Monsters, Inc. Laugh Factory is a comic book sequel to Pixar movie Monsters, Inc.. It features four stories, and began in June 2009 and ended in December 2009.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy: Waternoose is no longer the Well-Intentioned Extremist he was in the original movie, as he now wants revenge on Mike and Sulley, and is willing the sabotage the company that he once owned in order to take it back and force the citizens to rely on scream power again.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Mike, a one-eyed monster who travels to another dimension as part of his job, thinks Sid is "a few heads short of a hydra" when he starts ranting about toys coming to life.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: A poster in the first story shows that Randall is wanted "for conspiracy, industrial espionage, assault, kidnapping and sucker punching."
- Ascended Extra: Celia, a side character in the movie, is part of the main cast here and is even the main character of Issue 4.
- Cassandra Truth: When the other monsters finally catch Sid, he tries to explain he was attacked by his own toys and was trying to prevent other kids from suffering the same fate. Naturally, the monsters don't believe him and throw him right back home.
- Company Cross References:
- When questioned on how several other monsters' comedy props ended up in his locker, Mike suggests that they're all secretly alive and searching for a spaceman, even saying it's like "that movie with the toys".
- One of the human children has a bed that looks like Lightning McQueen and a lamp based on Mr. Incredible.
- One of the streets seen in Issue 4 is called Ranft, a nod to deceased Pixar creator Joe Ranft.
- In both Boo's room and that one kid from Issue #4, there's posters of Wall-E and E-VE saying that "The Future is Now".
- In Boo's room, there's a Dug on a shelve above her bed.
- Crossover: The human world the dimensional doors connect the monsters' world is the world of Toy Story and Sid is the comic's human antagonist.
- Damsel out of Distress: Celia in the fourth comic. While she was captured by the villains along with Mike, she does manage to evade the villains while keeping Boo out of harm's way. Sid does manage to catch her, but her snake hairs bite him in order to force him into releasing her from his grasp.
- Frame-Up: Randall Boggs steals props from Monsters, Inc. to frame Mike in the first story. The fourth story features Waternoose entertaining the idea of using this kind of revenge against Mike and Sulley until Randall talks him out of it.
- Fun with Acronyms: The CDA has been renamed from Child Detection Agency to Crime Detection Agency.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Invoked in this line from the second story, which details Waternoose escaping from a high-security prison and coming back for revenge.Sully: How exactly does someone like Waternoose escape from jail?Roz: That's classified. Let's just say a monster with no eyes and no ears has no business being on guard duty.
- Karma Houdini: Due to being outside of Monstropolis Jurisdiction, Sid merely gets sent back home for his crimes in both of the issues he appeared in, as opposed to Waternoose and Randall who get increased prison sentences when captured. albeit, the closer thing he got for a punishment was that he was going to be visited by various monsters to scare him straight though.
- Monster of the Week: Bonus points for two of the characters being literal monsters. The first story features Randall Boggs as the villain; the second one features Waternoose; the third one features Sid; and the fourth has the three of them working together.
- The Pardon: The second story features Waternoose trying to discredit the new energy system so the monsters will be desperate enough for energy to get him pardoned so he can run Monsters, Inc. again.
- Portal Slam: Early in the fourth story, Mike tries running after Sulley into Boo's door, only for the power to shut down before he can reach it. Cue Mike comically slamming into a wall.Mike: "Urgh, they cut the power again..."
- Real After All: Issue 3 ends with Mike and Sulley dismissing the idea of toys coming to life, thinking Sid's crazy. Cue Boo's Jessie doll winking at the reader.
- Rule of Three: The comic features three villains.
- Scandalgate: Sulley refers to Waternoose's scheme of solving the energy crisis by harvesting screams from kidnapped children as "Waternoosegate".
- Sure, Let's Go with That: In the first story, Mike assumes Sulley just pretended to think he's a thief to lure Randall into a false sense of security. Sulley plays along.
- Tempting Fate: The last story's epilogue shows Mike saying he would hate being the monster assigned to the child he and his friends ran into during the mess caused by the villains. Mike turns out to be that monster and he's proven to be right about dreading the idea.
- Villain Team-Up: Boggs and Waternoose rekindle their alliance and add Sid to their team.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sid plans to use the monsters' door technology to steal toys all around the world. This isn't out of any malicious intent, but rather, he wants to save other kids from going through what he did, calling back to the scene in Toy Story where Woody and the Mutant Toys scare him straight.
