FoxTrot

FoxTrot
File:FoxTrot banner.png First panel of FoxTrot Sunday strips since 1999.
Author(s)	Bill Amend
Website	FoxTrot.com
Current status/schedule	Running
Launch date	April 10, 1988
End date	December 30, 2006 (Daily)
Syndicate(s)	Universal Press Syndicate
Genre(s)	Humor, Family

FoxTrot is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Amend centering on the daily lives of the Fox family; Andy, Roger, Paige, Peter, and Jason. As of December 2006, FoxTrot is carried by over 1,000 newspapers worldwide. It was published on a daily schedule from its inception in 1988 until December 31, 2006, when Amend switched it to a Sunday-only format. Foxtrot is translated into many other languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish.

The strip covers a wide range of subject matter, including spoofs of pop culture fads and popular consumer products. As a Mac owner, Amend has been known to "heartlessly beat up on Microsoft" in his strips.

The Characters

Main Characters

Main article: List of FoxTrot family members

Roger

Roger Fox is the father of Paige, Jason, and Peter and the husband of Andy. Head of the household on 1254 North Elm Street, he is forty-five years old and works as a B level manager (corporate slave in general) at the fictional Pembrook Corporation. He was born in Chicago and majored in English at Willot College (a parody of Williams College, the rival school of Bill Amend's alma mater, Amherst College).

Andy

Andrea "Andy" Fox is the mother of Peter, Paige, and Jason and the wife of Roger. She is forty-two-years-old and was an English major in college. Earlier strips portrayed her as a freelance writer or columnist for a newspaper. Although references to her job crop up occasionally, they became more and more rare over the years until the point where she nearly appears to be a stay-at-home mother. Her children still turn to her (but rarely) for help on their papers and English homework. She has called herself "Andyana Fox" spoofing Indiana Jones for the various footballs, baseballs, and rockets she must dodge.

Peter

Peter Fox is Andy and Roger’s oldest child, a 16-year-old high school junior. He almost always wears a purple and white (wearing a different for school baseball) baseball cap with the letter A on it (a reference to Amend's alma mater, Amherst College), a grey sweatshirt, and blue jeans. During the summer, he often works at a movie theatre, where he cleans the bathrooms, collects tickets, wears movie supporting costumes, and has spent his entire paycheck on food from the concession stand. His voracious and insatiable appetite makes him the equivalent of a teen-aged black hole.

Paige

Paige Fox is Andy and Roger’s middle child, a 14-year-old who recently became a high-school freshman. She is always portrayed with her blonde hair in a pony-tail, although other characters sometimes suggest she changes her hair-style or claim she has changed it.

Jason

Jason Fox is Andy and Roger’s youngest child, a 10-year old fifth grader with a somewhat omnipotent mind. He is the most intelligent person in the family, and is often required to help Roger with his taxes and work assignments and Paige and Peter with their homework. Unlike his siblings, he wants to do his homework. He's a master at chess and always devastates his father during games. He's also a genius in mathematics and science (especially physics), often solving problems that are far too complex for his brother and sister, and even many adults. He is particularly gifted with computers, having created his own operating system, written a web browser before breakfast, repeatedly hacked into government computers, as well as CNN in order to insult his sister, made a video game dubbed "0.0005 Life", a spoof of Half Life to only operate on his "iFruit" computer, and once brought down the entire Internet with his “Darth Jason” computer virus. He has an A++++ average in school, but aggravates the teachers with his overly complicated answers.

Supporting characters

See also: List of minor FoxTrot characters

Marcus Jones

Marcus is Jason's best friend, with whom often he emulates science fiction, usually Star Trek, and bothers Paige (though he does not bother her as much as Jason does). He is the most frequently appearing non-family character, and the only African-American character. He also enjoys video games, and he plays Dungeons & Dragons (and Houses and Humans) with Jason on occasion. Like Jason, Marcus enjoys school and TV, dislikes being outside and doesn't seem to like girls, but his dislike of girls isn't as strong as Jason's. Marcus has four sisters (Doreen, Lisa, Lana, and Cybil). His mother is a nurse and his father is a scientist of some sort, but except for Marcus himself, they are all unseen characters.

File:FoxTrot Camp FoxTrot - 1998.JPG

Camp FoxTrot.

Eileen Jacobson

Eileen is sometimes Jason's nemesis, sometimes his semi-friend, whom he doesn't want to admit he secretly likes. A fan of Harry Potter (a character Jason loathes to admit he also enjoys), Eileen first appeared in the strip in 1995, when she got a higher grade than Jason on a math test (they got a 104 and a 102, respectively), and ended up going out for ice cream with him. Eileen also showed up when Jason and Marcus went to summer camp. She has made quite a few appearances since and Jason eventually admitted that he liked her. However, Jason's constant insistence on hiding their relationship began to annoy Eileen, and as a result, she became angry at Jason and they decided to stop being a couple. It seems she still has feelings for Jason, though, since she has tricked Jason into spending time with her in exchange for something Jason wants (for example, Eileen once made Jason be her partner on a field trip to the science museum in exchange for a holo-foil Charizard Pokémon card; or when she had him go ice skating with her). After Marcus gave her his World of Warquest screenname, she helped Jason out in the game and finally let out that she was a girl, and later admitted the whole story, all through the game. Jason acts queasy when he sees her and hacks government computers to delete the record of his calls to her to keep it secret that he likes her.

Steve Riley

Steve is Peter's best friend from high school. He owns several electric guitars and an amp set that Peter sometimes borrows, much to Roger and Andy's dismay. In addition to sharing Peter's passion for microwave burritos (especially in the wee hours of the morning), Steve also has a job at Luigi's, the local pizza parlor. Steve is also left-handed.

Denise Russo

File:Denise foxtrot.gif

Denise Russo

Denise is Peter's girlfriend. Denise's parents have been heard to speak, but do not show up often on Peter's visits to Denise's house. Denise is clearly the one in control of the relationship, and knows exactly how to get what she wants from Peter, whether it's just for him to put his arm around her or to take her out to dinner at La Maison Rouge, the most expensive restaurant in town. Despite her sometimes manipulative nature, she seems to genuinely like Peter, but once admitted that she liked him because with his flawed nature, no other girl would take him (early strips, which indicate Peter's lack of success getting a girlfriend, seem to confirm this). Peter attempted to break up with her once in late 1989 so he could see other girls and "gain experience in the field of dating," but his attempt ended in failure when he discovered he missed her. Denise is blind, which is an occasional source of humor or more serious storylines in the strip. Peter once punched one of his classmates for joking that all his dates with Denise were "blind dates." On Denise's first date with Peter, she asked to "read" his face with her hands, explaining that it was "like reading Braille, in a way." When Peter asked what it said, she replied, "R...O...B...E...R...T...R...E...D...F...O...R...D.". Jason has occasionally claimed to be Peter while speaking to her on the phone or in person, but has never managed to fool her.

Nicole

Nicole is Paige's best friend, also fashion-obsessed but somewhat more level-headed than Paige. She seems to have better luck with boys than Paige (which doesn't say much), which has caused problems in their relationship a few times (such as when Nicole was the only one of the two to find a prom date). However, she is also not without faults, as one time, she almost convinced Paige to shoplift a CD from a music store from the mall, but luckily Paige's conscience won out.

Morton Goldthwait

Morton is the "biggest geek in school", according to Paige. Apparently, the entire science department calls him "Sir". He has a crush on Paige and hasn't given up, despite what she thinks of him, even inviting her to a Halloween party at his house one year, which Paige counted on as being the halloween party from purgatory, as one from hell would have been cool. He took the SATs as a freshman and was mad that he got a 1590 (just shy of perfect at the time the strip ran). He was also a counselor at Camp Bohrmore over the summer, and ruled his cabin with an iron fist. Jason and Marcus both had the misfortune of being assigned to Goldthwait's cabin when they went to Camp Bohrmore. Until he learned of Morton's crush on Paige, Jason had planned to set Morton up on a date with Paige as revenge. Paige has said, "This is the kid who makes origami fusion reactors out of his lunch napkins, is in a math class I can't even pronounce, and whose personal goal is to find a typo a day in the math textbook! And you call him a stud?"; to which Jason replies "Sorry. A super stud." Several times he has shown likeness (and hatred) toward Peter (and vice versa).

Miss O'Malley

Miss O'Malley has been the teacher of Jason's and Marcus' class since 1991. She was the replacement for Jason and Marcus' former teacher, Ms. Grinchley. Considerably younger and more "on the ball" than Ms. Grinchley, she appears to have a marginally better handle on Jason as well, much to his dismay. Of course, this seems to encourage Jason to try even harder to get under her skin. Sometimes Jason succeeds (as when, since he wasn't sure which math chapter Miss O'Malley had assigned for homework, he proceeded to do a problem set from every math and science textbook he could find), and sometimes he fails (as when he brought Quincy in for show-and-tell, thinking Quincy would frighten Miss O'Malley, and she instead thought he was cute).

Quincy

Jason's iguana. Jason occasionaly plays around with him by putting on ridiculous clothes and using Quincy for a "lizard head". He enjoys chewing up Paige's things and has only talked once, when Andy told Jason that "cartoons weren't reality", and Quincy told Jason to, "listen to his mother". In one of the comics Jason puts on a web page that Quincy likes to escape from his cage and eat things. Quincy nearly dies in one set of strips, but is saved by Paige. Paige resolves not to tell Jason because she believes Jason will then spend more time following her around.

"Grandma"

This is Andy Fox's mother. She is often described as being "perfect". (quoting a New York Times story about her) and her turkey stuffing has been featured in 12 cookbooks. All of the Foxes love her except for Andy. She doesn't like her mother because she fears she can never live up to her. This is fixed when they actually sit down and have a talk when Grandma visits for Christmas.

Phoebe Wu

Phoebe is Eileen's best friend. Jason and Marcus meet them when they attend the science camp called Camp Bohrmore for the summer.Over the course of the summer they grow to like each other, and it ends with Jason and Marcus joining Phoebe and Eileen's secret "Camp Bohrmore Frienship Club"

Eugene Wu

Phoebe's brother. He is smart, annoying and obnoxious.

Places

The Fox Family home is located at 1254 North Elm Street, with the specific city a mystery, as characters always refer to their home as "Suburbia." Older comics suggest the family lives in Kansas City, Missouri, as Peter and Roger are big Chiefs fans (now any desired team). However, newer comics suggest the family lives near Chicago, as Roger uses that airport for business trips and Andy was given Chicago Bulls tickets as a gift once. Further evidence includes a field trip whose destination bears uncanny similarities to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, complete with a planetarium and Foucault Pendulum. One strip showed Jason celebrating the New Year at 8 a.m., saying, "It's midnight in New Guinea. Next up, Tokyo." This statement places the Fox family home in the Central Time zone.

Andy also went to Lollapalooza with Paige during her mid-life crisis in the early 90s. Some fans have suggested that the Foxes live in Hillsdale, Illinois (a suburb of the Quad Cities) or Hillsdale, New Jersey, as an early strip shows Paige and Andy shopping at a certain Hillsdale Shopping Center (the Hillsdale theory is supported by the fact that the high school sports teams have an H somewhere on their uniforms). However, when Bill Amend was asked about it, he said: "I've never established a town name for where they live. The mall sign was meant as an homage to the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo, CA, where I used to shop as a teenager."

Uncle Ralph's Cabin is a typical camping spot for the Fox family. The location of the cabin is never explicitly stated in the comics, even relative to where the Foxes live. However, one could assume it is fairly isolated, because the family seems to have a long drive and one time when Roger locked his keys in the car, Paige worried they would be stuck forever since they couldn't contact anyone.

Fun-Fun Mountain is an amusement park. There is a Hall of Vice Presidents exhibit (similar to the Hall of Presidents), and a sign in the park labels a mosquito the "Mickey Mosquito". There are roller coasters, including the Drop-O-Death; a log ride; whirling coffee cups; and a fun house. The food is extremely expensive: for example, Andy bought a snow cone for $20.00.

Fun-Fun Universe is another amusement park that seems to be a parody of a real one, and in this case it is the Walt Disney World Resort. There is a hotel that is connected to the actual amusement park by unirail, a glass-bottomed boat, and a "sky-tube." The rides mentioned include a log ride and several roller coasters. It has also at one time have thought to have been a parody of Worlds of Fun, an amusement park located in Missouri. However, Amend denied this, saying he had no idea there was a place with such a name.

An important roller coaster in Fun-Fun Universe is the Voodoo Mountain Bobsled Ride. The ride is supposedly closed down every morning, but only for show. That way, riders will be "scared to death not only by the ride, but by the dread that the thing wasn't built very well." Peter believes this theory, assuming that what looks to be a worker welding the track is animatronic. Like Fun-Fun Mountain, the food for sale at the park is very expensive. Roger's Chili Fun-Fun Burger and fries cost him $41.00.

The Fox family once went on a two-week camping trip to Cactus Flats, a desert community in Arizona. According to a pamphlet, Cactus Flats was the home of the Muckatoo Indian tribe until the whole tribe died of heat stroke. The desert is also home to various snakes (including rattlesnakes), lizards, scorpions, spiders such as tarantulas and black widows, and mountain lions as well as mosquitos.

On another one of the family's camping trips, the Foxes camped at Skeeter Falls. According to Roger, Skeeter Falls is an eight-hour drive from their house. It is 100 miles (160 km) away from the nearest city and the grounds cover 400,000 acres (1600 km²). The falls get their name from the mosquitoes that live there. Skeeter Falls has the most mosquitoes per unit area of any place in the world during August. There is also a geyser that erupts every 24 hours at 3:38 am, as well as rivers, mountains, and "200-foot" (60 m) trees.

Camp Bohrmore is an eight week co-ed summer science camp. The camp contains waterfalls, hiking trails, a redwood grove, a T-1 line in every cabin, computers, lasers, and a paleontology lab. This is also where Jason and Marcus met Phoebe and Eugene Wu. Morton Goldthwait served as camp counselor to Epsilon cabin which included Jason, Marcus, Hawkins, and Eugene. At camp, Eileen and Phoebe would often play tricks on Marcus and Jason, such as luring them into poison-ivy infested fields, putting snails in their bedsheets, and putting pepper in their pudding cups. Jason and Marcus attempted revenge by trying to sabotage their experiment, but sabotaged their own by mistake. However, at the end of camp, they made a truce with Eileen and Phoebe, and eventually joined their friendship club.

Boonhurst is a small town, location unknown. Roger once went there to finish a business deal on orders from Pembrook. It is evidently a less-developed city, as Roger asked Pembrook if they had finished paving the runway yet. When Roger missed his flight to Boonhurst, he was forced to go through several connections; from Chicago, Illinois to Dallas, Texas to Los Angeles, California to Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon to Denver, Colorado to Charlotte, North Carolina to Boonhurst.

Boonhurst is likely a reference to the town of Pinehurst, North Carolina.

The Isles of Fun-Fun Caribbeanny Resort is an artificial Caribbean resort, probably a parody of the real-life Caribbean Beach Resort in Walt Disney World, utilizing reproduced island life with "state-of the-art water park technology." The resort has special Caribbean-themed rooms, such as the Limbo Suite, which features a low ceiling, and Calypso music in the elevators. There are many Caribbean-esque activities as well, such as snorkeling, body boarding, voodoo doll puppetry, and steel drum lessons. In fact, the resort even schedules fake hurricanes from time to time.

However, many aspects of the resort are fake (hence the word "Caribbeanny"). The ocean is just a big pool (complete with chlorine) with walls painted to resemble the ocean (somewhat like in The Truman Show). The steel drum music at the beach consists of a staff person playing the synthesizer. However, according to Andy, who had been adamantly opposed to going, the children enjoyed their trip.

Popular culture

File:Foxtrot wikipedia cartoons.png

Two FoxTrot cartoons that have mentioned Wikipedia so far. In the top one (May 7, 2005), Jason introduces the site to Peter by editing the (Warthog). In the bottom one (September 7, 2006), Peter attempts to use the Thomas Edison article to do a school assignment.

In addition to typical family humor, the strip has many stories built around fandom, nerdiness and popular culture. The characters (especially Andy and Jason) frequently have new obsessions or interests which reflect the time period at which the strip was published.

Andy, for example, has had obsessions with Doomathon II, collecting "Bitty Babies" (Beanie Babies), the movie Titanic, the Nintendo DS game Nintendogs, and her Mango-Kiwi-colored iFruit computer in the past.

Similarly, Jason, as a stereotypical nerd, loves and frequently quotes Star Wars, Star Trek, Spider-Man, the X-Files, The Lord of the Rings and has tried to make parodies of four popular movies, The Blair Witch Project, Jurassic Park, Finding Nemo and King Kong. Jason's obsession with The Lord of the Rings (he had memorized the books word-for-word, and the idea of his starring in the movie was explored) is one of the few fascinations he shares with Paige, who developed a crush on Orlando Bloom. Jason has also attempted to make an improved version of the popular computer games Half-Life and Myst, a competitor to Microsoft Operating System Windows 98, and sent in suggestions to Lucasfilm to digitally insert him into the Star Wars Special Edition Trilogy. He is also an avid player of 'World of Warquest', a pseudonym for the real-life online video game World of Warcraft, and there are many strips where the joke centers around World of Warcraft specific humor. He has also created a "Darth Jason" computer virus, as a product for his "Jasonzonbayhoodotcom" internet stock binge. The news network CNN is also mentioned in the strip, only rarely (most often with Jason hacking into its teleprompters). In the past, Jason has also had an obsession with Duke Quakem (a portmanteau of Duke Nukem and Quake), which despite the name is a video game, not a computer game (see "Games" section below for other examples).

Peter has been shown to be a Bruce Springsteen fan consistently since the early 90s. An early strip featured a headline "Cartoonist to tour with Bruce", presumably Amend. Peter also has been known to like Pearl Jam and Guns N Roses

Fox News is occasionally referenced, often in a negative way.

Jason also once styled his hair with hair gel in order to look like Yami Yugi from the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. In fact, he even held up a deck of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and told his father, "I'm off to the Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament", which shows that he even has a love for anime.

Scientific references

Amend majored in physics at Amherst College, and this is reflected in FoxTrot's frequent inclusion of complex mathematical or physics formulae, usually written by Jason Fox. The formulae are correct, though oddly flavored; Jason often uses them to describe bizarre situations, or, more rarely, they are school assignments for Peter Fox. Amend also uses Jason to express his knowledge of computer languages in much the same way that he uses physics formulae (once Roger asked for a cup of java to start his day and Jason gave him several pages of code written in the Java programming language). Both these elements add a layer of superfluous complexity to the strip, and juxtaposed with the odd circumstances in which they appear, give FoxTrot a uniquely surreal air.

Style

Passage of time

Similarly to most comic strips, the characters do not age. For example, an early 1990 storyline involves Paige making an effort to go from being a child of the '80s to a woman of the '90s. As she is still 14, she now would have been born by 1992 or 1993. In 2003, on the strip's 15th anniversary, the Foxtrot site stated that "Paige wonders if she's still 14."

There was an in-joke on this subject in a strip published shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which Andy told Jason that Roger had donated blood even though he was scared of needles because "We all have to grow up, kiddo." Jason replied, "Whoa, did I stumble into For Better or For Worse?", referring to a comic where the characters actually do grow up.

The comic strips change along with the seasons; the kids go back to school in September, the family celebrates important holidays on their respective dates, and one will find the characters tanning themselves or throwing water balloons during the summer.

In the earlier strips, the family would only live in the present-tense: that is, the family would only refer to the present — or, as in the case of a storyline, the very near future — but never past events (save for once when Jason remarked "you're still mad about the car, aren't you?," which referred to an earlier time when he inadvertently wrecked the car playing "Mad Max"). However, more recent storylines have broken this "rule", most notably when referring to Jason's summer at Camp Bohrmore. In cases where the past must be referenced it's always "last year", even if the referenced storyline happened more than a year ago.

Parodies and subtitles

Cartoonists and Comics

The characters appear to be aware that they are living a comic strip, with references to such events as ink shortages.

If one observes closely, one will notice that in any scene where a character is reading a newspaper, there are headlines that say things such as "Cartoonist Delivers Triplets in Elevator" or "Cartoonist to join NASCAR," or "Cartoonist to direct Jurassic Park II" or "Cartoonist wins presidential Election" or "Cartoonist in jail!"and just recently "Cartoonist wins another nobel prize". This is usually accompanied by a caricature of Bill Amend himself. There are also times where one can see a Calvin and Hobbes comic on the back of the newspaper.

In scenes with large crowds, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes can often be seen in the background. In some scenes, characters from various comics can be seen in the background. On one occasion, pictures of Cathy, Dilbert, and Calvin and Hobbes were seen as pictures above a staircase, or on a picture frame; sometimes, they are even shown for what they really are, as comics in the newspaper. In one comic, Jason and Marcus are shown in a store called "Calvin's Hobbies," an obvious reference to Calvin and Hobbes. He also creates a snow Calvin and Hobbes making a snowman with a hole in its center after being shot with a snow cannon and cannonball. (In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin often builds snowmen going through painful moments like being eaten or buried.) There are two other snowmen, depicting Calvin and Hobbes, building more snowmen. Jason says, "This way it's an homage, not a ripoff." When the family is in line for their airline tickets to the carribeanny resort, one can see Dilbert in the line.

On another occasion, Peter is shown wearing a Calvin and Hobbes T-Shirt, at a time when Bill Watterson was having licensing conflicts with his publisher.

Jason sometimes attempts to send other cartoonists his ideas for their comic strips, often pitching his ideas to Peter. When Aaron McGruder went on sabbatical from The Boondocks, Jason wanted to fill in for him. Peter pointed out that Jason knew nothing about black culture, and could not write political commentary without offending some readers. He also became frustrated at other cartoonists taking vacations without using his submissions, specifically Cathy, The Family Circus, Pearls Before Swine, Zits, For Better or For Worse, and Garfield. However, almost all of his strips are simply some way of insulting Paige, with the exception of his Garfield submission, which he edited to insult Peter when he criticized him for insulting Paige, and his The Family Circus submissions, which were filled with poisonous animals, ghosts, and a reference to The Exorcist. Often, one panel of each strip would show Jason's depiction of the strip in question.

In addition, in many older strips, the characters of FoxTrot can be seen reading Luther and Locke comic strips, a reference to the naming scheme used by Bill Waterson for Calvin and Hobbes (Luther and Calvin were both religious figures, and Hobbes and Locke were both philosophers. Also worth noting, Calvin and Luther, and Hobbes and Locke, are historically regarded as having conflicting philosophies.)

Also, in a few strips, Andy gets obsessed with Dilbert, describing several possible reasons for its success.

The comic also features references to The Far Side, such as that the family drinks "Larson Farms" milk, whose logo is one of Larson's famous cows. Jason also drew several comics insulting Paige when he heard that the author of The Far Side was going to retire.

Theaters

In the cinema where Peter works you can also often see names such as Trek Wars. The week Garfield: The Movie came out, Peter dressed up as Garfield to promote the movie. Often signs in the theater are edited to have a humorous effect (such as "Mission Impossible 2: The Comic Strip Deadline").

Products

Many products seen in the strip have altered names, such as:

• Chips McCoy (Chips Ahoy!),
• Brucy Juice (Juicy Juice),
• Roughels (Ruffles),
• Toridos (Doritos, Tostitos),
• Tofu Helper (Hamburger Helper),
• Cap'n Sucrose (Cap'n Crunch),
• "Fax Mactor" (Max Factor),
• The Humbler (Hummer),
• Coffeebucks (Starbucks), and

The Foxes often get their pizza from Dominic's (Domino's Pizza, in which a few comics call it its real name) or Luigi's (Mario's Pizza), also parodying Luigi from the Super Mario Bros. Series. In one strip, Peter is eating from a bag of "Bugles," but in the next panel, the bag changes to "Trumpets," and in the last panel, the bag reads "Flugelhorns."

The fast-food restaurant that the Foxes occasionally patronize has two Ms back-to-back, parodying the McDonald's logo. Roger is not allowed to go to Costclub (Costco, Price Club, Sam's Club, BJ's Wholesale Club) by himself, because he always buys way too much there.

Magazines

Most of the magazines shown in the comic strip are parodies of real magazines or magazine genres. For example "Fourteen" magazine (Seventeen), "Thyme" (Time), "Guy's Life" (Boys' Life), or Life (with a picture of the grim reaper on the front), "Chick" (except with a baby bird on the cover), and (at least for a while) "Illustrated Sports" (Sports Illustrated), or, most recently "Vōg" ("Vogue"). Roger is sometimes seen reading Golfster magazine. Paige is often seen reading copies of "Self" with a photograph of Paige on the cover.

Games

Many video games in the comic strip are a portmanteau of two or more different names. Examples include:

• Doomathon (a combination of first-person shooter games Marathon and Doom),
• Duke Quakem (a combination of Quake and Duke Nukem),
• Grand Zombie Auto 3 (Grand Theft Auto and Zombie Rally 3),
• Iron Mysticus (Iron Helix, Myst, and Lunicus),
• Riviablo (Riven and Diablo)
• Prince of Assyria (Prince of Persia and Assyria)
• Blizzerbund (a combination of computer game companies, Blizzard Entertainment and Brøderbund),
• World of Warquest (World of Warcraft and EverQuest) (in fact one weapon Jason found in the comic was made into a real item on World of Warcraft, the Doomulus Prime),
• Zeldakong (The Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong).

The same occurs with Jason's video game systems, his Jupiter-64 Gamestation (a combination of the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64, and the Sony PlayStation) and GameStation 2 (a combination of PlayStation 2 and GameCube). Note: The controller of the Gamestation 2 still resembles that of a Nintendo 64. Also, the accessories to these games systems are altered, such as the Rambo Pack, which is a spoof of the Rumble Pak, (however, unlike its real-life counterpart, it does more than just vibrate, especially when Jason instructed his father have his character touch an electrified fence on the screen).

Ironically, earlier strips had Jason playing the actual Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES systems, with some games having altered names such as Mortal Karnage, Primal Instinct, Super Mario Universe and Super Earthworm Mario Country 3, while other games had their real names featured in the strip, such as the Super Mario Bros. series, Carmageddon and Myst. Other examples of real names used in the strip are the Nintendo DS, its game Nintendogs, the game console Wii, the Diablo series, the Doom series, and Star Wars Battlefront.

Andy has also joined the organization MAGG (Mothers Against Gory Games, a parody of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)), partly out of concern for the level of violence in the games Jason and Peter played, but her primary motivation most likely was to make sure they stopped altogether. The list of video games approved by MAGG included such titles as "Nice City," "Pacifist-Man," "Ms. Pacifist-Man," "Eternal Lightness," and "Resident Good" (takeoffs of, respectively, "Vice City," "Pac-Man," "Ms. Pac-Man," "Eternal Darkness," and "Resident Evil"). Roger supports less-than-violent games, but he thinks that M rated stands for "Mild". At one point Jason gave Peter cheat codes that would make the days in "Nice City" even sunnier, a parody of cheat codes for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, when it is possible to change the weather.

Bands

Occasionally Paige talks about a band she adores called "The BackSync Boys," which is a combination of the boy bands Backstreet Boys and N*Sync. Paige once got an autographed picture of The BackSync Boys. Andy said that she would take care of the picture; however, Quincy slipped out of his cage and ate the photo. Paige made her mother do her bidding until she got 20 copies from the mail, the BackSync Boys not keeping track of whom they sent autographed photos to (Paige sent an abundance of letters to them). The strip also usually mentioned both bands as a whole. Another strip shows a poster in her room of a band named "Henson" (Hanson and the Muppets--via Jim Henson), portraying three long-haired teen-age Muppet style boys.

The strip has also frequently made reference to real-life bands and musicians. Peter listens to Bruce Springsteen (his idol), U2, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Metallica, and Guns N' Roses. In one early strip, Paige gossiped to Peter's girlfriend, Denise, that Peter liked to dance in his underwear to George Michael records. Paige is a Britney Spears fan and was also shown listening to Madonna record albums and cassettes in early strips. Andy also appears to be a fan of classic rock, as her old record collection includes such artists as The Eagles, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, and Jefferson Airplane. In one strip, Jason and Marcus played Frisbee with Andy's records and were surprised to find that Led Zeppelin flew farther than the others.

Physics

The nature of world in general is also often exaggerated. This has been shown as when Andy claims it's 95 degrees out, yet the rubber football Peter is practicing with starts to melt. This is also done in jokes about Jason, Peter, and Roger's respective weights; how low Andy keeps the thermostat; Jason's physical strength; and the speeds Peter drives: he has reportedly "flirted with four digits."

Other subtleties

The first one of these subtleties to appear was a picture of a unicorn next to a fly in Paige's room. In the next panel, the unicorn notices the fly and eats it in the next panel. The first subtlety to be shown in a color Sunday strip appeared April 12, 1988 in the "throwaway panel" identifying the strip. It shows Jason eating "Honey Skulls" (Honeycomb) cereal.

Often it can be seen that one thing in the background changes in the next panel. For example, the position or expression of characters in a picture may change, or a fish hanging from a mobile may explode by the end of the strip.

Also in Foxtrot is the infamous picture of fruit in their kitchen. The fruit in the picture change between apples, pears, watermelon, cherries, and even a large bowl of fruit, sometimes several times per strip.

Signs on walls have been seen to change message between panels. For example, in the first panel of a cafeteria scene, a paper sign in the background reads, "No food fights!" In the next panel, it reads, "Really!" In the last panel, it reads "We mean it!"

Peter's posters in his room also are often edited to read things like "Baywitch", taken from the television show Bewitched and Baywatch (almost all of Peter's posters are a parody of Baywatch).

Also, in one early Sunday strip, the strip appears to break through the fourth wall, because on the back of the newspaper Roger is reading, the first 2 panels of that same strip can clearly be made out.

Sometimes in Andy's office, where the iFruit is located, you can see a covered picture of the Golden Gate Bridge partly inundated in fog. In the next panel that the picture is shown, the fog gets higher until it completely covers the bridge. Sometimes it goes back down in a longer strip.

In another strip where Paige is working on a dissection and talking to a boy about the prom, in one panel, one of the frog's eyes opens to look at Paige, then goes back to an X. In the same story arc, while Paige is at the prom, you can see in the background a couple dancing intimately, and ultimately ending with the girl slapping the guy for getting too fresh and storming away.

Sometimes, when they are playing golf, you can see a man playing in the background, messing up, and repeatedly slamming his club against the ground.

Computers

The first computer to appear in the FoxTrot strip was an old Apple II used mostly by Jason to play Star Trek video games. By 1991, Andy bought a new computer which although not specifically named, was probably a Mac Classic II from the design and the time. The next computer "upgrade" is silent; there are no strips referring to the family buying a new computer. It is probably a Power Mac of some sort, modular, with a CPU and a monitor, and is "three years old" by the time the family opts for a new one. Again, this computer is not named, but many strips refer to it as an Apple computer. (Bill Amend is a vocal fan of Apple computers.)

iFruit

The Fox family's current computer is an iFruit (based on the original Apple iMac), a computer Andy purchased in a 1999 storyline after Roger's disastrous attempt at earning a living through online trading ended with him selling the family's old computer.

Jason originally wanted a computer with a fancy new 3D chip, dual processors, and gobs of RAM, but Andy didn't listen to him so they ended up with the iFruit. The iFruit can talk, criticize font selection and even change the wallpaper (of the room). Though initially mortal enemies with the geeky Jason due to its emphasis on ease of use, Jason grows attached to it, especially after matching color schemes (or "flavors", with the Fox family's iFruit being mango-kiwi) persuades his mother to buy all manners of peripherals, such as scanners and CD burners. The iFruit has also been upgraded and taken apart by Jason many times. However, the iFruit cannot handle most of the games Jason wants to play (Macintosh computers are not able to play Windows video games, such as Half-Life 2, or Doom 3), and Jason wanted to get a Windows computer. The iFruit once beat Roger in chess 250,000 times in a row; the one time Roger beat it, Andy was convinced to call the repair center. Evidently, it is made of bullet-proof plastic (just like the original G3 iMac on which it is based), and is durable enough that even Roger cannot damage it, although in one strip he pushed it off the desk when Andy told him that it needed "backing up."

Books

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The newest FoxTrot collection, Houston, You Have A Problem

For the complete list of FoxTrot books, please see List of FoxTrot books.

There have been 34 FoxTrot books published so far, all by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Of the 34 books, 23 are collections and 11 are anthologies. The anthologies are comprised of the two or three previous collections, and include Sunday strips in color.

Merchandising

FoxTrot books may be found on Amazon.com here, and assorted items such as clocks, cards, mugs, and other items may be purchased at Cafepress.com here.

During the late 1990s, the character of Jason Fox was licensed to Wolfram Research as a product spokesman for its Mathematica software package.

External links

Links last verified on January 3, 2007

• FoxTrot.com
• Universal Press Syndicate FoxTrot Page
• Bill Amend's Homepages
• FoxTrot comics at GoComic
• Biographies of Bill Amend
• Bill Amend's press release about FoxTrot Ceasing Dailies