Along with his friend Mickey Mouse, Donald was included in TV Guide's list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time in 2002,[5] and has earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

These films introduced Donald's love interest and permanent girlfriend Daisy Duck and often included his three nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

In Italy, Donald is a major character in many comics, including a juvenile version named Paperino Paperotto, and a superhero alter ego known as Paperinik (Duck Avenger in the US and Superduck in the UK).

"[8] Nash reputedly originally developed the voice as that of a "nervous baby goat" before Walt Disney interpreted it as sounding like a duck.

As animator Fred Spencer put it: The Duck gets a big kick out of imposing on other people or annoying them, but he immediately loses his temper when the tables are turned.

Throughout his appearances, Donald has shown that he is jealous of Mickey and wants his job as Disney's greatest star, similar to the rivalry between Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.

Donald has numerous enemies, who range from comical foil to annoying nemesis: Chip 'n' Dale, Pete, Humphrey the Bear, Spike the Bee, Mountain Lion Louie, Bootle Beetle, Witch Hazel (in Trick or Treat), Aracuan Bird and Baby Shelby (in Mickey Mouse Works).

[14] On April 29, 1934, five days before The Wise Little Hen's first theatrical release, bandleader Raymond Paige performed the score to the cartoon on his California Melodies program for the Los Angeles AM radio station KHJ.

[17] The film's given release date of June 9 is officially recognized by the Walt Disney Company as Donald's birthday,[18] though historian J.B. Kaufman, consultant of The Walt Disney Family Museum, discovered in recent years that The Wise Little Hen was first shown on May 3, 1934, at the Carthay Circle Theater for a benefit program, while its official debut was on June 7 at the Radio City Music Hall.

[15] Donald's appearance in the cartoon, as created by animator Dick Lundy, is similar to his modern look – the feather and beak colors are the same, as are the blue sailor shirt and hat – but his features are more elongated, his body plumper, his feet smaller, and his sclerae white.

[19] Donald's act is to recite the poems Mary Had a Little Lamb and Little Boy Blue, but every time he tries, the mischievous orphans heckle him, leading the duck to fly into a squawking fit of anger.

[23] Other shorts from this period include a six film mini-series that follows Donald's life in the U.S. Army from his drafting to his experiences in basic training under Sergeant Pete to his first actual mission as a commando having to sabotage a Japanese air base.

Titles in the series include: Thanks in part to these films, Donald graced the nose artwork of virtually every type of World War II Allied combat aircraft, from the L-4 Grasshopper to the B-29 Superfortress.

Donald's most famous appearance, however, was on the North American Aviation B-25B Mitchell medium bomber (S/N 40-2261) piloted by Lt. Ted W. Lawson of the 95th Bombardment Squadron, USAAF.

The Ruptured Duck's pilot survived, with the loss of a leg, and later wrote about the Doolittle Raid in the book, later to be the 1944 movie, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Donald is seen repeatedly attacked, harassed, and ridiculed by his nephews, by the chipmunks Chip 'n' Dale, or by other characters such as Humphrey the Bear, Spike the Bee, Bootle Beetle, the Aracuan Bird, Louie the Mountain Lion, or a colony of ants.

In effect, much like Bugs Bunny cartoons from Warner Bros, the Disney artists had reversed the classic screwball scenario perfected by Walter Lantz and others in which the main character is the instigator of these harassing behaviors, rather than the butt of them.

In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Donald has a piano duel scene with his Warner Brothers counterpart Daffy Duck voiced by Mel Blanc.

However, ten years prior to the series' beginning, Della went missing, leading to Donald and Scrooge going their separate ways and not speaking to each other throughout that time.

While Donald's cartoons continue to be shown in the United States and around the world, his weekly and monthly comic books enjoy their highest profile in many European countries, especially Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland, but also Germany, the Netherlands, and Greece.

In most of them, publications still continue: Australia, Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark (Faroe Islands), Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the former Yugoslavia.

Barks placed Donald in the city of Duckburg, creating a host of supporting players, including Neighbor Jones (1944), Uncle Scrooge McDuck (1947), Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), April, May and June (1953), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), Magica de Spell (1961), and John D. Rockerduck (1961).

One example is Donald Duck's alter ego, a superhero called Paperinik in Italian, created in 1969 by Guido Martina (1906–1991) and Giovan Battista Carpi (1927–1999).

Romano Scarpa (1927–2005), who was a very important and influential Italian Disney artist, created Brigitta McBridge, a female Duck who is madly in love with Scrooge.

The American artist William Van Horn also introduced a new character: Rumpus McFowl, an old and rather corpulent Duck with a giant appetite and laziness, who is first said to be a cousin of Scrooge.

Working for the Danish editor Egmont, artist Daniel Branca (1951–2005) and scriptwriters Paul Halas and Charlie Martin created Sonny Seagull, an orphan who befriends Huey, Dewey and Louie, and his rival, Mr. Phelps.

With writer/editors Stefan and Unn Printz-Påhlson, Vicar created the character Oona, a prehistoric duck princess who traveled to modern Duckburg by using Gyro's time machine.

[42] In the mid-1930s, Robert S. Hartman, a German who served as a representative of Walt Disney, visited Sweden to supervise the merchandise distribution of Sagokonst (The Art of Fables).

[46][47] Some observers from Finland from the same time period supported Donald, referring to him as a "genuine proletarian ... forced to sell his labor at slave rates to make a living".

However, the constant search for an outlet to vent his frustration led the Italian rendition of Donald Duck to seek his catharsis in several ways: in the sixties, vexed by Scrooge's antics and Gladstone's luck, he reinvented himself as Paperinik, the Duck Avenger (as he came to be known outside Italy), an anti-hero at first, a self-assured, well-adjusted, brilliant hero in later stories, no longer bound by the self-doubt and the mockery Donald is constantly subjected.