Donald Duck (Disney)/Synopsis

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Films

Saludos Amigos

Of the four segments, Donald stars in two of them. He first appears in the first segment, Lake Titicaca, as an American tourist who visits Lake Titicaca and gets to meet some of the locals, including a llama. He appears in the final segment, Aquarela do Brasil, and he is shown South America by the parrot José Carioca and introduced to the samba.

The Three Caballeros

It is Donald's birthday, and he is receiving presents from his friends in Latin America. The first present he receives is a document on birds, and among the birds Donald learns of are the Aracuan Bird. Donald is next given a book by Jose, which tells of Bahia, one of the many states of Brazil. Jose shrinks himself and Donald down so they can enter the book. In the adventure, Donald and Jose meet with the locals and dance to the samba, and Donald pines one woman. After the dance, Donald and Jose leave the book.

Donald is too small to open the third present, so Jose teaches him to use magic to return to normal size. He meets Panchito Pistoles, who reveals the secret of the pinata, and blindfolds Donald to try and break it. They celebrate and the trio take the name The Three Caballeros. The celebration ends when Donald ends up fired away by firecrackers.

Fun and Fancy Free

In the second segment of the film, titled Mickey and the Beanstalk, Donald is a peasant that lives with Mickey and Goofy in Happy Valley. After the harp that kept the land fertile and prosperous is stolen by Willie the Giant, Happy Valley suffered from a drought and severe shortage of food. All of them extremely hungry and starving, they have to share one loaf of bread, which they cut as thin as paper so all of them will be able to eat some. Unsurprisingly, Donald can't cope with the drought as well as Mickey and Goofy and flies into a rage and starts consuming anything in sight, including dishes and utensils. After Mickey and Goofy calm him down, he next spots the cow and takes an axe to kill it and eat it. Before he can do so, Mickey and Goofy restrain him.

Donald in Fun and Fancy Free

Mickey decides to sell the cow for food. Donald and Goofy are at first pleased, imagining the great food they will have when Mickey returns. Instead, Mickey comes back with tiny magic beans, which he states will bring good fortune if planted under the full moon. Donald has a breakdown again, not believing that Mickey sold their cow for tiny beans that would barely fill one of them and snatches the beans from Mickey and throws them away and they fall through a hole. The beans are in fact magical and a beanstalk grows when the full moon is out and the trio are lifted into the sky as they are asleep. They wake up in a land above the clouds and they proceed to enter a castle filled with food that they feed on. They then discover the magical harp, who explains that the reason Willie took her was because he liked the music she made.

Willie the Giant himself comes back to the castle to demonstrate his magical abilities while eating the food. Mickey tries to trick the dimwitted Willie into turning into a fly to hit him with the fly swatter and calls Donald and Goofy to come and help him left it. Willie turns into a bunny instead and realizes their intentions, and locks the trio in the chest holding the harp, but Mickey climbs out before he can lock all three of them inside. After Willie falls asleep, Mickey is able to steal the key inside his pocket and frees his friends before taking the harp to bring back to Happy Valley. As Mickey tries to tie Willie's shoestrings together, the giant awakens and chases after the trio to get the harp back. They limb down the beanstalk and Willie follows, so the trio chop off the beanstalk and Willie falls to his apparent death. With the harp back, Happy Valley is restored to its former glory.

Melody Time

Donald and Jose are both in a bad mood and are moping at the cafe. The Aracuan Bird meets up with them and introduces them to the samba, and this cheers them up.

Fantasia 2000

He stars in the most famous and popular Bible story Noah's Ark, who plays the role as the assistant of Noah and the husband of Daisy, and Noah left him in charge of the the Ark and the animals. When Donald is rounding the animals inside the Ark, he was checking off two pairs of animals, a male and a female as they arrived and by the time Donald and Daisy entered the Ark safely, during the checking, when Donald realizes that Daisy was missing he went outside the Ark and rushed to his house, but a colossal wave was about to crash in, he rushes back to the Ark, when both him and Daisy saw what happened, they thought both each other were left behind and died.

40 days later, he sent a male dove to search for dry land and threw him far away, then a female dove starts crying, which that made Donald thinking about Daisy, thinking how much he misses her and Daisy felt the same thing, when the dove returned with an olive branch. Donald led all the animals out of the ark, then Noah rubbed Donald's head in a reward for doing a great job with the animals and the Ark, but in the end of the segment Donald and Daisy finally found each other and united in process.

Television

Cartoons

Donald in the early cartoons

Donald Duck's first appearance was in June, 1934, in the Silly Symphonies cartoon The Wise Little Hen as a rather lazy and selfish duck who, along with the pig, were too lazy to help the wise little hen prepare food and pretended to be sick. The hen caught on to this and ate the food by herself with her children while Donald and the pig watched on. Donald later appeared in a Mickey Mouse cartoon The Orphan's Benefit, where he tries to entertain the orphans by reciting the poems Mary Had A Little Lamb and Little Boy Blues, but he loses his temper and flies into a rage when the orphans eat his pie.

Donald proved a very popular character amongst the audiences, so he continued to appear in Disney cartoons along with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Minnie Mouse, and Pluto. Donald became famous due to his stubborn personality. In one cartoon, The William Tell Overture, he disrupts Mickey's orchestra by playing a different song.

Donald's new appearance

In 1936, Donald was redesigned. Original thin with a long beak, he was then designed as rounder, plumper, and had a shorter beak. In 1937, he began starring in his own cartoons, the first being Don Donald, which introduced his love interest Daisy Duck, who was here named Donna Duck. Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, were introduced in the 1938 cartoon appropriately titled Donald's Nephews.

DuckTales

In DuckTales, Donald is joining the Navy and has left his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie with his uncle Scrooge McDuck. Donald would appear occasionally throughout the series.

Mickey Mouse

Donald returns in this animated series starring Mickey and the gang.

Donald's first appearance in the series was in the episode "No Service". In this episode, Donald and Mickey are planning to have a picnic on the beach with Minnie and Daisy and intend on ordering take-out at a snack shack, but Goofy denies serving them, as the shack's policy strictly states "No shirt, no shoes, no service". However, Mickey comes up with the idea to have one of the duos wear a full outfit and go into the shack to order take-out for everyone. They draw straws and Donald cheats his way to victory. Taking Mickey's shorts and shoes, Donald heads inside to order but spends much of his time laughing at Mickey's expense while the mouse tries to prevent Minnie and Daisy from seeing him nude. In the end, however, Donald is literally kicked out of the shack for attempting to pay with a credit card and Mickey's ID, causing his entire outfit to fall off just as Minnie and Daisy arrive, humiliating the duck.

While Donald was portrayed as a trickster in "No Service", his appearances in "Stayin' Cool", "Potatoland" and "Tapped Out" follow his more dominant personality, where he is easily aggravated by the antics of Goofy and the wholesomeness of Mickey, often leading to the duck getting himself harmed and humiliated comically.

Donald can also be extremely selfish at times, such as in "Wonders of the Deep", where he initially refused to journey into the ocean to save an endangered Ludwig Von Drake. In "No", he initially refused to help Mickey overcome his difficulties in saying the word "no". Despite this, Donald can pull through and act with heroism, as he eventually did in both instances.

The first episode to fully revolve around Donald is "Flipperboobootosis", where Donald comes down with a rare foot disease but refuses to have it properly treated because of his fear of the doctor. After several failed attempts to cure the duck themselves, Mickey and Goofy eventually force Donald to the hospital, though it pays off in the end, as the Bear Doctor was able to cure the Flipperboobootosis.

Other episodes where Donald plays a key role include "The Adorable Couple", "Down the Hatch", "Bronco Busted", and "Split Decisions". He also had a starring role in "Captain Donald", where his deepest, darkest secret is revealed — he can't actually sail. It was also revealed that Donald got his sailor suit from Daisy because she likes men in uniform.

In "Duck the Halls: A Mickey Mouse Christmas Special", Donald decides to live out his dream of experiencing Christmas by staying in the north with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto as opposed to migrating to the south with Daisy and the rest of his family. Being a duck, however, the harsh winter weather sickens Donald to a deadly degree. By the end, Mickey and the others manage to transfer him to the south, where they learn that Christmas can be celebrated anywhere in the world.

DuckTales (2017 TV Series)

Main article: Donald Duck (DuckTales 2017)

Donald is a major character in the 2017 DuckTales series. He plays a significantly larger role compared to the original series.

Legend of the Three Caballeros

Donald with Panchito and José in Legend of the Three Caballeros.

Donald serves as the protagonist of the action/adventure series, in which he inherits the belongings of his great-grandfather, Clinton Coot. This includes a shabby cabana cared for by the Aracuan Bird, as well as countless ancient and priceless artifacts. Unfortunately for Donald, he must share his inheritance with a parrot named José Carioca and a rooster named Panchito—neither of whom have Donald previously met in this continuity. Though initially displeased with this revelation, Donald and his new acquaintances work together to sell Coot's belongings for profit, with help from April, May, and June. Their items catch the interest of the sinister billionaire, Baron Von Sheldgoose, who offers the trio one billion dollars in exchange for their artifacts—so long as it includes a golden atlas. Motivated by their oncoming wealth, the trio scavenge through the home and soon uncover an ancient book thought to be the atlas Sheldgoose is after. Strangely, contact with the book unleashes Xandra, goddess of adventure. According to Xandra, Donald, Panchito and José are descendants of a group of heroes known as the Three Caballeros.

Ten years prior to the start of the series, Donald and Scrooge were partners and regularly embarked on fantastical adventures. For reasons evidently regarding the disappearance of his sister, Della, Donald and Scrooge became distant from one another, to the point of Huey, Dewey and Louie having no idea that Scrooge was their great-uncle at the start of the series. In "Woo-oo!", Donald prepares for a job interview and, out of desperation, leaves the boys in Scrooge's care for the time being. He gets the job, but the employer is Flintheart Glomgold, who enlists Donald on his search to find the jewel of Atlantis (which Scrooge and the boys are also after). Though they are left in the city for dead by Glomgold, Dewey uses the wisdom he gained from Scrooge to rescue them. Impressed, Donald warmly allows the boys to remain in contact with their great-uncle, as he believes Scrooge will, at the very least, teach the boys how to get out of the dangers they'll inevitably face throughout their adventurous lives. Unfortunately, Donald's home catches fire, which prompts Scrooge to charitably invite his four nephews to live in his mansion. Though they accept, Donald still retains his houseboat, only now it resides in Scrooge's pool.