Darkwing Duck
What Could Have Been in this series.
I am the Concept Art that Doubles your O's. I am... Duck, Double O duck.
- The show almost never came to be! In fact, If Disney had only owned the full rights to
Rocky and Bullwinkle, not just video distribution rights, they would have produced a new Bullwinkle series instead. When it was learned they didn't have the rights, the animator brushed off his Double-O Duck proposal because they needed a replacement pitch in a hurry. - As mentioned in the Shout-Out entry on the main page, the original pitch for the show was very different. It was originally going to be a James Bond spoof called Double-O Duck, with Drake Mallard as a globe-trotting spy working for SHUSH. All the villains were going to be agents of FOWL (Fiendish Organization of World Larceny) with Steelbeak overseeing them as the show's big bad. Eventually the concept was combined with ideas from a superhero-based DuckTales (1987) episode and became Darkwing Duck, the new name a result of an in-studio contest that was won by Alan Burnett. DW sometimes does missions for SHUSH as a freelance agent, so some of the spy elements survive. FOWL occasionally pops up but only two of the show's dozen or so recurring villains actually work for the organization, and it's run by three unknown shadowy figures.
- Disney's merchandising division never got the full memo about the change, so most of the show's merchandise portrays all the villains as F.O.W.L. agents with Steelbeak as their leader. The Darkwing Duck NES game famously bases its whole plot around this concept.
- "Double-O-Duck"? That was the name of an episode of DuckTales (1987) where Launchpad went undercover as a spy to stop F.O.W.L. (known then as the Foreign Organization of World Larceny), and its leader at the time was apparently Killed Off for Real, letting "High Command" take over by the time of Darkwing Duck. Heck, Launchpad's Tuxedo and Martini was the basis of Derek Blunt's costume. "Double-O-Duck"/Double Duck later became Donald Duck's spy name in Donald Duck comics.
- The writers came up with the idea of a spin-off set 20 Minutes into the Future, featuring Gosalyn as either a teenager or young adult, and featuring her own superhero alter-ego, Quiverwing Quack (who had previously appeared on Darkwing, and was a Green Arrow parody, right down to the trick arrows). It never got past the planning stages. The character was briefly mentioned in the Boom Studios comic, as the daughter of an alternate universe Darkwing who was killed in action, leading that Darkwing to take on the persona in honor of her.
- According to some rumors, if DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp was more successful, there "MIGHT" have been a Darkwing Duck movie as well.
- Also, Darkwing and Morgana were eventually going to get married and have kids together down the line if the show had continued.
- One of the storylines pitched for the comic book series had Darkwing and Mickey teaming up to battle the Phantom Blot.
- There were originally plans for a Crossover with Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers on the show. Though it ended up not happening, Chip & Monty's voices can be heard in "Twitching Channels", as a Shout-Out. Additionally, Gadget makes a cameo appearance alongside the Ranger Plane in Part 3 of the comic "The Duck Knight Returns".
- Concept art sketches in the F.O.W.L. Disposition trade paperback indicate that Femme Appeal was originally going to be a duck, a dogface, or a canary instead of a fox, Mickey Mouse and Goofy were at one point going to make cameos among the people under Duckthulhu's influence, and that the F.O.W.L. High Command would have been revealed to actually be alien experiments like the ones made by Jumba.
- Before the second volume of the comic revival was abruptly cancelled (again), the Joe Books series was supposed to bring in Frequencia, a villain from the story book "High Wave Robbery."
- There was originally going to be an episode where Negaduck I returned, forcing Darkwing and Negaduck II to team up against him.
- Quackerjack was intended to be a darker character, sort of a mixture of the Joker and Toyman, but the end result was more akin to a mixture of Toyman and Harley Quinn.
- Back in the days the BOOM Studios comic was being published, Aaron Sparrow mentioned that the initial idea for the DuckTales/Darkwing Duck crossover was a light parody of Secret Invasion (2008), with the reveal that several characters had been replaced with body snatcher duplicates, as a way to explain away any out-of-character behavior up until that point. Some of the covers had even been illustrated with that plotline in mind. However, the story was dropped for Ian Brill's version of the crossover.
- In the initial drafts, it was Megavolt who was meant to be Darkwing Duck's archnemesis. However, when Negaduck was created, he quickly became a favorite of the creative staff and later the fandom, leading the character to effectively become Darkwing's arch enemy though Megavolt still appears more often.
- The Gnatmare, a villain introduced in the Joe Books comics, was originally named "Juggergnat" and wore a helmet closer in style to his comic inspiration. The creative team was told that legal "might" have a problem with the original name, and the old helmet made him look too much like Ant-Man, necessitating both to be changed.
- The cancellation of the Joe Books series had several plot points Left Hanging. When Dynamite Comics got the publishing rights, Aaron Sparrow and James Silvani lobbied to be able to continue where they left off. However, Dynamite Comics ultimately passed on them, opting to instead hire a new creative team, with the new series written by Amanda Deibert and drawn by Carlo Lauro. Furthermore, the new team opted to start from scratch rather than continue Aaron and James' stories, meaning those plot points remain unresolved even in the new series.
