reading up on gary larson i found two ABSOLUTELY wonderous tidbits of information:

from wikipedia.org/Thagomizer:

"The thagomizer is the arrangement of four to ten spikes on the tail of dinosaurs, like the famous Stegosaurus, in the clade Stegosauria. It was used to defend against predators. The term was originally a joke from a Far Side comic strip by Gary Larson, in which a group of cavemen in a lecture hall are taught by their caveman professor that the spikes were named in honor of the late Thag Simmons (the implication being that the Thagomizer was responsible for Thag's death, along with the typical Larson out-of-context joke that suggested cavemen might have modern surnames).

It has since been adopted as a genuine anatomical term, and is used by multiple palaeontological authorities, including the Smithsonian Institution."

the image caption reads "Now this end is called the thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmons."

and from wikipedia.org/Horrendous_Space_Kablooie:

"The Horrendous Space Kablooie is an alternate term for the Big Bang, coined by Bill Watterson in his comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

In one strip, Calvin says to Hobbes, "I've been reading about the beginning of the universe. They call it 'The Big Bang.' Isn't it weird how scientists can imagine all the matter of the universe exploding out of a dot smaller than the head of a pin, but they can't come up with a more evocative name for it than 'the Big Bang'? That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder."

Hobbes asks, "What would you call the creation of the universe?"

Calvin replies, "The Horrendous Space Kablooie!"

This term enjoyed a brief popularity in the scientific community and was widely used in informal communications (often abbreviated to "the HSK")."