Any mentally unbalanced individual can come up with a creepy fan theory about your favorite cartoon -- that's why they're called "fan" theories. However, every once in a while we come across some that are just too compelling to ignore, even if reading them guarantees that we won't sleep for the next month.
So once again we dove into the massive cesspool of deranged interpretations, overanalyses, and obsessive rants that is the Internet and emerged with the most strangely plausible fan theories out there. May our sacrifice allow you to blow your friends' minds the next time you're stoned. (Also, spoilers ahead, dummy.)
5
Toy Story 3 Is an Allegory for the Holocaust
Pixar
Toy Story 3 is arguably the darkest film in Pixar's flagship trilogy, but it's still a heartwarming tale about friendship, growing up, and sticking together through the hardest times (like, say, during a Randy Newman song montage). Oh, and also it's about the mass extermination of millions of people in concentration camps.
Pixar
"Rex, why are you smiling?"
The Theory:
According to film critic Jordan Hoffman, Toy Story 3 is totally about the Holocaust. Then again, in the same article he goes on to make a case for the movie being Marxist propaganda, an existentialist film, and a metaphor for various world religions, so maybe he wasn't being completely serious there. The Holocaust theory is the one that caught the attention of the Internet, though, because of the surprising number of parallels between this lighthearted story about talking toys and one of humanity's greatest tragedies.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Let's look at the plot: It starts when the Jewish people (represented by the toys) are left behind by their host nations at the onset of World War II (represented by Andy going off to get high and score in college). At this point the toys' leader, Woody, suggests hiding in the attic, Anne Frank style, but they get caught and shipped off to Sunnyside Daycare -- you know, a place where their kind is "concentrated" and routinely mistreated (only by little children instead of Nazis).
Pixar
Although this kid is probably both.
The abusive toys who live in Sunnyside are the movie's version of the Jewish police who helped push their fellow Jews into trains for Auschwitz. Because of them, the main characters end up on a conveyor belt ... headed straight for the incinerator.
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