Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
"Mad Scientists rule the world. Badly."
A Web Comic (originally a print series) by Phil and Kaja Foglio, which has become one of the classics of the Steam Punk Gaslamp Fantasy genre.
The titular character of the story is Miss Agatha Heterodyne, who begins as a young apprentice to a type of Mad Scientist known to the world as a "Spark".
Can be found at the Studio Foglio website, accessible through this elegant and finely-crafted link .
Girl Genius WILL ALWAYS update every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, usually around midnight.
Given a Hugo Award in August 2009.
Talk about the comic in our discussion forum for ''Girl Genius''. A character sheet can be found here.
Provides examples of:
- Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Castle Wulfenbach.
- All Part Of The Show: Twice, a circus of Sparks pretending to pretend to be Sparks, and a Jäger hiding among people who pretend to be Jägers
- All There In The Manual: the Secret Blueprints and the expanded chapter-by-chapter Cast pages.
- Almost Kiss: Argh!
- Alternate History: Perhaps better called parallel history, because the Sparks have been around for long enough that even geography has been changed by their influence, and yet the world and its history are not completely dissimilar to ours: there were still Mongol Hordes on cue, German is still spoken as a European lingua-franca, R(embrandt) Van Rijn was still a famous genius and Casanova a famous skirt-chaser, the [Weather] King was still a towering historical figure, and there is still a powerful church(es) with
a pope(s) seven popes, according to this page.
- The page itself is not entirely clear or definitive as to whether there are seven popes at once, or whether there have been 7 popes since it was written. This is entirely possible, as at one point (before the creation of the holy roman empire aka the guy who rules what we call Germany, most popes only lasted from a few months to maybe 2 years... considering this is an alternate history, that life expectancy rate may have survived into the 19th century.
- Or indeed there may be seven popes at once, given a comic exaggeration of the Great Schism when there were two simultaneous Popes in Rome and Avignon (a joke also used in Blackadder, when at one point a bull is signed by 'both Popes', and later in the episode by 'all three Popes').
- There were once three popes at the same time. Schisms could be pretty bad in the Middle Ages.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Jaegermonsters, and anyone infected with Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation.
- Anguished Declaration Of Love : Gil gets one regarding Agatha. Not to her, admittedly, but he was still pretty anguished thanks to Zeetha hitting him.
- Anti Climax: The final "battle" of "Revenge Of The Weasel Queen."
- Archive Binge: It had what was probably one of the biggest in history when the version for people who started reading it online caught up with the version for people who'd read the print comics.
- Arc Words: "I can work with that."
- Also, "I hate this place" & variations.
- And "You have no idea."
- Arson Murder And Jaywalking: the list of Heterodyne names in the crypt includes Caligula, the Red Heterodyne, the Black Heterodyne, and Bob.
- Aside Glance: "At least she was color coordinated."
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Klaus, his son (when thrust into authority, Gil's asskicking genes more than rise to the challenge), and the Jäger-Generals.
- Asskicking Equals Authority: More generally, in a semi-feudal world ruled over by extremely intelligent nutjobs, it's the one at the top of the castle you want to watch out for. They're in that spot for a reason.
- Because someone's tied them to a weathervane?
- Author Appeal: You think it's an accident Agatha wears such lacy underthings? And more to the point, has spent quite a bit of time in them?
- Phil Foglio is well known (unabashedly so) for drawing his female characters with rather large "assets." But it's his wife (and co-author) who loves to get Agatha into the "lacy underthings." She's a big fan of Victorian-era undergarments.
- Not to mention paper dolls.
- Author Avatar: The creators, Phil and Kaja, are both apparently natives of the story's world who, it would seem, will eventually meet, marry, publish a... controversial account of Agatha's deeds, and flee into our world with it to continue it safe from Agatha as a supposedly fictional comic.
- Art Evolution: It started in -black and white-.
- Back To Back Badasses: Gil and Tarvek, on the cover of Volume 9.
- Badass: Too many to count. Baron Wulfenbach, especially, clawed his way to being ruler of Europe atop God knows how many others and it shows.
- Badass Boast: Several; this is the most effective example.
- Bald Of Evil: Veilchen
- Bar Brawl: Apparently there's one every evening in Mamma Gkika's. Except on Thursdays; then it's poetry slam night. Emphasis on slam.
- Battle Butler: Ardsley Wooster.
- Betty And Veronica: Gil and Tarvek.
- Beware The Nice Ones
- Big Screwed Up Family: House Sturmvoraus. So much.
- Bilingual Bonus: Many names of people, races, places etc make more sense if one knows a little German.
- BFG: "Clenk Gon", Agatha's Death Rays
- Subverted nicely in that Gil has NO death rays to speak of when we first meet him - it's such a nice subversion as he is the son of the man who rules Europa with an iron fist and is quite literally feared just as much as he is respected.
- Bifauxnen: Grantz, Baron Wulfenbach's monster hunter.
- Big Damn Heroes: Gil, once again demonstrating why you shouldn't shoot him. You'll just make him mad.
- Big No: Right after Agatha breaks Merlot's mind with the enormity of his mistakes.
- Bleached Underpants: Prior to Girl Genius, Phil Foglio was best known for his pornographic comics, and unlike many artists with a similar background makes no attempt to hide it - they're quite good, Or So I Heard.
- They are, but I don't think this counts. He did What's New and Buck Godot long before he did XXXenophile.
- Not to mention the classic Con Reports.
- Or a pair of excellent, funny updates of old '60s humor comics for DC Comics at about the same time as XXXenophile.
- Blessed Are The Cheesemakers
- Blessed With Suck: Most sparks, and Agatha in particular, have to deal with being shunned, used, or attacked by most everyone they meet. And that's if they don't get killed by one of their own creations.
- Bottled Heroic Resolve
- Caffeine Bullet Time: Agatha's first experience with coffee
- Cargo Cult: The Other is believed to be a deity by the Geisterdamen.
- Chandlers Law
- Character Name And The Noun Phrase: both in and out of setting
- Charm Person: Sparks are very charismatic...
- Chaste Hero: Barry Heterodyne, as far as we know. The folks who write the fairy tales about the Heterodynes try to avoid mentioning this.
- Didn't he have a liaison of some sort with a High Priestess?
- He always ends up with the High Priestess in the stories and plays. What happened in Real Life is more unsure...
- "The High Priestess" wasn't a single person - an older version of the cast page explained that this was the catch-all term for whatever lost priestess, distressed damsel, or mad scientist's beautiful but misguided assistant (other than Lucrezia) happened to figure in any given Heterodyne play. Basically, an in-world trope.
- We have met one High Priestess. Her name was Vrin. However, there's no evidence whatsoever that she was involved with Barry at any point.
- Chekhovs Gun: Gilgamesh's lightning generator
- Cheshire Cat Grin: The Heterodynes frequently sport these, as do many other Sparks when in the Madness Place, sometimes reaching the level of Slasher Smile.
- The Jägerkin sport those every time they're about to fight, so it also overlaps with the Slasher Smile.
- Cool Airship: Castle Wulfenbach, of course. Zola's ship might have qualified if she hadn't colored it pink.
- Crazy Enough To Work: While you get the impression this happens a lot, perhaps the most hilarious one would be curing Tarvek of a terrifying disease by killing him and then bringing him back to life.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: These seem to happen with alarming regularity, with each one topping the last.
- Cyanide Pill: One is offered to Moloch, but he obviously has yet to use it.
- Death Glare: Gil gives one to Zeetha along with a brief World Of Cardboard Speech.
- Death Of The Hypotenuse: Lars, anyone?
- Death Ray: Just about every spark has made one or something like one - but no one but Agatha redesigns the architecture with them during sleep.
- Didnt See That Coming
- Do Anything Robot: Dingbots!
- Does This Remind You Of Anything: Gil and Agatha's rapid-fire exchange of ideas on how to cure Tarvek gradually get more breathless and excited as they go on, culminating in this strip. Mad science as foreplay, full-on experimentation for the sex. Oh, and did I mention Gil was shirtless the whole time?
- Double Entendre: The Castle teasing Agatha about her attraction to Gil: "All the Wulfenbach Sparks are known for their over-sized machinery..." Also figures in about half the references to Death Rays. And almost every reference to toolbelts.
- Drill Tank (the Deep 6 Model; also something of a Punny Name)
- Dysfunction Junction: the Sturmvoraus family. Dear God, the Sturmvoraus family. These people make The Sopranos look like The Brady Bunch.
- Their name, when translated out of German, means "Storm ahead" (in the sense of a weather forecast) so that's no surprise.
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Da Boyz, the jaegermonster trio, but also the freaking nyar spider, of all things.
- Everyone Can See It: Mostly played straight, in that anyone who meets either Gil or Agatha and merely hears them talk about the other knows they're madly in love, but they know it too— they just refuse to admit it (though Zeetha finally got a confession out of Gil).
- Evil Albino: The Geisterdamen, an order of ghostly white priestesses who are in the service of the Other.
- Evil Hand: May be a side effect of the Spark, as Agatha demonstrates.
- Evil Laugh: or sometimes, not so much an evil laugh as an insane one; basically every Spark at some point while they're in the Madness Place.
- Exactly What It Says On The Tin: It happens in the not quite canon story "The Heterodyne Boys and the Dragon from Mars" but none the less, ocean in a bottle anyone? "Truth in Packaging" indeed...
- Faking The Dead
- Face Fault: The reactions to Gil "admitting" to Zola that he's really a pirate.
- Famed In Story: The Heterodyne Boys. And how!
- Fanservice: So very, very much gratuitous Agatha-in-her-underwear. Also impressive bosoms on basically every female character. On the other hand, it is only ''Victorian'' underwear...Not that that especially matters
- Fan Nickname: Dingbot Prime among others.
- Feed Me: It's bursting at the seams with mad scientists who are compelled, by their very nature, to go off on emphatic rants on how the fools DID NOT UNDERSTAAAND!!
- Filler Strip: Radio Theatre Breaks, Heterodyne Boys stories, Fairy Tale Theatre: Cinderella, and "The Storm King Opera" synopsis.
- Flashback Effects: sepia tones.
- Floating Continent: Castle Wulfenbach, sort of; it's an enormous zeppelin surrounded by a fleet of smaller airships, but in most ways is a genuine castle.
- For Science!: Girl Genius would not exist without this trope.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Pretty much all Sparks.
- Geeky Turn On: And how.
- Generation Xerox
Klaus: "Ah, I see history repeats itself."
- Gentle Giant: Punch, apparently, though most people who didn't know him assume he's just Dumb Muscle. Also possibly a Genius Bruiser, though the evidence for that comes from the Jägers who are...not the best at determining who's "schmott."
- Giant Spider (one of the many creepy albino monsters the Geisterdamen use for transportation.)
- Also one more recently in Castle Heterodyne. Not quite as big, but...
- Good Is Not Nice: Gil, Agatha, Master Payne
- Gratuitous German: Jägermonster = hunter-monster, Geisterdamen = ghost ladies, Sturmvoraus = storm ahead, Wulfenbach = "Wolf's stream" (not strictly correct, but German is dialectual and it's a place/family name)
- Of course, since this story is apparently set in a 19th century Central Europe not totally unlike our own, this is more of a Translation Convention, since German actually would be the lingua franca of the setting.
- There is one straight-up bit of gratuitous German when a Jäger uses "Jägermonstern" as a pseudo-German plural for his own kind. The German plural is in fact "Jägermonster", which of course sounds rather odd in English.
- Note also the writing in the last panel of this page.
- In the third panel of this page the warning sign is cropped on the right to read "Nein", presumably the first half of "Nein Eingang"- which although it literally means "No Entry" would be incorrect- the correct term is "Kein Eingang"
- Or it could just be saying "NO!"
- Holzfäller, the fake surname Gil used in Paris, translates as "lumberjack".
- I realized that Sturmhalten, the home of the Sturmvoraus familiy (see above), literally means "to keep storm", a.k.a. Storm Keep. This matches with Mechanicsburg, burg being old germanic for 'castle'. Wulfenbach started as a smaller house, so their fortress is just Castle Wulfenbach.
- Hellish Horse: The aptly named Monster Horse Beastie
- Heroic Sociopath: Castle Heterodyne (and to a lesser degree the Jägers) for Agatha. Bangladesh Dupree for the Baron.
- Hidden Elf Village: the Lost Kingdom of Skifander, where Zeetha comes from.
- Homicide Machines: virtually every piece of advanced technology can be used as a dangerous weapon no matter what it was meant for originally.
Gil: What about this one? It looks like a toaster.
Agatha: Well, it is a toaster. Sort of.
Gil: Sort of?
Agatha: Oh, yes. It could toast the whole town.
- Hostage Situation: Gil volunteers for one. Agatha doesn't want it.
- Ho Yay / Foe Yay: Gil and Tarvek, in recent comics. Semi-naked, snarky, and walking arm-around-arm? Oh yes.
- Hyperspace Mallet: Not actually a mallet, but just about every other gadget that a well-equipped Mad Scientist might require.
- I Am Who
- I Can Fight
- I Just Want To Be Normal: Said by Agatha, in the beginning. Othar thinks the entire idea is hilarious.
- Indy Ploy
- In The Name Of The Moon:
Schtop! Hyu horrible monster-y ting of Evil!
- Although that was an intentional delivery of a Large Ham as well...
- The Igor: Basically the entire populace of Mechanicsburg.
- Infernal Retaliation: "Here.
"Great. Now the crowd is trapped by the stalagmites while the flaming monster advances."
- Instrument Of Murder: Sleipnir O'Hara's 'Hot Pipes'
- Ironic Echo: Agatha quoting Moloch Von Zinser back at himself here demonstrating that the tables have indeed turned.
- Is That What Theyre Calling It Now
- It Makes Sense In Context:
Gil: "I've changed my mind! Let's just kill him!"
Agatha: "Stop it. We're going to kill him properly."
- It Was A Gift: Agatha's ring.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: And how! Chekov's guns that were put on the mantle in books 1, 2, and three are being taken off and fired years later. Gil and Tarvek also indulge in some Lampshade Hanging when they discuss a bunch of convoluted noodle incidents.
- Kill It With Fire: the Torchmen, Sleipnir's pipes...guess you can't start a fire without a Spark.
- Last Dance With Mary Jane: Anevka to a degree.
- Leave Behind A Pistol
- Les Yay: Zeetha and Agatha during certain moments of training.
- Literary Agent Hypothesis: The entire comic is postulated as a course on the life of Agatha Heterodyne, as taught by the Professors Foglio at Transylvania Polygnostic University ("Know enough to be afraid.") They stick mostly to the truth - though this very admittance means that it's possible that, in the "real" universe where this story takes place, not every woman has the Most Common Super Power.
- Living Motion Detector: the clank in this comic.
- Love Triangle: Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek.
- Mad Artist: The tailor clank in the "Revenge of the Weasel Queen" fillers.
- Make My Index Live: This mythos is a major part of the premise.
- Mad Scientist: 'Sparks', whose erratic genius has literally reshaped the world. Practically half the cast are mad scientists of one sort or another, though the ones that come closest to the classic villain type are probably Prince Wilhelm Aaronev and the late Lucrezia Mongfish.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: Several, most notably those belonging to Baron Wulfenbach and Prince Aaronev. And all of the ones in Castle Heterodyne.
- Mad Scientists Beautiful Daughter: Lucrezia Mongfish is officially referred to as The Villain's Beautiful Daughter in the stories told about Agatha's parents. Agatha herself is arguably one, and she's already run into at least two Mad Scientist's Handsome Sons.
- Othar Tryggvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!) actually asks Agatha if she's one of these.
- The current storyline is hinting broadly that Zola is Lucrezia's daughter as well, or at least a member of the Mongfish family tree.
- And most offspring of mad scientists are mad scientists themselves.
- Science Related Memetic Disorder: The Spark condition. Though even non-Spark scientists and engineers are a bit off-kilter, probably because that's how everyone expects them to act.
- Weird Science: All over the place.
- Magnetic Hero: Any and all Sparks; their manic vision pulls normal people into their service.
- Malevolent Architecture: Castle Heterodyne.
- Malicious Slander
- Mama Bear: Von Pinn, and how.
- Mauve Shirt: Sergeant Scorp of the Baron's Vespiary Squad. Also an unquestionably Cool Old Guy, right down to the superb facial hair.
- Mary Sue: Maria Antonia Fantasia Philomel, and her mother, Raven Moonsdaughter. As you have probably guessed, a parody.
- Maximum Fun Chamber: Also Castle Heterodyne.
- Mc Ninja: Introduced with the followers of the Way of Smoke. May not be as good as they think they are.
- Then again, Violetta readily admits she sucks at her job, and Veilchen seems quite competent, so there's likely a pretty wide range of skill level.
- Memento Macguffin: Agatha's ring.
- Mental Time Travel: Othar, in his Twitter.
- Midair Repair: Gilgamesh and Agatha while testing Gil's flying, or rather falling, machine
- Mini Mecha: Agatha's Dingbots, particularly Dingbot Prime.
- Minion Maracas: Agatha demonstrates the proper technique.
- Minion Shipping: There's been strong fan support for Violetta/von Zinzer,
minions retainer/NOT-minion of Tarvek and Agatha, respectively. Shipping a snarky Mc Ninja who hates her job with a world-weary ex-soldier just works.
- Mobile Maze: Castle Heterodyne. "We're doomed! The door we came through -- it never led HERE before!"
- Moment Killer: Damn you, Merlot!
- Monochromatic Eyes: The geisterdamen have all-white eyes.
- More Than Mind Control: Sparks' "command voice" makes them almost irresistibly charismatic.
- Has anyone other than Lucrezia and Agatha been seen to have one, though?
- All Sparks have the capacity to be intensely charismatic, but only Lucrezia and Agatha have the "command voice".
- Most Common Superpower: Every single female character, notably Agatha, Zeetha, the white spider women, and Mama Gkika.
- My God What Have I Done: Specifically Aaronev Sturmvoraus and his dying daughter, though certainly said by others in this world.
- Basically the Fatal Flaw of every Spark in the world. Entering "The Madness Place" grants them incredibly powerful focus, but it makes them entirely oblivious to the potentially disastrous results of their creations.
- Myth Arc: One of the best webcomic examples. The foreshadowing starts with the fourth strip of the first chapter, with hints about the phenomenon scattered over many, many volumes - and a full explanation has still not been given.
- Names To Run Away From Really Fast: Practically half the cast: Klaus and Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, Lucrezia, Master Payne, Von Pinn, and probably several more. Possibly subverted with Moloch.
- Necromantic
- Never Found The Body: a plot point has significant individuals from the past killed by a machine made from 'farm machinery and pork products' which turns them into a string of sausages. Hard to confirm that.
- Nice Hat: Case in point.
- Only a man whose bowler has granted fantasy adventurers super-powers could create a culture like the Jägers, whose attitude to this trope is close to a religion.
- Noodle Implements: One wonders what part a tea cozy has to play...
- The Nose Knows: Jägermonsters
- Not A Game
- Not My Boyfriend: A consequence of it seen here with Violetta.
- Not So Harmless: Zola
- The Nudifier: The Wacky Weave Destabiliser
- Number One Dime: a.k.a. said Nice Hats
- Obfuscating Stupidity: A lot of people. Some of the Jaegerkin are considerably smarter than they appear, the circus pretends to be simple performers when in truth they're all Sparks, and most especially Zola.
What? No! That was that idiot from the island of th... She is good.
- Oddly Visible Eyebrows
- Odd Shaped Panel
- Of Corsets Sexy: Usually on Agatha.
- Offhand Backhand: Used by both Wulfenbachs and Wooster.
- Oh Crap: "This must be how my father feels -- ALL THE TIME!"
- Only Sane Man: Von Zinzer. Good news is, he has a lot of experience dealing with Sparks, which also gives him lots of Genre Savvy, though he's also somewhat fatalistic - he's resigned to the fact that having to work for Sparks means he could be blown up, eaten, ripped apart or otherwise brutally killed at any time.
- Orphans Plot Trinket: Agatha's locket
- OT3: This has been suggested as a potential outcome of the Love Triangle by some of the Shippers On Deck. Given how the Cinderella digression turned out, the Foglios may actually be planning this.
- Our Hero Is Dead: and buried, complete with digging up the body and cloning a replica to make sure it's really her. The corpse was doctored to make it look like Agatha, but the cloning gave the deception away, as the cloned body was not hers.
- People Jars: Dr. Beetle in Beetleburg put criminals into giant glass jars to perish.
- Playboy Bunny: During the Weasel Queen omake, Zeetha and Agatha evoke this trope with their "rabbit costumes."
- Politeness Judo: Getting Moloch to help in the kitchen.
- Poor Communication Kills: Subverted. Agatha's possession by the Other is set up as a big secret that could cause all sorts of problems; but Zeetha goes out of her way to mention it to Gil at the very first opportunity.
- Played straight as far as the Baron goes, though, at least so far.
- Power Perversion Potential: I'm just sayin', Sparks gotta have some interesting bedroom toys, given their tendencies when building anything else.
- Psycho Electro: Anevka. She's more sadistic than psychotic, but if the trope fits...
- Psycho For Hire: Former pirate queen Bangladesh Dupree, the cheerfully murderous Dragon of Baron Wulfenbach.
- Psycho Serum: The waters of the River Dyne.
- Rebus Bubble: Bang, when her jaw is broken. "Gil = nut?"
- Religion Of Evil: The Geisterdamen worship the Other.
- Replacement Goldfish: Anevka
- Restraining Bolt: Agatha's locket
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Agatha's little clanks she builds as assistants, practically the unofficial mascot of the comic.
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand
- Right In Front Of Me
- Rodents Of Unusual Size: The Sturmhalten guides' description of "normal" sewer rats.
- Possibly inverted with the mimmoths (mouse-sized wooly mammoths), which are viewed as little other than annoying pests.
- Science Hero: Damn near everyone.
- Screw Gun Safety: Panel 4
- Seen It All
- Shoulders Of Doom: Zeetha approves.
- Shout Out: Loads of them.
- Sigil Spam: The Wulfenbach family signs everything.
- Signed Up For The Dental: The lapinohemoths in the Weasel Queen filler.
- Skewed Priorities: Locking children in vats and letting them out only for Christmas is a terrible thing, but only if you let the control group out.
- Slasher Smile: The Jägermonsters' mouths open literally from ear to ear and are full of very big fangs.
- Smooch Of Victory: Agatha's idea of a fine way to celebrate exploding a giant writhing slug. In any case, Gil approved.
- The Speechless: Punch ("Adam"). An early construct of the Heterodyne Brothers, he was unable to speak. Until Gil extensively repaired both Punch and Judy, granting Punch speech.
- Steam Punk: everywhere. The authors prefer to call it "gaslamp fantasy", because of the presence of Frankenstein-esque constructs as well as clanks.
- Stop Helping Me: Gil, as seen in the fourth panel here, almost word-for-word.
- Strapped To An Operating Table: Othar, by Klaus (and various other incidents here and there — this is a world run by mad scientists, after all).
- Tarvek and Gil have to be strapped to a table in this recent strip.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Sooo much shrapnelly goodness...
- Super Soldier: the Jägermonsters, who were created by the old 'bad' Heterodynes as shock troops but then had to obey the 'good' Heterodynes due to
a loyalty imperative that was built into them the oath of loyalty they take very seriously (though are still capable of breaking; look at Captain Vole).
- And don't forget Von Pinn.
- Or else.
- Interestingly, the Jägers aren't artificial, they are humans mutated by exposure to the dyne river, jager-draught, and other unspecified stuff. The first Jäger was also a Heterodyne. It is strongly implied that Gil and the Baron have at least some Jäger properties
- Synchronization: Gil and Tarvek, thanks to the Si Vales Valeo procedure.
- Take A Third Option: Try an incredibly risky procedure with only stuff made for killing someone or take him to another hospital, which may or may not have the requisite stuff anyway? Alternatively...
- Take Over The World: Baron Wulfenbach has already taken over the world - or at least the bulk of Europe, where the story is set - by the time the story starts, and he never wanted to.
- Talking Is A Free Action: Gil takes a panel to rant about not being taken seriously - in the middle of his fight with Vole.
- Although, to be fair, Vole was in the process of recovering from Gil's most recent move. What really made this a CMOA in this troper's opinion is that Gil continues to rant while he continues to lay the smackdown on Vole.
- Tear Jerker: Barry giving Agatha the locket.
- Tempting Fate: Many instances here and there, but recently (April 2009):
- "It's just one little clank."
- "Somebody's coming out! To surrender, I imagine."
- Thirty Xanatos Pileup: Agatha's arrival in Sturmhalten causes everyone to set off their master plan at once.
- This Is SPARTA: "What. Do. You. WANT."
- Too Much Information: Tea cozy... only one spoon...
- Translation Convention: Word Of God and incidental writing in the background says that everything is actually in German and Romanian, translated for the benefit of the audience.
- TV Tropes Wiki Drinking Game: Today's (November 2th) issue features Egregious Heterodyne. No,really.
- He is famous for deciding to enlarge a holy spring until it becomes a river. Quite appropriate for the name.
- A river whose waters have the ability to create Toothy Birds, such as the duck in the last panel.
- Unsound Effect: YOINK!
- UST: Jeez, Agatha, just make out with Gil already...
- Victorias Secret Compartment: The Other does this, as fits her personality (but not Agatha's, providing a minor bit of hilarity).
- Villainous Breakdown: Dr Merlot wasn't exactly the most sane individual in Volume 1. His little story in Volume 9 seems to indicate that he might be having some difficulties.
- Visible Silence: Appears often, but then four times in a row here.
- Visual Pun: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...Santa Klaus.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Gil and Tarvek. At each other's throats one minute, talking shop on espionage the next.
- Volleying Insults: Gil and Tarvek in the Cinderella story.
- Webcomic Time: Agatha has been trying to get into, or trying to repair Castle Heterodyne for at least two years now.
- What Are You In For: When our heroes come across Mr Foglio in the dungeons of Prince Aaronev:
Maxim: Vot hyu in for?
Foglio: Bad storytelling.
Maxim: Ho! How hyu do dot?
Foglio: You put the Prince in the story.
- What Does She See In Him
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome: Volume Seven, Page 52. That must be good coffee.
- If coffee worked like that in Real Life, we wouldn't have so many heroin addicts. Just saying.
- What The Hell Hero: TRULY YOU ARE YOUR MOTHER'S CHILD!
- Considering the one calling Agatha out murdered her parental figures in cold blood, can you really blame her?
- Who Dares: The Dragon of Mars
- Why Did It Have To Be Snakes: Gil and Agatha take turns saving Zola from dozens of incredibly deadly traps that she keeps falling into in Castle Heterodyne. That is, until they encounter a slightly-larger-than-average spider.
- Will They Or Wont They: Gil and Agatha, most frequently impeded by terrible miscommunication and Gil's bad luck.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Sparks,
almost by definition; Baron Wulfenbach fights this off by pure force of will... usually. Every successful spark has at least one very level-headed keeper.
- The Heterodyne familly in particular. Apparently their unearthly strength and stamina comes from drinking from a spring famed for causing Insanity and Death.
- It's implied that the reason the Storm King was regarded as the greatest king of all time was because he was able to keep enough self-control to rule effectively. This may have been at least partially due to the influence of the Muses.
- World Of Badass: Show us a character who's not Badass, and within a couple of strips they'll turn out to be one of the more dangerous characters seen yet.
- X Days Since: There's one sign counting the days since the last hideous death. Considering the castle's nature, this may be a way of keeping score.
- You!: Klaus' reaction to Zeetha.
- You Killed My Father: The reason why Agatha is not too keen on accepting Von Pinn's help.
- Your Approval Fills Me With Shame: "Delightfully done my lady. Your enemy is thoroughly crushed. You are a true Heterodyne."
- Like Zola didn't deserve worse...
- Your Favorite: Wooster knows how Gil likes his tea.
- Zeppelins From Another World
|
|
