Darkwing Duck

Disney's Darkwing Duck is a Disney cartoon show that ran from 1991 to 1994 (often inside The Disney Afternoon), featuring an eponymous superhero anthropomorphic duck with the alter ego Drake Mallard. Owing much to the tradition of The Shadow and Batman, the only people who know the hero's secret identity are his adopted daughter Gosalyn Waddlemeyer Mallard (mistakenly referred to as his niece in recent Disney information sources), his sidekick Launchpad McQuack (originally from Duck Tales), Gosalyn's best friend Honker Muddlefoot, and in later episodes, Darkwing's girlfriend Morgana Macawber. The show is set in the fictional city of St. Canard.

Trivia

• This show was inspired by two episodes of DuckTales, entitled Double O'Duck and The Masked Mallard. The original concept had Launchpad McQuack as the star.
• Many of the episode titles are puns or references to other titles or phrases from pop culture. "In like Blunt," for example, is a reference to In Like Flint, with Derek Blunt replacing James Coburn's "Derek Flint" character. "Whiffle While You Work" is a bit of an inside joke, combining the character of Whiffle Boy with the song "Whistle While You Work" from another Disney production, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
• There was also a Darkwing Duck video game released by Capcom on the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy. Another game was also made for the TurboGrafx-16.
• At the end of the episode "Comic Book Capers", Darkwing discusses having his comic book published by Disney - a meta-reference to Disney publishing their own comics, and also perhaps the first time the company name was said in their own cartoons.
• In at least two episodes, Gary Larson and his The Far Side comic are referenced. In "Twin Beaks", a cow character explains that they come from the planet Larson, on the far side of the galaxy (cows were also often featured in his comic). In "Beauty and the Beet", the names of the two lab scientists opposite Dr. Reginald Bushroot are Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson.
• Darkwing Duck exists in the same continuity as many of the other Disney cartoon series. In addition to Launchpad and GizmoDuck's appearances in the series, Magica DeSpell, Flintheart Glomgold, and the Beagle Boys from DuckTales can be seen in crowd shots during "In Like Blunt." Chip N' Dale's Rescue Rangers are indirectly referenced in "Twitching Channels." (The episode was originally planned to be a full crossover with Rescue Rangers, but that plot was rejected.) In an episode of Goof Troop, Max is wearing a Quackerjack watch, and in another episode, Pete is reading a newspaper with Darkwing Duck pictured in the cover story. Also, the character of Darkwing Duck also appeared occasionally in the series Bonkers.
• One of the greatest upsets to fans of the series is that one of the last aired episodes, "The Steerminator", featuring the return of Taurus Bulba, leaves at a cliffhanger ending complete with "To be Continued." Originally meant to be resolved in Season 4, the series was unfortunately canceled before this could happen. The resolution to this episode seems doomed to be left eternally unsolved.
• There is an episode of this series that has been banned from television. The episode Hot Spells is about Gosalyn wanting magical powers like Morgana. She is unable to attain them at the speed she desires, and, becoming impatient, she is easily maneuvered by the devil in order to access forbidden knowledge to attain this power in order to force Darkwing to relinquish his soul to save her. However, the demon makes the hasty mistake of simply lying to her that the contents of forbidden knowledge room were replaced with permitted material, which meant Gosalyn honestly believed that she was allowed to use the room. This mistake means she is actually innocent by a technicality, although she should have asked one of the librarians to confirm this claim before taking the word of the janitor the Devil was disguised as, thus allowing her to save her father. The very fact that a Disney-related show had any reference to Satan (and was even allowed to air a few times) is unusual. It was last seen on Toon Disney, but due to bad scheduling and the addition of JETIX, it has vanished completely off the network. Along with a number of other shows it was removed from schedules in November 2004 and has not been seen since. It is unknown if it will ever return, and Disney currently has no plans to release the series on a DVD set.
• It currently (2005) airs on Toon Disney in Scandinavia.