History ComicBook / TheBoys

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: [[spoiler:Hughie throws Susan Raynor's attempt at political power and trying to make him feel guilty about his time with The Boys back at her face. As he leaves her office, he calls Susan a loveless, petty woman, unlike Butcher, [[EvenEvilCanBeLoved who found someone who loved him and loved them back.]] Susan is so mad at Hughie that she throws a whiskey glass at him as he goes]].

** At one point, the series criticizes the superhero industry's usage of RapeAsDrama for its characters, which can be hard to take seriously when one considers that Butcher's primary plot is avenging his wife, who was raped by Homelander[[spoiler: (actually Black Noir)]].

** The Legend, the shadowy genius behind the comic book industry, has an unmistakable resemblance to underground comics' genius Creator/RobertCrumb - right down to the way the woman giving him sexual favours is drawn. She is a very typical Crumb woman - [[BrawnHilda drawn overscale]] with a very prominent backside in tight shorts.

** The end of the Pre-Wiz: considered too dangerous to even attempt to resocialise, as well as a public relations liability, the children abducted by Godokhin to be turned into superheroes are locked in a cage and jettisoned into the Arctic Sea from several thousand feet up, so as to dispose of an inconvenient loose end.

** Character design sketches included in the books reveal that Bill Butcher's original working name was ''Savage''. The early sketches have a distinct resemblance to the character of Frank Savage in the ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' serial ''Invasion'' - also about an ex-soldier leading a resistance to an established order, and taking a little vengeance on the way.

* BigFriendlyDog: Terror, if you're not an enemy of ComicBook/TheBoys. Also trained to hump ''anything'' on command.

* BigFriendlyDog: Terror, if you're not an enemy of Comicbook/TheBoys. Also trained to hump ''anything'' on command.

*** Another Irish pub landlord with a penchant for writing obscene words in pints of Guinness when people asked for shamrocks appeared in ''Comicbook/ThePunisherWelcomeBackFrank'', a Punisher-story also written by Ennis.

** It's mentioned that the events of September 11th caused the word "war" to be banned from comic books. This is accompanied by a picture of a comic book starring The Seven called ''[[Comicbook/TheInfinityGauntlet The Infinity]] [[Film/AvengersInfinityWar Debate]]''.

*** He has a weird take on the DC/Marvel feud; VAC's first generation of supers is dubbed "[[Comicbook/TheAvengers The Avenging Squad]]", but Bush and the VAC rep says it isn't final -- the company's still deciding whether the group's theme will be "Justice" or "Revenge". The entire squad is massacred at the Battle of the Bulge, and [[Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica the Seven]] are established soon afterwards -- except VAC hires "[[Creator/StanLee The Legend]]" as the mind behind the comic book franchise. Mallory bemoans that everything started to go wrong right after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII for one basic reason;

** The shadowy genius behind the comic book industry has an unmistakable resemblance to underground comics' genius Creator/RobertCrumb - right down to the way the woman giving him sexual favours is drawn. She is a very typical Crumb woman - [[BrawnHilda drawn overscale]] with a very prominent backside in tight shorts.

** The whole story can also be seen as a TakeThat to anti-heroes who are presented as being as noble as traditional superheroes, like the tagline on the Creator/RobLiefeld created ComicBook/{{Youngblood}}. Especially in light of The Seven being more focused on making money from their merchandise than being heroes, which is commonly stated as Liefeld's reasons for not getting comics out on time in the 1990's.

* RapeAsBackstory: An in-universe example, oddly enough. The Seven are having their image reworked into a DarkerAndEdgier mold, and the public relations people try to convince Starlight to go along with rape being a part of her back story and motivation for becoming a hero. 1) This wasn't true, and 2) Starlight ''has'' been sexually abused, by members of the Seven, including a forcible AttemptedRape. As a result she's not pleased and verbally chews out the PR guys.

** Early in the miniseries, Homelander lists a number of prior "crises", all of which are named after real-life comic book crisis events, including [[ComicBook/FinalCrisis Final Fracas]], [[ComicBook/CivilWar Civil Dispute]], [[ComicBook/CountdownToFinalCrisis Downcount]] and [[ComicBook/SecretInvasion Covert Intrusion]].