[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ratqueens_343.jpg]]

''Rat Queens'' is a ComicBook by Kurtis Wiebe for Creator/ImageComics, with artwork by Roc Upchurch. Stjepan Šejić replaced Upchurch as the main artist for issues #9 and #10, with Tess Fowler taking over issues 11-16. In response to fan backlash Wiebe pulled the series for a year, returning in March 2017 with artist Owen Gieni[[note]]This confused issue numbers with original run #1-16, then retool run #1-ongoing. As of retool #10 both runs are canon[[/note]]. In April 2019 Wiebe and Gieni handed off to writer Ryan Ferrier and artist Priscilla Petraites. The retool ended at #25, with Wiebe and Upchurch returning for a final graphic novella, ''Sisters, Warriors, Queens", in 2023.

Rat Queens follows the adventures of a typical adventuring party on a quest for gold and glory. The storytelling tone is light and playful, weaving between {{deconstruction}} and {{reconstruction}} freely, and tropes are played with, averted, inverted and turned inside out. The Queens themselves are beer-swilling, loudly foul-mouthed, destructive mercenaries operating out of the tiny town of Palisade. A fairly standard setup for a comic book that's not taking the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' world too seriously, but with the twist that all four (and a majority of their allies and rivals) are women.

There's also an ActualPlay RPG by Creator/HyperRPG.

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!!''Rat Queen'' provides examples of:

* ActionGirl: The basis of the book. Betty, Dee, Violet and Hannah are one of the two groups that completely fought their way clear [[spoiler:of the assassins]], and are quite capable of dishing out severe damage even when surprised or when one member of the group is disabled.
** Braga definitely qualifies as this as well, capable of ''slaughtering'' legions of orcs on her own (though having the Queens as backup didn't hurt), while consciously lapsing into a some-what controlled blood-rage. That, and her reputation as [[TheDreaded "The Bastard"]] amongst the orc people precedes her.
** Lola, Sawyer's right-hand lady, is a BareFistedMonk who takes down ''eight'' guys at the same time in issue 7.
* ActionMom: Morgan, of Clan Meldhammer, who participates in a melee tournament. She becomes Violet's inspiration.
%%* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: Betty does this in issue 2.
* AlphaBitch: Hannah and Tizzie bicker in this way constantly, although neither of them seem to do it to other people.
* AmazonBrigade: The Rat Queens themselves.
* AmicableExes: It is strongly implied that Hannah and Sawyer are this now. [[spoiler:Not exactly "ex", and more like FriendsWithBenefits, as seen in Issue 6.]]
* ArcWelding: The High Fantasies arc culminates in an encounter with illusionist Castiwyr. He is revealed as working on behalf of the villain for the Colossal Magic Nothing arc, [[spoiler:Evil Hannah]]. The same villain claims to be [[TheManBehindTheMan behind the Once and Future King.]]
* ArtShift: Inevitable when Stjepan Sejic took over art duties from Roc Upchurch (see [[Trivia/RatQueens the Trivia page]]), and then again when Tess Fowler took over from Sejic, and ''again'' when Owen Gieni stepped in for the retool.
* TheAtoner: Sawyer had a criminal past before he joined Palisade's law-and-order.
* AttackPatternAlpha: "Betty Climber" is successfully executed. A "White Screamer" is also mentioned, but interrupted by the severe injury of Hannah before we can see what it looks like.
* BabiesEverAfter: Played in the Colossal Magic Nothing arc's flash-forward. Violet and Mathias have five children plus Betty and Faeyri have two more. With domestic bliss in stride they dust off their equipment to go check on [[OneLastJob one small task]] for Violet's clan...
* BadassBoast: Being a high fantasy comic, they abound.
-->'''Braga''':"Orcs know only one language. Blood. I'm the fucking alphabet."
* BaitAndSwitchBoss: Played twice in quick succession: the Queens are sent to wipe out a goblin hold, which turns into an ambush by an elite assassin, who is himself squished by a troll, who ''then'' attacks the party.
* BarbieDollAnatomy: Partial -- Professor Finch has breasts with visible nipples, but no apparent genitals.
* BetterThanSex: Explicitly invoked in Issue #2. "Dee, I'd seriously give up sex for healing spells." "Let's not go crazy, now."
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Orc Dave seems like a nice, laid-back fellow - quick to help out his fellow adventurers, and one of the side effects of his healing powers is [[FriendToAllLivingThings a flock of bluebirds emerging from his beard]]. That said, he's a member of the only adventuring group that doesn't lose a member for a reason beyond his animal-friendly healing abilities. [[spoiler: As shown in flashback, you don't want to be around when the ''red'' birds come out of his beard.]]
* BigDamnKiss: Orc Dave and Violet in the second arc, in the middle of a battle. Everyone else thinks that it isn't the time.
* BigfootSasquatchAndYeti: The Slog Chimp is a legendary monster rumored to live in the swamp and used to frighten children. According to Betty he's a pretty chill guy.
* TheBigGuy: The Four Daves. All four of them.
* {{Biomanipulation}}: The Flesher orcs claim to unleash the potential of the mind to reshape the physical form to match. The process is usually lethal but survivors are formidable soldiers.
* BlackEyesOfEvil: Hannah gets this when she really loses her temper.
* BloodlessCarnage: is mostly averted, but [[spoiler:Hannah's nearly-torn-off arm]] in issue #2 is way, way less bloody than you'd expect.
* BodyHorror: The series occasionally indulges in some serious body horror, most notably what Lake does to Bernadette in Volume 1, and when the two villainous chefs merge into a gestalt being in "The Colossal Magic Nothing".
* BoobyTrap: In the third arc goblins devour Betty's bag of candy and die horribly, revealing that it also contains deadly poison.
-->'''Violet''': I have eaten candy out of that bag! More than once!
-->'''Betty''': Why do you think I told you not to eat the green ones?
* BreastAttack: ''"You put an arrow in my favorite boob, fuckwit!"''
* BuffySpeak: Violet and Betty both do this at various times. As does Old Lady Bernadette [[spoiler:at the end of issue 3. "Can you please make sure that you '''''kill them to fucking death''''' this time?]]
* ButchLesbian: Betty's girlfriend Faeyri has a distinctly more masculine appearance.
%%* ButtMonkey: Gary.
-->'''''Next Issue''': Fuck You, Gary! +1 on all attacks against guys named Gary!''
* TheCaper: First a failed one, then a successful one. Betty is considerably better at this than Hannah, for reasons that are probably obvious (namely, one's a thief and the other's a wizard).
* CainAndAbel: The final villain of Wiebe's fun is Voon, master of the Flesher orcs, and the elder brother of Braga.
* CasualDangerDialogue: Much of the group's banter in combat is this.
* CerebusRetcon: The first arc of the retool is High Fantasies, a return-to-form heavy on jokes and quick conflicts rather than an overarching villain. In the Colossal Magic Nothing it's revealed that the closing conflict of High Fantasies was in fact a new villain probing the Queens for psychological weaknesses.
* CerebusSyndrome: Starting with the third arc, [[spoiler:which culminates with the party splitting and Hannah giving into the dark side and the others not wanting anything to do with her.]]
* ClusterFBomb: Cursing in this book is NOT censored, and all four of the girls have fairly foul mouths.
* ColossusClimb: The Betty Climber starts as a FastballSpecial and turns into this.
* CosmicRetcon: The explanation for the soft-reboot at the beginning of Volume 2. [[spoiler:Dee changed history so that she and the others stopped Hannah from falling to the dark side and rescued Gerard]].
* CrystalWeapon: Dee conjures them for the whole team when steel crumples against the armor of the Flesher orcs.
* CuttingTheKnot: When the team come across a jewel on the other side of a room full of complicated traps, Betty examines the traps closely and then has Hannah simply grab the jewel telekinetically.
* DarkIsNotEvil: Evidently the cult of N'rygoth, while certainly creepy for its worship of a tentacled eldritch horror, is largely benign and its followers fairly decent people.
* DarkSecret: [[spoiler: Sawyer]] is apparently responsible for the death of the wife of the leader of the merchant guild, and is heavily implied to be a former member of the assassin group.
** There is reason for Hannah's unique hairstyle.
* {{Deconstruction}}: Of fantasy role-playing and HighFantasy comics. Or at least of worlds in which adventurers are commonplace, as Palisade is getting tired of their brawling and rowdiness spilling over into the streets and causing all sorts of property damage. To the point where [[spoiler:one of the townspeople hires an assassin to kill them all]].
* DeityOfHumanOrigin: All of them, supposedly. Per Lady Love a mortal ascends to godhood by viewing the world through ancient eyes, effecting some major change on the world, and hearing a prayer to themselves. Per Bilford Bogin if that major change is undone then the god reverts to mortality.
* DelightfulDragon: Dennis, who lives near Mage University, loves sweets, doesn't eat humans, and gets on well with Betty.
* DestructiveSavior: The Rat Queens have a bad rep for causing destruction and mayhem wherever they go. Were it not for Sawyer cutting them a lot of slack, they would've been booted out of the city long ago.
* DistractedByTheSexy: Smidgen Dave manages to distract a group of orcs by conjuring an image of a naked orc chick, leaving them ogling until they're impaled by arrows.
* DistressedDude: Sawyer is tied up and forced to watch in issue 7 as tentacle monsters descend on Palisade.
* DoYouWantToCopulate: Violet to Orc Dave. She really doesn't give him an option.
-->'''Vi''': I want to get drunk. I want to get high. I want to have sex with Orc Dave. They can happen in any order or all at once. Any objections?
* DontExplainTheJoke:
->'''Vi''': Dave saved nothing for when I get back, if you know what I mean. [BEAT] He gave me a lot of sex before I left, that's what I mean.
* TheDreaded: Braga has this reputation among her fellow orcs, as seen in Issue #4. She's known as "The Bastard," and the mere sight of her is enough to make her opponents start quaking in their boots (or lack thereof). The reasons -- and the nickname -- are explored in greater detail in the Braga Special.
-->'''Random Orc:''' We're fucked!
-->''He and his buddy's heads get bifurcated simultaneously by Braga.''
* DrunkenSong: We read what is presumably the ending of either a verse or the chorus. "And the old wizard fumbled in the gloom, As he reached out for his trusty broom/But he was in for a vulgar shock, When he firmly gripped his horse's cock, OHHHHHHH!"
* DualWielding: The way Betty wields her daggers is this; also Violet with her twin wakizashis.
* EldritchAbomination: Dee Dee used to be in a cult that worshipped N'rygoth, a tentacled elder god. And as of issue 7, [[spoiler:an entire army of tentacled horrors has been summoned to destroy Palisade.]]
* EurekaMoment: Violet is resigned to an unhappy life trapped by family conventions until she meets a woman who escaped by rejecting the same conventions and realizes that's an option.
* EverybodyHasLotsOfSex: Hannah and Sawyer. Betty and Faeyri. Violet and Orc Dave. Braga and Human Dave. Even Hannah's parents put the romance in necromancy.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Four Daves. A mercenary group made out of four men called Dave.
* ExplosiveBreeder: Smidgens, apparently.
-->'''Betty''': ''So'' true. We like pushing things out of our bodies as much as we like putting things in 'em!
-->'''Hannah''': [[TooMuchInformation Well, on that delightful note -- ]]
* ExtraEyes: N'rygoth has two primary eyes, each surrounded by a circle of smaller eyes.
* EyeScream: Betty kills a [[spoiler:giant troll]] by stabbing him through each eye. Gets the eyes as spell components for Hannah, too. Hannah does the same thing with magic wands when she goes berserk during the big battle in issue 5.
** [[spoiler:Bernadette on the last page of]] issue #6, in a ''big'' way.
-->[[spoiler:'''''Next Issue''': '''FUCK''''']]
* FaceDoodling: Not actually the face, but in the first issue of Volume 2 someone has written "FEED ME" on Braga's belly while she was passed out drunk.
* FacialMarkings: the followers of N'Rygoth get facial tattoos above and below their eyes as they advance in the cult.
* FairCop: Sawyer.
* FamilyOfChoice: While some of the Queens have surviving family members, it's stated at several points that they consider the Queens as family. Braga explicity chooses them over her birth family.
* {{Fanservice}}: Sometimes.
** Deliberately averted in daily adventuring. The female characters who are the focus of the party for the most part dress like you would expect professional killers-for-hire to dress. Hannah and Dee's costumes are light, Betty's is cut for maximum freedom of movement, and Violet wears fairly reasonable body armor. They also all have quite distinct and plausible body shapes.
** Embraced whenever a Queen has a sexual encounter.
** There's also the "Sexy Men of ''Rat Queens''" fanart images Kurtis and Roc have been posting on the comic's Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter pages when they receive it as a response to the overwhelming prevalence of {{stripperific}} female armor you usually see in fantasy art. Well, maybe not that one of [[ButtMonkey Gary]]....)
* FanDisservice: [[NoJustNoReaction The giant troll. Just, the giant troll.]]
** [[spoiler: Swayer. Getting tortured while [[FullFrontalAssault fully naked]]]].
* FantasticDrug: The Rat Queens are habitual drug users who consume mushrooms. Hannah has a hookah used to smoke pure magic and Betty takes bits of [[MushroomMan humanoid Mushrooms]] for this purpose after killing them, despite the others questioning this.
* FantasyCharacterClasses: Betty is a Thief, Dee is a Cleric, Hannah is a Wizard, and Violet is a Fighter.
* FantasticRacism: Hannah and Violet engage in a round of ElvesVersusDwarves at an inopportune time.
* FastballSpecial: The "Betty Climber" is a modified version of this - rather than throwing any member of the party, Dee crouches with Violet's shield and is used as a launching platform for Violet and Betty to attack the enemy.
* FeministFantasy: Of a particularly crude and foul-mouthed variety.
* FieryRedhead: Violet.
* FlatEarthAtheist: [[AvertedTrope Averted]] with Dee. Dee is an atheist but she seems to be reasonable in why she doesn't believe in the gods (explicitly citing the god she was raised to serve as ridiculous), and the world has not given particular reason for either belief or disbelief in any gods. In Dee's words, "I'm Goddess enough for me." She also retains some cultural traditions even if she doesn't believe in the religious component of them, such as showing respect to the dead with a prayer position--she tells her husband that she doesn't need to be a believer to find such things important and comforting.
* FlippingTheBird: Hannah drops several as expressions of defiance, often while leaving.
** She throws a double while storming through the magic mirror at the end of the Demons arc.
** Another double when she is attacked by the Colossal Magic Nothing.
** And her bird is the last thing shown when she makes a quick exit near the end of Once and Future King.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Wiebe likes to drop bread crumbs while writing.
** Atheist cleric Dee is asked how she's able to do divine-derived cleric spells despite not believing in gods. She answers, "I'm goddess enough." [[spoiler:In the Infernal Path arc she ascends to godhood herself.]]
** Violet acquires a sword from a dragon's hoard in the Demons arc that gives her a vision of combat with an evil sorceress. [[spoiler:In the Colossal Magic Nothing arc that vision pays off with evil Hannah.]]
* FriendsWithBenefits: Commonplace. Hannah and Sawyer can't seem to stay out of each others' beds despite ''knowing'' it's a bad idea. Braga and Human Dave have a much, well, ''friendlier'' friends-with-benefits situation going on.
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: The big fight at the end of the second arc shows Braga swinging a man by his feet as a weapon.
* GargleBlaster: The Betty Special, which is mostly drugs and alcohol, because she hasn't worked out how to make an orgasm into an ingredient yet.
* GettingEatenIsHarmless: Betty gets swallowed by a giant pterosaur, and the biggest danger is the psychotic cannibal Smidgen who is already living in its stomach.
* GirlsWithMustaches: Female dwarves in general grow beards, if they don't shave like Violet (who is shown with a magnificent one in flashback).
** Although, in defiance of the trope name, they seem not to grow hair above their upper lips, and will usually have a full beard ''without'' a mustache.
* GlowingEyesOfDoom: Hannah's eyes glow white whenever she's casting, unless she's [[BlackEyesOfEvil really pissed off]].
* GodsNeedPrayerBadly: Inverted with [[spoiler:the cult of N'rygoth]] where humans invoking the god's rituals drain that god's ability to act of its own volition, or even wake up.
* GoodIsNotNice: Well... more like "Protagonists are not Nice," but the Rat Queens are at least good ''in theory.''
* GruesomeGoat: Referenced in a couple places.
** Half-demon children grow goat horns. The more evil the person, the longer and more curled the horns become.
** N'rygoth itself is pictured with horizontal pupils like goat eyes.
* HalfIdenticalTwins: Issue 3 reveals that [[spoiler:Violet]] has a twin brother, who calls her out for [[spoiler:shaving her beard and telling dwarven tradition to go fuck itself.]]
* HandWave: A shocking murder of questionable motive is changed in flashback to the first skirmish in a townwide doppelganger attack.
* HangoverSensitivity: Explicitly invoked in the preview and issue #2
* HardDrinkingPartyGirl: Every member of the party can very definitely hold her liquor.
* HealingFactor: Not exactly, but Dee's magic can repair an arm that's nearly been torn off of the person it's (barely) attached to, and bring someone back from the brink of death.
* HeroesPreferSwords: Violet carries the traditional heroic sword-and-shield to signal that she's the moral leader of the group.
* HeroicResolve: Hannah goes absolutely berserk when [[spoiler:Violet gets shot in the throat]].
* {{Hobbits}}: Smidgens. Betty was actually referred to as a hobbit in the promotional material. Presumably, the Tolkien estate's lawyers dusted off the speech they gave to Creator/GaryGygax back in the day.
* HeroicSacrifice: Bilford Bogin claims he died intentionally to unite the better angels of smidgens. Worship has spilled out to other races also.
* HorseOfADifferentColor: A couple noteworthy examples.
** The Once and Future King rides a giant dog named Professor Fudge.
** The same king's army uses giant crows for long-distance scouting/assassination.
* IHaveNoSon: [[spoiler: Braga was the recipient of this back before she transitioned and was the heir to an orc clan. For the most part, she likes it better that way]].
* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: A brief one in the Underpit among the Queens when they are turned into PeoplePuppets against each other.
* IdenticallyNamedGroup: The Four Daves are an adventuring party composed of men all named Dave. To tell them apart, they're referred to by their species (Human Dave, Orc Dave, etc.)
* InsistentTerminology: Old Lady Bernadette would like to remind everyone that she's [[OldMaid thirty-nine years old!]]
* ItsPopularNowItSucks: Violet has this opinion in-universe regarding clean-shaving for Dwarf women. She started shaving her beard as an act of social defiance, but when facial shaving became popular among young dwarves she let her beard grow back.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Averted in a big way. Violet has a pair of wakizashi in her arsenal but mostly uses them as a backup weapon.
* KillSteal: When the Queens fight the giant pterosaur, Barrie walks up and stabs it while it's dying, and then claims a share of the bounty.
* KilledMidSentence: The [[spoiler:assassin]] at the end of issue #1, in a tremendous way.
* TheLadette: All of the Rat Queens (except maybe Dee) and most of the other female characters.
* LampshadeHanging: A furniture store could make a great deal of money with all the lampshades in this series.
* LateArrivalSpoiler: There's a major character reveal in the second arc where [[spoiler:Hannah shows her demon horns to Sawyer.]] By the retool run a couple arcs later that's routinely shown on the cover art.
* LipstickLesbian: Betty.
* LocalHangout: The Black Satyr is popular with all the adventuring parties in Palisade. It's run by Maestro, a former adventurer bard, and his daughter Maddie.
* LudicrousGibs: The Queens are drenched in them by a poor assassin KilledMidSentence.
* {{Magitek}}: Hannah uses a necromancy-based cell phone. It's powered by souls and can only reach her dead mother.
* MaleFrontalNudity: Sawyer in issue 7.
* MalevolentMaskedMen: The Council of Nine who rule Mage U.
* MeaningfulEcho: Retool issue #14 sees a desperate Betty praying for the first time since her childhood. Uncertain of divine intervention she reassures herself with Dee's adage.
*** '''Betty:''' Goddess enough.
* MeaningfulName: The Four Daves are a party of four men, all of them named Dave.
* TheMedic: Dee, to a certain extent; also Orc Dave.
* MissingChild: Played oddly with [[spoiler:Orc Dave]]. A one-off reveals he had a child. Several issues later the child is discovered and revealed to have been kidnapped in front of the father, who never mentioned it nor took any action to seek out said child.
* MoralMyopia: Voon believes Braga has to pay for her betrayal of him, and how dare she go after him when he's family. The fact that Voon ''tried to murder her'' before her transition, murdered her lover and has no compunction trying to torture Braga to death is kind of lost on him.
* MrFanservice: Sawyer. (Also see the Fanservice entry above.)
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: The character descriptions: Hannah the "Rockabilly Elven Mage," Violet the "Hipster Dwarven Fighter," Dee the "Atheist Human Cleric," and Betty the "Hippie Hobbit Thief".
* NonMammalMammaries: Sadie. Head of an owl, talons for hands and feet, and wings, but a humanoid torso with large breasts. [[spoiler: Which the comic shows off completely in Volume 2, Issue #15.]]
-->'''Hannah:''' Fuck me, I bet Braga ten gold those would be covered with feathers.[[note]]They're not, though Sadie replies if Hannah wants to find out what is, which is not shown.[[/note]]
* NotWorthKilling: In #19 the king arrests the Queens for a show trial and execution but boots their junior member Maddie aside entirely.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Early in #19 Maddie the bard gets kicked offscreen by the king. She reappears in the same issue covered in the blood of the king's army she slaughtered without taking a scratch herself.
* OhCrap: Two of Gerrig's mooks when they see who is coming for them.
->'''Mook 1''': The Rat Queens '''and''' the Four Daves '''and''' Lola '''and''' Braga? Bilford Bogin! We're gonna need an army.
->'''Mook 2''': What the hell are you on about? We '''are''' an army.
->'''Mook 1''': Oh Brad, Brad, Brad, Brad, Brad. You are so fucking dumb.
* {{Omnibus}}: The massive ''Rat Queens Omnibus'' published in 2024, which contains all of the ongoing issues, the specials, and the digital shorts.
* OneLastJob: In the flash-forward of the Colossal Magic Nothing arc, Violet leads the gang to dust off their equipment to run down some troubling reports at the edge of her clan's territory...
* OneSteveLimit: [[AvertedTrope The Four Daves]] explicitly avert this.
* OriginsEpisode: Issue 8 for Violet.
* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Explicitly invoked. Violet is noteworthy because this mindset is exactly what drove her to leave her people in the first place. She also notes how ridiculous it is whenever someone talks about something like "dwarven ale," as if dwarves would only make ''one'' type of beer and ''call it dwarven ale''. In general, dwarves in the story are thickset and have lots of facial hair, but are only slightly shorter on average than humans.
* OurElvesAreDifferent: Elves Hannah and Tizzie are just as aggressive, alcoholic, violent, and shallow as the others surrounding them. Hannah's father appears grey-haired and wrinkled, indicating that they age just like any other race. The only obvious physiological difference between elves and humans is their pointy ears.
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Moondogs look like the typical wolfman style werewolf, but they have the personalities of frat boys. They also don't appear to have any specific resistance to being harmed with weapons that aren't made of silver.
* OverusedCopycatCharacter: The Obsidian Darkness appear to be an entire party of [[Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt Drizzt]] clones. [[spoiler: They all get [[TakeThat quickly and summarily slaughtered]] in the first issue.]]
* PathOfInspiration: A bizarrely inverted example in the N'rygoth cult that started as a straight ReligionOfEvil, but the worshippers got less fanatical and stopped being evil. [[spoiler: In fact, the cult's rituals are designed to slowly '''kill''' the chained Eldritch Abomination. Only the High Priest knows the full truth.]]
* PensieveFlashback:
** The effect of the presence of the extra-dimensional squid monsters in the second arc.
** Also the "mirror of regrets" in the first reboot arc.
* PlotMandatedFriendshipFailure: The Queens have a rough time in the ''Demons'' arc. When one member's history of violence is exposed by an outsider, she cops to it but claims that part of her life is over. She's then countered by another Queen proving that ''it's not'', then rejects their help while claiming they're rejecting her. [[CliffHanger All this building to the end of issue 15 with the remaining Queens sailing away.]]
* PreAssKickingOneLiner: "To the slaughter, my [[TitleDrop Rat Queens]]!"
** Braga has a one of the best ones ever; see BadassBoast, above.
* PrecisionFStrike: At the end of issue 2. "Ahh... fuck buckets."
* PreMortemOneLiner: The assassin in Issue #2 fails at this miserably.
* PseudoCrisis: The first page of Volume 2 has Violet regaining consciousness among a pile of bodies -- and then it turns out to be the wreckage of another massive party.
* PsychoLesbian: Averted. Betty is an unhinged little bundle of murder but that's pretty much par for the course for [[AnAdventurerIsYou adventurers]] in this world. Outside of battle she's as sweet and cute as you would imagine a halfling to be.
* PunchedAcrossTheRoom: Maddie is subject to these due to her youth and inexperience. Two examples are on Violet's treasure hunt and in combat with the Once and Future King.
* PunishedWithUgly: Castiwyr claims his fishy appearance is due to a curse. As a favor Hannah kisses him to break the curse and he transforms into a drop-dead gorgeous human male. He claims the new form is his true one and equally disgusting. [[TricksterGod But maybe he was just messing with her.]]
* RealityIsOutToLunch: The Far-Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth arc has reality-bending monsters invade Palisade. Participants in one attack warp from charging into the fight to dragging their wounded and dead to cover with no memory of the actual combat.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Sawyer tends to negotiate between the law-abiding citizenry and rowdy adventurers instead of cracking down.
* ReligionOfEvil: Subverted with the worshipers of N'rygoth. Dee's family seem quite nice, but Kiah is aware that the religion's relics and incantations can be twisted to evil by a man with malicious intent -- much like any religion that ''doesn't'' worship an EldritchAbomination. [[spoiler:Later revealed as an inversion: N'rygoth '''is''' an evil alien god, but the cultists' worship and spellcasting drains its power.]]
* {{Retool}}: In 2016 Wiebe put the series on hold for a year. He came back with a new artist in March 2017 by just ignoring the least popular parts of the third arc and bringing everyone back to base.
** Later arcs reintroduced the axed elements as an alternate timeline now making an attack on the retooled timeline.
* RetGone: Happens to [[spoiler:Maddie and Violet]] courtesy of [[spoiler:Evil Hannah]].
* {{Revenge}}: Several villains.
** [[spoiler:Bernadette]] hires assassins to kill the mercenary adventurers of Palisade for brawling in the streets and destroying property.
** [[spoiler:Gerrig Lake]] is driven to kill his wife's murderer.
** [[spoiler:Evil Hannah]] seeks vengeance against the Queens for perceived lack of loyalty.
* TheRival:
** The Peaches introduced in the first story arc may be this for the Rat Queens, but more likely it's just that Hannah and Tizzie, the leader of the Peaches, get under each other's skins. A flashback shows that (unsurprisingly) they used to be close friends when they were in school, and in times when things get too dangerous for them to remember that they hate each other they have exceptional teamwork abilities.
** In Volume 2, Barrie's all-male team ripped off from the Queens fills this role.
* SacrificialLamb: The first two issues leave about half the adventuring parties in Palisade assassinated, including the Brother Ponies and the Obsidian Darkness. Only the Rat Queens, the Four Daves and half the Peaches survive the cull.
* SecretRelationship: Dee [[spoiler:is married, something the other Rat Queens were not aware of]].
* SherlockScan: Betty is really good at these, which makes sense considering her role as "the thief" of the group. In Issue #3, she only needs to give Gerrig Lake (a merchant the Queens suspect in having a hand in the attempts on their lives) and his office a cursory glance to determine that he had returned from Denval (a location two weeks away by boat) that morning, that he had recently stopped wearing his wedding ring, that his office was booby-trapped via magic, and that he had a wallsafe behind one of his paintings.
** Later in the series: [[spoiler: she climbs into bed blind drunk to find an assassin standing over her. Violet busts in about 30 seconds later, and Betty already knows exactly where the assassin was from.]]
* ShoutOut:
** The '''Bro'''ther Po'''nies,''' to the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fandom. Given what happens to them, it could also be taken as a TakeThat.
** In the opening of the final issue of Volume 1, we see some of the Queens at a bar where [[WebVideo/CriticalRole an oddly familiar looking group of adventurers are hanging]].
** Also early in the final issue of Volume 1, Dee refuses to return to the sea because it's a [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail "silly place"]].
* SimilarSquad: Violet's brother Barrie draws from her playbook and forms the Cat Kings: an elderly male mage, an outdoorsy extrovert druid, and a silent sentient fungus of questionable utility.
* SirSwearsalot: All the Queens drop obscenities, but Hannah incorporates them into almost every social interaction she has.
* SixthRanger: As of the first issue the Rat Queens are one of several adventuring parties competing in Palisade, also including Braga of the Peaches party. By the High Fantasies arc Braga was officially inducted into the Queens.
* SleevesAreForWimps: Lola, Sawyer's second-in-command, wears a sleeveless watch tunic. She's got some impressive muscles, too.
* SociallyAwkwardHero: Dee definitely counts as one of these, primarily during things like parties. When the Queens host a party in celebration for royally trouncing orc ass, she sinks into a chair near the back of the room and buries her nose in a book. It should be noted that Dee [[spoiler:is also married, a fact she had kept a secret from the rest of the Rat Queens]].
-->'''Dee:''' Okay, Dee. Just, breathe. You love to party. You love strangers. You love mingling and small talk.\\
'''Random Douche:''' Hey, look at you hiding away by your--\\
'''Dee:''' [-Go away.-]\\
'''Random Douche:''' Pardon?\\
'''Dee:''' This is my party. This book is good. It asks no questions. The book lets me engage it on my own terms.\\
'''Random Douche:''' Okayyyy. ''[leaves]''\\
'''Dee:''' Social Dee strikes again.
* SquareRaceRoundClass: Orc Dave is a massive Orc, but is the party healer.
* StayInTheKitchen: Violet's dad and brother have this kind of mentality. It's one of the reasons why she fled home. It's also one of the reasons why she admires Morgan Meldhammer, because her attitude is "Fuck tradition", while also simultaneously kicking ass.
* SwallowedWhole: Betty by a giant pterosaur-type creature. She cuts her way out.
* SweetTooth: Betty ended up packing the party's rations full of candy and drugs in the first issue. During a MushroomSamba, she began to hallucinate Violet as made of candy and started munching on her.
* TakeThat: The Brother Ponies are [[spoiler:killed without even a single panel showing their fate.]] Also, the Obsidian Darkness, a parody of goth high fantasy characters and DarkFantasy in general.
* TheBard: At least three of note.
** One member of the Chorus.
** Maestro, proprietor of the Black Satyr tavern.
** Maddie, Maestro's daughter and the Black Satyr's waitress.
* TitleDrop: Since the title of the comic is also the name of the adventuring party including the main characters, it happens fairly regularly.
* TrickedToDeath: Betty carries a bag of candy mixed with poison just in case her stuff gets stolen. It pays off when she's captured by goblins who immediately gorge themselves and die.
* TricksterGod: Castiwyr is introduced as an immortal illusionist jerking mortals around out of boredom. His presence in the gods' domain shows he is a technical god just like Lady Love and Bilford Bogin.
* ToAbsentFriends: "To the lucky dead, who will not be feeling this hangover tomorrow." "To the lucky dead."
* ToxicFriendInfluence: One of the reasons Betty's ex-girlfriend broke up with her is that she considered ''all'' the Rat Queens to be toxic influences on one another and didn't want to stick around long enough to see what happened to Betty. (The other reason being that Hannah punched her in the boob.)
* UnusualEuphemism: "Nrygoth's ballsack!"
** Ending issues 1 and 3.
*** "Son." "Of." "A." "Kitten."
*** "Oh poop."
*** "Ahh...fuck buckets."
** "Bilford Bogin" is another one that gets thrown around quite a lot as well. For reasons yet to be made clear, it's considered ''especially'' [[CountryMatters vulgar]] in this world.
*** It's revealed in the third arc that Bilford Bogins was a religious figure whose named entered into use as an exclamation similar to 'Jesus Christ'.
* VitriolicBestBuds:
** Hannah and Violet, more than anyone, get to [[ElvesVersusDwarves shouting at one another often]]. Played with, as it's implied that Hannah fails to realize she might be more hurtful than she intends.
** Hannah and Tizzie, too. They might hate each other and swap insults at every chance, but half the time it just ends with the two of them laughing, and any time the situation gets dire enough that they forget their rivalry they become violently protective of each other.
* WartsAndAll: Violet comes to admire one the fighters in a melee tournament, because she realizes this lady is pretty much everything she wants to be.
-->'''Violet''':"You shaved your beard... your clan, they allow it?
-->'''Morgan''':"Fuck no. I just felt like doing it."
-->'''Violet''':"But... what about tradition?"
-->'''Morgan''':"Tradition? Fuck tradition. (beat) Can we hurry this along? There's enough boob sweat to fill a flagon up in here."
-->'''Violet''':"Marry me."
* WeHardlyKnewYe: [[spoiler:The Brother Ponies, The Obsidian Darkness, and half of The Peaches]].
* WeddingFinale: Played for Wiebe's departure from the series at the end of Infernal Path.
* WhamLine:
-->[[spoiler:'''Evil Hannah:''' I'm the Hannah you left behind.]]
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: Issue 8 is this until the very last few panels. ItMakesSenseInContext.
* WildChild: Dalen was taken very young from his father by the Flesher orcs. He's a rare case that survived the biomanipulation process but didn't actually transform. Needless to say growing up around an army of violent monstrosities did nothing for his social skills. His father rescued him and is trying to repair the damage with mixed results.
* WorldOfSnark: The Queens trade barbs with each other, allies, enemies, passersby...
* WritingAroundTrademarks: As described above, between the pre-publication publicity and the actual comic "hobbit" was replaced by "smidgen". Which is generally assumed to be for this reason.
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->''Did you seriously pack candy and drugs for dinner?''
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