Simon Nerlich is the main antagonist of the scrapped Monsters Inc. sequel; Monsters Inc.2 Lost in Scaradise. He is a nerdy self-proclaimed "Monster-Hunter" in his thirties determined to prove that monsters are real.
Biography[]
After listening in on a police scanner, he learns that a group of children had an encounter with monsters at their house. Intrigued, he pays them a visit, where retrieves a description and drawing of what the monsters looked like.
Later, he captures a glimpse of Mike and Sully after they enter the comic-book store that he was working in. He fails to chase them down, but notices the "swamp creature" comic book that they were looking at on the ground. This allowed him to know exactly where they were headed. Simon and his co-worker Rodney then hop into his beat-up van and make their way to the Florida swamps. Rodney is excited to see the monsters, but Simon explains that being able to see monsters is an ability that very few adults possess. After making their way to the swamp, they attempt to kidnap Randal (whom Sully and Mike were seeking out for help), but he is saved by Sully and Mike.
Using one of his devices, Simon detects a large influx of electromagnetic energy twenty minutes away from him. He eventually ambushes Sully at Boo's birthday party and tackles him to the ground. He soon realizes that he didn't tackle Sully, but instead a man in a blue dinosaur who was entertaining the children at the party. The children attending Boo's party then proceed to beet him up. Just before Mike, Sully, and Randal were about to leave through Boo's door, Rodney catches it. Once Simon arrives, he explains that the monsters used the door to escape to the monster world. Simon then enters the closet door, determined to go to the monster world and retrieve a monster in order to prove their existence.
After all of the banished monsters are brought back to the monster world, Simon peaks out from behind one of the doors and begins to snoop around. During Mike's wedding, just as he's about to say "I do," Simon appears and sends everyone into a panic. He steals Celia during all of the commotion , and so Mike and Sully rush to save her. While searching for them, they find his wallet and drivers license on the floor. They eventually find him in the Laugh Canister storage room, and so Simon stands on on one of the shelves and begins to throw laugh canisters at them. This releases highly pressurized laugh energy, causing the lights to flicker and the canisters to shoot off like missiles. Simon and Celia escape during the chaos, eventually bumping into Flangbottom. He demanded to know where the doors were, and Flangbottom coweringly showed him. They made their way to the door vault using a maintenance platform, and hop on to one of the moving doors. Mike and Sully realize that they are too far away to reach them, so Mike quickly formulates an idea involving the nearby Laugh Canisters. He asked Sully to break one of the canned seals, hopping onto it and rocketing towards the duo. He grabs Celia just before it runs out of energy, sending them plummeting, but Sully catches them just in time. Simon guesses his way into opening one of the doors. Simon does not want him to leave because he knows that Simon knows how to get back. He plants himself between the door and Simon, confronting him with an old file containing Simon's information. It is revealed that Simon was once a child that they used to scare at the factory, and his particular fears were hair monsters with fangs. Sully then lets out a terrifying roar and Simon backs away in fear. The unvarnished monsters descend on him, and Sully decides to send him to the Himalayas.