Did you know Disney once made a surprisingly dark Mickey Mouse short? Runaway Brain (1995) is unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Credits: A.F. ARCHIVE

Does anyone else remember Runaway Brain, a strange animated Mickey Mouse short that Disney put out in 1995? It's different tonally from everything else Disney had done before, because it has such a strange, sometimes even grotesque, dark and nonsensical humor.

The plot is surprisingly dark: Mickey wants to take Minnie on an extravagant vacation, but he can't afford it, so he answers a dubious ad for well-paying "mindless work". It turns out that this work is a cruel, insane prank set up by a mad scientist named Dr. Frankenollie, who wants to swap Mickey's brain with a monstrous version of Pete that looked more like a giant zombie.

Mickey then wakes up as the giant Pete-monster, and things go off-the-rails from there. There are some pretty wild, crazy animation, obnoxiously exaggerated visuals, some morbid humor, some jumps, and a few jumpscares. You definitely do not think that you are watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon.

What feels even weirder is that it appears so familiar in style. It is all animated in classic Disney style, so it looks kind of like a classic Disney cartoon, yet the copious dark and grotesque humor feels so out of place for a Mickey Mouse production. I remember this short film playing in theaters before A Kid in King Arthur's Court, and I believe it was even considered for an Academy Awards nomination, but I think Disney was not sure how to better present something so ridiculous to audiences.

Now, it's a mix of a odd classic, and somewhat of a cult classic. Clips are on YouTube, and it shows up on a few rare DVD collections, but it’s largely forgotten.