El Goonish Shive

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Exposition or Mind Screw? You decide!

"Easily the most perverted squeaky clean comic on the net." —Tangents Reviews

"I grew up in Moperville. Weird stuff happens here..." —Carol Brown the reporter

El Goonish Shive is an Action Series Adventure Series Dramedy Web Comic, written, drawn, inked and colored by Dan Shive. He has stated that all of the comic can be summed up in one of the main characters' quotes: "Because it sounds like one big awkward moment." Oh, and pay no attention to the art quality of the early strips. It gets better, drastically better.

It's about a cast of characters and their relationships while in the middle of spellcasting, Shapeshifting (Voluntary Shapeshifting and otherwise), gender-bending, and blatantly disregarding the laws of physics. Or, alternately, it's about a cast of characters who occasionally take time off from obsessing over their relationships to cast spells, change shape, and break the laws of physics. The gender-bending is pretty constant, though.

The series has a heavy focus on interpersonal relationships; it's easy to get so wrapped up in the characters' lives that you forget that an inter-dimensional Evil Overlord has possibly been attempting to attack them since his last appearance (seen in a picture) when he sent monsters to kill his dimensional counterparts in one of the first story arcs.

It has its own wiki, Shiveapedia, which contains the definitive timeline of the comic (which is considered Canon by Word of God) plus practically exhaustive arc summaries and character bios.

Tropes used in El Goonish Shive include:

• Aborted Arc:
  • Hints dropped at Ellen taking up drinking were later explained away because the creator didn't like the direction it would take. Thus, the hints are stuffed back in the refrigerator... "behind the Red Herring".
  • The "Lord Tedd" arc will presumably pick up again some day, but it's more or less indefinitely on hold because the author realized he introduced it too early.
    • It just might be coming back...
  • Susan's crusade against the school uniform policy dropped out of focus and then ended abruptly not because nobody in the school wanted to wear the uniforms (Even if only Susan was willing to openly act on the matter), but because the parents of the students complained about the increased laundry costs.
    • Averted somewhat in that Dan had always intended to end the arc in a lame way, but admitted he didn't intend for it to be so abrupt.
• Abusive Parents: Damien ended up making himself a sort of twisted father figure to Grace and her brothers, but there is nothing "fatherly" about him at all. He is an abuser pure and simple, able to control his "children" through fear and constantly hitting them whenever they displease him. And like any parent whose children are young enough, he's too powerful for them to do anything about it. And the reason he wanted Grace back? He wanted to breed with her so that he could raise an army. Whether she wanted to or not. (She didn't, by the way.)
• Academy of Adventure: Two of them: Moperville North and South. Raven mentions offhandedly that South is some sort of haven for supernatural and paranormal children--and he's in charge of protecting them.
  • Not so. Raven states that there are several children of an arcane nature - that could mean 20 in a school of over a thousand. What's more, he never states other schools aren't like this - we might just not have met Raven's Moperville North equivalent.
• Accidental Truth:
  • Susan tells one of these about Justin being gay. And one more about spontaneous hair color changes.
  • Ellen and Grace's math teacher pretends to deduce facts about his new students, and concludes that "the end result appears to be a duplicate squirrel of some sort." The girls are rather shocked about how close to the mark he is until he says he was just messing with them and it had all been gibberish. Then again, this is Moperville High, so he may well have been lying/unknowingly magical.
• Action Girl: All the girls (and some of the guys) except for Sarah.
• Actually Not a Vampire:
  • A variation. Susan flashbacks to an earlier encounter with an 'Aberration' -- a person who has used magic in order to become immortal through parasitically leeching off the life-force of others. She starts to describe to her friends about how it had some vampire-like characteristics, realizes her description sounds like it is of a vampire, and decides to say it was one. When her friends ask if it really was one she said 'No, not really, but it was a monster that used to be human, hypnotized young women and sucked blood out of their necks. It doesn't matter what I say. You two are going to hear "vampire."' The accompanying comments say no, it's not a 'real' vampire.
  • Despite what some people might think, Raven assures you that he is not, in fact, a vampire. He also wants you to know that sandwiches are delicious.
• Aerith and Bob: Jerry the Immortal thinks you should be glad he's a Jerry, because most immortals go for elitist names from ancient mythology.

"Let me tell you, there is nothing more hilarious than the legendary hissy-fits that result from two or more immortals named Zeus running into each other."

• Air Vent Passageway: Noah uses the school's air vents to hunt a magical creature.
• Alien Tropes: Several, mostly parodied.
  • Alien Among Us: They're born on Earth, they're not aliens.
  • Humans Are Not Ready: Maybe.
  • Take Me to Your Leader: Greetings, human! Can you take me to your Tedd?
  • First Contact: At least, for Elliot.
  • Insufficiently Advanced Alien: They made a lot of cool stuff, but... Three words: "Sanctioned Programming Languages." After banning OOP wholesale out of certain areas, it's no wonder even a little kid on Earth can help them with their technical problems.
• All Cheering, All the Time: A sketchbook entry explains why "Cheerleadra" is an awful superhero concept.
• Alpha Bitch: Subverted. Diane is set up to be this, but she's revealed to actually care for her friends (and be concerned for random crying strangers), as seen here, and is thus really a Lovable Alpha Bitch. Her friend Lucy, on the other hand, fits the bullying part of the archetype but isn't the leader of the group.
  • Susan seemed to be an example of this at first, being portrayed as a snobby mean rich girl... but the moment she was given more screen time she quickly got one hell of a character development. She was also revealed to have a traumatic backstory, so it would be more appropriate to call her a Broken Bird, or, more recently, a Defrosting Ice Queen.
• Alternate Universe: Several. The one where Ellen and Kaoli "met" got Uryuoms and seyunolu as an accepted part of Human life for two centuries or so...
  • In Spite of a Nail: ...but it still has Tedd.
  • Flash Sideways: "Sleepy Time" with Lord Tedd, "Second Life" with Ellen and Kaoli.
• Amusing Injuries: The end result of a Demonic Duck jumping out of a moving car. They were NOT amusing enough to distract Susan.
• And Call Him George: Played for laughs here.
• Anger Born of Worry: The first panel of this strip.
• Anticlimax:
  • Hedge is the King of this.
  • Unfortunately, the school uniform subplot, one of the few subplots to actually receive a conclusion so far, suffers from this. In the commentary, Shive blames poor planning on the abrupt end, but insists the tone would have remained the same regardless.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Grace's brothers at first.
  • Abraham
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • The Anime Style Martial Arts dojo is located in the same neighborhood as a strip club, cigarette store, adult bookshop, abortion clinic, and ice cream shop.
  • In the commentary section of one comic, referring to an Obviously Evil Eldritch Abomination: "It probably ate a puppy for breakfast right before it burned down an orphanage and talked loudly on a cell phone at a restaurant."
  • In one strip where Agent Wolf is accusing Lavender (Mr. Verres' Uryuom secretary) of being an alien (again) he says that she has a tail, bug-eyes, no nose or ears and a damn near impossible figure.
  • "I know this is a stressful time for you. You just realized you're gay, you're worried your family will find out, you were sneezed on..."
  • "Students fighting, transgender mayhem, wrecked hallways, hairpiece snatchings."
• Artifact Title: Played with after so many people asked about the title's meaning. It was intended to be nonsense ("El Goonish" + the author's last name), but to appease the questioners he introduced a "hired goon." In a non-continuity Fourth Wall Mail Slot Filler. For one panel (do you know what is it worth to hire a really huge goon?). There was also one easily missed mention of goons before this.
  • There's also repeated references to "Super Smash Goons Melee".
• Art Evolution: Contrast this and this. Same characters, same artist, 8 years.
  • He's also shifted from grayscale to full-color and back multiple times.
• As You Know: One of the immortals following Elliot recaps the plot points related to them. When her companion calls her on it, she points out that it helps compensate for their Easy Amnesia.
• Aura Vision: What makes bloodgrem a useful summon instead of merely obnoxious.
• Author Appeal:
  • The copious amount of transformation. In-story, Tedd represents this aspect of him. Or rather an exaggerated version, Tedd is more pervy than Dan.

Dan: I suppose it's POSSIBLE Sarah won't get transformed at any point while assisting Tedd. Possible, but not bloody likely.

• • Also, judging from this rant, Susan (and Diane's) "concern for hygiene" is another example.
• Author Avatar: Dan's squirrel avatar, though only out of continuity.
  • Actually, Dan is a squirrel-boy character in the comic strips Sarah draws in her spare time.
• Author Filibuster: The Legends of Celida arc so far seems to exist for the sole purpose of allowing Dan to rant about the true nature of Sheik from Ocarina of Time and whether Zelda is simply casting an illusion or out and out transforms into a male.
• Author Guest Spot: Dan has appeared as himself as he appears in real life as the "super smart" guy in panel six of this strip but as he only revealed that it was him in the commentary and calls it a cameo it is more like a Creator Cameo.
• Awesome McCoolname: Pandora Chaos Raven. She chose it herself, and claims that it matches her personality.
• Badass Boast: "No one will care if I kill you."
• Badass Family: The Verres family, including cousin Nanase and resident Grace.
  • And Raven's family as well, with Raven being one of the series biggest badasses, his adopted son/lodger Noah being able to defeat a dragon singlehandedly and has hints of being the child left behind from the experiments that created Damien and Grace. His mother, Pandora, is shaping up to be series Big Bad.
• Badass Longcoat: Hedge, Abraham, and, of all people, Tedd's dad.
• Badass Teacher: Endangering students of Mr. Raven is the sort of things insurance companies make a specific exclusion for. Even for wizards.
• Beat Panel: Frequently, and once turned into gag in its own right.
  • Used to great effect when Nanase encounters one of the guys she dated before she came out.

Gary: I don't mean to be rude, it's just I used to think you didn't want to go on a date with me because I was too geeky. BEAT Nanase: Yes. It was entirely because I am a lesbian.

• Beautiful All Along:
  • Guineas is a rare male example.
  • Susan between Art Evolution and a less strained attitude.
• Berserk Button: Quite a surprising number of times, for a relatively non-violent series.
  • Hurting Grace makes Tedd resemble Lord Tedd a bit.
  • Speaking of Tedd, well... this is how Ellen came to be.
  • Grace is wired with a little surprise.
  • During the battle with Damien's "goons," Ellen merely has a thumb war with Guineas. Then Vlad nearly kills Nanase. He was REALLY asking for it.
  • Hurting Raven's students.
  • Do not hurt Nanase (or any member of the Verres family, for that matter) in front of Mr Verres. He will break you.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Grace, who can shapeshift into any number of extremely lethal forms when provoked. And when she's reluctant or unable to enter close combat she just uses telekinesis instead. Beware, indeed.
  • Tedd looked like Lord Tedd when he discovered Damien's mistreatment of Grace, which wasn't one-off event, he learned from this. As "One Way Road" shows, he wants to be able to help his absurdly powerful friends, and is not satisfied with roles of a reclusive ballast or Mission Control. And as a Mad Scientist he's able to climb the Super Weight ladder if he really wants... and does, as The Stinger to the same arc shows.
• Bi the Way: Ellen. In general, changing straight people's sex wreaks havoc on their sexuality.
• Big Eater: Nanase and Grace. And Man v. Food Fictional Counterpart in the next strip, but he doesn't count.
• Bigger Stick
• Big No: Played with here and here.
• Big "What?": Everyone's reaction to Sarah being okay with going along with the theme of Grace's birthday party.
• Big Word Shout: "SKIRRRRT!"
• Bilingual Bonus: If you're willing to go here to translate Uryuomoco. A couple real examples with French and Japanese though.
  • "Verres" in Uryuomoco is "Bolloc" (he is a cover-up specialist). It's also the French word for "Glasses" (though technically it only refers to the lenses).
  • Pretty much needed for this comic to make much sense beyond "ominous dream involving the Big Bad."
    • In a more recent comic, the Uryuomoco in the comic was shown translated. In the commentary, Dan stated that it was because he felt it was irresponsible to alienate readers who didn't know how to translate it.
• Biological Mashup: Lespuko-chimera can acquire and combine forms.
• Bishie Sparkle: Justin, here.
• Bishonen: Tedd isn't quite a classic bishie, but he is still both androgynous enough and attractive enough when he takes his glasses off to cause homophobic bully Tony to go into full-scale panic.
  • Also Noah, who makes straight guys see rainbows.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Uryuom reproduction is very... complicated.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Elliot and Sarah display these here to indicate extreme anger at Tedd.
  • Nanase, Ellen and Grace aren't amused by Nanase's ex-almost-boyfriend interrupting their double date. Could you tell?
• Blessed with Suck: Sure, Elliot and Ellen will get pretty sweet magic powers, but the Power Incontinence (especially embarrassing for Elliot) means that for a while, life will be just a little crap for them.
  • In Elliot's case it's not helped by people who've read too much Ranma ½ dumping buckets of water on him.
• Blinding Camera Flash: As the title puts it, "Dude, Like, Sarah Just TOTALLY Flashed Female Justin".
• Body Horror: Pandora. Oh GOD Pandora.
  • Turns out Aberrations can be pretty freaking disturbing too.
• Boobs of Steel: Nanase, Ellen and (by extension) Female Elliot are the best physical fighters of the main cast, and they also have the largest chests.
• Brain Bleach: Invoked Trope here

Tedd: Grace, can your antennae function as Brain Bleach?

• Break the Cutie: Many times, especially Grace.
  • Believe it or not, resident Deadpan Snarker Susan as well. She was apparently a literal Wide-Eyed Idealist before this happened.
• Brick Joke:
  • November 19th is a callback to a comic from six years before.
  • The product of Ellen's unhealthy imagination is recalled later.
  • In another comic, Susan explains "where the hell that sword came from" in a comic from nearly eight years before.
  • Hammer Joke.
  • REVIVE THE FUND!
  • Though it's a bit of stretch, "Harry Potter and Stoned Sorcerer" still counts.
  • After nine years, the COAT OF SOLITUDE returns.
  • Vampiric Hat Double Brick with yet another Take That on top.
  • Another one is from here. Carol, the news journalist, is told by her boss to find a plausible story, like Bigfoot or giant hogs. I guess she'll cover the current arc too.
  • Turns out Raven totally does get Grace apology ice cream.
  • January 2007: "You're suggesting that girls just casually cuddle and fall asleep together? Could you imagine Sarah doing that with Grace?" Three and a half years later, we don't need to imagine.
• Broken Bird: Susan, but getting better lately, once she got much angst out of her system in one big Freak-Out.
• Broken Masquerade: Breaks on a semi-regular basis to individuals. Of late, it's showing more cracks, and may completely break for the entire world.
• Brought Down to Normal: Nanase, after "burning up" her magic in order to defeat Abraham. This is, however, temporary.
• Bully Hunter: Elliot Dunkel has fought bullies in the past to protect their victims, including both Justin and Tedd. He lapses back from time to time when a friend of his is bullied nearby, though circumstances always manage to deal with the problem before Elliot can get started.
  • Gerald as well, sort of. He wears gothy outfits and makeup specifically to provoke bullies into picking fights with him.

Tedd: He sounds like a venus fly trap that catches bullies. That's awesome.

• Bunny Ears Lawyer: Resident Mad Scientist Tedd is quite brilliant...it's just difficult to recognize when his field of expertise is so deeply tied in with his many quirks.
• But Not Too Foreign: Tedd is part Japanese and ostensibly part Caucasian.
• But Your Wings Are Beautiful: Grace worried about her "monstrousness", until she discovered that the only reaction Sarah and Elliot ever show is blaming Tedd (due to specific experience), while Tedd ogles her in hybrid form even more eagerly than in human form. Even after the remark about "furry fetish and a half-cat girlfriend" she had a fit of concern about her three-tailed omega form. As if there could be any problem.

Grace: I didn't scare you, did I? Tedd: (visibly spaced out) so... hot...

• Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Averted Trope—Dan decided to concede and call his not-exactly-a-vampire thing a "vampire" because he knew the readers would accuse him of trying to pawn a vampire off as something else.
• Call Back: Nothing can penetrate the coat of solitude.
• Calling Your Attacks: What else would you expect from "Anime Style Martial Arts"? Elliot and Ellen do this on several occasions—in Gratuitous Japanese no less. Lampshaded when Elliot wanted a do-over after he forgot. And mocked once.
• Can Not Tell a Lie: Abraham.
• Can't Get in Trouble For Nuthin': Ellen, in her first separate appearance.
• Canted Camera: Abe's sleep bomb causes this for the next page, reflecting how the spell dazed him.
• Captain Superhero: Spoofed when they tried to think of a better superhero name than "Cheerleadra."
• Casanova Wannabe: T.C., aka "The Playah."
• Cast of Snowflakes: Dan's had to come up with lots of new designs for extras recently.
• Catgirl: In various ways, ranging from the appropriately-named Catalina, to Ellen's online persona, to Grace's werecat form and the variants thereof to normal form of Nioi and Kaoli (they're skunks, but this looks close enough). Not to mention Elliot's catboy form....
  • At some point in the backstory, Sarah was stuck as one for a day thanks to Tedd being careless with the TF gun.
• Cat Scare: Parodied and Justified Trope at once—Jeremy defending his territory is not a critter to be trifled with.
  • Well, unless you can project your spirit energy into a force field.
• Catch Phrase:
  • "Sexy-awesome!"
  • Also "Za?(!)" on occasion.
  • "And we shall never speak of this again." or any variation thereof
  • "Yee-Yup."
  • Catalina yells "JACKASSES!" enough for it to be one
  • Quoting the (retroactively added) commentary, "This comic contains Tedd’s first declaration of something being blasphemy, and it will not be his last."
• Cerebus Retcon: Dan is famous for this Trope. Before this series developed Cerebus Syndrome, many hyper-zany elements were present in the story, and now that the series has become more serious, Dan is having fun going back and deconstructing lots of the ridiculousness of the earlier strips. The self-deprecatingly titled "Hammerchlorians" arc is devoted to one particular instance of this.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The Painted Black arc was the turning point. Word of God states that he is going to attempt to undo/turn this down in upcoming arcs. Ironically, the "Bringing Silly Back" is (self-admittedly) more serious in some ways than previous arcs.
• Chain Pain: In his original appearances, Hedge wielded a chain as a weapon - specifically, the very chain that had once bound him in captivity in the laboratory that created him. Very symbolic. Very quickly forgotten, too. Only really appeared in one scene, if memory serves, though Grace references it again later.
• Character Development: One of the strong sides of EGS. It's rather chaotic and detail-saving, but profound.
• Characterisation Marches On: Goes hand and hand with Art Evolution and Cerebus Syndrome as the author grows from an adolescent to an adult.
• Character Filibuster: Tedd, on occasion.

Elliot and Sarah: (a synchronized Face Palm) Aw crap! Susan: What? Did I say something wrong? Tedd: They've heard the rant to follow before.

• Chekhov's Gun: A lot of 'em. It got to the point that Shive redesigned a character who would have had certain "suspicious" traits (such as an eyepatch) specifically so that nobody would sit around waiting for those to be explained.
  • Possibly Lampshaded in the commentary for this strip: "On the plus side, should the fact that there's a photo of Grace on the wall of a pancake place where a TV show episode was filmed ever come up again, the high-res version is already drawn." Definitely lampshaded in this page's commentary.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Hedge, among others. Noah was even worse—he showed up, gothic font and all, and then... completely vanished. For years.
• Chekhov's Skill: It took nearly eight years to explain how Susan made a sword appear back during the Sister arc.
• The Chessmaster: Pandora. Dan even says in one commentary that she's not someone you want to play at chess. Her desire to manipulate events rather than getting directly involved actually makes sense for two reasons: the other immortals get cheesed off if one of them does anything more than assist people on the physical plane, and she prefers things to be as unpredictable as possible (Chaos is literally her middle name). Doing everything herself would either earn her severe retribution or just make things too boring.
• Children Forced to Kill: Susan and Nanase when, during a class-trip to France, they wind up being targeted by an aberration. He's not technically human, but he LOOKS human - mostly - and while Nanase does most of the fighting, it's Susan who ends up having to kill him - with an ax, even. Unsurprisingly, she was somewhat traumatized, and the storyline that featured the flashback culminated in an Immortal decrying the irresponsibility of the two French Immortals who originally equipped the girls for the battle, while giving them no apparent alternative save dying at the hands of the aberration. Apparently, they could have simply informed the French Government's anti-supernatural-creature-squad instead, but elected to drag two pre-teens into a battle in order to 'recruit them for the fight against evil'. Omniscient Morality License, anyone?
• Child Soldier: After a monster attacked Susan in Paris, two Immortals empowered her and Nanase, and instructed how to kill it, though it implied–and in the Hammerchlorians arc, confirmed–that they could have gone to an experienced local magic-user instead. Susan... didn't take it well.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Word of God states he is attempting to avert this. The author did finally properly introduced Noah, a character who was first mentioned (and then ignored) 6 years beforehand.
  • The best example in this series was likely Sensei Greg. Despite having played a fairly decent role in early arcs, he was reduced to a brief cameo in Painted Black, and only got a short, non-plot critical scene in the party arc before it got into full swing. However, this has been averted as of 8/18/2010, which marks Sensei Greg's re-introduction to the storyline.
• Clark Kenting:
  • Tedd can fool Will and Gill without even meaning it—they call him an impostor when they see him without his glasses. On the other hand, those are really big glasses, they have never seen him without them and they seem not to know what glasses are (instead assuming they are his eyes) which would make sense if, as shapeshifters, they never need glasses since they can shapeshift to correct or modify their vision.
  • Exaggerated Trope with an incredibly lame (but apparently successful) government campaign to hide the presence of aliens on earth by such methods as having them wear T-shirts that say "Homo Sapiens."
  • In the New And Old Flames storyline Elliot got a superheroine form spell. Later, it was revealed it comes with its own alter ego form which seems to allow this trope. However, it is subverted in that in the form Elliot actually requires glasses and his speech patterns are made mild mannered. This means he doesn't really need engage in Clark Kenting consciously; the form does it for him.
• Cloning Blues: Played depressingly straight at first. When Ellen was accidentally created, she freaked out, with good reason. She had all of Elliot's memories, but suffered Loss of Identity since she could never get back his old life, and all of his friends were now essentially strangers she only knew about secondhand. She was permanently stuck in female form, something the original Elliot was so desperate to escape that he resorted to using a dangerous magical artifact he clearly didn't understand rather than risk spending (at most) a few more weeks in that form. Ellen also had reason to believe she might have less than a month to live, and feared she'd spend that time locked up in a research facility as a test subject. She went a little crazy, and as a coping mechanism, tried being an Evil Twin for a while, which only made her more miserable. However, this trope was heavily subverted in the long run. Ellen learned her fears of an imminent demise or being locked up for study had no basis in reality. Elliot's friends welcomed her warmly and treated her like a normal individual, rather than just an accidental female copy of someone they knew. Elliot became fiercely protective of her, treating her as a cross between a little sister and a daughter, rather than the Evil Twin she had tried to be. Even Elliot's parents accepted her surprisingly easily, given the circumstances. Ellen eventually developed her own personality and became a major character in her own right, as well as an unprecedented solution to an earlier Love Triangle.
• Cobweb of Disuse: There's a dojo that's disused but lacking cobwebs... then the sketchbook explains why.
• Code Name: Grace originally didn't have a real name, but went by the code name 'Shade Tail'. 'Grace' was the name her Dr Sciuridae gave her, after the dead daughter who had been her gene-parent.
  • Both for Grace and general Tail variants, Tail as the last name is not arbitrary, it's family name, since their Uryuom parent's name translates to Tail from Uryuomoco.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: When Nanase creates one shadow copy of herself, the copy is colored with one of the primary additive colors (red, green, or blue), while Nanase is colored with the corresponding primary subtractive color (cyan, magenta, or yellow, respectively). This actually makes sense from a scientific standpoint: The real Nanase is absorbing the color the fake one is producing.
• Color Failure: Nanase has one at the party when Ellen goes to get her change of clothes.
• Coming Out Story: Justin's, related to Susan during Grace's party, though it had previously been shown without explanation. Nanase, on the other hand, comes out during the party, though by then everyone there that night except Tedd already knew. For a while she was only out to the people who were at the party, though.
• Confused Bystander Interview: There's one of these, complete with sound effects, Buffy-Speak, and general hyperactiveness. Subverted in that she's actually not a bystander. She's the superhero that she allegedly saw. And she's not even a "she".
• Congruent Memory: Tedd is supposedly better at cooking while female. He seems fully aware of the absurdity of this, however, admitting that it's probably all in his head. Doesn't stop him from doing it.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted. The "fire monster" summons in the New and Old Flames arc aren't really made of fire because they would incinerate themselves. They just look like they're on fire and takes on fire-related vulnerabilities. It's a beginner's mistake when summoning certain monsters to just go with what looks cool instead of what actually works.
• Covert Pervert:
  • Justin, of all the crew, is the first to wonder if using the TF gun on a female results in a male form with generous... er... gentlemanly parts.
  • Sarah, too. At the very least, she seems to have lots of romantic and possibly sexual fantasies
• Crazy Prepared: Mr. Verres' party chaperon presentation.
• Creating Life: Played for Laughs -- "Our goo kinda came to life...," but later revealed to be a monster sent on purpose from an Alternate Universe. Also, in a filler strip soap bubbles came to life as Pac-Man-like critters... and promptly attacked Tedd.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Mr. Verres and Agent Wolf. In early comics, the two characters were pretty goofy and usually played for laughs. That changes a bit later on:
  • We've gotten hints for some time that Mr. Verres is a very prominent figure in the paranormal area (possibly even enough to qualify him as the Big Good of the EGS world), and his Crowning Moment of Awesome near the end of the Abraham encounter demonstrates that he has enough skill with magic that you really don't want to mess with him or anyone he cares about.
  • The encounter with Abraham has also shown that, when he's not obsessed with aliens, Agent Wolf is very professional, and Raven has identified him as one of the most powerful wizards in the Midwestern United States.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • Agent Wolf is such a--
  • An earlier example from the Goo: {{{1}}}
  • Elliot explaining Justins coming-out.

Elliot: He was MISERABLE and DEPRESSED and it was ALL BECAUSE OF THAT STUPID-

• Damsel in Distress: During the "Painted Black" arc, Grace becomes one when she's captured while infiltrating Damien's base... at least until Damien makes her really, really mad.
  • Elliot, due to his self gender-bending abilities, temporarily becomes a damsel in distress as well, if only to escape.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Magic apparently drain users at various rates. Spells too powerful to handle may overtax even well-trained magic users, possibly even removing their magic for months at at a time.
• Dawson Casting: Tedd invokes this in an EGS:NP strip by claiming to be twenty-one outside of continuity due to Comic Book Time. Grace counters the gap might be up to a year, making Tedd eighteen. She then goes on to say that it doesn't matter anyways since none of them are likely to look any different before they turn 30.
• The Dark Side:

The Principal: So you're saying you can't make me an army of goo-based hall monitors? Tedd: Even if I could, I would not give into the dark side so easily.

• Daydream Surprise: Here, with hints, and far more emphatically here.
  • This has become easier to notice thanks to Dan's consistency in displaying 'imaginary' panels with rounded corners. The last example portrays this perfectly.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Mr. Raven, sometimes Susan, Mr. Verres and Elliot. Ellen in nearly too many instances to cite. Tedd can do it when he wants to.
  • Definitely Susan. Dying is usually inconvenient.
    • Lampshaded here.
  • This guy.
• Death Glare:
  • "If Looks Could Kill..."
  • Hello, Lucy. Ellen is just happy to see you, that's all.
  • Nanase can do this too.
  • Tedd gets hit with a rather scary double whammy.
  • Elliot gives a wonderful first impression to Melissa.
  • Gerald gets a triple dose from Grace, Ellen, and Nanase.
• Default Setting Syndrome: In-universe - Newspaper arc "Dan in the MUD."
• Department of Redundancy Department: "You could always get hugs, have a second player for video games, get hugs, have help with chores, get hugs..."
• Deus Ex Machina: Subverted or maybe deconstructed mildly with the Dewitchery Diamond. It seems like a plot device at first, but then it solves it in a way completely different from the way everyone expected, and caused more problems than it solved, in the form of Knight Templar Abraham.
  • Magic is stated to have a flair for the dramatic. The characters are actually Genre Savvy enough to expect magic act this way.
• Didn't See That Coming: Anybody who forgets he's fighting a wizard after having to overcome his spells just to get there deserves to be spammed by exploding crows on the spot.
• Didn't Think This Through: Abraham. Almost everything he did at all.
• Digging Yourself Deeper:
  • Abraham's diplomatic efforts. He doesn't tongue-slip, but still manages to annoy one more hell out of Adrian Raven with every phrase, starting from the second.
  • Tedd, in his usual style.
  • Oh, Elliot...
• Directionless Driver: Referenced after Ellen's "birth," as she deluded herself into thinking she was Elliot's Evil Twin.

Tedd: Careful, she might use tactics that wouldn't even cross our mind. (cut to Ellen asking a gas pump attendant for directions)

• Dirty Business
• Dirty Old Man: Averted, but Lampshaded, here.
• Distant Reaction Shot: Space Is Noisy now - courtesy of
  • ...Cry heard from SPAAAAACE #1 (Catalina).
  • ...Cry heard from SPAAAAACE #2 (Raven).
  • ...Cry heard from SPAAAAACE #3 (Elijah).
  • SPAAAACE Explodes (Grace and Elijah)
  • ...Cry heard from SPAAAAACE #5 (Sarah)
• Distracted by My Own Sexy:
  • A V5-ed Susan gets distracted by her own sudden-sexy in this strip. Understandable, as in addition to the appearance this form has a rather... unusual hormonal status, which she wanted to experience in the first place. She stood enthralled until Insulted Awake... and only from the second attempt.
  • Genderbent Sarah also has one of these moments here.

NO! BAD Sarah! Stop thinking of yourself as a sex object!!

• The Ditz: Grace on occasion. She learns VERY quickly, however.
• Ditzy Genius: The reason for Grace's Ditzy characteristics. Both her ability to absorb information and her lack of common sense are impressive.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Ellen yells at Tedd for never apologizing for the mistakes that lead to her creation. He in turn refuses to apologize, saying that if they were mistakes, they were "The best mistakes I ever made." Sounds like they're talking about an unplanned pregnancy, huh? Also ties in with the Running Gag about Tedd being Ellen's father.
• Doing In the Scientist: At first, the plot was fairly silly all transformation weirdness was due to the Transformation Gun, an invention of Tedd's. Then it was revealed to come from Uryuom technology. Then that was revealed to be based on magic, a fundamental form of energy which had already cropped up in earlier storylines.
• Doing In the Wizard: In a way. Magic has actually become more prevalent after the Sister 2 arc, but it's also become less silly and more systematic. See Cerebus Retcon above.
• Don't Try This At Home: The commentary for this comic goes out of its way to inform readers of the potential hazards of using a sleeper hold.
• Dope Slap:
  • Invoked
  • You normally wouldn't expect someone like Grace to perform this on anyone, but when your friend's been acting like a dummy...
  • Melissa? Your turn.
• Dramatic Wind: Susan is particularly good at it. Tedd too as of late.
• Dramatic Thunder: Happens whenever Nanase's mother says something emphatic. Played seriously the first time, and then for laughs in one of the Q&A comics.
• Dream Sequence: An entire Story Arc of them, each revealing something personal about one of the main characters.
• Dropped Glasses: ...revealing that the character doesn't really need them.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady:
  • Tedd's face is so feminine that he grows his hair out just so he can blame that on why he looks so much like a girl when his glasses are off.
  • Noah, though he seems completely fine with it.

"Regardless of which gender he is at the time, I use the female [plastic] artist model for Tedd. And Noah, now that I think about it."[1]

• Dysfunctional Family: Not only has Tedd's mom gone to Europe and abandoned her family, but when Nanase's mom is asked about her sister, the answer sounds much like Pandora-Chaos at her worst.
• Eagle Land: The Government isn't that bad. Even The Men in Black (though they have their moments). But tourists...
• Eating the Eye Candy: While not hunky, Sarah ends up considering it during the Party arc. The object? Herself. It Makes Sense in Context, really.
• Education Mama: Nanase's mother.
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: Three times. One is Justified Trope in expansion, other is justified in previous development and the last one was built up in more than two years so that it was bound to appear and could not be anything less than Summon "Oh Crap."
• Eldritch Abomination: Two of them to date. First off, Pandora looks like this whenever she's not a Creepy Child or adult woman. Then there's this ... thing.
• El Spanish-O: The "El" in the name of the comic.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: Greg stumbles onto a pile after charging into Tedd's house to protect Grace.
• Enhance Button: Averted.
  • In this comic, zooming in on a photo and using the brightness command results in visible pixels and artifact.
  • Discussed in the commentary of this comic, inclusing a jab at CSI's usage of this trope.

Of course, if this was CSI, some dude would magically multiply the resolution of the image, clean it up, and get the license plate of a nearby car from a reflection in Elliot's pupil.

• Enlightenment Superpowers: How sensei Greg created Anime-Style Martial Arts.
• Epiphany Therapy: Lampshaded. Tedd gets over his homophobia long enough to kiss guy!Grace, but Grace is quick to point out that just recognizing he has a hangup isn't enough to instantly make it go away.
• Especially Zoidberg: Susan drops one of these.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Female Variant Number 5 is meant to cause this.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Discussed. After the furious look Elliot gave Melissa, Noah tries to get out of him what was that about:

Noah: Is it jealousy? I have been told I could make straight men see rainbows.

• Embarrassing First Name: Tiffany Susan Pompoms.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Tedd Drew Verres isn't such a bad name, but he makes a big deal out of it. Middle Names are Always Fun!
• The Empath: Uryuom (and greater chimera) has empathic abilities they use instead of pheromones, as well as low-grade telepathy. Both are related to antennae.
• Everythings Nuttier With Squirrels: Well, duh.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Even Magus won't help Chaos ruin Verres to just to kill Abraham ... just to punish Raven for being a disobedient son. Though Magus hasn't yet been clarified as "good" or "evil", he had been antagonising Ellen through the arc.
  • Also, during Painted Black, Hedge did everything in his power not to bring women back to Damien, knowing that he only wanted them for breeding.
• Everyone Is Bi: Sure looks that way…
• Evil Laugh: Along with Psychotic Smirk, played to the hilt with Raven though he could just be being creepy and weird.
  • Definalty just being wierd, considering he's one of the series most powerful supporting heroes. His mother, on the otherhand, plays this one strait...
• Evil Overlord: Lord Tedd, though Nioi insinuates that he's nothing of the sort. Well, to Nioi and around her he may be very nice lad indeed. After all, Lord Tedd is the product of Tedd's issues never fixed by the presence of either Elliot or Grace, and it looks like "guy with a furry fetish and a half-cat girlfriend" again.
• Evil Twin: When she's first introduced, Ellen tries to be one of these for Elliot in an effort to give herself some sense of identity. She turns out to be spectacularly bad at it.
• Exposition Cut: Its frequent use is lampshaded in this comic from late in the "Sister" arc.
• Exposition Diagram: Both Mr. Verres and Elliot's parents have used the Type 2 version.
• Exposition Party: Gets its own arc, the longest in the series.
• Expy: Grace definitely has nothing in common with Squirrel Girl... oops. On the other hand, "Catgirl"-to-"squirrel girl" substitution doesn't leave many options anyway.
  • Mr. Raven comes across as Snape with better style, at least at first. Tell me you don't imagine Alan Rickman delivering some of his lines.

Raven: You are a homicidal wizard invading a public school. No one will care if I kill you.

• Extra Parent Conception: Uryoms reproduce this way, with a variable number of parents.
• Face Palm: What the hell have you two been doing?
  • Synchronized facepalms, even.
  • the tinyest facepalm
• Fan Service: This filler is the most over the top example of it.
  • Female Gaze: Guinea's transformation provokes some... reaction from both Ellen and a female trooper.
  • Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Amanda, invoked by Dr. Germahn being a Dirty Old Man.
  • Innocent Fanservice Girl: Grace, who initially didn't understand that nudity embarrasses people, or that shapeshifting can be Squicky to those unaccustomed to it. She catches on eventually.
    • One of the best (and funniest) examples takes place during her birthday party, here.
  • Most Common Superpower: More literal than usual for Ellen, who can use one of her powers to expand her already-impressive bust.
  • Ms. Fanservice: In just about every one of her appearances, Amanda ends up transforming, usually shrinking or turning into a Half-Human Hybrid. This appears to be Fanservice for a particular segment of EGS's fanbase and Dan himself.
  • The Nudifier: Dr. Germahn once invented a potion that caused your sweat to dissolve clothes.
  • Playboy Bunny: Let us not forget this one, which is the first bit of Fan Service Shive gave us (as well as what he claims is "the first and last violation of the 'No Cleavage' part of Sarah's contract").
  • Sensual Spandex: Uryuom clothes give a considerable protection and are made for shapeshifters. The net effect, however, is that three Action Girls have to wear outfits guaranteed to remain skin-tight in all and any circumstances. Later Grace starts to wear this just in case. And that's before adding some fun poses. And combine in costumes that underscore this.
  • Sexy Santa Dress: Ellen tried to wear one in a filler strip but her mom thought she would catch cold.
  • Sexy Silhouette: Of transforming Susan and Dual-Wielding Susan.
• Faux Paw: Done by Ellen to Nanase's ponytail several times, starting here.
• Fictional Counterpart: SWEDEKEA! And how.
• Finishing Stomp: Performed by Ellen on Goo Cell #0012. Squishtality!
• Fireball Eyeballs: Ellen here and here, Susan here.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Susan and Nanase, of all people, are Fire Forged Vitriolic Best Buds. Now that Susan's secret is out, she's even opening up to her.
• First Girl Wins: Elliot and Sarah, Tedd and Grace (that we know of anyway), Ellen and Nanase, if you count Ellen's "birth" as taking Sarah out of the picture.
• Fish Out of Temporal Water: Abraham averts this by having spells that give him modern knowledge and clothes, given how magic works in this series it makes sense that he would have them in conjunction with his statue spell.
• Flat Joy: When Elliot discovered that his inconvenient "girly powers only" time ended and he began to acquire cool magic. Of course, he's not only in a female form, but in the middle of a random encounter, but still.
• Flat What: Performed here, and again by Susan. And then by Justin here and here.
• Flight: Many characters are capable of this. Nanase, in three different ways: wings in her fairy form, magical levitation in normal form, and wings in her "angel" form. Grace—levitation, though only in Omega form. Nioi—magic. Vlad—wings plus levitation. Immortals (so far, all) -- either magic or it's an inherent quality. Elliot -- while in his superhero form.
• Follow the Chaos: Need to know if Tedd is upstairs or downstairs in his lab? Listen for an explosion.
• The Force Is Strong with This One: Adrian Raven admitted having ability to measure magical power without devices, which all but confirms a common wild guess on who his "random favourites" are.
• Forced Meme: Shive attempted to turn "sexy awesome" into a Catch Phrase, but never caught on outside the fan base, and even the characters have all but stopped using it.
• Foreshadowing: Tends to get Lampshaded a lot. What is left is usually cryptic or already blatantly obvious.
  • What's seen here translated with this. "Death. It Is Time For The End Of Man. This Master of Fire Shall Inherit The Earth. My Very Presence Eats Away At Your Flesh" Other than the two bizarre words in the end, it's pretty creepy.
  • Susan's sword (5th December, 2002) and "tattoo" Venus (5th October, 2005) were good hints that she isn't as simple as she looks, but were proven to be plot points and not throwaway gags only in much later flashback (26th May, 2010).
• Fourth Wall Mail Slot: The Q&A strips.
• Freak Lab Accident: What the Goo originally was before a Cerebus Retcon turned it into an attempt by Lord Tedd to kill this universe's Tedd.
• Freak-Out: Susan wasn't amused to discover what the hammers were made for—and what they in fact do. Of course, that being in the presence of an Immortal, she just caught an Instant Sedation spell in the face and got spaced out for her efforts.
• Freudian Excuse: Most of the cast have really screwy home lives. Specifically, Susan's hatred of men is very nearly outright said to be her making an excuse for her father cheating. Her mother's hate-filled "because he's a man" when lil' Susan asked her why probably helped this along a little.
• Functional Magic: Nioi is a powerful sorceress, as is Nanase. Nanase in particular uses it very often and quite openly at times.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: A significant portion of the "Sister II" arc is devoted to explaining exactly how magic works in EGS.
  • Squishy Wizard: Specifically averted. Two of the three wizards seen so far are also swordsmen (Abe also used shield and axe), for third it's unknown, but as a FBI operative he's likely to have at least basic handgun training. The rest of magic users in the comic practice Supernatural Martial Arts, and one that doesn't is at least pretty Badass and is competent enough with melee weapons.
  • Wizard Duel: Magus vs. Terra's duel appears to be either sparring or a non-lethal quarrel. Abraham vs. Raven, with spells and weapons both.
• Fun with Subtitles: "[See? I can speak the alien language of the Uryuoms.]" (subtitles: Translated from TAKE A WILD GUESS.)
• Gas Leak Coverup:
  • And a mysterious stalker from the mysterious girl's past. But not a crazy wizard attack. Not at all.
  • And Mr. Verres already contemplated using swamp gas as a random coverup.
• Gender Bender: The entire main cast, at least once. They even did this as a theme for a birthday party. Ellen is a special case, since she's an Opposite Gender Clone of another main character with all the memories of the original, and she has the innate ability to turn men into women. Pretty much anything in the EGS universe will get your gender bent, including fixing a toaster.
  • Attractive Bent Gender: Pretty much whenever anyone is transformed, goes in both directions. It helps that the person behind the gender-bending technology is an unrepentant pervert who custom-designed transformation variants to appeal to certain fetishes.
    • This issue was explored in rather disturbing ways in one of the Q&A sessions.
    • Tedd as a female deserves special mention, as "she" is just about the hottest character in the comic. Conversely, Tess in Newspaper complained she became "so androgynous she wasn't even sure it worked."
      • Though, seemingly, Tedd is plenty of attractive to guys as it is.
  • First Law of Gender Bending: EGS, while not as casual or frequent about it as The Wotch, certainly pays the Law its dues. According to the rules governing the comic's main sex-changing phlebotinum, only male-to-female sex changes can be made permanent (pregnancy); female-to-male sex changes, even of someone trapped by pregnancy (for whom it's only even possible afterwards), cannot exceed a 30 day time limit. The second time a boy - the main character - is turned into a girl the device breaks, leaving "her" stuck for the full thirty days; the attempt to circumvent this creates an Opposite Gender Clone and the permanent ability to change sex at will, something the rules of magic eventually force him to do on a regular basis.
    • Also, much later, a "seyunolu" (chimera) member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad, Vlad, is hit with a Transformation Ray and is turned female, but more importantly to him/her, human. "She" has no desire to change back, and since Bizarre Alien Biology overrides the time limit (and, implicitly, gender identity), Vladia, as she is now called, is treated as a woman from then on.
    • Moving on from Elliot being a double victim of this, we get to Tedd. Who probably wouldn't know this was a law: the "circumstances" usually equate to "Dad's out of town" and "As a girl, I'm hot."
  • Second Law of Gender Bending: Largely averted, despite all of the constant Gender Bending: Elliot has no interest in remaining female for long and considers his gender-bending Power Incontinence distasteful, Justin specifically rejects the idea even though it would make him sexually compatible with the object of his unrequited affection, Ellen accepts it without expressing any preference (though there are hints that the Loss of Identity associated with Opposite Sex Cloning Blues was a sore point until she got a new set of memories).
    • It's touching in Vlad/Vladia's case. There's nothing kinky about her accepting the change—for the first time in her whole life normal people aren't terrified by the sight of her, so she's willing to accept any form provided it's human, which her old, male form decidedly was not. And given that her one attempt to use her supposed shapeshifting powers was a painful, near-death experience she's not about to experiment even given the chance.
    • The curent theory is that Elliot will acquire new female forms again and again until he really likes one of them—then again, it was Tedd's idea. Between flying around as a superheroine and ogling Perky Goth form in a mirror, he may have found this already.
    • Tedd is the only straight example. He likes this form of shapeshifting because his androgynous face becomes an advantage while close enough to Tedd's own form and he likes to feel attractive. Once this problem became moot it was revealed that Body Swap is #37 on his fetish list.
  • Third Law of Gender Bending: Grace's Birthday Party arc, part-masquerade where the various characters deliberately chose stereotypical outfits for each other in keeping with the 'walk a mile in my shoes' theme of the occasion.
    • Susan starts acting macho and aggressive to Nanase very soon after becoming male. Sarah points out that Susan is simply a highly competitive person; now that she's male, and feeling stronger, it takes the form of an arm wrestling match.
      • Tedd does note that the first time gender bending their new genders thoughts are exaggerated, which played a part in everyone's storyline during the event, but the only one whose gender bending mental state was a major plot point was Susan, as it helped her recognize her hangups with men.
    • Later, when Elliot develops the power to morph his clothes and appearance along with his gender his female forms tend to end up wearing girly outfits because he apparently just can't help visualizing them that way.
    • A better example is Tedd; in fact, Grace has less dresses and skirts in her wardrobe than he does despite most of her first clothes being selected by Ordinary High School Student Sarah. He even prides himself on how sexy he looks transformed. And cooks better while female, just out of habit.
  • Opposite Gender Clone: Ellen.
• Genki Girl:
  • Grace is usually defined as "bubbly." Although, Jerry the Immortal implies that she lost her innocence a long time ago, and she's simply overcompensating.
  • A more literal example is Susan's curiosity, seen here.
  • Elliot's superhero spell comes with a "party girl" form whose default state is hyper and apparently slightly drunk.
• Genre Busting: It crosses a few. It starts out like a comedic slice-of-life comic, quickly adds sci-fi and drama, then fantasy (later explaining the sci-fi as magic)(except it's not the same magic). Currently it's kind of a mix of the lot. And weird.
• Gentle Giant:
  • Justin, from Rhoda's point of view. She's normally scared of people bigger than her (and his 6' to her 5' is quite a difference), but also knows that he's friends with Nanase, and that Nanase wouldn't be friends with anyone bad.
  • Sensei Greg is an imposing 6'10 (208 cm) but is a perfectly decent guy.
    • So decent, that he is bothered by not being a "traditional" perverted anime sensei.
• Good Is Not Nice: Raven is a strict disciplinarian, quite caustic and doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's also a ruthless fighter, and won't hesitate to risk his life to protect his students.
• Gilligan Cut: "Please don't be on World War II...Dammit!"
• Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Played with every imaginable way.

Kid 1: You know how we all dreamt of dating Nanase someday? Kid 2: Yeah? Kid 1: That dream is dead, but something magical has taken its place.

• Girl Posse: Alpha Bitch Diane and her hangers-on Lucy and Rhoda. At least that's how it seems at first....
• Girls with Moustaches: Several non-canon examples.
  • An Imagine Spot showed Nanase as a man, looking exactly like her normal self only sporting a moustache.
  • Grace had a Jamie Hyneman 'stache as a part of a MythBusters-themed filler arc.
  • The gypsy woman who sells Tedd dangerous magical objects in the non-canon NP arcs has a moustache at one point.
  • Sarah is shown with one when playing as Mario.
• The Glomp: Frequently. a.k.a. "Tackle Cuddle"
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Tedd's glasses, which can do just about everything except correct vision.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Susan's Curiosity and Logic (Curiosity is a Catgirl and Logic is a Vulcan); they end up agreeing, to her chagrin. Later, Susan's Nature and Nurture; they do not agree, and Nurture ends up gagging Nature.
• Got Volunteered: Susan and Nanase (especially Susan) during their trip to Paris.
• Graceful Loser: Principal Verrückt pushes in all the wrong directions, but doesn't mind when he's repelled. At least if it's not about murals.
• G-Rated Drug: Involves a Catgirl with catnip.
  • Random magic potion party. Because drugs're bad, m'kay?
• Grammar Nazi: Mr. Raven is presented and referenced as one, and his Hitler Forelock does not help his case at all.
• Grandfather Clause: Several of the boys originally had very '90s/early '00s hairstyles; while Elliot's mullet and Justin's bowl cut have been toned down to generic medium-guy-length hairstyles. Tedd's curtains are just as curtain-y as ever, though.
• Groin Attack: Sarah delivers a very impressive one to Hedge.
• Hair Antennae: Grace, most of the time. She is part Uryuom though, and they have antennae, so... it makes a kind of sense. Also, Grace in squirrel form and General Shade Tail.
• Hair Wings: The Mysterious Cloaked Figure (Noah) makes hair wings (called by name in the commentary) that are actually hair.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Grace and her brothers, Nioi, Mr. Raven.
• Half-Identical Twins: Elliot and Ellen, though they're not actually twins.
• Hands-Off Parenting: Mr. and Mrs. Dunkel are capable of taking the most bizarre things in stride, to the point where it becomes a Running Gag.

Mrs. Dunkel: Why are there two Brownies? Ellen: I'm Ellen, Mom. I turned into a cat. Mrs. Dunkel: Oh dear. Can you change back? Ellen: Sure, anytime I want. Mrs. Dunkel: That's good.

• • It's implied that Tedd has been doing some WEIRD stuff to and involving Elliot for years, meaning they might just be used to beloved family members becoming small furry animals (or something equally bizarre) on a regular basis. After all, if no permanent harm has come to them so far, why would they assume it would start happening now?
• Hard Head: Lampshaded here. Upon learning that he was knocked out by a blow to the head, Elliot starts worrying about brain damage, but Tedd tells him he's overreacting.
• Heel Face Turn: Ellen, though the whole Evil Twin thing was mostly caused by her thinking she was going to disappear in a month. She was never very good at it, anyhow.
  • Also, once Damien was no longer around to control them, Grace's brothers surrendered peacefully and now live comfortably in a new government facility.
• Hero with an F In Good: As well as F in enchantment. And the same in strategy. Abraham. He thought he was the good guy there, but...
• Herr Doctor: Doctor Germahn.
• Hidden Depths: It's easier to name aversions.
• High on Catnip: The mini-arc "Catnip"; also, the plant itself reappeared later.
• High School: Two of them of the cross-town rivalry variety, complete with uniforms, bizarre teachers, odd mascots, and most of the other associated tropes. Half the cast attends Moperville North and the other half goes to Moperville South.
• Homage: The demonic duck looks very similar to a major character in Goats, the comic strip by Jonathan Rosenberg.
• Hot Amazon: Elliot has no problem dating Nanase, a black belt who's the only student at their dojo who's a better fighter than him.
• Hug and Comment: "You're better than a Neanderthal."
• Hybrid Monster: The result of Uryuoms' eggs through Mix-and-Match Critters, thus Here There Be Chimerae.
• Hyper Awareness: Information gathering is Hedge's strong side. Maybe he's no Sherlock Holmes, but he grasps any clue present, like occasional slips of Elliot knowing Grace or Grace being in a relationship.
  • Diane also displayed this ability when determining that Ellen and Grace were new to Moperville South. She was even wearing a Sherlock Holmes outfit for one panel.
• Hyperspace Mallet: As with everything else in the series, rules for when, where, and why it can and can't appear eventually were provided.
  • At least Susan and Abe did summon actual weapons out of thin air.
  • Now it got even better, but hammers are off-line.
  • Dan Lampshaded his reasoning behind changing the hammer origin in the later story arc. The old guy who looks vaguely like Santa explains his initial reasoning for using the hammer gag to humorous effect... that is, the same as out of the 'verse.
• Hypocritical Humor: Making fun of hacks and unnecessary expositions (aside of the last panel, see the chapter's name).
• Identical Stranger: Susan seems to be some sort of fundamental archetype within the EGS universe. Diane at MSHS is a very close match, barring dress sense (note: Susan is naturally blonde). Even stranger, she is also a dead ringer for a hypothetical niece of elf (i.e. half-immortal) Raven.
• I Gave My Word: Abraham really does not want to kill Ellen Dunkel, but his oath was too inclusive, so... and he's quite happy to be pushed into what sounds like a legitimate loophole.
• Ignored Enemy: Sort of, at least.
• I Have No Sister: Mrs. Kitsune has no sister, and it's clearly unsafe to argue about the accuracy of this statement.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Sarah has a bit of this, mostly because she couldn't spend so much time surrounded by shapeshifters, magical martial artists, and mad scientists without getting jealous or at least curious.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: the TFG
• Immortality: The Immortals are basically spiritual beings who never die, but the way they go about it is almost a deconstruction of the concept. They continue to get older, smarter, stronger, more bored and less sane until the point comes where they basically become Persons Of Mass Destruction. To prevent this, they voluntarily undergo a kind of ritualistic death/rebirth cycle every couple centuries to lose most of their power and memories so they can start over and keep things interesting. Which is a good thing, as Pandora Chaos Raven (name chosen by self) shows to full extent with her crazy, and Eldritch Abomination / Creepy Child forms...
  • Ironically, half-immortals (elves) largely have the advantage over true immortals. Since their power is not constantly increasing like their parents', they don't have to worry about resetting, but get ageless immortality and powerful magic. The only downside is that they are bound by similar rules as the immortals, meaning that they can only interfere directly when a situation involves magic, or to defend themselves and others.

Raven: You are a homicidal wizard attacking a school. No one will care if I kill you.

• • There are also various "aberrations" that immortals ruthlessly destroy, who obtain a pseudo-immortality through either body stealing or parasitism.
• Impossible Insurance: George in El Goonish Shive has car insurance that covers monster-related damage (obviously just to advertise "completeness"). The result: surprise, they have to pay for repairs of a car damaged in a fire monster's attack (and on camera at that).
• Incompatible Orientation: A whole chain of them: Catalina ->Susan ->Justin ->Elliot ->Nanase (not all at the same time, mind)
  • Alllows rather funny Sketchbook entries, though.
  • The Elliot/Nanase dilemma, at least, is neatly resolved with Ellen.
  • The gender-bending complicates this, with bisexual male Susan and straight female Justin making out at Grace's birthday party. Also, at least one of Elliot's female forms has a crush on Justin.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Technically, Magus apparently was behind the v-five Elliot incident and tries to manipulate Ellen within some plot that sounds quite dubious. And is not very good at this. But he's in desperate straits, which isn't even his own fault (unlike Abe's case). And he's still reluctant to kill a guy who stands in his way even when pushed hard to do this.
  • He knows it, too: http://egscomics.com/?date=2008-04-14
• I Never Told You My Name: Painted Black arc. After Elliot is captured he refers to Guineas by name. Guineas then tells Hedge that Elliot knew his name even though he hadn't been told it. This causes Hedge to realize that Elliot must know Grace, who's the only one who could have told him. Hedge then turns this around on Elliot by only referring to Grace as "my sister", so when Elliot refers to her by name, it proves Elliot's spoken with Grace since Elliot and Hedge first met.
• Inept Mage: Abraham, despite being a force to be reckon with when it comes to spells, the guy lacks common sense. This earn him a reputation for this trope.
• Info Dump: Shive is really thorough when it comes to describing the capabilities of Tedd's technology, the mechanics of alien and hybrid genetics, and more recently, magic. Anything left for the readers to guess about is practically guaranteed to be a Chekhov's Gun.
  • The so called Trapped in the Basement portion of New and Old Flames (so-called due to the just under two months real time spent infodumping in the Verres' basement) and the entire Hammerchlorians arc (essentially an entire arc devoted to nothing but infodumps and backstory exposition for Susan and her summoning abilities) are probably the most notorious example of Dan's tendency to slip into infodump territory.
• Informed Ability: Susan's magical powers, which are seen exactly once and then aren't visible for many arcs. Then Susan explains that Nanase's powers are of a different order than hers ("Awakened" vs. "Dreaming") without going into detail.
  • Until much later Susan explained her magical abilities with a big Flash Back. and she is properly "Awakened".
• Innocent Innuendo: "The duck! He's magic you can do!"
  • Grace wouldn't be Grace without this. "Legally, it does (make me an adult)! You can do all sorts of things with me!"
• Insane Troll Logic: Used here, though YMMV on whether it makes sense or not.
  • Also 95% of what comes out of the Principal's mouth.
• Instant Sedation: Jerry got a useful spell.
• Insulted Awake: Ellen did this to Susan once. At the second try.
• Internet Backdraft: In-universe - Anticipated.

Tedd: ...Oh, right... Hotness is subjective...

• Interspecies Romance: Tedd and Grace; Ellen @ Second Life and Archie; the demonic duck also admits to preferring human women. For Uryuom it's quite normal to create chimerae, fertile at that. Isn't done obliviously, as at least psychophysiology matters even with shapeshifting seyunolu.
• Ironic Name: Tiffany "Susan" Pompoms always goes by her middle name, because she considers her actual first- and last-name to be too "perky and upbeat" for her cynical, sardonic personality. (Ironically, it's been made quite clear that if it wasn't for ONE traumatic childhood event, she would've wound up fitting her name just perfectly.)
• I Sense a Disturbance In The Force: Greg, up to becoming rather jumpy from a shapeshifter's exercises without being in the same house.
  • Tedd sensing anything sexy involving Grace.
• Is That What He Told You?: Elliot learns about the other side of the story of Justin's outing. "She told one person." (who then told everyone)
• I Think You Broke Him: Elliot, with his "Gracelyn" form, once "broke Tedd."
  • Two Ellens can cause a sensory overload.
• It's a Small World After All: Hello there. You're dating Tedd Verres?! And... haven't I seen you cosplaying as Chun-Li?
• I Will Show You X: During the Wizard Duel between Terra and Magus, Terra promised to show him "potential".
• Jaw Drop: The last two panels of this strip. And this. And this.
• Juggling Charged Rayguns : Sarah is scared of Shapeshifting and holds a grudge against Tedd after his "just joking around" with a supposedly "not charged" Transformation Ray gun.
• Jumping the Gender Barrier: Elliot and Nanase's relationship had no spark and eventually failed, and she couldn't explain why...until Ellen.
  • Though this trope is never actually invoked, Elliot and Tedd's odd connection teases this. It seems like in any universe where they were born opposite genders (such as one where Elliot has always been "Ellen," and the technically non-canon story where Tedd accidentally and retroactively became "Tess") they are inevitably dating. A partial exception is when Ellen begins living through a "Second Life" in her dreams, but even then Tedd has a crush on her. The trope will probably not be played straight in this case, as historically neither is super-keen on giving up their "real" sexual preference while transformed.
• Kaleidoscope Hair: Happens to Nanase (whose hair turns black when her magic burns out) and Susan (when she goes through an angst-induced awakening)
• Kamehame Hadoken: As a practitioner of "anime-style martial arts," it's no big surprise that Elliot (and Ellen, who "inherited" his abilities) uses a variety that emits short-range force blast. He needs to have free hands to do it.
  • Ellen has a modifying variant as an outright beam from her hand. Sensei Greg is, of course, jealous when he sees it. It turns people into attractive girls, and lately can turn HER into whatever she hits.
• Kicked Upstairs: Mr. Verres winds up in a position created just for him when his boss decides that it's best that he not be directly involved with the frequent cases involving his son and niece, and keep away a cover-up specialist from the limelight (the last part seems to be about to backfire).
• Kewpie Doll Surprise: Justin waves his mental arms wildly at Elliot being too darn cute!
• Knight of Cerebus: Damien. It's sort of a subversion as Dan killed off Damien because he didn't want his comic to develop Cerebus Syndrome. It did anyway, just with seriousness developing within the characters' personal demons rather than fantastical conflict.
• Kudzu Plot: Alongside Schedule Slip - two nasty tastes that really don't go together.
• Lampshade Hanging: Mr. Verres' transformation into the newest Mr. Exposition.
  • And a typical Star Wars fan ranting about writers deciding they need to explain things that no one was questioning. (In the middle of Dan trying to Cerebus Retcon hammerspace.)
    • Just to make sure nobody misses the lampshade, this sequence is titled 'Hammerchlorians'.
    • It turns out the lampshading goes deeper than that, as the whole arc sets the immortal Jerry up to lampshade the Hyperspace Mallet gag, including Dan's reasons for initially using it as well as the reason why he stopped using it.

George: Fans willingly suspended their disbelief for years, and out of nowhere Lucas figures he has to explain it. Any writer who takes something no one was questioning and tries to explain it is a hack. (Cut to Susan on the phone expositing the hell out of the Hammers.)

• • Mr. Verres lampshades one of Grace's attempts to be Miss Exposition.
• Large Ham: Mr. Verres gets his moment, even if only for one panel.
  • Tedd have his moments too. With a Queen quote at that.

Commentary: Tedd has the blood of kings inside of him and he will rock you because he is the champion!

• • "The Child Left Behind" and the same character later. The poor chap got a habit of talking as if he was in a knightly romance book or something.
• Last Het Romance: Melissa to Justin.
• Laughing Mad: Ellen, when she's first created and thinks she's going to die.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Elliot tells this to Tedd here. Not that it stopped them from speaking of it again. Grace's suggestion that Elliot turn into her to be sexy in front of a mirror seems doomed to a similar fate.
• Life Drinker: The monster in France was a former human who achieved immortality by draining the lives of young women.
• Lighter and Softer: After several very dramatic arcs in a row, "New and Old Flames" is... well, something else entirely.
• A Light in the Distance: "What is..." THWACK!
• Loads and Loads of Characters
• Long Runner Tech Marches On: In Shade (2002), Elliot had a landline phone extension in his room (with then-old-tech corded handset); later on all telecommunication among the teenage cast is via Cell Phone and even adults are shown using landlines only at their workplaces.
• Look Behind You!: "Is that a demonic duck of some sort?" Subverted—there really is a demonic duck of some sort except during the strike. Or his high school reunion. Or vacations.
  • Also, used without the duck during Elliot vs. Noah Epic Race.
• Love Is in the Air: The super-pheromones of the Variant Five settings. "Male, female, gay, straight... female variant #5 cares not."
• Mad Scientist: Tedd, Lord Tedd (Evil Overlord, though it's not clear how much), Dr. Germahn (Horny Scientist), Amanda (Hot Scientist), Chika (Crazy Prepared).
• Mama Bear:
  • Knowing that Adrian Raven is half-human and half-immortal, Abraham managed to draw only one conclusion, and mostly wrong one. The prospect of facing said immortal's reaction after he'd beaten her child within a hair's breadth of death somehow escaped his attention in all this haste... Isn't it surprising—where all those heavy boots flying toward his butt came from? And it's still not enough for her.

Pandora-Chaos: Also? He hurt my son.

• • Diane, not surprisingly.

Diane: (after Rhoda was accosted by a boar) It should burn. I'm having pork for lunch.

• • According to Nanase's mother when she's trying to get her a babysitting job, Nanase.

"No, seriously. She will defend your children with the ferocity of a mama bear protecting her cubs."

• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: It's implied that Tedd does this on occasion just for fun, but so far no other character has.
  • Later on it's pretty much verified.
  • Note that this means Elliot is a double victim of this law. It's like the whole universe is out to get him.
• Man Shaped Hole: Damien and Adrian Raven both made big holes part in the window and part in the wall by being blasted through. Both survived this and flying one story down to the ground after, both being tougher than normal humans.
• The Masquerade: At least two—with magic and Uryuoms, and people aren't always allowed into both at once.
  • Grace isn't really into it, though. It's too inconvenient, after all.
  • Broken Masquerade: More or less, done.
    • Pandora is now hellbent on causing this. Also, it will let her son Adrian participate fully in society. Whatever form it's going to take after this, anyway.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Assistant Director Liefeld is rather overmuscled.
  • Justin is very much into geek media. His last name, Tolkiberry, is a portmanteau of Tolkien and Roddenberry.
  • Nanase's last name is Kitsune and she ends up calling her magical clone Fox.
  • Also, Grace's last name, Sciuridae, is the scientific name for various species of squirrel. In addition, her codename is "Shade Tail," a rough translation of "Sciuridae."
  • A few minor characters, such as Susan's geeky boss Mr. Tensaided (ten-sided) and Ellen/Grace's math teacher Mr. Alephnull.
  • Tedd's last name, "Verres," is French for "glasses" and translates into Uryuom as "Bulloc" which is appropriate to his father's cover-up jobs.
• The Men in Black: Until the end of the "Sister II" arc, Mr. Verres was the head of the Paranormal division of the FBI. Now he is the "Director of Paranormal Diplomacy" a position that was created just for him when Kicked Upstairs because his extensive paranormal connections prevented him from being fired.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: About halfway. Gender Benders face the consequences of the new hormonal status and reactions on pheromones, whether they are comfortable with this or not. But Shapeshifting does not turn the subject mentally in a cat, guinea or squirrel. On the other hand, both innate and artificial Shapeshifting have some safeguards.
  • This trope is explored more seriously in the "Grace's Birthday Party" arc, when Susan allows herself to be gender-bent specifically to find out whether being male really does make people act like Jerkasses. (Answer: nope. Evidently her dad had no excuse for his jerkiness.)
• Mind Screw: Lots of it. When done intentionally, usually involves attempts to project the normal family tree onto Ellen's case in several equally disturbing ways.
• Minored in Asskicking: Mr. Raven, though this is more of a Crouching Creeper Hidden Badass
• Missing Mom: Where exactly Tedd's mom is, why she's not around, and what the nature of their relationship is continues to be one of the strip's biggest mysteries.
• Mister Descriptor: "All of you animal people have horrible names."
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Uryuoms' eggs work this way producing Hybrid Monsters, thus Here There Be Chimerae. And then, part-lespuko chimerae.
  • And let's not forget Jeremy, Tedd's housecat with hedgehog spines.
• Mood Whiplash: Oh dear god. What started out as an arc based on Grace and Tedd going on a double date with Ellen and Nanase to keep Tedd's mind off of science ended up by showing that Tedd has a version of Lord Tedd's mechanical arm.

Tedd: Then the next time someone has the balls to mess with us, we will stand together... and we will make them regret it.

• • It gets better: The next comic has Sarah and Susan... playing video games at Sarah's house. Ow, my metaphorical neck.
• Mooks: The not-really-flaming fire summons.
• Morality Pet: Lord Tedd looks almost normal and even rather nice when he looks for Nioi, as opposed to most other scenes with him, while Nioi is convinced he's not that bad and it's all only the corrupting influence of General Shade Tail.
• Motionless Makeover: Justin likes doing this to Nanase when her body's unconscious during the use of her Fairy Doll spell. He limits himself to the hairdo, however.
• Mr. Exposition: Dr. Germahn and Amanda during the Q&A segments, Tedd when he explains the TF/TG gun.
  • Mr. Verres is An ENDLESS BARREL of exposition.
  • Jerry the Immortal is also one of these.
  • Mr. Verres lampshades one of Grace's attempts.
• Mugging the Monster: After Sarah takes Grace out to buy clothes, the two of them are set upon by a mugger. This is how we are introduced to her shapeshifting powers.
  • And her telekinesis as well, although it's not confirmed until this strip.
• Multiple-Tailed Beast: Grace's omega form is a three-tailed squirrel-girl.
• Mundane Fantastic: How Elliot and Ellen's parents react to all the weirdness around them.
• Mundane Utility: Elliot finds out that he must transform before bed each evening to stave off unwanted magic buildups... so, Ellen sees an opportunity to try out new hair colors or make costumes for roleplaying with her girlfriend.
• Mysterious Parent: All that's known about Tedd's mother is that she's somewhere in Europe, and that there's some bad blood between her and her sister Mrs. Kitsune.
  • To a lesser extent, Susan's father. It's eventually explained that he left after being caught in an affair, which was the root of Susan's ultra-feminist tendencies.
• Mysterious Past: What the hell happened in France, anyway?
  • Finally getting resolved as of here!
• Naked Apron: Tedd here, and Elliot here.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Pandora Chaos Raven. "Refer to me as one or as all. I WILL live up to the name."
• Narrator All Along: It's not significant for the plot, but the occasional, initially-anonymous narration in "Sister 3" is revealed to be excerpts from the "memoirs" Pandora's passing on to her next incarnation. The last of these narration boxes fades out as Pandora resets.
• Necessarily Evil: Abraham.
• Negative Continuity: Some of the EGS:NP storylines. Like this one.
• Nepotism: The title of the arc where Justin tries to get Grace a job at the comic book store, referencing the fact that his uncle owns the place.
• Never Heard That One Before: It's not a close encounter of the fifth kind.
• Never Live It Down: In-universe - Abraham's creation of the Dewitchery Diamond. Every properly trained wizard has heard of him.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The magic system explicitly allows any "Awakened" character to develop any power the plot needs, any time it's convenient. The characters acknowledge living in a world where Rule of Drama is an observable phenomenon akin to gravity.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Abraham and his great idea to make the Dewitchery Diamond. What he needed was to remove or suppress the lycanthropy of one guy. What he did is create a Booby Trap for unaware shapeshifters and users of cosmetic magic, with side effects that in turn suffer several other side effects in such a way that whatever problem caused its activation spreads. And it's nigh indestructible, so all this fun never ends.
  • Lets not forget the fact that good ole' Abe thinks it might be intelligent!
• No Bisexuals: The strip has a rather unusual take on sexual attraction and gender identity, which led to vast, multi-site flamewars on whether it was doing the GLBT contingent, and bisexuals especially, a disservice.
  • Not sure if this is what the above example is referring to, but in this comic, being subject to a Gender Bender causes one to gain heterosexual tendencies appropriate to the gender being changed into (basically, straight people become bisexual while homosexuals see no real change in which gender they're attracted to), so El Goonish Shive is an aversion of this, as much of the cast have been bi, albeit only temporarily. Ellen (a magical duplicate of Elliot permanently turned into a girl) is also bisexual but has decided that she isn't able to deal with dating men, largely because she realizes her attraction to guys is a purely artificial construct forced onto her by Sufficiently Advanced Technology.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: "Now now, Mr. Raven, I know you just think of me as a lowly intern with a remarkable resemblance to Zach Braff..."
  • The guy who loaned Elliot a lighter sure looks a lot like Silent Bob.
• Noodle Implements: Ninjas, japanese bath houses, and hamsters. Lots of hamsters.
• Noodle Incident: Two if you're just counting the main cast, whatever happened in France (and how exactly French speaking immortals are related to this) and the series of events that led to Sarah becoming a Catgirl. The France events were narrated in details only May 2010 -- five years later. The Catgirl incident was never told in sequence or flashbacked, but alluded enough to give a very good idea what happened. Few months before the comic started, while Tedd and Sarah worked on a project for school together. He was just joking around!
• No Infantile Amnesia: Ellen, via her "Second Life."
• No Mouth: Until the second story arc, Tedd's mouth wasn't drawn unless he was yelling or grinning.
• No Ontological Inertia: After a summoner is killed or rendered unconscious everything he summoned vanishes.
• No Pronunciation Guide: Subverted. When Grace and Ellen start school, we're not only told how to pronounce "Sciuridae" but also "Dunkel".
• No Social Skills: Grace. She was raised in a lab, and it took her a long time to realize why everyone in the main cast was uncomfortable with her nudity. Also lacks what should be common knowledge.
• Not Helping Your Case: When Mr. Verres has given permission for Grace to have a birthday party while he's away, on the condition that Elliot supervise (instead of Ellen):

Mr. Verres: The clincher, however, was that crazed look you got on your face when I first suggested the party. Ellen: That crazed look could have meant any number of things. Mr. Verres: That doesn't help your case.

• Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: One of Justin's fangirls is sad that he's gay. But only because she can't ask him out. Even though she already has a boyfriend.
  • "Wait, do lesbians have to say that?"
• No Yay: Several in-universe examples.
  • This is Tedd's reaction to the thought of Nanase, his cousin, involved with anyone.
  • In the 'Hammerchlorians' arc, it looks like Sarah may need to settle occasional feelings in this area regarding Elliot's less manly times, too.
  • Justin is less than thrilled with Elliot's less manly times as well.
  • Elliot and Tedd at Grace's saying she wouldn't mind Elliot turning into her if he wants to experiment with making his 'turn into a girl' magic sexy.
• Oblivious to Love: Done twice, played with and played straight, with the same character. In an early storyline, Elliot pretended to be unaware that Sarah was in love with him, in a complicated (and failed) attempt to spare her feelings when she found out he had a girlfriend. They work it out. He also seems to be genuinely unaware that Justin has feelings for him.
• Odd Friendship: Susan and Tedd. One is the result of a Straw Feminist upbringing. The other is an enormous pervert who openly objectifies women. To say they got off to a rocky start would be an understatement, but once they found common ground (Parental Abandonment and Star Trek), they actually get along okay.
• Of Corset Hurts: Never demonstrated, but conversed.

"...So basically, the difference between traditional corsets and the modern faux corsets is the absence of evil."

• Offer Void In Arizona: Played for Laughs in this comic's commentary.
• Official Couple: Tedd and Grace. The other couples, Sarah/Elliot and Nanase/Ellen, seem slightly less stable, though at least one is getting better.
• Offscreen Crash: More like an offscreen explosion.
  • And a really big one.
• Oh Crap:
  • "Oh Hell," actually, when Jerry turns around and discovers that Susan has gained a (somewhat freaky looking) hair-Battle Aura after he pointed out that he created the hammer system not to prevent sexual harassment, but to encourage it.
  • Elliot/Heidi, realizing that he just kissed his girlfriend's sister when in an alternate identity. After calling her sexy. On TV. Yes, it was just a goodbye peck on the cheek, and he could blame it on his magical disguise messing with his head, but there's still reason to be concerned, as Elliot's girlfriend is very insecure when compared to her older sister.
  • The first one ever came in this comic. Of course, it's more of Elliot saying it in sympathy to Tedd.
  • Resident Badass Teacher Raven gets one here.
• Older Than They Look: Raven looks 40-50, but he's old enough to have taught Nanase's mother. These comics make it clear he's also arguably Younger Than They Look, since he evidently uses an illusion spell to look older (being half-immortal basically means eternal youth).
• Old Master: Invoked

Greg: For alas it is my greatest of shames as an anime martial arts master that I am not an old man or a pervert!!!

• One-Gender Race: While some Uryuoms living on Earth adopt gender roles, they really are ambisexual; any two Uryuoms can form an egg together, which can then be 'fertilized' with any available DNA sources.
• One-Sided Arm Wrestling: Nanase vs Man-Susan
• Only Six Faces: Maybe not six, but it's here and is only aggravated by the "shapeshifting into some similar form" theme. However, he got better.
• Opaque Lenses: Tedd's glasses.
• Open-Minded Parent: The Dunkels, whose idea of punishing Elliot involves deciding he can only have one brownie with dinner, then forgetting that decision when the time comes and letting him have as many as he wants. There's also a Running Gag where something utterly bizarre happens (like Elliot turning into a girl for the first time) and they respond with indifference, amusement, or immediate acceptance, usually after everyone else has made a much bigger deal of it.
• Our Elves Are Better: Elves are what you get when you breed humans and immortals (read: small-g gods) together, with all the power that implies. Raven happens to be one, which explains how he's been teaching since Nanase's mother was in high school.
  • Subverted though, since elves are bound to similar rules as immortals, being disallowed from directly interfering with mortals when magic is not involved.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The creature that attacked Susan and Nanase in France. It's strongly emphasized by Susan that it wasn't really a vampire, but it was vampire-like enough that they may as well call it one.
• Over Nine Thousand: The newest story arc is called 9001%.
• Owl Be Damned: "READ or the owl will eat you." Later reused with a real big owl in Goonmanji. Also, a Running Gag with Hedge.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Parodied; aliens avoid detection by wearing T-shirts with phrases like "Homo sapiens."
  • Aliens? What aliens?
  • "The Ecology Of Anteaters (Not a Spellbook)."

• Parental Abandonment: Mr. Verres is often away from home on government business, and the former Mrs. Verres is in Europe somewhere. Meanwhile, Mr. Pompoms has only been seen in Susan's memories, and significantly, his face is always obscured. Finally, all of Grace's parents are dead; her human gene-mother actually having died before she was conceived, her Uryuom father being murdered by Damien, and her other two parents being non-sentient lab animals which presumably would not have survived.)
• Partial Transformation: Grace can transform to any stage between full squirrel and full human, can selectively morph away her furry antennae, as well as routinely pull off various Shape Shifter Mashups with any or all of her continually growing number of humanoid forms.
• Personality Powers: In this 'Verse magic development is based on "who you are and what you're doing" -- at least normally.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Grace and a guy she just knocked out with a sleeper hold.
• Playing with Fire: Damien.
• Playing with Syringes: Project Lycanthrope.
• Please Get Off Me: "I appreciate your affection, but I need to breathe"
• Please Put Some Clothes On: The standard response to Grace's early nudism. Playing with the trope—she actually takes it as people thinking she's ugly.
• Poisonous Friend: Nioi acts on the assumption that Lord Tedd would be better off without his personal Blood Knight. In turn, General Shade Tail's opinion of Nioi is pretty low.
• Political Correctness Gone Mad: The strip originally called "Politically Correct to the Bitter End, though Ironically, I Think the Bloodgrem's British"
• Poor Communication Kills: Averted by Justin when confronted with an angry, incomprehensible fire monster; his first response is to try and work out a way to communicate, rather than go straight to beating the tar out of it. It attacks anyway, but it's the thought that counts. Later his sensei Greg tries to talk as far as possible too.
• Post-Historical Trauma: Done self-consciously for Grace's first day at school. Subverted when it turns out to be not about World War Two as such, but related personal experience.
• Power Gives You Wings: Nanase, here. And boy does she look PISSED.
• Power Glows: Mostly subverted. The glow is optional and only used to indicate that said person is using his/her powers. This is the case with Nanase's fairy doll, and by Word of God, with Elliot's and Nanase's martial art skills.
  • The reason or meaning of occasionally glowing Tedd when he thinks of Grace is (as yet) unknown. As is his glowing during a Eureka! moment and a personal revelation. Apparently it's a real glow and not artistic convention, as Grace can see it too.
• Power Perversion Potential: Tedd showers as a girl.
  • Also subverted: Elliot fails at perversion.
• Practice Kiss: So far, only as an Imagine Spot:
  • The trope is mentioned in this strip.
  • And when Sarah considers what Tedd (shapechanged to look like Grace) might think goes on in women's restrooms.
• Precision F-Strike: Grace pretty much swears for the first time here.
• Prescience Is Predictable: Chaos only helps out Magus because she wants to make things as unpredictable as possible.
• Protectorate: Though she's gotten more assertive on her own behalf over the last several arcs, pretty much the only surefire way to piss off Grace is to threaten her friends. You may not get the chance to do this more than once.
• Psychoactive Powers: When someone makes Grace explode (metaphorically), something is going to explode (literally).
• Psychotic Smirk: Along with Evil Laugh, played to the hilt with Raven though he could just be being creepy and weird.
• Puppy Dog Eyes: None Can Stand Alone Against a Septet of Puppy Dog Eyes! When performed by Susan, it's mostly used for shock effect.
  • At least when she does it intentionally. Otherwise...
  • And again.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Lord Tedd. Lampshaded in one strip.

Mr. Verres: Elliot, your concerns are based on incomplete and false information. We have been addressing the Lord Tedd situation, and I can assure you, it wouldn't make sense for him to be behind it. Elliot: You have?! Mr. Verres: Of course I have! Did you honestly think my strategy after hearing that someone from another universe was allegedly out to kill my son was to ignore it and hope for the best?! Elliot: That... seemed like what we were doing... Mr. Verres: Well, it wasn't. But that's not important right now. This is all complicated enough as it is with-out dragging Lord Tedd into it.

• • Dr. Germahn. Also lampshaded/hand-waived by the man himself here.
• Pop Cultural Osmosis Failure: Grace, even for stuff that's not so "pop."

Grace: Who the hell is Santa Claus?

• • Elliot apparently didn't pay much attention to The Matrix.

Mr Tensaided: (wearing dark glasses) Hello, Mr. Anderson. Welcome to the video store. Elliot: Hello! It's, uh, Dunkel, actually. Elliot Dunkel.

• Ravens and Crows: Murder Shroud. The best Goth spell ever.
• The Rant: The commentaries on some comics, which may explain a plot point, a technique used, or Dan's opinion on Scrubs and Family Guy's different styles of Indulgent Fantasy Segue.
  • They may also (unintentionally) explain Schedule Slip, as in more rant = less art.
  • And then even this was Lampshaded / self-parodied. Also:

Elliot and Sarah: (a synchronized Face Palm) Aw crap! Susan: What? Did I say something wrong? Tedd: They've heard the rant to follow before.

• Rapunzel Hair: Elliot during Grace's Birthday Party. Susan has this naturally and it was lampshaded quite rudely.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Raven, as shown here.
• Reinventing the Telephone: Nanase's Fairy Form. With inevitable commentary on this by the rest of the cast.
• Red Herring: Eric, who was introduced at the start of the New and Old Flames arc, initially appears to be the one who summoned the fire creature, but we quickly find out that it was really Dex, who only appeared to be an odd background character.
  • And it turns out that Dex wasn't the Big Bad, either. He was being possessed.
• Relationship Reboot: Towards the end of the Sister arc, Ellen and Nanase do this, though Nanase doesn't get it at first. Ellen then goes on to reintroduce herself to the entire cast, with Nanase threatening to bitch slap anyone who laughs.
• Relax-O-Vision: Used in-universe and weaponized by Jerry. Causes both calming and illusory fluffy animals to cuddle.
• Replacement Goldfish: Grace; Dr Sciuridae replaced the original gene sample that was to be used for Shade Tail with one from his daughter, after she was killed in a car accident.
• Reset Button: Averted; this is why Time Travel is impossible in EGS.

Sarah: Grace finally snapped and destroyed half of Moperville. Tedd: TO THE UNDO BUTTON!

• Retcon / Revision: Melissa was introduced as some girl that Justin dated once as a freshman who became a Stalker with a Crush in denial and who outed him. Later, we get details where she's an Unlucky Childhood Friend who after one failed date (when he realized he was gay) let his secret loose. And then the other side of the story where she couldn't deal with losing the boy she wanted to marry nor the aftermath of confiding in her gossipy sister while emotionally devastated by the break up and became delusional.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Wondering about something while talking to a summoned creature may quickly end up in Too Much Information.
  • And this bit of dialogue:

Tedd: Who ever gave you that idea? Grace: Everyone I have ever known ever.

• Right Behind Me: That's awkward.
• Right-Hand-Cat: For an Evil Lady. Also, Susan and Jeremy.
• Romance-Inducing Smudge: Subverted when Ellen goes to wipe a smudge off Nanase's face and she freaks out because she was having trouble admitting her attraction to Ellen, and moments like that only made it more awkward.
• Rousseau Was Right: After Tedd calls out half the school for making fun of Susan when she's the only one trying to change the uniforms, most of them are quick to apologize, with one saying that "we aren't a Borg Hive Mind." Earlier, when Grace runs out of class (due to not having heard of WWII) and is very embarrassed upon coming back, the other students are quick to offer their condolences over her leading such a sheltered life, and are angry at the people who subjected her to that rather than her. In fact, this comic demonstrates in many places that, with a few exceptions, high school students aren't the bastards that most media would have us believe. They're just normal people, with basically good natures.
• Rule of Cute: The only problem with Art Evolution is that Dan is almost incapable of designing a female character without making her dangerously adorable one way or another.
  • Cute Little Fangs:
    • In the person of Catalina Bobcat.
    • Grace in her squirrel-girl form (a squirrel obviously should have big incisors instead, but she also got lespuko traits).
    • Mr. Raven also clearly has fangs, while hardly cute—though Amanda could argue about the latter.
    • Vladia also has little fangs, though it's harder to tell.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Jeremy tried this on Susan, but failed. See also Sarah's reaction to Grace's full squirrel form
  • Cuddle Bug: Grace and Ellen occasionally fall into this—they hug someone all the time, while The Glomp was performed not by one of them only twice: by Nanase (to Ellen) and Catalina (to Tedd). In the Second Life it was said to be fairly typical for a greater chimera. As to Ellen, at least Justin thinks it's pretty normal for girls. Or she's just that uninhibited.
  • Meganekko: Chika, the newly introduced colleague and sane partner of Amanda. Or at least looks like one most of the time.
    • Much to his chagrin, Tedd gets this at times when he's wearing his glasses.
    • Dan commented that he's been doing this more and more lately with random female background characters.
• Rule of Drama: It's been stated explicitly that magic is "overly dramatic," such as when all dark blue dye from Susan's hair ran out of her hair and into her clothes, followed by the magic making dark blue her natural hair color. Just because.

Grace: But why did her hair grow? Jerry: See "over the top emphasis."

• Rule of Fun: The author's stated reason for just why transforming is ridiculously, absurdly safe.

Amanda: (Evil glare) It's more fun that way. [KRAK-A-THOOM!]

• Rule of Funny: Why else would THIS happen?
• Rule of Sexy: "Why haven't you buttoned up?"
• Running Gag: The Demonic Duck; Elliot and Ellen (and in one strip Tedd) saying "Za?"
  • "Either I'm a narcissist, or I'm just that girly." Either way, that was a disturbing revelation, Tedd.
  • Attempts to build a genealogy tree for Ellen in several diferent, but equally ripe with Mind Screw ways. She's an Opposite Gender Clone created by a magical artifact in conjunction with Gender Bender Magitek, but those around her keep trying to describe her parentage with traditional mother/father roles. For example, Ellen could be considered the daughter of Elliot and Tedd. Elliot's the mom because Ellen came from him and Tedd's the dad because he made it happen. Or she's a daughter of Elliot and Dewitchery Diamond, so one can discuss which is her "mom" and which "dad", etc. Turned serious with this strip.
  • "READ or the owl will eat you."
  • "Zappa the kitty!"
  • Girls who have kissed Sarah count. (currently 3)
• Running on All Fours: Grace during the "Painted Black" arc. She encounters Vlad while infiltrating Damien's underground lair in her half squirrel/half human form and gets down on all fours like a squirrel to run away from him.
• Saying Too Much: "An Endless Barrel Of Exposition" spilled it again.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Mr. Verres, on occasion, and Tedd here. Preceded by Tedd's failed attempt to invoke this.
• Scenery Censor: Due to Grace's views on casual nudity, and a lack of Magic Pants.
• Schedule Slip: Part of the reason arcs seem to take forever. Dan's been all over the place with it, but at the bare minimum a strip usually comes out twice a week, baring hiatuses or serious slips.
  • Zig-zagged recently. There's no set schedule yet, but there's frequent updates.
• Schoolgirl Lesbians: Ellen and Nanase, and apparently Catalina
• Security Blanket: Susan's Star Trek T-shirts. Tedd's glasses.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Damien was created with the intent of fulfilling a prophecy.
• Shapeshifting: Lots. There are several "natural" shapeshifters, the TF gun, the TF belt, etc.

one bunny: 'EGS' really stands for 'Extremely Gratuitous Shapeshifting'

• • Baleful Polymorph: Occurred on-screen and in backstory, though more discussed.
    • In the comic's prehistory Sarah was once accidentally turned into a Catgirl, due to Tedd's unsafe handling of a Transformation Ray gun. Cue an understandable grudge. See also the commentary of a filler image.
    • Elliot was turned into a girl just before the Transformation Ray broke. He would've automatically turned back after a month, and Tedd probably could've rebuilt the device sooner, but Elliot was so desperate to return to normal that he resorted to using a magical artifact, which had unexpected side effects.
  • Involuntary Shapeshifting: Multiple examples. Elliot, for example, has shapeshifting Gender Bender powers, but he's at a stage where his body doesn't know its limits, so basically, he needs to transform every day to burn off excess magic, or else it'll overload at some inopportune moment, causing him to involuntarily transform with barely any warning.
  • Magic Pants: At first, it's averted; shapeshifters apparently ruin a lot of shirts, and Grace, the biggest shapeshifter, has absolutely no nudity taboo. Later, the trope is brought in, with textile technology from a race of alien shapeshifters.
  • Painful Transformation: Sometimes—seems to depend on specific forms and method.
    • Boy-to-Catboy was painful but not quite incapacitating with an early model and acceptable with TF gun—Sarah complaining about Catgirl incident mentioned every possible problem but this. Human-to-human (Gender Bender or normal female to female v5) is "Wait -- I feel more jiggly than I should...."
    • An attempt to transform from living genetic salad of six kinds of beings to human was nearly lethal for Vlad. Part of Grace's design supposedly was to counter this problem. Though it may be partially because Project Lycanthrope seyunolu were not just made by eggs but also tinkered with.
  • Required Secondary Powers / You Can See Me?: Greater chimerae seem not to have much problems with identifying people they know in different forms. Uryuom once failed at this, but it may tell more about mental changes in Tedd after acquaintance with Grace.
  • Shapeshifter Baggage: where were my keys?
  • Shapeshifter Default Form: Artificial transformations are temporary, in normal conditions new forms expire and the subject snaps back. A chimera may keep other forms for a good while, but is born in hybrid form and deem these the most "natural" i.e comfortable. Though Grace appears to have no problem remaining in her human form (plus antenna) for long periods.
  • Transformation Ray: The key plot device of the series.
  • Transformation Trinket: The Cat Belt.
• Sherlock Scan: Diane does it while cap-and-piped. So much for being introduced as an Alpha Bitch two and half real-time years earlier.
• Shipper on Deck: Sarah, with Nanase and Ellen. Interesting because she's essentially returning the favor: Nanase helped Elliot get together with her. Grace is just as enthusiastic about pairing them up. In fact, the only person who doesn't like the idea is Tedd, who considers Nanase his "ugly cousin"—he can't handle the thought of her being in a relationship with anybody.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: If they can't be milked for drama, they're gone. At present, this means the Hammers are gone, and Greg is closing his dojo. Also leads to Doing In the Scientist with both Hammerspace and Anime-Style Martial Arts being explained by magic.
• Shout-Out: See El Goonish Shive/Shout Out
• Show Within a Show:
  • The Lucky Bunny Bounty Show (Greg and Dex are fans, Tedd owns the dvd, and now there's a poster).
  • Sarah draws comics—something about a squirrel-boy character named Dan.
  • Not only that, but once even lampshaded guest comic provided by a character from within the comic itself. Just in case Fourth Wall wasn't already turned into Klein bottle.
• Shrouded in Myth: Grace, at times, at least as far as the Child Left Behind is concerned.

Grace: You can call me Shade Tail. (whump) Greg: Are you okay? CLB: I'm fine! I tripped! Grace: But you were sitting. CLB: Yes I was. Sorry, mistress. Ma'am. Shade Tail.

• Shy Finger-Twiddling: A rare male example (well, usually), Elliot does this a lot.
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Has characters that practically run the gamut between human and animal.
• Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism: Tends towards the idealistic side.

Word of Dan: I'm not saying a more "gritty" approach is wrong in general; I speak only of what is appropriate for this comic. The world is full of cynical, gritty and dark comics full of brooding, angst and doom, and while I'm sure many of those comics are good, one of my specific intentions for EGS is for it to not be one of those comics.

• Side-Story Bonus Art: The Sketchbook and Newspaper, with parts occasionally squirreled into the canon.
• Singing in the Shower: Played for Laughs here.
• Single-Target Sexuality: While admitting that she does like other people, Grace is pretty much a Teddsexual. This was even pointed out in universe. With huge clues to the reasons before it's fully revealed.
• Sinister Silhouettes: About half the cast was introduced this way.
• Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness: The early strips had No Fourth Wall. As the years progressed, any mention of the author or even fourth wall breaks in general were dropped and are now relegated to the newspaper and filler strips, which are out of canon.
• Smelly Skunk: Averted with two seyunolu girls who are part-skunk. Apart from names translating to "scent" and "fragrance", there is no mention of how they smell one way or another.
• Some Kind of Force Field: Greg can do it. Also, "Standard lockdown procedure." For schools that have a wizard teacher, that is.
• Species Surname: 'Sciuridae' is the formal name for the family which includes squirrels.
• Speech Bubble Censoring: Nanase, then Lisa.
• Spit Take: So close. Mr. Raven held the tea inside his mouth only with a heroical effort. As The Rant points out, Grace sometimes have such effect on people.
• Spock Speak: Noah, though Dan has said he is trying to limit this trope.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: For a long time, women who were offended by sexist men could conjure hammers from out of nowhere and use them to pummel the offender. This lasted until the person who originally created this ability passed away.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Nanase and Ellen have kicked pretty much the rest of the cast out of the spotlight. They even had the most screentime in Painted Black, Grace's backstory arc.
  • Tedd even lampshaded it.
  • This seems to have decreased somewhat lately, as Ellen and Nanase only appeared 12 times (together or alone—Nanase appeared 6 times alone, Ellen appeared 2 times alone, and they appeared together 4 times) in the latest mini-arc (which has lasted for 43 strips). Today's spotlight stealer might instead be Justin, though Elliot beat him by 2 strips (31-29). Susan was becoming this during Hammerchlorians, but has had 4 appearances since then.
    • Now in One Way Road the plot, while seemingly focused on Tedd, keeps derailing for Ellen.
• Stat Grinding: Nanase takes this approach to trying to learn more spells once she realizes she can.
• Stealth Pun: Many, especially in minor characters' names (see Meaningful Name above).
  • Mr. Raven's Murder Shroud spell creates a cloud that exploding crows come out of. A flock of crows can also be called a murder.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: The Latin word 'Sciuridae' translates as 'Shade Tail', which was also Grace's Code Name, though it was not in reference to Dr. Sciuridae.
• The Stinger: It looks like Dan acquired the taste for it by the latter arcs (which somewhat improves Rotating Arcs side in itself). After all was said and done in "New And Old Flames", the last page has a good hook. "One Way Road" got an even better "postscriptum" in the last panels.
• Invisible to Gaydar: Justin, and also Nanase. There are no flamboyant stereotypes to be found in this comic.
  • Well, except for Justin really likes to play with hair. Though Dan tried to explain that it wasn't because he was gay it's just he happens to have a strong emotional link to hair...and it just happens to be a gay stereotype.
    • He mostly plays with Nanase's hair, though.
  • Inverted with Ambiguously Gay Ambiguous Gender Noah (who is Friends with Benefits with Melissa).
• Straw Feminist: Susan's mother, who instilled it into her daughter. Susan is a Deconstruction of this, as her stereotypical views on men were influenced by an event where she walked in on her father having an affair. It turns out she doesn't actually hate her father for this, but was trying to excuse his actions by believing that he couldn't help it because he was male (a notion that her mother helped to reinforce). Eventually she realizes that people just make stupid mistakes, no matter what their gender.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Any straight Gender Bender becomes bisexual for the duration. A certain male-to-female setting - which can also be used on women - will, for 48 hours, make you extremely attractive, even to people who normally don't like girls. Not to mention the Stupid Sexy Flanders overtones of Gender Benders in the first place. Even without gender-bending, Tedd is constantly getting this; Justin once joked that he shouldn't worry about gay men being attracted to him. Also, while removing his glases was enough to make V5-ed Elliot blush:

Sarah: In Elliot's defense, your face isn't really the best barometer of whether he was really into guys...

• • Noah seems to trigger this among the fans.
• Sudden School Uniform: Due to Webcomic Time, the uniform policy Moperville North announced in March 2005 and abolished in January 2010 was really in effect for two and a half days.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Tedd is attempting to treat magic just like any other area of the (mad) sciences—physics, chemistry, robotics, etc. So far, we've seen him trying empirical testing of transformation spells, running numbers instead of hoping that things "just work", and so forth. It's heavily, heavily implied that "Lord Tedd" resulted in one timeline when he forgot the value of friendship in lieu of obsessing over magic-turned-science -- and thus, power -- to the exclusion of all else.
• Summon to Hand: Susan can do this via Hammerspace.
• Super Empowering: Immortals have the ability to trigger Awakenings, provided the subject has built up enough magical energy.
• Super Gender Bender: Elliot acquires a spell that allows him to turn into a voluptuous superheroine.
• Super Mode: Nanase with Angel-form, Elliot with "Cheerleadra".
• Supernatural Aid: Immortals work this way rather than interfering more directly.
• Super Soldier: Grace's brothers and Grace herself; the older chimeras were meant to be super-assassins, while Grace was created specifically to fight Damien.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial
  • The cover of one character's spell book reads "The Ecology of Anteaters (Not a Spellbook)".
  • "I assure you that we have never met before, with the possible exception of that one time when we did."
  • Lisa had a bad first year of college apparently.
  • "Why, father! I have been in this bathroom the whole time, and not sleeping with the squirrel girl as you previously suggested!" "Oh, well, that's good to know."
• Sword Cane:Raven has this, but carries it only when expecting serious trouble.
• Take That: "George Lucas: Take That -- And Back!," "Vampire sparkling: what exactly is a big Fetish Retardant" and "An Evil Monkey American!"
  • Sketchbook got things like this.
  • "Get out of here, you blonde androgynous interloper! Go play Final Fantasy X or something!"
  • How about delivering a two-for-one to his own story in progress and to George Lucas both?
• "Take That!" Kiss: and it's even made a tradition...
• Taking You with Me: Damien says the trope name word for word here.
• The Talk: Susan has to explain to Grace why nudity is awkward. Before that, others tried and failed.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Nanase gambles on Abraham's good intentions to convince the wizard to swear an oath not to harm Ellen.
• Talking to the Dead: An unknown would-be avenger aka Mysterious Cloaked Figure (later revealed to be Noah) in "The Child Left Behind."
• Tastes Like Diabetes: In-universe - Susan began physically choking after Elliot and Sarah started flirting in the same room as her.
  • And used this taste as a repellent, accidentally giving Justin Brain Bleach deficiency syndrome.
• Tempting Fate: Grace and Raven knew it's not good. Abraham didn't.
  • "{{{1}}}" (cue a noticeably less badass pose 15 pages later)
• There Are No Therapists: Averted with this. Read the title if you don't get it. Also see the text message sent here.
  • More to the point, there obviously are therapists - it just seems nobody knows when to get one. This is most apparent with Susan, who obviously has some serious issues, but could probably have been therapized (whether that is still possible now cannot be said).
• There Can Be Only One: Possibly subverted; while Lord Tedd is supposedly out to kill the "weak Tedds," Nioi insisted that he was misunderstood, and it is clear from various hints that he has a Freudian Excuse lurking in the shadows. Unfortunately, due to the Kudzu Plot, he's been Put on a Bus, so it'll be some time before we find out why.
• This Is a Song: Sarah's cellphone has one of these:

this is a ringtone song... ringing all the--*

• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: Melissa, of all people.
  • And Justin. Don't forget Justin.
• This Is Reality: One of the immortals says so here.
• This Is Wrong on So Many Levels: As they said during the "Inkblot Test Handwriting" incident,

Justin: This is messed up on so many levels. I'm guessing you don't visit your cousin and uncle that much? Nanase: It's common sense not to.

• The Time of Myths: "Sister 3" part 1, "Legacy", (which, be warned, spoils Adrian Raven's parentage for "Sister 2") depicts Pandora as being from a deliberately indefinite time of dragons, werewolves, Giant Spiders, giant magic lion bears, and adventurous explorers wearing (according to the commentary) "vaguely medieval fantasy clothing, taking inspiration from The Legend of Zelda and The Sword in the Stone". "Sister 3" part 7, "An Unkindness", implies that the werewolf was the one Abraham created, suggesting that he too is from this time period.
• Time Travel: Averted. It's impossible.
• Timmy in a Well: Parodied, almost by name.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Happens to Abraham, an ancient wizard who created the Dewitchery Diamond intended to remove terrible curses like lycanthropy. And turned out to have the rather severe drawback of splitting a cursed individual into the original and an embodiment of the curse adept at spreading the curse to others. Unable to destroy the diamond, Abraham swore to dedicate his life to killing these cursed forms, which were generally vicious and powerful monsters (having failed to consider things like cosmetic magic). So he awakens from self-imposed suspended animation, sensing that the diamond has been used again. He is horrified to learn that one guy had used the diamond to cure himself of a Gender Bender, accidentally creating an Opposite Gender Clone, so the latest cursed form he's sworn to kill is an innocent teenage girl—but feels compelled to go through with it. In the end, Nanase is able to convince Abraham not to murder Ellen, reasoning that following the letter of his oath would violate the spirit of his oath, since it was made with the intention of protecting innocent people.
• Too Much Information:
  • Fine, whatever!
  • In the climax of "Sister 3", Susan would like Adrian Raven to slow down, take time to process what just happened, and stop telling her about his sex life.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In the off-continuity Goonmanji arc, the main cast pisses off the evil cursed Reality Warper game by being far too perverted/accustomed to the Mad Science to treat whatever it does to them as something more than Fetish Fuel at best and petty annoyance at worst.
• Toplessness From the Back: Oh, boy
• Trans Equals Gay: Tedd catches a lot of this from the start, which is completely groundless. The author indicated in a non-canon piece that Justin would love being a girl so he could pick up guys. After receiving complaints, turned it the other way in follow-up piece and kept it from entering the comic's canon. Later on in the canon story Justin addresses the fact that he doesn't actually want to be a woman, even though it would make his life easier.
• Transformation Comic: One of the definitive examples.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Known as an Angst-Induced Awakening, one of the standard ways for magic potential to be realised.
• Tribute to Fido: Guineas is based on a friend's guinea pig.
• Tropes for Dummies: For squirrels.
• True Companions: Although the two members that are actually family have virtually no interaction with each other.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy : Nanase likes Ellen, but since girl-Elliot is identical to Ellen, Hilarity Ensues when Nanase sees them (more or less) tickle-fighting.
• Two Gamers on a Couch: The NP stories are starting to show shades of this.
• Tyke Bomb: "Project Lycanthrope" chimerae. Including Grace, although it didn't work very well.
• Ultimate Job Security: Principal Verrückt, as Susan notes.
• Unsound Effect: Not all that frequent, but notably including Sensory Overload when Nanase saw Ellen and female Elliot tickle-fighting in their underwear.
• Unstoppable Rage: After Grace finds out what happened to her real father, she goes utterly ballistic on Damien. She snaps out of it before actually killing him, though. Also happens to Nanase when Abraham tries to destroy Ellen.
• Utility Magic
• Visible Silence: Principal Verrückt of Moperville North High School is temporarily rendered speechless by Sarah's Puppy Dog Eyes.
• Visual Pun: Susan's curiosity is a Catgirl, and what do we say about cats and curiosity?
• Wall of Text: "No, seriously, what's the plan?"
• Wangst: Played with in-universe in regards to Susan's "major angst-induced Awakening."

Jerry: Angst-induced Awakenings are usually triggered by things like murdered loved ones or a village burning down, not disappointment over origin stories.

• Webcomic Print Collection: Two volumes; the first is out of print.
• Webcomic Time: Eight years of EGS as a webcomic is just over two months of time in-comic. The Birthday Party was a particularly jarring example; a year of EGS was one day of in-comic time. This makes Ellen's character and Nanase coming out slightly odd.
• Weird Trade Union: The demonic duck belongs to the Distraction Union. And he doesn't like "scabs".
  • The Distraction Union apparently has a booth at EGS-Con.
• Wham! Episode: The "Painted Black" arc.
  • May 31, 2010.

Word of God: I have frequently seen Susan described as having a "bored" look on her face. For a long time now, I have seen it as something else.

• • The end scene of Death Sentence. Rhoda has a Power Tattoo, her spell is making things grow, and she was the one who turned the boar big in the first place.
• Wham! Line: "It was real. The monster was a golem created by one who must be found. The girl is a good Samaritan who can fly. What was seen is what was."
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: "Surely Nothing Bad Can Come from This.".. Right?
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Indiana Elliot And The Temple Of Swedish Furniture storyline consisted of Elliot shopping for a Swedish TV stand. 8 comics in, we have an epic chase sequence.
  • This comic has the most epic clicking of "do not like" ever.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: Susan's fairy doll acts on her subconscious. Sarah and Grace have a field day interpreting how its actions show things that Susan tries so hard to hide.
• What Have I Become?: Tedd asks this of himself after saying that he would rather figure out the science behind Elliot's transformation magic than ogle his breasts (yes, the pronoun is correct).
• Why Can't I Hate You?: Justin feels this way towards Sarah.
• Willfully Weak: Mr. Raven is half immortal and very powerful—but not allowed to interfere with mortal events. Mostly. Unless you're stupid enough to press his Berserk Button.
• Wine Is Classy: The presence of a glass of wine in Mrs. Pompoms hand seems to be an example of the high society version.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Revealed to be the reason why Immortals "reset" every two hundred years. As time goes by, they become "more bored, more powerful, and less sane," which as Jerry notes is "kind of a bad combo." This could explain why Pandora acts the way she does, since alleviating boredom through certifiably insane plots is her entire reason for doing things. She may have never "reset" in her life.
• Wondrous Ladies' Room: Averted, Lampshaded, and flat-out abused.
  • And then it got even better.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The fire-summon mooks have a weakness to water, despite not actually being on fire. Trying to make flaming creatures with a summon spell that can't allow it (the creatures would incinerate themselves) causes the effect.
• We Were Rehearsing a Play:

Tedd: They're... um... rehearsing a play... Pizza boy: A play? Tedd: Yes. A play. Pizza boy: About two guys fighting over skirts? Tedd: Yes..No! They're staying true to the play's Shakespearean roots by having men play female roles!

• • At the end of "Sister II", Ellen and Nanase rehearse a play about CPR.
• Wiki Vandal: According to Mr Verres, there's a unit of The Men in Black "whose whole job is to fill [wikis] with gibberish".

Commentary: That last panel isn't true, by the way. At least, I don't think it is. I've heard of crazier government expenditures, and it would explain a few things. Although, wikis related to TV shows and the like seem to be reliably accurate. Maybe those are written by genuine fans, and everything else is by men in black? Or maybe they like TV, too, and getting to write super detailed episode descriptions of their favorite shows is one of the perks.

• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Being morphed by a beam of energy is good for you.
• Wimp Fight: "Sissy slap-fight". Return of the sissy slap-fight!
• Word Salad Title: Lampshaded here.
• Writer's Block: Shive has this, and many filler strips consist of him chasing a box-like creature labeled as such.
• Xanatos Gambit: Though very simple compared to many other gambits, Ellen considered her fight with the goo to be a "win-win", given that loosing the physical fight would have resulted in a "noble death".
• X-Ray Vision: Tedd's glasses used to have an x-ray feature. And Grace suggested a version that would remove the wearer's clothing when taken off and vice versa (It Makes Sense in Context). Innocent Fanservice Girl, indeed.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: Used in the narration for this strip.

Laterz... What? Z's are cool.

• You and What Army?: Seriously? Gerald needed to ask?
  • Well, in the guy's defense, Tedd is scrawny enough to warrant the phrase, just the big dimwit didn't realize he was accompanied by 3 of the most powerful characters in the comic (even if one of them has been Brought Down to Normal recently)
• You Fail Economics Forever: Invoked.

Magus: I can totally hook you up with straw turned to gold. Aberration: I'm already worth millions, and you'd just be devaluing gold in general if you made more.

• You Fail Physics Forever: Somewhere A Physicist Is Crying. An in-universe case in this strip.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: The Verres's purple hair is natural. Nanase's red well, black now is natural, despite her dominant Asian genes. Susan's (dyed...well, natural now) hair is actually dark blue, not black, and this is seen as a natural hair color.
  • The mystery finally is unveiled.
• You Watch Too Much X: (guest strip) Tedd, wake up.