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This comic contains examples of:
- Absent Animal Companion: Subverted and Lampshaded. In one comic, T-Rex gets a dog that he names The Angriest Dog In The World. This dog is brought up again only a handful of times in the proceeding thousands of pages, usually with a Lampshade Hanging about how rarely he shows up.
- Absurdly High Level Cap: T-Rex theorizes that it would be potentially infinite in an afterlife where ghosts can kill each other.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: Ryan North thinks everything is awesome!
- Alternate Universe: In which everyone has goatees. The comic is also "mirrored"; that is to say, the standard comic image is flipped left to right before dialogue (and goatees) are added.
- Alt Text: Used for comments or additional punchlines. The strip titles (only found on the archive page
and feed) and "contact" links for each strip serve similar purposes. - And That's Terrible!: "sometimes no matter how much we prepare, boats will sink and that is terrible."
- A Rare Sentence: God confirms T-Rex is the first to ever say "I've allowed my love of gravy to distract from my prescriptivist linguistic crusade!"...and that this will help him get into heaven.
- Also, T-Rex once says the words "Sandwichtastic" and "Sandwichocracy" in one sentence. God then hints that the entire universe was created just to see if those words could be in the same sentence.
God: YOU WOULDN'T THINK IT WAS A BIT OF A LET DOWN AT THE END THEN HUH - Also, T-Rex once says the words "Sandwichtastic" and "Sandwichocracy"
- The Artifact: The dinosaurs are far too big compared to the house, car, and woman. Ryan North has admitted that this is because when he started the comic, he didn't know how big dinosaurs were. But because the comic's central gimmick is that the art never changes, he can never fix it. (One fan has attempted to explain away the problem by suggesting that some objects are merely closer to the camera than others.◊)
- Artistic License – Physics: Physics does not work this waaaaay.
- Art Shift: In the "Origin of the dinosaur comics" arc, the art switches to hand-drawn sketches.
- Ate It All: Yep, I've got a problem.
- Audience-Alienating Premise: Lampshaded, as demonstrated.
- Bathos: Much of the humor.
- Brick Joke:
- T-Rex forgets his wallet on the moon in this strip. 323 strips later we get the Alt Text to this strip
- Also, the mention of ex-girlfriend names in this strip results in nostalgia in this strip over 5 years later.
- Utahraptor has a very good memory.
- T-Rex forgets his wallet on the moon in this strip.
- Canon Discontinuity: T-Rex attempts to improve his life by declaring less favourable parts non-canon.
- Catchphrase T-Rex's "Today is a good day I think for _____"
- Chekhov's Gun: Explained in this strip of the "Literary Technique Comics" series. May involve Pop-Tarts.
- Clickbait Gag: The comic has a strip about a man named Jim, who reacted to headlines as clickbait writers expected everyone too. So, he literally could not forget these five facts about cats, he reacted to this video you could not believe with the Platonically perfect skepticism, and number 6 blew his mind, making him a wholly new man. The dinosaurs agree he sounds awesome, even if he would be a great assassin.
- Cliffhanger: The "Literary Technique Comics" series explains it.
- Colony Drop: The "the last Dinosaur Comic ever" overlay replaces the last panel of every comic with one.
- Continuity Nod: After espousing the benefits of having a truly gender-neutral third person singular pronoun (and deciding that 'thon' sounded coolest) T-Rex uses it in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it way later on referring to gender-neutral babies.
- Cursed with Awesome: Applied to several tragic Greek figures (sometimes in rather contorted ways) in this strip.
- Curse Cut Short: As the Alt Text for this episode says, "it's not swearing if you don't enunciate the last phoneme. PRO TIP"
- Cut-and-Paste Comic: One of the first, and most extreme: almost every strip uses the exact same artwork; only the dialog changes.
- Dada Comics: The premise is played surprisingly straight, and the sheer repetition of the art eventually makes it all feel perfectly normal.
- Defictionalized:
- Fans occasionally make Choco-Chops and send them to Ryan North.
- In 2005, T-Rex came up with an idea for a book. In 2010, this was published, known as Machine of Death.
- One intrepid fan actually prepared and ate the recipe invented by T-Rex, which involves frying up equal parts of ground beef and ice cream, throwing in some eggs and salt and then serving it in a bathtub with a cash garnish. This concoction was described as "astonishingly edible".
- One strip mentioned a steel-drum-and-theremin version of the Cheers theme song. A fan recorded it soon after.
- Another strip suggested mashing up "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Layla. Fans came up with two versions.
- Deus ex Machina: T-Rex explains it in the "Literary Technique Comics" series.
- The Devil Is a Loser: The Devil doesn't really do much besides play videogames and talk to T-Rex about videogames. T-Rex finds him mildly annoying.
- Disappeared Dad: T-Rex never knew his father.
- The Ditz: T-Rex is a pretty smart dude! However, his boundless enthusiasm for anything that gets in his head leaves him with no self-awareness, self-restraint, sensibilities, or respect for laws of physics.
- Almost the same goes for God.
- Don't Explain the Joke: Flaunted with "Jokes Explained!"
- Dumb Dinos: Averted. All of the dinosaurs can talk and are very philosophical.
- Easter Egg: Add "&butiwouldratherbereading=nedroid" to the end of a Dinosaur Comics URL to change T-Rex and Utahraptor into Reginald and Beartato. You can also change them into Problem Sleuth and Pickle Inspector, xkcd characters, Tycho and Gabe, make T-Rex into a Borg, make T-Rex swear more, make T-Rex wear more and give all the dinosaurs feathers.
- Emoticon: T-rex has a particular fondness for OGC.note
- Empathic Environment: Explained as a part of the concept of the "pathetic fallacy" in this strip of the "Literary Technique Comics" series.
- Even Nerds Have Standards: When pestered by the Devil for his favorite videogame system, T-Rex answers with the N-Gage. The Devil disagrees strenuously.
- Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Duh.
- The fact that the characters are dinosaurs is usually irrelevant, except when it's lampshaded.
- The fact that the characters are dinosaurs is usually irrelevant, except when it's lampshaded.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a comic... about dinosaurs. In some cases, it's used as the punchline.
- Faked Kidnapping: T-Rex in this guest comic.
- Fan Fic: The subject of
this strip. You kiss in my story. - Fetish: Besides his reoccurring interest in 1920s flappers, T-Rex has a fetish for entropy decreasing in a closed system.
- Flat "What": To the point where other web cartoonists will attribute its invention to Ryan North.
- Floating Advice Reminder: On the "About" page of the site:About Interacting Socially: This can be tricky! You want to be friendly, but you don't want to come on too strong. My best advice is to carefully observe others, and to relax!
- Friends with Benefits: Whatever is between Dromiceiomimus and T-Rex has inklings of this, but even they are not really sure about the state of their relationship.
- Furry Reminder: Every now and then we get a reminder that these characters are, in fact, dinosaurs.Alt Text: SOMETIMES, THEY'RE DINOSAURS.
- Gamebooks: "CYOA" that amusingly features a But Thou Must! A later guest strip by Andrew Hussie features T-Rex attempting to do an animated strip version of a CYOA, with Dromiceiominus and Utahraptor discussing with him about the problems with handling a CYOA in said format. It falls apart in the fifth panel, where T-Rex and Utahraptor end up carrying their conversation through the panel shifts.
- Ryan North went on to turn Hamlet into a Gamebook.
- God: Only T-Rex can hear him. He speaks without punctuation, in all-caps, and is something of a ditz himself.
- A God Am I: T-Rex swaps places with God for about 2 minutes, until God forces them to swap back after realizing much to his disgust that T-Rex's mouth tastes like T-Rex spit.
- And just when T-Rex had figured out the controls too >:|
- Goofy Feathered Dinosaur: Not usually, but with this overlay all the characters have feathers. Not in a way that’s any more scientific than the rest of the comic, mind you.
- Great Way to Go: When something is sad—like death—but also awesome—like an arrow managing to hit something not even the size of a quarter when dropped randomly from a plane—it is sawesome.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: Every member of the cast aside from T-rex, Utahraptor, and Dromiceiomimus, to varying degrees.
- Heaven Above: Ever since God's second appearance, his text has always been portrayed as coming down from the sky, since of course God lives directly above our two dinosaur protagonists. Also, according to this strip, he used to intervene by reaching down his giant hands from the sky, but reaching that far tired him out and he stopped.
- A Hell of a Time: In Hell you can play video games and do whatever you want, but you have to sing songs with all the lyrics replaced by "party".
- How We Got Here: Parodied in this strip, which begins with T-Rex discovering that everybody died. It then flashes back three weeks earlier, where we find T-Rex... discussing about charging MP3 players with his friends. The last panel ends with a message appologising that they went so far back that the events that led to everybody dying haven't started yet, ending with "LISTEN, THANK YOU FOR READING MY COMIC TODAY".
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: In this strip, T-Rex claims that dinosaurs are in fact the most dangerous game, rather than humans, because dinosaurs have claws. This is actually pretty reasonable considering dinosaurs clearly have human-level intelligence is whatever world this comic takes place in.
- Hypocritical Humor: Describing how not to make a comic in a comic that does all those things. Also doubles as Self-Deprecation.
- Insane Troll Logic: "Dinosaurs lived in the past, so they evolved into cats."
- Just Testing You: God asks T-Rex where wind comes from, and then defends himself: "UM OF COURSE I KNOW I JUST WANT TO SEE IF YOU DO"
- "Kick Me" Prank: Instead of 'kick me' T-Rex wants to plant a sign that says 'kiss me'.
- Lampshade Hanging (every once in a while, a joke about the parameters of the comic, eg here or this one lampshading the lampshading.) This was explained/parodied in this strip, also from the "Literary Techniques Comics" series.
- Light Gun Game: The Devil is a fan of them.
- Long Title: Most of the strip titles.
- Magic Feather: Turns out it doesn't work twice in a row.
- Male Gaze: Discussed in this strip, especially as it pertains to Video Games.
- Manchild: T-Rex, at his most childish
- Midas Touch: Exaggerated in this strip, where Midas the dinosaur king gets the ability to transform everything he touches into gold. The planet he's standing on turns into gold, and then the air he breathes turns to gold, and the air molecules around him turn to gold.
- Minimalism: Of course, given that it has the same six panels on every single issue only with different texts.
- Mirror Universe: a Story Arc that involves this and one of the few art-changes in the comic's history starts in this strip.
- Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer: Discussed here.
- New Year's Resolution: Discussed twice. The first time suggests selecting other people's resolutions. The second has God using his omnipotence to discover T-Rex's secret resolution.
- Noodle Incident: T-Rex's idea of a party anecdote is the time he lost someone's baby. Only a Noodle Incident to the people he's talking to, though, not the readers: T-Rex actually lost said baby and discussed it across several strips very early on in the comic.
- No Pronunciation Guide: drom-iss-ee-oh-MY-muss
- Oh Frig: It's not all that uncommon for panel 2 or panel 6 to be T-Rex Oh, Crap! moments.
- Prequel: Parodied in this strip, and further applied to William Shakespeare in this one.
- Painting the Medium: God talks in BOLD ALL CAPS. The Devil meanwhile speaks in BIG RED LETTERS, and the raccoons and cephalopods ARE UNNERVINGLY ITALICISED.
- Pungeon Master: T-Rex. It can get bad.
- Recursive Acronym: "H.A.M.L.E.T's Actually Me; Lshak Espeare Thrust-bottoms"
- Remix Comic: Technically, every strip after the first one; fan-made Remix Comics of it are, of course, also common.
- Retconning the Wiki: It suggests that we solve this problem on Wikipedia by only vandalizing the article about chickens, because "dudes already know about chickens."
- Room Full of Crazy: The title for this strip:sometimes i imagine my life where i write the same comics i've been writing, but instead of publishing them online i put them in a big stack, or, you know, wallpaper my house with them and never invite anyone over. hah! WHO IS THE CRAZY ONE NOW
- Satan: One of the odder incarnations of the Adversary in fiction, he's a nerd obsessed with Video Games whose voice comes in from the bottom of the panel. Like God, he talks in all-caps without punctuation.
- Secret-Keeper: Parodied in this strip, where T-Rex is "the worst Lois Lane ever".
- Self-Referential Humor: The strip above, among other things.
- Sensory Abuse: The "Something That Will Destroy My Brain" overlay rapidly cycles though all the overlays available.
- Shout-Out:
- A back-and-forth with Andrew Hussie involves Ryan watching him eat dinner. (Archived here.)
- Another MS Paint Adventures-related Shout-Out can be found in this comic, if you look close enough.
- The Dinosaur At the End of This Comic.
- Apparently, the Greek myths were made up by a five-year-old and transcribed onto scrolls by his 30-year-old brother.
- In a bit of Alt Text:Toronto's politicians and tourism board will look up and shout, "Boo hoo hoo we can't increase tourism and we've never even tried calling ourselves 'Omega City, Where It's Always Two For One Tacos', tell us what to do, Ryan" and I'll look down and whisper, "No."
- The one where T-Rex wears more features an actual Nedroid T-shirt.
- Apparently, "too crazy" is like "fhqwhgads."
- There's one to Adventure Time here.
- xkcd get in some good natured ribbing in this comic's Alt Text
- A short story arc reinterpreting Christmas creatures seems to be referencing the SCP Foundation.
- "Here lies T-Rex / Where he's going, he won't need... roads."
- "Our bodies are ready."
- In one strip, the dinosaurs sing the first verse and chorus of "Barrett's Privateers", before T-Rex summarizes it in emoji.
- This strip starts with the T-Rex saying "Wow! The plants are nice and the birds are singing and the sun is almost down from the top of the sky."
- To TV Tropes. The description for this strip reads "Thanks, everyone who put me in touch with TV Tropes! I am much obliged. Here's the Dinosaur Comics entry, but be careful, because you can easily lose yourself for hours in the site!"
- A back-and-forth with Andrew Hussie involves Ryan watching him eat dinner. (Archived here
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Discussed and combined with car chases in this strip.
- Society Is to Blame: this strip where T-Rex told a story of Sherlock Holmes deducing that all of society was responsible for a crime, but then saying that since Holmes lived in "history times" this didn't apply to modern audiences.
- Sophisticated as Hell: T-rex's entire friggin' speech pattern.
- Stock Money Bag: When T-Rex comes up with the idea of making laundry bags with dollar signs on them to riff on this trope. They were later Defictionalised!
- Straight Gay: Utahraptor. It's not a big deal, and is seldom mentioned. Ryan North claims that he "doesn't go on about it that much because he has interests outside of being gay?".
- Stylistic Suck:
- The comic itself. It's the same 6 panels every time, with the only difference being the dialogue.
- The Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff overlay.
- Also, the Pokey the Penguin overlay.
- Tempting Fate: Subverted in this strip. In the past, T-Rex has had parties ruined by God, which led to embarrassment with the ladies.
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Used when T-Rex invents a new tense and discussed when T-Rex brags about his grammatical prowess
- Title Drop:God: OH GOD
- Toilet Humor: T-Rex conceives brass knuckles saying PO OP when he realizes he only has two knuckles per hand.
- Totally Radical: T-rex is quite fond of the word "rad".
- Tonight, Someone Dies:Alt Text: This installment of Dinosaur Comics stars T-Rex, Utahraptor, Dromiceiomimus and a cat that comes up in conversation. Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! In this issue, one! Of! These! Characters! Will! DIE!
- Translation ConventionT-Rex: "I am a new man, cats and kittens!"
(title: FUN FACT: i do some translating in the comics. t-rex originally said "i am a new tyrannosauroid, protomammals and juvenile protomammals!") - The Unpronounceable: Utahraptor does this here. Made better by T-Rex's reaction coupled with the alt text.
- Also done here where T-rex pronounces "$".
Utahraptor: "It sounded like the sound dogs make when they're just about to throw up."T-Rex: "$$$$$" - Also done here
- Unreliable Narrator: Another trope explained in the "Literary Technique Comics" series (it even provides the quote for the trope's page).
- Visual Pun: Mr. Tusks, even if he's never actually seen.
- Voice of the Legion: The Devil, according to the alt text of this strip.
- Wolverine Claws: God has them.
- You Do NOT Want to Know : The premise of this particular strip.
- later: i confess that i write comics by just filling a binary file with about 65k of 1s and 0s and somehow it ALWAYS WORKS
