Michael "Mickey" Theodore Mouse[1] is one of the world's best-known cartoon characters, created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks in 1928 as the Disney cartoon studio's new star, following the loss of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Charles Mintz and Universal Studios. Though his first produced film was the silent short Plane Crazy, Mickey made his theatrical debut in Steamboat Willie, which has the distinction of being the first sound cartoon short. In more recent times, for several decades, Mickey's active animation career became secondary to his more visible role as the face and mascot of the Walt Disney Company. In 2002, he was ranked #19 in TV Guide's Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters.
"Appearances"[]
1987 Continuity[]
Donald and Launchpad mention Mickey in the first US printing of "The Arcadian Urn".
Officially, Mickey does not appear in the original DuckTales TV series. He is strangely not mentioned in "All Ducks on Deck", the episode in which his archenemy, the Phantom Blot, appears. He is, however, mentioned by Donald and Launchpad in the first US printing of the Denmark comic story "The Arcadian Urn", as seen in Uncle Scrooge #399, thus confirming that Mickey exists within the original series. However, when the story was reprinted in The Disney Afternoon Adventures: Gummi Bears in "A New Beginning", this dialogue was changed to instead mention Fethry Duck.
Outside of the DuckTales show itself, Mickey hosted the Mickey's Starland Show at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom park, in which Scrooge and Launchpad appeared, alongside other Disney Afternoon characters. Scrooge, Donald, the nephews, and Gyro also appeared alongside Mickey in the Walt Disney's World on Ice 10th anniversary show in 1990.
2017 Continuity[]
- Main article: Mikey Melon
During production of 2017 DuckTales reboot, Francisco Angones had planned to have Mickey make a guest appearance as Donald's former college roommate who had become more successful than him.[2][3] However, Disney refused to have Mickey even be mentioned in the reboot, despite having had no problem with him being mentioned in the original continuity.
The closest that the reboot ever did come to mentioning Mickey was in "Moonvasion!", in which Donald, having spent the last several episodes on a deserted island, has built a ventriloquist's dummy resembling Mickey out of watermelons, officially dubbed Mikey Melon and "voiced" by Chris Diamantopoulos (who voiced Mickey himself in the 2013 Mickey Mouse shorts series and Once Upon a Studio). This unfortunately likely indicates that, in the reboot, Mickey is officially nothing more than a figment of Donald's imagination.
Mickey's likeness appears as an Oscar award in the McDuck Studio in the episode "The Duck Knight Returns!"
Notes[]
- If one takes the comic story "The Legend of the Chaos God" into account, Mickey's existence within the original show's universe is also technically confirmed by A Goofy Movie (which is spun off from Goof Troop, one of the shows involved in the crossover comic), due to him and Donald having a brief cameo during the song "On the Open Road".
- Ironically, despite Mickey not existing in the reboot, a Disney Channel ID featuring the show's version of Donald showed him losing his temper after his attempt to draw his own silhouette with the wand disappears in a Mickey-shaped puff of smoke.
References[]
- ↑ Revealed in the comic story "La planète des cerveaux", published in Le Journal de Mickey #2829
- ↑ Frank Angones' Twitter
- ↑ Frank Angones' Twitter