Schlock Mercenary / Tropes G to N

Tropes A to F | Tropes G to N | Tropes O to Z

Schlock Mercenary provides examples of:

• Gadgeteer Genius: Kevyn; Dr. Todd, inventor of the "magic cryokit".
• Gag Censor: The censor box bubble blocked view of a head injury, and also prevented Doyt and Haban from taking a good look at the wound until they pushed the body off-panel, which then caused Doyt to get an eyeful of the gory wound.
• Gale-Force Sound: "If you want to really yell at somebody, Doctor, do it from the diaphragm."
• Gallows Humour: After Schlock is killed, and restored from a backup of his memories;
  Tagii: I'm not the one who jumped into a six-kilometer hole without a flight suit.
  Schlock: Neither am I.
• Gambit Pileup: Both most arcs and the overreaching plot, especially since the Fleetmind formed.
• Gargle Blaster: Different drinks for different folks; not helped by the introduction of "depth charges" (one drink with a shot of something else dropped in the glass); Schlock ends up trying different combos, including "Hey, Bartender! Depth-charge my Ovalquik with kerosene!" (As Kevyn says, "I'm not cleaning up the mess...."). Then there's what happens after Schlock ingests several bottles of concentrated solvent:
  (BURRRP!)
  Legs: Frankly my dear, it's full of stars...
  Schlock: MEDIC!
  Legs: I see dead people!
  Schlock: HAZMAT!
• Generation Xerox: Played with and ultimately averted in a short storyline. General Tagon looks a lot like his son, which causes the latter to worry at one point that he's going to become his father as he ages, but an AI's projection shows that Kaff will look very different when he reaches his father's current age.
• Genghis Gambit: On a galactic scale.
• Genius Loci: Any ship with an AI.
• Gentlemen Rankers: Para Ventura joined the Toughs as an ensign and made lieutenant before she was discovered to be a spy and left in disgrace. When she was later instrumental in the Toughs being reconstituted, she found a new position, as a corporal, which rank she retains.
• Godzilla Threshold: The Pa'anuri detonate an artificial nova, threatening the Unioc homeworld. Petey is forced to evacuate the Uniocs by destroying all of their Teleport Interdiction and ripping out their souls.
• Got Volunteered:
  • Very common. Every briefing generally turns into the "don't accidentally volunteer for something" game.
  • Variant when Massey is helping write the Jumpstar Prime constitution. Due to a minor glitch, he filled out a blank spot with his own name, meaning he accidentally nominated himself for Supreme Justice. The council signed it, and when he informed them of the mistake, they just said "no mistake."
  • The Pa'anuri manage to damage Petey's galactic core generator, depriving him of the energy needed to fight them back or send military assets over to Andromeda. Using what energy is left before he loses it entirely, he terraports the mercenaries to fight the Pa'anuri in their own galaxy. While Tagon had already been thinking about participating in such a mission, he isn't happy that Petey grabbed him without even giving him the option to refuse.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: As usual for this trope, massively parodied. Tagon shoots his shoulder angel with his sidearm because he thinks it's a mosquito, his shoulder devil tries to dress up as an angel, and his shoulder angel comes back to shoot it in the head for doing so.
• Good News, Bad News: All over the place, in every form, including
  Kathryn: (upon viewing certain spy cams in Dr. Pau's facility) Hmph. Well, the good news is that I can now start killing and not feel in the least bit guilty. The bad news is I'm not going to feel the least bit guilty about the killing I'm about to do.
• Godiva Hair: Several times in The Sharp End of the Stick, this is used to hide Elf's breasts, after the Toughs captured by Shufgar were stripped of their clothing.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual:
  • In addition to Kevyn's Cool Shades, some eyewear can also be used for Friend or Foe identification.
  • The Reverend's glasses are pretty cool too...but not as cool as Kevyn's.
    Theo: ...mine also have designer frames.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Tagii is disconnected by Thurl, but instead of turning her off entirely, he only isolates her from any outside feedback or interaction and let her run at full speed on her main processor banks, for a few dozen minutes, which she experiences as much longer than that. Upon being unwittingly re-plugged in, she goes on a murderous rampage.
  • A while later, they find out another AI that has been in a similar situation for over 10 million years.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: In the final arc the dark matter beings have finally punched through Petey's defenses and his fleet is being decimated. The UNS and at least some of the other galactic powers are on their way so far, and word has gone out to the Precursors beyond the rim. It's ultimately subverted; the Toughs win the war all on their own while everyone else is still assembling.
• Gone Horribly Right: As Dr. B explains how Project Laz'R'Us synergizes dozens of soldier boosts:
  Bunnigus: They found that the right combination of these technologies would make any human functionally immortal.
  Breya: Okay, but what were the side effects?
  Bunnigus: You mean besides turning the entire population into a standing army of Super Soldiers? No side effects. Clean as a razor sharp, double-edged sword-whistle.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Captain Tagon isn't shown extracting a knife that was stuck in his eye or what he does with it to the knife thrower, but from the concluding scene the next day, it wasn't pretty.
• G-Rated Drug: Ovalkwik, for Schlock
  Ch'vorthq: Sergeant, you will be drinking a very heavy stimulant cocktail cut with shampoo and inert ultra-tensile carbon.
  Schlock: I don't drink it. I eat it straight.
  Ch'vorthq: (dryly) And I suspect you're addicted to it.
  Schlock: (drawing his BFG) Step away from the tub of happiness.
• Gravity Master: Gravitic technology is used for both protection and offense ("gravy-guns"), as well as sundry other uses such as Artificial Gravity and ship propulsion.
  • The UNS Tunguska, like all Battleplates, has extremely precise control of its ability to sling around gravity, lifting the Toughs into the air as a show of force, transmitting a message by using gravity to rattle the ship's hull, and even gravitically controlling Tagon to shoot Jak in the head. All of this is notable in that it probably is NOT Art Major Physics.
  • The Pa'anuri, being dark matter-based Eldritch Abominations, have this as their only way of interacting with regular matter. Considering they're really pissed at organics for teraport usage, that interaction usually involves crushing.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe:
  • The alien womenfolk are generally quite alien, as ably demonstrated by Legs.
  • Zigzagged with Ceeta, who has purple skin, but is a genetically modified human.
• Grievous Harm with a Body:
  • Tagon swung Breya at a goon as part of a tag-team attack. With an added kick (literally).
  • Corporal Chisulo, whose team was tasked with defending a group of UNS politicians, uses a bag full of politicians (It Makes Sense in Context) as a weapon, here.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Tagon's Toughs aren't the heroes. They're the protagonists. There's a distinction (though they do overlap).
• Grey Goo: Mentioned to be a risk of weaponized Nano Machines. An ancient Bradicor suffering from memory loss also makes reference to green goo when he re-meets Schlock.
• Gunship Rescue: Troops from the company on the ground have on occasion been rescued by close air support provided by their home ship, as shown here and here, for example.
• Hair Substitute Feature: A Fobott'r has a crest of similar shape and consistency to a human mohawk, but it's really a collection of symbiotes that help regulate temperature and the chemical balance of the blood and nervous system.
• Hammerspace: Besides the Toughs seeming ability to pull handguns out of thin air, Schlock's own mouth is like a Bag of Holding, in which he's carried guns, a suit of collapsible armor, and sometimes other people. Subtly Lampshaded when Schlock tries doing a spit-take and empties everything he had in there onto the floor, including a Bugs Bunny-style giant hammer.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: During the book The Sharp End of the Stick, a group of Toughs are captured and stripped naked. Assorted objects intervene to prevent anything "naughty" from actually showing, at one point even Lampshaded in one strip's author's note, explaining that Schlock's arms spread in a yawn conveniently covers body parts for which there was nothing in the scenery to block the view.
• Hand Cannon:
  • Schlock's plasma guns fit this trope well, a large but still handheld plasma weapon that can even be used against heavy armor. Several times he's refused a weapons upgrade because the new weapon, despite being far more powerful, is smaller than his preferred one and lacks the ominous hum and intimidating glow at the business end. Later, he gets his hands on some real antitank cannons and simply saws off the stocks and barrels to make pistols of them.
  • Depending on the environment, your cannon may vary. In the second Credomar arc Lt. Pibald modifies his ordinary-sized pistol to fire antimatter rounds.
    LOTA: You should now confiscate Lieutenant Pibald's pistol. It can shoot a hole in the world.
• Handwriting as Characterization: The print copy of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries includes handwritten margin notes by a number of the comic's characters. The Book Dumb captain Kaff Tagon has notably sloppier handwriting than his father the general, while the Sophisticated as Hell Murtagh's is very neat and tidy. Manchild Schlock uses a marker.
• Happiness in Slavery: I am ablative armor! Life is boring, then briefly exciting, then over! I am ablative armor! Life is boring, then briefly exciting, then over! I am...
• Hard on Soft Science:
  • Heartily mocked in the author's note for this strip.
  • In this strip Liz comments on how the trope attitude has resulted in her studies in memetics, linguistics, and sociology resulted in her landing a fast food job.
    • It does eventually pay off, though: As of book 19, she's a Lieutenant, specifically because she took "an elective", and Schlock considers himself her bodyguard.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Tohdfraug fleet was introduced attempting genocide. Petey captured them and when next seen, they seem to have become devoted to protecting the helpless.
  Tohdfraug Admiral: (to Petey) We've failed you. We've failed them.
• Hellevator: Both an escalator to hell and a space elevator on Luna, called the "Hellevator".
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: A lot over the course of the comic, but perhaps taking the planet-sized cake is the Fragsuit Personality Overlay of Cindy, despite being explicitly non-sentient due to the suit's limited processing power, experiencing an emotion when asked "what's it look like out there?" with Schlock fighting the Pa'anuri. Because how it looks is Dark-Matter!Schlock chowing down on their previously nigh-unstoppable enemies.
• Heroic BSoD: Karl Tagon, upon learning of his son's Heroic Sacrifice
  Kathryn: Commodore, we've got fires to put out!
  Karl: That was the last of them, Kathleen.
  Kathryn: No, they're still burning, And my name is Kathryn
  [Beat]
  Kathryn: (unsettled) And you've never gotten that wrong before
  [...]
  Bunnigus: Kathryn, the commodore's file says Kathleen was his WIFE's name
  Kathryn: Oh no... I thought he was broken before, but now he's actually broken-broken.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A couple, despite all the Heroic Comedic Sociopathy.
  • Most notably Brad, who stayed on his crippled tank to jury-rig a self-destruct out of ordnance so it wouldn't crash in a city and kill hundreds to thousands of people. In a surprising twist, he actually died. He got a really big statue, though. His last thoughts also "highlight his noble character." This particular sacrifice got all the hero mileage possible.
  • Similarly Hob, who also died setting off a life-saving explosion.
  • Not death, but in a similar vein, Tailor agrees to have his personality rewritten (which he is understandably afraid of) to gain the medical knowledge needed to save Tagon.
    Ventura: Do you trust me?
    Tailor: I'm terrified of you.
    Ventura: But you want me to do this?
    Tailor: My Captain needs me to be something I'm not.
  • A pair of Oafans deflate themselves (which is fatal) so that the Toughs won't have to spend disproportionate resources protecting a pair of living hydrogen balloons. Oafans may have an atrophied sense of self preservation, however, as they have a symbiotic relationship with a Hive Mind to whom their biological memory backup is typically given after their death.
  • The original Kevyn pulled one of these a second after creating a clone that shared all his memories. When it was discussed in-universe whether that counted the copy said he was going to put it on his resume and hope nobody asked too many questions.
  • A borderline example, when Clone!Kowalski gives the Toughs targeting coordinates on his own position to wipe out the army of nannie-subverted rebels on Earth. Summed up by the narrator:
    Maxim 20: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.
  • Captain Tagon, sacrificing himself by setting off a nuke inside Broken Wind to keep the renegade Espees from taking it.
  • The Unioc crew who are first to engage the Pa'anuri's supergiant dreadnought. Subverted, they don't actually die, but the Captain was fully prepared and expecting to.
    "Someone with far more firepower than we have might be able to stop [an incoming enemy]. All we can do is send them our data, and hope they arrive in time for us not to have died in vain.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath:
  • Most of the main cast are... well, mercenaries. What else would you expect?
  • In particular, Captain Tagon's father seems to be concerned that his son may be going over the line.
• Hero of Another Story: Quite a few of them but the top contenders would probably be Petey/The Fleetmind, Admiral Breya and Der Trihs (post retirement). The bonus story in one of the print books is all about Petey and Der Trihs being the heroes of their respective stories.
• Hive City: As explained in this stip, there are roughly 200 billion sophont beings living on Earth, and the immense population is managed by restricting it to a series of immense systems of arcologies and vertical cities that collectively occupy only 10% of Earth's land and oceans but which are several kilometers high and deep. Population density is measured in people per cubic rather than square kilometer. This is viable chiefly thanks to a number of futuristic technologies, including highly efficient underground farming and superstrong construction materials.
• Hive Mind: The Fleetmind is sort of an artificial Hive Mind, an amalgamation of hundreds of A.I.s united to for a common cause. After the second time they combined into a Hive Mind, they decided the most effective thing to do was stay as The Fleetmind, rather than dispersing like last time.
  • Utchi-Skafatka is a very ancient hive mind, which has a symbiotic relationship with the Oafans. The Oafans, being living hydrogen balloons, are able to house a small swarm of Utchi-Skafatka inside them. Oafan technology also allow them to back up their memories, to be given to Utchi-Skafatka after their death. So not only does Utchi-Skafatka have eons of its own memories, but also the accumulated memories of a vast number of individual Oafans.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • During the final invasion from Andromeda, in the 2020-04-20 strip, it turns out the Dronuri, the little meatish squid found in Pa'anuri vessels, act as mental backups for them, ones that can be read by the vessel's computer in order to recreate the Pa'anuri once more, bringing them back to the battle in moments. And then in the 2020-04-26 strip, It also turns out the readers on these vessels, with a bit of hacking, can read Amorph goo... and with extra hacking, letting the Amorph regain control of the ensuing dark matter entity. The result is Dark Matter Schlock rampaging through Pa'anuri space, abusing nonbaryonic chemistry to devour them like he would any other foe. Never let your better toys fall into enemy hands, they might figure them out better than you have.
  • Ennesby hacks the Pa'anuri hypercannon's targetting data, causing it to take out itself and all the Pa'anuri nearby.
• Hollywood Hacking:
  • When Ennesby tries to interface with Pa'anuri technology so that he can try to hack one of their ships, he sees literal tentacles in a virtual space and tries to figure out whether he should eat or wear them to control it.
  • When Schlock tries to hack a Pa'anuri ship and connects to it via a Brain/Computer Interface, Cindy translates it into something he can understand, namely a spaceship cockpit with an alien "houseplant". When he confirms that just manipulating the ship's other controls isn't enough, Schlock tries to take control of it by going inside of the "houseplant".
• Hologram: Strip 2001-03-08 reveals a "Friendly Emergency Medical Hologram" of the cryokit, also presumably a Shout-Out to the Emergency Medical Hologram of Star Trek: Voyager.
• Hologram Projection Imperfection: In strip 2010-10-10, the projection of Petey comes with horizontal flicker lines.
• Homage:
  • A brief Formula-Breaking Episode In the Style of CSI, complete with Expys of Grissom, Warrick, Brass, and Nick, begins here.
  • That said, when the Toughs get lost during a teraport (something that should be impossible):
    Narrator: Don't worry. We're not going to do Lost in Space. This will be ever so much worse.
• Honor Among Thieves: The Toughs may be sociopaths but they steer clear of outright evil beyond what's Necessarily Evil to get the job done, and are very loyal to each other. Schlock in particular: to hurt someone he likes is not a safe place to stand. Nor, for that matter, is anywhere else downrange or in the blast radius. Case in point: here and here (death spoiler warning if you're mid Archive Binge).
• Humanity Is Young: A paltry thousand years participating in a galactic civilization that has existed for over 20,000.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: many of the aliens look more-or-less human, but have subtle or bizarre differences, like Lt. Ebbirnoth, whose species has their brain located in their pelvis and, rather than having a head, has a single giant eye.
• Humans Are Special: "Rescue Party" variant; with less than a thousand years in space - a fraction of many prominent species' lifespans - humans have already spread an English-influenced dialect of "Galstandard" far and wide, ballooned to the fifth-largest sapient species and fourth-strongest military power yet seen, rediscovered an order-disrupting technology purposefully suppressed for six million years, and been indirectly responsible for the creation of a godlike AI hivemind.
• Humans Are White: Averted, in that dark skinned people show up as often as they would in the modern day. Intra-species ethnicity seems to have become a less significant matter compared to the wide variety of sophonts in the Schlockiverse. "Human" has been expanded a bit by genetic fiddling; a significant ethnicity is purple. The alien characters usually can't be bothered to identify the various Terran species (including intelligent apes, elephants, squid, and more) apart from each other half the time.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Pops up quite a bit.
  • Schlock notionally carries his armament inside him, but many others go around fully armed wearing very fitting clothes with no obvious bulges...
  • 'Chelle conceals a pistol about her person whilst wearing nothing but a bikini. Bit of Fanservice involved there.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: The way wars were fought in the galaxy was completely changed thanks to the invention of the Teraport and related inventions such as the Terapedo. It isn't long before various anti-teraport countermeasures are designed to bring a sense of equilibrium back to transgalactic warfare.
• Hyperspeed Escape: Quite common, unless measures are taken to prevent escape via Teraport.
• Hypocritical Humor: The Fleetmind, during the war with the Dark Matter Entities, realizes that their human captains aren't willing to sacrifice themselves for the fleet. However, when they start talking about it with the other AIs in the fleet, Athens says she doesn't want to go first.
• Identical Stranger: it has no plot relevance beyond a Lampshade and a joke, but Schlock's "grandmother"^note as in, his mother's personality was modeled after hers looks identical to Breya, only older.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The parts of the "Quest for Second Sight", are: "Through the Ages", "Through a Darkened Glass, and "Through the Roof".
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!:
  • Parodied.
    Nick: Lemme hit 'im too, sir. I promise not to kill 'im too quick.
    Kevyn: I know he murdered our friend, but that will take you into a very dark place, Nick. We are going to turn Shufgar, alive and healthy, over to judges of House Est'll. Then, per ancient tradition, he will be killed and eaten a little bit at a time.
    Nick: Your place sounds darker, sir.
    Kevyn: It has the advantage of being legal.
  • Yet another variant:
    Major Murtaugh: ...Sanctum Adroit is never violent in anger lest we become the evil we behold.
    (report about Maximilian's team being wiped out comes in)
    Maximilian: (smugly) Well... well... Major Murtaugh, are you ready to become what you behold?
    Major Murtaugh: (looking at him with disgust) I'm ready to punch what I behold. Does that count?
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Schlock pulls this once, after the Toughs discover that two of their soldiers were killed by UNS nanite weaponry. Tagon is not amused, and threatens him with physical violence. Tagon was calmed down when Tailor explained creating armor for Schlock from battlefield scrap.
• I Know You Know I Know: Right here, between Petey and Tag in regards to what is known but wasn't discussed in the extradition hearing for the Toughs, following the HTRN building hit. Also, referenced by name here.
• I'm Standing Right Here:
  • During Schlocktoberfest 2005, Shodan comments on the competence of the local constabulary.
    Michelle: Uh-oh. These teeth are too small. I think we got the wrong shark.
    Shodan: Elizabeth might take issue with that since this is the shark that was trying to eat her.
    Michelle: Yeah, but the cops said that the teeth-marks on Monk were bigger than this.
    Shodan: True. But the cops are also stupid, and think Der Trihs faked that attack somehow.
    Policeman: I'm standing right here.
    Shodan: Oh, good. That means you heard me.
  • Shows up later when Captain Tagon and his father are discussing the woman who used to captain the ship they're on.
    Karl: Make her a sergeant.
    Tagon: Are you kidding me? Dad, she's a complete unknown!
    Murtaugh: I'm right here.
    Karl: She's not UNS intel, and she's not trying to steal the ship back.
    Tagon: How can you possibly know that?
    Murtaugh: Listening to every word, boys.
    Karl: I'm old, and I'm smart about a few things. I've got her pegged as a knight errant, a ronin. She's a sullied paladin questing for redemption.
    Murtaugh: Gentlemen, I'm standing between you.
• Improbable Weapon User: From Schlock using a piece of Battle plate armor (in a beautiful case of Show, Don't Tell when asked "What Would Schlock Do?"), to using a tailor 'Bot as a battlefield surgeon. (And considering amorphs were originally developed as a type of self-repairing computer memory/ external hard drive, Schlock himself is an improbable weapon.)
• Indy Ploy: No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and at times the battle plans for the Toughs don't even make it to the point of contact before going up in a blaze of (in)glory.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After having his first high-profile case torpedoed by Captain Sorlie, newly-minted Chief Justice Reinstein decides to go for an ethanol-and-olives lunch. i.e. a Martini. Or quite possibly more than one.
• Information Wants to Be Free: Multiple:
  • Early on in the series, the mercenaries are attacked repeatedly by the F'sherl-Ganni "Gatekeepers," due to experimenting with (and holding the patent for) the Teraport, a method of Faster-Than-Light Travel that far outstrips the unwieldy stargates that got the F'sherl-Ganni their other name. Finally, Admiral Breya Andreyasn figures out that there's a way to stop the attacks: release the Teraport into Open Source, essentially spreading the technology freely across the galaxy and removing the Gatekeepers' reason to specifically target Tagon's Toughs.
  • Invoked by Petey after the UNS battleplate captain realizes that his intended private discussion with Petey was being transmitted on public channels.
  • A bizarre eco-terrorist uses this as justification for the giant man-eating sharks he created.
    Mad Scientist: Freedom is the ultimate aim of all things! Freedom, and the Great Democracy of Unfettered Choice!
    Detective Dannovo: Are you saying you want the animals to be able to vote?
    Mad Scientist: Okay, that's just ridiculous.
• In Medias Res: Used in the opening of Book 8, The Sharp End of the Stick. Later lampshaded here.
• Insult Friendly Fire: When trying to get Schlock to care about "the state of [his] immortal soul", Reverend Theo declares their employer (Petey) is a soulless automaton, evolved from a warship AI... to which Schlock, quietly offended, answers amorphs, too, evolved from computational systems.
  Theo: Well that's a rhetorical landmine I should not have stepped on.
  Schlock: This "soul" thing... can I get one by eating someone else's?
• Ironic Echo:
  • When Para meets Kevyn for the first time, she recognizes him by name prompting a 'my reputation precedes me' from Kevyn before she gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. When Para meets the timecloned Kevyn, it goes exactly the other way around.
  • When Max inadvertantly gives away that he's an Intelligence operative, Kathryn says, "Oh, you poor thing." A few panels later, when Kathryn realizes that his next move is to make sure she doesn't talk, he says "You poor thing."
• Ironic Echo Cut:
  • Used during the "Massively Parallel" arc to communicate flashbacks.
    Thurl: Okay, perfect. That should do it.
    Narrator: Rewind: seven hundred hours earlier, berthed at the High Olympus shipyards.
    Kevyn: Okay, perfect. That should do it.
  • Again, during "Force Multiplication." Someone steals a villain's visor computer, which doesn't log itself out. She gloats about how he must be stupid, or it must be defective, right before it blows up in her face. Cut to the one who blew it up complaining about how he always suspected it was defective when she lives.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: In this strip, Karl Tagon is identified as a "nice old man". In the last panel, he shows up suddenly to object to the "nice" part.
• It Can Think: The giant Thurl uses as a character in his virtual world is a fully sentient program (named Cecil) and not just a mindless NPC. Tagon repeatedly puts his foot in his mouth by openly stating he hadn't realized Cecil was a person.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Cleaning up the foxtrot in Book 12 involves making Professor Pau treat the victims of his blood-nannie-farm experiments a lot better:
  Kathryn: They are people, Pau. Don't you ever refer to them as "multipliers" again.
  Pau: Can I use the word "hosts?"
  Schlock: Please, just let me eat him now.
• It Wasn't Easy: 2004-08-31:
  Kevyn: Do you expect us to believe that you took control of a Tausennigan Ob'enn Thunderhead Superfortress using nothing more than a minitank?
  Petey: I didn't say it was easy.
• I've Got an X, and I'm Not Afraid to Use It!: A protester who pilfered Schlock's BFG threatens Breya with it. "I've got this nifty plasgun now, and I'm not afraid to use it on you, hot cheeks!" Unfortunately for him, Breya isn't afraid of using her Sonic Stunner, either.
• I Warned You: Ennesby zings Kevyn hard here.
  Kevyn: One word from you and I'm handing you to Lieutenant Ventura for upgrades.
• I Was Never Here: "I was never aboard. I did not hear any of this."
  Xinchub: What, with those ears?
• Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: In the "Reality Television" arc, Lieutenant Ebniroth actually gets hired as a janitor for the building he's meant to infiltrate. Since they don't know the mercenaries are after them, he doesn't have to disguise his identity at all, even bragging about how his service qualifies him for the job.
• Joke Item: The Urtheep M3 Incapacitator, labeled "tater" by its users both for its potato-like shape and the fact that it is actually less useful than one. It is standard issue for the Dom Atlantis police force, and is conceived to select the appropriate loadout to incapacitate an opponent without hurting them. In case there might be splash damage, or the line of fire is not clear, it will not fire. It even has a strap to keep its holder from throwing it at a target.
  Mako: Tater, why aren't you firing?
  Tater: Target is fully armored, no stun solution available.
  Mako: Immobilize her with Goober rounds!
  Tater: Line of fire includes traffic.
  Mako: Shoot SOMETHING or so help me, I will throw you at the t...
  Tater: (shooting straps to attach itself to Mako) Ballistic restrictor strap engaged.
  Mako: You are a disgrace to every tool in the history of things with handles.
• Jump the Shark: Just in case anyone thought the introduction of time travel might be the shark-jumping moment for the series, the author lampshades it here.invoked
• Just Between You and Me: Lampshaded here, with Major Timmons of UNS Intelligence declining to spill the beans to his intended victims.
• Karmic Death: Colonel Krum originally tried to prevent Kathrine (and others) from using one of Tunguska's terapods, reserving seats for priority personnel. During the destruction of Morokweng, she was left behind with Kowalski claiming the seats are all full of priority passengers.
• Killed Off for Real: So far, Doctor Lazcowicz, Hob, DoytHaban (well, sort of), Sh'vuu, Pronto, and Brad.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Multiple:
  Ensenby: (from an armed troop-transport to a single guard) You there on the ground. Drop your weapon or be fired upon!
  Guard: I'll die before I [THOOM!!]
  Ensenby: "...finish my sentence", I think he was saying.
• Killer Rabbit:
  • The Ob'enn, (colloquially known as "psychobears") are cute, cuddly-looking koalazoids who just happen to be unbelievably violent xenophobic megalomaniacs.
    Ennesby: The Tausennigan Ob'enn warlords look like cuddly teddy-bears?
    Petey: Yes, they do. And they'd cheerfully exterminate your entire race for making that observation!
    Ennesby: I guess that explains their rich military history, then.
  • And inverted by the Kssthrata, the velociraptor-like species which evolved in the same system as the Ob'enn. Instead of continuing their counter-genocidal war with the Ob'enn, they just moved.
• Laser-Guided Broadcast: In the "Barsoom Command" arc, Sergeant Schlock gets a targeted ad that whispers that he's being followed and should hide in the storm drain. Of course it turns out that the "ad" was hijacked by an AI who wanted his help.
• Late to the Punchline: Depicted here.
• Law Enforcement, Inc.: Sanctum Adroit, referred to by Tagon as the "haughtiest, most self-righteous mercenary company I know of." In other words the most principled.
• Layman's Terms: Multiple:
  • From strip 2000-11-12:
    Planet Merc Sales 2: It costs a bit more, because rather than just lining it with buckminster fullerene carbon tubules, the suit is completely woven out of the stuff. Dupunt's patented "carbonan" carbon nanofilament mesh is guaranteed to stop rounds of any caliber or composition, and at up to almost relativistic speeds. Besides that, it's comfortable, and offers a generous power-assisted movement system.
    Breya: Once more. This time in English, please.
    Planet Merc Sales 2: "Carbon nanofilament" is an expensive word for "Diamond."
  • Kevyn's learned them. It was that or die because soldiers aren't physicists, and if you can't get them to understand you, you, along with trillions of others, will die because most people don't know the difference between "nonillion" and "bazillion".
    Kevyn: Captain, I need to be patched out. We've found something important.
    Megiddo: I'll be the judge of that. Speak.
    Kevyn: The stabilizer control systems for the stellar-core toroidal singularity that drives the gate-copy system were damaged in the initial assault. Between eighty and ninety hours from now that singularity is going to release about a nonillion kilograms of mass, most of which will likely be expressed as energy.
    Megiddo: Not worth the call. What else have you got?
    Kevyn: Well, we expect a pretty impressive supernova in about four days.
    Megiddo: See, that is worth telling the fleet about.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Characters often grip panel edges.
  • Also:
    Ennesby: The stray breacher round was a nice touch. Good timing. Perfect ironic humor. (Said in the last panel of a comic)
• Legacy Vessel Naming: Petey has so many ships he evidentially struggles to come up with enough names that fit his Theme Naming scheme, judging by some of the names resorted to. He also reuses names when a ship is destroyed. The result, five separate vessels have gotten the inspiring name of Predictably Damaged. As the comic explains a normal human would likely have picked a new name by now, but Petey enjoys the irony.
• Le Parkour: It's evolved into a martial art called Parkata Urbatsu. According to one character, along with influences of urbobatics and "something called YouTubing."
• Let's You and Him Fight: When being attacked by a battleplate belonging to a decidedly nasty faction of the UNS, Tagii lures it close to a just released dark matter entity.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Ennesby to Schlock, after a particularly unpleasant moment involving the removal of the smell of death from Ennesby's chassis.
• Lighter and Softer: The Mallcop arc was distinctly lighthearted, with aerial hijinks and the only antagonists being non-violent free-runners.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Multiple:
  • Tagii and Tagon, according to herself.
  • Kathryn and Nick, according to Karl Tagon.
• Little Hero, Big War: Ostensibly the Toughs' position, being a small mercenary company in a big, big galaxy with lots of conflict. However, they do play a role in many important events and are responsible for some major shifts in the galactic balance of power, including the introduction of the teraport, the formation of the Fleetmind, and the creation of LOTA.
• Living Doorstop: Kevyn strapping misbehaving Buranabots to the hull as "ablative armor".
• Locked in a Room: Dr. Bunnigus and the Reverend are trapped together on the Hellevator as one result of an attack on them by the Attorney Collective.
• Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard:
  • The mobsters that kidnapped timeclone-Kevyn and general Tagon actually force Kevyn to build a machine that they don't understand.
  • The original Kevyn turned a mini-wormgate into a gravy gun that splattered the UNS marines about to kill him, though it was fortunate he used it to clone himself first.
  • Also happens to Lt. Ventura, genius roboticist. Her captor tries to not have the innocent-with-the-big-eyes looking girl guarded by an easily swayed human guard. Instead they locked her in with the robots...
• Lodged-Blade Recycling: Captain Tagon does this when he gets a knife thrown into his eye, following a jam of his pistol leaving him unarmed until that point. Justified, as he's been boosted, then immediately Deconstructed, as he falls unconscious from internal bleeding after the fight is over and requires field brain surgery from another character.
  Tagon: Thank you. Now I have a knife.
• Longevity Treatment:
  • The amorph's creators made themselves immortal but ran into several layers of problems, which destroyed their civilization as a result. The main issue was that they neglected the mental effects of longevity, particularly on memory, resulting in people going mad after a few thousand years. They attempted to rectify this in two ways. The first method was Brain Uploading into a shared consciousness, but this eventually collapsed. The second method was to gene-tweak themselves into a state that left them comparatively naive and senile, but still sane. The few individuals who went for the second method are still alive and sane after about twelve million Terran years "give or take a little bit".
  • A plot point is "Project Laz'r'us", which was intended to circumvent humanity's short lifespans in comparison to many other sophonts using hyper-advanced nanotechnology. The nannies are also capable of repairing a clinically dead host and even making internal backups of the brain.
• Long-Runners: The comic has run constantly since June 2000. Howard Tayler has announced his intent to finish the 'mega-arc' by late 2020. As of July 2020, he made good on that promise.
• Loophole Abuse: Presumably, after this strip there's now a company policy regarding air vents, where there wasn't one previously.
• Made of Iron: Many of Tagon's mercenaries have various artificially-induced boosts to their strength and endurance, but during the Timeclone Kevyn and Karl Tagon rescue, Captain Tagon was particularly badass. Bad guy throws a knife and sticks Tagon in the eye with it. Tagon pulls it out of his socket and uses it to kill the bad guy and a Mook.
• Mad Scientist: Several, subverted in Kevyn. See the Characters page for details.
• Magic Antidote: The regenerative tanks, which can rebuild an entire person as long as their brain survives.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Soldier-boosts and future medical technology make this a fairly common trope.
  Kevyn: Casualties?
  Shodan: Sergeant Wenzi and Private Ng are stable. No other casualties to report, sir.
  Kevyn: Really? What about your arm?
  Shodan: I'm currently left-handed.
  Kevyn: Your right arm is missing.
  Shodan: It is not missing. It's fused to a bulkhead on deck twelve.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!":
  • Invoked here after the original use of Credomar as a hyperspace death ray that can't be stopped by any existing defensive technology is revealed by Lota:
    Kevyn: This is where I defecate in sympathetic reflex for every defense planner in the galaxy.
  • The crew together lets loose one when trying a then-experimental FTL drive to escape an attack by the Attorney Collective.
• Mathematician's Answer:
  Chelle: Why do you think the Barsoom Circus recruits new performers from all over the galaxy each month? People come to see the aliens do weird, alien stuff.
  Schlock: Are we joining a circus or a freak show?
  Chelle: [Deadpan] Yes.
• May–December Romance: The General Karl Tagon/Kathryn Flinders romance is teased for several books, finally paying off in Book 20.
  Murtaugh: Do you know why I reassigned Flinders to your lyceum?... Idiot. I reassigned her because she asked. Because she loves you. And bless her silly heart, she loves you enough to make a project out of fixing your old, busted-up soul.
  Karl Tagon: I thought she was just being nice.
  Murtaugh: Again I say, "idiot".
• Meaningful Name: Multiple:
  • Several of the names in the series have gags attached to them (e.g., 'Corporal Oleo' getting sliced in two at the end of an Overly Long Gag based on the saying 'like a hot knife through butter'; the planet Qlaviql, which appeared shortly after Tayler injured his clavicle in Real Life; the Tohdfraugs; Dr Todd, which stood for 'The Old Dead Doctor', who wasn't given a name until long after he was killed). Finally, Fanon holds that Kevyn and Breya's last name is meant to imply that they are descendants of a certain 21st century computer industry figure - who must have done very well, given that they are nobility back on Earth.
  • And, most significantly, the oft-injured Der Trihs.
  • The Reverend Theo Fobius. A comical inversion of "Theophilus" who crops up in both Luke and Acts in The Bible.
  • Most of the planets they encounter. And all the Battleplates are named after notable meteorite impacts with the earth (Tunguska, Chicxulub, etc.). Logically, since they've meant to prevent the near light-speed, weaponized version of that.
  • Then, of course, there's LOTA...
    Kevyn: That's the name. LOTA. It's your name. You live in those control systems. You are the Discontiguous Particle Acceleration System.
    Lota: Yes, that is a little megalomaniacal.
    Kevyn: Only now "Lota" stands for "Long-gunner Of The Apocalypse".
    Lota: ...and Lota likes it.
  • This is played with in some flavor text outside of the comic. For example the Buuthandi which according to the side blurb is shorthand for something along the lines of "This (expletive) thing was really (expletive) expensive to build."
• Meat-Sack Robot: The character Doythaban Gyo has an AI called Haban built into his cyborg implants; they do not fit this trope. However after a gate clone of Gyo is created by an alien race who want to torture it for information, the clone Gyo is shot in the head; medical intervention is able to save the copy of Haben, leaving only the AI in control of the clone body.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: Neeka, the Tough's newest (Esspererin) surgeon, is extremely skilled, but also extremely messy, and her bedside manner when it comes to more organic patients can be lacking; she tends to neglect the anesthesia and liberally remove and reattach limbs. Tagon has compared footage from previous surgeries to the results of a bomb blast, and the procedure in question could be best described as "disassemble, then reassemble without the bullets".
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Several;
  • Schlock and his fellow "Carbosillicate Amorphs" evolved from "self-repairing distributed storage systems for (Bradicor) supercomputers."
  • The Esspererin are described as "late-phase output from somebody's iterative mechanical replication experiment." This neatly explains why they don't need to breathe.
    Ventura: Mother of chrome... They're solar-powered robo-fairies.
• Membership Token: A new member of the team decides to introduce the challenge coin tradition to Tagon's Toughs, to tie-in with the Real Life creation of a variety of Schlock Mercenary Challenge Coins created by Tayler for a Kickstarter campaign after he learned of the military tradition.
• Memetics in Fiction:
  • Side character Liz majored in Memetics in college, unfortunately due to the Hard on Soft Science meme persisting she found herself folding burritos for a living.
  • Company chaplain Theo Fobius occasionally refers to memetics, such as when berating Ennesby for programming repair bots to perform the Macarena (which has apparently been banned multiple times).
  • Putzho manages to explain memetic evolution without referring to the word "meme" once.
  • Some of the Boloceade get concerned about the crew of the Pursuing Dinosaurs introducing dangerous ideas to them despite their vastly inferior technology. They decide on isolating them in a meatspace section of their ship where they're forced to think more slowly than the virtual Boloceade.
• Memory Gambit: Schlock pulls off one by taking advantage of the origins of amorphs as artificial data storage devices, by sneaking some memories into a bit of amorph goo stuck into one of his extra eyeballs.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Generally played straight. Although Tagon has several women in his company, the majority are officers, and the only two among the grunts are Elizabeth and Legs (neither of whom are human). While the female members of Tagon's command have suffered injuries throughout the series, the only members of the company who have actually been Killed Off for Real have been male. More female characters outside Tagon's crew have died, but even then not enough to avert this trope.
• Metaphorgotten: Multiple:
  • Howard Tayler loves playing with metaphors, almost as much as Terry Pratchett. Breya even revokes one character's metaphor privileges after a particularly Squicky one.
  • This happens to Schlock, too.
    Ebby: I need to see if these lieutenant tabs will let me revoke metaphor privileges from a sergeant.
    Schlock: They don't. And even if they do, they don't.
  • And when discussing new uniforms (to the point of Comically Missing the Point):
    Ebby: He's put his signature up and down all the seams.
    Shodan: I've had it on for all of three minutes, and it already feels like an old friend. Wait... You can read the stitches in the nanoweave?
    Ebby: Hang on... How exactly do you feel your old friends?
• Might Makes Right: Despite all the cynicism, this trope is usually averted. Oh, sure, the strong ones can do whatever they like, but at least no one pretends they have the moral high ground.
• Mindlink Mates: Kevyn likes the idea. Petey doesn't think it's going to work well for humans without related experience.
• Mind Rape:
  • The "Mind-Rip," an invariably fatal method of extracting a being's memories. Funnily enough, it's been used by the "heroes" at least as often as the villains.
  • Elf accuses Petey of having "mindraped" Kevyn, but realizes it wasn't so bad after calming down.
• Mook Horror Show: The 2001 Schlocktoberfest has Schlock regenerating, eating his friends to increase his mass (they were already badly wounded and he made sure their heads got into cryokits), and then tearing apart what the transcript calls "Diamond Bugs". The Bugs are juveniles and they see Schlock as a "REGENERATING ZOMBIE CANNIBAL".
• More Dakka: Used liberally, and forms the basis of Maxim 37: There is no "overkill". There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".
• Motion-Capture Mecha: Used with sufficient delicacy to pick one's own nose.
• Mouth Taped Shut: When the Toughs had reason to take prisoners Pronto enjoyed shutting them up with duct tape. Once he quips that a prisoner they're leaving behind had better remember how to say "I would like some anesthetic" in sign language.
• My Brain Is Big: In strip 2002-05-04, with "ACME High-Capacity Helmets" when talking about smart MENSA Infantry.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die: All three show up in one panel of the 2001-07-22 strip.
  Gasht'g'd'g'tang: I'm Gasht'g'd'g'tang. Your gate-copy killed my son. Prepare to die.
• Myth Arc: Multiple:
  • It's subtle, but the state of the galaxy is influenced a great deal by the Toughs, whether they know it or not. It begins with Kevyn's invention of the teraport, then the gatekeepers siccing the partnership collective on them to suppress the technology. Which leads to The teraport wars, and then the war with the dark matter entities.
  • There's a second arc at play as well. Project Lazarus started as an even more subtle myth arc, with aspects that lead into it there from almost the beginning with the old Doctor, but starting about here a lot of Chekhov's Guns were fired in quick succession, bringing the arc to the fore. The Lazarus arc may not be as vast as the Teraport Wars or the Andromeda War, but it's a lot more personal - and what with Petey having taken in General Xinchub and possibly allied with him, the two arcs are likely to fuse into one.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Multiple:
  • The ship Serial Peacemaker. Ironically, it is the smallest and least dangerous ship the Toughs have used as their flagship.
  • As explained here, he name of the alien artificial intelligence T'kkkuts Afa literally translates as "Broken Wind". This shows why it is very important to consider cultural context when performing translations; a looser translation would be "Angry God". The looser translation is not misleading. Later on a native speaker suggests that the closest translation would actually be Breath Weapon.
• Nanomachines: used heavily in-story and played with a lot by the author.
• Narrative Profanity Filter: Ennesby uses General Xinchub's detonator codes to send him a message demonstrating Ennesby's extensive obscenity collection, which is only vaguely described after the fact.
  Tagon: I see you've just been exposed to Ennesby's weapons-grade vocabulary.
  Jevee Ceeta: My stomach is in my throat right now. It's trying to spit acid on the parts of my brain that remember reading his message.
• Neck Lift: From 2002-09-21. Elf does it to a gangster named Scab after he calls her "sweet-cheeks":
  Scab: Woo! Say no more, sweet-cheeks.
  Elf: You got that exactly wrong, pencil-neck. It's 'Say sweet-cheeks no more.' I don't do that kind of work.
• Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight: 2002-09-12 has the situation occur with an attempted mugging using a knife.
• Never Heard That One Before: In this strip Kathryn Flinders replies sarcastically that "that joke never gets old" when Schlock references an old joke about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron, after she's hired by the Toughs in the "Haven Hive" storyline.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Show Within a Show has Schlock gaining abilities which Amorphs don't actually have for the sake of the show's plot. This presents problems for Schlock later.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • The "older and wiser than everyone" Thurl, of all people, falls victim to this. After figuring out that Para and Tagii might have loyalties elsewhere, he goes and disconnects Tagii. The result? Since Tagii was jamming the Redhack, Gavs started morphing into Super Soldiers all over the place, the Toughs lost overwatch and are in an ill position to fight off anyone else since Ennesby doesn't have Tagii's processing power at his disposal and the Oisri startup sequence is running and threatening to squish everyone around into singularity. Oh, and Tagii goes banshee-insane, and tries to kill the entire crew. Of course he acted in the best interest of the Toughs based on the information he had, but he stands firmly in the Unwitting Instigator of Doom territory.
  • In a later plot-arc, the Toughs arrive at their new assignment aboard a massive space-borne construct, find that their entrance is blocked with wooden growths and promptly start an equally-massive fire blasting their way in.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: a number of characters, starting with Schlock and going up to god-like proportions.
• Night Swim Equals Death: The plot of the Mahuitalotu arc kicks off this way, with one of the Toughs being eaten by a shark secretly introduced into the oceans.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • In one strip, the Pi talks about watching Jack-san Robo III, which features a ninja pirate cowboy with a monkey.
  • Turns out that the UNS is a government version of this. It's a combination of democracy, oligarchy, and every other sort of government you can think of, with some representatives elected, others chosen by lottery, and others with their seats explicitly and publicly bought. It's mentioned that this insane compromise of a legislature has been balancing on a knife's edge for centuries, and has great difficulty making any major decisions.
  • Nearly word-for-word when Ennesby and Kevyn are wondering why King Lota hired them for a confidential job:
    Kevyn: Maybe he wants us to build him a superweapon so he can cruise the galaxy as a giant robot ninja-pirate terrorist.
• Nobody Poops: Perhaps a bit too averted at times.
• No Endor Holocaust: Averted here.
• No Fourth Wall: More frequently and noticeably in early strips.
  • During the "Pointy End of the Stick" storyline, Kevyn literally "met his maker" during a near-death experience, and instantly recognized him as the cartoonist, which led to this exchange:
    Kevyn: Are you killing me?
    The Cartoonist: No.
    Kevyn: Oh. Goo—
    The Cartoonist: Blood loss is killing you.
  • Generally speaking, the fourth wall disappears when someone is dying (usually only for that character). Thus, when the entire galaxy is dying, the fourth wall may as well be non-existent.
• No Help Is Coming: In the 20th book, Petey sends the Toughs to Andromeda in one small ship to disable the weapon that is preventing him from sending more. Captain Andreyasn points out (after he is already stranded in Andromeda with everyone else) that it is extremely unlikely that they can kill a planet-sized superweapon with one little ship.
  Captain Andreyasn: So... we're headed into a fleet-sized fight, but we don't get a fleet to help us unless we win.
  Captain Tagon: When you say it that way you make it sound impossible.
  Captain Andreyasn: You're the one making it sound impossible. I'm just making sure I heard you correctly.
• Noodle Incident: Tagon and Nick, on their ship being flooded, describe the situation as "like Third Orleans... All that's missing is the zombies."
• Not Hyperbole: Discussed in one strip, to Tagon's surprise:
  Tagon: You know, for all I've threatened to do it in the past, this is the first time I've actually torn someone a new one with my bare hands.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The tactical uses of this combined with Paranoia Fuel are nicely demonstrated here.
• Not in My Contract: In the closing of the first Credomar story arc, Tagon protests to a UNS Commodore that it wasn't in the contract that they should distribute the food to a Credomar faction inclined towards annexation by the UNS.
  Commodore: You might have found our choice...objectionable.
  Tagon: Then we would have asked for more money.
  Commodore: Mercenaries...
  Tagon: You get what you pay for.
• N-Word Privileges: Gorillas have, prior to the 31st century, been uplifted to human level sapience, and since then a lot of primate-related phrases have been deemed as being racist. Unless you're a gorilla yourself, apparently.

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