- Celia: "So, uh, are we going anywhere special tonight?"
Mike: "I...I just got us into a little place called, um, Harryhausen's."
Celia: "Harryhausen's? But it's impossible to get a reservation there."
Mike: "Not for Googley Bear." - —Celia and Mike
Harryhausen's (pronounced HAIR-ree-HOW-zinz) is a Japanese sushi restaurant in Monstropolis. Difficult to get a reservation at, it is where Mike Wazowski takes Celia Mae out to for a date.
Monsters, Inc.[]
Harryhausen's is the Japanese-style restaurant where Mike takes his girlfriend Celia to for her birthday dinner in Monsters, Inc.. The greeting shouted when visitors arrive is: "Get a paper bag!"
During Mike's dinner with Celia, Sulley shows up to tell Mike about Boo, the human girl who somehow got into the monster world. However, she breaks away from Sulley and makes her presence known to all the patrons, causing mass panic in the restaurant. The Sushi Chef calls the CDA for help, and they arrive at the restaurant and round up everybody inside for decontamination. All that's left in there is the zipper bag as they try to run outside. Mike and Sulley manage to escape with Boo, but Celia is caught. The entire restaurant is then closed off from the rest of the city in a green force field. It was after the incident in the restaurant that all of Monstropolis became aware of Boo's presence in the monster world.
The restaurant scene is also featured in Mike's company play Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me, where Mr. Bile participates as the Sushi Chef in this play.
Monsters at Work[]
In the first episode, Mike says that since he and Sulley caused the incident at Harryhausen's, they've been banned for life. However, in the fourth episode, it is revealed their ban was lifted after their promotion, proven in the end when Mike goes there with Gary Gibbs, sharing the "dinner for two" grand prize.
Trivia[]
The billboard in Cars 2
- The restaurant is named after the famous stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. Such noticeable examples of Harryhausen's work include films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Valley of Gwangi (1969), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), and Clash of the Titans (1981).
- The Sushi Chef who runs the restaurant is also based on the octopus from It Came from Beneath the Sea, another film that Harryhausen worked on.
- In both the storybook version and storyboards of Monsters, Inc., the CDA destroyed the restaurant by blowing it up, but because of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, it was changed to the restaurant being quarantined under a force field in the finalized version of the film in order to show respect to the victims.
- A remnant of the original scene can be seen in the final film when the CDA show Waternoose the bag Boo was in, in which viewers can see burn marks on it.
- Marlin from the next film Finding Nemo is shown on the wall behind the Sushi Chef in the restaurant. On an interesting note, Finding Nemo was released a year and a half later.
- A billboard of the restaurant makes a cameo in Cars 2.
- The overall design of the restaurant resembles a Japanese sushi restaurant.
- In the Russian dub of the film, Harryhausen's sushi restaurant is named Godzilla's.
- The restaurant also made a brief cameo in the short Tokyo Mater, complete with car-ified versions of Mike and Sulley that appeared earlier in a Cars version of Monsters, Inc. (Monster Trucks, Inc.) that was among the Cars versions of other Pixar films shown during the credits of Cars.
- The fact that the monster employees yell, "Get a paper bag!" whenever someone enters the restaurant may be a reference to the fact that Japanese employees at restaurants and other stores yell, "Irasshaimase!" whenever someone enters. A similar Japanese saying and interpretation shows up in Toy Story 2 when Al, while talking with Mr. Koneishi, says, "Don't touch my mustache!", a mnemonic of the Japanese term for "You're welcome."
- According to the directors in the audio commentary for the original film, Mike was supposed to propose marriage to Celia at the restaurant, but it was scrapped because, according to Dan Gerson, they realized that it already showed that Mike was going to have a split with Sulley, and thus they felt that it would clash with Sulley becoming attached to Boo, as that was what they wanted to cause the split.
- A piece of trash containing a logo that very closely resembles the Harryhausen's sign can be seen in Toy Story 3.