"Oh, and by the way, 'xkcq' is worth 8 more points than 'xkcd' in Scrabble, or a whopping 30 more if both are played optimally on a triple word score. Nyahhh."
Rich Burlew and Keith Baker seem to have what could be described as a friendly rivalry, so this is probably more of a Shout Out, especially considering that Baker himself got a cameo in the second Order of the Stick prequel book, "Start of Darkness".
See also this article by Baker, on Burlew's website.
The swipes at Harry Potter taken in this strip, on the other hand, are somewhat less friendly. In his commentary in the compilation book, he took a parting shot at the people who sent him hate mail over it: "...hey! Harry Potter fans who can't take a joke! I have a spell for you: developus sensus humorous!"
In that same commentary, Burlew wrote that he likes the Harry Potter movies, and he makes fun of stuff he likes -see D&D and Lord of the Rings.
The few digs taken at Video Games in 619 are more or less neutral on the nasty-humorous axis. Though the Bistro is named "Blizzard's Restorant".
The last three panels of 623 can be seen as a Take That to the more obsessed readers.
Much of comic 560 and the first panel of 561 reference LOST. 561 is where it shifts from gentle poke to Take That.
Burlew did a couple of minor ones at the fandom of Thog. The Misaimed Fandom was commented on In-Universe by Tarquin, an evil dictator has put Thog into an endless series of Gladiator Games and marvels at how the fans love Thog no matter how many horrible things he does or how many people he kills. A few comics later Thog kicks his opponent's sword into the stands, where it beheads a random Thog fan. No one in the crowd seems to notice or care.
The webtoon Bonus Stage is full of of Take Thats, roughly on par with Family Guy, but its creator Matt Wilson really doesn't like his fanbase: he has levelled several Take Thats against Bonus Stage fan fiction, Fan Dumb and the fan wiki.
Penny Arcade took a swipe at Ctrl+Alt+Del with the side character L.H. Franzibald, a self-obsessed litigious pseudo-intellectual who writes books based on ideas plagiarised from Tycho. He talks in a slimy, needlessly wordy manner, often explaining the joke of a strip in the last panel, or indulging in acts of pointless violence — once, a comic with him in even imitated the four-panel format◊ of CAD. He wears a large pair of B-shaped sunglasses and his mouth is always only slightly open to give him the distinctive B^U look. To Penny Arcade's credit, it's used as self-deprecating humour, too — according to the lore, the accusations of plagiarism are very tenuous, and Tycho's resentment of Franzibald is repeatedly shown to be pointless since Franzibald is still very successful.
Jeffrey Rowland gave Buckley a kick in the pants with thisOvercompensating comic.
In fact a lot of people have, and for the sake of not turning this article into one, long CAD rant, we won't be posting any more.
Not to mention the Memetic Mutation that sprung up in the wake of his miscarriage storyline of people and other webcomic artists inserting the last panel where appropriate for maximum funnies. That was a small industry of Take Thats.
A lot of User Friendly involves attacks on Microsoft.
Then again, pretty much the entire comic is an Affectionate Parody of games like Final Fantasy VII and their various clichés, so pinpointing one strip seems to miss the big picture.
In The KAMicsthis comic gives the doomed guard the same name as another cartoonist who had done a comic trashing other comics characters & authors.
After the World of Warcraft comic, Dark Legacy Comics, had been on a storyline about NPCs overthrowing PCs for several weeks, the author got enough of forum-goers complaining about the unrealism of such a concept and did this strip.
ThisPvP strip was similarly levelled at people who complained about the then-current Story Arc. Specifically, the strip was a response to this earlier Take That from the webcomic The Whiteboard regarding his disappointment in the wasted potential of that Story Arc.
minus. had a fairly gentle Take That against most of the criticisms you'd expect to hear aimed at the idea of a comic about someone with infinite power. For extra points, imagine it as a Superman comic.
Honestly, it would take up an entire page catalouging the number of times Shortpacked did a Take That against the worst parts of Transformers fandom.
And obligatory kicking a dead, but sparkling horse: Mummyonahorse! Did you know that the Mummies "shroud their glittering skin with flowing cloth to disguise themselves from jealous mortal humans"?
Achewood took potshots at stereotypically mediocre fantasy and furry webcomics hosted at places like Keenspot in this strip. Their activities are so poorly conveyed.
8-bit Theater once did a comic in which is, effectively, Black Mage making a pee joke and everyone else reacting with confusion and mild disgust. The name of the strip? "VG Mages".
Two Lumps has taken several pot shots at Garfield.This is one of the more blatant examples.
Well, this one is more of a Take That against people who link to us as opposed to forming their own opinions, as well as Unpleasable Fanbases and the pure distilled awfulness of One More Day. It's hard to tell exactly how effective it is to "puppet" the opinions of a wiki which, after all, can be changed by anyone. *
And in any case, he wasn't aiming it at this site, but someplace with the url tvtropes.com.
This isn't the only case of Take That that Milholland has ever done, of course. For example:
Sluggy Freelance once had the cast go to war with Dilbert and kill off every single character from that strip. Their reasons? "Dilbert just really ticks us off!"
In response to people who demanded faster updates, suggesting a sacrifice in art quality to achieve it, Thunt of Goblins offered this◊ to appease them.
Better Days artist Jay Naylor once frequented FurryMUCK, an online roleplaying environment for furries; during his time there, there was a specific section that he visited regularly, but when his behavior started to get on people's nerves, the owner of the "building" called him out on it in a rather public manner. So what does Naylor do? He leaves FurryMUCK and makes an entire chapter of his comic a prolonged Take That, turning D'anna into what is essentially the Big Bad of the chapter.
The Tales of the Questor spin-off Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger includes a very heavy-handed Take That aimed at Star Trek. This was a startling departure from Junior's usual platform of rants through clever story telling and interesting characters, but QQSR has been the vehicle for many odd Take Thats, including one against pirates, for some strange reason.
According to the artist, due to the fact that at the time that arc was being planned out, people were going ga-ga over the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.
VG Cats did numerous of Take Thats, but one of the best is this.
For those who love this smell in the morning - carpetbombing.
The Finale of The Authors Fatman Returns saga is a blatant TAKE THAT at another website that accused the creator of plagiarism. The other "Fatman" site accused the creator of stealing ideas, and posting them on his site before they got a chance to post it on theirs. The (hilarious) accusation was unfounded since the other site was set up 5 months after The Author started his Fatman sagas.
The Wotch was at one point attacked by Something Awful. A few weeks later there came a minor plotline where Anne was besieged by a giant troll; Miranda West saved the day by banishing it to a dimension named Sapoe.
"I sent it to a troll dimension, he'll like it, full of trolls"
The Oatmeal artist/writer Matthew Inman expresses his 14 years of agonizing frustration as a web designer with this strip. No wonder the dude quit to make web comics.
