Long-time Pixar fans will be aware that the highly-respected animation behemoth often sneak Easter Eggs in to their movies. Especially with a long-running franchise like Toy Story, which has been going for 27 years and counting. There are frequently callbacks to previous films or to other Pixar movies, which are sometimes hidden in the background as a reward for eagle-eyed viewers.
This has led to several conspiracy theories. A popular one is that the villain of the first Toy Story (1995) – the sadistic neighbour kid Sid – has a cameo in Toy Story 3 (2010) as a bin man. Another one took hold after the release of Toy Story 2 in 1999. We all remember the upsetting flashback set to the tear-jerking song When She Loved Me which provided Jessie’s backstory.
In the sequence, Jessie plays with a girl who is Andy’s age called Emily. As Emily gets older, she loses interest in horses and cowgirls and gets into make-up and music. She then donates Emily to a charity. Some viewers spotted that when the younger Emily plays with Jessie, she wears a cowgirl outfit with a hat that looks very similar to the hat Andy wears when he’s playing with Woody.
Also, if we trace the timeline back – Andy is six years old in 1995, meaning he was born in 1989. This means that his mother would have likely been a teenager in the 1970s, which matches up with the hippie tie-dye, flower-power and psychedelic posters and record player that Emily gets as she grows older.
Therefore, there is a popular theory that Emily – the callous girl who cruelly abandons Jessie as a teenager – is in fact Andy’s Mum, thereby making her the true villain of the Toy Story franchise! Evil Emperor Zurg eat your heart out.
Find out if Jessie made our list of the best Toy Story characters and whether we think there will be a Lightyear 2.