Sidney “Sid” Phillips is the primary antagonist of the 1995 Disney• Pixar animated film Toy Story. Sid is Andy’s next-door neighbor, but unlike Andy, he torments his toys instead of cherishing them. Sid is unaware that his toys are actually alive, and his horrific treatment of them makes him an antagonist from the toys’ point of view. Sid is a young, bratty, and disturbed 11-year-old skate punk with metal braces who thrives on scaring his little sister, Hannah, by stealing her toys and using them for dangerous experiments. Throughout the movie, Sid undergoes a significant transformation. In this article, we will discuss Sid’s background, personality, appearances in Toy Story 1, 2 and 3, his role in Disney parks, and some trivia about this famous character.
Background
Sid Phillip’s backstory is not depicted in the movie. However, his actions portray him as a bully with a lack of parental supervision. Sid’s personality is quite mischievous and eccentric. Like most boys his age, Sid loves heavy metal music and performing dramatic, violent plays with his toys. However, his playtime takes a dark turn as he disassembles and combines his toys in abnormal ways, such as switching their heads or performing “mad doctor” experiments on them.
Personality
Sid is characterized as a disturbed, fiery, and sometimes gloomy child. He enjoys tormenting small animals and is fascinated with destruction. Sid’s desires to manipulate the world around him lead to his obsession with taking his toys apart. Sid’s personality is not completely dark. In one or two scenes, Sid is depicted as occasionally having a funny side, which is exposed during his dream sequences about ponies.
Appearances in Toy Story
In Toy Story, Sid is Andy’s 11-year-old neighbor, and his character is portrayed as a malevolent toy tormentor. Sid is infamous for exploding a Combat Carl with an M-80, accompanied by his toy-chewing dog, Scud, which prompts Bo Peep to tell the other toys, “The sooner we move, the better!”. Woody, Buzz, and the other toys are taken aback when they realize that Sid has returned to his old habits so soon, assuming he was kicked out of summer camp early this year. Sid’s malicious actions don’t stop here. When Sid realizes that his sister, Hannah, has a toy he doesn’t like, he snatches it away and runs off to his room. Sid then conducts a “double bypass brain transplant” on his Pterodactyl toy by putting its head on Janie Doll’s body, which he shows to Hannah, scaring her so much that she runs off to report to their mother.
Sid is a proficient night graffiti artist, and his walls are filled with drawings of disfigured toys. Woody and Buzz soon discover that Sid’s room is a dangerous place for toys and plots how to escape through one of his windows. Woody explores his room and notices that Sid has taken toys apart and assembled them back together in unnatural combinations, which is distressful for Woody.
Sid wakes up and interrogates Woody and Buzz, and it is during this scene that Sid scares Woody by holding him over a fire, throwing him around, and threatening to blow him up. Meanwhile, Buzz is strapped to a spinning drill bit and spun around, a scene that was later deleted from the movie.
In acts of defiance, Woody and Buzz eventually motivate the other toys to work together to save themselves by staging a terrifying sequence and scaring Sid. Ultimately, Sid is terrified enough to give up his awful ways and never harm a toy again.
Toy Story 2
Although Sid does not appear in Toy Story 2, he is mentioned by Buzz during his rescue mission with Slinky Dog, Hamm, Rex, and Mr. Potato Head to save Woody, who has been stolen by a greedy toy collector.
Toy Story 3
In Toy Story 3, Sid makes a cameo appearance 10 years after Toy Story, now grown-up, and working as a garbage man. When Sid pulls up at Andy’s house to collect the trash, including Andy’s toys and mistakenly puts them outside with the garbage, Woody springs into action and races to save his friends. Later in the film, when the toys escape the incinerator at the Tri-County landfill, they hitch a ride on Sid’s garbage truck to get back home.
Role in Disney Parks
Sid is one of the most popular Toy Story characters featured in Disney parks worldwide. Toy Story: The Musical aboard the Disney Cruise Line ship showcased Sid’s villain song called “Make a Little Noise.” In 2021, Sid appeared at the Oogie Boogie Bash in California Adventure Park, where he hosted the Sid Show Circus at Pixar Pier’s stage, showcasing the Mutant Toys.
Trivia
Debian’s unstable trunk is named after Sid. Debian is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993.
Sid’s design was inspired by Newbert, a childhood friend of one of the animators who would take apart and rebuild toys in new ways.
- Sid’s house rug is strikingly similar to the carpet pattern in The Shining’s Overlook Hotel.
- Written on Sid’s backpack is “Julie Mcbarfle has cooties,” referring to an editor named Julie MacDonald who kept asking the art director to put her name in Toy.
- During production, Sid was nicknamed “Little Jack Nicholson.” In addition, Sid’s house has the same rug pattern as the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, in which Nicholson starred.
- In the book, Toy Story: The Art and Making of the Animated Film, it is said that the story team tried beefing up Sid into a full-tilt bullying nemesis for his neighbour Andy. They generated scenarios of jealously and rivalry between Sid and Andy, but that approach threw the plot line out of balance. In the film itself, Sid and Andy are not even aware of each other’s existence.
- In Monsters, Inc., Claws Ward runs out the door of a kids room on the scare floor. He states that the kid almost touched him. As he runs out, the “Kill’n Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox of Doom” poster from Sid’s room can be seen on the wall of the room. The same film also implied that the child at the time was six years old.
- In a 2016 interview with some of the key animators of Toy Story, they stated that their primary influence for the character Sid was actually one of the animator’s longtime childhood friends, Ryan Newbert.
- It is said that Sid was also inspired by a former Pixar employee who has been known to disassemble toys and use the parts to build strange creations.
- Sid also appeared in a Toy Story Treats short Woody’s Nightmare. Sid was laughing evilly as he had swapped the heads of Woody and Buzz Lightyear (much like how he had replaced the Janie Doll’s head with the Pterodactyl’s).
- Erik Von Detten reprised his role as Sid in Toy Story 3. The fact that he is now older than he was when he did the first Toy Story movie had no effect on the character of Sid since he had also grown up. However, his dialogue was just scatting.
- Sid was also von Detten’s last acting role before his retirement in 2010.
- According to Hamm and Rex, Sid was supposed to be attending summer camp before they moved in the first movie but was supposedly kicked out for his bad attitude.
- Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3, confirmed that the garbage man in Toy Story 3 is, in fact, Sid.
- Along with Al McWhiggin, Sid is the only main antagonist in the Toy Story film series to be a human being, as Stinky Pete, Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear and Gabby Gabby, the respective main antagonists of Toy Story’s first three sequels, were all toys.
- Debian’s unstable trunk is named after him. Debian is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993.
- Andrew Stanton considers Andy to actually be weirder than Sid since Andy takes absolute care of his toys.
