Webcomic / Nerf NOW!!

Nerf NOW!! is a gaming webcomic by Josué "Jo" Pereira. Originally centering on the RED and BLU Teams' endless battle in Team Fortress 2, it later branched out to story arcs taking place in Left 4 Dead, StarCraft, or one-shot comics based on other games. The latter is now the comic's primary focus, featuring metagaming issues from whatever game Jo thinks is most controversial at the time. What sets it apart from its rivals is its art, which is animesque, dangerously cute, and somewhat inappropriate for a scenario involving two factions trying to murder each other. Initially the comic attempted to tell the story without any dialogue but later expanded to using more speech bubbles.

Recurring characters include the TF2 cast, expanded to include gender-swaps and chibi versions of several characters, the female BLU Engineer Engie-tan who plays and comments on games when off-the-clock and the Author Avatar, which takes the form of a purple tentacle. Be aware that the comic provides generous servings of fanservice occasionally, making it somewhat Not Safe for Work (although not outright pornographic).

In a rework of the concept, the comic now revolves around five characters that originated as gender-swapped Team Fortress 2 classes living in one house. Engie-tan has become Angie, the overworked, sarcastic, reluctant team-mother. Demowoman became Morgan, obsessed with rules and saddled with playing the straight man to Jane (developed out the Soldier-Tan) who likes to play pranks. Alek (Heavy Weapons Gal) is a gentle giant while Anne-Marie (Spyette) is devious and self-obsessed.

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Provides examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer: How did Enchantress get such high base speed? Running from one of these.
• Accentuate the Negative: Some of the humor comes from flaws Jo finds in video games. It's such an important part of the comic that he's disappointed by Hades, because there was nothing stupid or bad in there for him to make fun of.
• Actually a Doombot: The Angie in comics 2574-2845 ^note from June 2019 to November 2020 is a robot that was so life-like, it was able to completely replace Angie, including doing the usual Fanservice, and nobody noticed.
• A-Cup Angst: Morgan shows signs of this from time to time. "I think you got a couple pixels here wrong."
• Age-Inappropriate Dress: Angie refuses to let Maggie play a sorcerer in Lost Ark, specifically because of the Stripperific outfits.
• Air Quotes: At one point, Shepard throws the air quotes back in Spartacus' face.
• All Men Are Perverts: The Team Fortress crew? Mostly. Mario especially. Which leads to....
• All Women Are Lustful: The ladies are just as willing as the men.
• Almost Kiss: Dammit, Scout!
• Alternate Universe: In the Alola region, people are different because of being raised in a different environment. Alola!Morgan walks around in Stripperific outfits, while Alola!Anne-Marie was raised as a nun, and not of the naughty variety.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • One strip is titled "There Is Always Someone Bigger," and involves Valve putting the kibosh on the ESL in a fight over DMCA takedowns and video streaming rights. In keeping with the spirit of the trope, the author's commentary explains that it's largely because Valve wants to make sure that their own rights are protected; they don't necessarily care about the streamers that the ESL is attacking.
  • In one mini-arc named Isekai'd, Truck-Kun is about to run over Victoire when he himself gets run over by a bigger Truck-Kun and gets Isekai'd himself.
• And I Must Scream: Female Shepard probably shouldn't have used the Renegade option when backtalking the author.
• Animesque: Sweat Drop? Check. Cross-Popping Veins? Check. Corner of Woe? Check. Luminescent Blush? Check...
• Anti-Role Model: When Jo kicks Engie out of the house and tells her to go her own way, she goes to Minette for help. Normally she doesn't like Minette, and that's still the case; Engie went to her for help because she's just an NPC. She was on the ballot when Skullgirls fans voted on new playable characters for the game, but she didn't win. Engie thinks this makes her a total loser, and so she should study Minette to know what ''not'' to do.
• Appeal to Force: The way to win a Batman vs. Superman argument is to hit the Superman supporter with a Batarang.
• Armor Meter: When Morgan asks when the bar is going to drop the belly dancer theme, Angela checks the durability rating on her clothes. Afterwards, Angela considers just repairing her outfit so she can keep wearing it, but Morgan can't wait to get rid of the outfits, and uses an Anti-Armor attack to break Angela's outfit.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In this strip, poking fun at New Media Are Evil as applied to video games.
  Science: Gaming linked to terrorism, global warming, and balding.
• Art Evolution: The November 22nd 2011 comic had much more detailed shading than previous ones (and Engie-tan dressed like an actual Engineer for a change).
• The Artifact: The comic does very little with Team Fortress 2 nowadays, but the BLU Engie-tan still remained the female lead, and when she's replaced it's with four other TF2-tans.
• Artistic License: Jo took one look at Raven from Injustice: Gods Among Us and draws her with a completely different face, which he calls "artistic liberty".
• Ascended Fangirl: Alek liked the announcement of Zarya at the 2015 Pax. She later gets Zarya's role at Overwatch, and Jo styles her hair to fit.
• Attack Backfire: Xin, the Ember Spirit uses his Searing Chains to trap Lina and Akasha, and is disturbed when the pair seem to like it. The comic's description says that winter is coming, implying that the girls like being set on fire when it gets chilly.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Jane gets distracted for her razzing Morgan by a DLC pack with extra achievements.
• Author Avatar: The Engineer with short, red hair. She appears more often than the other TF2-tans and is used as Jo Pereira's avatar for Twitter and DeviantArt. Also, in this strip and various Mass Effect 2 strips.
  • And then denied here, where he is apparently a tentacle monster in the comic.
  • From time to time, he'll occasionally appear as himself.
  • An in-universe example - the BLU engineer inserts herself into her own RPG campaign as the Big Bad. Strongly implied to be a Villain Sue as well(particularly given her reaction when the RED team manages to kill her with a lucky crit).
• Badass Adorable: Mini Medic-Tan when she gets her Heavy training.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Anti-Mage, Slardar and Vengeful Spirit are getting ready to push while looking like The Mafia.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Engie-tan in "Take One", although it's mainly because she just isn't trying.
• Bag of Kidnapping: Engie-tan gets snatched with one in the very beginning of the comic.
• Batman Gambit: "Master Plan".
• Beach Episode: We see the aftermath of one in this comic.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Sniper snatches the canteen upgrade, intent on showing who the "true credit" is to the team...and RED Medic-tan admits it really works. He later shows his worth with a Critical Hit in the RPG though.
  • Cammy complains about how sexist her clothing is compared to the guys, and wants to switch so they know how it feels. The one who takes up her offer is Zangief, who wears even less than she does.
  • Beastmaster sends his hawk pet to spy on some of the girls bathing in the hot springs and asks it to take pictures of "hot chicks". It was probably best to not ask a bird for that, as it takes pictures of the Skywrath Mage. In DOTA 2, the Skywrath Mage is essentially a harpy, who happens to be very beautiful, and male.
  • Leshrac wanted to be the most powerful character in Dota2 so that everyone would want to pick him, he got banned for being a High-Tier Scrappy.
  • Knuckles wanted to be more popular than Sonic. The paw turns him into the controversial Ugandan Knuckles meme.
• Berserk Button: Alek has shown to have two:
  • NEVER ask Alek if her DOTA team, Empire, will win the International. Her Russian pride will kick in.
    "What you mean by 'chance?' Do you think team is weak? You dare to mock Glorious Empire??? '''RUSSIAN DOTA IS BEST DOTA!'''"
  • Also, NEVER play a Priest deck against her in Hearthstone. The "dirty mind trick" move angers her greatly. It also gets her into Hulk Speak.
    "Stoooopid Priest Deck, steal Warrior minions with dirty mind tricks. Alek wants to break their tiny necks like twig."
  • The Sniper of Dota 2 causes Alek to be loud and belligerent while asleep.
• Berserker Tears: He loved that doctor.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: In-Universe, TentaJo knows almost nothing about Fire Emblem, and the only thing his research comes up with is the incest.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Jo in "Sodium Overload", big time.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Steam-tan. Her true love is money. Of course, this is returned in kind.
• Bittersweet Ending: Drone-tan being forced to become a Hatchery.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: What the Lanius think of other races in the galaxy for requiring oxygen.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Alek, Morgan, and Engie following the later's return to the comic full time. Jane, Morgan, and Engie also qualifies.
• Bling of War: Jane is showing off her really expensive gold armor, but Morgan asks if it's gold or gilded (another metal with a gold coating) as gold is too soft to make armor out of. The last panel shows it's actual gold and Jane is taken out by a few arrows.
• Body Paint: When Jane loses a bet and has to do fan service for Jo, he chooses Cortana, a holographic projection of a nude blue woman; so Jo pulls out a can of blue paint.
• Boisterous Weakling: This DOTA2 player thinks he's way better than he is and wants to go straight into ranked battles against top players. Instead of working his way up the ladder, he buys someone else's account and gets creamed.
• Bottom of the Barrel Joke: Hat jokes. Lampshaded here.
  • Also, "can't think of anything to draw" comics. Usually, these involve short conversations between the author and Engie-tan, or Engie-tan briefly taking over the comic.
• Bound and Gagged: Blue Engi in an early arc. Fortunately, Pyro's knowledge of muffle speak allowed him to understand her.
• Brain Bleach: Angela's reaction to the live-action ''Sonic'' movie, is a lobotomy.
• Breaking Bad News Gently: Engie uses a From Bad to Worse scenario, then reveals the "worse" part (she's pregnant) was a gag so that the "bad" part (DRM and real money auction house in Diablo III) doesn't seem so bad.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During Victoire's introduction arc, she decides to pay a visit to the girls. Victoire shows up drawn in high-definition, while the other girls in the same comic are drawn as simple doodles. Anne Marie complains to Jo (the artist) about this obvious discrepancy.
  • A more literal example happens when Angie tries to feed a cheesecake that's made of fanservice to Jo, in an effort to show him off as a sexy fanservice example (and also, for revenge). But it turns out though, that the world (and the comic) just can't handle that level of fanservice...
• Breast Expansion: 2-up.
• Brick Joke:
  • Harking back to Meet the Demoman, the Sniper, after ticking off Demo-tan, is being stitched back together... "In Hell!"
  • Santa didn't forget about what happened to him at Engie's place last year, but he's a forgiving fellow: He even gave her a hat!
  • On the 500th comic, we were promised fanservice. Fast-forward to now, and we are indeed getting fanservice for the milestone!
• Brilliant, but Lazy, While playing Astroneer, Angela prefers the annoying task of maintaining lots of small bio-generators instead of building one large power station, as that requires exploring for rare materials and developing the technology to make it.
• Broken Aesop: After Engie gambles Jo's hat on a DOTA game, and wins, Red is worried that she's learning the wrong lesson. Jo doesn't care as he's loaded with the winnings.
• Brutal Honesty: Morgan gives this in the E3 2014 coverage with Tenta-Jo, who then realizes this might not be the best approach...
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Jane's gotten on Jo's bad side three times. See Worth It for details.
  • A Baron of Hell gives Doomguy shit for playing with dolls. The only reason he still has his head in the next panel is because Doomguy hasn't pulled the trigger yet.
• The Bus Came Back: When Jo commented on how many people are playing WoW Classic, Angela snarked back that maybe he should listen to his own fans who want the comic to go back to the way it was. The next panel has the return of RED Engie-Tan with Angela (formerly the BLU Engie-Tan) going missing.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • The Sniper. Back during the Sniper VS Spy Update, there was a string of comics with the Spy being far superior to the Sniper. He then later pissed of a RED Demogirl, and... it ended badly.
  • In contrast, Sniper-Tan has been exempt from this treatment. As of late, however, she has her own problems to deal with.
  • After exhausting all her options, the now-homeless Engie-tan still refuses to spend the night at Sniper's camper van.
• The Cameo:
  • This strip has an appearance by Charity "Baby" Nineheart and the Uninstalalafell.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': A public service announcement about playing a Blizzard game without an authenticator.
• Cardiovascular Love: Heart Symbol imagery appears all the time.
• Cargo Cult: It turns out Angie's a devotee of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
• Casting Couch: Bait-and-switched here. She's not putting out, she's just having trouble with the handle.
• Cat Fight: The BLU and RED Engie-tans can't settle things with words...so they get physical.
• Cat Girl: Anne-Marie cosplays as one here for her fanbase.
• Censor Steam:
  • When the girls join My Hero Academia, Morgan's quirk is the ability to create this or blinding light whenever anything "inappropriate" happens around her, such as Jane flashing the rest of the class. Mineta is not happy.
  • Also used when the girls go to the sauna.
• Chainmail Bikini: Subverted here where Engie starts out wearing one but asks for a more realistic suit of armor.
• Christmas Episode: For Frostivus, Crystal Maiden tells Tiny he shouldn't kill Pugna, as it is the time of truce, celebration and giving presents. So Tiny gives Pugna a lovely gift-wrapped boulder, delivered at 9.8 m/s².
• The City vs. the Country: Taken to extremes with how Angie and Morgan play Factorio. Angie has industrialized every inch of the game world, while Morgan wants to live In Harmony with Nature and has only the bare minimum of facilities. Sure, Morgan's world looks nicer, but it'll take ages to build anything.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • Sniper-tan.
• Coin-on-a-String Trick: Anne-Marie does it here with her share of the rent.
• Comedic Sociopathy:
  • What happens when Jane and Morgan know the Diablo III auction house is closing and Anne-Marie is sad? They celebrate the closing to rub it in.
  • What team does Morgan support? Alliance, which gives frustration to Jane, Alek and Anne-Marie.
    "Their tears of frustration is why Alliance is my favorite DOTA team."
  • When Angie and Anne-Marie nearly come to blows over whether Street Fighter or Smash Brothers Melee should be the closing game at EVO, Jo asks if they should be fighting among themselves. So they decide to troll Jane over "No Melee at EVO" (though it might been partial payback for Jane getting Morgan to troll Anne-Marie over Diablo above).
• Comically Missing the Point: Jo sent Matt Bozon a sketch of Engie asking Shantae for an autograph, handing her a marker, and opening her top. Matt sent back a picture of Shantae autographing the marker.
• Competition Freak: Jane, even when Jo makes her do Fanservice, she insists her fan service has to be better than Morgan's.
• Context-Sensitive Button: Geralt from The Witcher video games uses the same button to loot treasure as he does lighting and extinguishing candles, so Angie uses this fact to protect her cash register by putting a candle on it. Every time Geralt tries to loot the register, he's lighting or putting out the candle instead.
• Contrived Clumsiness: Jo explains that he "accidentally" uploaded a video of Anne-Marie in the changing room, but she doesn't exactly buy it.
• Cool Down: As demonstrated here, Yurnero jumps back and forth between Dirty Coward and The Juggernaut depending on whether Omnislash is available.
• Cool Old Guy: The old man from the Noob arc.
• Corner of Woe:
  • This one. Can't really blame the Medic for it; over more or less the entire arc, things were going really, really badly for him. Good thing the enemy heavy was sympathetic.
  • Poor Wii Fit Trainer...
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: When Morgan takes Jane off-screen to show her a tattoo she has, Alex grabs Maggie and pulls her away from the door, covering her eyes.
• Covert Pervert: Jane's reaction to the video of Anne-Marie in the changing room: "A Brazilian stripe, Anne? How bold!"
• Creator Cameo: Here. Brain Bleach is that way.
  • Early-Bird Cameo?
• Critical Hit: The Sniper rolls a 20 on a d20 in BLU Engie-tan's RPG to do a TWANG-Headshot.
• Crossover:
  • Neon Fortress Senterion, anyone?
  • The RPG Elements Valve is adding to Team Fortress 2...
• Cross Player: Jo here.
• Cruel Twist Ending: One of the things Jo hates about indie games is how so many of them have dark endings, seemingly for no other reason than indie games are supposed to screw over the player.
• Cultural Translation: "Localization".
• Cute Little Fangs: Zergling-tans.
• Cute Monster Girl:
  • The Zerg. No, seriously.
  • And the Lusty Argonian Maid.
• Dating Catwoman: The Engie-tans from the opposite teams are pretty much together by now.
• Day in the Life: The "Get A Game" strips. Alek, Morgan and Anne-Marie were given money to buy a game for their day's strip. Alek bought one with a free Team Fortress 2 hat, and Morgan got one that was the "Nostalgia Goggles Edition"... while Anne-Marie got her online fanbase to buy the game for her and pocketed the money for herself instead.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: From kill reports, chat channels, and the fact that they occasionally change classes/games, the two teams are obviously in a video game, though their players are never shown.
• Defeat by Modesty: While playing Pocky & Rocky, Morgan as Rocky was turned into a Little Bit Beastly tanuki in a bikini, and is too concerned with covering herself to do anything. She quickly accepts Angela's offer to switch characters as Pocky is a conservatively dressed miko.
• Demoted to Extra: Engie-tan, rather jarringly. Her role on the comic has since been taken over by four new "sidekick girls". Word of God seems to suggest this was the result of wanting to use original characters, rather than ones based off someone else's work and/or copyrighted material. Several other once-prominent characters (like most of the TF2 characters) have similarly faded into the background, or, in some cases, disappeared altogether.
• Depraved Dentist: We don't see her in action, but what would you expect from Akasha the Queen of Pain.
• Detachment Combat: Thanks to Genji's slicing and dicing, and Baptiste's Immortality field, Reaper does it here, though not willingly.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Said by Anne-Marie when she suggested a Splatoon themed Wet T-Shirt Contest. She didn't consider that the ink has the consistency of paint instead of water.
  • When Engie goes to star in her own game, she goes to Minette for advice. She does this on the grounds that Minette is still just an NPC, having not gotten enough fan votes to be added to Skullgirls as a playable character, and would be a good example of what not to do. While that might be a good idea, actually telling her that is not.
• Difficulty Spike: In-Universe. Ori and the Blind Forest starts off easy, but once you reach the Ginso Tree the kid gloves come off. Also counts as Surprise Difficulty as Jo thought the game would be good for casuals, and then remembered what the game is really like.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • This short arc about a newbie video game princess's first kidnapping.
  • And this previous mini-arc featuring a casual gamer
  • Oh God yes.
• Double Standard ^note With a dash of Hypocritical Humor: Of the non-gender-issues related variety.
  • When this trope meets Extreme Omnisexual.
• Downer Ending: The Mega Man 9 arc.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: After gambling away her and Red's clothes, Jo scolds Engie about gambling, only for her to come to a different conclusion.
  Jo: Hope you learned your lesson. When you bet sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
  Engie: (while gambling on Jo's hat) I lost last time, this means this time I'm totally going to win!
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: While welcoming Linkle (a female Link) to Hyrule Warriors, they're actually talking to Link. He goes off to rant about people getting genders mixed up to Sheik (Zelda disguised as a man).
• Dumbass Has a Point: Invoked by Jane. She finds it stupid that Morgan is buying an early access game, essentially paying to be a beta tester; whereas when Jane pre-orders the latest Call of Duty she gets some bonus content thrown in. Jane then drives the point home that she's the dumb one, leaving the Morgan upset that she was spending money on an unfinished game while making Jane look sensible.
• Dynamic Difficulty: Just as BLU Engie was about to kill a boss in Diablo III, RED Engie joins her game, causing the dynamic difficulty to kick in, boosting the almost dead boss enough to squash BLU like a bug.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: It started as a story-driven Team Fortress 2 comic, but it's mostly a gag-a-day general gaming comic now.
• Easter Bunny: When Lina and Crystal Maiden are painted in Playboy Bunny outfits by Jo, Engie thinks he's doing the Easter comic with them as the Easter Bunnies. Jo accepts this.
• Eats Babies: This comic depicts Sylvanas attempting to eat a baby and assuring her gullible subordinates that she's only doing it for the survival of The Horde and not because she's an undead abomination.
• Engrish: The creator is Brazilian and English is not his first language. This comes across occasionally.
• Erotic Dream: Morgan has one between her and Angela. Morgan knows this can only mean one thing: Jo is drawing weird stuff again. Angela has the same dream, which means she finishes a line on her erotic dream Bingo card. Apparently Angie's had ones involving the other Nerf Now girls, Engie-tan, Samus, Peach, and Morrigan, but not Victorie, which Anne rubs in Victorie's face.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Morgan takes Jane to court for libel and slander over the Steam tags, and Alek looks like she's going to act as defense. However, Alek is also pissed off at Jane for hinting that Alek's breasts weren't real, and sides with the prosecution instead of defending Jane.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Team Fortress 2 characters get referred to by their class names with their Distaff Counterparts similarly so... until it was lampshaded with four of the female classes receiving actual names. Engie-tan was not among their number.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The American Violent Gamer may be violent, but he doesn't violate women. Only Japanese gamers do.
  • Anne will do almost any kind of fanservice for enough money, but a love scene with her sister is her limit.
• Evolutionary Levels: The "Nature's Balance" strips avert this despite a sort of Goal-Oriented Evolution, in that an animal's build is more important than its raw power. Low-level birds survive by not playing the PVP game with sabretooth tigers, and later on, while lions are easily killed by humans, other felines easily dominate the latter by building charisma and becoming house cats.
• Exact Words: Riot Games received complaints that all of the females in League of Legends were "barely clothed bimboes with big boobies". The artist's response is to create Jinx, a barely clothed bimbo who is as flat as a board.
• Exiled to the Couch: That's what BLU Engie gets for gambling away her and RED's clothes.
• Expy:
  • The most recent one is how one Engie-tan resembles Rei.
  • A more obvious version.
• Fake Boobs: Jane uses a Steam tag to mark Aleksandrina's chest with the text "not a real boobie". Alek insists they're real and that Jane is just jealous.
• Fake Nationality (In-Universe): Demoman in Team Fortress 2 is Scottish. Demo-tan, who eventually became Morgan, is revealed to be Brazilian.
• Fanservice: With a huge engineered lampshade.
  Fanservice? In MY Nerfnow?
  • Similarly here, but with more pun.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Curse you, WoW!
  • Raven, old hag face on a super model body.
• Fastball Special: Tiny throws his teammate (Drow Ranger Traxex) at Slark to take him down.
  • Ass Kicks You: She lands on his head with the head going "Splosh" into red paste with a tongue sticking out. She not only has Slark's blood on her cape, she then gets razzed by Lina and Crystal Maiden.
    LINA: Wow, sure is good to have such a fat carry.
    CRYSTAL MAIDEN: She is too big to handle now.
• Fireball Eyeballs: Jane trolling Morgan about Homeworld Remastered causes Morgan to gain these, and Alek to keep Morgan from strangling Jane.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Apparently, between Morgan and Jane.
• For Science!: Angie asks who would win a Zerg-Tyranid fight and Jo imagines it. Only thing is, the Zergling gets puppy-licked by the Tyranid instead.
• Four-Point Scale: In-Universe, this comic suggests EGM's score of 9 for Aliens: Colonial Marines, while the Metacritic average is 4.6, is due to plain old bribery.
• Fridge Logic: In-universe, coupled with "Eureka!" Moment: Dr. Wily finds a strategy to exploit Mega Manning.
  • What happens if you are already dead to begin with?!
• Fully-Clothed Nudity:
  • After the Anti-Mage vs. Void arc, the next strip shows Jane playing a game in her underwear. When Morgan tells her the arc is over and it's back to them, Jane immediately covers herself. This is the same Jane who put on Cammy's leotard for some fan service.
  • Morgan is the polar opposite, she hates doing fan service and is usually the most conservatively dressed. However, she Sleeps in the Nude and doesn't bother putting clothes on if she has to get up for something.
• Gag Echo: Commander Shepard returns Councilor Sparatus' air-quotes.
• Gambler's Fallacy: Engie interprets "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose" to mean that if you lose, then a win must be right around the corner.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: This comic lampshades the impossibility of the Engineer's feats in the actual game as a punchline.
  • This comic shows how Gameplay and Story Integration, works against World of Warcraft. With the Horde engaged in civil war, Engie tries to convince King Varian that now is the perfect time to pick off the Horde races from the sidelines, starting with the Forsaken. But because the gameplay dictates there must be a Horde, Varian goes with an Enemy Mine situation to help one half of the Horde fight the other, and gives no reason why.
• Genius Bruiser: The Heavy, apparently.
• Genre Savvy: Lydia knew enough about both sides of the Fur Against Fang debate to know which one she wanted Engie-Tan to go to.
• Genre Shift: "She Was Just Level One" is a pretty grim and gritty story for a comic that normally runs on the Rule of Cute.
• Gilligan Cut: Engie and Jo are wondering if Starbound will ever get out of beta.
  Engie: At this point I just hope they release the game before space exploration becomes reality.
  Space Engie: Nope, still not released.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: The author does enjoy drawing lesbian make-out scenes every now and then, and again, and again, and again...
  • It seems Pyro and Demoman in the third comic agree. Scout probably agrees also, he's just impatient.
  • Invoked by Chun-Li and Cammy who use themselves as bait.
• The Glomp: Done by Mini-Medic to Heavy here. Extra cute given that she's about 1/4 his size.
• Glory Days: Azwraith was a top carry in DOTA 2, but has since been relegated to "pub tier"^note "Public Tier" means characters that are easy to use and give good results, so they are favored by average players in public games. Competitive players want the most powerful characters and are willing to learn difficult mechanics and overcome weaknesses, to they lean towards Difficult, but Awesome characters., passed over for Slithice.
• Goal-Oriented Evolution: Nature's Balance, a set of comics which likened evolution to character building in RPGs or MOBAs. It starts with a sabre-tooth tiger getting angry at a prey species for picking up the "flying" talent, followed by a dinosaur switching to a herbivore diet because there are too many predators and the prey are learning new defensive skills. The third is of primates arguing over builds, and one goes heavy on intelligence and tool use, suggesting it'll start slow but by end-game will dominate. The other apes think that It Will Never Catch On. Another comic has another animal saying that just because the intelligence heavy build worked out, doesn't mean a charisma heavy build would, and asks if the player plans to charm the hunters into submission. Considering a charisma heavy build leads to house cats, the answer was yes.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: The Good vs Evil comic, displaying Heavenly Blue against Red and Black and Evil All Over, with some Spikes of Villainy and Skeletons in the Coat Closet for good measure.
• Good News, Bad News: The good news is your friends are dumping the crappy 3rd edition of D&D, the bad news is you have to buy the 4th edition books to keep up. And then the 5th edition comes out.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Considering they're being worn by Pyro, you can probably guess what they are...
  • A female example serves as an enjoyable last view for the sniper.
• Grass is Greener:
  • Some gaming ladies dream of being on the other side of the fence. Princesses Peach and Zelda dream of being the heroes in their respective games, while Bayonetta dreams of being a captive princess.
  • It might be a nice idea to quit your soul-crushing corporate job for Stardew Valley, but after a day's back-breaking field work, you'll be dreaming of a nice, easy cubicle job.
• Green Boy Color: This strip has Jo trying literal green-shaded Nostalgia Goggles. According to him, it is "less rosy than expected".
• Griefer: Jane and Alek know that the most fun to be had in DOTA 2 is to reach the enemy base, but instead of destroying the Ancient to win the game, they spawn camp the other team for the rest of the match.
• Groin Attack: When depicting the PC vs. Console war as a boxing match, PC emulation of console games is shown as a punch below the belt.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Morgan with a Zerling plushie. In a shocking twist, it wasn't because Jo forced her into some fan service, but because she sleeps in the nude; when she needs to get up for something, she just holds a nearby object in front of her in case someone sees her.
• Hands Go Down: Concerning uses of the new Kinect system.
• Happy Place: Anne-Marie's favorite team, i.e. the one she bet her rares on, didn't make the DOTA International Grand Finals. She retreats to her happy place and imagines that they won.
• Head Pet: Heavy Weapons Guy needs to go Scout to deliver a message, but doesn't have a helmet. Mini-Medic wants to tag along. The solution is obvious.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: When Engie puts on a full suit of armor she leaves out the helmet, suggesting that she'll rely on Plot Armor.
• Hikikomori / Crazy Survivalist: This strip.
• Hipster: Morgan, or at least it's how Jane portrays her, at the very least, she's into the indie gaming scene.
• History Repeats: Remember when Jo wanted to make a Fire Emblem: Three Houses comic, which he knew nothing about, then found out about the Incest Subtext in the franchise, leading to Anne-Marie telling Victoire to run? The fans asked for an Astral Chain comic, which Jo knows nothing about, so he uses word association to come up with S&M, and Morgan tells Jane to run.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Jo knows better than to try killing Hitler because of this should he gain the ability to time travel. Instead he plans on going to EVO 2004 to see the Daigo parry against Justin live.
• Hospital Hottie: RED Medic-Tan (she's dressed like a nurse) and Anne-Marie in "She Cares" when to back up Morgan she goes from Spyette to Medic.
• Hot Springs Episode: As an April Fools' Day joke, this was done as a full-text comic, lampshading that it's "borderline porn" without showing anything.
• Hotter and Sexier: It's Team Fortress plus anime babes.
• Humiliating Wager: Jane's competitive nature had led to these.
  • After crushing Jo in Skullgirls, Jane sweetens the pot to lure him into another Curb-Stomp Battle. Unfortunately, she offered to do some Fanservice if he wins, which motivates him to destroy her.
  • When Jane dismisses Morgan's love of strategy games, she challenges her to one. If Jane learned anything from losing to Jo, it's to set the contest to favor herself as much as possible.
• Hypocritical Humor: Angie wants Jo to draw a comic about Sephiroth appearing in Smash, and calls him out for drawing more sexy females than males. Once he starts drawing, it's clear why Angie was insisting on a Sephiroth comic.
• Idea Bulb: This comic.
• Identical Panel Gag: While expressing a wish to be able to re-use previous content like Nintendo remaking or porting a number of games, Jo uses the exact same panel three times for the entirety of the comic.
  • History repeats itself in Cyberpunk 2077; Angie goes to get a cyberimplant installed, which the doctor (Jo) completes the procedure instantaneously. Angie questions having such a procedure done without even a cutscene, to which Jo provides some shade:
  Angie: You're not even going to draw a different panel?
  Jo: Why? I mean, that's exactly how it happens in the game. If a triple-A game can get away with it, I don't see why I can't.
• Ignore the Fanservice: When Anne-Marie notices that her Fanservice-filled WildStar stream isn't getting many hits, she thinks it's because some skanky bitch is showing her tits to steal viewers. But it turns out to be Morgan's totally non-fanservice series on player housing.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Blue Engie-Tan in the Rainy Day arc. She declares a truce with the red team and invites them into a warehouse just so she'll have someone to play Dungeons and Dragons with.
• Improbably Predictable: When Alek and Jane stole Angie's money and went shopping, Angie was pissed. Because of her love of fanservice, the two girls had half their clothes taken off before Angie could say "punishement".
• Impossible Pickle Jar: Morgan starts a Training Montage after she finds herself felled by one of these. When she finally gets it open, Jane's reaction is to demand that Morgan impregnate her.
• Incest Subtext: Jo wants to do a Fire Emblem: Three Houses comic, but doesn't know anything about the series, so he Googles it for ideas, and finds the franchise's history with this. Anne-Marie fears Jo will start making comics about incest, and she's the only one with a sibling.
  • Then again, it seems that Victoire is kinda into Anne-Marie, period...
• Incompatible Orientation: Sakura has just turned 18 and wanted to celebrate with Ryu, who would rather spend the day with Sagat.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl:
  • Slithice always goes around topless, apparently because nobody told her about the surface dress code. Slardar pings her to try to warn her about it all the time... but when he said "top is missing" she just mistook it for lane instructions.
  • The Zerg, if the Overlord and Drones are anything to go by.
• Innocent Innuendo: What were you expecting?
• Innocently Insensitive: In The Interspecies comic Morgan claims that orcs do not look like Jane's cosplay, ie a green Jane in a Chainmail Bikini. Three different depictions of orcs show up to correct her, with the first upset at the implication that Morgan thinks orcs have to be ugly.
• Intimate Lotion Application: The "Sunscreen Tutorial" strip mocks the idea sunscreen application scenes are often used for fanservice, with Engie rubs sunscreen on Shantae's back.
• Intimate Marks: Morgan has two tattoos: a Homeworld tattoo on her back, and another one which we don't get to see, but Jane does when Morgan leads her into her bedroom.
• Irony: Situational, noted in the News Post under Strip 297, the end of the "Nerf" arc.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: In-Universe, Jo is complaining that patch 1.0.5 has made Diablo III much easier, complete with Diablo-Tan presenting loot on a silver platter. Engie asks if the game is more fun than when it was It's Hard, So It Sucks!, and he sheepishly admits that it is.
  • Happens again with the 2.0.1 patch; this time it's Jane complaining that Diablo III has been ruined in trying to appeal to stupid casual gamers, like Morgan. Morgan disagrees on the "ruined" part.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Heavy Weapons Guy and Heavy Weapons Girl compete for the Medic's affections. When Medic chooses HWGirl, HWGuy leaves so as not to come between them.
• I Warned You: When the Engies go out on a camping trip, BLU-Engie brings along her DS and extra batteries while RED brings "her spirit of adventure". When nature dumps a rainstorm on them, keeping them in their tent, BLU rubs it in when RED admits she's bored.
• Jerkass: The Sniper.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Anne-Marie is obsessed with getting money by any means necessary, whether it's through fanservice or straight-up cons. At least some of which goes to Engie to keep her fed and healthy while she works on her game.
• The Jinx: When Jo asks the Engies what their favorite DOTA teams are, he reveals that every team he roots for seems to disband shortly after. He then wants to root for a team that is not doomed to fail, and the girls try to get him to support each others team.
• Jumping the Shark: Invoked in Jo's opinion of iOS 10.
• Kiss of the Vampire: Skyrim's Lydia is asked what Engie-tan should afflict herself with: lycanthropy or vampirism. Lydia suffers often from Video Game Cruelty Potential and she knows that eventually Engie-tan is going to eat her. So she chooses sensual neck nibbling over being ripped into pieces.
• Kryptonite Factor: We find Risky Boots finds Shantae's in this strip here.
• Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Inverted here, where a game company disguises a fanservice game as a strategy game.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Anti-Mage is looking for a "hard support" and is instead paired up with Slithice, who is anything but. She asks if the point of a "hard support" is "being hard". Anti-Mage tries to argue back, but just Facepalms.^note A "hard support" is a unit that can defend the carry while they farm while forgoing their own farming, thus by endgame the carry is well leveled and ready to attack the enemy, at the expense of the support being underleveled. Slithice is also a farm dependent carry, so she'll want to be farming instead of helping Anti-Mage with his farming, which would certainly make the game harder. Also, she is a Ms. Fanservice who slithers around topless, which would make it hard in another way.
• Lazy Artist: Blatantly so here, where instead of drawing Hanzo's complex tattoo on his left arm, the word "TATTOO" is literally written down it in brown instead.
• Leave Him to Me!: Anti-Mage vs. Faceless Void: both tell their teammates to stay out of it, until Void realizes AM is no pushover and calls for reinforcements.
• Leet Lingo: Jo wanted to do a "leet" comic for strip #1337, but decides it's too old to be relevant and then compares it to MIRC, which Jane doesn't even recognize.
• Lesbian Vampire: What Lydia imagines Dovahkin!Engie as.
• Limited Wardrobe: Averted to hell and back with Engie-tan who has a different (and extremely fanservicey) outfit in pretty much every comic.
• Loners Are Freaks: The original TF2 Sniper is a Butt-Monkey due to his exaggerated loner reputation.
• Look Both Ways: After forgetting about Victoire, Jo brings her back for a comic where she's rushing to get to work, and runs right into traffic.
• Loophole Abuse: Anne Marie tried this to get away with wearing a skimpy outfit during the week they wear princess dresses for uniforms by saying it's an authentic video game princess outfit. Granted, she's right (it's Princess Daphne's outfit) but based on the looks the other girls are giving, they're not letting her get away with it.
• Loot Drama: In-Universe, after the RED team beats Engie's tabletop RPG, she get revenge by giving out a single piece of loot and letting them argue over it.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Redhead Engie-tan.
• Love Hurts: Several arcs go take the major relationships to dark places.
• Love Triangle:
  • Between a Medic and two Heavies.
  • Between a gamer, Steam-tan and Origin-tan.
• Lowest Common Denominator: (In-Universe) Jane's favorite taco stand is bought out by a big corporation and she's worried that they're going to change it. Anne-Marie suggests that the corporate investment could lead to growth and more people getting to enjoy the tacos. Turns out Jane was right and "Hell Tacos" was turned into "Very Mild Tacos for Normies".
• Major Injury Underreaction: Sometimes being aflame is just a chance to flirt. Or not.
• Mama Bear:
  • Alek becomes protective of Maggie, complete with literal depiction of the metaphor.
  • Hyenas who try to start some PVP with a level 2 elephant end up getting some PVP with its mother. They decide that PVP is not for them.
• Medium Awareness: Sonic, in this comic. Too bad he was wrong about what to expect.
• Method Acting: In-Universe, Anne-Marie and Victoire play incestuous Fire Emblem sisters^note Victoire as a gender flipped Ephraim, and Anne-Marie as Eirika; one of the most famous cases of subtext in the franchise. in a comic. Victoire tells Anne-Marie it's just acting, and that when she plays a murderer in a movie, she's neither a real murderer, nor does she enjoy it. Anne-Marie inititally calms down, but when the comic gets going, Victoire's enthusiastic acting style freaks her the hell out. The comic is even called "Method Acting".
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Downplayed example since it's only in the context of a video game, but Morgan's displeased when she finds out Jane unwittingly embarked on the Genocide route in Undertale.
• Miser Advisor: Anne-Marie has been established as the one who'll do anything for a fast buck. Particularly if it involves providing fanservice.
• Misery Builds Character: Parodied Feeling left out after everyone else got Character Development, Jo sends Alek to space to fight "Alien Biters", and she comes back as a jaded Hollywood Cyborg with Jo constantly spouting how "deep" she now is.
• Moe Anthropomorphism: Drone-tan is genki about harvesting minerals, Zerglings and Hydralisks are Cute Monster Girls, and an Overlord is a Bespectacled Cutie dangling from a balloon. The Zerg have never been more precious.
  • The Protoss add their Probe-tan to the fray. And when a Probe and a Drone meet in the mineral fields, traditional harvesting isn't on their minds.
• Moment Killer: The first rule of peeping on two girls making out, don't yell at them to get on with it.
• Mook Horror Show: A variation.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family:
  • Zerglings and Drones have a tendency to revert to this when they start chewing on something. Notable in that they still manage to keep up their Moe aspects in the process.
  • After Jo get's a wisdom tooth pulled, Angie is surprised because she didn't think he had teeth. Jo shows her how many teeth he has.
• Morton's Fork: Mighty No. 9 faces one when he has to decide whether to rush his game to launch, or to delay the game to polish it; both choices lead to angry fans.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Engie-tan in the beginning, and presently Anne-Marie.
  • Jane has two sure instances and one potential one:
    • She acts as Cammy for one scene after Jo calms her down (Jane was upset she didn't have a "Get a Game" strip, but Jo wanted to do more than a predictable Call of Duty joke with her).
    • She puts on "Pit Girl" Cosplay while Jo draws her.
    • She gets a rematch in Skullgirls from Jo after she offers to do any cosplay he wants if he wins (she beat him in a Curb-Stomp Battle last time); cue Jo's "Let's Do This" and Jane's Oh, Crap! look.
  • Samus Aran was afraid her so-called Character Development was turning her into this, but over a thousand strips later with her Zero Suit and Rocket Heels courtesy of Super Smash Bros. she's enjoying things more.
• Mugging the Monster: While any hero in DOTA 2 would qualify as a monster, a hero infested by N'aix the Lifestealer is a double threat.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Mineral Scan!!!
• Must Have Caffeine:
  • Reaper, as shown here at Talon HQ and at Angie's Bar.
  • Aerith also likes black coffee and jokes to Angie about it. Though she does an Art Shift from Jo's usual style of art to a more severe one when Angie asks how Aerith wants it, then back again when she's joking with Angie.
• My Eyes Are Up Here:
  • Inverted by Valeera Sanguinar.
  • Lady Dimitrescu is so tall that her breasts obscure her face.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Bangus the Endowed
• Naughty Birdwatching: Inverted here, when Beastmaster asks his hawk to get pictures of "hot chicks" bathing, only the bird comes back with pictures of a harpy.
• Nerdgasm: Angela's reaction to Final Station.
• New Old Flame: Deus Ex, personified as Adam Jensen, to Engie-tan.
• The New Rock & Roll: The "Satan's Game" arc is a The Binding of Isaac parody where Satan lures in kids to play Dungeons & Dragons. According to him, it's not for the sake of corrupting the world's youth, but because he personally loves the game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Nice job ruining Christmas, BLU Engie-tan...
  • It could be argued when Morgan called out Angie for banishing Jane and Alek that TentaJo took back the reins from Angie when it got too meta. They moved to another place and lost '''all their money''' (no doubt including whatever savings or investments they had) as Angie said they were "gibbus poor." Forcing them to look for jobs.
• No-Dialogue Episode: "Rainy Day" has no spoken dialogue, as does "Entire Team is Babies."
• No Guy Wants an Amazon: Apparently applies to Samus Aran. She's apperently so desperate for a little attention that she pulls the old "Answer the Pizza Guy In Lingerie" routine.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Defied by the female Wisp. Jo says he didn't add boobies because he'd then have to draw the male Wisp with a dick.
• Noodle Incident: So why does the comic start with 4 instead of 1?
• Nostalgia Filter:
  • Discussed in a Pokémon comic.
  • Also Cool Old Lady GOG-tan.
  • Jo wears literal nostalgia goggles which colors everything in shades of green like the original Game Boy.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In-Universe. Engie's reaction to the [PS4: meh. The PS3 got a rise out of her, even if it was rage over the price.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Heavy. Dammit, Heavy.
• Not Me This Time: When Jo first hears about the auction house closing in Diablo III, he at first thinks BLU Engie-tan was pranking him.
• Not the Intended Use: While playing Astroneer, the devs increased the energy costs of larger machines to force players to explore for rare materials and to research to build more advanced power generators. Players, specifically Angela, would rather just build lots of small power generators instead of going through all the trouble of making one big one.
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • Jo spills some ink on the floor and the Lusty Argonian Maid slips on it, falling on him; Engie comes in and it looks like the two are making out. The maid says this, but Engie sees the ink on the floor and deduces what really happened. Jo would rather people think they were making out, and tells Engie that's not what happened.
  • Jane and Victoire are in their underwear because the AC is out, and are fighting over the controllers. Morgan comes in just as it looks like they're making out, but guesses that they were fighting over the "good" controller, and berates Jane for ruining the other controller. Morgan even comments on the trope.
  • Happens again when Angela falls off a chair onto Morgan and Jane walks in on them. Despite Jane being jealous that Morgan and Angela were bonding over Pocky & Rocky, she also guesses that this was an accident, and refers to the time when Morgan walked in on her and Victoire.
• Nude-Colored Clothes: Engie makes Lydia look like Pinkie Pie, which includes coloring her skin and clothes pink so she looks like an anthropomorphic Pinkie Pie wearing this.
• The Nudifier: Angie has a button which she uses to create instant Fanservice, in case the comic's popularity drops off. When Anne-Marie pushes it, Morgan's clothes explode.
• Obviously Evil: While playing Among Us, Angie fingers Green as the imposter. When prompted for evidence, she merely points to Green who is chasing two of the other players with a bazooka.
• Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: Could Be Worse has the Animal Crossing Villager unhappy about the Ax-Crazy Memetic Mutation the Super Smash Bros. community has given him, but Tom Nook points out it could be much worse. Cue a shot of a horrified Wii Fit Trainer in a Corner of Woe, who became a Ms. Fanservice in the game due to her flexibility and thus has a lot of Rule 34 fanart.
• Older and Wiser:
  • The Heavy after joining a team of "babies". Has shown elements of being a Papa Wolf as well.
  • The old man from the "Noob" arc.
• Older Than They Look: Angie refuses to serve D.Va at her bar because she's too young, but Morgan has no trouble giving the even younger looking Etna a beer. As Morgan points out, Etna looks 14, but she's actually 1400.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Slardar saw that Slithice was going around topless and tried to warn her about the surface dress code, but when he said "top is missing" she just mistook it for a lane instruction.
• Only in It for the Money: Steam-tan and Anne-Marie are both shown to only care about profit. Anne-Marie will join any movement that gets her more views/donations and Steam is depicted as money-grubbing in almost all appearances.
• Our Orcs Are Different: The Interspecies comic in a nutshell, with it portraying three different kinds of Orcs with one noting that Jane having an axe and spikes is enough to fall in the very wide definition of orc.
• Pantsless Males, Fully-Dressed Females: This trope is mocked at least twice in Nerf NOW!!, particularly in the case of Sonic The Hedgehog:
  • In one strip, Sonic turns down swimming with Blaze and Rouge not because he's hydrophobic, but because he doesn't have a swimsuit.
  • One strip has Angie and Morgan be turned into Sonic-style Funny Animals; the latter deliberately goes without clothes, her reasoning being that wearing clothes just entices lewd people to imagine what's underneath, while going without them shows to everyone that there's nothing to see. Angie notes that that doesn't stop some people.
• Parody of Evolution: This strip depicts an Engineer hunched over a turret, a somewhat short Pyro, a normal-size Soldier, and a Spy with a visible paper mask.
• Passing the Torch: Once Engie-tan returns and is given the name "Angela," Jo leaves a note that tells her, You Are in Command Now.
• Pass the Popcorn: With all the controversy surrounding it, Angela figures the circus around the launch of The Last of Us Part II is going to be more fun than playing the game itself.
• Pie in the Face: When Hearthstone classes are presented as pies, the Hunter's is a pie in the face.^ExplanationThe hunter class is famous for decks that focus almost exclusively on directly rushing attacks to the enemy player's HP; colloquially, the "face."
• Pink Means Feminine: A fan asks Jo to create a female Wisp, essentially a blue ball of light, so he draws a pink ball of light.
• Pizza Boy Special Delivery: Samus is frustrated that she doesn't have a boyfriend, and tries to get some action by ordering 3 pizzas, then trying to seduce the pizza boy.
• Poke the Poodle: Carrion is a game about a Lovecraftian horror that does unspeakable acts upon the human race, like eating all the Oreo fillings.
• Political Cartoons: A number of comics feel like this, only with video game related topics.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: Tiny uses this to his advantage when playing Rock–Paper–Scissors. Being a golem, people assume he'll use rock, and counter with paper, so he goes scissors instead.
• Power Creep: Behold Excalibur, the legendary sword that is completely outclassed by quest loot in the next expansion.
• Power Perversion Potential: For the Kinect.
  • And for the time manipulation on Singularity.
  • The Protoss find a new purpose for Observers.
  • Don't take suggestions for a hot spring from a water elemental.
• Precocious Crush Medic-Tan has one on the Heavy.
• Prehensile Hair:
  • Later known as Morgan, she won a Halloween 2014 poll as to whom the fans wanted to see in an artwork for Halloween, and on Jo's Twitter page, she got to play the Zerg Queen, with a little Zergling in her arms.
  • Morgan turns her hair into a fist to knock a monitor out of sight when an angry Alek wants to get the person who just used a Priest deck against Alek's Warrior Deck.
• Produce Pelting / Torches and Pitchforks: Gamers' reaction to the Xbox One.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Only it's ''larva eyes'' for zergs.
• Put on a Bus: Both BLU and RED Engie-Tans.
  • The Bus Came Back: BLU Engie-Tan returned after finishing her game in late 2014.
• Rage Quit: In the Little Red Riding Hood episode.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Discussed in "Build To Last". Modern technology rusts in a few short years; ancient wood and stone technology lasts forever!
• Read the Fine Print: When Morgan (formerly Demo-tan) officially joins the comic, her first comic has her doing Fanservice. She initially refuses, but Jo points to her contract, which needs a magnifying glass to read the tiny clause 34: she will do fanservice.
• Rebus Bubble: Used for the dialogue-free arcs.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Soldier 76 calls out Junkrat for not following proper gun safety; specifically, do not have your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot something.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Anne-Marie gets them after Jo "accidentally" uploads a video of her in the changing room.
  • The Engineer in the "She was just Level 1" arc.
• Refuge in Audacity: Adam Jensen walks by a guard while "ducking". The guard assumes that it was his imagination. This and the previous comic is pretty much a hilarious alternative explanation for 'ducking'. That somehow makes more sense than just crouch-walking through air vents.
• Rescue Romance: The very first arc. And it doesn't work out for Pyro.
• Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: Started out as a series of story-line based dramedies before evolving into one-off comedy strips. Jo still does story arcs, but they tend to be much shorter and continuity has become harder to come by.
  • Mostly because, as the most recent (and, as it happened, "last") arc proved, viewers prefer the stand-alone strips.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Just about each of the major Team Fortress 2 updates have garnered a reaction strip or three, but other examples include: Backstab, Karma, and Lottery.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: BLU Engie-tan's character gets a Stripperific version of this here. Notable in that she wears the wizard hat on top of her hard hat.
• Robot Me: Instead of waiting for Cyberpunk 2077, Angie cryogenically freezes herself and leaves a robot duplicate in her place. But when Anne asks why Angie froze herself, Robo-Angie decides she'd rather deactivate herself instead of waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 and builds Robo-Angie Mk II to take her place. By the time Angie wakes up, the latest Robo-Angie is so life-like that she's indistinguishable from the real thing.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: On a rainy day, BLU Engie invites some REDs over for some tabletop gaming, as GM she's planning one of these.
• Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...: Scout is lime green, everybody hates him.
• Rule 63: The Team Fortress 2 classes are joined by attractive female couterparts.
• Running Gag: Ever since Hearthstone came out, jokes related to faces have become a thing in the comic. invoked
• Russian Reversal: In Soviet Russia, Tetris plays YOU!
• Sadistic Choice: Lampshaded in this strip Morality. Pointing out how many hard choices you get seem to be choosing between who dies. It also asks why it is these situations seem to pop up so frequently.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Angie has a contest where the other girls pick their favorite team in the DOTA2 Summit 3 vote, and whomever wins gets to do some Fanservice. Morgan hates the idea since she doesn't like doing fanservice, and since Angie draws the comic, she can force the girls to do fanservice whenever she wants, which makes it pointless; so Morgan asks why not skip the contest and go straight to the fanservice. Angie thinks she is trying to make a real suggestion.
• Second Love: Sniper-tan to Pyro.
• Seen It All: This farmer is more annoyed than scared by the demons and undead.
• Self-Deprecation: "I got bored of butchering the english language. Now I butcher grammar in japanese too." [1]
• Self-Insert Fic: The BLU Engie-tan casts herself as a sexy, ultra-powerful evil sorceress and end-boss in her tabletop RPG during the Rainy Day arc.
• Serenade Your Lover: Sniper-tan confesses her love for Pyro by singing Never Gonna Give You Up.
• Serious Business: Holy wars between Mac and PC get rather heated when you're trying to run sentry turrets. Caution: they may end in kissing.
• Sex for Services: When BLU Engie-Tan tries to play Poker Night at the Inventory but has no money, she offers her clothes as the ante. She's not trying to turn the game into Strip Poker, she's trading a strip show for a seat at the table. The RED Heavy rejects the offer because he doesn't want her clothes, and either didn't understand or didn't care about what she was really offering.
• Sex Sells: Inverted here, where an eroge called "Stratacus" disguises itself as a strategy game to mislead people into starting to play it and thus reach a wider audience.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Discussed.
• Shout-Out: To Plants vs. Zombies, with the Peashooter in all of the Left 4 Dead arcs.
  • To My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and only the Sniper's not having fun
    • And a certain pink party pony cameos in the last panel.
    • Guess who Lydia's modded after?
    • The issue of alpha-version leaks had been addressed. You can guess the site that it happened on.
  • Angela channels her inner Rikka!
  • #300
  • I'm on a pig.
• Signed Up for the Dental: How the Umbrella Corporation lured scientists to work on their illegal virus experiments.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: There seems to be no reason why Drow Ranger and Windranger dislike each other so much. Jo believes they secretly like each other, but are so Tsundere that they don't know how to properly show affection, and jump back and forth between fighting and making out.
• Slasher Smile: IT'S PATCH TIME!!!
• Slippery Slope Fallacy: In the early days of World of Warcraft, Blizzard changed the lore to allow female Night Elf druids, and one of the developers was worried that if they start messing around with the lore, where will they end up? 7 years later, Gnomes can be warriors, and there are Alliance shaman and Horde paladins.
• Small Reference Pools: This comic of Hand of Fate 2 has a random picture of Pyra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in the middle. Jo says it's hard to write jokes about an Indie Game no one has heard of, so he threw in the Fanservice from a big industry RPG.
• Smoke Shield: This strip, complete with Big Damn Heroes moment.
• The So-Called Coward: Faceless Void believes this of Anti-Mage, because the latter keeps running away from fights. The real reason is that he is in the middle of farming and wasn't ready to engage Void. By the time Void dismisses AM as a threat, AM has finished his farming and is off to buy gear.
• Something We Forgot: So where are Maggie and Victoire? Jo literally stuffed them into the fridge like leftovers intent on bringing them back later, and forgot about them.
• Speaking Like Totally Teen: In the commentary for strip #1337, Jo compares using leet today with "your dad trying to say some slangs to look cool".
• Speed Sex: Morgan invokes this to mock Jane's Speedrun obssesion.
• Spoof Aesop: Albeit a very modern and valid one.
  Twilight Sparkle: "Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned people are soulless pricks and an NDA is as strong as my ability to enforce it."
• Stating the Simple Solution: Morgan's solution to headcrabs, unlike her fellow girls' solutions with far more flair or requiring specific talents, is a helmet with large spikes coming out of it.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Tonight's Jeopardy! special guest: Dracula.
  • Guess who's in the pit of snakes.
• Straw Hypocrite: Anne suggests dressing up as their favorite Pokémon, but she intends on dressing up as the most popular to boost her own popularity. It backfires as she didn't consider that "most popular" means "most peoples' favorite", so they all dressed up as Pikachu; except Morgan who dressed up as the Pikachu-wannabe Mimikyu.
• Strawman News Media: Gaming journalism does not come off well. Though independent YouTube channels get it too. Whenever reviews are mentioned, expect it to be in the context of them being paid for by the game companies.
• Streisand Effect: In-Universe. When the cast were turned into Sonic-style furries, Morgan goes without clothes. She thinks that wearing clothes will lead to people imagining what they look like in the nude, while going in just her fur and showing she doesn't have anything will dispel this. For the fans who are still going to make fanservice out of them, nothing would stop them anyway so it wouldn't matter what they wore.
• Stripperiffic:
  • The female Team Fortress 2 characters' outfits can be dangerous distractions.
  • The BLU Engie-tan gives herself one in the Rainy Day arc.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys:
  • Apparently, the StarCraft scene is nothing but this.
  • In other strips, SHFG's are depicted as grey-brown skinned cultists in purple robes with "Mr. Yuk" on them.
  • Diablo is terrified of the thought that players might be having fun playing Diablo III.
• Super-Deformed: Particularly the "Entire Team Is Babies" arc.
• Take a Third Option:
  • When DOTA players want more DOTA comics and TF2 players want more TF2 comics, Jo makes a crossover.
  • You can see Jo take a fourth option here.
• Take That!:
  • This comic makes a not-so-subtle jab at The Twilight Saga.
  • Also this against game reviewers and xkcd.
  • This comic takes a jab at those who hate Mini Sentries for being "unfun" to fight against.
• Tautological Templar: Batman never kills, so when he's driving around and running people over, that's not killing, because Batman doesn't kill.
• Tempting Fate:
  • The "Good Day" comics have someone discussing a plan or strategy, followed by someone else who exploited a flaw in the strategy writing a letter saying they had a good day.
  • An item that boosts attack power at the expense of defense? Perfect for ranged fighters, unless you get targeted by an invisible assassin.
  • Outnumbering your opponent? What can one support do?
  • Everyone focuses on late game units, no one would whip up an army of small units and attack early in the game.
• That One Player:
  • Engie (in comic) and Jo (in real life) have low-level alts in Diablo III so they can play with friends who aren't as far in the game as them. Unfortunately, being big fans of Diablo, they often play with their alts and outlevel their friends, defeating the whole purpose.
  • So is Jane, but she does it deliberately to annoy Morgan.
• The Internet Is for Porn: Jo appropriately renamed a Mozilla Firefox shortcut in this strip.
• There Are No Girls on the Internet: Inverted here.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Lesharc ^note or Leshrac when spelt correctly was once a wise man who sought enlightenment, and tried to divine the nature of the universe; he became a perpetually angry centaur when he found out he's a character in a video game.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-Universe, Engie doesn't like]] Mighty No. 9 because they replaced the hardhat wearing Mettools with road cone robots.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: When Omnislash is off Cool Down, Yurnero is the Juggernaut, Bitch!
• This Is Unforgivable!: Angie had her cheesecake eaten by Jane, Alek and Maggie (and gets back at the first two by tampering with their Internet connections; it takes Jane buying Angie more fancy cheesecake to fix it). Jane stole the stylus Angie used to draw the comic, and a free-for-all with the other girls broke it, prompting a visit by Zone-tan with a replacement and a dire warning. The final straw was Jane and Alek stealing a dispenser Angie loaded with money, and not even buying unusual shotguns with it (which would have given them mercy with Angie). Jane and Alek think fanservice for the strip will help them settle up with Angie, but this was the last straw: Angie has had enough of their trolling, and throws them both out.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Crystal Maiden in "Good Day #4". Normally CM is a Crutch Character whose job is to weaken enemies so that her allies can rack up kills and earn gold and XP. When her allies head off with their gains to buy upgrades, she's left alone to defend a tower which get assaulted by some nearly dead creeps, letting her grab a few quick kills of her own.
• Title Drop: Here and here.
• Toplessness from the Back: Used with Engie a couple of times, also combined with Sideboob.
• Torches and Pitchforks: Anne-Marie is selling pitchforks to gamers outside of Blizzcon 2019.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Subverted with the E.M.M.I. robots from Metroid Dread. They undergo a complex transformation to switch to pursuit mode, by which time Samus has already built up a good head start.
• Trapped in Another World: The Isekai ^note "another world" in Japanese storyline has Victoire about to die in a car accident, only to be whisked away by a wizard to be the hero of another world. Subverted when a larger truck T-bones the truck that would've killed Victoire, and the wizard pulls the truck instead.
• Trilogy Creep: Sporked in "Tetralogy" with regards to Halo 3 (the stunning conclusion to the Halo trilogy) and Halo 4 ("Oh, hey, what's up?").
• [Trope Name]: One cyborg's response to seeing Angie choke another cyborg is "Spanish expletive".
• Tsundere:
  • Jack from Mass Effect 2.
  • A female Predator for Valentine's Day.
  • And again here.
• Two Gamers on a Couch: Strips involving Jo and Engie-tan have this vibe to them. These strips become much more frequent as the comic progresses.
• Ungrateful Bastard: When Jane gets in over her head with a Humiliating Wager, Morgan bargains with Jo by offering to do a different sort of Fanservice. Jane sticks around to mock her for it.
• Unsound Effect: Often. The page image is apparently the sound effect of a Zergling Rush. Among other examples, various sound effects have also included "loot loot", "Direct Hit!", and "BULLET BULLET BULLET BULLET".
• Unusual Weapon Mounting: When Jane hears about the ability to customize genitals in Cyberpunk 2077, she imagines installing a grenade launcher inside her vagina. She is less enthused when Angela suggests that won't be an option.
• Useless Useful Spell: In the commentary for this comic, Jo mentions that the best form of crowd control is to nuke the enemy, and the best debuff is death.
• Visual Pun: When Jo holds up a stack of bills he has to pay, one of the sheets is a picture of Bill.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: Apple Pie 2077 turned out to be a very good pie, albeit with some bugs hanging around, while expectations were for something much bigger.
• War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Team Fortress 2, now with romance!
• Wet T-Shirt Contest: It doesn't work so well with squid ink.
• We Win Because You Didn't: Jane's bet against Morgan was based on whether Morgan would win or lose, then Jane challenged her to a 4-player game, even if Morgan beats Jane, she'd still have to beat Alek and Marie to win. The game Jane challenged her to is DEFCON, where it'd be easy for Jane to suicide herself to kill Morgan and make her lose.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Toru Hagakure has the worst superpower set in all of My Hero Academia. First, being an Invisible Streaker means she can't wear any protective clothing, such as winter clothes, without negating her invisibility. Second, she lacks any offensive secondary powers, so she's no better than an average teenage girl at physical combat. And finally, she's bad at fanservice.
• Woman Scorned:
  • BLU Sniper discovers that RED Demo-tan doesn't take rejection well.
  • Hell hath no fury as an AI scorned. Master Chief really should have cleared his browser history.
  • More like Anthropomorphic Personification scorned, but...
• World's Smallest Violin: Requiem.
• Worth It:
  • Jane is getting into the habit of taunting Jo, and learns nothing from the punishment, usually claiming this.
  • Jo is mad that Facebook bought Oculus as he was interested in the Oculus Rift, but doesn't like Facebook and is worried what they'll do to the project. Jane taunts him about it, and says it was worth it despite Jo's murderous response.
  • After Jo and Alek proclaim Nintendo the victor at E3, Jane points out that Jo still doesn't have a Wii U; even getting locked in an iron maiden doesn't stop her taunting.
  • Jane challenges Jo to a game of Skull Girls, insisting she's not very good at the game; and Jo cooks her alive when she beats the pants off him.
• Wretched Hive: Sarasa Land.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • A reader e-mailed Jo asking for a comic that didn't treat the Sniper like a Butt-Monkey; so he throws a party with hot babes for... another Sniper.
  • Engie appears to try to make peace with Maggie by folding her a paper hat. An appreciative Maggie is about to take it from her... when Engie suddenly snatches it back and rips it in half
• You Don't Look Like You: Angie believes that Dota2 has gone too far with the cosmetics, but she mistakenly thought Hoodwink was a skin for Windranger. In her defence, she points to Invoker's Acolyte of the Lost Arts skin, which turns him from an adult to a kid.

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