Fridge / DuckTales (2017) S2 E9 "The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck!"

Fridge Brilliance

• Louie asks Scrooge how he could possibly know what happened between Marshall and Gyro if he wasn't there. However, Scrooge and Goldie likely would've wondered how Marshall got his steampunk Power Armor, so it would've made sense for him to provide them with his side of the story for context.
• Gyro doesn't leave the timeline until the very end. If you keep an eye out, he pulls a shard of gold from his pocket to activate his time machine. It's likely the reason he was trapped was because his time machine functioned off of the "Gold Tech" generator that Della mentioned the Spear was powered on, and went along with the whole shenanigans to get the shard he needed to get home.
• There are actual reasons why Louie would choose to be more like Goldie than like Scrooge at the end.
  • In Scrooge's story Goldie did wind up with most of the gold. Louie likely focused in on that fact over others.
  • Scrooge in his story didn't get his victory by being determined, he got it by capitalizing on an opportunity and still didn't get the profit he would have had had he gotten the gold.
  • Goldie's methods are more in line with Louie's way of thinking than Scrooge's are. Her dynamite plan had her getting results equal to Scrooge while putting in a mere fraction of the effort as well as setting back her competition by a wide margin.
  • For all of his troubles with Goldie, Scrooge never actually condemns her the way he does the likes Glomgold and Rockerduck so Louie likely doesn't see any trouble with taking up her methods as Scrooge's own high morals don't have that big of an issue with Goldie's actions.
  • Scrooge did decide to steal from Rockerduck over his dishonest actions and even recruited Goldie to help. Louie probably doesn't see the problem with being shiftier like Goldie if Scrooge can be pushed to the point he'd consider something like that. Not to mention Scrooge's morally dodgy actions did end up profiting him, if in a somewhat indirect and longer term manner than he likely realized.
• While Scrooge never realized, until this episode, that Gyro was the mysterious inventor that helped him back in his prospector days, he witnessed first hand how useful the so-called crazy inventions can be. That would explain why he's so tolerant towards eccentric, inventive people; while it's not easy to get along with them, and their inventions can be dangerous, many of them are ultimately good persons with valuable creativity. Also, the memory of the sheriff improvising a primitive yet still reasonable useful tech-armor definitely influenced his decision of allowing Fenton to continue being Gizmoduck despite his earlier failures.
• How is it that people in the present day know that Rockerduck is a horrible man, while people during his time did not know that? That was Gyro's doing, and he merely gave the sheriff a nudge so he could figure it out. And from that, people likely stopped and considered their thoughts on Rockerduck.
• In "The Most Dangerous Game...Night!" Scrooge tells Louie that the oft-forgotten third trait of his is "Sharper than the Sharpies" and that Louie can aspire to become that. Goldie O'Gilt is the only person to have ever consistently outsmarted Scrooge, meaning that she's sharper than Scrooge. Naturally, if he wanted to be Sharper than all of the sharpies, he has to learn from Goldie.
• Initially the timeline seems screwed up for this to be the Old West. Even with Scrooge's freakish, vaguely-implied-to-be-supernatural longevity, he was still only born in 1867, and had to be at least twenty years old at this point. Meaning the Old West period and its famous gold rushes were already over, and most of the gold rushes that would have made sense for the timeline would have been in colder climates like Alaska, or the Yukon, or at least Montana. However it makes sense when you consider:
  • That gold mining never really completely ceased in the American West
  • Goldie states that this take place after she left Dawson and therefore the Klondike Gold Rush
  • Scrooge and Goldie being the only prospectors in town actually makes more sense if this actually wasn't during a major gold rush.
  • The date being several decades later than a typical old west setting would also be more consistent with the type of heavy machinery Rockerduck was using, which would make it state-of-the-art for its time rather than ahead of its time. This in turn is more consistent with Rockerduck's characterization as a wealthy traveling con-man who doesn't seem to employ anyone besides his bodyguard-butler, since it means he doesn't need to employ any sort of super-engineer to explain having anachronistic tech. ^note (As for why Scrooge was still using a pickaxe and dynamite when heavy equipment was generally available, he was probably just being a cheapskate as always, or else wasn't even rich enough yet to afford to rent such a thing.)

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