Oxide Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) are widely used in data communication. However, VCSELs are sensitive to ElectroStatic Discharge (ESD), which is one of the main reasons for their failure. It is difficult to identify the root cause of this problem. Therefore, 3 different ESD models including Human Body Model (HBM), Machine Model (MM) and Charge Device Model (CDM) and Electrical OverStress (EOS) shocks were applied to carry out the failure analysis of oxide VCSELs. Among them, voltage shocks of different polarities were used for HBM while reverse I-V, forward L-I-V scan, emission microscopy (EMMI) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) were used for characterization. The results show that different ESD models show significantly different damage voltage thresholds, and the oxide VCSEL is susceptible to damage in the HBM and MM models but insensitive in the CDM model. Defect characteristics associated with ESD failure were found including increased reverse leakage, degradation of optical output power, and bright spots in the EMMI. TEM was the most direct and effective method where different ESD events showed different defect sizes and locations. These research results are of great significance to confirm whether the failure mode is caused by ESD and to judge the specific ESD models in detail.