Misconceptions about Disney - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep. 28)

Hi, I'm Elliot, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube

Today, I'm going to talk about some misconceptions about Disney, both the man and the company

Misconception at number one, Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen. After Disney died in 1966, he was cremated

But the rumor that he was frozen was so persistent that his family opened the Walt Disney Family

Museum in San Francisco in 2009. According to his daughter, Diane Disney Miller, other little kids

would say to my kids, your grandfather is frozen, isn't he? And I couldn't let that stand. Plus

if he had been frozen, don't you think they would have unfrozen him for the premiere of the movie

Frozen? It's like the best possible publicity stunt ever. Use your brains, people. That movie

totally flopped. As for where people think his frozen body might be stored, that brings me to

misconception number two. Disney is buried underneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride

at Disneyland. I guess we can't really know for sure, but his family claims that he was cremated and

his ashes were placed in Glendale, California at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park

So let just put this urban legend to rest Get it Misconception at number three Walt Disney designed Mickey Mouse It turns out that Walt didn even draw Mickey all that much After he went into business for himself in 1928

he did come up with the idea to create a mouse character, but Mickey himself was designed by Walt's partner, Ub Iwerks

I guess you could call the character a collaboration between the two men. Fun fact, Mickey was originally named Mortimer Mouse

Which brings me to misconception at number four, Mickey Mouse was named after Mickey Rooney

This is an interesting myth because it was Rooney himself who claimed it to be true

He said that he was playing a character named Mickey McGuire when he met Walt at Warner Brothers Studio

which prompted Walt to name the character after him. Well, it was actually Walt's wife, Lillian, who suggested the name Mickey in place of Mortimer

Still, it's possible, I guess, that his wife could have been inspired by Rooney, but it's hard to believe considering Rooney was working for Warner Brothers at the time

and Disney had his own studio, and Rooney changed the story a couple of times, so who knows

Speaking of character inspiration, misconception at number five. Disney animators based Tinkerbell on Marilyn Monroe

People tend to believe this one because the film came out around the same time that Marilyn Monroe was becoming a very popular actress

But the animators actually hired a model to base Tinkerbell on Her name was Margaret Kelly and it took her six months of work to pose for the film She acted out all of the motions that Tinkerbell does Plus Kelly modeled for and voiced one of the Neverland Mermaids

Misconception number six, the Disney logo is Walt's actual signature. Actually, Walt's real signature didn't even look like the logo

While he was alive, a few Disney employees were authorized to sign Walt's autographs

The logo that later emerged appears to be a fancier version of the signatures that various employees had attempted

an authentic Walt Disney autograph that looks like the logo has yet to be uncovered

Misconception at number seven, the word sex can be seen in The Lion King. So this one is kind of a maybe

There's a scene in the film in which Simba lays down and some dust flies off of a cliff

And if you look closely, it looks like the dust spells out S-E-X for a moment

The film's animators have claimed that it was supposed to look like S-F-X, short for special effects

But like, you can decide for yourself whether you believe them. Okay, you have to admit it's pretty weird that they chose an abbreviation, only one letter off from sex

Fires. Misconception number eight, you can see Disney's face in the Haunted Mansion

There's a bust that slightly resembles him in the graveyard scene of the Haunted Mansion, but that man is Thurl Ravenscroft

who you might know as the voice of Tony the Tiger for 50 years Although Disney and Ravenscroft had similar mustaches so it could be some sort of tribute Who knows Speaking of the Haunted Mansion misconception number nine The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland was shut down due to a guest heart attack There an urban legend that the

Haunted Mansion really opened in 1962, then a guest rode it and had a heart attack. So the ride

was shut down until 1969, and it was made significantly less scary. It's true that the

ride's opening was postponed, but it wasn't for that reason. Other events got in the way, like

Disney's death. Plus, the building hadn't even been completed by 1962, so there's no

way this legend could be true. Misconception number 10. No one dies at Disney parks. The story goes that any time there's

a serious medical emergency at a Disney park, that person is rushed outside the gates so

no one is ever declared dead at a park. But there have been numerous declared deaths there

including some from a 1984 plane crash in the Epcot parking lot. It's not really a

a preventable thing, even with that Disney magic