Line #8 Creator/WaltDisney


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5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/walt_disney_3.jpg]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:The man who made dreams come true.]]
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11	-> ''"I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty."''
12
13	Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966), one of America's (and the world's) most famous animators and entertainment entrepreneurs, has quite an interesting history.
14
15	He started out as a boy who wanted to entertain people. He attempted various careers to find out how best to do that—acting, cartooning, filmmaking—until he decided to try and break into the new and expanding field of animation. Since cartoons were mainly a novelty at the time, he had little trouble absorbing all there was to be known about it, and then he began pushing the envelope. After several of his animators were recruited out from under him, and his [[WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit mascot character]] stolen away by his [[Creator/{{Universal}} old employer]], it seemed all hope was lost for this aspiring animator.
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17	Then he (or his pal, Creator/UbIwerks, more likely) drew a rough draft of what became WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse. The rest is history.
18
19	Walt's animation studio, [[Creator/{{Disney}} Walt Disney Productions]], which he founded with his brother Roy, became a pop culture phenomenon. Mickey Mouse became beloved by children everywhere during UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation, and soon after his ''WesternAnimation/TheThreeLittlePigs'' short met similar fame and success. Then, Disney decided that short cartoons weren't enough, considering the set fees for that format could not cover their big budgets enough for good profits, and that he would gamble on making a feature-length film. At the time, some scoffed at the plan, calling it "Disney's Folly" and saying the animation wunderkind had bitten off more than he could chew. They were quickly silenced when they saw [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs the movie]] (or, perhaps even more importantly, its ''profits''). Seventy years later, it is number 34 in the Creator/AmericanFilmInstitute's 100 Greatest American Films list, and the only one to be animated.
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21	After completely dominating the field of animation, and inspiring many new techniques in the field, Disney, a driven perfectionist who was never satisfied with any of his work, began to move in other directions — namely, television and theme parks. Again, he was ahead of his time in both fields, turning potential disasters into huge successes. The Ride/{{Disneyland}} theme park was a ''particular'' accomplishment, and in some ways may be his greatest legacy; because of the sheer ''scope'' of the park and what it had, and still has, to deal with logistically, Disney and his "Imagineers" ended up pioneering enormous leaps forward in urban and transport planning, lessons that would end up being adopted the world over from the example Disney parks provided (though, ironically, cities outside of America would make much more use of these lessons than America would). His ultimate dream was never realized — the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", a fully-functional city, where people could live and work, centered around an arts college, which his detractors have noted sounds disturbingly in the details like ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'''s Village, or, more realistically, like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism an industrial paternalism project]]... to which Walt would likely have grouchily replied "yes, that's what we call 'good central planning'". Disney did genuinely believe, thanks to the massive amount of experience from Disneyland, that his EPCOT was the way forward for urban planning and that America's sprawling cities were going to run into major problems if they just continued to sprawl outward haphazardly as they had following World War II.
22
23	Disney died of lung cancer (though he didn't smoke in public in order to project a wholesome personal image, Walt was known to be a chain smoker when in private) before EPCOT was finished, and without his guidance the plan soon became another theme park. However, thanks in part to his prescient foundation of the California Institute of the Arts which taught major film greats like Creator/TimBurton and Creator/BradBird, his legacy lives on with The Walt Disney Company, one of the most powerful media enterprises in the world. The Disney studios are [[VanityPlate symbolized]] by an image of Cinderella's/Sleeping Beauty's castle.
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25	Walt Disney earned fifty-nine Academy Award nominations, and of those he won twenty-six, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual.
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27	There are [[http://www.snopes.com/disney/waltdisn/walt.asp numerous]] UrbanLegends. Rumors about Walt Disney being less friendly than many people would see him are common. He was rarely satisfied with the films his studio produced and was intensely critical of his employees (and perhaps justifiably afraid of unions, as he once had an entire animation staff sell him out to work with a competitor when he lost WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit)[[note]]However, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, who later on help create the Looney Tunes, both have gone on record saying that one of the main reasons a lot of the staff left back then was because Walt was becoming very hard to work with and was not allowing the staff to have more control. This story was later on backed up when Ub Iwerks, who was one of the few animators who stayed with Walt when Harman & Ising left, also left Walt years later due to the same reasons.[[/note]] but stories also abound of Walt's supposed racism, sexism and antisemitism, and supposedly he never actually drew anything[[note]]Almost all of the WesternAnimation/NewmanLaughOGrams & early WesternAnimation/AliceComedies were drawn by him or he was deeply involved in the drawing himself. However he stopped drawing regularly in the mid 1920s as he was able to hire people to draw for him. This is with the exception of the first handful of WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse shorts, as Walt had only 6 people left at the studio and were drawn mainly by Ub Iwerks with Disney helping Iwerks. [[/note]], took credit for people's work [[note]]It was common in the 20s to have the producers name attached to cartoons with no credits for every other person who worked on the film[[/note]], and was so extremely paranoid with the threat of communism he put innocent people in jail during the [=McCarthy=] Communist witch hunts. Many of these attitudes can be attributed to the time in which he lived -- [[ValuesDissonance most of America at the time saw little problem mocking blacks, Jews, Native Americans, and women, and reporting suspected communists was actively encouraged by the government]]. In truth Walt hired several Jewish, female, Hispanic and black employees (Floyd Norman, Mary Blair, Rudy Zamora, and the Sherman Brothers to name a few) was close with his female employees, had a rabbi as one of the three military chaplains invited to the opening of Disneyland[[note]]Alongside a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister[[/note]], and was very devoted to his daughters and grandchildren -- EPCOT, by all accounts, became his obsession in large part because of how worried he became for their future by the Sixties. However, [[NotHelpingYourCase he didn't help his case with some of his actions]] -- for instance, he was the only Hollywood figure prepared to meet Creator/LeniRiefenstahl, director of Nazi propaganda film ''Triumph of the Will'', when she visited Hollywood (and no, he wasn't a Nazi sympathizer). That said, rumors that he was anti-union and supported [=McCartheyism=] are true and easy to substantiate -- he reacted to a 1941 strike by not only firing many employees, but reporting them as communists, caricaturing them in his films, and on one occasion physically assaulting strike leader Art Babbitt.
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29	Perhaps the oddest UrbanLegend that after his death Walt's body was placed in a [[HumanPopsicle cryostasis chamber]] [[note]]This rumor probably originated from a joke. In the 90s the Walt Disney company produced several ice skating shows featuring characters from their movies. These shows were collectively known as "Disney on Ice", leading some to joke that the actual Walt Disney had been put "on ice" (i.e. cryogenically frozen) after his death[[/note]] under Ride/{{Pirates of the Caribbean}} at Disneyland. (Everyone knows it's really just his head that was frozen in Cinderella's Castle at Disney World, of course. When it's not under Epcot.) The ''actual'' truth is that he was cremated, and the rumor was further spread by friend, animator, and royal prankster Ward Kimball. (''Website/SCPFoundation'' would later ShoutOut to this legend by making Disney's frozen head [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2805 SCP-2805]], with a TearJerker twist.)
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31	He is played by Creator/TomHanks in the film ''Film/SavingMrBanks'', about the production of ''Film/MaryPoppins''. Thomas Ian Nicholas played him in the film ''Walt Before Mickey'', which is about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Walt's early years in animation before creating Mickey]] and founding his successful independent animation studio.
32
33	Peter Stephan Jungk's novel ''The Perfect American'' is a fictionalized look at the end of Disney's life. Music/PhilipGlass later adapted it into [[Theatre/ThePerfectAmerican an opera]].
34
35	In 1999, Time Magazine named him #24 on their list of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century.
36
37	In September 2015, Creator/{{PBS}} aired a two part documentary called "American Experience: Walt Disney" which deals with Walt's life and reveals more info behind Walt outside his public persona and his relationship with his family. It included new video footage and never before seen or heard audio recordings from him.
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39	Season 3 of ''WebVideo/{{Defunctland}}'' also is heavily centered around Walt Disney, the events in his life that influenced him, and the earliest days of the Ride/DisneyThemeParks.
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41	See also the trope MrAltDisney, which is directly inspired by the man.
42	------
43	!!Tropes Related to Walt:
44	* ActingForTwo: Walt did this in some of the early Mickey shorts where he voiced multiple characters - for example, Mickey and the traffic cop in 1931's "Traffic Troubles."
45	* AlterEgoActing: Disney had a soft spot for Mickey Mouse, the character to whom he owed his success. Walt voiced Mickey for many years, and once jokingly said "I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman." Walt may have said it jokingly, but according to his wife Lillian, it wasn't that far from the truth.
46	* AmusingInjuries: Slapstick is actually prominent in some of his work.
47	* AnimatedAdaptation: The bulk of the 19 animated features made in his lifetime were based on pre-existing stories. The only features he made that weren't based on any pre-existing stories were Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. The bulk of Make Mine Music and Melody Time consist of original story material as well, but have a couple segments based on pre-existing stories, such as Casey at the Bat, Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot and Pecos Bill. Several of the ''WesternAnimation/SillySymphonies'' were based on classic fairy tales as well.
48	%%* AnimalWrongsGroup: Several Disney stories revolve around cutesy animals who are either killed by humans or saved in the nick of time, ''WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians'' being among the most famous. This has helped make millions of audiences sympathetic of animals' causes all over the world.
49	* AnthropomorphicPersonification: Though not the first to do so his work is very much associated with anthropomorphizing animals, plants and objects (machines and so on).
50	* ArtEvolution: While Disney himself hardly drew any drawing himself after 1926 since he was famous enough to hire animators, said animators achieved an enormous technical advancement between 1928 and 1940. Just compare ''WesternAnimation/PlaneCrazy'' to some of the sequences in ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' and you'll see exactly what we mean.[[note]]The water effects in Pinocchio are still talked about to this day due to how even computers until recently had a hard time of animating water correctly.[[/note]] Disney is still associated with top-notch art work.[[note]](1991's ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' used computer animation to make the "camera" swoop around the pair in a ballroom dancing scene, and animation has never been the same since.)[[/note]]
51	* ArtistDisillusionment:
52	** Despite the critical praise and commercial success for ''WesternAnimation/{{Cinderella}}'', Walt was reportedly very unsatisfied with the film, as to him it was no ''WesternAnimation/{{Snow White\|AndTheSevenDwarfs}}''.[[note]]Though he did name her transformation scene as his single favorite piece of animation from the studio.[[/note]] This applies to many of his post-WWII animated films. Though by this point, he was very hands-off during the production of them due to his focus on live-action films, television, the construction of Disneyland, and his [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking train obsession]]. To be fair, it's likely he felt he'd ''never'' make anything as good as [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs his]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}} first]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}} five]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}} animated]] [[WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}} films]] again.
53	* AuthorAppeal:
54	** Disney felt particularly passionate about rural America in the early [=1900s=], and as a result, some of his works are Period Pieces from this time. He also animated several American folk tales, such as Myth/PaulBunyan, or folkloric characters of American history like UsefulNotes/JohnnyAppleseed and UsefulNotes/DavyCrockett. Disney was pretty genuinely a patriot, and felt strongly about making sure children remembered America as it was (particularly after the post-WWII era began changing America too dramatically).
55	** On the [[AccidentalPun comical end]], Walt unapologetically ''loved'' butt jokes, especially ones involving characters getting their butts jabbed, burned or maimed in some way. They're one of the [[http://land.allears.net/blogs/jackspence/2012/10/rump_humor_1.html most frequently used gags in his cartoons and animated features]], and many of them have at least one--this kind of humor even popped up in some of his theme park attractions.
56	** Walt was also a ''huge'' film buff. while he was well-known in Disney's live-action days for having a nose for exceptional new talent (Dean Jones, Hailey Mills, Kurt Russell, etc.), He also made great pains to seek out golden age actors, now in their old age, to give them one last big job to support them now that Hollywood was done with them. One of the best examples is Mary Poppins, that's ''Elsa Lanchester'' (The Bride of Frankenstein herself!) as Katie Nana.
57	* {{Bookends}}: Walt's first and last works in any subject tend to match up surprisingly well.
58	** The very first Mickey Mouse short ''WesternAnimation/SteamboatWillie'' begins with Mickey entering the scene on a steamboat. Walt's last Mickey short ''The Simple Things'' ends with him being chased off screen by a flock of seagulls.
59	** WesternAnimation/{{Goofy}}'s first short ''Goofy and Wilbur'' starts with Goofy riding in on a motor boat while on a fishing trip. His last short ''WesternAnimation/{{Aquamania}}'' ends with him ([[TheKlutz naturally]]) crashing his motor boat after winning a race.
60	** ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', his first animated film, begins with the camera zooming in on the villain as she walks onscreen. His last animated film ''WesternAnimation/{{The Jungle Book\|1967}}'' ends with the camera zooming out on two of the protagonists as they walk off screen.
61	** His first ([[RogerRabbitEffect mostly]]) live-action film ''Film/SongOfTheSouth'' beings with the main characters riding in on a horse and cart. His last live-action film ''The Happiest Millionaire'' ends with two of the main characters riding off in a motor car.
62	* BeneathTheMask: Disney hid his real personality behind his public persona; both were very different from one another. He has been described as "shy", "diffident", "self-deprecating", "insecure" and as "play[ing] the role of a bashful tycoon who was embarrassed in public" (and acknowledging doing so). Disney recognized this difference:
63	--> I'm not Walt Disney. I do a lot of things Walt Disney would not do. Walt Disney does not smoke. I smoke. Walt Disney does not drink. I drink.
64	** Due to the high expectations he had of his staff, the highest compliment he gave them was "That'll work", preferring instead to give financial bonuses to his high-performing employees, or recommend them to others and having these passing them on his praise.
65	* {{Bowdlerise}}: Notorious for sugarcoating classic fairytales and novels too much into children's stories with happy endings. At the same he did keep a lot of hardcore NightmareFuel in his early animated features that parents to this day find too scary for their offspring.
66	* ClarkKenting: He'd put on sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, then wander around Disneyland, just to check that everything was running smoothly. Apparently, he looked just like any other tourist.
67	* ClassicLiterature: He adapted many classic (children's) novels to the big screen.
68	* CreatorBacklash: ''WesternAnimation/TheGoldenTouch'' became one right after it was released and bombed at the box office. Disney wanted to try to see if he could direct ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'' after not directing anything in years. The film did so poorly that he forbade anyone from talking about the short ever again.
69	* CreatorBreakdown: Walt had one in 1931 due to the stress of running the studio and producing so many works at the same time coupled with his wife's recent miscarriage.
70	* CrossDressingVoices: In addition to voicing WesternAnimation/{{Mickey\|Mouse}}, Walt also voiced ''WesternAnimation/{{Minnie\|Mouse}}'' [[WesternAnimation/MinnieMouse Mouse]] early on, before Marcelite Garner got the role.
71	* CultSoundtrack: Many of the catchy songs written for Disney movies have become so popular over the decades that they are practically standards.
72	* {{Disneyfication}}: The TropeNamer.
73	** Disney had a talent for making otherwise complex – or in some scenes not always that engaging – stories into mesmerizing tales that the general public could easily understand and enjoy. Unfortunately this has also led to some drastic AdaptationDisplacement where many classics of world literature have been altered, simplified, and sugarcoated so much that his version became the official version instead of the other way around. To this day you'll find people complaining about film or theatre adaptations of stories they only know from the Disney adaptations, because certain scenes are so different, despite being in the original book. This can be forgiven somewhat in the case of the fairy tales (The Three Little Pigs, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.) because they were carried over by oral tradition and thus varied from storyteller to storyteller. With the literary classics it's a bit more controversial. ''Literature/{{Pinocchio}}'', ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'', ''Literature/TheSwordInTheStone'' and ''Literature/TheJungleBook'' are perhaps the Disney films that resemble the original source material the least. Even after Walt's death, the Disney Studio is still criticized for deviating and sugarcoating from great (copyrighted and/or public domain) literary works a lot.
74	** For the record, even Disney himself occasionally grew tired of the house style that led to the Disneyfication, since it involved watering down complex artwork or story concepts. However, his attempts to deviate from that style and create more complex and technical films such as Fantasia or Sleeping Beauty wound up being too expensive to turn a profit, until their rerelease years later.
75	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The early Disney cartoons from the 1920s show only a few sparks of the storytelling brilliance that Walt would become famous for, and are legendary for introducing subject matter thought somewhat scandalous at the time, such as Mickey's casual cruelty to the animals in Steamboat Willie, a trait that Mickey would later lose as he became less Charlie Chaplin and more Douglas Fairbanks.
76	* ExactWords: In Walt's early days in Kansas City, he was known to use this to get around bill collectors looking for him. One example was a bill collector asked him if he had seen Mr. Disney when he was overdue on his rent money, where Walt would say he wasn't here (Walt referring to his father) or ask if Walt was around and saying he was out of town (referring to a co-worker of his with the same first name).
77	* ExcusePlot: Surprisingly, despite his acclaim as a master storyteller and his legendary reputation for having anal-retentive attention to detail in his films, Walt firmly believed in using the Excuse Plot in both his short cartoons and feature films, even as early as his WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit cartoons. To him, gags based on character motivation and context were what really mattered. Two of his top animators, [[Creator/DisneysNineOldMen Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston]], verify this early in their book "Too Funny For Words: Disney's Greatest Sight Gags";
78	-->"At that time, however, even the distributors were questioning whether gags were enough to sustain a whole film and they started asking for more story. Walt, the greatest of storytellers, reacted in a surprising way. "By the time you have a story really started," he said, "it is time to iris out (end the picture), and you have failed to make the audience laugh." Obviously, in Walt's mind, the first priority in any film was the laughter, and too much story quickly became tedious. He never forgot that point throughout his whole life, constantly shying away from projects that had more continuity than entertainment."
79	** Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{The Jungle Book\|1967}}'' is acclaimed as a legitimate animated feature classic, even though its plot is wafer thin. Creator/WaltDisney specifically told the story artists to not read or follow the book and even chewed them out when they had concerns over the simplistic story, saying the characters and entertainment were more important. Animator and story artist Floyd Norman, who worked on the film, [[http://floydnormancom.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/5/requiem-for-a-gagman summed it up on his blog]]:
80	-->''"With Pixar's string of successful movies it became popular among animation buffs to quote the familiar mantra, story, story, story. But, I remember it was no less than Walt Disney himself who chewed us out back during the development of "The Jungle Book." Because we thought we had legitimate concerns about the films' simple plot line. Well, we caught the wrath of the Old Maestro head on. "You guys worry too much about the story," Walt shouted. "Just give me some good stuff." And, what was that good stuff Walt Disney was talking about, you ask? Fun, humor, entertainment. In a word, Walt was speaking of gags. "The Jungle Book" didn't need a more involved story line because we already had great characters to work with. Let the humor come out of the situation, the characters, and the story will take care of itself."''
81	* {{Expy}}: WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse was more or less based on Disney's earlier successful character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, only with the rabbit ears changed into round mouse ears. As Disney's film catalog grew, some critics complained that certain characters in his films were virtually similar in design or personality. For instance, Jiminy Cricket (''Pinocchio'') and Timothy the Mouse (''Dumbo'') fulfill the same kind of roles and even have the same height. Alice from ''Alice in Wonderland'' and Wendy Darling from ''Peter Pan'' not only share very similar builds, faces, personalities, and roles in the story but also the same ''voice actress''.
82	* FairyTale: He famously adapted many to the big screen.
83	* HaHaHaNo: Around 1940, when two of his story men suggested an adaptation of ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'' starring Mickey Mouse, Walt seemed to like the idea, laughing heartily and inviting other staffers in to hear the idea. When the story men asked Walt when they could expect the idea to be animated, Walt told them, "Never. You've just murdered my characters." Walt did eventually warm up to the idea, and the result was ''Mickey and the Beanstalk'', part of 1947's ''WesternAnimation/FunAndFancyFree''.
84	* HesBack: After being out of the production side of Animation since the 1940s and the poor reception of ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheSwordInTheStone'', he decided to become heavily involved with ''WesternAnimation/{{The Jungle Book\|1967}}''. Both the critics and artists said that it was like Disney never left. Sadly, that was also the last film that he worked on as he died before the movie could be completed.
85	* InsultToRocks: When he saw Creator/FleischerStudios 1939 adaptation of ''WesternAnimation/GulliversTravels'', he took a snipe at it by saying "We can make a better film than that with our second string animators."
86	* ManOfAThousandVoices: Like his work or not, he was an ''amazing'' voice actor.
87	** Workers at his studio recalled for decades afterward his initial pitch for ''Snow White'' in 1934, in which he stood on stage and acted out all the characters - voices and all, even animals - while telling the story. Employees begged him to repeat that performance time and time again, and Walt was only too happy to oblige.
88	* MickeyMousing: Obviously the TropeMaker, but not only in Mickey Mouse cartoons. He made music an integral part of all his cartoons and movies.
89	* MissingMom: The long tradition of motherless protagonists in his studio's full-length features, stretching back to ''Snow White'' but most famously in ''Bambi'', may have its roots in the death of Walt's own mother, Flora, who asphyxiated not long after ''Snow White'' due to a furnace leak in the house Walt had had built for his parents. Walt reportedly blamed himself and never spoke about his mother's death again--according to his daughter Sharon, he would cry and refuse to talk about it if the subject ever came up and he couldn't even bring himself to visit her grave out of guilt.
90	* {{Motifs}}: A featurette on the ''WesternAnimation/PeterPan'' Blu-ray concerns how many Walt Disney films (and Pixar films by extension) have the motif of flight, as it was something Disney was interested in and felt that was one of the few ways that humanity felt truly free.
91	* NaziProtagonist: During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Disney produced many propaganda films in support of the Allied cause. [[WesternAnimation/EducationForDeath One of these]] was about a German boy named Hans, it was to show how Nazi indoctrination can cause a small child to grow up into a bloodthirsty monster. He also cast Donald Duck as a Nazi in ''WesternAnimation/DerFuehrersFace'', showing what terrible conditions the Nazi soldiers were forced to work under (exaggerated both for comedic effect and PatrioticFervor), though it turns out to be AllJustADream of the real American Donald Duck.
92	* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: While his name has become synonymous with stuff aimed at children (syrupy-sweet children fare, {{Bowdlerize}}d Fairy Tales, and overly-simplistic, historically inaccurate, way-too-lighthearted treatment of grim stories, it's easy to forget that some Disney fare used NightmareFuel by the tanker truck. [[NightmareFuel/{{Disney}} Look here for a partial list.]]
93	* OddFriendship: Not a true friendship, but the red-blooded conservative Disney spent time with homosexual Jewish communist Creator/SergeiEisenstein during the latter's brief period in Hollywood. Disney admired Eisenstein's visual approach and montage editing, while Eisenstein was a big fan of animation (his favorite film was ''Snow White'').
94	* RagsToRiches: In addition to creating the version of ''Cinderella'' most are familiar with, the now worldly known Disney came from a poor rural background and his father was a failed businessman, so his children had to work hard to help him make ends meet. When Disney started making animated cartoons the medium wasn't exactly the best investment for a bright future. Animation was used at the time crude, primitive shorts used as filler in film theaters--they were new and exciting but hadn't achieved great quality. Disney changed that by revolutionizing the art form, and became the first millionaire in the cartooning business.
95	* RailEnthusiast: This was shown in much of his work that featured railroads, such as ''The Brave Engineer'' and the Casey Jr. scenes from ''Dumbo''. Despite the fantasy nature of the scenes, there are many small details, such as certain moving parts and railroad terms, that were in fact very accurate. Furthermore, one of his stated requirements for Disneyland was that it have a steam train (the Santa Fe Railway was a corporate sponsor, incidentally), which was not only duplicated at Walt Disney World, but the newest version of the company's VanityPlate has a steam train puffing through the background. Disney himself loved building model railroads in his spare time and a few ones he would ride.
96	** CoolTrain: Fictional and real life examples (Casey Jr., Monorail)
97	* {{Retirony}}: While Walt never made any formal plans to retire due to his focus on "The Florida Project," he died three months before ''Ride/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'', the last attraction he personally envisioned and led the development of, opened in Disneyland in 1967.
98	** His older brother Roy sadly fell victim to it too. He delayed his retirement after Walt's death to ensure that construction of Disney World went ahead. This took a tremendous toll on his health and Roy died two months after the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971.
99	* TheRival: Throughout the 1930s Creator/MaxAndDaveFleischer were Disney's main competitors. Near the end of the decade this crown went to WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes and WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry. In animated features he had no genuine competition of any major studio.
100	** Defunct studios like Van Beuren, Famous Studios and Terrytoons which didn't last long. Even Creator/UbIwerks' studio tried to rival Walt.
101	* RogerRabbitEffect: One of his earliest projects, the WesternAnimation/AliceComedies, had a real-life girl named Alice inserted in an animated world.
102	* SceneryPorn: The Disney cartoons have always stood out among their competitors because of their technical advancement. The eye for detail in most of their work between 1932 and 1960 is amazing, with beautiful and colorful backgrounds full of atmosphere. Just watching some of the stills is enough to make you sigh in beauty.
103	* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: Because of Disney's perfectionism, his films were all exceptionally expensive, but this trope was Walt's basic attitude about the money culture. His brother Roy, who handled the money end of the studio, worried constantly about expenses and tried to keep Walt in line about such. One time, in response to Roy criticizing Walt about expenses, according to production supervisor Dave Hand, Walt raised one of his eyebrows in frustration at Roy and, "in an uncompromising, matter-of-fact, straight-from-the-shoulder answer, said quite simply, 'Roy, ''we'll'' make the pictures -- ''you'' get the money.' That was that." In short, Walt viewed financing as nothing more than a necessary evil.
104	* SdrawkcabAlias: Occasionally, when he wanted to be involved in something but did not want the public or media to know of his involvement (such as in the case of ''Film/LtRobinCrusoeUSN'') he would use the alias "Retlaw Yensid".[[note]]And now you know where [[Franchise/KingdomHearts Yen Sid]] gets his name![[/note]]
105	* ShownTheirWork: Walt insisted his animators do their homework when prepping for the studio's early animated features in order to achieve optimal realism, including hiring models to act out the characters so the animators could see how their clothing moved, or having the animators throw stones through plate-glass windows to analyze how the glass moved.
106	* SiblingYinYang: As the above entry notes, Walt was the ''creative'' genius, while Roy was the ''financial'' wizard. Each was equally essential to the success of the company. Walt, of course, became a household word, while Roy, the ''older'' brother, is largely known only to Disney fanatics (admittedly a rather substantial subculture). This might have led to a world-class case of SuccessfulSiblingSyndrome, except that Roy was genuinely more comfortable [[OvershadowedByAwesome in the shadows]]. When Walt passed away, Roy put off his own retirement to take over the corporation and make sure [[Ride/WaltDisneyWorld "the Florida Project"]] was completed. He did so, and specifically named it ''Walt'' Disney World to honor his brother. Sadly, the effort essentially killed him; Roy passed away just over two months after the park opened, and joined his brother up in Heaven.
107	** Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit are in essence the Toon versions of both Walt and Roy.
108	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Could be the TropeNamer for the Idealistic end of the scale.
109	* SlidingScaleOfRealisticVersusFantastic: While being very realistically animated with much attention to physical detail the stories are still rooted in fantasy worlds with magic, monsters, anthropomorphic characters, plants and objects and sometimes physically impossible cartoony gags. His animated short films tend to be more cartoony than his animated features.
110	* SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty: Shiny at its best.
111	* SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness: Of the sliding scales, Walt probably showed the most range here. His early work, and for that matter almost all of the shorts, are supremely silly. On the other hand, most of the features are decidedly serious, even taking into account the comic relief elements. ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' showcases his range, from the "Dance of the Hours" segment through "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" to "Night on Bald Mountain."
112	* SophisticatedAsHell: Walt firmly believed that animation was a real art form and not just matinee filler, and pushed hard for the medium to be taken seriously. He also unapologetically loved cornball humor (particularly butt jokes) and children's stories, and his films prominently feature them. He even lampshaded it by admitting he was corny, but so were millions of other people in his audience.
113	* StandardSnippet: Long before Carl Stalling (''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'') made it into an art form Disney short cartoons were using countless classical music melodies as background music for certain situations. The man responsible for much of this in the Disney catalog, until his departure from the studio in 1930, was none other than Stalling himself.
114	* StarvingArtist: Early in Disney's career, during the time between Laugh-o-Grams and when he founded The Walt Disney Company, Disney was one. He was said to be eating out of can beans, living on the floor of his office, and only showering once a week. When a local dentist wanted a film shot for his business, the dentist went to pay for Walt's shoes to be repaired as they were falling apart and Walt didn't have the money to fix them.
115	* SugarBowl: Disney was a master in creating idyllic fantasy worlds where any child or nostalgic parent would enjoy living. Even if scary or evil stuff happens it is usually defeated or overcome in the end. This gave his work a timeless entertainment value, ideal for forgetting your troubles for a couple of minutes or hours. However, in his theme parks he tried to create these worlds in reality, which crosses into creepy territory for some observers... and into awesome territory for many, many others.
116	* TropeCodifier: For developing the medium of animation as a whole, especially character animation. While many innovations in animation history predated Disney's involvement and contributions, Disney really set the standard for others to either imitate, build upon, or rebel against his example.
117	** While ''WesternAnimation/SteamboatWillie'' was not the first synchronized sound cartoon, it was the first really successful one which helped kickstart UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation. Likewise, ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'' was the first feature-length animated film in the English-speaking world (though not [[WesternAnimation/ElApostol the first one]] as a whole).
118	** He was one of the first artists to really develop animated characters as beings with personalities rather than vessels for gags.
119	** Overall, he saw animation as having potential as an art form. As such, he had his animators take life-drawing classes and different kinds of art classes to really elevate their craft, eventually leading to the development of TheTwelvePrinciplesOfAnimation.
120	* UrbanLegend:
121	** As stated above, the idea that Walt's head is cryogenically frozen under one of his theme parks.
122	** One that combines with NeverHeardThatOneBefore is his supposedly responding to questions of "Are you Walt Disney?" in public with "No I'm not, and if I could meet the bastard I'd deck him because of how often I get asked that", since Mr. Disney obviously would never threaten violence or use harsh language.
123	** One that often gets tossed around online is Walt's alleged Nazism, often backed by a shot of Donald Duck giving the "Heil Hitler" salute. In reality, Walt was a very staunch American patriot, firmly ''anti''-nazi, and the cartoon in question, ''Der Furher's Face'', was an anti-nazi propaganda film that spent its entire run time mocking the Third Reich's regime.
124	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
125	** Obviously, if EPCOT had followed his original vision of a centralized city where employees of [[Ride/WaltDisneyWorld Disney World]] could live, instead of what it ended up being: Another theme park.
126	** When Walt was able to meet Creator/OsamuTezuka in person at the 1964 New York World's Fair. He discussed about doing a collaboration movie with Tezuka and told him "If you have time, visit me in Burbank." after he revealed that he's seen ''Manga/AstroBoy'' in Los Angeles. The idea was never revisited again and quickly died after Walt's passing in 1966.
127	** When Walt's desk was being cleaned out after his death, a slip of paper was found that simply said "Creator/KurtRussell," who at the time was a child actor under contract with Disney. No one, not even Russell himself, has any idea what sort of project he had in mind for him.
128	* WhatExactlyIsHisJob: Everybody on Earth knows who Disney is. But his actual profession is far more difficult to describe. Many see him as a cartoonist and an animator, yet Disney last drew as recently as the mid-1940s. Others claim he is a film director, but he only directed a minor few of his movies himself. He is often credited as a wonderful creator and storyteller, but most of the character designs, ideas and technical innovations were thought up and done by other people. The best description may be 'film producer', seeing that Walt invested millions of money in his cartoons and used the profits back for new projects. He could also combine the talents of many people and make them enthusiastic for each new project. And of course he was also a voice actor for his own studio, providing Mickey Mouse's vocals until his voice became hoarse from years of smoking. Walt himself admitted to being asked this question...
129	-->"You know, I was stumped one day when a little boy asked, 'Do you draw Mickey Mouse?' And I had to admit I do not draw anymore. 'Well then, you think up all the jokes and ideas?' 'No,' I said, 'I don't do that.' Finally, he looked at me and said, 'Mr. Disney, just what do you do?' 'Well,' I said, 'sometimes I think of myself as a little bee. I go from one area of the studio to another and gather pollen, and sort of stimulate everyone. I guess that's the job I do.'"
130	* YourCostumeNeedsWork: The iconic Walt Disney logo wasn't actually his real signature, it was created by the artists. When people would ask for his autograph on the street and it didn't match what they were expecting, he would sometimes have to produce his drivers license to prove that he really was Walt Disney.

Context Creator / WaltDisney