%%* {{Anvilicious}}: Usually of the "{{A|nAesop}}esops delivered via '[[ShutUpHannibal Shut up,]] [[StrawCharacter Straw Liberal]]'" variety.
* ArchivePanic: There are over 940 comics from the "original run" of the comic, back on R.H. Jr's old site. Then there's the new comics that start over from when he changed the site in 2014 and began renumbering from scratch again, which is currently at comic #81 and climbing.
* [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Crowning Moment of Awesome]]: Bandit challenging a guy about twice his size to a boxing match. He gets clobbered, but being beaten to a pulp and still being able to stand is undoubtedly awesome.
** Nip's entire plan in exploiting a very small loophole in Michael Moby's movie contract and succeeding at it.
* CrossesTheLineTwice: [[http://www.rhjunior.com/nip-and-tuck-79/ This one-page gag strip]] about a suicide bomber relay race.
* DesignatedMonkey: Gilly Gopher, of course. While other characters may have defeats and setbacks, Gilly has never had (and will never have) anything but. All of the other recurring characters in the strip have had at least one victory, Gus Guthrie included; Gilly isn't even allowed to make bad jokes without immediate punishment. Gilly has even acquired a small, sympathetic following among the readers since the writer started introducing new characters to beat him up.
** This has led to Gilly being the closest thing the strip has to an EnsembleDarkHorse, particularly given that he believes he lost his crush Zelda to movie-star Nip. [[spoiler: In actuality, Zelda's been crushing on Nip since she first saw him in childhood, meaning Gilly -- even if he wasn't a complete idiot in approaching her, which he is -- never had as much chance as a snowball on a hot plate.]]
* UnintentionallySympathetic: The trans woman in the dress who gets her testicles crushed when she tries to go into the ladies' restroom. We're meant to think that she's a pervert who's trying to sneak into the wrong gender's restroom, but she instead comes off as a victim, both of an aggravated assault and of society refusing to recognize her gender identity.
* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: The janitor who crushes the aforementioned trans woman's testicles. We're meant to think that he's protecting "actual" women from a sexual predator, but to some commenters, he comes off as a self-righteous, transphobic jerk who should have been arrested (especially since, in the strip itself, there's zero indication that the trans woman in question has any nefarious intentions at all, so the janitor's actions would legally be considered unprovoked assault at best and an outright hate crime at worst).
* ValuesDissonance: While not common in this strip, it does show up, which makes sense given that R.H. Jr. is a pretty solidly Right Wing Southerner (okay, Midwesterner) kind of person and doesn't shy away from using his comics as a soap box.
** Women who actually call themselves Feminists come in for a lot of abuse... but the female characters in the regular cast are strong-willed, sensible, and able to take care of themselves... which is what a lot of actual feminists think a female character should be like. (The hard part is whether this counts as Values Dissonance for the strip or for Feminism...)
*** Given the author's female characters are generally portrayed very positively -- other examples include a WrenchWench in ''Webcomic/TalesOfTheQuestor'' and a girl genius in his short-lived superhero comic Fellowship Of Heroes -- it's pretty much ValuesDissonance with Feminism, especially radical feminism, which is discussed and deconstructed in the strip.
** Then there's [[http://www.rhjunior.com/nip-and-tuck-58/ this]] [[http://www.rhjunior.com/nip-and-tuck-59/ two-part strip]] condemning trans people as mental deviants who deserve to be physically abused until they conform to gender norms, with the second featuring not only R.H. Jr. expanding on that belief in the comments, but also making one of several statements across his comics where he condemns homosexuality as a sin.