Mickey Mouse universe
The Mickey Mouse universe is a fictional shared universe which is the setting for stories involving Disney cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto as the primary members, and many other characters related to them, most of them being anthropomorphic animals. The universe originated from the Mickey Mouse animated short films produced by Disney starting in 1928, although its first consistent version was created by Floyd Gottfredson in the Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip. Real-world versions also exist in Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, called Mickey's Toontown. The term "Mickey Mouse universe" is not officially used by The Walt Disney Company, but it has been used by Disney comics author and animation historian David Gerstein. The Walt Disney Company typically uses terms such as Mickey & Friends or Mickey & the Gang to refer to the character franchise.
Since 1990, the city in which Mickey lives is typically called Mouseton in American comics. In modern continuity, Mouseton is often depicted as being located in the fictional U.S. state of Calisota, analogous to Northern California. This fictional state was invented by comics writer Carl Barks in 1952 as the location for Donald Duck's home city, Duckburg.
The most consistent aspect of the Mickey Mouse universe is the characters. The most well-known include Mickey's girlfriend Minnie, pet dog Pluto, friends Donald, Goofy, Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, and nemesis Pete. Some Disney productions incorporate characters from Disney's animated feature films, such as Bath Day, in which Figaro from Pinocchio appears as Minnie's cat, Mickey's Christmas Carol, and – most extensively – House of Mouse. Although crossovers between the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck universes have been infrequent, the two universes overlap. Characters from the Donald Duck universe make occasional appearances in the Mickey Mouse universe and vice versa.
Continuity development
The Mickey Mouse universe essentially originated with the debut of Mickey himself in Plane Crazy. Although Mickey's stories included the character Pete, who was created in 1925, the world in which Mickey lives holds a continuity largely independent from earlier films. An exception to this was the reintroduction of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 2010 with the release of Epic Mickey.In 1930, Disney began a Mickey Mouse comic strip, which greatly expanded Mickey's world. The stories then became a work of collaborative fiction with writers working in different media and different countries. This sometimes caused continuity discrepancies. For example, while Mickey and his friends largely live in the same contemporary setting, they sometimes appear in exotic settings, including period pieces and fantasy films.
The comics writers explained this discrepancy was to present the characters as "real" cartoon characters who are employed by Disney as actors. Walter J. Ong in his cultural research of Mickey Mouse and Americanism also agreed with this opinion. In short, characters are more human-like, featuring fewer animal features in their characteristics. This understanding of the characters leading separate lives was welcomed by Walt Disney. When asked whether or not Mickey and Minnie were married, Disney replied that the mice were indeed married in their "private lives", but that they sometimes appear as boyfriend and girlfriend for "screen purposes." Also, in the World War II propaganda film The New Spirit, Donald Duck fills out his income tax and lists his occupation as "actor", and the film The Three Musketeers includes a DVD bonus feature of the characters reminiscing on their experience filming the feature film.
Animation historian David Gerstein has noted that, although the characters will appear in different settings and sometimes even change their names, the characters are still themselves and behave in a way consistent with their natures.
Initially, Disney comics were produced in the United States. Over the years, demand for these comics eventually became so intense that stories were created in the United States exclusively for foreign consumption. Disney licensed its characters to foreign publishers. As a result, many Disney comics stories have been created by European or Latin American authors, resulting in more continuity discrepancies and local variations of the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck universes. Some characters have become more popular abroad than in the United States, while some appeared and were used solely in foreign stories.
Generally, Mickey Mouse series films are for entertainment purposes. Unlike traditional stories like Aesop's Fables, Disney animation generally does not avoid adult or mature scenes. In Hawaiian Holiday, Goofy was depicted in a grave in one scene, followed by a laugh scene. Its choice of scene creation can be seen as a signature of the attention to entertainment effort.
Places
Mickey's farm
In Plane Crazy, the first produced Mickey Mouse story, Mickey is seen at a farm. In his early films, Mickey is in a rural setting, but most commonly at a farm. This setting was succinctly presented in the first sentences of one of Mickey's first storybooks:In the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, Mickey's farm was most likely located in the midwestern United States, as indicated by characters' comments to have arrived "out west" to Death Valley and to go "back east" to conduct business, etc. This rural setting reflected Walt Disney's own childhood in Missouri and like Disney, Mickey eventually moved to the city, although he never forgets his roots. Mickey sometimes makes references to his life "back on the farm."
Mouseton
Mickey appeared in an urban setting as early as 1931 in the short film Traffic Troubles where he works as a taxi driver. Mickey's city was unnamed until 1932, when the comic story The Great Orphanage Robbery identified it as Silo Center. Some Floyd Gottfredson stories simply called the city Hometown while other Gottfredson stories used the name Mouseville. But the first consistent name for Mickey's city came in 1950s Italy, where it was called Topolinia.In 1990, Disney Comics launched the new American comic Mickey Mouse Adventures and initially planned to use the name Mouseville there. But due to then-current Mighty Mouse cartoons' use of a city called Mouseville, the new name Mouseton was created for Mickey's town instead; both in Mickey Mouse Adventures and in Disney's contemporary reprints of vintage stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Later publisher Gemstone and the present Boom Studios have continued the use of Mouseton from 2003 onward. In-between licensee Gladstone
Mouseton's location in Calisota and its positioning with regard to Duckburg were the subject of speculation early on, but have generally been treated consistently in American publications from 2003 onward.
In Disney comics published by Egmont and Abril, Mickey lives in Duckburg—even though Mickey and Donald only rarely team up in shared comics adventures. The same tradition extends to Disney comics published in Germany by Egmont subdivision Ehapa, although the German comics have mentioned possible equivalents of Mouseton as neighboring towns or villages: Mausdorf and Mäuslingen.
In Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil and Scandinavia, local tradition has it that Mickey's hometown is simply a different district of Duckburg. In Disney theme parks, the Roger Rabbit-inspired Toontown, a district in Los Angeles specifically for cartoon characters, is presented as Mickey's home.
In animation, Mouseton is mentioned in the DuckTales reboot series, where one of the characters, Zan Owlson, graduated from Mouseton's School of Business, the place appearing briefly in the episode "The Ballad of Duke Baloney!" during Owlson's presentation.
Non-Mouseton continuity
In some 1920s and 1930s Disney press releases and magazines, Mickey was described as living in Hollywood—even though the rural setting of the actual cartoons and comics had little in common with the real Hollywood.In the film Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip Mickey and Pluto live in the actual world city of Burbank, California, home of Walt Disney Studios.
The Walt Disney Parks and Resorts modeled Mickey's hometown and birthplace as Mickey's Toontown. Occasional modern animated projects reference Toontown as well.
In the TV series Goof Troop Goofy and Pete live in the fictional town of Spoonerville. The town also appears in the 1993 video game of the same name and in the two films based on the series: A Goofy Movie and An Extremely Goofy Movie. According to the map Goofy has in A Goofy Movie, the town is located in Ohio.
In the Kingdom Hearts series, both the Mouseton and Duckburg characters live in a realm called Disney Town, mainly inspired on Mickey's Toontown.
In the TV series Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures and Mickey Mouse Funhouse, the characters live in the fictional town of Hot Dog Hills.