Why did the monsters in Monsters University and Monsters Inc. believe the children being scared were toxic?

Well, if you believe in Jon Negroni's Pixar Theory (if you don't know what that is, I recommend checking it out online, I'll be referencing it quite often in this book), it may have been because the monsters once were human.

Just for a quick review, here's a brief summary of the Pixar timeline created by Jon Negroni.

Several million years ago. The Good Dinosaur. Rather than striking Earth and wiping out all the dinosaurs, a gargantuan asteroid simply passes our planet by, marking the beginning of the alternate timeline. Eventually the dinosaurs die off anyway, so skip forward another several million years, to the dark ages in Scotland. Wisps of magic begin to appear, causing animals to start exhibiting humanlike qualities and becoming more intelligent. Along with this, these wisps also have the ability to create doorways and portals. Flash forward another thousand years or so, and you're in the 1950's/60's. The government finds a way to harness "human energy" (emotion) and when applied correctly, can be used to create people with superhuman abilities- the supers. This creates problems, though, and soon supers are no longer being created. However, highly advanced technology is still being created, and it eventually gets too smart to wonder why it has to take orders. This tech "disappears".

A few decades later, the A.I. has found a way to create its own company, Buy N Large, and they are now creating toys. These toys, like the supers, feed off of human (children) emotion, and come to life. There are hints of pollution becoming quite dire. Animals begin to further their intelligence. One man, Charles Muntz, begins to suspect the intelligence of the animals, and creates devices for them to display that intelligence (i.e. the collars for his dogs that allow them to speak). BNL continues to grow as well, becoming more and more powerful and influential, even on a global scale. Meanwhile, the pollution gets worse and worse, to the point of making Earth too dangerous to inhabit. BNL creates a fleet of starships which everyone on Earth must board to save themselves from the toxic environment on the once- blue planet. When they leave, all other life dies off, and some robots are left behind to clean up the earth.

What was meant to be a five year trip turned into several hundred, and while the humans are gone, the machines left behind take over, specifically, the cars. They take on the personalities of the last person who drove them (this is actually its own theory), but they encounter an energy crisis when the oil begins to run low. Eventually the cars lose their lives as well. The humans send out a drone to check for organic life on Earth, and the search is successful. The humans return to their planet, and begin to bring things (very slowly) back to the way they were pre-pollution. Animals begin to return as well, but bugs are by far the most advanced.

Somehow, either animals or humans begin to evolve, becoming much more varied in shape and size, turning into monsters. These monsters, whether they came from animals or humans, got o war with the humans, and the monsters are victorious. They establish their own new society. As with the cars, they begin to run the risk of losing their way of obtaining energy- which is through scaring children. Scream energy isn't as powerful as it once was. Eventually it is discovered that laugh energy is so much more powerful than scream energy, and the transition to this method marks Monstropolis beginning to truly thrive.

This is the end of the timeline, however, there is a catch. One of the monsters accidentally exposed a little girl to the monster world, and even after he returned her home, she didn't forget what she'd seen. All her life, she attempted to find a way back to that world. After several decades, she was able to find a way to transport herself, but it wasn't to the monster world- it was to the dark ages. Boo became the witch in Brave.

The theory sounds crazy, but it's amazing. There is so much evidence to support it, if you read between the lines and notice specific details in the films. I could go on and on, but that's not what the focus of this part is. Going back to the initial question...

Why did the monsters in Monsters University and Monsters Inc. believe the children being scared were toxic?

Personally, I believe the monsters evolved from humans rather than animals. This is important because as they were evolving, some of the monsters would have retained more of their humanity than others did, and some of them may have been completely aware of what was happening to their species. So, when decades, or even centuries, before the events of Monsters Inc., a distant relative of Mr. Waternoose's founded the company, they knew about humans. The discovery of the doors leading to the human world wasn't accidental. One monster (at least) knew right from the beginning, and worked towards being able to harness that emotion that was so powerful back in ancient times. Obviously, being monsters, fear was the easiest emotion to draw from these humans, and this is how scaring was introduced.

Here's where the "toxic children" bit enters the picture. Most people are familiar with the theory that time travel or dimension hopping could cause a lot of problems. For example, if you were to make contact with yourself from an alternate reality (dimension), the dimension you were in could collapse in on itself. Something similar could happen if you made contact with yourself from another timeline.

Just for clarification, timelines and dimensions aren't the same thing, even though they seem to be when used in this context. If you were to visit yourself from another timeline, you could be meeting yourself from Ancient Rome, 2,000 years ago. You could also meet a younger version of yourself from the same timeline, in which case the same thing could happen, or there could be two of you. That could be either a good or bad thing, but it could still mess up history pretty badly. On the other hand, if you were to meet yourself from another dimension, you could be meeting a version of yourself as a different gender, or a version of yourself from a world where gravity doesn't exist and coffee makes you hallucinate wildly. Contact between the two of you could cause the dimension to implode. That's the way I see it, anyway. If you don't believe any of this, I don't blame you!

I digress.

The belief that human children are toxic may have been implemented by the founder(s) of MI, because they knew that if a certain monster were to come in contact with a certain child it could have disastrous consequences. Unlikely, sure, but would you risk it?

Of course, this theory only works if you also believe that the doorways through which the monsters walk are connected to another dimension where humans never became monsters, and are also connected to either the same or a different timeline. As discussed above, the monsters evolved from humans, so depending on where they were in the timeline, the human children could be another version of a monster who never actually became a monster. I know it all seems crazy, but I do have one piece of evidence to support my claim.

One piece of evidence. Very solid, right?

Anyway, in Monsters Inc., Mr. Waternoose makes an offhand comment about how "this company has been in my family for generations." It's not extremely substantial, but depending on the lifespans of these monsters, just a few generations could span several hundred years. If the knowledge of the human to monster evolution was passed down through the family, and possibly to the company supervisors and the Child Detection Agency, that would explain why such extreme measures were taken when dealing with children. If they weren't, the world would fold in on itself. Another thing that somewhat supports the theory is the fact that as time goes on in both worlds, and both humans and monsters age, it becomes less and less likely that the same two people/monsters will encounter each other. In this case, Mr. Waternoose may have begun to disregard common safety practices and behavioural guidelines (which he did) and cutting corners (which he did), because he knew that it would be safer and safer every day to do so.

Like I've said, there isn't a ton of evidence, but I think this theory explains the inherent, but not instinctual, fear of children that the monsters have. The children may not actually have been toxic per se, but that doesn't mean that they weren't once dangerous.

What do you think of my theory? If you don't believe it, feel free to leave a comment explaining why. I'd love to hear any counterpoints. Do the same if you find any other supporting evidence for this theory. Thank you for reading, and I will see you guys next time.