History Comicstrip / Peanuts

* KidsAreCruel: Well, they're always cruel to Charlie Brown. They can occasionally be cruel to each other as well.
** Lampshaded especially hard in [[http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1958/02/23 this strip]].

* GirlishPigtails: Violet wore her hair in braids in her early years before permanently switching to her trademark ponytail. She appeared in pigtails one more time in a brief 1989 appearance.

* GoingColdTurkey: Linus tried to give up his blanket cold turkey a number of times. It failed every time. Often it was the result of Lucy doing something to try to "break him of the habit," such as burying the blanket or making a kite out of the blanket and then letting go of it, but sometimes it was voluntary. A few times it even ''almost'' worked, but invariably something happened to make him "relapse": for example, Charlie Brown buying him a new blanket to make up for the one Snoopy had made into two sport coats (1971), or the discovery that his only pupil for his "security blanket cessation" clinic was Sally in disguise (1983).

** In a 1984 storyline, Peppermint Patty goes to France with her father for the summer (on the school psychologist's recommendation since Patty was depressed over being held back a grade). In post cards back home, she proudly tells Marcie and Charlie Brown that she's learning to speak French. But in Patty's world, fluent French is "''Bonjour'', kid!" or "''Garcon'', junk food, ''s'il vous plait''!"

* HiddenBadass: Linus, of all people. When Charlie Brown was crying as a bully was attacking The Little Red-Haired Girl, then we see Linus using his blanket as a whip in the air, he goes off-panel and we see the same sound effect of the blanket-whip. Poor bully...

*** And the blanket itself, in a 1965 storyline in which it struck back at Lucy for her years of attempting to get rid of it. It frightened Lucy so much she was afraid to go home at night or be alone in the house with the blanket.

* HighHopesZeroTalent: Charlie Brown loves baseball, and there's nothing he'd rather be doing than playing the game. He's also terrible at it, usually losing double figures to nothing. Probably the only reason he's still a team manager is that nobody else on the team cares enough to try and have him removed.
** In one sequence, Peppermint Patty asks Charlie Brown to help her baseball team...selling popcorn at their game. He agrees to do it, but spends most of the game asking her for a chance to pitch. Peppermint Patty, who knows exactly how bad Charlie Brown is at baseball (or so she thought), rejects him every time. That is, until the very end of the game, when her team is so far ahead -- they have a fifty to nothing lead, and it's the last of the ninth, two outs -- that she decides it's impossible for them to lose anyway, so she lets him pitch just this one time. The first thing Charlie Brown does, is to throw a wild pitch that knocks Patty unconscious. Then he somehow causes her team to lose fifty-one to fifty. Infuriated, Patty demands to know how this is even possible, but Charlie Brown [[RiddleForTheAges can't (or won't) explain]], and spends some time hiding from her.

* TheDeterminator: No matter how many times he loses, Charlie Brown simply refuses to give up. And he expects the same of his teammates, to the point where he refuses to call games even if it's raining hard enough to flood the entire ball field.

** Snoopy was a normal (presumably non-sentient) dog, and he wasn't definitively Charlie Brown's pet. Also, in at least 1953 and 1954, it seems that Schulz couldn't decide whether to use normal word balloons or ThoughtBubbleSpeech for his dialogue (although in instances where normal balloons were used, it was still clear that the other characters couldn't hear him).

** The first pulling-the-football-away strip had Violet instead of Lucy, and she pulled it away from Charlie Brown out of fear he'd kick her hand rather than malice. A later strip had Shermy holding the ball for Charlie Brown, who actually kicked it; albeit not very far.

** Violet seemed to be presented as a child LoveInterest and was a relatively reserved girly girl type character. Before suddenly [[TookALevelInJerkass Taking A Level In Jerass]] out of nowhere.

** Linus, upon being referred to as Sally's 'Sweet Babboo', or whenever Lydia tells him, "Aren't you kind of old for me?" when he's only ''three months'' older than she. Also, in the TV special ''Why, Charlie Brown, Why?, when a bully makes fun of his friend Janice after he takes her hat and reveals her bald head (she has leukemia), he flips out and delivers an epic TheReasonYouSuckSpeech.

** One series of strips had Charlie Brown sent to the hospital for unknown reasons and Lucy was a complete nervous wreck the whole time, so much so that she actually swore that [[PetTheDog she'd let Chuck kick the football the next time around]]. [[spoiler:And ''she actually did''. Partly due to Linus's telling her that you can't break a promise you've made to a sick person, but nonetheless. [[YankTheDogsChain Unfortunately]], Charlie Brown fails to actually ''hit'' the ball and accidentally kicks Lucy in hand so hard that she ends up needing a cast for it.]]