History Headscratchers / MonstersUniversity

* This movie shows that the Yeti knew Mike and Sully when they were working in the mail room. However, when they meet in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' there is no implication that they met before.

*** [=IIRR=], Terri didn't really say that they [=ID'd=] as male or female (or anything strictly as either), just that their version of the name "Terry" is spelled with a feminine variant ("Terri" usually being short for somethin' like "Teresa")

*** If the scene with the kids suggested anything, Mike is more "psychologically humorous" than he would be scary. The other monsters were scary but in different ways beyond appearance.

*** There ain't anything to say they wouldn't use both

*** [=IIRR=], Terri didn't really say that the [=ID'd=] as male or female (or anything strictly as either), just that they're version of the name "Terry" is spelled with a feminine variant ("Terri" being short for somethin' like "Teresa")
!!How did he get that far

*** If the scene with the kids suggested anything, Mike is more "psychologically humorous" than he would be scary. The other monsters were scary but in different ways beyond appearance.

*** Depending on the size of the font/text

** This is subtly explained visually at the end of the scene: Mike was using a fishing line to yank down the beds and move around the doll.

* Why would Sully tell Dean Hardscrabble he cheated on the final test? It would likely have just made things worse for Mike and the rest of Oozma Kappa; she could well have refused to let any of them into the scaring programme on the grounds that they hadn't fairly passed the tryouts.
** He wanted to convince her that he held full responsibility for cheating and that they shouldn't fail because of him. After all, they did perform really well during the final, something Dean Hardscrabble must have taken into account to not expel them. What's more is that the university was bound to find out about Sully's cheating before long, since the simulator was very obviously broken into and sabotaged. And for all the school knows, any one of the Oozma Kappas could've done it, so they all would've been punished.

* At the end we see Roz (as a member of the CDA) take Mike and Sully away saying "I'll be watching these two." This means that before they actually knew her, they got a glimpse of her. Here's the question: When Mike and Sully started working at MI, they didn't raise an eyebrow at the slug woman with a gravely voice who started around the same time as them?
** Roz was talking to Oozma Kappa, not them. They might never have met Roz before she started working at the factory. With the above estimate of them working there for 5 years before actually making it to the scare floor - nothing says Roz started working at the same time, and they wouldn't have had any contact with her for years even if she did. She was one of a dozen people that arrested them, and all they saw was faceless monsters in yellow suits.

** Mike, Sulley and the Abominable Snowman likely simply forgot. After all, Yeti seemed like he was a supervisor when he talked to the duo at the end of the movie, so even though they worked together they might not interact often enough to remember each other.

** The balls ''aren't'' from the human world. They didn't have human tainted stuff lying around, so they used something from their own world - specifically, they said they ''couldn't'' actually use human items, so they had the boys in the lab cook up something for them.


* As shown in the start of MU, going to University and getting a degree is needed/heavily preferred to be a scarer. So how, exactly, did Mike and Sully climb the ranks? After all, a cafeteria worker at a nuclear power plant wouldn't be able to become a nuclear scientist no matter how hard they work.

Also, remember that during MI there's an energy crisis. Maybe at the time of MU the entry requirements for scarers were strict, but you could easily see them relaxing this more and more as time went on and energy grew scarcer. Heck, the opening scene of MI has obviously untrained monsters trying out for scaring positions.

* If an adult scream is also a great source of energy, why not situate some doors next to rollercoasters and theme parks? It's demonstrated the scream doesn't actually have to be of fear, since Boo screaming with excitement during the climax of the previous movie manage to briefly power the door the gang was riding. Seems a lot more efficient than scaring kids.
** There aren't usually doors near roller coasters, so they won't be able to connect to objects like those close enough. Admitteedly perhaps setting up a door attached to a haunted house could be effective...

** Based on how the adult screams blew the capacity of a lab's entire stock of cannisters ''through a closed door'', it may be that the energy obtained from full-grown humans is too volatile to be bottled commercially, or even to use at all. Same as we don't use liquid nitroglycerine to fuel cars.

* Why is everything in the monster world designed for average sized monsters roughly as large as humans? Both movies showed that there are monsters building-sized.
** Maybe they have separate facilities for both types of monsters. After all, it would be incredibly inconvenient for human-sized monsters to have gigantic locker-rooms.

** Most likely, but remember that the conversion to laughter didn't happen overnight. Other schools exist, and each one would convert at a faster pace than others. While the Scaring curriculum was the most popular and prestigious of MU's programs, it was made painfully (at least for Sully and Mike) clear that it wasn't their only program. Others like Fear Tech might need to change their names, but it's likely that all they needed to do was just come up with a new program and re-allocate rooms rather than completely uplift the school.
** FWIW when the film was in theaters, the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor attraction at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Walt Disney World]]'s preshow was updated to include an advertisement for Monsters University, which apparently is indeed now a comedy school.

** Since one team was caught and Oozma Kappa never was, presumably Oozma Kappa would have simply had to continue with the event and go back into the library after their flag. Judging by the elimination in the first game, only one team ''can'' be eliminated per event, which make sense. After all, if more than one team was eliminated in one event, they'd have to skip one or more events, and where's the fun be in that?


* Continuing the above headscratcher, in the fourth challenge of the Scare Games, Roar Omega Roar and Oozma Kappa won the challenge by avoiding the monsters who needed to find them in the hide-n-seek game, resulting in the elimination of the Eta Hiss Hiss team as they chose too easy hiding spots. However, Mike and Sulley also chose hiding spots where they could have been easily detected. If that was case, assuming the other members of Oozma Kappa and the members of Eta Hiss Hiss we didn't see being detected made it out from the house, then which team would have stayed on the game?
** Just like the answers above, it's possible that the team with more detected members was the one kicked out from the competition and the one with less detected members stayed.

** Remember the games ''aren't'' supposed to be fair; the scare games and ultimately Monsters University, is to train your scaring skills. So yes, Randall has an unfair advantage, but it's good that he has that advantage and they are encouraging him to make good use of it.

* Monsters U is most likely affiliated with or owned by the Waternoose family, considering they share the same logo and brand name. If this is the case, why are monsters that went to rival schools, such as Fear Tech, ended up working at Monsters Inc.?

* If the toys and clothing of children not being toxic was unknown at this point, how did Mike bring himself to wind the doll (and touch other things) when he was scaring the adults at the summer camp? If they touched all of that stuff, wouldn't the CDA be more concerned with them and do more than just haul them away? Even if he did it because he had to, he still should have acted like he touched some kind of bio-hazard.
** By that point, they'd been in the human world so long, they probably both figured that a little more touching to get out wouldn't do much extra harm. [[FridgeBrilliance This earlier encounter with human kids might have even helped them to realize an accept that Boo wasn't dangerous that much sooner.]]
** Not ''everything'' in the human world is presumed to be toxic, only things that children have handled extensively. Scarers who venture through Doors into human bedrooms don't have to worry about touching the floor, bedframes, etc. Possibly Mike wrapped his hand in a garbage bag from the cabin wastebasket, or some leaves snatched from a bush outside the window, before touching the doll.


* Acting as assistant/coach to a scarer is clearly a viable career (as seen during the school trip at the start of the movie). So why does ''no-one'' suggest this as a good path for Mike after he's repeatedly shown his knowledge? Even when he gets kicked out of scaring he goes straight to can development.

** Does the coach position even exist officially? During the opening montage and when Mike breaks into Monsters Inc. to show OK the Scare Floor there are assistants but no individual coaches; the scaring major at MU seems to indicate at that point scarers were expected to be good at both technique and analysis; even during the first movie all of those other technician monsters seemed to lean a lot more towards "assitant" than "trainer". Mike's "coaching" was probably a personal thing between them.

* In the final Scare Games challenge when Mike finds out that the test dummy was rigged, we see that it was only set to the lowest difficulty during Mike’s turn. The rest were set at the highest. So, just how was the robot still able to rack up perfect scores when Mike went onto testing the robot to see if it ''was'' fixed? Logically, the robot would have reset the order at the end if it was to be in perfect condition, so just why was it able to produce two or three perfect scream scares in a row when the other settings were set to the highest?
** Given the toggles seemed to be old eighties-style physical sliders, it seemed likely they have to be manually reset after the last round, otherwise it stays on the last setting.

*** But wouldn't someone cleaning up the arena afterwards realize that one of the panels has been busted open?

* Again during the final round of Scare Games, no one, not even Dean Hardscrabble, seems to find it suspicious that Mike's not-particularly-scary scare gets him the ''highest possible points'', even though none of the other competitors (most of whom were clearly scarier than Mike) managed to do that?

** Not necessarily. Shiny sharp teeth is just as scary, if not scarier, than terrible looking teeth, because it's a signifier that you're going to get bitten. So it's actually in a scarers' best interest to keep their teeth in good shape.

** Could count as part of LoopholeAbuse, but also could count towards real experience in the field. If you are going to climb walls as part of your scare technique, you are going to have to deal with loud noises knocking you off. And it was stated that the dummies are set to the highest setting, which means a very heavy sleeper. There have been plenty of people who sleep through earthquakes..

** The newspaper doesn't really say the monsters have female and male heads, just five heads. But assuming there are monster with multi-gender heads, it would likely ultimately depend on what the monster heads agree upon and which fraternity would accept them to say the least. Or, if not, it could be like the transgender issue in human society.

** He did well with his homework and got all the answers right. It was only when the exam came that he'd actually have to do scaring, and that's when he would have failed. But even regarding that, the issue with Mike is that he still believes himself to be scary in appearance when he isn't. That is ultimately why he failed while the rest of Oozma Kappa managed to continue their degree.


* The only event's conditions that you could logically guess at in the Scare Games is the scare simulator at the end. ROR are implied to all be past their freshman years (otherwise they would have had to take the final exam with Mike and Sully). So why is Reggie Jacobs caught so off-guard by the toys on the floor?

** They ''do'' assign specific monsters with certain kids. Hence why Boo had her drawing of Randall and why Sulley said in the last instalment "Randall is your monster, huh?". But it helps to train scarers to be able to scare many different kids. They'd prefer as versatile a scarer as possible. This also makes sense as they can realistically only scare a specific child once a night, whereas being able to scare many children is much more efficient.

** Their reputation that they cheated in exams, caused a scandal and potentially almost revealed the monster world to humans would likely cause FT to decline accepting them. Either that, or financial issues.

*** She could also not. Being impressed doesn't mean you have positive thoughts of someone.

* How/why is Oozma Kappa permitted to have their fraternity in a normal neighborhood off-campus instead of on Frat Row? It's also curious that Hardscrabble later tells Sully to leave campus (and later Mike), even through it seems Oozma Kappa live in a off-campus neighborhood.

* Why was the cabin evacuated and surrounded by deputies by the time Sulley got there? It was clearly being treated as an emergency situation even though the entire point of the preceding scene was to show that the girls weren't scared of Mike.
** Even if the kids go "There was this weird one eyed frog thing and a bear inside, LOL!", the counselors are going to order an alarm and security check to make sure there's no chance of harm.

WordOfGod elaborates that monsters like Mike and Oozma Kappa lack ''traditional'' build. But while Oozma Kappa were able to adjust their "faults" into effective Scaring techniques (with Mike's help), Mike, however, lacked a certain "spark," implying there really wasn't much about his physical appearance or traits to be resourceful about and convert into the effective Scaring technique. The animators even designed Squishy to be shorter and "cuter" than Mike to emphasize it wasn't physical appearance that doomed Mike, it just was his lack of spark. Whether this worked out, YMMV.


* Randall ditches his glasses, squints and looks confused, showing that he really needed them (plus, they're '''huge'''), then proceeds to help Mikethat involves reading a textbook and has absolutely no trouble. How?

** Have you ''seen'' his roar face? Or ''heard'' his roar? Sulley looks friendly because we've seen him in daily life. At night, as a kid, with no idea what he is, one would definitely be terrified of this screaming beast from nowhere.

** Hardscrabble merely assumed that none of her students would be clumsy enough to knock it over. It's not exactly the center of attention - Sulley stumbled back a good few feet before he bumped into it and knocked it over. The canisters were also shown to be pretty heavy, so it's not like anyone but the bigger monsters could've knocked it over, and they would've had to be really clumsy, careless or malicious in order to allow it to happen.

** Because Sulley at that point was still a moody, overconfident jock, unable to recognize his own faults. One aspect of his character development is him coming to the realisation that he's a one-trick pony that should have tried harder to make his scaring abilities more diverse and actually take the course seriously.


* How did hard working bookworm Michael Wazowski turn into too-lazy-for-paperwork Wazowski?
** The reason Mike worked so hard during his time at MU was because he was striving for a career he really wanted. Paperwork OTOH is repetitive and boring, so it's something he doesn't like and not concentrate too hard on. Also, his problem with the paperwork wasn't that he didn't get his paperwork in, it was that he didn't file it correctly, giving the various departments the wrong colored papers. There's probably a spot in each department marked "Wazowski (and others)" for misfiled paperwork thanks to that. And finally, the simple reason: it's been 10 years between the events of this movie and the last one. People change; they get lazy.
** He is hardworking in the sequel, he simply chooses to direct his efforts and energy elsewhere.

** Randall ditches the glasses because they didn't camouflage with the rest of him and remained visible. Perhaps the same would happen with contacts, having visible lens floating around and making light reflections unless he kept his eyes closed. Mike obviously doesn't have any issue around being invisible, and for him wearing a contact lens is more comfortable than a framed lens that would essentially surround his whole body due to his shape.

* So, Sulley and Mike get off the ground at MI as mailmen first, and then move up to other blue-collar positions, including at one point being janitors. Given this, why is Mike shown to be dismissive towards the janitor duo that appear in Monsters, Inc.? Doesn't working in those shoes yourself usually endow you with a more empathetic attitude towards those working in the position now?

** Mike made the deal with Hardscrabble right in front of him. Johnny was definitely there because that's when Mike asks Randall to join Oozma Kappa and we learn he joined ROR.

* Why was Sulley mad at Mike for failing his exam? He brought it up on himself. One could argue that they provoked each other into an inevitable verbal beatdown by Hardscrabble, but whether or not they had wouldn't matter; once they were actually going to test their skills by scaring the dummy, they would have failed anyway: Mike for not being scary and Sulley for not using his head. So why is he blaming Mike when he isn't held accountable for his own laziness?
** Because Sulley, at that point, was still a moody, overconfident jock, unable to recognize his own faults. One aspect of his character development is him coming to the realisation that he's a one-trick pony that should have tried harder to make his scaring abilities more diverse and actually take the course seriously. Before that, he was so smugly confident that he was going to pass the exam with a single roar, that he decided that it must be have been Mike, and not his clumsiness, that cost him his place in the scaring program. Additionally, Sulley had tripped over the pens and pencils Mike had tossed on the floor, which is what caused him to knock Hardscrabble's prized canister over. So, he also held Mike accountable for making him trip over.
** That, and the writers [[RuleOfFunny probably also thought that it would be funny having Sulley glare at Mike for the entire scream can design class]].
** Sulley blamed Mike for escalating their confrontation that led to Hardscrabble's scream being damaged and her coming down on them. And with his ego, Sulley wouldn't see his own responsibility for what happened; only Mike's.

* How did hard working bookworm Michael Wazowski turn into lazy for paperwork Wazowski? He and Sulley worked so hard to become scarers and scare assistant, and he then became so lazy that he didn't even file away his regular paperwork on how his scaring went for the day on a regular day anymore? What sense does that make?
** Its repetitive and boring, so it's automatically something he isn't going to like and so not concentrate too hard on. Also, his problem with the paperwork wasn't that he didn't get his paperwork in, it was that he didn't file it correctly, giving the various departments the wrong colored papers. There's probably a spot in each department marked "Wazowski (and others)" for misfiled paperwork thanks to that. Another thing is that Mike has already obtained his dream when Monsters Inc. happens, so he might just be getting complacent.
** Also, the reason Mike had to work so hard while he was growing up was because he was striving for a career that he physically wasn't cut out for. Once he realized his true strength was in being the world's greatest scare assistant, he resorted to using his already-acquired book smarts to help set the stage for Sulley, instead of needing to put in more effort into pulling off the scares himself. So he didn't need to work as hard once he came to that realization.
** You can work hard for your dream job and still dislike (and thus slack) parts of it. Especially when it's something that doesn't really pertain to the job itself. Sulley and Mike have also been scarers for approx. 10 years and complacency sets in for even the hardest-working people at times.

** The simulators used in the event were just generic scare simulators, as far as I know, designed to be used by both the most experienced scarers and new scare students fresh into school. It makes perfect sense for them to have different settings. Also, one of the characters mentions quite clearly at the start of the event that each and every simulator will be set to the same difficulty level, anyway. (The highest one.)

** I can see where you're coming from, but not everyone would necessarily be inclined to care about the little guys just because they once held a menial job themselves. Since working his way to the top was only Mike's second choice, I can imagine him trying his best to forget about all that hard labor he had to put in before he became a scare assistant. Also, he was only dismissive of them once, when he thought they were distracting Sulley from his work -- it's possible that under less "strenuous" circumstances, he tends to be a bit friendlier. The two janitors hardly seem put off by his telling them to get lost, hinting that it's not that big of a deal to them or that he hasn't made a habit of saying it.
** Alternately, maybe he remembers perfectly well that he and Sulley used to work alongside those two, but he ''also'' recalls that they didn't get along so good. Some people just rub one another the wrong way.

** Didn't Mike make the deal with Hardscrabble in front of a ton of students at the sign-up event?
*** Yep. And Johnny was definitely there because that's when Mike asks Randall to join Oozma Kappa and we learn he joined ROR.

* In the final Scare Games challenge when [[spoiler: Mike finds out that the test dummy was rigged, we see that it was only set to the lowest difficulty during Mike’s turn. The rest were set at the highest. So, just how was the robot still able to rack up perfect scores when Mike went onto testing the robot to see if it ''was'' fixed? Logically, the robot would have reset the order at the end if it was to be in perfect condition, so just why was it able to produce two or three perfect scream scares in a row when the other settings were set to the highest?]]
** [[spoiler: Given the toggles seemed to be old eighties-style physical sliders, it seemed likely they have to be manually reset after the last round, otherwise it stays on the last setting.]]


* Speaking of the last event in the scare games, how did [[spoiler: no one notice Sully sabotaging the scare dummy in the final event of the competition? They show us that there is a live feed inside the set, and no one picked up on it? It even ''looks'' like the case was bashed open.]]
** [[spoiler:At one point, he lay against the side of the bed with his front facing the camera and his back to the bed. He adjusted the machine behind his back, and nobody noticed because his hands were behind his back.]]
** [[spoiler:But wouldn't someone cleaning up the arena afterwards realize that one of the panels has been busted open?]]
** They may have not been cleaning the scare room because it lacks all the confetti and strewn popcorn left by the audience. Besides, one of the scarers' main abilities is precisely to be stealthy, so Sully could have found a way to tamper with it without anyone noticing. Besides, [[spoiler:wasn't the panel hidden by the bed sheets]]? That would make it that much harder to notice...
** You couldn't see the part of the bed where the panel was on the TV showing their scares.
** Before they start scaring, the team suggests that Mike goes first. Sully, knowing that he already tampered with the controls, makes a strong argument that Mike should finish strong and go last. He makes that suggestion knowing that the controls for the last scarer are set to easy.
** If Sully had already tampered with the controls, he could've just set the first simulation to easy instead. He suggested Mike go last so that he could go before him and tamper it during his run.

*** I think it would stand to reason, RuleOfFunny aside, that Roz and a few other slug monsters are bigger than that one, if not lighter, thus they could clear more ground without much need for speed.

** Well WordOfGod says the retainers were either to straighten or worsen his teeth, but they [[ShrugOfGod don't know what the monsters would view as good (or bad) teeth.]] Given Mike's desire to be a scarer, he might want to have braces to make his teeth extra scary.
** The first movie shows that part of Sully's workout routine is brushing his teeth ("Scary Monsters don't have [dental] plaque"). So it is more likely a case of straightening his teeth. They may be monsters, but they still care about good dental hygiene.
*** Plaque leads to cavities, which leads to teeth rotting and falling out. A great deal of a child's fear of monsters is that they will be bit and eaten by the creature, therefore teeth become a terrifying image, especially when they glint at you in the dark. Kids probably aren't scared of being gummed to death by a toothless monster. So it's in a scarers' best interest to keep their teeth as in-tact as possible (although, wasn't there a line in Monsters U from the teacher that said 'I want scary faces and yellow teeth' or something to that effect? Yellow teeth may be more frightening in some cases, but that goes against the brushing of teeth. [[FridgeBrilliance Unless they have toothpastes that stain teeth yellow while still cleaning them).]]
*** Why not? We've known they have cologne that smells like rotten garbage since the first ten minutes of the first movie.
** To answer your question, Professor Knight says, "I want to see matted fur and yellow fangs!" So yeah, it's possible that they have toothpastes that stain teeth yellow while still cleaning them.

* Shouldn't [[spoiler: knocking your opponent off a wall count as some kind of interference? For that matter, if the roar was so loud, then shouldn't Randall's fake kid have been affected by it?]]
** [[spoiler: Could count as part of LoopholeAbuse, but also could count towards real experience in the field. If you are going to climb walls as part of your scare technique, you are going to have to deal with loud noises knocking you off. And it was stated that the dummies are set to the highest setting, which means a very heavy sleeper. There have been plenty of people who sleep through earthquakes.]].

* Towards the end of the movie, where [[spoiler: all the sheriff's deputies are looking for what turns out to be Sulley and Mike inside the cabin, why is it that none of them are armed with anything more than a flashlight? Even if they thought it was a bear or some other woodland creature, you would think that they would ''at least'' have a taser or something to stun the creature with. One could say that it was off camera, on a belt or something, but even when they see claw marks on the walls, they still don't even think to pull out a weapon of some sort, most likely meaning they didn't have one at all. Just what were they planning to do if they managed to find Sulley and Mike anyway?]]
** As the post says itself, they could have easily been armed, and probably were. The reason why they didn't pull out their weapons, be they tasers or guns, is because [[spoiler:not only were they tangled up together in a load of wire thanks to Mike, '''''they were terrified out of their freaking minds.''''' You did ''see'' the result of their screams, right? And they all went scrambling out as soon as possible.]]
** In addition, the cabin was so dark that they couldn't see anything. It would've been really dangerous to have their weapons locked and loaded without anything resembling a good shot at what they were aiming for, especially as their anxiety at the situation was slowly evolving into terror.

* In answer to a complaint about why they didn't make Terri female on the YMMV, one justification given is that fraterities are traditionally male, and sororities all female. Which raises the question- we know that monsters can be born with both female and male heads, as seen in [[http://www.theframegame.gr/2012/08/newsflash.html a newspaper Roz holds]] in the first movie. So would a monster with both male head(s) and female head(s) be allowed to join a fraternity, a sorority, or neither?
** The newspaper doesn't really say the monsters have female and male heads, just five heads. But assuming there is a monster with a female and male head, it would likely ultimately depends on what the monster heads agree upon and which fraternity would accept them to say the least. Or, if not, it could be like a transgender issue in human society.
*** The OP was probably talking about how there are [[TertiarySexualCharacteristics three heads with bows and two heads with boyish hair]]. The heads probably have arguments about which sorority/fraternity to join like the Terr(y|i)s did about their major. Who knows how common such a thing is, they may not have any sort of rules/social norms about it.
** While it wouldn't be a shock to find out there are hermaphrodite monsters boys can wear bows and girls can cut their hair like boys. The existence of young monsters confirms monsters do have sex. It can be assumed that regardless of the appearance of your head they would simply check the gender of the monster in question and that most of them regardless of the number of heads are distinctly male or female down below. If not... well then things get complicated.
** That's assuming that monsters procreate in the same manner as real-life mammals. They could reproduce by budding, for all we know.

** He did well with his homework and got all the answers right. It was only when the exam came that he'd actually have to do scaring, and that's when he would have failed.
*** That's missing the point. If Mike is so intrinsically un-scary that even taking the exam was deemed a waste of time, and there is nothing Mike could have done to change that, why did the university waste ''Mike's'' time in a program he wouldn't even be given a chance to complete? Even if we say his admission was a mistake, why did the Dean just sit back for months and never tell Mike he's on a dead-end track? Friendship with Sully aside, the end result was that Mike ended up spending many years of his life recovering from a setback that was entirely the University's fault. How is he not even a little bitter about this?
** Because it isn't the university’s fault, it’s purely Mike’s. The Dean told him flat out that Mike was not scary and he should basically change courses to one best suited to his skills. He ignored this advice because of his own ego, so he only has himself to blame.
** The audience only explicitly knows that Hardscrabble told him that during the final exam. There aren't any clues or implications that he was advised upon enrollment or during the duration of the course. Are we to assume he was advised upon enrollment in that case if the blame is on him?
*** Someone else on this page pointed out that Mike might actually be scary to some kids. And someone else on the FridgeBrilliance page pointed out that Hardscrabble was more upset about her scream can being destroyed than she let on. She was most likely looking for an unfair excuse to get Mike out of her Scaring Program out of anger. Professor Knight didn't seem to have any issue with Mike's appearance.
** To be fair, he isn't "that" un-scary.......He is cute (under daylight), but it's still pretty scary if you saw one very big eye ball slowly approach you in the totally dark.
* After the hide and seek round, Dean Hardscrabble tells Sully that everyone must prove they are scary, and she knows that one monster (Mike) is not. She doesn't make the distinction of thinking ''at least'' one monster isn't scary, so why did the other Oozma Kappas get kicked out of the scaring program?
** It indicates that after many games, she is finally seeing that the Oozma Kappa members have improved from their first semester and are able to be scary on their own, but Mike in particular had not proven much. Also, Oozma Kappa might have been kicked out of the program originally just because they just failed the exams for various other reasons, and she considered them more of wasted potential rather than lack of potentials as she perceived in Mike.

* The only event's conditions that you could logically guess at in the Scare Games is the scare simulator at the end. ROR are implied to all be past their freshman years (otherwise they would have had to take the final exam with Mike and Sully). So why is Reggie Jacobs caught so off-guard by the toys on the floor? Even if he had just transferred from a different university, his teammates should have filled him in on what to expect.

** They ''do'' assign specific monsters with certain kids. Hence why Boo had her drawing of Randall and why Sulley said "Randall is your monster." But it helps to train scarers to be able to scare many different kids. They'd prefer as versatile a scarer as possible.
*** This also makes sense as they can realistically only scare a specific child once a night, whereas being able to scare many children is much more efficient.
*** Not to mention that children outgrow being easily scared, and are doing so at younger and younger ages. The rapid rate of turnover doesn't allow for perfect matches only.

** The doors in the human world leading into a child's bedroom could act as some kind of GPS, and other branches of the scare industry go into them and collect such data for those working on the Scare Floor. And as we see in Monsters University, more doors are being made all the time.

* Why, after being expelled from MU, could Mike and Sully simply not enroll at Feartech? Okay, it's not "the" university, but it's still obviously a good enough school to produce scarers, and they'd snap them both up after what happened during the climax of the film. Why did they HAVE to start at the bottom as Janitors?
** Maybe its tuition is more expensive, and/or they're cashless after enrolling in MU. Maybe their reputation would follow them to Fear Tech. It's obviously not very far from MU if Sully could steal their mascot and have FT students chase him back to the dorms.
** As said above, it seems unlikely that FT would take in these two expelled students. Also, knowing that Mike seemed to have done well pre-college days academically, he might have lost his scholarship.
** Dean Hardscrabble said she was surprised by the two of them, but if you watch her in the climax, she's scared too because of all the energy being reaped. She could have done so much more for them than just "wish them luck." She herself is a legend, and while MU and Feartech are rivals, I'm sure an absolutely glowing letter of recommendation from a scare legend such as herself would open just about any door Mike and Sully could care to name. Worst case scenario, they would have to promise that the misdeed that got them expelled would not be repeated, and they'd be watched very carefully at Feartech. Even if cost were a concern, I'm sure Dean Hardscrabble has the knowledge to point them towards some scholarships, and the clout that just the letter of recommendation would pull some serious strings with the financial aid office.
** Remember, Sully was ''already'' expelled even before the scaring incident - Hardscrabble wanted him off campus once he revealed that he'd cheated. Not to mention the risk both of them took while they were in the human world was about equal to the reward. Even if someone wanted to try to recreate it, they'd have to get several adult humans into a room together and set everything up so that they can scare them without being seen. That all sounds ''extremely'' dangerous and could easily expose the monster world.

* Considering that Oozma Kappa is situated in the Squibbles's household in a normal neighborhood off-campus, not the on-campus Frat Row, how is this housing standard permitted for fraternities/sororities in Universities? And it's curious that Hardscrabble later tells Sully to leave campus (and even Mike had to leave eventually), even through it seems Oozma Kappa live in a off-campus neighborhood.

** Kids would rather go around in threes than be seen with Mike.
** Nineteen kids means there will be 9 pairs of kids and one left over. In that case, even if Mike had found someone willing to be his 'buddy' there would still be one kid that was paired with the teacher. With twenty students this does seem a bit odd since it should be even. Are you sure you didn't mishear, and Mike was included in the nineteen? The teacher didn't seem surprised by the fact that Mike was left alone (again).
** ...Maybe one of the students has two heads? The teacher counts them as two separate entities, but because they share one body, it's not possible (or at least not ideal) for Mike to 'pair up' with just one head while the other already has a partner.
** ...Perhaps one of the students missed school that day? Maybe Mike's class were twenty but one of the students didn't go to school that day.

* Why was the cabin evacuated and surrounded by deputies by the time Sully got there? It was clearly being treated as an emergency situation even though the entire point of the preceding scene was to show that the girls weren't scared of Mike.
** Even if the kids go "Haha! there was this weird one eyed frog thing and a bear inside!", the counselors are going to order an alarm and security check to make sure there's no chance of harm. Kids might not be scared by bears, but that still means the area should be surrounded for safety.
** Maybe one of the kids was actually scared and ran off to tell a counselor. It would've been a good 20 minutes between the time Mike showed up to when Sulley was able to run in and save him, so providing that the police were able to respond quickly, if a kid ran off right away, it's possible. Alternatively, if the kids were turning on the lights and playing with the weird green thing, one of the counselors could've seen the lights on, gone in to tell them to go to sleep, seen Mike, and ran off to call the police.

* So, Mike is [[spoiler:Completely, 100% not Scary? To anyone? At all? How?! First of all, in Monsters Inc, it's been shown that certain kids are afraid of certain Monsters, not all of them. So it stands to reason that some kids could definitely be afraid of a Small Green Eyeball with Sharp teeth. Second, this movie itself shows that some Kids are just afraid of everything, which, again, would include a Small Green Eyeball with Sharp Teeth. It doesn't make sense to simply say Mike is not scary, when he can indeed be scary, just not to everyone. Then again, none of those monsters probably was scary to everyone either. So how, in all honesty, can people, in this movie, say "Mike, you're not Scary, to anyone." when he definitely can if given the right children!?]]
** A child with a fear of aliens or reptiles would easily be horrified by Mike.
** Well if you think about it, many of the monsters at MU are big and terrifying, the exact image of what most children think of when they think of a "monster". Mike is a little guy, a bit scary to look at yeah - but nowhere near as intimidating as say, Sulley. When they say he isn't scary at all, its because he doesn't fit the image of what is perceived at MU to be the ideal frightening monster.
*** And yet, the aging Old Octopus Man, the Small Pink Blob with horns, and the Furry U Creature from Franchise/TheMuppets are considered "Scary", but Dean Hardscrabble just plain up says "One Monster is definitely not scary", which is Mike. I'd be inclined to agree with you if those three creatures also couldn't scare anyone, but they did (In the Scare Games). And yet Mike can't scare anyone at all. What makes them different from Mike?
** WordOfGod elaborates that monsters like Mike and Oozma Kappa lack ''traditional'' build. But while Oozma Kappa were able to adjust their "faults" into effective Scaring techniques (with Mike's help), Mike, however, lacked a certain "spark," implying there really wasn't much about his physical appearance or traits to be resourceful about and convert into the effective Scaring technique.
*** To elaborate, WordOfGod is that the animators even designed Squishy to be shorter and "cuter" than Mike to emphasize it wasn't exactly height or even cuteness that doomed Mike, it just was his lack of spark. Whether this worked out, YMMV.
** Here's an idea...Neither Mike nor the other members of Oozma Kappa are scary in a traditional sense, as mentioned above. Once Mike realizes, though, that they can still win if they just change their tactics, he manages to help the others take their unique traits (Don's octopus-like form, Terry and Terri's two heads, Squishy's ability to sneak around soundlessly, and Art's unique methods of moving around) and develop them into all-new scaring techniques. However, he did so much work with all of them while believing that he himself was still scary in the traditional sense and thus didn't need to rethink his techniques - he tried so hard for so long to try and convince people of something that sadly wasn't true, and by the time he came to accept that he wasn't traditionally scary, not only had he been expelled and thus unable to try a new way of doing things, but he also discovered his knack for setting things up for ''other'' scarers, by helping to organize the single biggest scare ever recorded on campus.
** And keep in mind that A) as others have pointed out, Dean Hardscrabble might've been more ticked off about her scream can being damaged than she was letting on when she dubbed Mike so unscary that he shouldn't be in the scaring program and B) we don't get to see how Mike would do in the simulator at a reasonable setting. He might not have done as well as Sulley or Johnny, but who knows? He ''might've'' done decently...

* During the final round of Scare Games, there's a live camera feed from inside the simulated bedroom, so everyone can see Mike scaring the dummy. Yet no one, not even Dean Hardscrabble, seems to find it suspicious that Mike's not-particularly-scary scare gets him the ''highest possible points'', even though none of the other competitors (most of whom were clearly scarier than Mike) managed to do that. Shouldn't someone suspect foul play? Why doesn't anyone inspect the dummy after the game is over?
** Not really, all them roared at the dummy, same as Mike did. The only difference was in how they got to the dummy, the end result was the same for all of them.
** If roaring at the dummy is all that matters, then they all should've gotten the same score. But they didn't, so clearly some of them are better at scaring the dummy than others, and the score they get reflects that. It should've been obvious to any expert observer (and there were plenty of scaring experts there to watch the Games) that Mike's scare was hardly the scariest, yet no one found it suspicious it resulted in the highest possible score?
*** Maybe they were too into the Games to notice? That's why the host of the U.K. version ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' didn't notice one of the contestants cheating.

* Randall ditches his glasses, squints and looks confused to show that he genuinely needed them (plus, they're '''huge'''), then proceeds to help Mike in a manner that requires reading a textbook and has absolutely no trouble doing this. How?

** Actually, he could just be very nearsighted, as some people are and or has a hard time reading a particular size of font, in which case he would need glasses to read. Also, some myopic people do have a difficult time reading sans specs.

* Okay, I'm sorry, but how are a green eyeball devil, flesh-colored blob, humanoid octopus, and a two-headed goat-horned mutant less scary than a puffy ball of cuddles like Sully? He's like a Saint Bernard with horns and pink polka dots. In the dark he could be mistaken for a bear, but other than that, he looks more like a children's toy than a fearsome monster, especially since he apparently gathers more scares than Hardscrabble, who is a centipede dragon, by the time of the first movie.
** Have you ''seen'' his roar face? Or ''heard'' his roar? [[Film/FullMetalJacket "LEMME SEE YOUR ROAR FACE! RAAAAAA!!!"]] Besides, monsters operate in the dark. Sulley looks friendly because we've seen him in daily life. At night, as a kid, with no idea what he is, one would definitely be terrified of this screaming beast from nowhere.

* So if it's possible to power up a door from the human world, and a powered-up door can work even when in storage and lying on the ground, then don't you think that there would be at least a few instances of a situation where, as a result of a bunch of people screaming for some monster-unrelated reason near a door, people would accidentally get into the monster world? And also, if a kid's laugh is so ridiculously powerful, then wouldn't that result in the same situation as well?
** It's only possible for a portal to open if the door is in a station on the monster world-side. Also, remember how powerful the scream (from multiple adult humans) had to be to open a door in a station from our world's side. The chances of those conditions being met by accident (multiple adults screaming their heads off in a child's room while the door is in a station, presumably on a Scare Floor during work hours, when a child would be asleep in that room) are ''not'' good.

** Ego.
** Hardscrabble merely assumed that none of her students would be clumsy enough to knock it over.
** It's not exactly the center of attention, either. Sulley stumbled back a good few feet before he bumped into it and knocked it over. The canisters were also shown to be pretty heavy, so it's not like anyone but the bigger monsters could've knocked it over, and they would've had to be really clumsy or just careless in order to allow it to happen.

* [[spoiler: Why does the scare machine at the end have difficulty settings? Presumably, all the students are supposed to be judged equally.]]

** Maybe Randall had to wear his ROR sweater in all the challenges to avoid that? In all the challenges minus the last one, Randall wears his ROR sweater. If we examine closely, Randall's camouflaging abilities could have given him unfair advantage in all the challenges (he could have turned invisible to avoid being a target in the first game, avoid being detected by the Librarian in the second game, avoid being seen by the teens carboards in the third game, etc.). Perhaps he was just allowed to not wear his sweater in the last challenge so he could properly scare the robotic child.
** Perhaps Randall was cheating? As the fourth challenge included no public to witness the events inside the house, maybe Randall was taking advantage of the opportunity and cheated to not cost ROR its victory?

** By that point, they'd been in the human world so long, they probably both figured that a little more touching to get out was worth the risk. [[FridgeBrilliance This earlier encounter with human kids might have even helped them to realize an accept that Boo wasn't dangerous that much sooner.]]
** Mike probably understood that they had to risk a little toxicity in order to escape the danger. They might have figured they had to risk a little and hope that if they made it in time, they could be sanitized.

** Did the coach position even ''exist'' back then? During the opening montage and when [[spoiler:Mike breaks in to show OK the variety of the Scare Floor]], there are assistants but no individual coaches. After all, what was the need? You may need operators for the machinery, but at that point scarers were expected to be good at both technique and analysis of what was needed, as we see by the material taught in Mike and Sully's classes. It's entirely possible that Mike and Sully proved the validity of their tag-team approach, and the company started to adopt it- after all, Sully quickly became their top scarer.
*** It's doubtful that it does, even during the time of the first movie. All of those other technician monsters were obviously a lot less qualified to know about scaring; Randal's assistant, for example. Mike's "coaching" was probably a personal thing between them.
*** The "coach" part is probably not an official part of the job; on paper Mike's probably just Sully's assistant, but he unofficially acts as Sully's coach and cheer-team as well. Which is probably why they're so successful at the job, since if few / any of the other assistants are involved in as much coaching as Mike is (possibly because -- if Randall's anything to go by -- a lot of the other scarers are probably so full of themselves they don't think they need any coaching from a mere assistant), Mike's coaching to Sully gives him an edge the others lack.

* Can somebody explain why a crying child alerting their parents would be such a bad thing? It wouldn't produce any energy, of course. But is screaming suddenly ''not'' a reason for the parent to check up what the hell is going on in the child's room?

** If your child is crying, you try to find out what is upsetting them so you can get rid of it, therefore you are more likely to search the room. If a child is screaming, it is more likely to be written off as a nightmare or seeing things that aren't there. And on the other side of it, if a scarer made a child cry, they'd have to get out so they wouldn't be seen by the parents ''and'' they wouldn't gather any energy, effectively wasting time and the use of a door. If they make the child scream, they still have to get out fast, but it means they did their job, a.k.a. collect energy.
** Someone on the FridgeBrilliance page pointed out how Hardscrabble was [[TranquilFury actually more upset about her scream can being destroyed than she let on.]] Someone else then responded that she was purposely being unfair to Sully and Mike as a result. As the OP pointed out, a scream is just as likely to alert a kid's parents as a cry is. Really, the only logical reason making a kid cry would be bad is that no energy is produced, wasting the use of a perfectly good door. But she exaggerated the consequences to justify getting Sully out of her Scaring Program.

* Possibly just too much in depth thinking, but [[spoiler:in the final Scare Games, when Mike finds out after the event was over that the test dummy was fixed, we see that it was only set to the lowest difficulty at Mike’s turn. The rest were set at the highest. So, just how was the robot still able to rack up perfect scores when Mike went onto testing the robot to see if it ''was'' fixed? Logically, the robot would have reset the order at the end if it was to be in perfect condition, so just why was it able to produce two or three perfect scream scares in a row when the other settings were set to the highest?]]
** [[spoiler:Sully went second to last, and sabotaged the dummy during then. That's why he argued Mike should go last. Otherwise, ''everyone'' going after Mike (Or Sully, rather) would have gotten a perfect score, and that would have revealed he had cheated.]]
** [[spoiler: OP is wondering how Mike could easily scare the dummy three times in a row (the second two times when Mike and Sulley are hanging around after the event) if it would've reset after his official scare. Maybe it has to be manually reset after the last round, otherwise it stays on the last setting. They look like old, worn out machines, so it stands to reason they're not advanced enough to be automatic.]]

* [[spoiler:And speaking of the last event in the scare games, how did no one notice Sully sabotaging the scare dummy in the final event of the competition? They show us that there is a live feed inside the set, and no one picked up on it? It even ''looks'' like the case was bashed open. What, were they all blind?]]
** [[spoiler:At one point, he lay against the side of the bed with his front facing the camera and his back to the bed. Luckily then he adjusted the machine behind his back, and nobody noticed because his hands were behind his back.]]
** [[spoiler:Yeah, but wouldn't someone cleaning up the arena afterwards realize that one of the panels has been busted open?]]

* How come that one slug student took so long to get to class, but other slug monsters like Roz can move around pretty quickly?
** Why doesn't he just get a scooter?
** RuleOfFunny.

* Why would Sully tell Dean Hardscrabble that he'd cheated on the final test? It would likely have just made things worse for Mike and the rest of Oozma Kappa; she could well have refused to let any of them into the scaring programme on the grounds that they hadn't fairly passed the tryouts.
** A guilty conscience?
** And that's exactly why he said: "The rest of the team had nothing to do with it" - he wanted to convince her that he held full responsibility for cheating and that they shouldn't fail because of him. After all, they did perform really well during the final, something Dean Hardscrabble must have taken into account to not expel them.
** What's more is that the university was bound to find out about Sully's cheating before long, since the simulator was very obviously broken into and sabotaged. And for all the school knows, any one of the Oozma Kappas could've done it, so they all would've been punished.
** Of course, there's also the fact that Sulley forgot to change the settings back to the original afterwards, but because Mike and Oozma Kappa were still around, he wouldn't have time to fix it inconspicuously.
* The trailers for this movie seem to imply that Mike and Sully are meeting for the first time in college, but several moments in the first movie say that they've known each other much longer. Mike tells Sully that "you've been jealous of my good looks since the fourth grade, pal!", and the teaser trailer has Sully mention the fifth grade. What gives?
** And a ''Magazine/DisneyAdventures'' issue claimed Sully first met Mike by sitting on him when he mistook him for a stool. It's either a retcon or the trailers just aren't clear about it. Better wait to see if the movie addresses it when it comes out. '''EDIT:''' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=ODePHkWSg-U Judging by the newest trailer]], it's been retconned.
*** A Pixar guest at a convention said that Mike's/Sully's line was hyperbole, and they simply ignored that detail to fit the story they wrote for the prequel. Of course, there's no comment from Disney or Pixar on Sully's other line from the teaser. This coming from Pixar's reputation as the "kings of story". Granted, a small tweak to their history probably won't hinder plot problems in this prequel: they can still have their rivalry and compete with each other even after reuniting from grade school. But with the way the trailer implies but never states that they really do meet for the first time here, you gotta wonder.
*** You can't remember all of your grade school classmates after several years.
*** WordOfGod claimed that they really did try hard to be consistent with the "4th grade" line in the prequel by having Mike and Sully meet in elementary school. But they just couldn't do it, and had to proclaim that it was just an expression in the monster universe.
*** It's certainly in character for Mike to say something like "you've been jealous of my good looks since the fourth grade" as a joke/humorous exaggeration.
** First off, that's from a teaser trailer which tend to be non-canon. Secondly, Pete Docter himself said to disregard that line.

** We weren't told exactly, but probably about 5 years. They spent at least a year in the mailroom (they got an award for most mail delivered in a year), and if they spent another year in each of their jobs as janitors, cafeteria workers and techs, 4-5 years.
** Someone worked out through the calendar that the film takes place in the late 80's and if we accept that the first film took place in present day (which for the film would have been 2001), then it could be anything within 10-15 years. Now taking into account that Sully is close to breaking the all time scare record and the time it would take to reach that, it's likely to be within 10 years.
** Disney released "Disney Parks Scare Cards" (like the ones Mike mentioned in the film and we saw in the credits) and the cards for Sulley and Randall have them each in their 10th year as scarers with their scare totals matching what we saw in Monsters Inc.: Sulley at 99,479 and Randall at 99,351. So we can assume it took Mike and Sulley approx. 3.5 years to reach the scare floor.

* At the end we see Roz (as a member of the CDA) take Mike and Sully away saying "I'll be watching these two." This means that before they actually knew her, they got a glimpse of her. Here's the question: When Mike and Sully started working at MI, they didn't Raise an eyebrow at the slug woman with a gravely voice who started around the same time as them?
** Roz was talking to Oozma Kappa, not them. They might never have met Roz before she started working at the factory.
** With the above estimate of them working there for 5 years before actually making it to the scare floor - nothing says Roz started working at the same time, and they wouldn't have had any contact with her for years even if she did. She was one of a dozen people that arrested them, and all they saw was faceless monsters in yellow suits. They're supposed to instantly recognize somebody based on a faceless voice they heard years before that?
** Then, in the credits, they have a trading card of Roz as a contemporary of them, a "Rose Lynn".
*** Rosie Levin is a different character than Roz. She is in the Eta Hiss Hiss sorority and competes in the Scare Games.
** Roz only started working at the company two and a half years before the events of the first film. It's doubtful that Sully and Mike would remember her, seeing as she only showed up as they were being escorted away by the CDA.
** Typing from personal experience, it's easy to forgot what your own professors look like just a few months after leaving college. Remembering the voice of someone coming from behind you that you only heard for a few seconds at least half a decade ago? Signs point to no.

* This movie shows that the Yeti knew Mike and Sully when they were working in the mail room. However, when they meet in WesternAnimation/MonstersInc there is no implication that they met before. He even says that he assumed Mike and Sully were friends because "he saw them hugging", not that he knew they were friends from the mail room. Furthermore (though this could be an issue with the original as well) the Yeti myth dates back to the 19th century. WesternAnimation/MonstersUniversity / WesternAnimation/MonstersInc seems to take place near the present day (give or take a decade) so that must mean he was only in the human world for a few years. So, how exactly does any of this work?
*** Maybe more than one Yeti-esque monster has been banished? Besides, how many people can totally remember their first boss, especially when they're working a menial job like the mail room? And vice versa: the Abominable Snowman probably didn't care or remember the workers in the mail room because working there is practically the most forgettable and lowest job obtainable in WesternAnimation/MonstersInc. He just saw them as workers and nothing more because he was too caught up in his own stuff. By the time Mike and Sully became well known in the company, the Snowman was most likely banished by then.
*** Not to mention, maybe there had been other Yeti-esque monsters sent to scare children precisely to that part of the world; The Himalayas have an extremely cold weather, so it's safe to assume all the scarers sent there must be able to resist it, meaning any monster the people see there is large and furry.
*** They weren't ''that'' startled when Yeti showed up in the first movie, they actually had that confused look to them after a few seconds. It's possible that they hadn't heard what happened to him after he was banished, so to see him after so many years was probably the most shocking part about their meeting. (He ''was'' mentioned as Abominable Snowman in the movie, after all, and that he was banished along with a few other monsters. Which could possibly suggest banished monsters get renamed as a form of being dishonored.)
*** There's a theory going around ([[ShapedLikeItself "The Pixar Theory"]]) regarding all of the connections between Pixar movies; one aspect of this theory is that the world of Monstropolis is really Earth in the distant future, and the doors used by scaring companies send monsters [[OurTimeMachineIsDifferent back into the past]] to scare human children. If this theory is true, then it's possible that whoever banished the Snowman could have tweaked the settings to send him to 200 years or so prior to their usual range.
*** Although if that theory was true, Monsters Inc. could go to any time rather than just the present and effectively scare the child version of everyone in history at once. There would be no power shortage like the one in the first movie.
*** The doors can't be set to a certain time jump. They will only go so many years back in time, that's it. It's basically like ''LiveActionTV/SevenDays''.
** In the commentary on the DVD, Dan Scanlon admits that he doesn't know the answer to this.

* The first test in the Scare Games is to run across a dark hallway to the light at the other end, avoiding spiky "balls" that monsters got from the human world that are laced with toxins and that give them an allergic reaction- in this case, swelling. And as we see, the teams' skin ''do'' swell up at even the slightest touch. In WesternAnimation/MonstersInc, it was shown that not only did George Sanderson have a human child's sock on his back and he ''didn't'' get swollen, but children are ''not'' toxic at all! Sulley and Mike go through the movie with Boo being in close contact with them and they have no allergic reactions. The first film showed that humans are ''not'' toxic, so how come human items in this prequel are?!
** The balls ''aren't'' from the human world. They didn't have human tainted stuff lying around, so they used something from their own world- specifically, they said they ''couldn't'' actually use human items, so they had the boys in the lab cook up something for them.

* As it's shown in the start of MU, going to University and getting a degree is needed/heavily preferred to be a scarer. So how, exactly, do Mike and Sully climb the ranks? After all, a cafeteria worker at a nuclear power plant wouldn't be able to work hard and eventually work with the dangerous chemicals hands-on.
** The ending credits showed that eventually there were scare try-outs inside the plant itself. By then Mike and Sully would have worked through the ranks, and more importantly, managed to network pretty much the entire plant, which would have allowed them a chance at the interviews. Plus Mike and Sully would have had the long years to practice their partnership and ace the interview.
** Also, scaring is one of those partially creative industries where a degree is less important, especially for the non-technical stuff. A great number of programmers in the video game industry are self-taught and many in general don't have a degree in a design field. This also goes for basically any other creative field, where a degree isn't required to become successful.
** Also also, remember that during MI there's an energy crisis. Maybe at the time of MU the entry requirements for scarers were strict, but you could easily see them relaxing this more and more as time went on and energy grew scarcer. Heck, the opening scene of MI has obviously untrained monsters trying out for scaring positions.

* If an adult scream is also a great source of energy, why not situate some doors next to rollercoasters and theme parks? It seems a lot more efficient than scaring kids.
** Screams ''would'' require fear if it wasn't shown that Boo screaming with excitement during the climax of the previous movie manage to briefly power the door the gang was riding. Likely they don't want to risk being spotted near a enormous crowd, or the scream collector requires an enclosed room to capture as much of the sound as possible.
** Also, there aren't usually doors near the roller coasters. The closest ones are probably at the loading area, and that is also the only place the cars are near a door for more than a second. Perhaps setting up a door attached to a haunted house could be effective.
** Fear screams might be more powerful. When she's screaming in excitement, it only makes the door activate for a second or two. The earlier screams we saw made the whole room overload.
** Except no. If laughter were later established to be a greater source of energy than screams (ten times better to be precise), which mainly stems from a happy emotion, why wouldn't a scream of excitement also be better than a scream of fear, a negative emotion?
** No one realizes children's' laughter is more powerful than screams until the end of MI, and they don't put them near roller coasters and other public places for fear of exposing their world.

* Judging from WesternAnimation/MonstersInc and WesternAnimation/MonstersUniversity, there is definitely a presence of monsters larger than an average building, yet most facilities seems designed only to a human scale.

** Most likely, but remember that the conversion to laughter didn't happen overnight. Other schools exist, and each one would convert at a faster pace than others. Note that while the Scaring curriculum was the most popular and prestigious of MU's programs, it was made painfully (at least for Sully and Mike) clear that it wasn't their only program. While others like Fear Tech might need to change their names, it's likely that all they needed to do was just come up with a new program and re-allocate rooms rather than completely uplift the school.
** Plus, as the FridgeBrilliance page states, not all children have a sense of humour. So they will most likely keep teaching scare techniques to use on those children. And don't forget that the scare techniques can be used to create humour and a good laugh when the kid in question realises that what was initially terrifying is actually completely harmless, or even cute.
** When the film was in theaters, the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor attraction at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Walt Disney World]]'s preshow was updated to include an advertisement for Monsters University, which apparently is indeed now a comedy school. I don't know if we're supposed to consider the attraction canon to the films, but there's that...

* In the first challenge of the Scare Games, Oozma Kappa came in last place and stayed in the game because another team was disqualified. This implies only one team can be eliminated per round. So in the second round, what would have happened if more than one team was caught? Would it just be the first team to have a member caught been eliminated? What if Oozma Kappa hadn't gotten their flag? Who would have been eliminated, them or the team the librarian threw out?
** There are several explanations. The team who was caught first is out, whilst the others get a handicap in the next test. The teams that failed have to fight it out in another spate test to stay in, whilst the other teams proceed straight to the next levels, or the ones who performed the best go through, whilst the worst is kicked out.
** Since one team was caught and Oozma Kappa never was, presumably Oozma Kappa would have simply had to continue with the event and go back into the library after their flag. Judging by the elimination in the first game, only one team ''can'' be eliminated per event, which make sense. After all, if more than one team was eliminated in one event, they'd have to skip one or more events, and where'd the fun be in that?

* In a similar case to the previous question, in the fourth challenge of the Scare Games, Roar Omega Roar and Oozma Kappa won the challenge by avoiding the monsters who needed to find them in the hide-n-seek game, resulting in the elimination of the Eta Hiss Hiss team as they chose too easy hiding spots. However, Mike and Sulley also chose hiding spots where they could have been easily detected. If that was case, assuming the other members of Oozma Kappa and the members of Eta Hiss Hiss we didn't see being detected made it out from the house, then which team would have stayed on the game?
** Just like in the aforementioned situation, it's possible that the team with more detected members was the one kicked out from the competition and the one with less detected members stayed.

* Regarding the fourth challenge also, why Randall was allowed to compete in that challenge if his camouflaging abilities gave him an unfair advantage? He could camouflage himself all the time he wanted and no monster seekers would have ever detected him...
** ...Unless Randall chose a hiding spot on the floor and some monster seeker tripped on him.

** This troper believes the second troper is right in this instance. We do briefly see Randall during the fourth challenge, and he hides by climbing up a standing lamp so the shade hides his sweater, then turns invisible.

** To be fair , he isn't "that" un-scary.......He is cute (under daylight), but it's still pretty scary if you saw one very big eye ball slowly approach you in the totally dark.

** To be fair , he isn't "that" un-scary.......He is cute (under daylight) , but it's still pretty scary if you saw one very big eye ball slowly approach you in the totally dark.