60 Fun Facts About Monsters Inc

Who provides the voice of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan?

Goodman went on to voice Sulley again in the prequel and the streaming series, making it one of the longest-running Pixar voice roles.

Which comedian voices the one-eyed Mike Wazowski?

Mike is the film's motormouth, and his voice actor was already a veteran Oscars host when the film came out.

In which year was Monsters, Inc. released in US cinemas?

It arrived the same autumn as Shrek's home-video release and Harry Potter's first film, an unusually crowded season for family movies.

Boo thinks Sulley is a large version of which animal?

Her nickname for him becomes the emotional core of the film, right down to the last word she says before the door closes.

What is the name of the monster city powered by children's screams?

The city runs on scream energy collected in canisters, which is why the company's slogan is all about caring.

By the end of the film, the factory has been retooled to harvest what from children instead of screams?

The discovery is made by accident when Boo giggles and blows out every light on the scare floor.

To which mountain range was the Abominable Snowman banished?

He greets his unexpected visitors with snow cones and insists the yellow ones are lemon.

What special ability lets Randall Boggs sneak up on Sulley and Mike?

He has eight legs to go with the camouflage, which is why he can scuttle across a ceiling while doing it.

What is Henry J. Waternoose's position at Monsters, Inc.?

He runs the place as a family business, and his fear of the energy crisis is what drives him into Randall's scheme.

Grumpy scare-floor administrator Roz turns out to be what?

She has been keeping an eye on the company the whole time, which recasts her endless paperwork nagging as surveillance.

Mike's girlfriend Celia Mae, the front-desk receptionist, has what instead of hair?

Her hair has a personality of its own and hisses at Mike when their birthday date goes wrong.

In which year did the prequel Monsters University reach cinemas?

It came a full twelve years after the original, long enough that many of its target audience had not been born for the first film.

In Monsters University, Mike joins which fraternity of misfits to compete in the Scare Games?

Their house is a member's mother's home, and their motto is "We're OK!", which is exactly as intimidating as it sounds.

Expelled from Monsters University, where do Mike and Sulley start at Monsters, Inc.?

A closing montage shows them climbing from there to the scare floor, tying the prequel back to the first film's opening.

Which Oscar-winning actress voices Dean Hardscrabble in Monsters University?

The dean is a red dragon-like monster with centipede legs and bat wings, and her disapproval hangs over both leads for the whole film.

On which service did the series Monsters at Work premiere in July 2021?

It was developed by Bobs Gannaway and picks up the day after Waternoose's arrest, as the factory switches over to laugh power.

Who is the new main character of Monsters at Work, a scare graduate reassigned to the maintenance crew?

He arrives with a job offer to be a scarer just as scaring is abolished, so he ends up fixing pipes with MIFT instead.

Which actor, better known for Fargo and Boardwalk Empire, voices Randall Boggs?

Randall was designed as an eight-legged reptile so his camouflage could carry him silently across ceilings and walls.

Who directed Monsters, Inc., his first time in the director's chair?

He later went on to make Up, Inside Out and Soul, and has been Pixar's chief creative officer since 2018.

Which veteran star of The Magnificent Seven voices Henry J. Waternoose?

Waternoose inherited the company from his father and is a spider-like monster with five eyes and six crab-like legs.

Who performs the end-credits song "If I Didn't Have You" on the soundtrack?

The duet lets the two leads sing as their characters, and Sulley's actor later helped perform it live at the Oscars.

"If I Didn't Have You" won Randy Newman his first-ever Oscar in which category?

In his acceptance speech he joked to the applauding crowd, "I don't want your pity," after more than a dozen previous nominations.

Monsters, Inc. lost the first-ever Best Animated Feature Oscar to which film?

The category was brand new at the 74th Academy Awards, so the film became one of its very first nominees.

Its record-breaking opening weekend surpassed the previous animated-film record held by which movie?

Pixar broke its own record: the previous holder was the studio's third feature, released just two years earlier.

Which Oscar-winning Pixar short about a squabbling flock on a wire played before Monsters, Inc.?

Written and directed by Ralph Eggleston, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2001.

Which 2002 short was Pixar's first to use dialogue and to reuse characters from a previous film?

It runs about five minutes, and the DVD commentary is by "Docter and Gould", who turn out to be the directors' young sons.

Which Pixar good-luck charm voices the Abominable Snowman?

He had a part in every Pixar feature from Toy Story onward, and here he gets to insist that a yeti is only "abominable" in the eyes of others.

In Monsters University, Mike and Sulley are expelled from the scaring program after breaking what?

The canister holds the record-setting scream from her own career, which is why she takes the accident so personally.

In Monsters University, Sulley initially gets into which elite fraternity that rejects Mike?

Its members wear matching jackets and win the Scare Games year after year, right up to the final where they face the misfits.

How does Mike discover that his winning Scare Games performance was not entirely his own doing?

The discovery sends Mike through an experimental door into a summer-camp cabin full of children who are not remotely scared of him.

Which Firefly and Castle star voices frat president Johnny J. Worthington III in Monsters University?

Fellow Firefly alumnus Alan Tudyk is a Pixar regular too, but he does not appear in this one.

In Monsters at Work, the maintenance crew Tylor joins is called MIFT. What does the F stand for?

The team is led by Fritz, a scatterbrained tapir-nosed boss voiced by Henry Winkler.

Monsters at Work introduced Roze, a new character who is Roz's what?

The producers reasoned that after the first film's ending Roz would never be back on the laugh floor, so they built a lookalike to fill her desk.

The dark ride Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened in 2006 at which park?

It took over the building of the Superstar Limo dark ride in what is now Hollywood Land, and Roz gets the last word on the way out.

Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor at Magic Kingdom replaced which attraction in 2007?

It sits in Tomorrowland, where live performers voice animated monsters who riff on the audience in real time.

At Tokyo Disneyland's Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek, what are guests handed to hunt for hiding monsters?

Pointing the beam at targets around the factory triggers the characters, turning the ride into a giant game of hide and seek.

Approximately how many individual hairs did Pixar's animators have to simulate on Sulley?

Getting all of that fur to move convincingly forced Pixar to set up a dedicated simulation department.

Which actor was considered for the role of Sulley before the part was cast?

Sulley ended up with a warmer, less sardonic voice, which suits a character who is essentially a very large teddy bear.

Mike's voice actor accepted the role partly out of regret at having turned down which earlier Pixar part?

He said yes to Pixar this time without hesitation, and has stuck with the studio's little green cyclops for more than twenty years.

In early story drafts, what name did the character who became Sulley go by?

At that stage the story was simply called Monsters, and Mike Wazowski had not been invented yet.

Docter named Mike Wazowski after the father of which friend, a Muppet performer who also voices Fungus?

The same performer is the voice of Yoda and Miss Piggy, making Fungus one of the least famous roles on his CV.

The title Monsters, Inc. was suggested by veteran animator Joe Grant as a play on which gangster film?

Grant's career stretched back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, so the pun came from a man who had been naming things at Disney since 1937.

What was the name of the fur-simulation software Pixar built for the film?

The name is short for "physics tool", and building it meant setting up a whole new simulation department at the studio.

Docter's very first pitch for the film centred on what?

That concept was scrapped in favour of a buddy story between a monster and a child, which slowly evolved into the film we know.

How was three-year-old Mary Gibbs's performance as Boo mostly captured?

She was the daughter of story artist Rob Gibbs, and the tie-in book even gives Boo's real name as Mary.

In the film's original 2001 release, roughly how much did Monsters, Inc. gross worldwide?

That made it the third-highest-grossing film of 2001, behind only Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and The Fellowship of the Ring.

How many DVD copies did Monsters, Inc. sell on its first day, then a single-day record?

The 2002 disc also carried the short Mike's New Car and the end-credits outtakes, which helped drive demand.

Songwriter Lori Madrid sued Pixar claiming the film stole her ideas from what?

She had turned the piece into a stage musical; the judge ruled in June 2002 that the film had nothing in common with it.

In an early design, what was Sulley planned to have instead of feet?

The idea caused so many problems in early animation tests that he was given ordinary legs, which also made him easier to hug.

Monsters University was the first Pixar film to use which lighting technique?

The system uses path tracing to imitate how real light bounces, and some campus scenes contained thousands of light sources.

Monsters University holds what unwanted distinction in Pixar's awards history?

It still did fine commercially, taking $743 million worldwide against a $200 million budget.

Before Monsters University, a scrapped sequel was in development under what subtitle?

That version would have sent Mike and Sulley into the human world; it was dropped when Disney bought Pixar and the prequel took its place.

In Monsters at Work, the theme song is an a cappella rendition of what?

Composer Dominic Lewis performed it himself, and the show begins the day after Waternoose's arrest, so the callback is deliberate.

Which of these was a real tie-in video game released around the 2001 film?

Two others rounded out the set, a plainly titled Monsters, Inc. and Scream Team, all released around the film's cinema and home-video windows.

Which actress voices Celia Mae, the receptionist and Mike's girlfriend?

Bonnie Hunt is also in the cast, as Flint, the talent recruiter who trains new scarers.

What was the production code name for Monsters, Inc., taken from Pete Docter's favourite restaurant?

Docter started work in 1996 while the rest of Pixar was busy on A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, and pitched Disney on February 4, 1997.

The idea for Monsters, Inc. was born at a 1994 Pixar lunch that also seeded which other film?

John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft brainstormed as Toy Story neared completion; A Bug's Life and WALL-E came out of it too.

After the September 11 attacks, what replaced the planned explosion of Harryhausen's restaurant?

The restaurant is named for stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen and is decontaminated by the CDA after Boo is spotted there.

Which short film played before Monsters University in cinemas?

Directed by Saschka Unseld, the short followed the prequel's London premiere at BFI Southbank on June 5, 2013.

Roughly how much did Monsters University gross worldwide?

That made it the third-highest-grossing Pixar film at the time, with a Pixar opening-weekend record in Latin America.