YMMV / Toy Story 2

• Accidental Innuendo:
  "He's selling himself for 25 cents!"
  "Oh, Woody...you're worth more'n that!"
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Some fans believe Emily never forgot Jessie, and did have fond memories of her, but simply felt she outgrew her, and put her in the donations box so that another child would love her, not knowing that Al would find her instead. It doesn't help that she doesn't get any lines, so you never learn her side of the story. Indeed, this interpretation is popular among those who had similar experiences with their toys.
  • Prospector ends up in the ownership of a girl who likes drawing on her toys, at least one of whom speaks highly of her. Is the girl meant to be a Good Countepart to Sid (innovating her toys rather than deforming them) or is her doll suffering Stockholm Syndrome?
  • Given the popularity of customizing standard manufactured dolls into unique art pieces, It is possible that Prospector actually gets a positive re-make. Especially if he feels like a toy nobody wants initially, being made over from a stinky, ugly Scrappy into a different archetype might help him find a new role.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The explanation for the "Buzz Lightyear Aisle" that Barbie gives is completely real. There was a heavy Demand Overload for Buzz Lightyear toys after the original movie came out and became an unexpected smash-hit, which this scene is hanging a lampshade on.
• Award Snub: It received only one Oscar nomination, which it lost to Tarzan, making it the only non Oscar-winning Toy Story film. Its critical acclaim was such that it could have even been nominated, and won, for Best Picture. Notably, it is the only film of the original three that couldn't earn a nomination for its screenplay, despite reviews on par with the other two. Granted this was 1999, often thought of as one of the better years for cinema, but it is generally seen as being equal to just about all of the actual nominees. Though it did end up winning Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes the same year.
• Awesome Music:
  • "When She Loved Me". An utterly heartwrenching song by Jessie that was said to have made both Tim Allen and Tom Hanks tear up during the premiere.
  • Ride Like The Wind. The reprise of the first movie's "Infinity and Beyond" near the end really sells it.
  • The Cleaner is a solely musical number showcasing the Cleaner's precision and skill in cleaning and refining Woody. After all, "you can't rush art".
  • Woody's Roundup is a cheery western theme with a country tune to hype people for the in-universe show.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Zurg's line "No Buzz, I am your father" followed Utility-belt Buzz's Big "NO!" can come off as this to children who hadn't watched The Empire Strikes Back beforehand, especially given that it has nothing to do with the main plot concerning Woody and his friends, and is quickly dropped off by the time the toys follow Al to the airport, as by that point, Utility-belt Buzz is seen having "reconciled" with Zurg and wants to stay behind to play ball with him.
• Broken Base:
  • Did Al deserve to lose Jessie, Bullseye, and Prospector after he stole Woody? Some agree, some instead feel sorry for him.
  • The decision to cut the blooper where Prospector flirts with two Barbie dolls from re-releases since 2019. It's generally understood that this was done because of John Lasseter's then-recent exposure for sexual misconduct, but it still causes debates between those who decry it as censorship and those who think it's not a big deal and is the right thing to do.
• Contested Sequel: A very minor example. No one disputes that the film is excellent, but some fans can't agree on whether this film is just as good as the original, not quite as good, or even slightly better. Mostly the question comes down to personal preference.
• Crosses the Line Twice: While the Reality Subtext made it awkward enough for Disney to cut it out of future releases, the gag of Prospector flirtatiously offering two Barbies a role in the sequel, with obvious ulterior motives, is still hilarious on its own.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Regardless of how sympathetic Prospector is, some fans often tend to overlook him trying to force Woody not to go back to Andy and then flat out trying to dismember Woody when the latter made it clear he wasn't going to Japan.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: In spite of his short screen time, Evil Emperor Zurg has grown to become very popular amongst Toy Story fans thanks to his unique Vader-inspired design, his booming voice, and his bombastic personality. He earned himself a place as Buzz's nemesis in both Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and Lightyear as a result.
• Even Better Sequel: This movie is not only considered to be one of the best Pixar films, but also considered by critics to be one of the rare sequels to be better than its predecessor with praise being directed towards the improved animation, deeper characterisation from the cast particularly Woody and Jessie with their fear of abandonment, and memorable heart-wrenching scenes like Jessie's backstory.
• Fanfic Fuel: We know about Jessie's past with Emily, and we know that Prospector was never bought back in the day, but what about Bullseye's backstory? On top of that, what were Jessie, Bulleye and Prospector's journeys like before they were picked up by Al?, how many places have they been?, did they meet other kids and toys along the way?, and how Al got each of them?. It's also possible that Jessie and Bullseye (but not Prospector, since Al never took him out of his box) were restored by Geri the cleaner like he did with Woody due to Al already knowing him.
• Faux Symbolism: In Woody's nightmare, the cards surrounding him are all the ace of spades, the card used to represent death in fortune telling.
• Franchise Original Sin: This was the first Disney/Pixar movie to have a twist villain, which was novel here but would later become a trope that many accused Disney and Pixar of overusing and misusing in The New '10s. The key word there being "misusing", as most agreed it was done very well in this movie and that upon rewatch, the twist reveal all adds up and makes a lot of sense (which was even stated as the intention in the DVD Commentary), and the eventual villain character gets a lot of screentime and development before the reveal. Comparatively, later movies that use this trope do it on a character who is offscreen for a good majority of the movie, the Foreshadowing is either non-existent or vague at best, and the villain ends up thwarted so quickly after the reveal that it ends up lacking any real impact or memorability.
• Game-Breaker: The green laser pick up in the game adaptation. It completely destroys any enemy in Buzz's way, to the point that it makes the mini bosses in the game effortless to destroy (except for the Jackhammer, Emperor Zurg, Zurg's silver robot guards, Prospector and Blacksmith, all of whom are immune to Buzz's lasers).
• Genius Bonus: "What, that's in yen, right? DOLLARS?!" This was done at a time in which not a lot of people in the target audience knew about how Yen worked compared to US/AU/CAN Dollars, which use decimals, unlike Yen. So yes, it really was expensive for Al to check luggage and ship stuff to Japan.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The blooper where Wheezy swallows his squeaker becomes a lot darker when in Toy Story 3, it's revealed that he was lost before the events of that movie took place.
  • The blooper showing Jessie accidentally snapping Woody's pull string becomes harder to watch when in Toy Story 4, Woody loses it along with his voice box for good.
  • The blooper of Prospector flirting with two Barbie dolls, whispering that he might be able to get them a role in Toy Story 3, feels a lot skeevier following director/Pixar co-founder John Lasseter's firing over sexual misconduct. This was enough to get this blooper cut from future releases.
  • Woody saving Wheezy from being put in a yard sale. Sometime between the second and third Toy Story movies, Wheezy was one of the toys lost before Andy left for college, possibly even having been sold off in a yard sale. Punctuated by this line:
    Wheezy: What's the point in prolonging the inevitable?
  • Woody convinced Jessie to come with him back to Andy's by telling her that Andy will love her. Comes the fourth film, Woody is the one not being loved by Bonnie after Andy donated the toys to her in the ending of the third film, which drives the entire plot to happen. In fact, the expectation the toys make that children will always love them is thoroughly deconstructed in that film.
  • After "When She Loved Me", Jessie says, "You never forget kids like Emily or Andy, but they forget you." In 4, Bonnie forgets about Woody. Hitting this harder is Bonnie doing this to Woody at a much earlier age than Emily did to Jessie.
  • This film ends with Woody deciding that even after Andy outgrows him, he'll have Buzz to keep him company "for infinity and beyond". The fourth film ends with Woody saying goodbye to Buzz so he can stay with Bo Peep at the carnival. What's worse is the last lines of that movie, as the vehicle containing what's left of the gang is driving away.
    Buzz: To infinity...
    Woody: ...and beyond.
  • Prospector telling the toys towards the end of the movie that they'll end up in a landfill became this after the toys end up almost getting burned to death in the incinerator of a landfill in the third movie.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: A couple of moments after the events of Toy Story 4.
  • When he decides to stay with Jessie, Bullseye and Prospector rather than leave them for good, Woody muses to them "Who am I to break up the Round-Up Gang?" In 4, Jessie and Bullseye support his decision to go off on his own and start a new life.
  • One of the film's best jokes is Bo Peep giving Buzz a good luck kiss and tell him "This is for Woody when you find him," which Buzz replies it "won't be the same coming from [him]." In 4, Buzz and Woody exchange a platonic but completely sincere embrace before Woody leave him to be with Bo.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The relationship between Zurg and Buzz (well, second Buzz) is a deliberate Affectionate Parody of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Disney now owns Star Wars.
  • Prospector asks Woody if he honestly believes that Andy is going to take him to college. Come the sequel, and Andy really is planning to take Woody with him when he goes to college.
  • Woody's Large Ham persona when he struts out of a box and "flirts" with Jessie brings to mind the "Creepy Woody" meme.
  • Prospector's punishment is to be stuck at a new home with a girl and her Barbie doll. Three years later, Grammer played as a Big Bad within a Barbie film.
  • One that's downright hysterical in hindsight: while searching for Woody's hat, Ham says, "The lawn gnome next door says it's not in the yard, but he'll keep looking." On the DVD Commentary, Andrew Stanton jokes about a spin-off movie with the lawn gnomes, which John Lasseter jokingly replies "Shhh! Don't give them any ideas!" Not only did Disney eventually produce a lawn gnome movie, but it was actually John's decision not to have it be part of the Disney Animated Canon.
  • During the second 2016 U.S. presidential debate, undecided voter Ken Bone became an overnight meme hero, and several memes revolved around how heavily he resembled◊ Al, and that Toy Story 2 predicted the rise of Bone.
  • The climax involves Woody and Jessie having to escape from a plane during takeoff. This is not the last film with Tom Hanks to have him in peril on a plane; there are the plane crashes in Cast Away and Sully, the latter of which introduced the meme "Never travel with Tom Hanks".
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Prospector derisively refers to Buzz Lightyear as "Buzz Yogurt Light" after locking the air vents to prevent Woody from returning to Andy's house. Fast forward to the premiere of Lightyear and fans had a chuckle after seeing Danone plastered Buzz's image on its sugar-free yogurt's one-liter presentations.
  • The Andy's Buzz vs. Utility Belt Buzz scene is often retrospectively and humorously compared with the 2023's Cap vs 2012's Cap scene in Avengers: Endgame. Then Lightyear came along in 2022, and Buzz Lightyear is voiced by none other than Chris Evans himself.
  • The Cleaner's declaration of "you can't rush art" has a bit of Reality Subtext to it, as the film's production was rather rushed and hectic, with Pixar even having to almost start over from scratch at one point, but the movie's quality ended up not suffering for it, being widely seen as an Even Better Sequel to an already groundbreaking film. So, no, Gerri, it turns out you can rush art.
  • Buzz's Dynamic Entry in the movie's introduction, coupled with what he does throughout Zurg's lair (not the least of which includes actually getting beaten by Zurg), would lead to Adam Warlock doing something quite similar some 24 years later. Really all he needs as he's approaching terminal velocity is for "Crazy On You" to be playing in the background.
• I Am Not Shazam: Prospector has become so widely known as "Stinky Pete" that many forget that it is not his actual name, but rather an insulting nickname that he is only referred to as twice by Woody in the whole movie, and even then, Woody only does so as a way of insulting him. The character's official name is Prospector (he is even referred to as such in the movie credits).
• It Was His Sled: Prospector's villainy was never indicated in any marketing material until the movie's release. Nowadays the twist isn't so shocking anymore.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Prospector, who spent his whole life stuck on a toy shelf never being sold until Al came along. Once he was finally bought, he was kept in the box as a collector's item instead of a toy.
  • Al is a greedy, hostile and occasionally lazy opportunist who steals a woman's possession despite being told it wasn't for sale. Other than that, he doesn't appear to be a dishonest businessman and his trade with the toy museum was implied to be entirely fair. His visible sadness in his final scene is completely understandable, and even rational. Word of God even gives him a Freudian Excuse that his obsession with toys as an adult comes from the fact that his parents never let him play with them as a child.
• Karmic Overkill: While Al stealing Woody was worthy of Laser-Guided Karma, as far as we know he aquired Jessie, Bullseye, and Prospector completely legally, as well as the rest of his Woody's Roundup collection. With that in mind, him losing the travel money as the deal with the museum undoubtedly fell through, plus any damage to the other merch as the airport clearly isn't being as careful as Al wanted, can seem too far for something that in our world would just be a petty crime at most (the only reason its treated akin to a kidnapping by the protagonists is because the toys are living creatures in the Toy Story universe).
• Love to Hate: Prospector and Al McWhiggin, the Big Bad Duumvirate of the film. Both of them come off as more sympathetic than intended, with Al in particular also being laughable and entertaining as a Fat Slob.
• Magnificent Bastard: Emperor Zurg is the Arch-Enemy of Buzz Lightyear. When Buzz is called to Zurg's planet to deal with him, Zurg first sets a trap of thousands of robots. When Buzz escapes that he nearly kills him with a spike trap, a levitating bridge, and even fools him with a fake power source. Finally facing Buzz head on, he kills him in battle, and then laughs maniacally. The film then cuts to the "real world", where Rex complains about how hard the Zurg boss fight in the game is.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Narm: "You really are Stinky Pete, aren't you?"
• Narm Charm: The sight of Emperor Zurg rolling across the empty parking lot shouting "DESTROY BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!" over and over is pretty silly. However, then the Fridge Horror kicks in — just like Utility Belt Buzz, this toy thinks it is actually Emperor Zurg and it is dead-set on killing Buzz, which makes him legitimately threatening as well as funny.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The game for both the PlayStation, the PC and the Nintendo 64 combined the similar free-roaming gameplays of Super Mario 64 and Spyro the Dragon to great effect, while following the plot of the movie. This helped a lot in Europe, where the game's rerelease on the PlayStation Network helped to make out for the Spyro trilogy's late arrival (December 2012). Additionally, several movie locations^note (such as Andy's house, his neighborhood, Al's Toy Barn and its Pizza Planet-esque Buzz Lightyear-based section, Al's penthouse and the airport) translate pretty well to functional video game levels.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The cleaner who repairs Woody, played by Geri of Geri's Game.
  • The Rock'Em Sock'Em robots in Al's office.
    Red: HEY! HE WAS TALKING TO ME!
    Blue: NO, HE WAS TALKING TO ME!
    (Both fight, and Blue knocks Red's block off.)
• Porting Disaster: While the Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast ports of the game are by no means disastrous, they are both considered to be inferior, due to the former having a very watered down version of the games' soundtrack, as well as poor sound quality and worse graphics/visuals, and the latter for having a terrible control system, longer loading times, bad draw distance (blue colored fog often appears in levels, making it very hard to see) and a frustrating save system that does not allow you to overwrite your previous save files, forcing you to delete in order to create a new save, which can turn into a repetitive process, if you are saving the game constantly. As a result, the PC and PlayStation versions of the game are both widely preferred by most fans.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The Game Boy Color version of the video game, like its predecessor on the Game Boy, suffers from bad controls and physics, boring graphics, annoying music and a baffling enemy choice (Rex and the Little Green Men are enemies in this game).
• The Scrappy: The Dinosaur boss (not to be confused for Rex) in Al's Toy Barn (level 7) is often remembered by fans as one of the most pathetic bosses in the game, due to the fact that it moves at a snail's pace and breathes fire at such a short range, in a big room, no less, that makes it easy for Buzz to easily outsmart the Dinosaur and destroy him with minimal effort.
• Scrappy Weapon: In the game adaptation, one of the weapons is the disc launcher, which, as the name suggests, fires homing discs and is meant to be used against tougher enemies that are immune to Buzz's laser. Unfortunately, it is unsatisfying and frustrating to use, due to the fact that it isn't particularly effective against enemies, often bouncing off of them instead. It helps that you only need to use the weapon twice in the whole game.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: This game is far easier compared to the first which was rather Nintendo Hard, thanks to the lack of Unexpected Gameplay Change and making it a fairly standard 3D platformer.
• Signature Scene: Geri refurbishing Woody is well-remembered. More so, Jessie's backstory during the "When She Loved Me" sequence.
• Strawman Has a Point: Prospector, the film's true main antagonist, has the unambiguously nasty aim of keeping Woody from returning to Andy, whom Woody knows to appreciate him. However, as he's defeated, he screams "Children destroy toys! You'll all be ruined! Forgotten! Spending eternity rotting away in some landfill!" It's a perfectly legitimate concern, and Prospector had no way of knowing how good an owner Andy is. His foreshadowing almost comes true in the third movie.
• That One Boss:
  • The Jackhammer boss from level 4 the video game adaptation is remembered by fans as one of the scarier bosses in the game, due to his large, intimidating appearance and the creepy laugh he makes if he touches you. While he is a pretty easy boss by a hardcore gamer's standards, he is still one of the tougher bosses compared to the other mini bosses in the game, since you can only defeat him with a disc launcher, which doesn't always hit him properly, often bouncing off of him. It also doesn't help matters that you have to fight him on top of an unfinished building made of girders that is still under construction and is easy to accidentally fall off of.
  • The boss of the sixth level, Slime Time, like the name would imply, is a slime monster who bounces around while inside a trash can. The more you shoot him, the more he literally shrinks, but what ultimately makes him one of the tougher bosses is that he grows larger and larger after each time you try to make him shrink, meaning that you will have keep shooting him more times, whenever he gets bigger, made more frustrating by the fact that he bounces around at a fast pace, meaning that the player will have to keep shooting him as fast as possible before he jumps away again.
  • The boss of the ninth level, Toy barn encounter, is a giant King Mook version of the floating hover droids seen in previous levels. Here it has containers of regular mooks, who get released each time you shoot the hover droid boss. The hover droid will only let you shoot it once each time in order for it to release their mooks, and lasers are immune to the hover droid until you destroy its released mooks, which has to be done six times before it will allow you to shoot at it as many times as you please and destroy it.
  • Emperor Zurg himself, the boss of the twelve level, who is taller than Buzz, floats around and fires both homing and non-homing bullets from his ion blaster. He is also immune to bullets and can only be hurt by Buzz melee attacking him when he gets close, which can be hard, since Zurg tends to float away quite fast. While he is an aversion of this trope in most versions of the game, due to him still being pretty easy to defeat, the PC version of the game unintentionally makes Zurg play this trope very straight, if played on later versions of Windows, due to a glitch, where he will keep endlessly evading from Buzz, until he is cornered in an area where Buzz has to do a spin attack against him while jumping. The only issue there is it is an area where Buzz can easily fall to his death, and it's the only area to corner Zurg too, meaning the player has to be super careful when trying to attack Zurg.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Since the whole reason Woody ended up in Al's clutches in the first place was because he was rescuing Wheezy, it would have been nice if Wheezy had gone with Buzz and the others on the rescue mission to get Woody back.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Prospector is meant to be a deserving victim for betraying Woody and his friends, but we can really sympathize with him as he spent a lifetime in his box on a shelf watching other toys being sold and never got sold himself and felt like he'd never been loved. As far as he's concerned, being put in a museum to spend the rest of his existence being admired by visitors is his reward for enduring such isolation and loneliness, and now Woody is going to take it away from him. Additionally, Prospector is meant to act as Woody's Shadow Archetype in the first film, which doesn't quite work out either as even when Woody was overlooked for Buzz he's still a tall, dashing hero toy with loyal friends and a love interest who gets him, while Prospector is a Gonk sidekick that absolutely nobody was concerned with.
• Values Dissonance: The Casting Couch gag in the Hilarious Outtakes immediately became dated once #MeToo took off in 2017. Even disregarding the fact that director John Lasseter was one of the first people to be directly called out for sexual misconduct, it would be seen as much too sexually explicit for a family film after The New '10s, when the negative long term effects that sex in media has on children are taken much more seriously. Unsurprisingly, modern releases omit this clip.
• The Woobie:
  • Wheezy. He was shelved after his squeaker broke and left up there, collecting dust, for who knows how long. He gets much better at the end of the movie, though.
  • Jessie. "When somebody loved me..." She's portrayed with mostly realistic anxiety issues, especially abandonment issues and claustrophobia.
  • Woody could also qualify when Andy doesn't take him to Cowboy Camp due to his broken arm. To say that he was upset because of it is an understatement. It also affects him throughout the movie.
• Woolseyism:
  • In one scene of the movie, Buzz gives a rousing speech to encourage the toys to rescue Woody. Towards the end of it, an American flag appears behind him while we hear The Star-Spangled Banner play, before transitioning to the exact same image on Al's TV. In international versions of this movie, however, the American flag is replaced with a rotating globe with fireworks, and The Star-Spangled Banner with an original piece by Randy Newman called the One World Anthem.
  • When Wheezy is singing "You've Got a Friend in Me" at the end of the film, he's on a stage made up of letter blocks that spell his name. International versions replace the letters with stars.
  • In the Latin Spanish dub, during the scene in the airport when Slinky gets his rear stuck in a suitcase going to the opposite side, he says that it's going to "fly to the Patagonia" instead of Baton Rouge.
  • In the Latin Spanish dub, when the gang first meet the Barbies, instead of calling them "ladies", Ham calls them "Muñecas." Which is a typical way to call a girl sometimes, but it literally means "doll", making a pun of the situation.

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