With Walt, there's also the context that he was the founder and CEO of the company who chose to make himself a very public spokesperson for the company for many decades, including regular TV appearances on Disney's weekly national TV show - all in an era where few CEOs were public figures outside financial markets. And many of his appearances went far beyond the role of CEO to include playing host, product demonstrator and marketing spokesperson.

He clearly had no problem with representing the company and actively promoting Disney theme parks, movies and products with his image. Even while he was alive Disney Corp sold high-end memorabilia like large framed pictures of Walt working at his drawing board and including his distinctive signature. So he not only promoted products but turned himself into a revenue generating product. In some sense, he made himself a mascot for his company as much as Mickey Mouse and this was clearly by design. To me that's different than a CEO who mostly limited his public exposure to the usual earnings calls and shareholder's meetings.

Dead for 10 years vs dead for 100 is a meaningful difference to me.

Namely how many people alive actually knew the person.

I think what would be unfair is putting words in the mouth of the animatronic, making Walt say something that he wouldn’t have agreed with. Same with any historical figure.

I apologize in advance because you'd probably prefer text, but this is a very high quality video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjNca1L6CUk

The video is segmented into chapters--if you're not interested in the whole thing, the section about the Lincoln animatronic is chapter 4, about an hour into the video.

There's some fuzzy line somewhere - building an animatronic person just after they passed against (what would have been) their will or that of close relatives seems wrong.

But at some point personalities and people themselves fade into history, and it becomes a historical figure (such as Lincoln).

I live in America so 'moral rights' aren't a thing, but in europe it appears to give artist/creators rights over how their work is portrayed. How our legacy is carried forward of our own likeness or our work is a moral question, and cultural, and defines our values.

I dunno, “The Mouse” has become a euphemism for the faceless corporate drive to profits and milking every intellectual property to the maximum extent, personified by the South Park portrayal.