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D
- Dark Age of Supernames: Parodied: Sean's ninja name is "Dark Smoke Puncher", and Doc mocks him for it at one point.
- Darker and Edgier: Though not a complete, or even major, departure from the goofy setting and previous stories, ever since Doc Gets Rad the storyline has gotten considerably darker, with no overt victories and several significant defeats that would be played for tragedy anywhere else.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Dr. McNinja is an interesting example. He's clearly good and heroic, despite being a ninja, but has also committed some decidedly antiheroic, if not downright evil acts. The Doc and his True Companions are certainly more willing to kill than most super heroes.
- It's attributable to Early-Installment Weirdness, but in the first story he killed a security guard in cold blood (to facilitate a Mugged for Disguise).
- Dark World: The Negazone functions as both this and a Spirit World. It is a dark reflection of reality with considerable Mind Screw relating to the visitor's own psyche. The Dr. gets trapped there while attempting to rescue the president.
- Dead Person Impersonation: The AWOL MD arc gives us two, plus a subversion.
- A demon is masquerading as a teacher at Gordito's school.
- Dr. McNinja is impersonating Dr. McLuchador, who died some time ago, to infiltrate King Radical's gang.
- To make that impersonation more believable, Chuck Goodrich impersonates Dr. McNinja in order to "fight" Dr. McLuchador and be defeated by him. It's a subversion because Dr. McNinja is not actually dead.
- Deadly Doctor:
- Dr. McNinja, who "heals with one hand and kills with the other".
- Dr. McLuchador is a villainous example. Though he means well, his patients tend to end up worse off from his treatments, either due to toxic medicine or "unconventional" wrestling-based methods of applying it.
- Death by Cameo: Two characters, a guard killed by
Dr. McNinja and one of Radical's goons are based on Chris Hastings. - Death by Origin Story: Gordito's father
- Death In All Directions: In the tennis temple. the Alt Text snarks "clearly he dies on the next page".
- Death Is Cheap, but not necessarily easy. Lampshaded in the comic itself, where it complains about resurrections making death meaningless.
- Depraved Dwarf: Dr. Knickerbockers.
- Destination Defenestration: "Go everlive somewhere else!"
- Determinator:
- Gordito, who grew his mustache out of sheer willpower. Later subverted when it's revealed that he grew it out of panic, and uses it to hide his insecurities under a badass facade. He finally ends up Becoming the Mask, however.
- The third Nasaghast. Able to deflect the holy shuriken, pulls his head through the sword that impaled him to the ground, launches himself into space, catches a missile and throws it straight at his target.
- Devious Dolphins: Agent Bearclaw used to pretend to be drowning, just so he could kill the dolphins who came to rescue him. So when he falls into the ocean after a real plane crash, and more dolphins show up, he assumes they're here for revenge and panics. But in spite of his fears, the dolphins actually carry him to a nearby island. Relieved, Bearclaw thanks the dolphins for their mercy... and then the dolphins pull out guns and shoot him.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Doc laying down the law on a Nasaghast.
- And, well, the chapter is called '''Punch Dracula''...
- Dirty Business
- Dodge the Bullet: Played straight by the Doctor; subverted by Beeman.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Occurs in the story "There Is A Raptor In My Office". It turns out everything was engineered by the Fox News corporation to be an amazing, rating-boosting story. It was thwarted by their weatherman who, earlier in the story, was all puffed up to do a story about three hurricanes in the Atlantic forming a Mickey Mouse shape only to be deflated by a lead in story about velociraptor riding banditos. He stopped it in the end in order to prevent the story from going public just so that everyone would be excited about the weather.
- Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!: Gordito is reluctant to wake up Dr McNinja for this very reason. The good doctor's parents apparently ingrained it into him by attacking him in his sleep, because... well... he's a McNinja.
- Dracula: One of the many antagonists in the comic.
- Don't Try This at Home: "Please do not pour beer on your wounds and tell your legal guardian that I was the one who suggested it."
- Dressed to Heal: The Doctor always wears a lab coat and stethoscope, in addition to the ninja mask and ninja-to.
- Drives Like Crazy: Doc, to the point of reducing his younger brother to tears.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Lampshaded during There's A Raptor In My Office when Yoshi eats a woman's dog. The Alt Text suggests that you do not show this page to animal lovers.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: If a named character is offed permanently in this comic, it's likely to be this trope. Discussed when Gordito relates the story of his father's death to the McNinja family. Lampshaded by King Radical just before his own death.Dan: What an incredibly awesome way to die.
- Dynamic Entry: King Radical really loves doing these.
E
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the main reason the author suggests that you skip "Issue One Half". None of the supporting cast is present, the art is crudely done, and Doc is an amoral
Designated Hero. "Meet The Doctor" is considered the real first issue and "Issue One Half" is basically getting the Broad Strokes treatment.- Even starting from there, Doc casually murders a night guard for their outfit.
- His patient's mother is startled by the odd goings-on at his office when that sort of thing should be considered more common place.note Among them, being open in the dead of night is a complete one-off.
- The first few issues are far shorter than the majority to follow, and of course the first half of the series is in black and white.
- Dan is a lot more hostile to Doc early on while later on that would mostly be Mitzi's problem.
- Gordito doesn't show up until issue three.
- King Radical and the Radical Land would not become a part of the story until the switch to colour in Monster Mart.
- Enemy Mime: Donald McBonald, even if he dresses like a clown. He even mimes a working parachute after jumping from a window and a working bomb with detonator.
- Epic Hail: "Ha ha! We just sent a distress signal....to DRACULA! KING OF ALL VAMPIRES!"
- Escaped from Hell: Not technically Hell, but Dr. McNinja fights his way out of the afterlife by double-teaming Death with the dual manifestations of his doctor and ninja personas.
- Establishing Series Moment: The very first story arc featured the good doctor himself fighting a child who has turned into Paul Bunyan. The insanity only increases from there.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Hank the pilot.Random guy in the airplane: I'm homosexual now!
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: All the King’s Dirtbikes and All the King’s Men ends with Dr McNinja, Gordito, the President of the United States, and one of her aides laughing at King Radical having become "just another person hiding out waiting for the right time to kill Dr McNinja]".Alt Text: I guess it's kinda funny if you’re stressed or something.
- Every Japanese Sword is a Katana: Averted. Doc's sword is clearly a ninja-to.
- Everything Fades: Starting about here, the bodies of McNinja's many clones gradually disappear.
- Justified; in "Dr. McNinja's Final Thoughts" for that issue, Doc even points out that those particular clones were created using inferior, outdated technology, and were so unbelievably shitty that they literally melted after they died. Then he plays a video showing how they were going to start literally falling to pieces at any minute anyway.
- Exact Words:Dinosaur President: The Alpha Shield can't be broken by anything on earth!
[...]
Dr McNinja's Message: Dracula, please fire your moon laser at this precise location. - Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
- His family name is McNinja. He's a doctor. These are his adventures. Any other questions?
- Issue #8: "Punch Dracula".
- Expansion Pack Past: Dr. McNinja's flashback in Army of One.
- Explosion Propulsion: In order to catch a bunch of King Radical's goons by surprise. He activates a trap that explodes his entire office and sends both him and Gordito flying at them.
- Expy: The "Friend Bros." featured in the beginning of A Cumberland Ninja in King Radical's Court are expies of the Mario Brothers, with special references to Mario Kart (mostly in the alt-text).
- Eyepatch of Power: Frans Rayner. Lampshaded in the Alt Text: He went from being Johnny Cage to Kano!
- Judy's kitten gets one too after its run-in with Yoshi.
- US President Maria Funkhouser has one.
- Eye Scream:
F
- Face–Heel Turn: Old McNinja pulls one... and quickly regrets it when he sees just how crazy King Radical really is.
- The Face of the Sun: The sun of the Radical Lands wears Cool Shades and sports a smile on its face.
- Fake Defector: The Doctor pretends to ally with Frans Rayner in order to negate his Reverse Ninja Law.
- Faking the Dead: Doc and Chuck Goodrich after the time travel storyline. It ends toward the end of "A Cumberland Ninja in King Radical's Court".
- Fanboy: The one copilot astronaut to Chuck Goodrich. It doesn't end well.
- Fanservice: the good Doctor himself, here... and much appreciated, by the way.
- The cover of the fourth book has the doctor posing on his motorcycle with his shirt unbuttoned, showing off a patch of his chest hair.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Dan seems to have some prejudices against gorillas.Dan McNinja: Gorillas are cowards! Nowadays you're not allowed to say it, but it's true!
- There also seems to be some racism in the Radical Lands. Don't tell Ron!
- This page explicitly spells it out:Alt Text: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is proud to participate in the long history of fantasy stories being a place where characters can be completely unabashed speciesist jerks.
- Dan seems to have some prejudices against gorillas.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink:
- Zombies, ghost wizards, vampires, resurrected Ben Franklin and Hitler, drugs that confer ninja skills, Headless Horsemen, superheroes, a disease that turns you into Paul Bunyan, cloned dinosaurs, thieving lobsters and a mafia led by a radical dirtbiking king (...and a world-ending Mayan tennis machine. Seriously.)
- Of note: the radical dirtbiking mafia leader looks suspiciously like ''The Burger King'', though the author states that the inspiration of King Radical was actually King Boo on a Dirtbike.
- A perfect example in Futures Trading: Dr. McNinja had Dracula fire his moon laser at the base of the President of the Human-Dinosaur alliance.
- Fascinating Eyebrow: One of Doc's many graduate degrees must be in this.note Gordito is a quick study.
- Feed It a Bomb:
- In the Bad Future, this is Mitzi and Dan McNinja's Dying Moment of Awesome. To kill the Horrorsaurus, Mitzi allows it to swallow her while she's got explosives strapped to her chest. Dan follows, because "You didn't pack enough".
- Happens to the Doctor during his rematch against McBonald. Forcefeeding him a mime bomb, the doc is understandably very worried when he first feels it stuffed in his mouth and forcefully digested.
- Fight Dracula: The "Punch Dracula" story is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, an opportunity for Doc to get into a fight with the lord of all vampires.
- Flat "What": Used more than a few times, practically being a Running Gag. One instance is so flat it even lacks punctuation.
- Another with no punctuation, found here. Though, considering that a clone just got an arm kicked off in a spray of blood, this is justifiable.
- Yet a third with no punctuation. Though it's a bit understandable, since Doc looks up just in time to see what appears to be a solid sheet of Christmas in July coming straight down at him from a clear sky.
- Even King Radical utters it upon seeing the return of the McNinja Burger. Justified in that Dr. McNinja is supposedly dead, in his/everyone's/Donald McBonald's mind.
- Another with no punctuation, found here.
- Fluffy the Terrible: What is the identity of the strange motorcycle that appears to brainwash the people riding it, and manipulated the Doc into bisecting the last rider and destroying the last known supply of True Dew? A unicorn. Named Sparklelord. Also...Dr. McNinja: I shall. Name you. Yoshi.
- Footnote Fever: The dinosaur-riding banditos speak English with a sprinkling of Spanish, which is always translated in footnotes. Even when the meaning is clear. Even when the word appears multiple times in the same panel.
- Foreshadowing: "And sometimes, they wore tank tops."
- Doc seeing his younger self via time hole while chasing after King Rad through the caves.
- Related to the above, Doc is jumping through time, reliving his memories in the past. But then he "jumps too far ahead," to a memory in the future, where he is a fugitive from the military.
- In A Cumberland Ninja in Kind Radical's Court, Chuck tries to read a book, but gives up, throws it away, and announces "This is boring!". A couple of pages later, King Radical does the exact same thing with a pamphlet. The next storyline reveals that they are alternate versions of the same person.
- In Space Savers, Chuck saw King Radical kill him, or a version of him, in the past. So he knew exactly what would happen when he jumped into the portal.
- In I Told You That Story So I Could Tell You This One, Dan McNinja tells Gordito that they always wear their masks so that they can take it off and leave their lives behind if everyone turns against them. In Army of One, Frans Rayner clones the Dr. and through this gets to see his face, saying that someday, this will be very useful. Sure enough, in the final arc, the entire world goes out for the Dr.'s blood, and this leads to Frans Rayner ensuring the Dr. won't be able to use this last resort.
- And at the very end of that arc, Doc is, in fact, betrayed by his entire family (though admittedly with no other options), and he does remove his mask in order to escape. Once he's saved the day, he takes advantage of the opportunity to start over as a plain old medical doctor. And since Dan finally killed Frans once the real President was brought back, Doc no longer had the threat of being exposed hanging over him. As Dan puts it, "early retirement earned."
- Forgets to Eat: The titular Doctor. Low blood sugar makes him cranky, too.
- Freudian Excuse: Parodied in "Monster Mart" where not only is stupidity of an alternate form used as an excuse but gets instant forgiveness granted once told.
- Fugitive Arc: The final arc is this. The Big Bad, King Radical, successfully overthrows the U.S. government and has Dr. McNinja declared an enemy of the state.
- Future Badass: Happens to Dark Smoke Puncher (now going by Doctor McNinja too), Gordito and Yoshi.
G
- Gadgeteer Genius: Dark Smoke Puncher, while Doc is more focused on medical and science. Sean is more interested in tech.
- Gallows Humor: How do the creators celebrate an anniversary in their comic? By having something bad happen to the Doctor (year 1: Doc gets shot to what is apparently his death.; year 3: His office explodes in a fiery hellstorm.
- Gambit Pileup: Let's see, we have the Doctor himself, King Radical, and Sparklelord. Dracula, of course. Victor the plumber, who is most definitely not the tiniest spy in the world. Rayner, who can't seem to stay dead. And whatever Chuck Goodrich is planning.
- Genius Cripple: The father of Dr McNinja's college friend Martin is a scientific genius confined to a wheelchair. Who also bears a fairly good resemblance to Stephen Hawking. His name? Professor Birding.
- Genius Loci: The Radical Lands are capable of determining the most radical of them all and crowning that person king.
- Genre Shift: A momentary one, invoked by the Doctor. At one point, Franz Rayner cloned an army of Doctors to exploit the fact that when they all turned against him, Conservation of Ninjutsu would take effect and even the original Doc would become totally useless. Doc rescues himself by "switching sides" and teaming up with an unwilling Rayner so as to treat the whole situation like a Buddy Cop Show until the clones were slain.
- "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Because he so often helps the police, the mayor made a deal with Doc that he could get away with any of the laws he broke while doing his ninja thing if he got to his office before the police did and said "Base!"
- Giant Mecha: Part of King Radical's master plan involves turning all of Cumberland into this by installing haunted wood in every house in the city and using magic to merge them into one of these...because it's RADICAL.
- Washington D.C. was designed to be this, but due to budget restraints it was never completed.
- Girls with Moustaches: A prank by King Radical results in a bunch of kids, girls included, ending up with bushy beards.
- Girls can contract Paul Bunyan's disease, which may overlap with Gender Bender.
- Godzilla Threshold: In The End Part I, Dr. McNinja makes a bid to stop Radical's world shattering plans by using the device he got in his youth in First Generation Ninja American to summon Sparklelord, an Omnicidal Maniac and the only one King Radical truly fears. That and he had to reveal his real name, freeing the Ghost Wizard with a vendetta against him that his grandfather sacrificed himself to seal away.
- Gone Horribly Right: Since Mitzi and Dan didn't know how to raise a kid to be a ninja, when Doc was a kid they introduced him to Batman comics to inspire him. Doc's obsession with being Batman hasn't let off the gas since.
- Good Is Not Nice: Doc... sometimes.
- Gory Discretion Shot: This page, as explained in the Alt Text.
- Goshdang It To Heck: "Damn," "ass," and "hell" are about as bad as the profanity gets. Anything stronger is visually bleeped out or amusingly censored (i.e. "You have got to be [flarking] [pooping] me.")
- Additionally, the Doctor's standard expression of surprise or dismay is the exceedingly mild "Oh my goodness."
- Gratuitous English: The Great Dane himself, Frans Rayner, especially in the older days.Frans Rayner: Hey, Dan, come on. You are just the baby school, and I am the Big League Chew. Why do you try?
Dan McNinja: Frans, I can't wait to see how much worse your horrible English will be once your skull is concave. It'll be hilarious. - Gratuitous Spanish: Parodied with the paleontologist banditos.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Sparklelord ascended to this after smashing King Radical's space shuttle. He's still out there enjoying the world's "slide into entropy," but he could return at any time he pleases.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Dan's fatherly advice covers this subject with regard to alligators.
- Also, Frans Rayner rips an arm off an Old McNinja clone and uses it to bludgeon another clone.
- Dr. McNinja picks up Dracula by the legs and uses him as a weapon against King Radical. Bonus points for being an Incredibly Lame Pun: He turned Dracula into a bat.
- And follows that up by throwing Pope Francis at him, destroying the now-vampirized King Radical. Furious and revenge driven though he might've been before, Radical dies with a smile because of how radical his death is.
- Also, Frans Rayner rips an arm off an Old McNinja clone and uses it to bludgeon
- Groin Attack: "Hahahahah. He kicked you in your genitals. Ninjas have no honor."
- Gullible Lemmings: King Radical's main motive is to save his own people by sacrificing billions of lives from this world, who he doesn't care about due to being boring. Despite this, the entire country still loves him and supports his efforts.
- Gun Kata: Gordito is seen practicing these outside the office here.
- The Grim Reaper: In Doc's world, Death is a skeletal maitre d' with a tidy little moustache.
