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"Mike" redirects here. For other uses, see Mike (disambiguation).


"Would you listen to this? Blame it on the little guy, how original. He must've read the schedule wrong with his one eye!"
—Mike, in the teaser trailer

Mike Wazowski is one of the main characters in Monsters, Inc. and its prequel, Monsters University. He also returned as a main character in the series, Monsters at Work. He is a short, lime green spherical monster with one large green eye, two small horns on his head, and thin arms and legs attached to either side of his torso.

Monsters, Inc.

In the first film, Mike is the best friend, roommate, personal trainer, and assistant to Sulley, the top scarer at Monsters, Inc. who in turn has a rivalry with Randall Boggs. He is Celia Mae's boyfriend and Roz is frequently annoyed by his inability to turn in his paperwork on time. While at Harryhausen's for Celia's birthday, Sulley interrupted the date to inform Mike that he had lead a human girl into the monster world. Putting her into a Monsters, Inc. gym bag, Sulley tried to show him, but Boo escaped the bag and wreaked havoc all over the restaurant. The two snuck her out before the CDA could take action.

When Mr. Waternoose throws Sulley and Mike into the frozen wasteland, a rift forms between them after Mike becomes furious at him for listening to Waternoose instead of him.

When they learn that Waternoose and Randall are secretly plotting to drain children of screams, Sulley tricks Mr. Waternoose into confessing his complicity with Randall's scheme while Mike records the confession and smugly replays it to watching CDA agents. Immediately, the CDA arrest Mr. Waternoose for his crimes. Roz ordered the shredding of Boo's door, later discreetly rebuilt by Mike.

Sometime after the film, Mike produces the low-budget company play "Put That Thing Back Where It Came From or So Help Me."

Mike's New Car

In the short, Mike is now the main character of his own story. He has brought a new six-wheel drive car, and wants to show it to Sulley. When they both get in the car, Sulley accidentally ruins the brand-new car and injures Mike. In the end, Mike kicks Sulley out, speeds off and wrecks the car completely.

Monsters University

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Mike as he appears in Monsters University

A younger Mike appeared in the prequel as the main character. He looks smaller and wears a retainer.[1]

Mike Wazowski is first seen as an elementary student attending Ms. Graves' class visiting Monsters, Inc. as part of a field trip. During the field trip, Mike tries to get a look at the scare floor but the other students push him aside, telling him he doesn't belong there. Mike walks past the safety line and follows a scarer named Frightening Frank McCay into the Human World. Mike watches Frank scare a child then follows him back through the door. Frank is not only surprised but impressed with Mike for sneaking in unnoticed, giving him his Monsters University cap. This incident spurs Mike to become a scarer and attend MU.

On the first day at college, a now 17-year-old Mike's roommate is revealed to be Randall Boggs, who is initially friendly towards Mike. When he sees Randall's invisibility at work, Mike encourages him to use it more, telling him to lose his glasses that can't be concealed. While attending Scaring 101 at Professor Knight's class Mike sees gets his first look at Sulley (Mike's eventual friend), who, despite his natural talent, is lazy and arrogant. Dean Hardscrabble, the school's headmistress and a famous Scarer then flies into Prof. Knight's classroom and tells all of the students that they all had to complete a final exam at the end of the semester which will determine if they stay in the program. Mike immediately commits to studying hard. Later, Sulley then comes in through the window of Mike's dorm, having stolen Archie the Scare Pig (rival school Fear Tech's mascot). Archie steals Mike's hat and runs off. Mike catches him but Sulley gets the credit for it, impressing the Roar Omega Roar president Johnny Worthington III and sparking a rivalry between Mike and Sulley. Mike studies every chance he gets, whilst Sulley's arrogance causes him to falter in the class. During the final exams, the two monsters get into an argument and they accidentally knock over Hardscrabble's scare can, destroying it. Though she is calm about it, Hardscrabble proceeds to test Mike on the spot. While Mike correctly names the appropriate scare technique to use, she dismisses him before he can even demonstrate it. Hardscrabble fails Mike from the program, telling him that he is not scary. Sulley is also washed out of the program due to his recklessness, and expelled from ROR.

Wanting to prove himself, Mike decides to participate in the university's Scare Games by teaming up with a fraternity made up of rejected monsters called Oozma Kappa composing of Don Carlton, Terri and Terry, Art, and Squishy. Sensing an opportunity, Mike baits Hardscrabble into accepting a wager: if OK wins, she allows the fraternity into the Scare Program; but if they lose, Mike leaves MU for good. Sulley later joins OK as they require six members, while Randall has joined ROR. OK barely makes it through the Toxicity Challenge because Jaws Theta Chi was disqualified for cheating. Mike then takes charge of the team and instructs them to do as he does. For the next challenge, they have to get through the library without getting the librarian's attention, retrieve their flag, and escape. Sulley's impatience nearly costs them, but Squishy somehow got the flag in the commotion, advancing to the next round. That same night, they are invited to the ROR house for a party, but ROR humiliates them in front of the whole school. Dejected that they are the laughing stock of the whole campus, OK is ready to call it quits, so Mike takes them to Monsters Inc, showing them that they can still become Scarers, if they use their differences to their advantage. This also sparks a change in both Sulley and Mike, and they begin to respect each other.

OK trains even harder under Mike's new leadership skills, making it through the next two rounds using their actual talent. OK is pitted against ROR for the final round, in which both teams try to out-scare the other using simulators set to their highest level. On Sulley's suggestion, Mike goes last, pitting him against Johnny. In the simulator, Mike remembers all the scorn and derision towards him in his life, unleashing his frustration in one mighty scare, and with that OK wins the Scare Games to everyone's surprise. Mike later discovers that the simulator was rigged so that Mike would get the highest score. Sulley admits it was him, revealing his lack of confidence in his friend. Furious at this deception and feeling that no one would ever give him a fair chance, Mike decides to go into the human world where he tries to scare a little girl. This goes horribly wrong, as not only is the girl not scared, but she is in the cabin of a summer camp full of other girls instead of a bedroom. As they were not terrified, Mike is forced to flee. Minutes later, Sulley arrives to rescue Mike and has to escape from forest rangers who mistake him for a bear. He finds Mike at a lake, sulking over his failure. The two argue, both of them venting their frustrations. They eventually reconcile and make their way back to the door, but Hardscrabble deactivates it. With the rangers nearby, Mike believes that they can generate enough energy to activate the door from the human world. Using Mike's extensive knowledge, Sulley successfully terrifies the rangers, which not only activates the door but overloads every scream canister in the room, as well as the door itself. They manage to escape and are subsequently expelled.

The two say their goodbyes to their OK brothers, who tell them that Hardscrabble was impressed with their performance in the games and allowed the remaining members into the Scare Program. For the first time, Mike doesn't have a plan, yet he states that he's "okay just being okay." Mike gets on a bus to leave MU but Sulley stops him, telling him not to settle for being okay, stating that everything that led to OK joining the Scare Program was due to Mike's efforts. Hardscrabble arrives with the school paper, showing them they made the front page. She tells them that they surprised her, something she believed was impossible. While she can't do anything about their expulsion (despite the fact she's the one who expelled them), she wishes them both luck and tells Mike to "keep surprising people."

Sulley points out an ad in the paper from Monsters Inc, giving them a chance to work at a Scare company. They start in the mailroom, then get promoted to janitors, kitchen assistants, and then can wranglers. Finally, Sulley enters the company's open tryouts, becoming a scarer with Mike as his assistant. He and Sulley became rookie of the year.

Party Central

In the short film Party Central Mike shows up at Oozma Kaapa's party when Sully and Mike decides to visit them. Mike then uses a borrowed door to get monsters from the Roar Omega Roar party to show up at the party at Oozma Kappa. When the party is over, Mike is last seen leaving the house.

Monsters At Work

Mike and Sully are now in charge of Monster Inc. after Waternoose's arrest. He works as a Jokester and trains former scarers to be Jokesters. It is shown he has a brother, too. He enters a bowling competition against him, and they are shown to be rivals.

Personality

Mike and Sulley argue and/or fight sometimes; however, it is usually Sulley who annoys Mike first. He is funny, smart, brave, but can sometimes fail to see the obvious in a situation. He has a very strategic mind and is a thinker by nature, arriving at conclusions very fast. He is also kind and has very smooth conversations with his girlfriend, Celia. Additionally, he is sarcastic and charismatic.

Mike is also skilled with words; he has been shown multiple times to come up with witty comebacks to Randall and anyone who gets on his nerves, but can falter if asked a question under pressure.

Mike is also shown to have a positive outlook in situations that seem disappointing by not acting disappointed but rather happy it happened. This is especially noble when an image of him is covered in some form of media, such as television, magazine covers, and school I.D. cards. An example of this is when he saw that his picture on a magazine cover was blocked by a barcode, his reaction seemed sad at first, but he turned out to be happy he appeared in the cover regardless.

Unlike Sulley, who needed some adjustment in his personality, Mike didn't change much from his MU days, aside from a boost in his ego. Being insecure and accepting to just being "OK", thanks to Sulley, Mike realized that he also has his good qualities.

Trivia

  • Mike's full first name, confirmed by Celia, Ms. Graves, and Emmet is Michael.
  • Mike was used in the Slingshot Challenge game on Novel Games on September 10 2019.
  • Mike was listed #23 in Empire Magazine's The 50 Best Animated Movie Characters.
  • In an early animation test, Mike was considered to have no arms and would have picked things up with his feet. He would have also worn a cowboy/Texan hat. [1]
  • In Monsters University, it is shown that Mike had braces as a child. As a teenager, he had a retainer.
  • As revealed in an early cut-scene, Mike was originally Randall's assistant instead of Fungus.
  • Mike is renamed "Robert 'Bob' Razowski" in the French dub.
  • Mike has a brief cameo, swimming past in scuba gear during the credits of Finding Nemo, returning the favor, so to speak, after there is a Nemo cameo near the end of Monsters, Inc. The "gear" he is wearing was what he wore to "protect" himself from Boo in Monsters, Inc.
  • Mike appears in the end credits of Cars as a small car. This car version of him also appears briefly in Tokyo Mater with Sulley when Mater drives through a building.
  • He also starred in Tomorrowland's attraction, Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor, with Roz.
  • A topper of Mike can be seen in WALL•E.
  • In the original pitch of Monsters, Inc., Mike did not appear in the movie.[citation needed]
  • Mike also wears a contact lens, which is said to be the size of a pizza, considering that he has very poor eyesight on account of being a cyclops.
  • Mike has his own spell card in the Disney World attraction, Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom called, "Mike's Grand Entrance."
  • Whenever Mike Wazowski is shown on public media or most merchandising, such as a Monsters, Inc. commercial or a magazine cover, his face is often covered up by the text on said media (such as the Monsters, Inc. "M eyeball" logo in the commercial and a barcode on the magazine cover). Also, the DVD (and possibly the Blu-Ray Disc) for the film appears to take this even further by having the DVD artwork and the hole in the middle of the DVD used to secure it into place once inside the DVD player both positioned in a way so that the hole is actually placed over Mike's face.
    • A similar thing occurred during Monsters University in which Mike's ID card has his head out of view.
    • The gag of his face being blocked out occurs throughout the two movies, and a running joke is that he is completely oblivious to his face being obscured.
    • This joke is subverted in the first issue of Monsters, Inc.: Laugh Factory, as at the end of the commercial Fungus produced, Mike's face is in full view while Sulley's is hidden behind the company logo.
  • In Monsters University, Mike is 18, meaning that in Monsters, Inc., he is about 28. Despite this, Billy Crystal was around 51 during the production of Monsters Inc., & 63 because the prequel was released 12 years later during the production of Monsters University.
  • As pointed out by Dean Hardscrabble, Mike Wazowski can never become a scarer, so in the original film he ultimately becomes a comedian instead.
  • The character's last name "Wazowski" resembles the name "Lebowski" from the movie The Big Lebowski, which is a film where two actors from Monsters, Inc., Steve Buscemi and John Goodman, had appeared.
  • Mike and Frank McCay both share the same birthdays according to their Scare Cards.
  • Despite them clearly meeting for the first time in Monsters University, Mike remarks at one point in Monsters, Inc. that Sulley had been jealous of his looks since the fourth grade.
    • Additionally, in the first teaser trailer for the movie, Sulley mentions that they were in Geography class together in 5th grade.
    • Interestingly, the filmmakers of the prequel wanted to make the fourth grade line a reality, but felt it was necessary for Mike and Sulley's rivalry to work if they just met. So it can be implied that Mike was just making a joke with the fourth grade line. That and what happens in Pixar trailers aren't always canon in the real film.
  • In Monsters, Inc., 90% of all the monsters have Mike's tongue.[2]
  • The scream that Mike makes when Roz shuts her office door on his hands is the same scream that he makes when Baby Smitty bites his hand.
    • Additionally, this same scream Is used in Monsters University when Mike is dragged out from under the bed by Archie the scare pig.
  • He and Sully are two employees in the scaring department of company to not have any degrees.
  • In an early trailer for the film, Sulley mentions that Mike had a childhood crush named Suzy Boyle.
  • At this time, he later became one of the most popular memes on the internet, but his face was switched with Sulley's.
  • Before Billy Crystal was cast, Eddie Murphy originally auditioned for the role of Mike Wazowski but turned down the role due to being in Shrek. In addition to Murphy, David Schwimmer, Drew Carey, Sinbad, Robin Williams, Jack Black, and Matthew Broderick auditioned for the role of Mike Wazowski.
  • At one point, his image on google changed to a famous face swap between him and Sulley due to it being an extremely widespread internet meme.
  • Mike was named by Muppet performer Frank Oz.

Gallery

References

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