The 26 greatest Pixar characters

You’ve got a friend in me – and all the rest who make up Pixar’s multiverse of stories. Beginning with the acclaimed feature film Toy Story in 1995, Pixar has been a titan of the animation film industry for decades with revered features.

While Pixar was officially founded in 1986, it had earlier origins circa 1974, when New York Institute of Technology’s Alexander Schure established “CGL” – for “Computer Graphics Lab” – which set out to produce the world’s first computer-animated movie. It had early encouragement from filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. A handful of CGL members eventually joined Lucas’ Lucasfilm under a new name, Graphics Group. This group would be the true forerunners to what we know as Pixar today.

Pixar is a studio revered worldwide for its movies that appeal to all ages. Whether the characters come from a child’s toy box or a world of sentient automobiles or a city of superheroes, Pixar’s characters are some of the most iconic movie characters of all time – but some are more iconic than others. And here are the greatest characters from Pixar’s movies.