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From left to right, back to front: Mark, Tubsy, Christie, Allison Schwartz, Aurora Boreanaz, Pasqualo Trianglini, and Katie Tehrani

Allison: I don't hope you shit out all your blood and die from shitting!!
Pasqualo: I don't hope you mistake a hand grenade for your tampon!!
Strip 86: One More Time!

It Hurts!! is a webcomic by Gobolatula, who says it is "...about a silly boy riddled with depression and anxiety named Pasqualo Trianglini and how he finds his first love, a mysterious yet super kind girl named Aurora. Pasqualo also has lots of friends, including his best friend Allison who's a dirty little munchkin and Tubsy who's a chilled out big fat dude. Over time, strange and crazy things start happening and before you know it, the whole world changes."

It can best be described as a Surreal Humor Slice of Life story that contains dialogue often bordering on the completely obscene and ridiculous. It's also pretty lengthy, clocking in at over 450 pages, and as the description implies, changes a lot over the course of its run (which you might've guessed by looking at the trope list). Consider it a version of El Goonish Shive but with more profanity and less supernatural stuff occurring. At least, at first.

The comic ended with 475 strips on May 29th, 2017. A Sequel Series drawn by Gobolatula and written by It Hurts!! editor Josef, called Please Forgive Me!!!, started on March 4, 2018.


This webcomic provides examples of:

  • Abusive Parents:
    • Pasqualo's Dad, though Pasqualo doesn't seem to mind in the slightest. His mother (despite being outwardly friendlier and having a lot more in common with her son regarding their personalities and interests) might actually be worse given that she tries to murder him multiple times.
    • Allison's parents don't sound all that pleasant either, given that her mother often rants about Allison's being adopted and complains about feeding the family because her husband won't have sex with her. It's probably a case of Early-Installment Weirdness, given that she's perfectly fine with them in later strips.
  • A God Am I: After finding out about his regeneration powers and his robotic origins, Pasq starts calling himself a robotic God. Thankfully he drops this behavior.
  • Ambiguously Bi: Allison hits on her male gym teacher and her main love interest is Tubsy, but she semi-jokingly flirts with Aurora several times and fantasizes about Scarlett Johansson when she thinks she's about to die. Pasqualo shows attraction exclusively to women and monstergirls for most of the comic, but he checks out Bill's ass at one point, had lewd fantasies about Dewey from Duck Tales as a child, and his "harem" includes Bartleby, a gay guy.
  • Ambition Is Evil: Jennifer has broken into government facilities, worked with terrorists, made her pregnant acquaintances have forced abortions so she could have their fetuses as test subjects, and more reprehensible atrocities all in the name of ambition.
  • Androcles' Lion: Referenced during Pasqualo's endless journey to the end of the universe, as he's helping out other alien races. There's a giant alien lion that needs a thorn out of his paw.
  • Anguished Declaration of Love: Pasq to Jennifer in Chapter 5, albeit a familial one.
  • Archnemesis Mom: Jennifer to Pasqualo, at least until Chapter 5.
  • Arc Words: "It's not fair".
  • And I Must Scream: The Space Rhino General is punished for destroying the Earth by being reduced to a severed head in a jar floating through space, unable to die. While being forced to listen to a single Chumbawumba MP3 on loop forever. In 64 KBPs.
  • Antagonistic Offspring: Pasqualo tries to be this to Jennifer, but at most, all he can do is trash talk her. He's horrified when he actually lands a hit and is even more remorseful when he accidentally kills her.
  • Armor-Piercing Question:
    • Pablo launches a barrage of these ala Shut Up, Hannibal! towards the zombified Allison after she gets a little too arrogant for his taste.
    • Lodge manages to reach a chink in Pasqualo's armor when he tries to make excuses for himself.
  • Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Tubsy. Though he's actually going to hell. The guy's rather chill about it though and even gets to have a tender farewell with Allison.
    • And now they're both in Hell, and have been upgraded to an Official Couple.
  • Asshole Victim:
    • Mark. He does nothing but harass Allison and Aurora for the majority of his screen time, and when he isn't able to directly target the former, he specifically harasses other people around her to make her uncomfortable by proxy. Then he gets his skull punched out of his head by Tubsy after he breaks his promise. We mean this literally.
    • The Space Rhinos too. Considering that they blew up Earth, rather callously destroyed the Ark, and enslaved the inhabitants of another planet millennia later, no one sheds a tear when their planet is blown up and they get annihilated.
  • Astral Finale: The last stretch of the comic has Pasqualo on a journey into space to reach the End of the Universe.
  • Back for the Finale: Everyone who dies in the first arc and those who died afterwards makes a reappearance in Hell in the last arc to wrap up their plot lines.
  • Bait-and-Switch: Chapter 5 is called "Everyone Dies". You would think that everyone would... y'know, die during it, but only a couple of minor characters kick the bucket, and it ends with everyone celebrating Pasqualo's 15th birthday on their newly revealed spaceship while the Space Rhinos blow up the Earth. Katie namedrops the chapter by saying "Everyone dies some day". This immediately leads into Chapter 6, "Space Adventure!", which consists of a single page where the Rhinos destroy the spaceship and (almost) everyone actually dies.
  • Battle Rapping: The third time Pasq and Jennifer fight against each other, it's this.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: We learn in the Intermission that the night before the comic started, Pasq prayed to God to let him be happy for once in a while. His happiness, thanks to Harmony, comes in the form of Aurora, and that is not a good thing.
  • Berserk Button: No matter what kind of insults and abuse Pasq's dad throws at him, he always finds it some strange sense of humor. But insult his love of Sailor Moon, and that, of all things, is the one thing that finally sets him off on his father. According to invokedGob though, it's less that (the bastard could have insulted his manga and anime ages ago), but more of the fact that Pasq is in no mood to hear any of his dickish verbal abuse.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Given the opportunity to remake the universe by Harmony and Chaos, Pasqualo is torn because if he does so without changing anything the apocalypse will happen again and if he does alter it significantly to avoid it then Aurora will never exist as it was that specific strain of circumstances that led to her conception. Not wanting anyone to unjustly suffer just so he can be happy and not wishing to deprive his friend the chance to exist, Pasqualo chooses to switch places with Aurora, giving her his life while he himself fades into nothingness.
  • Bland-Name Product: A "Games N' Shit" carries "Farm Crossing", which looks to be a combination of the Harvest Moon series and Animal Crossing.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Harmony and Chaos are most definitely not evil, but their sense of ethics is on a different plane. For instance, they don't see anything objectively wrong with Pasqualo choosing to remake the world in such a way that it will cause the apocalypse to happen again just so he can be with Aurora, because the people that died during it would have died anyway eventually.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Maddie. She's unreasonably mean even for a kid, and post encounter with Pasqualo, she's turned into more of a mouthy little girl.
  • Brick Joke: Early in the comic, Pasqalo's father gets worried that he had a girlfriend, because that would mean he lost a bet with his friend Bill. Chapter 5 has Pasq run into Bill and mention his girlfriend Katie, making the latter man scream at him to ask his father for the bet money.
  • Call-Back:
    • Allison bites Pasqualo's right arm in strip 104, much like she does in strip 40.
    • During the middle of Chapter 1, there's a flashback to how Ally and Pasq said they were going to be "awesome, together" when they grew up, and then flashes to now when they're a cyborg and a zombie. The scene is repeated in another flashback, where they hark back to the childhood promise and say they've made it given they're the King of Zombies and an all powerful cyborg at that point.
    • There's a monologue that Pasq has, where he talks about how he'd like to be more like Charlotte from Charlotte's Web and make all of his friends as happy as possible, for the purpose of being known as a selfless person. The soliloquy is revisited in the finale, but after Pasqualo's character development, he realizes Charlotte never wanted any kind of reward for what she did. Similarly, Pasqualo's own sacrifice at the end of the comic will never be known by any of the people it benefits.
  • Cat Smile: Pasqualo's was popular with the fans. The strips actually have a a ":3" tag on the website.
  • Cessation of Existence:
    • Choosing to walk the wrong way down the Highway to Hell has this effect, as may hellfire. Also, dying in the afterlife will do this.
    • As we learn in the finale, Aurora ceased to exist, not even with a soul, after her death. Pas gives up his existence just to give Aurora a shot at a normal life at the end of the comic.
  • Character Filibuster: The one thing about Pasq's dad is that he keeps going on and on about how much he hates his son. One of his speeches takes up almost a whole goddamned page.
  • Chick Magnet: What Pasq eventually turns into, complete with a Gay Option in Bartelby.
  • The Chosen One: While Pasqualo was a Loser Protagonist in the beginning, later revelations show that he's the only person in the story completely unbound by fate.
  • Christmas Episode: Two, among other holiday specials.
  • Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Trisssh ends up with Mark, of all people, upon entering Hell. Being in Hell and being able to release as much sexual tension as he wants has caused Mark to chill out significantly, to the point where he's even reasonably decent to Allison. But upon seeing Trisssh, he instantly becomes incredibly attracted to her, and she makes him her slave (which he's completely ecstatic about).
  • Coming of Age Story: One of the weirder ones, but still. You start with a boy with crippling anxiety and his friends who swear, act crude, and don't think much about all the terrible shit their lives are surrounded with, and then end with that same boy willingly giving up his existence for a girl he loves and to bring everyone back to life because they all deserve to be happy.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Katie, although she's absolutely right on everything.
  • Crapsack World: At least in the beginning. Everyone took all the terrible shit that happened in stride, and they don't seem to dwell on their shitty home lives much. Then the apocalypse hits, and everything just gets infinitely worse.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Pasqualo's dad, in spades. First, he converted his son into an incredibly powerful and durable cyborg, to ensure Pasq could suffer the curse of outliving all his loved ones and the entire human race, which he does. Next, he had a secret room in his basement that he absolutely forbid Pasqualo from ever entering, knowing that his obedient son would only dare to enter the room after his dad's death. All that time, the room contained nothing a crude sign revealing his son was a cyborg, and a pre-recorded hologram of himself that explains the same. He hid another pre-recorded hologram message inside Pasq's ass, addressed to his ex-wife on the chance she would attempt to hack Pasqualo and activate his self-destruct function. It then kills her with Pasq's explosive farts, ensuring Obtusangelo gets revenge on his ex and gets to permanently traumatize his despised son by saddling him with the responsibility of killing his mother in one fell swoop.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Pasq makes a Space Rhino shit all of his insides out. It'd be completely awful if the recipient didn't kill what was left of Pasqualo's friends.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: The Space Rhinos absolutely annihilate everyone on Earth, beat the nigh-immortal Pasqualo to death, and even manage to kill Aurora. They even have a weapon made explicitly to kill beings like her.
    • However, when a resurrected Pasqualo confronts the same rhinos again 3000 years later, he effortlessly vaporizes an army of them and blows up their planet for good measure.
    • Jennifer manages to confront God himself and is utterly annihilated before she even gets to land a hit because he's not a fan of getting punched no matter how little it would actually hurt him.
  • Cyborg: After the apocalypse hits, Pasqalo figures out he's one. He'd been worked on by his father from an early age, and slowly converted into a semi-robotic being.
  • A Day in the Limelight: The high school arc is this for Katie, and it's mostly an adventure where none of the main cast besides her has a huge role.
  • Deal with the Devil: Jennifer forms an alliance with Satan to kill God during Strip 335.
  • Death Seeker:
    • Maddie, the little girl from the fast food restaurant becomes this in later strips, frustrated that her father won't kill her and the rest of the family. She grows out of it.
    • Peeplops seems awfully happy about the idea of the complete cessation of his existence, and is the only character who willingly allows it to happen.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Most semi-important characters who are initially hostile to Pasqualo end up being annexed into his kingdom. Lodge is a notable exception, remaining bitter and angry at him to the end.
  • Defiant to the End: Right before watching his homeworld get blown to smithereens and being left to an endless life of suffering by a vengeful Pasqualo, the beheaded Space Rhino looks distraught for a moment before getting angry and telling Pasq to suck his dick.
  • Desperately Craves Affection: Pasqualo has had a rough life. His mother abandoned the family, his father clearly doesn't give a shit about him, and he's beyond anxious and depressed. He needs his friends to comfort him and tell him he's worth something, and when he finally gets his first girlfriend, he latches onto her with all his might because he masks his dissatisfaction with an unhealthy obsession with his love for her.
  • Determinator: Pasqualo spends 101000 years flying to the End of the Universe to meet Harmony to try to bring Aurora back.
  • Disproportionate Retribution:
    • Getting turned into a zombie under any circumstance is enough to get you sent to Hell after you die (again). Even beyond that, a man touching his own penis (including non-sexually, like when using the toilet) or a woman being exposed to sunlight at any point in their lives will also condemn them to Hell.
    • As revenge for Pasqualo punching him in the face during his previous life in God Dammit!, God tricks Pasqualo into going on a long, pointless quest to the "End of the Universe" to find Aurora which, like in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, isn't so much a location as it is a date.
    • Allison and Pasqualo almost sentence a family to be eaten by Zombie!Allison just because a little girl didn't give him a Rainbow Dash toy.
    • When Bartelby puts penis graffiti on the middle school building, Pasqualo's response is to conquer and annex the high school he came from to the middle school shelter Pasq and the gang currently reside at. And draw a dick on Bartelby's forehead.
  • Dissonant Serenity: Tubsy doesn't even bat an eye or change his expression when he straight up kills a dude.
  • Dragged Off to Hell: Tubsy, during the events of the Talent Show in Strip 100. He adjusts to it pretty well, even getting a job there.
  • Dramatically Missing the Point: After Lodge tries to cut Pasqualo down to size with her Kirk Summation, all he manages to get out of the whole thing was that he needed to learn that some people just won't like him and call it a day.
  • Driven to Suicide: Christie, during the events of the Talent Show in Strip 100.
  • Dysfunction Junction: No one's okay, not even the more well adjusted ones. A lot of the time the main characters hide their shitty home lives with laughter or ignorance, and their peers and teachers at school aren't much better.
  • Easily Forgiven:
    • After spending dozens of strips as a zombie, Allison is quick to forgive the ghouls that gruesomely killed her because she understands their perspective now. It helps that being a zombie isn't all that bad.
    • After spending a couple of pages being justifiably angry with Aurora, the gang keeps her as a valuable ally and friend.
    • Oddly enough, averted with Katie. After she purposely got the high school overrun by zombies to allow Pasq's faction to conquer it, everyone but Eliza is rightfully pissed at her. They're cool with Pasqualo annexing them afterward, for some reason.
  • Easy Road to Hell: According to Tubsy, the gatekeeper of Hell, the one sin that guarantees being sent to Hell after death for a man is touching his dick, even if it's to use the bathroom. For women, it's being exposed to sunlight.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect: France, Egypt, and China's destruction is represented by the Eiffel Towel breaking, mummies chasing people near the pyramids, and a giant panda attacking the Great Wall respectively.
  • Eviler than Thou: Pasqualo is an immature, obnoxious, and rather vicious piece of work. The principal is much worse. As are the Hellbeast, his own mother, and the Space Rhinos.
  • Eye Scream: In Strip 100, Allison has her eye torn out by zombies.
  • Fake-Out Fade-Out: Done at the end of Chapter 5, going into Chapter 6. Details at Bait-and-Switch above.
  • Faux Action Girl: Eliza. She talks a good game about being cold, heartless and ruthless and fighting the misogynist system, but in practice she blindly follows orders from her (male) high school principal and only makes speeches while pushing everyone else around. She gets better eventually.
  • Forced to Watch: Pasqualo preserves one Space Rhino's still-living head so he can watch him take revenge upon his people in spectacular fashion.
  • Foreshadowing: A lot of it building up to the 100th chapter and beyond:
    • Katie often warns Pasqualo of possible catastrophic dangers, and tells him that he'd better hope his dad's abuse prepares him for the zombie apocalypse. In fact, everything she says eventually comes true. She also praises him and tells him that he'll survive the apocalypse.
    • The way Aurora and Pasq admit their love for each other is also one to later revelations:
    Pas: Lately, I've been pretty fucking happy lately. And like not like a nervous retard... and it's all because of you. I mean, half the school burned down, my friend went missing, Tubsy slaughtered a dude, and our talent show is tomorrow... and I still feel... pretty rad... because I got you as my sugar baby booboo.
    Aurora: Pasqualo, that's why I'm here! I love you!
    • The Aurora that appears in Pasqualo's dream in strip 323 (where she has Pasq's original blond hair and blue eyes) looks similar to her form when she takes Paqualo's place in the new universe. After her death, she explains that the reason she was crying in that dream is because she foresaw the choice Pasq was going to make when creating the new universe, and that it's not what she wants. This in turn could foreshadow how generally terrible Aurora!Pasqualo's life is in the sequel comic, despite Pasq's good intentions.
    • During the rap battle, Jennifer points out that Pasq is probably too weak to fight rhinos. Guess what kind of enemies he ends up fighting later? And no points for guessing who he really does end up losing to...at first.
    • In Chapter 402, Pasqualo talks about a dream he had in which he asks Allison to dance with him at the prom, and that they ended up together. The pictures used show that both Ally and Pasq are identified by pink, and the blurred picture of them on the farm has Pasq with a feminine haircut. Turns out to be foreshadowing to the fact that Aurora takes his place in the new universe.
  • God and Satan Are Both Jerks: Though God is slightly less so than Satan. Also, they're a couple.
  • Groin Attack: Ally's "special finishing move" when fighting Pasqualo is a swift kick in the balls.
    • Satan shoots Pasqualo in the dick after an enlightening Hannibal Lecture. As if we didn't need more reminders that he's a jerk. He later apologizes after shooting himself in the dick for fun and realizing how much it actually hurts.
    • Ally rips the Hellbeast's balls off.
  • Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Christie, after Tubsy murders Mark in Strip 75.
  • Gratuitous Japanese: Pasqualo is a giant weeaboo, and in between normal sentences he'll often add Japanese honorifics to people's names or say an odd phrase or two.
  • A Hell of a Time: Hell is actually pretty cool. It's just mortal life with some supernatural stuff happening, but it's enjoyable.
  • The Hero: Eventually, what Pasq aspires to be; a person that his friends can count on, someone who has their backs and give them as much joy as possible.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Poop sets himself on fire and swallows dynamite to get a shot at destroying the Hellbeast from the inside. It does enough damage to mostly immobilize it.
  • Hot for Teacher: Allison towards Mr. Gordon.
  • Hopeless Suitor: Mark to Allison. Partially because he's a lecherous sleaze, but mostly because Allison is in love with Tubsy.
  • Hypocritical Heartwarming: Pasqualo's parents feuded for years, constantly creating inventions in an effort to show who the superior scientist was. Pasqualo's father considered turning his son (who he constantly belittled and abused) into a cyborg to be his crowning achievement, and one Jennifer could never trump.
  • I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Played with. Allison encourages Pasqualo to let go of the absent Aurora and start dating Katie because of the latter's larger bust size.
  • I'll Kill You!: Allison to Mark, in Strip 12.
  • Imagine the Audience Naked: In Strip 99, before Pasqualo and Aurora start their act for the talent show:
    Pasqualo: "If you still feel nervous, just imagine the audience naked, and missing limbs. That way, they got other shit to worry about."
  • Improbable Infant Survival: Double Subverted. The baby does die, but Allison quickly zombifies it, so it's all good.
  • Ironic Echo: Katie and Pasq say the famous "I love you/I know" quotes from Revenge of the Sith together while they're still in love. They repeat it, sadly this time, after a nasty argument that marks the last time they speak to each other.
  • It's All About Me: Not even getting sent to Hell is enough to make Jennifer any less of a hateful, self-centered asshole.
  • It May Help You on Your Quest: Parodied. Satan gives Pasqualo his jacket as he begins his post-mortem quest to find Aurora. When Pasqualo asks God if he's going to give him anything, the deity remarks that he hadn't planned to do so, but on the spot decides to bequeath Pasqualo his penis.
  • Jerkass: Mark. Pasq's dad and his mom. Many, many others to varying degrees.
  • Karma Houdini: Pasqualo's dad ends up going to heaven. Though according to Tubsy, people can only really get condemned to hell if they touch their penis for any reason (male) or stand in the sunlight (female), and we learn from Obtusangelo himself that he accidentally followed their universe's cosmic parameter for morality and never once touched his junk because he thought it would be gay.
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Pasqualo slaughters the space rhinos, blows up their planet and subjects their leader to a Fate Worse than Death... which would be morally worse if the rhinos hadn't been established as a bunch of sadistic, genocidal psychos who destroy planets and gleefully massacre billions for no real reason beyond the fact that they really hate turtles and all things turtle related.
  • Kill Sat: One of the ways Jennifer tries to kill Pasqualo.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • After all the fun that Pasq had after apocalypse, the afterlife sends him to a crushing reality; he was the one that got them all killed in the first place, and now he's the only one who can remember those who are erased from existence. He loses his powerful cyborg body and his emotional crutch in Aurora, and swiftly returns to being the physically weak, self-loathing, emotionally draining crybaby he was at the beginning of the comic. Subverted when he meets back up with Satan— according to Satan, nothing that's happened to Pasqualo in Hell has been due to karma, and his story isn't as personal as he thinks. His lucky streak is just "over", is all.
    • The Space Rhinos get A Taste of Their Own Medicine in the finale, with Pasqualo blowing up their planet and personally killing the Rhino that killed him and Aurora.
  • Late for School: In the new universe, the fact that Pasqualo, Allison, and Tubsy (sort of) are wearing school uniforms is an indication that they're in the universe Pasqualo made. He apparently couldn't resist adding anime tropes to it.
  • Losing Your Head: Allison, several times after she becomes a zombie. It's easily reattachable, and she can autonomously control her body to make its way back to her head.
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: Mark. All the characters seem to find him hilarious, aside from Allison who's usually the subject of his affection. Ally claims she would enjoy his sense of humor too, if he was harassing anybody else.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy:
    • Pasq, while becoming more confident later, is a boy who's more outwardly emotional and wears his feelings on his sleeve. Allison, while wearing girly clothing, likes to solve things with violence, has to be the emotional rock for Pasq in the beginning of the comic, and is more assertive in general.
    • Romantically, Pasq with Katie once they hook up.
  • Matricide: Though not entirely his fault, Pasqualo ends up killing Jennifer in Chapter 5.
  • Mood Whiplash: Constantly. One moment you can watch a dead guy's mouth get stuffed with warm hot dogs to give the impression he's still alive, and the next major characters are getting killed off.
  • Moral Myopia: As long as Pasq's closest friends are alright, he doesn't really care about anything else. He can even come to terms with the fact that he and his ex destroyed the world because he's gone through the emotional journey he thought he needed, and everyone he knows is better off for it.
  • Mundane Afterlife: For all the mysteriousness of the Highway to Hell, Hell itself, or at least the top layer of it, is a perfectly mundane city with hellfire sometimes breaking up the surface.
  • Mythology Gag: Several to God Dammit!, a previous work Gob did that uses much of the same characters.
    • Tubsy punching Mark in the face and killing him, as well as the line he says when he does it ("Pow. Gangsta shit."), was taken from there. Though Tubsy in that one ends up killing Mr. Gordon's prototype.
    • The sequences where Jennifer and Pasqualo die and go to hell are near identical to the one in GD.
    • The Pasqualo from GD is among the other Pasqualos during the final strip.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the event that the high school didn't ally with the middle school, Pasq's group would have Ally sick her zombie army on them, and in the meantime Katie stuffed all of the high school's weapons with bananas. Katie couldn't even tell anyone to call off the attack because she'd been knocked out after a Mushroom Samba, leaving the high school defenseless.
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore: In Strip 100, Aurora's singing causes multiple deaths in the audience, zombies to rise, asteroids to crash into Earth, aliens to invade Paris, mummies to terrorize Egypt, and giant pandas to terrify China. Not to mention her transcending her physical form and blipping from existence.
  • Otaku: In the "loves anime and manga" sense, Pasqualo. Like Mother, Like Son we suppose, as Jennifer's a huge manga/anime fan too.
  • Parental Substitute: The principal looked to be one for Pasqualo in the short time he interacted with him, and Mr. Jones serves as one to Allison and Eliza.
  • Perpetual Smiler:
    • Aurora always has a smile on her face, even when she doesn't want to do something or hears something that she doesn't want to hear. The first time she lets it down is when Pasqualo breaks up with her, and after that she drops the smile during a few particularly serious moments.
    • The high school principal is a creepier version of this, mixed with The Sociopath. He even smiles as Trisssh kills him.
  • Pervert Revenge Mode: Tubsy, after Mark breaks his promise to stop verbally harassing Allison. It's absolutely lethal. Allison herself used to beat up Mark for his antics, until she realized that he gets off on it.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: Pasqualo & Allison. They'd ride or die for each other, and each subsequent arc reflects on that.
  • Prophecies Are Always Right: Katie predicts the events of the apocalypse after Strip 100, and even the Space Rhinos who don't show up as a threat until over a year later.
  • Pretty Boy: God is highly androgynous, and characters debate at one point about what their pronouns might be. Satan, who would know better than anyone, uses masculine pronouns for God, and God gifts Pasq his dick before sending him off on his journey to the end of the universe.
  • Really Was Born Yesterday: Aurora was born on the day she and Pasqualo first met.
  • "Reason You Suck" Speech: Pablo the chicken man doesn't mess around when it comes to Ally's "tough girl" image:
    "Is that a skull and crossbones t-shirt? Good gravy! You must be extraordinarily tough! I mean the way you punched me in the balls... magnificent! Such inventive fighting skills! And how you eat starving people's food despite the fact that you're a zombie and don't require sustenance... bravo, Miss Supervillain!"
    • Lodge gives a big one to Pasqualo in the second half of Chapter 5, calling him out for his revelry in the post-apocalyptic world and prioritizing his own happiness over taking responsibility for his actions.
  • Reference Overdosed: Every other page has a reference to late 2000s and early 10s memes, songs, and shows.
  • Reincarnation: Pasqualo's had previous lives before, and they all show up during the finale.
  • Ret-Gone: Everyone who goes to hell has the option of walking the wrong way down the Highway to Hell and having their soul consumed by the void, erasing all memories of your existence across creation. Hellfire may have the same effect.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Pasqualo goes apeshit after everyone's killed by the Space Rhinos. His first attack is no-selled, and he and Aurora die too.
  • Running Gag: Pasqualo forgetting Stephanie's name, or almost remembering it. The only time he gets it right is right after she's killed.
  • Sacred First Kiss: Pasqualo makes a big deal about Katie stealing his "face virginity."
  • Sarcastic Confession: The high school kids are so ignorant that Katie just spills out to them her Mole status and they take it as a joke.
  • Satellite Love Interest: A lot of Aurora's development was a result of anything involving Pasqualo. Most of her relevance relied upon him, and she kept on loving him until the day she died. Invoked though, given that she was literally made for Pasqualo's happiness.
  • Self-Deprecation: It happens, but one of them is far more blatant than the others:
    Katie: "It's like I'm living in the middle of a shitty parody written by some dumbass who's like, spoofing The Walking Dead and he thinks that people will find the fact that he's doing a goof on The Walking Dead funny, and he's even pointing that out to people so he thinks he's absolved of his hacky-douche sins."
  • Serial Escalation: The series begins as a Slice of Life but soon spirals off into a nigh-incomprehensibly insane web of supernatural and science-fiction events that begins with the apocalypse.
  • She Is the King: By chapter 200, Allison usurps the title of Zombie King from Elvis, and it's never adjusted for gender.
  • Shout-Out: A ton:
    • A couple of explicit references to AKIRA during Pasq's fight with Jennifer.
    • "I love you." "I know."
    • On the wall with all of Pasqualo's drawings, he has a small doodle of Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty to compare to himself and Aurora.
    • Mixed with Take That!, Allison calls Pasqualo a "Johnny Test looking motherfucker" during one of their shit-flinging sessions.
    • Pasq is a huge fan of Sailor Moon, among all the other manga he had in his house. Jennifer also has a Luna hat in Chapter 5.
    • Lampshaded one to Diff'rent Strokes in Chapter 4 with the classic "What'chu talking 'bout, Willis?" line.
    "Haha, remember that show?"
  • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Allison is the queen of this trope in the comic, even though swearing is a God-given right in this world. She and her friends also use a lot of PC unfriendly slurs, which Pasqualo gets her to tone down because it might make someone uncomfortable and they need to be a little more mature.
  • Slice of Life: Well, it starts as one, anyway.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Allison smokes frequently after she becomes a zombie.
  • So Proud of You: The one and only time Pasqualo stands up to his father, that's the one time the latter man smiles. Sure he doesn't say anything positive, but "asshole" without any other additives is probably the highest form of praise Pasq's father could have given his son.
  • Spiritual Successor: To God Dammit!, which largely uses the same characters and some characterization as this series. And because God and Satan look pretty similar, and God specifically glares at Pasqualo when he yells about how it sucks to get punched in the face, It Hurts!! turns out to be a story that takes place later in that universal timeline.
  • Starcrossed Lovers: According to Harmony, no matter what happens, Aurora is fated to destroy the world if she ever gets close to Pas. Even making another universe won't change anything— as long as those two are together, no one can be happy.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: During the flashback intermission, Allison asks Pasq's father to take him to therapy if he's so ashamed with having a constantly depressed kid. He spits in her face for it.
  • Straight Gay: Rutherford and Bartleby are the meanest sons of bitches in the early stages, but they're also gay and dating each other. Or at least were until the apocalypse. They get back together later though.
  • Straw Feminist: The high schooler with the mohawk, Eliza, is one. She makes a big deal of the girls having to tough it out in a man's world, and allies with Katie precisely because she's a girl.
  • Take That!: An obligatory one to DiC Entertainment for their handling of the 90s Sailor Moon anime.
  • Tempting Fate: "With [Katie] around, we'll never die!" To be fair, they do say this after Katie reveals she made a space ark for Pasqualo's kingdom, and they survive the Earth's destruction, but they should know better than to keep running their mouths. Because exactly after that chapter the ark is blown up too.
  • Talent Contest: The first arc of the comic builds up to it. And the chaos ensuing from it was only the beginning.
  • Talking to the Dead: Pasqualo to Allison, in Strip 101. It doesn't last.
  • Tears of Joy: At the very least, everyone's absolutely elated to see their loved ones in Hell.
  • Title Drop: Aurora mentions that she kept thinking "It hurts!" after she saw Pasqualo's distraught face after the Talent Show.
  • Together in Death: Pasqualo contemplates killing himself in the future after Katie dies to avoid hooking up with Trisssh on the rebound.
  • Toilet Humor
  • Token Black Friend: Parodied with Allison. She abuses N-Word Privileges and makes a ton of minority jokes, mostly acting like the hardened street smart kid, even though she was raised by a white upper middle class Jewish family. She's also adopted and doesn't know her birth parents, and at one point refers to herself as "probably black".
  • Top God: Not God, surprisingly, but the ones above Him, Harmony and Chaos.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Everyone seems to have a particular fondness for Penguin Graham Crackers. Jennifer, as the heiress to that particular snack franchise's empire, has been lacing all of them with explosive nanomachines for quite some time and tries to murder the entire cast with them. Aurora sabotages the attempt.
  • Tragic Keepsake: Allison's hair bow, after everyone's been killed. Pasqualo keeps it with him until the end of the universe.
  • Visual Pun:
    • To respond to Pasqualo asking "what are you?", we take a look into Aurora's eyes to find her dressed as Batman.
    • Satan gives Pasqualo a Devil May Cry copy for his birthday. As he does this, Satan himself starts to tear up.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Pasqualo & Allison, on multiple occasions, but always in a pretty good spirited way.
  • Walking Spoiler: Almost every character qualifies, what with the apocalypse.
    • Pasqualo is revealed to be a cyborg after the apocalypse.
    • Allison becomes a zombie.
    • Aurora sings the song that ends the world, revealing herself to be an angel or a demon or a demigod or something.
    • In a much less drastic example, Katie is missing and presumed dead even before the apocalypse, but Pasqualo and Allison manage to find her alive and well after the world ends.
    • Jennifer and Trisssh just make no sense in the setting before the apocalypse, and their mere physical appearance is a huge red flag that something weird and huge goes down.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist:
    • Jennifer toes a strange line. Despite the many, many atrocities she caused, she still did everything for what she thought was the greater good. Making scientific progress unconstrained by morality could be argued as a good thing, but by her own admission Jennifer did shit like creating new diseases so she could take credit for curing them, so it's unclear how much net good she actually accomplished.
    • Even though they're opposed to the main characters, the multiple groups who try to kill Pasqualo and destroy the Peppershanty Kingdom are, in their own eyes, fighting against "Pasqualo the World-Killer", the person primarily responsible for causing the apocalypse, and who's aggressively expanded his territory and caused random mayhem for fun.
  • Wham Episode: Strip 100 for the first part of the series. Strip 422 for the endgame.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • Satan appears to take Pasqualo to hell. When Pasq claims he didn't do anything wrong, Satan points out that the whole time he's been in the apocalypse, he's just been terrorizing and strong-arming other people for selfish reasons.
    • Same thing with Pasqualo to Aurora, who he resents for killing everyone during the Talent Show.
  • What Would X Do?: In this case, "What Would Goku Do", but it's more or less the same thing.
  • Whole Episode Flashback: The intermission, whose title reflects the feelings of most people who see one in other media ("Goddamn It It's a Fucking Flashback Arc").
  • Who's Laughing Now?: After the apocalypse, Katie believes that she's due for this and that all her surviving friends will finally admit that she was right. When she meets up with them later, they never really do, at least, not in a way that vindicates her, because they have bigger and more important things to worry about.
  • Worthy Opponent: The bully that vandalizes Pasqualo's new high school only shows him and it respect after Pasqualo draws a cock on his forehead and crudely plants his high school atop his own.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Aurora isn't in Heaven and never was there. As God put it: "You're on Fake Namek!"

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