Awkward Zombie (Webcomic)

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Awkward Zombie is a wacky weekly gaming webcomic by Katie Tiedrich. While many of the strips are stand-alone gags from various games such as The Legend of Zelda or World of Warcraft, the webcomic also features several recurring Super Smash Bros. characters living together in a building and dealing with various hijinks.

It once could be described as not actually having much to do with its title,^note until this strip came out.

There are also many pages that appear on her DeviantArt gallery only.

She has also started to illustrate (but not write) a brand new webcomic called Aikonia, which can be found at this site.

In 2012, the author tried to raise money to print the comic book; the Kickstarter was a runaway success, and ended at over a thousand percent funded.

Provides examples of:

Abhorrent Admirer: Ruto, who was weaponized by Link here.
Adaptational Curves: Inverted for Samus, who is much more built than in the game and has some rather impressive biceps.
Adaptational Jerkass:
- As noted below, Marth is much more of an arrogant snob than he is in canon.
- Professor Layton is notably more aggressive than he is in the games as a result of viewing puzzles as Serious Business. This ranges from angrily demanding a police officer to give him a puzzle he hasn't seen before to slapping Luke for suggesting they use a hamster wheel to get a hamster to exercise instead of an elaborate puzzle.
Adaptational Ugliness: Done to Miranda and Tharja. The former is due to a strong dislike, the latter to play up her creepy stalker personality.
Adaptation Personality Change: The comic portrays Marth from Fire Emblem rather differently than the games do. The author was rather surprised when confronted with a game highlighting the difference, noting that "Sometimes I forget that I kinda sorta totally made up his characterization for the purposes of this comic." While not mentioned as often, the same thing applies to Roy. This is, surprisingly, kept in a sort of canon; any comic dealing with Marth and Roy in the settings of their own games keeps them more or less in-character, while appearances in the context of Smash Bros uses the made-up characterizations.

Age-Inappropriate Dress: Nowi is Really 700 Years Old, looks like a human girl who's still in elementary school, and wears Stripperific armor.
All-Powerful Bystander: Master Hand, sorta. He mostly just chews Roy out for sticking around after he was fired. He also brainwashed the Smashers (with Mewtwo's help) to fight for him.
Alternate Character Interpretation: Done in-universe with Marth especially, but also Link and a bunch of others as idiots/Jerkasses.
And Now For Something Completely Different: The occasional comic where Katie draws about what's been going on in real life. Lately, though, they've been replaced by 24-hour comics where Katie draws 2 comic panels about something that happens in her vicinity for each hour of a day.
Applied Phlebotinum: Mass Effect is used for lots of advanced technology from Faster-Than-Light Travel to Artificial Gravity; but not the translators, that's magic.
Armor-Piercing Question:
- Katie makes Miranda burst into tears when she asks why, if she was meant to be genetically perfect in every way, does she have buck teeth.
- In this comic, Sniper Wolf asks why, if Liquid Snake has all the dominant genes, he is blonde.
Arc Welding: In this version Ike is from 400 years into Marth's future, but their actual Fire Emblem games take place in separate universes. Awakening has playable descendants of both Ike and Marth, making this Hilarious in Hindsight.
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
- Magical lawyer superpowers from the Ace Attorney series include psychic lie detection, hypersensitive tell spotting... and basic logic.
- "My two-months-late parts just came in and the vendors drilled the holes in the wrong locations. And they painted them the wrong color AGAIN."
Artistic License:
- Katie did an entire comic explaining the thought process behind an Animal Crossing comic, and explained two inaccuracies. It also showed that she was concerned about whether having an Out-of-Character Moment would backfire, which is why she went with a more benign change.
- In Defection Detection she draws Lyn trying to recruit Guy even though in their game the two will never meet until three chapters after Guy's recruitment. Her reason? Because she simply wants to draw both of them in a single comic.
Artistic License – Statistics: One of the strips is built out of this and Random Number God. The blurb mentions that Katie actually has studied statistics, but when she plays Fire Emblem she conveniently forgets it all.
Art Shift:
- Used as a punchline in this strip. After graduating from art school, BLU Spy makes a sniper disguise that is much more detailed and differently shaded from the RED Soldier standing next to him, inadvertently giving him away.
- Katie's Animal Crossing comics are drawn in a Super-Deformed style, to amp up the cute and comedy.
Ascended Meme: In A Link to the Cast, Katie references the silly tier lists meme that popped up around Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's development time, this one being social status of the fighters (where Marth ranks himself and the other royalty members above the "divinity" tier).
Ate His Gun: Snake found that preferable to Otacon droning on about Pokémon.
Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: It's a bad idea to send into a battle a Pokémon in which you are still on its back.
Author Appeal: Katie really, really likes Metal Gear, and had every other comic be a Metal Gear comic from 10/26/2015 to 12/4/2017 (that's 2 years, 1 month, and 8 days).
Author Avatar: Appears when telling autobiographical vignettes or when she places herself in the role of the main character from the Pokémon and Animal Crossing games.
Author Tract: Katie has a strong dislike for Miranda Lawson, and makes sure her audience knows it.
Awesome, but Impractical:
- The scoped shotgun, seen here. A great long-distance scope is great... unless fitted onto a strictly close-quarters shotgun.
- And this little beauty, a ship made entirely of guns that almost immediately crashes and burns.
Awesome Moment of Crowning: Sort of. Remember when Katie got accepted into college? Well, guess what? She graduated and is now a bona fide mechanical engineer, building spaceship parts. It's a glorious thing.
Ax-Crazy: Kratos is willing to kill people just for giving him advice.
Baby Planet: This comic shows why it would suck to live on one of these. When your planet is the size of a cottage and your food supplies consist of a single coconut, it's really easy for your ecosystem to be wrecked by a passing plumber deciding to use your planet's entire food supply as ammunition.
Back for the Dead: Roy gets killed by Master Hand. A short time later, he comes back and is killed off again almost immediately.
Bamboo Technology: Deconstructed. Computers made out of wood and tin cans don't work too well.
Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Katie's Khajiit character in her Oblivion and Skyrim comics is always barefoot. Presumably personal preference, since Oblivion and Skyrim Khajiit are perfectly capable of wearing shoes (as opposed to, say, those in Morrowind).
Battle Trophy: Apparently, Peach takes trophies from every kill she makes in Super Smash Bros — her main reason for being excited about Dark Pit joining the roster is that now she can decorate her hat with his black feathers alongside Pit's white and Falco's blue.

Beauty Equals Goodness: Lampshaded in Defection Detection when Lyn is looking for an enemy bandit that could possibly defect to their side. Take a guess at who. As commented by Katie, "he's also the only person in that army not named Bandit".
Bee Afraid: As seen here, where Katie is set upon by angry swarms lurking in trees, drawers, mailboxes, rivers...
Berserk Button: DON'T call Roy "Lord Eliwood".^note
Beware the Mind Reader: Mewtwo is seen using his psychic powers to induce embarrassing nightmares in other people.
Bilingual Bonus: The broken Russian dialogue on this strip. Approximate translation
Soldier 1: All patrols are of good quality
Soldier 1: I saw a dog today.
Soldier 2: Cute it was? ("it" is not said dog or even something living)
Soldier 1: Yes-
Birds of a Feather: Katie and many of her friends are gamers, and several comics just show Katie hanging out with her friends to play/talk about Pokémon, Guitar Hero, and many others. A good number of comics are written by her husband, Norrin, as well.
Bishōnen: Katie's version of Marth is a parody of the character type.
I don't know what it is, but I can no longer draw faces that are the least bit feminine. Marth almost looks like a man and that should not be.
Black Comedy: In practically every other comic. This one manages to combine it with Disappears into Light.
Blasphemous Boast: In Marth's ranking system for the social status of the members of the Smash cast, the "royalty" tier — including, of course, himself — is ranked above the "divinity" tier. Given that "divinity" in this context means actual deities like Palutena, Marth evidently feels himself as more important than gods.
Block Puzzle: A lampshade is hung on how absurd it is this sort of puzzle some how is effective at keeping Ganon away from anything.
Bloody Murder: Parodied here, in a reference to Dragon Age. The character ends up dying from blood loss.
Boring, but Practical: In Ace Attorney, most of the defense attorneys use flashy supernatural or superhuman abilities to crack cases or find the truth. Not Miles Edgeworth though, he gets things done with... basic deductive reasoning. Everyone else still remarks on how amazing this ability is though.
Brick Joke: When Marth meets Lucina, she tells him she's his great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandaughter.^note Then when she meets Roy and does it again, Marth interrupts her, shortening it to descendant.
Butt-Monkey:
- Odds are that if Apollo Justice is in a strip, he'll be mixing this trope with Only Sane Man.
- Roy becomes one after getting kicked out of Smash. Heck, even after he's invited back into Smash, he still gets no respect.
- Ignatz fulfills this role in the Three Houses comics. So far, he has been choked by Edelgard with his own bow and lost his inhaler, with Byleth having no plans to return it soon.
California Doublinginvoked: Amusingly, it's California being doubled for by Japan in this strip. Apollo is not amused.
Cat Folk: Katie seems to prefer playing as these in The Elder Scrolls — her characters in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are both Khajiit, the franchise's playable race of humanoid felines.
Chain of Deals: The subject of this comic.
Characterization Marches On: Marth went from an Only Sane Man and Deadpan Snarker in the early strips to an egotistical and condescending snob in the later ones.
Cheated Angle: "Aw, you know me! I had my own game? Sword Of Seals, Blah Blah Blah? My hair points to the left no matter what direction I'm facing?" Rather than directly referencing the game, however, this seems to be a minor jab at the artist's way of drawing Roy.
The Chew Toy:
- Marth, often the butt of the strip's joke. He becomes a literal chew toy in a strip where he;s eaten and spit out in rapid succession by Yoshi, Kirby, Wario, Bowser, King Dedede... and Samus, who cites being part Metroid as her excuse.
- Roy, starting with a Running Gag revolving around his removal from the roster for Brawl and continuing even after he finally got added back into Smash 4.
Chocolate Baby: Two Dartrix are awaiting the hatching of their baby, but instead of a Rowlet, it's a Ditto. The parents then look suspiciously at each other.^note
Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Link wears his red tunic instead of his green one, and gets beaten up because it's St. Patrick's Day.
- Pac-Man is eating all of his blue opponents, just like he would eat the ghosts when they turn blue in his own games. Rosalina sees what's going on and changes into a red dress.
Comically Missing the Point: When Samus reveals that Ridley killed her parents, he protests it was only "one time!".
The Comically Serious: Marth. Most of the time.
Convenient Questing: The Pokémon games are laid out with wild Pokémon having strength proportional to their distance from the starting town; very convenient for any aspiring trainers living out there, bad news for anyone starting out from the last city.
Cow Tipping: In "Pro Tipping", two boys get more then they bargained for when they go Miltank-tipping and start its Rolling Attack (even though the Miltank is still asleep!).
Crossplayer:
- If Katie's Author Avatar using the male trainer's outfit during Pokémon strips is any indication. Interestingly a bonus strip◊ shows her with a full-pants variant of the RSE female, while later comics based on their Gen VI remakes depict Katie once again wearing the male trainer's outfit.
- As well as Norrin (her husband) wearing a full-pants version of the female player character, starting with B&W. And if you get to the forums, some users have shopped Norrin into wearing the cutoffs version. And hairy legs.
Damn You, Muscle Memory!: After Katie sets her ringtone to be the "enemy spotted" noise from Metal Gear, she reflexively ducks and covers whenever she hears it.
The Dandy: Marth is always well groomed, and enjoys the futuristic luxuries of Smash Mansion, like hot showers or Peach's shampoo.
Dark World: One strip features Link from The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds getting lost amid a series of parallel worlds — including the Dark World from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Subrosia from The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, the Twilight Realm from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and the Silent Realm from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword — while trying to get from Lorule to Hyrule, in a parody of the franchise’s tendency to invent a seemingly new but functionally identical Dark World whenever a game needs one.
There are many parallel universes out there, and it turns out a lot of them are slightly darker and blurrier.
Defeat Means Friendship: Big Boss makes prolific enough use of Fulton Recovery Devices in Peace Walker for every soldier in his army to be a former enemy henchman that tried to kill him and got knocked out, tied to a balloon and sent off to his base.
Department of Redundancy Department: When Katie reclasses the characters in Fire Emblem Awakening, she has a dragon (presumably Nowi, Nah, or Tiki the shape-shifting manaketes) riding around on another dragon.
Desperation Attack: Exploited by Lucario, who uses a smart bomb to damage himself and thus gain increased power (in reference to Super Smash Bros.).
Determinator:
- The villager from Age of Empires II.
- Roy will never give up trying to get back into Smash Bros. He eventually succeeds, to the astonishment and attention of absolutely no one.
Distracted by My Own Sexy: Marth is initially stunned by Lucina's beauty when she's introduced for Smash Bros. 4. His reaction to learning she's his distant descendant is "that would certainly explain it".
Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Invoked by Link when OoT Link cannot defeat Dark Link, so he makes a loud proclamation of his love for Princess Ruto, then hides, leaving Dark Link to deal with the amorous Zora. Navi thinks this is a bit mean.
Dramatic Wind: Ricken from Fire Emblem Awakening asks Chrom how his cape is fluttering like that, when there's no wind around. Chrom doesn't want to be seen around such unmajestic people and orders everyone to make their capes/cloaks billow in the wind too.
Driver Faces Passenger: Fox is so impressed with the new targeting system in Star Fox Zero that he's not paying attention to where he's actually flying.
Dumb Blonde: Ocarina/Melee Link, in a gender-inverted example. At least he's good at puzzles.
Easter Egg: Clicking on the "O" in the site's title lets you change the color scheme of the webpage, at least for your computer.
Everyone Has Standards: Marth may be a narcissistic prick, but hearing about how he'll screw up his country in the future triggers a Heroic BSoD for him. Good thing Ike made the whole thing up.
Evil Counterpart: Parodied in this comic. Dark Pit and Wolf speculate about what Dark Samus looks like under her helmet, imagining that she looks just like Zero Suit Samus with stock dark counterpart traits (such as an eyepatch, black hair, and red eyes). To their horror when they ask her to remove her helmet, they learn that unlike other dark counterpart characters, what makes Dark Samus different from Samus is that instead of just being a Darker and Edgier version of her, the armor is where the similarities begin and end.
Exhausted Eye Bags: A notable feature of Katie's Author Avatar.
Expendable Clone: Played for black comedy in a Minish Cap comic, where Link creates a clone to help him with a task. The new clone spends several panels coming to grips with his status as a newly living being and enjoying the world around him... until he runs into a tree and shatters moments after his birth, at which point Ezlo casually tells Link to just make another clone.
Exploding Closet: How Katie plays the Fallout games.
Eye Scream: In this comic, a Tauren from World of Warcraft puts stamina gems in every socket of his armor, as well as his eye sockets.
The Face of the Sun: Seen here.
Failure Is the Only Option: Katie sees taking out bosses non-lethally in Metal Gear Solid as this, pointing out in Worth a Shot that even if the player does it, the following cutscene will invent a reason for the boss to die.
Fanon Discontinuity: Katie seems to have adopted an "I haven't played it, therefore it didn't happen" attitude toward Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.invoked
Felony Misdemeanor: The police are more strict about laws to not send out more than one Pokémon at a time in a Single Battle than they are in stopping a crime boss from trying to kill most of Earth's population.
Festering Fungus: In one Minecraft comic, mushroom growth starts to get a tad out of hand as thick carpets of shrooms start growing under every tree, all over the player's house, all over the player...
I know that the mushroom spread rate has increased, but they have a tendency to completely overtake any patch of darkness they can wedge into. It's entirely unsettling.
Flat-Earth Atheist: Fox mocks the Fantasy-based Smash cast for believing in gods, only for Palutena to show up.
Flat "What": Katie is a fan of this.
Forced Tutorial: No, Shauna, I already have a team full of Pokémon, and collected all the gym badges, and caught the legendary, and I've been doing this since before you were born. I don't need a tutorial on how to catch a Pokémon.
Foreboding Architecture: Katie Shepard knows what a room with waist high walls means.
Freaky Is Cool:
- The Horde may be this to Katie. Almost all of the WoW comics are of the Horde, with Tauren, Trolls, and the Forsaken being prominent; the only comic that is about the Alliance is about the Worgen, and Katie wishes they were a Horde race.
- Her Elder Scrolls comics use a Khajiit main character.
Fridge Logic: Katie's specialty is pointing out the logical holes in her favorite games. invoked
- "Missing Link" points out how the technology in the Metal Gear series seems to always be improving, even when the games are set before ones with worse technology:
  The hard part about releasing a game in 2015 set in 1984 that's a prequel to a game released in 1987 and set in 1995 while yet itself a sequel to several games set further in the past is that you've bracketed yourself into a narrow band of available technology. I love that Kojima couldn't help himself from putting iPhones and Gundams into MGSV, and then I guess all of the futuristic scifi eighties stuff exploded before the events of the original Metal Gear and they all had to go back to using radios.
- In 24-Hour Comic 2017, Norrin wonders why Bowser◊, when he went on vacation in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, didn't take Bowser Jr. with him. All Katie can think of is that Bowser doesn't like his son.
Furry Confusion:
- As seen in Animal Crossing, where two dog citizens react with horror to seeing Katie's Author Avatar walking a regular dog on a leash.
- Having people around who fall all over the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism can lead to confusion, as Ganondorf finds when he starts to absentmindedly scratch someone lying next to his armchair, before looking up to find that the Duck Hunt dog is at the other end of the room and he's been petting Fox's head.
- When Isabelle meets the Duck Hunt dog for the first time, she greets it as she would any other Funny Animal from her franchise. The dog's reaction is to scratch itself, bark and wander away.
  Isabelle (thinking): What a freak.
- Incineroar gets subject to this too by Roy, thinking he's an animal person like the Star Fox characters instead of a Pokemon. Incineroar proves him wrong to Little Mac by meowing.
Furry Reminder: Even with the Animal Crossing folks' near-human status, the deer scare still does its job.
Gang Up on the Human: "Everyone stop fighting! There's a weird old man on the roof!"
Genius Ditz: Link, as mentioned under Dumb Blonde.
Gift-Giving Gaffe: When Corrin gives Charlotte a new hat, Keaton asks if he can have an accessory too. Corrin says sure, and steals back the hat to give it to Keaton.
Glad I Thought of It: Ignis isn't the most innovative chef around. When presented with a recipe book, he immediately hides it behind his back and states that he has invented a new recipe.
Go-Karting with Bowser: Discussed and defied in this comic as why Ridley isn't part of the playable roster in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/WiiU (or any game in the series until Ultimate). As said in the blurb underneath:
Katie: Ridley is kind of the only Nintendo villain who's ever done anything really awful — Bowser's a jerk and Ganondorf tends to make everyone anxious for a while, but both are still probably easily forgiven.
Gross-Up Close-Up: Mana using classes in World of Warcraft use water to replenish their mana supply, which also has other benefits.
Guest Strip: Katie did a guest comic for VG Cats and one for Fanboys.
Guide Dang It!: This comic ridicules some of the silly recruitment methods in Fire Emblem. It goes so far that other characters start questioning the sanity of the people giving orders.
Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty: Parodied in the strip "Guilty Until Proven Guilty." The judge accepts that Athena's client couldn't have possibly committed the crime. However, since she did not bring up a possible suspect, the judge decides to declare Athena's client guilty anyway because "someone should go to jail."
Hands in Pockets: Katie Tiedrich admits in the description of this page that she hates drawing the top of Midna's helmet, and thus always puts her at the top of panels in this page and subsequent comics including her.
Hidden Depths: Yen Sid, as it turns out, has a bachelor's degree in fashion design and still tailors clothing, and is a bit put out at people not realizing this. According to the strip's description, he also has a master's in theater arts.
High-Pressure Blood: As seen here, in parody of Dragon Age, where a blood mage stabs his hand and sprays a hose-like jet of blood over a team of soldiers.
- And here, where Katie's character does the same move with both hands, only to die of blood loss.
Homoerotic Dream: One of the perks of being a Psychic-type Pokémon is the ability to screw with others' dreams — as Mewtwo demonstrates when giving Marth a dream of Roy jumping on and messily making out with him.
Horrible Judge of Character: The entire plot of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is soundly mocked when Eraqus introduces the Obviously Evil Xehanort as his best friend and truest ally, and Terra falls for it hook line and sinker.
Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: When a Pokémon breeder gives Katie an egg that her Pokémon had, and says he has no idea where it came from. Katie calls him out on this, as a breeder he should know where eggs come from. The breeder then points to the very different Pokémon that Katie left at the day care, and asks if she knows where an egg would come from.
Impact Silhouette: Samus turns down Captain Falcon's advances by throwing him through several walls, leaving holes the size and shape of Captain Falcon's tumbling body.
Implacable Man: In old Fire Emblem games, the characters didn't visibly block attacks and would just say "no damage", whether they just took an axe to the face, or got impaled with a spear. In this comic, the victim of said impaling then walks down the spear to stare at point blank range with the spearman.
Improbable Age: Ace Attorney's prosecutors are apparently prodigies — most seem to have begun prosecuting in their early twenties and late teens, and one became chief prosecutor at twenty-seven. Given that it takes four years of law school to be even eligible for a bar exam — after regular college — these ages are rather improbable to say the least.
Incendiary Exponent: "My truck is going so fast it burst into flames? Awesome!"
Infernal Retaliation: Happens to Link twice in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
- The first time, he fires a fire arrow at a keese... which comes back to strafe him as a flaming variant of itself.
- In the second time, he uses Din's Fire to engulf a room in flame and quickly light several torches at once. As it turns out, there were also several keese in the darkness, all of which become fire keese and start dive-bombing him at once.
Infinite Canvas: This strip, which uses an extra-long panel to convey a Visual Pun about Marth missing the romantic undertones in Caeda's comment.
Insistent Terminology:
- The Super Smash Bros. games are spelled with a colon separating the title and subtitle (i.e. Super Smash Bros.: Melee), which has never been used officially.
- "Oh, you mean Blackjack." "NO. It's the FUTURE. It's called QUASAR."
Instant Flight: Just Add Spinning!: Has a take on how Doduo, a flying Pokémon with no wings, can fly using this trope.
Instantly Proven Wrong: Marth in Rubix Rubes, after failing to solve a Rubix Cube which Link then steals.
Marth: No offense intended, Link, but if I couldn't solve it, there just isn't a chance that you-
*Link slams the completed Rubix Cube on the desk*
Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: One strip parodies how Link can't seem to open a locked door without breaking the key he used to do it.
Interface Screw: Jensen gets so used to his implants highlighting important items with yellow outlines he goes nuts trying to interact with a bedspread that has a yellow trim.
Jensen: Tell me your secrets.
Interface Spoiler: Katie has a hearing problem, and turns on subtitles on everything. This causes problems when the subtitles run ahead of the actual audio.
ISO-Standard Urban Groceries: Carried by Lydia at the end of a comic depicting the Dovahkin fumbling around because of imprecise controls.
It's All Upstairs from Here: Bowser puts his infite stairs to good use by using them as a vertical treadmill to get in shape for an upcoming fight with Mario.
It's a Long Story: Solid Snake asks Master Miller where he learned so much about wildlife. Cut to Venom Snake surrounding Kaz with a zoo's worth of animals in Mother Base, then saying the trope name.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: The title of this Metroid Prime-based strip. The "good idea" in question is a Space Pirate facility that has doors that can only be opened by weapons that only Samus owns.
Jabba Table Manners: Effie swipes a loaf of bread meant for someone else and stuffs the thing into her face.
Just Eat Gilligan: Or Just Eat the Pikmin, in this case, as the protagonists of Pikmin 3 figure that eating the plant-based pikmin themselves is a better way to gather food than scrounging for fruit.
Karma Houdini: Two hundred years of community service turned out to be really useful for getting Twinrova into Heaven despite having been unrepentant villains in life.
Kick the Dog: All part of Plan B. Katie figures that she must become a colossal jerk for people to actually criticize her, so she starts riding a motorcycle while punting people's dogs over the horizon.
Lampshade Hanging: A good portion of the comics hang lampshades on all aspects of games from mechanics to story points usually by following them through to their absurd conclusion.
Large Ham:
- Katie, in her author notes at the bottom of the page.
- Master Hand, with his No Indoor Voice.
- Roy, with his over-exaggerated expressions.
Last Place You Look: One strip has Katie talking about how if she can't feel her possessions in her pockets she gets paranoid. Even if she's holding the item she's worried about and is in the process of using it.
Look, I'll call you back. I think I lost my phone.
Literal-Minded: Apparently, Naked Snake did not get what they meant by "Blend in with your surroundings".
Literally Shattered Lives: One Pokémon strip has a Noivern be frozen solid by an Ice Beam... in midair, causing it to fall to the ground and shatter like glass.
Logical Fallacies: You SURE you don't have any blood to track him down with?
Look Behind You: In the text underneath this strip:
"...How did Virion get stabbed in the back if he leapt face-first into danger, you ask? Well, there's a rational LOOK A BEAR"
Lucky Charms Title: Technically the title of the comic is Δwkward Zombie, as Katie tends to write capital As as Δs.
Major Injury Underreaction:
Katie, while being blasted in the face with a rocket thruster: Hmm yes
Male Gaze: This strip (and especially the commentary) lampshades Mass Effect 2's tendency to focus on Miranda's posterior.
Man in a Kilt: Link, to Midna's displeasure.
"As much as I love hanging in your shadow, you REALLY need to start wearing pants."
Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: In the Pokémon comics, Katie usually wears the male trainer's outfit (though for RSE she had a pants variant of May's outfit), and Norrin wears a variation of the female trainer's outfit (with pants instead of shorts or skirts). In the short-lived Nuzlocke comic he wears Leaf's outfit, skirt and all, after losing in rock-paper-scissors.
Meaningful Name: How Phoenix picks his clients.
Mind Screw: Ike does this to Marth for kicks. Same for Mewtwo, only more literally.
Min-Maxing: When Katie played through Fire Emblem Awakening the second time, she played it on Lunatic Mode, which required min-maxing all the characters into unstoppable killing machines, resulting in some unusual character builds. This is followed by abusing the relationship system to get particular skills on their children.
Mistaken for Pedophile: Nowi, from Fire Emblem Awakening, is a thousand year old dragon, who looks like a prepubescent girl and wears an absolutely scandalous outfit. Everyone else avoids her explicitly because of this, and even Katie says she needs to go to jail just for drawing the comic.
Mistaken for Racist: Miranda's Dad in this comic, due to his idea of a "perfect human being" apparently being a white woman.
Money for Nothing: The description of "Carry On" explains how Katie plays video games not to defeat the Big Bad but to sell Vendor Trash for money that she won't spend. But it's totally worth it.
More Dakka: "This possibly could have been avoided if you hadn't BUILT THE SHIP ENTIRELY OUT OF GUNS."
"I... REGRET... NOTHING!"
Mundane Utility:
- In one comic, Lynne blows her own brains out to make use of Sissel's time travel powers to unspill a glass of soda.
- In this comic, Byleth demands Sothis rewind time after she bores Dorothea during a tea party. Sothis refuses to play ball, however.
My God, What Have I Done?: Played for Laughs when Miranda's dad freaks out rather hilariously when it's pointed out to him that the "genetically perfect being" he made happens to be white. It's either due to this or massive awkward discomfort at the thought of being seen as racist when that had never even crossed his mind driving him to leap out the window to spare himself from the awkward situation.
Narcissist: Marth. Played for Laughs in one strip where the only other person he would be willing to describe as beautiful... is his 32nd-great-granddaughter from the future who looks almost exactly like him, just with longer hair.

Nice Hat:
- Katie is normally depicted wearing a large red hat, though she later switched to a gray one. Fans did not like the change, for some reason. She also has a nice green fuzzy one.
- Norrin is always seen wearing a Diamond Helm in the Minecraft comics.
Nice Guy: Granted, we don't see it that often, but much like in Uprising, Pit shows this by being one of the only two people to actually recognize AND congratulate Roy. Especially when you consider that Pit was considered Roy's Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: This comic will never allow you to see Pokémon Centers the same way ever again.
No Face Under the Mask: Dark Samus, as seen in this comic, has absolutely nothing beneath her helmet.
No Indoor Voice: Master Hand. "FOOOOOOOOOOOLS!!" Or in one comic, where he finds out Roy is back. "NO"
"No. Just... No" Reaction: "Disney Backwards" has Sora warp into Song of the South and see Br'er Rabbit coming down the path, but then Yen Sid slaps Sora out of that world.
Yen Sid: SOME WORLDS STAY SLEEPING FOR A REASON.
Noodle Implements: In the Mythbusters flash cartoon:
Adam: To bust this myth, I'll need four owls, a dog skull, and seven gallons of pudding!
Not the Intended Use: In "Down to the Wire", Edelgard uses a bow to strangle Ignatz and win an archery tournament.
Not Proven: Katie takes a jab at Ace Attorney's court system where the defendant can still go to jail even when proven to be not guilty because the real perpetrator is still unknown.
Not What It Looks Like: The zombie's not grabbing his ass. Really!
No, You
Norrin: Boo-Berry is back in season!
Katie: You're pathetic
Norrin: YOU'RE pathetic
Oblivious Guilt Slinging: When Alm is sent to the world of Fire Emblem Heroes, he exclaims that he doesn't have time to be fighting there, since he has his own kingdom to protect. After asking Anna "Don't you think the heroes you've summoned have better things to do than fighting for someone else's amusement?", a certain group of warriors are looking pretty guilty. Well, most of them anyway.
Odd Couple: Marth and Roy. One is a narcissistic prick, the other is an immature pyromaniac. They're almost always together, because the contrast is hilarious.
One Size Fits All: Or not.
Only Sane Man:
- Apollo Justice tends to find himself in this position in Ace Attorney strips.
- In the later Ace Attorney strips, Athena Cykes takes on the spot as the only sane one. Exemplified here.
- In the earlier Super Smash Bros. strips, Marth. Since then, he has deviated towards being the Narcissist, and Samus has taken his place, mostly because seeing the bounty hunter's reactions (or, rather, lack of them due to her 24-Hour Armor) is inherently funny.
- Generally, this role will drop into the lap of the person who is most likely to make the gag funnier. For instance, Hector taking issue with Eliwood's irrational supply hoarding and, well, other player-driven antics.
- The Metal Gear comics pass around the Sanity Ball regularly, but the one who holds it most of the time is Kaz.
Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: In one comic where several characters are having a heated debate over their religious differences, Fox — the only one from a Science Fiction space age setting rather than a High Fantasy world — drops in to mock the whole concept of religion.
Fox: Oh, you primitive cultures and your god-worship. How quaint.
Out-of-Character Moment: Or, considering the nature of this comic, more like "In-Character Moment" if you will; this strip features Marth showing a surprising amount of humility and even self-depreciation.
Perpetual Frowner: Marth, which comes as no surprise considering what he's putting up with.
Pet the Dog: A literal example with Ganondorf here.
Poor Communication Kills: The whole mess in Bravely Default could've been avoided if the heroes and villains had just stopped and talked everything out. When Edea's father tries to get his point across, and Edea is willing to listen to what he has to say, he grabs the Idiot Ball and doesn't tell them a damn thing.
Popularity Polynomial: Lampshaded in "The Pokemon Effect", which is about how Pokémon was extremely popular when the Katie was in grade school, unpopular in high school, and became popular again in college.
Power-Up Letdown: Several strips have Link's iron boots tear off his feet, and one strip has a fresly-found pair crush his skull when he drops them on his face. Another strip has a newly-found pair of hover boots fly away.
Puppy-Dog Eyes: Shauna uses these to get Katie to sit through the Forced Tutorial on how to catch a Pokémon.
Preemptive "Shut Up": After Link solves a Rubik's Cube in two panels flat and takes off with a small key above his head, we have this "exchange".
Roy:
Marth: Don't.
Product Placement:
- Parodied and taken Up to Eleven in this comic where all the Mass Effect characters are wearing the Runaway Entei t-shirt for no reason and The Rant hyperlinks to the store page.
- Done again in this comic with a "Have You Ever Tried To Punch a Bird" shirt.
- The last frame here alternates between the punchline and an over-exaggeratedly blatant plug for the Awkward Zombie book.
- Apparently the Shepherds can buy t-shirts online.
Psychic Nosebleed: Happens to Ness when a bomb goes off in Magicant.
Quip to Black: Done here.
Raised by Wolves: To Marth's annoyance. Samus and Falco share a morning ritual of crowing at the sun. Samus was raised by Bird People.
Marth: What, you too?
Samus: I was... I was raised by birds.
Random Number God: The RNG is not kind to Katie in Fire Emblem.
The Rant: One appears in almost every Author comment.
Reaction Shot: Mocks Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's use of this in Express. It didn't help that, as Katie admits, she picked up the game without knowing it was a sequel and, having not played the previous games she had no attachment to most of the things the characters were reacting to.
Read the Fine Print: Marth tried to do this when signing up for Smash Bros. Too bad Master Hand had Mewtwo nearby just in case.
Reality Ensues: Many strips regard the consequences of some gaming events and abilities in real life. One example is what using a move like Earthquake in the Battle Subway would logically lead to.
Really 700 Years Old: Throughly mocked here, where all the characters refuse to interact with Nowi because a prepubescent girl in a Stripperific outfit is creepy no matter how old she claims she is — to say nothing of starting a canonically sexual relationship.
Remembered I Could Fly: After getting captured in this comic, Est either forgot or was just being polite.
Remix Comic: A popular activity on the forums. Usually, the Dominion Rod, Katie's Dad, and Entei come up at least once. Nowi has appeared as well, overshadowing Entei and Katie's Dad...until the edits escalated to almost NSFW levels and were greatly reduced in appearance as a result. The Entei t-shirts are on the rise as well. Shortly after the release of the comic, a number of forum members shopped a shirt onto their avatars. The same happened on the forums with the Troubadourable shirts after the comic where most of the Shepherds wore one.
Required Secondary Powers:
- Being a Blood Mage has its downfalls. Like self-exsanguination.
- Don't pick flowers using your fire hand.
Resurrection Sickness: This comic reveals why World of Warcraft players suffer from this if they resurrect at a graveyard.
Roommate Com: The basis for most of the Super Smash Bros. comics, where all 26 (and counting) characters live together in a giant apartment complex. Hilarity Ensues.
Running Gag:
- "[name] wrote this comic. It is about [something]."
- Whenever the topic of Pokémon comes up, Katie's character will always be dressed as the male player character, while Norrin will be dressed as the female player character.
- Katie's hourly comics always tend to mention "Today's Podcast", in reference to the podcasts she listens to during certain hours.
- In 24-Hour Comic 2020: Katie wondering when her cats laid on her.
Science Marches On: Lampshaded in a comic about Golden Sun, where the planets associated with the four elements match classical pairings — and, because Earth wasn't always considered a planet, earth doesn't go with Earth and is instead paired with Venus.
And, naturally, the planet that best embodies the characteristics of the earth: Venus!
Seen It All: Phoenix Wright.
Nahyuta: [hits Phoenix with his beads] He's... He's totally unaffected by my beads of constriction... This is no ordinary defense attorney — He must have had years of combat training—!
Phoenix: [recalls being tazed, whipped, having hot coffee thrown at him, and getting scratched up by a hawk]
Selective Magnetism: This comic portrays The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess's use of this trope more realistically to the extreme.
Self-Deprecation: Loads, but it might get better. Not to mention many of the blurbs on the early comics are her constantly complaining and apologizing for her quality of artwork.
Shipper with an Agenda: This strip, in which the Avatar from Fire Emblem Awakening is depicted as one of these. For context, Galeforce is a Game-Breaker skill exclusive to a female-only class. Via some complex rules of inheritance and gender-exclusivity, a daughter fathered by Gaius can get that class. Panne, who Gaius was about to ask out in the first panel, always has a son. Tharja, on the other hand, always has a daughter.
Shout-Out:
- The Boss has Eyes Always Shut, like in the webcomic Hiimdaisy.
- One of the kids in the first panel of this comic looks like Numbuh Four.
- 24-Hour Comic 2017 drops a reference to the "Back at it again at Krispy Kreme" meme.
Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Katie has a bit of a problem with this. invoked
I have turned the game on, played Voltorb Flip for like an hour, and then turned the game off without actually looking at any Pokémon. TEAM ROCKET'S INSIDIOUS PLOT WAS A SUCCESS.
Silence Is Golden: Quite a few strips rely solely on the visuals for the joke, with the only words being written sound effects.
Single-Biome Planet: According to Wolf, there's a beach planet.
Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Fox seems to edge between different tiers of this scale. He looks like a furry human with a fox's head and tail… until he takes off his boots to reveal fully digitigrade legs, making Samus very confused about how he can possibly seem plantigrade when he's wearing pants and shoes and digitigrade when he isn't.
I have no idea if Fox is maybe just a normal-proportioned human dude with way too much hair or instead a weird dog that has crushed its horrible body into the vague shape of a man. Someone needs to ask Nintendo these tough and important questions??
Soap Within a Show: The first part of this comic has one from the Mushroom Kingdom. Peach is obviously into it, while Marth is not impressed.
Something We Forgot: One strip for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker has Kaz turning Mother Base into a tortilla chip factory, when Big Boss pipes up.
Big Boss: Weren't we supposed to be doing something in Costa Rica?
So Much for Stealth: Adam Jensen is surprised when this doesn't happen after he knocks down a pile of oil drums. But then he tries tiptoeing away and is immediately noticed and shot.
Space Whale Aesop: These must be those dangers of eating paint I've heard so much about.
Sphere Eyes: How Katie usually draws eyes.
Square Race, Round Class: Katie switches Miriel from a mage to a war cleric, giving her a battle axe, which she can't even lift.
Stripped to the Bone: Master Hand does it to Roy here. Later, Katie announces her new job building rocket parts, and shows her performing tests while standing too close.
Stupid Sacrifice: Virion, you're not supposed to block for someone in a heavy suit of armor.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Pit for Roy. Foreshadowed in an early comic after it was announced that some characters wouldn't be returning to Brawl, made official after the game was released, Roy was kicked out of the house by Master Hand and Pit started taking his place in the jokes, though Pit annoys the others a lot less.
- Lampshaded here, where Roy voices his suspicion that Pit — who shares his spiky hair, general looks and overall attitude — was brought in explicitly to replace him.
- Even more similar, Ocarina of Time Link is replaced with Twilight Princess Link; due to Katie's drawing style, they are almost indistinguishable. In that case, OOT Link murdered TP Link and took his clothes and gear. While Mario, Fox and Pikachu were watching in horror. He was later replaced by the Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild Links in any case.
Take a Third Option:
- How to get people to criticize you: become the biggest jerk in the world.
- Most Pokémon games have the Professor character offer you your choice of starter Pokémon, except for Ruby and Sapphire where the Professor is being attacked by wild Pokémon and he tells you to take one from his bag to fight them off. Katie abuses the scenario to take all three and run.
Take That!: this comic calls out Hurdle Hijinx and Playtonic (specifically for Yooka-Laylee) for making retro games that copy many of the same hardware limitations that frustrated players of their era, making them Nintendo Hard not by gameplay, but by poor design. Despite this, Katie says she actually liked the latter game a lot, at least.
Take Your Time: Sam is given a mission to deliver medicine to the Elder within 30 minutes, but he has other deliveries to do and the Elder is not on the same route. Because the timer doesn't start until he accepts the medicine; he leaves the medicine behind, saying he'll do it tomorrow.
The Tetris Effect: Katie sets her ringtone to be the Metal Gear "enemy spotted" tone... and freaks herself out whenever the tone actually sounds.
The Thing That Would Not Leave: Roy has apparently been camping out in front of the Smash Bros. house since he was kicked out, determined to get back on the roster.
This Ain't Rocket Surgery: "And then Katie became a rocket scientist."
Thousand-Yard Stare: Phoenix Wright does an impressive one when Nahyuta Sahdmadhi tries to use his "beads of constriction" on him. Nahyuta thinks he's being stoic and unaffected, but Phoenix is just flashing back to all the other times he's been assaulted in court.
Throw the Dog a Bone: After constantly being ignored or unrecognized by his peers, one is given to Roy in this strip, when someone actually takes the time to congratulate him on his re-entry into Smash.
Timey-Wimey Ball: The Smash House has characters from different time periods, like Marth and his great great great great great great great... descendant, Lucina. When Roy comes back to the house after a long hiatus, he wonders just how long he was gone for.
Title Drop: A veeeeery subtle one here.
Tomboy: Katie's Author Avatar often takes the place of video game protagonists, and is almost always shown wearing the male outfit (when there are multiple options).
Too Awesome to Use:
- Katie has a bad case of this, as seen in this comic where Eliwood refuses to lend a Vulnerary to Hector because they might need it later, even when he has a lot of them in storage. Later on, they retrieved another Vulnerary from a chest but since they don't have another room for one more Eliwood then throws one of them away much to Hector's disappointment.
- Taken even further in this comic, where Hector points out the absurdity of increasing his secondary weapon rank when he already gets a legendary axe and is in the middle of fighting the Final Boss.
Too Dumb to Live: As seen here.
Trademark Favourite Food: Garlic is this for Katie, if the hourly comics are to be believed.
[making lo mein for dinner]
Norrin: Is this enough garlic?
Katie: No
Norrin: You didn't even look
Katie: (angry face) It will never be enough garlic
Undead Author: Lampshaded in Storied Past where Old Snake asks Drebin how he knows Laughing Octopus's past when she's the only survivor and lost her mind. Turns out, Drebin made it up.
Unexplained Recovery: The first time Master Hand killed Roy, Roy came back to life by taking a stock from Marth, only to be almost immediately killed by Master Hand a second time. He later appeared alive and well in other comics without any explanation for how it's the case. Lampshaded in one strip.
invoked Unfortunate Implications:
- Miranda's dad made her to be the perfect human in all respects. Jacob is a bit miffed that this includes being white. The implied accusation of racism makes Miranda's dad so uncomfortable that he literally jumps out of a window.
- Yen Sid absolutely refuses to let Sora wake a world based on Song of the South.
  SOME WORLDS STAY SLEEPING FOR A REASON.
Unreliable Narrator: Katie's bio smacks of this.
Unsound Effect: BELAY! and ANGST!, among others.
Uriah Gambit: Katie tries to kill off Miranda in the suicide mission.
The ending of Mass Effect 1 conditioned me to expect one of my teammates to die at the end of Mass Effect 2, and I made as much of an effort as I could to make sure it would be Miranda.
Vendor Trash: Any game with the ability to carry objects will have Katie carrying around the maximum carry capacity worth of unsellable garbage.
War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Subverted at the last second in this Advance Wars strip. Also an example of Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick.
The War on Straw:
- Carefully read the journalist's shirt in the first panel of "A Brief Interlude". For those whose prescription isn't good enough: I am made of straw. Okay, not subtle, but subtle in its own illegible way.
- The follow up to "Under the Table" likewise has the punchline delivered by a "StrawGuy2009" criticizing Katie's strips.
What the Hell, Hero?:
- According to Navi, Link using Ruto's crush on him to trick her into Glomping Dark Link seems like a mean way to win a fight.
- Alm is more direct in calling out Anna over the whole concept of Fire Emblem Heroes. Summoning heroes from other worlds to help them fight off an invasion, and keeping them around for various tournaments and festivities afterwards, while those heroes might have their own problems back home.
With Catlike Tread: Jensen completes a stealth mission undetected, but Sarif sends a helicopter to extract him. Jensen is the only one to realize how stupid this is.
Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Used by Isabelle in Smash Bros Ultimate. Despite being a combatant in a fight; she acts like an innocent little girl and screams "Ow!" when Little Mac hits her, causing the other fighters to gang up on him.
Wreaking Havok: Seen in this Skyrim comic.
If something gets knocked to the floor, you may as well just resign yourself to its new permanent location.
You Bastard!: This one goes out to all you Pokemon trainers in X and Y that did nothing but Wonder Trade.
- ...and also those who raised and showed love to a Pokemon just to get it to evolve, and then simply let it rot forever in the PC box afterwards.
You Can't Go Home Again: Roy tries to break back into the Smash Bros. house, and is confronted by Master Hand who says no one is allowed to return, except Dr. Mario... and a couple Links... and Mewtwo.
Marth: Nobody actually left, did they?
You Killed My Father: While many of the antagonists in Nintendo's universe live in the Smash Bros. house alongside their rivals, Samus refuses to let Ridley join because he killed her parents. That may be a line too far crossed. There's an extra joke in that his excuse of "One time!" isn't even true. He killed her biological and adoptive parents!
You Shouldn't Know This Already:
- Averted disastrously when Link accidentally plays the "Aria of Sun" and teleports himself into the sun.
- Played straight in this comic where Apollo's deduction is denied by the judge because he hasn't reached a certain point in the witness' testimony yet, only for Athena to provide the obvious hint when he gets the opportunity to present his deduction to the court.