Kevin And Kell / Tropes S to Z

Kevin & Kell by Bill Holbrook

Tropes: A to B | C to I | J to R | S to Z

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S

• Scars Are Forever: Leona has a scar over her left eye thanks to a hunting match at Caliban where a branch smacked her in the face, requiring her to get stitches.
• Second Love: Most of the cast are happier with their second spouses/lovers than their first ones, as with Kevin and Kell, Ralph and Martha, Douglas and Dorothy, George and Danielle, Aby and Mark, Leona and Carl, and Miranda and Edgar.
  • Also averted with Angelique, who is twice divorced. Kevin was first, then the father of Gweneth and her 19 other rabbit/skunk hybrid children. She also may or may not have had multiple lovers between marriages.
  • Edgar is also an aversion, as he had two previous serious relationships with Rhonda and Leona before finding lasting love with Miranda.
• Secret Relationship:
  • An interesting case involving one of the earliest secrets of the strip is Bruno denying experiencing constant feelings about girls to Rudy at the age of 12, when in reality he's wearing his girlfriend, Corrie, as a sheepskin. It would still be four years before Rudy would meet Corrie, and even longer before he learned she was a sheep.
    Corrie: So when you gonna tell 'im 'bout us?
    Bruno: Patience, my sweet.
  • Miranda initially tried to keep her relationship with Edgar a secret. They put it back into secret during the campaign to get her the Rhizome Trophy. Both times, Edgar disguised himself as a mouse. The second time, they described Edgar's real form as a "groupie", since he had already previously been seen at Beige University's stadium.
• Secret Test of Character: Kevin's dad pulls strings to get Douglas bunked with him in prison so he could make sure he was a suitable partner for Dorothy.
  Kevin: Dad, I'm surprised.
  Bentley: ...that I'm a better ex-husband than a husband? WHY???
• Self-Demonstrating Article: When Lindesfarne is hunting Fenton's lover after finding out she's a nocturnal insectivore, Rudy and Bruno mention she'll probably make a rookie mistake. Sure enough, she and Tammy got in a conversation and became friends.
  Tammy: Fenton was dating you, too?
  Lindesfarne: Yeah, what scum.
• Self-Insert Fic: On Catherine Aura's Twitter, she talks about how she and Nigel are spying on a human (Subject A) that seems to have a 'psychic link' to the K&K world, and is drawing a comic about it. This is a rather obvious hint that Subject A is Bill Holbrook himself.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: As noted under Ready for Lovemaking, Bill has interesting ways of flirting with his self-imposed rating. The closest he's come to showing anything...explicit is this August 2008 comic where the action is hidden under several inches of insulation, but ear positioning makes what's going on between George and Danielle Fennec crystal clear.
  • And then there's this Valentine's Day comic from 2020 where the holiday is compared to "training for March", when rabbits are usually depicted to be most...amorous. Not least of which is Kevin toward Kell.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The entire arc with Harelink vying for an extremely lucrative contract to provide free wi-fi to the citizens of Domain was ended in a single strip - after they won, the telecom industry instantly got a law passed that stopped cities from providing this service entirely because they wanted the contract for themselves. This also rendered the entire arc, which took place over several months, entirely pointless. The real purpose of the arc was revealed to be a soapbox against the telecom industry.
• Sherlock Can Read: In a fall 1998 storyline, Vin Vulpin has joined "The Institute for Species Purity". When Rudy and Fiona wonder why, Lindesfarne lists off a host of reasons, prompting Rudy to remark "Good guess." Then Lindesfarne reveals it wasn't a guess — she read it on his membership application.
• Ship Sinking:
  • Outside the context of the main plot, Catherine Aura tries to prevent Nigel from thinking about or contacting Coney after they cross over to the human world, or trying to find the version of her in their side of the portal.
  • This is invoked by Miranda's dads after she gets engaged to Edgar. While her uncle notes she always had a thing for carnivores, her uncle's partner actually hoped she'd get together with Carl.
    Miranda's uncle: That ship left port years ago.
• Shout-Out:
  • Quite a few to Calvin and Hobbes.
  • ... And one to author E. B. White.
  • In the Interspecies Support Group, you can see a moose standing next to a squirrel.
  • And here we have a shout-out to Jurassic World.
    Commenter: Now I'm imagining Marty being voiced by Chris Pratt.
  • The strips from the 16th to the 24th of December 2009 are one big shout-out to A Christmas Story.
  • When Harold (a stinkbird) helps Jessica (a cow) escape over a wall with a ladder in this strip, she says she "would've exceeded the capacity of an unladen swallow."
  • For a more meta reference, fans broke out the "Log" song from The Ren & Stimpy Show when Rudy and Fiona rounded out their new burrow by bringing in a log that was a frequent meeting place for them throughout their relationship to use as a sofa.
  • And there is a more internal shout-out to one of Bill's dead tree strips, On the Fastrack. When Lin started to rebel by wearing dresses instead of Mei-Li's preferred professional attire, Mei-Li mentions she would've preferred it if Lin went goth instead. This is likely a reference to Fastrack character Dethany, a goth executive secretary.
• Shovel Strike: Happened to Spork when he tried to rescue his dung beetle co-workers from Herd Thinners' bug operation.
• Sibling Rivalry: Lindesfarne and Rudy have a typically snarky sibling relationship. Here's a good example from after a situation at Beige where Lindesfarne (using her personal flight drone, since she was pregnant at the time) had to play Big Damn Heroes for Rudy's squirrel charge as a safety escort:
  Rudy: You know, those "wings" make you look like Buzz Lightyear.
  Lindesfarne: How'd you like to "fall with style"?
• Sistine Steal: When George and Danielle regain their static connection, one of their first poses mirrors "The Creation of Adam".
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Danielle number two and George^note It was an effort to get George to fall out of love with her since the original one died. It failed.
• Smell Phone: Rudy Dewclaw can ascertain that he's cyber-chatting with Fiona by sniffing the CPU exhaust fan.
• Something Else Also Rises: Kevin's one floppy ear perks up when he's feeling frisky.
  • Kevin inverted this when he noted in a strip that he used Viagra to get both his ears to go straight up.
    Kell: You've never needed it for anything else...
  • It happened to Dip when his horns were growing in. When Caniche kissed him, they grew suddenly, and in the next strip, they were full bighorns.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Subverted for laughs during Lindesfarne and Fenton's wedding:
  Reverend Bruinoge: "And should anyone object to this union... ...Let him speak now or forever hold his peace." (checks phone) "Nothin' via text or Facebook! We're good to go!"
• Species Surname: damn near everyone, those who don't have surnames based on features of their species.
• Spirit Advisor: Randy, Rudy's dead biological father, came back in spirit to give Rudy some pointers when he was going to fight Vin. Of course, this was ultimately subverted when it was discovered Vin was also Randy's son from an extramarital affair. He admitted he helped Rudy because he didn't want both his sons to kill each other.
  Rudy: So who do I turn to now for a moral, ethical role model?
  Randy: Why, Kevin, of course.
  Rudy: I MEAN ONE THAT I CAN ADMIT TO MYSELF!
  Randy: Oh. Now that's a toughie...
• Stay with Me Until I Die: An extended inversion for the dung beetles with Spork; knowing they don't have long, and won't live past the winter, they keep Spork company while DFW Alaska is in shutdown. Their deaths occured offscreen, with Spork formally adopting their offspring.
• Stealth Pun: An elephant insurance man whom no one wants to acknowledge.
• Stock Animal Diet: Strip 2012-09-01 has one bird eating a mouse, and was able to determine the kinds of cheese in its last meal.
• Strawman Political: They appear occasionally. Bill Clinton was apparently a rabbit, George Bush is apparently a butterfly. One of Lindesfarne's blog entries mentioned Kerry as a horse, though he was never shown within the strip. A strip did not show Obama on panel, but described him as the hybrid of an African Gazelle and a North American White Tail Deer. Trump's species is not shown, but it's revealed his hair is a furry little rodent-like...thing.
• Stunned Silence: This is pulled off Bruno and Corrie in the strip before we see them giving up on natural childbirth.
• Stupid Boss:
  • George Fennec, when he was running Hare-Link, was almost completely useless beyond bankrolling the company. For a while, his only actual purpose at Hare-Link was daycare for Francis and Coney. And at times his behavior lived down to that, like his ambivalence to the signs that wife Danielle was pregnant:
    Danielle (in the bathroom with her pregnancy test) HOORAY! YEEEEE-HAH!
    George: Odd. She never does that at home when she...
    Kevin: Get a clue, George.
    Ralph: They sell those on eBay... along with cribs.
  • Early on in his time as VP of Hare-Link, there were clues to this with Ralph as well. Once when Kevin went on vacation, he recognized that Fenton and Candance would be the ones actually running the show.
• Suddenly Voiced: Kevin and Kell gain voices in a few simple animations that have been done in the past. Kevin has been voiced by Bill himself and Tom Smith, and Kell has been voiced by Bill's wife Teri and, in the song, by Karen Underwood. Fenton got a voice in the intro video, and with a possible TV show on the horizon, more voices may be on the way.
• Super Window Jump: Fenton flies through a closed window at Tammy and Ray's lighthouse to stop Lindesfarne from getting them to take her to the portal so she could return to the human dimension.
• Sure, Let's Go with That:
  • Harcourt's response when Harold arrived in Carnivore Summer Camp to rescue Jess and asked if his flapping alerted them to his arrival, when it was really his stench.
  • We get this word-for-word when we find out Onk's native name, which Lindesfarne decides to shorten to Onk as a nickname.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Twice during the Distressed Dude situations of 2016, Carl suffered side effects from his injuries:
    • He spent a couple weeks in the hospital following his near-drowning at the summer camps. While initially sent there for "concussion symptoms", likely because he crashed through a bridge into a river, this pointed at possible pneumonia as a result.
    • The second time she saved his life, Leona broke one of Carl's ribs when she used a hose to give him the Heimlich.
  • The flood that nearly drowned Lindesfarne and Fenton's Tree also caused Douglas' stash of acorns to begin sprouting. He and Kevin were able to sell them to Domain to plant them for use as new residential developments.

T

• Take a Third Option: At the end of the Danielle arc, Danielle believes she and Lindesfarne will have to return to the human world to restore the balance, but Lindesfarne realizes that any two individuals can restore the balance, opting to have her mice do so instead. According to Catherine Aura, however, they're too small, and Catherine and Nigel fly through instead.
• Take This Job and Shove It:
  • When Kell was ousted from Herd Thinners, virtually the entire senior staff walked out behind her. This would lead to the formation of Dewclaw's Fine Meats.
    Kell: Why have you all followed me?
    Frank: Hang on...
    Madelaine: It takes a minute to text a resignation...
  • In the "Great Resignation" plot of early 2022, every single remaining employee at Herd Thinners quit, forcing them to initially subcontract with Dewclaw's Fine Meats, then pivot to the fake meat industry using bats to harvest insects to produce fake meat products.
  • In May 2022, Mother Goose injured her wing, leading "Honk" to sub for her. He found out their courier company was purposefully forcing geese to overwork themselves and quit, since the migratory species generally didn't settle and educate themselves. She quit, and they formed a preschool for goslings so they could be directed to actual education, and eventually other careers.
• Take That!: Plenty. Car dealerships, talk radio, Windows, politicians (especially lobbyists), humans, even Pokémon... The strip often uses Take Thats as punchlines.
• Taking the Bullet: Danielle I for George.
• Talk Show Appearance: Kevin and Kell are invited as guests on the "Jerry Springer Spaniel Show," presumably as a Bile Fascination romance between a large hare and an alpha wolf. Jerry's ulterior motive is to bring up an online affair between "Incisor" and "Deathpaw," in hopes of televising Kell shredding Kevin.
• Tap on the Head: Two notable aversions:
  • After Kell suffers a concussion in the challenge she faces as CEO, her doctor tells her to stop hunting. Though previous pauses to her hunting ultimately were reversed, she has not gotten back into regular hunting since forming Dewclaw's Fine Meats.
  • It is implied Carl suffered a concussion when he dove through a bridge and into a river to block a predatory bird from getting Francis in the 2016 summer camp arc. Since he was knocked unconscious, he nearly drowned in the river, though Llisa extracted him and Leona resuscitated him. He would spend a couple weeks in the hospital.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Angelique was forced into this with the Dewclaws when all the workers at Herd Thinners quit in March 2022. Kell permitted Angelique to subcontract Dewclaw's Fine Meats for one week in exchange for a 10% stake in Herd Thinners. She then used her stake to plant Kevin as a proxy on the Herd Thinners board of directors.
• Teeth Flying: Fights occasionally lead to this:
  • Rudy and Bruno's fight in 2003 led to major damage to Bruno's jaws and teeth. But there was a silver lining: he got a full set of herbivore teeth out of the deal.
  • Kell defeated Marty in his challenge by shoving a fruit cake in his mouth and yanking it out, parting him of his teeth.
• Tempting Fate:
  • When Fiona bought R.L.'s shares in Kevin's business, she said she saw "nothing but good" coming out of it. Cue her father George looking for a date.
  • This one time at Carnivore Summer Camp, Lin and Harcourt fantasized about their first kills, but Coney warned them prey isn't going to fall right into their lap. Cue Jess falling through their tent, a victim of another camper's plot to use a drone to kidnap a Herbivore Summer Camp camper.
  • Note this line from the mother of Delphi, the opossum friend of Turvy:
    Delphi: Mom, I like flying with Turvy!
    Delphi's mother: I don't want you losing your grip and falling! Stay right here on the ground! Where you're safe!
    • This is actually an aversion, as Delphi's mom said "where you're safe" right after an owl snatched Delphi while she wasn't looking.
• Their First Time: The comic made a bit of a big deal of Rudy and Fiona's first time together when they are twenty-two. But they subsequently agree not to rush to the altar immediately after:
  Rudy: Still not ready for marriage.
  Fiona: Me neither.
• This Is Something She Has To Do Herself: Kell facing a predator challenge 28 days after her ascension as Herdthinners' new CEO. It's company policy.
• Threat Backfire: RL finds out Kell's setting up a rival company and threatens to crush her company and devour her. She's thrilled that RL sees her as a threat.
• Toilet-Drinking Dog Gag: There's a Running Gag that Rudy, the wolf teenager of the mixed species family, likes drinking from the toilet.
• Tomboy: Jess is this, to the point Wendell didn't realize she was female until he saw the class roster at their school. Even though he knew she was a cow.
• Too Dumb to Live: Several prey species in one-shot strips get eaten after falling into obvious predator traps or doing other careless things (like leaving their cell phones on).
• Took the Wife's Name:
  • Kevin changes his and Lindesfarne's last name to Dewclaw after marrying Kell, mainly because he had been disowned for marrying a predator. Considering he's a rabbit and Kell's a wolf, this is probably the least unusual thing about their marriage.
  • Dip took Caniche's last name. Being someone who was bred to be food, there was no point to his having one of his own until then.
• George Gopher did this when he married Ophelia, as he was violently on the outs with his own family at the time.
• Totem Pole Trench:
  • Spork's dung beetle co-workers and a bunch of other bugs used this tactic to save Spork from Herd Thinners' mystery meat operation.
  • After the 2022-23 Winter, when his original dung beetle friends passed away, Spork introduced their offspring to Marty as emerging from one of these.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: Being a part of K&K's N.R.A. is nothing to be proud of - in this universe, a predator's natural hunting skills are a source of pride and having to use a weapon to catch prey is a major admission of failure. Not that arming someone as inept as Ralph would put anyone but Ralph in danger.

U

• Uncanny Family Resemblance: A recurring trope in the comic, especially when characters use it to trade places.
  • Kell and her cousin Sheila look similar enough to pass for each other, as Sheila is literally just Kell with different clothes and heavier makeup.
  • Coney and Wendell look so similar that all they have to do to switch places is for Coney to cut her long hair and give it to Wendell to use as a wig.
  • When put in fox makeup, Rudy looks so much like his late father that Kell screams and breaks down into tears when he tries to surprise her with it.
• Undead Tax Exemption: Completely averted in this series - in the main universe, animals must be listed in the species registry to be part of the civilized world. Having no records is only possible if you've gone back to The Wild Corrie has to basically live undercover for her first several years in the strip, and being able to become a part of society is a huge factor in her initial attempt to join society as Candace's adopted daughter. However apparently its really easy to join the registry, as Corrie finds out to her horror. An attempt to help out Rudy and Bruno by temporarily disguising herself as a wolf named Dale suddenly becomes permanent because an overly helpful Fiona fills out an online form in mere seconds. Much later, when Corrie's storyline progresses to the point that she can just live as a sheep again, updating her entry to show her correct species is again a nearly-instantaneous process.
  • This also carries over into the human world, as when Catherine and Nigel enter human society, Catherine has to forge identities for both of them so they can get jobs and go to school.
• Unholy Matrimony: R.L. and Angelique have been shown to be genuinely in love with each other, despite Angelique seeing R.L.'s disappearance as an opportunity to take over Herd Thinners to conquer the world. Yet when R.L. returns alive, he is only minorly perturbed and simply convinces her its easier to make piles of money instead.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: A rare non-heterosexual example. It looks like Rachel might be trying to romance Bruno... until she realizes he's a boy. Rachel, as it turns out, is gay. Bruno was wearing a fake sheepskin covered with his girlfriend Corrie's wool, thus making him smell like a girl and giving a species with poor eyesight no other cues to his actual gender. After a few laughs from his friends over the misunderstanding, Bruno attaches ram horns to the sheepskin to prevent this from recurring.
  • Comes back again when Wendell finds out Jess is a girl. Jess has horns, but a lot of people don't realize both genders of cattle have horns.
    Jess: What part of "cow" don't you understand?
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom
  • Nick and Ki, by arriving in Domain, push the animal world past the tipping point, so that the balance must be completely restored (as opposed to merely having the two of them leave) lest instinct loss take over.
  • Kevin and Kell's appearance on the Jerry Springer type show leads to his insurance agency that he is married to a wolf.

V

• Very Special Episode: When your title couple are the equivalent of an interracial marriage, you know these will happen and frequently.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Rabbit's Revenge is supported by almost three quarters of the rabbit community because they don't know of their methods.
• Visual Metaphor: When Carl rose to two feet during his first date with Leona, commenters noted that was "standing up for her".
• Visual Pun: Bill Holbrook is quite fond of these. It has become a rather copious Image Source.invoked
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Dorothy and Elanor, despite often clashing, particularly in their different approaches in their work for Aby and Coney's diet, have admitted that they're each other's only friends.
• The Voiceless: Generally, whichever character is a baby/toddler at any point in the strip doesn't talk for years at a time, well past the point of when normal children would start to talk. It's almost like Holbrook is unaware of what age children start forming words...
  • Coney was the originator, not speaking in a strip until she was well past the age where she should have started, only beginning when she was in preschool.
  • Francis was very rarely seen speaking early on, and only spoke one or two words at a time, though one factor to that was him largely being Out of Focus. When he returned with the Summer Camp 2021 arc, he was speaking normally with those around his age (being only a year younger than Coney).
  • Turvy was first seen speaking at age three. Her lack of speech was justified because she spoke at super-high frequencies, with Fenton eventually coaching her down to audible vocal frequencies in 2022.
  • Of the cast around Turvy's age, Carla still has yet to speak despite being five years. Subverted, as Corrie has said she does speak when she wants to.

W

• Wacky Cravings: When Linsfarne is expecting, she is still eating her normal diet but is craving extremely exotic insects; listed examples include 17-year cicada, burying beetle, puss moth caterpillar, scorpion fly and something Fenton calls "a gum leaf skeletoniser".
• Wacky Marriage Proposal:
  • When Martha proposed to Ralph, she hid the ring in a meatball. He ate it whole.
    Martha: ...and thirty hours later, he accepted!
    Fiona: *Face Palm*
  • When Douglas proposed to Dorothy, he framed it as a business partnership where he'd be planting acorns as new real estate. Dorothy rolled with it.
    Dorothy: But that'll require a formal financial partnership, with a security stake on your part!
    Douglas: (presents her with an engagement ring) Will this precious metal holding suffice?
    Dorothy: Oooo! Nice collateral!
  • Not so much wacky, considering the circumstances, but when Aby proposed to Mark so he could adopt his orphaned nephew, he gave her a lug nut to stand in until they could get actual rings.
  • Carl and Leona's engagement was pretty much a disaster (see: Poor Communication Kills). Leona was convinced Carl was going to dump her when he decided to turn pro, and closed herself off emotionally to him, resulting in him returning the engagement ring after multiple attempts to even get to ask her. When she finally re-opened at the cajoling of Frank, he finally popped the question, and had to use the return receipt as a stand-in for a ring.
  • When Edgar and Miranda were attacked by a bear following the Rhizome Trophy ceremony, Edgar's mouse disguise was destroyed. A squirrel streamed the aftermath live in an (unnecessary) attempt to smear Miranda. She turned it around and proposed to Edgar on the spot. She then gnawed an engagement ring out of a branch for him.
    Edgar: Miranda, was that real or improv?
    Miranda: Real.
  • When George Gopher lamented the jailing of his family after a plot to separate him from Ophelia that involved them faking their deaths, Ophelia showed him he wasn't really alone:^note For context, George, Ophelia, and Greta were eating together, likely at Greta and Ophelia's burrow.
    George: Now I really am alone in the world!
    Ophelia: Hardly. (she slips something to him)
    George: Did...you just propose to me?
    Ophelia: With an onion ring.
    Greta: Make sure that's not stolen.
• We Are as Mayflies: Taken to an extreme on the short lifepsan species. While it's technically the adult form that has the short lifespan, Mayflies and June bugs are commonly treated as having a sub-month lifespan while still integrated as fully functional members of society as long as they're alive. Examples include June bugs being considered fast food, or mayflies only needing a student loan of 35 cents (for the part of their life that they attend college.)
  • This became a plot point when Spork migrated to Alaska to join Marty at his branch of DFM. After he got a job, his dung beetle coworkers reminded him they would not be around much longer.
• Weak, but Skilled: Francis compensates for his lack of natural defenses with clever use of tools and booby traps.
• Webcomics Long-Runners: Having started in September 1995—near the beginning of the medium—and still running in 2023, it is the undisputed longest of the long.
• Webcomic Time: Zig-zagged over the strips long life. Characters really only age up when Holbrook decides it's time for a new batch of jokes about their current stage of life, particularly the main three Dewclaw kids. It allows Coney, Rudy, and Lindesfarne to age a few years here and there, consequently aging everyone as well. Coney was confirmed to be 5 in 2013 and remained so until 2017 when Turvy was born. Since then, they have aged in almost real-time, with Coney now 8, Rudy's peers now getting married and now having kids at the young but not unheard of age of 22, and with Turvy coming up on her third birthday in 2021. Oddly, Coney and her peers have continued to age, as Wendell and Lin are mentioned as being 10 in 2023, but Miranda and Fiona mention they are still 22.
  • This can still get very messy with supporting cast members in the orbit of the Dewclaws. Both Rhonda and Rachel were introduced as being explicitly in Rudy's grade level in high school, but then they suddenly graduated high school well before him and became college roommates with Lindesfarne, who had just started college. Rhonda was even still dating Edgar for awhile, even though he was still shown as being in high school with Rudy and Fiona.
  • Vin's birthdate was eventually listed in the comic, showing him to be much older than he had been implied to be considering his introduction in the strip.
  • It becomes even more bizarre to the point of bordering on Negative Continuity due to the acknowledgement of fixed points in time across the history of the comic. The Y2K problem was a major plot arc in the year 1999, and so was set in the present day. However, the strips regarding Rhonda's graduation clearly show her as part of the class of 2013, and the comic has clearly shown that New Year's Eve 2017 occurred in the story. This would indicate that at least 14-18 years should have passed over the course of the comic. However, based on progression of the major characters, only 8-10 years have passed over the course of the comic's run.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Lindesfarne to Angelique before the divorce.
• Wham Episode:
  • Lindesfarne and Fenton discover Vin to be alive, but while investigating it, Fenton is kidnapped, learns that Mrs. Aura is in charge of a conspiracy to prevent the world from descending into chaos and that everyone else, including Lindesfarne, believes that he is dead.^note Well, not so much for Lindesfarne. She would quietly look for him for the remainder of the Millennium Bug storyline, primarily because he coincidentally disappeared at the same place as Vin, who was also disappeared by Microtalon.
  • The revelation that Lindesfarne is a former human.
• Wham Line
  • One of the earliest. Just when Rudy had finally gotten a girlfriend...
    Fiona: My family's moving in the morning.
  • As Kell flees the Rabbit Warren (which she entered to find Kevin's parents) with the rabbit whom she saved and who had helped her.
    Kevin: Thanks, Dad.
  • Dorothy, while discussing requests for arranged marriages for Coney with Kevin, says she had set one up for him.
  • Kevin finds an intruder in his house, who turns out to be working for his political opponents. When he says he's not up for re-election yet:
    Intruder: Check that. You're facing a recall.
  • Lindesfarne tells Rudy that she's found Vin Vulpen's half brother, whom they need to give him a tail transplant. Rudy asks who would have to do it, and she says "Four inches should do it" while holding a ruler at his tail. Shortly thereafter, another comes when Rudy realizes the implications of this and denies that his father committed adultery.
    Rudy: IT'S A LIE! IT's A SLUR! IT'S—
    Kell: It's something I hope neither you nor Vin inherited from him!
  • The culprit in Sid's murder confesses
    Danielle: I'd say there's a 100% chance it's me, Daddy.
  • Kell... you... you WON. YOU'RE the new CEO of Herd Thinners!
  • Dip reveals his true intended nature when he helps stop a cyber-attack on Dewclaw's Fine Meats:
    Dip: I'm a spy for Herd Thinners. Duh.
  • Fenton gets clued in that his and Lindesfarne's lives are about to drastically change:
    Fenton: Wait... she was the designated driver... (as Lindesfarne throws up in the background).
  • And another of the earliest in Kevin & Kell, one that would dictate the early history of the strip:
    Nigel: When do you think they'll catch on that we birds run the world?
    Catherine Aura: Never, if they're lucky.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Kevin was elected to the school board in 2006, on a platform of eliminating high stakes testing. Which, in this comic's universe, leads to students being eaten alive to save money. Despite the fact that both of his school-age children could be at risk of an untimely death, the comic has dropped the plot entirely and only occasionally revisits his school board post for mundane one-off jokes.
  • When Corrie first got a job at Herd Thinners as their webmaster, she immediately bought a house. But once she found out Ralph was her father, she immediately moved in with him with no fanfare or explanation. She would go on to move into Martha's side of the Fennec mansion (now the boardinghouse) when Ralph married her, and continued to live there when Bruno started cohabitating with her after his graduation. What happened to her own house was never explained.
  • After all the hoopla about baby Francis, his genetics, and turning into a human baby, he's barely been seen in strip and the plotline has been dropped. This even includes an obvious Sequel Hook from Francis' birth storyline in which Danielle hinted that the only reason she would return to the human world would be to save him. This is never mentioned again.
  • "Domestication", once a major issue in Domain (though its actual negative effects were nebulous at best), hasn't been a major plot point since 2002, when Vin Vulpen was Put on a Bus. It hasn't been mentioned at all since 2005, when Caliban hunting coach Sam Pardus was outed as a domestic cat pretending to be a leopard.
  • More literally, what became of Lindesfarne's mice/research subjects/assistants? The last time they were seen was at her and Fenton's wedding as guests.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Rudy often got these for his actions when he was younger. In one case, this overlaps with Even the Dog Is Ashamed, when Coney dope slaps him for not sending Kevin and Kell's marriage registration.
  • Though he was also able to dish one out on the spirit of his father after finding out Vin was his brother. Complete with a cold, dripping speech bubble for his salutation.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: For some reason, Princess Chertsey of the United Kingdom has some kind of Cockney-Scots accent, possibly. Definitely not "posh", anyway. Then again, she was raised in an orphanage, so she likely picked a lot of vocal inflections that would be unusual for a British royal as she learned to speak.^note Though a relative of the real-world British Royal family would probably be able to affect a Scottish accent, as she would only be a few generations down from Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Elizabeth II's mother, who was Scottish.
• What You Are in the Dark: Played for Laughs (as well as heartwarming) when Coney got Rudy to explain how he really felt about Fiona while she was playing with Fiona's cell phone.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Domain's location relative to the rest of Earth "the world" is pointedly never established. However, the town is heavily inspired by Atlanta, Georgia, where the author lives, and several landmarks from that region appear in the strip using fictional equivalents.
  • Made even more ambigious by the fact that Domain is openly mentioned to not exist in "our" world in any shape or form (including Parallel versions).
  • That being said, when Dorothy re-entered civilization, the address listed for the Dewclaw household had a ZIP code that, in the real world, represents Monroe, Georgia, a town 40 miles east of Atlanta. And the coordinates for her last den in the Wild are just south of the northern Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta.
  • And Interstate 85, which runs in the Atlanta area, has been mentioned in the comic.
• Who Will Take The Kids?: An early story arc has Kevin and Kell debating over who should take the children in the event of their death. Ralph was automatically ruled out (this was before his Character Development), Kell's parents were ruled out since her father was succumbing to Alzheimer's, her cousin Sheila would eat Coney (this was years before Sheila was properly introduced to the strip), and Kevin was still estranged from his family over Kell. In the end, they name Lindesfarne (then in high school) the legal guardian and vow to take separate planes until she's twenty-one.
• Whole Costume Reference: Wendell dress exactly like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes and shares more than a few personality traits with him.
• Wicked Stepmother: Inverted; Lindesfarne considers Kell more of a mother than her original adoptive mother.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Bruno (wolf) and his girlfriend Corrie (sheep) literally, figuratively, and just about every single variation one can think of.

Y

• You Have Failed Me: R.L. typically fires people by eating them...or so we were led to believe. Turns out, most of his trophies (the people he fired) are still alive - R.L. hired them back as temp workers, preventing them from getting any benefits.
  • However, it's implied that it's Played Straight when R.L. returns. This is punctuated with Marty's departure, as he left Herd Thinners when he found out he was on a Christmas Party menu.
• You're Not My Father: Lindesfarne stops calling Angelique "Mom" after the divorce, upset at being abandoned and not being acknowledged much even during the marriage.
• Your Television Hates You:
  • A variant: it was a stray Google ad that outed Lindesfarne as pregnant to Rudy and Fiona—or at least, led her to admit a positive pregnancy test. She tried to ask them to at least keep a lid on it until she got it confirmed medically, but their initial excitement at the news led to this:
    Fenton: (dejected) Texting the families now...
  • Later, we got another bombshell dropped due to Google ads:
    Kell: Ad for a basal body thermometer?
    Corrie: Yes. Bruno and I are trying...