sister Molly was born, the theory claims that he developed post-polio syndrome, which led to his death.
The theory then asserts that before passing away, Andy Sr. entrusted his son with Woody, whom fans are told in Toy Story 2 is a collector’s item. This theory also claims that the doll was a one-off prototype that Andy Sr. came into ownership of because of his childhood illness.
Despite the theory being popular on the internet, with Mozart maintaining its validity, another Toy Story writer Andrew Stanton, dismissed it on social media as nothing more than “fake news.”
Unfortunately for fans, Ranft passed away in a car crash in 2005, so he’s not around to put an end to the debate once and for all. Although Andy’s mum even refers to Woody as “an old family toy”, and there are elements of the theory that are plausible, many aspects still fail under scrutiny.
