Streets - A Mickey Mouse "Cartoon"

WARNING!!!
This story may contain sentitive subjects like World War II and medical problems. If any of those may be too much for you, go read something else. Also it sucks.
Disney has always been a sketchy company. From rumors and controversies, it's no secret that Disney has swept things under the rug for many years. Among the most unsettling of these secrets is the tale of an unreleased Mickey Mouse cartoon from the 1930s, a film so disturbing that it was hidden away from even the most devoted fans.
According to many sources, it was nothing special, just a repetitive loop (similar to The Flintstones) of Mickey strolling past six buildings that continues for two or three minutes before fading out. Unlike the cheerful tunes usually included, the soundtrack in this cartoon was not a song at all, just random piano keys held at random notes for a minute and a half before transitioning to eight piano keys being smashed at once and then going silent for the rest of the film.
It wasn't the merry old mouse we've come to adore, either. Mickey wasn't dancing or smiling; he looked miserable, his arms down, slouched, and with a gloomy expression on his face. There was also rain falling in the background, and it seemed to avoid Mickey like it didn’t want him to get wet.
Up until a year or two ago, it had been assumed that the film just ended after the screen cut to black. When Leonard Maltin was reviewing the cartoon to be put in the complete series DVD release, he decided it would take up too much space, but wanted to have a digital copy since he assumed that it was a creation of Walt Disney himself. When he had a digitized version up on his computer to look at the file, he noticed something unusual.
The cartoon was significantly longer than initially anticipated, clocking in at 9 minutes and 5 seconds. During my work hours, Mr. Maltin became visibly disturbed by the content he was viewing and enlisted another employee (whom I will call John for privacy reasons) to complete the viewing and transcribe his observations.
As I was walking with my Donald Duck mug to get my daily cup of Joe, ready for another day of being overworked and yelled at by the higher-ups, I noticed a series of muffled, screeching sounds reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard, accompanied by a woman's screams. Mr. Maltin, who was passing by, also noticed the commotion and hurried to my location, where we both observed flickering lights emanating from beneath the viewing room door.
The noise stopped after approximately 13 or 14 seconds, leaving an eerie silence. Concerned, we entered the room to investigate and discovered a horrifying sight. It was John lying on the floor, convulsing and frothing at the mouth, looking like he had literally fallen off his seat. Given my knowledge of this individual's severe epilepsy and susceptibility to seizures, it seemed likely that something in the cartoon had triggered an episode. Panicking, I told Mr. Maltin to call an ambulance.
After that, I became curious and asked if I could see what was in that cartoon. Maltin was unsure at first, but hesitantly agreed after I persuaded him. Curiosity is a powerful force. Anyone uses it to see anything, even if it's forbidden or confidential.
As I sat down to watch it, I read the transcripts that the now-hospitalized employee had written. The following is what he wrote.
"It fades to show Mickey again, still gloomy, but the rain seems to fade away. After 10 seconds, Mickey’s face curls into a cheesy grin, with eyes like in the Cactus Kid poster, where he looks uncomfortable, at least to me. His eyes also morphed from ovals to small circles. There is no music, no sound (except for the sound of rain pelting on the ground), just Mickey walking with that creepy smile on his face.
After 5 minutes of walking, the rain completely stopped. Dead silence, no sound. A few seconds passed, and Mickey’s eyes became bigger and shadowed if that makes sense, the middle of his teeth cracked, making them look sharp and jagged as his smile widened a bit more.
The audio returned, but this time it sounded like a slowed-down droning ambience. The scene lasted 2 minutes and 5 seconds before it changed again. Mickey closed his mouth and eyes before going back to grinning. His eyes became more shadowy and bigger, while also looking spaced out, despite only his left eye being visible throughout the whole cartoon. There is no way Walt made this. His teeth are a little bit cracked, and two were visibly missing.
The audio of the droning ambience started to turn into gurgled cries of some sort. The background started to distort and twist, while also becoming more blurry too. The street began to curl downwards and upwards, the buildings twisting and swirling into each other, yet Mickey’s physics didn’t react to it in any way like he was still walking on flat ground.
At the 5-minute mark, the film started to jitter and jump, like it wasn’t stabilized correctly, the background became more blurry and twisted, no longer looking like a small desolate town and more like random black and gray smudges mixed with what looked like pen scribbles all over. Mickey started walking faster through the messy void, the gurgled cries turned to muffled sounds of a large group of people screaming in panic. The madness went on for 2 more minutes, unt-”
That’s all the man wrote before suffering from a seizure, so I’ll finish the transcript for him.
After 2 minutes of walking, Mickey’s face was consumed by black scribbled lines, and then he stopped. After 2 seconds, he turned to face the viewer, being me, and presumably broke the fourth wall for 10 more seconds before a voice that sounded like Mickey, but not in Walt’s take on the voice, since this cartoon had someone with a German accent to do Mickey’s voice.
“We have you now, filthy Americans.”
A suspenseful sound that sounded like coughing started getting louder and louder until Mickey pulled off the scribbles from his face and ran towards the camera until it was only his face visible in a white background with black German text reading “ÖFFNE DEINE AUGEN” which translates to “OPEN YOUR EYES” flashing from white and black to black and white on a loop with Mickey’s face unchanging.
Speaking of his face, Mickey’s eyes had become so big that they looked like black voids in his face, and his teeth were now broken to the point that they looked like shattered glass.
At this moment, the film became even more unstable and jittery, and the sound turned into a group of people screaming, but much clearer sounding. I could now see why John reacted the way he did, the flashing lights were unbearable.
After 1 minute, the film started melting like the reels were finally giving up and started falling apart, making the already disfigured Mickey face look worse until the film only showed black and white blobs at the top of the screen with a big white silhouette in the middle and the audio stopped.
I was flabbergasted at what I’d just seen. What was that? Was it even a creation of Walt Disney himself? Was it some kind of mockery of the company? What did I watch?
The next day, I was ordered to send it to the vault, where other private Disney media was being stored away, when I found some documents. Out of curiosity, I read them one by one. They talked about all the rumors and controversies about the company from Walt’s frozen head to the atrocity known as “Song of the South” until I read a document that answered all the questions I had about the cartoon.
The document described that during World War II, the US Department of War commissioned a Disney animator to produce a film for use in interrogating Nazi prisoners held at P.O. Box 1142 to extract information from them by psychologically torturing ones who resisted threats of being handed over to the Soviets. What Disney allegedly presented them was an extended, 9-minute-long version of the above animation test, in the same style as Mickey’s original design.
Whether this was ever used in P.O. Box 1142 is up for debate amongst believers of this rumor. If this were to exist and have been used, of course, none of those involved would admit this existed, or that any of the prisoners were subjected to anything traumatic, and all records of what happened at the intelligence facility have been destroyed following the end of the war. It is also debated whether the film reel made for the War Department was kept, or if it was destroyed as well. Well, here is proof that it still exists.
Now, here is my theory about what the ending of the film meant.
The text reading “ÖFFNE DEINE AUGEN” was probably telling the prisoners to continue watching the films to cause as many health problems as possible. Mickey saying “filthy Americans” was referring to the prisoners. The film was later rumored to be around under the name “suicidemouse.avi” but there was no proof.
The rest of the documents were either early scripts for movies or just junk after that. I was going to leave, but then my boss came in and yelled at me for being late and for looking through the confidential files without permission, and threatened to blacklist me from the animation industry and lower my already minimum wage paycheck. Now I know Disney is going to blacklist me anyway if they see that I posted this publicly, but seeing how the company is now, with it being mostly focused on greedy executives and money laundering, I think they deserve it. I hated the working conditions anyway, and I think people deserve to know the truth about what really goes on behind the scenes at Disney.
This story isn’t just about a bizarre, disturbing cartoon; it’s about the lengths a company will go to hide its skeletons. And after working there and seeing how they treat their employees, I’ve realized just how deep that rot goes. This is why I decided to post this story. It’s not just about the cartoon;
it’s about exposing a culture of deception and exploitation. Disney may have built a magical kingdom, but beneath the surface, there's a dark reality that people deserve to know.
Category:Disney
Category:Cartoons
Category:Animation
Category:Retake
Category:Mickey Mouse
Category:Mickey