When you think of the best monsters, names like the Xenomorph, The Thing, or even the Cloverfield monster might come to mind. But now it’s time to welcome a new horror icon: Goofy. That’s because the Disney character was a big influence on the creature design in the new Nicolas Cage film Arcadian.

The movie was directed by Ben Brewer, who recently told IGN he was fixated with capturing the kind of unusual things that he found scary as a kid… like Goofy.

EARLY CREATURE SKETCHES BY DIRECTOR BENJAMIN BREWER (COURTESY OF RLJE FILMS)

Arcadian’s Goofy Effect

“From the beginning, I had this idea of big nocturnal eyes, and massive spaced-out teeth,” he said. “Teeth way too big for the creature’s mouth. Goofy, the Disney character, was a big inspiration.”

Specifically, it was the scene in A Goofy Movie where Goofy’s son Max has a nightmare about turning into his father that served as inspiration for the creature that has taken over the planet in Arcadian.

Really, it’s not that far-fetched an idea because that Goofy scene is rather off-putting. As Brewer tells it, what makes the scene scary, and why the Goofy influence stuck with him, is the overabundance of personality in the Goofy dream character. Working from a script by Michael Nilon, Brewer wanted his creature to have a soul – for the audience to be scared yet also sense that the monster has a personality.

“That’s where the Goofy thing comes in, because in that film, that dream sequence or even like the way Bigfoot is depicted [in A Goofy Movie], it’s terrifying,” said the director. “It’s too much personality. We gave our creatures too much personality because it would be freaky for people.”