History Comicstrip / FoxTrot

* DelegationRelay

* BlandNameProduct / BrandX: Occurs quite frequently. Sometimes just a background gag, other times part of the strip's plot. Often times they're mashups of existing names (''Doomathon''), or just inversions (''Illustrated Sports''). Oddly, [[ZigzaggingTrope it uses real products almost as often as fake ones]]. WordOfGod is that Amend originally intended to [[AvertedTrope avert this trope]] so that the humor was more grounded in existing culture, but after seeing products like "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" in ''CalvinAndHobbes'' he concluded that [[RuleOfFunny it was just funnier]] to mash up existing products into silly names.

* TwerpSweating: Denise's father does this to Peter when he arrives to take her out for their first date.

** Completely averted in [[http://www.foxtrot.com/comics/2011-12-25-5d33de3d.gif this strip]].

* CreatorThumbprint: All of the science/math humor, due to Amend being a physics major.

** Paige also gets excited that the cafeteria is serving steak, which she explained is written in all-capital letters. Turns out that the lunch ladies are serving "'''[[EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods s]]'''[[EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods quid]] '''t'''entacles, '''e'''ggplant, '''a'''nd '''k'''idneys".

** Paige also gets excited that the cafeteria is serving steak, which she explained is written in all-capital letters. Turns out that the lunch ladies are serving "'''s'''quid '''t'''entacles, '''e'''ggplant, '''a'''nd '''k'''idneys".

* MysteryMeat: Any strip set in the school cafeteria. One strip features [[FunWithAcronyms STEAK]]: "And how would you like your '''[[EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods S]]'''[[EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods quid]] '''T'''entacles, '''E'''ggplant '''a'''nd '''K'''etchup cooked?"

* StickySituation: A week long story featured paige and Jason having their faces glued together by experimental bubblegum.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The earliest strips (Before the iFruit) showed the family using early Apple computers and Roger admitting he had absolutely ''no idea'' how to use a computer, period, and ignoring when one was actually added into his office. Nowadays, people will probably view that as TooDumbToLive, but in the 80s, that's not as stupid as you might think - some middle-aged people in the 80s never actually ''did'' use home computers, and not all industries pretty much ''required'' them. This was before Roger came from BumblingDad to flat out TooDumbToLive.

** Subverted in [[http://www.foxtrot.com/comics/2011-12-25-5d33de3d.gif this strip]].

* AllJustADream: Several strips have the characters dreaming an absurd situation (Jason giving Andy the keys to a fancy car and vacation tickets because she raised his allowance to $15,000 a week — then cut to TheReveal that he's whispering into her ear to manipulate her dream). Averted in the Nutcracker dream arc, where she apparently is put in a flying sleigh.

** Jason's "Slug-Man" comics are an inversion of the trope, as they are mainly designed to make Paige([[TropeOMatic -o-Tron]]) into [[CompleteMonster as horrible a figure as possible]].

* AllJustADream: Averted in the Nutcracker dream arc, where she apparently is put in a flying sleigh.
** In one Daily Strip, Roger visits a salvation army bin, and doesn't have any change on him, and tries to compensate by giving her all the certificates for all the stocks in his retirement account that he had, and agrees with her that even a handful of nickels and dimes were worth more than the certificates. The final panel reveals that it was a nightmare, but Roger was fully convinced that it was real before Andy asks if he had a bad dream. On the flipside, another Daily Strip had Roger also had one where he eats a lot of fattening food, only for it to be revealed that he was not only dreaming the whole thing, but was asleep on the tofu casserole and sleeptalking.

* AprilFoolsDay: On one April Fools' Day, ''[=FoxTrot=]'' featured the same punchline as ''GetFuzzy'' and ''PearlsBeforeSwine''.

** Another strip had Roger and Andy sorting through the mail, commenting: "Junk....junk....junk" until Andy finds a letter which read "Pay Jason Fox two million dollars in small bills". Roger instantly says that's "junk".

** Early in the strip's run, the "F" in the strip's splash panel logo featured Quincy resting on it, having already taken a bite out of the "F." In one strip, Peter was blowing on a barbecue grill in the splash panel, and the smoke was drifting in the direction of the logo; the Quincy on the logo was depicted coughing.

* BucketBoobyTrap: Jason has tried this on Paige several times. It never works
* ButtMonkey: Poor, poor Peter. Though all of the other family members get plenty of their own time in this role.

* ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs: During one shopping trip, Andy asked Jason to pick out one cereal whose first ingredient wasn't sugar. Jason found one cereal whose ''last'' ingredient was sugar ... because sugar was its ''only'' ingredient.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Denise suddenly disappeared from the strip in the mid-2000's, although Peter never broke up with her. Oddly, strips after Denise's disappearance show Peter attempting to impress other girls.

* ClusterFBomb: Played with and ultimately subverted: When Jason decided to take over ''TheBoondocks'' while Aaron [=McGruder=] was focusing on making the Animated adaptation, one of his ideas was, after hearing that the strip references "N-words", he might as well throw in a lot of them, with Peter being aghast at Jason's decision after learning this from Jason. However, Jason doesn't actually know what the N-word actually means, so it shows a lot of N-words, but neither of them are ''the'' N-word.

* ContentWarnings: A 1997 strip featured the recently introduced TV ratings system in the US and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] the ForbiddenFruit affect this has with kids. Jason is shown flipping through the channels and continuing to change each time he came across something labeled TV-PG and TV-14, until he yells, "Is there nothing for a kid to watch when his parents aren't home?" Then he comes across a program rated TV-MA, and says, "Finally."

* DisturbingStatistic: Andy tells Roger one in order to keep him up all night, thereby keeping him from snoring.
* DIYDisaster: Roger does this quite often, most of the time because he took a rhetorical question seriously. In one of the later daily storylines, he tries making his own wine, doing things like stomping grapes with Desinex on his feet, and resorting to melting down grape popsicles to increase the overall amount. In the end, the only compliment he can get out of Andy is that pouring it down the drain made their garbage disposal run better than ever.

*** Hell, Peter got a lot of these, didn't he?

* FourFingeredHands

** Yet another time, he brought the machine up to the shower to record Roger singing in the shower (made even more hilarious when it's later revealed that this was partially Roger's own fault as well, since the model was designed to carry a long cord that can go up the stairs, he bought it, and thus he essentially brought it onto himself).

** Paige has also done so, usually in the context of begging for a date to Prom.

* FunWithAcronyms: On two occasions, Jason asked Paige and Peter if they wanted a PB&J sandwich. Paige's sandwich was full of margarine (Jason had said it stood for Peanut Butter and Jelly, but he [[ExactWords left out a comma]]) and Peter's was full of jalapeños.

** Paige once can't tell the difference between a football game and a baseball game.

** One strip also implies that days when Roger is grilling on Summer Vacation are the closest thing to an exception to the usual rule of Jason having to go outside to get fresh air (namely because Roger's attempts at grilling result in the ''destruction'' of fresh air).

* HeliumSpeech: In one strip, Jason imagines himself floating to the ceiling after inhaling helium, only to express his disappointment (in [[PaintingTheFourthWall curly letters]]) that it only makes his voice funny.

** One Halloween strip has Marcus dressed as MegaManX.
*** Actully, ''everyone'' was a fictional character in that strip: Eileen was [[TheIncredibles Violet]], Phoebe was [[CalvinAndHobbes Hobbes]], Eugene was [[StarTrek Spock]] and Jason was [[StarWars Jabba the Hutt]] (although Jason's costume was part of the joke).

* AnalogyBackfire: Peter once used ''TheMetamorphosis'' as an example to Jason, who had been transformed into a girl (ItWasAllJustADream), commenting on how well things had worked out for Gregor Samsa. Jason says that Gregor starved to death, abandoned by his family. Peter then admits he had never read past the first page of the book, [[RunningGag as usual]].

* GenderBender: Jason attempts to have a FranzKafka-inspired dream after Peter tells him about ''The Metamorphosis''. However, instead of turning into a bug, Jason wakes up as a miniature Paige. The next two weeks of strips are filled with him experiencing various horrors like shopping with "Big Paige" and Marcus falling in love with him, but when he reaches the point where he actually likes the BackstreetBoys, he finally wakes up, remarking that it's true that you can't die in your dreams.

* IReadItForTheArticles:
--> '''Andy''': Peter, I found something interesting under your mattress.
--> '''Peter''': Mom, I only read [[PornStash those magazines]] for the articles! I swear!
--> '''Andy''': I meant this baseball mitt.
--> '''Peter''': Oh. That's how you break it in.
--> '''Andy''': Now, about those magazines...
--> '''Peter''': (''makes an OhCrap face'') You mean my ''Scientific American'' collection?
** And again when Peter claims he bought the ''Sports Illustrated'' swimsuit edition for an article on marlin fishing off Bora Bora. Andy offers to cut it out of the magazine for him. Peter's response: "And read it out of context?"

* IfItTastesBadItMustBeGoodForYou: Andy is such a health food nut, and even some real life equivalents would find her dishes to be NauseaFuel. (Beet and Cheese Subs, Curry Loaf, Corn on the Cob in a Hot Dog Bun, Lima Bean pizza?) Often played for kicks though, due to the RuleOfFunny. This was almost the TropeNamer for this very trope as one strip calls it "The irony of health food."
* IfYouDieICallYourStuff: Occurs in one arc where Jason "coaches" Peter on football in 95-degree heat: "You know, it occurs to me that if you die, I'll get your stereo." "OK, OK, I'll pay you ''two'' dollars! Just cool it with these push-up drills!"