Webcomic / Mountain Time

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Oh dear lord, what have I gotten myself into?

Mountain Time is a very strange Stick-Figure Comic by Chris Combs. It consists mainly of non sequiturs, deriving much of its humour from such bizarre events as a man removing his heart and turning it into macaroni salad, a woman whose silverware keeps getting stolen by ghosts, and a salesman peddling hills as the latest new thing. The comic is often completely incomprehensible, but the author claims that it always has a symbolic meaning. He's probably making it up. We hope.

This comic provides examples of:

• The Alcoholic: Chimneyfoot drinks more than humanly possible, but then again, he isn't a human.
• Alien Geometries: Most notably in the Crypt.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Chimneyfoot. His character page even compares him to Rudolph.
• Anachronism Stew: Computers have flat-screen monitors, but all the televisions are tube (complete with rabbit ears). Interstellar travel is apparently such a trivial matter that any pair of idiots can go on a mission to an exoplanet, but everyone still uses rotary phones. Knights interact with cowboys interact with robots sophisticated enough to have emotions. At least one person still has a beeper.
• Artistic License – Biology: Used in-universe by two characters arguing nonsense pregnancy rules.
• Audience Participation: The author regularly responds to comments... in ways that make as much sense as the comic itself.
• Bilingual Bonus: TORTHOS, EMPEROR OF THE INFERNAL REALM OF IUCUNDUM PRATI. "Iucundum Prati" is slightly mangled Latin for Pleasant Meadows.
  • The comic also contains fair amounts of French and Spanish.
• Bizarro Universe: By flipping the Mountain Time logo upside down, River Valley Time was born. Much unease followed.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: Censor bars over stick-figure nudity don't actually accomplish much.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Attorney, architect, doctor, cop, doctor cop, attornitect, lava puncher, etc.
• Break the Cutie: Agoraphobic Hamster has been ripped from his comfort zone, spooked in his own house, and killed multiple times.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Chimneyfoot is an unemployed, raging alcoholic, but he's also an extraordinar mathematician. The Great One collects hot dogs, but almost single-handedly keeps the world from ending.
• Captain Obvious: Raoul has a... condition.
• Catchphrase: Self Aware Dinosaur's "I'm a dinosaur!"
  • It may not count as a catchphrase exactly, but Agoraphobic Hamster has "Eep!"
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: A very large percentage of the characters.
  • Marvin even has a cloud on top of his head.
• Comically Missing the Point: Dr. Dee Mented can't quite figure out why she feels so sick.
• Dada Comics: To varying degrees. Here is a strong example.
• Did You Die?: three times.
• Drinking Game: A very easy game was described in the notes under this comic, the rules simply being: drink any time you're reading Mountain Time.
• Fate Worse than Death: Dave tricks someone into trapping himself in the five (but not fifth) dimension, where he faces a very long and cruel punishment.
• Fauxlosophic Narration: Any time the snailbear appears.
• Finish Dialogue in Unison: Regarding what appears to be a faulty crime ring.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Agoraphobic Hamster interacts with the narrator on a regular basis. Some of the other characters do as well, but not nearly as frequently.
• Gargle Blaster: Drinking bearshine is sure to put you in a hallucinogenic blackout state and leave you with a fair bit of missing time.
• Greek Chorus: The penguins. They seem to know about, and comment on, everything going on in the strip, but they're almost never involved in the slightest.
• Grim Reaper: The Great One, god of death and hot dogs.
• Hammerspace: The onions' swords are larger than the onions themselves, but we never see them until they're drawn.
• Hurricane of Puns: Pillow Cop is good at causing them. He's soft, but not on crime. But that's just the cop side of him — his other side is really cool.
• Insistent Terminology: A submarine is a boat, not a ship. This comes up more than once.
• invoked Ethnic Scrappy: Parodied with Giuseppe, a walking Italian stereotype... who everyone in the comic misinterprets as being a walking Asian stereotype.
• Konami Code: The Contra Waltz.
• Literal-Minded: The guy who isn't Dave in the very first comic, and many others.
  • And then Dave here.
• Long List: Pelican Cello is apparently good at making them.
• The Magazine Rule: Are You Thinking About Cows?, Tumbleweed Enthusiast, I Don't Know Myself, and Toxic Landfill are all magazines available in the Mountain Time universe.
• Meat-O-Vision: Happens to George Washington in the 26th century.
• Mind Screw: Quite often, really, but especially here.
  • This one also stands out.
• Mind Screwdriver: In "Wasps Are the Key Difference between Humans and Bees", a man named Leonard takes a strange phone call, only to be told by a bear that there is no phone, there is no table, there is no bear, and there is no Leonard. The final panel reveals this is because they're all going to the beach.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The lirus, the snailbear, Pelican Cello, Burrito Squid...
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Dave, who seems to have a new power every time he appears.
• Ninja: The onions. Yes, literally.
• Non-Indicative Name: It doesn't have terribly much to do with mountains or time.
  • Also, Joe's Pool Hall. It's not a hall, it doesn't have a pool table, and there's no one called Joe there.
  • Joe's Pool Hall is located in the Mystic Woods, in which there are no trees.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Beefsmoke 4: The Smokening gives us two in a row.
  Haywood: How is Mario fat? Dude runs everywhere and only eats mushrooms!
  Marv: Italy is shaped like a boot. AND JAPAN, IF YOU LOOK AT IT RIGHT, ISN'T!
• Not What It Looks Like: played straight, and then, um...
• One-Man Army: Adios Taco and Surf Rat have both resolved wars almost singlehandedly.
• Planet of Steves: Or, more accurately, Universe of Pauls.
• Pokémon Speak: Soup-of-the-day Steve has a weird variant of this, where he can only say whatever the soup of the day is.
• Political Cartoons: Parodied in this comic, which touches on NAFTA, Quebecois sovereignty, and Church's Chicken.
• Precision F-Strike: The comic has almost no swearing, but one recurring character is called Lenny the Fuck You Zebra.
• Previously on…: Parodied in this comic.
• Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: Dave plays with this one now and then.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: Reality only shows up for work a few hours a week. The sky is full of ham, settings change mid-conversation, and people suddenly discover they've recently robbed a bank.
• Reality Warper: Probably the best way to explain Dave's powers.
• Running Gag: Luther was right!
  • Well, I'm not working in this coal mine any more.
  • That really bends my sea lion.
• Shout-Out: There are many, but this one to MST3K is among the most notable.
  • To say nothing of a surprisingly detailed Dalek in a stick figure comic.
  • The Fly (1958) gets an absurd homage in this comic.
  • Most of the Shampoo Weeks borrow their comic titles from various Wire albums: Underwater Experiences through Piano Tuner (Keep Strumming Those Guitars) from Document & Eyewitness, Finest Drops through Boiling Boy from It's Beginning To And Back Again, and No Cows on the Ice through Footsi-Footsi from The First Letter, for instance.
• Snap Back: Otherwise everyone would be dead, like, thrice. There was even a time when Helen Hunt killed more people than live on Earth. Traffic was still bad. Afterward, the world was no worse for the wear.
• Split Personality: Donna the Bears. Her personalities are all bears.
• Standard Hero Reward: The White Knight's motivation for slaying the Dreadful Dragon is the hand of Princess Online Dating in marriage.
• Stealth Pun: David Tennant's chewing gum is scenery-flavoured.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Frequently.
• Surreal Humor: Basically the whole point. Heck, the comic's tagline is "surreal comics for real people."
• Tin Tyrant: TORTHOS, EMPEROR OF THE INFERNAL REALM OF IUCUNDUM PRATI.
• Title Drop: No, it's Mountain Time.
• Totem Pole Trench: This strip features Bottom, a squat little...thing who was genetically engineered to be the lower half of one of these.
• Unsound Effect: Detach! Be affected by gravity!
• Verbal Tic: AAAAH! Troper! Burrito Squid has one.
• Waving Signs Around: Branching off from the the whole "John 3:16" idea.
• Word Salad Title: Comics tend to have titles like Immortality Through Unremarkable Yellow Stickers or Fascism's Belly Button.
• World of Weirdness
• X Days Since: Being a supervillain.
• Worst News Judgement Ever: A running gag.