 Unlike most comic strips from the time, Rarebit Fiend is not humorous or escapist. The strips highlight readers'darker selves — hypocrisies, deceitfulness, phobias, and discomfort. They offer often biting social commentary and show marital, money, and religious matters in a negative light. McCay had an interest in pushing formal boundaries, and playful self-referentiality plays a role in many of the strips; characters sometimes refer to McCay's alter-ego "Silas" or to the reader. Though frequent in Rarebit Fiend, this self-referentiality does not appear in McCay's other strips.
