8 Most Emotional Toy Story Moments That Make Adults Cry, Ranked (Including 3 From Toy Story 5)

Watching Toy Story as an adult is a strange experience because some of the scenes that barely registered as a kid can now feel almost impossible to sit through. A child sees Jessie sitting in a box and understands that she is sad. An adult sees someone realizing that a person she loved has moved on with her life, and suddenly the scene is about something much bigger than a toy.

That is the trick Toy Story has been pulling since the first movie. The characters are toys, but their problems are rarely about being toys. They worry about being replaced. They get jealous. They hold onto old relationships. They watch children grow up and have to figure out what they are supposed to do when the person who gave their lives meaning no longer needs them. Those are not particularly childish problems.

It also explains why the emotional scenes can get worse with age. There is something almost cruel about watching Andy play with his toys as a kid when you know where the story eventually has to go. The older you get, the more familiar that kind of change becomes. The movies have not necessarily gotten sadder. The audience has gotten better at understanding what the sadness actually means.

Toy Story 5 continued with that same emotional baggage, but it also has the advantage of decades of history behind it. Characters who were dealing with abandonment or change years ago have had time to carry those feelings with them. That gives some of the new movie's smaller moments a little more weight than they might have had in the first film.

8 Jessie's Forgotten Life

Toy Story 2

Jessie's story in Toy Story 2 is basically a horror story for anyone who has ever kept something from childhood. "When She Loved Me" shows Emily carrying Jessie everywhere, sleeping with her, playing with her, and treating the cowgirl like her best friend. There are all these little moments of the two of them together, and Jessie clearly adores her.

Then Emily gets older, and Jessie gets left under the bed.

There isn't some big moment where Emily decides she doesn't love Jessie anymore. Jessie just slowly becomes part of the room that Emily has grown out of. Eventually, Emily finds her, puts her in a box, and takes her to the charity drop-off. Jessie is still sitting there in the same clothes, watching Emily through the car window as she leaves.

There isn't a reunion at the end of Jessie's story. She never gets to show Emily that she remembers her. She just gets left with those memories, which makes it pretty easy to understand why being abandoned is such a sore spot for Jessie later on.

7 Andy Gives His Toys To Bonnie

Toy Story 3

Andy pulls the toys out of the box one at a time and introduces them to Bonnie. He explains who everyone is and talks about them like he is handing over something much more important than a pile of old toys. When he gets to Woody, there is a little more hesitation because Woody was supposed to go to college with him.

Instead, Andy puts Woody in the box with the others, adds the note telling Bonnie to take care of them, and brings them over. Bonnie has no idea why Andy is making such a big deal out of the toys. To her, it is just an exciting box of new things to play with.

Andy stays and plays with them for a while, slipping right back into the games he used to make up as a kid. Woody is the sheriff, Buzz is part of the story, and Andy is still completely comfortable in that world. Then he has to leave. He carries Woody over to Bonnie, lets her hold him, and walks back to his car.

Woody watches Andy drive away, and there is no big final moment to soften it. Andy is not throwing his toys away or walking away because he stopped loving them. He is going to college, Bonnie is becoming their new kid, and the bedroom where all those years happened is already behind him. Nothing went wrong. Andy just grew up.

6 Lotso's Backstory

Toy Story 3

Lotso was once somebody's favorite toy. The flashback in Toy Story 3 shows him with Daisy, Big Baby, and Chuckles. Daisy takes all three of them everywhere, and Lotso gets plenty of attention. They are clearly well-loved toys.

Then they get left behind during a family outing.

The three of them eventually make it back to Daisy's house, only to look through the window and see another Lotso sitting with her. Daisy had replaced him after thinking he was gone. Lotso does not go inside. He just turns around and leaves.

That is such a brutal little moment. He has finally made it back to Daisy, and she is right there. He can see her playing with a toy that looks exactly like him. From where he is standing, there is not much else to see.

Big Baby and Chuckles go with him, and that is basically the last time Lotso is the toy Daisy loved. Years later, Big Baby sees a picture of Daisy at Sunnyside and immediately reacts to it. Lotso sees the same picture and has a completely different response. Whatever memories he still has are buried under everything that happened afterward.

The movie does not spend much time on Lotso's past, but it gives you enough to understand how different he used to be. He went from being carried around by Daisy to making sure the toys at Sunnyside never had much say in what happened to them.

5 The Final Goodbye

Toy Story 3

The goodbye at the end of Toy Story 3 hits differently because Woody is the one watching Andy leave. After Andy drops the toys off with Bonnie, Woody stays at the window as Andy gets into his car. He presses his hand against the glass and watches as Andy drives away.

Woody keeps his hand against the window as the car gets farther down the street. He follows it with his eyes until it disappears, then lowers his hand. There is no way to pretend this is temporary anymore. Andy is not coming back for the toys, and Woody knows it.

Then Woody turns back toward the others. They are all standing together, watching him, and for a moment nobody does anything. They have spent the entire movie trying to get back to Andy, only to end up watching him leave. Then Woody smiles. It is a tiny smile, but it is enough. He is sad, but he also knows the toys are together and Bonnie is going to love them. Andy's car is gone, and Woody finally lets himself turn away from the window.

4 Bo Peep And Woody Say Goodbye

Toy Story 4

Woody and Bo Peep have already lost each other once. Bo was given away while Woody was still Andy's toy, so finding her again years later makes their goodbye at the end of Toy Story 4 so sad. Woody finally has a chance to stay with her, but that means leaving Buzz, Jessie, and the rest of the toys behind.

Before he goes, Woody takes off his sheriff badge and gives it to Jessie. He has worn that badge for years, and handing it over feels like more than passing along a toy. He is letting someone else be the one who looks after the group.

Buzz gives Woody one last push with, "She'll be okay." Woody looks back at Bo, and they walk away together.

After spending so long trying to keep everyone else together, Woody finally chooses the person he lost years ago. And this time, he does not have to watch Bo leave.

3 Bonnie Is Bullied For Playing With Toys

Toy Story 5

Bonnie's relationship with her toys gets more complicated in Toy Story 5 when she starts worrying about what other kids think of her. Playing with toys used to be completely normal. Now, it is something she feels like she has to hide.

That is rough for the toys to watch because they can see how much Bonnie still enjoys them. She has not suddenly stopped caring about Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the others. She is just old enough to notice that other kids might think playing with toys is embarrassing. The toys cannot really fix that for her, either. They can hide, move around, and come up with all kinds of plans, but they cannot make Bonnie stop caring about being teased. There is something particularly sad about watching a kid start editing the parts of herself she used to enjoy without thinking twice.

For the toys, Bonnie's embarrassment feels like another version of the goodbye they went through with Andy. This time, nobody is moving away or giving them to another kid. Bonnie is still right there. She is just starting to feel like she has to leave that part of herself behind.

2 Jessie Learns Emily Never Really Forgot Her

Toy Story 5

Jessie spends most of Toy Story 2 believing Emily grew up and forgot about her. Emily took Jessie everywhere, left her under the bed, and eventually gave her away. Then, when Jessie sees Emily as an adult, Emily does not even recognize her.

Toy Story 5 complicates that memory when Jessie learns that Emily never completely forgot her. Emily named her daughter Jessie after the cowgirl she loved as a child.

That detail lands differently for Jessie because she spent all those years assuming she meant nothing to Emily anymore. She remembered every part of their time together. Emily apparently carried some of it with her too, even if she did not keep Jessie.

Jessie does not get the reunion she probably imagined as a toy. She does not get to go back to being Emily's toy or undo what happened under that bed. She just finds out that the little girl who left her behind carried her name into the next generation.

For Jessie, that has to change the memory of Emily a little. She was forgotten in the way Jessie feared, but maybe not completely.

1 Bonnie Says She Doesn't Play With Toys Anymore

Toy Story 5

Bonnie saying she does not play with toys anymore lands differently for Woody because he has heard this kind of thing before. He knows what it means when a kid starts looking at a toy differently, and he has already watched Andy reach that point. What makes it harder is that Woody is still standing there. Bonnie is not giving him away or packing him into a box. She can walk past him, the same Woody she was so excited to get from Andy, and barely think twice about him.

Woody has spent his entire life worrying about being left behind. With Andy, he eventually got a real goodbye. With Bonnie, there is no goodbye yet. There is just that uncomfortable moment lingering when Woody realizes she can stop needing him without anything dramatic happening at all in this sequel of Toy Story.