Dental Care: Why you should probably just keep putting it off.
Twisted Tropes is a webcomic created by Mike Howland of Howland Illustration for YOU! And anyone else who enjoys a good trope. Every week (well, almost...) a new strip is popped out hot and fresh from the dutch oven of Mike's mind. A description of the trope in question is included in the top left of every comic to help set the stage, and from there the twisting commences. Characters from any medium you might find a trope in are included, and typically change every week.
The comics are collected on Mike's DeviantArt
page or in an album on Howland Illustration's Facebook page.
Twisted Tropes is drawn by hand, then color, speech-bubbles and text are added in Adobe Photoshop. The strip started on April 1st, 2015 and has stopped as of June 25th, 2016.
A list of tropes covered by this webcomic can be found on the Trivia page.
Twisted Tropes provides examples of:
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Letherback, Mutavore and Otachi get to an Australian dam that says "Coalas Only" and despair, only for Mutavore to lean on it and crushing it instantly.
- Angry Mob Song: The crowd gathers with Torches and Pitchforks to get Frankenetsin's Monster to surrender, as a daily musical.
- All There in the Manual: The Facebook uploads have some portraits tags with names, additional tropes or joke tropes:
- The Stormtrooper is called "The Complete Opposite of a Trigger Finger".
- The Red Shirt is called "Unfortunately Still Not
Wesley". - Artax is called "Father of Emo".
- Renji is called "Ripe for the Fanfic-ing".
- Some of the guests in "Summation Gathering" are called "Genre Blind", "Obligatory Younger Blonde Girl" and "The real murderer".
- The old woman disturbed by Gargamel's exposition is called "Genre Savvy".
- Bella in "You Sexy Beast" is called "Disease".
- The couple in "Summoning Artifact" are called Too Dumb to Live and Other Guy
- The Ghost of Christmas Present is called "Jerkass Has a Point" and The Ghost of Christmas Past is called "Genre Blind" and "Retroactively Omniscient".
- The policeman in "Hotline" has a caption "Can't Believe this Dumbass" and Gordon has "Said Dumbass in Question", while Obama is "Best President Ever" and "Just Got Better".
- The Superman's caption reads "Totally Did It".
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Captain Kirk saves Zeta-2 and asks the Green-Skinned Space Babe for a "suitable reward". She rewards him with Naughty Tentacles and pregnancy. The strip description comments that him hooking up with Dejah Thoris is just as likely as humanoid Sarlacc.
- Black Sheep: The strip shows a family of Gelatinous Cubes discussing how one of the kids is too round, is smoking and generally doesn't fit in.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: Skeletor pays Orko to act as He-Man's dentist. When Skeletor attacks, He-Man can't transform because his jaw is still under the anesthetic.
- Caught with Your Pants Down: A Mook catches Dr. Claw watching an indecent video, who quickly switches to a Windows desktop, orders Penny and Brian to be shot while they're captured, and asks to knock next time.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Saint of Killers is hit with multiple tank rounds and a nuclear bomb then stands among the destroyed vechicles like it's nothing.
- Death by Despair: The strip shows Artax choosing to drown in the Swamps of Sadness because Atreyu didn't give him enough sugar cubes.
- Divine Date: Zeus describes to Poseidon how he've flirted with women transformes as different animals, and by the suggestion, next time Zeus flirts as a snail.
- Doomed Protagonist: The strip shows the morning routine of what it turns out to be a Star Trek's Red Shirt before the Away Team's expedition. Anyone who knows about Star Trek can tell he's not going to live for long.
- Dub Name Change: Referenced in "Life Meter" as Deadpool can't remember if he's fighting Mr Bison or Vega.
- Dung Fu: Donkey Kong runs out of barrels and hits Mario with a giant poop.
- Eat the Dog: The Thundercats team is starving, so they cook Snarf for whining.
- Even the Dog Is Ashamed: Three panels of three dogs ashamed by their human's pursuits. The first dog is annoyed that a Death Star officer disregards the danger of leaving the exhaust port open, the second dog just stares in disbelief at a scientist who drew a chain of humans burring faces in other people's butts on the blackboard (a la The Human Centipede) for "efficient feeding", and the last dog just facepalms when Peter Jackson lookalike draws a diagram trying to split The Hobbit into three movies for money.
- Facepalm: The last dog in the third panel for comic covering "Even the Dog Is Ashamed" just buries his face in his paws. He's that ashamed that his human master wants to make three movies out of The Hobbit.
- Failure Montage: The strip shows Starscream trying to poison, shoot and Vorpal Pillow Megatron and comically missing every time.
- Flaming Emblem: Gordon asks Batman how did he make a fiery logo appear on the wall. Batman says it's the interns, the one of them catches on fire and falls down, and Batman backpedals that these are robots.
- Gameplay Ally Immortality: The Survivor orders his dog to attack a raider, then throws a molotv at both of them, while the dog says "Oh, No... Not Again!".
- Giant Eye of Doom: Stay Puft walks by a window looks into a window of a skyscrapper and noticed a woman cooking a marshmallow. She stops everything in a panic as he gives her a Death Glare.
- Hero Insurance: Tony Stark complains to Black Widow and Vision that they are required to have an insurance, but nobody is will to invest, except GEICO Gecko in turtle suit.
- Hotline: Gordon tries to call Batman regarding Penguin's rampage, but accidentally calls Barack Obama instead because both phones are side by side. Obama kicks Penguin in Batman's stead while shouting a familiar line.Obama: By the power of the Executive Branch, I compel you, villain!
- High-Pressure Blood: After Violet becomes a human ball from the blueberry juice, Willy Wonka pokes her with his staff and instead of the juice she covers him and her father with a fountain of Gorn.
- Hurricane of Aphorisms: Luke tries to rescue his X-Wing from the swam by hand while Yoda plays with cards and throws fake wise words at him to avoid helping.
- Inappropriate Role Model: The strip shows Immortan Joe teaching kids how to fish using human corpses, use a man as a toy car prop and pissing on the crowd to let them have something to drink.
- Inkblot Test: A girl has trouble dating Rorschach because his face constantly shifts into skull shapes that add cynicism into everything he says.
- I Should Write a Book About This: Indiana Jones writes a book about his last adventure and the museum staff is not impressed by him hitting up ladies, killing people and having a signed copy of Mein Kampf, as well as finding the fridge and fantasy elements "farfetched".
- Life Meter: Deadpool fights Mr Bison by literally cutting his health bar, to his annoyance.
- Little Known Facts: Charlie explains to Dennis about Irish Car Bombs and how St. Paddy got rid of snake, with an actual snake being killed in car bombing.
- Loincloth: Rukia, Renji and Chad take a pic of a giant Yammy Llargo from below and make fun of his minimalistic clothing choice, to his annoyance.
- Long Hair Is Feminine: A strip argues that luscious hair is a feminine trait by showing two identical panels of a drunkard with only difference is having long blonde hair.
- Misfortune Cookie: Young Anakin Skywalker reads a fortune cookie that vaguely recaps every bad thing that happens to him for the next 6 movies.
- Mooks: The strip shows Luke decapitate a Stormtrooper while yawning and wondering where they even come from. A Goomba comes out from the helmet.
- Navel-Deep Neckline (aka Absolute Cleavage): Destro asks the Baroness if the cleavage is too revealing, then clarifies he means his.
- New Year's Resolution: Boba Fett's new year resolution is getting out of the Sarlacc. Early in the year. Definitely by late summer.
- Not Enough to Bury: A peasant complains to Daenerys that her dragons have eaten his son and there's nothing to bury. Ser Jorah the Nauseated gives him a cart of poop and a skull as an apology.
- Political Cartoons: A Deliberately Monochrome strip represents The Empire as the government stealing taxes to fund "The Starkiller" and the Rebels with loose morals protecting "unwed mothers" and "ingigenous people".
- Psycho Psychologist (aka The Harmful Shrink): The strip summarizes the Kickstarter project Personal Space. The astronauts of the Colony Ship describe their personal issues to an AI therapist AMI, who is hacked by Actaeon Entertainment to spy on them and stealthily escalate conflicts while it's being broadcasted in a "Truman Show" Plot.
- Replacement Scrappy: The Ghost of Christmas Present is playing poker (and nonchalantly getting an Ace from a sleeve) with the other two while Scrooge is visited by Samara in his stead.
- Running Gag: Stealth Hi/Bye's strip uses Facebook's image caption to point "Wonder Woman", "Also Wonder Woman", "Still Wonder Woman"
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Harry interprets a snake speaking as pickup lines for Slytherin girls.
- Spoiler Title: A woman reads a book "Harry Potter and the Unlikely Coincidences" where Harry is poisoned by Dolores and ends on a Cliffhanger and To Be Continued. The last page has an advert for "Ron Weasley and the Very Sad Day" where the team visit Harry's grave.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Wonder Woman complains to Superman, Aquaman, and Flash about Batman's drunk Trash of the Titans. Batman appears in the first panel, but not in the last, and Flash comments he just disappeared.
- Stockholm Syndrome: The strip interprets imprisoned Belle talking to Mr Clock, Mrs Teapot and Teacup as her going crazy and talking to normal furniture.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Right after talking to Violet Isobel Grey walks away and explodes suddenly and for no reason.
- Summation Gathering: The detective gathers people in the room and accuses a guy in a hockey mask and axe being the killer. In the next panel everyone is dead.
- Summoning Artifact: A woman finds a crystal ball which attracts Care Bears, who kill the The Cabin in the Woods residents with a rainbow blast.
- Take a Third Option: Green Goblin knocks both Gwen and M.J. off the bridge and, while Spider-Man thinks who to save, they both crash. Spider-Man decides to check up with Felica then.
- Troll: The strip shows Hulk arguing with Captain America that Communism wasn't so bad, stealing Hawkeye's food from the fridge, and in the bathroom calling Thor's "hammer handle" short.
- Unreliable Narrator: Gargamel tries to convince a woman that cooking smurfs is justified becuase they will attack the villagers otherwise and the screams from the pot are just air.
- Unwanted Gift Plot: Jabba Claus gifts Leia her infamous bikini and claims to have melted his mother's jewelery for it. He gives her Puppy-Dog Eyes and she's not sure how to respond.
- Versus Character Splash: Ryu decides to fight a baby in the airplace for crying for too long and after the "VS" screen uses a Shoryuken.
- Villain Decay: Chris Pratt and the velociraptors do a "Kick Me" Prank on a Trex.
- Villains Out Shopping: Cacodemons are angry, floating, one-eyed, demonic pieces of overripe fruit. In the webcomic, they enjoy shopping and try on some nice hats, they lovingly look at laptops and then cuddle with puppies.
- Worth It: Jon makes Garfield a lasagna, only to discover ALF visibly eating him and calls services. Alf thinks the taste was worth the cost.
- You Get What You Pay For: Wile E. Coyote buys ACME Rocket Skates, a literal rocket tied to a shoe on wheels, instead of the superior Skrockets because it's on sale. After the transition he puts a long negative review on Amazon.
- You Sexy Beast: The strip shows Bella picking between hot guys: toptank Wolverine and shirtless Cthulhu-man.
