Tom Hanks wears a Bradley Mickey Mouse

The Mickey Mouse watch is Robert Langdon's signature. In Dan Brown's novels, Langdon's parents gave him a Bradley Mickey Mouse watch for his tenth birthday, and he wears it as a daily reminder to keep a young perspective. The prop department for the film adaptations stayed faithful to the books, putting Tom Hanks in the Bradley "Fat Boy" version across the Langdon films. The Bradley Time Division produced Disney character watches from 1972 to 1985 after acquiring the license from Elgin National Industries. The Fat Boy Mickey, made between 1972 and 1974, has a shorter, rounder Mickey with pie eyes recalling 1928's Steamboat Willie rather than the modern corporate version. Mickey's arms point to the hours and minutes.

Ron Howard directed Angels & Demons (2009), the second Langdon film, sending the professor racing through Vatican City to stop an antimatter bomb before midnight. The Fat Boy Mickey's hands are literally counting down to destruction. There is something funny about a fifty-dollar novelty watch keeping time on a mission to save Rome, and Brown knew that when he wrote it. The watch is the joke Langdon tells about himself.

The watch is mostly hidden under Hanks's jacket in The Da Vinci Code (2006), but Angels & Demons gives it real screen time: a clear closeup as Langdon checks the time in a crowded Vatican square, and another visible shot as his arm rests on the edge of the Fountain of the Four Rivers after a rescue. The screen-used prop later sold through Heritage Auctions with an engraved caseback confirming its use by Hanks on the production.