- Quality over Quantity: In a water balloon fight, Calvin brags to Hobbes how he has the overwhelming advantage because he's got three water balloons as opposed to Hobbes' one and taunts about how he will drench Hobbes thoroughly. Hobbes simply tosses his balloon to Calvin, who screams that his hands are full, resulting in him getting quadruple-drenched. Hobbes then taunts Calvin that rather than stocking on water balloons, he should've stocked on brains instead.
- Radish Cure: Calvin's mom lets Calvin smoke a cigarette his grandpa left behind. He really doesn't enjoy it, but the Aesop he learns was not to trust his mother.
- Rage Quit: Calvin is a huge Sore Loser and has had this a few times, with even a metaphysical example of Calvin stating that his spirit was kicking the checkerboard's spirit clear across the room after losing 165 games straight.
- Rain Dance: Calvin attempts a "snow dance" to get school cancelled. It doesn't work.
- Rain, Rain, Go Away: There was one story arc where the family goes camping and it starts raining once they get to the camp site. Despite Calvin's and mom's complaints, Dad decides to tough it out - for an entire week - but eventually he has enough and decides to pack it up. And in that very moment, the rain finally stops. Cue Face Palm and copious off-screen swearing.
- Random Events Plot: In one of the story arcs in Scientific Progress Goes "Boink" Calvin suddenly has his gravity reversed while doing his homework, and it just as suddenly stops on its own once his mom walks in. Then he inexplicably starts growing, eventually getting so big that he outgrows the universe, where he finds a door floating in a void that leads back to his room. Watterson admits in retrospective that it was just "weird for weirdness' sake".
- Randomized Transformation: In one strip both titular characters fight with Calvin's transmogrifier gun by turning each other into different animals or objects.
- Raptor Attack: Calvin writes a report about Susie being attacked and killed by a pack of Deinonychus as a means of curbing overpopulation.
Science hadn't marched on yet and the raptors lack feathers, but are definitely closer to real size than, say, Jurassic Park velociraptors (which, Watterson noted in commentary on the strip, caused him to put the dinosaur fantasies on hiatus because he didn't want to compete too much with cutting edge CGI and animatronics, which he feared would make Calvin's imagination appear "less vivid by comparison"). - "Rashomon"-Style: One Sunday strip had an amusingly meta example when the duo were recounting the "minutes" of their last G.R.O.S.S. ("Get Rid Of Slimy girlS") club meeting. President Hobbes acts as the secretary and reads the minutes about a fight he and Dictator Calvin had at the previous meeting, making it sound as though he was totally not at fault for what happened and that Calvin got his "comeuppance." Calvin in turn insists that Hobbes was being a Jerkass and that "I beat you fair and square!" Hobbes objects to being called a liar, and the two get in another fight over who started the first fight. (They immediately call a truce and make up afterward, fighting being one of their main activities as club members since they have little else to do.) We never do find out what actually happened, but from the strip's context, it can be reasonably guessed that both were lying.
- Raygun Gothic: Calvin's daydreams of Spaceman Spiff, interplanetary explorer extraordinaire. He wears Space Clothes, carries a Ray Gun, and jets about in a flying saucer with a bubble cockpit and tail fins.
- "Reading Is Cool" Aesop: One Sunday strip has Calvin and Hobbes encounter a snake slithering across the ground. They realize they don't know much about snakes, so they decide to find and read a book about them. However, Calvin soon objects to the thought of spending a summer day learning about something his schoolteacher would make him learn. Hobbes assures him that since the teacher's not forcing Calvin to read over the summer, it counts as fun. Calvin ends up agreeing while he and Hobbes read the snake book together.
Calvin And Hobbes: Cooooooool.
- Readings Blew Up the Scale: One Sunday strip has an Imagine Spot where Calvin's dad lets him drive, and instead the car starts flying.
Calvin's Dad: How fast are we going?
Calvin: Can't say. We broke the speedometer.
- Read the Freaking Manual: There's a strip where the two try to put together a model airplane. They (or, at least Calvin) ignore the instructions completely and end up with the newspaper glued to the floor, and a wrecked airplane.
Hobbes: Shouldn't we read the instructions?
Calvin: Do I look like a sissy?
- In another strip, said airplane was, "hit by anti-aircraft guns", after Calvin got frustrated trying to follow the instructions, to which Hobbes replies, "Your planes seem to encounter a lot of those."
- However, one strip within the former story has Hobbes surprised because the instructions apparently start in English, but then go into Spanish and French. This is probably meant to be interpreted as Hobbes having misunderstood that the manual was written in all three languages for the benefit of non-English speakers.
- Realistic Species, Cartoony Species: Humans are drawn in a very cartoony style while animals (except for Hobbes) are almost always drawn in a very realistic style. That said, most animals (with the exception of Hobbes) only appear in Calvin's Imagine Spots, and only rarely in the "real" world of the comic.
- Real-Place Background: Much of the art is based on the artist's home town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, including the suburban atmosphere and the local trees, especially in this large graphic that appeared on the back of an early collection
◊. See Where the Hell Is Springfield?. - Rebel Relaxation: One short story arc had Calvin being "cool" by leaning against a tree. Hobbes tried to imitate him, but he didn't really seem to get the concept, putting on a sombrero and then Mickey Mouse pants.
Hobbes: What are you doing?
Calvin: Being cool.
Hobbes: You look more like you're being bored.
Calvin: The world bores you when you're cool.
- Recursive Creators: In the first duplicator story arc, the first duplicate starts making his own duplicates. Hilarity Ensues.
- Recursive Reality: Calvin once grew to the size of a galaxy and found a door that led back to his own room.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Calvin is red, Hobbes is blue. Aptly, Calvin's favourite colour does seem to canonically be red, though Hobbes seems to prefer orange to blue.
- Reduced to Dust: Calvin is playing with Dad's binoculars when he drops them and breaks them. When Hobbes asks how bad the damage was, Calvin reveals a box of dust.
Calvin: Don't sneeze.
- Refuge in Audacity: Several examples. Calvin would occasionally do this, often in an attempt to baffle Miss Wormwood and get out of doing actual schoolwork.
Calvin: Miss Wormwood, could we arrange our seats in a circle and have a little discussion? Specifically, I'd like to debate whether cannibalism ought to be grounds for leniency in murders, since it's less wasteful.
- Religious Russian Roulette:
- Retcon: A subtle one. In the comic's first strip we see Calvin captured Hobbes in a tiger-trap. Later comics would occasionally reference Hobbes having known Calvin since he was a baby, implying the two have been together for far longer. The reason is probably because Watterson later regretted showing Calvin and Hobbes meeting for the first time and thought the comic might've been stronger not showing it. That being said, many readers have decided to interpret Calvin "catching" Hobbes was just another one of their many role-plays.
- Revealing Cover Up:
- In one arc, Calvin accidentally floods the bathroom trying to fix a leaky sink. While trying (badly) to fix the mess without his parents noticing, he starts singing that everything's fine, there's no trouble, and he's just carrying a few buckets to the bathroom for... nothing bad. His parents, who hadn't noticed anything amiss yet, are immediately clued in that Calvin's done something really bad.
- In one strip, Calvin tells his mother that, just a few minutes ago, he was warped into another dimension and replaced by an Evil Doppelgänger, leading his mom to immediately ask what disaster he's caused this time.
Calvin: No, no, see, it wasn't me...
- In another strip, Calvin makes a sudden, totally unprompted, and impassioned advocation for the importance of educators and how they deserve to be paid far more. After a moment of confusion, Miss Wormwood realizes that Calvin was drawing attention away from the fact he didn't do his homework again.
Miss Wormwood: Ok, hands up. Who else didn't do the homework for today?
Calvin: Actually, I'd like to see more teachers out on the streets.
- Revenge via Storytelling: Calvin writes an illustrated poem about a kid named "Barney" who locked his father in the basement after his father made him eat his peas; Calvin's father is not pleased with the depiction. In a different comic, the dad would tell Calvin a story about a boy who got locked in the basement for not going to bed on time.
- Reverse Psychology:
- Reverse Psychology Backfire: In one strip, Calvin writes to Santa Claus that he really doesn't want any gifts this Christmas, just love and peace among people. Hobbes's opinion of this reverse psychology gambit: "Kind of risky, don't you think?" Calvin throws the letter away.
- Rhyming Episode: Several of the Sunday strips (such as one where Calvin imagines himself as a rampaging Tyrannosaurus or another where he has a dream about Santa Claus) were told through rhyming couplets, as were two illustrated stories in the beginning of the treasuries. There are also a few weekday strips where Calvin starts spouting poetry unprompted.
- Rhyming Title: An in-universe example. Calvin's favorite bedtime story is titled "Hamster Huey and the Gooey-Kablooie".
- Riddle for the Ages: Just what exactly happened during the infamous Noodle Incident? The strip never chooses to answer this because the author found it was infinitely funnier to let the reader think of all the possibilities themselves.
- Ridiculous Counter-Request: Susie Derkins does this while talking to herself after Calvin is mean to her. She wishes she had a hundred friends to play with so she wouldn't care what Calvin said to her. But in the last panel she sits down sadly and says "...And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony."
- Ridiculous Procrastinator: Calvin's always like this when it comes to his schoolwork—assuming that he bothers doing it at all, he'll always put off doing an assignment until the absolute last possible minute (he actually once completely forgot about an assignment until the day it was due, despite having at least a month to work on it). To name some specific examples:
- When Calvin's assigned to give a report on the brain, he gets three days to prepare for it—he writes it on the bus on the way to school the day it's due.
- In one story arc, Calvin is paired up with Susie for a project on Mercury. Despite Susie's constant reminders and being given a week to do it, he only starts working on it the very morning of the presentation at school. Susie is not pleased by Calvin's half of the presentation.
- Another time, Calvin comes home chattering to Mom about how he has to make a desert life diorama in a shoebox for school. Mom, suspicious, asks when the assignment is due. Calvin tells her, "It was due today, but I told the teacher I wasn't quite finished."
- Calvin once went on an epic flight of fancy. When his mother comes in to see if he's doing his homework, he cheerfully replies: "I've almost started!"
- In one story, he's given two weeks to collect fifty different leaves for a school project, but he outright refuses to work on it until late into the evening before the day it's due. He then gets mad at his mom for not taking him to the arboretum twenty minutes before it closes, while she's busy preparing dinner, and when he gets the chance the pawn the project off to a pair of aliens, gets upset at them for arriving at the very last minute late at night.
- Right on Queue: One strip used several of these at once, with Mom running errands:
Mom: Fifteen people in line and the teller goes on break without a replacement... After I wait ten minutes, they open a new line for all the people behind me who have waited two minutes... I'm waiting to pay, and the cashier puts me on hold instead of the person on the telephone.
Cashier: (eventually) Have a nice day.
Mom: Too late.
- Right Out of My Clothes: Often when Calvin is pasted by a snowball or subject to one of Hobbes' Attack Hello pounces, he'll literally be blown right out of his shoes, if not more clothes. In one strip, Calvin's blasted right into his underwear.
Calvin's Mom: I don't understand why you have to take off your clothes to play cars. It's very weird.
Calvin: Just give 'em here, OK?
- Right Under Their Noses: Calvin's mom demands he take a bath, so he hides from her. He avoids being caught by hiding in the bathtub, saying "she'll never look here."
- Rip Van Tinkle: In one strip, Calvin walks by a river that leads to a waterfall. Then he gets caught in a storm, sprayed by a fireman and gets swept into an ocean. He then wakes up from his dream and makes a break for the bathroom.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Whenever Hobbes brings up humanity's environmental damage to earth, one of the prominent issues he'll mention is the growing hole in the ozone layer, one of the biggest issues of its kind in the turn of the 90s. Though the ozone layer's condition remains a concern despite improvements over the years since the strip ended, it's prominence in response to the climate crisis has fallen greatly in comparison to the problem of greenhouse gases and other disruptions of the planet's ecology (as opposed to the ozone layer crisis being more specific to the global warming phenemon), leaving Hobbes's concerns somewhat dated, though unfortunately not solved.
- Road Apples: One strip had Calvin complain to Susie his mom packed him pie for lunch. When Susie asks what's so bad about pie, Calvin replies that it's cow pie. It's implied he's lying just to gross Susie out though.
- Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies:
- In one Sunday strip Calvin initiates a Derailed Fairy Tale in the story his father is reading, so Dad just has the tiger eat everybody to end the story. Calvin and Hobbes both love that ending, of course.
- In another strip, Dad gets sick of always reading the same story to Calvin at bedtime, so he decides to tweak it a bit. One Gilligan Cut later, and Hobbes is wondering if the villagers will ever find Hamster Huey's head...
- Roger Rabbit Effect: It never happened in the actual strip, but Watterson drew a one-panel strip where he interacted directly with Calvin:
Bill Watterson: Come on kid, do something funny. I've got a deadline here.
Calvin: Maybe I don't feel motivated enough. What's it worth to you?
- Rogues Gallery: Calvin imagines many of the people he knows as Stupendous Man's enemies: Susie becomes Annoying Girl, Miss Wormwood is the Crab Teacher, Rosalyn mutates into Baby Sitter Girl, and Calvin's Mom is his Arch-Enemy Mom-Lady.
- Rooting for the Empire: In-Universe. One night when Calvin's dad is reading him a bedtime story; Calvin requested a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood where the Big Bad Wolf succeeds in eating her. When Calvin's dad suggests Hansel and Gretel, Calvin says he wants the witch to eat them and then have the wolf eat the witch. Another strip had him rewrite Goldilocks and the Three Bears except the bears were tigers and they eat Goldilocks. His dad was disturbed by it.
- Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...:
- Occurs in one story arc where Susie gets in trouble for talking to Calvin in the middle of class, and gets sent to front of the class, and then Calvin passes a note to taunt her for getting embarrassed when the teacher called on her, provoking her into writing another note and getting in trouble again.
Roses are red,
A deep crimson hue,
When you got in trouble,
You sure were too! Ha! Ha!
- Another variant occurs in a Sunday comic where Calvin seems to have gotten a gushy Valentines Day card from Susie. It turns out to have been Hobbes playing a trick on Calvin however.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Tu-lips are what we'll be kissing,
Woo-woo!
- Rotten Robotic Replacement: In one strip, Calvin is abducted by aliens and replaced with a bad-behaving robot, who proceeds to smash a lamp, raid that Tempting Cookie Jar, dump his textbooks in the garbage can, and more. His parents, of course, don't believe that this is what happened...
- Rule-Abiding Rebel: The strip would often explore the hypocrisy of pop-culture rebellion — and in at least one instance, in a more gentle and wistful way that focused on the "conformist" rather than the "rebel."
- Rule of Funny: There's no justification in-universe for Calvin's Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness or freakish intelligence in general, Hobbes' Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane nature is never explained, and his classroom curriculum spans the entire elementary school in difficulty. But so what?
- Certain aspects of Calvin's personality are inconsistent. In particular, in some strips he only wants to play outside, while in others he can't imagine doing anything but watching TV, usually dependent on which one his parents least want him to do, or just for an opportunity to mock television. Sometimes he hates eating the food his mother cooks because he thinks it's made of something nasty, other times he gobbles it up after being tricked to believe something nasty is in it, but the end result is still that someone is disgusted (whether that be Calvin or one of his parents).
- The Runaway:
- One early story arc had Calvin "seceding" from his family to go live in the Yukon. He got into a fight with Hobbes over who gets to lead the expedition and decided to quit, going home and leaving Hobbes in the woods. As Hobbes is, at least when Calvin's not around, actually a stuffed animal, the parents have to go out searching for him.
- In another arc, he decided to leave the Earth with Hobbes and go live on Mars because of how grown-ups were treating the environment. He eventually comes back home when he realizes it's also his responsibility to help fix the Earth (although whether the journey actually happened or was just his imagination is another story...).
- Running Gag: Many. See this page for examples.
- Running Gag Stumbles: One of the Running Gags was Roslyn the babysitter coming to babysit Calvin, only for Calvin to misbehave egregiously—in one strip he steals Roslyn's school work, and in another he locks her out of the house. However, in Roslyn's last appearance (near the end of the run and after a long absence) she figures out another tactic. Instead of trying to discipline Calvin, she promises to play Calvinball with him and let him stay up an extra half hour if he behaves. In return he is no trouble, does his homework and goes to bed when he's told. When Mom and Dad come back from dinner out and Roslyn tells them that Calvin was no problem, Dad says "This is no time for jokes, Roslyn."
- Sabotutor: Calvin's father sometimes teaches Calvin untrue things on purpose, like telling him colour came to the world around 1950 and before that the world was black and white, or that wind is caused by trees sneezing. Bill Watterson claims his own dad did the exact same thing.
- Sadist Teacher: Calvin sees Miss Wormwood as being one of these. In truth, Miss Wormwood is a stern-but-decent teacher who's just too boring for a hyperactive kid like Calvin, which of course is what makes her classes so hard for him to sit through. Kids like Susie who study hard have no problem with her. As Bill Watterson puts it, she seriously believes in the value of a good education, so needless to say, she's an unhappy person when she has to put up with the likes of Calvin.
Calvin: I want a high-paying job when I get out of here! I want opportunity!
Miss Wormwood: In that case, young man, I suggest you start working harder. What you get out of school depends on what you put into it.
Calvin: Oh... then forget it.
- Safe Under Blankets:
- One occasion had Calvin's parents go out for an evening and decide to leave him by himself, so, naturally, he and Hobbes get a scary movie. When his folks come home, they find him upstairs hiding under the covers and the room booby-trapped.
- One time Calvin and Hobbes hear a monster under the bed. It claims to be alone, so Calvin thinks he and Hobbes can take it, but then they hear the monster arguing with others and they pull the covers over and yell for Mom.
- Sanity Ball: When Calvin and Hobbes are interacting, Hobbes has the ball. When Calvin's parents, Miss Wormwood, or Rosalyn enter the scene, overly imaginative Calvin usually has the ball. When it's just Calvin's mom and dad, Mom has the ball. When Susie shows up, Calvin's typical reaction is throwing the Sanity Ball at her and running away.
- Santa Ambiguity:
- An early strip actually depicts Calvin's parents setting out presents for him on Christmas. Some Imagine Spots depict Santa Claus, but there is never any proof given that Santa Claus might be real.
- There was that time Santa Claus watched him from the North Pole while deciding whether he was "good" or not but this seems to end up being Calvin's imagination. Calvin even hung a lampshade on it once by asking why Santa doesn't just reveal himself, and even compares it to God.
- There's also the strip where Calvin's dad hints that "Santa" would rather have a beer left out for him than milk and cookies.
- Santa Claus: Most Decembers Calvin spends a lot of time thinking about ways to convince Santa that he's been good all year, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
- Santa Clausmas: The Christmas strips of Calvin and Hobbes concentrate on Calvin's attempts to behave so that he gets all the presents he asked for. Semi-averted in one strip that has Calvin doubting the existence of Santa Claus (it should be noted that, while God is mentioned by Calvin a couple times in the strip, Jesus isn't):
Calvin: Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery? If the guy exists, why doesn't he ever show himself and prove it? And if he doesn't exist, what's the meaning of all this?
Hobbes: I dunno... Isn't this a religious holiday?
Calvin: Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.
- Santa's Sweatshop: Discussed in a strip where Calvin claims that Santa's secretarial staff must be "a bunch of underpaid and woefully unprepared temps".
- Sarcasm-Blind: Calvin can't detect sarcasm sometimes.
Calvin: This whole business of Santa rewarding good kids and neglecting bad kids really bugs me... not that I have anything to worry about.
Hobbes: A paragon of virtue, that's you.
- Sarcastic Clapping: In one Sunday strip, Calvin makes a theatrical production out of attempting to choke down a small bite of his dinner, declaring afterwards that it nearly killed him just to taste it. Cue sarcastic clapping and calls for an encore from both of his parents.
Calvin: (thinking) I'm going to run away to Alaska.
- Sarcastic Title: In the 10th anniversary collection commentary, Watterson stated he named the treasuries with descriptors like "essential", "authoritative", and "indispensable", ironically, because all of the comics inside them had already been printed in the annual collections, so describing them as "essential" was an outright lie. Of course, he also printed exclusive bonus comics inside them so they wouldn't be entirely redundant.
- Satiating Sandwich:
- The Trademark Favorite Food of Hobbes is tuna sandwiches (Watterson established that fact in the very first daily strip of the comic).
- In one strip, Calvin asks Hobbes what he'd wish for if he could have anything in the world. Hobbes says, "A sandwich." Calvin accuses him of being unimaginative: he'd wish for "a trillion billion dollars, my own space shuttle, and a private continent!" Hobbes may not be all that creative, but at least he gets his wish.
- When Calvin and Hobbes attempt to emigrate to Alaska, the only food Calvin packs is two sandwiches. He puts chocolate syrup on one, and marshmallows in the other, cramming as much sugar in the sandwiches as possible to get as much energy they can.
- Satire: The strip contains a variety of satire. Most often Calvin himself acts as satire of narrow-minded self-centeredness of people or the shallow ethos of the consumer society, sometimes other things. His father's behavior is often satire of certain kind of parental behavior. Both of them sometimes offer satire of hobbies taken too seriously (bicycling for Dad and chewing gum for Calvin). And there's much more.
- Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: Calvin demands to be read a book called Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie every night before bed. His dad hates it.
- Say It: In several strips, Calvin has to sing a very lengthy password extolling the endless positive values of tigers before Hobbes lets him in their treehouse:
Calvin: Tigers are mean! Tigers are fierce!
Tigers have teeth and claws that pierce!
Tigers are great! They can't be beat!
If I was a tiger, that would be neat!
He can climb the tree without the ladder, so he got to make the password.
Hobbes: Go on, what's the third verse?
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud:
- Saying Too Much: Calvin accidentally makes his mother aware of the Noodle Incident when he panics and tries to explain what Miss Wormwood told her at the parent-teacher meeting.
- Scale Model Destruction:
- Several times Calvin makes sand box communities and then devastates them.
- Calvin gets frustrated trying to build a model airplane and smashes it to shrapnel with a hammer. Then he tells Hobbes that the plane "got hit by anti-aircraft guns."
- Scandalgate: In one strip, where Calvin pretends that his dad is an elected official, he mentions major scandals during his dad's administration, such as "Bedtimegate" and "Homeworkgate."
- Scare 'Em Straight: During a contest to make a traffic safety PSA poster, Calvin decides to make such a PSA, with the slogan "Be Careful, or Be Roadkill!", and covering the poster in chunky spaghetti sauce to simulate ultra-realistic gore. Everyone else thinks it's a little too disgusting.
- Scary Fiction Is Fun: Calvin frequently attempts to watch scary movies whenever he has the chance, despite his parents warning him not to do so. In one instance, he rigs up monster traps after watching one while his parents are out; in another, he imitates a Kaiju and goes on a "rampage" through the house after emerging from the bathtub a la Godzilla (to quote Calvin's mother: "NO MORE AFTERNOON TV MOVIES FOR YOU! EVER!"). Even if a movie/comic book/whatever scares him, he'll always end up watching another one eventually.
- Scary Librarian: Discussed in one strip, though it seems in reality, the worst they may have done is give a Death Glare.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: Calvin has a lot of painful encounters with bees and hornets and other stinging insects. Of course, he brings some of them upon himself by throwing rocks at their nests.
- Scavenger Hunt: An early story arc with Susie's birthday party has Calvin and Hobbes in a scavenger hunt as one of the activities. The first item is a license plate and although Susie probably meant a loose license plate, Calvin attempts to wrench one off a parked car. Hobbes is understandably concerned for the legality of obtaining some of the items on the list.
- Scavengers Are Scum: Calvin once made a report that defended the carnivore-vs.-scavenger aspect of Tyrannosaurus rex while super-intelligent. While he intended at first to go into scientific detail ("to argue that tyrannosaurs were predators and not scavengers, we'll need to write a brief overview of carnosaur evolution. Then we'll delve into skeletal structure, skull design, arm strength, potential running speed, and environmental factors") to defend his theory, his brain shrank and his bedtime came up, and he ended up going with Rule of Cool as his sole argument.
I say tyrannosaurs were predators, because it would be so bogus if they just ate things that were already dead. The end.
- Scenery Porn: The Spaceman Spiff segues often include amazing arid alien landscapes. Bill Watterson admits that he didn't make them up on his own, but they're illustrations of the desert scenery of the United States, which he figures are as wonderfully alien a landscape as Mars.
- Also subverted in a strip where Calvin is Watching the Sunset, there is a great panoramic drawing of the scene, and he's complaining about the shows he's missing.
- The strips featuring Calvin's wagon typically exploit the liberty of the Sunday strip to give us some great visuals of the hilly forest, while Calvin and Hobbes discuss some philosophical matter.
- Schmuck Bait: Two when Susie and Calvin get in trouble for passing notes in class. The first time, Susie warns Calvin not to read it. Calvin's curiosity is piqued, and he opens it to see that Susie wrote "Calvin you stinkhead: I told you not to read this." The next day, Calvin proudly announces that Susie's passing notes and demands that Miss Wormword read it in front of the class. The note reads "You know what I hate about Calvin? He's a squealer!"
- School Play: One of the earlier arcs involved Calvin's class putting on a play called Nutrition and the Four Food Groups. Calvin is cast in the *cough* tear-jerking role of the Onion, with other characters cast as "Fat", "Bread", and "Amino Acid". Calvin's major struggle with this show, besides the zipper of his costume, is his difficulty in remembering his line. "In addition to supplying vital nutrients, many vegetables are a source of dietary fiber!" He remembered it perfectly, but was stuck in the bathroom at the time.
- Schrödinger's Butterfly:
- Invoked in one Sunday strip, when he wakes up, gets dressed, eats breakfast, walks outside, and hears his mother telling him to get up. Then he wakes up again in his bed.
Calvin: My dreams are getting way too literal.
- And later played for laughs and drama◊ when he puts on a coat, walks outside, trips over a rock, and falls off a cliff miles into the air. Then he wakes up, gets dressed, leaves the house, and falls out the door through the sky. Then he wakes up, and is clearly terrified to get out of bed.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Calvin and Hobbes manage to reach Mars from Earth and back within a single afternoon. In reality, it takes about seven to nine months for a spacecraft to reach Mars from Earth (and of course the same amount of time to go back). Then again, the entire journey may just be happening in Calvin's imagination, since he also managed to escape Earth's velocity in his little red wagon and the issue of there being no oxygen in space is never brought up either.
- Scrabble Babble:
- Calvin plays "Zqfmgb" on a Double Word Score box for 957 points.
Hobbes: "Zqfmgb" isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel!
Calvin: It is so a word! It's a worm found in New Guinea! Everyone knows that!
Hobbes: I'm looking it up.
Calvin: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word
you played with all the
X's and J's!"
Hobbes: ...what's your score for "zqfmgb"?
Calvin: 957.
- In another strip, Calvin somehow scores 2 points by playing the word "be", despite the letter B being worth three points in Scrabble. (It's technically possible that the B could have been a blank, and he played the 'E' on a double-score tile, but who's counting?) Hobbes counters with "Nucleoplasm", which is a real word, but it's left unclear how he could spell an 11-letter word in a single turn. (It's possible he could have prefixed "nucleo" to an existing "plasm" on the board, but that's not important.) Hobbes' play is illegal in another way: first, he plays "xygomorphic", Calvin uses the I to play "in", then Hobbes uses the N to play "nucleoplasm". This results in Hobbes spelling "cu", which isn't a word and therefore invalidates "nucleoplasm" by default. Considering he makes up his own Chance cards for Monopoly, they could be using house rules. That or Calvin, being six years old, doesn't understand the rules entirely.
- The Scream: Calvin, for five panels, upon learning Rosalyn is coming over.
Mom: Take a breath before you pass out on the floor!
- Calvin again, out of fear, as his dad attempts to teach him to ride a bike:
Dad: Think about how impressed your friends will be! Think about how much fun you'll have! ...Think about inhaling.
- Spaceman Spiff, faced with the ultimate weapon of interrogation: a calm discussion of wholesome principles!
- Screamer Prank: An off-computer variant in one strip, where Calvin performs an "Emergency Broadcast test" to his mother - it's just him screaming very loudly.
- Screw Learning, I Have Phlebotinum!:
- In a strip, Calvin once dreams about getting a "knowledge implant" (in the form of extra brain matter) from a robot surgeon. The point of the fantasy is so that he doesn't need to go to school anymore, which to him would be the ultimate of joys.
- In one story arc, he enlarges his brain to make his homework easier and becomes so intelligent that, within moments, he mentally calculates the purpose of the cosmos and all reality into a single, simple answer. However, he is unable to figure out why girls are so weird. The effect goes away after a few hours, and for whatever reason Calvin never tries to use it again.
- Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: One comic has Calvin questioning why old people slow down and become more complacent as they get older. In the end, he resolves that when he is old he'll be "going like a maniac." Hobbes immediately states that the world can't possibly wait for such a day, his voice (most likely) dripping with sarcasm.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- The Scrooge: Calvin's dad is a penny-pincher, particularly when it comes to heating the house. Once, when Calvin asks him to turn the heat up, he instead tells Calvin to go and stand outside for a few minutes so when he comes back in it will seem warm by comparison.
Calvin (from outside): I'm telling the newspapers about you, dad!
- Scully Syndrome: One-half of the title duo is subject to Scullying by everyone except the other half (nobody but Calvin and Hobbes see Hobbes for what he is. However it's left ambiguous as to what his nature is).
- Second Place Is for Losers: This is Calvin's attitude in regards to the school safety poster contest. His "Be careful or be roadkill!" poster loses out (for obvious reasons) to Susie's entry, leading him to rant to both Hobbes and his dad about this.
- Secret Identity Change Trick: Deconstructed in an arc where Calvin become Stupendous Man to pass a history test, so he climbs into his locker to change into his costume. Unfortunately it's too dark to see anything, so he's trapped in the locker until Miss Wormwood lets him out.
- Secret Message Wink:
- One sequence has Calvin faking amnesia to get out of doing homework. He keeps up the act throughout dinner and bedtime. When he's closed inside his bedroom, he knowingly winks at Hobbes before yelling to his dad, "MISTER, THERE'S A TIGER IN MY ROOM!"
- When Calvin and Hobbes get invited to Susie's birthday party, Hobbes insists on dressing up for it, to Calvin's disgust. At the party, Susie acts indifferent to see Calvin but gives Hobbes a big hug and compliments his tie. Calvin admits Hobbes was right and begs him to stop winking to show his self-righteousness as Susie carries him around.
- Secret Test of Character: Calvin would be given chances to tell the truth, which he fails big time due to his insistence that everyone will be stupid enough to believe his obvious lies.
Mom: While your dad is taking Rosalyn home, perhaps you can explain what happened tonight.
Calvin: Gee, Mom, I don't know what to tell you. At eight o'clock, I brushed my teeth, put on my pajamas, and went to bed. Nothing happened.
Mom: (pulls out written confession Rosalyn made him write of what he did) And this?
Calvin: Uh... lies! All lies! She made me do that just to get me in trouble! None of that's true! I went straight to bed!
- Security Cling: Hobbes feigns a lethal pounce on Calvin, scaring him half to death. Calvin holds onto Mom so tight that it looks like he's attached to her with velcro. His parents think the little guy is scared out of his mind because of the comic book he was reading at the time (bonus — Hobbes, in "stuffed animal" form, is in pounce position in the last panel, just as he would be in "real tiger" form.)
- Seesaw Catapult:
- The trope's page image is from a comic in which Hobbes turns Calvin's improvised skateboard ramp into a catapult with expert timing.
- In another strip, Calvin tries to use this mechanism to launch a giant snowball. The predictable result is that he gets a facefull of snow himself. The result is the current page image for I Meant to Do That.
- In yet another strip, Calvin tries to use the same configuration to make a springboard so that he can jump into a pile of leaves. Predicably, the rock that he uses as a counterweight flies up and hits him in the head.
Hobbes: Why wouldn't your mom get you a springboard?
Calvin: She was afraid I'd hurt myself.
- Self-Applied Nickname:
- One mini-arc has Calvin declare that from now on, he is to be referred to as Calvin the Bold:
Calvin: I have an announcement. As of today, I will no longer respond to the name "Calvin". From now on, I wish to be addressed as "Calvin the Bold".
Calvin's Mom: Calvin the Bold?
Calvin: Right. That's my new name for the rest of my life.
Calvin's Mom: How about Calvin the Deranged?
Calvin: Also, Calvin the Bold will begin referring to himself in the third person.
- He then tries this at school:
Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, will you do the next problem, please? Calvin?
Calvin: Who??
Ms. Wormwood: YOU!
Calvin: Calvin the Bold demands that he be addressed by his full title for any response.
Principal Spittle: Back again, hmm, Calvin?
Calvin: Who?
- The final strip is his dad finding the best way to deal with it.
Calvin's Dad: Calvin the Bold!
Calvin: Yes?
Calvin's Dad: Kneel.
Calvin: Huh?? What? Kneel?
Calvin's Dad: By the finite patience vested in me, I hereby dub thee "Mud". You may rise.
Calvin: My name is MUD?!
Calvin: Mr. Subtlety drives home another point.
- In another strip, he asks his mom to start introducing him to people as "Calvin, Boy of DESTINY!", with a dramatic pause after "boy" and emphasis on the first syllable of "destiny"; he wishes they had a pair of cymbals to crash after it, while his mom says she's going to stop introducing him entirely. As in the earlier "Calvin the Bold" story, he carries this over to his schoolwork, to Miss Wormwood's disdain; she tells him to stop signing his work as "Calvin, Boy of Destiny" and that his time would be better spent studying than tweaking the design of his seal.
- Self-Deprecation: Watterson often inserted his own opinions about society into the mouths of the characters, but he usually prevents from being too ham-fisted by having another character snark on said opinion or exaggerate said opinion to ridiculous levels. For example, one comic had Calvin state his grandpa loudly complained about how the size and art quality of newspaper comics is terrible compared to how it was back in the day, an opinion which Watterson discusses in length in the 10th anniversary treasury's commentary, only for it to end with him and Hobbes agreeing he's gotten a bit senile and takes newspaper comics way too seriously. However, just as often it would be inverted, as he would have Calvin state a stupid opinion he disagreed with and have someone (usually Hobbes or Calvin's dad) snark on it.
- Self-Imposed Challenge:invoked
Calvin (cracking an egg above the stove with only one eye open): The secret to making life fun is making little challenges for yourself.
Hobbes: Like the challenge of explaining the stove and floor to your mom?
Calvin: Rats. See if there's another carton in the fridge, willya?
- Seppuku: In one story arc, Calvin asks Hobbes if this would be the appropriate response to breaking his father's prized binoculars, or if running away from home would be sufficient. Hobbes suggests both.
- Sequel Episode: There would occasionally be story arcs which followed up on prior story arcs many months or even a few years later, such as a second duplicator arc where he added a Morality Dial, or two follow-up time machine stories, such as one where he intentionally goes back in time this time.
- Series Continuity Error: Certain details of Calvin's life vary depending on the needs of individual strips, and the continuity of the series was rather loose to begin with.
- A few early strips allude to the family having two cars, and the very first strip shows Calvin's dad washing a car resembling a Ford LTD. However, in all subsequent appearances, we've only seen one car, an econobox hatchback, and even then the cars taillight design changes between appearances.
- Does Calvin's dad take the bus to work or does he drive? Depending on the needs of the joke at hand, it changes (such as when Calvin rolls the car into the ditch while his dad is at work, or when Calvin builds a snow mound over his driveway, preventing the car from getting out and making his dad late for work).
- The position of the window next to Calvin's bed changes between strips; it's changed from the side of the house, the front of the dormer, and the side of the dormer, and also alternates between the left and right dormer.
- Details of Calvin's classroom also vary from strip to strip (particularly in early comics), such as Susie's position relative to him, which side of the classroom the outside window is, whether the door is behind or in front of the desks, and in one strip the classroom was on the second floor.
- This occurs between strips when Calvin's parents are in bed. The first two strips show Calvin's dad on the left, but the third one has him on the right, and the fourth one has him on the left again. Whether Hobbes sleeps to the left or right of Calvin also changes from strip to strip.
- The first strip shows Calvin capturing Hobbes in the wilderness in the present, but subsequent strips allude to Hobbes having known Calvin since he was a waddling infant. Word of God noted in commentary that he came to regret showing how Calvin met Hobbes and would've preferred it to be a mystery.
- Calvin is shown writing with both his left and right hands. While he could be ambidextrous, the more likely explanation is that Watterson just didn't keep track of which hand Calvin uses to write.
- The transmogrifier gun story arc had Hobbes turn Calvin into a tiny pterodactyl because "big dinosaurs give [him] the willies". A later time machine story arc had the pair go back to the Jurassic Period where they encounter a hungry Allosaurus. Rather than giving Hobbes "the willies", he is amazingly ignorant of Allosaurus being a potentially dangerous predator.
- An early strip establishes that Calvin's dad didn't meet Calvin's mom until a few years after college, but a later strip states that they were prom dates. While it's possible they broke up and reconciled later, more likely Watterson just didn't care or keep track of earlier continuity.
- The shape of Calvin's sled/toboggan changes from strip to strip between a simple wooden sled and a runner toboggan (although it's simply possible that Calvin has two different sleds and the strip never draws any attention to this).
- One story arc in the "Yukon Ho!" collection has Calvin wishing that he was a tiger and making a tiger costume so Hobbes can teach him to be a tiger. Apparently, he totally forgot the earlier storyline where he used the transmogrifier to turn himself into a tiger and found that it wasn't as interesting as he thought. He more or less comes to the exact conclusion here, again.
- During the strip's first camping story arc, Calvin is excited by the idea of living off the land in the wilderness. Apparently, he forgot the earlier story arc where they went camping, although in a cabin rather than a tent (this is strange because Calvin would consistently refer to earlier camping trips in future camping trips after this).
- Serious Business: Chewing gum, which has as many as 12 consumer magazines dedicated to it. Calvin completely buys into it wholesale, but Hobbes think the whole thing is patently ridiculous.
Hobbes: What kind of nut would care about all this?!
Calvin: Everyone! This is hard data! It lets you quantify your enjoyment!
Hobbes: I thought fun was supposed to be fun.
Calvin: Well I prefer to trust the experts.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
- Calvin frequently uses this to mess with Moe, typically by insulting him without the latter realizing it, as it's generally the only way he has to get one over him. For just one example:
Moe: Gimme a quarter, Twinky.
Calvin: Your simian countenance suggests a heritage unusually rich in species diversity.
Moe: What?
Calvin: Here you go. (tosses him a quarter) That was worth 25 cents.
- Also in an earlier strip — from Moe's first appearance, in fact:
Calvin: Moe, I was wondering something. Are your maladjusted antisocial tendencies the product of your berserk pituitary gland?
(Beat Panel)Moe: What?
Calvin: (
looks out to the Fourth Wall) Isn't he great, folks? Let's give him a big hand!
- When Calvin increased his brain size in order to become more intelligent, his vocabulary becomes even more complicated than usual as a side-effect.
Hobbes: What happened to your head??
Calvin: Evidently, an unanticipated physiological consequence of cerebral augmentation. My brain swelled.
- Severed Head Sports: Calvin builds a snowman that plays ten-pin bowling with another snowman's head.
- Shadow of Impending Doom: Often this would occur when Hobbes pounces on Calvin, and just before landing, Calvin would notice the darkening tiger-shaped shadow. By then it was usually too late.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Some storylines end this way. Calvin particularly had it bad when he brought his Stupendous Man costume to school on the day of a test. He gets stuck in his locker while changing, gets dragged kicking and screaming to the principal's office and has his costume confiscated by his mother. After everything has blown over, he tells Hobbes that he flunked the test.
- Shapeshifter Showdown: Kinda — in the first test of the transmogrifier gun, Hobbes zaps Calvin into a (scientifically accurate) 2-foot Pterodactylus. Calvin, having thought that Pterodactylus was one of the larger pterosaur species, is none too pleased with this outcome, so he spitefully zaps Hobbes into a duck. In due course, Hobbes zaps Calvin into a pig, so Calvin zaps Hobbes into a chimpanzee, so Hobbes zaps Calvin into a flower, so Calvin zaps Hobbes into a crocodile, so Hobbes zaps Calvin into an armadillo... cut to "much later", where an owl and a hobgoblin are sulking and wondering who is which. (This is one of the very few Sunday Strips to take place in the middle of an ongoing Story Arc.)
- Shark Fin of Doom: One of Calvin's hilariously morbid snow sculptures involved a snowman being chased by a pack of sharks portrayed as fins protruding up from the snow.
Hobbes: Snow sharks?
Calvin: That guy's a goner.
- Shoehorned Acronym: The title characters make a club called GROSS— Get Rid of Slimy GirlS. Calvin, who came up with it, knows the acronym is bad... but he thinks that it's redundant because all girls are slimy, yet he wanted to have it spell something.
- Shoo Out the New Guy: Uncle Max, who had a brief storyline and then left the strip permanently, partly because Max did not bring out any new sides of Calvin, thus making the character redundant, and also because Bill Watterson found it too awkward to write dialogue in which he never called Calvin's parents by their names.
- Shoot the Messenger: Lampshaded by Calvin when he is sent to the principal's office for shouting "BORING!" at one of Miss Wormwood's lectures.
- Shoot the Television: One strip of a camping trip story arc has Calvin's dad, after having his attempt to take a picture of their vacation rebuffed, muttering how the next time he sees a Kodak commercial he'll put an ax through the TV.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Show-and-Tell Antics: A Running Gag is for Calvin to bring something to school for show-and-tell. The gag tends to focus more on the telling than the showing, sometimes using it to brag about himself and/or insult the other students.
- In one strip, Calvin is holding a paper bag and he says: "For "Show and tell" today, I have something that will astound and amaze you! This little guy can... (looks into the bag, looks around) Have you all had your shots?"
- In another strip, he refuses to show what he brought or tell anything about it.
Calvin: It's a mystery that will haunt you all your miserable lives! You'll never, ever know what I brought! You can beg and plead, but I'll never end your torment! I'll carry my secret to the grave! It's the show and tell that was never shown or told!
(Evil Laugh) - In another strip, he claims that he brought an "invisible cretinizer":
Calvin: One shot will render the victim a babbling simp, a dolt, an utter moron!
Ronald: Oh, sure, Calvin! Give us a break!
Calvin: As Ronald proves, it's quite effective even at long range.
- One strip had Calvin bring what he claims was an alien he caught to show and tell. He shows them what he claims is a zarnium-coated bag (a paper bag) he kept the alien in while he fed it pure ammonia. When he reveals the alien, we see it's basically a sock puppet.
- In another, he brings a charcoal briquette, which he claims is the result of a UFO landing in his yard.
- Calvin brings a set of flash cards designed to teach swear words.
- One time he brings a snowflake, and goes on a monologue about how bringing the unique ice crystal into school makes it melt into a drop of water just like any other. He then tries to leave the classroom while the analogy sinks in.
- Another time, he pretends to be invisible, and starts taking off his clothes. Thankfully Miss Wormwood stops him before he can take off his pants.
- In yet another, he remembers at the last minute that it's show-and-tell day, and searches desperately for something to bring. It's implied he decides to take the snot from his sneeze.
- One time, Calvin claims that he had an Out Of Body Experience after dying of boredom from his homework. He shows a yo-yo he supposedly brought back from the afterlife.
- One time he has nothing to show, but claims that his mom dresses up in a leotard and fights crime.
- Calvin brings "an utterly amazing whistle", but another classmate complains that it sounds normal. Calvin responds that it can only be heard by ugly cretins.
- Calvin brings a toy airplane. The presentation starts out fairly normal this time, but then he starts declaring that he'll be getting on a real airplane as soon as he can to get away from "you chumps", earning him a visit to the principal's office.
- Calvin and Susie compare the show and tell items they're bringing. Suzie has a letter she wrote to their Congressman, while Calvin has a bag of dead bugs he collected from windowsills.
Best of all, this way Mom didn't have to pack me a lunch!
- Calvin pretends to be an alien conqueror out to subjugate humanity, with his "show and tell" presentation demonstrating terrifying weaponry. Outside of his imagination, the rest of the class just sees him speaking gibberish.
- One time, Calvin interrupts class to hype up his show and tell presentation the next day.
That's called a teaser, by the way.
- Showdown at High Noon: One strip parodies this, the urban expansion solution actually does occur to them (because Calvin's mom wouldn't let them play with guns).
Hobbes: I get to be the zoning board!
- Shown Their Work: In early strips, Watterson drew cartoony dinosaurs that wouldn't have looked out of place in The Flintstones. However, after realizing that Calvin would have been interested enough in dinosaurs to imagine them accurately, he started hitting the books and consequently, later depictions of dinosaurs are far more detailed and realistic and belong to recognizable species, though Science Marches On has resulted in some of them being incorrect in the long run.
- Shrunken Head:
- Siblings Wanted:
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Susie attempts to enforce this when she and Calvin play house. Calvin's not having it. Hobbes also tends to describe love to Calvin in terms likely to nauseate adults ("'Bitsy Pookums,' I'd say. 'Yes, Snoogy Woogy,' she'd reply..."), let alone a six-year-old inclined to believe that Girls Have Cooties.
- Sick Episode:
- One strip had Calvin being told that it was Saturday and he doesn't have to go to school. Calvin says, "I know," which causes his mom to freak out and call the doctor.
- In one storyline, Calvin's mother is unwell.
- Another series of strips had Calvin with chicken pox.
- Silence Is Golden: Watterson said that the change to his Sunday Strip format allowed him to further explore the ability to tell a story without dialogue. (For an example, visit the trope page, which uses one such strip for its image).
- Simpleton Voice: Moe combined this with Painting the Medium — his speech bubbles are written in a childish scrawl to indicate his unintelligence.
- Single-Biome Planet: Every single planet Spaceman Spiff crashes on is an arid, rocky desert planet, without fail (although in one case he landed in a body of water adjacent to the desert, and in two different strips he came down on an alien metropolis).
- Single Serving Friend: An early arc introduced Max, Calvin's uncle on his father's side, visiting from out-of-state. He gets along with Calvin better than any other adult, but after he gets on the plane back home, he's never even mentioned again. (Bill Watterson had wanted to make Uncle Max a recurring character, but changed his mind after writing this one story arc: he felt that Max didn't have much personality, didn't bring out any new sides of Calvin, and required some awkward writing to avoid mentioning Calvin's parents by name.)
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Calvin has several.
- The first is Susie Derkins. It has been suggested that the two might get to like each other if Calvin ever outgrew the belief that Girls Have Cooties. (Of course, he never got past age six in the comics.) One storyline had Calvin create a duplicate of himself with the morality switch set to "good", who (tried to) get along very sweetly with Susie, much to the original Calvin's horror.
- Another nemesis is Rosalyn the baby-sitter, who is the only person Calvin actually seems to fear.
- With Moe, things balanced out in a cosmic sort of way. Calvin ran intellectual circles around Moe, but Moe had the raw physical power to make that not really matter that much in the immediate short term.
- Sitting on the Roof: Calvin occasionally ends up on the roof, but this is generally because he's hiding from something.
- Sizeshifter: In an early transmogrification arc, Calvin asks Hobbes to turn him into a pterodactyl, so that he can terrorize the neighborhood. After a false start that results in him transforming into a chicken, Calvin gets his wish — but given that "big dinosaurs give [Hobbes] the willies," he's smaller than he would have liked.
Calvin: Say, when did you transform yourself into a 200-foot colossus?
Hobbes: I didn't. Why?
- Skinny Dipping: Hobbes says that he never wears trunks when he goes swimming due to preferring to go "furry dipping".
- Sky Face: One episode has Calvin look at a cloud that forms into his head, and he sees to his shock that it's sticking its tongue out at him!
- Sleeping Dummy:
- Calvin once used one by hiding a pile of clothes under his blanket and a broom for his hair.
- A non-bed variant, Calvin once used a snowman shaped like himself and put it in the bathtub to fool his mom. How he got a snowman into his house and into the bathroom is another story...
- Sleepwalking: Calvin's parents often think he's been sleepwalking whenever the "homicidal psycho jungle cat" (that is, Hobbes) jumps him while he's going to get a drink of water. In one strip, Hobbes goes sleepwalking and makes a tuna sandwich, while Calvin follows him in a state of confusion and mild concern, and ultimately gets the blame for making a mess in the kitchen.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: For a story about a boy and his tiger friend, which sounds like something that could be
horribly saccharine, it's very close to the middle, just barely leaning more towards the idealistic end. The world is full of wonders, but it's also unfair and sometimes cruel. - Small Reference Pools: Generally averted. The strip usually tried to steer clear of cultural references, particularly later in its run, but Calvin once compared the experience of walking through the snowy woods to Doctor Zhivago (an Academy Award-winning movie, to be sure, but one that most people have not seen since the 1960s). Two strips made reference to the 1912 Durchamp painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Another strip had Calvin waxing sarcastic about middle-aged pop stars endorsing soft drinks; this was fairly common in the early '90s (Ray Charles, Elton John), but many current viewers may not remember those commercials. Hobbes also once called Calvin out for misspelling the word "Weltanschaung."
- Smart Animal, Average Human: Played with: Calvin is a reckless six-year-old boy, while his stuffed toy tiger Hobbes is more mature and has more common sense. On the other hand, Calvin has precocious grasp of vocabulary and artistic terminology, while Hobbes is lacking in certain basic areas of study, such as mathematics.
- Smart People Build Robots: To get out of cleaning his room, Calvin tries building a robot to do it for him. Surprisingly (at least to him), it turns out that six-year-old Calvin, much as he may love to think of himself as a genius, doesn't actually have the necessary knowledge to build a robot from household materials. He spends all day trying to figure it out, to no avail... and ends up successfully going to bed without having cleaned his room.
- Smart People Play Chess: Lampshaded in a September 10, 1989 Sunday strip. Calvin and Hobbes play a very physical game of football that ends with Calvin battered and filthy. The last panel has the two of them playing chess, with Calvin explaining that "I've decided to become an intellectual."
- Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: Calvin's religion, so much as he can be said to have one, is Santa Claus. He's been known to beg forgiveness at the sky when threatened with the "Naughty" list, though his arguments boil down to half-truths and legalese.
- He also attempted to overpower bad weather with the sheer force of his words. Twice.
"It's man against the elements! Conscious being versus insentient nature! My wits against your force! WE'LL see who triumphs!"
(gets hailed on) "Ow! Ow! Hey! What's with the hail!? That's fighting dirty!"
- Smoking Is Cool: One strip has Calvin telling his father that he should start smoking cigars because it's all the rage. His mother overhears:
Calvin's mom (dryly): Flatulence could be all the rage, but it would still be disgusting.
Calvin: I see.
Calvin's dad: Nicely put, dear.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: Calvin once asked his mom if he could try smoking. Much to his surprise, she agreed to it without argument and even told him where to find some cigarettes around the house. Naturally, when Calvin lights up outside and tries taking a nice big pull on it, he finds himself choking and coughing up the smoke. His mom then steps out and asks if he learned his lesson. Calvin takes away that trusting his parents can be hazardous to his health.
- Smug Snake: One Sunday strip has Calvin brag to Hobbes about how he has three water balloons while Hobbes has one. He calls himself a "walking arsenal of hydro-weaponry" and says he can act with impunity. Instead of throwing his water balloon directly at Calvin, Hobbes lightly tosses it into Calvin's hands while he's still holding his own balloons. Calvin tries and fails to juggle all four of them, and they end up landing on him. The strip ends with him completely soaked while Hobbes is dry and triumphant.
Calvin: We super-powers have it tough.
Hobbes: Maybe you should stock up on brains instead!
- Snake Oil Salesman: In one strip, Calvin decides to set up a stand selling drainage ditch water as "Calvin's Curative Elixir" at a dollar a glass. When Hobbes tells him nobody will pay to drink what is obviously just filthy water, Calvin changes his pitch to "Pitcher of Plague: Calvin's Debilitating Disease Drink! $1.00 not to have any."
- Snarky Inanimate Object:
- While we won't get into a debate over whether Hobbes counts, Calvin's TV got in a few good ones, always quietly to itself:
Calvin: What does this mean, "religion is the opiate of the masses"?
TV: It means Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet.
- To say nothing of the Ouija Board he was messing around with in a later strip:
Calvin: O Great Ouija Board, will I ever become president?
Hobbes: It's moving!
Calvin: "G...O...
Hobbes: [finishing] "..D...F...O...R...B...I...D."
Calvin: [kicking the board] When I want an editorial, I'll ask for it, you stupid board!
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: A lot of it, usually with Calvin on one side and his dad, Susie, or Hobbes on the other.
- Sneaking Snacks: A Running Gag involves the many elaborate and often ill-conceived plans Calvin develops in his attempts to raid the cookie jar.
- Sneeze of Doom:
- Done in one strip, where Calvin sneezes so hard that he launches himself into space, and then sends himself back with another sneeze.
- There's also this one strip where Calvin's head explodes from a particularly violent sneeze. Turns out, he was pretending.
- Snooty Sports: Discussed in Calvin and Hobbes several times.
- One strip had Calvin playing a bizarre version of golf with Hobbes, and remarking that "if you don't want to play with old geezers, you have to make golf a contact sport."
- Another strip had Calvin playing croquet with Hobbes and claiming it was "a gentleman's game". . . shortly before getting into an argument that culminated in a Big Ball of Violence.
- Snowball Fight: Snowball fights are Serious Business to Calvin, who takes them to Warrior Poet levels although he usually has nobody to fight with besides Hobbes or a reluctant Susie. During summer, he uses water balloons instead. (Except the time when he saved a snowball in the freezer til June... and missed.)
- Snowlems: The Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons.
- Soap Within a Show: The daytime television show that Calvin watched in one strip when he was at home sick; he commented that he learns things staying home that he would never find out about in school.
"Oh, Mary, you look ravishing in that skimpy negligee!
Mmm ... darling, don't you wish we were married?
Murder?! You sick animal! I love it when you talk that way! Come here!"
- The Social Darwinist:
- Calvin tries to justify behaving badly multiple times by saying it's a dog eat dog world and might makes right, claiming that's just how Nature works. Invariably, he's shown up when Hobbes does something like push him out of the way, smugly citing his ethos back to him. Calvin then says it only applies to him, not everyone else.
- Also, one Imagine Spot has him fantasize about Susie getting chased down by a deinonychus then devoured along with other kids, citing this as natural selection at work to justify it being a good thing, with the weak and stupid being weeded out.
- Society Is to Blame: Calvin tries to pull this excuse on his dad, saying that he's a pawn of unfortunate influences and the culture is to blame. Calvin's dad responds that that means he needs to build more character and sends him to shovel the walk.
- Soapbox Sadie: Calvin is a mild example, in that he can get very passionate about various issues (usually environmental), but since his worldview is still that of a six-year-old, the narrative doesn't mind showing him to be just as naive as he is well-meaning. Also spoofed when Calvin retrieves a small, cardboard soap box to stand on so he can "harangue the multitudes."
- Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: Stupendous Man uses a giant magnifying glass from an observatory telescope in order to fry Calvin's school off the map. Calvin's mom doesn't believe him when he says that the school got fried, and still makes him do his math homework.
- Sold His Soul for a Donut: Calvin claims he sold his soul in exchange for a single snowball to hit Susie right in the kisser. He only says this after the fact, though.
- Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying:
- Calvin's mother once told him not to take Hobbes into a lake the family was camping by because "tigers don't swim very well". Cats Hate Water doesn't apply to tigers, but clearly Calvin's mom (who only sees Hobbes as being an inanimate stuffed animal) just didn't want Hobbes to get soaked.
- An In-Universe example in another strip which has Calvin describing bats as bugs, simply because they fly and they're ugly and hairy. Typically, everyone calls him out on it. Watterson stated he received far more information on bats in fan letters than he ever needed to know after this story arc.
- Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying: In one story arc, Calvin adds an earthworm to his insect collection because "worms are bugs". Earthworms are from a separate phylum (Annelida) than insects (Arthropoda). Entomologists may be spared some weeping by the fact that Calvin may not actually think worms are bugs; he's just desperate to fill out his collection with ANYTHING (he has only two actual insects; other items include the worm, a smashed spider, and "a piece of lint that looks like a bug") before class starts. At least it's better than in a later arc where he thinks bats are bugs (in this one Hobbes tries to point out Calvin's error early on, and as soon as Calvin starts reading his report in class the entire class yells in unison "Bats aren't bugs!"). Justified in both cases. Calvin is six years old and, while he is certainly intelligent, he doesn't pay attention in class unless it involves dinosaurs. It's not surprising that his understanding of entomology would be a mite unreliable.
- Son of an Ape: In one strip, Calvin asks whether Hobbes believes that humans evolved from apes. Hobbes' says that he doesn't because "I sure don't see any difference."
- Sophisticated as Hell: Calvin is a soft-PG example.
- Sore Loser:
- Because of huge ego, Calvin often throws huge tantrums when he fails, such as after losing a game of checkers. When Hobbes tells him that it's just a game, he cheerfully responds "I know. You should see me when I lose in real life!" And he was. When the traffic safety poster he designed for a school contest (which everyone but him knew would lose, given as it was a gory picture with the slogan "Be Careful or be Roadkill") lost to Susie, he claimed the contest was rigged.
- In the baseball arc, Calvin's teammates are like this when Calvin catches the ball when the other team was playing, even though he only got them out rather than make them outright lose. They denigrate him, with one of them even asking the coach if he could hit him with the bat.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Calvin's Dad works as a patent clerk in an office, and several strips shows him lamenting that he spends so much time working he doesn't have much left over to enjoy life. Usually, he's then exposed to what dealing with Calvin all day is like for his wife, and he goes to the office with a smile.
- Sound Defect: "Scientific progress goes 'boink'?" This became the title of one of the anthologies.
- Sounds of Science: "Scientific progress goes 'boink'?"
- Space Whale Aesop: One early story arc riffed on the traditional "scare tales" for children, namely "Don't make that face or it'll stick like that." After hearing that warning from his mother, Calvin was thrilled at the prospect of becoming a horrific freak. He only stopped making the face when he realized that people weren't as shocked as he'd hoped.
- Spelling Song: Played for Laughs because Calvin isn't actually good at spelling.
S... For Stupendous!
T... For Tiger, ferocity of!
U... For Underwear, red!
P... For Power, incredible!
E... For Excellent physique!
N... For... Um... Something... Hm, well, I'll come back to that...
D... For Determination!
U... For... Wait, how do you spell this? Is it "I"??
- Spin the Earth Backwards: Calvin did this as part of a Stupendous Man fantasy once, striking the Earth at a low angle to turn it backwards a full rotation so it'd be Saturday instead of Sunday, thereby giving himself an extra day to shirk off his homework.
- Splash of Color: The final strip places the brightly-colored title characters against a white snowscape with bare black trees.
- Spontaneous Human Combustion: Discussed in one strip, which has Calvin ask his dad whether this ever happens. When he says no, Calvin bursts a blown-up paper bag around the corner, asking whether he was fooled.
- Spoof Aesop: All over the place. The lesson Calvin learned about the snow goon incident was "Snow goons are bad news." He then lampshades that one with a comment to the effect that he prefers morals that don't actually suggest a change to his behavior.
- Splitting Pants: In one strip, when Calvin is on the swings, the bell rings signalling everyone that recess is over. As Calvin gets off the swing, his pants snag on the swing chain and rip open. He tries to hide it from everyone, but unfortunately, he's exposed when Miss Wormwood makes him come up to the front of the classroom to solve a math equation on the chalkboard. Although we never see it, apparently pandemonium ensued on a scale that resulted in class being cancelled.
- Spraying Drink from Nose: Calvin attempts to explain why something that happened at school was so funny, before ultimately admitting it was because it caused milk to shoot out of a kid's nose.
- Squirrels in My Pants: Subverted: Calvin actually had a hole in his pocket that some pennies dropped through.
Calvin: You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants.
Hobbes: Another reason not to wear 'em.
- Stable Time Loop: Shamelessly subverted: Calvin goes two hours forward to try to get an essay that he should have written assuming that he got it done, only to discover that his future self did the same thing two hours ago to no avail. Rather than giving up, they then decide to go back in time with the intention of beating up Calvin's self from somewhere in the middle for the same reason. While all this is worked out, past and future Hobbes both write a story about the whole time travel debacle, and it gets an A+.
- Stage Mom: Calvin once asked his father if he was attempting to live vicariously through Calvin to make up for his own failures in life. His father shot back that if he was, he'd be trying a lot harder. Calvin manages to deduce his father's disrespect.
- Staircase Tumble: Happened to Calvin in at least two strips; one where he turned into a Human Slinky, and another where the act of falling down one step is dramatized with the Ghost in the Machine, showing numerous tiny Calvins controlling Calvin bracing for impact.
- Standard '50s Father: Calvin's Dad looks a bit like one of these, wearing an outdated suit to his job as a patent attorney, and trying to present an image of stern discipline and authority to his son. He's also the Trope Namer for Misery Builds Character. He occasionally subverts it by making up bizarre Just So stories. For example, he tells Calvin that the reason that old movies were in black-and-white is that the world was black-and-white then and that the sun sets each night in Arizona, which is why the rocks there are so red. He also practices cycling as a hobby, with a few strips focusing on his escapades.
- Starfish Aliens: With Calvin's imagination? You bet. A lot of his aliens end up having rather human personalities, though.
- Stargazing Scene: Occasionally, Calvin and Hobbes contemplatively stare up into the starry night sky, using it to comment on mankind's place and overall insignificance in the universe.
- Start My Own: Hobbes departed (or was booted out of) G.R.O.S.S. and formed his own club, C.A.D. (Calvin's A Dope). It was a short-lived schism, since as soon as Susie showed up, Calvin was willing to make up with Hobbes so they could throw rotten apples at her.
Calvin: That's not a name for a club!
- Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: In the snow goon story arc, Calvin and Hobbes quietly creep out of the house in the middle of the night to ambush the snow goons as they're sleeping, but once they start spraying them with ice water, Calvin starts screaming bloody murder, waking his parents up.
- Stating the Simple Solution:
- Calvin is worried over Rosalyn coming over to babysit again, and unsure of how to handle it. Hobbes suggests that maybe they could try being good for a change. Calvin incredulously asks him to repeat that. Hobbes just says, "Nothing. Forget it."
- In another comic, Calvin is plotting out an elaborate plan to hit Susie, who is playing with her doll, with water balloons. Hobbes suggests that they just ambush her while she's sitting, to which Calvin says Hobbes lacks "an executive mind".
- Status Quo Is God: Since all of Calvin's adventures may or may not be occurring in his imagination, all of them end with his parents not noticing anything supernatural happening and Calvin back to his normal life at the end. On a more mundane note, Calvin also suffers intentionally from Aesop Amnesia; no matter how often his harebrained schemes get him into trouble, he'll deliberately avoid learning from his mistakes.
- Stealth Insult:
- Hobbes gets in a lot of these. One example, from a strip where Calvin made wings for himself out of construction paper:
Hobbes: If paper feathers are all it takes to fly, don't you think we'd have heard about it before?
Calvin: It takes an uncommon mind to think of these things, Hobbes.
Hobbes: I'd agree with that.
- And a more blatant example, after Calvin cannot find the marbles he'd been playing with:
Calvin: I've lost my marbles.
Hobbes: [with a huge grin] Everyone suspected as much.
Calvin: Well, I hope somebody finds them, then.
(Cut to nighttime, when both are in bed and the realization suddenly dawns on Calvin)Calvin: [angrily] HEY!
- The same joke, substituting an incomplete set of playing cards for marbles, is used in the next strip:
Calvin: I'm not playing with a full deck!
Hobbes: That's what some people say.
Calvin: Really? then why didn't someone just buy new cards? (cut to nighttime) HEY!!
- Stealth Parody: In-Universe. In one strip, Calvin builds a perfectly normal looking snowman, which surprises Hobbes, since Calvin was attempting avant-garde snow creations. Calvin states "it's secretly ironic".
- Sticky Situation:
- Stock "Yuck!":
- At Susie's birthday party, Calvin makes an offhand remark about how he hates it when "the birthday kid chooses something gross [for their cake] like coconut." Thankfully, it was chocolate... which Hobbes found out because he already ate some before Susie had even blown out the candles yet.
- Calvin refers to his dad's oatmeal as "pasty, bland, colorless sludge" while trying to get him to try his favorite cereal, Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs. Another has dad count a big bowl of plain oatmeal as part of the "crazy hedonism of weekends" to demonstrate his uptight stodginess.
- When there's a substitute named Mr. Kneecapper teaching class for a day, Calvin scares Susie by saying he heard that Mr. Kneecapper once took a boy out to the hall for talking in class and there were strange lumps in the cafeteria meatloaf that afternoon, which disgusts her. After she leaves, the last panel is him looking at the audience and gleefully saying, "Wait 'til she sees what's on today's lunch menu."
- Stop Copying Me: A few examples.
- When Calvin does it to Hobbes, he is stopped by Hobbes quoting from an incomprehensible philosophy text. (But first he tries insulting himself, and Calvin answers, "At least you have the courage to admit it.)
- When Calvin does it to his dad, his dad stops him by saying, "I forfeit all my desserts for a week." So Calvin accepts his dad's "forfeited" desserts.
- Story Arc: One of the regular features of the strip, to the point where there were probably more of them during its run than there were one-shot gags.
- Straw Nihilist:
- Calvin has some moments like this: "The problem with people is that they don't look at the big picture. Eventually, we're each going to die, our species will go extinct, the Sun will explode, and the Universe will collapse. Existence isn't only temporary, it's pointless! We're all doomed, and worse, nothing matters!" Of course, he's using this as an excuse to not do his homework.
- Hobbes can usually be counted on to issue a retort to these grumblings:
- Street Smart: Parodied in a very early strip, where Moe the bully is said to be "streetwise".
Calvin: That means he knows what street he lives on.
- The Strength of Ten Men: Calvin claims that his alter ego, Stupendous Man, has the strength of a million mortal men... of course, this is all in Calvin's mind, so in real life, not so much.
- Stuffed into a Locker:
- In one story arc, Calvin shuts himself into his own locker to change into his Stupendous Man costume, and manages to get stuck until his teacher lets him out (and is clearly surprised at his change of appearance).
- In a one-off strip, Calvin got shoved into a locker by Moe. As in, Moe literally plowed his head into the metal door of the locker.
- Stunned Silence: Calvin's dad, typically in response to one of Calvin's questions. The best one: "Why do you live here with Mom instead of in an apartment with a number of scantily clad female roommates?"
- Stupidity-Inducing Attack: During show-and-tell, Calvin claims to have invented one of these- and it's invisible too.
Calvin: I have in my hand an invisible cretinizer! One shot renders the victim a babbling simp, a dolt, an utter moron!
Ronald: OH SURE, CALVIN! GIVE US A BREAK!
Calvin: As Ronald proves, it's quite effective even at long range.
Ronald: HEY!
- Stylistic Self-Parody:
- Stylistic Suck: The comics Calvin reads generally come off as ultraviolent shlock.
- Stylized for the Viewer: Hobbes appears as a Funny Animal in panels from Calvin's point-of-view, but a stuffed toy to everyone else. Whether Hobbes only comes to life when he's alone with Calvin or is Invisible to Normals is left for the reader to decide, and is one of the reasons given by Bill Watterson for not allowing merchandising or adaptations.
- Suckiness Is Painful: At least in Calvin's mind, in which his parents' cooking is portrayed as inedible sludge at best and small-scale Eldritch Abominations at worst.
- Sudden Eye Colour: Most characters are normally portrayed with Black Bead Eyes, but sometimes, if angered or surprised, they'll have visible whites and irises. This most often happens to Calvin, usually (and inconsistently) giving him either blue or green irises.
- Suddenly Shouting: "For the next sixty seconds, I will conduct a test of my emergency broadcast equipment. AAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
- Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology: Calvin's treasured cardboard box could be used (depending on its orientation) to transmogrify any creature into any other, duplicate a living thing, or even travel in time. Of course, these advances may have been all in Calvin's imagination...
- Suicide as Comedy:
- In one story arc where Calvin accidentally breaks his dad's expensive binoculars, he asks Hobbes whether he should commit hara-kiri or run away from home. Hobbes suggests both.
- In another story arc where Calvin accidentally floods the bathroom, he starts looking for cyanide in the medicine cabinet to avoid having to face his parents' wrath.
- A few times, Calvin's grotesque snow creations include a suicidal snowman, such as a snowman killing himself with a hot water bottle on his head, a snowman about to jump from the roof, and a snowman about to hang himself.
- Summer Campy: Surprisingly averted in the early strips where Calvin was in the Cub Scouts, which had none of usual mishaps of the Horrible Camping Trip story arcs later in the comic strip. Any misfortunes that actually occurred were minor and always Calvin's own fault.
- Sunday Strip: After doing normal Sunday strips for the first few years of the series ("normal" meaning in this case that they were designed so that the first two or three panels could be left off at the discretion of individual page editors without changing too much,) Watterson negotiated the right to lay out his Sunday strips however he wanted. This resulted in unique strips, such as some with only three panels (an inset in the top left, the joke itself as a panorama, and a small punchline in the bottom right, like the "Tyrannosaurs in F-14s" strip mentioned above and some strips with dozens of panels.
- Superhero Episode: The various Stupendous Man strips which appear from time to time. Some of these are purely Imagine Spots, while others have Calvin actually putting on a costume and acting it out.
- Superheroes Wear Capes:
- Calvin and Hobbes presents: "This is a job for..."
- Outside of the above example, one of Calvin's alter-egos, Stupendous Man, also wears a cape.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Played for Drama when Calvin joins the baseball team. In a more conventional strip, Calvin would've practiced until he was a champion, then scored for his team. Instead, he gets hit in the nose with a grounder when he tries playing with his dad, then, when he actually plays for the team, he ends up making them lose (due to them not bothering to tell him that they're switching places), causing them to harshly yell at him. Then, when an unrelenting stream of abuse makes him quit, the coach calls him a "quitter".
- One strip has Calvin's dad grocery-shopping, only for him to go on a loud tirade about the numerous choices of peanut butter for sale. The last panel shows the family outside, with Calvin's mom asking Dad if the manager had to talk to him "again," implying that not only has Dad done this before, but he at least got a stern lecture about making a scene, if not just kicked out of the store. Oh, and he never got the peanut butter.
- Super-Speed Reading:
- Surprise Jump:
- Calvin pulls this off on Hobbes once with a Jump Scare, when he snuck in through the back door and found Hobbes waiting to pounce on him when he normally comes through the front. Hobbes tore Calvin a new one for pulling that prank on him though.
- In another strip, Hobbes was able to sneak up right before Calvin before sending him shooting up into the sky and right out of his clothes with a simple "ahem". Calvin laments his hatred of Hobbes' ability to retract his claws for soft footfalls.
- Surrogate Soliloquy: In the raccoon story arc, Calvin's mom uses Hobbes (in his normal stuffed animal form) to express her doubts about the little raccoon Calvin found making it. She then lampshades it by saying "...you can tell I'm upset when I start talking to you..."
- Switched at Birth: Calvin's dad has more than once commented about how he's certain that some nurse switched the bassinets. His wife sarcastically replies he take her word for it that's Calvin's theirs.
- Symbol Swearing: Used exactly once, when Calvin spells "be" in Scrabble and is frustrated that it's only worth two points. Later strips also established Calvin doesn't actually know any swear words.
- Take a Third Option: One strip shows our heroes on their way back home with Calvin's parents after Dad bought them ice cream. Calvin is towing Hobbes in the wagon, but wants to trade places and have Hobbes pull him. They both refuse to pull the wagon and get into a big argument. The strip ends with both our heroes riding in the wagon being pulled by Dad.
Dad: Why do these "walks" always end up as "rides?"
Mom: Oh, you need the exercise more anyway.
- Take Me to Your Leader: In one of the last story arcs, Calvin encounters two aliens who demand to be taken to "the Supreme Earth Potentate". Calvin, to Hobbes' shock, tells the aliens that they're speaking to the one. The aliens are gullible enough to believe it.
- Take Our Word for It: Calvin's favorite bedtime story, "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie." As Bill Watterson explains in the comic's 10th anniversary book, "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie (like the Noodle Incident I've referred to in several strips) is best left to the reader's imagination, where it's sure to be more outrageous."
- Take That!:
- Bill Watterson has used Calvin and Hobbes to mock modern art, art criticism, and superhero comic books. Either Calvin uses phrases copied verbatim from art journals to describe his snow men, or his breathless praises of comic books as an art form are interrupted by comments like: "Oh no, Captain Steroid's getting his kidneys punched out with an I-beam!" Watterson's career peaked during The Dark Age of Comic Books, which likely influenced his opinions quite a bit, but as to why he didn't seek out fellow "comics can be art" proponents such as Dave Sim and Scott McCloud and join up with the Graphic Novel movement is a mystery.
- Watterson directed a few Take Thats at Garfield creator Jim Davis over the years. In a rare 1987 interview, he harshly condemned Davis' comic strip U.S. Acres, calling it stupid and badly done. In The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, Watterson extensively discusses why he hates merchandising, and how it robs a comic strip of its heart and soul. He even writes about how a cartoonist risks becoming a "factory foreman," remarking on how he went into cartooning "to draw cartoons, not to run a corporate empire." He disgustedly remarks on how he would have sold out his own creation if he'd done this. Given the context, it was pretty clear who he was talking about. Granted, since Jim Davis stated that he created Garfield for the purpose of making money, and probably didn't intend there to be much of that deeper significance in which Watterson puts so much stock, it's unlikely that Watterson would have liked it anyway.
- Bill Watterson's foreword to Bill Amend's first FoxTrot book is an extended take that against Jim Davis. For example, Watterson champions Quincy the Iguana for not thinking "the cute thoughts that quickly get most comic strip animals in the greeting card business."
- Watterson had Calvin reading from Chewing, a magazine that rated chewing gums in excruciating detail (e.g., "[T]he top five brands of chewing gum based on flavor retention, elasticity, bubble capacity, and chewing rebound,") offered advice for chewing it, and otherwise was a spot-on parody of every review mag. Specifically, Watterson based Chewing off a lot of bicycling magazines he'd read.
- Watterson made several strips with subtle jabs at his editors and the syndication people. In "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes", Watterson writes that the heavy pressure from the syndicate to do merchandising (greeting cards and Hobbes plush dolls and such), and his categorical refusal to allow this, played no small part in his decision to end the strip in 1995.
- There is a Take That related to Calvin and Hobbes, although not in the strip itself. For strips in Bloom County that parodied cartoon cats that featured characters such as Garfield and Hobbes, Bill Watterson retaliated hilariously with this comic◊. In response Berkeley Breathed said this:
"I have committed other thefts with a clean and unfettered conscience. Garfield was too calculated and too successful not to freely raid for illicit character cameos. Calvin and Hobbes was too good not to. Calvin creator Bill Watterson took these thefts in stride and retaliated in private with devastatingly effective illustrated salvos, hitting me in my most vulnerable places. Bill's sketch is an editorial comment on my addiction to the expensive sport of power boating and the moral compromises needed to fund it. That's me doing the kicking. The chap on the dock represents my cartoon syndicate boss, which says it all, methinks."
- In one comic Calvin talks about wanting to be a talk radio host. It ends with him saying "Imagine getting paid to act like a six-year-old!" The strip in question was published in 1994, right around when Rush Limbaugh was first beginning to attract a wide audience.
- Watterson has very choice words about his disdain for "graphic novels" in the collection books. Given what Watterson says about the term "graphic novel" in the Tenth Anniversary Book, it's possible he had a very cynical viewpoint of the term and had his impressions of comic books too colored by the contemporary examples he had in front of him to listen to anyone talking about it being a legitimate art form.
- In one strip, he also took a jab at comic book collectors of the time, which eventually became vindicated by the comic industry crash of the mid-90's, which was in part caused by the oversaturation of the market with worthless "collectors" comics.
- Watterson makes it clear in the collection books that the appeal of sports is completely lost on him, which is also best summed up by the cruel treatment Calvin goes through during the baseball arc.
- Taking the Bullet: Played for Laughs in one strip where Calvin pretends to be Superman, jumping up and blocking a bullet for his dad. His dad is of course totally confused by the act.
- The Talk: Subverted; whenever Calvin asks his dad where babies come from, his dad always messes with him, coming up with ridiculous answers, such as him being dropped down the chimney by a pterodactyl (Calvin thinks that's cool), or a construction kit that was bought on sale. Calvin is only six years old. "Mostly they come from Sears, but you were a blue-light special at K-Mart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper!"
- Talking Heads: in one strip, Watterson complains about the prevalence of this in Newspaper Comics. (Because it's Watterson, the strip's art is identical in all four panels, and the character who brings it up is Calvin's curmudgeonly grandfather.)
- Talking in Your Sleep:
- In a strip, Calvin overhears Hobbes saying in his sleep: "Oh yes, I'm VERY fond of Calvin. ...pass the gravy, please." Calvin decides to let Hobbes have the covers and be cold for the night.
- In another strip, Calvin says that he likes to mess with Hobbes's dreams. He holds a cookie under Hobbes's nose while he's sleeping, and sure enough, Hobbes starts mumbling about cookies.
- In another strip, Calvin asks a sleeping Hobbes what he's dreaming about, and Hobbes mumbles, "I'm going to pounce on Calvin," giggling. Calvin screams, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, CALVIN!", scaring Hobbes awake, who then proceeds to furiously chase Calvin.
- Talking Is a Free Action: All of Calvin's fantasies are narrated by himself out loud and no-one else in them notice or care. Calvin is also able to casually continue on long monologues even as he and Hobbes are free-falling off a cliff.
- Tank Goodness: One of Calvin's daydreams has him doodle a tank on his homework and blow up his school and his classmates. His rampage ends when Miss Wormwood shows up, takes away his paper and gives him detention (in the doodle she's a giant monster that is strong enough to resist the tank's cannon fire).
- The Tape Knew You Would Say That: In one story arc, Susie asks Calvin to pass a note to a classmate, telling him not to read it because it's a secret note. He reads it anyway; the note says, "Calvin you stinkhead: I told you not to read this." Of course, this makes it look like Susie did this For the Lulz. It certainly wouldn't make much sense if Calvin just passed the note. But even this is addressed in the next strip, where Calvin immediately tells the teacher about the next note Susie passes him. What does the note say? "You know what I hate about Calvin? He's a tattler!"
- Tarzan Boy: In one strip, Calvin declares himself to be Wonga-Taa, King of the Jungle◊, after getting fed up with Suzie's make-believe dinner, and runs off in underpants to find Hobbes. He has also pretended to be Tarzan a few◊ times◊.
- Tastes Better Than It Looks:
- In a strip:
- On some occasions, Calvin's mom jokes that she's made something over-the-top disgusting for dinner, like fried monkey heads or spider pie. Invariably, this intrigues Calvin enough that he tries it with an open mind and actually likes it, but Calvin's dad gets grossed out and can't finish his meal.
- Teachers Out of School: At one point Calvin's mom mentions seeing his teacher Ms. Wormwood at the supermarket. Calvin remarks that he just kind of assumed that teachers slept in coffins all summer.
- Teasing the Substitute Teacher: Implied in one early story arc where Calvin's normal homeroom teacher, Miss Wormwood, is sick. Although we never actually see what happens, Calvin mentions to Hobbes after school "she went home at noon". It's left to the reader's imagination what could have possibly happened to her.
- Technical Euphemism: Calvin sometimes uses overly-sophisticated vocabulary to get away with insulting Moe. Being the Dumb Muscle, it usually flies over his head. An example of which is when Calvin tells him that his "simian countenance suggests a heritage rich in species diversity" to imply that he looks like an ape.
- Technically a Smile: Calvin does a grotesquely awful/hilarious one for a photograph. Calvin's dad is furious, but Calvin says it was a smile enough (so he doesn't have to take any more photos).
- Technology Marches On: Referenced In-Universe, in one strip where Calvin says that advancing technology has made mathematics increasingly simple, so therefore, they should just leave math equations to technology and cancel class. His teacher, obviously enough, doesn't agree.
Calvin: Miss Wormwood, my dad says when he was in school, they taught him to do math on a slide rule. He says he hasn't used a slide rule since, because he got a five-buck calculator that can do more functions than he could figure out if his life depended on it. Given the pace of technology, I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside.
- Technophobia: Calvin's dad repeatedly makes his disdain for modern technology clear, especially where television and computers are involved. Note that he's a patent attorney.
Hobbes: Your dad's going into the future kicking and screaming, isn't he?
- The Tell: In one strip where the two are playing poker, Hobbes' poker face is great but his tail begins flicking in excitement when he gets his hand, leading to Calvin folding and Hobbes accusing him of cheating.
- Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: One camping trip leads the family to get rained on for an entire week. The last strip of the arc consists of Calvin's Dad trying to rationalize the trip on the ride home, but Calvin's Mom is so angry she isn't speaking to him. Calvin, of course, is happy to pass on the message.
Calvin's Mom: Calvin, tell your father that any judge would take this trip as grounds for divorce.
Calvin: Dad, Mom says...
Calvin's Dad: All right, all right, I get it!
- Temporal Duplication: One arc that involves Calvin trying to get out of doing his homework has him use his time machine at 6:30 PM and jump two hours ahead (along with Hobbes) to pick up the finished paper. Naturally, 8:30 PM Calvin doesn't have anything because two hours prior he went to the future instead of writing it. 6:30 and 8:30 decide that it must be 7:30 Calvin's fault and go to him to demand the paper, but he weasels out of it by pointing out that any pain inflicted on him will be shared by 8:30 Calvin. 6:30 and 8:30 Calvin return to 8:30 to find that both their respective times' Hobbes have collaboratively written the paper (which, much to Calvin's horror, is about how silly the whole thing is, although he did get an A+).
- Temporal Paradox: Unsuccessfully invoked and thereby subverted in one story arc. Calvin tries to travel two hours into the future so that he won't have to write the story they're supposed to be writing for school. But the future Calvin doesn't have it, because he was to busy time travelling to the future to actually write it. Then they both travel to one hour ago because they decide that that Calvin should have written it... but he refuses on the grounds that whatever they threaten to do to him, they'll be doing it to themselves. In the end, the two Calvins return to the future empty-handed, only two find that the two Hobbeses have written the story for them. When Calvin starts reading it out loud at school, it turns out to be a story about his foolish time-travel while the tiger(s) save(s) the day.
- Tempting Cookie Jar: A natural Running Gag. One strip in particular depicted a giraffe using its tall frame to reach the tastiest leaves on the treetops... the scenario being an Imagine Spot and the punchline being Calvin using stilts to reach the cookie jar on top of the fridge.
- Tempting Fate:
- Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Nearly all of Calvin's dinosaur fantasies involve imagining himself as the mighty predatory animal that has ever lived in his eyes, the Tyrannosaurus rex, where it's nearly always shown in a Curb-Stomp Battle with some prey dinosaur (at least until in-universe Reality Subtext kicks in) and then roaring triumphantly.
- That Cloud Looks Like...:
- That's No Moon: In two Spaceman Spiff stories, he observes the peculiarity of a planet's landscape only to find it's actually some gargantuan resting alien (in reality, his dad sleeping in bed).
- Thermostat Tamper Tantrum: Calvin is constantly forbidden from turning up the thermostat during the winter, with his parents insisting that he just wear extra layers of clothes if he's that cold.
- Third-Party Deal Breaker: In the strips for the week of 17 May 1996, Calvin's mom happens upon him about to eat worms in exchange for Susie's nickel. Calvin's mom drags him home, telling Susie that it's mean to take advantage of kids who lack sense. Calvin complains loudly... and then thanks her once they're away from Susie, since he was originally just trying to gross Susie out and got outsmarted.
- Thought-Aversion Failure:
- In one story arc, Calvin's mom tells him to stop thinking about the monsters under the bed and they'll go away. Whether or not it actually works is unclear, because it's sort of difficult for Calvin to not think about a horrible man-eating creature under the bed he's sleeping on.
Calvin: Mom wants me to try an experiment tonight. She says the monsters under my bed may need me to think about them to exist. Her theory is that if I just don't think about them, they'll go away.
Hobbes: ...of course, that idea of being dragged under the bed and devoured by monsters has a way of gripping the mind.
Calvin: And it's not like Mom and Dad go away when I stop thinking about them.
- Occurs in another strip where a bee lands on Calvin and Hobbes, never unhelpfully, tells him not to imagine a worst case scenario.
Hobbes: A bee landed on your back!
Calvin: A bee?! Acckk! Get it away!
Hobbes: Don't move, and it won't sting you. Just stand still and try not to imagine that it might very well crawl down your shirt and into your pants!
(Calvin jumps into the air, screaming)
Hobbes: He imagined it.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Calvin often has to battle with the monsters under his bed, never fully depicted but often shown as alien, tentacled... things; one of the comic's strip collections is even titled Something Under the Bed Is Drooling. Luckily, they're also not very smart; they'll leave Calvin alone if he leaves garbage under the bed for them to eat — much to his parents' chagrin — and their poor bluffing caused their ambushes to fail on two separate occasions. The collection The Essential Calvin and Hobbes contains an original poem (with some fantastic, if terrifying, illustrations) called "A Nauseous Nocturne," about such a monster attacking Calvin at night, but then getting scared away by a sleeping Hobbes.
Suddenly the monster knows I'm not alone! There's an animal in bed with me! An awful beast he did not see! The monster never would have come if he had known!
- Third-Person Person: Most of Calvin's alter-egos would narrate their own adventures in the third person (and in present tense,) Tracer Bullet being the exception.
- "Also, Calvin the Bold will now refer to himself in the third person."
- This Is Gonna Suck:
- When Calvin's mom asks him to take his hat (which he's wearing to hide his botched haircut from Hobbes) off at the dinner table, he rolls his eyes and thinks, "Here comes the hurricane."
- Happens twice during the formation of the Get Rid Of Slimy girlS club.
- When the duo tries to push the family car out of the garage to make room for their club, Calvin insists they don't ask for Mom's help because he doesn't want to bother her. When the car starts rolling toward the road, Hobbes' response is "I think your mom's going to be bothered."
- When the car rolls across a busy road and into a ditch on the other side, Hobbes is visibly relieved that it didn't hit any other cars... while Calvin's response is just a horrified "Hooray, we're dead."
- This Is My Side:
- One arc has Calvin deciding to become a tiger, then finding out that tigers are territorial. He uses a boulder to define the boundary between his and Hobbes' territory, then brags about how much better his side is. Hobbes then rolls the boulder over toward Calvin and declares that "your side is smaller."
- Calvin and Hobbes bickered in the back seat of Calvin's parents' car once.
- They once had divided parts in Calvin's bed, with a demilitarized zone in the middle. Although of course they immediately got into an argument over how the space was divided up.
- Threat Backfire:
- Calvin's mom once told him the all-too-common parental threat that making faces too often would cause his face to freeze that way. She should have known better than to try that with Calvin. It actually encouraged him to do it more. Ironically, Susie telling Calvin his ugly face was actually an improvement got him to give it up.
- Calvin wonders what Hobbes would do if Calvin threw a water balloon at him. Hobbes tells him to think of the worst thing he can imagine, then imagine something a hundred times worse. Calvin says, "You'd do that?" and Hobbes says no, he'd do something even worse. Calvin soaks him with the water balloon anyway, explaining, "He piqued my curiosity."
- Three Wishes: During one of their wagon rides, Calvin asks Hobbes that if he were given three wishes for anything he wanted, what he would wish for. Hobbes has trouble of thinking of what he'd wish for... until the wagon (once again) goes over a cliff.
Calvin: Oops! Hang on.
Hobbes: Ok, I know what my first wish would be.
- Throat-Slitting Gesture: As Calvin's parents are going out for the night, leaving Calvin alone with Rosalyn, his dad makes the gesture so he knows to behave. He ultimately doesn't.
- Thunder Equals Downpour: In the first camping arc, Calvin's parents paddle towards the island where they plan to set up the campsite. The third panel of the strip has the word "BOOM!" and everyone looking up towards the sky. Cue soaking rain in the fourth panel.
- Tickertape Parade: In one comic, Calvin has an Imagine Spot where he's thrown a tickertape parade for getting an A in class.
- Tied-Together-Shoelace Trip: In one strip Hobbes tells Calvin about this idea for a prank, Calvin thinks it's a great idea and decides to go off to pull it on some "sucker", only to fall over on his face when it's revealed Hobbes had already tied Calvin's shoes together by the laces. The last panel shows Calvin, with his shoes still tied together, hopping after Hobbes in a rage.
- Tied Up on the Phone: In one strip, Calvin is walking in the forest with a rotary dial telephone, prompting Hobbes why he has a telephone with it. He's very unamused when Calvin tells him he's trying out "bird calls", and the last panel shows Calvin with the phone's cord wrapped around his head several times and the receiver stuffed in his mouth.
- Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: All of the 'time-travel' arcs.
- Time Is Dangerous: In a strip from the first time machine story arc, the dangers of using a cardboard time machine are discussed. It also foreshadows how they end up accidentally going back in time rather than forward.
Hobbes: Why do we have to wear goggles?
Calvin: Geez, do you think travelling years into the future
is like driving down the street?! We've got to contend with
vortexes and
light speeds! Anything could go wrong! Of course we have to wear goggles!
Hobbes: Gosh, I think my goggles are in the bedroom. If I'm not back in a couple minutes, you can go without me.
- Time Travel for Fun and Profit:
- The second time Calvin uses his time machine, he goes to the Jurassic to take pictures of real dinosaurs and sell them in the present. His parents, however, just see pictures of plastic toys.
- And the first time he used it, he planned on swiping something from the future and patenting it, but he accidentally went the opposite direction in the time stream.
- And in another, he had to write a paper at 6:30 but didn't feel like doing it, so he went two hours into the future to pick up the completed paper. Except, of course, that there wasn't a paper at 8:30 since two hours ago he went to the future instead of writing it. 6:30 and 8:30 Calvins rationally decide it's 7:30 Calvin's fault and go see him, but of course he's no closer to writing it (and when 6:30 threatens to punch him, 7:30 points out 8:30 is going to feel it too). Fortunately 6:30 and 8:30 Hobbeses wrote the paper, a write-up of that evening's adventures narrated by Hobbes. Calvin ended up (according to him) looking like a lunatic in front of the class, but it got him an A+.
- Time Traveler's Dinosaur: The first time the duo use Calvin's cardboard box time machine, they try to travel to the future but accidentally wind up in prehistoric times instead. They only realize their mistake when they notice a sauropod is watching them, at which point they panic and rush back to their own time. Then in a follow-up story arc, Calvin and Hobbes deliberately travel back to the Cretaceous so they can take photos of dinosaurs and get rich selling them. They encounter an Allosaurus and barely escape getting eaten.
- Tin-Can Robot: Calvin once tries building a robot using a tin can for the head. Unfortunately, since he's just a six-year old with no engineering or robotics knowledge, he doesn't know how to make one that does anything.
- Title Drop: The anthology Yukon Ho! is named after a lyric from The Yukon Song which opens the book.
- Title Drop Anthology: The majority of the non-"The [Adjectival] Calvin & Hobbes" collections are named after a particular line from a strip that's contained within the book.
- Title: The Adaptation: Calvin is given a homework assignment in which he has to write a paragraph on what his father does. He titles it "Dad: The Paragraph."
"What does my dad do? Mostly he gets on my nerves. The end."
- Toilet Paper Prank: Calvin remarks on his dad's enjoyment of Halloween. It turns out he likes to "sit in the bushes with the hose and drench potential tp'ers."
- The Tokyo Fireball: Spoofed in an early strip. Calvin builds a small city in his sandbox and calls it "downtown Tokyo". Then he stomps the whole thing flat while making loud growling sounds.
- Toll Booth Antics. Played with in one strip, where Calvin stands at the garage door, declaring it a tool booth when his dad gets home. Calvin then declares an ultimatum - pay 25 cents or he'll close the garage door on the car. He gets sent to his room, decrying "what a cheapskate."
- Tomato in the Mirror: In an strip, back when Calvin was in Cub Scouts, Calvin notes to Hobbes of all the wildlife you can see out in the woods. He then points and says, "Look! A tiger!" causing Hobbes to jump in fear, before realizing Calvin was referring to him. He then shouts to Calvin, "Don't do that!"
- Tongue-Out Insult:
- The six-year-old Calvin sometimes sticks his tongue out to insult people. His ambiguously-real friend/stuffed tiger Hobbes also likes it. Both tend to combine it with Blowing a Raspberry.
- In one Sunday strip, Calvin dreams that Santa Claus one day decides to reward naughty kids instead of nice kids. This version of Santa tells Calvin to "stick your tongue out at your Dad if he scolds."
- In this strip, Calvin sees a cloud that looks like him sticking his tongue out to insult someone. It makes him remark, "Boy, there's nothing worse than an inscrutable omen."
- Too Dumb to Live: Day after day, Calvin would announce his return from school at the front door with a loud "I'M HO-OME!" ...Only to realize too late (if he remembered at all) that this was always the signal for Hobbes to violently pounce on him. (The few times he tried to change the outcome, his plan would either not work or would backfire in a horribly unexpected way.)
- Except for one time, Calvin yells "I'm home!" before opening the door. Hobbes instinctively jumps and crashes his head into the door. Calvin happily walks in without injury.
- That's light compared to Calvin's other bone-headed stunts. He once tried to fly with construction paper feathers taped to his arms and had Hobbes throw him off a cliff, where he crashed PAINFULLY. Next he jumped out of his bedroom window using a bed sheet as a make-shift parachute thinking he'll float down. He doesn't, and falls like a rock, right onto ROSE BUSHES. Another time, Calvin attempted to bungee jump from his window until his mom stopped him. From the panel, the cord he used was much too long, so Calvin would've really gotten killed if his mom didn't stop him in time.
- Too Fast to Stop:
- A strip has Calvin roller-skating down a hill and not knowing how to stop. Of course, taking that suggestion from Hobbes about steering into a gravel driveway isn't all that helpful.
- Calvin and Hobbes did this sort of thing all the time — with sleds by winter and a red wagon by summer. It usually provides an action backdrop to avoid "talking heads" in a deeply philosophical discussion... And the inevitable crash at the end provides a nice counterpoint. On a few memorable occasions, the entire discussion is about the impending crash.
- On one occasion, the cart ride would have been a perfect metaphor for their conversation about life... but they don't quite realize it.
- Too Much Alike: Taken to an extreme when Calvin completely clashes with his duplicate, simply because he's exactly like him.
- To Serve Man:
- Spaceman Spiff sometimes views aliens as this. One time he finds out that a certain planet's McZargald's has served over 75 million Earthlingburgers.
- "Goldilocks and the Three Tigers", a story Hobbes wrote, ends with the tigers eating Goldilocks.
Dad (reading Hobbes' story): "The tigers quickly divided Goldilocks into big, medium, and small pieces and dunked them in the porridge—" I'm not finishing this, it's disgusting! Good night!
Calvin: He didn't even look at our illustrations.
Hobbes: Now I'm all hungry.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Hobbes puts Calvin's head in his mouth, but spits him out, claiming he tastes terrible. This is also a Running Gag for every person he "eats". Except for Tommy Chestnut, who apparently did taste awful, but was eaten anyway.
- Tooth Fairy: In one strip, Calvin plans to fool the Tooth Fairy with a large number of decoy teeth. When Hobbes questions if she'll catch on due to the number, Calvin says a being that prefers an old tooth to a quarter can't be too smart. Another strip has Calvin try and trick the Tooth Fairy by putting corn kernels under his pillow.
- Torment by Annoyance: In one story arc, the titular duo are in the car with Calvin's parents, driving to a campsite. At one point, Dad, who's driving, asks Calvin what he wants to eat, to which Calvin replies with hamburgers. His dad gets irritated, due to the fact that that's all they've eaten so far. Calvin then starts singing "TEN MILLION BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL, TEN MILLION BOTTLES OF BEER", causing his dad to angrily point out that they're close to a place that serves hamburgers and asking him if he's happy.
- Tormented Teacher: Miss Wormwood is so put upon by the daily antics of Calvin (including the Trope Naming Noodle Incident) that she has taken to drinking Maalox straight from the bottle (to Calvin's visible disgust). Calvin also notes, rather pleased with himself, that it's rumored that Miss Wormwood is "up to two packs a day, unfiltered."
- Torso with a View:
- Torture Is Ineffective: In one Spaceman Spiff Imagine Spot, Spiff is captured by Muck Monsters who take him to their dungeon to extract information from their uncooperative captive. Spiff boasts that he is impervious to pain, but it turns out they have something much worse in mind for him than physical torture...
Spaceman Spiff: Hey, what kind of dungeon is this?! Aren't you going to torture me?
Yukbarf Alien: Oh yes! Have a seat and let's see how you withstand a calm discussion of wholesome principles!
(Cutting Back to Reality)Calvin: AAAUGH!
Calvin's Dad: Yes, life is tough and suffering builds character. Nothing worth having ever comes easy. Virtue is its own reward. And when I was your age...
- Totally Radical: Both averted and parodied in a strip wherein Calvin made up his own slang, just to prove to his dad that it was possible. The father replied with some old hippie slang.
Calvin: Don't you think that's totally spam? It's lubricated! Well, I'm phasing.
Dad: Marvy. Fab. Far out.
- Totem Pole Trench: They try this to sneak into a movie theater on their own. With Hobbes as the head, leading the ticket lady to say "This is a new one."
- To the Batpole!: Calvin once tried to convince his mother to set out his clothes for the day and breakfast on the stairs so that he could be ready for school simply by falling down the stairs and he wouldn't have to get up so early. He failed.
- Tough Room: This is common in the comic strip. There are times when you wonder if the two title characters are the only people with imagination or a sense of humour in the entire town. One of the more obvious examples is Calvin's mom's comment on how people are moving out of the neighborhood because they find Calvin's snowmen disgusting. In real life, the sheer amount of creativity and work Calvin puts in them would net the area frequent visitors every winter and probably attract some attention in the media about a kid with such artistic talent.
- Touché: One Sunday strip had Miss Wormwood giving a geography lesson and interrupt Calvin's daydreaming to ask him what state he was in. When he answers with "denial," she admits she can't argue with that, and Calvin goes back to his daydream.
- Toxic Waste Can Do Anything:
- Referenced in a comic where Calvin's dad gets him to eat his Mom's cooking by telling him that it is "toxic waste that will turn [him] into a mutant".
- Averted in one strip where Calvin and Hobbes were playing with toys in the sandbox. Calvin narrates a situation where improperly buried nuclear toxic waste seeps into the groundwater, causing the cancer rate of a nearby town to triple. Hobbes is disturbed and leaves to hide under the bed.
- Trademark Favorite Food:
- Hobbes loves tuna, particularly in sandwich form, changed to salmon in later strips, while Calvin likes Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
- Mom loves coffee, and it's implied that Dad likes healthy food such as plain oatmeal, for its benefits if not for its taste.
- Trailer Park Tornado Magnet: In one strip where Calvin pretends to be a tornado while messing up his room, the narration reads "The twister searches for a trailer park! Finding one, it touches down!"
- Train Problem:
- Calvin's method for answering a question of this sort at school is to turn it into a Film Noir detective mystery in his head. It doesn't quite work, as the answer he comes up with is "a billion". In his defense, Calvin is six, and shouldn't have to tackle that kind of problem anyway.
- He gets another variant of the problem later, this time with two cars driving down the highway at 5PM. After thinking about the problem for a few seconds, he simply says, "Given the traffic at that hour, who knows?" To be fair, he's not exactly wrong.
- Transformation Ray: The transmogrifier gun works by shooting a narrow beam that transforms whatever it hits into whatever the shooter is thinking of.
- Trapped at the Dinner Table: In one strip, we see how much work it takes for Calvin's mom to make dinner. Calvin takes one look at the dish, declares it absolutely putrid, and refuses to touch it. The last panel shows him still sitting at the table late into the night.
- Trauma Swing: Calvin once did this at school recess after the bully made him give up his toy truck. There's some Lampshade Hanging from another boy next to him: "Hey, kid, are you going to use that swing or what?"
- Tree Cover: Calvin does this a lot, mostly to Susie, while he's sneaking up to throw water balloons or snowballs at her as she's walking down the sidewalk.
- Treehouse of Fun: Calvin and Hobbes hold their G.R.O.S.S. meetings in a simple treehouse consisting of essentially a wooden box. One strip has Calvin telling Hobbes that his mom said that if he stayed up in the treehouse for a minimum numbers of hours every week, she wouldn't sign him up for classes in the summer.
- T. Rexpy: While Calvin usually sticks to fantasizing about Tyrannosaurus rex itself, one strip shows him imagining a dinosaur species named Calvinosaurus, a kaiju-sized sauropod-eating superpredator that resembles a comically outsized T. rex, though with brow ridges and three-fingered hands more similar to Allosaurus.
- Trial Balloon Question:
Calvin: Do you love me, Dad?
Dad: Of course I do Calvin.
Calvin: Would you still love me if I did something bad?
Dad: Well, of course... I... would...
Calvin: I mean something really, really...
Dad: CALVIN, WHAT DID YOU DO?!
- Triangle Shades: One Sunday comic has Calvin asking his mom to buy him a pair of green triangular sunglasses, but unfortunately for him, she adamantly refuses and demands he put them back.
Calvin: Mom says no way.
Hobbes: Grown-ups have no taste.
- Trojan Veggies: Because Calvin is an extremely picky eater, his parents lying about the ingredients of dinner to get him interested in eating it is a Running Gag.
- Troll: Calvin has been known to do things solely to irritate his parents. Then again, he is six.
Calvin: I got the new album by Scrambled Debutante. All their songs glorify depraved violence, mindless sex, and the deliberate abuse of dangerous drugs.
Hobbes: Your mom's going to go into conniptions when she sees this lying around.
Calvin: [throwing the record in the trash] Well, I sure didn't buy it for the music...
- Tropey, Come Home: Happened twice to Hobbes, although he's only animate from Calvin's point-of-view, so to everyone else, it looks like a case of Lost Toy Grievance.
- In the 'Yukon Ho!' story arc, Hobbes gets lost in the woods, and Calvin's parents have to go look for him at night. Calvin's mom even calls out "Hobbes! Where are you?!"
- An earlier storyline had a large dog stealing him, and worried fans of the strip even wrote letters to Bill Watterson hoping Hobbes was okay. Luckily, Susie came across him.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Played for Laughs. Calvin is only six years old, but he creates macabre scenarios when he makes snowmen (everything from depicting them as being hit by a car or Buried Alive to collecting shrunken heads), writes disturbing essays for school assignments (claiming that he has Abusive Parents who chain him in the basement and throw him meat that he has to fight rats for), and strange behavior like taking his clothes off to play cars (which are the result of being tackled by Hobbes) and splattering his breakfast all over the hallway (which is the result of Hobbes wanting "breakfast on the run") which to his parents looks like him acting alone.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: invoked
- One strip about "high" art versus "low" art is a logic train that borders on insanity.
- Watterson mentions that he once read an art book that was so packed with postmodern gibberish that he started underlining passages for later use.
- In-universe, Calvin himself sometimes applies this approach to his snow sculptures, eschewing the "common" depictions of regular snowmen in exchange for his "avant-garde" depictions of snow horror.
- Trust Password: Hobbes can climb up to the treehouse without the ladder and Calvin can't. So in order to gain access to the treehouse, he makes Calvin recite an extremely long, flowery poem with at least seven verses about how great tigers are.
- Try and Follow: During one of Calvin's escapades as the "incredibly annoying human echo", Hobbes is able to get him to knock it off by rapidly reading off a passage of impenetrable philosophy from a textbook, which Calvin can't keep up with.
Hobbes: "We can a priori and prior to all given objects have a knowledge of those conditions on which alone experience of them is possible. But never of the laws to which things may in themselves be subject without reference to possible experience."
Calvin: We can ah peoria and ..um.. Slow down. What? Hold on.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Calvin's titles within the GROSS club are "the great Grandiose Dictator–for–Life, the Ruler Supreme, the Fearless, the Brave, the Held–High–in–Esteem, Calvin the Bold", and club meetings begin with reciting these. Bear in mind that this club has exactly two members...
- Tsundere: Word of God attributes traits consistent with the two major subtypes to Calvin (tsun-tsun type) and Susie (dere-dere type).
- Tuckerization: As revealed in the footnotes in the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, Calvin and Hobbes are both named for philosophers. Susie Derkins was named for a beagle that belonged to Bill Watterson's wife's family, and Miss Wormwood was named for a character of the same name from The Screwtape Letters.
- Twitchy Eye: Occurs to Calvin's mom in the Chicken Pox Episode, when the doctor says Calvin will have to stay inside for a whole week to avoid spreading the illness to other kids.
- Two Decades Behind: While the strip wasn't particularly dated when it ran in The '80s and The '90s, and retains a timeless feel, there are some ways it seems more like something from The '70s or even earlier:
- Calvin's dad is sometimes shown wearing what looks like a fedora on his way to and from work, even though the "you're not fully dressed without a hat" attitude was already on its way out in the early-mid sixties. He's also seen wearing a trenchcoat sometimes, though admittedly usually on cold days. This can be justified as an extension of his personality, as he's generally a very culturally conservative person with a marked dislike for modern trends and habits.
- Spaceman Spiff and Tracer Bullet, two characters Calvin fantasizes about being, seem like more appropriate alter egos for a fifties or sixties kid growing up with the pulp and noir (respectively) properties they're clear pastiches of.
- Video games are never referenced, even though the strips were made and take place during the era when they were really taking off. While Calvin's dad and his aforementioned Luddite tendencies might help explain why the family doesn't seem to own any game consoles, the fact that Calvin never says anything about wanting to go to an arcade or expresses any interest in getting games for the family computer is noticeable, especially for a kid like him.
- Calvin's ultra-sugary breakfast cereal, Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs, feels a bit out of place in the era when the strip ran. While kid's cereals were alarmingly sugary once upon a time, companies started to reduce the amount of sugar in them as a response to increasing health concerns beginning at the tail end of the 1970s.
- One strip has Calvin's dad panning a cartoon his son's watching as a boring, preachy glorified toy commercial with extremely Limited Animation. Aside from the "glorified toy commercial" part, most of these qualities became less prominent starting in the 1980s.
- Calvin's Free-Range Children lifestyle was becoming outdated even when the strip started due to a fever of "stranger danger" paranoia among middle-class American around the early 80s. As was Calvin's parents leaving him in the car alone while they went shopping, which would've been a no-no, even back then. Watterson, not having kids himself at the time, admitted to being a little behind on parenting trends.
- In a few strips, Calvin is punished by the teacher for making some kind of ridiculous statement by being forced to sit in the corner with a Dunce Cap. Punishing schoolchildren with a dunce cap was out of date in the 1960s, never mind the 80s or 90s.
- There are numerous references to media from the mid-20th century that have since fallen into relative obscurity, such as Bedtime for Bonzo, Doctor Zhivago, Dick and Jane, The Blob (1958), Song of the South, and How Much is That Doggie in the Window?.
- In the earlier strips, Bill Watterson drew the dinosaurs as he had remembered them as a child of the 60s, with lumpy proportions, standing upright with their tails dragging, and alligator-like scaly bellies. This was eventually subverted when Watterson decided to do some more research on dinosaurs, discovered how knowledge on dinosaurs had changed in the last twenty years, and put much more effort into portraying them as contemporarily accurate.
- T-Word Euphemism: Calvin once tried to use this to learn swear words, by presenting cue cards with one letter and several dashes following it to his class and asking them to yell out the vulgar words they represent. His teacher isn't amused and sends Calvin back to his desk.
- Unabashed B-Movie Fan:
- Calvin is constantly trying to convince his parents (and sometimes his babysitter, Rosalyn) to let him watch sleazy exploitation movies with titles like Cuisinart Murders of Central High, Vampire Sorority Babes, and Venusian Vampire Vixens. However, the only time he actually gets to see one, he regrets it.
- In a Sunday strip, he imagines himself as Godzilla rising from the sea (his bathtub) to defeat Megalon (his mother). His mom is not amused when he spits a "fireball" (read: mouthful of water) at him and tells he's not allowed to watch any more afternoon movies.
- Unconventional Food Usage: In one strip, Calvin uses Crisco to make his hair curly for class picture day. To his frustration, though, his mother makes him comb it out.
- Uncool Undies: One storyline starts when Calvin rips the back of his pants open on the playground, exposing his underwear.
- Unexpected Art Upgrade Moment: In one Sunday strip◊, the pair find a dead bird. The first panel consists of a rather detailed and realistically-drawn closeup of it. In a bit of Reality Subtext, it's a sketch of an actual dead bird that Bill Watterson found one day.
- Unexpected Kindness: Played with in one story arc; Calvin is terrified of how his father's going to react if he finds out that he accidentally wrecked his binoculars. When he ultimately comes clean, his father completely loses it and screams at him, but he's quick to realize he shouldn't have exploded like that and apologizes for overreacting. He also gives Calvin some binoculars of his own.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode:
- One strip focuses on Calvin and Hobbes finding an injured racoon, who dies despite their attempts to care for it. Then, they wax philosophical about death. Watterson himself considered it the point where the strip began getting more emotionally complex.
- A later story arc has Calvin and his parents come home from an overnight trip to find their house was burglarized while they were gone. The robbery is played extremely seriously, and the story devotes a significant amount of time showing how terrified Calvin's parents are by the event, without any real attempts at comedy.
- Unexpectedly Real Magic: The snow goon story arc starts with Calvin trying to bring a snowman to life, but he's clearly shocked when it actually does come to life... and then starts trying to kill him.
- Unflattering ID Photo: Calvin's dad sneezes while posing for his driver's license photo, and the photographer manages to capture him mid-sneeze. Calvin thinks it's the greatest picture ever, while Dad announces that he'll be driving exactly the speed limit until he can get a replacement license.
- Uniqueness Rule: One of the few stated rules of Calvinball is that you can't play it the same way twice.
- Unishment: Calvin tried to pull this on his babysitter Rosalyn, tackling Rosalyn while wearing his Stupendous Man outfit (pretending that she's yet another female supervillain), letting her chase him around the perimeter of the house, then sneaking back inside and changing from his mask and cape into pajamas. When Rosalyn finally confronts him, he appears to have been in bed the whole time, denying any knowledge of what "Stupendous Man" did. But even when Rosalyn tells him she knows he is Stupendous Man, Calvin tauntingly points out that she can't punish him anyway, since her punishment is always sending him to bed and he already is in bed. Rosalyn then makes him go downstairs a write a confession of his misdeeds for his parents to read when they return.
- Universal Remote Control: Subverted in one daily, where Calvin turns off the TV with the remote and then, inspired, points it at his father and clicks.
Calvin: [when his dad remains in place] Rats.
- Unknown Character:
- In one early story arc, Hobbes is "kidnapped" by a big dog. The dog itself never appears, nor does it ever become story important; it was only a necessary plot device to have Hobbes somehow become separated from Calvin briefly.
- In the story arc where Calvin's house is broken into and robbed, the burglars themselves are already long gone by the time the robbery factors into the plot. Who they were is not important, only the effects they have on Calvin and his parents are what is focused on.
- Unnamed Parent: Calvin's parents are just Mom and Dad, or "dear" to each other. Word of God says they have no names, because "as far as the strip is concerned, they are important simply as Calvin's mom and dad." This results in a near-total lack of "on-screen" relatives for Calvin (save one Uncle Max,) since they could never address Calvin's parents by name.
- As the strip went on Watterson broke his own rule, and fleshed Calvin's parents out more and more, sometimes writing strips where Calvin and Hobbes don't appear at all. See A Day in the Limelight. (They still didn't get names, though.)
- Unreliable Narrator: Calvin usually portrays himself as being a victim when there are times he's not, Played for Laughs. It's possible that the Free-Range Children is a case of this; even though Calvin appears to live behind a forest, it looks practically like a national park.
- The Un-Reveal: Used in one strip◊ for Calvin's show-and-tell, in which he neither showed nor told, but laughed about the fact the class would never know. Given that it's Calvin, he probably did not in fact have anything, and this was his way of getting out of it.
- Unseen Evil: The monsters under Calvin's bed are rarely seen (apparently because they shrivel up and die upon exposure to light). Sometimes, though, you'll see parts of their body in the dark, which don't look terribly cuddly.
- The Un-Smile:
- One strip has Calvin's dad ordering him to smile for a photograph or else Calvin's name will be "Mud". He made a hideous face that was technically a smile since his mouth was upturned.
- Calvin's done that a number of times for photos. One of them was a strip Bill Watterson said he laughed out loud at. Needless to say, these smiles are always fantastic.
- There's also a scene at the breakfast table where Dad says that Calvin should have an earlier bedtime because he's so grumpy in the morning. Calvin tries to look happy so that Dad will change his mind. Dad is not fooled.
- Unsound Effect:
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Every time Calvin makes up some elaborate scheme to bug Susie it never goes as planned, usually because he completely overestimates his own intelligence.
- Unusual Euphemism:
- Calvin's dad, after dropping a Christmas present on his foot: "Slippin'-rippin'-dang-fang-rotten-zarg-barg-a-ding-dong!" However, this may be Translation Convention from genuine swearing.
- Spaceman Spiff talks like a B-movie hero. "Zounds!"note "Zounds" is actually a 16th century curse word, abbreviated from "God's wounds!" Much like saying "holy cow" instead of taking the Lord's name in vain, it was a curse that was changed to a less blasphemously offensive form.
- Up, Up and Away!: In one early strip, Calvin, wearing a cape (but not in full costume), shouts "Up, up and away!", leaps into the air with arms outstretched and lands flat on his belly.
"ACKK! Kryptonite! Kryptonite!"
- Valentine's Day Episode: On a few Valentine's Day strips, there was a Sunday strip which teased Susie and Calvin's "relationship", usually in ways that had Calvin screaming about Girls Have Cooties.
- Valentine's Day Violence: Many Valentine's Day-themed strips have Hobbes riling Calvin up by teasing him about having a crush on Susie, Calvin getting enraged and the two of them getting into a Big Ball of Violence. One occasion when they did this was interrupted by Susie showing up and throwing a snowball at Calvin for sending her a valentine card with a drawing of her as a worm-eaten corpse.
Hobbes: Oh HO-O-O! You sent her a CARD?? Doctor Love, paging Doctor I.M.N. Love!
Calvin: (buried in the snow) I'd say we're about due for another St. Valentine's Day massacre.
- Verbal Judo: Calvin does it accidentally when taking Hobbes to confront his bully Moe. Calvin thinks Moe's scared away by facing a real tiger, but from others' point of view, he just acts so confidently that Moe suspects a trap with the teacher watching or something and doesn't dare to do anything.
- [Verb] This!: In one of Calvin's comics, in response to a character's assertion that he is merely toying with her, Amazon Girl yells: "Toy with this!" and uses a hyper-phase distortion blaster to blast a spine-shattering hole through his torso.
- Very Special Episode:
- In one storyline Calvin found a sick baby raccoon and had his parents try to save it. Unfortunately the little raccoon passes away and Calvin learns about how "death is as natural as birth" and we have to move on even when we don't understand things. A later Sunday strip◊ also looked at the nature of death, with practically no joke, just philosophy.
- Another story was about Calvin's house being broken into while the family was away. While Calvin is more focused on making sure Hobbes is okay and later mourning his stolen television, his parents struggle with the trauma and fear of knowing they aren't safe in their own house.
- Vetinari Job Security: Rosalyn is able to get copious advances on her fees from Calvin's parents, since no other babysitter in town will take a job watching him.
Calvin's dad: Hi Rosalyn! You don't need to worry this time. Calvin will be on his best behavior tonight.
Rosalyn: Even so, I'd like an advance.
Calvin's dad: An advance? But...but...
Calvin's mom: Dear, may I speak with you a moment?
Calvin's dad: But we gave her an advance on tonight when she left last time!
Calvin's mom: I don't care. Just pay what it takes us to get out of here!
- Vicariously Ambitious: Defied in one strip, where Calvin asks his dad if he's projecting his own ambitions.
Calvin: Dad, are you vicariously living through me in the hope that my accomplishments will validate your mediocre life and in some way compensate for all the opportunities you botched?
Calvin's Dad: If I were, you can bet I'd be re-evaluating my strategy.Calvin: Mom, Dad keeps insulting me.
- Victory Is Boring:
- A Villain Named "Z__rg": Evil aliens encountered by Spaceman Spiff include Zorgs, Zargs, Zorkons, Zogwargs, and Zogs.
- Villainy-Free Villain: Calvin's tendency to see himself as a Designated Hero causes his teacher Miss Wormwood, his Badly Battered Babysitter Rosalyn, and even his mother to be portrayed as horrifying sadistic monsters in his overactive imagination. Of course, when you're only six years old, the adults in charge of you tend to look more menacing than they really are. His Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Susie Derkins also gets portrayed as an ugly alien monster in a few of his Spaceman Spiff fantasies, but even there she poses no obvious threat until Spiff starts shooting at her and her cries for help attract some larger monster.
- Vindicated by History: Invoked and name-dropped by Calvin's dad in one strip where Calvin says his dad's administration is still suffering from the scandals of "Bedtimegate and Homeworkgate.
Calvin's Dad: Instances of true leadership. History will vindicate me.
Calvin: I wonder what my new dad will look like.
- Visual Pun:
- During the Balloonacy arc, Calvin is falling from the sky and looking for something to save himself when he realizes he has his Transmogrifier Gun on him. He points it at himself and fires while saying he's safe... and since the gun works on reading the user's brainwaves, he turns into a safe.
- In one strip, Calvin and Hobbes toast to their friendship... and then chow down on some toast.
- A few Fantasy Sequence comics rely on this as the punchline when Cutting Back to Reality. Such as Calvin imagining himself as an intrepid explorer cutting his way through the untamed wilds, ending with his mother telling him to clean his room because "it's a jungle in here!".
- An early strip features Calvin showing Hobbes an "antelope"... by taking him over to an anthill, pointing to one, and saying "See, she's climbing down the ladder to her boyfriend's car!" Hobbes is not amused.
- Vitriolic Best Buds:
- Our heroes sometimes come across this way, particularly with the number of fights they get into, the times Hobbes tackles or outright tries to prey on Calvin, the insults they often exchange, and so forth.
- Calvin and Susie are also this. Despite their cycle of Calvin being a smart-aleck or trying to pelt her with snowballs and ending with Susie KO'ing him, they still hang out together very often; for instance, when Calvin is forced outside by his dad after watching Saturday morning TV, he immediately goes to Susie's, who happily invites him in.
- Volleying Insults: Often exchanged by the title characters. One time, instead of escalating to a Big Ball of Violence, they wind up just doing insulting "impressions" of each other, until Calvin's mom calls, "Time to come in!" They trudge off, muttering:
Calvin: Leave it to Mom to interrupt our repartee.
Hobbes: Just when I had you wriggling in the crushing grip of reason too...
- Volumetric Mouth: Used a fair amount of times, in the vein of the Trope Codifier Peanuts. note Watterson even noted this when reviewing a biography of Schulz. Lampshaded when Hobbes asserts during a time travel arc that "Drawing Calvin is easy! You just make a big mouth and add some hair!"
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Calvin throws up twice off-panel after catching a stomach bug.
- Walking the Earth: Calvin tries to start walking the Earth on a few occasions, most notably when he accidentally pushes his mom's car into a ditch and later when he decides to walk to the Yukon after "seceding" from his family. Naturally, it doesn't last.
- Walk the Plank: Played with in an early strip where Calvin has an Imagine Spot as the captain of a mighty galleon at sea, only to show they're just sitting on one wood board floating in a pond.
Calvin: Run up the skull and crossbones! Prepare the plank!
Hobbes: Our ship IS a plank.
Calvin: And you're going to walk it, wise guy!
- Wallet Moths: It happened in one strip when Calvin's dad was paying Rosalyn's baby-sitting bonus and there was nothing left.
Calvin's Dad: You're sure no one else in this town will agree to baby-sit Calvin?
Calvin's Mom: Maybe you would like to spend a week on the phone!
- Wanting Is Better Than Having:
- Invoked by Hobbes when Calvin sent away for a motorized propeller beanie. While he restlessly waits the six weeks for the beanie to arrive, Calvin keeps dreaming about how he'll be able to use it to fly around the neighborhood. When it arrives, it turns out to be an ordinary beanie with a propeller.
- Another has the pair on one of their dangerous wagon-riding adventures while Calvin argues that having is much better than wanting, and he can't think of anything he would rather have later than right away. Hobbes says: "Death comes to mind" as the wagon careens off a cliff.
- In another strip, Calvin muses on the idea that when you get something it's new and exciting, but that when you have something it's old and boring, concluding that it's important to keep getting new things. Hobbes remarks: "I feel like I'm in some advertiser's dream."
- One Sunday strip had Dad try to instill this moral to Calvin while waiting for the charcoal in the grill to get hot. Calvin, being 6 years old and virtually incapable of patience, disagreed.
- The second-to-last Rosalyn arc sees Calvin locking her out of the house and getting the night to himself he always wanted... only to learn the hard way that ultimately wasn't worth the inevitable consequences.
- Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: In the story arc where Calvin pushes his mom's car out of the garage, Hobbes says: "I think you're mom's going to be bothered."
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Calvin argues that since he's such a little hellion that being nice is difficult for him, any good deed he does should be worth five good deeds of some kid who wants to be good in terms of Christmas presents. Hobbes points out that the question of his good deeds is purely theoretical anyway, but Calvin insists that not putting a rock inside that last snowball was already something. Of course, this is Calvin we're talking about — he's also stated that he's done his part in the world just by being born and thinks everyone else ungrateful for not thanking him for it.
- Warrior Poet: Parodied constantly, as Calvin treats all snowball fights as epic wars. One time, he gave a speech about the importance of craftsmanship while meticulously assembling a snowball from just the right kinds of snow (and signing it) before getting steamrolled by Suzie, who had used the time to amass a massive snowball arsenal. Another time, he actually consecrated his snowball before throwing it:
Oh lovely snowball, packed with care,
Smack a head that's unaware!
Then with freezing ice to spare,
Melt and soak through underwear!
Fly straight and true, hit hard and square!
This, oh snowball, is my prayer.
- Wasteful Wishing: Subverted. Calvin asks Hobbes what he'd wish for; Hobbes says he wants a sandwich. Calvin doesn't understand why and wishes for enormous wealth. Hobbes gets his wish, and Calvin obviously does not.
- Watching the Sunset: And missing lots of great shows.
- To be more specific; Dad loves this trope. Calvin does not.
- Watch Out for That Tree!: If the title pair aren't hurtling off some obscenely high cliff at the end of their sled or wagon rides, they'll slam into a tree at breakneck speed and be launched high into the air.
Hobbes: There's a tree! Hit the brakes!
Calvin: Trees are my brakes.
- Water Guns and Balloons: A regular source of entertainment for Calvin and Hobbes. They regularly get into battles with each other using these weapons and anything else that can distribute water, including the hose, and a full kiddy pool on one occasion.
- Weak, but Skilled: Referenced in one strip where Calvin says to Moe, "You're so dumb you probably never thought about how a sparrow's smaller size and greater maneuverability is an advantage in fighting off big crows." Calvin is then punched by Moe.
Calvin: Those TV nature programs will be the death of me yet.
- Wearing It All Wrong: In one strip, Calvin attempts to head out for school with his shirt and pants swapped, so he's wearing his shirt as pants, has his pants on his arms, and shoes on his hands. His mom is not amused, and makes him go change.
- Weight Woe: Calvin's mom apparently has friends who have this issue. After being put off jelly doughnuts by Calvin, she pushes the bag aside and comments, "My friends ask me how I stay thin."
- Weird Currency: Parodied when Calvin tells space aliens he'll give them the Earth for 50 different kinds of alien tree leaves, he put off a school assignment, and wanted the alien tree leaves so that he could finish it in time, and the aliens thought it meant "these primitive fools" (Earthlings) "use leaves as currency."
- Weird Sun: Calvin's dad goes to town with this, telling him that it's about the size of a quarter, moves by "solar wind" and lands in Arizona at night which is why the rocks there are all red.
- Western Zodiac: One story arc sees Calvin start reading horoscopes. He’s excited when it promises “big dividends” so long as he “asserts his views in a confident manner”, only to be disappointed when his mother still makes him do his homework.
- Wet Cement Gag: A strip had the duo find some freshly-poured cement and apparently sat in it offscreen to try and put their butt imprints in it, only to find out that it would dry very quickly.
- Wham Line:
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Stated in the story arc where Calvin wants to make their clubhouse in the garage, and decides to push the car out out onto the driveway instead of asking his mom to move the car for him. The car starts rolling and ends up in a ditch across the road.
Calvin: Look, stop being such a baby and help me push the car into the driveway. We'll move it 10 feet. What could possibly go wrong?!
Hobbes: Whenever you ask that, my tail gets all bushy.
- What Have We Ear?: When Calvin's dad does it to him, he has Hobbes hold him upside down and shake him, to see if there is any other loose change in him.
Hobbes: Anything yet?
Calvin: J-just a b-b-bloody n-nose.
- Whateversaurus: A few comics have Calvin describing a made-up dinosaur called the Calvinosaurus. In two instances, it's depicted as an enormous carnosaur that dwarfs even the largest sauropods, although in the arc where Calvin and Hobbes dug up someone's litter and mistook it for fossils, it looked more like a diminutive horned anteater.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- Enforced with Calvin's Uncle Max, who only appears in one weeklong series. We get several intriguing hints to him having a Mysterious Past and he charms Calvin by the end of the week, then he gets on a plane never to be seen again. Bill Watterson apparently found it too much work to write his dialogue without ever revealing Mom and Dad's real names.
- After the story arc in which there is a break-in to Calvin's house, nothing is ever said of it again. Although the family eventually get a new TV to replace the one that was stolen, it's never mentioned if the burglars were caught.
- When It All Began: The very first strips show how Calvin 'caught' Hobbes in a tiger trap baited with tuna fish. Watterson would mention regretting this in the 10th Anniversery collection, as he had felt the need to "explain" how Calvin met Hobbes when the strip started, but eventually felt it ruined the ambiguity.
- When I Was Your Age...: Spoofed in a Sunday strip in which Calvin imagines himself as Spaceman Spiff being hauled off to a torture chamber by disgusting aliens. Spiff is surprised to find himself in an exact replica of his parents' living room, and one of the aliens announces that Spiff will be subjected to "a calm discussion of wholesome principles." The next panel shows a Big "NO!" from Calvin in the "real world" as his father spouts various Standard '50s Father cliches. ("Yes, life is tough and suffering builds character! Nothing worth having ever comes easy! Virtue is its own reward" - and then the Trope Namer.)
- When Life Gives You Lemons...: Stated in one story arc where Calvin's class if given an assignment to collect fifty different leaves in two weeks. Calvin hates it and procrastinates, but Susie treats it like a scavenger hunt game and has fun with it, to Calvin's disbelief.
Susie: When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.
Calvin: I say, when life gives you a lemon, wing it right back and add some lemons of your own!
- When Props Attack: The strip has several examples, including Calvin's dad pretending that he was being attacked by a poltergeist to scare Calvin. It's implied that this is what onlookers see when Calvin and Hobbes "fight" (ex. just watching an angry six-year old rolling in the dirt with a stuffed animal).
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: We're never told precisely where Calvin and co. reside, but it's presumably an outer suburb (with access to woods, fields, and other more rural areas) near some Midwestern U.S. city. And an hour and a half's drive away from the lake.
- However, this trope is Downplayed, because there is a lot of evidence to suggest it's actually Watterson's own hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio:
- In the treasury collection The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, the back cover features a scene of a giant Calvin rampaging through a town's business district. The scene is modeled after Chagrin Falls, and Calvin is holding the Chagrin Falls Popcorn Shop, an iconic candy and ice cream shop overlooking the town's namesake falls.
- More evidence of an Ohio setting is the fact that Calvin's treehouse is in a buckeye tree. Ohio is, of course, the Buckeye State.
- One strip showed a news van from Cleveland's Channel 3 News, complete with logo.
- Bill Watterson has noted in commentaries about his fall strips that he did his best to capture the feel that Ohio gets during the season.
- It should be noted that, in another strip, Miss Wormwood, to gauge whether Calvin is paying attention, asks "What state do you live in?" Calvin's answer? "Denial."
- In one strip, Calvin and Hobbes determine from an atlas that they live in a big, purple country and their house is right next to the giant letter "E" in the word "States."note Depending on how you orient the words on the map, this would put them either in the loose vicinity of Arkansas or West Virginia.
- "Where? Where?": In a 1986 Cub Scouts strip.
Calvin: Look! A tiger!
Hobbes: A TIGER?! [
Beat Panel] Don't
DO that!
- Which Me?: Averted in one story arc where Calvin and Hobbes use their time machine at 6:30 and travel two hours ahead so they can grab the completed homework assignment, then both Calvins go back an hour to find out why 7:30 Calvin didn't do it. Each Calvin refers to the others by the time they're from, and fortunately are all visually distinct (6:30 has goggles, 8:30 has goggles and is in his pyjamas).
- Who Even Needs a Brain?: One strip has Calvin letting his brain wander out of his skull for a while, but of course it's implied this was just in Calvin's imagination.
Calvin: I let my mind wander and it didn't come back.
Calvin's Mom: I figured you'd lost your mind years ago.
- Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Stated in one strip, Calvin is sitting in front of the TV and disparaging the programs he's watching:
Calvin: Who do they think is stupid enough to sit and watch this trash?
Hobbes: You.
Calvin: If there was anything
better on, I'd watch
that.
- Wicked Stepmother: Referenced in two comics; one where he accuses his mom of not coddling him while he's in a bad mood because she's not his biological mother (to which she assures him that anybody but his biological mother would've abandoned him a long time ago) and another where he asks if she adopted him with the intent of turning him into a slave and/or food. Notably, both these strips were changed to remove mention of adoption in the complete collection (in the first, it was changed to Calvin saying "a good mother" instead of "my biological mother", while in the second he asks if he was cloned or genetically engineered), likely to avoid the negative implications of this trope.
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: This often occurs to Calvin, usually when he's about to subject to yet another pounce attack from Hobbes.
Calvin: What do you do, wait until you see the whites of my eyes?!
Hobbes: You should've seen them! They were as big as dinner plates!
- Wild Take: There are some wild takes from the title characters, particularly in one Sunday strip where Calvin manages to sneak up on Hobbes from behind when he comes home (only to get mauled by tiger anyway).
- William Telling:
- In one strip where Calvin tries to knock a snowball off a snowman's head. (He accuses the snowman of flinching when he misses.)
- In another strip, Calvin bets Hobbes he can knock the hat off his dad's head with a snowball. He misses and hits his dad instead, getting sent to his room, and blaming Hobbes for getting him into trouble by taking the deal.
- Wish-Fulfillment: If looked at in a certain context (and taking note of the numerous clues sprinkled throughout,) the strip is Bill Watterson wishing he was still a kid growing up in the Sixties. Of course, several other more blatant clues make it clear that Watterson doesn't use a Nostalgia Filter:
"People who are nostalgic for childhood were obviously never children."
- With Catlike Tread: Toward the end of the Snow Goons arc, Calvin and Hobbes sneak out of bed and go downstairs, shushing each other to keep quiet. Once they're out in the open, Calvin starts laughing loudly and yelling for the Snow Goons to die, waking his parents.
- With Friends Like These...: It's sometimes difficult to tell why the titular Calvin and Hobbes are friends at all. Hobbes condescends to Calvin, attacks him for no reason, occasionally bullies him, and has betrayed him for his own gain multiple times, while Calvin tends to see Hobbes as little more than a partner for his own schemes and often treats him no better than Hobbes treats him. The implication seems to be that because Calvin is so terrible, he has to take what friends he can get, and even Hobbes may or may not be imaginary.
- A Wizard Did It: Invoked by Calvin's dad when Calvin is curious about how vacuum cleaners and lightbulbs work; Dad tells him, "They're both magic." Calvin is unconvinced and replies, "You just don't KNOW how they work, I'll bet."
- Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour:
- In one strip, Calvin asks "Geez, I gotta have a reason for everything?" when his tired parents enter his room because he's playing drums and honking a squeeze horn in the middle of the night.
- In this strip, Calvin's mother complains about being woken up at two in the morning because Calvin said he was feeling sick.
- This strip has Calvin dancing to classical music at 78 RPM in the middle of the night.
- In one strip, Calvin wakes up his mother early in the morning to inform her that Hobbes had a nightmare about eating the whole family. She is not pleased.
- Women Are Wiser:
- Susie includes this in her imaginings of what adult married life would be like. Then again, she imagines herself married to Calvin, so...
- Calvin's mom is also this, especially when dealing with her husband's obsessions such as camping and biking. However, the relationship between Calvin's parents is completely (and hilariously) inverted in one strip where Calvin leaves Hobbes in the woods:
Calvin's Mom: Any luck?
Calvin's Dad: Of course not! How am I going to find a stuffed tiger in the woods at night? Why can't Calvin keep track of his toys? I must be crazy to be out here...
Calvin's Mom: (calling out loud) HO-O-O-BBES!(realizing what she just did, with an extremely embarrassed look on her face)Calvin's Mom: Oops. Heh heh.
Calvin's Dad: I may be crazy, but I'm not as crazy as you.
- Word-Salad Humor: The September 1, 1992 strip:
Calvin: Hey Dad. Know what I figured out? The meaning of words isn't a fixed thing! Any word can mean anything! By giving words new meanings, ordinary English can become an exclusionary code! Two generations can be divided by the same language! To that end, I'll be inventing new definitions for common words, so we'll be unable to communicate. Don't you think that's totally spam? It's lubricated! Well, I'm phasing.
Father: (Making the peace sign) Marvy. Fab. Far out.
- "Explain Newton's First Law of Motion in your own words." "Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz."
- The Worf Barrage: As Spaceman Spiff, Calvin's Ray Gun is never effective as a weapon, because the people he's imagining are monsters aren't playing along. At best, he has a water pistol or dart gun in reality, and manages to annoy his "foe."
- Workaholic: A funny version. No thanks to Calvin's troublemaking, Calvin's Dad considers being at the office more relaxing than being at home. In some strips, he wishes aloud that his job would either ask him to work on weekends or travel for it.
- World Limited to the Plot: Throughout the strip's entire run, the reader learns very little about where Calvin lives and there's very little interaction or development of elements that aren't a large part of Calvin's life. We never see who else lives in Calvin's neighbourhood except Susie, Calvin never goes to a recognizable location, the layout of the settings constantly change as needed for the story, there's only a handful of reoccurring characters, and there's only crowd shots in Calvin's Imagine Spots. Much of this probably has to do with the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane nature of Hobbes; there could never be many stories in busy locations or involving many human characters because Hobbes was only ever animate when he's alone with Calvin.
- World of Snark: Nearly every main character has many sarcastic moments, though some of them more so than others. In one early strip, even Calvin's inanimate television provides a snark.
- World's Shortest Book:
Calvin: On today's agenda, we'll make a list of what girls are good for. Obviously this will be a short meeting!
- Worth It:
- One strip showed Calvin refusing to scratch an itch, only to be tortured by it until he finally gives in and scratches furiously. Euphoria! "Oh man, it was worth it!" Except... his skin now burns from all the scratching.
- Another strip had Calvin make a snowball and set his sights on hitting Suzie with it. She gives him fair warning not to and after contemplating his choices, throws it at her anyway, yelling that it was worth it right before Suzie chases Calvin down and throttles him.
- And a third time in an early strip where he and Hobbes go splashing through a puddle. Calvin's payment is soaked underwear to ride up his butt. Hobbes merely responds, "That's why I never wear the stuff."
- In a fourth strip Calvin sneaks up on a sleeping Hobbes, awakening him by blowing into his belly. In the last panel, Calvin stumbles away, scratched and roughed up, remarking "It's a high price to pay, but nuzzling tiger tummies is one of the great pleasures of life."
- And when Moe is threatening Calvin for his lunch money, Calvin states that he sees some simian countenance in Moe's face. Moe is confused, and Calvin happily gives up the quarter while saying "That was worth 25 cents".
- One strip had Calvin insulting Susie with a cootie catcher. After she beats him up, Calvin says, "Life doesn't get much better than this." with a smile.
- Would Hit a Girl: Played with, Calvin likes to try and pelt Susie with snowballs, water balloons, pine cones, apples, toy darts, etc. but he never actually hits Susie. He has threatened to do so however.
Calvin: The Tooth Fairy's gonna make you rich tonight, Susie.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Susie pulls this on Calvin after he hits her with a snowball by pretending that he knocked out her eyeball, in order to get him to drop his guard as he looks for it so that she can get back at him.
Calvin: Ha ha! I gotcha, you dumb girl!!
Susie: AUGHH! MY EYEBALL! WHERE'S MY EYEBALL?!
Calvin: What are you talking about? I hit you in the back.
Susie: It knocked my eyeball out! Find it and pack it in snow so they can save it! Ow! Ow!
Calvin: (bends over to look for it) Gosh, did you really lose your eyeball? I didn't know they came out! Wow. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to knock it out. Can I see the socket? Boy, where do you suppose it rolled?
Susie: (kicking him in the backside) SOMEWHERE OVER THERE, POOP HEAD!!
- Write Back to the Future: Calvin writes a letter to his future self, expressing envy at having experienced life 20 Minutes into the Future. When he receives the letter, some days later, he feels sorry for his past self.
- Writer's Block: Referenced in one strip with a Visual Pun by having Calvin make a physical writer's block... one that prevents anyone from using his desk. Hobbes isn't too amused.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Hobbes cites a statistic that claims that by the age of six, the average child has seen a million murders on television. That's over 456 per day. Then again, this could just as easily be Hobbes being bad at math or making up a statistic.
- Write What You Know:invoked In-universe, this is the reason Calvin gives a bemused Hobbes for his attempt to use "man who flicks through channels with a remote control" as a trope in a story he writes.
- Written Sound Effect: Paraphrased:
Hobbes: Are you sure this is such a good idea?
Calvin: Brother! You doubting Thomases get in the way of more scientific advances with your stupid ethical questions. This is a brilliant idea! Hit the button, will ya?
Hobbes: I'd hate to be accused of inhibiting scientific progress... Here you go.
The button: BOINK!
Hobbes: [staring right at the fourth wall] Scientific progress goes 'boink'?
- Wrong Restaurant: One strip saw Calvin answering the phone at home and immediately start ordering a pizza. The flustered person on the other end couldn't even put together a coherent sentence before Calvin claimed the caller had the wrong number and hung up.
Calvin: I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
- You Didn't Ask: Galaxoid and Nebular complain to Calvin that he didn't tell them that his neighborhood getting snow was a result of Earth's axis being tilted away from the sun. Calvin quotes this trope in response.
- You Do Not Want To Know:
- Calvin's mom after he runs inside naked and screaming at a hailstorm; "I'll bet there's an explanation for this, and I'll bet I don't want to hear it."
- In another strip, Calvin tries to cook an eggs and orange juice breakfast for his mother while she's ill, but the eggs end up being crispy lumps stuck to the pan. When she asks about the orange juice, Calvin answers "Dad says not to tell you about that until you're better."
- When Calvin asks if he can use gasoline to write flaming letters on the lawn so airplanes flying overhead can read it, his dad's second thought (after "No, you can't do that! Don't be ridiculous!") was that he didn't even want to know what Calvin was going to write.
- You Get What You Pay For: In the "Leaf Collection" arc, a pair of aliens buy the Earth from Calvin for fifty alien leaves, which are implied to be worthless on their planet. A few months later, they come back to Calvin to complain about the Earth's tilted axis, to which Calvin replies "let the buyer beware".
- You Will Be Spared: In this Sunday strip, a bug-eyed monster in one of Calvin's "Spaceman Spiff" adventures tells Spaceman Spiff (of course the knowledge was just the history reading Calvin should've done for school that day):
You have knowledge we need. Cooperate, and we'll kill you rather painlessly.
- Young Entrepreneur: Calvin is occasionally an entrepreneur selling lemonade. Sometimes it's not anything even like lemonade: in one strip he sets up a stand selling "A Swift Kick in the Butt," and he complains about business being so much worse than his own estimate of how many people need one.
- Your Head A-Splode: Calvin occasionally imagines his head exploding. In one strip, he sneezes so hard his head blows up (he just stuffed his head into his shirt). In another, a particularly bad mosquito itch makes him feel like his head caught on fire and exploded.
- Your Other Left: In one strip, the two eponyms stalk into the house, drenched in snow after another toboggan crash and glaring at one another. They proceed in angry silence to the bookshelf and furiously look up an entry in the dictionary, whereupon Hobbes shouts, "See?! Starboard is right! Port is left!"
- You're Insane!: In one strip where Calvin's pediatrician diagnoses him with chicken pox, he seems to doubt the good doctor's sanity (mostly because he hates going to the doctor for any reason at all).
Calvin: Chicken pox?! Mom, what is this guy? A veterinarian? He's mad! Mad I say! I'll bet the real doctor is tied up and gagged in the other exam room!
- Zombie Gait: In one early story arc, Calvin starts imitating a zombie, lurching around with outstretched arms and gaping mouth and messily disemboweling a PBJ sandwich. Hobbes sees Calvin and gets into the gait too. They then look at each other and burst out laughing.
