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Kevin And Kell / Tropes A to B

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Kevin & Kell by Bill Holbrook
Tropes: A to B | C to I | J to R | S to Z
Main Character Page | Core Family | Kindle Extended Family | Dewclaw Extended Family | Lindesfarne's Peers | Rudy's Peers | Coney's Peers | Younger Characters/Turvy's Peers | Other Characters
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    A 
  • Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder:
    • Almost happened to Lindesfarne and Fenton early on in their relationship, as their inability to see each other during the shorter summer nights led Fenton to take a lover. This was resolved when Lindesfarne was revealed to be a hedgehog instead of a porcupine.
    • It is implied that Edgar cheated on Leona with Miranda because Leona's obsession with her sorority during their first year at Beige University made him feel neglected.
  • Accidental Adultery: Supposedly averted in this comic where Kell and her identical cousin Sheila switched places to play a trick on Kevin.
  • Acquainted in Real Life: Both Kevin and Kell receive an invite to be on-air guests on the Jerry Springer Spaniel Show starting on the Thursday 21 May 1998 strip. Once on camera, Jerry tries to intimate that Kevin has had an online affair behind Kell's back. "Think back. Last year. With someone named 'Deathpaw.'" Deathpaw was Kell's online persona while tutoring Kevin, a/k/a Incisor, on ways to be more predatory.
  • Aerith and Bob: The mole scientists, Avogadro and Bob. The former's name being a Stealth Pun.
  • After the End: Although it isn't brought up much, the world the characters live in was created by an organization of birds. After humans made Earth uninhabitable, and departed for a distant planet, the birds, the only surviving vertebrates, used the humans' intelligence rays to increase their intelligence, and travel back in time to 10 million BC, to stop humans from emerging, giving intelligence to other species in the process.
  • All of the Other Reindeer:
    • Kevin was widely rejected for being a fearless rabbit, even before he married Kell and thus became even more of an outcast.
    • George was eventually thrown out of the gopher community because he'd rather grow his own vegetables rather than steal them.
  • All There in the Manual: Lindesfarne's blog and later Catherina Aura's twitter have been used to explain or develop plot points in greater detail than merely within the strip.
  • Altar the Speed:
    • Lindesfarne and Fenton zig-zagged this trope:
      • Initially, after the Microtalon incident, Fenton decided not to return to school, and instead went to work at Flea-Bay (later Harelink). He quickly moved to propose to Lindesfarne, but still being a high school senior, Lindesfarne decided they needed to wait.
      • They would spend seven years real-time courting before Lindesfarne finally accepted Fenton's proposal late in her undergraduate work at Beige University. The caveat for the proposal is that they would marry when she graduated.
      • The trope then asserted itself in late 2009, when Lindesfarne discovered that extra credits from high school could be integrated into her college credit work, the result being that she graduated several months prior to when she originally thought. Since she chose to keep her promise to Fenton, she got married much earlier as well.
    • Here are some straight plays of the trope:
      • After a con where the foreigners that were after Caniche tried to get her deported, Dip had a solution to make sure it would not repeat itself.
        Dip: I never want to go through that again!
        Caniche: Oui! Me either.
        Dip: No, I mean... (pulls out a ring, takes a knee) ...I never want to go through that again.
      • Aby and Mark's wedding, which was triggered so Mark could adopt his orphaned nephew Tyler, makes this a Literal Metaphor: they exchanged vows during a pit stop for one of his MOUSCAR races. It took all of 20 seconds.note 
        Aby: We told everyone the reception would be in the Winner's Circle.
        Rev. Bruinooge: That's confident.
    • There are also some aversions:
  • Ambiguous Gender: Geese in the strip don't have words in their language that identify them by gender, something close to a real-world analogue of of non-binary people. As they have no identify markings between male and females and that it would be rude to ask, Lindesfarne and Fenton refer to the parent of a goose when they took both in, Onk, with gender-neutral pronouns as 'they' and 'them'.
  • Androcles' Lion: Invoked a few times.
  • And That's Terrible: A cow once got tipped by milk pirates:
    Cow: They took my milk! Did they have to tip me, too???
    Cop: The fiends.
  • Animal Jingoism: Used and abused, occasionally Aesoped.
  • Animals Not to Scale: Most of the animals are of similar size, no matter what their species.
  • Animal Stereotypes: blind bats, snooty water-hating cats, loyal dogs, hedgehogs with super-strong quills, cowardly rabbits with big families, deer stuck in directed light, and shark lawyers among others.
    • This is often subverted, like with Kevin, who is basically a walking, talking, subversion of many of the stereotypes about rabbits.
  • Anti-Climax: Something is digging under Tree, and George Gopher feels by the tremors that something is coming his way. He gets on a game footing only for a Damsel in Distress to emerge from a tunnel and collapse before him.
    George: Here it comes! Whatever it is, I'm ready for anything!
    (a tunnel opens in front of him, and Ophelia weakly reaches out for him)
    Ophelia: Help... me... (she falls out of the tunnel and collapses exhausted at his feet)
    George: ...or not.
  • Archive Panic: invoked Discussed, where binge-watching every episode of a TV series was considered impossible before DVDs, only for webcomics being a counterexample.
  • Arc Words: "Never talk to your prey. You may become friends." They are very important.
    • They led to the conception of Corrie
    • They led to the romance between Corrie and Bruno
    • They led to the friendship between Lindesfarne and Tammy, which ultimately saved the former's relationship with Fenton.
    • While not preyed on, it did lead to the fling between Edgar and Miranda.
    • It even led to Kevin adopting Daisy as a pet.
  • Arranged Marriage: Kevin and Fran Caudal, though the marriage was called off due to Fran's parents being concerned over his lack of fear. Kevin's disastrous first marriage was his own mistake, as he admits. The two later wound up opponents in a campaign for the local school board. Kevin won, and was influential in getting Fran the headmistress job at Caliban Academy, since he knew so much about her from campaign research and knew she was very well qualified.
  • Art Evolution: Quite noticeable in some cases, especially with some of the patron characters: Justin looks completely different in his first appearance to subsequent ones, and Cynthia isn't even the same species in all her appearances (in her first appearance she's a white tiger, then spends a few as a solid-coloured feline, and makes one appearance with leopard spots before settling down to be an orange tiger. And she's clearly meant to be the same character all the way through.)
  • Artificial Intelligence: It was revealed that Rudy and Fiona's latest car was actually used in self-driving car tests. It soon started to reveal a mind of its own, even though its self-driving tech was supposedly removed.
  • Artistic License – Biology
    • Fenton is shown to have terrible eyesight even with his glasses. In reality bats have fantastic vision. As Holbrook stated shortly after introducing him, he was toying with "blind as a bat" idea and decided that corrective eyeglasses gave Fenton a "geeky look" which fit him best. His echolocation is also portrayed highly inaccurately.
    • The history of the Great Bird Conspiracy claims that they were the only species to survive the destruction of our Earth's environment because they could fly over the trash heaps. Birds in real life are highly sensitive to pollution and would probably be some of the first common species to go. They also don't spend all of their lives in the air.
    • Hedgehogs do not have quills. Quills, like in a porcupine, are thin, barbed, and detachable. Lindesfarne's design (and Chertsey's) mirror that of a porcupine. Hedgehogs have spines, which are thick, white, and a permanent part of their body outside of occasional shedding. Not shockingly, Lindesfarne is incorrectly portrayed as having the porcupine quills and behavior patterns, with the weak explanation that she "became an American porcupine" by being adopted (which was later revealed as a lie anyway, but a biologist like her should have known that.) For that matter, Chertsey, who never Americanized anyway, still appears as a porcupine despite supposedly being an English hedgehog.
    • Rabbits are drawn with stereotypical cat-like button noses rather than slit-shaped noses. On the other hand, realistically-drawn rabbits are portrayed with the correct noses.
  • Artistic License – Economics
    • When Fiona loses all of her money, she reveals that all of her scholarship offers for college have also vanished along with it. The author, when asked about how this could possibly happen, suggested that the colleges were only offering scholarships to her because she was formerly rich. Scholarships are actually offered to people who don't have money. Even putting aside that scholarships do not work that way, Fiona's high academics and successful athletics more than qualify her for even the most basic merit awards, let alone need-based awards. This comic tries to handwave it with the claim that every single scholarship offer was simply offered to her because she'd be a rich alumnus...which is, again, not how scholarships work. Of course, the real reason for this happening in the plot is to facilitate Rudy selflessly giving up half of his Easter Bunny scholarship...which is completely undercut by how badly all of these events had to handwave reality to make this happen.
    • Surely the IRS would have said something about Kevin and Kell filing jointly as spouses for ten years despite the fact that legally, thanks to Rudy, they were not married.
  • Artistic License – Law: Legislation does not take place instantaneously. This pops up a lot in the comic to try and create obstacles or simplistic resolutions to complex problems, such as the community wi-fi contract or Kevin and Kell's rush to marry before the anti-mixed species marriage act passes.
  • Artistic License – Space: The initial report on research Lindesfarne did for NASA on biological samples of potential extraterrestrial origin was preceded by info on where one meteorite may have come from. NASA noted that a larger object sped through the Solar System, broke up flying by Jupiter, and one piece hit Earth. While breaking up by Jupiter is possible if it passes close enough, they seemed to imply that the other pieces had already left the Solar System, something that would take years when the impact of the object had only taken place a few weeks prior.
  • As You Know: A hallmark of all of Holbrook's comics.
  • Ascended to Carnivorism: Coney the Killer Rabbit.
  • Ask a Stupid Question...:
    • Fiona's first reaction when she found she'd been moved into a different room when Bruno moved in with Corrie at her mansion.
      Fiona: Bruno?
      Corrie: No, Kanye Wren. Of course, Bruno!
    • When Angelique called Lindesfarne about the right work force for hunting insects, she suggested Bats. That led to this series of lines:
      Lindesfarne: Of course, they'll have to work at night.
      Angelique: To avoid my oversight?
      Lindesfarne Yeah, millions of years of nocturnal evolution just to annoy you.
  • Ass in a Lion Skin: Many characters have used make up, costumes, and/or parts of other characters to disguise themselves as members of other species. For starters, Corrie had gone a long while disguised as a wolf named Dale. Kell has disguised herself as a rabbit and shortly after as a feline. George Fennec spent a while disguised as a rabbit despite disliking rabbits since he has always been confused as one his whole life. And at least three non-rabbits spent Easter disguised as the Easter bunny.
    • And this occasionally pops up as Halloween costumes for kids. Kell noted one time that a child was using a...less-than-fresh pelt. (In fact, this is eventually where Corrie's "Dale" pelt went: into Coney's dress-up box.)
  • Asshole Victim: Several minor characters get devoured as a result of their misdeeds, like when one personnel director tried to get Kell fired for being domesticated, only to get eaten by Coney before he could do so◊.
  • Ass Shove: What ultimately happened to the poachers that tried to kidnap Carl in the Christmas 2016 arc:
    Police #1: Um...how are we gonna get those guys down from there?
    Police #2: Painfully.
    • Miranda threatened this to the pufferfish PR reps who told her if she wanted the Rhizome Trophy (gardening equivalent to the Heisman), she couldn't be dating a lion, Edgar.
  • Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Angelique as a rat.
    • Averted because Angelique has Plastic Surgery to alter her ears to look rat-like after she was banned from calling herself a rabbit after betraying secrets that rabbits use to evade their predatory foes. Though Kevin stated later that those were "secrets" the rabbits thought predators had already sussed out..
  • Author Filibuster: The occasional storyline, usually the politically centered ones.
  • Auto Erotica:
    • Not sex, but in the Lindesfarne betrothal storyline, she found out her roommate, Rhonda, was in an online relationship with Quinn, the porcupine she was betrothed to. She cooked up a plan for them to get married to break the betrothal so she could marry Fenton as planned. But after the wedding, when she wanted to discuss when they would divorce after the betrothal was broken, she saw them making out in the backseat of her car and realized that wouldn't be necessary.
    • As for actual backseat shenanigans, they are implied to take place between Kevin and Kell in this strip not long after she became CEO of Herd Thinners.
      Kell: Wally, this isn't the route to the office.
      Kevin: I gave Wally the day off.
    • Alluded to with Aby and Mark's honeymoon. They sent pictures to the title couple, and Kevin mentioned they were "intimate". The last frame shows the two of them working on a race car at Indy.
    • One of the first things Rudy and Fiona did after purchasing their smart car was test its suspension.
  • Awful Truth: Invoked when Carl called Leona on her Chronic Hero Syndrome after he was saved from poachers.
    Rudy: That truth hurts?
    Fiona: All truth hurts.
  • Awful Wedded Life: Kevin's first marriage to Angelique. It's also implied that Kevin's parents had a rocky marriage as well before they divorced.

    B 
  • Badass Adorable: Several characters qualify, but the undisputed champion is Coney. Being half-wolf, Coney ends up effortlessly devouring attackers five times her size in a single panel. She was that dangerous even when she was in diapers, much to the (brief) dismay of unsuspecting predators.
  • Bad Boss: R.L. has little to no respect either for or from his employees and treats most of them poorly, firing Kell, one of his most loyal employees, on the advice of a contractor.
    • Eventually this started to bite R.L. in the ass with Kell's Honest Corporate Executive competing predator company treating it's employees fairly. Two strips have shown a spy hired by R.L. switching jobs because he liked working at Kell's company better, and that R.L.'s employees are malnourished which renders them unable to properly compete with Kell's employees.
    • It eventually gets to the point where all of Herd Thinners' employees quit the company in February 2022.
  • Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Everyone except Francis. Lampshaded in a Christmas strip where Kevin and Kell wonder what these little textile objects with the names of the family members that they hang on the mantlepiece are supposed to be.
    Kell: I always thought they're tiny body-bags.
    • And speaking of Francis, it's implied that George Fennec made shoes for Francis based on experiences related by his formerly-human wife Danielle, extracting the leather for it from a carcass he had as a hunting trophy.
      George Fennec: ...and while I don't have a lot of hunting trophies from my youth, I figured, heck, it's for my son...
  • Beast and Beauty: Gender and species flipped.
  • Becoming the Mask: Lindesfarne drops some coyotes into the Rabbit Hole with rabbit disguises, suggesting that they might take years to discover the exit. At least one marries a female rabbit and keeps up the facade well into his old age.
    • A milder example was Fiona disguising herself as Rudy to avoid paparazzi during her Y2K world tour, and as a result acting more like him-moody, lazy, irresponsible. When Rudy acting responsible literally knocked the disguise off her, she vowed to disguise herself as someone who wouldn't affect her work ethic. (Since she chose Lindesfarne, it works...but she starts to crave bugs.)
  • Bedmate Reveal:
  • The Bermuda Triangle: The Bermuda Triangle is revealed at one point to be a portal between the human and animal worlds (which the humans have been using to get rid of garbage, until a trampoline is set up on the animal side to block the path). It's how baby Lindesfarne and adult Danielle crossed into the animal world, and another arc has Ralph and Martha temporarily end up in the human world through it. Danielle later tries to go back through, only for Lindesfarne to pre-empt her by planning to send her mice instead (and even up the balance between the worlds)... and then for Ms. Aura and Nigel to pre-empt that and cross over instead.
  • Big Damn Heroes: It happens from time to time:
    • Rudy coming to Lindesfarne's rescue◊ when she was attacked by cougars on her way home from a summer job.
    • When Rachel and Joan found out the tree they wanted to move into was infested with bark bettles, Lindesfarne and Fenton—with some help from their Tree, who was the parent of the tree they were moving into—hatched a plan to exterminate the infestation and nurse the tree back to health.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: A few come to mind:
  • Big Eater: Coney's eaten animals whole before, including deer, large cats, and bears.
  • The Big Guy: Kevin, who's about three times the size of a normal rabbit.
  • Birthday Episode: The 25th anniversary of the comic was treated as Lindesfarne's 25th birthday.
  • Bland-Name Product:
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: To put it bluntly, the concepts of right and wrong in the K&K universe are both bizarre and alien to the average human mind.
    • And to each other in some cases, guess that's what happens when your food is sapient.
    • For example, Danielle expressed bafflement that while in the human world sexuality is a big deal, in Domain no one raises an eyebrow about Rachel's homosexuality, noting that diet is the, as she put it, 'pointless arbitrary division' everyone focuses on. (Kevin just asks what an eyebrow is.)
    • Discussed when Fenton's tree house embezzles from Hare-Link. He states that while fauna have to follow their own rules to ensure that society remains orderly and functional, plants naturally consume all resources they can to sustain themselves, and Tree is making an effort to do the right thing.
  • Bodyguard Crush:
    • The original dynamic between Dip and Caniche. Caniche was introduced as the security guard at Dewclaw's Fine Meats during the arc where Herd Thinners was trying to liquidate Dip. Dip, who was being hidden by disguising him as a dog, was smitten from the start.
      Rhonda: Hey, you got the drooling part down!
    • When Carl was hired as Miranda's bodyguard by her adoptive fathers (her uncle and his partner), one (the partner) became a Shipper on Deck hoping for this. But Miranda never showed interest, and Carl respected that. In fact, Carl even "outsourced" his duties to Rudy when Miranda began dating Edgar on the understanding that Edgar was capable enough to defend Miranda himself (which ultimately proved true).
  • Boomerang Bigot: The hate group N.O.P.E., who target the Dewclaw family for mixed species breeding. However, once Lindersfarne runs DNA tests on them, she finds that none of them are pure-blooded as they claim. This has two effects: one member performs a Heel–Face Turn and turns in the members who committed felonies, and the info revealed ensures no one in the group will trust each other ever again, leaving them decimated.
  • A Boy, a Girl, and a Baby Family: Rudy, Lindesfarne and Coney, respectively.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: In this Sunday strip, it's refernced by name!
  • Brick Joke:
  • Broken Pedestal: Lindesfarne finds out that the professor whom she's working for falsified his results on stem cell research. Rudy learns that his biological father cheated on his mother.
  • Buried Alive: The apparent fate of the badger fur traders that Ophelia escaped from as Tree collapsed the tunnel system under her to stop them, as the chase had cut some of her roots.
    George: We need to make sure the guys after you are... uh...
    Ophelia: Worm food?
    George: Yeah.
    Random worm: Give it about five minutes.
  • Burp of Finality:
    • Little Coney yields a burp after devouring a grown tiger who was poised to expose her mother's affliction with domestication, which would've gotten Kell fired.
    • The Jerry Springer Spaniel Show tried to stir up trouble between Kevin and Kell over an online affair. The last panel of the Thursday 28 May 1998 strip has Kell give a burp while speaking to her husband; Jerry Spaniel is suddenly gone, his microphone lying on the set floor.
    • And one is used at the end of the story where Angelique "rescues" R.L. from The Wild and takes him to prison to replace his doppelgänger.
      R.L.'s doppelgänger: Hey, what's going on?
      Angelique: R.L. is taking your place. I'll smuggle you out.
      R.L.'s doppelgänger: NO WAY! IN HERE EVERYONE IS TERRIFIED OF ME! I LIVE LIKE A KING! I'M NOT LEAVING!!!
      (R.L. eats his doppelgänger)
      Angelique: In a way, he was right.
      R.L.: (burps)
  • The Bus Came Back: Harcourt unceremoniously returned in March 2013 after a 12-year absence. His disappearance had been explained as his entire family moving to Florida off-camera. His return? His family...moved back.
    • Rhonda and Quinn suddenly came back into focus for a brief storyline in 2013. Quinn had literally only been part of a single storyline, the one that put Rhonda on the bus in the first place in 2007. His only other appearance in the strip was a crowd scene in 2010. Rhonda had not done anything significant in the strip since 2010 (where she was part of the wedding party) and two one-off gag strips in 2011. One of them literally used her as an extra.
  • Bus Crash: The death of Spork's original dung beetle co-workers took place off-screen over the Winter of 2022-23.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Invoked and Played for Laughs shortly after Lindesfarne found out she was pregnant:
    Lindesfarne: Wow! Pregnant! I'm actually carrying a living being! This is amazing!!!
    Fenton (carrying Lindesfarne on one of their flights): ...or for me, this is Thursday.note 
  • But We Used a Condom!: Also invoked when Lindesfarne got pregnant. They pretty much figured that her quills likely compromised one. The look on Lindesfarne's face upon her realization really sells it.
    Lindesfarne: It was just a matter of time before there'd be a puncture...
    • Averted for Carl and Leona; while Lindesfarne said in her Fourth-Wall Mail Slot that Savanna's conception was unplanned, there's no evidence they were trying not to have a baby during their lockdown-extended honeymoon.
    • Status unknown for Honk and his current girlfriend, with regards to the conception of daughter Ack in 2022. All that's known is that it's heavily implied they got busy while keeping warm during a flight.

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