Headscratchers / TaleSpin

• So where/what exactly is Cape Suzette? It seems to be part of America at first but is at driving distance from a Romania-like country ("The Balooest of the Bluebloods") and a couple of hours at most of this universe's Russia (Thembria).
  • My personal theory is that Cape Suzette is an island in a crossroad of commercial lines and located between continents, which is also the reason why it's so ethnically diverse. All other countries in the universe seem to be more uniform, made of one single species, whilst Cape Suzette has individuals from each species, which happens in real financial and cultural crossroads like Singapore, or Hong Kong, or the Caribbean Islands. If the show is in the same universe of DuckTales (1987)/Darkwing Duck as is the common fan theory, then where Scrooge and Darkwing live is this universe's version of the USA and that’s why it's still diverse but not so much with ducks, pigs and dogs more similar to Anglo-Saxons, African-Americans and Hispanics but with one group, the Anglo-Saxons (or in their case ducks) as the dominant majority, whilst Cape Suzette is much more diverse with no dominant species.
  • Syfy's Oral History on the Disney Afternoon has several ex-staffers peg the show as taking place in Southeast Asia, so the comparsions to Singapore and Hong Kong are particularly apt. My guess is it's an American-controlled territory in Asia, akin to Guam and (formerly) The Phillipines.
• In "The Idol Rich", the idol Baloo and Kit find turns out to not be worth much (only 8 units of currency in Cape Suzette money). If that's the case, why are all the treasure hunters (and Col. Spigot) so eager to find something that is practically worthless?
• In "The Time Bandit", why does Dunder willingly takes the blame from Spigot's screw up? No matter how loyal or good-hearted he could be, in an Orwellian dictatorship like Thembria he can get shot for that, especially because he has a very low rank.
  • Precisely because Dunder is too low ranked. He knows the punishment won’t be serious, unlike in the case of Spigot. Despite all of his flaws, Spigot seems to be more like an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain that is never shown to be really harsh on Dunder and that Dunder knows how to handle. If Spigot get shot or demoted Dunder may end reassigned under the command of a much meaner and crueler commander.
  • Spigot and others have been sentenced to being shot multiple times anyway. There's something to Thembrian standards that seems to omit the lethal implications of the punishment. Otherwise all they have to lose is their good name, which means a lot for Spigot but little for Dunder.
  • Thembria has some really screwy ideas of what constitute a punishment. At the end of one episode, Spigot is sentenced to peel turnips because it is supposedly "much crueler" than being shot.
• Were air-pirates/sky-pirates a real thing back in the 1920s?
  • Actually, yes.
• Why doesn't Wildcat install guns into the Sea Duck? Baloo and his friends have been shot at dozens of times. Shouldn't they protect themselves from future enemies?
  • They're probably illegal, even for self-defense. Nor even Khan's planes use them and he doesn't seem to be the kind of man that would shy away in using guns unless there's a strong legal reason not to.
  • Khan's planes do have guns in at least one episode (the one with Whistlestop Jackson).
• Is this universe Shere Khan a villain? Sometimes he is seen helping the main characters. Some episodes try to make him sorta sympathetic by having his employees back-stab him (Douglas, the crooked pig sheriff, and his moronic deputy). Other episodes Khan is committing criminal acts in order to gain more money, or eliminate a competition.
  • Khan is kind of an Anti-Villain with a certain honor code. This code can be twisted a little, like in the episode "Save the Tiger", when he owes his life to Baloo and after Baloo abuses the "anything you want" clause of his life debt, he arranges for Baloo to get kidnapped to settle the score. Technically he didn't break his own word but obviously he twisted things to go his way. So, he is honorable but at the same time his interests always come first, so he's not really evil but very ruthless. In any case, very few people are really evil in Real Life.
    • He's clearly a corrupt businessman who will do illegal things for money and is fairly heartless about the careers of others (more than one scheme would have put all the local pilots out of business). But Khan typically balks at pointless cruelty or actual serious harm done to people. He goes off on that one guy who was abusing their workers because Khan wants them happy and productive and breaking them to the bone accomplished nothing. Likewise for all the trouble he gives Baloo as a rival company he never say, has him killed or even just sends thugs to beat him up so he can't fly anymore.
• Speaking of Khan and Villainy, the episode "On a Wing and a Bear", shouldn't Khan be in serious trouble for aligning with Pirates to steal Oil?
  • Was he caught at the end of the episode? In any case he probably has very good lawyers.
• In "Sheepskin Deep", how could missing a single trivia question while getting every other problem correct result in an F on the test?
  • Did he get every other question right? His teacher's exact words were "You only failed by one question." Baloo was able to prove that one answer was right that had been marked as wrong, but I don't recall any other answers being mentioned as right or wrong, so that one might have made the difference between an F and a D minus.
• Why does Klang goes to such lengths to hide the fact that he's a snake? And how come we never see any other snakes in the series? Are snakes shunned from normal society in a form of Fantastic Racism on account of not having any limbs?
• Why does Shere Khan appear to be tailless? Other big cats in the series, including Wildcat, have visible tails and Shere Khan had a tail in The Jungle Book (1967).
  • Maybe it's in his pants.