Funny / The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck

0:Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies

• After having dinner with Donald and the kids, Scrooge regales them with the story of how he earned his #1 Dime. While Scrooge tells the nephews about the desperate poverty of the clan in 1877, Donald can be seen playing the World's Smallest Violin, because his own mother lived through the same hardship, and he knows full well that while it was a hard life, Scrooge is playing things up quite a bit for drama.
• When Magica meets Scrooge's father, she mistakes him for Scrooge and jumps Fergus so quickly she knocks over toddler Hortense in the process: "Scrooge! How did you get here? Never mind! I'll fight you through all the ages! I'll..." (she then realizes it's not him and has to apologize).
  • After Magica steals the first dime, Fergus demands it back, and Magica tells him that he wouldn't dare to put his hands on a lady. Cut to Fergus holding her upside down by the legs and shaking her until the coin falls out.
  Magica: Of course, I could be wrong.
• Howard Rockerduck, a former prospector who struck it rich in the 1849 California gold rush, is visiting Glasgow at the same time as Magica in the hopes of finding a woman to settle down with, and even tries to flirt with her, much to Magica's disdain and total lack of interest. After Magica's fight with Fergus, during which she hijacks Rockerduck's carriage, he ends up bruised and battered down by the Glasgow docks, and decides to buy a ticket back to America, thinking that the women of Europe are a bit too intense for his tastes. Considering the awful shrew he ended up with, not to mention their Spoiled Brat of a son (John Rockerduck, Scrooge's future rival), Howard would probably have been better off with Magica.

I: The Last of Clan McDuck

• A bird pulling a worm out of the ground is tapped on the wing by another worm behind it, holding a club with a nail in it in its "tail".
• While Fergus is proud that he managed to inspire Scrooge with the #1 Dime, he worries his son might have learned his lesson too well once he starts asking for reciepts whenever he gives his parents some of the money he's earned.
• Quackly tells Scrooge that the McDucks feared "No man of woman born"... save the tax collector.
  • One of the items in the old clan castle is a web-covered piggy bank with a spiked mace attached to it with a chain as a rather extreme form of theft deterrent.
• When Scrooge leaves for America at the age of 14, Fergus gives him the only two heirlooms the clan has left, in case he needs money; the silver pocket watch and gold dentures that once belonged to Seafoam McDuck. While Scrooge says he'll never sell the watch (and in fact, never does), he thinks the dentures are creepy and doesn't mind selling them.

II: The Master of the Mississippi

• Scrooge first meets his uncle Angus while he's playing cards against Porker Hog. Porker seems to win with a full house - three aces and two kings, only for Angus to reveal his hand - three aces and two aces. Turns out that they're playing by "riverboat captain rules", where not cheating is seen as an insult. Porker had a device to feed him aces, but it had a hangup. As Angus leaves, the device has dropped enough aces on the floor to reach Porker's knees.
• Scrooge first sees Ratchet Gearloose showcasing his invention of water purification pills, which can clear even the notoriously muddy waters of the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, while the water looks clear, it still tastes like crap.
  Ratcher: So? I bet Edison's first lightbulb didn't taste very good either!
  Scrooge: (Thinking) America, where even a crackpot might get rich!
• The Affably Evil pickpocket who gives people genuinely useful directions and advice while stealing their luggage.
  • Scrooge is surprisingly nonplussed after he discovers he's essentially lost everything except his Nr 1 dime and the clothes on his back. He doesn't even remark on it, just tosses the bag handle away as he walks into the saloon. Porker Hog does the same thing after the pickpocket gets his suitcase of loaded dice.
• Scrooge spots a woman giving out free wood on the side of the river. The woman turns out to be one of the Beagle Boys, who didn't even bother disguising his moustache for the role. Scrooge remarks that he apparently knows too little about girls.
  • "You nitwits! You was follered by a WHOLE RIVERBOAT!!"
• The Brick Joke that Ratchet Gearloose is using the engine on the riverboat to cook pies. After the Dilly Dollar is destroyed during Scrooge's second encounter with the Beagle Boys, Ratchet decides to just cut his losses and open a pie shop.

III: The Buckaroo of the Badlands

• In one of his letters home, Scrooge mentions that he named his ill-tempered horse after his equally ill-tempered sister Hortense. She's not the least bit amused.
• Teddy explains how the fossil is from a "duck-bill dinosaur". Scrooge takes it as an insult.
• While searching for the cattle-rustling McViper brothers in the Montana Badlands, Scrooge and a young Teddy Roosevelt stumble upon two Native hunters and asks them for help.
  Native: Can't you smell them? They're in the second canyon over.
  Other Native: And tell the tall one to wash his feet! Phew!
• How Scrooge manages to retrieve the stolen cattle from McViper brothers: he and Teddy tie one end of the lasso to one of the brothers, while the other end gets caught around a grizzly bear. As the grizzly chases the brother it's tied to (who desperately tries to get his sibling save him), they knock against a dinosaur fossil, and its skeleton falls onto a different cattle, who panics and runs after the Natives, who think it's an evil spirit. Teddy's reaction to all this sums up the absurd hilarity:
  "Godfrey! And I thought politics was a three-ring circus."

IV: The Raider of the Copper Hill

• Scrooge cracks open a lightbulb, under the impression that it's an oldtimey oil lantern, and gets a nasty shock for his trouble. The guy he's eating with immediately asks the server what the hell they put in his food.
  • The bartender, ignorant of how elecricity works, scolds Scrooge for having opened the bulb and let it spill out. He calls over a cleaner to wash it up, which the cleaner proceeds to do throughout the scene. When he empties his bucket outside, a cat passing by gets a similarily nasty shock.
• After learning of the rise of copper's value, Scrooge and a bunch of eager cowboys make a beeline to the nearest hardware shop for supplies. The shopkeeper, who was in the process of advertising a prospector's outfit for $10, sees the stampede and tacks on a few 0s;
  Scrooge: $100?! You crook! You scoundrel! I haven't got $100!
  Shopkeeper: (With a shit-eating grin) Then please stand aside and allow someone who does to insult me!

V: The New Laird of Castle McDuck

• The Scottish afterlife is apparently a Fluffy Cloud Heaven where every McDuck ancestor plays an eternal game of golf. If it wasn't a hallucination.
• Sir Quackly tries to convince the other McDuck ancestors to give Scrooge a second chance at life, to little luck at first as they don't think he has what it takes to measure up to the clan name. Quackly quickly calls them on their hypocrisy;
  • One ancestor was killed in battle in the 14th century because he was too cheap to provide his archers with arrows.
  • Another ate himself to death while raiding the pantry of William The Lion.
  • Seafoam McDuck, who claims that Scrooge has no business sense due to his failed ventures with the riverboats and cattle herds is the same idiot who used the family fortune as collateral for a shipment of horseradish, leaving the McDucks destitute in the 18th century. He was also the original owner of the gold dentures that Scrooge was given by Fergus in case he needed cash, and complains that Scrooge sold them. Keep in mind that he's a duck like the rest of the clan, meaning he never had teeth in the first place, so god knows why he even had the dentures made!
  • Sir Quackly himself is no prize, as he had accidentally walled himself up inside Castle McDuck in 1075 after he got a bit overzealous trying to hide the gold he was paid to shelter King Macbeth during the English Civil War. Though at least he has the decency to feel bad for his screwup and tries to serve as a guide for the surviving members of the clan, especially Scrooge.
• At one point, the ancestors yells for someone "up there" to give them the book chronicling McDuck destinies. The book hits one of the ancestors in the head when it comes down, and Quackly has to pay a fee when they send it back up. Assuming it was sent by God, He is both petty and greedy.

VI: The Terror of the Transvaal

• When the diamond miners catches Glomgold trying to steal from them again, he tries to get out of punishment by saying that he thought the diamonds were ice and he wanted a cold drink.
• When the bartender is trying to keep Scrooge from shooting up his bar to get revenge against Glomgold, he holds up a flyer reading "Free Lunch Special Today - $5".
• Glomgold doesn't know what a "cowboy" is and asks if it's some sort of apprentice milkman.
• While Scrooge is dragging Glomgold to jail, he tells the authorities that he's filing a complaint against a bushwhacker. Glomgold complains that he's never whacked a bush in his whole life.

VII: The Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never

• This exchange
  Narrator: At this moment, young Scrooge is on the absolute opposite side of the planet from his Scottish home.
  (panel showing fish underwater)
  Narrator: Well, no, that would be in the Pacific Ocean, south of New Zealand, actually...
• When Jabby, an aboriginan wiseman, asks Scrooge to blow on a didgeridoo as part of a sacred ritual, Scrooge sarcastically remarks about being John Philip Sousa. Since Scrooge never actually told Jabby his real name, he spends the rest of the story referring to him as "Jonflip".

VIII: The King of the Klondike

• Just look at Scrooge's interactions with various animals when he is surveying the area for gold in 'King of Klondike"...
  • After Scrooge checks a wolf's teeth for gold flakes, that wolf is looking at another wolf with a panicked expression, as if saying, "Did you see what he did!!" Judging by the eyelashes on the second wolf, it's implied to be his mate, and she even pats him on the shoulder with her paw to comfort him!
  • Scrooge ends up waking an eagle in it's nest, who looks startled at first, but in the next panel is carrying him across the valley while he's hanging on to it's talons and following the river below. The annoyed look on it's face really seals it.
• Scrooge, true to form, allows the various furry wildlife of Hidden Valley to spend the winter inside his cabin simply so he won't have to waste coal or firewood to keep warm. The second spring comes around, he kicks them all out.
• After his legendary takedown of Soapy Slick and his entire steamboat with his bare hands, a still-seething Scrooge approaches the Canadian Mounties who witnessed the whole affair to turn Slick in. Their initial response as they all try their best to stay huddled in their shack?
  Mountie: Please, mister... There's only twenty of us! Can't you wait until our reinforcements arrive?

IX: The Billionaire of the Dismal Downs

• Immediately after revealing his new duds, Scrooge gets hit by tomatoes thrown by townsfolk yelling insults at him for being wealthy and thinking he's "better than them". Scrooge blows up, causing the townsfolk to be shocked at how different he is, especially after they gave him such a friendly welcome.
  • This scene has two levels of humor; the obvious one, that the villagers were simply jealous, or that this is how they'd treat anyone who'd been away from the community for a while and needed to be brought down a few pegs. The dialogue implies it could be either.
• Scrooge is very proud of his new outfit, which he got for free in Glasgow from a tailor who hoped it would give him a boost in business. He exchanges it for his iconic red coat as soon as the seller offers a few pounds extra in exchange.
  • Fergus, Matilda and Hortense all eagerly anticipates the carriage from Glasgow... which goes right by without even stopping. Turns out Scrooge has made a habit of carting his personal fortune around with him, so obviously he's not going to pay extra for transport when he can just drive the wagon holding his money himself!
• Scrooge goes through several events in the local Highland Games, and screws them all up in spectacular fashion. His attempt at a hammer throw goes south when his wrist gets caught in the strap on the handle, sending him flying away upon throwing the hammer... and since he landed right next to it, the judges only count the throw as a few inches. His attempt at reading poetry ends badly when he recites a bawdy limerick from the Yukon, and his fishing technique - inspired by grizzly bears - ends up soaking the judges so badly that they wander off to a local pub to warm up. His best chance at a legitimately high score - his success at the caber toss, which his assistant Scotty claims is the best caber throw he's ever seen - is ruined when he learns the judges all got hammered at the pub, completely missed the throw, and the games are already moving on. The only points he gets in the games are from when he hits a golf ball into a quicksand mire and wades in to fish it out for resale - the judges commend him on his frugality and give him a bonus five points.
• Scrooge is trying to plan his trip to Duckburg while Hortense and Matilda tease him about his lock of Goldie's hair. Scrooge gets so rattled and distracted he continually fumbles the name of the city before yelling at his sisters to shut up.
  Scrooge: The girl... I mean the land, is in the state of Goldiesota... I mean Calisota... in a small settlement named Goldieburg... I mean Duckburg! Drat!
  • In the next panel, Fergus asks about this "Goldieburg", to which Scrooge has to correct him.

X: The Invader of Fort Duckburg

• Hortense mistakes a Beagle Boy for The Lone Ranger. Keep in mind, aside from the masks, the two couldn't be more different; the Beagle Boys are fat, unshaven thieves, while the Ranger is a fit, clean-cut hero.
• Scrooge's sister (and eventually Donald Duck's mother) Hortense chasing off a cavalry charge by herself with a broom.
• Scrooge and his sisters arrive in Duckburg in an early motorcar, which is not only shaky and uncomfortable, it's also missing a few luxury add-ons such as brakes, because Scrooge's aging eyes couldn't read the list of optional features. The car gives up the ghost halfway up the hill to Fort Duckburg, causing "Pa" Duck to rename it Killmotor Hill from it's original Killmule Hill.
• Donald's parents' first meeting is hilarious: Scrooge accidentally runs over Elvira's cornfields after due to his car's brakes malfunctioning. Quackmore Duck (Donald's father) throws a tantrum when he sees the wrecked corn, and Hortense flares back at him. After yelling at each other, they immediately fall in love.
  Elvira: Landsnakes! I've never seen Quackmore out-quacked before! [...] Maybe someday I'll be called Grandma duck.
  Humperdink: I shudder to imagine the kid that would come from that union.
• Gladstone Gander's mother Daphne, showing just who her inherited his luck from. She dodges Scrooge's runaway car and finds a diamond ring in one of the eggs she dropped.
• Blackheart Beagle telling his sons I Want Grandkids. The look on one of the Beagle Boys' faces as he hears this is priceless.
• "Look out for the east tower, men!"
  Soldier: Is there a sharpshooter?
  Teddy: No, I mean look out for the east tower! Here it comes!
  • The Heroic Retreat Down Killmotor Hill!
• Having dinner with the president doesn't quite go like Hortense had pictured it, with Teddy and Scrooge bantering and laughing around their campfire and a pot of beans for dinner.

XI: The Empire Builder from Calisota

• The first appearance of a (still young) Mrs Quackfaster. Scrooge is horrified that his sisters have splurged on such extravagance as a secretary! When they point out they hired an entire office staff to help properly manage Scrooge's growing empire, he outright faints from shock.
  Scrooge: How can I maintain a profit with such limitless extravaganze?!
• While the circumstances surrounding it are tragic, the natives put Scrooge in an utterly ridiculous costume to humiliate him.
  • Scrooge's second encounter with Bombie The Zombie, which happens while he's offering to fund Robert Peary's expidition to the North Pole (so he can charge for the use of compasses). One of Peary's teammates had hired Bombie as a porter, apparently not noticing that he's an 8-foot, mute, dead-eyed abomination dressed in nothing but a long shirt.
• Scrooge stops by early-Revolution Russia during his European tour, where Tsar Nicholas is busy trying to get as much capital as he can before the Red Army comes for him by selling off his assetts. Scrooge buys some of his priceless Faberge eggs by the dozens, complete with egg cartons.

XII: The Richest Duck in the World

• When the Beagle Boys are escaping, part of the fight spills over a couple's apartment. The wife, shocked out of her wits, calls the police, despite the sleepy husband complaining it's probably a publicity stunt from a certain song...
  Husband: You know, 11 pipers piping, 12 drummers drumming, 13 Santas brawling and so on and so on and so on!
  • The gag goes on. When the police catches up with the Beagles, one of the officers tells the other to watch out for the drummers. A few panels later, the officer's seen pursuing a completely innocent drummer down the street.
• A newsreel describes Donald as "local top-blower, Donald Duck."

Bonuses and sidestories

• The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut: Hortense's and Matilda's continuous efforts to flirt with cowboys throughout the story, with most of them trying their best to escape the love-crazed sisters.
  • Part of their reluctance comes from Hortense, due to aforementioned chasing off army singlehandedly, armed only with a broom, having achieved The Dreaded status among United States soldiers. During the story, she effortlessly puts a soldier, a secret service agent, and Teddy Roosevelt himself out of commission with a single punch, not helping her reputation diminish one bit.
• In The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff, Pothole McDuck and the Native American Gokhlayeh spot a poster for an Idian Elephant. This leads to Pothole explaining to Gokhlayeh about the America-India misunderstanding;
  Gokhlayeh: Hyiii! What is that beast?
  Pothole: That, One-Who-Yawns, is an Indian elephant!
  Gokhlayeh: Hmph— The Apaches have nothing that ugly!
  Pothole: No, not American Indian! The real Indians! In India!
  Gokhlayeh: The old duck talks gibberish!
  Pothole: Stop yawning and listen! When we discovered your land, we thought it was India, which is actually 11,000 miles away!
  Gokhlayeh: (Beat Panel, Aside Glance) Hmph! It's easy to see why you need me to guide you!
  • The ridiculous Imagine Spot when Pothole decides to do some impromptu plotting for his dime novels while he and Buffalo Bill are looking for the Daltons, and basically invents the Mary Sue concept well over a century before the Internet; Pothole becomes insanely muscular and grizzled, while Bill becomes decades younger and suddenly has a ton of medals on his chest, talking about how they tear up the saloon and makes the Daltons swoom with their shooting skills. The comic then cuts back to reality, showing the Daltons staring at them, wondering why the two old men are babbling about.
  • Pothole and Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show isn't much better; among other things, Pothole wrote Scrooge's character as a Butt-Monkey comic relief who he constantly has to bail out of trouble. He's not even played by a duck, he's played by some random guy in a duck costume!
• "Hearts of the Yukon": What of Scrooge and Goldie's story back in his Klondike days isn't heartbreaking is absolutely hilarious.
  • When Scrooge is told that Goldie had pressed charges against him, prompting Steele to rescind his claim to his mine, he tries to rush back to Dalton on foot, and faints in the snow. He then starts dreaming about her mocking him, and the dream/nightmare takes a hilarious turn when she gradually turns into a reindeer adorned with jingling bells. The dream Goldie is not happy at being turned into a deer and trots off with her nose in the air, while Scrooge begs for her to come back.
  • The "rescue" during the burning saloon scene: It begins with Scrooge and Goldie staring each other down, Scrooge trying to think of what he should do, and Goldie waiting for him to make the first move. After a few seconds, Goldie breaks the stalemate by pretending to faint and as Scrooge rushes to help her, he gets knocked out by a chunk of ice from a fire hose. Once Goldie notices Scrooge hasn't come to her, she gets up, drags the unconscious Scrooge out, poses him next to a crate with his arms out and lies down on them and then proceeds to theatrically wail about how some brave stranger rescued her. Then a couple of locals grab her to escort her to the doctor, and she switches to swearing up a storm at them for ruining her plan.
  • In the same story, the Running Gag that Superintendent Steele immediately gets up no matter what happens with not a scratch or piece of mud on him. "A superintendent of the North-Western Mounted Police does not get... muddy."
  • The Running Gag with Steele trying to come up with a good catchphrase, and the writer who's been hired to document his adventures pointing out there's something missing. Steele finally comes up with "the Mounties always get their man" right at the end. He came up with "always get their duck" first, but Scrooge told him not to promise more than he could deliver.
  • Hoping to divert Steele's attention, the criminal scum of Dawson claim that Scrooge is the main source of crime in the area, lying that he's a thief, bully, and "all-around bad role-model" for the citizens. And that Soapy Slick was a morally upstanding member of the community that Scrooge ran out of town.
  Writer: The criminal and gambling czar Soapy Slick?!
  Thug: No, not THAT Soapy Slick!
• When Scrooge is present at the eruption of Krakatoa, the sound effect is withheld because it was the loudest known sound in history and the editors don't want to hurt the readers' sanity... or ears.
• At the start of "The Prisoner of White-Agony Creek", Huey, Dewey and Louie ask Scrooge what actually happened that month he and Goldie shared a cabin. In the background, Donald has an epic Oh, Crap! face and quickly shoves the boys of to do something else. The kids may be too young to realize what would happen when two people with a mutual attraction spend a month in close proximity, but Donald definitely knows.
• The Dream of a Lifetime
  • Donald tries to ask his nephews to make Scrooge dream about things that will help them escape danger, which always fail spectacularly: banging mugs together to imitate horse hooves only makes it rain mugs in the dream, making car noises to conjure a vehicle that would allow them to escape a flash flood instead creates a rush hour traffic (in the middle of the Australian outback) that blocks their escape path. Later, their attempts to send Donald some guns turn into a pan of popcorns, a set of drums, then finally a cannon bigger than the boat they're on, causing it to sink.
  • Right after that, Donald gets rescued from sea in another dream, then notices his inner tube reads "Titanic." He sighs "Oh, brother!"
  • While in Scrooge's dream about his childhood, one of the Beagle Boys gets a hold of Scrooge and is told to force the combination out of him, but asks if he has to when ten-year old Scrooge is so cute.