In this video, you're going to learn 20 behind-the-scenes facts about Pixar's "Toy Story",

such as, how Pixar almost got shut down for making Woody act like a jerk,

how the animators used camera tricks to get around some technical limitations of the era,

and you'll also see some Easter eggs that suggest Pixar may have had some bad blood with Disney during the production.

"Toy Story" was Pixar's first full-length feature film, and they wanted to make sure it would be a success.

So, they asked some people over at Disney to look over their screenplay and help them improve it.

And one of those people was Joss Whedon, who is now famous for writing the first two Marvel "Avenger" movies.

Since Pixar relied upon Disney to help produce "Toy Story", this meant they had to take notes from one of Disney's executives, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who advised them to make the story more edgy and cynical that led to having Woody treat everyone like a jerk, which was a change that nearly got the whole movie shut down.

Get up here and do your job!

However, "Toy Story's" director John Lasseter convinced the other Disney executives to give Pixar two more weeks to improve the story, which they did by throwing out the ideas they received from Katzenberg and went back to create the story they intended to tell in the first place.

When "Toy Story" was in production, the animation team got permission to use the company credit card to buy toys for "research".

The animators would often stay at the office⏤sometimes as late as 3 a.m.⏤while playing with the toys to help them think like a child and to get ideas to use to create their characters.

Since Buzz is supposed to be the coolest toy ever, there was a lot of debate over what his features should be.

Each of the animators wanted him to be based on their own favorite childhood toys, but in the end, they chose to make him a mixture of several toys and was mostly based off of G.I. Joes and Big Jim action figures.

In the movie's audio commentary, John Lasseter said they got Buzz Lightyear's first name from Buzz Aldrin, who was part of the famous Apollo 11 mission.

But before Pixar settled on Buzz Lightyear, they had first considered the names Lunar Larry and Tempus the Morph.

Let me know in the comments if you're glad they didn't go with those two names.

For Buzz's color scheme, it was a combination of John Lasseter's favorite color, fluorescent green, and his wife's favorite color, purple.

Woody started out as a ventriloquist dummy but was eventually changed to his cowboy look with a pull string, which was an idea that came from John Lasseter's childhood Casper doll that had the same feature.

The "Toy Story" animators often used hidden production tricks in order to make some of their shots more balanced and cinematic.

For example, since Woody is a lot taller than Buzz, they used a technique called "trenching", where they placed Woody's legs inside the floor to line up his eyes better with Buzz's for close-ups.

Another hidden trick used to get past the technical limitations of the era was for the paratroopers' parachutes.

When the soldiers jumped and fell out of the frame, they were replaced with a new set of paratroopers that already had the parachutes pulled open.

Because, at the time, it was too difficult to try to animate an unfolding parachute.

A mistake the Pixar animators didn't notice until it was too late to change was the soldiers were talking through the baby monitor's receiver instead of the transmitter.

Pixar's sound department snuck in some references from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" by using the shooting arrow sounds for the pushpins, and the sound of the rolling boulder was used for the globe.

The animators were concerned they had gone too far when Woody hit Buzz repeatedly in the face during their fight, but their worries were put to rest when they found out that the sound engineer dubbed the punches using a squeeze toy.

Another funny sound bite you may not have noticed is that the sound of Woody running while inside the Pizza Planet cup comes from a straw being jiggled inside a soda cup lid.

Given the technical limitations of the time, all 17 Pizza Planet kids and adults were created by making variations to the Andy and Mom CG models.

If you've ever wondered if the baby-face toy was really using Morse code...

Yes, it was, and the message it tapped was "RR. Come out!" or, in other words, "Roger, Roger! Come out!"

There's a reference to Tim Allen's sitcom "Home Improvement" if you noticed the Binford Tools crate inside Sid's room.

If you've always wanted to know where "Toy Story's" hidden Mickey is, you can spot it inside the watch hanging in Andy's room.

The Mickey-watch Easter egg also contains another hidden reference that was pointed out in a video by Crazy Nate.

I'll put a link to his video in a card so you can watch it later.

Crazy Nate mentions that the Mickey clock says 12:05 p.m., but the size of the characters' shadows make it look like it's much later in the afternoon, which could be Pixar's way of saying Disney was behind the times with their hand-drawn animated movies.

Let me know if you think that theory holds up or if it's a stretch.

There's also another hidden reference that hints at bad blood between the two companies.

When we see earlier in the film that Buzz has Disney's name written on his backside, and later on, we see that Sid has shot it with a sticky dart.

If you'd like to see more facts on the channel about Pixar movies, click the video on the screen.

And if you're new here, make sure to subscribe and click the bell so you'll always be notified when I post my next video so you can keep learning more fun facts about your favorite films.