Daffy Duck (1937-63, 1970-present)

'''This page along with the other Looney Tunes pages are dedicated to the late Mel Blanc (1908-1989), He will always be a true Looney Tune. This page along with Bugs will also be dedicated to their late creator Tex Avery (1908-1980), He will always be remembered for making Looney Tunes popular.'''

Daffy Duck is one of the main characters of the Looney Tunes franchise. He was created by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. His best frenemies are Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig.

NOTE: Happy 85th Birthday to Daffy

Creation
Tex Avery created the original version of Daffy in 1937. Daffy established his status by jumping into the water, hopping around, and yelling, "Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Woo-hoo!" Animator Bob Clampett immediately seized upon the Daffy Duck character and cast him in a series of cartoons in the 1930s and 1940s. The early Daffy is a wild and zany screwball, perpetually bouncing around the screen with cries of "Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!" (In his biography, Mel Blanc stated that the zany demeanor was inspired by Hugh Herbert's catchphrase, which was taken to a wild extreme for Daffy). Bob physically redesigned the character, making him taller and lankier and rounding out his feet and bill. He was often paired with Porky Pig.

1941-1945
Daffy would also feature in several war-themed shorts during World War II. Daffy always stays true to his unbridled nature, however; for example, he attempts to dodge conscription in "Draftee Daffy" (1945), battles a Nazi goat intent on eating Daffy's scrap metal in "Scrap Happy Daffy" (1943), and hits Adolf Hitler's head with a giant mallet in "Daffy - The Commando" (1943). Daffy was "drafted" as a mascot for the 600th Bombardment Squadron. "Plane Daffy" is also focused on WW2, focusing on Hitler and Daffy in a house.

1946-1952
For "Daffy Doodles", his first Looney Tunes cartoon as a director, Robert McKimson tamed Daffy a bit, redesigning him yet again to be rounder and less elastic. The studio also instilled some of Bugs Bunny's savvy into the duck, making him as brilliant with his mouth as he was with his battiness. Daffy was teamed up with Porky Pig; the duck's one-time rival became his straight man. Arthur Davis, who directed Warner Bros. cartoon shorts for a few years in the late 1940s until upper management declared there should be only three directors, Robert McKimson, Friz Freleng, and Chuck Jones, presented a Daffy similar to Robert's. Robert is noted as the last of the three directors to make his version of Daffy uniform with Chuck's, with even late shorts, such as "Don't Axe Me" (1958), featuring the "screwball" version of the character. His persona also changed from a literal daffy character to that of a greedy, impatient and more intelligent character.

1953-1964
While Daffy's looney days were over, Robert continued to make him as bad or good as his various roles required him to be. Robert would use this Daffy from 1946 to 1961. Although, even McKimson would follow in Jones' footsteps in many aspects with cartoons like People Are Bunny and Ducking the Devil. Friz Freleng's version took a hint from Chuck Jones to make the duck more sympathetic, as in the 1957 "Show Biz Bugs". Here, Daffy is portrayed as arrogant and jealous of Bugs, yet he has "real" talent that is ignored by the theater manager and the crowd. This cartoon finishes with a sequence in which Daffy attempts to wow the Bugs-besotted audience with an act in which he drinks gasoline and swallows nitroglycerin, gunpowder, and uranium-238 in a greenish solution, jumps up and down to "shake well" and finally swallows a lit match that detonates the whole improbable mixture.

Parodies of Pop Culture
While Bugs Bunny became Warner Bros.' most popular character, the directors still found ample use for Daffy. Several cartoons place him in parodies of popular movies and radio serials. For example, "Drip-Along Daffy" throws Daffy into a Western, while "Robin Hood Daffy" (1958) casts the duck in the role of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood. In "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" (1953), a parody of Buck Rogers, Daffy trades bullets with Marvin the Martian, with Porky Pig retaining the role of Daffy's sidekick. Other parodies were Daffy in "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" (1946) as Duck Twacy (Dick Tracy) by Bob Clampett and as "Stupor Duck" (Superman of DC Comics, now a WB property himself) by Robert McKimson.

Pairing of Bugs and Daffy from 1951 to 1964
Bugs' ascension to stardom also prompted the Warner Bros. animators to recast Daffy as the rabbit's rival, intensely envious and determined to steal back the spotlight, while Bugs either remained indifferent to the duck's envy or used it to his advantage. Daffy's desire to achieve stardom at any cost was explored as early as 1940 in Freleng's "You Ought to Be in Pictures", but the idea was most successfully used by Chuck Jones, who redesigned the duck once again, making him scrawnier and scruffier. In Jones' famous "Hunting Trilogy" of "Rabbit Fire" with "Rabbit Seasoning" and "Duck! Rabbit, Duck!", Daffy's vanity and excitedness provide Bugs Bunny the perfect opportunity to fool the hapless Elmer Fudd into repeatedly shooting the duck's bill off. Also, these cartoons reveal Daffy's catchphrase, "You're despicable!" Jones' Daffy sees himself as self-preservationist, not selfish. However, this Daffy can do nothing that doesn't backfire on him, more likely to singe his tail feathers as well as his dignity than anything. It’s thought that Chuck Jones based Daffy Duck’s new personality off of his fellow animator Bob Clampett, who, like Daffy, was known for being a loud, shameless self-promoter.

Daffy Today
When Warner Bros. revived Daffy and the rest of the classic Looney Tunes cast in modern interpretations, Chuck Jones' greedy, selfish, neurotic, sassy, immature and spotlight-hungry of Daffy is commonly used, completely ignoring the "evil Daffy" traits exhibited in the mid-1960s.

Daffy appears in later cartoons, like a piano duel with his Disney counterpart and rival Donald Duck in the 1988 Disney film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as both are playing "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2". In this film, Daffy's appearance is based on his early-1940s Bob Clampett design.

In 1987, to celebrate Daffy's 50th anniversary, Warner Bros. released "The Duxorcist" as its first theatrical Looney Tunes short in two decades. Daffy also appeared in several feature-film compilations, including two films centering on Daffy. The first was released in 1983, Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island; the second came in 1988, Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, which is considered one of the Looney Tunes' best compilation films and featured another new theatrical short, "The Night of the Living Duck". Daffy has also had major roles in films such as Space Jam in 1996 and Looney Tunes Back in Action in 2003. The latter film does much to flesh out his character. That same year, Warner Bros. cast him in a Duck Dodgers series. In this show, Duck Dodgers actually is Daffy Duck due to him being frozen in suspended animation. He had a cameo appearance in The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries. Daffy has also been featured in several Webtoons.

In the television series Tiny Toon Adventures, Daffy is a teacher at Acme Looniversity, where he is the hero and mentor of student Plucky Duck. Daffy is shown as a baby in the Baby Looney Tunes show and makes occasional cameos in Animaniacs and Histeria!. In Loonatics Unleashed, his descendant is Danger Duck, who often acts lame and unpopular to his teammates because of his arrogance but is far more heroic, loyal and selfless.

Daffy starred in the lead role in the 2006 direct-to-video film ''Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas'' in an Ebeneezer Scrooge-esque role who is the owner of the Lucky Duck Mall. Unusually, the film combines both Daffy's egotistical Chuck Jones persona and Daffy's villainous DePatie-Freleng/Format Films/Seven-Arts personas for the character's Ebeneezer Scrooge-esque role, while making him a sympathetic character at the same time by giving him a character arc courtesy of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future showing him the errors of his ways.

Daffy also starred in the 2012 3D short "Daffy's Rhapsody" with Elmer Fudd that was originally set to premiere before Happy Feet Two but instead it debuted prior to Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. The short features Daffy and Elmer in the first CG or 3D depiction of these specific Looney Tunes characters. According to Matthew O’Callaghan who directed the short, the audio comes from a 1950s recording for a children's album voiced by Mel Blanc.

Cartoon Network, during the summer of 2013, created a video montage of cartoon characters from their shows. In the end of the montage, the CN logo is formed by several characters quickly appearing in and out of existence. Two of the cameoed characters were Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny representing gods.

The Looney Tunes Show
Daffy returned to Cartoon Network in The Looney Tunes Show, voiced by Jeff Bergman. His characterization here seems to incorporate some elements of Clampett's and Jones' designs while giving him an overall more cheery if dimwitted personality. In the show, he has moved out of the forest and shares Bugs Bunny's house with him. Unlike Bugs and their neighbors, Daffy has no way of earning money and relies on Bugs for food and shelter.

He has tried on numerous occasions to get rich quick but ended up failing repeatedly. Daffy's one possession he is proud of is his paper-mache parade float, constructed on top of a minivan, which is his main means of transportation. It was destroyed by a car wash incident, and Daffy sought to replace it with a yacht by tricking Porky Pig into giving him the expensive loan, but his less-than-stellar boating skills ended that ambition. His parade float is repaired shortly after. Another one of his most prized possessions is his recliner. He saved up his own money working at a fast food restaurant before he met Bugs. It broke and was briefly replaced in "The Shell Game" but was repaired and returned to Daffy in the same episode. He also prizes his white collar, the only one of his possessions to not be either destroyed or stolen. In "Rebel Without a Glove", it was revealed that the collar is actually a pearl necklace given to him by his grandmother.

His girlfriend on the show is Tina Russo. While Daffy's greed and jealousy of Bugs remains, he appears to be less antagonistic in this show, with the exception of the series finale. This is the final production to feature Daffy's egotistical Chuck Jones persona, as all further productions would use his original screwball personality instead.

New Looney Tunes/Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Prod.
Daffy finally appeared again after Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run (2015) in a New Looney Tunes clip from "Porky's Duck-Livery Service", his only appearance in Season 1. Daffy appears in more episodes in Seasons 2 and 3 after the series quit focusing solely on Bugs Bunny in favor of focusing on the other Looney Tunes characters in addition to Bugs.

Here, Daffy abandons his egotistical Chuck Jones personality and reverts back to the zany screwball character as perfected by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, although some episodes may feature his Jones personality when the plot calls for it, like "You Were Never Duckier", "Daffy Dilly", and "Don't Axe Me", classic shorts which combine both his Clampett and Jones personalities together all at once. In addition, he is now redesigned to resemble his early-1940s screwball Daffy design by Bob Clampett. In this series, Daffy was voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, who previously voiced the character in Space Jam.

Looney Tunes Cartoons
Daffy appears in some of the Looney Tunes Cartoons, retaining his screwball personality and character design from the early shorts and New Looney Tunes. He was voiced by Eric Bauza.

Like the original shorts, Daffy is paired up with Porky Pig, causing mayhem for the pig. While he retains his personality from the 1940s Looney Tunes cartoons, Daffy Duck still retains his Chuck Jones-era persona, although unlike the New Looney Tunes, this is not only when the plot and script demand it, but also when there is something that disfavors Daffy Duck, when there are scenes of sharing things or when there is a lot of money and precious things. Also, it's very common for Daffy Duck to go bad at the end of an episode, unlike New Looney Tunes, which rarely did.

Space Jam A New Legacy
Daffy appeared in Space Jam A New Legacy as the coach of the Tune Squad. He was voiced again by Eric Bauza. His design and personality are closer to the Chuck Jones incarnation. His role is smaller than it was in Space Jam.

Bugs Bunny Builders
Daffy appears in the preschool series Bugs Bunny Builders, once again retaining his screwball personality and character design from the early shorts, New Looney Tunes and Looney Tunes Cartoons, only this time, he is more heroic and less selfish than the previous series, only doing unintentional things unaware of his own flaws/actions while helping his friends work on construction sites. A running gag shows that everytime the crew go to build, Daffy would do stunts that are referred to the projects that the team builds. He is once again voiced by Eric Bauza.

Looney Tunes: Acme Fools
Daffy Duck appears in Looney Tunes: Acme Fools where his personality and design are the same of Chuck Jones-era.

Personality
Just like most other characters, Daffy has more than one personality.

Jones' Daffy and Transformation to the Present
Film critic Steve Schneider calls Jones' version of Daffy "a kind of unleashed id". This is evident in Jones' "Duck Amuck" (1953), "one of the few unarguable masterpieces of American animation" according to Schneider. In the episode, Daffy is plagued by a godlike animator whose malicious paintbrush alters the setting, soundtrack, and even Daffy. When Daffy demands to know who's responsible for the changes, the camera pulls back to reveal none other than Bugs Bunny. "Duck Amuck" is widely heralded as a classic of filmmaking for its illustration that a character's personality can be recognized independently of appearance, setting, voice, and plot. In 1999, the short was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Freleng's Daffy
Friz Freleng used the Jones idea for Daffy in "Show Biz Bugs" (1957) wherein Daffy's "trained" pigeon act (they all fly away as soon as Daffy opens their cage) and complicated tap dance number are answered by crickets chirping in the audience, whereas Bugs' simple song-and-dance numbers bring wild applause.

McKimson's Daffy
McKimson made more benevolent use of Daffy; in "Ducking the Devil", for example, his greed becomes a vital tool in subduing the Tasmanian Devil and collecting a big cash reward. However, McKimson also played with Daffy's movie roles. In 1959, Daffy appeared in "China Jones", a parody of a television series of the day, China Smith, starring Dan Duryea, in which he was an Irish private eye with an Irish accent instead of the usual lisp.

Daffy's Pairing with Speedy in 1965-1968
When the Warner Bros. animation studio briefly outsourced cartoon production to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (DFE) in the 1960s, Daffy Duck became an antagonist in several Speedy Gonzales cartoons, where his mean spirit is taken to extremes. In these years, Daffy was transformed into a grouchier, more disturbing and bitter character with little to no good character traits present in him.

For example, in "Well Worn Daffy" (1965), Daffy is determined to keep the mice away from a desperately needed well seemingly for no other motive than pure maliciousness. Furthermore, when he draws all the water he wants, Daffy then attempts to destroy the well in spite of the vicious pointlessness of the act, forcing Speedy to stop him. In "Assault and Peppered" (1965), he whipped and declared war on poor Mexican mice for starving on his property. In "Go Go Amigo" (1965), he holds up a local radio station at gunpoint so that Speedy and his friends couldn't listen to music at Daffy's electronics store.

Whilst Daffy usually lost in his bouts, he actually defeated Speedy in "Chili Corn Corny" (1965) and "Mucho Locos" (1966).

The last classic cartoon featuring Daffy and Speedy is "See Ya Later Gladiator" (1968), which has been negatively received by fans of the Warner Bros. cartoons and has been considered the worst Looney Tunes cartoon ever made. The Warner Bros. animation studio was entering its twilight years, and even Daffy had to stretch for humor in the period. In many of the later DFE cartoons, such as "Feather Finger" (1966) and "Daffy Rents" (1966), Daffy is portrayed as a more sympathetic character rather than the full-blown villain he is in cartoons like "Well Worn Daffy" and "Assault and Peppered".

Why He Makes Us Go "Daffy" (In a Good way)

 * 1) When he debuted in 1937, he became the most popular character who would occasionally steal the show.
 * 2) *In fact, when he first appeared in 1937, he was the very first of all the "screwball" cartoon characters, which is a trope of cheery, silly, crazy, eccentric goofball prankster characters with nonchalance for hyperactivity and mischief which he himself started, which paved the way to other similar characters such as Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker, Tex Avery's Screwy Squirrel and Disney's Aracuan Bird for example, which was considered pretty unique and original back in the day.
 * He, along with Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and Tom and Jerry, were largely involved in putting an end to the cutesy cartoon characters of the 1930s and kickstarting the trend of zany-wacky cartoon characters throughout the 1940s-1950s.
 * 1) His famous rivalry with Bugs Bunny and Porky is very awesome and entertaining to watch.
 * 2) *His relationship with Bugs Bunny, as they used to have a form of rivalry that turned into friendship, is considered to be timeless, unforgettable, and a fan favorite.
 * 3) He even has a rivalry with Disney's own duck.
 * 4) *In fact, He and Donald's rivalry made perfect chemistry in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when they were playing pianos.
 * 5) His famous catchphrase "Youuu're dessthpicable!" never gets old.
 * 6) *Speaking of which, his famous laugh "Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!" back during his screwball days can be seen as funny and also never gets old as well.
 * 7) He has a habit of fourth-wall jokes and entertaining viewers with his own gags, which is really typical for cartoons.
 * 8) * His jokes and comedy were at their absolute best in the episode "Duck Amuck", where he wanted to be the star of the episode and his self-obsessed expectations always backfire on him in hilarious ways. Which became so legendary, he even got a fanmade collab which is full of creative and diverse reanimated versions of the episode itself.
 * 9) His other personality is being a screwball egotistic character, which can be funny and annoying at the same time, and being humiliated for his egotism makes his antics much more fun to watch.
 * 10) The funny running gag in some universes, like Space Jam, is considered the least favorite Looney Tunes character, much to his dismay.
 * 11) Mel Blanc, as with all his other characters, did an outstanding job voicing Daffy, giving an amazing singing voice to him in a couple of songs such as "Daffy's Rhapsody".
 * 12) He is so amazing, that he even has some of his own video games, and his star short "Duck Amuck" even inspired some other shorts such as "Rabbit Rampage" and "Rabbit Rampage 2 " from New Looney Tunes (originally named "Wabbit").
 * 13) His iconic lisp by Mel Blanc was so funny, that, similar to Sylvester, he needed to deliver a "Big Sloppy Voice", and even the fact that "I would have to keep repeatedly cleaning my script each time"
 * 14) Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett and Tex Avery all do fantastic and memorable jobs a giving Daffy their own personalities of him, weather it would be having him rivalling against Bugs and being a stingy money-hungry coward, driving other characters crazy, going on amazing adventures with Porky, or being the owner of his own company.
 * 15) He greatly redeemed himself in 1970 and has remained his lovable self since then.

Despicable Qualities

 * 1) His rivalry with Speedy Gonzales is often considered to be a terrible rivalry, and is more likely a rivalry fit for Sylvester since cats and mice don't like each other.
 * 2) *Speaking of which, this rivalry was also a factor that contributed to Daffy Duck's atrocious flanderization in the Seven Arts era. Thankfully, he has recovered since 1969 after they stopped his rivalry with Speedy Gonzales.
 * 3) **He also got slightly flanderized during 1951-1963 as he was a screwy happy-go-lucky duck into a short-tempered greedy money-loving coward. however, he is still likable.
 * 4) *Although he is charismatic, funny, and very kind in The Looney Tunes Show, he has an arrogant, mean, irresponsible, very facetious, and temperamental personality.
 * 5) While very funny, he can be very mean-spirited when he was considered to be the least favorite Looney Tunes character when in real life, he isn't.
 * 6) He can be annoying at times because of his jerkassery at times, especially towards Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny, even as a crazy goofball type of character.
 * 7) He was a bit unlikeable in some episodes of The Looney Tunes Show, most notable is in the episode "The Float", were he was at his absolute worst (in terms of the post-1969 cartoons), despite Daffy get punished in this episode, he didn't accepted it.

Videos
rPykx8Cb5yY A04exaGLpb0 LcCAZfGD-j4 e_XO3QS5_wc&t pYGNGfAWLPg QNBiz2zMPKI 23NbEOXRkCg gghILCfvFiM 6XvXsuSJ-1A uffz8KE5Wyg

Trivia

 * As revealed in the video "Doug Walker's Top 15 Comedic Influences", he is placed at #1. This is because Daffy's personality, energy, and wit as a "well-developed persistent loser who seeks fame and glory" is what inspired the Nostalgia Critic to have him fictionalized as a comedically jerkish and wrathful character who receives torment for being egotistical.