Many people are familiar with Mickey Mouse, Disney's iconic cartoon character, and have likely seen some of the black-and-white Mickey Mouse short films from the early days of animation. However, there is a story about a certain Mickey Mouse cartoon that is said never to have been officially released. It's not considered a standard short film because it contains almost no content—nothing significant happens. The film simply shows Mickey Mouse walking past six buildings on a loop. What makes it unsettling is that, unlike Disney's typical cheerful music, this animation's soundtrack consists of jarring piano notes being pounded aggressively, creating a discordant and eerie sound.
The depiction of Mickey in this cartoon is unlike his usual lively and cheerful self. Instead, he is expressionless, without his signature smile, walking with a subdued and melancholic demeanor. His head sways slightly as he walks, giving him a forlorn look. After about one and a half minutes, the screen abruptly cuts to black.
Martin, a Disney film expert, discovered the footage and decided to digitize it for a potential DVD release. Initially, he thought the black screen segment after Mickey's walking loop was pointless and planned to cut it out. However, knowing the footage was reportedly created by Walt Disney himself, he decided to archive the full version of the film on his computer for further review.
When Martin later examined the cut footage more carefully, he noticed something unusual. The film was nine minutes and four seconds long, with six full minutes of a black screen before Mickey's walking loop resumed. During those blacked-out minutes, faint whispers could be heard, though the words were indecipherable. Then, at around the seven-minute mark, the visuals began to change.
The scene grew increasingly bizarre. The colors became erratic, and Mickey's face slowly twisted into a sinister grin. The whispers turned into horrifying screams, and the animation took on a darker tone. Mickey's face became more distorted and blurred as the sequence continued.
As the animation progressed, the physical laws of the world seemed to break down. The buildings Mickey had been walking past earlier turned into floating debris, suspended in a void. Mickey moved forward in ways that defied logic or gravity, moving in directions that didn't align with any concept of human spatial understanding.
Martin found this portion of the film deeply unsettling. He stepped out of the room and instructed his staff to finish watching it and take notes on what occurred before archiving the footage in a restricted collection. What happened next became the stuff of legend.
The distorted screams lasted for eight minutes, with Mickey's face splitting into two halves as the animation spiraled further into chaos. At the very end of the film, a sharp sound resembling a shattered music box broke the silence.
When Martin returned, he found one of his staff pale and trembling. The man stammered out something in Russian: "You don't know true pain." He repeated this phrase seven times before grabbing a security guard's gun and ending his life.
According to Martin, the final frame of the film showed a Russian phrase that roughly translated to "The sights of hell bring its viewers back." He admitted that he knew very little about the true origins of the footage, as he had only heard details secondhand from his assistant, who had recorded the final moments of the film before its contents were sealed away.
This chilling tale of the so-called "Mickey Mouse Suicide Tape" remains one of the most infamous and unsettling urban legends associated with Disney, casting a dark shadow over the company's typically wholesome image.