Girl Genius/Tropes K-O

Tropes A-E | Tropes F-J | Tropes K-O | Tropes P-T | Tropes U-Z

Girl Genius provides examples of the following tropes:

K

 * Kill It with Fire
 * Sleipnir's pipes... guess you can't start a fire without a Spark.
 * Wreathed in Flames: The Torchmen
 * Kneecapping: Higgs uses this move against Zola. Unfortunately for him, she is too high on combat drugs to fall down.
 * Knight Templar: Othar. He wants to kill all sparks, because he thinks they are "the cause of everything wrong in the world today.

L
"Civilian man: And what about the one giving orders? Civilian woman: (holding a rolling pin) Oh, him we treat with respect."
 * Lampshade Hanging: Many.
 * Using a book titled Using Found Objects as Weapons as a bludgeon is probably the best example.
 * Large Ham
 * All sparks chew scenery when in The Madness Place. Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer is like that all the time.
 * Jägers get in on the hamminess when there's no Spark around. And when a Spark is going nuts and there's an excited Jäger in the room, the ensuing Ham-to-Ham Combat can knock down walls.
 * Laser-Guided Karma: An officer in one of the many armies that invade Mechanicsburg tells his soldiers not to keep their eyes of the captured civilians, to treat them with respect, and to execute them all. Right before the Doom bell knocks all the soldiers out.

"DuPree: I heard there was a hat! Gil: You're delusional."
 * Leave Behind a Pistol: Gil gives Moloch von Zinzer a poison pill upon his departure to Castle Heterodyne, underestimating the degree of von Zinzer's Action Survivor skills and Genre Savvy.
 * Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone: With a somewhat unexpected pair of lovebirds in this strip.
 * Leitmotif / Theme Music Power-Up: Agatha discovers that if she hums a certain series of notes, she can improve her focus while working on various projects. This tune pops up throughout the series, in various forms. Unknown if anyone has actually tabulated and played her song in real life, though.
 * Leonine Contract
 * Let's Get Dangerous: The Unstoppable Airman Higgs is, in fact, unstoppable.
 * Let Them Die Happy: These plants are trying to do this.
 * Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Gilgamesh orders that his Nice Hat should be hidden in a safe place -- and never spoken about again.

That is, the first print collection, "Agatha Heterodyne & The Beetleburg Clank", and the original printed comics, are presented as an unauthorized but accurate record published by TPU, Phil Foglio having witnessed Agatha's "Battle Circus" himself; later, he is indeed in town when the Battle Circus episode occurs. However, Phil Foglio is also shown telling the tale as fiction in the street right on page one. (An alternative tryout sketch released online seems to have Agatha herself telling the story to her grandchildren.) Maybe that's after he was accidentally sent back in time or something. But also, in the "radio play" episodes of the webcomic, Studio Foglio are repeatedly shown escaping as they perform the last seconds of the episode just as the real and angry Agatha Heterodyne and her friends are about to catch them and stop the show.
 * Lingerie Scene: The creators admit the work contains "lots of running around in Victorian underwear". Most of the time, Agatha is the offender.
 * Literary Agent Hypothesis: The entire comic is postulated as a course on the life of Agatha Heterodyne, as taught by the Professors Foglio at Transylvania Polygnostic University ("Know enough to be afraid.") They stick mostly to the truth -- though this very admittance means that it's possible that, in the "real" universe where this story takes place, not every woman has large breasts.
 * Little No
 * Type 1 from Wooster to Bangladesh.
 * A mix of type 1 and 3 from.
 * Little No meets This Is Gonna Suck meets Oh Crap when Castle Heterodyne decides to put out a fire.
 * Living Battery: Agatha drinks water from the Dyne and is super-charged as a temporary power source.
 * Living Crashpad: Jägers are polite about this.
 * Living Labyrinth: Castle Heterodyne
 * Living Legend: Quite a few.
 * Othar Trygvassen, Gentleman Adventurer, very well known and generally viewed as a hero. Except by the main protagonists.
 * Klaus Wulfenbach is fine with having a reputation as a terribly villainous evil emperor if it keeps the peace.
 * The Heterodyne Boys had a wonderfully heroic reputation, beloved in no small degree because their family very much did not.
 * Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek are all rapidly building themselves reputation, what with being stuck in the middle of the most epic story since the Heterodyne Boys defeated the Other.
 * Living Motion Detector: The clank in this comic.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: There really are a lot of regular characters in this comic, to the point where it can get difficult to keep track of everyone.
 * Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Maxim, the beautiful male Jägermonster. See the Cinderella breather episode, where Maxim is supposed to be one of the "ugly" stepsisters, but it doesn't quite turn out as planned. Also counts as a Badass Long Hair.
 * Look Behind You!: Von Zinzer: "Uh... hey, check it out." -- though in this case not only does the target look, but there's actually something to see.
 * Loophole Abuse: Not a weapon. That's a chair!
 * Losing Your Head: Also here, with  in the body of a mechanical Muse. Also an example of Arc Words.
 * Love Bubbles: Bubbles and roses.
 * Love Triangle
 * Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek.
 * Possible Minion Love Triangle in Moloch, Violetta, and Snaug. Although, Violetta denies romantic interest in Moloch, and he's smitten by Sanaa Wilhelm. Suuuure she isn't interested... which turns the one centered on Moloch into a low-grade Love Dodecahedron.
 * Loyal Phlebotinum: Practically everything that the Heterodynes made.

M
""I told the baron, give me a thousand orphans, a hedge maze and enough cheese and I can--""
 * Mad Artist: The tailor clank in the "Revenge of the Weasel Queen" fillers.
 * Made of Iron
 * Airman Third Class Axel Higgs
 * Othar Tryggvassen
 * Old Man Death took multiple Jägerpunches to the face and was still able to outfight the Jäger who provided them.
 * Mad Scientist: "Sparks", whose erratic genius has literally reshaped the world. Practically half the cast are mad scientists of one sort or another, though the ones that come closest to the classic villain type are probably Prince Wilhelm Aaronev and the late Lucrezia Mongfish.
 * There's even a mad social scientist, who complains that the mad "hard" scientists get all of the funding and attention.

"Zola: Avoid any floorstone marked in white. It is a trap that will kill you. Do not stand under any part of the ceiling marked in white. It is a trap that will kill you. Duck under any opening taller than one meter. It is a trap that will kill you. Do not touch any metal surface. It is a trap that will kill you."
 * Agatha awakening to her mad science is what starts and drives the entire story forward, and raises the question ...or will her newfound mad science DESTROY THEM ALL!
 * Mad Scientist Laboratory: Several, most notably those belonging to Baron Wulfenbach and Prince Aaronev. And all of the ones in Castle Heterodyne.
 * Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter
 * Lucrezia Mongfish is officially referred to as "The Villain's Beautiful Daughter" in the stories told about Agatha's parents. Agatha herself is arguably one, and she's already run into at least two Mad Scientist's Handsome Sons.
 * Dr. Mongfish had at least two other daughters besides Lucrezia; Serpentina (Theo's mother), and Demonica.
 * Othar Tryggvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!) actually asks Agatha if she's one of these.
 * And most offspring of mad scientists are mad scientists themselves.
 * Magitek: "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"
 * Magnetic Hero: Any and all Sparks; their manic vision pulls normal people into their service.
 * Make My Index Live: This mythos is a major part of the premise.
 * Malevolent Architecture: Castle Heterodyne. It was designed by an Ax Crazy Spark, and it shows.

"Dr. Sun: He does his teachers proud."
 * Malicious Slander
 * The Man They Couldn't Hang: Well, The Jägers They Couldn't Hang, but otherwise Da Boyz. Definitely Da Boyz.
 * Marriage to a God: The original Heterodyne was supposedly married to a local battle goddess.
 * Master Apprentice Chain: Gilgamesh is taught by Klaus himself (among the others), and we know some of people who taught the baron himself.

"Gil: Let me take a look at that. Tarvek: ... Already doing it. Gil: Hey! I am a doctor, you know. Tarvek: pft. And who isn't?"
 * Martellus von Blitzengaard, aka Tweedle, was the "number one apprentice" of then-troublesome Dimitri Vapnoople. Which is where his Sparkhounds and werewolves came from; Swartzwalders (bear constructs) are explicitly Vapnoople's creation, serving Martellus per an agreement.
 * Maximum Fun Chamber: Castle Heterodyne contains several; in fact, most of the castle counts.
 * McNinja: The Smoke Knights. Dear God, the Smoke Knights.
 * The invisible woman sitting in the third chair is considered adequate by Smoke Knight standards.
 * The two mooks in this page are "Wulfenbach Stealth Fighters", some of the Baron's most elite assassins. They've just effortlessly slaughtered their way through an entire airship of badasses who fight giant monsters in CQB with daggers and pistols. And they're not fit to shine a Smoke Knight's knives. Pay particular attention to the ninja vanish done by leaping directly into a fire.
 * At this point it's just getting silly. Honestly, where did she even have that life-sized cardboard decoy stowed, in her pocket?
 * Meaningful Name
 * Word of God has it that Theopholous DuMedd was originally "doomed" to be killed off in volume 3, but the Foglios so enjoyed him that he stuck around.
 * Most likely Sleipnir O'Hara wasn't supposed to be kept around either. Agatha needed a roommate to introduce her to the world of the Baron's flying castle, so the Foglios gave her someone to "sleep near".
 * The town of Mechanicsburg is integrated with the mechanical Castle Heterodyne.
 * Bangladesh DuPree. Bang duPrey. Or Du-praved.
 * Heterodyne: The principle of periodic functions upon which theremins and radio modulation rely. Possibly related to the Theme Music Power-Up.
 * Portentius Reichenbach's Portentous Operatic Masterpiece: The Storm King.
 * Mechanical Evolution: Inverted; Agatha tends to compulsively construct little Clanks termed "dingbots". These dingbots can then go on to construct more dingbots, but dingbots are only so bright, so each successive generation gets less and less advanced, and less bright, and by the third or fourth generation the dingbots produced are nonfunctional.
 * The Medic
 * Mamma Gkika
 * Although we haven't seen this happen yet, the Heterodynes to the Jägers.
 * Dr. Sun is a doctor. As well as a Spark.
 * We also have this exchange:


 * Melee a Trois: Tarvek vs. Zola vs. Lucrezia!Agatha.
 * Melodramatic: EVERY. SINGLE. SPARK. Can get this way. The only Spark we've not seen like this -- yet -- is Klaus.
 * Memento MacGuffin: Agatha's locket.
 * Mental Time Travel: Othar, in his Twitter.
 * Mentor Occupational Hazard: Dr. Tarsus Beetle, who kept Agatha at the university because he knew the truth about her, dies at the first story arc.
 * Mexican Standoff: Subverted between Klaus and Dr. Beetle here.
 * Midair Repair
 * Gilgamesh and Agatha while testing Gil's flying, or rather falling, machine. Of course because they're sparks, it starts to become midair redesigning the device before Zoing points out to Agatha that they are still falling.
 * Tarvek is forced to do the same thing... while tied up to a Spark fighting with a mad Jäger on board. He finally makes the machine fly inches from the ground.
 * Milky White Eyes: Geisterdamen and possibly other geistercreatures.
 * Mini-Mecha: Agatha's Dingbots, particularly Dingbot Prime.
 * Minion Maracas: Agatha demonstrates the proper technique.
 * Minion Shipping
 * There's been strong fan support for Violetta×von Zinzer, minions in denial and retainer/NOT-minion of Tarvek and Agatha, respectively. Shipping a snarky McNinja who hates her job with a world-weary ex-soldier just works.
 * Lately, canon seems to agree. But then, he jumped to fraulein Snaug (repeating Agatha×Gilgamesh×Zola case).
 * Oh boy, now he's on Sanaa, with Fraulein Snaug suggesting Murder Is the Best Solution.
 * Also, Zeetha and Higgs. Totally canon.
 * When Sparks do it, others begin to inconspicuously look for blast doors.
 * Another one that makes a lot of sense: DuPree and Vole.
 * Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Castle Heterodyne acts as this to the prisoners repairing it, due to its fractured personality.
 * "Mission Impossible" Cable Drop: Gil does this here.
 * Mistaken for Gay: In this strip, unless it's just good-natured teasing between siblings. Or not mistaken, since his objection to Sanaa's statement isn't Gil's gender, it's that he's "a foul villain". Bi the Way at the most, though, since he was married to a Geisterdame for a while in the Twitter.
 * Mobile Maze: Castle Heterodyne. "We're doomed! The door we came through -- it never led HERE before!"
 * Modesty Bedsheet
 * Gil, while lying on the bed injured and naked.
 * Von Pinn, in a similar situation.
 * Moment Killer
 * Merlot, in the page that is aptly titled Smoochus Interruptus.
 * The Jägers are of the opinion that Gil and Agatha's budding relationship will be the motivation they need to remove the copy of the Other's mind from Agatha -- because it will mean that they can't make out without Agatha's mother watching.
 * Monochromatic Eyes: The geisterdamen have all-white eyes.
 * Monster Clown: Whatever this thing originally was made for, among other things, probably.
 * Mood Whiplash
 * The calming pie is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. (Warning: spoilery. And the pies may contain nutmeg.)
 * Say-...
 * Mook Horror Show: The flashback of Zeetha wiping out a whole pirate ship sure looks like this in a couple panels.
 * Moral Myopia: A lot of people other than Klaus and the heroes fall into this. Such as Merlot, who blames Agatha for the fact that he killed a few dozen people and got punished for it.
 * More Hero Than Thou: Tarvek and Gil have a brief exchange about who gets to be this.
 * More Than Meets the Eye: A few different characters.
 * Agatha kicks the story off with this.
 * Tarvek also qualifies.
 * seems to be the new, most prominent example.
 * Also, Da Boyz and use Obfuscating Stupidity.
 * Gil (especially in his Paris days), Agatha's "parents", Wooster, Von Pinn, Dr. Sun, Dolokov, the Circus, Sanaa... it's probably easier to list which characters AREN'T more than they appear.
 * More Than Mind Control: Sparks can be almost irresistibly charismatic when they put their minds to it.
 * Motivational Kiss: Gil gets one here (continued to the next page).
 * Motor Mouth
 * Movit #11 causes this, increasing with dosage.
 * Coffee does this to Agatha. Increasing dosage was deftly averted.
 * Prince Aaronev's sedative must have contained a truth serum; Agatha blabs for almost three full pages of unrestrained and meandering truth before she passes out. So much for "Lady Olga".
 * Mr. Fanservice: Gil, Tarvek, Klaus, and more.
 * Mugging the Monster: In Mechanisburg, one surviving hostile Spark seems to think that Axel Higgs and Zeetha, daughter of Chump will make good innocent hostages. Keep in mind that this is the guy who absolutely destroyed a Moveit #11-enhanced Zola earlier, while Zeetha wiped out a pirate fleet and fortress by herself.
 * Mummies At the Dinner Table: Anevka, to a degree.
 * Mushroom Samba: The Circus pumps out a hallucinogenic gas during their escape from Sturmhaven, shout "The Heterodynes are back!" and we get this little gem. This evidently made the rumours of this incident and anything linked to it even more vivid and contradictory.
 * Must Have Caffeine: Vanamonde von Mekkhan spends all his time in a coffee shop in Mechanicsburg, and certainly does enjoy his coffee. He has even written a textbook on coffee preparation (under a pseudonym): Bean There, Done That.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: Basically the Fatal Flaw of every Spark in the world. Entering "The Madness Place" grants them incredibly powerful focus, but it makes them entirely oblivious to the potentially disastrous results of their creations.
 * Specifically, Aaronev Sturmvoraus and his dying daughter, though certainly said by others in this world.
 * My Instincts Are Showing: Krosp I, Emperor of All Cats -- basically, a cat with human-level intelligence, speech, thumbs, and the ability to walk erect... he'd like to claim that his "cat-instincts" have no hold over him, but Agatha rather enjoys proving otherwise using a piece of string.
 * Myth Arc: One of the best webcomic examples.
 * The foreshadowing starts with the fourth strip of the first chapter, with hints about the phenomenon scattered over many, many volumes -- and a full explanation has still not been given.
 * Another one is Ancient God-Queens and Portal Network of "Queen's Mirrors".
 * At least one adventure of Heterodyne Boys involved a friendly "High Priestess". About two centuries ago Andronicus "the Storm King" Valois and some of still-living Jägers met a High Priestess of Nyx. Albia of England mentioned Nyx as a "Sister Queen" (most likely older) killed almost five millennia ago. The official costume of Lady Astarte, Albia's "High Caretaker of the Sacred Well" very obviously resembles that of a "High Priestess" depicted in Heterodyne stories.
 * The first Heterodyne found a small spring dedicated to a "warrior goddess". Dyne water can be used to temporarily induce the same state in which Albia implied to remain constantly, and to make Jägerdraught that makes people ageless among the other things (if they survive). Mechanicsburg had a "Queen's Mirror" device they all used...
 * According to the legend, Skifander was colonized via Queen's Mirror that was already there. Albia also personally knew Luheia, Zeetha's ancestress (who sacrificed herself to take out a presumably equal enemy). Then there are Geisterdamen who know of Skifander, wear trinket somewhat resembling that of Skifandrian amazons and wanted their goddess back. And some strange people in England who got some secret grudge against Skifander.
 * Oh, and Albia searches for the other Queens (she found one alive, plus descendant of another). And there's Embi, a guy who looks too well for his age of over 130, which he claims is a result of his sacred vow "to see the world before he died".
 * The two greater arcs are now linked, once Albia positively identified (she does "see" minds) the killer of Nyx and others as someone who is supposed to be much younger than that, and as such presumed to be a time traveller.

N
"Zola: Bringing a knife to a gun fight doesn't seem very smart, now does it? Agatha: Well, I suppose it isn't that much worse than bringing a gun to a clank fight."
 * Nakama: Team Agatha is a classic example, given that Agatha and her immediate retinue are basically the only family any of them really has. Even most of the ones who actually still have living blood relatives consider Agatha and the rest to be their true family.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Practically half the cast.
 * Klaus and Gilgamesh Wulfenbach;
 * Lucrezia and her sisters Serpentina and Demonica;
 * Master Payne;
 * Von Pinn;
 * Possibly subverted with Moloch.
 * Also basically all of the Heterodynes (prior to Bill and Barry) have these.
 * If these things are any indication, all strong Spark families tend to be this way.
 * Before the time skip, the Queen of England was only mentioned in hushed tones, even though the only British member of the cast was Wooster. (It was a WMG that she exercises mind control over the entirety of the English Isles; this was Jossed after the time skip.)
 * Naughty Tentacles
 * "Impertinent mechanical squid!"
 * Aaaaaand now there's this scene. Do note how Agatha seems positively delighted in the panel.
 * Necessarily Evil: Any Spark who wants to be a good guy sometimes has to turn into a raging madboy just to keep the million separate interests from coming apart. Klaus, Gilgamesh, and Agatha have all found this out.
 * Neck Lift
 * Merlot finds out this way that Baron Wulfenbach despises traitors.
 * Von Pinn introduces herself to Agatha by giving her a personal demonstration of this trope.
 * Mamma Gkika also explains through this method (with "slammed-into-a-wall" bonus) to why it's a bad idea to wake her up too early in the morning.
 * Vole reminds that you should never, ever take a Jäger lightly, by catching the two of them in a strangling neck lift -- one in each arm.
 * Necromantic
 * Never Found the Body
 * A plot point has significant individuals from the past killed by a machine made from "farm machinery and pork products", which turns them into a string of sausages. Hard to confirm that.
 * Not to mention Othar Trygvassen, Gentleman Adventurer; he's been tossed out of two airships on-screen, within the same chapter. Gil doesn't even consider the possibility that he died, having seen him come back from the same or worse so many times.
 * Gil is also Genre Savvy enough to find it suspicious  body is never found.
 * Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight:

"Othar: Ha! It'll take more than being tied to a lit keg of explosives and tossed into a pit of acid filled with mutant, acid-resistant flying pirahnas armed with flame-throwers and battle axes while venomous, mechanical, missile-launching Morris dancers armed with liquid nitrogen harpoon guns are overhead; riding giant, rabid killer bees with side-mounted death rays to kill Othar Tryggvassen!
 * And later, "It's harder to break things with a knife."
 * Nice Hat: Only a man whose bowler has granted fantasy adventurers super-powers could create a culture like the Jägers, whose attitude to this trope is close to a religion. Case in point. A worthy hat must be claimed in battle against a mighty foe who happens to have the same size head as you. Demonstration with Maxim's hat, replaced. And it is a dem nice hat (better than the former, at least).
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero
 * Agatha activates her own "Lion" device to prevent the Castle A.I. from stopping her from intentionally dying. This permanently destroys the A.I. and lots of other systems. All over the city. Subverted because she found a part of the Castle A.I.. After hooking the A.I. back into the castle, it thanks her for the EMP blast since it destroyed the rogue programs, making it easier to control those parts of the castle. She still has to fix everything, though.
 * Lampshaded by Violetta on this page when she discovers that . Although she was being a little unfair, seeing as how the there's no visible symptoms and she was the one carrying the blood-test kit.
 * Dr Sun takes down the Baron's escape klank -- by himself -- and enforces Klaus's bed rest in order to stop him killing himself from the strain. Awesome --
 * Noblewoman's Laugh
 * Zeetha in the second panel.
 * Lucrezia in the first panel.
 * No-Holds-Barred Beatdown
 * Holy crap. Tarvek?!
 * Also, Higgs to Zola.
 * Noodle Implements
 * "Thank goodness you had all those clockwork ducks, Klaus".
 * One wonders what part a tea cozy has to play...
 * Used to hilarious effect in "The Storm King" Opera synopsis. The roller-skating giraffe pretty much speaks for itself.
 * Why does one need a hammer to cure Verictus Panteliax's Chromatic Death? Unfortunately, we never find out, since Tarvek has some other kind of disease (which is much worse, by the way).
 * Noodle Incident
 * Apparently, the Baron has used the Med Clank before. After what happened last time, he promised to put it away.
 * "The Socket Wench of Prague" is all about this. Agatha played the leading lady and even she didn't know what was going on.
 * The novelizations have a lot of these, usually referring to some strange thing that some Spark had built or what said Spark attempted to do with said strange invention.
 * No One Could Survive That: Othar. Being thrown out of an airship and surviving is among the least of his feats. From the radio play:

Ferretina: Whoops! Silly me, I forgot to turn the lightning generators on!

Othar: Er... not a whole lot more, I'll admit."

"Castle Heterodyne: No! Not in the facing!"
 * The Nose Knows: Jägermonsters; Krosp
 * Not a Game: The Castle warns Agatha that claiming to be the Heterodyne is not a game!
 * Not Distracted by the Sexy: Spark mode Agatha is not interested in nudity.
 * Not Helping Your Case: Tarvek denies having any part in the plan to usurp the Wulfenbachs by installing a fake Heterodyne -- his plan was orders of magnitude better!
 * Nothing Is Scarier: "But I see nothing!" "Don't say that like it's a good thing!"
 * Not in the Face: Played with.


 * Not So Different
 * Jägermonsters and Lackya don't get along well. They're both bruisers who don't function well without a person to follow.
 * Tarvek and Gil, just like Agatha told them.
 * Tarvek and Violetta; despite the family power structure having set them up so that he's the brains and she's his (deftly-applied) muscle, it transpires that Tarvek can pull smoke knight moves even on Violetta, and Violetta has a talent for intrigue and projecting how power dynamics could be brought to play out that can outdo Tarvek's own.
 * Martellus and Tarvek. Martellus gets a wistful look -- rather out of keeping with his earlier characterization, but similar to one we've seen on Tarvek's face an introspective time or three -- when he mentions an implication that Euphrosynia Heterodyne actually loved Andronicus Valois, the original Storm King.
 * Not So Harmless:
 * Not That Kind of Doctor: Actually, most Sparks are. The only reason Agatha isn't is because they wouldn't let her take the tests.
 * The Nudifier: The Wacky Weave Destabiliser. (Un)Fortunately Zeetha wears special underwear.
 * Number One Dime: Hats, to the Jägers.

O
"Tarvek: What? No! That was that idiot from the Island of th... (makes a face) She is good."
 * Obfuscating Stupidity: A lot of people.
 * Most especially Zola.

""Who in blazes is that?" "Why, I am OTHAR TRYGGVASSEN, Gentleman Adventurer!" "Uh oh.""
 * Some of the Jägerkin are considerably smarter than they appear.
 * The circus pretends to be simple performers when in truth they're.
 * Astonishingly enough, Tarvek seems to be in this category. Considering that he's an Insufferable Genius with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder who's spent an inordinately long time on the Face side of the Heel Face Revolving Door, it's shocking that it took this long.
 * Agatha began the comic with an item that forced her to Obfuscate Stupidity.
 * Gil appears to have spent most of his life doing this. As a child he hid his Spark, and in Paris he pretended to be a much worse student than he really was. It was only after returning from school that he was finally able to stop doing it and fully be himself.
 * Although we haven't seen the details yet,
 * Wooster apparently tried this, or at least Obfuscating Normal, on Gil, to infiltrate Castle Wulfenbach. Gil was onto him, but played along until he could make more use of Wooster as a
 * Oddly Visible Eyebrows
 * Odd-Shaped Panel
 * Of Corsets Sexy: Usually on Agatha.
 * Offhand Backhand: Used by both Wulfenbachs, Wooster, and Zeetha.
 * Offing the Offspring: What purportedly did to her own son, and
 * Oh Crap
 * "This must be how my father feels -- ALL THE TIME!"
 * Klaus, and
 * In a subverted Big Damn Heroes moment:

"Agatha: Hey, Gil! All of Paris is about to go up in flames, and Zola has her head caught in a bucket! Up and at 'em, Hero Boy! Gil: Hm? A bucket? Again? Okay, I'm comin'. Agatha: (shooting a sideways glance at Zola) Yeeeess. I suspected as much."
 * Amusingly invoked here.
 * And here
 * Everyone is thinking it
 * Oh My Gods: Here, in the second panel.
 * Oh, No, Not Again: When Agatha's trying to snap Gil out of a stupor:

""Two minutes and she hasn't killed anyone!" "A new record!""
 * Old Master: Dr. Sun, quite capable of singlehandedly disassembling any number of clanks -- and who taught Klaus and Gil quite a lot about martial arts.
 * Ominous Floating Castle (Type 3): Castle Wulfenbach certainly qualifies.
 * Ominous Pipe Organ: At one point a flipped-out Agatha directs a small army of clanks (including Transforming Mecha and Luggage) with a high-falutin calliope. Doubles as a visual Crowning Music of Awesome. And perhaps a literal version of Autobots Rock Out.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: While all Heterodynes were maniacs, some weren't picky about who to kill, as evidenced by this exchange:

"Gil: Seven broken ribs. Severe fracture, right leg. Fractured clavicle. Some crush injuries, but the kidneys appear unharmed. First and second degree burns on upper back and lower legs, third degree on the lower back. Four broken fingers, three broken toes, sprained and bruised muscles throughout -- major and minor lacerations, and a concussion. Klaus: I've had worse."
 * Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Though Sparks do specialize, it appears that most of the really strong ones can stitch a living being out of spare body parts as easily as they can build a mechanical AI... or design an electric death ray or a giant airship. Only minor Sparks appear to be restricted to a discipline, as opposed to simply being best at one
 * One True Threesome: Phil and Kaja Foglio, thanks to their unabashed Bleached Underpants history, may be deliberately dangling this in front of the audience. Lampshaded and teased in the strip itself.
 * Only a Flesh Wound:

"Wooster: Um... we're not going to meet some ancient undead Heterodyne vampire or something, are we? Carson: Oh, and wouldn't that be the perfect capper to my day. Wooster: Um, actually, that wasn't a "Ho ho, don't be silly old chap." Carson: I ain't being paid to lie to you, brit."
 * Only Sane Man
 * Von Zinzer. Good news is, he has a lot of experience dealing with Sparks, which also gives him lots of Genre Savvy, though he's also somewhat fatalistic -- he's resigned to the fact that having to work for Sparks means he could be blown up, eaten, ripped apart or otherwise brutally killed at any time. No wonder he can be so snarky. Given the large number of Sparks and Spark minions he has recently been hanging around with, he is sometimes literally the only person in the room who is not crazy.
 * Krosp has also been this at times. Just not when the string is going to escape.
 * OOC Is Serious Business: Bangladesh DuPree not choosing at once the "let's blow everything up" option gets her second-in-command worried. She was just fooling around, however.
 * Organ Theft: Mittelmind and Diaz(spoilers!)
 * Orphan's Plot Trinket: Agatha's locket.
 * Our Hero Is Dead: And buried, complete with digging up the body and cloning a replica to make sure it's really her.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: Dame Aedith is a vampire hunter, despite the fact that no vampires have been seen. Although there was this little gem...

"Gil: AAARGH! I haven't had any lines in months! Am I even still a main character?!"
 * Out of Focus: Lots of characters have done this.
 * Most notably, Gil dropped out of the story early in Volume 4, reappeared briefly at the end of Volume 5, and finally reentered the story for real in Volume 7.
 * Lots of other characters from the first arc disappeared after it was over and have either not returned or only showed up again in the third arc. The end of the second arc also sent a large number of supporting characters offstage. It also happens within arcs: Klaus has done this more than once. Given the webcomic format, the size of the cast, and the demands of the story, it's inevitable that it will keep happening.
 * This gets a non-canon lampshade in this picture.


 * Outscare the Enemy: Veilchen does something like this.
 * Overly Long Name
 * "I am Zola Anya Talinka Venia Zeblinkya Malfeazium."
 * In the "Cinderella" omake, Cinderella's full name is really Sleeping Beauty Snow White Rapunzel Ozma Rose Red Riding Hood Rumpelstiltskin. (No, really. Just don't ask.)