Ennui GO! (Webcomic)

Ennui GO! is a webcomic written and drawn by Doctor "Doc" Glasgow, and the central comic of what's known as the Ennuiverse. It was formerly hosted on Smack Jeeves, and is now hosted on ComicFury. A backup of the comic can be found here.

The comic's main focus is on the Pritchard family and associates, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits if there ever was one, and how they navigate the insane world they live in. It's divided into parts, with each part so far consisting of several volumes.

Part 1 is the story of Elizabeth "Izzy" Pritchard, a video game programmer who was bored with her life and, on a whim, created an H-game/fishing simulator combo where players fish for monster girls and have sex with the ones they captured. Through actions out of her control, she ended up becoming the biggest success story in the gaming industry. Now with her pockets filled with more money than she knows what to do with, the story details the misadventures of Izzy, her circle of Friends with Benefits, and other characters as they are all roped into the constant insanity, debauchery and materialism that Izzy subjects others to. That, and the slow reveal of the messed-up circumstances that made Izzy the person she is and the question of whether or not she'll be able to move past it. Part 1 ran from September 24, 2015 to November 20, 2020, with six volumes in total.
Part 2 sees Izzy's nephew Max take over as main character. There, he enters high school along with his best friends Cricket and Bee, his girl friend Calixta, and her friends Vanitas and the Nevershould. They explore the awkwardness that comes with puberty, deal with the general craziness that comes with living in his aunt's island nation of Key Manati, and maybe learn something more about Max's abilities, origins, and childhood imaginary friend Min along the way. Part 2 ran from November 27, 2020 to March 4, 2026, with four volumes in total.
Part -1, described as a companion book, is a prequel that puts the focus back on Izzy. Here, we get to see her college years, building up to the eventual creation of Pro Ass Fishing and the sudden influx of wealth that came with it.

Be warned — Part 1 is often very NSFW, although it's censored for the general public and does have a Self-Censored Release called Ennui GO! [R]emix. Part 2, by contrast, avoids explicit sexual scenarios thanks to its predominantly teenage cast.

See also Rainbow Skies Forever, Doctor Glasgow's previous webcomic which gets referenced multiple times in this one, and Black Hole (2019), a spin-off that manages to be even more NSFW than Part 1 was.

Ennui GO! provides examples of:

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# - E

20 Minutes into the Future: Set about 2030 or so, judging by Hashim's comment that since Extreme Sports ended in 2000, all contestants have to be at least 50. The only advance is that prosthetics have evolved to cybernetics. Also, US Presidents are genetically engineered human/beetle hybrids after Trump's term, although this is meant to be a secret (shhh!).
Abnormal Allergy: In one of the very first strips, Izzy dumps a bucket of whale semen off the top of her building simply because she could. Unfortunately, the one person it lands on- Venus- turns out to be allergic to it, and the resultant scarring is the driving force behind her revenge plot against Izzy.
Actually Pretty Funny: In "Invitation", during a threesome with Izzy, Noah and Hashim decide to impersonate Darcy. Izzy warns them that Darcy could kill them for that, but Darcy actually finds the impersonations pretty good.
Acquired Error at the Printer: Renee had custom printed uniforms made for her roller derby team, the Screamin' Demons. They got jerseys labelled "Semen Demons".
Afterlife Welcome:
- In "Deeper", Izzy ends up entering a purgatorial space that seems to resemble a circus, meeting a grim reaper dressed as a ringmaster as she's drowning alongside her sister in their mother's car. However, she doesn't enter as the reaper tells her it's "AIN'T [her] TIME YET" as Red Snapper's mom comes up to grab them.
- In "The Last Show on Earth", after dying right after her daughter left her hospital room, Izzy and Adelie's mother (along with her three personalities) enters the same space and meets the same reaper. This time, he tells her it's her time...
  Reaper: THERE YOU ARE. NOW IT'S YOUR TIME.
  "Morrigan": Um...well... How'd I do?
  Reaper: NOT GONNA LIE. PRETTY SHITTY. C'MON. DON'T LOOK SO DOWN. WE'LL GET YOU SOME COTTON CANDY, SEE A FEW SHOWS, AND WHEN YOU'RE READY, YOU CAN TRY AGAIN.
All Gays Love Theater: Parodied in strip "Electives": a poster on the classroom wall asks if a student is gay and advises them to join the Drama Club.
Amalgamated Individual: Inverted: "Florida Man" actually is a single immortal (maybe) man whose exploits include releasing alligators into urban areas, publicly insulting Castro, robbing banks, trying to detonate a nuke, and rescuing two girls from a sinking car.
Ambiguous Syntax: In "Hypersigil", Min gets annoyed at Max calling her over for something as she had been "eating out" with Brittany. Max isn't sure if she's referring to food or sex, but quickly decides that he doesn't care, though if the Ascended fancomic "Princess Treatment" is any indication it was the former after they were done with the latter.
Arc Number: 049 (or occasionally just 49) shows up all over the place in the comic. Len calls them "the mystical numerals" during a blood ritual in "The Pool", though she doesn't elaborate about what makes them special.
Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: Izzy declares her intention to invade Florida by stabbing a map of the state, and telling Noah and Hashim that they know what she wants. They start making jokes, and she screams that it's like trying to make war plans with a pair of puppies.
Armor-Piercing Question: Omegaman gives one to Izzy during his Rousing Speech in "Tetrapod", giving her the emotional strength to finally shoot Florida Man.
Art Evolution: The general art style shifted drastically after less than a year of running, including shading and more rounded and realistic body proportions (while still maintaining the rather cartoony style).
Artificial Meat: It's explained in "Meaty Growth" that Key Manati doesn't really have the space to raise cattle (being an island nation and all), so all their beef products are made using lab-grown beef designed by Doctor Bald. The end result is indistinguishable from natural meat, but him not understanding why they wanted it means that his initial attempt resulted in Meat Boy.
Ass Shove: In "Investigation", one of the Diamond Guards infiltrates the Gardeners and pulls his communicator out of his butt (he's shown from the front but his arm and expression make it clear) to relay information about what he's discovered.
Babies Ever After:
- Part 2 sees the main cast of Part 1 starting families of their own, with three sets first being seen pregnant and Renee having already given birth by the time she shows back up. Izzy, Darcy, and Tanya have twins named Nathan and Morgan, Noah and Len have a daughter named Phoebe, Renee and Hiro have a son named Kazumi, and Hashim and Sarah have an as of writing unnamed son. Additionally, another unnamed child is shown alongside them in "Thugbrats" who is implied to be the daughter of Hashim's twin brother Xoltan and his girlfriend Sybil.
- Max's vision of a possible future at the end of Part 2 has this as well. He and Calixta are shown with a daughter, Min's carrying Brittany's baby, Kavya and Lilooly have a toddler, and Bee and Cricket have a three (with a fourth on the way). Even The Nevershould is (somehow) pregnant, implied to be acting as Orion and Vanitas' surrogate.
Bad Future: Comments from Doc have revealed that they consider their previous comic, Rainbow Skies Forever, to be this for Ennui GO! (mostly in regards to Kirsty and Lucian's story). Volume 9 reveals just how bad it really is: besides RSF's canonical Downer Ending, future Max is married to Brittany, was forced to bind Min to a sigil to keep her around, and has somehow managed to alienate both Calixta (who looks like she embraced her family's business) and Len's family (with Len herself having seemingly (completely) lost her sanity in the interim). Also, Izzy's dead, and her family doesn't talk about her anymore according to Ashley.
Max: YOUR FUTURE CAN GET AN ELECTRIC MIXER UP THE ASS!
Bait-and-Switch: "Negative One" initially starts off seeming like it's taking place shortly after the events of Part 2, with Adelie and Bella sending Max off to college, only for it to turn out that it's actually a flashback and Izzy is the one going to college.
Bait-and-Switch Suicide: The title page for the final arc of part 1 appears to set up Izzy finally fulfilling her long-stated resolution to kill herself. Turns out it's a Double-Meaning Title, as while Izzy Pritchard does die, Izzy Slater is still alive and well...attending her wedding.
Based on a True Story: A In-universe example. Robin reveals in "Replacement" that superheros will occasionally sell stories about their adventurers to comic book publishers for extra money. This is later built upon during the "Burn! Burn! Burn!" arc where it's explained that supervillains who appear in these stories are entitled to royalties, so they tend to get pissed off when Canon Foreigners are used instead.
Battle Cry: Played for laughs in "Yaoi Oar", with a crazed fangirl who shouts "UWUUUUUUUUUU!" while attacking Max and Cricket with a yaoi paddle.
Be Careful What You Wish For:
- In "The Penetrat-Her", Tanya finally makes her move on Izzy, telling her to fuck her up. Izzy pulls out something that looks like a chainsaw and a dildo had a baby, leaving Tanya looking shell-shocked in the last panel. Noah lampshades this:
  Now normally I hate victim blaming. But when you LITERALLY asked for it, well...
- Vol. 2 Big Bad Venus had finally achieved her dream of becoming a senator after her facial reconstruction, only to learn that she can never become president due to the stupidity of the American public forcing the government to secretly create bio-engineered bugmen as presidents and hold false elections. As a result, she ultimately leaves the U.S. in favor ruling over her own country, much like Izzy.
Benevolent Conspiracy: In "The Adventure Brigade", Len claims that vaccines are part of an Ancient Conspiracy's plan to usher in the next stage of human evolution, though their actual role in said conspiracy is just to prevent diseases like they do in real life. As she puts it, "Humanity can't become hyper-evolved if we're all dying of the mumps."
Bestiality Is Depraved:
- When Izzy invites Tanya to a Depravatorium...
  Tanya: Is she gonna do that with ALL of those horses?!
  Renee: A lesser woman would likely be killed.
  Izzy: Eh, I've seen bigger. Wonder what Noah's up to.
- The circus arc also features a centaur whose mother used to do donkey shows.
The Big Damn Kiss:
- The end of the "How Do I" arc in part 1 ends with Max and Calixta sharing their first kiss.
- Cricket plants one of these on Bee in "Hearts in a Hurry", which makes his own feelings for her clear after spending much of the comic being a tsundere.
- "Glittering" has all the couples of the part 2 main cast share these during their senior prom. Most notably: Brittany and Min, Vanitas and Orion, Kavya and Lilooly and the Nevershould and his two girlfriends.
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Skunk Apes appear in a few comics. They are apparently a protected species.
Bizarre Alien Biology:
- An alien friend of Axil's can grok radiation, allowing them to "feel" warm and cool varieties.
- From the alien's perspective, Tanya's sense of sight is an example of this.
Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Inverted. While Hashim's father's restaurant does make really spicy food, Hashim keeps a bottle of extremely mild sauce behind the counter that he uses to trick some people who ask for their food to be super spicy. Sybil knows he has "white people spicy" and "REAL spicy" sauces, and nearly breaks his arm for trying to give her the former.
Blunt "No": This was Tanya's reaction to Izzy's interest in buying the "Corn-Dogger".
Bodily Fluid Blacklight Reveal: Exaggerated in "Black Light". Izzy apparently had so much sex in her room that Renee turning on a black light turns everything (including her) solid white.
Body Horror: While it shows up every now and then as a gag, when it's used for actual effect, it's very effective, with the most prominent case being Izzy's and Adelie's mother, who has multiple infected track marks in her elbows and neck, and some sort of injury on her right temple which has turned her right eye red and veiny.
Bonding Through Shared Earbuds:
- Max plugs multiple earbuds into his computer so he, Bee, and Cricket can listen to "Fuck the Police" instead of the Kidz Bop version, which is a shocking moment for all three.
  Bee: I don't wanna do this any more! I don't even WANT to know what the real lyrics are!
  Cricket: No! We're learning the truth and we're doing it TOGETHER!
  [they start listening]
  Bee: That's... a LOT of swears.
  Max: [holding hands with both Bee and Cricket] Things are different now.
- Izzy and Adelie, for once, have a calm, peaceful moment at home sharing earbuds and listening to a CD.
Bouquet Toss: Exaggerated. Being a polygamous same-sex marriage, there are naturally thee bouquets at Izzy, Darcy, and Tanya's wedding at the end of Part 1. Sarah, Len, and Renee end up being the ones to catch them, and sure enough they're all shown to have tied the knot with Hashim, Noah, and Hiro when we catch up with them a few months later in Part 2.
Boy Meets Ghoul: In "Romeo and Juliet and Zombies", Izzy and Renee watch a movie about a female zombie falling in love with a man despite the disaproval of both of their parents. Renee is actually reduced to tears while watching it.
"Brave the Ride" Plot: "The Marlinator" has Max, Calixta (who has a fear of roller coasters), and Brittany ride the titular rollercoaster, which Max describes as having caused people to throw up, have Potty Failures, pass kidney stones, and even give birth on due to its insane speed and G-forces. When their ride is over, Calixta has passed out and Brittany is starting to have a reaction from her cousin Omegaman's blood transfusion.
Breast Expansion: Len conclusively proved that Fizzy Izzy is being made with water contaminated with a chemical that results in the drinker's bust growing. This results in bigger breasts for women and more developed pectorals for men. Sales shoot through the roof.
Brick Joke: In "Pitching", after Darcy hires him to be Izzy's hype man, Izzy pawns a rapper and children's TV producer off on Max, who suggests an idea for the season finale of the producer's main show. Fourteen strips later, "Vesuvius" reveals that the producer used the idea, which Max brags about to a disbelieving Cricket.
Brown Note: As Max, Cricket, Bee and the shop club brainstorm ideas on how to get revenge against Jericho for constantly breaking their creations, Bee mentions this trope by name when one of the shop kids mentions the bully shoving a baseball up someone's ass. Sure enough once they get the supplies needed, that's exactly what Max and the crew go with, as he unleashes it upon Jericho and Cyrus in the appropriately named "Brown Note".
Burning Bag of Poop: Max pranks his creepy gym teacher Coach Bobert by leaving the usual burning bag at his front door, but instead of feces, the bag is filled with angry bees.
Call-Back:
- Venus' motivation for shutting Izzy down is because when Izzy dumped that bucket of whale cum off her building's roof in one of the very first comics, it landed on Venus. She turned out to have been severely allergic and ended up with disfiguring scars.
- A minor one, but an idea Max gives to Loose Flow is used in an episode of The Jimmies.
- Another minor one, in Circle of Life we see a Sasquatch get hit by a carrot truck. 155 pages later in Skunk Ape we see Max make an offhand reference to it when he sees a young Skunk Ape. And 2 pages later, in Isekai we find out the one that got hit by a truck was summoned as a hero to Another Dimension.
- In "Condoms", Noah sets up an online buisness called "Discrete Meat Sheet" which delivers condoms in nondescript packages for men that are too embarrased to get them in public. 2145 pages later in "Awkward", Max makes use of it when he and Calixta have Their First Time.
Call-Forward: Volume -1 contains several of these by its nature as a prequel.
- When Adelie sees Izzy off on her first day of college in "Negative One", the two have the exchange "If anyone gives you any trouble" "Punch them in the neck", which is the exact same advice she would give her daughter Min seventeen years later in "Highschool Debut".
- In "Overlap", Noah claims that he has a thing for weird shut-ins and could even see himself marrying one someday, referencing his eventual marriage to Len.
- While the group is discussing what they'd do if they became rich, Hashim says he'd open up his own Chuck E. Cheese style restaurant, which he and Sarah actually do in "Bubbles' Ballroom".
- In "Foo'baw", Izzy mentions that she loves raccoons, referencing the fact that she eventually gets one as a pet.
The Cameo: Len bumps into Slenderman.
Canon Welding:
- Played With. Izzy's clone Kirsty and her husband Lucian are explicitly stated by invokedWord of God to be the parents of the protagonist of his previous comic, Rainbow Skies Forever, but invokedWord of God also states that it's considered the "Bad End" to Ennui Go!
- Max, Min, Adelie, and Bella come from another old comic called Max and Min. One of its strips would even be recycled as "Avast", suggesting that it is also canon to a degree.
- Technicolor Tammy from The Jimmies started as a character from another unreleased project.
Captain Ersatz:
- Hashim looks and behaves very much like Son Goku.
- Smegli is Smeagol. NOT Gollum.
Cast Full of Gay:
- Part 1 plays this straight, with the majority of the main cast being bisexual and the one outlier being a lesbian. This even extends to the supporting cast, with Kirsty being the only one who is explicitly straight.
- Part 2 downplays it, with half of the new main cast being straight, while the other half is a mixture of bisexual, gay, and lesbian. Most of the supporting cast do not have their sexuality specified (in part because the story is now focusing on high schoolers and can't use onscreen sex as a Queer Establishing Moment), though a good chunk those that do seem to be straight
Cat Fight: In "The P.T.A.", a PTA meeting turns into a brawl between Adelie and Skyler's mother, complete with clothes coming off.
Bella: Why do you come to our PTA meetings? You don't have a kid.
Izzy: [munching popcorn] For this exact reason.
Central Theme: Anyone can be helped, no matter who they are. One of Izzy's most enduring character traits is her willingness to offer help to others, whether she's using her wealth to assist her loved ones or trying to save her enemies, and a large part of her Character Development involves realizing that she can be helped, too. Max sets up an entire school club dedicated to helping his classmates with their problems, and part of his character arc involves figuring out the right way to help others. Finally, Ashley has to struggle with whether or not she can still help Akihiro even after everything he did to her and her family, and she ultimately does choose to help him when she travels back to the time right before he discovered the Obsidian Mirror and saves him from falling off a cliff.
Cerebus Syndrome: Starts when Asher, Izzy's art guy, attacks Hashim with a broken whiskey bottle. That being said, there's still plenty of hilarity, but there are actually real plots now.
Character Blog: Jerry has one called The Oozing World.
Circus Episode: Izzy and her friends go to the circus in the "Murder at the Big Top Funhouse" storyline, with Izzy (as the highest authority on the island) getting roped into investigating the death of the trapeze act. It also serves as the introduction of Robin and her status as a very obvious Dick Grayson expy.
Citizenship Marriage: Back during college, a sleazy teacher attempted to blackmail Izzy into marrying her so he could have American citizenship by altering her grades to a fail, and the student advisor was too busy staring at their phone to help her when she brought the subject to their attention. Fortunately, Darcy decided to take matters into her own hands and threw the teacher out the window.
Class Trip: Volumes 7 and 10 both feature Max's class going on a trip. In the former, they head to Fish-Girl World, with Max and Calixta having to deal with Brittany recently developing a crush on the former and using her newly acquired Omega powers to try and steal him away. In the latter, they go on a Burning Man-like camping trip and end up getting attacked by Caliban with Spiral-Man's Rogues Gallery in tow.
Close-Enough Timeline: This is more or less how time travel works, going by Len's explanation in "Caveats". You can change quite a a bit, but the major story beats are always going to keep playing out, either because creatures beyond comprehension, gods, or the Time Police are making sure they stay in order. This is best seen at the end of Volume 9. Even when Akihiro's Start of Darkness is undone in the climax and he no longer takes part in the story, the resulting timeline is stil more or less the same up until the moment when everyone gathers at the Obsidian Mirror.
Clown Car: Appropriately, Sarah drives one. It's the size of a smart car. Six clowns pile out of it to confront the mimes, the smallest of whom are proportioned like Tracy or Noah and the largest of whom is comparable to André the Giant.
Color-Coded Wizardry: Magic has different palettes depending on what type of magic it is, though it's never directly addressed by the narrative. Fish-girl magic is blue while sigils are shades of pink and purple.
Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The various divisions of the Key Manati military police have different colored uniforms along with a specific symbol on their helmets. They are as follows:
- Pink Hearts: Queen's Guard
- Teal Spades: Military
- Purple Clubs: Police
- Red Diamonds: Secret Operatives
- Yellow Stars: Space Forces
- Green Leaves: Propagandists
- Blue Cups: Coast Guard
- White Crosses: Emergency Services
Comedic Spanking: Izzy threatens Noah with "five across the ass" a couple of times when he's being especially snarky.
Comic Books Are Real: Superheroes are considered a fact of life and tend to get comic books based off of them if they're popular enough, with some of them even selling the rights of their adventures to publishers for extra money. That said heroes from works like Marvel and DC (which both exist in-universe) are just as fictional as they are in the real world.
Comic Sutra: In "Spears", Izzy goes to a business meeting and comes back to find her roommates piggyback-jousting with dildo lances. Apparently this happens every time.
Comical Coffee Cup: Any time someone is shown drinking from a mug, it will usually have something silly printed on it (primarily comic book references).
Commuting on a Bus: The main cast of Part 1 all disappear after Max takes over as the new lead, being slowly reintroduced as supporting characters over the course of Volume 7.
Consulting a Convicted Killer: Downplayed in "Usual Suspects" when Max needs help tracking down the Spaghetti Bandit and goes to ask Jericho (who is currently in detention) for help. His insight that it's probably someone doing it for anarchy's sake rather than as a bully (since they're targeting everyone regardless of their popularity status) does turn out to be rather close to the truth.
Continuity Cameo: Alex and Bastian from Rainbow Skies Forever make a brief appearace in "Generative" watching an AI tv show.
Converse with the Unconscious: The main reason why Izzy wanted to take over Florida; her mother was in a hospital there and felt like she had to conquer the entire state just to have the emotional strength to visit her.
Cosplay Café: In "Maid", Darcy has Izzy dress up in a maid outfit before getting busy with her.
Darcy: Darcy has been exposed to the concept of maid cafes. Now, Darcy has a HUNGER.
[one costume change and some frisky business later]
Izzy: Oh no Mistress, you musn't! What if your girlfriend comes home and catches us?
Tanya: [apparently behind them the entire time] What IF? Don't stop on my account.
Costume-Test Montage: The day after Min gets a body of her own, all the girls take her to the mall for some clothes (since the only wardrobe she has access to are her brother's outfits). We're treated to a montage of her tying on the various outfits the other girls pick out before eventually landing on a loose t-shirt with a vaporwave print.
Courthouse Wedding: Renee mentions that she and Hiro got married at a courthouse owing to both her practical mindset and the fact that his narcolepsy would make a long ceremony impractical. The two of them were so happy at how efficient it was that they ended up conceiving their son Kazumi in the broom closet shortly afterwards.
Creator Career Self-Deprecation: Used as part of a brief gag in "Speed Dating", where Xoltan treats getting paired up with a comic author as worse match than the serial killer that wanted to turn his skin into leather pants.
Creepy Stalker Van: The men who try to kidnap Max in the "How Do I" arc drive a black van with black paper taped over the windows and "Free Candy" spray painted on the side. Max isn't stupid enough to get in, so they physically drag him inside.
Crossover: "Crisis on Two Comics" sets up a crossover between Ennui GO! and Black Hole (2019).
Crowded-Cast Shot:
- "Tetrapods Reign Eternal" is a splash page featuring just about every character who has ever appeared in attendance for Izzy, Darcy, and Tanya's wedding.
- "Village'' has every person that Max has ever befriended or helped (26 in total) show up to help him give Min her own body
- "Class Photo" is a splash page with almost the entire Part 2 cast (57 in total) gathered for graduation day.
Curb-Stomp Battle: Max, upon seeing two bullies, Jericho and Cyrus, pick on another student, decides to give them a beatdown. However, when he punches one of them, Jericho is unfazed and proceeds to beat up Max.
Cult: In "Crisis on Two Comics", Renee informs Izzy that several cults have sprung up in Key Manati, including (among others) the Gardeners, the Apostles of Ape Shaving, Followers of the Great Milky Mommy, Bobby's Guys, and American Christianity.
Cyborg:
- Asher eventually becomes one after having the left half of his face replaced by cybernetics.
- Venus gets a cybernetic replacement eye as part of her facial reconstruction.
Dance of Romance: In "Stolen", Min and Brittany share a dance during their senior prom after four volumes of being unable to be with the person they love for one reason or another.
Dead Guy Junior: When Izzy ends up having twins, she chooses to name her daughter "Morgan", after her late mother Morrigan. It is a weird case where it isn't being done out of love (at least not directly), but rather she's trying to spite the abusive old hag and prove that she'll be a better mother. It's also heavily implied that baby Morgan is actually Morrigan reincarnated, meaning she was named after herself.
Deliberate Values Dissonance: This is ultimately the reason why Bee and Cricket have so much difficulty making progress in their relationship despite their very clear mutual attraction. Cricket grew up in a Protestant household and thus finds public displays of affection to be incredibly uncomfortable, while Bee was raised in a Latina Catholic family and considers such things to be far more normal. This results in a cycle of him showing signs of liking her, only to be offput when she tries to respond in kind, giving her constant mixed signals.
Demoted Memories: Izzy and Adelie were rescued from drowning by Red Snapper's mother as children after their mother left them Trapped in a Sinking Car, but due to the fact that humanity as a whole weren't aware that fish-girls actually existed at the time, they ended up convincing themselves that the trauma of the event caused them to simply imagine her. Izzy would end up using her memories of the event as the inspiration for Pro Ass Fishing and would only realize that the whole thing actually happened when Red Snapper and her mother came to meet her again in Volume 3.
Destination Defenestration: In "Defenestration", Hashim accidentally launches Sarah out their bedroom window with the force of his thrusting. She ends up landing on Izzy in the yard.
Devious Dolphins: Discussed in "The Key to Manatees". When asked why Key Manati is named after manatees rather than something like doplins, Izzy explains that she considers dolphins to be murderous rapists (while manatees are chill and just want to eat lettuce). As such it's the smallest island in the chain that's named after dolphins, and it's undeveloped aside from being the site of the Pit.
Dirty Cop: Izzy gets a cop to ignore the obvious drug use going on by literally throwing money at him.
Distracted by the Sexy: "Civil War" is a huge brawl between "Methany", the other mimes, and Sarah and her fellow clowns...except for one female mime who's utterly focused on a very busty clown who's showing her boobs.
Distressed Drink Jitters:
- In "Doppelganger", Adelie is deeply shaken when she sees Ashley for some reason. After she and Max leave the room, Adelie tries to refill her wine glass with trembling hands, and in the next panel she's holding her head in her hands and the wine bottle is draining onto the table.
- In "Imaginary Friend", after Adelie finishes explains the unusual circumstances of Max's birth, Max says that he's going to confront the scientist who made it possible. As he's leaving, Adelie is pouring a glass of wine, but both hands are shaking badly and she looks like she's about to have a breakdown.
Divided States of America: Volumes 5 and 6 have a running plotline of Izzy attempting to conquor Florida to give her the emotional strength to visit her comatose mother and the US government decides to basically just let her have it due to it being more trouble than it's worth (the President ends up giving Midway Atoll of all things statehood in its place to keep the state count at an even 50). Later on, Venus (having become jaded by the state of American politics) decides to follow in her footsteps and takes over the state of Washington.
Doomed by Canon: Volume 1 opens with Izzy having cut everyone out of her life (barring Noah, Hashim, her sister's family, and to a lesser extent Darcy) when they all tried to get their hands on her money after she struck it rich. Because of this, every other relationship she forms in Volume -1 is doomed to eventually fall apart.
Double-Meaning Title: "Closet" has Vanitas and Andromeda locked inside the janitor's closet, thanks to Cricket in a previous comic, and it ends with the latter figuratively "coming out of the closet" to her ex-boyfriend. It's even lampshaded by someone in the comments section of the comic.
Driven to Suicide: "Stay Classy Bethesda" ends with Izzy putting her gun to her head when she realizes why that dog was left alone at the Red Rocket gas station.
Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The first two volumes were each 300 pages long and individual strips would vary between a few horizontal panels and full pages. Later volumes would instead be a flat 200 full pages.
- "That's How You Get Ants" has Hashim suggest Izzy hire a chef, rather than be the one to make food.
- Darcy didn't refer to Darcy in the third person in her first appearance.
- A flashback to Min's creation shows Izzy and Addy living in what appears to be a perfectly ordinary middle class household, which doesn't line up with anything else we see from the time period, especially the whole abused by their drug addicted prostitute of a mother. The house is also in far better condition than what's seen in the tail end of Volume 5.
- Asher is an unrepentant serial killer who maintains a grudge aganist Izzy even long after the end of volume 1. Later Arc Villains would be depicted more sympathetically, with all of them having a Heel–Face Turn or at the very least ceasing to antagonize the main cast once their time in the spotlight was over.
- Izzy and Kirsty's first meeting in "Confrontational" has Kirsty asking if they were going to make out. Later comics depict her as heterosexual.
- The way Max sees Cricket in "Cross-Eyed" is very different from how his vision works in later comics, with some sort of weird snail creature floating behind Cricket. All future depictions of the world from Max's perspective instead have everyone being depicted as some sort of fantastical creatures due to him unknowingly viewing their astral forms.
Easy Sex Change: Subverted. Skyler sees Min on her first day of school and mistakenly believes that she's Max having somehow transitioned over the weekend. Needless to say, he gets spooked out when Max shows up behind him.
Eccentric Artist: Almost every artist in the comic has something off about them, either suffering from multiple mental illnesses, being raging egoists, or outright serial killers. According to the Doctor Glasgow, the reason for this is "artists look at the natural world and think 'I can do better'. Of course there's something wrong with them."
Eldritch Abomination: Len's god, Eru. She also attends the Court of Silence from time to time, and keeps a being called Molestor at bay with her sexual prowess.
Emotional Hospital Visit: Izzy visits her catatonic mother Morrigan in the hospital, to tell her she doesn't forgive her, but no longer hates her either (having learned what she went through), choosing instead to simply cut her out of her life. Morrigan dies shortly after, but Izzy gains the confidence to finally pull the trigger and get married to her girlfriends.
Everybody Has Lots of Sex: On average, at least one strip every week in Ennui GO! (especially in Part 1) will show at least two adult characters engaged in sex (or at the very least stripped naked). invokedWord of God states that the middle school aged characters also have sex, but for obvious reasons this is never shown. Indeed, since the focus has shifted to the now high-school aged characters in Part 2, this aspect of the comic has more-or-less vanished.
Everyone Went to School Together: It's mentioned at several points that Izzy and Darcy first met and started dating while they were in college. Volume -1 would reveal several other characters who also attended college at the same time as them, including Hashim and Noah (who were roommates that befriended Izzy due to her dorm room being next to theirs), as well as Asher (who was Izzy's classmate).
Exact Words:
- Izzy really shouldn't have asked Sergio to "take care of" the weird guys outside her building.
- Titania agrees to step down as president of the printed media club if the others can convince her "by measure of mouth". Max sends in Kayva with the intention of her besting Titania in a rap battle, but she just makes out with her instead.
Explaining the Soap: In "Channel Surfing", Izzy, Noah, and Hashim are channel surfing and Noah ends up explaining the plot of a telenovela they come across involving a recently transitioned transgender woman using her new feminine identity to reveal her wife's infidelity.
Extra Parent Conception:
- Discussed in ''Stipulations" when Izzy reads about an article regarding children born with three parents and brings up that she'd hypothetically be able to do so with Darcy and Tanya if they ever decide to have kids. This eventually comes to pass in Part 2, with Darcy giving birth to a son and daughter.
- As it turns out, the Homosexual Reproduction method that produced Max used DNA from a fish-girl who washed up dead on a beach as a basis, so Max and Min technically have three mothers. Caliban is the only one with fish features, though.
Eye Scream:
- Narrowly averted when Asher cuts Hashim's face with a broken whiskey bottle, as the cuts weren't deep enough to damage his eye.
- Noah's final opponent in the Arcanus: The Widening tournament stabs himself in the left eye solely so he can put the ball of tiger's eye that was the grand prize in the socket.

F - J

Facial Horror:
- Jerry's face grows in feature-by-feature, starting with his mouth... then his left eye.
- One of the strip's major Call Backs involves this. Venus' face is horribly scarred and her left eye is damaged due to an allergic reaction to the whale semen Izzy unwittingly poured on her.
- A filler strip has a man who cranked off a chimp get his face torn off.
- Asher gets half of his face chopped off. He "fixes" it with a crude cybernetic mask.
Fanservice Faux Fight: In "Pillow Fight", Izzy and Tanya have one in their underwear. Subverted in the last panel:
Tanya: *oblivious to Darcy in the background about to wallop her* But why do I feel like we're forgetting something?
The Farmer and the Viper: During her college years, one of Izzy's classmates was Yorkin, a rude and entitled jerk who became the professor's favorite by pandering to what was popular rather than actually making a good game. Despite this, Izzy offers to hire him to help her work on Pro Ass Fishing because he's having trouble keeping jobs...and he repays her by whining every time she asks him to do something, shunting all his work onto Chaz and taking the credit for it, and ultimately trying to usurp control of the game from Izzy outright. Needless to say, he doesn't last long on the development team.
Feathered Fiend: There's a Running Gag where where scenes taking place on the beach will have a Funny Background Event of someone getting attacked by seagulls. It's eventually explained in "Field Guide" that they're specific species native to Key Manati called Shifty's Gull who are particularly murderous.
Fixed Point in Time: During volume 9, while teaching Max about the ins and outs of time travel, Len mentions that the timeline is conditionally mutable; while it is possible to change some things, there are "anchor-points" in history that are completely impossible to change no matter how much someone tries (e.g. the invention of the saxophone — apparently the reason Adolphe Sax had so many brushes with death is time travelers trying and failing to prevent it). This is best demonstrated with the volume's end; while Max and his friends are successfully able to change the past so that Akihiro was never corrupted by dark magic, their confrontations with the Occult Research Club played out largely the same.
Flat "What":
- In "Custom Fit", this is Izzy's reaction to Tanya telling her she can get custom-fitted bras.
- Done by Omegaman when Izzy reveals that she and her sister are the girls from the case he failed to solve.
Flipping the Bird: Noah's "Shut the Fuck Up For a Second" strips start with him doing this in the logo.
A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Sybil and Xoltan end up striking it rich thanks to selling lewd pictures of her on the internet, only to lose all of it in a class-action lawsuit shortly afterwards because they tried to sell his bathwater while claiming it was hers and the people who bought it could tell the difference.
The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Its name is Eru.
Foul Cafeteria Food: The food in Key Manati High's cafeteria is initially some vague brownish paste, which ends up leading Max to start a homemade pizza racket. After the whole thing ends up spiraling into a full blown food fight, Len is convinced to start pushing for actual food to be provided (though it's mentioned later on that it's still far from anything you'd consider to be good).
From Dress to Dressing: Subverted. Brittany is introduced to the story in "Power Struggle" getting a nasty head wound during cheerleading practice. Max (who happened to be sitting in the bleachers at the time) rushes to help and tells Bee to call the paramedics and get a towel he can use to stem the bleeding until they arrive. When Bee asks why he can't just use his scarf, he responds that it isn't sanitary because it's already covered in blood.
Bee: Whose blood?
Max: Bee we don't have TIME for that!
Frustrated Overhead Scribble: When Hashim and Sarah are talking about the likelihood of Sarah getting pregnant, Hashim's mom pops up excitedly. When they say it'll likely be a while, her speech bubble contains a frustrated scribble before she disappears again.
Fun with Acronyms: Key Manati's space program is named the Aeronautical Society for Science and Space EXploration.
Funny Background Event:
- In an early strip, Izzy cuts off Noah and Hashim due to the combined effect of Noah's girth and Hashim's vigor. They give a high five as she walks away.
- "Selfies" has several: a sign saying "FUCK OFF" on a lightpost, a guy literally windowlicking, and a twerking pigeon.
- "Carded": There's a couple banging in the background while Izzy is wrangling with the librarian. Also, there are vulgar signs promoting reading all over the place, which continues into "Remembrance".
- "Reversal": Not only does the vulgar signage in the library continue, as Sarah is "dragging" the mime lady toward the door, the bathrooms (which are specifically labeled "NO FUCKING") are in the background...and Renee and Hiro are walking out of the men's room.
- "Elections": The e-ballot shown in one panel has a warning to "[...] stop trying to shit in the voting machines." In the next panel, as Izzy and Renee are talking, a guy in the background apparently didn't read that part.
- "Gifts": Hashim, Noah, and Renee are eating ice cream outside while talking. All the while, the guy working the counter guzzles down...something...attacks a customer with a knife, and gets the shit beaten out of him by Izzy's military police.
- "Corvid": As a reporter is giving a live update on a news story, a man and woman are in the background twerking.
- "Policy": While Izzy is being interviewed, a man on the beach pours a bucket of some goop on himself. This attracts a flock of pigeons who swarm him; in the last panel, all that's left is a puddle of the goop on the sand.
- "Environment" has Sarah discuss methods on how to prevent pollution while Sybil is in the background doing the opposite of what Sarah is suggesting. This clearly annoys Sarah to the point that she locks Sybil in a chokehold.
- "Serialization": A window washer is busy doing his duties while Hiro and Galatea discuss his new comic. In the last panel, a hawk flies toward him and attacks him.
- "Those Guys": In the background, an inmate in Asher's prison is attempting to take a dump on the lunch table in front of another inmate.
- These are a near-constant occurrence in part 2 as part of the general insanity of Max's school, both with people doing weird stuff and signs and posters on the walls, such as "Antifreeze" which has posters for "Sex Ed. with Sex Fred" and "Friday Night Chimp-O-Rama" on the back wall of the classroom, among others.
Girlish Pigtails: Sarah normally wears her hair in a ponytail with loose bangs that cover her right eye, but in "Hacking" she wears her hair in this style as part of a disguise.
Gold Digger: Invoked but averted. Noah and Hashim were Izzy's only friends that didn't try to sponge money off her after she made her fortune, which is exactly why she invited them to live with her.
Gone Horribly Right: In the appropriately-titled "The Plan", Florida Man reveals that he swapped out Izzy and Adelie's mom's drugs so that she'd have a psychotic episode, then he and his gang would call the police to report a domestic disturbance. While it still worked in a way, he did not expect the girls' mom to go completely batshit and attempt to kill them by driving their car off the pier.
Grub Tub: In the aptly titled "Chocolate", Izzy fills her bathtub with melted down luxury chocolate and invites Tanya to lick it off her. It ends up giving her a yeast infection.
Happy-Ending Massage: Discussed between Izzy, Noah, and a spa worker. Apparently Hashim got his signals crossed.
Has Two Thumbs and...: Done by Izzy, but not in a good way.
Who's got two thumbs and a horrible norovirus? THIS gal- *cue projectile vomiting*
Hates Everyone Equally: Invoked. The military police of Key Manati wear helmets with red tinted lenses to increase aggression and prevent them from being able to tell the skin color of the people they're beating.
Trainee: Sooo... you WANT the MPs to be giving out random beatings?
Sergio: Yes. So long as they're not motivated by prejudice.
Hearing Voices: Max is distracted from taking his medication by Calixta being splatted by the Spaghetti Bandit. A few hours later, he begins to hear a cacophany of voices in his head cursing at him and maligning him, and he very nearly loses control until Min appears and talks him through calming himself down.
Heir Club for Men: Averted. Izzy isn't exactly the type to care about "traditional values" so Key Manati's order of succession doesn't take gender into account.
Hereditary Homosexuality: Seemingly downplayed but later averted altogether; Izzy is bisexual while her identical twin Adelie is a lesbian. But when Izzy ends up getting a clone named Kirsty, the latter is presumably straight (the fact that she's only ever shown interest in one person kind of makes it hard to gauge her preferences). Max also appears to be straight, though much like with Kirsty he's only ever had a single significant other.
Hidden Depths: Izzy and Adelie's views and attitudes stem from abusive childhoods and life-threatening experiences that the rest of the cast generally don't know about.
Hide Your Lesbians: A local newspaper labels Izzy, Tanya, and Darcy as being nothing but friends in "Gal Pals" and continues to do so when they have a threesome in the middle of a public park to rectify that misconception.
High-School Sweethearts: Adelie and Bella first met in high school, with the former acting as the latter's Closet Key. It's not clear how long they dated before getting married, but it's stated in "Detritivore" they were already considering it shortly after graduation.
Hitler Ate Sugar: While investigating Titania for any shady behavior, Orion spots her eating spaghetti during lunch and comes to the conclusion that, since both spaghetti and Benito Mussolini are Italian in origin, Titania is a fascist sympathizer.
Vanitas: Tryyyy again, Limp-Dick Traaaacy.
Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Unplugged", after Max unleashes the Brown Note on Jericho, he gloats over his victory.... until Min points out that he's not wearing earplugs like the other shop class kids are. Cut to Max and Jericho taking a dump in the school bathroom.
Homage Derailment: Hui-Ying's plans to corrupt Cricket are presented as being near identical to Palpatine causing Anakin's fall to the Dark Side in Revenge of the Sith (right down to her putting on a black hoodie to imitate Sith robes). However, it eventually turns out that Cricket was only pretending to go along with her plans and was manipulating her into getting cocky enough to provoke Max (since, unlike him, Max Would Hit a Girl). He lampshades the whole thing after revealing his deception, saying that he didn't even like the Star Wars prequels.
How Dad Met Mom: When Adelie is telling Max the story of how he was born, there is a brief flashback showing how she met Bella and became her Closet Key.
Human Ladder: In Tower Formation, Max and his friends form one so he can climb into the ceiling after the Spaghetti Bandit. Cricket isn't entirely willing about the whole thing.
Humans Are Divided: In "Mu", "they still fight within their own species" is one of the reasons Axil gives as to why humanity isn't mature enough to join the Galactic Council yet (and why he mistakes Noah's assertions otherwise for a humorous joke).
Hurl It into the Sun: Miss Mantis tries to use Alphasite on Omegaman in Superman. This trope is his response.
I Call Him "Mister Happy": Izzy named her boobs - her left is "Fat Man" with her nipple being "Little Boy", while her right is Elfangor Siriniul Shamtul. Her vagina, naturally, is "The Notorious V.A.G."
If Only You Knew: Part -1 features several gags about Noah having undersized genitals, since he hasn't shown it to anyone. He tends to smirk knowingly when it happens.
I Like My X Like I Like My Y In "Venti", Izzy says that she like her coffee to be black and gay like her women.
Tanya: We both know you don't have preferences in women. Also how can coffee be gay?
[Izzy dumps an entire vial of glitter in her mug]
Impossible Hourglass Figure: Most of the female cast (even Darcy and Sarah) had this design in the comic's early days before Art Evolution set in. See here for one such example.
The Incomparable Bliss of Low Cuisine:
- "Tacos" sees Noah and Hiro balk at a restaurant menu that consists of expensive "high-end" tacos, with blue corn shells and fillings that include wagyu beef, caviar, and lobster. They promptly ditch the restaurant in favor of a fifty cent taco truck whose owner tries to deck Hiro when he asks for diced tomatoes, and are far happier for it.
- Back during college, Hashim prefered eating fast food like Taco Hole, something which Noah found to be weird given the fact that he was studying culinary arts.
  Hashim: I spend all day making GOOD food, so that's the LAST thing I want when I'm hungry.
Innocuously Important Episode: Doctor Glasgow has a knack for taking what initially seem to be one-off joke comics and revealing that they're actually plot relevant. One such example is "Vacation Destination"; what looks like a humorous information video parody at first turned out to be foreshadowing for both Captain Orca's motives and a major overarching plot point in Part Two.
The Intern: Noah makes an intern deliver a flash drive to a lab with a creepy co-worker.
Noah: Now I didn't haul my balls through grad school to have to hear the wet slapping sound Bernski makes when he moves. That's an intern's job! So get your ass over to lab B, capiche?
Intern: Capiche.
Internal Deconstruction: For much of the comic's run, Cricket and Bee's relationship has been a humorous case of No Guy Wants to Be Chased; she'll aggressively pursue him, he'll act like a tsundere about it, rinse and repeat. However, the "Don't Say You Love Me" arc ends up deconstructing this dynamic. Cricket, while still harboring a crush on Bee, is genuinely uncomfortable partaking in public displays of affection. But because he resorts to shoving her away and avoiding her without telling her why he’s uncomfortable, Bee sees no reason to stop with her pursuits — and consequently, is getting frustrated by the fact that Cricket can't seem to make up his mind about wanting the relationship or not, culminating in her calling him out on it during their drive-in date. Once he clearly explains that he loves her but isn't comfortable with PDA, she agrees to respect his boundaries.
Internal Homage:
- The panel of Xoltan and Sybil seeing how much money they made selling photos of her in "Scheme" mirrors the flashback of Izzy and Darcy first seeing how much money Pro Ass Fishing has made in "Portfolio Piece".
- The panel of Brittany sitting out on the deck during Max's party in "Shark" is incredibly similar to when she was talking to Max in "Human Sacrifice".
- "Halftime" feature Casey and Brittany in the exact same poses they were at the start of Part 2, just with the panel order reversed.
The Internet Is for Porn: Max and Calixta are introduced to the concept by Cricket and Bee respectively; while Cricket just alludes to the idea, Bee straight up shows Calixta what she's found.
Interrupted Intimacy:
- In "Mood Killer", Sarah and Izzy are in the middle of sexy times until Sarah sees a spider on the wall, catches it and tosses it out the window.
  Sarah: Now where were we?
  Izzy: After that? Done.
- Exaggerated in "Caught". Len tries to fool around with Noah, but is interrupted multiple times by her mom...with the last time being her offering to tag in if needed.
Intimate Telecommunications: In the aptly titled "Phone Sex", Izzy and Darcy chat over the phone and use a webcam to engage in sex while the latter is away on a business trip.
Intramarital Affair: In "Channel Surfing", Noah describes to Izzy and Hashim the plot of a telenovela where a wife is having an affair, unaware of the fact that the woman she's with is actually her husband who had recently transitioned and is using their new identity to find out if she's faithful. Izzy can't tell if that's a brilliant plot point or highly offensive (or both).
Ironic Echo:
- In "Satellites", Izzy asks Florida Man why he's helping her and Adelie escape from their abusive mother and he responds "becasue I feel like it." Then, in "Boxed In" when he reveals that he was the one who got their mom hooked on drugs in the first place and Izzy asks him why, he once again responds responds with "because I feel like it."
- In "Eyes", Len comforts Max after he learns that his "hallucinations" are actually a form of Aura Vision by saying "No you sweet boy, no... Remember my first lesson... It's all magic." This gets turned on its head two volumes later when Akihiro reveals that Max's plan to send Ashley back in time to undo Akihiro's Start of Darkness is doomed to fail because he's manipulated her to hate him too much to be willing and says to Max "No, you sweet, stupid boy, let this be a lesson to you... It's ALL magic!"
It Amused Me: In "Cheering Up", Sarah visits Darcy's office to help cheer her up. After numerous attempts fail to make her laugh, Sarah throwing a pie at her face does manage to make her smile. However, it's not for the reasons she thinks it is.
Sarah: Hey, THERE'S a smile!
Darcy: No, you see your attempts at entertaining Darcy are pathetic, and THAT is amusing.
It Will Never Catch On: Combined with This Is Going to Be Huge in "College Life", where Izzy is learning game programming in college back in 2009 and the professor tells the class that the future of gaming is Facebook and generic brown shooters, which is why they'll be primarily focusing on programming in Flash. When Izzy asks about indie games, he decries them as gay.
It's Always Spring: Justified due to the comic being set on a tropical island from Volume 3 onward. This actually gets lampshaded in "Snow Job" when Sarah and Hashim engage in some ice play for Christmas and decide to take it outside, only for it to turn out that they're actually using a snow machine on the beach and it's 81°F.
It's Not You, It's Me: Invoked by Izzy to try to get Tanya to steer clear of her after their initial tryst. Tanya heeds this at first but starts hanging out with them and eventually does become romantically entangled with Izzy in "Penetrat-Her".
Jerks Use Body Spray: In "Spray", rather than using the school's showers after gym class, Skyler saturates himself with Ass body spray. He thinks it attracts girls, but when he walks by Calixta and Bee, Bee remarks "Ugh, what smells like piss?", which echoes Max's opinion of how it smells.

K - O

Kaiju: Doctor Bald creates a gigantic female monster...but not to create havoc in Key Manati, but to be the ultimate waifu.
Doctor Bald: Nerds the world over will join the army of Doctor Bald just to hold hands with the most perfect waifu the world has ever seen!
Izzy: That's all you're gonna do with it?
Doctor Bald: What other use could there be?! A HAHAHAHAHA HA HAAAAAA!
Karaoke Box: Izzy and company go to a karaoke parlor starting in "Karaoke"; of course, what starts with karaoke ends with an orgy.
Karma Houdini: Izzy, as part of her Heel Realization, refuses to allow this to happen with herself. She writes an apology letter to Venus and personally finances her very expensive facial reconstruction surgery and cybernetic replacement eye.
Knee-capping: Max, selling popcorn for an Adventure Brigade fundraiser, resorts to this when his sales pitch doesn't work.
Kimono Fanservice: Invoked. The traditional festival wear of Key Manati (if you can call something from a country that is less than a decade old "traditional") is an outfit known as a bitaba. It's based off of and named after the medieval tabard, though seeing as it's directly pointed out how Izzy reads too much manga when Max complains about it makes it clear that it's meant to emulate the visuals of people going to festivals in yukata.
Kirby Dots: Used around Darcy's head in "Home Ec" when she tells Max's class that they're going to learn how to sew.
Knighting: In "Knighthood", Izzy posthumously honors Jimmy Buffet (sic) by making him the first Knight of the Realm of Key Manati. However, when Max asks Adelie if Izzy really cares that much about him, Adelie just notes that Izzy is still not right in the head despite all the progress she's made.
Laughing Mad: Izzy and Adelie have a moment of this after they regain consciousness from being saved by the fish-girls, and the combo of relief that they're alive and horror of what they just went through starts to set in.
"Last Supper" Steal: The 5th panel of "STRANDED! in the Pleasure Archipelago" has the characters take this pose when one of the engines of their plane catches fire.
Let Her Grow Up, Dear: Shortly after Bee and Cricket finally start dating, her father freaks out at the thought of her having a boyfriend, saying she's still a little girl (despite her being a senior in high school) and demanding to know who the boy is and what his intentions are. His wife is significantly less concerned, pointing out that they've known Cricket his entire life.
Limited Wardrobe: Downplayed but still present in Part 1. The main cast usually sticks to specific outfits throughout the series, although they will wear different outfits for different occasions, and some characters change to more weather-appropriate wear when the comic setting relocates to a more tropical climate. Averted in Part 2 when characters start wearing different outfits each day.
Like Reality Unless Otherwise Noted: About the adventures of an insane, hedonistic celebrity billionaire, except that one of her friends is a minor Eldritch Abomination and another is a witch, and there are fish-girls and (confirmed) space aliens. Oh yeah, and console manufacturers are OK with Adults Only games.
The Loins Sleep Tonight: A handful of strips revolve around various characters having libido issues for one reason or another, which are usually discussed between said characters and their partners and sometimes coupled with inventive ways of solving the problem.
Love Triangle:
- Izzy gets together with Tanya early in the series, but she and her ex girlfriend Darcy still clearly have feelings for one another despite their messy breakup. This is ultimately resolved when the cast spends a month stranded on a deserted when the three ultimately decide to form a polygamous relationship after Izzy finds the other two having sex (which isn't as big of a deal as it sounds since the entire main cast are in open relationships anyway.
- Noah spends the first several volumes with both Renee and Len competing for his heart (and other things). Noah ultimately chooses Len, with Renee instead hooking up with Hiro.
Magical Accessory: In the aptly titled "Accessories", Len explains to Max how wizards will often wear accessories that have been enchanted to store magical power for later use (though she also admits that it's partially because it makes them look cool).
Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: Many examples of this. Both as a topic in of the strip, and as one of the many humorous background events that appear in strips.
- For instance, the aptly titled Nude Room, which releases bees to attack you if wear clothes while inside of it.
Male Restroom Etiquette:
- Broken to hell and back, to Noah's chagrin.
- Broken by Orion, which doesn't annoy Max as much as it's him making yet another comparison to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Meaningful Echo:
- The very first thing Len ever teaches to Max in "The First Lesson of Len" is "It is all magic". When he later learns that the "hallucinations" he's been seeing all his life are actually him viewing people's astral forms rather than a sign of insanity, she comforts him while saying "No you sweet boy, no... Remember my first lesson... It's all magic."
- Max comments "She's done this before" while holding one of his baby cousins for the first time twice when he notices that they're reincarnations, once regarding Morgan and once regarding Ashley. The first time around he says that they look upset (as it's implied to be Morrigan's soul) while the second time Min says that they look happy (as it's implied to be the original Ashley's soul now free of her Bad Future).
- "I'm/You're an Alpha Bitch." It's first stated by Brittany just before she unleashes her transformation for the first time as she prepares to face off against Teen Spirit. Min repeats it back to her to psyche her up while she's under the effect of a Supernatural Fear Inducer.
- When Min admits that she's scared when Max prepares to give her her own body in "Save Point", Max calms her by paraphrasing what she said to him in "Polarity" when his meds wore off and he was overwhelmed by voices.
Merit Badges for Everything: The Adventure Brigade offers a Horse Murder merit badge.
Meta Origin: The comic initially appears to be a Fantasy Kitchen Sink filled with things like fish-girls, mad scientists, superheroes, and the like. However, when Len takes on Max as an apprentice, she reveals that while all these things may seem unrelated, every single supernatural phenomenon in the world is ultimately just magic expressed in different ways.
Misophonia Gag: In "Styrofoam, Noah exploits this to break Izzy out of a major depressive episode. He rubs two Styrofoam containers together near her, and then runs out of the room with her hot on his heels.
Modest Royalty: Becoming the royal family of Key Manati did not in any way change up Izzy or the rest of the Pritchards' wardrobe (other than Max ceasing to wear black due to the island's heat) and they all continue to wear contemporary clothes. Izzy and Max are on very rare occasions seen in formal outfits for special occasions, but for the most part we don't see anything fancier than Izzy having a small crown while on duty as queen.
Mo' Money, Mo' Problems: The comic kicks off with protagonist Izzy joining the Fiction 500 when an H-Game she made gets unexpectedly popular. It immediately wrecks her social life (she's down to Noah and Hashim friend-wise at the start because the rest just wanted her money), she has no idea how to fit in with other rich folk, and it does nothing to solve her already-existent mental issues, with the Rich Boredom she suffers outright exacerbating them.
Monochrome Past: Inverted. Max's trip to the future is depicted in grayscale (with Max's eyes and the sigil containing Min's soul having a Splash of Color), since it's taking place in the time period of the black and white drawn Rainbow Skies Forever. However, the Flash Forward seen in "Time Capsule" averts this, as it's in full color.
Mood Whiplash: A number of strips have the cast answering a question. When it gets to Izzy, we get a flashback to her horrifying childhood to explain her answer.
Muggle Sports, Super Athletes: Word of God states that superpowered beings are freely allowed to use their powers in competitive sports. This is actually why Grunnard comes to the help club, because the school's rival baseball team has a superpowered pitcher and he wants to win a game to ask out a girl he likes.
Mushroom Samba:
- Izzy hallucinates trees while Renee calls poison control.
- Izzy, Noah, and Hashim drop acid and then have a threesome. It starts out as simple hallucinations, but then Izzy seems to travel back to before she was born, to witness what made her mother turn out the way she did, and then to see the day she tried to kill the girls from an outsider's perspective.
Nice, Mean, and In-Between: River, Skylar, and Brittany respectively fill these roles in their friend group. River is friendly and accepting of people's hobbies, Skylar is a spoiled bully who turns into a full blown Trumplica at one point, and Brittany is mostly self-centered but is shown to have a softer side.
No Name Given: As pointed out by the author in the comments of this strip, "Florida Man".
No Yay: "Big Plans" ends with the implication that Max and his friends, with nothing else to do, are going to fool around with each other. When the next strip jumped to a completely different topic, discussion in the comments section^note included a statement from the strip's creator saying that the comic would allude to whatever didoes Max and company might get up to but absolutely wouldn't depict anything until they were all of legal age.
Noodle Incident:
- Apparently The Gauntlet arc wasn't the first time Izzy pulled a Twin Switch to seduce someone.
- In "Down Again", Manta mentions that she tried to seduce Orion at some point.
- In "Nekkid", Max and Zaza make mention of several incidents that the Help Club handled, none of which had been covered in previous arcs.
Not in the Face!: Played with in "Riot". Bee tells Max not to hit Cricket in the face or penis before the come to blows since they recently started dating and she'd obviously want his most important parts intact to enjoy.
Oblivious Guilt Slinging: In "Island Madness", Izzy and Noah talk about how the pilot ran off while they were stranded on what would later become Key Manati, Noah makes a comment about how he was so obsessed with what he wanted to do to survive that he never bothered to ask or even think about what the others wanted. While this is going on, Darcy can be seen behind them with a look of shame, as Noah's words cause her to finally understand why Izzy broke up with her prior to the start of the story.
Obsolete Occupation: Inverted as a gag in "Obsolete Jobs", where it's revealed that Izzy has brought back several jobs that have long since fallen out of use including but not limited to: Lady in Waiting (as an emergency posse), nomeclators (to entertain employees while at work), and garden hermits (to spice up your landscaping).
Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Averted. Supervillains fund their evil schemes through, of all things, royalties from use of their likenesses in comic books adapting their nemeses adventures. As such, they tend to get pissed off when Canon Foreigners are used instead.
OOC Is Serious Business: When Noah's not playing along with the innuendos, pay attention.

P - T

Painting the Medium:
- Underwater speech is drawn in a literal speech bubble.
- In "Reversal", Sarah's talking is rendered as a dialogue frame from a silent movie due to the reality-bending nature of the conflict between her and the mime lady.
Panel Break: In "Expert", Diana is attempting to subdue...something...which, in its attempt to escape, tries to climb out of one of the panels.
Parental Love Triangle: Noah moonlights as a male prostitute to older women who pay him in trading cards. One of these turned out be his future girlfriend Len's mother, who in a later strip interrupted their sexytime asking if they needed anything. It ended with her asking if she could "tag in" as she was stripping her clothes off.
Parental Sexuality Squick:
- Len ends up being subjected to this during a family walk in "Familia", where her parents discuss their sexual explioits (along with a reminder that her mother briefly dated Noah).
  Len: What will make this conversation stop IMMEDIATELY?! My disability check? A sacrifice? I will do literally ANYTHING.
- When Max has a talk with Adelie about how Growing Up Sucks after his first day at high school in "Kitchen Table", Adelie points out how she'd much rather be plowing Bella than doing her job as a writer.
  Max: Thanks for that new pothole in my roadmap of mental scars.
  Adelie: Just doin' my job, champ.
Parents Know Their Children: Kirsty and Lucian immediately pull Ashley into a hug when she shows up crying at their front door despite having no way of knowing that she's the future version of their second child from a Bad Future where both of them are dead. Even baby Jenny, Ashley's older sister in her timeline, hugs her alongside her parents.
Patchwork Kids: Renee and Hiro's son Kazumi has his mother's hair (complete with Idiot Hair) and his father's skin tone and eye color. He also inherited the former's stoicism and the latter's narcolepsy, and rapidly shifts between the two every panel. Later, Len and Noah's daughter Phoebe has her mother's chalky white skin and her father's Black Bead Eyes.
Pixellation: You have to be a member of the creator's Patreon to get the comic uncensored; otherwise, the strips are released with genitals and female nipples covered by digital mosaics.
Poverty Food: Volume -1 is set during Izzy's college years, long before she struck it rich with her indie game. As a result, she's shown to mostly subsist on instant ramen and Taco Hole (though to be fair, she eats a lot of the latter even after becoming a billionaire).
The Power of Friendship: Min's plan to help Max get her a body in "Spirit Bomb" involves gathering everyone they know and have them all believe really hard that Max is skilled enough to pull it off. This greatly pisses Max off, not because it wouldn't work but because it sounds like something out of Dragon Ball and will make Orion insufferable.
Primal Scene:
- Max has walked in on Adelie and Bella getting frisky a couple of times, but they've managed to either hide or get clothes on (mostly) before he sees anything.
- In an all-adults version, Adelie walks in on Kirsty and Lucian consummating their marriage. Kirsty freaks out a bit but Addy doesn't bat an eye.
  Adelie: Listen, the caveat of being a part of this family is you've gotta be at least kinda okay with being seen naked. I didn't make the rules.
  Kirsty: Who did?
  Adelie: Izzy. She co-signed my mortgage loan.
Pro Wrestling Is Real: Double Subverted. According to Len in "Real", pro wrestling is real, pretending to be fake, pretending to be real.
Tempest: God damnit, marks aren't allowed to know that!
The Prom Plot: Max and his friends attend their senior prom at the tail end of Volume 10 (and Part 2 as a whole), with it serving as a lighthearted Dénouement Episode after Max's final battle with Caliban.
Pun-Based Title: The comic itself, which you might not catch if you're pronouncing "Ennui" wrong.^note
Pyrrhic Victory: As Max and Cricket are discussing what was really going on with Mrs. Cruddletwat:
Max: We're actually gonna have to learn shit now, aren't we?
Cricket: Hard to say if this was a victory or not.
Quest for a Wish: In the arc "Blood on the Sand", Izzy holds a competition with this trope as the reward. The only limitations are that the winning team can't wish for extra wishes or just cash. Ultimately, Max and his friends win; they end up asking for Minecraft-themed fidget spinners.
Real After All:
- The fish-girls that subconsciously inspired Izzy to make Pro Ass Fishing many years later.
- A lot of Len's insane ramblings turn out to be 100% true.
Rigged Prize Game: In "Gran Hombre", after Tanya expresses an interest in the toys being offered at a circus, Darcy tries to win one for her. However, all the games are rigged to make her lose (especially noticeable because two of them are a "test your strength" game and a "knock the cans over" game and she's the strongest character in the cast); the repeated failures enrage her to the point that she tries to fight the strongman running them for the prize. Ultimately, Izzy bribes the strongman with twenty bucks to get the toy and keep Darcy from potentially killing him.
Right Through the Wall: Izzy comes to regret inviting Adelie and Bella to live with her. To be fair, Adelie did warn her they were loud, but being able to be heard more than 20 floors away is incredible.
Ripped from the Headlines:
- "Sex Ed", in which Coach Bobert gives Max and his classmates all kinds of utterly idiotic nonsense, has a note in the first panel saying that everything in the comic is taken verbatim from the sex ed class Doctor Glasgow had as a kid.
- Starting with "Bad Gas", the comic begins to integrate the COVID-19 pandemic, with the disease itself being mentioned in "Substitute". "Corvid" introduces a sexually transmitted disease that turns victims into bird-people, but the strip heavily lampoons the reality of the COVID-19 situation at the time of its publishing: Noah gives a press briefing with sensible precautions and advice, outraged protestors defy the advice Noah gave, and Izzy gives a rambling press briefing that spoofs Pres. Trump's "disinfectant" briefing in typical Izzy fashion.
- "Tropical Depression" dropped just as Hurricane Laura made landfall in the Gulf of Mexico.
- "Reverse Psychology" is based on the controversy in early 2022 regarding Maus being banned from certain school libraries (and book bannings in general). Adelie confronts Len over a number of books and graphic novels that were banned from Key Manati schools, but Len reveals that this was done specifically to encourage the students to read them on their own.
  [Len and Adelie see Max and several others on a staircase reading]
  Len: It is foretold that the only way to ensure that the children do their reading is to make it tantalizingly forbidden.
Rock–Paper–Scissors: In "Conflict Resolution", Izzy, Darcy, and Tanya play a round in order to decide which one of them would top that night. Darcy describes it as "the most ancient and venerated judge of worthiness imaginable".
Rudeness Backfire: The consequences are implied but not shown in one strip where Izzy (a young woman with revealing clothes, pink hair, and a stupidly huge fortune) randomly buys companies and then goes to visit them. The man who greets her mistakes her for a job applicant, makes a disparaging comment on her appearance and her generation, then finally asks for her name.
Man: Anyway, what's your name? I need to know who to put in the reject pile.
Izzy: Izzy Pritchard.
Man: That's funny, you've got the same name as the woman who bought our company last week.
Izzy: That IS funny.
Man: ...wait... [Cut to the guy looking terrified and Izzy making a trollface]
The Rule of First Adopters: Dr. Bald creates life. He calls it... Franken hooker!
Rule 63: For a week or so, they showed what it was like in Earth-11, where everyone's gender was reversed. It wasn't that much different, other than Sarah's counterpart having a very classy mustache. We return to that world in Part 2, where we meet the gender-swapped versions of Max and his friends.
Rules Made to Be Broken: In the aptly titled "Reverse Psychology", Adelie goes to Len's office to complain about Key Manati High putting so many works of classic literature on the banned book list, and Len explains that it's actually meant to encourage the students to read more because there's no better way to get a kid to do something than by making it Forbidden Fruit.
Runic Magic: Sigil magic is a loose version of this as explained by Len in "Activation". To cast a spell, you write down the desired result using active language, remove all vowels and repeat letters, and then rearrange the remainder until it looks suitably magical. All you need to do after that point is supply some sort of emotional energy to power it.
Running Gag:
- Sarah listing examples of certain topics, which grinds these strips to a halt and often irritates the other characters. Izzy flat out stops her from doing this in "スムーズジャズ"
- Several comics refer to people being thrown in "the pit" as a punishment for something. It's finally revealed (somewhat) in "Crisis Averted".
Running Over the Plot: Played for Laughs. In Circle of Life we see a Skunk Ape get hit by a carrot truck. Later on in the aptly titled Isekai we see that the Skunk Ape got transported to Another Dimension where it was summoned to be a hero.
Scary Stinging Swarm: Izzy's building has a room called the Nude Room, where you have to be completely naked while inside, or you get attacked by a swarm of African Killer Bees.
School Forced Us Together: Bee is the type of person that Brittany would normally mock without hesitation, but the two end up becoming close friends thanks to being paired up as lab partners in science class during freshman year.
Scooby Stack: Done by Max, Robin, and Calixta when they peek out of the janitor's closet after their trap for the Spaghetti Bandit is tripped.
Scout-Out: Key Manati's Adventure Brigade, which Len becomes an adult leader for.
Self-Deprecation: Hashim's brother would rather date the serial murderer who turns her victims into leather pants and sells them on etsy over the comic artist.
Series Fauxnale: Vol. 6 ends with Izzy marrying Darcy and Tanya and the last strip, titled "Ennui GONE!" has Izzy giving a whole speech detailing her new, brighter outlook on life, all told with a huge hint of finality to it. However, Doc Glasgow had confirmed that it was only the end of Part 1 and thus Part 2 began not long after.
Sex Miseducation Class: In "Sex Ed", Max's creepy gym teacher Coach Bobert gives Max and his friends a horrible sex ed class, including calling a condom a "linoleum wrapper" and telling them that holding your pee for too long will cause it to eventually back up into your brain and kill you. Additionally, one scrawl on the chalkboard is "pee is stored in the balls".
Sexy Whatever Outfit: After complaining that women's costumes are too sexy and men's not sexy enough, Izzy and Hashim go as Sexy Meat Packing Plant Worker and Sexy Nuclear Disaster Cleanup Crew respectively.
Sham Ceremony: Downplayed. It's revealed in "Homonculi" that after the fiasco that was the (first) Trump administration the American government decided that they had to be a lot more careful about who they let into power and started producing genetically engineered human/beetle hybrids to serve as candidates instead. Elections do still serve a purpose though as they help gauge the public's interests when designing the next batch.
Shoddy Knockoff Product:
- Parodied. There's a knockoff of the comic itself called "Depression Direction" where Izzy, Hashim, and Noah (or rather Beth, Techems, and Newman) all look like muppets.
- In "Flakes", Tanya accidentaly buys an off-brand version of Frosted Flakes caused Sugar Frosted Flakes that tastes like stale cardboard. Somehow, she failed to notice that the box had a saiga antelope on the box instead of Tony the Tiger.
Shopping Cart Antics: In "Cart Riding", Izzy and Hashim have some fun riding on a shopping cart in a parking lot. And when an MP comes to scold them for knocking into an elderly man, they invite him to join them as well.
Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Lampshaded in "Hooky" when Max agrees for the help club to assist Manta and Seabass get some cotton candy.
Cricket: But Max, we can't just leave school in the middle of the day.
[Beat]
[They both laugh]
Sick Episode: "Cramps" deals with how the female cast handles period cramps. Tanya endures them. Izzy and Renee both self-medicate, Izzy with booze and drugs and Renee with Ambien. Darcy binges chocolate. Sarah angrily demands sex from Hashim. Len tries hoodoo.
Darcy: *carrying an armload of chocolate* Judge Darcy not lest YE be judged.
Len: *having just butchered a chicken* Aw, now there's just MORE blood!
Side Effects Include...: Word to the wise - don't take Erectaid.
Sitting Sexy on a Piano: Parodied in "Up the Hall" when Max is informed that he'll have to get a piano from the music club for the plan to get back at Jericho. He ends up having an Imagine Spot of Calixta wearing a slinky dress and laying on a grand piano while giving him a come hither stare as he's struggling to push it down the hall.
Slumber Party: "Sleepovers" featured two different ones involving the main cast of Part 2. The boys play video games, wrestle, and talk about their family issues. The girls give each other makeovers, talk about their crushes, and discuss the best way to kill people and hide the body.
Small Role, Big Impact: Donald Trump, of all people. He never shows up onscreen and is only ever indirectly mentioned a few times, yet him being elected President is what inspired Izzy to found Key Manati in "An Idea".
Sneeze Cut: In "Dark Shop", Jericho explains to Max that his club breaks school property so that the shop class can earn grades for fixing them. Max wonders "what maladjusted asshole teacher" would approve of this activity. We cut to Mrs. Cruddletwat in The Pit, sneezing.
Social Media Is Bad: Both Len and Axil state that social media is one of the greatest dangers to civilization in "Social Animals".
Len: It drives people insane! And coming from me, that should say something.
Soda-Candy 'Splosion: In "Science Fair", Izzy is forced to judge a middle school Science Fair. Among other failed projects, Cricket and Bee are shown to have constructed the inevitable model volcano. Bee wanted to use hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid, but Cricket told her to get Diet Coke and Mentos instead. Bee proceeded to forget what he said and got Dr. Pepper and Skittles instead, ultimately resulting in merely a very sticky volcano.
Some Kind of Force Field: In "Cavalry", when Izzy calls Miss Mantis and the rest of the Hero Union for assistance, she learns from the latter that they are trapped by a giant force field. Izzy quickly figures out that this is Methany and the other mimes' doing.
Speed Dating: Hashim had Xoltan take part in speed dating to help get him laid, leading to him and Sybil getting together.
Spit Take: Izzy does one in "Frogs" when Len reveals exactly which water reservoir the spilled bust-enhancing cream leaked into.
Start of Darkness: The reveal of Izzy's mother's own abusive childhood, which not only sets up what will later happen but also shows the strange tripling of her irises which is a clue to the eventual three-way fracturing of her psyche.
Strange Minds Think Alike: Subverted. When Len and Smegli meet, Len thinks Smegli is a gremlin who wants to impregnate her, Smegli thinks Len is a ghost.
Straw Nihilist: Calixta and Vanitas mistake the Church of Erudition's dogma for this.
Suck E. Cheese's: Hashim and Sarah open up a pizzeria/arcade combo called "Bubbles' Ballroom", complete with singing animatronic characters, particuarly one that resembles a taller version of Sarah (who is the mascot). Unlike other examples of this trope, there is no ball pit (so the place "won't smell like pee") and has shares some aspects of Dave & Busters (like having a full liquor bar with a five drink minimum).
Sultry Belly Dancer: In "Tales from the Pigwater Inn", Renee's costume in the first session of Dungeons & Dragons the group plays looks fitting for what someone with a Dancer class would wear in-game.
Superhero Trophy Shelf: The Help Club amasses a variety of trinkets from their various adventures over the course of Part 2 which slowly fill up their club room. The topic of who gets what once they graduate does get floated near the end of Volume 10, though they eventually decide to just leave them for future generations of the club after Zaza joins, with Cricket even creating a record book that explains where each of them came from.
Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- We don't immediately learn someone's name unless they introduce themselves. Len took months to let her name slip, and the redheaded chick who works everywhere and tells horrifying secrets is seen with a nametag reading "Sybil."
- Turns out when something is 10 years from the marketplace, there's a good reason, as Hashim found out with the hoverboard.
- As it turns out, faking an identity or two can take a pretty long time and involves a lot of paperwork and a bit of breaking and entering.
Suspiciously Specific Denial: While filling out a doctor's form, Izzy writes down that her living relatives are her sister, nephew, and DEFINITELY NO ONE ELSE.^note We learn three volumes later that her mother is still alive.
Sweetheart Sipping: "Food" revolves around cute and bad foods to share with loved ones, with the first cute example being Max and Calixta sharing a milkshake.
Take That!:
- Inverted as Hiro describes commissions from the Furry Fandom as a positive force behind developing and independent artists.
- Played straight with a recurring SJW character who is as unpleasant as possible and has multiple buttholes. "Redesign" piles onto this by making him a part of the "redraw female superheroes to be more 'realistic'" movement.
- In "Sun and Moon", Izzy and Sarah talk about a new update for Pro Ass Fishing Izzy's coding called Sun and Moon, with both of them agreeing that adding hours of hand-holding via tutorials would be a terrible idea.
- Izzy has a burning hate for Captain Marvel & The Carol Corps and once burned every copy she could get her hands on.
- At one point, Adelie refuses to buy Max chicken nuggets, because "Chicken nugget kids grow up to be chicken nugget men", pointing out a grown man throwing a tantrum because he can't have chicken tenders.
- "Hacks" is a blatant shot at the formatting changes Smack Jeeves made which prompted the comic to move to ComicFury, couched as Izzy finding out that Darcy moved her games to a new distribution platform after the old platform was bought out by a Korean company that made a lot of obnoxious changes.
- Multiple shots are taken at the use of generative AI, such as the Izzy Trading Cards in "Replacement" or the future TV shows in "Generative".
- "Job Hunting" has a not-so subtle jab at how many companies want years of experience for entry-level positions.
Tamer and Chaster:
- While the first part of the comic had plenty of on-screen sex scenes between its characters, the second part reduces them to off-screen hints and implications. It's justified by the change in cast (from a bunch of legal adults to a bunch of underage teenagers).
- This happens in-universe when Izzy's company decides to make a child-friendly cartoon based off of Pro Ass Fishing called Pro Sass Fishing. Izzy is somehow the only one who finds this to be a terrible idea, but she gets outvoted by the board and later ends up getting brought up on charges of corrupting the youth by the DA (who has a grudge against her).
Tears of Joy:
- Hiro has this reaction when Galatea tells him that she only needs twenty pages a month rather than a week from his comic and that he cannot work on any other project beside his book.
  Galatea: Are...are you crying? Look if it's that big a deal you can get it to me by Tuesday.
  Hiro: I CAN FINALLY SLEEP!
- Tanya displays some during her wedding to Izzy and Darcy.
Terrible Interviewees Montage:
- The first three people showing up to be Izzy's personal assistant aren't even interested in the position: one wants to get laid, another wants to complain about Izzy's game, and the third wants to pitch a game idea.
- Rinse and repeat when Renee tries hiring a new artist for Izzy's game. Considering the previous one tried to murder her, the bar was set rather low, but the three first applicants still manage to disappoint.
Thanks for the Mammary: After Max, Calixta, and Robin set a trap for the Spaghetti Bandit, they hide in the janitor's closet, which leaves Max sandwiched between them with his face smushed into Calixta's chest. She doesn't seem to mind.
Their First Time: The comic normally doesn't put any focus on this, given that the majority of the Part 1 cast regularly engage in casual sex and Part 2 is Tamer and Chaster due to the switch to an underage cast. However, there are a few times where it gets brought up.
- In "The Penetrat-her", Tanya finally convinces Izzy that she's not going to get rid of her and invites her to "fuck me up". Izzy proceeds to take her up on the offer, pulling out an unholy cross between a chainsaw, a jackhammer, and a dildo. Cut to a very shell shocked Tanya sitting on the couch.
Noah: Now normally I hate victim blaming. But when you LITERALLY asked for it, well...
- Unlike most of the cast, Izzy's clone Kirsty is very insistent on remaining chaste before marriage, so naturally she and Lucian don't sleep together until their wedding. More specifically, they proceed to get it on during the reception.
- Max and Calixta finally have sex for the first time in "Long Haul" after their senior prom, though Max's size does make it somewhat difficult despite Calixta having been preparing for the moment for literal years.
- The fancomic "Princess Treatment" (which seems to be treated as implicitly canon) has Min and Brittany engaging in some Auto Erotica after prom.
This Is Gonna Suck: Upon finding out that Darcy of all people is his substitute for home economics, Max can only say "Oh hell this ain't gonna be good."
Time Skip: Not a huge one, but at least two months have passed between Izzy's wedding in Part 1 to Max and co. starting high school in Part 2.
Title Drop: Of a sort. As Asher is strangling Izzy in "Hazard: Part 5", he shouts "ON YOU GO!", a reversal of the comic's title (which, as explained in Punny Name above, is pronounced "On We Go!")
Tradesnark™:
- Done by Len, with the added twist of somehow vocalizing the TM notation, which creeps Noah out.
- Later she teaches Bee how to do the vocalization.
Trojan Gauntlet: "Condoms" sees Noah set up the website "Discrete Meat Sheet" to help guys like him anonymously buy condoms without facing judgement from the cashier (as well as make sure they get the right size, especially since Noah himself has a Gag Penis). Years later, Max makes use of it before he and Calixta have Their First Time.
True Art Is Incomprehensible: One early arc sees Izzy get into a game competition with Blackwood, who brags about making "real" art while she's "content to rut in the whore-house of capitalism". His entry ends up being a nigh-incomprehensible Art Game (the player seems to be running a soup kitchen, but that's about all that can be guessed at surface level) he claims is layered with symbolism and complexities; two of the judges don't understand it, the one that does criticizes the execution, and all of them vote for Izzy's entry despite it being unfinished simply because it's an actual game.
Twin Switch: Zig-Zagged when Izzy disguises herself as Adelie to seduce Officer Espinosa. Adelie is not amused. It also wasn't the first time she attempted this, either.

U - Z

Unconventional Electives 101: Early on in part 2, Max and his classmates have to pick an elective/club to join; these range from relatively normal things like football to more esoteric things like phishing and animal husbandry. Students are also allowed to make their own if they can't find one they like; for example, Jericho created Dark Shop, which he claims is his way of helping the shop class kids earn passing grades but comes off more as an excuse for him to break school property without consequences.
Unlimited Wardrobe: Part 1 abided by a semi-Limited Wardrobe (characters had one main outfit that they'd usually wear and switch into other clothes depending on the occasion), but from Part 2 onward we start seeing everyone change up their outfits every day.
Unproblematic Prostitution:
- Frankenhooker was designed by Dr. Bald to be a prostitute, but she said no, ending that particular plotline with no fuss (Dr. Bald is a terrible supervillain).
- Noah has sex with older women who pay him in trading card booster packs precisely so it won't count as prostitution. From what we see of it, the only issue (apart from failure to perform) is that he started unknowingly dating a client's daughter.
Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Darcy gives birth to fraternal twins, Morgan (a girl) and Nathan (a boy), with the implication that the former is Izzy's mother reincarnated.
Visual Pun: Calixta's debut as a wrestling heel has her curb-stomping a wrestler with a gourd theme, making it a literal Squash Match.
Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Izzy and Darcy are both shown throwing up due to illness, and Izzy throws up as a teen when "Florida Man" introduces them to booze and drugs.
Wacky Homeroom: Given the general World of Weirdness that the comic as a whole takes place in, Class 1-5 in Part 2 (of which a majority of the main cast are members) includes but is not limited to: two (later three) members of royalty, a Mafia Princess, three superheroes, two supervillains, a sapient blob of meat, and a literal clown.
Wardrobe Malfunction: "Planned" revolves around Darcy having one in front of a crowd. It helps her win a cosplay contest.
Wedding Finale: Volume 6 (and Part 1 as a whole) ends with the wedding of Izzy, Darcy and Tanya.
Weird Trade Union: The Clown Union got even weirder since they merged with the Mime Union. There is a lot of friction due to the difference in procedures and cultures.
Wham Line:
- Two of them, and all part of Izzy's Heel Realization:
  Venus: [removing her bandages, revealing her scars] WHO EVER HEARD OF SOMEONE BEING ALLERGIC TO WHALE CUM?!
  *later, as Izzy and the others are leaving*
  Noah: [to Smegli] We all make mistakes. What separates good and bad people is that the good ones recognize when they've hurt someone, and then try to make things right. You're good people, Smegli.
- This reveal. If it's true, it's no wonder Izzy seems to hate him.
  Florida Man: After all... I'M the guy that got your mom hooked on drugs in the first place!
- Izzy drops a bombshell on Renee:
  Renee: Up you go Izzy. you have a board meeting to get to.
  Izzy: Nope.
  Renee: How many times must we do this? I manage your schedule, please do not try to lie to me.
  Izzy: Not lying this time. I gave away all my shares this morning.
- Max is starting high school, so Adelie decides to give him "the talk" And as Max soon learns, it's not the "sex" talk...
  Adelie: On that note, my point is you can't expect your aunt Izzy to bail you out of trouble anymore. It's all gonna be up to you.
- Apparently, Venus knows something we don't:
  Venus: *having received news of her eventual presidency and successful takeover of Washington* But of course I would better at this than you, Pritchard. Ah, or should I say...?
- Izzy meeting with Red Snapper's mom again:
  Izzy:[...] I got some stuff to do. Big stuff that I need to see through to the end. For me, y'know? And well, I... I don't know how it's gonna turn out.
- "See. I put drugs in the city's water supply."
- And after Florida Man reveals his "Gasparilla" plan?
  Izzy: So this is your big plan? You've been fucking with me just to throw a crappy parade in a hurricane?
  Florida Man: *geninuely confused* Huh? No, I- *slaps his forehead in embarrassment* OHHH! Duh! I am SO embarrassed. Here I am being all theatrical and I forgot to tell you what the Hell we're even DOING here! Talk about a senior moment, huh? See, I built a little surprise, and hid it under one of these floats. Something for ALL OF FLORIDA to enjoy! IT'S A NUCLEAR BOMB!
- When the Hero Union are unable to help Izzy in her current predicament, Miss Mantis gives her (and the readers) some hope with this line...
  Miss Mantis: Well, it's a long shot. And I'm not sure how much he can help right now... But there IS still ONE of us out there!
- Omega man: *after punching out Florida Man* Hello again citizen. Should've at least expected THAT.
- Izzy: Hey mom.
- At the end of Part 1, Len decides she should find herself an apprentice and consults her tarot cards. What the cards revealed surprised her, but is left unanswered to the reader.... until part 2 when Principal Len makes Max a proposition....
  Len: I would like you to be my apprentice.
- Throughout the Ocean Festival, Max had noticed that Vanitas was acting stranger than usual and goes to check on him...
  Max: Hey...Vanitas. You been uh, kinda dodgier than usual lately. You okay man?
  Vanitas: Heeeeell yeah boooooooiii, I- [Beat, his usual smug smile slowly changing into a tearful expression] Andromeda broooooke up with me.
  - And, after two arcs dealing with both the school's Manga Club and Max and Vanitas' attempt to retrieve a pair of boots from a tree (and keeping the janitor off their backs), Cricket locks both Vanitas and Andromeda in the janitor's closet and Andromeda reveals to Vanitas revealed why she broke up him.
    Vanitas: So whyyyy'd you break up with me?
    Andromeda: BECAUSE- Oh God I don't wanna do this. Because I like girls.
- And when we get a full idea of what Calixta's family is like...
  Min: Wait, Cali's a MAFIA PRINCESS?!
- Volume 9 begins with the introduction of a new transfer student to Max's class — and he has a name that fans who've read Rainbow Skies Forever will be all too familiar with:
  "Hey everyone. My name is...Akihiro."
- And later, in volume 10, we get an even bigger idea of who Min really is...
  Adelie: Max... you were supposed to be a twin. We picked out a name and everything. (Beat) Her name would've been Minerva.
Wham Shot:
- Izzy and Adelie sitting together in utter shock after The Reveal of their mom's Start of Darkness, which darkly mirrors the shot of them listening to music together.
- In the last panel of "Those Guys", Ally is revealed to be pregnant with Captain Orca's child.
- Florida Man standing on-top a pirate boat as the drugged-up Floridians party on in "The Gasparilla".
- Izzy finally shooting Florida Man in "Paper Doll"
- Izzy decides to take a visit and see her mother.
- When Izzy leaves after her final talk with her comatose mother, in the final panel of "Pale Pink Things" Morrigan turns her head after her daughter walked off the door.
- Izzy, Darcy and Tanya get hitched! And everyone is invited, even past enemies and Corey! Oh, and Kirsty's pregnant.
- In "Who", when Max is talking to Min:
  Max: I'm a little old for this Calvin n' Hobbes imaginary friend bullshit. C'mon, what are you, really?
  Min: *unmasking herself to a shocked Max* Aw, Max. You're a smart enough kid. You shoulda figured it out by now.
  Min: *unmasked, her face resembling a female version of Max, giving a sly, toothy grin* I mean really. Who ELSE could I be?
- When Max gets called to the principal's office after the pizza war between his friends and the bullies, the final panel reveals that Len, the first character among the original main cast to return, is now the principal of Key Manati High.
- When Max goes to his aunt Izzy to complain, he instead finds her wife Tanya, now the second original main character to return.
- Darcy IS..... back and...PREG NANT!
- Much like his grandmother all those years ago, Max's eyes begin to multiply as he hears voices in his head....
- After his adventure searching for the "Spaghetti Bandit", Max finally begins his first day as Len's apprentice. Len decides his first act is to experience a "metaphorical rebirth" by taking him to a bridge and pushing him into the water.
- At the Ocean Festival, Max runs into some old friends. Or rather, his aunt's friends Sarah and Hiro, now the fourth and fifth members of the original cast to reappear. Oh, and Sarah is pregnant and wearing a wedding ring.
- Not only do Noah and Hashim return, but Len also gives Max's another surprise....
  Len: (comes to the living room, whining, has a big baby bump and wearing a long t-shirt that reads "Bun in the Coven") Noaaaaah my FEET hurt! My BACK hurts! Why won't you let me gestate the thing in a POD?
  Noah: I'm tellin' you woman it ain't NATURAL! Or sanitary.
  Max: [Beat] (surprised and incensed) WHAT THE FUCK.
  Len: NOAAAAH! Nobody must SEE me without my GLAMOUR on!
- Brittany finally developing her powers after receiving her cousin Omegaman's blood transfusion.
- Renee finally returning to the comic, carrying her and Hiro's son as she meets with Max and co. at the Key Manati Anime Rumpus.
- "The Practical Lesson of Len" shows that Len has given birth to a baby girl, who's named Phoebe in the next comic.
- The Return of Izzy Slater
- When Max ends up traveling to the Bad Future, Len points him in a certain direction. What is it that he sees? A wounded and sobbing Ashley Lockheart.
"Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: At the end of Part 2, Max has a vision of a possible future that acts as this trope for the Part 2 cast.
- Max and Calixta move into a houseboat (which she isn't thrilled about), get married, and have a daughter.
- Cricket and Bee are married with three kids (and another on the way), and Bee is an archeologist while Cricket is a comic book writer.
- Kavya is in a band called Clussy and has a child with Lilooly.
- Orion and Vanitas are still together as a couple and as archnemesis, and the Nevershould is implied to be their surrogate for their future child. Orion also gets a sidekick of his own, Justipede.
- Brittany and Min are married and have a baby on the way, and Brittany continues her superhero career and takes on a sidekick like Orion.
- A much calmer Caliban is briefly shown flirting with a stoner girl.
White-Bread Palate:
- Played straight in this strip where a dude asks Hashim for spicy and is instead given sauce labeled "extra-mild for white people", which the customer thinks is amazingly hot.
- Subverted with Sybil, a Card-Carrying Jerkass who seems to be Unaffected by Spice and confronts Hashim when he tries to serve her the “white people mild” sauce.
Wilhelm Scream: Invoked in "Weird Noises" when Hashim is telling Izzy about being weirded out by Sarah using horns and other noisemakers while they were having sex.
Hashim: And when she came, I swear I heard the wilhelm scream.
Izzy: Hm.
Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer: When Lucian's father shows up to petiton the return of his people's ancestral lands in "Land Back", he's actually disappointed that Izzy immediately agrees since he had a whole presentation and speech that he worked really hard on.
World of Weirdness: At first glance, the world appears to be fairly close to reality, but as we learn more about it, it becomes clear that things are... odd. There's superheroes, fish-girls, magic, whatever the hell Jerry is, and that's before you factor in what all the "normal" people get up to in the background. It's eventually revealed in Volume 9 that this is a consequence of Akihiro repeatedly rebooting the timeline, and things would have gotten even weirder had he actually suceeded with his plans at the end of the volume.
You and What Army?: Asked by the librarian in "Carded" in response to Izzy claiming she had the police beat up.

Ennui GO!

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