A webcomic of comedy, romance, adventure, and raccoon propaganda.Sandra and Woo
is a English and German-language webcomic by Oliver Knörzer and Powree, about the adventures of middle-schooler Sandra North
and her pet
talking raccoon, Woo. It's drawn in an
Animesque style with some western comic stylizations, and makes up of mostly unconnected story arcs. Imagine
Calvin and Hobbes aged up a few years,
crossed with iCarly, and with some more serious plot threads.
The story mostly focuses on Sandra and Woo's misadventures but will also focus on one of Sandra's two best friends, Cloud and
Larisa, or Woo's adventures with his woodland friends, Shadow the fox and Sid the squirrel.
It also has a forum thread on this site.
Sandra and Woo contains examples of:
- Aborted Arc: In the comments for the January 2010 strip about Larisa's secret, Oliver Knörzer stated that he was writing the concept of an arc about Larisa's backstory, and that he planned on publishing it by fall 2011. That date came and went without any arc, and the plot of Larisa's secret would not be revisited until November 2013. At that time, Knörzer revealed that he dropped the arc because he eventually disliked it and considered it not being up to the quality of the comic. Larisa's secret was finally revealed in September 2015 (see The Unreveal below).
- Aerith and Bob: We have believable names like Sandra and Larisa, and then we have Woo and Cloud. Justified in that Woo is a pet and Cloud was named by Final Fantasy nerds and has a sister named Yuna.
- Afraid of Needles: Enough to attempt reporting a case of animal abuse.
- Age-Inappropriate Dress: Larissa's dress while doing her "homework"◊ in this strip. Age-inappropriate enough that an alternate version with more conservative attire was posted to the main page.
- An Aesop: Quite common. Occasionally border on Anvilicious Author Tracts, but so far the comic has never failed to return to lighthearted silliness very shortly afterward.
- And I Must Scream: Larisa's answer to "Three things I wish upon my worse enemy" is "immobility, insomnia and immortality".
- All Love Is Unrequited: Or, at least, it is if you're gay and your interest isn't. Subverted later on, though (the canonicity of this scene is not established, though).
- All There in the Manual: Landon's parents are only named in the narrative below the comic, not in the comic itself
- Alpha Bitch: Zoey and her best friend Michelle.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Ye Thuza. She even joins her son's friends in making fun of him on occasion.
- Amusing Injuries: Common
- Animal Talk: Woo and all other animals, including Woo's friends Shadow and Sid, speak the same language, but only Woo is able to communicate with humans. However, he's not talking to anyone but Sandra since he is afraid of ending up in a laboratory otherwise.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Sandra and Cloud's favorite political slogan: "Freedom! Justice! Cookies!".
- The Devil offers to turn Larisa into a succubus who will "debauch innocent young men to a dissolute life full of sex, drugs and dubstep."
- Art Evolution: A slight progression over the years, with body proportions, mainly everyone looking taller and longer.
- Art Initiates Life: Larisa's father had to destroy two of his paintings (depicting his daughter in poses of American and Russian patriotism), because they "became self-aware and began sending weapons of war to the Middle East".
- Ascended to Carnivorism: Ruth the "level 5 carnivore" pine squirrel.
- Babies Ever After: Woo and Lilly finally had kits!
- Badass Family: The Williams family. The mom is an ex-Child Soldier, the son is a trained swordsman and martial artist and the young daughter is a little Mad Scientist. Even David, the Team Normal, is badass by proxy for having all this people as family.
- Bad Future: In 2037, the U.S is desolated thanks to the Great Fires caused by Larisa, who set every forest on fire just to prove Smokey wrong.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between Richard and his new coworker, Melody, from the look of things.
- Berserk Button: Don't tease Sandra about her looks, even if you're her best friend, talking pet raccoon or even her father.
- Betty and Veronica: Sandra and Larisa, respectively, with Cloud as Archie.
- Beyond the Impossible: Larisa managed to set water on fire.
- Bi the Way: Larisa is very impressed by Luna's ability to set fires. This may be less a matter of Larisa having lesbian tendencies, and more a matter of her liking fire that much.
- Big "NO!": Richard here.
- Black Helicopter: A squad of Black Helicopters appeared for investigation, after Larisa (supposedly) tried to detonate a nuke.
- A Boy and His X: A girl and her raccoon.
- Boys Have Cooties: Lampshaded.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The text below this comic should give you an idea about the arc it's part of.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Correction: I needed to go to the bathroom.
- Broken Pedestal: Zig-Zagged. After being built up for several comics, it's revealed that Butterfly is terrified of climbing difficult obstacles, seemingly getting ready to turn into this trope. However, it turns out that all Butterfly needs is a bit of encouragement from Woo, allowing her to get over her performance anxiety.
- The Cameo: Sir James Eglamore from Gunnerkrigg Court.
- Carnivore Confusion: Both averted and played straight. Woo is friendly with Shadow, a fox, and Sid, a squirrel. They regularly try to eat each other, but as the tagline says, fail. This doesn't stop Woo and Shadow from eating other woodland creatures, successfully.
- Justified by the fact that Sid and Shadow were both orphaned by a woman running over their moms, and she brought the surviving babies to a friend of hers who took care of them until they were old enough to survive in the wild and Shadow asks Woo not to eat Sid.
- While hungry, Woo found a sole apple guarded by a snake, he prefers to eat the snake, talk about badass.
- Woo's reaction to catching a grey squirrel bullying the smaller and weaker Sid was to carry the squirrel off to Shadow and his family for dinner.
- Catchphrase: Woo's "Woo!" What Woo is named after, and his common reaction to pleasant surprises.
- Character Blog: Sandra has a YouTube channel, also going by her alter ego Sandy the Third, empress and supreme ruler of Northia, there.
- Children Are Innocent: Defied to the point of being a recurring Aesop. Larisa, in addition to being generally vindictive, is a pyromaniac, and one strip has her, confronted with sushi, casually pull out the lighter she carries to set fires and cook it. Cloud's mother is a former Shan Child Soldier in Burma, and she frequently deals with relatives being menaced or killed by the SPCD.
- Clothing Damage: Woo leaps on Sandra at one point in a hyped-up state, and tears her clothes to shreds, leaving her in her panties. Much controversy in the comments box, under the circumstances....
- Coitus Uninterruptus/Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Woo thinks having sex at the dinner table with his (very, very satisfied looking) wife is completely acceptable behavior.
- Crossover: Sir James Eglamore and the god Coyote from Gunnerkrigg Court have appeared in the comic, which seems to state the two comics take place in the same universe.
- Renard and Ysengrin are there with Coyote as well, according to the tags
- Cruel And Unusual Interrogation Methods: If the C.I.A ever used this CD, they would have crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
- Crush Blush: Landon.
- Cow Tools: Parodied with this.
- Deadpan Snarker: Sandra, sometimes.
- Deal with the Devil: Parodied in this strip as Sandra accidentally sells her soul to the devil for a glass of lemonade.
- Death by Origin Story: Sid's mother, Hazel. We hardly knew ye.
- Deconstructive Parody: Of the eponymous duo.
- Demon of Human Origin: In the "Divine Comedy" arc, Larisa sells her soul to the Devil, who says he'll make a succubus of her because anything else would be a waste of her talents.
- Department of Redundancy Department:
- Deus ex Machina: As seen here.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: Larisa grumbling.
- Dinner with the Boss: Sandra asks Woo to behave himself when her father's boss is over for dinner. Woo's idea of ideal raccoon behavior involves having sex with his girlfriend on the dining-room table while eating all the food there.
- Dirty Coward: When Roger Brown found out that Tommy wanted him as a Virgin Sacrifice, he tried to convince him to sacrifice Sandra instead.
- Don't Ask: "What the hell?"
- Eats Puppies: Ruth claims to eat wolf pups. She's already proved surprisingly adept with a gun despite being a squirrel.
- Engaging Conversation: Probably. And this.
- Everyone Has Standards: Woo decides not to name his and Lily's kits based on names acquired through a [fake] Patreon drive. Because Lily threatened him when he suggested names other than what she decided.
Woo: Even if you give Novil a million dollars, I won't commit suicide for you!
- Played with regarding the Devil: He is visibly disgusted by the whole plan about God killing Sandra, but when reading about what Larisa plans to make her worst enemy suffer (namely making them immobile, insomniac and immortal), he is beyond excited and even promotes her.
- Evil Poacher: "She makes Elmer Fudd look like an animal rights activist."
- Exiled to the Couch: Hey, David dared to cheat on an Unreal Tournament Deathmatch.
- Face Palm: Digging Yourself Deeper
- Facial Profiling: The parents of Larisa have pronounced cheekbones and jaw-lines to have them look more Slavic.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: While not really delved upon, the comic takes place in the same world as Gunnerkrigg Court so its not unusal to see Ghosts, aliens, mermaids, talking animals and Gods and Goddesses.
- First Kiss: After three attempts were broken up—the first by Cloud's sister and mother, the second by a soccer ball, and the third by Larisa—Sandra and Cloud got fed up and made sure nobody would interrupt them again.
- First-Name Basis: Larisa calls her parents, Jelena and Ivan, by their first names. She usually calls her mother "Lena", to boot.
- Foreshadowing: Butterfly, a raccoon brought up for only a mention in #510, shows up in the second longest Sandra and Woo story arc starting with #530
- Food Slap: Sandra to her father, after he accidentally agreed with Larisa's assessment of her looks.
- From Bad to Worse: The ''Under A Killer Ballon" arc started with Sandra's favorite cereal getting changed to contain raisins and escalated to Sandra and other guy being kidnapped by a maniac in order to made them virgin sacrifices to the Aztec god of war, with Woo being the only able to save them.
- Funny Terrain Cross Section: In this strip.
- Furry Fandom: Invoked when Zootopia came out:
Larisa: I'm afraid I'm bunny-sexual.
Jelena: We all are, Larisa, we all are.
Ivan: I think Nick is much hotter!
- Genius Bonus: Invoked and parodied mercilessly; in response to claims that the webcomic wasn't challenging enough, the two introduced a simple 4-panel strip that, to read, one would have to solve a crossword puzzle, speak a certain Malay language, carry out a series of word puzzles, and have a bit of knowledge regarding coding, ASCII, and RGB values.
- Glomp: Sandra gives an epic one to Cloud after he gives her a love letter.
- Go Look at the Distraction!: Look!! A talking raccoon!!! Said by a talking raccoon in front of the guy.
- Gone Horribly Right: When a nature photographer catches Shadow as he's about to have sex with his wife and then uploads the picture to the Internet (along with another picture of Shadow taking a dump), Shadow convinces Woo and Sid to help him get revenge. They cover his house with pictures and statues of animals having sex, including filling his computer with furry porn. What they don't realize, however, is that the photographer's date is extremely kinky, and takes all of this as a sign that it's time to break out the whip and handcuffs. The trio just walks away, incredibly confused about what just happened and conclude that they don't really understand humans.
- Good Colors, Evil Colors: When Larisa is looking for a place where Sandra can't be killed by angels, she happily exclaims that luckily the entire map is green. It takes her a moment to realize that she works with the devil.
- Goofy Print Underwear: The link for Bullying a Dragon.
- Grammar Nazi: Sandra's grandma gets into trouble for correcting graffiti.
- G-Rated Sex: Averted.
- Green Aesop: There's an arc of them.
- Groin Attack: A Boring but Practical move.
- Happily Married:
- Cloud's parents.
- Shadow and Echo
- Woo and Lily, who seem to commit to monogamy in the "Dark and Stormy Night" ark, which is rare for raccoons.
- Presumably, Sandra's parents, Richard and the late Julie North.
- Heartbreak and Ice Cream: A lot of both.
- Horny Devils: When the Devil visits Larisa to convince her to sell her soul, he says that when she eventually goes to Hell, he plans to make her a succubus, tempting the innocent with her sexual wiles. He then has to tell her to stop drooling at the prospect.
- Hot Teacher: Sir James Eglamore.
- Hypocrite/Double Standard: The principal gives Larisa an earful about drugs while smoking.
- Hypocritical Humor: A meta-example in this comic. Zoey is complaining about the author of a book she’s reading is Pandering to the Base... while Michelle gives her a kiss on the cheek.
- Ill Girl: Larisa has diabetes, in turn caused by Wolfram syndrome.
- Innocent Innuendo: Subverted. After a recent adventure, Lily suggests Woo relax with "eating, sleeping and...cuddling". When they get to the "cuddling" strip, they show a tree and make it sound like Woo's having difficulty. The comic shows they're playing billiards. But then comes this:
- Innocent Swearing: In #189, Yuna completed her call for the freedom of the people of Burma with the word "motherfuckers". After she was told, that it's an very offensive swearword, she apologized.
- Intellectual Animal: Shadow might be the most prominent example for this trope since he's for example able to come up with a rhyming carnivorous anthem.
- The Internet Is for Porn: Woo uses YouTube to get videos of racoons getting it on.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Shadow and his mate, Echo, are interrupted by a wildlife photographer.
- Interspecies Romance: The bird is in love with a stick insect in panel #42.
- Jerkass Gods: trolls her followers and even the Supreme Deity.
- Jesus Was Way Cool: Sandra thinks that Jesus was a swell guy, but she can't stand his fanboys.
- Jumping the Shark: Inverted, and taken literally. invoked
- Just Friends: Invoked and discussed with "The ladder theory" before being averted in the next strip.
- Raccoons Prefer Bubble Wrap: Sandra gives Woo a cardboard box full of bubble wrap as a gift.
- Killer Game Master: Sandra, when Cloud misbehaves.
- Kissing In A Tree: Yuna sings this while embarrassing Cloud and Sandra.
- Implied case of going all the way with Woo and Lily.
- also played with in First Kiss above: Sandra and Cloud are kissing, Larisa is in the tree.
- Kissing Under the Influence: To celebrate Butterfly's successful climb, Seeoahtlahmakaskay declares early mating season.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The end result of the "Divine Comedy" arc. The Western God is killed and replaced, the Devil gets Larisa to sign a contract to become a succubus in order to save Sandra's life, and Seeoahtlahmakaskay whips Cupid's ass raw, but ultimately Larisa and the audience are subjected to the "flashy thing" from Men in Black.
- Laugh Themselves Sick: The suggestion of intelligence agencies being held accountable was so ludicrous to Cloud, that he pretended to die of laughter.
- Layman's Terms: Inverted in this strip. "These are management consultants. From IBM. They don't understand your "Technobabble"."
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A brief gag with Cloud's parents
- Limited Wardrobe: Averted: the characters obviously wear the same clothes when comics takes place sequentially, and change to hint a new day happens.
- Like Father, Like Daughter: Larisa is, like her father, an accomplished painter, buth with different styles (Larisa is also a sculptor, which in case of her father wasn't confirmed yet).
- Like You Were Dying: Strip 718 finally confirms that at least some of Larisa's reckless behavior and cavalier attitude is due to her belief that since she'll be "blind in 10 years and dead in 20", due to Wolfram syndrome, the consequences of her actions don't matter and she might as well have fun.
- Loves Me Not: Played with here
- Madness Mantra: Can't trap them, raccoon will shoot me! Can't trap them, raccoon will shoot me!
- The Mafia: A pest control shop called "C. Nostra".
- Major Injury Underreaction: The eagle here is only mildly annoyed that Woo is eating her offspring.
- Animesque: The art style clearly borrows a lot from traditional manga, particularly with the large eyes and cute faces that many characters have.
- Matter of Life and Death: Food, necessary to maintain the art of not eating squirrels.
- Meaningful Name: Woo and Lily's kits are named after stars: Sirius, Vega, Arcturus and Canopus.
- Medium Awareness: The characters apparently know the comic's update schedule.
- Meet the In-Laws: There was a story arc where Larisa went over to dinner at Landon's place for the first time. Landon's religious mother was convinced that she was either a witch or a succubus destined to give birth to the Anti-Christ. On the other hand, his father got along with her perfectly. Fortunately, his mother isn't an issue anymore since they got divorced and the father has custody.
- Memetic Mutation: In universe, a video of Cloud taking down a thug was "more popular than free bacon." It turns out that this was all part of Larisa's Batman Gambit to help out her dad's website.
- Missing Mom: Sandra's mother Julie died of an yet unknown cause two years before the comic began. She has only been mentioned on a few strips, and only shown on one (in flashback form).
- Mistaken for Junkie: Larisa, who is diabetic, is caught by a teacher when giving herself an insulin shot during recess. She's then sent to the principal who informs her that taking this "dangerous drug" violates the school's zero tolerance policy against drugs. The plot was inspired by a similar incident on a U.S. middle school in the 1990s. Start reading here.
- Moment Killer:
- Money Spider: Lampshaded.
Cloud: Seventeen dollars?
- Mood Whiplash: The comic is notable for skillfully managing to weave between heartwarming childhood adventure, adult humor and some frighteningly dark themes without changing its pace, to an effect that can sometimes be jarring. Examples of this include the subject of Sandra's dead mother, Ye Thuza's childhood as a child soldier in Burma, Zoey's coming-out-of-the-closet, and, most recently, the fact that Larisa was born with a disease that would probably kill her by 30.
- Most Common Superpower: Lampshaded here.
- Mugging the Monster: Don't mess with Cloud.
- Name and Name
- Nature Is Not Nice: Mainly whenever the animal's carnivorous nature is brought up. Played for Black Comedy. Woo and Shadow have sometimes threatened to eat Sid the squirrel, even though they're normally friends, and Shadow had even shared a chunk of his childhood with Sid. Or an Eagle captures Woo to eat him, only to watch Woo eat its eggs. Or most recently, the carnivor animals claim to have been inspired by Zootopia to act nice to the herbavors, but it turns out to be a trick to attack and eat the herbavores now that their defenses are down.
- Nerf Arm: Cloud has a wooden katana.
- Never Live It Down: invoked One of Cloud's fears regarding a love letter.
- Noir Episode: The Under A Killer Balloon Story Arc.
- Non-Indicative Name: Luna mentions a gang called The White Brotherhood took over her old neighborhood in Camden, New Jersey. Sandra assumes they're Neo-Nazis, but Luna points out they're actually a black gang. It's implied they got their name because they believe mayonnaise is Serious Business.
- Noodle Incident: Do we really want to know how playing "Truth or Dare" with Larisa can cause psychological trauma?
- No Sell: Tommy tries using a Mind Control gun on Lloyd. It doesn't work.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: Surprisingly Averted. Granted, all the main characters have Vague Ages, but through a series of conscious Art Evolutions on the part of the author, the kids have progressively grown older. Compare this strip from 2008 to one from 2011 and then one from 2015.
- "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: How the game demo starts.
- Oblivious to Love: Thomas was completely clueless as to why Luna wanted to go to the Warriors game with him, despite the fact that she was wearing a shirt that said "Thomas, I like you!"
- Officer O'Hara: There's a recurring cop character by the name of Nigel O'Sullivan, but he doesn't really have any Irish stereotypes.
- Official Couple:
- Sandra and Cloud. Starting Here.
- Landon and Larisa, starting here, though probably more officially here.
- Woo and Lily, starting here. Note that raccons normally don't settle down to monogamy, so Lily's expression is really touching.
- Pacing Problems: Melody's story arc. Richard goes from being a bitter rival to being in love with her in less than five panels, which can leave some readers puzzled as to how things escalated so quickly.
- Pædo Hunt: Mercilessly parodied. Larisa comes to a terrifying conclusion after dressing as a pedophile for Halloween:
Larisa: Could it be that I
am a pedo?
Sandra: What?
Larisa: Well, I’m totally into cute 12-year-old boys.
12-year-old boys, Sandy!! Sandra: Totally disgusting… especially for a 12-year-old girl like you.
[...]
Larisa: You, on the other hand, seem to be
solely interested in boys of your own age!
Sandra: I’m such a pervy perv. - Larisa winds up called out for it at the school psychologist's. She misses the point of her calling-out completely.
- The Pen Is Mightier: Yuna demostrates how is done against the bullies.
- Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: The eagle deity Roc accidentally triggered a meteor-caused mass extinction event on his second day 65 million years ago. To make up for this mistake, he spends most of his time answering prayers from Earth's last remaining dinosaurs (birds).
- Physical God:
- Seeoahtlahmakaskay, the raccoon mother deity. She personally interacts with Woo multiple times, and talks to Butterfly after her death-defying rock climb.
- The "Divine Comedy" arc introduces God, the Devil, Odin, and Cupid, all of whom Larisa is able to see and/or speak to, along with Seeoahtlahmakaskay.
- Pirate Girl: Sandra dresses up as one for Halloween in the aforementioned strip:
Sandra: Arr, Liz, didn't you want to dress up as something extra scary for the party today?
- Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: Played for Laughs here.
- Precision F-Strike: Done by someone less than ten.
- Product Placement: Oreos, saving squirrels from being eaten since 1912.
- Raging Stiffie: Poor Cloud...
- Raptor Attack: Lampshaded in this comic.
- Read the Fine Print: On the payment contract of the North's internet provider.
- Refuge in Audacity: Get snatched by an eagle? Eat its eggs!
- Rousing Speech:
- Running Gag: Sid is friends with Woo and Shadow which does not stop them from trying to eat him on a constant basis. And when they're not trying to eat him, their mates or other predators are.
- Russian Guy Suffers Most: Subverted with Larisa Korolev, who is Russian and probably acts the most cheerful and carefree of the main characters, but played completely straight with her parents. Her father, Ivan, appears to be a stereotypical "tortured bohemian", with the requisite mane of unkempt hair and the obsession with painting dark and macabre pictures, and her mother is a ruthless businesswoman who treats both Larisa and her husband very coldly. Larisa even goes as far as to say that her family has always had a "penchant for misery", which she hopes to end (presumably via her own happy-go-lucky behavior). She says this in the context of telling a classmate about her terminal illness. Those Russians just can't seem to catch a break.
- Savage Wolves: Wolves are frequent antagonists in the comics.
- Scenery Censor: This one, censoring Woo's thoughts with shrubbery.
- Schoolgirl Lesbians: It looks like this is what Zoey and Michelle are going to become, but it turns out that Michelle doesn't reciprocate Zoey's feelings.
- Self-Deprecation: A meta example.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Never ask a biologist to say something romantic.
- Serious Business: Larisa and kisses.
Larisa: It's
always a good moment for smooching!
Landon: No, we should
definitely post-pone it!...Because I'm giving a presentation on Germany.
Larisa: (
without stopping kissing him)
Nazis bad, cars good, the end! - Shameless Fanservice Girl: Larisa has this attitude when she sends a nude picture of herself to all of North America by mistake. Her reasoning is particularly sad: she’ll be blind in 10 years and dead in 20, and some naysayers seeing her by mistake is insignificant in comparison.
- Shipper on Deck: Frequent occurrence in Cloud's family.
- Shout-Out:
- Frequently to Calvin and Hobbes, and many more to video games, namely Final Fantasy. A couple even named their two younger children Cloud and Yuna after the game.
- Probably not an intentional one, but Sandra could be a dead ringer for Roll.
- Often wearing Penny's shirt, no less.
- Several characters have been seen watching Wallace & Gromit and Wall E as well.
- Many of the posters and filer strips give to an artist, movie, television series or other comics.
- This strip is a nod to this famous Penny Arcade strip.
- A racoon named Sly and a veeery familiar looking cane.
- I am better Than both The Bologna and the Salami combined is one to the Rocko's Modern Life episode, "Wacky Delly."
- A green, bubbling liquid you call "The Dip" and which can kill imaginary characters. Now, where could I have seen that...
- Several My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic toys have appeared in the background... and foreground. Sandra has a Fluttershy doll, and at one point Cloud and his mom play with other toys of the Mane Six.
- In one strip, Sandra becomes a strange mixture of Beatrix Kiddo and Alma Wade on Cloud, who previously had went Joker on her.
- Larisa's family name is Korolev. The most famous Real Life person with the same family name was Sergei Korolev, the number-one designer of Soviet rockets and space craft. Many consider him having practically invented "practical astronautics".
- #82: Can't trap them, Racoon will shoot me. Can't trap them, Racoon will shoot me.
- Woo and the Road Runner having a meal.
- Sandra's having The Scream, after she remembers making a mistake in a maths exam.
- A spoof of Obi Wan's words about the destruction of Aldeeran: "as if one voice was suddenly silenced, and millions suddenly cried out in joy."
- Woo donning a hat and holding a whip when informed about Sandra and Larisa's treasure hunt is supposed to evoke an Indiana Jones-vibe.
- Sandra's "Doubleplus ungood!" after Larisa's latest case of Skewed Priorities
- "Go for the eyes, Qoo, go for the eyes!" in this comic. Of course, this one was begging to be used.
- A while earlier, Sandra's dad was mentioned to be playing it. It was described as "great".
- *Suddenly, an axe crashes through the door and a madman's face appears in the gap* "Here's Tommy!"
- Here. "Game over, Tommy! Game over!"
- Not one, but four shout-out strips in a row to Zootopia.
- Yuna accidentally reversing enthropy.
- Spaghetti Kiss: Subverted when Woo and Lily share an earthworm, but Lily sucks it out of Woo's mouth before they kiss.
- Spoof Aesop: Crops up at the end of the insulin ban storyline, where Sandra's dad gives the Incredibly Lame Pun of "ducks are bad for you," with a beer bottle in his free hand and something hand-rolled in his mouth.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Would be played straight, but is avoided by the fact that the writer decided to legally give the spotlight to Cloud and Larisa instead, officially elevating them to Woo's level of focus.
- Stock Animal Name: Woo is initially christened 'Rascal'. He isn't pleased.
- Stuffed into a Trashcan:
- Straw Feminist: The new biology teacher, Dorothy Cambrigde and the Moral Police.
- Sudden School Uniform: Literally. Powree just started drawing the kids in identical white polos and dark pants without mention in the dialogue at all, let alone a subplot..
- Take That:
- The Talk: This strip has four unique views on avoiding teenage pregnancy:
- Panel 1: Richard tells Sandra about the pill. Presumably he's putting her on it.
- Panel 2: Lily and Woo discuss whether 13-year-old raccoons can even have kits anymore.
- Panel 3: Larisa advises Landon that, in one month, he could knock up a teenage girl. Given her character, the dynamics of their relationship, and the fact that she seems to be undressing, rest assured it is not innocent.
- Panel 4: Cloud's mother, Ye Thuza, threatens to cut his head off if he impregnates Sandra before she graduates high school. Given her character and the way she deals with issues, that is NOT an idle threat (and notice how her sword actually goes off the panel).
- Talking Animal:
- Woo, Shadow, Sid and all other animals. (see Animal Talk above)
- Might just be Woo, since he can understand talk to humans.
- Tears of Joy: They don't need to watch the Paradise Falls to be happy together. Awwww.
- Teen Pregnancy: Discussed here. Clearly, Ye Thuza does not want this to happen to Sandra and Cloud.
- That Came Out Wrong: Sandra, you shouldn't bad mouth rebels (even in a roleplay game) when the son of a former real-life rebel is hearing you.
- Theme Naming: The Williams family named him and his sister after Final Fantasy characters. One is Cloud and the other is Yuna.
- They Fight Crime!:
- This Is Reality: Sometimes it’s not like in the movies where everything will be alright again in the end.
- Through a Face Full of Fur: Lily here
- Too Dumb to Live: Yes, Tom the Talking Toast. Play yourself up in front of a girl who can't decide what she wants for breakfast.
- Took a Level in Badass: Woo. One year he lets two of alpha raccoon Tibor's mooks have a girl he was courting uncontested. The next year, when he courts Lily (Tibor's daughter), he runs them out of the forest.
- Too Much Information: Tell me less.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible:invoked Discussed in an arc in which Sandra and Larisa spend a day at the MOMA.
- The Unreveal: We never find out what Cloud wrote that caused Sandra to pounce on him, remove half his clothes, and beg him to marry her, though it does contain the line "Sandy's shining eyes".
- Strip 528: Larisa finally tells Zoey what's been haunting every fan's mind for the last three-going-on-four years... AND RIGHT THEN AND THERE THE COMIC EXPERIENCES ITS FIRST EVER CASE OF TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES! All we get are Zoey's reactions to Larisa's reveal... It doesn't seem like it's good news. At all. It would be almost two more years - over five and a half years after the original hint - that it would finally be revealed that Larisa suffers from Wolfram syndrome and will be blind in a decade and dead in two.
- Vague Age: The implication, through Art Evolution, is that they are aging in real-time, but the only certainty is that Cloud, Larisa and Sandra are, as of 2015, 12 years old.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: This page takes it as a given that the reader knows why running blindly through tall grass and bushes is an unsafe idea. Unfortunately, most of those readers don't seem to go outside very often, as it went over everyone's head.
- Visual Pun: The puppet government.
- We All Live in America: Knörzer and Powree are German and Indonesian respectively, but most of S&W points to a U.S. setting.
- What Cliffhanger: The comic titled Cliffhanger, the team is about to open the bag, and one makes a loud scream as if something happened. Instantly resolved in the next strip as the bag being full of bugs.
- Wham Line: Larisa succinctly explaining her cavalier attitude towards her nude selfie being sent to all of North America and causing a colossal scandal in this comic.
- The next strip clarifies Larisa's statement by explicitly revealing that she has Wolfram syndrome, a rare genetic illness that results in gradual blindness and nerve damage, with a typical life expectancy around thirty years.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: What became of the kittens of the bobcat Ruth killed?
- Wise Beyond Their Years: In the vein of Calvin and Hobbes, albeit further away from the family-friendly end.
- You Fail Logic Forever: How is taking food about to be given to a hungry fox not your fault when said fox angrily chases you?
- Videogame characters will soon be indistinguishable from real life, therefore, we are video game characters.
- Somewhat justified, given that it was said by a little girl.
- Your MP3 Player Hates You: See here.
