Buzz Lightyear - Cultural Impact

Cultural Impact

On October 2007, readers of Empire voted him No. 1 of the Top 20 Greatest Pixar Characters. They also rated him the 94th greatest movie character of all time.

Buzz's classic line "To infinity... and beyond!" has seen usage not only on T-shirts, but among philosophers and mathematical theorists as well. Lucia Hall of The Humanist linked the film's plot to an interpretation of humanism. She compared the phrase to "All this and heaven, too!", indicating one who is happy with a life on Earth as well as having an afterlife. The 2008 quadruple platinum song Single Ladies by Beyoncé Knowles includes the lyric "...and delivers me to a destiny, to infinity and beyond," a reference which was pointed out by alt-country singer Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco during a 2010 solo performance in Chicago. Also in 2008, astronauts took an action figure of Buzz Lightyear into space on the Discovery Space Shuttle as part of an educational experience for students while stressing the catchphrase. The action figure was used for experiments in zero-g. Also in 2008, the phrase made international news when it was reported that a father and son had continually repeated the phrase to help them keep track of each other while treading water for 15 hours in the Atlantic Ocean.