History ComicStrip / Popeye

** In "The Natural Thing To Do," Popeye says "Conversing breaks up the [{{Malaproper}} monopoly]] of not talkin'!"

* OnceAnEpisode: Popeye gets in a life-threatening situation, pulls out a can of spinach, and summons the strength necessary to save himself -- and, probably, Olive. Occasional variations cropped up, such as Olive Oyl saving Popeye from a hillbilly giantess in ''Hill-Billing and Cooing'', but even these variations nearly always involved the strategic use of spinach.

* NoAntagonist: There's a few shorts [[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, With Little Swee'Pea, Lost and Foundry, Let's Celebrake, The House Builder-Upper, I Yam Lovesick, Plumbing is a Pipe, Popeye the Sailor with The Jeep, A Date to Skate, Cops is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Wotta Nightmare, Never Sock a Baby, Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive, Puttin' On the Act, My Pop, My Pop, Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Baby Wants a Bottleship, Cartoons Ain't Human and Olive Oyl For President[[/note]] where the conflict doesn’t come from an antagonistic force like Bluto, but more Popeye's own inaction or other circumstances. Notably the short "Let's Celebrake!" has no conflict whatsoever and is about Popeye taking Olive's grandma to a New Years Eve party.

* NoAntagonist: There's a few shorts [[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, With Little Swee'Pea, Lost and Foundry, Let's Celebrake, The House Builder-Upper, I Yam Lovesick, Plumbing is a Pipe, Popeye the Sailor with The Jeep, A Date to Skate, Cops is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Never Sock a Baby, Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive, Puttin' On the Act, My Pop, My Pop, Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Baby Wants a Bottleship and Cartoons Ain't Human[[/note]] where the conflict doesn’t come from an antagonistic force like Bluto, but more Popeye's own inaction or other circumstances. Notably the short "Let's Celebrake!" has no conflict whatsoever and is about Popeye taking Olive's grandma to a New Years Eve party.

* NoAntagonist: There's a few shorts [[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, With Little Swee'Pea, Lost and Foundry, Let's Celebrake, The House Builder-Upper, I Yam Lovesick, Plumbing is a Pipe, Popeye the Sailor with The Jeep, A Date to Skate, Cops is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Never Sock a Baby, Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive, Puttin' On the Act, My Pop, My Pop, Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, and Baby Wants a Bottleship[[/note]] where the conflict doesn’t come from an antagonistic force like Bluto, but more Popeye's own inaction or other circumstances. Notably the short "Let's Celebrake!" has no conflict whatsoever and is about Popeye taking Olive's grandma to a New Years Eve party.

* NoAntagonist: There's a few shorts where the conflict doesn’t come from an antagonistic force like Bluto, but more Popeye's own inaction or other circumstances. Notably the short "Let's Celebrake!" has no conflict whatsoever and is about Popeye taking Olive's grandma to a New Years Eve party.

** In April 1926, Segar finally eliminated the gag-a-day format from the daily strip altogether (the Sunday strip, which had begun in 1925, mostly remained episodic) and penned a lengthy sequence in which Castor met (and eventually married) Cylinda, a stunning young woman eventually revealed to be the daughter of the [[TheScrooge spiteful, misanthropic billionaire]] I. Canniford Lotts, who immediately disapproved of Castor's working-class background and [[ParentalMarriageVeto attempted to break the marriage apart]]. Over the following two years, the strip would increasingly center on Castor's attempts to support himself and Cylinda via a series of unsuccessful careers and moneymaking ventures while repelling Lotts' frequent attempts to [[ObnoxiousInLaws deride Castor and bankrupt the couple]]. Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl, meanwhile, were increasingly DemotedToExtra, finally disappearing entirely by the end of 1927.
** Upon Cylinda abruptly abandoning (albeit not officially divorcing) Castor for a film career in June 1928, however, Castor reunited with Ham and Olive, re-installing the strip's mid-1920s format (albeit with lengthier and more ambitious storylines, most notably the "Great American Desert Saga", which ran in the Sunday strip for a full ''two years'' from 1928 to 1930). This period would prove short-lived, however, after its second daily storyline introduced a certain gnarled, malapropism-spouting sailor who would [[EnsembleDarkhorse rapidly gain popularity among Segar's readership]], and thus become a regular, by the end of 1929. The Sunday continuity, comparatively, would not exit its "pre-Popeye" incarnation until March 1930, when Castor and Ham returned to the Oyl household at the conclusion of the "Desert Saga" and discovered Olive to have entered a romantic relationship with Popeye, heralding [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome Ham's disappearance]] only weeks later.
** Popeye was a much rougher personality in his early appearances (both in the comics and in the theatrical shorts), and he had a remarkably different appearance. Also, he gained his powers not from eating spinach (a trait first mentioned in June 1931), but from rubbing the head of a magical whiffle hen--he almost died of gunshot wounds in his first battle, until the Hen rejuvenated him. The comics also lacked the visual metaphors and reality warping powers that would become hallmarks of the Popeye cartoons. And Bluto, his infamous nemesis, only appeared ''once'' in the original Segar comics (specifically in the 1932 Eighth Sea arc) and didn't become a mainstay of the comics until later on.

*** The earliest strips, owing to the comic's original provenance as a replacement for the now-obscure strip ''Midget Movies'', were chiefly parodies of then-commonplace silent-film scenarios and characterizations. The strip's two protagonists, Harold Hamgravy and Olive Oyl ([[OlderThanTheyThink yes, that one]]) were largely amorphous "actors" whose identities, characterization and (sporadically) ages could change drastically dependent on the satirized idioms containing them, with the supporting cast largely a revolving door of one-shot figures (save for "Willie Wormwood", a parody of silent melodrama villainy initially acting as Hamgravy's primary antagonist for Olive's affections).
*** Within months of the strip's foundation, Segar relinquished the strip's reliance on silent film satire, thus eliminating Wormwood and rendering a more-defined Hamgravy (now simply "Ham Gravy") and Olive the protagonists of a highly episodic gag-a-day strip focalizing their daily life and foibles, with Olive's brother Castor Oyl a minor player largely cast as a paradoxical, exaggeratedly absurd "nutcase".
*** Beginning with a six-month storyline (interspersed by a month of more episodic strips) starting in July 1922, Segar increasingly revamped the strip further into a comedy-adventure style focalizing Ham Gravy, Olive Oyl and, particularly, Castor; by the end of 1923, the strip had become almost entirely serialized and Castor had shed much of his earlier "nutcase" characterization, thus settling into an irascible scoundrel prone to wild flights of fancy and get-rich-quick scheming. Owing to this more flexible characterization, Castor increasingly [[AscendedExtra evolved into the strip's main character]], leaving Ham Gravy more of a deutertagonist or foil to Castor by 1925. As Segar's experience and confidence with the medium grew, the strip's secondary cast expanded (at the arguable expense of Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl, both of whom were entirely absent for several months early in 1928) to encompass regulars such as Castor's wife Cylinda and her father, the miserly tycoon I. Canniford Lotts (both of whom vanished circa 1928), and the storylines correspondingly became more ambitious, culminating in the "Great American Desert Saga", a sequence of Sunday strips in which Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy (in what would eventually dwindle to the latter's final prominent role) traversed a series of misadventures within a caricatured American West for a full ''two years''. It is within this general incarnation of the strip that, in 1929, Popeye would be introduced (and ultimately begin his takeover of the comic)
** Popeye was a much rougher personality in his early appearances (both in the comics and in the theatrical shorts), and he had a remarkably different appearance. Also, he gained his powers not from eating spinach (a trait first mentioned in July 1931), but from rubbing the head of a magical whiffle hen--he almost died of gunshot wounds in his first battle, until the Hen rejuvenated him. The comics also lacked the visual metaphors and reality warping powers that would become hallmarks of the Popeye cartoons. And Bluto, his infamous nemesis, only appeared ''once'' in the original Segar comics (specifically in the 1932 Eighth Sea arc) and didn't become a mainstay of the comics until later on.

* StrictlyFormula: While the Creator/FamousStudios Popeye cartoons are notorious for this, this is surprisingly ''[[SubvertedTrope not]]'' the case with the Fleischer Popeye cartoons. Despite the notoriety of the spinach cliché and the characters' love triangle, more than half of their shorts eschew the latter formula or have some clever variation of it. Out of the 108 Fleischer shorts, 21 don’t feature Olive[[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, What--No Spinach?, Goonland, Never Sock a Baby, Fightin’ Pals, Doing Imposskible Stunts, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, The Mighty Navy, Blunder Below, Fleets of Stren'th and Pipeye, Pupeye, Poopeye, and Peepeye.[[/note]] while 44 of them (close to half of them) don't feature Bluto at all[[note]] I Yam What I Yam, Wild Elephinks, Sock-a-Bye Baby, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, Strong to the Finich, Shiver Me Timbers, Choose Your 'Weppins', Brotherly Love, Never Kick a Woman, With Lil' Swee'pea, Lost and Foundry, Big Chief Ugh-A-Mugh-Ugh, Plumbing is a 'Pipe', Popeye the Sailor with The Jeep, Mutiny Ain't Nice, Bulldozing the Bull, Goonland, A Date to Skate, Cops is Always Right, Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, Leave Well Enough Alone, Hello How Am I?, Never Sock a Baby, Females is Fickle, Wimmin Is a Myskery, Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive, Puttin' On the Act, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Olive's Sweepskates Ticket, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, I'll Never Crow Again, The Mighty Navy, Nix On Hypnotricks, Pip-eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye and Peep-eye and Baby Wants a Bottleship.[[/note]] Even shorts that do feature both Bluto and the spinach have clever gags and unique situations built around them--one short, "Fighting Pals", twists the formula by having Popeye tearing through a jungle in ''search'' of Bluto, and when he's clearly battered and fatigued from his endless search, Bluto ends up saving his life with the spinach! "Let’s Celebrake" is completely devoid of conflict, as Popeye lets Olive and Bluto go out together so Popeye can take Olive's grandmother out for New Years Eve. And on top of that, there are 19 of the Fleischer Popeye cartoons where he doesn't eat the spinach, or spinach is absent altogether.[[note]]Never Kick A Woman, Hospitaliky, Lost and Foundry, I Like Babies and Infinks, Popeye the Sailor and the Jeep and its similarly named follow-up Popeye the Sailor Presents Eugene the Jeep, Cops Is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Wotta Nitemare, Never Sock a Baby, Nurse Mates, Puttin on the Act, Wimmin is a Myskery, I'll Never Crow Again, Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix, Flies Ain't Human, Pest Pilot, Child Psykolojiky, and Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket.[[/note]]

* StrictlyFormula: While the Creator/FamousStudios Popeye cartoons are notorious for this, this is surprisingly ''[[SubvertedTrope not]]'' the case with the Fleischer Popeye cartoons. Despite the notoriety of the spinach cliché and the characters' love triangle, more than half of their shorts eschew the latter formula or have some clever variation of it. Out of the 108 Fleischer shorts, 21 don’t feature Olive[[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, What--No Spinach?, Goonland, Never Sock a Baby, Fightin’ Pals, Doing Imposskible Stunts, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, The Mighty Navy, Blunder Below, Fleets of Stren'th and Pipeye, Pupeye, Poopeye, and Peepeye.[[/note]] while 41 of them (close to half of them) don't feature Bluto at all[[note]] I Yam What I Yam, Wild Elephinks, Sock-a-Bye Baby, Choose Your 'Weppins', Brotherly Love, Never Kick a Woman, With Lil' Swee'pea, Lost and Foundry, Big Chief Ugh-A-Mugh-Ugh, Plumbing is a 'Pipe', Popeye the Sailor with The Jeep, Mutiny Ain't Nice, Bulldozing the Bull, Goonland, A Date to Skate, Cops is Always Right, Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, Leave Well Enough Alone, Hello How Am I?, Never Sock a Baby, Females is Fickle, Wimmin Is a Myskery, Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive, Puttin' On the Act, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Olive's Sweepskates Ticket, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, I'll Never Crow Again, The Mighty Navy, Nix On Hypnotricks, Pip-eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye and Peep-eye and Baby Wants a Bottleship.[[/note]] Even shorts that do feature both Bluto and the spinach have clever gags and unique situations built around them--one short, "Fighting Pals", twists the formula by having Popeye tearing through a jungle in ''search'' of Bluto, and when he's clearly battered and fatigued from his endless search, Bluto ends up saving his life with the spinach! "Let’s Celebrake" is completely devoid of conflict, as Popeye lets Olive and Bluto go out together so Popeye can take Olive's grandmother out for New Years Eve. And on top of that, there are 19 of the Fleischer Popeye cartoons where he doesn't eat the spinach, or spinach is absent altogether.[[note]]Never Kick A Woman, Hospitaliky, Lost and Foundry, I Like Babies and Infinks, Popeye the Sailor and the Jeep and its similarly named follow-up Popeye the Sailor Presents Eugene the Jeep, Cops Is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Wotta Nitemare, Never Sock a Baby, Nurse Mates, Puttin on the Act, Wimmin is a Myskery, I'll Never Crow Again, Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix, Flies Ain't Human, Pest Pilot, Child Psykolojiky, and Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket.[[/note]]

* StrictlyFormula: While the Creator/FamousStudios Popeye cartoons are notorious for this, this is surprisingly ''[[SubvertedTrope not]]'' the case with the Fleischer Popeye cartoons. Despite the notoriety of the spinach cliché and the characters' love triangle, more than half of their shorts eschew the latter formula or have some clever variation of it. Out of the 108 Fleischer shorts, 21 don’t feature Olive[[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, What--No Spinach?, Goonland, Never Sock a Baby, Fightin’ Pals, Doing Imposskible Stunts, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, The Mighty Navy, Blunder Below, Fleets of Stren'th and Pipeye, Pupeye, Poopeye, and Peepeye.[[/note]] while 49 of them (close to half of them) don't feature Bluto at all[[note]] I Yam What I Yam, Wild Elephinks, Sock-a-Bye Baby, Choose Your 'Weppins', Brotherly Love, Never Kick a Woman, With Lil' Swee'pea, Lost and Foundry, Big Chief Ugh-A-Mugh-Ugh, Plumbing is a 'Pipe', Popeye the Sailor with The Jeep, Mutiny Ain't Nice, Bulldozing the Bull, Goonland, A Date to Skate, Cops is Always Right, Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, Leave Well Enough Alone, Hello How Am I?, Never Sock a Baby, Females is Fickle, Wimmin Is a Myskery, Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive, Puttin' On the Act, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Olive's Sweepskates Ticket, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, I'll Never Crow Again, The Mighty Navy, Nix On Hypnotricks, Pip-eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye and Peep-eye and Baby Wants a Bottleship.[[/note]] Even shorts that do feature both Bluto and the spinach have clever gags and unique situations built around them--one short, "Fighting Pals", twists the formula by having Popeye tearing through a jungle in ''search'' of Bluto, and when he's clearly battered and fatigued from his endless search, Bluto ends up saving his life with the spinach! "Let’s Celebrake" is completely devoid of conflict, as Popeye lets Olive and Bluto go out together so Popeye can take Olive's grandmother out for New Years Eve. And on top of that, there are 19 of the Fleischer Popeye cartoons where he doesn't eat the spinach, or spinach is absent altogether.[[note]]Never Kick A Woman, Hospitaliky, Lost and Foundry, I Like Babies and Infinks, Popeye the Sailor and the Jeep and its similarly named follow-up Popeye the Sailor Presents Eugene the Jeep, Cops Is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Wotta Nitemare, Never Sock a Baby, Nurse Mates, Puttin on the Act, Wimmin is a Myskery, I'll Never Crow Again, Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix, Flies Ain't Human, Pest Pilot, Child Psykolojiky, and Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket.[[/note]]

* StrictlyFormula: While the Creator/FamousStudios Popeye cartoons are notorious for this, this is surprisingly ''[[SubvertedTrope not]]'' the case with the Fleischer Popeye cartoons. Despite the notoriety of the spinach cliché and the characters' love triangle, more than half of their shorts eschew the latter formula or have some clever variation of it. Out of the 108 Fleischer shorts, 21 don’t feature Olive[[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, What--No Spinach?, Goonland, Never Sock a Baby, Fightin’ Pals, Doing Imposskible Stunts, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Olive's Sweepskates Ticket, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, The Mighty Navy, Blunder Below, Fleets of Stren'th and Pipeye, Pupeye, Poopeye, and Peepeye.[[/note]] while 49 of them (close to half of them) don't feature Bluto at all[[note]] I Yam What I Yam, Wild Elephinks, Sock-a-Bye Baby, Choose Your 'Weppins', Brotherly Love, Never Kick a Woman, With Lil' Swee'pea, Lost and Foundry, Big Chief Ugh-A-Mugh-Ugh, Plumbing is a 'Pipe', Popeye the Sailor with The Jeep, Mutiny Ain't Nice, Bulldozing the Bull, Goonland, A Date to Skate, Cops is Always Right, Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, Leave Well Enough Alone, Hello How Am I?, Never Sock a Baby, Females is Fickle, Wimmin Is a Myskery, Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive, Puttin' On the Act, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, I'll Never Crow Again, The Mighty Navy, Nix On Hypnotricks, Pip-eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye and Peep-eye and Baby Wants a Bottleship.[[/note]] Even shorts that do feature both Bluto and the spinach have clever gags and unique situations built around them--one short, "Fighting Pals", twists the formula by having Popeye tearing through a jungle in ''search'' of Bluto, and when he's clearly battered and fatigued from his endless search, Bluto ends up saving his life with the spinach! "Let’s Celebrake" is completely devoid of conflict, as Popeye lets Olive and Bluto go out together so Popeye can take Olive's grandmother out for New Years Eve. And on top of that, there are 19 of the Fleischer Popeye cartoons where he doesn't eat the spinach, or spinach is absent altogether.[[note]]Never Kick A Woman, Hospitaliky, Lost and Foundry, I Like Babies and Infinks, Popeye the Sailor and the Jeep and its similarly named follow-up Popeye the Sailor Presents Eugene the Jeep, Cops Is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Wotta Nitemare, Never Sock a Baby, Nurse Mates, Puttin on the Act, Wimmin is a Myskery, I'll Never Crow Again, Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix, Flies Ain't Human, Pest Pilot, Child Psykolojiky, and Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket.[[/note]]

* StrictlyFormula: While the Creator/FamousStudios Popeye cartoons are notorious for this, this is surprisingly ''[[SubvertedTrope not]]'' the case with the Fleischer Popeye cartoons. Despite the notoriety of the spinach cliché and the characters' love triangle, more than half of their shorts eschew the latter formula or have some clever variation of it. Out of the 108 Fleischer shorts, 21 don’t feature Olive[[note]]Sock-a-Bye Baby, What--No Spinach?, Goonland, Never Sock a Baby, Fightin’ Pals, Doing Imposskible Stunts, Popeye Meets William Tell, My Pop, My Pop, With Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep, Problem Pappy, Quiet! Pleeze, Flies Ain't Human, Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, Olive's Boithday Presink, Child Psykolojiky, Pest Pilot, The Mighty Navy, Blunder Below, Fleets of Stren'th and Pipeye, Pupeye, Poopeye, and Peepeye.[[/note]] while 49 of them (close to half of them) don't feature Bluto at all. Even shorts that do feature both Bluto and the spinach have clever gags and unique situations built around them--one short, "Fighting Pals", twists the formula by having Popeye tearing through a jungle in ''search'' of Bluto, and when he's clearly battered and fatigued from his endless search, Bluto ends up saving his life with the spinach! "Let’s Celebrake" is completely devoid of conflict, as Popeye lets Olive and Bluto go out together so Popeye can take Olive's grandmother out for New Years Eve. And on top of that, there are 19 of the Fleischer Popeye cartoons where he doesn't eat the spinach, or spinach is absent altogether.[[note]]Never Kick A Woman, Hospitaliky, Lost and Foundry, I Like Babies and Infinks, Popeye the Sailor and the Jeep and its similarly named follow-up Popeye the Sailor Presents Eugene the Jeep, Cops Is Always Right, Leave Well Enough Alone, Wotta Nitemare, Never Sock a Baby, Nurse Mates, Puttin on the Act, Wimmin is a Myskery, I'll Never Crow Again, Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix, Flies Ain't Human, Pest Pilot, Child Psykolojiky, and Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket.[[/note]]

* BornInTheTheatre: The 1938 Fleischer cartoon short "Goonland" ends with Popeye and his long-lost father fighting the Goons together. As they fight their way down a mountain, the image suddenly shrinks, becoming much smaller in the center of the screen. It's eventually revealed to be a film strip--which cracks in half. After a live-action hand enters the camera frame and tapes up the film strip, the cartoon ends with Popeye and his dad making their escape.

* CheerUpEpisode: In "I Like Babies and Infinks", Popeye and Bluto compete over who can make a crying Swee'Pea laugh. Naturally, they end up brawling, and Popeye reaches for his spinach, [[spoiler:but he opens a can of ''onions'' by mistake. The fumes give him, Bluto and Olive OnionTears, and it's the sight of all three crying like babies that makes Swee'Pea laugh]].

* BeamOWar: Done with water from fire hoses in "The Two-Alarm Fire".

** Popeye's corncob pipe had to be dropped in recent animation so children wouldn't smoke by imitating him.

** "I'll Never Crow Again" -- Olive calls Popeye to help rid her garden of a murder of crows, and he ends up completely humiliating himself every step of the way, with Olive even laughing at him! Popeye finally has enough and decides to tie Olive up like a scarecrow; which surpassingly enough works in the end!

** The first few shorts did not use the sailor's iconic theme for the intro, but rather a redone version of the 1900 song "Strike Up the Band (Here Comes a Sailor)".

** Some of the Popeye shorts didn't really have a lot of dialogue. In his debut short, Popeye only sang his theme song and said his CatchPhrase, "Well, blow me down!". It wasn't until "Blow Me Down!" that we got the trademark ad-libbed mumblings from the characters

Originally a minor character in ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popeye#Thimble_Theatre_and_Popeye_comic_strips Thimble Theater,]]'' a newspaper comic strip drawn by Elzie Segar for Creator/KingFeaturesSyndicate, Popeye the Sailor [[BreakoutCharacter quickly took over the series]], edging out [[TheSlacker Ham Gravy]] as the principal suitor of Olive Oyl. He made his animation debut in a 1933 WesternAnimation/BettyBoop short produced by Creator/FleischerStudios, and continued appearing in cartoons throughout the 1940s and 1950s, when Creator/FamousStudios produced the series, and even continued on into several made-for-tv cartoons. Despite his sailor moniker, Popeye [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything rarely ventured out to sea]], instead spending his days romancing Olive Oyl and competing with Bluto for her affections.

* WorldOfJerkass: Glaringly applicable to Segar's original strip, in which the primary repository of comedy stems from the juxtaposition between Popeye's relatively consistent (if oft-impetuous and uninformed) humanitarian values and the blatant-yet-innocent narcissism of the universe he inhabits: the vast majority of the individuals surrounding him are prone to vehemently pursuing blatantly shallow aims through destructive and impulsive means; they're likewise swiftly swayed by any potential offerings of short-term monetary acquisitions or (ostensible) emotional gratification, enabling them to violently shift motives between consecutive panels. This is even more intensely exemplified by the strip's pre-Popeye run, in which, lacking any defined moral center, the strip squarely focalizes [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist the shamelessly acquisitive Castor Oyl]] and [[SlapSlapKiss the dysfunctional but inexplicably long-running romance]] between Olive Oyl and Ham Gravy, with the supporting and tertiary cast following suit: a 1924 storyline, most notably, features Olive losing an entire fortune acquired in [[DarkestAfrica colonial Africa]] through the president of her bank spontaneously "busting" its vaults and stealing the entirety of his own clients' wealth.