Comics for the faint of heart.
"Someday we'll look back on this moment — presumably through some interdimensional rift or portal — and have a good ol' laugh about it."
—Doomed Astronaut, "Hindsight is 20/20: A Space Odyssey"
The World is Flat is a webcomic by Connor Murphy (also known here as Connor Davis Murphy). There are no continuing plotlines or characters, and the comics are typically posted with 2-4 panels each. Gags include wordplay, trope subversions and similar absurdities. It originally began as a daily comic strip for The Daily Texan newspaper in 2013 (continuing until 2016). Since then, it has gained a modest following via Tumblr and Instagram.
The World is Flat contains examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: In the "One Hot Mission" comic, a group of secret agents try to use this trope, which the Genre Savvy handyman realizes and rats them out after the building heats up.
- Bedsheet Ladder: In "Moonlighting as a Dinosaur" it's played for laughs as part of the ladder is a costume, and the girl is sneaking out to the costume party.
- Chained to a Railway: Parodied in "Mellow Drama". The stock goon has tied a woman down and cackles that she'll never see her family again... before it's revealed that it's a play toy train track, and the train that would run her down is being driven by her kid (who obviously stops).
- Chest Burster: Used seriously and kind of gruesomely in "Dating an Astronaut" — the astronaut date, initially joking that he's "stuffed" from the meal, turns out to have one of these when asked how the mission went. We're going to say probably not too well.
- Clones Are People, Too: Parodied in "Patent of Paternity" — the clone being a fleshy mess from the creator's butt. He's probably a nice kid and plays videogames, though is bullied at school and doesn't look much like a person.
- Critical Failure: One of the tabletop RPG players in "Dungeons and Dating" wants to roll to annihilate the orc that killed his parents... and ends up with a 0, hitting on the orc instead and failing.
- Cutting Corners: In "Drowning in Debt" an aquarium is so low on funds that their floor design financing seems to be the home of the corners getting cut... putting the sharks in with the jellyfish... and the offices in with them both.
- Dinner Theatre: The set up for the murder mystery comic◊ is one, being set at Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre.
- Ejection Seat: Played for laughs in one comic, in which the end panel shows the ship going down is a submarine, and the ejection seat is still just a seat, not a pod.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Shown in a 2016 panel reminiscent of 2018 Oscar-winner The Shape of Water — in "L'affaire Aquatique" a man romances a fish with some lovely French, which the subtitles reveal are less than complimentary.
- Evil Chef: In "Culinary Assassin", the chef adds spices that will kill their enemies, and then add flavor, because it would be a crime not to.
- Fish-Eye Lens: The visitor in "Peephole People" is being seen through a door's peephole and he looks pretty good. Open the door, that peephole was clearly playing with the fish eye effect because of his actual facial distortions.
- Flat World: The title, obviously. Shown in the logo, too, which is a cartoon of what looks to be juvenile crafting diorama of a mountain and lake... corregated card and dripping paint, so very literally flat. Likely a Shout-Out to the two-dimensional artistic medium of comics.
- Fly in the Soup: The "Soup of Tomorrow" has a man complain about something in his soup... a black hole that sucks him in right as he threatens never going back to the restaurant. Unless it's at the end of the Universe, it's unlikely.
- Going Down with the Ship: A pirate ship, getting attacked by another pirate ship, has the crewman in the Birds' Nest seemingly unwillingly go down with the ship as it progressively sinks in the expressive visual comic here.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: The Earth itself, in "Ocean of Emotion", is revealed to be the intelligent life wondering if it's alone, but literally, in the Universe and has resorted to asking itself this.
- Hell Hound: Sniffles, the titular "Demon Dog", who floats, radiates neon green, and has glowing red eyes. Though it seems to be friendly enough and happily goes back into the high security prison.
- I Can See My House from Here: A pair climb a mountain in "Home Sweet Peak" and comment on being able to see their house... which is on top of the mountain, they then lament how bad their commute is.
- Just Friends: Played with in an old knight comic — one gets "challenged to a duel" and has to tell the other that he already has "a rival", the other assuring him that he doesn't want to actually be his rival, they can instead duel just as friends.
- Libation for the Dead: In "You Can Party When You're Dead" it takes the saying and the trope to their logical extremes, Philip is a ghost who is joining in on the party after the trope is seemingly played straight in the first panel.
- The Name Is Bond, James Bond: Hilariously shown in "James Bond: Bungling Spy"; James Bond is apparently so nervous that he accidentally forgets his first name, then clarifies, giving the famous line.
- Parental Abandonment: A poor child in one comic has to be told that their dad went out for cigarettes and never came back, leading to the child demanding that they want their cigarettes, and suggesting that the dad maybe didn't just disappear. The mom remarks on how bad they are at parenting.
- Punny Name: An optometry clinic named "The Eyes Have It" in this comic.
- Totem Pole Trench: A pair of kids go shopping dressed in a trench coat and when the sales rep says the man has lost weight, one of the kids inside cries that they've lost a friend.
- Trash Landing: "Don't Do the Crime If You Can't Do the Grime" depicts it with an emphasis on wordplay: "Rats, the cops!" before jumping a fence and landing in garbage, "Cops, the rats!" afterwards.
