Well… it IS written down in ink. (Taken from my Dreamworks’ The Art of Megamind book, in fact.) Maybe it’ll come true. One day…
Also, by the by, I love the Megamind fandom. Because I had NO IDEA who these characters were until I started reading fan stories involving them, spanning across multiple pieces of literature. Looking them up was like stumbling across a treasure trove, eventually driving me to actually track down and buy the art book just to find out more. And damn is that thing expensive and rare these days.
Headcanon: Metro City is a leader in the pollution control industry and is the cleanest industrial city in North America. This is because neither Metro Man nor Megamind has much tolerance for pollution.
They started doing something about it shortly after they began their respective public careers. Metro Man mainly concerned himself with air pollution. He would visit corporate CEOs during regular business hours and talk about how bad things looked from the air and how poor air quality depressed tourism and citizen morale. If appealing to the CEO’s public-spiritedness didn’t work, he would use threats, but never physical threats. His parents were the undisputed leaders of the city’s elite social life, and his influence with them could get the CEO’s entire family ostracized from it. He could also use his celebrity to publicly embarrass the CEO. If all else failed, he could arrange, through his contacts in government and his family’s position as major shareholders, to have the corporation, or the CEO personally, audited. Polluters are seldom just polluters. They reliably engage in financial crookedness as well. Since an audit could be career-ending and possibly result in jail time and financial ruin, the threat of it worked every time.
Megamind and Minion tended to visit CEOs late at night, and they usually talked about water pollution, both current dumping and the potential of inadequately stored industrial wastes to leak out. Minion was known to pick the target up by the pajama collar, pull the target’s face up to his dome, and point out in a reasonable tone of voice that the cleanliness of the lake was a very, very personal matter for him. Megamind would brandish the de-gun and whisper the name of a company offering pollution abatement services and/or equipment, which he strongly advised the target to patronize. This was inevitably a company backed by Megamind, often one that sold or used equipment invented and patented by Megamind. To the target’s surprise, its services would turn out to be efficient and cost-effective.
The villainous pair would also concern themselves with surface runoff, but in a less heavy-handed way, since it involved dealing with farmers, golf course owners, and other humble citizens. A personal letter delivered by brainbot was usually sufficient. Their efforts pretty much killed the local market for many of the nastier pesticides and herbicides. They also insisted that fleets of vehicles be properly maintained so that automotive fluids did not drip onto the roads. And in the slums, where many owners of very old cars were barely getting by and could not afford proper maintenance, a team of specialized brainbots would appear, surround a car, and proceed to replace worn gaskets and patch leaks. The cars usually ran better after the brainbots were finished with them, and had no problems passing inspection.
I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break.