Comic Strip / The Perry Bible Fellowship

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The Perry Bible Fellowship is a newspaper comic strip/webcomic by Nicholas Gurewitch. It's notable for its black, surrealist humour. It specializes in juxtaposing whimsical settings with morbid subject matter. It's kind of like The Far Side, except with cutesier art and more murder.

Most of the tropes it encounters, it subverts. Art Shifts are frequent; it goes for either a very intricate or very simplistic art style, depending on the joke. Has a habit of Crossing the Line Twice, and sometimes three or four times. At some point, it will probably ruin your childhood. Maybe your adulthood, too.

Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories, a reprint of the original webcomic and additional artwork, won the 2008 Eisner Comic Book Industry Award for Best Humor Publication. The comic is currently on semi-hiatus, and updates every once in a blue moon.

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This webcomic contains examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: A pair of kids enter one in Secret Mutant Hero Team, only to find a team of hideous mutant molerats.
• Abusive Parents: Many examples of kids being dicked around by parents, usually played for dark comedy.
• An Aesop: "Deeply Held Beliefs" points out how when it comes to personal beliefs, tropes like Tautological Templar and Black-and-White Morality do not translate well in reality, no matter the topic. Harassing people and treating them as evil monsters over their opinions not only makes them recalcitrant to your point of view, but it also alienates neutral parties and makes them reluctant to take your side because you look like such a vicious, unreasonable Jerkass.
• Affair Hair: "The Blue Hair" subverts this trope, Wolverine finds a blue hair on his lover and sets out to get Beast. Played with as the last panel shows that hair comes from a blue lion plush next to the girl's bed.
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• After the End: "Post Apocalyptic" parodies The Postman, with the delivery of a sweepstakes entry.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted in Adam 2.0. The robot was curious and compassionate, but when they gave him a Heart Drive aka humanity....
• All Your Powers Combined: Features a Deconstruction of this, in this comic, where a Voltron-like hero team combine into a giant gun.
• Animal Nemesis: Mocked in this strip, where a diver kills a scar-eyed Threatening Shark to avenge his father's death, only to find that Scar-Eyed Sharks are actually a common species.
• Anthropomorphic Typography: A typically acerbic twist on this idea. It depicts lowercase letters, who are children, bullying the lowercase letter b, for being butt-ugly. Reunion comes, and the uppercase letter B now stands for beautiful.
• Appropriate Animal Attire: Parodied when a realistic (and thus naked) rabbit gets into hot water in a land of fully dressed Funny Animals.
• Art Shift: In addition to the art style changing drastically between strips, from very simplistic and cartoony to highly realistic and detailed, there are often changes within a single strip to drive home the punchline.
• Ass in a Lion Skin: A halfway literal example: a donkey disguising himself as a unicorn.
• Badass Preacher: Preach Skate◊ is a Totally Radical priest with some awesome skateboarding skills. Not awesome enough to avoid getting injured, though.
• Badass Teacher: Mr. Ortego lost his hand in some pretty hardcore circumstances, although he denies it, saying it was a woodcutting accident.
• Bait-and-Switch: Most strips end this way.
• Base-Breaking Character: Skub, in-universe. Made more hilarious because we, the outside viewer, get no context as to why what looks like a can of ointment causes such violent debates. Some fandoms have even adopted "skub" as a by-word for "Base Breaking Character".
• Be Careful What You Wish For: A boy in "One More Day" wishes for his Gramps to be alive for one more day... too bad Gramps is still in his coffin.
• Bedroom Adultery Scene: A funny one where the couple are Anole lizards and the interloper sneaking out is a Chameleon.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Used for subversion in "Disgusting Ted". We see a man leering lustfully at a horse's rump, and his friend being disgusted by that... but actually all three are centaurs, and Ted's friend is disgusted because the girl centaur is too young.
• Black Comedy: The entire comic runs on it, playing disturbingly dark material for laughs.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Schlorbians need to get a grasp on "Human Terminology".
• Bloody Hilarious: There is a lot of gore in the comics, always Played for Laughs.
• But What About the Astronauts?: "Space Disaster" depicts a pair of astronauts stranded on the moon and watching the apocalypse occurring on Earth.
  Astronaut: Well... who's the genius now, Mr. We-won't-have-time-for-board-games-in-space?
• Captain Ersatz: The blond guy who is apparently Little Mac (who has brown or black hair depending on the game, but never blonde, though the shade of brown he sports in Super Punch Out is close.) in this parody of Punch-Out!!
• Carnivore Confusion: Played for Laughs in this comic featuring dinosaurs in class, with a Tyrannosaurus rex professor teaching a class of herbivores.
  Mr. Rex: See me after class, Pete.
• Cassandra Truth: When asking for an answer in "Quiz Kid", the recipient is rather miffed to be handed a sketch of an ejaculating penis...except that he's taking sex ed, so that is the right answer, apparently.
• Cat Up a Tree: In "Kitty Stuck", however it has a morbid ending.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: In "Caught", a husband is found masturbating in his "man cave", but it all takes a happy turn.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: "The Golden Ticket" ponders how it would be different if Wonka runs a meat factory instead of a candy factory (note the Art Shift to Quentin Blake)
• Clown Car: "Honk" shows what happens when one crashes.
• Combining Mecha: The Guntron is a team of Voltron-like heroes combining into a giant gun.
• The Computer Is Your Friend: Truancy bot, is a well-intentioned, though not very apt, robot.
• Cool Uncle: Crazy Uncle Duncan stages a gladiator fight for his nephews, which they really enjoy. Until the real lion shows up.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The people of Durab Inc. are willing to make an unwitting little child cry just to test the quality of their latest paper tissues.
• Cosmetic Catastrophe: Elana, the vampire girl ends up with one.
  Elana's mother: The other girls can see vhat ze hell zhey are doing!
• Crapsaccharine World: The comics usually start out as cutesy, but end up dark, deconstructive, and often gory.
• Creepy Souvenir: A kid gets particularly disturbing Memorabilia from an Ancient Roman gladiator fight.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Exaggerated in "Martha's Orphanage". First, Santa doesn't visit the titular orphanage, then it catches fire... and then it gets attacked by a Giant Spider.
• Cut-and-Paste Comic: For the more elaborate art.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • In "Puppy", a man barters his soul for a puppy. Despite it being a selfless wish, he still ends up in Hell.
  • In another strip, a man sees a dead bird on the ground, and expresses sorrow. The devil then appears, and grants his wish: a really long penis.
• Deconstructive Parody: See homage below.
• Deface of the Moon: The Schlorbians attempt to insult humanity by writing a message on the Moon. Unfortunately for them, they are very bad at spelling.
• Depraved Kids' Show Host: "Catch Phrase" (The host committed suicide after being dogged by his silly Catchphrase — which was then engraved on his tombstone.)
• Designated Villain: In-Universe, "Billy the Bunny" shows Mean Old Farmer Ben chasing some rabbits away and being portrayed as the villain of a fictional children's book for it. The "punchline" (if you can call it that) is Ben's family facing famine due to said rabbits eating all his crops.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Baskins' father in "For Baskins" ships the title character overseas in a monkey cage for... suggesting he sell his own father's watch to buy a monkey.
• Distracted by the Sexy: The father of the victim in "Bully" forgets about admonishing his son's attacker and instead makes out with the bully's mother.
• Dope Slap: Of all the places to start a Food Fight, a third-world country is not the best.
• Double Entendre: In the "Mrs. Hammer" strip, a man with a hammer for a head discovers that his wife (a board) has a screw stuck in her. Cue him beating up his screwdriver-headed neighbor.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-universe, "No Survivors shows that an airplane crash is not a good opportunity to be creative with your marriage proposal.
  • Again with the Food Fight strip mentioned below. Neither the time nor the place, fella.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Caused by Puppy-Dog Eyes in "Executive Decision". Yes, It Makes Sense in Context (just barely).
• Egg MacGuffin: The plot of "Baby". (Too bad it's not a pretty little birdie that hatches...)
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: Often subverted.
  • In "Rainbow", a rainbow turns out to be the eyes of a giant monster.
  • In "The Jubilee", children sit on rainbows attached to smiling clouds. And are then sacrificed by being dropped into a volcano.
  • In "Book World", a rainbow appears when the kids enter the book (and on the poster encouraging them do to that) to represent how fun reading can be. Although their choice of book turns out to not be so fun.
• Everything's Precious with Puppies:
  • Happy Birthday, "Miggs" has a gangster surprised with sweet puppies due to a cake mix-up.
  • "News Puppy" has a father reveal that he got a puppy by pulling down his newspaper... which contains an article linking puppy saliva to brain damage and penis rot.
• Evil Teacher: Mr. Rex, who just so happens to be a tyrannosaurus rex serving as a teacher at a school for dinosaurs, eats his students as punishment for misbehavior.
• Eye Beams: The dad in "Fun Bot" has these. It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.

• Fantastic Racism: "Bad Apple" implies this is the situation between fruits and vegetables, after an apple is beaten up by a carrot and broccoli for spraying 'seedless' on a car.
• Finger in the Mail: After Colonel Sweeto is outed as a chocolate spy, the Chocolate Kingdom receives a box containing his "nut".
• Food Fight: Not something The Red Cross approves of.
• Forbidden Fruit: Implied in "Deeply Held Beliefs". An anthropomorphic pie chart is chewed out for believing in white with pink bars representing an unspecified deeply held belief, which just causes that section of the chart to grow bigger and also makes the pie chart in the back gain that belief.
• From Bad to Worse: Poor Martha's orphanage. First Santa forgets them, then the spiders attack...
• Furry Reminder: The yellow and orange snails in "Snail Harrassment" apparently need to be reminded that all snails are hermaphrodites.
• Future Imperfect: A futuristic society forgets some of the details about WWII.
• Gag Penis: In exchange for your soul, The Devil will give you one like rope!
• Gallows Humor: The game Hang-Man takes on a whole new meaning.
• Gone Horribly Right: Hugbot is adorable. Especially when he tries installing a nuclear reactor.
• Gulliver Tie-Down: "Gnome Bubbles" combines this with Eye Scream.
• Hair-Trigger Avalanche: Shouting is all that's needed in "Hey Goat". The bodies are not exposed until the following spring.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Mr. Rex wears a shirt, tie and glasses, but no pants. The clothes signify his higher status as teacher in a class of non-clothed dinosaur children.
• Hollywood Chameleons: "Love Lizard" has a chameleon blending in amongst the walls of a bedroom to avoid being caught sleeping with a lizard's wife.
• Hollywood History: Because battles in WWII were mainly between British-Jewish Lancers on Zebras and Nazis armed with laser guns and WWI-era Kaiser Helmets.

• Horrible Judge of Character: The principal in this comic.
  Principal: "What makes you think you'd make a good kindergarten teacher?"
  Interviewee: *smiles with fanged mouth and gorily rips head off with bare hands*
  Principal: "I like your style."
• Humans Are Bastards: The implication after this robot is given 'humanity'.
• Human Sacrifice: To Aranaktu, who accepts all "gifts."
• Hurricane of Puns: "Harlot's Web", a parody of Charlotte's Web, sees the spider taking everything it writes in its web from the dirty talk of the hot farmer's daughter and her farmhand lover ("ONE FINE ASS", "GREAT COCK", "SWEET PUSSY" etc) only for the farmer to assume each one is referring to one of his farm animals.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Jeremy applies his skills at Tetris in "Game Boy" to clean his room.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The bully in Nice Shirt learns that unicorns are real, the hard way.
• Impossible Pickle Jar : Bruce Banner encounters one in "The Green Menace". Of course, he's only able to open it once he transformed into Hulk.
• Inevitable Waterfall: The bird couldn't stay on that raft forever, and they both knew it...
• Inkblot Test: The titular character in "Psychoanalyst" tries to pick up one of his patients with a lewd inkblot, and gets slapped for it.
• Interspecies Romance: Bacon Egg features one between a pig and a chicken, who get discovered when the farmer cracks open an egg and discovers a strip of (somehow already cooked) bacon inside instead of a yolk.
  • "Not Today" features a somewhat creepy example with an adolescent girl and her talking pet rabbit.
  • "Different" features a voluptuous fairy and/or butterfly who turns down a male butterfly's affections but its later seen having sex with a mouse.
• Jumping Out of a Cake: Double subverted when "Miggs" got the wrong cake. Miggs got the cute puppies, and the gunman meant to shoot Miggs ended up at the Animal Lovers' Society meeting.
• Kung-Fu Jesus: JESUS VS. GANESH IN A BATTLE FOR SOULS (actually prayers for the spelling bee).
• Lilliputian Warriors: Intruders approach! Release the Agronox!
• Literal Metaphor: The boxer in "Take on the world" gets to do just that.
• Make a Wish: The Wishing Well. It actually works, but everybody only gets one.
• Measuring the Marigolds: In "Loring's First Theorum", everything is math, including naked women.
• Medium Blending: Keep on Truckin'... looks like a happy cartoon. It turns out to be what rats see while on LSD.
• Mental Picture Projector: The titular machine developed by scientists in "The Dreamcatcher 3000". Alas, they end up losing their funding when their subject has an Erotic Dream about the senator that's overseeing their funds.
• Merit Badges for Everything: A rather vulgar example in "Boy Scouts" involves the troop leader taking the scouts to have sex with a prostitute.

• Missing Reflection: This strip explores how inconvenient no reflection is for makeup application.

• The Mole: In the strip "Colonel Sweeto," the eponymous officer of the Candy Kindom Army is interrogated by the king about how we was the only survivor of the Chocolates' massacre of Lolly Town. When the king strikes him with his scepter, Col. Sweeto is revealed to be a chocolate piece with a hard sugar coating. The final panel shows the chocolates opening a package from Agent Sweeto, only to be horrified to see it contains his nut, which was most likely extracted from within his body after being tortured to death.
• Mood Dissonance: Disturbing events tend to be combined with a cutesy art style.
• Mood Whiplash: Comics tend to start out really sweet and then end up ridiculously dark, or vice-versa
• Moon Rabbit: Subverted when the rabbit turns out to be massive.
• Non-Human Head:
  • People with musical instruments for heads are the characters of "Harmony"; the bassoon's father is not pleased at her settling to marry a lowly whistle.
  • People with rock, paper, or a pair of scissors for heads get into an argument over seating in "Shotgun", which they decide can only be decided one way... gladiatorial combat.
  • "Mrs. Hammer" is about a hammer-headed man discovering that his wife (a plank of wood) has a screw embedded in her.
  • While at first the characters are angled so it isn't obvious, the twist in "Sweet Deal" is that the people all have teeth for heads and can be murdered with excess sugar.
  • "Hard Read" is centered around two people with books for heads; they break up when one of them finds the other's been using a copy of Cliffs Notes.
  • "Preserves" has a peanut butter-headed man marrying a jelly-headed woman, only to be disgusted when her 'will pop if seal is broken' lid pops when he takes her veil off.
  • The characters in "Bad Apple" are gangs of fruit-headed people and rival vegetable-headed people.
  • "Genius, Sir" shows a war between soldiers with dice for heads and dominoes for heads.
  • "Electro Sutra'' has two women with batteries for heads, um, trying to get their relationship to spark, as it were...
  • "Technorgy" features a large group of people with various technology-related heads (a computer, a calculator, a flashlight, a camera, etc.) doing just what the title says. A second panel shows that one of the participants later gave birth to a smartphone-headed baby.
  • "Shocked" has a mother and daughter with electrical outlets for heads, a hopeful suitor for the daughter whose head is a plug, and a motorcycle-riding Bad Boy with a fork head with whom the daughter elopes.

• Noodle Incident: How Mister Ortega lost his hand in "Shop Class". Apparently, he figures the kid would never believe the story behind it, so keeps it to himself.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Doctor Loring in "Loring's First Theorem" just can't avoid reducing everything to geometric proofs.
• Not in Front of the Parrot: "Boss" shows the danger of discussing a Klingon Promotion with a parrot in the room.
• Odd Organ Up Top: "Sweet Deal" has people with teeth for heads and thus, can be killed by excess sugar.
• Only You Can Repopulate My Race: Exploited by an opportunistic donkey in "The Last Unicorns"

• Out with a Bang: Subverted in One Time Thing, when an erupting volcano means dinosaur infidelity winds up preserved for the ages.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: They have lobster heads, for one...
• Overly Nervous Flop Sweat: Subverted, a man playing chess with a monkey wasn't sweating, it's just a really hot day.
• Pædo Hunt: Lampshaded to hilariously depressing effect in "Kitty Photographer", where a streaking child at just the wrong second lands a man in prison.
• Panty Shot: Stiff Breeze, thanks to a gust of wind. It has a... suggestive... effect on a nearby cloud.
• Paperthin Disguise: This wanna-be unicorn male is a donkey in a pretty unconvincing disguise.
• Passing the Torch: Passed On has a grandfather helping the next generation find his Porn Stash.
• Perspective Flip: Mean Old Farmer Brown! is a twist on Peter Rabbit, where the farmer chasing the rabbits out of his garden is just a man with a family to feed.
• Police Lineup: In one of the gangster strips. Slim escapes identification by gaining weight really fast.
• Poor Communication Kills: Bee ends with a child with exceptional vision getting corrective surgery due to Ambiguous Syntax.
• Porn Stash: In "Passed On", Grandpa makes sure that his little boy gets one of his most prized possessions, even from beyond the grave.
• Portal Book: Book World. Too bad they chose to jump into that book...
• Power Perversion Potential: Doll Change has a Raggedy Andy Expy use his button eye to peep on the Expy of Raggedy Anne while she's changing.
• The Power of Love: In Bunny Pit. Love will find a way... if you can breed rapidly enough to fill a pit.
• Precision F-Strike: "Barry. Shut the fuck up... seriously." Delivered to a whale that suggests evolving to adapt to the land to the other whales.
• Pretty in Mink: A redheaded lady in a green dress also wears a white fur wrap.
• Professional Sex Ed: One strip depicts a Scoutmaster furnishing Boy Scouts with the services of a prostitute so they can earn a merit badge (implied to be a "safe sex" merit badge, but even so...)
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Wherein a race of puppies manage to convince aliens to go blow up Earth instead of the puppy home planet, but be careful of overusing it.
• Razor Apples: Subverted in "The Treat". A witch puts a syringe in a trick-or-treater's bag, which actually contains insulin. The family is overjoyed due to how expensive their bills for insulin were.
• Recycled IN SPACE!: An adults-only version of The Far Side (not that The Far Side was really for kids either).
• Refuge in Audacity: Dark material, but it's presented so outrageously that you're just as likely to laugh as gasp.
• Reset Button: Literally in "Reset," where all human progress keeps getting set back to the beginning by an accident in the Rocket Age.
• Robotic Reveal: Casting Call has a contestant exposed via flamethrower for being a bit too perfect.
• Rocketless Reentry: One comic has an astronaut fall during a spacewalk. Reentry burns him down to a single, minuscule ash, which two children mistake for the first snowflake of winter.

• Say My Name: NUUÑÑÑEZZZ!!!
  • SGT. GRUUUUUUMMBLES!
• Self-Parody: News Puppy is an over-the-top imitation of the comic's frequent Diabolus ex Machinas. It crosses the line twice, but so poorly that the act of line-crossing itself crosses the line twice.

• Sham Supernatural: "The Last Unicorns" features a donkey poorly disguising himself as a unicorn to try and seduce a tribe of female unicorns.
• She Is All Grown Up: b is far more enticing when she's an adult B.
• Single-Attempt Game: "Game System", where Your Mind Makes It Real, implying this because you can only die once, but it appears quitting the game without death is possible, since another player wants a turn, which presumably would not involve the death of the first player.
• Sistine Steal: Parodied thanks to a meddling pup in Barkelangelo.
• Skewed Priorities: Super League knows what's really important: Good coffee!
• Snow Means Love (and Death too): Hey Goat, I love this girl! Cue the avalanche that gets all three of them...
• Snowed-In: Missing School shows that snow days aren't always a good thing.

• Sugar Apocalypse: The friendly lumberjack who destroys a forest smiles at the now-homeless woodland critters... and then butchers and eats them.

• Sugar Bowl: Suicide Train, wherein a man finds out the hard way that it's very hard to commit suicide when you live in a children's pastel world and everything has wings.
• Suntan Stencil: Cover Blown features the "accidentally embarrassing" version, with a guy's girlfriend's head suggestively outlined over his groin, to his wife's dismay.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A frequent source of the series' comedy is to ignore the consequences of a strip's premise until the final panel for Black Comedy. Some examples:
  • This comic shows what would happen if Transformers transformed into robots while their vehicle mode had passengers: the passengers get crushed to death.
  • An anthropomorphic Earth and Sun love each other. The punchline is everyone on Earth burning to death. What did you think would happen if the Earth got much closer to the Sun?

• Sympathetic P.O.V.: The strip about Farmer Ben provides the trope image. From the rabbits' perspective, he's scaring them away when they try to get food to feed themselves. From his perspective, he's trying to ensure that his family doesn't go hungry.

• The Talk: Subverted in The Talk, where a father decides to tell his daughter about "the birds & the bees". Then the next panel reveals that the setting is After the End, and he's literally explaining what birds and bees were before the apocalypse.
• The Tetris Effect: Causes a little boy to misinterpret how to clean his room.
• That Cloud Looks Like...: A bunny giving oral sex to a little girl in a skirt, according to said bunny.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: "Dad and Monster", where a father reassures his kid that there isn't a monster under his bed except there was, it kills the kid and then pays the father.
• Timmy in a Well: Or a burning building, rather. Subverted, naturally.

• Train-Station Goodbye: Goodbye, Stanley subverts this, where our hero runs alongside the train just long enough to see something he'd be happier not seeing.
• Transforming Mecha: "Refridgeron and Magnimus" and "Disassemble" are parodies of the Transformers.
• Trapped in TV Land: These kids find out that it's not the best idea to explore the fictional world of a satanic book.
• Vagina Dentata: Zarflax has one.
• Vegetarian Carnivore: Dragons are apparently obligate carnivores, but Scorchy promised a little girl no more...
• Virginity Flag: A jam jar apparently comes with one.
• Warm Water Whiz: In this comic, some people play this prank on a sleeping dragon with a cauldron of steaming water. It ends with the Dragon's pee flooding the village below.
• We Will All Fly in the Future: Judging from the last panel of this comic, true of that futuristic (if very bad at history) society, with Flying Cars, some kind of flying chair, and people using what look to be actual hoverboards instead of walking.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?:
  • Earth doesn't have puppies as cute as on Pupulon.
  • Standards of beauty differ.
• When Trees Attack: "The Unforgiving Tree," a dark parody of The Giving Tree which has since been removed from the site.
• Wise Old Folk Façade: One strip has an old sex offender masquerading as a sea god to approach little children. In one case, he uses this disguise to comfort a child whose castle is washed away by the sea, telling him he, too, lost a kingdom.
• Wishing Well: This strip has a man wishing for true love and obtaining a girlfriend as a result. However, he sees other people leaving with wheelbarrows of money, a spaceship or Superman's powers, and clearly has second thoughts.
• Word Salad Title: Let's say it's not something likely to be found on a church's bulletin board.
• Written Sound Effect: This comic, in which the sound effects also happen to sound like racial slurs, which leads to the Iron Fist parody telling the Luke Cage parody how his fighting style is "extremely problematic". Luke's response is to break Iron Fist's back like Bane with the sound effect "CCRRCKKKRRR".
• Yonkoma: It's perhaps a stretch to call it this, but many strips have exactly four panels, and all are titled.
• Your Mime Makes It Real: A candidate for Mayor of Mime City is shot dead with a Finger Gun...that is, a Finger Sniper Rifle, complete with Laser Sight. The police pull out their Finger Guns in response.

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