7 Fun facts about Monsters, Inc.

“Mike Wazowski!”

Tonight’s feature for family movie night was the fabulous Monsters, Inc. from Pixar. My husband hadn’t yet seen the movie, and it was fun to watch his reactions to the movie. He liked it, and my tween is always happy to see it again. In honor of this evening’s fun, here are a few facts about Monsters, Inc. that you may not have known.

“You’re the boss. You’re the boss. You’re the big hairy boss,” announces Mike Wazowski, as top scarer James P. “Sulley” Sullivan walks into work. In fact, Sulley has has 2,320,413 individual hairs on his body and each one had to be animated, making Sulley an incredibly time consuming character. Slate reports that each frame of Sulley took 11 to 12 hours. I always thought his hair blowing the wind in Nepal was some incredible animation.

It’s impossible to think of Mike Wazowski as voiced by anyone other than Billy Crystal. Crystal was not, however, the first choice for the role. Bill Murray was the first choice, according to Buzzfeed. Anyone else really glad that didn’t work out?

Mike takes girlfriend Celia on a date to the fancy restaurant Harryhausen’s. The name of the restaurant is a tribute to the great animator and special effects artist Ray Harryhausen.

My tween was excited to see Jessie and Nemo, other stars of Pixar films, in Boo’s bedroom. Toy Story 2, which stars Jessie, was released in 1999, two years prior to the release of Monsters, Inc. Finding Nemo, however, did not come out until 2003, so it could be said that this was the little clown fish’s cinematic debut.

Jeff Fungus and Miss Piggy have something in common: they are both voiced by Frank Oz.

Watching tonight, I was struck by how much John Ratzenberger’s Yeti looks like the Abominable Snowman from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. According to Screen Crush, that’s not an accident. The former is in fact based on the latter.

He says of his name, “Abominable! Can you believe that? Do I look abominable to you? Why can’t they call me the Adorable Snowman or…or the Agreeable Snowman, for crying out loud? I’m a nice guy.”

The joke of the day on the laugh floor at the end of the film is The doctor says to the patient, “What seems to be the trouble?” Raising his arms, the patient says, “It hurts when I do this.” That’s all that show son the screen. The punch line that isn’t show is “The doctor says, ‘Don’t do that.'”