This is the kind of thing that's all over the Internet, and people think it's true because they saw it on a website like Flip the Movie Script, which introduces it as a Fact. "The fact is quite difficult to prove," it continues, with no sense of irony, "but many of the people that knew Walt Disney provided some information about the fear." The thing is, Flip the Movie Script doesn't have any quotations or evidence from any of those people.
"Shortly after his creation," Flip the Movie Script goes on, "Mickey Mouse carried the much more 'masculine' name Mortimer. It was only after Disney's wife interfered that Mortimer became the friendlier Mickey. Some claim that Disney created the friendly and always laughing Mickey in an attempt to help other phobia sufferers. He wanted to change the 'image' of mice and bring an amicable character to life."
Notice that Flip the Movie Script doesn't say who these people are, who "claim" that Disney created Mickey to help "other" phobia sufferers. Nor does it have any traceable evidence. In fact it's just repeating rumours. The only bit of the above extracts that I'm prepared to believe without corroboration is that Disney's wife persuaded him to change the character's name from Mortimer to Mickey.
I can find nothing on any reputable website to back up the rumours.
Wikipedia mentions rumours of racism and anti–Semitism (which it says "have been contradicted by many who knew him"), but doesn't mention fear of mice.
When I googled "walt disney fear of mice" (this was how I came across the aforementioned Flip the Movie Script), the only site that came up on which I would place any credence was Time magazine. 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Walt Disney is not a title that fills me with confidence, I must admit, but in fact the only fear that it mentions is the "overwhelming fear of communist infiltration" by which the USA was gripped in the years following the Second World War. According to Time, Disney "contributed to anti–Communist hysteria"; he "believed in the Red Menace". In addition to serving as vice president of the anti–communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA), of which he was a co–founder, he testified in front of the House Un–American Activities Committee against several labour organisers, accusing them of motivating his animators to strike. Disney also accused the Screen Actors Guild of being a communist front, and claimed that their 1941 strike was a socialist plot.
One rumour that Time actively rejects is the one that Walt Disney's body was cryogenically frozen, after his death in 1966 from lung cancer. Time refers to Snopes, (formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages), which concluded in 1995 that "there is no documentary evidence to suggest that Walt Disney was interested in, or had even heard of, cryonics." It lists plenty of evidence to demonstrate that Disney's body was in fact cremated.
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