History Fridge / MonstersUniversity

** Speaking of demons and hell, what did the parents in ''Party Central'' think of the sight of the burning fire with several monstrous beings raving within the inferno, as one of them briefly rocketed between doors. When they were afraid of monsters in their closet, it might have been a severe understatement compared to what they believed they saw.

* Why didn't we see a bunch of familiar faces (besides Mike, Sulley, Randall, and a cameo of Roz in ''Monsters University''? Well they might have gone to different universities, such as Fear Tech and other schools.

* While they were running from the cops after sneaking into a building, Art mentioned that he can't go to jail again. What did he do to get arrested?

** Considering how much Life Sucks, probably not very.

* When one thinks about it, Dean Hardscrabble is a foil to Waternoose from the first film. First off, how is she introduced? She's shown as a legendary scarer who's rooted in old ways, just like Waternoose. There's also a lovely closeup of her [[CreepyCentipedes centipede legs]], instantly making one think of the other arthropod-esque authority. Almost everything about her screams "This is the villain!" from her demonic design, to her cruel, antagonistic attitude. Waternoose, on the other hand, was set up as a warm, grandfatherly old man, and a trustworthy friend. His design also didn't stand out as overtly villainous in comparison to the other odd creatures in the monster world. Then when more of them is shown, [[spoiler:Waternoose is still rooted in his beliefs, even as he betrays them to try and support his company. Hardscrabble, on the other hand, learns the error of her prejudices and prepares to change her ways for the betterment of her school.]] In the end, [[spoiler: the warm, likable old man becomes hard and villainous, while the cold, cruel headmistress becomes friendlier and kinder without losing her dignity.]] This is even foreshadowed in the way the Dean [[spoiler:makes her flying exits. When she enters a scene, it's in the cover of darkness, playing up her eeriness. But when she flies off, she's shrouded in light, implying she's not really quite as bad as she lets on.]]

** His desperation in preserving his and Sulley's job. While it might have come off as rather selfish at first, think about what happened to him: he was [[spoiler:expelled from his dream university, and suddenly all of his hard work meant nothing]]. Years later, he has clawed his way from the bottom up with his best friend, has his dream job working on the Scare Floor- and now all that is suddenly at risk because of a little kid. And Sulley, just like back in university when he was still a JerkJock, is being fairly laissez-faire about the situation.

** His general attitude towards Randall, and their open antagonism towards each other. [[spoiler:They used to be roommates in University- not just that, but friends and study buddies- until Randall dumped Mike to get in with the "cool kids" in ROR.]] It makes sense that he would only want to rub Randall's face in his and Sulley's overwhelming success. It also puts an interesting twist on how Sully always had a much more accepting (if slightly exasperated) reaction to Randall early on in the first film. It's not just that he's more welcoming than Mike (though that's almost certainly a large factor), it's that Randall was never anything more to him than some easily ignored jerk he met in college. To Mike, Randall was [[spoiler: an old friend who betrayed him]], which is ''much'' harder to forgive and forget, even as adults. Sulley, in turn, seems to be almost protective of Mike towards Randall (especially in Randall's introduction scene in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'')[[spoiler:, which makes sense, as at the very least, he witnessed the moment Randall abandoned Mike.]]
** Especially his interactions with Randall in the Scream Extractor scene. He starts out being cheeky with the latter, then pleads with him, and only freaks out when he realises it's actually happening. While they're certainly not on good terms, he still does not expect Randall to actually harm him [[spoiler:because they [[WeUsedToBeFriends used to be good friends]]]].
*** A lot of Randall's behaviour too, really, makes sense after the prequel. Part of the reason Randall is so angry about Sully beating him in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' is, not just because he [[spoiler:inadvertently humiliated and showed him up during the Scare Games]], but because he's being bested by someone who is essentially a [[spoiler:''college dropout'']]. Plus, Randall only ever directly attacks Mike, but never Sulley. [[spoiler: ''Before'' he tries to openly kill both.]]

* Why was Roz [[spoiler:, a.k.a., Number 1,]] working in the paperwork office in MI? [[spoiler: Because after Mike and Sully enigmatically explode the door lab escaping from the human world, the CDA needs to be watching them. Aaaaaaaalways watching...]]
* Why in MI were Mike and Sully not excessively freaking out over Boo's laughter powering all the doors in the door storage? [[spoiler: Because they've powered offline doors through excessive amounts of power before...]]

* ''University'' shows [[spoiler:it's possible, with enough scream power, to activate a door from the human side]]. So why didn't Mike and Sully try that in ''Inc'' when [[spoiler:they were banished to the Himalayas]]? [[spoiler:Because there were no humans around in range of that door. They'd have to drag an entire village there to try that again.]]

* It may be unintentional but most of the humans in this film had their faces either shadowed or drawn in less detail compared to the very colorful and extravagant monsters seen. It's to play up the unknown and fear that monsters have for humans, especially in the scene where [[spoiler: the campers begin to crowd around a terrified Mike.]]

* By the time this film came out, the kids that enjoyed the first film would be in or heading off to university. Therefore, the new film is set in university!
** The fact that Sulley and Mike need each other to be a remarkable team (as evidenced by [[spoiler: their ultimate scare against the adults at the children's camp]], with Mike being the brains, and Sulley being the brawn.), harkens back (or would that be forward?) to ''Monsters, Inc.'' After all, Sulley and Mike say to each other in the credits of ''Monsters, Inc.'': [[spoiler: ♫ "I wouldn't have nothin' if I didn't have you!"♫ ]]

* Why didn't we see a bunch of familiar faces (besides Mike, Sulley, Randall, and [[spoiler:a cameo of Roz]] in ''Monsters University''? Well they might have gone to different universities, such as Fear Tech and other schools.
* Mike's symbolic threshold-stepping happens four times: as a child, crossing the warning line on the Scare Floor; entering the university; subtly, [[spoiler:''leaving'' the university; and finally re-entering the Scare Floor as an employee.]] While on first impressions the third step is an undoing of the second, which is certainly how Mike views it at the time, all four can be seen as important moments in his journey to working at Monsters, Inc. [[spoiler:As we see, leaving college is just as important to his CharacterDevelopment as entering it.]]

* The BrickJoke concerning the incredibly slow-moving yellow slug monster being LateForSchool, [[spoiler:only to finally make it to class '''at the end of the school year''']] is ActuallyPrettyFunny, [[spoiler:until you realize he failed each and every one of his classes, getting himself expelled and probably having to reapply to the university...and probably repeat the cycle. This also implies that he hasn't eaten, drank, or slept for ''months''.]]
** [[spoiler:This is pure speculation here, but if he moves that slowly, he probably doesn't need to eat, drink or sleep very often -- otherwise he would never have survived; he would have died of hunger and thirst by the time it took him to walk from his couch and to the kitchen.]]

* Although Mike and Sully scaring the living souls out of [[spoiler:the adults in the human world]] served as a wonderful climax and SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome, you can't help but wonder [[spoiler:what would become of those horribly traumatized people. Remember, these aren't kids that we're talking about. These are fully grown adults who have experienced a scare taken UpToEleven and have come face-to-face with a real live breathing monster. In fact, they would have assumed it was a DEMON from hell haunting a camp in the forest instead of just a monster. In real life, there actually exist reportings of similar scares and hauntings by unidentified/urban creatures that have occurred in remote areas such as this one. The people who experienced these have often end up being scarred for life and went through intense therapy to get rid of the paranoia, insomnia, and constant nightmares. They usually end up quitting their jobs because they just couldn't go on with their lives until they were cured from that permanent nightmare. It wouldn't be surprising if they were even DrivenToSuicide. Who's to say the adults in the human world wouldn't have a similar [[FateWorseThanDeath fate]] as the victims in real life?]]
** [[spoiler:That summer camp would also have huge rumors of being haunted. Either they can whip that up into a huge publicity boost or they'll be closed.]]

** FromBadToWorse: imagine what will happen if [[spoiler: any of those adults have children in the future. Picture this... as your child progresses through the toddler stage, you start to wonder why your baby looks so scared when you wake him/her up each morning. Your kid is still too young to explain fully, but through crude crayon drawings and snippets of toddler speak, you're eventually able to figure out what it is your child is trying to warn you about: ''monsters''. You try to tell your spouse, but they haven't seen what ''you'' saw in the cabin that night, so they just laugh and assure you that your child just has an overactive imagination, nothing to worry about. You start to become uneasy, unable to sleep. You swear you've been hearing noises in the house at night, as though a large animal has broken in. But every single time you leap out of bed and try to reach the room in time to find the thing that has broken into your home, you're too late. There is nothing there, nothing but your child, screaming and crying, pointing in terror at their closet...]]

* A subtle one, but Mike was devastated after he found out [[spoiler:Sulley had rigged the scaring machine.]] Later, the other monsters see him trying to enter a door into the potentially dangerous human realm, and are begging him not to do it. Did they think Mike was upset enough to be DrivenToSuicide?
* If a [[spoiler:child's laughter is powerful enough to power every door in the factory]] and an [[spoiler:adult's scream is powerful enough to make a door explode and overfill almost every scream tanker in a room]], then how powerful would an [[spoiler:adult's laughter]] be?

* The power generated by [[spoiler:scaring the policemen is enough not only to reopen the portal, but to actually make the door completely blow up in a fiery blast as Mike and Sulley escape through it. So just imagine: what if they had been just ''one'' second slower? They would have missed what may have been their one chance to make it back in the monster world, and possibly have gotten caught by the policemen shall any of them have returned...and that's if they were ''lucky''. Even worse, they could have gotten ''incinerated'' in the blast, or gruesomely split in half due to the abrupt disappearance of the portal.]] Granted, how close of a call it was just makes the scene all the more [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome awesome]].

* The power generated by [[spoiler:scaring the policemen is enough not only to reopen the portal, but to actually make the door completely blow up in a fiery blast as Mike and Sulley escape through it. So just imagine: what if they had been just ''one'' second slower? They would have missed what may have been their one chance to make it back in the monster world, and possibly have gotten caught by the policemen shall any of them have returned...and that's if they were ''lucky''. Even worse, they could have gotten ''incinerated'' in the blast, or gruesomely split in half due to the abrupt disappearance of the portal.]] Granted, how close of a call it was just makes the scene all the more [[MomentOfAwesome awesome]].

** I felt this was obvious, Hardscrabble was not being fair to either of them. Not even Mike a chance to run the simulator, she also likely chose a child for Sully that she knew he would fail because a roar wouldn't have worked. Had they done the test properly Mike might have been able to scrape a pass (we never got to see how well he can do on the simulator at a reasonable setting) while Sully may have lucked it with a more (or should we say less) roar-friendly child.

** If you look closely at the posters in the rooms, Randall has a poster that says "Winds of Change". Guess how Randall changes throughout the film from a nice guy to a

** I felt this was obvious, Hardscrabble was not being fair to either of them. Not even giving a Mike a chance to run the simulator, she also likely chose a child for Sully that she knew he would fail because a roar wouldn't have worked. Had they done the test properly Mike might have been able to scrape a pass (we never got to see how well he can do on the simulator at a reasonable setting) while Sully may have lucked it with a more (or should we say less) roar-friendly child.

* How did Sully figure out that laughter is more powerful than scream in MI? Here, Mike shows us that if you pump enough energy into Monsters tech, you can power it from the human world. They however, pumped so much energy into that door to make it explode, something that took a top level scare. However, Boo managed to blow out half a city block (at least) with a laugh, on her own! Sully put one and one together that laughter has that explosive potential (uh no pun intended), by putting one and one together. Looks like he was paying attention to Mike in the end.

* Those who've seen the original film know that laughter turns out to be much more powerful than screams and revolutionizes the energy industry. Keeping this in mind, suddenly all those monsters who mocked guys like Oozma Kappa for not being "Scary Enough" have had the tables turned on them. Monsters like Art, Terri and Terry, and Squishy probably now have a much easier time generating laughter thanks to their non-threatening appearance.
* In the end Mike said that he and Sully were going to "change the world". At the end of Monsters Inc, they ''do change'' the monster world by discovering that children aren't actually toxic and laughter is a more powerful energy source than screams.
* The way that Mike and Sully treat all the employees during Monsters Inc would have hinted that the two guys where kicked out of university and had to start from the very bottom of the ladder and work their way up to the Scare Floor: They greeted all the employees, even lowly interns, warmly and by name, and everybody in turn knew who they were. If they had graduated from the university and went straight into scaring, chances are they wouldn't interact with those on the lower hierachy as much.

* These doors were a thesis project by the University students. On the surface, it seems to be a simple door leading into a camp cabin bed with a lot of kids. However, in a lot of ways, it is very similar to Real World university thesis projects related to energy: Many study rare sources with the aim of produce a lot of power, but are mostly not yet very safe or mass producible. The camp door would have resulted in a huge energy payoff (multiple kids!), but at the same time is a lot less safe than a door leading to only 1 kid - kids in groups are more likely to band together and fight off the monster, or worse, investigate what is on the other side of the door. Also, there are only so many camps in their world with cabin doors. It's rich energy source, but low chance it can be reproduced to factory level.

*** Or maybe the problem is that he never learned to take it seriously, the avoiding contact with the contaminants. With protection, he could sprint freely. However, he never learned to be as careful as necessary to avoid contact.

* If there are colleges to prepare monsters for scaring, why, in 'Monsters Inc', the first thing we see is novice, rookie scarers that obviously got little to none academic training for this job, to the point they're not familiar at all with the simulators? Because, by that time, there's a power crisis in Monstropolis, so the power companies are in desperate need of scarers and can't wait for new scarers to finish their education, something that probably takes from 3 to 4 years. We also see, by the end of 'Monsters University', that the company offers promotions and incentives to employees so those with enough skills can become scarers and scare coaches even if they didn't graduate, so they have simulators to test the applicants.

** The fact that Sulley and Mike need each other to be a remarkable team (as evidenced by [[spoiler: their ultimate scare against the adults at the children's camp]], with Mike being the brains, and Sulley being the brawn.), harkens back (or would that be forward?) to Monsters, Inc. After all, Sulley and Mike say to each other in the credits of Monsters, Inc.: [[spoiler: ♫ "I wouldn't have nothin' if I didn't have you!"♫ ]]

* When the Oozma Kappas are introducing themselves, Don mentions working in the textile industry until they downsized him out of a job. At first it seems like topical humour until I realized there's a hidden layer to that. Most of the monsters present in the first two movies don't really wear clothing, and if they do its mainly just a shirt or coat, etc.
* Why would monsters have trouble distinguishing adolescent humans from human children? Because humans are a different species. How many signs do human zoologists and biologists need to memorize to properly identify the age of individual animals? The human kids in the "Don't Scare The Teen" event all probably look very similar to the monster contestants.
* An additional good thing about the discovery at the end of ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' -- Don, Terri and Terry, Squishy, and Art have to make extra effort to be scary, but they'll make excellent laugh technicians.
* Why didn't we see a bunch of familiar faces (besides Mike, Sulley, Randall, and [[spoiler:a cameo of Roz]] in Monsters University? Well they might have gone to different universities, such as Fear Tech and other school.
* Mike's symbolic threshhold-stepping happens four times: as a child, crossing the warning line on the Scare Floor; entering the university; subtly, [[spoiler:''leaving'' the university; and finally re-entering the Scare Floor as an employee.]] While on first impressions the third step is an undoing of the second, which is certainly how Mike views it at the time, all four can be seen as important moments in his journey to working at Monsters, Inc. [[spoiler:As we see, leaving college is just as important to his CharacterDevelopment as entering it.]]

* Dean Hardscrabble dismisses Sully from the program because he immediately roars without listening to her information. In her words, the boy he would have roared at was afraid of snakes, so the roar would make him cry, not scream, alerting his parents and exposing their world. Now, wouldn't a scream ''also'' alter the boy's parents? It took a moment to realize that maybe Hardscrabble was more upset about the scream canister than she was letting on...

* Although Mike & Sully scaring the living souls out of [[spoiler:the adults in the human world]] served as a wonderful climax and CrowningMomentOfAwesome, you can't help but wonder [[spoiler:what would become of those horribly traumatized people. Remember, these aren't kids that we're talking about. These are fully grown adults who have experienced a scare taken UpToEleven and have come face-to-face with a real live breathing monster. In fact, they would have assumed it was a DEMON from hell haunting a camp in the forest instead of just a monster. In real life, there actually exist reportings of similar scares and hauntings by unidentified/urban creatures that have occurred in remote areas such as this one. The people who experienced these have often end up being scarred for life and went through intense therapy to get rid of the paranoia, insomnia, and constant nightmares. They usually end up quitting their jobs because they just couldn't go on with their lives until they were cured from that permanent nightmare. It wouldn't be surprising if they were even DrivenToSuicide. Who's to say the adults in the human world wouldn't have a similar [[FateWorseThanDeath fate]] as the victims in real life?]]

** FromBadToWorse: imagine what will happen if [[spoiler: any of those adults have children in the future. Picture this... as your child progresses through the toddler stage, you start to wonder why your baby looks so scared when you wake him/her up each morning. Your kid is still too young to explain fully, but through crude crayon drawings and snippets of toddler speak, you're eventually able to figure out what it is your child is trying to warn you about: ''monsters''. You try to tell your spouse, but he/she hasn't seen what ''you'' saw in the cabin that night, so he/she just laughs and assures you that your child just has an overactive imagination, nothing to worry about. You start to become uneasy, unable to sleep. You swear you've been hearing noises in the house at night, as though a large animal has broken in. But every single time you leap out of bed and try to reach the room in time to find the thing that has broken into your home, you're too late. There is nothing there, nothing but your child, screaming and crying, pointing in terror at their closet...]]
** Which becomes FridgeBrilliance when you realize this might be Sulley's thought process when he looked at himself scaring Boo in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc''. No wonder he doesn't think scaring matters anymore; he's come to believe that it's awful.

** Not to mention the time it would take to train enough comedian monsters to replace all the scarers, specially considering that only a handful of monsters have looks that help them make kids laugh with ease; at the end of Monsters Inc, we see that most of the new 'comedians' need to modify their aspect to be funny enough. The complete transition from 'fear power' to 'laughter power' might take at least a few years.

* If a [[spoiler:child's laughter is powerfull enough to power every door in the factory]] and an [[spoiler:adult's scream is powerfull enough to make a door explode and overfill almost every scream tanker in a room]], then how powerful would an [[spoiler:adult's laughter]] be?

* How did Sully figure out that laughter is more powerful than scream in the MI? Here, Mike shows us that if you pump enough energy into Monsters tech, you can power it from the human world. They however, pumped so much energy into that door to make it explode, something that took a top level scare. However, Boo managed to blow out half a city block (at least) with a laugh, on her own! Sully put one and one together that laughter has that explosive potential (uh no pun intended), by putting one and one together. Looks like he was paying attention to Mike in the end.

** Especially his interactions with Randall in the [=ScreamExtractor=] scene. He starts out being cheeky with the latter, then pleads with him, and only freaks out when he realises it's actually happening. While they're certainly not on good terms, he still does not expect Randall to actually harm him [[spoiler:because they [[WeUsedToBeFriends used to be good friends]]]].

** His general attitude towards Randall, and their open antagonism towards each other. [[spoiler:They used to be roommates in University- not just that, but friends and study buddies- until Randall dumped Mike to get in with the "cool kids" in ROR.]] It makes sense that he would only want to rub Randall's face in his and Sulley's overwhelming success. It also puts an interesting twist on how Sully always had a much more accepting (if slightly exasperated) reaction to Randall early on in the first film. It's not just that he's more welcoming than Mike (though that's almost certainly a large factor), it's that Randall was never anything more to him than some easily ignored jerk he met in college. To Mike, Randall was [[spoiler: an old friend who betrayed him]], which is ''much'' harder to forgive and forget, even as adults. Sulley, in turn, seems to be almost protective of Mike towards Randall (especially in Randall's introduction scene in WesternAnimation/MonstersInc)[[spoiler:, which makes sense, as at the very least, he witnessed the moment Randall abandoned Mike.]]

*** A lot of Randall's behaviour too, really, makes sense after the prequel. Part of the reason Randall is so angry about Sully beating him in WesternAnimation/MonstersInc is, not just because he [[spoiler:inadvertently humiliated and showed him up during the Scare Games]], but because he's being bested by someone who is essentially a [[spoiler:''college dropout'']]. Plus, Randall only ever directly attacks Mike, but never Sulley. [[spoiler: ''Before'' he tries to openly kill both.]]

** Which becomes FridgeBrilliance when you realize this might be Sulley's thought process when he looked at himself scaring Boo in WesternAnimation/MonstersInc. No wonder he doesn't think scaring matters anymore; he's come to believe that it's awful.

* A lot of Mike's behaviour in WesternAnimation/MonstersInc can be this thanks to this prequel. Let's review, shall we?

** There is also another reason: they produce '''[[PhlebotinumOverload too much energy]]'''. There must have been at least a hundred Scream Canisters in that room. From the screams of at least half a dozen adults, all of those Canisters were filled to the brim and exploded because they could not contain the ambient energy from their screams, and those same screams [[PhlebotinumOverload caused the door to overload and '''explode''']]. Even that slumber party Mike and Sulley scared in the first movie only produced seven full canisters, and each canister is enough to contain the screams of one kid. In short, an adult's screams produces at least one thousand times more energy than a child's, but no scare canister in the world could contain that amount of energy.

** There is also another reason: they produce '''too much energy'''. There must have been at least a hundred Scream Canisters in that room. From the screams of at least half a dozen adults, all of those Canisters were filled to the brim and exploded because they could not contain the ambient energy from their screams, and those same screams [[PhlebotinumOverload caused the door to overload and '''explode''']]. Even that slumber party Mike and Sulley scared in the first movie only produced seven full canisters, and each canister is enough to contain the screams of one kid. In short, an adult's screams produces at least one thousand times more energy than a child's, but no scare canister in the world could contain that amount of energy.

** Also adults are phyically more dangerous. If most children are visited regularly by the monsters in their closets if you tried that on an adult how long do you think it would take for them to go get a gun.