Fridge Brilliance
An episode that's almost 22 straight minutes of Rewatch Bonus is naturally going to have a lot of moments where you go, "Now I get it!"
- The central theme of this episode is bad and good luck — it's one of the "bad and good luck tales" mentioned in the theme song.
- Wait a minute, a real casino would never treat Gladstone Gander like that! They'd never let someone that lucky through the door... which is why it should have been obvious from the beginning that this isn't a real casino.
- Indeed, a comic story where Rockerduck wanted to make Scrooge in a Gambling Addict had him mention he had a licence to open a casino in Duckburg but never actually used it because he knew Gladstone would win it out of business in a couple days. And at the end of the story that's how Donald, as his superhero/antihero alter ego Paperinik, gets back at him: even before curing Scrooge of his addiction he recalled Gladstone back to Duckburg and had him go to the casino disguised as Scrooge. Gladstone won the casino out of business in hours, and against blatant cheating at that.
- Is he even winning all of those games, or is Liu Hai cheating for him and feeding on his luck each time?
- Gladstone loses at the end thanks to getting distracted by a random $20 bill that materialized out of nowhere. Why did that happen? Had Gladstone won, he would have been free, but every living member of what he can call "family" would have been taken prisoner forever. Instead, his losing enabled Scrooge to arrange things so they could all go free. So, as galling as it is, his statement at the end that "me losing was the luckiest thing that could have happened" is... 100% correct. (Calling himself a hero is not, though.)
- Another way of looking at it is that Gladstone realized what would happen as soon as the race started, and that's why he's so calm during it. Meanwhile, he's genuinely unsettled at the end by the possibility that Scrooge sacrificed Donald because that was 100% not the plan (since Liu Hai stuck it on at the last second), and it's why he sounds serious when he asks Scrooge "what do we do".
- Donald may have won the final game, but he was appointed Scrooge's champion — Donald's victory was Scrooge's victory. Scrooge McDuck technically beat Gladstone Gander. Liu Hai now has support for his theory that Scrooge is actually luckier than Gladstone...
- A large part of the episode seems to contrast the luck of Donald and Gladstone as well as the life skills gained or lost as a consequence. However, there's a third part of the luck equation: Scrooge McDuck, whose luck seems largely neutral. Scrooge may encounter a much higher than average number of odd occurrences around him (like, say a lucky nephew who gets captured by a luck-eating spirit and needs rescue), but they are neither overwhelmingly good nor bad taken alone. What sets Scrooge apart though is his ability to twist chance events in his favor, such as when he tricks Liu Hai in order to beat a rigged game (escaping a casino whose geography constantly shifts) and again to convince him take the unlucky Donald over the much luckier Gladstone and thus rescue everyone when Liu Hai decides to alter the agreement to where he doesn't actually lose what he wagered.
- In other words; Gladstone has good luck, Donald has bad luck, and Scrooge makes his own luck (or is at least not superstitious).
- Liu Hai rigged the game in his favour by selecting Donald. If he was truly a being of luck and chance, he would never have done so. Thus this Loophole Abuse marks him out as a hypocrite and villain.
- Another indicator of Liu Hai not playing fair is that despite the initial card games, no card games are actually played in the casino. That's because such games do not usually rely entirely on luck, but can require some actual math or skills, and so Liu Hai couldn't easily trap people with them if they can easily match/draw him.
- Alternatively, selecting Donald as Gladstone's opponent could be seen as a sneaky way to allow Scrooge a chance to try and prove that luck isn't everything (through the unluckiest duck in the world beating the luckiest duck in the world).
- Liu Hai bought Scrooge’s spiel about Donald being luckier than Gladstone very easily, especially given that he’d spent time observing Donald’s bad luck long before he’d revealed himself. However, as an expert on fortune and chance, he knows that luck is a very random and unpredictable element, abandoning/aiding people at unexpected moments. He’d just seen Donald beat Gladstone (even though the odds were so heavily against Donald), so he reasonably assumed that luck had now abandoned Gladstone and gone to Donald. What he didn’t expect was that Donald only gets a few good streaks in his life of bad luck, and that things would snap back to normal.
- Those familiar with Don Rosa's comics might remember that once Scrooge actually said that Donald was much richer than he was because of his loving nephews. By the same reasoning, he might be honest (or, at least, merely invoking Exact Words) claiming that Donald is luckier than Gladstone. After all, he says that Donald's victory proves his luck, and how did he win? Getting some second wind from his nephews.
- A meta example: this episode premiered on Saturday, the 14th of October, barely missing an air date on Friday the 13th - a day traditionally associated with bad luck. Talk about lucky.
- Launchpad LANDS the plane. But then, things might not have gone well for Gladstone if LP had crashed. Not to mention they wouldn't have made it to see the cricket... where Launchpad ends up crashing the plane anyway.
- Of course, it's a water landing in a plane designed to land on water. And not the smoothest landing either. Water just happens to be a bit more forgiving than ground in regards to such things.
- Exactly where did that $20 bill come from at the end of the race between Gladstone and Donald? Well, considering it's still there to buy the golden yacht a beautiful heiress needs to get rid of for tax reasons, it's probably just a normal $20 bill and not part of Liu Hai's casino (which had just vanished). So where did it come from? Perhaps Gladstone's luck so good that it spawned out of thin air... or perhaps one of the others (Scrooge, Donald, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Webby) lost a $20 bill off-screen while wandering the casino. Is the second option really any less probable than finding a $20 bill in a box of breakfast cereal?
- When Liu Hai is introduced, he addresses Scrooge as "the highest of high rollers." You initially think this must mean he knows nothing about Scrooge McDuck, since Scrooge is not a high roller — he's a no roller who's never gambled in his entire life. But it makes sense once you learn what Liu Hai really is and what he believes — he assumes all of Scrooge's success is due to luck, so from his point of view, the Richest Duck in the World is "the highest of high rollers."
- It's kinda strange, on the first watch-through, that he doesn't react at all to Webby being part of the group. (Webby would know of him through her McDuck family research but this seems to be the first time they've met.) There's a couple of explanations for this...
- First, the easy one is that he's just that self-centered and really doesn't remember if she's a relative of his or not.
- Second, and slightly more likely given how he acts through the first two acts, is that the situation means he can't react with surprise to her presence. Just like in a real casino he's being watched at all times, knows it, and has to pretend things are hunky-dory... or else Liu Hai will simply put a stop to it by, uh, starting the third act early?
Fridge Horror
- Just how many other people suffered a similar fate as Gladstone, being drawn into the House of Lucky Fortune and finding they can't leave?
- All the patrons of the casino are transformed into cards. Were they all illusions conjured up by Liu Hai? Or were they once innocent people lured in like Gladstone was?
- As evidence towards the "innocent victims" theory: notice how happy the patrons milling about the lobby seem when Scrooge makes his escape?
- Just how long was Gladstone trapped in that casino? The McDuck family doesn't seem that close to Gladstone so it could be months before they realized that he's missing if he didn't call them for help.
- Worse, was part of the reason he didn't just ask for magical help because he'd been there so long he didn't know Scrooge was adventuring again? His plan was entirely based around using Donald's bad luck, when "Woo-oo!" establishes that Scrooge was an old hand at besting beasties of an unworldly nature. The third act can even be summed up as "Scrooge figures out what's going on and puts a stop to it (with Donald's help)".
- What would have happened if, as Gladstone seems to have intended, only Donald showed up to help? Or worse, if Donald hadn't been there...?
- What happens to Liu Hai's victims when they try to pull an escape attempt? And is this related to why Gladstone deliberately doesn't tell the others just what kind of help he actually needed?
