20 More So-Called Happy Movie Endings That Absolutely Aren't
13. Monsters Inc.
Anyone who has watched a Pixar film or two will know that they are not all smiles and sunshine. There are some truly harrowing, emotionally traumatic moments throughout the likes of Toy Story, Up, Finding Nemo, Coco, and more, but generally, at least the stories tend to end on a happy note.
That may seem to be the case with Monsters Inc., as Mike and Sully (Billy Crystal and John Goodman) discovered the power of laughter as an alternate and more potent energy source to screams, but there was far more of a fallout to such a change than was shown.
Imagine completely flipping such a huge and vital industry to Monstropolis on its head like that. Monsters who had been scarers all their lives would simply not be able to make it as comedians, and would in all likelihood wind up unemployed. The same could be said for any of the students going through Monsters U. with a view to being a scarer.
The latter was actually explored in Monsters at Work on Disney+, which showed Tylor (Ben Feldman) struggling with transitioning to comedy after leading his class as the best scarer since James P. Sullivan. Teething problems and dangerous power outages, as well as widespread unemployment and wasted education as a result of the big Monsters Inc. change, would mean the world would arguably have been thrown into more turmoil than before.