Analogies backfiring in comic books.
- The Avengers: In the opening issue of Ultron Forever, Black Widow and The Vision are talking about the latter's synthezoid nature, and he remarks he's no more programmed than Black Widow, to which she points out she spent her youth as a brainwashed assassin.
- Beasts of Burden: In "Grave Happenings", Pugsley talking about how he doesn't trust Dymphna.Pugsley: Now she's supposed to be all okay an' crap. Well, I ain't buying it. Animals don't change their markings.
Whitey: Some lizards can ch—
Pugsley: Oh, shut up, Whitey! You know what I mean.- Shortly after that, they run into Digger, whose face fur has turned from black to white with shock.
Whitey: So weird. And Pugs was just saying animals can't change—
Pugsley: Would you shut up? I was talkin' 'bout that no-good witch cat! - "Comic Book/Commando": In one issue, British platoon is sent to hunt German "Werwulfs" after Third Reich has capitulated. note After few days of combing a forest, the men get nervous (they've had multiple false alarms and a friendly fire incident by this point.) Sergeant tries to remind main character, a superstitious private who is starting to believe in literal wolf-men, of "Boy who cried wolf." Private points out that in the end of the story, a real wolf appears.
- Peter David's comment on Captain Marvel's Wisdom of Solomon: "God directly commands you to build no temples to other gods. Do you build temples to other gods? If you said "yes", congratulations! You have successfully displayed the Wisdom of Solomon!"
- The Death of Captain America: After Red Skull ends up trapped in Aleksander Lukin's mind, the two trade blows verbally and mentally.Lukin: This isn't what we agreed on, Skull. Our pact was highly specific in the details.Red Skull: So was the pact between Stalin and Hitler, and we know how that ended.Lukin: Yes, with the death of your master and the rise of the Motherland.Red Skull: You call that rising, do you? Slowly losing a war for five decades while your entire country crumbles at your feet?Lukin: And how is your Glorious Thousand-Year Reich faring, then?
- In the Knights of the Dinner Table strip Java Joint, Tank says that he is "as serious as Garrison Keillor", apparently not realising that Garrison Keillor is a humorist.
- Lucifer has a scene wherein the titular character has a philosophical debate about determinism with Destiny of the Endless. In this, Lucifer compares God's creation to a prison; Destiny, in turn, compares Lucifer's own creation to an asylum, and says that a prison would be preferable. Lucifer responds violently to this.
- Inverted in Phil Foglio's adaptation of Myth Adventures. Aahz tells Skeeve, "We'll be famous for this! Like Napoleon at Waterloo - Custer at the Little Big Horn - the Light Brigade at Balaclava..." The inversion is that Aahz presumably knows that those battles didn't end well for the named person, and thus is fully aware of what he's saying, but Skeeve doesn't know, and is genuinely encouraged by the analogy.
- In the MAD parody of Heaven Can Wait (1978), Tony Abbott (no, not that one) claims that he would never hurt Farnsworth because he loved him like a brother. Like Cain loved Abel.
- Spider-Man:
- One issue had Hammerhead comment on how he'd "Go out in a blaze of glory. Just like the real Scarface." It was later pointed out that Al "Scarface" Capone died in prison of complications due to syphilis.
- In another issue, Peter, who's been through hell lately, angrily tells Mary Jane that he feels like "that guy from Network". After he hangs up, MJ quietly observes to herself that the character he's talking about died in the end.
- In one Superboy (1994) storyline, S-Boy's friends are worried about how much he's hanging out with Knockout, a former Female Fury who has been implicated in a murder. When Tanya remonstrates with him, she calls him "kid", and he angrily responds that Knockout is the only person who doesn't call him that, or think of him as being one. He then flies off before Tanya can point out that Knockout's name for him is "pup", which doesn't exactly imply she thinks of him as an adult.
- In Flight 714, Rastapopoulos swears to Tintin that he will crush him "like I crush an insignificant spider!" Unfortunately, the spider in question proves quite adept at dodging Rastapopoulos's foot blows.
- Ultimate Marvel
- Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: When Reed says he works alone, Fury mentioned that it was a team work, and compared it with playing ball at school. Reed pointed that no, he didn't play much ball at school, he was a nerd reading books inside... and that's how he got to be a genius, with the guy who played lots of ball at school now asking for his help.
- Ultimate Vision: Tarleton mentioned that those in the satellite live like monks. He then had to clarify that they are not motivated by religion, that he only made the monk comparison because of the reclusion.
- Watchmen: Rorschach named himself after the Rorschach inkblot test. He chooses the name because of what it represents, that there is no meaning beyond what we ourselves impose, just as the patterns of an inkblot are open to interpretation. Somewhat of a backfire in that he's named after a psychological test, and decidedly psychologically unsound later on his career after he crosses the Despair Event Horizon.
- In a What If? issue in which the Avengers disband rather than be seen as supporting an increasingly corrupt US government, Captain America tries to appeal to Hercules' honor to convince him to stay with the team. Hercules glances at Cap and sadly quips, "When in Rome, eh? Rome fell, you know."
- X-Men:
- The X-Men, who were famously built around the Fantastic Racism trope, were created in the '60s but never took off until Chris Claremont heavily revamped the franchise in the '70s. Writer Jesse Schedeen pointed out one of the big reasons why the premise didn't work up until that point:
It wasn't until the 1970's that someone looked up from the drawing table and said, "You know, maybe if we're trying to sell the idea of the X-Men being hated and feared for being different, we shouldn't have a team made up entirely of young, handsome, middle class white people."- In an early '80s story, Illyana Rasputin is pressing her best friend Kitty Pryde for details regarding Kitty's teenage romance with Illyana's brother Piotr, commenting, "Juliet was younger than you when she met Romeo." Kitty countered, "And look what happened to her!"
- In the mini-series X-Men: True Friends, Kitty and Rachel Summers find themselves transported to 1930s Great Britain, at the start of the Blitz. At one point, a handsome German officer chats up a skeptical Kitty, saying in regard to the Nazi party that she shouldn't "judge a book by its cover." Kitty answers, "I read the book. Mein Kampf. Still gives me nightmares."
