Cloudcuckoolander/Webcomics

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Sustained Misunderstanding no extra charge.

• 8-bit Theater
  • Red Mage is convinced his world runs on Tabletop Games rules. He carries around a character sheet, rolls twenty-sided dice to see if he succeeds at things, and is obsessed with manipulating these rules to his advantage. If he were in another webcomic, this would make him Genre Savvy. However, the world of 8-Bit Theater doesn't actually run on Tabletop Games rules; it runs on the Rule of Funny instead. That means he's just a Cloudcuckoolander, except when it would be funnier for him to be right. He's simply insane all the time, in his own special way, and often oblivious to logic, warping reality with his own bizarre ideas. Just because his crazy schemes occasionally briefly succeed (like the Chocobo breeding experiment) doesn't make him sane. You would never ever think of Red Mage as "the only truly sane person of the group".
  • Maybe during the earlier parts of the comic, before Sarda really started having an effect on the plot.
  • Since Red Mage took mild forms of insanity as character defects in order to maximize his skill points, including a "3-point Hallucination flaw", it is possible for him to be both insane and yet correct in his perception of the universe.
  • Fighter has a few Cloudcuckoolander traits, but is generally closer to a The Ditz.
• Bliss from The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred. And to top it off, only one person can hear her speaking as she rambles on about colour theory, how a combustion engine works or something else with no relevance to the topic at hand.
• The title character of Alice constantly escapes into fantasy -- Hilarity Ensues.
• Abe from Alien Loves Predator.
• Tesrin Stepford-Brown from All Over the House:

"I'm going to upload my brain onto the Internet and live in perpetual electronic bliss."

• Hope from Alone in a Crowd tends to say and do some pretty strange things, much to the confusion of the people around her.
• Hugh, the CEO of Angst Technology fits this trope quite well, mistaking a monkey for a small child, singin hilarious mangled lyrics of songs during karaoke, and playing make-believe space cadet and western characters with the office supplies of canned air.

"We are men of vision. Like when Magellan crossed the Sahara, or when the Persians first made cheese in a can. We are living in an advanced age where man can look to the stars and walk on Uranus. I foresee a future for this company when our products are as popular as Frogger, or even... dare I say... Burger Time. It is our destiny, gentlemen, to forge ahead like Marcel Marceau and to take charge like that fellow Charles... who was apparently in charge. Look to the future men, for we may never see it again!"

• Archipelago gives us Blitz. He's a bit of a tragic case, as he's a man-child whose mind was badly broken in the same incident in which his eye was gouged out, but with that aside, he's a happy-go-lucky overly optimistic sidekick who is the poster child for Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny and goldmine for humor.
• Reece in At Arms Length. Her train of thought frequently gets derailed at the station. She's known to focus on non sequitars during an action scene.
  • Chuck'thulhu even refers to her as such; apparently it's one of the tastier flavors of crazy.
• Vagrant Grey from Atavism.
• The otherworldly titular setting of Awful Hospital is full of this sort of character, but almost all of the major staff have some shade or other of Cloud Cuckoolander tendencies.

Dr. Phage: [on seeing a crude crayon drawing of himself taped to the other side of a window] "Ah-ha! Looks like I'm already hard at work in the lab after all! Brilliant as usual, doctor!" ... Dr. Tori: [operating on Fern with a spork] "Okay, this is probably where the brain goes, right? ...Right? ...Tenth time's the charm!" ... Fern: [to Doctor Man, seemingly the only other human in a world of ambulatory organs and giant microbes] "But where did you come from?" Dr. Man: "Virginia." Fern: "And how did you get here?" Dr. Man: "Walked." ... Dr. Mizer: [stares intently and silently at a poster depicting a slice of pizza with the head of an infant wearing a chef's hat, in an otherwise empty room] ... Note from Dr. Balmer: "BALMER: Have this wall reinforced! Love, Balmer." Second Note: "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!"

• David from Bittersweet Candy Bowl is all the way up there, as his first conversation with his admirer, Kizuna, shows:

Lucy: Ready for the games, David? David: Am I ever! (Floating hearts, Bishie Sparkle) Kizuna: Ah... um... Kizuna: H- Hi! (More Bishie Sparkle) David: Ovaries.

• Bunny of Blade Bunny is a hyperfocused killing machine in combat, otherwise she is oblivious to social nuances.
• Bass in Bob and George, very much unlike his video game version. He's not evil at all, and spends most of the comic wondering what's going on while staring blankly, and unlike Mega Man, never has moments of clarity.
• Chex from Checkerboard Nightmare.
• Roger and Lily Pepitone in College Roomies from Hell.
• Fluffy from Commander Kitty is a little kitten who seems to be more than just a little bit crazy. Highlights include putting a leash on an eggplant because she couldn't find any turnips, playing with the transporter and summoning an army of her alternate-universe doppelgangers, and somehow hijacking a Triple-I Skyfly mid-flight. The rest of the crew have pretty much given up trying to figure out how she works.
• In Corgi Quest, Bonabelle is usually guilty of this: for example, he once flirted with a room (not everyone in the room, the physical structure itself). The rest of the party have their moments, as well. Given the comic's nature as an Interactive Comic hosted on the MSPA Forums, it was basically inevitable.
• Ctrl Alt Del: Ethan.
  • Chef Brian.

Chef Brian: Yes, Clancy! My existential shell is filled with the dreams of wild chipmunks! Thank you for asking!

• • Chef Brian has been seen in the sillies, reciting a haiku: "Lemon pie puppet. In love with his socks with teeth. I am made of beef." Riiiiiight.

• The Cyantian Chronicles: Subverted and generally bent into a pretzel by Quinn Akaelae. She can actually teleport into another dimension and often speaks with two residents of said dimension, who can only be seen by her.
• Dada Comics are what happens when you take this and turn it into a genre.
• Derpy, as depicted in The Daily Derp, is rather childlike and does weird stuff at times, and has a propensity to panic about random things.
• T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics.
• Quilt from Dominic Deegan has no brain (he's a necromantic golem, a la Frankenstein's Monster), and thus can be a little... out there. When told to keep his eye on someone, his response was to take his eye out of the socket and point it at the subject. But this is probably where he exhibits the trope the most.
• In Dragon Mango, Cherry is oblivious to all sorts of things. When asked if she single-handedly overcame a group of oni, she declares that the chickens helped.
• Everyone in Edmund Finney's Quest hails from Cuckooland, except Edmund himself, who is the Only Sane Man on the planet. For example, Edmund meets this nutjob while traveling with a pair of hunters with "Nice To Meet You" guns, who are trying to find a Yeti using only a coffee stain and an extraordinary misinterpretation of some guy's comment about a sandwich.
• Sensei Greg of El Goonish Shive seems to be one. Being an anime-style martial arts instructor, he has obviously watched way too much anime, and it seems to effect his behavior. His first appearance had him attempting to go Super Saiyan, and later after learning one of his male students could turn into a girl, attempted to make it happen by dumping a bucket of cold water on his head.
  • Speaking of his student Elliot, he has recently discovered an ability to shift through three alternate personalities, while still able to break through them. One of these personalities? Heidi, perhaps the zaniest character in the comic. As Elliot first noted upon becoming her, ahem, "Holy crap I feel like I chugged down an expresso not literally of course that would hurt unless it was cold which wouldn't taste as good wow I look different than I thought I would but I guess it sort of makes sense I look what's the word I think it's spunky but I'm not sure that makes me think of a spunky Brewster although I don't know what a spunky Brewster is or was it a punky Brewster I've only heard of it before was that a tv show or something wow I'm full of energy". When the personality is in the forefront of Elliot's mind, we are treated to observations that "Superheroes are bouncy" and "Chipmunks have great judgement". These only sort of make sense in context. Hell, she was nicknamed Heidi simply because of how Un-Elliot she is. It stuck in both the author's and the fandom's mind.
• Eddie from Emergency Exit is nothing "but" this. He is obsessed with traffic cones, thinks chickens are out to take over the world, collects distractions, and just generally acts like a insane seven-years-old on an eternal sugar rush. He also wields a Hyperspace Mallet, and uses a "coolness enhancer" that enhances whatever it's attached too. Anything. He also has a fully stocked Mad scientist laboratory, although the whether the stuff he makes is powered by science, magic, or some combination of the two is anyone's guess.
  • Thing is...even though Eddie sounds crazy, if you've actually seen what he's describing (I've found the thing with the stuff! You should use the use the thingy majig to find that one thing with the other stuff!), it makes sense.
    • The prevailing theory is that Eddie actually used to be a normal-ish guy, until he shoved a fragment of a portal into his head for safekeeping.
• Inquisitor Eastwood from Sonic 40K Exterminatus Now takes refuge in Cloudcuckooland sometimes when giant spiders show up. To protect his fragile brain from the shock, he has been known to begin calculating the number of teapots a walrus could eat while juggling George Clooney and David Hasselhoff.
• Zedfelos from Final Destination Pixelation. As described by Zymeth,

Zymeth: "Trying to delve into the inner machinations of Zedfelos's mind is like trying to deep-water-dive without proper protection...the pressure begins to build up and you are eventually crushed by the sheer magnitude of the force of your own weight."

• Fletcher Apts: Kia is the cute ditzy girl who seems to be in her own world all the time, and any jokes told to her or aimed at her just fly right over her head.
• Arkady from Freak Angels, due to an overdose, is quite flighty, but certainly seems to be perfectly in control of most every situation and the only one willing to push her powers beyond their assumed limitations. Justified as the lingering effect of a drug overdose that nearly killed her when she was fifteen.  Actually, it may have killed her. Self-resurrection for a Freak Angel includes a power boost, and at the beginning of the comic Arkady's said to have the strongest powers of them all....
• Brad from Fur Will Fly fits the bill of a classic Cloud Cuckoolander almost perfectly, complete with boubts of Fridge Brilliance. The sequel, Coming Up Violet, expands on the mahem with his doughter Beatrice, who is a chip off the block in almost every respect.
• Sylvester from A Game of Fools:

"Pfft, it's not aliens you should be worried about. It's the carrot people."

• Kwerki in Ghastlys Ghastly Comic. She started off seeming to have No Social Skills, but quickly turned into a chatty little loon who believes citrus fruits squirting juice in your eyes is an S&M thing for them, among the other crazy and not-particularly-worksafe theories she has to explain equally mundane things. For example, her wedding toast... At a reception she wasn't invited to, and most likely doesn't know anyone at. And it involves a rather 'unique' use of a bottle as a prop.
• Girl Genius: Certain Jägermonsters are this, interestingly enough. Or not, considering their creators. Whether or not it's interesting that they qualify, they certainly are interesting guys either way.
  • For what it's worth, Sparks can definitely head into this territory.
• Coyote from Gunnerkrigg Court shows signs of this and Large Ham. Annie also has elements of this, often seeming to occupy a separate world to her classmates, and the pair definitely rub off on one another.
• In Irrelevator the green stickman is this from time to time.
• In Least I Could Do, we have the main character, Rayne. He does stuff like this.
• Leif & Thorn has Olive Romarin as a President Cloud Cuckoolander. She has a record of successfully doing good things, but tends to lose track of which ones she's done, has to be reminded when it's an election year, and can get sidetracked by dessert.

President Romarin: "I organized the control of the Kudzu problem, meaning the mage named Kudzu who got all murder-y up in the northeast, and the control of the kudzu problem, meaning the invasive plant that tried to overgrow half of the gulf coast. Also! I have a specialty pie named after me! Can any of my opponents say that?"

• Franky, from The Life of Nob T. Mouse:

"Have you tried Counting Sheep? When I couldn't sleep, I walked all the way to the nearest farm to count the sheep. By the time I got there I was so tired, I nodded off right away!"

• Richard of Looking for Group is a combination of Heroic Sociopathy in the vein of Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater and Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, bearing most of the humor of the comics currently due to Cerebus Syndrome.
• In Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, both Canadian Guy (much to the Commander's ire) and Jared (who the Commander is more tolerant about, considering he finds Jared's brain bizarre and interesting).
• Largo from Megatokyo at first finds it hard to tell the difference between the real world and the videogame world. Then it turns out the Megatokyo world is indeed a conglomeration of anime and videogame tropes. Which just shows you can be Genre Savvy and a Cloudcuckoolander at the same time; in fact, it can be an advantage if the situation you're in is itself insane. Largo is just Crazy Awesome; which helps him in the insanity of the setting.
• Yuki from Ménage à 3, though lampshaded by the fact that growing up around her father's comic art really did mess her up pretty badly.
• The eponymous character of minus would normally qualify, dubbing herself Warrior Queen of the Ant People and wanting to grow up to be an elephant, if she weren't an omnipotent Reality Warper (with a dash of Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant) who ensures all her fantasies become reality.
• Miscellaneous Error quickly makes it apparent that main character Jack is rather detached from reality.
• Sapphire Gem, the zombie girl from Monsterful, an extremely random protagonist. In these two pages a nice example is given, there are a ton others though. She's also an Idiot Hero, and these two traits combined always lead to instant madness.
• So many characters in Mountain Time that it might just be set in Cloud Cuckooland. A good example is the "Pod-like Thing," which is the oval with three feet seen here.
• MS Paint Adventures has a weird meta-example with the entire fan forum community. The majority of commands in the various series are suggested by the fans, which leads to lots of zany antics within the comics' continuities.
  • Homestuck gives us a few in-universe examples with Jade (hit the "==>" arrow) and the Wayward Vagabond.
    • All of the dream-selves seem to be this. Dave even forbids Jade from doing anything to his house while she's asleep (It Makes Sense in Context) because she tends to be so illogical when she's dreaming.
    • Any incarnation of Courtyard Droll/Clubs Deuce fits the description as well, in contrast to the rest of the Midnight Crew's harsher antics.
  • Terezi is...shall we say, a trifle eccentric. At one point she holds an elaborate show trial for a stuffed toy. Later, she responds to finding a friend's corpse by getting a number of other stuffed toys together to serve as her assistants and then doing a crime-scene routine. So her friend is dead and there she is pounding on his face with the arse of a stuffed dragon in order to dust for prints.
  • Horuss Zahhak is between this and just plain insane. He claims to be a horse trapped in a troll's body, later taking it to another extreme when describes it as a multiple system of several ancestral horse spirits. This would be fine,isn't were for the fact that he once rebuild Rufioh's body as a horse to be more like his ideal. Aside for that, he talks and behaves in a cheerful and even innocent manner.
• My Life in Blue: Iddy pop (not to be confused with a certain Stooges singer) lives and breathes this trope.
• Shiitake from Negamaki spouts odd statements at random, agrees to be sacrificed to a dark god with very little encouragement and has a casual conversation about the movie Event Horizon with said dark god.
  • Later comics have him citing that he uses naive wonderment to avoid thinking about things, possibly making his tendencies towards this trope a defense mechanism from the weird, traumatic things his friends rope him into.
  • Tempura Potato seems to be one of these, rambling and singing all the time, but it's mostly because he's strung out on cough syrup. Reality breaking apart suddenly makes him lucid.
• Frankenstein of Noblesse, when under the influence of the Dark Spear, which he summons willing whenever he can, as he's easily provoked.
• Jane Doe of Nobody Scores! in her loopier moments.
• Wonderella from The Non-Adventures of Wonderella. And her sidekick, Rita, is even more of one.
• Elan of Order of the Stick. For instance, when Haley argues that, as they are adventurers, everything they do counts as an adventure... he takes off his shirt, covers himself in jam, stands on one hand, hangs a lantern from one foot, puts a squirrel on the other and plays with a paddle-ball with his free hand. And shouts "I'm on an adventure!" In an earlier strip, Elan found out that wearing armor incurs an armor-check-penalty on certain skills, including Hide. Therefore, he decided that removing all his clothes would increase his Hide skill to the point of invisibility. Hilarity Ensued. He much later concluded, when a newly resurrected Roy was standing naked in front of him, "You're invisible!" Elan is now less Cloud Cuckoolander and more hyper-Genre Savvy.
  • As of Strip 889 Elan's genre-savviness has allowed him to break out of an epic-level illusion by recognizing that his cloud-cuckooland wishes had all come true, against all logic and reason.
• Kevin from Overlord Academy definitely qualifies as this.
• Penny Arcade
  • Tycho Brahe
  • Gabe
  • Sometimes, the Penny Arcade world, with one or two people who have been handed the Sanity Ball. Other times the world is sane and it's just Tycho and Gabe who are crazy...and sometimes it's just Gabe...and sometimes it's just Tycho...and sometimes it's Div...
• The Protagonist of Persona 3 FTW is portrayed as this. Even more impressively, he manages to be this while also being The Voiceless.
• In the Triquetra Cats spinoff Polonian Tales, the character of Nalaynee was specifically modeled after Osaka.
• Tiffany from Precocious is known to do strange things such as randomly digging a hole or drawing continuing far past the canvas.
• A number of characters in Princess Chroma are off their rockers, but Sonny, who advises June to use cheat codes to win real-life battles and pulls a cork out of thin air to plug up a magical cannon, takes the cake.
• Questionable Content
  • Ellen, but Raven seems to have officially taken over that role recently.
  • Hannelore might also qualify on occasion. Word of God has it that she's channeling Osaka.
• Everybody in Redmeat.
• Kevin in Rhapsodies.
• In The Rifters, Tobi trying to lick a rift because he was thinking of grapes probably qualifies him.
• Rob from Rob and Elliot is this in the extreme. He talks to fruit, harasses Elliot for looking at his bum (as in hobo, not his rear) and trains dogs by threatening to kick them in the balls. He is always coming up with zany new schemes.
• Zee Captain from Romantically Apocalyptic.
• Occela from Rumors of War is a high-functioning Cloudcuckoolander. Though at times it seems like she only suffers a little because she doesn't know what you mean.
• Scary Go Round: Shelley Winters and Ryan Beckwith are like this all of the time, although their brands of oddness tend to vary. Shelley's detachment from reality seems to manifest in her bizarre thought processes, Ryan has his interesting grasp of history and both of them love a good non sequitur every now and then. As of the current moment, Ryan teaches school; slightly less odd, but then he is now a supporting character, and his students qualify.
• Schlock Mercenary's Lieutenant Pibald turns into one of these when he forgets to take his medication, acquiring delusions of having hyperbolically exaggerated status or talents which he doesn't. This wouldn't be as serious a problem as it is if his hobby wasn't homemade explosives... that metastasize and form colonies.
• Second Empire has two: Absent-Minded Professor Yttral and low-level warrior Grexzol. Both are depicted as barely interacting with reality. Yttral might have once attempted to rebuild a ship's engine, mid-flight, while Grexzol is more interested in the various otaku memorabilia strewn in the Ziragalen warehouses than the ongoing attack on his position. Yttral is single-handedly reviving the proud Dalek tradition of Magnificent Bastardry, while Fridge Logic points out Grexzol's senility is a symptom of his advanced age, which in a culture as militaristic as the Daleks, marks him as a very skilled and determined survivor....
• The main character of Shameless has a very childish view on things, such as her name.
• Andy from Skewed Reality. "I love these green sporks! I have ten of them in my pants."
• Buwaro from Slightly Damned due to a childhood that's best described as having nothing but brown rocks within many miles radius. His condition is currently improving.
• Torg from Sluggy Freelance does this quite a bit, such as when he declares "I will find us a new place to live!" He doesn't actually make any effort to find a new apartment; he thinks making the big dramatic statement should be enough. Or when he promises to paint Zoe's apartment, and takes that as liscense to do a nude portrait of her on the wall of her living room. And doing a painting of Rodin's "The Kiss on her bathroom ceiling. Using pictures of her parents as models.
• Fluffmodeus, aka Little Blue Friend, in Something Positive, especially his first appearance.

"And and and and this other time? I was at the zoo and the man at the zoo was all 'You can't feed animals here' And I was all 'But why not?' And he was all 'Cause there's no one to feed 'em to.' HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA It's funny, new friend! It's so funny! ...it only takes seven pounds of pressure to crack open a man's head... from the inside. Kisses now!"

• Most characters in Sore Thumbs slip in and out of this; Harmony is firmly cemented in it.
• Lee from SSDD is a clone (most of which can't even talk) who can best be described as "flaky", and his tendency to stab himself with forks once his ability to feel pain is restored.
  • In fact he was chosen for a "special assignment" because he was too mentally unstable to be a regular soldier, the rest of his squad have their own problems ranging from plain stupidity to suicidal depression.
• Cube, from the Stick Figure Comic Stickman and Cube, occasionally drifts into this territory. For instance, on Talk Like A Pirate Day 2007:

Cube: Pirates give me gas.

• Fi in Storywisher can be pretty eccentric and has a wild imagination, which she enjoys inflicting on other people (her cousin in particular).

Fi: I wonder what this dark and terrifying forest has in store for us!

• While his name and Character Title implies he's more of an Idiot Hero or perhaps the Fool or the Ditz, Stupid Fox isn't stupid so much as just weird, having shown flashes of creativity, learning, and insight, but going about it all in a charming, yet slightly surreal way. The strip's MST3K Mantra looks to be "It probably makes sense to him."
• Several examples from Survivor Fan Characters, including Craig, a fourty-year-old maniac who thinks he's a strategic mastermind Kala, a Wolf Girl who speaks to inanimate objects such as her "Happystick", and Gatemaster, an oaf who controls the entire season without even realising it.
• Every single character (save for Jame and maybe Liln) in Terror Island. Sid and Stephen (the main characters) are especially bad, what with the groceries and all that.

Stephen: It's strange how we have an invisible postal worker who delivers the mail by altering history so it was always here. Sid: We don't. We have a normal mailman who comes by before you're awake. Stephen: Same thing.

• Snooch from Two Lumps, although alcohol is often a factor.
• In UG Madness, Wizards of the Coast R&D director Mark Rosewater is portrayed as this. He's also an imp. The author claims this to be a true and accurate portrayal. Many who have read Mr. Rosewater's articles might agree.
• Uh Oh Its a Dinosaur: Kyra comes off this way, due to cultural/experiential differences relative to most humans. So does Beatrice, just because.
• As one of the quotes implies, Leo from VG Cats has been known to go from "it's so hot out" to "there's a face growing out of my butt, if you touch it you can see the future" within seconds. This is when he isn't being a full-on idiot, though.
• Mirth from Voodoo Walrus is a prime example of this. And for good reason too. Arguably, the same could be said for Grymm as well, but not on a full time basis.
• James from What Do You Do takes this Up to Eleven; he once stops his party just to build a stone walrus, which he then levitates and uses as a mount. Really, the whole comic takes place in Cloudcuckooland.
• Devin of White Dark Life has an overly active imagination and poor understanding of how the world works leading to some pretty odd conclusions. Vomit from over eating? Dark Matt has control over her vital organs. Aliens take a hostage? give them what they want for space cookies. Sadly, this whimsical side slowly edges out of her life as she grows older and understands how horrible her life has been. Once she becomes an adult it's gone entirely having been replaced pessimism and anger.
• Lord Sykos from The Wotch is, as his name suggests, completely insane. Example: "Sorry, but no one goes anywhere 'til I'm done with my little investigation. 'Cept for you. You need to get me a taco. I don't know what they are, but I want one." His Perky Female Minion Aimee is pretty strange, too.
  • Jo in Cheer!. Too ditzy to be fooled by the Agents' Somebody Else's Problem Fields, completely Genre Savvy without even knowing it, and she thinks she's a Magical Girl. And talks to squirrels, which talk more like CATS. Also too ditzy to have been affected by Miranda's mind-altering magic, and thus retains all of her memories of being Colin.
• Summer Glau's recent portrayal in Xkcd. Sample dialogue: "I can extrude hair, but I can't retract it."
  • Does that seem right to you?
  • Also the white beret guy.
• Captain Fang from Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic is arguably insane and stupid (though who can tell for sure with him?), but he's the ultimate king of absurd non-sequitur. A few examples.
• Zebra Girl:
  • Crystal, though this aspect of her is toned down as the comic gets darker, and she becomes too depressed to act like her old self.
  • Mad Mabel from the Subfusc. She has trouble making it through a whole thought without several bizarre tangents. She is implied to be Alice. How she lost her name is unknown, but the thimble and many of the seemingly nonsense things she says hint at her identity.
  • Black Betty, the vorpal pook. She loves to talk, and it is sometimes difficult to follow her train of thoughts, as she has a tendency to do a lot of non-sequitur.