the idea for "monsters, inc." came during a lunch in 1994 attended by john lasseter, pete docter, andrew stanton and joe ranft. one of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a movie about monsters. "when we were making "toy story", pete docter claimed, "everybody came up to me and said that they totally believed that their toys came to life when they left the room. when disney asked us to make more films, i wanted to tap into a child-like notion that was similar to "toy story". i knew monsters were coming out of my closet when i was a kid. so i decided monsters would be appropriate". docter's original idea revolved around a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters (which he drew in a book as a boy) coming back to bother him as an adult. each monster represented a fear he had, and conquering those fears caused the monsters eventually to disappear.