FoxTrot/Trivia

• Missing Episode: On April Fool's Day 1997, almost every syndicated cartoonist traded places with another. Amend drew that day's Nancy while the Nancy team took that day's FoxTrot. The strip that they drew does not appear in the compilation Welcome to Jasorassic Park, though; in its place are the chewed-up corners of the strip and a flock of "Quincyraptors" (a reference to a Jurassic Park pastiche in that same compilation, wherein each dinosaur resembles Quincy). As far as anyone can tell, this is the only FoxTrot strip that has never been reprinted in the books. However, it is available on Go Comics' website for the strip.
• One of Us: Bill Amend is unabashedly nerdy. He plays World of Warcraft and, in the comic's pastiche of it, had Jason discover a fancy weapon called the "Doomulus Prime." Blizzard put it in the real game. (Though they did water it down a bit first. The item Jason found had a DPS rate of 3,000.)
  • Although the proc on that thing makes it sound more like the developer cheat item Martin Thunder...
  • He also did a Guest Strip for Penny Arcade (link). And wrote the foreword in their first book.
  • And now he's done a Guest Strip for Xkcd (link) as well.
• Recycled Script: Very rare occurrences:

Jason: Mom, this hotel is great!
Andy: I'm glad you like it
Jason: Our room came stocked with all sorts of candy bars and sodas. A very nice touch.
Andy: Really? Ours didn't.
Jason: Did you look in that little fridge over there?
Andy: Jason, that's the minibar!
Jason: The 20-inch Snickers bars were a tad stale, but otherwise...
Andy: (with her head in her hands) Let the bankruptcy begin.
Paige:( with an armload of shopping bags) Guess what? The gift shops let you charge things to your room!

• • A later strip:

Jason: Mom, this place is great! They give you stuff for free!
Andy: What are you talking about?!
Jason: You just tell them your room number and you can have anything you want!
Andy: Jason, it's not free! They're just putting it on our bill!
Jason: Oops.
Andy: (with her head in her hands) Why didn't I pack aspirin?
Paige:( with an armload of shopping bags) Get some at the gift shop. Everything's free.

• • Recycled scripts, as rare as they are, are pretty blatant at times. For example, there are two strips about Jason doing a card trick with a deck missing a card, which have the same punchline. There are also two strips about Peter telling Paige and Jason at two separate occasions how to channel-surf faster, also both using the same punchline.