Angst Dissonance: Ethan hates Rory because Rory constantly manipulated him as a child, injured him for his own amusement and always got what he wanted with zero consequences. Meanwhile, Ethan regularly abuses his employee Rob and the customers in his store for his own amusement and has been known to attempt to ruin a friend's career so he can get a game several months in advance. With zero consequences.
Anvilicious: Notoriously the "gamer religion" arc. In a different way, the introductions of Emma and Christian get their respective characters across with all the subtlety of anvil pie to the face.
Bile Fascination: Some people who dislike the comic still read every strip Buckley releases.
Critic-Proof: Despite that the comic is hated (So much, the main page was even locked!), its readership is large enough that Tim Buckley is able to live off of this comic and related events. Note that for webcomics, this is very rare.
Designated Hero: Christian is a jerk, doing some incredibly slimy things, but considering that Ethan's antics have also screwed over people whom he considers his friends for selfish reasons and have even put people's lives in danger, it gets harder to root for Ethan.
"Side Panel Sid", for an unnamed, awkwardly drawn character in a strip about CPUs.
Growing the Beard: The comic vastly improved in art style around the time of the Embla storyline, with Tim going out of his way to stop using the recycled faces and add more details. Tim's art and writing skills both grew a lot more during the break after the end of Version 1.0.
The Ouya's failure as a console basically makes this strip hold true to whoever owns one.
A story arc had Lucas discovering a Game of Thrones CCG game and being informed by Ethan that he had crossed into the realm of "supernerds". This is later reinforced by Lucas encountering other "supernerds" who actually have formed a secret society for mutual protection. The strip was released when the A Song of Ice and Fire series was still a niche fandom. Now that the Game of Thrones TV series has brought the universe into the mainstream, the "supernerds" might have found acceptance at last.
It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Though one of the most read webcomics on the web, you wouldn't know this by hearing what people have to say about it.
B^U after the comics infamous method for character design that has nearly every face easily approximated by it. The general consensus is that it is pronounced aloud as "bee-you", like a foghorn.
"Loss"Explanation A strip where Ethan rushes to the hospital only to find that Lilah miscarried. The strip was widely criticized upon its release for its clunky writing, its sudden swerve into heavy drama (compared to the otherwise lighthearted tone of the rest of the series), and its portrayal of the event as a Convenient Miscarriage. This backlash resulted in the strip becoming widely parodied, either through replacing the last panel of any other comic with the ending of "Loss" or, more prominently, through recreating the layout of the strip with other characters, objects, abstract shapes, and pretty much anything else one can think of.
| || || |_ Explanation An abstract/minimalist version of the four panels of "Loss," which has become instantly recognizable in any visual format.
Ethan's "hairbird" (his hair looks like a bird), after someone noticed the resemblance between Ethan's hair and another goon's photoshopped avatar of Nicolas Cage with the caption "My hair is a bird, your argument is invalid!". In an odd coincidence, Ethan's hair has become more bird-like since the haters started using the "hairbird".
The "hairbird" meme has even created an Original Character, Hairy O' Birdigan.
For The Annotated Series: "HOOOOOOORSE CUM!" (a mondegreen(?) of the expy-Swedish Chef's nonsense dialogue), "Jackie" (a girl Tim Buckley was accused of mailing obscene photos when she was a teenager).
$150.20, after the amount Buckley gained (out of $3000) in con funds. It was started by Something Awful, whose members chipped in, one penny per member.
"You have been banned. Reason for ban: None given. Date ban will be lifted: Never." apparently in reference to the trigger happy nature of CAD's forum mods.
"WORDS WORDS WORDS" in reference to the webcomic's frequent walls of text.
Tumblr is currently studying the theory that any given CAD comic becomes much funnier if only the first and last panels are used, with the dialogue of the last panel (if any) being removed, and users have been posting various strips in this form to demonstrate.
"Your Honor, — League of Legends" "Death."explanation An edited comic◊ that removes the vast majority of the text but still retains the essence of the joke. Some people have argued that it's much funnierthat way.
Mating PressExplanation A further edit of the League of Legends comic that focuses solely on the judge and replaces the text in his speech bubble with "mating press," referring to the sex position. The edit became a popular reaction image used in response to fanart of characters that one considers attractive.
The strip where Tim Buckely's Author Avatar delivers an open letter to Jack Thompson, especially the end where Buckley caps off his message with "Do not fuck with us!" is often rewritten and/or partly included in various copypastas due to the whole thing coming across as a prime example of Narm.
"Mark this day in the history books, for today, LEGO Star Wars II... hits the shelves!"Explanation This line said by Ethan in The Animated Series has been embraced in an ironic fashion as a Pop Culture Holiday to celebrate the game's release. It's also become something of a meme to point out how Ethan's remark of, "Mark this day in the history books," is Innocently Insensitive, as LEGO Star Wars II was first released on September 11th.
Narm: Any time the strip abruptly makes a sudden left-turn from goofy video game jokes immediately into dark drama. Most infamous is, what else, yep, you guessed it- "Loss."
Ssissimias from the post-reboot Starcaster Chronicle is a colony of Puppeteer Parasites infesting a dead body, with holes on its right face where it could burrow in and out. Trypophobiacs, beware.
No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Owes a good deal of its popularity to its haters. To the point where Buckley did a guest comic for another comic that pointed this out.
"Just remember every time you bash Ctrl+Alt+Del, I gain more page views and more money. Suckers."
Seasonal Rot: The Animated Adaptation; the first season was pretty well hated to begin with, but season two took the first season's already massive flaws and made them even worse. Errors were more common, the already poor animation lost whatever quality it had and the episodes themselves were longer, which only led to considerable Padding.
Signature Scene: The Convenient Miscarriage became this due to how dark it was for this usually silly and lighthearted webcomic. As mentioned under Memetic Mutation, it still gets frequently parodied to this day.
So Okay, It's Average: Nowadays, both the comic and Buckley have gotten this view, with the art and writing having improved along with Buckley's attitude, even if the comic's nothing too special.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Rob's interest in Counter-Strike as the only game he really plays is supposed to paint him as a "less" serious gamer, which in turn is supposed to make him acceptable for a "more" serious gamer like Ethan to heap scorn and abuse on (all of which are Played for Laughs). But in practice, Rob pretty much just comes across as an enthusiastic, lovable doofus, who tries his best to bond with Ethan over a shared interest, in spite of Ethan constantly insulting, belittling, and even occasionally physically abusing him.
or Akasia
