Every Toy Story Villain, Ranked Worst to Best 

Across six movies (including Lightyear) and 31 years, the Toy Story franchise has managed to create one of the most compelling villain lineups ever assembled in American animation, and Toy Story 5 has only reinforced that. This is surprising. For that is another way of saying that Pixar understands that the thing that destroys you is never the thing you see coming. These are portraits of damage and its transmission, of grief that calcifies into cruelty, of loneliness.

All of these villains are ranked on a scale of least to most villainous based on how much harm they cause and inflict upon the world. We have also considered the terrifying factor, which means the scarier the better.

10 Emperor Zurg 

There are technically two Zurgs in the franchise. Here, we will focus on the Lightyear version of the villain. The Toy Story 2 version of the villain is more like a parody than a real villain. The one that earns a spot on this list is the older, embittered Buzz from an alternate timeline. He is voiced by James Brolin (the father of Josh Brolin). He has spent decades inside a mechanized suit in pursuit of a time-travel fix for a mistake he cannot stop punishing himself for.

This is truly a tragic concept, a man so full of self-hatred that he has become his own worst enemy literally. The film gestures toward something compelling, but it remains a mere gesture. He is neither redeemed nor condemned; he just drifts off into a post-credits scene. This version of Zurg ranks the lowest in the list, as the film could have capitalized on what it created.

9 LilyPad

Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton refused to call her a villain. The film earns that refusal. LilyPad (voiced by Greta Lee) does not want to hurt anyone in the film. The horror of her is that she is not wrong. She puts Jessie and Bullseye up for an auction with the same efficiency with which she invites people for a video chat, just because of indifference, which is scary enough already. She reforms, feels guilt, and ends the film as part of Bonnie’s support system. She ranks 9th for what she briefly, effortlessly, nearly does to Jessie’s life, and for the way she does it without ever raising her voice.

8 Ken Carson

Ken (voiced by Michael Keaton) from Toy Story 3 is dangerous, like any little bureaucrat. He’s been given some power, and he thinks that’s all there is. Michael Keaton makes him into an auditioning villain, trying to make sure no one sees through the act. When Barbie turns on him, he collapses immediately. The reason he’s number 8 is that his harm to Andy’s toys is real and sustained. It just turns out that underneath the Dream House aesthetic, there is nothing there.

7 Gabby Gabby

Gabby Gabby, voiced by Christina Hendricks, from Toy Story 4, is a pull-string doll with a broken voice box. She is trapped in an antique shop while the world comes and goes without stopping for her. She wants only to be held by a child who loves her. Her plan to take Woody’s (Tom Hanks) voice box is wrong in the way desperation is wrong: not cruelty, but an inability to imagine another way out. 

She finally gets the voice box, but Harmony, the girl she has spent years waiting for, rejects her anyway. That she ends the film in the arms of a lost girl at the carnival, finally chosen, asks you to be happy for the villain. That the audience generally is says more about Pixar’s understanding of longing than almost anything else in the canon. She is ranked 7th because villainy is inseparable from her victimhood.

6 Al McWhiggin

Every part of Al’s life has revolved around stealing other people’s possessions without questioning as to what that says about him. A villain in Toy Story 2, he steals Woody from a kid’s garage sale, smuggling him inside an apartment decorated like a shrine to arrested development, almost sending him to Japan, and nearly ships him to Japan, which will make him momentarily relevant. 

He causes damage, and then the movie simply goes away from him. There is no conflict, no punishment. He gets forgotten, and that is the one thing that can do the worst possible harm to Al McWhiggin and exactly the right ending. He is ranked 6 because he is too pitiable and pathetic.

5 Big Baby

Big Baby from Toy Story 3 cannot talk because what he carries — his memories of Daisy, the picture, the way he holds the picture up accusingly — transcends words.  A cracked-headed, lazy-eyed doll in the Sunnyside yard at night, he is the franchise’s most purely Gothic image. He is Lotso’s muscle, loyal to something that stopped deserving it long ago. Finally, when Big Baby dumps Lotso into the dumpster, the film just leaves the image there for what it is. He is ranked fifth because he is creepy in ways words cannot explain.

4 Benson and the Ventriloquist Dummies

What Benson and his dummies know is that silence is the most frightening weapon there is. They move about Second Chance Antiques with a chilling efficiency, operating almost like robots, completely indifferent to the influence of their surroundings. They have nothing to atone for since they cannot understand the idea.

The movie strips them of any light, any interior life, and leaves the rest up to the audience to recall all of the ventriloquist dummies they’ve ever seen and finally figure out why they’ve always been afraid.

3 Sid Phillips

We all love to hate Sid from the original Toy Story, but he is not evil, not really. But he is unsupervised, which in a child of a certain disposition amounts to the same thing. He is also creepier because of poor character design, since 3D animation was still in its infancy back then. He has a toolbox and an imagination, and no one to tell him what they are for. His room, with its dark walls, mutant toys that inhabit his darkness, and the menacing dog standing on guard at the entrance, is the first real scary place in the franchise. 

And the movie makes no effort to explain it, relying on you to figure out the type of house where such a room could come into existence. The toys that do not make it out of his room do not make it out. He is the only villain here who can claim clean hands. The franchise will never again be so generous with its antagonists. He is ranked at 3 only because the two villains above him are more compelling.

2 Stinky Pete

Stinky Pete, voiced by Kelsey Grammer, spent decades watching every other toy find a child. What that produced was an ideology: the museum is better than the child. He performs his role as the granddad character so convincingly that the audience almost believes it, too. That kind of manipulation only works on those who want to be comforted. 

And when he sheds it and locks himself behind the air vent with his pickaxe pointed at Woody, he does so with authentic treachery. He is almost the best villain in the franchise, if not for that damn teddy bear.

1 Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear

Soft and pink, carrying a genial smile, speaking in a Southern drawl that belongs to every reassuring older man in every film where the reassuring older man turns out to be the worst thing in the room — Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear is the franchise’s only true monster. He was abandoned by Daisy, returned, discovered he had been replaced, and built a prison from that break. He installed himself as warden and sent new arrivals to be destroyed by toddlers. 

And when Woody and Buzz — who had just pulled him from a shredder — got him to the emergency stop button at the incinerator, he looked at the toys burning behind him, sneered where’s your kid now, Sheriff?, and walked away. The filmmakers debated whether to give him redemption. They decided not to. All that is why he is simply the best and most terrifying villain in the best movie of the Toy Story franchise (Toy Story 3).

Here’s a summary:

#	Villain	Film	Why They Rank Here
10.	Emperor Zurg	Lightyear	Tragic concept, squandered execution
9.	LilyPad	Toy Story 5	Not a villain by intent. Causes harm through algorithmic indifference
8.	Ken Carson	Toy Story 3	Real and sustained harm to Andy’s toys, but folds the moment Barbie turns on him
7.	Gabby Gabby	Toy Story 4	Villainy inseparable from victimhood; every coercive act reads as grief
6.	Al McWhiggin	Toy Story 2	Causes genuine harm but is too pathetic for confrontation
5.	Big Baby	Toy Story 3	The franchise’s most Gothic image and loyal to something that stopped deserving it
4.	Benson and the Ventriloquist Dummies	Toy Story 4	Silence as terror: blank-faced, unredeemable, given no interiority and needing none
3.	Sid Phillips	Toy Story	Not evil, just an unsupervised kid. His room is the franchise’s first genuinely frightening space
2.	Stinky Pete	Toy Story 2	Neglect becomes ideology. The grandfather mask held so long that even the audience almost believed it
1.	Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear	Toy Story 3	The only villain who was given a choice and chose wrong. Most terrifying villain in the franchise

Do you agree with our ranking? If not, which Toy Story villain do you think deserved the top spot? Let us know in the comments!

Toy Story 5, the latest entry in the franchise, is currently running in theaters. It was released on June 19, 2025.