YMMV / Steamboat Willie

• Alternative Character Interpretation: After Mickey is punished with potato-peeling duty, he's shown peeling the potatoes in a way that wastes most of the potato. Is he too angry to do so in a less wasteful way? Or is he deliberately doing this to get back at Pete while maintaining Plausible Deniability?
• Common Knowledge:
  • This was not the first appearance of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, nor Pete. Mickey and Minnie originally debuted in Plane Crazy a few months prior to this short back in May 15, 1928, and Pete first appeared in one of the Alice Comedies shorts, "Alice Solves the Puzzle", back in February 15, 1925, meaning he predates not only Mickey Mouse, but Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (Mickey's predecessor) as well.
  • It is also a very common mistake in animation history that this short was the first sound cartoon, when those existed as early as 1924 (and Paul Terry had taken a shot at the sound cartoon called Dinnertime just a month before Willie was released). Steamboat Willie simply made the sound cartoon popular.
  • Pertaining to the plotline, Mickey isn't actually the Steamboat's helmsman. During the iconic opener, the ship's rudder is locked and Mickey is actually goofing off by being up at the wheel in the first place. His real job is to swab the deck. Pete is the ship's actual helmsman.
  • When the film entered the public domain in 2024, many mistakenly believed that Mickey Mouse's modern self was also now in the public domain. This is not the case. Only the 1928 version of the character is in the public domain (see Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. for more details). His full name "Mickey Mouse" is still trademarked (which may or may not cause legal trouble if used not as a trademark, see Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. for more details), and any later designs of the character are still protected under copyright.
  • Works useing this version of Mickey Mouse will often depict him wearing his captain's hat, almost as if it's an integral part of his design that's required to distinguish him from copyrighted versions of the character. In reality, he only wears the hat for a few seconds during the opening, only to loose it after Pete forces him away from the wheel, where he then spends the rest of the short bareheaded. Ironically, within the short itself, Mickey was actually wearing the hat unauthorised, as he wasn't the captain.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Animal abuse, while normally seen as abhorrent, manages to be surprisingly funny in this short as Mickey plays numerous animals (cats, pigs, and ducks) like musical instruments. Technically abuse, but it's done in a way that's so divorced from reality that it crosses over into becoming hilarious.
• Designated Villain: Pete is supposed to be seen as the bad guy for being mean to Mickey, but Mickey was slacking off, and he isn't that nice to the animals in this short either, making it come off as karma.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Despite what Disney likes to claim, this was not the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. That honor goes to Plane Crazy, which predates it by several months.^note However, Steamboat Willie was the first to be released to the public (hence why Disney likes to claim it to be his debut). Plane Crazy would not receive a public release til March 17, 1929, a few months after Steamboat Willie's release. Getting this fact wrong is a good way to anger both hardcore Disney fans and animation historians alike.
• Fan Nickname: "Steamboat Willie", or "Willie" has become popular since this version of Mickey's design became public domain, usually to denote when someone is using the public domain version of Mickey as opposed to a version Disney still owns the rights to. Others instead refer to him as "Michael".
• Genre Turning Point: While it wasn't the first sound cartoon (see above), the quality of its sound, on top of the quality of drawing and storytelling showed the world that animation had chops as a serious art form.
• I Am Not Shazam: Willie is the name of the Steamboat, but some people think that it's Mickey's name, via Early-Installment Weirdness. Especially glaring, considering the opening credits even have Mickey's name on it. Although after the short's release into the public domain, it has since become a Fan Nickname to differentiate the Mickey in the Public Domain from the one Disney still has the rights to.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Steamboat Willie Horror Movie. ^ExplanationFollowing Steamboat Willie's long awaited entry to the Public Domain, many joked about making a horror-themed adaptation similar to what happened to Winnie the Pooh once the original story also hit the Public Domain, Ironically, the director of Blood and Honey himself ruled out making a Steamboat Willie horror film just to avoid the risk of Disney's lawyers. And there ended being not one but THREE horror movie announced afterwards (Mickey's Mouse Trap, following a man masked as Mickey killing teenagers at an arcade, Screamboat Willie, a slasher set in the actual steamboat, and an animated film called The Return Of Steamboat Willie), AND two horror video games (Infestation: Origins and another one, simply titled Steamboat Willie). The creator of The Man in the Suit also released a teaser for an Analog Horror series based on the short.
  • "Hey guys check out this cool video i made". ^ExplanationA reupload of Steamboat Willie in its entirety by Dolan Darker. The rest of the comments play along by complimenting how good it looks and how it must have taken him a long time to make.
  • After the release of Steamboat Willie into the public domain, people made all kinds of gag dubs or video edits with it.
• Newer Than They Think: Though not by much. Few realize that Plane Crazy was made first.
• Older Than They Think:
  • As attested on the main page and above, Steamboat Willie was not even close to being the first sound cartoon, which Max Fleischer had been doing as early as 1924 with his Song-Cartunes series, and Paul Terry had created his own sound film, "Dinnertime", just a month before Willie was released.
  • This is not Pete's first appearance. He actually first appeared in one of the Alice Comedies shorts, "Alice Solves the Puzzle", back in 1925.
• Parody Displacement: The title is supposed to be a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr.. In fact, the BGM at the beginning of the cartoon was "Steamboat Bill", the song that the film was named after. The tune Mickey whistles was actually the chorus to the song.
• Signature Scene: The first shot of Mickey piloting the boat is one of the most iconic shots in the history of animation. Disney even incorporates it into their opening logos of their newest animated features.
• Tough Act to Follow: An often forgotten tidbit is that this short originally preceded a film called Gang War. Now, animated shorts preceding movies was nothing new back then, in fact it was very common practice, but this short just so happened to be such a groundbreaking achievement that it largely overshadowed the film that followed it. In fact, Gang War ended up going forgotten enough that it now counts as a lost film (as in, no surviving copies of it are known to exist), where Steamboat Willie continues to reign as perhaps the second biggest turning point in Disney's history (behind Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).
• Values Dissonance:
  • Mickey and Minnie's animal abuse in the short was considered to be hilarious back in 1928 and didn't raise many eyebrows back then. Nowadays, though, such abuse is considered to be unacceptable and the idea of Disney's mascot abusing animals in any context would be considered unthinkable today. As proven by the Crosses the Line Twice entry above, though, this doesn't make the short any less funny.
  • Pete is shown enjoying some chewing tobacco; today, anything seen as promoting the use of tobacco products is controversial at best.

---