Randall Boggs

"Do you hear that? It's the winds of change..."

—Randall to Mike and Sulley

Randall Boggs (called Randy in Monsters University) is one of the two main antagonists in Monsters, Inc., alongside Henry J. Waternoose. He returns in Monsters University. Randall resembles a lizard, with purple and blue skin, three pink antennae and eight limbs, four arms and four legs.

Monsters, Inc.

Randall is Sulley and Mike's direct rival and nemesis.

Randall's scare assistant is Fungus, who usually annoys him. He usually gets into small disagreements with Mr. Waternoose. Randall resembles a lizard, with the ability to change his color from purple and blue to blend into his surroundings at will, much like a chameleon, making him invisible.

He works as a Scarer for Monsters, Inc. by entering children's rooms through a system of closet doors and scaring sleeping children to bottle their screams, which is a source of power in their world. He is in competition with Sulley and Mike for the glorious post of Top Scarer. Randall constructed a "Scream Extractor" and kidnapped a human child in cooperation with the company's leader, Henry J. Waternoose, with the hopes to eventually rise to the leader of the company.

However, the initial plot failed due to Mike sending Sulley back after closing hours to submit paperwork which Mike forgot to turn in earlier. Sulley stumbled upon the child, whom he nicknames Boo. Mike and Sulley take the child home with them, but since children are forbidden in their world, due to a belief that they can infect the monsters, Mike and Sulley are exiled when their secret is revealed. Randall and Waternoose are now able to go through with testing the scream extractor on Boo (although Waternoose expresses distaste for having to exile Sulley and Mike due to Randall's negligence, pointing out that Sulley was "twice the scarer Randall could ever be").

After Sulley manages to escape and wreck the Scream Extractor, Randall attacks and strangles him. He proves to be quite an adversary, due to his cloaking abilities. This whole time Mike is trying to apologize to Sulley, thinking that Sulley is just clowning around as he tries to fend off his invisible foe. Mike finally gets annoyed with the fact that Sulley is not listening to him and throws a snowball at Sulley, but it hits Randall instead, exposing him to the two partners, making them realize that Randall has been attacking Sulley. Randall is defeated after a chase through the factory, where he and Boo escape into a door and Boo begins to pull on his antennas and hit him with a baseball bat, making him turn into different colors. Sulley then restrains him with a chokehold, followed by a snake wrestling maneuver, and throws him through a door that banishes him to a trailer in the middle of a swamp in the south, where a hillbilly family beats Randall senseless with a shovel, thinking that he is a gator. The door is then tipped over the railing it was leaning against and shatters onto the floor far below, trapping Randall.

Monsters University

"Monsters University freshman Randy Boggs has big aspirations for college life. The peculiar lizard-like monster with his host of gangly arms and legs plans to major in Scaring and lead an active social life filled with fun, friends and fraternity parties. If only he could get his embarrassing disappearing habit under control, he’d be good to go, because how is he ever going to be a great Scarer if nobody can see him?"^[1]

Randall reappears in the prequel and is nicknamed "Randy" in this movie. Instead of being sneaky, evil and impatient, he is now nerdy, shy, and nervous.

Randy is first seen when Mike arrives to his new room. The two greet each other, but Randy, startled by objects falling in the background, disappears. Mike suggests that he should use that power more often, to Randy's shock. He soon follows Mike's advice of getting rid of his glasses because they don't disappear whenever he turns invisible, thus giving him his characteristic squint. Randy is worried about school and wonders if he'll manage to impress the cool kids, but Mike reassures him. He follows Mike and sits next to him on their first day of class.

Later, while Mike is studying scaring, Randy decided to bake cupcakes for a party organised by the cool kids. At the party, Randy tries to offer cupcakes to some girls, but Mike runs into him while riding Archie the Scare Pig, splattering four of the cupcakes on Randy that spelled "LAME" on his face, much to his dismay.

He is later seen helping Mike study by asking him questions on phobias (such as arachnophobia, fear of spiders).

However, Randy becomes a member of Roar Omega Roar and ends up abandoning Mike, refusing to join Oozma Kappa and help him since Randy is finally with the "cool kids". He actively participates to OK's humiliation at the ROR house, as the one who activates the trap dousing them with toys.

During the last part of the Scare Games, Sulley accidentally ruins Randy's attempt to scare the child dummy, causing him to fall onto a carpet and change into a humiliating pattern of white with red hearts (similar to a pair of cartoon boxer shorts). The chameleon swears revenge on Sulley as he is disqualified and criticized by the other members of his fraternity.

During the credits, Randall appears on one of the Scare Cards, eventually becoming a Scarer at Monsters, Inc.

Laugh Floor Comic Miniseries

In the Laugh Floor comic miniseries by Boom! Studios taking place after Monsters, Inc., Randall manages to sneak back into the factory and tries to frame Mike for stealing props and material from other Monster comics (this might be explained by Randall finding a settlement to sneak back in through the door, similar to how Sulley and Mike managed to get back to the monster world despite being banished to the Himalayas). In the fourth issue, he is helped by a human boy named Sid Phillips (the antagonist from Toy Story), and they, along with Mr. Waternoose, aim to extract revenge on Mike and Sulley in order for the antagonists to rise to power.

Personality

As a college freshman in Monsters University, Randall, or "Randy" as he was called then, was quite friendly, a little socially-awkward, and expressed a desire to be in with the cool-crowd. Being shy, he had little control over his invisibility and found it a little embarrassing until his roommate, Mike Wazowski, convinced him to use it in his Scaring studies "but lose the glasses, they give it away," which is what led to Randy discarding his glasses and taking on his characteristic squint. After he was accepted by the Roar Omega Roar fraternity, the lizard's personality began to change drastically. Apparently, because of the fraternity's negative influence, Randall willingly participated in their devious activities, and appeared to take enjoyment in pulling the prank on Oozma Kappa, even though Mike was part of OK. After this, his friendship with Mike began to disappear along with his originally shy personality, as he started to develop a more ruthless and vengeful one. He also demonstrated more control over his invisibility, but still could not control timing, as he accidentally camouflaged with a pink-heart pattern on a carpet due to the vibration Sulley made, which caused him to fall down and lose to OK. His loss against Sulley also appeared to bring out his darker traits that would come later in life and eventually cause him to become the cruel monster he is today.

In Monsters, Inc., Randall is Sulley and Mike's direct rival and nemesis. Randall's scare assistant is Fungus, who usually annoys him. He usually gets into small disagreements with Mr. Waternoose. Randall resembles a lizard, with the ability to change his color from purple and blue to blend into his surroundings at will, much like a chameleon, making him invisible. He also is implied to be treacherous, as he responds to Waternoose's statements about not leaving behind any witnesses to their actions.

Trivia

Randall's original names were "Switt" and "Ned." He was named "Ned" in the early treatment, and "Switt" in the original opening.
Randall is the third Pixar villain to be physically fought, the first two being Hopper and Stinky Pete.
Randall is ranked #27 in the Top 30 Disney Villains.
In a early script for the film in place of Fungus, Mike Wazowski was going to be Randall's assistant instead.
Randall shares the same first name and many traits of Randall Weems from the Disney television series Recess. Both characters are sneaky, mean, and have the same posture.
Randall for some reason is the only Scarer in the film that is referred by his first name on the Scarers' Leaderboard rather than by his last name. This could imply that "Randall" at one point was actually going to be his last name rather than his first name.
- Strangely, he is referred to by his last name by his fraternity brothers and at the Scare Games in Monsters University.
Randall's nephew, Rex (named after the Toy Story character), made an appearance in the "Monsters Inc. Storybook Collection" as one of the toddlers in the company's day care program. It is unknown whether Rex has the surname Boggs or not, but is often referred to as "Randall's nephew". Rex greatly resembles his uncle - including Randall's ability to "disappear" - but has orange scales and only one frond, as opposed to Randall's purple scales and three fronds.
In Scream Arena, a computer game set after Monsters, Inc., Randall now appears to be back at work, and is no longer depicted as evil. Instead, he has apparently reformed, but is still extremely devious.
In the prequel, Monsters University, Randall appears to be wearing glasses, while in the original he doesn't. This is due to the fact that Randall learns that he cannot make clothing invisible, such as glasses, and discards them. This also explains why he is seen squinting in Monsters, Inc., since he cannot see well without glasses.
One of the backgrounds Fungus used to demonstrate Randall's cloaking abilities is the cloud background that served as the wallpaper of Andy's bedroom in the first Davis residence seen in the first Toy Story film.
At one point, Randall threatens to put Fungus through the shredder. This is a shout-out to one of Steve Buscemi's characters, who was once killed by a shredder.
In the movie Monsters Inc., Randall makes a possible reference to his defeat at the Scare Games when he attacks Sulley and says, "You have no idea how long I wanted to do that, Sullivan!"
The color schemes Randall underwent after hit by Boo before Sulley grabs him and throws him into the hillbilly trailer door include pale yellow with red zigzag lines, blue with purple spots (Sulley's own color scheme), pink and yellow plaid, white with red stars, a red brick pattern, green and yellow swirls, red and black plaid, blue with white spots, purple with a brown head, purple with white stripes, a red circle pattern, and finally solid green.
According to the M.U. website, Randall had very little control over his camouflaging abilities as a kid. Though MU the movie does not go into detail on this fact, it can assumed that between the events of M.U. and M.I., Randall had learned to assume near perfect control over his abilities.
Randall is the second Pixar villain (the first being Sid Phillips) to appear in two movies of their franchise, and the first to have a main role in two movies.
Above Randall's bed in Monsters University is a framed poster with the words "Winds of Change" printed. This is a reference to his infamous quote from the first movie.
Despite being an antagonist, Randall has a surprisingly large fanbase, many of whom do not believe he is as evil as others believe. Some argue that it is because of these fans that Randall reappeared as the nervous and insecure Randy in Monsters University, though there is no official evidence for this claim.