Fact Check

Walt Disney

Legends and myths about Walt Disney.

Published Nov. 16, 2008

Claim:



Walt Disney was a tantalizing contradiction. He was the creative head of one of the film industry's most renowned movie studios, the inventive genius behind a world-famous theme park, and the genial host to of a weekly television program. Nonetheless, his private life remained remarkably private: to all appearances he was the traditional family man, maintaining a forty-one year marriage and raising two daughters. Since his death, however, more than a few unusual tales have come to be told about our beloved Uncle Walt. In this case, fiction is definitely stranger than truth.




Red bullet
Walt Disney was an illegitimate child.


Red bullet
Walt Disney was dishonorably discharged from the military.


Red bullet
Walt Disney's body was put in cryonic storage.


Red bullet
Walt Disney's face appears on a
bust in the Haunted Mansion.*


Red bullet
Walt Disney was born in Robinson, Illinois, and named after a helpful townsperson who assisted his parents.


Yellow bullet
Disney animators slipped a single frame of a naked woman into a film to see if Walt could spot it.


Red bullet
Walt Disney's will specified that a substantial bequest go to the first man to become pregnant or bear a child.


White bullet
Maternal figures were typically absent in Walt Disney's animated films because he felt responsible for his own mother's death.

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David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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