Fun with Acronyms/Web Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Sure, Francis. We believe you.

Examples of Fun with Acronyms in Web Comics include:

  • Fans adjusted the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the Fantasmagorical Investigation Bureau, or FIB.
  • The secret anti-alien organization in It's Walky! is called SEMME... which does stand for something, but the author has yet to reveal what. It's pronounced like "semi", creating useful pun fuel. In one strip, part of the E on their building is blown off, prompting Walky to start calling the organization "SEMMF".
    • I'd think there'd be more pun fuel if it were pronounced how it looks.
  • On The Wotch, one character guessed that the first two letters of the radical feminist group D.O.L.L.Y. stood for "Daughters of", but the rest was never determined and the leader was defeated just before she could reveal its full meaning - and turned into a dolly as punishment .
  • In a 1990s Penn State in-joke (because PepsiCo seemed to have a great deal of influence at the college), The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob once had a giant monster called the People-Eating Poly-Sorbate Insectoid.
  • The KAMics had the Semi-Mystical Otherworldy Gates or S.M.O.G. Nothing deep about the name though, the author took the acronym from a running gag he was part of on one of Nitcentral's humor threads.
  • Mr. Mighty in Everyday Heroes is a member of The Society of Amazing, Valiant, and Extrememly Unselfish Superheroes ... S.A.V.E.U.S.
    • According to the cast page, Mr. Mighty has previously worked for the Team Hoping to Uphold Decency (THUD), the White House Advanced Personnel Protective Office (WHAPPO), the American-Mexican International Group Of Superheroes (AMIGOS), and the Group Of Official Do-Gooders United In Suppressing Evil (GOOD GUISE.).
  • This episode of WCI High spoofs Captain Marvel when Blossom Pearl invokes her "magic word".
  • Spoofed in this spoilerific entry for "anti-HEROES", a comic which seriosuly ripped off the art style of Order of the Stick.
  • Sluggy Freelance had the 'Notification of Unified Kindness' Envelopes as the ultimate weapon within the Dimension of Peace.
    • Super Mega Ultra Robot Festival [1]
    • Also, from this strip, we get Recording Editable Content Application Peripheral.
    • And before that we get 4U City's Maternal Obedience Maintenance Medicating Y-Frames and the Chem-Lab Review and Assignment of Personnel Riff teaches.
  • xkcd kicks it up a notch with the International Choice of Urinal Protocol. Think about that for a second.
    • A straighter example is this strip, where Douglas Hofstadter's autobiography reads, "I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym".
  • Penny Arcade gives us Gamers Against Exercise, a theoretical support group founded by Gabe who support traditional, controller-based gaming. Especially funny on a shirt.
  • The Perpetual Aquarium had the fish take the Comprehesive Assessment and Report of Progress, or CARP. This was lampshaded when one of the fish comments that basing a year's progress isn't CARP, it's C----, and, when interrupted, comments that he likes anagrams.
  • The Faster-Than-Light Travel drive in the Freefall universe is called the Dangerous And Very Expensive drive.
    • The name was suggested by a reader after the writer decided he had to call it something so he might as well call it DAVE.
  • Irregular Webcomic has the Secret Action Squadron Team of Cryptid Hunters.
  • In the Jet Dream Remix Comic, the T-Girls represent NATO's Joint Elite Team, Division of Raiding-Expert Aeronautical Maidens (J.E.T. D.R.E.A.M., or usually just "Jet Dream.") Their "little sister" team is Junior Echelon, Teen T-Girls, Elle-Boys, and Esprit-Girls (Natural!), or J.E.T. T.E.E.N. Both organizations must deal with the sinister schemes of Zoned Extortion and Removal, Occidental (Z.E.R.O.).
  • Erfworld has Lord Stanley the Tool's elite hobgobwin knights, the Knights In Stanley's Service. They are, of course, a reference to the band KISS; their "war paint" is the makeup KISS wears onstage, and their name is a reference to the old moral panic-driven legend that KISS stood for "Knights In Satan's Service" (which it didn't).
  • The GIGAHERTZ, or Gizmonic Institute Graphical Automated Hyper-Enhancement of Reality through Teleportation and, uh... Zoom, from The Way of the Metagamer.
    • Responded to with the Clayton Forrester Volumetrically Displayed Entertainment and World-Taking Over Device, or, uh... CFVDEWTOD (khfhvhdootodd?) for short.
  • Penny Arcade played with it:

General: We call it the Kinetic Ingestion Regulator Bio-Yorganism.
Meta Knight: Yorganism?
General: Y is kind of a tricky letter.

"EGS" really stands for "Extremely Gratuitous Shapeshifting"

Violet: And you're U.N.I.T.Y.
Unity: Yep!
Violet: The Upgradeable Necrotic Independent... what?
Unity: We don't talk about my acronym.
Violet: Sorry, did I touch a nerve?
Unity: Well, you know. People died and stuff.
Violet: People died... because of your acronym.
Unity: The committee meetings, man! It was law of the jungle!

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