| 1 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1587764754061397900 |
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| 4 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/51l32r5dykl.jpg]] |
| 5 | [[caption-width-right:350:This is just some of the hilarious stuff you’re gonna see.]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Classic single-panel {{Newspaper Comic|s}} by Gary Larson. Running from January 1, 1980 to January 1, 1995, it featured numerous talking animals, most notably cows, and frequent depictions of [[FluffyCloudHeaven heaven]] and [[FireAndBrimstoneHell hell]], along with various other stock settings. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | The strip was also known for its use of scientific jokes and puns. A story Larson quotes in one of his anthologies tells of a science teacher who had ''Far Side'' cartoons mounted on a bulletin board. As his students learned more and more, they laughed at more and more of the jokes. This is pretty much the essence of ''The Far Side'' -- witty, educated, nerdy humor that dealt with the world of animals and plants far more so than the mundane reality of cities and towns. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | As a result of ''The Far Side'''s popularity, two species of animals have been [[BinomiumRidiculus named after Mr. Larson]] -- an owl louse (''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni Strigiphilus garylarsoni]]''), and an Ecuadorian butterfly (''Serratoterga larsoni''), which Larson humorously admitted was the best someone like him was ever going to get. In addition, the distinctive tail spikes of Stegosaurs are called ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer thagomizers]]'' in reference to one of his cartoons. An animated special, ''Gary Larson's Tales from the Far Side'', was also released in 1994. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | '''Attention''': Due to [[Administrivia/AboutImagesAndCopyright our policies regarding copyright law]], the vast majority of ''Far Side'' strips cannot be used for page images. Also, Mr. Larson has requested that his work not be displayed online. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | In late 2019, Larson launched an official [[https://www.thefarside.com/ Far Side Internet site]], which reposts batches of old strips, and even includes some [[https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff all-new material]]. However, [[https://www.thefarside.com/about/48/a-letter-from-gary-larson Larson's request]] -- ''So I’m hopeful this official website will help temper the impulses of the infringement-inclined. Please, whoever you are, taketh down my cartoons and let this website become your place to stop by for a smile, a laugh, or a good ol’ fashioned recoiling. And I won’t have to release the Krakencow.'' -- means that the aforementioned rules are still in effect. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ---- |
| 18 | !!''The Far Side'' has named the following tropes: |
| 19 | * CowTools: The strip in question is funny in its own unique way. It led to a lot of fuss, as people tried to figure what the tools ''were'' (Larson has said his mistake was making one of the tools look like a crude handsaw), while the joke was simply the idea of cows ''making'' any. |
| 20 | * FarSideIsland: A frequent setting, usually featuring one or more guys with scruffy beards. |
| 21 | * OffscreenInertia: [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes Formerly]] "Tethercat Principle". Named for an infamous cartoon that featured two dogs playing tetherball with a cat on a rope. In ''The Prehistory of the Far Side'', Larson speculates that one reason so many people were outraged was that, due to the static nature of the cartoon, the dogs never ''stop'' playing tethercat. You walk away and come back, they're still playing tethercat. You look at it a week later, yep, they're still playing. This is in contrast to the slapstick violence in animation, where [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Sylvester the Cat]] can be shot or stabbed, but a few seconds later is completely fine. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | ---- |
| 24 | !!"Tropes of The Far Side": |
| 25 | * FiveFiveFive: One strip sees a man reading a message that came with [[BrokenWindowWarning a brick through his window]] that read as follows: |
| 26 | -->''"Bricks thrown thru your window? CALL AL'S GLASS 555-1232"'' |
| 27 | * SixtiesHair: Many female characters in the strips feature beehive hairdos, usually paired with cat eye glasses. In the world of the strip, these are a universal signifier for mother figures and frumpy housewives, and are found on women of all species. |
| 28 | * AbnormalAmmo: The "Dobie-o-Matic" gun, which shoots a live Doberman. |
| 29 | * AbsurdPhobia: |
| 30 | ** Anatidaephobia: The fear that somewhere, somehow, [[FoulWaterfowl a duck is watching you]]. |
| 31 | ** Luposlipaphobia: The fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor (not a situation that it is absurd to be afraid of, mind, but one that is absurdly ''specific''). |
| 32 | * AchievementsInIgnorance: Larson is [[TaughtByExperience not a trained artist and learned on the job]]. In some compilation books he points out some mistakes he made but also highlights some aspects he is proud of. An artist friend would point out where he did an exceptional job on a complex design but he was just trying to find some way to fit it inside the panel, an example given is a front-end view of a cruise ship about to hit a lighthouse. |
| 33 | * AcmeProducts: |
| 34 | ** The company A-1 is shown to make a variety of products (masks, life rafts, inflatable cows, etc.) within the Far Side universe. |
| 35 | ** Actual Acme products occasionally pop up in strips. |
| 36 | * AdjectiveAnimalAlehouse |
| 37 | ** One strip had "buzzard beatniks" reading poetry in a dive named "The Dead Heifer." |
| 38 | ** A Western-based strip had several horses knocked over on their sides (like motorcycles) in front of the Red Dog Saloon. |
| 39 | * AerosolSprayBackfire: In one strip, a pair of explorers covered in insects notice with horror that they're using "On" bug spray (a popular bug spray in the US is called "Off"). |
| 40 | * AffairHair: Found on the back of a monkey husband, apparently belonging to [[BestialityIsDepraved Jane Goodall]]. |
| 41 | * AndYouWereThere: The final newspaper strip had Gary Larson wake up in bed next to all his family and friends, who happen to resemble a lot of the strip's more popular subjects. |
| 42 | -->'''Gary:''' And Aunt Zelda all the women looked like you and Uncle Bob all the cows looked like you and Ernie there were cavemen that looked like you and there were all these nerdy little kids like you Billy and there were monsters and stupid-looking things and animals could talk and some of it was confusing and... and... Oh, wow! There's no Place like home! |
| 43 | * AnimatedAdaptation: [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109873/ Really]]! [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120270/ Two of them!]] Unsurprisingly, the first was shown on Creator/CartoonNetwork [[NightmareFuel late night on Halloween]]. It also made one and ''only'' one appearance on CBS. Reaction from reviewers to the Zombie Ranch? Not good (the video release dubbed in a wacky travelogue voiceover to make the scene more lighthearted and less morbid). The sequel, which if anything upped the ante in terms of content, never aired anywhere in the US, but made the rounds at various film festivals. Neither are [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes currently available]] for purchase. |
| 44 | * AnnoyingArrows: A herd of buffalo, several of which have half a dozen arrows sticking out of their backs, eye a dead one and ask "Say...maybe it's not just a bad swarm of horseflies." |
| 45 | * AnthropomorphicTypography: One strip featured an anthropomorphic "h" arguing with her husband (an "R") and saying to him, "Yes! I've been seeing all the vowels - a, e, i, o, u... Oh, and sometimes y." |
| 46 | * AnticipatoryBreathSpray: Rusty makes his move (with a can of Dog Breath spray). |
| 47 | * ApatheticPet: Some comics have dogs debating the pros and cons of murdering their owner: in one case, there'll be no more treats, but there'll be no more "Fetch the stick, boy!" |
| 48 | * ApocalypseAnarchy: From 1986. Two fishermen look at mushroom clouds in the distance, one says "I'll tell you what this means, Norm — no size restrictions and ''screw'' the limit." |
| 49 | * ArrowsOnFire: "Hey, they're lightin' their arrows! ...Can they ''do'' that?" |
| 50 | * ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: A section of Hell has rooms for murderers, terrorists, and "people who drove too slow in the fast lane." |
| 51 | * ArtEvolution: Larson is parlayed a childhood hobby into a career, so the art started out rougher and a bit more grotesque. When he first started the strip, he also apparently didn't even know about the existence of White-Out, and so to avoid making mistakes had a habit of not filling all of the backgrounds in (like a bulls-eye patterned rug that mysteriously vanished halfway across the panel) -- he admitted that he preferred to "touch up" older strips to fill in half-completed background elements when they were published in collections. After a while his art style became slightly more refined, though still retained a certain StylisticSuck appeal. |
| 52 | * ArtisticLicenseBiology: Larson pointed out in the commentary for a strip that showed a mosquito husband returning home to his wife and quipping "I must have spread malaria across half the country!" that he got letters from irritated biologists informing him it's the ''[[AnimalGenderBender female]]'' mosquito that bites. Larson's response... |
| 53 | -->"I knew that. [[ArbitrarySkepticism Of course, they have no problem that these mosquitoes also wear clothes, live in the suburbs, speak English, etc]]." |
| 54 | ** He has admitted, though, that he's been bugged (no pun intended) with himself at certain scientific errors that have been pointed out to him by readers--such as one showing polar bears and penguins in the same habitat. |
| 55 | * ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Another quip from ''The Prehistory of the Far Side'': "There should be a special confessional where cartoonists can go and say things like 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned -- I have drawn dinosaurs and hominids together in the same cartoon.'" |
| 56 | ** But in one case, science followed art. When one of Larson's cartoons named the tail-weapon of ''Stegosaurus'' the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer thagomizer,]]" paleontologists said SureLetsGoWithThat. |
| 57 | * ArtsyBeret: |
| 58 | ** One strip has an artist who uses his shoe to paint pictures of squashed bugs. The artist wears a red beret and paint-stained smock. |
| 59 | ** The cover of ''Wiener Dog Art'', a collection of strips, features an artist dabbing wiener dogs in paint and rubbing them on the canvas, parodying a style in midcentury abstract art. The artist wears a beret and a paint-stained smock. |
| 60 | ** In another strip, a painter (signified by his beret), who is trying to paint a still life, yells at the anthropomorphic fruit in the bowl to settle down. |
| 61 | * AshFace: One strip sees this happen to ''God'', [[ArtisticLicenseReligion as a kid]], after trying to use a chemistry set to make a chicken. |
| 62 | * AssInALionSkin: |
| 63 | ** One strip had a polar bear with a PaperThinDisguise -- a penguin's beak -- pretending to be a penguin. |
| 64 | ** The cover of the book collection ''The Chickens Are Restless'' depicts a duck with a false chicken comb among the mob of chickens. |
| 65 | ** Another strip had a herd of cattle talking about how there was a spy among them, with an [[TwoMenOneDress obvious two-person cow costume]] in the middle of them. |
| 66 | * AttentionDeficitOohShiny: As vikings are storming a castle, one is trying to call their attention to gold fish in the moat. Larson admitted that was pretty much him on the bridge. |
| 67 | * AuthorAppeal: Science, bugs, anthropology, Westerns, and jazz music. And beehive haircuts. |
| 68 | * AuthorAvatar: Larson's is a short, fat kid with glasses and a flat-top haircut. |
| 69 | * AwkwardSilenceEntrance: Played with in one strip. Two musicians in a saloon see an ObviouslyEvil cowboy coming in, so one tells the other to start playing in a [[VillainSong minor key]] (rather than going silent). |
| 70 | * BabysitterFromHell: The strip where a couple admonishes the actual witch (broomstick and all) they hired for cooking and eating their children. Not just one, but ''both!'' |
| 71 | * BadHumorTruck: One strip shows neighborhood kids hiding from a "Liver and Onions" truck, and another features the "Vaccination Van" making its rounds. Also, the failed marketing ploy "I Cuss, You Cuss, We All Cuss For Asparagus!". |
| 72 | * BalloonBurstingBird: One comic had a pair of aerial balloonists staring up in horror at a woodpecker about to burst their hot-air balloon. |
| 73 | * BarBrawl: PlayedForLaughs in one comic. A group of cowboys is having a ChildishPillowFight inside a Western bar and someone outside says "Somone better run fetch the sheriff" as if it were a real bar brawl. |
| 74 | * BeachBury: One strip has a kid burying his father with the following (paraphrased) caption: "Billy, the tide's coming in... Billy, unbury Daddy now... You don't want Daddy to get angry..." |
| 75 | * BearsAreBadNews: From time to time. |
| 76 | ** One comic has the Ranger Mafia sending someone to "sleep with the bears"... that is, dressing him up as a garbage can and dropping him off in a national park. |
| 77 | ** Then you have the scientist who disguises himself as a bear to try and decipher the bear tongue. He's accepted for a while... until one of the real bears notices the zipper on his costume. |
| 78 | ** "Look at these teeth! Look at these claws! You think we're just supposed to eat honey and berries?!" |
| 79 | * BeeAfraid: A woman driving her car keeps telling herself not to panic about there being a bee in there with her. The bee in question is six feet tall and sitting in the backseat. |
| 80 | * BeehiveHairdo: Standard, along with cat-eye glasses, for women in his strips. |
| 81 | * BestialityIsDepraved: |
| 82 | ** One of the most controversial comics featured a female gorilla finding a blond hair on her mate and accusing him of doing "research" with "that Jane Goodall tramp". The intended joke is that the female is making a hilariously incorrect assumption as to what Goodall's research involves, but many readers thought it was implying actual bestiality on Goodall's part and were outraged. Goodall herself was said to have found the strip ActuallyPrettyFunny. |
| 83 | ** The strip "Red Cloud's worst nightmare" showed an Indian chief mentally resolving to kill himself when his daughter runs away with her [[DatingWhatDaddyHates new boyfriend]]... a buffalo. |
| 84 | * BestServedCold: "''Remember me, Mr. Schneider? [[NoodleIncident Kenya. 1947.]] If you're going to shoot at an elephant, Mr. Schneider, you better be prepared to finish the job.''" |
| 85 | * BicolorCowsSolidColorBulls: Cows are black-and-white and bulls are black or brown. |
| 86 | * BirdPoopGag: One strip depicts people and a dog with targets on them and the caption "How birds see the world". |
| 87 | * BlackComedy: The strip loves to show characters getting hurt, killed, or eaten- implying it is just as funny, too. |
| 88 | ** In ''The Prehistory of the Far Side'', there was a strip that had a snake inside a baby's crib, and a gigantic bulge in the middle of the snake (presumably the baby) rendering the creature unable to exit the crib, with the snake looking annoyed. Immediately following, Larson says "[[MoveAlongNothingToSeeHere You didn't see this. Turn the page.]]" |
| 89 | ** Another example from ''Prehistory of the Far Side'' was a strip of crocodiles 'Bobbing for poodles' (with that as the caption, and the inside of the bucket thankfully obscured). Larson's comment for it was along the lines of "Thank goodness I didn't go with my original caption of 'Bobbing for babies'." |
| 90 | ** The strip with a mother having just given birth. The doctor cuts the umbilical cord and the baby deflates and flies all over the room like a balloon. Larson mentions that he didn't even try to submit this one after he had finished it, and that he was originally going to add written sound effects before his sanity prevailed. He did, however, eventually publish a rather similar comic depicting a baby "deflating" in a similar way in a hospital nursery. The caption? "Belly button slipknots". |
| 91 | ** One that ''did'' get published had ants carrying a (live) baby. According to Larson, he originally submitted a version where the ants were carrying an elderly man, but ''that'' was rejected, and the baby version was published. |
| 92 | -->"You idiots! We'll never get that thing down the hole!" |
| 93 | ** Another has a pair of spiders who built a web at the bottom of a playground slide. |
| 94 | -->"If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings." |
| 95 | ** Yet another one has a pair of crocodiles sitting, stuffed among the remains of a team of explorers. |
| 96 | -->"Some cheesecake would be good right now." |
| 97 | ** One comic features an Archer WilliamTelling on a boy with a ridiculously oversized head (as in literally bigger than his body), on which is perched a ''tiny'', barely visible apple, the caption being: "William Tell's less fortunate son, Warren." |
| 98 | ** A strip titled "Horse Hospitals" shows a row of anthromorphic horses with their broken legs up in slings, while all the doctors are carrying ''rifles'' and you can hear a loud "'''''[[ShootTheDog BLAM!]]'''''" coming from behind the nearest curtain. |
| 99 | ** Another strip features a farmer carrying eggs from the henhouse passing a chicken carrying a baby from his house. |
| 100 | ** And yet ''another'' one had two nurses shooing an alligator out of a hospital nursery, with the implication that it's already eaten many of the occupants. They seem oddly nonchalant about it, evoking a farmer shooing a fox out of the henhouse. |
| 101 | -->"Git, you rascal, git! Heaven knows how he keeps getting in there, but you'd better count 'em" |
| 102 | ** [[ToServeMan There seems to be a theme here.]] |
| 103 | * BlackComedyAnimalCruelty: In one cartoon, a woman calls her dog home through the window, getting it excited and encouraging it to run, while we see on the interior that she's boarded the dog door completely shut and the dog will run straight into a solid surface. |
| 104 | * BlackComedyPetDeath: One strip has a very large lady calling around the house for her MisterMuffykins while [[DramaticIrony the reader can see]] that the dog has been reduced to a ButtSticker. |
| 105 | * BloodKnight: As one medieval soldier explains to another during a battle. "Win or lose... I love doing this" |
| 106 | * BorrowedWithoutPermission: One comic has [[TheIgor Igor]] being convinced by his buddies that they are only "graveborrowing" as his StartOfDarkness. |
| 107 | * BottomOfTheBarrelJoke: |
| 108 | ** PlayedForLaughs with at least two strips captioned "It was late and I was tired." |
| 109 | ** And one where the caption was a mock-interview with the cartoonist about whether it's tough to come up with ideas ("Sometimes")... and the strip itself is a flock of ducks yelling "''Chicken''!" and ducking out of the way of a chicken thrown over their heads. |
| 110 | * {{Bowdlerize}}: Larson submitted one cartoon with a mammoth examining a flattened caveman on the bottom of his foot, with the caption, "Well, what the... I thought I smelled something." The version that made it to the newspapers was, "Y'know, I thought I heard something squeak." (Arguably, the implications of the last one are ''worse'' than the original, going from "mammoth stepping on caveman, whose smell makes the mammoth think he [[ToiletHumor stepped in dung]]" to "mammoth stepping on caveman, [[BlackComedy who screams in agony as he is crushed to death]]".) |
| 111 | * BowelBreakingBricks: One strip showed a spider dropping silk after a fright. |
| 112 | * BreakingTheFourthWall: A boss fires an employee in one comic for all the insulting stuff he was ''thinking'' about him, saying they're in a cartoon, so he can see his thought bubble and everything in it. And in another strip characters notice a narrative caption that says "Later..." |
| 113 | * BrickJoke: One strip had Santa threatening to turn his reindeer into venison if he heard any more complaints, and a later strip showed him at a typewriter printing up "9 Ways to Serve Venison". |
| 114 | * BullSeeingRed: In one strip a bandaged guy with his arm in a sling is sitting at a bar, holding up and waving around a piece of cloth while explaining to the bartender what happened: "And so this truck starts headin' right for me, y'know, so I takes out this here red handkerchief and I starts waving it like this, y'know...but he don't see me, so I just keeps waving and waving and all the time I'm thinkin', 'Is this really happening to me?'" Unfortunately for the poor guy, the patron sitting next to him is an anthropomorphized bull (wearing clothes and a hat) with his eyes clearly fixed on the "red"[[note]]the strip is in black and white[[/note]] handkerchief. Hilarity presumably ensues shortly thereafter. |
| 115 | * ButForMeItWasTuesday: Implied in the strip where one Mr. Schneider is confronted by the elephant he shot in Kenya, [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge seeking revenge.]] |
| 116 | * TheButlerDidIt: |
| 117 | ** One strip shows a murdered butler at an international butlers' convention, and a detective complaining that he hates to start a week like this. |
| 118 | ** Another strip shows a detective accusing the butler of goring and trampling a man to death as he sits next to the literal ElephantInTheRoom. |
| 119 | * CapsLockNumLockMissilesLock: |
| 120 | ** A man on a plane is about to flip a switch from "Wings Stay On" to "Wings Fall Off" while trying to recline his chair. |
| 121 | -->"Fumbling for his recline button, Ted unwittingly instigates a disaster." |
| 122 | ** Also a man operating the soundboard at a concert starts turning up the knob marked "Suck". |
| 123 | -->"Raymond's last day as the band's sound technician" |
| 124 | * CaptainObvious: A cartoon depicts two Bedouin on camels in the middle of the desert, and the caption is "Hold still, Omar. Now look up. Yep, you've got something in your eye all right. Could be sand." |
| 125 | ** Another strip shows two jungle explorers encountering a native tribe with one man dressed in distinctive, wildly colorful and ornate regalia, looking down on them from where he stands on the backs of two other tribesmen. "Hey... this could be the chief." |
| 126 | * CartoonWhale: Usually depicts whales as sperm whales with upper teeth. |
| 127 | * CatDogDichotomy: Many strips feature the conflict between cats and dogs as the punch line. |
| 128 | * CementShoes: Played with. One strip has the fish mafia give somebody Styrofoam shoes so he can "sleep with the humans". |
| 129 | * CharactersMostHatedSong: One comic depicts "Music/CharlieParker's personal Hell", where Satan forces the legendary jazz saxophonist to listen to nothing but New Age music. |
| 130 | * ChasedByAngryNatives: Inverted in one strip show a tribesman carrying a [=TV=] while fleeing from a band of angry suburbanites. |
| 131 | * ChekhovsGag: In ''Tales From The Far Side I'', there is a 15-second "Meanwhile... back in Egypt" segment that consists of a desert marketplace full of locals who eventually stop and wave at the viewer before going about their business. Unlike the rest of the special, there's no weirdness whatsoever. But in the sequel, there's a segment with amoebas at a party that's abruptly interrupted when their "world" goes sideways. The camera cuts to a man putting down a mostly-empty water glass... then pulls back to him and his family exiting the same exact Egypt scene (sans waving) from the first special. |
| 132 | * ChickenJoke: |
| 133 | ** One strip shows a chicken looking across a road at a sign that reads "THE OTHER SIDE. Why do you need a reason?" |
| 134 | ** Another features a female chicken telling her returning husband that she found a blonde feather and doesn't buy his excuse that he's only been crossing the road to get to the other side. |
| 135 | * ChildishPillowFight: PlayedForLaughs in one comic. A group of cowboys is having a pillow fight inside a Western bar and someone outside says "Somone better run fetch the sheriff" as if it were a real BarBrawl. |
| 136 | * CirclingVultures: The subject of several gags, one example being a depiction of "the perils of improper circling": two of the vultures bonk heads in mid-air. |
| 137 | * CloserThanTheyAppear: In one cartoon, a car's outside rear-view mirror shows the angry eye of an unspecified but huge creature. At the bottom of the mirror it says, "Caution, objects in mirror closer than they appear." |
| 138 | * ComicallyIneptHealing: One strip had a husband trying to practice home surgery on his wife using a Time-Life book and complaining that she's thrashing around too much. |
| 139 | * ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch:[[invoked]] Larson apologized for the "Hell's Video Store" comic after actually ''watching'' the movie ''Film/{{Ishtar}}'', because he had not seen it at the time he did the comic and had only used it because of its reputation. He later admitted that the movie was funny. |
| 140 | * CoolAndUnusualPunishment: "Mr. Thingy", for someone who won't talk for normal methods. This also counts as BuffySpeak. |
| 141 | * CorrectiveLecture: One strip shows a young boy being lectured by his father about force, angle, trajectories, and the like after evidently putting a baseball through a window. The caption notes that the boy comes to dread his father's lectures over all other forms of punishment. |
| 142 | * CrazyCulturalComparison: In one strip, a farmer unwittingly dooms humanity when he tries to shake hands with an alien visitor whose head has an unfortunate resemblance to a human hand. |
| 143 | * CrazyEnoughToWork: A real life example. It's almost impossible to find pirated copies of ''Far Side'' books online, partly because Gary Larson put out an [[http://www.portmann.com/farside/home.html open letter]] asking people not to distribute it illegally. |
| 144 | * CurbStompBattle: |
| 145 | ** "Toby vs. Franchise/{{Godzilla}}" |
| 146 | ** The Pillsbury Doughboy vs. a paving contractor. |
| 147 | ** {{God}} trouncing someone in a game show. The other man hadn't even scored once. (Larson later said he felt bad for giving the contestant a zero score, but realized that if he had given the guy even 1 point, he'd be sure to get hate mail from people who couldn't take the joke of a normal person beating God to the answer buzzer.) |
| 148 | ** The aftermath of a fight between a chicken and a {{cowboy}}. The chicken was shot, but the cowboy got nothing except some egg on his face |
| 149 | ** A ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' episode featuring Einstein, Edison... and some random guy who barely scored 100. In his defense, though, he was pretty sure something was wrong with his buzzer. |
| 150 | ** A group of martial artist just happen to notice that aliens made of bricks and wooden boards are invading right outside their dojo. |
| 151 | * DarkestAfrica: Essentially presented a la ''Franchise/{{Tarzan}}'' movies, and often featuring the man himself. |
| 152 | * DatingWhatDaddyHates: One strip features an Indian chief's daughter running away with a [[BestialityIsDepraved buffalo.]] |
| 153 | * DeadGuyPuppet: In one strip, a bear entertains his cubs by making two human skulls ask each other if there are bears in the cave. |
| 154 | * DeadlyDingos: A strip depicting a daycare next to a dingo farm is captioned, "Trouble brewing", implying the dingoes want to eat, or otherwise attack, the kids |
| 155 | * DeathOfTheHypotenuse: One strip features two men and a woman trapped on a [[FarSideIsland desert island]]. Much to the delight of the one man, a meteor takes out the other. |
| 156 | * DejaVu: A hippie stops at a house to ask for directions; upon noticing that the person he's speaking with is an elephant-bird-giraffe-man, he says, "Oh, wow, deja vu." |
| 157 | * DesertSkull: One uncaptioned cartoon shows a pair of oxen pulling a covered wagon across the desert, [[OhCrap turning their heads as they pass a bovine skull]]. |
| 158 | * TheDinnermobile: One comic depicts a regular occurence in [[SpeciesSpecificAfterlife Dog Heaven]]: Once every hour, a truck made entirely out of ham drives slowly across the clouds, and all the dogs get to chase and eat it. |
| 159 | * TheDinosaursHadItComing: ''Smoking'' is apparently "the real reason dinosaurs went extinct". |
| 160 | * DirectionlessDriver: One comic had an elderly couple driving on the surface of the moon. The wife exclaims "Oh, for heaven's sake -- NOW look where the Earth is! Move over and let ''me'' drive!" |
| 161 | * TheDiscoveryOfFire: One comic had a caveman who claimed to have invented fire—but it's actually just a wooden cut-out of a campfire. The caption notes that he was exiled from the tribe over "[[{{Scandalgate}} the Firegate incident]]". |
| 162 | * DissonantSerenity: A not uncommon theme. One strip has an enormous, monstrous eye looking in through a woman's window; her reaction is to calmly call a neighbor to ask her what said eye belongs to. |
| 163 | * DivineMisfile: [[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/95/52/15/9552153ffd72083b13ea3b231d18b046.jpg Ernie]] is sent to Hog Heaven by clerical error. |
| 164 | * TheDogWasTheMastermind: Parodied in one strip when a cow suddenly leaps up in a courtroom and proclaims, "All right, I confess! I did it! That's right! The cow! Ha ha! And I feel great!" |
| 165 | * DontEatAndSwim: One strip had a young snake with a large lump in his belly attempt to go swimming at the beach. His mother tells him to wait a whole week before going in. |
| 166 | * DontExplainTheJoke: |
| 167 | ** There ''is'' no explanation for the infamous "Cow Tools" cartoon. |
| 168 | ** A cartoon has a cat with two wooden front legs sitting in a pet shop next to a fish bowl containing a piranha. Larson says he tried multiple times to come up with a good caption, before realizing the visual gag stood on its own. |
| 169 | ** ''The Complete Far Side'' reveals that Larson was infamous for this. Him and his publishers receiving letters asking them to explain a strip was a regular occurrence, usually resulting in them writing back with a concise explanation (which, expectedly, made it less funny). |
| 170 | * DoorDumb: At a school for the gifted, no less. |
| 171 | %%* DoorStopper: [[http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Far-Side-1980-1994-vol/dp/0740721135 The Complete Far Side]]. |
| 172 | %%* DownOnTheFarm: Pretty much all the strips with cows and/or chickens. |
| 173 | * DragonsVersusKnights: A couple of strips play off of the enmity of knights and dragons, usually skewed in the dragons' favor. One features a dragon handling the scalding hot armor of a freshly roasted knight and calling for his wife to hurry up with the hot pads; another has an irritated dragoness scolding her husband for eating in bed and leaving leftovers (i.e., knights' armor) all over the sheets. Another has dragons failing to attract knights with a dummy and concluding they need a real damsel to hold captive. |
| 174 | * DrearyHalfLiddedEyes: Uncaring or bored characters are drawn with straight lines for eyes, implying half lids but sometimes resembling EyesAlwaysShut. |
| 175 | * DudeNotFunny: |
| 176 | ** {{Invoked|Trope}}. Larson has a friend with a very strange sense of humor, so whenever he called and said "I loved today's strip!" Gary figured, "I've offended half of America." |
| 177 | ** As ''The Complete Far Side'' shows, Larson would regularly receive hate mail by various readers demanding the comic be pulled from the paper for various reasons, focused on material ranging from the religiously offensive to the scientifically inaccurate. |
| 178 | * DumbDinos: Dinosaurs don't come across as particularly intelligent for the most part. In one cartoon a T. rex is shown to have poor grammar, and in another a group of dinosaurs are laughing at a mammal as it begins to snow. |
| 179 | * DungeonShop: PlayedForLaughs when a traveler in a ThirstyDesert [[https://imgur.com/a/NR0lPHg encounters a tropical fish pet shop]]. Don't ask the logistics of how a such a shop remains supplied in the middle of a desert or how many customers they get. |
| 180 | * EatMyDust: One strip shows the crew of the ''Santa Maria'' sail past the ''Pinta'', waving a giant banner reading "EAT OUR WAKE PINTAHEADS". |
| 181 | * ElephantGraveyard |
| 182 | ** Parodied with a pair of researchers coming across the coveted Secret Chipmunk Burial Grounds, a large pile of tiny bones. |
| 183 | ** Parodied with the secret elephant playgrounds, the secret elephant aerial grounds, the secret elephant breeding grounds (a bunch of giant, flattened beds), and even the secret ''appliance'' burial grounds. |
| 184 | ** One strip has two elephants lost in the jungle and reading a map to find the elephant's graveyard. |
| 185 | --->"According to the map, this should be the place -- but it sure doesn't look right to me. Well, we're supposed to die around here ''somewhere''." |
| 186 | * ElephantsNeverForget: One strip has a dejected elephant sitting at bar, bemoaning that although he drinks and drinks, he never forgets. In another, an elephant confronts the man who shot at him during a hunting trip, reminding him of the exact date that it occurred. |
| 187 | * ElmuhFuddSyndwome: The TropeNamer appears in a strip, being lectured by an employer about his speech. |
| 188 | -->'''Employer:''' The problem, Mr. Fudd, is that you've been having a subliminal effect on everyone in the factory. We're proud of our product, Mr. Fudd, and there's no company in the world that makes a finer skwoo dwivuh... dang! now you GotMeDoingIt! |
| 189 | * EmotionlessReptile: Parodied. A crocodile on the stand in court says to the lawyer cross-examining him: "Well, ''of course'' I did it in cold blood, you idiot!... I'm a reptile." |
| 190 | * EpicFail: One strip has a cowboy losing a QuickDraw... To a ''sloth''. |
| 191 | -->'''Bystander:'''"Well, the sloth nailed him. ...Y'know, ol' Hank never was exactly a 'quick draw'." |
| 192 | * EskimoLand: Numerous strips with fur-clad Eskimos living on an icy plain in igloos. One typical example has the eskimos witnessing the landing of an alien saucer, with aliens that look exactly like cacti. One of the Eskimos exclaims they look like nothing he's ever seen. |
| 193 | * EveryoneHatesMimes: Several strips. "''Situation's changed, Jules...take my buffalo gun and hand me the [[CrazyPrepared mime rifle.]]''" Another strip has an IceCreamKoan asking, "''If a tree falls in the forest, and it hits a mime, and no one's around, does anyone care?''" |
| 194 | * FailedASpotCheck: |
| 195 | ** A bunch of penguins are concerned about the rash of disappearances, failing to notice one penguin is much bigger and ''furrier'' than them... |
| 196 | ** A hunter proudly proclaims to another he can tell a deer's been resting thanks to the telltale signs such as the disturbed grass. Not the sleeping bag, or the framed photo of a deer on the tree. |
| 197 | * FalloutShelterFail: One strip in a bomb shelter where a woman is berating her husband for stockpiling a wall of canned food... and no can opener. |
| 198 | * FalseInnocenceTrick: Two truck drivers stop in front of a bear lying down in the road, with the older suggesting they don't get out. "Maybe that bear's hurt, maybe he ain't." A wise suggestion, given there's another bear lurking behind a tree. And the truck carries honey and grubs... |
| 199 | * FictionalVideoGame: The "Stampede" segment of the second ''Tales From the Far Side''. A cow in a barn plays it, running over a bunch of cowboys (and also [[Music/ElvisPresley Elvis]] for some reason), but ultimately runs into a slaughterhouse and loses. |
| 200 | * FightForTheLastBite: In one strip, a man mentions how he wants to eat the last slice of beef despite already being full. Meanwhile, a dog's eyes are just poking up over the far edge of the table, ''staring'' at him. |
| 201 | * FilmNoir: Parodies multiple times. For example, one panel has an elephant seeking revenge on a big game hunter, done in a style Larson directly compared to a Creator/HumphreyBogart movie. |
| 202 | * FireAndBrimstoneHell: A frequent setting for the strip. |
| 203 | ** "Ok, sir, would you like inferno or non-inferno?... Ha! Just kidding. It's all inferno, of course -- I just get a kick out of saying that." |
| 204 | ** "''HEY!'' Who keeps turning down the thermostat?!?" |
| 205 | ** Nerds in hell: "Hot enough for ya?" |
| 206 | ** One in which people are being marched into hell via a cavernous hall with one of those hand-knitted plaques saying "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," which they all eye nervously. |
| 207 | ** Said to one demon by another as the two watch this one clueless idiot of a man whistle merrily as he toils away in the mines of Hell: "You know, we're just not reaching that guy." |
| 208 | ** [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Scotty in Hell]]. |
| 209 | ** Devils in an office are laughing at the submissions pulled out of their suggestion box. |
| 210 | ** "[[CaptainObvious Watch out! These plates are hot!]]" |
| 211 | ** A painter has just painted "999" on Satan's office door in hell. Satan doesn't look happy, and the painter says he "must have been holding the dang work order like ''this''!" (ie: [[SixIsNine upside down]]). |
| 212 | ** "C'mon, c'mon -- [[MortonsFork it's either one or the other]]" The choice is between two doors, labeled ''DAMNED if you do'' and ''DAMNED if you don't''. |
| 213 | ** "Welcome to Hell——-Here’s your accordion." |
| 214 | * FishPeople: |
| 215 | ** Two strips have essentially the same gag. In one, a diver is taking a huge fish out of the ocean and notices a fish man taking a captive woman ''into'' the ocean. A more lighthearted one features a guy carrying a surfboard running towards the ocean to catch some waves. Then he notices a fish man carrying a ''wagon'' running out of the ocean to catch some dunes. |
| 216 | ** One comic has a fish man rising out of a swamp, with a battered-looking frog telling him, "[[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Go get 'em, brother.]]" |
| 217 | ** A fourth comic had a heron trying to swallow a fish man, which is clearly far too large to fit down its throat. |
| 218 | ** A fifth has one on a date with a human woman. He tells her that he resents the term "swamp thing" and prefers to be called "wetlands-changed mutant". |
| 219 | * FlockOfWolves: "Is ''anyone'' here a real sheep?" |
| 220 | * FluffyCloudHeaven: |
| 221 | ** "Wish I'd brought a magazine." |
| 222 | ** There's even one for dogs, where, every hour on the hour, a truck made entirely of pressed ham lumbers its way through the clouds... and the dogs can choose whether or not to join in the chase. |
| 223 | ** "Life on Cloud Eight is alright, but the folks next door really seem to be living it up." |
| 224 | ** The human Ernie accidentally gets sent to "Hog Heaven". |
| 225 | * FlyInTheSoup: |
| 226 | ** One comic inverted it. A giant fly is seated at a table, with a bowl of soup on his head. A human, sitting at the same table, exclaims, "Waiter! What's this soup doing on my fly?" |
| 227 | ** Another has a fly who's fallen into a soup bowl, while another shouts to her from the rim: "Tread soup, Deborah! I'm going to get help!" |
| 228 | * FoulWaterfowl: One comic is about Anatidaephobia: [[AbsurdPhobia the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you]]. |
| 229 | * FrankensteinsMonster: Appears fairly regularly. One strip has him getting into a heated argument with TheIgor in the middle of a diner, much to Dr. Frankenstein's embarrassment. |
| 230 | * FreudianCouch: Used often, although in the 10th anniversary retrospective, Larson said he considered the device a cliché and described how having an animal visiting a human psychiatrist would frequently break his own WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief and cause him to start questioning everything about his comic. |
| 231 | ** In one instance, it was a disembodied eyeball (who was suffering from incredible hostility to the outside world), which was nearly invisible in the newspaper versions. Most readers either missed the eyeball entirely or thought it was just one of the buttons sewed onto the couch. In his 10th anniversary retrospective, Larson briefly tried to defend the cartoon before admitting that maybe it wasn't that great an idea after all. |
| 232 | * FromBadToWorse: |
| 233 | ** One strip features a man drifting on an rubber life boat in the middle of the ocean, and watching a news report on a portable TV. The newscaster then mentions that the company has recalled that particular type of raft because a defect in the production causes it to gradually lose air, and eventually sink in a manner of days. |
| 234 | ** Another strip has two other bedraggled wayfarers in a similar raft being attacked by ''navy'' ants. |
| 235 | ** In one strip two men are stranded in the desert and are so badly dehydrated they are reduced to crawling and hoping that the direction they are crawling towards will lead to water. One guy notes that it's not a cheerful sign that a '''camel''' is crawling ''towards'' them. |
| 236 | * FunetikAksent: |
| 237 | ** Parrot mimicking, "Hey boid! Shaddup! Hey boid! Shaddup!" to a gangster loading a gun. |
| 238 | ** A meeting of the bird mafia: "Have all the boids arrived?" |
| 239 | ** Another strip depicts some gangsters going out "boid watching". |
| 240 | ** With [[SapientCetaceans dolphins]]: |
| 241 | -->'''Scientist''' (with headphones): ''We're getting another one of those strange '[[BilingualBonus aw blah es span yol]]' sounds''. |
| 242 | * FunnyAnimal: Not to mention funny plants and funny protozoa ("Humor at its lowest form"). |
| 243 | * FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the [[AbsurdPhobia "Anatidaephobia"]] strip, [[ProperlyParanoid look at the windows across the street from his office]]. |
| 244 | * FurIsClothing: One strip has a man and a snake unexpectedly meet while skinny dipping in the same pond. The man has a pile of clothes on the bank, and the snake left his snake skin on land. |
| 245 | * FurryReminder: While most of the animals are anthropomorphized, many strips with animals rely on those animals' characteristics. Like a bunch of snakes who can't let their friend in because they can't work the doorknob. |
| 246 | * GanglandDriveBy: One strip shows one of the cartoon figures partially erased, with a woman nearby saying, "My God, it could have been any of us!" The caption reads, "Drive-by erasings". |
| 247 | * GiantAnimalWorship: Parodied with a tribe of insects leaving a butterfly tied up to be taken away by a giant (to them) entomologist. |
| 248 | * GiantEnemyCrab: A boxer's literal worst nightmare. "No matter what I do, he keeps going to the side!" |
| 249 | * {{God}}: |
| 250 | ** Portrayed as [[GrandpaGod a big guy with long white hair, robes and a beard]]. [[KingOfAllCosmos Has a good sense of humor]]. According to Mr. Larson, this is "the way most of us are pretty sure he looks." |
| 251 | ** In one strip he has the Earth in a pot and is holding a jar on it that says "Jerks" and is thinking, "...and to make it interesting..." |
| 252 | ** God (thinking of the Earth He's taking out of the oven): "Something tells me this thing is only half-baked..." |
| 253 | ** Making snakes out of clay, God muses "Man, these things are a cinch!" |
| 254 | ** While designing the great white shark, He wonders if He should put a happy face on its uvula. |
| 255 | ** Another has Him thoroughly trouncing the current champion of a game show, on which Larson noted that he was careful to make it clear that the champion had never once beaten God to the buzzer, as someone doubtlessly would have gotten upset. |
| 256 | ** God at his computer. It has a 'Smite' key. |
| 257 | ** He even had a cartoon depicting God as a small boy, standing amidst the aftermath of a child's chemistry set explosion, feathers everywhere, and the caption "God as a kid tries to make a chicken in his room." Larson noted that he wasn't really worried about people being offended by that one, but he ''was'' a little nervous about [[BoltOfDivineRetribution other potential consequences...]] |
| 258 | * GoingDownWithTheShip: Except the Captain convinced the ship's ''cook'' that it was his duty instead. |
| 259 | * TheGrimReaper: Appears in several strips. |
| 260 | ** The Grim Reaper as a child. He's a chubby skull-headed boy who likes playing with model cemeteries. |
| 261 | ** He does stands-up comedy, but only one person in the audience is brave enough to laugh at his jokes. |
| 262 | ** With boxing gloves, he becomes the Angel of Migraines. |
| 263 | ** He discovers his (human) girlfriend is cheating on him with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kevorkian Jack Kevorkian]]. |
| 264 | ** He and his wife have their downtime interrupted when a salesman comes literally knocking at death's door. |
| 265 | ** A passerby unwittingly has a brush with him (as in, bumps into him. "''Watch it, buddy!''") |
| 266 | * GroinAttack: A hunting party of cavemen surrounds a mammoth brought down by a single arrow to the (featureless) crotch. "Maybe we should remember that spot." |
| 267 | * HallOfMirrors: "But which of us is the ''real'' duck, Mr. Frischberg, and not just an illusion?" |
| 268 | * HarassingPhoneCall: Larson put out a few strips involving obscene phone calls. One was Literature/{{the Three Little Pigs}} with the wolf huffing and puffing on the other end, the second was a cow chewing cud, and [[RuleOfThree the third was]] an "obscene duck call". |
| 269 | * HardOnSoftScience: Averted. Larson's favourite branch of science seems to be biology, but he's also fond of anthropology, and besides everything from physics to psychiatry gets lampooned at some point or another. |
| 270 | * HeadlessHorseman: The Horseman comes home from his day at work, and is greeted by his family, who are also all headless, including the pets. |
| 271 | * HesAFriend: One strip has a police officer taking a man to jail. On the top bunk is a mentally insane man tearing apart his pillow with his teeth. |
| 272 | --> '''Officer:''' Hey, Durk! New roommate, Durk! New roommate! Friend, Durk! Friend! |
| 273 | * HollywoodNatives: Used as the subject of many gentle gags. One strip has one fleeing from a mob of angry suburbanites with their stolen idol (a TV). |
| 274 | * HollywoodPrehistory: Numerous examples of cavemen and dinosaurs interacting; a typical example has a tyrannosaur scooping up a mouthful of cavemen, and then spitting them out in disgust, with the caption reading "The days before soap." RuleOfFunny aside, Larson expressed his scientific shame for doing these strips. (He ''did'' also do lots of gags with cavemen more accurately hunting mammoths.) |
| 275 | * HornyVikings: Showed up pretty regularly, including one where they fought the "Wimpodites", who wielded pillows. |
| 276 | * HostileHitchhiker: One strip has two women in a car looking at at a one-eyed man with a HookHand and a sign that says "Anywhere". The caption is "Come on, Cynthia, where's your sense of adventure?" |
| 277 | * IAlwaysWantedToSayThat: One panel showed a group of vultures and one of them says, "Well, I suppose you're all wondering why I've asked you here today...Ha, I've always wanted to say that." |
| 278 | * IAteWhat: One cartoon had a crowd of scientists gathered around a cup with one of them saying, "What's this? Lemonade? Where's my sample of amoebic dysentery?" while another scientist on the other side of the panel is drinking from a glass with an OhCrap expression on his face. Larson received letters from a few peeved scientists who wanted Larson to know that eating in a science lab is strictly forbidden (Larson knew that, but did it for RuleOfFunny). Of course, since the cartoon is such an excellent depiction of ''why'' you don't eat in a lab, some labs use it in addition to the standard warning posters. |
| 279 | * IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: The collections with indexes feature sections for each letter of the alphabet. However, every letter but "T" is blank, as each comic is identified as "The one with the [x]". |
| 280 | * TheIgor: Often appears alongside a MadScientist and FrankensteinsMonster. One example has the Doctor holding an itty-bitty version of the monster's head and shouting at Igor for letting it go through the wash in his pants pocket. |
| 281 | ** Referenced in one strip depicting a bunch of scientists arguing amongst each other. The caption reads "Another case of too many scientists and not enough hunchbacks." |
| 282 | * InsultingFromBehindTheLanguageBarrier: The Lone Ranger discovers that "kemosabe" is an "Apache expression for a horse's rear end". |
| 283 | * IntellectualAnimal: Animals are frequently shown talking and communicating with humans like people. |
| 284 | * InterspeciesRomance: A frequent topic of humor. |
| 285 | ** Dog to sheep: "Confession time Mona: [[IncrediblyLamePun I've led you astray]]." |
| 286 | ** A relationship between a wolf and a sheep fizzled because the wolf's pack wouldn't stop heckling him and the sheep just ate the flowers he gave her. The original caption for this one was simply "Predator/prey relationships," but Larson became intrigued by the way the wolf was looking over his shoulder and decided to dig a little further into their relationship. |
| 287 | ** It turns out that chickens fantasize about sex with ducks. |
| 288 | ** "Dang it, Monica! I can't live this charade any longer! I'm not a telephone repairman who stumbled into your life -- I'm a Komodo dragon, largest member of the lizard family and a filthy liar." |
| 289 | ** In one strip a woman is kissing a maintenance technician when her husband (a bipedal rhino) comes home early. She warns him that her spouse's eyesight is poor, but his hearing and smell are very good. |
| 290 | ** "It's this new boyfriend dear... I'm just afraid one day your father's going to up and blow him away." The boyfriend is a humanoid deer (and a bit of a loudmouth), and the girl's father is an avid (and annoyed looking) deer hunter. |
| 291 | ** Another one has a woman dancing with an anthropomorphic crocodile. "I'm originally from the shores of the upper Nile, and... say, did anyone ever tell you your pupils are ''round''?" |
| 292 | %%* InventionalWisdom |
| 293 | * InvisibleAnatomy: The "Down at the Eat 'n Slither" strip, with snakes sitting at a bar, eating breakfast and reading the news. Larson himself lampshaded it in ''The Prehistory of the Far Side'': |
| 294 | --> "I have no idea how those snakes are holding up those newspapers..." |
| 295 | * IronicHell: FireAndBrimstoneHell often doubles as this. |
| 296 | ** "Oh, man! The coffee's cold! They thought of everything!" |
| 297 | ** For musicians in particular: "Welcome to hell. Here's your accordion." |
| 298 | ** "Hell's Video Store" ([[TakeThat only carries]] ''Film/{{Ishtar}}'') Larson later apologized for this one, having only heard of the film's dismal reputation when drawing the strip. Not that having an infinite number of copies of the same movie to watch for all eternity [[FridgeLogic isn't a punishment either]]. |
| 299 | ** Music/CharlieParker's private Hell is a room in the traditional fire and brimstone Hell where nothing but New Age music is played. |
| 300 | ** "Hell's library" only has books of story problems. |
| 301 | ** "Bowler's hell": ''Whoa! Another split?... What a bummer!'' And the end of the lane is about fifty feet wide. |
| 302 | ** "Aerobics in hell": ''Three more, two more, one more, okay!... Five-million leg lifts, right leg first!... Ready, set!..'' |
| 303 | ** Satan leading a symphony conductor to a room full of hick-looking types playing banjos. |
| 304 | ** In one of the Far Side of Science strips, a physicist is led into a room full of astrologers. |
| 305 | ** Dog hell forces the dogs to be mail carriers. |
| 306 | * ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime: During the siege of the Alamo, a would-be entrepreneur is trying to sell T-shirts that read "I kicked Santa Anna's butt at the Alamo" and commemorative mugs. He's had to reduce the price from 3.95 to one dollar. |
| 307 | * JustTheIntroductionToTheOpposites: There are a few strips with this theme. For example, one has some hornets unwisely provoke a human family by throwing rocks at their house. |
| 308 | * {{Kaiju}}: Larson saw a lot of monster movies as a kid, so giant monsters make frequent appearances. |
| 309 | * KangarooPouchRide: Hannibal's first attempt at crossing the Alps involves riding kangaroos along the narrow ledges. It is implied to not have worked very well. |
| 310 | * KarmaHoudini: |
| 311 | ** The police stop a man who's been hitting people with a hammer, only to discover he actually has license to do it. |
| 312 | ** A hunter gets away with entering a deer's home and killing it. The officer tells the deer's wife he was in season. |
| 313 | * KickMePrank: |
| 314 | ** One time a bear had a "Shoot Me" sign on his back. |
| 315 | ** Another featured a flower with a "Weed me" sign on its back. |
| 316 | ** Two painters with one painting "I carry cash" on the back of the other. |
| 317 | ** A cowboy in one strip has "trample me" taped to his back during a cattle drive |
| 318 | * KidsPreferBoxes: One cartoon has two scientists squabbling over who gets the cardboard box that their Polaris missile came in. |
| 319 | -->Your kids got the ''last'' one! |
| 320 | * KillerRabbit: Many "cute" animals are dangerous in this strip. |
| 321 | ** In a quite literal example, one strip had a couple of guys being threatened by rabbits with guns. |
| 322 | ** Or the one where a hiker encounters a bunch of little happy forest animals, but notices that they are looking a bit ''[[SlasherSmile too happy]]''... |
| 323 | ** A group of poodles discussing their owner: "On the other hand, if we kill her, then the pampering will stop." |
| 324 | ** Night of the living dead chipmunks. |
| 325 | ** Another one has an old lady feeding birds at the park. One of the birds asks his friends "Who here has seen Creator/AlfredHitchcock's ''Film/TheBirds''?" |
| 326 | ** As noted above, [[FoulWaterfowl ducks are evil]]. |
| 327 | ** A subtle one simply shows a man tumbling off a building ledge. Closer inspection reveals a small bird with him on the ledge with its foot extended, [[DontExplainTheJoke implying that the bird kicked the man off the ledge.]] |
| 328 | * KissTheCookApron: A comic features a barbecue hosted by donkeys, with the cook wearing an apron that reads "Kick the Cook". |
| 329 | * KnifeThrowingAct: A knife-thrower flashes an OhCrapSmile at his enraged audience, when it turns out his "assistant" is actually an inflated dummy, which he has punctured with one of his knives. |
| 330 | * LargeHamTitle: "The Names We Give Dogs/The Names They Give Themselves" implies this. |
| 331 | * LetsMeetTheMeat: |
| 332 | ** A chicken being served chicken soup by his wife when he has the flu. "Will you relax? It's nobody we know!" |
| 333 | ** A chicken baking a cake takes a long hard look at her eggs... |
| 334 | ** A cow grilling burgers: "You're sick, Jessie! Sick, sick, sick!" |
| 335 | ** Another cow eating a steak (possibly on a dare) while his buddies look on: "Interesting... interesting... I'd say we taste a [[TastesLikeChicken little bit like chicken]]." |
| 336 | ** Non-food variant: a calf wearing leather. According to his parents, he's only doing it for the shock value. |
| 337 | ** A more subtle example is one strip with a dolphin busy canning tuna in her kitchen while another in a police uniform is saying "Just a few more questions about your husband's disappearance and then you can get back to your canning." |
| 338 | ** A cow who got a job driving a butcher's delivery van. |
| 339 | --> Murray eventually took the job - but his friends never did speak to him again. |
| 340 | * LighterAndFluffier: |
| 341 | ** The "Wimpodites" and their ferocious pillow-fighting tactics. A common prey to vikings. |
| 342 | ** A mobster, to a guy he's trying to get information from: |
| 343 | --> "Still won't talk, eh? Maybe Rudy and his ''wiffle bat'' can change your mind!" |
| 344 | * LightningReveal: Subverted in the second animated special. The dangerous animals surrounding the dancing couple turn out to be stuffed... as does the male partner when the police drag the woman out of the taxidermy shop the couple was running. |
| 345 | ** Implied in "Scene from ''The Return of the Nose of Dr. Verlucci''." |
| 346 | * LookMaNoPlane: Inverted. A flock of geese are keeping pace with a passenger jet, and one looks over and sees another goose riding in comfort in the plane, making faces at the others through the window. |
| 347 | * LostAtSea: Another common setting for gags, often involving the castways' rubber liferaft being under threat of destruction in some humorous fashion. |
| 348 | * LudicrousGiftRequest: Implied in a strip that shows a boy with an ant farm and an off-page voice saying that if he really looks after them, maybe next year he can have "that puppy", implying he asked for a puppy. |
| 349 | * LuringInPrey: One cartoon has a man peering into an alley at a giant set of jaws with a tongue shaped like a beer bottle. |
| 350 | * MadScientist: Lots, often paired with monsters and hunchbacked assistants. |
| 351 | * MantisMatingMeal: One strip features a praying mantis talking to her neighbor, apparently accusing her of cheating with her husband. |
| 352 | -->"I don't know what you're insinuating, Jane. I haven't seen Harold all day. Besides, surely you know that I would only devour my ''own'' husband." |
| 353 | * MaximumCapacityOverload: In one strip, we see a man on an elevator with several elephants, and he watches in horror as one more tries to get in. The max. capacity is shown as several thousand pounds. |
| 354 | * {{Medusa}}: In "Medusa Starts Her Day" featuring one of his dowdy, bespectacled women showering, wearing a shower-cap through which a snake has poked its head. |
| 355 | * MindlessSheep: In one strip, a sheep stands up in the middle of a herd of other sheep and shouts "Wait! We don't have to be ''just'' sheep!" The other sheep don't listen and continue grazing. |
| 356 | * MischievousBodyLanguage: one comic has an [[FunnyAnimal anthropomorphic dog]] asking his students which of them didn't [[ADogAteMyHomework eat their homework]] on their way to school. The ones who ostensibly did eat their homework are wearing cheeky smiles. |
| 357 | * MiserableMassage: PlayedForLaughs, in a strip where Captain James Hook from ''Peter Pan'' is visiting the job counselor Doreen, with Doreen stating "Okay, Mr. Hook. Seems you're trying to decide between a career in pirating or massage therapy. Well, maybe we can help you narrow it down." |
| 358 | * MissingReflection: One strip has a man ranting on a soapbox about vampires being everywhere. None of the passersby seem to be listening to him, and the reason why is apparent in a large mirror being carried across a nearby street [[RightBehindMe behind his back]], which shows a reflection of him alone. |
| 359 | * MobileFishbowl: |
| 360 | ** One strip has a fish using a frogman suit with a line attaching it to a fishbowl. |
| 361 | ** Another shows a fish driving a bowl on wheels around a person on a beach before driving back into the water. |
| 362 | * MonsterInTheMoat: {{Parodied}}. One cartoon features HornyVikings storming into a castle. As they cross the drawbridge, one soldier in particular looks down to see what's in the moat, and shouts "Ooh! Goldfish, everyone!" |
| 363 | * MoralGuardians: |
| 364 | ** Oh ''god'', the Moral Guardians. Larson faced opposition from several groups who just couldn't let his "unique" brand of satire slide, especially if religion or torture was involved; several newspapers were sent letters from upset readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Fortunately for Larson, the editors rarely caved. |
| 365 | ** Interestingly, Larson himself conceded that some of these groups, such as Amnesty International, made very good points in their criticism and complaints. Also, he himself said that people's misinterpretation of the infamous "When car chasers dream" cartoon was his own fault. |
| 366 | ** On the other hand, the "that Jane Goodall tramp" cartoon aroused some outrage until Goodall herself finally publicly said that she thought it was ActuallyPrettyFunny. |
| 367 | * MouseWorld: A setting for many cartoons, ranging from rats and goldfish all the way to amoebae living in a miniature environment not unlike human civilisation. |
| 368 | * MrMuffykins: |
| 369 | ** Actually subverted in one strip where the dog's owner, a large old lady, is seen getting her dog to run into a wall. He then notes in the commentary that the reason these dogs get so much hate may be partly due towards their owners' mannerisms. |
| 370 | ** Also see the poodles under KillerRabbit, above. |
| 371 | * MurderousMannequin: There was a Sunday strip with a horror movie blurb spoof, ''Night of the Crash Test Dummies''. Later used as the cover of a strip collection. |
| 372 | * MyBrainIsBig: |
| 373 | ** One comic had the cops rushing into the villain's headquarters -- which had your typical MyBrainIsBig guy as well as some huge-bodied, tiny-headed mooks -- and shouting, "Who's the brains of this outfit?" |
| 374 | ** In another strip, Larson [[InvertedTrope inverted]] it, by having a student with a head half the size of everyone else asking to be excused from class because his "brain was full". |
| 375 | ** And in another inversion, a stegosaurus lectures other dinosaurs: |
| 376 | -->"The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen... the world's climates are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut." |
| 377 | * NaturallyHusklessCoconuts: When coconut tree is depicted, expect coconuts hanging from it to be without a husk. |
| 378 | * NoCanOpener: In a fallout shelter, there's a fully-stocked post-nuke bomb shelter where a woman is berating her companion for forgetting the most critical item. |
| 379 | -->"How many times did I say it, Harold? How many times? 'Make sure that bomb shelter's got a can opener - ain't much good [[NoCanOpener without a can opener]],' I said." |
| 380 | * NoSympathy: A bear angrily asks her husband what his excuse for being home late is this time, ignoring the tag, collar, and the fact ''someone'' has shaved the words "no. 8" on his back. Or she does notice it and wants an explanation, and it better be a good one. |
| 381 | %%* NobleSavage |
| 382 | * NotAfraidOfHell: One comic shows a man in Hell happily whistling a tune as he pushes a wheelbarrow while everyone else suffers. One devil says to another "You know, we're just not reaching that guy". |
| 383 | * NotEvenBotheringWithAnExcuse: The strip for December 9, 1994 features a boy nonchalantly standing inside a hornets' nest, with two hornet detectives investigating who could have thrown rocks at the hive from the inside. Beneath the cartoon, the caption reads: "Artist: G. Larson; Medium: Ink on paper; Title: It Was Late and I Was Tired." |
| 384 | * NotInFrontOfTheParrot: |
| 385 | ** Including a caveman's parrot... saying "Grunt, snort... Grunt, grunt, snort." |
| 386 | ** A parrot is sitting on a branch over some quick sand, and two pith-helmets are seen partially submerged. The parrot is saying "Stop struggling, Simmons, you're pulling us in! Stop struggling, Simmons, you're pulling us in! Stop struggling, Simmons..." |
| 387 | ** The leader of a group of gangsters insists on having his mob repeat the address of their new safehouse aloud a hundred times so as to not forget. Said gangsters are hiding out in a pet shop full of parrots. |
| 388 | ** Another one with a lone gangster polishing his gun, and his parrot alternately whistling and saying "Hey boid, shaddup!" |
| 389 | ** Another with a very full python in a pet store, with the parrot repeating calls of distress. |
| 390 | * NotSoImaginaryFriend: "Big Bob is tired of you saying he doesn't exist." |
| 391 | * NotWhereTheyThought: In one strip, an alien is telling off another for getting not only the wrong planet but the wrong solar system. |
| 392 | * NoodleIncident: |
| 393 | ** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Larson, who assumes in an anthology commentary that there's "a sordid, bizarre past" behind a particular strip: |
| 394 | -->'''Duck:''' So, Professor Jenkins, my old nemesis! We meet again... but this time, the advantage is mine! |
| 395 | ** Also, an elephant wearing a jacket and hiding in an alley: |
| 396 | -->'''Elephant:''' Remember me, Mr. Schneider? Kenya. 1947. If you're going to shoot at an elephant, Mr. Schneider, you better be prepared to finish the job. |
| 397 | ** And an old man who somehow managed to survive having his head removed from his body, and exists as only a head now: |
| 398 | -->'''Grandmother:''' For heaven's sake, Henry, tell the kids a ''pleasant'' story for once -- they don't always have to hear the one about your head. |
| 399 | * OhCrap: A ''very'' frequent theme. |
| 400 | ** The scientists at a viral pathology research building have one of these reactions when they accidentally drop a sample out the window into an open city street. |
| 401 | ** And another when one mistakes a bacteria culture for a glass of lemonade and drinks it. |
| 402 | ** Cows have them too, as when a wide-eyed cow, in a house with other, partying cows, looks into a freezer; the caption is "While Farmer Brown was away, the cows got into the kitchen and were having the time of their lives -- until Betsy's unwitting discovery." |
| 403 | ** One strip takes place at a science symposium where the speaker on stage and all the scientists sitting in the auditorium are seen holding a duck, with one exception. That lone scientist has a shocked expression on his face and the caption reads: "Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realized he forgot his duck." In ''The Prehistory of the Far Side,'' Larson states that [[NoodleImplements the duck itself is irrelevant]], the punchline of the joke is the underlying fear that everyone has: going somewhere only to realize you are completely unprepared because you forgot to bring something important. |
| 404 | * OnceDoneNeverForgotten: Two cowboys and their stagecoach are held up by rabbits with guns. "This ain't gonna look good on our record, Jake," says one to the other. |
| 405 | * OneHitKill: One of the caveman comics shows a giant mammoth brought down by a single arrow. One of the cavemen mentions that they should probably write that spot down. |
| 406 | * OnlySixFaces: As Larson's art [[ArtEvolution evolved]], he eventually was able to settle on a base design for every type of character he needed, from men, to women, cavemen, and various animals. Of course, it was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] occasionally. Notably in his final syndicated strip, where a cartoon version of himself parodies [[Film/TheWizardOfOz Dorothy's return from the Land of Oz]] and tells his family how [[SelfDeprecation everyone from his comic looked like them]]. The exception to this trope are Larson's alien characters which rotated in design regularly, [[StarfishAliens reasonably enough]]. |
| 407 | * OpaqueLenses: Any person in glasses will have lenses that aren't transparent, leaving their eyes obscured. |
| 408 | * OpportunisticVendors: A vendor selling "I kicked Santa Ana's butt at the Alamo" T-shirts during the battle starts deeply discounting them as the Alamo's defenders are driven back. |
| 409 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: Dragons have featured in a couple of strips, such as one depicting young dragons using matches to set their sneezes on fire and another featuring an irritated dragoness scolding her husband for eating in bed and leaving leftovers (i.e., knights' armor) all over the sheets. |
| 410 | * PaperThinDisguise: |
| 411 | ** See the "Ass In A Lion Skin" entry. |
| 412 | ** One comic has a boa go to a cobra party with a cardboard hood on his neck that slipped off. |
| 413 | ** In another, a wolf dons a shoddy human costume hoping to enter a meat company's facility. |
| 414 | * ParanoiaFuel: But what if a duck ''really is watching you?'' |
| 415 | * ParanormalGamblingAdvantage: One strip has Lois Lane tell Franchise/{{Superman}} they're playing cards with the neighbors that week, and if Clark doesn't use his XRayVision they won't bring the kryptonite. |
| 416 | * ParentalFashionVeto: In one strip, a fly leaves for a date, with her father telling her to remove some of that makeup and the gallon of pheromones. |
| 417 | * ParodicTableOfTheElements: One comic has the caveman table, consisting only of the element "Dert" (De). |
| 418 | * PartingTheSea: |
| 419 | ** In one strip, Moses, as a kid, parts a glass of milk. |
| 420 | ** In another strip, there's a divide through Moses' hair with the caption "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Moses parting his hair]]". |
| 421 | * ThePearlyGates: |
| 422 | ** One strip has Colonel Sanders (founder and mascot of KFC) at the Pearly Gates, thinking "Uh-oh" because the guards are chickens. |
| 423 | ** Another has a [[TheKlan Klansman]] arrive wearing his hood, only to find a black St. Peter grinning while thinking, "I love my job." |
| 424 | * PeeveGoblins: |
| 425 | ** "Car Key Gnomes" shows two garden-gnome like figures in a nightly living room picking a ring of keys from a pair of trousers hanging over a chair, with the apparent intent of hiding it under the couch cushions. |
| 426 | ** "Door Ding Gnomes at Work" depicts two elf-like beings in a parking lot using hammers to create small dents on the sides of cars. |
| 427 | * PianoDrop: Subject of several gags over the years, including a vulture planning to drop one on a desert traveler about to reach water or ''piano precipitation'' keeping people indoors. |
| 428 | * PerspectiveFlip: A lot of the strip's humor comes from gags about humans being treated the same way we treat animals, by other people, anthropomorphized animals, or aliens. |
| 429 | * PlayboyParody: One comic had "Playsnake", which a couple of snakes were shown to read. Evidently, it had a centerfold that has to be unfolded five or six times to show the snake-of-the-month's full portrait. |
| 430 | %%* PolarBearsAndPenguins: Again, see "Ass In A Lion Skin". |
| 431 | * PrimitiveClubs: The strip's cavemen often wield the classic wooden clubs in comedic ways: |
| 432 | ** A guy is about to brain an opponent, when his club "jams" on him. |
| 433 | ** Another caveman prepares "poison clubs" by tying small venomous frogs to them before battle. |
| 434 | * PsychoPoodle |
| 435 | ** In one strip, three poodles are discussing murdering their owner. The caption reads: "Well, yes, that is the downside, Fluffy. When we kill her, the pampering will end." |
| 436 | ** In another strip, the owners of a poodle open the door to a cellar where the poodle with a crazed expression on its face is building a giant robot poodle. The caption reads: "And down here we keep Fluffy. We're afraid he may have [[MadScientist gone mad]]." |
| 437 | * PublicDomainCharacter: Pretty much ''everyone'' listed on that page has shown up at least once. |
| 438 | * PunBasedCreature: |
| 439 | ** In one strip, a pair of picnickers are attacked by army ants who deploy heavy artillery. |
| 440 | ** In another strip, a couple who are LostAtSea in a raft are attacked by a pair of tiny longboats crewed by navy ants. |
| 441 | * PuzzlingPlatypus: Scientists studying platypuses realize that they are rats wearing fake duck beaks. |
| 442 | * RainDance: The strip where the Native chief is consulting a book called "101 Rain Dances" to figure out what the hell kind of dance he was doing... while it's raining eggbeaters. |
| 443 | * RakeTake: The African Rakesnake, shown whacking an unsuspecting adventurer when he steps on its tail. |
| 444 | * RapidAging: In one strip, Creator/DickClark's age suddenly catches up to him on live broadcast. |
| 445 | * [[ViewersAreGeniuses Readers Are Geniuses]]: Part of the strip's long-lasting appeal. This was discussed at length in the foreword to the 2nd Far Side Gallery by a PHD (specializing in slugs), who explained how most of the jokes work on multiple levels. For example, "Cape Buffalo Fear" is a play on the animal coupled with the [[Film/CapeFear then-recently remade movie]] -- but this is made ''far'' funnier when the reader knows about [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19351_the-6-deadliest-animals-too-adorable-to-run-away-from_p2.html?wa_user1=5&wa_user2=Science&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=companion the animal's propensity for getting revenge]], to the point that they're ''the'' most deadly of the "Big Five" African animals. |
| 446 | * RealMenWearPink: |
| 447 | ** A recurring gag was having cowboys act like prissy socialites: |
| 448 | -->I just can't go in there, Bart. Some fellow in there and I are wearing the same hat! |
| 449 | ** And subverted in another, where one cowboy chastises another for crossing his legs at the thigh. |
| 450 | ** A third with two cowboys in high heels about to face off-- the joke being that, regardless of outcome, the Boot Hill will be irrevocably changed. |
| 451 | * RefugeInAudacity: Some of the strips would probably never have made it to print if they were any ''less'' [[BlackComedy extreme.]] The "Jane Goodall" strip is one such example, a comic strip about adultery is one thing, a comic strip about '''[[BestialityIsDepraved Monkey]]''' adultery is another thing entirely. |
| 452 | * ReptilesAreAbhorrent: |
| 453 | ** Played with in one of Larson's very early strips, with a hugely fat and very ugly couple looking at a small snake, and the woman screaming, "Egad, it's ''hideous!''" |
| 454 | ** Another has a very ugly boy chasing his equally ugly sister around with a snake with the caption, "And for the rest of its life, the young reptile suffered deep emotional scars". |
| 455 | ** Played straight when a reptile-house keeper suffered an attack of 25-years' worth of "the willies". |
| 456 | * ReroutedFromHeaven: One cartoon has a man and pigs in FluffyCloudHeaven, captioned "Through an unfortunate celestial error, Ernie is sent to Hog Heaven". |
| 457 | * RevolvingDoorCasting: Larson [[TropeCodifier codified]] the concept of the "gag-a-day, new-characters-per-strip" comic template, and he made it a point to explain that having regular characters wasn't his style as it was common convention for comic strips to have such by the time he started ''The Far Side''. |
| 458 | * SaintBernardRescue: |
| 459 | ** One cartoon has a guy in an outhouse in the middle of nowhere, yelling for help, cutting to a Saint-Bernard with a roll of toilet paper around its collar (The caption is "Far away on a hillside, a very specialized breed of dog heard the cry for help."). |
| 460 | ** Another is "Common rescue animals", featuring among others: a Saint-Bernard with a keg of brandy, a dolphin with a pair of swim trunks, a rhinoceros with car keys. |
| 461 | * SafeUnderBlankets: One strip shows a snorkel allowing a child to breathe comfortably while hiding under the blankets (showing the kid doing just that while hiding from a dragon and a werewolf). |
| 462 | * SandNecktie: |
| 463 | ** One cartoon features two cowboys buried like this by Indians. One is gloating about the shadow cast by his partner's hat. "Sure is nice in the shade, yessiree." |
| 464 | ** Another features two Indians dragging a cowboy overlooking several different anthills, each with neon signs advertising their cowboy-torturing skills. |
| 465 | ** Another features two Indians having buried a cowboy up to his neck by an anthill, one of the Indians calling the other one an idiot because he brought mayonnaise instead of honey. |
| 466 | *** A similar one has one Indian chiding another for sitting to watch, as "A watched head never gets eaten by ants."[[note]]A send-up of the English phrase "A watched pot never boils"[[/note]] |
| 467 | ** And another featuring "[[ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}} Charlie Brown]] in Indian country." |
| 468 | ** Overlapping with BeachBury, one has a kid burying his father with the following (paraphrased) caption: "Billy, the tide's coming in... Billy, unbury Daddy now... You don't want Daddy to get angry..." |
| 469 | * SapientCetaceans: |
| 470 | ** This comic takes a few jabs at dolphins; one is the dolphin whose husband is missing (dolphin cop: "We're going to let you go back to your canning in a minute...") |
| 471 | ** In another, dolphins are trying to communicate with scientists (on blackboard: [[FunetikAksent kay pas-uh; aw blah es span yol]]). |
| 472 | ** In another strip a whale starts singing "I'm Just Singing in the Rain" to scientists recording whale song. (In the original version, the whale's song was "Louie, Louie". "Singing in the Rain" was used for international releases, and Larson admits it was possibly a better song choice.) |
| 473 | * SatchelSwitcheroo: Apparently luggage mix-ups can occur on an intergalactic scale. |
| 474 | * SavagePiercings: Crops up from time to time; for example, the "Anthropologists! Anthropologists!" strip, in which a group of "savages" (complete with prominent nose piercings) frantically race to hide their modern appliances[[note]]Well, modern for the 1980s; the "modern" tech includes a VCR, a rotary dial phone, and a console TV[[/note]] from approaching Western anthropologists. |
| 475 | * {{Scandalgate}}: In one cartoon, a caveman impresses the rest of his tribe with his invention of fire — except the fire in question is just a wooden cutout, painted to look like flames. The caption notes that he was exiled from the tribe over "the Firegate incident". |
| 476 | * TheScapegoat: One strip was as blunt as a sledgehammer with this trope. |
| 477 | -->''The world was going down the tubes. They needed a scapegoat. They found Wayne.'' |
| 478 | * ScaryStitches: One cartoon parodies this by showing a GrannyClassic sewing together a [[FrankensteinsMonster monster]] with a sewing machine. |
| 479 | * TheScreamParody: The print collection ''Weiner Dog Art'' includes several dachshund-themed art parodies. One of these is ''The Whine'', an alternate version of ''The Scream'' with all three figures replaced by dachshunds. Gary Larson's description also notes how this was generally considered the worst piece in Munch's entire body of work. In one incident, thieves stole dozens of artworks from a museum, including ''The Whine''--then within the week, they returned ''The Whine'' specifically. |
| 480 | * SeadogPegLeg: |
| 481 | ** In one cartoon, an old sailor is pointing at his peg leg and saying "Well, that's not such a bad story... But wait 'til you hear how I lost this!" to a man with a peg ''head''. |
| 482 | ** Another comic features an infamous snake pirate, described as 'unmistakable with his one eye and pegbody.' Yes, he is literally just a head atop a single tall peg. |
| 483 | * SeaOfSand: Several strips depict lost wanderers or local wildlife in deserts made up of nothing but endless rows of sandy dunes. |
| 484 | * SeriousBusiness: The aforementioned Jane Goodall strip drew an angry letter from the Goodall Society, upset at someone making a joke at the expense of their founder. Some years later, he was seriously confused when the Goodall Society asked his permission to use that same strip for fundraising purposes. Turns out that an employee took it upon themselves to express outrage on behalf of Jane Goodall, who as it turned out loved the strip; Goodall invited Larson to visit her Chimpanzee preserve and even wrote the foreword to a collection of ''Far Side'' strips. In this foreword, Goodall implied that she fired the representative who sent the initial angry letter. |
| 485 | * SeveredHeadSports: |
| 486 | ** Played for laughs in a cartoon about the invention of headhunting -- cavemen are gathered on a volleyball court, and one of them notes that no one brought a ball, and one of the bystanders has a round, bulbous head... |
| 487 | ** Also shown with stick-figures in a cartoon done by seven-year-old Larson. |
| 488 | * ShaveAndAHaircut: One strip had a group of gangsters use this as their secret knock -- and it was easily figured out by the police raiding them. |
| 489 | * ShoutOut |
| 490 | ** ''Film/{{Psycho}}'' |
| 491 | *** One strip has a group of boys waiting for their friend to come join them. |
| 492 | --->''Every Saturday morning, while his playmates patiently waited, little Normy Bates would always take a few extra minutes to yell at his “dog.”'' |
| 493 | *** One strip has a woman taking a shower. Unlike the film, where a person attacked the woman in the shower, a ''military tank'' breaks through the wall. The caption is ''Psycho III''. |
| 494 | ** Another strip has the police investigating a brutal bar fight. As the witness recalls; |
| 495 | -->''"...So [[WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}} this sailor dude]] whips out a can of spinach, this [[ThemeMusicPowerUp crazy music]] starts playing, and... well, just look at this place!"'' |
| 496 | ** One strip has a lobster about to be put in a pot of boiling water saying "Auntie Em, Auntie Em! There's no place like home! There's no place like home.", a reference to two lines in the film version of ''Film/TheWizardOfOz''. |
| 497 | ** One strip has a horse walking out of a theater showing ''Film/TheGodfather'' looking terrified and a person with them saying "Get ahold of yourself! It was only a movie, for crying out loud!" This is a reference to the scene in the film where a horse's head is left on Jack Woltz's bed to scare him. |
| 498 | ** ''WesternAnimation/PeterPan'' |
| 499 | *** One strip has an old crocodile calling an old man (with an eyepatch and a hook for a hand) and saying "Tick-tock" over and over again. This is a reference to ''WesternAnimation/PeterPan'', which has a crocodile that pursues Captain Hook (who has an eyepatch and a hook for a hand). The crocodile has an ticking alarm clock inside of him that always alerts Hook that the crocodile is approaching. |
| 500 | *** A strip has a woman inside a house saying that she heard a large bird hit the window. Outside, the body of a man wearing a ''WesternAnimation/PeterPan''-style costume is lying below the window. |
| 501 | ** One strip has a housewife talking to her scientist husband, who has the head of a fly. This is a reference to the film ''Film/TheFly1958'', in which a scientist gains the head of a fly after an accident with a teleportation machine. |
| 502 | ** One strip had a man talking to a doctor, saying that he's "come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee" (and he does, in fact, have a banjo-shaped protrusion on his knee). This is a reference to the song "Oh Susanna", which has that line in it. |
| 503 | ** A strip has two gorillas in a zoo after a man falls into their enclosure. One gorilla says to the other "Looks like it's time for the old luggage test." This is a reference to a series of 1980s American Tourister commercials which showed a gorilla doing everything it could to damage one of their suitcases and failing. |
| 504 | ** One strip showed a housewife telling her husband (who is carrying a flute and has a group of rats behind him) to take the rats down to a lake. This references the story of Literature/ThePiedPiperOfHamelin, who used his musical abilities to get rid of the rats of Hamelin by taking them to a nearby river and drowning them. |
| 505 | * ShowAndTellAntics: In one early cartoon, a boy brings in a [[BrainInAJar severed head in a jar]] which he just found on some beach for show and tell. In ''The [=PreHistory=] of the Far Side'', Gary Larson says that he feared readers would complain when it ran, and attempts to explain why none did: |
| 506 | -->The point of the humor, I felt, was the innocent fascination children have for things they find almost anywhere--the beach, the woods, etc.--and the fact that this "innocence" was about to come crashing down on top of this pleasant-looking schoolteacher. I was careful, however, to make the head in the jar look sort of silly and benign... |
| 507 | * ShowdownAtHighNoon: Parodied numerous times, such as the one cowboy that lost a quick draw to a ''[[EpicFail sloth]]'' |
| 508 | * SilenceIsGolden: Many of the strips are just some sort of insane situation with no caption or in-panel dialogue. There are times Larson was trying to come up with a caption but found the imagery of the panel spoke for itself (such as a cat with two wooden legs next to a fish bowl with a piranha inside). Other times he may include a caption only to alleviate what could have been a more controversial topic (he joked about creating an elaborate [[NoOntologicalInertia post-Tethercat]] story where [[TheDogBitesBack the cat gets revenge]]). |
| 509 | * SillyPrayer: In a strip, a dog prays to be able to see colour, along with his family and two other dogs named Rex and Tucker. |
| 510 | * SillySimian: "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" (After this particular comic saw its share of controversy, Larson was worried that he'd offended Dr. Goodall herself, and was intensely relieved to find out she loved it. She even wrote the foreword for a ''Far Side'' collection. He in turn visited Gombe Stream National Park and got bullied by a chimp.) |
| 511 | * SixIsNine: In one cartoon, a painter has just painted "999" on Satan's office door in hell. Satan doesn't look happy, and the painter says he "must have been holding the dang work order like ''this''!"(ie: upside down). |
| 512 | * SkewedPriorities: A fisherman's reaction to seeing several nuclear blasts going off in the distance? "I'll tell you what it means, Norm. No size restrictions and screw the limit!" |
| 513 | * SledDogsThroughTheSnow: One comic, in which the idea of flat tires is applied to sled dogs. |
| 514 | * SlowerThanASnail: One cartoon has a cowboy named Hank lose a quick-draw to a ''sloth''. |
| 515 | * SmartPeopleWearGlasses: One strip has some cavemen gathered around a fire with expressions of agony on their faces as they roast their food with their bare hands. One points to another caveman wearing glasses, who is using a stick to roast his food. "Hey! Look what Zog do!" |
| 516 | * SnakeCharmer: One strip has a snake-charmer's cobra poking his head out of his basket wearing a pair of [[Creator/TheMarxBrothers Groucho glasses]], with the charmer thinking "I'll get him for this." |
| 517 | ** In a different panel, it shows a normal snake charmer with his flute glancing over at another guy playing a tuba with a giant basket (which we never see the contents of). |
| 518 | * SnakeOilSalesman: |
| 519 | ** A man being attacked by a werewolf thinks back to the salesman ''assuring'' him the bullets he was buying were genuine silver, as he notes that the tie around the werewolf's neck looks awfully familiar... |
| 520 | ** A young man is hesitant while buying a car made of sticks, which the dealer is insistent on selling, as he remembers the fiasco with the car made of ''straw''. |
| 521 | * SnakePit: One panel shows a family in a living room that inexplicably has a circular hole in the floor about three feet across, and is full of snakes. The dad is in the process of grabbing his kid, who is careening toward the pit on his tricycle, while the caption reads, "That was too close! Billy was headed straight for the snake pit when I grabbed him." |
| 522 | * SockSlideRink: One comic depicts a [[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fe/d6/31/fed631d5023c41600b9c8774e175d31a.jpg child wearing socks being chased around a table by wolves]] -- the caption reads "Luposlipaphobia: The fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor". |
| 523 | * SomewhereAnEntomologistIsCrying: In ''The Prehistory of The Far Side,'' Larson writes that he "''really'' heard it" from readers when he published a cartoon depicting a male mosquito coming home from work after a hard day of sucking blood and spreading disease[[note]]It's the female mosquitoes who do the bloodsucking, not the males[[/note]]. "Of course," Larson japes, "it's perfectly acceptable to these people that mosquitoes live in houses, have jobs, wear clothes, etc." |
| 524 | * SpaceIsNoisy: {{Discussed|Trope}} in an early strip that had a balding, lab-coated scientist jump up in the middle of a crowded cinema shouting "Stop the Movie! Stop the Movie! Explosions don't go 'BOOM!' in a vacuum!" |
| 525 | * SpaceSector: One comic features the "quadrant" variation of this trope; aliens (in what looks to have been a classic FlyingSaucer) have crash landed on Earth (which they misidentify as "Bob's Shoeworld"). In their distress call the aliens say the planet they're stranded on is in "quadrant 57 of the Milky Way". |
| 526 | * SpeciesSpecificAfterlife: A number of comics were based on various afterlives meant for a specific type of creature, and the idiosyncrasies of what these creatures would find as rewards or punishments. |
| 527 | ** One strip features Dog Heaven, noting how once an hour a truck made entirely of pressed ham lumbers through it for the pleasure of habitual car chasers. |
| 528 | ** Another strip shows Dog ''Hell'' instead, where damned canines are forced to walk around with pooper-scoopers or deliver mail while wearing the uniforms of the post officers they chased and harassed in life. |
| 529 | ** Another strip shows a lone human soul standing in a crowd of pig souls in a FluffyCloudHeaven. The description notes that, due to some celestial management error, this guy's soul was sent to Hog Heaven by mistake. ("In Hog Heaven" being an antiquated expression for "having a wonderful time", it's another {{pun}}.) |
| 530 | * SpermAsPeople: |
| 531 | ** In one strip, a bunch of sperm surround an egg and ask to be "let in". |
| 532 | ** One strip depicts a sperm cell with an outboard motor. |
| 533 | * SpidersAreScary: Played straight and subverted: |
| 534 | ** Two spiders say of their new web, "If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings!" [[ToServeMan The web is at the bottom of a playground slide.]] |
| 535 | ** Another cartoon had two spider kids dangling a tiny human on the end of a thread over a balcony, freaking out their newspaper-reading father. |
| 536 | * StarfishAliens: |
| 537 | ** Two strips had aliens that resembled crosswalk signals ("Our agents are posted at every corner, this world will fall swiftly!") and fire hydrants ("'Take me to your leader', I said...and then the most horrible thing happened!"[[note]]A dog peed on it. [[/note]]). |
| 538 | ** A farmer dooms the Earth when he encounters aliens with heads that resemble human hands. In an effort to be friendly, he ''grabs their leader's head and shakes vigorously''. |
| 539 | ** The first living thing a bunch of visiting aliens who look a bit like giant rear ends meet is a billy goat. The caption: "When worlds collide". |
| 540 | ** An unusual alien lands his FlyingSaucer near a person, punches him in the face, and flies off. "Frank never knew what hit him." |
| 541 | ** Cactus-shaped aliens are emerging from their ship, as witnessed by two Eskimos. "They look like nothing I've ever seen!" |
| 542 | ** Aliens made of bricks complete with wooden block heads land right outside a karate class. |
| 543 | * StealthPun: In the GanglandDriveBy entry above, the victims were "rubbed out". |
| 544 | * StoppedClock: In one cartoon, police are investigating a shooting at a clock store. The place has been shot to pieces, [[ImplausibleSynchrony all clocks are reading the same time]] as each other, and the detective is wondering: "Well, we've got the weapon, a list of suspects, and their motives. Now if only we could determine the time of death...." |
| 545 | * StrangeMindsThinkAlike: Larson once did a cartoon with where a snake had swallowed ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} (given that it had clearly swallowed something and Garfield's dish was nearby. Ironically, Jim Davis did a gag like that in [[https://garfield.com/comic/1982/02/28 one of his actual strips]] years before that. |
| 546 | * SuicidalLemmings: Parodied in a cartoon featuring one lemming among a horde running into the sea wearing a life preserver. |
| 547 | * SuperficialSuggestionBox: One cartoon is several demons in {{Hell}} reading suggestions out of a suggestion box and laughing uproariously. |
| 548 | * SuspectExistenceFailure: A strip that has the caption: "Blast! Up to now, the rhino had been my prime suspect!" (The rhino was killed via a small dagger in his back.) |
| 549 | * SweetnessAversion[[invoked]]: Discussed and parodied in the Dedication for ''The Far Side Gallery 5'', where Larson draws a speculative example of what The Far Side might have been like were it not for his late older brother Dan's ("who showed me the beauty and wonder of a jellyfish, and... who showed me the beauty and wonder of [[BigBrotherBully smacking your sibling in the face with that same jellyfish]]") influence on his sense of humor: a cat and dog playing ball together, with the dialog "Boy, Sparky, it's sure a lot more fun since we decided to be friends!" "You can meow that again, Fluffy! Ha ha ha!" |
| 550 | -->'''Larson:''' Saved by a jellyfish to the head. |
| 551 | * TakeThat: The "Hell's Video Store" strip. Also, anything involving accordions. (Interestingly, Larson actually regretted drawing that strip when he watched ''Film/{{Ishtar}}'' himself, not having seen the film before drawing that strip, and found it ActuallyPrettyFunny.) |
| 552 | ** One of his 2021 strips has a "Creator/DonaldTrump tear" on display in a museum, likely [[LackOfEmpathy due to its rarity]]. |
| 553 | * TakeThatCritics: In ''The Prehistory of the Far Side'', Gary Larson offers a response to the people who complain about his strip by drawing a cartoon version of himself sticking his tongue out at the viewer. |
| 554 | * TalkingAnimal: Every now and then. |
| 555 | * TankGoodness: ''Film/{{Psycho}} 3'' features a tank driving into the bathroom to attack a showering woman. |
| 556 | * TemptingFate: A cowboy is having a campfire, singing "Give Me A Home", as a herd of buffalo bear down on him... |
| 557 | * TertiarySexualCharacteristics: Female members of all species can generally be identified by their BeehiveHairdo and [[NerdGlasses cat eye glasses]]. |
| 558 | * ThatWasTheLastEntry: In one strip, two explorers find the journal of a scientist. The last entry says that the next day, the scientist would test the sense of humor of a group of large but gentle primates by giving one of them a handshake with a joy buzzer. The area is filled with the ripped/discarded clothing and destroyed equipment of the late scientist. |
| 559 | * ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Several, but one notable example of two ancient Chinese warriors standing upon the newly completed Great Wall; one of them boastfully states "NOW we'll see if that dog can get in here!" |
| 560 | * ThingOMeter: One strip has a dog holding a "Fear-o-sensor" up against passing visitors. |
| 561 | * ThingsThatGoBumpInTheNight: Because they hit their heads on the door frame. |
| 562 | * ThinksOfSomethingSmartSaysSomethingStupid: Tarzan swings through the jungle, rehearsing a number of ways to introduce himself to Jane. Upon actually seeing her, however, his far more eloquent introductions collapse into "Me Tarzan! You Jane!" much to his chagrin. |
| 563 | * ThirstyDesert: Used in numerous gags. One, for example, features a man coming across a billboard ad saying he should have gotten their flask product that carries so much water it never feels empty, and in another, two travelers find a drinking fountain, but the first one puts his mouth on it. |
| 564 | * ThreateningShark: The subject of several strips. One has a trio of them discovering the reason why swimmers always manage to flee them before they can get close enough to attack is because of their dorsal fins sticking out of the water. |
| 565 | * TimeTravel: An occasional theme, i.e. "Disaster befalls Dr. Fitzgibbon's cleaning lady when she mistakes his Time Machine for a new dryer." |
| 566 | ** Another one had a scientist travel back to the age of the dinosaurs and gets stuck there because his machine just ran out of gasoline. |
| 567 | ** Cavemen visit the present day riding their newly invented "Time Log". |
| 568 | ** Or when two scientists get stranded in the past by setting their time machines to the exact same coordinates. |
| 569 | ** One time travelling palaeontologist brings an enormous rectal thermometer with him to settle the "warm-blooded/cold-blooded dinosaur" debate once and for all. We see him approaching a dinosaur from behind, and the caption informs us that the question remains unanswered since he was never heard from again. |
| 570 | * ToiletDrinkingDogGag: One comic strip shows a dog TV presenter introducing a talk show segment about dogs who drink from the toilet bowl -- the dogs who will be talking are seen silhouetted in the background. |
| 571 | * TotemPoleTrench: In a strip three dogs do this to make an attempt to catch a cat they were chasing who went up a tree. The dogs disguise themselves as a woman and have the fire department get the cat down for them. |
| 572 | * TortureFirstAskQuestionsLater: One strip has a cowboy shooting a man and then asking him random trivia questions. Another cowboy reprimands him for shooting first and asking questions later. |
| 573 | * TortureTechnician: "You know, Sven, you're great at your job. You can make a guy beg for mercy in nothing flat... but I'll be darned if you don't make a really lousy cup of coffee." Every time Larson set a strip in a torture chamber, he would get angry letters from Amnesty International a few days later. |
| 574 | * TWordEuphemism: One strip talks about "the D-word" in a UsefulNotes/{{Mensa}} convention. It's "duh". |
| 575 | * TuttiFruttiHat: |
| 576 | ** Parodied in a strip captioned "Carmen Miranda's Family Reunion", which depicts a room full of people with different kinds of food (cheese, meats, etc) on their heads, including a kid in a baseball cap with a slice of pie stuck to it. |
| 577 | ** Another cartoon sticks the standard fruit hat on a cow, who was, of course, named [[IncrediblyLamePun Cowmen Miranda]]. |
| 578 | * {{Uberwald}}: An occasional setting. |
| 579 | * {{Understatement}}: A nerd says "hot enough for you?" to a fellow prisoner in hell. |
| 580 | * UselessSpleen: "Having explored the heart of the jungle, the intrepid explorers now entered the spleen." |
| 581 | * ViewersAreGeniuses: Some of the jokes are pretty scientific and/or obscure. |
| 582 | * VileVulture: The subject of several gags in ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'': |
| 583 | ** One famous strip has some vultures gathered around an unseen corpse. One of them is wearing the guy's hat and coat and says mockingly "Hey! Look at me, everybody, I'm a cowboy! Howdy, howdy, howdy!" |
| 584 | ** Another strip cartoon has a parched desert traveler crawling his way towards a pool of water. This prospect disappoints one vulture hovering above him, but a second vulture prepares to [[PianoDrop drop a piano on him]] before he reaches it. |
| 585 | ** Another strip features two elderly men feeding birds at a park bench, commenting on the smaller birds eating their seed [[BlackComedy but wondering why two much larger birds nearby just stare at them]]. |
| 586 | %%* WallpaperCamouflage |
| 587 | * WaxingLyrical: |
| 588 | --> '''Detective:''' But look! Hundreds of [[Theatre/TheSoundOfMusic bright copper kettles, warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up in string!]] Someone was after a few of this guy's favorite things. |
| 589 | * WeWillAllFlyInTheFuture: In a 1991 strip what is presumably a comedy club advertises "Appearing Tonight: George Burns". We know it's the far future (hence the joke) in part because there's a bunch of {{Flying Car}}s, a (human-piloted) FlyingSaucer, and some kind of personal helicopter flitting around in the sky. Creator/GeorgeBurns was 95 at the time the strip was originally published (but did not, alas, live to see ubiquitous flying cars, as he died at the age of 100 about five years after this strip was originally published). |
| 590 | * WhenTreesAttack: One strip has a bunch of trees grabbing a logger and arguing about what they should do to him (such as cut him in half and count his rings). |
| 591 | * WilliamTelling: Another one that got Larson in trouble, it depicted William's less fortunate son Warren, who is shown to have a ludicrously large head; the trouble came when some assumed he was making fun of hydrocephalus. |
| 592 | -->"So what do they think about Charlie Brown?" |
| 593 | * WitlessProtectionProgram: One strip has an informant interviewed on TV (in a darkened room)... so of course, a [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom janitor comes in and turns on the light right when they cut to the guy]]. |
| 594 | * WordSchmord: One strip has several characters saying some variant of the phrase: Neanderthals Schmeanderthals (mammoths), Indians Schmindians (Custer), Huns Schmuns (castle guards), etc. The caption is "History Schmistory". |
| 595 | * WormInAnApple: Two worms in a half-bitten apple watch in horror at the human child eating their home. One worm exclaims "Egad! [[HumansAreCthulhu It's]] got Uncle Jake!" |
| 596 | * WrongParachuteGag: One cartoon shows a skydiver with a piano and an anchor coming out of his backpack. |
| 597 | -->"Murray didn't feel the first pangs of real panic until he pulled the emergency cord." |
| 598 | * YouMustBeThisTallToRide: Parodied in one strip. A [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant monster]] encounters an even taller sign which states "You Must Be This Tall to Attack the City." |
| 599 | * YourMom: One strip has a cow heckling a cowboy by saying "Yippy-I-Yo-Mama!" |
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