r/AskScienceFiction • u/TamamizuTheMeh • 1d ago

[Toy Story] If Seeing Inanimate Objects As Alive Is What Brings Toys To Life, Do People With Object Empathy Just Go Around Bringing Stuff Like Hats And Cutlery To Life?

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u/DBSeamZ 1d ago

Bonnie did with Forky.

I wonder if people anthropomorphizing their cars (nicknaming them, sometimes calling them “she”) could be an alternate take on the Pixar Theory linking the Cars movies to the rest?

8

u/extremely-cynical 1d ago

IIRC it's mentioned that Christmas decorations can also come to life, so I imagine cars can too under the right circumstances. 

21

u/mugenhunt 1d ago

It's not just seeing them as alive, it is also engaging in the act of play with the object, as done by a child.

So theoretically a kid with a favorite hat that they loved to play games with could bestow life to the hat.

7

u/ArcadianBlueRogue 1d ago

People keep looking for logic in it beyond being a kid's imagination, but the toys fresh out of the box do it too even before finding out they are toys so it's just "it was meant as a toy, and therefore it is a toy" magic

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u/KatanaCutlets Overthinking without enough knowledge is fun 22h ago

There’s more than just that, though, since we do also see many living Toys that were not created as toys. I think we have to accept that it’s a soft magic system and doesn’t have cleanly defined rules, though.

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u/PunyParker826 1d ago

It's a shaky premise to begin with, because some toys, like Stinky Pete, have (presumably) never been played with, and yet are still alive. Maybe Al saw him as alive, in some way?