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"Do you hear that? It's the winds of change..."
—Randall to Sulley and Mike

Randall "Randy" Boggs is a chameleon/gecko-like monster that was a member of the Roar Omega Roar fraternity at Monsters University and worked as a scarer for Monsters, Inc.. He appeared in Monsters, Inc. and its prequel, Monsters University.

Physical Appearance[]

Randall is a monster that looks akin to a lizard. He has small sharp teeth, two green eyes that are nearly on top of his head, and three fronds on the top of his head. He is quadrupedal, with eight limbs in total. (Four legs and four arms.) He has three toes and three fingers on each of his limbs. His skin is covered by small smooth scales that are usually dark purple in colour. The scales on his tail are blue instead of purple, like the rest of his body. Of course you can't see any of this when he is camaflauged. (Except the teeth)

In Monsters University, Randall appears to have brighter purple and blue scales. His eyes are and larger he wears a pair of convex glasses with round purple frames to help him see. These magnifed his eyes so much that it gave him a very… different… more cheerful… appearance.

Monsters, Inc.[]

Randall is Sulley and Mike's arch-nemesis.

Randall's scare assistant is Fungus, who usually annoys him. He usually gets into small disagreements with Mr. Waternoose, who serves as Randall's partner-in-crime.

Randall 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 in order to end the energy crisis, 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. Sulley and Mike take the child home with them, since children are forbidden in their world due to a belief that they can infect the monsters. Randall later discovers the pair's connection to Boo after seeing Mike in the newspaper with her. Aware that she's somewhere in the factory, he makes a deal with Mike to return Boo home. Mike agrees, unaware that he actually intends to kidnap her once she's back in her room. He ends up kidnapping Mike by mistake (due to Sulley and Boo distrusting Randall and Mike attempting to discredit them), but decides to use him as a test subject for the machine; however, Sulley saves him at the last second. Sulley and Mike are exiled when their secret is revealed to ensure that they can't get in their way and to keep them from exposing their plot to the public. 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 return and wreck the Scream Extractor, Mr. Waternoose tells Randall to stop Sulley, then Randall attacks and strangles him. He proves to be quite an adversary due to his cloaking abilities; he also states to Sulley how he had personally waited so long to attack him. 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 had 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, which disrupts his stealth with multiple obvious patterns. Sulley then restrains him with a chokehold, followed by a snake wrestling maneuver, and throws him through a door leading to a southern marsh, where he is mistaken as an alligator and mercilessly attacked by some Trailer Folk. The door's light is shattered by Sulley and then tipped over the railing it was leaning against and shatters onto the floor far below, ensuring that Randall can never return. Sulley congratulates Boo for beating him and she then blows a raspberry in his direction.

Afterwards, Sulley and Mike expose Mr. Waternoose of Randall's plan to the CDA, thereby getting Waternoose arrested and foiling their plan once and for all. Mike retold the events of the film in his play Put That Thing Back Where It Came From or So Help Me, exposing Randall's conspiracy to the public; The audience watching the play are seen booing against this depiction of Randall, indicating that his reputation has been permanently tarnished by his crimes. Fungus is noticeably much happier after Randall's absence and still works as a respected employee at Monsters Inc.

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 appears in the prequel and is nicknamed "Randy" in this film. He was depicted as 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 organized by the cool kids. At the party, Randy tries to offer cupcakes to some girls that were in Eta Hiss Hiss, 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 event of the Scare Games, Sulley accidentally ruins Randy's attempt to scare the child dummy, as his roar is so strong that it makes him fall onto a carpet and change into a humiliating pattern of pink with red hearts (similar to a pair of cartoon boxer shorts). Due to this, his scare is weak and ineffective, giving him a poor score (7.5 points out of 20), with Oozma Kappa being tied with Roar Omega Roar because of this. Randy swears revenge on Sulley as he is criticized by the fraternity and presumably expelled afterwards.

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

Monsters, Inc.: Laugh Factory[]

In the Laugh Factory 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 after being banished to the Himalayas). In the fourth issue, he is helped by a human boy named Sid Phillips (the main antagonist of Toy Story), and they, along with Mr. Waternoose, aim to extract revenge on Sulley and Mike in order for the villains to rise to power.

Monsters, Inc. video games[]

Monsters, Inc. (GBA Version)[]

In the Gameboy advanced version of the Monsters Inc. game, Randall does appear as a boss in the game. His appearance is different for his first boss battle, appearing blue and he seems to have the ability to summon ice spikes on the ground for the player to avoid and is able to teleport; this ability wasn't shown in the movie. Randell is fought the 2nd time but he is the final boss of the game. Though he loses his teleportation ability and chooses not to use his ice powers, he seems to have the ability to generate a CDA energy shield that deflects some of Sully's Roar attacks but the shield seems to vanish every 2 or 3 roars; 2 CDA employees also accompany him to make the boss battle more difficult but they can be stunned.

Monsters, Inc. Scream Team[]

Randall appears in Monsters, Inc. Scream Team as the game's recurring boss. He appears during Pursuit Races and must be defeated by reaching the goal before him while collecting a specified number of Monster Tokens. Randall will always take shortcuts via Trampolines, Speedboost Arrows or Flingshots whenever possible, which the player can also take, but at the risk of not gathering enough Tokens. In the final race, Arctic Pursuit, Randall cheats by starting during the countdown.

Disney Infinity[]

Randall also appears as a playable character in Disney Infinity with his Monsters University design.

Kingdom Hearts III[]

Randall also makes an appearance in Kingdom Hearts III as the boss of the Monstropolis level. After narrowly escaping the trailer at the end of Monsters, Inc., Randall met Vanitas, who repaired his door and lent him his Unversed soldiers to aid his quest for revenge. Insisting that laughter is unsustainable, Randall decides to gather much more negative emotions.

Personality[]

In Monsters University, Randall was originally a kind, timid teenage monster who would hang out with Mike. However, after Mike was forced to befriend Sulley and stopped associating with Randall, he felt hurt and this caused him to slowly turn on Mike and become his new enemy, even though he betrayed Mike in the first place.

In Monsters, Inc., Randall is greedy, ruthless, sneaky, short-tempered, competitive and overall evil in nature. Judging by his intentions to capture children for their screams (and possibly never return them), he is probably willing to severely harm children (or worse).

Trivia[]

  • In the international version of the scene when Mike Wazowski was chasing after Archie the Scare Pig, the cupcakes had smiley faces instead of "Be my Pal."
  • Randall's original names were "Switt" and "Ned." He was named "Ned" in the early treatment and "Switt" in the original opening.
    • In another deleted scene, another name for Randall was "Switch."
  • In an early script for the film, instead of Fungus, Mike Wazowski worked for him.
  • Randall's design was said to be based on a veiled chameleon, with several qualities of geckos. His signature head crest is reminiscent of the possible wings of Longisquama, an extinct lizard from the Triassic period.
  • 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 antenna on his head, as opposed to Randall's violet scales and three antennae.
  • In Scream Arena, a Nintendo GameCube 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 squints in Monsters, Inc. as he is myopic.
  • Randall is presumably 18 in the prequel, meaning he is likely 28 in the first film. Despite this, Steve Buscemi was around 42 during the production of Monsters Inc., and around 55 during the production of Monsters University.
  • 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 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 pink spots, pink and yellow plaid, white with red stars, a shade of dark turquoise, 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.
  • When his skin gets a heart pattern in the Scare Games final, one of the hearts is where his nose would be if he had one.
  • According to the M.U. website, Randall was inept at his ability in his youth. He presumably had to master for a decade.
  • Randall serves as the host of "Pinball Panic," which came as a bonus disc with select copies of the Monsters, Inc. 2-disc Collector's Edition DVD.
  • Above Randall's bed in Monsters University is a framed inspirational poster with the words "The Winds of Change: Can you hear them?" printed. This is a reference to his infamous quote from the first film.
  • James Woods, Willem Dafoe, Andy Dick, Chris Barrie, Jim Carrey, Vincent D'Onofrio and Jeff Goldblum were all considered for the role of Randall before Steve Buscemi was cast.
  • According to Randall's Scare Card, Randall is 5'0" (1.52m), weighs around 220lbs (99.7kg), and was born on March 26.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, Mike and Sulley explain his banishment was because he had tried to collect screams by force. However, Mr. Waternoose isn't mentioned despite the fact that he was working with Randall in the film.

Gallery[]

References[]

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