Bob and George
Hey, Mega Man. Wanna go do something stupid?—Bass
Probably the most influential of all Sprite Comics ever. Stands on three pillars: No Fourth Wall, Mega Man and stupidity. Originally, it was intended to just be filler for a hand-drawn comic the author was making, but the idiotic adventures of Mega Man and friends proved more popular, and the title characters were incorporated into the author's skewed vision of the Megaverse.
The bulk of the comic can be boiled down to a basic format; once a year, there would be a parodic retelling of one of the 8-bit Mega Man games, and once a year, a villain would show up and try to kill everyone. Filling the gaps are a mind-boggling amount of Time Travel, Alternate Universes, hilariously stupid antics, meta-interactions with the comic's author, and, of course, the titular Bob and George, two brothers who were a Super Villain and Superhero respectively before getting warped into the Megaman Universe.
Ran daily (mostly) from April 1st, 2000, to July 28th, 2007, making, codifing, abusing, lampshading, and generally making tropes into all sorts of funny shapes throughout it's once-a-day, seven-year run.
Can be found right through this link.
It was also known for hosting many sub-comics, of which only MS Paint Masterpieces is still known to update. Sometimes.
- Aborted Arc: Not directly in the comic per se, but the 'Cataclysm' side-story is a good example. Referenced in-comic by X, Zero, Protoman, and Bob; meant to explain the intentional gap between the Mega Man and Mega Man X series, with the plot being that Dr. Wily's building and premature activation of Zero, causing him to systematically kill and destroy every member of the Mega Man continuity. Originally planned to be animated multi-part flash movies, according to Dave himself, they became "A lesson in frustration for everyone involved." Eight episodes were planned, but less than half of them ever saw the light of day, due to the project stalling out and Anez's life progressing towards adulthood. Anez himself has stated that he'd like to finish them one day, but "I don't really know if that day will ever come."
- Above Good and Evil: Bob claims he and George are this. George doesn't agree.
- Achievements in Ignorance: Mega Man, naturally, in this strip. He was also (temporarily?) too stupid to realize that he had fatal wounds.
- Actual Pacifist: The aptly named Pacifist Man.
- All of the Other Reindeer
- All the Myriad Ways: The Rockman Universe and the alternates in the final battle, who are sent out in droves. Averted in the case of George himself, who does care what happens to the Mega Man universe despite not being from it.
- Alternate Universe: There are an infinite number of them, and Bob visits a lot of them.
- Amnesiac Dissonance
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Awesomely lampshaded here.
- Pointedly averted in the Mega Man 4 storyline, as Mega Man attains more and more damage to his body.
- Ambiguously Gay: Zero and X.
- Sephiroth too, while Bob is hanging out in a null dimension and his Good Angel, Bad Angel create Final Fantasy characters for him to hang out with.
- Animated Adaptation: Comics We Wanted to See Animated.
- The Annotated Edition: The on-site commentary, which currently goes up to March 31st, 2004.
- Anticlimax: Mega Man's fight with Skull Man, after tons of fan speculation. (Skull Man got better.)
- Anti-Hero: George is a Type I, at first (as pointed out here).
- Ascended Fanboy: A variation with George. He grew up playing the Mega Man and Mega Man X games in his home dimension. Now he gets to fight alongside the characters he used to control in the games.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "George can't use his blaster, I still have yours, and I just happen to be wearing my asbestos undies today."
- Author Guest Spot: Practically invented it.
- Baby Talk
- Backhanded Apology
- Back from the Dead: Almost everyone at one time or another.
- Bad Dreams
- Batman Grabs a Gun: In the last five strips of the series, George figures out how to work his Power Armor's Arm Cannon, and takes aim at Bob.
- Because Destiny Says So: Alternate Mega Man and Crystal Man believe in this. Alternate Bass does not. Which is right seems to vary.
- Berserk Button: Bob displays two.
- The first was pressed when he made a big show on how Alternate Mega Man couldn't possibly get through his shield. Mega Man does exactly that and reduces Bob to incoherent rage.
- The second is triggered when Metool D2 threatens to do...something...to Bob's mother.
- Also, do not speak against ice cream.
- Big Badass Wolf
- Big Red Button: The control to George's time suit isn't red, but it's big, and quite important according to Dr. Light.
- George gets back at Dr. Light by manipulating a Big Red Button controlling X's pod, much to Dr. Light's astonishment.
- Then there's the Big Red Button inside Mega Man's mind that activates his router.
- Bilingual Dialogue
- Blatant Lies: Dr. Wily whenever he's interacting with Dr. Light.
- Bloody Hilarious: Bloody Explanations
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Played with, as the villain doesn't just wander away, and the trap worked. Mostly.
- Bowdlerization: A rare case where the author had to Bowdlerize himself (and Up to Eleven at that) by replacing a strip which was already censored to begin with (Heat Man's Snack was originally this -- see Heat Man's Armor for the set up).
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The characters are very aware of being aware of being in a webcomic, with forums. Kinda hard not to since the Author is a semi-regular character.
- Brick Joke: While Bob was unconscious (during Mynd's arrival in the main universe), the 2001 Halloween comic occurred. 40 strips later...
- Does "the slide" count?
- Burning with Anger: Bob. Unsurprising since he has fire powers.
- The Butler Did It
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: "Cool! I'm just a pair of glowing floating eyeballs!"
- Cain and Abel: Bob and George on a few occasions. Interestingly, Bob is the villainous one, despite being the younger brother.
- Calling Your Attacks
Ran: COSSACK BUSTER!!!
- Came Back Wrong: Mega Man's very hasty reassembling of Skull Man:
Skull Man: Would someone remove my arm from what is not an arm socket?!
- Camp Gay: Top Man and Very Alternate Bob.
- Canine Companion: Rush
- Card-Carrying Villain: "What? I'm evil. I Lied."
- Cats Are Mean: Tango spends several comics screwing with Rush and Treble.
- The Cavalry
- Cerebus Syndrome, to some extent.
- Chained to a Railway: Alternate Mega Man in the fifth game parody.
- Character Development: Mostly averted with the Static Character Mega Man characters, but George is an example who goes through subtle, but important, character development through the comic's run.
- Chiaroscuro
- Circling Birdies
- Civilian Villain: Dr. Wily, a few times.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Zero in the first Cataclysm Movie.
- Cold-Blooded Torture
- Contemplate Our Navels
- Contractual Genre Blindness
- Contractual Immortality: Used by George at several points to survive situations that should have killed him. He can occasionally use it to shield whoever is closest.
- Contrived Coincidence
- Cool Gate: The original dimensional portal in Bob and George's home dimension.
- Cool Shades: Proto Man and all his recolors.
- Crazy Prepared: Proto Man. Occasionally the villains, particularly in later years.
- Creator Breakdown: Parodied. When The Author breaks down, the comic literally falls apart until he's placated with explosions.
- Crossover: During his journey through parallel dimensions, Bob ends up as a guest on Fairly Aimless RPG Talk Show or FARTS (click on episode 5 to see their half of the crossover, or you can just click here to see the Bn G webcomic's cross-post of the relevant bit).
- Almost every anniversary party chapter can be seen as a crossover between the main Bob and George comic and the many comics that are hosted on the site.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Mega Man; ordinarily an idiot, but he often develops quite clever strategies whenever he heads into battle. His programming states that stupidity is a secondary objective, and he ignores it while performing his primary task - fighting stuff.
- Crying Indian: Tomahawk Man from the sixth game.
- Cut Himself Shaving: After the Shadowy Author revives dead characters in the Rockman Universe. Bob tells Rock and Dr. Light that they fell down. Rock then questions if Roll fell up, as she's tied to the ceiling. Bob responses that he put her up there to prevent her from falling down.
- Damsel in Distress: Kalinka in the fourth game parody.
- Dead Baby Comedy: At one point during "BnG News", literally. After discovering a orphanage on fire, Roll takes the opportunity to have some roast baby. And it is hilarious
- Deadly Dodging: Proto Man fires at the Helmeted Author, who phases out. The shot hits and kills George.
- Deadpan Snarker: Helmut, Roll, Dave.
- Death Trap
- Delayed Ripple Effect: Any time time travel is used.
- Didn't See That Coming
- Didn't We Use This Joke Already?: Used repeatedly, even to the point of going meta.
- Dimension Lord: Mynd claims to be one
- Dude in Distress: George.
- The Ditz: Bass, most of the time. Even Mega Man needs someone stupider than him (he can be smart, but Dr. Wily prefers to leave him in idiot mode so that his plans aren't constantly criticised).
- Divided We Fall
- Do Androids Dream?
- Dodge the Bullet
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: In the comments for a battle between Snake Man and Ring Man in the 6th games Robot Tournament, Anez admitted that he ran out of amusing filler robots with some relation and just threw in the two least quirkiest robots for that day's comic. The next day he commented on how many e-mails he got explaining "the obvious relationship between snakes and rings."
- Do Not Taunt Cthulhu
- Don't Explain the Joke: "It's funny... laugh dammit!!"
- Doomed by Canon: Even though most of the cast get killed during major storylines (such as in "The Attack of Mynd") and get better once they're over, it seems as if the Cataclysm would be their Final Deaths. Then it turns out that they merely faked their deaths, making this trope a subversion.
- Dramatic Thunder
- Dramatic Wind, heavily lampshaded.
- Drunken Master: Dr. Cossack - "While I am an excellent programmer while sober, I am a programming MASTER when tanked."
- Dumbass Has a Point
- Einstein Hair: Dr Wily, naturally.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Bob
- Evil Counterpart: As in the games, Bass to Mega Man. Though in this case, Wily went a little too far in having Bass one-up Mega Man in everything. Yes, he's stronger and faster...but he's also stupider.
- Evil Is Not Well Lit: Played with. Mynd is unable to find the lightswitch in his lair.
- Evil Overlord List: Used quite a lot with Mynd.
- This was supposed to be how he found out about it.
- Evil Smells Bad
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Wily's fortresses.
- Expecting Someone Taller
- Fail O'Suckyname: George's superhero alterego, Blitz, was originally called "Spark".
- Dr. Light has his own support unit, which, to keep with the Theme Naming scheme, he calls Circus.
George: Circus?
Dr. Light: Circus music is a type of music, too!
- A Fate Worse Than Death
- Fiery Redhead: Hi Bob.
- Filler Strips: A rare (if not unique) case of the Filler Strips becoming the actual strip.
- Follow the Leader: Inspired hundreds, if not thousands of copycat sprite comics.
- Fire-Forged Friends
- Flaw Exploitation
- Forgot I Could Fly: Note: do not point out to a character who has spent six months suspended by his arms in Dr. Wily's fortress that he has superpowers and could have escaped. Megaman also often forgets he can teleport.
- Forgotten Superweapon
- A Friend in Need
- Funny Background Event: Played straight the "Something Different arc". He's also subverted this in a few comics where the funny background events would be given their own panel(s) in the foreground.
- Fusion Dance: Nate and Chadling can do this with other characters, resulting in combinations like Charge (George + Chadling).
- Gainax Ending: Par for the course with how the rest of plot was.
- Genius Ditz: Mega Man, when fighting Robot Masters and Dr. Light with his inventions.
- Fanon figured that since his primary mission is to defeat robot masters and secondary mission is to be stupid, he would "smarten up" during fights. Author took this and run with it
- At one point, Mega Man actually frightened his intelligent alternate self with his sudden battle brilliance.
- Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: George and Proto Man stumble across a VHS tape of the First Annual Robot Tournament (the events leading to Mega Man 6). Turns out, it's just a documentary. But George really wants to find out what happened:
George: There's only one way to find out what really happened! We have to go back in time!
(Proto Man slaps George across the face)
(Beat)
George: ...did you just bitch-slap me?
Proto Man: Yes. You needed it.
George: Yes I did. Thanks.
- Get It Over With
- Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Gamma from the Mega Man 3 storyline made a reappearance at the climax of the Mega Man 4 storyline, only to get stepped on by a colossal Eddie.
- Glass Cannon: Ran's a One-Hit-Point Wonder to the extreme, but his Cossack Buster is one of the most destructive in the entire comic.
- A God Am I: X
- Goggles Do Something Unusual
- Go Mad From the Isolation
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Bob has them. His mother sent them.
- Good Is Dumb: Why George forgot
- Gossipy Hens Here
- Grandfather Clause: Gets away with sprite comic clichés because it started most of them.
- Grandfather Paradox: Played with extensively using various examples.
- Guest Strip: A Special Comic By Someone Else.
- Hannibal Lecture
- Happily Ever After
- Harmless Villain: Wily turns into one pretty quickly, and has been part of at least one Enemy Mine.
- Heel Face Turn: Crash Man
- Helping Hands
- Hero Antagonist: In the 6th Mega Man game storyline, all the bosses were trying to stop a rampaging Mega Man, who had undergone a Face Heel Turn after being reprogrammed by Vic.
- Heroic Sacrifice
- Heroic Second Wind
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Very visible.
- High-Pressure Blood: Pretty much everybody, but Helmut takes the cake.
- Honorary Uncle: Mega Man attempts to make Helmut this for no apparent reason.
- How Much Did You Hear?: Not only is it a Running Gag, but the monologuing character complaining about the Running Gag has become a part of said Running Gag.
- Hurricane of Puns: Many times. Later, it's forcibly subverted in the Guts Man vs. Stone Man fight.
Bob: Who will triumph when these two behemoths square off?
Stone Man: I will, cause you ain't got no guts!
Guts Man: Pssh! You're stoned!
Bob: One more pun and I will kill you both myself, understand?
Both: Yessir.
- Hypocrite
- Ice Cream Koan
- Identical Twin ID Tags: The future and alternate future versions of Bass and Mega Man wear nametags.
- Idiot Ball: The MM4 Robot Masters in the April 21, 2003 comic.
Commentary: Wow, who would've thought that all of the Robot Masters would just be standing around in a big field together in the middle of nowhere where Mega Man could just conveniently run into them? I mean, seriously, aren't they supposed to be out trying to Take Over the World or something?
- I Gave My Word
- I Lied - oh, god.
- Immune to Drugs: Dr. Light has an alcohol tolerance that could rival that of Andre the Giant. His response to being told he "must've consumed enough to take down a bull elephant"?
Dr. Light: Bull elephant? Pssh...lightweights.
- Implausible Deniability
- Implausible Fencing Powers: Mynd
- Indy Ploy: Pretty much the entire comic, according to the author. In the comments section he admits that he was basically winging the entire thing, and whenever he created a plot hole, he was willing to go to absurd lengths to fix them, introducing time travel, clones, etc... rather than just let the hole remain.
- The Infiltration
- In Medias Res: The Attack of Non-Alternate Mynd starts off this way. While previous events had lead up to this, the actual series of comics starts off with George, Protoman and Mike standing on a pile of corpses, fighting, with no explanation as to how they got there. Mynd asks George to explain How We Got Here.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: In some of the fan comics.
- In the Back
- Ironic Echo - "Jesus, Dr. Light, it's only one button!"
- I Take Offense to That Last One
- I Work Alone: One reason Bob gives for turning down Mynd's offer.
- Just a Flesh Wound: Most of the characters are robots, after all. And it wasn't like Mega Man really needed that arm anyway...
- Just Eat Him
- Kick Them While They Are Down
- Kill It with Fire: Bob is very fond of this trope.
- Knights and Knaves - parodied with Gemini Man.
- Lampshade Hanging: They do this so often that they hang lampshades on their habit of lampshade hanging.
Dr. Light: Want to know why his name's Rock?
Dr. Wily: I know, I know, Rock and Roll. I got it. We did this joke before, remember?
Dr. Light: We did?
Dr. Wily: Yes. In fact, we've done this joke before as well.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: What Wily fakes in order to infiltrate Dr. Light's lab and set up the events of the third game after trying to take over the world twice.
- Subverted during a time travel mishap, when everyone's too distracted to remember they're supposed to do this to two of the characters to prevent a paradox.
- Lecture as Exposition
- Let's See You Do Better: The commentary here. (The actual comic, too, but mostly the commentary)
- Not the actual comic, but the Custom Comic (and glue factory) thread on the official forums lives off this trope.
- Lightning Can Do Anything: One of the titular characters manipulates lightning.
- Lost Aesop
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Parodied with Bob (Darth Volcanus) in the 4th game.
Mega Man: Ring Man, I am your father.
Ring Man: No you're not.
Mega Man: You win this argument.
- Also used in the third game with Break Man aka Protoman. He can't pass up the opportunity to tell Mega Man they're brothers.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Mynd says this in this strip when Charge sliced off his left hand. Charge responds to this by slicing his right hand.
- I'm Thinking It Over: "George's Decision":
Mynd: Will you stand aside and let me deal with the imposter, or do you want to die too?
(Beat Panel)
Mike/Proto Man: George!
George: What?! I'm thinking!
- I Was Told There Would Be Cake
- Malicious Slander
- The Man
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane
- Medium Awareness: Everyone.
- Milestone Celebration: Averted Trope in the 500th Comic, much to the characters' chagrin.
- A Million Is a Statistic
- Mirror Universe: The alternate universe has all characters swapping their core personality traits. So Proto Man becomes stupid, Mega Man is a genius and George is super-violent.
- Monster of the Week: In every year of the comic, somebody attacks and the heroes defeat him. The "monsters of the year" are, in order: The Yellow Demon, Bob, Mynd, "evil Mega Man", Helmut, Non-alternate Mynd, X, and finally Bob again.
- Mook Face Turn: Blame the ice cream.
- Morality Dial: All of Dr. Light's robots have one. Bass, on the other hand, has a switch whose two options are "evil" and "stupid".
- More Hero Than Thou
- Motor Mouth: Quick Man.
- Mundane Utility: The initial purpose of all the robots created in the first game. After all, why have a fridge when you can have a robot that produces cold standing in a box?
- Mushroom Samba: Needle Man's needles cause hallucinations.
- My God, What Have I Done?
- My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Parodied, with the villain/hero roles reversed, in this comic.
- Played straight here
- My Name Is Not Durwood: Mike's name is not Ninja Ned. Nor is non-alternate Mike's.
- Name and Name
- Naughty Tentacles: "I suddenly have an urge to go find myself a Japanese schoolgirl."
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Dr. Light's entire pathos with X is this. He meddles with X's programming to the point where he makes him an antisocial wuss who is pacifistic (resulting in a botched plan by Proto Man and Roll to steal his blaster) and hates ice-cream (making it impossible to make friends with people, especially George, Chadling and Mega Man). After a off-handed remark by George that he can't force people to be his friend, X goes nuts and does exactly that... with a little help from the wireless router Dr. Light used to build X's brain.
- No Fourth Wall: The Author keeps arguing with the characters.
- Noodle Implements: Protoman's plan to get X's blaster required car batteries, cinder blocks, iced tea and the city's ENTIRE supply of yogurt.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond
- The Nose Knows
- Not Now, Kiddo
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: In this comic, George says these exact words (minus "here"). Bob immediately proves him otherwise by blowing up a building.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Though Mega Man is a genuine idiot, he has feigned stupidity in battle to cause his opponents to drop their guard. Most famously against Ring Man.
- This comic, as revealed . Also note the commentary.
- And the bad guys will do it too.
- Odd-Shaped Panel
- Offhand Backhand: They're still sunglasses, you stupid bastard...
- One-Dimensional Thinking: Deliberately averted
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The Cameo character Ran, for whom Death Is a Slap on The Wrist.
- One-Two Punchline: After Bob revives from unconciousness off panel, when he actually appears in the penultimate panel of the next comic, he is wearing a ridiculous girly costume. The final panel has him making a reference to the prior Halloween comic, which is where the costume originated.
- Only Sane Man: Proto Man.
- Overclocking Attack
- Overused Running Gag: Wily complaining about him never seeing people are around to hear his plans.
- Paint It Black: Bob's outfit is literally a Proto Man costume charred black (fanart depicts his scarf in rags for extra effect).
- Parental Favoritism: Dr Light, towards X.
- People Jars
- Planet Eris:
- Playing with Fire: Bob
- Plot Armor: Lampshaded in this strip, double subverted in the next strip and seemingly used straight with a prior Lampshade Hanging in this strip and the previous one.
- Later, it's given a Double Subversion. Bob and George can't die because they're in the title of the comic, so when the plot calls for George to actually die, the title of the comic changes to allow it to happen. He gets better, though, and the title returns to "Bob and George."
- Plot Hole: Averted, or so the Author says.
- This is almost a Running Gag; Plot Holes appear all over the place, and half the fun is watching the author attempt to seal them.
- So much so that on the forums, the word 'Plothole' gets automatically filtered to 'Spoon'. Afterall, there is no spoon
- Helmut appears to be the one to handle plot holes when no actual explanation can be given, having rescued Chadling from an alternate dimension and returned Bob's blaster, for example.
- This is almost a Running Gag; Plot Holes appear all over the place, and half the fun is watching the author attempt to seal them.
- Popularity Power: Star Man lampshades this trope in the sixth game storyline, believing this will guarantee his victory until he realizes his opponent is Shadow Man.
- This is the reason Mega Man had to put Skull Man back together after accidentally taking him out in one panel.
- Power Glows
- Power of Friendship
- Precision F-Strike: Someone uses the F word (uncensored) once annually, pretty much making this the epitome of the trope. The strips in question are always titled "[Character Name] Says The F-Word."
- Prepare to Die
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Robot Masters, and Mynd's minions, Chadling and Ned.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
- Rage Against the Author: Bob's ultimate plan.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: During July 2003, the Author had not only lost his internet connection, but the site also suffered a server crash. In the following month, he had to play catch up, resulting in many of the punchlines being mediocre, to the point where the author actually apologises in-comic.
- Recap Episode: There's quite a few of them, most notably "Story Time".
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Bob does this when particularly pised.
- Redheaded Stepchild
- Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: Hilariously subverted here.
- Retcon
- Revenge
- Reverse Mole
- Reverse Psychology
- Right Behind Me: Happens to Wily all the time. Subverted at one point, where no one was behind Wily, and he complained it just wasn't the same.
- Inverted during the final storyline, where Bob (who at this point believed he killed Wily) boasts that Metool-D2's shield won't stop his Robot Master army, at which point Wily appears behind Bob to have a say on the matter, revealing that Bob only killed a robot decoy.
- Rock Bottom
- Room 101
- Rule of Funny: Here we are given a "scientific" explanation where this is named "The Gag Reflex".
- The comic runs on this, really. Acknowledged by Ran:
Ran:And it's not just time traveling. The way I see it, we've broken every law of physics except the third law of thermodynamics.
Dr. Light: Aha! Negative two Kelvin!
Ran: Never Mind...
- Rule of Three
- Running Gag: So many, it's better to just point at a list. Which is almost certainly incomplete.
- Also most of the gags are given multiple subversions.
- Schmuck Bait
- Schrödinger's Butterfly
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Dr. Light in this strip.
- Screw Destiny: Alternate Bass.
- Shark Pool: A robotic version in Maneki Man vs. Mouse Man. More notably part of a convoluted trap to kill Alternate Mega Man when Bob took over Wily's fortress.
- Shock and Awe: George's powers.
- Shut UP, Hannibal
- Spot the Imposter: Lampshaded and parodied here.
- Shaggy Dog Story: almost the entire storyline
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: subverted
- Shout-Out: "Oh god, I hope it's not Superman, he's a dick."
- Also counts as a Continuity Nod.
- Plus The Lord of the Rings here, Star Wars here, Star Trek here, The Wizard of Oz here, and many, many, many more.
- Single-Malt Vision
- Snowball Fight
- Something Only They Would Say
- The Speechless: Nate. He occasionally makes use of signs or elaborate waving of hands. Or at least as elaborate as a sprite comic can get.
- Spirit Advisor: The Shadowy Author.
- Stable Time Loop
- Superpower Meltdown
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Parodied during the adaptation for the first game, where all of Dr. Light's robots seemed suited for combat, but are all designed to do mundane household chores (Proto Man's a butler, Cut Man's a gardener, Ice Man lives in a fridge, Guts Man's a garbage man, Fire Man manages the fireplace, Elec Man powers the TV, and Bomb Man... is just a love machine).
- Supervillain Lair: Wily's fortresses.
- Sure Why Not: The comic's author once mentioned that he didn't realize that he'd already written a strip that explains Mega Man's lack of stupidity in battle until readers pointed it out.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Wily has many of these.
- Swallowed Whole
- Take That: According to Anez, some fans complained about the characters' dialogue being to stilted and too Superfriends-sounding. He then wrote a comic in which the characters spouted Shakespeareian dialect (appropriately titled "Mega Hamlet", as Bob had wandered into a Shakespeare-influenced universe), leaving Bob to note, "Well, at least they don't sound like something out of Superfriends..."
- Tastes Like Friendship: Often also like ice cream.
- Technical Pacifist
- Temporal Paradox
- Title Drop: Here.
- Thicker Than Water
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch
- This Is No Time to Panic
- "Three Laws"-Compliant: While called upon several times, they definitely are not compliant.
- Time Travel and everyone directly involved will gain a severe hate for it.
- Too Dumb to Fool
- Too Dumb to Live: Inverted. Mega Man has the "extraordinary ability to not recognize life-threatening injuries" -- he's too stupid to die.
- Played straight with many of the robot masters, though; Bubble Man in the game tries to make you jump to the top of the screen with the Deadly Spikes. In the strip, all Rock has to do is do bet him that he can't reach the spikes.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Chadling, George, and Mega Man will find a way to get ice cream whether it involves betraying their employer, ruining continuity, or suffering the side effects of massive dairy consumption while lactose intolerant.
- Chadling initially loved bananas, but that was quickly traded for ice cream.
- Bob also mentions, almost in passing, during one of the hand drawn strips that he love BBQ. When he is the Big Bad of the last plot events are just kicking off before the 4th. He tells all his robots to stand down. The text during the celebration shows that he only did so because he seems to enjoy a good BBQ almost as much as George loves ice cream, and will take any excuse to start up the grill within sense.
- Trope Codifier: Did not create the sprite comic, but did set a lot of standards for them.
- Two Lines, No Waiting
- Understatement
- Unreadable Disclaimer: Bob almost becomes a victim of this in the short crossover chapter mentioned above.
Macc: Say, can I get your autograph? Right here on this soul-sealing contract-looking piece of paper?
Bob: Yeah sure, no problem... Say, what's all this small type that looks suspiciously like fine print... Hey!
Macc: Damn... oh come on, sign it.
- Black Holes Suck
- Unwilling Suspension: George, during the third game. Among others. Many others.
- Villain Exit Stage Left: Discussed Trope in the commentary here.
- Villainous Breakdown
- Visible Invisibility: So that the reader knows where Shadow Man is.
- Visible Silence
- We Can Rule Together
- Weirdness Magnet: If the Author appears, weird things 'will' happen to whatever universe or timeline he's in. At one point a character in the future complains that because the Author hadn't showed up for years in his timeline, things have gotten boring 'and' he hasn't had a good reason to smirk for ages.
- We Need a Distraction: Bass has a very pretty transformation sequence.
- Webcomic of the Game: In between the exploits of the title characters and other original characters, there's the 8-bit Mega Man games.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Here.
- Many, many times, usually followed with instant regret.
- What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Skull Man's Skull Barrier.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Mega Man's blatant homophobia towards Topman. He gets called out on this afterward. By Helmut no less.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Whether or not the comics takes place in Japan or not is a point of debate, particularly at the fourth of July celebrations.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Bob's fear of Pokémon.
- With Great Power
- A Wizard Did It
- The Worf Effect: It happens to most Mega Man characters when they're facing an original character.
- Would Not Shoot a Civilian
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Alternate George has his eyes plucked out in his first appearance. They're still bleeding seven years later.
- Xanatos Gambit: The whole plot was one by Bob and George's mom to toughen George up and to show Bob that he Can't Get Away with Nuthin'.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Knightman.
- You Are Too Late
- You Can See Me??: During George's time travel escapades. Only Bass and Rush can see him.
- You Can't Fight Fate
- You Have Failed Me...: As Mega Man explains to Bass, it's essentially a requirement for all evil villains to kill their lackeys once they screw up. Nothing personal.
- You Killed My Father
- You Shall Not Pass
- You Wanna Get Sued?: here
- Zombie Apocalypse: In a Halloween special.
- Practically every trope involving plots that are contorted, nonsensical, retconned or impossibly complicated.