Chick Tracts

The only known image of this elusive figure (left), assuming it's for real.
Look out-- Here come de judge-- Here come de judge! HAW HAW!
—"Somebody Goofed"

Chick Tracts, authored by Jack T. "Thomas" Chick (April 13, 1924 – October 23, 2016), is a series of short comic books that primarily exist in the form of very small printed albums - small enough to easily fit into a wallet. However, most of the tracts are also available for free at their home website Chick.com. The first tract was published in 1960 and Chick continued to work on the series until his death. With 56 years of publication it is among the longest lived series under a single creator.

Each tract tells a story. These stories handle all kinds of subjects, but they all have two things in common: They all have some direct or indirect connection to religion, and they all end in An Aesop about everyone needing to become a born-again Christian. Sometimes the entire story builds up to this Aesop; other times it's shoehorned in after the actual story is finished.

Villains in these stories are demons or misguided mortals. Demons range from Cthulhuish monstrosities that make the heroes facing them come across as epic fantasy heroes, to silly little imps that are mostly Played for Laughs. Mortal villains are very likely to make a Heel Faith Turn due to Easy Evangelism. Those who do not invariably end up in Hell. And so does everyone else, including those who are kind and selfless. Only a very particular kind of evangelical Christian gets to avoid eternal torture; everyone else is doomed no matter what. The tracts are all set in the same world (and thus have a lot of recurring characters). A world very different from what most people, including most Christians, are used to. In The Verse of Chick Tracts:

In other words, this setting is a very dark fantasy world, comparable to Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000, although with less graphic violence (and with a bit of South Park thrown in). Unlike Games Workshop, however, the people behind chick.com seemed to believe their own message. Some people insist that it must be some kind of parody. However, Jack Chick himself had given one interview where he claims to be totally serious. Honest or not, he does seem to have made a lot of money from people who buy large quantities of his tracts with their own money and then hand them out free of charge to friends and random strangers in the hope that this act will eventually spare a few souls from the horrors of hell.

Meanwhile, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Chick's efforts have inspired many parodies, and he was featured as the subject of the documentary, God's Cartoonist.

Not to be confused with The Chick with huge tracts of land.

Tropes used in Chick Tracts include:

A-E

"I hate you! And I hate your lousy birthday!"

    • Also, as noted below, The Devil's Night explains the "true" origins of Halloween in a massive case of Did Not Do the Research.
  • Almost-Dead Guy: A lot of Chick's amoral characters always manage to see the error of their ways and convert to Christianity just like that when on the verge of death. In one instance, a character survives several grenades thrown at him at a church, and takes time to stagger out of the building, drive to someone else's house and find peace in Jesus while dying in the arms of his friend.
  • Amoral Attorney: Attorney Douglas Rogers in "Busted!" prosecutes people without caring whether they're guilty, and likes "to see the accused squirm."
  • Ancient Conspiracy: Apparently, the Catholic Church has a computer database with the name of every Protestant in the world so that when Catholics Take Over the World they'll kill them all. Also, the Catholic Church manipulated Mohammed into creating "the Islam religion" (which includes Catholics on the list of people to convert), instigated the American Civil War and then caused the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (despite the latter being Catholic), formed the Ku Klux Klan (despite its anti-Catholic origins), created Communism (despite its famous anti-religion views including being against Catholicism) and were responsible for the Holocaust (which included Catholic victims) among other, just as stupid, things. Where and whether the Eastern Orthodox church fits into any of this has yet to receive any mention, however.
  • Anti-Anti-Christ: The vampire Antichrist becomes a Christian via Easy Evangelism.
  • Artistic License: Biology: "Big Daddy?".
  • Artistic License History: The Vatican caused the Holocaust and is the enemy of Israel.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: People who are Sikhs, Satanists, North Koreans, witches, atheists and... archaeologists.
    • The crimes against God in This Was Your Life include theft, whoremongering, and whispering.
  • As the Good Book Says...: Quoted very often--but only the King James Version. (All other translations are allegedly the work of Satan himself, with the help of a massive Jesuit conspiracy, you see.) Whether the quotes are presented with due regard to context is another question.
  • Author Filibuster: Quite often, a character will give a show-stopping lengthy speech on whatever the theme of the tract is.
  • Author Tract... in fact, Chick Tract.
  • Badass: Jesus, according to "The Sissy?", for being willing to suffer and die for the good of humanity.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Fairly often, Satan and his minions succeed in capturing a soul.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: The flip side of this trope is more frequently observed; Chick's heroes tend to be "cute" children who tend to look somewhat creepy, whilst his villains are hideous. "Wounded Children" presents an odd inversion: the gay men, including the main character, are drawn very detailed, handsome and attractive for the majority of the tract. The ex-homosexual and born-again Christian he meets that turns him from homosexuality is bearded, fat, and just plain ugly. The main character then becomes much less attractive when he converts.
  • Big Bad: It turns out that the Vatican is behind everything. Everything. And, of course, Satan is behind the Vatican.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Several tracts feature the characters dying untimely and tragic deaths, but managing to get into heaven.
  • Black and White Morality: All people in Chick tracts are divided into either Christians (i.e.: good, unless Roman Catholic) or non-Christians (i.e.: bound to Hell, unless they convert). Note that Chick's definition of "Christian" is (apparently) "American evangelical Protestant."
  • Bold Inflation: Jack Chick loves this style of writing.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: In "Wounded Children" (an Old Shame of his), Satan/a demon leads a boy to get into porno, have unsatisfying sex with girls, then go gay and have unsatisfying sex with guys. The boy considers suicide, but Satan/the demon suggests against that. Later, the boy gets saved straight. Satan/the demon could've just killed the boy/let him commit suicide, since sending people to Hell is what Satan's supposed to do, right?
  • Book-Burning: In a rare case were burning books (and other media) is presented as a rather benevolent thing to do, "Dark Dungeons" ended with people burning their Dungeons & Dragons games, gear, and such.
  • Bowdlerise: In the original version of "The Poor Little Witch", the main character leaves alone despite the warnings and the threats to her life and gets murdered by the Satanists. In the modified version, she stays under the protection of Mrs. Grayson.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Li'l Susy can easily be seen as incredibly annoying and petulant.
  • The Tasteless But True Story: Some tracts have the disclaimer "This is a true story."
  • Butt Monkey: Bruce in "Fallen." He's apparently a Jerkass, and comes off as quite rude, but what exactly he did to avoid being dumped by his friends with his mother's purse, and have his neck broken by Frankie is unclear. The main character in "Unloved" has also been one his entire life.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Satan and his demons. No Freudian Excuse for these guys; they know that God is right and drive you away from him anyway, purely For the Evulz. Satan is also sometimes seen filling the role Judaism has him in, as God's "devil's advocate".
  • Catch Phrase: "Hi there!" -- The Grim Reaper.
    • God seems fond of Matthew 25:41

"Depart from me, ye cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!"

"I'm UNWANTED, UNLOVED, DISOWNED... and the doctor says I'm dying of CANCER!"

  • Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: The Devil in "First Bite" makes a false prophecy to a group of vampires because, as he says, "I Lied! It's What I Do!" Except that this false prophecy directly leads to many of them being saved, which is usually the opposite of what he does. The way it's presented, however, it does seem he intended to make his prophecy to come true, and then claimed to have lied to save face when he failed. Of course, this is very in-character for the Father of Lies.
  • Did Not Do the Research: Comes up quite a bit when he tries talking about historical events.
    • Very evident in "Titanic":
      • One of the most glaring flaws here is that the sinking appears to occur just hours after the departure from Southampton, completely ignoring the stop in Cherbourg, France and then in Queenstown, Ireland.
      • Another is that the tract hints that the officers confused two iceberg reports for one iceberg, which was not the case! The Titanic steamed full ahead into an ice flow, and also, Jack Phillips failed to pass on a vital telegram which had the iceberg in the ship's path.
      • One of the bridge officers orders the helmsman "hard-a port!" and "full speed ahead!" First Officer Murdoch ordered "hard-a starboard" (turning the rudder to starboard so it could turn to port) and also full reverse.
      • And he misspelled "iceberg" twice. Strangely, he spelled it both as "iceberg" and "iceburg" in different parts of the same strip.
      • As this was written in 1983 before there was more careful examination of the event, a couple of these errors are honest mistakes, such as the iceberg shown ripping a massive hole in the ship and the ship evidently exploding.
    • Also a case in "The Missing Day": the Mayflower sailed from England. In addition, the Puritans were not initially seeking to "reach the lost" as Jack claims, but rather to escape 'tyranny'; they believed the Church of England was corrupt (which it was, a bit) and found it too 'high church' for their more evangelical sensibilities. Furthermore, some Church officials tried to get them and their children to accept religious (re-)education (to the Church's religiously-moderate standards). So then they decided to emigrate and set up a New Jerusalem for themselves.
    • The origins of Halloween, which offers few sources and little accuracy. While some traditions of Halloween are indeed pagan in origin (the pumpkin, originally a turnip, for example), it never involved worshiping Satan or child sacrifice. The worst that would happen with the "trick"--then as now--is that you'd get your house vandalized. Kids certainly don't dress up as devils and witches to "celebrate paganism" these days. The costumes originate from the disguises superstitious pagans would wear so that ghosts wouldn't recognize and haunt them, which is the same tradition by which we wear black (originally white) at funerals. "Halloween" means "Hallowed Evening" because it's the night before All Saints' Day. Also, no teacher would punish a child for not wearing a "scary" costume. He even has an article on his website talking about how "no true Christian" should ever celebrate Halloween. Christmas, which also has many pagan origins, doesn't get so anywhere near so much attention.
    • Every single part of Dark Dungeons:
      • It's pretty unusual, albeit not impossible, to have an RPG group with more girls than boys; Dungeons & Dragons tends to be more of a male hobby.
      • The tract begins with a player freaking out when their character dies, only to be kicked out of the group because "they're dead." While there may be a psychotic gaming group out there that plays like this and it's certainly possible for players to become attached enough to a character to be really upset when the character dies--especially new players--character death in D&D either means you create a new character and keep playing, or you find a way to bring your character back. Most good DMs would probably allow for some leeway with the latter option if a player got that upset about his character's death. This gets even more ridiculous when we find out in the next panel that the player who kicks the dead character's player out of the group is playing a *Cleric*, meaning that her role in the party is to heal members and even bring dead characters back. Rather than getting to join a coven at the 8th level, an 8th. level Cleric would be getting to the point where she would be able to bring her friend's dead character back. Depending on the deity, a Cleric is the closest you can get in the D&D world to playing a Christian priest, and is therefore not terribly good "occult training."
      • Also, you can't cast "Mind Bondage" on a loved one to get them to buy you D&D stuff.
        • Sadly.
    • In "Evil Eyes", most of the people shown practicing Santeria are white (ie- of European ancestry). Santeria is an Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion. While Latin America is racially diverse, a Latin American person of European ancestry is unlikely to be practicing a religion that is African in its origin.
    • Chick often comes close to making a salient point with some things (such as people worshiping Mary or Buddha- even though no doctrine teaches such things, there really are some people who do it anyway), but the track is riddled with so many errors that it undermines the point he was trying to make.
    • "Birds and the Bees". Gay men do not refer to their male spouses as "wife"; the usual preferred term is "husband" or "partner".
    • Chick did do the research in Big Daddy. The problem was, his research consisted entirely of reading one anti-evolution screed by Kent Hovind.
      • Actually, not - Big Daddy was ghostwritten by Hovind himself. (The original version of Big Daddy was written by Chick - it was replaced with Hovind's rewrite due to the obvious Critical Research Failure contained within.)
    • One tract has a girl saying she turned to witchcraft after imitating things she read in Harry Potter, including the use of tarot cards, ouija boards and crystal balls - despite the fact that magic is performed almost exclusively with magic wands, and ouija boards aren't mentioned at any point.
    • Chick has some very... interesting ideas about Catholicism, to say the least.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: According to this tract, anyway.
  • Dirty Communists / The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: "Fat Cats" and "The Poor Revolutionist".
  • Disproportionate Retribution:
    • In "Fairy Tales?" after learning a horrifying truth, a child (Harry Garner) goes on a killing spree, burning down his school and eventually becoming the FBI's most wanted fugitive who is then arrested, tried, and executed. What was the truth so dreadful it drove this child to kill? The fact that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and Easter Bunny aren't real.
    • Another case of this trope comes from "The Last Generation" mentioned below. It's mentioned that Larry's mom told him to go to bed immediately. What happened? She got put in a concentration camp for child abuse.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The tracts fall prey to this quite heavily.
    • The notorious "Dark Dungeons" made roleplaying out to be an exciting life-or-death scenario that introduced real occultism and gave players fabulous supernatural powers that they can use to brainwash their parents into buying them stuff. More than a few roleplayers love the tract and it has been parodied and affectionately referred to in innumerable ways among the subculture.
    • In his anti-Catholic tracts, Chick shows very little downside to being one of those dastardly Papists, since they seem to have nothing but crazy sex parties and oodles of cash, and be secretly running the world.
    • Depending on the tracts, he'll even make the devils funny or sufficiently clever to provide comic relief, which makes anyone who wins against them seem like a bit of a killjoy.
  • Dolled-Up Installment: "The Slugger" has been recycled several times, swapping out the first few panels and changing the dialogue to make it apply to sports other than baseball.
  • Doublethink: In this Verse, Fundamentalist Christianity is not only true, but a very obvious truth. Some characters who understand this at heart still choose not to believe in it, instead embracing whatever false teachings that will be good for their career and social life. In some cases this is merely playing along with the lies, but in others they appear to honestly believe in them.
  • Driven to Suicide: "Dark Dungeons" among others.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him:
    • People who reject the offer to convert are often killed off in short order by a fairly sudden or improbable cause of death (such as Charlie Connors in "Hi There!" falling from a girder and getting impaled, or the main character's cousin being killed by a falling tree in "The Contract").
    • Sometimes people who accept the offer get the treatment: (Crazy Wolf is told by God he made it by the skin of his teeth), other times those considering it are killed before making up their minds, meaning they go to Hell. In both cases, the Aesop usually demands that the character's death and arrival in the afterlife make it into the story somehow, and the death is used to remind readers that they can't put off accepting Jesus.
  • Dystopia: "The Last Generation", complete with an oppressive government regime that teaches animal sacrifices in school, and evil little children who snitch on their parents.
  • Earth Is Young: Chick typically use straight Type B: Scientists are evil, and need to be cured of their heresy by the power of Easy Evangelism.
  • Easily Forgiven: Quite a few people who change their ways upon being converted, especially abusive parents or spouses (Ahmed in "Is Allah Like You?", Roy Davis in "The Secret", and Henry Walker in "Lisa").
    • Surprisingly, initially averted in Happy Hour. After pushing his wife down and indirectly causing her death of a heart attack, and later spending the grocery money on liquor, Jerry tries to apologize to his children, but his children will have none of it until they go to church and learn the value of forgiveness, forgiving him two panels after the previous incident.
    • Eric in Baby Talk. Granted, he recognizes his mistake in abandoning Ashley and tries to fix it, but she doesn't seem angry at him at any point.
  • Easy Evangelism: On what seems to be the vampire Jesus.
  • Easy Road to Hell: Simultaneously played straight and inverted: everyone is going to hell for the slightest, and least objectionable, of sins. However all you have to do is accept Fundamentalist Protestantism and you'll spend eternity in heaven.
  • Empathic Environment: Skies gray and clear for sin and redemption, respectively.
  • Enfant Terrible: Harry Garner in "Fairy Tales?"
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Crashed cars tend to explode.
  • Everything's Better with Bob: Kind of subverted in that he is a preacher who "retells" the Bible stories with a bit of his own embellishment[2] and preaches damnation versus salvation ONLY through Jesus Christ in some tracts.
  • Evil Laugh: HAW HAW HAW
  • Evilutionary Biologist: All of them.
  • Expospeak: Quite a bit of it. Arguably justified, since after all these are unashamedly Author Tracts.

F-J

  • Face Death with Dignity: The saved Christians die with more dignity than those who end up going to Hell.
  • Face Heel Turn: Occasionally, Christians fall from grace, like three of the four brothers in "Four Angels?", Harry (only briefly mentioned) in "The Poor Revolutionist", and Paul in "The Last Generation".
  • The Faceless: God's head is silhouetted by brilliant light, making it impossible to see His face.
  • Fan Film: Hot Chicks, here, here, and here.
  • Fan Flattering: Those who read the tracts and agree with them go to heaven. All Christians who disagree with the tracts (most Christians), as well as all non-Christians, go to hell.
  • Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: The non-Christians do this quite often. They feel insulted, threatened, even oppressed... not by how the Christians treat them, but by their very existence.
  • Flat Earth Atheist: Every atheist on the planet, according to Jack Chick. Of special notes are the atheist who are visited by devils. It's probably intended to come off as the whispers of the devil putting thoughts in their minds, but some panels really show the atheist facing the demons and having what looks like a conversation with them.
  • For Halloween I Am Going as Myself: A demon in this tract.
  • Footnote Fever: Chick Tracts sometimes have as much space devoted to footnotes as to the tracts themselves.
  • For the Evulz: Aside from the protagonist of any given tract, supporting characters with a viewpoint that opposes Chick's are quite often very happily aware that their religion, belief, etc. has been planted by the Devil. More often than not these characters are intentionally out to inflict some form of harm the other characters of the tract. (In several cases, the supporting characters are flat-out demons in disguise.)
  • The Fundamentalist: All the heroic characters in a Chick Tract.
  • Funny Background Event: Sometimes, there are Funny Foreground Events, too.
  • Gender Flip: Take "This Was Your Life", replace the damned soul with a woman, update the wording a bit, and you get "You Have A Date".
  • A God Am I: Declared by a child after learning about "evolution".
  • Good Angel, Bad Angel: More precisely, demons causing all sorts of human evils, from homosexuality to suicide to Freemasonry. When angels appear, they pull minor pranks like tripping people and give them seemingly irrelevant directions (such as, "You're going to wash your hair"), but all for the cause of saving souls.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Satan tends to get the lion's share of the action in most stories, always working to corrupt people. God rarely shows up except at the end to render final judgment, with a few exceptions. On the other hand, the angels sometimes show up to counter Satan and his demons, presumably on assignment from God. (Also, an occasional miracle in answer to a prayer may be coming more directly from God.)
  • Gravity Is Only a Theory: Some tracts go into this territory, claiming that the solar system is held together by Jesus' hand rather then any scientific principle such as gravity, because Science Is Bad.
  • The Grim Reaper: Originally appeared in "Hi There!" "Moving on Up!" also gives him a cameo:

Hi there!

K-O

P-T

  • Parental Abandonment: Li'l Susy's mother died when she was born and her father died of a heart attack.
  • Parental Incest: The tract "Lisa" where a father (Henry Walker), and his next door neighbor (Charlie), sexually abused his very young daughter, but he was forgiven because he accepted God and Jesus. Since pulled from publication, but copies are still online.
  • Path of Inspiration: The Catholic Church, Buddhism, Islam, and pretty much any other religion or denomination that doesn't mesh exactly with Jack Chick's worldview.
  • Poe's Law: Most of the positions stated and conclusions drawn in the tracts are so preposterous and illogical (not to mention un-Christian, at least to the majority of Christians) that it's hard to tell if Chick is being entirely serious.
  • Police Brutality: A minister who protests a Gay Pride parade gets a savage beating from the cops that puts him into the hospital.
  • Politically-Motivated Teacher: "Big Daddy?" features one trying to indoctrinate his students with belief in evolution, with a plucky student countering and eventually breaking him.
  • Prayer of Malice: This is sometimes done by Catholics, non-evangelical Protestants, and so on. Within the context of the pamphlets, this "proves" that only evangelicals are Real Christians.
  • Pride Parade: Several tracts feature Pride Parades, portraying them as unholy armies of Satan laying siege to the world.
  • The Prophet Muhammad: The tracts go straight into the Type 4 tradition. They portray him as a brigand, thug, devil-worshiping liar, pedophile and so on, much as it does with any other villain.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: God regularly kills people, including unsaved ones, just to get the attention of their loved ones. The subject of Mean Momma gets all three of her children killed just to make her repent. No one brings this up, instead gushing on about how wonderful God is for saving her.
  • Punch Clock Villain: The Grim Reaper seems like a rather pleasant fellow even while he's killing people.

"Hi there!"

  • Race Lift: In the tracts' case, a rather interesting variety: when the Target Audience is of a different race/nationality, the characters and sometimes the settings as well are also redrawn to look like the people and places of those ethnicities. Compare, for example, the North American English version of "This Was Your Life" with the African English version ("It's Your Life!"). Even the angels are of different ethnicities. Even God can be black or white depending on the ethnicity of the one who's up for final judgment. Chick is nothing if not flexible.
  • Rape and Switch: In the first tract of the year 2011, Chick declares that all gay people were molested when they were children (and possessed by gay demons).
    • An idea which originated with the Freudians, let us note, and was discredited along with them.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In "Angels?", Henry gives Charlie one, denouncing him as a false Christian and an enemy of God.
  • Reclusive Artist: Chick himself has only ever given one interview in his lifetime, citing death lists as the reason. The top of the page picture is the only photograph that seems to exist.
  • Recursive Canon: When there's no Bob or Lil' Susy around to perform Easy Evangelism, Chick will have a character find redemption by coming across one of his other tracts, sometimes as a Deus Ex Machina randomly stuck in their pocket.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Tracts that involve people such as murderers finding redemption will often end with their death.
  • Religion Is Magic: In The Verse of chick tracts, all religions (except Chick's variant of Christianity) practice black magic. Catholic clergy are particularly vicious mages.
  • Religion of Evil: Catholicism, mostly. And Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism,... heck, any other religion that is not Chick's particular brand of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: One demon looks exactly like a Frill-necked Lizard.
  • Resuscitate the Dog: Eric leaves Ashley after she gets pregnant, but after seeing the error of his ways and accepting Jesus, races to stop her from getting the abortion, declaring that he's willing to stay with her now.
  • Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: In "The Poor Revolutionist", the main character and some of the revolutionaries are executed because "[he is] a revolutionist, perhaps [he] might revolt against [their] own system." The country shown being overthrown is not actually specified, though it certainly does look like the USA, and the revolutionary hippies he lampoons are hard to mistake for being from anywhere else. Some versions do mention, though, that basically in any country Communism overthrows, the revolutionaries are always eliminated afterward.
  • Sadist Show: An attempted serious rendition, in "Unloved".
  • Sadist Teacher: Oh, that Miss Henn, pushing such depravities on poor children.
  • Satan: Sometimes comes to the fore, but usually shown more as The Man Behind the Man.
  • Schmuck Bait: In this tract, a group of boys find a pool surrounded by numerous warning signs and decide to go for a swim.
  • See You in Hell: A hitman says this to the Judge after injecting him with a fatal poison in Here Comes The Judge. Since this is Chick, he means it literally.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: In "Fatal Decision", Dr. Bowers sells most of his stocks and bonds to obtain a vaccine for a patient, who destroys it and dies a few days later. To make matters worse, Bowers' son died in an accident on the way back.
  • Sliding Scale of Realistic Versus Fantastic: The tracts run the range. Some, like "This Was Your Life" do represent the author's view of reality; others, such as a fairy tale "The Fool!" are clearly intended more as fantastic allegories.
  • The Starscream: According to Chick, Islam is this to Catholicism.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: Compare "This Was Your Life" when it is tailored to men to when it's written for women.
  • Stealth Parody: What some people, including some Christians, suspect he may be.
  • Step Three: Profit: Despite the title, the subject of Love That Money! has a clear plan for profit, but the demons and angels don't. The devils say that Joe Bronson will be their star in politics and is invaluable to them, but they seem perfectly fine with his ending up broke and in Hell (where he was pretty much heading before). The angel meanwhile stops the demon from preventing Joe from listening to some evangelism, but apparently doesn't stop the man's Christian aunt from dying such that Joe gets her money, which ultimately prevents him being saved.
  • Strawman Political: He uses them frequently, mostly with counter-productive results.
  • Strictly Formula: Usually, whatever else is in the story, a sinner gets salvation explained (and offered) to him at some point. Either 1)He accepts and goes to Heaven, 2)He doesn't and goes to hell, or 3)Someone accepts and another person doesn't.
  • Stupid Evil: Satan and his minions sometimes come out looking like this at times, particularly when their schemes backfire.
  • Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom: In "It's Not Your Fault", there is a foster home called "Happy Halls". It's so awful there that seven-year old kids routinely kill themselves.
  • Surprisingly Good English: Spoken by the Native Americans according to Mortimer, who even lampshades this in "The Missing Day".
  • Symbol Swearing: Any time someone swears. Notably, it's almost always the same sequence of symbols, beginning with "@", then some exclamation points, and some stars/asterisks.
  • Tag-Team Suicide: In "No Fear?", Lance commits suicide and Dolly is about to do so at his funeral, but her sister and a preacher stop her.
  • Take That: Against almost everything Jack Chick sees as bad.
  • Taking the Bullet: Officer Joe Donovan for Murph in "Murph". Interestingly, Joe receives minor wounds while Murph is mortally wounded.
  • Those Wacky Nazis: Featured in "Holocaust".
  • Too Dumb to Live: The main character in the original version of "The Poor Little Witch" leaves alone after getting saved despite knowing her life is in danger, and gets murdered.
  • Twist Ending: "Somebody Goofed" and "Oops!" which was illustrated for black people.

U-Z

  • Undercover Cop Reveal: In "Trust me" and "Bad Bob," a buyer turns out to be an undercover narcotics cop, who arrests the respective main characters
  • The Unfavourite: Jimmy in "Unloved", as his parents refuse to attend his high school graduation, constantly tell him he's inferior to his sister Nancy, criticize his choice of a wife, blame him for having rotten kids, berate him for losing his job, and disown him after he asks to borrow money.
    • In "Mean Momma", Austin Parker realizes that Charlie is favored over him, and then commits suicide.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Brutus indirectly causes a patient's death by getting him to distrust a doctor.
    • The Devil often tries to invoke this, especially in The Assignment. Charles Bishop's subordinate's wife is a successful case, as she prevented him from witnessing to his boss, but the devils' attempts to use a popular boy and the subordinate as distractions for Bishop's daughter and Bishop fail.
  • Vanity Publishing: All of Chick's work is published and distributed by Chick Publications, including books by other authors.
  • Verbal Tic: The omnipresent and random use of Biblical quotes, especially John 3:16.
  • Villainy Discretion Shot: When the Bull has some prisoners killed, it isn't shown, presumably to prevent people from seeing him as a Karma Houdini.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist If you believe Jack Chick is a real person and not a troll, no matter how distasteful you find his opinions or ridiculous his methods, he is after all just trying to get people into heaven and away from a fiery pit of eternal torment.
  • Wham! Line
    • Baby Talk: "She's not here. Thelma took her to the clinic. They left an hour ago."
    • The Letter: "Mildred, didn't you hear? Saturday night Frances and John's car skidded in the rain and they hit a tree. John's still alive but Frances died instantly."
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: Apart from the straight examples it is also inverted when portraying the reactions of the friends and family of the newly converted. And apparently, learning that a Christian is praying for them acts as a Berserk Button for non-Christians.
    • As noted earlier, even Satan occasionally screws up. In this case, he was probably planning to have his character commit some more "spectacular wickedness" (as Screwtape would put it) and corrupt the people around him before harvesting his soul.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Taken Up to Eleven in "The Thief"; the robber is determined not to let his witness live, but puts it off long enough that his victim manages, through Oblivious Guilt Slinging, to talk him out of it.
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: The angels and the devils in "The Assignment" repeatedly revise their plans to ensure that Cathy Hillman witnesses to Charles Bishop and prevent her from doing so, respectively. For example, the devils have an insurance man named Irving plan to pitch a policy to Bishop, but the angels give him a flat tire and prevent him from using the phone by having an old woman tie it up. Bishop dies before he can convert, and thus is sent to hell.
  • Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: God, of course, as well as the KJV Bible itself.
  • You Have Failed Me...: The devils hand down severe punishments when souls get into Heaven.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Lance Clawson is implied to have been killed in jail in Here Comes The Judge.
  • You Rebel Scum: "Fanatic" is a favorite insult to True Christians (very much a minority in the world of Chick Tracts) by nonbelievers and authorities.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." --John 14:6
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  1. ↑ which actually tells Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son
  2. ↑ which is more like twisted versions of these stories
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