XKCD - Television Tropes

xkcd - Television Tropes & Idioms
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Analysis
Webcomic: xkcd
aka: XKCD
Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).
xkcd is a Stick Figure Comic by Randall Munroe. It is a gag-a-day comic, and generally does not have a continuing plot line or continuity (though there are occasional short story arcs). Many of the jokes are based on math, physics, UNIX and Internet memes, as well as romance and sex. Originally a relatively unknown set of personal sketches and doodles, it grew in popularity in 2006 when other webcomics (such as Dinosaur Comics) began linking to it. However, it was when Randall posted a "Map of the Internet ", and said map was
'Are you stealing those LCDs?' 'Yeah, but
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subsequently featured on Slashdot , that xkcd's popularity truly erupted. Since then, it has been among the most well-known of webcomics.
I'm doing it while my code compiles.'
Of course, you wouldn't know that just by looking at the comic. The characters are still drawn as very basic stick gures, with no facial features other than hairstyle (which is often used to distinguish males and females). However, there are three recurring characters who can be recognized by their respective headgear: "Black Hat Guy," a Jerkass Badass character with a black pork-pie hat, who in one storyline encountered a woman who out-Jerkassed him , and has now become a romantic interest . A beret-clad Cloudcuckoolander and Anti-Nihilist, generally thought of to be an Existentialist, albeit one with a thing for pastries. A dark haired woman, referred to in several comics as "Megan"; she shares many of the same interests with the nondescript Author Avatar and is commonly shown to be in a relationship with him. Was the main character of the "Choices" Series. There also seems to be a recurring main character with a distinct personality (most likely the author's own), but since he looks exactly the same as all the other stick gures without hair or hats, it could be argued that he's just a stock character. He has picked up the nickname Cueball. There are other recurring characters in the same social circle e.g. the dark-haired nihilist but most of them are less distinctive. existential
Has mentioned this very wiki . The wiki has returned the favor, taking many XKCD comics for page images (see Trivia.XKCD for the list). xkcd is part of the documentation for goto on the PHP website , and was mentioned as a ticket in a changelog note . Numerologists take note: adding up the numerical values of the title's letters yields a sum of 42. Coincidence? ...Yes.
SUBPAGES
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awesome characters fridge funny haiku heartwarming main nightmarefuel quotes tearjerker trivia wmg webcomic ymmv
MAIN INDEX NARRATIVE
Reached one thousand comics in January 2012. As the above-mentioned main character says, "Wow just 24 to go until a big round-number milestone!" In June 2012, xkcd added a section called What If? to its website, where Randall tackles hypothetical questions with physics and silly drawings. Has a lot of snark. Finally, be sure not to miss the Alt Text possessed by each and every comic which contain additional jokes and context. Completely unrelated, but some fan had the bright idea to create mathematics in XKCD style . Tropes used by this webcomic:
OPEN/CLOSE ALL FOLDERS
universal applied phlebotinum characterization characters characters as device dialogue motifs narrative devices paratext plots settings spectacle
GENRE
# & A-E 20% More Awesome: Used repeatedly, including this particularly meta example involving a graph about a decline in a relationship that might be caused by graphing things. Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder: 57: Wait For Me Acceptable Targets: In-universe, string theorists, liberal arts majors, 610: Objectivists (and again at 1049), 590: typographers and 114: computational linguists . Also, Velociraptors. Affectionate Parody: 141: Parody Week , whose strips don't really make fun of anything and, in some cases, could actually have been used by the regular cartoonist except for the artwork. It turns into a deconstruction of parody with the author halting his MegaTokyo parody because he feels sorry for the writer. The author also stops a later Penny Arcade parody because he respects the writers too much (with the respect transitioning to Ho Yay and then Slash Fic before he nishes.) Aggressive Categorism: 385: How It Works .
Guy to Guy: Wow, you suck at math. Guy to Girl: Wow, girls suck at math.
action adventure comedy
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commercials crime and punishment drama horror love news professional wrestling speculative ction sports story war
MEDIA
A.I. Is a Crapshoot: 416: CTRL-C! CTRL-C! All Just a Dream: 806, "Tech Support" . All Love Is Unrequited: 642, "Creepy" . Alt Text Ambiguous Syntax: Hyphen and Jacket
and Skynet
Anachronism Stew: Discussed. No one will care in the future. Analogy Backre: "And from that day on, I wore this little F key pendant everywhere I went." Angrish: One comic has a father conditioning his daughter's speech centers to shut down when she's upset. Hilarity Ensues to say the least: 573, "Parental Trolling" Animal Athlete Loophole: There's no rule saying a meerkat can't play rugby! Applied Mathematics: It's fond of this. April Fools' Day: For 2010, they changed the layout so that you navigate through the comics with a text interface . If you typed in 'cat' with no arguments, you'd get a line of text that reads "You're a kitty!" There were a lot of Easter Eggs hidden in there. 'make me a sandwich'/'sudo make me a sandwich' , emacs, the Konami Code... the list goes on. And for 2011, all comics went 3D. Also counts as Hypocritical Humor given the April Fool's comic itself . And now for 2012, the comic itself changes depending upon the web browser one views the comic with (as well as various other factors, such as location and operating system, but the web browser is the easiest to view the change with), with at least four different variations in Google Chrome, Windows Explorer, Moxilla Firefox, and Opera. Anything But That!: Many of the strips revolve around Randall's fear of velociraptors. Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "There's no porn set atop storm chasing vans. No homoerotic spelling bees. No women playing electric guitar in the shower". The last one actually worked, so it probably was
animation (western) anime comic book fan cs lm game literature music and sound effects new media print media radio sequential art tabletop games television theater
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videogame webcomics TOPICAL TROPES betrayal censorship combat death family fate and prophecy food holiday memory money morality politics religion school OTHER CATEGORIES british telly the contributors creator speak creators derivative works language laws and formulas show business
not so bad. The future predictions for 2100 end with: "Rainforests mostly gone due to climate shifts", "All coral reefs gone" and "Gillette introduces 14 bladed razor". The Alt Text for 1036 reads: "I plugged in this lamp and my dog went rigid, spoke a sentence of perfect Akkadian, and then was hurled sideways through the picture window. Even worse, it's one of those lamps where the switch is on the cord." The Art of Bra Removal: It doesn't help that the mechanism to unhook a woman's bra is apparently a Rubik's Cube. Art Evolution: Compare the rst 150 strips or so with the newer ones. Art Shift: A few strips actually shift up in terms of quality. The author doesn't seem to have a strong inclination to keep up such things though. On occasion, Randall has created temporary UNIX-themed and 3D-versions of the comic. 1021: "Business Plan" is hand-drawn, like the early strips were. Art Style Dissonance: It's surprisingly smart for its limited art style. Asbestos-Free Cereal: The "Free " strip, featuring three brands of cereal, with one of the being asbestos-free! Provides the page image for the trope and is the Trope Namer. Attention Decit... Ooh, Shiny!: Illustrated with a clever visual metaphor here . Author Appeal: Randall seems to really , really like create http://cu.nniling.us/ a redirect to xkcd itself cunnilingus , going so far as to
Author Avatar: The plain-featured stick man. (Sometimes. It can also be just anyone without special features.) Also, this Author Filibuster: Quite a few on DRM, for example here. Eventually lampshaded here and here. This one provides a similar counterpoint, though it's not exactly a lampshade. Author Phobia: Randall's alleged fear of velociraptors, Played for Laughs. Author Vocabulary Calendar: Wikipedia's propensity for using specic words over and over is discussed in the strip "Malamanteau" . Badass:
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split personality stock room trope truth and lies truth in television
While the recurring badasses are listed on the character sheet, Elaine Roberts from the 342nd issue is very much a badass. Imagine if there was nothing holding her back. Bavarian Fire Drill: Did you know you can just buy lab coats? Beware the Nice Ones: Our beret-clad Cloudcuckoolander makes some car-driving decisions . Stephenie Meyer. Seriously. Big Electric Switch: In Time Machine , the time machine looks like some kind of vending machine with a Big Electric Switch on the front. Bilingual Bonus: Assuming you speak Binary... this strip. Each group of four bits represents one nibble (hexadecimal digit): 6261 7365 2032. Each pair of digits is the ASCII code for one character in "base 2". Bitter Wedding Speech: Hey, you asked me to do a toast ... The Blank: All the characters. Bluff The Eavesdropper: In #525 :
Now and then, I announce "I know you're listening" to empty rooms. If I'm wrong, nobody knows, and if I'm right, maybe I just freaked the hell out of some secret organization.
Boggles the Mind: "Scrabble"; family games.
on the prevalence of dirty words you nd when playing
Book Ends: The rst panel and alt-text of this strip. Brains and Bondage: Chemists pick the worst safewords. Brick Joke: Ongoing The Journal boomerang difculties . joke , too . only one comic apart ?
Does it count if they're Then there's the
Wait, isn't Etymology Man a Flying Brick? So... bobcat . The reference in the latter two are in the Alt-Text.
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Tetris in 724
and 888 .
Buffy Speak: Up Goer Five is a cross between this and an inverted Expospeak Gag: it describes a Saturn V rocket using only the 1000 most-frequently-used words in the English language. Burma Shave: Found here. Call Back: Very popular, especially in the Alt Text. In "Useless ", an early comic, a heart is inserted into various mathematical formulas ending in question marks. It was captioned "My normal approach is useless here." Five years later in "Probability ", he wrote a strip about a terminally ill woman. The Alt Text reads, "My normal approach is useless here, too." Another in "Rogers St. ", to "Little Bobby Tables" from "Exploits of a Mom " Also, "Hell " and later, "Heaven ". In "A-Minus-Minus ", the Black Hat Guy sells an ofce chair on eBay, only for the actual package to arrive at the purchaser's home a bobcat. 251 comics later in "Packages ", one character sets up a script that purchases something random off eBay every day so he can continually receive packages (notice the Alt Text). The bobcat gets mentioned yet again in "Coupon Code " (Alt Text again). In "Barrel - Part 1 ", the very rst comic, a boy starts oating around in a barrel. In "Ferret ", the author puts wings on a Ferret hoping he will y. Eventually, the boy loses the barrel, and 11 comics later, in "Barrel - Part 5 ", is rescued by the winged ferret. The punchline for "Barrel - Part 1" is reused in Click and Drag ", when you scroll all the way to the right. The man with the loud girlfriend and the elliptical dish from "Loud Sex " gets a mention in the Alt Text from "Bass ". In "Forks and Spoons " scientists created fork/spork/spoon hybrids, with disastrous results. Only two comics later they are mentioned again in "Making Hash Browns ". The mouseover in "Cat Proximity " reads "You're a kitty!" The mouseover in "Turtles " "You're a turtle!". "Marshmallow Gun ", where the water gun appears to be the same one from
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"Philosophy " Black Hat Guy's past exploits are brought up in "Secretary: Part 3 ". Many of the romance comics feature a girl named Megan with shoulder-length black hair. Electric skateboards are a recurring motif. So are giant hamster balls. "Lemme know if you nd out why she's ordering all those colored plastic balls." In "Reload ", the Alt Text says, "And watch out for that guy from comic #53 ." ("Hobby"). Zeppelins Summer Glau: As a real paladin, he ghts in the name of his fair lady in "Venting ". He measures things by the silhouette which is always before his eyes in "Converting to Metric ". Oh, hey, speaking of cat captions... I IZ "IN UR REALITY "! In "Circuit Diagram ", the Alt Text remarks, "I just caught myself idly trying to work out what that resistor mass would actually be, and realized I had self-nerd-sniped." ("Nerd Sniping ") At one point Munroe produced several strips about boomerang hijinks. Then, once we've all forgotten about them, we get this . A very subtle and easily missed one occurs in the Alt Text of "Exploits of a Mom ", which references "Pi Equals ". The comic Up Goer Five explains a space rocket with only the 1000 most common words used in English. It includes the phrase "you will not go to space today" for when something goes wrong. The (later) What If? essay Model Rockets explains that it's possible to reach space, but not orbit, with model rocket engines. That phrase ends the article. The phrase also appears in alt-texts for Machine Gun Jetpack and Interplanetary Cessna .
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The Calls Are Coming From Inside The House: Spoofed. The Cameo: Hannelore from Questionable Content can be found here. Car Fu: Actually Submarine Fu: Black Hat Guy recovers his hat from his Love Interest in this strip by crashing a Russian nuclear submarine through the ice she's skating on. Catapult Nightmare: The dream in 806, "Tech Support" starts out as a nightmare, but eventually it gets a Happy Ending. The catapult is still there at the end. Centipede's Dilemma: "Did you know November is Tongue Awareness Month?" Centrifugal Farce: Argues whether or not this should be "centripetal force" . Children Are Innocent: Subverted , though partially doubly subverted when the child says "Gosh" in reaction. Cloudcuckoolander: Apparently , Summer Glau:
I eat my body weight in food every thirty-one days. That's slightly faster than the human average. [stares off at the clouds then falls down] I'm part of the oor now.
The Beret Guy can count as one as well. And maybe Randall himself... Coincidental Accidental Disguise: Apparently, a coin is enough to fool Batman. Comedic Sociopath: Black Hat Guy Comically Missing the Point:
"Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this picture?" The white balance, for one. Focus is a bit too close. The chromatic aberration suggests you bought your camera because it had "the most megapixels" THE CAR IS ON FIRE! Maybe you should use the insurance money to get a new camera.
having acne on half your face and ipping
Continuity Nod: See Call Back. Convection Schmonvection: Would someone please inform these kids of this trope. (It's
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not completely their fault; they're re-enacting the plot of Volcano.) Cool Shades: A derivative of this trope (with a reference to the CSI Quip to Black), as seen here . Cool Sword: This strip pokes fun at some of the avors this trope comes in.
Counting Bullets: In a parody of Dirty Harry in this comic Crazy-Prepared: Can go wrong . Also found here . Creator Breakdown: In 2010 Munroe discovered that his ancee has cancer. Coincidentally, quite a few comics he wrote afterward touch on the subject. Creepypasta: Parodied here . Cruel and Unusual Death: Especially from a hypochondriac's point of view. Cuteness Proximity: Shown in the strip "Cat Proximity ", which is the Trope Namer as well. Darker and Edgier : Played with in-universe by Harriet the Spy Date My Avatar: This Deconstruction: Fun seventy years, indeed. When we said to make it more realistic, we meant the graphics. Dectionalization wetriffs.com, mentioned in a spoof of Granted, not terribly detailed. Also, literary criticism. And now, apparently, all of them. Department of Redundancy Department: The Tautology Club is about redundancy Rule 34, is now a real thing . strip demonstrates how the internet makes you appear smarter.
A Degree In Useless: According to the Alt Text here, anthropology .
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because redundancy is what the Tautology Club is all about. Description Cut: Surely Nathan Fillion has better things to do these days than pretend to be Mal Reynolds. Meanwhile, wearing a brown coat, "Name's Captain Reynolds, ma'am." *ahem* "Name's Captain Reynolds, ma'am." Made even funnier by a certain episode of Castle Determinator: "He just reconnected the cables we cut, muttering something about "uptime". Devil's Advocate: Invoked but not used here . The trope itself is used without Name Drop in the Wright Brothers example . Did You Actually Believe? Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Mephistopheles encounters the E.U.L.A Disproportionate Retribution: Lots. Here're three examples . (for "endless wings").
Distant Reaction Shot: Used in the comic Tuesdays
Distracted From Death: In this strip a guy is so worried about this happening that he forces in sweet last words even when his love interest is just going to the grocery store. Dogged Nice Guy: Deconstructed here, uncharacteristically cynically. with the whole "Nice Guy" situation being played
Don't Explain the Joke: The comic frequently violates this rule. In many cases, the punchline occurs in the second-to-last panel, only to have a nal panel that then explains it. Other times the punchline is in the last panel... but there's a nal sentence that then explains the joke. On the rare occasion neither are done, you can probably check the Alt Text and nd it explained there. Don't Try This at Home: See the Alt Text for Wings . Subverted in a blog post : "But remember, I am not advocating doing anything dangerous unless its really cool." Double Entendre: "Geology: surprisingly erotic." Dream Apocalypse: "Please don't wake up. I don't want to die." Droste Image: This .
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Drunken Master: In the form of Ballmer's Peak . Dying Alone Eagleland / Global Ignorance: Deconstructed in this strip . Early-Bird Cameo: A line a big deal is made out of here while earlier . Arguably unintentional, but... actually appears verbatim quite a
Early Installment Weirdness: Newcomers to the series will nd it very strange that the rst few dozen comics are actually just sketches and philosophical musings set to artwork. It wasn't until around 50 strips in that xkcd as we know it began to surface. Edit War: Discussed here . Eldritch Abomination: This is why you shouldn't awaken the sheeple. Elemental Powers: Elements Elevator Gag: Floor 5: Zeppelin! Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Black Hat Guy and his girlfriend Even Evil Has Standards: While going over Black Hat Guy's (extensive) criminal record...
Black Hat Guy: I plead the third. Congresswoman: You mean the fth. Black Hat Guy: No, the third. Congresswoman: ...You refuse to quarter troops in your house? Black Hat Guy: I have few principles, but I stick to them.
The Black Hat Man's companion massacre .
does not condone his participation in the My Lai
Evolutionary Levels: Parodied in "Evolving ", which uses a Pokmon style cut scene to show a disease-causing bacterium evolving into a drug-resistant variant. F-J Facepalm: "Local g" offers an example (last panel). explains how to write good code, or possibly
Failure Is the Only Option: This ow chart
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not. Fake Out Opening: "The remaining 90 minutes of the movie will be a romantic comedy." False Cause: Several, though it is discussed here . Firefox and Witchcraft , as pointed out by Microsoft and the Christian Church. Cancer causes cellphones , though he is willing to reconsider with more data. A web site's visitors with False Dichotomy: "Charity" Fantasy Twist: This strip Martha Stewart Living subscribers, and the Furry Fandom. discusses this.
takes it to a very weird place. is to be trusted, they're not half as boring as they're
Far Side Island: If this strip stereotyped. Feghoot
90 years worth of predictions for the future ... only to end in an extremely lame meme. Lampshaded, then subverted here . Fetish Retardant: In-universe, the Power Rangers theme is this . Filler Strip: Parodied . Flatworld: Here , in a reference to Flatland. (Bonus points for the Alt Text pointing out what a stick gure would look like in Flatland according to the book.) Flock of Wolves: What are the odds of ve Ayn Rand fans being on the same train together? Four Point Scale: Strip 1098 explains the trope . Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: Done with a wolf, goat and cabbage , it ends halfway through when the problem solver leaves the wolf behind, questioning why he had a wolf in the rst place. The Alt Text goes a step further asking why there was a cabbage, taking only the goat, goats are ne. Geeky Turnon: Frequent, though with occasional unfortunate Manic Pixie Dream Girl overtones.
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Genre Blind: Genre blindness in horror movies is made fun of in this strip Genre Savvy: "The outbreak started with patient zero... and ended with patient zero ve minutes later." Gift of the Magi Plot: At least the result was the same . Girl in the Tower: This girl wants to be a lighthouse keeper because she gets to be the girl in the tower, only she's the one saving people. Girl on Girl Is Hot: Go go Gadget two lesbians doing it. Glasses Pull: Done by both Rick Astley and Isaac Newton for particularly dreadful puns. Glass Shattering Sound: Attempted. A God Am I: 676: The result of realizing how much computing power is available to the average person . 505: Speculating that a deity might be creating the universe out of boredom. Godwin's Law: Referenced and parodied in this strip. Also, the suggested a screen consisting entirely of Hitler's face with ashing eyes would be preferable to Vista. Going Mobile: There is a mobile version the Alt-Text. of the site, even with a button to click to show It doesn't exactly go as planned.
Golden Mean Fallacy: Played for laughs here. The Alt Text explicitly states: "I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims." A Good Name for a Rock Band: Or for a Tumblr. Inverted in the Alt Text: "Dot Tumblr Dot Com" would not make A Good Name for a Rock Band, due to potential confusion about its website. Gets skewered here, as well. Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: Strip 79 , "Iambic Pentameter". Guest Strip: A week full of them, by the authors of Questionable Content, Buttercup Festival, Overcompensating, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and FoxTrot. Yes, Bill
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Amend did a guest strip. Hard On Soft Science: With some frequency. It also appears in the warning at the bottom of each page. Homeopathy is a soft target, but perhaps Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped. Help Help Trapped In Title Factory: How someone got trapped in a universe factory, we'll never know. Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Black Hat Guy uses a one-time-only time machine to go back and kill Hitler, at his friend's insistence. Only he did it in 1945, in the bunker, which is when and where Hitler actually died. Hoist by His Own Petard: "I just caught myself idly trying to work out what that resistor mass would actually be, and realized I had self-nerd-sniped." In-universe, the strip just before that one. Homage Icarus Allusion: #1110, "Click and Drag", mentions Icarus. Really, it does. You'll have to look hard, though. I'd Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You: Well, kill you even sooner. Incredibly Lame Pun: Rather blatantly in strips 282 , 594 , and 626 . "I'm sorry if I hurt anthropology-major feelings with Friday's friendly jibe at a cool eld. I ... anthropologize." This one 460: Palaeontology . A comic the author drew as a part of a game features Richard Wagner chasing a guy on his "Ring Cycle". He commented: "Why did I draw this?" Complex Conjugate . Oh my Eris... Not just your signicant other. Your "statistically signicant" other . This strip's Alt Text. alt-text. I meant it as a
note
has two, one as the punchline and one in the Alt Text.
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345 : You'd make a wonderful dread pirate, Roberts. This. A lampshade is hung in the alt text. He thinks he drew this one to get back at people going through his stuff. They did this one on purpose. The alt text here, accompanied by a Glasses Pull.
Incredibly Obvious Bomb: It comes with a ''radioactive'' label . Innite Canvas: Several of the comics, but taken to the extreme with Click and Drag. Insane Troll Logic: All over the place! "Just talk to them like a fucking human being." "Nah, that's a sucker's game!" Face it--I'm your statistically signicant other. "Why are you carrying a chin-up bar?" ... "I'm not really a not-carrying-a-chin-up-bar person." Instant A.I., Just Add Water: Very easy on Python ! (as usual, Alt Text explains how) Internet Backlash: Many people were angry at #631 , as well as the alt-text in #764 . In The Style Of: Many of his parodies t this trope a little closer. Inverted Trope: Well, if it were a trope... "It" Is Dehumanizing: Some jerkass uses this on a furry in "Aversion Fads ". It Meant Something To Me: The spambot. It Was His Sled: parodied . I Want My Jetpack: Replace "jetpack" with "ying car" and the trope name's quoted word-for-word. I Will Find You: Find You Jerkass: Black Hat Guy. Jerk with a Heart of Gold: "No One Must Know" .
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Jumping the Shark: Played with in-universe in this strip's K-O
Alt Text.
Know Your Vines: Relationship after camping trip: strained. Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Alt Text gag from #721 really are stick gures. only works on the assumption that people in the xkcdverse
The punchline of #1054 depends entirely on you reading the speech bubbles instead of imagining them as spoken dialogue. Lightbulb Joke: How many audiophiles... L Is For Dyslexia: Double subverted in this strip . And then subverted a third time in the Alt Text. Logic Bomb: Used several times, but this one's Logical Fallacies: An intentional example in 'Extrapolation' Lampshaded here , in the "Principle of Explosion" comic. Loud of War: Several strips have featured inventive audio revenge on loud car stereos and neighbours who are loud in bed. Lol Cats: "What are you doing?!" "Gluing captions to your cats." Love Allegory: Katamari . Also, "Our love is like a Brontosaurus" . Love You and Everybody: I love the whole world. Major General Song: "Every Major's Terrible ", which is about choosing a course and how the person can't/won't/doesn't want to do any of them. Someone sang the whole comic (with accompaniment) here . for the audience.
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Note that the video was released within hours of the comic. Say what you will about XKCD's fandom, but damn. Manic Pixie Dream Girl: the female character. On the other hand, most characters in the strip have a strong devotion to making life a little weirder from the start, including Black Hat Guy. The appeal of this trope is parodied in comic 122 : "I didn't actually mean be different. I just want silly and entertaining on command now and then." But played completely straight here . The Masochism Tango: Black Hat Guy and his girlfriend. He blew up her car, for Chrissakes. By moving the mines she had set up to blow up his car. She stole his hat. He likes his hat. Measuring The Marigolds: Subverted in "Beauty" . Yes, scientists nd beauty and wonder in their work. It's just not always what everyone else thinks of as beautiful. Michael Bay: Knows the worst-case scenario . Mighty Glacier: Used literally in "Digital Rights Management" .
Black Hat Guy: Let's make a deal. You stop trying to tell me where, when, and how I play my movies and music, and I won't crush your homes under my inexorably advancing wall of ice.
Milestone Celebration: Only 24 Comics left till the *real* milestone! Ironically averted when "the *real* milestone" came. Mind Screw: Here. Just so you understand how weird this is, the guy on the right is talking to the past, and it's talking back. This strip starts out fairly normal. Then the whole world falls apart all of a sudden. The small print about "the algorithm" on the home page might also qualify as either an example or a parody:
We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently nds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves.note . The algorithm is Banned In China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly nds Jesus. This is not the algorithm. This is close. The story behind that is as follows: In 2007, some billboards popped up in New York with those
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sentences on them, as part of an apparent viral marketing campaign by ask.com . However, they apparently didn't nish it; the phrases didn't return anything relevant on Google. Randall decided to exploit this by having the many bloggers in his fanbase post the sentences as links to xkcd.com. He added them to the site itself so that the effort wouldn't be misinterpreted as an attempted Googlebomb . It worked; if you Google the phrases, the top results are all references to xkcd.
"Perhaps this Zone. Here . "Dark Flow"
could change your mind?" It's like something straight out of The Twilight
Mood Whiplash: Too many to fully enumerate. Some examples: segues from a Your Mom gag to something rather heartbreaking.
Mundane Made Awesome: In the xkcd-Verse, computer science is revered as if it were a martial art. The 1337 story arc is a good example. Making a sandwich! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!! Mundane Utility: Frequently, including lasers to zap squirrels . Also, using the LHC to cause cancer in helicopters . Mundane Wish: Done in this Averted with 'Megan' The alt text of the Actuarial strip names the Black Hat Guy as "Hat guy." The Author Avatar may be named Rob . Never Bareheaded: Black Hat Guy. Except the one time his hat was stolen . Nightmare Fuel: Velociraptors, in-universe. Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: This strip . strip.
Nameless Narrative: Most of the names of recurring characters were never clearly stated.
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Examined further in this one . Noodle Implements: Invoked here , to the dismay of the characters. Noodle Incident: Whatever the rest of "Comic fragment" was. Also, he somehow managed to go from upgrading a computer to being stranded out in the middle of the ocean surrounded by sharks. Then we have #521 . Start with trying to one-up some christmas light displays on Youtube. End up ghting raptors with lightsabers, Bill Gates killing Santa, and nally cutting down the Yggdrasil as a Christmas tree. And however he lost his genetics, rocketry, and stripping licenses in one go . Ofce Sports: What programmers get up to while their code's compiling . Off The Chart: This comic describing The Star Wars Holiday Special. This comic says logarithmic scales are for quitters who don't bother with getting enough paper to display their charts properly. Older Than They Think: (In-Universe) With the rapid pace of technology and information, everyone assumes that conversation is dying, newspapers are becoming sensationalist garbage, the sanctity of marriage is being threatened, society is collapsing, and things were better in the old days. This comic shows that people have been believing this for over a century. Ontological Mystery: #505 starts with this, and then puts another layer on top.
Organ Theft: Inverted in 914 . His ice is stolen... and he wakes up in a bathtub full of kidneys, rather than the other way 'round. Overly-Long Gag: On TV Tropes Signicant, which even combines this with Overly Pre-Prepared Gag. Expect to burst out laughing several times during #1110 . Not from the little tidbits in it,
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but from scrolling through it and nding you're still scrolling but it's not ending! That or simply stare in awe with mouth agape while thinking about how long that had to have taken to make... Overly Narrow Superlative: "I love you most out of all the girls in all the world who love me back." May double as a False Reassurance. And subverted in Bill Amend's guest strip :
Alt Text: Guest comic by Bill Amend of FoxTrot, an inspiration to all us nerdy-physics-majors-turnedcartoonists, of which there are an oddly large number.
Overly Pre-Prepared Gag: Just shy of a hundred years future, until you get to 2101.
of Googled predictions for the
Time may count as both this and Overly-Long Gag: the image on the strip page changes every hour, forming a stop-motion video with narrative when combined on external sites such as this one . People discussing it on the forums initially assumed it would go on for a few days, it went beyond that. Then it seemed logical that it would conclude at the end of the week, with a punchline on April 1st. When it became clear that the story was of two people building a sandcastle on the beach, the most common prediction was that upon nishing the sandcastle the tide would wash it away and the scene loop to the beginning, forming a metaphor of some sort. Eventually the castle was nished and the tide did wash it away, the scene fading to white... only for a brand new scene to start, two people now on a quest to nd out how seas and river and everything else works! It has now been going on for almost three months, updating each hour, with no end in sight.
Megan: That's what the rst part of not ending looks like.
P-T Parking Payback: "Police reported three dozen cheerful bystanders, yet no one claims to have seen who did it." Parting Words Regret: Discussed in Leaving . Person with the Clothing: Black Hat Guy.
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Pizza Boy Special Delivery: Subverted . Planet of Steves: The Alt Text for Hurricane Names reveals that with the English and Greek alphabets and the Oxford English Dictionary exhausted, and the subsequent storms proving to be uncountably innite, the NOAA gives up and names all the remaining hurricanes "Steve". Pluto Is Expendable: "It's been two years. I thought those wounds had healed. But I stand by what I said. Pluto never should have been a planet." Poe's Law: Referenced here . Poor Communication Kills: Demonstrated here . Porn Names: Discussed here . Power Perversion Potential: 3D printers . Precision F-Strike : The mission is FUCKING acomplished! Premature Aggravation: 439, "Thinking Ahead". window?" "Did he just go crazy and jump out the
Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Five of them, ranked by the likelihood of catching on. The Presents Were Never From Santa: He's an agent for the "forces working beneath the chaos of life"...or maybe not . Public Secret Message: This strip Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: FUCK. THAT. SHIT. MISSION. FUCKING. ACCOMPLISHED. Quip to Black: Here . (The CSI meme version.) Rain of Arrows: Agincourt Gambit Really Gets Around: Touched on here . "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Given by the target of a pickup artist in this strip . makes fun of the public messages in Redwall.
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Record Needle Scratch: Apparently a good name for your daughter . Red Pill, Blue Pill: parodied . Reference Overdosed: Many comics require the reader to know the reference to get the joke. Remix Comic: the forum-produced Making XKCD Slightly Worse . Notable is the fact that the spin-off comic has more than three times the number of strips than the original. Repeating so the Audience Can Hear: This one. Lampshaded by the Alt Text.
Retirony: This strip shows an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to defy the trope, with an ofcer dying the day before his last day on the job, when the department locks retiring ofcers into a heavily protected room for that day. Reverse Psychology: Black Hat Guy warns Rickroll: Mentioned several times. This strip actually includes the opening score, making for what has to be the most subtle Rickroll ever (unless you can read music). They actually rickrolled Rick Astley Subverted in this strip they hire Rick Astley to show up at a party and not sing. Complete with Glasses Pull and Quip to Black. "They kept Rickrolling me! It was only fair." Right Through the Wall: With an elliptical reector dish . Rule Number One: The rst rule of the tautology club is rst rule of the tautology club. Rule 34: If there are no actual Strunk/White erotic fanctions probably will be as a direct result of this comic. Discussed by name. Running Gag: Cory Doctorow blogging in a hot air balloon from the blogosphere. Raptors out there now, there vandals not to mess with his jack-o-lantern.
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Sarcasm Mode: "Try an Internet petition drive those totally work." Scenery Porn: There are several strips that have good visuals in them, such as United Shapes , but the absolute ginormous size of "Click and drag " takes this trope way past root 121. Schmuck Bait: "Jeffrey is famous as the picture on the Wikipedia article on 'Necrosis' " Science Is Wrong: "No one told you because you're cute when you get into something." The Scream: How people react to endless wings . Selfcest: You'd think this The hipster graph is going somewhere dramatic, but no.
Self-Deprecation: One way to interpret this strip . notes that the graph itself is "making it all worse." Self-Imposed Challenge: A rare non-video game example: This strip inspired an actual Flash implementation of the game. It's pretty unplayable (that's kind of the point) with the usual Tetris goals, but a MeFite pointed out the game is actually interesting and reasonably challenging if you try to end the game with as few pieces as you can. Serial Escalation: There are poster sized comics. There's one or two wall sized comics. But #1110 is so big it probably wouldn't t on the oor of a passenger jet hangar. It's 165888 pixels wide by 79872 pixels high (roughly 46'/12m wide by 22'/6m tall at 300DPI). The stick gures are about half an inch tall in a world that is to them 5 miles across. Trying to nd everything in it is likely to take at least half an hour. Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Wikipedia's propensity for this is discussed in the strip "Malamanteau" . Sexy Shirt Switch: At the bottom of #819 , that girl in biology class wearing one of your shirts rates 4 (out of 4) stars on the hotness meter. That girl in biology class wearing one of your mother's shirts rates a Flat "What.". Shaped Like Itself: The basis of 688 . And 703 . According to 1079 , Colorado is shaped like its Wikipedia article.
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The graph in #1230 Shout Out:
is true if you interpret it either as a polar or a cartesian plot.
Many, but of particular note is this one . It gets worse. Click the comic itself. Earlier than that, we have "In Popular Culture" . It's very subtle, but take a look at the works listed as examples. Any of them look familiar? Calvin And Hobbes say Hi . And again (this one also contains Shout Outs to Rocky and Bullwinkle and The Lord of the Rings). In the rst "1337" comic, one character poses the question, "How does she type with oven mitts on?" This is a reference to a frequently asked question on Homestar Runner's Strong Bad emails, and possibly also a reference to his "training gloves" in the site's "In Search of the Yello Dello" toon. The nal "1337" comic has the line "You'd make a great dread pirate, Roberts." Several comics reference Ender's Game. The Alt Text on this one Treader. is a reference to an obscure detail in The Voyage of the Dawn about swine u.
Hannelore's twitter account is seen during this strip
In the same one, it also has someone asking how long it'll take the u to reach Madagascar. "Craigslist Apartments" Ash Tree Lane. has a few notable addresses, including one house on scenic
Strip Games . See the Alt Text? Right. Black Hat is based on Aram from Men In Hats in many ways Hofstadter and his recursiveness . Jason Fox makes a cameo appearance in this strip . The Alt Text of this strip Gravity Wells is "We have met the enemy and he is us". a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a couple of things in Titan going "weeoooeeooo".
Falling whale in Click and Drag
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Also, a Creeper can be found in one of the caves. Hey! you're doing science. And you're still alive in the worst possible hell... Big Brother realizes he's trapped
Sickeningly Sweethearts: Black Hat Guy and his equally sociopathic girlfriend, when they think no one's watching. God help you if you catch them at it . Silent Scenery Panel: The occasional landscape drawings. Slow Loading Internet Image: Discussed in this Smart People Play Chess: On roller coasters, Snowy Screen of Death: With a screensaver . So Bad Its Horrible: Conversed here . Something Only They Would Say: How to get access to a server. Something Person: Etymology-man! Sophisticated as Hell: Strip 36 And this one This happens a lot. Check this strip . Space Elevator: After countless engineers / spend trillions over fty years, / a modern Babel disappears / because some fuck brought pruning shears. Space Whale Aesop: This is what happens when you use GOTO. comic. no less.
Special Edition Title: On October 26, 2009, the site was temporarily redesigned in a retraux early 90's style in dubious honor of the end of Geocities. Complete with broken HTML! Spin The Earth Backwards: Sort of. Spy Speak: Parodied. Stalker with a Crush / Dogged Nice Guy: Once again, Strip 513 . You'll understand.
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Starsh Alien: Whatever the entity in Steroids is . The Stars Are Going Out: Invoked in this strip .
The point is that there are too many stars. It's been freaking me out.
Stealth Pun: Ahem . This strip . In this strip , where an audience member lampshades its use. In this strip , beneath Black Hat Guy's tool bench is a box labelled "drills" and a box labelled "non-drills". Step Three: Prot: Mentioned in the Alt Text here . Stick Figure Comic "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Trope Namer. This strip shows a guy deriding a few people playing Rock Band, telling them it doesn't make them cool ... even though they're having fun. Stuffed into the Fridge: The combined volume of Summer Glau, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul is less than the volume of the fridge! Here . Swallowed a Fly: This strip, referencing a similar example in Serenity.
Swivel Chair Antics: Graphed. Take That: As required for any "real" computer user, the strip hates Windows, especially Vista. Computational linguists are also targeted occasionally. Because fuck computational linguistics . In the Alt Text:
Chomskyists, generative linguists, and Ryan North, your days are numbered.
While all those are often partially tongue in cheek, DRM gets searing loads of venom . Randall also makes his views on string theory fairly a very Old Pun . clear . Brains vs string theorists is
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Fuck grapefruit. This
Fuck coconuts.
for people who endlessly parrot Python.
Fuck literary criticism , philosophy , anthropology , psychology ... basically, any eld that isn't physics, mathematics, or computer science. He has also declared war on chemists , though that's more a grudging rivalry than a belittlement. With some exceptions, like the one against homeopathy, the Take Thats are usually intended to be in jest. Occasionally the comic doesn't make this entirely clear; notably, the one against anthropology majors was so widely seen as a serious insult to the eld that the author later issued an apology for it, as noted above under Incredibly Lame Pun. Fuck the cosine Console Lines . Xbox / Playstation fanboys are jerks. Nintendo fans will give you a hug, though. Fuck Cancer . "Suckville is considered by the Census Bureau to be part of the Detroit Metropolitan statistical area, despite not being located anywhere near Detroit." Another Alt Text one: "I've been trying for a couple of years now , but I haven't been able to come up with a name dumber than 'Renesmee'." Tempting Fate: A couple times in this strip.
"Are the raptors contained?" "Sure. Unless they gure out how to build lightsabers."
Terrible Ticking: Unn-tss, unn-tss, unn-tss... There Are No Girls on the Internet: This strip reason for that. addresses the author's theories about the
They Changed It, Now It Sucks: In-universe example. This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Science. It works, bitches. To Be Lawful or Good: He chooses lawful.
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Too Dumb to Live: In this comic , a girl runs up to a man named Rob and tells him:
"Remember last week when we dug up all those indian bones and made puppets out of them? It turns out they were buried over an ancient indian burial ground!"
The Topic Of Cancer: Shows up in more than a few strips, as Randall Monroe's now-wife had been diagnosed with stage-3 breast cancer during their engagement. Tradesnark: In this comic's alt text after the spambot is found out:
"Fine, walk away. I'm gonna go cry into a pint of Ben&Jerry's Brownie Batter(tm) ice cream [link], then take out my frustration on a variety of great ash games from PopCap Games(r) [link]."
Truth in Television: The "Get out of my head Randall!" meme where many of the comics are applicable to the everyday lives of the readers. Turing Test: The examiner is now questioning his own humanity . TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: Possibly the rst actual work to use this ? Twice Shy: This strip . And again . Deconstructed U-Z Unholy Matrimony: Black Hat Guy acquires a girlfriend in a mini-arc who shares similar interests and is more than a match for him. She comes up again, but slightly more rarely than he does. Un Installment: 404 The Unpronounceable: U+202e . Unsound Effect: Draw. Make make. Scoop. Pour. Tie. Rumble. Boom. Crack. Fuse. Follow. Detach. Open. Remove. Admire. Examine. Grind. Set. Approve. Give. Unwinnable Joke Game: There's a strip about Tetris. Predictably, someone on the internet made a game like that. And some managed to score lines in it . Up to Eleven: The basis of 670 . (sort of) and subverted .
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Vanity License Plate: The tendency of such plates to be owned by pretentious rich jerks is parodied, and Black Hat Guy claims another victim . One guy tries to fool people by getting a vanity plate consisting of 1's and I's , thinking he can commit crimes with impudence as no one will be able to correctly record his plate number. This backres on him in that he's the only one with a license plate like this, so the cops can nd him easily; and the Alt Text suggests his girlfriend gets a similar plate so that she can commit crimes that he'll get blamed for. Viewers Are Geniuses: One of the biggest practitioners. The strip often bases comics on obscure math, physics, or computer jokes. This has gotten less common over time, and the forums are very useful. You may need to be knowledgeable in several possibly obscure or complicated elds to completely get some of the earlier ones. For example, computer programing, meteorology, cosmic rays, and tao philosophy. Really . Another example: Hand this the laughter. to an electronics technician, and just sit back and watch
Viewers Are Morons: This directly goes against the above assertion, sometimes twining the two. While many of the jokes in the strip are aimed towards those in specialized elds or hobbies, Randall has a tendency to explain these references and jokes within the comic. Visible Silence: E.g. the end of this strip Visual Pun: This comic features a literal tarbomb .
We All Live in America: The old World According To Americans "map of ignorance/prejudice" gag is subverted when the Americans asked turn out to be "unexpectedly good at geography" and also aware of the holes in their knowledge. We Are As Mayies: To the time vultures , at any rate. Weird Currency: Here. Wham Episode: Randall reveals that due to illness in the family, the next few weeks are going to be ller. Normal updates resume. Then ve months later, he gives us a Tear Jerker with a heart-breaking Ironic Echo. (His now-wife is doing just ne, though.) What Is This Thing You Call Love?: My normal approach is useless here .
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What Measure Is a Mook?: Done via FPS mod . When All You Have Is a Hammer: Parodied. White Knighting: Occasionally the kind is accused of engaging in this kind of behavior , something directly parodied by Chansawsuit here. Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: This zombie movies that start in labs. comic points this out, specically with regards to
Why We Can't Have Nice Things: You could argue that it's subverted in the Alt-text ... but not by much. Wiki Vandal: Wikipedia articles are frequently defaced whenever a relevant topic is mentioned, as this blog documents . Wiki Walk: This This This shows the danger of falling into these. comic describes the trope perfectly. one mentions a path in the Alt Text.
Women Are Wiser: The women usually play the more sensible part in the comic. Word Puree Title: Explained here. X Days Since: 38 days since someone reset this sign . X Meets Y: Dirty Harry meets Rain Man , if only for one strip. Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: One of the strips is the trope page. Also this . Your Mom: Played with frequently. The trope is also used. Subverted here . Is in the Alt Text here and here . Mrs. Roberts defaces websites of people who tell these jokes to her daughter. Another one , and still another She apparently has a deeper gravity well than Saturn. You Answered Your Own Question: Happens here
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Your Brain Won't Be Much of a Meal: When Zombie Feynman wants brains after explaining how MythBusters are true science:
Person: Try the physics lab next door. Zombie Feynman: I said BRAINS. All they've got are string theorists.
Zeppelins from Another World Zerg Rush: Due to the popularity of xkcd, it's common to click on links and watch counts skyrocket. This is more apparent on "What if?", which has at least one outside link and a couple of PDFs per post. One of the most common comments in any of them is "xkcd army reporting in!"
The Word Weary Whatever Love Means Whubble William Shakespeare Stick Figure Comic Rant Comedy Gag-per-Day Webcomics Notable Quotables You Know Whats Bullshit Zorphbert And Fred You Tube Poop
alternative title(s): Xkcd new edits workshops edit page view source random
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TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy 220746 29
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XKCD - Television Tropes

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XKCD - Television Tropes

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xkcd - Television Tropes & Idioms

'Are you stealing those LCDs?' 'Yeah, but