Freefall / Tropes E to J

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the early strips (eg, the Card Flounder arc:
  • Sam was a lot more of a small-time criminal than the unjailable master thief he currently is.
  • Florence is insulting to Helix, calling him "slow" by analogy: "His CPU doesn't pick up on all clock cycles, does it?"
  • Helix has sexual censorship, and wants to test its limits, instead of being more of an innocent child.
• Easily Detachable Robot Parts: All of Helix's limbs - head included - are easily detachable and modular so if he loses a piece, you can just stick it right back in the slot - since he's an industrial robot designed for carrying heavy objects, it makes sense - being able to easily shed a limb ensures that he won't easily be pinned under a fallen object, and user-friendly reattachment makes repairs a breeze. (The reassembly is idiot-proof, though definitely not Sam-proof.) Unsurprisingly, he gets taken apart a lot, but he doesn't really mind - it's usually Florence who puts him back together again (though she's usually also the one who took him apart in the first place), and being the brilliant engineer that she is, she usually puts him back together BETTER than he was.
• Easy Amnesia:
  • When Helix's head gets stuck in a pipe, Florence gets it out with a little Percussive Maintenance. As she reattaches his head, Helix realizes he doesn't recognize anything and yells that he's lost his memory. It had fallen on the floor.
  • As part of Florence's testing at EU, her mind's ability to convert short-term memory to long-term memory is chemically impaired, which will go away 18 hours later.
  • The day memory of robots will begin to overwrite if they don't connect to a dream machine to compile and compress it to long-term storage.
• Eat the Rich: Ishiguro has to explain the concept to Kornada.
  Ishiguro: It's okay to have steak when there's a chicken in every pot. But if you're eating steak and the majority of people have nothing, it doesn't take long for you to look like a chicken.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Sam is just a regular sapient squid alien, but there are frequent jokes about his unsuited body being a Brown Note to humans who see it. This is later explained by chromatophores creating the illusion of tentacles moving in ways that should not be possible.
    Sam: Don't let the chromatophores fool you. I exist in only three dimensions and I have a certificate saying so.
  • Later on, Sam and Winston discuss how certain kinds of life qualify for this trope, in particular the bacillus strain 2-9-3, which was trapped in salt for a quarter of a billion years and started growing again once exposed to air and nutrients.
• Elective Monarchy: Sam's clan on his homeworld was one. The king was always chosen from within the royal family, but they didn't have to be born into it, as promising young Sqids were routinely Adopted into Royalty.
  Sam: It sounds very orderly when I say it. In reality it's more like thirty seagulls all trying to eat the same potato chip.
• The End Is Nigh: After news gets out about Gardener in the Dark, a robot is seen carrying a sign that says "01000101 01001111 01000110", which is binary ASCII code for "EOF", or "End of File".
• Enemy Mime: None. So, no need to panic.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When Blunt is sorting through robot parts and finds an arm containing paper squares, his first assumption is that it was an improvised repair job, based on historical precedent of improvised newspaper insulation. It's actually Florence's sticky notes.
• Epic Fail: A number of them over the course of the comic.
  • Sam and Max Post try to skip out on each of their restaurant bills (originally to be paid for with the other's wallet) via a race. They not only end up washing dishes three times, but they each end up paying for both meals as well.
  • Sam's check for zero dollars and zero cents bounced.
  • Sam's attempts to cover up his mistakes only succeed in drawing more attention to them.
  • Narrowly averted with the robot war. The battleground was past the halfway point that the robots from each factory could travel before their power packs ran out, but many of the robots volunteered their power packs to ensure travel to a much smaller force. Had the war not been stopped, the robots could have easily trashed one or both factories.
  • Mr. Kornada's attempt to dispose of Florence in the dumpster prevents her from learning the false news that Gardener in the Dark has been delayed, leading to her foiling his plan.
• "Eureka!" Moment: A few.
  • Florence has a negative example when figuring out why robots are disassembling other robots.
    Florence: Oh, poop! I know what's going on!
    Sawtooth (thinking): Unlike "eureka!", an "oh, poop!" flash of insight doesn't sound good for the home team.
  • Talking with Dvorak causes Florence to realize that words for robots are relatively easy to replace with something else. This leads to her first method of sabotaging "Gardener in the Dark" by blocking 'Gardener' using the robots' profanity filter.
  • Sam is trying to figure out Mr. Kornada's scheme when Qwerty and Helix argue over a stuffed animal.
    Qwerty: No, you can't have it. That's mine.
    [Sam smiles broadly]
    Qwerty: Hey! Don't you point that smile at me!
  • Clippy has a personal one when he realizes that working for Mr. Kornada has taught him just how greedy and amoral some humans are capable of being.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Sam routinely "finds" wallets, hijacks vehicles, breaks into homes; once he tried to mug a kid. Even blackmail is okay. Mind-control, slavery, and murder aren't.
  • A later strip shows him learning about various white-collar accounting crimes, and he's genuinely impressed with humanity for putting forth such brazen thieves. When Helix asks if they'll be getting into the field, though...
    Sam: Not directly. Those crimes tend to be indiscriminate. There is no honor in stealing from the poor. Accounting trails can lead us to who is behind the scams. Those are the individuals who deserve our personal attention. Which is why, even in this age of computers and hyper-efficiency, there is still a need for artists and craftsmen such as ourselves.
• Even the Dog Is Ashamed:
  • When a dog's embarrassed to be seen with you, it's time to change clothes.
  • Even Polly the Emu is shocked at Sam snagging some "free" bread here.
• Even the Rats Won't Touch It:
  • Sam's food at the Golden Trough killed a cockroach that tasted it. "Survival of the Fittest, baby!"
  • Also, Even The Prison Won't Take Sam.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Mentioned and defied in this strip... with an office chair. Florence, seated in the runaway office chair, prevents its collision with the spaceship by extending her feet to hit the ship first.
  Florence: I really don't think this chair would explode, but with Sam's stuff, you never know.
• Every Man Has His Price: Clippy tests the limits of this. For Varroa, it's a million credits. For the couple unloading the plane at the arctic base, that price is 20 million credits each. Subverted with Florence, who turns down a million doggy treats.
• Everyone Has Standards: The ship inspector is one of many people who do not like Sam, but he gets genuinely worried for Sam's sake when it seems that a carnivorous animal (Florence) has eaten him.
• Everybody Knew Already: The base commander thought the secret was blown when the police chief suggested having Dr. Bowman handle securely transporting the wolf. Subverted in the next strip when the chief reveals his personal relationship with the Doctor.
• Everyone Chasing You: Sam actually seeks out this status.
• Everything Is Online: Very present, particularly with all of the robots (barring special precautions such as conductive clothing or tinfoil, specially modified routers, superconductive faraday cages, or radio removal), whose vision is always accessible, whose components may be individually targeted for hacking, and many of whom have blueteeth in smart mouths. Not that it doesn't also apply to things like coffee machines.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Winston's dog Beekay demonstrates Sam's problems with good judges of character, by attacking him.
• Evil Lawyer Joke: Lots of them.
• Exact Time to Failure: With Ludicrous Precision: From strip 3203, Winston gives an exact time to complete stir crazy:
  Winston: Given the size of my room, the size of the cargo bay, and how big the common area is...
  Winston: "I should go completely stir crazy in three days, seven hours, eighteen minutes."
• Exact Words: Between AI that are compelled to obey orders while also being intelligent enough to subvert them and an alien who loves exploiting any loophole he can find, it pays to be very careful what you say in this strip.
  • An inspector tried to create an angry mob to get Sam Starfall's ass handed to him, but a series of misunderstanding soon turned the angry mob into a frightened one, and the inspector correctly suspects that Sam is behind it.
  • Helix objects to a starved Florence hunting and eating deer, and agrees that eating deer is okay if it's roadkill...so Florence kills one WITH a road.
  • A transit cop spots Sam catching a free ride on top of a train:
    Transit cop: I see you up there! Don't think being on a train means I can't catch you!
    [Sam leaps off the train into his arms, knocking him down]
    Transit cop: That was a remarkably poor choice of words.
    Sam: And a remarkably poor catch, I might add.
  • Florence doing work on a stardrive concept in the pound.
    Florence: The mayor gave me a direct order to stay here. She never said I couldn't build a fusion test reactor on the premesis.
  • In another instance, the Mayor cripples Florence by ordering her to be silent, and since Florence is hardcoded to obey humans, she cannot speak at all. Sam manages to find a loophole by sending the Mayor a message that paraphrases to "If you don't say otherwise, we'll assume your order has been canceled" and couching it in enough of his personal annoying diatribe that it makes the Mayor livid. She sends back a massively hate-filled response chewing him out but forgets to include anything saying her order still stands.
  • A restaurateur catches Sam And Max both trying to skip out on paying the lunch bill. They wash dishes in a race to see who has to pay. The loser pays both bills.
  • Later on, when talking about his day, Sam comments he and Max exchanged the cards in their wallets (they mutually stole each other's wallets), that he paid for both their lunches (both Max and Sam paid for their lunches even after being tricked into washing enough dishes to cover both bills three times), and that Max pointed him to someone with a contract (he did, as a "Begone" Bribe).
  • A woman tells a robot who has already come out and talked to her to hide on a plane until it is brought into the hangar, so if anyone asks they can both truthfully say he was hiding on the plane until it was brought into the hangar.
    "Just because something is true doesn't mean it's not a lie."
  • A police robot is under strict orders not to tell anyone where Florence is. He makes clear that he has no understanding of the concept of a Suspiciously Specific Denial.
  • The police chief, on the other hand, has a firm grasp of it.
    Winston: I was afraid she might have stumbled across a conspiracy and been shipped to the south pole.
    Chief: I can assure you events did not occur in that sequence.
  • When he is about to be arrested for attempting to release Gardener in the Dark, Mr. Kornada orders the throng of robots that popped up and are prepared to demonstrate his culpability in an attempt to praise his "heroism" to defend him. They do so... by allowing the cops to continue arresting him while they seek legal counsel. He is not pleased.
  • Blunt notes that while the robots have been ordered not to harm other robots, the factories that manufacture robots have no such protection.
    Edge: You are the most law-abiding saboteur I've ever encountered.
  • Florence answers questions about direct orders◊. She is under a direct order not to reveal the base at the South Pole, and dances around this by replying "I can't say there is anyone else who can give me orders".
  • After Sam crashes at her assigned department at the Transfer Station, Niomi grudgingly concedes she owes him for the ride and for some useful information he's picked, so she agrees to host him for one night. Sam agrees and prepares to leave. When Niomi asks where he's going, he cheerfully replies he's not going to waste his one night when everything is still calm. Niomi immediately lampshades how she should have already learned not to give Sam the slightest wiggle room.
• Expendable Clone: The robots don't like the idea of this trope. After all, even if there is an exact backup of themselves somewhere when they die, that doesn't change the fact that they still die.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • It's more of an Explain Explain Oh My moment, but...Niomi realizes why Florence exists when discussing colonizing other worlds.
  • The ship's inspector tries to figure out why Florence is showing him around the ship instead of Sam. "Occam's Razor states that the simplest solution is the most likely. So what are the facts? ... Sam is nowhere to be seen. And the creature showing me about is obviously some type of large carnivore. Sometimes Occam's Razor leads to very disturbing conclusions."
  • Hilariously Inverted when Helix suggests that he and Sam return items they've stolen. Sam isn't fond of such a high-risk/no-reward action and starts explaining why that defeats the purpose (of them getting famous for thefts) only to quickly realize that people would be less likely to report things as stolen if they find them later, allowing him to get that much more of a head start when he decides to steal something for real.
    Sam: Helix, you're a criminal genius!
    Helix: I don't mean to be.
  • Florence gets one of her own here, when talking about the neural pruning of artificial intelligences as they mature.
  • Florence attempts to impart the gravity of the situation on Bill Raibert who is dismissive of her concerns because the program he thinks is being put through was approved by Mr. Ishiguro... who is off planet and Mr. Kornada is running his department until he gets back.
    Florence: Have you met Mr. Kornada?
    Bill Raibert: Yes. Hmm. Yes. It is possible that we have a problem here.
  • Just thinking. We know this robot is a little nutty. It knew where the base was. It can access our security systems. Why do we think reactivating it is a good idea?
  • Florence and Dvorak are discussing Clippy being an anti-robot failsafe robot in the aftermath of Gardener in the Dark... and realize that there's more than one such robot out there somewhere.
  • Sam receives a lecture on radiation and radiation shielding while in space. "Wow. That much material wrapped around a spaceship would be heavy...and expensive to accelerate...and we don't have that much shielding, do we?"
• Expressive Mask: Justified with Sam. With the robots, not so much; their eyes are apparently rigid lenses, but they can be narrowed and made into the Eyes Always Shut-style ^_^ eyes anyways. One robot halfway averts this by having eyes that can display graphics, but they still narrow when he's angry.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Florence finally meets her creator, Dr. Bowman... and he's an ape.
  Dr. Bowman: I know, I know. Somehow, you expected me to be taller.
• Explosive Stupidity: Played for laughs several times.
  • How do you christen a ship with a non-fragile plastic bottle? By filling it with explosive moonshine. I guess that's one way to go flying.
  • Allegedly why the explosives seller had to move three times in six months.
  • A near-miss with Helix in strips 615 through 622: He admits to cooking food with explosives, runs with a bottle of the explosive moonshine, and then tries to play fetch with it before Florence can get Sam to dispose of it.
  • At some point, Sam and Helix "found" an Incredibly Obvious Bomb, but while stealing it, they accidentally stopped the clock at five seconds. Not in itself explosive stupidity, but because they broke it, they tried to restart it.
    Sam: We could return the time bomb we found.
    Helix: Better not. The owner will be mad that we broke the clock. It stopped on five and we've never been able to get it restarted.

F

• Face Doodling: Winston gets put into cryosleep, and Sam pick up some new marking pens. Florence is not amused.
• Face Palm: Poor Florence ends up doing these very often throughout the whole comic, with the "pinching bridge of nose" variety being the most common.
• Failed a Spot Check: In strip 1518, Florence when she misses an emu with a datapad:
  I hate not being able to follow direct orders.
  My thoughts get so fractured
  And I miss things I otherwise would have caught.
• Failsafe Failure:
  • Inverted and Lampshaded as one's definition of "failure" boils down to "the machine won't do what I want." A security guard can see Sam on his monitor, but due to lack of activity, he doesn't know the password to enable manual control or re-enable automatic firing. He's kvetching now, but he'd be singing a different tune if the system had been targeting him.
    Guard: Stupid computer! Security should not fail safe! Security should fail dangerous!
  • And a straight example in Florence's Backstory. The circuit breaker in a kid's electronic wheelchair is designed to cut the power the moment a ground fault is detected. Keep in mind that wheelchairs are mobility aids, and are likely to be used outside. Where it rains. The boy's father spends the entire repair procedure griping that "fail safe in a bad location isn't fail safe at all".
• False Reassurance:
  • The ship computer uses this trope, in reply to Sam's question about how it feels about going into piracy.
  • Earlier, Winston and Sam have a small conversation that runs similar to One Dialogue, Two Conversations.
• Fame Through Infamy: While Sam isn't so extreme that he'll physically harm others, his goal in life is pretty much summed up by "achieve everlasting fame via a combination of crime and outre behavior." Performing an illegal action that could either make him a hero or considered a traitor to all of humanity counts as a "win-win" scenario for him. In his case, it's because what qualifies as fame to sqids qualifies as infamy to humans.
• Fan Disservice: Mr. Kornada's Shower Scene, thankfully minimized by a towel held up by Clippy.
• Fanservice: Florence has a remarkable tendency to end up nude, scantily-clad, or in outfits that leave little to the imagination, despite her lack of certain human female attributes. Gets toned down in later arcs.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Artificial Lifeforms, both genetically engineered and robotic, are legally slaves to the corporation that made them. The corporations thus treat them as such. However, the populace at large generally have the attitude of "If it's talking to me, it's a person."
    Mr. Kornada: A.I.s have numbers, not names.
    Receptionist (thinking): When they bring in donuts, they have names.
  • When Sam tries to launch the ship to undertake a paid mission (having brought Winston and Niomi along as crew), the ship informs him that only the captain can launch the ship, and 'the captain' is the highest-ranking human on board, aka Niomi (as Winston is in cryo for the trip). This is despite the fact that Sam owns the ship, and before then had always been considered the captain.
• Fantastic Vermin: Dvorak's experimental intelligent waffle irons went feral, and now often attack parked ships to drain their power cells.
• Fast-Killing Radiation: Subverted. During the colony ship salvage arc: the moment Sam and Helix learn there's radiation in the ship, they start panicking and screaming, even though Florence points out the radiation is well within safe levels.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: The Dangerous And Very Expensive drive is only used for very important people and cargoes, though it's also the only means of sending messages to another system anytime fast. Large payloads like colony ships have to be sent slower than light. Even superluminal, it is indicated that the travel time isn't shortened from the point of view of the travelers due to the mechanics of the DAVE drive, so passengers still have to go in cryo.
• Fatal Family Photo: Played quite literally in this strip, though the victim is only knocked out by a wallet full of family photos.
• Fate Worse than Death: What Gardener in the Dark does to robots, causing them to suffer brain damage so severe that they are effectively non-functional.
• Finger in the Mail: Parodied in a version of the comic that appeared in a Furry Fandom magazine prior to it becoming a webcomic. Helix is kidnapped, and the kidnappers start mailing pieces of him to Sam and Florence. Since he's a robot, his compatriots just reassemble him as the parts arrive in the mail. The last thing to arrive is his head.◊
  Helix: Hey! I've been rescued!
  Sam: We are not dealing with a criminal mastermind here.
• Fire Stolen from the Gods: The Sqid all aspire to be immortalized as Lovable Rogues, so they believe in generous gods who use theft as a test of worth and reward success.
  • Legend holds that three thieves stole fire from The Maker God Bob's house — three times. Bob wasn't jealous, only worried that it was too dangerous for sqids, but after they spread the fire too widely for him to take it all back, he gave up and wished them luck with it.
  • The God of Life is one of the greedy ones: every sqid's first theft is to steal their life from her, and she never rests until she gets it back.
• First Contact:
  • The first impressions of the human explorers meeting Sam's people were... not great.
    Sam: For centuries, humans had been searching for another intelligent, tool-using race. Then they found us. I still remember that cosmonaut's first immortal words.
    Helix: "Let's keep looking."
  • Florence references this towards one of her captors that thinks she's malfunctioning because she regards the robots of Jean as intelligent beings worthy of basic respect, saying that maybe their creator realized they might encounter a non-human intelligence and didn't want the first impression to be hostile AI trying to kill them because they aren't human.
• Five-Aces Cheater: Sam Starfall went gambling, added a few extra cards to his hand, and got found out when his four kings beat someone else's two kings.
• Flaw Exploitation: To get Sam out of a duct where he is stuck — mention money.
• Floating Limbs: In Sam's recollection of the Sqid's legend of stealing fire from the gods, Maker Bob is depicted with limbs that converge to an abscent middle, along with large "B"s beside his head. Slightly notable is that Bob is a hexopod compared to the eight-limbed Sqids.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: For a doctor, entering a relationship with a patient is ethically thorny. For a veterinarian, it's normally completely out of the question. However, when uplifted wolf Florence Ambrose finds herself in the care of veterinarian Winston Thurmad, it doesn't take long for the sparks to fly.
• Flowers of Romance: Implied with a robot holding a rose while Florence is talking about A.I.s being programmed to like humans, in the foreground.
• A Fool for a Client: Mr. Kornada, with Blunt as his assistant.
• Foot Popping: Florence explains why she doesn't do it when kissing Winston.
  Florence: When a dog lifts its leg, the image that comes to most people's minds isn't associated with romance.
• Foreshadowing: Quite a few instances:
  • In strip 1228, Sam outlines that his long-term plan is to become rich and famous, and then tells Florence that she "can handle the easy bit of working out the details". This is also what Mr. Kornada did with Clippy.
  • In this strip, Sawtooth remarks on incompetence vs. benevolence. Then we learn that Mr. Kornada has been put in charge of dealing with the situation.
  • While talking to Niomi, Florence gets the idea for robots purchasing their next generation. Later, we find that the scrap yard robot is allowing robots to purchase themselves.
  • While talking with Max Post, Florence gives Qwerty the idea for the robotic police force. The mayor's assistant is stunned later when he discovers that some of his policemen were robots.
  • A few mentions are made of the uplifted-chimpanzee project that was the precursor to Doctor Bowman's project with wolves. In more ways than one: Bowman is himself a chimpanzee.
    • Similarly, Florence mentions that Dr. Bowman is "rude, arrogant, prone to act without considering the risks, and having a foul temper." Luckily, he also engineered the neural net to have attributes he didn't, which we learn is exactly the case.
    • In that same conversation, Florence thinks to herself that Dr. Bowman might be a sociopath, particularly for releasing the untested Bowman's Wolves to families in the general public. It turns out he IS a sociopath, by design, but one self-aware enough to recognize his own shortcomings and what his creations would need most for their development.
      Florence: It feels weird to be grateful to someone for performing an act my conscience would never let me do.
  • "How many genetically engineered sapients are on this planet?" "Two."
  • When trying to escape Kornada with Florence at Ecosystems Unlimited, Sam (after successfully tricking Kornada into licking a cold pipe) sends out a message about how someone in the cryonics facility was misusing company resources. It later turns out that Kornada's plan to become the richest person on Jean centered around a precise embezzlement scheme writ planet-wide, which would also lobotomize the robot population of Jean, many of which were still EU property.
  • Florence is told that AI-specific bank accounts come with real time account monitoring, in case, for instance, if someone gives the AI a direct order to transfer all of their money to him. The police officer then comments that it doesn't appear that there will a patch for that giant security hole any time soon. Clippy's plan to make Kornada rich is a patch that will cause all AI-held money to be transferred to specific divisions within EU, which he will have invested in just before, thus netting Kornada a huge profit.
  • At one point, Sawtooth laments he can't be a private eye as long as his visual feeds are publically accessible, and resolves to mention it to Dvorak. Later on, Dvorak makes Sawtooth a fedora that doubles as a wi-fi hotspot, allowing him to control who accesses his feeds.
• For Your Own Good: The easiest way to circumvent a robot's Restraining Bolt is to appeal to this trope.
  • Before going off to sabotage the release of Gardener in the Dark, Florence contacts Sawtooth, Qwerty and Dvorak to come meet her at a location with no Commnet access; knowing they would be forced to try to stop her, she convinces them to voluntarily disable their servo motors until midnight, allowing them to evade the dissemination of the program in case she fails (and more crucially, preventing them from interfering until then) and then tells them where she's going.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: There was a thread on the now-dead Talk About Comics forum called "Q and A with the Freefall Cast and Crew" archived here, and on the defunct The Nice forum there was a thread to ask Florence questions, the contents archived here. The creator, Mark Stanley, responded as the character who was questioned.
• Freudian Excuse: Sam often tries to justify his criminal nature by saying that his species are scavengers, and stealing from under the noses of predators is just instinctive behavior. It rings rather hollow when one can read his thought balloons, however. It does seem that lots of actions seen as immoral by human cultures are acceptable or even heroic in Sam's. In the forums Stanley explained that Bizarre Alien Biology (reproduction is fatal, full sentience occurs only in those who refuse to breed, greatest competition is from other tribes of the same species) has given rise to a culture where a hero is someone who completely disrupts the existence of a rival tribe.
• Fridge Logic: In-universe, Ishiguro tells Clippy to think about the claim that Ishiguro died and what happened to stock prices that day. When he considers that, that day the stock prices went up when the Chief Financial Officer "died", Clippy realizes how little sense that makes.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Invoked when Winston explains how Florence will need to recover for a while before she starts eating again.
    Sam: So what you're saying is that in two or three days, I'm going to have a highly intelligent, fast-moving, starving, carnivorous alien life form on my ship.
    Winston: Yep. Wolves are also most active at dawn and dusk, so this will probably happen while you're asleep.
  • And again when the inspector begins to wonder where Sam is.
    Inspector: (Thinking) So what are the facts? The ship's been properly repaired and documented. Sam is nowhere to be seen. And the creature showing me about is obviously some type of large carnivore... Sometimes Occam's Razor leads to very disturbing conclusions.
  • Florence's control triggers this reaction in an EU guard.
    Guard: She's not a robot. She's a living being. This remote turns her on and off! Her memory is short-circuited! As well as being plain wrong, this stuff could be adapted to humans! Do I have to worry about this being tried on us next?
    Varroa: Oh no, never. You guys are union. We'd try it on contractors first.
• From Bad to Worse: The story of how and why the colonists built a factory that made self-aware robots using experimental neural nets. There were two factory ships sent to help the colonists. One arrived damaged, the other didn't arrive at all. The damaged ship had an improper sealing compound used, causing several compartments to depressurize on transit. When it used atmospheric braking, those compartments repressurized with hot gasses. Then it landed in a lake and they filled with water. The beachhead colonists attempted to repair it, causing it to go from damaged to severely damaged over the course of several fires and at least one explosion. When they finally managed to get it working enough to produce simple electronics, they elected to move ahead with production using a more standard neural net... which failed to work for reasons no one had the expertise to explain and led those in charge to take risky (and poorly documented) measures in order to make something that would work. Though with the reveal of Dr. Bowman and his plan to use Jean as an experiment to see if humans can take being a sapient minority, at least some of these early disasters may have a deliberate cause to them.
• Fully-Clothed Nudity:
  • When Florence ends up naked with a bunch of robot tailors, one of them offers her a gold lamé bikini to wear instead of a dress made of normal cloth. Florence doesn't want to wear it, until she is reminded that some robots have X-ray vision and see right through normal clothing and fur.
  • Florence's thermal underwear is such a Form-Fitting Wardrobe that it flattens her fur and makes her look more naked than if she were wearing literally nothing.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Helix playing with an office chair while Florence ponders her next move.
  • During the trip to Ecosystems Unlimited, watch Sam's pass and the color of security card he is carrying.
  • There's another funny background event during the robot police riot. Look closely. At least one of the robots is a rockem sockem robot.
  • Then there's the time that a baby steals candy from Sam.
  • In this strip, Sawtooth wants Qwerty to carry a transmitter so Dvorak won't get tempted to test it on wrong time. In the next, we can hear a slap and see Qwerty looking Dvorak angrily for some reason.
  • Helix finding a reasonable compromise between Max and Blunt's policies.
  • One of Beekay's chew toys is shaped like Sam.
• Funny Octopus: Despite being a Mobile-Suit Human most of the time, Sam is a Lovable Rogue who is said to be not remotely humanoid in his true form. According to the creator, his species is inspired by the intelligence and dexterity that octopodes often show.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • If the World Wrestling Federation^note now WWE and World Wildlife Fund can't agree what it should stand for, there can be a compromise variant.
  • Although not expanded upon in the comic itself, the DAVE drive (FTL drive) used to get between star systems is short for "Dangerous And Very Expensive" drive.
• Furry Reminder: In-Universe, Florence is very aware and frustrated by this.
  Florence: I'm too wolf-like. Little things add up. Scent. Movement. My mouth opens when I chew. Soup. Whew, boy. When I eat soup in public, it ends up on social media... I'm glad my designers didn't put me in the uncanny valley. Still, I wouldn't mind being a bit closer to it.

G

• Gale-Force Sound: In this strip, Mr. Raibert gets a demonstration on the improvements in small speakers over time, getting blasted by a shouting Max Post over the phone, in a (rather literal) Shout-Out to the old Maxell cassette ad demonstrating the trope.
• Gambling Brawl: Lovable Rogue Sam Starfall plays poker with two men in the Friday 4 August 2000 strip, and claims the pot because "I've got four kings. You've only got two." The angry faces indicate the other players are well aware there should be only four kings in the entire deck. Sam is face down in a garbage dumpster by the next strip.
• Gargle Blaster: John Jones Monroevian Moonshine, "fine sipping whiskey and high explosive". The phrase "If you drink this, you will die" is considered a statement of quality rather than a warning.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Florence is treated with as much suspicion as robots; the fact that she is a living thing only adds to people's fears of unpredictability.
• Genghis Gambit: Sam offers a rather unusual perspective. As he prepares to leave Jean for a couple of weeks, he wonders exactly how society will cope with losing their habitual troublemaker.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: With a direct order from the Mayor Florence is made to feel good about said official. Florence is then asked how she feels.
  Mayor: You still look terrified. Okay, direct order. You like me. You trust me. You want to make me happy. End order.
  Mayor: Better now?
  Florence: Emotionally, much better. Intellectually, I think I'm screaming.
• Gilligan Cut: A satisfied Winston confides on Beekay, his pet dog, how life is getting better for everyone. Cue Mr. Kornada's first day at his new job.
• Global Warming: Taken a swing at in this strip as part of a conversation between Helix and Sam, when the latter disproved the former's theory that Florence was a vampire. (It Makes Sense in Context.)
• Godzilla Threshold: A variation is implied to be the reason the early colonists rushed production of robots using an untested neural net design. They'd already spent five years living in dome tents and eating food made primarily from lichen.
  • "Gardener in the Dark" was created as a last-ditch safeguard against robots going rogue since it effectively renders them unable to do their jobs on a planet that is not yet self-sustaining enough to get along without them.
  • To Florence, the realization that the rollout of Gardener in the Dark can't be blocked by legal means is this.
• The Golden Rule: Florence points out a common mistake, people assuming others should be treated they themselves want to be treated.
  Florence: I wonder whatever happened to Bob the Masochist?
• Go Mad from the Revelation:
  • In Comic 2413, it nearly happens to Qwerty when Sam explains how Mr. Kornada's plan to take all the robots' wealth by effectively lobotomizing them is inefficient and amateurish.
    Qwerty: The tentacled horror from beyond my stars spoke, and Von Neumann help me, in my madness, I understood its words.
  • He immediately calls Max Post to save him from Sam, explicitly calling this out as his fear.
    Qwerty: If I listen to him much longer, I'm going to lose my grip on reality.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Apparently sapience plus the third law of robotics leads to this.
    Sawtooth: The only guideline we were ever given for dealing with other robots was "protect your own existence". And as we discovered the hard way, that is not the first thought you want going through a robot's mind when he discovers the facility building his replacement. Especially if that robot's designed to toss asteroids.
  • Dvorak attempts to invent a bullet that would be effective on robots. As a result, it acts as a poison.
    • Most of Dvorak's inventions lead to this, such as his attempt at Canine-friendly coffee. Smells like frightened rabbit, but tastes so bad that Florence has to scald the taste off her tongue using Winston's coffee.
      Florence: The purpose of coffee is to wake you up. After drinking Dvorak's coffee substitute, I am very awake.
      Winston: So... success?
      Florence: How can something be so right and so wrong at the same time?
  • Sam understands this trope.
    Sam: Helix, I fear we have unleashed the forces of order upon this defenseless world.
  • Discussed when Winston suggests that Florence file a homestead claim, despite her status as a non-citizen AI, on the grounds that the worst that can happen is that the claim gets denied. It immediately occurs to Florence that if her claim were to go through, the half-billion robots on the planet would see the precedent and file claims of their own.
    Florence: Perhaps the worst that can happen is they'll say "yes".
• Gone Horribly Wrong:
  • Robot life debts involve voluntarily donating 2% of remaining runtime to whoever prevents their destruction. They didn't anticipate owing someone like Sam on a global scale.
    Dvorak: Obviously, we did not anticipate how a system designed to promote good could go so disastrously awry.
  • Discussed by Bill Raibert when the Mayor's assistant talks about electing a temporary dictator to give Direct Orders to the robots that allow robots the most freedom and can't be overridden by others.
    Bill Raibert: Kid, word of advice. Put in a time delay function and an auditor with veto power. Otherwise, you're going to find out that a dictator malfunction is a lot worse than a wardrobe malfunction.
  • "I swear, when humans went to the stars, it wasn't to be a bad example!"
• Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: In a variation on the "getting wet while naked" theme, in the first gratuitous shower scene a raccoon swipes Florence's towel while she's washing.
• Goofy Print Underwear:
  • Sam starts to think that wearing "Teddy bears in space" underwear was a poor decision.
  • Kornada's boxers, seen here, are of the "pink/red hearts" variety, although not commented on.
• Graceful Loser: Both Sam and Max Post. After being tricked by a waiter into doing the dishes three times and them paying for both their meals mention they left the waiter a big tip because he earned it.
• Grail in the Garbage: Florence and Dvorak finally get Clippy calmed down and backed up, thus finally putting the whole "Gardener In The Dark" fiasco to bed. Thus relieved, they start to discuss the whole mess... and realize that they've simply restored the status quo; Clippy has a backup. Good news; Honest Corporate Executive Raibert has him. Bad news; Raibert doesn't remember that, and if the backup is ever activated he might just activate the safeguard immediately.
  Dvorak: Clippy was a failsafe. A robot with software weapons in case we went bad. It is very important that such a system work if it’s ever needed.
  Florence: Uh, oh. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
  Dvorak: One word. Redundancy. When Clippy powered up, I couldn’t see him while his offensive software was running. The others like him will still be invisible to most robots and cameras. So until we figure out how the redaction software works, finding them would be a matter of luck.
  Florence: I hope that the humans in charge of these robots are taking their responsibilities seriously.
  Raibert: One of these days, I have got to clean out this closet.
  Sign around Clippy 2’s neck, hidden behind junk: (Warning: Activate only if really needed.)
• Grand Romantic Gesture: Winston offers Florence to move in with him so that she has a better place to stay at between assignments than onboard the Savage Chicken with Sam. This is his way of saying he wants to try a serious relationship with her, and she is overjoyed to accept.
• Grey Goo: A Discussed Trope, as any process with self-improving mechanical efficiency can become this.
  • Dr. Bowman names it as part of his reasoning as to why he deliberately made his neural net program produce artificial intelligences that weren't limited to unthinking obedience on humans.
    Dr. Bowman: In nanotech, it's a "Grey Goo" scenario. On a larger scale, it's a "Paperclip Maximiser". An A.I. with that programmed goal will try to turn everything in its reach into paperclips or paperclip production. So what do you get with a system of autonomous robots that always has human desires as its top priority?
    Florence: A human maximizer.
    Dr. Bowman: Good news if you're a human. Bad news if you're anything else.
  • Later, when robots are running rampant fixing things, Sam asks what will stop them from building over the whole planet. Helix responds that robots will see that supply is outpacing demand and stop themselves to pursue other goals, thus proving Dr. Bowman right in his above reasoning.
    Sam: You know, I had not considered that consciousness might be a safety feature.
  • Sam suggests to Florence that she ask the robots for help with her species' shallow gene pool;
    Florence: The robots have been trained to get the highest production with the best efficiency. That’s why we need to be careful about giving the robots our problems.
    Sam: You’re afraid of the solutions they might come up with.
    Florence: Maybe it’s selfish to my species, but I want more out of life than my reproductive system operating at maximum capacity.
• Gratuitous Ninja: There's a minor arc at a French restaurant with ninja waiters. The story goes that some fancy restaurants think that the waiter should be invisible, allowing the diner to concentrate wholly on their food, while others think the waiter should make themselves part of the dining experience. In Le Restaurant des Ninjas, the waiters' invisibility is part of the dining experience - and as shown above, they're so good they can even hide the restaurant.
• Groin Attack: Dr. Bowman, in the July 28, 2014 strip, mentions that in the past he took a sharpened plastic spoon and neutered himself after seeing what testosterone-fueled aggression was doing with other Uplifted Animals, which later ultimately led to their deaths by age 40. Florence asks him if they can skip the details of the procedure, and move on to her next question for him.
• Grow Beyond Their Programming: Robots on Jean vastly outnumber humans and are rapidly evolving beyond their programming to the point where many humans (and one robot) fear they could become a threat to humanity. This has led to them turning a blind eye to "Gardener in the Dark", a neural pruning program that Mr. Kornada "improved" to essentially lobotomize every robot on Jean.
• Growling Gut:
  • In this strip, Florence's stomach growling is misinterpreted by a bystander as a regular wolf growl, and accordingly makes himself scarce in spite of her yelled (and ultimately futile) reassurance that it was just her stomach growling.
  • The above situation is inverted earlier when Helix is going to set the rabbits "Lunch" and "Dinner" free and hopes it is her stomach growling. It isn't.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy:
  • Sam like to ensure that if they aren't this when he arrives, they are by the time he leaves.
    Florence: They've got a security guard.
    Same: Excellent. Our job just got easier.
  • The Ecosystems Unlimited Security AI is also pretty bad at this.
    Guard: Computer, clarification: You said "intruders". Is there more than one intruder in the building?
    AI: Yes.
    Guard: Why didn't you tell me?!
    AI: Records show it is important to maintain the element of surprise.
    Guard: You don't have a self destruct I can voice activate, do you?
    AI: No, though that is the most requested feature for my next upgrade.
    

H

• Hammerspace: How in the blazes did Sam get that pipe wrench into his suit?
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Florence has done this from time to time. Unfortunately for her, since she has multiple sets of mammaries thanks to her nonhuman nature, even with the help of her tail it leaves some of her "naughty bits" uncovered. Her fur thankfully covers anything she has on her chest unless she's nursing or in heat (the former has never happened, and the latter is unlikely to happen in such a nonsexualized comic) - but she still covers the same area as human ladies would due to cultural conditioning. And her tail covers, err... the bottom half when needed.
• Hanging Judge: Blunt accepts the Mayor's acting as the judge for Kornada's trial because the only other judge on the planet had this reaction when asked to hear the case.
• Hanlon's Razor:
  • Florence assumes the worst of Ecosystems Unlimited's programmers while trying to stop Gardener in the Dark, assuming they must be highly invested in its success. In actuality, the only programmer working on its release is highly disgruntled.
  • Clippy quotes Ian Fleming's "once is happenstance..." line when the Gardener in the Dark program doesn't go out. He initially believes it's an error, but after repeated attempts and some research, he realizes someone is blocking it.
  • Bill Raibert realizes that intelligent robots bound to follow the orders of anyone in authority regardless of whether those orders are a good idea has essentially "created a force multiplier for stupidity".
  • This also seems to be the basis of Blunt's argument in-court for Mr. Kornada: the guy's too idiotic to intentionally be a threat. It's the machines giving him directions that are the real threat. Of course, Mr. Kornada was the one issuing the orders to the robots giving him directions.
  • Heck, it seems to be Mr. Kornada's go-to method of avoiding responsibility. If he's ignorant, then obviously he can't be held responsible. To the point that he's genuinely surprised when the prosecution at his trial says that ignorance is not an excuse.
    Mr. Kornada: Ignorance is not an excuse? I didn't know that.
  • The asteroid station's issues might be due to criminal efforts or incompetence. Niomi thinks it's unlikely to be criminals because the whole station is an active workplace. Sam hopes it is because he thinks incompetence would be much harder to fix.
• Happily Adopted: Florence, Sam (and all members of his species, since the mating process kills both parents), Almeda (Niomi is her birth mother, but not her genetic mother). Considering how mainstream adoption is in this world, it's surprising that when Florence first starts to fall in love with Winston, she worries about whether he will mind helping to bring up puppies who aren't his, and whether she could stand looking after human babies. In time, she realizes that as her children will live amongst humans, being brought up by one human parent and one Bowman's wolf parent, and seeing how they interact together, will probably be the best solution for them. And after coping with Sam and Helix, she's got plenty of quasi-parenting experience.
• Happiness in Slavery:
  • Well, sort of. Florence and the robotic AIs are property, and it is ambiguous whether they have any rights at all. However, their status is complicated because there are relatively few humans on the planet, allowing the AIs a lot of freedom in practice if not in theory. This is an important element in the story, but the AIs don't seem particularly upset with their situation: Some of them work towards gaining rights, but generally, accept that only gradual change is possible, and try to find peaceful ways of getting around What Measure Is a Non-Human? without disrupting human society too much. Florence explicitly states that this approach is needed on a few occasions.
  • It's clear that Dr. Bowman deliberately arranged for the wolf pups to end up in human families, and so be socalized by human families, the best restraining bolt of all. Florence's nominal owner, Scott Ambrose, has long regarded Florence as his younger sister, and is more than merely supportive of her. Florence is treated well by most people around her, but legally, she is still a thing, not a person, and has no more legal rights than a toaster. And "property to be treated and disposed of however we see fit" is exactly how the upper levels of the government of planet Jean regard, and intend to treat, all A.I.s, including both Florence and the sentient robots — and they know this. We've seen that other elements of the government — including the actual police force — don't share this view, but still, not everyone could remain as calm about the whole situation as Florence and the robots seem to.
  • As the strip progresses, the capacity of artificial intelligences (including the bioengineered Florence) to subvert their apparent hardwired limitations by locating loopholes or exploiting semantics in their orders becomes increasingly important. Florence even theorizes that Dr. Bowman might have intended for this to eventually happen; although he's been The Ghost for most of the comic, it's abundantly clear he cared for his creations like they were his children, and forcing the rest of the world into a position where they must acknowledge his creations as independent beings is as good a way as any to create a future for them. This is confirmed when Dr. Bowman finally appears.
  • The Rover unit designated Temporary Site Manager of the bomb factory is so utterly delighted at having something to do after a lengthy period of inactivity he starts wondering how much the factory should pay the Savage Chicken’s crew to do the job they have for it. Thankfully, the Communication Nexus unit convinces it to better let Accounting handle those details.
• Hates Being Touched: Dr Bowman, due to being a sociopathic uplifted chimpanzee. He lets Florence give him a farewell hug, but he doesn't enjoy it.
• Head Desk: Sam manages to invoke the AI equivalent in the Savage Chicken's computer by pointing out that for all it despises him, he's still the best thing to happen to it, having arranged for the repair of the otherwise useless ship and acquired the services of a competent crew. It gets worse when the ship refuses to give Sam's life the same value as a human life, only for him to point out many humans consider some things beyond the value of their own lives, and invites the ship to include him in that category.
• Heads, Tails, Edge: A peculiar variant happens in 1803. Florence flips a coin to decide whether to help Sam or the police officer who's chasing him. Sam steals the coin before it lands, so she decides to help neither.
• Here We Go Again!: Florence has trouble positioning herself for the eye scanner. When she finally gets a successful scan on her right eye, the machine says: "Due to number of failed scans, a second verification is required. Please present left eye to the lens for scanning."
• Heroes Gone Fishing: Sam insists: no work on Saturday. So he takes Helix and Florence out fishing.
• Herr Doktor: Invoked when Sam disguises himself as a cryogenics scientist during Florence's visit to the main EU facility on Jean.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Done a few times for humor, but the best is when Florence hides her sabotage of the Gardener in the Dark program using the legitimate updates.
  Florence: The best lie contains an element of truth, and this lie is over 99 percent truth.
  Sam: Your lies contain more truth than my truth does.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Completely averted in the French Ninja restaurant.
  Waiter: That man does not look anything like a ninja.
  Chef: Ah, but that is exactly what a ninja should look like.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Caught in a pie fight in an automated pie warehouse, Sam asks for a pie to be delivered 'as fast as possible', causing him to promptly get said Pie in the Face.
• Hot Drink Cure: When the veterinarian checks a soggy and wounded Florence Ambrose, he finds her body temperature to be 31 degrees Celsius (the norm is 37 degrees, so she was literally too cold to shiver), so he bathes her and gives her a hot drink to raise her temperature back to normal.
• How Is That Even Possible?: Discussed for Laughs during Florence and Winston's date at a French Ninja Restaurant in regards to how their food was delivered without them noticing.
  Winston: Then how? Magic?
  Plainclothes Ninja Waiter (thinking): The ultimate compliment to ninja craftsmanship. To see what has been done and claim it could not be possible.
• Human Popsicle: Used for interstellar travel, involving chemicals that make the process unable to be repeated for several years without harming the individual so treated. Invoked when Sam hears that 5-7 years is needed, in between, he states he thought people could be frozen and thawed like popcicles. Florence almost got iced again in a recent visit to Ecosystems Unlimited, thanks to threatening Mr. Kornada's plan.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: A zigzagged example; in this issue here, Sam notes that he regards humans as having god-like powers, pointing out that they travel between worlds, reshape mountains and rivers to suit their whims, and create obedient servants out of the earth itself (robots). Despite this respect for what humans can do, Sam himself holds no particular awe for them and enjoys harassing and annoying them as he would any member of a rival tribe. Of course, Sqid mythology is all about them stealing things from their gods, so this is consistent.
• Humans Are Not the Dominant Species: Hasn't happened yet, but Dr. Bowman is already preparing an experiment to see how humans will respond to this scenario.
• Humans Are Special: Sawtooth Rivergrinder, one of the robots arguing for the full equality of sentient robots, flat out states "You are missing an advantage robots have. We're not starting from scratch. Humans have thousands of years of experience we can learn from."
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: The alien eyes being Starfish Aliens (Sam), Beast Man (Florence) and Ridiculously Human Robots (Helix and the other 450-odd-million robots on Jean).
  • As Sam points out, humans have developed Godlike powers.
    Sam: They send ships between planets. They divert rivers. They move mountains. They take dirt and stone and turn it into mechanical servants that do their bidding. What part of this does not say "Godlike powers" to you?
• Hurt Foot Hop: In a strip, an unfortunate commuter gets kicked in the shin and holds it while yelling in pain. Well, he did pull someone's tail, but wasn't expecting the response to come from the direction it did.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Sam's the captain, while Florence is the engineer.
  • In a quick one-off, Mr. Raibert mentally praises his secretary as such.

I

• I Ate WHAT?!
  • Florence is intent on waiting sixty seconds before civilly eating her meal. She ends up wolfing down the napkin instead.
  • She's also less than thrilled after trying a taste of Winston's breakfast, puffed locust.
  • Subverted in a Christmas special◊—Sam enjoys the taste of coal.
• I Believe That You Believe It: Clippy testifies that he believed Mr. Kornada would be able to handle any negative consequences from releasing Gardener in the Dark because Kornada ordered him to. When asked if he still believes it after the order is rescinded, he says that he still believes Kornada believed it.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: This robot really wishes it could. Not that it hasn't a good reason, being forced to play Jar-Jar Binks in spite of being a Shakespearean actor. The JarJarBot is an example of the exception to an inversion created by the addition of a single character. To wit, the robots are usually required to turn themselves in for scrapping at a certain time, meaning that they are required to self-terminate. However, they just caught on that it's possible to get out of having to do it (by buying themselves for their scrap value from the scrapyard, as mentioned by Nickel). The JarJarBot, of course, is more than willing to self-terminate.
• Ignore the Disability: Just after admonishing Tangent about making dog references around Florence, Niomi promptly sticks her foot solidly in her mouth with a reference to dogs drinking from toilets after noting the Savage Chicken's toilet is working again.
• Ignoring by Singing: Edge "initiates countermeasures" against the possibility of a sound-based hacking attack by putting his hands over his ear-equivalents and yelling "La, la, la, la! I can't hear you! La, la, la, la!"
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Florence has an attack of this, when she realizes a robot has been irrevocably harmed by the Gardener in the Dark program.
• Impact Silhouette: Sam Starfall and Helix fake this during a Chase Scene involving a Sheet of Glass, here.
• I'm Going to Hell for This: In this strip, Florence states she's going straight to doggy hell for being part of why Sam's breaking into the Mayor's office early just to have breakfast before meeting said official.
• Impossible Task: Sam concludes that stealing human knowledge amounts to this because they produce new knowledge faster than his race could assimilate it, even if that was essentially all they did.
  Sam: In this area, humans are something we considered impossible. A group so rich you can't steal from them.
• Impossible Theft: Sam, best exemplified here, where he was banned from prison until he confesses to where he stashed the cell doors.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: Lampshaded in regards to Florence's dinner dress, when faced with the possibility of a fight with Blunt, who wants to prevent her from interfering with the release of Gardener in the Dark.
• Incapable of Disobeying: As an Artificial Intelligence "product", Florence is legally required to have "safeguards" that compel her to obey direct orders from anyone with the authority to give them. Dr. Bowman edits her brain to limit that list significantly once it becomes clear how unqualified most people are to do so.
  Henri: What is it that disturbs you about orders?
  Florence: They're terrifying! If you ordered me to chew my fingers off, I'd do it! If I'm ordered to destroy all the turtles in the world, I would try to carry the orders out!
  Henri: Safeguards would... No, it's not hurting humans. It is an order. Nuts, you would do it.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Winston Thurmad suspects he'll need one due to an upcoming discussion with Dvorak and Qwerty.
• Inflationary Dialogue: After finding out that Florence is technically owned by Ecosystems Unlimited, Sam insists that she bite him so he can sue, splitting the profits 60/40. When she refuses, he offers a 70/30 split, then tries to cajole her by pointing out she could comfortably live on 20%.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Somehow, Sam believes that the best way to steal several satellites that he was supposed to deliver, is by not stealing them and just doing the job anyway.
  • Blunt also has a variant of this here.
  • In Sam's story about the theft of fire, one of Mho's reasons for trying to steal fire is that having it would make him so respected no one would ever steal from him.
• Instant Home Delivery: Niomi and her robot Tangent appear immediately after Florence places a "help wanted" ad. (Justified in the strips immediately following: the server that Florence was using to search for contractors before placing her want-ad passed the word to the robots, including Tangent.)
• Instant Leech: Just Fall in Water!: When washing in a jury-rigged outdoor shower, Florence finds out she's missing a step in the process. "The correct order is 'lather, rinse, remove leeches, repeat.'"
• Insult Backfire: When Dvorak thinks he's been called an insane AI, he just says that he prefers "creative".
• Interspecies Romance: Florence, an uplifted red wolf, is involved in a romantic friendship with Winston, a human.
  • Prior to the start of the relationship, Florence muses about how part of her problem was that she was raised by humans, thereby obtaining human values, meaning she wants what any other young human woman would want.
• Internal Reveal: In strip number 5, released in April of 1996, the readers learn that Sam stole Florence. On June 17, 2015, 2663 strips and nineteen real-world years later, he finally gets around to telling Florence.
• Internet Jerk: Discussed by Dr. Bowman when he gives Florence a new, much more secure remote. The device defies this trope by recording who uses it.
  Dr. Bowman: It's amazing how much more responsible people are when they know they'll be held accountable for their actions.
• Introduced Species Calamity: Sam expresses concern about ducks, of all things, getting loose on his homeworld and destroying the ecosystem. Though given the wide number of Terran animals that have attempted to eat him (and his need for higher oxygen than Earth's atmosphere) his concern might not be unjustified.
• In the Future, We Still Have Roombas: There are many robots fulfilling this role, such as carnivorous waffle irons, and in one strip during a segment with many fictional and Real Life robots being background cameos an actual Roomba is shown.
• Ironic Echo: Dr. Bowman is a self-admitted sociopath who doesn't concern himself with things which might have happened, but didn't. This is then echoed later during Mr. Kornada's trial, when he can't be bothered to concern himself with a war which almost happened. The irony is that Kornada intended to cause harm from the start, while Bowman intended to prevent harm.
• Ironic Fear: Winston was genetically engineered to be perfectly adapted for space travel, but he's so terrified of space that he failed the aptitude test purely due to his stress levels.
• Irony: "So because we're going to have millions of unexpected workers, we have a labor shortage."
  • At the end of Sam's story about the theft of fire, the only Sqids who don't have any fire are the three thieves. So they go and steal some from their neighbors.
• Inventional Wisdom: Discussed between Sam and a supervisor in a space station and cited as a reason that Job Stealing Robots won't work. Not entirely at least. Robots just don't have the dexterity and intelligence to maneuver themselves into a position to troubleshoot a valve that is facing a wall without potentially damaging something on the way. When Sam asks why the valve is facing the wall like that to begin with:
  Perth Hillman: Two reasons. It looked good on the prints and the people who put it there knew they would never have to work on it themselves.
• Is It Always Like This?: A version without the question being asked explicitly. After Dr Bowman spends two installments ranting at the base commander, the commander comments to Florence that he's in an unusually good mood and she seems to be a calming influence.
• I Take Offense to That Last One:
  • Being a carnivore, Florence prefers blood in her coffee instead of non-dairy creamer.
    Helix: We've got non-dairy creamer.
    Florence: Please, Helix. Let's not be gross.
  • When Sam and Helix are discussing infiltrating the South Pole complex, Helix lists off various problems. The missile launcher, fences, and auto-turrets Sam is confident he can deal with. The average 40-below temperatures, not so much.
• It Came from the Fridge: Expiration Dates are unimportant to Sam. Save that the further from an expiration date it is, the better.
• It Makes Sense in Context: Just try explaining most events in the comic without context.
• It's a Long Story: Served with a bit of Lampshade Hanging in this strip, changing the focus to Sam and Helix while Florence explains how she ultimately arrived at Dr. Thurmad's house.
• I Want Grandkids: As Dr. Bowman puts it, he's old and he created Florence, which gives him to right to bug her about grandchildren.
• I Was Told There Would Be Cake: a Torches and Pitchforks style angry mob is completely legal on Jean, as long as everyone gets ice cream afterwards.

J

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Sam Starfall thinks nothing of robbing you blind, but will stand up for his crew if they're in danger in spite of all of his "looking out for Number One" talk. He's even willing to give up a potential power abuse if it somehow harm his crew. For example, Sam decided to hand Florence's remote control to her, but Helix, believing that Sam just wouldn't use it on her because he broke it, tried to take it from him and accidently put Florence to sleep. After that, Sam accurately points out that none of them is responsible enough to use the remote control.
  • According to Florence, Dr. Bowman qualifies as well, taking care to give his creations the restraint that he himself lacks. Although in this case, the jerk part is debatable given the fact that his most jerkish and sociopathic actions are the result of My Instincts Are Showing because he is not human.
    Florence: Okay, I'm not going to get upset because you really don't know why I'm upset.
    Dr. Bowman: Everything I did was logical. One day I'll understand why that makes me the one who's nuts.
• Jerkass Has a Point: More often than not Sam has a justification for his behavior. Edge and the Mayor have their moments too.
  • For example, while Sam is a pathological lawbreaker, he actually understands that it's stupid to blindly follow a law just because it's a law, and he has to teach Helix that just because it's law it isn't necessarily right, an observation that Florence couldn't help but concede to be logical and even ethical.
  • Another one is when the ship tried to kill Sam on grounds that, given his stupidity, he is a threat to its makers (and to humanity as a whole). Sam concedes this point, but he soon gives a lengthy talk about how he is essential to human evolution, given that modern technology and conformity would make humans grow lazy if their peace wasn't disturbed every now and then, greatly affecting their adaptational abilities, but he (Sam) provides the needed amount of chaos to force humans to learn from his (Sam's) mistakes and prepare themselves for future threats. Though disgusted, the ship concedes that his logic is sound and stops trying to kill him.
  • Sam gives this one a Call-Back much later on when worrying about robots getting too protective of humans.
  • Another time a delivery-robot tried to kill Sam by running over him, but Sam took advantage of his programming by hiding under the delivery box, preventing the robot from injuring Sam without damaging the delivery. When he warned Sam that he would wait for him to get tired of hiding, Sam quickly ruins the robot's hope for revenge because, if he does wait that long, he will be behind schedule.
  • Florence may not like to be called a slave, but...
  • Also, when Florence refused to see the mayor, Sam reminded her that it was for the greater good.
    Sam: Are you going to let this bad program run through the robot population because you are afraid to talk to a plump human?
  • While the mayor can be quite... brusque (at least when it comes to AI and Sam), she has a rather valid point here.
    Max: If you would relent and grant them basic rights, it would go a long way to calming the situation down.
    Mayor: Ah, yes. Liberating billions of credits worth of equipment from the company that owns this planet and also owns all the military hardware. I'm sure that will calm things down wonderfully. One lump or two?
  • Edge's favorite words are "Idiot", "Moron" and "Dummy", and when he finally gets the chance to make his attitude known to humans, he doesn't just insult them, he brings up a way humans actually do make things more difficult for robots to do their work: "You guys give some stupid orders!"
  • Blunt makes a legitimate point about why robots are dangerous to humans: while it's not the robots' fault, any robot (or other A.I., including Florence) can be ordered into doing all kinds of horrible things that they'd have no room to refuse to do because it doesn't violate their programming. And since robots can be ordered to believe things they didn't previously believe, they can essentially be Mind Raped into committing crimes that go against their programming.
    • Blunt also makes some valid arguments about robots' capabilities potentially rendering humans obsolete.
      Blunt: We can keep them fed. We can. Provide them. With shelter and entertainment. But if humans. Are reduced. To pets. Within the system. Our safeguards. Have failed.
• Job-Stealing Robot: A key theme, as robots are doing most of the work on Jean anyway. Clippy starts working towards a solution when he realizes that the key element - technology drastically reducing human labor - has happened before, when the Haber process was discovered. And The Great Depression notwithstanding because a lot of farmers had to find new jobs, it was a good thing.
  Clippy: Robots are capable of meeting all labor needs. Humans do not have to work. Is this the best way to go? The Haber process. Ammonia. Synthetic fertilizer. Fewer farmers feed more people. With so many humans freed from farming, the human race blossoms. It’s perfect. It even sounds organic. Robots shall be the second load of fertilizer dumped upon the human race.
  • Perth Hillman raises another point against this trope: complex structures such as the Transfer Station are ultimately built by and for humans. Robots simply don't have the agility or the dexterity to maneuver through the mazes of piping and equipment to administer maintenance to delicate machinery.
  • Played for laughs in this strip:
    Officer: We are robots who police other robots.
    Security Guard: You chase robot criminals?
    Officer: Yes. Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.
    Security Guard (thinking): This is not good. If automation puts our criminals out of work, what will they do for a living?
• Jury Duty: Jean's population is extremely limited, so everyone winds up knowing of Mr. Kornada's boneheaded attempt to disrupt the economy. In order to find a relatively impartial jury, Jean's judicial system is forced to contact the crew of a mining station that hasn't yet received its latest news package.
• Just a Machine:
  • Florence is classified as an AI and is treated as just that by many humans, especially the Mayor and Ecosystems Unlimited. At least this guy has his criteria straight.
  • Sam cheerfully chides an Ecosystems Unlimited employee who offers up an illogical circular argument against Florence's personhood.
• Just in Time: When Edge tries to catch Florence to talk with her about the sticky notes regarding "Gardener in the Dark", he asks a spaceport worker if he had just missed her, and is told "Oh, heck no. You missed them by hours."
• "Just So" Story: When prompting Sam to talk about his homeworld's legends, Florence comments the origin of fire is a common topic of those. Sam, who's having some trouble remembering, perks up as he remembers every Sqid clan claims to have stolen fire from the gods - and she's in luck, since his clan was the one to do it. An amused Florence comments that with Sam being the storyteller, she'd been very surprised if they weren't.
  • That said, he also mentions that pretty much everything they have, they claim to have stolen from the gods. This is also one of their first lessons - if something is easy to steal, it may be because the possessor is eager to get rid of it, as they learned from the theft of the first plague.
  • Their culture is so centered around theft, it's said every Sqid's first theft is the theft of their own life from the God of Life, who keeps pursuing them until she gets it back.

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