This page contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned.
Toy Story 3 is easily the most intense installment of the Toy Story franchise so far, and most of all of these horrors are caused by a maniacal and crazed stuffed bear.
Watching your icons futilely struggle for their lives in the inferno... "Toys don't last forever," indeed.
- Lots'o-Huggin' Bear, as expected from an Ax-Crazy killer teddy bear. On the outside, he's a caring stuffed bear who looks after all the other toys at Sunnyside. On the inside, he's a sociopathic nihilist acting like a mob boss who not only doesn't give a second thought to sending new arrivals to the Caterpillar Room where they'll inevitably be used until they're ruined and sent to the dump, but is so bent on doing so that he's turned Sunnyside into a nigh-inescapable prison where he rules with an iron fist through lies, abuse, surveillance, coercion, and even brainwashing — all for the sake of forcing his nihilistic worldview upon any toy he possibly can as a self-validating coping mechanism for the heartbreak his former owner put him through. Even Woody, after he and the others escape the incinerator, considers Lotso too far gone to be worth the trouble.
- Especially compared to previous antagonists in the last films. Sid was just a kid with an appetite for destruction, Scud was just an aggressive dog, Stinky Pete was just bitter about never having been played with, Al was just a greedy adult who wanted the big bucks the Woody's Roundup merchandise would give him. Lotso on the other hand is purely malicious and takes it out on others.
- Lotso's confrontation of Andy's toys at the dumpster is the only scene which precisely demonstrates how terrifying he truly is. It's the first - and only - time we get to peek into his deeply twisted psyche, due to his Motive Rant, which is every bit as dark, nihilistic, and terrifying as his cold and shriveled soul (if he even has one), and it is immediately right after he essentially tells his minions to dump every single toy in the dumpster and leave them to die.WHAT?! YOU WANT YOUR MOMMY BACK!? SHE NEVER LOVED YOU! DON'T BE SUCH A BABY!!! "PUSH 'EM IN! ALL OF THEM!! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DUMMIES TRY TO THINK! WE'RE ALL JUST TRASH! WAITING TO BE THROWN AWAY! THAT'S ALL A TOY IS!!!"
- If you looked compared Stretch's face before and during the entire sequence when Lotso's giving his motive rant and abusing Big Baby. She's clearly beginning to second-guess herself and the look on her face when Lotso orders her to push Andy's toys (and Barbie and Ken) into the trash is a mix of reluctance and fear. This heavily implies that she's beginning to realize what she's doing is wrong but is too terrified of Lotso to disobey.
- This line from Buttercup captures his character:
- Apparently, before Ned Beatty was cast, none other than Jeff Bridges was considered for the voice of Lotso. Anyone who has seen Iron Man knows how incredibly intimidating Bridges sounds like as a villain.
- Mark Hamill was also in contention to play Lotso. Imagine what would've been if the tyrannical teddy bear ended up sounding like The Joker, Fire Lord Ozai, Skeletor, or if Luke turned to the dark side!
- Speaking of the brainwashing, there's what happens to Buzz. Considering that he's been one of the most heroic characters of the series, watching him be overpowered and turned evil (particularly after his Character Development in the first film) and then ruthlessly help imprison his friends is pretty unsettling. The reveal, in which Buzz emerges from the shadows in front of Jessie, even resembles something from a horror film.
- Especially chilling is the slow zoom-in shot of Lotso smiling Kubrick-style and leaning on his cane, while the only thing the audience has to go on is a few fleeting glimpses of Buzz darting around in the foreground and the sounds of him single-handedly dispatching his friends.
- During the scene, Lotso talks his thugs through the reset by reading from a Buzz Lightyear instruction manual that the Bookworm has handy in the bookcase. That manual had to have come with another Buzz that was previously donated to Sunnyside, and it's not hard to piece together what happened to him.
- As if the actual Mind Rape wasn't unsettling enough, the scene where Buzz gets brainwashed is also eerily reminiscent of a Prison Rape, with him being forcibly bent over, having his battery covering opened and the thugs accessing a normally private part. To further drive home the point, he's screaming in pain, begging his tormenters to stop and finally ending with a Big "NO!".
- The scene wherein we realize just how short of a breaking point any toy assigned to the Caterpillar Room can expect. It's basically the equivalent of being locked in a room full of angry chimpanzees.
- The thought of spending the night locked in the Box must be quite daunting to anyone with a fear of confined spaces. Like Jessie.
- The scene where Woody tries to escape Sunnyside on a kite but is caught by an upward draft is punctuated by a first-person perspective shot looking straight down at the ground several hundred feet below. Yikes.
- The resolution of the scene is even worse, given some Fridge Logic: How lucky is it that Woody's string doesn't snap when it snags on that tree branch? To make matters worse still, Bonnie simply yanks him downward when she finds him instead of bothering to pull him off the branch gently.
- The Cymbal-Banging Monkey. Creepy enough already, but things go up to eleven fast whenever he sounds the alarm. Makes perfect sense that he's Lotso's security guy in that sense. And dear God, the scene where Woody and Slinky ambush him...
- Made even scarier if you failed to notice the only indication that he knew Woody and Slinky were there (a slight moving of his eyes). Miss it, and there's no warning WHATSOEVER for when he abruptly jerks his head around 180 degrees and screeches at the top of his lungs. Woody's scream in response really says it all.
- The climactic scene where Lotso leaves the toys to die in the trash incinerator, which is likely the closest thing to Dante's Inferno you'll ever see in a kids' movie. This scene was such nightmare fuel that most fans consider it to be the darkest scene in the Toy Story series by far.
- The landfill sequence as a whole, in fact. First, we get Buzz being crushed by a TV in a garbage truck. He survives, but it's unnervingly easy to imagine things not turning out so well. Next, at the dump, the comic relief aliens get run over by a bulldozer as Mrs. Potato Head screams in horror. They survive, but they were very lucky to do so. Then the toys come very close to being torn to shreds by the crusher - especially Lotso, who is trapped beneath a caddy bag of golf clubs. Woody and Buzz save him, at great risk to themselves, but when Lotso is given the chance to redeem himself by stopping the conveyor belt, he instead tops it all off by abandoning and betraying the toys.
- Worst of all is the Hope Spot just after the toys escape the crusher: Rex looks ahead to the conveyor belt's exit and declares that he sees daylight, and the toys share a well-earned moment of celebration. And then the music changes as Woody's face falls.
- Just the jarring reveal that the 'daylight' is in fact a roaring incinerator of unearthly proportions. Seeing all the garbage falling in the center of a roaring flame, and putting two and two together is horrifying.
- Lotso sees a button to stop the conveyor belt and convinces Woody and Buzz to give him a push up so he can climb the ladder and hit the button. They do so, and Lotso genuinely hurries, and it looks like he's going to do the right thing and repay Woody and Buzz for saving his life moments before. Once he finally gets to the top, he stops. His expression turns from panic to a scowl. And as the horns on the soundtrack begin to blare and the toys beg for Lotso to push the button, we cut back to a shot of Lotso who now has a haunting smirk, before he delivers the line that turns the viewer's blood to ice.
Lotso: Where's your kid now, Sheriff?!- Lotso gives a mocking salute as he runs off, and all the toys can do is cry in anguish before they are finally thrown into the incinerator. As far as Lotso knows, since he never sees the toys again, he won and vindicated his own evil beliefs.
- Consider the following: if the Aliens never made out alive to save Woody and The Gang in the incinerator, Lotso would have won and Woody and company would be dead, which would eventually end the franchise and would lead to a Downer Ending.
- Lotso's Dragon, Big Baby. Pixar invokes the Uncanny Valley brilliantly with this lazy-eyed Terminator of an oversized doll.
- It's hard to decide which part of the swing scene is the creepiest: Big Baby staring motionlessly up at the sky, spinning his head around 180 degrees with terrifying speed, or keeping his head fixed in that direction as his body pivots around it.
- The Chatter Telephone has been at Sunnyside for an untold number of years by the time of the film, but has never been broken. This lends his defeat near the end of the movie all the more impact, especially since we only see the cringe-inducing aftermath of the Cold-Blooded Torture the movie implies Lotso and his thugs brutally put him through, but leaves us to imagine for ourselves.
- While he ultimately deserved it for all the horrific acts he did throughout the movie, Lotso is resigned to what may well be a Fate Worse than Death at the end: Being tied to the front of a garbage truck to slowly deteriorate.
- Between the wind, the mud/dirt, the insects, time, and possibly the detritus, Lotso is doomed to rot away, and he will most likely FEEL it. Ladies and gentlemen, karma at its most vicious, and maybe well deserved if you're feeling like he really does deserve it.
- The front grills of trucks like that can get insanely hot as well, adding to the torment.
- Andy is shown playing with his toys in a montage, all while the series' theme "You've Got A Friend In Me" plays, but during the last minutes of the scene it zooms in on Andy laughing, hugging all the toys on his bed. The instrumental drains out and the lyric "Our friendship will never die" plays out with no musical accompaniment, and a small echo, as the screen cuts to black. It's small, but still rather bone-chilling to think of.
