One decade after the dramatic climax of “Toy Story 3” — wherein the gang find themselves trapped in a garbage incinerator and facing certain annihilation — the film’s director Lee Unkrich has come to confirm just how dark that scene really was.

The toys of “Toy Story,” including Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and a rotating cast of dilapidated dolls, had managed to survive being lost inside a Pizza Planet restaurant (“Toy Story”), and getting pilfered by a maniacal, mouth-breathing toy collector who brought them to Japan (“Toy Story 2”).

But “Toy Story 3” presented the most traumatic circumstances of all: being sent to a daycare center where a malevolent purple bear would shove them into a dump truck that drops them off in an incinerator.

With seemingly no way out, the toy family reconcile their sad fate, make amends and join hands before death — a heavy notion for the PG-rated age group, which surely prompted thousands of conversations between parents and their kids about what happens to our loved ones after finding themselves in a furnace. Mercifully, viewers were spared a tragic culmination to the beloved franchise and saw a full-circle ending instead. Rather than melt into oblivion, the alien toys from Pizza Planet came to their rescue in the clutch, if you will, with “the claw” — a reference to the first “Toy Story” installment.

A pair of fans took to Twitter to clear up a hypothetical debate that has raged between them for 10 years: If animated toys aren’t alive in the first place, are they immortal?

“My girlfriend and i are having a big fight bc i think the toys from “Toy Story” are immortal and she thinks they can die,” wrote Twitter user @markydoodoo.

The burning debate, which has garnered nearly 60,000 likes on Twitter since Saturday, saw more than 350 responses ranging from the philosophical to the scientific.

“Sid’s experiments [another reference to the first “Toy Story” movie] clearly establish that toys can survive dismemberment and take control of newly attached parts. So either the toys have a core which contains their consciousness, or it’s distributed throughout their bodies,” figured @electric_claire.

Astutely, the user added, “Given the diversity among the toys and the fact that they don’t appear to have been built in any special way, I lean toward the latter. If that’s the case then the toys can never die, but their consciousness degrades along with their bodies.”

“They’re given life by a child’s attention — even Sid’s dismembered toys were animate,” posited @seemlypseudonym.

While all creative and thoughtful answers, “Toy Story 3” director Unkrich thought it high time to dispel the myths surrounding toy mortality.

They live as long as they exist. But if they were to be utterly destroyed? Say, in an incinerator? Game over. https://t.co/p9nwIAjAl8

— Lee Unkrich (@leeunkrich) August 2, 2020

The answer is simple, according to Unkrich: “They live as long as they exist. But if they were to be utterly destroyed? Say, in an incinerator? Game over.”

So, there you have it. The response changes nothing about the movie, but confirms the upsetting realization that we came that close to never getting a fourth sequel.