Classic Disney Shorts/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Animation Age Ghetto: The Skeleton Dance and The Mad Doctor were apparently so unucually scary for cartoons, some theater owners refused to show them, making this trope Older Than Television.
    • Also "The Little House" has some dark moments, see Nightmare Fuel.
  • Complete Monster: The Mad Doctor
  • Creator Backlash: Disney hated The Golden Touch.
    • Wilfred Jackson disliked the early Mickey Mouse short "The Castaway" and upon it's failure vowed to never make another picture that didn't feel like a Disney film again.
    • According to "Of Mice and Magic", some of the Donald Duck staff grew to dislike the character and how formula driven his shorts became over time. One of the directors, veteran Jack Hannah (no relation to Hanna-Barbera) even complained "I got so damned tired of that duck's voice. I just could not stand having to work with it all the time."
      • It should be noted, however, that Don's most formulaic period came precisely when Hannah took over as the sole director of the series and apparently made his life goal to fill the duck's filmography with repetitive stories. Really, count how many cartoons that pit Donald against vermin -where he's Out of Focus and suffers from severe Flanderization- emerged on this time as opposed to the past. There were some nice exceptions here and there, especially at the beginning of Hannah's tenure, but for the most part the Duck owes much of his personality loss to these pictures.
    • According to Neal Gabler in his book "Walt Disney and the Triumph of the American Imagination", Walt Disney "absolutely hated the Goofy cartoons, threatening constantly to terminate them before relenting, largely to provide work for his animators."
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Donald Duck and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
  • Hell Is That Noise: Mickey crying in "Fiddling Around".
    • The sounds accompanying the fire in "The Little House", particularly someone shouting "Sound the alaaaarm!".
  • Nightmare Fuel: In "The Little House", two houses get burnt in a fire. And since everything in the cartoon is alive, then...
  • Older Than They Think: Pete predates Mickey by three years.
    • The character, Mortimer Mouse (or a very similar version thereof) initially appeared in Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers, a very early storyline from the Mickey Mouse comic strip.
    • Max Goof first appeared in "Fathers are People" as Goofy Jr.
    • Humphrey and Woodlore predate a more famous bear/ranger team by eight years.
  • Tear Jerker: Parts of "The Little House", mainly when the house was abandoned.
    • Also "Truant Officer Donald", when Donald thinks he killed Huey, Dewey and Louie.
    • Don't forget the ending of The Barn Dance.
  • Villain Decay: Pete. In his earlier apperances, he was actually a menace, a dangerous villain with a temper hot enough to shake Hell itself. Now he's usually a clumsy, idiotic Smug Snake.