Just for fun, I'm creating a family tree for Mickey, not fictional wise, but in how he was created.
To clarify, Felix the Cat was one of the world's first cartoon characters. His success was so great that other characters were cloned from him, including Waffles the Cat, Julius the Cat (who was actually created when Felix the Cat distributor, Margaret Winkler, who had been having constant fights with Felix owner Pat Sullivan, requested Disney to make him) and a re-worked Krazy Kat (whom I dubbed as Krazy Kat II).
Later on, after the Alice Comedies (where Julius is from) became boring, Oswald was created by Disney to replace him, and was also in competition with Felix.
Later, when Disney lost the rights to Oswald when he left to create his own studio, he created Mickey Mouse. And then after that Krazy Kat (whom I dubbed Krazy Kat III) was again remodeled to compete with Mickey.
When two Disney animator left to help start up the Looney Tunes & Merry Melodies, Bosko, Foxy & Piggy were cloned from Mickey Mouse. Later when the same two animators left, they took Bosko (Foxy and Piggy having already be dropped) with them, and the third Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies animator was left with a hole to fill, and so he created Buddy, To replace Bosko.
Another early Looney Tunes character, Beans the Cat, was copied from Waffles the Cat.
Disney also had two other Oswald based characters, Dennis the Duck from an episode of Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse, and Nimrod the Rabbit from an episode of Bonkers.
Cubby Bear, was another Mickey Mouse clone. I'm not exactly sure if he was based off of any one character, but Toby the Pup was created to fit the same animation style as the above characters.
The Warner Bros, and Warner Sister, Yakko, Wakko and Dot's designs were created to mimic the earlier designs of the characters.
It is believed that Naoto Oshima was inspired by Felix the Cat for the design and creation of Sonic the Hedgehog while working at Sega. If this is true, then this 'family tree' would include Ristar who was 'evolved' from the same character that later became Sonic. And possibly Mighty who was put in Knuckle's Chaotix as a stand in fro Sonic.
And it would also include any other characters that were cloned/ripped-off not just Felix, but any other character that I have already listed, like Jazz Jackrabbit, and possibly Crash Bandicoot..
What I would like is to find more characters, do any of you know of any?
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