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Context Headscratchers / MonstersInc

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13[[WMG:What happens if you're inside the closet when the portal opens?]]
14* Two possibilities:
15** One, it's impossible to connect to a closet door if someone's inside.
16** Two, you get sent to the monster world and it's in fact how Boo got there: she was hiding in the closet trying to avoid Randall.
17
18[[WMG: If the doors need power to operate but provide the power for the monster world, then how did they start working in the first place?]]
19* AllThereInTheManual. Monsters used to travel to human lands by conventional means to gather screams, but this was dangerous, so the Waternoose family innovated a safer way (though it does raise questions of which way one is supposed to travel).
20
21[[WMG: In the monster world, what happens if you open the door from the other side?]]
22* Most doors can only open in one direction - toward their hinges - so that's probably impossible. Either that, or you end up inside the closet.
23
24[[WMG: What happens if a kid switches rooms with an adult? People move houses and redecorate/change rooms all the time. Do the Monsters have a way to pick up on this, or something?]]
25* It takes more than a day to switch to sleeping in another room. If the room is unusable it would be picked up on pretty quickly. The door would either be shredded or put into storage. Even if the swap wasn't noticed before a scarer went into the room, ''Monsters University'' establishes it as common for them to approach the child slowly, scouting out the room and considering the best approach for maximum scare power. As long as they don't rush into it, they'd have more than enough time for it to occur to them that, "Hey, there's no kid in here," and that they should bail on that attempt so as not to risk their exposure.
26
27[[WMG: If a child's room has a sliding door for its closet, how would a hinged door portal work?]]
28* One of the other closets throughout the house? They go through the coat closet, the towel closet, etc, then just use the bedroom door.
29* There's two possibilities. There might just not go to scare children with closets with sliding doors. Another is that there might be sliding door portals as well for those specific types of closets, but we don't see any of them in the movie because the other type is so much more common.
30
31[[WMG: A kid claims there was a monster in the closet, parents would likely dismiss them as lying or wanting attention. But wouldn't a whole bunch saying the same thing be suspicious? That slumber party Sullivan scared seemed to be a big risk.]]
32* A very real part of most slumber parties is all the attendants trying to make a monster appear or trying to re-enact some creepy urban legend. The parents would most likely know this and chalk it up to the shared hysteria a group of kids bring about in a group when they want to be scared.\
33And no matter what, jumping to the conclusion that monsters are using interdimensional portals to scare children is a reach for the parents. Maybe the parents would believe that they were just getting worked up over a giant stuffed animal, or something.
34* The movie itself was based in the very real fact that LOTS of kids from ALL OVER the world ACTUALLY DO report seeing monsters in their closets. And yet no parent ACTUALLY believes there are portals in there with real monsters.
35
36[[WMG: What happens if a door is destroyed while it is open? Say, in the case of a door falling from a great height (like during the climax) and breaking apart.]]
37* The connection is probably severed instantly.
38
39[[WMG: Why is banishment a thing? It is a goal of monster society to keep their world's existence a secret from humans. So then, why do they deal with rogue monsters by throwing them out into the human world, where they could communicate with or be discovered by humans? ]]
40* The movies indicate the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman are all monsters that got banished, which seems a perfect demonstration that even if humans discover their existence it doesn't mean they will find out about the monster world as a whole.
41* From what Mikey says, we can assume that those types of incidents are rare, but nobody ever forgets them. Think of it as the ultimate punishment only to be used when the GodzillaThreshold or MoralEventHorizon is broken. Besides, the banished monsters seem to do a pretty good job of hiding themselves anyway.
42** ''WesternAnimation/MonstersUniversity'' establishes that you can get banished for tampering with the mail. Sure that's a federal crime in most places but definitely not a MoralEventHorizon-worthy crime on its own.
43
44[[WMG: Do monsters think adults are toxic too? If not, then when do they think humans become not toxic?]]
45* According to Monsters University, yes, they think all humans are toxic. It is just children are the only ones pursued since they are far easier to scare. Adults and teens won't scare easily.
46* It probably comes from transmittable diseases. Children are notoriously more messy, snot-nosed, and prone to putting things in their mouths than teens and adults. "Toxic" might be a hold-over linguistic convention similar to how we describe "catching a cold" from the old belief that being chilled can cause illness even though the truth is closer to viral infection in both cases. Adults on the other hand are probably still considered dangerous since they are bigger and stronger.
47
48[[WMG: Previous headscratchers established parents won't believe childrens' words about a monster. But what about video evidence? Imagine: you're a child. You see a beast come to your room and scare you. You try to tell your parents, but they say it's just your imagination. Naturally, you'd want to prove your words. So next time you see the monster you grab your camera/phone and take a video. Now if there are ''multiple'' videos from different children, aren't the human authorities going to investigate these cases?]]
49* No, they'd just write off the "monsters" as computer effects, or people in costumes, or puppetry; after all, there won't be ''supporting'' evidence (ie the closet door). Also established in previous headscratchers, even if the parents did believe them, it won't reveal/threaten the monster world as a whole because humans are still unable to travel to it.
50** Except when the doors are in use, during scaring hours. If a parent was convinced that there was a real monster in their child's closet (and there undoubtedly would be some, in a world where flat-earthers exist) the obvious strategy is to camp in your kid's room at night with a shotgun at the ready. Hell, [[https://twitter.com/DudespostingWs/status/1450491329193160704 some parents do this already]] just to humor their children. One dead monster, or better yet, a ''live'' one, and their entire world is blown wide open.
51** Luckily for the monsters, they clearly have ways of keeping tabs on the human world, in order to build new doors and know about children's fears and such. They would know in advance not to try scaring any child whose parent was expecting them to show up.
52
53[[WMG: How can Celia cut her hair?]]
54* At one point in the film, Celia mentions that she is thinking about getting her snake-hair cut which makes her snakes gasp in horror, until Mike says that he likes it like it is which makes them then sigh in relief. But how can Celia cut her hair? It's made of living snakes. Wouldn't that kill them? Also, they're obviously sentient snakes given that they understand her and Mike. Or would she just replace them with shorter snakes?
55** She cuts them, then the heads grow back. Same personalities and memories. So they don't die, but it still hurts.
56*** Which gives her a similar trait to another monster from Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra. Know for regrowing two heads after having one decapitated. Nice added bonus to someone who's got cyclops and gorgon traits. But unlike the hydra, the snake heads probably won't regrow instantly. It's a more similar case to lizards losing their tails.
57
58[[WMG: What about bedrooms that don't have a closet? Do Monsters just get into them through the regular door?]]
59* Those bedrooms simply wouldn't be included in the archive. There are hundreds of millions of children in the world so there'd be no shortage of bedrooms. The children in rooms without closets would never see monsters during their childhood, unless they were to move into a house that ''does'' have one.
60* Maybe there's another energy company that covers monsters under the bed.
61
62[[WMG: How come audio recordings of screaming wouldn't convert to electricity? I know that's the case, because the monster world would have to be ridiculously stupid to ignore that simple solution.]]

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