These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: Dick Tracy
YMMVs in the comic strip:
Anvilicious: Chester Gould's stories got really bad for this during The Seventies, with Tracy frequently going on lengthy speeches about how the law should operate. Mike Kilian had a tendency to do this as well (most infamously with the movie piracy story), though to a much lesser extent than Gould.
Dick Locher's strips completely averted this, oddly enough, though presumably as a famed political cartoonist Locher had another outlet for that sort of thing.
Dork Age: Arguably from the start of the "Space Era" in the 1960s until Max Allan Collins took over as writer, and definitely Dick Locher's era as writer.
Ensemble Darkhorse: The Blank; though he only appeared in one story, he's largely one of the more memorable villains Tracy fought.
Toss in Flattop; originally a one-shot character, he proved to be so popular that not only did Gould keep bringing him back, but once he killed him off, introduced his family to continue his legacy.
Pragmatic Villainy: The people running the Apparatus find out about Big Boy's million dollar open contract on Dick Tracy and storm in to tell him point blank that it isn't worth it.
Also the general freakish nature of most of Tracy's rogue gallery.
The Brow had a Cold-Blooded Torture device consisting of a small mechanical iron maiden that closed around the victim's leg. Eventually the villain gets caught in it by the head. He has no choice but to tear his bleeding head out of it before it can close on him completely.
So Bad, It's Good: The Moon Period stories can actually be a lot of fun if you enjoy the very pulpiest of pulp science fiction. They're utterly ridiculous and out of place, but they're fun for exactly those reasons. And Gould's artwork during this period is gorgeous, arguably the best he ever did; he very clearly enjoyed getting to draw stuff so radically different from the normal restrictions of the strip's genre.
Took a Level in Badass: Groovy Grove, Tracy's hippie sidekick, gradually became a much more serious and heroic character once Max Allan Collins took over the writing. It didn't prevent him from being killed, mind you, but he did at least get into a relationship with Lizz in the months prior to his death.
Jerk Sue: There's no denying his honesty and courage, but Dick Tracy can be quite arrogant and brutal in his treatment of suspects - particularly when he waives their constitutional rights out of sheer spite.
Nightmare Fuel: the general freakish nature of most of Tracy's rogue gallery, where with the exception of the Breathless Mahoney (who designed the Blank costume/persona to wear so that she could go around killing people without anyone suspecting her), the costume designers went overboard to portray all of Tracy's villains as the grotesque looking freaks they were in the comics. Even Big Boy Caprice.
So many of the gangsters (Pruneface, Influence, and Steve the Tramp, to name just three) are so unbelievably ugly (courtesy of some truly pull-out-all-the-stops movie makeup) that the average 6- or 7-year-old's reaction is less likely to be "Hee-hee, they're funny-looking" to "Mommy, make the scary people go away...."
A surprisingly high body count for a PG-rated film, with seven men being killed in the first 10 minutes alone.
Lips Manlis pathetically begging for his life as cement slowly covers him.
Big Boy Caprice's lethal temper and chronic fondness for Kicking The Dog.
The final gun battle on the street, with Influence and Flattop shown getting shot in disturbing close-ups. ( Flattop's spasmodic death throes, his tommy gun firing wildly as his fingers lock on the trigger in a death grip, is virtually guaranteed to be the stuff of nightmares.)
Ethnic Scrappy: Joe-Jitsu and Go-Go Gomez in one of the animated series. Think about the worst way you could animate an Asian and a Mexican while still having them be good guys. That's about it.
