YMMV / Calvin and Hobbes

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• Accidental Aesop: While Calvin loathes having to learn lessons, the reader can glean some stuff:
  • Kids know more than you think they do. Calvin is a smartass but remarkably observant about human behavior, double standards, and cultural oddities. He knows that Mrs. Wormwood is a chain smoker and guzzles Maalox when stressed and that his dad is a G-rated masochist about exercise while finding excuses to make Calvin do chores so as to "build character" and make him miserable.
    Calvin: (while being made to shovel the walkway) Pretty convenient how every time I build character, he saves a couple hundred dollars.
  • Know when to compromise. No one likes an overly stubborn Determinator who won't give an inch of ground no matter what. Calvin and his Dad have one thing in common: they absolutely refuse to be flexible. Dad insists on taking the family on camping trips for vacations no matter how much they dislike them, and won't consider Calvin's requests of wanting to go to a casino (which is actually not a bad idea for families) or a regular hotel. Calvin, in the meantime, always thinks that he knows best and won't listen to others, and this often messes him up. Case in point, when Hobbes tells him he should do his homework on a day when school is canceled due to snow, Calvin refuses and procrastinates until it's too late.
  • Sometimes a kid who is acting out will do it just for the sake of it; in one strip, Calvin hammers nails into the coffee table just because. The best way of handling an uncooperative kid is calming them down by empathizing with them and talking on their wavelength. Uncle Max becomes the Cool Uncle in Calvin's eyes by pretending that Hobbes is real and that he's a killer, while also not scolding him. Meanwhile, Rosalyn against all odds gets Calvin to cooperate by offering to play his favorite game and letting him stay up half an hour past his bedtime. Not only do she and Calvin have a lot of fun playing Calvinball, it's the only time he did his homework early and showed kindness in her presence.
  • Not everyone learns from their mistakes resulting in consequences, nor does punishing an out of control kid guarantee a lesson will stick (especially if this hypothetical kid has a mental/neurological disorder, diagnosed or not). Indeed, Calvin almost always gets trouble for his antics but no matter how many times his parents, Miss Wormwood, Susie, Rosalyn or even Hobbes retaliate, Calvin practically doesn't change his ways at all, instead content to deny responsibility for it altogether. It can also be presumed that his parents and teacher never tried to properly explain to him basic cause-and-effect regarding his actions, opting instead for the old-fashioned (and demonstrably ineffective) approach of expecting him to learn only from getting disciplined.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Calvin talking to the TV: "Shock and titillate me! I've got money!" Hell, knowing what he's tried to watch in other strips, it's barely accidental.
  • In one arc, Calvin gets Susie sent to the principal's office. He's relieved at first, but quickly realizes that she's probably going to tell on him. The exact phrase he uses is "Suppose she fingers me!" For the longest time, "finger" as a verb mainly referred to ratting out an accomplice in crime.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In one strip, Calvin's dad waxes nostalgic about wooden escalators. While the snipe at modern technology is obvious, it's easy to assume he's just talking about stairs to mess with Calvin (and indeed, it would even be in character for him to do so), but no, wooden escalators were a real thing. One is even still in operation at Macy's in New York City.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: There is a lot of this to be had, especially where the two title characters are concerned.
  • Some have posited that Calvin's Bratty Half-Pint behavior could be seen as a case of The Dog Bites Back mixed with Then Let Me Be Evil when you consider what he has to put up with. His parents never once work with him and attempt to meet terms agreeable to the both of them, often yelling at him or assuming the worst of him. His peers at school regard him with disdain. His babysitter is a jerk who threatens him with physical harm if he doesn't comply with her demands. Really, no one (except Hobbes and Susie sometimes) talks to him like he's actually a human being. Thus, it's hard to see how Calvin isn't supposed to be a Bratty Half-Pint to the people who treat him like garbage on a regular basis.
    • Hobbes abuses and bullies Calvin on a regular basis, even when Calvin doesn't provoke him. If Hobbes truly is imaginary, then this means that Calvin has a huge Inferiority Superiority Complex, which makes his interactions with other characters a lot worse in retrospect. Consider the moments where Calvin acts like a Small Name, Big Ego and Hobbes all but demeans and insults him to put him in his place.
    • This can also explain why Susie's the only one Calvin's age he regularly interacts with in a non antagonistic way - she's the only one who even tries to be nice to him.
  • Who or what exactly Hobbes is tends to be a subject of debate. It probably doesn't help that by Watterson's own admission, the comic goes out of its way to not explain it while at the same time raising more questions. There appears to be an in-universe disparity in how people see Hobbes too, with Calvin viewing him as a real being and other people viewing him as Calvin's Imaginary Friend.
  • Calvin's mother can come off as harshly authoritarian at times. She rarely smiles at him, and has a knee-jerk reaction of trying to suppress whatever he's engaged in (whether she turns out to be right to do so or not). And when you consider that Calvin displays many symptoms of ADHD and autism, and he doesn't appear to be getting any help with managing either condition, this could have overtones of neglect and abuse. There even was one strip where his mother puts Calvin (who yet again is only six years old and probably has untreated ADHD and autism) out to wait for the school bus for two and a half hours before it arrived, just to give herself a morning free from having to take care of him! Watterson himself lamented in one commentary that he regrets that the strips mostly showed her in a bad mood, since most of her appearances had her around to react to Calvin's latest misbehavior. Other ones, however, do show she does love Calvin; he's just hard to deal with at times (plus, in the 1980s/90s, conditions like ADHD and autism were far less known and recognized by much of the mainstream than nowadays).
  • Calvin, in his exuberant sled or wagon rides, frequently flies off what seem to be massive cliffs, falling heights likely to cause death or serious injury. Either Cartoon Physics are in charge, or the strip is an Unreliable Narrator and the cliffs shown are only his perception of smaller and much less lethal slopes. Similarly, his backyard may be less than the vast national park it seems to be, which would explain why his father treks the family hundreds of miles to go camping rather than do it out back. In the story arc where he accidentally pushes his mom's car into a ditch (which thankfully wasn't damaged in the incident), he reacts as if it was a cliff, indicating that he does exaggerate greatly, and his stunts are showing what he imagines around him, not what is actually there.
  • A few fan interpretations of the infamous Noodle Incident are to be found floating around the internet. One of the most popular is that in this case, Calvin was actually innocent for once, and really was blamed for something he didn't do (sometimes saying he was framed), as he claims.
  • Hobbes is usually portrayed at various times as the Straight Man, voice of reason when Calvin is about to do something foolish or selfish, a pal who improves his day and yet not above antagonizing Calvin either as Laser-Guided Karma or at little to no provocation despite occasionally possessing maturity and moral scruples. Given that Calvin sees him as a living being, is he a representation of Calvin's emotional state at any given time, a toxic friend who he knows has a bad side but won't leave due to a co-dependency or even Calvin projecting his frustrations with a hypocritical and moralistic society onto a preferred object to try and rationalize his worldview?
  • Is Calvin a put-upon Woobie who no one understands, or is he a narcissistic little sociopath who quite frankly deserves most of what happens to him given what he puts his parents, Rosalyn, Suzie, and Miss Wormwood through?
  • At first glance Susie herself seems like a friendless Nice Girl who constantly suffers from Calvin's pranks but tends to get vindictive, smug and short-tempered when putting one over on him, even at a provocation as small as a failed snowball toss. All this is especially worth noting because it's very much at odds with her moralistic personality and disdain towards Calvin for misbehaving, as well as her complaints in some strips about him being mean to her, yet she never once feels any remorse nor apologizes for her outbursts (whereas Calvin, of all people, has expressed guilt for his antics going too far once or twice). All things considered, she may not be a Woobie at all but rather a hypocritical "perfect child" who acts as further evidence of Calvin living in a harsh and conformist environment that doesn't try to understand him.
    • Additionally, recall that Susie is high strung enough she's worried a bad presentation in the first grade will be enough to keep her out of a good college - is she just naturally a perfectionist or does she have some serious education parents? The fact that her parents are never shown makes it easier to just run with it and being raised in a strict family could partly explain why she has so little patience for Calvin's antics beyond just being one of his usual targets.
    • Plus, is Susie genuinely a Nice Girl with a feisty streak when pushed to her limits or does she act that way only because her Education Mama demands it, her outbursts resulting from stress and/or fear of getting severely punished for the slightest mistake?
    • Exactly how good is Susie's home life? Consider that, according to the 28 December 1985 strip, her idea of "playing house" consists of the parents coming home from work, griping about their jobs, and then arguing over whose turn it is to microwave dinner (whereas Calvin has a stay-at-home mom who cooks most nights). It could just be evidence of a stressed but otherwise innocuous dual-income household (not exactly rare even in The '80s), but it could also be evidence that their marriage is on the rocks, which might in turn explain some of how Susie behaves.
  • When Calvin refuses to take a bath and claims there are monsters in the bathtub, is he truly scared, or is he feigning fear and telling Blatant Lies because he Hates Baths?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation:
  • One strip showed a montage of Calvin's gruesome snowmen followed by Calvin's mom saying "You have to admit it's slowed down the traffic on our road." Does she mean that the road now gets less traffic so that people don't have to look at the snowmen, or that the traffic drives by more slowly so that people can get a closer look at them?
  • One of the family camping trips had the family deal with constant rain from beginning to end. When they leave, Dad says "I've had enough. What a rotten week!" Then the rain suddenly stops to Dad's annoyance. The final panel has Calvin asking Hobbes "Do you know what any of Dad's words meant?", and Hobbes saying he wrote them down to look them up when they got home. The joke is that Dad was swearing offscreen, but some younger readers assumed "Dad's words" meant the I've had enough... line, because Calvin and Hobbes assumed it was some sort of magic phrase that could make the rain stop, and they were going to look it up to see which of those words was the magic rain-stopper. Or alternatively alternatively, they were poking fun at how unusual it is for Dad to give up by saying his words must mean something different.
  • An early Valentine's Day arc in which Calvin receives a snowball to the head for giving Susie dead flowers and a mean Valentine culminates in them both thinking "he/she loves me". Similarly, a Sunday strip begins with Calvin and Susie exchanging hateful insults with him stating to the reader, "It's shameless the way we flirt". Some could easily take this as proof that Calvin and Susie have an antagonistic crush on each other but it's also very likely to be a Stealth Parody of the Masochism Tango and Loving Bully tropes, given the overall strip's satirical and comedic nature.
  • One gag has Calvin asking Hobbes if he wants to toss "the ol' pigskin" around, which Hobbes refuses, and Calvin is then shown carrying a toy that looks like a pig's skin. The joke is a Bait-and-Switch about "pigskin" meaning an American football, but readers outside the US would probably assume the joke is that Calvin has poor taste in games.
  • A 1985 strip had Calvin climb out of the house in the middle of the night and dial his parents, saying "It is now three in the morning. Do you know where I am?" This is a reference to the PSA "Do you know where your children are?", which ran in the 80s, but readers too young to remember that only laugh because Calvin's gag is funny and in-character.
  • In one strip, Calvin is at the dinner table, saying "What if we die and it turns out God is just a big CHICKEN?? What then?! ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES, THAT'S WHAT!" It's not clear from the artwork that the family is actually eating chicken for dinner, so if you miss the intended joke, it could come across as Calvin just being a Cloudcuckoolander freaking out over nothing. Other people thought Calvin was calling God a coward.
  • Calvin once got into trouble at school for something unspecified, that resulted in emergency sirens being heard. This was probably just supposed to be a simple Nothing Is Funnier gag, but many fans think that whatever Calvin did this time was actually the Noodle Incident itself.
  • One strip has Calvin stick his nose into a jar of mustard. While it's probably intended to be simple yellow mustard, the fact it's in a jar can actually suggest that this is a brown or dijon mustard - thus it's even hotter!
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: One strip was clearly meant to criticize the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction by having Calvin claim that Hobbes wouldn't dare throw a water balloon at him because Calvin had even more. The problem is that Hobbes won by tossing his balloon at Calvin, making Calvin drop all his balloons on himself, leaving one with the impression that the best move is to strike first.
• Anvilicious:
  • Watterson's frequent broadsides against TV, advertising, comic books, deforestation, commercial culture, war and human nature can get ham-fisted at times. Generally speaking, if Calvin's dad has the most dialogue in a strip, Watterson is about to lecture the reader. He himself admitted to being too heavy-handed in an arc in which Calvin and Hobbes go to Mars to escape pollution, only to encounter a Martian who immediately flees (Hobbes:"Would you welcome in a dog that wasn't housebroken?") and realize that they have to take care of their own planet before going on to others.
  • In one Sunday strip, Calvin and Hobbes play a game where they play the opposing sides in a war and shoot each other at the same time with dart guns. Calvin then remarks that it's a "pretty stupid game". It's an obvious allegory for mutually assured destruction, as Watterson spells out in the Tenth Anniversary Book.
• Arc Fatigue: In the 10th anniversary retrospective book, author Bill Watterson writes about how he wanted to get this reaction with one particular story arc, but wound up fatiguing himself instead. Specifically, this was the surreal arc where Calvin's personal gravity reverses, then he grows so large that he falls off the planet. Watterson wanted to drag the story out until he started receiving complaints from readers—but instead he wrapped up the arc of his own volition first. Aside from getting cold feet over deliberately annoying his readers, Watterson just lost interest in the story itself, describing it as "weirdness for weirdness' sake."
• Awesome Ego: Calvin's ego could blot out the sun, and the strip rarely pulls any punches in bringing him back down to Earth, but he is brilliant in his own way, and comic fans of all ages look up to him as childhood personified. Hobbes is only slightly less narcissistic, if that, but his suave, feline elegance and wit make him just as lovable.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In an early strip, Calvin and Hobbes are puzzled by Calvin's study material for school. In the next panel, the TV answers Calvin's question (albeit in a thought bubble). This never happened again; presumably Waterson was trying something he decided didn't work. ^note That said; The punchline from the TV is fitting since the question was what "Religion is the opiate of the masses." means and the Boob Tube's thought bubble answer, "It means Karl Marx hadn't seen anything, yet!"
• Bizarro Episode: In the story arc from November 13th, 1989 to December 2nd, Calvin suddenly has his gravity reverse with no explanation, and then revert itself just as inexplicably, while doing his homework. Then, he grows so big he outgrows the entire universe, but finds a door floating in the void that leads back into his bedroom. The story stands out as bizarre even compared to Calvin's other fantasies, especially because of the lack of jokes or Calvin's usual Large Ham narration. Watterson noted in the 10th anniversary edition treasury it wasn't one of his more interesting stories and he intentionally cut it short.
  "It's just weird for weirdness's sake, and I don't think it holds up very well."
• Broken Base:
  • The baseball story arc is probably the most divisive arc in the whole strip. Some find it a very emotional and realistic story that shows what happens when a non-athletic person with no interest tries to do sports. Others find it a mean-spirited Kick the Dog moment for Calvin, especially with the cruel kids and equally cruel coach who get off scot-free in the end.
  • Bill's decision not to license the strip. Many agree with his choice, pointing to other strips that were cheapened by excessive merchandising, and saying that anyone who wants merch isn't a true C&H fan. Others lament over how great it would be to see an Animated Adaptation, especially since the characters would've had a chance to become more popular in other countries. In regards to this, there are three divisions about merchandise: Either A) You're not a true fan for wanting merch, B) You don't want merch for respecting Bill's choice, or C) Take the Third Option and while respecting Bill's decision against official merch, but feel fan merch is a whole different story. And D) Respecting Watterson's wishes, but understanding the lack of licensing meant it opened the doors to things like the 'Calvin peeing on things' decals that goes against the spirit of the comic.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • The strip where Calvin filches his father's glasses, dresses as him, and says, "Calvin, go do something you hate! Being miserable builds character!" Considering that the dad basically uses "building character" as an excuse for Horrible Camping Trips, something that no one else wants. Even Mom breaks into hysterical laughter, falling out of her chair, and Dad sullenly mutters Calvin is being super-sarcastic.
  • The arc where Calvin brings Hobbes to school to intimidate Moe. Suffice to say, it works; Moe suspects it's a trick when Calvin offers to let him play with the tiger and backs away as Calvin taunts him. The final panel has Hobbes shouting, "Come back and call me a bear again! Yeah, YOU, Bub!" while shaking his paw-fist.
  • Downplayed In-Universe. While Calvin fantasizing about Moe and some of his other classmates dying in horrible ways is disturbing and sadistic, it's hard to blame him when you reread certain arcs, particularly the Baseball one, where they spend every second treating him like shit for things that aren't his fault and generally being horrible, sadistic bullies who mock and ostracize him for being different. It's generally not hard to imagine Calvin would love seeing these little assholes pay, even if you think he takes it too far.
• Common Knowledge: Because Hobbes is depicted as both a stuffed animal and a real tiger, readers usually assume Hobbes is either Calvin's Imaginary Friend or a Living Toy who reveals his true nature to only Calvin. In the Tenth Anniversary Book, Watterson rejects both of the aforementioned interpretations and instead suggests that Hobbes's dual nature is simply a metaphor for subjectivity. In addition, the comic itself never answers which perspective of Hobbes is the "correct" one.
• Delusion Conclusion: Some readers theorize the main character may be suffering from schizophrenia or a related mental illness, seeing as Hobbes appears as real to him but everyone else sees him as a stuffed tiger. It's never made clear if Hobbes is real or simply Calvin's fantasy, since some aspects are difficult to explain, while series author Bill Watterson has famously refused to clarify one way or another.
• Designated Hero:
  • Hobbes can come off like this at times. He's generally portrayed as a smarter conscience to Calvin when the latter is about to misbehave or do something foolish but often doesn't live up to his moral standards, is just as prone to foolish activities as he is and doesn't hesitate to make Calvin suffer. While his aggression towards Calvin can sometimes be mitigated by the fact that he's acting on tiger instinct and it's more often than not a justified reaction whenever Calvin starts the fight, he occasionally bullies him at next to no provocation as well. In addition to physical attacks, he purposefully inconveniences and takes advantage of Calvin despite the latter doing little to deserve it in those situations (e.g. when Calvin was tied to a chair and in another arc where a bee landed on his back) and remorselessly delighting in his misery. Unlike Calvin, who almost always pays for his mischief and selfishness, Hobbes faces virtually no comeuppance and yet you're expected to side against Calvin in the instances where it was uncalled for.
  • Susie Derkins is sometimes this as well. She's portrayed as a victim of parents with high expectations, along with being a frequent target of Calvin's mischief, which burdens her with a degree of stress. However, she will more often than not act hostile to Calvin on instinct and deliver an excessive degree of Disproportionate Retribution for something minor, often to the point of physical abuse. Yet she's typically given the upper hand in the end and the reader is often expected to take her side.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Calvin having ADHD has long been a popular fan theory thanks to his general obliviousness to the world around him and his short attention span, to the point where one notorious fan comic depicts Calvin being unable to talk with Hobbes anymore after being prescribed Adderall. Calvin being autistic is another commonly held theory thanks to his inability to comprehend the motivations of other people, his intricate and vivid fantasies, and the fact that his Book Dumb nature belies his immense knowledge about subjects that truly interest him, such as dinosaurs and gross things (which are consequently easy to read as special interests); after the DSM and ICD started allowing dual diagnoses of autism and ADHD, many neurodivergent fans started interpreting Calvin as having both.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Calvin's Tracer Bullet alter-ego. Because of how long it took Watterson to draw the Film Noir-style art, he only appears in two arcs comprising six strips each in addition to his brief appearance in the haircut story, but he's as fondly remembered as Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Garfield. Fans who appreciate the sophisticated humor of Calvin and Hobbes see Garfield as being too repetitive and overly reliant on slapstick. This even extends to the creators with Bill Watterson highly critical of Jim Davis marketing Garfield for the purpose of more money (something Jim Davis has admitted to on several occasions).
  Bill Watterson: Jim Davis is... consistent.
  • This rivalry appears to be one-sided on Watterson's part; Jim Davis does not seem to take the criticism personally, and even gave Watterson and Gary Larson (who has also been critical of his work) praise in one of his Garfield anniversary collections, calling 1995 a "heartbreaking" year for comics fans due to those two colleagues of his retiring.
• Fanon: A couple strips where Calvin's mom communicates with Hobbes (such as talking to him in the raccoon story arc, or attempting to call to him in the "Yukon Ho!" story) has led to many fans believing Hobbes originally belonged to her when she was Calvin's age.
  Calvin: You sissy. Mom always takes your side!
  Hobbes: That's because she wanted another tiger, not you!
• Gateway Series: If you can find any comic after the '70s besides Peanuts or Garfield that has left more of a mark and gotten more people into newspaper comics, chances are it will be Calvin and Hobbes.
• Genius Bonus:
  • From one strip where Calvin asks his mom if hamburgers are made from people in Hamburg. While that is obviously (hopefully) not the case, hamburgers DID get their name from Hamburg, Germany.
  • Lead characters named after John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes also fit into this trope. Same with Miss Wormwood.
  • In one strip, Hobbes claims "If you don't get a goodnight kiss, you get Kafka dreams." The rest of the strip is about the duo fighting off an enormous bedbug.
  • "The Yukon Song" is written In the Style of Robert Service, who's best remembered today for his poems about the Yukon during the gold rush.
  • One of Calvin's tiger poems has the verse "A sambar who'll be dismembered". A sambar is a type of Asian deer that is a popular prey item for tigers.
  • One Sunday strip has Calvin having a nightmare about being trapped in a laboratory with a pair of alien scientists using a puppet version of his mom to try and feed him oatmeal. This is a reference to scientists in bird rehabilitation centers using bird puppets to feed chicks to prevent them from imprinting on the scientists.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The strip quickly became popular in the UK and is still reprinted in some newspapers there to this day. The collections are also still sold in bookshops. Go in any branch of Waterstones' and you'll still find people buying them.
  • Not only that, but when the 25th anniversary of the strip came round (in 2010), BBC Radio 4 made a documentary celebrating the strip, hosted by Never Mind The Buzzcocks' Phill Jupitus. In said documentary, people were interviewed buying the books in Waterstones and other bookshops, showing how beloved it is in the country.
  • The strip remains enormously popular in Scandinavia to this day. In Norway, it had a monthly comic book lasting from 1989 to several years after the strip ended. The reprints are still selling well.
• Growing the Beard:
  • According to the author, the strip's world opened up after he wrote the "dying raccoon" storyline and found that Calvin and Hobbes had more potential than he thought, as it was one of the earliest times the strip moved away from mostly light-hearted gags to deeper, less humorous subjects like death.
    "The story not only revealed new facets of Calvin's personality, but it also suggested to me that the strip was broad enough to handle a wide range of subjects, ideas, and emotions."
  • In one of the early story arcs, Hobbes is "kidnapped" by a dog and goes missing for a few days. Watterson noted in the 10th anniversary treasury that even though the arc lasted only a week (and Hobbes was found by Susie on the fourth day), he received numerous letters from readers worried about Hobbes. He stated it was a good early sign that readers were now emotionally connecting to the characters.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In one strip, Calvin draws a squadron of B-1s nuking New York in class. Since 9/11, there's little chance a strip like that would get the green light.
  • In one strip, Watterson takes a jab at comic book collectors of the early 90s by having Calvin gushing about a comic series whose issues are all #1 so they are all "collector items". Just a year after the comic ended, the comic industry crash of 1996 happened, which was in part caused by the oversaturation of the market with worthless "collectors" comics.
  • In an early strip, Calvin tells his mom he wants to be a radical terrorist when he grows up. 9/11 and the rise of radical terrorist groups both at home and abroad would result in no chance in having Calvin say that today.
  • The arc where Calvin is carried away by a balloon isn't so light-hearted ever since the Balloon Boy hoax.
  • In one Sunday strip, Calvin is teased by Hobbes about being in love with Susie. He sends her a card with a drawing of her as a worm-eaten corpse and grumbles, "I'd say we're about due for another St. Valentine's Day massacre." after she hits him with a snowball. 25 years later, the Parkland school shooting happened, taking place on February 14.
  • When Calvin asks his mother if he can buy a "Satan-worshiping, suicide advocating heavy metal album", she replies that "the fact that these bands haven't killed themselves in ritual self-sacrifice shows that they're in it for the money like everyone else." In 2006, Satan-worshiping, suicide-advocating black metal musician Jon Nödtveidt (the lead vocalist for Dissection), who was previously convicted for being an accessory to the murder of a 36-year-old gay man, indeed killed himself in ritual self-sacrifice.
  • In a 1990 strip, Susie breaks the fourth wall and tells us her and Calvin's class voted Calvin "most likely to be seen on the news someday." Given the kind of people who made the news throughout the 1990s, and who were often loners or acted strange as children, this joke becomes a whole lot more disturbing, as does the Fridge Horror of what it implies Calvin's peers think about him.
  • In a September 1990 strip, Calvin imagines a plane taking off colliding with a plane landing at an airport. Less than five months later, it would happen for real, killing 35 people, though this accident was due to air traffic control error, rather than pilot error.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, in his blurb explaining Susie's character, Watterson mentions that after so many comic strips about boys written by men, he thinks a comic strip about a little girl written by a woman, "would be great." Nowadays, we have Phoebe and Her Unicorn, which many consider to be a Spiritual Successor to Calvin and Hobbes. And as of April 2018, Nancy is being written by a woman for the first time since it began 85 years prior.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this strip, Calvin is trying on sunglasses in a supermarket. The pair he likes best looks like Kamina's... Except green. With a little bit of photoshop...◊
  • In this strip, Calvin writes a message in the snow requesting pilots to do a barrel roll.
  • The script styling of Calvin & Hobbes: The Series makes one strip, which chronicled Calvin discussing how they could become cultural icons on television, much more amusing.
    • It's also amusing because they are cultural icons now, albeit not on television.
    • Likewise, a comic arc involving Calvin using a piece of cardboard to pretend he's on TV ends up even more amusing — particularly the one where Calvin plugs his beloved Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs, in light of the fic's tendency for Product Place.
    • What's more, a throwaway gag from one New Year's strip has Hobbes asking Calvin if his parents celebrate the new year. Calvin notes that their idea of a party is "mixing regular coffee in with the decaf." Then there's "New Year, New Disasters", which has Calvin invited to a New Year's party, while Calvin's parents drown their sorrows in cider.
  • This strip, where Calvin writes a "fictional autobiography", has become this following the controversy surrounding James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.
  • March 11, 1992: Calvin, disillusioned that the same generation that protested "The Man" has become "The Man" themselves, starts listening to easy-listening muzak to start his own protest. And start it, he very well may have: published nineteen years before Daniel Lopatin's 2010 release Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, the strip seems to be the very first example, at least as a concept, of Vaporwave.
  • In this strip, Calvin imagines himself as a crocodile in the Amazon stalking a hippopotamus. Since the raid of Pablo Escobar's private zoo, a population of escaped hippos lives in Colombia.
  • Twenty years after the "Tyrannosaurs in F-14s", the first trailer for Jurassic World ends on Chris Pratt riding a motorcycle with a raptor pack in tow; fan reaction was divided between a Calvin reaction ("This is so cool!") and a Hobbes reaction ("This is so stupid!")
  • This strip where Calvin tries to start a "secretly ironic" art movement feels somewhat prescient following the rise of the Hipster archetype.
  • This strip uses Calvin's "Chewing" magazine subscription to poke fun at the concept of targeted marketing, with Hobbes dryly noting "as if advertising wasn't intrusive enough before." Two decades later, social media algorithms have made Internet Ads more specialized and intrusive than ever.
  • Calvin notes that his watch doesn't tell what month it is in this strip. Nowadays, digital watches actually say what day of the month it is.
  • In one strip, Calvin comes up with a new game called "Gross Out": "You come up with the grossest thing you can imagine, and I try to come up with something grosser. Whoever comes up with the grossest thing gets a point." The basic idea is not dissimilar to the card game Cards Against Humanity.
  • One strip has the titular characters playing Monopoly where a losing Calvin cheats by taking money from the bank, to which Hobbes protests that Calvin cannot rob the bank. In 2018, Monopoly released a special version of the game which allowed its players to rob the bank (among other crimes).
  • A punchline in one strip has Hobbes joking about Batman having a “bat-fax”. Guess what one of Batman's gadgets is in The LEGO Batman Movie.
  • Calvin received a "barfing face sticker" on a test 24 years before the vomiting emoji.
  • One strip has Calvin's dad joking that babies are made from kits purchased at Sears, but that Calvin was a cheaper kit purchased from Kmart. In 2005, Kmart purchased Sears for eleven billion dollars (and both store branches later filed for bankruptcy).
  • February 11, 1993: Calvin writes a ridiculously confusing essay thick with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness in an effort to sound more intelligent than he is. One may be reminded of the Sokal affair which took place just three years later.
  • Bill Watterson predicted The Great Comics Crash of 1996 when Calvin gushed about buying and sealing five copies of a comic that debuted a new Darker and Edgier villain. Hobbes wondered how the comic would be so rare and valuable if every kid in America had five copies, and Calvin said that they were all counting on the other guys' moms to throw them away.
  • In a strip published in 1989, Calvin mentions a nonexistent B-movie called Venusian Vampire Vixens. In 1995, an actual movie called Vampire Vixens From Venus was released. According to the director, the title's similarity was a coincidence.
• Jerkass Woobie: Let's not sugarcoat it: if Calvin weren't so lazy, self-centered and egotistical, he'd be an almost completely sympathetic character. He's constantly picked on at school, either aggressively by Moe or verbally by Susie, roughed up a lot by Hobbes, is a Butt-Monkey overall, and is ignored or sarcastically responded to by his own parents (it doesn't help that you can count the times Calvin's parents are actually in good moods on one hand). Also he has many Everyone Has Standards moments, like when he tries to save a baby raccoon, and when he and Hobbes mournfully think about a dead bird they find. It's made very clear that Hobbes isn't just Calvin's Imaginary Friend; he's his only friend (while Susie is more of a "frenemy"). It's really easy to see why he's prone to Jerkass moments. It makes the tender moments he and Hobbes have together all the more touching.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • THIS THREAD IS NOW INCREDIBLY AWESOME◊.
  • The infamous Peeing Calvin decal that has appeared on the backs of pick up trucks in some variant since the mid 1990s onward. The design never actually appeared in the comic strips (it may have been copied and altered from this 1988 strip however), nor did creator Bill Watterson make it. It has its origins in the mid-90s bootleg market, and has been a popular tasteless car decal ever since, though there have been many attempts to stop it from spreading. There are even religious and female versions of the decal.
  • The fake "final" strip◊ of Calvin taking meds and ignoring Hobbes who becomes a stuffed plush again. Goes into this territory again if commentators mention Ritalin.
  • Calvin and Hobbes being replaced by two similar characters in a Homage comic is almost a trope in and of itself.
  • "I'll spout simplistic opinions for hours on end, ridicule anyone who disagrees with me, and generally foster divisiveness, cynicism, and a lower level of public dialogue!"^note A quote from a strip where Calvin discusses getting his own talk radio show, which is commonly used online as a response to toxic social media users, to the point where it's even one of the 4chan banners.
  • "The Horrendous Space Kablooie!"^note Taken from a Sunday strip where Hobbes asks Calvin what he would call the creation of the universe in place of "The Big Bang". Some scientists who don't consider "The Big Bang" an exciting term have adapted Calvin's phrasing.
  • The Facebook group "Calvin and Hobbes Spiffposting" has a few:
    • "Hob◊", an unnerving clipart tiger who once appeared on a bootleg Calvin and Hobbes book listing on Amazon.
    • The "Filthy Rich" strip, which fans have decided is So Unfunny, It's Funny due to the odd setup and punchline, has been memed in dozens of different ways.
    • The "Bat Barf" strip where Calvin is sent to his room without dinner and orders a pizza has been edited to have him ordering other things, like one of the overcomplicated orders from SpongeBob SquarePants.
    • "BATS AREN'T BUGS!" has become memetic, with edits of strips where every mention of "bat" is replaced with "bug" (including Batman to "Bugman"). Most notably this has a crossover with the aforementioned "Bat Barf" strip as "Bug Barf".
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Fans often debate whether Hobbes is "real" or "fake", even though Watterson carefully avoided making such a distinction and held that it defied the point of the strip.
    [Calvin & Hobbes] is more about the subjective nature of reality than it is about dolls coming to life...
  • The final panel of this comic is often posted by itself, removing the context and making it seem as if that is the point being made, when the point being made by the last panel is comedically undermined by the very strip itself.
• Moe: Susie can be quite adorable, especially when she dresses up with a bow in her hair.
  • Calvin himself can be huggable whenever he's not being an jerkass.
• Narm:
  • In the binoculars storyline, the part where Calvin's dad yells at him is an appropriately intense scene... save for the second panel, where his eyes are drawn in a cross-eyed fashion that can come across as unintentionally hilarious.
  • In an earlier strip, Calvin's dad makes a similar expression while scolding him for destroying his pillows.
• Nausea Fuel: In the Tenth Anniversary Book commentary, he recounts how the strip got removed from one newspaper after just one day because the strip in question that was printed that day was this one, where Calvin says he has a thermos full of phlegm. Even though nothing gross was actually shown, apparently the mental image of a "thermos full of phlegm" was just too much to handle.
• Older Than They Think: Watterson revealed in the 10th anniversary book that Spaceman Spiff is actually the first comic he tried to sell to newspapers, which had its origins in a very silly comic he wrote for a college German class. He quickly realized that Calvin's fantasies gave him the opportunity to actually use some of his ideas for Spiff, and occasionally give himself a break from writing Calvin and Hobbes.
• One True Pairing: Calvin and Susie, for obvious reasons. They actually seem to have and reciprocate feelings for each other, but it was in a single strip where Calvin gave Susie a crummy Valentine, and creams him with a snowball. The thought bubbles reveal each of them is secretly pleased that the other "noticed."
• Paranoia Fuel: Reading strips about Calvin's killer bicycle is not recommended if one is learning to ride a bike. On top of chasing Calvin inside the house and out, it stalks him when he has no intention of riding it. In one strip it hides in Calvin's closet and comes out in the middle of the night, only to be foiled by the creaking of the door and Calvin yelling for help.
• Sacred Cow: Unlike the likes of Garfield or Peanuts, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who genuinely hates this comic or finds it worthy of mockery. The closest you'll get is the aforementioned Memetic Mutation above where Calvin "kills" Hobbes by taking medication or jokes about how they were killed in a horrible sledding accident following the final comic, but even those jokes are considered stale and overdone.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • While sometimes Calvin's animosity towards Rosalyn is unfounded, his fear of her is rational; she locked him in the garage for something he did on her first night with him, for several hours. Then, she spends the night talking with her boyfriend about her success. The next time she babysits, she threatens to lock him in the basement after sending him to bed early.
  • Some of Calvin's harsh feelings towards his parents aren't exactly unfounded either. As much of a Bratty Half-Pint as he is, they can be needlessly hard on him even when he's not doing anything wrong and almost always responding to whatever he's up to by snapping at him. When, among other things, your father leaves you outside in the snow because you were complaining about how cold it was inside (his justification being that when Calvin comes inside the house will seem warmer by comparison), and both have threatened to hurt or even kill him on more than one occasion, it's easy to see why Calvin has such a low opinion of his parents.
  • Calvin's griping at his school assignment in one arc (having to build a leaf collection) was framed as completely absurd by the narrative and the characters, and the clear intent throughout is that Calvin could have finished the collection easily if he'd just applied himself. However, a lot of readers thought that while Calvin's approach of literally waiting until the last hour was indeed reckless, the assignment itself seemed far more difficult than anything that should be given to a first grader (collect fifty leaves, each one from a different tree, and label them with both proper and scientific names), making them think that Calvin was entirely right to declare the whole thing impossible.
  • Calvin's griping about his school assignments in general is pretty justified if you really stop to examine some of the things he's asked to do, many of which are far above what he should be learning. Most six year olds are just learning basic reading and arithmetic. Meanwhile, Calvin has been assigned:
    • The above mentioned leaf collection, and a similar insect collection.
    • A biology report on bats.
    • A report on the mythology of the planet Mercury.
    • A report on Lewis and Clark's expedition to the pacific.
    • A debate paper on whether or not Tyrannosaurus was a scavenger or a hunter (notable in that even the teacher acknowledged this was more than he could have handled).^note Calvin himself picked the topic of this one, though.
• Tear Dryer:
  • The resolution to the arc where Calvin breaks his father's binoculars. On the day of the strip where he finds out, Dad shows genuine remorse for his knee-jerk reaction to yell at Calvin. The following day, he apologizes for being so angry before telling Calvin "In the big scheme of things it's really not so bad". To drive the point even further across, he remarks Calvin might be wrecking his car in about ten years.
  • Calvin's family returns home from a trip to find out that their house had been broken into. The next few days of strips has Calvin worried sick that Hobbes had been stolen, since he was left behind. Thankfully, Mom finds Hobbes under Calvin's covers. Calvin notes that he's now safe and sound with both his parents agreeing that they're a family again.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Calvin's doctor is considered by many to be a very funny and sarcastic character (like when he tells Calvin his ear light is a cattle prod and that "it hurts a little less than a branding iron", making Calvin faint). Sadly, he disappeared after the chicken pox storyline, and never became as major as Rosalyn or Miss Wormwood.
  • Bill Watterson regards Calvin's uncle Max as a bad idea of a character, arguing that Max failed to open new avenues in the writing or bring out anything new in Calvin. A number of fans disagree with this; Uncle Max is the only adult who tries interacting with Calvin at his own level from the get-go, and Max is implied to have a Friendless Background much like Calvin does. The idea of an adult that Calvin could have formed a solid connection with didn't appear in the rest of the strip's run, and it could have been interesting to see how Calvin interacted with an adult who was willing to meet him halfway, given how stubborn and uncompromising Calvin normally is. Despite this, Max gets on an airplane at the end of his arc, and leaves both town and the comic strip for good.
  • Galaxoid and Nebular (the two aliens Calvin sells the planet to) would have been fun recurring characters... unfortunately, they had to be introduced two months before the strip ended.
• Toy Ship: Calvin and Susie. It's not really central to the strip — primarily because Calvin's still at the Girls Have Cooties stage of childhood — but it is hinted at, especially in an early Valentine's Day strip as well as Word of God confirming Calvin does have a mild crush on her but doesn't know how to process that. A popular bit of Fanon is that Calvin and Susie end up getting married when they're older and having kids of their own with Hobbes befriending the next generation.
• Ugly Cute: The Tyrannosaurs in F-14s, in addition to being Cool, but Stupid, are oddly cute with their gaping mouths and then fighter pilot goggles on their small eyes.
• Unconvincingly Unpopular Character: Calvin is intelligent, witty, and extremely creative. And yet, it's implied that the other kids in Calvin's class (especially Susie Derkins) think Calvin is a weirdo who isn't worth the time of day. It doesn't help that Calvin's overactive imagination leads to him either zoning out or playing pranks on people, frequently getting him sent to the principal's office.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Enough to give it its own page.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Calvin can fall into this.
  • He's a Bratty Half-Pint, sure, but the things that his Unintentionally Unsympathetic parents, Hobbes, and Susie can do in retaliation tend to be rather nasty as well, and sometimes he doesn't even do anything wrong but still gets screwed over. For example, one storyline has him asking Hobbes to tie him to a chair so that he can escape and be the next Houdini. And then his mom calls him down for dinner. Calvin finds himself unable to escape, and Hobbes is no help at all, then proceeds to just stand there reading Calvin's cub scout manual and taking his sweet time while Calvin begs him to find the part about knots and untie him. As if that wasn't enough, Hobbes acts as though he's not at fault in the slightest. Long story short, Calvin's dad walks upstairs, sees Calvin tied up, and comes to the conclusion that Calvin somehow tied himself to a chair (granted, he had no reason to assume that Hobbes did it, but the ropes were covering Calvin's arms) and chews him out as he's untying him. The storyline ends with Hobbes mocking Calvin as the boy angrily rubs his sore rear end, the implication apparently being that his father spanked him. It's really hard to blame Calvin for being ticked off.
  • Ms. Wormwood's curriculum for her first grade class has been shown to include subjects such as high school level algebra and Russian history. Which earns Calvin a lot of sympathy in regards to his poor grades and classroom behavior.
  • Most strips where Calvin makes snowmen center around how embarrassed and disturbed his parents are by him doing things like making decapitated snowmen. But honestly, he isn't hurting anyone by it (except when his snow men come alive, of course, and the occasion where he builds snowmen in his father's driveway right before he has to drive work), and you kind of have to admire the level of creativity, planning and hard work that goes into e.g. building a huge snow head just beyond a hilltop so it looks like a giant is peeking over it.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Pretty much any character who gets into conflicts with Calvin.
  • Calvin's parents, mainly when the strip was still running. Unlike many other parents in fiction at the time, Parents as People is in full effect here (perhaps a bit too much so). And yes, Calvin is a Bratty Half-Pint who would be a handful for most people to raise as their kid. But even still, his parents will hardly ever interact with him in a loving way, even if he's not up to doing something wrong, and the fact that they don't seem to even try to understand him really doesn't help their cases. They will snap at him even for small things like that he "bothers" them while they're reading a book. The mother has done things like throwing Calvin (who is just six years old) out two and a half hours before the school bus arrives, so she could get herself a morning free from spending any time with him. The father on his part has said things like that he would rather have gotten a dog, and had an apathetic reaction to Hobbes getting lost in the woods. There are some tender moments between the parents and their young son, but they are few and far between (like only twice a year or so). It became so bad that Bill Watterson himself had to address the issue in a commentary, where he expressed some regret that Calvin's parents mostly had been seen when they were in a bad mood (because they would often only appear in a story arc to react with anger to their son's latest shenanigans). Though he also said "they did better than [he] would've" with regards to the kid, so take it with a grain of salt.
    • Calvin's Dad in particular for his inability or unwillingness to realize that his wife and son do not enjoy the Horrible Camping Trip vacations he drags them on every year instead of finding something the entire family could enjoy.
  • Susie. Sure, Calvin does torment her without provocation much of the time, but she tends to give as good as she gets (if not more). Her Hair-Trigger Temper doesn't add much sympathy for her either. Also, several strips have her throwing a snowball at Calvin when he didn't do anything to provoke her. Some earlier strips had Susie complain about how badly Calvin hurt her feelings, but she never seems to think about how her retaliatory outbursts might make him feel.
  • The "Yukon Ho!" arc expects the reader to be concerned for Hobbes' well-being when Calvin is distraught that he had gone missing and his parents look for him even though Hobbes behaves like a jerk towards Calvin before the latter ditches him in the woods, particularly usurping his position as leader of the expedition and deliberately insulting him by claiming his mother sold him off to a circus due to a disease affecting his height right to his face. Furthermore, we never get to see how Hobbes feels about being stranded in the woods afterwards. Once all is said is done, when the two are happily reunited, he doesn't apologize for his behavior and instead states he returned home out of boredom.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In the baseball arc, not one girl has the slightest interest in playing baseball, but all the boys except Calvin do. The combination of Moe making fun of his refusal to participate and having to share the playground with all of the girls forces Calvin to join the team, even though he really doesn't want to. Nowadays, it's not only far more probable that some girls would also play, since that has become much more common since, but with baseball losing its prominence as "America's Pastime" in favor of sports like football and basketball as well as video games, it would be likely that at least a few of the other boys would not be interested in playing.
  • In one strip, Calvin fires an arrow at Susie while dressed in a very stereotypical Native American costume. Cute and charming when the strip was published, considered problematic cultural appropriation nowadays.
  • In the throwaway panel of the Sunday strip where Calvin's mom lets Calvin learn firsthand how dangerous smoking is, Calvin and Hobbes stand in front of a cigarette vending machine (Hobbes clarifies the minimum age required to use it). Nowadays, cigarette vending machines are only allowed in licensed establishments exclusively serving adults, so a 6-year-old likely would not encounter such a thing so easily today.
• Values Resonance:
  • One arc has Calvin and Hobbes get so sick of the pollution on Earth that they decide to move to Mars. When they find that Martians don't trust Earthlings, Calvin realizes, "We ought to fix up our own planet before we go messing around with other people's planets." The early development of space tourism in the 21st century correlating with rising climate change concerns has led to criticisms of this exact nature.
  • One 1992 storyline had Calvin chew out Hobbes for making "original art" (a clay tiger) instead of "popular art" with recognizable characters and merchandise tie-ins. While merchandising was obviously a source of discourse at the time (with Watterson famously being against merchandising his own comic), the increasingly easy production and distribution of sequels, spinoffs, revivals and reboots since then, as well as the increased prominence and success of franchise films, has kept this satire relevant.
    Hobbes: And how are the movie sequels this summer?
    Calvin: Great! Man, there's nothing I hate more than paying five bucks and having to deal with some new plot.
  • One February 1991 strip has Calvin asking his dad how soldiers killing each other solves the world's problems (with his dad unable to answer). The strip was drawn and released when the United States was in the midst of The Gulf War, the first major conflict with live televised news coverage. Although the war ended only ten days after the strip came out, the message itself remains timeless (especially because it would be far from the only war in the Gulf).
  • Calvin mangles the Pledge of Allegiance in a 1988 strip, and he refuses to lead the class in the Pledge of Allegiance in a strip from the following year. Both these instances result in Miss Wormwood sending him to the principal's office. Come the 21st century, an increase in readers who question schools requiring that children say the Pledge of Allegiance sympathize heavily with Calvin. It helps that Calvin makes valid points about being forced to say it in the second strip.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Two misspellings pop up very frequently in online discussions of the comic: "Hobbs" instead of Hobbes and "Suzie" instead of Susie. One would think that their names being visible in the speech bubbles at all times would alleviate this issue, but one would be wrong.
• The Woobie: Just about everyone in the strip can count as this, except for Moe.
  • Despite being capable of great Jerkassery, Calvin can be very sympathetic when he's getting picked on by Moe or when things are going badly for him.
  • Susie tried to make friends with Calvin before she realized the futility of it, and was genuinely hurt by Calvin cruelly rejecting her time and again. This side of her is shown in a few cases, such as when her feelings are hurt by Calvin insulting her.
  • The entire family were Woobies after their house was burgled, particularly how Calvin's father ponders that he always thought he would know what to do in a situation like this when he grew up, but nothing could have prepared him for this.
  • Before he got Put on a Bus, Uncle Max had this Woobie-worthy exchange:
    Mom: Didn't you ever have an imaginary friend?
    Uncle Max: Sometimes I think all my friends have been imaginary.
  • Even Rosalyn has these moments whenever she puts up with Calvin's antics. For instance, it's hard not to sympathize with her in the arc where Calvin threatens to flush her science notes.
  • Even Bill Watterson himself feels a lot of sympathy for Miss Wormwood. The stress she suffers dealing with Calvin on a daily basis is implied to be the reason she's a heavy smoker who takes multiple medications.
  • Calvin puts his parents through a lot of grief. Even Bill Watterson thinks they do a better job raising Calvin than he would.
• Woolseyism:
  • One Polish translation of the strip renamed it Kelvin & Celsjusz (Kelvin and Celsius), while the Finnish one renamed it Lassi ja Leevi after Lars Levi Læstadius. The Norwegian name of the strip is Tommy og Tigern (Tommy and the Tiger). In Brazil, Hobbes is called "Haroldo", though Calvin keeps his original name.
  • In one strip, Calvin complains about "the lack of sex education" because the English language doesn't have grammatical genders. When it was translated into Norwegian, which does have grammatical genders, "Tommy" complained about grammatical genders being politically incorrect.

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