Styled as an anthropomorphic black duck, he has appeared in cartoon series such as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, in which he is usually depicted as a foil for either Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig or Speedy Gonzales.

Virtually every Warner Bros. cartoon director, most notably Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones, put his own spin on the Daffy Duck character.

Porky's Duck Hunt is a standard hunter/prey pairing, but Daffy (barely more than an unnamed bit player in this short) was something new to moviegoers: an assertive, completely unrestrained, combative protagonist.

In fact, the only aspects of the character that have remained consistent through the years are his voice characterization by Mel Blanc; and his black feathers with a white neck ring.

However, in Mel Blanc's autobiography, That's Not All Folks!, he contradicts that conventional belief, writing, "It seemed to me that such an extended mandible would hinder his speech, particularly on words containing an s sound.

(In his autobiography, Mel Blanc stated that the zany demeanor was inspired by Hugh Herbert's catchphrase, which was taken to a wild extreme for Daffy.)

Friz Freleng's version took a hint from Chuck Jones to make the duck more sympathetic, as in the 1957 Show Biz Bugs.

Some TV stations, and in the 1990s the cable network TNT, edited out the dangerous act, afraid of imitation by young children.

Several cartoons place him in parodies of popular movies and radio serials; Porky Pig was usually a comic relief sidekick.

Daffy's desire to achieve stardom at almost 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.

(each respectively launched in 1951, 1952, and 1953), Daffy's attention-grabbing ways and excitability provide Bugs Bunny the perfect opportunity to fool the hapless Elmer Fudd into repeatedly shooting the duck's bill off.

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.

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.

The last cartoon featuring Daffy and Speedy is See Ya Later Gladiator, in what animation fans call the worst cartoon made by Warner Bros.[9] In light of the longstanding popularity of The Bugs Bunny Show and its various incarnations on CBS and ABC, NBC commissioned their own half-hour series, The Daffy Duck Show, which began airing in the fall of 1978.

[10] Eventually, NBC canceled the series, and many of the cartoons were reintegrated into the lineups for the respective CBS and ABC Bugs Bunny shows.

In the film, Daffy (utilizing his original, wacky characterization) shares a scene with his Disney counterpart Donald Duck whilst performing in a piano duel.

The latter film does much to flesh out his character, even going so far as to cast a sympathetic light on Daffy's glory-seeking ways in one scene, where he complains that he works tirelessly without achieving what Bugs does without even trying.

In Tiny Toon Adventures, Daffy is a teacher at Acme Looniversity, where he is the hero and mentor of student Plucky Duck.

In Loonatics Unleashed, his descendant is Danger Duck (voiced by Jason Marsden), whom his teammates consider lame and unpopular.

Following Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Warner Bros. has slowly moved the spotlight away from Bugs and more towards Daffy, as shown in the 2006 direct-to-video movie Bah, Humduck!

However, more recent merchandise of the duck, as well as that featured on the official website, have been shown to incorporate elements of the zanier, more light-hearted Daffy of the 1930s and 1940s.

Producer Larry Doyle noted that recent theatrical cartoons were planned that would portray a more diverse Daffy closer to that of Robert McKimson's design; however, due to the box office bomb of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, these new films ceased production.

Daffy's one possession he is proud of is his paper-mache parade float, constructed on top of a flatbed truck, which is his main means of transportation.

Daffy has difficulty telling fiction from reality; he often confuses television shows for his own life, believes Bugs is Superman, and at one point hallucinates he is a wizard.

Daffy appears in the preschool series Bugs Bunny Builders which currently airs on Cartoon Network's Cartoonito block and HBO Max.