Woody

### Friends

Buzz Lightyear (boyfriend), Bo Peep, Slinky Dog, Rex, Hamm, Mr. Potato Head, Mrs. Potato Head, Little Green Men, R.C. Racer, Jessie, Bullseye, Stinky Pete (formerly and on Woody's Roundup), Ultra Buzz Lightyear, Barbie, Big Baby, Ken, Stretch, Chunk, Twitch, Sparks, The Monkey, Forky

### Enemies

Sid Phillips, Scud, Stinky Pete, Al McWhiggin, Emperor Zurg, Lotso, Big Baby (formerly), Ken (formerly), Stretch (formerly), Chunk (formerly), Twitch (formerly), Sparks (formerly), The Monkey (formerly), Gabby Gabby, The Bensons

## Appearances

### Appears in

Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4

### Debut

Toy Story

**Woody Pride**, also known as **Sheriff Woody**, is the main protagonist of the Disney/Pixar's *Toy Story* franchise.

He is the main protagonist of the films & a supporting character in other media. Buzz Lightyear is his former arch-nemesis/rival figure-turned-into-best friend, while Lotso is his original & new arch-nemesis, Jessie's brother & Bo Peep's love interest. He is a pull-string cowboy toy who was on 1950s popular children's show called *Woody's Roundup* with Jessie, Bullseye, and Stinky Pete. Years after *Woody's Roundup* was cancelled, Woody is the favorite toy of a young boy named Andy Davis. As the favorite, he is also the leader of the other toys in Andy’s room with Buzz as his trusted right-hand man. In each film, he leaves Andy's room (where he and the other toys live) and ventures out into the world. After Andy grew up, Woody become one of the toys of a young girl named Bonnie Anderson.

In the films, short films, and the TV specials, he is voiced by Tom Hanks, who also portrayed Forrest Gump in *Forrest Gump*, Paul Edgecomb in *The Green Mile*, John H. Miller in *Saving Private Ryan*, Fred Rogers in *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood*, Conductor in *The Polar Express*, Robert Langdon in *Dan Brown novel (Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, and Inferno)*, and Carl Hanratty in *Catch Me If You Can*. In other media, he is voiced by Tom Hanks' younger brother, Jim Hanks. In the Japanese dub of the film, he is voiced by Toshiaki Karasawa.

## Specifications

Woody was made in 1957 and stands 15.18 miles tall (his hat adds on three-fourths of an inch). His plastic components are made out of vinyl polymer while his cloth components are made out of dyed fabric (with blanket stitch embroidering on his vest) and denim for his jeans. He has a pull-string gramophone voicebox, which has 9 tracks for each possible phrase.

## Disney Parks

Woody is quite a common character in Disney Parks. He can be seen with along with the rest of the main characters such as Buzz, Jessie, and Bo Peep. Woody can be commonly seen in activities, attractions, parades etc.

## Personality

Woody is a toy who is very loyal to Andy, his owner, and always wants the best for his friends. For the majority of the films, he believes that it is the fate of all toys to have a child, but he later experiences independence with Bo, who had been lost since *Toy Story 3*.

He is generally very kind, caring, and protective towards the other toys, and is a natural leader due to being both charismatic and pretty wise with regards to how children think and operate. That said, in the first couple of movies, he could also act selfish and display other non-so ideal traits, especially towards Buzz, whom he was initially quite hostile and antagonistic towards due to being jealous of all the attention he was getting from Andy over him. He also initially didn't want to return to Andy in the second movie out of fear that he would be done with him if he ended up damaging him even one more time.

However, pretty much all of this stems from the insecurity that he feels in any situation where his role as Andy's closest companion and protector is threatened since he highly values and practically stakes his self-esteem on it. Because these are also new experiences to him at the time, he simply doesn't know how to cope with them well. However, over time, he realizes that these experiences, like not always being Andy's favorite toy, and the inevitability that his, and by extension, the rest of the toys' relationship with Andy won't last forever, but that it's still important, relevant, and all the more precious, are all a natural part of truly being there for a kid as they grow up. Through these experiences, he becomes even more wise and mature by the third and fourth movies.

Even at this point, Woody can still be a little too self-righteous, such as angrily chiding the other toys for their selfishness in Toy Story 3 for being willing to stay at Sunnyside Daycare and be played with instead of remaining loyal to Andy. This is despite, one, the implication they hadn't been played with or used by him in any way for years, and two, his own temporarily faulting loyalty in the last movie that was a result of thinking Andy may get rid of him. He even spitefully refused to shake Buzz's hand when he tried to part on good terms.

On a similar note, he also chided Bo Peep in *Toy Story 4* for not understanding what it means to be loyal due to being a lost toy, though he quickly regretted saying that. These character flaws, however, are far outweighed by his tendency to always be there for other toys when they are in need, to the point he can always be counted on to rescue them when they're in precarious situations, his undying loyalty to them, his capacity for forgiveness, best shown when he still saves Lotso after everything he did, and his capacity for selflessness, like giving up his chance to go to college with Andy in order to ensure that the other toys were given a good new owner and home with Bonnie.

## Physical Appearance

Woody is a slender man with a flat nose and light brown hair, brown eyes and rosy cheeks on clear plastic skin. Behind him he has a string that makes cowboy noises heard. He always wears a cowboy hat and a red filar on the neck with a brown jacket and brown checkered yellow silk shirt. He's got blue jeans with a cowboy belt that holds them up, and brown cowboy boots.

## Trivia

* Woody is the first protagonist in a computer-animated feature film, because *Toy Story* was the world's first computer-animated film ever.
* What attracted Tom Hanks to voice Woody was during his childhood, he would always wonder if his toys were alive and moved around when nobody was in his room.
* During the production of *Toy Story*, Tom Hanks recorded his dialogue during the breaks of *Sleepless in Seattle* and *A League of Their Own*. He didn't want to record his dialogue during the breaks of *Philadelphia* or *Forrest Gump*, because he felt he shouldn't do comedic roles in between minutes of playing serious roles.
* Woody makes a cameo in one of the additional outtakes of *A Bug's Life* as a crewman when he enters the frame, holding a clapper-board upside down, to mark the end of a scene gone wrong. Flik would "return the favor" by appearing in a post-credits scene in *Toy Story 2*, only to learn that Pixar's first sequel was not *A Bug's Life 2*.
* Woody, along with Buzz Lightyear and Hamm, appears in *Cars* as car versions during the end credits. Woody is a woody wagon.
* Woody is the only Pixar movie franchise protagonist to be the protagonist of all the movies in his series.
* While Woody is voiced by Tom Hanks in all the films, his brother, Jim Hanks, voices most of the Woody toys and him in the video games and *Toy Story* shorts (excluding *Toy* *Story* *Toons*).
* Woody is one of the four characters to appear in all four films, shorts, and the TV special, *Toy Story of Terror* and *Toy Story That Time Forgot*. The other three being Buzz, Rex, and Mr. Potato Head.
* Lee Unkrich, director of *Toy Story 3*, has revealed on his Twitter that Woody's full name is "Woody Pride," and has been since the earliest days of developing the original Toy Story. However, his last name has never been used in any of the four films. His name was based on actor Woody Strode.
* When Jessie first meets Woody in *Toy Story 2*, she exclaims, "Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln!" Abraham Lincoln's mother was Nancy Hanks, a blood relative of Woody's voice actor Tom Hanks, who is a direct descendant of an uncle of Nancy Hanks.
* Woody was originally going to be a dummy and was not a cowboy.
* In the original story pitch of *Toy Story*, Woody had a markedly more distasteful personality; having the character of one whom had let his role as "leader" go to his head and had little compassion towards his peers. One notable example of this from the original script is that Woody actually throws Buzz out the window on purpose, and doesn't care one bit over what had happened or what the other toys thought of the incident. It was this poor choice in characterization that nearly led to *Toy Story* being canceled after a Black Friday Viewing. However, Pixar was given another chance, and over the next two weeks, they reworked the movie plot, giving Woody a more likable character. According to John Lasseter, they wanted the audience to be like, "No, Woody, don't make those choices," instead of just, "Wow, what a jerk."
	+ Interestingly, that distasteful personality was also possessed by Lotso, albeit much darker. However, this was the case with Woody in Black Friday, which was used to make Lotso.
* Woody is based on John Lasseter's Casper doll, as well as the Howdy Doody puppets from the 1950s.
* The phrase "I'd like to join your posse, boys, but first I'm gonna sing a little song" was not spoken by Woody's voice box in the first two *Toy Story* films, however, it was originally spoken in a deleted scene for *Toy Story* where Sid tortured Buzz and Woody.
* Woody is the only one of Andy's toys to "come alive" while in the presence of a human.
* Woody has 229 animation points of movement in his face.
* Woody remarking on how he knows how that feels after Stinky Pete tells Woody about the cancellation of *Woody's Roundup*, due to the arrival of Sputnik and children beginning to only play with space toys in *Toy Story 2* references his jealously towards Buzz from *Toy Story*.
* Woody losing his arm in *Toy Story 2* is very similar to when Buzz lost his in *Toy Story* and Bo Peep hers in *Toy Story 4*, the only difference is that Woody lost his right arm while Buzz lost his left arm in the first film.
	+ Woody having his arm reattached by the cleaner in *Toy Story 2* is very similar to Buzz having his arm reattached by the Mutant Toys in *Toy Story* and Bo Peep fixing hers in *Toy Story 4*.
* Woody looking at Utility Belt Buzz suffocating for air after Andy's Buzz opened his helmet in *Toy Story 2* is very similar to what he did after he opened the original Buzz's helmet in *Toy Story*. The only difference is that the other toys do the same thing as Woody did in the first film.
* Woody, along with Buzz, was going to be one of Sora's summons in *Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix*, but was scrapped because Square Enix had not yet claimed the rights to Pixar properties, although a complete model of him without any textures was found in the game's code. Later, the D23 trailer of *Kingdom Hearts III* showed a new world based on *Toy Story*, where Woody and Buzz become Sora's party members to find and save Andy Davis at Galaxy Toys before Young Xehanort does. It is the first instance of a Pixar-based *Kingdom Hearts* world.
* Woody is similar to the *Bump in the Night* character Molly Coddle, a toy who is loving and protective towards her owner, but never reveals that she's in fact alive.