As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
The cartoon:
- In his debut episode, Bushroot casually decides to make it look like the scientists who bullied him constantly had "an accident." When Darkwing and Launchpad show up to investigate, Bushroot decides to do the same thing to them. Considering that he's usually pretty meek, seeing Bushroot so calmly resort to murder is jarring; it makes you wonder if his experiment didn't just affect his body...
- Sometimes when SHUSH asked Darkwing to take over a case for them they showed him what happened to the guys they had who were looking into it before. The show outright confirms murders are being conducted in droves and deaths are ongoing. Like once Darkwing asked what happened to their last agent and J. Gander replied by taking a can of cat food out of his desk drawer containing the agent's remains.
- Paddywhack from "The Haunting of Mr. Banana Brain.". Monster Clown, feeds on negative emotions, beak filled with sharp teeth, evil beady eyes, spider-like limbs on a squat body, that deep scary voice... GAH! (when isn't hamming up a scene at least). He's the Darkwing-verse version of It. Issue #7 brings him back. And now..Paddywhack is coming to supper!
- A couple of the e.t.-themed episodes revolve around the existence of a literal planet of hats. That means, a planet full of hat-like aliens who could possess Earthlings by jumping on their heads. And could disguise themselves by simply closing their eyes. They could be in the middle of an invasion any moment and it would appear as merely a strange hat-wearing fad...
- Posey, the vampire potato and Bushroot's "bride".
- After Bushroot sees what he thinks is Darkwing and Posey in a compromising position, he tries to cut Darkwing down with a riding mower; when that doesn't work, he gets out a bazooka.
- There was also the last vampire test that involve setting the accused vampire on fire.
Moe: [lighting a match] Zack, get the diesel fuel.
- After Bushroot sees what he thinks is Darkwing and Posey in a compromising position, he tries to cut Darkwing down with a riding mower; when that doesn't work, he gets out a bazooka.
- "Time and Punishment":
- Darkwarrior Duck, as very well exemplified by his introduction:
Darkwarrior Duck: I am the terror that hunts in the night! I am the jackal that gnaws at your bones! (Fires a warning tank shell at the suspect) I'm not finished~! I... am Darkwarrior Duck! Maybe a year in the pen will teach you to use a crosswalk! Jaywalker.- Behind the cartoonish slapstick comedy and the hammy over-the-top performance, you'll see a man who's become so consumed by his grief and madness that an entire metropolis has to suffer. If the big and scary-looking war machines he uses don't scare you, then his new and terrifying appearance, his red eyes and angry-looking face will do it, and if not even that, then the fact that he sends people to jail for years for such petty things as jaywalking will do it. And if his entrance wasn't enough to make it clear that something is wrong with his head, then Launchpad will make it clear when he tells his story on how he got fired from the sidekick job because he thought they "should arrest the crooks before giving them the electric chair". And then you'll ask where Negaduck went, or where the other heroes of St. Canard, including Morgana, went, or why the democratic government would allow one man having totalitarian control of a city inside their borders, Joseph Stalin style, without trying to take him out. And it ain't stopping there; when Darkwarrior Duck gets his hands on Quackerjack's time machine, he's planning to use it to go back in time so that he can rewrite the Code of Hammurabi so that even "being cranky in the morning" will be punishable by death. Or go back right at the time when the evolution of landwalking animals is getting started, and then delaying it until he'd get a "few rules straight". But the moment when his insanity hits the high point is when he aims a missile launcher right at his daughter's face, with a closeness enough to get himself blown up as well if he pulls the trigger, while angrily ranting on her past "criminal tendencies". Sure, he doesn't pull the trigger, but Darkwarrior Duck's Knight Templar personality was so great that it even made the Justice Lords look merciful by comparison. Hell, not even Negaduck was this extreme when he found out his own daughter had turned against him in "Life, the Negaverse and Everything"...
- Darkwing and Negaduck are polar opposites, but they also have similarities. DW can be as ruthless and vicious as Negaduck II if you push him off the deep end. Him losing his mind after Gosalyn "disappeared" is pretty scary. It's almost like he was becoming a third Negaduck. He was even shown using lethal guns and tanks. And to think, all it takes is for Gosalyn to run away for Darkwing to turn into a psychotic murderous maniac like his evil twin.
- Just to underline that Fridge Horror a bit more, there are points when Darkwarrior sounds exactly like his old self, despite being right in the middle of being a maniacal dictator.
- It's implied that Darkwarrior has killed people during his reign of terror. Keep in mind that we don't even see Negaduck II commit murder on the show.
- "Heavy Mental":
- Launchpad's future vision of Darkwing's death. Not only do we get to see Darkwing get crushed to death, but it's topped off by the villains of the episode standing over and suddenly laughing as their faces transform into grotesque abominations.
- Then there is the main villain's demise: being hit by the ray and having his head explode, just like the lizard earlier (whose head popped like a balloon). And then, even his ghost gets its head exploded.
- Taurus Bulba. Amongst the Rogues Gallery of wacky, comical, over-the-top Saturday morning cartoon villains, we've this ruthless, cunning, murderous, and downright psychopathic crime lord played by Tim Curry. He's one of the few villains besides Bushroot, Phineas Sharp, F.O.W.L. and Darkwarrior Duck who's confirmed to have committed murder, and his victim was none other than Gosalyn's grandfather. Later on, he attempts to do the same with Gosalyn, both to blackmail Darkwing Duck and For the Evulz, showing that not even children are safe from him. When he's rebuilt by F.O.W.L., he thanks them by destroying their base, declaring himself above them and threatening to kill them after he kills Darkwing Duck. When he seeks out Gosalyn for revenge, she gets a complete mental shutdown when meeting him. And while he has some hammy and comical moments, they're way outnumbered by his atrocities, making him the show's local Knight of Cerebus.
- The whole episode "Twin Beaks". This episode has Bushroot's "corpse", superficially innocent looking videos with puzzling details in the background, mysterious arc words, a Disney Acid Sequence, and an eerie atmosphere in general. Not too surprising, considering what show the episode is spoofing.
- "Dead Duck":
- Darkwing dies, visits the afterlife, comes back as a ghost, and has to deal with Death hunting him. He wakes up and is overjoyed, thinking it was just a nightmare, and then... it implies it's not just a dream.
- The citizens of his city not giving a hoot about him after he saved their tails a million times. Only three people in the world care about DW.
- Bushroot is able to regenerate, which leads to (or rather allows for) some nasty deaths, including once going through a woodchipper.
- F.O.W.L has plans that could literally destroy the world if they don't submit to their world-domination terms, including stopping the earth's rotation and dooming the earth to one half eternal winter and one half burning to the ground.
- In "Disguise The Limit", while trying to catch Negaduck so Darkwing can prove his innocence under the effects of a machine that can change his appearance to whatever he looks at, when Gosalyn suggests thinking like Negaduck in order to capture him, Darkwing looks at a "Wanted" poster of Negaduck and turns into him. Unfortunately, this ends up working too well, in that Darkwing starts acting like Negaduck and begins going after Launchpad and Gosalyn with a burner, while asking Gosalyn menacingly, "Wanna play Moth in the Flame, shnookums?” before we cut to a perspective shot of Negaduck!Darkwing laughing maniacally as he gets closer and closer to the screen.
- Negatron Negaduck from the episode "Negaduck":
- He initially starts off as an Evil Knockoff of Darkwing, created via an accident with Megavolt's device. Whilst the majority of his evil tendencies are Played for Laughs, it's a good reminder that without his heroic qualities, Drake Mallard would be as bad as the villains he fights.
- This is followed up quickly with him getting "galvanised", when he tries to destroy Megavolt's device so he won't be merged back with his good half. During the struggle, he gets zapped with the machine again, transforming him into a supercharged, photonegative version of Darkwing with electricity shooting off of his body and a constant static screeching noise whenever he's on screen. It's no wonder that Megavolt's first reaction is to cower in terror as the new Negaduck delivers a terrifying variation of Darkwing's usual Badass Boast:"I... am the skunk that pollutes your air!
- Almost immediately afterwards, he decides that petty crimes are beneath him and that he's going to lay waste to St. Canard for the sheer fun of it, starting by throwing Megavolt through a wall with his powers. He then shows himself to be very capable of carrying that threat out, as the ground cracks wherever he walks, his lightning destroys whatever he passes, and he has enough destructive power to lay waste to entire buildings. This leaves no doubt that the Negatron Negaduck is destruction incarnate - were it not for the galvanised Posiduck's ability to restore things, he could very well have destroyed a lot more than a single city.
- The sheer number of minor villains present in the show who plan to commit city wide or even universal genocide becomes unsettling in contrast to the Disneyesque setting. One villain known as Isis Vanderchill planned to melt all the gold of St. Canard, which she would then use to coat the entire city in order to reflect the sunlight and heat up the entire city, thus giving her the warmth she so longingly desired while killing all the city's residents with heatstroke.
- Another was an insane alien named Wacko who had explosives on him with enough power to destroy the universe if set off and wanted to do so For the Evulz.
- In "Slime Okay, You're okay" Gosalyn's clear mental deterioration into a mindless slime puddle that can only think of eating is rather unnerving, especially with Bushroot deciding to just use her to refine his IQ 2 U formula and Darkwing's earlier callous disregard for her well-being until he realized what he was doing.
The comic:
- Darkwarrior Duck's reappearance in Crisis on Infinite Darkwings is disturbing in a subtle way. In the episode where he appeared, it was implied that Darkwarrior was nothing more than a Bad Future version of Darkwing himself and that he would cease to exist in favor of the real Darkwing once Gosalyn got home. But he's present here again, which means that that wasn't exactly the way it was, and which further means that the horrific alternate St. Canard that Gosalyn encountered still exists.
- The Muddlefoots becoming tentacle creatures when under the influence of Duckthulhu in issue 10. It is not a pretty sight to see such a (mostly) affable family be transformed into something out of H.P. Lovecraft.
