When you’re working on a film digitally there’s something you can’t really plan for: the unpredictability of technology. Pixar learned this while making the sequel to their smash hit Toy Story.

Pixar’s computers have a special command called “RM*” that makes the computer delete everything it can as fast as it can. Someone accidentally typed in RM*. This set off a wild panic at the animation power house. They scrambled and scrambled and eventually just pulled the plug on the server so they could keep whatever hadn’t been deleted.

So what’s a company to do when most of the movie is gone? Check the backups! OF COURSE! But wait.. the backups are bad. How did Pixar salvage the movie? Check out the video for the rest of the story. [via Reddit]

pixar, toy story 2