Why does mickey mouse have 4 fingers

For one thing, it simply makes hands easier to draw. In the era of hand-drawn animation, having one less digit on every character in every cel could potentially save animators a ton of time, which, in turn, saved companies a ton of money. But there are other factors as well. A lot of early animation featured a rounded character design made up largely of circles think Felix The Cat and Mickey Mouse. For Example, King of the Hill has all of their characters drawn with five fingers.

Which is understandable because the overall design of their characters have a more realistic look about them compared to the Simpsons, at least. The characters in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe all have five fingers except for that weird, floaty hat wearing Orko. What about my old fave Thundercats? One of the reasons is to move some characters further away from human design. Think of Disney films…Aladin and Jasmine have five fingers, but the Genie has four.

In Cinderella, all characters are blessed with five fingers, except the poor mice, who only have four. However, in the case of Pinocchio — he starts with four fingers and then later on he gets promoted to five! If you watch the scene where Pinocchio transforms from puppet to boy, his four fingered, white gloved hands slowly morph into five fingered human hands. This was intended to show his transition to being a human.

The characters on the Simpsons are known for being self aware of their four fingeredness. But the one character famous for having all five fingers is God. He makes several appearances in the show — the one that sticks out in my head is when he visits Homer in a dream to discuss why Homer has stopped going to church. He then excuses himself as he has to go and appear in a tortilla in Mexico. God then floats up into the air where we can see his five toed feet for a split second and flies away.

I recall a Simpsons episode from many years ago where Lisa shows Bart a magazine and tells him that in another million years humans will have an extra finger.

By sketching characters with only four digits, it saved time — and money. YouTube user ChannelFrederator breaks it all down in a minute long clip that deep dives into your favorite toons. Of course, not every character got the shortcut treatment. Animators drew human figures, like Disney Princesses, as realistically as possible minus those huge eyes and tiny waists , so they have the usual five fingers. For more basic figures, like Mickey Mouse, animators worked mainly with circles.

Not just for the iconic mouse's main shape, but for his hands and body, too. By drawing just a thumb and three fingers, it kept the circular pattern going. Another reason a slew of your favorite characters, like the Genie, Mushu the dragon, and Winnie-the-Pooh don't have five-fingered human hands?