Pixar’s Lightyear Movie Makes Even Less Sense Thanks To This Toy Story 2 Scene

Lightyear‘s place within Toy Story continuity is already tenuous at best, but one scene from Toy Story 2 puts Pixar’s 2022 Buzz spinoff movie on the verge of being nonsensical. While Lightyear is officially part of the Toy Story canon, the movie’s unique feel and look make it very different from the other films. As such, Lightyear becomes a point of confusion regarding where it slots into the Toy Story timeline.

Lightyear‘s explanation at the start of the movie establishes it as the film Andy saw in 1995, triggering his desire for a Buzz Lightyear action figure. While this opening text allows Lightyear to sit nicely alongside the main Toy Story movies for the most part, it seems as though Pixar may not have accounted for a moment in Toy Story 2 that leads to one of several unanswered questions about the Toy Story universe that Lightyear raises. As a result, Lightyear‘s foothold in Toy Story lore becomes incredibly confusing.

Toy Story 2 Opens With A Buzz Lightyear Video Game That Looks Nothing Like 2022’s Lightyear

The Buzz in the game is identical to the Buzz from the main Toy Story movies

Toy Story 2 begins with an incredibly cinematic sequence showing Buzz Lightyear in full-on sci-fi hero mode. Eventually, Buzz’s action-packed adventure is revealed to be nothing more than a video game being played by Rex. What’s interesting about this scene is that Tim Allen voices the game version of Buzz, and the character looks identical to the Buzz Lightyear toy from the first movie – cool antigravity belt notwithstanding. However, in the world of Toy Story, the Lightyear movie was released years before the events of Toy Story 2.

Seeing as Lightyear canonically inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy, the game being played by Rex should also look like Lightyear rather than the main Toy Story universe. The fact that the game features a Buzz that looks like the action figure makes no sense, as this Buzz should technically look more like Chris Evans’ version of the character from 2022’s Lightyear. While Toy Story 2 was released 23 years before Lightyear in the real world, the presence of this video game within the same universe should have been considered by Pixar when Lightyear was being made.

It would have made much more sense to make Lightyear in the same art style as the Buzz game from Toy Story 2. The sequence shown in the video game is much more likely to instill the need for a Buzz toy in a child like Andy than what the Lightyear movie eventually became. In addition, the Buzz toy looks only slightly like the Buzz from Lightyear, so as far as in-universe movie merchandise does, it isn’t great.

There Could Be A Reason Why The Buzz Game In Toy Story 2 Is So Different To Lightyear

The Buzz game could have been inspired by the toy rather than the Lightyear movie

Lightyear was a box office bomb when it was released in 2022. In the Toy Story universe, the movie was released in 1995 and could also have crashed and burned at the box office. This would be supported by the fact that Lightyear as a movie is never mentioned in the Toy Story films. So, the popularity of the Buzz Lightyear action figure inspired by the film may very well have eclipsed its source material.

Going forward, whoever made Lightyear within Toy Story canon may have chosen to prioritize the toy rather than continue to attempt to make the Lightyear movie a success. Doing so would have resulted in new Buzz merchandise where the franchise’s main character looked just like Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear rather than the version seen in the 2022 spinoff. So, the most likely explanation is that the game Rex is playing at the start of Toy Story 2 is based on the Buzz Lightyear toy rather than the Lightyear movie.

As such, the Buzz Lightyear with the antigravity belt who apprehends Buzz in Al’s Toy Barn in Toy Story 2 is likely a game-inspired version of the same toy, whereas the Buzz from the first Toy Story is merchandise generated from Lightyear within the world of Toy Story. This may sound like a roundabout theory, but the Lego brand has done something similar in the real world.

Lego’s toys were originally released as physical playthings, but their popularity has led to an entire library of video games where the playable characters are made from virtual Lego. Then, new physical Lego merchandise was inspired or lifted directly from their video games. So, the framework for this cyclical process could be applied to the Buzz Lightyear toy situation in the Toy Story universe.

Toy Story 2’s Buzz Game Scene Proves The Lightyear Movie Should Have Been Kept Separate

Pixar overthought how Lightyear could fit into Toy Story canon

While certain narrative backflips can be performed to explain how the Lightyear movie and the Buzz game from Toy Story 2 exist within the same universe, the fact of the matter is that this justification process shouldn’t be necessary. Instead of shoehorning 2022’s Lightyear into the Toy Story universe, it would have been simpler and more effective to have the spinoff movie exist outside the main canon as an individual entity.

Other than Lightyear‘s opening text, the movie doesn’t try to account for its placement in the Toy Story timeline, so omitting the explanation at the beginning wouldn’t have harmed the film in any way. Instead, Pixar tried to get too clever with the project. As a result, the canonical dissonance between Lightyear and the Buzz video game in Toy Story 2 makes what was clear franchise continuity just that little bit messier.