History Franchise / ArchieComics

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!!Archie's works provide examples of:

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[[folder: 0-D]]
* AbhorrentAdmirer: Big Ethel for Jughead.
* ADayInTheLimelight: Stories starring secondary characters ranging from Coach Kleats to Mr. Lodge are very common.
* TheAllegedCar: A running joke on Archie's jalopy.
* AllGuysWantCheerleaders: Multiple cover have Archie (and some boys) show interest to cheerleader, often Betty and Veronica, and easily distracted by them during the games.
* AlliterativeName: Archie Andrews, Jughead Jones, Dilton Doiley, Coach Clayton, Trula Twyst, Evelyn Evernever, and a few others. Some are nicknames or titles, but it still fits. And possibly the best example in this group: Marmaduke Merton Matowski "Moose" Mason.
* AluminumChristmasTrees: Surprisingly, Jughead's trademark beanie was once a ''real'' fashion accessory of 1940s teenagers called a "Whoopee Cap": teens would cut their father's old fedoras into the jagged-edge rim shape, pin buttons on it, and wear them as a fashion statement. Long before that, this style of hat was popular among adult factory workers and mechanics. Nowadays, it has mutated into a form unique in itself, no longer much resembling the real-life version, and just makes Jughead look like a [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/12/18/comic-book-legends-revealed-186/ kook.]]
* BarbieDollAnatomy: There is not one person in the universe who knows what a nipple is.
* BeautyContest: Beauty contests, often of an impromptu sort, were a staple of stand-alone ''Archie'' stories during TheSeventies and TheEighties in particular. Most often, they took place at the [[BeachEpisode beach]]. A frequently-used premise had the contestants -- which nearly always included Betty and Veronica -- attempt to sweet-talk the judge(s) -- usually Archie, and sometimes Reggie as well -- into voting for them. If Midge was a contestant, this inevitably meant her boyfriend Moose threatening the judge(s) into voting for her (a reversal of the usual GreenEyedMonster Moose plots where merely glancing at Midge from a distance would earn Archie or Reggie a curb stomp).
* BettyAndVeronica: The TropeNamer.
** The interesting thing about them being that Betty and Veronica are ''inseparable best friends''. They have each other's backs 99% of the time, it's just that they both want the same guy (and he's head over heels in love with them both). Stranding the three of them on a deserted island would either lead to murder… or it might be their private idea of Heaven.
** In one comic, Veronica states that they only fight over unimportant things, like boys.
** It was also originally the TropeNamer for ThirdOptionLoveInterest, back when it was known on this wiki as The Cheryl Blossom, after the aforementioned character.
** Along with the iconic Archie/Betty/Veronica love triangle, there are numerous other triangles throughout the series that also fit this trope:
*** Veronica (Archie), Archie (Betty) and Reggie (Veronica).
*** Midge (Archie), Moose (Betty) and Reggie (Veronica).
*** Archie (Archie), Veronica (Betty) and Cheryl (Veronica).
*** Archie (Archie), Betty (Betty) and Cheryl (Veronica).
*** Betty (Archie), Archie (Betty) and Reggie (Veronica).
*** Betty (Archie), Archie (Betty) and Jason Blossom (Veronica).
* BettyAndVeronicaSwitch: Interestingly, despite being the TropeCodifier for Betty and Veronica relationships, it gets blurred once [[spoiler:Betty tries to kill Archie in an issue.]]
* BigEater: Jughead is pretty much the biggest example of this in all fiction.
* BigFancyHouse:
** The Lodge Estate, home of the insanely wealthy Veronica Lodge.
** The Blossom Mansion, Cheryl Blossom's home that's so large it has a tram just to get to Cheryl's bedroom in the "west wing". Archie even comments how her house makes The Lodge Estate look like a ''cottage''.
* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: Betty, Veronica, and Cheryl, since the latter's debut. Betty, Veronica, and Archie, of course. Or [[ComicBook/JosieAndThePussycats Melody, Valerie, and Josie]].
* BoyishShortHair: Cricket and Midge.
* BratsWithSlingshots: Veronica's (seemingly forgotten) cousin Leeroy, also frequently used by kids in general
* BreakingTheFourthWall: Frequently used – characters will "talk to the audience", and several #100 issues will have the characters deciding exactly ''how'' to celebrate their "[[MilestoneCelebration 100th issue]]".
* BreakUpMakeUpScenario: Soooo many...
* ButterFace: Big Ethel, in her early days. Eventually FailPolish set in big time, to the point that in the '90s she was downright attractive with just a bad Pebbles Flintstone haircut.
* CanonForeigner:
** For "The New Archies", a version featuring the group set in their middle school era, the characters of Amani and Eugene were created. "Fangs" Fogarty and Ambrose appear in the elementary-setting "Little Archie". None of the four made it to the mainstream continuity in anything other than a one-shot or cameo.
** Ambrose's absence in the main stories is explained once by him moving away. There is one main story where he comes back for a visit and rekindles with Archie.
* CanonImmigrant: Betty's older siblings, Polly (a reporter) and Chick (a spy). Both debuted in the ''Little Archie'' stories of Bob Bolling when older teens were needed for the kiddie-based tales. Later on, Kathleen Webb added them to the mainline continuity as successful siblings who'd moved out of the Cooper household. ''Betty's Diary'' stories made the most use out of them- otherwise it [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]] (they weren't even at her Future Wedding!).
* CavalierConsumption: Jughead is normally apathetic and somewhat aloof. The only thing he openly takes seriously is food. This results in his eating during serious discussions, with other characters getting annoyed at him. However, more often than not he really is paying attention and is simultaneously thinking on two levels: About his food and about the discussion at hand.
* CelibateHero: Jughead doesn't so much hate women anymore as he is simply not interested in romance, believing it complicates a guy's life and taxes his funds. This doesn't keep girls from hitting on him, though. Big Ethel is usually the one who pursues him, although in one story all the girls in Riverdale pursued Jughead because he was the only guy ''not'' wearing an overpowering cologne at a school dance, much to his chagrin. His blatant misogyny was altered by 1989 into being conflicted problems over women, as he had many romantic liaisons during the '90s: Joani Jummp, Debbie, January [[=McAndrews=]], Anita the disabled girl, etc.
** He also has a magical hatpin at one point that attracts girls. In a subversion, the pin [[DependingOnTheWriter (sometimes)]] makes him want to be with girls.
*** In one story, he gets a date with a girl named Terri thanks to Reggie trying to make her think Jughead's the "Second-Best Romeo In Town" but with the pin drawing Terri to Jughead, Reggie gets thwarted – and the small-scale VillainousBreakdown he goes through once Archie told what went on is priceless.
** It was explained in one comic that Jughead stays away from girls because he's witnessed how much grief they cause Archie.
--->'''Archie:''' I wonder where he found her?\\
'''Reggie:''' You wouldn't believe me even if I ''told'' you!!
* CharacterBlog: The Archie comics website has character blogs for [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/archie/ Archie]], [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/betty/ Betty]], [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/veronica/ Veronica]], [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/reggie/ Reggie]], and [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/jughead/ Jughead]].
* CharacterDevelopment:
** Betty was initially shown as a more typical "domestically talented" girl, and often rather ditzy. By the 1960s, the Women's Lib movement had converted her to the more familiar tomboyish/girly-girl mix, and boosted her intelligence by a great deal.
** Jughead has also gone through a transformation, from a one-note girl-hater (often blatantly misogynistic to the point of "hating dames") into a character sometimes conflicted (the Joani Jumpp years, the recent "New Style" arc, dating a handicapped girl, etc.) about love for women, ultimately returning to the less complicated world of food.
** In the Archie's Marriage Omakes, Moose realizes that he's being abusive and possessive towards Midge, and breaks up with her. He also calms down a lot, presumably to avoid an assault charge now that he's an official adult.
* ChildhoodFriendRomance:
** Betty, the Victorious one, when Archie marries her. Romance sweeps the entire town when this happens.
** Of course, she turns into the Unlucky one when he marries Veronica, complete with unemployment. Naturally, the latter gets by pretty well when he marries the former instead.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome:
** Used too frequently to even list all the victims. A comic with a fairly large base cast that constantly introduced new recurring characters in nearly every year, this happens a ''lot''. Ask old-school fans about "Adam the Alien", Jinx Malloy, January [=McAndrews=] or Cricket O'Dell. Even Cheryl Blossom got this in the 80s. A few characters are actually shown moving away (Cheryl in the late 1990s), but most are just casually ignored with no mentions after a few years of appearances. We'll see where the new pair of Asian girls, Wendy Weatherbee, and others end up.
** Many characters (Jinx, Cricket) simply got DemotedToExtra, while others, like Frankie Valdez, were shown having moved back to Riverdale. With Archie Comics, it's hard to tell if someone's really been dropped, as an occasional comic will have one of these minor age-old characters reappear as if nothing was different. Not to mention the Digests that reprint old stories.
* {{Cliffhanger}}: Any time Betty and Veronica try to make Archie choose between them in any media ever. True, the whole franchise runs off the LoveTriangle, but it really does have to end some time.
* ClingyJealousGirl:
** Betty and Veronica both become more than a little crazy whenever another girl takes an interest in Archie.
** Less commonly seen is how Midge goes nuts whenever another girl shows too much interest in Moose.
* ComicBookTime: Archie and the gang have been in high school for nearly seventy years. Someone once wrote in to the ''Archie'' letters column demanding an explanation for this, theorizing that the characters must be really, really dumb if they can't graduate. Reggie Mantle (yes, the character) responded by explaining that he and the other characters had simply [[CursedWithAwesome been stuck with eternal youth]].
* CoveredInKisses: Happens regularly to Archie, often from Betty.
* CrazyJealousGuy: The prevalent example is the ''extremely'' jealous Moose, who gets very angry whenever anyone hits on his girlfriend Midge, leading him to usually hit them as punishment.
* {{Crossover}}:
** Most Archie Comics characters are accepted to be in the same universe, so it's reasonable for Sabrina to show up in an Archie story, or for The Archies to perform alongside Josie and the Pussycats. The biggest example is the Civil Chore(s) story, where the writers get as many characters as they can think of together for a single-page spread.
** Or that time ComicBook/ThePunisher showed up in Riverdale in ''ComicBook/ArchieMeetsThePunisher'', one of the oddest crossovers in the entire history of comics.
** Or the ComicBook/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|Adventures}}. Coming to us in 1991 we have the '87 cartoon versions of the turtles getting vomited out of a floating, dimension spanning cow’s head (Cudley the Cowlick). Archie and the green team eventually join up and rescue Veronica from a kidnapping attempt, and still have time to get their pizza eating on before the turtles return to their own dimension.
** There also was a crossover with ''ComicBook/TinyTitans''.
** Archie 641-644 has one with ''Series/{{Glee}}'' where Dilton finds a way into the Glee universe and accidentally ends up swapping some characters around. Characters like Veronica, Jughead and Dilton end in Glee universe and viceversa.
** In issue 627 we have a 4 part mini-series where monsters are unleashed onto poor Riverdale and only the rock gods Music/{{KISS}} can save the day.
* CutenessProximity: Characters are prone to this in general, especially Betty and Veronica. But what might be the most notable example was when Chuck marched around town being a jerk for some reason, and Archie stopped this by putting a kitten in his path. Chuck immediately picked up and played with the kitten.
* DarkerAndEdgier:
** The original ''Life With Archie'' series (1958-1991) featured longer, more "adventure" oriented stories than the typical Archie titles, including elements like five-alarm fires, attempted kidnappings, and... [[http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/01/life-in-riverdale-surprisingly.html mysterious Satanic boxes that melt people's faces off]].
** ''The Married Life'', which follows up the WhatIf storyline "Archie Marries Veronica/Archie Marries Betty", which was itself a revival of the "Life with Archie" series. Both story lines feature a dramatic soap opera-stlye depiction of the issues of married life. Both timelines end tragically with Archie dying in the "The Death of Archie".
** "Secrets of the Deep", one of those adventure-oriented stories, had an evil treasure hunter shooting at the gang with a spear gun and setting an electric eel on them!
** Which is nothing compared to 2013's ''Afterlife With Archie'' series, a straight hardcore horror written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa,[[note]] Creator of the comic adaptation of Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheStand'' and an upcoming film remake of ''Literature/{{Carrie}}''[[/note]] where Sabrina zombifies Jughead's deceased dog, who in turn bites Jughead, unleashing a plague of zombies upon Riverdale. In addition, the series contains several risque jokes and Veronica wears a SexyWhateverOutfit to the Halloween dance while Betty wears a NaughtyNurseOutfit (although at one point a character still says "[[GoshDangItToHeck Hades]]" instead of "Hell"). It is highly likely that this comic would not have been publishable had Archie Comics not ended UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode.
** To give you an idea of just how disturbing it is, they brought a model of a sandwich with Veronica's severed head to Comic-Con!
** ''ComicBook/ArchieVsPredator'' decides to go both ways by keeping the overall light tone of the original comics while also brutally murdering everyone.
* DependingOnTheArtist: The physical and [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield geographical]] characteristics of Riverdale and its local landmarks change seemingly at will. These things change within stories drawn by the same artist, too, especially the design of Veronica and Archie's homes. Dan [=DeCarlo=] said in an interview that the publishers once tried to make him establish a consistent look for the interior of Archie's house, but he found it was too limiting.
* DependingOnTheWriter: Many characteristics of the characters vary over the years and between writers. Variable character traits include: Jughead's hatred of women (misogyny versus avoidance of romance), Betty's obsessiveness regarding Archie (ie. is she crazy, or just a standard young girl in love?), Veronica's bitchiness, Reggie's evil, Mr. Lodge's heartless businessman tendencies, and Archie's womanizing. Various character traits are up for grabs as well – Archie is either the best or the worst athlete on any given sports team, Jughead is either a poor or very good student, and Betty's siblings tend to disappear depending on what the current writer knows about her past. Even Betty and Veronica's status as best friend, while usually fairly consistent, has fluctuated in the past, with at least one story showing them outright hating each other. Enough that one could imagine that the comic spans multiple {{Alternate Universe}}s. [[FridgeBrilliance Actually, that would explain a lot]]. In fact it's implied this is canon, though the universes aren't separated by decades.
* DisneyAcidSequence: Some of the 60's-70's era "The Archies" comics.
* DispelMagic:
** The RichBitch Alexandra Cabot from ''ComicBook/JosieAndThePussycats'' series can cast witchcraft spells, but these are fragile spells whose effects are ended by as little as Melody Valentine snapping her fingers, which Melody is wont to do.
** ComicBook/{{Sabrina|TheTeenageWitch}} has cast a few of her spells so weakly, they were negated by three claps.
* DistaffCounterpart:
** Josie and her early friends were very much opposite-gender versions of the Archie gang- a redhead hero, a quirky best friend, a blonde nice character and a brunette nasty one competing over the hero, etc.
** Gender-flipped in a ''Betty and Veronica'' comic that sees the young women meet a wealthy, brunette young man named Don Sodge, and his middle-class, blonde friend Benny. The similarities they share with Betty and Veronica go so far as to have both of them trapped in a LoveTriangle with a redheaded young woman, Andi Archer. After Betty and Veronica decide to go home, Veronica and the guys awkwardly share this exchange:
--->'''Don:''' Is it because you don't think we have anything in common?\\
'''Benny:''' Is that it?\\
'''Veronica:''' Gulp! No! Absolutely not! In fact, we have too much in common! 'Bye!
* DistractedByTheSexy:
** Archie would occasionally have this problem very times that see a cute girl. Once he somehow managed to trip over a floor buffer in a hallway that had [[OffscreenTeleportation been two frames earlier completely clear.]]
** Another notable example is Veronica deliberately pulling this trope on the boys in gym class, much to Coach Kleats' annoyance. Archie gets back at her by strolling through the girls' gym class in the same way.
* TheDitz: Melody. She is an absent-minded, bubbly sort of character often taken to using silly, nonsense language, and provides much of the comic relief of the series.
* DoubleStandard:
** This is actually a frequent occurrence, with guys always being given the short end of the stick. Whenever there's a competition between guys and girls, the guys will be made extremely arrogant and put the girls down (even when this makes them OutOfCharacter) before being on the receiving end of a CurbStompBattle, but on the few occasions the guys actually win, it's always [[DownToTheLastPlay very close]] and ends with the focus on the girls in a way that encourages the reader to feel sorry for them. Then again, the target audience is young girls, [[EnforcedTrope so...]]
** Guys are also constantly assaulted by girls in various ways – slapping, kicking, pushing, hitting with their purses, being thrown into a river, and other various ways that would realistically result in some sort of legal trouble, yet they're just laughed off. On the very, very, ''very'' rare occasion a girl gets hit by a guy, it's never anything even ''close'' to what girls have done to guys over the years, and a ''huge'' deal is made out of it.
** Used in one of the comics, when Midge gets annoyed with Moose for hitting men merely for ''talking'' to her. During the course of the day, Midge catches him helping out Betty and Veronica with various things and points out to him that if she were being that friendly with a boy, he'd be furious. Moose decides that she's right and promises to ease up. [[spoiler:Turns out that this was all set up by Midge to begin with and Betty and Veronica were in on it]]. This turns into HypocriticalHumor when we see that Midge goes just as crazy whenever another girl takes a romantic interest in Moose.
* DumbBlonde:
** Betty Cooper used to be this in some early stories, before Women's Lib put the kibosh on that. She was often confused, ditzy, and a total loser compared to Veronica, rather than the smart, funny, athletic girl we all know today.
*** Subverted in a story where Archie shows up at Betty's house to beg her to mend a torn pocket for him in time for his date with Veronica. Betty pretends to be so ditzy and disorganized that it takes her about eight hours to do the simple repair job, during which time Archie is forced to stay there with her and stand up Veronica entirely.
** Melody would also count. There was a story in which she was certain that nylons were an endangered animal and that Josie and Alexandra's fake fur coats were made from "cute, cuddly orlons".
** Long before (as in nearly two decades before) Melody there was ComicBook/{{Suzie}} who was in many ways a Proto-Melody being a very sweet natured and gorgeous but clueless blonde.
* DumbMuscle: Moose.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: E-H]]
* EgocentricTeamNaming:
** Archie named his rock-n-roll group "The Archies". You'd think ''Reggie'' (if no one else) would have a problem with that.
** ''That Wilkin Boy'' featured Bingo's band the Bingoes, who were just [[{{Expy}} Expies]] of the Archies.
* EverytownAmerica: Riverdale
* {{Expy}}: Archie has Expies in Wilbur Wilkin (though Wilbur actually debuted first, he quickly became like Arch) and Bingo Wilkin years later. Both were clumsy guys who were girl-crazy. Both had Reggie-like antagonists and Jughead-like weird friends as well.
* EraSpecificPersonality: Betty was originally portrayed as feminine and somewhat of a DumbBlonde. Archie leaned heavily towards Veronica for a period and thus Betty was often trying to break them up. Fans often note Betty seemed outright {{yandere}} in older works however she was eventually mellowed down into the sweet tomboy we know today.
* EyesAlwaysShut: Jughead, famously. He'll open them if shocked or surprised, and spent a good deal of the 1990s with them consistently as open as everyone else's, but usually it's his trademark along with the hat and sweater. Other characters often point this trait out, and it's usually seen as him being too lazy to open them all the way. In one comic he went to an eye doctor and passed with flying colors with his eyes still closed. These days the artist seems to compromise with his eyelids drooping but not quite closed most of the time.
* {{Fanservice}}:
** To an ''amazingly'' large extent, considering that Archie is aimed at families. Artist Dan [=DeCarlo=] was a cheesecake art ''king'', and featured the girls in the skimpiest bikinis allowed in any era, to say nothing of major sexpots like Melody (who suffered ClothingDamage at least once) and Cheryl.
** This was parodied in one story, in which Betty and Veronica stumble across a nudist camp. When they tell Mr. Lodge later, they say that they'll ''never'' be nudist… as they go off in their bikinis.
** The popularity of [=DeCarlo=]'s cheesecake art was such that the company released its first glossy hardcover book (think coffee table reading) called ''The Art of Betty & Veronica''. While the book mostly explores how the art style of the comics has changed over the years, it's no small coincidence that the cover features Betty and Ronnie modelling in swimsuits.
* FemaleGaze: Not as utilized as its SpearCounterpart, but there have been well-drawn hunks that the girls would admire (or said hunks admiring girls). Sometimes a DoubleStandard would [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/100631322434 be lampshaded]].
-->'''Archie:''' Say! What's going on? ''[catching Betty and Veronica viewing through binoculars]''\\
'''Veronica:''' Just a little harmless boy-watching!\\
'''Reggie:''' [[{{Hypocrite}} But girls aren]][[StayInTheKitchen 't supposed to boy watch!]]\\
'''Archie:''' It's unheard of!\\
'''Veronica:''' You just heard of it!
* FirstEpisodeSpoiler: The third strip of the newspaper comic revealed that actually, Veronica's so rich that she has a private chauffeur take her to school, making Archie look pretty stupid with his bragging about owning his very own car.
* FiveManBand: They often trade roles depending on the writer, but this is the most common arrangement:
** TheHero: Archie
** TheLancer: Jughead
** TheBigGuy: Reggie
** [[TheSmartGuy The Smart Girl]]: Betty
** TheChick: Veronica
** TeamPet: Hot Dog
*** Also ''literally'' a five-man band as The Archies – Archie on lead guitar, Reggie on bass guitar, Jughead on drums, Betty on tambourine and Veronica on keyboard.
* FiveTokenBand: Sort of; while not meeting the numbers requirements, virtually all of the new class of characters are of a non-white ethnicity, as if the Editors are deliberately building a "one of each type" mentality. Lightly subverted in that the new characters now include a rare ''four'' Asians -- one Chinese, two Japanese, and one Indian.
* FlashForward: ''Archie Marries Veronica'' and ''Archie Marries Betty'', which are set after the gang has graduated from college.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Archie is Sanguine, Veronica is Choleric, Betty is Melancholic and Jughead is Phlegmatic.
* FormFittingWardrobe: Much of the clothing the girls wear.
* FrenchCuisineIsHaughty: The cook at the Lodge house is Gaston, a very temperamental French chef.
* FrenchMaid: The Lodge have some of these in their mansion. Once Archie is ''too attentive'' to Veronica's new French maid.
* FriendlyRivalry: Betty and Veronica [[DependingOnTheWriter sometimes]] have this dynamic.
* FriendVersusLover: Archie at the center, with Jughead as the friend vs. Betty/Veronica.
* FurBikini: Betty and Veronica tended to wear them in "Archie 1" Caveman-era stories.
* GenderIncompetence: Seen in a lot of older Archie stories, usually typical of the era:
** A late 1960s or 1970s storyline focused on the cluelessness of women. Archie's mom goes into a frenzy trying to find her purse, which Mr. Andrews exasperatedly reveals has been in front of her all along; Archie learns from this situation and later willfully ignores Veronica while she desperately searches for her own purse, until it is, again, found to be right in front of her. Mr. Lodge then compliments him on his understanding of females.
** Another "classic" example of this ended up being reprinted in a more modern double digest. It demonstrated the ridiculousness of working professional women. The reader is invited to consider how silly it would be to have women in men's jobs, with funny vignettes portraying women failing in a number of professions including police officer and doctor.
* GeographicFlexibility: Riverdale has been shown having a local beach, a mountain range, a river, a lake, several ponds, cold winters and hot summers; and has been described as either a tiny one-school town or a fairly large city, with an airport, a stock exchange, large businesses and TV studios... basically anything any story could need, ever, just for the sake of convenience.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Has [[Radar/ArchieComics his page]].
* GrandRomanticGesture: Frequently it shows Archie pulling these off for Veronica, who is hard to please. Some examples: making a giant Valentine card for her, building a heart out of snow and spelling "Archie Loves Veronica" in coal, buying her jewelry he can't afford...
* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Each major Archie series has a blonde heroine who is kinder, sweeter, more innocent and more beautiful than all the other female characters. In the Archie series it's Betty, in Sabrina it's Sabrina, in the Josie stories it's Melody, and in the Wilbur series it's Laurie. (Each of these series also has a contrasting black haired villainess who is nastier and more worldly than all the other female characters. In the Archie series it's Veronica, in Sabrina it's Gemini Stone, in the Josie series it's Alexandra, and in the Wilbur series it's Linda.)
** Some might disagree that Betty is supposed to be more beautiful than Veronica, but it's well established by many stories that Veronica's charm over boys is due to her expensive (and often revealing) clothes, and that blondes are aesthetically the top of the pile in Riverdale.
** The other Archie teen series tend to have blonde heroines as well, like Samantha in That Wilkin Boy and the titular heroine in Suzie, but although these girls are sweet and beautiful, they don't have all characteristics of the trope.
* HelloNurse: Various characters nearly always draw this reaction? Veronica, Cheryl Blossom and Melody Valentine, most often.
** Veronica and Cheryl when are in bikini (especially in the covers for Veronica) or in other skimpy outfits. Betty usually only does if and when she dresses up for an occasion to one-up Ronnie.
** For Melody of ''ComicBook/JosieAndThePussyCats'', the RunningGag is that she causes this reaction wherever she goes and is [[DumbBlonde too naive/dumb]] to notice.
* HeManWomanHater: Jughead was a prominent example of this till the writers began toning his misogyny down in the 1980s. By the 21st century it had virtually disappeared, though he remained uninterested in romance most of the time.
* HeterosexualLifePartners: Archie and Jughead, obviously. More so in Juggie's case than Archie's, since Archie's shown hitting on anything in a skirt, and will readily bail on his best friend.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Most schemes hatched by the characters will backfire in one way or another. When Archie is trying to save money for his date with Veronica even though he promised to take Betty for a drive in the country, he tries to keep Betty distracted from wanting to buy lunch. He ends up getting a speeding ticket, which Betty points out is a lot more expensive than if they'd stopped for hot dogs and ice cream.
** One story had Archie, Betty and Veronica participating in some charity bike ride. Veronica decides to pull a WoundedGazelleGambit, acting like she had fallen off of her bike. Unfortunately for her, the "injury" meant that she couldn't be at the dance that night. Veronica gets mad and kicks her bicycle. This time, she ''does'' injure herself.
** Once, Veronica tricks Betty into humbling a chauvinistic Archie in tennis, only for Ronnie to play the hapless beginner in her own match against Archie, even though Veronica is already shown as being better at tennis than Betty. The manager of the country club later recruits Archie to be a representative in a mixed doubles tournament, and Veronica suggests herself, naturally, to be his partner. Archie instead chooses who he believes is much better than him, Betty. Whoops...he buys her a dozen roses. It turns out Miss Grundy is an expert at the game and she easily defeats him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: I-L]]
* {{Ice Queen}}s: Veronica and Trula.
* InterclassFriendship: Betty and Veronica. Betty is not dirt poor, but everyone in Riverdale is in comparison with the super-rich Lodge family. When they're not feuding over Archie, they're good friends. And when they are, it's mostly [[FriendlyRivalry friendly]].
* ImprobablyCoolCar: Archie's jalopy, believe it or not. In 1941, the 1916 Ford Model T was a car around 8-9 years older than Archie himself (completely believable). In 1980, it was a museum piece.
** The 1966 Mustang that replaced it has gone through a similar process – a believable cheap beater in 1983 (even as a convertible); a pricey, sought-after classic now. Time to scan the schematics for a '99 Honda Civic into the [[Blog/TheComicsCurmudgeon AJGLU-3000]]…
* IncompatibleOrientation: Veronica tries her hardest to flirt with Kevin. Too bad he happens to be the only gay man in town.
* InformedAttractiveness: Veronica is usually treated in-story (more commonly early on) as more attractive than Betty, despite being famously the [[OnlySixFaces same face]] & body with new hair. It's excusable when one considers that Ronnie dresses much better, often showing more skin, and Betty can compete on an even keel whenever she dresses in skimpy gowns/bikinis. One story even makes fun of this, when Archie thinks he's talking to Veronica, only to find out that it's Betty trying out a black wig.
* InkSuitActor:
** KISS, when they crossed over with Archie.
** Pat Kiernan, the reporter covering Occupy Riverdale, is the morning anchor for NY1, a 24-hour cable-news television channel focusing on the five boroughs of New York City. (He's also known for playing himself or a reporter in several TV and movie cameos, and hosting/"question reading" a few game shows in the 2000s. Wiki/TheOtherWiki has more info on his career.)
* InnocentBlueEyes: Whenever Betty or Archie's eye color is mentioned in the script, it's almost always blue. In one story, Betty suggests that this is a good reason for the two of them to become a couple.
* IntercontinuityCrossover: ''Archie Meets The Punisher''.
* ItRunsOnNonsensoleum
* ItsAWonderfulPlot: Subverted in one story. An angel shows Cheryl Blossom what things would be like if she hadn't moved to Riverdale. It turns out that the other characters are better off without her. Betty becomes a supermodel dating a prince, Archie is vice-president at Lodge Industries and HappilyMarried to Veronica, and Jughead is the mayor. In the end, Cheryl [[ComicallyMissingThePoint misses the point and decides that making their lives more complicated is her purpose in life]], so she goes back to the life she has. And the angel gets demoted.
* ItsFakeFurItsFine: Fur is occasionally stated to be this.
* JailBait: Somewhat has unfortunate implications in the sense that grown men have discussed how hot Betty and Veronica are for years, but in every incarnation, they're never older than 17. At least they're drawn as busty, curvy grown women and not obviously meant as pedo-bait.[[note]] Please note that the age of consent in New York (where Archie Comics is based) is 17, and in much of the rest of the United States, it's 16. (basically, one must remember that California's strict consent laws don't apply to the rest of the world or even the rest of America)[[/note]] Made a bit understandable in the case of people who grew up reading the comics. Betty and Veronica started out as a PrecociousCrush for many young boys.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Reggie Mantle is a mean-spirited prankster much of the time, but he takes steps to prevent anyone actually being seriously hurt either by his pranks or anyone else. Veronica functions as the female equivalent.
* TheJinx: Jinx Malloy, a recurring character (of the "causes bad luck in others" variety). He's so infamous in Riverdale that when he goes out, he wears disguises so no one will run away in terror at his approach.
* KarmicJackpot: This trope is used often, for example with either Archie or Betty encountering a poor-looking man who they help out, while Reggie mocks them for it. Later, either the poor guy turns out to be a wealthy man who lends Archie a fabulous car for a week, or Reggie ends up stranded at a mall with no money to call for a tow truck after his car broke down.
* KavorkaMan: Archie and the other guys aren't ugly, but the men of the Archie universe aren't drawn as sexily as the girls are, yet they often get tons of girlfriends no matter how jealous (Moose), conceited (Reggie), or two-timing (Archie) they are. Betty {{Lampshades}} this trope way back in the 50s when complaining how guys can get away with [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/83063953203 "looking like tramps" and girls have to take time and effort to look nice for a date]].
* LIsForDyslexia:
** Moose. He fits all the classic signs, including excelling at sports. In the late 1980s, soon after the publication of a certain best-selling book on dyslexia and intelligence, Miss Grundy tested Moose for dyslexia. She, and other students, began giving him special tutoring geared to his learning style. (It may have come off like a VerySpecialEpisode to a lot of cynics, but to some who actually suffer from the condition, it was likely quite touching).
** ''The Married Life'' features the same subplot as a reasoning for Moose's seeming incompetence. Miss Grundy refused to believe that Moose is legitimately stupid, and this convinced him to improve his lot in life.
* LadyInRed: This has always been the color Veronica wears most.
%%* LateForSchool: Common with several characters.
* LethalChef: A recurring component of Ronnie's character, and something Betty has over her. One particular issue had Ronnie ''demanding'' to cook a meal for Archie (to one-up Betty, of course), and such was the tragedy that a ''line'' of sympathetic boys said their goodbyes to poor Arch, ''including Reggie''.
* LoserGetsTheGirl: Archie's not a good student, not exactly handsome or well-built, and is usually a clumsy, poor athlete. Yet Ron & Betty fight over him, and he has no problems getting dates with any other random girl in Riverdale.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: M-P]]
* MadonnaWhoreComplex: Betty is usually written as perfectly virtuous, or with very minor flaws, widely admired by the other characters of Riverdale, and more interested in school, sports, and friends than boys, with the exception of her true love Archie. She dresses and acts much less provocatively and flirtatiously than Veronica, but is often rewarded for her virtue by attracting boys anyway. Veronica uses blatant sex appeal to try to attract boys and doesn't have a true love (many stories imply she doesn't really love Archie) but instead is interested in several different boys. Not surprisingly, she's also written in about half the stories as selfish, snobby, spoiled, stupid, and often downright evil. In stories where she and Betty compete over a boy, Veronica tends to lose, especially if she tries to vamp it up.
* MaleGaze: For generations, even after the Comics Code, there have been a lot of fanservice-y drawings of the teenage Betty and Veronica, their friends, Katy Keene, and other women. There have been a lot of jokes using the gaze whenever Archie is gazing at pretty girls and commenting on their figures while another friend is waxing lyrically about nature or math.
* MaltShop: Famously, Pop Tate's. Almost as famous as Arnold's on ''Series/HappyDays''.
* ManipulativeBastard: Trula Twyst, the arch-nemesis of Jughead. She uses her powers of persuasion (bordering on [[MoreThanMindControl mind control]]) to, on separate occasions, convince him he loves her, ''[[OOCIsSeriousBusiness give up hamburgers]]'', give up his master revenge plan on her, etc. Her first appearance features her convincing Jug he likes her, just so she can get the attention of all the other boys in town for "seducing the un-seduceable".
* MooseAreIdiots: Referenced, as the person ''named'' Moose is the DumbMuscle. In one story, though, he knew enough about sports to help Riverdale win a quiz show with "Sports" as the category.
* MsFanservice:
** Veronica. It's pretty much a given that she'll be wearing the most-revealing outfit of any given strip, especially the beach-themed ones. Sometimes she's even been arrested for wearing "indecent" bikinis on public beaches – and the artists show it!
** Cheryl Blossom defined this in the 1980s (where it got her written out of the books) and '90s. Dan [=DeCarlo=] gave her a Pamela Anderson clone body, with [[ImpossibleHourglassFigure even larger breasts and buttocks]] than was normal for Riverdale girls, and was frequently seen in skimpier clothes than all the others. In one beach storyline, she tried to go ''topless''.
** Melody was this for ComicBook/JosieAndThePussycats, wearing the skimpiest outfits and drawing all the male attention.
* NarrationEcho: A favorite gag of writer Frank Doyle.
-->'''Caption:''' One glance is enough to reveal the whole dirty plot to the astute [[SuperpoweredAlterEgo Captain Hero]]!\\
'''Jughead:''' Aha! I can see the whole dirty plot on account of I am so astute!
* NeverBareheaded: Jughead is seldom seen without his signature crown-shaped hat.
* NeverTrustATrailer: Okay, so how many times has it been claimed that "Archie will finally choose between Betty and Veronica in this comic – no, seriously! Wait… Why are you putting the comic back on the shelf? HEY! HEY YOU GET BACK HERE!! [[BlatantLies WE'RE SERIOUS, IT'S TRUE!!]]"?
* NewTechnologyIsEvil: Archie comics has this as a standard plot where the characters get some new trendy tech and everything goes wrong with it with the characters' usual shticks until they ultimately reject it. If the tech in question stays around in real life for at least a decade, then it just becomes part of the background in the stories without comment. An example is the answering machine in the 1980s, which was the focus of a Veronica story which ends with her throwing it out and vowing to take all future calls personally, while now, that device is just a standard appliance all the characters have.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed and LawyerFriendlyCameo: Pretty much every real-life celebrity, TV show, company, movie or comic book company has some kind of mock name attached to it – e.g., [[Music/BruceSpringsteen Bruce Sprongsteen]], [[Franchise/IndianaJones Montana Jones and the Final Adventure]], etc.
* NoGoingSteady: The teens seem to believe in this. Though the girls get mad when they see Archie date another, it's generally acknowledged that everyone just dates whomever, whenever, and there's no "cheating" going on. Most newly-introduced characters are one-shots.
* NotAllowedToGrowUp: The teenagers have been in high school for decades, with the exact same teachers and principal. In fact, the publication commonly tout Archie as the world's oldest teenager. This trope is exactly why ''ComicBook/LifeWithArchieTheMarriedLife'' was conceived-- to show what could happen if the characters did all grow up (in fact it had two separate arcs about "What if Archie married Betty?" and "What if Archie married Veronica?"). There was also ''WesternAnimation/ArchiesWeirdMysteries'', which showed a middle-aged Archie during a Time Travel episode.
* OldTimeyBathingSuit: There are few stories with the gang dressed up in old-timey swimsuits ("bathing costumes"). One story actually had Riverdale transported back in time, and when they went to the beach Veronica was very nearly arrested for wearing a swimsuit where you could see her (gasp!) ankles and shoulders!
* OnlyChildSyndrome: Out of the gang (according to Wiki/TheOtherWiki), only Jughead, Betty, Cheryl, and Jason have known siblings (the latter two being twins).
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname:
** Jughead Jones' real name is Forsythe. Similarly, his sister Jellybean Jones; real name is Forsythia.
** Pretty much everyone in the comics goes by a nickname, which usually are just shortened versions of their names (Archie is named Archibald, Betty is named Elizabeth, Moose is named Marmaduke, etc). Only Veronica gets called by her name often, and even then you'll see it as "Ronnie" or "Ron" just as much.
* OnlySixFaces: Legendary in pop culture for it. The entirety of the teenage female cast possesses the exact same frame and facial make-up, to the point that Betty and Veronica can switch identities with wigs. Only intentionally "busty" or "curvy" girls, like Cheryl Blossom and Melody Valentine, are different, as well as {{Gonk}} characters like Ethel, or HollywoodPudgy Brigitte. {{Lampshaded}} in one issue where Betty wearing a simple brunette wig is enough for Archie (presumably the man ''who loves her'') to mistake her for her rival Veronica.
** It should be noted that Archie thought he was going crazy at the time because everything he'd been seeing that day wasn't what it looked like (a soda can that was really a radio, an old bus that was really a snack bar, a banana phone, etc.) and just wanted to meet someone "normal". It didn't help that Betty acted like Veronica to fool Archie at the time.
** There's a story meant to directly {{Lampshade}} this, Betty and Veronica swap hair colors just to MindScrew the rest of the gang. All the guys get Archie's haircut and a red dye job to teach them a lesson.
* OpposingSportsTeam: Riverdale plays almost exclusively against Central City, an entire city with a population of nothing but criminals, cheaters, and con artists, all of whom hate everything pertaining to Riverdale. The one time a Central player was portrayed sympathetically was when Archie and Chuck saved his life, while his friend abandoned him to die so he could win the race.
* OverprotectiveDad: Mr. Lodge isn't very fond of Archie dating Veronica, mostly because accident-prone Archie typically destroys something valuable whenever he visits Lodge Manor. Other stories avert this trope when Archie and his friends rescue Mr. Lodge from crooked thieves, blackmailers, or business rivals.
* PantyShot: Li'l Jinx was most prone to this, as were Betty and Veronica in the Little Archie series. As teens, panty shots were limited to cheerleader bloomers and tennis outfits; but on rare occasions, they (and even Sabrina) were seen solely in their skivvies.
* ParanoiaGambit: Used more than once.
* ParentService: Despite the comics' official audience being children, they have always been known for the frequently sexy drawings of Betty, Veronica, and the rest of the younger female cast.
* PimpedOutCar: Archie once had a shiny new exterior installed over his beloved beat-up antique jalopy. It didn't fool anyone for long because "Betsy's" interior was as broken-down as ever.
* PluckyComicRelief: Reggie, the most comedic and magnificent jock in Riverdale.
* PoorCommunicationKills: ''Archie'' relies on this trope and most of its subtropes for its humor. In fact, the 2003 Free Comic Books Day comic revolved around hanging a {{Lampshade}} on it. A kid from the "real world" arrives in Riverdale and points out the repeated cases of misunderstanding and poor communication. Everyone agrees to be more understanding and wait for explanations. And the Universe is instantly boring!
* PortalToThePast: Several characters have gone down Memory Lane and met their counterparts from the 1940s or '50s. The street also served as a Portal To The Future, when Archie decided to go ''up'' Memory Lane and see what would happen after he decides who to marry.
* PrettyInMink: Veronica has loads of furs, but other characters wear fur occasionally.
* ProgressivelyPrettier: Jughead's mom, Big Ethel, and Archie's & Betty's mothers have all been altered into more attractive forms in the past couple decades. A few of the fathers (Betty's father, Hal, for one) have also lost their original white hair, being recoloured in collected digests.
* ProtagonistAndFriends: The SpinOff ''Jughead and Friends''.
* PublicDomainCharacter: Archie Comics never renewed the copyrights for anything they published before the 1950s – and yes, this includes all the issues of ''Pep Comics'' and ''Archie'' published up to that point. This would technically make the pre-[=DeCarlo=] versions of the characters public domain. The reason why we haven't seen anyone else doing their own versions of Archie's gang is because Archie Comics trademarked the characters' designs… that and Archie Comics is notoriously litigious about anything even remotely related to their characters.
* PutOnABus: Cheryl Blossom, just gradually vanishing in the 1980s, had this done to her once her re-introduction in the 1990s wore out its welcome, and she moved away. They brought her back within a couple of years, this time without her own series.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Q-V]]
* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: Veronica is sometimes this due to her often bitchy personality, black hair, and penchant for wearing red.
* ReplacementFlatCharacter: Cheryl Blossom is basically a bitchier, meaner version of Veronica, amplifying most of her negative traits. In Cheryl's own series, her Pembrooke friends contain many worse examples of ''her'' personality.
* RichBitch: Veronica used to be this, before CharacterDevelopment moved her into the JerkWithAHeartOfGold territory. Early stories portrayed her as almost explicitly evil on occasion.
** Veronica was portrayed as rather nice in the 1940s, no better or worse than the other girls in the series. It was in later decades that she was written as evil, till she began to be softened in the late 1980s and was further mellowed in the 1990s and 21st century.
* RichInDollarsPoorInSense, SpoiledBrat, and the AlphaBitch, sometimes: Veronica ''defines'' all of these, but she's often shown with the "secret heart of gold" routine as well. Cheryl Blossom is a more authentically bad version (though still has her nice moments, because she had her own series for a while). Libby Chessler, seemingly a creation of the ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' TV series, is both and the TropeNamer for the latter.
* RuleThirtyFour:
** The company is known for coming down ''hard'' on {{Slash Fic}}s featuring its characters, to the point where Fanfiction.net will no longer accept any kind of Archie-related fanfiction. Adultfanfiction.net still accepts them though.
** They don't look too kindly on parodies either – ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken's'' got pulled ([[SarcasmMode Fair Use? What's that?]]). The only reason ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' got away with it is because they paid the company.
** Their rules seem to have become more lax in the 2010s. For example, both Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net have ''Series/{{Riverdale}}'' sections.
* RuleSixtyThree:
** January Andrews, time traveler from the future, is said to be a distant descendant of Archie Andrews. She is a GenderFlip of Archie – identical to him in all ways save slightly different hairstyle and breasts. She is a recurring character who usually appears in Jughead stories. Somewhat disturbingly, Jughead is always shown to be romantically involved with her.
** A 2012 story, "The Great Switcheroo," provided canonical examples in ''Archie'' #636.[[note]] [[MeaningfulName Meaningful Number]]?[[/note]] In the story, Comicbook/{{Sabrina|TheTeenageWitch}}'s cat Salem casts a GenderBender spell on the entire population of Riverdale, not to mention Comicbook/JosieAndThePussycats too.
** There have been at least two other skits in the past, one with the same idea as ''The Great Switcheroo''.
* SceneryPorn: Depending on the artist, although Bob Bolling in particular seemed to love nature scenes.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Played straight with Veronica and inverted with her father, as she will often attempt to utilize her clout to get what she wants, while Mr. Lodge will chide her for doing so.
* SelfDeprecation:
** Lately the series has taken to LampshadeHanging some of the RunningGags and cliches from over the decades, most prominently Archie's commitment issues.
** The cover of the October 2014 Archie Comic has [[ComicBook/AfterlifeWithArchie Jughead dressed as a zombie]] for Halloween, while Archie, Betty, and Veronica laugh over how ridiculous the premise would be.
* SelfMadeMan: Sometimes Mr. Lodge is written has being born into a wealthy family or he's written as building his own wealth from a middle-class existence. And the trope is subverted in [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/101656548934 this comic]].
* SelfParody: The "Night At the Comic Shop" issue had comic book characters come to life. One of the characters was "Wilbur", who dresses pretty much identical to Archie's old design (except with a "W" on his cardigan). He's described as a "wacky teenager who's always chasing girls" and true to art Veronica shows attraction to him. This is actually a clever double self-parody; on one level Wilbur is a parody of Archie. On another, Archie Comics are using a pre-existing character for the GeniusBonus of "Yeah, back in the day Archie had spawned a FountainOfExpies, we ripped off our own character for some reason".
* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness:
** Frank Doyle, Archie's most prolific writer from the '50s to the '90s, loved having the teenaged characters burst into inappropriately sophisticated verbiage for no reason (except RuleOfFunny).
--->'''Veronica:''' Wouldst thou mind removing yon nose from mine business, friend?\\
'''Betty:''' Forsooth, my pretty prevaricator! Itty-bitty Betty exits forthwith from your web of intrigue!
** This kind of talk often appeared in films and books about teenage characters. It was probably originally intended to reflect the kids' response to Shakespeare in English or Dramatics class, by going around talking like that.
** Dilton is the biggest target for this. One comic {{Lampshades}} it brilliantly. Archie is attempting to look up a the definition of a word, Jughead suggests he should save time by asking Dilton. Dilton's explanation reflects his usual penchant for scientific jargon. A steamed Archie berates Jughead for his advice, claiming he now has to look up the definitions of several more words.
* SexySantaDress: Betty, Veronica, Sabrina and other girls would wear them quite frequently during Christmas issues, at least on the covers.
* ShipperOnDeck: Jughead, for Betty & Archie. He doesn't like Arch's obsession with the ladies, but Betty is a friend and the least-bad option in his mind.
* ShooOutTheNewGuy: Many characters over the years were introduced with great fanfare as potential regulars, and then dropped instantly when readers weren't interested.
** One notable example was Adam the Alien, introduced simultaneously in all three flagship titles (''Archie, Jughead, Betty & Veronica'') in 1979, with captions promising that he'd have lots of wacky adventures at Riverdale High. He never appeared again.
* ShoutOut:
** An old joke from Blog/TheComicsCurmudgeon is that the Archie newspaper comic is written by a computer, the "Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000", or "AJGLU-3000" for short. In 2008, a crossed-out "AJGLU-3000" [[http://joshreads.com/?p=1827 showed up on Archie's T-shirt]], and the phrase has been used numerous times since then to refer to the school's computer system.
** There was a shout-out to the Creator/DiC dub of ''Manga/SailorMoon''. Betty and Veronica were pursuing a man named "Maxfield Standin" who looked exactly like his [[http://amandamoon.www3.50megs.com/maskedman/maskedman.html source material]].
** In one comic, Veronica owned a Hedgehog, and named it Sonic. (Archie, you'll recall, has published the ''Sonic'' comic series since 1993).
* SingleTargetSexuality: Big Ethel focuses like a laser on Jughead.
%%* SlapstickKnowsNoGender
* SlutShaming: Both Veronica and Cheryl Blossom have been criticized many times by other characters for dressing too provocatively, being too flirtatious or 'easy', and going out with too many boys. Usually the story will cast the girls in a bad light for this (worse than for male casanovas like Archie) and often punish them at the end.
* SmartPeoplePlayChess: Dilton.
* SnowballFight: Turns up quite a bit during winter.
** If Dilton Doiley gets involved, expect him to bring in an automatic snow thrower, like the catapult seen in the page image.
** One story had Veronica fed up with her friends' immature snow-throwing behavior, bonding with Dilton who shares her condescension... until she discovers he's stashed away a freezer full of snowballs, planning ahead for the summer.
* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: Archie, Jughead, and Betty were all fairly young in their first 1941 appearance, resembling pre-teens. By the next issue, they were full-on teenagers.
* SpannerInTheWorks: The vast majority of plots and schemes in any given Archie story end up derailed by this trope.
* SpinoffBabies: "Little Archie" was one of the earliest (the 1960s), taking place in the gang's elementary school years. For some reason, Mr. Weatherbee and Miss Grundy were working at their school. "The New Archies" (an AnimatedSeries and a comic, both short-lived) came in the 1980s, and was based around their pre-teen years in middle school. The former appears to actually be in continuity (told nowadays as flashbacks), but the latter, with several replacement characters (Eugene for Dilton, among others), is mostly forgotten.
** During the "Pureheart the Powerful" series, the little Archies all became superheroes, too.
* SpoiledSweet: An AlternateCharacterInterpretation of Veronica. The two regularly compete for Archie's attention, but are shown to actually be best friends with each other. When Veronica buys a new wardrobe, she takes all of her old stuff and gives it to Betty – these are ''still'' nice clothes.
** This was Archie creator Bob Montana's basic interpretation of Veronica. In his stories and strips, she's pampered but pleasant except on rare occasions (usually when Archie does something incredibly stupid and earns her wrath).
* SpyCatsuit: Betty and Veronica wear black catsuits when acting as "[[TeenSuperspy Agents B & V]]".
* StatusQuoIsGod: ''Is it EVER''. No matter how big a story, or how glorious a cover, things will revert back to normal by the end of the storyline. Ethel still chases Jughead, Archie still can't decide between Betty & Ronnie, Reggie still plays pranks, Jughead goes back to avoiding girls and being single, all the relationships are the same, etc. When there's 60 years of stories, and Digests re-using old stories, that tends to happen. Even newly introduced characters are 99% likely to be doomed to the C-List and Trivia questions within a few years (Cricket O'Dell, Ginger Lopez, Marie & Frankie, etc.).
** The only exceptions seem to be Cheryl Blossom's re-introduction in the 1990s, and successful newcomers Chuck & Nancy in the 1970s, alongside a few gradual shifts in characterization between the 1950s and now. For instance, Betty changed in the 1970s from a stereotypical DumbBlonde, to a self-confident {{Tomboy}} who could easily run rings around Veronica in terms of physical skills like athletics and auto mechanics.
* StraightGay: Kevin Keller, introduced in the comic as a normal, positive gay character for kids to read.
* {{Stripperific}}: ''Everyone'' in the Archie I series. Betty and Veronica tote FurBikini outfits, and Archie and Jughead both wear an incredibly small LoinCloth. FanService for all.
* SubliminalAdvertising: There was a story published in 1992 in which Archie talks the gang into going to have a picnic in the woods so they enjoy nature, but they all bring along electronic devices to distract themselves with. Throughout the story, all sorts of real life products pop up in the artwork – Veronica's eating a Fruit Roll-Up in the first panel, Archie's sipping from a pack of Capri Sun (and from when it was doing a promotion for ''[[WesternAnimation/YogiBear Yo Yogi!]]'', no less[[labelnote:†]] Fun Fact: Yo Yogi kept appearing on packets of Capri Sun way into the late-90's, nearly a decade after the cartoon's unceremonious demise[[/labelnote]]) when he notices Jughead's playing a handheld electronic game, Jughead pulls out a box of Cap'n Crunch when Archie falls in the river... They actually [[JustifiedTrope justified this]] by the fact that these products were all being given out in baskets to kids who joined the Archie Fan Club at the time.
** Another story from 1992 opened with Archie and Jughead playing UsefulNotes/SuperNintendo. Boxes for actual Super Nintendo games were all on the floor in front of them.
** Somewhat less subliminal: Comic issues would often have single-page spreads in between stories where the Archie gang advertised a specific product – rollerblades, candy, whatever. Got weird when the exact same ads showed up in ''Sonic'' comics.
* SweaterGirl: The girls really fit into their sweaters.
* TeamworkSeduction: BettyAndVeronica have pulled this trick a few times, usually with them ruining it by fighting again. Since the two girls are best friends, though, "threesome" endings are rare but not completely out of the question (in a PG-rated sense, of course).
* TeenGenius: Dilton Doiley has served in this role for decades.
* TeenSuperspy:
** At the height of the spy craze during the 1960s, Archie Comics did a series called "The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E." that featured the Archie gang as secret agents.
** More recently, Betty and Veronica have appeared as 'Agents B & V'.
* TheyFightCrime: "The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E." in the 1960s (and just recently restarted), the 1965 "[[http://www.toonopedia.com/purheart.htm Pureheart the Powerful]]" (or "Captain Pureheart") stories, which engendered their own comic books, and "Archie's Explorers of the Unknown" in the 1980s.
* ThirdOptionLoveInterest: For Archie, there's:
** Cheryl Blossom, the former TropeNamer. Famously came in as a "third choice", and temporarily had a legit shot at taking over. In the 90s, the Love Showdown storyline, where Betty and Veronica escalate their competition for Archie, ends in Archie choosing Cheryl Blossom instead (although the Status Quo is restored in a follow-up special). Since then, however, she has apparently started going out with the nerd of the cast after getting to know him on the internet, in a ThrowTheDogABone moment.
** Valerie of ''Comicbook/JosieAndThePussycats''. She was featured as his love interest in a crossover supplement story, and the idea became popular enough that she returned several times as his permanent girlfriend. She even received her own ''Married'' storyline alongside Betty and Veronica, wherein Archie chose to go into music rather than go into business. He and Valerie become a husband-wife singing duo, and even have a DarkSkinnedRedHead baby who follows in their footsteps.
* ThroughHisStomach:
** This is an area where Betty always wins over Veronica.
** Big Ethel tries this all the time on Jughead. He's certainly willing to tolerate her presence when food is forthcoming, but it never gets her any closer to a date (unless you count the time it takes him to eat, and considering it's Jughead that can't be very long).
* TokenMinority:
** Valerie, arguably one of the first in all of comics, debuting in 1969, followed by [[BlackBestFriend Chuck]] and his girlfriend [[TokenMinorityCouple Nancy]] in the 1970s, and Frankie & Maria, a Latino pairing also debuting then, but not catching on as well.
** Other black and Hispanic characters have shown up with lower degrees of success, like Ginger Lopez, and in the early 1990s, very short-lived characters with disabilities (Anita and Jeff).
** It took a little longer for the Asian characters to catch on. But instead of one character to represent all of Asia, they've had a number of Asian girls (Tomoko, Kim, Kumi?). To say nothing of the Indian boy Raj.
** They introduced a gay character in 2010. This caused MoralGuardians to flip out and [[ScapegoatCreator somehow relate it to President Obama or the Democrats' then-majority in Congress]], and resulted in InternetBackdraft against the MoralGuardians. It was also a ''major'' game-changer in American culture as a whole. Archie Comics has a decades-long reputation as a bastion of "traditional values" due to its rather chaste world and lack of violence or cursing (plus everything Al Hartley did back in the 70's, official or not). Thus, when Archie introduced Kevin Keller and refused to back down, it made national news – after all, if such a conservative place as Riverdale has no problem with a gay man in their midst, then why should anyone else in America take issue?
* TomboyishPonytail: Betty was the first of the female cast to get more "masculine" hobbies like being a mechanic so she eventually adopted this look.
* TotallyRadical:
** A notorious case. For example, one late-'80s story had a lifeguard tell a surfing Veronica, "I really dig the way you attacked those waves with your rad moves". Around the same time, an in-house ad for an ''Archie'' calendar featured a cartoon teenager, sporting a ridiculous multi-colored mohawk, oversized shades that Music/EltonJohn would reject, and mismatched-color clothes, telling the reader, "I ordered mine!" Like gnarly, daddy-o, if a rad hepcat teen like him bought one, I better slap down the bread too, yo yo yo.
** Played with in a story titled "Lingo Lesson". In it, Archie talks like this, as does a brownie troop that his mom leads. It drives Archie's dad nuts.
* TwoTeacherSchool: Averted. Sure, Miss Grundy and Mr. Weatherbee are usually the only teachers to take a major role in a story, but the school's custodian (Mr. Svenson), cafeteria worker (Miss Beazly), science teacher (Prof. Flutesnoot), another elderly teacher (Miss Haggly), two coaches (Kleats and Clayton), and even the Bee's secretary (Miss Philips) have shown up repeatedly over the years, and many have even received major roles in stories.
* TwoTimerDate: Archie often dates both Betty and Veronica at the same time.
* UnclePennybags: Mr. Lodge is actually a really nice guy – it's just that being one of the main victims of Archie's clumsiness has a tendency to drive him crazy.
* UnlimitedWardrobe: Betty and Veronica are classic examples of this trope. It's also one of the rare instances when is justified for both girls. Veronica obviously has the money to buy whatever clothes she wants...and as for Betty, in some stories she's developed an impressive wardrobe of her own because Veronica just hands off any clothes she gets tired of to Betty. Not that Betty necessarily minds, since Veronica's generosity allows her to keep up with Ronnie in fashion despite her much more limited finances.
* UptownGirl: Veronica is much more wealthy than any of her peers but still attends the same public high school as the rest of them.
* WrenchWench:
** Betty is absurdly talented with auto repair and other forms of masculine expertise. This makes her either more or less attractive to the boys, depending on the story.
** Valerie was also this.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: W-Z]]
* WackyRacing: ''Archie's RC Racers'' has much of the extended cast participate in a 50 state RC car race with things like recurring super villains playing into the plot.
* WaitForYourDate: Archie is sometimes kept waiting by Veronica or other dates.
** In one short joke, with an anonymous girl, her Dad announces that her date is here.
---> Girl: "Oh daddy, Archie can afford to wait."\\
Dad: "Well, maybe he can afford it but I can't!" (as Archie raids the refrigerator)
* WeddingDay: It was perhaps the most long-awaited invocation of this trope ever when Archie married Veronica. Needless to say, it also led to quite a bit of [[BrokenBase fan arguing]]. But then it turned out to be {{all just a dream}}. And then they did it again when Archie married Betty (also just a dream).
* WhatIf: Several. The most famous are the Archie Marries Veronica/Betty storylines and the ideal sequel ''ComicBook/LifeWithArchieTheMarriedLife''.
* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: Either that or "Riverdale" would have been perfectly accurate; they're the two most famous examples of this trope ever.
* WolverinePublicity: Cheryl Blossom ''exploded'' onto the Archie scene on her 1990s return, quickly getting one limited series after another. Finally, she got her own series and was a constant feature. Eventually, backlash set in, and she was actually written out of the books again before the decade was over, and is now a mere extra.
* WomenDrivers: Played straight before the '60s, usually subverted any time after that.
* WriterOnBoard: In the '70s, Al Hartley occasionally infused his conservative Christian beliefs into the comics until the publishers (who were, are, and have always been Jewish) told him to knock it off. Later in the decade he convinced Archie to license the characters for the explicitly evangelical Spire Christian Comics.
* YeGoodeOldeDays: Al Hartley's rose-colored view of the 1890s as a time free from the ills of modern society… and apparently free from the ills of the 1890s as well.
* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: This is a recurring punchline.
** In one comic, Principal Weatherbee hires Jughead to write jokes for his assembly speech when a particular kind of joke is really popular. Then Weatherbee hears two girls complaining about the jokes. When he asks Jughead what happened, Jughead tells him that the jokes are completely lame now. When did they become uncool? "Oh, yeah. When word got around that [Weatherbee] was telling them."
** In another comic, Archie worries that his band's latest song may not be well-recevied... because Mr. Lodge loves it.
** In one memorable story, a reporter decides to write a story on Archie's popularity. After the article comes out, all of Archie's friends ostracize him. And when the reporter writes about Archie's fall from grace, the gang become incensed at the reporter for saying such things about Archie. Mr. Weatherbee sums this up thusly, "You see, Archie was popular until I said he was popular. Then, when you wrote about him being unpopular, he became popular again!"
** In another story, Veronica shows off her skills as a trendsetter by making Jughead's hat the next big thing. After the entire school is wearing hats like Jug's, Veronica (Fed up with seeing that hat everywhere) puts an end to the fad by having the teachers wear the hats.
* YourCheatingHeart: DependingOnTheWriter the BettyAndVeronica dilemma is this, though usually it's written as neither being Archie's steady girlfriend or Archie breaking up with one for the the other.
[[/folder]]

** In another comic, Archie worries that his band's latest song may not be well-receved…because Mr. Lodge loves it.
** In one memorable story, a reporter decides to write a story on Archie's popularity. After the article comes out, all of Archie's friends ostracize him. And when the reporter writes about Archie's fall from grace, the gang become incensed at the reporter for saying such things about Archie. Mr. Weatherbee sums this up thusly, "You see, Archie was popular until I said he was popular. Then, when you wrote abut him being unpopular, he became popular again!"

** Jughead Jones'real name is Forsythe. Similarly, his sister Jellybean Jones; real name is Forsythia.

* ''WesternAnimation/JosieAndThePussycats'' (1970-71), retooled as ''Josie and the Pussycats In Outer Space'' (1972-73), then again as ''Film/JosieAndThePussycats'' (2003) (co-produced with ''Creator/UniversalStudios'' and ''Creator/{{MGM}}'')

* ''Archie Andrews'' (1943-1953; radio show)

''Archie Comics'', originally known as ''MLJ Comics'', after its three founders, soon took the name of its most popular character, a teen named Archie Andrews, who debuted in ''Pep Comics'' #22, 1941 in a story drawn by Bob Montana. A cast slowly grew around him and his buddies, and by the mid-1950s, the world had for the most part developed into the cast we'd now recognize. Preaching that StatusQuoIsGod, a large array of stock plots and occurrences (the Love Triangle of Archie, Betty, and Veronica; Jughead conspiring against Reggie or women; Ethel chasing Jughead; Reggie chasing Midge and confounding Moose; Dilton being smart; Chuck obsessing over comic books; Archie and Jughead running afoul of the teachers, etc.) have become among the longest-running motifs in fiction. With the start of Dan [=DeCarlo=] as primary artist in the '60s, Archie Comics created its "house style" – one that lasted all the way til 2015, when artists Fiona Staples, Adam Hughes, and Erica Henderson were brought onboard to reinvent the visual look of Archie and his associates in main continuity.

Though the eternal love triangle is the heart of the series, and only the Big Four (Archie, Jug, Ron, and Betty) have any kind of long-running success in solo books, the recurring cast is actually [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters huge]], and has only grown as the decades passed. It's very possible to have an Archie story where none of the Big Four appear at all-in fact, ADayInTheLimelight stories are so common that the Archie universe has one of the best developed supporting casts this side of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.

[-[[caption-width-right:350:L - R: Betty, Jughead, Archie, Veronica, and Reggie.]]-]

Though the eternal love triangle is the heart of the series, and only the Big Four (Archie, Jug, Ron, and Betty) have any kind of long-running success in solo books, the recurring cast is actually [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters huge]], and has only grown as the decades passed. It's very possible to have an Archie story where none of the Big Four appear at all.

--> '''Archie:''' I wonder where he found Her?
--> '''Reggie:''' You wouldn't believe me even if I ''told'' you!!

---> '''Archie:''' Say! What's going on? ''(catching Betty and Veronica viewing through binoculars)''
---> '''Veronica:''' Just a little harmless boy-watching!
---> '''Reggie:''' [[{{Hypocrite}} But girls aren]][[StayInTheKitchen 't supposed to boy watch!]]
---> '''Archie:''' It's unheard of!
---> '''Veronica:''' You just heard of it!

--> '''Caption''': One glance is enough to reveal the whole dirty plot to the astute [[SuperpoweredAlterEgo Captain Hero]]!
--> '''Jughead''': Aha! I can see the whole dirty plot on account of I am so astute!

* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Frank Doyle, Archie's most prolific writer from the '50s to the '90s, loved having the teenaged characters burst into inappropriately sophisticated verbiage for no reason (except RuleOfFunny).
--> '''Veronica''': Wouldst thou mind removing yon nose from mine business, friend?
--> '''Betty''': Forsooth, my pretty prevaricator! Itty-bitty Betty exits forthwith from your web of intrigue!

* TomboyishPonytail: Betty.

* UptownGirl: Veronica and Archie.

* WackyRacing: ''Archie's RC Racers''

[-[[caption-width-right:350:From left to right: Betty, Jughead, Archie, Veronica, and Reggie.]]-]

* OneMillionBC: The series of "Caveman Archie" stories with prehistoric versions of Archie and the rest of the Riverdale gang.
* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain: In a story, Archie recites this statistic to his friends. Moose exclaims that 10% is "almost less than half our brains". Archie muses if the statistic is too high in some cases.

* AccidentalAthlete: One story has Archie and Betty walking by the football field while the team is practicing. Archie says that if they were [[DiscussedTrope in an old movie]], a stray ball would fly in his direction and he'd kick it it fifty yards, thus earning him an instant spot on the team. To Archie's chagrin, when a stray football does make it their way, it's ''Betty'' who kicks it straight between the uprights. It seems that "they don't make old movies the way they used to."
* AccidentalHero: A comic had Jughead failing as a security guard until he tripped and fell on a guy who turned out to be a shoplifter.
* AccidentalProposal: In one of the Xmas issues, Moose shows Jughead a jewellery store window with a birthstone ring. He then asks Jughead to find out from his girlfriend, Midge, if she'd like that ring for Christmas. So later, Jug casually asks Midge if she would like the ring in the store window. Midge kisses Jughead and runs off in ultimate excitement. Turns out the jeweller had since placed a diamond engagement ring in the birthstone's spot. Since Moose was normally so jealous that he was known to hospitalize other guys for merely talking to Midge, Jughead was now seriously in deep doo-doo.
* AddictionDisplacement: In an [[TheEighties eighties]] [[VerySpecialEpisode story]] on the dangers of smoking, three teenagers unintentionally create a false fire alarm by chain-smoking in the boys' washroom at school. At the end, they apologize to the principal, Mr. Weatherbee, and inform him that from now on, whenever they have nicotine cravings, they'll chew gum instead.
-->'''Weatherbee:''' Egad! Another habit I don't approve of. Oh, well. You win some, you lose some.

** [[TakeThat It's a red Ford (a Model "T" in the classic strips and a Mustang converable in the modern ones): "Found On Road, Dead."]]

* ArtEvolution:
** There was a massive one in the late 1960s, coinciding with Dan [=DeCarlo=]'s promotion to the artist for nearly all Archie comic covers. Soon, all the new artists were mimicking his style as the 'base' Archie, though a few older artists continued to draw their own way. The shift to the unified "house style" was total enough that the clothing styles are all that can define most stories from the 1960s until now, when a few more "out there" artists like Fernando Ruiz have put their own stamp on the "[=DeCarlo=] Style".
** Then there's the "Dynamic New Look" art style, which goes for a more realistic approach. It's only used for specific story arcs, though.
** ''Comicbook/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' and ''ComicBook/JosieAndThePussycats'' both went through "manga-style" stretches.
** As of 2015, Archie ended their old Archie series that had been going for over 600 issues with a brand-new series with a completely new look.
* ArtisticLicenseSports: One story involves a new kid in town coming out of nowhere to become the star player on Riverdale's baseball team, playing shortstop. His leg is then badly injured when a player on a rival team spikes him, but he reinvents himself as an ace pitcher and leads Riverdale to the championship. It would be a great story if it wasn't utter bullcrap. As anyone who's ever pitched at any level could tell you, it is impossible to pitch on an injured leg, at least with any degree of competency.
** In another issue where Betty becomes a race car driver, the flag bearer at the racetrack waves a checkered flag at the start of her first race. The checkered flag is supposed to signal the end of a race.
* AsleepInClass: One time ([[RecycledScript or maybe more]]) Jughead painted eyeballs on his eyelids so he could sleep in class and look like he wasn't sleeping.
* BaitAndSwitchComment: [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/andswitch1_1088.jpg This sequence]]. "I'd like to compliment you on your good work... WHEN YOU DO SOME!"
* BannedInChina: InUniverse example. Veronica [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veronica_banned_bikini_7152.jpg proudly shows off a bikini she bought]] that had been banned in Boston.

* BatmanGambit: Reggie and Veronica played a prank on Archie by making up a story about how Mr. Weatherbee was looking for him. Then Weatherbee turns up and he really was looking for someone, to represent the school on a trip to the capital. After Archie recommends Reggie and Veronica, Weatherbee sends various messengers to summon the two to his office (the first of which is Archie himself), but Reggie, thinking that Archie is playing the same gag on him, rebuffs them each and every time. Weatherbee eventually gets fed up, and trails the next messenger, so when Reg and Veronica ignore the summons one last time, he was there, and he sent them off to detention.

* BerserkButton: Jughead kicks ass on a pair of robbers when they try to steal the Chocklit Shoppe's hamburger supply.

* BigFancyHouse: The Lodge Estate, home of the insanely wealthy Veronica Lodge.

* BrandX: Done frequently, with many exceptions. See SubliminalAdvertising, below.

* BroadStrokes: One theory about the comics is that they all take place in parallel universes, which would nicely take care of plenty of {{Canon}} problems, along with the many comics that seem to be almost [[AesopAmnesia complete duplicates of previous plots]].
** [[NotAllowedToGrowUp Not to mention the age problems]].
** The first issue of ''ComicBook/LifeWithArchieTheMarriedLife'' actually includes a display of an ''Archie'' {{multiverse}}. Dimensions include "The Happy Days of the 1940s-50s", "The Fantasy World of Little Archie", and "Archie's New Look," among others.

* CallingMeALogarithm: Moose has a very limited vocabulary.
--> '''Moose''': "Duhhh hey! Who are you calling an Idiom!?"
* CanonForeigner: For "The New Archies", a version featuring the group set in their middle school era, the characters of Amani and Eugene were created. "Fangs" Fogarty and Ambrose appear in the elementary-setting "Little Archie". None of the four made it to the mainstream continuity in anything other than a one-shot or cameo.

* CaptainGeographic: Some of the superheroes.

* ChasedOffIntoTheSunset: A story had Jughead timing Archie for the latter's partaking in a track meet, where he is astonished to learn that he just broke the record for being the fastest there is. Come the day of the track meet, after Archie wins the race, Coach Kleats then reveals to Archie that Jughead's stopwatch is actually a lot slower than Archie, which angers Archie so much that he starts chasing Jughead at the end of the story.
* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Betty, the Victorious one, when Archie marries her. Romance sweeps the entire town when this happens.

* ChristmasEveryDay: In one issue, Jingles allows Archie to repeat Christmas Eve for a day so Archie can have more time to prepare, but the computer he used to turn back time gets frozen into a loop.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Used too frequently to even list all the victims. A comic with a fairly large base cast that constantly introduced new recurring characters in nearly every year, this happens a ''lot''. Ask old-school fans about "Adam the Alien", Jinx Malloy, January [=McAndrews=] or Cricket O'Dell. Even Cheryl Blossom got this in the 80s. A few characters are actually shown moving away (Cheryl in the late 1990s), but most are just casually ignored with no mentions after a few years of appearances. We'll see where the new pair of Asian girls, Wendy Weatherbee, and others end up.

* ClockDiscrepancy: In a comic, Big Eater Jughead is in class, and informs the teacher, Miss Grundy, that "his stomach" says its lunchtime. She reminds Jug that the clock on the wall reads 10 before noon. At that moment, the school janitor Mr. Svenson enters the classroom with a ladder. The purpose? To adjust the clock, which he said was running ten minutes slow.

* CongruentMemory
** There was one Betty and Veronica comic where Veronica was studying for a test while lying on the floor of her room. When the day of the test came around, she couldn't remember any of the information — until she lay down on the floor of the classroom in the same position she'd studied in.
** In another story, Jughead could throw snowballs easily, but couldn't get the same feeling when handling a normal baseball.
** In the same vein, Jughead was once scouted for the opera thanks to his bombastic singing voice — unfortunately, he only sang well in enclosed spaces because he did most of his singing in the bathtub.

* ConvictionByContradiction: Believe it or not, there have been a few stories where this tropes is ''inverted'' to prove a character's innocence, to prove that a painting is a forgery, etc.

* CriminalDoppelganger: In the {{Crossover}} ''ComicBook/ArchieMeetsThePunisher'', a criminal the Punisher has tracked to Riverdale looks very similar to Archie. The story also ends with Comicbook/{{Wolverine}} learning about [[HereWeGoAgain a dangerous mutant who looks like Jughead]].
* {{Crossover}}: Most Archie Comics characters are accepted to be in the same universe, so it's reasonable for Sabrina to show up in an Archie story, or for The Archies to perform alongside Josie and the Pussycats. The biggest example is the Civil Chore(s) story, where the writers get as many characters as they can think of together for a single-page spread.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: A non-combat version with Coach Kleats. He appears to be a slow-and-overweight gym teacher and coach, and indeed, he can't run well and would kill himself if he slid into a base. But he can still hit every pitch out of the park or thread a needle with a high-velocity football pass, which is why he never ''had'' to run in either sport.
* CrushingHandshake: A story had this happen to Mr. Weatherbee when congratulating substitute hall monitor Maria Rodriguez for teaching the other students not to run in the halls. Maria is actually a [[StrongerThanTheyLook lot stronger than she looks]] so she crushes the 'Bee's hand while giving him a handshake. The last panel shows Mr. Weatherbee getting his hand bandaged by Miss Grundy.

* DaintyLittleBalletDancers: In one story, Archie and Reggie make fun of Veronica's "sissy" ballet instructor, until [[DanceBattler he uses dance moves to beat up]] some thugs threatening them. The two of them then take ballet lessons with him themselves.

* DependingOnTheArtist: The physical and [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield geographical]] characteristics of Riverdale and its local landmarks change seemingly at will.
** These things change within stories drawn by the same artist, too, especially the design of Veronica and Archie's homes. Dan [=DeCarlo=] said in an interview that the publishers once tried to make him establish a consistent look for the interior of Archie's house, but he found it was too limiting.
* DependingOnTheWriter: Many characteristics of the characters vary over the years and between writers. Variable character traits include: Jughead's hatred of women (misogyny versus avoidance of romance), Betty's obsessiveness regarding Archie (ie. is she crazy, or just a standard young girl in love?), Veronica's bitchiness, Reggie's evil, Mr. Lodge's heartless businessman tendencies, and Archie's womanizing. Various character traits are up for grabs as well – Archie is either the best or the worst athlete on any given sports team, Jughead is either a poor or very good student, and Betty's siblings tend to disappear depending on what the current writer knows about her past. Even Betty and Veronica's status as best friend, while usually fairly consistent, has fluctuated in the past, with at least one story showing them outright hating each other.
** Enough that one could imagine that the comic spans multiple {{Alternate Universe}}s. [[FridgeBrilliance Actually, that would explain a lot]]. In fact it's implied this is canon, though the universes aren't separated by decades.

* DontTryThisAtHome: One story where Veronica directly addresses the reader has her cautioning them not to follow her example, saying that she's rich and spoiled and hatching evil schemes is [[YouBastard "expected"]] of her.

* DramaticCurtainToss: Frequently. There is at least one story where Archie accidentally knocks off the head on a statue of a local businessman; he has it repaired in time for the official unveiling of the statue, but when the curtain comes off, we find out the repairman screwed up and put the head of a pig on instead. Oops.

* EgocentricTeamNaming: Archie named his rock-n-roll group "The Archies". You'd think ''Reggie'' (if no one else) would have a problem with that.

* [[EvenEvilHasStandards Even Jerkasses Have Standards]]: When Cedric, the best friend of Jason Blossom, sabotages Dilton to have Pembrooke Academy (his and Jason's school then) win a quiz show, Moose manages to win on a sports question, and then clobbers Cedric when he found out what Cedric did to his "little buddy." Jason, understandably, congratulates the Riverdale team and leaves Cedric hurting.

* {{Fanservice}}: To an ''amazingly'' large extent, considering that Archie is mostly for girls. Artist Dan [=DeCarlo=] was a cheesecake art ''king'', and featured the girls in the skimpiest bikinis allowed in any era, to say nothing of major sexpots like Melody (who suffered ClothingDamage at least once) and Cheryl.

* FanVid: This DarkerAndEdgier [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djRAiiFlCy8 fake trailer]].

* FemininityFailure: One issue had Veronica teaching Betty to be more ladylike (which was essentially her teaching Betty to be identical to her mannerisms). Everything was going well until she spotted a couple of kids playing catch, which ends with her joining them and landing in a tree in retrieving the ball when it got stuck up there. While Veronica is annoyed with the turn of events, the kids all laud Betty as a hero.

* ForHalloweenImGoingAsMyself: In one story, Archie and Jughead are dressed as vampires and accidentally get invited to a party full of real monsters, who are celebrating because this is the one day of the year they can walk around normally.

* FreakyFridayFlip:
** One comic has Dilton accidentally switch Archie's and Mr. Weatherbee's minds, making each the two spend one night and one day in the other's life. To help remind readers that Archie and Mr. Weatherbee had each other's minds, "Archie"'s word and thought balloons have pictures of The Bee in them, and "Mr. Weatherbee"'s word and thought balloons have pictures of Arch.
** One issue of Veronica own book featured a mystical pendant that swapped her with her own mother for a day. The two need to attend a fancy party together, and predictable shenanigans ensue. After that, the two just decide to wait it out, and pass the time with card games long into the night.

* TheGayNineties: One writer, Al Hartley, did a few stories with the Archie gang in the 1890s: dedicated to telling everyone how much better things were back then. Weirdly, these were written in the 1970s, long after the craze for gay Nineties nostalgia had died. Check it out [[http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics210.html here]] (with added snark for your reading pleasure).[[note]] Al Hartley was the son of Fred Hartley, the ultraconservative Congressman who cosponsored the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act. Al himself became a born-again Christian around the time he was hired by Archie. He often used the comic to promote his beliefs, culminating in him producing (with Archie's reluctant permission) a series of explicitly Christian Archie comics for an Evangelical publisher in the late 70's.[[/note]]
* GenderBender: In "The Great Switcheroo", Comicbook/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch's cat Salem casts a spell that changes the sex of everybody in Riverdale. The story plays a bit like a GenderFlip in execution, as none of the transformed characters know what their "true" sex is supposed to be, but it "really" happened, and Sabrina's eventual reversal spell isn't actually a ResetButton. There's even video evidence suggesting that the gang spent a day as the opposite sex, even if none of them remember it.[[note]] ''Archie'' #636 (2012)[[/note]]

* GoneSwimmingClothesStolen: While on a wilderness outing with Archie, Betty becomes covered with mud and washes off in a nearby lake,only to have her clothes stolen by a homeless boy. Archie loans her his shirt to cover up with while they track down what happened.
* GrandRomanticGesture: Frequently it shows Archie pulling these off for Veronica, who is hard to please. Some examples: making a giant Valentine card for her, building a heart out of snow and spelling "Archie Loves Veronica" in coal, buying her jewelry he can't afford...
* GretzkyHasTheBall: In one issue, the Riverdale team shows up to a football game, and the rival team is female. One CurbStompBattle later, Archie and Reggie are moping around, depressed, when Betty and Veronica ask to be shown how to "shoot baskets with this horse hide"[a football]. Reggie and Archie walk off with the girls in hand, going "[[CompletelyMissingThePoint When will you learn football is a man's game]]!" The girls wink at each other.
* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Each major Archie series has a blonde heroine who is kinder, sweeter, more innocent and more beautiful than all the other female characters. In the Archie series it's Betty, in Sabrina it's Sabrina, in the Josie stories it's Melody, and in the Wilbur series it's Laurie. (Each of these series also has a contrasting black haired villainess who is nastier and more worldly than all the other female characters. In the Archie series it's Veronica, in Sabrina it's Gemini Stone, in the Josie series it's Alexandra, and in the Wilbur series it's Linda.)

* {{Headdesk}}: After ignoring a warning from his mom that it looks like rain and he might catch a cold if he goes out, Archie and Jughead both get soaked and head for Veronica's place. After going through a sauna and doing laps of a pool to try and avoid getting sick ("No germ would be stupid enough to stick around for that punishment") Archie gets home and...sneezes. "Banging your head against a wall is not an accepted cold medicine!"
* HeldBackInSchool: Jughead discovering he had never graduated grade school had to do a make-up test to avoid this.

** Betty and Veronica themselves are not immune when see an handsome boy. Especially their boy.
* HelpingGrannyCrossTheStreet: A 1970s issue of ''Archie's Joke Book'' had a one-page joke in which Moose carried Miss Beazley, the high school lunch server, across a busy street, ignoring her protests. After they reach the other side, she tells him that she didn't want to cross the street in the first place.
** Archie and Betty come across Jughead and an old woman cross the street, and they find it sweet on Jughead's part… until they learn that she's his aunt and that it was ''she'' who was helping Jughead.

** Once, Veronica tricks Betty into humbling a chauvinistic Archie in tennis, only for Ronnie to play the hapless beginner in her own match against Archie, even though Veronica is already shown as being better at tennis than Betty. The manager of the country club later recruits Archie to be a representative in a mixed doubles tournament, and Veronica suggests herself, naturally, to be his partner. Archie instead chooses who he believes is much better than him, Betty. Whoops...
* HollywoodMagnetism: There was a story in which Archie acquired a very large magnet, which he carried in the back seat of his car. As he and Jughead traveled, the magnet attracted anything and everything that was made of metal.
* HollywoodPudgy:[[invoked]] Brigitte is meant as AnAesop on judging people by their appearances, as she's Riverdale's only fat girl. Unfortunately, they made her as pretty as most of the female cast (just with a double-chin), and only slightly overweight.
* HomeAloneAntics: One story has Archie and Jughead house-sitting for Mr. Lodge. Although the mansion has a sophisticated security system, the boys decide to play it safe and add some extra anti-burglar defenses, involving the usual buckets of water, tin cans, flypaper, etc. Of course, Mr. Lodge comes home and walks into all the booby traps.
** [[spoiler:Hilariously, Archie and Jughead sleep soundly through the racket.]]
* HotTeacher: One issue from TheSeventies features a young female substitute teacher so attractive that all of her male students are too distracted with the floating {{Heart Symbol}}s above their heads to pay attention to their schoolwork.
** SoBeautifulItsACurse: At the end of the issue, Principal Weatherbee ''fires her'', telling her that teachers, like fine wine, get better with age. [[ValuesDissonance …It was a different time…]]
* HustlingTheMark: In one story, Mr. Weatherbee reveals that when he was younger, he used to hustle people at “pitching pennies". Miss Grundy, who claims to be bad at the pastime, convinces him to show off his skills in a friendly game. If Mr. Weatherbee wins, Miss Grundy buys him lunch and if Miss Grundy wins, he buys her a dozen roses. It turns out Miss Grundy is an expert at the game and she easily defeats him.

* ICantDance: In a story Dilton doesn't know how to dance, so he builds a pair of shoes that dance for him, making him a sensation at the school dance. Then [[LightningCanDoAnything lightning strikes]], the shoes go whack, and things don't end well.

* ImpendingClashShot: Used as TheStinger to ''Archie Meets The Punisher'' as Comicbook/{{Wolverine}} is [[SequelHook about to pounce on Jughead]].

* InformedAttractiveness: Veronica is usually treated in-story (more commonly early on) as more attractive than Betty, despite being famously the [[OnlySixFaces same face]] & body with new hair. It's excusable when one considers that Ronnie dresses much better, often showing more skin, and Betty can compete on an even keel whenever she dresses in skimpy gowns/bikinis.
** One story even makes fun of this, when Archie thinks he's talking to Veronica, only to find out that it's Betty trying out a black wig.

* IntercontinuityCrossover: Archie Meets The Punisher.

* JailBait: Somewhat has UnfortunateImplications in the sense that grown men have discussed how hot Betty and Veronica are for years, but in every incarnation, they're never older than 17. At least they're drawn as busty, curvy grown women and not obviously meant as pedo-bait.[[note]] Please note that the age of consent in New York (where Archie Comics is based) is 17, and in much of the rest of the United States, it's 16. (basically, one must remember that California's strict consent laws don't apply to the rest of the world or even the rest of America)[[/note]]
** Made a bit understandable in the case of people who grew up reading the comics. Betty and Veronica started out as a PrecociousCrush for many young boys.

* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: A comic from the early 70s starts with Reggie yanking away a pennant from Jughead and saying "Take your hands off!" Jughead replies "I can't, they're attached to my arms!" and proceeds to drive Reggie crazy with his incessant recital of "Dem Bones." Later Jughead realizes he may have gone too far and seeks to apologize. He finds Reggie half way around the bend and tells him "I didn't want to upset you." This drives Reggie even crazier as he didn't accept it as a valid apology.
** Archie himself turns into a ScrewySquirrel / KarmicTrickster in a story about a fake rubber hand he borrowed from the art class. He uses it to play practical jokes on Reggie and Big Moose, getting them in trouble with Mr. Weatherbee. Jughead, who disapproves of Archie's behavior, thinks a hand clinging to the outside of a window sill is Archie's fake hand and nudges it off, only to find it was the janitor. Jughead, Reggie and Big Moose wind up serving detention, with Archie delivering a final needle ("I sure wish I could give you a ''hand!''") As Archie laughs outside, three arms from the detention room reach out towards him.

* KavorkaMan: Archie and the other guys aren't ugly, but the men of the Archie universe aren't drawn as sexily as the girls are, yet they often get tons of girlfriends no matter how jealous (Moose), conceited (Reggie), or two-timing (Archie) they are.
** Betty {{Lampshades}} this trope way back in the 50s when complaining how guys can get away with [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/83063953203 "looking like tramps" and girls have to take time and effort to look nice for a date]].
* KidsPreferBoxes:
** An old issue showed the gang as cave people, given presents by Santa: Modern clothes in the sorts of boxes high end stores once used. They find the modern clothes useless, but thank the strange red guy for the wonderful gifts - the immensely useful boxes.
** Betty makes paintings, and one is finally bought by a man raving about how it was just what he needed. He then tosses the painting away as he leaves, continuing to rave about the frame.
* KnowYourVines: One comic ended with the revelation that the corsage Archie gave Veronica to wear at the prom was poison ivy.
* LIsForDyslexia: Moose. He fits all the classic signs, including excelling at sports. In the late 1980s, soon after the publication of a certain best-selling book on dyslexia and intelligence, Miss Grundy tested Moose for dyslexia. She, and other students, began giving him special tutoring geared to his learning style. (It may have come off like a VerySpecialEpisode to a lot of cynics, but to some who actually suffer from the condition, it was likely quite touching).

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: One comic cover (Betty and Veronica No.46, 1994) has Veronica using the barcode as an earring. "Betty: Only Veronica could turn a UPC Box into something chic!"

* MarilynManeuver: Cheryl Blossom in a [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iiKU0OQhIK0/UpZF7qT3V6I/AAAAAAAACm4/8JkEhi9gOy0/s1600/654225.jpg cover]] from her mini-series "Cheryl go to Hollywood" homage Marilyn.
* MeetYourEarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Traveling down Memory Lane often results in this with 2008s characters find themselves face to face to face to face with their version of the 1950s! .
* MistakenForAnImposter: There's a story in which Veronica has Archie masquerade as her dad at the school's father-daughter dance, since Mr. Lodge had to go on a business trip. She gets angry with Archie at some point and then he goes outside, where he finds Mr. Lodge, who cancelled said business trip so he could go to the dance. Mr. Lodge arrives at the dance, but Veronica, still angry with Archie, attempts to expose him and finds out the hard way that she's yelling at her father.
* MistakenForCheating: One story had Archie's mother borrow his jacket and accidentally leave a tube of lipstick in the pocket. Betty and Veronica later borrow Archie's jacket and find the lipstick. They think that Archie is seeing another girl because the lipstick isn't either of their brands, and angrily confront the baffled Archie. Betty and Veronica both dump Archie, but then they realize that this will just make him go after the girl they think he's seeing now. They both come back and smooch Archie to show that they're better than the competition. The story ends with Archie's mother realizing what she did and apologizing if she caused him any trouble, but a love-dizzy Archie just tells her to cause as much of it as she wants.
* MistakenForRacist: In a comic where Veronica has a party. She tells Archie that she doesn't want certain friends of his there. Since he's hanging out with Chuck and Jughead at the time, he thinks she means Chuck (who's black) and becomes angry. Turns out she means Jughead, who tends to be a slob and rather greedy with the food.
* MistakenForSpies: In one of the time-travelling strips, Jughead ended up in the middle of the Civil War and was immediately accused of being a spy for the South until Lincoln himself pardoned him.
* MooseAreIdiots: Referenced, as the person ''named'' Moose is the DumbMuscle.
** In one story, though, he knew enough about sports to help Riverdale win a quiz show with "Sports" as the category.
* MotivationOnAStick:
** Jughead Jones was convinced to ride a stationary bike (using a bag of potato chips) this way in one story.
** In another story, a variant is used to motivate to run faster for the track team. Jughead is outfitted with a special harness with a mirror in front that's positioned to let him see the photo mounted in back, so it looks like his AbhorrentAdmirer is always right behind him.

* MudWrestling: Incredible as it may seem for the G-rated comic, a 1970s story had Betty suffer amnesia and end up being exploited as a sideshow mud wrestler.

* NeverWakeUpASleepwalker: One comic has Jughead, for some unexplained reason, sleepwalk through almost all of his entire school day. To avoid waking him up, the teachers give all of their students tests. During lunch, Jughead stays asleep but eats the food off of everyone's trays. He eventually wakes up when the school bell rings, suffering from no ill effects. The other students aren't very happy.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: When a presidential candidate once visited Riverdale High (he's an alumnus there), Archie, with his camera, snaps a picture of him catching a tripping Miss Grundy (an old friend of his). A sleazy tabloid reporter cons Archie into selling that camera (film included), and proceeds to use his paper to spin tales regarding the two surrounding the picture, ruining the reputations of both Grundy and the candidate. To Archie's credit, once he realizes he's been had, he immediately tries to set things straight.

* NotRareOverThere: In one comic, Jughead loses his hat and is none too concerned, telling Archie not to worry about it and going home. Archie, believing it to be an irreplaceable staple of Jughead's personality, goes to great lengths to retrieve it. When he returns it to Jughead at home, Jughead thanks him, but shows him that he has a cupboard full of them since they tend to get lost or damaged over the years.
* NotSoDifferent: Archie, Reggie, Moose and Jughead once proposed having an RC race after school, but then they had their toys confiscated by the faculty. At the end of the story, the boys didn't get their cars back, but the race is still on… with the teachers playing the toys at the gym.
* NotSoForgottenBirthday: A ''Little Archie Comics'' story presented a subversion of this. Veronica tells Archie that she thinks her dad has forgotten it's her birthday - and he has, because he's busy making plans for next week's Founder's Day celebration. Fortunately for him, Archie thinks he's planning a surprise party for Veronica and rounds up everyone to take part in it.
* NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat:
-->'''Jughead:''' For your information, [[Franchise/GIJoe G. I. Jack]] is an [[LessEmbarrassingTerm action figure!]]\\
'''Archie:''' Not that there's anything wrong with boys playing with dolls if they want to!
%%* OddShapedPanel: Did this routinely in the 1970s.
* OldFashionedRowboatDate: Archie and Betty go on one in a story set in TheGayNineties story.
* OldBeggarTest: Played With in a story. Archie wants to take Veronica out to a concert but can't afford the tickets. Veronica buys them and then tries various ways for Archie to stumble across them so it seems like he's the one treating her rather than vice versa. At one point she hires a homeless man to ask Archie for the directions to Main Street. Archie tells him, "You're on Main Street." The homeless man rewards him by giving the two tickets as a present, but Archie sees through the ruse and goes away after yelling at the man, who is then stuck with a quizzical look and two concert tickets.

* OurNudityIsDifferent:
** In one of the strips set in TheGayNineties, Archie has this reaction to a swimsuit that bares Veronica's… shoulders.
** Another, set in the 1800's, has Betty and Veronica nearly arrested for wearing men's swimwear — a t-shirt and knee-length trunks combo.
** When Betty and Veronica, in a story, meet their old version of the '50s (through the [[PortalToThePast Memory Lane]]), Veronica is called out by the two girls for her "skimpy" outfit that BareYourMidriff.

* ThePatientHasLeftTheBuilding: When Big Ethel wanted to care for a badly injured Jughead (he got hurt trying to run away from her), he fled the hospital.
* PerformanceAnxiety: One story involved Reggie getting stage fright during his first attempt at stand-up comedy, leading to Jughead heckling him, which got Reggie mad enough to reply and then go into the rest of his routine.

* PresentPeeking: Archie bought his mom a sweater for her birthday, and asked Veronica to hide it at her house. However Veronica's mom snoops around for her anniversary present and finds the sweater! What's more, she loves it! But her husband, billionaire Mr. Lodge, had actually bought his wife a mink coat.

* PuddleCoveringChivalry: Parodied in one comic, where dumb jock Moose pushes Archie into a puddle when his girlfriend Midge is concerned about stepping in the water when crossing the street.

* {{Qipao}}: An old comic has Veronica wearing a qipao, and getting furious when everyone comments on her "ripped dress".
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Archie #635 had the "Occupy Riverdale" movement, making Riverdale the most recent area it's affected.

* RipTailoring: One story has Betty and Veronica coming to school wearing the exact same outfit. Veronica sabotages Betty's dress, creating a tear in the bottom part of the skirt. Instead of going home to get her dress replaced, Betty just sews the tear into a fashionable (and very {{Fanservice}}-laden) addition.
* RuleThirtyFour: The company is known for coming down ''hard'' on {{Slash Fic}}s featuring its characters, to the point where Fanfiction.net will no longer accept any kind of Archie-related fanfiction.
** Adultfanfiction.net still accepts them though.

* SaunaOfDeath: In a comic book, Veronica was placed in an overheating steam cabinet and left to die by a supervillain. Jughead (who was in superhero mode) was charged with rescuing her, but didn't do a very good job of it. Losing quite a bit of weight and starving in the ordeal, she consumed a vile concoction the beanied one had prepared earlier for his lunch so as to fatten back up a bit — grossing everyone, including the bad guy, totally out.

* SecretDiary: One story had Betty losing one of her diaries (to be more exact, the one she wrote about her moments with Archie in) and was worried that Veronica would get her hands on it. To make matters worse, Veronica overheard her and offered $100 to anyone who turned it in to her. Fortunately for Betty, Mr. Svenson returned it to her before anyone else could find it.

* SelfParody: The "Night At the Comic Shop" issue had comic book characters come to life. One of the characters was "Wilbur", who dresses pretty much identical to Archie's old design (except with a "W" on his cardigan). He's described as a "wacky teenager who's always chasing girls" and true to art Veronica shows attraction to him.
** This is actually a clever double self-parody; on one level Wilbur is a parody of Archie. On another, Archie Comics are using a pre-existing character for the GeniusBonus of "Yeah, back in the day Archie had spawned a FountainOfExpies, we ripped off our own character for some reason".

* ShamefulShrinking: In a story, Veronica invites Archie to a "high society" party. She berates him like crazy while briefing him for the event, e.g. "You have nothing in common with these blue-bloods, but there's no point in advertising it". At the end, Archie is barely up to Ronnie's socks. Then, Archie runs into Betty, who tells Archie what a great guy he is. Arch walks away literally 10 feet tall.

* SomethingElseAlsoRises: In one story set in the Prehistoric Ages, Veronica was pleased with Archie making her as a model for his mud statue, and kisses him. You can see a ''volcano'' in the background shoot a boulder out of its mouth.
* [[{{Somethingitis}} Something-itis]]: When Archie is being examined by the school doctor.
-->'''Archie:''' I think I've got the bug that's going around.
-->'''Doctor:''' Yes, I know. It's called "Dodge-an-exam-itis".

* SuntanStencil: A story, in which Archie is dating Veronica, has Archie wondering about getting a tattoo or something for Veronica, then dozing off at the beach under a blanket with two small tears in it. On waking up, he discovers that he's one-upped the other beachgoers by getting 'branded' with a 'V'. On his forehead, no less.
* SuperstitionEpisode:
** One where Betty notices it is Friday The Thirteenth, and prepares for it. Unknowingly, she set off DisasterDominoes that missed her, but got everyone around her involved.
** There was one other, with Archie bringing misfortune on himself trying to avoid bad luck – and not being careful.

* TakeOffYourClothes: [[http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics196.html This story]] which really has to be read to be believed.

* TeenSuperspy: At the height of the spy craze during the 1960s, Archie Comics did a series called "The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E." that featured the Archie gang as secret agents.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: One comic created an in-universe example, after Archie and Veronica watched a movie adapted from one of Veronica's favorite romance stories. When Archie asked her afterward if she liked it, she exclaimed that she ''loathed'' it, and spent the rest of the night nitpicking every way the movie deviated from the original events. However, she also developed a crush on the male lead actor, which swiftly eclipsed her hatred of the changes.

* ThroughHisStomach: This is an area where Betty always wins over Veronica.

* TimeTravelersAreSpies: In one comic, Jughead accidentally travels back in time to the UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and is mistaken for a Confederate spy (one of the suggestions being that the S on his shirt stands for "Spy" or "South").
* TokenMinority: Valerie, arguably one of the first in all of comics, debuting in 1969, followed by [[BlackBestFriend Chuck]] and his girlfriend [[TokenMinorityCouple Nancy]] in the 1970s, and Frankie & Maria, a Latino pairing also debuting then, but not catching on as well.

** They introduced a gay character in 2010. This caused MoralGuardians to flip out and [[ScapegoatCreator somehow relate it to President Obama or the Democrats' then-majority in Congress]], and resulted in InternetBackdraft against the MoralGuardians.
*** It was also a ''major'' game-changer in American culture as a whole. Archie Comics has a decades-long reputation as a bastion of "traditional values" due to its rather chaste world and lack of violence or cursing (plus everything Al Hartley did back in the 70's, official or not). Thus, when Archie introduced Kevin Keller and refused to back down, it made national news – after all, if such a conservative place as Riverdale has no problem with a gay man in their midst, then why should anyone else in America take issue?

* TooMuchAlike: In one ''Betty And Veronica'' story, the titular girls bumped into two cute guys in the mall, Jon and Benny, who were pretty much their {{Spear Counterpart}}s. By the end of the story, Betty and Veronica decided that they wouldn't make a good match because they have too much in common.
* TotallyRadical: A notorious case. For example, one late-'80s story had a lifeguard tell a surfing Veronica, "I really dig the way you attacked those waves with your rad moves". Around the same time, an in-house ad for an ''Archie'' calendar featured a cartoon teenager, sporting a ridiculous multi-colored mohawk, oversized shades that Music/EltonJohn would reject, and mismatched-color clothes, telling the reader, "I ordered mine!" Like gnarly, daddy-o, if a rad hepcat teen like him bought one, I better slap down the bread too, yo yo yo.

* TrickedIntoSigning: In one comic story, Reggie decides to write up a petition protesting litter on the beach. Archie is eager to be the first to sign it, so Reggie has him sign it with a nice and large signature before he's even drawn up the petition content. Evil-hearted Reggie then writes up a love note to an anonymous girl. With Archie's signature below it, the note is sure to unleash Betty and Veronica's wrath.

* UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo: In the first issue of Archie Comics, ''Pep Comics'' #28, Archie had just moved into the neighborhood, albeit a couple years younger than he was in later issues and with the nickname "Chick", and tries in his first issue to impress his neighbor Betty Cooper to try to get her to date him through dangerous stunts which she believes make him look arrogant. After Veronica moves in during "Archie Comics 1", the whole dynamic was changed to a BettyAndVeronica format where Betty has a really big and sometimes obsessive crush on Archie.
* UnsoundEffect: In one episode, '''Slamdunk!'''

* VandalismBackfire: Jughead boards a passenger train. The conductor yells at Jug to move his suitcase out of the aisle, but refuses. After another passenger trips on the suitcase, Jughead still refuses to move it, so the conductor throws the valise off the in-motion train. Jughead then says he learned his lesson, and will never leave things where people can stumble over them. After the conductor expresses a little remorse for acting so ruthlessly, Jug calmly adds "...it wasn't even my suitcase."

* VideoPhone: Veronica of the future once got one installed, only to switch back to normal phones because her friends called while she was doing face masks or when she'd just gotten up.

* WardrobeMalfunction:
** A story in ''Veronica'' volume 201 had the girls discover a collection of old-style bathing suits and try them out in the water. The boys didn't really appreciate the cover-everything styles... until it became clear that the old fabric couldn't stand up to water anymore and disintegrated, leaving Betty, Veronica and the rest ''naked'' in the ocean. Heck, this even happened to ''Mrs. Lodge'' who tried out one of the suits at a pool party.
** In another Archie comic, Cheryl stole a dress that Veronica designed and wore it to a party just to laugh in her face - only to find out at that point what a bad seamstress Veronica was. The whole dress ripped apart in front of everyone. (Of course, as humiliating as that was for Cheryl, the story didn't quite end on a high note for Ronnie either...)

* YouMeddlingKids: There is an issue where Archie and Jughead solve a crime and the crooks are being led away in restraints by the police. One crook complains about being stopped by a bunch of dumb kids and Jughead fires back "This 'dumb kid' is not the one wearing handcuffs!"

* YourTelevisionHatesYou: One story had Archie and the gang trying to find some way to escape the heat on a scorching summer day. Eventually they retreat into an air-conditioned movie theatre. the movie showing is called ''Way Down Below'', which they assume will be a SubStory. It turns out to be set in FireAndBrimstoneHell.
* {{Zipperiffic}}: A story has Reggie boasting to Veronica how his outfit is so this. Jughead then draws him with another zipper, on Reggie's mouth.

** ''Comicbook/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' and ''JosieAndThePussycats'' both went through "manga-style" stretches.

** Another story from 1992 opened with Archie and Jughead playing SuperNintendo. Boxes for actual Super Nintendo games were all on the floor in front of them.

* OldBeggarTest: Played in a story. Archie wants to take Veronica out to a concert but can't afford the tickets. Veronica buys them and then tries various ways for Archie to stumble across them so it seems like he's the one treating her rather than vice versa. At one point she hires a homeless man to ask Archie for the directions to Main Street. Archie tells him, "You're on Main Street." The homeless man rewards him by giving the two tickets as a present, but Archie sees through the ruse and goes away after yelling at the man, who is then stuck with a quizzical look and two concert tickets.

Archie Comics pushed for the creation of UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode, and more or less ran it for the entirety of its existence. Archie was the last publisher officially adhering to the Code when it ceased to exist in early 2011.[[note]] Creator/DCComics was the other holdout – although they had been slowly dropping their titles from the Code throughout the 2000's, a few series continued to follow it until the end of 2010. Once DC left the Code, Archie agreed there was no point in keeping it around.[[/note]] Unofficially, they had stopped following it decades earlier, but nobody noticed because things like sex, drugs, or violence were never really part of the Archie universe anyway.

* TotallyRadical: A notorious case. For example, one late-'80s story had a lifeguard tell a surfing Veronica, "I really dig the way you attacked those waves with your rad moves". Around the same time, an in-house ad for an ''Archie'' calendar featured a cartoon teenager, sporting a ridiculous multi-colored mohawk, oversized shades that EltonJohn would reject, and mismatched-color clothes, telling the reader, "I ordered mine!" Like gnarly, daddy-o, if a rad hepcat teen like him bought one, I better slap down the bread too, yo yo yo.

** Betty lampshades this trope way back in the 50s when complaining how guys can get away with [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/83063953203 "looking like tramps" and girls have to take time and effort to look nice for a date]].

* OnlySixFaces: Legendary in pop culture for it. The entirety of the teenage female cast possesses the exact same frame and facial make-up, to the point that Betty and Veronica can switch identities with wigs. Only intentionally "busty" or "curvy" girls, like Cheryl Blossom and Melody Valentine, are different, as well as {{Gonk}} characters like Ethel, or HollywoodPudgy Brigitte. Lampshaded in one issue where Betty wearing a simple brunette wig is enough for Archie (presumably the man ''who loves her'') to mistake her for her rival Veronica.

** There's a story meant to directly {{Lampshade|Hanging}} this, Betty and Veronica swap hair colors just to MindScrew the rest of the gang. All the guys get Archie's haircut and a red dye job to teach them a lesson.

* PoorCommunicationKills: ''Archie'' relies on this trope and most of its subtropes for its humor. In fact, the 2003 Free Comic Books Day comic revolved around hanging a lampshade on it. A kid from the "real world" arrives in Riverdale and points out the repeated cases of misunderstanding and poor communication. Everyone agrees to be more understanding and wait for explanations. And the Universe is instantly boring!

** Dilton is the biggest target for this. One comic lampshades it brilliantly. Archie is attempting to look up a the definition of a word, Jughead suggests he should save time by asking Dilton. Dilton's explanation reflects his usual penchant for scientific jargon. A steamed Archie berates Jughead for his advice, claiming he now has to look up the definitions of several more words.

* BannedInChina: {{In-Universe}} example. Veronica [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veronica_banned_bikini_7152.jpg proudly shows off a bikini she bought]] that had been banned in Boston.

----

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!!Archie's works provide examples of:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: 0-D]]
* OneMillionBC: The series of "Caveman Archie" stories with prehistoric versions of Archie and the rest of the Riverdale gang.
* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain: In a story, Archie recites this statistic to his friends. Moose exclaims that 10% is "almost less than half our brains". Archie muses if the statistic is too high in some cases.
* AbhorrentAdmirer: Big Ethel for Jughead.
* AccidentalAthlete: One story has Archie and Betty walking by the football field while the team is practicing. Archie says that if they were [[DiscussedTrope in an old movie]], a stray ball would fly in his direction and he'd kick it it fifty yards, thus earning him an instant spot on the team. To Archie's chagrin, when a stray football does make it their way, it's ''Betty'' who kicks it straight between the uprights. It seems that "they don't make old movies the way they used to."
* AccidentalHero: A comic had Jughead failing as a security guard until he tripped and fell on a guy who turned out to be a shoplifter.
* AccidentalProposal: In one of the Xmas issues, Moose shows Jughead a jewellery store window with a birthstone ring. He then asks Jughead to find out from his girlfriend, Midge, if she'd like that ring for Christmas. So later, Jug casually asks Midge if she would like the ring in the store window. Midge kisses Jughead and runs off in ultimate excitement. Turns out the jeweller had since placed a diamond engagement ring in the birthstone's spot. Since Moose was normally so jealous that he was known to hospitalize other guys for merely talking to Midge, Jughead was now seriously in deep doo-doo.
* AddictionDisplacement: In an [[TheEighties eighties]] [[VerySpecialEpisode story]] on the dangers of smoking, three teenagers unintentionally create a false fire alarm by chain-smoking in the boys' washroom at school. At the end, they apologize to the principal, Mr. Weatherbee, and inform him that from now on, whenever they have nicotine cravings, they'll chew gum instead.
-->'''Weatherbee:''' Egad! Another habit I don't approve of. Oh, well. You win some, you lose some.
* TheAllegedCar: A running joke on Archie's jalopy.
** [[TakeThat It's a red Ford (a Model "T" in the classic strips and a Mustang converable in the modern ones): "Found On Road, Dead."]]
* AllGuysWantCheerleaders: Multiple cover have Archie (and some boys) show interest to cheerleader, often Betty and Veronica, and easily distracted by them during the games.
* AlliterativeName: Archie Andrews, Jughead Jones, Dilton Doiley, Coach Clayton, Trula Twyst, Evelyn Evernever, and a few others. Some are nicknames or titles, but it still fits. And possibly the best example in this group: Marmaduke Merton Matowski "Moose" Mason.
* AluminumChristmasTrees: Surprisingly, Jughead's trademark beanie was once a ''real'' fashion accessory of 1940s teenagers called a "Whoopee Cap": teens would cut their father's old fedoras into the jagged-edge rim shape, pin buttons on it, and wear them as a fashion statement. Long before that, this style of hat was popular among adult factory workers and mechanics. Nowadays, it has mutated into a form unique in itself, no longer much resembling the real-life version, and just makes Jughead look like a [[http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/12/18/comic-book-legends-revealed-186/ kook.]]
* ArtEvolution:
** There was a massive one in the late 1960s, coinciding with Dan [=DeCarlo=]'s promotion to the artist for nearly all Archie comic covers. Soon, all the new artists were mimicking his style as the 'base' Archie, though a few older artists continued to draw their own way. The shift to the unified "house style" was total enough that the clothing styles are all that can define most stories from the 1960s until now, when a few more "out there" artists like Fernando Ruiz have put their own stamp on the "[=DeCarlo=] Style".
** Then there's the "Dynamic New Look" art style, which goes for a more realistic approach. It's only used for specific story arcs, though.
** ''Comicbook/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' and ''JosieAndThePussycats'' both went through "manga-style" stretches.
** As of 2015, Archie ended their old Archie series that had been going for over 600 issues with a brand-new series with a completely new look.
* ArtisticLicenseSports: One story involves a new kid in town coming out of nowhere to become the star player on Riverdale's baseball team, playing shortstop. His leg is then badly injured when a player on a rival team spikes him, but he reinvents himself as an ace pitcher and leads Riverdale to the championship. It would be a great story if it wasn't utter bullcrap. As anyone who's ever pitched at any level could tell you, it is impossible to pitch on an injured leg, at least with any degree of competency.
** In another issue where Betty becomes a race car driver, the flag bearer at the racetrack waves a checkered flag at the start of her first race. The checkered flag is supposed to signal the end of a race.
* AsleepInClass: One time ([[RecycledScript or maybe more]]) Jughead painted eyeballs on his eyelids so he could sleep in class and look like he wasn't sleeping.
* BaitAndSwitchComment: [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/andswitch1_1088.jpg This sequence]]. "I'd like to compliment you on your good work... WHEN YOU DO SOME!"
* BannedInChina: {{In-Universe}} example. Veronica [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veronica_banned_bikini_7152.jpg proudly shows off a bikini she bought]] that had been banned in Boston.
* BarbieDollAnatomy: There is not one person in the universe who knows what a nipple is.
* BatmanGambit: Reggie and Veronica played a prank on Archie by making up a story about how Mr. Weatherbee was looking for him. Then Weatherbee turns up and he really was looking for someone, to represent the school on a trip to the capital. After Archie recommends Reggie and Veronica, Weatherbee sends various messengers to summon the two to his office (the first of which is Archie himself), but Reggie, thinking that Archie is playing the same gag on him, rebuffs them each and every time. Weatherbee eventually gets fed up, and trails the next messenger, so when Reg and Veronica ignore the summons one last time, he was there, and he sent them off to detention.
* BeautyContest: Beauty contests, often of an impromptu sort, were a staple of stand-alone ''Archie'' stories during TheSeventies and TheEighties in particular. Most often, they took place at the [[BeachEpisode beach]]. A frequently-used premise had the contestants -- which nearly always included Betty and Veronica -- attempt to sweet-talk the judge(s) -- usually Archie, and sometimes Reggie as well -- into voting for them. If Midge was a contestant, this inevitably meant her boyfriend Moose threatening the judge(s) into voting for her (a reversal of the usual GreenEyedMonster Moose plots where merely glancing at Midge from a distance would earn Archie or Reggie a curb stomp).
* BerserkButton: Jughead kicks ass on a pair of robbers when they try to steal the Chocklit Shoppe's hamburger supply.
* BettyAndVeronica: The TropeNamer.
** The interesting thing about them being that Betty and Veronica are ''inseparable best friends''. They have each other's backs 99% of the time, it's just that they both want the same guy (and he's head over heels in love with them both). Stranding the three of them on a deserted island would either lead to murder… or it might be their private idea of Heaven.
** In one comic, Veronica states that they only fight over unimportant things, like boys.
** It was also originally the TropeNamer for ThirdOptionLoveInterest, back when it was known on this wiki as The Cheryl Blossom, after the aforementioned character.
* BettyAndVeronicaSwitch: Interestingly, despite being the TropeCodifier for Betty and Veronica relationships, it gets blurred once [[spoiler:Betty tries to kill Archie in an issue.]]
* BigEater: Jughead is pretty much the biggest example of this in all fiction.
* BigFancyHouse: The Lodge Estate, home of the insanely wealthy Veronica Lodge.
** The Blossom Mansion, Cheryl Blossom's home that's so large it has a tram just to get to Cheryl's bedroom in the "west wing". Archie even comments how her house makes The Lodge Estate look like a ''cottage''.
* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: Betty, Veronica, and Cheryl, since the latter's debut. Betty, Veronica, and Archie, of course. Or [[ComicBook/JosieAndThePussycats Melody, Valerie, and Josie]].
* BoyishShortHair: Cricket and Midge.
* BrandX: Done frequently, with many exceptions. See SubliminalAdvertising, below.
* BratsWithSlingshots: Veronica's (seemingly forgotten) cousin Leeroy, also frequently used by kids in general
* BreakingTheFourthWall: Frequently used – characters will "talk to the audience", and several #100 issues will have the characters deciding exactly ''how'' to celebrate their "[[MilestoneCelebration 100th issue]]".
* BreakUpMakeUpScenario: Soooo many...
* BroadStrokes: One theory about the comics is that they all take place in parallel universes, which would nicely take care of plenty of {{Canon}} problems, along with the many comics that seem to be almost [[AesopAmnesia complete duplicates of previous plots]].
** [[NotAllowedToGrowUp Not to mention the age problems]].
** The first issue of ''ComicBook/LifeWithArchieTheMarriedLife'' actually includes a display of an ''Archie'' {{multiverse}}. Dimensions include "The Happy Days of the 1940s-50s", "The Fantasy World of Little Archie", and "Archie's New Look," among others.
* ButterFace: Big Ethel, in her early days. Eventually FailPolish set in big time, to the point that in the '90s she was downright attractive with just a bad Pebbles Flintstone haircut.
* CallingMeALogarithm: Moose has a very limited vocabulary.
--> '''Moose''': "Duhhh hey! Who are you calling an Idiom!?"
* CanonForeigner: For "The New Archies", a version featuring the group set in their middle school era, the characters of Amani and Eugene were created. "Fangs" Fogarty and Ambrose appear in the elementary-setting "Little Archie". None of the four made it to the mainstream continuity in anything other than a one-shot or cameo.
** Ambrose's absence in the main stories is explained once by him moving away. There is one main story where he comes back for a visit and rekindles with Archie.
* CanonImmigrant: Betty's older siblings, Polly (a reporter) and Chick (a spy). Both debuted in the ''Little Archie'' stories of Bob Bolling when older teens were needed for the kiddie-based tales. Later on, Kathleen Webb added them to the mainline continuity as successful siblings who'd moved out of the Cooper household. ''Betty's Diary'' stories made the most use out of them- otherwise it [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]] (they weren't even at her Future Wedding!).
* CaptainGeographic: Some of the superheroes.
* CavalierConsumption: Jughead is normally apathetic and somewhat aloof. The only thing he openly takes seriously is food. This results in his eating during serious discussions, with other characters getting annoyed at him. However, more often than not he really is paying attention and is simultaneously thinking on two levels: About his food and about the discussion at hand.
* CelibateHero: Jughead doesn't so much hate women anymore as he is simply not interested in romance, believing it complicates a guy's life and taxes his funds. This doesn't keep girls from hitting on him, though. Big Ethel is usually the one who pursues him, although in one story all the girls in Riverdale pursued Jughead because he was the only guy ''not'' wearing an overpowering cologne at a school dance, much to his chagrin. His blatant misogyny was altered by 1989 into being conflicted problems over women, as he had many romantic liaisons during the '90s: Joani Jummp, Debbie, January [[=McAndrews=]], Anita the disabled girl, etc.
** He also has a magical hatpin at one point that attracts girls. In a subversion, the pin [[DependingOnTheWriter (sometimes)]] makes him want to be with girls.
*** In one story, he gets a date with a girl named Terri thanks to Reggie trying to make her think Jughead's the "Second-Best Romeo In Town" but with the pin drawing Terri to Jughead, Reggie gets thwarted – and the small-scale VillainousBreakdown he goes through once Archie told what went on is priceless.
** It was explained in one comic that Jughead stays away from girls because he's witnessed how much grief they cause Archie.
--> '''Archie:''' I wonder where he found Her?
--> '''Reggie:''' You wouldn't believe me even if I ''told'' you!!
* CharacterBlog: The Archie comics website has character blogs for [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/archie/ Archie]], [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/betty/ Betty]], [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/veronica/ Veronica]], [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/reggie/ Reggie]], and [[http://www.archiecomics.com/blog/jughead/ Jughead]].
* CharacterDevelopment:
** Betty was initially shown as a more typical "domestically talented" girl, and often rather ditzy. By the 1960s, the Women's Lib movement had converted her to the more familiar tomboyish/girly-girl mix, and boosted her intelligence by a great deal.
** Jughead has also gone through a transformation, from a one-note girl-hater (often blatantly misogynistic to the point of "hating dames") into a character sometimes conflicted (the Joani Jumpp years, the recent "New Style" arc, dating a handicapped girl, etc.) about love for women, ultimately returning to the less complicated world of food.
** In the Archie's Marriage Omakes, Moose realizes that he's being abusive and possessive towards Midge, and breaks up with her. He also calms down a lot, presumably to avoid an assault charge now that he's an official adult.
* ChasedOffIntoTheSunset: A story had Jughead timing Archie for the latter's partaking in a track meet, where he is astonished to learn that he just broke the record for being the fastest there is. Come the day of the track meet, after Archie wins the race, Coach Kleats then reveals to Archie that Jughead's stopwatch is actually a lot slower than Archie, which angers Archie so much that he starts chasing Jughead at the end of the story.
* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Betty, the Victorious one, when Archie marries her. Romance sweeps the entire town when this happens.
** Of course, she turns into the Unlucky one when he marries Veronica, complete with unemployment. Naturally, the latter gets by pretty well when he marries the former instead.
* ChristmasEveryDay: In one issue, Jingles allows Archie to repeat Christmas Eve for a day so Archie can have more time to prepare, but the computer he used to turn back time gets frozen into a loop.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Used too frequently to even list all the victims. A comic with a fairly large base cast that constantly introduced new recurring characters in nearly every year, this happens a ''lot''. Ask old-school fans about "Adam the Alien", Jinx Malloy, January [=McAndrews=] or Cricket O'Dell. Even Cheryl Blossom got this in the 80s. A few characters are actually shown moving away (Cheryl in the late 1990s), but most are just casually ignored with no mentions after a few years of appearances. We'll see where the new pair of Asian girls, Wendy Weatherbee, and others end up.
** Many characters (Jinx, Cricket) simply got DemotedToExtra, while others, like Frankie Valdez, were shown having moved back to Riverdale. With Archie Comics, it's hard to tell if someone's really been dropped, as an occasional comic will have one of these minor age-old characters reappear as if nothing was different. Not to mention the Digests that reprint old stories.
* {{Cliffhanger}}: Any time Betty and Veronica try to make Archie choose between them in any media ever. True, the whole franchise runs off the LoveTriangle, but it really does have to end some time.
* ClingyJealousGirl:
** Betty and Veronica both become more than a little crazy whenever another girl takes an interest in Archie.
** Less commonly seen is how Midge goes nuts whenever another girl shows too much interest in Moose.
* ClockDiscrepancy: In a comic, Big Eater Jughead is in class, and informs the teacher, Miss Grundy, that "his stomach" says its lunchtime. She reminds Jug that the clock on the wall reads 10 before noon. At that moment, the school janitor Mr. Svenson enters the classroom with a ladder. The purpose? To adjust the clock, which he said was running ten minutes slow.
* ComicBookTime: Archie and the gang have been in high school for nearly seventy years. Someone once wrote in to the ''Archie'' letters column demanding an explanation for this, theorizing that the characters must be really, really dumb if they can't graduate. Reggie Mantle (yes, the character) responded by explaining that he and the other characters had simply [[CursedWithAwesome been stuck with eternal youth]].
* CongruentMemory
** There was one Betty and Veronica comic where Veronica was studying for a test while lying on the floor of her room. When the day of the test came around, she couldn't remember any of the information — until she lay down on the floor of the classroom in the same position she'd studied in.
** In another story, Jughead could throw snowballs easily, but couldn't get the same feeling when handling a normal baseball.
** In the same vein, Jughead was once scouted for the opera thanks to his bombastic singing voice — unfortunately, he only sang well in enclosed spaces because he did most of his singing in the bathtub.
* CoveredInKisses: Happens regularly to Archie, often from Betty.
* ConvictionByContradiction: Believe it or not, there have been a few stories where this tropes is ''inverted'' to prove a character's innocence, to prove that a painting is a forgery, etc.
* CrazyJealousGuy: The prevalent example is the ''extremely'' jealous Moose, who gets very angry whenever anyone hits on his girlfriend Midge, leading him to usually hit them as punishment.
* CriminalDoppelganger: In the {{Crossover}} ''ComicBook/ArchieMeetsThePunisher'', a criminal the Punisher has tracked to Riverdale looks very similar to Archie. The story also ends with Comicbook/{{Wolverine}} learning about [[HereWeGoAgain a dangerous mutant who looks like Jughead]].
* {{Crossover}}: Most Archie Comics characters are accepted to be in the same universe, so it's reasonable for Sabrina to show up in an Archie story, or for The Archies to perform alongside Josie and the Pussycats. The biggest example is the Civil Chore(s) story, where the writers get as many characters as they can think of together for a single-page spread.
** Or that time ComicBook/ThePunisher showed up in Riverdale in ''ComicBook/ArchieMeetsThePunisher'', one of the oddest crossovers in the entire history of comics.
** Or the ComicBook/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|Adventures}}. Coming to us in 1991 we have the '87 cartoon versions of the turtles getting vomited out of a floating, dimension spanning cow’s head (Cudley the Cowlick). Archie and the green team eventually join up and rescue Veronica from a kidnapping attempt, and still have time to get their pizza eating on before the turtles return to their own dimension.
** There also was a crossover with ''ComicBook/TinyTitans''.
** Archie 641-644 has one with ''Series/{{Glee}}'' where Dilton finds a way into the Glee universe and accidentally ends up swapping some characters around. Characters like Veronica, Jughead and Dilton end in Glee universe and viceversa.
** In issue 627 we have a 4 part mini-series where monsters are unleashed onto poor Riverdale and only the rock gods Music/{{KISS}} can save the day.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: A non-combat version with Coach Kleats. He appears to be a slow-and-overweight gym teacher and coach, and indeed, he can't run well and would kill himself if he slid into a base. But he can still hit every pitch out of the park or thread a needle with a high-velocity football pass, which is why he never ''had'' to run in either sport.
* CrushingHandshake: A story had this happen to Mr. Weatherbee when congratulating substitute hall monitor Maria Rodriguez for teaching the other students not to run in the halls. Maria is actually a [[StrongerThanTheyLook lot stronger than she looks]] so she crushes the 'Bee's hand while giving him a handshake. The last panel shows Mr. Weatherbee getting his hand bandaged by Miss Grundy.
* CutenessProximity: Characters are prone to this in general, especially Betty and Veronica. But what might be the most notable example was when Chuck marched around town being a jerk for some reason, and Archie stopped this by putting a kitten in his path. Chuck immediately picked up and played with the kitten.
* DaintyLittleBalletDancers: In one story, Archie and Reggie make fun of Veronica's "sissy" ballet instructor, until [[DanceBattler he uses dance moves to beat up]] some thugs threatening them. The two of them then take ballet lessons with him themselves.
* DarkerAndEdgier:
** The original ''Life With Archie'' series (1958-1991) featured longer, more "adventure" oriented stories than the typical Archie titles, including elements like five-alarm fires, attempted kidnappings, and... [[http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/01/life-in-riverdale-surprisingly.html mysterious Satanic boxes that melt people's faces off]].
** ''The Married Life'', which follows up the WhatIf storyline "Archie Marries Veronica/Archie Marries Betty", which was itself a revival of the "Life with Archie" series. Both story lines feature a dramatic soap opera-stlye depiction of the issues of married life. Both timelines end tragically with Archie dying in the "The Death of Archie".
** "Secrets of the Deep", one of those adventure-oriented stories, had an evil treasure hunter shooting at the gang with a spear gun and setting an electric eel on them!
** Which is nothing compared to 2013's ''Afterlife With Archie'' series, a straight hardcore horror written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa,[[note]] Creator of the comic adaptation of Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheStand'' and an upcoming film remake of ''Literature/{{Carrie}}''[[/note]] where Sabrina zombifies Jughead's deceased dog, who in turn bites Jughead, unleashing a plague of zombies upon Riverdale. In addition, the series contains several risque jokes and Veronica wears a SexyWhateverOutfit to the Halloween dance while Betty wears a NaughtyNurseOutfit (although at one point a character still says "[[GoshDangItToHeck Hades]]" instead of "Hell"). It is highly likely that this comic would not have been publishable had Archie Comics not ended UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode.
** To give you an idea of just how disturbing it is, they brought a model of a sandwich with Veronica's severed head to Comic-Con!
** ''ComicBook/ArchieVsPredator'' decides to go both ways by keeping the overall light tone of the original comics while also brutally murdering everyone.
* DependingOnTheArtist: The physical and [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield geographical]] characteristics of Riverdale and its local landmarks change seemingly at will.
** These things change within stories drawn by the same artist, too, especially the design of Veronica and Archie's homes. Dan [=DeCarlo=] said in an interview that the publishers once tried to make him establish a consistent look for the interior of Archie's house, but he found it was too limiting.
* DependingOnTheWriter: Many characteristics of the characters vary over the years and between writers. Variable character traits include: Jughead's hatred of women (misogyny versus avoidance of romance), Betty's obsessiveness regarding Archie (ie. is she crazy, or just a standard young girl in love?), Veronica's bitchiness, Reggie's evil, Mr. Lodge's heartless businessman tendencies, and Archie's womanizing. Various character traits are up for grabs as well – Archie is either the best or the worst athlete on any given sports team, Jughead is either a poor or very good student, and Betty's siblings tend to disappear depending on what the current writer knows about her past. Even Betty and Veronica's status as best friend, while usually fairly consistent, has fluctuated in the past, with at least one story showing them outright hating each other.
** Enough that one could imagine that the comic spans multiple {{Alternate Universe}}s. [[FridgeBrilliance Actually, that would explain a lot]]. In fact it's implied this is canon, though the universes aren't separated by decades.
* DisneyAcidSequence: Some of the 60's-70's era "The Archies" comics.
* DispelMagic:
** The RichBitch Alexandra Cabot from ''ComicBook/JosieAndThePussycats'' series can cast witchcraft spells, but these are fragile spells whose effects are ended by as little as Melody Valentine snapping her fingers, which Melody is wont to do.
** ComicBook/{{Sabrina|TheTeenageWitch}} has cast a few of her spells so weakly, they were negated by three claps.
* DistaffCounterpart:
** Josie and her early friends were very much opposite-gender versions of the Archie gang- a redhead hero, a quirky best friend, a blonde nice character and a brunette nasty one competing over the hero, etc.
** Gender-flipped in a ''Betty and Veronica'' comic that sees the young women meet a wealthy, brunette young man named Don Sodge, and his middle-class, blonde friend Benny. The similarities they share with Betty and Veronica go so far as to have both of them trapped in a LoveTriangle with a redheaded young woman, Andi Archer. After Betty and Veronica decide to go home, Veronica and the guys awkwardly share this exchange:
--->'''Don:''' Is it because you don't think we have anything in common?\\
'''Benny:''' Is that it?\\
'''Veronica:''' Gulp! No! Absolutely not! In fact, we have too much in common! 'Bye!
* DistractedByTheSexy:
** Archie would occasionally have this problem very times that see a cute girl. Once he somehow managed to trip over a floor buffer in a hallway that had [[OffscreenTeleportation been two frames earlier completely clear.]]
** Another notable example is Veronica deliberately pulling this trope on the boys in gym class, much to Coach Kleats' annoyance. Archie gets back at her by strolling through the girls' gym class in the same way.
* TheDitz: Melody. She is an absent-minded, bubbly sort of character often taken to using silly, nonsense language, and provides much of the comic relief of the series.
* DontTryThisAtHome: One story where Veronica directly addresses the reader has her cautioning them not to follow her example, saying that she's rich and spoiled and hatching evil schemes is [[YouBastard "expected"]] of her.
* DoubleStandard:
** This is actually a frequent occurrence, with guys always being given the short end of the stick. Whenever there's a competition between guys and girls, the guys will be made extremely arrogant and put the girls down (even when this makes them OutOfCharacter) before being on the receiving end of a CurbStompBattle, but on the few occasions the guys actually win, it's always [[DownToTheLastPlay very close]] and ends with the focus on the girls in a way that encourages the reader to feel sorry for them. Then again, the target audience is young girls, [[EnforcedTrope so...]]
** Guys are also constantly assaulted by girls in various ways – slapping, kicking, pushing, hitting with their purses, being thrown into a river, and other various ways that would realistically result in some sort of legal trouble, yet they're just laughed off. On the very, very, ''very'' rare occasion a girl gets hit by a guy, it's never anything even ''close'' to what girls have done to guys over the years, and a ''huge'' deal is made out of it.
** Used in one of the comics, when Midge gets annoyed with Moose for hitting men merely for ''talking'' to her. During the course of the day, Midge catches him helping out Betty and Veronica with various things and points out to him that if she were being that friendly with a boy, he'd be furious. Moose decides that she's right and promises to ease up. [[spoiler:Turns out that this was all set up by Midge to begin with and Betty and Veronica were in on it]]. This turns into HypocriticalHumor when we see that Midge goes just as crazy whenever another girl takes a romantic interest in Moose.
* DramaticCurtainToss: Frequently. There is at least one story where Archie accidentally knocks off the head on a statue of a local businessman; he has it repaired in time for the official unveiling of the statue, but when the curtain comes off, we find out the repairman screwed up and put the head of a pig on instead. Oops.
* DumbBlonde:
** Betty Cooper used to be this in some early stories, before Women's Lib put the kibosh on that. She was often confused, ditzy, and a total loser compared to Veronica, rather than the smart, funny, athletic girl we all know today.
*** Subverted in a story where Archie shows up at Betty's house to beg her to mend a torn pocket for him in time for his date with Veronica. Betty pretends to be so ditzy and disorganized that it takes her about eight hours to do the simple repair job, during which time Archie is forced to stay there with her and stand up Veronica entirely.
** Melody would also count. There was a story in which she was certain that nylons were an endangered animal and that Josie and Alexandra's fake fur coats were made from "cute, cuddly orlons".
** Long before (as in nearly two decades before) Melody there was ComicBook/{{Suzie}} who was in many ways a Proto-Melody being a very sweet natured and gorgeous but clueless blonde.
* DumbMuscle: Moose.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: E-H]]
* EgocentricTeamNaming: Archie named his rock-n-roll group "The Archies". You'd think ''Reggie'' (if no one else) would have a problem with that.
** ''That Wilkin Boy'' featured Bingo's band the Bingoes, who were just [[{{Expy}} Expies]] of the Archies.
* EverytownAmerica: Riverdale
* {{Expy}}: Archie has Expies in Wilbur Wilkin (though Wilbur actually debuted first, he quickly became like Arch) and Bingo Wilkin years later. Both were clumsy guys who were girl-crazy. Both had Reggie-like antagonists and Jughead-like weird friends as well.
* EraSpecificPersonality: Betty was originally portrayed as feminine and somewhat of a DumbBlonde. Archie leaned heavily towards Veronica for a period and thus Betty was often trying to break them up. Fans often note Betty seemed outright {{yandere}} in older works however she was eventually mellowed down into the sweet tomboy we know today.
* [[EvenEvilHasStandards Even Jerkasses Have Standards]]: When Cedric, the best friend of Jason Blossom, sabotages Dilton to have Pembrooke Academy (his and Jason's school then) win a quiz show, Moose manages to win on a sports question, and then clobbers Cedric when he found out what Cedric did to his "little buddy." Jason, understandably, congratulates the Riverdale team and leaves Cedric hurting.
* EyesAlwaysShut: Jughead, famously. He'll open them if shocked or surprised, and spent a good deal of the 1990s with them consistently as open as everyone else's, but usually it's his trademark along with the hat and sweater. Other characters often point this trait out, and it's usually seen as him being too lazy to open them all the way. In one comic he went to an eye doctor and passed with flying colors with his eyes still closed. These days the artist seems to compromise with his eyelids drooping but not quite closed most of the time.
* {{Fanservice}}: To an ''amazingly'' large extent, considering that Archie is mostly for girls. Artist Dan [=DeCarlo=] was a cheesecake art ''king'', and featured the girls in the skimpiest bikinis allowed in any era, to say nothing of major sexpots like Melody (who suffered ClothingDamage at least once) and Cheryl.
** This was parodied in one story, in which Betty and Veronica stumble across a nudist camp. When they tell Mr. Lodge later, they say that they'll ''never'' be nudist… as they go off in their bikinis.
** The popularity of [=DeCarlo=]'s cheesecake art was such that the company released its first glossy hardcover book (think coffee table reading) called ''The Art of Betty & Veronica''. While the book mostly explores how the art style of the comics has changed over the years, it's no small coincidence that the cover features Betty and Ronnie modelling in swimsuits.
* FanVid: This DarkerAndEdgier [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djRAiiFlCy8 fake trailer]].
* FemaleGaze: Not as utilized as its SpearCounterpart, but there have been well-drawn hunks that the girls would admire (or said hunks admiring girls). Sometimes a DoubleStandard would [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/100631322434 be lampshaded]].
---> '''Archie:''' Say! What's going on? ''(catching Betty and Veronica viewing through binoculars)''
---> '''Veronica:''' Just a little harmless boy-watching!
---> '''Reggie:''' [[{{Hypocrite}} But girls aren]][[StayInTheKitchen 't supposed to boy watch!]]
---> '''Archie:''' It's unheard of!
---> '''Veronica:''' You just heard of it!
* FemininityFailure: One issue had Veronica teaching Betty to be more ladylike (which was essentially her teaching Betty to be identical to her mannerisms). Everything was going well until she spotted a couple of kids playing catch, which ends with her joining them and landing in a tree in retrieving the ball when it got stuck up there. While Veronica is annoyed with the turn of events, the kids all laud Betty as a hero.
* FirstEpisodeSpoiler: The third strip of the newspaper comic revealed that actually, Veronica's so rich that she has a private chauffeur take her to school, making Archie look pretty stupid with his bragging about owning his very own car.
* FiveManBand: They often trade roles depending on the writer, but this is the most common arrangement:
** TheHero: Archie
** TheLancer: Jughead
** TheBigGuy: Reggie
** [[TheSmartGuy The Smart Girl]]: Betty
** TheChick: Veronica
** TeamPet: Hot Dog
*** Also ''literally'' a five-man band as The Archies – Archie on lead guitar, Reggie on bass guitar, Jughead on drums, Betty on tambourine and Veronica on keyboard.
* FiveTokenBand: Sort of; while not meeting the numbers requirements, virtually all of the new class of characters are of a non-white ethnicity, as if the Editors are deliberately building a "one of each type" mentality. Lightly subverted in that the new characters now include a rare ''four'' Asians -- one Chinese, two Japanese, and one Indian.
* FlashForward: ''Archie Marries Veronica'' and ''Archie Marries Betty'', which are set after the gang has graduated from college.
* ForHalloweenImGoingAsMyself: In one story, Archie and Jughead are dressed as vampires and accidentally get invited to a party full of real monsters, who are celebrating because this is the one day of the year they can walk around normally.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Archie is Sanguine, Veronica is Choleric, Betty is Melancholic and Jughead is Phlegmatic.
* FormFittingWardrobe: Much of the clothing the girls wear.
* FreakyFridayFlip:
** One comic has Dilton accidentally switch Archie's and Mr. Weatherbee's minds, making each the two spend one night and one day in the other's life. To help remind readers that Archie and Mr. Weatherbee had each other's minds, "Archie"'s word and thought balloons have pictures of The Bee in them, and "Mr. Weatherbee"'s word and thought balloons have pictures of Arch.
** One issue of Veronica own book featured a mystical pendant that swapped her with her own mother for a day. The two need to attend a fancy party together, and predictable shenanigans ensue. After that, the two just decide to wait it out, and pass the time with card games long into the night.
* FrenchCuisineIsHaughty: The cook at the Lodge house is Gaston, a very temperamental French chef.
* FrenchMaid: The Lodge have some of these in their mansion. Once Archie is ''too attentive'' to Veronica's new French maid.
* FriendlyRivalry: Betty and Veronica [[DependingOnTheWriter sometimes]] have this dynamic.
* FriendVersusLover: Archie at the center, with Jughead as the friend vs. Betty/Veronica.
* FurBikini: Betty and Veronica tended to wear them in "Archie 1" Caveman-era stories.
* TheGayNineties: One writer, Al Hartley, did a few stories with the Archie gang in the 1890s: dedicated to telling everyone how much better things were back then. Weirdly, these were written in the 1970s, long after the craze for gay Nineties nostalgia had died. Check it out [[http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics210.html here]] (with added snark for your reading pleasure).[[note]] Al Hartley was the son of Fred Hartley, the ultraconservative Congressman who cosponsored the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act. Al himself became a born-again Christian around the time he was hired by Archie. He often used the comic to promote his beliefs, culminating in him producing (with Archie's reluctant permission) a series of explicitly Christian Archie comics for an Evangelical publisher in the late 70's.[[/note]]
* GenderBender: In "The Great Switcheroo", Comicbook/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch's cat Salem casts a spell that changes the sex of everybody in Riverdale. The story plays a bit like a GenderFlip in execution, as none of the transformed characters know what their "true" sex is supposed to be, but it "really" happened, and Sabrina's eventual reversal spell isn't actually a ResetButton. There's even video evidence suggesting that the gang spent a day as the opposite sex, even if none of them remember it.[[note]] ''Archie'' #636 (2012)[[/note]]
* GenderIncompetence: Seen in a lot of older Archie stories, usually typical of the era:
** A late 1960s or 1970s storyline focused on the cluelessness of women. Archie's mom goes into a frenzy trying to find her purse, which Mr. Andrews exasperatedly reveals has been in front of her all along; Archie learns from this situation and later willfully ignores Veronica while she desperately searches for her own purse, until it is, again, found to be right in front of her. Mr. Lodge then compliments him on his understanding of females.
** Another "classic" example of this ended up being reprinted in a more modern double digest. It demonstrated the ridiculousness of working professional women. The reader is invited to consider how silly it would be to have women in men's jobs, with funny vignettes portraying women failing in a number of professions including police officer and doctor.
* GeographicFlexibility: Riverdale has been shown having a local beach, a mountain range, a river, a lake, several ponds, cold winters and hot summers; and has been described as either a tiny one-school town or a fairly large city, with an airport, a stock exchange, large businesses and TV studios... basically anything any story could need, ever, just for the sake of convenience.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Has [[Radar/ArchieComics his page]].
* GoneSwimmingClothesStolen: While on a wilderness outing with Archie, Betty becomes covered with mud and washes off in a nearby lake,only to have her clothes stolen by a homeless boy. Archie loans her his shirt to cover up with while they track down what happened.
* GrandRomanticGesture: Frequently it shows Archie pulling these off for Veronica, who is hard to please. Some examples: making a giant Valentine card for her, building a heart out of snow and spelling "Archie Loves Veronica" in coal, buying her jewelry he can't afford...
* GretzkyHasTheBall: In one issue, the Riverdale team shows up to a football game, and the rival team is female. One CurbStompBattle later, Archie and Reggie are moping around, depressed, when Betty and Veronica ask to be shown how to "shoot baskets with this horse hide"[a football]. Reggie and Archie walk off with the girls in hand, going "[[CompletelyMissingThePoint When will you learn football is a man's game]]!" The girls wink at each other.
* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Each major Archie series has a blonde heroine who is kinder, sweeter, more innocent and more beautiful than all the other female characters. In the Archie series it's Betty, in Sabrina it's Sabrina, in the Josie stories it's Melody, and in the Wilbur series it's Laurie. (Each of these series also has a contrasting black haired villainess who is nastier and more worldly than all the other female characters. In the Archie series it's Veronica, in Sabrina it's Gemini Stone, in the Josie series it's Alexandra, and in the Wilbur series it's Linda.)
** Some might disagree that Betty is supposed to be more beautiful than Veronica, but it's well established by many stories that Veronica's charm over boys is due to her expensive (and often revealing) clothes, and that blondes are aesthetically the top of the pile in Riverdale.
** The other Archie teen series tend to have blonde heroines as well, like Samantha in That Wilkin Boy and the titular heroine in Suzie, but although these girls are sweet and beautiful, they don't have all characteristics of the trope.
* {{Headdesk}}: After ignoring a warning from his mom that it looks like rain and he might catch a cold if he goes out, Archie and Jughead both get soaked and head for Veronica's place. After going through a sauna and doing laps of a pool to try and avoid getting sick ("No germ would be stupid enough to stick around for that punishment") Archie gets home and...sneezes. "Banging your head against a wall is not an accepted cold medicine!"
* HeldBackInSchool: Jughead discovering he had never graduated grade school had to do a make-up test to avoid this.
* HelloNurse: Various characters nearly always draw this reaction? Veronica, Cheryl Blossom and Melody Valentine, most often.
** Veronica and Cheryl when are in bikini (especially in the covers for Veronica) or in other skimpy outfits. Betty usually only does if and when she dresses up for an occasion to one-up Ronnie.
** For Melody of ''ComicBook/JosieAndThePussyCats'', the RunningGag is that she causes this reaction wherever she goes and is [[DumbBlonde too naive/dumb]] to notice.
** Betty and Veronica themselves are not immune when see an handsome boy. Especially their boy.
* HelpingGrannyCrossTheStreet: A 1970s issue of ''Archie's Joke Book'' had a one-page joke in which Moose carried Miss Beazley, the high school lunch server, across a busy street, ignoring her protests. After they reach the other side, she tells him that she didn't want to cross the street in the first place.
** Archie and Betty come across Jughead and an old woman cross the street, and they find it sweet on Jughead's part… until they learn that she's his aunt and that it was ''she'' who was helping Jughead.
* HeManWomanHater: Jughead was a prominent example of this till the writers began toning his misogyny down in the 1980s. By the 21st century it had virtually disappeared, though he remained uninterested in romance most of the time.
* HeterosexualLifePartners: Archie and Jughead, obviously. More so in Juggie's case than Archie's, since Archie's shown hitting on anything in a skirt, and will readily bail on his best friend.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Most schemes hatched by the characters will backfire in one way or another. When Archie is trying to save money for his date with Veronica even though he promised to take Betty for a drive in the country, he tries to keep Betty distracted from wanting to buy lunch. He ends up getting a speeding ticket, which Betty points out is a lot more expensive than if they'd stopped for hot dogs and ice cream.
** One story had Archie, Betty and Veronica participating in some charity bike ride. Veronica decides to pull a WoundedGazelleGambit, acting like she had fallen off of her bike. Unfortunately for her, the "injury" meant that she couldn't be at the dance that night. Veronica gets mad and kicks her bicycle. This time, she ''does'' injure herself.
** Once, Veronica tricks Betty into humbling a chauvinistic Archie in tennis, only for Ronnie to play the hapless beginner in her own match against Archie, even though Veronica is already shown as being better at tennis than Betty. The manager of the country club later recruits Archie to be a representative in a mixed doubles tournament, and Veronica suggests herself, naturally, to be his partner. Archie instead chooses who he believes is much better than him, Betty. Whoops...
* HollywoodMagnetism: There was a story in which Archie acquired a very large magnet, which he carried in the back seat of his car. As he and Jughead traveled, the magnet attracted anything and everything that was made of metal.
* HollywoodPudgy:[[invoked]] Brigitte is meant as AnAesop on judging people by their appearances, as she's Riverdale's only fat girl. Unfortunately, they made her as pretty as most of the female cast (just with a double-chin), and only slightly overweight.
* HomeAloneAntics: One story has Archie and Jughead house-sitting for Mr. Lodge. Although the mansion has a sophisticated security system, the boys decide to play it safe and add some extra anti-burglar defenses, involving the usual buckets of water, tin cans, flypaper, etc. Of course, Mr. Lodge comes home and walks into all the booby traps.
** [[spoiler:Hilariously, Archie and Jughead sleep soundly through the racket.]]
* HotTeacher: One issue from TheSeventies features a young female substitute teacher so attractive that all of her male students are too distracted with the floating {{Heart Symbol}}s above their heads to pay attention to their schoolwork.
** SoBeautifulItsACurse: At the end of the issue, Principal Weatherbee ''fires her'', telling her that teachers, like fine wine, get better with age. [[ValuesDissonance …It was a different time…]]
* HustlingTheMark: In one story, Mr. Weatherbee reveals that when he was younger, he used to hustle people at “pitching pennies". Miss Grundy, who claims to be bad at the pastime, convinces him to show off his skills in a friendly game. If Mr. Weatherbee wins, Miss Grundy buys him lunch and if Miss Grundy wins, he buys her a dozen roses. It turns out Miss Grundy is an expert at the game and she easily defeats him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: I-L]]
* ICantDance: In a story Dilton doesn't know how to dance, so he builds a pair of shoes that dance for him, making him a sensation at the school dance. Then [[LightningCanDoAnything lightning strikes]], the shoes go whack, and things don't end well.
* {{Ice Queen}}s: Veronica and Trula.
* InterclassFriendship: Betty and Veronica. Betty is not dirt poor, but everyone in Riverdale is in comparison with the super-rich Lodge family. When they're not feuding over Archie, they're good friends. And when they are, it's mostly [[FriendlyRivalry friendly]].
* ImpendingClashShot: Used as TheStinger to ''Archie Meets The Punisher'' as Comicbook/{{Wolverine}} is [[SequelHook about to pounce on Jughead]].
* ImprobablyCoolCar: Archie's jalopy, believe it or not. In 1941, the 1916 Ford Model T was a car around 8-9 years older than Archie himself (completely believable). In 1980, it was a museum piece.
** The 1966 Mustang that replaced it has gone through a similar process – a believable cheap beater in 1983 (even as a convertible); a pricey, sought-after classic now. Time to scan the schematics for a '99 Honda Civic into the [[Blog/TheComicsCurmudgeon AJGLU-3000]]…
* IncompatibleOrientation: Veronica tries her hardest to flirt with Kevin. Too bad he happens to be the only gay man in town.
* InformedAttractiveness: Veronica is usually treated in-story (more commonly early on) as more attractive than Betty, despite being famously the [[OnlySixFaces same face]] & body with new hair. It's excusable when one considers that Ronnie dresses much better, often showing more skin, and Betty can compete on an even keel whenever she dresses in skimpy gowns/bikinis.
** One story even makes fun of this, when Archie thinks he's talking to Veronica, only to find out that it's Betty trying out a black wig.
* InkSuitActor:
** KISS, when they crossed over with Archie.
** Pat Kiernan, the reporter covering Occupy Riverdale, is the morning anchor for NY1, a 24-hour cable-news television channel focusing on the five boroughs of New York City. (He's also known for playing himself or a reporter in several TV and movie cameos, and hosting/"question reading" a few game shows in the 2000s. Wiki/TheOtherWiki has more info on his career.)
* InnocentBlueEyes: Whenever Betty or Archie's eye color is mentioned in the script, it's almost always blue. In one story, Betty suggests that this is a good reason for the two of them to become a couple.
* IntercontinuityCrossover: Archie Meets The Punisher.
* ItRunsOnNonsensoleum
* ItsFakeFurItsFine: Fur is occasionally stated to be this.
* JailBait: Somewhat has UnfortunateImplications in the sense that grown men have discussed how hot Betty and Veronica are for years, but in every incarnation, they're never older than 17. At least they're drawn as busty, curvy grown women and not obviously meant as pedo-bait.[[note]] Please note that the age of consent in New York (where Archie Comics is based) is 17, and in much of the rest of the United States, it's 16. (basically, one must remember that California's strict consent laws don't apply to the rest of the world or even the rest of America)[[/note]]
** Made a bit understandable in the case of people who grew up reading the comics. Betty and Veronica started out as a PrecociousCrush for many young boys.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Reggie Mantle is a mean-spirited prankster much of the time, but he takes steps to prevent anyone actually being seriously hurt either by his pranks or anyone else. Veronica functions as the female equivalent.
* TheJinx: Jinx Malloy, a recurring character (of the "causes bad luck in others" variety). He's so infamous in Riverdale that when he goes out, he wears disguises so no one will run away in terror at his approach.
* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: A comic from the early 70s starts with Reggie yanking away a pennant from Jughead and saying "Take your hands off!" Jughead replies "I can't, they're attached to my arms!" and proceeds to drive Reggie crazy with his incessant recital of "Dem Bones." Later Jughead realizes he may have gone too far and seeks to apologize. He finds Reggie half way around the bend and tells him "I didn't want to upset you." This drives Reggie even crazier as he didn't accept it as a valid apology.
** Archie himself turns into a ScrewySquirrel / KarmicTrickster in a story about a fake rubber hand he borrowed from the art class. He uses it to play practical jokes on Reggie and Big Moose, getting them in trouble with Mr. Weatherbee. Jughead, who disapproves of Archie's behavior, thinks a hand clinging to the outside of a window sill is Archie's fake hand and nudges it off, only to find it was the janitor. Jughead, Reggie and Big Moose wind up serving detention, with Archie delivering a final needle ("I sure wish I could give you a ''hand!''") As Archie laughs outside, three arms from the detention room reach out towards him.
* KarmicJackpot: This trope is used often, for example with either Archie or Betty encountering a poor-looking man who they help out, while Reggie mocks them for it. Later, either the poor guy turns out to be a wealthy man who lends Archie a fabulous car for a week, or Reggie ends up stranded at a mall with no money to call for a tow truck after his car broke down.
* KavorkaMan: Archie and the other guys aren't ugly, but the men of the Archie universe aren't drawn as sexily as the girls are, yet they often get tons of girlfriends no matter how jealous (Moose), conceited (Reggie), or two-timing (Archie) they are.
** Betty lampshades this trope way back in the 50s when complaining how guys can get away with [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/83063953203 "looking like tramps" and girls have to take time and effort to look nice for a date]].
* KidsPreferBoxes:
** An old issue showed the gang as cave people, given presents by Santa: Modern clothes in the sorts of boxes high end stores once used. They find the modern clothes useless, but thank the strange red guy for the wonderful gifts - the immensely useful boxes.
** Betty makes paintings, and one is finally bought by a man raving about how it was just what he needed. He then tosses the painting away as he leaves, continuing to rave about the frame.
* KnowYourVines: One comic ended with the revelation that the corsage Archie gave Veronica to wear at the prom was poison ivy.
* LIsForDyslexia: Moose. He fits all the classic signs, including excelling at sports. In the late 1980s, soon after the publication of a certain best-selling book on dyslexia and intelligence, Miss Grundy tested Moose for dyslexia. She, and other students, began giving him special tutoring geared to his learning style. (It may have come off like a VerySpecialEpisode to a lot of cynics, but to some who actually suffer from the condition, it was likely quite touching).
** ''The Married Life'' features the same subplot as a reasoning for Moose's seeming incompetence. Miss Grundy refused to believe that Moose is legitimately stupid, and this convinced him to improve his lot in life.
* LadyInRed: This has always been the color Veronica wears most.
%%* LateForSchool: Common with several characters.
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: One comic cover (Betty and Veronica No.46, 1994) has Veronica using the barcode as an earring. "Betty: Only Veronica could turn a UPC Box into something chic!"
* LethalChef: A recurring component of Ronnie's character, and something Betty has over her. One particular issue had Ronnie ''demanding'' to cook a meal for Archie (to one-up Betty, of course), and such was the tragedy that a ''line'' of sympathetic boys said their goodbyes to poor Arch, ''including Reggie''.
* LoserGetsTheGirl: Archie's not a good student, not exactly handsome or well-built, and is usually a clumsy, poor athlete. Yet Ron & Betty fight over him, and he has no problems getting dates with any other random girl in Riverdale.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: M-P]]
* MadonnaWhoreComplex: Betty is usually written as perfectly virtuous, or with very minor flaws, widely admired by the other characters of Riverdale, and more interested in school, sports, and friends than boys, with the exception of her true love Archie. She dresses and acts much less provocatively and flirtatiously than Veronica, but is often rewarded for her virtue by attracting boys anyway. Veronica uses blatant sex appeal to try to attract boys and doesn't have a true love (many stories imply she doesn't really love Archie) but instead is interested in several different boys. Not surprisingly, she's also written in about half the stories as selfish, snobby, spoiled, stupid, and often downright evil. In stories where she and Betty compete over a boy, Veronica tends to lose, especially if she tries to vamp it up.
* MaleGaze: For generations, even after the Comics Code, there have been a lot of fanservice-y drawings of the teenage Betty and Veronica, their friends, Katy Keene, and other women. There have been a lot of jokes using the gaze whenever Archie is gazing at pretty girls and commenting on their figures while another friend is waxing lyrically about nature or math.
* MaltShop: Famously, Pop Tate's. Almost as famous as Arnold's on ''Series/HappyDays''.
* ManipulativeBastard: Trula Twyst, the arch-nemesis of Jughead. She uses her powers of persuasion (bordering on [[MoreThanMindControl mind control]]) to, on separate occasions, convince him he loves her, ''[[OOCIsSeriousBusiness give up hamburgers]]'', give up his master revenge plan on her, etc. Her first appearance features her convincing Jug he likes her, just so she can get the attention of all the other boys in town for "seducing the un-seduceable".
* MarilynManeuver: Cheryl Blossom in a [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iiKU0OQhIK0/UpZF7qT3V6I/AAAAAAAACm4/8JkEhi9gOy0/s1600/654225.jpg cover]] from her mini-series "Cheryl go to Hollywood" homage Marilyn.
* MeetYourEarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Traveling down Memory Lane often results in this with 2008s characters find themselves face to face to face to face with their version of the 1950s! .
* MistakenForAnImposter: There's a story in which Veronica has Archie masquerade as her dad at the school's father-daughter dance, since Mr. Lodge had to go on a business trip. She gets angry with Archie at some point and then he goes outside, where he finds Mr. Lodge, who cancelled said business trip so he could go to the dance. Mr. Lodge arrives at the dance, but Veronica, still angry with Archie, attempts to expose him and finds out the hard way that she's yelling at her father.
* MistakenForCheating: One story had Archie's mother borrow his jacket and accidentally leave a tube of lipstick in the pocket. Betty and Veronica later borrow Archie's jacket and find the lipstick. They think that Archie is seeing another girl because the lipstick isn't either of their brands, and angrily confront the baffled Archie. Betty and Veronica both dump Archie, but then they realize that this will just make him go after the girl they think he's seeing now. They both come back and smooch Archie to show that they're better than the competition. The story ends with Archie's mother realizing what she did and apologizing if she caused him any trouble, but a love-dizzy Archie just tells her to cause as much of it as she wants.
* MistakenForRacist: In a comic where Veronica has a party. She tells Archie that she doesn't want certain friends of his there. Since he's hanging out with Chuck and Jughead at the time, he thinks she means Chuck (who's black) and becomes angry. Turns out she means Jughead, who tends to be a slob and rather greedy with the food.
* MistakenForSpies: In one of the time-travelling strips, Jughead ended up in the middle of the Civil War and was immediately accused of being a spy for the South until Lincoln himself pardoned him.
* MooseAreIdiots: Referenced, as the person ''named'' Moose is the DumbMuscle.
** In one story, though, he knew enough about sports to help Riverdale win a quiz show with "Sports" as the category.
* MotivationOnAStick:
** Jughead Jones was convinced to ride a stationary bike (using a bag of potato chips) this way in one story.
** In another story, a variant is used to motivate to run faster for the track team. Jughead is outfitted with a special harness with a mirror in front that's positioned to let him see the photo mounted in back, so it looks like his AbhorrentAdmirer is always right behind him.
* MsFanservice:
** Veronica. It's pretty much a given that she'll be wearing the most-revealing outfit of any given strip, especially the beach-themed ones. Sometimes she's even been arrested for wearing "indecent" bikinis on public beaches – and the artists show it!
** Cheryl Blossom defined this in the 1980s (where it got her written out of the books) and '90s. Dan [=DeCarlo=] gave her a Pamela Anderson clone body, with [[ImpossibleHourglassFigure even larger breasts and buttocks]] than was normal for Riverdale girls, and was frequently seen in skimpier clothes than all the others. In one beach storyline, she tried to go ''topless''.
** Melody was this for ComicBook/JosieAndThePussycats, wearing the skimpiest outfits and drawing all the male attention.
* MudWrestling: Incredible as it may seem for the G-rated comic, a 1970s story had Betty suffer amnesia and end up being exploited as a sideshow mud wrestler.
* NarrationEcho: A favorite gag of writer Frank Doyle.
--> '''Caption''': One glance is enough to reveal the whole dirty plot to the astute [[SuperpoweredAlterEgo Captain Hero]]!
--> '''Jughead''': Aha! I can see the whole dirty plot on account of I am so astute!
* NeverBareheaded: Jughead is seldom seen without his signature crown-shaped hat.
* NeverTrustATrailer: Okay, so how many times has it been claimed that "Archie will finally choose between Betty and Veronica in this comic – no, seriously! Wait… Why are you putting the comic back on the shelf? HEY! HEY YOU GET BACK HERE!! [[BlatantLies WE'RE SERIOUS, IT'S TRUE!!]]"?
* NeverWakeUpASleepwalker: One comic has Jughead, for some unexplained reason, sleepwalk through almost all of his entire school day. To avoid waking him up, the teachers give all of their students tests. During lunch, Jughead stays asleep but eats the food off of everyone's trays. He eventually wakes up when the school bell rings, suffering from no ill effects. The other students aren't very happy.
* NewTechnologyIsEvil: Archie comics has this as a standard plot where the characters get some new trendy tech and everything goes wrong with it with the characters' usual shticks until they ultimately reject it. If the tech in question stays around in real life for at least a decade, then it just becomes part of the background in the stories without comment. An example is the answering machine in the 1980s, which was the focus of a Veronica story which ends with her throwing it out and vowing to take all future calls personally, while now, that device is just a standard appliance all the characters have.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: When a presidential candidate once visited Riverdale High (he's an alumnus there), Archie, with his camera, snaps a picture of him catching a tripping Miss Grundy (an old friend of his). A sleazy tabloid reporter cons Archie into selling that camera (film included), and proceeds to use his paper to spin tales regarding the two surrounding the picture, ruining the reputations of both Grundy and the candidate. To Archie's credit, once he realizes he's been had, he immediately tries to set things straight.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed and LawyerFriendlyCameo: Pretty much every real-life celebrity, TV show, company, movie or comic book company has some kind of mock name attached to it – e.g., [[Music/BruceSpringsteen Bruce Sprongsteen]], [[Franchise/IndianaJones Montana Jones and the Final Adventure]], etc.
* NoGoingSteady: The teens seem to believe in this. Though the girls get mad when they see Archie date another, it's generally acknowledged that everyone just dates whomever, whenever, and there's no "cheating" going on. Most newly-introduced characters are one-shots.
* NotAllowedToGrowUp: The teenagers have been in high school for decades, with the exact same teachers and principal. In fact, the publication commonly tout Archie as the world's oldest teenager. This trope is exactly why ''ComicBook/LifeWithArchieTheMarriedLife'' was conceived-- to show what could happen if the characters did all grow up (in fact it had two separate arcs about "What if Archie married Betty?" and "What if Archie married Veronica?"). There was also ''WesternAnimation/ArchiesWeirdMysteries'', which showed a middle-aged Archie during a Time Travel episode.
* NotRareOverThere: In one comic, Jughead loses his hat and is none too concerned, telling Archie not to worry about it and going home. Archie, believing it to be an irreplaceable staple of Jughead's personality, goes to great lengths to retrieve it. When he returns it to Jughead at home, Jughead thanks him, but shows him that he has a cupboard full of them since they tend to get lost or damaged over the years.
* NotSoDifferent: Archie, Reggie, Moose and Jughead once proposed having an RC race after school, but then they had their toys confiscated by the faculty. At the end of the story, the boys didn't get their cars back, but the race is still on… with the teachers playing the toys at the gym.
* NotSoForgottenBirthday: A ''Little Archie Comics'' story presented a subversion of this. Veronica tells Archie that she thinks her dad has forgotten it's her birthday - and he has, because he's busy making plans for next week's Founder's Day celebration. Fortunately for him, Archie thinks he's planning a surprise party for Veronica and rounds up everyone to take part in it.
* NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat:
-->'''Jughead:''' For your information, [[Franchise/GIJoe G. I. Jack]] is an [[LessEmbarrassingTerm action figure!]]\\
'''Archie:''' Not that there's anything wrong with boys playing with dolls if they want to!
%%* OddShapedPanel: Did this routinely in the 1970s.
* OldBeggarTest: Played in a story. Archie wants to take Veronica out to a concert but can't afford the tickets. Veronica buys them and then tries various ways for Archie to stumble across them so it seems like he's the one treating her rather than vice versa. At one point she hires a homeless man to ask Archie for the directions to Main Street. Archie tells him, "You're on Main Street." The homeless man rewards him by giving the two tickets as a present, but Archie sees through the ruse and goes away after yelling at the man, who is then stuck with a quizzical look and two concert tickets.
* OldFashionedRowboatDate: Archie and Betty go on one in a story set in TheGayNineties story.
* OldBeggarTest: Played With in a story. Archie wants to take Veronica out to a concert but can't afford the tickets. Veronica buys them and then tries various ways for Archie to stumble across them so it seems like he's the one treating her rather than vice versa. At one point she hires a homeless man to ask Archie for the directions to Main Street. Archie tells him, "You're on Main Street." The homeless man rewards him by giving the two tickets as a present, but Archie sees through the ruse and goes away after yelling at the man, who is then stuck with a quizzical look and two concert tickets.
* OldTimeyBathingSuit: There are few stories with the gang dressed up in old-timey swimsuits ("bathing costumes"). One story actually had Riverdale transported back in time, and when they went to the beach Veronica was very nearly arrested for wearing a swimsuit where you could see her (gasp!) ankles and shoulders!
* OnlyChildSyndrome: Out of the gang (according to Wiki/TheOtherWiki), only Jughead, Betty, Cheryl, and Jason have known siblings (the latter two being twins).
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname:
** Jughead Jones'real name is Forsythe. Similarly, his sister Jellybean Jones; real name is Forsythia.
** Pretty much everyone in the comics goes by a nickname, which usually are just shortened versions of their names (Archie is named Archibald, Betty is named Elizabeth, Moose is named Marmaduke, etc). Only Veronica gets called by her name often, and even then you'll see it as "Ronnie" or "Ron" just as much.
* OnlySixFaces: Legendary in pop culture for it. The entirety of the teenage female cast possesses the exact same frame and facial make-up, to the point that Betty and Veronica can switch identities with wigs. Only intentionally "busty" or "curvy" girls, like Cheryl Blossom and Melody Valentine, are different, as well as {{Gonk}} characters like Ethel, or HollywoodPudgy Brigitte. Lampshaded in one issue where Betty wearing a simple brunette wig is enough for Archie (presumably the man ''who loves her'') to mistake her for her rival Veronica.
** It should be noted that Archie thought he was going crazy at the time because everything he'd been seeing that day wasn't what it looked like (a soda can that was really a radio, an old bus that was really a snack bar, a banana phone, etc.) and just wanted to meet someone "normal". It didn't help that Betty acted like Veronica to fool Archie at the time.
** There's a story meant to directly {{Lampshade|Hanging}} this, Betty and Veronica swap hair colors just to MindScrew the rest of the gang. All the guys get Archie's haircut and a red dye job to teach them a lesson.
* OpposingSportsTeam: Riverdale plays almost exclusively against Central City, an entire city with a population of nothing but criminals, cheaters, and con artists, all of whom hate everything pertaining to Riverdale. The one time a Central player was portrayed sympathetically was when Archie and Chuck saved his life, while his friend abandoned him to die so he could win the race.
* OurNudityIsDifferent:
** In one of the strips set in TheGayNineties, Archie has this reaction to a swimsuit that bares Veronica's… shoulders.
** Another, set in the 1800's, has Betty and Veronica nearly arrested for wearing men's swimwear — a t-shirt and knee-length trunks combo.
** When Betty and Veronica, in a story, meet their old version of the '50s (through the [[PortalToThePast Memory Lane]]), Veronica is called out by the two girls for her "skimpy" outfit that BareYourMidriff.
* OverprotectiveDad: Mr. Lodge isn't very fond of Archie dating Veronica, mostly because accident-prone Archie typically destroys something valuable whenever he visits Lodge Manor. Other stories avert this trope when Archie and his friends rescue Mr. Lodge from crooked thieves, blackmailers, or business rivals.
* PantyShot: Li'l Jinx was most prone to this, as were Betty and Veronica in the Little Archie series. As teens, panty shots were limited to cheerleader bloomers and tennis outfits; but on rare occasions, they (and even Sabrina) were seen solely in their skivvies.
* ParanoiaGambit: Used more than once.
* ThePatientHasLeftTheBuilding: When Big Ethel wanted to care for a badly injured Jughead (he got hurt trying to run away from her), he fled the hospital.
* PerformanceAnxiety: One story involved Reggie getting stage fright during his first attempt at stand-up comedy, leading to Jughead heckling him, which got Reggie mad enough to reply and then go into the rest of his routine.
* PimpedOutCar: Archie once had a shiny new exterior installed over his beloved beat-up antique jalopy. It didn't fool anyone for long because "Betsy's" interior was as broken-down as ever.
* PluckyComicRelief: Reggie, the most comedic and magnificent jock in Riverdale.
* PoorCommunicationKills: ''Archie'' relies on this trope and most of its subtropes for its humor. In fact, the 2003 Free Comic Books Day comic revolved around hanging a lampshade on it. A kid from the "real world" arrives in Riverdale and points out the repeated cases of misunderstanding and poor communication. Everyone agrees to be more understanding and wait for explanations. And the Universe is instantly boring!
* PortalToThePast: Several characters have gone down Memory Lane and met their counterparts from the 1940s or '50s. The street also served as a Portal To The Future, when Archie decided to go ''up'' Memory Lane and see what would happen after he decides who to marry.
* PresentPeeking: Archie bought his mom a sweater for her birthday, and asked Veronica to hide it at her house. However Veronica's mom snoops around for her anniversary present and finds the sweater! What's more, she loves it! But her husband, billionaire Mr. Lodge, had actually bought his wife a mink coat.
* PrettyInMink: Veronica has loads of furs, but other characters wear fur occasionally.
* ProgressivelyPrettier: Jughead's mom, Big Ethel, and Archie's & Betty's mothers have all been altered into more attractive forms in the past couple decades. A few of the fathers (Betty's father, Hal, for one) have also lost their original white hair, being recoloured in collected digests.
* ProtagonistAndFriends: The SpinOff ''Jughead and Friends''.
* PublicDomainCharacter: Archie Comics never renewed the copyrights for anything they published before the 1950s – and yes, this includes all the issues of ''Pep Comics'' and ''Archie'' published up to that point. This would technically make the pre-[=DeCarlo=] versions of the characters public domain. The reason why we haven't seen anyone else doing their own versions of Archie's gang is because Archie Comics trademarked the characters' designs… that and Archie Comics is notoriously litigious about anything even remotely related to their characters.
* PuddleCoveringChivalry: Parodied in one comic, where dumb jock Moose pushes Archie into a puddle when his girlfriend Midge is concerned about stepping in the water when crossing the street.
* PutOnABus: Cheryl Blossom, just gradually vanishing in the 1980s, had this done to her once her re-introduction in the 1990s wore out its welcome, and she moved away. They brought her back within a couple of years, this time without her own series.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Q-V]]
* {{Qipao}}: An old comic has Veronica wearing a qipao, and getting furious when everyone comments on her "ripped dress".
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Archie #635 had the "Occupy Riverdale" movement, making Riverdale the most recent area it's affected.
* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: Veronica is sometimes this due to her often bitchy personality, black hair, and penchant for wearing red.
* ReplacementFlatCharacter: Cheryl Blossom is basically a bitchier, meaner version of Veronica, amplifying most of her negative traits. In Cheryl's own series, her Pembrooke friends contain many worse examples of ''her'' personality.
* RichBitch: Veronica used to be this, before CharacterDevelopment moved her into the JerkWithAHeartOfGold territory. Early stories portrayed her as almost explicitly evil on occasion.
** Veronica was portrayed as rather nice in the 1940s, no better or worse than the other girls in the series. It was in later decades that she was written as evil, till she began to be softened in the late 1980s and was further mellowed in the 1990s and 21st century.
* RichInDollarsPoorInSense, SpoiledBrat, and the AlphaBitch, sometimes: Veronica ''defines'' all of these, but she's often shown with the "secret heart of gold" routine as well. Cheryl Blossom is a more authentically bad version (though still has her nice moments, because she had her own series for a while). Libby Chessler, seemingly a creation of the ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' TV series, is both and the TropeNamer for the latter.
* RipTailoring: One story has Betty and Veronica coming to school wearing the exact same outfit. Veronica sabotages Betty's dress, creating a tear in the bottom part of the skirt. Instead of going home to get her dress replaced, Betty just sews the tear into a fashionable (and very {{Fanservice}}-laden) addition.
* RuleThirtyFour: The company is known for coming down ''hard'' on {{Slash Fic}}s featuring its characters, to the point where Fanfiction.net will no longer accept any kind of Archie-related fanfiction.
** Adultfanfiction.net still accepts them though.
** They don't look too kindly on parodies either – ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken's'' got pulled ([[SarcasmMode Fair Use? What's that?]]). The only reason ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' got away with it is because they paid the company.
* RuleSixtyThree:
** January Andrews, time traveler from the future, is said to be a distant descendant of Archie Andrews. She is a GenderFlip of Archie – identical to him in all ways save slightly different hairstyle and breasts. She is a recurring character who usually appears in Jughead stories. Somewhat disturbingly, Jughead is always shown to be romantically involved with her.
** A 2012 story, "The Great Switcheroo," provided canonical examples in ''Archie'' #636.[[note]] [[MeaningfulName Meaningful Number]]?[[/note]] In the story, Comicbook/{{Sabrina|TheTeenageWitch}}'s cat Salem casts a GenderBender spell on the entire population of Riverdale, not to mention Comicbook/JosieAndThePussycats too.
** There have been at least two other skits in the past, one with the same idea as ''The Great Switcheroo''.
* SaunaOfDeath: In a comic book, Veronica was placed in an overheating steam cabinet and left to die by a supervillain. Jughead (who was in superhero mode) was charged with rescuing her, but didn't do a very good job of it. Losing quite a bit of weight and starving in the ordeal, she consumed a vile concoction the beanied one had prepared earlier for his lunch so as to fatten back up a bit — grossing everyone, including the bad guy, totally out.
* SceneryPorn: Depending on the artist, although Bob Bolling in particular seemed to love nature scenes.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Played straight with Veronica and inverted with her father, as she will often attempt to utilize her clout to get what she wants, while Mr. Lodge will chide her for doing so.
* SecretDiary: One story had Betty losing one of her diaries (to be more exact, the one she wrote about her moments with Archie in) and was worried that Veronica would get her hands on it. To make matters worse, Veronica overheard her and offered $100 to anyone who turned it in to her. Fortunately for Betty, Mr. Svenson returned it to her before anyone else could find it.
* SelfDeprecation:
** Lately the series has taken to LampshadeHanging some of the RunningGags and cliches from over the decades, most prominently Archie's commitment issues.
** The cover of the October 2014 Archie Comic has [[ComicBook/AfterlifeWithArchie Jughead dressed as a zombie]] for Halloween, while Archie, Betty, and Veronica laugh over how ridiculous the premise would be.
* SelfMadeMan: Sometimes Mr. Lodge is written has being born into a wealthy family or he's written as building his own wealth from a middle-class existence. And the trope is subverted in [[http://riverdalegirlsrule.tumblr.com/post/101656548934 this comic]].
* SelfParody: The "Night At the Comic Shop" issue had comic book characters come to life. One of the characters was "Wilbur", who dresses pretty much identical to Archie's old design (except with a "W" on his cardigan). He's described as a "wacky teenager who's always chasing girls" and true to art Veronica shows attraction to him.
** This is actually a clever double self-parody; on one level Wilbur is a parody of Archie. On another, Archie Comics are using a pre-existing character for the GeniusBonus of "Yeah, back in the day Archie had spawned a FountainOfExpies, we ripped off our own character for some reason".
* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Frank Doyle, Archie's most prolific writer from the '50s to the '90s, loved having the teenaged characters burst into inappropriately sophisticated verbiage for no reason (except RuleOfFunny).
--> '''Veronica''': Wouldst thou mind removing yon nose from mine business, friend?
--> '''Betty''': Forsooth, my pretty prevaricator! Itty-bitty Betty exits forthwith from your web of intrigue!
** This kind of talk often appeared in films and books about teenage characters. It was probably originally intended to reflect the kids' response to Shakespeare in English or Dramatics class, by going around talking like that.
** Dilton is the biggest target for this. One comic lampshades it brilliantly. Archie is attempting to look up a the definition of a word, Jughead suggests he should save time by asking Dilton. Dilton's explanation reflects his usual penchant for scientific jargon. A steamed Archie berates Jughead for his advice, claiming he now has to look up the definitions of several more words.
* SexySantaDress: Betty, Veronica, Sabrina and other girls would wear them quite frequently during Christmas issues, at least on the covers.
* ShamefulShrinking: In a story, Veronica invites Archie to a "high society" party. She berates him like crazy while briefing him for the event, e.g. "You have nothing in common with these blue-bloods, but there's no point in advertising it". At the end, Archie is barely up to Ronnie's socks. Then, Archie runs into Betty, who tells Archie what a great guy he is. Arch walks away literally 10 feet tall.
* ShipperOnDeck: Jughead, for Betty & Archie. He doesn't like Arch's obsession with the ladies, but Betty is a friend and the least-bad option in his mind.
* ShooOutTheNewGuy: Many characters over the years were introduced with great fanfare as potential regulars, and then dropped instantly when readers weren't interested.
** One notable example was Adam the Alien, introduced simultaneously in all three flagship titles (''Archie, Jughead, Betty & Veronica'') in 1979, with captions promising that he'd have lots of wacky adventures at Riverdale High. He never appeared again.
* ShoutOut:
** An old joke from Blog/TheComicsCurmudgeon is that the Archie newspaper comic is written by a computer, the "Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000", or "AJGLU-3000" for short. In 2008, a crossed-out "AJGLU-3000" [[http://joshreads.com/?p=1827 showed up on Archie's T-shirt]], and the phrase has been used numerous times since then to refer to the school's computer system.
** There was a shout-out to the Creator/DiC dub of ''Manga/SailorMoon''. Betty and Veronica were pursuing a man named "Maxfield Standin" who looked exactly like his [[http://amandamoon.www3.50megs.com/maskedman/maskedman.html source material]].
** In one comic, Veronica owned a Hedgehog, and named it Sonic. (Archie, you'll recall, has published the ''Sonic'' comic series since 1993).
* SingleTargetSexuality: Big Ethel focuses like a laser on Jughead.
%%* SlapstickKnowsNoGender
* SlutShaming: Both Veronica and Cheryl Blossom have been criticized many times by other characters for dressing too provocatively, being too flirtatious or 'easy', and going out with too many boys. Usually the story will cast the girls in a bad light for this (worse than for male casanovas like Archie) and often punish them at the end.
* SmartPeoplePlayChess: Dilton.
* SnowballFight: Turns up quite a bit during winter.
** If Dilton Doiley gets involved, expect him to bring in an automatic snow thrower, like the catapult seen in the page image.
** One story had Veronica fed up with her friends' immature snow-throwing behavior, bonding with Dilton who shares her condescension... until she discovers he's stashed away a freezer full of snowballs, planning ahead for the summer.
* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: Archie, Jughead, and Betty were all fairly young in their first 1941 appearance, resembling pre-teens. By the next issue, they were full-on teenagers.
* SomethingElseAlsoRises: In one story set in the Prehistoric Ages, Veronica was pleased with Archie making her as a model for his mud statue, and kisses him. You can see a ''volcano'' in the background shoot a boulder out of its mouth.
* [[{{Somethingitis}} Something-itis]]: When Archie is being examined by the school doctor.
-->'''Archie:''' I think I've got the bug that's going around.
-->'''Doctor:''' Yes, I know. It's called "Dodge-an-exam-itis".
* SpannerInTheWorks: The vast majority of plots and schemes in any given Archie story end up derailed by this trope.
* SpinoffBabies: "Little Archie" was one of the earliest (the 1960s), taking place in the gang's elementary school years. For some reason, Mr. Weatherbee and Miss Grundy were working at their school. "The New Archies" (an AnimatedSeries and a comic, both short-lived) came in the 1980s, and was based around their pre-teen years in middle school. The former appears to actually be in continuity (told nowadays as flashbacks), but the latter, with several replacement characters (Eugene for Dilton, among others), is mostly forgotten.
** During the "Pureheart the Powerful" series, the little Archies all became superheroes, too.
* SpoiledSweet: An AlternateCharacterInterpretation of Veronica. The two regularly compete for Archie's attention, but are shown to actually be best friends with each other. When Veronica buys a new wardrobe, she takes all of her old stuff and gives it to Betty – these are ''still'' nice clothes.
** This was Archie creator Bob Montana's basic interpretation of Veronica. In his stories and strips, she's pampered but pleasant except on rare occasions (usually when Archie does something incredibly stupid and earns her wrath).
* SpyCatsuit: Betty and Veronica wear black catsuits when acting as "[[TeenSuperspy Agents B & V]]".
* StatusQuoIsGod: ''Is it EVER''. No matter how big a story, or how glorious a cover, things will revert back to normal by the end of the storyline. Ethel still chases Jughead, Archie still can't decide between Betty & Ronnie, Reggie still plays pranks, Jughead goes back to avoiding girls and being single, all the relationships are the same, etc. When there's 60 years of stories, and Digests re-using old stories, that tends to happen. Even newly introduced characters are 99% likely to be doomed to the C-List and Trivia questions within a few years (Cricket O'Dell, Ginger Lopez, Marie & Frankie, etc.).
** The only exceptions seem to be Cheryl Blossom's re-introduction in the 1990s, and successful newcomers Chuck & Nancy in the 1970s, alongside a few gradual shifts in characterization between the 1950s and now. For instance, Betty changed in the 1970s from a stereotypical DumbBlonde, to a self-confident {{Tomboy}} who could easily run rings around Veronica in terms of physical skills like athletics and auto mechanics.
* StraightGay: Kevin Keller, introduced in the comic as a normal, positive gay character for kids to read.
* {{Stripperific}}: ''Everyone'' in the Archie I series. Betty and Veronica tote FurBikini outfits, and Archie and Jughead both wear an incredibly small LoinCloth. FanService for all.
* SubliminalAdvertising: There was a story published in 1992 in which Archie talks the gang into going to have a picnic in the woods so they enjoy nature, but they all bring along electronic devices to distract themselves with. Throughout the story, all sorts of real life products pop up in the artwork – Veronica's eating a Fruit Roll-Up in the first panel, Archie's sipping from a pack of Capri Sun (and from when it was doing a promotion for ''[[WesternAnimation/YogiBear Yo Yogi!]]'', no less[[labelnote:†]] Fun Fact: Yo Yogi kept appearing on packets of Capri Sun way into the late-90's, nearly a decade after the cartoon's unceremonious demise[[/labelnote]]) when he notices Jughead's playing a handheld electronic game, Jughead pulls out a box of Cap'n Crunch when Archie falls in the river... They actually [[JustifiedTrope justified this]] by the fact that these products were all being given out in baskets to kids who joined the Archie Fan Club at the time.
** Another story from 1992 opened with Archie and Jughead playing SuperNintendo. Boxes for actual Super Nintendo games were all on the floor in front of them.
** Somewhat less subliminal: Comic issues would often have single-page spreads in between stories where the Archie gang advertised a specific product – rollerblades, candy, whatever. Got weird when the exact same ads showed up in ''Sonic'' comics.
* SuntanStencil: A story, in which Archie is dating Veronica, has Archie wondering about getting a tattoo or something for Veronica, then dozing off at the beach under a blanket with two small tears in it. On waking up, he discovers that he's one-upped the other beachgoers by getting 'branded' with a 'V'. On his forehead, no less.
* SuperstitionEpisode:
** One where Betty notices it is Friday The Thirteenth, and prepares for it. Unknowingly, she set off DisasterDominoes that missed her, but got everyone around her involved.
** There was one other, with Archie bringing misfortune on himself trying to avoid bad luck – and not being careful.
* SweaterGirl: The girls really fit into their sweaters.
* TakeOffYourClothes: [[http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics196.html This story]] which really has to be read to be believed.
* TeamworkSeduction: BettyAndVeronica have pulled this trick a few times, usually with them ruining it by fighting again. Since the two girls are best friends, though, "threesome" endings are rare but not completely out of the question (in a PG-rated sense, of course).
* TeenGenius: Dilton Doiley has served in this role for decades.
* TeenSuperspy: At the height of the spy craze during the 1960s, Archie Comics did a series called "The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E." that featured the Archie gang as secret agents.
** More recently, Betty and Veronica have appeared as 'Agents B & V'.
* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: One comic created an in-universe example, after Archie and Veronica watched a movie adapted from one of Veronica's favorite romance stories. When Archie asked her afterward if she liked it, she exclaimed that she ''loathed'' it, and spent the rest of the night nitpicking every way the movie deviated from the original events. However, she also developed a crush on the male lead actor, which swiftly eclipsed her hatred of the changes.
* TheyFightCrime: "The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E." in the 1960s (and just recently restarted), the 1965 "[[http://www.toonopedia.com/purheart.htm Pureheart the Powerful]]" (or "Captain Pureheart") stories, which engendered their own comic books, and "Archie's Explorers of the Unknown" in the 1980s.
* ThirdOptionLoveInterest: For Archie, there's:
** Cheryl Blossom, the former TropeNamer. Famously came in as a "third choice", and temporarily had a legit shot at taking over. In the 90s, the Love Showdown storyline, where Betty and Veronica escalate their competition for Archie, ends in Archie choosing Cheryl Blossom instead (although the Status Quo is restored in a follow-up special). Since then, however, she has apparently started going out with the nerd of the cast after getting to know him on the internet, in a ThrowTheDogABone moment.
** Valerie of ''Comicbook/JosieAndThePussycats''. She was featured as his love interest in a crossover supplement story, and the idea became popular enough that she returned several times as his permanent girlfriend. She even received her own ''Married'' storyline alongside Betty and Veronica, wherein Archie chose to go into music rather than go into business. He and Valerie become a husband-wife singing duo, and even have a DarkSkinnedRedHead baby who follows in their footsteps.
* ThroughHisStomach: This is an area where Betty always wins over Veronica.
** Big Ethel tries this all the time on Jughead. He's certainly willing to tolerate her presence when food is forthcoming, but it never gets her any closer to a date (unless you count the time it takes him to eat, and considering it's Jughead that can't be very long).
* TimeTravelersAreSpies: In one comic, Jughead accidentally travels back in time to the UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and is mistaken for a Confederate spy (one of the suggestions being that the S on his shirt stands for "Spy" or "South").
* TokenMinority: Valerie, arguably one of the first in all of comics, debuting in 1969, followed by [[BlackBestFriend Chuck]] and his girlfriend [[TokenMinorityCouple Nancy]] in the 1970s, and Frankie & Maria, a Latino pairing also debuting then, but not catching on as well.
** Other black and Hispanic characters have shown up with lower degrees of success, like Ginger Lopez, and in the early 1990s, very short-lived characters with disabilities (Anita and Jeff).
** It took a little longer for the Asian characters to catch on. But instead of one character to represent all of Asia, they've had a number of Asian girls (Tomoko, Kim, Kumi?). To say nothing of the Indian boy Raj.
** They introduced a gay character in 2010. This caused MoralGuardians to flip out and [[ScapegoatCreator somehow relate it to President Obama or the Democrats' then-majority in Congress]], and resulted in InternetBackdraft against the MoralGuardians.
*** It was also a ''major'' game-changer in American culture as a whole. Archie Comics has a decades-long reputation as a bastion of "traditional values" due to its rather chaste world and lack of violence or cursing (plus everything Al Hartley did back in the 70's, official or not). Thus, when Archie introduced Kevin Keller and refused to back down, it made national news – after all, if such a conservative place as Riverdale has no problem with a gay man in their midst, then why should anyone else in America take issue?
* TomboyishPonytail: Betty.
* TooMuchAlike: In one ''Betty And Veronica'' story, the titular girls bumped into two cute guys in the mall, Jon and Benny, who were pretty much their {{Spear Counterpart}}s. By the end of the story, Betty and Veronica decided that they wouldn't make a good match because they have too much in common.
* TotallyRadical: A notorious case. For example, one late-'80s story had a lifeguard tell a surfing Veronica, "I really dig the way you attacked those waves with your rad moves". Around the same time, an in-house ad for an ''Archie'' calendar featured a cartoon teenager, sporting a ridiculous multi-colored mohawk, oversized shades that EltonJohn would reject, and mismatched-color clothes, telling the reader, "I ordered mine!" Like gnarly, daddy-o, if a rad hepcat teen like him bought one, I better slap down the bread too, yo yo yo.
** Played with in a story titled "Lingo Lesson". In it, Archie talks like this, as does a brownie troop that his mom leads. It drives Archie's dad nuts.
* TrickedIntoSigning: In one comic story, Reggie decides to write up a petition protesting litter on the beach. Archie is eager to be the first to sign it, so Reggie has him sign it with a nice and large signature before he's even drawn up the petition content. Evil-hearted Reggie then writes up a love note to an anonymous girl. With Archie's signature below it, the note is sure to unleash Betty and Veronica's wrath.
* TwoTeacherSchool: Averted. Sure, Miss Grundy and Mr. Weatherbee are usually the only teachers to take a major role in a story, but the school's custodian (Mr. Svenson), cafeteria worker (Miss Beazly), science teacher (Prof. Flutesnoot), another elderly teacher (Miss Haggly), two coaches (Kleats and Clayton), and even the Bee's secretary (Miss Philips) have shown up repeatedly over the years, and many have even received major roles in stories.
* TwoTimerDate: Archie often dates both Betty and Veronica at the same time.
* UnclePennybags: Mr. Lodge is actually a really nice guy – it's just that being one of the main victims of Archie's clumsiness has a tendency to drive him crazy.
* UnlimitedWardrobe: Betty and Veronica are classic examples of this trope. It's also one of the rare instances when is justified for both girls. Veronica obviously has the money to buy whatever clothes she wants...and as for Betty, in some stories she's developed an impressive wardrobe of her own because Veronica just hands off any clothes she gets tired of to Betty. Not that Betty necessarily minds, since Veronica's generosity allows her to keep up with Ronnie in fashion despite her much more limited finances.
* UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo: In the first issue of Archie Comics, ''Pep Comics'' #28, Archie had just moved into the neighborhood, albeit a couple years younger than he was in later issues and with the nickname "Chick", and tries in his first issue to impress his neighbor Betty Cooper to try to get her to date him through dangerous stunts which she believes make him look arrogant. After Veronica moves in during "Archie Comics 1", the whole dynamic was changed to a BettyAndVeronica format where Betty has a really big and sometimes obsessive crush on Archie.
* UnsoundEffect: In one episode, '''Slamdunk!'''
* UptownGirl: Veronica and Archie.
* VandalismBackfire: Jughead boards a passenger train. The conductor yells at Jug to move his suitcase out of the aisle, but refuses. After another passenger trips on the suitcase, Jughead still refuses to move it, so the conductor throws the valise off the in-motion train. Jughead then says he learned his lesson, and will never leave things where people can stumble over them. After the conductor expresses a little remorse for acting so ruthlessly, Jug calmly adds "...it wasn't even my suitcase."
* WrenchWench:
** Betty is absurdly talented with auto repair and other forms of masculine expertise. This makes her either more or less attractive to the boys, depending on the story.
** Valerie was also this.
* VideoPhone: Veronica of the future once got one installed, only to switch back to normal phones because her friends called while she was doing face masks or when she'd just gotten up.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: W-Z]]
* WackyRacing: ''Archie's RC Racers''
* WardrobeMalfunction:
** A story in ''Veronica'' volume 201 had the girls discover a collection of old-style bathing suits and try them out in the water. The boys didn't really appreciate the cover-everything styles... until it became clear that the old fabric couldn't stand up to water anymore and disintegrated, leaving Betty, Veronica and the rest ''naked'' in the ocean. Heck, this even happened to ''Mrs. Lodge'' who tried out one of the suits at a pool party.
** In another Archie comic, Cheryl stole a dress that Veronica designed and wore it to a party just to laugh in her face - only to find out at that point what a bad seamstress Veronica was. The whole dress ripped apart in front of everyone. (Of course, as humiliating as that was for Cheryl, the story didn't quite end on a high note for Ronnie either...)
* WeddingDay: It was perhaps the most long-awaited invocation of this trope ever when Archie married Veronica. Needless to say, it also led to quite a bit of [[BrokenBase fan arguing]]. But then it turned out to be {{all just a dream}}. And then they did it again when Archie married Betty (also just a dream).
* WhatIf: Several. The most famous are the Archie Marries Veronica/Betty storylines and the ideal sequel ''ComicBook/LifeWithArchieTheMarriedLife''.
* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: Either that or "Riverdale" would have been perfectly accurate; they're the two most famous examples of this trope ever.
* WolverinePublicity: Cheryl Blossom ''exploded'' onto the Archie scene on her 1990s return, quickly getting one limited series after another. Finally, she got her own series and was a constant feature. Eventually, backlash set in, and she was actually written out of the books again before the decade was over, and is now a mere extra.
* WomenDrivers: Played straight before the '60s, usually subverted any time after that.
* WriterOnBoard: In the '70s, Al Hartley occasionally infused his conservative Christian beliefs into the comics until the publishers (who were, are, and have always been Jewish) told him to knock it off. Later in the decade he convinced Archie to license the characters for the explicitly evangelical Spire Christian Comics.
* YeGoodeOldeDays: Al Hartley's rose-colored view of the 1890s as a time free from the ills of modern society… and apparently free from the ills of the 1890s as well.
* YouMeddlingKids: There is an issue where Archie and Jughead solve a crime and the crooks are being led away in restraints by the police. One crook complains about being stopped by a bunch of dumb kids and Jughead fires back "This 'dumb kid' is not the one wearing handcuffs!"
* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: This is a recurring punchline.
** In one comic, Principal Weatherbee hires Jughead to write jokes for his assembly speech when a particular kind of joke is really popular. Then Weatherbee hears two girls complaining about the jokes. When he asks Jughead what happened, Jughead tells him that the jokes are completely lame now. When did they become uncool? "Oh, yeah. When word got around that [Weatherbee] was telling them."
** In another comic, Archie worries that his band's latest song may not be well-receved…because Mr. Lodge loves it.
** In one memorable story, a reporter decides to write a story on Archie's popularity. After the article comes out, all of Archie's friends ostracize him. And when the reporter writes about Archie's fall from grace, the gang become incensed at the reporter for saying such things about Archie. Mr. Weatherbee sums this up thusly, "You see, Archie was popular until I said he was popular. Then, when you wrote abut him being unpopular, he became popular again!"
** In another story, Veronica shows off her skills as a trendsetter by making Jughead's hat the next big thing. After the entire school is wearing hats like Jug's, Veronica (Fed up with seeing that hat everywhere) puts an end to the fad by having the teachers wear the hats.
* YourCheatingHeart: DependingOnTheWriter the BettyAndVeronica dilemma is this, though usually it's written as neither being Archie's steady girlfriend or Archie breaking up with one for the the other.
* YourTelevisionHatesYou: One story had Archie and the gang trying to find some way to escape the heat on a scorching summer day. Eventually they retreat into an air-conditioned movie theatre. the movie showing is called ''Way Down Below'', which they assume will be a SubStory. It turns out to be set in FireAndBrimstoneHell.
* {{Zipperiffic}}: A story has Reggie boasting to Veronica how his outfit is so this. Jughead then draws him with another zipper, on Reggie's mouth.
[[/folder]]

** Betty and Veronica themselves are not immune when see an handsome boy.