Foxtrot / Tropes A to M

FoxTrot contains examples of:

See also Tropes N to Z.

A-B

• 419 Scam: One serves as another way to show that Roger is a total rube.
  Andy: Oh, look. A Nigerian widow is offering to give me $10 million if I send her $500 for paperwork.
  Roger: Andy, Andy, Andy, just delete the the e-mail. It's a total rip-off.
  Andy: [sarcastically] Gosh, you think so?
  Roger: Yup. I'm getting $20 million from a Ugandan for $350.
  Andy: This is where you say "Just kidding"...
• Absurdly Bright Light:
  • One strip has Jason ponder cartoonist corner-cutting techniques such as justifications for leaving a blank panel. As he ponders how it would work indoors, Peter shows off his new 50,000-watt flashlight and generates this effect.
  • In another strip, Jason catches so many fireflies that their combined light, collected together in a jar, turns night to day and prompts Jason to ask Peter to find his sunglasses.
  • Yet another has Andy saying goodnight to Jason and turning off his light... which does nothing to change the light level in his room. Then Andy questions him about how many glow-in-the-dark toys he has.^note A different strip mentions that he has managed to completely wallpaper his room with glow-in-the-dark stickers from his cereal.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: Peter throws a baseball at an apparently far-off tin can sitting on a fence post. In the final panel, we see that he was actually aiming for Roger's much closer glove.
• Accidental Proposal: Eileen Jacobson begins her "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" essay by announcing that Jason proposed to her. Jason uncorks a multi-panel Big "WHAT?!", while his best friend Marcus seems unsurprised: "Dude, you waved hi at her when she was with her dad. What'd you think it meant?" Though given their relationship, she may very well be gaslighting him for laughs.
• The Ace: Grandma, although she also ends up deconstructing The Ace a bit in her first appearance when she learns that her Monty Oum levels of awesome had given Andy resentment and a desire to prove herself since the seventh grade.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Provides the page image. Roger is somehow able to get fire to blow out the bottom end of a grill by putting the charcoal in upside-down. Jason even lampshades it:
  Jason: For anyone else, I'd declare this impossible.
• Acid Reflux Nightmare:
  • Andy's food tends to cause this. In different arcs, Jason had A Christmas Carol nightmare, Paige had a The Nutcracker nightmare, Peter had an Odyssey nightmare, and Roger had a Polar Express dream.
  • One of the final series of daily strips had Peter and Paige eating tons of gingerbread cookies, resulting in a dream sequence where they became such cookies.
• Acquaintance Denial: When Roger Fox is acting embarrassing in a Yoga Class, his wife Andy tells him that she is "pretending not to know you".
• Acquainted in Real Life: Jason has been World of Warquest buddies with a player named "Sgt. Neelie" for three weeks, and he's shocked that not only is the player a girl, she is his "real-life nemesis", Eileen. She later reveals that she knew his username from the get-go and had tricked him to prove a point (that they could be friends if it weren't for his real-life hang-ups).
• Acting Unnatural: Paige and Nicole shoplift a CD. Nicole tells Paige to act naturally. Paige holds her breath. Nicole tells Paige that acting naturally includes breathing. Paige immediately starts loudly panting as Nicole Face Palms and adds "Quietly".
• An Aesop:
  • In a 1989 story arc, Peter and Jason find an envelope with $80 in it. Jason is excited because he gets to buy Indiana Jones toys and have enough left for Peter to buy a new baseball glove. They then discover that the money was intended for a person who died, and thus give it back to one of his relatives. This ends up being a lesson in responsibility for the both of them, although only Peter seems to be the one learning.
  • In an early arc, Peter and Steve struggle with a physics question and repeatedly tell their teacher that they have it covered. At the end of the arc, they end up begging him for help. The teacher tells them that physics is a hard class, and he doesn't think they're stupid for asking for help; he thinks they'd be stupid not to.
  • Andy freaks out when Paige and Jason toss away a needle they found on the beach. While they had good intentions, she tells them that they could easily have stuck themselves with the needle and got sick. It would have been better to fetch an adult to dispose of the needle safely. A good lesson for most kids to know.
  • Paige and Nicole attend a party with upperclassmen, thrilled that they were invited and treated like one of the crowd. They become disappointed, however, on realizing people just want to hook up or do drugs. Nicole and Paige decide to run to the video rental store to save the night. Sometimes popularity is overrated.
• Affair Hair: Andy thinks she finds one on Roger's jacket during an uncharacteristic fit of jealousy.
• Affectionate Parody: Of The Boondocks when Jason attempts to fill in for Aaron Mcgruder, despite knowing nothing about "African American Culture" or "Politics".
• Afraid of Needles: Roger, in a story arc that ran after 9/11, decides to give blood despite being afraid of needles.
• All-Cheering All the Time:
  • When Paige was trying out for cheerleading, she started using cheers all the time; including giving a (correct) answer to a question on The Scarlet Letter in English class.
  • And when Paige was on the JJV (junior junior varsity) cheer squad, she was sent to cheer at events like chess matches and debates.
• All Just a Dream: Several strips have the characters dreaming an absurd situation (Jason giving Andy the keys to a fancy car and vacation tickets because she raised his allowance to $15,000 a week — then cut to The Reveal that he's whispering into her ear to manipulate her dream).
• Always Someone Better:
  • Eileen is this to Jason. She seems to trump him at everything (schoolwork, video games, you name it), much to his rage, and his attempts to one-up her always end in disaster. The fact that she has a crush on him only makes it worse.
  • This is sometimes taken to ridiculous extremes. In one strip, Jason found a Four-Leaf Clover right before class started, and then gloated to Eileen how it would help him get the highest grade on the math test... And then Eileen found a five leaf clover. In the last panel of the strip, Andy is yelling at Jason because he apparently flunked the test because he missed it, because he was spending the whole time searching for a clover with more leaves.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents:
  • Andy becomes one in an early story arc in which she is tapped to write a column about family life for her newspaper. Much to the kids' chagrin, she shares embarrassing stories about them while using their real names, leading to their being mercilessly teased at school. She finally bows to pressure and agrees to publish her column under a pseudonym.
  • Andy's mother is this to her by the virtue of being, as described by the New York Times itself, "perfect".
• Amusing Injuries: Whenever Paige beats Jason up, he has broken glasses.
  • Peter wearing a catcher's mask so that Fauntleroy couldn't bite him? Sure, it was worth a shot. Crouching down and taunting Fauntleroy to do his worst? Not such a great idea.
    Peter: [speaking through a layer of bandages] Did you know that some dogs' heads are smaller than a baseball?
• Amusingly Awful Aim: The baseball coach wants to move his car so Peter doesn't hit it with the ball again. The coach drives it right into center field.
• Analogy Backfire:
  • When Peter shaves his head after losing a bet (see Humiliating Wager, below), Andy cries that people will think he's a Nazi! Peter offers, "Michael Jordan has a shaved head and no one calls him a Nazi."
  • Occurs in an early story where Jason becomes interested in trading commodities, then asks Roger for advice (see Space Whale Aesop, below):
    Roger: The basic idea behind commodities trading is that you're trying to predict whether something will become more scarce and thus more valuable, or less scarce and therefore less valuable. For example, if you thought space aliens were going to come and take away half the world's cows, you might want to load up on cattle futures, since the low supply would send their value through the roof.
    Jason: Space aliens? This is cooler than I thought.
    Roger: Conversely, if you knew someone was about to discover a giant pirate cave filled with gold...
  • In the Camp Bohrmore story arc, Morton Goldthwait, in Drill Sergeant Nasty mode in his capacity as a counsellor, berates Jason for doodling on his aerodynamics notes, asking if Bernoulli or da Vinci ever doodled. Jason points out that da Vinci doodled quite a lot - and is promptly punished for talking back.
  • Peter once used The Metamorphosis as an example to Jason, who had been transformed into a girl (It Was All Just A Dream), commenting on how well things had worked out for Gregor Samsa. Jason says that Gregor starved to death, abandoned by his family. Peter then admits he had never read past the first page of the book, as usual.
• Animated Actors: Some strips use this premise for Rule of Funny.
  • In one Sunday strip, Peter lights up the grill in Roger-style fashion; in the last panel, Roger walks in, script in hand, and says he was supposed to do that. A scorched Peter says "Happy Father's Day, Dad."
  • Taken to another step in one series where the comic suffers an "ink outage"^note being reduced to blank panels with Peter and Jason represented by their hat and hair & glasses respectively, with Peter checking with "neighbors" like Jon Arbuckle and the Pattersons to see if the outage is affecting them too.
• Animated Adaptation: This post on the strip's website has drafts for two episodes of one that never got off the ground.
• Annoyingly Repetitive Child: During one instance of Paige babysitting Katie, Katie's mother informs Paige that Katie isn't allowed to watch TV that night. However, Katie has just become a big fan of Blue's Clues and just keeps chanting the name of the show ad infinitum throughout the entire set of strips, only stopping to breathe when Paige reminds her to.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Jason to Peter and Paige.
• Apathetic Teacher: The kids' teachers tend to fall into this mode occasionally.
• Appeal to Flattery: The kids often try this to get what they want. Sometimes it works when combined with Loophole Abuse:
  Paige: Favorite Mother... wonderful Mother... beautiful Mother... flawless and wise—-
  Andy: Paige, with a buildup like that, I can promise you in advance, the answer is "No."
  Paige: Do you mind if I put off my homework so I can go to the mall?
  [Andy is speechless, knowing she's been outsmarted]
  Paige: I'll be back in time for dinner.
  Andy: I'm obviously not that wise.
  Jason: Favorite Mother... wonderful Mother...
• Apple for Teacher: One Sunday Strip involved Peter eating all the apples before Jason could give one to the teacher at the start of the school year. Peter eventually convinced Jason to go with a potato, as it's known as the "apple of the earth" in French.
• April Fools' Plot:
  • In an early strip, Peter spent an entire week having to live down Denise's April Fools' Day joke; a chocolate rabbit filled with hot sauce, which he, of course, ate in two bites before his mouth was set aflame.
  • On one April Fools' Day, FoxTrot featured the same punchline as Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine, where one character uses a Ouija board to spell out a message to kick the other character in the shins.
  • There's also this memorable strip, where Jason is watching the season 2 premiere of Game of Thrones, only for them to show a fake episode using My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and knight toys.
• Armor-Piercing Question: During one storyline, Steve, having missed a test due to a doctor's appointment, asks Peter what was on the test, but Peter refuses to say out of principle.
  Steve: "Cheating" would be if I knew the correct answers ahead of time. All I'm doing is asking you what your answers were.
  Peter: What's the difference?
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: A G-rated example. In one of her dream sequences (usually involving a handsome French swain named Pierre), Paige reflects aloud:
  Paige: (sigh) Here I am, all alone and beautiful on this romantic hillside...
  [Beat]
  Paige: I SAID-
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Done in this strip:
    Andy: Jason, I told you two weeks ago that I didn't want Mortal Karnage II coming into this house. You have no one to blame but yourself.
    Jason: But... but...
    Andy: You're too young for this sort of thing. I mean, look at what it teaches: that human disembowelment is entertainment... that "winners" decapitate their enemies... that carnage is spelled with a "K"...
    Jason: I know carnage isn't spelled with a "K".
    Andy: The sad part is, that's the least of my concerns.
  • And with Paige's new alarm clock app:
    Alarm: Reeeee! Reeeee! Multiple tornadoes approaching! Seek shelter immediately!
    (Paige snores away)
    Alarm: Awoooga! Awoooga! Zombies have breached the perimeter! Barricade all doors and windows!
    (Paige still snoring away)
    Alarm: Ding! Ding! Attention fashion shoppers... our 99-percent-off-everything sale ends in one minute!
    Paige: (bolts up from her pillow) Wait! Wait! What???
• Armchair Military: In an unsubtle Take That! to the then-administration's foreign policy, Jason and Marcus try playing "Army Men" outside, but decide it's too hot, so they come inside and play "Civilian Leadership" instead:
  Jason: More iced tea, Mr. Secretary?
  Marcus: Why, thank you, Mr. President.
• Art Evolution: The art was a lot looser and more detailed in its first couple years. By the early 1990s, it had started becoming flatter and more geometric (eyes became circles instead of ovals, Jason's hair strands became equally spaced, the lettering became mono-spaced, etc.) but still had a fairly high attention to detail, most of which was simplified in the latter half of the decade.
• Artificial Outdoors Display: During the Caribbeany resort arc (Roger takes the family to a tropical resort a thousand miles from the ocean), we see Roger and Andy looking at the sunset together... before it's replaced with a "Please swipe credit card to continue".
• Art Imitates Art: In one Sunday strip, Jason is ecstatic to find a "Doomulus Prime" weapon while playing World of Warquest. A few months later, Blizzard Entertainment created a Doomulus Prime item for World of Warcraft. In his annotated "Best Of" collection, Bill Amend admitted, "how cool is that?"
  • Bonus points for the fact that Amend originally named the weapon after Optimus Prime from Transformers.
• Artistic License – Animal Care:
  • Quincy is an iguana - iguanas are vegetarian, yet Jason feeds him mealworms. Though he's not nearly as bad as Roger, who fed Quincy chocolate chip cookies in one strip (chocolate is poisonous to animals).
  • Invoked when Paige gets fish - she puts guppies in with an angelfish, resulting in this:
    Paige: That's right little guppies, eat the fish food. That's right mister angelfish, eat the fish-FOOD! I said eat the fish FOOD!
• Artistic License – Chess:
  • Jason once won a chess game with only a single move after his father moved one pawn. This is impossible; the fastest capable checkmate requires four moves minimum.
  • Played within the February 7, 2010 strip as seen above Jason and his friend Marcus add new stuff to the game, making his sister remark that they actually found a way to make chess nerdier. (Jason and Marcus know the rules; they purposely added to them.)
• Asian and Nerdy: Eugene and Phoebe Wu, a brother-sister team whom Jason and Marcus first met in a late-1990s Story Arc involving a science summer camp.
• Asleep in Class: This happens to Paige often. One strip seems to explain that her internal clock is 12-hours fast.
• Author Avatar: Jason is used to project Amend's nerdy nature.
• Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Roger occasionally ropes Peter and Jason into these, most typically taking them on miserable camping trips.
  • In one strip, Roger invites Jason to play golf with him after school, and Jason starts misbehaving in class in the hopes of being put in detention to get out of it.
• Awkward Poetry Reading: Played with. Peter writes a poem for his girlfriend Denise, excitedly bringing it to her in the lunchroom at school. She's very flattered and asks him to read it to her...because she's blind. Cue an Oh, Crap! from Peter because he forgot that, and Denise struggling not to smile because she knows he forgot.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: As much as they fight, the Foxes are still family, and are there for each other when they need it.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Paige worries that she'll become this after not only not getting grossed out by dissecting a frog for a science lab, but actually enjoying it. It doesn't help that Jason keeps telling her that.
  • Peter becomes this (with an actual axe!) when Jason and Marcus try to shoot Paige in the face with a bunch of darts with glue on them, but miss and hit Peter instead. He cuts down the tree they've chosen to hide in, then asks if they've ever seen The Shining.
• Backwards-Firing Gun: One strip had Jason ask Paige to help him figure out what's wrong with his squirt gun. She gives it a once-over, then grins evilly as she points it at Jason and pulls the trigger, only to soak herself. Jason quips "I mean, what's the point of a squirt gun that fires backwards?", and Paige replies "You got me."^note Which can be seen as either "I have no idea" or "You managed to trick me".
• Bad Boss:
  • J.P. Pembrook, Roger's boss, who does things like giving himself a giant pay raise while the company's in the red, insisting that the employees make themselves look bad on photo day so he'll look better by comparison (he doesn't tell Roger this because he automatically makes Pembrook look better), and at one point hired Roger to be the clown at his son's birthday party — though to be fair to that one point, Roger's job description actually does include "Bozo Services" (which Roger thought was a joke when he took the job), and at the end of the arc Pembrook thanks him for a job well done (and begs him not to sue).
  • In the series where Roger briefly quits his job and then comes back for it, Pembrook shows his nice side by simply counting it as spent vacation time...however, his Jerkass side is much stronger, since he essentially forces Roger to get on his knees and beg for the job back (and shine his shoes), and he cuts Roger's pay immediately after admitting that other companies would pay a man with his level of skill and experience six times what they were paying him.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • One story arc had Roger taking the boys camping, which naturally turned into a Macho Disaster Expedition. In one strip Peter remarks that the only way it could get worse was if Roger had them sit naked around the campfire and beat a drum in some kind of insane male bonding ritual. Obviously it's set up to be Tempting Fate, but the last couple of panels reveal that the boys were well aware Roger was going to attempt exactly that and thus were trying to head him off at the pass via Hint Dropping (Jason: "I don't think he heard you, try saying it louder" as Roger pokes his head out of his tent while holding a drum).
  • In one strip, Denise mentions to Peter that her mother wants her to ask how emotionally committed he is to her, and whether he's made any long-term plans for their relationship; she waits for a few seconds, well able to imagine his Oh, Crap! expression, then:
    Denise: Of course, I told her to put a sock in it.
    Peter: (sagging) I love you, Denise.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Near the end of Roger's temporary retirement arc, when he admits that "maybe" he should have considered his responsibility to support his family along with his desire to spend time with his children, Andy says that he's wrong... about the "maybe" part.
• Batter Up!:
  • Peter and Andy in two separate arcs hinted at wanting to bludgeon Roger with one of his golf clubs (or in the case of the latter strip, his newly bought, expensive golf club) when irritated about having to golf with him in torrential rain and in fury about Roger buying a new golf club, respectively.
  • Peter wanted to do it another time too, after Roger only offered to pay him five cents a hole after a particularly grueling job as a caddy.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • After Andy expresses joy at seeing The Passion of the Christ become a success, she says that she wishes that more of the "copycats" in Hollywood would do more religious-themed movies. She then sees a trailer for Alien vs. Predator vs. Jesus.
  • Also, Roger's rants about either gaining a lot of money in regards to developing a website or the excessive costs of christmas cards were the reason why Jason decided to do money-making schemes relating to these things.
  • Played almost verbatim in one strip in which Paige knocks a bag of flour off the counter while singing "White Christmas", and the flour turns her, Andy, and the whole kitchen white. Paige even remarks, "Figures it'd be that stupid wish that comes true."
• Bedsheet Ghost:
  • In a 1999 Halloween strip, Peter does this and gets an appropriately horrified reaction from his mother, but only because he has cut holes in her new Ralph Lauren sheets.
  • In other strips in 2001, Jason wears this as a costume and the trick-or-treaters were wearing the same thing.
• Bedsheet Ladder: Jason places a ladder constructed of tied together handkerchiefs in Quincy's cage, along with a book on lock picking and a few paperclips and hair clips, in an attempt to create plausible deniability when he turns the iguana loose in Paige's sleepover.
• Bedtime Brainwashing: There's one where Jason tries to convince his mother to increase his allowance by getting her to dream of all the ridiculously expensive stuff he's buying for her.
• Beef Gate: A strip featured Jason trying to fight his way through one of these, only to have his sister discover that if you don't attack, it will let you pass by in peace. "The biggest, most dangerous monster in the whole game, and you're not supposed to take him on?"
• The Benchwarmer: Peter really, really sucks at baseball, so he is usually a reserve player when on the team. Note that he's only let on the team when the coach has no choice (like when half the players were caught cheating on tests).
• Berserk Button:
  • Peter punches a guy in the nose for making a tasteless joke about Denise (and gets in trouble for it, naturally).
  • Before Peter went out on his first date with Denise, he was telling one of his friends that he had a date that night, and when his friend jokingly suggested that "she has to be ugly as sin or blind as a bat," Peter crams his entire binder into his mouth.
• The B Grade: Jason reacts in this manner to A++ grades, as he usually does far better.
• The Big Easy: After Hurricane Katrina, Andy and Roger recall their honeymoon in New Orleans, showing that they had a much wilder youth than the staid middle-aged couple we see.
• Big Eater:
  • Peter and Roger are this to extremes, especially when it comes to Thanksgiving ("Plate 559 and feeling fine.") Paige applies when it comes to candy, once managing to eat the insides of a solid chocolate Easter rabbit while leaving the exterior untouched (except for the bottom).
  • Paige is this when it comes to ice cream.
  • A little known fact is that Roger was originally the only Big Eater, but Peter only got into it around the mid-1990's, as seen in the Thanksgiving 1990 strip:
    Andy: Well, I'm full.
    Jason: I'm extra full.
    Paige: You're full of a lot of things.
    Peter: I'm teetering somewhere between full and sick.
    Roger: So who's ready for some PIE?!
  • In fact, they invented new types of eating contests to get around this advantage.
• Bilingual Backfire: Jason's tap-dancing act in the school's talent show lands him in trouble because one of the teachers understands Morse code^note His message was "One day I will rule you all".
• Bilingual Bonus: In one arc, Roger is given a cigar branded Aroma del Baño ("Smell of the Bathroom").
  • In one of Paige's "Pierre" fantasies:
  Paige: Pierre! Is it you? Is it really, really you?
  Pierre: C'est moi.
  Paige: Moi moi moi moi moi...
• Bill... Bill... Junk... Bill...:
  • One strip had Paige sorting through the mail, discarding it as nothing but junk except for the last item. The Reveal was that the "junk" was in fact personal letters while the last item was a shopping catalog.
  • In another comic, she sorts through the mail to find letters for herself, gets disappointed that they're all for her parents, and hands the stack to her mother, musing "You grown-ups have it so nice." Andy's reply? "They're called 'bills', Paige."
  • Another strip had Roger and Andy sorting through the mail, commenting: "Junk....junk....junk" until Andy finds a letter which reads "Pay Jason Fox two million dollars in small bills".
    Roger: [rolling eyes] Junk...
• Birds of a Feather: Each of the Fox kids has a best/Only Friend who is essentially their exact duplicate in personality and interests, just slightly more level headed and mature.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: One early arc had Roger get an intern that appeared to idolize him in every way, but ended up ditching him for a more successful employee in the end, with the implication that his idolization of various employees was just him being a suck-up to get ahead in the company.
• Black Comedy: A rather subtle example happened around Valentine's Day once, though it's pretty dark when you really look at it.
  Paige: Mom, should I give a Valentine's Day card to a cute boy I don't know and sign it something mushy like "Love" or would that be a big mistake?
  Andy: A big mistake.
  Paige: Are you sure?
  Andy: Trust me.
  Roger: [wagging eyebrows] Remember that first Valentine's Day card you gave me?
• Black Comedy Pet Death: Paige mixes guppies with an Angelfish, causing this.
• Blah, Blah, Blah:
  • Inverted. Paige complains that the day has been boring, and it's just been one "blah" event after another. Cue Peter walking up to hear her actually say "blah blah blah" out of the legitimate context she had been using.
  • This strip was possibly Amend lampshading, as early strips involved Paige's phone conversations literally written as "Blah blah blah blah blah."
• Blaming the Tools: One early strip has Roger tell a coworker he needs to write a report as it's so full of spelling errors it's like a 3rd-grader wrote it. The coworker complains it's not his fault the computer didn't come with a spell-checker.
• Bland-Name Product: Occurs quite frequently. Sometimes just a background gag, other times part of the strip's plot. Oddly, it uses real products almost as often as fake ones. Amend originally intended to avert this trope so that the humor was more grounded in existing culture, but after seeing products like "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" in Calvin and Hobbes he concluded that it was just funnier to mash up existing products into silly names.
  • Jason's video games are a common source (Doomathon, Riviablo, Zeldakong 64, and World of Warquest) In addition, Paige's favorite boy band is named "The Backsync Boys".
  • Inversions are also common, such as Rogers's favorite magazine, Illustrated Sports.
  • Sometimes they're just outright parodies (Self magazine becomes Myself).
• Blunt "Yes":
  • At the end of the "Mortal Karnage II" arc, Jason gives Andy a speech about how video games are a waste of one's childhood, impressing Andy... until Jason reveals it's all a ploy to convince her he's mature enough to have the game back. As Andy seems ready to spank Jason for even trying this...
    Jason: Can't blame me for trying.
    Andy: Oh yes I can.
  • Inverted after Roger's intern Skip Riley reveals that he's going to work for a higher-ranking executive who essentially poached him. Skip justifies his decision by saying that it's in his best interests.
    Skip: Face it- Diggs is a big cheese. You'd do the same thing in my shoes.
    Roger: No. I don't think I would.
• Boob-Based Gag: In a series of strips collected in How Come I'm Always Luigi?, Andy orders Jason and Marcus to play outside, so they build snow replicas of their favorite video game tableaux. Their attempt to play Tomb Raider fails because the two large snowballs on the front of their snow-woman Lara Croft "keep falling off."
• Boss Button: One strip Jason talking to Peter about his new Prince of Persia game, which their mother doesn't know about. Just as he's saying that it's a game where you need to be fast, their mother drops in... and sees Jason typing up his book report.
  Peter: And fast you are.
• Bowdlerise:
  • One strip featured Jason leaving a phone recording message for Satan Hotline◊. When it got reprinted in the book collection, it was changed to Jason singing "A Million Bottles of Beer"◊.
  • In one strip, Andy is strung out on allergy medication and tries channel surfing without the TV turned on. When this is pointed out to her, she remarks that "I thought Oprah looked extra black." In reprints, this changed to "I thought Bill O'Reilly seemed soft-spoken."
  • In-universe, Jason and Andy hear an easy-listening version of "Highway to Hell" which changes the lyrics to "Highway to Heck", and remark that some songs were just not meant to be turned into Muzak.
• Boys Like Creepy Critters:
  • Jason Fox (10) keeps an iguana named Quincy, which he mostly uses to freak out his 14-year-old sister Paige. He also occasionally takes it to school for the same reason, but is thouroughly befuddled when his new teacher likes it.
  • Another for Jason Fox was an arc in which his mother and sister thought he had a crush on a girl, and naturally teased him about it, much to his confusion. The girl was in fact the classroom's pet snake.
• Brainless Beauty: Paige and her friend are willing to see past this when it comes to a cute guy.
  Paige: Nicole, look! Bobby Whitmeyer must've transferred into our history class! He's the hunkiest hunk in the school! He is sooo hot! Sooo babe-like! Sooo to die for!
  Nicole: ...Sooo stupid...
  Paige: Oh, like brains really matter.
  Bobby: Oops — I'm in the wrong room.
  Nicole: In this case they do.
  Paige: AAAA! Come back!
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  • From an early vacation strip in Uncle Ralph's cabin:
    Roger: This place is great! Look what Ralph left us: beer in the fridge, trout in the freezer, wood in the fireplace, fishing tackle in the closet...
    Andy: Playboys in the bathroom...
    Roger: Playboys in the — WHAT?!
    Peter: This place is great!
  • A family-friendly example from a 1998 strip:
    Paige: After-school sports...Play rehearsals...Upcoming shoe sales...Movie schedules...Phone numbers...E-mail adresses...Cute boys without girlfriends...Anything I need to keep track of, I write in my planner.
  • Another in an early strip where Jason buys a model rocket. The instructions list off recommended items for ideal construction: "Ruler, white glue, art knife, pencil... fire extinguisher, high-pressure water source, comprehensive liability insurance..."
  • From a 1990 story arc in which Jason tries to market "suction-cup leeches":
    Paige: Jason, why would anyone want a stupid fake leech stuck to their windshield?!
    Jason: Ah, you see, the beauty of these guys is you can stick them anywhere. Refrigerators... mirrors... windows... ceilings... furniture... sisters...
    Paige: AAAAA! You didn't stick one on ME, did you?!
    Jason: [to himself, grinning] They're gonna sell like hotcakes.
  • A 1993 strip found here has this trope when coming up with what to include in a comic shop, the last one being much awesomer than the others mentioned.
  • A 1997 strip in which Jason suggests the family go to a remote tropical island:
    Jason: It'd be perfect. No phones... no hassles... no extradition treaties...
    Andy: What do extradition treaties have to do with our family vacation?
    Jason: Who's talking about a vacation?
    Andy: NOW what have you done?!
• Breakfast in Bed: In one comic, Roger and the kids tried to do this for Andy on Mother's Day, but all of them are so terrible at cooking that they nearly set the kitchen on fire.
  Andy: You said I'd be having breakfast in bed, not bedlam!
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The first strip broke the fourth wall, with the cartoonist yelling at Jason, who was hauling in one of the strip's panels. Since then, the strip hasn't really broken the fourth wall at all, but it has come very close at times:
  • In one of the first Sunday strips, that very strip's splash panel is shown on a newspaper that Roger is reading.
  • Early in the strip's run, the "F" in the strip's splash panel logo featured Quincy resting on it, having already taken a bite out of the "F." In one strip, Peter was blowing on a barbecue grill in the splash panel, and the smoke was drifting in the direction of the logo, resulting in the Quincy on the logo coughing.
  • In one arc, Peter and Jason discuss what would happen if a cartoonist got sick — would he draw stick figures, try to Photoshop the strip, etc.? — and their suggestions are reflected in the final panel.
  • Another example of this is a discussion between Andy and Roger talking about Dilbert, the innovations it came up with, and the fact that people might try to rip it or other successful comics off. Just guess what the last panels tended to be.
  • The last set of dailies consisted of Andy and Roger discussing what would happen if a cartoonist stopped doing dailies, asking how he would thank his fans, etc. This trope even gets lampshaded at one point when Roger suggests that the cartoonist would straight-up thank his fans for their support, and Andy responds, "And break the fourth wall? Not likely."
  • In another arc, Andy was having trouble motivating herself to write her column. In the last strip of the arc, she finally finishes at around midnight, and Roger muses about what might happen if a cartoonist just didn't feel like drawing. Cue the lights turning off.
  • In the aforementioned cookie-nightmare arc, Peter points out that he has it on authority that they'll be back to normal in the next strip. He calls it a "doughus ex machina."
  • The 'ink outage' arc shatters the fourth wall, jumping all the way to Medium Awareness (see below).
• Breakout Character: Jason, to the point where he appears in nearly every strip to deliver the punchline.
• Briar Patching: Jason tries this after accidentally crashing the family car, but makes the mistake of listing a punishment he would not like (losing computer time), as a lenient one.
• Broken Treasure:
  • In one early story arc, Quincy chewed up Paige's favorite sweater and Jason (actually feeling guilty) tried to repair it, but when he got found out he ended up buying a replacement...except that it was a Spider-Man sweater, which he thought she'd like better.
  • In a later arc, Paige gets an autographed photograph from the Backsync Boys, but once again Quincy eats it while she's at school. Since Andy promised to watch it, Paige blames her and spends the next few days slinging guilt (calling Andy "mother who ruined my life" and such) to get whatever she wants. At the end of the arc, Paige receives another dozen copies of the photo because of all the letters she wrote^note A point of humor early in the arc was Paige treating the photo like it was unique, despite the fact that it was obviously mass produced — it just said "To our number one fan, love the Backsync Boys", and she apologizes to Andy for her behavior.
• Bucket Booby-Trap: Jason has tried this on Paige several times. It never works.
• Bucket Helmet: One arc had Jason fashioning a make-believe virtual reality helmet out of a bucket.
• Buffet Buffoonery: Peter cleans out an entire buffet, leaving nothing for his family. In another strip, he takes advantage of the all you can eat special at the pizza place where his friend Steve works at, and eats for six hours straight, only stopping when Steve tells him to leave at midnight (seeing as the special has ended, and his manager is pissed. Peter pushes his luck further and asks if he can have some to go.). In this later strip, he believes "all you can eat" is a requirement.
• Bullying a Dragon: Peter has often dog-sat for a tiny little dog name Fauntleroy. Despite being only the size of a rat, it not only attacks Peter over and over, but also threatens much bigger dogs.
• Butt-Monkey: The whole family each get these moments, but it's mostly Peter and Roger.

C-D

• Call-Back:
  • The first vacation arc began Roger excitedly asking the family where they are going, and them unenthusiastically responding that it's Uncle Ralph's cabin, where they've gone camping at for the past 10 years. When Roger asks how they knew, one of them says, "Dad, you're blocking the TV." A year later, a gag repeats the first three panels word-for-word, but the fourth panel has the dad shouting "HAWAII!" and one of the kids saying "Dad, you're blocking the T—WHAT?!?"
  • One early strip has Paige finding her old teddy bear "Grizzly Pooh" in the attic and remembering how she used to use it to harass Jason (the implication being that this is the reason he harasses her nowadays). Almost two decades later, we get a strip where Paige pulls Grizzly Pooh out of the attic again, once more realizing that she put him away because of Jason (though this time it's due to his G.I. Jim spring-loaded stuffed bear traps).
  • Andy's obsession with Titanic returns in Jason's remake of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! featuring Andy in the title role, in which the Jason character remarks that there's no room for any money in "Mrs. Grinch"'s wallet because of all the old Titanic ticket stubs.
  • Paige's role in Antony and Cleopatra, in which she played Cleopatra, is referenced in a Sunday strip in which she tries speaking in Flowery Elizabethan English to her P.E. teacher to get out of running laps. When it fails, Nicole snarks, "Nice British accent," and Paige replies, "All my prior acting's been in Shakespeare, okay?"
  • A story arc from 2003 featured Roger trying to home-brew his own wine, which proved to be a disaster. A much later strip published in 2021 reveals that Roger kept one bottle to see if it gets better with age.
• Camp Wackyname: In one story arc, Jason and Marcus attend a summer science camp called Camp Bohrmore.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality:
  • In one arc, Peter is working at a multiplex with only one film showing on every screen: Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. At the concession stand, he rings up two kids dressed in Jedi robes and says their bill comes to $13.75. They wave their hands and tell him a dollar will be sufficient. Peter Facepalms and asks them not to hold up the line.
    Jedi Kid #1: Smart of them to hire people immune to Jedi mind tricks.
    Jedi Kid #2: (waving his hand at the line) Someone will loan us $12.75...
  • In another arc, Jason agonizes over the fact that the Spider-Man web-shooter he ordered from a catalog doesn't work like the "real" thing is supposed to, no matter how much he tinkers with it.
• Card-Carrying Villain: In-universe, Jason portrays Paige(-O-Tron) in Jason's "Slug-man" comics as the most horrible character possible.
• Car Hood Sliding: In one strip, Peter tries to make the fact he is driving a station wagon cooler by doing a The Dukes of Hazzard style slide across the hood. He winds up snagging his underwear on the windshield wiper.
• Catapult Nightmare: Paige experiences a standard "falling" dream. Midway through, she realizes that it's a dream, and concludes that she'll wake up before hitting the ground. Sure, enough, she does. The last panel has her realizing she was right... as she falls out of bed.
• Catch-22 Dilemma: A strip where Jason asks Roger if he can hang out with his friend Marcus, and Roger answers "I'm okay with it if your mom is." Then when Jason asks Andy, she says "I'm okay with it if your father is." The comic ends with Jason reading a book on formal logic, trying to figure out whether they actually gave him permission or not. The next comic had Paige asking a similar question and getting the same answers... and she simply interprets that as an okay.
• Celebrity Paradox: It's not uncommon for an out-of-universe comic strip character to be spoken of by the Foxes as though they were a fictional character only to make a cameo (often as part of a Crossover Punchline) in another strip. Notably, a whole early arc was about Jason making his own The Family Circus panels to send as filler comics while Bil Keane was on vacation, while a later strip showed Billy himself visiting the Foxes.
• The Chains of Commanding: In the Love Letter Lunacy arc, Peter left Paige waiting in the rain for a seecret admirer, which turned out to be Peter pulling a nasty prank. Paige ends up in a bad angry Heroic BSoD, where she curls up in her room, glaring at Peter. Andy feels bad for her, but also knows that she can't let Paige punch out Peter, so she tries to get Peter to apologize. It doesn't work; Paige is in no mood to hear an apology.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • If you read the early comic strips you'd notice that Jason actually seems to act the way a normal kid would about school — that is, not wanting to go (notable when he neglects his homework to work on a Slug-Man comic). But later on? He loves school and relishes the idea of being given a massive homework assignment or a math test. One strip even has him attempting to attend school even though he's obviously too sick to be there.
  • One early storyline sees Jason try to impress Roger and Peter by memorizing sports trivia. By the mid-1990s, he considers anything of the sort beneath him.
  • Early on, Roger was shown as being good at chess and wasn't Too Dumb to Live. Of course, the chess part was flanderized within a couple years. His Walking Techbane status was also less prevalent early on, with early punchlines of the sort being more credible (such as his the floppies for Jason's Star Trek game and Roger's accounting software accidentally getting switched, or Roger not knowing how to print, which would have been credible for a 40something adult in the late 80s). There's a strip early in the run where Roger is conversing with a work colleague about a report featuring copious Rouge Angles of Satin, and the report's writer defending himself by claiming he doesn't know how to use spell-check (this was before those squiggly red underlines were invented). Roger is the person criticizing the report, even though if you rewrote it later he would be the one defending it.
  • One early strip has Jason and Peter playing Dungeons & Dragons in the throwaway panels, something Peter would never do under normal circumstances. This strip was before Marcus was introduced.
  • Andy Fox was pretty much flanderized into a Moral Guardian / Granola Girl taken up to eleven, with a side of Fleeting Passionate Hobbies (she was often seen obsessively collecting things like Bitty Babies). That being said, her only characterization prior to this was Only Sane Man, so it arguably represents a step forward for her to have, y'know, personality, whether or not that personality is flanderized.
  • A minor one: in her introductory arc, new teacher Ms. O'Malley actually encouraged Jason's far-beyond-overachieving, which drove him nuts because he was used to trolling his previous teacher Miss Grinchley. About a year later, with no explanation given but ostensibly because it got old for her, she's suddenly sick of Jason's antics (though she still doesn't flip out the way Miss Grinchley supposedly did).
• Chickenpox Episode: Denise comes down with the chickenpox, forcing her to miss a school dance with Peter. Andy suggests that Peter take Paige instead, which he begrudgingly does.
• Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs: This Trope is used often, usually to contrast against Andy's own health-craziness Running Gag:
  • In one one-panel strip, Andy is writing an angry letter "To the manufacturers of Sugar Frosted Honey Flakes cereal..." as Jason paces the kitchen with a rubber dart gun (several of which are already plastered all over the kitchen, and Andy herself), complaining, "it's 7:00 a.m.! How late can Paige sleep?!"
  • During one shopping trip, Andy asked Jason to pick out one cereal whose first ingredient wasn't sugar. Jason found one cereal whose last ingredient was sugar... because sugar was its only ingredient.
  • Another strip had Peter reading from a cereal box, "Sugar, Sugar, Sugar, Sugar..." and so on, finishing with, "...Sugar, Sugar, Sugar... Flakes."
  • Another has Jason admitting that while his "Sugar-Frosted Honey Flakes" are gross enough to turn his milk into purple ooze, he'll still eat six bowls every morning to get a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur stickers offer. Paige, reading the ingredients, remarks, "Actually, I'm a little surprised you don't glow in the dark by now." The choice of the color purple is likely a direct Shout-Out to Trope Namer Calvin and Hobbes, in which Calvin once said, "I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple."
  • In another series of strips, Jason's cereal itself glowed in the dark, and when Peter ate it (because they were out of Wheaties) it made him sick. At first he was surprised that one bowl of cereal made him so sick; then he read the ingredients, and was glad it only made him that sick.
  • In yet ANOTHER strip, the kids have nothing but a bowls of sugar for breakfast and claim it STILL doesn't have as much sugar as most cereals.
  • In the throwaway panels of one Easter Sunday strip, Paige is wondering what to take from her candy basket first. Andy holds up a box of cereal and suggests she have breakfast first, causing Paige to quip, "Like that cereal has less sugar."
• Choosy Beggar: One arc parodying A Christmas Carol has Jason's mom as a beggarwoman going through his old electronics after the Ghost of Christmas Future takes him away and declaring it's all junk, before wondering if the curtains might be worth something. It's more a Take That! at how quickly electronics become obsolete than her character though.
• Christmas Creep: One comic that ran in November had Andy complaining about how the decorations came out earlier every year, and stores begin pushing holiday merchandise. The punchline was that she was complaining about Valentine's Day decorations, despite it not even being December yet.
• Christmas Episode: Besides the usual Christmas-themed strips, there have also been several holiday-themed story arcs dedicated to parodying more famous Christmas stories.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Denise suddenly disappeared from the strip in the mid-2000s, although Peter never broke up with her. Oddly, strips after Denise's disappearance show Peter attempting to impress other girls. A strip published in 2017 has Paige mentioning Peter's girlfriend, but it was never specified whether that was Denise or not- Paige referring to her as Peter's "girlfriend" rather than by name was likely so that people who'd never heard of Denise wouldn't be confused. A 2021 strip also mentions Peter having a girlfriend, but again doesn't specify if it's still Denise or not.
  • Virtually all of the supporting cast disappeared from the strip regularly when the strip moved to Sundays. Marcus is the only character outside of the Fox family to appear on a regular basis nowadays. After Marcus, Eileen is probably the non-Fox character that has appeared the most, having made several appearances since her reappearance in 2011 (her last appearance prior to this was 2008). Peter's best friend Steve, Paige's admirer Morton, her best friend Nicole, her science teacher Dr. Ting, Jason's teacher Miss O'Malley, and Peter's coach have all shown up in 2014.
  • The iFruit, for a long time. It made a brief appearance again in October 2011, in a strip that paid Homage to Apple founder Steve Jobs, who had recently passed away. Jason took it out of storage in the basement, looked at it sadly, and then turned it on. Andy came up behind him and told him he couldn't turn back the clock, and Jason replied, "I know. Just let me pretend."
• Clickbait Gag: In this 2021 strip, Peter's teachers give clickbait titles to online assignments such as "Twelve Math Problems That Will Blow Your Mind! (You Won't Believe #3!)" and "Nineteen Rare Historical Photos of the Teapot Dome Scandal That Will Leave You Speechless!"
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • Played with and ultimately subverted: When Jason decided to take over The Boondocks while Aaron McGruder was focusing on making the animated adaptation, one of his ideas was, after hearing that the strip references "N-words", to use several of them. However, Jason doesn't actually know what the N-word actually means, so it shows a lot of N-words, but neither of them are the N-word.
  • The trope occurs off-screen in this comic.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Paige goes to see The Return of the King just because Orlando Bloom is in it, and wishes they would stop wasting time with that "filler stuff about a ring."
  • In one strip, Andy rants about how almost all of that day's comics mention golf in some way, asking "what kind of group mind-rot is at work here?!" She shows the paper to Roger, who remarks, "No kidding! Seven strips don't even mention golf!"
  • Another strip has Peter and Roger watching the Super Bowl, with the rest of the family only ducking in for the commercials.
    Peter: You're supposed to be caring about the GAME!
    Roger: Welcome to Super Ad Sunday, son.
  • Another strip has Peter asking about a diorama on The Great Depression Jason's making for school.
    Peter: What's this here?
    Jason: Kirk, Spock and Bones jumping back through the time portal.
    Peter: Um, shouldn't this be a little more realistic?
    Jason: You try painting Vulcan ears with a number two brush.
  • One story arc has Roger buying a mobile phone that isn't "mobile" by any definition of the word: it's almost as large as he is, weighs a ton due to its stainless steel construction, and has to be plugged into a standard electrical outlet to function (though it does come with 12 cigarette lighter adapters if you're on the go).
  • In one Sunday strip, Paige and Nicole confuse Memorial Day with Independence Day, because Memorial Day marks the end of the school year. When Roger points out their mistake, this exchange occurs:
    Paige: The school year must've run longer back in 1776.
    Nicole: By a whole month? No wonder they revolted.
  • When Jason complains about how Marcus managed to complete Super Mario Bros. before he did, Andy points out that Marcus probably did so by neglecting his studies, skipping meals and losing sleep. This gives Jason an idea of what he needs to do, and given that he gets in trouble for staying up late, it could cross into Dramatically Missing the Point.
• Comically Small Bribe:
  • Roger tips the paperboy with a nickel and then wonders why the paper always ends up on the roof or in the rosebushes.
  • Similarly, Peter Fox, after making a rather complex order at a coffee shop that costs $4.97, pays with a $5 bill and tells the cashier to keep the change. He also admits to Jason that he realizes he was being annoying, which was why he tipped him. Cue the three pennies flying towards his head.
• Comic-Book Time:
  • Jason, Paige and Peter have been 10, 14 and 16, respectively, for two decades. One early strip featured Roger panicking over his 45th birthday, but later strips have stalled his age at 45 and Andy's at 42.
  • Interestingly, if Peter and Paige had aged from the start of the strip, they'd be almost the same age as their parents by now. Which means Roger and Andy are now part of the generation to which Peter and Paige originally belonged—a phenomenon observed in the comics themselves. One Halloween comic in the 80s had Roger attempt to impersonate Darth Vader, and he mispronounces "Obi-Wan Kenobi" and does the Vulcan salute. Fast forward to 2005, when Revenge of the Sith was released in theaters, Roger tells Jason that he used to have a Darth Vader helmet like the one Jason has back when The Empire Strikes Back came out.
    Roger: [eyeroll] "Search your feelings. You know it to be true."
    Jason: Noooooo!
  • Lampshaded in this post 9/11 strip.
  • And again in the July 25, 2010 strip, when Jason says he's been waiting for StarCraft II for 11 years. Andy points out that he's only 10. He replies that he started in the womb.
  • One comic has Peter feeling old because it's 1990 because, as he puts it, "When I was a kid, 1990 was this year way off in the future. Heck, when I was a kid, 1980 was this year way off in the future!" (The joke being that all of the monologue is coming from off-panel until the last panel, when it's revealed that it's Peter talking, not Roger.) Of course, thirty years have passed since that strip was published...
  • It was played with in a strip about the comic's twentieth anniversary where Jason complains that Paige stole his hairpiece again.
  • An odd example happens in an arc where Roger decides to do the Christmas cards himself to surprise Andy. In one strip he finds and prints out a Christmas letter he found on the computer, the gag being that it's hilariously outdated ("Peter stopped using diapers this year..."). However, the fact that it's on the computer suggests that they've had one since Peter was at least a toddler, while this particular strip was printed in the early 2000s, which would date the old letter to the mid 1980s.
  • Lampshaded yet again in the February 4, 2024 strip wherein Peter talks to Jason about how excited he is for the then-recently announced Grand Theft Auto VI and how Andrea won't be able to get on his case about playing it when it comes out because he'll be 17 by then. Jason remarks that they had a very similar conversation when the last game was released, which Peter says isn't possible because he couldn't have also been sixteen when GTA V was released ten years ago...right? Jason concludes that it might be better if they just don't think about it.
• Completely Off-Topic Report: Jason once had to do an oral presentation on Old Yeller. He ended up working on the powerpoint's visual effects instead, so when he finished his teacher had only one question: "Did you actually read the book?"
• Compliment Backfire: Roger extravagantly compliments Andy on "one great meal" because she's the one who found the restaurant where they ate it. She is not flattered.
• Compressed Vice: This is Andy's third most prominent character trait (after being a Granola Girl and overprotective mother); past story arcs have seen her becoming obsessed with Titanic and "Bitty Babies" among other things. This actually played to Jason's advantage when they bought an iFruit, since Andy willingly bought the peripherals because of their cute designs ("Banana-orange CD-ROM burners! Aren't they adorable?!")
• Confusing Multiple Negatives: Paige tricks Peter into driving her to the mall by adding several "not"s to her statement ("Do you not want to take me to the mall?" "Yes." "Do you not not want to take me to the mall?" "No.") She outsmarts him by skipping from four to six "not"s.
• Contemplating Your Hands: Andy does this (off-panel) while strung out on allergy medication.
• Content Warnings: A 1997 strip featured the then-recently introduced TV ratings system in the US and lampshaded the Forbidden Fruit affect this has with kids. Jason is shown flipping through the channels and continuing to change each time he came across something labeled TV-PG and TV-14, until he yells, "Is there nothing for a kid to watch when his parents aren't home?" Then he comes across a program rated TV-MA, and says, "Finally."
• Continuity Nod:
  • "Take our ill-fated attempt at sledding with a drag chute last winter..."
  • "You've swiped my winning Monopoly strategy!"
  • When Jason gets some school supplies he doesn't like from Andy, he asks her if she's still mad about the car he crashed.
  • Early 1999 storyline featured Jason getting frustrated because he couldn't get past the Red Orb Guardian in a video game he's been playing. Paige managed to get past it by NOT attacking him. A few months later, when Andy's mom came to visit for Thanksgiving, Jason asks her if she wants see "his" trick of getting past the Red Orb Guardian.
  • Andy's obsession with Titanic returns in Jason's remake of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! featuring Andy in the title role, in which the Jason character remarks that there's no room for any money in "Mrs. Grinch"'s wallet because of all the old Titanic ticket stubs.
  • Paige's role in Antony and Cleopatra, in which she played Cleopatra, is referenced in a Sunday strip in which she tries speaking in Shakespearean English to her P.E. teacher to get out of running laps. When it fails, Nicole snarks, "Nice British accent," and Paige replies, "All my prior acting's been in Shakespeare, okay?"
  • A story arc from 2003 featured Roger trying to home-brew his own wine, which proved to be a disaster. A much later strip published in 2021 reveals that Roger kept one bottle to see if it gets better with age.
• Convenience Store Gift Shopping: Happens all the time:
  • A running joke is that Roger and the kids routinely buy Andy useless or inappropriate gifts.
  • Once, for Mother's Day, Roger planned to get her a "Three Stooges" DVD collection, to which Peter objected — but only because he thought it would make his gift of flowers look lame in comparison.
  • On a related note, the kids often give her flowers plucked from her garden.
  • Valentine's Day was usually the worst use of the trope: Roger once gave her a new extension cord, and later a heart-shaped pancake spatula (The latter gift also resulted in Andy not feeding Roger any breakfast, more specifically the pancakes made from the spatula). He once gave her a normal spatula for Valentine's Day, prompting her to ask Roger to consider why none of their children have birthdays in November.
  • Played with in one strip, where he ended up giving Paige, Peter, Andy, and Jason a football, earrings, an electronic voltometer and a pink Backsync Boys sweater respectively because he was tired and mixed up the gift tags.
  • Played with again in another strip: Although not technically gifts, Roger ended up giving Peter and Jason Beavis and Butt-Head stockings even when they never asked for them. Peter and Jason themselves liked the stockings, Andy and Paige did not. When trying to reason with his wife, Andy suggests that she's going to demonstrate her rage in ways he wouldn't want to repeat.
    Jason: [holding stocking] Wow! I can't believe dad got me a Beavis stocking!
    Peter: [holding stocking] I can't believe dad got me a Butt-Head one!
    Peter and Jason: Hnnhuhhunnhuuhnnhunnmmhuuhnnhhnuhnmmm...
    Paige: [covering her ears] THEY can't believe it?!
    Roger: The lady at the store said they were all the rage.
    Andy: Let me show you "rage"...
  • Subverted in a strip where Roger mentions that he was planning on giving Andy fluffed earphones for Christmas (even though she wanted a necklace) specifically because she would need them (she was telling Roger the gifts he'll have to give the kids, and they all have to do with loud noise as something in common).
  • In an earlier strip, Paige and Andy were shopping for a new lunchbox for Jason. When Andy finds one with Ariel on it, Paige enthusiastically suggested she get it for Jason, although Andy seemed to know better and picked a Jurassic Park lunchbox instead, causing Paige to curse that she's no fun.
  • Something similar happened in another strip where Paige went Christmas shopping for various clothing that supposedly were her family, although they were actually intended to be for herself (for one thing, all the items that they have in common are that they are girls' items, and one of the shoes, Andy notes, matches Paige's shoe size).
  • Roger once gave Jason Four Solid Metal Gears and a Walk the Line CD in previous Christmases, apparently because Roger did not understand what Jason meant by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots or even "Cash".
  • Another rather unpleasant example was when Andy went back-to-school shopping and bought Jason stuff with Barney & Friends pictures on them, believing he'd like them because he liked dinosaurs. Even Roger realized Barney was not the type of dinosaur he'd like.
  • Andy does this on purpose do to her Moral Guardian personality by getting them things like thesauruses for Christmas.
• Converse with the Unconscious: Subverted in an early arc where Jason falls off the roof and is taken to the hospital:
  Peter: Jason?... Jason I'm really, really, really sorry.
  Jason: ...I heard that.
  Peter: You're supposed to be asleep!
• Cool Old Lady: Andy's mother. She seems to excel at everything; among other things, she's such a great cook that Martha Stewart herself is trying to buy one of her recipes, she can match Jason in math skills, shares Paige's love for modern fashion, is just as knowledgeable in sports as Peter, and an article in The New York Times says she's "perfect". Unfortunately, Andy herself has "issues" with her due to feeling inadequate when she's around; her worst case of being a Lethal Chef came from trying to outdo her on Thanksgiving. (And as fate would have it, her mother told her that she had gone through the same thing with HER mother.)
• Cool Shades: Roger wears a pair at home, in keeping with his new persona as an "expert" online poker player. They prove to be spectacularly impractical:
  Roger: Andy, relax, I'm playing it totally safe. Take this current hand as an example: I was dealt a measly two-nine off suit, so I clicked the blue "fold" button right away.
  Andy: (face-palming) Roger, the blue button says, "All In."
  Roger: (lifting his shades) Whoops. Okay, let's use the next hand as an example...
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Andy is considered one, thanks to her preference for Disgusting Vegetarian Food.
• The Cracker: Jason. Well, rather, he tries to be one, but never actually benefits, and often causes disasters by accident. In one strip, he "killed off the Internet" with a "dinky little program" he had come up with.
  News Anchor: Tonight's story: the "Darth Jason" virus. Is there hope for mankind?
• Crocodile Tears: Jason uses this to get Andy to make Peter drive him to the planetarium. The last panel reveals that Jason didn't even ask Peter in the first place, saying that his method was more fun.
• Crossword Puzzle: Jason has composed several for the sole purpose of insulting Paige.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Inverted (i.e., Kind To Be Cruel, but in a way that does not fall under Cruel Mercy) in this strip: Paige buys Jason the DVD box set of the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for Christmas, just so Andy can discourage him from buying it with his own allowance, and Paige can listen to him twist and moan for two full weeks.
  Jason: (off-panel, gasping) C-c-can't... s-s-survive...
  Andy: Maybe you could give it to him early.
  Paige: But this is the best part!
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Any chess game between Roger and his computer.
  • Jason is a victim of this whenever he has to play dodgeball in gym class.
• Cut a Slice, Take the Rest:
  • Peter does this with everything, and his parents keep falling for it. Although there was one strip where Andy caught on (She told Peter he could have one brownie; he picked up the entire sheet and was halfway to shoving it into his mouth when she said "After I finish cutting it.")
  • Roger, meanwhile, will pour one cup of coffee... for Andy, while he drinks the rest of the pot.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
  • Jason has been guilty of this through the entire run of the strip. He has come up with several ludicrous schemes to make money (including thousand-dollar snow dinosaurs, which, you know, would melt come Spring), despite the fact that he has effortlessly built machines and coded programs that could have made him millions had he simply sold them. He once tried to form a one-man corporation, but all he had to show investors was "a dinky little program I wrote for fun." Unfortunately for him and them, the Darth Jason virus did not "kill off interest," it "killed off the Internet." Possibly justified in that, while "book smart" at times, Jason is still a child and thus doesn't always have the best common sense. His parents also care more that he should be a kid rather than pursue these ventures.
  • That, and the fact that, because he is a child, he often puts more effort into frivolities. If the thought ever occurs to him to make money off of the things he produces, it's only so he can buy materials needed to cause greater mischief. For instance, he once caused a computer virus pandemic with a virus called the "I Don't Love You Eileen Jacobson Virus" simply to goad Eileen, which not only caused a crisis but apparently made it obvious who had created it.
• Cuteness Overload: Andy is prone to this. She goes into fits about Beanie Buddies, and issues squeals of delight on seeing Peter Jackson and - thinking he is a fantasy creature from The Lord of the Rings - wants to know if they make plushies of him.
  • This happened in one story arc where Jason decided to bring Quincy to school to scare his teacher, Mrs. O'Malley. However, instead of screaming in terror like Jason intended her to do, Mrs. O'Malley squees over how cute Quincy is, and starts talking baby talk to the iguana and giving him a belly rub, much to Jason's horror and embarrassment.
• Damned By a Fool's Praise: Paige finds a pair of retro pants and squees over them to Peter, until Roger walks by and mentions he used to have a pair just like that and suggests they should go around dressed the same. Paige's next line to Peter is, "Want some pants?"
• Daydream Surprise: A Running Gag in the comic is Jason pulling some sort of overly elaborate prank on his siblings or suddenly exhibiting some sort of superpower (like having laser eyes or losing his temper after biting his tongue too many times while eating breakfast and Hulking Out), only for the final panel to cut to Jason either trying in vain to pull the prank or use the superpower in real life, expressing disappointment with reality, or being told he's weird by one of his other family members.
• A Day in Her Apron:
  • Everyone except Andy is a horrible cook, so any attempt to fill in for her in the kitchen ends badly.
    Peter: Cool! The coffee's on fire!
  • Peter is shown on occasion to be a perfectly capable cook so long as he's cooking only for himself and no one else.
  • The kids once cooked a wedding anniversary dinner for Roger and Andy, which apparently was quite edible, judging from the parents' reactions. They also can make cookies, which turn out well whenever Paige isn't confusing baking soda with Diet Pepsi. And occasionally, Roger doesn't ruin what he grills on the barbecue.
• Dead TV Remote Gag: The batteries are dead and there are no replacements, so Peter wails about how he'll have to watch the same channel all night, at least until his Mom comes in to tell him his bedtime is in ten minutes. "THAT LONG?!"
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: Jason, of course. Sometimes Peter as well.
• Delegation Relay: Andy asks Peter to take the garbage. Peter says that Paige owes him a favour so that Andy should ask her. Paige says that Jason owes her a favour so Andy should ask him. Jason says that Peter owes him a favour so Andy should ask him. Andy asks Peter (again) who then willingly takes out the garbage.
• Delivery Stork: For all his intelligence, Jason apparently has no idea where babies come from, as evidenced when he fell out of his treehouse and sprained his ankle. Andy picks him up and slings him over her back, quipping that she carried him for nine months, another fifty feet won't kill her.
  Jason: Nine months? When was this?
• Democracy Is Bad: In this strip, Roger and Peter are watching the Super Bowl, when Andy asks Roger if she can watch Downton Abbey. Roger scoffs and tells her to either record it on DVR or watch it on the miniature television in their bedroom. Then he is outvoted when Peter says he'd just as soon watch Downton Abbey too, because "Lady Rose is super-hot."
• Denied Food as Punishment:
  • Andy did this to Roger after he was accused of ruining the computer. It turns out that Jason and Paige had done so by spilling a can of pop on it.
  • A Sunday strip had something similar: Andy fed everyone except Roger pancakes, all after giving an extended question along the lines "Would you like some pancakes made from the heart-shaped spatula that your father gave me for Valentine's Day?" as a message that she did not like Roger's gift.
    Andy: Jason, would you like some pancakes made using the spatula your father gave me as my Valentine's Day gift?
    Jason: Sure.
    Andy: Paige, would you like some pancakes made using the spatula your father gave me as my Valentine's Day gift?
    Paige: Ok.
    Andy: Peter, would you like some pancakes made using the spatula your father gave me as my Valentine's Day gift?
    Peter: Yes, please.
    Jason: I'm noticing mom's not offering you any pancakes.
    Roger: I'm noticing that, too.
    Andy: Jason, would you like seconds?
• Desert Skull: While on a Horrible Camping Trip to the hot, arid desert of Cactus Flats, Arizona, Jason finds one and wears it to try and scare Paige.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Happens quite frequently with Peter before he meets Denise.
• Didn't Think This Through: Jason and Marcus, both of them could qualify for college-level degrees in math and physics, but their common sense hasn't developed to the same level:
  • Building a snowman replica of the climactic confrontation from The Fellowship of the Ring, they're trying to think of a way to keep their "snow Balrog" from melting - after they keep setting it on fire.
    Jason: Maybe if we used a touch less lighter fluid...
  • Their trip to the premiere showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is spoiled by their insistence on dressing as "authentic" hobbits - and thus trudging barefoot through the snow:
    Jason: (shivering) Whose bright idea was it to release a hobbit-themed movie in December?!
    Marcus: (shivering) Whose bright idea was it to walk to the theater barefoot?!
  • Aptly summed up by Peter as he looks up from a complex diagram, meticulously calculating the physics necessary for Jason and Marcus to catapult themselves through Paige's bedroom window, and sees them desperately trying to "untrigger" their catapult, since Paige just closed her window: "From such smarts, such stupidity."
• Diegetic Visual Effects: One story arc has Paige struggling both to write a school report about Thomas Edison, and to fend off Unwanted Assistance on the subject from her dad Roger. In one strip, an Idea Bulb suddenly appears above her head as she's writing. Then it turns out Roger was just standing behind her, holding a real lightbulb up, as a pretext to rattle off a list of Edison's inventions.
• Disembodied Eyebrows: Present since the earliest years.
• Disguised in Drag: A Sunday strip shows a Lipstick-and-Load Montage of Paige putting on her make-up getting ready to go out. The last panel reveals it to actually be a grounded Peter trying to sneak out of the house disguised as Paige.
• Disgusting Vegetarian Food: Andy's the most competent cook of the family, but she often tries to make vegetarian health food for the others, at which point sanity and skill go out the window. ("She makes a mean, if not downright cruel, tofu casserole.") By which we mean she's taken fruit salad — which does qualify as healthy under normal circumstances — and warped it into something unrecognizable. She does manage to get it right at least once:
  Peter: Mm-mmm. Great pizza, Mom.
  Andy: I'm glad you like it. Bet you can't even tell I made it with nonfat cheese, low-sodium tomato sauce, and meatless tofu pepperoni slices.
  [beat panel]
  Peter: GAACK!
  Andy: Nice try, Olivier.
  • There's also the incident from the January 27, 2019 strip where the kids are revealed to have listed their house as a one-star restaurant on Yelp, apparently in protest to their mother's repeatedly making "Beetloaf".
• Disney Owns This Trope: Jason tried to copyright 1 and 0 so that any song released on the Internet would be pirating his work.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In one Sunday strip, Paige sprays Jason with a hose because he did that to her. The catch was that he did it in summer while she did it in winter resulting in Jason being covered in ice.
• Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: When Jason became a millionaire (by converting all his cash into Turkish lira), he started wandering around in a smoking jacket and puffing on a bubble pipe.
• Disturbing Statistic: Andy tells Roger one in order to keep him up all night (specifically, that one in five men can expect to get prostate cancer), thereby keeping him from snoring.
• D.I.Y. Disaster: Roger does this quite often, most of the time because he took a rhetorical question seriously. In one of the later daily storylines, he tries making his own wine, doing things like stomping grapes with Desenex on his feet, and resorting to melting down grape Popsicles to increase the overall amount. In the end, the only compliment he can get out of Andy is that pouring it down the drain made their garbage disposal run better than ever.
• Dodgy Toupee: There was a week-long story involving Roger getting himself a bad toupee. His wife Andy is less than pleased:
  Roger: Andy, I can't believe you don't like my hair piece.
  Andy: Did I say I didn't like it?
  Roger: No.
  Andy: Then don't put words in my mouth.
  Roger: Fine. [silence] Andy, I can't believe you think my toupee looks like roadkill.
  Andy: "Unkempt roadkill."
• Does This Make Me Look Fat?: In one strip, Andy asked Roger if he thought she could lose some weight and asked him to be honest. He said "Maybe a pound or two" and she collapsed in tears, claiming she had wanted him to be honest, not brutal.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • One arc has Eileen inviting Jason over to play video games with her, but their dialogue at first makes it seem like something else is going on. This starts in the first strip...
    Eileen: Hey, Jason, wanna come over to my house after school?
    Jason: Eileen, get real. You're a girl. I'm a boy. What could we possibly do together that'd be any fun?
    Eileen: [whispers into Jason's ear]
    Jason: [suddenly ecstatic] OH MY!
    Eileen: See you after school.
  • ...and continues in the second strip until the punchline.
    Jason: We both know why I'm here, Eileen. I'm a young man with a young man's urges, and you've got what I need. Now enough chit chat. Let's get to the sofa.
    Jason: Finally! A Gamestation 2 controller in my grasp!
    Eileen: Ready to get it on?
• A Dog Ate My Homework: Or, in this case, an iguana.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Deconstructed when Paige spends some time worrying about Morton asking her to the dance like he always does, where she will have to turn him down, like she always does. Then she finds out that he asked someone else, and instantly gets upset that he didn't even try. When she finally brings herself to confront him, she says she's offended that he forgot about her, and he says he didn't ask because he remembered.
  Paige: Morton, you're killing my ego.
  Morton: Egos heal.
• Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project: Roger refuses to call a plumber because it is not worth a $60 call-out fee just to have him change a washer. After flooding the bathroom, he declares that at least now it is a situation worth the call-out fee.
• Door Stopper:
  • Jason's Christmas lists. He often indexes them, and even the index often qualifies as a Door Stopper.
  • He once gave Andy his Christmas list in a single envelope, to her surprise. He said it was to save trees. Turned out it was just on floppies.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Roger's attempt to cheer the kids up during another Horrible Camping Trip with his bad jokes makes it worse in this strip.
• Double Standard: A very mild, but still noticeable, example. Roger does a lot of dumb things and usually gets not only called on them, but called an idiot too. Andy does almost as many dumb things, but is only called on it about half as often, and usually comes out of it with everything but her pride unscathed. This may have something to do with Roger's near-bulletproof ego; the man continues golfing and playing chess when every member of the family but the iguana has demonstrated higher proficiency than him. One of the few times Andy apologized, for complaining about a vacation the kids enjoyed, she almost immediately after changed the subject to what Roger now owes her.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Paige beats up Jason regularly and occasionally threatens Peter. Andy has been known to hurt Roger when he does something worse than usual. The worst violence we've seen go the other way is Jason shooting Paige with his nerf guns. Always Played for Laughs.
• Do Wrong, Right:
  • After Peter gets caught speeding, Andy scolds him, but Roger is more interested in how the car handled.
  • After Paige gets detention for forging Roger's signature on a note to get out of P.E., Andy asks her what she learned from the experience, and Paige replies, "To practice Dad's signature so I don't get caught next time." Andy glares at her, unamused, and even after Paige clarifies it was a joke, grounds her.
  • Another strip shows Peter enduring an interrogation about not bringing home his report card and attempting to play innocent, which fails. In the last panel, we see that the person interrogating him is Paige, to help Peter prepare his "innocent" act for the real interrogation: "Grill me. I'll show you how it's done."
  • Jason gets suspicious during a camping trip when Paige and Peter try to lure him on a Snipe Hunt. He points out that he knows that they intend to ditch him in the woods and leave him to find his way back to the cabin. They say, "Um maybe" and he says at least wait until it's darker out so it will be a more fun adventure for him.
• Dream Sequence: Sometimes Andy's terrifying cooking would spark off a pop-culture or literature reference, allowing Amend to pastiche anything from The Polar Express to The Nutcracker to A Christmas Carol. Everyone but Andy eventually visited one of these Elseworlds, which were generally populated by the other family members.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Miss Rockbottom in the coach version of this. Morton serves as one in camp.
• Drives Like Crazy: Peter, all the time. He once tried to run a yellow light from five blocks away. Another time, his driving created a zero-G effect in the car. When Jason plays the video game Carmageddon it gives both him and Paige the feeling they've been in the actual car. One time when a neighbor called Andy to tell her Peter was swerving like a maniac at a certain place, he protested, saying he was going to fast to be seen. The most extreme example is his claim that he's reached speeds of 1,000 MPH or more, or perhaps the time he somehow managed to drive 4 miles in 10 seconds (that's 1,440 mph) to avoid listening to Marcus nerding out about The X-Files.
• Drunk with Power:
  • Happens to Peter every time he's in a position of authority, as Andy eventually comes to realize. This almost proved lethal to him in one week long arc when he was made manager of the football team, and the players quickly started to hate him. He himself said that if they weren't venting it on the field, he be dead. (The coach, however, couldn't have been happier; the venting had actually caused them to win three games straight.)
  • Morton Goldthwait as well, as Jason and Marcus's summer science camp counselor.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season:
  • Peter attempts this in one strip:
    Peter: I think we should rent Austin Powers.
    Jason: I think we should rent Alien: Resurrection.
    Peter: Austin!
    Jason: Alien!
    Peter: Austin!
    Jason: Alien!
    Peter: Alien! So, now you're supposed to say...
    Jason: Ah good, we agree.
    Peter: Dang, that trick always worked for Bugs Bunny.
  • Peter seems to get the last laugh, however. In the final panel, Jason seems to be having a tough time convincing the cashier that he's 18. (Alien: Resurrection is rated R.)
• Dude, Not Funny!: Paige's reaction to Peter's Love Letter Lunacy, which baffles Peter, who simply can't understand why anyone wouldn't find his prank funny. Also, Andy's reaction just about any time Roger makes a joke at her expense.
• Dug Too Deep: One of Jason's ideas for "How Disney could improve its movies" went like this:
  Dwarves: We dig-dig-dig and dig-dig-dig and mine the whole day through...
  Grumpy: Balrog!

E-F

• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Early on, both Andy and Paige had bangs. Andy had hers cut off in a 1988 strip and they never grew back. According to Bill Amend, this was because he had received messages from readers complaining that they couldn't tell Andy and Paige apart.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Until about the early 1990s, the strip was a lot more focused on a somewhat realistic portrayal of a typical nuclear family. As the 1990s progressed, pretty much everyone's personalities got exaggerated into cartoonish caricatures, while "nerd" humor (though present in small doses from the earliest years) and pop-culture references began to dominate even the most basic of interactions. Some of the defining personality traits — such as Roger's and Paige's incompetence at cooking, Peter's huge appetite and incompetence in sports — aren't even present in the earlier strips at all. One could be forgiven for thinking that the strips pre-1992 or so were part of a different comic, as the character designs and the tone are so dissimilar to what they became.
• Easily Forgiven: Zig-zagged at the end of one arc in which Jason unwittingly gets Eileen's hopes up by giving her the impression that he's interested in her. While he's genuinely sorry, she tells him that it will probably take time for her to forgive him and become friends again. At the end of the strip, she then suggests that she's open to being asked.
• E = MC Hammer:
  • Perhaps one of the notable aversions. A Running Gag involves Jason using far more complicated mathematical methods on his school tests — and of course, all the advanced math is 100% accurate. It was done to such an extent that the teacher was actually able to recognize his work even when he hadn't actually written his name on there.
  • Played absolutely straight on occasion with Paige.
    Jason: OK, now what trig function gives you the ratio of the opposite side to the hypotenuse?
    [Paige doesn't answer]
    Jason: I'll give you a hint: stoppppp...
    Paige: ...in the name of love.
    Jason: One wayyyyy...
    Paige: ...ticket.
    Jason: It boggles the mind.
    Paige: Well, that could be any function.
• Egopolis: Jason names everything he creates after himself. That is, everything he doesn't name after Paige as an insult.
• Embarrassingly Painful Sunburn:
  • This has happened to Paige a few times. One strip subverted it: Paige woke up in shock to find her skin beet red, but the last panel reveals that Jason had actually painted her while she slept.
  • Perhaps reversed as a Painfully Embarrassing Sunburn, another time Paige grabs a bottle of sunblock and applies it while wearing very dark sunglasses. Whe she is told she left her sunblock in the kitchen, she realizes she slathered herself in mustard.
• Embarrassing Password: Jason creates one that is too embarrassing for Paige, rather than himself, to protect his user account:
  Computer: Enter Username: JASON_FOX
  Computer: Enter Password: IS_A_STUD
  Computer: Access Granted
  Jason: (to Marcus) She might be able to guess it, but she'll never be able to type it.
• Embarrassing Ringtone: One strip had Jason swapping out the ringtone on Peter's phone for "Loser" by Beck.
• Embarrassing Tattoo: In one strip, Peter thinks he can turn this to his advantage: he'll have a huge Harvard logo tattooed on his chest, and when he is interviewed by the Dean of Admissions, he'll rip open his shirt and explain that if he isn't admitted, he'll look stupid for the rest of his life - "and if the Dean's a woman, I could flex a little, too." Andy prudently vetoes the idea.
• End-of-Series Awareness: The characters are aware of when Bill Amend decides to switch the strip to Sundays-only.
• Entertainment Above Their Age:
  • One series of strips reveals that Paige has seen R-rated films such as Indecent Proposal and Basic Instinct, and another series shows that she's a fan of a trashy talk show called "Jerzy Spaniel." The former results in Paige getting grounded by Andy, and the latter gets her in trouble when she watches the show while babysitting, and Katie happens to start repeating a profanity she hears from the show.
  • Ten-year-old Jason shouldn't be watching Game of Thrones, something Andy is in agreement with. That doesn't stop him from watching it.
• Epic Fail:
  • Jason. When his schemes fail, they fail big. As he puts it, "Why can't my successes ever be as spectacular as my failures?" (the failure in this case being a model rocket whose engines were installed backwards, the second stage of which turned the lawn into a volcanic eruption). One story arc around the release of the first Spider-Man movie involved Jason trying to recreate Spidey's web-shooters from the comics, only for them to literally backfire and trap him in a cocoon of webs every time. When Roger offers to help troubleshoot the device, it still ends up covering Jason despite the fact that he pointed it in the exact opposite direction.
  • Roger is even worse. To give one example of how bad he can fail, Jason once programed a computer chess game so that he had a king and fifteen queens and the computer had a king and fifteen pawns; the computer beat him.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: In-Universe and parodied with a dream Paige has where she imagines herself as Clara from The Nutcracker.
  Paige: Wait a minute. This is it?! We just ride off in a magic sled?! They call this an ending?! There's no sense of closure! Who wrote this dumb ballet?! The audience should get to see the girl wake up! Can you imagine the riots if someone tried this in a comic strip?
• Everyone Has Standards: Quincy (an iguana) throws up on the sofa while trying to watch a segment of Fox News, in which Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Neil Cavuto and Bill O'Reilly all preface their "news" reports by plugging their upcoming books.
• Everyone Hates Mimes: Roger is delighted when Paige is assigned to do a history paper on Thomas Edison, who just happens to be the subject of Roger's college thesis. Paige tries every tactful way she can think of to get him to leave her alone, by saying it isn't allowed for someone else to tell her the answers. Roger excitedly says he can mime them, and she locks him in a closet until she is finished.
• Exact Words:
  • A frequent source of humor.
    [Peter is doing the dishes]
    Peter: It's unbelievable how much homework I have to do tonight! I can't remember the last time I had this many things due! I don't know what all my teachers were thinking!
    Andy: In the case, Sweetie, why don't I do the dishes?
    [later on]
    Jason: I thought you had no homework...
    Peter: It's all in how you say it.
  • In one strip, Jason is complaining about no one selling the Jpad and it beating the competition of the iPad. Jason then claims that the Jpad would literally smash the iPad. Andy remarks that he misused the word "literally"... until she turns it around and discovers a rock taped on the back of the Jpad.
  • Andy is just as bad, as this strip proves. (In fact, even using the Exact Words argument, she's wrong; lima beans and peas are almost always classified as legumes, not fruits.)
  • Jason once asked his father to participate in his trivia game show, "I Want To Be A Millionaire". The twist being that if the contestant gets a question wrong, he pays the host the amount he would have won.
    Jason: It's totally honest — I want to be a millionaire.
  • One strip had Andy ask Peter how his Summer reading list was coming along, and he responded that he was halfway through. Catching onto this trope for once, Andy asked "Halfway through reading the books on the list, or halfway through reading the list itself?", prompting Peter to whine "C'mon Mom, it's a whole page!"
  • One arc begins with Jason wanting to see how Roger's electronic chess game works. Andy warns him with "I don't want you taking apart and breaking your father's chess thing!" Jason says that it isn't what he plans on doing, so she tells her where the game is. Jason then thinks to himself as he's leaving "I'm just gonna take it apart."
• Explaining the Soap: Peter gets this reaction in a 1995 strip (eyes glazing over and repeating "uh-huh") when Paige explains a then-current story arc on Melrose Place to him, but Paige had exactly the same reaction when Jason explained the premise of Highlander: The Series to her.
• Expo Label: When Roger is setting up his account to play online poker, he is invited to choose from three levels of gameplay: 1) "Expert"; 2) "Semi-Expert"; or 3) "Fool who thinks he's an expert but is about to learn a cruel lesson." No points for guessing which level Roger picks.
• Exposed Embarrassing Purchase: In one strip, Jason and Peter go to the store, and Jason scratches out the bar codes on certain items, causing the cashier to yell things like "price check on extra-strength dandruff shampoo!"
• Exploding Closet: Any time Jason cleans his room.
• Extremely Easy Exam: One Sunday strip has Paige taking a math final exam that is very easy to solve. Unfortunately, it was All Just a Dream.
• Eye Scream:
  • In one strip, Peter flicks a paper football and winds up lodging it in Paige's eye.
  • In another, a fallen, dried-up autumn leaf blows into Paige's eye, and she blames Jason for it - since he knows physics, he probably "calculated the aerodynamics" of the leaf when he saw it coming and told Paige to look up at just the right moment. Turns out that's exactly what Jason did, as evidenced when he forgets to hide the physics scribbling on his hands from Paige and ends up head-first in a garbage can for his trouble.
• The Faceless: Roger's boss, J.P. Pembrook (originally R.T.); we only ever see the end of his cigar and his hands.
• Faceplanting into Food: One strip has Roger talking about all the delicious, fattening food he's eating in enormous quantities (steak, baked potatotes, corn with butter, onion rings, an entire rack of ribs, a pie...) before revealing he's passed out in a plate of his wife's horrible health food.
  Jason: It's almost as if Dad falls asleep during dinner on purpose.
  Andrea: Just ignore him. More tofu slaw, anyone?
• Facial Scruff: One arc has Roger deciding to grow a beard over Andy's objections. It ends when Andy announces that she has decided that it is his facial hair and he can grow it out if he wants to. Similarly, these are her leg hairs... Roger shaves.
• Failures on Ice:
  • In one strip, Jason tries to rollerskate, but rolls down a hill and into a yard with a sign that says "Beware of Dog." Paige, naturally, enjoys this.
    Paige: I really need to write Gramma thanks for those roller-skates...
  • Jason is seen flailing and thrashing around on his ice skates before grabbing the wall for support. He then says that if he's that bad on the rubber mats, going on the actual ice should be interesting.
  • Jason gets hit with the short end of the stick again when Eileen invites him to go ice skating. He falls down twice.
• Fancy Dinner: Peter took Denise out on occasion (at her insistence) to a local French restaurant called La Maison Rouge (literally "The Red House"), which was portrayed as being so expensive Peter had to ask a year and a half's worth advance on his allowance in order to afford it. (The second time, Denise got smart and borrowed her mom's credit card to pay for it.)
• Fantastic Fantasy Is Mundane: One time, Jason and Marcus play a game called "Houses and Humans", whose characters are suspiciously similar to the Fox family (except the youngest son is President of the Universe).
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Happens to Paige for one school assignment.
    Peter: What's wrong with you?
    Paige: [head on desk] I have to write a ten-page essay.
    Peter: Poor baby.
    Paige: On Thomas Edison.
    Peter: Poor baby.
    Paige: Dad did his college thesis on Edison.
    Peter: I'll go get the straitjacket.
    Paige: I'd prefer razor blades.
    Roger: [walking into panel] Just heard the good news...
  • Also, any time Jason has to tutor Paige in math.
    Paige: [the night before a big math test] I figure I'd be better off just ending it all now and saving myself the misery.
    Andy: Paige, no math test is that bad!
    Paige: It's not the test I'm worried about.
    Andy: Huh?
    Jason: Your tutor awaits...
• Faux Horrific:
  • Jason decides to dress up as an iMac for Halloween. When asked why an iMac is scary, he responds, "I HAVE NO FLOPPY DRIVE!" in a scary voice, and Peter is terrified.
  • Also:
    Jason: ...And it's said that if you listen, you can still hear the sound of his beating heart!
    Paige: Lame.
    Jason: ...and there, dangling from the car door's handle, was a bloody metal claw!
    Paige: Yawn.
    Jason: ...it wasn't until they got home that they learned the McCoy Lodge had burned down 25 years ago!
    Paige: Face it, Jason. You can't scare me.
    Jason: ...and when she opened the closet, all the clothes were polyester!
    Paige: AAAA!!!!
    Jason: I just needed to warm up.
    Paige: Tell me it's not true! Tell me it's not true!
• Feigning Healthiness: Jason attempts to fake being well in order to go to school and at the very least take a math test despite clearly being sick. The teacher doesn't buy it and tells him to go home.
• Fictional Video Game: Lots of them, mostly played by Jason, although most have names that are parodies of real games or combinations of their names, like Duke Quakem, Mortal Karnage, Riviablo, Nice City, Primal Instinct, Super Earthworm Mario Country 3, World of Warquest, and Candy™ Farm™ Dungeon™. the system Jason uses is called the Jupiter 64 Gamestation. (The comic does also mention a lot of real games, for example, Carmageddon.)
• Filth: Parodied:
  • Peter finds Jason drooling over a centerfold. Of a computer. ("Hey: this video card looks airbrushed!")
  • Andy and Roger once catch him drooling over old National Geographics, and Roger believes it is due to pictures of topless women, when it turns out to be the Apollo 11 issue.
  • Played straight in a 1989 story where Peter receives a swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. Peter insists I Read It for the Articles, and Andy suggests that she cut out the swimsuit women, causing Peter to reply "And read it out of context?" Eventually, she just takes it from Peter and burns it (to Roger's horror).
  • Peter puts up a new calendar and spends all afternoon in his room with it. Andy hears about this and approves, saying she also likes to plan things things out. Jason then corrects her, he's just looking at the bikini models for each month.
    Andy: I wish your father would talk to that boy...
    Jason: It'd be pretty easy, he's up there with Peter.
• Fire-Breathing Diner:
  • Peter spent an entire week having to live down his girlfriend Denise's April Fools' Day joke: a chocolate rabbit filled with hot sauce, which he of course ate in two bites before his mouth was set aflame.
  • Also used in a different comic: Jason is shown adding three full bottles of hot sauce to his tacos. He ends up breathing fire into Andy's face, while remarking how great Novocaine was. (He had paid a visit to the dentist earlier.)
  • In another strip, Jason and Peter are playing a Name That Tune-style game with their tacos ("I can eat this taco with eight squirts of hot sauce." "Eat that taco."), resulting in Peter spraying flames from off-panel.
• Flash In The Pan Fad: One storyline had Paige and Nicole debating whether to steal a popular CD from the music store, since they don't have enough money to buy it. Paige wants to just wait and buy the CD when they do have the money, but Nicole counters that they need the album now, because the band will be completely passé by the end of the week, if not sooner.
  Paige: There's a definite downside to liking flash-in-the-pan groups.
• Flat Character: Lampshaded on the back cover of Assorted FoxTrot, which mimics a "Nutrition Content" panel. Ingredients include the various leads and "several artificial characters added for flavor."
• Flaw Exploitation: Jason is a master of this when it comes to Paige and schoolwork, as he likes to take advantage of Paige's incompetence in math to give her wrong answers on purpose when she asks for help.
  Jason: Want help with your math homework?
  Paige: Nope.
  Jason: Want help with your science homework?
  Paige: Nope.
  Jason: Want help with ANY of your homework?
  Paige: Nope.
  Jason: Hmm. You're either getting smarter or wiser.
  Paige: [sternly] By the way, Shakespeare's first name was "William," not "Chet."
• Flexing Those Non-Biceps: The weedy Jason draws battleships on his biceps, so they can bob up and down when he flexes. When Paige points out they aren't moving, he wonders if he should have started with a lighter ship.
• Flipping the Bird: Peter, watching the catcher's signals in baseball:
  Peter: Two fingers? Shake him off. Three fingers? Shake him off. Two fingers? Shake him off again. Three fingers? Shake him off again. One finger?... Hey, same to you, pal!
• Floating Advice Reminder:
  • In a baseball story arc, Peter is standing at home plate and imagines a hallucination of Roger hovering in front of him, dispensing batting advice. In the final panel, the reaction from the dugout implies that he is swinging the bat at the hallucination to get it to shut up.
  • A 2002 story arc sees Roger going to Costclub to buy Halloween candy. Andy insists on going along to be the voice of reason stopping him from making stupid impulse purchases, but Roger insists he can be his own voice of reason. His "voice of reason" is a floating copy of himself, seen from the shoulders up, and is just as dumb as Roger if not more so, actively encouraging his stupid impulse purchases at every step.
• Flowery Elizabethan English:
  • Lampshaded in one strip when Peter decides to base his paper on Hamlet not on any of the countless thematic or symbolic topics it presents, but on the biggest question it raises of all: "What's with all the 'prithees'?"
  • Also in an earlier story arc, in which Paige is reading Antony and Cleopatra for school:
    Paige: Peter, what's "prithee" mean?
    Peter: Vegetable shortening.
    Paige: What's "dotage" mean?
    Peter: It's the act of cutting lumber into two-by-fours.
    Paige: What's "forsooth" mean?
    Peter: "Kiss me, hot momma, I'm burnin' with love."
    Paige: [putting her head down in frustration] I can't understand this play at all.
    Peter: Moron.
    [next strip]
    Paige: "An argument that he is pluck'd, when hither he sends so poor a pinion of his wing, which had superfluous kings for messengers, not many moons gone by"?!?!?!? English literature my buns. This is Martian literature.
    Jason: No, no—I'd recognize Martian.
  • Years later, Paige tries speaking in Flowery Elizabethan English to the gym teacher, Miss Rockbottom, to get out of running laps. "Madam, we beseech thy fair nature." "Prithee grant mercy, for this track doth grant none!" It fails.
    Nicole: [sarcastically] Nice British accent.
    Paige: All my prior acting's been in Shakespeare, okay?!
• Food Slap: In an arc centered on Roger attending his college reunion, one strip opens with a woman confirming that he's Roger Fox, from the Delta Theta fraternity, at which point she says "After all these years, I can't believe I found you!" ...And then promptly throws her drink in his face, calling him a pig. And as this is happening, another woman walks up, asking "Roger Fox?"
• Forced Meme: Jason has tried to do this many times. However, trying to make binary a common language among humans, stick on slugs, and theories about the pachycephalosaurus dominating other dinosaurs with Psychic Powers and the dinosaurs being wiped out by time-travelling big game hunters have not caught on as much as he had hoped.
• Foreign Sounding Gibberish: Averted. In one strip, Peter accidentally places a phone call to Japan by playing Led Zeppelin with the tones. The symbols shown in the phone's voice bubble are the Japanese characters for "moshi moshi", which is the "hello" phrase commonly used on the phone in that language.
• Foul Cafeteria Food: The horrible cafeteria food at Peter and Paige's high school is a running gag. Paige once received a plate of food where the macaroni and cheese was purple, the broccoli was orange, and the blueberry cobbler was green, there's apparently no refrigerator in the kitchen since the meatballs in red sauce they serve on Monday have turned into meatballs in fuzzy green sauce by Thursday, and don't be fooled if you see STEAK on the menu because it's actually Squid Tentacles, Eggplant, and Ketchup.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Played straight.
• Fourth-Wall Portrait: In one strip, three paintings of a bowl of fruit are shown, then one painting in the strip's standard style. In the fifth panel, Andy looks at a bowl of fruit and remarks that Paige's drawings are getting "more and more realistic."
• Freak Out: One Sunday strip has Peter open the fridge and go into a wide-eyed, slack-jawed panic because he found a miniature bird inside. Andy dryly explains that it's a Cornish game hen, not their Thanksgiving turkey, which calms Peter down...just as Roger enters the scene and starts freaking out over the bird himself.
• Free Prize at the Bottom: Jason comes across this trope on occasion.
• Funny Answering Machine: Several times, each courtesy of Jason:
  • One 1989 strip had him singing "A Million Bottles of Beer" over the answering machine. (The original strip had him answering as the Satan Hotline.)
  • "To reach Paige, press 666." This led to a fire-and-brimstone message from their preacher.
  • Another time, he offered a separate number for boys calling to date Paige. It was the number of the insane asylum.
  • Yet another time, he brought the machine up to the shower to record Roger singing in the shower:
    Roger: You did this HOW many weeks ago?!
  • Paige has also done so, usually in the context of begging for a date to prom.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Done a few times, such as when Andy sees Peter throwing an axe at a tree as part of a bet with Jason.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Quite often. The fog might slowly rise in a picture of San Francisco; letters might change on a sign; et cetera. Another common one was Amend sneaking a caricature of himself and a funny headline onto a newspaper being read by a character.
  • In one instance during the arc where Paige has a true suitor who takes her to a dance, in the background of the strip where they actually dance, there are two other couples dancing. One ends the dance with a VJ Day Kiss, the other ends with the guy nursing a black-eye after copping a feel. This is a possible throwback to the last date that Paige had with Chris, where she had to deal with the exact same event.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • On two occasions, Jason asked Paige and Peter if they wanted a PB&J sandwich. Paige's sandwich was full of margarine (Jason had said it stood for peanut butter and jelly, but he left out a comma) and Peter's was full of jalapeños.
  • Paige also gets excited that the cafeteria is serving steak, which she explained is written in all-capital letters. Turns out that the lunch ladies are serving "squid tentacles, eggplant, and ketchup".
• Fun with Alphabet Soup:
  • Jason's alphabet soup consists of the letters N, A, C, and L. He comments that it tastes salty.
  • Andy's Cordon Bleugh Chef tendencies are highlighted by her alphabet soup, which spells out things like "YUCKY" and "GROSS".
  • Jason wants a refund on his soup because it doesn't contain the entire alphabet.
  • Jason spells out a message with alphabet cereal that says: "By eating this cereal, you agree to buy Jason a new computer".
  • Peter freaks out because his alphabet cereal spells out "HELLO PETER", saying that the odds of that must be "one in a gazillion". Andy responds that, given the amount of cereal Peter eats, it's statistically unsurprising.
  • During finals week, Paige is concerned that it's a bad omen when her Alpha-Bits cereal doesn't have any A's.

G-H

• Gag Penis: Peter's entire baseball team is standing before the coach with huge bulges in their pants. The coach Face Palms and says, "Boys, I thought I told you to let the store tell you what cup size you need."
• The Gambling Addict: Among the many formulas for disaster in the Fox household beginning with "Roger", must be included, "...discovers online poker."
• Gamer Chick: Eileen becomes this in a few story arcs but never seems to retain it otherwise. There were also a few strips where Paige, oddly enough, gave off this vibe, although it was usually with an ulterior motive of somehow driving Jason crazy.
• Garbage Hideout: One comic, Jason pulls a prank on Paige and hides in a full trashcan, figuring she won't look for him in there. When Peter finds him, he explains his logic, leading to Peter later asking Paige "Isn't it great the way our brother punishes himself for us?".
• Gender Bender: Jason attempts to have a Franz Kafka-inspired dream after Peter tells him about The Metamorphosis. However, instead of turning into a bug, Jason wakes up as a miniature Paige. The next two weeks of strips are filled with him experiencing various horrors like shopping with "Big Paige" and Marcus falling in love with him, but when he reaches the point where he actually likes the Backstreet Boys, he finally wakes up, remarking that it's true that you can't die in your dreams.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme:
  • If Jason isn't pestering Paige, he's more than likely trying to pull off one of these.
  • Roger falls for a get-rich-quick scheme in an infomercial. He pays $200 for a pamphlet supposedly containing information on how to become a millionaire, but it amounts to telling him to invent a product, sell it for $200 and sucker 5,000 people into buying it.
• Getting Sick Deliberately: One time when Paige got sick with the flu, she had Peter sitting by her bedside for an uncomfortably long time.
  Paige: I appreciate your concern, but...
  Peter: Concern, nothing. I've got a math test tomorrow.
  Jason: (entering the room) Time's up. It's my turn.
• Giftedly Bad: Everyone in the family has it:
  • No one likes Peter's guitar-playing. One strip had Jason messing with his sheet music so he'll spend more time counting off the rhythm rather than playing.
  • Jason tries playing recorder for a while. The entire family hates the squeaking sounds.
  • Roger tries to write a novel in a weekend that is Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue". Andy starts retching at it.
  • Paige is established as a bad singer. Peter tells her to stop singing, and Jason tries to record her in the shower.
• Gift-Giving Gaffe: Roger's history of gift buying for his wife Andy is less than stellar. Gifts include: an extension cord, a heart-shaped spatula (for Valentine's Day), a box set of The Three Stooges DVDs...the list goes on.
• Gift Shake: In one strip, Jason shakes a present and says "Ooh! I wonder what this is?" A shattering noise is heard as he tells Marcus "That's why I never shake my own presents."
• Gigantic Gulp:
  • Peter drank a giant-sized "thirty-two-ple" espresso when he needed to cram.
  • In another strip, Jason discovers that Fun-Fun Mountain sells 128-ounce Slurpees.
  • Another strip has Roger filling up a giant coffee mug:
    Andy: Roger, the kids brought you that mug as a joke.
    Roger: I think you just can't stand to see me so happy.
• Girls Have Cooties:
  • Jason, quite frequently, sometimes taking it up a notch, such as when he goes out for ice cream with Eileen and her parents. When she tries some of his sundae, he screams because the spoon touched her lips, and therefore, she has infected his entire sundae with lip cooties, and if he eats it, he'll die. However, as time went on, he got better, eventually admitting he liked Eileen (of course, said admission was followed by a week of exploring time travel as a way to prevent his past self from making said admission).
  • Marcus had this too, but never quite to the same extent as Jason, and there were always subtle hints that he started liking girls while Jason was still afraid of cooties.
• Global Ignorance: In one arc, published during the first Persian Gulf War, Paige and Nicole's Current Affairs teacher invites Nicole to look at a world map without country names and point out Iraq; she is shocked when Nicole can't find the United States, let alone the Middle East.
  Ms. Cooper: Nicole, I find it truly distressing that you can't even find your own country on this map!
  Nicole: All the names are missing.
  Ms. Cooper: Go by shape.
  Nicole: How am I supposed to know what kind of stupid shape the U.S. is in?!
  Ms. Cooper: ...Interesting choice of words.
• Glurge: In-Universe. One of Jason's The Family Circus strips involves the father sparing the black widow that fatally poisoned Dolly, saying, "at least one will live." Paige doesn't get it, and walks off, at which point Jason protests that it's supposed to be heartwarming.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: A variation occurs in one series of strips where Roger goes shopping at Costclub. Andy says he needs someone to go with him to act as his "voice of reason", but he insists he can do it himself. The following comics depict Roger's Voice of Reason as a miniature Roger sticking out of a cloud who (since he's basically the same person) just reinforces decisions he was already going to make or exacerbates them (like encouraging him to buy three gigantic bags of potato chips instead of just one).
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: In one strip Peter shouts "Curse you to Hades!" at the RIAA when he thinks his new CD is copy-protected and won't play in his computer. But then the iFruit explains that no, it just refuses to play Vanilla Ice on general principle.
• Gotta Have It, Gonna Steal It: A week's worth of strips had Paige and Nicole thinking about shoplifting the latest CD of the hot new boy band. Ultimately they decide to put it back, which is just as well as the mall cop had been watching them the whole time, due to the way they were Acting Unnatural.
• Grammar Correction Gag:
  • Done frequently by Andy. She tries to justify it by being an English major who appreciates the value of the language, but judging from Peter's response of "You're coming through real clear", it doesn't work.
  • Roger, of all people, chews out a co-worker for turning in a typo-filled paper. Said co-worker blames it on his computer's lack of a spell checker. (Worth mentioning is that this isn't Roger complaining about a few misspelled words- the co-worker had the spelling skills of a three year old. Even the simplest words are mangled, the punchline being that computerized spellchecking was so commonplace that the co-worker believed the lack of it was a perfectly acceptable excuse for the abysmal quality.)
• Grammar Nazi: Andy, especially in early strips, being an English major and an occasional writer. Peter and Paige often forget that asking her for help with an English paper is a bad idea, and Jason enjoys aggravating Andy by mispronouncing words like "nuclear" on purpose.
• Grandfather Clause: Due to the strip's Long Runner status it uses plenty of tropes that are now considered discredited, like Jason's Girls Have Cooties or Paige's Teens Love Shopping.
• Gratuitous French: Among other instances, in Paige's "Ooo - Pierre" dreams.
  Pierre: Bonjour, Paige.
  Paige: Pierre, is that you?
  Pierre: C'est moi.
  Paige: Moi moi moi moi moi moi moi moi...
  [Note: "C'est" - "It is" - in French is pronounced similar to "Say" in English]
• Green-Eyed Monster: Despite being a Big Eater, Peter never seems to gain weight, and not for lack of trying. He often complains about the fact that he's thin as a rail despite the amount he eats. This has made both his parents envious, usually Roger, but Andy too, who once wore earplugs when he weighed himself and insisted he lock the door to the bathroom while he did so. After he made a Dagwood Sandwich and huge chocolate shake in order to gain weight for the swimsuit season (and Andy dumped the shake over his head) he mused, "Nobody ever feels sorry for the skinny."
• Gretzky Has the Ball:
  • Played with, and sort of the Trope Namer.
    Jason: Joe Montana fades back to pass. He sees Jerry Rice open in the end zone!
    Peter: Wrong team.
    Jason: He sees Derrick Thomas open in the end zone!
    Peter: Wrong position.
    Jason: He sees Wayne Gretzky open in the end zone!
    Peter: Wrong sport. Moron.
    [Beat Panel]
    Peter: [picks up a piece of computer equipment] So is this a modem or a hard drive?
  • In another comic, Jason predicts that the Orioles will win the Super Bowl, then asks "Which team has Charles Barkley?"
  • Peter has to take Jason to a basketball game. Jason is angry at first over having to watch a bunch of eight-foot-tall geeks kicking balls through goalposts for two hours, then asks which guy is the quarterback.
  • Andy once asked what inning was it during a football game.
• Grilling Pyrotechnics: A Running Gag with Roger:
  • At least one strip had Jason sabotaging Roger's attempt to grill hot dogs by having his toys, while reenacting Saving Private Ryan, melt a soldier on the grill.
  • One strip also says that days when Roger is grilling on summer vacation are the closest thing to an exception to the usual rule of Jason having to go outside to get fresh air (namely because Roger's attempts at grilling result in the destruction of fresh air).
  • One strip shows an attempt causing a pillar of flame to blast from the grill, into orbit, and destroy a probe on the moon. It's then implied that this isn't the first time it's happened.
    Jason: (handing Roger a phone) NASA called. Apparently you owe them some money.
    Roger: AGAIN!?
• Grocery Store Episode: Roger and Peter are depicted as being as bad in a grocery store as Paige is at the mall, if not worse. Andy once sent them to buy eggs, and they ended up buying so much stuff (most, if not all, of it junk food) that the receipt filled one entire grocery bag.
• Groin Attack: Occurs to Peter when trying to slide across the hood of his car, The Dukes of Hazzard style. His underwear snags on the wiper blade, causing this trope.
• Grounded Forever: Peter has been grounded for intervals of decades, centuries, or life. It never seems to stick of course. (Of course, in one two week arc where he was grounded for only two weeks, Andy reduced it to one, because having him stay in the house was proving to be a cruel punishment for the rest of the family, he was so annoying.)
• Hacked by a Pirate: Jason creates an elaborate treasure map (with a computer folder marked X) and wears a hat and eyepatch when illegally downloading music files for Peter.
• Halfway Plot Switch: A few arcs had these:
  • An arc had Roger attending an out-of-state business meeting, then returning home to find Jason needs stitches due to getting hit in the face by a Hot Wheels car. After two days devoted to Jason and his stitches, Roger quits work to spend more time with his family. He then gets conned into buying a $199.95 booklet on making money (which turns out to be worthless) and then tries to make money selling stocks on the internet. After losing $11,000 in the second hour, he sells the family computer and they buy an iFruit.
  • A 1995 arc began with Roger entering Jason in a chess contest. Thereafter, Jason wins $50 in the contest, taunts his siblings with it, then eventually spends it on 5,000 gumballs, which he eats in one weekend, then he gets a cavity, eventually ending up with him going to the dentist.
• Hammerspace: In one strip Peter looks inside his bag lunch and realizes he must have gotten Jason's bag by mistake, since it contains a ham and cheese sandwich...emphasis on the "a". The last panel shows Jason with about a dozen sandwiches, Marcus wondering how on Earth his mother fit them all in a standard brown lunch bag.
• Haplessly Hiding: Self-inflicted in two different arcs. Jason & Peter are on the run from a sibling, having broken something of theirs. Jason hides in an overflowing trash can, Peter flees cross-country through briar patches and poison ivy, and while Peter comes to realize he punished himself, Jason doesn't.
• Headphones Equal Isolation:
  • In one strip, Andy appears to be scolding Peter while he sits in a recliner, but her dialogue is represented as tiny squiggles. In the last panel, she yanks off his headphones (which to this point had been obscured by the recliner's padded headrest) and screams, "AND TAKE OFF THIS STUPID WALKMAN!"
  • Also, the kids give Andy a Walkman and then proceed to ask her questions like "Tell me if it's not all right for me to blow off my homework tonight" while she is plugged in.
• Hated Item Makeover: Jason's mother cleans his room while he's at summer camp. He's... less than appreciative.
  Jason: AAAHHHHHH!!!! WHAT'D YOU DO TO MY DUST-MAN ACTION FIGURE!?!!
• Hate Fic: In-Universe, basically every single one of Jason's creative endeavors is one of these towards Paige, turning her into a horrible monster or having everyone in the world treat her with the same terror and revulsion he feels towards her. The sole exception in the strip's entire run seems to be his How the Grinch Stole Christmas! parody, which focused on Andy instead and had Paige as one of the victims of her Grinchy ways alongside Peter and Jason.
• Heads, Tails, Edge: Peter, trying to decide on a prom date when caught in a Love Triangle among Denise and a new character named Mindy. She's eventually set up with Peter's friend Steve, and then never heard of again.
  Peter: It doesn't count. It landed on a crumb.
• Heart Symbol: In one strip, Morton texts Paige, asking her to simplify "2i < 6u" (the answer being i<3u).
• Helium Speech: In one strip, Jason imagines himself floating to the ceiling after inhaling helium, then expresses his disappointment (in curly letters) that it only makes his voice funny.
• Helping Granny Cross the Street:
  • Conversed and parodied in an arc where Andy bans Peter from playing violent video games and instead gives him a game called Nice City (as opposed to Vice City). At one point he complains that his character's next challenge, helping 12 old ladies cross the street in under in a minute is impossible - until Jason points out that his video game instincts telling him to beat up and rob the old ladies probably contributed several layers of difficulty.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Trope Namer, inspired by Roger's novel-writing Story Arc "His Code Name Was the Fox," which portrayed him as a Gary Stu in a bad Tuxedo and Martini spy novel that he wrote. Also an example of Stylistic Suck.
  • Also Bill Amend himself. Newspapers read by the characters frequently feature such headlines as "Cartoonist Jams With Springsteen" or "Cartoonist Invited To Speak At U.N."
  • Jason's "Slug-Man" comics are an inversion of the trope, as they are mainly designed to make Paige(-o-Tron) into as horrible a figure as possible.
  • Another example from Jason came when the remastered Star Wars movies came out in the late 90s. Jason sent a letter to Lucasfilm, asking them to edit him into the film — as a Villain Sue counterpart to Luke who ends up converting to the dark side.
• Hidden Depths: At one point, Peter bakes cookies when an angry Paige tells him he can do that to start making up for pulling a cruel prank on her. Given that Paige asked Jason, he must be better at baking than the rest of the family is.
• Hide and No Seek: Usually used by Peter or Paige to get Jason out of the way.
• Hitler Ate Sugar: Done by Andy, believe it or not. When Peter's baseball team loses a bet with the soccer team and has to shave his head (see Humiliating Wager, below), Andy sobs that he "looks like a skinhead" and that "people will think you're a Nazi!" (Peter's reply is that nobody calls Michael Jordan a Nazi, probably not the best comparison.)
• Hobo Gloves: In a series of Yet Another Christmas Carol strips from 1998, "Jasonezer" is led through a scene by the Ghost of Christmas Future where his mother, wearing patched rags including fingerless gloves, is scavenging through his obsolete computer equipment for anything of value.
• Hollywood New England: One strip had Peter and Jason deciding to adopt exaggerated Boston accents while eating clam chowder, with Peter even saying "pahk the cah in the Hahvahd Yahd" in the throwaway panels. They stop upon threat of violence from Paige.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Both of the elder Fox siblings but occasionally exaggerated with Peter.
  • In one strip, Peter even buys a CD by a band he hates solely because of the "hot-looking half-naked babe" on the album cover, and asks Roger, "Dad, at what age does a boy's brain regain control of itself?"
  • In another:
    Peter: Now do we want to sit in the front of the class, where we'll be perceived as nerds; in the back of the class, where we'll be perceived as slackers; or in the middle, where we won't be perceived as much of anything?
    [two attractive female classmates in sexy outfits walk by]
    Girl: Come on, Ashley, let's sit up front.
    Steve: Call me Nerd Boy.
    Peter: How did we make decisions before hormones?
  • In another series of strips, Peter agrees to get a discounted haircut from a cosmetology student because she's a former lingerie model. He's so distracted by her talking about bearskin rugs and posing nude that he doesn't even notice when she cuts his ear, and in the final strip he calls it the best haircut he's ever gotten - despite the fact that his head looks like it was stuck under a malfunctioning lawn mower.
  • Lampshaded in a Sunday strip when Paige asks Jason if there's a way to text "kissy face" emojis to a boy she likes, but have him see only regular "smiley faces" so she doesn't come on too strong;
    Jason: If you want him to see regular smiley faces, why don't you just text him those?
    Paige: Because he's cute and I want to send him kissy-faces! Duh!
    Jason: (to Roger) Be honest: when hormones hit, my brain's gonna turn to mush, isn't it?
    Roger: I wish I had good news for you, son...
• Horrible Camping Trip: Roger's annual camping trip is a Running Gag for the strip; though the locations may differ, the results are the same. Some examples:
  • Roger likes going to Uncle Ralph's cabin. Most of the kids aren't thrilled about it. One arc started with the kids hiding in the bathroom and Jason sabotaging the lock. 
  • In one arc, Roger takes them on one of these to a place called Skeeter Falls. In another, he locks all the food in the car, and spends the whole arc trying to open it with a clothes hangar.
  • Subverted once when the family's next Horrible Camping Trip was instead a trip to Fun-Fun Mountain (Although the parents weren't too happy).
  • And subverted again in an early arc where they go to Hawaii.
  • Zig-zagged in the Caribbean resort arc, as most of the family enjoyed it even though the place turned out to be every possible kind of fake and cheap: It was actually housed in a giant building with an artificial beach hundreds of miles from any ocean, the staff all had fake Jamaican accents, the "steel drums" were a synthesizer (whose player accidentally hits the button for bagpipes instead), and the "limbo suite" is so named because of its low ceiling. (Roger had taken the "How low can you go" sales pitch to mean it was a low rate.) Andy was the only one dissatisfied with the trip.
  • Roger turns out to have a Freudian Excuse, as revealed in this strip.
• "How I Wrote This Article" Article: One series of strips has Jason writing "a running first-person account of the process of writing a nine-hundred-word essay" for school, as part of a bet with his friend Marcus to see who can write the longer essay. Jason wins the bet, but his essay gets a poor grade because it's literally nothing but "This is my fourth sentence. This is my fifth sentence. This is my second paragraph..."
• How the Character Stole Christmas: Jason wrote a pastiche of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! with his mom as the title character. It ends up being an inversion of the original story, where she replaces lavish gifts with "useful" items such as novels, health food, and clothing. She then retracts after the "kids down in Kidville" complain.
• Human Popsicle:
  • Comically invoked in one strip where Jason manages to spray water from a supersoaker his dad got him for Christmas at him when he was shoveling the driveway, causing Andy, who is frozen with him, to go "'Don't give him a super-soaker for Christmas I said. 'But he really wants one.' You said."
  • And in another where Peter is practicing baseball in the backyard during winter. He used heat lamps to keep the backyard snow-free, but then knocked a foul ball off one and ended up frozen.
• Humiliating Wager: Peter has to shave his head after the baseball team loses a bet with the soccer team about who could eat the most burgers at White Castle.
• Hummer Dinger: One storyline had a storyline where Roger went to a "Humbler" dealership. Said vehicle turns out to be comically huge, have a gas mileage of 25 meters per gallon, and is hinted to be so heavy that it affects the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The salesman, sensing (correctly) that Roger fears Andy's reaction if he even considers buying it, says the dealership has a divorce lawyer on call. Roger wisely keeps the brochure and goes home.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: It's often shown that while Peter, Paige and Jason may get on each other's nerves, only they can do that:
  • Peter will make fun of Paige and keep her social life down to less-than-desirable. Then he finds out that the local "lech" in his words asked Paige out to prom. Peter warns her about the guy, threatens him that his date is "My baby sister" and spend the dance night looking out for Paige. He insisted that she take mace with her, and waited up for her to return home. While he says he'll say "I told you so" for weeks, his expression isn't mocking, but concerned that she didn't listen to him and relieved that the mace worked. 
  • Paige will punch out Peter if he insults her or goes too far. When some high school thugs try beating him up — they were disappointed his Halloween party didn't have beer— she went You Leave Him Alone! and threatened to call the cops on them. Peter was so surprised and sincerely thanked Paige for saving his bacon.  
  • One variant is that Jason was shocked and appalled that Peter made Paige really upset by faking a secret admirer letter, and leaving her to wait in the rain for a guy who wouldn't come. His pranks on Paige never went that fair, albeit partly because Jason thinks that Girls Have Cooties. He did consider setting Morton up with Paige, but only as revenge for Morton bullying him in summer camp. 
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Andy is a master of this, from lecturing Jason and Paige on breaking their New Year's resolution to be nice to each other while breaking her own resolution by snacking on potato chips, to chastising Jason for watching too much TV and ordering him outside - so she can watch her soaps.
    • Andy loves to play Moral Guardians, trying to restrict what media the kids consume because she doesn't want them being affected by it. Of course, she also watches trashy soap operas, Sex and the City, and The Sopranos, got addicted to Doom once, and it most certainly affects her behavior: in one strip she let out a Cluster Bleep-Bomb that would impress Tony Soprano himself when she was told that the show's next season had been delayed.
  • In one series of strips, Peter gets in trouble for punching out another student; when Denise finds out, she chews him out for acting like he's in a Clint Eastwood movie or something. When she learns that Peter punched the guy for insulting her, she says "And you just punched him in the nose?!" and Peter, rolling his eyes, responds "Look, Clint, I..."
  • Roger is like this in a very early Sunday strip. He wakes the kids up for church, and they're upset, wanting to go back to sleep. Roger scolds them, telling them, "Someday you'll realize that some things are more important than sleep!" What does he do when they get to church? He falls asleep. Paige darkly suggest pinching him.
  • In another strip, Paige chides Peter for hanging a wall calendar in his room filled with photos of half-naked (or more) women.
    Paige: Need I remind you that Mom and I do come into this room on occasion? Did you ever think of that, Mr. Insensitive? I mean, you could have gotten one with at least a couple of half-naked men.
    Peter: What?! Every time you see me in my skivvies you just laugh.
  • In one series of strips Paige gets a pimple on the end of her nose and freaks out about it. Andy tells her that it's just a natural part of growing up and she needs to calm down...and then when Paige asks "Is that a new gray hair?" she freaks out just as bad, prompting Paige to walk off saying "No comment."
  • In one series of strips Peter goes to the pizzaria where his best friend Steve works, figuring that he'll be able to get free pizza. When Steve presents them with a bill, Peter rants to Jason about how friends are supposed to look out for each other...and then remarks "Oh well, at least I don't have to leave him a tip."

I-J

• I Can Explain: Happens at least twice when Peter confesses to a transgression that he erroneously believes Andy already knows about:
  • In the aforementioned Berserk Button plot mentioned above, Peter is told a call will be made to his parents:
    Peter: [worried] Hi.
    Andy: Peter, the school called me today.
    Peter: Look, I know what you're going to say. Fighting is wrong. I know that. It was a momentary lapse. It won't happen again. I'll have to serve detention, but Mr. Krimpshaw says he may not put it on my permanent record. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was an idiot, all right?!
    Andy: They called to say someone found your wallet.
    Peter: [thinking] "Was" nothing.
    Andy: Now, then. What's all this about a fight?
  • In a one-off strip, Andy tells Peter she was cleaning under his bed and found something. Peter rapidly stammers that he only has those magazines for the articles... until Andy reveals that she was talking about his old baseball glove, which she then produces.
    Andy: Now, what's this about magazines?
    Peter: [tugging at his collar] You mean my Scientific American collection?
• Idea Bulb:
  • Parodied in one strip where Jason takes every bulb in the house and uses them to make a mobile of light bulbs over his desk, saying that it "enhances my aura of creative genius."
  • In another strip, Paige is struggling with her essay on Thomas Edison when one of these flashes above her head. It turned out to be Roger who's holding a literal bulb up because he wants to impress her with all his Edison knowledge.
  • Another strip has Paige, who is struggling with her homework, hold a lightbulb over her head in order to invoke this trope. Peter claims that he does this for Shakespeare.
• I Did What I Had to Do: In an Imagine Spot, Paige tells a frog that she's dissecting that she's dissecting him For Science!, then is grabbed by a larger frog, who tells her the same thing. Arguably deconstructed, since it shows that it's easier to make rationalizations like that when you don't end up paying the price.
• If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You: Andy is such a health food nut, and even some real life equivalents would find her dishes to be Nausea Fuel. (Beet and Cheese Subs, Curry Loaf, Corn on the Cob in a Hot Dog Bun, Lima Bean pizza?) Often played for kicks though, due to the Rule of Funny. This was almost the Trope Namer for this very trope as one strip calls it "The irony of health food."
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Occurs in one arc where Jason "coaches" Peter on football in 95-degree heat: "You know, it occurs to me that if you die, I'll get your stereo." "OK, OK, I'll pay you two dollars! Just cool it with these push-up drills!"
• I Just Want to Be Special: Played for Laughs with Jason and his constant desire for superpowers, such as standing out under a full moon after being nipped on the finger by a chihuahua in case it was a baby werewolf. Or asking the dentist to aim the X-ray machine at him so he can gain Blendo Man's powers. Or standing in the hot summer sun hoping to turn into The Human Torch.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: The whole cast shows this, but mostly Jason. He professes to be an Insufferable Genius (even desiring the "insufferable" part), but several times he proves to be a Know-Nothing Know-It-All armed with a vast library of Little Known Facts that he uses to try to impress people, only to look foolish. Some examples include doing a multimedia computer presentation of Old Yeller as a book report that had nothing whatsoever to do with the book (which he never even read) and doing a class report on Amazon.com when the assignment was the Amazon river. (His excuse? "I looked it up, they don't have one.") There are dozens more, all of them incredibly silly. That said, Jason is very book smart, tutors Paige on math and generally gets straight As, but it could be argued he is Street Stupid. Eileen acts as his Foil, being both just as book smart at him but more streetwise
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: Peter and Denise at a fast food restaurant. Peter orders "two burgers, two large fries, two chocolate shakes", Denise objects, saying she wanted a vanilla shake, and Peter says he hasn't started ordering for her yet.
• Imagine Spot: Happens all the time, but in one memorable series of strips, we see what it'd have been like if Jason and Marcus had been cast as Frodo and Sam in the The Lord of the Rings movies, with Peter Jackson having to put up with their uber-geekiness.
• Imagine the Audience Naked: Turns out not to be useful advice to give to Paige. "Yowza! It's like a Chippendales show!"
• Implausible Deniability: After seeing the latest Captain Goofball strip, Roger, who's in denial over how far it's fallen, dismisses it as an "off day." Andy then brings out previous newspapers to show that this isn't a fluke.
• Implausible Synchrony: The Train Problem that Jason solves includes him assuming all the clocks are accurate, ignoring any relativistic effects.
• Impossible Pickle Jar: Jason is having trouble with a pickle jar, so Peter decides to show him "how a REAL man does it." Cut to off-camera sounds that sound like Peter's going into labor, with Jason revealing to Paige that he's glued the lid shut: "This ought to be entertaining for a couple of hours."
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Anytime someone wants to go to the mall, he or she can count on Paige inviting herself along the minute the word "mall" is uttered (regardless of how quietly it was said). Paige apparently has superhuman hearing with regard to this, as in one strip Peter, while at home (and after being reassured by Andy that Paige wasn't), told Andy he was going to the mall and Paige apparently heard it although she was standing in the popcorn line at the movies at the time.
  • The same gag applies to Jason with regard to computer shopping (in the story arc in which the iFruit is introduced).
  • Another example involving Paige occurs in an early strip in which Jason is being scolded by Andy for not buying Valentine cards for his class as he was supposed to, because the store only had Muppet Babies cards.
    Andy: What's wrong with Muppet Baby cards?
    Jason: Mother, do you know what kind of loser buys Muppet Baby cards?!
    Paige: [entering] I can't believe I just got the last box of Muppet Baby cards!
    Andy: Bad timing, Paige.
    Jason: I rest my case.
• Incendiary Exponent: Basically any time Roger (and in some cases, Peter) attempts to light the grill for a barbecue.
• Informed Attribute:
  • Jason and Peter are supposed to be skinny, and Roger is supposed to be overweight, but all three appear to be roughly the same build as all the other characters. (It's slightly more noticeable when their shirts are off. Some of it could be chalked up to Peter's baggy sweatshirt.)
  • "Captain Goofball" is apparently a strip that used to be good back in the day, but is so obviously past its prime that even Roger, who's nostalgic for the strip, can't deny that it's no longer as good as it used to be. However, we're never shown the strip itself, so we only have Andy and Roger's word for it.
• Innocent Swearing: In one episode, Paige watches Jerzy Spaniel while babysitting. Of course, the kid hears the word and starts repeating it. In the epilogue, Paige reports that the mother said kids always hear bad words and repeat them, but if you don't use them often or attach special significance to them, they'll eventually drop it. Then they discussed watching Jerzy Spaniel while babysitting... resulting in Paige making a grand total of one cent for that babysitting job.
• Insane Troll Logic: Enough examples for its own page, but each member of the family has at least one prominent moment:
  • Andy replaces the bacon in Roger's BLT. with broccoli, reasoning that it's still a BLT, only much healthier.
    Roger: Your insanity has a frightening logic.
  • Roger attempts to justify buying an expensive golf driver with money from the family savings account, despite Andy expressly forbidding him to:
    Roger: I'm telling you, Andy, my buying an expensive club like this can actually save us money!
    Andy: Excuse me?!
    Roger: The titanium lets it have a super-huge sweet spot, which will help to straighten out my slice.
    Andy: How will that save money?
    Roger: Remember that lawyer I almost beaned the last time we golfed?
    Andy: He only threatened to sue.
    Roger: And then there are the cases of balls I lose each time...
    Andy: You know, you could just STOP PLAYING!
  • Shortly after he starts dating Denise, Peter decides he needs to break up with her, explaining to Andy that a high school boy is expected to "play the field" and date as many girls as possible, so that he will be ready when it is time for him to settle for just one. Andy stares at him and asks if he can hear himself.
  • Paige asks Jason if there's some way of texting heart and "kissy-face" emojis to a boy she likes, but in such a way that all he'll see is ordinary "likes" and "smiley-faces", so she doesn't come on too strong. Jason, confused, asks why she doesn't simply text smiley-faces, if that's what she wants him to see?
    Paige: Because he's cute and I want to text him hearts and kissy-faces! Duh!
    Jason: (to Roger, face-palming) Be honest. When hormones hit, my brain's gonna turn to mush, isn't it?
  • Before trying to juggle half a dozen eggs in the living room, Jason yells, "everyone but Mom, look at me!" then complains about her not listening to him.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!:
  • The iFruit can speak, fantasize about sexy video game characters, demand hugs, and taunt those who refuse to play games against it. It also has, at times, a rather disturbing ability to deny user control and even control its own environment, changing not only its own wallpaper, but the wallpaper in the computer room.
  • One comic also featured a digital camera that supposedly had some sort of AI to guarantee decent pictures. When Roger tried to use it, it asked to be handed to someone who knows what he's doing, and retracted all the buttons.
  • Various other talking, seemingly intelligent electronic devices: A electronic chess set in the early days, an obnoxious computer at Roger's workplace ("Can I get you some coffee? ...Oh wait, I don't have arms."), and a Tamagrouchy, a sentient (and aptly-named) knockoff of a Tamagotchi that Roger got Paige for cheap at the height of the real thing's popularity.
• Insufferable Genius: Eugene Wu, mostly because he's an arrogant Jerkass who feels the need to rub his intelligence in everyone's faces. His sister Phoebe is smarter, but she's actually nice and well-adjusted. Jason has moments of this as well.
• Insult Backfire: Andy is furious when Roger uses Jason's virtual plastic surgery software to re-sculpt her photo into his "ideal woman". She retaliates by taking Roger's photo and re-sculpting him to look like Viggo Mortensen. He stares in confusion at the retouched photo and says he looks exactly the same, what did she change?
• Insult Misfire:
  • Jason tries to farm gold in a video game and sell it on eBay:
    Peter: I guess there's an idiot born every minute.
    Jason: Don't call my future customers idiots.
    Peter: I wasn't referring to your customers.
  • In one strip, Peter goes to a Fast Food Restaurant, only to end up screamed at by the order-taker about how there are no more Bitty Babies as well as insulted. Peter then tries to tell the order-taker that he was only there to get a cheeseburger, to which the order taker reopens the channel and apologizes, explaining that it's been a rough week.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: In-Universe example: One strip had a TV Christmas special playing called "Rudolph's The Lord of the Rings Christmas" where, just as the title implied, has Hermie, Rudolph, and Clarice being dispatched by the Elf enforcer to Rivendell to meet up with Elrond for a council (presumably the same one Elrond held regarding the One Ring). When it cut to a commercial break, Peter shouted "Hey Jason, they used your idea!"
• The Internet Is for Porn: From the series of strips where they start using Compunet:
  Jason: Ms. October sure has big hooters.
  Marcus: I wonder if that affects download time.
• Intimidating Revenue Service:
  • Every April, without fail, Roger waits until the last minute to file his tax returns by himself (or try to) and it turns into a nightmare for him. He never learns, apparently. Without a doubt, his worst attempt was the time he tried to use the computer to do them; a bad idea for someone who has a hard time simply figuring out how to use a mouse.
  • He actually tried it twice. To be fair, the first time would have worked... had Jason not deleted the file (due to its size) to make space for a Moon Rover simulator. He didn't know that the file was related to taxes, but randomly deleting files doesn't make it that much better.
  • A different variation of this occurred in a Sunday strip depicting Jason and Marcus trick-or-treating. Despite not wearing any obvious costumes, everyone at the door reacts with horror. It then cuts to a frontal shot, depicting the boys wearing T-shirts reading "IRS Auditor". Marcus admits he was skeptical when Jason's dad suggested the costumes, while Jason hopes that one neighbour was only faking the heart attack.
• Invisible Parents: Denise's parents, who only appear in one arc and never on-screen.
• iProduct: The iFruit, of course. Also parodied in one arc where Jason tries to one-up the iPod by making a jPod.
• I Read It for the Articles:
  • Peter preemptively uses this excuse when he thinks his mom found a Porn Stash.
    Andy: Peter, I found something interesting under your mattress.
    Peter: Mom, I only read those magazines for the articles! I swear!
    Andy: I meant this baseball mitt.
    Peter: Oh. That's how you break it in.
    Andy: Now, about those magazines...
    Peter: [makes an Oh, Crap! face] You mean my Scientific American collection?
  • And again when Peter claims he bought the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition for an article on marlin fishing off Bora Bora. Andy offers to cut it out of the magazine for him. Peter's response: "And read it out of context?"
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: Invoked by Jason when Eileen gets a higher score than him on a math test. Most people would be thrilled with a score of 102, but not Jason, especially when the person scoring 106 percent is a girl.
  Jason: The lowest of the low! The vilest of the vile! And now one of their wretched ilk has beaten me at math! It's more than I can STAND!
  Andy: [deadpan] Speaking as one of the wretched... bummer.
  Jason: I'm not getting the sympathy I think I deserve. Where's Dad?
• Ironic Echo: Practically every other punchline.
• It's All About Me:
  • One mid-90s arc had Paige and her best friend Nicole trying to get dates to the prom. Nicole eventually gets asked out and Paige becomes upset and starts guilt-tripping her, essentially because it meant she wouldn't have someone to share her dateless misery with. After being called out on her attitude by Andy, Paige realizes she was being selfish and mends fences with Nicole... but they still argue about what color dress she's going to wear (to which Andy responds "Good friendships take time").
  • In another early-90s arc, Andy's boss invites her and several coworkers to a basketball game; when she asks Roger if the Chicago Bulls are worth watching, he ecstatically assumes he's being offered the ticket, then (after being corrected) drives the whole household up the wall with his ranting about how Andy knows nothing about basketball, how she doesn't appreciate the gift she's been offered, and if there was any justice in the world she'd give him the ticket. He sullenly watches the game on TV with Peter:
    Roger: So what if she doesn't know basketball. So what if she doesn't know who's who. So what if she can't tell a low post from a high post.
    Peter: So what if Michael Jordan. dives into her lap.
    Roger: AAAAH! That would have been my seat!
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!:
  • In-universe example. Jason worries about the good public reception of The Lord of the Rings movies. Although he is only concerned that enjoying Tolkien's trilogy will make it (gasp!) mainstream to be a nerd, therefore depriving people like himself of their "special" status.
  • Also, a very early story arc had him upset when his mom bought him a Batman lunchbox from the 1989 film, because the movie had already been out for a few months and he didn't want to be seen as a bandwagon-jumper.
  • In a very early week-long arc, Jason was obsessed about The Simpsons, but in the last strip, thought that "the fad was passé" because Paige liked it. (This was when the show was on opposite Murder, She Wrote by the way. It seemed Jason, like everyone else at the time who thought it was just a fad, was way off.)
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Played with in-universe. Jason was tired of waiting for the sequel to Myst to come out, so he created his own sequel. He showed his brother his game, "Here's the observatory and here's the library..." and Peter said, "Wait, these are all the same levels of the first game. What makes this different?" The computer then beeped and said, "Warning, velociraptor approaching." Jason replied, "You have to solve the puzzles a little faster now."
• I Warned You: An early storyline had Paige being asked out by a senior student who is known to be a sleazebag, which she accepted even though Peter repeatedly warned her. Of course, he tried to make moves on her, despite saying no, and he only relented after she threatened to mace him (which Paige only brought because Peter made her). After telling Peter what happened, his only response is that he's going to spend weeks taunting her and saying "I told you so," which only made her night worse.
• Jerkass:
  • Jason, throughout the comic strips regular storylines, could be downright unlikeable.
  • Every member of the family has their moments, actually, with Paige and Andy also being downright nasty a few times. Roger is perhaps the only person who's hardly ever actively malicious, but he still often causes trouble for his wife and/ or kids by being oblivious to the consequences or their feelings.
  • Eugene, Phoebe's brother, is probably the biggest one in the two arcs where he appears. His debut is him being snotty and arrogant to his roommates at Bohrmore Camp, and no one can stand him. The guy is also a Professional Buttkisser that bribes their counselor with a Starfleet insignia. While he snarks that it would have been great to beat Jason and Marcus's science project, he explodes when Jason reminds him that Eugene lost to his little sister. When Phoebe returns to hang with Eileen, Marcus, and Jason in their home neighborhood, Eugene tries to sabotage their friendship.
• Jerkass Has a Point: One arc has Jason be bratty while trying to complete a Star Trek level and receive an admiral promotion. Andy has her column due, so she boots him off to meet her deadline. Jason is sullen for the next couple of days, and Andy tries to impress in him that her work is more important than his games. He retorts that none of his family shares his interests, thus anything he would do is less important by default. Andy tries to protest that it's not true, she can be interested in Star Trek. Jason orders her to prove it; cut to Andy looking to the heavens and silently thinking a part of Jason is right as he orders her to go to warp speed on the level. She definitely is not interested in what intrigues her son. 
• Jobless Parent Drama: Downplayed when Bumbling Dad extraordinaire Roger quits his job in order to spend more time with his family. His family, naturally, are horrified, both because of the loss of income and the prospect of full-time Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity. Thankfully, Roger finally sees reason and gets his job back (And There Was Much Rejoicing from his family)... with the added bonus that his boss considers the days he didn't work as vacation time, so the family won't be able to go on their yearly camping trip. Roger, being the only one in the family who enjoys these trips, doesn't understand why the kids and his wife are now cheering louder.
• "Join the Army," They Said: After school, Peter recounts that a Marine Corps recruiter showed up in his homeroom class; on the one hand, he showed video of boot camp training, featuring recruits crawling through mud underneath barbed wire, with live machine guns being fired over their heads; on the other, he held up a college calculus textbook. Paige commends the recruiter's savvy, and Peter confirms that students were tripping over each other to enlist.
• Just Here for Godzilla: In-Universe.
  • In an early Sunday strip, Paige is disgusted that Peter rented Raising Arizona from the video store despite the fact that he's seen the movie four zillion times but rented it again just because Holly Hunter is in it. "Oh, THAT'S a reason," she says. It turns out the video store rented Peter Dirty Dancing by mistake, and when Peter starts grousing about it, Paige tells him to shut up so she can watch. After all, even though Paige has seen the movie eight billion times, Patrick Swayze is in it.
    Peter: Oh, THAT'S a reason.
  • Paige's sole reason for seeing The Return of the King is to sigh adoringly every time Orlando Bloom is on screen. She's hardly the only swooning fangirl in the audience, leading to Jason's punchline, and the name of the anthology in which the strip is collected, "Orlando Bloom Has Ruined Everything."
  • Not that she's the only member of the Fox family to do that kind of thing:
    Peter: I hear you and Marcus want to see Thor next weekend. If you pay for my popcorn, I'll drive.
    Jason: Since when do you care about comic book movies?
    Peter: Natalie Portman is in this one.
    Jason: Weirdo.
  • Roger scoffs at Andy's suggestion that he and Peter stop watching the Super Bowl so she can watch Downton Abbey, only for Peter to outvote him, because "Lady Rose is super-hot."
• Just Like Making Love: Roger uses this metaphor when lecturing his son on the fine art of lighting a fire... before realizing that Andy is standing right behind him.
• Just One More Level!: In one arc, Jason tries to convince his mom that she will like Doomathon II after playing it. Although she is apprehensive at first, she quickly falls victim to this trope.
• Just the Introduction to the Opposites: Played with in one strip, when Paige, Nicole and her fellow freshman classmates are actually excited about eating Mystery Meat for lunch. It turns out they're legitimately excited because they don't know what mystery meat actually is.
  Cafeteria Worker A: These poor freshmen break my heart.
  Cafeteria Worker B: You took an oath. Now glop it on.

K-L

• Kazoos Mean Silliness: One strip had Jason post a lot of fake spoilers for The Phantom Menace to keep fans away and ensure he could get tickets for the film, one of which was claiming that John Williams "is big on kazoos now".
• Kid Detective: In one arc, Jason and Marcus become kid detectives, using the name 'Encyclopedias Brown and White'. As with most of their schemes, this one goes off the rails.
• Kid Has a Point:
  • Roger's reaction when Jason defends his latest house-destroying stunt with, "but jai-alai's an indoor sport!" Andy is not pleased.
  • Andy is horrified when Peter announces he's trying out for the high school football team, since he can fit inside any of the other aspiring students two or three times over. Peter argues that what he lacks in bulk, he makes up for in sheer agility.
    Jason: (offscreen) Oops. Incoming!
    Peter: (ducking a hobby rocket zipping through the living room) I live with Jason, for crying out loud.
    Andy: You have a point.
• Kissing In A Tree: Jason's classmates sing this to him after Eileen gets Jason's love note and thinks it was for her.
• Klatchian Coffee:
  • Any of Peter's coffee based drinks.
  • Also, in one strip, Roger tells Jason to make the coffee strong. He makes it so strong, Roger can't let go of the ceiling.
• Know Your Vines: Jason and Marcus get sent on a night hike through poison ivy as part of an Escalating War of pranks with the girls. They compound the folly by deciding to use the leaves as camouflage.
• Lampshade Hanging: Crossing over into Better than a Bare Bulb territory: Plenty of it:
  • For instance, in one of the aforementioned Elseworld trips, Paige finds herself transported into a pastiche of The Nutcracker, then asks if anyone could imagine such a trick being attempted in a comic strip.
  • Also notice how many of the tropes listed here are shown to have lampshaded examples.
• Lampshade Wearing: Parodied. Upon seeing that his parents are snoozing on the sofa on New Year's Eve, Jason prompts them to whoop it up. They do so by donning lampshades, then falling right back asleep.
• Landline Eavesdropping: Jason was fond of eavesdropping on his teenage siblings' phone conversations. In one strip Pete and his girlfriend are inexplicably speaking in obvious code phrases before cutting to Jason and his friend listening in with the comment "they're on to us." In another Paige is trying to convince their mom to get a second phone line:
  Paige: A second line wouldn't be... (shouts into phone) TAPPED!
  Jason: (ears smoking): Medic...
• Laser-Guided Karma: Happens from time to time. In the camp arc, Jason and Marcus' attempt to sabotage the girls' science project ends up rendering their own project inoperable, and they are forced to vote for the girls, lest Eugene's team win.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Andy and Roger did this back in 2006 during the final 6 daily strips; they sit at the table while casually discussing an article about a cartoonist announcing that he'll now only do Sunday strips instead of doing 7 a week, as he'd previously been doing.
• Lethal Chef:
  • Everybody's had trouble in the kitchen at some point or another. Paige's approach to cleaning turkey is sticking it in the oven and putting it on "clean", her "orange juice a la Paige" was black, and she once used Diet Pepsi in making Christmas cookies because she couldn't find the baking soda; Roger has trouble with scrambled eggs; Peter has tried defrosting frozen orange juice with a frying pan; Jason once substituted ingredients in cookies using his chemistry set and has managed to set coffee on fire somehow... Andy usually averts this (albeit with other cooking issues), but even she burned a Thanksgiving dinner when trying to outdo her mom.
  • Peter has been shown several times to be a perfectly competent cook as long as he's making food for himself and no one else. He can also bake cookies.
• Lethal Eatery: The high school cafeteria.
• Let's Have Another Baby: Andy goes through a mid-life crisis of sorts and suggests this. Roger immediately tries to talk her out of it... only to start to recant when she suggests getting a Ferrari instead.
• Lighter and Softer: While a newspaper comic obviously can't be too edgy, in the 80s and early 90s Amend was more willing to write about mature themes, like the infamous storyline where Paige attends a frat party with Nicole and has to put up with a guy who tries to get her to smoke marijuana, snort cocaine, and/or have sex with him (with him actually taking a hit from a bong on-panel). Over time the series has switched to a more simple gag-a-day format (even before it became Sunday only) and comics with heavier themes are typically saved for Very Special Episodes.
• Lipstick-and-Load Montage: Done in a Sunday strip that apparently shows Paige putting on her make-up getting ready to go out. The last panel reveals it to actually be a grounded Peter trying to sneak out of the house disguised as Paige.
• Limited Wardrobe: It's rare that Peter is seen without his sweatshirt, and even rarer that he's seen without his baseball cap. One series of strips shows him wearing the cap in his baby photos. Lampshaded in one comic where Andy gives Jason some of Peter's hand-me-downs; cue Jason wearing the same sweatshirt and cap, preparing to ask him the obvious question.
• Literal Metaphor: In one strip Paige finds "Kick Me" signs taped to the back of all her tops and immediately accuses Jason, saying "Your fingerprints are all over this!" In the last panel, Marcus remarks "I told you not to eat those Cheetos before you tried that."
• Literal-Minded: One Sunday strip has Paige using a CD burner to attempt to literally burn (as in destroy) her Britney Spears CD, after she learns that Spears has a thing for Prince William.
• Locker Mail: In one of his more Big Brother Bully moments, Peter leaves fake love letters in Paige's locker that are supposedly from a Secret Admirer.
• Logic Bomb: In one strip, Paige asks both parents if Nicole can stay over, and each tells her to ask the other, with her concluding that it's okay for Nicole to come over. Jason got the same answers from asking both parents, but instead consulted logic books.
• Long List:
  • Peter, after discovering that all of his clothes smell like Paige's perfumes:
    Peter: You want to explain why my jean jacket smells like Giorgio perfume?
    Paige: Beats me.
    Peter: Or why my red sweater smells like Coco? Or why my pink shirt smells like Opium? Or why my blue t-shirt smells like Liz Claiborne?
    Paige: Peter, will you calm down?!
    Peter: Or why my scarf smells like Obsession? Or why my sweats smell like Lauren? Or why my green windbreaker smells like Colors? Or why my favorite sweatshirt smells like... like...
    Jason: White Linen? [beat] ...What? It was just a lucky guess. Really. Honest. Crud.
  • Also taken quite literally in a few strips, such as Jason writing his Christmas lists, Jason comically forgetting to specify essay length with several piles of presumed essay pages, and annual strips of Roger having several Tax-returns to fill out (with one even making a pun out of the 1040 form and his having 1,040 forms to fill out.).
• Long-Lost Uncle Aesop: Andy's unnamed mother, although appearing more than most examples of this trope, hasn't appeared in the strip since 1999.
• Look Behind You: Paige managed to trick an ice cream vendor at the Zoo this way in order to distract him long enough to have her ice cream cone be given a huge amount of swirls. He says afterwards that she pulled the same trick on him the previous summer.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: The notoriously dateless Paige. Nicole seems to have somewhat better luck with boys than Paige does, but not much.
  • On the rare occasions someone other than Morton Goldthwait seems to take an active interest in Paige, he often turns out to be a creep, like Chris Hennessey, Paige's upperclassman prom date whose attempts to seduce her ended when she threatened to Mace him; or Mitch Kellogg, who propositioned Paige for sex at a party while drunk (she angrily refused).
  • There was one story arc in which Paige did go to a school dance with a reasonably nice, good-looking boy who seemed to like her too, but he was never heard from again afterward.
• Loophole Abuse: The kids try this all the time:
  • Peter combines this trope with Cut a Slice, Take the Rest and Exact Words in one strip. He tells Andy that he and Jason only had "one slice each" at the pizza parlor before dinner, which translated to one pizza cut in half (coincidentally, on a night when Andy happened to be making "curry loaf" for dinner). Afterwards, Peter tells Jason "The Book of Peter, verse 1: Know thy loopholes."
  • Paige does a similar one: her mother says she can only have one scoop of ice cream before dinner, so she jams a spoon into the ice cream tub and pulls out its entire contents as a single cylindrical "scoop."
    Paige: One scoop. You're my witness.
  • The above-mentioned ice-cream gag was also recycled in a later strip, except it used Jason and Halloween candy, and his tactics involved keeping his bag of Halloween candy next to the radiator so it would all fuse together into "one piece."
  • Another common gag has Peter getting permission to eat "the last" of some snack food item, and proceeding to eat through several boxes in order to get to the "last" one.
  • The kids buy Andy a Walkman, and while Andy is listening to it and is oblivious to what's going on around her...
    Peter: Tell me if it's not okay for me to blow off homework tonight.
    Paige: [pointing to catalog] Tell me if it's not okay for me to order this sweater on your credit card.
    Jason: Tell me if it's not okay for me to eat this box of Ho-Ho's before dinner.
  • Jason tries it a lot, but doesn't always succeed, as when he argues that "just a sec" can also refer to a parsec. (He was playing a racing game.)
    Jason: So far I've only driven 46 miles out of the 19.2 trillion you approved.
  • Paige tried this as well:
    Paige: Mom, can you read my book report?
    Andy: I'd be happy to, Paige.
    Book Report: Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is about zgwqolm and epxmhjdkav. The central character is Dgejhgp and the main themes are yqmnezxprb and tthja nwvkjd.
    Paige: [holds up a pen] Feel free to fix any typos, by the way.
    Andy: Nice try.
  • Peter's three-page book report on The Great Gatsby:
    Page 1: The Great Gatsby
    Page 2: is about a guy
    Page 3: named Gatsby.
    Peter: They never specified font size.
• Lost in Transmission: Deliberately invoked by Peter in one strip. He phones his mother and asks "Would it be alright if I...saved for college?" with a suspiciously long pause in the middle. After his mother agrees, he is shown with an Xbox and explaining to his friend Steve that he'll claim he actually asked "Would it be alright if I buy an Xbox with the money I saved for college?" but the signal on his crappy phone dropped out partway through. That way, his mother will also buy him a new cellphone.
• Lots of Luggage: In one strip, Roger laughs at the amount of gear Jason and Peter are bringing on the trip, saying that if they brought much more there wouldn't be room for them in the car. Obvious to the reader is the fact that that's exactly what they're trying to achieve (Fox family camping trips never end well), and in fact most of their luggage is filled with styrofoam.
  Peter: Out of curiosity, how much more?
  Jason: I'm running low on duffel bags.
• Loud of War: In one strip, Paige is annoyed at the sounds of Jason making sweet talk to Quincy in the next room, and eventually yells at him. The last panel shows that Jason has been using a megaphone pointed at her room the whole time.
• Love Letter Lunacy:
  • Peter (in one of his more Jerkass moments) leaves notes in Paige's locker, pretending to be a secret admirer.
  • In another series of strips, Jason writes his mother a particularly mushy Mother's Day note, hoping to butter her up before asking for a new computer. Unfortunately, he hides it in his math book, and both he and Eileen accidentally take each other's math books home...
  • There was a Sunday Strip where Jason and Roger's Valentine's Day cards got swapped by mistake. Andy ended up getting one with a bunch of juvenile Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue... variations ("Roses are red, daffodils gold; you might look better if you scraped off that mold."), with Roger beaming the whole time, unaware of the switch. The last panel shows Paige reading from the other Valentine, which is appropriately sappy ("Your kisses sweet, like angel's song"), as Jason mutters "Uh oh..." and we hear Roger shouting in pain in the background.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Paige and Jason are a non-evil example of this to each other.
  • In this strip, Paige buys a cheat guide to one of Jason's favorite video games, just so she can "suggest" helpful tips for clearing the hardest levels:
    Paige: This cheat guide was expensive, but it's worth it to hear the screams.
    Jason: (off-panel) AAAA! How?! How?! How?! How?!
  • In one arc, Paige receives a beta copy of Riviablo - which Jason requested while "accidentally" logged in as her - and pretends to play it in her room without Jason being able to see it. Then she gaslights Jason by pretending to have received a letter from Blizzerbund Software, accepting her suggestions to make the monsters cuter, the puzzles easier, and the levels shorter, and to change the game's name to "Happy Town."
    Peter: I thought they sent you a form letter.
    Paige: Oops, you're right. My mistake.
    Andy: (off-panel) Jason, will you stop bawling long enough to tell me what's wrong?!
  • Jason gets his own back on more than a few occasions, such as when he tells Paige that his New Year's Resolution is to be her new best friend:
    Paige: If you even think of following me to the mall...
    Jason: ...and when you say things like that, I'll just say, "I love you, sis."
    Paige: AAAAAAA!
    Peter: I thought your New Year's Resolution was to drive Paige nuts.
    Jason: So I started a little early.

M

• Macho Disaster Expedition: In one arc, Roger takes Peter and Jason on a week-long male-only camping trip, which went as badly as all the previous camping trips the family went on. Jason and Peter actually lampshaded the sexist nature of the trope, though they claimed it was sexist against them because they weren't given an option on whether or not they wanted to do the trip in the first place. Paige and Andy didn't mind staying home, and Andy was actually the one to suggest the idea in the first place.
• Making a Spectacle of Yourself: In one strip, Peter buys a pair of sunglasses with one square lens and one triangular one simply for the sake of having a pair that no one else will borrow.
• Man in a Bikini: When Peter and Paige have to clean the basement during spring break, Peter complains that MTV says he should be cavorting with girls in bikinis instead of cleaning. Andy retaliates by sending Jason down in a bikini, telling Peter to squint.
• The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: Jason complains to his reflection how unfair it is that his family want him to donate his allowance to hurricane relief rather than buying a newspaper comic collection. His reflection agrees and goes on about how unfair it is of the family to assume that the needs of those whose homes and lives have been destroyed outweigh his desire to giggle for 30 minutes (or 45 if he reads slowly). Jason's final comment is "I'm not sure I like what I'm seeing".
• Man-Made House Flood: Roger once invoked this trope while filling in for Andy (see Walking Techbane). Jason and Marcus also did the same by stapling paper bats to the water heater.
• Martial Arts for Mundane Purposes: In this comic strip, Jason storyboards his proposal that the Thanksgiving turkey be carved by a ninja. Roger points out that even if he had the necessary skills, the sword Jason gave him to use would have to be made of something besides styrofoam.
• Masochist's Meal: There are a number of strips involving Jason or Peter accepting dares to put a ridiculous amount of Tabasco sauce on his Mexican food (and suffering the consequences).
• Meaningful Name: Whenever Amend needs names for the kids' classmates, he uses the monikers of his fellow cartoonists, with students named "Ricky Kirkman", "Scotty Adams", "Jimmy Davis", and "Billy Keane".
• Medium Awareness:
  • Occasionally the characters will refer to the fact that they're in a comic strip. Notably, the week-long arc caused by an ink outage.
    Jason: I called Funky Winkerbean. He said the ink's out over the entire grid.
  • Incidentally, that arc ran shortly after the Northeast Blackout of 2003.
  • The 20th anniversary strip from 2008 combined medium awareness with a lampshading of Comic-Book Time. Roger spends most of the strip trying to convince Andy that a 20th anniversary means they're still young, especially compared to other cartoon families like the Bumsteads and Pattersons who've been around a lot longer. In the last panel, a balding Jason comes in complaining that Paige stole his hairpiece.
• Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: The strip's online-only 25th anniversary special involved Peter looking over photos of panels from the comic's first year and commenting on how odd the early character designs were.
  Peter: The box says 25 years ago, which is weird because I'm only 16.
• Mega Meal Challenge: The first time Jason and Eileen go on a date (not that Jason would ever call it that), she convinces him to order a ridiculously huge bowl of ice cream bigger than his head.
• Men Can't Keep House: When Andy leaves the house for a week, Roger somehow manages to flood the house about waist-deep in water after attempting to use the dishwasher.
• Merchandise-Driven: Parodied in one arc in which Jason creates a comic strip for his school newspaper (which is never shown on screen, and eventually gets pulled due to censorship)
  Jason: Feast your eyes on the world's next multi-bijillonaire!
  Andy: Oh?
  Jason: My school is starting a monthly newspaper and I volunteered to do a comic strip.
  Andy: Jason, "volunteering" means you're doing it for free.
  Jason: I'm only doing the strip for free.
  Andy: Well, what else is there?
  Jason: A little thing called 'merchandising'. Ever hear of Garfield?
  Andy: You know, just for once I'd like to be able to attend a PTA meeting...
• Millennium Bug: Referenced a few times in the run-up to the big day; the actual strip for January 1, 2000 has the strip itself being affected, with Peter and Jason reverting to period clothing, Peter's soda turning into a milk bottle, and Jason reading an article on "what those Wright brothers are up to".
• Memory Wipe Exploitation: During one arc where his mother is whacked out of her gourd on cough medication, Jason repeatedly goes up to her to say she forgot to give him her allowance for the week.
• Microwave Misuse: Paige once put some soup in the microwave, and it exploded. When her mother asks to see the can, Paige answers "I told you, it exploded."
  Andy: Paige, didn't we have this conversation about our first microwave?
• Mischief for Punishment: One strip has Jason desperate to get out of playing golf with his father, so he unleashes a storm of paper planes at his teacher in an effort to be forced to stay behind after school.
• Mister Muffykins: A couple of story arcs have Peter pet-sitting a tiny dog named Fauntelroy who's constantly either hopping around and yapping angrily or biting Peter. Peter thinks it's got the mother of all Napoleon complexes, but the second story arc implies that it's because he's been bathing with an all-natural beef tallow soap Andy purchased recently.
• Mocking Music: When Ridiculous Procrastinator Peter is trying to cram for his finals the night before, he hurls a book at the stereo when "Time Is On My Side" by The Rolling Stones comes on; bitterly commenting that some songs are not intended for students.
• Monkeys on a Typewriter: Peter reasons that, if monkeys can randomly write Hamlet, surely he can use a random number generator to write a book report about Hamlet. When Paige laughs at the gibberish on one page, Peter comments that was his attempt at the essay.
• Mood Whiplash: When Paige gets a 91 on her math test, she's on cloud nine... until she sees Jason's score of 108 on his math test (a new school record).
• Moral Myopia: Denise does not find violence an acceptable way to solve problems... except when someone has insulted her. Lampshaded when she chews Peter out, saying "This is Real Life, not a Clint Eastwood movie!"; when he says he punched the guy for insulting her, she responds "And you JUST punched him?!", prompting Peter to roll his eyes and say "Look, Clint..."
• Mountain of Food: In the arc in which Jason is Scrooge and Peter the Spirit of Christmas Present, Peter explains the conspicuous lack of a mountain of food as having had a light lunch.
• Mouthful of Pi:
  • Paige is doing a geometry problem and asks Jason what pi is. Jason starts reciting. The last panel shows him still reciting at dinner time, with Paige asking Andy how it's her fault.
  • Another strip has Jason and Marcus playing football, being unable to hike the ball since they decided to hike it on pi.
• Mundane Ghost Story: Jason does to this Paige. After his conventional ghost stories fail to scare her, he tells her one that ends with "...and when she opened the closet, all the clothes were polyester!". In the opening panel of another strip, he asks Peter if he wants to hear the one about the headless lumberjack or the time he saw Paige in her underwear; when Peter says "whichever is scarier", he starts the second one.
• Muscle Angst: Peter sometimes stresses about not being able to gain any muscle due to his superhumanly high metabolism. One Sunday strip had him and his friend Steve cramming a huge work out session into one day to prepare for going to the pool the next day. Unfortunately, the next day they're barely able to move due to being so sore.
• Mushroom Samba: One story arc has Andy taking decongestants, and the side effects are comparable to those of hallucinogenic drugs. One of the kids offscreen asks Andy if she could take out the Pink Floyd out of the music player, and Andy wonders who wrote squiggly lines on her hand.
• Must Have Caffeine:
  • Roger seems incapable of getting through a day without coffee, considering the man attempted to drink the answering machine one morning, and on another occasion started sipping from an empty mug and didn't even realize it until Andy pointed it out (and then put the unopened instant coffee canister in his mug and attempted to sip from that).
    • The kids enjoy taking advantage of this as well, which manifested in one story arc in which Andy purposely neglected to buy coffee at the grocery, forcing Roger to go cold turkey.
      Peter: I think what you're doing to Dad is criminal.
      Andy: Asking him to go one day without coffee?
      Peter: Asking him to go one day without coffee in this house.
      Andy: Why would he be better off someplace else?
      Roger: [eating breakfast] Son, you're [crunch] sure this is [crunch] cereal I'm eating?
      Jason: [holding a box of uncooked elbow macaroni and a jug of vinegar] Absolutely. More milk?
  • Peter consumes ludicrous amounts of caffeine when studying, and despite Andy chewing her husband and eldest son out for their caffeine consumption, she occasionally suffers from the same problem.
  • One strip has Roger and Andy waking up and trying to give each other a good morning kiss, except they're so groggy that they kiss everything except each others' lips ("You're kissing my chin." "You're kissing my pillow.") At the point where Roger is planting one on Andy's elbow, she suggests they keep a pot of coffee in the bedroom.
  • Peter seems to get this from his father, although it usually only kicks in during cram sessions. One strip taking place during midterm season has Peter reading off the entire menu of a coffeehouse as his order. Another one has him drinking Starbucks on the way home, and after his mom protests, he says that he's drinking lesser amounts to wean himself off the large amounts he took during test season to prevent a crash. When she asks if that means he's drinking half-caff, he reveals that it's actually a quintuple expresso.
    • In one story arc, Paige, who needs to pull an all-nighter to finish reading a book for English class, asks Peter whether coffee or tea has more caffeine, and Peter suggests she combine both into one concoction. She overdoes it by drinking a dozen cups of the stuff - even Peter, the caffeine king, is shocked when he finds out how much Paige drank - and is so jittery as a result that she's unable to keep still in order to read, or to sleep once she gives up on reading because of her jitters.
• Must Make Amends: After Jason falls off the roof while trying to get the football, Peter offers to stay with him at the hospital as a means of atoning for causing this. Andy, who isn't about to let him off the hook that easily, says it can be "an aspect of (Peter's) punishment."
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: In one week of strips, Peter is not happy when Paige says that Peter's best friend Steve is cute.
  • When Peter learns that Paige's prom date is an upperclassman named Chris who has a reputation for trying to put the moves on girls, he warns Chris, "Those lips belong to my little sister." Not that it dissuades Chris from trying to seduce Paige anyway.
• Mystery Meat: Any strip set in the school cafeteria. And if you're a vegetarian, there's also "Meatless Mystery."