The Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja / Tropes L to O

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L

• Lame Pun Reaction: Invoked in the Alt Text, which says that it's easy to make a lame pun acceptable just by having the Doctor complain about it.
• Lampshade Hanging: And what wonderful lampshading it is! It's everywhere, even in the Alt Text. At one point, McNinja can't lampshade a plot because he's laughing too hard at the inanity of it all.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: Towards the end, issues started getting shorter. After years of a continuous serialized story, two issues were prequels filling in parts of Doc's backstory, and a seemingly unrelated (and brief) story about saving the president. Much of this is setup for the series' finale.
• Latex Perfection: Sean's "technomage" getup is pretty convincing. Dan's pirate costume successfully fooled a whole bar full of pirates. Though, the masks are typically only convincing when portraying weathered, wrinkly faces with obscuring facial hair.
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Subverted. When Gordito, who is physically less than five feet tall, and weighs maybe a hundred pounds, fires a shotgun, the recoil might reasonably be expected to knock him over. Instead, it propels him in an arc over the desk behind him and into a chair with enough force to topple it. Played straight with Doc a page or two later.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: As a result of his encounter with "the wizard", Doc is the only person on Earth who knows his real name.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After the Dr. catches a spy in his office and asks what he knows, he says that he knows that the Dr. talks into the wall sometimes, which may or may not be a reference to the Dr. McNinja's Final Thoughts that occur at the end of every chapter. It gets Lampshaded in the Alt Text.
• Lethal Chef: Mitzi's pickled beets are apparently just this side of edible, even when they're not poisoned.
• The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others: Played for Laughs in an April Fools' Day one-shot where his family of ninjas (and gunslinging sidekick) is murdered by their only weakness: "Bullets... from a gun."
• Let's Get Dangerous!, with Badass Boast: A rare instance where the hero says it on behalf of his sidekick. And it's awesome.
• Libation for the Dead: Well, pizza for the dead.
• Light Is Not Good: Sparklelord.
• Like You Would Really Do It: invoked Lampshaded by the Alt Text on this page. And then on this one too, for good measure.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Inverted: losing to the giant robot causes everything to fall apart.

• Lotus-Eater Machine: When Sean McNinja is possessed by the Wizard Ghost he sees his father giving him a highly uncharacteristic hug while saying "computers are kinda cool", embracing his nerdy side. This was a part of the Ghost's possession process.
• Love Bubbles: When the Ultimate Diplomat pays you a compliment, you know you've been complimented.

M

• Made of Explodium: Averted, Doc actually settles for "two of three" since nothing will explode if he throws the Big Bad off a cliff onto sharp rocks. He's satisfied with the end result.
  • Played straight with the multicar pileup blocking the road into town, and with many a barrel.
• Made of Plasticine: The clones of Old McNinja, as they were made with low-quality cloning technology.

• Macross Missile Massacre: In a storm. A nasty storm. With pterodactyls. Seriously.
  • Also, Dark Smoke Puncher's truck.
• Magic Music: For Doc, the Ghostbusters theme (see Musical Assassin).
  • At one point, a bystander mistakes it for Huey Lewis and the News' "I Want A New Drug" and yells out the wrong chorus, causing Dr McNinja to lose his "Ghostbusters ohm".
• Magic Pants: Averted in the "Monster Mart" arc, causing Doc to feel a crippling sense of physical inferiority. Inverted with Paul Bunyan's Disease, which actually makes clothes grow on the afflicted when they transform.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Showcased here.
  Judy: Everyone is impressed because you were unconscious while he beat you for an hour.
  Dr. McNinja: Well, you were right. I needed a nap.
• Man on Fire:
  • Dr McLuchador sets the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services on fire, sends him off a skateboard trick ramp and into a tub of murky liquid. The liquid completely heals the burns within seconds, proving to the people of Cumberland that McLuchador is a very competent doctor. And proving to King Radical that he is radical.
  • The McNinjas eventually face the one foe they don't know how to deal with: a pirate who's on fire^note Ninjas can't catch you if you're on fire.

• Mayincatec: The Inocktec in "Death Volley": an ancient, generically-South-American people who invented the game of tennis and whose "tennis temple" houses a device (supposedly) capable of destroying the entire world.
• McNinja: The McNinja family originally hails from Ireland and immigrated to the United States at some point.
• Meat-O-Vision: Implied here ("What Ben sees is a man with dreadlocks made of fried chicken legs.")
• Mecha-Mooks:
  • In Issue One Half, Dr. McNinja starts viciously slaughtering the employees at McBonalds, revealing them to be robots. At the end, he thoroughly Lampshades the fact that he would have looked like a serial killer if they hadn't been robots.
  • The Inocktec temple guards.
• Merged Reality: The Dr.'s universe exists between our world and the Radical Lands, and as such is a balance between mundane and awesome. King Radical's main motive is to save the dying Radical Lands by throwing the Dr.'s universe out of balance in favor of radicalness, which will result in the two worlds merging and erasing everything too mundane in the Dr.'s world in the process.
• Me's a Crowd: Doc got Benjamin Franklin II to make clones of him who would acquire as much knowledge as possible, and later join together so Doc would gain decades of knowledge instantly.
• Metaphorgotten: At the beginning here and in the alt-text here.
• Meteor Move: Through at least two decks.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: A gorilla who caught Doc by surprise does this to him, and continues long after he has fallen unconscious and woken again.
• Michael Jackson's Thriller Parody: "Revenge of the Hundred Dead Ninja" opens with one, with Ben in the Michael role (complete with V-jacket!). Turns out it was Doc's nightmare... and then the actual ninja zombies show up.
• Mighty Lumberjack: Lumberjacking makes people susceptible to Paul Bunyan's Disease, which causes those it affects to turn into a giant lumberjack who is "enraged at how many trees still stand within his vicinity."
• Mind-Control Eyes
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Happens a fair bit:
  • Played for laughs on this page: "James! The leader of our group. He invented jet boots, and he used them to kick people."
  • And then there's Martin, who has Hulk Out powers and uses them to advertise his chain of super-markets. He does also do work for the mafia (which is admittedly better suited to the abilities of Super-Strength and Super-Toughness), but only because he took a loan out from them.
  • But easily topping them both: Using a Time Portal for garbage disposal. And a septic tank, somehow.
• Mistaken for Terrorist: Doc on a plane. It's an honest mistake.
• Mob-Boss Suit Fitting: When Donald McBonald mistakes King Radical for the Burger King, the latter decides to update this wardrobe.
• MockGuffin: The book of Inocktek technology from "Death Volley" supposedly contains all the great cultural and technological treasures of the ancient Inocktek people. However, when it gets translated, it turns out to be twelve hundred pages about how great tennis is (with a healthy amount of racist overtones). Later we learn that the real book, that contains the secrets of the Radical Land, actually got switched out by Hortense on the plane ride back to the USA.
• Mood Whiplash: The next page after the rather heartbreaking ending of First Generation Ninja American was delayed for a few days due to Chris Hastings' drawing tablet breaking, which gave fans time to think about the revelations of the chapter and think about what it meant for the comic as a whole. When it returned, the first page of the next storyline has a news anchor sitting prepared to do the morning news...but is incredibly nervous due to the raptor breathing down his neck.
  News Anchor: In sports n—
  Dinosaur: RAAAAAAAAAA
  Alt Text: Why yes, screwing with news anchors IS a theme of this comic.
• Moody Mount: Yoshi the raptor won't let anyone but Gordito ride him. Unless Gordito is in danger.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Even though doctors are sworn to take no life, there's no shortage of grisly deaths at the hands of the titular character.
• Mundane Afterlife: Purgatory is a restaurant. With really bad service. The worst. The existence of Heaven and Hell is implied, however.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • The Crater of Racial Tolerance.
  • In order to save the world, humanity's champion must play tennis against an ancient robot.
  • Also, awesomely firing a plumber.
  • The Alt Text makes this into a Running Gag by providing absurdly mundane explanations for characters acting in a dramatic manner. Example: "I need to get MY SLIPPERS."
    Bee Man: That was... the most menacing promise of dine and dash I've ever seen.
  • How can shamrocks be made cool? By having frozen versions of them be used as throwing stars.
• Mundane Solution: How does Gordito and Judy deal with the Victor, the half-spy-half-plumber? They fire him and hire someone else. Of course, the comic makes it out to be very awesome.
• Mundane Utility: According to the Alt Text from this page: "Everything in the McNinja household has hidden displays for security alerts. They are also wired to the microwave, so they know when pizza bagels are done."
• Musical Assassin: Doc becomes one when he runs out of holy weapons to use against the third Nasaghast. Inspired by a memory of his dad, he proceeds to spend four pages doing nothing except humming the theme from Ghostbusters. It begins with him tentatively humming it, but culminates with him screaming the finale as he does this and then this.
  • He does it again here.
• Must Make Amends: After he had to screw over the Friend Brothers while infiltrating King Radical's court, Doc makes sure to pay them back.
• My Horse Is a Motorbike: Or rather My Motorbike Is A Unicorn.
• Mysterious Backer: Ben's "eternal life serum" research was backed by a reclusive Eastern European billionaire, who gave his name as Alucard. Cue Head Desk from Dr. McNinja.

N

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Agent Bearclaw. Ninja names apparently take this route if Dark Smoke Puncher is anything to go by. Mitzi and Dan just use their real names.
• Necromantic: In a village of sapient gorillas, the village doctor desperately wanted to bring his wife, who died of illness, Back from the Dead. Towards this end, he murdered other women and used their body parts in an attempt to repair her. According to Dr. McNinja, the pseudo science involved could never have worked, but thanks to magic from The Power of Love, she does comes back. As a Multiple Head Case. Enraged at her new state, she ultimately drags her husband with her when she falls to her death.
• Nerd in Evil's Helmet: Dark Smoke Puncher.
• Newhart Phonecall: Played abnormally straight in this strip.
• Newspaper Dating: Parodied.
  Newspaper: It is Oct 4th, 1979! That's it. Nothing is going on. Slow day. No one even died.
• Never Found the Body: Uh oh.
  Dr McNinja: NO! It can't be! I was pretty sure you were dead!
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Mitzi accuses Gordito of this when he knocks out a possessed Dark Smoke Puncher rather than shooting him, ostensibly making her kill him instead. Gordito takes a third option, however.
• Nightmare Fuel: An in-universe Real Life Writes the Plot example in Dr. Knickerbockers, the crazy smiling, evil laughing midget doctor. Apparently a similar being haunts Kent Archer's nightmares, making it grievously difficult for him to ink pages in which Knickerbockers appears.
  • Naturally, the Alt Text takes a dig at this: "Kent took a really long time to ink the last panel. He kept getting tears and vomit all over the page."
  • Also, the opening pages of chapter 17. "From now on this comic is going to be 100% Chris Hastings Nightmare Diaries."
  • And don't forget: When I say "HAPPY" you say "BIRTHDAY"!
  • Early cloning experiments.
  • NASA's security system.

• NGO Super Power: King Radical appears to have his own private army.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Too many instances to name.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot Monkey Clown BANDITO WEREWOLVES. Well, not in that order.
• No Full Name Given: Lampshaded with "Now I know you've never been to my office, so you've never seen the degree that hangs by my desk. So I will let you know — it's made out to Dr. McNinja, not Judas McNinja." Later handwaved when talking to his clone, "You never told anybody our name, did you? 'Cause, you know... the wizard." The reason is later shown in "First Generation Ninja American." As a kid, he and his grandfather got in over their heads when a simple assassination turned into a fight against a really powerful ghost wizard. His name and his grandfather's life were the price paid to seal the ghost wizard.
• No Kill like Overkill: President Funkhowser donates some of her blood for the doctor to perform tests on. A fish tank full.
  President Funkhowser: In case you need enough to fill a pig with it and do experiments on the pig. I don't know how you people do things. Get to work.

• Noodle Incident:
  • In "Army of One."
    Dan: Who would call us on Katanaka?
    Mitzi: Your father's still dead, right?
    Dan: Well, we'll never be sure, but I don't think he'd just call.
  • Un-noodled as of "First Generation Ninja American."
  • Where Dan got the skeletons in "The End: Part 1" to fake the deaths of Gordito (a child), Judy (an adult gorilla), and Yoshi (a velociraptor), though judging by the look in his eyes when he says that where he got the latter two skeletons was more interesting, he clearly enjoyed it.
• No One Could Survive That!: Despite glaring Death in the face, Frans Rayner survived falling off of a cliff and landing on sharp rocks. When the rocks pierced his head, he swallowed half of his brain to prevent damage to it.

O

• Obfuscating Stupidity: Dark Smoke Puncher, who tries to hide his Gadgeteer Genius tendencies and general geekery behind a facade of bad slang and acting cool.
• Obstructive Bureaucracy: Whoever decides the budget for Washington D.C. The city was designed to transform into a Giant Mecha but the project was never finished due to budget restraints.
• Obviously Evil: Victor.
• Offscreen Teleportation: pulled by Mitzi on Gordito with a Stealth Hi/Bye here
• Oh, Crap!: "Rayner, party of one, your table is ready."
  • King Radical provides a priceless example here.
  • Happens three times in a row: Once with a space dinosaur and twice more with Doc and Chuck.
  • When Doc, undercover as Dr McLuchador, has to take the ninja drug from D.A.R.E. He's internally freaking out over the fact that it was never tested on a life-trained, natural born ninja. And then he gets a double dose.
    • When Doc's overdrived ninja instincts start spiraling out of control, you can see King Radical in the background making a terrified face.
  • Franz Rayner, when he sees Maria Funkhouser return, and all his men stop listening to him, as he's no longer the real President.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In a particularly strange way, too. Sean/Dark Smoke Puncher uses a lot of slang to try and conceal from his parents that he's a nerd. Occasionally, he'll forget it, or in the case of this strip, he forgets, and tries to tack it on at the end.
  Sean: Yeah, this is a prototype. It's designed to set off a contained chemical reaction so that whatever it's blowing up immediately converts to harmless fiber. It's a way to limit collateral damage... dawg.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Nasaghasts have shown an almost single-minded devotion to their Ghostly Goals of avenging attacked astronauts, to the point that they will endanger other astronauts and even the entire planet if necessary. And yet, when Doc points that out, the nasaghast actually responds with Shrug Take, which prompts a Big "WHAT?!" from the Dr.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
  • Ben Franklin cloned himself to enable a much longer than normal lifespan and has made quite a few scientific advancements in the process.
  • With Ben Franklin II's help, the Doctor split himself into a number of clones, each of which went off and got a degree in a specific field. After a few years, the original and all of the clones rejoined into one body, the Doctor we know today, with all of the knowledge acquired from the clones — except for one, which is why he doesn't know agricultural science.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Usually played straight, but averted at a critical moment. Doc's many injuries missed his arteries and vital organs, but they were clearly life-threatening because he'd lost so much blood. Doc immediately left the field of battle and didn't return until he'd patched himself back up.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Smoke Puncher revealed himself to be a Nerd when he called Gordito out for trying to impress his father with a line he ripped from The Dark Tower, which Gordito quickly realises he would only know if he read the books.
• Our Clones Are Different: While modern clones are indistinguishable from their originals, it's established that earlier cloning technology produced clones who were significantly more fragile. A flashback shows one of the first clones of Benjamin Franklin accidentally exploded his own head by biting into a sandwich with too much force. When Frans Rayner makes dozens of clones of Dr. McNinja (in order to make Conservation of Ninjutsu work in his own favor), he only has access to the outdated cloning tech, resulting in an army of McNinjas who all die in a single punch. Another flashback also reveals that clones can be fused back into their original, creating a single person with all the knowledge and memories of both. His is how Dr. McNinja became an Omnidisciplinary Scientist: he cloned himself, scattered his clones to get degrees in every field of science, then recombined afterwards.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Vengeful spirits that don't avenge themselves but any other astronauts who could be harmed. With an impressively Nightmare Fuel design to boot.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires can be created through using The Dark Arts for Immortality Immorality, or by being drained of blood by an existing vampire. Vampires cannot be photographed or reflected. As far as weaknesses are concerned, they are compelled to count fallen grains of rice, are vulnerable to holy symbols, and they can be killed by wooden stakes or sunlight. Sebastien's coven is comprised of languid, gothy vampires; Dracula has very evident strength, intelligence, and resourcefulness.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • Almost - Chris Hastings originally planned to do an entire week of Dr. McNinja falling down stairs. Instead, it became just one strip. Of course, who knows if he was telling the truth?
  • Played with again in the Alt Text to this strip: six more pages of bodies getting disintegrated and mashed together!
  • Eventually played straight with the second panel of the "Judy Gets a Kitten" story arc, in which the good doctor is still going on about what to get at the supermarket from before.

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