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- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Sparklelord, when he was an Evil Overlord.
- Hand Wave:
- "Ninja tricks" is the explanation given for how the ninja characters can eat, shower, and brush their teeth without revealing their faces, as Dan McNinja demonstrates by eating a bagel without removing his mask. (He still has to cut a hole in front to reveal his mustache, however.)
- Several times, we see Doc in an impossible to escape situation at the end of a page. Then the next one simply has a panel saying “HE IS A NINJA”, and continues with no further explanation how he actually managed to survive/escape.
- King Radical gets fatally ill and needs the Doc's help. Doc briefly contemplates simply letting him die and is held at gunpoint to force him provide treatment, with the Alt Text lampshading that this gets the writer out of the corner he inadvertently wrote himself into.
- "Ninja tricks"
- Hard Head: Usually played straight. Averted in one instance when Doc gets a concussion and has a hallucinatory (if helpful) conversation with a roast turkey.
- Has Two Thumbs and...: The Abs Man
- Haunted Headquarters: NASA headquarters is inhabited by THE NASAGHASTS, which attack anyone who dares to harm astronauts within the building.
- Haunted Technology: The tennis machine of the Tennis Temple is fueled by the ghosts of all the former champions. Recovering the knowledge he used to build that machine is a key component of King Radical's scheme, using it to modify the Cumberland zombie defense system.
- Head Desk: At least once
- Headless Horseman: Dracula, from his moon base, hatches a plot to turn the clone of Benjamin Franklin into a headless horseman in order to find out more about the afterlife. The headless horseman was chosen because it retains its physical form. Turns out they can also travel through space.
- Heal It with Booze: When Dan offers a couple of ninja-drug-using punks a drink. He chooses something with a higher alcohol content, promising that it'll "sterilize all those cuts on [their] face." Then pointed out as a bad idea.Alt Text: Please do not pour beer on your wounds and tell your legal guardian that I was the one who suggested it.
- Hellish Horse: Between Ben Franklin's ghostly equine stalker and Sparklelord the evil unicorn, horses are typically villains in the McNinjaverse.Alt Text: I think horses are never not scary in this comic, because they are never not scary in my life.
- Hero Antagonist: Discussed with King Radical. A lot of people in-universe and out see little wrong with what he's doing and find Doc's crusade against him completely unfounded. The reveal of his true plan to bring people from his world into the Doc's world by killing everyone he doesn't consider radical enough largely killed off this line of thinking.
- Heroic Dolphin: The story Death Volley has the implication of dolphins getting revenge on Agent Bearclaw. His story: "One time I swam out to sea, and pretended to be injured so that dolphins would swim up to rescue me. I did this so that I could kill them with my bare hands."
- Hero Insurance: "Base!"
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Bearclaw, an NSA agent who makes a hobby out of slaughtering animals with his bare hands.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Rayner's mooks. Averted with Old McNinja, who is very competent at staying hidden.
- Hired Guns: In "Death Volley", the doctor is constantly harassed by a gun-toting masked assassin. It turns out the assassin is his ex, Hortense, and the client is
the doctor's parentsKing Radical. - Holding Out for a Hero: Implied in one strip, when the police runs away from the dinosaurs:Mayor Goodrich: The police won't deal with this?
Driver: Yeah, we're all pretty used to waiting for Dr. McNinja to handle the weird stuff. - Hollywood Hacking: Played with. Dan's response to seeing King Radical's giant robot formed from all the buildings in Cumberland and powered by planks of wood harvested from a haunted forest? Tell Sean to "Hack it." Later on, Dan himself tries to do it, by throwing a keyboard and mouse at the mech.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick:
- Judy, the gorilla receptionist.
- And Gordito:Dr. McNinja: Do you think I run around with a twelve year old boy just because I like his inferior grasp of girls and higher level math? Do you think I left him with my psychotic parents because I wanted him to die? No, you undead pale ponce! Gordito is the effing badass kid. So go ahead and finish up your masterful scheme to make me let you kill me, because Gordito's going to slap around whatever ghost lackey you have like he was a pinata on the Mexican day of the dead."
- The Mummy that accompanies Archibald King of the Hoboes, which grants him immortality and protects him from assassination attempts.
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- I Am One of Those, Too: Subverted — Sean calls Gordito out on his inner geekiness, only to backpedal rapidly as he realizes he has just revealed his own.
- Identical Panel Gag: The comic where Gordito and Judy take care of Victor, the evil half plumber half spy. The four panels have the characters in exactly the same pose with only the narration and dialog changing.
- Impossibly Awesome Magic Trick: There's a flashback to Gordito's father, the Great Flying Shooting Juan (a sharpshooting trapeze artist magician) performing a card trick. The volunteer chooses a card, places it back in the deck, and throws the entire deck into the air. Juan shoots the card in midair... but the volunteer can't find the card afterwards. Then he gets a call on his cell phone...Volunteer: That was the police. The man who robbed my house... they finally caught him because he was shot in the upper thigh... There was a queen of diamonds in his pocket.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Where do you think Gordito got it from?
- Doc too. He hit a pirate on a ship from a plane in motion, despite not having any way to see his target. Especially impressive, given what his payload was.
- Doc too. He hit a pirate on a ship from a plane in motion, despite not having any way to see his target. Especially impressive, given what his payload was.
- Improvised Weapon: The razor-sharp frozen shamrocks used by the Irish proto-ninjas.
- In the big finale, Doc weaponized Dracula to turn King Radical into a vampire. Then he throws Pope Francis at him. Radical's last words are about how cool his death will be.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Doc claims to have trained his skills with Batman. In reality, though, he's just learned from reading his comic books and watching his movies.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
- Averted when Dark Smoke Puncher is possessed by a ghost wizard.Mitzi: Shoot him!
Gordito: But he's your son!
Mitzi: Shoot him fatally! - Gordito doesn't shoot him, but continue to avert it by proceeding to knock him out and having no sort of discussion with Dark Smoke Puncher.
- Averted when Dark Smoke Puncher is possessed by a ghost wizard
- I Know Your True Name: Doc never tells anyone his real name because of "the wizard." Due to his grandfather sacrificing his name in order to seal a powerful ghost wizard, he can never utter his own name without freeing him.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Lampshaded.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Parodied. A demon kills all of Gordito's classmates, causing the Alt Text to say that their heads will grow back after a day or two. And, due to the skills of Doctor McNinja, they do.
- In a Single Bound: Taken to the ultimate extreme — with enough skill one can apparently jump from the Earth to the Moon, or vice versa.
- I Need a Freaking Drink, with Drowning My Sorrows: Jose Cuervo: 1; Dr. McNinja: 0.
- Incendiary Exponent:
- Ninjas can't catch you if you're on fire.
- In the Monster Mart story, Marty tries to threaten some thugs, it doesn't work, he piles up some barrels of flammable liquid behind him, smashes them and tries again, framed by the firey explosion. It works.
- Ninjas can't catch you if you're on fire.
- Ineffectual Loner: Doc manages to turn Frans Rayner from a One-Man Army to one of these by invoking 80's buddy martial-arts movie rules.
- Inexplicably Awesome: Normally, diplomacy is awesome but not quite this effective.
- Informed Small Town: Doc is incredulous to learn that Cumberland, which has a population just over twenty thousand people, has not one but two mafia criminal organizations trying to take over.
- Inn Between the Worlds: Purgatory is a restaurant. With really, really slow service.
- Inner Monologue: Often. Doc has been known to argue with his inner voice.
- (And lose.)
- You hush.
- (No.)
- Insane Troll Logic:
- The Axe Cop crossover proves that, yes, there are some things too crazy to make sense even in this comic.Axe Cop: If bad guys steal this book [that forces you to be on their team]... I'll chop your head off. After I kill all the bad guys you can heal yourself with your doctor power.
McNinja: Just... Just protect the book, okay? - Then there's the pirates.Captain O'Shay: For each one of my men ye touch, I will kill five members of yer family.
(Dr. McNinja glances at the three other members of his family, tied up and on the edge of the plank)
Dr. McNinja: ...that math does not work out at all. - BAD MATH PROVES A POINT!Alt Text: The point that you're a total dumbass, Captain O'Shay.
- The Axe Cop crossover proves that, yes, there are some things too crazy to make sense even in this comic.
- In Spite of a Nail: No matter how many alternate-universe counterparts Chuck Goodrich helps, another one will appear.
- Instant Chucks: Chainsaw nunchucks
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Subverted with Judy. Her sign language is translated for the reader, and Ben Franklin II understands it, but Doc doesn't know sign language.
- Inventional Wisdom: "You just cut the elevator?! What are you doing?!" "Why is there even a button for that?"
- It's Been Done: "This sounds a lot like Lost."
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- Jawbreaker: Doc does it to a zombie. Since it was undead, it doesn't really kill the thing, but it does prevent it from biting him.
- Jerkass Has a Point: This is how Doc realizes something is up with Martin. Martin's father says Martin put up a billboard near his home as a deliberate mockery and Martin can't defend his decision, but Doc notes the billboard is in a prime location for one and wonders why Martin can't point that out.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Many later chapters have an increasing amount of Call-Backs (even weird Call Forwards) to previous weird events, proving that they were actually perfectly logical. Quite unexpected, since there is so much weirdness going on, we didn't really think about it. Until everything (broadly) is explained by King Radical.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: When attacked by the final Nasaghast, Doc is pulled into his own mind and forced to confront the creature there.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The Doctor himself, in Let's Get Rad, due to Sparklelord's influence.
- Jumping the Shark: Lampshaded in the alt text on this page.
- Jump Scare:
When I say "Happy" you say "Birthday!" HAPPY! - Just for the Heli of It:
Word of God says that: "Helicopters only exist in this comic to get exploded. They serve no other purpose." Also, one of the inhabitants of Radical Land is a helicopter head ent... and yes, that is exactly what it says on the tin. - Just One Man: A plot point in Army of One.
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- Kansas City Shuffle: Carl, the weather man.
- Karmic Death:
- Parodied with the anonymous pilot of Bearclaw's airplane, who admits that he deserved to be randomly murdered because he himself intentionally killed some innocent bystanders to show off his piloting skills.
- Agent Bearclaw once swam out to sea pretending to be injured so that he could strangle the Heroic Dolphins that came up to rescue him. He eventually finds himself stranded at sea for real, surrounded by dolphins, and they shoot him to death shortly after they rescue him.
- Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Gordito in the Bad Future. Looks handsome, more badass and his mustache doesn't look hilariously oversized compared to his face..
- Kill and Replace: The way Dracula's ghost wizards operate, killing a human host and stealing their body.
- Presumably what happens to all "lame" people who get replaced with residents of Radical Lands.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: King Radical's inarguably radical death.
- Killed Off for Real: The comic isn't afraid in racking up the killcount and making sure those deceased stay dead. The roster of people permenantly killed are: Ben Franklin II, Beeman, Agent Bearclaw, Dinosaur-timeline Chuck Goodrich, Herschel, (presumably) Zombie-timeline Chuck Goodrich, Ron Wizard, Old McNinja, King Radical, and Dracula. Subverted but later played straight with Frans Rayner.
- Kill Sat: An interesting version in Dracula has moon laser. Which is basically just a giant laseron his moon base that's targetted at Earth.
- Kill the Host Body: The McNinjas are hired to assassinate a Ghost Wizard, which includes killing the guy it's possessing so they can fight the exposed spirit with holy weapons. It re-possesses Sean, Dan and Mitzi are fully prepared to kill their own son, but Gordito stops them and shoves a blessed bullet down his throat before it fully takes hold of him instead.
- King of the Homeless: Archibald, King of the Hobos.
- Klingon Promotion: Frans Rayner plans on becoming President this way. When it's pointed out that it doesn't work that way, he admits that it doesn't, but by the point he kills the President he's banking on the American people being so scared and desperate that they'll install him in power anyway.
- Knight Templar: King Radical just wants to make the world radical... even if it means killing billions.
- Kryptonite Factor: The Doctor's special anti-ninja drug, which he created to stop Frans Rayner and his personal army of "drug ninjas". After getting a lot of flack for hoarding the drug, he defended his actions by stating that he had "created his own Kryptonite" and therefore wasn't going to let it out of his control.
