Nightmare Fuel / Donald Duck

Donald Duck, being Driven to Suicide. Sweet dreams, kiddies.

Expected any less from the foul-tempered bird? Boy, are you in a surprise when you see just how deep Donald Duck's behavioral issues run.

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Animated Shorts

• Donald's nightmare in Donald's Diary.
• Donald going mad with godlike power in "Trombone Trouble". Along with him saying, "Power. Power! POWER!" and then laughing maniacally. The sharp teeth shown while he's laughing certainly didn't help.
• Donald roaring and taking a huge bite out of a wooden column in "Donald's Double Trouble".
• "Down and Out With Donald Duck" combines the above-mentioned scenes with those from a few other episodes to show Donald why his temper disturbed and/or horrified those around him... to an absolutely frightening effect.
• His nervous breakdown in Mickey and the Beanstalk is absolutely terrifying. It starts with him madly assembling plates and cutlery into a mock-sandwich, which he ravenously shatters in his champing bill as his friends Mickey and Goofy try to restrain him. Babbling incoherently, he stares at the camera, eyes filled with mad spirals... and then he spots an axe on the mantlepiece. Developing a truly terrifying Nightmare Face, he turns to stare hungrily at Mickey, then slowly creeps out of sight. Fortunately, his attention was actually directed out of the window, as he creeps up on their starving cow, axe held behind his back. Then, eyes pulsing red and yellow, drool pouring from his lower beak, he lunges at her, swinging his axe. It's still a Disney film, so she gets away unhurt, but it's still a horrifying sight — especially when he grabs her tail and tries gnawing on it in sheer desperation.
  • The subsequent fury he flies into when Mickey returns and proudly announces he swapped the cow for three "magic" beans isn't as scary, but it's still intense, with the duck's eyes turning red before he leaps up and hangs upside down from the ceiling, tearing his "hair" out whilst spluttering in a fury.
• Donald literally turning into a devil at the end of "Soup's On".
• Donald's treatment by Mickey in the short "Magician Mickey" is really funny (or creepy for some, landing it on this list), but its reappearance in the later special "Down And Out With Donald Duck" makes the scenes really creepy because this time we have no context for them and they're clip-edited together. And we have a blank-eyed Donald under hypnosis dreamily stating that the memories still give him nightmares, meaning that this actually caused Donald psychological trauma.
• The Old Army Game: Donald believes that his entire lower torso and legs were unintentionally amputated after being cut by a razor sharp fence. He becomes so distraught he steals Pete's gun and attempts to kill himself, all while sporting a deranged, psychopathic smile the whole time.
  • Just a few seconds later, when Donald discovers that his legs are fine, then looking at Pete to show him that everything's OK, the latter's face is not exactly pleasant.
  • Some Real Life Fridge Horror: This was a Wartime Cartoon. There may well have been soldiers on leave or on the base watching this cartoon upon initial release who found themselves in situations similar to Pete's; i.e., they were asked by critically wounded comrades on the battlefield to put said comrades out of their misery.
• "Donald's Snow Fight": The ending where Donald is frozen alive.
• "Donald Duck And The Gorilla". Donald having to deal with a monstrous Killer Gorilla who broke into his house.
  • Crossing into Fridge Horror territory, the opening to the short seen in A Disney Halloween and ''Disney's Halloween Treat" make the idea of Ajax breaking out of the zoo seem more like Your Mind Makes It Real, suggesting that the very action of the news report was because Donald and the nephews simply had a random thought of it on a dark and stormy night.
• "Donald's Happy Birthday". Huey, Dewey and Louie are planning to buy a birthday present for Donald, so in the end they decide to buy him a box full of cigars. Donald catches them thinking that they're now into smoking so he decides to give them a lesson... by forcing them to smoke each cigar as punishment. The thick cloud of greasy cigar smoke has them visibly choking and suffocating — one of them tries to flee out of the window, but Donald simply grabs him and hauls him back inside to complete his "punishment".
• "Truant Officer Donald": Huey, Dewey, and Louie barricade themselves inside their clubhouse; Donald builds a fire at the door to smoke them out and take them to school not realizing it's still summer vacation. The nephews then try to fool him by taking some plucked chickens (at least we sure hope they're chickens, but then remember Clara Cluck...), dressing them in their clothes, escaping out the window, and making Donald think the fire spread inside and burned them to death. To further traumatize their uncle, one of them covers his body in talcum powder, dresses in a white gown, puts on angel wings and a wire halo, and has his brothers lower him in via fishing line to encourage Donald to grovel before him. This cartoon was nominated for an Oscar.
• "Donald's Lucky Day": Postman Donald has to deliver a package on Friday the 13th. All whilst being harassed by a creepy black cat. And it turns out the package is a bomb.
• "Der Fuehrer's Face": Donald’s Disney Acid Sequence after being overworked.
  • For that matter, the title song's third verse, which if you read it, is utterly terrifying when you realize the context:
  When der Fuehrer says
  "Ve never will be slaves!"
  We "Heil! Heil!" but still ve work like slaves
  While der Fuehrer brags and lies and rants and raves
  Ve "Heil! Heil!" and work into our graves! (Heil Hitler!)
  When der Fuehrer yells
  "I've got to have more shells!"
  Ve "Heil! Heil" for him, ve make more shells
  If one little shell should blow him right to (Donald Duck gets hit in the head by a large shell)
  Ve "Heil! Heil!"
  And wouldn't that be swell!
• Ben Buzzard's two terrifying Nightmare Faces while trying to crash Donald's plane in "The Flying Jalopy"; one with red eyes with his pupils replaced with skulls as he tries to get the duck to fly through a narrow mountain side, and another that has him sporting demonic-looking horns as he reveals to an appropriately terrified Donald that he leaked all the gas out of the plane.

Comic Books

• This, and whatever happened to Donald on the Pacific front to cause it.
• This comic. The most disturbing part is Donald's satisfied smile at the end.
• Paperinik the Devilish Avenger. This is Donald using his wits, hard-won skills at pretty much everything, and gadgets made by Gyro to take revenge on those who torment him... And is so unstoppable that the very first story has him stealing Scrooge's mattress while he's sleeping on it. Even when played as a superhero he's terrifying: one story showed a group of thieves coming to Duckburg only for Paperinik to show up on a bulldozer, confirm their interntions and throw them out of the road, and a few panels later another thief tells of the time he was about to go to Duckburg when Paperinik came at his home (he's prone to do this to criminals) and showed him a video of some friends of his being beaten up and arrested by the Devilish Avenger himself... And that's him being gentle. No wonder that the people of Duckburg are so quick to believe anyone accusing him of committing crimes, or that the local criminals fear him so much that, when caught in the act by him, they grab their tools and go to the police to give themselves up (at least they dodge the beating).
  • From the same comics, the memory-erasing candies. You eat a random candy, and instantly lose memory of the last few hours. While he normally uses them only to protect his identity, the potential abuse is enormous. Then there's the time Daisy found out his identity and he fed her a damaged candy... And she forgot of Donald and started believing her fiancee was Paperinik.
  • Paperinik is perfectly aware of how terrifying it is to have an enemy show up at your home, so he's extremely protective of his secret identity. How protective? Here's a few examples:
    • On one occasion, Fethry had stumbled in his secret... And Donald calmly prepared one of the candies, and almost force-fed it to him. And he actually trusts Fethry, enough he relented and let him know. Eventually Fethry took the candy of his own will when he realized he was making things worse for his favorite cousin, but Donald was about to just that.
    • In another occasion, the Beagle Boys hatched a plot that made it appear someone had discovered it so they could trick everyone out of town on a race while they sacked the city. Paperinik, after verifying it was a hoax, got them caught in the act and beaten up by the people of Duckburg, before walking in as Donald and calmly explaining why "his friend" had done that.
    • At one point the Beagle Boys realized they could discover his identity by using the in-universe Google Maps expy. Upon finding out just that, they marched in his home... And were beaten up horribly by a group of football players, as Paperinik had already altered the satellite pics just for them.
    • There was the time the Beagle Boys did discover his identity, taking his mask off while he was down after hitting his head... Then Paperinik woke up and they reacted as if he was about to murder them. He didn't because the injury had made him lose his memory, so Granpa Beagle convinced him he was their leader and started sacking the city while using him as a helper and scapegoat, and in the meantime they kidnapped the Nephews to have some insurance if he recovered his memory. It didn't work: when Paperinik recovered his memory and realized why the Nephews were missing he tracked the Beagle Boys down to their hideout, took them down before they could actually use their hostages, and then made them forget his secret... By hitting them in the head until they forgot. He then dressed them up in Paperinik costumes and called the police on them to make it appear they had dressed up as him to frame him, so when they woke up they had a large hole in their memories and the police was accusing them of something they weren't stupid enough to do.
  • Much later, when Paperinik has solidified his reputation as the "Duck Avenger" and no longer the "Devilish Avenger", in his rogue gallery we're treated with the Evronians, a race of Alienesques ducks feeding on the human mind and emotions. In one story he's been told that he has to gear up and face the Evronians again to prevent a Bad Future in which they'll raze the Earth to the ground because Paperinik dropped his guard. We're then treated with a scene in which Donald Duck is pleading for his life, surrounded by a legion of aliens, laser sights lit up all over his body, with the aliens grinning and ready to slay him on the spot, defenseless and scared.
    • With Donald Duck dead in the worst possible way (and be warned, the ally made sure to describe everything happening in the bad future, so Donald wasn't spared any grievious detail), the ally goes on to describe how in the Bad Future everyone Donald cared for or loved is now dead, or a slave for the Evronian Empire, without any way out.
• Donald's wrath in "Reginella's Wedding". Him showing up with a shotgun and plenty of salt shells should be enough to make the readers realize shit is about to go down... Then he single-handedly inflicts a Mook Horror Show on an entire middle ages-equipped army, and while he doesn't kill them the villains are horribly beaten, and so terrified they melt their weapons into agricultural tools when Donald orders them and threatens to wreck everything they still have of healthy if they don't. Yes, if they disobeyed he wasn't going to kill them, just make them wish he did.
  • A completely unintended consequence of his wrath: he unleashed his wrath to save Reginella from a forced wedding and protect her Perfect Pacifist People from the villains, but the spectacle prompted the children to imitate him and start to become violent themselves. Considering a violent Pacificus had already appeared once, trying to murder Donald wielding a Flaming Sword, it's no wonder Reginella opted to send Donald back home, even if they were about to marry....
• The Golden Helmet may be Barks' creepiest Donald comic. To start with, there's the premise: that whoever possesses the titular helmet of Olaf the Blue will become absolute ruler of North America. Then, the helmet turns out to be an Artifact of Doom that warps the seekers into becoming mad with power: not just the villain Azure Blue, but the friendly Museum Curator, and even Donald himself. Only sinking it in the Atlantic saves them from its grip.
  • Perhaps the most disturbing part is that, aside from the narrator musing that it's almost like there's a curse on the helmet, there's no explicit claim of anything supernatural going on. The helmet doesn't need it.
    • Confirmed in the latest iteration of story: a later sequel (without any involving from Barks) that gets the helmet resurface and bring several inhabitant of Mouseton equally mad with power. Until the helmet falls in Goofy's possession, that promptly refuses even to entertain himself of the idea of ruling America and dumps the helmet among the other clutter in his house, inherited by his vast number of ancestors.
• Speaking of Barks, the middle of "Vacation Time" is a frightening bit of understated horror. The first part of the story is a lighthearted comedy with Donald and the kids going on vacation, Donald going out of his way to get a picture of a stag that just doesn't want to pose for him, and Donald arguing with a careless, thuggish camper over his unsafe campfire... and then said camper wanders off, and his campfire actually goes out of control. The thug loses everything in the fire, and steals Donald's car to make an escape, leaving Donald and the boys in the middle of a gigantic inferno that burns the forest down. No evil schemes or plots or monsters needed here - just a careless, selfish idiot.

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