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sometimes people ask me "what is dinosaur comics about?" and sometimes all i can say is "about six panels, i'd say"

—episode title for December 17 2008.

• A Hell Of A Time: In Hell you can play video games and do whatever you want, but you have to sing songs with all the lyrics replaced by "party".
• Alternate Universe: where everyone has goatees. And the comic is run 'backwards', that is to say, the standard comic image is flipped before dialogue (and goatees) are added.
• Alt Text: Used for comments or additional punchlines.
• Better Than It Sounds: as is said in the above image.
• Cloudcuckoolander: T-rex.
• Chekhovs Gun: Explained in this strip of the "Literary Technique Comics" series. May involve Pop-Tarts.
• Cursed With Awesome: Applied to several tragic Greek figures (sometimes in rather contorted ways) in this strip.
• Curse Cut Short: As the Alt Text for this episode says, "it's not swearing if you don't enunciate the last phoneme. PRO TIP"
• Cut And Paste Comic: It's the Ur Example.
• Dada Comics: The premise is played surprisingly straight, and the sheer repetition of the art eventually makes it all feel perfectly normal.
• Defictionalized: Fans occasionally make Choco-Chops and send them to Ryan North.
• Dis Continuity: T-Rex attempts to improve his life by declaring less favourable parts non-canon.
• The Ditz: T-Rex, although he can be highly intelligent at times. He is not, however, a Genius Ditz (except when he is).
• Dont Explain The Joke: Flaunted with "Jokes Explained!"
• Emoticon: OGC
• Empathic Environment: Explained as a part of the concept of the "pathetic fallacy" in this strip of the "Literary Technique Comics" series.
• Fan Fic: The subject of this strip. You kiss in my story.
• Floating Advice Reminder: On the "About" page of the site:
  About Interacting Socially: This can be tricky! You want to be friendly, but you don't want to come on too strong. My best advice is to carefully observe others, and to relax!
• God: Only T-Rex can hear him. He speaks without punctuation, in all-caps, and is somewhat of a ditz himself.
• King Of All Cosmos: God.
• Lampshade Hanging (every once in a while, a joke about the parameters of the comic, eg here or this one lampshading the lampshading.)
  • Also explained/parodied in this strip, also from the "Literary Techniques Comics" series.
• Light Gun Game: The Devil is a fan of them.
• Magic Feather: It all goes wrong in this strip.
• Male Gaze: Discussed in this strip, especially as it pertains to Video Games.
• Mirror Universe: a Story Arc that involves this and one of the few art-changes in the comic's history starts in this strip.
• Noodle Incident: T-Rex's idea of a party anecdote is the time he lost someone's baby.
• No Pronunciation Guide: drom-iss-ee-oh-MY-muss
• Prequel: Parodied in this strip, and further applied to Shakespeare in this one.
• Never Give The Captain A Straight Answer: Discussed here.
• Painting The Fourth Wall: God talks in BOLD ALL CAPS. The Devil meanwhile speaks in BIG RED LETTERS, and the raccoons and cephalopods ARE UNNERVINGLY ITALICISED.
• Remix Comic: Technically, every strip after the first one; fan-made Remix Comics of it are, of course, also common.
• Satan: One of the odder incarnations of the Adversary in fiction, he's a nerd obsessed with Video Games whose voice comes in from the bottom of the panel. Like God, he talks in all-caps without punctuation.
• Secret Keeper: Parodied in this strip, where T-Rex is "the worst Lois Lane ever".
• Self Referential Humor: The strip above, among other things.
• Shout Out: Recently, a back-and-forth with Andrew Hussie involves Ryan watching him eat dinner. (Archived here.)
• Slap Slap Kiss: Discussed and combined with car chases in this strip.
• Straight Gay: Utahraptor (and by extension... T-Rex?). It's not a big deal, and is seldom mentioned.
• Sophisticated As Hell: T-rex's entire friggin' speech pattern.
• Tempting Fate: Subverted in this strip. In the past, T-Rex has had parties ruined by God, which led to embarrassment with the ladies.
• This Is For Emphasis, Bitch!

Also, when I started the comic, I wrote five thousand comics in one incredibly productive afternoon and have just been posting them one a day since then.

-Ryan North