The character was designed by Ward Kimball, who had been very disappointed and was about to leave the Disney studio when much of the work he did for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was cut from the final version of that film.

He was originally performed by singer Cliff Edwards, who voiced the character for Disney through the 1960s and sang Jiminy's most famous song, "When You Wish Upon a Star".

The Blue Fairy gives Jiminy the task of becoming Pinocchio's conscience, and teaching him to distinguish between good and evil so that one day he will become a real boy.

But the next day, Pinocchio is convinced by con men Honest John and Gideon not to go to school and become an artist, without listening to Jiminy's warnings.

They sell Pinocchio to Stromboli, a puppeteer who, after putting on a great show with the wooden boy, ends up locking him in a cage.

However, Jiminy discovers that all the children on the island have been turned into donkeys, and when he runs to tell Pinocchio, he sees that the same thing is happening to the puppet, already having two ears and a tail.

They discover that Geppetto left to look for Pinocchio on Pleasure Island,[10] and in the sea he ended up being devoured by a whale named Monstro.

After a search on the seabed, they end up finding Monstro, who devours Pinocchio, while Jiminy stays outside, trying to get the whale to open its mouth to follow his friend.

As of 2023, Jiminy has also been found in popular web comic "Goofy HECU", a group of long time and loyal Walt Disney fans.

In the I'm No Fool series, he advised children how to steer clear of dangerous traffic, sharp objects, strangers, exposed electrical lines, and so forth.

The badge is given to him by the Blue Fairy at the end of Pinocchio marking him as an official conscience now declares him to be the Ghost of Christmas Past.

An alternate version of Jiminy (both in fairy-tale cricket form and as his "real world" human alias, Archie Hopper) is a core character on the Disney-owned ABC television series Once Upon a Time (2011-2017), played by Raphael Sbarge.

In the series, which finds cursed fairy tale characters living in present-day Maine without memory of their true origins, Jiminy/Archie serves as the town counselor and "conscience".

Some new elements included in this version are that Jiminy manages to accompany Pinocchio to school, although the boy is expelled from the place, and after it he is unable to help him because Honest John and Gideon trap him in a glass jar, from which he later escapes.

In the animated series The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, Jiminy (voiced once again by Joe Ochman) appears in the episode "Disappearing Act" (2021), where he makes a cameo appearance alongside other Disney magical characters like the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty, Merlin from The Sword in the Stone, and the Blue Fairy, to help Mickey realize he had the magic inside him all along.

[15][16] On October 25, 2019, it was reported that Disney is developing an undetermined animated project focused on Jiminy Cricket for the streaming service Disney+.

Jiminy Cricket is a main character in the game Disney's Villains' Revenge (1999), wherein he must help the player save the stories of Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from the stories' respective villains: the Ringmaster, the Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and the Evil Queen.

He appears in the Kingdom Hearts video game series as the chronicler of player character Sora's travels, writing journals with the history of the events that occurred in each world, keeping a cast list of the figures they meet, friend or foe, among other notes with the extra features of the game.

He has a substantially bigger part in the sequel, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (2004), frequently talking to Sora and offering advice.

In the Japanese version, Jiminy was voiced by Kaneta Kimotsuki until his death in 2016 and by Yōhei Tadano since Kingdom Hearts III.