Full Recap
TBA...
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: At one point, Scrooge calls the twins "Dona" and "Dello". Donald wonders which name refers to which twin.
- Anachronism Stew: A mild one; Ludwig von Drake is shown playing with a Rubik's Cube in the 1960s. In the real world, the toy was invented in 1974.
- Badass Boast: Scrooge gives off a truly epic one when he confronts Bradford near the episode's end.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Bradford successfully erases Scrooge, Donald, and Della's memory of seeing him with Black Heron and becomes Scrooge's chief financial officer. He doesn't get the Papyrus of Binding but his goal was to keep it from being used, and Scrooge ensured it wasn't going to be found for a long time anyway.
- The Bermuda Triangle: Yellowbeak's ship was stranded on an island in the Bermuda Trapezoid.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Black Heron, as usual. No matter what Bradford says, Heron continuously botches up their plan to steal the papyrus through her showboating, which forces Bradford to use the papyrus to remove his involvement from Scrooge and the kids' memories. She also makes only one attempt to kill Donald and Della with the papyrus, despite being given the correct terminology by Scrooge himself after her first attempt failed.
- Book Ends: At the beginning of the episode, Black Heron shakes hands with Bradford after agreeing to collaborate with him and claims that this will be the beginning of a beautiful "fiendship". At the end, Scrooge shakes hands with Bradford after hiring him, and the latter says that it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
- Both Sides Have a Point: While it's understandable for Bradford to be concerned about the collateral damage and resulting monetary costs that S.H.U.S.H racks up trying to thwart evil, von Drake is correct in pointing out how his plan to solve it basically boils down to stooping to the level of their enemies.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Young Donald and Della are introduced wrecking stuff in Scrooge's office. Hortense's letter to Scrooge also explains that she needs him to watch them because their dad is in the hospital after they lit a firecracker under his chair.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Much to Bradford's frustration, Black Heron continually forgoes the pragmatic course of action in favor of villainous showboating.
- The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Despite Black Heron suffering from Bond Villain Stupidity, she did have one idea Bradford liked: letting Scrooge lead the way to the relic and stealing it once he gets there. Too bad Heron had to make her presence known.
- Company Cross References: Yellowbeak's ship on the mountain peak resembles the Miss Tilly centerpiece at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon water park at Walt Disney World.
- Continuity Nod:
- Scrooge mentions Bradford being at his Christmas party, as seen in "Last Christmas!"
- Donald's grunge phase started before he arrived on Scrooge's doorstep.
- When first talking to the twins, Scrooge drops a bag of marbles. This was also the first thing he tried to give the triplets.
- Black Heron once again disappears with just her robotic arm hanging on to something.
- In the first episode, Scrooge tried to have Beakley take notes for him and shuffle his schedule around, only for her to refuse to do it on the grounds that she is not his secretary. Here, Duckworth does it without complaint, implying that he was only doing it to Beakley in the present out of habit.
- Duckworth mentions to Scrooge one of his tasks for the day is a routine security check of Falcon Island, another subtle detail about the episode's timeframe.
- The Papyrus of Binding is shown to have been created as a gift for what appears to be the pharaoh Toth-Ra.
- Create Your Own Villain: Bradford was a member of S.H.U.S.H. who was becoming increasingly concerned with the amount of chaos and ludicrous spending both the organization and the criminals they chased were causing. When Ludwig von Drake turned down his idea to take control of the world to better protect it, he opted to start up F.O.W.L. and recruited Black Heron as its first member.
- Dem Bones: Black Heron uses the papyrus to wish the skeletal remains of Yellowbeak back to life, and he proves to be a formidable swordsman who nearly gets the best of Scrooge.
- Disney Villain Death: The skull of Yellowbeak falls off the rests of his ship, and given the length of the fall, it's very likely the skull was destroyed upon impact.
- Distinction Without a Difference:
- In the 1960s, Beakley is shown arresting Black Heron because she was trying to blow up Mount Neverest. Black Heron corrects her by stating she wasn't trying to blow it up, she was trying to carve her face into the mountain.
- When Bradford is making his presentation to Ludwig von Drake that S.H.U.S.H. should take over the world in order to rid it of chaotic evils, von Drake questions that Bradford's plan seems to involve stooping to villainy in order to combat it. Bradford tries to convince von Drake it's completely different... but entirely unconvincingly.Bradford: Of course not, sir! We simply defeat all who oppose us, rein in any unpredictable factors, and efficiently run the world from the shadows with an iron fist! ...Yes?
- Distant Prologue: The Cold Open takes place in the 1960s, showing how Bradford and Black Heron first met and formed F.O.W.L., as well as the former's motivations for doing so. The episode primarily takes place decades later.
- Double-Meaning Title: The episode's title doesn't just refer to this being Scrooge's first adventure with Della and Donald but for him in general. Until then, he had only seen his exploits as "business trips" to build his company and fortune.
- Driven to Suicide: Heavily implied to be what happened with Yellowbeak when he wrote his final will in the Papyrus. After all the terrible misfortunes the scroll gave him, he sunk into deep depression, and asked the scroll to free him from its curse, resulting in his death. Considering all that happened to him, death would’ve been an acceptable outcome for him.
- Eat the Rich: Used by Donald in his song lyrics, in front of Uncle Scrooge.Just another rich uncle
Gotta EAT THE RICH UN-CLE! - Everyone Has Standards: While S.H.U.S.H. may be chaotic and costly when it comes to their work ethic, Ludwig flat out states that the organization will not stoop to using villain-esque methods such as controlling the world in order to stop villainy.
- Exact Words: The Papyrus of Binding takes anything written on it very literally. It is how Yellowbeak met his end, and allows Bradford to erase himself from the other characters' memories. It takes some careful, critical thinking to make the paper work without any drawbacks.
- Fatal Fireworks: Della and Donald are dropped off with Scrooge because they set a giant firecracker off under their father's chair and Hortense (their mother and Scrooge's younger sister) needed to take him to the hospital.
- Fun with Acronyms: Bradford's original name for his new organization was the Organization for World Larceny. Black Heron insisted on adding the F for "Fiendish", which Bradford reluctantly agreed to.
- Funny Background Event: If you look at all the other SHUSH agents as Beakley walks Heron through the offices, you'll notice they're all wearing the exact same outfits.
- Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: The opening shows that Bradford had a full head of hair in the 1960s.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Captain Yellowbeak was the last known person to steal the Papyrus of Binding in search of its wish-granting power and he met his end because of it. Ultimately, he simply wished to be free of its curse, at which point he immediately dropped dead in his seat.
- Hypocritical Humor: Scrooge McDuck says he's not made of money. Money proceeds to fall out of his pockets.
- I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: Scrooge tells Della and Donald that he's a "businessman, not a babysitter".
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Della is able to take control of the plane and make an emergency landing because she's an ace at an arcade game called Outrunner 2: Flight Simulator.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Bradford uses the papyrus of binding to make sure Scrooge, Donald, and Della forget about him being a F.O.W.L. agent.
- Literal Genie: The papyrus of binding works this way using Exact Words, often to the point of deliberate malicious interpretation (though unlike a true Jackass Genie it does not take this to extreme lengths and can be used relatively safely if one is specific and moderate enough with it). Bradford describes it as chaos magnified:
- Yellowbeak asked to escape the Spaniards and the papyrus stranded his ship atop a mountain in the middle of a lost island. He asked for water and his entire crew drowned on dry land. Finally, he asked to be freed of the papyrus's curse and promptly dropped dead.
- When Black Heron used it, she wrote that Scrooge's "sidekicks" would perish on the mission. It didn't work because Scrooge refused to refer to Donald and Della as his sidekicks and they kept referring to the trip as an "adventure".
- Bradford is smart enough about how the Papyrus works to warn Heron about this; ask it for unimaginable power and they could be zapped by millions of volts of electricity, unimaginable wealth and get crushed by a mountain of invisible treasure. When he does use the Papyrus, he words it so that as far as the Duck family knew he was never there, altering their memories and allowing him to either teleport away or become invisible to them.
- Related to all this, the only times the Papyrus works as intended are when the one writing asks for very specific, small (by the standards of reality-warping) things that would be difficult to interpret in a negative way. Like Scrooge writing that the Papyrus will be lost until his true heir recovers it.
- Mythology Gag:
- The letter Hortense leaves to Scrooge is worded similar to how Della worded it to ask Donald to take care of her sons in the 1937 short Donald's Nephews and its comic strip adaptation. Particularly, it details how their father was hospitalized by a firecracker they placed under his chair, just like the nephews did to their father.
- Scrooge uses his cane like a pogo stick again.
- Pirate parrot Yellow Beak is the same pirate character from Carl Bark's "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold", where a small pirate named Yellow Beak hires Donald and his nephews for a trip to retrieve a hidden pirate treasure.
- And that story was indeed the First Adventure - first "adventure story" featuring Donald Duck, and first full-length story produced by Carl Barks.
- Scrooge regales Donald and Della with an adventure involving the Valley of the Golden Suns and a rival known as "El Capitán", based on the climax of "Too Much of a Gold Thing", the finale of the Five-Episode Pilot of the original DuckTales series.
- Black Heron references the show's theme song, saying it's time to "rewrite history".
- The set-up with the villains pretending to be pilots in order to jump off the plane half way leaving our heroes to their doom and being forced to land the plane on their own plays out very similarly to Don Rosa's very first story "Son of the Sun" where Glomgold does the same thing.
- Duckworth mentioned a bottlecap factory in Tralla-La, which is a reference to a Carl Barks story by the same name, as well as its adaptation in the original DuckTales, where the ducks visit the said land.
- Della mentions that Scrooge has toppled the Colossus of the Nile and discovered the Treasure of the Ten Avatars, referring to stories written by Romano Scarpa and Don Rosa.
- The Bermuda Trapezoid is a reference to the Talespin episode "Bearly Alive" (where it's the Bearmuda Trapezoid).
- Nepotism: Bradford only got his job at S.H.U.S.H. because Ludwig owed his grandmother a favor.
- Not My Driver: Bradford and Black Heron are the pilots of the plane taking Scrooge and the twins to find the Papyrus of Binding. Heron reveals herself midflight, despite Bradford's insistence that they wait until they're on land and follow them to the Papyrus.
- Not So Above It All: Based on Bradford's presentation, the world-saving organization S.H.U.S.H. is just as reckless and dangerous as the evil doers they constantly fight against.
- Obliviously Evil: Even after saying phrases like "Defeat all who oppose us", "Rein in any unpredictable factors", and "Efficiently run the world from the shadows with an iron fist" (complete with a fist-shaped diagram), Bradford genuinely doesn't seem to realize how evil his plan actually is and thinks S.H.U.S.H. just can't understand his genius.
- Only Sane Man: Bradford, as usual, tries to spell out to Black Heron that F.O.W.L operates in the shadows and that he only wants to stop Scrooge from potentially putting the world in danger with his adventuring. Of course, nobody listens to him.
- Origins Episode: This episode shows the story of Donald and Della's first adventure with Scrooge, as well as Bradford Buzzard's backstory and the origin of F.O.W.L.
- Pirate Parrot: Captain Yellowbeak is an anthropomorphic parrot based on the shape of his beak.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Bradford, as usual. He complains when Black Heron reveals her and him as F.O.W.L. agents to Scrooge and the twins and then bails out, asking why they didn't just wait for the plane to land and then capture them instead of tipping their hand, and would rather seek out the Papyrus rather than set a convoluted trap.
- Present-Day Past: The prologue of the episode is set in the 1960s, yet shows Ludwig Von Drake playing with a Rubik's Cube, which would not be invented until close to the mid-'70s. See Anachronism Stew above.
- The Reveal: Beakley wasn't just one of S.H.U.S.H.'s top agents; she became von Drake's successor when he retired, and kept that position for a yet unspecified time.
- Rewriting Reality: The MacGuffin of the episode, the Papyrus of Binding, is a papyrus scroll that makes whatever written on it come true, with the main drawback of following the letter of whatever was written. Anything written on it vanishes whenever someone wishes to write something new.
- Rubik's Cube: International Genius Symbol: At S.H.U.S.H. headquarters, von Drake is solving a Rubik's Cube as Bradford explains his idea.
- Running Gag: Donald singing or otherwise making music relevant to the current situation.
- Rushmore Refacement: The episode starts with Black Heron arrested for trying to blow up Mt. Neverest. She claims she was blasting her face into the mountain, which would have been an improvement, according to her.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Bradford escapes but not before making sure Scrooge forgets about his involvement in F.O.W.L.
- Shout-Out: Yellow Beak and his ship are found in much the same state as Ponce de Leon and his ship were found in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, with dangerous mystical objects the goal sought after in both.
- Talking Is a Free Action: In this case, writing is a free action. In the last fight, every time the papyrus is used, everyone else simply stands around gaping as the wish is written. Probably justified as a half-written wish might be even more dangerous due to the papyrus Exact Words tendencies.
- Technology Marches On: In-universe. Scrooge is shown with two extremely clunky cellphones and a similarly blocky laptop he uses to communicate with S.H.U.S.H. in what is presumably the 1990s.
- Time Skip: The opening takes place in The '60s, just prior to the formation of F.O.W.L., while the rest of the episode takes place several decades later, when Donald and Della were children.
- Unstoppable Rage: Donald goes ballistic on Heron after she throws Della off the pirate ship.
- Villain Has a Point: While trying to turn S.H.U.S.H. into a paramilitary conqueror was a bit extreme, Bradford's pitch was a plan born from the fact that S.H.U.S.H.'s work model revolves around responding to supervillain havoc by accelerating havoc and hemorrhaging money while doing it, implying that S.H.U.S.H. at least could use some kind of reform in its methods. As an accountant, keeping S.H.U.S.H.'s budget in the black and proposing solutions to do it was his job. But, judging by Von Drake's response for Bradford to get the "kooky villain stuff" out of his head, most of his suggestions including this one bordered on extremism.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: Preventing this trope is a huge part of why Bradford formed F.O.W.L. He noticed most S.H.U.S.H. missions involved responding to supervillain havoc, rather than take proactive measures to prevent villains from launching their schemes to begin with. That said, his idea to turn S.H.U.S.H. into a paramilitary conqueror who would control the world from the shadows with an iron fist to prevent any distension (and skim a little profit off the top) involves a "Villains Act" set-up too.
- Waxing Lyrical: Black Heron drops the title song line "rewrite history" when she reveals herself to Scrooge.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The episode shows that Bradford used to be a member of S.H.U.S.H. who became concerned with the large amount of costs and collateral damage the agency was creating during its missions. He proposed that S.H.U.S.H. take control of the world to preemptively rein in any chaos, but Ludwig von Drake shot this idea down.
- We Win, Because You Didn't: Scrooge manages to both keep the Papyrus of Binding out of Heron's clutches and rescue his niblings from her grasp by writing that the scroll will be lost until Scrooge's living heirs manage to recover it from its final resting place. This ensures that she can't kill them or any of his other relatives without it becoming lost forever.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The entire episode is set some time before the present day. The prologue occurs during the 1960s while the rest of the episode is set a few decades later (presumably the 1990s) when Della and Donald are adolescents.
- Would Hurt a Child: Black Heron's first request on the papyrus is for Donald and Della to perish. Later, she fights the children, and throws Della off the ship; after that, she holds both kids hostage and threatens them with a hand blaster to force Scrooge to give her the papyrus.
