Disney Ducks Comic Universe/WMG

Scrooge, Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie found and drank from the fountain of youth.

• How else has Scrooge been around since the 1800s to the present and besides they have found the seven lost cities of gold, Xanadu, dinosaurs, magic and creatures that live beneath the earth and cause earthquakes. It's not to much a stretch to imagine.
  • This is actually canon — at least partway! In one Carl Barks story, That's No Fable! from 1953, Scrooge and his nephews actually do find the Fountain of Youth, and are shown drinking from it. Granted, in this particular story, drinking the water only makes you more limber and gives you a huge energy boost (Scrooge spontaneously begins doing cartwheels after drinking!); to get the youth effect you have to swim in it — which they are stopped from doing. Still, just drinking from the fountain may have had long-term effects that the Ducks simply did not realize at the time....

Dickie Duck is Scrooge's biological granddaughter.

• What was the first story to feature Goldie after her introduction in Back to the Klondike? The story by Romano Scarpa introducing Paperetta (aka Dickie)! Come on... Scrooge's old flame randomly shows up on his proverbial doorstep with a granddaughter of unknown parentage and asks Scrooge to take her in for no apparent reason. He accepts, also for no apparent reason. Then, almost as quickly as they introduced her, the writers try to ignore her existence and seem determined never to give a straight answer about her origins. Sure, nobody's covering up anything here. Again. Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Rumpus McFowl, Gideon McDuck... this family's got kids out of wedlock running all over the place!
  • Considering that she's often found working for Bridget, the question becomes, does Bridget know this?
    • Probably yes, and was told by Goldie herself. The one time they met, after all, Goldie encouraged Brigit to pursue Scrooge, and Brigit asked about it. With Goldie admitting the deed so Scrooge wouldn't have an easy way out.
  • Lets not forget the time aspect to this - for this to work, Scrooge and Goldie would have had to have concieved when they were doing something that "wasn't a hanging offense". Scrooge didn't have any protection, and neither did Goldie. But then the follow up, Hearts of the Yukon, would have to take place in such a time that she was pregnant, and knew it, but not noticeable - supposing they just gave the hell up on them actually being ducks and just made them people, that means about 5 months. Prisoner of White Agony Creek began in the Spring of 1897, and they were together for a month before the ..... anyway, that means it could have happened in the beginning, considering Scrooge said there was no thaw yet. This means that it happened near mid April. Hearts of the Yukon, their follow up, takes place in January 1898 - a full 9 months after the incident. She couldn't hide a child back in those days. Whatever happened, no-one was produced. Scrooge has no children.
    • ...supposing they just made them (like) people. Did they? "It's not a lie unless they have proof." I'd rather just assume they didn't than think about that too much.
      • In the theatrical cartoon, "Don's Fountain of Youth", Donald Duck convinces Huey, Dewey and Louie that the eponymous pool has turned him into a baby — and then into an egg. It's a con, and the theatrical Nephews aren't the All-Knowing Oracles of the Barks tales, but they treat Donald's "transformation" as the logical result of such an immersion. I believe that I've seen references to the "Duck Family Album" in old Disney comics — possibly including those by Barks — which show various Duck characters as "just a baby": i.e., as eggs wearing bonnets or trademark sailor hats.
    • In the DuckTales episode "Sweet Duck of Youth", when they actually find the Fountain of Youth, they discover it merely makes your reflection look young. The triplets all turn into eggs when they look in it, just like Donald pretends he has been youthenized into in "Don's Fountain of Youth".
    • Graphic proof from Marco Rita's From Egg To Duck, although the comic it is from is non-canon in many regards (such as saying that Donald was a lost egg found and raised by Grandma Duck and Scrooge).
  • Wacky theory: Dickie was intended to be Scrooge's grandaughter and the contradictions with what we know from Don Rosa's writings are simply due to different writers with different interpretations. The comics revolving around the Duck Clan aren't any different from other comic books in regards to continuity and timescales.
    • Yes, time can never be trusted very far with comic books.
    • Especially since the Italian Duck stories take place in a universe very different from Don Rosa's vision. There are several Duck canons that only vaguely overlap.
    • Ducks come from eggs, as mentioned above. I don't think it takes 9 months to hatch an egg.
      • Since the actual process is never clearly defined, you can make up any rule you want.
  • (I think that the cartoon with the triplets scamming Donald above was actually based on a Barks comic? I recall reading the same story once.) The egg idea gives a possible loophole to make both canons work: Goldie may have not been able to hide a child, but instead gave away the egg to be hatched by someone else. (We can assume that she would have been as ashamed as protective about her reputation in Klondike.) So the child was probably raised somewhere else, while Goldie got older and matured herself. She was feeling increasingly responsible which peaked when Scrooge himself and his nephews showed up. She went on to seek out her child, only to be told that he or she was dead or disappeared, but - to her surprise - has left behind a daughter who is a good girl and works hard to support herself, but just can't help causing trouble with her modern ways. Goldie realizes that she deserves a better chance at life in Duckburg and takes her with her, but never tells her her true origins.

Scrooge is distantly related to Darkwing Duck (Drake Mallard).

According to Don Rosa's Duck Family Tree, Scrooge's paternal grandmother was named Molly Mallard (maiden name).

Drake Mallard (Darkwing Duck) is Scrooge's illegitimate child

Fearing an scandal, he kept the child secret and provided him with a portion of his fortune as a form of Child Care and Compensation (this is how Drake can afford all of his crime-fighting stuff without any known job). Scrooge probably thinks of him as a disappointment and Drake prefers not to think about his biological father.

The money vault is a sham.

The money vault is filled with worthless paper and coins topped with a layer of a million or so bucks. Scrooge keeps all his real cash in banks like normal people. The vault is to keep the attention of his legions of adversaries so they don't (A) hack the banks and (B) cause real trouble by literally knocking over, say, casinos full of innocent people.

• In the Don Rosa series, it is filled with real money, but it's only Scrooge's coin collection kept for sentimental reasons. The vast majority of his wealthis where it should be, in banks and investments. That said, there's a LOT there, and it's not like the Beagle Boys are really capable of stealing 65% of a computer company or something.
• Technically it's all the money he earned on his own, not counting investments, interest etc. He's THAT rich that he can afford to store so much money in such an impractical manner, since he has plenty more.
• I vote sham. How else could Scrooge dive into a pile of solid coins with no ill effects (the coins would have to reduce Scrooge's speed/kinetic energy gradually, and I don't think a pile of metal has much give).
• But when other characters try to dive into a pile of money, they land on top of it painfully. Scrooge being able to defy the laws of physics this way is just Rule of Cool meeting Rule of Funny or another sign of his signature Badass-itude.
• It's been shown time and again that Scrooge had super strength when he was younger. It's faded with age, but the presence of so much of his own hard-earned cash rejuvinates him enough to pull that kind of stuff.
• In another story of Don Rosa we are shown that it is indeed filled with money when Donald Duck starts to mine for rare coins (which Scrooge hoards by the hundred)
• Sure, but let's go back to the Carl Barks stories. You know, Scrooge's creator. He showed in the story against the Marahaya of Huduyustan that Scrooge indeed only has a few billions in sight. But then there's a hidden hatch, which really showes us 3 cubic acres of cash. In another, his vault is so full he needs to spend money, or his bin is going to burst. It it were fake, he would probably have put it in the vault. In yet another one, Scrooge fill the bin with water to drown the Beagle Boys out, who are digging a tunnel under the money bin. They would, if there wasn't the coldest night in years, which makes the bin burst open and 3 cubic acres of ice slide down. The end shows the Beagles scraping the money out of the ice, in the part which is usually 3 cubic acres deep.

We also see Scrooge digging in his money in some stories, several meters deep, and it has been seen open from the side several times. I think it's kind of justified that Scrooge has 3 cubic acres of money.

Scrooge has money-related superpowers, and may not realize it.

He can dive through a pile of coins like it was water, and it's been shown that anyone else who tries to dive into the coins gets exactly what you'd expect. He's probably right at the top of the Fiction 500, so it's not like he's bad at predicting cash flows and stocks. If the money he earned on his own, not counting investments and the like, can fill such a huge room, he'd pretty much have to be preturnaturally affluent.

• And he can tell of every single coin when, where and how he acquired it. We're talking about millions, if not billions of coins here. That's some super memory.
• He can also smell money.
• Then there was this time the Beagle Boys made of with a load of his cash. Scrooge was walking down the street on the other side of town, but stopped dead when he felt what he described as "an empty feeling in my wallet".
• Three cubic acres of money make some sort of a five-dimensioned amount of cash.
  • you know what other creature can do all that? dragons! Scrooge is half dragon and the money bin is his hoard!
• One story shows these abilities as genetic and inheritable. Donald has the right gene, but due to his general lack of mental faculty, it activated only for a short time (don't ask, it's a comic book). This is just one step away from superpowers, as well as implying that the triplets may exhibit these abilities too, in a couple of years. Makes one shudder...

The entire Scrooge McDuck Universe is just a daydream young Scrooge is having about his future while on the ship going from Scotland to America.

At the end of Don Rosa's "The Last of the Clan McDuck", Scrooge sees images of himself and his future wealth appear in the sky. But did this daydream ever stop? Maybe all subsequent stories are just a continuation of his egomanic daydreams.

• Which would pretty mean that virtually all Donald Duck stories are non-canon, including the one where he can stay in his rich uncle's cabin for Christmas which coincidentally is the same story that first shows Scrooge. It would undo any Scrooge story, giving Don Rosa no reason to start making Scrooge comics including the The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, making this WMG one big paradox. No, Don Rosa wouldn't want to do that to himself. Continuing: Carl Barks would run out of ideas by 1955, stop Disney comics leading to the discontinuation of the Donald Duck comics somewhere around the 1970s/1980s if not earlier.

Gladstone Gander is a secret Reality Warper

One story suggested that his supernatural luck is the result of Fortuna, goddess of luck falling in love with him. But that was an isolated incident. I think he has the ability to manipulate reality in a rather Haruhi Suzumiya like fashion. Fortunately for the universe he is willing to chalk up his unending fortunes to "luck" and laze around without any sort of goals beyond comfort. Scrooge may in fact be a danger to the entire cosmos, as if his occasional attempts to make Gladstone ambitious ever succeeded, he'd probably end up ruling the world.

• Or he is simply a Kappa-level psyker.

Fergus and Downy McDuck had a Slap Slap Kiss relationship.

Psychologically, kids subconsciously imitate the romantic relationship between their parents when forming their own. Both Scrooge (with his New Old Flame Goldie) and his sister Hortense (with her husband Quackmore Duck) fit this trope.

Hortense Duck died shortly before Christmas 1947.

It was the death of his sister (and the subsequent reminiscing and possibly left over guilt from never making amends) that prompted Scrooge to reconnect with her son, Donald, and grandsons Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Linked to the above, Hortense died of a severe heartbreak.

It goes like this: Hortense and Quackmore first had to support her daughter when Della had triplets before she was ready. Then the kids' father gave up on them, making Della even more vulnerable. Finally, Della herself gave up on her sons and, even if Donald agreed to take the boys off their grandparents' hands, the pressure of having their daughter disappear on them was the last blow to Quackmore's worsening health. After losing her daughter and her husband in quick sequence (and being out of touch with her brother), Hortense doesn't last long before her own health fails.

"Duck to the Future"

The whole "turn our earnings back over the bosses" thing on payday was a way of saying that taxes have been raised so high, such as "The Privilege of Working for Magica McDuck Enterprises Tax," that getting a paycheck is practically a moot point ("Who gets paid?") since just about all your money gets taken out.

• So the state too has become property of the ducks? Not that Magica was beneath something like that.
• Magica McDuck?!! Since when has Magica been a part of the family?
  • Hey, that's what she called her company. Why is open for interpretation...
  • It's actually Magica-McDuck, like Sears & Roebuck or Proctor & Gamble.
  • Same implications.
  • Shouldn't it be DeSpell-McDuck? Magica is her given name.
  • Maybe she insisted on using her first name rather than surname for the merger, for name recognition or because, on some level, she liked seeing her name next to his.
    • It makes perfect sense on some level: as I recall, the reason Magica wanted Scrooge's lucky dime in the first place was not because she believed that it was what had made Scrooge a success, but because she believed that Scrooge's own fortitude and other qualities that made him such a success had rubbed off on the dime. In short, she believes the dime would make a powerful magical talisman because of how much she admires Scrooge himself.

DuckTales is a highly inaccurate tv series that airs in the comic book Scrooge McDuck Universe, funded by Scrooge himself.

Don Rosa: "I'd love to do a story where DuckTales is an unauthorized TV series in Duckburg based on Scrooge's life, and Scrooge must sue the creators of the show for slander."

Here's how played out: At some point, he was approached by producers interested in making a series based on his adventures. Scrooge agreed to this after being encouraged that it would make him more marketable with a younger crowd. All the differences were due to Executive Meddling, but Scrooge initially cooperated (although he vetoed many of their original ideas; for instance, they would have made one of the triplets into a girl to satisfy The Smurfette Principle, but he refused to allow that, thus, Webby). It became popular for a time, bringing in money from The Merch that Scrooge felt comfortable to let it run on its own; the less attention he paid to it, however, the more creative license was taken... until it was brought back to his attention just how Off the Rails the series had gone, at which point he pulled the plug.

Huey's, Dewey's, and Louie's father is from Tralla La, aka Xanadu.

This, from Rosa's commentary printed along with Return to Xanadu in Uncle Scrooge #357.

• That would explain why that guy looks all mangled and burned: he's never been the same since his bratty sons set off a firecracker under his chair.

Huey, Dewey and Louie were born as result of Brother-Sister Incest between Donald and his twin sister Della.

Yeah, I'm going to straight to Hell for this. But just seeing how the in their early appearances the triplets were constantly pushed to Don by Della and vice-versa, and how great lengths they seem to go to avoid seeing each other, it would make sense that there's something extremely scandalous going on in the background.

• That makes too much sense for my liking so I would like to declare officially that I hate for totally raping that last bit of lovable childhood I had.
• That WMG is negated by the story "The Duck Who Never Was" by Don Rosa. In the alternate reality where Donald was never born, the triplets still exist, therefore Donald isn't their father.
  • Wasn't that alternate reality just a dream?
    • The genie who granted that wish doesn't think so.
    • Technically you could argue that the genie either created a convincing illusion or an alternate reality to teach Don a lesson. Whatever happens in it doesn't necessarily accurately reflect the "reality" of Donald Duck's universe.
    • Even it was just an illusion, it shouldn't have such logical impossibilities that would be easily noticeable by Donald, in order to be convincing for him.

Huey, Dewey and Louie are the result of a teenage pregnancy.

In the penultimate chapter of "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck", Della and Donald were shown to be younger than the triplets. This takes place 17 years before "present day". This means that Della was, at the very most, 16 years old when she gave birth to her children.

• Actually, more or less confirmed by Word of God! Check out this comment.
• According to Don Rosa's timeline, Della would have been 20 years old when she had the boys.

The witnesses of the destruction of Soapy Slick's steamer were lying.

The steamer wasn't destroyed by metal fatigue causing smokestacks to collapse, a cast-iron stove crashing through three bulkheads, or a freak tidal wave from the Bering Sea, but rather a very angry Scrooge McDuck.

• I think the whole point is that no one could agree on what happened that day, and people were making up all sorts of explanations both mundane and fantastic. In "Hearts of the Yukon", Scrooge himself claimed that he broke free when a boiler exploded... then goes on to claim that he "licked a baker's dozen [of Soapy Slick's men]! And the baker!"

"Quack Pack" is Donald's Dying Dream.

• "Quack Pack" was a spinoff of DuckTales that was more of a tribute of the original Donald Duck cartoons (with a 90s flavor) than a sequel to the aforementioned show. The reason that it was so different from "Duck Tales" was because Donald never left the Navy. During "Duck Tales" his carrier ship was torpedoed, resulting in everyone aboard being killed. As he was drowning he began hallucinating about what his future could have been with Daisy and his nephews. Scrooge does not appear because he would have died in-between Donald coming home for good and re-adopting the boys. The reason for the references to the old Donald Duck cartoons is because his brain is also trying to find comfort to counter the very frightening (and painful) experience of his lungs filling with water. The series ends when Donald finally expires.

The Junior Woodchucks are connected to the Fireside Girls.

Both have a handbook containing knowledge on everything ever, and their members have a tendency to be affiliated with/be main characters.

• The only problem being that one exists in a world populated by humanoid animals while the other has never shown speaking animals, much less the type seen in the Scrooge-verse.
  • PnF Earth is another planet, perhaps discovered and kept secret by the founders of the OWCA. The Fireside Girl and Junior Woodchuck Handbooks are offshoots of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tailored to the organization's planet by the group's leaders.

Donald's neighbour Jones is the commander of his ship in DuckTales

Well, they look alike, and that would explain their relation: before Donald joined the Navy he showed up Jones in a sea-related competion, then Jones used his rank to get back at him; after they both left the Navy (Donald because he was fed up, Jones because Scrooge noticed the abuse and pulled some string), they were both fed up with each other, and started their infamous battles.

Donald's captain in the Navy, Scrooge, Gladstone and Launchpad Mc Quack are responsible for Paperinik's birth, and Scrooge knows it. Launchpad then triggered his metamorphosis into hero

Tied to Paperinik's origins as a cynical avenger of himself. In the story he first became Paperinik, Donald was VERY bitter and acted in a very OOC manner, to the point of literally kicking a dog because his nephews wanted to keep him and stealing a whole manor from Gladstone (Gladstone won it at the lottery, but Donald got it because of a mail error and kept it), something very easy if he had just left the Navy where he was treated as an idiot, Scrooge tried to pressure him into giving the nephews back in his care (in that very story he offered Donald an underpaid job as a human mechanical fan and put Donald and his nephews against each other over that), saw the overtly lazy Gladstone staying rich in face of his hard work and Launchpad becoming a role model for his nephews in his place while he was away. So, when he got the items of a phantom thief by chance he saw the occasion to get back at them, starting with Scrooge and Gladstone. Scrooge understood what was going on, but did nothing for fear of his nephew going completely mad (and sometimes did things to be targeted by Paperinik and help Donald venting) and Gladstone needed to know his luck wouldn't always give him everything. Then Donald targeted Launchpad, but seeing him helping Darkwing Duck fighting crime provoked an Heel Face Turn, and Paperinik the Devilish Avenger went from an avenger of himself to a Batmanesque superhero, with Scrooge secretly paying for his new weapons made by Gyro.

Della Duck and her husband are working for the The High Council

Della and her husband are agents for the High Council.The firecracker incident was just an excuse for an injury obtained while on a mission.The last time she left the boys with Donald was to protect them while she and her husband went on a prolonged assignment. The reason they hasn't come back since is because they are trying to let their children have a normal life while they work. Donald is aware of their involvement which is why he hasn't made an overly large effort to locate them.

Della Duck and her husband died at some point.

In a 1940s Donald Duck newspaper strip, Donald applies for child benefit as the sole guardian of Huey, Dewey, and Louie. It would seem unlikely that Donald had been granted custody of the boys unless something happened to their parents. Since Huey, Dewey, and Louie were originally created for the newspaper strip (and the child benefit strip was drawn by Al Taliaferro, their co-creator), this would be the most canonical explanation of what happened to Della and her husband. Most likely, Della's husband died in the Second World War (the 1940s strips show that WWII happened in the Disney Ducks Comic Universe), though Della's ultimate fate is unknown.