During an official club meeting of G.R.O.S.S., Calvin and Hobbes plot to hit Susie with a water balloon, but soon an even better opportunity presents itself, and the two proceed with a kidnapping and ransom plan on Susie's favorite doll.
Tropes
- Complexity Addiction: Calvin and Hobbes want to hit Susie, who is playing with her dolls on the sidewalk in front of her house, with a water balloon. Rather than just go over to her and throw a water balloon at her, the two spend the entire morning meticulously mapping out their neighborhood and constructing an extremely complex secret code. Even once they're done with that, the two then concern themselves with running back and forth haphazardly to lose any potential people that are following them. By the time they get to Susie, she's long since gone inside.
- Cut-and-Paste Note: Calvin and Hobbes make one for their ransom demands after kidnapping Susie's Binky Betsy doll. Calvin signs the bottom with his name, defeating the entire point of making one.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Calvin does not take kindly to Hobbes being such a willing captive of Susie, admonishing him strongly for not fighting back against her.
- Happy Ending: Susie gets her Binky Betsy doll back from Calvin, plus a quarter. But Calvin considers the mission (and the entire club) a success when Hobbes reads a page out of Susie's diary during his captivity, immediately forgetting all the setbacks of the day. So it's a happy ending for both parties.
- Idiot Ball: Calvin and Hobbes go through all the trouble of trying to make their ransom demands to Susie anonymous, even using letters clipped out of a magazine and glued to a piece of paper so there's no handwriting...and then Calvin signs his name at the end of the note. He does so the same way he wrote the rest of the note.
- Out-Gambitted: Calvin kidnaps Susie's Binky Betsy doll and holds it for ransom. Susie follows Calvin's directions to deliver the ransom, but instead of paying him, she kidnaps Hobbes when Calvin is distracted trying to get the money. The two exchange the dolls back to their original owners (with Susie even managing to squeeze an extra quarter out of Calvin).
- Ransom Drop: Calvin instructs Susie to leave the envelope with the ransom money by a particular tree trunk for him to pick up.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When Susie 'kidnaps' Hobbes, Calvin expects him to attack her or at the very least escape her. Hobbes doesn't do either, because he can't, because he's a stuffed animal from the perspective of everyone except Calvin.
- Welcome Back, Traitor: At the end of the arc, after Calvin has taken Hobbes to task for submitting himself so easily to Susie's imprisonment and ruining their ransom plans, Hobbes says he peeked into her Susie's diary while he was at her house. He only saw one sentence ("Calvin is a pig-faced smelly fat-head"), but it's enough for Calvin to now consider the mission a success, welcome Hobbes back into the fold with open arms, and even promote him.
