Mr. Waternoose
Mr. Henry J. Waternoose the Third is the main antagonist of Monsters, Inc. He is client of the Devils in the world of Monstropolis.
History and Description[]
The story of Waternoose and his fall to darkness is linked with the history of his homeworld. Long ago, the Devils discovered a very easy way to collect a lot of fear energy: to scare a very emotive kind of people, namely young children. For that purpose, they directed a race of short, hairy hapless creatures called Mons into sailing away to an enchanted island of the Devils' creation, and eating the food of the island, which transformed them into a myriad of monstrous new forms. Then, after stoking the flames of vengeance and hatred within the Monsters' hearts, the Devils persuaded the Monsters to go to various worlds to scare children and collect the energy. But, though they liked to scare as a way of getting back at humanity for chasing them away beforehand, the Monsters were not evil as the Devils expected them to become; they didn't want to help the Devils in their plot to darken the whole multiverse into a gigantic hell. So instead, they escaped through a portal back to the enchanted island which they had come to love as their one true home. Starting from nothing, they created Monstropolis, a futuristic city for them to live in peacefully. But a city such as this one needed energy to sustain itself, and the only kind of energy the monsters knew about was the fear energy. Using portals created for this purpose by using their knowledge of magic acquired from the Friends, the Monsters then daily visited a magic-less world, where they scared children every night to collect energy. But the Devils hate the High Council and anything good; for that reason, when the Monsters lived with the Devils, they had been conditioned to fear and avoid anything that resembled a High Council agent. Being pure and kind by nature, children then inspired great fear to the Monsters.
Unfortunately, as time went on, the human children of the magic-less world became harder to scare due to being jaded by the increasingly negative historical events reported to them on the news. Therefore, the reserves of Fear Energy the Monsters had used to power their world were slowly being dwindled away to a shortage. This distressed Mr. Waternoose, the kind, fatherly corporate executive of Monsters Inc., one of the leading Fear Energy companies in Monstropolis, as he feared he would lose the company that had been in his family for three generations, and he vowed to do anything to keep it from going under.
That was when the Devils made their move. Sensing Waternoose's despair event horizon, they approached him with an offer he couldn't refuse: start kidnapping human children from the magic-less world and drain them completely of their souls to deliver to the Devils, and they in turn would provide him and his company with all the energy needed to save the world from a permanent blackout and collapse. Waternoose was horrified at this offer, as he knew collecting the souls of the children would get him thrown in jail in a hurry if he were found out, but the Devils simply sweetened the deal by lessening it so that Waternoose wouldn't have to drain the childrens' souls, just all of their Fear Energy, keeping them alive but incapacitated for a little while, and he can just give them a little portion of the fear energy he collected to keep him on good terms with them so no one would have to know. That was the key to bringing Waternoose to their side, and he, now satisfied with the lessened terms, accepted the deal right then and there.
Waternoose had hoped to bring both of his Top Scarers Sulley and Randall on board with his plans on the good it would do for the company and the city, but only Randall ended up accepting due to his pride, greed, and desire for revenge on Sulley for his earlier humiliation at a Scare Games tournament back in college. In fact, it was Randall's technical know-how with the Scream Extractor that helped jumpstart their plans to begin delivering children for fear energy draining. Unfortunately, due to Sulley stumbling on one of Randall's kidnapping missions leading to a massive-wide panic of a human child entering the monster world, Waternoose was eventually forced to reveal himself and his plans, slowly becoming corrupted with darkness as his desperation stripped away his morals, determined to not let anything stop what he thinks will be the best way for the company to keep going, never taking into account looking for other energy resources. In the end, after jumping off the slippery slope by declaring his newfound drive to kidnap every child to drain them of their souls to keep the company from dying, Waternoose was finally defeated and taken away to prison for his crimes against Monstropolis.
Now that he was fully on their side despite his arrest, the Devils began making plans to engineer Waternoose's escape from prison, using a portal door of their own design called the "Master Door" to allow Randall entry back to Monstropolis and free Waternoose from his cell. The two began using the Master Door to begin harvesting Fear Energy from hapless children and turn them against the Monster Comedians of Monsters Inc. to ensure the Devils' return to power over the monsters. Though they were defeated, the game was not over yet, and they were joined by a third agent of the Devils, Sid Phillips, to embark on one last caper for revenge against Mike and Sulley: kidnapping toy agents of the High Council from kids' rooms to leave the children without any divine protection from their subsequent scare assault, as well as use the Door technology to get rich in the Human World. In the end, Waternoose and his henchmen were defeated yet again, and placed under CDA arrest for good, though Sid would later reform and join the High Council in his adult years. The Devils, meanwhile, decided that Waternoose was a lost cause for acquiring Fear Energy and subsequently abandoned him to rot in prison.