My Toy Story Theory: The "Toys" Are Haunted/Reincarnated After Death

The Toy Story toys display many very human characteristics, including ones associated with having actual human bodies. This is because they are reincarnated, after their own (human) deaths.

Look at Woody cough in this clip from Toy Story 2.

To cough, you need lungs, a cough reflex, and a system that is affected by dust. If you look closely, you can also see his tongue, even though as a "toy" he does not need a tongue.

In the first movie, at least most of the "human" toys also seem to reenact their own deaths.

Woody is "shot" in the stomach by the Etch-A-Sketch.

Buzz suffocates in the air of a strange planet (and talks about his "eyeballs being sucked from their sockets").

Combat Carl is blown to bits.

Even Bo Peep grabs Woody about the neck with her staff (and Woody talks about how "painful it is--you need nerve endings to feel pain!). This could indicate that she was hanged, perhaps as a witch, or perhaps for a crime--and that she has an obsession with the neck because of it.

 RC crashes violently into Buzz, then the back of the moving van.

Potato Head suffers a violent fate, with much dismemberment, towards the end of the first movie. This would explain what kind of body he got after his death, with parts coming off all the time.

Slinky is "dragged" behind a moving van. He was dragged to death, accidentally, in life, when he was tied to a car by his leash and left there (go to about 4:21 into the video).

An alien is torn up by a giant (to him) dog.

The toy soldiers don't need any explanation, or even any reenactments.

In the short "Toy Story of Terror," also, Jessie reenacts her own death by getting into a box--a coffin--where she is afraid of being abandoned and trapped. She was accidentally (or not) buried alive in life, and died in the coffin in which she woke up. I also heard a human heartbeat as a sound effect when I watched it on TV, though I have not been able to find a clip with the heartbeat sound. If my memory serves, and the heartbeat indeed was there, then that would indicate that Jessie has a heart.

In addition, in the first movie, Buzz does not in fact know that he is dead. Woody tries to convince him that he is a "toy," but that is only a polite way to put it. Buzz does not know that he's a toy, because he does not know that he is dead! Therefore, he does not know that he has been reincarnated. Woody is the good guy, who is trying to get Buzz to face and accept his own death.

In the second movie, Woody is hopeful that by touring the world, his memory will live on after his death. Buzz tries to gently convince him to give up thinking about his last life, and focus on this one.

The toys feel pain, are burned, breathe, see, and have "wing erections" (when Buzz sees Jessie jump onto a doorknob to let the dog out, in the second movie, his wings pop open, and some people say that that represents him having an erection). Buzz even gets drunk-- these all things that require a body. They even "die" again every time a human is in the room. Woody and the other toys only overcame the impulse or compulsion to "die" when Buzz was in danger of dying again, perhaps permanently. This compulsion can only be overcome with a very strong will, which is why the toys do not reveal themselves as alive to Andy, even though he is wonderful and they all love him very much. (Did anyone else see the movie as a child, then sit their toys down and explain that it was okay for the toys to come to life in front of them?)

This even explains why Buzz can still fly, even as a toy. He retains a at least a vestige of his abilities from his past life, and he also has a real body.

The only "evidence" against this theory is that in the second movie, Woody's arm is ripped, and we see "stuffing" coming out. However, that is not "stuffing."
That is ectoplasm! They have reincarnated bodies, and so they produce ectoplasm, which the living think is "stuffing." (Some ectoplasm from old-time mediums was described as "resembling cheesecloth" or other, similar materials.) This ectoplasm is what the living see, rather than the real muscles and blood underneath.
The toys reenact their own deaths. So even if they have bodies, why would they not produce ectoplasm? They are not truly living beings in the same way we are, after all. This is an afterlife, a kind of living death.