Jonathan Worthington III is the main antagonist of Disney•Pixar's 2013 animated film Monsters University and one of the two main antagonists (alongside Randall Boggs) of the second season of Monsters at Work. He is a Satan-like monster with purple fur, two upward-facing fangs (where his nickname "The Jaw" originates from), and a muscular body.
Background
Official Description
- Johnny Worthington has reason to be supremely confident—he's the top Scare student at Monsters University and president of the best fraternity on campus, Roar Omega Roar. Johnny comes from a long line of MU Scarers and respects the school's legacy, traditions and most of all, the system by which Scaring excellence is judged. He may have been born with a silver spoon in his jaws, but this monster's no softy.[1]
Personality
As president of RΩR, the premiere campus fraternity, Worthington is very selfish, egotistical and only interested in having the "highly elite" Scarers in his fraternity, inviting James P. Sullivan to join, as the latter comes from a family of successful Scarers, but mockingly denies Mike Wazowski and suggesting he joins a fraternity that's "more his speed."
Worthington clearly cares more about his fraternity's reputation (taking grades and academics into account), when he threatens to kick Sulley out of RΩR if he loses to Mike on the final exam. When Mike and Sulley are both kicked out of the Scaring Program by Dean Hardscrabble, Worthington and his frat-boys leave without a word to Sulley.
His rivalry towards Mike escalates when, right before the Scare Simulator, Worthington arrogantly tells Mike not to take losing so hard and that "he never belonged in the Scaring Program anyway." Mike wins the Scare Games due to Sulley's tampering of the settings, thus humiliating and surprising RΩR in its defeat. Worthington is not a sore loser as he admits defeat, offering Sulley back to their group in Randy's place only for Sulley to reject his offer and give him the trophy since he is more concerned in rescuing Mike.
Despite his arrogance, sets art director Robert Kondo explains that he has something to lose, is afraid of failure and has a tradition to live up to.
As shown in Monsters at Work, Johnny doesn't seem to care about the well-being of others as well as his own scare company, Fear Co. for he failed to realize that mixing laugh energy with scare energy could lead to a corporate impact. Which would eventually cause a chain reaction that would affect all of Monstropolis.
Appearances
Monsters University
Johnny first meets Sulley and Mike after the two have been led to the Greek row by Archie the Scare Pig. As other fraternities are trying to get Sulley to join them, Johnny welcomes Sulley and takes him to be a Roar Omega Roar. When Mike tries to attract his attention, Johnny "kindly" tells him that he would be better with Oozma Kappa, the weakest-looking fraternity.
As the semester goes by, the RΩRs are increasingly disappointed by Sulley and feel threatened by Mike as Mike is doing extremely well in the Scare Program as Mike is getting good grades due to taking the material seriously and working hard while Sulley does poorly as he dismisses the need to know “that stuff” to the point where he doesn’t learn anything about Scaring that he doesn’t already know. Johnny finally signifies to Sulley that if he fails the final exam to Mike, he will be removed from RΩR.
Johnny is with the RΩRs on the subscription day for the Scare Games and laughs when Mike presents himself to the competition. The RΩR have great success at the games, coming first at all challenges. However, against all odds, Oozma Kappa somehow stays in the competition after two rounds.
The OKs are invited to a party at the RΩR house that will actually be their doom. In front of everyone present, Johnny congratulates the OKs of how good they did in the Scare Games and invites them to the stage. But when OK are on stage, Johnny tells his brothers to spill on them paint, glitter and flowers. Randall spills bunny plushies on them and Chet photographs them. Johnny and the RΩRs open a stand the next day and massively sell products featuring the embarrassing picture, supposedly to collect funds for a "good" cause. He tells them that no matter what, they'll never be real scarers. They took this to heart since they know he's right: they can't keep trying to be something they're not. However, Mike takes the OKs to Monsters, Inc. where he and his team watch scarers do their jobs which inspires him and his team to just be themselves in the games.
When they see the OKs continue to perform better and better at the Scare Games, Johnny and his crew are increasingly upset but hope to get the last word at the final race, which tests how scary a monster really is. At the last race, the fight between OK and RΩR is intense. Johnny is highly irritated by Randy's failure. Johnny is on the last and decisive face-off, where he is against Mike. Confident of his win, he repeats one last time to Mike his place is not here and then proceeds to get a near-perfect score. But Mike gets the maximum score, a full scream can, beating Johnny and bringing the victory to OK, much to Johnny's shock.
Following the race, Johnny tries to bring Sulley back to RΩR at the place of Randy, but Sulley refuses and gave the trophy to him, then heads off to save Mike from both entering the door lab and end up stuck in the real world, leaving Johnny and his gang utterly confused.
During the credits, it is shown that Johnny got a job as a scarer at FearCo, his family company.
Monsters at Work
Johnny appears in Season 2 as one of the top scarers at Fear Co. and its current CEO (the company having been run by his family for generations) which has not chosen to switch over to laugh energy after the events of the original film. He is also shown to have married Claire Wheeler and raised two kids with her, and is now noticeably overweight. When Tylor Tuskmon finds himself struggling as a jokester, Johnny offers him a job to actually put his scaring degree to use. At first, Tylor politely turns him down, but reconsiders after his family is revealed to be barely getting by financially and when Tylor is accused of corporate sabotage at Monsters, Inc., Johnny then finally gives him a job as a scarer. Eventually, he reveals to Tylor that he and former Monsters, Inc. scarer Randall Boggs have been robbing Monsters, Inc. of Laugh Power and also reveals that they orchestrated all the bad things happening at M.I., including framing Tylor to get him on their side. Tylor, having experienced that mixing Laugh and Scream energies will make the canister unstable and explode, tries to warn Johnny of the danger, but Johnny assures him that everything will be fine and plans to pass off mixing the resources as a machine that enhances Scream Energy. Reconciling with MIFT, Tylor and his friends manage to stop Johnny and Randall, with Worthington getting arrested and is soon revealed to be the cellmate of Henry J. Waternoose III.
Party Central
Johnny Worthington briefly appears in Party Central. He enters the hall of the RΩR house, preparing to greet his guests, but he is shocked to see instead the room empty of both monsters and supplies.
Gallery
Trivia
- The RΩR house's interior was based on a backstory Johnny had.
- In Disney Tsum Tsum, Johnny could be fought as a boss during the Japan Pixar Story Books Event in March 2020 and the International Pixar Storybooks Event in May 2020. He was erroneously referred to as "Johnny Washington" in the International version.
- Like Skinner, Johnny technically both loses and wins, since while he loses the Scare Games, it is revealed that Sulley cheated by setting the difficulty to easy so that makes RΩR winners by default. Unlike Skinner, who ultimately loses in the end despite having shut down Gusteau's, Johnny ultimately wins in the end since they are the true winners of the Scare Games since Sulley cheated, although he and his team never knew about it despite losing, until the events of Monsters At Work when he hears about it. As a result, the winner remains disputed or deduced by viewers.
- His voice actor, Nathan Fillion, would later voice fellow antagonist Sterling in Cars 3.
- Interestingly, both Johnny and Sterling have a bunch of similarities:
- Both are introduced in follow-up films (Monsters University for Johnny; Cars 3 for Sterling).
- Both get to be owners of different companies (Fear Co. for Johnny; Rust-eze for Sterling).
- Both have personal vendettas against the main characters.
- Both managed to sabotage the protagonists (Monsters, Inc. workers for Johnny; Lightning McQueen and Cruz Ramirez for Sterling).
- Both have downfalls that have an impact to the story (Johnny got arrested; Sterling lost his ownership to Rust-eze after DINOCO bought it).
- Both of them don't like being called "Mr.".
- Interestingly, both Johnny and Sterling have a bunch of similarities:
- His name might be similar to Honest John's real name, John Worthington Foulfellow.
- He bears similarities to Bradley Uppercrust III from An Extremely Goofy Movie.
- Both are not only influential leaders in the Panhellenic Greek system at their respective colleges, but they also lead a fraternity and are extremely selective of whom they allow into them.
- Additionally, they both selected major characters to be allowed into their circle of friends for the purpose of collegiate game competition. With Johnny, he picked Sulley (at first) and, later on, Randall because he was sure that they would be excellent Scarers for the Scare Games. With Bradley, he chose Max (though he quickly rejected the offer) and, later on, Goofy (who would soon after separate himself from his group) because he noticed their skills in skateboarding and thought he could use them to his advantage for the College X-Games.
- Furthermore, they both show good sportsmanship after conceding defeat. Unlike Johnny, however, Bradley does attempt to cheat and nearly get Tank killed in his drive to win, which resulted in his downfall since Tank gets revenge on him.
References
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