Follow TV Tropes

Following

Comic Book / The Beano

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/beanoresize_1146.png
The 68th Beano Annual with a few of the longer running characters appearing on the front.

The Beano is a long-running British children's comic that's been in circulation for over 80 years, having entertained several generations of kids since 1938, making this one hell of a long runner. Published weekly, for over 80 years and with over 4,000 issues, it's famous for iconic strips such as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids, and is a huge influence in (and a reflection of) British culture. Other iconic strips include Roger the Dodger, Billy Whizz, Biffo the Bear, Big Eggo, Lord Snooty, Ball Boy, Jonah, General Jumbo, Ivy the Terrible, Little Plum, Calamity James, and The Three Bears.

A number of Spin-Off comics have been released as well, including: The Beano Annual (which is released every Christmas and continues to sell 100,000+ every year); the monthly BeanoMAX; The Beano Summer Special, a yearly reprint Annual featuring content from both The Beano and The Dandy; Plug comic, a weekly comic which ran from 1977-1979 featuring as its main star one of The Bash Street Kids; and the Beano Comic Libraries, which evolved into the Fun Size Beano. Other spin-offs include a few animated series (some of which were Direct to Video) and video games.

The comic is easily the most well-known British Humour Comic and is also the longest-running comic of its genre. It has outlived numerous generations of competitor comics, such as Whizzer and Chips, Film Fun, Smash, and Buster, and continues to introduce new characters and innovate.

Its readership peaked in 1950 before the introduction of its most iconic characters, and some consider it to have Jumped the Shark in the mid-'60s when the artists Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid left to draw for DC Thomson's (The Beano's publisher) rivals. However, the comic continued for long after these artists stopped drawing altogether, though the pair were a big influence on the comic.

In its long run it has had no official cases of a Comics Merger, but it has absorbed a number of characters from defunct comics such as The Numskulls and Fred's Bed from The Beezer and Bananaman from Nutty and The Dandy.

Two Beano home videos have been released, the first in 1993 and a follow-up: Beano Videostars in 1994. Also, an interactive DVD in 2006, which focuses on the characters' attempts to save Bash Street School from closure after TV stars Mr. Cheekychops and Sir Stinksalot's underhand underground scheme.

In the 2020s, a series of books called Boomics (Book + Comic) was released. These were written by former editors Mike Stirling and Craig Graham, though the third name credited with them for the first six books, I P Freely, is actually just a pseudonym, as she's really a character the comic introduced to promote the Boomics. The first six stories focus on Dennis and Gnasher, and so have illustrations by his artist Nigel Parkinson. The seventh book is about Minnie the Minx, so the art is by Laura Howell. The eighth is a choose your own adventure format with a manga art style not seen in the comic before.

Not to be confused with Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, often referred to as The Beano Album due to the fact that Clapton can be seen reading an issue of the comic book on the cover.


This comic (and its strips) provide examples of:

  • Abandon Ship: Whenever the sailors on a ship realise Jonah is aboard they would often shout 'Aaagh it's im' and attempt to leave the ship before its inevitable sinking (Jonah would manage to sink the ship everytime).
  • Abhorrent Admirer:
    • Calamity James occasionally fell victim to one of these - usually either "Sweaty Betty" or her sister (depending on the issue) "Smelly Nelly", who were combinations of Gonk and The Pig-Pen.
    • Daisy also considers Ernest to be one of these in the 'Crazy for Daisy' strips.
    • In more recent issues, James is himself one for Minnie the Minx. He loves her, but the feeling isn't mutual and she sees him as a pest.
  • Absurdly-Spacious Sewer: The Ratz appear to live in a sewer large enough for a number of things and the sewer enables them to easily get into the houses of humans. However the sewers have never been shown to be large enough to fit humans down them.
  • Abusive Parents: Downplayed, but Roger the Dodger's parents pretty much use him as a chore combine harvester. Often times, he has to do several chores at once (such as hoovering with one hand, polishing vases with the other, wiping the floor with a cloth on his foot, serving food with a tray on his head) while his parents do nothing to help and simply sit around eating biscuits and drinking tea. And they wonder how he got so good at dodging.
    • Quite often, that is dodging - he is trying to get multiple tasks done at once if he can't dodge them entirely.
    • Abusive parents were a common theme in early Beano strips, the most prominent example being Dennis the Menace's father, who would often punish his son with 'the slipper' at the end of almost every strip. Fortunately, this has been phased out, (though it's still occassionally lampshaded in more recent issues through Dennis Sr.)
  • Accidental Bid: A staple of the comic in the 1990s.
  • Achievements in Ignorance: Smiffy.
  • Adapted Out: The live action short film adaptation of Calamity James leaves out James' pet Alexander Lemming.
  • Adults Are Useless: The adults and teachers never seem to be able to prevent their kids from misbehaving. In older strips they would whack their kids with slippers or a cane but now it seems the kids never seem to get much in the way of a punishment apart from making their parents really angry.
  • Affectionate Parody:
    • The comic frequently parodies things such as Doctor Who.
    • 2018 issues would occasionally base a comic strip on an upcoming movie. A great example was Roger's outing Dodge Solo.
  • Affirmative Action Girl: During Super School's first run there were originally four super kids, three male one female, and then Bananagirl was added to the cast balancing the sexes quite a bit.
    • As of June 2021, two new girls, Harsha and Mandi, have joined the Bash Street Kids. They were soon followed by two more, Mahira (basically a female version of Ball Boy), and Khadija (who's obsessed with art). That evened the gender balance a bit as now instead of Toots being the only girl in a class of 10, there's five girls in a class of fifteen.
  • Air-Vent Passageway: Used in a Bash Street Kids strip which saw Fatty, Plug and Smiffy crawl into a vent in an attempt to steal a key off Teacher.
  • All There in the Manual:
    • The Bash Street Kids' full names are very rarely used. A strip in January 2015 had Danny call himself Danny "Deathshead" Morgan, probably for the first time since it was first revealed in a text story in boys story paper The Wizard in the 1950s. Plug's name wasn't revealed in those text stories, and was instead revealed in his own comic in the 1970s. His name, Percival Proudfoot Plugsley, is the only one used often enough for most readers to know it. Cuthbert Cringeworthy is an exception to this. His is the only full name actually revealed in The Beano itself.
    • As of the 2016 revamp, other characters started having their real names revealed too, on the new look website. For example, Roger the Dodger is Roger Dawson. The comic revealed this by referring to his Dad as Mr Dawson. Minnie the Minx's name was revealed to be Hermione Makepeace, but only the surname has actually been used in the comic. Pie-Face's name was actually Keith.
  • All Women Love Shoes: In a few early strips, Daisy exchanged her high heels for platform shoes. In 1999, she started wearing platform shoes full-time.
  • Always Someone Better: When characters are focused around a single aspect, a fairly common plot is for a new character to show up who's stronger, such as an even cleverer pupil than Cuthbert joining Bash St School. Of course, they get wiped out in the Reset Button by the end of the strip.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Hayley Comet, an alien, has blue skin.
  • Ambiguous Situation: The central conceit of Pup Parade is that the dogs are the pets of the Bash Street Kids they resemble, but they're also portrayed as living in a dustbin (although it might just be a clubhouse). This gets weirder with the fact files on the website, since Danny, Wilfrid, and Toots mention Bones, Manfrid and Peeps, but 'Erbert, Scotty, Freddy, and Smiffy don't mention 'Enry, Blotty, Tubby and Sniffy. Plug says his dog is named Napoleon (not Pug) and Sidney mentions Peeps (since he and Toots share a home) as well as his many other pets, but not Wiggy.
  • Ambiguous Syntax: Sometimes used as one of Roger the Dodger's scams, such as selling tickets to see the "Man Eating Fish"...which turns out to be a man, eating fish (and chips).
  • Ambiguously Brown: Miss Mistry. In a Black History Month post she was identified as black, but her voice actor in Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed! is Indian, so that may have been a mistake.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Walter and the Softies are sometimes considered this. It was averted when he got a girlfriend, called Matilda who looks eerily similar to Walter, in the cartoon series.
  • Amusing Injuries: Just how many times has Calamity James had his ears reversed?
  • Animal Jingoism: The old strip Kat and Kanary and the much newer strip entitled Meebo and Zuky (which involves a cat and dog being violently cruel to each other in a similar vein to an earlier DC Thomson strip from the Sparky entitled Puss n Boots).
  • Animal Lover: Sidney of the Bash Street Kids loves animals and has a wide variety of pets, from elephants to mice. He wants to be a vet when he grows up.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Billy is a teenage superhero who wears a cat themed outfit and is very acrobatic. But doesn't really seem to have the powers of a cat.
  • Animated Adaptation: Dennis the Menace received his own animated series. There have also been a few straight-to-video animated specials for the entire comic (featuring shorts with each of the characters).
  • Anthology Comic: One of the most well-known.
  • Anvil on Head: Used numerous times, most recently in a Meebo and Zuky strip.
  • Art Evolution: For example, 1950s' Dennis looks nothing like present-day Dennis.
  • As You Know: For a long time Smiffy's appearances would be accompanied with a caption explaining he's the dimmest kid at Bash Street School.
  • Audience Participation: The comic has always allowed readers to participate in changes.
    • In the mid-2010s, the front and back page star a young reader who sends in a photograph and stars in a short comic strip with the characters of the comic. (For example, if Lewis had sent in a photo, he could star in a strip called Loud Lewis and it would be about how loud and annoying he is to adults.)
    • A few instances had three or more new series introduced and run in rotation, with readers voting on what series they wanted to continue permanently. The ones that lost were discontinued.
    • Sometimes, the audience would do whatever they liked. Whenever the writers wanted to do a Ratings Stunt, it often panicked their readers, such as the story arc in The Bash Street Kids in which the cast, setting, and plot were drastically changed. The audience sent angry letters and signed petitions to protest the change; fortunately, there wasn't gonna be a change to begin with!
    • In 1988, a hundred kids and their teachers helped the comic become the biggest ever in the Guinness World Records by drawing a 60-foot high front page across a beach.
  • Badly Battered Babysitter: Danny's Nanny, which is about a dog who winds up becoming this to a bratty, rambunctious toddler called Danny.
  • Balloon Belly: In one Bash Street Kids strip, the already balloon-bellied Fatty is forced to play football (soccer), but as his name indicates he is not the fittest of characters. He solves this problem by playing in goal, and eating so much that he is fat enough to fill the entire goal-mouth!
  • Banister Slide: Dennis has done this many times, notably once in a 1980s comic, where Mum had sewn a sandpaper patch on to his shorts, leading him to sand down the banister for her. It was one of many nice things he inadvertently did - Mum was taking advantage of his usual behaviour - and thus he was surprised when he was rewarded at the end.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted in the Minnie the Minx strip from issue 3338, where you can see Minnie's bare chest and she actually has visible nipples.
  • Beef Bandage: Was standard treatment for a black eye, in the good old days when children's comic characters regularly beat each other up to that extent.
  • Berserk Button: Vic Volcano who starts off nice and calm, but would go berserk after the slightest insult. Uh Oh Si Co also has an example, in the form of a boy called Simon Coe, who is obviously called Si Co by his peers. Three guesses why.
  • Best Years of Your Life: Used in "Tim Traveller" just after Tim sees how bad they're going to get.
  • Big Bad: Baby Face Finlayson in the longer strips by Kev F Sutherland.
  • Big Ball of Violence: Used frequently almost whenever there is violence. For a long period the title panel of Dennis the Menace was a Big Ball of Violence.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Even before his Menace Decay, Dennis has been very protective of his sister, as seen here.
  • Big Eater:
    • Fatty from The Bash Street Kids, as well as Minnie the Minx's Friendly Enemy Fatty Fudge. Both boys are unfortunate to now be associated by this name, both being later changed to Freddy and Frederick respectively by 2021.
    • Former characters The Three Bears, and Chiefy from Little Plum could pack away the comestibles too.
    • It's not just fat characters. Minnie the Minx can also get greedy with food at times.
    • When it comes to pies, Dennis' friend Pie-face wins, he beat all the other big eater characters in a pie eating contest then went home for more pie for tea.
    • The original Beano fatty, Big Fat Joe.
  • Blind Mistake: This is 'Erbert from the Bash Street Kids' main trait, even though he wears glasses, but he's blind with them as well as Blind Without 'Em.
  • Blind Without 'Em: 'Erbert of the Bash St. Kids is blind without 'em - as is his canine counterpart 'Enry.
  • Book Dumb: Most of the main characters are this way. Roger the Dodger seems to be able to make up for it with a cunning nature, though.
  • Boring, but Practical: At the end of the "Zombeano" storyline where the zombie apocalypse has been reversed, Cuthbert angrily marches up to his Rejuvenation machine which caused the mess in the first place...and calmly dismantles it since he can use the parts in a different project.
  • Boring Vacation Slideshow:
    • One Bash Street Kids strip has the entire class and their teacher relocate to a Haunted House rather than stick around for their Headmaster's boring slideshow of his time in Australia. Unfortunately for them, said Headmaster had taken that into account and had them all captured so that he can show his slides to them uninterrupted. Fortunately for them, the Janitor shows up dressed as a Bedsheet Ghost and scares the Head away before he can start the slideshow.
  • Born Unlucky: Calamity James has this as his gimmick. It's sufficiently bad to sabotage any attempt to make his luck better.
  • Brats with Slingshots: Most characters used them at one time or another. Dennis the Menace and Minnie the Minx certainly did, and so did the Bash Street Kids.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Word boxes full of the comic editor's Self-Deprecation are common in some strips to be a Deadpan Snarker or critique what the characters decide to do.
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: Roger the Dodger. He's often coming up with schemes to get out of doing work and, ironically, these schemes take much more effort than the work he's trying to get out of doing. He can also be genuinely helpful at times, as one strip did feature him helping out a charity shop by modifying and rebranding the low-key donations into appealing and creative products such as an old action figure into a flower bed scarecrow, a vase as a 3D jigsaw and using an exercise ball and the handles from a skipping rope into a space hopper.
  • Broad Strokes: The Wizard's "Bash Street School" text stories are sort of canon unless they're not. The full names they gave the kids are now offical, the names they gave Teacher (Sleepy Sam Snorer or Weary Willie Watson) aren't, and the portrayal of the Janitor as a terrifying ex-Sergeant-Major was never adopted by the strip. The text stories also locate Bash Street in the fictional town of Northport.
  • The Bully: Cruncher Kerr from Roger the Dodger.
  • Bully Hunter:
    • The short-lived comic strip from the late 90s Even Steven involved a boy called Steven who got even with bullies.
    • Pansy Potter has her moments, too.
  • The Bus Came Back:
    • The Nibblers, who originally left the comic in 1984 have their own story in the 2012 Annual.
      • Which proved popular enough that they got a full return in the weekly comic in 2014!
    • Tricky Dicky also returned in 2014.
    • There were a few comic strips that disappeared from the issues for good but would appear frequently in the Annuals. Billy the Cat, for example, hadn't been in the comic since the 1970s but would cameo in Annual stories.
    • Pansy Potter famously disappeared after the death of her comic strip artist, and then returned as a Soft Reboot in which she'd emigrated to Wonderland to live with the Fairy Tales' characters. She did make reappearances in more recent years.
  • Butt-Monkey: Walter The Softy and Cuthbert Cringeworthy have to undergo torment, harassment and bullying that would destroy any normal boy their age.
    • To say nothing of Calamity James!
  • Canine Companion: The Bash Street Kids have the Bash Street Dogs. Dennis has Gnasher.
  • Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': Both forms of this trope are a fairly common plot, such as Dennis the Menace disguising himself as Walter and pulling pranks to try and get him into trouble, or Roger the Dodger trying to get himself grounded in order to escape revenge from the last set of people he's pranked.
  • Catching Some Z's: In one Bash Street Kids strip, Teacher ends up falling asleep and the kids (whom he's spent the entire story bringing into class) complain he's not teaching them anything but the last letter of the alphabet.
  • Cats Are Mean: The cat (the dog is equally as mean) in Meebo and Zuky. Also Kat in Kat and Kanary and the cat in the Nibblers.
  • Characterization Marches On:
    • From 2012 onwards, the Dennis the Menace strips have been about the son of the original Dennis the Menace.
    • Lord Snooty had existed as a kid for the entirety of his comic strip appearance. In the 2000s, his series technically returned, but through his grandson, Lord Snooty III.
  • Charlie Brown Baldness: Billy Whizz, his brother Alfie, and their Dad. They all have two long hairs and the rest of the head is bald. There are little dots on Billy and Dad indicating that theirs are buzzcuts, but Alfie, being a toddler, lacks this, and so plays the trope straight.
  • Chaste Toons: Averted. Gnasher the dog is the proud father of six puppies. Also, before Dennis' sister Bea was born, there was a long-running storyline which featured his mother's pregnancy.
  • The Chew Toy: Calamity James. The entire point of the comic strip is that the universe has it in for him, and the humour comes from the never-ending stream of horrible luck he goes through.
  • The Christmas Annual: Referred to traditionally as The Beano Book rather than an annual, although this changed in the 2000s.
  • Christmas Episode: There was often a bumper issue for Christmas usually being on sale for two or three weeks rather than the usual week. The Christmas issue would also often feature long stories involving all the current characters. Which is unusual seeing as this is an Anthology Comic.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
    • Wayne's in Pain, a new Bash Street Kid who was chosen as a new Bash Street Kid after a competition on Blue Peter to create a new Kid, appeared in The Bash Street Kids strips for a while in the late 2000s until he was dropped for no reason and without warning, with his last appearance being him falling down an open manhole.
    • Curly, one of Dennis's best friends, vanished when Dennis And Gnasher Unleashed launched; he was replaced by sporty black girl JJ and disabled inventor Rubi.
  • City of Everywhere: A wartime issue had Lord Snooty concoct a plan to confuse the Luftwaffe pilots bombing his hometown by surrounding it with landmarks "borrowed" by the RAF from all around the world. These included the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal, and Table Mountain.
  • Class Clown: Harsha, one of the new Bash Street Kids and part of the Har Har family, is a prankster.
  • Cloudcuckoolander:
    • Smiffy from The Bash Street Kids, Dimmy from Ball Boy. Sometimes paired up for scenarios demanding two particularly stupid characters for some reason.
    • Calamity James' happy-go-lucky mood rarely seems to dim whenever he's going through his bad luck.
    • Freddie Fear's mother is also a bit of a dingbat.
    • Dennis' mother came across this way in the '90s Dennis The Menace TV series, but not in the comic itself.
    • And Smiffy's canine counterpart, Sniffy, in Pup Parade.
    • Les Pretend. He's round the bend.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: Calamity James is the world's unluckiest boy, and gets chewed up by life in every strip; sometimes the punishment comes from his pet lemming or even his mother. This trope makes it funny, though the poor boy wouldn't see it that way.
  • Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: The short-lived Robbie Rebel was modeled on Robbie Williams.
  • Comic-Book Limbo: Lord Snooty disappeared for almost 20 years - then his grandson, Lord Snooty the Third, appeared, heavily implying that the original Snooty was dead (he'd need to be for the younger Snooty to inherit the Lordshipnote ), an unusually dark scenario for The Beano. Occasionally, characters brought back are heavily redesigned or openly mocked for appearing odd to a modern audience (see Keyhole Kate and Pansy Potter's treatment in one of Kev F Sutherland's strips.
  • Comic Books Are Real: In one Calamity James strip, James buys a huge stack of Mega-Man (nothing to do with the video game character comics) and promptly has them fall on top of him. Fortunately, the real Mega-Man suddenly swoops in and saves him... but then James offers him a jelly baby in thanks, forgetting that jelly babies are the one substance that can defeat his Mega-powers.
  • Comics Merger:
    • Merged with Magic Comic for just the annuals back in the 40s. Had unofficial mergers in the 90s which saw the comic absorbing characters from recently defunct comics, most notably The Numskulls from The Beezer.
    • The Dandy's demise resulted in Bananaman moving over as well, though they'd already been running reprints as a way to promote his merchandise. After the end of the digital Dandy, these reprints were replaced with new stories.
    • Also, the end of BeanoMAX when it was replaced with a dedicated Dennis and Gnasher magazine saw Wallace & Gromit and Fight My Monster move to the weekly comic, though still only appearing every month or so. Fight My Monster, an advert strip for an online game, was quickly dropped, however.
  • Companion Cube: Smiffy from The Bash Street Kids has a pet pebble named Kevin, and Pie-Face has a potato called Paul.
  • Composite Character: Tricky Dicky is a combination of The Topper character with the same name, and an old Beano character called Gordon Bennett.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • In Beano Annual 2009 the Ratz briefly meet the Nibblers (a group of mice from a 1970s/1980s Beano comic strip).
    • One Tim Traveller strip from the late 2010s involves Tim going back in time to visit her ancestors, one of which is the original Tim Traveller from the 1990s, Cool Bike and all.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Used in one Bash Street Kids story from a 1980s annual when Teacher discovered it was the way to get perfect discipline: dishing out such punishments as "marry a potato", "stand in the corner and don't think about an orange penguin" and "go to the moon without any supper" (which Fatty objected to strongly, he didn't mind going to the moon, just missing his supper). Unfortunately, in his rush to tell Mrs Teacher how well this worked, he tracked mud throughout the house leading to his own punishment (standing the middle of the pond dressed as a fairy) which put an end to the Cool and Unusual Punishments.
  • Cool Bike: Tim Traveller has one that can travel through time.
  • Cool Car: Dennis has one whenever it'll make things funnier.
    • For a while several of the characters from both The Beano and The Dandy sported some rather nifty vehicles, in order to tie in with the game Beanotown Racing.
  • Cool Gate: Fred's Bed in the appropriately titled strip Fred's Bed which allows him to go anywhere, but his control over where he goes seems to vary strip by strip.
  • Cool Old Lady: Dennis's Granny, who is just a mischievous as her grandson, much to the dismay of her son and daughter-in-law.
  • Cool Teacher: Miss Mistry is the more modern teacher at Bash Street School, and much more fun and open-minded than the other teachers, but still knows when to rein in her pupils.
  • Cordon Bleugh Chef: The Bash Street Kids' cook, Olive, is notorious for having terrible cooking, including custard so thick you have to cut it with a knife.
  • Corporal Punishment: The standard punishment for Dennis the Menace up until the 1980s was getting "slippered" (spanked with a slipper), and the teachers in The Bash Street Kids once wielded canes against their rebellious students.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Calamity James' main trait is his extreme unluckiness. James knows how unlucky he is but is unable to stop it, and whatever he does is doomed to end in disaster.
  • Country Cousin: A strip from the 1960's was actually entitled Country Cuzzins, but instead of being this trope involved a group of cousins who lived on a farm. This trope is also used more traditionally in other strips which have sometimes have the characters visiting relatives who live on farms.
  • Covers Always Lie: Roger appears on the VHS cover of The Beano Videostars, but he isn't on the video itself. Possibly justified because his checkered jersey would have made him hard to animate.
  • Crack Fic: In-universe. The 1968 annual had a story where the Bash Street Kids decide to go and work at the Beano offices. Upon their arrival, the staff all make a run for it, so the kids have to produce that week's Beano. Smiffy is appointed as editor, and the results...well, just take a look and see.
  • Creator Provincialism: The comic is created by DC Thomson who are based in Dundee, Scotland, and their Scottish origins are often clear most notably in strips based around Scotland such as the McTickles, Wee Ben Nevis and Red Rory of the Eagles.
  • Creator's Culture Carryover: Even though the Three Bears are American they use a lot of British terms.
  • Crocodile Tears: In one strip, Minnie the Minx used these to convince her dad's boss that her dad has been driven insane from work-related stress so her dad could take time off work and take her to the fun fair.
  • Crossover: The strips will from time to time will feature characters from elsewhere in the comic walking in and having a role. These can range from cameos to advancing the plot.
    • This is explained as all the characters living in "Beanotown" which is incidentally next to Dandytown, leading to at least one crossover there.
      • In one storyline involving a crossover between the comics, the Bash Street Kids and Dennis compete with Korky and other Dandy Characters over solving a mystery.
    • Wallace & Gromit showed up in the 70th Anniversary issue. They're also regulars in BeanoMAX and, for some reason, appeared in the 2012 Christmas issue of the weekly Beano rather than the corresponding issue of MAX.
      • A switch which became semi-permanent with MAX's demise a few months later.
    • In issue 3185, for the comic's 65th birthday, the current characters crossed over with old characters that had long been retired.
  • Cute Bruiser: Pansy Potter.
  • Cut Short: Happened to several stories in the 1940s owing to paper rationing forcing sudden reductions in the number of pages in the comic. Decades later, Dean's Dino suddenly ended when the artist died.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • One Crossover comic in the 2008 annual had Billy the Cat face off against General Jumbo, who plots to kill Billy and start a conquest. It turns out that Jumbo was Brainwashed and Crazy thanks to an experimental toy soldier named Private Pike who had a prototype "learning chip" installed in him who modified Jumbo's arm brace with electrodes to control his mind and act as a puppet for Pike's conquest. He's destroyed by his creation after Billy suggested that due to the amount of electricity needed for this, it would fry anything smaller. In the end, Jumbo's back to normal and Pike is destroyed...or is he?
    • The live-action short film adaptation of Calamity James explores how a boy afflicted with disastrous luck might try to cope in real life. In this version, his predicament is the result of a medical condition - acute misfortune syndrome - that can temporarily be passed on to anyone who makes physical contact with him. Like in the comics, James survives horrendous injuries (including being struck by lightning twice in quick succession) without any longterm physical results, but that’s about the only cartoonish holdover from the comics. James is otherwise presented as a realistic boy having to go through life with no friends and a resentful mother as a result of (and in addition to) constant suffering over which he has next to no control. There’s also a lot of bad language that could never be used in The Beano proper.
    • BeanoMAX, which featured (very slightly) more adult storylines and was marketed at a "young adult" audience rather than preteens.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance / Anachronism Stew: The comic's editorial position seems to be to essentially create a mild version of this by not shifting the settings more than they absolutely have to be (as opposed to sister comic The Dandy, which had more of a tendency to jump on modernising bandwagons).
  • Depending on the Artist: Just about all the characters in the comic have outlived their original artists by some time, and succeeding artists have often made major changes to the character designs.
    • Subverted with Minnie the Minx in the 2000s. Long-serving artist Jim Petrie retired in 2001, and over the next few years a succession of artists all tried their hands at the strip, sometimes radically changing Minnie and/or her family. Then, when the editors finally settled on Ken Harrison as regular artist later in the decade, he undid not only the previous artists' changes but even those of Jim Petrie, taking Minnie all the way back to how her original artist, Leo Baxendale had drawn her in the 1960s.
  • Depending on the Writer:
    • Most Crazy for Daisy strips portrayed Ernest as a creep that readers were clearly not meant to feel sorry for, but sometimes he would be portrayed sympathetically.
    • Cuthbert's portrayal can vary from story to story with only his intelligence being the consistent factor. Sometimes he's a sleazy suck-up, sometimes he's just socially awkward, and other times he's fairly well adjusted and practical.
    • Mike Pearse's take on the Bash Street Kids gives some of them more individual qualities - Sidney's the Butt-Monkey, Spotty's the Deadpan Snarker with a Napoleon Complex, Smiffy's stupidity is up to eleven, etc. He also portrayed the The Three Bears as a Dysfunctional Family, with Pa Bear being dumber, Ma being tempermental and downright abusive at times and Ted being the sarcastic Only Sane Man.
    • Later writers portray Sidney as the gang's animal lover, with a wide range of exotic pets, and Spotty/Scotty as the most argumentative.
    • In Tricky Dicky, Mr. Throbb is almost universally portrayed as a Sadist Teacher who actively enjoys making life miserable for students (in one strip, he not only confiscates Dicky's phone for using it in the hallway, but he then repeatedly stomps on it while repeatedly asking if he's learned his lesson yet, which would undoubtably get him fired in real life). Some other strips like Bananaman many have him written as a more normal teacher who is just exasperated by his students not paying attention. To put it into perspective, he doesn't even confiscate Eric's manga when he's openly reading it in class.
  • Deserted Island: Frequently used in old adventure strips such as The Shipwrecked Circus.
  • Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: As an example of just how much of a level in jerkass Walter took post-millenium, he gets carried away during a monologue and lets slip his desire to someday become Prime Minister and outlaw fun.
  • Didn't See That Coming: A strip of The Numskulls had Brainy decide to teach the other Numskulls of his importance by leaving and get Edd's pet parrot to remind his mother about his homework. The remaining Numskulls are initially freaked out...until Snitch realises that it's about Biology, specifically, the human body. Since they've worked their lives maintaining one, they manage to complete the homework in time before Brainy comes back so they can diss him.
  • Didn't Think This Through: One Roger the Dodger strip had his father set up a "Dodge Box" scheme where Roger owes it one pound every time he performs a dodge. He finds a serious flaw in that system and exploits it by deliberately performing dodges all day until he's racked up around £11. When his father comes to collect the money, Roger reminds him that he only gets £3.50 for pocket money, meaning that his father has to owe the Dodge Box the offset.
  • Distaff Counterpart: A favorite trope.
    • The Belles of St. Lemon's, which was a gender-flipped (and upper-class) version of the Bash Street Kids.
    • Some versions of Billy the Cat had his cousin Kathleen partner up with him as Katie the Cat. It would be renamed "Billy the Cat and Katie".
    • Dennis the Menace and Minnie the Minx.
    • Billy Whizz's cousin Billie Whizz, the other fastest kid in Beanotown.
  • The Ditz: Smiffy's exploits are frequently greeted with, "He's got it wrong again!"
  • Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Pansy Potter.
  • Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: Any issue in days gone by would have included at least two instances of this.note 
  • Doppelgänger Dating: In one of the Crazy For Daisy strips, Daisy dates a guy who looked almost identical to Ernest apart from different coloured clothing (right down to an extra toe and a mole on his bum). In the end he dumps Daisy for a similarly identical version of her to both Ernest and Daisy's confusion.
  • Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Mike Pearse's take on The Three Bears features a worrying amount of this Played for Laughs.
  • Downer Ending: One infamous Calamity James strip ended with his mum abandoning him at an orphanage.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: In one of the annuals, Roger the Dodger reacts this way when a pair of newsreaders reveal that a meteor they claimed would hit Earth is actually going to miss the planet entirely.
  • Dustbin School: The Bash Street Kids seem to be the only pupils at Bash Street School. Aside from Cuthbert Cringeworthy they are all about as academically minded as a sloth.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: In early issues, pretty much all the comic's most iconic characters had yet to appear. The only strip in the first issue to survive into The '50s was Lord Snooty. Early issues also included text stories and adventure strips unlike later ones which only featured humourous comic strips.
    • When Dennis the Menace first appeared in 1951 he lacked his red and black stripey jumper and instead wore a tie. Plus, Gnasher didn't debut until 1968 and then he looked very different.
    • The Bash Street Kids started life as a strip called When the Bell Rings and, aside from Danny and Toots, featured none of the recognisable characters. It would take a few years for the main nine to set in place.
    • Minnie the Minx wore a skirt with suspenders in her first appearance, while Roger the Dodger wore shorts in his.
  • Eek, a Mouse!!: Used in the Ratz strip but with rats instead of mice.
  • Elseworld: A one-off of Billy the Cat was a Steampunk-themed "William the Cat" in Victorian London, which culminates in him fighting a giant mech. In reality, it was a hallucination of the modern William, who was on a school trip to a Victorian exhibit and got knocked out by a falling sign. Curiously, several people from his dream are either his friends or strangers in real-life.
  • Elvis Impersonator: Les Pretend's dad and Butch Butcher (who often appears in the Gnasher and Gnipper strip) both have Elvis Impersonation as a hobby.
  • Era-Specific Personality: Older readers will point to the Golden Age of some of the long-running characters being the 1960s and 1970s, when Leo Baxendale drew and scripted the long-runners such as The Bash Street Kids. Baxendale's combination of lunatic surreal humour and way-above-average artwork is still reverenced today.
  • Everybody Hates Mathematics: Everyone except Cuthbert Cringeworthy, who lives for sums textbooks. The rest of the Bash Street Kids happily throw masses of textbooks in fires.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Teacher, Mrs Teacher, Headmaster, Dennis' Dad, Ivy's Mum... The list goes on.
    • But subverted in that it's sometimes stated that those are their actual names (Dennis' Dad was christened "Dennis' Dad", and Teacher's full name is Algernon Teacher).
    • Not any more for Headmaster, as he got demoted to PE teacher. As such his real surname got revealed: Headington.
    • Averted for most other characters, except for Teacher and Janitor, from the 2010s onwards. Dennis's Dad is now Dennis Menace Sr, Dennis's Mum is now Sandra Menace, Minnie's Dad is called Darren Makepeace, Roger's Dad is Les Dawson, etc.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • Dennis and Gnasher didn't like Walter's dog Foo-Foo, but they were still disgusted at Walter callously firing and replacing his pet just because he lost a contest. They spend some time trying to find Foo-Foo a new job until he settles for sheep herding.
    • Minnie seems to have a distinct hatred for snob-like behaviour and spoilt children.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Alexander Lemming is a Lemming. Also Roger the Dodger likes to Dodge things.
  • Exact Words: One very old strip had Dennis challenge some other kids to a tug-of-war and states that he'll beat them with only Walter as his teammate. They think it's Walter the Softy. At the challenge, Dennis shows up with a circus elephant named Walter.
  • Expy:
    • Number 13, a strip about a supernatural family of monsters, was pretty much The Munsters.
    • Kat and Kanary is pretty much Sylvester and Tweety from Looney Tunes.
    • The character of Joe Jitsu seems to be an expy of an earlier character entitled Karate Sid from the 80s.
    • Meebo and Zuky are this for Itchy and Scratchy.
    • Harsha Chandra is basically a female Tricky Dicky, but with a twist - she doesn't have to buy the tricks because her Dad owns the joke shop! Their strip, Har-Har's Joke Shop, replaced Dicky's.
  • Extreme Omni-Goat:
    • Fatty from the Bash Street Kids and whenever a goat is featured in a strip.
    • A Les Pretend strip features this where he pretends to be a policeman and tries making a goat his subordinate. During this they manage to scare a pizza delivery guy and the goat eats the pizza, angering Les because he is eating the "evidence".
  • Failed a Spot Check: Calamity James is constantly surrounded by fortunes, from gold bars lying in the street to eccentric millionaires throwing around fistfuls of money in the background, but he never notices.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Calamity James will never, ever have good luck, but it has been subverted on a few occasions, such as landing on some train tracks with a train about to hit him, until the driver immediately stops since two leaves landed on the track.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: Occasionally in the late nineties and early noughties, for special events the comic would be taken up by one big story by Mike Pearse featuring all of the current characters, usually with the Bash Street Kids (who had noticeably more fleshed-out personalities thanks to the longer-form stories) in the main role with the other strips in supporting roles (the exception being his Dennis the Menace story to mark the strip's 50th anniversary).
  • Foul Cafeteria Food: Stretched all the way to Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed, everyone hates Olive's school dinners. The Olive from the Dennis cartoon is actually a different character than the one from the Bash Street Kids strip in the Beano comic - the comic nowadays uses both Olives, and both are as bad as each other.
  • Fountain of Expies: In-Universe: Billy Whizz has been challenged to a race by several similar characters such as Lightning Luigi and Jackie Flash. Then he faced off against his cousin, Billie Whizz for the former's slot in the comic.
  • Four-Fingered Hands: Played straight or averted Depending on the Artist.
  • Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: For several years, Roger the Dodger had a spin-off called Roger's Dodge Clinic, where readers wrote to Roger with their problems and he would suggest a dodge for them.
  • Frame Break: Used occasionally especially in The Beano Video where among other things Gnasher is used to break a frame.
  • Friendless Background: Calamity James is fervently avoided by other people due to his danger magnetism. His only companion is his anthropomorphic pet lemming, who, despite treating James's many injuries from time-to-time, is usually amused by his master's predicaments.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Sidney from the Bash Street Kids' defining quality. Some writers tended to forget this, leaving him as the only Kid without a 'hat', and essentially becoming The Generic Guy.
  • Funny Animal: Biffo the Bear, Big Eggo, The Three Bears and numerous other strips.
  • Funny Background Event: The source of much of the humour in Calamity James' strips, which often capture when James is inches away from stepping on a Banana Peel.
  • Generation Xerox: Turns out that Deathshead Danny I is an ancestor of Danny from Bash Street.
    • One episode of Dennis the Menace (maybe in one of the 1970s Annuals) revealed that Dennis's Dad was exactly the same as Dennis when he was younger.
    • Following the redesign of Dennis' parents, it was later retconned that the current Dennis is actually the son of the original.
  • Gentle Giant: Some older strips featured these. Examples include the strips The Singing Giant and The Invisible Giant.
  • Ghost in the Machine and Mobile-Suit Human: The Numskulls.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Ivy the Terrible had her hair in bunches, which generally followed her motion-lines to emphasise how active she was. Minnie the Minx has more constrained pigtails (which may actually be plaits, Depending on the Artist) with bows at the end.
    • Tim Traveller also gains braids in her 2019 series, after a time travel portal accident turns him into a girl (something that was done in homage to Doctor Who).
  • Godwin's Law of Facial Hair: Many characters with authority are depicted with toothbrush mustaches; such as the Teacher from Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace's Dad and Minnie the Minx's Dad. At the time, these characters were drawn with the mustaches in the 1950s and they were redesigned in 2010. Denis's dad and Minnie the Minx's dad lose their mustaches in the redesign to avoid comparisons to Hitler. With the teacher being the only one to keep the Toothbrush Mustache.
  • Gold Digger: Daisy won't let her lack of attraction to Ernest stop her from accepting expensive gifts from him or getting him to buy her dinner.
  • Green-Skinned Space Babe: Hayley Comet, though she's blue-skinned.
  • Hair Reboot: One issue has a Minnie the Minx strip in which, not liking a perm her Mum had made her get, she cuts off all her hair. Of course, she has her pigtails again next issue. A much later issue introduces a new strip, Gwyneth's Book of Records. Her first record attempt? Longest hair. Her hair grows so long (many times her own height, thanks to a hair restorer) it has to be cut off, but the next issue her usual ponytail is back.
  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The Nibblers - this is made fun of in Beano Annual 2009 when the Nibblers briefly meet the Ratz.
  • Half-Identical Twins: Sidney & Toots.
  • Having a Gay Old Time:
    • There are old Beano comic strips called Little Dead-Eye Dick and Cocky Dick (Cock and Dick both being contemporary British slang for penis). Also, in an old Bash Street Kids strip Smiffy points at a stuffed lion which Danny has stuffed his head into and says, "What a big pussy!" (Pussy is slang for vagina, but can be used to describe a coward. It is also a common UK term for cat, which is the more likely meaning here...).
    • The Topper's Tricky Dicky has returned twice in the Beano.
    • Minnie the Minx. In the old days, 'minx' meant any kind of impertinent female, but nowadays it's more associated with promiscuous females.
  • Here We Go Again!: A three-part Calamity James story arc about him trying to ditch a Pig Pen Abhorrent Admirer ends with James being accosted by her near-identical sister.
  • High-School Hustler: Roger the Dodger.
  • Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Calamity James's mother openly despised her son for being Born Unlucky and in one strip even has a hypnotist regress him to infancy so that she can abandon him at an orphanage.
  • Hostile Show Takeover: During the lead-up to Bea's arrival, Dennis got so fed up with the mystery he announced that he wouldn't be appearing in the next issue. Cue several other characters trying to take over his strip.
  • Hot Teacher: Minnie the Minx's teacher ... and the small knickers that hang on her washing line when Minnie terrorises her at home...
  • Hufflepuff House:
    • Any class other than Class 2B in pre-75th anniversary issue Bash Street Kids strips.
    • Any department other than the Brain, Eye, Ear, Nose and Mouth departments in The Numskulls.
  • Hypocritical Humor: One Les Pretend strip had Les's dad discussing the daft things Les pretended to be with his friends, and them all laughing about it. It was at the end of this strip that we first learnt Les's dad and his friends are all Elvis Impersonators.
  • Iconic Sequel Character: Dennis The Menace did not appear until almost thirteen years into the run of the Beano comic. Other mainstream strips such as Minnie The Minx and The Bash Street Kids appeared even later.
  • Illness Blanket: At the end of one Bash Street Kids comic, Teacher catches a cold and is wrapped in a blanket while giving himself a Foot Bath Treatment.
  • Improvised Imprisonment: One special for the Bash Street Kids involves them discovering an ancient proclamation that declares Beano Town independent of England and whoever finds it the new monarch. This leads to Toots becoming Queen and turning the school into her palace. Naturally power almost immediately goes to her head and she starts ordering anyone who opposes her (or annoys her) sent to the Tower. As attempts to explain to her Bash Street School doesn't have a Tower just makes her angry, they eventually resort to locking the prisoners in the school's water tower. By the end of the story, Toots has imprisoned everyone in the tower (even her friends for suggesting she might be going to far). However, due to it not being designed to hold them, their combined weight makes the water tower collapse. Once freed, the masses immediately depose her and destroy the proclamation. The story ends with them locking her in an equally makeshift prison to teach her a lesson.
  • In Name Only: The BBC's live action Calamity James short has nothing in common with the comic strip apart from the title character and his extraordinary bad luck.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Dennis' Grandma is the only adult who Dennis respects rather than his parents and is his best adult friend. An episode of the animated series even revealed she's something of a Generation Xerox to him.
  • Inventional Wisdom: The "Zombeano" story starts because Cuthbert invented a machine to rejuvenate his old ageing comic books, but standing on the opposite end shaped like a giant exhaust turns you into a zombie. Even worse, it instigates a zombie apocalypse because of the radio waves it emits being able to essentially send zombie bites through answering your phone.
    Cuthbert: I should really have that bit cordoned off.
  • Invisible Anatomy: Minnie sometimes has large muscles that can only be seen when she rolls up her sleeves.
  • Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Many characters have occasionally glimpsed international counterparts who look identical except for wearing stereotypical national costume.
  • Insult to Rocks: In one "Crazy for Daisy", Daisy compares Ernest to a warthog. After this, she's incredibly shocked at herself for being so insensitive and immediately apologizes — to any warthogs who happen to be reading.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: A lot of the characters, although they'd rarely show their kinder side. The bad behaviour would be reserved for adults and their enemies on the playground whereas the kindness would be reserved for their friends or animals.
  • The Jinx:
    • People who spend significant time with Calamity James often befall some sort of mishap themselves, and he is avoided by the locals as a result.
    • Jonah was an example with a very specific form of bad luck. If he was anywhere near a ship, it sunk. (Sometimes this was directly his fault, so doesn't count as this trope, but sometimes it just happened all on its own.) He remained perpetually oblivious to this, and couldn't understand why it was so hard for him to get a job as a sailor. (Phrase Catcher, from every ship's captain who encountered him: "Aargh! It's 'im!")
  • Karma Houdini: Both Minnie and Roger were most likely to get away with mischief more than Dennis, who'd receive the slipper frequently. However, they've also received their comeuppance on many occasions.
  • The Kid with the Remote Control: General Jumbo was in command of a sizeable army (and occasionally navy and air force) built by his friend Professor Carter. A low-achieving hero by modern standards, he mainly foiled minor nuisances and petty criminals, but since even this entailed independently controlling dozens of models using a wrist controller with only a few buttons, it would be churlish to deride his efforts.
    • Jumbo still frequently shows up in the annuals. In a crossover with Billy the Cat in the 2008 annual, one of his toy soldiers (Private Pike) becomes both self-aware and malevolent, and tries to take control of him.
  • Kiddy Coveralls: Ivy the Terrible is notably younger than most Beano characters (a toddler rather than a pre-teen) but just as much of a troublemaker (in her initial strip she challenges Dennis the Menace (UK) for the title of "toughest kid in Beanotown"). She's always shown wearing a sweater under overalls.
  • Klatchian Coffee: The tea served to staff at Bash Street School. Alternates between dissolving the spoon and not actually being a liquid. One storyline involving a wireless lie detector was ended by Olive the dinner lady insisting that she did know how to make tea. The lie detector exploded.
  • Knight of Cerebus: The Billy the Cat and General Jumbo crossover in the 2008 annual has Private Pike; one of Jumbo's toy soldiers who was given an experimental "learning chip" which gave him free will, and questioned why Jumbo only used his army for menial tasks when he could just Take Over the World and proceeded to brainwash him into trying to kill Billy.
  • Laborious Laziness: Some recent comics in particular have accused Roger the Dodger of this, his parents and teachers observing that it would actually be easier for him to just do what they're asking him to do than expend all that effort trying to dodge it.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Common feature, especially in the Annuals.
  • Last of His Kind: Meta example. The Dandy's demise as a print title leaves The Beano as the last weekly humour anthology comic in the United Kingdom.
  • Lethal Chef: Olive the School Dinner Lady. Apparently based on the publisher's tea lady.
  • Limited Social Circle:
    • The Bash Street Kids tend to hang around together most of the time.
    • Dennis usually hangs out with Curly and Pie-Face, and less often Minnie and Roger.
      • At least, he used to. When Dennis And Gnasher Unleashed launched, Curly, who isn't in the cartoon, vanished, and athlete JJ and wheelchair-using inventor Rubi replaced him.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Nearly all the characters wear exactly the same outfit all the time. However occasionally their outfit changes - for example Ball Boy's football kit has gone from red and black to blue and black, and for a brief period in 2007/2008 Minnie wore a red and yellow jersey instead of a red and black one.
  • Live-Action Adaptation: Calamity James received one in the form of a one-off short film in 2023, which can be viewed on BBC iPlayer.
  • Long-Lost Relative: According to a story in issue 3244, Dennis and Walter are distant cousins. Dennis is horrified by this revelation.
  • Magic Skirt: Averted for a second in the Beano Rap video when Minnie is dancing with Walter.
  • Middle Name Basis: Spotty's new name introduced in 2021, Scotty, is derived from his full name, James Scott Cameron.
  • Mirror-Cracking Ugly: Plug (who used to be called "Pug" until Smiffy gave him an extra L he had left over from spelling a word).
  • Misleading Package Size: In one strip, Roger the Dodger tries to convince his father to buy him a games console for Christmas and, despite all his efforts, his dad ends up buying what is very much shaped like a guitar, much to his chagrin. As it turns out, Dad simply placed the games console he wanted inside a guitar case as a Bait-and-Switch prank.
  • The Münchausen: Uncle Windbag.
  • My Little Panzer: General Jumbo, a schoolboy who was given a fully-functional set of remote-control toy soldiers and military vehicles by his friendly neighbourhood Mad Scientist, and used them to fight crime. Notable as the last non-humour strip to have a regular place in the comic, and still turns up occasionally in annuals. The source of a number of Expies in more recent comics by British creators.
  • Napoleon Complex: Spotty/Scotty of the Bash Street Kids is sarcastic, conceited and protective about his masculinity and height.
  • Naughty Is Good: Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids, who routinely use catapults (slingshots) on passers-by, charge through the town in carties knocking over pedestrians, and so on. An early Minnie strip had her mother encourage her to take up a "ladylike" hobby such as scrapbooking. After using the scrapbook as an Improvised Weapon, she told her mum "I won three scraps with it!" Villainous "good kids" include Walter and Cuthbert Cringeworthy, both of whom are tell-tales whose main interest is getting the main characters into trouble. In Walter's case, recent stories have stretched the concept of "goody-goody" a bit, as he's been shown as quite happy to frame Dennis.
    • Also Roger the Dodger, though he's more of a schemer.
  • Negative Continuity: In Lord Snooty the Third it is implied that the original Lord Snooty (an old Beano character) is dead and was Lord Snooty the Third's grandfather. Whilst characters which are still children eg Dennis the Menace interacted with the original Lord Snooty whilst they were both still children and they also interacted with Lord Snooty the Third whilst they were both children as well.
    • The two Snootys also appear together in the end plate of the 2014 annual.
  • Nephewism: Biffo the Bear had a couple of nephews also he had a human aunt.
  • Nerds Love Tough Schoolwork: Cuthbert especially. In one comic from the 1990s, he kept getting the Bash Street kids in trouble so he could steal all their punishment homework.
  • Nice Guy: Billy Whizz is known not to be quite as mischievous as the other Beano characters and often does not go out of his way to harm or annoy others. Any trouble he causes is usually by accident, though this happens quite often due to Billy's whizzspeed. His kind nature and good heart is occasionally taken advantage of by other characters, especially that of Roger the Dodger and Dennis the Menace, as for example in one strip he agreed to carry Roger's dodge books so he could slow down.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Zig-zagged, as some celebrities have appeared as themselves and others have pun names.
  • No Fourth Wall: All the characters are avid fans of The Beano, and read about their own and each other's strips in the comic. Occasionally they'll go to the Beano offices to try and change or get advance warning of their adventures, or make Serious Business of getting a special issue.
  • No Name Given:
    • First generation Dennis' parents' real names were apparently "Dennis' Dad" and "Dennis' Mum".
    • Some issues gave the parents names as "Mr. Menace" or "Mrs. Minx". In one comic, Minnie's father was named Victor.
    • Averted Trope nowadays. Dennis's father is called Dennis Menace (he's supposed to be the Dennis of the 1980s), and his wife is called Sandra.
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Calamity James has Alexander Lemming and Dennis the Menace has Gnasher.
  • Not Allowed to Grow Up: Practically everyone. Weirdly enough, Dennis celebrated his 50th birthday in a special issue, even though he's still physically 10.
    • Averted and then played straight with Dennis. Originally the character looked quite young but as the years progressed Dennis got taller and ganglier so much so that by the 70s he resembled more of a teenager than a 10 year old boy. However after this the original artist stopped drawing the character and Dennis did not age for much of the 80s until the 90s when he got younger in part to make the character easier to animate.
      • One theory has it that the current Dennis is the son of the original, the main "clues" to this being that Dennis's dad was redesigned from a pinstriped authoritarian in 2011 to look something like a grown up Dennis, and occasional flashbacks showing the new Dennis' granddad looking exactly like the old pinstriped dad.
      • Lampshades in the special 70th Anniversary issue, in which Dennis' friends can't tell whether his birthday banner reads 10 or 70, with one of them telling the other that it's obviously 10, since Dennis cannot possibly be 70.
    • The Lord Snooty from the 2000s is stated to be the grandson of the original, however, and Bunkerton Castle's portrait gallery has borne witness. Strangely, this became a retcon in 2013 when the original Snooty returned!
  • Not This One, That One: Inverted in a story in one annual. The characters have hired a boat to go to Australia and when they go to see it, they are shown a rather small battered wooden boat parked next to an ocean liner. They then use the small boat as to get the liner while the man giving them the boat shouts at them that it's the small one they're getting (he is ignored).
  • Official Couple: A flash-forward in the 2006 Dennis the Menace Annual shows Dennis and Minnie as adults getting married and having a kid. As of the 2010's, this has been retconned and they are now cousins.
  • One of the Kids: Grandpa, the eponymous character from the strip "Grandpa", is often seen acting like a child and playing with children. He also has a dad who spanks him the same way characters like Dennis the Menace got spanked back in that era.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted by two Only Known by Their Nickname characters both being named "Fatty"; he of the Bash Street Kids, and Fatty Fudge from the Minnie the Minx. This was tacitly acknowledged in one of the annuals when the two Fatties were cast as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a parody of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (they fought over who was the "dum" one).
    • Bash Street School has two different dinner ladies named Olive; the original one from The Bash Street Kids and the one from Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed!.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Some of the Bash Street Kids are only known by their nickname such as Fatty, Smiffy and Plug. However some of their full names were revealed in a spinoff Bash Street Kids prose story in the comic entitled "The Wizard" and Plug's full name was revealed to be Percival Proudfoot Plugsley in the Plug comic.
    • Fatty Fudge from Minnie the Minx. His real first name is Frederick.
      • Bash Street Fatty was also renamed Freddy in May 2021. They didn't want to teach kids it's OK to call a friend Fatty, so both Fattys were changed to Fredericks. Similarly, Spotty is now Scotty, although this is still sort of a nickname since "Scott" is his middle name. Plug remains known as Plug, presumably because the connection to the phrase "plug ugly" is less obvious.
      • Minnie's first name is really Hermione.
  • Opposing Sports Team: Sports examples are actually rare, but the Bash Street Kids are often shown to have this relationship with rival schools Posh St and Blob St.
  • Outdated Outfit: The Bash Street Kids are the main offenders, there was at least one strip where this was lampshaded. Their teacher seems to be in on the act, and is frequently seen wearing a mortarboard. There was an attempt in The '90s to give Dennis a new outfit comprising of jeans, t-shirt, denim jacket, sunglasses and headphones but it didn't stick (because it turned out to be a publicity stunt).
  • Parental Bonus: One strip featured the Bash Street Kids meeting discontinued comic characters- cue them all bursting into laughter at the mention of Desert Island Dick.
  • Personal Raincloud: One of these hovers over Calamity James' head, and occasionally takes a proactive role in his bad luck, like firing lightning bolts at a woman selling lucky white heather.
  • Pet the Dog: The Bash Street Kids may torment Teacher to avoid having to actually learn anything, but when he's in trouble they show genuine concern for him, ranging from easing off pranks for a time because they think he's working two jobs (actually he was just covering for his wife on her job as the night cleaner when the kids caught him) to making sure he got 'Teacher of the Year' when they learned that the award ceremony was being rigged to benefit someone else.
  • The Pig-Pen: Smudge
  • Political Cartoons: Numerous strips during World War II were political in nature such as Musso the Wop (which featured the italian dictator Benito Mussolini as an incompetent buffoon) and other strips such as a Lord Snooty strip where Lord Snooty fought against Adolf Hitler.
    • It has been argued that the Beano was instrumental in changing Hermann Goering's reputation in the English-speaking world from potentially dangerous war hero to idiotic, overpromoted Fat Bastard.
  • Politicians Kiss Babies: A The Bash Street Kids strip has the teacher tell the class that they will be electing a head boy by democratic vote. Plug references the trope saying that politicians get votes by kissing babies, so he goes to kiss some at a nursery. But because Plug's ugly, the babies scream and he gets thrown out without a kiss.
  • Pretender Diss: One Billy Whizz strip had the titular character furious to find out that a brand of trainers claimed that he uses them personally. He publicly confronts them by taking their trainers for a run to America, and came back reporting that they fell apart midway. This led to a lot of angry customers.
  • Print Long-Runners: The comic itself (80 years as of 2018) and the following strips:
    • Lord Snooty (1938-49; 1950-90, intermittently until 2000, 2013-present)
    • Biffo the Bear (1948-1986, 1989-99, 2013-2015, returned 2018 for 80th anniversary)
    • Dennis the Menace (1951-present)
    • Roger the Dodger (1953-present)
    • Minnie the Minx (1953-present)
    • The Bash Street Kids (1954-present)
    • Billy Whizz (1964-Present)
    • Ball Boy (1975-2014)
    • Ivy the Terrible (1985-2011, 2014)
  • The Professor:
    • Lord Snooty had Professor Screwtop.
    • Also the guy that built Tin Can Tommy.
    • Rubi's father, Professor von Screwtop.
  • Prophetic Names: Something of a Running Gag.
  • Pun-Based Title: The title of the strip Les Pretend. Also many other strips titles are puns on films such as The Bea Team, Karate Sid and Pirates of the Caribeano.
  • Punny Name: Les Pretend. More subtly, Alexander Lemming, Calamity James's sidekick (refers to Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin).
  • The Quiet One: Wilfrid and 'Ebert of the Bash Street Kids.
  • Race Lift: When the strip Betty And The Yeti was re-introduced into the comic in 2015 after a long absence, Betty's ethnicity was changed to South Asian (quite possibly Indian).
  • Ratings Stunt: During Euan Kerr's time as editor of the comic, he was inspired by the publicity received by Story Arcs on soap operas (such as Deirdre Barlow's imprisonment on Coronation Street) to run similar storylines in the comics, such as the infamous "Gnasher goes missing" in 1986, the redesigned Bash Street Kids in 1994, and Dennis' mother's pregnancy and the subsequent birth of his little sister Bea in 1998. The storylines worked as desired, as they received national press coverage and a spike in the comic's sales.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: "Uh Oh Si Co", a strip about a boy who went berserk at the slightest negative comment, was dropped after appearing in just three issues due to accusations of trivialising mental health.
  • Rebel Prince: The original Thirties version of Lord Snooty was like this, secretly sneaking away from his aristocratic family to hang out with his commoner friends.
  • Relax-o-Vision: Used sometimes in Calamity James to obscure the pain inflicted upon Calamity James due to his unluckiness.
  • Retcon:
    • In the past, Dennis and Minnie were sometimes shown in the future as a couple. Minnie's character profile on the 2016 version of Beano.com refers to her as Dennis's cousin... she also apparently has several brothers, who as of September 2016, have never been seen. The confusion worsened when it was revealed that the new Dennis was the son of the old Dennis, most likely leading to the character's information muddling with the new change.
    • Common when it came to character names.
      • Minnie's name was also changed from Minerva, to Hermione Makepeace. However, this can be blamed on Generation Xerox.
      • In the old Wizard story paper serial Bash Street School, Toots was called Kate Pye. The website in the 2010s now lists her as Sydney Kate Pie, to match her brother Sidney.
    • Reprints erase the Peanut character from the 1940s logo and the character Polly from 1950s Lord Snooty. Both characters were, unfortunately, black racist stereotypes.
  • Retool: Has happened occasionally. For example, Lord Snooty started out as a posh kid who'd rather play with the poor kids from the local alley instead of the posh kids from his school, and he hid this from his Aunt Matilda. Later, the Ash Can Alley gang moved into the castle, Aunt Mat now being their guardian. And later still, several of the characters were dropped, with a few new ones who used to have their own strips moving in instead. In later years, Snooty would struggle for money to pay for repairs to the castle. And then there was the time his grandson got his own strip - which was retconned away when the original Snooty returned again.
    • Biffo the Bear was rested in the late eighties (some time after he lost his status as cover star to Dennis), and after a few years returned as a half-page strip with no dialogue, relying on surreal visuals.
  • Resentful Outnumbered Sibling: A frequent premise of Tom, Dick, and Sally. Tom and Dick would gang up on their sister Sally because she was a girl, such as trying to get her to do something for them (often household chores) or blame her for their naughty behaviour. Of course she'd either get revenge or make sure they get found out so that the boys always ended up worse off.
  • Rhyming Title: The strips feature many series that use Character Title with Rhyming Names. In addition to the famous Dennis the Menace, there's also Roger the Dodger and Tricky Dicky. Defunct strips include Contrary Mary, Handy Sandy, Wavy Davey and his Navy, Jenny Penny, Alf Witt the Ancient Brit, Daniel the Spaniel, and Even Steven.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Gnipper and his sisters.
  • Roger Rabbit Effect: Some strips (especially in the annuals from the 90s and 00s) involve the Beano characters interacting with photographs of real people in a comic format. Became a feature in the comics when #SoBeano competition began when the children reading could send in photos to prove how much they love the magazine so that they can win prizes.
  • Rubber Man: Played for Laughs in the strip Ping the Elastic Man. This strip is from 1938 and often ended with Ping being tied up in knots.
  • Rule 63: Minnie the Minx is often considered simply a female version of Dennis the Menace. However another example which even better fits this trope is Dennis the Menace's cousin Denise the Menace (who appeared in a couple of Dennis the Menace strips back in the autumn of 1967); she looked just like Dennis except for a bow in her hair and she wore a skirt.
  • School Is for Losers: The standard attitude of the characters.
  • The Scrooge: Many adult characters (parents and Teacher from the Bash St. Kids) often show signs of it, which may be a reference to the comic's Scottish origins.
  • Secret Pet Plot: In "Betty and the Yeti". The tagline for the story is "the little girl with the extraordinary best friend". Betty keeps the yeti (whose name is actually Yeti) as a pet, who causes chaos, often breaking things. Her parents don't know he exists. To help hide him, Yeti sometimes wears a wig and a dress, pretending to be a very large human girl named Agnes.
  • She Is Not My Girlfriend: Anyone who asks Dennis if he fancies Minnie is threatened with violence.
  • Ship Tease: In one 60s strip, Dennis was Minnie's date to a Valentine's Day dance. In the '90s Dennis The Menace TV series, there was a flashback where Dennis' next door neighbour The Colonel was in a brief relationship with Dennis' granny before he joined the army, and when he encountered her again it seemed to reignite his feelings for her.
  • Shout-Out:
    • One strip had a bunch of protesters holding signs, among them "Down With This Sort Of Thing" and "Careful Now".
    • Calamity James is named after Calamity Jane. And then you have his pet Alexander Lemming, named after scientist Alexander Fleming.
    • The Meebo and Zucky stories are definitely a more sadistic Tom and Jerry.
    • Belles of St. Lemons (a lyric in "Oranges and Lemons") was about a group of boarding school girls always getting into trouble.
    • Uh Oh, Si Co! was intended to be this to Yu-Gi-Oh!, but it apparently didn't work because The News of the World accusing the stories of encouraging bullying caused its cancellation.
    • Jonah the disastrous sailor is most likely named after the naval "Jonah the sailor" superstition.
    • Many of the superheroes that have passed through have confirmed or implied connections to popular American comic book heroes.
      • Jack Flash was designed as a Beano equivalent to DC Comics' Captain Marvel, despite having more parallels to Superman (i.e. Flash crash-lands on Earth after leaving his planet), and not having much powers apart from flight. But he also has similarities to the Roman god Mercury in his winged ankles.
      • Billy the Cat is an orphaned schoolboy who sneaks out his house disguised as a masked vigilante of a cat to fight crime when his elderly aunt is distracted. Too many similarities to Spider-Man to be a coincidence.
      • Later-newcomer Bananaman is more of a Shazam expy than Jack Flash, but is also DC Thomson's Batman. Issue 4000's Beano crossover even revealed his Bad Future counterpart is a gravel-voiced and Perma-Stubble cynic perched in a cowling pose on a rooftop.
      • Played with in one of Rasher's comic strips when he imagines himself as Ham-Man.
    • Dennis the Menace was named after the music hall song "Dennis the Menace From Venice" by Eddie Pola.
    • One strip had Dennis go to a comic convention, where he is briefly approached by two cosplayers from apparently America, who confuse him with the other Dennis the Menace.
  • Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: When Tom Paterson drew Minnie the Minx, her eyes would be shown to be green in close-ups.
  • Sixth Ranger: Bananagirl who joined Super School a few weeks after it started.
  • Slobs Versus Snobs:
    • Dennis is a catapult wielding tearaway against the more nicely brought up Softies.
    • Lord Snooty and his family versus the Gasworks Gang. Most of Lord Snooty's close friends were also commoners, though; in the first issue, he decides they're more fun than his posh friends.
    • Posh Street School is one of the two schools that has a rivalry with Bash Street. (The other being Blob Street, which is more or less the same socioeconomic status as Bash Street.)
    • Minnie the Minx against Soppy Susan. Heck, Minnie hates snobs and spoiled children in general.
  • Slogan:
    • The Beano used to have the slogan "Never be without a Beano".
      • Later they used the rhyming slogan "Everyone we know reads the Beano!"
    • The Bash Street Kids have "The class every teacher dreads!"
  • The Smurfette Principle:
    • Toots is the one girl in The Bash Street Kids and one strip showed her being asked out by all the boys in the gang (except of course her twin brother Sidney). Unfortunately for all of them, Toots canonically has a crush on Dennis the Menace. Averted as of June 2021, as a few new girls, Harsha, Khadijah, and Mandi, have joined the class.
    • Minnie the Minx was said to be created for this very reason so that girls reading wouldn't feel left out.
  • Species Subversives: Richard the Lion, instead of being King of Beasts, is weedy, skinny and only 'king' of Lord Threadbare's Safari Park.
  • Species Surname: Alexander Lemming.
  • The Speedster: Billy Whizz is exceptionally fast and is known as "The world's fastest boy".
  • Spiderman Send Up: Billy the Cat is an athletic young Animal-Themed Superbeing who relies on a variety of gadgets, and lives with his elderly aunt.
  • Spin-Off: Often in the form of annuals for a specific comic strip, eg the Dennis the Menace Annual and the Bash Street Kids Annual. Also Plug from the Bash Street Kids had his own spinoff comic.note  Some Beano comic strips are spinoffs of other strips in the Beano, e.g. Bea the Mini-Menace was a spinoff of Dennis the Menace, and The Three Bears was a spinoff of Little Plum.
  • Spinoff Babies: Bringing Up Dennis was a late 1950s' spinoff of Dennis the Menace with Dennis as a baby. This trope has also been used as a gag in some of the annuals.
    • The mini strip The Bam-Beanos definitely qualifies as it depicts Dennis, Minnie, Roger and the Bash Street Kids as toddlers at a daycare.
  • Splash Panel: Used in older Bash Street Kids strips especially back when it was called When The Bell Rings. Used most recently in the strip The Riot Squad. This trope is also used quite a bit in the annuals.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The Beano SuperStars used to alternate between Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger and The Bash Street Kids, but starting with issue 81 they were all Dennis the Menace stories.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Ernest Valentine of Crazy For Daisy.
  • Stealth Pun: The biggest, strongest member of the Nibblers, a group of mice, is called Enor (Enor Mouse; enormous).
  • Stock Animal Diet: Pretty much all of the stereotypes about what certain animals like to eat have appeared on a regular basis. One time two were linked together in an interesting way was a Minnie The Minx episode when she pulls a face so grotesque it curdles her pet cat's milk so it turns to cheese, which some mice then come to eat.
  • Story Arc: Relatively rare, but there are some examples, usually involving a character going missing and the remaining ones either trying to replace him with a succession of stand-ins or going in search for him.
    • One was used leading up to the 2016 revamp. Walter's father, Mayor Wilbur Brown, manages to take over the Beano editor job. The next week, Walter and his Dad appear in most strips, ruining everyone's fun (by making Billy Whizz wear lead shoes, releasing a wild boar to stop Roger from dodging a cross country run, confiscating all of Minnie's weapons, etc) and thus, the comic, which he's trying to get closed down (he figured if it's already ruined, nobody will complain). At the end of that issue, Dennis promises the readers that the cast will fight back the next week.
    • Previous story arcs were used to introduce Gnipper (and his sisters) in 1986, and Bea, Dennis's baby sister, in 1998.
  • Sucky School: The school from the Bash Street Kids. One of the cartoon adaptations had the school shut down because of this (it was back by the end of the episode). No one learns, outdated books, falling apart building which has no central heatingnote  and (wasn't outdated then) Teacher still wearing a mortar board.
    • Most of the pupils don't wear uniform, either (the only one who does is a snobby elitist), and all attempts to get them to do so are farcical.
      • The lack of uniforms was Lampshaded when the kids decided to dress as pirates to reverse global warming (Smiffy's dad's idea). Also of note, the school isn't completely hated. Baby Face Finlayson used the school as an abattoir. Of note, the spoiler is a good reason, it's a rare case of an actual Story Arc.
    • Eventually, the school was demolished by Ant and Dec and the cast were migrated into Dennis's school.
  • Suicidal Lemmings: Calamity James's pet lemming, Alexander Lemming, likes to find high surfaces to plummet from.
  • Superdickery: Dennis the Menace, frequently inverted. If the cover shows him being kind, polite or 'soft' in any way, expect things to be back to normal by the last page.
    • Same with Daisy.
    • An extreme example was when the 'new, modernised' Bash Street Kids were unveiled: the old staff were sacked, Plug got plastic surgery, Fatty had muscles etc., etc. A tabloid ran an outraged story condemning the changes. When it was published, the conclusion of the two-part story undid all of the changes.
  • Superhero School: In Super School, the idea of a superhero school is Played for Laughs. Extra points for the strip's title is almost the name of this trope.
  • Super-Speed: Billy Whizz. His speed and reactions are so fast they even allow him to stay dry in a rainstorm by dodging between raindrops.
    • To put it into perspective, a "slow jog" for Billy is about 100mph or so. He can easily outrun sound - he once went supersonic at school to prevent a teacher from hearing an insulting remark his friend had just made about the teacher. His greatest moment to date though was when his father wanted to change the TV channel to watch some boring football match, and Billy outran the signal from the remote control in order to negate the channel-change command. Yes, he went considerably faster than light across the living-room and back!
    • In October 2013, Billy was introduced to his female cousin, Wilma "Billie" Whizz; who turned out to be about as fast as him. The first thing that they decided to do was challenge each other to a race. Surprisingly enough for a speedster race, it did not end in a draw.
      • The first race was a short sprint across Beanotown (several miles) and was won by Billy by about an arms-length. Billie challenged him to 2 further races to determine who was the faster, with the prize possibly being who got control of his comic strip in future. Billy agreed.
      • The second race was a "middle distance" race from Beanotown (usually depicted as a small town somewhere in the southeast of England, surrounded by countryside) to Dundee, Scotland (a distance of abut some 400 miles). Billy was leading early in the race, but was overtaken in the latter stages and lost by several metres.
      • The third challenge was a long distance race around the world. It started in Beanotown, travelling south and across the English channel, through France, Germany, and shortly afterwards passing through Transylvania (during the Hallowe'en 2013 edition of the comic). At this point, Billy and Billie were still level.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
    • One time when Ernest broke into Daisy's bedroom through her window, rather than deal with him the comical way she usually does, she instead called the police.
    • A man named Sylvester, who decided that everyone has had enough of Gnasher's menacing, crept into Dennis's backyard at night and tied balloons to his kennel to send him away. After Rasher headbutts and causes him to land in his parent's room, they immediately press charges against him for trespassing and endangering their son since Dennis happened to be sleeping in Gnasher's kennel.
      • When Sylvester informs Dennis' dad of what he's done, he expects him to be delighted. The next panel is of Dennis' dad visibly distraught, wondering how he's going to explain to his pre-teen son that he's never going to see his beloved pet dog again.
  • Take That!:
    • The Beano and The Dandy have a friendly rivalry which often involves taking potshots at each other (e.g. characters being threatened with the possibility of getting sent to the other comic). Stopped after the Dandy's demise in 2012.
    • 2020 saw a special BeanOLD 8-page bonus comic released, intended for the adults who'd been reading the regular Beano during the COVID-19 Pandemic and other assorted crises of the year; the plot revolved around Dennis Sr. and Sandra pitted against Prime Minister Boris Johnson (who's depicted as being unable to make a decision) and Walter's father, who has put Dennis Sr. out of a job by way of closing Beanotown's paperclip factory. Jabs at 2020's multitude of horribleness abounded.
    • In 2018 the comic issued a cease and desist at Jacob Rees-Mogg, accusing him of copying Walter the Softy: both were incredibly snooty, stopped other people having fun, and constantly invoked their father's name. A bit harsh on Walter, perhaps.
    • A Bash Street Kids strip in the 30th of April, 2022 issue is an entire jab at the controversial NFT market, with farts sold on the "Niffy Fart Trade" in place of digital media.
  • Talking Animal: Biffo the Bear and The Three Bears are good examples of this. Also Gnasher can speak but always puts the letter G in front of N for example "Gno way".
  • Temporary Bulk Change: Several characters have gone through this. Out of all the characters, Minnie has become fat the most times.
    • In the Crazy for Daisy strip in issue 3265, Daisy became massively obese after eating a giant box of chocolates Ernest brought her. She soon lost the weight through exercising... by jumping up and down repeatedly on Ernest.
  • The Makeover:
    • Happened to Dennis's parents thanks to Gok Wan, and Roger's parents off panel (due to an artist change) in August 2012. Both Dads lost their outdated moustaches. Roger's later changed back, while Dennis's was retconned as Generation Xerox.
    • Pie-Face, because of Dennis And Gnasher Unleashed. His hair grew longer and he started wearing glasses.
  • The One Guy: Gnipper is the only boy in his litter.
  • Theme Naming: All of the Bash Street Dogs are named similar to their owners eg Sniffy and Smiffy, Enry and Erbert, Pug and Plug, Blotty and Spotty. Dennis the Menace's pets have this too with Gnasher, Rasher and Dasher. Gnasher's puppies are named Gnipper, Gnaomi, Gnatasha, Gnanette, Gnora and Gnancy.
    • Harsha and her siblings Heena and Hani all have names starting with the letter "H," and themed around laughter ("har," "hee," "ha") due to Harsha's nature as a prankster.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Occasionally a strip will have characters doing something nice for their victims; Minnie tricking her Dad's boss into giving them tickets to the fairground to cheer him up, the Bash Street Kids cooperating with Teacher to overcome a third-party antagonist, etc. Even Calamity James got thrown a bone in a Beano Comic Library special when First Ada - a wannabe nurse whose schtick was causing harm to the people she wanted to help - seemingly cancelled out his chronic bad luck, giving him a day of good fortune.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: Lord Snooty III is the grandson of the original Lord Snooty, who was implied to be deceased (otherwise, III couldn't have the title of Lord). So why are they shown together on the third page of the 2014 annual?
  • Title Drop: Whenever someone says to Bea (Dennis the Menace's baby sister), Bea No!.
  • Tomboy: Minnie the Minx, the world's wildest tomboy. Also Toots from the Bash Street Kids.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Walter. In the early days of the comic, he was a genuinely nice boy who simply preferred girly interests. Due to the fear that Dennis bullying him would seem like homophobia, Walter has become more malicious, vindictive and determined to get Dennis into trouble, making any comeuppance Dennis gives him justified.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: In contrast, Dennis became more mischievous and attention seeking than malicious.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Bantersaurus Rex. In his 2015 debut, he pretends to have accidents, then says "it's just bantz, innit?" - then he ends up sinking in quicksand and nobody believes he's in trouble. He's essentially The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
  • Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Any attempt to give Plug plastic surgery ends with Plug's natural ugliness undoing it.
  • Tormented Teacher: Due to its focus on mischievous and disruptive but loveable kids, baring the odd Sadistic Teacher, this pretty much the norm for every teacher the protagonists go up against (especially for Dennis the Menace and Minnie The Minx). However, no one else embodies quite as much as this Teacher from the The Bash Street Kids. As well as Bash Street school being an underfunded dump that is literally falling apart at the seams, he constantly has to deal with the kids antics which can range from simply being disruptive in class to flat out causing chaos throughout the town, with him constantly being the victim of numerous practical jokes and disasters they cause. To the point that several issues involve him flat out assisting the kids in their efforts to bunk off school for the day, just so he can get some peace. However, every so often their be an issue do end with him getting the occasional victory, so that things don't get too hopeless.
  • Totally Radical: In the 2013 annual, Dennis' (younger and hipper) Dad uses the term "chillaxing".
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Pie-face (from Dennis the Menace) and pies.
  • Transplant: This is not a new thing—many characters from defunct comics, most famously the Beezer and Topper, have migrated to the Beano or its sister comic the Dandy over the years.
    • In 2007 the comic started running reprints of Fred's Bed, formerly a strip in the defunct Beezer and Topper comic, as a cost-saving measure. Then for the 70th Anniversary special edition of the comic the following year they ran an all-new Fred's Bed strip, as the strip's setup made it a convenient way of exploring the comic's history. This led to a full revival of the strip in the following months.
    • Bananaman, who came from Nutty and The Dandy.
    • The Numskulls had their time hopping around different DC Thomson comics.
    • A number of characters from other Beano strips have been transplanted to the Bash Street Kids in order to avert The Smurfette Principle and Monochrome Casting: Harsha (from "Har Har's Joke Shop"), Mandi (from the Very Special Episode strip "Mandi"), Stevie (from "Stevie Star"), Mahira (from "Mahira of the Match"), and Khadija (from "Sketch Khad").
    • Angel Face originated from her own The Dandy strip Little Angel Face in 1954 before she was brought back for the 2013 Dennis the Menace and Gnasher TV series and soon started appearing in The Beano.
  • Tsundere: There have been hints of this between Dennis and Minnie. In one strip they were arm wrestling and Minnie threatened to kiss him if she lost.
  • Tunnel King: Henry Burrows
  • Twin Theme Naming: Sidney and Sydney Pye of the Bash Street Kids. Which is probably why Sydney goes by Toots.
  • Uncanny Family Resemblance: Dennis the Menace and his cousin Denise the Menace.
  • Uncatty Resemblance: The comic loves this trope. Gnasher's spiky fur resembles Dennis' hair, and he also has Rasher, a pig covered in spiky bristles; Pup Parade, featuring the pets of the Bash Street Kids; Roger the Dodger used to have a pet called Joe Crow with the same tuft of hair/feathers; and, in the silliest example, Cuthbert Cringeworthy, the Bash Street school swot, looks like Teacher. Because he's the teacher's pet.
  • Universal-Adaptor Cast: Many strips have relocated the characters to other settings, including a graphic novel that reinvented the Bash Street Kids as a starship crew, and a series of text stories in the 1964 annual which placed multiple characters in historic settings (Dennis meets Robin Hood, Roger meets the Artful Dodger, the Bash Street Kids meet Guy Fawkes, and Jonah meets Sir Francis Drake).
  • Unnamed Parent True in almost all strips except Les Pretend where his dad is named Des. A few times it's implied Dennis's dad is actually named Dad. Averted in The New '10s, with all the parents being named, at least on the website. Dennis's dad is now also named Dennis, in keeping with the current implication that Dennis is a Legacy Character.
  • Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Many characters in the strips have strange pets such as Roger the Dodger who had a pet crow and Smudge who had a pet... something... which was covered completely in mud.
  • Villain Protagonist: Is Baby Face Finlayson a hero in any strips outside of his own?
  • Visual Pun: From A few dollops more starring Fatty Fudge (See issue 3596), Outlaw cowboys say "we've got prices on our heads" and they literally have prices on their heads.
  • Wacky Homeroom: The Bash Street Kids all had distinct personalities. Of course, there were only 9 of them.
  • Wallet Moths: Used pretty much any time any character took out a wallet or otherwise searched for money. Unless their gimmick was being incredibly rich, of course. (On Calamity James this sometimes happened even for rich people, but the moths came out carrying diamond rings and wearing moth-sized fur coats).
  • Wheel o' Feet: Billy Whizz. All the time.
  • White Gloves: Worn by original cover star Big Eggo mainly to make him more anthropomorphic and white gloves made it look more like he had hands than just wings.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: In the first issue from 1938 in the prose story The Wangles of Granny Green features a boy dressed up as his grandmother.
  • Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Smiffy from the Bash St. Kids and similar characters (other members of his family and Dimmy from Ball Boy for instance).
  • The Wonderland: The Pansy Potter in Wonderland strip is an example of this.
  • World of Snark: Just about every other character in Mike Pearse's strips reacts to craziness and/or stupidity with deadpan sarcasm.
  • World's Strongest Man:
    • Morgyn the Mighty, an old adventure strip appearing in the first issue of The Beano.
    • Pansy Potter was the daughter of one.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Since the majority of the Beano's main characters are kids, you'll be seeing this a lot!
  • Xanatos Gambit: Roger the Dodger is known for pulling them, for example apparently letting his scheme fail and be banished to his room, only for his parents to find out that he wanted to have an excuse to be stuck there to avoid an angry mob, etc...
  • Xeno Fiction: Black Flash the Beaver a prose story about a Beaver from the very first issue.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Ratz
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: Several times Calamity James has come close to averting or even been temporarily "cured" of his bad luck, only for some overriding force to snatch away his good fortune. Examples include:
    • Being relieved of his bad luck by hypnosis treatment, only for someone to snap their fingers within earshot and thus breaking the trance;
    • Being sent to a world where all the inhabitants experience good fortune, only to crash-land on its rubber surface and end up pinballing around a planetary system for hours;
    • Inadvertently rescuing a leprechaun from a pile of peat, who readily agrees to grant James's wish to be lucky as a reward, only for James to wind up in a vat of pig slurry because the leprechaun had peat clogging his ears and misheard the request as "I wish to be mucky".
  • You Don't Look Like You: In issue 3649, Dennis' parents got a makeover that made them about 20 years younger and more like Dennis. This was revealed to be a subversion: the new designed parents are actually completely different characters to the original parents because Dad is the adult versions of the original Dennis, meaning that viewers were now reading about the antics of Dennis the Menace, Jr.!
  • Zeerust: Any of the older strips, which was either set in the future, space or involved robots. Examples include Jack Flash (about an alien boy who could fly and lives on Earth), The Clockwork Horse (Some of these were set in the past but they did involve robots) and Tin Can Tommy (a strip about a robot built by a professor).

Top