It would be a pretty hard sell convincing you that without Robin, Batman would be nothing more than an insomniac running around Gotham in his footie pajamas. Or that without that screaming ninny Willie, Indiana Jones would have found himself on the business end of a crocodile's gaping maw. Because those statements are obviously stupid.

But that's not the case with these lesser-known, real-life sidekicks who, for one reason or another, got shafted by history.

#5. Walt Disney's Sidekick, Ub Iwerks

Ub Iwerks was a Missouri-born animator and Walt Disney's oldest and closest friend. He was also the guy who invented Mickey Mouse.

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You read that right. Before there was Disney, the multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate, there was just Walt, the young man kicking around at someone else's animation studio, and his buddy Ub, the guy doing the grunt work. Ub's first success as Walt's go-to guy was the creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit:

Which happened to look like Mickey Mouse, if some sadistic bastard had hung Mickey up by his ears for a week and a half. Unfortunately for Disney, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was actually owned by Universal Studios, and Universal Studios decided itdidn't need Walt's involvement to keep this scrappy character going. So Walt asked his BFF Ub to whip up an Oswald 2.0:

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Did everyone just look like Charlie Chaplin back then?

Iwerks not only conceptualized Mickey Mouse, he animated Mickey's first cartoon, all by himself. In fact, because Disney was shorthanded, Iwerks ended up animating Mickey's first five cartoons, plus the first Silly Symphonies. And Disney was so appreciative of his friend's work that some of those first cartoons' titles read like this:

Notice how Iwerks' name is bolded and bigger than Disney's.

So why have we never heard of him? Apparently, because Iwerks was shy and didn't have a very good sense of humor. Believe it or not, back in those days people thought Mickey Mouse was hilarious. Like, pee-your-pants, snort-milk-out-of-your-nose hilarious. And even though Iwerks was recognized as one of the most technically talented animators in the field, he just wasn't all that funny.

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"I cannot breathe for my vigorous laughter!"

So when he left Disney to start his own studio, it flopped like a wet bologna on a lube-covered Slip-N-Slide. Walt could replace Iwerks with new animators, but Ub couldn't replace Walt's sense of humor. Eleven years after leaving Disney, he came back to the studio, but this time around, he spent his talent concentrating on solving more technical problems, like how to integrate archaic live-action racial stereotypes with blatantly offensive animated animals.

In the end, Disney himself said his friend's personality was the reason no one had ever heard of him. Iwerks was too shy to promote himself, and no one makes it in Hollywood without a little bravado. As a result, when people all over the planet see the face of one of the most recognizable characters in the history of human culture ...

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And also, some broad in an ugly dress.

... they think one word and one word only: "Disney."

#4. The Wright Brothers' Sidekick, Octave Chanute

Despite having a name that sounds like a musical garbage compactor, Octave Chanute was one of aviation's earliest champions. Already an old man and a retired engineer in 1890, he began tinkering with flying machines as his second career, publishing the very first history of aviation before anyone had actually taken flight. Which, coincidentally, inspired us to publish The History of the First Blow-Job Powered Hovercrafts, but that's another story.



One with alligators.

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More importantly, Chanute developed collaborative relationships with his contemporaries, freely sharing knowledge with the hopes that someone, anyone, would finally get a plane up in the air. One of those aviators, Percy Pilcher, actually took Chanute's design of the first triplane and built one but tragically died in a glider accident days before he could test the plane out. Which was a shame, because over a hundred years later, some British university students reconstructed the plane and flew it for over a minute. Which means that Octave Chanute probably designed the world's first functioning airplane, four years before the Wright brothers flew theirs.