Mike Wazowski is the deuteragonist of the movie Monsters, Inc. and the main protagonist of the prequel Monsters University. He is a short, unfrightening monster who works at Monsters, Inc. and is best friends with James P. Sullivan.
Appearance[]
Mike is a short, rotund monster with a spherical body that lacks a distinct head. He has bright green skin, two arms with four digits on each hand and two thin legs with three toes on each foot. He has a single large eye, a wide mouth with pointed teeth and two short horns on his top.
Monsters, Inc.[]
In the first film of the series, Mike Wazowski is Sulley's best friend and his assistant. At Monsters, Inc., Mike's job is to set up doors leading to the human world where Sulley is to scare children so that the monsters can harness their terrified screams for energy. While not a Scarer himself, Mike knows everything that the job entails and advises Sulley on scaring tactics so that he excels at his work and maintains his title as the company's top Scarer.
After an incident at the plant results in a human child arriving in the monster world, Sulley turns to Mike for help in hiding her until they can find a way to send her home. Mike is initially hesitant to help, believing that the girl - whom Sulley calls "Boo" - to be toxic, as all monsters have been led to believe. Mike eventually comes around and helps Sulley sneak Boo back into the plant, but their plan is discovered by Randall Boggs and their boss, Henry J. Waternoose. Waternoose has Mike and Sulley banished to a frozen wasteland, after which Mike gets angry at Sulley for not standing up to Waternoose.
Mike and Sulley eventually make up and find a way to get back to their own world. When they return, they learn that Randall and Waternoose are involved in a scam to drain children of their screams and Sulley tricks Waternoose into confessing everything. Mike records Waternoose's confession and shows it to the CDA as evidence, which leads to Waternoose being arrested. After Boo is returned to her room, the CDA destroy her door so that her closet can't be accessed again. Some time later, Monsters, Inc. is reorganized into a laughter processing plant that harnesses children's laughter rather than screams. Mike even rebuilds Boo's door so that Sulley can see her again.
Monsters University[]
In the second film, Mike's origins before going to Monsters, Inc. are revealed. Ever since he was a child, he dreamed of becoming a scarer and over time he studied scares more and more until he graduated from Monsters University. It was at the university where he first met Randall Boggs, his roommate who later became his best friend. He also met Sulley there, but their relationship was initially a rivalry as the two competed to become top scarer, something that Sulley naturally excelled at while Mike failed miserably.
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 Dean Hardscrabble into accepting a wager: if OK wins, she allows the fraternity into the Scare Program; but if they lose, Mike has to leave MU. Sulley joins the team, which Mike has to accept since they need six 'bodies' and Randall has joined ROR, abandoning Mike. OK only makes it through the Toxicity Challenge because Jaws Theta Chi was disqualified. 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 get badly humiliated. 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.
Thanks to Mike's rigorous training regimen, OK manage to progress through the games smoothly up until the final round, where the teams have to take part in a Scare Simulator. Mike goes last and is pitted against Johnny Worthington III. However, Sulley isn't confident that Mike is scary enough to pass and so he rigs the simulator so that Mike gets the highest score. After OK win the final event, Sulley admits what he did and Mike becomes enraged. Furious that no one will give him a fair chance to scare on his own merit, Mike decides to go to the human world and prove himself. Arriving in a summer camp, he attempts to scare a little girl, but the girl is not alone. When the children all gang up to attack him, Mike finally realizes that he isn't scary at all and runs away.
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, the both of them venting their frustrations. They eventually patch things up with each other 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 knowledge of scare tactics, Sulley scares the adults, which not only activates the door but overloads every scream canister in the room, as well as the door itself. Mike and Sulley make it back, but are expelled for their actions.
The two say their goodbyes to their OK brothers, who tell them that Hardscrabble was impressed with their performance in the games and allowed them 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."
Not long after their expulsion, Mike and Sulley find work at Monsters, Inc. as mail clerks. Over time, the two of them work their way up, becoming janitors, kitchen assistants, and eventually rookie Scarers. Sulley excels at scaring while Mike becomes his assistant.
Personality[]
Mike 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 Mae. 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.