#The Massive Mistake That Nearly Destroyed Toy Story 2

It was the winter before the film’s release, and animators were hard at work bringing “Toy Story 2” to life. They were already deep into production when an unnamed Pixar employee accidentally input the command code “/bin/rm -r -f*” in the root directory of the computer system where all the “Toy Story 2” files were kept. This code was designed to wipe everything from a specific location in a swift manner, but because the employee had entered it in the root folder, it targeted everything. Everything.

What happens next sounds like a combination between the self-destructing messages in “Mission: Impossible” and the vanishing, dusted heroes of “Avengers: Infinity War.” Here’s how Catskill remembered it:

“First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. Whole sequences — poof! — were deleted from the drive.”

The film was a work in progress, not only in the sense that production was underway but in the sense that people were there at that exact moment working on it. They watched their work disappear right in front of their eyes.

To say that this was a costly mistake would be an understatement. “Toy Story 2” ultimately grossed almost half a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, so take that into consideration when you form a mental picture of this mistake and how costly it really was — or would have been, had not a guardian angel come to the rescue.