How Toy Story 2 Was Accidentally Deleted (And How One Mom Saved It)

Toy Story is a Pixar film franchise totally remarkable and important for an entire generation that cried when Andy left his toys with Bonnie before heading off to college in the third movie. The original came out to a huge audience, with a string of films reaching great heights over time – no wonder a fifth film is in the works and set to be released in June 2026. But it’s fair to say that all this bigger success really started with Toy Story 2, which grossed $497.3 million worldwide. However, this might not have happened, since during the making of the sequel, files started getting deleted from the computer.

It’s hard to believe that a simple command line accidentally pressed by an employee caused the entire movie to be deleted – from sets and character models to entire sequences that had already been put together. A Pixar production takes a long time to finish compared to a regular movie because of the complexity and detail involved in the process. For example, the first Toy Story film took about four years to develop; imagine watching all that work on the sequel, done over such a long period of time, simply vanish in seconds with no way to access the backup. Thankfully, though, a very dedicated employee on maternity leave managed to save the movie.

How Toy Story 2 Was Almost Completely Lost

Toy Story 2 came out in 1999, but it wasn’t until years later that the world found out about its near-disaster through the book Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. In it, Ed Catmull, the studio’s co-founder, shared the behind-the-scenes story of the movie and the infamous accident. According to him, in 1998, an employee ran a command line on the drives where the film files were stored. This code, in simple terms, was meant to delete everything in a specific location – and that’s exactly what happened. Most likely, the person didn’t mean to run it at the root of the project directory, but once it was done, there was no way to undo it.

In a 2012 chat with The Next Web, Oren Jacob, who worked as an associate technical director on Toy Story 2, opened up more about what happened. “That’s when we first noticed it, with Woody. [Larry Cutler] was in that directory and happened to be talking about installing a fix to Woody or Woody’s hat. He looked at the directory, and it had 40 files, and looked again, and it had four files. Then we saw sequences start to vanish as well, and we were like, ‘Oh my god’,” he said.

[RELATED – Toy Story 5 Director and First Teaser Revealed]

In the book, it’s mentioned that one of the technical directors – probably Jacob or Cutler – noticed the deletion process happening on-screen and frantically called technical support for help to cut the power. However, it all happened so quickly that about 90% of the work was lost. The backup system was supposed to be Plan B, but to make things worse, Pixar’s system wasn’t functioning properly, and there was no additional copy of the project stored securely. In short, they were completely stuck.

According to Catmull, the entire Toy Story 2 project had been chaotic from the beginning, as it took a long time to conceive the story. On top of that, director John Lasseter seemed completely drained from managing the production after two demanding projects like Toy Story and A Bug’s Life. Given the circumstances, starting over from scratch would have been incredibly frustrating. On top of that, the movie’s release would be delayed significantly, the financial losses would demand new investments, and the psychological toll on the employees would be yet another challenge. Fortunately, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

How a Mom Saved Toy Story 2

Luckily for everyone, Galyn Susman, the film’s technical direction supervisor, who was also among the employees affected by the Disney’s layoffs, had a copy of the project at home. While on maternity leave after having her second child, she decided to continue working from home – a concept common today but quite unusual at the time. Susman made it a point to take her work home once a week to stay updated and, ultimately, to maintain a reliable backup of the project.

As a result, it was reported that her computer was carefully transported back to the Pixar office, cradled like a baby and wrapped in blankets during the car ride. This allowed the team to copy the files and recover nearly everything that had been lost. Susman didn’t have the entire movie on her computer, but according to Catmull, they were able to retrieve enough of the previous progress to complete and deliver Toy Story 2 on time.

In the end, the experience served as a valuable lesson, and today, with the studio having grown significantly, there is a strong commitment to creating multiple backups of projects and implementing extra security measures to prevent such incidents from happening again. If it weren’t for Susman, the movie’s story would’ve definitely been different, which would’ve impacted the two sequels that came after. Crazy, right? As for the employee who caused the mishap, there are no reports of them being fired or facing significant consequences. Still, it’s easy to imagine the tension surrounding them at the time.