Disney is synonymous with Mickey Mouse, so to find out there was another character before his existence is pretty surprising! But lo and behold, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, did exist, thanks to a 1927 Disney cartoon that was discovered in Norway!
Experts once believed that only 25 seconds of the cartoon, Empty Socks, existed, but archivists at Norway's National Library found an almost complete version of the film at the library's facility near the Arctic circle, according to The Guardian.
"At the beginning, we didn't know it was a lost cinematographic treasure," Kvale Soerenssen, an archivist at the library, said in a statement. "The film was in two reels which weren't clearly labeled."
The original film was about five-and-a-half minutes long, but the discovered version has about 30 to 60 seconds missing from it. Disney cartoonist David Gerstein authenticated the film, which has since been digitized and sent to The Walt Disney Co. in California.
This is a huge coup for Disney, as the only known find of Empty Socks was the 25-second-long clip at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Walt Disney created Oswald in 1927 with his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, for Universal Studios, according to NPR; however, Oswald didn't last very long, with the famous animation company coming up with Mortimer Mickey a year later. The short-lived rabbit only appeared in nine cartoons, including Empty Socks. But Universal acquired Oswald and continued to make cartoons with him into the 1940s.
But fortunately for Oswald, he made a resurgence last year when he appeared in Disney's Get a Horse 3-D short, making it his first Disney appearance since 1920 after being reacquired in 2006! But he was subsequently traded to NBCUniversal's Al Michaels.
Welcome back, Oswald!
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)