The Things

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The Things are recurring characters in the British adult humour magazine Viz.

The Things are some kind of troll-like creatures with long fur, fangs and narrow tails with arrowhead shaped tips. Despite being the whole point of the strips they appear in, they are always in a supporting role, with the main protagonists being a perfectly normal human married couple.

The humour in the strip comes from one of the couple saying some sentence containing the word "things" to the other, which by itself would be perfectly ordinary, but the strip causes the reader to assign a new, more literal and physical meaning to the word "things."

Examples include:

• A woman says to a man: "Darling, there are some things I'd like to get off my chest." The strip shows the woman standing next to a wooden chest, with two furry Things standing on it.
• A man says to a woman: "Let's face it, darling. Things just aren't working out between us." The strip shows the couple standing apart from each other, with two furry Things standing idly in the middle, near some exercise equipment they obviously have no intent of using.
• A man says to a woman: "I couldn't eat another thing." The strip shows the woman coming in offering dessert (a Thing covered with cream) and the man is sat at the dinner table with three plates each with the bones of Things on, obviously having been eaten as a meal.
• Possibly the most contrived Things cartoon - much of Viz' humour relies on deliberate contrivances, as a knowing parody of the contrived, forced, teleological plots of many children's comics - consists of a man talking to a well whilst a couple of Things stand in his herb patch. His speech bubble reads 'Well, I've seen some Things in my thyme (time.)'