Monsters, Inc. Trivia

Cameos, in-jokes, re-used animation and other trivia from Monsters, Inc..

Cameos

• When Randall gets banished near the ending, the setting is the same trailer setting from A Bug's Life, complete with the Pizza Planet truck which is parked next to it and A113 is spelled out in the stars above.
• A13 is also displayed rather than A113 on a pillar in the distance when Randall is getting thrown into the door he's banished to.
• The unicycle from Red's Dream appears on the Laugh Floor.
• Roly Poly Clown appears at the end.
• Boo has a Pixar ball, a Nemo toy and a Jessie doll in her room.
• Rex appears in the outtakes.
• Randall turns the same color as Andy's bedroom paint job from Toy Story at one point.
• The wall behind the Octopus in Harryhausen's has Marlin from Finding Nemo on it.
• Nemo also appears on the door of the Trailer Son and Mom when Sulley throws Randall into it.
• The toy plane from Toy Story appears on the top left of the shelf in the little boy's bedroom at the beginning.
• There is a sticker of a beaver from Toy Story 2 on a child's door after Randall comes out of it, scaring a child. The beaver is a critter from Woody's Roundup.

Cameos Gallery

A113 spelled out in the stars, and the Pizza Planet truck to the left

Within Monsters, Inc. its actualy A13 on the pillar instead of A113

Monsters, Inc.

The plane from Toy Story is seen

Behind the Sushi Chef appears Marlin from Finding Nemo on the wall

Roly Poly Clown from Toy Story and Toy Story 2 appears in the end

A Nemo toy in Boo's bedroom

Nemo's cameo in the door

Jessie, Nemo and Luxo Ball appear in Boo's bedroom

Rex from the Toy Story movies appears in Outtakes

A fuzzy material resembling Sulley's fur as a toilet seat covering in Partysaurus Rex.

Other trivia

• Sulley has 2,320,413 individual strands of hair. 25,336 of them are "key" hairs, which are used to guide the motion and shape of the other 2,295,077 hairs. A technical director hand animated the hairs on his fingers to make them react to Boo's touch near the end of the movie.
• The letters "FIZT" on the door machine come from an application developed to control the movement of Sulley's fur based on his actions and other factors such as wind.
• The name for Mike Wazowski came from the father of the Muppet performer Frank Oz.
• In one of the children's bedrooms at the end of the film, posters for Disneyland's Sailing Ship Columbia and Tomorrowland are seen.
• Randall Boggs, voiced by Steve Buscemi, at one point says to Fungus, "If I don't see a new door in my station in five seconds, I will personally put you THROUGH THE SHREDDER!" Buscemi starred in Fargo, a movie in which his character gets put through a wood chipper/shredder by his murderous accomplice.
• On the top scarers leader board, under Sulley and Randall, is a monster named Ranft. This was probably to Joe Ranft, who is one of Pixar's storyboard artists. He also did a couple of voices in films.
• All of the Scarers' last names except for Sulley, Randall, George Sanderson and Ricky Plesuski are also those of actual Pixar staff members.
• The Hidden City Cafe (located in Richmond) is seen in the opening scene, which, according to a teaser trailer for WALL•E, is where they thought up the idea for Monsters, Inc, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo and WALL•E. In the Filmmakers's Round Table feature on the Blu-ray release of the movie, Pete Docter revealed the movie was originally named "Hidden City" because the Cafe "was basically the Pixar commissary for a lot of us".
• The scene where Sulley thinks that Boo has been crushed to death in a trash compactor references the Looney Tunes short Feed the Kitty, right down to Sulley even mimicking Marc Anthony the bulldog's reactions to "Boo"/"Pussyfoot" being "shredded alive" by the compactor/"cooked alive" in an oven and subsequently lamenting her "death" after retrieving a garbage cube containing one of Boo's costume's "eyes"/cookie shaped like a cat.
• The preschool teacher who brings her class to the Monsters, Inc. factory during Boo's escapades inside the factory and blending into said class is named Ms. Nesbit, after a throwaway gag in Toy Story in which Hannah Phillips assigns that name to Buzz Lightyear after Buzz attempts to fly out of a window after learning the truth about him not being a flying toy after watching a TV commercial about his toy brand only to fall off the balcony and crashing onto the first floor and severing his left arm, before being rescued by Hannah and turned into one of her "dolls."
• This is the first Pixar film not to be directed by John Lasseter.
• This is the only Pixar film to shorten the opening logos.
• The only Pixar film directed by Pete Doctor to be rated G by the MPAA since Up and Inside Out were both rated PG.
• It is also the first Pixar film of the 21st century as well as the first to air in the 2000s.
• This is the last Pixar film to have outtakes at the end of the film.
• This is the first (and to date only) film directed by Pete Docter to be scored by Randy Newman, with Up and Inside Out being scored by Michael Giacchino
• The Blu-ray release, 2013 DVD/Blu-ray re-release and 2020 UHD release of the film's closing credits lacked the outtakes as in the original 2001 theatrical release (before the outtakes started on December 7th) and on the 2002 Collector's Edition DVD (Widescreen) release as such has been relegated to a bonus feature, instead it features stylized monster body parts (like in the opening credits) and closet doors surrounding the credits.
• All of the digital displays (such as the clock radio, the "Days since the last accident" counter, etc), are all made up of Nixie tubes. Nixie tubes were digital displays made up of digits formed from light bulbs with wiring shaped like letters or numbers, much like neon signs.
• This is Pixar's first attempt at animating fur.
• It's also Pixar's first attempt at animating loose clothing like skirts and dresses (in this case, Boo's nightshirt). In the first two Toy Story films, all human girls and women, (Ms. Davis, Hannah Phillips) wore pants since it was very difficult at the time to animate skirts and dresses, Bo Peep's dress included a hoop skirt, and the various Barbie dolls were all seen wearing tight clothing. The second instance of Pixar animating loose clothing was in Finding Nemo with a woman's skirt in the waiting room (most noticeable in the original 2003 US home release-exclusive fullscreen version) toward the end of that film.
• This is the only Pixar film whose original VHS and DVD releases lacked a paperboard slipcover.
• There are at least 100 different monster "races" seen in the film.
• Due to software limitations, the artists were mostly limited to 1 hairy character per shot.
• This film was nominated for the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2001, but lost to a DreamWorks film named Shrek. This makes Pixar one of the first three animation studios to be nominated for that category.
• This is the first Pixar film to mute the beginning of the Disney and Pixar opening.
• Before Billy Crystal got the role of Mike, he was given the option to voice Buzz Lightyear for Toy Story but decided not to. After he saw the film, he said that he made a big mistake. Pixar said that if anything were coming up that they will consider him. When he was given the option to do this film, he immediately said yes.
• This was the only Pixar movie that had a blue VHS tape instead of black.
• The code 2319 stands for White Sock - W is the 23rd letter in the alphabet and S is the 19th letter.
• 90% of all the monsters in the film have Mike's tongue.
• The producers had a hard time getting Mary Gibbs, Boo's voice actress, to get her voice recorded because they couldn't get her to stand still at the microphone. They ended up carrying a microphone around her when she played the character.
• The amplifier in Mike and Sulley's apartment has controls for Bass and Perch (instead of Treble). Both bass and perch are common fish found in northern America, including Minnesota. Minnesota is Pete Docter's home state.
• During the scene where Mike and Sulley walk to work, that day's Monstropolis Horn is shown in a vending machine. With the Blu-ray release of the movie, the articles on the front page are just legible enough to recognize that the same text was used for both the "Scream Shortage Looms" and "Modern Kis Harder to Scare".
• This is the first Pixar film to have (Created And Produced At - Pixar Animation Studios - Emeryville, California).
• According to Albert Lozano's file, human world is set in 1999.
• As stated by Pete Docter in the Filmmakers' Round Table feature, "every sequence that's now impossible to do is called 'The Yeti's Cave'" in honor of both how technically difficult it was to animate the snowstorm and its effects on Sully, as well as the difficulty in developing the sequence where Mike and Sully meet the Yeti.

Other trivia Gallery

The Hidden City Café (where the idea of the film was thought up) appears when Mike and Sulley walk to work.