Randall Boggs

Randall "Randy" Boggs is the one of the two main antagonists in Disney/Pixar's 2001 film Monsters, Inc., the other being Henry J. Waternoose, and the supporting protagonist turned tertiary antagonist in its 2013 prequel Monsters University. He is voiced by Steve Buscemi.

Personality
As a college freshman in Monsters University, Randall, or "Randy" as he was called then, was quite friendly, clumsy and a little socially awkward. Out of his lack of self-confidence he expressed a desire to be in with the "cool crowd," so he can feel bearly a bit stronger as he would be in a shadow of the strongest and the most popular one. Being shy, he had little control over his invisibility and found it a little embarrassing until his roommate, Mike Wazowski, convinced him to use it in his Scaring studies "but lose the glasses, they give it away," which is what led to Randy discarding his glasses and taking on his characteristic squint. After he was accepted by the Roar Omega Roar fraternity, the lizard's personality began to change drastically. Apparently, because of the fraternity's negative influence, Randall willingly participated in their devious activities, and appeared to take enjoyment in pulling the prank on Oozma Kappa, even though Mike was part of OK. After this, his friendship with Mike began to disappear along with his originally shy personality, as he started to develop a more ruthless and vengeful one. He also demonstrated more control over his invisibility, but still could not control timing, as he accidentally camouflaged with a pink-heart pattern on a carpet due to the vibration Sulley made, which caused him to fall down and lose to OK. His loss against Sulley also appeared to bring out his darker traits that would come later in life and eventually cause him to become the cruel monster he is today.

In Monsters, Inc., Randall is Sulley and Mike's direct rival and nemesis. His lack of confidence is overcome, and he even appears to be aroggant, as he replays with "I plan to" when Sulley offers him his hand and says: "May the best monster win Randall's scare assistant is Fungus, who usually annoys him because of his slowness. It shows his impatient nature. He usually gets into small disagreements with Mr. Waternoose. He also is implied to be treacherous, as he responds to Waternoose's statements about not leaving behind any witnesses to their actions. Too, he is shown as very intelligent and able to do most of the dirty work of Waternoose's plot very well. Randall's nature can sometimes turn from cunning and deliberate version to one extremly violent and murderous, as he almost strangles Sulley to death by his own hands during their fight. When Mr. Waternoose told him that "there can't be any witnesses," Randall responded in a sinister way that "there won't be," which suggests that he also plans on also killing Waternoose after Sulley and Mike.

Monsters University
In the prequel, Randall (nicknamed "Randy") is first seen when Mike arrives to his new room, as Randall is his roommate. The two greet each other, and Randall seems nice, offering Mike first choice of the beds. Randall shows that he has the power to turn invisible, doing so when surprised, leaving only his glasses hovering in mid air. Mike suggests that he should use that power when scaring, to Randall's suprise. He soon follows Mike's advice of getting rid of his glasses because they don't disappear whenever he turns invisible. Randall 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, Randall decided to bake cupcakes for a party organized by the cool kids, decorating them to spell "Be My Pal". At the party, Randall tries to offer cupcakes to some girls, but Mike runs into him while riding Archie the Scare Pig, splattering all the cupcakes on Randall, which spell "lame," with the letters on them, much to his dismay.

He is later seen helping Mike study by asking him questions on phobias (such as arachnophobia, fear of spiders).

However, Randall ends up slowly decreasing his friendship with Mike when he replaces Sulley as a member of Roar Omega Roar and thus was unable to help Mike and join Oozma Kappa as their sixth member, since he's finally in with the "cool kids". His friendship with Mike decreased further when Randall took part in his group's prank on Mike's team, Oozma Kappa.

After this, he is frequently seen in group shots of the Roar Omega Roar until the final event of the Scare Games, where he faces off against Sulley. Randall is poised to scare, when the vibrations from Sulley's roar, cause him to fall on a carpet and involuntarily blend in with its pink and heart pattern, causing his scare score to be minimal, resulting in his former "friends" berating him. After this, he looks over bitterly at Sulley and mumbles his last line in the film, "That's the last time I lose to you, Sullivan." Because of this, Randall assumedly begins his gradual descent into villainy as his jealousy for Sulley grows over the years. Because of his hatred for Sulley, he also comes to no longer accept Mike as well, but not for the same reason. Randall seems to hate Mike by the time Monsters Inc. happens, not because of anything that he personally did to him, like Sulley, but simply because of Mike's close association with him.

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

Monsters, Inc.
Years later, Randall works as a Scarer for Monsters, Inc. by entering children's rooms through a system of closet doors and scaring them to extract their scream energy. He is in competition with Sulley and Mike for the glorious post of Top Scarer. He also managed to beat Sulley and become the Top Scarer, although the victory was short lived when Sully managed to scare an entire slumber party and regain his spot seconds later. However, Randall has also constructed a "Scream Extractor," and attempts to kidnap a human child in cooperation with the company's leader, Henry J. Waternoose, with the hope of eventually rising to the leadership of the company.

However, this plot failed when Sulley was sent by Mike after closing hours to recover paperwork (which Mike forgot to turn in) and stumbled upon the kid, whom Sulley nicknamed Boo. After Mike and Sulley are exiled, Randall and Waternoose 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, as well as pointing out that Sulley was "twice the scarer Randall could ever be"). After Sulley manages to escape and wreck the Scream Extractor, Randall then attacks Sulley and tries to strangle him. He proves to be quite an adversary, due to his chameleon-like abilities. However, when Mike gets annoyed with the fact that Sulley is not listening to his apology, he throws a snowball at him, hitting Randall instead: allowing Mike to realize that Randall has been attacking Sulley. Randall then gave pursuit and had them cornered at the Scare Floor, although Celia, after learning the truth from Mike, aided them by "awarding" Randall with the all-time Scare Record (although Randall was too determined to stop Sully and Mike to care about his "victory"). He goes after the trio in a chase through the factory until he manages to grab Boo and escape into an activated door. When Sulley comes to rescue her, Randall surprises him and attempts to send him falling from the door, lamenting of how Sulley was always the best Scarer and with him gone, Randall will finally come on top. Suddenly, Boo begins to pull on his frond and hits him with a baseball bat, making him turn different colors, then Sulley restrains him with a chokehold, followed by a snake wrestling maneuver.

Afterwards, he gets thrown through an active door, while desperately begging them not to do it, that banishes him to a trailer home in the middle of a swamp in the south, where a cajun family beats Randall senseless with a shovel, thinking that he is a gator. The door then has its glass light shattered, and is then tipped over the railing it was leaning against and shatters on the floor far below, thus ensuring that Randall cannot return through the door.

Monsters, Inc. Laugh Factory
Randall, as a secondary antagonist, eventually found his way back to Monstropolis using the door system and survived his encounter with the hillbillys. As part of his revenge against Mike and Sulley, he tried to frame Mike for stealing other monster's comedy props. After Mike has been sent to prison, Randall strikes again trying to frame Sulley for assault on Waxford when he visits him in the security camera room to look at the tapes of the locker room. The fight makes it's way to the Laugh Floor where after being unable to hit Randall, Sulley succeeds in exposing him by pulling the fire alarm. Randall is sent to monster prison afterwards and Mike's name is cleared. Later, Randall would be freed by Sid Phillips (who had visited the Monster World earlier) alongside Mr. Waternoose and the three would together work on another revenge plot. They cut off the door power when Mike and Sulley return from a visit to Boo's and try to figure out how to go about their revenge. Randall turns down Waternoose's idea of a frame job and Sid just wants his reward of being given the door system patents to become rich in the human world. Eventually, Celia and Boo escape when Boo activates her door and the three villains give chase while shutting Mike and Sulley out of it. Going through the neighbor's house, all three try to capture them, but Celia and Boo make it to the resident child's closet and bring the three right to a CDA task force waiting to take them into custody. It is unknown if Randall ever reformed and was released, though there is an extremely small chance.

Disney Parks
Randall appears in various attractions based on Monsters, Inc, such as Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! at Disney California Adventure and Monsters, Inc. Ride and Go Seek at Tokyo Disneyland. In Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek, Randall has returned to Monstropolis and tries to capture Boo once again.

Trivia

 * Randall's original names were "Switt" and "Ned." He was named "Ned" in the early treatment, and "Switt" in the original opening.
 * Randall is the third Pixar villain to be physically fought, the first two being Hopper and Stinky Pete.
 * Randall is ranked #27 in the Top 30 Disney Villains.
 * In a early script for the film in place of Fungus, Mike Wazowski was going to be Randall's assistant instead.
 * Randall shares the same first name and many traits of Randall Weems from the Disney television series Recess. Both characters are sneaky, mean, and have the same posture.
 * Randall for some reason is the only Scarer in the film that is referred by his first name on the Scarers' Leaderboard rather than by his last name. This could imply that "Randall" at one point was actually going to be his last name rather than his first name.
 * Strangely, he is referred to by his last name by his fraternity brothers and at the Scare Games in Monsters University.
 * 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 frond, as opposed to Randall's purple scales and three fronds.
 * In Scream Arena, a computer game 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 seen squinting in Monsters, Inc., since he cannot see well without glasses.
 * 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 the movie 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 purple spots (Sulley's own color scheme), pink and yellow plaid, white with red stars, 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.
 * According to the M.U. website, Randall had very little control over his camouflaging abilities as a kid. Though MU the movie does not go into detail on this fact, it can assumed that between the events of M.U. and M.I., Randall had learned to assume near perfect control over his abilities.
 * Randall is the second Pixar villain (the first being Sid Phillips) to appear in two movies of their franchise, and the first to have a main role in two movies.
 * 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 movie.
 * Randall serves as the host of the PC game "Pinball Panic", which came as a bonus disc with select copies of the Monsters, Inc. 2-disc Collector's Edition DVD.
 * Despite being an antagonist, Randall has a surprisingly large fanbase, many of whom do not believe he is as evil as others believe. Some argue that it is because of these fans that Randall reappeared as the nervous and insecure Randy in Monsters University, though there is no official evidence for this claim.