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"Look out— Here come de judge— Here come de judge! HAW HAW!"

Chick Tracts are short, evangelical comic books that primarily exist in the form of very small printed albums - small enough to easily fit into a wallet. However, most of the tracts are also available for free at the Chick Publications website: Chick.com.

The writing and the majority of the illustrations for the tracts were credited to Jack Chick. Chick was the epitome of a Reclusive Artist, turning down countless interview requests and refusing to allow his photo to be published. This led to major speculation over whether the name was a pseudonym, or even if Chick was a fictional persona.

Each tract tells a story. These stories handle all kinds of subjects, but they all have two things in common: They all have some direct or indirect connection to religion, and they all end in An Aesop about everyone needing to become a born-again Christian. Sometimes the entire story organically builds up to this Aesop; at other times, it can be more or less shoehorned in after the actual story is finished.

Villains in these stories are demons or misguided mortals. Demons range from Cthulhuish monstrosities that make the heroes facing them come across as epic fantasy heroes, to silly little imps that are mostly Played for Laughs. Mortal villains are very likely to make a Heel–Faith Turn due to Easy Evangelism. Those who do not convert invariably end up in Hell and so does everyone else, including those who are kind and selfless. Only a very particular kind of evangelical Christian gets to avoid eternal torture; everyone else is doomed no matter what. Most of the tracts appear to be set in the same world, though some take place in more obviously fantastic near-future dystopias. The baseline setting is Like Reality Unless Otherwise Noted, but even so soon becomes a world very different from Real Life and what most people, including most Christians, are used to. Such is The 'Verse of Chick Tracts:

  • Most adult citizens of the present-day USA have never heard about Jesus before, and get surprised when someone tells them. And on the off chance they DO know who Jesus is, they barely know anything about him.
  • Homosexuals, Freemasons, Wiccans, tabletop gamers, and readers of Harry Potter books are all possessed by demons.
  • Some atheists don't just worship demons — they are demons. Same goes for some record producers, specifically those whose labels make rock music (yes, even Christian rock).
  • The Ancient Conspiracy is everywhere. The world's most powerful scientific, religious, and political establishments are all fronts for it. The world is a very dangerous place indeed, and the Devil rules over us all.
  • A prime player in this worldwide Satanic conspiracy is the Roman Catholic Church, which in this setting is really a pagan Babylonian religion in disguise and bears the blame for pretty much every war and tragedy since its creation. Also, Islam is actually only a front organization for the Catholic Church, or at least started out that way.
  • Evolution is a religion, demanding faith and loyalty from its adherents and forbidding theism.
  • Noah actually saved the dinosaurs from the great flood, but due to death of all plant life, the air was too thin for them to breathe properly. They were soon hunted to extinction by humans.
  • Gravity may or may not be a real force. But it really doesn't matter, as Jesus is in complete control!
  • Secular and Islamic countries are bound to attack Israel and get slaughtered by Jesus.
  • The Authorized Version (or King James Version) of the Bible is the only modern version that God inspired. Nearly all other versions of the Bible are lies corrupted by humans, and/or Satan.
  • More positively, Chick tracts have no problem criticizing the antisemitism and racism displayed by many fundamentalist groups (though given his own crudely stereotypical portrayals of everyone, this makes him kind of a hypocrite).
  • People can only relate to other people of the same gender and ethnic group. Many best-selling tracts have been rewritten to change the characters to women, or to black people, or to [insert target demographic here]. All of these have a Jive Turkey feel to them.

In other words, this setting is a Dark Fantasy comparable to Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, although with less graphic violence (and with a bit of South Park thrown in). There are even a few recurring characters, like pencil-'stached Bible-thumper Bob Williams, and innocent, pigtailed schoolgirl Li'l Susy Barnes, who exist to deliver Easy Evangelism and present Chick's message in the most Anvilicious way possible. There's also an Ugly Cute dog (?) named Fang who shows up randomly, and has become the Ensemble Dark Horse of the series.

Unlike Games Workshop, however, the people behind chick.com seem to believe their own message. Some people insist that it must be some kind of parody, however information released after Chick's death makes this unlikely. In a rare interview, Chick stated he was completely serious. Honest or not, he did seem to make a lot of money from people who buy large quantities of his tracts with their own money and then hand them out free of charge to friends and random strangers in the hope that this act will eventually spare a few souls from the horrors of hell.

Meanwhile, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Chick's efforts inspired many parodies, and he was featured as the subject of the documentary, God's Cartoonist.

In addition, a live-action version of "Dark Dungeons" came out in August 2014. It's precisely as over-the-top and narmy as was expected. Also, two other Chick tracts, "The Sissy" and "Tiny Shoes," have been made into short animated films. Interestingly enough, the latter has Jack Chick credited as a few supporting roles, meaning it contains one of the few publicly available recordings of Chick's voice.

Chick Publications announced that on October 23, 2016, Jack died at the age of 92. They also began releasing more details about his life, confirming that he was indeed a real person, who grew up in Southern California, briefly pursued an acting career, served in the military, and became a born-again Christian after listening to a radio preacher. Chick's longtime assistant David W. Daniels has taken over the creation of the tracts. In 2017, Daniels published You Don't Know Jack: The Authorized Biography of Christian Cartoonist Jack T. Chick, which was really more of a personal reminiscence (and defense) of Chick than a straight biography, but notably featured several previously-unpublished photos of the man himself. In 2022, Chick's longtime collaborator, artist Fred Carter, passed away.


"We're gonna Trope, Trope, Trope, Trope with the TROPES!":

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    A to E 
  • Aborted Arc: The way Faith addresses the audience at the end of "First Bite" makes it look like Chick was planning to turn her into a recurring character (as a teen counterpart to Li'l Susy), but she never appeared again.note  "Here, Kitty Kitty" also feels like it was meant to be the start of a whole Peanuts-esque series with Miss Johnson and her students, but it never happened.
  • Abusive Parents:
    • Most infamously in "Lisa," but a running theme.
    • In "Unloved," Jimmy's parents are emotionally abusive, since they treat him like The Unfavorite and belittle him for not living up to his sister.
  • Acquired Error at the Printer: "Titanic" misspells "iceberg" as "iceburg" the first couple times.
  • Activist-Fundamentalist Antics: In The 'Verse of Chick Tracts, a real Christian would never resort to this kind of behavior. However, preachers of other faiths easily fall into this trope, thus proving the Christians to be superior. Oddly enough, there is an entire tract ("Why Didn't He Tell Us?") about preaching for Chick Tracts...
  • Adapted Out: "Humbug" completely omits the three ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, resulting in Marley being the only person Scrooge sees.
  • Aesop Collateral Damage: Played strangely, given that by the author's view of Christianity, no one is an innocent and everyone deserves to burn forever in hell if they don't accept Jesus, but expect to see lots of characters whose primary role is to die and end up in hell so another character can be horrified by their fate, accept Christ, and end up in heaven.
  • Affably Evil: The Grim Reaper is actually a remarkably pleasant fellow, all things considered.
  • Affectionate Parody: Some funny parodies have been done of Chick Tracts. A few examples: "Darkseid", "Who Will Be Eaten First?", "Why We're Here", and "Galactus Is Coming!"
    • Now with Ponies!
    • "God Hates The Scene." What would Eazy-E and Tupac do if they were alive to see all this pretentious Goth bullshit? They'd grab their gats and start rushing some pasty-ass tricks to the dirt, that's what.
  • Alcohol Hic: "Hard Times", "The Missing Day", and "Somebody Loves Me". In the latter two, a character thinks with an Alcohol Hic.
  • The Alcoholic: Several.
    • In "Happy Hour", Jerry ends up spending most of his family's money drinking, causes his wife to die after pushing her over during an argument over his drinking, and uses the grocery money on alcohol. Naturally, while his kids think that he should have died instead of their mother, they end up forgiving him and Christianity is what he needs to get over his alcoholism.
    • In "Tiny Shoes", Juan's alcoholism is the reason why he is unable to keep his promise to buy shoes for his son. After the saloon is destroyed by lightning, he decides to buy the shoes, but by then, Juanito has died of pneumonia after walking out in the rain to search for him.
    • In "Mad Machine," a father and a son go to a facility described to treat alcoholism. The father's told that he'll like it there, but he says that his son is the patient.
  • All Crimes Are Equal: Whether for murdering, stealing, or occasionally telling a small lie, you deserve to go to Hell if you don't accept Jesus — and conversely, you'll go to Heaven if you do. You still deserve Hell, but Jesus will forgive you if you ask his forgiveness.
  • All Myths Are True: They're all agents of Satan (except maybe the Grim Reaper), but a surprising number of mythological figures do exist in the Chick world. The Grim Reaper is practically a minor character, and magic, although Satanic, apparently does work (because of Satan).
    • "The Trick", one of Chick's first Halloween-themed tracts, accomplishes the mind-boggling feat of tying the two big moral panics of The '80s together. There really are secret covens of Satanists in suburbia, and kids really do get treats with razor blades and poison in them on Halloween — because the Satanists tamper with the candy to turn the kids into unwitting human sacrifices!
    • According to an anti-D&D article on his site, "the Necronomicon and the Cthulhu mythos are quite real".
  • All There in the Manual: Reading one or two Chick Tracts can sometimes lead to an unintended message being conveyed. Having a large collection to cross-reference (especially if it includes one of his tracts directed at already-saved Christians) tends to clarify the confusion. His company also publishes more in-depth books on some of the subjects touched upon in his tracts.
  • Almost Dead Guy: A lot of Chick's amoral characters always manage to see the error of their ways and convert to Christianity just like that when on the verge of death. In one instance, a character survives several grenades thrown at him at a church, and takes time to stagger out of the building, drive to someone else's house, and find peace in Jesus while dying in the arms of his friend.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Some of the atheist villains are not merely possessed by demons, THEY ARE demons. Also, Roman Catholics and Muslims are usually depicted as jerks if not outright villains in the tracts (though there are also exceptions).
  • Ambiguously Jewish: The wealthy, crooked managers and senior partners at Shyster & Shwindle in the "It's Who You Know" tract. If Jewish, they are also an example of the Greedy Jew trope.
  • Amoral Attorney: Attorney Douglas Rogers in "Busted!" prosecutes people without caring whether they're guilty, and likes "to see the accused squirm".
  • Anachronism Stew: The druids were so evil, they could culturally appropriate symbols across several thousand miles and several millennia. (One ancient group actually did borrow the ankh and used it in their own religion: Coptic Christians!)
  • Ancient Conspiracy:
  • And That's Terrible: Two examples from "Boo!": "Satanic human sacrifices are a slap in God's face," and "Halloween started in the British Isles with the Druids. Those guys were really spooky."
  • Anti-Anti-Christ: The vampire Antichrist becomes a Christian via Easy Evangelism.
  • Anti-Magic: Christians have this, being able to resist vampires, demons, Skinwalkers, and witches through faith in God.
  • Anti-Magical Faction: Due to all magic in this setting deriving from Satan, Christians are opposed to magic. A rare examples of the protagonists being one of these.
  • Armor-Piercing Question:
    • In "Sin City," Bob has two in rapid succession.
      Bob: Malcolm lovingly tried to warn homosexuals of God's judgment. So who committed the hate crime? Malcolm, or the guys who almost beat him to death? Tell me, Ray, of all the sins, lying, adultery, stealing etc., can you think of any other sin where God Himself wiped out entire cities to remove that sin?
      Ray: No... No I can't!
    • Another common one is asking people whether they've sinned. They will often bring up minor sins, such as lying, and Chick will point out that everyone has sinned, and are doomed to hell unless they repent and accept Jesus. "It's The Law" has a nice example of them.
      Bob: Have you ever told a lie?
      Teacher: Of course- Who hasn't?
      Bob: Ok, so what does that make you?
      Teacher: Gulp... a liar.
      Bob: You broke the 9th Commandment and God hates lies. Ever take home a paperclip from your classroom?
      Teacher: Umm... hmmm.
      Bob: So what does that make you?
      Teacher: Yeah... but... (sigh) a thief.
      Bob: So now you've admitted you're a lying thief. The 10 Commandments show us we are ALL guilty before God- We are ALL sinners.
    • In "The Bull," the eponymous character asks a chaplain who doesn't believe the Bible is the Word of God, "If you don't believe any of this, then why are you a chaplain?"
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: People who are Sikhs, Satanists, North Koreans, witches, atheists, and... archaeologists.note  The crimes against God in This Was Your Life include theft, whoremongering, and whispering.note 
  • Artistic License – History:
    • The Roman emperor Constantine the Great, not Saint Peter, is said to have been the first Pope. There was, in fact, a Pope Constantine, but he was neither the first Pope nor the Emperor of the same name. In this case, it may simply be a theological dispute than a case of willful ignorance: while Constantine was obviously never a pope, pretty much every non Catholic Christian also rejects the idea that Peter was either. Chick takes it a step further by claiming that the papacy is the successor to the Roman Emperor rather than the Apostles. He's still got his facts wrong, however.
    • In one of the tracts about the Catholic Church, Chick claims that Martin Luther read the Bible and discovered that the bread and wine of communion are only symbols, not the actual thing. While it is true that Martin Luther rejected the Catholic belief that bread and wine are transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus, he also made it quite clear that they were not mere symbols, instead urging followers to believe the body and blood are present and embrace it as a mystery beyond human understanding.
    • The "Boo" tract depicts the ancient Druids of the British Isles using pumpkin jack o'lanterns. Pumpkins are native to North America and so they would have been unknown to the ancient Druids (The Celtic precursor to the modern jack o'lantern is a carved turnip).
  • Artistic License – Linguistics: "Is Allah Like You?" has the Muslim protagonist realizing that the Qur'an has "meaningless words like Ssad and Quaf". "Ssad" and "Qaf" are Arabic letters, not words.
  • Artistic License – Religion: Oh, where to begin...
    • In Crazy Wolf, some Native Americans seek the help of a Skinwalker to get rid of a Christian missionary. Native Americans consider skinwalkers to be Evil Sorcerors required to perform an action to push them Beyond Redemption to gain their powers, and so would not want anything to do with them.
    • In The Death Cookie, we are told that the Egyptians had an equivalent of Mass which was used to worship Osiris, the sun god. Osiris was a god of the dead, not the sun (that's Ra), ordinary Egyptians were not allowed inside temples as the tract shows, and no such ritual existed.
    • In The Little Bride, a Muslim tries to convert little girls Becky and Tashana by making them recite the Shahada (the Muslim creed) in Arabic. The requirements of the shahada are that you have a proper understanding of what you say and are saying it sincerely, which someone tricked into saying it in a language they do not speak could not meet.
    • Boo! claims that Halloween is "the most sacred night of the year" for "witches and Satanists". Wiccans do not have a "most sacred night" and The Church Of Satan (the only branch with set holidays) regards the practitioner's birthday as the most important festival. Additionally, witchcraft and Satanism are often used interchangeably, when in reality followers of Wicca get on badly with Satanists.
    • The Traitor implies that Hindu deities have multiple limbs and heads, when in reality such images of deities are used to stretch the imagination beyond the earthly, not to accurately represent deities.
      • The tract also claims that Kali is the most powerful of the Hindu gods, when in reality she is not regarded as such in any branch except some sects of Tantrism, which is regarded as a disgusting heresy by mainstream Hinduism.
    • Many tracts claim that Halloween in the time of the Druids was a night of mass human sacrifice, but no sacrificial bodies found (dated by contents of stomach) were sacrificed in October, and there is no textual evidence for such a practice. Plus, it's been pointed out that if the Druids really had gone door-to-door every year and picked one victim from each household to sacrifice, they would've run out of people to sacrifice in a few short years.
    • Are Roman Catholics Christians? describes Baal as a Babylonian sun god who was a blueprint for Catholicism. Which is wrong from start to finish. Baal was a Canaanite storm, war, and fertility god whose worship was long dead by the time Catholicism originated. The tract also repeats the claim that Osiris was a sun god, when, as mentioned above, he was a god of the dead.
    • Dark Dungeons portrays the obviously teenage Debbie joining a Wiccan coven, when in reality you have to be an adult to join a coven, because some rituals are sexual in nature.
    • Satanists are frequently shown performing ritual human sacrifice, which no real Satanist group performs. Of course, these tracts are about the satanist cult so monolithic, widespread, and powerful that no-one has a shred of verifiable evidence for them.
    • Chick believes the Roman Catholic church is responsible for the creation of Islam, Communism, and Nazism. There is no historical evidence for any of the above.
  • Art-Style Dissonance: Some have noticed how Fred Carter's drawing style sometimes "suffers" from this; despite Jack's dismissive views on homosexuality, Fred's art ironically looks like he's channeling Tom of Finland with his burly, hairy, and muscular hunks who tend to wear either tight or revealing clothes.
  • Asshole Victim: While many people who end up going to Hell are relatively sympathetic, and the outcome is played for tragedy, there are many others who aren't at all sympathetic. For example, in "Here comes the Judge!", the eponymous judge is a corrupt man with deep ties to the equally corrupt governor, who's willing to murder and frame his enemies. When the judge himself becomes a liability and ends up being targeted, one of his former servants witnesses to him, but isn't too put out when the judge refuses.
  • As the Good Book Says...: Quoted very often — but only the King James Version (all other translations are allegedly the work of Satan himself, with the help of a massive Jesuit conspiracy, you see). Whether the quotes are presented with due regard to context is another question. A common one is quoting Luke 12:20 ("Thou fool, this night thy soul will be required of thee") whenever someone is doomed to go to Hell.
  • Author Filibuster: Quite often, a character will give a show-stopping lengthy speech on whatever the theme of the tract is.
  • Author Tract: ...In fact, Chick Tract.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Fairly often, Satan and his minions succeed in capturing a soul, reflecting Chick's belief that most people will go to hell. Though ultimately, of course, they still lose.
  • Badass Normal: The priest in "The Traitor" gets attacked by a bunch of demons and Kali, the Hindu death god and lives. Also, the girl in "First Bite" wards off (with Jesus's help of course) the vampire with zero effort, knocking him across the room.
  • Badass Preacher: One is shown in "No Fear?" kicking a door down to prevent someone from committing suicide and going to hell.
  • Based on a True Story: Some tracts have the disclaimer "This is a true story." This is always, in fact, a lie.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness:
    • Many characters who start as "evil" and get saved are drawn obese and hideous prior to their salvation, with their facial features emphasized to the point of caricature; after accepting Christ, they're depicted as much slimmer and more realistic.
    • Inverted in other strips; Chick's heroes tend to be "cute" children who tend to look somewhat creepy, whilst his villains are hideous. "Wounded Children" presents an odd inversion: the gay men, including the main character, are drawn very detailed, handsome, and attractive for the majority of the tract. The ex-homosexual and born-again Christian he meets that turns him from homosexuality is bearded, fat, and just plain ugly. The main character then becomes much less attractive when he converts.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Apparently, Freemasonry for Bob Williams, as the tract dealing with it, "Good Ol's Boys," is the one time where he's shown to lose his cool at the person he's trying to convert.
    • Non-Christian characters in Chick Tracts tend to react this way to other characters mentioning the Bible or Christianity, or revealing that they are Christian.
    • Apparently abortion for God, since "Who Murdered Clarice" is the only tract where He actually gets angry and yells at sinners instead of calmly condemning them.
    • The teacher in "Big Daddy?" instantly flies off the handle when one student announces that he doesn't believe in evolution.
    • In "Angels?", Lew Siffer gets angry when the Green Angels insist that they're Christians, and has a Villainous Breakdown when Tom seeks forgiveness for his sins.
  • Big Bad: It turns out that the Vatican is behind everything. Everything. And, of course, Satan is behind the Vatican.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Many of the Satanists seem like friendly people at first, but that's just a facade to lure in potential converts or pawns. The facade ends up slipping if the Satanist gets upset enough.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Several tracts feature the characters dying untimely and tragic deaths, but managing to get into heaven.
    • The tracts "Allah Had No Son" and "The Decieved" both end with Muslims converting to Christianity, resolving to witness others in the middle east, and reflecting that they'll likely be killed by their people for this.
  • Black-and-White Morality: All people in Chick tracts are divided into either Christians (i.e.: good, unless Roman Catholic) or non-Christians (i.e.: bound to Hell, unless they convert). Note that Chick's definition of "Christian" is (apparently) "US-style Evangelical Protestant".
    • It's frequently pointed out by riffers that despite His supposed omnipotence, Chick's interpretation of God actually appears to be bound by His own rules. God frequently mentions how much He hates having to send people to Hell, but nevertheless seems unable to make the qualifications for getting into Heaven more lenient.
  • The Blank: God's face is never shown, and he usually appears this way at the Last Judgment.
  • Blaxploitation: Yes, Jack Chick even tried his hand at this—"Soul Story".
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Everybody but born again Christians are damned to eternal torture, regardless of whether they were actually decent people or not. Join Jack's denomination, or God hates you.
  • Blunt "Yes": The typical response Chick's Christians have to anyone who asks whether a person has gone or will go to hell (in the latter case, often about themselves), although with the caveat "but you don't have to."
  • Bold Inflation: Jack Chick loves this style of writing. Entire lines can be bolded and/or italicized, and some words in those lines are emphasized further by being in all capitals.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: In "Wounded Children" (an Old Shame of his), Satan/a demon leads a boy to get into porno, have unsatisfying sex with girls, then go gay and have unsatisfying sex with guys. The boy considers suicide, but Satan/the demon suggests against that. Later, the boy gets saved straight. Satan/the demon could've just killed the boy/let him commit suicide, since sending people to Hell is what Satan's supposed to do, right?
  • Book Burning:
    • In "Angels?", a former rock band member preaches to a congregation advising them to "Burn anything you have associated with rock music. Then you'll be set free."
    • "Dark Dungeons" ends with a bonfire scene that had people burning their Dungeons & Dragons materials.
  • Book Ends:
    • "Fat Cats" begins with El Supremo and his staff, among them a Roman Catholic priest, talking about crushing the rebellion over dinner. It ends with Premier Carlos and his staff doing the same, showing that it's a Full-Circle Revolution.
    • "Big Daddy" begins and ends with similar lines, which also counts as a Meaningful Echo.
      Professor: (to a student on Page 4) You can Get Out! of MY class!! After you've apologized to everyone for your rudeness and ignorance, we MIGHT let you back in!
      Administrator: (to the professor on Page 21) WHAT!? Are you crazy? Get Out! of OUR university!! After you've apologized to everyone for your rudeness and ignorance, we MIGHT let you back in!
  • Bowdlerise: A few tracts have undergone this over the years:
    • In the original version of "The Poor Little Witch", the main character leaves alone despite the warnings and the threats to her life and gets murdered by the Satanists. In the modified version, she stays under the protection of Mrs. Grayson.
    • Similarly, the original version of "Titanic" has Chester uttering a profanity (covered by Symbol Swearing) after discovering a letter from an aunt begging him to become a Christian replaced by the expletive deleted entirely to read "That old Hen! She never leaves me alone!" Elsewhere, the sailor's initial exclamation upon spotting the iceberg is diluted from "My God! Iceberg dead ahead!" in the original to "Oh no! Iceberg dead ahead!" in the revised version.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Li'l Susy can easily be seen as incredibly annoying and petulant.
  • Bread and Circuses: It's implied that Satan uses sports and other things to distract people from faith.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • In one tract, Jack calls out the Jehovah's Witnesses on their absolute refusal to accept a blood transfusion. In fact, the consequences of doing so are the driving plot of the tract (the JWs convert in time to get the transfusion). But in another tract, the Mad Machine, Chick demonstrates an attitude towards modern psychiatry very similar to Hank Hill, and recommends that anybody who is having mental problems should simply pray to Jesus.
    • Another tract has a talentless kid sell his soul to the devil for incredible fame and basketball skills. The Fantastic Aesop is "don't sell your soul to the devil," except the end of the comic outright says the devil never had his soul. In other words, the kid traded nothing for ridiculous success.
    • The tracts try to encourage readers to live a morally upright life. However, the emphasis on salvation through faith alone, combined with the number of stories about horrible people accepting Jesus and being saved right before they die, makes it sound like living morally is merely optional.
  • Brutal Honesty: Typically exercised by the Christians over whether the unsaved have gone to hell. Oscar in "The Slugger" mentions that "a real friend had the guts to tell (him he) was a sinner on (his) way to hell." Oscar himself has the guts to tell his boss, a famous baseball player, that he's nothing without Christ, and that he'll go to Hell if he doesn't convert.
  • Butt-Monkey: Bruce in "Fallen." He's apparently a Jerkass, and comes off as quite rude, but what exactly he did to deserve being dumped by his friends with his mother's purse, and have his neck broken by Frankie is unclear. The main character in "Unloved" has also been one his entire life.
  • Cain and Abel: Apart from the Trope Namer, "The Poor Revolutionist" has Paul and Jimmy. The former is a revolutionist who's willing to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on his brother, who tries in vain to witness to him. When Jimmy is about to be hanged, Paul smugly tells him he was a fool to oppose the revolution.
  • Calling Parents by Their Name: In "Born Wild," Connie's son disrespectfully calls her by name. When he switches to calling her "Mom" after accepting Jesus, she's rather dismayed.
  • Captain Ersatz: Tony Stiletto is very clearly Vito Corleone. That's right; Chick saved the Godfather.
  • Captain Obvious:
    • Jack Chick's "Alberto" found it necessary to fill the thing with helpful definitions of complex words, like "deacon", and "sacraments" and "Dominicans". And "deny", "documents", and "intense". And "stone". He seriously found it necessary to tell us all what a stone is, while leaving terms like "extreme unction", "nihil obstat", and "concordat" undefined. It turns out it's actually subverted, however: he fails to define stone correctly.
    • The inspector in "It's Not Your Fault" reacts to the news that a 7-year-old child at a foster home committed suicide by saying "That's a red flag!"
    • Lance can't muster any better reaction to his eternal torment as he burns in Hell in "No Fear?" than to yell "I'm burning!".
    • "Payback" has this commentary about Queen Jezebel's Family-Unfriendly Death (emphasis not added).
      "When the dogs were finished with Jezebel, not much was left. It was pretty gross."
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Satan and his demons. No Freudian Excuse for these guys; they know that God is right and drive you away from him anyway, purely For the Evulz. Satan is also sometimes seen filling the role Judaism has him in, as God's "devil's advocate."
    • Also most of the villainous human characters. If Jack Chick does not want you to sympathize with a character, you can expect that character to be an over-the-top caricature of unpleasantness with no motivation for their actions beyond the joy of being nasty.
  • Cassandra Truth: In "Fat Cats", a Christian informs his son-in-law that the revolutionary he intends to join will not only be as bad as the dictator he is fighting, but will kill him to secure his power and thus send him to hell. The poor man doesn't live to be proven right, as he is murdered by one of the revolutionary's advisors.
  • Cat/Dog Dichotomy: There's an unnamed cat who occasionally pops up as a nemesis for Fang.
  • Cats Are Mean: Inverted - "Trust Me" portrays dogs as mangy jerkasses, and cats as misplaced, innocent creatures, a kind of Animal Reaction Shot Author Avatar Empathic Environment.
  • Catchphrase:
    "Depart from me, ye cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!"
  • Categorism as a Phobia: While most tracts portray negative feelings against Christians as a matter of ignorance, bigotry and believing the lies of demons, some characters are portrayed as having a phobia against Christians. When it comes to the demons in this setting, the fact that almost all of them are terrified of Christians does not count as a phobia, since this fear is completely rational.
  • Category Traitor: Chick implies that all Christians who disagree with him on certain religious matters- especially Catholics- are this. Similarly, he believes that the Catholics see the "real" Christians as this.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: In "The Poor Little Witch," Mrs. White drives Mandy by a Gospel Hall and warns her about a "traitor" named Mrs. Grayson. At the end, Mandy, desperate to find salvation from Mrs. White's cult, remembers this and goes to Mrs. Grayson.
  • Chewing the Scenery: Scrooge in "Humbug", when he goes on a rant about how humans are terrible creatures, and ends up quoting the Bible in the process. A few others do this at various points.
  • Children Are Innocent: Despite vehemently insisting that one must accept Christ to miss Hell, Chick makes one exception - “Little Children”.
  • Christian Fiction: Very much so, if not to the delight of all Christians.
  • Christianity Is Catholic: Does it really need to be explained how it's Averted, Inverted and Subverted? The fact that there's a tract titled "Are Roman Catholics Christians?" (to which the answer is a resounding "No") is effective indication of how firmly this is averted.
  • Christmas Episode: "Holy Night".
  • The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes "The Mad Machine" shows all sorts of experts whose knowledge does little to solve their own problems. Von Koffenheimer, a renowned expert in the world of finance, says he's not sure what to do, and then is told to consult himself, in a manner similar to the "I am Pagliacci" joke mentioned in Watchmen. Similarly, Dr. Hyde, a therapist, is apparently Driven to Suicide because of his own problems.
  • Les Collaborateurs: Paul in "The Last Generation". Overlaps with Et Tu, Brute?, as he is Connie's brother.
  • Compressed Adaptation: The "Humbug" tract, which is Chick's adaptation of A Christmas Carol, omits several of the ghosts that appear in the source story, presumably due to lack of space.
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Li'l Susy's mother died when she was born and her father died of a heart attack.
  • Conspiracy Kitchen Sink: The Vatican is secretly a satanic cult responsible for both world wars, the Holocaust, the assassinations of JFK and Abraham Lincoln, Mormonism, Nazism, Islam, Communism, Jehovah`s witnesses and Chick Tracts being removed from Protestant bookstores. And satanists rule the world as well. It`s actually the druids, who are using rock music to corrupt the youth. How Chick juggled these contradictory claims is unknown.note 
  • Contrived Coincidence: In "Gomez is Coming," Ricky randomly fires a gun into a crowd in a drive-by shooting, injuring two and killing one. The person he killed just so happened to be Luis Gomez, the younger brother of infamous gang member Carlos "The Butcher" Gomez, and Gomez happens to be about to be released from prison. Somewhat less contrived is the chaplain managing to convert Gomez the night before his release, since it's possible that he knew that Gomez would be affected by Luis's death, but it's still amazing that he managed to succeed.
  • Cool Old Guy: Many protagonists are grandfatherly old men, possibly as insertions of the elderly Chick himself.
  • Corporal Punishment: In "Bad Bob!", the titular character's mom asks a child guidance counselor if she should spank him, but he says not to do that as it would ruin his personality (kind of a moot point since he's a selfish brat) and destroy his creativity.
  • Corrupt Church:
  • Corrupt Politician: A handful of tracts, such as "The Bull" and "Here Comes the Judge", include such characters, usually being state governors, as one of the villains.
  • Crapsack World: Present in many of his works, in various versions, culminating in the "End Times" stories where the world is ruled by the Antichrist as a sort of Satanic Communist totalitarian dictatorship. However, there's always one way out of it: (Jesus).
  • Creepy Catholicism: As mentioned elsewhere, the Roman Catholic Church is depicted as a Satanically-inspired false religion all part of an Ancient Conspiracy.
  • Creepy Child: Li'l Susy, but more generally, many of his portrayals of kids (even as heroes) can fall into the Uncanny Valley eventually.
  • Crisis of Faith: The character Roberto has a brief one at the end of "Evil Eyes", after his attempts to preach to followers of Santería see him driven out of town. He wonders why God sent him there if he wouldn't end up reaching anyone, only to learn on the bus out that he saved the priest of the town.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Fairly common for martyrs; the unsaved, at worst, typically get a relatively quick if undignified death.
    • In Alberto Rivera's comic, he recalls the story of how one martyr was put on a rack, with a rough cloth slowly forced down her throat and torn out, before being burned at the stake.
    • In "Fat Cats", Juan's family is necklaced.
    • In "Satan Comes To Salem," it's pointed out that the hanged Salem witches "took several minutes to strangle to death".
    • In "The Last Generation", the grandfather that is captured for being Christian is tortured with pain-increasing microchips in an attempt to get him to renounce his faith. When it doesn't end up working, one of the workers is told to dispose of "it", or use it for food.
  • Cruel Twist Ending: "The Letter" ends with this. Mildred had a dream about her best friend Francis, going to hell, and writing her a letter condemning her for not witnessing her. Mildred wakes up and realizes it was All Just a Dream, and resolves to tell her friend about Jesus the next Monday. But when she calls she finds out that Francis died on Saturday.
  • Cultural Translation: "This Was Your Life" has a ton of this in its various different-language versions. Besides the art style of the tract being different in certain translations, the tract in Chinese and Slovak has some subtle, and not so subtle differences from the English version. Heck, the English-African one has a peeping scene that isn't even included in the others.
  • Culture Blind:
    • It's hard to believe that the adults who grew up in the United States and are the target of his Easy Evangelism have never even heard of Jesus or basic Christian beliefs. Then again, the fact that significant percentages of the US population in real life literally believe the Earth is flat makes it hard to consider almost any sort of ignorance implausible.
    • In one tract, a US Christian lectures a Muslim on the "history" of Islam.
  • Cure Your Gays: In addition to the infamous "Wounded Children," the idea is also presented in Sin City and "Uninvited." The latter tract also states that being molested makes you gay (unless you find Jesus). But note also that none of the "saved" gays are shown to become heterosexual.
  • Curiosity Causes Conversion: Once anyone hears of Jesus.
  • Deal with the Devil: Occurs in "The Contract" and "Angels?" among others. But it's almost invariably subverted. Firstly, if you're not a Christiannote  the Devil will get you when you die, no matter what—he doesn't need a contract. And secondly, if you do become a Christian, Jesus will save you and no contract can stop him. So why does the Devil keep signing those deals? Not generally answered, but possibly it's to convince people they're hopelessly lost so they won't become Christians.
  • Death by Childbirth: Li'l Susy's mother.
  • Demonic Possession: A lot of non-Christians. Some actually are demons in disguise.
  • Demoted to Extra: When you hear that "The Little Bride" is a tract about Islam starring Li'l Susy, you assume it's going to feature Ms. Henn forcing her class to read the Quran or something like that. Instead, she only appears in the first panel and seems oddly cheerful and pleasant.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: "When we sin, we're called sinners."//
  • Depending on the Artist: Chick's had anonymous artists illustrate for him from time to time, though one, the talented Fred Carter, has actually become fairly well known to outsiders. Compare: Chick's artwork. Fred Carter's artwork. David W. Daniels's artwork.
    • Particularly in his later years, the quality of Chick's own artwork could vary widely in a single tract. In "The Nervous Witch," Holly looks different in practically every single panel.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Among the specific examples of her sins, the bad girl in "You Have a Date" is strongly implied to have had lesbian liaisons in college, though she has also been married to (at least) two men.
  • Depraved Homosexual: In the Jack Chick universe, being a homosexual is apparently synonymous with being a drifting, shamelessly promiscuous swinger unable to form any kind of commitment. The only reason any of them seek government recognition for gay marriage is that they know it'll upset Christians (and God). In addition, they feel that using the word "queer" is a sign of insanity and that anyone who disagrees with their agenda should be sent to prison.
  • Description Cut:
    • In "Born Wild!" Connie mourns the death of her brother Jerry. The next panels reveal that he was stealing from the mob before they murdered him, and had no friends.
    • In "The Gun Slinger", after Terrible Tom is hanged.
    Sheriff: At last! Terrible Tom got exactly what he deserved!
    Minutes Later in Heaven
    God: Welcome home, my son.
  • Deus Angst Machina: Particular the case in this tract.
    "I'm UNWANTED, UNLOVED, DISOWNED... and the doctor says I'm dying of CANCER!"
  • Deus ex machina: Happens often, since the whole point of the tracts is basically "God will make everything better if you pray to him." Most notable in The Last Generation, where the rapture happens just as the door is bashed down by the villains.
  • Devil in Disguise: Several times (for example, Somebody Goofed). A person is considering accepting Jesus, but a friend convinces him not to—"you'll lose all your friends" or "you have plenty of time for that later". The person dies unsaved, goes to hell, and sees who his "friend" was all along.
  • Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: The Devil in "First Bite" makes a false prophecy to a group of vampires because, as he says, "I Lied! It's What I Do!" Except that this false prophecy directly leads to many of them being saved, which is usually the opposite of what he does. The way it's presented, however, it does seem he intended to make his prophecy to come true, and then claimed to have lied to save face when he failed. Of course, this is very in-character for the Father of Lies.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: According to this tract, dragons were renamed dinosaurs in 1841.
  • Dirty Communists / The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: "Fat Cats" and "The Poor Revolutionist".
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Plenty of it (mainly from God himself).
    • In "Fairy Tales?" after learning a horrifying truth, a child (Harry Garner) goes on a killing spree, burning down his school and eventually becoming the FBI's most wanted fugitive who is then arrested, tried, executed, and sent to Hell. What was the truth so dreadful it drove this child to kill? The fact that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and Easter Bunny aren't real.
    • Another case of this trope comes from "The Last Generation" mentioned below. It's mentioned that Larry's mom told him to go to bed immediately. What happened? She got put in a concentration camp for child abuse.
    • A historical version of it here. Apparently, all of our problems come solely from Abraham slighting Ishmael by driving him out over teasing a kid.
    • Multiple tracts (including "Big Daddy?" and "Moving On Up!") claim that the punishment for being an evolutionist instead of a young Earth theorist is burning in the Lake of Fire for the rest of eternity. It should be noted that, mostly because it was written before the idea of evolution was ever a thing, this bold claim is nowhere to be found in the Bible.
    • Some readers might think it harsh that incorrect theologies more generally will damn even sincere Christian believers. "Reverend Wonderful" features an example, a Protestant minister who is perhaps a little too full of himself, but never does anything overtly villainous, let alone criminal. He is condemned, not even for his pride, but because he did not put sufficient emphasis on justification by faith alone in his preaching.
    • The tract "Sin Busters" opens with a man being arrested (and being beaten by the cops) for...posting the Ten Commandments on a public school bulletin board. Worth noting is that just below the steps where the man who posted the Ten Commandments was being taken into custody is a drug deal where the dealer mentions having picked up 10 kilos of what is strongly implied to be cocaine from Colombia.
  • Dolled-Up Installment: "The Slugger" has been recycled several times, swapping out the first few panels and changing the dialogue (including the name of the star and his servant) to make it apply to sports other than baseball.
  • Don't Fear the Reaper: The Grim Reaper is a nice guy even when he causes expiration.
  • Double Standard: Occurs often with regards to the matter of whether or not people of the past should be judged by the same values as those of the present. Someone from the past whom Chick doesn't like does something morally-questionable by today's standards, for instance, Muhammad marrying an (allegedly) underage girl? He's a sick freak who nobody in their right mind should follow and probably worships The Devil. One of the good guys from the Bible does something morally-questionable by today's standards, for instance, the fate of the Amalekites or Daniel's accusers? A glorious victory for the forces of good, and the jackasses brought it on themselves anyway.
    • Several tracts tell us that even the worst murderers can still go to heaven, as long as they accept Jesus as their saviour. Homosexuals, however need to stop being homosexuals as well as accept Jesus to be saved.
    • Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: Jack Chick apparently believed that defending yourself against an attempt of gay rape would be an act of intolerance in the eyes of most of society. See the tract "Home Alone?".
  • Doublethink: In this Verse, Fundamentalist Christianity is not only true, but a very obvious truth. Some characters who understand this at heart still choose not to believe in it, instead embracing whatever false teachings that will be good for their career and social life. In some cases this is merely playing along with the lies, but in others they appear to honestly believe in them. Also, several tracts have people openly acknowledging that they are following "false gods."
  • Dragged Off to Hell: Varies between an angel carrying it out on God's orders and one or more demons doing it themselves.
  • Dramatic Irony: One tract alternates between a Roman Catholic man's funeral, in which the priest says he's' going to Heaven, and God sending him to Hell.
  • Dramatically Missing the Point:
    • A lot of people who reject the conversions don't get what the Christian who's witnessing to them is trying to express. For example, the sheriff in "Gun Slinger," assumes he's too good to go to Hell. In reality, the point of the tract is that it doesn't matter whether you're a good or bad person as long as you accept Jesus and repent of your sins; a notorious outlaw who'd repented of his sins before being executed goes to heaven, while the sheriff goes to hell.
    • Subverted in "Ransom." Bonnie, who's just learned that her sister and brother-in-law have no intention of paying her ransom, initially sounds like she needs a reality check when she says that she's already been ransomed, but then launches into a metaphor about Jesus paying the "ransom" for mankind's sins that ends up converting her kidnappers.
  • The Dreaded: The witches and Satanists fear Mr. Williams, since they know he has God on his side and can exorcize their demons.
  • Driven to Suicide: "Dark Dungeons: The Movie!" among others.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him:
    • People who reject the offer to convert are often killed off in short order by a fairly sudden or improbable cause of death (such as Charlie Connors in "Hi There!" falling from a girder and getting impaled, or the main character's cousin being killed by a falling tree in "The Contract"), or the nameless kid getting hit by a train after Satan encourages him to drive over railroad tracks while a train is bearing down on him in Somebody Goofed.
    • Sometimes people who accept the offer get the treatment: (Crazy Wolf is told by God he made it by the skin of his teeth), other times those considering it are killed before making up their minds, meaning they go to Hell. In both cases, the Aesop usually demands that the character's death and arrival in the afterlife make it into the story somehow, and the death is used to remind readers that they can't put off accepting Jesus.
  • Dub Name Change: Whenever Chick Tracts are done in other languages, the names are changed to names common in that language.
  • Dwindling Party:
    • In "The Last Generation," one of the Christians stays behind and is arrested, another betrays them, and the last two are Raptured away.
    • In "Four Angels", three of the four brothers fall from Grace over the years and end up going to Hell. Only Charlie makes it to Heaven.
  • Dystopia: "The Last Generation," complete with an oppressive government regime that teaches animal sacrifices in school, and evil little children who snitch on their parents.
  • Earth Is Young: Chick typically use straight Type B: Scientists are evil, and need to be cured of their heresy by the power of Easy Evangelism.
  • Easily Forgiven:
    • Quite a few people who change their ways upon being converted, especially abusive parents or spouses (Ahmed in "Is Allah Like You?", Roy Davis in "The Secret", and Henry Walker in "Lisa").
    • Surprisingly, initially averted in Happy Hour. After pushing his wife down and indirectly causing her death of a heart attack, and later spending the grocery money on liquor, Jerry tries to apologize to his children, but his children will have none of it until they go to church and learn the value of forgiveness, forgiving him two panels after the previous incident.
    • Eric in Baby Talk, who breaks up with his pregnant girlfriend, leaving her to either get an abortion or raise the baby alone. Granted, he recognizes his mistake and tries to fix it, but she doesn't seem angry at him at any point, and apparently takes him back.
  • Easy Evangelism: This is extremely common in Chick's tracks. People can go from staunchly anti-Christian beliefs to devout believers with a few minutes of conversation with a Chick-like Christian. Averted in many cases when this fails, but when this succeeds, it doesn't need much effort.
    • This one even shows an apparent vampiric anti-Christ get converted to Christianity.
    • Downplayed in this tract. While the Freemason Robbie accepts Jesus at the urging of his friend Bob, he still wasn't entirely sure that a church with a Masonic Pastor should be avoided.
    John: "[My church's pastor being a Mason] makes no difference ..."
    Robbie: "It does to me ... right, Bob?"
  • Easy Road to Hell: Simultaneously played straight and inverted: everyone is going to hell for the slightest, and least objectionable, of sins. However all you have to do is accept Fundamentalist Protestantism and you'll spend eternity in heaven.
  • Eldritch Abomination: God. He is a Time Abyss that is all powerful and will send all of us to an eternity of torment for believing in the wrong religion or the wrong sect of the right religion.
  • Empathic Environment: Skies gray and clear for sin and redemption, respectively.
  • Emphasize EVERYTHING: Chick uses bolds and caps a LOT, when he wants characters to make something particularly clear; that is, when they're not shouting.
  • Enfant Terrible:
    • Harry Garner in "Fairy Tales?"
    • Bobby in "The Last Generation", who enthusiastically talks about animal sacrifices, disrespects and threatens his parents, and even turns in his own grandfather for a reward.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas
    • Leroy Brown in "Soul Story" loves his mother, and eventually takes her advice to convert to heart.
    • In "Good Ol' Boys", the Shining Path leader praises the pastor's wife as being like his mother by virtue of being courageous.
    • Downplayed in "The Execution." Sonny treats his mother with contempt, but is horrified to learn that she was hanged in his place.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: This quote from one of the druggies in "Bad Bob".
    Bob's the best connection we've ever had. He can get us acid, smack, dust, coke, speed and black beauties. It's too bad he's such a sleaze.
  • Everybody Hates Hades: Averted. The Grim Reaper is the only genuinely nice person in any of the tracts.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Crashed cars tend to explode.
  • The Everyman: The protagonist of "This Was Your Life," an unnamed chap who is obviously meant to be an Audience Surrogate.
  • Evil Laugh: HAW HAW HAW
  • Evilutionary Biologist: All of them.
  • Evil Is Petty: It's pointed out in several instances that the devil knows that he will lose against God and be cast into the lake of Fire, and all he wants is to take people with him.
  • Expospeak: Quite a bit of it. Arguably justified, since after all these are unashamedly Author Tracts.
  • Eyepatch of Power: George, the former tough judge in "The Last Judge" wears a patch, but the only explanation for why is his mention of an "accident". Then, inexplicably, he returns in later tracts as Li'l Susy's grandfather.
    F to M 
  • Face Death with Dignity: The saved Christians die with more dignity than those who end up going to Hell.
  • Face–Heel Turn: Occasionally, Christians fall from grace, like three of the four brothers in "Four Angels?", Harry (only briefly mentioned) in "The Poor Revolutionist", and Paul in "The Last Generation".
  • The Faceless: God's head is silhouetted by brilliant light, making it impossible to see His face.
  • Failed Future Forecast: Chick had... interesting ideas about how the Cold War would turn out, some of them bordering on Insane Troll Logic (The Soviet Union invading Israel under orders of the Pope? WHAAAAA?!) After the fall of the Soviet Union, tracts containing these bizarre theories were re-issued with them clumsily edited out.
  • Fan Film: Hot Chicks, here, here, and here. Since some of the above have been removed, Hot Chicks 1-5 can be found here: 1 2 3 4 5
  • Fan Flattering: Those who read the tracts and agree with them go to heaven. All Christians who disagree with the tracts (most Christians), as well as all non-Christians, go to hell.
  • Fantastic Aesop: At least one tract has the aesop of "don't sell your soul to the devil." Which is a little hard to do anyway.
  • Fantastic Slurs: In at least some stories, witches and neo-pagans use the weird-sounding slur "muggle" to refer to ordinary people who are not into occultism.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Aside from God, Satan, angels, demons and witches, the tracts also have a Skinwalker, a coven of vampires and the Grim Reaper.
  • Fat Bastard: Reverend Chuckwyn/Smiley (depending on which edition you read), the leader of the Corrupt Church in "The Poor Little Witch", is noticeably rotund. But he looks too much like John Candy to be taken seriously as a villain.
  • Fear Is the Appropriate Response: Used twice in "War Zone." One student tells a nervous transfer student that he should be scared, since Westmont is a terrible school. Randy tells Moose that he should be scared after reading the tracts, since if he dies, he'll go to Hell.
  • Felony Misdemeanor: Apart from the straight examples it is also inverted when portraying the reactions of the friends and family of the newly converted. And apparently, learning that a Christian is praying for them acts as a Berserk Button for non-Christians. As noted earlier, even Satan occasionally screws up. In this case, he was probably planning to have his character commit some more "spectacular wickedness" (as Screwtape would put it) and corrupt the people around him before harvesting his soul. And of course, according to Chick, trying to witness to others often gets you sued, prosecuted or killed.
  • Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: The non-Christians do this quite often. They feel insulted, threatened, even oppressed... not by how the Christians treat them, but by their very existence.
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell: Hell in the tracts is like this. And whoever doesn't believe in it (or believes it isn't fire and brimstone) will end up there, also when they were Christians.
  • Fix Fic: The tracts have become a magnet for Remix Comics and Fix Fic of this sort, thanks to their endemic research failures. Most of them completely change the worldview espoused by the comic.
  • Flat-Earth Atheist: Every atheist on the planet, according to Jack Chick. Of special notes are the atheist who are visited by devils. It's probably intended to come off as the whispers of the devil putting thoughts in their minds, but some panels really show the atheist facing the demons and having what looks like a conversation with them.
  • Flatline: Alice's EKG flatlines after the doctors unsuccessfully try to defibrillate her.
  • Flowery Elizabethan English: God consistently uses the same old-fashioned manners of speech as the KJV, the only translation Jack Chick accepts. The word "saviour" is consistently spelled with a U, even outside of Bible quotes, presumably because it's done that way in the KJV.
  • Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Heaven is depicted this way: as a city on clouds, where everyone walks around in white garments and praises God (or judges the newly dead with Him) the whole day.
  • Footnote Fever: Chick Tracts sometimes have as much space devoted to footnotes as to the tracts themselves. Usually, they are Bible references or references to books Chick has published.
  • For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: A demon in this tract.
  • For the Evulz: Aside from the protagonist of any given tract, supporting characters with a viewpoint that opposes Chick's are quite often very happily aware that their religion, belief, etc. has been planted by the Devil. More often than not these characters are intentionally out to inflict some form of harm on the other characters of the tract. (In several cases, the supporting characters are flat-out demons in disguise.) It's also implied that the upper echelons of the Catholic Church (at least, the Chickverse Catholic Church) are fully aware they serve Satan and just don't care because they believe he'll reward them in the afterlife.
  • Fractured Fairy Tale: As discussed here Chick's Halloween tracts are a dark form of this, blurring the lines between literal monsters Chick believes in (such as vampires and demons) and harmless Halloween trappings- a man dressed like Satan talks like him, demons pass off their appearances as costumes and pop culture figures appear both in haunted house decorations and a vampiric coven.
  • The Freelance Shame Squad: Famously in "This Was Your Life," the recently deceased main character is surprised to be welcomed into the afterlife with a movie of everything he has ever done played on a big screen in front of God, the angels, and every single person in heaven to be judged. He is mortified and then gets sent to Hell.
  • Full-Circle Revolution: This is what ends up happening in "Fat Cats". The revolutionists either got corrupted by power, or else they were Straw Hypocrites all along; in either case, the only difference between the old corrupt regime and the new one they replace it with turns out to be the uniforms they wear.
  • Funny Background Event: Somewhat frequently, often involving Fang. Sometimes, there are Funny Foreground Events, too.
  • Gender Flip: Take "This Was Your Life", replace the damned soul with a woman, update the wording a bit, and you get "You Have A Date".
  • Go Out with a Smile: Cathy.
    Doctor: She's gone... but look at her beautiful smile.
  • A God Am I: Declared by a child after learning about "evolution".
  • Good Angel, Bad Angel: More precisely, demons causing all sorts of human evils, from homosexuality to suicide to Freemasonry. When angels appear, they pull minor pranks like tripping people and give them seemingly irrelevant directions (such as, "You're going to wash your hair"), but all for the cause of saving souls.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Satan tends to get the lion's share of the action in most stories, always working to corrupt people. God rarely shows up except at the end to render final judgment, with a few exceptions. On the other hand, the angels sometimes show up to counter Satan and his demons, presumably on assignment from God. (Also, an occasional miracle in answer to a prayer may be coming more directly from God.)
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: In "Happy Hour," Jerry's daughter Janice breaks the bottles of alcohol he bought with the money a neighbor had given him to buy groceries. When Jerry confronts Janice, she threatens to "cut" him with the bottle if he hurts her.
  • The Grim Reaper:
    • Also "Busted", in which he escorts the prosecutor to hell, and even tells him that it's almost time when he prepares to leave work for the last time.
  • Halloween Episode: Chick published a whole bunch of Halloween-themed tracts.
    • "Boo!" It's Satan's birthdaynote  so he's liable to crash your party while wielding a chainsaw and wearing a pumpkin on his head. Surprise!
    "I hate you! And I hate your lousy birthday!"
    • Also, as noted below, "The Devil's Night" explains the "true" origins of Halloween in a massive case of research failure.
  • Hanging Judge: "Here Comes the Judge" focuses on Judge Shelton Barnstead (who doubles as a Corrupt Politician); who after framing the wife of a private eye investigating some of Barnstead's corrupt dealings for murder and convicting her in a Kangaroo Court says he's "mercifully" sentencing the woman to 40 years.
  • Happily Adopted: In "Adopted," Sharon's friend was given up for adoption when her biological mother realizes she couldn't take care of her. Sharon doesn't hold it against her, since she's grateful to have found a family that would love her, and even uses it as a metaphor for her relationship with Jesus.
  • Hard Truth Aesop: From a Christian's point of view; oftentimes, some of the tracts deliver messages that can be hard to swallow even for them.
    • For one, even if you have lived a good moral lifestyle as a person, that does not mean you will win God's favor and get in to Heaven.
    • The tract Four Angels? gives the message that some, especially your siblings, would not be genuinely changed and it would be just for show, nothing else. While Henry is saved and thus reformed, the other three brothers of his are not.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: Chick often explains and illustrates the doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Notably in "Flight 144", a humanitarian couple is sentenced to hell because they trust their good works more than Jesus' sacrifice.
  • Hearing Voices: In "Kidnapped!"
  • Heavy Meta: In "Angels?" the title rock band sings an anthem with the lyrics, "We're gonna Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock with the ROCK!"
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: Some people, like Charles Bishop in "The Assignment" and Bruce in "Fallen"note  die while considering conversion (and procrastinating), and go to Hell as a result.
    • Defied in "The Chaplain". An evangelical army chaplain called The Preacher threw himself on a grenade to save the life of a soldier who was receptive to Christianity but hadn't accepted Jesus yet. Sure enough, that soldier converted shortly after that encounter.
  • Heel–Faith Turn: Constantly, the sinners get converted to Jack's definition of what a Christian is, and thus, by extension, become good guys.
  • Heel Realization: Quite a few of the soon-to-be-converted undergo this, especially those Chick believes are responsible for enabling sinful behavior. Kelli in "Payback!" realizes that what she did to the old man she was nursing was essentially the same thing that Ahab and Jezebel did to Naboth, even calling herself "a Jezebel".
  • He Knows Too Much: In "The Thief," the burglar plans on killing the Christian homeowner, not wanting to let a witness to his crimes live.
  • Hell of a Heaven: If your loved ones don't convert you'll be in Heaven all alone so convert everyone you know today! It only twists the knife further because if you don't, you have to watch as your loved ones are judged by God and sent to the lake of fire to burn for eternity.
  • A Hell of a Time: According to "No Fear?", millions of people have been told that Hell will be a wild, endless party. Of course, when people end up there, they find out it's really anything but. ("All parties cancelled due to fire.")
  • Hellevator: One appears at the end of "A Demon's Nightmare", operated by a demon wearing a Hazmat Suit.
  • Hell Seeker: Some tracts feature Straw Loser characters who believe that hell is cool. They are, of course, soon taught the error of their ways.
  • Henpecked Husband: Tim B. Dobbs in "The Assignment"; as seen when his wife successfully intimidates him into not witnessing to his boss, Charles Bishop.
  • Heteronormative Crusader: Several tracts are about homosexuals being possessed by demons or generically evil. Sometimes fetish clothes and BDSM tools are used to show just how evil the gays are. Heterosexual BDSM and sodomy has not yet gotten any mention. One of the strongest examples is the tract called Uninvited: The tract feature a nurse who harasses dying AIDS-patients for their "crime" of being gay. Of course, her actions are fully justified within the verse of the tract, since this is an anviliciously bigoted Author Tract. The real kick? It turns out that all the homosexuals became homosexuals because they were sexually molested as children. More to the point, when a child gets sexually molested, she automatically becomes unclean, possessed by a demon of defilement. The trope Defiled Forever is played straight for everyone who isn't both The Fundamentalist and a Christian. Averted for all characters who are (or become) Holier Than Thou.
  • Hollywood Heart Attack: There are many cases of people dying with heart attacks, in Chick Tracts, it's always accompanied with a "YAAAAAH!!" just like every other deaths.
  • Hollywood Satanism: Chick exploited the Satanic Panic with every example of this you could think of. For one thing, he always conflates witchcraft and Satanism. And there are secret covens all over, often using things like Dungeons & Dragons and non-Fundamentalist Christian churches as fronts. And they use candles and pentagrams, cast spells (that always work, because Satan's doing their bidding) and even engage in Human Sacrifice. And since religions like Catholicism and Islam ultimately spring from Satan, they also get portrayed this way. And unusually for this trope, Jack Chick does actually believe all this.
  • Humans Are Bastards: The tracts tend to ping-pong back and forth on this in a bizarre way. Some use it straight, citing the doctrine of Original Sin, but in others it seems as though the only reason humans do anything evil at all is due to the influence of demons.
  • I Control My Minions Through...: Fear, in the case of the Devil and his minions.
    • In "The Death Cookie", the main character and his advisor gain power by convincing everyone that the Communion wafer is a god and that anyone who doesn't eat it must die. Discussed in the following exchange
      "How could I gain control of all these people without an army?
      "It's simple. Make them believe their immortal souls are in your hands. If you can make a man believe that you have the power to put him into Hell... He'll do anything you ask to save his skin."
    • "The Hunter" has the devils' drug operation be a mix of Fear and Material Benefits. "The Master" tells his minions to get their human slaves to get him some souls, and one demon threatens to have the human leader of the drug conspiracy killed if he doesn't do better. The conspiracy then gives Curt the task of tripling his quota of straight kids hooked on drugs- if he fails, he'll be killed, but if he succeeds, he'll be handsomely rewarded.
  • If I Were a Rich Man: In "Titanic", Chester and his wife stay in a first class room on the aforementioned ship. He then goes off to rub shoulders with all the wealthy passengers and says that in a few months, they'll "be rolling in money." This is odd, considering that they're in a first class suite and in today's dollars, they cost either $83,000 or $3000 (depending on if they went with a parlor suite or a berth; the extreme price difference is because there were only four parlor suites on the entire ship and two of them had their own private 50-foot promenade, so it probably wasn't supposed to be one of these). Therefore, by some standards, he was already rolling in money. Of course, he may have been saving his pennies for this expensive trip because it was his opportunity to get really rich really fast.
  • If My Calculations Are Correct: The bad guy in "First Bite", says this phrase almost word for word.
  • I Got a Rock: Several tracts are specifically intended to be handed out to trick-or-treaters, usually (rather ironically) the ones arguing that Halloween is an evil pagan holiday. In the tracts themselves (see "Stinky" for example), some characters are positively portrayed giving out tracts as treats. Somewhat averted when the children in the tracts appear quite excited to receive them, and in real life, to his credit, Chick does recommend including a bag of candy along with the tracts.
    "And here's a nice treat for you... little comic books!"
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Expressly defied, since Christianity teaches that in God's sight all men, even the very best, are ultimately sinful and imperfect. However, by human standards, at least, Mr. Williams is a shining example of uprightness, to such a degree that he frightens witches.
    Samantha: He makes me nervous because he reminds me of Jesus.
    Holly: Are you kidding?
    Samantha: No, Holly! I've never seen him do anything wrong... it's like this guy never sins. He's scary.
  • Insane Admiral: The lieutenant-general in "How to Get Rich!"
    The world's financial picture is so bad, the only thing that can save us from total collapse... Is an all-out, full-scale thermonuclear war!
  • Insane Troll Logic: For starters, believing in evolution will probably turn you into an atheistic, xenophobic, borderline-sociopathic Jerkass. Thankfully, Easy Evangelism can save you.
  • Insufferable Genius: Often invoked by Jack Chick. Chick doesn't seem to have a very favorable opinion on most highly educated religious scholars (to say nothing of scientists who study evolution, as well as the teachers who teach it), given how often people who only just picked up a tract or don't have much of an education out-debate chaplains and religious scholars, and how the latter group often falls back on "I have a doctorate in divinity!" or some other comeback.
  • Interrupted Suicide: Several tracts have someone about to, or attempting, suicide, only to be talked out of it and talked into accepting Jesus.
  • In Vino Veritas: Judge Barnstead, after getting drunk, ends up spilling the beans about his corrupt dealings to a reporter; leading to the equally crooked Governor ordering his underlings to silence Barnstead permanently.
  • Ironic Echo: From "Big Daddy", the atheist professor says upon learning the one Christian in his class disagrees with the theory of evolution by screaming, "You can GET OUT of my class! After you've apologized to everyone for your rudeness and ignorance, we might let you back in." Later, said professor, announcing his resignation after being shown up by the Christian student and that he could no longer teach evolution, is told by the faculty, "You can GET OUT of our university! After you've apologized to everyone for your rudeness and ignorance, we might let you back in."
  • It Always Rains at Funerals: In "Last Call" and "Soul Story", where it's even accompanied by lightning!
  • "It" Is Dehumanizing: From "The Last Generation": "Take this heretic away! Dispose of it, or use it for food."
  • Jerkass The vast majority of the unsaved, apart from the kind that are used as proof that good people will go to Hell if they don't get saved. "Bad Bob" is a particularly good example.
  • Jerkass Has a Point
    Scrooge: Why in HEAVEN'S name would God bother with insignificant Man? Man is rotten to the corenote ! MAN is a BLIGHT on the earth!
    Cratchit: What a coincidence, Mr. Scrooge. The Word of God says the same thing.
    Scrooge: It does?
    • In "Unloved" Jimmy's parents, who have treated him as The Unfavorite all his life, to the point of being emotionally abusive, tell him that the woman he marries is a "tramp" and "trash". In the end, she leaves him and takes all his money.
  • Judgement of the Dead: Frequently happening in the tracts, basically whenever someone dies. And some are even sent to Hell without any kind of trial.
  • Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Harry in "Fairy Tales," mentioned above, who goes straight from disbelieving in Santa Claus to becoming a mass murderer.
  • Just in Time: Typically, someone dying of a disease will convert (or in some cases, get through to the person he or she was trying to convert) within a day of expiring.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • While neither abuser in "Lisa" is shown going to jail, the neighbor is an even better example. The Villain Protagonist father, at least, gets scared badly enough to contemplate suicide, not only because he might go to jail, but because everyone's going to know what he's done. The neighbor, who also helped make things even worse for him by blackmailing him, simply disappears at the end without explanation.
    • The Governor in "Here Comes The Judge" and the Communist leaders in "Fat Cats" and "The Poor Revolutionist" also qualify, though one can presume they went to Hell eventually.
    • The sergeant from "Holy Joe," after deliberately sending Joe to his death, goes to Heaven after asking God for help seconds before he dies, while the corporal who objected to the order ends up in Hell.
    • In brief, owing to the religious views of the author, any nasty character who asks Jesus for forgiveness before he/she dies automatically becomes this, while any pleasant character who doesn't ask Jesus for forgiveness inverts it. 'Karma', in the Chick universe, has next to nothing to do with being a decent human being and virtually everything to do with whether you accept Jack Chick's version of Christianity.
    • A bizarre Spared by the Adaptation case. In the original editions of "The Poor Little Witch", where Mandy was murdered by the Satanic cult, the pastor of the Corrupt Church that served as a front for the cult dies in his sleep the same night and gets condemned to Hell by Giant Faceless God in the last panel. In the revision where Mandy survives, the pastor pulls a Whatever Happened to the Mouse? and isn't mentioned again. Also, for some reason, Chick changed his last name from Chuckwyn to Smiley.
  • Karmic Misfire: The unintended message is that God will send even good people to hell for not expressly accepting a very specific set of Independent Baptist teachings while people who unapologetically live their entire lives in a manner that's destructive to themselves and others will get off with no punishment or consequences of any kind if they accept Jesus by saying the correct magic words right before death.
  • Karmic STD: Coach Brad, the Depraved Homosexual and child molester in "Home Alone", ends up dying of AIDS-related complications, allowing him to be Dragged Off to Hell.
  • Kneel, Push, Trip: Happens to the central character in The Loser. Apparently this is what happens on the mean streets in Chick's world where no one has heard of Jesus.
  • Large Ham: Even considering how often things are emphasized in Jack Chick's tracts, some characters end up talking EXTREMELY loudly and animatedly, FAR more than would be expected otherwise! Scrooge in "Humbug" is a good example.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Happens from time to time, such as when A.J. fires Dudley after he makes a $5 million contract with Japan (for flying first class), the contract fails and he gets sued for it (among other indignities).
    • Although it doesn't happen in the story of "The Last Generation" itself, it explicitly states in one of the post-story panels that Bobby, the child that reported his family in the beginning and seemingly loved the idea of sacrificing animals, died in his sins and (presumably) went to Hell.
  • Lawful Stupid: Chick's Christians, and surprisingly, not just where their brand of Christianity is concerned. They know that the teachers and other authority figures are not on their side, but believe in following them so long as doing so doesn't involve them going against their religion. For example, Suzy's grandfather tells her, in response to Ms. Henn's Halloween party, that she must obey her since she's an authority figure, but it doesn't have to be a Halloween costume.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "Churches only use that garbage for scare tactics" could be taken as an unintentional example.
  • Lies to Children: The tract "Fairy Tales?" rails against this type of lies, on the grounds that while lies of convenience and lies of fun (like Santa and the Tooth Fairy) might seem harmless they're still lies, and when found out they still hurt and will damage your child's ability to trust.
  • Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Chick's villainous women tend to have long, dark hair, including Eve herself. By contrast, the heroine who accepts Jesus is often blonde, like Debbie vs. Mistress Frost in "Dark Dungeons" and Samantha vs. Holly in "The Nervous Witch". But averted with his Creator's Pet Li'l Susy, who has dark hair (in pigtails). Another heroic brunette is Faith, the vampire-defeating teenage heroine. The Virgin Mary is also universally portrayed as a brunette. There's also Ashley from "Baby Talk". She does get pregnant out of wedlock, yes, but is mostly a sweet-natured girl.
  • Lighter and Softer:
  • Littlest Cancer Patient:
  • Lonely Funeral: Ansley Parker in "Mean Momma". Only the minister and the grave digger attend the funeral.
  • Loophole Abuse: Li'l Suzy fulfills the letter but not the spirit of Ms. Henn's requirement to dress up for Halloween by dressing up as Santa Claus.
  • Louis Cypher: Straight up with Lew Siffer in "Angels?"
    • And in "Boo!", there's Camp Basil Bub. Guess who shows up...
  • The Mafia: "The Poor Pope?" reveals that the Mafia is also one of the Roman Catholic Church's enforcement arms. This theory is somewhat less exotic than many others displayed in the tracts, since the traditional Sicilian Mafia is indeed strongly Catholic, but they still don't take their orders directly from the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in real life; indeed, official Catholicism is actually rather ashamed of them.
  • Magical Native American: In this tract.
    • He uses this to portray witchcraft in certain Native American religions.
  • Malcolm Xerox: Lamont in Unforgiven becomes this when he converts to Islam. He hates Christianity and considers it a "white man's religion".
  • The Man Behind the Man: Satan, to the Vatican.
  • Manly Gay: Amazingly, the homosexuals in "Wounded Children" are portrayed this way. Chick typically depicts them as a variant of Camp Gay.
  • Meaningful Name: The heroine of "First Bite" is named Faith, and of course it gets Lampshaded.
  • Meta Fiction: Chick tracts exist in the Chickverse! And naturally, they're infallible tools to lead people to Jesus.
  • Meet the New Boss / Full-Circle Revolution: Played straight with a vengeance in "Fat Cats". (Compare the first and last frames.) Indeed, this tract supplies the image for the main trope page.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: In "Kidnapped", the child sex trafficker gets pulled over for driving erratically and a kidnapped girl is found in his car.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: Scrooge in "Humbug". He seems to hate all his fellow humans, and is shocked to find that the Bible agrees with him about man being "a blight on the earth."
  • Missing Steps Plan: Despite the title, the subject of Love That Money! has a clear plan for profit, but the demons and angels don't. The devils say that Joe Bronson will be their star in politics and is invaluable to them, but they seem perfectly fine with his ending up broke and in Hell (where he was pretty much heading before). The angel meanwhile stops the demon from preventing Joe from listening to some evangelism, but apparently doesn't stop the man's Christian aunt from dying such that Joe gets her money, which ultimately prevents him being saved.
  • Morally Bankrupt Banker: Boggs in "The Contract." One of John Freeman's first acts upon signing the contract and getting the money is ensuring that Boggs gets fired.
  • The Moral Substitute: While the tracts were primarily meant for conversion and not as entertainment, a fairly widely-held belief is that they were influenced by Tijuana bibles, short, pornographic comic books that were passed around by hand, often featured celebrities or copyrighted characters note  that existed from the 1920`s to the 60's. Chick tracts and tijuana bibles have similar art and writing styles, were aimed at a similar demographic and were distributed by hand. However, Chick was Two Decades Behind, as he started making tracts when tijuana bibles were on their last legs and being superseded by Underground Comics.
    • Averted in Angels? where the converted protagonist states that all rock music, including Christian Rock, is satanic.
  • The Movie:
    • "The Truth as You've Never Seen it Before", a 78 minute long film that brings The Bible to life, named for its star, The Light of the World. Perfect for your Hell-bound friends and Sunday School. Official Site. Watch here.
    • Two Chick tracts have also been animated in mediocre CGI, unfortunately.
    • Dark Dungeons, made with Chick's approval, but not his involvement, and done as a Stealth Parody.
  • Mr. Exposition: Any character who's an evangelist will get to spend a lot of time presenting Chick's views. Mr. Williams is probably the most eminent example.
  • Multiple Endings: "This Was Your Life" and "You Have A Date!" feature two endings. The first ending in both stories is the sinner's film of their life ending with them scorning a preacher and with God casting them into hell. After that, both pages cut to an alternate timeline where the sinner spoke to the preacher in private after the sermon, repented and converted to Christianity, and lived the rest of their life piously before being let into Heaven.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Ice Man kills James when his fiancée expresses a casual interest in him.
  • Must Make Amends: Eric leaves Ashley after she gets pregnant, but after seeing the error of his ways and accepting Jesus, races to stop her from getting the abortion, declaring that he's willing to stay with her now.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Mildred in "The Letter", after learning that her unconverted friend died in a traffic accident and went to hell.
    • Juan has a surprisingly believable one when he realizes that his alcoholism and neglect resulted in the death of his son. The epilogue kind of mitigates it, though, as it basically makes it sound like the whole thing wasn't Juan's fault.
    • In "Payback," Kelli realizes that by conning an old man into willing his property to her and then letting him die, she's become as bad as Jezebel.
    N to Y 
  • Named After Someone Famous: In-Universe example involving Timothy Emerson Clark, part of the White Dude, Black Dude duo at the center of the Crusaders series of comics. Clark was named after an uncle who happened to be an ambassador; which ends up being Played for Drama in the first Crusaders comic, Operation: Bucharest, when a Soviet official attempts to create a scandal by setting the younger Timothy Clark up with a female agent who would then falsely accuse Clark of rape; with the Soviets taking advantage of Tim's familial relationship and shared name to his uncle, presumably an avowed anti-Communist, to attempt to pressure the United States to remove the elder Timothy Emerson Clark from his position.
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name:
    • The Healers of "The Last Generation" send Christians to "mental camps" to be killed if they refuse to recant their beliefs. They also train children to spy on their parents like the Hitler Youth and even give them a similar uniform. Bobby, one of these children, is even shown doing a Nazi salute in one panel just before selling out his grandfather.
    • "Moving On Up" revolves around a boy named Tyler who, after learning about evolution, decides he is a god and formulates the idea of a Master Race made up of people with blonde hair and blue eyes, declaring that those who are not part of this race don't deserve to live. Chick declares this proof that "Evolution's Final Solution is the elimination of the weaker!"
  • Necessary Fail: In "It's The Law", Miss Crawford considers her flunking Timmy for writing about the Ten Commandments to be this, since it enabled her to meet Uncle Bob and get converted to Christianity.
  • Neck Snap: Bruce suffers one, but doesn't die immediately.
  • Never My Fault: Some condemned sinners complain that they were never told about Jesus, such as Mildred's friend Frances in "The Letter". Most of them are wrong, and someone did tell them.
  • Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Averted in a few tracts. Chick's heroes can and will remind people that the recently deceased unsaved have ended up in Hell.
  • The New Rock & Roll:
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In this tract, the protagonist, Joe Bronson, who has been established as only caring about money, is all set to convert to Christianity, until his Christian aunt (Louise), who is a multimillionaire, dies and leaves him all her money. Joe then decides that he doesn't need to accept Jesus as his aunt saved him from poverty. He dies in a sudden storm that hits the next night, and so goes to Hell.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In "The Contract" a man makes a Deal with the Devil to save his farm. The devil upholds his end of the bargain, making the man rich. Late in life, as the man lay dying, he laments his impending damnation only to be told that the contract was never valid because the devil already has claim to everybody's souls unless they accept Jesus. This leads to the man undergoing a deathbed conversion and going to heaven upon death. Had the devil never offered the deal in the first place, the man would have had no reason to lament it and he may never have learned the true path to salvation.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: The race car drivers at the center of the plot for "The Wall" are barely disguised stand-ins for Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon.
    • The televangelists visited by the Pope in "Why No Revival?" are TBN founders Paul and Jan Crouch in all but name.
  • No-Dialogue Episode: A few tracts count. "The Little Sneak" has exactly one line of dialogue: "No!" "Set Free" has wordless panels captioned with Bible quotes.
  • No Punctuation Period: In some Scripture passages of the KJV version embedded in many Chick tracts, most notably with no quotes.
  • No-Sell: Every Magical Minority Person has demons at his/her beck and call. Siccing them on a Christian however, will make God intervene and prevent them from harming the Christian.
  • No True Scotsman: If you believe in Evolution, either are Catholic or consider Catholics fellow Christians, or question Mr. Chick's interpretation of Scripture, you are not a True Christian™.
  • Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: In "The Sissy?", the man who converts the truckers notes that Jesus should have died even before he got to the cross.
  • Not Afraid to Die: The homeowner in "The Thief" is an odd, cheerful version of this, as well as a Heaven Seeker.
    I fear God... NOT YOU! You can only kill my tired old body.
  • Obliquely Obfuscated Occupation: Bob Williams sure has a lot of free time to go around sharing the gospel, and a lot of money to throw around, but it's not clear if he even has a job. We know he teaches Sunday School, fixes computers and hangs around hospitals a lot.
  • Oblivious Guilt Slinging: The Christian homeowner in "The Thief" is not trying to talk the burglar out of murdering him, but succeeds anyway.
  • Obnoxious In-Laws: Averted in "Fat Cats." While Juan disagrees with his father-in-law and rejects his attempt to convert him to Christianity, the two men remain on decent terms, and Juan is furious to learn that his father-in-law has been necklaced.
  • Officer O'Hara: What Chick might have been going for with the deputy in "Boo!", who says "Run...'Tis the devil himself!" and "May the saints preserve 'em." Rural America in 1991 isn't a terribly realistic place and time to use this trope, however.
  • Oh, Crap!: The reactions of people of other faiths, or Christians who disagree with Chick when they realize that they aren't going before their god. In "Baby Talk," Eric has this reaction when he learns that Ashley is being taken to the abortion clinic while he's trying to rectify his mistake.
    • Invariably the reaction of the unsaved when they find out Hell is real and that they are there forever.
  • Once per Episode: Rare indeed is the tract where John 3:16 isn't quoted. Its darker companion Matthew 25:41 appears almost as frequently — usually at the end of the story.
  • Only Sane Man: Yusuf in "The Sky Lighter" wonders why only the kids, and never the old men training them to be suicide bombers, actually blow themselves up.
    • Despite the world of Jerkass Gods, satanic conspiracies, assholes, lunatics, and obnoxious fundamentalists that he inhabits, the Grim Reaper is delightfully friendly and polite, even as he's taking people to their deaths. "Hi there!".
  • "Open!" Says Me: In "No Fear!," the pastor kicks a door open in order to prevent a suicide.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Chick Tract demons can appear in varying guises, from traditional horned imps to subtly disturbing humanlike creatures to sinister shadows, grotesque worms or beast creatures, or sometimes downright Eldritch Abominations. They are often depicted as hovering unseen over the shoulders of sinful people (whom they subconsciously influence toward further sin), regularly possess people and can grant powers of curses, shapeshifting, mind control and probably a lot of other stuff. However, by God's grace they are generally rendered powerless to attack anyone who has true Christian faith.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: In "First Bite," they are born as vampires, and apparently they can survive all the way up to adolescence before the first time they get hungry. Though this may only be true of Igor specifically, who is a sort of Vampire Antichrist and so may be exceptional.
  • Our Werecreatures Are Different: Or rather, skinwalkers, but the principal is the same. They are Evil Sorcerers who can cast curses and turn into large, bear-like animals through summoning demons. Praying sincerely will summon an angel to render it helpless.
  • Original Position Fallacy: One of the most common types of Straw Loser is the guy who isn't afraid of hell. One variant of this is that he believes that hell exists and that it is a horrible place for the damned, but also believes that he'll be one of Satan's demons reigning in hell. Of course, his fate invariably turns out to be much crueler.
  • Parental Incest: The tract "Lisa" where a father (Henry Walker), and his next door neighbor (Charlie), sexually abused his very young daughter, but he was forgiven because he accepted God and Jesus. Since pulled from publication, but copies are still online.
  • Parental Title Characterization: In "Born Wild," Connie's son shows that he's turned over a new leaf when he starts calling his mother "Mom" instead of by name.
  • Parody: A comic spoofing the Chick Tracts has Chick dying and going to Heaven where comes face to face with God. He is unimpressed with Chick.
    Chick: But God.. I've spent my whole life kissing your ass!
    God: If I had meant for you to kiss My ass, I would have given you lips (spreads His arms all the way out) this big.
  • Passed-Over Inheritance: In "The Slugger" and its equivalent, "The Superstar", the gardener who converted the character to Jesus gets all his wealth, as the only one the willmaker trusts to use it wisely. The tracts had emphasized that one's wealth in life is meaningless after death.
  • Path of Inspiration: The Catholic Church, Buddhism, Islam, and pretty much any other religion or denomination that doesn't mesh exactly with Jack Chick's worldview is (in his view) a tool of Satan.
  • Pedophile Priest: Occasionally brought up as a means of attacking the Catholic Church.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • Despite the massive amounts of bigotry towards other religions, beliefs, and sexual orientations, Chick dislikes racism. Some strips have even been rewritten for a black audience.
    • In the Crazy Wolf strip, the Christian character specifically mentions that Jesus was a Jew and was not white. He also includes a Semitic-looking Jesus in "It's Not Your Fault". Considering how much of a Flame Bait this topic can be among American evangelicals, it is remarkable that Chick put his stance on the topic so clearly.
    • Chick also did not appear to be a Dominionist, a believer that secular governments should be overthrown for Christian theocracies, which is also a somewhat common position among the American Christian far-right. Chick praises the U.S. Constitution in several tracts, and while he takes the position that all human societies suck in comparison to the utopia Jesus will establish upon His Second Coming, people should respect their secular governments until that happens naturally and absolutely not try to speed up the process.
    • He has a surprisingly good record when it comes to The Bechdel Test, in tracts like "Dark Dungeons". Though the "conversation about something other than a man" part gets thrown out when Jesus finally gets mentioned.
    • In “The Contract”, the devil states that little children never go to Hell. Considering how hateful his tracts come across as, one would think he’d gladly write off younglings who don’t accept Jesus.
  • Poe's Law: Most of the positions stated and conclusions drawn in the tracts are so preposterous and illogical (not to mention un-Christian, at least to the majority of Christians) that it's hard to tell if Chick is being entirely serious.
  • Police Brutality: A minister who protests a Gay Pride parade gets a savage beating from the cops that puts him into the hospital.
  • Political Overcorrectness: A few tracts suggest that hate crime laws are a Satanic plot to keep Christians from speaking out against sin.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: Jack Chick strongly opposed homosexuality, regarded all non-Christian religions as secretly sinister cults and used his tracts to preach his views. Take this as a given.
  • Politically Motivated Teacher:
    • "Big Daddy?" features one trying to indoctrinate his students with belief in evolution, with a plucky student countering and eventually breaking him.
    • And the recurring series where Ms. Henn's plans to use her grade school classroom to promote evolution, gay rights and Halloween are thwarted by Li'l Susy.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: Humbug!, which is a tract adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Since the full story wouldn't fit without cutting out way too much, Chick skips the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, and instead focuses on Scrooge's bad deeds and his redemption after being visited by Marley's ghost.
  • Prayer of Malice: This is sometimes done by Catholics, non-evangelical Protestants, and so on. Within the context of the pamphlets, this "proves" that only evangelicals are Real Christians.
  • Pride Parade: Several tracts feature Pride Parades, portraying them as unholy armies of Satan laying siege to the world.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: God regularly kills people, including unsaved ones, just to get the attention of their loved ones. The subject of Mean Momma gets all three of her children killed just to make her repent. No one brings this up, instead gushing on about how wonderful God is for saving her.
    • 'Bull' is still a violent, threatening psychopath by the end of his eponymous tract, but now that he's intimidating and bullying people for "the right reasons" (i.e., spreading the Gospel and screaming at those who take the Lord's name in vain), he's treated as a hero.
    • The preacher walking around with a sign "Homosexuality is an abomination" was supposedly warning people in a "loving" manner.
  • Public Service Announcement: The stories typically end with one, warning the reader of the dangers of unbelief. Some are quite memorably phrased, such as the laconic one in "Reverend Wonderful":
    DEAR READER: Please don't let hypocrites cause you to go to Hell.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: The Grim Reaper seems like a rather pleasant fellow even while he's killing people.
  • Punny Name: Some characters, such as Abdullah Abdula in "The Trial" have these type of names.
  • Questioning Title?: Chick loves this trope. Often mixed with Sarcastic Title, like with "Angels?" and "No Fear?".
  • Quip to Black: Delivered by God himself, in "The Pilgrimage."
    Abdul: But I was a very sincere Muslim.
    God: I'm sorry Abdul, but you were sincerely wrong.
  • Race Lift: In the tracts' case, a rather interesting variety: when the Target Audience is of a different race/nationality, the characters and sometimes the settings as well are also redrawn to look like the people and places of those ethnicities. Compare, for example, the North American English version of "This Was Your Life" with the African English version ("It's Your Life!"). Even the angels are of different ethnicities. Even God can be black or white depending on the ethnicity of the one who's up for final judgment. Chick is nothing if not flexible. The website even lists them as "Adapted for black audiences".
  • Rape and Switch: In the first tract of the year 2011, Chick declares that all gay people were molested when they were children (and possessed by gay demons). This is an idea which originated with the Freudians, let us note, and was discredited along with them.
  • Rated M for Manly: "The Sissy?" delivers the typical Chick message in a tough, machismo-heavy kind of way.
  • Rays from Heaven: The black and white tracts are full of these indicating Heaven and God's glory, as they are easy to understand when drawn simply in a small panel.
  • Real Men Love Jesus: In "The Sissy", two truckers have a good laugh over a fellow trucker's Jesus-themed bumper stickers - until he turns out to be Right Behind Me and is built like a bodybuilder. Oh, Crap!.
    • Ironically, this captures the hostile message of Chick's tracts quite well: you're going to listen to me or else. Billy Joe and Duke wouldn't have listened to this guy if they didn't fear him and what he could do to them. Likewise, accept Jesus like I say or you'll burn in Hell forever.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In "Four Angels?", Henry gives Charlie one, denouncing him as a false Christian and an enemy of God.
    We walked by day and night, and yet you showed me not the light.
    You let me live, love and die, and all the while you knew I'd never live on high.
    Yes, I called you friend in life, and I trusted you in joy and strife...
    and yet, in coming to this end, I see you really weren't my friend.
    • A jail guard gives one to Bad Bob and his cousin after he fiercely rebuffs an attempt to witness to him.
    If two guys ever deserved hell, it's you two. You didn't have to destroy that kid the way you did. He might be a little off base, but he's sincere. I'm a Christian... and let me tell you, that kid's got more guts than the two of together. Anyone can be rebellious and crude like you guys. But it takes real guts to stand up for God like that kid did. He cared about you and wanted to help you. But you are too blind to see it. Whether you know it or not, we all deserve to burn in hell. But God in His mercy sent His only begotten son to shed His precious blood and die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. But you two have spit in God's face and rejected His gift of eternal life, so both of you are on your way to the lake of fire.
  • Recursive Canon: When there's no Bob or Lil' Susy around to perform Easy Evangelism, Chick will have a character find redemption by coming across one of his other tracts, sometimes as a Deus ex machina randomly stuck in their pocket.
    • In "Somebody Loves Me", before the homeless child freezes to death, he/she is saved by reading a copy of a tract that is blown by the wind. The title of the tract that the child reads? "Somebody Loves Me."
    • "How to Get Rich" ends with the reader holding the track of the same name and complaining that it tricked him.
    • Sadly, Chick never drew a tract where a character reads a Chick tract in which another character reads a Chick tract.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Tracts that involve people such as murderers finding redemption will often end with their death.
  • Religion is Magic: In The 'Verse of chick tracts, all religions (except Chick's variant of Christianity) practice black magic. Catholic clergy are particularly vicious mages.
  • Religion of Evil: Catholicism, mostly. And Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism,... heck, any other religion that is not Chick's particular brand of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity. Also atheism, even though atheism is a blanket term that means "does not believe in a deity," not a religion in itself.
  • Remix Comic: A frequent target of such. Here's one of the more prominent examples.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: One demon looks exactly like a Frill-necked Lizard.
  • Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: In "The Poor Revolutionist", the main character and some of the revolutionaries are executed because "[he is] a revolutionist, perhaps [he] might revolt against [their] own system." The country shown being overthrown is not actually specified, though it certainly does look like the USA, and the revolutionary hippies he lampoons are hard to mistake for being from anywhere else. Some versions do mention, though, that basically in any country Communism overthrows, the revolutionaries are always eliminated afterward.
    • In "Good Ol' Boys", a variation applies when the Shining Path leader offers to let anyone who denies Jesus live. When the missionary and his wife refuse to do so, he orders that his men spare them, but "shoot the traitorous dogs who believe in nothing."
  • Running Gag:
    • Fang's cameo appearances count.
    • There seems to be a running gag regarding Chick's firm belief that Britain has long been overrun by violent Muslims as a punishment from God. He also seems to claim that the decline and fall of the British Empire is the result of their failure to support Israel, a fate that awaits any nation that does the same.
  • Sadist Show: An attempted serious rendition, in "Unloved".
  • Sadist Teacher: Oh, that Miss Henn, pushing such depravities on poor children.
  • Satan: Sometimes comes to the fore, but usually shown more as The Man Behind the Man.
  • Scare Quotes: In case you didn't get that Chick doesn't view Catholicism as legitimate, in "Papa" he makes a reference to "Saint" Augustine.
  • Schmuck Bait: In this tract, a group of boys find a pool surrounded by numerous warning signs and decide to go for a swim.
  • See You in Hell: A hitman says this to the Judge after injecting him with a fatal poison in "Here Comes The Judge." Since this is Chick, he means it literally.
  • Serendipitous Survival: Several tracts, such as "Busted!" and "Limited Time Offer", have someone who narrowly escapes death, realizing that they could have ended up in hell if they had died, and accepts Jesus on the spot.
  • Serial Killer: One Halloween tract has a serial killer wielding a chainsaw and wearing a jack o' lantern mask going around killing people. At the end of the story it turns out that he's literally Satan (apparently the Devil doesn't have anything better to do with his time). This is all somehow supposed to teach you that Halloween is a satanic holiday or something.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog:
    • In "Fatal Decision", Dr. Bowers sells most of his stocks and bonds to obtain a vaccine for a patient, who destroys it and dies a few days later. To make matters worse, Bowers' son died in an accident on the way back.
    • In a sense, this applies to Jesus as well. Several tracts imply he did everything he could to prevent someone from being sent to hell, but since they refused to accept him as their savior and died in their sins, he has no choice but to sentence them to the lake of fire to burn for eternity.
  • Shout-Out:
    Taller, stupid man: What are we gonna do today?
    Shorter, smarter man: We're gonna take over the world!
    • The star of "Soul Story" is a bad, bad man named Leroy Brown.
    • The witch who gets saved in "The Nervous Witch" is a blonde named Samantha, which is odd, since Chick previously denounced Bewitched as a tool of Satan.
    • The tenth panel of "The Scam" appears to depict Stephen King crying after reading a Chick Tract!
      • "The Poor Little Witch" liberally borrows plot points and even character names from Carrie.
    • The Senator in the Framing Device at the beginning of "The Royal Affair appears to be very strongly modeled after Boss Hogg.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: In "The Crisis" Doug Foster gets a fairly snappy one against his former Jehovah's Witness superior, when the other man angrily asks him if he's "out of his mind" for approving a blood transfusion to save his daughter's life.
    Doug: Not any more.. I found out that JESUS IS JEHOVAH!
  • Shut Up, Kirk!: Fairly common from the sinners.
    • In "The Last Generation," Bobby, after being witnessed to by his grandfather, yells "I HATE you and your Jesus! You're an insane criminal! I hope the healers KILL YOU!" before running off to turn him in.
    • In "Here Comes The Judge," the Judge's servant offers him a "Yes/no" sheet after asking him to accept Jesus. The Judge instead writes "You're fired."
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: In "Ransom," Bonnie is a humble and down-to-earth Christian who's willing to preach to her kidnappers, while her twin sister Connie is a Rich Bitch who doesn't seem to care for her own sister.
  • Significant Monogram: The "J.T.C." on the lower right corner of the front cover of the tracts stood for Jack Thomas Chick, but it's been pointed out it could also mean "Jesus the Christ". No doubt Chick was aware of that, too.
  • Single Tear: Many of Chick's tracts will often have characters shedding a single tear, usually when repenting.
  • Slasher Movie: "Boo!" was obviously inspired by these, though whether it's an imitation or a satire isn't clear. One of the few outsiders to ever visit Chick's office says it had shelves full of VHS tapes, including the whole Friday the 13th series.
  • Slasher Smile: The Sheriff in "The Gun Slinger," after Terrible Tom is hanged.
  • Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic: The tracts run the range. Some, like "This Was Your Life" do represent the author's view of reality; others, such as a fairy tale "The Fool!" are clearly intended more as fantastic allegories.
  • Smug Snake: Quite a few of the unsaved, but Elmer Boggs is a particularly good example. He's rather arrogant and condescending toward John Freeman, but ultimately, he's relatively low-ranking in his bank, and when his boss calls him out on what he's done and fires him, he becomes quite pitiful.
  • Social Services Does Not Exist: Essentially the case in any tract involving an abusive parent, such as "Lisa".
  • Space Whale Aesop:
    • "Fairy Tales?" don't teach your children about stuff like the Easter Bunny or else they'll grow up to become a terrorist when they find out they're not real.
    • "Wounded Children", showing pornography to children will not only scar them for life, but make them gay...even Jack realized down the road that this Aesop was kind of insane.
    • Speaking of which: "Lisa", pornography (again) and women working outside the home will lead to incest...which you can be forgiven for if you accept Jesus even if you have your daughter a deadly STD.
  • Special Person, Normal Name: The recurring hero of one series of tracts, who's extremely knowledgeable about doctrine, and even gets compared to Jesus at one point, is named Bob Williams.
  • Speech Impediment: To emphasize the horrors of making innocent tykes re-enact a sinister Druid ritual, Chick always seems to include a scene in his Halloween scaremongering comics where a cute little kid says "twick or tweat".
  • The Starscream: According to Chick, Islam is this to Catholicism.
  • Start X to Stop X: "The Mad Machine" has an army officer do this.
    "The last thing we want is to fight! We want peace at any price! (suddenly angry) Even if it means going to war to get it!
  • Stay in the Kitchen: Compare "This Was Your Life" when it is tailored to men to when it's written for women.
  • Stealth Parody: Quite a few people suspect that the tracts are this, though Chick claims otherwise. The director of the "Dark Dungeons" adaption has gone on the record saying that the film is going to be this (though how stealthy it will be is debatable).
  • Stealth Sequel: Toward the end of "Gladys", we find out that it's actually a sequel to "The Nervous Witch", with a vengeful Holly, still fuming over Samantha, showing up to diss Christian know-it-all Bob Williams. Many of the Bob Williams series of tracts feature recurring characters, but this is one case in which the fact that it's a follow-up to an early tract isn't obvious until near the end.
  • Stop Worshipping Me: "Why is Mary Crying?'' Hint: it involves the Roman Catholic Church.
  • Straw Character: He uses them frequently, mostly with counter-productive results.
  • Strictly Formula: Usually, whatever else is in the story, a sinner gets salvation explained (and offered) to him at some point. Either 1)He accepts and goes to Heaven, 2)He doesn't and goes to hell, or 3)Someone accepts and another person doesn't.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: In "Ransom," Bonnie looks enough like her sister Constance that she ends up being kidapped by mistake. Unfortunately, she isn't the wife of a wealthy businessman, so her brother-in-law has no intention of paying back her ransom.
  • Stupid Evil: Satan and his minions sometimes come out looking like this at times, particularly when their schemes backfire.
  • Sucky School: Westmont. Gangs of students make it impossible for teachers to do their jobs, such as by playing a boom box in class or slashing the tires of a teacher who gives homework, and as a result, some students are illiterate. Naturally, things get turned around when people convert to Christianity
  • Suicide is Shameful: Subverted in ''No Fear?''. When Lance is about to commit suicide he's being urged on by two demons, and after he does he finds himself in hell, but not for his "sin".
    Lance: "Am I in Hell because I committed suicide?"
    Demon: "No! You're here because you REJECTED Jesus Christ."
  • Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: In "It's Not Your Fault", there is a foster home called "Happy Halls". In fact it's so happy there that seven-year old kids routinely kill themselves.
  • Symbol Swearing: Any time someone swears. Notably, it's almost always the same sequence of symbols, beginning with "@", then some exclamation points, and some stars/asterisks.
  • Tag Team Suicide: In "No Fear?", Lance commits suicide and Dolly is about to do so at his funeral, but her sister and a preacher stop her.
  • Take That!: Against almost everything Jack Chick sees as bad.
    • The tract "Still no Revival?" takes a particularly pointed jab at Family Guy, though the criticism focuses solely on the character of Stewie and his obvious homosexuality than the show's vulgarity or atheist leanings (or even Stewie's repeated attempts at matricide, though those jokes were more or less gone by 2011).
    • Chick also would draw villainous characters to look exactly like certain celebrities. Harry, the "phony Christian" in "The Poor Revolutionist" is a dead ringer for John Lennon circa Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, while Frank the Freemason in "The Unwelcome Guest" was clearly based on Stephen Sondheim.
    • The Sucky School in "War Zone" being named Westmont is interesting, since Westmont College is an Evangelical Christian college in Southern California, Chick's home region. Perhaps the college did something that Chick disapproved of, and he used the name in retaliation.
  • Taking the Bullet: Officer Joe Donovan for Murph in "Murph". Interestingly, Joe receives minor wounds while Murph is mortally wounded.
  • Taking You with Me: Satan knows it's only a matter of time before Jesus returns and banishes him to the lake of fire forever. Therefore, it seems his primary goal is to ensure that as many people as possible end up joining him there.
  • Teen Pregnancy: The main plot of "Baby Talk" involves a high school age couple. Naturally, the conflict comes from the heroine's friends and a sex ed. teacher convincing her to abort, especially after her boyfriend abandons her. By the end they both convert and make up, and they have a son.
  • That Man Is Dead: Scrooge says that "the old Scrooge is dead," after his conversion in "Humbug", as he became a new man after accepting Jesus.
  • The Dog Bites Back: John Freeman, after getting wealthy in "The Contract", ensures that Boggs gets fired. Averted in "Here Comes The Judge", when one of the Judge's former house servants, Conrad, instead decides to witness to the Judge, but gets turned down.
  • Those Wacky Nazis: Featured in "Holocaust", both in Old School and Neo flavour.
  • Title Drop:
    Persecution, new killer diseases, earthquakes and wars all over... this could be THE LAST GENERATION!
    "My friend, if we pull this off, our cookie will become a death cookie for anyone who opposes our Holy Work."
    • "Happy Hour," along with its renamed version "Sunday Special" has the alcoholic parent's daughter declaring that a Sunday at church is "my Happy Hour/Sunday Special."
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • The main character in the original version of "The Poor Little Witch" walks home alone at night, even though she knows her life is in danger by homicidal satanists. She is murdered.
    • In "The Hunter," Jim casually threatens to turn in Curt, a drug dealer who's connected with a demonic conspiracy. He's wise enough to not press the issue too much, but ends up proving that he's a threat to Curt, and convincing Curt that he needs to be taken care of. Jim later accepts some "pure stuff" from Curt as a gift, then promptly overdoses.
  • Trans Equals Gay: Both "Doom City" and "Birds and the Bees" have gay men referring their partner as their "wife"note .
  • Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Ahmed in "Is Allah Like You?" is introduced as a brutal Straw Misogynist, but it turns out that he acts this way only because that is what he has been taught by his strongly Muslim family, and has his own private doubts about it. When he starts studying the Quran more carefully, he increasingly comes to disbelieve Islam, and eventually converts to Christianity, leaving the misogynism behind.
  • Tuckerization: Li'l Susy appears to have been named after Chick's second wife (and eventual widow).
  • Twist Ending: "Somebody Goofed" and "Oops!" which was illustrated for black people.
  • Undercover Cop Reveal: In "Trust me" and "Bad Bob," a buyer turns out to be an undercover narcotics cop, who arrests the respective main characters.
  • Underground Comics: Chick's tracts could be considered a weird, ultra-religious form of this. They borrow the basic format of the Tijuana Bibles, Chick's artwork has a crude quality similar to the stereotypical comix style, and the very broad storytelling style fits in there as well. The idea of having true believers distribute copies, rather then sell them directly to the public, is a strangely countercultural marketing concept (for a guy who didn't much like hippies or Communists).
  • Un Evil Laugh: HAW! HAW! HAW!
  • The Un-Favourite: Jimmy in "Unloved", as his parents refuse to attend his high school graduation, constantly tell him he's inferior to his sister Nancy, criticize his choice of a wife, blame him for having rotten kids, berate him for losing his job, and disown him after he asks to borrow money.
    • In "Mean Momma", Austin Parker realizes that Charlie is favored over him, and then commits suicide.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Brutus indirectly causes a patient's death by getting him to distrust a doctor.
    • The Devil often tries to invoke this, especially in The Assignment. Charles Bishop's subordinate's wife is a successful case, as she prevented him from witnessing to his boss, but the devils' attempts to use a popular boy and the subordinate as distractions for Bishop's daughter and Bishop fail.
  • Urban Fantasy: Vampires, skinwalkers and demons are real, rock music and Dungeons & Dragons are satanic plots, etc.
  • Vanity Publishing: All of Chick's work is published and distributed by Chick Publications, including books by other authors.
  • Verbal Tic: The omnipresent and random use of Biblical quotes, especially John 3:16.
  • Villainous Breakdown: In "Angels?", Lew Siffer, despite being calm and in control for the entire tract, save for angrily reminding the band that they belong to him, loses it when Tom prays for forgiveness.
    Lew Siffer: STOP THAT! What do you think you're doing? Remember, you're mine!
  • Villainy Discretion Shot: When the Bull has some prisoners killed, it isn't shown, presumably to prevent people from seeing him as a Karma Houdini.
  • Welcome to Hell: One student tells a new transfer student this in "War Zone," to underscore just how much of a Sucky School Westmont is.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ahmed in "Is Allah Like You?" is a fanatical Muslim because he has been raised that way by his family and personally really does believe that Islam is the true religion. However, he eventually turns his back on it when he is persuaded to really look into it, and discovers its internal contradictions and (at least as the comic views it) immorality.
  • We Want Our Jerk Back!:
    • Downplayed with "Bad Bob". The people at the bar who buy drugs from him are disappointed that he's a different person, but, befitting how many sinners see people as expendable in Chick's tracts, merely decide to get another dealer.
    • In "Born Wild!" Connie, despite being angered by her son's disrespect toward her prior to his conversion, is depressed when he finally does convert and starts acting like a good kid.
  • Wham Line
    • Baby Talk: "She's not here. Thelma took her to the clinic. They left an hour ago."
    • The Letter: "Mildred, didn't you hear? Saturday night Frances and John's car skidded in the rain and they hit a tree. John's still alive but Frances died instantly."
    • The Trial: "When Annie told me I should ask Jesus into my heart, I did!"
    • Mad Machine has several, including one by a man who's going with his son to a facility to treat alcoholism "Oh... I'm not the patient... my son is!"
    • This exchange from "The Execution"
    Guard: Here's your pardon. You're free to go home.
    Sonny: But I was supposed to die for that crime.
    Guard: It's been taken care of. Someone already died in your place.
    Sonny: Who? Tell me... WHO did they hang?
    Guard: Your MOTHER!
    • The Poor Revolutionist: After the revolution succeeds, Gregory has some surprising news for his subordinates.
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Here. It very much does.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: In "The Thief", the robber is determined not to let his witness live, but puts it off long enough that his victim manages, through Oblivious Guilt Slinging, to talk him out of it.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: Juan in "Fat Cats." He joins Carlos' revolution against his wife and father-in-law's warnings, and only realizes that Carlos is no better than El Supremo after Carlos' ally Father Dominic has Maria and Perez executed.
  • Wisdom from the Gutter: Happens from time to time in certain tracts, in which very famous, respected, wealthy or educated individuals get witnessed to by blue-collar workers, servants, convicted criminals, children and other people you wouldn't expect them to listen to. Whether they do depends on whether Chick wants to show them seeing the light and going to heaven, or show that if you reject Christianity, you will go to Hell.
    • In "The Bull," the eponymous character, after reading a tract, calls in the prison chaplain to give him a lecture about hell, which the chaplain doesn't believe in.
    Chaplain: My mother wanted me to be a minister.
    The Bull: Man, you don't even know what's going on. Do you know who Jesus, really is?
    Chaplain: Uh...he was a teacher, a good man...
    The Bull: You don't know nothin'! Jesus is the biggest shot-caller of all, and nobody messes with him! You're on your way to a burning, boiling hell, and I can prove it.
  • Witch Hunt: One tract portrays the Salem Witch Trials, in which demons posses not the "witches", but their accusers. There weren't any actual witches in Jack's version.
  • With Friends Like These...:
    Tom: Hey, Don, have you seen Bobby? He's skin and bones. He looks like death.
    Don: So he's got AIDS. Big deal! We'll replace him.
    Tom: But he used to be your best friend.
    Don: So who needs friends?
  • Would Hurt a Child: The Satanists in "The Poor Little Witch" sacrifice a baby and force the teenage Mandy to drink its blood, threatening to kill her if she refuses. In the original version of the tract, they end up killing her.
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: The angels and the devils in "The Assignment" repeatedly revise their plans to ensure that Cathy Hillman witnesses to Charles Bishop and prevent her from doing so, respectively. For example, the devils have an insurance man named Irving plan to pitch a policy to Bishop, but the angels give him a flat tire and prevent him from using the phone by having an old woman tie it up. Bishop dies before he can convert, and thus is sent to hell.
  • Yet Another Christmas Carol: "Humbug" is one, although only Marley makes an appearance, not the three ghosts (the entire experience lasts three panels), and Scrooge doesn't just take a level in kindness; he also becomes a Christian.
  • You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Connie's son, who had called her by her first name, out of disrespect and not seeing her as his mother, calls her "Mom" after he converts, much to her shock.
  • You Have Failed Me: The devils hand down severe punishments when souls get into Heaven.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
    • Lance Clawson is implied to have been killed in jail in "Here Comes The Judge."
    • The Jewish people could be said to fall into this. Chick says protecting the state of Israel is a God-mandated duty, and any nation that betrays or abandons the Jewish people will suffer consequences. However, all Jews who fail to accept Jesus will go to hell like anyone else.
    • Naturally, all of Satan's followers end up going to Hell with him. A few tracts involve him making fun of his followers for believing him.
  • You Rebel Scum!: "Fanatic" is a favorite insult to True Christians (very much a minority in the world of Chick Tracts) by nonbelievers and authorities.
  • You Should Have Died Instead: In "Happy Hour", Jerry's children tell him that he should have died instead of their mother, which is understandable, given that he had pushed her over and caused her death from a heart attack when she tried to stop him from spending the last of their money at the bars. Naturally, however, he's Easily Forgiven in the end.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."John 14:6

Alternative Title(s): Jack Chick, Chick Tract

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