Mickey Mouse universe  The Mickey Mouse universe is a fictional shared universe which is the setting for stories involving Disney cartoon characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Goofy and many other characters. The universe originated from the "Mickey Mouse" animated short films produced by Disney starting in 1928, but its first consistent version was created by Floyd Gottfredson in the "Mickey Mouse" newspaper comic strip. Real-world versions also exist in Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, called Mickey's Toontown. Since 1990, the city in which Mickey lives is typically called Mouseton in American comics. In modern continuity, Mouseton is often depicted as being located in the fictional U.S. state of Calisota, analogous to Northern California. This fictional state was invented by comics writer Carl Barks in 1952 as the location for Donald Duck's home city, Duckburg. The most consistent aspect of the Mickey Mouse universe is the characters. The most well-known include Mickey's girlfriend Minnie, pet dog Pluto, friends Goofy, Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, and nemesis Pete. Some Disney productions incorporate characters from Disney's animated feature films, such as "Bath Day" (1946; in which Figaro from "Pinocchio" appears as Minnie's cat), "Mickey's Christmas Carol" (1983), and – most extensively – "Disney's House of Mouse" (2001–2003). The term "Mickey Mouse universe" is not officially used by the Walt Disney Company, but it has been used by Disney comics author and animation historian David Gerstein. The Walt Disney Company typically uses terms such as Mickey & Friends or Mickey & the Gang to refer to the character franchise. The Mickey Mouse universe essentially originated with the debut of Mickey himself in "Plane Crazy" (1928). Although Mickey's stories included the character Pete, who was created in 1925, the world in which Mickey lives holds a continuity largely independent from earlier films. An exception to this was the reintroduction of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 2010 with the release of "Epic Mickey". In 1930, Disney began a "Mickey Mouse" comic strip which greatly expanded Mickey's world. The stories then became a work of collaborative fiction with different writers working in different mediums. This sometimes caused continuity discrepancies. For example, while Mickey and his friends largely live in the same contemporary setting, they sometimes appear in exotic settings including period pieces ("Brave Little Tailor", "The Nifty Nineties") and fantasy films ("Fantasia", "Fun and Fancy Free").