Joy

Joy is the protagonist and also anti-hero of Inside Out. She is the main Emotion out of the five that live inside the mind of Riley, the others being Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. She appears to be happy all the time and full of energy.

Amy Poehler describes her as follows: "Joy is the engine. She keeps everyone moving and happy. She represents the parts of Riley that are starting to change and become more complicated, and she is reluctant to let that change happen. She may be the most positive, but in many ways, she is the least flexible."

Official Bio
"Joy’s goal has always been to make sure Riley stays happy. She is lighthearted, optimistic and determined to find the fun in every situation. Joy sees challenges in Riley’s life as opportunities, and the less happy moments as hiccups on the way back to something great. As long as Riley is happy, so is Joy."

Inside Out
When Riley is born, Joy is the first Emotion to appear in her mind. Joy finds amazing this moment where she was alone with Riley. However, starting just 33 seconds after her with Sadness, other Emotions appear. Nevertheless, Joy remains Riley's main Emotion, making almost all of Riley's memories joyful, including the five core memories that power the Islands of Personality. It is a time composed of "perfect days" for Joy. Joy recognizes a function to each of the other Emotions, except Sadness, which she finds does not do any good to Riley. Because of this, she often distracts Sadness to get her away from the controls.

This all changes when Riley turns 11 and her family makes a move to San Francisco. Joy tries to keep things positive, but Riley's new situation appears less than thrilling. In this unfamiliar situation, Joy sees Riley's other Emotions suddenly become more prominent. What's more, Sadness gains the ability to turn previously joyful memories sad. Thinking Sadness is the last thing Riley needs in these difficult times, Joy keeps her away from the control panel more than ever, and forbids her from touching any memory.

The other Emotions begin to question whether Joy should still be taking the lead, considering that Riley's situation is definitively negative. But after Riley's mother thanks Riley for being happy, Joy appears as being the right emotion after all. As Riley goes to sleep, Joy takes over dream duty, but to her dismay, Dream Productions made a nightmare out of all the negative things that happened today. Despite knowing that she's not supposed to turn off the dream, Joy does so and plays a happy memory where Riley is skating with her family.

The next day is Riley's first day at her new school. Joy gives every Emotion a job except Sadness, which she entrusts of staying aside. When Riley is asked to present herself to the class, Joy takes things in charge. However, the joyful memory from Minnesota that Joy recalls unexpectedly turns sad, touched by Sadness. In the ensuing confusion, Sadness takes the commands, and Riley ends up crying, which creates a new, sad core memory. Joy, panic stricken by the turn of the events, prevents the core memory from being used. She activates the memory evacuation system to dispose of it, but Sadness opposes herself to it. Things go haywire and all of Riley's core memories end up accidentally sucked out of Headquarters, along with Joy and Sadness.

Joy and Sadness, completely lost, are alarmed to see that without the core memories, all of Riley's Islands of Personality are down, and that in Joy's absence Riley cannot be happy. Joy collects the core memories and heads to Goofball Island in hopes of reaching Headquarters through it. However the island crumbles down and Joy and Sadness barely escape. Their only choice is to venture in the maze-like Long Term Memory to find another way. Joy recruits Sadness as her "map", as the latter's knowledge from the Mind Manuals comes in handy to navigate the place.

However, the night goes by and they are still lost, until they come across Bing Bong, Riley's long forgotten imaginary friend. Bing Bong, more than happy to help them, proposes they take the Train of Thought to go directly to Headquarters. Joy finds Bing Bong way more enjoyable than Sadness and follows his lead. However, Bing Bong's childish ignorance brings them to Abstract Thought, which turns out to be extremely dangerous. Following this event, Joy understands she can't follow Bing Bong with a blind confidence and that Sadness' advice is valuable.

Joy is thrilled to visit Imagination Land on their way, but she is disgusted by the newly-formed Imaginary Boyfriend Generator, and shocked to see more childish aspects being taken down. Bing Bong is more so affected when his own rocket wagon is thrown into the Memory Dump. Joy tries to cheer him up by acting goofy, but in vain. Sadness then approaches Bing Bong and gets him to express his sadness. Joy is annoyed at first, but is confused when Bing Bong is comforted as a result.

The trio finally reaches the Train of Thought, only to find out that it doesn't run during night. The trio heads to Dream Productions to try to wake Riley up. Joy tries to take the lead, suggesting that they make Riley happy to wake her up, but it is only when she takes in Sadness' advice to scare her instead that they succeed, by freeing from the Subconscious Riley's worst fear, Jangles. Now riding the running train, Joy acknowledges that Sadness can have good ideas, and gives her encouraging words.

However, the train is destroyed as Honesty Island crumbles. Another way back to Headquarters presents itself when a large recall tube is exposed in the destruction. However, Joy realizes that Sadness cannot get in without touching the core memories and turning them sad. After one hesitation, Joy suddenly makes the decision to leave Sadness behind, stating "Riley needs to be happy", and closes the tube on herself. But the destruction of Family Island breaks the tube, and Joy falls down into the dump along with Bing Bong.

With all hope of escape seemingly lost, Joy despairs as she reflects on Riley's fading childhood memories and contrasts them with the sad core memory, seeing in it the failure of her efforts to make Riley happy. However, in her mourning, Joy comes across a joyful memory she had collected earlier. She realises that the memory has a sad beginning, and that this sadness was what led joy to emerge afterwards. Joy has the revelation that Sadness is key to Riley's happiness.

Her determination reinvigorated, Joy has the idea to use Bing Bong's wagon to rocket out of the dump. However Bing Bong and Joy can't get high enough, no matter how hard they sing. Bing Bong asks they try again, and this time, jumps off, sacrificing himself to make the wagon lighter. Joy succeeds to reach the surface, and only then she realizes what happened. She sees Bing Bong fade away. She is saddened but accepts his loss with resignation.

Joy finds Sadness, who flees her, having come to the conclusion she is harmful to Riley. In all urgency, using imaginary boyfriends from Imagination Land, Joy jumps, catches Sadness in flight, and finally reaches Headquarters.

To the surprise of the other Emotions, Joy entrusts Sadness of dealing with Riley, who is running away from home and out of control. Sadness succeeds to bring Riley to her senses, and gets her to express her feelings to her parents, who comfort her. Joy surrenders to Sadness Riley's childhood core memories, finally letting them turn sad. She then offers to Sadness the sad core memory she created earlier. Instead of using it, Sadness brings Joy to the console, and they create a new core memory, both joyful and sad, which repowers Family Island in a stronger form.

Some time later, as Riley turns 12, Joy remains in place as Riley's leading Emotion, but the others now all have their own place on the new, larger, upgraded console.

Personality
Joy is boisterous, hyperactive, exuberant, outgoing, and fiercely optimistic. The smallest spark of positivity makes her burst with excitement. She always sees the good in everything, which, on the flip side, causes her to be somewhat oblivious to the other, sad aspect of things. She is not insensitive to negative emotions; for instance, the destruction of Riley's Islands of Personality does bring sorrow to her; but her positive nature leads her to quickly push those feelings aside, refrain from being sad or angry, and think positive instead. Since on the contrary, Sadness is compelled to see the negative aspect of things, the two have completely different outlooks on the events of Riley's life.

Joy loves Riley, and feels a special bond as the first emotion that materialized in her mind. She wishes that Riley would be always happy and considers that for this to be, Riley must be nothing but joyful. She became a leader figure for the other Emotions, who looked up to her, trusting her to know what Riley needs. At the same time, Joy tried to bury down Sadness because she represented the exact opposite of her. She does try to be supportive to Sadness, and never acts as a bully towards her; but ultimately, Sadness seems to be a hopeless case to Joy. She sees no helpful function to her, and thus, actively tries to minimize Sadness' actions. And when pushed to the edge, she was ready to leave Sadness behind.

When Riley turns 11 and her life begins to change, Joy is terrified that the other emotions become more prominent, as she sees all the work she has done being destroyed; and when Riley ends up forming a sad core memory, it appears to her as a sign of utter failure. Over the course of her journey through Riley's mind, Joy comes to understand that growing up is inevitable, that to be truly happy Riley needs all of her emotions, and that she was holding Riley back by trying to suppress them. She realizes that she is meant to work not against Sadness, but in pair with her.

Appearance
Joy has light amber skin, sky-blue hair in a pixie cut and large azure blue eyes. She wears a light chartreuse summer dress adorned with blue flower-like motifs and is the only emotion not wearing pants or shoes. She is surrounded by a blue halo and emits a bright, golden light, brighter than that of any of the other emotions.

Trivia

 * Joy is the second female protagonist of a Pixar movie, the first being Merida.
 * Joy is the most human-like in appearance out of all the emotions.
 * Joy's appearance takes inspiration from the famous actress Audrey Hepburn.
 * In the trailer, Joy says, "Come on, group hug!", a reference to Anchor's quote from Finding Nemo.