YMMV / Donald Duck

• Archive Panic: We're talkin' about a character who has appeared in a considerable quantity of video games, thousands of newspaper strips, a hell of a lot in animation, and an absolutely monstrous amount in comic book stories, which have been released on a non-stop basis since 1934 and are unlikely to ever stop as long as The Walt Disney Company operates. It doesn't seem to even have any sign of slowing down in the present. To exemplify, by 2017, Donald was billed for roles in so many Disney shows and featurettes that they had to share them between two voice actors. The Inducks database of Disney Comics listed 52, 494 stories depicting Donald by early 2023.
• Bizarro Episode: It wouldn't be a surprise if half of the budget for Duck Pimples went to LSD for the animators.
• Broken Base: Depending on who you ask, Donald Duck's iconic quack-ish voice is either seen as charming and hilarious or obnoxious and too incomprehensible.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The brutal Radish Cure he inflicted on his nephews in "Donald's Happy Birthday".
• Designated Villain: There are some shorts where he comes across as this, such as the shorts where he's terrorized by a mischievous animal. While Donald's Jerkass tendencies often make him an ideal target for Laser-Guided Karma, there are also shorts where he actually does nothing to provoke characters like Chip and Dale or Huey, Dewey and Louie, who decide to attack him for no better reason than he happens to be there.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: "Donald's Diary": Donald breaking up with Daisy and joining the Legion of Lost Souls is supposed to be a happy ending for Donald, since he had a bad dream about living the Awful Wedded Life, but since he didn't so much as explain to her his sudden change in behavior, it is unlikely that Daisy will take this lying down.
• Fan Nickname: In the non-canon short, "How to Have an Accident at Work", Donald is shown to have a son, whom fans nickname Donald, Jr., although he's not explicitly named in the short.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • While Donald is certainly popular in his native America, Europeans absolutely adore Donald Duck, and in the Netherlands, Poland, and the Nordic countries, Donald Duck is more popular than Mickey Mouse himself. And thanks to the Italian and Nordic comics being translated, he is also very popular in Germany and France. Donald's larger popularity over Mickey in Europe is largely cited to be due to cultural differences in what makes for a good protagonist, as Donald's underdog status and his Classical Anti-Hero traits make him more endearing and appealing to European audiences than the traditionally heroic and successful Mickey Mouse. It also helps that the Disney Ducks Comic Universe is highly reminiscent of European Franco-Belgian Comics in both their tone and spirit.
  • Donald Duck is also very popular in Latin America (Although Mickey is equally as popular as Donald in Mexico, if not a bit more.) especially Brazil, to the point that Donald Duck comics was the first Disney magazine to be published by Abril in that country and the comics still runs since 1950 where he's the centerpiece of the Disney comics advertisement along with Uncle Scrooge in lieu of Mickey Mouse. As Abril became a huge media conglomerate, its founder parodied Walt Disney's declaration that "I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse." by saying "It all started with a duck". Also a book about Donald called Para leer al Pato Donald (How to Read Donald Duck) was published in Chile where it become a bestseller throughout Latin America and is considered a seminal work in cultural studies.
  • Japan adores Donald Duck as well, given that many of his games are developed by Japanese studios (especially by Capcom) and there is a buttload of exclusive Donald Duck merchandise that is made and/or is only available in Japan, including a manga starring him. He also had a themed cafe dedicated to him as part of Disney's themed cafe concept in 2022.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Ajax, the Killer Gorilla in "Donald Duck and the Gorilla", can come off as this to modern viewers, after Harambe the gorilla was put down in May 2016 when he posed a threat to a boy who fell in his enclosure. The end of the short also features Donald and Ajax weeping hysterically and dramatically, similar to the unprecedented maelstrom of memes mourning the dead ape for the rest of 2016.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The wartime Donald Duck cartoon Commando Duck had an anti-Japanese sentiment, decades later after the Second World War, Donald would later be a supporting character in the ironically Japanese-collaborated Disney video game franchise Kingdom Hearts (due to how big Disney was there). Also, Donald would also have a Japanese-influenced alter ego as Cold Shadow in another video game Donald in Maui Mallard.
• Jerkass Woobie: Donald isn't always the nicest person around, but with all the crud he takes, it's no wonder.
• Karmic Overkill: One of the reasons for the above trope is, while Donald takes some Laser-Guided Karma for being a dick, there are times where he suffers more than he deserves. One example that stands out is "Donald's Snow Fight," which starts with him wrecking his nephews' snowman for his own pleasure. Then after his nephews retaliate by tricking him into ramming into a boulder, he challenges them to a snowball fight and pelts them all with snowballs. Finally, the nephews fling their own snowballs at him, culminating in Donald falling into some ice water and basically turning into an ice statue!
• Memetic Badass: It's a bit of a running joke on 4chan's /co/ that Donald can basically win in any fight, up to and including destroying the Death Star single-handedly.
  • This is especially so after Kingdom Hearts III, where Donald is able to cast Zettaflare, the most powerful spell in Final Fantasy canon!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 2012 gave us a badly-drawn, psychopathic version of Donald named Dolan. This extended to other Classic Disney Shorts characters and even non-Disney characters such as characters from Looney Tunes.
  • From the Silly Symphony comic in which he sends Goofy to a watery death, his satisfied pose in the last panel◊ is often used to show him walking away from all sorts of catastrophes. The phrase "Do not fuck with the duck", is a common accompaniment.
  • Screenshots from "Der Fuehrer's Face" are very popular on the internet mainly because a lot of people find it hilarious and shocking to see a beloved children's cartoon character in a Nazi uniform. Granted in the actual film it was all just a nightmare Donald was having and it was made clear he hated being a Nazi.
  • In recent years, Donald Duck has appeared in memes (usually in his fighting stance or mid-rage fit) calling him "The Original Angry Bird".
  • A screenshot from the 1954 short Grin and Bear It with a sign reading "Don't Molest the Bears" became fairly popular on the internet for obvious reasons.
• Memetic Psychopath / Ron the Death Eater: Pretty much the point of Dolan is to exaggerate Donald into a psychopath.
• My Real Daddy: Donald Duck was a beloved creation by Walt Disney and his animators, but if you ask most of his comics fans, it was Carl Barks in stories like "Lost in the Andes!" and "Vacation Time" that really codified him into a three-dimensional character, someone who was unlucky but persistent and hard-working, hot-headed and flawed but also heroic when the chips were down, and who because of his love for his nephews and dedication to them, is somewhat of a tragic and lovable hero.
• Older Than They Think: The name Donald Duck first appeared in a written poem, More Hoozoo in 1931. (However, the illustrated duck did not resemble the character as we know him.).
• Unpopular Popular Character: One of the most famous enforced examples. Disney always ensures that Donald In-Universe is portrayed as second banana to Mickey and that in his adventures with Mickey and Goofy, he's often The Load who gets into trouble (while Mickey and Goofy are portrayed as more collegial), and he's often invoked as the sourpuss and unlikable one. Outside Disney's corporate brand image politics however, Donald is easily more popular and beloved than Mickey Mouse and Goofy, a character who has been reinterpreted time and time again for multiple generations, and who still finds new audiences around the world. He's a far more consistent and in-demand moneymaker than Mickey and Goofy ever were.
• Values Dissonance: In Donald's Happy Birthday, Huey, Dewey, and Louie are able to go into a store and buy a box of cigars for their uncle for his birthday. Today, it's highly unlikely that any store would allow children to buy cigars, regardless of whether it's for them or an adult relative. Donald then misinterprets and thinks he's caught the boys smoking, punishing them by having them smoke the whole box until the ordeal makes them sick, what was seen as a fair form of discipline and repellent from the habit in such a day is now considered harmful child abuse.

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