Strange Minds Think Alike / Webcomics

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• 8-Bit Theater. Used straight frequently, and played with in the case of the "Cold Fusion Reactor". Set up here and here, with the punchline occurring here
  • And then it's continued here and here
  • Then, the gross misuse of geometry, starting with the hypercube (a sphere of some sort), moving on to summoning circles (squares), and to the datasphere (a cube)...finally reaches its conclusion with the Stube.
• Bad Machinery: This page.
  Shauna's interior monologue: Oh my God, nuff cutlery. Do I just use the ones I like the look of best?
  Mr. Corky: Oh, just use the ones you like the look of best, Shauna.
• This strip of Blip. K, just before acting out her role as a pre-arranged third wheel, thinks to herself, "All right...time to bust out my Cate Blanchett skills..." When K proceeds to over-act the part, Hester thinks to herself, "Fail, Ms. Blanchett...fail."
• In The Wotch: Cheer!, there are the recurring set of Noodle Implements: Two geese, a roll of duct tape, 23 toothpicks, and some sodium benzoate. First used by Tamara, then later by Jo and Agent 32.
• A Dominic Deegan comic has Donovan, whose Orkcsh translations are all of My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels quality, say something about doing taxes in autumn, followed by the orc he's talking to saying "Close enough. Let's get moving." Meanwhile, an orc who's not too good with the Callanian language translates Dominic's rant as being something about taxes in autumn...prompting the same response. It turns out that Donovan and the orc had the same phrasebook.
  • Also, near the beginning of the comic's run, Sigfried meets both Lady Tavoria and Dominic. Both are hung up on his name, and ask him if they can just call him "Siggy."
• In El Goonish Shive, Tedd wonders why he's creeped out thinking about Grace becoming a guy at her Gender Bender-themed birthday party when he was fine with seeing her in his form before. He concludes that it's because he's either a narcissist or just that girly. Later, at the birthday party after everyone has changed gender, Grace asks Susan and Sarah why Tedd seems uncomfortable with her in male form when he's already seen her as himself. Susan theorizes that Tedd's a narcissist, and Sarah adds the "Or he's just that girly" comment.
  • Later Grace reassures Tedd that it's okay for him to be more weirded out by a male version of her than by her transforming into him because "It feels different to be with one's own self...and couples switching bodies is number thirty-seven on your list of weird things you like. It's also possible that you're just that girly, but I don't think you're a narcissist."
  • Also, toward the beginning of the "Night Out" arc, Nanase uses her fairy doll spell to talk to Ellen. When she first uses it, Elliot says to Justin, "Do you want to be the one to make a wise-crack about them inventing telephones when she snaps out of this, or shall I?" A few comics later, while Nanase is hanging out of Ellen's bra, Ellen informs Nanase that there is a lovely new invention called the telephone.
    • Also, both Ellen and Elliot have had a scene where they told Nanase in her fairy form that normally they would hug her but don't want to crush her.
  • Elliot realizes he's attracted to Susan after dreaming of her dressed up as Counselor Troi. Take a guess at what shows up on Susan's list of ways to avoid accidentally seducing Elliot.
  • Nanase and Ellen respond to Diane's "You asked if I wanted to help you solve a mystery" with "Or rewrite history?! DUCKTALES! WOO-OOH!. When they arrive at Charlotte's, Diane tries to head off a repeat of this joke with "Let's solve a mystery. And no rewriting history!", and Charlotte asks, "Magic power or Ducktales?" (Time travel has been confirmed impossible in the EGS universe, but the characters don't know that.)
  • Both Agent Wolf and Dr. Germahn use the phrase "Scrub Trash" in phone calls to Arthur (the head of the FBI paranormal department) in rapid succession. In both cases, Arthur repeats this terminology, only for the original speaker to say, "It sounds weird when you say it."
• In Girl Genius, Agatha demonstrates at which point the Spark runs in the family, when she discovers a highly dangerous train engine that she doesn't know yet was built by the old Heterodynes:
  Agatha: Oh wow! Why don't you have engines like that on all your trains? What a great idea!
  Brother Ulm: Well, of course you'd think so.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: In chapter 1, Annie tries to figure out how to get Shadow 2 across the bridge to the forest. Shadow 2 can only travel in shadow, but the bridge is bathed in light. While Annie can provide him cover using her own shadow, she is forbidden from leaving school grounds, so she cannot walk him across the bridge herself. She concludes that there is "only one sensible resolution":
  Annie: I must construct a robotic walking device which will provide you with transit across the bridge!

  In Chapter 30, Annie and Kat are trying to throw Annie's blinker stone into the ravine so that it lands on the shoreline on their side, but it keeps missing and landing in the water instead. As Kat puts it, the problem is that the ravine is so deep that only dropping it straight down from the edge will work, but they are not allowed to get close to the edge. Kat is struck by an idea:

  Kat: I could construct a robotic throwing device which will provide the stone with transit to the river's edge!
  Annie: What an… odd thing to say.
  The Rant: I agree. Kinda convoluted.
• Holy Bibble used to have a bit of this. Anyone baking anything tended to add "a few pastries for variety", despite being centuries and often miles apart. It's unknown if this will show up in the current reboot, though.
• Least I Could Do has Rayne attempting to popularize the word "vagoo" as a more casual synonym for the vagina. When a co-worker uses it in a later storyline, he says "I knew that term would catch on." Note that the term originated in a Fate/stay night doujin that censored "penis" to "ponos" and "vagina" to "vagooo". Image Boards latched onto it.
• A Modest Destiny:
  • Gustav and Lucille agree that the same-sex marriage between Maureen and Lucille (which exists only to avoid a curse on Lucille; Maureen does not, at this point, identify as a lesbian) lacks mayonnaise, to Maureen's bewilderment. Maureen is frustrated when Fluffy repeats the same line later independently.
  • There's also a Running Gag in which various characters suggest brightening up dismal rooms (such as prison cells) with throw pillows.
• This may be a Real Life example, but once The Order of the Stick and Erfworld (which then shared the same website) both included a joke about the restaurant Subway on the same day (which seems even odder since both comics take place in medieval fantasy worlds, albeit ones with Anachronism Stew and little or No Fourth Wall). The Order of the Stick author Rich Burlew insisted it wasn't intentional, though he took it as a sign about what he should have for lunch that day.
  • Another The Order of the Stick example: Haley says that Thanh has been "dominated" by Tsukiko, and both Belkar and a random cleric assume she is referring to consensual bondage rather than a Mind Control spell.
  • One example was inadvertently created by making a reference to a Running Gag: in one of the Dragon magazine strips, when Belkar accidentally dispels Elan's clothes, Phil Rodriguez says, "He's invisible!" Since these strips don't take place in the same continuity, Phil must have in this continuity somehow reached the same "naked=low AC penalty" logic that Elan did in the main comic.
• In Ozy and Millie, after music classes are cancelled to make way for standardized test, Mr. Larnblatt, the music teacher, starts shouting about how important music is using increasingly crazier metaphors, eventually getting to "Music is the nucleus of the cell! The avocado of death!" Later, after the music class has been restored, Millie expresses her joy to Mr. Larnblatt using the exact same phrasing. He answers "Yes, well, I did tell them that."
• Penny Arcade teaches us about Claw Shrimp.
• In Questionable Content, after Claire passes her exams, Emily, Hannelore, and Clinton all independently decide to give her a build-your-own-theremin kit as a congratulatory gift. Faye was also planning to get her one, but forgot to order it in time.
  Claire: Is this a bit? Am I being pranked?
• In Scarlet Lady, both Marinette and Adrien have the same idea about how to avoid being asked to become a temporary hero: mess up hard enough that no one would ask again. The difference is in how they do it: Marinette just "accidentally" outs herself, while Adrien takes advantage of how his temporary Miraculous lets him do Save Scumming to get some In-Universe Catharsis before handing it back.
• The Schlock Mercenary arc "Massively Parallel" is full of moments like this, since it's an extended storyline with several separated groups of characters and various repeated jokes cropping up. Of note are at least four characters asking What Would Schlock Do? in unrelated circumstances, and one group of characters saying It's not rocket science while performing impromptu brain surgery, and later another group saying "It's not brain surgery" while performing rocket science.
• In Sluggy Freelance, when Queen Valerie asks Torg his name, thinking he's a random peasant, he goes for the really lame Line-of-Sight Name Pheasant the Peasant. A short while later Zoe is about to be eaten by the demon K'Z'K, and in wild desperation she claims she's not Zoe but "her twin sister...um...Pheasant".
• Tawawa on Monday: I-chan shuts down Volleyball-chan's idea to make valentine's chocolates with a mold of her breasts. Standing behind her is her little sister, who already did.
• Team Fortress 2's supplemental comics gives us well-known Cloud Cuckoolander Soldier and Heavy's slightly crazed sister, Zhanna. Considering that Soldier is a jingoistic nutjob and Zhanna has basically been socially atrophied in Siberia for twenty years, the two of them operate on a disturbing shared mental wavelength. They're both more than a little bit off, perhaps best exemplified by this exchange that could only happen between them and no one else:
  Soldier: Expect heavy enemy resistance along the eastern perimeter. I want you to treat these men with extreme prejudice.
  Zhanna: You...want me to be racist at them.
  Soldier: I've made that same mistake, but no. "Extreme prejudice" just means killing everybody as violently as possible. I will leave the amount of actual prejudice to your discretion.
• In User Friendly, a guy with what appears to be punk hair applies for a job here and says the hair was due to an accident with a soldering iron and a ceiling fan. Later, two of the techs say that this was their first assumption.
• In WIGU, some church folk accuse Wigu of being a wizard, after which a policeman shows up to arrest him and have him buried up to the neck in the town square, due to a law that's been on the books since 1695. When Wigu's mother finds out her son has been arrested, her response is, "Charged with being a wizard? What is this, 1695?".
• This strip of Wondermark.
• "Randall, get out of my head!" is a frequently posted statement on the xkcd forums.
  • And, of course, this. Amusingly enough, the alt-text suggests an explanation.
• In Yahtzee Takes On The World, multiple characters independently base their decisions on consulting magic 8-balls. When one asks about Yahtzee's odd behaviour, the ball answers "He's the Anti-Yahtzee, dumbass," so maybe they know something we don't.

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