Mickey is a mouse. There is no doubt about it, just like Donald is a duck. And Pluto is a dog. It’s easy to distinguish Clarabella as a cow and Chop and Chop as squirrels, but the million-dollar question has been lurking since 1932: What the hell is Goofy? Yes, yes, you can laugh all you want, but there’s something hiding between that long nose, those ears and that goofy laugh. And we’re willing to go all the way.
Is it a dog?
The first answer is obvious: it’s a dog, isn’t it? In his first appearance he was called “Dippy Dawg”, which already gives us an idea of the origin of the character. In 1939 he was finally given the name we all know, in the short film ‘Goofy and Wilbur’, but it didn’t make anything clear about him. At that time Pluto had already been around for nine years, and he is undoubtedly a classic dog, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of one.
Some people say “They are just drawings, don’t think about it: they are both dogs. Only one talks and reasons and the other does not. There must be something else going on. His more modern girlfriend is Clarabella, a cow: if Minnie is a mouse and Daisy is a paw, you would think that at Disney they suffer from the “Noah’s ark” syndrome and put animals of the same species together. Then it’s settled, isn’t it? Goofy Goof is a cow.
Is it a cow?
Well. Or not. Goofy has been known to have other girlfriends who were definitely of the canine branch: chances are he doesn’t care, or that no one at Disney has spent as much time brooding over Goofy’s love life as the fans have. In the 1960s his girl was Glory-Bee, whose description only indicated that she has a dog’s nose.
What’s more: as we learned in the immeasurable ‘Goofy and Son’ he was married to a woman of whom we only know her name (Mrs. Goof) and they had a son, Max, who although he has the same problems as Goofy in terms of his animal origins, has more of a doggy face. Disney has stated that we have never met Goofy’s ex on screen, so we can rule out any of his loves. At least it’s clearer that he’s a dog. Sort of.
More or less?
Yes: Bill Farmer himself, the voice actor for Goofy since 1987, broke with everything when he bluntly said, in an interview with Yahoo, “Its not a dog“. Eye. “Pluto is a dog, but Goofy seems to be in the canine family in the same way that a wolf is not a dog but is also in the canine family”. Before being able to open new theories, the actor himself discards them because he knows how annoying fans can be with our absurd niches.
“I think Canis Goofus is the technical Latin term for what Goofy is. It’s simply Goofy.” Forever sunk. We started writing not knowing what the hell Goofy is (but seriously suspecting the doggy option) and now all we keep knowing is… we keep not knowing anything. Please, Disney, we need a solution. Who the hell is Goofy Goof?
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