Fun with Acronyms/Newspaper Comics

• Dilbert spoofed this when the boss' secretary put "DOPE" on his business cards--unaware that he did in fact hold the title Director Of Product Enhancements.
  • The boss was also tricked into putting an "e-" in front of his previous title acronym, DIOT, because all the cool things these days have them. (Forgot what it stands for.)
    • As I recall, his title at the time was Director of Information, Operations, and Technology.
  • Interestingly enough, the new prefix is "i-".
  • A variation: company e-mails are required to be the person's first initial and last name, causing complaints from an employee named Brenda Utthead. This editor has known at least two people whose first initial and last name spelled words.
  • One of Dilbert's projects was named TTP, which stood for The TTP Project.
• In Get Fuzzy, Satchel's dog group is called Canines Against Traffic. Bucky suggests that a better title would be Dogs On Ridiculous Krusades.
  • Possibly the Atlantic Research of Supernatural Entities Group.
  • Also, Minks Against Yearly Being Eviscerated - one of the minks wanted to change this not-so-assertive name to MACHO, but as the other mink pointed out, "It doesn't stand for anything!"
  • A more recent comic has Intelligence Department Institute Of The International Cathood.
• Eye Beam had the absurd megacorp TIC -- "Three Initial Corporation".
• One FoxTrot strip featured a dish called STEAK in the high school cafeteria. The name was an acronym for "Squid Tentacles, Eggplant, And Ketchup."
  • In another, Jason offers Peter a PB&J. Turns out the "J" in this case stood for jalapenos.
• In the mid-1960s, Al Capp's comic strip "Li'l Abner" had Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything, or SWINE, an unsubtle parody of student radical groups.
• The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers once caught the attention of an ultra right-wing paramilitary group calling themselves the Americans Secretly Serving a Higher Order of Law Enforcement and Subservience.
• Calvin and Hobbes played with this trope:

Calvin: Our top-secret club, G.R.O.S.S. -- Get Rid Of Slimy girlS!
Susie: Slimy girls?
Calvin: I know it's redundant, but otherwise it doesn't spell anything.

• In the early 1990's, when the World League of American Football (later NFL Europe) was starting, the comic strip Tank Mc Namara showed a group of executives upset that people were calling the league, "What-A-Laugh". One suit suggested changing the name to American World Football League, until he realized that this was just as AWFL.