History ComicBook / TheBeano

* ElvisImpersonator: Les Pretend's dad has Elvis Impersonation as a hobby.

* SpidermanSendUp: Billy the Cat is an athletic [[KidHero young]] superhero who relies on a variety of gadgets, and lives with his elderly aunt.

* RaceLift: When the strip Betty And The Yeti was re-introduced into the comic in 2015 after a long absence, Betty's ethnicity was changed to Asian (quite possibly Indian).

* ImprovisedImprisonment: One special for the Bash Street Kids involves them discovering an ancient proclamation that declares Beano Town independent of England and whoever finds it the new monarch. This leads to [[{{TomBoy}} Toots]] becoming Queen and turning the school into her palace. Naturally [[DrunkOnPower power almost immediately goes to her head]] and she starts ordering anyone who opposes her (or annoys her) sent to the Tower. As attempts to explain to her Bash Street School doesn't have a Tower just makes her angry, they eventually resort to locking the prisoners in the school's water tower. By the end of the story, Toots has imprisoned everyone in the tower (even her friends for suggesting she might be going to far). However, due to it not being designed to hold them, their combined weight makes the water tower collapse. Once freed, the masses immediately depose her and destroy the proclamation. The story ends with them locking her in an equally makeshift prison to teach her a lesson.

--'''Cuthbert:''' I should really have that bit cordoned off.

** Jumbo still frequently shows up in the annuals. In one story, one of his toy soldiers becomes both self-aware and malevolent, and tries to take control of ''him''.
* KlatchianCoffee: The tea served to staff at Bash Street School. Alternates between dissolving the spoon and not actually being a liquid. One storyline involving a wireless lie detector was ended by the dinner lady insisting that she did know how to make tea. The lie detector exploded.

* LastOfHisKind: ComicBook/TheDandy's demise as a print title leaves The Beano as the last weekly humour anthology comic in the United Kingdom.
* LethalChef: Olive the School Dinner Lady. Apparently based on the publisher's tea lady.

*** At least, he used to. When ''WesternAnimation/DennisAndGnasherUnleashed'' launched, Curly, who isn't in the cartoon, vanished, and athlete JJ and wheelchair using inventor Rubi replaced him.

* NapoleonComplex: Spotty of the Bash Street Kids is sarcastic, conceited and protective about his masculinity and height.

** The two Snooty's also appear '''together''' in the 2014 annual.

* NerdsLoveToughSchoolwork: Cuthbert especially. In one comic, he kept getting the Bash Street kids in trouble [[spoiler:so he could steal all their punishment homework.]]

* NonHumanSidekick: Calamity James and Alexander Lemming also Dennis the Menace and Gnasher.

* PoliticalCartoons: Numerous strips during World War 2 were political in nature such as Musso the Wop (which featured the italian dictator UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini as an incompetent buffoon) and other strips such as a Lord Snooty strip where Lord Snooty fought against UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.

* RuleSixtyThree: Minnie the Minx is often considered simply a female version of Dennis the Menace. However another example which even better fits this trope is Dennis the Menace's cousin Denise the Menace who appeared in a couple of Dennis the Menace strips back in the autumn of 1967 she looked just like Dennis except for a bow in her hair and she wore a skirt.

* ShesNotMyGirlfriend: Anyone who asks Dennis if he fancies Minnie is threatened with violence.

** Calamity James is named after Calamity Jane. And then you have his pet Alexander Lemming, named after scientist Alexander Flemming.

** Toots is the one girl in The Bash Street Kids and one strip showed her being asked out by all the boys in the gang (except of course her twin brother Sidney). Unfortunately for all of them, Toots canonically has a crush on Dennis the Menace. Averted as of June 2021, as two new girls, Harsha and Mandi, have joined the class.

* SpinOff: Often in the form of annuals for a specific comic strip, eg the Dennis the Menace Annual and the Bash Street Kids Annual. Also Plug from the Bash Street Kids had his own ''spinoff comic''.[[note]]Said comic folded after 75 issues and was [[ComicsMerger merged]] into ''ComicBook/TheBeezer'', leading to the unusual situation for several years where Plug was simultaneously appearing in two different comics[[/note]] Some Beano comic strips are spinoffs of other strips in the Beano eg Bea the Mini-Menace was a spinoff of Dennis the Menace, and The Three Bears was a spinoff of Little Plum.

* StealthPun: The biggest, strongest member of the Nibblers is called Enor (Enor Mouse; enormous).

** ''ComicBook/TheBeano'' and ''ComicBook/TheDandy'' have a friendly rivalry which often involves taking potshots at each other (e.g. characters being threatened with the possibility of getting sent to the other comic). Stopped after the Dandy's demise in 2012.
** 2020 saw a special ''[[IncrediblyLamePun [=BeanOLD=]]]'' 8-page bonus comic released, intended for the adults who'd been reading the regular ''Beano'' during the COVID-19 lockdown and other assorted crises of the year; the plot revolved around Dennis Sr. and Sandra pitted against Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson (who's depicted as being unable to make a decision) and Walter's father, who has put Dennis Sr. out of a job by way of closing Beanotown's paperclip factory. Jabs at 2020's multitude of horribleness abounded.

** Also, the end of [=BeanoMAX=] when it was replaced with a dedicated Dennis and Gnasher magazine saw WesternAnimation/WallaceAndGromit and FightMyMonster move to the weekly comic, though still only appearing every month or so. Fight My Monster, an advert strip for an online game, was quickly dropped, however.

* ContinuityNod: In Beano Annual 2009 the Ratz briefly meet the Nibblers (a group of mice from a 1970s/1980s Beano comic strip).
* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: Used in one Bash Street Kids story when Teacher discovered it was the way to get perfect discipline - after dishing out such punishments as 'marry a potato' and 'go to the moon without any supper' (which Fatty objected to strongly, he didn't mind going to the moon, just missing his supper). Unfortunately, in his rush to tell Mrs Teacher how well this worked, he tracked mud throughout the house leading to his own punishment (standing the middle of the pond dressed as a fairy) which put an end to the {{Cool And Unusual Punishment}}s.
* CoolBike: Tim Traveller.

* CoversAlwaysLie: Roger appears on the VHS cover of ''The Beano Videostars'', but he isn't on the video itself. Possibly because his checkered jersey would have made him hard to animate.
* CrackFic: The 1968 annual had a story where the Bash Street Kids decide to go and work at the Beano offices. Upon their arrival, the staff all make a run for it, so the kids have to produce that week's ''Beano''. Smiffy is appointed as editor, and the results...[[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xab7vCycZY4/UJUJm2rdB-I/AAAAAAAACLg/GH0y4DxeUVQ/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+(1).jpg well]], [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZKC9knyEjCw/UJUJTfv31GI/AAAAAAAACKw/sYTwZOqTkf8/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25282%2529.jpg just]] [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ji2UeprS9M0/UJUJU8FHqXI/AAAAAAAACK4/TS-jXnR4AJw/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25283%2529.jpg take]] [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GJ1f8_q-MAY/UJUJW8Tta9I/AAAAAAAACLA/RbWaG9OqG7M/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25284%2529.jpg a]] [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xBlTl9XXTEA/UJUJX2qm3lI/AAAAAAAACLI/SBs7G4FIpA0/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25285%2529.jpg look]] [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CplivhhiT18/UJUJZZInKjI/AAAAAAAACLQ/4BhnbzykK54/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25286%2529.jpg and]] [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/XPXUzA6rq10/UJUJanWh8wI/AAAAAAAACLY/tAOdhhpqGgU/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25287%2529.jpg see]].

* EverybodyHatesMathematics: Everyone except Cuthbert Cringeworthy, who lives for sums textbooks. The rest of the Bash Street Kids happily throw masses of textbooks in fires.

** Meebo and Zuky are this for [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Itchy And Scratchy]].

* ExtremeOmniGoat

* FormulaBreakingEpisode: Occasionally in the late nineties and early noughties, for special events the comic would be taken up by one big story by Mike Pearce featuring all of the current characters, usually with the Bash Street Kids (who had noticeably more fleshed-out personalities thanks to the longer-form stories) in the main role with the other strips in supporting roles (the exception being his ''Dennis the Menace'' story to mark the strip's [=50th=] anniversary).

* FrameBreak: Used occasionally especially in ComicBook/TheBeano Video where among other things Gnasher is used to break a frame.

* GirlsHaveCooties: Dennis. In the final segment of ''The Beano Videostars'', Dennis was kissed by a girl, so he stopped the film and jumped out of it so he could go to the projector and cut that part out so it never happened.

* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: Hayley Comet.

* CrossOver: The strips will from time to time will feature characters from elsewhere in the comic walking in and having a role. These can range from cameos to advancing the plot.

*** A switch which became permanent with MAX's demise a few months later.

** Later writers portray Sidney as the gang's animal lover, with a wide range of exotic pets, and Scotty as the most argumentative.
** In ''Tricky Dicky'', Mr. Throbb is almost universally portrayed as a SadistTeacher who actively enjoys making life miserable for students (In one strip, he not only confiscates Dicky's phone for using it in the hallway, but he then ''repeatedly stomps on it'' while repeatedly asking if he's learned his lesson yet, which would undoubtably get him fired in real life). Some other strips like ''Bananaman'' many have him written as a more normal teacher who is just exasperated by his students not paying attention. To put it into perspective, he doesn't even confiscate Eric's manga when he's openly reading it in class.

** Fatty from ''The Bash Street Kids'', as well as Minnie the Minx's FriendlyEnemy Fatty Fudge. Both boys are unfortunate to now be associated by this name, both being later changed to Frederick by 2021.

* BoringVacationSlideshow: One ''Bash Street Kids'' strip has the entire class and their teacher relocate to a HauntedHouse rather than stick around for their Headmaster's boring slideshow of his time in Australia. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for them, said Headmaster had taken that into account and had them all captured so that he can show his slides to them uninterrupted. Fortunately for them, the Janitor shows up dressed as a BedsheetGhost and scares the Head away before he can start the slideshow.]]

* BreakingTheFourthWall: Word boxes full of the comic editor's SelfDeprecation are common in some strips to be a DeadpanSnarker or critique what the characters decide to do.

** There were a few comic strips that disappeared from the issues for good but would appear frequently in the Annuals. Billy the Cat, for example, hadn't been in the comic from since the 1970s but would cameo in Annual stories.
** Pansy Potter famously disappeared after the death of her comic strip artist, and then returned as a SoftReboot in which she'd emigrated to Wonderland to live with the Fairy Tales' characters.

** Wayne's in Pain, a new Bash Street Kid who was chosen as a new Bash Street Kid after a competition on ''Series/BluePeter'' to create a new Kid, appeared in The Bash Street Kids strips for a while until he was dropped for no reason and without warning, with his last appearance being him falling down an open manhole.
** Curly, one of Dennis's best friends, vanished when ''WesternAnimation/DennisAndGnasherUnleashed'' launched he was replaced by sporty black girl JJ and disabled inventor Rubi.
* CityOfEverywhere: A wartime issue had Lord Snooty concoct a plan to confuse the Luftwaffe pilots bombing his hometown by surrounding it with landmarks "borrowed" by the RAF from all around the world. These included the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal, and Table Mountain.
* ClassClown: Harsha, one of the new Bash Street Kids, is a prankster.

* CompanionCube: Smiffy from The Bash Street Kids has a pet pebble named Kevin.

* HeroesWantRedheads: Dennis has often been hinted to fancy Minnie, though he won't admit it. This has been debunked with the reveal that the two are cousins.

* WidgetSeries: Beano's very British humor really stands out and prevents it from being exported to other countries like the United States.

** The live-action short film adaptation of Calamity James explores how a boy afflicted with disastrous luck might try to cope in real life. In this version, his predicament is the result of a medical condition - acute misfortune syndrome - that can temporarily be passed on to anyone who makes physical contact with him. Like in the comics, James survives horrendous injuries (including being struck by lightning twice in quick succession) without any longterm physical results, but that’s about the only cartoonish holdover from the comics. James is otherwise presented as a realistic boy having to cope with having no friends and a resentful mother as a result of (and top of) constant suffering over which he has next to no control. There’s also a lot of bad language that could never be used in ''The Beano'' proper.

* GoldDigger: Daisy won't let her lack of attraction to Ernest stop her from accepting expensive gifts from him.

* GoldDigger: On occasion, Daisy will let Ernest buy her expensive things while continuing to not return his affections.