Webcomic / Endtown

It's the End of Civilization as we know it. A mutagenic plague followed by a global war fought with disintegration weaponry has left much of the Earth a desert of fine powder and what remains of humanity fragmented into humans, animal-like mutants, and bloodthirsty monstrosities with lots of teeth. The surface, still teeming with the mutagenic virus, has become the domain of the dreaded Topsiders — well-organized, technologically advanced, and heavily armed un-mutated humans sworn to exterminate mutations of any kind in order to clear the way for the eventual resurgence of a new, genetically clean humanity. Faced with annihilation, mutants and "impure" humans have retreated into the depths of the planet to form communities and hope to win, or at least survive, what may prove to be mankind's final war. Endtown is the continuing story of one of those communities. It's also worth noting that every answer gives a dozen questions and mysteries are a major part of the story and thus best read without spoilers.

— Author's description of Endtown, found on the GoComics site

In short, Endtown is an apocalyptic Webcomic by Aaron Neathery that enjoys contrasting its Funny Animals and many silly jokes with the fact that it's The End of the World as We Know It. Alternates between being a funny comic, a serious comic, and a really friggin' scary comic, increasingly shading towards the latter two as time goes by.

The strip was originally hosted on Modern Tales. When it moved to its new home at GoComics, Neathery pretty much wrapped up the then-current arc and switched the focus of the action to a new set of characters; this was originally intended as something of a reboot ("Endtown 2.0") maintaining only loose continuity with the older comic, though the newer work was eventually merged with the earlier storyline (introducing some oddities in the process) and most of the original characters have gradually reappeared since the old Modern Tales strips were added to the GoComics archives.

Now has a FanficRecs page.

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Endtown provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • The issues with foraging no longer being viable due to every place within reach having been cleaned out (as mentioned by Allie) appear to have disappeared into the ether for the sake of having the "Pig Arc's" plot be possible.
  • With the concept art and the hints with Chic during the Unity arc taken into account, it looks a lot like Holly Hollister's character arc has been cut short with parts of it possibly transplanted to the character of Kirbee.
  • When we last left him, Albert Anderson, a past protagonist, was facing imminent mortal peril from an anti-human sub-faction of Jacob Jackrabbit's supporters. Once we return to Endtown it's as though that entire aspect of the plot has been completely forgotten.
• A God Am I: Jim declares himself God after suffering Schism Syndrome. Complete with demands to pray to him. He also mentions things he should have not possibly have known and survives things he should not have possibly survived(The flaming wreckage probably did it though). References to 'God' turn up again occasionally and in the most unlikely of places.
• Alliterative Name: Albert Anderson, Gustine Greene, Wally Wallechinsky, Allie Alvarez, Holly Hollister, Jacob J. Jackrabbit, Mike Mole, Louie Lynx...

• Almighty Janitor: Aaron Marx is working towards some overall mission to protect the multiverse and beyond from an Outside-Context Problem, and as such sticks to the sidelines in Endtown despite having a post-singularity reality-warping computer in his pocket watch.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Wolf anthros are seemingly depicted as this during the Pigs Arc. While it's initially shown that they're disgruntled due to being discriminated against by other citizens of Endtown, it soon becomes clear there may have been a good reason for that; with exception of one or two individuals, wolves are constantly shown to be varying degrees of Jerkass, ranging from harassing people, instigating fights with others at the drop of a hat and eventually starting up a riot fueled by supremacist beliefs. As Mavis reveals, this made them the perfect scapegoat and cover for the butcher cabal's activities.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Once Al and Gustine complete their quest and are officially cleared by security, the comic's focus shifts to Holly and Wally.
• Apathetic Citizens: Nobody in Endtown really seems to care about all the pigs that are going missing.
• Apathy Killed the Cat: Nobody in Endtown has ever been shown wondering where the heck the oracle came from, displaying any surprise as to its presence or nature, attempting to analyze the virus that turned them all into mutants, questioning the presence, activities and feats of Aaron Marx (outside of one or two characters who never seem to have pursued it any further) or talking about the origin of Endtown beyond implying that Mallard claims responsibility for at least part of it.
  • In later strips, turns out to be something of a Perception Filter. Unless you were born into this world, something prevents you from questioning most of the changes at all, to the point of those turned into anthropomorphic animals not being able to recognize that they now have Four-Fingered Hands.

• Batman Gambit:
  • [[spoiler:Jacob Jackrabbit's plan in the Milk and Eggs plot. He took Octavius Allgood, a Moral Guardian Knight Templar with goals opposite his, an overzealous security force recently bereft of its leader, and a High Council that has random selection and a short window of authority in exchange for functionally limitless power, and manipulated them all, knowing it would be a recipe for disaster. And they did not disappoint; Allgood had a pair of well-liked citizens and a recent transplant arrested on a charge that is widely considered 'icky' but not actually considered a crime. The arrest was performed by a squad of security rats who went in guns blazing, ransacking the locations they went to. Allgood then went forward with a sham showtrial expecting that the cronies he had seeded on the council would find them guilty no matter what and then issue an admonishment, when the council was under no obligation to do so and had explicitly left execution on the table as a punishment from the start. Jacob's outspoken position that mutants should accept proudly and loudly their animal aspects caused people to demand that he step forward to represent for the defense, which allowed him to loudly play up the ridiculousness of the trial to a raptly listening populace. The perceived over-reaction by Allgood and the High Council led to increased tensions in the town which turned into a riot when the trigger-happy rats were cornered by protesters. By the end, Allgood's position had been so thoroughly reviled by the public that Jacob was considered a hero and in an excellent position to take more power for himself.

• Berserk Button:
  • Try not to bring or even mention beans to Endtown. The people have been eating so much of it, some threatened to burn the place down from the smell alone.
  • Apparently Wally cannot stand child abusers. When he sees that someone had beaten a child's face black and blue, without hesitation he went and beat the guy until others pulled him off.
  • Taunting Holly about her baby, while throttling a child right in front of her. When a possessed Jim did so, she used her apron to attempt to gag him and then bit off all his fingers.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Linda sees the mutants' taboo against using mutant eggs and milk as food products as this, since it would alleviate, if not solve, Endtown's food shortage. But it's not much different than the Real Life taboo against the general consumption of human breast milk.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Sarah attempts to become Unity's leader by blaming the colony's destruction on Wally's gang, gleefully commenting how such action will prop her up further on the societal ladder. And then Topsider drones arrive and incinerate every other lizard except Sarah.
• Bitter Sweet Ending: Most of the story arcs, but the Eggs and Milk Trial arc had a particularly bitter ending. Holly, Linda, and Maude are released but Jacob got exactly what he wanted, Octavious was set up as a fall guy and killed by a lynch mob, Maude learns Linda used to be a Topsider and breaks off their friendship, many people including Allie were killed in a riot, Endtown descends into political madness and Holly is so traumatized that she attempts suicide. She's so disillusioned with Endtown that she convinces Wally that they should leave and find a new place to live
  • The ending to the "Ship Arc" is ostensibly intended to be bittersweet, but the general perception of the fanbase seems to be that it's purely bitter.
  • And the ending of the Butcher Arc: Sure, the real serial killer was found, proven guilty, and killed, but Endtown is still on the verge of collapse from all the successful hate-mongering they used as a smokescreen. Racial lines have been drawn, the mayor and his girlfriend died killing the butcher, Jake is a neurotic mess from realizing how close he personally brought the colony to destruction (or worse), and everyone's wondering what other depths the rest of Endtown will sink to since the remaining conspirators have been acquitted due to lack of police resources.
• Body Horror: What happens to people who get hit with the virus and can't resist it; the "lucky" ones turn into bipedal animals (the unlucky ones turn into monsters that range from something small but probably unpleasant, to human-scale horrors, to Lovecraftian Kaiju).

• Cats Are Mean: Flask's character design probably had this in mind. There's also the lynx catnip addict who kicked Holly, the two thieves at the hotel... seems the only feline who outright averts this is Wally, but then, even he sunk to cheating on Holly.
• Color Me Black: Linda is transformed into one of the mutants she hates, although Flask had intended to turn her into a slightly different variety.
• Comic-Book Time: Lampshaded by Holly, who says that it felt like they were in there for months.
• Contrived Clumsiness: Two waitresses have various "accidents" for their new co-worker, Linda, until she goes berserk.
• Contrived Coincidence: The transporter that became known as Petey so happened to be Flask's lover.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Chef Maurice of the Endtown Cafe shows signs of this in his attempts to make bean dishes taste better (because Endtowners are sick to death of them): He has an unwashed rat swim around in them because if the rat bathed, he wouldn't be spicy anymore. Cue Vomit Discretion Shot from Albert once he finds out.
• Cosmic Horror: The Eden arc is shaping up to be this, with the adverse effects of multiple universes crashing into one-another and the appearance of the aforementioned "Eye," which seems to exist between dimensions and manifests through Wally's dreams.
• Crapsack World: We've yet to see any area of the surface that wasn't zero-bombed to dust or warped by even stranger effects, a probable majority of the planet's population died about a decade ago, ravening monsters roam the world, society is divided between Nazi-esque gasmasked goons and depressed bunker-dwellers, there's an eldritch abomination eyeing the souls of the remaining population, and the only thing left to eat is beans.
• Dark and Troubled Past:

• Seems all the main characters have at least something troubling in their past. Wally still has nightmares from his job before WW3 and something happened to Holly about 2 years before the events of the story that threw her into a deep depression that seems to involve a baby. It is later revealed that Holly had her baby when it mutated into a fish. Unfortunately, fish can't breathe in the air.

• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Flask feels she has nothing to lose once everyone rejects her command.
  • Sam Sanders had hit this in the past.
  • Holly hits this after her trial is over, culminating in a suicide attempt.
  • Jim is pushed into this after catching Sarah cheating on him with one of the lizard colonists.
• Deus Angst Machina: Holly gets hit with this really hard, to the point where it honestly seems downright implausible that she could ever have been the fairly stable and friendly character we were introduced to. It's hard not to wonder if it was a last minute addition on the creator's part as part of his decision to write her out of the strip.

• Disintegrator Ray: The primary form of weaponry. Also has a Stun setting and is powered by a hand crank.
• The Ditz: Kirbee is a textbook example. Naive, silly (bordering on Cloudcuckoolander tendencies at times) and also one of the most genuinely kind-hearted and innocent characters in the entire story, she maintained her nature in the rather grimdark world of the Unity colony simply by remaining completely unaware of the bad things going on.
• Do-Anything Robot: Biomechanical organisms, the dittos have so far proved to be capable of camouflage, transport, shielding, strength enhancement, memory access and power source tracing. It's anybody's guess what they'll end up doing next.

• Does This Remind You of Anything?: An "Anti-prejudice" newspaper is created, using people who believe in free speech as an Unwitting Pawn, and then when it's finally done, turns out to be used as an outlet for racial supremacists. Are you sure this is not set in The New '10s?

• Driven to Suicide: When Maude shows Linda around her new apartment in Endtown, she mentions that the previous owner committed suicide a month after her husband had passed away. It's implied that this was Leo's old home, and his wife committed suicide not long after being informed by Allie.
  • After the Eggs and Milk Trial, Holly is left so traumatized that she attempts suicide. She is saved in the nick of time by Wally and Angus.

• Drugs Are Bad: Arguably takes the form of a Space Whale Aesop. Those who mutate in a badly drugged state rather than fully conscious or unconscious become peculiar hybrids with no obvious classification, which makes them an easy target for Fantastic Racism even within Endtown. Of course, it's still better than mutating while fully awake.
  • On the other hand, one of the author's favourite characters has been implied to have been a pothead, pre-war (before cannabis became a scarce commodity, if it still exists at all), with absolutely no judgement cast on that fact.
• Eat the Bomb: Technically, Aaron Marx eats the explosion itself, or at least inhales it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: While Al and Gustine were the main characters, the story was more of a dark comedy rather than the drama with comedic moments it is now. There were also aspects such as the Topsiders' guns being sentient like their vehicles, yet in phase 2 characters don't treat the guns like they are alive like they do the vehicles. Also we learn at the end of the first arc that Mallard had come up with a solution to hunger ages ago, yet food still remains scarce even in phase 2. It hasn't been mentioned since.
  • The food solution was briefly mentioned as a few years away and a gun spoke a word as an example when threatening some mutants with brain extractionC.

• Empathy Doll Shot: Interesting variation. Holly finds an old teddy bear in the wastes and decides to bring it back to Endtown for one of the kids there. When a monster mutant suddenly attacks, she realizes the monster was a little girl and that that bear is still very much in use.
• Evil All Along: Strictly speaking, Jacob Jackrabbit never struck us as much of a hero, but he turned out worse than we thought. this has been seemingly abandoned as of the Pigs Arc, where he's portrayed as a well-meaning leader whose anti-human sentiments are never brought up.
  • Same can be said for Denise, the Smug Smiler pig lawyer from early on in the Pig arc, who turned out to be the butcher responsible for deaths of her fellow pig citizens.
• Evil Is Petty: The Topsiders are constantly on on the prowl for mutants to use as Wetware CPUs - and they have a nasty habit of telling such unfortunates of their fate beforehand.
• Evil Versus Evil: Jacob Jackrabbit versus Octavius Allgood. You might call it Gray-and-Grey Morality, but it's hard to tolerate either's full position.
  • Topsiders versus Unity. They're both sadistic fascists who use 'reconstruction of the world' as a facade to hunt down and kill survivors who don't happen to be the same species as them. It's a curb-stomp battle in the Topsiders' favor, but the entire arc has shown how gleefully murderous Unity is.
• Exposition: Frequently, often in the form of flashbacks, and with those often using the resident mind-reading plot-tools known as dittos. Culminated in the "Holly's Flashback" arc, which was, as the fan-name suggests, almost entirely flashback.

• Extra Eyes:
  • Mutating while conscious almost invariably results in these.
  • Dittos tend to develop many "eye spots" when they go into "threat mode".

• Fan Disillusionment: In spades since the removal of Holly Hollister. May actually have begun before that, with her initial swerve into true madness, judging by an examination of the Google Trend for "Endtown".
• Fantastic Racism: Apart from Topsiders' treatment of mutants, there's a growing movement in Endtown for the mutants to fully embrace their animal natures, complete with meaningful renames to a Species Surname. Immune humans or mutants who don't conform to any particular species have no real place in their version of society. Mutants who want to keep their old name? Uncle Toms.
  • There's a parallel movement for mutants to preserve their humanity as much as possible, such as keeping human names and legally outlawing things like the consumption of mutant-produced eggs or milk.
  • Later we meet a colony of supremacist lizard mutants, who rely on piracy and selective breeding^note All eggs laid by female lizards are screened to see if they contain lizards, rather than other mutates. Those eggs that fail are used as food to sustain themselves.
  • And then comes the wolves and pigs... which many took to be a take on racial tensions in the states.
• Flipping the Bird: In this strip, Aaron Marx gives a double British version to an approaching team of Topsiders while helping other characters escape.

• Foreshadowing: Early on in the Pig arc, Walt apprehends two wolves that were chasing Portia and asks them what would happen if she had a concealed zip gun instead of a mace. Come the arc's climax, Portia fakes taking a knock-out drug while concealing a zip gun, which she uses to wound the butcher's accomplice.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: The Oracle, a truth-telling, precognitive pool of sapient water to which Endtown citizens have free access, only turns up whenever it's convenient to the plot and is otherwise forgotten in between.
• Fragile Speedster: Holly relies almost exclusively on her swift feet to save her. And can be amazing at it.
• Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Several incidental characters, plus Captain Blackie Flask and Holly Hollister.
• Funny Animal: Being exposed to the mutagenic virus mutates you into either this or something much worse.
• G-Rated Drug: Catnip. Not that we never see anyone drunk on alcohol.

• Go Mad from the Revelation: "Schism Syndrome" - when a mutant who has failed to accept his or her new form and instincts eventually goes insane due to the mental split. This can occur slowly, as was threatening to happen to Gustine and Wally, or very suddenly due to a shock in recent transformations like Jim. Results may vary, Word of God says most mutants just become "yowling maniacs", but in Jim's case, it lead to a homicidal rage.
  • It must be pointed out that what happened to Jim is more supernatural than "ordinary" Schism Syndrome. Word of God confirms that he was possessed by a quasi-demonic entity known as Eye, granting him the ability to see beyond the "veil" and into people's hearts and fates, and that this is a very unusual result of Schisming. Apparently, Eye saw Jim's schisming as an opportunity to wreak havoc in aid of an uncertain goal.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Velda apprehends Mavis for questioning by beating her unconscious with a wine bottle.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Professor Mallard in the main cast.
• Happily Failed Suicide: After she's been grabbed and pulled back from the top of the clocktower, Holly's first action upon waking up is to greet Wally with an "I love you". The general effect is less of a suicide attempt and more of a cry for help that was answered.
• Healing Factor: Mutants have a minor one, strong enough to knit broken bones in a day or two, but slow enough the Endtowners didn't notice until some Topsiders mentioned it.
• Heel–Face Turn: Linda, apparently.
• Here There Be Dragons: Endtown's maps of the surface. "Well, at least they know about the dragons."
• Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: Dates are given after the Apocalypse. The comic starts around the year 5, after two time skips and some indeterminate plot-time, we're now in year 9 to 10.
• I'm a Humanitarian: It's implied that Topsiders often will eat dead mutants if their form resembles human food animals.
• The Immune: The few humans left in Endtown. The Topsiders have a particular hatred for them as they carry the virus but don't look obviously nonhuman.
• Info Dump: Frequently and generally flashback-based, often gratuitously. Also notably used when a character is about to be written out of the comic, see: Flask and Holly.

• Interspecies Romance: Not uncommon in Endtown. Of course, "species" doesn't have the same meaning for mutated humans.
• Ironic Name: That survivor colony that went through a violent racist purge and got "rebuilt" to enshrine reptiles as the master race? It was called Unity.

• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: When Aaron Marx grants Flask her second chance, he also loses her forever — ironically to another reality's Aaron Marx, who loves her equally. When the Oracle asks if he is envious, he says yes, but that not everyone is granted a Happy Ending.
• Kangaroo Court:
  • Set up for Al and Gustine. The trial is kept secret so as not to panic Endtown with accusations of treason.
  • Another for Holly, Linda, and "Maw" Maude for the purpose of making the use of mutant byproducts explicitly illegal rather than just taboo.

• Yet another in the "Pig Arc", albeit this time with the non-guilt of Heather Hoss pre-decided by the jury.

• Kick the Dog: Posthumously happens to poor Heather Hoss. After suffering through the Trauma Conga Line for most of the Pigs arc, Heather makes a second, successful suicide attempt. The protesting wolves that gathered around her corpse begin howling in celebration and parade her still warm corpse through the streets.
• Kudzu Plot: It's beginning to look that way, especially with the "Pig Arc" introducing multiple plot threads on top of many that had already been left hanging/unresolved. This may be part of why at least two hanging threads from previous story arcs seem to have been forgotten entirely, as an aid to keeping things as manageable as possible.

• Laser-Guided Karma: Literally. After cheating on Jim, causing him to succumb to Schism Syndrome and being completely uncaring about using poison gas to kill him, Sarah rallies the surviving lizard people after their city burns down and turns them against the gang. When a large group of Topsider sky droids arrives to investigate, her adopted colony is disintegrated while she flees into the night.

• Magic A Is Magic A: The rules for mutation are as follows, according to Word of God (and explained later in the comic):
  • Those who mutate while awake become mindless, raging abominations. This is because their mind attacks its alternate universe self on a subconscious level, ripping both of their minds (and bodies) apart in the process.
  • Those who mutate while unconscious become cute animal people known as "anthros". Or whatever the hell they're swapping bodies with in the linked alternate universe. Even sapient toothbrushes.
  • Those who mutate while of impaired consciousness (due to being high or otherwise on drugs) become peculiar mixes of various traits.
  • And children born to 'anthros' are fully anthro.
• Mature Animal Story: The comic is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where much of the human population has turned in anthropomorphic animals. Plot lines deal with deadly Fantastic Racism, among other things.
• Meaningful Echo: Wally's at first weirded out by Oscar the Crab mutant and is relieved when the offer to shake hands is a joke. After Oscar ends up saving his life (and he's come to grips with some things), Wally asks to shake hands for real.
• Meaningful Name: In Endtown, by Contrived Coincidence, even the names that don't roll easily off the tongue often indicate what animal the character's mutation resembles: Allie Alvarez the alligator, P. Foxworthy the fox, and Linda Kowalski the koala.
  • There's also a practice among the Endtown mutants (such as Jacob J. Jackrabbit) of changing one's surname to the name of one's new animal form.
• MegaCorp: Apex Industries. They were big enough to turn entire megacities into Company Town weapons factories, but they were also stupid / ruthless enough to advance death ray research and then lose / give away their Fantastic Nuke to every other country, triggering the apocalypse.
• Mercy Killing: Flask shoots a child-turned-monster for this reason. Also, some Topsiders seem to see their massacre of mutants this way.

• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Topsiders employ Gas Mask Mooks to eradicate and/or enslave (via And I Must Scream technology) all "impure" lifeforms, and their insignia do evoke the classic look. There is also the reptile-only colony of Unity which is founded on a belief in racial purity, the superiority of reptiles over all other mutants...and a violent purge of all non-reptiles in the colony.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In order to draw the butcher out in the open, Jacob and Velda use Portia as bait, using the password they recently acquired, and knowing that Portia was a frequent target. However, Velda failed to double-check if the location she's stalking is still occupied by Portia, and realized her mistake all too late. It resulted in deaths of Portia, Walt and the butcher, Denise.
• Noble Bigot: Lizards of the Unity colony attempt to come off as civilized and polite despite their blatant treatment of other mutants as inferior, usually taking from any captured travellers what they feel is useful and letting them go. This is nothing but a facade; it's been mentioned that if they had any actual weapons instead of wooden swords, they would go to an all-out conquest of other mutant colonies.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Wally's reward for leaving an enemy alive? the death of two other fellow mutants
• Not Drawn to Scale: Portia Porter, the tiny pig, somehow smuggles a zip-gun the size of her own head into a den of cannibal kidnappers while pretending to be unconscious (and by implication, being carried) and having nothing else but the clothes on her back. The stark impossibility of this feat is probably why it was very deliberately not drawn at all, happening off-screen.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We do not get to see the result of the Topsiders' genetic experiments. Given Wally's response, they're quite horrific.

• Past Experience Nightmare:
  • Wally is shown to regularly have them. Usually related to his past as an engineer for a militarized equivalent of the CDC that started killing anyone suspected of being a mutant before World War 3 happened.
  • Weirdly absent from Holly's nights as far as we can tell, despite sufficiently worse things having happened to her to see her disintegrate as a person and provide the impetus for her removal from the comic.

• Pet the Dog: Considering her usual attitude about killing people in cold blood, putting the little girl Eldritch Abomination out of its misery is possibly one of the kindest and most reasonable things Captain Flask has done in the story. Yet it's regarded by many as Shoot the Dog, if not Kick the Dog, probably due in part to the exact degree and permanency of the abomination's misery being ambiguous.
• Plot Tumor: Aaron Marx and whatever he's doing seem to be slowly taking over the comic's plot.
• Proud Merchant Race: The Lucranians, apparently. According to Aaron Marx, there are only three things you need to know about them: "greedy beyond comprehension, cheat as readily as they breathe, and absolutely love bargains."
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Sarah, a secondary character, cheating on Jim, another secondary character, with Piotr, a tertiary character? Something only a sociopath would do. Wally, the hero, cheating on Holly, the heroine, with secondary character Kirbee? Framed by the comic as good and pure, and even cute.
• Punctuated Pounding: "Weak! Useless! Coward!"

• Remember the New Guy?:
  • Walt had apparently always had a thing for Portia the pig... who was introduced to the comic only shortly before he said that, but long after Walt himself had been introduced. Until then his main associate and longtime friend in the comic had been Dottie the capybara.
  • The High Council as an entity. It was neither consulted for the rocket crisis, nor was it mentioned as a standard duty of all citizens during Mallard's introductory video. It seems to have been created and retroactively made the highest authority in Endtown specifically in order to be destroyed during the Milk Trial arc.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The reptile-only mutant colony Wally and Holly wander into is quickly revealed to be a far darker place than the already morally ambiguous Endtown. There are some exceptions to the rule, but most of the reptilians turn out to be at least serious jerkasses, if not outright villains, and the entire single-species colony is revealed to have been the product of a violent civil war and the subsequent ethnic cleansing campaign.

• The Reveal: The virus is an inter-dimensional bleed effect that causes people in one world to merge with their alternate selves in another. Those who are 'immune' happen to be dead, or don't exist, in the alternate world. Staying conscious during the bleed causes the minds in both worlds to instinctively fight one another to a mutual kill, which also causes the chaotic physical mutations. Also, alternate selves aren't limited to cartoon animals; one Earth was populated by living toothbrushes. The Topsider suits are lined with Unobtainium that resists the bleed effect, and their current scheme is to replace everyone with Unobtainium-based androids.
• Self-Disposing Villain:
  • Sort of. When Flask was made captain of a self piloting ship, she planned to ram it into a Topsider base that had many noncombatants and children. The others were horrified and Wally tried to take over as captain of the ship. However the ship refused to acknowledge anyone else as captain as long as Flask was alive even though Wally had knocked her out. Wally, who didn't want to kill her, decided he had to if he was to save everyone else. But before he could, Flask drew an old gun on him that she had found earlier. But then it exploded in her hand due to age and disrepair, apparently killing her instantly and flinging her body out the window of the ship.
  • Jim dumps a flask of lamp oil over himself perched on a lighting rig over a boxing match almost all of Unity Colony was attending so that he could set the crowd on fire.
• Schizo Tech: Justified, as Endtown is an alternate Earth where the people hav to make do with whatever works. Candlestick phones make sense in a land of many species; there's no telling how far apart their mouths and ears will be. And those crank-powered ray guns never run out of ammunition (as long as your arm holds out).
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After being locked up for over a month over eating cheese made from mutant cow milk and seeing Endtown descend into rioting over it, Holly has decided she wants nothing more to do with the place. She and Wally leave to find somewhere else to live.
• Selfless Wish: The first big "Quest" in the series is Gustine attempting to turn human. Gustine eventually finds it, but uses the berry to bring her boyfriend back to life.

• Shoo Out the Clowns: Comedy relief characters like Maurice are notably absent from recent arcs as the writing has descended further into darkness.
• Shout-Out: This strip and the one before it are reminiscent of this Yoplait Splitz commercial, but darker. Also Billy Joel, the Twilight Zone, the X-Files, and the Wonder Twins.
• Skewed Priorities: Wally spends most of the ship arc standing around and gawping at Holly's memories, only finally deciding that he should try and save her once the flashback is essentially over.
• The Sociopath: Sarah Battle ends up seeming like one. After being mutated into a lizard person, and coming across an almost-entirely lizard settlement, she reveals her uncaring nature by showing disinterest in the mistreatment of the group she arrived with, and cheating on Jim, leading to him being overcome with Schism Syndrome, and this is after Jim had given up his humanity in order to save Sarah from dying of cancer. Sarah doesn't seem concerned by the havoc Jim reeks in his madness, or when he seemingly is killed. Even when he reappears and kills hundreds of other lizards along with himself, Sarah still isn't bothered, and takes it as an opportunity to seize control of the remaining lizard population, turning on her former allies. And when Topsider drones appear, she throws Piotr, the man she dumped Jim for, into the line of the drones' fire and managed to escape while leaving everyone behind.
• Something Only They Would Say: Flask identifies Petey when he calls her "Blackie."

• Take That, Audience!:

• First page of the post-Pig arc story has Wally and Marx in a colourful world of candy canes and lollipops, which some have interpreted as a thinly-veiled mockery aimed at those who complained about the comic's increasingly dark and depressing atmosphere, especially during the Pig arc.

• Tap on the Head: Averted. One swipe didn't just knock Wally out; he was still on death's doorstep in the hospital.
  • Played straighter later on when he again gets whacked on the back of the head. Enough to knock him out for a while, but he seems fine when he wakes up.
• There Are No Therapists: Justified since this is After the End.
  • The main psychological threat in the comic so far has been "Schism Syndrome", which is when a person suffers a mental break due to not being able to come to grips with their new form, causing them to usually go berserk. Unity's plan for it is the only one we see, and that seems to be "Separate if possible, put down if not".
  • Wally saw some crap in the days before the war and in the time since, he mostly has his stuff together, but he does have some ghosts still pursuing him.
  • Holly began showing signs of PTSD after The Milk Trial. Wally did everything he could to keep her together, but ultimately she elected to take command of a crashed ship full of dittos, allowing her to live in a fantasy world with her (dead) husband and child.
  • It has been suggested that alcoholism is pretty rampant in Endtown as a coping mechanism.
• The Unreveal:
  • Though there wasn't too much build up to it, near the end of his first arc, we learn that Wally doesn't feel natural in his new body. He still considers his pre-mutation body to be his real one. He takes out a picture of himself that he apparently looks at regularly to show Holly. However we do not see his human face, and she turns it into a paper boat and drops it in the river while trying to help him accept his current life. Even in a later flashback from when he was still human, we still do not see his face.
  • The mutagenic virus had long been assumed by part of the fanbase to not actually be a virus, for multiple reasons including semi-sentient behaviour (mutation is affected by mental state and local culture), the rapid and directed nature of the mutations, and the ability to create or eliminate mass depending on the end result of mutation. The Reveal regarding its true nature was teased during the "Holly's Flashback" arc, only for the only actual reveal to be a simple confirmation that it wasn't a virus, delivered to the audience as though it was intended to be a shocking revelation (and to be fair, for some it was - see "Wham Line", below). However, since part of the fanbase was already far beyond that point and deep into speculation on what it actually was, there was a certain amount of disappointment.
• Too Dumb to Live: Lucas, leader of the wolf supremacy movement. When he's arrested and brought to Jacob for interrogation, he's acting smug and confident as if he's some kind of great revolutionary, even as Dottie herself chews him out for using her for his racist newspapers. However, as soon as Jacob mockingly taunts him, he responds immediately by attacking and attempting to devour him. He gets a bullet through his chest for the effort.
• Trauma Conga Line: Poor, Poor Holly. She got in a flying car crash after being clipped by a plane, watched her friend being killed by robot explosives after mutating into a snake, mutated into a mouse, lost her baby, had her husband mutate in front of her, watched her husband die, got in another car crash and then caught in the middle of war. All of this happened in one day, before the comics timeline. Fresh trauma comes later
• Troll: The dittos have a cruel sense of humor. This is because they will starve to death if they don't consume negative emotions from others, but they still have a tendency to go too far, especially if there are too many at once.
• Truth Serums: Albert and Gustine are injected with them during their interrogation. They give the exact same story as before, and Flask still doesn't believe them.

• Unreliable Narrator: Word of God is that Holly's flashback is to be taken as broadly accurate, but not as gospel truth, due to the way memory works.
• Voodoo Shark: With the explanation for the mutations as of 2021 now apparently being a merging of the Endtown universe with a separate cartoon universe containing toon equivalents to some of the human inhabitants of the former, forcing them to assume the forms of their dopplegangers, the question is raised as to how the hell the Topsider's suits can protect them from something that should be happening at a space-time level. The answer is given as "a dimensional component in the plastic of their suits", implied to have been added by Aaron Marx.
• Wetware CPU: Topsider computers, made from those mutants whom they capture instead of disintegrate. Such as "Petey."

• What Happened to the Mouse?: Combined with Offscreen Inertia in the case of Heather Hoss's corpse, as it completely and abruptly disappears from a narrative that is largely about what is being done to the bodies of the deceased, last seen in the possession of a mass of wolf rioters, with absolutely no mention made of its recovery or status until many strips later when Jolene the pig, herself a victim of an even longer and much-remarked case of What Happened to the Mouse?, is finally seen mourning at Heather's grave, implying her body was collected and buried.

• You Monster!: What Holly calls Flask after she gives a child-turned-vine-creature a Mercy Killing. Could also qualify as What the Hell, Hero? Interestingly, Flask turns it right back on her, thanks to Values Dissonance.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Wally and Petey manage to foil Flask's plan to explode the rocket they thought they were just sabotaging, killing an entire Topsider city, only to find out that not only was the rocket they were after a decoy; it was specifically set up as a trap for Flask.
• Your Size May Vary:
  • Holly Hollister goes from being small enough to fit in her boyfriend's backpack to being nearly as tall as he is. This was done, according to the author, because he was finding it hard to fit them both in frame when talking to each other.
  • Holly's buckteeth. They've steadily been getting larger over the course of her story, possibly in a case of art drift or perhaps as part of a deliberate attempt to make her less cute.

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