Characters / Disney Ducks Comic Universe Main Characters

A list of the eight primary characters in Disney's Disney Ducks Comic Universe.

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Donald Duck

Donald Fauntleroy Duck

Debut: The Wise Little Hen (1934)

Voiced by: Clarence Nash (1934-1984), Tony Anselmo (1985-present), Daniel Ross (Mickey and the Roadster Racers)

The Everyduck at the center of the duck comic universe. Unlike in the animated shorts, where his chief distinguishing features are his trademark violent rages and nigh-incomprehensible quacking, the Donald of the comics is articulate and has a more nuanced character, though he still has a temper and will not hesitate to get back at anyone who gets on his bad side (using underhanded tactics, if necessary). Despite his many, MANY flaws, he is often capable of great decency and even heroism at a pinch. Carl Barks once said that he liked writing Donald because whether he was a good guy or a bad guy could change from story to story.

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• Abusive Parents: It's kind of an universal staple that his violent tantrums extend to his nephews as well. In some cases it's outright intentional Black Comedy. Admittedly, a significant portion of it is Values Dissonance, since during the heyday of the comics (and in the perpetual 1950s of the Don Rosa comics), it was perfectly normal for parents to use Corporal Punishment.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Most notably as Paperinik/Duck Avenger, where he sometimes reaches near-Batman levels of hyper-competence, even if it varies a lot Depending on the Writer. He hides this in his civilian identity by playing up his lazy layabout characteristics.
  • In Paperinik New Adventures, he got his own series and was suddenly fighting alien invasions, mad scientists, and major disasters on a regular basis with new powerful weapons and gear.
  • Also as super-spy in Double Duck (that is set in the same universe of PK).
• Adaptational Intelligence: See above. Donald Duck in PKNA and DD is quite a bit smarter than the one we usually see.
• Alliterative Name: Donald Duck.
• Amazon Chaser: Seems to have a thing for strong-willed and generally powerful women: Daisy's temper is known, and some stories present her as a spy (and Donald knows); Reginella is extremely nice but strong-willed and incredibly dangerous when pushed too far (it says everything that for her unleashing a berserking Donald on a villain is holding back); Lyla Lay is just as strong-willed, skilled, and incredibly strong as you'd expect from a Time Police droid; Xadhoom is a short-tempered Physical Goddess; and Kay K is a superspy, and skilled enough in combat she once wrecked Lyla.
• Anti-Hero:
  • Usually depicted as a Classical Anti-Hero, particularly in Carl Barks's stories. He's a very flawed individual, who nevertheless will step up to bat and display genuine heroism when it's called for.
  • In the early stories, his superhero alter-ego Paperinik wasn't actually a superhero, but a straight up Anti-Hero, avenging wrongs that had been done to Donald, sometimes in blatantly illegal ways. The writers toned this aspect down later and turned him into a superhero instead. The character's methods did not change much but he started targeting the criminal population of Duckburg.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Daisy Duck, Depending on the Writer. Donald can be a Jerkass at times, even with his gold-hearted moments, but Daisy is definitely a Tsundere.
  • Italian comics add another layer to this with their Superhero/Anti-Hero alter egos: as Paperinik and Paperinika they vocally loathe each other, but, to their horror, can't deny to themselves they're also attracted to each other.
• Berserk Button: It would almost be easier to list what DOESN'T set him off, but you can probably put being disobeyed by his nephews or having to deal with Gladstone's infuriating luck on the top of the list.
  • He also hates being pushed around. He will take a lot of shit, but he will eventually get tired of it, and you should better hope you are not caught in the resulting avalanche of violence.
  • Also inverted in one case: His nephew pointing out how he's a screw-up, Loser Protagonist would send him into a breakdown.
• Big Eater: Donald loves good food and can pack it away like nobody's business. Luckily, he's also quite a good cook, with some stories depicting him as a downright Supreme Chef (see below).
• The Big Guy: Surprisingly, this is actually his main role when out adventuring with Scrooge. Whenever strength is needed, it is usually up to Donald, since he is in his prime, and while Scrooge still has a lot of his old fighting skills, he is too old and the nephews are too young and lack the stamina and raw strength needed for a lot of demanding physical tasks. One of the more notable examples would be him singlehandedly sawing through a solid steel bar in a rapidly flooding chamber, and then right afterwards opening a series of floodgates with his bare hands in "Return To Xanadu".
  • In his pilot role in DuckTales, he is replaced by the Big Guy Launchpad.
  • He plays this role with Mickey and Goofy as well (even in the few times they meet in the comics) and is usually the one seen carrying their stuff when they all go out on a trip.
  • Despite being called a coward at different points (typically by his uncle), Donald is actually ready for a fight more often than not and willing to jump into the fray against any of the human/duck/anthropomorphic opponents that Barks and Rosa throw his way.
  • Land of the Pygmy Indians and its sequel War of the Wendigo has Donald being identified as the Duck Family's noblest warrior, by Scrooge no less.
  • Return to Xanadu has the triplets note that Donald is the biggest and the strongest out of the group. They are right, as the nephews are just children, and Scrooge is well into his 80's by this point and has lost most of his physical strength.
• Born Unlucky: Probably even more so than in his cartoons, especially in Don Rosa's stories! Several stories revolve around his practically supernatural levels of misfortune.
  • Donald is so unlucky that he cannot even capitalize on it (winning the "Unluckiest Man in the World"-contest, working as a Butt-Monkey for hire). In both cases his luck completely turned around and he was exceedingly lucky—at least until his grumpy customers/spectators were out of eyesight. He had better success in another comic where he gave rich people expensive guided tours of his daily life, showing off how consistently unlucky he is to them to make them feel better about themselves.
  • Though it's mostly in comparison to his cousin Gladstone Gander, the luckiest duck in the world and despite Donald's trend to get upset over his luck when compared to Gladstone's he's actually lived an extremely interesting life, has three nephews that adore him, good friends, and has even come into his share of treasure!
  • Donald also has the problem that he combines his bad luck with inherent laziness, ego and short temper. Many of his problems and failures could have been avoided if he didn't make them worse by his impulsive behavior. Donald is a very hard, talented worker when he wants to be, but has a tendency to get a swell head if he is being successful, and THAT IS invariably when bad luck gets him.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: While Donald does work hard once he is at work, he wants to laze around as much as possible. He is however incredibly skilled at almost anything he does (him being fired is usually due to bad luck or just falling asleep at a bad time), to the degree that he is actually the best in the world at certain things... one of them being coin polishing, which had one of the most prestigious coin collectors make a journey just to learn from him!
  • This could be identified as one of the biggest differences between Donald and his Uncle Scrooge. Whereas Scrooge will put 100% of his effort towards anything he attempts, there are times when Donald will slack off or fall asleep. Notably however in some stories when in competition with Scrooge, such as Barks' City of Golden Roofs Donald proves himself just as capable of matching Scrooge's work ethic and in his own way can even be superior to Scrooge. (In City of Golden Roofs salesman Donald has a good product to sell, good marketing skills, and a working knowledge of the customer's tastes. On the other hand, Scrooge is stuck with a useless product, and is too old-fashioned to recognize any of the modern (1950s) trends around him.)
  • There are also certain times when he isn't lazy at all, as evidenced by the sheer number of different jobs that Donald has had over the years (Especially in Barks 10-page works). He's successfully been a farmer, rainmaker, barber, demolitions expert, and held numerous other occuptions as well, all of which he was quite successful at, at first. Typically, things will end up going wrong halfway through the story for some reason, such as Donald's jealousy or becoming overconfident. But the fact that he is ever able to achieve success in so many different areas says quite a lot about his abilities.
  • Along with the many jobs he takes on, some of them require a surprising amount of work on his part to go along with his brilliance. Take Rosa's Master Landscapist for example. In it Donald trains rabbits "to munch grass down to exactly 3 centimeters", uses knitting needles to arrange rose vines, trims trees as if he's giving a person a hair cut, and files individuals blades of grass with an emory board! Needless to say this is a bit more work than the average landscapist could be expected to do.
  • Perhaps it is better to say that Donald is an enthusiastic and hard worker, at the beginning. His problem is that he usually grows bored with his jobs and starts to slack off or find ways to make them more exciting.
• Butt-Monkey: Dear Lord, Yes! He’s one of the most famous examples of this trope in comic book history, alongside Peter Parker and Hank Pym. Almost everything he does goes wrong one way or another, especially if his cousin Gladstone Gander is present for emphasis.
• Chaste Toons: He has three nephews, but no children of his own.
• The Chew Toy: It's generally toned down in the comics compared to the cartoons (Depending on the Writer, obviously), but he still tends to end up through the wringer. It's especially prominent in Don Rosa's stories, where it's a bit of a Running Gag that Donald ends up in dangerous or even life-threatening situations and Scrooge not caring at all — such as in The Last Lord of Eldorado where Donald nearly falls to his death while hanging onto two seperates pieces of a rope attached to two ends of a mountain, and Scrooge proceeds to walk over to Donald (On top of the rope donald is holding onto, forming a makeshift bridge), only to retrieve the map Donald was holding in his shirt and literally leaving Donald hanging over the chasm as he returns to solid ground.
• Chick Magnet: Aside from his relationship with Daisy, he was paired or at least shipped with many different female characters that show interest in him. Notable example are Donna Duck, Reginella, Lola Duck, Princess Oona, Xadhoom and Lyla Lay (Paperinik New Adventures), Kay-K (Double Duck) and various one-shot characters.
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Often in the adventures he shares with Scrooge and his nephews, Donald is the one most reluctant to come along, and who complains the most... so he's also the one who suffers the most hardships, though usually because his contrarian attitude makes things difficult for him.
  • On occasion, though, he gets a chance to shine as either the Only Sane Man or, at least, as Properly Paranoid, especially when paired off with Scrooge. Don Rosa, in particular, tends to show Donald in a more sympathetic light than writers like Carl Barks, but it's not unheard of even in the classic Barks tales.
• Cool Car:
  • Donald's old 313 (a 1934 Belchfire Runabout) straddles the line between this and The Alleged Car, but more of the former, as it has taken him through quite a few adventures. Made even more noteworthy (and serving as one examples of Donald's expertise in different areas) is that, as Rosa reveals in Recalled Wreck, Donald built the car himself and takes care of all the maintenance for it himself, completely taking apart the car and cleaning or repairing every part on a regular basis.
  • As Paperinik, Donald started using a modified version of his 313 able to fly and equipped with a lot of high tech gadgets by Gyro Gearloose to combat crime.
• The Cowl: In his super-hero alter-ego, Paperinik. Sometimes played straight (especially in Paperinik New Adventures), sometimes as an Affectionate Parody, and sometimes Played for Laughs.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Donald is a lazy, temperamental, often thoughtless and selfish braggart who has an unfortunate tendency to do the wrong thing or make a fatal mistake at crucial moments, and hence usually ends up with the short end of the stick and isn't really taken seriously by anyone. And yet, when properly motivated (either when his nephews are in genuine danger, or he's found something he really enjoys doing) he's a regular miracle worker, accomplishing feats that nobody else could even dream of. The problem with these bursts of badassery and hyper-competence is that they tend not to last; usually before the story is over he'll make another crucial mistake and slip back into being the Butt-Monkey.
• Dating Catwoman: In the story Date With A Munchkin ("Uncle Scrooge #350"), he unwittingly spends a prolonged time dating familial adversary Magica De Spell, due to the latter being disguised as Daisy. Whilst Donald goes back to the real Daisy when she escapes, the story closes with Magica admitting to herself that she genuinely enjoyed dating Donald.
  • A number of Paperinik stories had him in a romantic relationship with the thief Lola Duck, though this was troubled enough by them being on opposing sides of the law she eventually went and left for India.
• Dead Guy Junior: Implied to be named after his paternal great-grandfather Donald, a decorated hero of The American Civil War.
• Deadpan Snarker: Part of his irascible personality is making snide remarks about his misfortunes.
• Demoted to Extra: In DuckTales (1987) he only appears in a handful of episodes.
  • Averted in the 2017 reboot where he's part of the main cast (though his role is still much smaller than in the comics).
• Determinator: As soon as Donald starts to obsess about something, he'll go to any length. He never gives up.
• Ditzy Genius: He's a duck of many talents. Unfortunately, his biggest and most consistent talent seems to be screwing things up for himself whenever things are going well.
• Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: He doesn't have a belt, but in the older comics, he'd often chase his nephews with a stick.
• The Drag-Along: Donald is frequently this when treasure-hunting with Uncle Scrooge. Scrooge and the nephews might be excited at the prospect of a new adventure. Donald has to be coerced. Particularly evident in "The Twenty-four Carat Moon" (December, 1958) by Carl Barks. He doesn't want to go to a space-travel mission and proclaims "I want to keep my feet on good old Earth". Two panels later, he is in the space-traveling vehicle, chained to his seat and his feet are standing on a box of dirt. This doesn't stop Donald from being both useful and sarcastic.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Specifically in regards to his treatment at the hands of Scrooge, though other characters like Gladstone can be included as well. Not only has Donald gone on numerous adventures of his own in which he's put his life on the line, but he helps his Uncle fight off the likes of the Beagle Boys and Magica De Spell on a regular basis. This then doesn't take into account the adventures he goes on with his Uncle, in which he's typically integral to the success of the mission/treasure hunt in some way. Yet his Uncle still tends to treat him as a lazy nuisance that can't do anything right and in some instances has even claimed that he didn't need Donald's help to secure some of his treasures.
  • You could say that the entire purpose of The Duck Who Never Was is to point this out, as without Donald around Scrooge has long since fallen into poverty, due to losing his #1 dime to Magica and then being swindled by Flintheart shortly afterwards. Furthermore, Huey, Dewey, and Louie have become fat, lazy slobs under the care of Gladstone, instead of the adventurous intellectuals that they are living with Donald.
  • One example of this is Rosa's Treasure Under Glass, where it's Donald that figures out the method Scrooge can use to get to a sunken ship that contains a map of all the lost treasure that sank in the area of the Spanish Main! How does Scrooge repay him? By first blaming Donald's idea when the pictures he and his nephews take of the treasure map are stolen by pirates and then, after the crisis has been taken care of later and the pictures recovered, slapping Donald's hand with his cane when Donald asked for a reward (A reward which Scrooge had promised him at the story's start if he helped Scrooge get the treasure map and which he himself, rightfully, points out he deserves after risking his life once again to help his uncle). Why? Because one of the pictures taken on the camera was of Donald blowing a raspberry at Scrooge behind his back at the start of the story.
    • This example is probably made even worse because that map that Donald helps Scrooge recover? Some of the treasure they later find with it is what leads Scrooge to becoming The Last Lord of El Dorado. In fact, in that story Donald's specifically the one that finds the plaque that gives Scrooge the right to be said Lord. So even had he not been the one to come up with the idea for getting the map he would still deserve some credit for the second achievement.
  • The climax of Return to Xanadu features Donald as the hero of the story, when he saws through a metal door, nearly drowning, and proceeds to open the sluice gate hat was causing the valley of Xanadu to quickly fill up with water, by which all of its inhabitants would have drowned.
  • Say what you will about him being perpetually poor, but Donald Duck has probably managed to attain more jobs than any other character in literary history. True, he often ends up losing said jobs for whatever reason. But the fact that he is able to attain them at all (And many times in fact, the job he gets is one he created for himself, showcasing a general talent in the field of business) displays many different admirable qualities on his part, such as adaptations, perseverance, ingenuity, etc.
  • On Stolen Time, by Don Rosa, features the Beagle Boys gaining the ability to stop time due to a new invention they stole from Gyro Gearloose. Whenever time is frozen they proceed to steal millions of dollars from Scrooge at a time. Their plot is only failed thanks to Donald pretending to be frozen at one point, following them back to their hideout, and then returning to the Money Bin to inform Scrooge where they are. Fairly quick thinking for a duck often considered to be lazy.
• Eagle-Eye Detection: Don Rosa gave Donald this in An Eye for Detail to explain how Donald is able to tell his nephews apart. Turns out that beyond just being able to do that Donald can easily notice the smallest details of most objects, such as whether or not a fly has walked over a donut and left footprints on it. At the end of the story he seems to lose the ability, but it turns out to be a trick to get his uncle to stop trying to force him to use it for profit. The ability turns up again in The Dutchman's Secret.
  • Strangely enough, though Scrooge thought Donald had lost the ability at the end of the first story he is once more aware that he has it during the second, asking Donald to use it to identify which lines on a wall drawing are new and which are old.
• The Everyman: His characterization is ambiguous enough that anyone can identify with him.
• Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving: In one comic, Donald is put in a machine meant to determine his greatest aptitude, which reveals that he has the innate gift for snake charming. He spends the rest of the stories moping about this trick of fate, only for the skill to be useful when he gets attacked by a giant snake.
• Expy: His superhero alter-ego, Paperinik, started as the Disney version of Diabolik before evolving in a different direction. Some stories pay homage to this by having Lord Quackett aka Fantomius (the Gentleman Thief who was the in-universe inspiration of Paperinik look like the Duckified version of Diabolik◊.
• Fatal Flaw: Depending on the author, as usual, but some of the more common are Arrogance, Ambition, and a comically short fuse.
• Farm Boy: Donald was raised by his Grandma Duck in the countryside, where he spent his childhood playing with the other kids out in the fields. His skepticism of his nephews' new era toys and means of entertainment is a recurring trait in some comics.
• Flanderization: His portrayal in early Italian-produced comics exaggerated his character traits from the American comic of the time to comical extremes. Donald became a narcoleptic with a complete aversion to any kind of physical work and so dumb he genuinely believed two plus two equaled five point five. He treated his nephews more like slaves than family. Later stories keep his original characterization.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Donald has very few friends due to his obnoxious personality, short temper, and tendency to screw things up, and even then, they tolerate him at best and nearly despise him at worst. Most of his relatives treat him as a friend through Proximity, Necessity, Pity, Goodwill, and deep down Caring. Only Fethry, José, Panchito and Goofy are consistently portrayed as genuinely enjoying his company, though it varies how mutual this is (particularly when it comes to Fethry; in some stories Donald can barely stand him while in others he's perfectly happy to hang out with him).
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme. A staple in Donald Duck stories, sometimes pairing him with his cousin Fethry. They work out on occasion, but Status Quo Is God, so...
  • Falls somewhat into Fridge Brilliance when one considers that, unlike his Uncle Scrooge, Donald has three children who depend on him to provide for them, with numerous stories pointing this out. With the fact that you also often see him worrying about paying bills or loans back, it's not really surprising that he'd be interested in making large sums of money as fast as possible.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Much less prominent in the comic book incarnation of Donald than in his animated counterpart, but still very much a part of his character — after all, he wouldn't be Donald Duck without it. His mother, Hortense McDuck, and his father Quackmore Duck also had it, and this is why Donald has such a short temper.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Donald is capable of working incredibly hard when properly motivated, but this rarely brings him anything at all. It's also one of the main reasons he has such a bitter animosity towards his cousin Gladstone. Somewhat justified in that he almost completely lacks Scrooge's business sense, and his notorious bad luck usually trips him up.
• Honest Corporate Executive: An alternate version of himself in "History of a Disappearance" inherits Scrooge's wealth after his uncle falls into despair over the loss of his #1 Dime. He's surprisingly competent at running the business, but his sense of heroism has taken a hit as he's more likely to give a victim of theft money to buy a replacement for what was stolen instead of pursuing the thief himself.
• How Do I Shot Web?: As Paperinik, he sometimes has troubles with his gadgets, both in PKNA and non-PKNA stories. It's downplayed in PKNA, given he has One to help him with those (but still doesn't know how to use the full potential of his Extransformer shield, and when One gets deactivated he finds out he has no idea how to fuel the PKar... Or what the fuel is), but in non-PKNA stories he has some added problems because Gyro either forgets to explain how they work or gives him a gigantic user manual he cannot possibly read.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Whether or not Scrooge views Donald as this tends to vary across multiple stories. The Carl Barks story Some Heir Over the Rainbow, written in 1953, had Scrooge declare Huey, Dewey, and Louie his heirs, due to viewing Donald as this because of how he spent $1,000 that Scrooge secretly gave him, Gladstone, and the triplets — which Don Rosa naturally reinforced/referenced with Nobody's Business. Notably, that story features Scrooge even considering Gladstone to be a better successor than Donald. However, Race to the South Seas, from 1949, had Scrooge declare Donald as his heir at that story's end. 1956 had the story Two is Company where Scrooge is again trying to decide between Donald and Gladstone as to who will inherit his business. Then, 1961's Bongo on the Congo has Scrooge trying to teach Donald how to be a chief because he will inherit his business empire one day, and no mention is even made of the nephews doing so. So there are some stories showing the triplets being Scrooge's heirs and others showing that Donald is.
  • And in terms of business savvy, there are stories where Donald does indeed show that he has what it takes to turn a profit. City of Golden Roofs, 1957, in fact had him competing against Scrooge to see who the better salesman was and he is extremely successful at it. Though the story treats it as if Donald lost, as he ends it with a pile of money and golden jewels in comparison to Scrooge having a large lump of gold this could be debated, since the actual craftsmanship that went into making all of Donald's golden objects would probably make them more valuable than what Scrooge has.
• Instant Expert: Donald in several stories. Granted, the duck is talented.
• In the Blood: Donald inherited his awful temper from both his mother and father.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: No matter how fowl-tempered, self-centered, or otherwise annoying he may act, Donald isn't a bad person at heart. He may cheat or misbehave in small ways, but when things get serious he's usually well-intentioned and will go to great lengths to do the right thing or help people in need. Their relationship may be stormy at times but he genuinely does care for his nephews and will sacrifice just about anything for their sake. In "A Christmas for Shacktown", Donald goes out of his way to throw a Christmas party for the poor kids of Shacktown, of course it was the triplets' idea but once Donald committed to it, he was entirely behind it.
• Ladykiller in Love: He really used to take advantage of his status as a Chick Magnet before Daisy became the love interest...
• The Lancer: Serves this role when forced to accompany Uncle Scrooge.
• Lovable Coward: Present in a lot of stories; Donald is all gung-ho as long as there's no actual danger, but when there is he's as likely as not to lose his nerve — though writers tend to vary on whether this means he's an actual coward, or just the Only Sane Man who actually recognizes the danger that his Fearless Fool companions do not. This trait is almost absent from his animated counterpart, except in the movie Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, where a lot of fans unfamiliar with the comics complained that Donald's cowardice came out of nowhere.
• Master of Disguise: As Paperinik he is rather good thanks to the use of Latex Perfection and very good acting skills, to the point that his Clark Kenting act holds because everyone just assumes he wears a Donald Duck mask under his Domino Mask.
• Meaningful Name: A minor case. Obviously his surname reflects his species, but his given name, Donald, is Gaelic in origin, and he is half-Scottish on his mother's side.
• Miles Gloriosus: While he often displays amazing talents, he's got a tendency to brag and exaggerate, promising more than he can deliver. Usually his faith in himself is unshakable — until he's actually called upon to do all those things he's bragged about.
• New Job Episode: Donald has much trouble getting jobs. When not working for Scrooge, he is most commonly shown working in a skunk oil factory or a margarine factory, jobs he understandably despises.
  • Even so, Donald seems to be doing very well for himself at the margarine factory, at least. He once took a test of skills, and the conclusion was that the ideal job for him would be packing margarine.
  • DuckTales (1987) sent Donald off to the Navy for the length of the series, as a plot excuse to leave the three nephews with Uncle Scrooge.
  • A common plot in comics is that Donald starts in a job, and is amazingly good at it, earning money and becoming famous – until he makes a huge mistake that destroys the house, the garden, the road or whatever he’s a specialist in, and has to flee the town. Typically, it's his arrogance which causes the fateful mistake. He could be anything from a gardener to an explosions expert. He essentially creates works of art. His confidence increases with each successful assignment. Then he is offered a more demanding assignment, which seems to him like his crowning achievement. At this point he a) attempts to do by himself a job which would require one or more assistants, b) seriously underestimates the difficulties in accomplishing his goal or c) his single-minded pursuit of his goal prevents him from taking a rest, re-assessing the situation, etc. The scene is set for a spectacular disaster.
    • A common variation in Italian stories sees him often talked into various business ideas or new jobs by Fethry which often lead into a catastrophe. Alternativly, Scrooge hires Donald and Fethry for various jobs in which they similiary cause a lot of trouble.
  • Notably, in Rosa's Return to Xanadu, Donald notes that when he's free from the responsibilities and pressures of Duckburg he has no problem completing a job without screwing it up.
• Non-Powered Costumed Hero: As Paperinik, the costumed hero alter ego of Donald Duck, who's popular in European Disney comics. He's basically the Batman of Duckburg: he has no powers, he fights crime in a costume, few people know he's actually Donald, and he uses all sorts of gadgets developed by Gyro Gearloose. The stories where Donald appears in this guise seem to be in a whole different continuity from all others, as his becoming a badass with a Secret Identity would have huge ramifications for his character.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If he's enraged but is keeping his temper in check, apologize and beg: whatever he's planning is much worse than anything he'd do in a fit of rage, especially if this is a Paperinik story.
• One-Man Army: Not usually depicted as one, but in a number of comics he shows himself to be a dangerous fighter, capable of taking down multiple opponents much bigger than him. This trait is amplified in many Italian stories — especially stories that are set in alternate continuities or settings, like the many Medieval European Fantasy stories featuring the characters, where Donald (or at least his fantasy counterpart) has single-handedly taken on entire armies and won.
  • "Paperin Furioso" features a somewhat surreal dream world (brought on by Witch Hazel's magical pranks) where Donald is a knight in medieval times, with Gus as his squire. During the story, Donald goes insane with rage and becomes totally invincible. He not only only defeats a heavily armored knight with his bare hands, but he also uproots an enormous tree and bashes the Beagle Boys with it, then proceeds to hurl boulders at them, and for an encore he lifts an entire catapult and hurls it at the Beagle Boy army, before setting their camp on fire. And what does he say about any survivors barely left standing?
  Donald: (with sword in hand) I feel my arm tremble with excitement to pierce the survivors! Who's next to fall?!
  • Later in the same story, Donald also headbutts King Scrooge's palace when the latter tries to send his guards after him, nearly destroying it. Of course, this story is All Just a Dream... though maybe not completely, since it's heavily hinted that the story really did happen, just in a constructed universe.
  • The story also got a sequel, "Paperino Il Paladino," which is set in the same medieval-time world, but without the dream sequence framing. Donald the knight is completely sane during this story, but no less invincible in battle; he single-handedly defeats an entire army, twice, he merely shrugs off being flattened by a boulder, and he ends up fighting so furiously that his sword overheats and he has to blow on it to cool it down. In the second part of the story, he uses cleverness and tricks to sink as ship of invading Saracens — and when they manage to get ashore anyway, he once again takes on the entire army and defeats them all single-handedly. (Of course, unfortunate circumstances means that Gladstone ends up getting all the credit.)
  • In "Paperin de Paperac",◊ a musketeer version of Donald effortlessly disarms four Beagle Boys at the same time, stabbing one of them through the hat and just inches away from the Beagle's head. Needless to say, they beg him for mercy.
  • Even "regular" Donald sometimes gets in on the act. In "Donald Duck and Reginella's Wedding", he faces down an entire army of aliens (admittedly only possessing Medieval weaponry) under the command of the villain intent on marrying Reginella, whilst armed with only a boombox and a double-barreled shotgun loaded with rock salt rounds. He not only routs the enemy, he later forces them to melt their weapons into agricultural tools under threat of "ruining everything healthy you still have".
• Only Sane Man: Surprisingly enough given his hot-headed, stubborn personality, but he sometimes serves this role, as him being an Everyman allows him to have a more pragmatic view and a more average solution when weirdness arises, especially when he's on wacky adventures with Scrooge and the nephews.
• Papa Wolf: He will fight ghosts, aliens, contraptions, and even a thunderstorm should his nephews fall in danger.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: As Paperinik nobody recognizes him, even though the mask he wears barely covers anything◊. Justified, because in the early Paperinik stories a lot of people did have a tendency to assume that Donald and Paperinik were the same person, and Donald employed a lot of various tricks to "prove" otherwise — using things like robots and holograms (and in one story, an unwitting Fethry in disguise) to make sure that he and Paperinik were seen together on multiple occasions. He also made sure to make it known that Paperinik has various perfect masks, including some of Donald himself. In a story there was a memorable incident of the Beagle Boys unmasking PK and discovering the face of billionaire John D. Rockerduck, then he sneezed away the mask revealing the face of Donald, then he sneezed away that mask too to reveal a monstrous face (he was having issues with the glue of his masks): after that, only people who are from outside the city would think they can discover his real identity that easily...
  • In a few newer stories, it has been lampshaded, like in one Alternate Timeline story where a villain also discovers PK's secret identity.
    (looking at pictures of PK and Donald): Uhm... without mask and and with mask... It wasn't so hard, after all.
• Parental Abandonment: The earlier comics such as "This Is Your Life, Donald Duck!" has Donald raised by his Grandma Duck almost from the moment he hatched with his own parents, Quackmore and Hortense, nowhere to be found! And seeing that, his twin sister, Della, was not raised alongside him, really makes one wonder if his entire immediate family just abandoned him as an egg! Donald's parents and sister were last seen with him in Don Rosa's "The Empire Builder of Calisota" and then were never seen again. Donald's origins in the earlier Italian comics is even sadder and have him hatch from an egg bought at the market with Grandma Duck and Uncle Scrooge (who are brother and sister in that Italian origin story) adopting him!
• Parental Substitute: To Huey, Dewey and Louie, obviously. At least one story played a variation of this trope to a comical extreme, where he fought them - and even fought his uncle Scrooge - to make them sit their tails down and eat together as a family.
  • In fact, Donald often does work hard to be a competent guardian for his nephews, and their opinion of him matters a great deal. In Paperinik New Adventures the Raider, a time-traveling criminal who happens to be a single parent of one himself, actually compliments him on being such a good guardian without resorting to stealing to get the money he needs.
  • It may be a matter of translations, but in the Egyptian versions of the comics, Donald will occasionally refer to his nephews as 'my boys' or 'my kids'.
• Passed-Over Inheritance: Invoked and Zigzagged in Nobody's Business. Played Straight when Scrooge declares he's going to give all of his money to the triplets and not give one dime to his nephews Donald and Gladstone. Subverted when he admits to himself that such a decision isn't fair and he thus decides to award them with ownership of a company based on how they each invest $1000 he gives them.
• Perpetual Poverty: Typically not focused on that much, but Donald has had many of his own adventures where he's ended up with a good deal of treasure, such as The Looney Lunar Gold Rush by Carl Barks or The Crocodile Collector by Don Rosa, yet he forever seems to be forced to work for his uncle for only 15-30 cents an hour, along with his nephews as well depending on the story.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Donald is of average size for a duck in his verse, which means he is often outmassed by many characters — the dogfaces in particular tend to be significantly taller than him. Despite his small size, he has been seen to break free of strong ropes, pull a tractor with his bare hands, and fight off bigger enemies!
• Polar Opposite Twins: With his sister Della in one Dutch comic. He is a sailor. She is a pilot.
• Really Fond of Sleeping: Donald really likes to catch some Z's, much to Scrooge's annoyance, as he has a tendency to try and nap during work hours. In fact, Donald is so devoted to sleep that he's allowed into the Halls of The Dead prematurely during the events of Don Rosa's The Quest For Kalevala because Tuoni, the Finnish Grim Reaper, considers him worthy enough to get a preview of the eventual "eternal sleep".
• Real Men Cook: One of his more consistent characterizations is that he's an excellent cook. He presumably learned from his grandmother, a famously good cook, and having to take care of three children while living in relative poverty means he knows how to cook well with cheap and easy ingredients.
• Renaissance Man: Has shown awesome proficiency in fields as diverse as cleaning windows and coins (and is actually famous in-universe for the latter), cooking, demolitions, explosives (literally pulverized a condemned building with no collateral damage, and considered it a failure because two pebbles had come out of the designed demolition area), repairing bells and cymbals, bodyguard, shoemaking, butler, tax collector, truant officer, mall cop, driving everything, and so on. Then there are the more exotic skills he demonstrates whenever he's dragged along to Scrooge's treasure hunts, such as jungle survival, mountain climbing or deep sea diving.
• Secret-Keeper: In "A Letter from Home", it's revealed that Donald knew that Matilda, Scrooge's estranged sister, was the caretaker he unknowingly hired to look out for his family castle. While Donald never revealed the secret, not even to his nephews, he had been subtly trying to push them to reconcile.
• Seen It All: It doesn't come up often, but Donald Duck has been involved in finding El Dorado, Atlantis, the Lost Mines of the Incas and King Solomon, captured a unicorn, found the Vault of the Templars and the Holy Grail (that he broke in the head of a criminal), has an alien Love Interest, and so on, and when the authors remember it he's ready for everything.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: He had a Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling dynamic with Della when they were children with him usually getting up into all sorts of mischief that Della either had to fix or was the chief victim of. This makes his status as the Butt-Monkey to Huey, Dewey, and Louie's antics quite karmic in retrospect. Ironically, in DuckTales (2017), he is the Responsible Sibling to Della's Foolish Sibling.
• Straight Man: To Fethry Duck in the stories where both are the protagonists.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: He and Daisy at times come up with the same weird ideas, or at least understand them. For example, as spies they both infiltrated a villainous organization in disguise as a known member and let the other do the heavy lifting before revealing themselves at the right moment to save them, as superheroes they both justified their relationship with their superheroic alter ego by claiming to be friends, and when Donald decided the best way to get Daisy to stop complaining about his constant Paperinik-mandated lateness at their dates was to use a Paperinik gadget to send her half an hour forward in time and make her late to make her understand how he felt Daisy found it romantic.
• Strong Family Resemblance: At least if Don Rosa's stories are to be believed, he is the spitting image of his father, Quackmore. The early Barks story, "Voodoo Hoodoo" stated that he was one for Uncle Scrooge as well. This was minorly retconned in later stories where Scrooge was identified with his prominent sidewhiskers even as a young fowl, but aside from that, the resemblance between Scrooge and Donald is still quite strong.
  • Used as a plot point in several stories, where (for one reason or another), Donald impersonates Scrooge, by simply wearing Scrooge's clothes, spectacles, and false sideburns. Depending on the story, Donald either does a spectacular job or forgets some of Scrooge's mannerisms. People who don't know Scrooge well are still fooled, the others can tell the difference. One story has Daisy having doubts whether the "Scrooge" who just talked to her was the genuine article. She throws a coin to the ground and waits for Scrooge's trained ear to react to the sound. When the male duck does not react at all, she unmasks him as Donald.
• Super-Senses: According to Don Rosa, the explanation of how Donald could tell his nephews apart was that he could see tiny details that differentiate them, examples being: a crooked freckle, a speck in an eye, an extra eyelash, even the shade of white of their feathers. It only works subconsciously however, it is impossible for him to do it when trying.
• Supreme Chef: Depending on the Writer to a very high degree, and some comics even depict him as a Lethal Chef, but in most stories where it comes up, he's actually a good cook — not quite in Grandma Duck's class, and often limited by the fact that he can't afford to buy the proper ingredients, but a talented enough chef that family members will come running when he's doing the cooking.
  • Since food is one of Donald's main interests, along with sleeping, it makes sense that he would have at least some cooking skills.
  • One comic took it further by revealing his talent as a food critic, his reviews eventually leaving him great fame. It only went south when he had to review Daisy's food (from a cafè she had opened) on national television, when he couldn't stand her cooking.^note Luckily, his nephews had called in Grandma Duck to do the cooking, so Donald was left greatly enjoying the food, only to later talk about how bad Daisy's cooking was while she was standing right behind him. It ends with him having to leave town to avoid her beating.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: On very rare occasions, Donald manages to be the one who gets the treasure in the end, such as "The Crocodile Collector" and "The Trail of the Unicorn." Don't expect him to still be rich in the next story, though.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Donald really enjoys drinking soda, and Scrooge is constantly berating him for wasting his money on them. In Nobody's Business, Donald is given one thousand dollars by his uncle to invest, and by the end of the challenge, he makes a business deal for a new invention which he sold for one thousand dollars plus a crate of sodas. To be fair, he'd had extremely bad luck with any investment ideas so far, and he was getting thirsty anyway.
  • While soda is the most prominent, Donald really enjoys fast food in general, which was just becoming a thing when he gained popularity in the mid-20th century.
• True Companions: His Latin Americam friends, Panchito Pistoles and Jose Carioca, are the only people who consistently treat Donald with respect rather than look down on or abuse him as his relatives frequently do. In fact, one story has the nephews send Donald to Brazil go adventuring with him when Donald gets depressed, because they're the only people who can bring a genuine smile on his face when he's down on the dumps.
• Unfazed Everyman: He's basically The Everyman and a very average guy who struggles with everyday business like raising kids, keeping his love life with Daisy going and trying to find a job. However, he would also ocassionally accompany his uncle on treasure hunts and helps him defending his money bin against witches and other crooks, without finding that weird compared to his everyday struggles at all.
• The Unintelligible: Subverted in the comics, since there his dialogue is written for us to read. The Paperinik stories also imply he is a Voice Changeling (which even extends to the game PK: Out of the Shadows, in which regular Donald is voiced by Tony Anselmo as usual, but when he's Paperinik, it's Rob Paulsen who voices him), as his disguises regularly fool people who know well whoever he is disguised as.
  • Played straight on DuckTales (1987), though, where it's a Running Gag for people to ask "What did he say?" In the pilot, Launchpad even considers it a sign of how bad things are getting when he finally manages to understand him. In the 2017 version, it's even revealed that his own nephews find him hard to understand, and part of them preparing to rescue Scrooge in the first season finale involves giving Donald a temporary voice-mod so he can be understood. The only person who is able to easily understand his regular voice is Daisy.
• Universal Driver's Licence: Actually applies. His actual 'competence' in piloting/driving/sailing varies, especially if it'd be funnier if he screwed up.
• Unlucky Everydude: Although not as bad as in the Disney animated canon, Donald still tends to have absolutely rotten luck. Don Rosa, however, took this further and some comics with Donald are often more depressing than anything as a result.
• Unluckily Lucky: Depending on the Writer. He was Born Unlucky and there is no story whatsoever where he is not put through a gauntlet of injuries and humiliation, but on some of them he managed to obtain a silver lining by staying around (sometimes because of determination, sometimes because of despair) when whoever was his rival for the tale had already taken the apparent prize and left and the real prize appeared afterwards (thus making the "lucky" rival someone who Gave Up Too Soon).
• Unstoppable Rage: You guys think Scrooge McDuck is bad? Ha! Both in the animated feature as well as the comic, "This Is Your Life, Donald Duck," it's officially shown that Donald hatched ready to fight! And the comic version takes it even further by showing that even as a baby Donald could bash his head against a statue in anger and cause more damage to the statue than to himself! And when a baby Donald tried to take one sailor's hat, the sailor exclaimed, "Whew! He's got a grip to put many a big man to shame!" And the only reason he doesn't attack or bash things with his head anymore is for fear of hurting his hat! He's also broken free of strong ropes, pulled a tractor with his bare hands, beaten up the Beagle Boys and his bigger Neighbor Jones, etc. In fact, in a Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck comics crossover parody of Lord of the Rings, Donald fights off an enormous spider with a machete that had already captured Mickey in its web before threatening Mickey to explain to him what's going on before he turns the machete on him! So it's clear that although this aspect of his personality is displayed more in his animated incarnation, it's still definitely there in the comics, too and it's best to never anger this duck!
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: In several stories, he tends to have a mean streak.
• Violent Glaswegian: Downplayed, since he's only half Scottish, but Donald certainly inherited the McDuck temper.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Most consistently with Fethry — though occasionally also with Gladstone, in "stories like this one". In crossover stories, he tends to have this relationship with Mickey Mouse too.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: While most examples of Donald crossdressing have been played for laughs, there are also stories where he voluntarily and even excitedly puts on dresses and feminine clothing.
• Who's Laughing Now?: His Paperinik persona started out as a means for Donald to get back at Scrooge and Gladstone continuously tormenting and humiliating him, and the very first story features Paperinik stealing Scrooge's mattress as he sleeps on it for added humiliation factor.
  • Some of the earliest Paperinik stories, had Paperinik committing crimes and framing Gladstone for them. Some of them have Gladstone doing decent detective work just to clear his name.
• Wisdom from the Gutter: Donald may not always be the brightest bulb, his impulsiveness does cause him problems, and Scrooge looks down on him for not having either his wealth or his business, but in many stories Donald is actually shown to have considerably more common sense than Scrooge does. In particular, Donald takes the sensible viewpoint that having money for its own sake is pointless and it's better to enjoy what it can actually get you, whilst Scrooge scrimps and saves like his life depends on it, living a lifestyle that varies between "austere" and "downright miserable" despite having the world's biggest fortune. In one story, a deliberate contrast is directly drawn between Donald, who is not very wealthy but has a healthy social life and no major worries, and Scrooge, who lives in seclusion and exists in a constant state of paranoia over being burglarized. In The Treasury of Croesus, he also gets to call out both Scrooge and Magica, bluntly pointing out that their obsession with money just causes them to waste their lives and make themselves miserable, which neither of them can muster an argument against.

Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck

Debut: Donald's Nephews (1937)

All Voiced by: Clarence Nash (1938-1985), Russi Taylor (1987-2019), Tony Anselmo (Mickey MouseWorks, House of Mouse), Hal Smith (DuckTales, adult selves in "Duck to the Future")
Huey Voiced by: Jeannie Elias (Quack Pack), Danny Pudi (DuckTales (2017))
Dewey Voiced by: Pamela Adlon (Quack Pack), Ben Schwartz (DuckTales (2017))
Louie Voiced by: E.G. Daily (Quack Pack), Bobby Moynihan (DuckTales (2017))

Donald's triplet nephews, living with their "Unca Donald," rising within the ranks of the Junior Woodchucks, and causing trouble at home. However, as their adventures with their uncles progress, they grow to become true-blue heroes who are often a collective voice of sanity contrasted to their older relatives' quirks. In most of their incarnations they're completely identical in looks and behavior, but some incarnations have tried to give them individual traits. Individual tropes as mentioned here come mainly from either incarnation of DuckTales or Quack Pack, but have shown up in the occasional comic as well.

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Tropes applying to all three

• Adults Are Useless: Mostly Downplayed as Donald and Scrooge are very capable and competent in their own rights most of the time, nonetheless on many occasions it's on Huey, Dewey, and Louie to save the day or Scrooge's fortune. In Carl Barks's The Old Castle's Secret, they even mention that Donald and Scrooge wouldn't be a great help at the upcoming treasure hunt.
• Always Identical Twins: Always Identical Triplets, actually. The three of them are for the most part interchangeable and can just be told apart by the colours of their hats. Played With by Don Rosa in "An Eye For Detail", where it's revealed that Donald is the only one outside the nephews who can tell them apart.
• Bratty Half-Pint: They were troublesome brats when they first appeared. Not so much nowadays.
• Characterization Marches On: They started out as absolute terrors who delighted in tormenting their uncle, but slowly became more sympathetic and mature until they arguably acted more "grown-up" than Donald in most situations. This change was actually deliberately invoked by Carl Barks, who reasoned that the audience would tire of the boys if they never became anything other than mischief-makers.
  • In-story a large part of the change seems to have come from them joining the Junior Woodchuck organization, which as seen in Rosa's W.H.A.D.A.L.O.T.T.A.J.A.R.G.O.N was at the behest of Donald in hopes that it would straighten them up.
  • For a short time in animation, and a long time in comics, they tended to share much of their dialogue, either speaking in unison or finishing each others' sentences. This trait was eventually phased out.
• Chromatic Arrangement: Their colors have varied wildly, Depending on the Colorist, but in the late 1980s it stabilized as Huey/red, Dewey/blue, and Louie/green.
  • Another common combination in the comics is, or at least was, Huey/blue, Dewey/green, and Louie/Red. The change of colors was usually ignored, but sometimes lampshaded and explained as the boys sometimes borrowing each other's clothes. Also, possibly thanks to the fact that in their animation debut their colours were red/orange/yellow, Dewey is sometimes depicted with yellow clothes in certain European comics.
• Deadpan Snarker: In every incarnation, they are this in response to Donald or anything that they view as kind of lame.
• Depending on the Writer: In some of their more modern animated appearances, like in House of Mouse or Mickey Mouse (2013), they can alternate between their original mischievous rascal persona (albeit toned down) or their more sympathetic and mature personality from the comics.
• Deus ex Machina: Their Junior Woodchuck guidebook. There's an entry on how to make dragons sneeze in it, for crying out loud! One of Don Rosa's stories looked into the history of the book which revealed it's the modern version of a book that contained all the unique information from the Library of Alexandria. The original book was MUCH bigger.
  • Somewhere in the book there is an explanation of how to find and condense so much information in such a little volume.
• The Dividual: The twindividual variety, at least before DuckTales (2017) and Quack Pack made efforts to make them more distinguishable characters.
• Dumbass No More: While not particullary dumbasses, the trio consists of average, maybe a bit bratty children with few interest in schooling and "normal" hobbies. However, that changed with the introduction of the Junior Woodchucks: Huey, Dewey, and Louie are now full-blown boyscouts with great knowledge about almost everything and with an all-knowing Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. Their cleverness often helps Donald and/or Scrooge out of misery.
• Expy: They actually started out as Expys for Mickey's two nephews, Morty and Ferdie, who until the introduction of Huey, Dewey, and Louie actually made several appearances in Donald's comic strip, sans Mickey, in order to torment him with pranks and childish mischief. After a while, it was decided to give Donald his own nephews — and as a way of one-upping Mickey, Donald got three bratty, identical nephews instead of just two. Of course, since they only had a couple of animated appearances and starred in far fewer comics, today Morty and Ferdie aren't one-tenth as well-known or popular as Huey, Dewey and Louie are.
• Great Big Book of Everything: The Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, see below.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: The color of their clothes, at least nominally. In reality, the colorists often vary wildly on which boy wears which color, and since they also wear identical black shirts in the comics and often go hatless or are wearing identical Junior Woodchucks coonskin caps, it's often impossible to tell who is who.
• Insult of Endearment: After their first appearance, Donald Duck would often call them "little devils" due to their mischief-making antics. Sometimes however he uses the term affectionately.
• Morality Pet: While he does have his moments towards them, Huey, Dewey, and Louie are consistently portrayed as being the characters Scrooge is nicest to. Even when he's being a huge jerk towards Donald, Scrooge is usually still nice towards the triplets. They are also portrayed as one of the biggest reasons he starts warming up towards family again and getting back his love of adventure in multiple series.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Oh, yeah! Quack Pack made an attempt to age them by a few years, but most modern-day works featuring them disregard this.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Their common names? Nicknames. Their actual names are Hubert, Deuteronomy, and Louis.
• Parental Abandonment: Their mother is Donald's sister Della, and she apparently asked Donald to take care of them while their unnamed father was spending time in a hospital. And she was never heard from again...
  Scrooge: I'm not used to relatives either. The few I had seem to have... disappeared.
  Huey, Dewey and Louie: We know how that feels, Unca Scrooge.
• Same-Sex Triplets: They're identical triplets who are all male.
• Scout-Out: In the comics, they are part of the Junior Woodchucks.
• Shipper on Deck: Quite willing to help their uncle's relationship with Daisy.
• Single-Minded Twins: Single-Minded Triplets, in this case. It's more apparent in earlier stories, where they were often literally treated as one character with three separate bodies, to the point of sharing all their spoken lines. The trope is still in effect in later stories, but the boys seem to have at least stopped speaking in union and finishing each other's sentences.
  • DuckTales (1987) occasionally subverted the trope by giving them individual character traits — Huey as the energetic leader, Dewey as the smart guy and Louie as the gentle, good-natured tagalong. Quack Pack took these traits and ran with them, making the three boys distinct individuals and completely averting the trope.
  • DuckTales (2017) goes further with giving them individual character traits — albeit Huey is the intellect, Dewey's the energetic adventurer, and Louie is the easy-going one.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: In the newspaper strips, some early Barks-comics as well as the very early Italian stories (especially written by Guido Martina) they act as antagonists against Donald, taking over their role from the Classic Disney Shorts. While with the creation of the Junior Woodchucks the nephews generally get more mature and sympathic towards their Uncle Donald, some writers like William van Horn still enjoy pitting Donald and the nephews against each other.
• The Smart Guy: All three of them share this role when out adventuring with Donald and Scrooge, making for a team with one Hero (Scrooge), one Lancer (Donald) and three Smart Guys.
  • In Quack Pack, (and to a lesser extent in DuckTales (1987)) Dewey is the Smart Guy of the trio.
  • In DuckTales (2017), the title of Smart Guy goes to Huey.
• Speak in Unison: They speak together sometimes, one speech balloon with three stems. In the animated shorts, they usually finish each other's sentences instead.
• Species Surname: They have the same surname as their Uncle Donald (namely, Duck)
• Theme Twin Naming: Theme Triplet Naming; all of their names rhyme.
• Troll: How they love doing this to their poor Unca Donald in some stories, where they pretend to put themselves in a risky position and watch their uncle throw himself into danger.
• Vague Age: Their ages in the comics range from pre-teens to high schoolers. Even internally it's inconsistent who's the oldest and youngest of the three, some comics giving their order of births, while at least one source (a QnA section in a Norwegian comic) insists that, since ducks are hatched not born, they were all hatched at once.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: It helps that as Woodchucks, they own a manual that covers basically everything in the Universe.

Tropes applying to Huey

• Casanova Wannabe: In Quack Pack, he was often trying to impress teenage girls, but not having much luck with them.
• Keet: The most enthusiastic and energetic of the boys. Taken further with his 2017 incarnation.
• Red Is Heroic: His signature color is red, and whenever the boys are depicted as having a leader it's him. He's also the most dedicated Junior Woodchuck (in DuckTales (2017) he seems to be the only one of the boys who's a Junior Woodchuck at all), and the quintessential "Good Scout."
• Small Name, Big Ego: In Quack Pack, he has style and charisma but is essentially useless.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: In Dragonlords, he harvests and carries a clearly too heavy load of food for his wounded dragon Sniffles all by himself, despite his brothers and uncle being close by, implying that he wanted to care for his steed and friend by himself.

Tropes applying to Dewey

• I Just Want to Be Special: Seems to be the nephew most prone to experience this, wanting to be seen as an individual instead of just one of three brothers. It comes up in both the original DuckTales (1987) and in Quack Pack, and even in a couple of comics (one Italian comic had him be the first one of the brothers to get a crush on a girl, and subsequently he made more of an effort to stand out... which annoyed Huey and Louie to no end), before it became a major part of his character in DuckTales (2017). It probably ties in to his Middle Child Syndrome.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Confirmed by the creators of DuckTales (2017) to have a bad case of this.
• The Smart Guy: In the original DuckTales and in Quack Pack, he's the smartest of the nephews. Quack Pack turned him into an Insufferable Genius who would gloat about his intelligence.

Tropes applying to Louie

• Deadpan Snarker: In DuckTales (2017), he always seems to have some sort of snide or sarcastic comment for all occasions.
• Lazy Bum: As a part of Character Exaggeration in DuckTales (2017). Whereas Huey and Dewey are hard workers, Louie is happy to just kick back and watch TV.
• Tagalong Kid: Even if he's the same age as his two brothers, and never actually stopped from going along with them; whenever it comes up he's consistently depicted as the youngest of the three (by a few hours), and a follower rather than a leader.
• The Ditz: In Quack Pack and Ducktales 1987, he was portrayed as a naïve person who said or did dumb stuff.

Tropes applying to Phooey

• Ascended Meme: Actually, Phooey isn't a character, but an artist's error. Occasionally, stressed-out comic artists would make a mistake and draw a fourth nephew who was suddenly there for one panel and then vanished again. Fans took to calling this fourth nephew "Phooey" (though "Barks," after Carl Barks, was a popular alternate name for him). In 1999, a story named "Much Ado About Phooey" canonized him by explaining that Huey, Dewey, and Louie had once been struck by lightning, and after that the image of a fourth nephew would occasionally materialize next to them only to vanish a few seconds later, and the family were so used to it that they basically didn't pay it any mind.

Scrooge McDuck

Debut: Christmas on Bear Mountain (1947)

Voiced by: Clarence Nash (1943); Dallas McKennon (1960), Bill Thompson (1967), Jack Wagner (1980's), Will Ryan (Sport Goofy in Soccermania), Alan Young (1974-2016), Pat Fraley (DuckTales (1987), Young Scrooge in "Once Upon a Dime"), John Kassir (Mickey Mouse (2013), 2016-present), David Tennant (DuckTales (2017))

Donald's uncle, and Huey, Dewey and Louie's great uncle. The richest, and probably the cheapest duck in the world. He made his wealth by being tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties, and he made it square. He resides in a large bin full of money (which he loves to dive around in like a porpoise, burrow through like a gopher, and toss it up and let it hit him on the head) in Duckburg, constantly seeking to increase his wealth.

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• #1 Dime: Trope Namer, though whether he actually fits the trope varies from writer to writer — Carl Barks and Don Rosa portray the titular dime's only value as being sentimental (and, for Magica de Spell, sympathetic (or rather symbolic) - it's powerful because it belongs to Scrooge, it's not inherently magical), other writers avert the trope by making it a Good Luck Charm.
• The Ace: Especially under Rosa's pen. World's richest duck, completely self-made, does Indiana Jones' job for fun, worked about twenty jobs over his lifetime and was impressively good at all of them, and a good enough scrapper to keep the world's most dangerous crooks on their toes- all while pushing ninety years old.
• Action Survivor: In his Backstory, he survived quite a lot of daring feats.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: DuckTales (1987) and its 2017 revival gives him a loving and kind heart in place of the cold flint in the chest of his comic version. He's still acerbic and greedy, but it's far more harmless and restricted than his other incarnations, or at the very least he tends to repent a lot easier whenever he gains his ruthlessness characteristic to the comics.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: Although not formally educated (he has learned far more than most scholars ever will just by being on the road), this is what he does in his spare time.
• Affectionate Nickname: In DuckTales (1987), Launchpad likes to call him "Mr. McDee."
• Affluent Ascetic: Scrooge earns money only to save it. He doesn't believe in Conspicuous Consumption and will do anything he can to avoid spending money. He'll pay for the bare essentials necessary to fund his adventures (while searching for the best bargains in the process), but don't expect him to share the lavish, expensive tastes of his fellow millionaires, which he finds ridiculous. Not afraid to pay his taxes though.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Just how much money he has is typically never stated, and when it is it's in made up nonsense terms. One story, Terror of the Beagle Boys, has him mention that it would take him "thirteen years to count" how much money is in his safe. Occasionally an exact number will be placed on his wealth, but it still varies, since many of his stories involve him making more money, and it's always such a large amount (eg: "umpteen-gazillion, three-hundred-and-fifty-zillion, nine-hundred-forty-billion, six dollars and fourteen cents") that he may as well not have a limit placed on it anyways.
  • It's a minor meme that his bin holds "three cubic acres of cash", although the exact worth of that is hard to say, given the bin contains everything from nickels and dimes to thousand-dollar bills to fist-sized diamonds. And also because an acre is two dimensions already, so three cubic acres would somehow have to be a six-dimensional shape. Humanity is currently only aware of four dimensions, and the fourth one is time.
• Arch-Enemy: He has several rivals, but the closest thing Scrooge has to a mortal enemy is without a doubt Flintheart Glomgold.
• Art Evolution: It took about four years until Barks settled on the final design for the character.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Offered the chance by Väinämöinen himself.
  Väinämöinen: "I go beyond the northern lights! Have you courage for this journey? Is the Sampo worth that to you? If so, I grant thee, Scrooge, a gift, since from exile you did save me, and the Sampo did recreate! We are as one... I can feel it! Your love for lands of ice and snow... for the grandeur of the northland... Are you ready to come with me? Have prosperity eternal? Forsake your own Kalevala... where a lost love still awaits you?"
  Scrooge: "No."
  Väinämöinen: "Ah! Right choice! Congratulations! Hail and farewell, Sampo savior!"
• Badass Boast: Repeated with variants across Carl Barks's comics: "I'm Scrooge McDuck, and if you don't [X], I'll buy this [Y] and fire you!"
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: He wears spats, but no shoes.
• Been There, Shaped History: Especially in the comics, Scrooge is legendary for the number of famous historical figures he's interacted with, along with his own accomplishments. In-universe, he's been brought up as one of the few living legends still remaining from the frontier era.
• Benevolent Boss: In most continuities, while he won't spring for office luxuries like, say, break room coffee machines, (one comic shows his secretary had to buy and pay for the office coffee machine), he appreciates the talent and skills of his employees and pays them very well (which explains how the secretary was able to afford said coffee machine). Donald and the nephews are the only ones he really seems to cheap out on.
• Berserk Button: While he has a Hair-Trigger Temper to begin with, the one surefire way to get on Scrooge's bad side is theft or cheating of any kind, but particularly those who amass wealth by scamming or stealing from others, especially the ones weaker than themselves.
  • Also, don't imply that he made his fortune through luck rather than hard work.
  • Don't talk trash about his deceased parents. No chains will restrain his fury.
• Big Eater: While his frugal sensibilities keep him from indulging much on his own dime, Scrooge actually LOVES food, and will often stuff himself when others are footing the tab, usually when Donald cooks.
• Brave Scot: He is Scottish and often goes on adventures with his nephew and grandnephews.
• Breakout Character: He was introduced as just a wealthy miser uncle for Donald Duck by Carl Barks, and took off in popularity to become a famous character in his own right.
• Broken Ace:
  • For a while in the comics. The strain of doing all the impressive things he's done - and repeatedly losing everything he had - made him hard-hearted and mean-spirited, something that alienated him from his once-close family for decades. Adding to that is that since Scrooge worked for all his money, and he spent so much time doing so, he has no idea how to act in high-society circles someone as rich as him would be expected to participate in leaving him with no real friends.
  • This continues in DuckTales (1987). Scrooge is the richest duck in the world and has more adventures in a year than most people have in a lifetime — despite the fact that he's getting on in years. However, he's also quite insecure about his relationships with his friends and family, secretly fearing for at least part of the series that they're really interested in his money, not him.
• Byronic Hero: Especially in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. He's physically capable, cunning, brave, and charismatic, and he manages to achieve his success by being "tougher than the toughies and sharper than the sharpies". Despite this, he feels alienated from the world because almost everyone around him are crooks who are ready to swindle/rob him or those who hate him out of jealousy.
• Cane Fu: In the present era, as he needs to use a cane to get around but retains his fighting spirit and badass nature, he naturally uses it as his main weapon.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Originally Played for Drama, with the one time Scrooge didn't make his money "square"; the destruction of Foola Zoola's village, widely considered to be the worst thing Scrooge did in his life and would haunt him for decades to come, not to mention destroying his relationship with his sisters. It still pales in comparison to the actions of virtually every other businessman during the Gilded Age, something Scrooge himself complains about before his Heel Realization.
  • More comedic examples involve the backlash Scrooge receives when his greed starts to cross the line, even when it's not actually dishonest, such as in "His Majesty McDuck, or pulling a dirty trick while competing with Glomgold, especially if Glomgold hasn't done anything himself yet, like in "The Island On the Edge of Time".
• Celibate Hero: He's been in relationships (notably Goldie), but never married.
• Character Catchphrase: "I made it by being tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties! And I made it square!" This line was only used once by Carl Barks, but it was so memorable that other writers (e.g. Don Rosa) turned it into a catchphrase. It's also a Badass Boast, since Scrooge prides himself on being an Honest Corporate Executive who never made his money unfairly.
• Characterization Marches On: Scrooge was introduced as a genuine Jerkass, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who was ruthlessly stingy and greedy, well surpassing the meanness and cruelty of his Charles Dickens namesake. As the character became more and more popular and Barks discovered how much potential he had as a protagonist, though, he became a much more heroic figure. This was the interpretation that Don Rosa preferred, and he even used his magnum opus, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, to explain just how Scrooge could have gone from the hardnosed but good-hearted individual he was in his youth and who he returns to being in the "present" to being the crusty, curmudgeonly skinflint he is when he first appears in the Disney Duckiverse.
• Collector of the Strange: Is one, but also strangely disdains collectors. He has rare and valuable coins in his bin that are worth far more than they were minted for, to the right buyer, but he'd rather have the coins than their actual worth; to Scrooge, their real worth is as a reminder of the hard work he did to earn them.
• Confirmed Bachelor: In his youth he seriously considered marrying Glittering Goldie, but since then has shown little interest in marriage (and at times, great antipathy to the idea).
• Cool Old Guy: Not only does he have a past stuffed fit to bursting with fabulous adventures, he keeps on adventuring despite his advanced age.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Depending on the Writer. While he is sometimes portrayed as the exact opposite, Scrooge can be this trope also, especially in the Italian Disney comics. Notably, in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, his Start of Darkness is seen, turning him from the Honest Corporate Executive he sought to be into this and costing him his relationship with his family for decades.
  • Invoked in the story Zio Paperone e il Grande Papero where he has a Jerkass Realization after reading 1984 and dreams of being an evil dictator until he cross the line and Donald leads a rebellion against him.
• Cutting Corners: Surprisingly averted with Scrooge: he'll of course try to economize on projects, but will ultimately yield to necessary expenses to avoid substandard results that could lead to greater costs undoing the negligence. For instance, Scrooge might ask if each rivet in an building construction is necessary, but will not argue with his construction crew when they firmly assert what is necessary for a properly built structure.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not quite on Donald's level, but he can snark with the best of them, often making cutting remarks about how clueless and clumsy his allies are.
• Depending on the Writer: Scrooge's ruthlessness and adherence to ethics. Older Italian comics (particularly those written by Guido Martina) tended to portray Scrooge much more in line with his initial Jerkass characterization, veering into Corrupt Corporate Executive territory. Barks himself went back to a more ruthless Scrooge in a few Donald-centered gag stories.
  • DuckTales (1987), notably, goes the other way, turning Scrooge Lighter and Softer by giving him an openly sentimental streak and sense of family values that he seldom, if ever, displayed in the comics.
  • Even his #1 Dime is portrayed as a good luck charm, depending on the writer — don't let Scrooge know about this!
  • Scrooge's relationship with his staff varies as well. In one comics story where Donald was experiencing a world without himself, Scrooge invited his staff to a dinner, only to find that none of them wanted to spend any more time with him than necessary. DuckTales, perhaps as part of the Lighter and Softer nature of the story, has Scrooge having a vitriolic (on his side) but overall positive relationship with his staff, who (as he himself seems to realize) are some of the only good friends he has.
  • The role of artillery in the Money Bin's defenses: while the Bin always has four carronades, their importance for the defense against attacks compared to Gyro's more technological defenses, or even different kinds of artillery (that include a residuate from the Boer War and an Italian WWII residuate) varies with the story. The only constant is that the cannons are what he uses when he wants to destroy something or for longer range (Gyro's gadgets are usually made to immobilize attackers, and are relatively short-ranged).
  • His relationship with women and his attachment to his own celibacy differs. A number of stories have elderly Scrooge maintaining a long-distance relationship with his old flame Glittering Goldie O'Gilt, while other depict their relationship as having ended a long time ago. His relationship with his stalker/love interest Brigitta MacBridge has variously been depicted as a one-sided attraction, a business rivalry fueled by their emotions, genuine companionship, to a love-hate relationship. A running gag is that Scrooge turns into an overly jealous boyfriend whenever any other male character shows interest in Brigitta. A number of Italian stories have added a love interest for Scrooge called Molly McGold, a workaholic businesswoman who turned down Scrooge's marriage proposals but is not against dating him. (Only three appearances between 1989 and 1997). The story "Zio Paperone e le grandi conquiste" (Uncle Scrooge and the Great Conquests, December, 1997) has a female reporter investigating Scrooge's love life and discovering that he still has genuinely affectionate relationships with Goldie, Brigitta, Molly, and Magica! The story ends with the reporter falling for Scrooge and chasing after him, while an intimidated Scrooge wonders who she is.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • In the alternate universe that Paperinik visits in History of a Disappearance, Scrooge's Number One dime is accidentally destroyed by a criminal, putting Scrooge in such a sorry state that he cedes almost all of his wealth and corporate holdings to that dimension's Donald. He then becomes the new guardian of Huey, Dewey, and Louie after his nephew ditches them to enjoy his newfound money and power.
  • Also happens in The Duck Who Never Was; in an alternate universe where Donald was never born, Gus Goose became Scrooge's assistant, and was soon tricked into handing over his #1 Dime by Magica De Spell (she disguised herself as a street vendor selling hamburgers for a dime a piece). With the loss of his dime, Scrooge's spirit was broken, and easily crushed by Flintheart Glomgold, who swindled him out of the rest of his fortune.
• Determinator: He didn't become this rich by giving up, after all.
• Drama Queen: Grew a bit of a dramatic streak in his old age, such as fainting when he loses out on a treasure, acting like paying for something causes him physical pain, and gets really theatrical whenever his fortune is threatened.
• Driven by Envy: Return To Forbidden Valley implies that at least part of the reason for Scrooge's harsh treatment of Donald, despite the many times Donald has helped him attain a treasure or to defend his money, is that Scrooge envies Donald's life. Despite his poverty, Donald has a family and the freedom Scrooge had in his youth to seek new adventures and new accomplishments without the constant demands and worries that running a massive financial empire brings.
• Dub Name Change:
  • In Swedish, he's famously known as "Joakim Von Anka", as the clan name McDuck does not translate well (Anka is Duck in Swedish). The family is still a Scottish clan, but is identified as the "Von Anka" clan in all comics and supplementary materials.
  • In French, he is known as "Balthazar Picsou", with his first name being chosen for its ressemblance to "Ebenezer" and his last name coming from the expression "pique-sou" meaning miser. Interestingly enough, in French, Scrooge is usullay called by his last name by everyone, even Donald or his great-nephews.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The people of Duckburg tend to forget that Scrooge single-handedly turned Duckburg from a small village into a mayor city, and later fixed the economy in the middle of the Great Depression.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Though it may be a pure coincidence, a character closely resembling Scrooge made an appearance in the short The Spirit of '43 as Donald's "thrifty saver" conscience four years before Scrooge's actual debut in comics, though whether Scrooge as we know him was based on this character is presumably something that only Carl Barks himself would have known.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Scrooge in his early appearances in Barks' run on Donald Duck comics was not as hypercompetent as his later roles and his adaptations would have you believe. He was at times as clumsy and klutzy as Donald and the latter was not easily cowed by his uncle as later stories would have you believe. He was also simply wealthy, not the richest duck in the world. In "The Old Castle's Secret" he is in danger of going bankrupt and needs a few measly millions in the form of the family treasure to save his company.
  • While The Old Castle's Secret (June 1948) is Scrooge's first major appearance and fleshed out his character and background, it still has some rather peculiar moments. Early in the story, Huey, Louie, and Dewey want to test their uncles' courage and simulate the sound of an explosion. Both Scrooge and Donald faint out of fear. Later, Donald and Scrooge are trapped behind a locked door for quite a while. When Donald learns that Scrooge has a loaded gun in his pocket, he asks why didn't his uncle try to shoot the lock. Scrooge admits that he did not think about it, and asks Donald to kick him for his mistake.
  • Another peculiar early story is Voodoo Hoodoo (August, 1949). According to this story, in 1879 an adult and already wealthy Scrooge managed to displace a native African tribe from their hereditary lands, in order to claim the land as his own. And that he was cursed to be followed by a vengeful zombie for 70 years. A few years later, Carl Barks established that young Scrooge earned his fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush (1896-1899) and that he was previously impoverished. Trying to reconcile Voodoo Hoodoo with the rest of Scrooge's origin stories, Don Rosa retconned the dare from 1879 to 1909.
• Eidetic Memory: He remembers the history of each and every coin in his Money Bin. Also his Hidden Depths; he is so protective of his coins not for their monetary value, but because each of them is a treasured memory.
  • Though some stories portray his memory at not being exactly perfect. Back to the Klondike (March 1953) for example has him suffering memory lapses, to the point that he is forgetting who Donald and his other nephews are. The story has him take medication to restore his memory, and he suddenly has flashbacks to forgotten memories from the 1890s. The Coin also provides another example, where the titular coin that he gives to Donald turns out to be extremely important, but Scrooge is unable to remember this right away. A somewhat more comedic example comes from the Italian story "The Search for the Zodiac Stone: An Epic Yarn of Mice and Ducks!" (1990) where several characters have allied in search of the pieces of a valuable Zodiac Circle. One of the pieces used to belong to an old friend and business partner of Scrooge, but its current whereabouts are unknown. Scrooge gives detailed descriptions of decades-old journeys to Donald and Mickey Mouse, as they attempt to retrace the career of the missing friend. Donald and Mickey soon find that Scrooge's faulty memory had mixed up essential details, landing them in trouble again and again. When they return empty-handed from their travels, they discover that Scrooge had forgotten another key piece of information. When Scrooge and the missing man's partnership ended, Scrooge had received the piece of the Zodiac Circle as a parting gift. The missing piece was in the Money Bin for over 50 years, and Scrooge had forgotten that he owned it.
• The Fettered: A point of pride for Uncle Scrooge is that he made his money honestly.
• Fiction 500: Scrooge is the wealthiest duck in the world, has an enormous building holding his cash, his fortune exceeds trillions in worth, and his financial empire spans the world.
• Flanderization: His portrayal in early Italian-produced comics exaggerated his character traits from the American comic of the time to comical extremes. Scrooge was stunningly violent and cruel towards absolutely everyone, with zero aversions towards outright criminal acts. One story mentioning he made a lot of his fortune from running an opium smuggling cartel. He usually got away with anything and everything purely because he was rich.
• Friendly Enemy: He gets surpringly good along with most of his enemies, especially the Beagle Boys and to a lesser degree Magica DeSpell and John D. Rockerduck (Flintheart Glomgold being a rare exception). He's rather fast to help them out, especially against bigger threats. As someone with a few loyal friends outside of his family, it sometimes seems that Scrooges rivalries and fiendships would count as some of his deepest relationship with others.
• Good Is Not Nice: After he fully grows into his mainstream characterization, Scrooge is an honest man who does care for his family and holds onto his scruples with an iron grip... but he's also cranky, bad-tempered, and a major skinflint.
• Gone Horribly Right: Memorable double example in "The Secret of Atlantis". Scrooge has A Simple Plan to become the owner of the world's rarest coin by purchasing every minted copy of the 1916 quarter, then dump all but one into the ocean, thus ensuring that if anyone ever wants one (that's not the one he's putting up for sale), they will have to go through hell to get it. Guess who promptly has their rare coin run over by a steamroller? After much adventuring, Scrooge finally gets a replacement... and then learns that his orchestrated scarcity has made the quarter so valuable that there is only one person in the world who could possibly afford it. No prizes for guessing who.
• Greed: His defining negative character trait. But maybe not. See Hidden Depths below.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: In his relationship with Brigitta, Scrooge typically avoids her. But when he sees other males interested in her, he surprisingly often (Depending on the Writer) turns into an Crazy Jealous Guy.
• Guile Hero: As part of his childhood Badass Creed to "be tougher than the toughies and sharper than the sharpies", Scrooge is an expert at Gambits of various kinds, and will usually resort to his brains rather than his brawns when dealing with enemies.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: A family trait of the McDucks, though he still has nothing on his sister Hortense and her son Donald.
• Hat of Authority: He didn't have the top hat in his first appearances, but now it's basically an Iconic Item given it's a visual indicator of Scrooge being rich and elegant.
• Hero Antagonist: Early appearances aside, Scrooge is usually portrayed as good guy - at least in his own stories. In some European stories, Scrooge acts still antagonistic towards Donald. Many Donald stories revolve around Donald either wanting to be let alone and is forced by Scrooge to go along on his adventures or Scrooge trying to trick Donald to pay his debts and his rent and pressing him into jobs and activities Donald clearly doesn't want. Those stories are usually told from Donald's perspective, as in his own stories he appears nicer towards Donald and Donald is the one not carrying about his uncle.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Because of his bad attitude, people are afraid of him, even though he's really not a bad person. His family members and a handful of outsiders know what he's really like.
• Hidden Depths: While most people (including Donald, at times) see him as nothing but a greedy miser, stories that focus on his POV shows that he's far more than just that.
  • In The Quest for Kalevala, he was offered a chance for eternal prosperity in another realm. When it was implied that he will have to abandon Goldie, he simply said no.
  • A Dream of a Lifetime has the Beagle Boys try to invade Scrooge's dream to find the code for his vaults. They initially assume that Scrooge must be dreaming about money, riches, and treasure, and are surprised that he keeps dream-jumping into dangerous adventures that they mistook as nightmares. Indeed, Scrooge loves money, but he loved the experiences and adventures he's been through to obtain them even more.
  • "A Letter from Home / The Castle's Other Secret" laid it bare for readers to see. For one, he considered Donald to be richer than him, due to his love for his family and the thrill he still has from adventure, and considers himself to have become too caught up in the pursuit of money for its own sake and to have lost sight of his original goals.
    Scrooge, in front of his parents' gravestones: Momma... Poppa... did you approve of my mission in life? Were you proud that I traveled the globe seeking my fortune? Did you understand my passion for adventure on the world's frontiers? Or the thrill I got from matching wits with the sharpiest of sharpies — and winning? Or did you think I was only on it for the money? What did you think? I'll never know... I was always on the move, so you couldn't send me a letter from home!
• Hoarding the Profits: In stories where Scrooge Mc Duck is hit with Adaptational Jerkass and Adaptational Villainy treatment, he often steals riches that his nephews hardly earned.
• Honest Corporate Executive: And proud of it. Call him a greedy bargainer, call him a slavedriving taskmaster, call him an exploitative manipulator... but he prides himself on earning his fortune "square" without being a dishonest and immoral businessman — unlike his Evil Counterpart, Flintheart Glomgold. Typical Depending on the Writer and Characterization Marches On caveats apply.
  • He only deviated from this once in his lifetime... and it cost him dearly and ended up turning him into the bitter lonely miser we saw him as in the beginning before meeting his grandnephews and began redeeming himself.
  • He also apparently reports his income 100% honestly and pays all his taxes in full.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Anyone working at the Money Bin directly under him is this, a result of his work ethics and actually making sure his subordinates are as skilled as they're supposed to be.
• It's the Journey That Counts: Played with time and time again in multiple stories. It's often shown that though Scrooge certainly enjoys being rich and staying that way that it's the numerous memories attached to his money that he truly cherishes. We see a few times in fact that he's able to remember how he earned every single coin in his Money Bin.
  • Could take this a step further too, because Don Rosa especially often has Scrooge go on some amazing adventure for treasure, only to not actually attain the treasure in the end. Yet Scrooge still ends the story perfectly content.
  • Son of the Sun ends in such a way, though Scrooge is partially satisfied as the entire purpose of chasing after the remaining Incan treasure was as part of a race against Glomgold. Though the treasure is beyond Scrooge's reach, at the bottom of a lake, Scrooge does buy the lake and everything in it. Meaning that even though he can't physically touch the treasure he technically owns it, which as he points out to Flintheart was the purpose of their contest.
  • Treasure of the Ten Avatars might be a more straightforward example. The treasure that eluded Alexander the Great is lost, but Scrooge seems perfectly satisfied with the fact that it was the descendants of the original owners of said treasure who claimed it.
  • Definitely seems to be on a case-by-case basis as there are times when we see Scrooge distraught over some lost treasure, despite the amazing journey that led him to it. Two examples are Barks' Fabulous Philosopher's Stone, which Scrooge has to give up at the story's end, and the Lost Crown of Genghis Khan. The first Scrooge is forced to give to the International Money Council and the second he loses, after having already gained it on one adventure, while chasing after another treasure. His distress over the second one even serves to inspire him to go searching for its counterpart in Rosa's Crown of the Crusader Kings, which he also loses. (In Fabulous Philosopher's Stone, Scrooge has to give up the philosopher's stone for his own safety. The stone genuinely turns all objects into gold, but it is also slowly killing whoever uses it. And Scrooge was the one using it last.)
  • This can definitely be applied to how Scrooge feels about his time in the Klondike at least. Rosa's Last Sled to Dawson has him reciting a poem about this very thing when he is leaving the Klondike to return to Scotland:
  Scrooge: There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting, it's luring me on as of old! Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting so much as just finding the gold! It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder! It's the forest where silence has lease! It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder! It's the stillness that fills me with peace!
  • Attack of the Hideous Space Varmints opens and ends with Scrooge being depressed at the fact that he's thoroughly searched through all the frontiers and possibilites of making money on Earth, so he craves a new frontier, specifically that of space and the opportunities it can offer him. He craves it so much in fact that he nearly ends up staying in space altogether.
  Scrooge: It's the final frontier! It's just what I've felt a... yearning for! It's... wonderful!
• Jerkass: Started as one and is still occasionally written as such. Italian comics in particular tend to exaggerate his negative traits for comedic purposes. His default personality is incredibly abrasive, miserly and cold in general. For example he regularly forces Donald and his nephews to polish the coins one by one in order to pay off Donald's debts.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Once character development takes him away from being an actual jerk and one learns to see through his act. Formally established in in the Barks comic "Back to the Klondike." He likes people to think he's a heartless skinflint, because it means that less people try to beg or mooch off him. In one story, disillusioned by how many people outright hated him, he tried to drop the facade and become a philanthropist, only to have everyone walk all over him to such an extreme that he immediately put the facade back up. The only people he's consistently comfortable dropping the facade with is Huey, Dewey and Louie. Even Donald doesn't often get to see his soft side, he's afraid that Donald would lose any respect he has for Scrooge if he ever realized that the cold exterior isn't all there is.
• Karma Houdini: He rarely gets the comeuppance he deserves for his extreme pettiness and poor treatment of his family and workers. Though it's arguable how poor it actually is, since most of it is Played for Laughs.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Scrooge is quite a heroic character, for all his sour, cynical outlook on life.
• Last of His Kind: The last (male) member of the once great Clan McDuck. Even with Donald and the nephews now with him, he is the last person alive still using the clan name.
• Lonely at the Top: One of Scrooge's most important life lessons; if you do get wealthy and powerful, friendship is something you'll have to forsake.
  Scrooge: Hiya, Lem! Hiya, Joe!
  Lem: NUTS TO YOU!
  Joe: Get lost, Mr. Big-Shot Copper King!
  Scrooge: They were my friends! What did I do?
  Rockerduck: You got rich, son! Best get used to it like ⚞sigh⚟ I did! You'll have their respect, but no longer their love!
  Scrooge: Ah, who needs 'em? I'll have money!
  Rockerduck: I hope I wasn't wrong about you, son!

  — The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, "Chapter 4: The Raider of the Copper Hill"
• Made of Iron: In more than one way. Physically, he's survived getting hit by his multitude of traps, including cannons, electrocution and minefield (Guardians of the Lost Library). Physiologically, no realistic person could have worked as hard as Scrooge and live to that age.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's very good at manipulating people to get what he wants (hence the "smarter than the smarties" part of his iconic boast), and while how much of an asshole he can be about it is something that depends on the story, he always does his best to profit by it.
• Maybe Ever After: In Don Rosa's stories at least. He has hinted in some of his comments both in- and out of universe that his imagined "last Scrooge McDuck adventure", which "Disney would never let him write", involves Scrooge going back to White Agony Creek to spend his final days. And he wouldn't be alone.
• Meaningful Name: In the Egyptian translations, his name is Aam Dahab, which literally means Uncle Gold.
• Morality Chain: His Sisters until 1909 and finally left after 1930.
• Morality Pet : Donald and the triplets in the present are the people he cares about the most.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Former and rightful Trope Namer. He's for the most part a decent person, but he's one greedy duck, and his greed often causes problems for both himself and his nephews.
• Money Fetish: So much so that one of his favorite pastimes is swimming in it. He's also been shown bathing in it on occasion.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Scrooge finally realizes what he's become after he has an African village destroyed to trick their voodoo chief into giving him their lands, he rushes out to try and make amends - but it's too late. The voodoo priest, a magician named Foola Zoola, sends an unrelenting zombie after him, carrying a voodoo curse, then rushes off into the night. Scrooge would be able to dodge the zombie on-and-off for decades to come, but does not make amends with Zoola until almost 50 years later.
  • This is also the infamous incident where Scrooge fails in making his money "square" and the event that leads to the falling out between him and his sisters, resulting in decades of loneliness and becoming a bitter miserable old duck until he meets Donald and his nephews.
• No Guy Wants to Be Chased: His relationship with Brigitta. She is usually seen chasing after Scrooge, trying to get him to fall in love with her and Scrooge rejects her time and time again.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He appears to be (to some extent) an exaggerated parody of Andrew Carnegie, another wealthy Scottish émigré who rose from humble origins to become one of the world's richest men. Much like Scrooge, Carnegie relocated to America at a young age to seek a better life, and he was known for controlling a vast and diverse empire of unrelated business interests (pioneering the concept of "horizontal integration").
• Non-Idle Rich: Scrooge has to keep earning money - business deals, treasure hunts, lucrative gambles - or else he sinks into depression.
• Old Windbag: Not that he hasn't genuinely lived an interesting life, but he tends to be characterised as this anyway, boring his family and workers with pompous tales of his youthful grit, often with the same oft-repeated stock phrases.
• Omniglot: Due to the decades he spent traveling the world while earning his fortune he can speak nearly every language (and those he doesn't he can work his way around using similar languages he does know).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Scrooge got his name for a reason; he seriously loves money. If he reaches the point of not caring if he loses his cash (or a treasure he's been chasing), it's a sign things have gone pretty seriously downhill.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: The eighties Ducktales episode "Blue Collar Scrooge" has Scrooge get amnesia, and at first he asks "Who am I?" in a not-quite-Scottish accent, before sounding American with "And why am I talking in this funny accent?"
• Papa Wolf: His most noble and admirable attribute is his love for Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and how he is willing to forsake his life, and even his money to protect them in stories such as "The Mysterious Stone Ray." This also transfers to Donald in the comics, though Donald rarely needs protection as much as the nephews.
• Pride: While most people would associate Scrooge with Greed, Pride is actually a fairly strong character flaw in him as well. It was Pride that kept him from reconciling with his sisters for all those years, and it was pure luck that he did not spend the remainder of his life alone in a dark old house.
  • Not so much luck when you take into account that he's the one that got into contact with Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie for the events of Christmas on Bear Mountain and The Richest Duck in the World. As he admits to his sister in "A Letter from Home" he ended up doing so because his loneliness had finally grown to be too much for him, so it could be said that it outweighed whatever pride he still had.
  • It's notable that while he does love Donald he'll often be loathe to admit it because above all else he values Donald's respect and would hate for him to learn his old uncle is just a big softie deep down.
• Private Military Contractors: While officially not, he might as well have the Duckburg National Guard at his beck and call. In one story, he ordered a missile strike. The soldier in charge of the missile silo compared it akin to a pizza delivery service, but his superior told him to comply, saying Scrooge's taxes cover 97.3% of the military budget.
• Prospector: Scrooge's first big break came while he was prospecting, though it took him years of hard work. He's prospected for gold, copper, oil, silver, uranium, and just about anything that one can prospect for.
• Rags to Riches: At the core of Scrooge's character. He started out as a poor boy in Scotland with his family not even being able to afford to live on their ancestral lands, but over the course of a lifetime of hard work, he managed to become the richest man in the world. And he did it square!
• Retired Badass: Carl Barks's "Back to the Klondike" revealed his past as an intimidating, fiery youth and is what inspired Don Rosa's Life and Times. Present time he's still a badass, but the fact that he used to be a badass among badasses is something most people wouldn't have guessed at first glance.
• Riches to Rags: A few stories, such as A Financial Fable, will have this happen to Scrooge in the event that the Beagle Boys or some natural disaster causes him to lose all of his money. He always ends up getting his money back in the end though.
  • In the original DuckTales episode "Blue Collar Scrooge" he gets amnesia and briefly appears in shabbier clothing as he can't remember who he really is.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Subverted; Scrooge got and maintains his enormous fortune by virtue of the fact that he is incredibly smart and has lots of common sense — there's a reason two of his three favorite boasts are about being "smarter than the smarties" and "sharper than the sharpies". Arguably also zigzagged, in that despite this intelligence, Scrooge's obsession with money is sometimes implied to go a bit beyond sensible — namely, his tendency to alienate other people through his stinginess, or living in miserably austere conditions despite having more than enough money to live a comfortable lower-class lifestyle.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: His third favorite boast, of course, is that he "made it all square". And because he has rules, he's able to earn even more money.
• The Scrooge: He's named the way he is for a reason. He is as big a skinflint as his namesake from A Christmas Carol... though that doesn't mean he's not an admirable member of the Non-Idle Rich. Which, at least in Don Rosa's works, is actually a family trait of the entire McDuck Clan. Scrooge routinely pays his nephews 15 to 30 cents for adventures that take them around the globe and require them to risk their lives.
• Secret-Keeper: He's the only duck on Earth to know about Donald and Reginella's relationship after they had to erase their memories of each other.
• Self-Made Man: And he's extremely proud of this fact. In fact, this is why he despairs at the thought of ever willing his fortune to Donald Duck or to Gladstone Gander. Donald is hard-working, certainly more so than his cousin, but also bumbling, impulsive, and prone to wasting money when he has it. Gladstone, on the other hand, has a knack for earning money and certainly wouldn't waste it... but that's because he's too lazy to buy most things and he generally coasts by on his supernaturally good luck, which offends Scrooge.
  • In his younger days after striking rich in Klondike, he would lend money to gold prospectors in return for 50% of the profit (a fairly reasonable rate for the gold rush days). When a sleazy entrepreneur showed up with the idea to hire workers to mine FOR him (at a rate that could easily be described as a slave's wages), Scrooge approved his loan - in return for 95% of his profit, 45% of which would go right to his workers. Scrooge values intelligence, but he values hard work far more.
• Shipper on Deck: Has been shown supporting Donald's potential relationship with Reginella, even funding him with no expectation to get back the money.
• Simple, yet Opulent: Surprisingly enough he keeps around more than a few expensive things, though they aren't really ostentatious. Most notably is the Money Bin itself: it's just a plain cube defended by a few well-maintained old artillery pieces, but the simple fact he can afford to keep "three cubic acres" of cash and defend it with guns whose parts and ammo have to be custom made (the most recent mentioned, the Cannone da 149/40 modello 35, went out of production in 1944) speaks volumes about his wealth.
• Skewed Priorities: In the 2017 animated reboot, he's shown to be tolerant and indulgent of his nephews using his mansion for "an elaborate series of cutthroat war-games", but snaps into a cold Tranquil Fury when he discovers Donald taking a bath and doing his laundry in Scrooge's personal bathroom.
  • He would rather blow holes in his office walls hunting money-eating moths with a shogun than pay $10 to fix the window.
• Specs of Awesome: The pince-nez glasses are certainly necessary given how old he is, and thus help him be such an intrepid duck. According to Don Rosa, Scrooge originally had perfect vision, but his early years of cattle drives and prospecting in the bright, open plains of Montana led to him needing reading glasses by age 18. His six years in the frozen tundra of Klondike finished the job, requiring him to wear glasses permanently at 35.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: Scrooge left home at age 12, and only returned briefly at 18. When he finally returned home to settle down for good at age 35, he had a hard time assimilating to highlander culture.
• Strong Family Resemblance: In Don Rosa's stories, Scrooge's father Fergus looks identical to his son as an adult.
  • As seen in Carl Barks' Voodoo Hoodoo a young Scrooge McDuck looked identical to Donald, which is why Bombie the Zombie and Foola Zoola both mistake Donald for Scrooge when they see him. Rosa would go on to explain this, in his Life and Times as Scrooge tucking his whiskers in.
• Taking the Bullet: Almost, for his sister Matilda in "A Letter from Home". Fortunately, the pistol blew up on the gunman due to having been turned to gold by the Philosopher's Stone.
• Thrifty Scot: In the Don Rosa canon, this is a family trait of the McDuck Clan, and it's one they're very proud of — the ghosts of Scrooge's ancestors ensure he survives a would-have-been fatal injury when they discover his destiny is to become the most tightfisted tightward the world will ever see. In fact, one of Scrooge's ancestors lost a battle (and his life) because he was too cheap to buy arrows for his archers. Another lost a major battle because his army wouldn't fight for the measly wages he was paying them. When Angus Whiskerville insults the clan, referring to them as "liars, cowards and tightwads", Scrooge and Fergus are furious... at the first two insults, not the third.
• Took a Level in Cynic: As shown in the original series episode "Once Upon a Dime", Scrooge started his career trusting enough to be scammed more than once. By the start of the series, he's a cynic. One of the points of the story is his friends and family sending him through a level in idealism; while he remains more guarded than some of the other characters, he learns there are some people he can rely on and opens up to them.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Many Italian comic writers make him look far, far, worse than even Carl Barks ever portrayed him. Also, while his first comic appearance ended with Scrooge warming up to his family, even valuing Donald for his supposed bravery, his following appearances in Donald Duck-comics see him once again being a mean, antagonistic force with a low opinion on his nephew.
• Tyrannical Town Tycoon: A more benevolent example than most, but the whole of Duckburg built is around his financial empire and he holds lease with the majority of the city. This trope is even invoked by Donald in A Little Something Special, when he points out to the Mayor that Scrooge has never tried to tell anyone how to run the town, even though Scrooge could basically rule it like a king if he wanted to.
• Uncle Pennybags: When in a good mood, or when he's investing in a worthy cause or honest entrepreneur (the trick, however, is convincing him). It's expecting him to give you money for the asking that he won't truck with. One storybook where Donald and the Nephews were having a charity sale to save their grandmother's farm showed Scrooge applauding their hard work, and promising to match every dollar they made 2-to-1.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Falls into this sometimes with his treatment of Donald and tendency to ignore or forget just how much his nephews helped him along the way when it came to collecting many of the treasures he's so proud of.
  • The opening of Return to Xanadu has Donald calling Scrooge out on this after his Uncle continually uses language to imply that he found many of his prizes, such as the Crown of Genghis Khan, by himself.
    • The ending of the same story features Scrooge yelling at Donald for opening a sluice gate that was causing the valley of Xanadu to slowly fill up with water, which would've destroyed everything there and caused the citizens to drown, because Donald opened the gate before Scrooge and the triplets were back on dry land. This leads to them getting sucked into the whirpool inthe middle of the lake, which the sluice gate was plugging up. So despite the fact that Donald saved an entire valley and as far as he knew was saving his family as well, Scrooge still berates him when he see's him again. In comparison, Huey, Dewey, and Louie are happy to see Donald and the people of Xanadu proclaim Donald a hero (Along with the rest of the Duck Family as well in fact).
  • The beginning of Cash Flow has a similar scene, with Scrooge mocking Donald for not being able to hold onto his money. Then when Donald points out that he's still helped Scrooge keep his money out of the hands of thieves time and again Scrooge outright states that he doesn't need Donald's help to keep his money at all. This comes back to bite Scrooge later when the Beagle Boys have him backed into a corner and he's forced to beg Donald for help.
  • It could be argued that Rosa has a tendency to highlight this trait at the start of many of his stories, dating back to the first one, "The Son of the Sun". The beginning has Scrooge, as in the other stories mentioned above, going on about the amazing treasures he's found, such as The Crown of Genghis Khan, The Philosopher's Stone, and King Solomon's Mines. When Louie points out that they (The Duck Family) know all of this because they were with Scrooge on each of his adventure's Scrooge's reply is to complain about how he knows since he paid each of them 30 cents an hour every time. He then goes on to claim that he's the world's champion treasure hunter. Ironic since, based on the fact Louie pointed out, that's really a title that the entire family should share.
  • One of these occurs at the end of Rosa's War of the Wendigo. Perhaps more surprising than anything is the fact that someone else calls Scrooge out on this besides Donald. After the pollution and chemicals one of his mill's produces ends up leaving a surrounding area of land barren, Scrooge is angry since he believes that he could have stopped all of this from happening had the Peeweegah, from Barks' Land of the Pygmy Indians not stopped him and claims that mother nature had no right to take it all away from him. The Peeweegah Chief, who's been informed of Scrooge's history by his nephews then gives a completely epic response:
  Chief: Did man fill your mines with diamonds? Did man fill your wells with oil? Did man plant the ancient forests that turned to coal for your digging? Scrooge Mac-Duck, you owe your riches to the Mother Nature Spirit! This day Spirit has decided to take back this tiny portion!
• Unstoppable Rage: There is a story where at one point, Scrooge is chained up in a riverboat, with his enemies gloating over him and reading out loud one of his letters from his mother and mocking it. Then, reading another letter (which Scrooge had not yet had the opportunity to read himself) from his father, establishing that his mother had died in the interim since the previous letter. And then mocking that one. This sends him off the deep end. What followed ended up becoming a LEGEND in later years: he ripped apart the riverboat with his BARE HANDS (including hurling two smokestacks and throwing a piano out the window) and dragged the baddies off to jail. In present times, no one is even sure if that incident even happened. Scrooge himself claims that the riverboat was destroyed by a timely boiler explosion, and that he took out Soapy and his men in the resulting commotion. Whether he's just trying to downplay events, or if the scene we see is a case of Unreliable Narrator is up to the reader. But all in all, don't fuck with McDuck.
  • It's worth noting the letter that truly set Scrooge off was not a letter from his mother, but a recent one from his father that had bad news within. You can see the moment that Scrooge snaps when Soapy mockingly chides his men not to be mean "to a poor little motherless lad." Soapy should consider himself lucky that Scrooge let him live.
• Violent Glaswegian: He's Scottish, has a real short temper, and won't hesitate to get violent. And according to Don Rosa's stories, Scrooge was actually born and raised in Glasgow, so it's a literal example of the trope.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: While he does love money, it is shown several times that Scrooge was at his happiest earning that money, and that it was his adventures and experiences that actually made him happy.
• Would Hit a Girl: Usually adopts this attitude towards Magica de Spell, whom he has no compunction fighting physically with. Fair, considering that Magica makes up for her lack in physical strength with her magic abilities.
• Would Rather Suffer: Scrooge would rather be kidnapped and killed than pay a ransom, as this story goes. Thankfully, he comes to his senses.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Until he struck it rich in Klondike, he had one or two close calls with striking it rich, but was prevented from keeping it for one reason or another.

Daisy Duck

Debut: Mr. Duck Steps Out (in animation), Donald makes a hit (in comics) (both 1940)

Voiced by: Clarence Nash (1940), Gloria Blondell (1945-1950), Ruth Clifford (1948), Vivi Janiss (1954), June Foray (1960), Kath Soucie (1986-1998), Diane Michelle (1998-1999), Tress MacNeille (1999-present)

Donald's girlfriend, who is almost as temperamental as he is, but does have somewhat better self-control.

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• Adaptational Badass: As Paperinika (Super Daisy), the Distaff Counterpart of Donald superhero-alter ego. While the character was prominent in Brazilian comics (in the '80s), in Italy she was quickly Demoted to Extra because she was Always Someone Better to Donald and an unlikeable feminist (these traits are toned down in the modern appearances). On rare occasions, her regular civilian self has also been updated into an Action Girl, even going on adventures with Donald.
  • In some stories, Daisy replaces Donald as Scrooge's assistant and follows him in adventures.
  • At the end of the classic spy-themed "Moldfinger, or, The Spy Who Ducked-Out On Me", it turns out that not only Daisy has a side job as a spy for Scrooge, but had it for quite some time. This story was published seven years before Paperinika's debut.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Daisy is usually the responsible and down-to-earth foil to Donald, but in Mickey Mouse Works and House of Mouse, she becomes a self-centered kook who obliviously makes things difficult for her friends.
• Alliterative Name: Daisy Duck.
• Ambiguously Related: Despite being only Donald's fiancee, she shares a last name with him and is generally considered a fixed part in the family even when she and Donald (temporally) broke up. Furthermore, she is often seen having familiar ties to Grandma Duck and Scrooge (mostly in Dutch comics) independently from her involvement with Donald. Some figure her a distant cousin of Donald's.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Donald Duck, Depending on the Writer. Donald can be a Jerkass at times, even with his gold-hearted moments, but Daisy is definitely a Tsundere.
  • Italian comics add another layer to this with their Superhero/Anti-Hero alter egos: as Paperinik and Paperinika they vocally loathe each other, but, to their horror, can't deny to themselves they're also attracted to each other..
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She definitely does not take well finding Donald with another girl.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Some cartoons tend to reinterpret Daisy as this.
• Depending on the Artist: Usually has black eyes, like Donald. Sometimes depicted with blue eyes. Sometimes has longer "hair".
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Can be nasty and impulsive or kind and understanding. Sometimes both.
  • She and Donald met for the first time as adults. Some stories show them having met as teenagers. Others as kids. Or even as infants.
  • What does she do for a living can change a lot between stories. Several stories depict her as one of Scrooge's secretaries (or even his right-hand-woman at the office), a journalist, or give her various short-liver careers. Most stories do not depict her working at all.
  • Her relationship with Gladstone also depends on the writer: Does she has true interest in Gladstone till the point she sees Donald and Gladstone as equal boyfriends? Is it really a Love Triangle and she hasn't really decided between Donald and Gladstone yet? Or does she only truly love Donald and uses Gladstone only to make Donald angry or to get material things Donald couldn't afford?
• Double Standard:
  • Daisy often gets away with leaving Donald for Gladstone whenever it suits her (often as part of an Operation: Jealousy), making ridiculous demands from and sometimes downright mistreating Donald.
  • She is rarely punctual, but when Donald is late...
  • Many Italian stories depict both Donald and Gladstone as her boyfriends, and relying on her whim to get a date. But she gets very jealous whenever either of them pays attention to another woman.
• Flawless Token: In the Brazilian comic stories about the McDuck TV channel, Daisy is a way more savvy and effective reporter than Donald and Fethry. Donald gets close to her level sometimes, but Fethry never does.
• Gold Digger: Some stories show her being this towards Gladstone Gander.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Among the Disney Ducks, Daisy is the one that plays the most with this trope: when half-dressed (like in the picture) her rear feathers resemble bloomers, and sometimes she even wears dresses or pants (while everyone else keeps their traditional wardrobe).
• Head-Turning Beauty: In-Universe, she is so beautiful that her sight is enough to calm Donald from one of his rage fits (in fact, that is the very first thing she does).
• Hidden Depths: Turns out that, when properly motivated, she is just as brilliant as Donald and Scrooge, if not more. A classic example is the story "Mission: Bob Fingher", where Scrooge hires Donald as a spy to stop the titular master thief from robbing him... And once the day is saved it is revealed that Daisy was Scrooge's main agent, who had been around the whole time disguised as Fingher's niece and Donald hired as an (unknowing) support when it turned out Fingher would not confide with his niece.
  • In "Ruling the Roost" (December, 1960), Daisy is Scrooge's hardworking secretary. When Scrooge disappears for a while, there is no one to take care of the executive decisions. Daisy takes over the office and starts taking initiatives. When Scrooge returns (he was accidentally trapped in a room of the Money Bin), Scrooge is quite impressed with her decision-making. But he is secretly worried that Daisy is gunning for his own position.
• How Do I Shot Web?: In her debut as Paperinika, she had some serious problems at using her skating boots, and the first attempt ended with a ridiculous pratfall. Averted for the other gadgets, as her supplier has the common sense to explain how to use the things and provide sensibly-sized user manuals... Or simply provides gadgets that are based on something she already knows how to use (such as her bike).
• Intrepid Reporter: In Quack Pack and Brazilian comics.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Depending on the Artist. She has appeared on occasion in the old cartoons to have breasts in shorts like Mr. Duck Steps Out and Donald's Double Trouble. Obviously, this wasn't permanent, and except for a few instances like Quack Pack, she's been dodging the trope since then. She does, however, have a body shape that suggests womanly curves.
• Odd Friendship: With Minnie.
• The One Who Wears Shoes: You have to wonder how Daisy manages to squeeze duck feet into those little high-heels she always wears.
• Outdated Outfit: Is still famous for her 1940s tailor suit. The Brazilian comics usually avert this, and this is even the focus of one story, where Donald expresses sadness that she is no longer wearing this outfit which he has grown attached to.
• Pink Means Feminine: The colors of her clothes change very often, but her signature colors are usually purple and pink.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: She and Donald tend to come up with the strange crazy ideas.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Though Depending on the Artist she can feature additional physical differences from Donald, like a smaller beak and a somewhat curvaceous upper body.
• Tsundere: She often gets furious at Donald's shortcomings, but she does love him deep down.
• The Unfair Sex: Daisy's treatment of Donald can, in some stories, progress from Tsundere to just blatantly unfair. A perfect example of this comes up in The Magnificent 7 (Minus 4) Caballeros, where in the span of three panels she accuses Donald of deliberately dirtying the shirt she washed for him (Scrooge had just bodily thrown him down the stairs into the street moments beforehand), screaming her accusation at him in the middle of the street, punches him down whilst declaring that she never wants to see him again — and then walks off whilst calling back to him that he is still going to pick her up for dinner at the Ritz that night (which, per the perpetual 1950s standards of Don Rosa stories, means he will be paying for the very expensive meal). This is actually the last straw for Donald's nephews, who finally ask him why he lets everybody treat him like that — and it's why they arrange for him to go to Brazil and meet up with Jose and Panchito for some much-needed R&R.
• Women Are Wiser: The reason behind the creation of Paperinika (Super Daisy), the Distaff Counterpart of Donald superhero-alter ego. A great deal of stories involved working together with Paperinik. Unfortunately, not only did they end up constantly bickering and hating each other in their secret identities, which was annoying enough on its own, but every time they were together, Paperinik suddenly lost all competence and reverted to Jerkass bungling Donald Duck in a costume. Seeing as the whole point of Paperinik's creation was responding to fans' complaints that Donald was always a Butt-Monkey loser, the fans were not pleased at this development, leading to Italy axing Paperinika all together (though she is still used in the Brazilian comics).
  • Thankfull this trait is toned down in the modern appearances like in the Ultraheroes storyline. This time she's been written as even more incompetent than Donald when the two get together; mainly because she is so driven to prove herself Paperinik's equal that she worries about that more than the job at hand, and they end up bickering when they should be saving the day.

Gladstone Gander

Debut: Wintertime Wager (1948)

Voiced by: Rob Paulsen (DuckTales (1987)), Corey Burton (Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers), Paul F. Tompkins (DuckTales (2017))

Donald's impossibly lucky cousin, on his father's side of the family. Gladstone's incredible luck allows him to live a life of leisure without ever doing anything resembling working, much to Donald's chagrin. He is Donald's heated rival in almost everything, including Daisy's affections.

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• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • His original 1987 DuckTales incarnation is far less self-serving and smug. Furthermore, his Fatal Flaw is that he is overreliant on his supernatural luck (rather than arrogance or rubbing it in others' faces). Heck, in his first episode, he even tries to use his luck to do nice things for other people, like taking his uncle out to a nice lunch. While he never interacts with Donald in DuckTales, he does respect Uncle Scrooge and eventually takes his advice of actually getting a job to heart.
  • The 2017 incarnation retains the original's arrogance and self-serving nature, but is outwardly less smug and more friendly and generous. The nephews even consider him a Cool Uncle at first.
• Alliterative Name: Gladstone Gander.
• Barrier Maiden: "Gladstone and the Solitude of the Four-Leaved Cloverleaf" reveals that his luck has protected Duckburg from so many bad events that if he were to leave for an extended period the city would be hit by a biblical-scale flooding. After finding out he worked out a schedule to let the city get hit by bad luck a bit at a time, as he knows he's not immortal.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: There are a number of comics where Gladstone mentions his insecurites surrounding his enormous wealth of luck. He knows he has not one genuine friend among all his acquaintances, and is envious of Donald for having such a loving circle of friends and family. One Paperinik comic even suggests that Gladstone acts the way he does because he feels he's fated to do so and that his luck might leave him if he doesn't.
• Birthday Hater: In "The Sign of the Triple Distelfink", because this is the one day of the year he loses his luck. He loses the weakness and the trait at the story's end.
• Blessed with Suck: His luck ironically can fall into this sometimes. One story in the Brazilian comic books in particular shows Gladstone struggling to buy common items (like corkscrews) because his luck keeps getting him selected for prizes on the way to the store to such a time-consuming extent that it's closed by the time he gets there, and it's inconvenient to a point he actually needs Donald to do the shopping for him. When Donald says he's surprised his luck doesn't just help him with that, Gladstone makes a point about how luck wouldn't waste itself on matters so common. The same story also has him comment on how most of the time he doesn't have any interest or use for the prizes he gets.
• Born Lucky: Literally. The Don Rosa story "The Sign of the Triple Distelfink" attributes his supernatural luck to a magical sign painted for his mother's blessing before he was born. As for the "Lucky" part of things... Gladstone basically gets to cruise through life carefree because his luck provides him with absolutely everything he could ever want or need. In the Don Rosa story Nobody's Business, Scrooge actually comes to fear the idea of giving Gladstone his own company because he's just figured out that all of the profits Gladstone made with his string of investments came at the cost of losses to Scrooge's own business. That's right; according to Rosa, Gladstone would bankrupt Scrooge if they were direct business rivals! How fortunate for everybody that Gladstone is such an unambitious Lazy Bum.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Gladstone is so ridiculously lucky he could probably become richer than Scrooge with no effort but lacks the ambition to do so. Gladstone could even become Scrooge's heir if he weren't so lazy. Scrooge considers him potentially a better heir than Donald in that Gladstone is less likely to squander the money (of course Scrooge has a very skewered idea of what entails squandering), but Gladstone's carefree luck-based cruising through life offends the Self-Made Man to the very core of his principles.
• Brought Down to Normal:
  • Happens once in DuckTales. Although to be more accurate, he isn't just brought down to normal - he continues further below that because he's cursed with bad luck. Also happens whenever he and Feather Mallard, one of his love interests, are together.
  • "Gladstone and the Solitude of the Four-Leaf Clover" makes him a perfectly normal duck the moment he steps outside of Duckburg.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • He becomes this in the video game Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers. Every cutscene prior to a boss battle has him get comedically injured and by the end of the game, he is in a full-body cast.
  • Gets this treatment when put against Paperinik, the one character cunning enough to overcome his outrageous luck-and takes full advantage of this, with pranks that include making him believe Donald has cursed away his luck (and then selling him the fake charm and the book ostensibly used for the curse at an outrageous price).
• The Cameo: Aside from two episodes of DuckTales and the video game Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers, Gladstone's only appearances outside of the comics to date are his name appearing in a Mickey MouseWorks short and a cameo in an episode of House of Mouse.
• Characterization Marches On: In some of Gladstone's earlier appearances, his luck is not yet present, and he's basically a (slightly) more obnoxious version of Donald. Later, he got his infamous good fortune, and became that much more insufferable.
  • There were even stories such as "The Easter Election", written by Carl Barks in 1953, which was after Gladstone's extremely lucky nature had been established, that didn't focus on said luck at all. In Easter Election in fact, Gladstone only triumphs over Donald at various points in the story because he is outright sabotaging his cousin, which could be argued to be another change the character went through. The effort Gladstone puts into ruining Donald's chances of winning their competition is something that the later version of the character would be sickened by.
• Cursed with Awesome: As mentioned below, some writers try and portray Gladstone's luck as not being entirely positive, as others resent and dislike Gladstone because of his luck. Readers rarely see it this way, since A: Gladstone still gets to coast effortlessly through life, being so lucky he literally never has to work to get anything, even being able to feed and house himself entirely through winning raffles, gifts from rich patrons, etc, and B: Gladstone is resented and disliked less because of his luck and more because he's such a smug bastard about it and how it makes him "better" than less-lucky people, C: However, his luck CAN work against him; for example, a story had him pursue his lifelong dream of being a bullfighter...only to find out that since his luck keeps him from animals being hostile to him, that meant he was figuratively invisible to all bulls, who simply ignore him or don't even notice his presence. The story ends with Grandma Duck's huge but gentle bull stepping on Gladstone's foot because of that very same invisibility.
  • It is worth mentioning that this actually caused him heartbreak once. Feather Mallard is a girl just as lucky as he is that he meets, but despite both of them really loving each other, they have to separate because both of their lucks are so strong they actually cancel each other out. This causes both of them to end up in dangerous accidents, with Gladstone usually taking the brunt of the damage as he protects Feather. Eventually, Feather breaks the relationship off and leaves. Gladstone ends the comic by saying that he would've preferred a life of bad luck to losing her. In fact, the one area of life where Gladstone seem to have no luck at all is romance, as there are multiple stories that has him end up without someone he found he loved, such as an unlucky woman named Linda and even Magica! As such, him actually not having flopped entirely on his relationship with Daisy may be less his luck, and more Donald's bad luck. And her fickleness if it counts as something independent of either.
• The Dandy: Always well dressed as he is of course well-to-do and not afraid to flaunt it, thank you very much.
• Dark Secret: One story reveals that Gladstone has a hidden shame that he's concealed for years, terrified of anyone finding out; he keeps a memento of that time in his life as a grisly souvenir. It's eventually discovered the memento is... a single dime. It turns out that there was an instance in Gladstone's past where his good luck failed him, and he was left with no choice but to take an honest job and work for a living. Since his luck eventually kicked back in, the dime was his first and only truly earned wage, and he's embarrassed to death about it.
• Depending on the Writer: Gladstone's personality. Some had him as a simple jerk and either a Karma Houdini or someone on whom Donald will get the last laugh. Some had him as more genial and less rude to Donald, making the latter's hate for him seem more one-sided.
  • Some stories cast him as a good-natured character, others as an outright villain. Some stories depict him as a relatively competent adventurer, who can compete against Scrooge and Donald, others as incredibly lazy and incompetent. Some have him deeply caring for Daisy and his family, and others have him as indifferent to what happens to them. Some depict him as a courageous character, others depict him as a spineless coward.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Downplayed example, but in first few appearances Carl Barks drew him as larger than Donald (since geese are bigger than ducks) and with a slightly longer beak.
• Flanderization: Gladstone's laziness and the potency of his luck actually both grew in subtle but potent ways after he passed on to the hands of other writers from those of Carl Barks. Barks depicted Gladstone's luck as being potent, but not invincible, to the extent that Gladstone was often wiling to deliberately cheat to help his luck along. He also did not adhere to a specific formula of "Gladstone always beats Donald through sheer luck"; in Gladstone's 45 Carl Barks stories, he:
  • Loses to Donald 14 times.
  • Beats Donald 12 times.
  • Achieves a Mutual Loss 9 times.
  • Achieves a Mutual Win 3 times.
  • Doesn't Compete with Donald 7 times.
• Hate Sink: Though this varies somewhat depending on country, in general, the readers despise Gladstone since he is a smug, selfish, arrogant layabout who always has everything go right for him, while his much harder working cousin struggles and scrapes by, tending to fail more often than not.
  • It's telling that one of the Don Rosa stories usually considered his worst is "The Sign of the Triple Distelfink", where it is first revealed that the titular sign means Gladstone's luck reverses itself for one day of the year... and then removes that weakness so he's lucky 24/7, 365 days a year.
• Heroic Bystander: While he's certainly not out to save people or so, he's quite often in places where people are in life-threatening danger. When this is the case, he doesn't give a damn if it's exhausting, he WILL save the person involved, by luck or by strength. This heroic side of his is perhaps his most redeeming feature.
  • Tellingly, Paperinik stories show outright that when Donald needs a temporary replacement for his role as a superhero Gladstone is his first choice, and Gladstone accepts without asking anything in exchange. This is in spite of Paperinik targeting him whenever he crosses the line in his fights with Donald.
• Hidden Depths: In most stories he averts this, but there have been stories where it's revealed that his constant good luck isn't always a good thing — when it comes down to it, Gladstone's lifestyle and attitude has left him with absolutely no friends and only marginal support from his family. A few stories have speculated that this is the real reason he enjoys riling Donald up so much; it's the closest thing he has to a friendship. These stories portray his luck as almost being Blessed with Suck.
  • That would also explain why he willingly goes with Daisy's occasional suggestions/demands that he hang out with his cousin Donald on the condition that they don't kill each other. He must actually value their friendship.
  • In a couple stories, Gladstone is shown to be surprisingly affectionate about things relating to family. In one comic, he fights Donald to get back an old family chandelier that was displaced. It has no monetary value and is definitely not a luck charm - he only wanted it back for its sentimental familial value.
  • In another story, Scrooge pulls him along to search for a princess' hidden treasure. The treasure turns out to be a small chest of old toys, and it brings tears to Gladstone's eyes and evokes a double facepalm from Scrooge.
  • One story establishes that he's actually quite willing to learn how to rough it out when he wants to. He fully intended on staying in the countryside and away from Duckburg, eventually becoming a competent farmer with a lot of research and assistance.
  • In "The Hundred Gates Tournament" Gladstone is working as the coach of Scrooge's kid soccer team in a tournament when his luck is hijacked by Jeeves for the match with Rockerduck's team by interfering in his propitiatory ritual with a fake fortune. Gladstone quickly figures out what happened and that he can remove luck from the equation by ripping the fortune, but fears he'd lose his good luck forever by doing so... And still rips the fortune, giving his team the win and retaining the fortune. He also had the sense of having a proper coach train the team anyway just in case his luck somehow didn't work.
  • In "Gladstone and the Solitude of the Four-Leaved Cloverleaf", Gladstone moves out of Duckburg upon finding out that his family can barely suffer him... But the moment he hears that without him the city is being hit by all the disasters his luck had been keeping at bay all at once he comes back. He also works out a schedule to allow the trouble to happen at a controllable pace, so when he dies the city won't be destroyed by a biblical flooding.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The triplets found a way to turn his luck against him. His luck always wins against the odds. So in Oolated Luck, when he's confident that he will win a lottery simply by having one submission out of 10000, the triplets flooded the ballot box with his name. Now that his chance of winning is 9999 to 1, Donald's name got taken instead and he lost the lottery. Of course, losing the lottery turned out to be a good thing later on...
  • Jeeves pulled this too: in "The Hundred Gates Tournament" they were training opposing kids soccer teams for Scrooge and Rockerduck, and Jeeves, knowing that Gladstone's luck made Scrooge's team invincible, spied him to try and find a way around it and discovered Gladstone was using a complicated propitiatory ritual that included receiving a fortune for the day. Fortune that Jeeves replaced with a fake one that said Gladstone's team would lose the match that day. Doesn't work fully, as Gladstone figures out what had happened and takes luck out of the equation by ripping the fake fortune, at which point Gladstone having his assistants train the team properly just in case means that they mop the floor with Rockerduck's team that had lazed around confiding in luck to win...
• Inadequate Inheritor: Out of the people in the immediate line of inheritance Scrooge considers Gladstone the last person he wants inheriting his wealth, purely because he has no respect for how Gladstone abhors doing honest, hard work.
• It Runs in the Family: His mother, Daphne, also had the same unnatural luck. Unlike him, Daphne was a nice person. His uglier personality traits are from his father's side. His nephew Shamrock also is ridiculously lucky along with his nieces/cousins (depending on the source), while his cousin Disraeli has an unnatural ability to garner pity, giving him nearly the same advantages in life as Gladstone. A lot of Gladstone's family members also have his hair.
• Jerkass: In the comics. The big reason why many readers — and, In-Universe, his cousin Donald — hate him. It's not only that he has such incredible luck that he can coast through life, it's that he openly enjoys doing so, and loves to rub it in to other people that no matter how hard they might work, they'll always lose to his sheer luckiness.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk/Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Very much Depending on the Writer. Several comics have him saving Donald's life, and not in a lucky way either, but through actual physical labor. A prime example is "Donald's Lucky Day", where he doesn't hesitate for a second to throw himself into a river to save Donald from drowning.
  • It seems pretty easy to tell if he has a heart of gold based on where the comic is made. The European (primarily Italian) take on him is notably less of an outright jerk, and is always portrayed with at least some shreds of decency. The American version seldom has him as anything but Jerk with a Heart of Jerk.
  • For all his smug, jerkass behaviour, Gladstone will drop everything to help anyone, not just Donald, who is in genuine danger. Finding out that his good luck has led to a backup of bad luck for Duckburg itself, he takes the time to work out a schedule so that he can leave and come back in order to bleed off the excess relatively safely, so that the city doesn't get obliterated when he dies or is away for too long.
• Lazy Bum: Because he never has to work, things always going his way, he abhors physical labor and avoids it wherever possible. This has led to some of the rare occasions where his luck hasn't worked, notably one story where Donald and the boys spend the day digging up a beachside in search of a treasure, whilst Gladstone just lounges around waiting for it to fall into his hands. When he decides it mustn't be on that beach and moves on, the others dig the place up where he was sitting and find it; his luck had provided, if only he wasn't so lazy.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: On a few occasions he actually puts effort in what he's doing, showing himself quite intelligent and adding that to his luck, becoming effectively unbeatable.
  • Especially shown in his role as coach of Scrooge's futsal team in "The Hundred Gates Tournament":
    • Jeeves had figured out a way to hijack his luck... Except Gladstone had not only hired a deputy to actually train the team just in case, he quickly figures out what Jeeves had pulled and how and turns the tables on him.
    • In the final game it turns out Donald's team has grown stronger than his, to the point they could win through sheer skill, putting them on par in terms of victories (Donald's team having lost their first game) and winning the tournament thanks to the dozens of goals scored against the Beagle Brats... Then Gladstone shuts them down by ordering the Catenaccio and forcing a draw, as he only needed that to win the tournament.
  • The time Paperinik disguised him as Scrooge set him against Rockerduck's casino to give him a lesson for the plan to turn Scrooge in a Gambling Addict, Gladstone noticed and countered all attempts at cheating from a number of professional gamblers. He walked out with all the money in the casino.
• Logical Weakness: While his luck seemingly defies all logic, there is a logic to it. And whenever someone figures out that logic, they can work around it:
  • In one story, Huey, Dewey and Louie exploited the fact that Gladstone always defies the odds by making sure the odds were in his favor for once. Sure enough, Gladstone defies the odds and actually loses.
  • In "The Hundred Gates Tournament" Scrooge and Rockerduck, among others, were sponsoring five-a-side kids football teams, with Gladstone working as Scrooge's coach and thus having his luck benefit the team... And Jeeves, coaching Rockerduck's team, sees he has a complicated propitiatory ritual and interferes in it so that he hijacks Gladstone's luck for his team... At least until Gladstone who knew by experience that his luck wasn't invincible, figured out what had happened and how and turned the tables on them.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In one story, he happily sells the golden helmet to a villain who intends to use it to take over america. This was not done out of ignorance either, Donald had already told him about the helmet's true value and begged him to throw it to the sea. Gladstone simply didn't think about the implications.
• Not My Lucky Day: According to Don Rosa's The Sign of the Triple Distelfink, his birthday is the one day of the year his lucky streak stops. At the story's end, however, this flaw in his luck is removed — much to the chagrin of many readers.
• Not So Invincible After All: Gladstone's luck can be defeated with enough cunning or sheer skill:
  • Paperinik can reliably defeat him through his cunning and stubborness, having once convinced him his luck had been cursed away, among other tricks.
    • This can only be done by Paperinik, as Gladstone has learned from the experience and is quick to recognize and counter attempts at outsmarting his luck, and only Paperinik is able to still pull this off.
  • "The Mondor's Cup" shows that while he's a fantastic soccer goalkeeper Carlo Parola can still score on him with his signature bicycle kick.
  • If Gladstone were ever to face Magica he'd find himself helpless against her, as she has a spell capable of turning his good luck into bad luck just lying around.
• Passed-Over Inheritance: Invoked and Zigzagged in Nobody's Business. Played Straight when Scrooge declares he's going to give all of his money to the triplets and not give one dime to his nephews Donald and Gladstone. Subverted when he admits to himself that such a decision isn't fair and he thus decides to award them with ownership of a company based on how they each invest $1000 he gives them.
• Pet the Dog: Occasionally — very occasionally — he'll have a few moments where he does this and employs his incredible luck for the benefit of others and not just himself. Notable examples are ''Christmas for Shacktown'' and ''A Little Something Special.''
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Gladstone's luck allows him to coast through life and he exploits that shamelessly, amassing money, property and everything he could desire just by winning contests. This has come at the cost of him lacking basic life skills, however. One story shows that he has no idea how to cook eggs.
  • He only ever worked once, during a dry spell in his luck, earning a dime. That job and the dime are his greatest shame.
  • Which is an interesting contrast to Scrooge McDuck who values his trademark #1 Dime because it was the first dime he made on his first day of honest work on the job, even 20 years before he became rich.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: The coiffe cannot leave the house without being perfectly curled. In his trademark favourite green naturally, to honour shamrock, his personal symbol.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He thinks that being lucky means he's the best guy around, but his cousin Donald's reaction to his attitude says otherwise.
• Smug Snake:
  • In the comics, this is ultimately why people really hate him. It's less that he's supernaturally lucky and more that he's such an arrogant bastard about it who loves rubbing it in others' faces.
  • Subverted in his appearance in the 1987 cartoon. While still very lucky, he's actually pretty genial and his first bit was taking out Uncle Scrooge for a nice dinner. His Fatal Flaw is instead his overreliance on his supernatural luck.
• A Taste of Defeat: Done very rarely, for already specified reasons, but it's happened. Him magically losing his luck was the entire plot of an episode of DuckTales (1987).
  • Gladstone, even after having his incredible luck established, did not usually outright win in Barks stories where he was pitted against Donald. Typically, Gladstone either wins but finds that victory isn't really desirable, or wins the apparent prize/conflict and then quits prematurely, allowing Donald to score some less obvious, but more meaningful, victory. On the occasions where Gladstone does outright win (such as in "Gemstone Hunters"), Donald himself is generally behaving in some ethically dubious manner, making the loss more karmic than anything.
  • When Italian stories have him dealing with Paperinik, he either loses (with such gems as Paperinik making him believe Donald's curse with the Mail Shaman's charm made him lose his luck before showing up as Donald and selling him the useless charm), or finds out the prize isn't worth it (he was once mistaken for Paperinik, and the real one couldn't prove he wasn't while he enjoyed dating half the girls in the city. Then criminals started gunning for him...).
  • A notable early defeat for Gladstone is Trail of the Unicorn (February, 1950), because it relies on his lack of foresight. Scrooge has offered a reward to Donald for the capture of a fierce unicorn. Gladstone spies on them, and competes with Donald. While Donald and the nephews do all the hard work, Gladstone captures the unicorn and leaves them behind. Scrooge gives him the reward. However, Gladstone did not bring back anything for the unicorn to eat, nor did he care about that. Scrooge is increasingly desperate that his unicorn is dying of starvation. When Donald and the nephews return with information on the unicorn's eating habits, and rescue its life, Scrooge is overjoyed. Donald ends up with a much larger reward than Gladstone, who ends up looking like a poor relative.
• Token Evil Teammate: A milder example than most, being that he is more amoral than evil, but he is the only regularly appearing member of the Duck family who is pretty consistently an unsympathetic character.
• Too Dumb to Fool: He's one of the rare characters who's so completely disinterested in power that even the Golden Helmet has no hold on him because he's too lazy to ever try to take what it's offering. Deconstructed when it turns out that just being incorruptible does not mean he's Incorruptible Pure Pureness. He happily sells the helmet to someone far more malicious than him just because he needed some cash and didn't care about the consequences.
• Useless Bystander Parent: In Don Rosa's story 'The Duck Who Never Was', the triplets live with Gladstone in an alternate universe where Donald never existed. All three are immensely fat and too lazy to even turn in their chairs, which tells readers everything they need to know about Gladstone's parenting skills. Although Gladstone failed at teaching them any valuable life lessons and could even come across as neglectful, he didn't seem to hold back on things like food, toys, or affection.
  • In another story, Donald is swallowed by a huge fish, and the boys try to stir Gladstone into action by threatening to come live with him if their Unca Donald died. Gladstone's initial reaction is confusion and horror. He starts off thinking to himself that he doesn't want them in his house for extended periods of time because he's afraid Donald's bad luck has imprinted upon them. Then he worries that even if he does take them in, he'd probably not be a very good parent.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: with Donald, in "stories like this one".
  • In a comic where Huey, Dewey and Louie ask Gladstone if he'll miss Donald if he dies before him, he answers:
  Trnsl from Arabic: Of course I'll miss him! His recklessness is endearing! And he's funny when you tick him off!

Fethry Duck

First appearance: "The Health Nut", 1964

Voiced by: Tom Kenny (DuckTales (2017))

Donald's eccentric cousin who seems to take on a new obsession every week, but as all of his information on his obsession usually comes from books, TV shows, self-help videos and the like, he often messes up his attempts to apply his "knowledge" and is blissfully unaware of the trouble he causes for everyone around him (especially Donald). Despite Fethry's being an American invention, his stories weren't printed in English until relatively recently. Instead, he enjoyed popularity in other countries, Brazil going as far as to give him his own solo comic, complete with nephew (Dugan), girlfriend (Gloria), superhero alter-ego (The Red Bat, borderline useless). He is not part of Barks/Don Rosa canon, though Executive Meddling made Rosa include Fethry in the Duck family tree for the sake of international readers.

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• Breakout Character: Since his introduction, Fethry has been a recurring character. In the Brazilian Disney comics, Fethry soon became on of the most popular members of the Donald Duck character cast and he starred in various comics with him as the titular character (and give him also a superhero identity, the Red Bat). He's similary popular in Italy, being a constant character in the publications.
• Cloudcuckoolander: As he might say: "Having your feet on the ground just means you're standing still."
• Correspondence Course: Takes a lot of them, and often drags Donald with him.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Not as frequently as Donald, but he does have some moments where he manages to step up and pull off some genuinely awesome stunts. He's mostly liable to do this in the TNT (Tamers of Nonhuman Threats) stories.
  • Subverted with his superhero identity, the Red Bat. Despite his good intentions, he is a sort of joke that often create problems to real heroes like Paperinik (Duck Avenger).
• Depending on the Writer: Can become a borderline Load under certain writers.
• The Determinator: When he gets an idea, he will see it through to the end no matter what... or at least until he gets a new idea to be obsessed about.
• Ditzy Genius: Though as (bad) luck would have it, his tactlessness and lack of common sense punish others around Fethry more than Fethry himself.
• Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: One of his defining traits. Any interest or hobby Fethry picks up very quickly becomes an obsession — until he finds a new thing to obsess over. Which may very well be something wildly different or the exact opposite of his previous obsession. His first appearance, The Health Nut, perfectly illustrates this: After having read a book called "Health Can Be Fun," he becomes a total health freak, and spends the entire story dragging Donald along in his "healthy living" program... only to at the end of the story read another book, "Fun With Food" and instead devote himself to the art of gastronomy.
• Freudian Trio : In many stories Donald is the id, Fethry is the ego, and Gladstone is the superego.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Depending on the Writer he plays that role inside the Duck-family's dynamic.
• Genre Savvy:
  • Not so much in his normal, day-to-day life, but shows distinct traits of this as a TNT agent; a lifelong obsession with fantasy, sci-fi, horror and the supernatural has taught him just about every trick in the book, which comes in useful when going out to deal with real monsters.
  • Also he knows he's a Klutz, and, to help his family, is capable of weaponizing it. Best shown in the Italian story "Zio Paperone e l'Ultima Avventura" (Uncle Scrooge and the Last Adventure): The Plan to defeat Flintheart and Rockerduck and get back Killmotor Hill needed time, in which they would have erased the hill, so Fethry had himself hired as a demolition worker and set off disaster after disaster, slowing down the works long enough for the plan to succeed (before he's finally fired, we see him smiling and saying he doesn't want to get in the quickly solidifying concrete he flooded the area with when he used the wrecking ball and hit a mixer. The chief is among the people trapped in the concrete, and really wants to get his hands on him).
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: He starts a lot different professions and business ideas based on different interests of himself. While he himself isn't too interested in the financial success of his businesses, he uses the "getting rich quick"-argument frequently to talk Donald into joining him.
• Granola Girl: A rare young male example.
• Heavy Sleeper: As Characterization Marches On.
• Instant Expert: Subverted. Fethry tends to consider himself an immediate expert on any topic after having read one book on the subject — but without fail his "expertise" is shown to be extremely flawed and shallow; at best he only has the basics down and lacks the necessary detailed understanding, and at worst he has misunderstood even the basics.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Fethry selflessly dotes on Donald and considers him his favorite cousin, genuinely wishing to improve things for Donald whenever possible. You can guess about how well that works out.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: Although not stupid, he is rather naïve with a great dose of Cloud Cuckoo Lander, but probably one of the most helpful and friendly people you can find in the Duck family.
• The Klutz: He has traces of this and is responsible for inadvertently setting off a number of Slapstick routines.
• Lethal Klutz: Fethry Duck does sometime cause this kind of disasters. Not being an idiot, he does sometime take advantage of it, such as working in demolitions (that get much quicker and cheaper) or, as in the Italian story "Zio Paperone e l'Ultima Avventura" ("Uncle Scrooge's Last Adventure"), easy and large-scale sabotage.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Depends on the writer, but in spite of (or perhaps due to) his cloud cuckoo lander personality, Fethry will see unexpected opportunities and grab them. In one old comic, Scrooge is kidnapped and Donald and Fethry have to rush to the hideout with the ransom. Everyone eventually gets into a fight over the gun. Except Fethry. He picks up the phone and sells the story to the press.
• Manchild: He is an adult with childlike naivete.
• Never Bareheaded: It is rare see him without his cap. It is revealed, in The Health Nut, that Fethry wears a stocking cap because he was convinced by a self-help book author that one's head is healthier when it's kept hot.
• New Job Episode: He often starts different occassions and businesses based on his current varying interests, often forcing his cousin Donald into joining him.
• Nice Guy: There's absolutely no guile or malice to him, and he genuinely wants to help everybody (and especially Donald). His ways of helping people, however, generally lead them to wish he wasn't so helpful.
• Robosexual: Once fell in love with Margherita, a robot maid girl, oblivious to her nature (she wasn't even sentient) and even intended to marry her.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Often to Donald's snarky remarks.
• Shrinking Violet: Believe it or not, according to Donald Fethry used to be very shy and timid when he was a kid. He well and truly grew out of it.
• Simpleminded Wisdom: One of his undeniable strengths is that since his mind works in such strange ways, he's very good at spotting the obvious questions or solutions that everyone else misses.
• Soapbox Sadie: Occasionally, but unlike most examples of the trope he's hardly ever a soapbox for the writers and is probably wrong more often than he's right.
• Stalker without a Crush:
  • Can sometimes be this towards Donald, Depending on the Writer.
  • While it's obviously not a romantic interest, Fethry adores Donald's miserable pet tomcat, Tabby, and behaves in Elmyra-like fashion when Tabby is near.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Part of Fethry's charm is that he allows Donald to play the Straight Man to him in many stories.
• Super Zeroes: As The Red Bat (his superhero identity), he goes on by sheer luck, appearing more competent that he actually is and weaponizing his innate clumsiness.
• Terrible Artist: He's into recreational activities, like painting and sculpting. The problem with his 'artworks' is that people keep mistaking them for garbage.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Classic Type 1, with Donald. Fethry drives Donald insane on a regular basis, but he is one of the very few people in the Duck universe who genuinely likes and appreciates Donald as a friend. How much Donald in turn appreciates Fethry often Depends On The Writer, but even in the stories where he doesn't like Fethry much it's still clear that he vastly prefers Fethry to Gladstone-and in one Paperinik story Donald was willing to make an exception and let him remember his superhero identity rather than force Laser-Guided Amnesia on him as usual (it would be Fethry himself to ask for a memory-erasing candy after realizing he was only making things worse for him).
• Unwanted Assistance: He just wants to help people out and is honestly trying to look out for everyone... it's just that with his clumsiness and generally ditzy nature, he tends to harm more than help.