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"I'm a poor lonesome cowboy
I'm a long long way from home."
— "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy", Lucky's song

Lucky Luke is a Franco-Belgian Western comic book series created in 1946 by Belgian graphic artist Morris, who at first did both art and writing. It began as a semi-serious comic with a rugged cowboy hero, lots of gunplay and occasional almost-onscreen deaths. Then, from 1955 to 1977, the writing was taken over by Asterix co-creator René Goscinny and the comic turned into an unabashed Affectionate Parody of the whole western genre. Around the same time, the authors dropped all pretense of portraying the protagonist as a realistic cowboy and turned him into a Drifter/Gunslinger type whose fame and skill often made him the US Government's last resort when it came to particularly tricky situations (much to his annoyance).

One of the main points of the series is the number of historical characters Luke regularly meets and who most of the time take center stage in the story. Over the years they have included Judge Roy Bean (who owns a bar and acts as self-appointed "judge", complete with fake court proceedings, to extort money from locals... and turns out to be harmless, helping Luke against the actual Big Bad), Billy the Kid (portrayed as an actual, annoying Bratty Half-Pint whose defeat consists of a good spanking), Jesse James's gang (with Jesse parodied as a delusional Robin Hood fan and Frank as a Shakespeare-quoting pseudo-intellectual), Calamity Jane (with whom Lucky Luke developed a very sweet friendship), Mark Twain, and Wyatt Earp, among others.

The most iconic characters of the series, though, aren't historical characters but the fictional cousins of historical characters. After Morris had Luke fight the real Dalton Brothers and showed their deaths on the page, Goscinny found this way to bring back a similar group of baddies, since the original Daltons' regularly descending sizes and identical ugly mugs made for lots of fun potential — and boy, did it work. At first, the Dalton cousins were hopeless bandit wannabes impressed by the fame of their relatives, but they quickly became feared outlaws in their own right in-story, while in the real world (in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Quebec anyway) they completely outshone their real-world counterparts.

Lucky Luke also gave us Rantanplan ("Rin Tin Can" in some English translations; "Bushwhack" in English dubbed 1980s animated series, and "Rintindumb" in the English dubs of newer animated projects), a Rin Tin Tin parody and the stupidest dog in the world. With the hero's extra-smart horse Jolly Jumper, that's about it for the recurring characters, since Lucky Luke's wanderings took him to a different place each time. However, many character archetypes (the mayor, the sheriff, the undertaker, the saloon owner, the Chinese launderer...) are so similar from one town to another that they practically function as recurring characters and walking running gags.

After Goscinny's death, lots of writers took over penning the stories. After Morris passed away, Achdé took charge of the art, restricting himself to strict Morris imitation because his style was so particular. 2016 saw the beginning of a line of Homage issues by guest artists and writers. These stories have never been considered Canon in the first place, so the writers have much more liberties as long as they don't deviate too much from the mainline stories. Artists may also draw the comics in or closer to their own style. The first at this is Matthieu Bonhomme, who's created two Darker and Edgier stories.

As the series has been so successful for over fifty years, it has also known several Animated Adaptations, both with stories directly adapted from the comics and with original stories. The first two such adaptations, the animated films Daisy Town (1971) and Ballad of the Daltons (1978), were directed and written by Goscinny himself. The 1983/1991 Lucky Luke animated series mainly adapted the Goscinny canon plus the stories made after Goscinny's passing until 1988. The New Adventures of Lucky Luke inaugurated a new era of original stories not based off the comics as well as spinoffs.

There are also three live action adaptations: 1991's Lucky Luke starring Terence Hill (which spawned a series, too), 2004's Lucky Luke and the Daltons centered on the Dalton brothers starring French comedy duo Eric Judor & Ramzy Bedia and Til Schweiger, and 2009's Lucky Luke, starring Jean Dujardin.

English translations were fairly rare and obscure, but thankfully British-based publishing firm Cinebook has to date published about 40 albums, with even more translations on the way. An English version of the animated series from 1983 exists, but was never shown in the United States, despite being co-produced by Hanna-Barbera (although a direct-to-video compilation of the first two episodes was released on VHS in the late 1990s).


The Lucky Luke comics provide examples of:

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    Tropes A to B 
  • The Ace:
    • Lucky Luke is good at what he does. Very much so. It is said that he can draw faster than his shadow. A lot of the later Goscinny/Morris albums (especially those following the Daltons), tend to focus more on the villains trying to top Lucky Luke than Luke himself saving the day. Many of the movies also do this. There are a few cases where Luke is shown to be inept at something (he is paralysed by stage fright when he needs to act in a play and causes a huge mess when trying to pass himself as a Chinese in one Animated Adaptation) but they are few and far between.
    • Jolly Jumper is a horse Ace.
  • Adults Dressed as Children:
    • The Daltons, more than once.
    • Happens to Luke as well in an early album after he becomes a victim of Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen. It causes him to be made fun of by an entire town.
  • Adventure Towns: The Wild West is naturally full of those: Roy Bean keeping up the law west of the Pecos in his town with his tamed bear, a town torn by the feud of the two largest families, Billy the Kid's hometown living in terror and much more.
  • Affectionate Parody: The comic strip is a parody of the western genre, including all the clichés and tropes.
    • Rocky Luke: Banlieue West is a whole album that parodied Lucky Luke and their characters. It often veered into Black Comedy.
  • Alliterative Name: Lucky Luke & Jolly Jumper. Jesse James, Joss Jamon, Cass Casey...
  • Alliterative Title: Lucky Luke.
  • All Jews Are Ashkenazi: "La terre promise" is about Luke escorting a family of them, the narrative explains that, being 1869, Jews are already kind of rare in America so they are pretty much the only Jews Luke has heard of.
    Luke: How can you recognize a Jew?
    Passerby: It's like an American but more pessimist.
  • All Psychology Is Freudian: In one album, Luke comes across an alienist arrived from Austria to study the psychology of Western outlaws. His methods parody those of the Freudian school, even though Freud's own pioneering work is still some years in the future. Referenced in the last page: a panicked nurse comes running out of a baby's room yelling, "Mrs. Freud! Little Siggy just tried to—!
  • Always a Bigger Fish: Lucky Luke undermines Billy the Kid's fearsome image by setting himself up as an even worse crook.
  • Ammunition Conservation: When Elliot Bell forms a posse of bounty hunters to capture an Indian accused of stealing a horse, he has to tell his men to shoot faster because despite being compensated for the bullets, they are scrupulously keeping track of how much ammunition they use.
  • Amnesiacs are Innocent: The Daltons try to fake this after a real one is released from prison.
  • Amusingly Awful Aim:
    • One story has the titular hero training a wannabe crimefighter who's such a lousy shot that even standing directly behind him is not a guarantee of safety.
    • "The Rivals of Painful Gulch" has Luke dealing with two Feuding Families who will fire without warning at their rivals, or anyone they think is associated with their rivals. Unfortunately, their extremely bad aim makes them a danger to any bystanders rather than the actual target. At one point Luke tries to negotiate with them and they chase him off, with Luke himself admitting that he only survived the encounter because they are such lousy shots.
  • Anachronism Stew: The comic cherry-picks historical characters from around 1850 to the early 1900s while Luke of course never seems to grow older. Like in Asterix, the comic often draws a lot of humor from using anachronisms on purpose and by making references to events that have not yet past during the time period the comic is set in.
    • Strangely, The American Civil War is almost totally absent from the first seventy-eight albums.note  The seventy-ninth album, A Cowboy in High Cotton, doesn't show the war itself, but addresses the consequences directly, plunging Lucky Luke in reconstruction-era Louisiana where he has inherited a cotton plantation worked by former slaves. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the darkest episodes of the series.
    • The adult Lucky Luke meets (and helps out) the Earp brothers in the album O.K. Corral, while in Oklahoma Jim a much younger Lucky Luke cites Wyatt Earp as an example of a sheriff who has been shot...
    • In Lucky Luke vs. Pinkerton, Abraham Lincoln, traveling to his inauguration at the time of the Baltimore plot, refers to having met Lucky Luke in The Singing Wire... but in the Singing Wire, Lincoln is already president and living in the White House.
    • The titular device in "The One-Armed Bandit" is supposed to be the very first of its kind, but another one appears in "Western Circus", which was printed eleven years earlier.
    • Early bicycles had been around in Lucky Luke's time, but in the Homage issue Lucky Luke sattelt um, he rides a fairly modern bike. It even has pneumatic tires; when these were patented for bicycles, The Old West was already history.
  • Antagonist in Mourning: When Luke briefly believes the Daltons to be dead, he has a moment of this. He even admits how strange this is, given that there is little love lost between him and the Daltons.
  • Anti-Nepotism: The 20th Cavalry Regiment is headed by a colonel whose son is also in the regiment, and is punished for just about every single thing he says by the colonel to avoid any accusations of nepotism (according to the son it was by pure coincidence that the Cavalry assigned him to his father's regiment). The son finally snaps back at the colonel, who is stunned that his son is finally a man. Of course, old habits are hard to break, and at the end of the story, the son is punished for speaking out of turn (that is, saying "Goodbye, Luke" without asking Permission to Speak Freely).
  • Arch-Enemy: Luke chases the Dalton brothers far more than any other bandits. Most enemies appear in only one episode, with only Billy the Kid getting one return appearance. The Daltons have appeared in more than a dozen episodes, and in the animated adaption they have their own theme song.
  • Art Evolution: And how; over the years Lucky Luke went from looking like this to his current apperance (the image on top of this page)
  • Artistic License – Animal Care: Averted. Jolly Jumper is semi-frequently shown drinking beer. However, contrary to most people's intuition, beer is a perfectly harmless and fairly healthy treat for a horse. In fact, adding beer to water is a fairly common way to ensure that a dehydrated horse drinks.
    • Jolly Jumper tends to get plenty of excuses due to being just that awesome. Rantanplan gets a few thanks to general weirdness.
  • Art-Shifted Sequel: While Achdé tries his best to imitate Morris' style, the makers of the Homage issues are given the liberty to draw in their own personal styles.
  • Asians Eat Pets: One Rantanplan story has Rantanplan be the Pet Heir to a large amount of property, including most of a Chinatown. This causes him to be variously abducted by the residents of the Chinatown to protest the rents and living conditions or taken by a restaurant to be made into lacquered coyote while still alive (Rantanplan thinks he's enjoying a sauna in a beauty salon). Meanwhile, the Daltons get involved (as they're next in the inheritance after Rantanplan) after Averell mentions he wanted to try eating dog, leading to the Chinese allying with the Daltons.
  • Author Tract: The comic books written by Jul clearly reflect his opinions about racism and veganism.
  • Automaton Horses: Jolly Jumper. Zigzagged — Jolly gallops faster than his own shadow, for days if need be, but also enjoys baths and such, and complains about exhaustion or discomfort at times.
  • Badass Boast: Luke once claimed that he and Waldo could take out 20 men with their two six-shooters, and that wasn't a math mistake.
  • Badass Longcoat: Worn by the title character in The Bounty Hunter.
  • Bail Equals Freedom: In Belle Starr the titular character goes around posting bail for various criminals in exchange for working for her. Since she's bought off the local judge, his brother (who runs the only long-distance communication service) and the priest, she can continue unhindered.
  • Ballistic Discount: The usual way for the Daltons to get weapons after a prison break. One travelling gun salesman even Lampshades how hard it is to make any money because all his customers keep robbing him.
  • Bandit Clan: The Daltons.
  • Bar Brawl: There's always one going on.
    • One of the more amusing examples is a saloon pianist complaining to Luke that he wanted to play classical music in a concert hall. He gets his chance to do so, and is seized by Stage Fright due to the unfamiliar environment and high-class audience. Luke, seeing this, rides through the concert hall on horseback while Firing in the Air a Lot, which immediately starts a fight ("Hooray, a brawl!" "George! Have you gone mad?"). The pianist then starts playing, being in the right atmosphere again.
  • Battle Butler: In "the Tenderfoot", the butler of the tenderfoot decides to go native with the Sioux servant and greets the cowboys who wants to hang his boss with a rifle.
    Jasper: If it's a matter of law I have no problem but I just cleaned the floor so take two of you as delegate to conduct the search.
    Cowboy: What do we do?
    Cowboy 2: (looking at the barrel pointed at him) Well if that gun is loaded we do what he says.
  • Bawdy Song: Presumably, many of the songs in the saloon girls' repertoire; the good-riddance-to-publisher-Dupuis comic (see the "Darker and Edgier" entry) featured an especially bawdy one, going "see what the boys in the backroom will have". This sang by saloon girls dancing can-can. For the non-English speakers in the French audience, this counts as a Bilingual Bonus (see below).
  • Bears Are Bad News: Roy Bean's bear Joe turns out to be an aversion, sure he puts on the scary act but being a booze hound a bottle of alcohol can convince him to sit a fight out.
  • Beardness Protection Program: Works well on Dr. Doxey.
  • Because You Can Cope: Ma Dalton reveals that she's so tough on Joe because he's almost exactly like his father, unlike his brothers, and he needs to be tougher so he can look after them.
  • Berserk Button: Joe Dalton and any mention of Lucky Luke. Interestingly, Averell Dalton has one as well: having his cooking criticized. When Luke samples his food in Dalton City and declares it inedible, Averell asks for Joe's gun.
  • Beyond the Impossible: Luke shooting his (still drawing) shadow on the back cover of every book? Okay, maybe technically possible. Ran Tan Plan's shadow jumping over the shadow of the trashcan Ran Tan Plan just ran into? This trope.
  • Big Damn Hero: Lucky Luke is this trope embodied, often being called upon by the U.S. government as last resort when things get really out of hand.
  • Big Eater: Averell Dalton and Rantanplan. Both are also Extreme Omnivores, see below. The resemblance between them is more or less a Running Gag.
  • Bilingual Bonus: To the readers of the original French. Goscinny was fluent in English and peppered the stories with funny English names, actual songs, and so on.
  • Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Lucky Luke frequently does this to enemies, as shown on the trope page's picture.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: In Wanted Lucky Luke, the trio of sisters Lucky Luke escorts to Liberty town have blonde (Cherry the youngest sister), red (Bonnie the middle sister) and brown (Angie the eldest sister) hair.
  • Boomerang Bigot: A chieftain of Indians and a cavalry officer were at war against each other. The chieftain has a blood hatred against white people for invading their land and killing his people. The story revealed at the end that the chieftain is of Caucasian descent and that he always knew his true origins.
  • Boom Town: Some spring from the ground in a few hours, and as often as not turn into deserted ghost towns just as fast.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Lampshaded.
    Horace Greeley: Do you ever reload?
    Lucky Luke: Yes, at the end of every episode.
  • Bounty Hunter: The book The Bounty Hunter (in French Chasseur de primes) is a hilarious parody of the trope. Following a short introductional treaty on the general status of bounty hunters in the Old West, we get introduced to the title character, Elliot Belt, a notorious and unscrupulous representative of his trade. His appearance is an obvious nod on Western actor Lee Van Cleef, particularly his acting roles as merciless bounty hunter.
  • Breakout Character
  • The Bus Came Back:
    • Laura Legs, a saloon girl, shows up two times after her initial introduction.
    • Joss Jamon and his gang return after a very long absence and are after Lucky Luke's head in Wanted Lucky Luke. Patronimo also show up, still leading his tribe of Apache.
  • But Now I Must Go: At the end of a lot of Luke's adventures, the people who wants to thank and honor him for service he has done for them, often finds that he has suddenly disappeared without a trace and asks where he has gone. Cue Luke Riding into the Sunset while singing (in English) "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, far awaynote  from home...".
  • Butt-Monkey: Joe and Averell Dalton, in rather different ways.

    Tropes C to D 
  • The Cameo:
  • Canada, Eh?: Mounties, blizzards and lumberjacks. And all of them love tea, with a drop of milk. And did we mention Céline Dion?
    • Canadian Western: "Les Daltons dans le blizzard", where they flee to Canada. Contains this immortal line by Joe on seeing a Mountie: "Hooray, a policeman!".
  • Captain Crash:
    • The machinist in Going Up The Missisipi, Buster "Bangs", earned his Meaningful Name by making the steam engines of fourteen river boats explode. Had his captain not stopped him, he'd likely have exploded the Daisy Belle too in his frantic attempt to win the race. Subverted in the end, this time the other river boat explodes, much to his surprise.
      Buster "Bangs": Did I do that!?
      Assistant: No boss, this time the other one exploded.
    • In The Caravan, the inventor Zachary Martins crashes all of his experimental prototype vehicles.
  • Cardboard Prison: The Dalton's once-per-episode evasion. "Finding Lucky Luke and politely asking him if he doesn't mind bringing them back, please" is a standard prison protocol. The prison warden and some of the guards have become recurring characters in Rantaplan stories, and they are mostly depicted as buffoons. Besides the Daltons, many prisoners have fooled them and walked out of prison.
  • Card Sharp: There seems to be one in every town. One is even pivotal to the plot in "The Stagecoach", slipping Luke a derringer hidden in his sleeve.
  • Catchphrase:
    Averell: When do we eat?
    Joe/Jack/William: Shut up, Averell.

    Joe: I'll kill him!
    Jack/William: Calm down, Joe!

    Joe: I hate Lucky Luke!
  • Caught by Arrogance: In one story, we meet the master counterfeiter Fenimore Buttercup, who would have been successful, had he not printed 3-dollar bills and signed them with his name!
  • The Cavalry: Acts as Only the Author Can Save Them Now: the cavalry will come just in time, if and only if there is no other way to save the day anymore. Also notice that the cavalry was kind of Men of Sherwood in earlier albums. Later, they were flanderized into stupid militaries who still use Tonto Talk with indians who talk perfectly.
  • Chaste Hero: Lucky Luke is not romantically interested in anyone although women tend to be sweet on him. Enforced, as comic book heroes had to be at the time; The Comics Codenote  was ridiculously afraid of anything resembling love, in case it led to something inappropriate. In many cases that "anything" included women. Of course, to today's people it tends to suggest something else about those guys' sexuality... By Fridge Logic it might also be justified in-universe: being a cowboy means spending most of the year on the move after all, even if you herd the Daltons more than cattle. The irony is that while Luke is indeed celibate, the series didn't shy away from depicting saloon girls. In the end of the story Bride of Lucky Luke, the full version of his "lonesome cowboy" song is about him not getting steady with women.
    • At least one album had Lucky forced into an engagement with a woman, replacing her betrothed in an arranged marriage who was in prison for vandalism to other people's property. Lucky went out of his way to get the other man released and married to the woman. Lucky liked her, but did not like living with her or being forced to settle down.
    • While Lucky is forever single, Averell Dalton has been repeatedly depicted as genuinely in love with women, with at least three different girlfriends over the course of the series. All of his relationships ended because Lucky had to return him to prison, though the women would like him to return to them. For some reason, the series keep giving Averell "exotic" girlfriends: two Mexican ladies and one Native American woman.
  • Chariotpulled By Cats: One story has Luke escort a wagon convoy west. At one point the convoy packs up and leaves in the dark, hitching animals without checking who they belong to, resulting in wagons being pulled by pairs of donkeys, horses, cows, and one very confused buffalo. It's the comedic use of the trope with a misplaced wild animal.
  • Cheerful Funeral: The Tenderfoot begins with the funeral of Pappy, a rancher and friend of Luke. In his will, he asked the townsfolk to have a round at the saloon in his name, which ends up in a classic Bar Brawl and a good time all around. Afterwards, two of the people who had fought in the saloon are walking home together and says that Pappy would have loved that fight.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Happens in L'Élixir du Dr Doxey, which consists of two stories. In the first story the villain, a quack named Doxey, has an assistant named Scraggy. At the end of the story the two are imprisoned together. In the next story however, Doxy is suddenly alone in prison and Scraggy is never seen or mentioned again. The animated adaption solved this problem by showing how, after escaping, Doxey betrays Scraggy and uses him as a distraction against the sheriff.
  • Comedic Spanking: Since Billy the Kid in this setting is still 14 years old (unlike his real life counterpart who comitted most of his crimes as an adult, but kept his nickname due to how early he started), Lucky Luke's go-to punishment for him is a spanking. Part of the humor is in Billy's size. While depicted as pretty lethal with a handgun, Billy is a short and scrawny kid. Luke towers over him.
  • Comically Missing the Point:
    • One townsfolk remarks to another that Jolly Jumper is playing chess with Luke. The other simply answers: "Yes, he is taking way too long to make a move, but we have more pressing matter to take care of."
    • In another example, Lucky Luke comes calling for Jolly Jumper, and finds his horse by the river, fishing. Cue the following dialogue:
      Lucky Luke: You fishing I can understand, but how do you put the worm on the hook?
      Jolly Jumper: Like everyone else does: with disgust.
  • Continuity Nod: Zarter Schmelz, the Homage done by Ralf Koenig, himself a huge Lucky Luke fan, does this quite a few times.
  • Conveniently Cellmates: The four Dalton Brothers will always get a cell together. Add to that the fact that it is a Cardboard Prison and they are all Tunnel Kings, and they will also very easily escape together. Typically by digging four tunnels. Yes, they're that smart.
  • Coin-Targeting Trickshot: In Steaming Up the Mississippi, Luke must stop a ruthless hired gunslinger. Luke challenges him to show his skill, whereupon he tosses a coin and shots it. Luke says he's not impressed. The gunslinger then tosses up four coins and shots each one, which Luke says is just a waste of money. He then tosses a playing card and shoots right through it. Luke admits he has skill, but also reminds him that his six-shooter is now empty and Luke has the upper hand.
  • Cool Horse: Exaggerated/parodied with Jolly Jumper; he can even play chess! Better yet, he can fish... and bait his own fishhook with a worm. Luke asks him how does he do it, and he replies "Like everybody: with disgust." When Luke's hired by to find a stolen horse, he wonders if it didn't simply escape. The owner then shows him the empty stall and asks him if he knows any horses that can pick locks. "Yes, my own. But he's one of a kind..." A few stories have Jolly Jumper stolen or unavailable, causing Luke to find replacements horses. They are inferior replacements, reinforcing Luke's determination to locate Jolly Jumper.
  • Counting Bullets:
    • Luke has occasionally tricked opponents into using up all their bullets by taunting them to perform tricks.
    • In Lucky Luke versus Phil Defer, the professional assassin Phil Defer tries to use this against Luke, only for Luke to reveal that his pistol is a special model that holds seven bullets instead of the usual six.
  • Courteous Canadian: Variation in "Daltons in the Blizzard", where the Canadians aren't so much polite as far more respectful of the law than in the Far West: the single Mountie assigned to the area is able to break up a bar fight by telling the fighters to turn themselves in at the nearest outpost (three days away on foot), the bars are careful to close at the legally-prescribed time, etc.
  • Cowardly Yellow: "Yellowbellies" often comes up as an (untranslated) derogatory term for cowards, as does the French equivalent "foies-jaunes" (yellow-livers).
  • Cowboy: Our hero does find time to herd some occasional cattle.
  • Creator Cameo: In Lucky Luke contre Joss Jamon, the first album for which René Goscinny was credited, one of the members of Joss Jamon's gang, Pete, was drawn as a caricature of Goscinny.
  • Creepy Mortician: Undertakers, morticians and gravediggers are recurring characters in this comic strip, usually using formol as perfume, having vultures as pets and already coming to take measurements for the coffins before the cowboys are actually shot dead. The most recurring undertaker named Matthias Bones has a pale skin color.
  • Cuckoo Clock Gag: In "Les Dalton à la noce" (The Wedding Crashers), several custom make Cuckoo Clock's can be seen: the undertaker has a Cuckoo Clock that has bones as clock handles, and instead of a cuckoo a skull pops out (though it still makes the classic "cuckoo" sound), the saloon has a clock where the cuckoo is replaced by a drunk man making the sound of an Alcohol Hic, and the station master has a Cuckoo Clock where the cuckoo is a steam locomotive making the sound of a steam whistle. There is also a scene where Luke visits a clockmaker, and all the Cuckoo Clocks on the wall behind him go off simultaniously, which startles Luke into drawing his gun.
  • Cut and Paste Comic: Morris had a tendency to do this in his last stories, when old age was slowing him down.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Played for Laughs in a one-page comic that was made around the time the comic switched to a less strict publisher. In the comic, which freely breaks the fourth wall, Luke enjoys the freedom the change has given him by acting completely Out of Character. Namely by swearing, drinking alcohol instead of the usual lemonade, shooting a sheriff in the stomach and having implied, off-screen sex with a saloon girl, all while the other characters are pointing out that the publisher is too respectable to ever let him get away with these acts, and Luke in turn pointing out that he got a new publisher now.
    • The one-shot tribute The Man who Shot Lucky Luke could be described as "What if Lucky Luke was serious and realistic instead of humorous?" The drawing, the coloring and the mood is much darker. Lucky Luke is far more stoic rather than his usual laid-back self. There's some violence that's nasty rather than silly, both physically and because of who's doing it to whom. Jolly Jumper doesn't speak, and Luke comes across as formidable but doesn't show any unbelievable Improbable Aiming Skills and isn't a completely Invincible Hero. And smoking is bad for your health. (Actually, you probably won't laugh at that last one when you see how it's played.)
    • A follow-up to The Man who Shot Lucky Luke by the same author was released: Wanted Lucky Luke. A bounty has been put Lucky Luke's head. While hunted down, he try to escort a trio of sisters safely to their destination. The setting is as somber as its predecessor and the story dwells into Grey-and-Gray Morality.
  • Dastardly Whiplash: An in-universe use, when a traveling theater company in one book puts on a melodramatic play and the villain of the play is this.
  • Decoy Convoy: In "The Stagecoach", Luke is hired with much fanfare to protect a Wells Fargo stagecoach carrying a large amount of gold. At the end of the book, it turns out they risked life and limb to protect a load of rocks, while the actual gold went in a second stagecoach.
  • Denser and Wackier:
    • While hyper-realism was never a concern of the comic, the movie Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure is much more cartoony than what's normal for the series, with a high tempo, lots of wild takes and cartoon logic, and Amusing Injuries aplenty.
    • To a lesser degree The Daltons is this as well.
  • Deus ex machina:
    • The final showdown between Lucky Luke and Phil Defer is this. The latter's strategy is to have Lucky Luke waste all his ammo from his revolver and then kill him quickly before he can reload. This works as intended, but Lucky Luke fires one last shot out of nowhere, killing Phil. When the townsfolk ask how Lucky Luke pulled it off, he revealed that he carried a rare seven bullet revolver. Said gun was never referred to until the showdown was over, nor does it ever appear again (except for one reference).
    • In A Cowboy In The Cotton, we get the final confrontation between the black inhabitants and The Klan. Ammo is running low for Luke and Bass. Then all the sudden, a hurricane start devastating everything in its path. In the aftermath, we see that the clan members were devoured by alligators.
  • Digging to China: Played hilariously in The 20th Cavalry.
    Cavalryman: We Dug Too Deep! We Dug Too Deep!
    Ming Foo: No, no, it's only me, honorable Ming Foonote .
  • Dirty Coward: More than a few supposedly innocent civilians reveal themselves to be this and turn on Luke at first chance.
    • A particularly foul example were the citizens of a town that was ransacked by the Daltons during their first escape and who decided to vent their frustration by hanging Luke without any proof that he was a member of the Dalton Gang because life's no fun if they only kill guilty people. Luke turns the tables on them by claiming that if he is a member of the gang then they'll be screwed once the Daltons learn about their accomplice's execution.
    • Of note are also the Sheriff and the bartender in Emperor Smith who once the titular lunatic takes over, aren't content with merely sucking up to him and go along with his delusions but also start blaming Lucky Luke for the opposition in order to get points.
  • The Ditz: Two obvious examples: Averell and Rantanplan. According to his brothers Averell learned to walk at seven and Rantanplan faints anytime he has a coherent thought.
  • Dogs Are Dumb: Rantanplan is literally Too Dumb to Live, having nearly drowned or otherwise killed himself numerous times. Where Luke's tagline is "The man who shoots faster than his own shadow" (with accompanying image), Rantanplan gets "stupider than his own shadow" (and shows the shadow jumping over a barrel that Rantanplan runs into).
  • The Dreaded: A Running Joke. Any bandit worth his salt uses this to his advantage, as well as Luke himself.
    • Billy the Kid is an extreme example; most of the time, he doesn't even have to point a gun at anyone to intimidate them. In one short story, he successfully robs people just by putting up a sign saying he is nearby. In The Escort, Luke needs to bring Billy the Kid to a New Mexico court for crimes committed there, with Billy scaring townsfolk into giving up their valuables just by being there. But as soon as he has crossed the border from Texas to New Mexico, he finds that no-one has heard of him, and people treat him as the ill-mannered teen he looks like.
    • One short story involves Luke training a group of inept townsfolk in law enforcement. The result? The group became known as The Seven, and each became sheriff of their own town, where no criminal dared to go, knowing that it was protected by one of Luke's graduates.
    • Played straight with Black Bart, the diligence's passengers who braved Indians, bandits and more with relative ease are unnerved to go in his territory (save the photographer who wants to take a photo of the famed outlaw), even with Luke on their side. He is also one of the few bandits to get the upper hand on Lucky Luke and would have stolen the loot if the loot wasn't a decoy all along. One character even doubts that Black Bart is human. In reality, Black Bart was a rather unassuming man in late middle-age named Charles Bolton, as shown at the end of that part of the album.
    • The Daltons often get this reaction wherever they go. When they are actually trying to perform crimes, it helps them. When they are out on parole or trying to keep a low profile it proves detrimental. In some cases, they are only trying to get groceries or supplies, and have crowds panicking or handing them loot which they never asked for. Several times leading to one or more Dalton trying to explain: "This isn't what it looks like..." Daltons in the Blizzard has the Daltons moving north, their notoriety increasing with every hold-up, with the bankers' reactions going from "Who?" to "You're the Daltons! Take the safe, don't shoot!"
  • Dreadful Musician: Tortillas for the Daltons: The Daltons pose as a mariachi band to infiltrate a Mexican landowner's home. Their singing is so bad it causes the bandito teaching them to break down crying then try to hang himself (and the cover art shows various glass objects shattering).
    Bandito: Emilio, I've robbed, I've stolen, I've killed, but I don't deserve this!
  • Dub Name Change:
    • As a slight Woolseyism, Cinebook decided to change Rantanplan's name to Rin-Tin-Can.
    • In the Dutch translations, they dropped two letters to make it "Rataplan", which is a slightly archaic Dutch word for a chaotic mess. As the Dutch version of That Other Wiki states: "This indicates perfectly how this dog's brain functions."
    • The Swedish dub changed his name to Ratata.
  • Due to the Dead: For all the grief foreigners and immigrants are given in the West, as shown in The Tenderfoot, there's still a respect for them in death.
    Grave Marker: This tenderfoot died with his boots on...

    Tropes E to F 
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The first albums of Lucky Luke rely more on visual gags. The characters are drawn in a more roundish way with big eyes, suitable for cartoon animation, which was Morris' original intention. When René Goscinny became co-author the plots and gags improved enormously, even though the comic still was much darker compared to later albums. Lucky Luke tends to shoot his opponents dead.
    • Among the Joker Jury in Lucky Luke's trial in Lucky Luke contre Joss Jamon we find Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Calamity Jane (as a villainess!). Visually they don't resemble at all how they would look in subsequent albums in which they played starring parts. This was fixed in the animated adaptation of the comic, in which their looks were updated to their standard designs, and Calamity Jane was replaced by Ma Dalton.
    • In early stories, Luke is far from invincible, facing opponents who have similar skills in shooting and hand-to-hand combat. For example, in his first appearance, Averell Dalton fights Lucky to a draw in a fistfight, both of them too exhausted to continue fighting. Lucky's life often seemed to be in genuine danger, and he had to find ways in escape. As he gradually gained his Invincible Hero status, Luke is often depicted defeating entire armies of opponents without real effort and the conflict instead mostly comes from him having to face situations that cant be resolved with violence.
  • Ear Trumpet: Old timers are often seen with these, especially if weakened to wheelchair condition. Usually the ear trumpet user still cannot hear and has to rely on someone else to personally deliver "what he said".
  • Easy Evangelism: René Goscinny sometimes used this trope to bring a quick resolution to a messy situation. An especially blatant example is the end of L'Héritage de Rantanplan, where Luke tells local tycoon Oggie Swenson, in a very condescending tone, to improve the social conditions in Virginia City. Swenson instantly agrees with him, and in no time, the conflict between Chinatown and the rest of the city's population has been brought to an end.
  • Enraged by Idiocy: Luke rarely gets angry, but the prison guards once again letting the Dalton brothers escape from the cardboard prison is one way to do it. Once, when he was telegraphed about yet another breakout, his only reply was "idiots".
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: And the Daltons are quite right to. Ma Dalton was a fearsome bandit herself, and she still carries a loaded gun in her handbag. After his shootout with her is interrupted by her cat Sweetie running into her arms, Luke (still sweating cold bullets) admits that he has never been that scared. The stories imply that the Daltons' father has been dead for decades, and that Ma Dalton reared her boys as a single mother. They both love her and fear her strictness. In her eyes, the dreaded outlaws are still the little boys which she has to discipline.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
    • The Dalton Brothers always stick together, proving that even among criminals blood is thicker than water. There is one time when they start singing the songs they used to sing back when they were kids and their parents brought them along to rob banks. Any Dalton story has the brothers arguing with each other, and at times they act as rivals or opponents to each other. But they eventually admit that they need each other, and reconcile to bring the gang back together. One story featuring the Daltons as children, had Joe Dalton obsessing about a goal and ready to abandon his brothers in the wilderness to pursue it. The other three Daltons remind Joe that their parents taught them to look out for each other, and Joe admits that his family is more important than the goal.
    • Subverted with Frank James, when Jesse says they'll avenge their brave companion and cousin Cole Younger that was arrested by Luke, Frank tells him to shut up, they need Cole because he was the "poor" today so he is the one who knows where their money is.
    • Averted in "A Cowboy in the Cotton" where the Daltons fight off The Klan not for any moral reason but because they want to kill Luke themselves (they actually think the Klan are a native tribe with particularly ridiculous headgear).
  • Every Episode Ending: Lucky Luke rides off into the sunset, while singing "I'm a Poor Lonesome Cowboy". A short comic book story has the Daltons in hiding. Averell tries to warn the others that Lucky Luke is about to turn up, but they don't believe him. Then Luke appears and finds them. Averell explains that it's sunset, and that Luke always rides by this location at sunset.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The title character of The Bounty Hunter cannot comprehend why Luke prioritizes justice over money. (This is more pronounced in the original comic than in the Hanna-Barbera adaptation.) The background of the character mentions that he was motivated by greed since childhood, and did not really have any others goals in life. He could not understand goals or emotions which he never experienced.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Subverted. Rantanplan thinks he can do this... Rantaplan habitually mistakes heroes for villains and vice versa, and keeps misreading situations.
  • Eviler than Thou:
    • It is shown in cutaways gags that Billy the Kid completely subdues and terrifies the Daltons to the extent that Joe tells the others to avoid him.
    • A story had the Daltons escape prison with a self-declared prophet who intends to establish his own cult. Thinking it is a money-making scheme, they agree to help him in his plan. Once the "prophet" takes over a town with overly religious people (and very gullible ones) who believe in his teachings, he starts showing his true colors by becoming a tyrant, abusing people, abusing animals, etc. His motivation is not money after all. Three of the four Daltons are increasingly disturbed by his behavior, realizing that he is worse than them.
  • Evil Gloating: The Big Bad in the album about oil in Oklahoma. If he had not done it, he could have succeeded.
  • Evil Twin: Mad Jim
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Lucky Luke is nicknamed (both in and out of stories) "the man who shoots faster than his shadow". That is no bragging, he really does. Regularly. Not to mention that he rightly deserves to be called "Lucky".
  • Extreme Omnivore:
    • Averell Dalton.
      Averell: What's this delicious crust around the tamales?
      Espuelas: It's called a terracotta bowl, amigo.
    • Rantanplan will eat just about anything, usually while thinking it is actual food, such as mistaking coal nuggets for chocolate, gloves for cow teats or bath water for soup.
  • False Roulette: Luke once did this to Jack, shouting "BANG!" to make him think he was shot and faint.
  • Feuding Families: Exaggerated with the O'Timminses and the O'Haras in The Rivals of Painful Gulch.
  • First-Step Fixation: In Rantanplan's Inheritance, the Daltons plan another prison escape, but they'd need a weapon. Averell reveals he sculpted a fake Colt out of soap and dyed it with shoeshine. His brothers marvel at how realistic it looks, and Averell informs them he had a model — a real, loaded Colt that a prison guard misplaced. Averell then guilelessly explains that he couldn't make a fake Colt without a real one, otherwise the soap gun would have looked fake. Joe is so incensed by the stupidity of the whole thing that he forces Averell to eat the soap gun.
  • Flanderization: Jolly Jumper was originally a normal horse, but over the years he more and more developed a personality of his own and gained the ability to speak (although in Animal Talk, so only the reader can understand him).
  • Foreign Queasine:
    • The Daltons are disgusted at the idea of the Chinese eating dog (though Averell is willing to try, and in fact saves them when he seems to indicate that he wants to eat Rantanplan).
    • Alcatraz has Rantanplan taken by Chinese cooks to serve lacquered coyote.
  • Freudian Excuse: One album is about an alienist that uses this and Single-Issue Psychology to have people turn their life around when they realize how one moment in childhood snowballed tragedies that made them what they are now. It doesn't work on the Daltons since being from a loving family of outlaws, their every precious childhood memory is about robbing banks and misbehaving. They are making them happy with how they ended up.
  • Friendly Enemy:
    • A reversed version. Lucky Luke starts acting rather friendly to the Dalton brothers after a while.
    • Averell is rather friendly to Luke most of the time, and doesn't carry any of Joe's irrational hatred towards him.
    • Ma Dalton seems to like Luke, and has friendly interactions with him. He sometimes tips her off to the whereabouts of her boys, which she appreaciates.
  • Friendly Local Chinatown: In The Inheritance of Rantanplan, much of the story takes place in the Chinatown of Virginia City, Nevada, which is controlled by a secret society (though a comparatively benign one).
  • Funny Animal: Rantanplan, of course, by way of his ditzy status. Jolly Jumper counts as this, too.

    Tropes G to H 
  • Gender Flip: The Greek translations of the series turns Jolly Jumper into a mare called Dolly.
  • Generation Xerox: In Wanted Lucky Luke, our hero runs into Brad Defer, Phil's son who look exactly like his father. In this version, Phil's death truly happened when he was shot in a duel against Luke.
  • The Ghost: Lucky Luke and the Daltons are this in Rantanplan. (Except for a story where the Daltons were major guest stars, causing the prison staff to be Out of Focus in turn.)
  • Ghost Town: Several show up, and one is the setting of an entire episode.
  • Global Ignorance: From a telegraph operator:
    Herr Direktor: Signed Herr Direktor stop.
    Operator: With a name like that, you wouldn't happen to be Canadian, would you?
  • Gold Fever: In the town of Gold Hill, Powell was fooled into buying a mine that was salted. Everyone eventually abandoned the town while Powell fiercely defended the mine and continued digging for decades. When Lucky Luke shows up and after a run-in with two crooks, Powell finally decide to let go his fever. Ironically, in the last page, he does find gold, but decides to seal the mine rather than relapsing in the fever.
  • Good Feels Good: After an extended session of honest work, Jack / William comments that he is feeling something unfamiliar. Joe angrily tells him that he is feeling tired, everyone knows work makes you tired.
  • Gratuitous English: Like many French-language works, people use "Damned!" as opposed to "Dammit!".
  • Gratuitous Spanish: Averell's attempt to say "When do we eat around here?" while in Mexico ("Cuando se come aqui?") comes out as "Coacoacomékiki?". He keeps trying to get it right all through the album, but none of the Mexicans have any clue what he is saying. Finally, on the last page, he does manage to get it perfectly right... when talking to the prison cook, who is not Mexican and does not speak Spanish (and in fact, hears it as "Coacoacomékiki").
  • Gratuitous Russian: Yes, that too. In "Le Grand Duc", where selfsame Duke from Russia visits the Wild West. Cyrillic ensues.
    Anarchist Assassin: НЕУДАЧА! note 
  • Guest Strip: The homage issues made by other well-known comic creators since 2016.
    • L'homme qui tua Lucky Luke (The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke) by Matthieu Bonhomme (2016), Darker and Edgier than the original
    • Jolly Jumper ne répond plus (Jolly Jumper Stops Responding)) by Guillaume Bouzard (2017), a story centered around Jolly Jumper
    • Lucky Luke sattelt um (Lucky Luke Saddles Up) by Mawil (2019) in which Luke rides a bicycle coast to coast
    • Lucky Luke - Wanted by Matthieu Bonhomme again (2021), a sequel to Bonhomme's first story which adds three sisters to the mix, thereby giving "wanted" a double meaning
    • Zarter Schmelz by Ralf Koenig (2021) in which chocolate is introduced to the Wild West, and, unsurprisingly for the author, Luke encounters two gay cowboys
  • The Gunslinger: "Faster than his own shadow."
  • Hanging Judge
    • Roy Bean in The Judge. Notably, he was not a real judge, but mainly a scam artist who ran both a makeshift courthouse and the saloon. His threat of hanging was mostly bluster.
    • Isaac Parker in Belle Starr is a straighter example. Justified. The real-life Isaac Parker (1838 – 1896) was nicknamed "the Hanging Judge" due to his trial record. "Parker sentenced 160 people to death; 79 of them were executed." Several of the others sentenced by Parker died in prison before the set date for their executions. Parker was appointed judge by Ulysses S. Grant in part because he had a reputation for being incorruptible, and Grant wanted someone to replace the notoriously corrupt judge William Story. Grant probably did not expect that Parker would become known for an unusually large body count.
  • Happy Rain
    • In The Wagon Train, when the caravan of California-bound settlers was running out of water after crossing a desert. Of course, once all the water barrels are filled, and the praire starts turning to mud, the settlers start bitching about that instead, which is lampshaded by Luke.
    • In Barbed Wire on the Prairie, when a showdown between ranchers and farmers had turned to the latter's advantage because of a drought (the rain came just after an agreement to share water was reached).
  • Harmless Villain: Unlike his three signifigantly more vicious brothers, Averell has little interest in crime, and is more interested in food. He would likely not even be a criminal if not for his family.
    • To be fair, Averell has been depicted as having great fighting skills and can put them to good use on occassion. However, he is childishly naive, gullible, and impulsive. People take advantage of him frequently. A running gag of the series involves the Daltons' wanted posters. The reward on his brothers can amount to several thousand dollars, while the reward on Averell at times is less than 50 dollars. In the first version of this gag, before the new Daltons earned their infamy, he wasn't wanted at all!
  • Hate Sink: Bounty hunters are this in-universe. Elliot Belt has the worst reputation of all of them, to the point that saloon singers refuse to perform when he is present and the bartender spills his alcohol on the bar when he asks for a drink, even when he calls a round for everyone the barman just pour bottles on the bar.
    Bartender: No law says I have to serve your drink in a glass. Drink it and get out.
  • Heel–Face Turn:
    • The villain from The One-armed Bandit randomly drops his whole scheme (destroying the prototype slot machine because it would put card cheats like him out of business) because he and his goon, who he had been using as a horse because Lucky Luke had scared off their horses during their first ambush, were spotted by one of the managers for the Pony Express who was impressed with the speed they got around, and offered them a job. The offer of a decent wage and three meals a day is enough to get the villain to turn honest, and the last part of the story lacks a normal antagonist as a result.
    • Slim, the Fat Bastard Big Bad from "Barbed Wire on the Prairie" has an unusually quick one when the plot wraps up; after the other cattle barons and the farmers have made peace and agreed to share land and resources on the prairie, one of Slim's mooks asks him what they'll do now. Slim's response basically comes down to "we admit we acted like idiots and hope the farmers forgive and forget".
  • Henpecked Husband:
    • Mr. Flimsy in The Stagecoach. Played with as he gradually becomes more self-assertive once he realizes that he has incredible luck with games of chance. By the time he arrives in California, Flimsy has become a wealthy man and his wife seems impressed.
    • O'Timmins and O'Hara's patriarchs turn out to be really submissive to their wives, who are fed up with their feud by the end of the story and force them to make peace.
  • Historical Character's Fictional Relative: Lucky Luke's Dalton brothers are cousins of the historical Dalton gang, down to having the exact same faces, height, and irritability.
  • Historical Domain Character: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Frank James, Colin Younger, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill, Abraham Lincoln, Roy Bean, Mark Twain, Belle Starr, Big Nose Kate, Sarah Bernhardt, Horace Greeley, Emperor Joshua Norton,... have all met Luke at one point. (Jesse James and Calamity Jane twice and differently drawn.)
  • Historical In-Joke: And how! Luke pretty much met every big name in the Far West and some alt text is even given for some.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Abraham Locker (the head warden of a penitentiary) is so obsessed with removing personal freedoms that he repeatedly tries to sabotage the Statue of Liberty. He ends up enjoying a stay in a newly-built max-security prison in San Francisco Bay... as an inmate.
  • Holiday Pardon: One story starts when a newly-elected governor declares a general amnesty to celebrate his election, including the Daltons. By the end of the book (as Luke is bringing the Daltons back for their newly-committed crimes), one of the penitentiary guards says they've gotten the rest of their inmates back.
  • Horsing Around: Jolly Jumper, the horse of Lucky Luke. Besides being able to run impossibly fast and long, even while sleeping, and always coming when Lucky Luke whistles, as the series develops he gets the ability to speak and play Chess with Lucky Luke, as well as unhorse anyone who tries to steal him. In one case, an annoying Mountie confiscated him as Luke goes into the saloon. By the time Luke gets out, Jolly is back, and the mountie is asking help from a penguin.
  • Hypocrite:
    • One Congressman yells "Kick these foreigners out!" during a session, and a like-minded colleague tells him "Well said, Kowalski!"
    • Most villainous Cowboys have no problem with old school six-shooters duel at noon, even looking forward to it when the opponent seems to have no chance. However when a foreigner suggests a different sort of duel (the Austrian with fencing and the British tenderfoot with pistol duel) the cowboys are frightened by it and call it barbaric.
    • Abraham Locker is openly racist and yet, that doesn't stop him from hiring a Mexican thug to do his dirty work.

    Tropes I to J 
  • Iconic Outfit: See the page illustration.
  • Ignored Expert: In Travelling Up the Mississippi, a steamboat race between to rival companies will determine the winner and sole steamboat operator of the Mississippi. Captain Lowriver orders more wood thrown in the fire, much to the protests of the engineer who says that the boiler can't take it anymore. No guesses to what happens next.
  • I Have a Family: Parodied in one album, when the Daltons flooded the country with (faked, of course) Wanted Posters of Luke. Every person Luke meets after that does this, culminating in "I have fifteen children..."
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Most memorably when Luke shoots what seems to be random holes into a roll of waxed paper. Then he puts the roll and a coin into a player piano, and the piano starts playing Chopin's "Funeral March".
  • Inconveniently Vanishing Exonerating Evidence: Nonlethal variation in one Rantanplan story: A cavalry officer has left his grandson Douglas in the care of the prison's warden, but he ran off with the circus along with Rantanplan. In order to keep the colonel from investigating, the warden fakes letters from Douglas claiming that he's still in the prison. When both the circus and the colonel end up in the prison at the same time, the colonel demands to know about the letters he wrote, which of course Douglas knows nothing about. The warden quickly sweeps the fake letters off his desk where they're eaten by Rantanplan in the few seconds the colonel has his back turned. Having a bit of a breakdown, the colonel leaves.
  • Inevitable Waterfall: Lampshaded. As the Daltons are about to fall down one, Jack reassures Joe, saying that in adventure stories something always comes up at the last second to save the characters. Unfortunately, in this case nothing does and the four brothers take the plunge (though they are rescued afterwards by an Indian fisherman).
  • Ink-Suit Actor: Morris did this regularly.
    • The colonel in The 20th Cavalry is quite obviously played by Randolph Scott, and in many ways an Affectionate Parody of Scott's usual Western character.
    • The bounty hunter in the eponymous album is based on Lee van Cleef, who often played bounty hunter characters.
    • A barkeep in The Devil's Ranch, which features a Haunted House, is based on Alfred Hitchcock.
  • Insignificant Anniversary: In "Tortillas for the Daltons", Luke tells Don Prieto to host a party to lure the Daltons out of hiding. The next day, posters are put up to advertise a celebration for the Don's 14 years and 5 months of marriage.
  • Intrepid Merchant: A short story has Luke meeting a travelling merchant with the most versatile inventory (and generous about offering them to Luke who volunteered to escort him) and even secure a peace treaty with the natives with a business deal. He even offers Virginia tobacco for the Peace Pipe.
    Lucky Luke: I'm nearly out of ammo!
    Merchant: Start with the Smith and Wesson, they are the best quality.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: After the prison doc declares the Daltons to be amnesiac following an explosion:
    Luke: You sure about your diagnostic, doc?
    Doctor: (offended) Medecine is an exact science, Mr. Luke! You might as well ask me if Rantanplan is a dog!
    (Rantanplan, legitimately amnesiac, starts purring and rubbing against the doctor's legs)
  • Institutional Apparel: The striped prison outfits worn by the Daltons and other jail inmates.
  • In the Past, Everyone Will Be Famous: Luke has met almost every celebrity from the Old West.
  • Invincible Hero: This is very much how Luke evolved in the series... An example of Tropes Are Not Bad: Morris and René Goscinny used this to their advantages, by making the villains (especially the Dalton Cousins) the driving force of many stories. The fun is not watching how Luke will win, but how the villains will lose (and, in the Dalton's case, how will Averell and Joe's interaction doom Joe's plans).
  • Jail Bake: Any cake cooked by My Dalton contains prison-breaking tools by default; it's part of the recipe. Inverted in one case: the loaf is so overbaked Averell breaks a tooth on it, so they just file the bars with the loaf.
  • Jerkass: Joe Dalton. Once, when they steal an Indian's dogsled, Joe takes the sled for himself and lets his brothers run by foot. And later, when they lack time to harness the dogs, he lets them pull the sled.
  • Joker Jury: Featuring Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Daltons, and (due to Early-Installment Weirdness) Calamity Jane.
  • Jumping Out of a Cake:
    • In Dalton City, a saloon dancer is concealed inside a giant cake, but the homemade pastry (baked by Averell Dalton) is so tough that, by the time she manages to get out of it, the party, the fight and pretty much the story are over. The cake is tough enough to withstand gunfire, actually. Averell Dalton is that bad of a cook.
    • The book cover shows Luke himself burst out of a cake, surprising the Daltons. It's also in the opening of one Animated Adaptation and said cover is the page image for this trope.
  • Just Like Robin Hood: Parodied with Jesse James, who gives his stolen spoils to his poor brother, who gives it back, since giving away the stolen goods makes him poor as well. After Jesse realizes stealing from the rich and giving from the poor just changes who is rich and who is poor, he decides to instead begin burning the money he steals. His brother suggest him to give the money back and forth between themselves and their cousin so the rich gives to the poor in a loop.
  • Just Take the Poster: In the "The Bounty Hunter", when the sheriff puts up posters for a wanted Indian, the titular bounty hunter follows him and takes every poster so he'll be the only one after the reward.

    Tropes K to L 
  • Kangaroo Court:
    • In the album Lucky Luke against Joss Jamon. Complete with Joker Jury.
    • Also in The Judge where Roy Bean calls false witnesses to incriminate Lucky Luke for stealing livestock. Complete with Joker Jury drinking on duty.
  • The Key Is Behind the Lock: In a cartoon episode, the Dalton Brothers are trying to be honest, and to have a honest work, they open their own bank. At one point Averell Dalton is commanded to open the safe, but he can't remember where the key is, so he opens the safe with dynamite. It turns out that the key is inside, and Averell closed it in there "for safety". Joe Dalton is not amused.
  • Kick the Dog: Joe Dalton really doesn't like Rantanplan.
  • Killed Off for Real: Quite a few desperadoes actually but Mad Dog Jim stands out with the honour of being the only dead villain who is still canonically killed by Luke, confirmed even by the 2009 film's end credits.
  • Kung-Shui: The obligatory Bar Brawl. In one episode the saloon owner routinely removes the mirror behind the bar whenever a brawl is about to begin. At least one occasion has the mirror smashed just as he's putting it back.
  • Lactose over Liquor:
    • In " The Pony Express", the new recruits for the Pony Express are forced to drink milk in the saloon since their contract forbids them from drinking alcohol. This gets them mocked by the members of the Pacific Railway (the Pony Express' main competitor). Their leader, the station master, even forces William Russell, head of the Pony Express, at gunpoint to drink a bottle of whiskey. In the comic, he actually drinks it, while in the animated adaptation Luke shoots the bottle. In both versions, Luke then gets back at the station master by forcing him at gunpoint to drink a bottle of milk.
    • In "The Tenderfoot", Luke realizes that the bad guy is still alive, as the level of the bottle only he is allowed to drink from is getting lower. When the barman, his accomplice, claims that he's been drinking it, Luke points that like most barmen, he is The Teetotaler, as shown by the glass of milk he was holding at that moment.
  • Land in the Saddle: Repeatedly.
    • Subverted on at least one occasion, when Luke jumped through the wrong window and fell flat on the ground instead of ending up on his horse, much to the latter's amusement.
    • On another occasion, as he didn't know from which window Luke would jump, Jolly Jumper posted a fellow horse under each window of the building.
  • Language Fluency Denial: One Indian that ambushed a convoy is pretending to not understand the language, Luke spots him when the stagecoach interrogates them and the Indian is blushing.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Warden Abraham Locker is jailed for life in the very same high-security prison he designed.
  • Lazy Mexican: "Tortillas for the Daltons" features this in spades. There is an entire city in which the population did nothing but resting even when the criminals arrive to kidnap someone. It even turns out that a bank owner would make a party because his bank will finally be robbed. That being said, the biggest bandit group in Mexico from this comic book is a notable aversion, but you can understand that it is the biggest bandit group in Mexico for a reason (even if they are unable to rob banks).
  • Lethal Chef: Despite his great fondness for food, Averell is a horrendous cook, the only dish he can prepare with any degree of edibility is eggs with curry.
    • Somewhat averted in Cavalier seul where Averell works as a pizza chef and the restaurant's business skyrockets thanks to his cooking skills.
  • Light Is Good: Parodied, whenever the comics feature a character who performs as The Paragon cowboy in a stage show (such as the fake Daltons from "Western Circus", or the title character from "The Dashing White Cowboy"), they will always wear an entirely white outfit to showcase what good guys they are. This is a parody of the cowboy heroes from early Wild West fiction intended for kids, such as the movies by Tom Mix.
  • Lighter and Softer: The earlier comics were a bit darker and mostly based on Old West action and adventure (though not without some comedy). Luke even killed at least one man (lampshaded by Joe Dalton in Belle Starr).
    • One of the most famous effects of this trope is Luke quitting smoking and having a straw of grass in his mouth instead. Later lampshaded when a guy offers him a cigarette. Luke refuses, saying he quit. The guy apologizes, and offers a straw of grass. Luke then says, "No thanks, I'm trying to quit."
    • Also lampshaded in the Go West movie, where he is offered a cigarette again and says he quit. He's asked if quitting was hard, and Lucky Luke admits to chewing on a straw for quite a long time.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Luke is seldom seen without his blue jeans, yellow shirt (originally, it was plaid), black vest, red scarf, and white hat. The Daltons are usually seen in prison garb, but tend to pick up (matching) civilian clothes when they can. Their civilian clothes tend to be green shirts and jean pants, such as the ones they were using in their original appearance.
  • Longer-Than-Life Sentence: The Daltons are serving a 4200-years hard labor sentence in the beginning of La Ballade des Daltons before escaping. In another comic, an escaped convict lampshades this when his hostage tells him that if he turns back now, he will get a lighter sentence. The convict responds with "I can't see much of a difference between being sentenced to 236 or 295 years in prison".

    Tropes M to N 
  • Made of Iron: Ironhead in Going Up the Mississippi, whose name becomes obvious when he headbutts an alligator.
  • Meaningful Name: Abraham Locker's last name is "Locker" and he runs a prison.
  • Militaries Are Useless: The comic is an Affectionate Parody of the Western genre, so of course the cavalry is always either critically late to the action, or completely useless despite anything they might attempt.
  • Minion with an F in Evil:
    • Averell Dalton. In every episode that revolves around the Daltons going straight, he is the only one on who it ever works.
    • He even has his own "Not Wanted" poster! In Daisy Town he does have a "Wanted" poster like the other brothers. The posters are shown throughout their childhood and teens until adulthood with older faces and larger bounties. Everybody's bounty rises continuously. Averell's bounty stays at $4... Until it is lowered to $3.
  • Misplaced a Decimal Point: In the episode Outlaw, the Daltons (the original ones, not the cousins from the later stories) try to divide their loot among themselves. Having had no actual schooling, they fail horribly, turning a simple long division into a mathematical nightmare. Bob Dalton uses his gun to place a decimal point "to simplify things".
  • The Mob Boss Is Scarier: When Billy the Kid is captured, everyone is too afraid of him to testify against him. Same goes for the cousin of Jesse James where the townsfolk spin the situation that his derailent of the train was heroic while blaming Luke for driving the train without license.
  • Naïve Newcomer: The titular "tenderfoot" from the album of the same name. In a bit of a twist, he easily outdoes all the wild west tough guys at nearly everything (among other things, he was school boxing champion at Oxbridge and is a very good horseman from years of avid fox-hunting), but is very much stuck in his upper-class British mannerisms.
  • The Napoleon: Joe Dalton, the shortest Dalton brother, has a temper and a sense of arrogance as great as his stature is small, though his height is never used as an insult.
  • Napoleon Delusion: The character of Smith, convinced he is the Emperor of the United States, references the historical "Emperor" Joshua Norton, with the important difference that he is a millionaire ranch owner who can afford full Napoleonic costumes, paraphernalia and army. He names Napoleon as his "model" and insists on full-on First Empire protocol in all circumstances, to the hilarious dismay of his employees-turned-soldiers.
  • Never Mess with Granny: Ma Dalton. Luke even says he'd never been so scared as during his quick-draw with her, as there's no way he could shoot an old lady even if she was in fact very much about to kill him. Good thing Sweetie chose that moment to jump into her arms, allowing Luke to disarm her.
  • Never My Fault: The bandito assigned to teach the Daltons how to sing in Spanish ends up crying on his boss shoulder that sure he's stolen, killed, plundered... but he never did anything to deserve that. Later he has to be prevented from hanging himself.
  • Nitro Express: One comic is devoted to this. It's just too bad that the Daltons decide to hijack the train, thinking it's a heavily-guarded crate full of gold headed to a place called Nitro, and run close to blowing themselves to kingdom come.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Minor characters are often "played" by famous Western actors or other celebrities, e.g. Lee Van Cleef, Randolph Scott, Alfred Hitchcock or Louis de Funès.
  • No Fourth Wall: Jolly Jumper makes up for his speech impairment by addressing the reader all the time.
  • Non-Fatal Explosions: Most of the time, though a notable exception is The Dalton's father (who was killed in an explosion prior to the series when he tried to break open a safe with dynamite).
  • No Honor Among Thieves: While under escort, Billy the Kid makes a deal with a desperado who will free him in exchange for a part of Billy's loot. However, there's no loot, it was a lie. Billy thinks of killing the desperao once he's freed. Likewise, the desperado thinks of getting rid of Billy once he gets the loot.
  • No Smoking: In several stories, Luke has quit smoking and habitually chews on a straw of grass instead. In the Jean Dujardin live-action, that straw is revealed to have a stronger effect than cigarette. No wonder he's trying to quit that too.
  • Nothing Up My Sleeve: A derringer up the sleeve is the typical armament of gamblers in Lucky Luke.
    • The villain from "The One-Armed Bandit" is a professional gambler who has derringers stashed almost everywhere on his person. His secret weapon is a miniature derringer hidden in his ear!
  • Not So Stoic:
    • The Indian member of Joss Jamon's gang gives a long, elaborate speech, using Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, that he sums up as "they outnumber us twenty to seven, I'm not dying here and I'll scalp any of you stupid enough to stop me". After a whole album in which he said nothing but "howgh".
    • Luke is pretty much composed, aside from bouts of Enraged by Idiocy. When he reads an old friend's postmortem letter he tries to roll a cigarette only to shake too much and tear the cigarette paper, showing he is moved. This gets a Call-Back when a jewish boy plays a song with his violin where his wheatstalk almost fall off his mouth.
    • Despite his normally ice-cold demeanour under pressure, Luke can get flustered in situations he's not used to. Gun fights and other mortal dangers is no problem for him, but as seen in "The Bride of Lucky Luke" he's very uncomfortable around women. "The White Cowboy" also shows him suffering badly from stage fright. The psychologist from "The Daltons Cure" lampshades this, and gets under Luke's skin by pointing out that he clings to his "lonesome cowboy" persona as a safety blanket. Of course, said psychologist later decided to embark on a life of crime himself, so who knows?
  • Not Quite Dead: By Retcon, this turns out to have been the case for Emmett Dalton. Like the historical Emmett, he turns out to have survived while his brothers died. In the album Les Tontons Dalton ("The Dalton Uncles"), he's revealed to have survived, had has a brief fling with a saloon girl who later gave birth to a son. Averell is named the kid's godfather... which greatly angers Joe because he thinks that if there's any godfathers in the Dalton family it should be him.

    Tropes O to P 
  • Offstage Villainy: Used with many of the desperados Lucky Luke encounters in order to explain their notoriety. If rumours are to be believed, Phil de Fer, the original Dalton gang, Pat Poker and most specifically Billy the Kid have quite a remarkable body count. In Billy's case it is said that many of his victims were fellow criminals and Luke himself calls him worse than the Daltons (the new ones at least).
  • Once per Episode: Luke rides into the sunset, singing "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, far away from home..." Often lampshaded and parodied, such as the time he does so around page three and Jolly Jumper expresses his pleased surprise at this early ending. Sure as rain, the bridge they were riding on blows up. In Where The Sunset Is, Averell has a rare moment of Genre Savviness. After the Dalton brothers escape from jail again, Joe decides that rather than head for the nearest town (where they are bound to be found and arrested by Lucky Luke sooner or later), they will hide out in the wilderness. Soon they have found a nice peaceful place where they want to settle for the night — all except for Averell, who feels uneasy about the place and wants to leave. Just as the sun sets, Luke comes riding along, spots the brothers and arrests them. Back in jail, Joe wonders how Averell knew that Luke would be there, and Averell replies, "Didn't you notice? That's the place where..." Cut to the closing scene with Luke riding into the sunset at that exact location. That is "where the sunset is".
  • One-Note Cook: All the station cooks they encounter on a travel with the stagecoach can cook nothing but potatoes with bacon (well, and coffee, or something similar). Except for one, who makes beef with beans (because the gambler bribed him to win a bet). Even in a party organized by that stagecoach company, all the dishes contain potatoes and bacon, with an extra random ingredient thrown in for each one.
  • One-Steve Limit: In his first appearance, William Dalton was called Bill, but since the (deceased) real Daltons were Bob, Emmett, Bill and Grat, this was considered potentially confusing. So he was subsequently always referred to as William.
  • Oral Fixation: After chain smoking for much of the series, Luke eventually switched his cigarette for a straw of grass. Referenced when a government secretary offers him a cigarette, but Luke tells him he quit. So he offers him a straw of grass... only for Luke to tell him he's trying to quit.
  • Outlaw Town: Dalton City from the similar titled album.
  • Out-of-Character Moment: At one point, Luke is tied to a post with handcuffs and talking to Jolly Jumper. Rantanplan overhears this, runs to the drawer where he remembers the keys are kept, runs back to Luke with the keys in his mouth (astounding both of them) and promptly faints. Luke mentions he must have had a fit of intelligence.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: In Barbed Wire on the Prairie, Luke infiltrates a cabal of cattle ranchers by donning a suit, putting on a fake moustache, and dragging a single scrawny cow in tow. The disguise fails him, however, when someone realizes he's too thin to be a real cattle rancher (all of whom are badly overweight).
  • Parental Favoritism: Ma Dalton heavily favors Averell, her youngest son, over the other three, which is a possible reason why he is a much nicer person. However, the same album also reveals that she personally favors Joe because he reminds her so much of Pa Dalton. That's why she's so much tougher on him, because he's the brains of the group and has to look after his brothers.
  • Peace Pipe: A Running Gag in the series is that the peace pipe by Native American tribes makes everybody feel so sick that they would rather continue fighting than smoke it.
  • Peeling Potatoes: Spoofed in Le Vingtieme de Cavalerie. After an Indian raid during which the food stores are burned. Luke sees four men sitting on the ground around a bucket making peeling hand motions. When he queries the Sergeant, he is informed that these men have been assigned to peel potatoes, and life in the cavalry goes on, potatoes or no potatoes. The sergeant then berates the men for not pretending to peel thinly enough and tells them that the colonel will pretend to inspect the pretend peels personally.
  • Person as Verb: Joe claims "lukkiluk" is an English swearword to avoid Emilio Espuelas catching on that he knows Luke. As Joe is prone to suffering screaming mental breakdowns repeating the word, Espuelas believes him (and later uses lukkiluk as angry swearing).
  • Photo Doodle Recognition: In one story, charlatan Dr. Doxey changes his name, shaves his moustache and beard, and has a new picture of him taken for his ads. However, a kid Doxey pissed off defaces the ad to the point it looks exactly like Doxey's old face, allowing Luke to recognize him.
  • Pinball Projectile: Used many times to show off Luke's skill.
  • Pink Elephants: Luke escorts a circus for a while, prompting the town drunk to claim their elephant is the wrong color. Inverted when Luke tries to calm the elephant down after it's been shot at by telling it it saw little pink men.
    • In "The Black Hills", an alcoholic indian claims to see "big strange animals, pink, with long trunks" when he's drinking.
  • Pocket Protector: In Lucky Luke et Pilule, Pilule ("Pill") is shot but not hurt, to his confusion. Then he realizes that the bullet hit the box of pills that was in his pocket.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain:
    • Warden Abraham Locker is this, as he is shown to hate immigrants and lamented that slavery was abolished.
    • The main antagonists in "A Cowboy In The Cotton" are Klansmen.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Elliot was run out of his town as a kid when he misunderstood a "Wanted!" Poster for a delivery boy. It was for hire not for a bounty and the delivery boy's father was a really violent butcher who didn't take his boy being dragged at gunpoint well.
  • Prisoner Performance: "Le Cavalier Blanc" ends with the fraudulent actors imprisoned and putting on a show for the rest of the prison. Only this time, the audience start booing the hero.
  • Produce Pelting: in the 1-page story "The Concert", Lucky Luke meets a traveling singer who has this happening to him because of his bad singing. He doesn't mind, however, because it means that he gets free fruit and vegetables after each concert.
  • Professional Gambler: Characters like that often crop up in Lucky Luke stories. In fact this is kind of a stock character for Lucky Luke, like many other western trope characters.

    Tropes Q to S 
  • Quack Doctor: Doctor Doxey is a fake doctor who travel from town to town selling a miracle elixir that allegedly cure illness and restore strength and vigor.
  • Quick Draw: Luke, of course, but a few other characters are shown to be fast on the draw too. Bob Dalton was fast enough to shoot hanging from a branch and catch himself back.
  • Rain Dance:
    • In one episode, an area inhabited by Native Americans is suffering from serious draught. As it turns out, their shaman has fallen from a horse and hit his head. He is otherwise ok but can't get the dance right and his various attempts only produce minor weather anomalies (like a small blizzard conjured by doing the macarena).
    • In another, a group of irate native dignitaries enters the local saloon to deliver an angry message to the townspeople. These include their shaman... and his unruly apprentice, who is far more interested in the saloon girls than their mission, and decides to start dancing on the stage. Afterwards, it starts raining in the girls' dressing-room.
    • In "Fingers", Luke summons a brief rain shower that makes a plant bulb sprout and grow immediately, to impress a tribe of indians that his magic is greater. In actuality, the rain was faked by the titular magician using a wagon-mounted sprinkler, with the plant bulb serving to draw the indians' attention
  • Recoiled Across the Room: There's that old guy in a wheelchair who nonetheless packs a front-loader shotgun. The recoil from this vintage weapon is still strong enough to propel him and his wheelchair backwards all the way into the nearest pond.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder: In "The Bounty Hunter" the rich ranch owner thinks his favorite horse was kidnapped and wants help, when Luke asks if he is sure the horse didn't run away by itself the owner asks if Luke knows a horse that can pick locks.
    Luke: Mine, but he is special.
  • Riding into the Sunset: Every album ends with Lucky Luke riding off into the sunset singing "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy...". Strangely, this includes the album that ends on a beach in California.
  • A Round of Drinks for the House:
    • When the Dalton Brothers come to a city in Canada, a gold digger arrives and uses his gold to buy a round. The saloon owner says that the gold diggers all do that and then go back to digging gold for another six months. Cue to Joe Dalton planning to take over the saloon...
    • In The Bounty Hunter, when the hunter asks for this, the waiter soaks the counter in whiskey, as he refuses to give glasses to said profession.
  • Rule of Funny: A huge percentage of the series runs on either this or Rule of Cool.
  • Running Gag: Mention Lucky Luke to Joe. He will jump up and down yelling "I HATE LUCKY LUKE!" followed by Jack and William saying "Calm down, Joe". Averell saying "When's food?" optional.
    • Getting the actual cash register, rather than just its content, especially when you rob a saloon. Most bandits are so used to this that they will automatically say "Give me the register!"
  • Russian Reversal: Jolly Jumper likes to turn typical horse behavior on its end like this. In "Western Circus", a group of trained circus horses claim that they're trained to be summoned when their owner whistles; Jolly whistles and gets Luke to come over instead.
  • Russian Roulette: Yes, it is possible to cheat.
    Luke: You're right, one bullet. Now unlock the cell, I just lined it up with the barrel.
  • Sapient Steed: Jolly Jumper often talks, but usually does this with other horses or with himself, in the same vein as Snowy with Tintin. Mainly, but he also does talk to Lucky Luke sometimes. He's also exchanged the occasional word with Rantanplan, though not often — probably because he detests the dog.
  • Scooby Stack: The Daltons often do this. It helps that their height doesn't exactly change.
  • Serious Business: For cattle barons, barbed wire is a personal insult, as it means their cows can't go there. Luke has to go to a land mostly inhabited by farmers to get some because no one sells or will deliver it in cowboy's territory. They even go out of their way to make their cattle trample the farm of the person who put barbed wire.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
    • The typically quiet Indians will sometimes indulge in this for throwaway gags. A memorable example happens at the end of Lucky Luke versus Joss Jamon when a villainous Injun (who had up to that point not uttered a single word beyond the characteristic "Ugh!") delivers an elaborate, long-winded "The Reason You Suck" Speech to his ringleader. The criminals are stunned.
    • In another story, a Christian preacher tries to convert Indians through teaching the "savages" simplified lessons on Christian beliefs. A confused listener asks his friend to explain what the preacher is talking about. The other Indian gives a detailed explanation of the preacher's worldview, analyzing it from a philosophical perspective and using technical terms. This particular "savage" happens to be better educated than the preacher in question.
  • Shorter Means Smarter: Joe Dalton. Smartest of the Daltons, which isn't saying much. Luke calls him the moronic brain of the gang. Though some stories place his intelligence in question. Due to his bad temper and obsession with Luke, Joe sometimes makes essential mistakes that undermine their plans. And is criticized for it by his less smart, but calmer and more observant brothers. Word of God is that Joe isn't smarter, just meaner than his brothers.
  • Shout-Out: Various cameos of movie actors have appeared in the comic strip over the years.
  • The Shrink: Otto von Himbeergeist, who tries to cure the Daltons. While his diagnosis is usually right on-spot, he doesn't manage to turn them. And then, he gets the idea that he should've started a career in crime rather than in academics...
  • Silly Reason for War: A tribe of Comanches goes to war against the local town because the animal shelter refuses to sell a dog to the chief's son. The dog is Rantanplan.
  • Single-Season Country: In "Les Daltons dans le blizzard", the Dalton brothers flee to Canada. Naturally, it's winter over there.
  • Sinister Schnoz: The Daltons all have large bulbous noses.
  • Sir Swearsalot: Hank the stagecoach driver and Calamity Jane. The latter is contagious, as by the end of the story the three prim-and-proper ladies are also swearing like sailors (although it's still expressed by Symbol Swearing).
  • Sitting Sexy on a Piano: Most saloon singers do that.
  • Sky Cell: "Tortillas for the Daltons" has Joe escape from Luke onto a mesa... only to find that he's trapped on maybe four square feet of dirt. When Luke suggests he come back in a year or so, Joe (having run out of bullets) quickly surrenders.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Invoked by many outlaws and some cavalry soldiers in Wanted Lucky Luke. They all mocked Lucky Luke for quitting smoking and accused him of not being a real man.
  • Snake Oil Salesman: Dr. Doxey and several others, including one poor sap who sold a cure-all to a bunch of people who'd broken out in hives due to eating whalemeat. He then tells them his elixir is made from... whale oil.
  • Soap Punishment: Done by Ma Dalton to one of her foul-mouthed sons when he insults Averell.
  • Speech-Impaired Animal: Jolly Jumper and Rantanplan can only chat with members of their own species. Though most of the time, Jumper seems to be able to have conversations with Luke. Well, he understands Luke, anyway. And occasionally they'll talk to each other as well, but these conversations are extremely spare. Probably because Jolly Jumper really doesn't like Rantanplan and either ignores him or makes sarcastic comments about him.
  • Spin-Off Babies: Kid Lucky, portraying Lucky Luke in his childhood. It had only two albums.
  • Stars Are Souls: In Kid Lucky, Kid and the Daltons believe that the stars are the souls of sheriffs dead with their boots on.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: Luke slinks away every time people are starting to talk about rewarding him.
  • Sticky Fingers: Fingers, from the album Fingers.
  • Straw Character:
    • Infamous case in the last story The Man of Washington. The main villain is a hitman called Sam Palin (YES, Palin, and it was released around the 2008 American Elections?) who is a violent supporter of gun-owning rights. In a panel, his eye pupils become red, foam comes out of his mouth as he says "Just because we have guns doesn't mean we are dangerous! Grrrr!" Not to mention that the comic was also about a fictional oil millionaire from Texas who wants to become president and doesn't coincidentally look like George W. Bush. Laurent Gerra is just that subtle.
    • Abraham Locker is an obvious expy of Donald Trump. He supports slavery, hates immigrants and throw angry tantrums when things don't go his way. He's also one of the rare villains to incur the wrath of Lucky Luke.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: The Dalton brothers, who not only look identical to each other aside from their height differences, but are also identical to their cousins (the real Dalton brothers who got killed off in their first appearance), as well as their mother, Ma Dalton (ho looks just like her sons minus the mustache).
    • An uncle and a few other relatives have been depicted, all with the same facial structure, though their personalities differ (the uncle is an honest banker).
    • In one story it turns out the Dalton brothers themselves can't tell the difference if their heads are at the same heights.
  • Sub-Par Supremacist: "A Cowboy In The Cotton" has Luke inherit a massive cotton plantation in Louisiana just after the Civil War ends. He immediately declares his intent to divide the property among the former slaves, but is opposed by the former landowners in the region, all of which are either vapid and ugly Southern Belles swooning over the hero who's killed so many Indians, or Upper-Class Twit Klansmen (one of which has twelve toes, hinted to be from inbreeding). Making it all the more obvious is that Luke works with the historical black sheriff Bass Reeves, who is as competent as Luke himself.
  • Suicide as Comedy: Tortillas for the Daltons has the Daltons try to pose as mariachis and taught to sing by one of the Mexican bandits. They're so horrible at it that he breaks down crying, so the leader gives him a noose to encourage them. The bandit is about to hang himself, and later the gag is repeated when the Daltons rehearse one last time.
  • Super Window Jump: Repeatedly. Usually leads to Land in the Saddle.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In their first appearance the Daltons were actually shot dead by Lucky Luke! Since the characters proved to be very popular Morris brought them back, or rather their cousins, who looked and acted exactly the same and were also four brothers of differing height! So the Daltons we know today are actually copies of the original.
  • Symbol Swearing: A given in a Franco-Belgian comic, but in Calamity Jane, the titular character stands out. The first thing we see from her is a speech bubble filled with grawlixes while Jane herself is still off-panel.

    Tropes T to U 
  • Take That!:
    • In The Man from Washington, there's a not-so-subtle jab at a character named Sam Palin.
    • In A Cowboy in Paris, the main villain Abraham Locker is a very obvious expy of Donald Trump.
      Abraham Locker: Darn taco-munchers. One day we'll have to build a wall between our countries.
  • Tar and Feathers: A common form of mob justice for professional gamblers who get caught. Also, in one story the Daltons got tarred and feathered repeatedly, to the point where Averell decided to stay that way.
  • Telegraph Gag STOP: Whenever the telegraph is used (and of course, particularly prevalent in "The Singing Wire", where Luke escorts the telegraph builders.
  • Those Two Guys: Jack and William, the two middle Dalton brothers; Goscinny actually had trouble remembering which was which, so they tend to switch names between books. They work as an ensemble anyway.
  • Thou Shall Not Kill: Due to his habit of Blasting It Out of Their Hands Lucky Luke has the reputation of never killing his enemies, and several media mistakenly refer to him as never having killed anyone.note . However, this isn't in full effect as Luke has canonically killed Evil Twin Mad Jim, and this story was in the first album of the series. This fact is actually acknowledged by Joe Dalton in the album Belle Star. In the original run of Lucky Luke vs. Phil Defer story, Luke kills Defer at the end in a duel. This was later retconned in the album releases by Defer only being injured but rendered crippled for life. Also, the original Daltons gang was hanged after Luke caught them. In first publication, Luke actually kills Bob Dalton by headshot... and it's onscreen. In the album version, it is censored and replaced by a simple caught with a barrel — before their hanging.
  • Timber!: The Daltons are wandering through the forest, when suddenly they hear "Timber!" and huddle around trying to understand what it means. One gets as far as "I think it's something lumberjacks yell whenever they're cutting down a-" before being interrupted by the tree nearly falling on them.
  • Tonto Talk: The natives usually speak like this with some subversions, either to make the cavalry look dumb or because it's good for tourists.
  • Track Trouble: In "Jesse James", Jesse's gang pull one rail to the side to flip the train. One of them decides to improve on it by bending both tracks at a time, letting the train jump the tracks and coast to a stop in a nearby town (eliciting locals remarking they didn't know the railway was coming to their town and what this'll do to property prices).
  • Training from Hell: On their debut adventure, The (replacement) Daltons start out as pathetic joke characters uncapable of anything bad, so they grind themselves through a brutal training regime to become more like the original Daltons. It works.
  • A True Story in My Universe: In the Homage Guest Issue Zarter Schmelz, Lucky Luke comics exist within the world of Lucky Luke. It's never explained who makes them or how that person knows them to such great details, but amongst other things, they make possible a Continuity Nod when Terry asks Luke if he has ever killed someone and then confronts him with his much earlier killing of the original Dalton brothers, a nod to the pre-Goscinny era.
  • Tunnel King: The Dalton Brothers are experts in escaping through tunnels. With spoons no less. Often digging one tunnel per Dalton.
  • Two Decades Behind: The comic strip is more or less a satire of western movies, especially the classics by John Ford and Sergio Leone. Morris never liked the westerns that were made after the 1960s, when political correctness stepped in and many of the ancient stereotypes were removed for a more realistic and historically accurate approach of the Wild West. Thus many of the later Lucky Luke albums are still referring to western movie iconography that died out since the sixties and western films most of his younger audiences have never seen.
  • Tyrannical Town Tycoon: In the story "Western Circus", Lucky Luke helps out a circus family trying to perform in a town where pretty much everything is owned by a man named Corduroy Zilch, who considers the circus harmful competition for his own annual rodeo.
  • Underside Ride: When a train is derailed, it's usually revealed a tramp was travelling on the axles.
  • The Unfavorite: Joe Dalton routinely gets the harshest treatment from his mother, while she dotes on Averell constantly. She later tells Joe that she loves him the most, mostly because he reminds her so much of their father; the only reason she's hard on him is because she expects so much more from him than the others.
  • Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: When a backwater town is raided by Indians, the telegraph operator is overjoyed that he finally gets to use the machine and dusts off his codebook for the occasion. He then breaks down sobbing because the Indians cut the telegraph lines.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: In Wanted Lucky Luke, Lucky Luke escorts three sisters and their cattle to Liberty town. The journey is dangerous because of a desert crossing, a hostile tribe of natives and a bounty hunter. Despite arriving safely, the herd was lost to a band of Apache. The two older sisters, Angie and Bonnie, decide to hold Lucky Luke at gunpoint because of the bounty on his head. Since they lost their cattle, they'll settle for the 50,000$ reward. Only Cherry, the youngest sister, protests against this betrayal.
  • Use Your Head: As his Meaningful Name suggests, this is the m.o. of Hard-head Wilson in Going Up the Mississippi. He is seen doing severe damage to a steam engine with his head, and head-butts an alligator unconscious.
    Hard-head Wilson: ...and can I use my head during the brawling?
    Captain Lowriver: That's what I am counting on.

    Tropes V to Z 
  • Values Dissonance:
    • In-Universe. One episode centered around oilfields has one guy going "I've been had! This field is stuffed full of oil!" back when petroleum's value hadn't been discovered.
    • Luke calls a bandito a pepperbelly in an early album, although it was to be accurate like the use of tenderfoot.
  • Vegetarian Carnivore: Nelson the circus lion who only eats lentil soup, because the lion is just too old to chew on solid food. When he is sent loose in the street he only scares the sheriff so he can eat the grub he was serving to the prisoners.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Joe Dalton, whenever someone mentions Lucky Luke in his presence. Inverted, in that it usually happens at the beginning of an episode, and once he regains his calm he devises a plan to take his revenge.
  • Villainous Rescue: In A Cowboy in the Cotton, the Daltons of all people actually stop the KKK from executing Lucky Luke, since they want the honor of killing him.
  • Villain Respect: At the beginning of The Bounty Hunter, Lucky Luke sends a bandit called Bloody Bart to prison. When the sheriff tells Luke that there is a reward for capturing Bart, Luke refuses the money and tells the sheriff to give it to Bart's victim, causing Bart to shake Luke's hand and telling him he's proud of having been captured by Luke.
  • "Wanted!" Poster: As another staple of Western, about Once per Episode. Some gags are milked out of the Daltons' wanted posters, as mentioned above. In The Bounty Hunter, the antagonist got ran out of his hometown as a kid when he confused a wanted poster for an errand boy meant and held the butcher's son at gun point.
  • Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Rather subtle, but Lucky Luke's invariable combo of black vest, yellow shirt and red neckerchief mirrors the tricolor of Morris's native Belgium.
  • Weather Saves the Day:
    • An aversion: A bunch of cattle barons have leagued together against the homesteaders, as the former can no longer drive their cattle through what is now the latter's property. A drought hits, but it only hurts the ranchers as they didn't dig wells as part of their livelihoods. They come to an agreement... and rain starts falling just after it is signed. The ranchers maintain their agreement anyway.
    • Played straight in "A Cowboy In The Cotton" where a battle against The Klan in Louisiana is broken up by a hurricane. Leading to a mention that the main villain had Gone with the Wind.
  • We Sell Everything: Any general store Lucky Luke patronizes. "For the impossible," as one store manager puts it, "we request a two-week delay."
  • Wham Shot: In Rantanplan's Ark, Tacos needed to get away from Lucky Luke, so he shot Jolly Jumper. He was only injured, but it was enough to make Lucky Luke cry and many readers never saw that one coming.
  • White Sheep: Marcel Dalton, introduced in the album named after him, is despised by his family for being a straight-up good guy. Possibly a shout-out to the historic Dalton brothers' elder sibling Frank Dalton, a deputy U.S. Marshal in Arkansas who was killed in the line of duty.
  • Windbag Politician:
    • At the end of Fingers, the mayor wishes to say a few words. Cut to several hours later, where he is still talking.
    • One story has Luke help build a bridge across the Mississippi which isn't completed by the time the opening ceremony comes around. Luke tells the governor to stall for time, which he does by announcing that on this day praise must be given to the Lord, and starts reading from the Bible, page 1. The bridge is finished by the time he gets to Job.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Sarah Bernhardt's manager tries to get out of an Indian attack by throwing around glass beads and fake jewelry. The chief's response: "The paleface with beaver teeth is thinking of the wrong continent. Seize them!"

The Licensed Game series provides examples of:

  • Minecart Madness: Explosive Mine from the GBC title "Lucky Luke Desperado Train". It's the third-to-last level and if you want to see it, the password is Gun-Gun-Star-Horseshoe.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: all over the place for the sake of plot (if any), in the GBC title "Desperado Train". For a noteworthy example, you get to play as Rantanplan as soon as you get stuck in a cage, only to guide the dog through an underground dungeon in order to get the key and backtrack the whole stage to free Luke. And the level ends as soon as you free him.

I'm a poor lonesome cowboy
And a long way from home...

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