Brick Joke/Web Comics
 | This page needs visual enhancement. You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page. |
#
- In 8-Bit Theater, there's Thief's class change, which comes back to haunt him at the worst possible moment.
- To clarify, when Thief first gets his class change, he says that he "stole it from the future". Later, when the Light Warriors fight Sarda, everyone except Thief is demoted to their former classes. Thief says that he got lucky, and then his past self jumps out and steals the class change. Making this...
- Oh, it gets better. Remember when King Steve said that they had to go out and fight Chaos near the beginning of the story? Yeah...
- Let's not forget how the quest starts with Fighter looking for the Armor of Invincibility in the Cave of No Return. Some time later, they stumble upon a cave they don't want to return to and Fighter rushes back, wherein he finds the Armoire of Invincibility.
- Not to mention, in the VERY LAST comic (and the very last line in the series), Fighter mentions that they never did find the Armor of Invincibility.
- Now, 8-bit Theater has one of the longest set-ups for one of these jokes in history. In one of the first comics, Black Mage reads a Nintendo Power magazine and remarks "four white mages? It will never work!" Then, 1200 comics later, four white mages defeat Chaos.
- Fittingly, the payoff strip is actually called "The Longest Set Up In Webcomic History".
- Fittingly indeed, when you consider the fact that it took nearly 9 years to pay off. Most webcomics don't even last that long, let alone set up jokes so far in advance.
- Fittingly, the payoff strip is actually called "The Longest Set Up In Webcomic History".
- "Dark soon? What are you talking about? It's never night time around here. Well, until we stay at the inn anyway." 1198 comics later,This happens.
- "You don't actually drill for mana." 1061 comics later...
- That may have also been the payoff for this comic, which contains the last piece of advice Black Belt gave White Mage before he died.
- There are also a few more on smaller scales:
- 8-Bit Theater deserves a trophy for this kind of thing, containing several throwaway gags that get brought back years after they were first told.
- In the 7th strip, Black Mage is reading a Nintendo Power magazine. 9 years and over 1,200 strips later, the joke is referenced in the biggest Anti-Climax of the series (CAREFUL, MASSIVE SPOILERS ON THIS).
- The Armor of Invincibility, something mentioned in the very first strip, is brought back up again in the very last strip, a grand total of 1,225 strips later.
A
- In Adventurers!, Cody wonders if Gildward isn't really a superhero in disguise. Then fast forward to the finale...
- In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, one issue has Dan eating poisoned beets and mentioning he sucked up the poison and stored it in his eyes, so he can shoot it out like a toad. He wasn't kidding.
- The same fight includes two more bricks in quick succession. First, the Ghost Wizard casts a fire spell, which Dan cheerfully runs through because of his fireproof ninja suit that was used in an earlier story. The wizard's next spell is the KNIFE EYE ATTACK!!!, a move that Dan had supposedly made up while they were training for the fight.
- "Once I swam out to sea and pretended to be injured so dolphins would swim up and rescue me. I did this so I could kill them with my bare hands." Later on, this character actually IS in this situation, and dolphins come and rescue him...we see a strip with him wondering in fear why they're doing this...later on, at the end of the story arc when he's long been forgotten about...yeah.
- Here, we see King Radical tell Doc that he was going to fire a missile at an orphanage. But he stands back and lets Doc take the missile. Cut to here. "They'll wash off, don't worry." If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
- In one comic, we see Doc see his younger self while riding Sparklelord through a cave. A couple years later, we find out why. Even mentioned by the author.
- And we have Mikey, cured by Doc, but forever unable to grow a beard. 6 years worth of webcomics later, we visit Mikey again in the dinosaur infested future, where we see Mikey get dumped once again.
- In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, a few pages in "There Is A Raptor In My Office," Doc makes a few mentions about how diabetics are always whining. Five years later, during "Futures Trading," Doc's clinic gets shut down because everyone thinks he's dead, and there's a whiny diabetic outside the clinic as it shuts down.
- Amazing Super Powers has one, too (Alt Text). Also, see this comic and the newspaper text here.
- The first Western strip of Arthur, King of Time and Space shows a "Salooon" sign with three "o"s. This finally gets explained in a gag three months later.
B
- Bittersweet Candy Bowl, Remember that sex ed teacher near the beginning of the comic that says you get pregnant every time you have sex? Turns out she's right.
- Blank It uses Brick Jokes extensively. Perhaps the best is Aric's bug leg, which he uses as a machete. He loses it after 8 months when it is humorously gigantified as a way to disarm him. We assume that's the punchline but then it turns up fifty strips later in a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
- The first Christmas special of Brawl in the Family revealed that King Dedede pulls the Grinch stunt every Christmas. One year later, on the next Christmas special, we get a quick shot of King Dedede doing his yearly attempt to steal Christmas.
- And then there's the literal Brick Joke in "Variations on a Vine Comic". Are you scratching your head over the last one? Well, take a gander at this earlier strip.
- In this Brawl in the Family comic, Daisy catches Wiggler and Lakitu trying to get special privileges from their brethren in Mario Kart 7. Three comics later...
C
- Casey and Andy has the both the Casey Vaporiso-Annihilatomat, which is later topped by the Nineteenth Century White House Teleport-o-mat whose time-to-reappearance is more than half of the comic's run.
- Cyanide & Happiness recently did a short which would be incredibly depressing if the joke from the first twenty seconds didn't reappear at the end.
- He means this one.
- The short has a sequel, it is about the children of the star of the previous short gathering for his birthday, the punchline is that the short itself only lasts for half of the 2:09 video and that the credits themselves contain several Brick Jokes in itself
- Their 2012 new year's day comic was a falling brick from their 2010 comic.
- Cyanide & Happiness plays this very straight with their comics about Waldo. For those who don't want to experience the comic front to back, they introduce him here, he returns about a week later and then again two and a half years later.
- He means this one.
D
- Strip 351 of Darths and Droids had this surprise return of an apparent one-off joke.
 |
Anakin: You haven't forgotten the + 1 bonus, right? |
 |
- In Darths and Droids, Chancellor Valorum mentions wanting to turn people into cyborgs under his command. In Episode III, General Grievous reveals himself to be Valorum with a similar line.
- Several turn up in Digger. The first is the apparently hallucinatory voices from the first few strips, it later turns out that Digger probably did hear them, as their owners reappear, twice. Also, one of the rather obscure pronouncements made by the Oracular Slug is 'beware the peacock's tail' which sounds like gibberish, until it comes to pass much later that the name of the snowy mountain pass Digger and her companions have to cross is called the peacock.
- In this Dinosaur Comics strip, T-Rex forgets his wallet on the moon. 323 strips later, we get the Alt Text ("hey, my wallet's here") to this strip.
- DMFA: "What about all my stuff in the closet?" "Your stuff? All I found was a bunch of high-heel shoes..."
- Dominic Deegan, oracle for hire, just looped a joke back to its second comic. And he didn't need his second sight this time. Almost a 9 year setup.
- This is also a brick joke of people bothering him for readings.
- Drowtales had one in the form of a set of black and red clothing, Chrys'tel wore back in Chapter 7, and after she's captured Ariel takes them in Chapter 8 in order to impersonate Chrys'tel, though she never wound up using them. Then in Chapter 30, 22 chapters later, they're worn by Diva'ratrika, her grandmother, which later results in a hilarious payoff.
- In chapter 7 of Drowtales, Chrys'tel was seen wearing a set of black and red clothing, and after she's captured Ariel takes them in chapter 8 in order to impersonate Chrys'tel, though she never wound up using them. Then in Chapter 30, 22 chapters later, they're worn by Diva'ratrika, her grandmother, which later results in a hilarious payoff.
- In the background of this Dumbing of Age strip, Mike puts his books in the bag of Walky without Walky noticing. Two chapters later, Walky wonders how his books multiplied.
E
- El Goonish Shive: Way back in 2003, thanks to random acts of mad science, one character's hair is suddenly undyed, leaving with this line of dialog. Six years later... we get this.
- Going even further back, in 2002 Greg wonders where Susan's sword came from, and in 2005 we saw her Venus tattoo. Both turned from throwaway gags to plot points in 2010 when she finally explains about her Hyperspace Arsenal.
- In El Goonish Shive, Dan Shive will often include links to prior strips whose subject matter was referenced underneath the new chapters. As can be expected, several of these point out Brick Jokes, while some of them are Bricks of the Invoked variety.
- In Endstone, first Jon interrupted Cole's attack on Herrik, then Kyri interrupted Cole's attack on Jon, and then Kyri tried to reason with her, Jon ducked out, and Kyri and Cole fought -- Herrik interrupts the fight.
- In Erfworld, Stanley discovers while breaking walnuts with the Arkenhammer that every now and then the walnut turns into a pigeon. A while later, Stanley hits an enemy bird with the Arkenhammer, and it turns into... a walnut.
- Erma: At the start of 2018, the family left on a trip, and got Erma's babysitter Felicia to look after their pet dog Siris. Nearly three years later in Real Life, but only one week later in story time, we see the aftermath of the walk - combining Brick Joke and Noodle Incident.
- Errant Story: In the very first chapter, Meji selects her wildly improbable senior project on a lark. The response is predictable. The eventual result...not so much.
- Exterminatus Now - "Nah, we're not gonna do the Python gag yet. Maybe next time."
F
- Freefall:
- When Florence goes in for testing at the company that created her, this happens, followed half a year of reader-time later by this. And even later by this.
- Robots kept in check by other robots, and then later robot police force.
- Remember how a security guy blabs to Florence about the disabling backdoor in motor controllers? A little later, she found it and built an exploit herself.
G
- When the Girl Genius crowd put on a "side show" of Steampunk Cinderella, the brick is played by a houseplant and a dead mouse.
- later on, we find a new one; Gil meets Zola in the Castle Heterodyne. She reveals her plan - and then mentions how the Baron's son is a complete maniac and was last seen in Beetleburg "chewing on the furniture". Suddenly, the section name "Gil chews the Scenery" makes sense.
- Also...The Hat Came Back.
- Remember how Fräulein Snaug visiting the cistern was scared by {{{1}}}? Later the cistern was dumped, so here it is.
- At one point, the heroes find a room in the middle of Castle Heterodyne that is completely engulfed in flames. Gil suggests that, being Castle Heterodyne, it's possible that the room is supposed to be on fire. Later, when the castle regains control over that room, it remembers that said room is supposed to be on fire.
- In Goblins, the Anymug gets introduced here, right after the first fight, and shows up again almost four years Real Time later here, just in time to deliver some thematically appropriate violence to Dellyn Goblinslayer.
- In Chapter 7 of Guilded Age, Frigg "wins" a game of chess. Then four chapters later... (Make sure to read the alt text.)
- Gunnerkrigg Court: In the middle of Chapter 7, Reynardine makes a rude comment. Antimony orders him to be silent, and he's compelled to obey. Annie forgets about this until the bonus page at the end of Chapter 9; a week of in-story time, and several months of Real Life time, later.
- In Chapter 20, Annie accidentally defaces the moon. Now look at the Moon in Chapter 27.
- It Got Better. She said "I may have some explaining to do" and in Chapter 34, ah, an interested party visits the Court to seek some explaining. And no, the lady with moon rabbit doesn't buy the story about "solar winds".
- In Chapter 20, Annie accidentally defaces the moon. Now look at the Moon in Chapter 27.
H
- Homestuck has a few examples.
- Dave created his first UNREAL AIR in Act 4, after which it promptly floated away. Six months pass and it's mentioned in a conversation between Dave and Davesprite as probably winding up on Skaia eventually. Six months after that, it finally does.
- Andrew Hussie compares himself to the kid from The Neverending Story. Then he lives the dream.
- The "What Pumpkin" running gag, has been around since Jail Break. After over 6000 updates, it turns out Jake was behind it...although Roxy might have had something to do with it too.
- Right after Dave was introduced, he considers bleating like a goat for ironic purposes. No less than 3960 pages (and 2½ years) later, Brobot bleats like a goat for strategic and ironic purposes.
- John is mentioned to have a peanut allergy. This never comes up until about 4000 pages later, where it turns out Jake, John's Alternate Universe relative, shares the same allergy.
- 01/09/12 gives us the longest Brick Joke in the comic. On page 32 John talks about a book of his that is so heavy, it could kill a cat if dropped. Cut to 01/09/12, almost three years later, and Roxy attempts to prove to Jane that she has an appearifier by appearifying the very same book. Right on top of her pet cat.
- In Homestuck, Act 4, Dave created a skateboard called Unreal Air that just went up, and up, and up and was basically useless. He made another one and kept it with him just for kicks, and we forgot about it. In the Act 4 Finale, what did we see? Dave riding into his first gate in the Medium. RIDING UNREAL AIR.
I
- The "Love and Space" arc of The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob has two. At the beginning of the story, Molly has built a giant robot. Then the characters go into space, leaving the robot. Six months later, a one-panel cutaway shows that the naughty neighbor kids have discovered the robot. We spend the next year with our heroes in space, during which time an energy beam ricochets off a ship's force field and shoots into deep space. At the end of the whole 18-month story, we learn that the kids accidentally activated the robot and it destroyed Bob's roof. Rocko, who is rich, repairs the roof... only for a mysterious energy beam to come out of the sky and destroy it again.
- And don't forget these two Irregular Webcomic! comics.
L
- In Least I Could Do, Rayne somehow kidnaps a rabbit from its home (which just so happens to be the home of one of John's students and the very hot mother of said student) in an attempt to impress the girl he's with, in case she's an animal lover, only for it to vanish by the next comic (while commenting that the readers probably won't wonder what happened to it). Sometime later, John's conscience leads him right to the rabbit just as its owners come up to him, in a Xanatos Gambit to get him laid.
- Inverted in Lightning Made of Owls, #206 and #207.
- In the third comic of Looking for Group, Richard mentions off hand he's the mayor of a little village. Two hundred comics later, that village becomes a major plot point, as it's attacked, forcing him to leave the group right before their big battle.
- He later asks if they 'did what he said to with the women and children'. He's told 'the catapult could only fire four at a time.' It sounds like his typical pointless violence, until the payoff later.
- From Loserz: Birds are evil!
M
- These two strips of the Chess based web comic series maniccomics.
- Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: "When Spartans play Gay Chicken, they play for keeps." So sayeth Commander Badass.
- There's even a conclusion to the game. Leondias concedes defeat to Kratos, but it's a Pyrrhic Victory as Kratos is reminded that he no longer has a family.
- In this A Miracle of Science page, protagonist Benjamin Prester is trying to find his new partner, Caprice, a member of an extremely powerful hive intellect. Eventually he decides to let Caprice find him, imagining that she can do this easily with an increasingly ridiculous list of powers she supposedly possesses, from mind reading to scanning the station with neutrinos to detect his bone structure. Two chapters later, Caprice can tell which bone in Prester's hand is broken just by looking at it. When asked, she explains that she was looking at his bone structure with neutrinos.
- In Mortifer, there's Vlad's car crash. Mentioned in the first few pages of the first chapter as The reason that Vlad decided to retire, the not mentioned again until hundreds of pages later in Chapter 29, where it's revealed that the car crash was caused by a demon escaping hell and emerging in the middle of the road, right in front of Vlad's car.
N
- Nedroid: The Alt Text in the last page of the Robotginald story arc references Reginald's supposedly full name.
O
- Very early in The Order of the Stick, Elan obtained a Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity. At first this seems like a throwaway joke. Then, when Roy needs to escape from assassins more than 200 strips later...
- It was a throwaway joke. And then it came back.
- Even more bricky: in an early comic, Elan comes to the conclusion that Vaarsuvius is half-camel. Vaarsuvius, somewhat exasperated says "Sure, why not?" Just short of six hundred comics later, when the party is in the desert, Elan asks Vaarsuvius to help him communicate with the camels.
- Soon after, Belkar runs into a slaver with whom he has a mutual friend. More than five hundred comics earlier, he tried to convince Haley to sell a captured enemy into slavery, "I know a guy who knows a guy."
- When searching for the starmetal to get Roy's sword reforged, V gets polymorphed into a purple lizard, which V's familiar tries to catch. Blackwing (V's familiar) figures it out in strip #714, more than 500 strips later. The strip title implies that it was intentional.
- During a visit to a town, Belkar visits the barbarian guild and is given a brochure made from a piece of bark and moss. Later on, a hooded figure tracking the group visits the same guild and receives the very same brochure.
- In strip 135, Vaarsuvius buys 27 Potions of Heroism. About 300 strips later, (s)he gets a chance to use them.
- Guess what spell I cast before giving this to the bird.
- "...so the Boots of Speed were totally powerful, but they were, like, lime green."
- Don't forget the diamond for Roy's resurrection, stolen from the meet the cast page!
- Or this example, 300 and 600 strips later.
- "Are you a future psychic, too? You ARE just like Roy!"
- Very early in the comic, a Mindflayer is defeated when the two lawyers from Wizards of the Coast show up and arrest him, citing copyright infringement. Some time afterward, Vaarsuvius defeats a Drizzt Do'Urden parody by sending the lawyers after him. The lawyers have since become recurring characters, but initially seemed to be a one-time joke.
- And then the parody himself came back too.
- "Wait a minute, I had a 22!"
- This comic references the many instances in which Belkar used a lead sheet to escape from Miko's Detect Evil (most notably this one.)
- In this episode of The Order of the Stick, Elan saves the day with a magic item abandoned as 'useless' 224 strips earlier.
P
- Penny and Aggie: While not a joke, per se, soda spills make a big comeback over four years later under other circumstances.
- In the installment of Penny Arcade that introduced The Merch, the keen insight he gives is "I fucked your dad!". Guess what he says to Santa Claus at the end of the Christmas arc featuring him.
- In Problem Sleuth, the weapon that finally defeats Mobster Kingpin once and for all is the four pieces of candy corn Problem Sleuth picked up near the beginning of the story.
- There's also the bust of Snoop Dogg. Hussie has claimed that he knew as soon as he drew it, that he would make is vitally important to the ultimate destruction of the final boss.
- In this PvP strip we get a punchline that looks like a throwaway line. Then, eight years later...
Q
- Jeph Jacques unleashed one in Questionable Content: Strip #1594 explained what happened to the Roomba that Pintsize, ah, modified in #1557. And if you're wondering, the activities in Strip #1594 were successful.
R
- Real Life Comics has one in these two comics.
S
- Schlock Mercenary loves this, beginning with the a tasteless Aprils Fools joke about bringing Elf's Boyfriend back with Nanotechnology.:
|
Elf: Hey, everybody! It's open season on jerk narrators! Narrator: Oops. That's my cue to leave! |
|
- Which is EXACTLY what happens to her next boyfriend making the whole thing a five year Brick Joke. Another started here and hit again a year and four days later here.
- "They committed suicide when they saw me coming."
- Near the beginning of Shadowgirls, a trio of Jerk Jocks attempt to rape Becka, and are stopped only by the timely awakening of her Shadowchild powers. Fast-forward to the epilogue, and it appears that Becka's mom wasn't quite finished with them...
- Used all the time in Sluggy Freelance thanks to being Kudzu Plot incarnate. Just check out all the archive links for this strip.
- A character just appears out of nowhere in Timeless Space. Four years later, we find whe
ren he came from.
- A character just appears out of nowhere in Timeless Space. Four years later, we find whe
- Sluggy Freelance: June 2 and August 17, 2001 (the ship in the second strip is the crotch of the megarobot GOFOTRON)
- Spacetrawler: Russian tea cookies. (Also Nogg's promise.)
- Stickman and Cube is fond of this one:
- A time machine Cube sends into the future returns just in time to stop Stickman from doing horrible things to Cube with an electric cattle prod.
- In 2008, the two eponymous characters went out drinking. Cube consumed a very volatile cocktail while wearing an "extremely heavy metal helmet which could probably cause a lot of damage if it landed on somebody following an explosion", heavily implying that it would do so. It was launched through the roof in the ensuing blast, and no more mention was given to it (apart from one comic appropriately subtitled "What Happened to the Mouse??" in which Stickman and Cube idly wonder about unresolved plot hooks and abandoned Running Gags) until over a year later, when it comes down in a huge fireball just in time to smash Robo-Cube and the Hat right before they lay some hurt on Cube. This was lampshaded in the title, "At Least It Isn't A Brick".
- In Subnormality, this comic isn't really all that funny at first... until two comics later, when this comic is introduced.
- In an early episode of The Suburban Jungle, Yin Panda is seen explaining her latest "discovery", that if you shield the sun with your thumb you can see UFOs hiding in the corona. Years later, she has an encounter with real aliens. Guess where they have been hiding their ship.
- In this Super Effective (webcomic) strip, the old man who teaches you how to catch Pokemon falls asleep. 5 strips later, he wakes up and finishes what he was saying.
- In a VG Cats strip focusing on tabletop RPG, Leo ties a dead rat to a stick and dubs it a "rat-flail", which annoys Dungeon Master Aeris enough to tell him that the dead rat gave him plague and he died. The rat-flail returns in a Bleach parody some time later. Aeris-as-Byakuya is not amused.
- Fiona and Jim from Supernormal Step have indulged in two of these so far: "Be nice or you go in this jar I found." and this visual callback.
T
- A rather more literal one in Thespiphobia, where the techies have a competition dropping rail clips off the catwalk. Ends with Mikaela disappearing into the loft after being struck, to the panic of Gabe and the others involved.
W
- The remark in the second panel of this Wapsi Square strip seems to be only there to continue the conversation, but later on we get this.
X
- Lampshaded in Xkcd. The last panel of strip #220 ("Philosophy") has a character pulling a Super Soaker out of a drawer to use on a friend who is "getting existential again". In strip #517, a character is using a "marshmallow gun" to annoy a friend sitting at a desk. Said friend pulls the Super Soaker out of the drawer and shoots him with it, prompting him to say "Man, I forgot that was there."
- The author did this at least four times in one strip with #526, with references to Summer Glau, raptors on hoverboards, cats wearing captions and the amount of blood in a fieldmouse.
- Even more show up in the Alt Text, such as eliptical reflector dishes and dangerous hybrid forks.
- Is this the first time the Boomerang has been used as a brick joke?
- xkcd. In addition to the two strips that provide the main-page image, there's also the Super Soaker.