[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dicktracy_8252.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:Dick Tracy, [[DissonantSerenity contemplating the violence that he will no doubt be inflicting.]]]]
One of the most well-known NewspaperComics of all time, one of the earliest of the Adventure strips, one of the most popular and longest lasting, and one of the few Adventure strips still being published, Dick Tracy, created by Chester Gould, is about the cases of a tough as nails police detective. Inspired as a TakeThat towards organized crime in the 1930s (indeed, the strip's first major villain, [[BigBad Big Boy]], was an {{Expy}} of UsefulNotes/AlCapone) the series followed Detective Dick Tracy as he fights crime, as a modern day Literature/SherlockHolmes but with a lot of emphasis on forensic methods and police procedures. Furthermore, the strip pulled no punches with an intensity of bloody violence for its time that would impress Creator/SamPeckinpah and Creator/QuentinTarantino.

The strip has been depicted with numerous media adaptations: movie serials, the 1961/1962 TV series, ''WesternAnimation/TheDickTracyShow,'' cartoons, a rejected live-action pilot, video games published by [[VideoGame/DickTracySega Sega]] and [[Creator/BandaiNamco Bandai]] with a full-length 1990 [[Film/DickTracy theatrical film]] starring Creator/WarrenBeatty, whose specific tropes are discussed here.

The strip can be read online at the [[http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy GoComics website,]] though if you want to read anything published before 2001, you'll have to look elsewhere.

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!!Tropes:

* AbnormalAmmo: One arc has a villain who used a ice bullets to get revenge on the man who blackmailed him and drive his wife to suicide. He made a special case with dry ice in it, which allowed him to combine a paraffin bottom full of powder with water in a mold to create them. Tracy mentions that they only work at fairly close range, however, and when the villain tries to take them on, the bullets were out of the case long enough to melt.
* AccidentalKidnapping: In the Crewy Lou storyline, Crewy steals Tess Tracy's car in order to make a getaway. However, she fails to notice Bonny Ann Braids napping in the backseat, turning it not merely into an unintentional kidnapping, but making it ItsPersonal for Tracy.
* AffectionateParody:
** A long-running feature in Al Capp's ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'' is that Abner's hero is a Tracy pastiche called Fearless Fosdick. Political cartoonist Herbert Block would use Fosdick in some his installments to display some hypocrisy in government's role in crime fighting.
** There's the classic [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Daffy Duck]] cartoon "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery," in which Daffy dreams he's [[DisneyAcidSequence "Duck Twacy."]]
** WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures has an episode called "The Return of Pluck Twacy", where Plucky Duck has a similar dream sequence.
* TheAlcoholic: Poptop, the beer-guzzling father of Flattop and Blowtop. With that family, who can blame him?
* AlcoholicParent: Model's parents are unemployed alcoholics who are are never seen without a bottle or a glass in their hands. The teenaged Model provides the only income coming into the household.
* AmoralAttorney: Tracy had beefs with many lawyers, both in the pay of mobs and especially after Warren Court decisions about due process starting in the late 1950s.
* AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle: The Crimestopper's Textbook in the Sunday strips.
* AnimalAssassin:
** One of 'Trigger' Doom's henchmen attempted to dispose of Tracy by dumping him in a pen with an enraged bull. Tracy is only saved when Constable Ferret shoots the bull.
** A water buffalo at the zoo nearly did Tracy and Selfy Narcisse in. The buffalo was scared off when Tracy's wrist wizard exploded.
* AnyoneCanDie: Hank Steel, Jean Penfield, Stooge Viller, The Summer sisters, Brilliant Smith, Jim Worthington-Grove, Model Jones, Mary Steele, Moon Maid, Groovy Grove, Will Carver, Alfred Brau...
** Collins once said that, since he's the main character, you know Tracy will make it out alive, but you could never be sure about ''anybody else.'' He believed this was essential for a credible sense of drama.
** Arguably, you pretty much only knew two things- that Dick Tracy would live, and, between the 1930s and 1970s, there was a good chance that the villain would die.
* ArchEnemy: There are a few contenders for who could be Dick Tracy's arch-nemesis.
** "Big Boy" Caprice was responsible for Tracy's initial war on crime and was the primary antagonist for the first three or four years of the comic strip, but later fell by the wayside. [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge He came back in a big way]] in the "Big Boy's Open Contract" storyline, but died at the end of it.
** Floyd "Flattop" Jones is perhaps Dick Tracy's most famous enemy and the first one to truly put him in a nearly unwinnable situation, and although he dies within a year of his introduction his family continues to hound Tracy decades after his defeat.
** Mr. Bribery is another strong contender during both the Chester Gould Moon Era and the Staton and Curtis Moon Era. He is a criminal genius and egomaniac obsessed with Moon technology, and has led not one but two vast criminal organizations to obtain it, and has had more time to plan and scheme than most Tracy villains have to live. Even if he's not Tracy's nemesis, he's certainly the Moon Maid's.
** Abner Kadaver is a ghoulish assassin and arch-rival to Dick Tracy, driven by a mad vendetta against him after their first encounter. He and his partner Rikki Mortis are two of the most recurring villains in the Staton and Curtis era, including an arc where Abner challenges Tracy to a climactic showdown at [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes Reichenbach Falls]], just to hammer in the symbolism.
* ArmCannon: Dr Plain had a small flamethrower built into his artificial arm.
* AscendedFanboy: In-universe, the second Mr Crime is really [[spoiler: Davey Mylar, a comic book geek and trivia nut who finds some of the original Mr Crime's documents in his old headquarters, and uses them and his own computer skills to resurrect Mr Crime's criminal empire.]]
* AsianSpeekeeEngrish:
** Averted for actual Asian characters. Toyee and Lee Ting speak perfect (if slightly formal) English.
** At one point Pat Patton disguises himself as a stereotypical Chinese person and speaks this way. This may be intended for humor at Patton's expense since none of the other Asian characters speak act or look this way, and thus he appears ridiculous.
* AssassinOutclassin: With less than a year to live, in 1978, "Big Boy" Caprice puts out a contract for anyone who can get rid of Tracy. "Little" Littel places a bomb in Tracy's car; even though he fails to bump off Tracy, the explosion kills Moon Maid, tragically severing contact between Earth and the Moon, and bringing the Space Era to a close.
* AuthorFilibuster: Gould's rants about the restrictions of due process.
* AvengingTheVillain:
** Flattop's death resulted in both his daughter Angeltop, his brother Blowtop and his estranged wife Stiletta Jones coming after Tracy at various points. Strangely, his son Flattop Jr. did not seem to have any particular grudge against Tracy, but became a criminal anyway due to a general hate for authority, as he and his accomplice Joe Period were intended to represent the then-emerging social issue of juvenile delinquency.
** Pruneface's wife Mrs. Pruneface also sought to avenge her husband. Ironically, decades after her death, it was revealed that Pruneface was not dead, but had been cryogenically frozen.
** The Brow's unnamed son did not originally have a grudge against Tracy despite the death of his father, but after his fiancee Angeltop is killed, he eventually swears to avenge her.
** B-B Eyes' wife attempted to get revenge on Tracy after her husband drowns. However, his death was eventually Retconned.
** Little Boy, the grandson of Tracy's first arch enemy Big Boy, CLAIMED he was doing this, but it was revealed after his death that he wasnt related to Big Boy at all, just using his legacy to amass power for himself.
* BackFromTheDead: Mumbles has a strange habit of cheating death. He's come back from the dead twice (both times after he apparently drowned). The later years have also brought B-B Eyes back from the dead, decades after his death.
** Technically, Mumbles has come back ''three'' times, but his third is just a case of CanonDiscontinuity: Killian's "death of Mumbles" story contradicted so many points of previous continuity that Curtis has just chosen to ignore it.
** The leader of the Black Hearts crime organization turns out to be [[spoiler: Mr Bribery, who had apparently died in the Moon Maid era, still trying to get his hands on the Space Coupe. The Bribery who died turns out to have been a body double.]]
** Pruneface froze to death in 1942 but was kept preserved through Dr. Freezdrei's cryogenics. Pruneface was revived in 1983 but in an undocumented story, he fell to his death from a mountain cable car in 1999.
* AwfulTruth: Diet Smith is so horrified by the real story of Moon Maid's return that he orders all of his lunar research and technology destroyed, feeling as though he were responsible.
* BadassLongcoat: Tracy possesses one and its an iconic part of his outfit.
* BadassNative: Nah Tay was a Native American from Ecuador who worked for Mr. Bribery. One of his specialties was [[ShrunkenHead shrinking the heads]] of Bribery's victims.
* BadGuyBar: The Dripping Dagger Bar in ''Dick Tracy vs. Cueball''. Also, EJ's Bar in the strip.
* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Not only was Miss Egghead an afficiando of BeastlyBloodsports--runing a stable of gamecocks--but she also strangled a young girl's pet rooster in front of her.
%% * BaldOfEvil: Cueball, Panda, Mr. Kleen. Miss Egghead had a completely bald dome but long platinum tresses down the side.
* BeastlyBloodsports: Miss Egghead was obsessed with cockfighting and owned a stable of gamecocks.
* BeautyEqualsGoodness: Generally played straight, though there have been exceptions (the various Mahoney women for instance). Dick Locher also tended to draw much more normal-looking villains than the other artists did.
** Flattop's still-unnamed, law-abiding sister is a notable subversion, even if she never appeared much. She looks almost identical to Flattop himself, and most would agree he isn't exactly a very handsome man to begin with.
** Averted with Rikki Mortis, who looks adorable and sincerely loves Abner Kadaver, but she's an unrepentant murderess.
* BeautyToBeast: Tulza Tuzon used to be movie star handsome. In 1943, he was working as a commercial truck driver. On one trip, he was transporting dangerous chemicals when the truck crashed. Tuzon was knocked unconscious and left with half of his face submerged in the chemicals. By the time he was treated, [[TwoFaced the left side of his face was severely damaged, and his hair had been blanched]]. He first became a circus freak, and then a criminal under the name Haf-and-Haf. Later, he was exposed to toxic waste and developed a ''third'' section of damage in the middle of his head as well as multiple personalities and started calling himselves the new Splitface.
* BerserkButton:
** Junior, of all people, experienced this once. Right after his first wife is murdered (by a bomb meant for Tracy himself), the first thing he does when he finds out who was responsible is [[TookALevelInBadass take Tracy's spare gun, drive himself to their hideout and prepare to avenge his wife]]. [[spoiler: Only to chicken out at the last minute, requiring Tracy to come to the rescue.]]
** The Mole (after reforming) gets a button pressed in a storyline where a crooked wrestler steals donated money meant for the poor families under the Mole's care, causing the Mole to crawl into the ring in anger to fight him. In a later arc, another one is pressed when a girl he's fond of gets kidnapped and the Mole proceeds to hunt the villain down, rescue the girl and hold the villain off until Tracy arrives.
* BigBad: It changes every five years or so. Prominent enemies that lead nationwide syndicates include Big Boy, George Alpha (Mr. Crime), Mr. Bribery, Mr.Intro, [[spoiler:Davey Mylar]] (Mr. Crime II), and Venus Blackheart. Prominent villains of lesser gangland status include Flattop Jones, Mumbles, and B-B Eyes (who is becoming more and more recurring in later years).
* BigEater: Oodles
* BizarroWorld: ''Midnite Mirror'', introduced in the 2010s, is an in-universe book series wherein Dick Tracy and his allies are villains (his mirror self being "Boss Tracy"), and Tracy's villains occupy various heroic roles, with Flattop Jones himself taking the role of a consulting detective known as The Chalice. "Our" Tracy isn't exactly a fan, but in-universe the series is popular enough to have had a movie based on it.
* TheBlank: The Blank, who else? Duh! Also a {{Trope Namer|s}}.
* BlackAndWhiteMorality: Dick Tracy is always good, and the gangsters he fights are always irredeemable monsters (often with weird physical deformities) who always deserve their usually gruesome end.
* BodyHorror: Many of the iconic villains are hideously disfigured, especially Pruneface and the [[Franchise/{{Batman}} Two-Face]]-esque Haf-n-Haf.
* BookSafe: Flattop is hiding out in a boarding house and decides keeping his loot on his person is too risky. So, when he sees an old thick photo album under a table that looks rarely used, he decides to cut out the inner pages and hide his money in it. As it happens, the kid blackmailing Flattop has drowned while ice skating on expensive skates bought with the shakedown money. Those skates led Tracy to the boarding house where he requests the boy's mother to get a photo for the newspaper and so they go to the photo album and the money is discovered. When Tracy asks where this money came from, the mother guesses it must be from her boarder and Tracy proceeds to Flattop's room while the crook is frantically trying to escape.
* BoomHeadshot: In the strip's prime, Tracy usually aims for the head and hits it.
* BrainUploading: Memory Banks, in one of Collins's more offbeat stories.
* BumblingSidekick: Pat Patton in the very early days of the strip, but TookALevelInBadass in fairly short order.
* ButterFace: A number of recurring female characters, but Gravel Gertie in particular.
* CanonDiscontinuity: The strip's moon period of the 1960s was quickly consigned to this by Max Allan Collins after he took over as writer, and remained so under Mike Kilian and Dick Locher. However, Joe Staton and Mike Curtis began making small references to it after they took over in 2011, and fully reintegrated it into the canon the following year.
* CanonImmigrant: Staton and Curtis did two storylines featuring Cueball, the villain of the 1946 film ''Film/DickTracyVsCueball.'' They also made passing reference to Dick's late brother Gordon, who had only appeared in the first Dick Tracy film serial. A subsequent storyline featured Gruesome from the 1947 film ''Dick Tracy meets Gruesome''. The also referenced the 1945 movie by describing it as one of Tracy's past cases where he dealt with the first Splitface. Characters from other comic strips have also been added, most notably from ''ComicStrip/LittleOrphanAnnie''.
** Curtis said in an interview that he had hoped to import some of the characters from the 1960s animated series as well, but couldn't get the legal rights.
* CaptainErsatz: Early 80s art thief Art Dekko looks an ''awful lot'' like Franchise/LupinIII. On the other hand, an anime homage way back in 1980 is pretty cool in and of itself.
* CarCushion: In a rare case of a villain doing this and surviving, Joe Period does this while fleeing from the police. He leaps from three stories from the window of an apartment on to the top of a parked a car, crushing the roof of the car but surviving to limp away.
* CarnivalOfKillers: 'Big Boy' created one by offering a one million dollar open contract on Tracy's life.
* CarpetRolledCorpse: Little Face's henchmen do this with their (still-living) boss when they attempt to smuggle him out of the apartment where he had been secreted.
* CartwrightCurse: Although Junior did eventually settle down with Sparkle, he had to endure the violent deaths of both his first girlfriend and his first wife.
* CatchPhrase:
** "Ye gods!"
** Blowtop's "Woo gosh!"
* ChairmanOfTheBrawl: Model's [[AlcoholicParent alcoholic father]] hits with a chair to prevent from turning in her criminal brother Larry.
* TheChase: Many of the classic stories involve elaborate manhunts. The chase to catch the Brow, once he went on the run, is one of the most memorable.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Introduced during the Flattop story, [[LargeHam ham actor Vitamin Flintheart]] played a supporting role fairly regularly until the TV Wiggles story of 1950, after which he disappeared and did not return again for the duration of Gould's run. Future Tracy writer Max Allan Collins, who was fond of Flintheart, asked Gould in 1975 why he dropped the character, to which Gould cheerfully replied "Oh, we had him in there not too long ago!" Regardless, when Collins took over the strip the last week of 1977, he immediately brought Flintheart back.
* TheClan: B.O. Plenty's big, goofy, but mostly benign extended family. Also Flattop's family of crooks.
** Although Flattop's family is split. His wife, kids, and grandchild are the ones that go to crime, while his brothers and (unnamed) sister are civilians (Blowtop had to reform, though). His father is also a civilian, and has disowned his criminal relatives.
* CoolCar: Flattop Jr's iconic customized car that he drove during his two-state crime spree. He had it modified to include a television, record player, stove, and ''running water''.
* CoverIdentityAnomaly: In the "Spinner [=ReCord=]" arc, the Police Custodian claims to be a collector of rare first print records to explain his acquaintance with record dealer Spinner. However, when Tracy searches his house, he discovers that not only does the Custodian have any records, he does not even own a phonograph.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Everything about the Dick Locher's solo run on the strip (2006-2011).
* CoffinContraband: After Cinn murders her husband George Ozone, she disposes of the murder weapon by hiding it in a stranger's coffin.
* ComicBookTime: Tracy has been active since 1931 and is still going with no attempt to explain how he's still a man in his forties. Up through the Locher years, he was allowed to age, albeit very slowly. In TheEighties he was described as being in his fifties. For a time, Locher was even drawing Dick with graying temples and Tess with crow's feet, but he later changed his mind. Staton and Curtis have pulled the biological clock back a bit and [[WordOfGod declared]] Dick to be in his forties (he still gets to be a grandpa because he was in his early twenties when he adopted Junior, who was nine years old).
** Hilariously lampshaded in a strip guest-starring Walt Wallet from ''ComicStrip/GasolineAlley.'' ''Gasoline Alley'' was the first newspaper comic to let its characters age in real time, so Walt is now well over a hundred and looks it. Tracy mentions that he first met Walt years ago... and a flashback shows Walt as a young man, and [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall Tracy looking exactly the same, except for a 1930s hairstyle.]]
** This has become an issue with the villains introduced during the comic's heyday, as many of them had origins or crimes tied to World War 2 (B.B Eyes running a tire smuggling ring during the rubber rationing, Pruneface being a nazi spy etc.), which means that most of them would be closing in on a hundred in present day, and their original crimes would make no sense if moved to a contemporary setting.
** On top of that Tracy has sometimes clashed with descendants of older foes, kids and even grandkids; logically he should have been much older than them but he rather looked the same as when he faced their relatives.
* CommLinks: The various wrist communicators.
* ContractualGenreBlindness: Blackjack is like this because he's basically playing at being a "Dick Tracy villain." He's Dick Tracy's biggest fan, and so decided it would be the coolest thing in the world to join Tracy's RoguesGallery. He feels honored when he gets arrested, and then breaks out of prison to do the same thing again. He's happily insane.
* ContractOnTheHitman: Fearing the police's eventual retaliation when Big Boy offered a one million dollar open contract on Tracy's life, [[BigBadEnsemble other criminals]] offered a similar contract on the life of whoever claims the prize on Tracy's life.
* CreatorCameo: Dick Locher made an appearance in his final strip as artist, thanking Tracy for "32 years of high speed excitement." Whether this counts as a heartwarming moment or egotism depends on whether you prefer to remember Locher for his good artwork until 2005, or his terrible artwork and worse writing from 2006 onwards.
** Chester Gould once created a villain named Pear-Shape who was a parody of himself.
* CrossOver: The new creative team has done a bunch. We've had cameo guest appearances from the casts of ''ComicStrip/GasolineAlley, ComicStrip/BrendaStarr, ComicStrip/TerryAndThePirates, Mary Perkins on Stage,'' ''ComicStrip/LumAndAbner,'' ''ComicStrip/LittleOrphanAnnie,'' ''ComicStrip/LilAbner,'' ''ComicStrip/SnuffySmith,'' ''ComicStrip/OnTheFastrack,'' and the [[WritingAroundTrademarks (strictly unofficial)]] revelation that Broadway Bates is the brother of [[Franchise/{{Batman}} the Penguin.]]
** There had been a previous crossover with ''Brenda Starr'' back in 1994.
** The ''ComicStrip/LittleOrphanAnnie'' crossover has served as a FullyAbsorbedFinale. She's been reunited with Daddy Warbucks, and has since become a semi-regular as Honeymoon Tracy's best friend.
** [[http://joshreads.com/?p=23948 A crossover in 2015]] is with [[http://joshreads.com/?p=23932f of all things]] ''ComicStrip/FunkyWinkerbean''.
** The 2017 strips opened with a crossover with Comicbook/TheSpirit.
* CrusadingWidow: The equally grotesque Mrs. Pruneface showed seeking vengeance for her husband who died at Tracy's hands. She suffered a similar fate to her husband.
* DaddysLittleVillain: Angeltop, the daughter of the infamous hitman Flattop.
* DangerouslyCloseShave: Sam Catchem nearly has his throat slit while getting a shave from Empty's girlfriend Bonnie the Barber.
* DangerTakesABackSeat: Selford Depool does this to kill the hostess who had discovered his secret (that he was an escapee from the state asylum) and was taking the evidence to the police.
* DarkerAndEdgier: [[http://dicktracy.wikia.com/wiki/Dick_Tracy_-_The_Secret_Files Dick Tracy: The Secret Files]], a collection of prose short stories released to coincide with the movie. While a number of them are no 'worse' than the average Dick Tracy story (they even bring back Mumbles, AGAIN), some of the writers take advantage of the looser prose rules to take things a step further. Perhaps most evidenced in "Whirlpool, Sizzle, and The Juice"[[note]]Which is about a particularly freakish 'grotesque' trio whose faces have been sliced into a circular pattern, dunked in oil and pressed onto a hamburger grill, and beaten into an utter mess with damaged eyes that constantly leak tears.[[/note]] and the collection's final story, "Not A Creature Was Stirring"[[note]]Which features a child-murdering serial killer who disguises themselves as Santa and is outright stated to orgasm when he strangles children to death, and whom Tracy kills by violently bashing in his face with a coal shovel. Perhaps more eye-raising, this is the story that the strip's then-writer, Max Allen Collins, contributed to the collection.[[/note]]
* DeadlyDoctor: Dr. Plain.
* DeadMansChest:
** 88 Keyes hides a corpse in his grand piano.
** A tree surgeon, after committing murder, hides the body inside a tree trunk that had been split by weather. The tree heals around it and the body goes undiscovered until the tree is cut down, decades later, when the murderer is an old man.
** One of Nothing Yossum's henchmen disposes of Joe Period's body by stuffing it into a double bass case. However, Joe Period turns out to be NotQuiteDead.
* DeathByMaterialism: Mumbles drowns (although a later writer would bring him BackFromTheDead) when he falls from a helicopter and the bag of stolen gold and gems he had strapped to his back holds him headfirst underwater.
* {{Deathtrap}}: Tracy often needed rescue to fully escape them.
* DependingOnTheArtist: While most of the cast's appearances have stayed fairly consistent from one artist to the next, for whatever reason, Diet Smith and Lizz Worthington both seem to morph significantly every time a new artist comes on board.
* DepravedDwarf: Jeremy Trohs, AKA The Midget.
* DisplacedOrigin: The 1990 movie's canon has crept into parts of the comic strip, leading to this trope occurring for a few characters, most notably Breathless Mahoney. Originally just a one-shot villain most notable for being the stepdaughter of Shaky until embarking on a criminal career of her own, the movie turned her into a lounge singer, something she wasn't portrayed as in the original comics. Furthermore, letters she left behind for her sister mentioned her having an attraction to Tracy, which is odd since they had very little interaction in her appearance in the strip.
* DodgyToupee: The defining characteristic of bad guy Rughead.
* DontTellMama: [[spoiler: Davey Mylar]] doesn't want his mother to find out about his identity as Mr Crime II, and has rigged his computer to erase all his files if he doesn't enter a password every 48 hours. After he is mortally wounded, he asks Blaze, the only person who knew he was Mr Crime, to keep quiet about it, and she agrees. Even the police doesn't know, as far as they're concerned, the second Mr Crime is still at large.
** Stooge Viller has this, not with his mother but his daughter. When he's on his deathbed due to an illness contracted in prison (hospital documents reveals it as gangrene), he asks Tracy to not tell his daughter that he's dead, but that he's still incarcerated.
* DownerEnding: The Model story.
* DrivenToSuicide: Prunella kills herself after her father Pruneface dies during an escape from the Mossad.
* DroppedABridgeOnHim: In a villainous example, Flattop's former wife Stiletta Jones (a.k.a. Mrs. Flattop) showed up a year or so into Curtis and Staton's run, and was quickly established as one of the most dangerous villains of this new era. This eventually culminated in her planning to kidnap and possibly murder Tracy's newborn grandson, only for her to be ''accidentally'' killed in a fight with Silver Nitrate's sister Sprocket, [[EvenEvilHasStandards who thought she was going too far]], just before Stiletta could actually start carrying out her plan.
* DrowningUnwantedPets: Villain Mr. Bribery attempts to dispose of his chain-smoking pet cat by tying a steam iron to its neck and tossing it into the reservoir, although the cat manages to escape.
* EditedForSyndication: When Dell--and later Harvey--Comics reprinted the strips in comic book format, they changed dialogue and cut whole scenes from the original stories which they deemed too violent or sexually-charged. Fortunately, the Complete Collections have the whole shebang, as you'd expect.
* EveryoneKnowsMorse: Tracy escapes from Flattop by tapping out Morse code with his foot to communicate with the WAC-in-training living in the apartment below.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Flattop, of all people! It was revealed in a flashback storyline that he had worked with Pruneface to kidnap a scientist, but when Flattop found out Pruneface worked for the Axis, he instead auctioned the scientist back to the government, rather than have him working for the Axis cause.
** Blackjack may be a bank robber and a general nut, but actually endangering civilians is where he draws the line. When one of the banks he held up started catching fire, he immediately stopped the robbery and had his gang help everyone get out of the building safe. For that matter, he also only targets banks that make shady moves, like the aforementioned one (turns out the fire was set by the bank's crooked manager, who had set fire to a wastebasket as a desperate attempt to escape an accounting audit).
* EvilMakesYouUgly: The general theme with the villains, they're just as ugly on the outside that they are on the inside. However, not ALL the villains are deformed, especially not the women.
* EvilOldFolks: Several villains survive into old age, and never changed their ways. Most notably Pruneface, Big Boy and Heartless Mahoney.
* TheFaceless: Spots, the Blank [[spoiler: when masked]], Johnny Nothing.
* FaceHeelTurn: While he was technically already a criminal, The Brow's son wasn't particularly evil and only assisted Angeltop out of his love for her. He even stopped her from killing Lizz, but this seemingly cost her her life, and he swore revenge on Tracy. He hasn't reappeared to make good on this yet though. [[spoiler:That is until 2015 when he made his return as a masked serial killer known as The Hangman murdering crew members of an upcoming film [[FreudianExcuse out of a desire to let the memories of his father and his evil deeds die]].]]
* FacialHorror: Whilst many villains in the comic strip had deformed faces often overlapping with NightmareFace, only a few had concrete explanations outside of EvilMakesYouUgly.
** TheBlank, underneath his featureless mask had a [[https://live.staticflickr.com/1191/5100501225_a2f9dbafb0_b.jpg decayed skull-like face]], resembling the [[Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera1925 Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera]], supposedly obtained when escaping prison.
** Haf and Haf had a similar ailment to Harvey Dent, being TwoFaced, but may actually have it ''worse'' then the trope image. Whilst the deformed side of Two Face at least still resembles an actual face, Haf and Haf's [[https://assets.mycast.io/characters/24135_normal.jpg?1523957841 bad side]] is in such a mess it actually appears to be melting and, averting EyesAreUnbreakable, has no eye visible within his sagging flesh.
** Mrs. Pruneface was an uncommonly large woman with sunken eyes, a nearly non-existent nose and pointed teeth. Her facial disfigurement was the result of a MolotovCocktail being thrown in her face while she and her husband were escaping Europe.
** In contrast to the above examples, Littleface actually made his HeelFaceTurn ''after'' losing both his ears to frostbite. His run from the law ''really'' put him through the physical wringer, and one can scarcely blame him for wanting to leave his life of crime behind afterward.
* FacialScruff: Tracy sported a PornStache for a while in the '70s. Eventually, his coworkers physically hold him down and shave the ridiculous thing off. His response afterward is, "Thanks."
* FakingTheDead: B-B Eyes, [[spoiler:When he is revealed as the [[BigBad head of the Blackhearts]], Mr. Bribery is also revealed to have pulled this.]]
** Pruneface was revealed to not have been killed in 1943, but had somehow been smuggled out of custody and put in cryogenic suspension.
** Mumbles takes the cake though, having successfully faked his death ''twice.''
* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: People regularly die in perverse (and graphic) ways, such as getting run over by a steamroller, or having [[EyeScream their eyes gouged out]]. And this is all printed on the comics page. However, unless you're looking for collections aimed at adult readers, don't expect to see these endings --''Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy, I'm looking squarely at you!!'' -- because many of them were cut in later years by MoralGuardians concerned that the deaths were a bit TOO graphic... though [[FridgeHorror it did leave the impression that baddies like the psycho killer Flattop, the vile spy The Brow and others are still around and doing, um, what they do best...]]
** Better yet, the steamroller death took place on Christmas Day, and ''in the same frame'' the writers wished their readers "Happy Holidays from Dick and the gang!"
** Gould himself said that the worst death of all went to The Brow, who was [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice impaled on a flagpole]] so hard that he went all the way down to the ground.
*** That one was intended to be a KarmicDeath, as The Brow was a Nazi spy, and the flagpole he was impaled on bore the US Flag.
** Or Selbert [=DePool=], who was crushed alive inside a parade float.
** Doc Hump gets his throat brutally ripped out by his own dogs in the frame.
** Gargles met his end by holing up in a sheet glass factory, only to start a shootout which the police's return fire shattering the glass above Gargles and having the fragments rain down on him to deadly effect.
* {{Fanboy}}: Ironically, Doubleup learned how to be an expert with the whip because he was a fan of a fictional superhero who used one, the Scarlet Sting (it's a pity he didn't also pick up on the Sting's heroism!), and the best way to get in his good graces is to show an interest in the character, which will have him eager to swap bits of Scarlet Sting trivia.
* FarmersDaughter: Such a character features in the 88 Keyes story when said crook is hiding out at a dairy farm and while he proves hopeless working there, the farmer's preteen daughter is smitten with him. It progresses to the point where Keyes manipulates her into be an accomplice to elude Tracy, but she realizes what she is doing and attempts a HeroicSacrifice to stop him. Fortunately, unlike a lot of one-off characters in that AnyoneCanDie story world, all she gets is a good scare and is returned home all right and even gets a fatherly kiss from Tracy at the conclusion of the story. Of course, she takes said fatherly kiss somewhat differently than he intended...
* FatBastard:
** Brutal hitman Oodles weighs 470 lbs.
** Pouch ''used'' to be one of these, having worked as the Quarter Ton Man as part of a traveling freak show. He eventually dropped the weight, but as a result was left with grotesque folds of skin, which he used as pockets, all over his body.
** Pear-Shape, a SelfDeprecation villain Gould created that was a parody of himself. He was so fat he had to use a mirror to check his shoes.
* FauxDeath: Inverted. [[spoiler:The new Moon Maid turns out to have been a human (Gemma Ermine, specifically) who was genetically and physically reconstructed into more-or-less a physical clone of Moon Maid, as well as mind-wiped and given a set of FakeMemories that made her believe she was the real deal. So, it's a Faux Resurrection]]!
* FemmeFatale: Breathless Mahoney (and her sister Heartless), Sleet, Newsuit Nan, Babe, The Doll, Bundles Filagree.
* FemmeFatalons: MasterPoisoner Newsuit Nan had long sharp fingernails which she used to scratch her victims and induce poison into their bloodstream.
* {{Fiction 500}}: Diet Smith
* ForgottenPhlebotinum: Most of the Moon Period technology was never mentioned again after Moon Maid's death until the Staton and Curtis run, when some of it returned.
* FreakyFashionMildMind
* {{Frenemy}}: Blackjack is showing signs of this. He became a criminal because he's Tracy's biggest fan and so he wanted to join Tracy's RoguesGallery. He's quite nuts, if you couldn't tell.
* FreudianExcuse: [[spoiler:Although The Brow's Son reformed from his criminal ways for awhile, he eventually became a serial killer in order to prevent the ''Midnite Mirror'' film (which had a version of his father as one of the characters) from being made. His father's crimes having shaped his life from the time he was an infant, Brau Jr. wanted the man to fade out of the public consciousness, and knew a movie would dredge up bad memories and publicity he didn't want]].
* GadgetWatches: Dick Tracy's well-known 2-way wrist radio watch, which has been updated as technology has developed. Nowadays the Wrist Wizard is a more like a futuristic take on an Apple Watch.
* GenerationXerox: Flattop Jr. is the spitting image of his father.
* GhostlyGoals: The ghost of a teenage girl Flattop Jr murders when she accidentally reveals his location is seen hanging around and psychologically tormenting the killer as revenge for her death. Unlike most supernatural events in the comic, this one is implied to be real, as readers see the ghost remain for a moment after Flattop Jr's death, then flies off into the sky.
** A later story had Tracy spending a night in a "haunted house", which was apparently haunted by an actual ghost.
* GirlsWithMoustaches:
** Notta Chin Chillar (nee Fallar) has a petite goatee on her otherwise striking female figure. Notably, this does nothing to diminish her attractiveness in the eyes of others.
** Sue Reel, Art Dekko's accomplice, is an attractive young woman with a mustache resembling Salvador Dali's.
* GivenNameReveal: While she was simply "Moon Maid" throughout Gould's run (perhaps with the implication that she was TheUnpronounceable), Curtis has finally revealed Moon Maid's proper name: Mysta.
** We never learned the Brow or his son's real names during their original appearances, either. Curtis has finally named them too: Alfred Brau, and Alfred Brau Jr.
* {{Gonk}}: Most of the villains.
* GratuitousJapanese: Honeymoon and Mysta [[spoiler:Chimera]] have been treating each other by "onee-san" (big sister) and "imouto-chan" (little sister) [[spoiler:ever since Honeymoon's Lunarian horns started to grow.]]
* GrievousBottleyHarm: Haf-and-Haf knocks out his girlfriend Zelda by smashing a champagne bottle over her head.
* GunStruggle: Junior's first girlfriend Model is fatally shot when she attempts to wrestle the gun out the the hand of her criminal brother Larry who was planning to ambush Tracy.
* HairTriggerTemper: Blowtop
* HalfHumanHybrid: Honeymoon Tracy, child of Junior Tracy and Mysta "Moon Maid" Tracy.
** Also, [[spoiler:Mysta Chimera, the new Moon Maid, who is a surgically and genetically altered human]].
* HandicappedBadass: Dr. Plain
* HaveAGayOldTime: Stooge Viller is offered $10,000 if he can "Queer the Dick and ruin him for good with the big shots".
* HeartwarmingOrphan: Junior.
* HeelFaceTurn: Vitamin Flintheart, B.O. Plenty, and Gravel Gertie are the most well-known.
** The criminals Influence, Pear-Shape, Coffyhead, and Mousey were revealed to have gone straight during the Collins years. Influence makes a living helping people recover repressed memories. He made a cameo during the Curtis/Staton era, helping a witness remember information. Pear-Shape opened a legitimate weight-loss center, Mousy runs a pet store, and Coffyhead owns a coffee shop.
** Flattop's brother Blowtop went straight after being released from prison, and refused both his niece Angeltop and his sister-in-law Stilletta when they asked him to join their quest for revenge against Tracy--though he did give the former a million dollars upon request.
** The Mole, a criminal who provided hiding spaces and escape routes for other criminals, eventually turned straight and became a protector of the homeless.
** Little Face is shown to have gone straight, and becomes an undercover agent for Tracy.
** Pouch, one of the few really notable villains from the early 1970s, returns as an informant for Tracy while handing out balloons at a local park. However, he's not completely straight as he still sells information to criminals.
* HesBack: Pat Patton, who had been written out of the strip by Dick Locher, made his return within days of Mike Curtis and Joe Staton taking over.
* HideYourLesbians: It's pretty strongly hinted that Blaze Rize is a lesbian dominatrix, but never actually stated. (At least, not in the strip. WordOfGod confirmed it in March 2015.) She and Notta Chin Chillar have been shown getting cozy.
* HighVoltageDeath: The Claw in ''Dick Tracy's Dilemma'', who dies when his HookHand snags some high voltage wiring while he is trying to stab Tracy.
** Z.Z. Rowe, the Computer Killer, suffers a similar fate, taking Dwight Digit with him.
* [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents Hillbilly Accent]]: B.O. Plenty and his wife and daughter.
* HitmanWithAHeart: The Iceman, who falls for Sparkle Plenty. He dies a KarmicDeath, but does a minor HeelFaceTurn at the last minute, for her sake.
* {{Hobos}}: Steve the Tramp was a murderous hobo.
* HookHand: The Claw from ''Dick Tracy's Dilemma''.
* HumanMail: Spinner [=ReCord=] seals himself and the body of the police custodian he just murdered inside a packing crate, and has himself shipped off by train as part of a particularly elaborate plan for DisposingOfABody.
* HumanNotepad: George Ozone tattooed a treasure map on to the insoles of the feet of his sons. [[ShootTheBuilder He then killed the tattoo artist]].
* HumanPopsicle: In the Collins years, we learn the Nazis froze Pruneface. He gets revived only to die all over again during Mike Kilian's tenure as writer.
* HumongousMecha: [[http://joshreads.com/?p=1711 TRAZE-R, the giant robot Dick Tracy]].
* TheHyena: 'Laffy' Smith
* HypnoticEyes: Influence wears special contact lenses that allows him to hypnotize his victims.
* IconicSequelCharacter: The strip debuted in 1931, but it's TheForties that introduced many of its most famous characters. Three of the most frequently seen and referred to of Tracy's villains Flattop, Pruneface, and Mumbles, all made their debut then, as well as two villains who've been made more prominent under Curtis & Staton: The Mole ([[HeelFaceTurn now reformed]]) and B-B Eyes (BackFromTheDead and as rotten as ever). The decade also marked the debut of Vitamin Flintheart, Diet Smith, B. O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie along with their daughter Sparkle Plenty. The end of that decade marked the debut of Sam Catchem, who's been a regular ever since.
* IHaveNoSon: Poptop, the father of Flattop and Blowtop, has disowned his sons, along with their equally rotten children. Presumably, he's less ashamed of his law-abiding children Auntie Flattop and Sharptop.
* ImpactSilhouette: Mr. Bribery is dropped from a Space Coupe through the roof of the prison carpentry workshop: leaving a hole in the shape of his body, with outstretched arms and legs.
* ImprobableHairstyle: Crewy Lou, although all the characters do think it looks odd.
* InformedJudaism: Dick's partner Sam Catchem was introduced as a Jewish guy. It rarely has any bearing on the storylines, and isn't mentioned much.
** It has been getting a bit more play in the new Staton-Curtis strips.
* InstantAwesomeJustAddMecha: At the height of Locher's insanity, he introduced a HumongousMecha called TRAZE-R to the strip.
* JokerImmunity: A notable aversion. Gould created all sorts of bizarre, unforgettable villains through the decades, most of whom he'd have KilledOffForReal after just one story. His single most famous and popular villain, Flattop, is the best example of this. After a sensational three month run, Flattop was caught, promptly broke out of jail, continued to elude Tracy for another two months, and then drowned. His body was found, recovered, positively identified, and buried.
** There are a few times this trope is played straight: most notably, Pruneface, B.B. Eyes, and Mumbles, with the latter two becoming almost regular threats for Tracy every major sub-arc in the Staton and Curtis era.
* JokerImmunity: Generally regarded as the ultimate aversion, virtually every villain ended up dying, being executed, or jammed in prison, never to return at the end of their story. The few that didn't generally reformed or suffered SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome. There are, however, a few straight examples.
** Mumbles may have been intended to survive his first story, but every story after that generally ended with his death being outright impossible to escape (his "second death" is ''on panel''). Two creators thus far have "killed him off for good" only for the next one to use him. It's easy to see why though, he's generally regarded as the best villain after Flattop.
** Somewhat hilariously, the Brush showed up in 2013, his first story had him [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill blown up with dynamite struck with lightning]]. Subverted when the Creator stated he did not know the Brush died in his initial story.
** Abner Kadaver somehow survived being encased in concrete with no explanation, and seems to be headed this route.
** Infamously, the villain [[CreatorsPet Piggy Bank]] ended each of his stories escaping with minimal retribution, [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse including his last.]]
** Dewdrop is somewhat notable for averting SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome, possibly twice. In a 2011 comic Wormy and '''Thistle Dew''' were reported to have been killed in a failed robbery. What makes that odd is that Thistle Dew had reformed at the end of her story. The similar name to Dewdrop coupled with the fact that Dewdrop had previously worked with Wormy has lead some people to speculate that Dewdrop was the intended victim.
** Many of the later villains, especially the old ones, seem to have acquired this. The old ones include BB eyes, Mumbles, Mr Bribery, Putty Puss, Notta Chin Chillar, and a couple others.
* KarmicDeath: The main villain of some storylines suffer one, usually of the [[CruelAndUnusualDeath "Cruel and Unusual"]] variety.
* KarmaHoudini:
** Major comedy relief characters, B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie, first appeared and did major crimes: Robbery and attempted murder for Plenty and obstruction of justice and being an accomplice to attempted mass murder for Gertie. Yet, unusually for Gould, they do not receive neither legal or karmic punishments commensurate to those crimes, although they do endure unusual troubles such as Plenty being tortured, robbed and then tied to a length of wood and set adrift down the sewer to die courtesy of Itchy, although he somehow survived all the way to open water and was rescued by a passing ship.
** Pouch is one of VERY few villains in Tracy history to get off scot-free with his crimes. Most notably, he killed his partner-in-crime Johnny Scorn in revenge for Johnny killing Molette, the Mole's niece, by rigging Johnny's popcorn maker to explode and kill him. When the police investigated, they concluded that the explosion was due to a faulty gas line, leaving Pouch unsuspected. To this day, Pouch is still free, operating his information broker business under the cover of his day job as a balloon salesman in a city park.
** Piggy Bank, infamously.
** Early villain Maxine manages to escape from Tracy several times, and becomes an accomplice to the murder of Junior's father. She escapes on a boat to an unspecified foreign nation.
* KickTheDog: A female criminal gets OffOnATechnicality despite Tracy's best efforts. The criminal is freed laughing mockingly with the symbolic imagery of chains being cut, and she promptly poisons a little dog apparently just ForTheEvulz.
* KidSidekick: Junior
* KillerGorilla: Sleet is nearly done in by one.
* LanternJawOfJustice: One of Tracy's distinguishing features, to the point where Warren Beatty took heavy criticism for refusing to wear the prosthetic makeup to give him Tracy's profile in the 90s film.
** Of course, other accounts state that Beatty wanted to wear the makeup, but the studio wouldn't let him cover up his famous mug.
* LargeHam: Aged thespian Vitamin Flintheart is a good guy and one of Dick's best friends, but his charm comes from being an ''enormous'' ham.
* LawyerFriendlyCameo: [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H0xHH55N7Eg/UOn1wjM9KzI/AAAAAAAAH_k/CgSlzyMltDw/s640/tmdic130105.gif From the Staton and Curtis run.]]
** [[http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2012/08/24 And then there's this...]]
* LegacyCharacter: This was one way Gould and his successors have brought back some aspect of popular villians who'd been KilledOffForReal. Some equally evil family member would later show up either to [[AvengingTheVillain avenge their family]] or simply be up to serious criminal activities.
** The biggest example is Flattop. Not only do we have his father (Poptop), his siblings (Sharptop, Blowtop and an unnamed sister) and his kids (Flattop Jr. and Angeltop) but we also have his grandson (Hi-Top) and his equally evil wife, Stiletta Jones! It should be pointed out that Poptop was a law-abiding, albeit alcoholic father who was ashamed of his kids' (Flattop and Blowtop) and granddaughter's (Angeltop) criminal career (he hasn't been seen to comment about Hi-Top). Sharptop and the unnamed sister were also honest, although Sharptop did go on a crime spree when possessed by the ghost of Flattop.
** In 1942, over a year before he created Flattop, Chester Gould had created a sympathetic supporting character named Frizzletop, a friendly, good-natured nurse who had lost one of her arms in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Frizzletop appeared in several stories before [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome dropping out of sight]] in 1943 several months before Flattop's debut. In 2012, Curtis & Staton briefly brought her back to [[RetCon reveal]] that she was Flattop's honest cousin and to try to warn Tracy of the arrival of Mrs. Flattop.
** The earliest example is the rather bland villain Jacques. No sooner was he killed, then his brother, the grotesque B-B Eyes, showed up to avenge him. Later, Gould had another of his grotesques, Itchy, team up with Mrs. B-B Eyes. Still later, Collins created Itchy's brother Twitchy teamed up with Jacques and B-B Eyes' other brother, B-D Eyes. Curtis found a way to bring B-B Eyes BackFromTheDead.
** Pruneface. After his capture and death, Gould created his avenging widow, Mrs. Pruneface. Curiously, Collins brought Pruneface BackFromTheDead and still created another evil LegacyCharacter, the Prunfaces' daughter, Prunella. Kilian created Prunella's daughter, Prune Hilda. Eventually, Kilian wiped out the entire Pruneface clan. It's unknown if Curtis will ever try to expand on them.
** Shaky created a bizarre, two-way legacy. After beind KilledOffForReal, Gould created Shaky's totaly dissimilar yet equally evil stepdaughter, [[FemmeFatale Breathless Mahoney.]] Collins carried on Shaky's legacy with his niece, Quiver Trembly, while Kilian created Mahoney's sister, Heartless Mahoney. Curtis and Station created a second Shaky in the 2010s series, nephew to the first one.
*** In 1990, Collins created a story that Subverted the whole LegacyCharacter trope with a "team up" of Big Boy's grandson Little Boy, Flattop's grandson Hi-Top, and Breathless Mahoney's neice Restless Mahoney. In the end it turned out Little Boy wasn't Big Boy's grandson, he was just a BigBadWannabe; while Restless Mahoney was actually a [[TheMole mole]], she'd actually been privately offended when Little Boy and Hi-Top approached her assuming she'd be a crook just because her aunt was. The only one of the three who was a PlayedStraight example of a Legacy Character was Hi-Top.
** Within his first year of writing Tracy, Curtis created his own evil family legacy. First Curtis created a lady drug pusher named Hot Rize. Just a few months after she was KilledOffForReal, Curtis created her similar-looking sister Blaze Rize.
** A rare non-family example is Mr. Crime. [[spoiler:Davey Mylar]] had no apparent connection, family or otherwise with the original Mr. Crime, George Alpha, but was able to reassemble his organization, including a couple of Alpha's surviving henchmen Panda and the Mushroom Lady, when he got a hold of some of Alpha's old files.
** An even rarer benign form of Legacy Character has now showed up with [[spoiler:the new Moon Maid.]]
* LockedInAFreezer: 'Little Face' Finny suffers this fate. Locked in a cold room at a refrigerated warehouse, he is forced to wrap himself in cow hides for warmth to survive, and ends up losing his ears to frostbite.
** Tracy suffers this later at the hands of Elsa Crystal, who already killed her husband with the same method.
* LoonyFan: Blackjack, who deliberately wants to be a part of Dick Tracy's RoguesGallery, to the point where he shoots Tracy's hat so he could be part of his Wall of Hats.
* LowClearance: Selford Depool is crushed to death when the parade float he has hijacked deliberately veers under a viaduct, smashing off the top part where he is hiding.
* {{Lunarians}}: Mysta the Moon Maid and her people come from the Dark Side of the Moon.
* MagicPlasticSurgery: Dr. Will Carver, plastic surgeon to the underworld. Also, Dr. Beau Tox, seemingly legitimate plastic surgeon with criminal aspirations.
* MagicSkirt: A circa-1938 strip had Tracy clinging to a collapsed window-washer's scaffold. A female highwire artist is being interrogated by police when she hears Tracy. She jumps out to grab the scaffold rope, wraps it around one foot and then dangles upside down to affect a rescue of Tracy. The lady's skirt billows over only to her thighs in wide shots, but a medium close-up panel had her skirt over enough to show black panties.
* MalevolentMaskedMen: The Purple Cross Gang, a group of bank robbers that appeared early in the strips run.
* ManEatingPlant: Mr. Crime employed an old woman who breed man-eating ''muerte'' vines from UsefulNotes/TheAmazonRainforest, which Mr. Crime used to dispose of the bodies of those he had killed. The vines would consume the flesh, and the bones would be run through a crusher to create plant food. When Tracy is investigating the hidden grow house where the vines are kept, one of them attempts to grab his face. The end of the arc shows the vines being transferred to the public gardens, which seems a tad irresponsible.
* MasterOfDisguise: Putty Puss
* MasterPoisoner: Newsuit Nan. She was a chemist who specialized in the creation of blood-based toxins which she would use in poisoned nail polish and inject into her victims by scratching them with her FemmeFatalons. Her creations included an instantly fatal poison; a 100% reliable TruthSerum; and a poison that sapped the target's free will, making them a puppet.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: While science fictional elements like the Moon People have long been present, references to "magic" usually fall into this category. A notable exception is the ''ComicStrip/LittleOrphanAnnie'' crossover, because ''Annie'' never made any bones about the fact that magic existed in its setting.
** Skinny's ghost that haunts Flattop Jr into a slow grave could reasonably be interpreted as a guilt-induced hallucination.
** Little Boy Beard is much stronger than a baby should be, has a beard, and at one point tames panthers. It's never really explained due to a lack of interest in the character.
** Sharptop's "possession" by the ghost of his brother Flattop, which could just as easily be explained as Sharptop merely suffering a psychological problem.
* MeaningfulName: Pretty much everybody. However, a few minor characters who got promoted to series regulars wound up permanently stuck with names that only related to the plotline which introduced them. Poor Vitamin Flintheart!
* MethodActing: Fortuna Dyer, who played Breathless Mahoney in a biopic about the villainesses life, insisted on being called "Breathless" while filming, and did a great deal of research into Mahoney's life to try and get into the mindset of her character. After being warned off bothering B.O. Plenty and his family by Dick Tracy, she hooked up with Shaky's nephew Shaky II in order to understand her character better. One assumes she learned her lesson about hooking up with criminals after Shaky II socked her when she mouthed off to him.
* MoeGreeneSpecial: During a falling out with one of his hirelings, Mr. Bribery grabs the gun off him and fatally shoots him through the eye through his eyeglasses.
* MoodWhiplash: Several strips aren't necessarily this when read on a daily basis (as was the original medium), but quickly become this when read in one sitting. The most extreme example of this has to be when Junior's girlfriend dies. Junior is seen mourning her at her grave, saying he'll always love her... [[RefugeInAudacity and the next day's comic]] has the goofy looking Tonsils singing about muddy rainbows while his assistant "[[WhoNamesTheirKidDude Dude]]" forces a talent agent to listen at gunpoint.
* MuggedForDisguise: In the Rughead arc, Rughead does this to a cab driver, stealing his uniform and his cab.
* NarratingTheObvious: In 2009 the narration box over a drawing of a character playing solitaire blared, "SOLITAIRE".
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: George Tawara, a character based on Creator/GeorgeTakei, with Takei's approval, introduced in 2013 to provide information on internment camps. Also notable for being a positively portrayed gay man in the strip.
* NoGuyWantsToBeChased: FBI agent Fritz Ann Dietrich, a recurring character in the Staton/Curtis run, has the hots for Sam, who is married, and thus gets pretty uncomfortable with her flirting of him. This tension was eventually reconciled amicably.
* NoNameGiven: Strangely, The Brow's son is not given a name in any of his original appearances. Curtis has finally named him and his father: Alfred Brau and Alfred Brau Junior.
** For that matter, Moon Maid was only ever referred to as "Moon Maid" during her original run in the strip. Again, Curtis has posthumously revealed her actual name: Mysta.
* TheNondescript: Mike Kilian's creation, No Face. He actually does have a face, but it's so bland and forgettable that nobody, not even Tracy, can recall what it looks like even after seeing it (in the strip, readers usually only saw the back of his head, or a face with no features reminiscent of the Blank). This [[DrivenToMadness drove No Face to madness]], but it also enabled him to always pull off a KarmaHoudini, able to blend into a crowd with nobody able to pick him out.
* NonstandardCharacterDesign: while the villains are weird-looking, they're supposed to be freaks in-universe. Gravel Gertie and B.O. Plenty, on the other hand, look like they wandered in from another comic strip with a very different art style.
* OfficialCouple: Dick and Tess had a very, very long engagement. When they finally announced one day that they had just eloped, the entire cast was stunned.
* OffOnATechnicality: Chester Gould's later years spent a lot of time of Tracy busting crooks, only to be forced to let them go with their loot due to this trope, leaving him continually griping about legal reforms to due process mandating this.
* OlderThanTheyLook:
** Heartless Mahoney, the sister of the long-dead Breathless Mahoney, looked like a woman in her late 20s or early 30s, while actually in her late middle age. She eventually starts showing her age after her beauty treatments are revoked.
** Little Boy, the alleged grandson of Big Boy, claimed he was a teenager, but was actually well into his 20s. He also wasn't related to Big Boy.
** Stiletta Jones hooked up with Flattop Sr. while they were both teenagers and had two kids, one of whom was in his late teens and the other of whom was twenty-something when she was killed. Not only is her body in ''remarkably'' good shape for a mother of two, her face could probably pass for a lady in her mid- to late-twenties at worst.
* OutsideRide: Tracy's dog Mugg would often ride on the top of Tracy's patrol car.
* OverlordJr: Flattop's son, Flattop Jr. (although he is never actually referred to by that name in the strip, the other characters usually refers to him as "Flattop's boy", or, at his insistence, just Flattop).
* PapaWolf:
** Tracy, when Crewy Lou kidnaps his infant daughter.
** The Mole loves all the families that live in his old hideout, but he's especially close to a little girl named Toad Spencer. As villain Sweatbox found out, kidnapping Toad will get Mole to hunt you down on his own and proceed to beat you up when he finds you.
* PlagueMaster: Captain Cure
* PluckyComicRelief: Vitamin Flintheart, B.O.Plenty
* PoliceProcedural: Possibly the TropeMaker. This might be the first detective series where the main detective is a police detective (as opposed to an AmateurSleuth or PrivateDetective), basically making TheLestrade the hero.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: One group of villains introduced by Curtis and Staton in 2017 are a circle of cousins all named Margie, led by [[TheNapoleon the diminutive]] [[IronicNickname "Big Margie"]] Legase. Big Margie has vandalized Jewish graveyards and spouts antisemitic invective at Sam Catchem when he and Tracy arrest her on another charge.
* PornStache: Tracy sported one of these for a while in the '70s. Eventually, his coworkers physically hold him down and shave the ridiculous thing off. His response afterward is, "Thanks."
** Also Groovy Grove and [[PrivateDetective Johnny Adonis.]]
* PragmaticAdaptation: The handling of the non-gangster villains in media adaptations. In the case of Nazi spy Pruneface, he was turned into a simple mob boss. The Blank, in the Dick Tracy movie, didn't fair as well: the Blank became a disguise for Breathless Mahoney, who wore a man's suit, a flesh colored stocking over her head, and talked like a guy, and basically started killing off Dick Tracy's various enemies to take over the criminal underworld (so that Dick could have time to marry Breathless, if he had no bad guys to arrest).
* PragmaticVillainy: When Big Boy puts out a million dollar open contract to kill Tracy, the organized crime ruling committee, The Apparatus, confront the old dying gangster to tell him that it must be cancelled because not only is killing police officers nowadays more trouble than it's worth, but that Tracy is gearing up to retaliate with the police department's Organized Crime Unit.
* PregnantHostage: In a 1979 arc, a very pregnant Tess Tracy is kidnapped (along with Vitamin Flintheart) by aspiring punk rocker Bony and his girlfriend Claudine.
* PrettyInMink: A few rich ladies would wear fur. Most noteable is probably the FemmeFatale Sleet.
* ProtagonistTitle
* PunnyName: It would be easier to list the characters that ''don't'' have them, even counting characters-of-the-day.
* RaceLift:
** In a technical sense. Introduced in 2012, Stiletta Jones, wife of Flattop Jones, Sr. is meant to be African-American, thus making Flattop Junior and Angeltop biracial. Since we had no information about their mother beforehand, this isn't exactly a RetCon (although it might make one question Angeltop's red-blonde hair and blue eyes).
** Cueball, a villain from the 2010s, first originated in the 1946 movie ''Dick Tracy vs. Cueball''. Caucasian in said movie, his 2010s version was envisioned by Curtis and drawn by Staton to be biracial.
%%* {{Reconstruction}}: Staton and Curtis attempt to redeem the controversial Moon Period in the readership's eyes.
* RedRightHand: Most of the strip's most famous villains were grotesque in some fashion (Flattop, Pruneface, the Brow, etc.), usually some facial disfigurement.
* RedShirt: Most of the uniformed cops on the Force are usually expendable in this dramatic role.
* ReformedButNotTamed: Blowtop Jones is somewhat like this. In order to keep his parole, he's trying to live the straight life on the surface, but just associating with most of his relatives as he regularly does is a parole violation. Not to mention he occasionally funnels money to them when they need it, though he refuses to get involved with their schemes beyond this.
* RelativeButton: A villainous version. Don't ever, ''ever'' insult Stiletta Jones's husband or children, nor advise her against revenge. Not unless you'd like to get intimate with cold steel.
* RetCon: In 1931, Dick Tracy is recruited directly into the plainclothes force without going to the police academy or (evidently) having had any previous crimefighting experience. When the story of Dick Tracy becoming a plainclothes detective was retold in 2011, his backstory has been changed so that he was an Ex-Navy cop who'd impressed Chief Brandon by collaring a couple of crooks and was already on his way to being promoted to detective when Emil Trueheart was killed. While not quite as exciting, makes more sense in the more restrictive modern age.
* RevengeBeforeReason: Big Boy's open contract on Tracy, which even his fellow gangsters say is crazy.
** Similarly the Blank's murder spree; all because he was driven to madness over being rejected by his former friends due to his disfigurement.
** Basically everything the Flattop clan does to hurt Tracy, ever since Flattop's death. To put it in perspective, Mrs. Flattop was last seen planning to kidnap Tracy's newborn grandson. That was a line even Blowtop wouldn't cross, and Stiletta put him in traction for this.
* RightHandCat: The cat called Kitty Square had the odd trait of [[CigarChomper smoking cigars]]. At different times, he belonged to two different villains: Matty Square and subsequently Mr. Bribery. Bribery attempted to break Kitty of the smoking habit, and when he that failed, he attempted to [[DrowningUnwantedPets drown Kitty in the city reservoir]]. Bribery tied a heavy steam iron to Kitty's collar and prepared to toss it into the deep water. Kitty slipped out of the collar and attacked Bribery. For some reason, this endeared Kitty to Bribery, who took Kitty home and continued to light the cat's cigars.
* RippedFromTheHeadlines:
** Chester Gould started Dick Tracy as a direct counter to all the stories of mobsters of the day, and some of his stories reflected or even ''predicted'' actions that were happening at the time they were written. Notably, the "Homeville" storyline, which features Tracy taking over the eponymous town as Chief of Police and instituting tough new regulations for both his officers and strongly enforcing traffic laws seems almost to predict Eliot Ness's actions as Director of Public Safety in Cleveland a few months later (having been written well in advance).
** In a case of "Ripped from Science Headlines", Gould kept up on the newest forensic techniques and had Tracy frequently make use of them.
* RisingWaterRisingTension:
** Tracy's showdown with [[TunnelKing The Mole]] during the Mole's first appearance takes place in the Mole's system of tunnels which are filling with water; first from melting snow and then from a burst water main.
** In the Miss Egghead arc, Miss Egghead is double-crossed by her ally Chicory and locked in a gamecock pen in the basement of his hacienda. When a hurricane strikes the island, Chicory flees; leaving Miss Egghead in the cage in the basement which is slowly filling with water.
* RoguesGallery: Flattop, the Brow, Shaky, Itchy, Mumbles, BB Eyes, Pruneface, Little Face, the Mole, Stooge Viller, Steve the Tramp, Big Frost, Influence, Measles, Gargles, Wormy, Blowtop, TV Wiggles, the Blank, Breathless Mahoney, Crewy Lou, Piggy Butcher, Pearshape Tone, Mr. Crime, Oodles, The Chin Chillars, Spots, Empty Williams, Big Boy Caprice, Pouch, Flyface, Rhodent, and many, many, ''many'' more.
** Here's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dick_Tracy_villains a complete list]] on Website/TheOtherWiki.
** Specifically with the Staton and Curtis era, the regular ensemble of recurring villains include Abner Kadaver, Riki Mortis, Doubleup, B.B. Eyes, Mumbles, Blaze Rize [[spoiler:(pre- HeelFaceTurn)]], Mrs. Flattop (pre-death), Blackjack, Mr. Bribery, and Silver and Sprocket Nitrate.
* ScareCampaign: The story arc about music/movie piracy as not only [[{{Anvilicious}} ham-handed]], factually incorrect/out of touch on most counts, and like much of the strip then [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} utterly bugnuts]], it also included dire warnings about downloading, comparing it to buying drugs, and had [=PSAs=] warning parents they could suffer the consequences for their children downloading [=MP3s=], complete with an image of police car with sirens blaring zooming at top speed toward a suburban home.
* ScaryStingingSwarm:
** In the early 60s, Spots and his [[EvilMinions minion]] [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain Ogden]] get trapped by a swarm of bees.
** Previous to that, Flattop had gotten stuck in a chimney that also contained a beehive--but fortunately for him, those bees were dormant because of winter.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Played for laughs in one of Mike Kilian's earlier stories. After listening to two rival villains talking at length about why they want revenge on one another, Tracy suddenly starts to leave the building, saying that their dispute has nothing to do with the police and that they can sort it out themselves. The villains are taken aback, as they had both hoped to get Tracy to arrest and/or kill the other one, and try to persuade him to stay. It then turns out that what Tracy was ''actually'' doing by pretending to leave was distracting them so that Sam and Lizz could sneak up and knock them out -- which the crooks don't discover until after they come around and find themselves cuffed.
* ScunthorpeProblem: Due to the ''Dick Tracy''/''Funky Winkerbean'' crossover. On Funky Winkerbean's [=GoComics=] comment page, the filter removes any comment with the word "Dick" causing people to call him, D***, DT or give him an different name entirely.
* SdrawkcabName: Some of the characters in the Dick Tracy franchise have names like these, like the corrupt Judge Debirb and Congressman Retfarg, along with a hit man named Redrum.
* SecondFaceSmoke: Mr. Bribery owns a chain-smoking RightHandCat which exhales a stream of cigar smoke into Bribery's face whenever he is displeased with his master.
* SharkPool: Mr. Crime kept a 90 lb. barracuda in his swimming pool that he used for disposing of who had [[YouHaveOutlivedyourUsefulness outlived their usefulness]].
* ShoeSlap: In the "Mr. Bribery" arc, Ugly Christine kills one of her abductors by hitting him over the head with her shoe: burying the stiletto heel deep in his skull.
* ShootTheBuilder:
** George Ozone [[HumanNotepad tattooed a treasure map on the insoles of the feet of his sons]]. He then murdered the tattoo artists (although one survived) so they could not reveal the secret.
** Influence killed the optician who help him develop his hypnotic contact lenses. This didn't stop Tracy from figuring out how to make his own pair, though.
** After Will Carver reconstructed Angeltop's badly burned face to normalcy, she killed him so he couldn't reveal that she was still alive.
* ShootTheTelevision: Pantsy throws his shoe through the screen of the prison television showing footage of his capture.
* ShoutOut: The August 27-September 9th, 2023 "Minit Mysteries" arc featured a reference to the classic WhosOnFirst sketch, though not a direct recreation; two of the suspects Tracy investigates are a first baseman and a second baseman by the names of ''Hoo''-Jin Sen (referred to as Mr. Hoo at one point) and Oscar ''Watt'', respectively.
* ShrunkenHead: Mr. Bribery employed the Ecuadoran native Nah Tay as a front for his criminal enterprise, and used Nah Tay's skill at shrinking heads to intimidate his associates. Bribery kept a collection of the shruken heads of his enemies under glass covers.
* SickbedSlaying: Worried that the wounded test pilot Maay will reveal his role in his schemes, Mr. Bribery and his sister Ugly Christine eliminate him by machine-gunning in his hospital bed.
* {{Sidekick}}: Sam Catchem (originally Pat Patton, before Pat got promoted).
* TheSimpleLifeIsSimple: Averted. 88 Keyes thinks he can hide out on a farm, but his total lack of experience in farming (or manual labor in general) quickly gives him away.
* SinisterSweetTooth: Multiple examples, including Johnny Scorn, Mousse, and Coney.
* SkyHeist: When Mr. Bribery learns that his assassin Nah Tay is planning to kill him, he pays test pilot Maay [[ContractOnTheHitman to dispose of Nah Tay]]. Maay 'borrows' a flying space coupe from his employer Diet Smith and uses it to abduct Nah Tay by hoisting his car off the road. After killing Nah Tay, he uses the coupe to dump his body in orbit before returning the stolen vehicle.
* SlasherSmile: Mr. Bribery has an unusually unpleasant version, looking like a rictus grin on a corpse.
* SmokestackDrop: Ugly Christine was the first member of Mr. Bribery's gang taken into custody. Despite the efforts of Lizz and Tracy, Ugly Christine committed suicide by throwing herself from a magnetic Air Car and was burned to death in a fiery chimney. The melted remnants of her handcuffs were all that was recovered of her.
* SmugSnake: The original Mr. Crime in the 1950s was like that, an absolutely arrogant BigBad who had a silky self-assuredness that he was untouchable that the more pragmatic Big Boy in the 1930s never had. This made it all the more satisfying when he was finally cornered by Dick Tracy and shot in a futile last stand.
* SoapOperaDisease: While in prison, Breathless Mahoney developed an painful, wasting illness which eventually killed her. It's never been clearly defined what that illness was, as a sample from one of her glands proved inconclusive.
* TheSpeechless: Crewy Lou's henchman Sphinx. He destroyed his voice when he accidentally drank a glass of poison he intended for a pal of his.
* SpotlightStealingSquad:
** Moon Maid and the "Moon Period". Suddenly, the strip which for decades had been about one man's eternal war on crime became heavily sci-fi-focused, and while there are arguments to be made both for and against, few would deny it was [[GenreShift to the detriment of that core concept]].
** Despite their immense popularity at the time, the increasing focus on B.O. and Gertie in the late 40s led to weaker storylines: Gould excelled at action and suspense, not domestic comedy, and if a reader didn't like B.O. in the first place, they could find themselves subjected to weeks, if not ''months'', of the guy.
* StabTheScorpion: A tragic example from the "Hank Steele" story line, where Della, Steele's maid, was deceived/intimidated by Steve the Tramp into helping him set up an ambush for Tracy by claiming that Tracy was a kidnapper posing as a cop. Not trusting Steve, she shot at the Tramp with the rifle he made her take, but missed. Tracy, only knowing that someone he couldn't see clearly had shot in his direction, fired back at where the bullet came from and fatally wounded Della, though she lived long enough to explain her actions.
* StarterVillain: As far as having an arch-enemy for Tracy, this would be Big Boy, who was also one of the longest-lasting villains. The first of the colorful VillainOfTheWeek-type criminals would be Stooge Viller.
* StreetUrchin: Junior, before his adoption by Tracy.
** Also, the young singer Themesong.
* StrongFamilyResemblance: Many members of the Jones family inherited Poptop Jones's flat-topped skull.
* SunkenFace: This happened at least once to the villain Putty Puss, whose gimmick was that he could rearrange his facial features to impersonate other people. After figuring out that a celebrity was actually Putty Puss in disguise, Tracy revealed the deception by socking him in the face, which crumpled around his fist.
* SuperCellReception: Dick's first and most famous gadget is his Two-Way Wrist Radio, first used in the 1940s. Thus, the detective had a wrist communicator that was incredibly small and powerful for its day and the strip took maximum advantage of it for the heroes to get themselves out of sticky situations.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Several villains get offed by rather mundane causes, most notably Flattop.
** Putty Puss and Notta Chin Chillar stage a plan to disguise Putty as Tracy and shame him with photos of him kissing Notta. After years of people framing Tracy, Tess just accepts his denial this time and starts working on tracking down the culprits.
* TeensAreMonsters: This is not uncommon in the series. Flattop Jones Jr. committed multiple homicides at sixteen and Jimmy White was a mob hitman, repeat larcenist, and cold blooded murderer at seventeen. Joe Period became a mobster's muscle before go on the lam and murdering a hobo who treated his wounds on a moving train, Larry Jones robbed parking meters and murdered a cop trying to stop him and Mindy Ermine counted too [[spoiler:before she became the new Moon Maid]]. This was especially prevalent during the comics 50s period when society at large was concerned about the rise in juvenile delinquency (ignoring of course that teenaged criminals were just as common before, just not as culturally visible).
* ThievingMagpie: Haf-and-Haf first appears using a murder of trained crows to steal handbags.
* ThoseWackyNazis: Two of the most iconic villains, Pruneface and The Brow, were Nazi spies. There's also Dr Freeezedreid, the cryogenics scientist who had preserved Pruneface along with a handful of other Nazi fugitives, among them possibly Adolf Hitler.
* ThrowingOffTheDisability: The Mayor's invalid wife rises from her bed to shoot Mrs Pruneface and save her daughters.
* TinyGuyHugeGirl: Mama And the Midget, a husband-wife team of criminals, at least until the Midget abandoned his wife to save his own skin. This would come back to bite him.
* TookALevelInBadass:
** Groovy Grove gradually became a much more serious and heroic character once Max Allan Collins took over the writing. It didn't prevent him from being killed, but he did at least get into a relationship with Lizz in the months prior to his death.
** Pat Patton, was originally a BumblingSidekick for Tracy in the first few years. However, before the 1930s ended, Pat grew to be a hardheaded and reasonably efficient police detective who could find the important clues and save the day when called upon. He improved so much that Tracy recommended Patton to be promoted to Chief of Police after declining the promotion himself.
** Measles escapes on a train, but runs afoul of the honeymooning Vitamin Flintheart.
* TrappedInASinkingCar:
** The Brow killed the treacherous Summer sisters by forcing their cab off a bridge into the river. They were trapped inside and drowned.
** Selford Depool murders Carla Orlin by knocking her out and pushing her car into a reservoir.
** A 2014 story ends with criminal siblings Silver and Sprocket Nitrate locked inside a car at the bottom of a lake--where Sprocket had deliberately driven them after her brother struck her. The story cuts away before they actually drown, and they are eventually revealed to have survived (as the car had been specially modified by Flattop Jr, its original owner).
* TruthSerum: MasterPoisoner Newsuit Nan creates a totally reliable truth serum based on the blood of her target. Merely scratching a target with the toxin will place them in a trance and compel then to truthfully answer any question asked of them. She uses it to get Mr. Crime to confess that he as been cheating Panda and her out of their rightful share of the loot.
* TunnelKing: The Mole
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Even before it got ridiculous with the space period and after it pulled back, Dick Tracy has an ample supply of futuristic gadgets, especially with his various wrist communicators.
* TwoFaced: Haf-and-Haf started this way. Now he's ''three''-faced.
* UglyGuyHotWife: Subverted with Pruneface and Mrs. Pruneface.
** And B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie, for that matter.
* TheUglyGuysHotDaughter: How did B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie produce a child who looks like Sparkle?
* TheUnintelligible: Mumbles and later Murky. Mumbles' case is so bad, [[http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2015/07/07 he even writes like he talks]].
* {{Tykebomb}}: Stiletta Jones planned to kidnap the newly-born Dick Tracy III and raise him to become a villain. Sprocket Nitrate canned that plan, and also Stiletta.
* UnrelatedBrothers: A young gangster named Little Boy claiming to be the grandson of the iconic Tracy villain Big Boy appeared at one point, recruiting Flattop's grandson Hi-Top to his cause of forming a new crime syndicate consisting of current generation criminals. It's eventually revealed that he's not related to Big Boy and that he's not even a teenager like he claimed. He was actually 23.
* TheVamp: Breathless Mahoney. Also, Sleet.
* VaporTrail: Happens to Measles
* VehicleRoofBodyDisposal: After "Nothing" Yonson stabs Joe Period in the head with an icepick, he instructs one of his henchmen to get rid of the body. The henchman [[DeadMansChest stuffs the body into a double bass case]] and throws the case into an open car on a passing freight train. Joe, however, turns out to be NotQuiteDead.
* VerbalTic:
** Empty, who prefaced almost everything he said with "As a matter 'a fact".
** Doubleup repeats the last few words of his dialogue. His dialogue.
** Blowtop had "Woo gosh!"
** When Putty Puss re-appeared during the Curtis era, he had developed a tic of [[WaxingLyrical quoting popular song lyrics]].
* VideoPhone: Dick's "2-Way Wrist TV" that carries this function and is used to communicate with police headquarters.
* VillainousCheekbones: Sleet, a FemmeFatale villain who once tried to kill Sam Catchem, has cheekbones that look like they could cut diamonds.
* VillainousGlutton: Oodles
* VillainousLineage: Flattop's big extended family, though not all of them are crooks (just about half of them).
** Notably, ALL of his direct descendants are criminals, even an unknown half-black grandson named Hi-Top.
* WeNeedToGetProof: In the NES Dick Tracy, Dick needs to gather a significant amount of evidence before confronting the villains.
* WhatADrag: Wormy tries to kill Tracy by chaining him to the back of a car and dragging him along the road. Tracy is able to unhook the chain, but not before he is pretty badly banged up by the ordeal.
* WhatAPieceOfJunk: Joe Period drove a beat-up junker with a fuel-injected engine that could go over 110 mph and burn off any police car on the road.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Also on [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse/DickTracy its own page.]]
* WhereDoesHeGetAllThoseWonderfulToys: From Diet Smith Enterprises, mostly. Tracy met Diet when a crook tried to steal the plans to Diet's wrist radio. Diet has supplied the police with nifty gadgets ever since.
* WhiteSheep: Out of the Flattop family, the only law-abiding ones are Poptop (patriarch), Aunt Flattop (sister) and Sharptop (brother). Blowtop could count, since he has reformed.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Inverted in that's what Flattop wanted to do to Tracy in the beginning when he could have had his henchmen simply slash his throat earlier instead.
* WildHair: B.O. Plenty. Also Junior, well into his adulthood, but he did eventually start combing it. Under Staton's pen, Junior appears to have lost his comb and returned to his iconic moptop.
* WorthyOpponent: Big Boy Caprice admits this much of Tracy at the end of the NES game.
* WouldHitAGirl: Well, Dick would hit a homicidal female as large as himself, anyway.
** Tracy also slapped Jean Penfield, who was more of an annoyance than a villain, but she ''had'' become a StalkerWithACrush, delusionally claiming to the papers that they were engaged (prompting Tess to leave him), and was trying to kiss him against his will when he slapped her.
** The second Shaky socked Fortuna Dyer in the eye.
* WouldHurtAChild: Many of Tracy's villains are capable of that, such as Shoulders who shot the ten year old Themesong in cold blood.
** Coffyhead strung up Junior and one of his friends and whipped them when they refused to join his gang.
** Steve the Tramp was probably the first of these, when Tracy first met Junior, he was being abused by Steve.
* YouAreNumberSix: When Steve the Tramp is released from prison, he has been referred to as 'No. 2704' for so long he can no longer remember his own name.
* YoungerThanTheyLook: Gravel Gertie looks like an old lady, but she and B.O. Plenty not only had a daughter (Sparkle Plenty) together, they had a son (Attitude Plenty), born when Sparkle was old enough to be a divorcee with a child of her own. Possibly justified in that GG had a very rough youth.
* {{Zeerust}}: Then: "Ooh, wrist phone! Super high-tech!" Now: "Why doesn't he just keep his phone in his pocket like the rest of us?" And then there's the Apple Watch, which looks like a sort of {{Defictionalization}} of the concept.
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