B.C.

B.C. is a newspaper comic strip created in 1958 by Johnny Hart. It focuses on a small band of cavemen, led by one named B.C. Others in the strip include Peter, Clumsy Carp, Curls, Thor, Wiley, Grog, the Fat Broad and the Cute Chick. There is also a cast of talking animals that includes John the Tortoise, Dookie Bird, a family of ants, an anteater, dinosaurs, clams, snakes and an apteryx: a wingless bird with hairy feathers (a kiwi to the rest of us).

Initially, B.C. was a gag-a-day strip. After Hart became a born-again Christian in 1977, the strip gradually began adding more and more of Hart's religious and political beliefs until most strips were Christian-themed. Some newspapers refused to print certain strips that were deemed overly proselytizing. After Hart's death in 2007, it reverted to a mostly gag-a-day strip maintained by daughter Perri Hart and grandson Mason Mastroianni.

• Anachronism Stew: For a supposedly prehistoric comic strip, it's had references to movies, hippies and several other things that didn't exist until modern times (not to mention that Clumsy Carp wears glasses). Some strips hint that it may actually take place After the End and Earth All Along.

The Fat Broad: (answering a ringing telephone) Prehistoric times. (suddenly realizes what she's doing and runs away screaming) A TELEPHONE!!

• Animal Talk: All the animals in the strip, except the clams (who can be heard and presumably understood by humans) and dinosaurs (who only speak in GRONKs).
• Animate Inanimate Object: Rocky, a spherical boulder who can move around, and communicates by making words appear on his surface. He claims to have hundreds of similar friends.
• Animated Adaptation: A Thanksgiving and Christmas special aired in 1973 and 1981, respectively.
• Aside Glance: Happens quite often after a character does something unusual or stupid.
• Author Tract: After Johnny Hart became a born-again Christian, he began injecting his religious beliefs into more and more strips. One particularly controversial one featured a menorah turning into a cross.
• Bamboo Technology: Among other things, a telephone built into a tree.
• Big Friendly Dog: Wolf, more or less.
• Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game: Characters have actually been known to make golf swings while hanging by their feet from a tree branch. For a bonus, there's Bizarre And Improbable cheating when Clumsy Carp balances a submerged golf ball on his nose and raises it out of the water for a friend to hit, in exchange for a share of the winnings. Another time, B.C. (or possibly Thor)^{[please verify]} somehow wound up, after his swing, with the ball balanced on the head of his club. Consulting the massive rule book, Peter found a rule that "covers it explicitly," and told the unlucky fellow they had to shoot him.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When the cavemen first notice there's something pumping in their chests, one of them suggests calling it a "hart". Curly calls the proposer a "bootlicker".
• Catch Phrase: "Great Zot!"
• Cloudcuckoolander: Several characters veer into this trope. B.C., Clumsy Carp and Wiley appear to be the biggest offenders.
• Deadpan Snarker: Curls

B.C.: I'd like you to meet Curls, master of sarcastic humor. Clumsy Carp: Let's hear you say something funny. Curls: I'm pleased to meet you.

• Earth All Along: One strip eventually revealed that the comic takes place After The End, when a cache of books, including The Bible, is found.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Fat Broad is a fat broad. The Cute Chick is all the men's dream girl.
  • That being said, the Fat Broad appears to be more thick-muscled than fat, even though the characters (herself included) reference her being fat. She's proven herself multiple times to be the strongest character in the comic.
• Green Aesop: Hart actually did a bit of proselytizing before being born again, it just took a different form.
• Hates Baths: Wiley
• Jumping the Shark: In-Universe: one strip has a character offer Thor condolences for "Jumping a shark".
• The Klutz/Meaningful Name: Clumsy Carp.
  • Clumsy once attempted to raise his confidence by insisting people stop calling him that. After he falls flat on his face while standing still, he settles on the name "Clumsy Pike".
• Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!: Usually averted by keeping the animal characters away from the humans, but they can communicate when the humor requires it. Clams seem to be especially good at English.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Enough that the human characters are rarely, if ever, seen all together.
• One Million BC: The setting. Probably.
• Perma-Stubble: Most of the men.
• Pokémon-Speak: Grog can only say his name.
• Running Gag: Fat Broad's clubbing snakes, the apteryx' introduction of itself as "a wingless bird with hairy feathers," countless more.
  • CLAMS GOT RUNNING GAGS!^[1]

Clam: Now I have to kill him...

• Seldom-Seen Species: the Apteryx.
• Talking Animal: The yelling clams, probably.
• That Cloud Looks Like...: B.C. did a few, such as "all the ills suffered by mankind" (a mushroom cloud) and "the dust cloud raised by a herd of stampeding mammoths" (cue stomping as it turns out it is, indeed, the dust cloud raised by a herd of stampeding mammoths).
• Those Two Guys: John the Tortoise and Dookie Bird. It has also been known to veer into Interspecies Romance.
• Walk This Way: In one book, a character asks for a book on levitation. Cue the bookstore owner walking in mid-air while saying this trope.
• Writer on Board
• Written Roar: "GRONK."
• You Wouldn't Hit a Guy with Glasses: Clumsy Carp asks this of the Fat Broad one time when she's threatening to punch him. She replies, "No, I'd hit him with my fist!" and proceeds to get floored by Clumsy, who whacks her with his glasses.