The character was devised by performer Dave Goelz as a tribute to Jim Henson. Co-creator Bill Barretta stated in an interview:
“We had to figure out how much we wanted to do with Zoot. He’s always been very limited in speech and comprehension, so it was fun to find that he’s just living in his own surreal bubble, all the time. We explored that even further, to have him with his shoe. Dave...came to me one day and said, "I have this idea that Zoot has this little character with him." I was like, "Dave, that might be hard to do, all the time. Is there something else that maybe he has on him?" And he came back with this idea of doing a shoe named Jimmy, and Jimmy is Jim Henson. Dave found photos of Jim’s teeth because he wanted the shoe to be able to smile. Those are Jim’s teeth and he carved them himself. He went home and made this character because he was so dedicated to the surreal aspect of what he wanted to do with Zoot. And everybody brought great ideas and things, but he just went like far and above what we expected.[2]”
The name Jimmy Shoe is a pun on women's footwear brand Jimmy Choo.
Notes
The English audio description narrator for "Eight Days a Week" says "Using ventriloquism, Zoot makes a shoe talk" for Jimmy's debut scene. In contrast, the description in "We Will Rock You" uses "Zoot lets his shoe lead him away."
