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Disney’s Goofy is in the news with a TikTok user’s reference to the old rumor of Walt Disney wanting Goofy dead. The rumor had done its rounds many times before and was then set straight by Disney insiders or biographers.
However, the rumor keeps resurfacing, as it did again on December 24, 2023. One of the least intellectual characters of the Mickey Mouse team, Goofy has faced derision from both its creator and most of the franchise’s fans.
While The Walt Disney Co. and its characters have many rumors and myths about them, they are often negated by industry experts or fans who have followed the company’s work for years. As such, after he died in 1966, Walt’s bedside table was said to contain many notes that the legend had handwritten for future reference. The rumor claims that one note held instructions about eliminating Goofy.
What is the viral rumor about Disney's character Goofy?
On December 24, 2023, a TikTok user going by the name @ravvaslides put up a compilation of screenshots as a video. One of the screenshots was a comment by a Reddit user by the name of @kekcrocTheCroc, which suggested that Walt wanted Goofy dead. The comment says:
“When Walt Disney died, he left a note on his desk saying ‘Kill Goofy’ and nobody knows why.”
Being a disturbing piece of news, the video went viral and, within a few days, received six and a half million views. While the video was posted recently, the original Reddit comment was posted in April 2021. Fans and various media groups chased the rumor to investigate whether it was true.
The first point against the claim about Walt wanting to kill Goofy, as per the Reddit comment, is that there has been no such reference about it anywhere else throughout this time. The period between Walt’s death in 1966 and the Reddit comment in 2021 has 55 years between them.
No other source or medium has ever come across this piece of information, leading to the assumption that the comment is based on the Reddit user’s figment of imagination. It can be assumed that either the user was confused with pieces of information or had made up the rumor.
While there were several notes on the bedside table in Walt’s room when he died, none had “Kill Goofy” written on them, as per the cataloging done by Dave Smith, The Walt Disney Company archivist. According to Reader’s Digest and MousePlanet.com, the notes beside Walt’s bed had various production ideas and TV projects jotted down.
What is the source of the rumor about Walt Disney and Goofy?
The rumor from the Reddit user may be a confusion between two pieces of information, one of which says Walt’s bedside table had notes on production plans jotted down, and another fact that Walt did not like Goofy.
While Walt never had the words written beside his bed, he was not fond of Goofy, as told by his biographer, Neal Gabler, in his book Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. As per Gabler while speaking to Timothy Callaway in 2006, Walt disliked the character and would have “deep-sixed Goofy a long time ago."
While these were Gabler’s words, Walt may or may not have wanted to eliminate the cartoon character from the storyline of Mickey Mouse.
Why did Walt dislike Goofy, as per Neal Gabler?
As a biographer, Gabler stated in his book and in other interviews that Walt disliked Goofy. In a 2006 interview with Box Office Mojo, he said the creator found the cartoon character stupid. As per Gabler, Walt was a realist, and Goofy was the least realistic of all the characters.
Other characters, like Donald Duck, expressed human qualities like anger, or Dopey, the dwarf from Snow White, whose innocence was charming, Goofy had no realism to it. Gabler said:
“But Goofy was just dumb, an imbecile, what’s the human characteristic in him?”
While Walt wanted to take his creation away from an emotionless bunch of gags, he had to continue with some characters like Goofy to have work for the animators.
