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That guy who used to have glasses.

Douglas Darien "Doug" Walker (born November 17, 1981 in Naples, Italy) is an Internet-based comedian and film critic. He's the first member and face of Channel Awesome, originally being the "That Guy With The Glasses" that gave the site its former logo and name (before that name was used for one of his characters).

His original characters include:

His parody characters include:

Performances outside his own shows:


Tropes invoked by Doug Walker's works:

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    A-D 
  • Abandon Shipping: invoked From Adventure Time's "Go With Me", Doug was a big Finn/Marceline shipper and wanting Bubblegum to stay dead, but with What Was Missing he's more interested in Marceline/Bubblegum, even showing a picture of them in his "Are Kid Shows Now Better Than Ever" editorial while talking about exposing kids to gay couples before bigotry can take hold.
  • Acting for Two: He portrays multiple characters on his show alongside his critic persona, and sometimes they interact with each other. In Interstellar, he has a long chat with the “main character” of the movie, trying to explain to “him” that he should be a real person and not just exposition. To his credit he did warn the audience in the beginning that he was going to go a bit demented.
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
    • In the first viewing of Kangaroo Jack, Doug finds the epileptic line a little funny and Rob is like "no it wasn't shut the fuck up".
    • In the first viewing for Freddy Got Fingered, he legitimately laughed at the cancer joke, Darren yelling "Put it back in" during the childbirth scene, Gordy playing about with a fish (purely because of how childish it is) and the "When the fuck is this movie going to end?" sign.
    • The one geunine laugh he and Rob got out of The Angry Birds Movie was Terence being in anger management due to an unexplained relapse.
    • He actually enjoys the jokes made at his expense by OneyPlays, taking them in stride and acknowledging them as lighthearted jabs, and Oney and some of his crew are fans of Doug.
  • Adam and Eve Plot: Invoked for a giggle in an Anime Revolution panel, where he was asked whether he would choose Spoony or Nerd to have sex with to repopulate the earth. He picked Nerd because Spoony had already violated him and he wanted to make some fanfic come alive.
  • Aesop Amnesia: Invoked.
    • He yells at himself for being a "typical white American" with mocking/not remembering the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode titles/characters and breaking his own aesop with always calling it a kids' show, but carries on with both.
    • If there was a Drinking Game dedicated to how many times he promised to stop apologizing or overworking himself but kept doing so, hospital visits would go way up.
    • Starting around 2013 or so, he seemed to have difficulty with his "like what you like/every movie is a little miracle" belief, mostly because of his dislike for Michael Bay and partly because he wants to piss the fandom off with The Dark Knight Rises/Man of Steel hate.
  • Aggressive Submissive: Massive Author Appeal. Critic, Donnie and Ask That Guy are all masochists, but do most of the flirting. Even Doug's Alter-Ego Acting has identified as a Lovable Sex Maniac who enjoys pain a lot.
  • All Germans Are Nazis: In Critic behind the scenes and Korra s4 vlogs, he gets a lot of mileage out of being part German and pretending he's a Nazi. Jason once asked him how many Nazi jokes he's made and Doug admitted way too many.
    Jason: So why am I your friend again?
  • All Take and No Give: In "Message Received", he mentions it's healthy to learn when to move on and when the people you're with are taking more from you than you're giving to them.
  • All the Good Men Are Gay: Agreed upon by both Jori and Doug in the "Fionna and Cake" vlog as they say gay men are usually just so nice that they'd get all the women even if they were straight or bisexual.
  • Almost Kiss: With Jason twice in "Fionna And Cake", Ed Glazer at the first charity drive, and several guys at cons (with a few actual kisses). You notice a theme.
  • Alter-Ego Acting: Oh, so much of it. There's even different versions of Doug (playing up his own crazy, the Depraved Bisexual, ATG-lite, the Prima Donna Director etc.) which gets a little confusing.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Like Rob playing the Big Brother Bully, he will invoke for comedy. In reality it's more like Big Brother Worship.
  • Animation Age Ghetto:
    • Invoked with the Avatar series. His shoehorning of "kid's show!" to excuse anything silly/patronize it for doing something well will cause some gritted teeth, especially as it's him talking. Towards the end, he eventually learned his lesson and called it a "family show".
    • While he loves Gravity Falls too, "it's a show for ten year olds" is always Rob's excuse when Doug has rare complaints (like forced misunderstandings or tacked on morals).
  • Anti-Humor: Quite a few episodes will end with Jason groaning that Doug will do something predictable as a joke, like punching him or parodying the Batman "to be continued" symbol, and Doug will do exactly that.
  • Apologizes a Lot: Discussed.
    • See Spoony's DVD Commentary for the Zombie 5 review, where Spoony details how both men had come up with the exact same idea to open up a crossover with The Cinema Snob (Impersonating the Snob, only for him to interrupt) without knowing the other crossover was planned; after Doug got to shoot with Brad first and learnt that Noah was planning the same bit afterwards, Doug was so sorry about it that he called Noah up to apologise about it.
    • Best summed up in the Insurrection review commentary he did with Lewis. Lewis goes on for about five minutes defending something he said from a complaint, while Doug quietly says after that he can't do that, so just assumes the person was right and apologizes.
    • In the AT vlogs, he's apologized for different opinions, talking in general and saying anything about what he believes in. Jason tells him every time that he doesn't need to ask forgiveness for any of that.
    • In only four minutes of footage during the Critic/Blockbuster Buster, he says sorry at least three times. Like Jason, Erod is nice and always tells him it's okay.
    • He apologizes for "being too political" when he expresses glee about gay marriage being legalized everywhere in the USA, but he's just really happy about it.
    • In the I'll Be Home For Christmas middle, he apologizes for the Rogue One review (a clipless crossover and the second review in two weeks) being a day late because Christmas schedule.
    • Every video about how he's too sick to do a review/editorial involves a lot of profuse apologizing.
    • At a Fan World panel on convention stories, he has a whole list of creepy people who have scared him at cons, but pauses every now and then to say sorry and he loves most of us.
    • In the Sibling Rivalry for Frozen, Doug interupts (for once instead of the other war round) and Rob firmly says "let me finish". Cue contrite "sorry sir".
    • In the TBF commentary, he talks about not being 100% because working himself too hard, and apologizing because he thought that Todd's thank you for the Robocop costume was sarcasm.
    • In the IT reboot bloopers, he accidentally made Walter look into the sun and apologizes like five times.
    • He mentioned in an interview that winning a business award himself pissed off Michaud, and years later he still feels guilt.
  • Applicability: invoked
    • One reason why he likes Avatar: The Last Airbender so much. Aside from Zuko relating, he says in The Chase that he knows all about sleeplessness-induced conflict and being told off for working alone due to Guilt Complex reasons.
    • One of the main draws of the Adventure Time vlogs is hearing him relate a theme of any particular episode to his own experiences. It happens a lot.
    • In the Mockingjay Part 1 review he says that because he's in the media and knows all the manipulation and what lurks in the behind the scene shadows, the film is right up his alley.
    • In Steven Universe's "Back to the Barn", he praises the prejudice story being done with characters he already relates to (Pearl and Peridot), and so instead of being preachy, it grabs him because it gives them even more layers.
    • Joked about in real thoughts of Children of the Corn (1984), as Doug says Misery is his favorite Stephen King book, and Rob teases it's because they can relate to having stalker fans.
    • In the Finding Dory review, he enjoys it more than Finding Nemo because he relates more to the message and Dory's memory stresses.
    • Not for himself, but he defended Ghostbusters (2016) with the fact that women are pleased to get four different female characters that they can relate to when that really doesn't happen much. He and Beth actually talked about this and how he gets that the film is important to women.
    • While talking about Spirited Away, he says people ask him if he remembers events in the past to which he replies "no but I remember how I feel about them", and that's why he really relates to films that don't have to explain everything, just set a mood.
    • Aside from the Domestic Abuse/Stockholm Syndrome angles, Doug in Alone At Sea also relates Lapis's issues to both depression and being addicted to something that you hate.
    • He appreciates High School Musical a little for not going down the it's hard to be popular route and more showing the pressure of performing and trying to be what everyone wants you to be.
  • Aroused by Their Voice:
    • He shows in the Incendium vlog that he's still in love with Keith David's voice, and his wife offscreen teases him that she'll talk like the guy to get him off later.
    • In "The Pit", he has a brief orgasm over Marina Sirtis's voice, saying also that he met her at a con and it's even hotter in real life.
    • In the commentary for The Force Awakens, he compliments Tamara on her British accent and Malcolm for his Evil Sounds Deep Devil voice.
    • In the Connecticon Movies Everyone Disagrees With You On panel, he calls John Rhys Davies' voice like chocolate and makes your brain dance. In the convention stories panel, he added that it made him want to drop to his knees.
    • He has a crush on Ursula from The Little Mermaid (1989), and says he could listen to Pat Carol read the phone book because she always sounds deliciously evil.
    • Apparently Cary Grant's voice can do anything it wants to him.
    • He had this reaction to Paul St. Peter as Xemnas in his playthrough of Kingdom Hearts II, at one point suggestively saying "Ooooo, what are you doing to my ear?" as Xemnas is speaking.
  • Artist Disillusionment: invoked He had it for a couple of days after the Bart's Nightmare Let's Play, where he was already in a bad way from jetlag and coming back from vacation. He got upset over people acting like the video had kicked their dog and wanted to do a Take That! with Douchey in place of Chester as the mouthpiece for the fans, but Michaud talked him down. He very clearly still regrets this.
  • Artistic License – Biology: He is really not good with his identification of animals.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
    • Mocked by Rob in "Into The Inferno"/"Avatar Aang", where he says he can do whatever he wants to Doug and Doug won't be able to remember it the next day.
    • Jason also points out in "Belly of the Beast" that nobody should yell at him for giving Doug spoilers because Doug just forgets everything anyway.
    • He legit gets distracted by everything in Dream of Love, but plays it for laughs trying to get Jason off-focus too by talking about his lamp and clock.
    • An amusing bit in "Five More Short Graybles" is where Jason is talking to his face and Doug just disengages.
      Jason: Are you being- what are you getting distracted by now? I'm looking at you and you're looking over in the distance.
    • After about five minutes of Doug getting distracted in "Who Would Win" (partly to piss people off but mostly genuine), Jason actually asks him if he has any ADD/ADHD medicine. The answer's no.
    • Naruto's a big source of it ("it's a cat! a cute cat!") to the point where Doug will pet nothing because the cat is really on the opposite end of the room.
      Doug: I'm distracted by nothing, that's how distracted I get.
    • In Frybo, Doug talks about relating to the opening (Steven not listening to Pearl) cos he'll lose focus when someone is talking, try to just smile and nod in the right places, and has no problems telling them he blanked out because it happens all the time.
    • During "In Your Footsteps", Doug struggles not to get distracted by Naruto again, and Jason flicks water on the cat so he "wouldn't have to listen to you babble on for twenty minutes".
    • He talks seriously about it in Finding Dory, saying that he relates to Dory for having such a poor memory, and how upsetting it is to have everyone frustrated with you.
    • In The Smurfs real thoughts, Rob sing-gloats about being able to derail Doug's train of thought so easily.
  • Attention Whore: Lampshaded. He’s made fun of himself for making everything about him, and also mentioned that if he says true things in a theatrical way, you should still listen.
  • Author Appeal:
    • Doug really loves Batman, to the point where he must have worn a Batman mask about ten times spanning across various shows. In his favorite characters list, Batman came second. Critic has also related to Harley Quinn, and has played Catwoman and Poison Ivy with no genderswap jokes.
    • Dude likes his kidnapping plots. A lot. The Nostalgia Critic, Demo Reel, Pop Quiz Hotshot... One might be concerned.
    • If his favorite character countdown is to be believed, Doug loves characters who are Cloudcuckoolanders, Cowardly Lions, Deadpan Snarkers, Determinators, or all of the above.
    • Doug has a big thing for abusive (or at least messed up) people being Dysfunctional True Companions who display They Really Love Each Other. Critic, Tamara and Malcolm have done shitty things to each other but can show warped kindness, Ask That Guy and his narrator alternate between abuse and a relationship that makes sense to them, the movies he even said are basically a Rogues Gallery learning to be good and while Demo Reel have the nicest characters, it's still a Family of Choice for damaged people.
    • By his own admission, some of Doug's favorite forms of content involve overtly dark elements and themes, particularly if it's in material otherwise directed at children. He actually did an entire editorial on why he believed having such content in children's material is good, and it's part of the reason he enjoys the works of creators like Tim Burton, Roald Dahl, and Henry Selick so much. He would actually have a mini-series called "Dark Toons", which is him commentating on episodes with such themes. Indeed, the intro to the show consists of him directly referencing how his office is filled with such imagery.
  • Author Avatar:
    • As "The Writer" in To Boldly Flee and The Review Must Go On. There's virtually no difference between that 'character' and Doug, the former special hints that his name actually is Doug, and the latter one outright confirms this. From The Last Airbender onwards however, there's still not much difference but there's more Adam Westing and mocking his own issues.
    • Rob said in an interview that he left Donnie to be Doug's plaything character because they shared so many qualities.
  • Author Catchphrase: "Now I know what you're thinking." Mostly used for Ask That Guy, but Critic's done it a few times too, with the exact same inflection.
  • Author Tract:
    • Donnie ended "Blue Patches" learning that he couldn't obsess over his past and needed to look forward to the future, Critic ended his live Twilight review telling everyone that he wasn't going to do this anymore and that he was going to stick to being happy in the Plot Hole, and the Vampire Support Group Simon Belmont goes to in Video Game Confessions tells him they've had a good run and it's time to try new things.
    • He lampshades in the TMNT review that while he's never even met the guy, Bay brings out the scatterbrained condescending Fan Hater rants that he's usually too nice to say.
    • He's gone on several rants about how bad a time 1996-2001 was for action movies, going as far to say his generation was "held hostage by them". He eventually did an "Dark Age of Movies" editorial about it and hopefully got it out of his system.
    • He's talked a lot about needing to lie, for your own safety or not to freak people out, to the point where Rob mocks him for sounding like a politician.
  • Awful Wedded Life:
    • Joked about in "When Wedding Bells Thaw", as both he and Jason laugh that their wives have devoured them but then that fact makes them both sad.
    • He jokes that he's the worst husband ever (and even Rob calls him out) in the behind the scenes of "Food Fight" after he says he won't clean up his mess "because that's what wives are for", and he'll put his feet up on his wife when she clears it away.
    • When Doug goes on about how he wants Keith David's voice to do him (while his wife is in the room), Jason jokes that he needs marriage counseling, and the next episode when Doug gets on the pedophile joke train again, he comments that he has weird issues with marriage.
  • Awful Truth: In "Political Power", he says that, at least in his own experience, he wasn't ready to hear something or needed to hear it at a different pace, so that's why he thinks lying can be used to protect someone.
  • Baby Talk: In the Twister real thoughts, when Rob complains that people complain at him for thinking the film is dumb, Doug soothingly mewls that you can like things for different reasons.
  • Bad Boss: He isn't, he actually has the opposite problem, but the tagline for the "Behind The Scenes" video for "The Shining" is "see Doug treat his cast like how Stanley Kubrick treated his."
  • Bait-and-Switch:
    • His first vlog for Legend of Korra has the image show him flipping the bird. he froze it there to make people think he was going to trash the episode. In truth, it's against the trolling creators who lampshaded an unanswered question from the first one and then cut it off before the answer could be given.
    • His vlog on the Legend of Korra finale starts with him going on about two characters holding hands after expressing their love for each other. Those characters, of course, being Mako and Bolin.
  • Ban on Politics: Invoked. He tries to keep away from any political issue that isn't sexism or homophobia because, as he said in the "Lake Laogai" vlog, he's scared of the government attacking or killing him. Even in the Congo real review he feels the need to apologize after being still so excited about gay marriage being legalized everywhere in America. After Trump won the 2016 election, he explained that there'd still be political jokes and trying to help fight him, but he needs the show to be a safe space for him and others who are scared.
  • Basement-Dweller:
    • There's a strange rant from Doug in Soos And The Real Girl about how dwellers should go outside and have people care about them.note  Rob, who on the other hand has been trying to get Doug to admit he's had some creepy people in his life, thinks it'd be kinder for said people to stay inside.
    • In "Nostalgia For The Nostalgia Critic", he talks about how he was living with his parents for a while (literally living in the basement), and felt really embarrassed because as he admits, he didn't make the best financial choices back thennote  and didn't want that public.
  • Becoming the Mask:
    • Both this and Beneath the Mask was a big thing for him in the Catching Fire Sibling Rivalry, as he also talks about playing the media game until it's not actually playing any more, and then how you become part of the problem and start losing your humanity.
    • Again in Mockingjay Part 2, when he talks about how much humanity can you hold onto while still adapting to the manipulation, also pointing out that the video he's in counts as manipulating because he's not actually talking to us, he filmed it earlier.
  • Being Good Sucks: Discussed in Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service where Doug talks about how you can do so many things for people that it starts to stress you out and give you nightmares.
  • Beneath the Mask:
    • In the Hunger Games: Catching Fire vlog, he has a long impassioned rant over how damaging it is for the audience to just look at the surface of someone and assume they know what's going on from that.
    • Again in the Mockingjay Part 1 review, where he really wants to people see that any kind of media just builds up one person as The Messiah, and there is nobody like that, just people who'll kinda make it work and people who'll screw you over. Likewise in the Bottomless Pit vlog where he explains even the industry he's in is built on deception and illusion, and that can often be a healthier thing for everyone.
    • Averted in The Limit, when Jason says you should see Doug off-camera because he loses his mind a bit, but Doug points out that he's not exactly normal in vlogs either.
    • Discussing politics instead of entertainment but still in general, in "The Cooler" he talks about "as long as you look happy and confident and good-looking it'll increase your chances of people not suspecting you of doing anything even if you think it's in their best interest". Jason adds in pointedly "you can be purdy and smile and get caught red-handed and it's still kinda okay".
    • In "The Message", he says a lot of things in life, not just politics, consist of keeping the people happy and not letting them know that shit is going down.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Being condescending to kids is a good place to start. Regarding this, the Garbage Pail Kids movie really got him angry, because it was meant for kids, or, in his words, "forced down their throats". The "defender of kids" trait from the Nostalgia Critic is truly his, as he demonstrates here. The thing that hit home was that he begged his mom to let him watch this film when he was a kid and she refused, something he thanks God for after watching it now, because it would have seriously messed up a little kid's mind at that age. His face was very red and his eyes were wild, even his famous hat fell off during it and he didn't care. Plus, his hate against the movie is fully justified and he gives good reasons as to why it is horrible, and he strives to meet that person who actually likes that movie, because he wants to know why they like it.
    • The first Breaking Dawn film's treatment of the issue of abortion. He actually starts shaking and turning red while railing against this.
    • According to the Avatar commentary, stopping him from working is a good way to make him rage. When he was living with his parents, he punched a hole in the wall because computer issues were preventing him from reaching a deadline.
    • He has some Demo Reel issues. When Welshy teased him saying the IMDb trolls complaining that he "blew $60,000" on the show, he went into high-pitched flailing mode over how that was totally shown. Even in 2016, in the Resident Evil LP bloopers where the DR gang is brought back, he rants about people demanding Critic.
    • Death is Serious Business for him, as shown in the Ghost Dad review.
    • What child stars go through. Demo Reel was all about that, and while after that show died he tends to blame the actual child "for going kaput", he still brings it up all the time and is constantly upset about how they're treated.
    • People getting more angry over a different interpretation of a scene in a cartoon than when they hear about others going to sleep starving is another instance that gets him shouting and shaking.
    • TMZ. While he displayed some guilt in the AI commentary over being so mean-spirited, he talked in a 2015 panel that even just watching one second of that show makes him angry.
    • Adapting children's books badly. This might be obvious from the amount of anvils the Seuss reviews throw, but the real reviews of The Cat in the Hat and Alice in Wonderland (2010) has Doug "too much in a pit of hate" as he put it, to understand how anyone could like anything about those movies when usually he can.
    • "The white wallers", as he nicknamed the people who even pre-reboot, complained that Critic should have no character stuff and just be shouting at a movie in front of a wall, really seem to piss him off, as he's mocked them countless times for the fact that anything not what they want gets him the most views and hits. The Christmas With The Kranks review was all about this.
    • Starting at Demo Reel time, he's made a ton of rants about people who refuse to deal with change and only want one thing, in context of his shows but also in general, like people who don't want the world to be less sexist/racist/homophobic.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: He can be creepy when he invokes it, like when he's letting a movie trigger his child abuse button off, musing to a friend (who saw his friend get killed) that it'd be interesting to see someone hang themselves, or relating to a woobie character's need for revenge.
  • Be Yourself: Discussed in "Lars and the Real Kids", when Doug bluntly comes out with that some people should be a little less themselves and have more filter, and Rob directs him to what he actually meant, which is learn who to trust who you can be yourself with and who you shouldn't, especially when they might take advantage of and hurt you.
  • Big Brother Worship:
    • Invokes this in "The Top 11 Favorite NC Jokes", as Rob gets about three minutes of gushing for his directing skills.
    • When they get a few assholes at cons asking Rob what's it like to be Doug's shadow, Rob will usually blow it off while Doug's the offended one.
    • Not quite so fun in "The Runaway", where he went from at least being apologetic over the racist mispronunciations, to sharing Rob's full-on enjoyment of people getting upset over it.
  • Big Little Brother: He's taller than his older brother by a few inches.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: For jokey interviews and sketches "As Himself", he enjoys acting like his niceness is just a front for someone who is a dominating Depraved Bisexual dictatorish psychopath. Of course, in real life, he’s an Extreme Doormat, for better or for worse.
  • Biting-the-Hand Humor: While promoting Channel Awesome's new YouTube channel, he ends up listing all the other much better entertainers that you should be watching instead.
    Doug: The Angry Video Game Nerd! I don't tell many people this but he's am- [realizes, twitches] Just watch the videos below.
  • Black Comedy: The Most Disturbing Aristocrats Joke Ever.
  • Blah, Blah, Blah: When Doug is ranting on Jurassic World, Rob mocks him silently in the background for going on too long. He does it again when Doug rants that the plot of The Force Awakens is too much like the original trilogy's, with added snoring and "world's smallest violin" later.
  • Blatant Lies:
    • In "Dad's Dungeon", Doug calling himself an angel. Jason immediately snorts and Jori has a "No. Just… No" Reaction.
    • In the Gravity Falls vlog on the Wham Episode that was "Not What He Seems", Doug claims that "nothing much happened". Rob plays along, saying he was "disappointed" in The Reveal of Stan's brother being the Author.
  • Blind Without 'Em: From one behind the scenes video with Lindsay Ellis:
    Lindsay: Are you nearsighted or farsighted?
    Doug: I'm just blind.
  • Brainless Beauty: Parodied in that fandom likes to "affectionately" treat him like a dumb innocent puppy who needs everything explained to him, and he'll often downplay his opinions or intelligence in favor of Casting Couch jokes.
  • Born Lucky: Played for Laughs in the real review of "The Neverending Story", as both of them say how bizarre it is that they've survived given how unsafe the eighties were, and Doug jokes that God just wanted to see two assholes survive out of pure luck and chose them.
  • Break the Cutie: Played up a few times.
    • He used to love the Twilight movies in a So Bad, It's Good manner, but Breaking Dawn: Part 1 made him feel so dirty that he's very close to tears in his own review. invoked (Thankfully, he ended up adoring Breaking Dawn: Part 2.)
    • As described by Rob's commentary, the Suburban Knights production with the weather problems and script cuttings and upset producers "destroyed him". Thankfully the cutie gets mended this time as Rob and the others managed to get through to him that his It's All My Fault Control Freak attitude was hurting him and he needed to let them help.
    • In his video The WORST Movies Nostalgia Critic's Reviewed, he spends most of the retrospective calmly explaining why he disliked the films he was bringing up, only occasionally getting angry when remembering something that he really disliked. Then he gets to his number one pick and it's the near-crying and shaking of Breaking Dawn: Part 1 all over again.
    • Demo Reel ending. The commentary for The Review Must Go On touches on the bitterness he felt afterwards, and he's not quite as optimistic as he once was.
    • After watching the pilot of Adventure Time, he fully expects his mental state to get worse.
      Doug: You might just watch, depending on where this show goes, if it can go anywhere from there really, you might just be watching the mental breakdown of a man who may not have clearly all been there before.
    • He's really depressed in "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (he loved the first one, had the second one as a invoked Guilty Pleasure, didn't like the third one but was polite about it) complaining that unlike a lot of people he has no choice but to watch it and you should feel bad for him, says he's really tired, ends up accusing it of racism against white people, brings up not being able to eat real food all the time because of the cost, and tries his "like what you like" policy but unlike Garbage Pail Kids he doesn't even want to understand why anyone could enjoy it.
    • His first review of The Lion King (2019) after seeing it in theaters has him genuinely distraught, lamenting that Disney is dead and wondering why anyone would want to see this movie or even outright applaud it.
  • Broken Record: He'll noticeably repeat himself if he's upset. Good examples would be the behind the scenes video of Face/Off, where he tells Rachel at least three times that she didn't create any drama, and the early Adventure Time vlogs where he's trying his best to make sense of everything.
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Much like Finn in the episode, "Blood Under the Skin" is all about Doug's humiliation. And MomoCon made him stand in the corner like a five year old while giving fans a chance to win his money.
    • In 50 Shades Darker, because he hasn't seen the movie and Rob is trying to explain, he gets shoved down, groped and and has his neck grabbed.
      Doug: I feel violated.
  • Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Played for Laughs with his vlog on the Gravity Falls episode "Dipper and Mabel Versus the Future", as Rob keeps calling Doug (who is in Dipper hat) a dick and this is all his fault. Before he gets into it himself, Doug lampshades "I feel like you're just shifting your anger about a fictional show onto me".
  • Can't Hold His Liquor:
    • According to the It commentary he puked and passed out early on when he was trying the Red Dwarf Drinking Game.
    • Egoraptor has also said once that if Doug had actually been drinking during the It episode, clothes would have come off.
    • In "Onion Friend", while talking about adults needing to vent over booze, he mentions wine being the "magic liquid".
    • The Connecticon 2016 panel also had Doug and Rob joke about Doug being a flirty drunk.
    • At Shadocon 2012, he told an amusing story about getting drunk at his bachelor party, meeting up with his wife after and being "nice" by telling her they could both have the front seat.
  • Can't Tie His Tie: According to a behind the scenes, his dad has to still do it for him. On top of that, Yo apparently got called in to do it in Dragonbored/Demo Reel, and James's wife had to do it in one of the Critic/Nerd fights.
  • Careful with That Axe: He has a very high pitch range and is not afraid to flaunt it. Occasionally, it manifests itself in this trope (e.g.Tom and Jerry: The Movie, Junior, Flubber, It)
  • Casting Couch: He likes to joke (including at panels where his parents are in the back of the room) that he got noticed and popular by stripping for anyone who'd help him get there.
  • The Cast Showoff: invoked
    • If you don't know that he's a good singer and knows it, you probably haven't watched his videos. Same with his love of doing impressions. And then of course there's the fact that before making videos full-time he was a professional illustrator and is not unwilling to show off his drawing prowess.
    • Video Game Confessions was pretty much an excuse to show off said graphic design background with large portions being close-ups of him doodling humorous cartoons related to the story he's recounting in real-time.
  • Cat Boy:
    • No, really. See this picture.
    • In "Jake Vs Me-Mow", Jori puts kitty ears on his head specifically to get tumblr cooing, although it's slightly ruined at the end when he gets all weepy and thinks he's ugly.
    • The Moulin Rouge! bloopers has him batting at the air and mewling to annoy Brent.
    • After going to an adoption center, Doug started to own a cat named Chaplin.
  • Category Traitor: He's talked more than once about how other men think he's a traitor for enjoying female-led movies, and after the Ghostbusters (2016) Awesome Comics review, Beth mentioned the abuse she and her co-hosts were getting, as well as accusations that they'd cowed Doug despite him defending it in the Sibling Rivalry too.
  • Cats Are Mean:
    • Inverted with Naruto in the Adventure Time vlogs. His worst trait is lounging on the couch, but Doug keeps threatening to kill or neuter him. Jori calls him out on it in "Fionna And Cake".
    • Played for Laughs in An Indirect Kiss, where Rob is Dr Claw (because he was annoyed at the camera having more of Doug in frame than him and decided to go with it) and slaps Doug, so Doug whines like the cat and pretends to claw him.
      Doug: [in Claw's voice] Should have got a dog.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • invoked In Adventure Time's "Vault of Bones", he talks about how everyone has violence or anger in them, but as long as someone has an outlet - even if it might not be the healthiest - that's okay.
    • He's also talked about sketches in Critic being a self help outlet, and thanked people at Christmas 2017 for bothering to listen to him.
  • Celeb Crush: He had one on Jennifer Lawrence for a while, joking in a promotion that he wanted to stalk her, and in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire review acted like she was the Messiah of the celebrity world.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: There's still comedy involved, but the last Critic and To Boldly Flee played the character's brokenness for complete drama, Ask That Guy (as of writing) is hanging on a To Be Continued, sweet innocent Chester had a breakdown over selling out in the Wreck-It Ralph review and hasn't yet got back to his hyperactive self, and the pilot-following episodes of Demo Reel are heavy on the emotions. When asked about this, Doug said he just enjoys seeing how much drama he can put in and get away with before people beg him to stop.
  • Change the Uncomfortable Subject:
    • Happens in Adventure Time's "To Cut A Woman's Hair". Jason asks if he'd be wooed by a spaghetti dinner and his brain shuts off before avoiding the question.
    • In The Wicker Man (2006) commentary, he admits he just wanted to get Rob's head in a noose and that he has "sick specific fantasies". He then realizes how bad that makes him sound, sits in awkward silence for a moment and then changes topics fast.
    • An amusing Creepy Cuteinvoked bit in "Paper Pete" had Jason remind Doug ("your memory is terrible!") that he watches him when he sleeps and when Doug says he's glad because it makes him feel loved, mugs confused to the camera and changes the topic.
    • Both Doug and Rob do this a lot with each other in the Gravity Falls vlogs.
  • Character Development:
    • Freely admits to being addicted to it, even calling Spooning With Spoony his favorite series because "everyone evolves to a new place".
    • In terms of what's important in his own shows, at Youmacon 2012 he expressed confusion over why even watch something if you don't care about how the character evolves over time.
  • Character Tic: Plenty for his actual characters, but he himself invokes a couple: plucking hair out of his goatee when he's nervous, holding onto his wedding ring finger for support, and banging himself on the forehead with a prop (like the fake gun in bloopers, a microphone at cons and the Demo Reel bat in the donation drive) when he thinks he's fucked up.
  • Chickification:
    • A lot of anger at the Disney sequels comes because they made strong, interesting women like Cinderella, Ariel, Nani, Lilo and Jasmine boring characters with far less emotions than they had in the originals.
  • Chick Magnet:
    • As well as Even the Guys Want Him. He once got four proposals at one convention alone, which annoyed his colleagues.
    • He high-fives Jason in "The Real You", bragging that he gets hit on all the time.
    • Talked about more seriously in Breezy though, as Jason points out that the girls at cons who want to marry Doug don't actually know him, and Doug shares a con story about a strange woman who wanted to touch his ass and then his wife's.
    • In the Jupiter Ascending BTS, Doug tells of a friend being jealous of him because attractive women buying him stuff and him having no clue how to react is a common occurrence.
    • In Love Letters, talking about how it's not just men who don't know how to take no for an answer, he says (and Rob agrees) that Hyper's not all fictional and he's had awkward at best interactions with women like her.
    • In an Uncle Yo podcast, he talked about two girls hitting on him and how he had to call Yo for help because he was freaking out.
    • He's talked about creepy women who offer vast sums of money for some of his hair or an item of his clothing.
  • Chromosome Casting: He complains about the sausagefests on Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, saying he knows that neither story had much focus on women, but the muppet movies take so many other liberties anyway.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: He reveals in his vlog on Adventure Time's "Memories of Boom Boom Mountain" that he used to have this because he liked the feeling of being needed, but after failing a few times, gave up.
  • Choke Holds:
    • Played for Laughs at the end of Gravity Falls's "Land Before Swine", with Rob choking (not exactly gently) Doug with christmas lights and Doug getting out "what a jolly death".
    • Jason makes to strangle Doug at the end of the vlog on Adventure Time's "Jake the Brick", but unlike Rob, doesn't actually do it before the filming cuts out.
  • Clark Kenting: Doug admits during The Legend of Korra's "In Harm's Way"/"The Metal Clan" that he totally falls for this every time and can't even tell actresses apart when they have different hairstyles.
  • Cliché Storm: He describes Brother Bear 2, The Cheetah Girls, and both Camp Rock movies as this. invoked
  • Close to Home:
    • In "Daddy's Little Monster", Doug talks about how the scene where Hudson dismisses Marcy's hurt on how he treated her struck a chord with him, because when he's felt betrayed and wants to be serious, people have dismissed him too.
    • He also mentions in his "Top 11 Favorite The Simpsons Episodes" that for his number 1 choice of "Bart Gets An F" reminded him of when he was a child and was close to being held back a grade in school.
    • In "Back to the Barn", he calls "Katara getting misogyny" episodes this trope, though he says right after doesn't mean that in the "too uncomfortable" sense.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: In the first Adventure Time vlog, he calls himself someone who wasn't all there even before Sanity Slippage.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Doug likes the fighting on the ground in the first Daredevil episode because that's what would he do, and that when you're in a fight you have to do anything to win.
  • Compassionate Critic:
    • In his Vlogs. Even with his agony over Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part 1, he still keeps to his firm belief that people who like it aren't idiots, and he just hopes the grisly stuff about abortion will fly over their heads.
    • He desperately tries to find good things to say about Aladdin (2019), even sitting in silence, before he comes up with the orchestration and Jasmine’s actress.
  • Compliment Backfire: Both him and Rob have expressed uncomfortable feelings at people coming up to them and saying (in a positive way) they used to love a movie until Critic did a review of it.
  • Control Freak:
    • He'll be the first to admit it, but explains he's like that because then he'll be the only one blamed if the project goes wrong.
    • Discussed in an Uncle Yo interview; Rob talked about Doug having not much to do with Dragonbored except for the ending and changing the main's name from "Carl" to "Karl", positing that small thing allowed Doug to think he had some measure of control.
    • Just his wife teasing the cat with nuts invoked ("there's no way not to make this sound bad") off-screen while he and Jason do a vlog is enough to get him shaking and annoyed.
    • And with all that in mind, Doug saying in "The Boiling Rock" that people who need control aren't happy with themselves is pretty depressing.
    • Talking about Pearl in "Back To The Barn", he loves how it makes sense for her to be as controlling as she is, because she never had the control back on homeworld and needs to over-compensate.
  • Cosplay:
  • Comical Overreacting: A lot of his characters are prone to this. His comedic influences video even showed characters who overreact a lot.
  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: In-universe, Jason has called him out on thinking Mythbusters is stupid when he's only seen trailers, and judging the Harry Potter books based on the movies.
  • Converted Fanboy: For Adventure Time. He went from admitting to Brad that the show was stressing him out, to giving it higher praise than Avatar: The Last Airbender or Batman: The Animated Series for how well it can segue into drama or comedy at a whim.
  • Consummate Liar: In The Visitor, he talks about while everyone lies, there are people who need to lie all the time, and that there's no end-game for them and it's so self destructive. He also discusses how it's a legit thing, and can get you friends fast, but lose them just as quick.
  • Cooldown Hug: Played for Laughs when Doug is ranting about the T-Rex's death in Film/Jurassic Park III. Rob shushes him and strokes his face to get him calming down, and Doug just tries to bat him off as much as possible.
  • Corrupt the Cutie:
    • In "BMO Noire", he admits that for a long while he didn't get sexist/racist jokes, and it was people consistently calling him an idiot for not hating minorities that got him to understand.
    • Played for Laughs in "Blade of Grass", as he complains to Jason that he was trying to be a good boy and not talk about dicks to sate people's anger with him, but now because Jason was making the jokes about the sword he has to as well.
  • Country Matters: Joked about when Doug complains about possible Finn/Bubblegum subtext in "You Made Me", and alluding to people being assholes to Jori for the previous set of vlogs.
    Jason: Careful, you may be called the c word.
    Doug: Nice. [big "innocent" smile] I may be called candy! That's a c word, right?
    Jason: [beleaguered] Yes. Yes. Good Doug.
  • Crappy Holidays: In The Smurfs real thoughts, Rob admits he's nastier and more bitter than usual, and tells Doug "it's Thanksgiving Audrey, we're all miserable". And as much as Doug adores Christmas, he always acknowledges that a lot of people feel depressed during the season.
  • Creator Backlash: As far as he's concerned, Melvin, Brother of the Joker and Emo Jones are Un-People.
    • He's bashed the The Nostalgia Critic concept as a whole more than once. The Critic's rant about being a shitty reviewer in the review of Scooby Doo and the film To Boldly Flee were both improvised, Donnie's rant in Demo Reel about taking something miserable from the past and obsessing over it was a direct reference to TGWTG's usual shtick, and he's had to ask con-goers to stop requesting memes and actually ask questions. He's also pretty horrified when anyone implies that they see the character's obsession with movies as something to emulate.
      Rob had this too, as in these bloopers, he complains about having to hear "I remember it so you don't have to" for the past four years and that it felt like his entire life.
  • Creator Breakdown: invoked In The Lich, he tries to explain how this should be used to the writer's benefit.
    Doug: Everyone has the ability in themselves to be really dark, really messed up, really mean [-] but there's still work that has to go into it, it has to very carefully be done.
  • Creator Couple: Defied. He said in a Connecticon interview that while his wife would like to be in some of his videos (understandable, as he's admitted he spends more time working than with her), he refuses to let her because it might damage her social worker career. He also said a few years previously that they don't have the relationship where he's the one that calls the shots.
  • Creator Thumbprint: He has big things for tragic funniness, worlds where even the Straight Man is crazy and invoked Jerkass Woobies. Also, whenever he needs a girl's name in Critic or Ask That Guy videos, it'll always be "Vanessa".
    • Having a breakdown about your job or at least feeling miserable about it is an oddly common theme in his work.
    • His main characters (Critic, Ask That Guy, Chester and Donnie) have all had at least one moment where they're ready to die alone. Donnie actually does, as does Ask That Guy. Critic's death-that-was-meant-to-stick was with Doug watching so he sort of counts but not really.
    • Fitting for a guy who has bashed heteronormativity and called anyone who doesn't want gay in cartoons "hopeless", non-straight characters and Everyone Is Bi is a huge thing with him. Ask That Guy is a Depraved Bisexual, Chester kissed Lester, Zod got a Word of Gay relationship with Turrell, Critic's in a Transparent Closet, Donnie was bisexual from the start and the other Demo Reel characters had plenty of bi moments, an amnesiac Critic ended his Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee reviews with calling the creator gay because of how much Ho Yay was involved, and Doug will often portray himself in comedic interviews/cons/vlogs as wanting to sleep with everyone, man or woman. Rob even asks in Little Gift Shop of Horrors why he's so obsessed with the gay stuff (as Doug wanted the hot guy to really be a girl and the witch to be happy about that) and Doug ends a ramble with he just wants legit gay characters. He also had a rant in Cat Fingers about anyone not wanting to put trans/gay/black/etc. characters in their work are just limiting themselves in what they can do and representation is far more fun.
    • Surprisingly Rape as Backstory is common with him, as Critic was date-raped on prom night, Ask That Guy had to do sexual favors for his gym teacher, Chester's drug-addled innocence has got him taken advantage of, Rebecca was sexually abused by her uncle and it's partly why Donnie hates Horrible Hollywood so much. He gets away with it for two reasons though, as the first three are treated as tragicomedy and the last two drama, and even if it's treated as a sad joke the characters always have it meld them and mean something. In his review of Split, he complains at Shyamalan for doing this trope poorly, saying he doesn't understand the weight of it properly.
    • He's explained several times that his favorite emotional moments (and are the ones that usually get him crying) are mixes of two extremes, like extreme sadness and extreme relief both at once.
    • Critic, Ask That Guy and Donnie all have big Mommy Issues, with the former two's mom being abusive, and the latter committing suicide when he was young. There's also Aunt Despair. Doug's real mom was very sweet however, and he gushed about her loads.
  • Creator Worship: In-universe he really adores Dr Seuss, to the point of liking it when he fails "because it means he's human".
  • Creepy Awesome: In-universe, once he got used to and understood her feelings, Bubblegum fits into this trope for Doug, as "she's fascinatingly creepy".
  • Cringe Comedy: Most of the Avatar entries in his funny page are him unintentionally humiliating himself in some way.
  • Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: In "Trouble In Lumpy Space", he makes the mission statement that he'll give the show therapy while losing his mind, leading some of the less empathic members of the fandom to make "Doug's the Harley Quinn to Adventure Time's Joker" references.
  • Crusty Caretaker: He's as far away as crusty as you can get, but referenced as a good thing in "Jake Suit", as Doug used to be a janitor and loved it because he didn't have to talk to anyone and he could work on other things he was planning when he got home.
  • Culturally Religious:
    • With the religious themes in Daredevil, the Walkers mention this a lot in the vlogs. Rob in particular is amused by all the Catholic guilt that comes with that background.
    • In "It Could Have Been Great", Doug talks about how the religion you're raised on is always going to be a part of you, and Rob says he'll have catholic guilt until the day he dies.
  • Cute and Psycho: Will often portray himself as such when he's off on his Alter-Ego Acting kicks. "My Two Favorite People" has Jason lampshade that he has an evil streak, and when they cuddle at the end Doug gropes him.
  • Cute Kitten: "Freak City" had less talking about the episode and more making pussy jokes about the Jori cat sitting on the side.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Doug admits in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 review that he's always wanted to snuggle both Groot and Gollum.
  • Darker and Edgier: Given that Adventure Time is darker than Avatar: The Last Airbender, it's only fair that the AT vlogs are darker than the Avatar ones. Lampshaded with "Donny", where the tagline is "this one's just... sad".
  • Death by Despair: Referenced in "The Guru":
    Doug: You know that line "oh died of a broken heart", I mean it's not like that really happens that often, but that same kind of idea, that you can allow yourself to actually get ill when something is missing.
  • Death Is Such an Odd Thing: He once said he'd like to see someone hang themselves because it'd be interesting.
  • Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: He's annoyed at Aladdin and The King Of Thieves for dialling Jasmine down from a strong character to "give Aladdin support".
  • Depraved Bisexual: Not Doug himself, but an Alter-Ego Acting persona he put on in the third DVD advertisement. Shirtless, psychotic and threatening a tied up "pretty" guy with a knife.
    • The 'persona' makes a fandom-rejoicing reappearance in a Conbravo interview where he ends up riding the guy like a pony, and comes out a little in a Youmacon game of charades, where the guy Doug made out with compared him to Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. Also comes back in "The Limit", where he's all over Jason despite the latter's irritation about it.
  • Designated Villain: invoked In "The Puppetmaster", he doesn't quite get why bloodbending is such a bad thing, and relates to the abused crazy woman.
    • In "Hitman", Ice King is punished by Finn and Jake for stalking-harassing the breakfast princesses but Doug gets confused and views it as he was being nice to the girls. He's actually more skeeved in "Fionna And Cake" when Ice King makes Finn and Jake girls and the "love of his life Bubblegum" into a boy.
  • Desperately Craves Affection: Creator Thumbprint. Critic was nearly crying at the thought of Lupa listening to what he wanted in Simon Sez, even Ask That Guy is an Insecure Love Interest, Chester is needy for friends, Donnie did a whole film by himself because he wanted to make Tacoma proud, Rachel goes to extreme lengths just to get a "happy birthday" from Critic, Malcolm enables Hyper Fangirl because he needs someone to talk to, and Tamara might be a badass Fetishized Abuser but she still just wants to be included.
  • Development Hell:
    • At 2012 Youmacon he talked about working on a serious animation piece that had nothing to do with nostalgia or film, and wanted it out by 2013. As of 2014 it hasn't been talked about since, but fingers crossed that he didn't give up on it.
    • In Retrocon 2015, he said he wanted to have shows that had nothing to do with Critic out by the end of the year. Nothing yet, although Tamara mentioned in October 2017 that there's a non-review Critic project in the works where she's playing a doll.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In the vlog "Still", Doug and Jason stay in the exact same position throughout. By the end they're clearly thinking this, as Jason's arms ache and Doug has a ditz moment of trying to get up (without moving his position) and ends up hurting himself by faceplanting on the floor.
  • Die for Our Ship: invoked Because he loves Finn/Marceline so much (despite Marcy making it clear she didn't want Finn), in "Too Young" he admits he wanted Peebles to stay dead.
  • Digging Yourself Deeper:
    • In the beginning of "Speak of the Devil", Rob has compiled a list of names he's got wrong, and Doug laughs at him for really trying to prove he's not racist.
    • In The Smurfs real thoughts, Doug rambles about RL Aw Girls again, not insulting them but going on about popular girls he hung out with who just wanted to see cute bad-quality things, and Rob mocks him saying he's not helping his case.
  • Dissonant Serenity: He likes this one; Ask That Guy saying monstrous things while (apparently forced by meds) to be chilled out, Donnie casually admitting he was raped in the past and Critic – and as time goes on, Malcolm and Tamara – cheerily revealing serious issues.
  • Distressed Dude: Donnie got kidnapped twice in three episodes, Critic has been in I Have You Now, My Pretty trouble more times than one cares to count, Chester happily comments that he was a slave once, even Ask That Guy was victimized by Sage, and Doug's captured soldier role in the Sonic movie is blissful exploitation.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: At TGS, he took a picture with a Black Widow cosplayer who had held a fake gun to his head and he had to brought back to reality by the others because he was so hot for her.
  • Dogged Nice Guy:
    • He praises "Storytelling" for trying to enforce to both girls and boys that relationships are a two-way street and if someone doesn't want you that should be it.
    • In "The Suitor", he praises the show for the balancing act of making Braco quasi-sympathetic (because he's just lost and convinced himself that he loves PB), but also making the point that all he wanted was a doll that would say yes to him.
    • In Love Letters, he argues that romantic comedies are more damaging to men, as they make them believe that a no can be turned into a yes, and that he's gone to bars where he's seen even smooth-looking men harass women who are clearly not interested. And then he brings up that Hyper's not exactly completely fictional, because women have done this to him as well.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: In-universe, during the Cinderella Sibling Rivalry and talking about the original Disney movie, Rob calls the dress ripping scene really close to resembling a rape. Doug jerks back then says he knew Rob was going to say that.
  • Domestic Abuse:
    • In "Appa's Lost Days", they like the "so much of your trust has been replaced with fear" line, and near the end, Doug discusses how that works for victims of abusive relationships too.
    • When talking about Azula's breakdown, Doug's the one who feels the most sympathy for her because generations of families that start off abusive, with fear taking precedent over love, end up getting worse, leading to more mental illness as an extra bonus.
    • Played for Laughs when he screams in Jori's ear about having to be a happy family in "Red Throne" and "Betty", and in the Foodfight! behind the scenes where his jokes about his wife even get Rob saying Dude, Not Funny!.
    • In "Joking Victim", Doug gets upset enough at the abusive Lars/Sadie relationship, even comparing it to Joker/Harley, that Rob says the mood is getting too heavy and changes topics to Sinbad being in the episode. In "The New Lars", he talks about it again, saying at least Joker/Harley is portrayed as unhealthy, while Sadie/Lars always has hints of "might be a good thing".
    • While Connie's parents are more the overprotective type than outright abusers, Doug picks up on the way too controlling vibes in "Fusion Cuisine", and when Rob calls Connie a douche for lying to them, defends her because she was afraid.
    • In Jermaine, Doug talks about how even though a family member might have or be treating someone else really badly, it's still a family connection and it's hard to make a seperation.
    • In Alone At Sea, Doug especially is amazed at how well Lapis/Jasper is done, with Lapis hating herself, missing the relationship and acknowledging the abuse all at the same time.
  • Don't Shoot the Message: Invoked in FernGully: The Last Rainforest real thoughts, in which they say they hate left-wing propaganda more than right-wing, because while the latter is always awful, the former has good causes but is insufferable about it.
  • Double Standard:
    • While discussing Daria in his top favorite TV shows, he notices that men have a tendency to love Daria's monotone voice but hate the same thing in her boyfriend, while women react vice versa.
    • In the review of "The Rebel Spirit", he and Rob both spend a lot of time calling Korra a bitch, forgetting that both Tenzin and her father locked her up for thirteen years of her life and tried to control her, and anyone would be angry. They complain about this again in the season three premiere vlog, saying her anger wasn't justified because he'd saved her in the first season.
    • They think Mako's being totally legit and reasonable (adding later that he was just trying to help while Korra was acting like an abusive girlfriend, and that the Love Triangle is her fault) while Korra's (again) being a "whiny little bitch" in all the pair's arguments, despite her whole issue being trying to save her family and Mako betraying her. Lampshaded when Doug says right after he shouldn't be calling her these names, but he calls her an "insane douche" later on anyway.
    • For female vs female, "Too Young" has Jason call Doug out on buying everything Marceline does as a part of a character, but judging Bubblegum (as "boring" when she's nice or a "bitch" when she has a crazy moment) no matter what she does.
    • Fitting for something that had the creator apologizing for the sexism, he complains in "Wizard Battle" about Bubblegum being the reward (despite still thinking of her as a bitchy boring cocktease at this point) coming off as both unfair to her and all the straight women participating.
    • Doug mocks Jori in Hot To The Touch for initially calling Flame Princess the Cute and Psycho stalker, while Finn (who's the one chasing her) is called "cute and lovestruck".
    • It's almost amusing comparing the cooing over Ice King in "Princess Monster Wife" to really wanting an excuse to hate Bubblegum in "Goliad" and "Princess Cookie".
    • Jori admits herself that if it was anyone else fighting off a rape attempt in "Lady And Peebles" she'd think it was awesome, but because it's Bubblegum she has no choice but to hate it.
    • Doug asking Jori what's up with her hate for Bubblegum in "The Real You"... and then proceeds to hate her too. Thankfully "What Was Missing" made him interested in the character, and he relates to her when she's shown to be a workaholic frustrated with everything. By Sky Witch he loves her.
    • In "Jake The Dad", he complains about the Bumbling Dad/Women Are Wiser parenting cliches in a lot of sitcoms and mentions a few times that are plenty of bad mothers out there.
    • In "Earth and Water", Doug points out that it's only young women in fiction who have their emotions tied to powers (like Flame Princess, Elsa and Princess Peach) so it's seen as okay for other characters to treat her as a Hysterical Woman, and how he's getting sick of the trope.
    • In the Sin City 2 review, he talks about how can you see naked breasts constantly, but no Male Frontal Nudity and how that isn't fair.
    • Both Doug and Rob rip into the misogynists who wanted to boycott Mad Max: Fury Road, with Doug saying if you're so pissed off with Furiosa giving Max basic orders, then imagine she's a dude and you'll probably be fine.
    • In the Iron Man 3 Sibling Rivalry, Rob defends Iron Man's character not evolving as the writer's problem, never blaming Iron Man himself. Fast forward to calling Korra a bitch and Wendy pandering to millenials, and bad writing never even gets mentioned.
    • The fandom's tendency to listen to Rob more than Doug (reaction to said listening varying of course) was ranted about in the opening of Last Action Hero, as people giving Rob more heat for the Mortal Kombat: The Movie bashing and ignoring Doug, apparently pissed Doug off. They then say that because Rob told everyone about this, people will like Rob again and treat Doug like shit. Also mentioned in the real thoughts on Face/Off where Rob says that even if he makes a mistake people will usually attribute it to Doug.
    • In Jailbreak, while he's perfectly happy about more lesbian/bisexual women in cartoons, Doug complains that there's almost no gay male representation in children's animation.
    • In Love Letters, after saying Hyper isn't a complete work of fiction because there are plenty of women who have made him feel uneasy at cons, they talk about how male stalkers are really loud, spew off rape threats and so get caught more easily, while women are smarter about it and manage to keep going under the radar.
    • Doug's talked about the coincidental difference between the "a lot of assholes but mostly okay" reaction to his Ghostbusters review with Rob, to the "massive dislikes within ten minutes and so many insults" to the Awesome Comics one he did with Aiyanna, Beth and Heather.
    • Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Defied. In Twilight, as much as he hates Edward for the usual reasons, he also loathes Bella just as much for being such a manipulative, uncaring Domestic Abuser.
  • Double Take: In "Northwest Manor Mystery", of all the Big Brother Bully things (Played for Laughs) Rob has said and done to Doug, it's him calling Doug "not normal" that gets this trope going.
  • Drowning My Sorrows:
    • The first time Demo Reel came up on the 2013 drive, they were talking about all the alcohol involved in-universe, and Doug mentioned that he'd mostly drank after the show ended.
    • Played for laughs in the Indy Pop Con 2016 Facebook post, as he's super grateful for beer after a long autograph section.
  • Dude, Not Funny!:
    • invoked The end of "Belly of the Beast" has an offscreen Jason yell at Doug for making pedophile jokes about his fourteen year old daughter, and Doug say it's the most disturbing ending they had yet.
    • In Gutgrinder, Doug's creeped out by Jason joking that he watches him while he sleeps and takes pictures, and tells Jori not to laugh because it's not funny.
    • Cut off in "Five More Short Graybles", as Doug makes two disability jokes in a row (the first being he'd cut off his arm for fun), and Jason yells at him until he deadpans "I'm not making fun of handicap people".
    • Jori is never comfortable with his Awful Wedded Life jokes, especially when they're in front of his wife, and always asks Robin if she's okay with them.
    • Jason tells Doug in "James" that the dead Jori joke went over really badly and most people want it to stop. Thankfully she comes back in Red Throne.
    • The end of Ghost Fly vlog has Jason tell Doug "you're going to get us in a lot of trouble" when Doug makes a joke that they're klansmen.
    • In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", Doug gets upset at Rob mocking him for not being normal.
    • Discussed in-universe in The Disaster Artist review when he says people were laughing at Wiseau abusing his cast, but he knows it happened and how being abused yourself makes it less funny, but also tragedy + time makes more comedy.

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  • Eagleland:
    • In "Nostalgia For The Nostalgia Critic", his old room is covered with American flag stuff. When Doug expresses that it's a little creepy, his dad explains that his aunt decorated it because she wanted him to have something to be proud of.
    • In Return of the Jedi, he compares Jabba The Hut to the American Dream, meaning it in a sort of positive way.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending:
    • As he sorta-cynically, sorta-hopefully puts it, "the deeper you dig yourself, the further you have to dig out, but you can still dig out, and you're all the more proud when you make it."
    • In the Don Bluth real thoughts episode, he talks about even as a kid knowing you had to "survive" bad stuff in order to get to the good, and that Don Bluth films give you that hope.
  • Easily Forgiven: What he gets angry about in It Follows, as he would have been a lot more annoyed and police-happy at being drugged and tied down than Jay and her friends were.
  • Emo Teen: A lot of the time he (or Rob) makes fun of the fact that he was a miserable teenager with a Burton shrine. Although he does clarify later for any Emo Teen out there that while half of it is bullshit, the other half of it is legit. He also brings up in Unfriended that because of those insecurities he let them out on the wrong people.
  • Emotion Eater: Film Brain said in a stream (around the time of post-Suburban Knights) that Doug feeds off people thinking he's sexy, and later in the BTS of Food Fight! Doug himself says he's joyfully addicted to tumblr posts that call him out for whatever hurtful thing he did this time.
  • Empty Shell: Jokes that he's one in "The Real You".
    Jason: How do you continually go on everyday?
    Doug: I don't know, I'm not convinced I necessarily do. It's like there's some emergency back-up in my brain that's like "welp no, he's dead, okay just keep the body moving and talking, we'll fake it."
  • Erotic Eating: With a banana and a lollipop, both lampshaded to the best of his ability. At Connecticon 2013, he got on all fours and sucked a sugarcube out of a fan's hand, which has been labeled Fetish Retardant because he was pressured into it.
  • Erudite Stoner: In the "Real Thoughts On Hook" episode, Doug talks about watching the film with a (ex)girlfriend when they were both high, and her "beautiful" discovery about how Wendy had a crush on Peter, but when he has a crush on her daughter, she raises him as her child.
  • Even the Guys Want Him: We won't go into audience examples, but In-Universe he's been nearly kissed twice and managed to get out of a hug before he got his ass groped.
    • As for the guys he wants, he has a bit of a thing for Jacob from The Twilight Saga.
    • He asks his female audience to back him up on finding Marv from Sin City attractive.
    • Whenever Spooning With Spoony comes up at cons, he'll swoon over Noah's sexy and gush over how giving as well as taking he was.
    • Like most fangirls on the planet, the "Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes" commentary has both Doug and Rob wanting to marry Dante Basco, with Doug squeeing over how cute he'd look in a wedding dress.
    • When asked at Midwest Media Expo if he would still want Tim Curry in lingerie, Doug replied "not now. Back when he had a figure, please".
    • In his Suburban Knights commentary, he bragged that both fangirls and fanboys loved the Panty Shot scene.
    • In the real review of Jupiter Ascending, he tells all the ladies in the audience that he gets the appeal of Channing Tatum, especially if he's broody.
    • In both the Sibling Rivalry and Critic of The Force Awakens, he takes note of how Pretty Boy-like Kylo Ren is.
    • In Spawn real review, he admits to having a man-crush on Jim Carrey like apparently any boy did, and that's why he loved Batman Forever so much at first.
    • In his Marvel version of Disneycember, he acknowledges and enjoys the mass amount of beefcake.
    • He's always willing to compliment Malcolm and Jim for wearing suits so well.
    • In the Fury Road behind the scenes, the "hard for Hardy" sticker remained on his car, and he was appreciative of guys flirting on the road because they felt the same.
    • He wants both Keith David's and Cary Grant's voices to come to physical form and fuck him.
    • He starts to realise in the Deadpool 2 behind the scenes that he has a crush on Josh Brolin.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Invoked in The Cell real thoughts, as Doug admits he's had periods of just wanting people to analyze him and his work and give him attention.
  • Every Episode Ending:
    • In the Adventure Time vlogs, Jason foreshadowing the next episode while Doug (who caught on by The Duke but nevertheless) reacts with awkwardness or mood-swinging into either anger or depression.
    • Discussed in "Is That You", as Doug can't remember what he does at the end of AT vlogs because he's so used to vlogs he does with Rob where he just ends them on a generic "take care" note. He ends up going both for gay stuff and the 'being a klansmen' joke.
  • Everyone Has Standards: He practically exhausts himself in trying, and even gets upset because he fails, but he just can't see the worth in Breaking Dawn: Part 1 and the movies on "The Top 11 Worst NC-Reviewed Films".
    • There are a few times in Avatar where he doesn't trust Iroh's optimism, which is weird coming from someone who could have put Pollyanna to shame in the past.
    • He's got a good partner in his wife, as he affectionately points out in "I Remember You" that even though he's got a Nice Guy doormat reputation, her willingness to take care of everyone scares even him.
    • He brings up the "people can like what they like and shouldn't have to defend themselves" philosophy again in Transformers 4, but really can't understand what substance it could give anyone and doesn't really want to.
    • While talking about disturbing fans in Breezy, he firmly told a girl she couldn't grab his ass in front of his wife. And that she couldn't grab his wife's ass either.
  • Evil Laugh:
    • Invoked in his "The Review Must Go On" DVD Commentary, after telling everyone Donnie was only made to be Critic so they could be pissed off at the insult to both characters.
    • There's also Real Thoughts On Bridge To Terabithia where he has a gigglefit about the "meanest thing he's ever done" title card.
  • Expressive Hair: Around 2014, while his hair is getting worse with the balding, it can still get really fluffy when he's excited or in a good mood, and is flatter when he's not feeling so with it.
  • Executive Meddling: Talking Schumacher in-universe during Batman Forever and how he just does what the studio wants, he says he understands and gets that and doesn't judge him for it.
  • Eye Scream: Played for Laughs in "Beyond The Wilds", when Doug rambles that he won't stab himself in the eyes with a fork on camera, just do it for his own pleasure. Rob's WTF look is priceless.
  • Face Framed in Shadow: Most of the Avatar vlogs had him sitting in dimly lit rooms with most of his face obscured in darkness.
  • Facepalm: Jason does this quite a lot in "Loyalty To The King", mostly in reaction to Rob mocking Doug for his initial upset about the show.
  • Fake High: In "Heat Signature", Doug gets "sick puppy"-excited telling Jason that he pranks his friends by giving them wrapped up oregano, telling them it's real and seeing if they act drugged.
  • Family of Choice: In the "real thoughts" of Children of the Corn (1984), he talks about biological family being important, but how the 80s really tried to push that and that the past twenty years with "choose your family/what does family actually mean" plots are more fun.
  • Fan Disillusionment: Invoked with Christopher Nolan. He loved Memento and adored The Dark Knight, but from The Dark Knight Rises he's been really disappointed with the movies. Nolan's obsessively defensive fanbase doesn't help much. However, he was fully back on board with Oppenheimer.
  • Fandom Heresy: Doug both invokes it and tries so hard to curb it in Shadows of the Grass, by saying that he does like Breaking Bad, he just can't relate it to Walter White like he does with Fisk. Also invoked in "Real Thoughts On Batman And Robin", as Rob mentions that Doug as a child liked Batman Forever more than the 1989 Batman, which would be sacrilege for him to say now. In the real review for Dungeons & Dragons (2000), Doug says they'll alienate everyone by Rob laughing at Dobby's death in Deathly Hallows and Doug laughing at Gurgi's death in The Black Cauldron.
  • Fat and Skinny: The skinny to Rob's fat. They've lampshaded Doug is too skinny and Rob just looks bigger in comparison.
  • Fate Worse than Death: In "Lake Laogai", he says he thinks losing his mind would be scarier than dying. According to "Northwest Mansion Mystery", even as an adult and knowing it can't happen, he can't deal with people being turned into wood, stone or even robots.
  • Fear Is the Appropriate Response:
    • One of the many reasons he doesn't like the Transformers movies is because Optimus Prime doesn't show any fear, unlike one of his favorite inspirational heroes, Mrs. Brisby.
      Doug: Everyone feels fear and they have to confront it and they have to figure out what to do with it and how to come at it, when to hide, when to come forward.
    • In "Beyond the Wilds", Doug thinks "throw yourself into the fear so much that you're consumed by it and hopefully you can move on" is a good moral.
  • Female Gaze: Invoked. There are a lot of things he does that makes his girl fans squee and some of his younger male fans reach for Brain Bleach.note 
  • First Gray Hair: The "Review Must Go On" title card makes a point of showing his goatee starting to have gray in it.
  • First World Problems:
    • Did it to himself in an interview once, stating that compared to not being able to eat or going off to be a soldier, hate-filled or creepy comments against him really don't measure up as that bad.
    • Invoked in the Interstellar review, where he tries to point out that if he's somewhat crazily ranting about a movie As Himself he's not actually lying or playing it up, but it is still just about movies and there are more important things.
    • In "The Love God" vlog, he makes fun of the fact that he was trying to be a tortured teenager in a "beautiful, white, suburban neighborhood".
    • Both "The Ice King's Glasses" and "Real Thoughts On Batman And Robin" have him trying to tell people that there are a lot more things to worry about than another interpretation of a scene or someone making a bad movie, and that they should essentially grow up and realize that.
    • In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", Doug's reaction to Rob's "sweet or savory breakfast" dilemma is "you are so white" and outright calling it a first world problem.
    • At Zenkaikon 2015 he brought up the CollegeHumor video of teenagers whining that [movie] ruined their childhoods mixed in with actual victims who had their childhoods ruined to make the point that despite his own complaining, Bay movies are over-hated.
    • In the "real thoughts on Disney Afternoon" episode, they remember how annoyed they got when breaking news about invasions interrupted, and Rob laughs that they were entitled white kids who are still horrible people.
    • In Beach Party, Doug mentions people really wanting him to be angry about Drop Dead Fred reboots or all-female Ghostbusters, and how he can't muster up any reaction because there's more important stuff.
    • "So Many Birthdays" has them talking about age a lot, and that while they and others complain about being mid-thirties now, it would be a lot worse 100 years ago (Rob thinks they would have died at 40 being vaudeville people, while Doug assumes he'd be like a real life Chester) or in another country.
    • In the Star Wars Special Edition Disneycember, while he doesn't like some of the updates either, he dismisses the supposed controversy over them as "geeks with Nostalgia Filter complaining about something that doesn't matter", especially the "Han shot first" thing.
    • In Dragonball Evolution, Rob and Doug have no sympathy for movie-Goku as he's pretty, skinny and has natural Andrew Garfield hair.
  • Forgetful Jones: He is AWFUL with names. In a review of something he doesn't like, you can very much expect many characters to be called "the mother," or "the boy," or a wrong name, or the name of the actor playing him/her instead, due to his disinterest. He's also talked more seriously about how he doesn't remember what's happened to him in the past, and how frustrating having that bad of a memory is. When he messes up a title name in the Event Horizon real thoughts, he apologizes saying he needs more sleep.
  • Forgets to Eat: Addresses it in "All Your Fault", explaining that what he does (thinking working himself to the grind is more important than keeping himself alive with food) isn't a good idea so don't think "I'll be like Doug and never eat".
    • He used this tendency for a meta Freeze-Frame Bonus (in the book Jason is reading) in the "Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes", complaining that he's cranky because he's been too busy editing and hasn't eaten in days.
    • In Momocon 2015, he reassured that he isn't trying to starve himself just is a workaholic, but admitted it did go too far in December 2013 when he was so thin people asked if he was sick.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: In the 50 Shades Darker Sibling Rivalry, Doug actually hadn't seen it (or even read the books aside from some bits), so it's an hour of Rob ranting about the film.
  • Friendly Tickle Torture: Played for Laughs at the end of Congo when Doug does the "tickle me Amy" thing and raises his arm for Rob to tickle him. For obvious reasons Rob doesn't want to.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: In "Jake The Dog" and "Five More Short Graybles", he's self-deprecatingly okay with calling himself the asshole friend that people put up with.
  • Friend to All Children: In a much less screwed up way than The Nostalgia Critic. He lampshaded his protectiveness of kids in the Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea commentary, adding that he's speaking as someone who doesn't have kids of his own.
  • Friend Versus Lover: Comes right out with it and says the situation in "My Two Favorite People" happened with him, his wife and his friends. Jason's confused Aside Glances are gold.
  • From the Mouths of Babes: According to the How the Grinch Stole Christmas! commentary, his first word was "shit".
  • Funny Background Event: Jason and Jori's cat Naruto does this in his Adventure Time Vlogs.
  • Gayngst:
    • He assumes BMO's genderfluidity (sometimes being called "he", sometimes being called "she", sometimes being called "it") is it having an identity crisis, despite one of the perks of BMO is that they're totally okay with this aspect of their personality.
    • He's a lot more understanding and liking of Bubblegum in "What Was Missing" when he can see her as a woman who is growing up and realizing that she likes other girls while trying to fend off a younger boy's advances.
  • Gender-Inverted Trope: In "Henchman", he talks about seeing men do stereotypically shitty woman things like play mind games with their girlfriends and vice versa.
  • Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: When he keeps giggling at Little Kuriboh's line delivery, he at one point slaps himself repeating "shame" to focus.
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot:
    • In the Korra season three premiere vlog, Doug points to his crotch and says that brain wants that Korra and Asami to be a couple, but his real brain likes them being friends. Thankfully when they do end up being a couple, he's just really happy about it with no dick thinking at all.
    • In Too Far, when Doug wants a crush/relationship with Peridot/Amethyst and for the being on top of each of each other to not just be a joke, Rob for laughs interrupts him with a pervy "aww, yeah".
  • Girl-Show Ghetto: invoked
    • He's seen a lot of movies that are total Cliche Storms, but Chick Flick The Princess Diaries is the only one that makes him want to throw up "on Hathaway's pretty dress".
    • The tagline and facebook post on the Cinderella Sibling Rivalry seem quite embarrassed that they talked about a girly thing for an hour (and defended the animated version hard).
    • In It Could Have Been Great, Doug says that Rainbow Brite was one of the girl shows he watched, as he liked the villains.
  • Girly Run: When running to the kitchen in the Twister real thoughts. His legs just bounce.
  • A God Am I: He lampshades in "All The Little People" that he's done this storyline at least three times because he loves the idea of how much influence should or shouldn't the creator have on their creations.
  • God-Emperor: A title Played for Laughs when Rob calls Doug the "God Emperor of shitty jokes" in the Guardians of the Galaxy vlog.
  • Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: In "BMO Noire", he talks about how he was called an idiot until he had to start pretending to understand sexist/racist jokes.
    Doug: For so long, so many offensive jokes, like stereotypes and insults, had to be taught to me because I wasn't getting the jokes. There's all these jokes about a person's religion, or gender, or ethnicity whatever, and I was always like "I don't get it" and the other person were always like "oh dummy", I was like "...I'm a dummy because I don't hate people?"
  • Good Feels Good: The commentary for A Simple Wish is basically twenty minutes of him discussing how awesome it feels to be a genuine Nice Guy and he doesn't care if people think he's weak for apologizing all the time.
  • Gorn: Talked about in Event Horizon as he says there's a creativity to gore and it's not just people who like it are sick (though "they... we are, don't get me wrong").
  • The Glomp: He's a big fan of these at conventions. And in the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice behind the scenes, Joe is bemused at how clingy he is to Tamara (her likewise) even though they've only not seen each other a couple of a days.
  • Grey-and-Grey Morality: He loves Adventure Time for showing how complicated everything can be, and showing his belief that good people can do shit things and vice versa.
  • Grey Rain of Depression: In a con, he said one of the reasons why he didn't like Seattle was because he's not good with rain that never stops, and at least Chicago's bad weather stops eventually.
  • Gross-Up Close-Up: In "The Real You", he hurts his hand by smacking the table, and when he comes back as a hand-puppet the cut can be seen in charming detail.
  • Grotesque Cute: By "The Enchiridion", he's praising Adventure Time for doing something he loves: mixing the best of feminine attributes (i.e being super cute) and the best of masculine (i.e being really gross).
  • Growing Up Sucks: In "Belly of the Beast", he goes on a tangent about not liking clubs much anymore because he gets more headaches and is going deaf.
    • He admitted in Shadocon that being a thirty year old keet kicked his ass, as he'll run around being all bouncy and then feel like he's having a heart attack.
    • There was a January 2012 update where he expressed his fear that anyone would think he's getting old and lazy, before coming back to reality and admitting nobody's actually said that.
    • Discussed in the real thoughts on the Sonic shows vlog, as he talks about the difference between watching dark shows as a kid and as an adult; when you're a kid, parents look after you and you crave the dark stuff but...
      Doug: —as an adult you're just like, give me the afternoon show, things are tough now, job, work...
    • In the TMNT crossover BTS, Doug groans in pain when he gets up from kneeling and James commiserates "you get that too?". A couple of other friends on the sidelines note that (his lack of) weight must make it hurt worse.
    • A lot of the "So Many Birthdays" vlog is spent talking about age and all the different types of this trope, specifically mentally feeling ten years younger while your body (Doug's especially) is starting to rebel, and when they were actually younger, Doug getting scared while watching Goof Troop and hearing the line "you're young once, then it's gone forever".
  • Guilt Complex: Supermassive black hole-huge. The guy even felt guilty for 'boring' people with his praise of the Avatar series.
  • Guilty Pleasure: He has several, most notably being the Twilight movies, which he's admitted to loving for being so stupid. This is why the first part of Breaking Dawn, with all of its gore and clueless aesoping, Breaks The Cutie.
  • Guyliner: He'll wear it for shows and usually won't bother to wash it off afterwards because of fans saying it makes his eyes look even nicer.
  • Guy on Guy Is Hot: Jori (and Robin when she's there) reacts very well to any sort of flirting between Doug and Jason, and Doug was more than kind to out of universe yaoi fangirls for years.
  • Happily Married: To the point where he loves and relates to Garnet's talk of fusion because that's how he feels with his wife; only knowing her for eight years but needing her so much that she's like his left arm. Apparently he's like Ruby and his wife is like Sapphire.
  • Hard Truth Aesop:
    • Invoked and enjoyed with the "it's sometimes okay to lie" moral of Bottomless Pit, as Doug points out that a lot of times there are big pluses to deception. For example, everyone gets horribly depressing thoughts, and it's healthier to lie/keep them hidden and try to deal with it yourself.
    • He spends the first five minutes of "Political Power" going on about how he much likes that the episode shows that there's a lot of awful out there and lying is sometimes necessary to make people not panic, not just sign of corruption. When he gets to "I don't believe in you. I don't believe in myself", Rob eventually asks what the hell he's smoking.
    • In "Message Received", Doug talks about how kids need to learn that there is good in everyone, it's just you might not be able to get to it. Rob agrees but teases him for being depressing.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: In the real review of The Wizard, he says the main reason why he's popular is less working himself hard or actually being good, but more luck and nice timing.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In-Universe in the Xenon: Girl Of The 21st Century review, he hears "Chelsea Clinton as president" joke and envies them their hopeful optimism.
  • Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?: In Hit The Diamond, he talks about how he's really glad that gay representation has gone from this trope to complicated characters who can actually show that they love their preferred gender.
  • Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: In the review of Rise of the Guardians, Rob makes sure we know that he's married and straight after calling himself the expert on fairy lore. Doug of course just cracks up.
  • Hates Being Alone: A notable aversion as so many of his characters have loneliness issues. He instead thinks you should embrace and welcome it instead of being scared.
  • Hearing Voices:
    • Played for Laughs in Inside Out as they say the "little voices inside your head" can be neurotic and cute.
    • In this panel where he freaks about hearing stuff in the ceiling in the middle of talking about something but nobody else heard anything. He makes a joke out of it to change the subject.
  • Heavy Sleeper: When he actually does sleep, he sleeps like the dead. Notable because he goes on in "The Eyes" about how he can't empathize or relate to anyone who can't sleep when they feel like they're being watched.
  • Heel Realization: Played for laughs at the end of Ferngully real thoughts, when after alienating and happily offending everyone, Doug says that they've "added nothing to life".
  • Henpecked Husband: Played up in the fun way. There's been videos where he's shown off very large hickeys made by his wife, and he said in an interview that she doesn't appear in videos because he doesn't want to tell her what to do.
    • Also Played for Laughs with his ex girlfriend, who he's still friends with. In the "Princess Diaries 2" behind the scenes video, he's the weakest with pull-ups but she can lift him up off the floor three times despite being shorter than him.
  • Heroic Build: In Spawn real review, when Rob is ranting about the assassin being too stupid looking for even his Male Gaze, Doug mentions that superhero men are giantly muscular and make you want to go to the gym, while superhero women are ridiculously curvy and it just comes with the territory, but Spawn was just boring with it.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: Aside from looks-pride (and even that's gone), he has a deep dark hole where his self-esteem should go. Not many would relate to a Sin City character in terms of feeling worthless, but he did.
  • High School Is Hell: They talk about it in "So Many Birthdays", Doug telling any high schoolers watching that they should make friends and just try get through it as fast as possible, and Rob jokingly telling anyone who enjoys high school that they can't be friends with him.
  • Honor Before Reason: Loves the madness of people so obsessed with honor that they'd commit suicide before losing it, and doesn't always disagree with them.
  • Horrible Hollywood: He regularly talks about how he originally studied to work in film, but soon realized that someone like him wouldn't be able to survive in that industry and so went into illustration. Demo Reel was also about how badly Hollywood treats aging actresses and former child stars, with special apologies given to Elizabeth Hartman, Jake Lloyd, and Mara Wilson.
  • Ho Yay: In-universe during Batman vs Superman, Doug says that he saw the most sexual chemistry between those two and nothing with their supposed partners.
    • In the Logan Sibling Rivalry, Doug wanted Xavier and Wolverine to hook up, and can't wait for all the Slash Fic.
    • In Solo, Doug is disappointed that there wasn’t enough of this with Solo and Lando.
  • Hype Aversion: invoked Jason's family significantly hyped up Finn's baby song in Memory of a Memory, making Doug think that it was some sort of musical episode. When seeing the episode, he was more interested in examining the backgrounds than he was actually paying attention to the song which he had no real opinions about.
  • Hypocrisy Nod:
  • Hypocrite: Has been noted to be one on many, many issues, causing much backlash.
    • Jason's called him out on it, but in terms of Princess Bubblegum. She's a bitch when she's in Cute and Psycho mode or (rightfully) rejecting Finn's Dogged Nice Guy crush, but whenever she's responsible/nice he complains of her being a "boring princess stereotype".
    • The opening to the real review of Last Action Hero has Rob calling Doug out ranting about how people who like Mortal Kombat: The Movie are pussies while in the video he was doing the "like what you like" thing. Doug just thanks him for the sabotage and how everyone will think he's the dick now.
    • It can be difficult to square his remarks about how ridiculous it is that so many people are afraid to give their female characters flaws with some of his comments about Korra's anger issues. Granted, these comments were mostly made during Book 2, where Korra and many other characters were subjected to Flanderization, and Korra's temper was ramped up, but given that he called her "psychotic" and wondered aloud whether or not she was "redeemable" after being angry in the face of HER HOME BEING INVADED, it really comes off as hypocrisy.
    • In Soos And The Real Girl, Doug gets all pleading that basement dwellers should go outside "because we care about you" when Rob says it'd be better if they just stayed inside, but when he (Doug) gets to "I'm not going to be the one to care about you", Rob calls him right out on this.
    • Even Critic points it out in-universe during The Review Must Go On, saying it's a bit rich for Doug to act like Lewis is crazy for having characters that he talks to when he's doing the same.
    • In his review for Freddy vs. Jason, Doug says that in the past R-rated films were part of (as he puts it) "the Non-Pussy years". However, in his recent Sibling Rivalry review of Logan, Doug contradicts himself by saying that the film flaunted its R-rating too much.
    • In the Sibling Rivalry for Beauty and the Beast (2017) Doug calls anyone who liked Emma Watson in the Harry Potter films as Hermione blinded by nostalgia because, "You saw them as kids." He's done similar things and in a few Nostalgia Critic episodes to try to excuse why people might like certain films unironically. This is despite the fact that he has gushed about the likes of G1 Transformers and the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, among other things, out of nostalgia where people could easily say he does the same things with them and other things from his childhood.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • In Another Five More Short Graybles, Doug admits that he can't bitch about Jason showing skin when he happily showed a lot more in Suburban Knights.
    • In Space Race, just a few minutes after Doug likes a meme that mocks people getting offended and laughs that his job is offending people, he starts to have a rant (that Rob lampshades he'd hoped wouldn't happen) about "there's no shame in bailing" being a Hard Truth Aesop.
    • In Coach Steven, after Doug's ramble about you have to go outside and get exercise if you want to try and feel happier, Rob teases him about telling people to get sun but being ridiculously pale.
      Doug: Oh no no no, you see all these freckles though? These are from sun! My skin rejects it immediately but I still go out there!
    • Talking about meeting the voice actor for Steven Universe, Doug gets jokingly offended at having the smiley con "schtick" turned around him.
    • In Too Short To Ride, they do their "people are too addicted to documenting everything on social media" thing, but acknowledge they're documenting their SU thoughts.
  • I Am Not Pretty: The Avatar intro has him act like seeing his face everyday for two months is a bad thing. As skinny and tired as he looks, most would still disagree.
  • I Am Not Spock: Even though The Nostalgia Critic is a hyperbolic wreck who would have probably died in the real world long ago, people still confuse Doug with his character.
    • After the Doug/Critic scene in To Boldly Flee and Critic being mostly retired, the people still calling Doug "Critic" all the time are probably just doing it to try and annoy him.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: Referenced in the Bay TMNT review, saying that being primal is useful sometimes because you need to survive in bad situations.
  • Ignorance Is Bliss:
    • Defends this mindset a little in "The Earth King":
      Doug: So a lot of times they just have to act like they know what they're talking about and smile... or let me put it this way, they could know all this stuff, but then they'd have to give up everything resembling a social life, and anything that would keep them sane...
    • Discusses it a bit more in relation to himself in "Doug's Top Ten Hottest Women":
      Doug: In a lot of ways I'm very naive and I know I am- what's that phrase Ignorance Is Bliss? There's some truth to that, it can also cause a lot of trouble, if you can avoid being ignorant please do, I at least try. But there is something where- when you're not aware of so much danger and so much judgment you're just kinda naturally happy, not thinking about all these things that can come after you or things that might hurt you and you're just going through life enjoying it.
    • In "Political Power", he mentions people who ask does he know all the bad stuff that goes on, him replying no and he prefers that way, them saying doesn't he believe it, and his response being "I do believe it, that's the problem!"
    • In "The Pajama War", he says people like to ask why others (especially politicians) put on a façade and don't tell the whole truth and it's because you actually don't want the truth and everyone would go insane. He even name drops the trope again and both him and Jason agree they're happier not knowing everything.
    • Averted when it comes to Trump, as in The Lorax (2012) real thoughts, they briefly talk about people not being informed about what was going on either side, and that played a part in him getting elected.
    • His need for this trope has got him in trouble with other producers, with even him feeling awful in the commentary for not getting that the drill scene in TBF was rapey.
  • I Hate Past Me: He's talked a few times about how he was a dick as a teenager, being an only half deserved pretentious Emo Teen, lashing out at people who didn't deserve it, and not liking Grave of the Fireflies (at that point) because he was too much like the older brother.
  • I Have Nothing to Say to That: Not being able to be his usual wordy self on the first couple episodes of Adventure Time really upsets him, as he starts shaking and gets dangerously close to tears.
  • I Just Want to Be Beautiful: Teased in "To Cut A Woman's Hair", as he wears a wig for the first few minutes because he wants to feel pretty.
  • I Just Want to Be You: One of the reasons why the second hottest women list exists, as he wanted to talk about how the illusion of movie magic makes them hot, how he wants to be like them, and how they also embody what he's looking for in people.
  • I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Inverted. Until "What Was Missing", he only really likes Bubblegum (and even her Spear Counterpart) when she's thirteen and more receptive to Finn's crush. When she's older and making it clear she's not interested, she's a "bitchy cocktease".
  • I'm Going to Hell for This: In Coach Steven, when they get onto what kids are aware of and their games of Playing Doctor, Rob says to use protection and saran wrap, Doug adds on "and a gun", and Rob laughs that they're going to hell.
  • Immediate Self-Contradiction: In the vlogs, he partakes in too many to count. Jason or Rob will usually loudly call him out on it.
  • Important Haircut: Critic treated it like a mistake (at first anyway), but Doug had a ramble at the 2017 Conbravo that he couldn’t stand trying to style his thinning hair and feels so much better with it all gone.
  • Incredibly Long Note: His performance of a fan's parody of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" ends with a quite frankly ridiculously long one. And once it's over he just starts talking again, seeming to not consider it any big deal or be in any discomfort.
    • His participation in The Nostalgia Chick's One Day More group-sing had him hold a note almost 3 times as long as the actor who sang that part in the 25th Anniversary performace of said play.
  • Inherently Funny Word: In "Be More", he loves the word 'goof' and says he calls his wife that all the time.
  • Innocent Blue Eyes: They're the reason why even his grossest characters get away with everything when they pull out the puppy dog look.
  • Innocently Insensitive: Discussed in Get Out (2017), where he talks about the best writing being near the beginning, getting that "I know something is wrong but a more privileged person wouldn't suspect anything" feeling.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: In "Princess Monster Wife", he talks about spending most of his time growing up watching TV and trying to figure out a way to fit in from the shows he watched.
    • He explains this more in the Robin Williams tribute, mixing it with I Just Want to Be Special but not so special that everyone hates him because they think he's too much of a freak.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: "Pride is not the solution, shame is the cause of it" is a quote he loves from Avatar, and sums up his way of using this trope pretty well.
  • In Vino Veritas: The sweet admitting that he relates to Garnet because he feels like he's Ruby and his wife is Sapphire probably wouldn't have happened if he hadn't spent a few vlogs already drinking with Rob.
  • Insane Troll Logic: In Too Far, he says what he loves about prejudice in general is that whenever someone tries to rationalize it to him, they end up looking like idiots and going "y'know, c'mon!"
  • Insult Backfire:
    • According to the drive, he got bullied as a kid "for being weird", but took it as a compliment.
    • In the behind of scenes of Food Fight, he says he's gleefully obsessed with negative posts note  about himself on TGWTGSecrets:
      Doug: [after Malcolm mentions the site] You've discovered that? Isn't it addictive? When they talk smack about you, you're like "ooh what else are they saying!"
    • In Chille-Ted, Rob calls Doug a freak for getting tired from coffee and energy drinks, but Doug just goes "I knew that anyway".
  • Interplay of Sex and Violence: Lovingly alluded to in "Vault of Bones", as he tells Jason they should make out, Jason should set him on fire, their Estrogen Brigade should write Slash Fic about it and all will be right with the world. Also joked about in "Be More" when Jori and his wife want Jason to hit Doug sexily.
  • In Touch with His Feminine Side:
    • Apparently his complaining about much society bashes men who want to be femmier is something Jason's heard a lot, as evidenced by the "Thank You" vlog.
    • Sums it up in "You Made Me".
      Jason: You're a man, right?
      Doug: Close enough.
    • Joked about in "Dipper Vs Manliness" when they argue about the lighting, and Doug defends it because it makes him look "pretty... I mean manly".
    • "All hail Queen Doug".
    • In "Carpet Diem", after Doug says that he loves bodyswap episodes, Rob teases that it's because he might actually be a girl, and Doug jokes maybe and that fans assume so anyway because he's been in drag a million times.
    • In the Indy Pop Con 2016 panel, Doug said he might be open to doing the Barbie movies because a girl was nostalgic for them, and Rob teases him for playing with Barbies when he was little.
    • Lovingly teased about it by Aiyanna, Beth and Heather in the Awesome Comics review of Ghostbusters, where they all agree he doesn't quite count as a guy and call him an honorary sister (which he's happy about).
  • I Resemble That Remark!: When Jason says they forget to bring up stuff because they're "distracted and kinda foolish"-
    Doug: We do not! We do not get d- hey Naruto! note 
  • Irony: His Cash-Cow Franchise character's Catchphrase is "I remember it so you don't have to", and yet Doug himself has some serious memory issues.
  • It's All About Me: Played for Laughs in On The Run when Doug relates to Pearl's myopia and Rob teases him for this.
    Doug: It is all about me. Clearly. Is that something I'm not supposed to see?
  • It Runs in the Family: Because of Azula's situation, Doug talks (or at least tries) in the Avatar finale vlogs about mental illness can run in families, especially when there's abuse involved.
  • I Was Just Joking: Rare example where the audience is worried, not offended. He once tried to pass off his brokenly crying, shaking rants on Garbage Pail Kids and Breaking Dawn: Part 1 as them being played for laughs and him acting like Critic. Seeing as this was only one half-hearted attempt and he went right back to emotions over both in the next con, nobody bought it.
  • I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: In the Labyrinth behind the scenes, Doug says that any clothing that looks cool is Jim's old stuff, anything that looks stylish is Joanna's (Jim's wife), and anything that makes you go "wtf is that" is his.
  • I Work Alone: His habit of isolating himself to work so he can say It's All My Fault when people complain apparently drives Rob crazy. In the real thoughts review of Quest for Camelot he praises "I Stand Alone" for glorifying working on your own instead of the usual promoting teamwork.
  • Kick Them While They Are Down: Mentioned in "Power Animal", where he laughs that if he got captured and then rescued he'd be beating on dead bodies to make himself feel better.
  • Kids Are Cruel: In Goliad, he compares the creature with children he's had to deal with.
    Doug: There's something really creepy when you try to talk to a kid that just, like, does not understand and you really have to go super simple to explain things and they're not getting it and they have all the power in the world. I've come across a lot of those kids.
  • Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: Subverted as the Walkers (Rob especially) have talked a lot about the 80s movies they watched as a kid and how they love them, and Doug has said that the nightmares they gave him have made him tougher. He also admits in the It review that it takes a lot to scare him because his imagination is ten times worse.
  • Kill the Cutie: In "The Library", he assumes that the optimistic, upbeat, constantly curious (remind you of anyone?) guy will be happy about getting beheaded.
  • Kindhearted Cat Lover: He adopted two cats - Chaplin in 2019 and Buster in 2020.
  • Kinky Spanking: Naturally joked about in "The Silent King", as Doug thinks the coolest thing is to get spanked. He also demands either getting hit or juice in "The Real You".
  • Knight in Sour Armor:
    • The "Ice King's Glasses" Issue proved he can't really be called a naive Wide-Eyed Idealist anymore, as he ripped into a fandom that cared more about sending death threats about a badly interpreted scene than actually helping people in need.
      Doug: There's not going to be a shortage of things that will come after you and make you feel bad. Life is full of those things. The amount of effort and hatred that was being put into those comments, no amount of effort or hatred should be put into something like this. What we should do with our truths, that should have that amount of effort and anger, how to get people going to sleep at night hungry and starving to have that not happen anymore, that deserves that amount of effort and anger.
      Doug: [later] There is stuff that's worth hurting each other over, I know it sounds weird to say, but there are big issues and the world is big and terrible things happen, and that is worth fighting for, but this is Finn and the Ice King's glasses! It's not worth it!
    • In "Message Received", Doug talks about that while he believes there's good in everyone and people can change, the likelihood is that they won't or that they'll take a really long time. Rob makes fun of him for the depressing aesop.

    L-R 
  • Lampshaded Double Entendre: In the Kung Fu Panda 3 Sibling Rivalry, talking about overly long movies.
    Doug: Films like that, when they think long and big is good and it's not... [grin, hand motions] oh well under certain circumstances but you know what I mean.
  • Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: In a video where he was in Austria, he made a reference to Julie Taymor's work, and noted that about five people watching might get it.
  • Lampshade Hanging: In the It reboot sibling rivalry, Doug is getting antsy at Rob talking over him and Rob acknowledges his tendency to do that with a "Imma let you finish" meme.
  • Laughing Mad: In the "Sibling Rivalry" video for Man of Steel, Rob gets steadily more annoyed at Doug's incessant cackling at nothing.
    • The first vlog of Adventure Time is a mix of tears, the traumatized kitten voice he used for Garbage Pail Kids, and laughing so hard he can't get words out.
    • In the real thoughts on Patch Adams, Doug has a hysterical cackle over the next holocaust coming, and then tells himself off because he was supposed to act happy.
  • Let's See YOU Do Better!: In 50 Shades Darker, while Doug hasn't seen it, he said he and Rob are doing better sexual humiliation than the movie.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In 50 Shades Darker, to explain a bad scene, Rob grabs Doug's hand and points to his chest and crotch. Doug says he feels violated and they're never talking about that again "unless there's a contract".
  • Lis For Dyslexia: He clarifies in "Ocean of Fear" that all the misspellings come from an eye problem that also affects his balance, and it's not exactly dyslexia but it's close enough. He's said elsewhere that he's pretty sure he also has dyslexia too.
  • Life Isn't Fair: A big theme in the Avatar: The Last Airbender vlogs, despite needing the show's happy. Especially with "The Blue Spirit", he sounds very sad and beaten down when talking about Aang and Zuko realizing they're in a situation that they can't get out of yet and just have to deal with ut.
  • Like Brother and Sister: Watch any behind the scenes material with him and Lindsay Ellis; they're this trope. Even when she was done with the site's bad management, she said she still loved him like a brother.
  • Like Mother Like Son: At the end of The Christmas Tree he asks his mom to give reassurance to depressed people because "you feel it like I feel it".
  • Locked Out of the Loop: By his own admission, because he can't deal with pressures of business. He had no idea a redesign was being planned when a con guest asked him about it, and Rob confirmed that he was kept in the dark about some Demo Reel issues because he was so excited. Even Lupa said, when it comes to business calls, "he's allowed to be involved only when it's convenient".
  • Loony Fan: In the "real thoughts" of Children of the Corn (1984), Doug says that his favorite Stephen King book is Misery note , and Rob jokes that the "obsessed fan" part is why he loves it so much because he can relate.
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: Invokes this a lot in vlogs and sketches Alter-Ego Acting, especially in "Blade of Grass" where he complains about fandom wanting him to be a good boy and stop talking about dicks. In the Labyrinth real review, Rob gives him the compliment of being the expert regarding the topic.
  • Love Triangle: He claims to hate them with a passion. In his opinion, they only work in comedy when it's Played for Laughs, but in drama they're only a distraction that postpones what the audience already know is going to happen at the end. A good example of this is in the The Legend of Korra vlogs.
    • Jason has some fun with him in "Go With Me", making him think there'd be one with Marceline/Finn/Bubblegum when there isn't, and having him rant about nothing.
  • Luminescent Blush: In "Fionna And Cake", when Doug gives the very obvious lie that he never reads any of the porn about him,note  Jori is delighted to point out that he's blushing.
  • The Masochism Tango: In the real thoughts on Phantom, Doug thinks (and acts out with Rob) that Sarah Brightman and Andrew Lloyd Webber were in a competition to see who could make each other more uncomfortable and not flinch.
  • Mad Artist:
    • The To Boldly Flee commentary has him call his brain fucked up at least ten times, and he's just a little too willing to forgo food, sleep or human interaction for work that (he admits) doesn't always make him feel better about himself.
    • In the vlog for "The Chase", he talks about how feeling confused and chaotic can sometimes lead to moments of clarity.
    • Calls himself a "demented bastard" for wanting Zuko to go through even more identifiable pain so he'll come out stronger, and has joked he looks schizophrenic when it comes to making Bum Reviews.
    • He admitted in several vlogs and momocon that getting so deep into work makes him lose out on food and sleep, the former to the point where he's been asked if he has cancer because he's just so thin.
    • After "The Review Must Go On", JesuOtaku said on Something Awful that this is to his detriment sometimes. If he went anywhere else but TGWTG his issues wouldn't be tolerated, and it's only because his bosses and co-workers are his friends that he gets away with stuff.
  • Magnum Opus Dissonance: Has some problems with this himself in regards to The Nostalgia Critic and Demo Reel, and he references it in a larger context during "James Baxter The Horse":
    Doug: That's always the hardest thing, because if it does change the world that's great, but you're leaving yourself no option if it doesn't and it just makes the letdown all the more painful, like why put yourself through that pain.
  • Male Gaze: In his interview with Mara Wilson, they disparagingly discuss how much attention her bust gets because child actresses grow up. Unfortunately, if you look at the (male-dominated) comment sections note , this point - that it's ridiculous to objectify her just because you remember her as Matilda - seems to have flown over their heads.
    • In the beginning of "Wake Up", he and Jori mentioned that one time she wore a dress and flashed the camera, and he then tells the audience they can't find it if they go looking because he edited it out.
    • In the Street Fighter real review, when Doug complains that Chun Li never does anything with her need for revenge, Rob explains that it was just to get her in the outfit and says twice he's not complaining.
    • In the Mad Max: Fury Road sibling rivalry, they talk about the guys who were whining about too many women, and Rob points out that they're all hot so why would you complain.
  • Male Frontal Nudity: He complains about the lack of this in both the Heavy Metal commentary and the Sin City 2 review.
  • Manipulative Editing: Made fun of in a Gravity Falls vlog, when Rob decides onscreen that they'll do Over the Garden Wall and the shorts next, and that if Doug didn't want to he could just edit that bit out.
  • A Man Is Always Eager: In "Root Beer Guy", Doug and Jason have a ten minute argument about whether they'd have sex with their wives dressed in a French Maid outfit while a murder was going on outside. Jason would, while Doug wouldn't is the basic gist of it.
  • Mangst: He's a big fan of men/boys who have a lot of pain, but treat it as their own problem and are willing to die before they go crawling to anyone else for help. Out of his characters, despite the queerball femminess, Donnie from Demo Reel fit this style of angst perfectly.
  • Manly Tears: As his Author Avatar in "The Review Must Go On". Plenty of lip-quivering and eye-tearing, not so much with the happy.
  • Man of a Thousand Voices: Can go to any extreme.
  • Married to the Job: His workaholic issues are well-documented. In a con where his wife was in the audience, he said some words that she's had to get used to hearing are "In a few more minutes, honey! Almost done! Just a few more!"
  • Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: According to "The Duke" and "Henchman" (jokily of course), women are insecure and manipulative while men are stupid and violent, though Doug says in the latter that he's seen women do stereotypically male things and men do stereotypically women things (like play dick mind games).
  • Men Don't Cry: He's more than fine with crying at actual problems, even going as far as to say the shaking-hands-falling-to-pieces-while-trying-to-keep-composed breakdown is the best way of tears, but admitting he cried at the Zuko/Iroh reunion humiliates him. Comments mocking him for "being full of estrogen" probably don't help any.
  • Mid-Review Sketch Show: The Adventure Time vlogs with Doug, Jori and Jason can easily spend only a couple of minutes on the actual episode and veer off into a therapy session, playing with stuffed animals, or Jori and Robin encouraging Guy on Guy Is Hot.
  • Military Brat: Doug's father was in the navy, and he was actually born in Italy.
  • The Mirror Shows Your True Self: In Mirror Gem, he talks about how much he loves anything to do this trope and anything that plays with mirrors in general, and jokes that if a mirror fetish exists he probably has it.
  • Misblamed: invoked In the TMNT review (which he entitles "Michael Bay's TMNT") he makes the mistake of thinking Bay directed the movie and specifically says that he could see every bad idea that Bay had. In reality, Bay just produced the thing and was responsible for nixing a lot of ideas in early drafts that would have caused nerd rage. Lindsay was annoyed by this too.
    • In-universe, while Nick did screw over Korra a lot, Doug and Rob have a tendency to blame any writing flaws on them instead of the actual writers, who they Creator Worship constantly.
    • Something similar happens with Wendy in the Gravity Falls vlogs, as her only 'fault' was being an object for Dipper to crush on (which is a writer problem, not really her's), yet Rob complains about her a lot and calls "Into The Bunker" her redemption episode.
  • Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: At Kollisioncon, he talked about how weird it was for him to have huggy touchy-feely high school teachers who wanted to make sure he was having a good time in education. Though he was quick to say there were nice teachers too.
  • Miss Kitty: He's game enough to frequently make The Oldest Profession comparisons with what he does, and jokes in "You Made Me" that he's "head whore" of Channel Awesome.
  • Moment Killer: In Alone Together, Rob thinks Stevonnie (word of god pronouns being they) is a she, he and an it, so technically "shit", and then laughs that he's ruined the episode.
  • Momma's Boy: Unlike the abused Critic and tragic Donnie, he's one in a nice way. The end of "The Worst Christmas Special EVER" has him ask her to give people who are having a crappy time some hope because they both know how awful things have been in the past year. His mom is so nice that when she had to act like she was mad at him in "Disney Afternoon", she found it really hard. And like with his wife, he's thanked her for always feeling the need to look after him and anyone else that she could find.
  • Money, Dear Boy: Aside from Critic's status as a Cash-Cow Franchise, he admits in the Avatar intro that one reason why he's doing the vlogs is because just watching them all in one night isn't cost-effective.
    • A few months before "Doug's Top 10 Hottest Animated Women" came out, Doug mused at Kollisioncon that he didn't want to do the list because it would come off as sexist and alienating to female fans, but he might have to if he needed views that badly.
    • One of the suspected reasons Demo Reel was cancelled in favor of rebooting the Nostalgia Critic is this.
    • Teased in Youmacon 2012 where he added to his "like what you like" thing with "as long as you watch our stuff and give us money we don't care" with an impish grin.
    • In "Boss Mabel", when they're talking about Magnum Opus Dissonance, all Doug cares about at the end is that reviews like Man of Steel and The Lorax (2012) got a lot of views and people talked about them.
    • In Secret Team, he says that while watching cartoons is fun, getting paid to watch them is an extra perk.
    • He says early on in the second Hottest Women list that he's doing this because it would satisfy the kind of people who would yell at him for taking a week off Critic otherwise.
    • Averted in the Doug Tries Breakfast Cereals video, as he says outright don't worry as he won't make it a series. He just needed a video for the week as Rob couldn't do a real thoughts.
  • Monochrome Casting:
    • In the behind the scenes footage for Face/Off, the subject turns to The Lord of the Rings and he expresses his upset that aside from a few extras, there were no POC actors in the movies.
    • At the end of "Burning Low", he gets fake-weepy over admitting watching Downton Abbey "because it's so white it makes Maggie Smith look hip".
    • In his real thoughts review, he really likes that The Matrix movies averted this and only had a few white people.
    • In Bubble Buddies and Laser Light Cannon, Doug (former episode) and Rob (latter) appreciate that Steven Universe averts this and isn't just full of white people.
  • Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: In the real thoughts on Phantom, Doug admits that his one fanfic-like thing was to want to make his own Phantom movie, and Rob tells him to shut up because he's making them sound like 12 year old girls.
  • Most Writers Are Male: He discusses this (and other related Double Standard tropes) in the "Top 11 Favorite NC Jokes", detailing how ridiculous it is that male writers are almost scared to give their female characters flaws and personalities.
  • Motor Mouth: All of his characters, and Jason has teased Doug a few times over how he talks constantly and doesn't know when to shut up. Rob also complains at him for talking so much that "[Rob] couldn't say anything" in Jurassic World, even though he interrupted Doug plenty to call his criticisms of the movie stupid.
  • The Movie Buff: While he wanted to do other things, he says in "Transformers 4" that his life is just making fun of bad movies.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Invoked as hard he was able. As well as some of the things he does for the Critic and Ask That Guy, he takes every opportunity he can to flirt with people, start a striptease for con-goers or show off some skin. Film Brain also said in a livestream that Doug "lived for" the stuff on his fetish fuel pages, and that you should "feed him". In a Jesus, Bro! promotion, he lampshaded his very open shirt.
  • Muscle Angst: Discussed in Coach Steven, as Doug has a rant about how you shouldn't exercise to try and be strong, but to try and be happy because the sun is more helpful for sadness than sitting indoors.
  • Muscles Are Meaningful: He goes on a rant about how the bounty hunter woman in Bato Of The Water Tribe should have had giant muscles in order for him to believe that she'd defeat some guys. The comments enlightened him to another trope.
  • Must Have Caffeine: Inverted in Chille-Ted, as Doug actually gets tired from caffeine and had no idea for ages that people actually ordered coffee to stay awake.
  • My Greatest Failure: Discussed in the most uncomfortable moment of "The Awakening":
    Doug: That's the toughest thing for anyone to go through, when you try your hardest and it still blows up in your face [-] they really captured that fear, that pure fear that you will not be able to fix everything, that not only have you failed, but you've failed not just yourself but everybody whether they realize it or not, but you realize it so that's the ultimate failure.
  • Narcissist: Has joked he's one because he loves (mostly female) cosplayers of his characters.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: He's quite fascinated with suicide and death wishes, and the narrator for the To Boldly Flee documentary got freaked out when he revealed his fifth year anniversary idea would be "TGWTG goes to hell".
  • Never Bareheaded:
    • He'll nearly always wear the Critic hat when he does vlogs by himself.
    • He apologizes for the knit cap in "The Pods", explaining that he wasn't up for showering that day.
    • In the beginning of Walnuts And Rain, he's wearing a new hat that Jason gave him, and talks about how if his hair is looking flat and ugly and seems more balding than usual, he'll just grab whatever's available to cover it up.
  • Never My Fault: In "BMO Noire", he jokes that the greatest part of his job is messing up constantly and getting away with it.
    Jori: He's making mistakes, he can't make mistakes!
    Doug: I'm an internet critic, it's all we do, and then blame other people for them. Don't you know the drill? It's great!
  • Never Trust a Trailer: "Chamber of Frozen Blades" had the tagline "alright everyone...CHILL!" and a picture of Doug with his middle fingers up. It'd be okay fearing he was going to yell at us again, but really he's just embarrassed because he taped over the original vlog.
  • New Media Are Evil:
    • The basic gist of his long ramble in "A Leaf of the Wind", that his generation and the one after are so indulged with distraction and entertainment that they're scared to be alone.
    • In the Frozen Disneycember and again in the Inside Out portion of the "Top Ten Favorite Disney Films", he talks about how (in his opinion at least) social media either makes us too introverted and not knowing how to survive, or entitled to showing all our extreme emotions like being offended by anything or being made happy by anything.
  • Nightmare Fuel: In-universe, during Temple Of Doom, Doug and Rob talk about their reactions to the boa constrictor in Raiders, with kid Rob screaming and kid Doug completely checking out.
  • No Antagonist: In Kiki's Delivery Service, he loves that it doesn't have a villain and he hates movies that put villains into stories that work fine without them "because life is challenging enough".
  • No Bisexuals: Notably in their The Legend of Korra finale vlog, while Doug keeps saying how great it is that Korra is bisexual, Rob goes for the Last Het Romance route and keeps calling both her and Asami lesbians.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
    • To parody the episode (Fisk smashing a guy's head in with a car door), the fourth Daredevil vlog has Rob shoving Doug's head down and pretend to repeatedly punch him in the neck.
    • Played for Laughs (although Rob apologized after) at the end of the real review of Mamma Mia! when Rob displays how the film made him feel by smacking Doug with a remote and stabbing him in the ear with a pen.
    • Played for Laughs in "Real Thoughts On Son of the Mask", as Rob keeps playing with the monkey with a few slaps on Doug, but beats him with it twice at the end.
      Rob: Sorry, it was the monkey.
      Doug: [backed off] ...this is what you do with your spare time.
    • Joked about in Onion Friend, where Rob says his reaction to Doug having a really bad allergic reaction was to beat him horribly (he didn't actually) and then when that didn't work, took him to the doctor.
  • Noodle Incident: In both "Southern Raiders" and "Avatar Aang", he mentions having to defend himself with violence because he apparently wasn't "strong enough or smart enough" for anything else.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: He likes playing this trope himself, but says in the "real thoughts" of Children of the Corn (1984) that the scariest stuff in media to him is getting just enough but not knowing fully what happened.
  • No Sense of Personal Space/Hates Being Touched: He can grope people all he wants, but he freezes when they touch him back. Lampshaded muggily by Jason in "Evicted".
    • He knows he attracts fans who have zero sense of personal boundaries, and has asked a couple of times to not rush his panel desk.
  • Nostalgia Filter: Subverted in Cat Fingers where Doug says boy shows in the 80s tried harder, but then corrects himself a few minutes later saying they didn't and just appealed because toys.
    • He and Rob also avert this in talking about how much stricter gender roles were when they were growing up, and how they could have used shows like Steven Universe or movies like Ghostbusters (2016).
  • Not a Morning Person: But is enough of a workaholic to deal with it. He says in "Time Sandwich" that while it's a strain to get out of bed, he'll force himself to wake up earlier because he works faster when it's that early and nobody's around.
  • Oops! I Forgot I Was Married: Linkara, Rob and others have had to remind him when he's flirting with people that he is actually taken. His wife thankfully seems to enjoy it, and according to vlogs, is especially delighted with all the Slash Fic about him.
  • Offscreen Inertia: He will occasionally use defiance of this trope as a joke.
  • Off with His Head!: Threatened by Rob to Doug in "Blood Under Skin". He holds him down and Jason gets a knife while Doug screams a lot.
  • Oh, Crap!: Played for Laughs with the expression on his face when he meets some Sailor Scouts at Shadocon, referencing how bad the Sailor Moon review backlash was.
  • Older Than They Think: In-Universe, while talking about Cinderella, he brought up that it was really Pinocchio that started the whole "wish and you'll do fine" business that people dislike the Disney Princess range of movies for.
  • Once an Episode: More often than not in the Adventure Time vlogs, Doug will talk about having to deal with a different group of people who don't treat him very well or have some kind of mental health problem relating to the episode.
  • One-Note Cook: Apparently the most he can do is macaroni and cheese, but his wife, brother and sister in law are all Supreme Chefs who still have to make him eat their food because he doesn't want to ruin how pretty it looks.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Doug is featured as himself in a video and not one of his many characters, you can be sure he's telling his honest opinion rather than a comically exaggerated one. See, for example, him intentionally breaking character in the Bum Review of The Avengers, or fictionalized interactions between Doug and the Critic.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Whenever Doug tries to do an accent it inevitably turns into some sort of weird Eastern European accent. See his "How To Be a Pirate" videos and his contributions to Lupa's Tommy Wiseau videos for examples.
  • Oral Fixation:
    • Put anything phallic in front of him and he will lick it. His Ask That Guy with the Glasses pipe, a lollipop, a lightsaber (three times), a banana, a joystick... women were pleased. And as mentioned above, lampshaded plenty.
    • The "Movies Everyone Disagrees With You On" panel at Animecon 2015 had him make blowjob motions with his microphone, dirtiness which he apologized for.
    • He gets good-naturedly teased about it in the Mad Max: Fury Road behind the scenes, with Rob asking "what hasn't been in your mouth?".
    • Spurred on by Rob, and drunk off his ass in the Kangaroo Jack first viewing, he gives a quick blowjob to the booze bottle.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: In the TMNT crossover BTS, Doug as a kid really wanted Pound Puppies (1980s) bedsheets and swore he'd love that franchise forever, but then he got into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and demanded everything but couldn't get all the toys he wanted because his family didn't have enough money.
  • Overused Running Gag: invoked When the phone rings in "The Vault" and Jori (who was juiced a few episodes ago), Doug and Jason still continue the dead/Jason throwing his voice joke, and Doug says "we're going to run this bit until it's dead and reincarnated". Later in James, Doug tries to do it again and Jason tells him to stop because people hate it.
  • Papa Wolf: Even when it doesn't make sense (i.e. Ask That Guy), every character he has is either fiercely protective of kids or there is something very wrong when they aren't, like how Critic-post reboot killed a child because she thought he was the Nerd. As for Doug himself, he admits this is a huge thing for him, and worries in "Jake The Dad" that if he ever becomes a father the paranoia will destroy him.
  • Paranoia Fuel: In-universe he recommends watching The Watcher in the Woods when it's a dark night, you're all alone and you already feel like someone's watching you.
  • Pen Name: For a while he went by "Douglas Darien" in his Channel Awesome material, as he worried that it might jeopardize his career as an illustrator. He dropped it when the site became very successful on its own.
  • Percussive Therapy:
    • Referenced in "Who Would Win", when both it works and it doesn't.
      Doug: Anyone that's got in a fight with a sibling or a friend or something like that, and they've got really into a fight, sometimes it ends when you take a breath and realize it was stupid, but other times you're still angry and you're still trying to hate the other person.
    • He spends most of "real thoughts of Alice in Wonderland (2010) being angry and slamming his hands down on an offscreen table or his leg.
  • Pet-Peeve Trope: He made a whole list of them. More specifically, he really hates the Liar Revealed trope, which he brings up in his DreamWorks-uary videos, as they used it pretty often. He also hates The Bully, African chanting/One-Woman Wail, the Third-Act Misunderstanding.
    • He's made it astoundingly clear he's not fond of extreme representations of Manly Man at all. The only manly characters that have been written by him as sympathetic are Karl and Quinn, and he blames Bay for making him feel like being a man is boring.
    • A couple of times he's complained about people being too relaxed while taken captive, and that he'd be a lot angrier if that were to happen to him.
  • Playing Against Type: His role in Sonic. He's played drama and plenty of distressed dudes before, but Critic, Ask That Guy, Chester or Donnie could never be silent or stoic or manly.
  • Please, Don't Leave Me:
    • "Belly of the Beast" turns pretty desperate when Jason "quits".
      Doug: Don't leave me! ...please? Don't put your coat on, [turns the camera around] he's putting his coat on. Don't do that! No!
    • Played for Laughs in the Secret of NIMH 2 commentary, where Rob asks Doug if he wants him to leave, and Doug immediately goes contrite and gives a tiny "no".
  • Political Overcorrectness:
    • In the 50 Shades Sibling Rivalry, Rob has a long rant essentially boiling down to this after Doug agreeing with peoplenote  that the book is horrible to women, believing instead that the book is harmless stupid porn and if you think it's abusive you're taking it too seriously.
    • Mocked by Rob in the "Mortal Kombat" review where when Doug is talking about the sexist way Sonja was treated, he sarcastically calls him a social justice warrior just for wanting female characters to have brains.
    • Discussing PC-ness in the Good Burger real review, Doug says there's both "hate filled we're gonna offend everybody" and "we're very sensitive and don't offend anybody" and he especially likes people/shows who can do both at the same time, while Rob just cares if something's funny or not and jokes that he has happy feels about offending people.
    • In the real thoughts for The Monster Squad, Doug is trying to talk about how even though he loves the film it's inappropriate for kids, and Rob mocks "maybe not for today's kids, trigger alert".
    • Rob likes to Take That! at the stereotypical version of Tumblr every now and then. Doug will usually be nicer and appreciate their creativity and supportive community.
  • Praising Shows You Don't Watch: Inverted with Doug and 50 Shades, as he admits he's only read a few passages, but is mostly (as he's also agreed with women that it promotes abuse) agreeing with book-reading Rob that it's all entertainingly bad.
  • Prematurely Bald: When he gets upset about losing even more hair (this being in 2014 where 'poof' is sadly hard to find) in "Susan Strong", Jason reminds him that he did it to himself due to working too hard.
  • Pretty Boy: Lampshaded often by both him and others.
  • Pride: He talks about it during Grave of the Fireflies, saying that even if you think it's for the best, it can do some serious damage to you.
  • Prima Donna Director: His "persona" in "The Kickassian War". In real life he's too nice for his own good, as his To Boldly Flee commentary explained how he spent most of the shoot beating himself up for making people work.
  • Primal Fear:
    • In Shadows of the Grass, Rob says that the scariest villains in media are the ones with humanity because you always want to try and rationalize with them, but at any time they can snap, and Doug nervous-laughs that it's just like real life.
    • In the second Daredevil episode, when Matt cuts into a guy with a knife, he says that makes him most uncomfortable, because he's fine with most dark Anti-Hero stuff, "but I have a weird knife thing". Plus in ''Blood Under The Skin", he really does look afraid when Jason comes back with a knife.
    • In It real thoughts, he talks about how not much scares him because his imagination is worse than most things, but creepers and pedophile characters are one of the exceptions.
  • Product Placement: The "Gutgrinder" review grinds to a Played for Laughs halt so Doug can plug his cons and site.
    • Played for Laughs again in "The Tower", where Doug regularly plugs Starbucks Cake-Pops, and makes sure to point out that they're only two hundred calories but still his new favorite thing.
  • Professional Butt-Kisser: Played for Laughs when Disney bought Maker Studios. (who own Blip)
  • Properly Paranoid:
    • Doug likes Marble Madness because it shows there's a time for diplomacy and there's a time to be "uber uber cautious and paranoid".
    • In "The Cooler", he admits that growing up he always thought the government were watching people and so didn't get pissed like everyone else when that proved to be true.
    • In the Labyrinth behind the scenes, talking about how he worries about child stars, he says whenever he hears "they're being raised right!", he thinks that's usually a lie somehow (referencing Miley Cyrus actually hating her old show) and ends up being correct.
  • Proud Beauty: All of his main characters, and he played it for giggles in an Anime Milwaukee panel by flirting with a guy and getting upset when the audience member didn't play along by calling him sexy.
  • Puppy-Dog Eyes: In every character he has, and in terms of Sibling Rivalry, fans get amused by how often he just stares at Rob (or into space) like a starved kitten.
    • He spends most of "Slumber Party Panic" with eyes so huge that it'd put an anime girl to shame.
  • Quit Your Whining:
    • Has a tendency to do this to himself. Most people would consider complaints about becoming sick from overwork, creepy fans or having to rage every con because of a meme you're tired of justified, but he'll always find a way to act like he was just bitching unnecessarily.
    • Played for Laughs in a few Korra vlogs, with Doug trying to complain about not liking whatever thing in the show and Rob mocking him by saying he's acting like a baby.
    • While he's quick to point out that this doesn't work for everyone, he has a print out of Hamlet's "my thoughts be bloody" speech to inspire him to, in his words "what the fuck are you crying about, do what you have the privilege of doing and do it to the best of your ability" whenever he feels tired or bad about something.
  • Racial Face Blindness: In the beginning of "Speak of the Devil", Doug says he gets names wrong all the time and it's embarrassing, but it's far worse when names are of black people. Rob has a list of names he gets wrong, and Doug teases that he's so diehard trying to prove he's not racist that it comes off as digging in deeper.
  • Racist Grandma: "The Pit" has a long tangent about prejudiced old people who get away with it because of their age, and Doug says while he'll let strangers off because they'll get punished with death, if it's a family member being awful he'll fight a bit more.
  • Rape as Backstory: The main problem he has with Split, as he compares it to a senior in high school who just doesn't know enough about the experience.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Averted in 50 Shades Darker, as Rob says he's not into rape and he doesn't need to see it, but at least a rape scene would be more interesting.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: Pointed out in Balto about Steel being more realistic than he seems because Republicans can often act like that, destroying another party's goals purely out of spite.
  • Really Gets Around: Jason jokingly calls Doug a whore when Doug teases him for not having girlfriends at 14 and says he'll make up for the partners Jason didn't have. Rob's also mocked Doug good-naturedly for going through a load of relationships at first.
  • Religion Is Wrong: While he's not Catholic anymore, he still doesn't like this moral.
  • Reluctant Psycho: Goes between being sad about it and embracing it. Starting from To Boldly Flee commentary he kept calling himself messed up in the head, and his Valentine's 2014 posts had him go as far as to say if he could manage a relationship with all his self-loathing and crazy then anyone could. In the real thoughts for Patch Adams, he says that his way of coping in Trump-world is going to be embracing his insanity just a little more.
  • Repressed Memories:
    • Comes up in "The Vault", where Doug says he can understand the mindset of repressing anything that makes him depressed.
    • Also mentioned in Jermaine, where he talks about even if you block out family or religion (in context for abuse reasons), they're still who you grew up with and it's still going to be a part of you.
    • On a lighter note, The Killing Joke has him say that while he understands some not being able to separate the awful prologue from the actual movie, he's good at blocking stuff out.
  • Retroactive Wish: In "The Silent King" he got his wish for loads of butts granted, so he wishes at the end for "pretty naked ladies" in the next one.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: He is surprisingly good at writing lyrics for satirical or humorous songs, as shown in "Holiday Clusterfuck" and a few smaller moments in Nostalgia Critic reviews. He states that simple rhyming just comes naturally for him when explaining how he managed to write the How the Grinch Stole Christmas! review entirely in rhyme and still post it on schedule.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: By the point of season 5, he really likes Princess Bubblegum, and has come up with at least two theoriesnote  as to why she's a princess instead of the queen she behaves like.
  • Rule 34: In both Korra and Gravity Falls vlogs, Rob makes a point of not liking either Korra or Wendy for a long time while also bringing up how much they're porned over.
  • Rule 34 – Creator Reactions:
    • Doug enjoys the fic, brings it up a lot and has made fun of the people who expect him to be freaked out by the slash and some of the more... extreme things he and his characters have been put through. And Rob finds it all hilarious, as most big brothers would. Robin (Doug's wife) loves the slash fics so much that he joked in a vlog that it saved the marriage.
    • Taken a step further at 2012 Shadocon, where he states his full support for all the shipping and teases that he and his characters are always the ones submitting.
    • A little more muddled in "Fionna And Cake", where he complains that the art and fic of him are messed up and scary but demands slash with him and Jason regardless.
    • His characters run the gamut of reactions. Critic tried to bolt his closet door shut by complaining in a not well beloved editorial about the fanfic always making him gay, Donnie had a desperate-to-be-loved moment of wanting slash of himself, and Jimbroth snides in the DVD promo that there's too much slash in the fandom.
    • In Interstellar, he says of the movie “it's way too long and your butt will hurt at the end of it”, and then gives his permission for someone to take that line out of context and do terrible things with it.

    S-Y 
  • Sad Clown: He's a big believer in the "all comedy is based on misery" style of humor, to the point where he argues that he hasn't even seen any comedy that didn't have a misery element to it.
  • Sanity Slippage:
    • Mentioned by Jason in "The Limit" where he says you should see Doug off-camera because he's been losing his mind a bit, and Doug sarcasm modes that he's totally normal-sounding in actual videos.
    • Played for Laughs with the Gravity Falls sweaters Rob wears, thinking they're turning him into Mabel. Though in Soos And The Real Girl, where Doug gets into Talkative Loon mode again, they decide it's less Rob that's crazy this time and he's rubbing off on Doug.
  • Sarcasm Failure: Towards the end of his Boys Beware riff. He can only say "...wow" to the assertion that gay people are mentally ill.
  • Schedule Fanatic: According to both Rob and himself.
  • Schedule Slip:
    • The Adventure Time vlogs. There's been plenty of episodes since September 2014 (when the last vlog was done and he promised more soon) but Doug is only ever doing various other vlogs with Rob. He still talks about the show positively nearly all the time so it's not like he's gone off it either. They did finally come back with Ghost Fly in April 2015, along with lampshading how long it's been (with no explanation, just noting that it's been ages) and Doug forgetting most of the character's names.
    • Similarly, the Steven Universe vlogs. They stopped in September 2016, with a vlog of an episode in the middle of Season 3. Season 5 has now premiered and there's no new vlogs in sight. Doug explained September 2016 was when their mom died.
    • Played for laughs in Evergreen (when there hadn't been AT vlogs for a year) where they tease it's only been a week since the last one and Doug - not remembering some names - is acting like it's been forever.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Beautiful!: He and Jason both say in "The Cooler" vlog that if you're pretty and smile nice, you can get away with most things.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the Forced Viewing podcast, he gives a carefully worded explanation on how mentally ill people cling onto things like family or teddy bears and then bolts, not even sticking around for the "thank you for joining us today" at the end.
    • Jason at the end of "Loyalty To The King", when Doug says the fan and Rob will be around for another vlog.
      • He also tries to make a quiet break for it when Doug randomly talks like the Ice King in "The Other Tarts".
      • Jason does it again in "Belly of the Beast" when Doug displays a ridiculous loss of memory and doesn't remember the bears that he made a big deal about in "When Wedding Bells Thaw".
      • He leaves when Doug gets obsessed with "trunk mitts" in Dream of Love, and Jori comes in to lead Doug off too.
      • He leaves again in "You Made Me" when Doug starts getting OCD about Bubblegum's weird braided-crown-like hairstyle in the episode.
      • Understandably so, he leaves when Doug gets fixated on Tree Trunk's ass in Love Games, and only comes back when Doug promises to stop it.
    • During the Doug/Jason yelling match in "Betty", Jori tries to slink away because pressure from Doug was overloading her brain. (Jason says he can relate.)
  • Screw Yourself: Played for Laughs in the "Movies Everyone Disagrees With You On" panel at Animecon 2015, where introducing himself ends up a joke that he's having sex with Critic and teases spoilers.
  • Secret-Keeper: Discussed in Secret Team, as Doug praises the the show because keeping a secret from someone intimidating feels very real to him, and Rob agrees later that most teams work as one person being feared.
  • Self-Deprecation: One of the ruling champions.
    • A Hypocrisy Nod to Family Guy bringing back Brian is pretty ballsy.
    • In the "Shut Up And Talk" video with Todd, when Todd is glad he stuck with the job so he could be getting interviewed by Doug, Doug immediately apologizes for not being a better end-game.
    • A lot of vlogs with Jason or Rob will have them telling Doug that his comedy is predictable and not that funny.
    • Played for laughs in Same Old World, after hoping they offended everyone (though he encourages Rob to apologize for leading that thought in the next ep), he jokes that he Hates Everyone Equally, including himself and his state.
    • He's super willing to call himself awful for not liking movies that others do, like in "Mother!"
  • Self-Harm: Joked about in the drive, as he moves in for a kiss with the Nostalgia Muppet and immediately gets slapped. Cue "talk about self abuse" reaction line from Doug.
  • Self-Proclaimed Liar: Beneath the Mask and how the industry he's in manipulates people are common topic with him, and in Bottomless Pit he talks about how it's good to lie, especially as a means of protecting yourself and others from your issues.
  • Self-Serving Memory:
    • Rob points this out in regards to Doug's revised opinion on Thor, as he remembers Doug fangasming over that movie but Doug doesn't. Funnily enough, the exact same scenario happened regarding Batman Forever, X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man 3.
    • In The Room (2003) commentary, he says he gave the benefit of the doubt in regards to thinking "John from the room movie dot com" and Tommy Wiseau were the same person, but from the very beginning he made "Wiseau's accent came through the email" jokes.
    • As soon as he ended up liking Bubblegum for her Broken Bird side, Doug has a tendency to act like she was just a pretty princess airhead in season one. In actual fact, he called her a crazy bitch quite a few times in the first season's vlogs.
    • He's said twice in 2014 that he only found about shipping in 2013, but he asked for Slash Fic in Demo Reel and was making jokes about pandering to fanficcers way back in Kickassia time.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: You already know it if you watch con videos or listen to commentaries, but "Sibling Rivalry" proved it for Doug and Rob. Doug's giggly, emotional and shakes hands like a Proper Lady, while Rob's stoic and snarkier.
    • Also joked about in The Purge real thoughts, when Doug tells Rob that in Rob's case violence comes from anger, and Rob snarks that Doug is too happy.
  • Sentimental Drunk: He compares Mary Poppins favorably to getting really happily drunk at parties for the fun bits of the movie and then getting depressed and existential about life for the more serious moments.
  • Seriously Scruffy: In his Top 11 Movie Moments, he immediately apologizes for more stubble than usual because he's just been so busy on the Pixels review.
  • Sequel Hook: Continuing the connection that he and Critic have got themselves into, the "Business Time" vlog takes place at the exact same time that Critic disappears from his room and reappears in Alcon.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: As seen by the donation drives and some cons with Rob, he carries on the teasing even when others are uncomfortable.
  • Shipping: invoked Despite one of the points of the episode being Marceline not wanting Finn that way, "Go With Me" turns Doug into a diehard fangirl for the pairing. He's completely over it by "Marceline's Closet" though, as he doesn't mention the fuel of Finn seeing her naked, and is much more interested in her and/or Bubblegum being gay in some capacity.
    • As for himself and his characters getting shipped with each other or every being in existence, he's all for it, joking at Shadocon 2012 that he's mostly just noticed he's always the one submitting.
    • In Roadside Attraction, Doug says that he really ships Dipper/Pacifica, and isn't a fanboy but more of a fangirl because fanboys stereotypically aren't as into shipping.
  • Shirtless Scene: By this point he's had so many he might have actually topped Benzaie for most times half naked on the site.
  • Shrinking Violet:
    • In his Disneycember review of A Goofy Movie, he joke-cries that the shy, stuttering guy in the corner really can't get the hot girl in real life. Cue fangirl d'awwing.
    • According to him, he used to be really afraid of fans recognizing him at the beginning, until his dad and brother pulled him aside and told him off for it.
  • Show, Don't Tell: He's maybe a little too much a fan of this. He said absolutely nothing from the Scooby-Doo review to the end of To Boldly Flee, letting the trailers, the characters and the plot speak for itself.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: He's a lot more mellow than Rob, who come across as more abrasive and prone to making darker, off-the-cuff jokes. That said, Doug's a lot more hyperactive and upbeat than his brother, who's very sardonic and grouchy.
  • Sick and Wrong: He was particularly disgusted and upset by Breaking Dawn: Part 1 trying to discuss the topic of abortion, stating that a subject like that requires you to, among other things be highly knowledgeable on the subject and know what you're talking about, neither of which fits the film's take on the subject.
    • If "The Worst Movies NC Has Reviewed" is any indication, child abuse of any kind is on the same level as badly handling a hot topic like the above.
  • Signature Laugh: When he's Laughing Mad in character or on a Author Tract during vlogs, it's a high pitched "ha ha!" usually coupled with waving of his hands.
  • Signing-Off Catchphrase: Several of his characters have one. He himself will usually end vlogs (if he doesn't want to end on a sad/violent/joke note) with "talk to you guys later" and "take care".
  • Single-Issue Wonk: invoked By The Painted Lady, even he's scared about how fixated he is on hating Man of Steel.
    • In "Long Live The Earth Queen", Doug apologizes for always beating on The Dark Knight Rises note  but quickly changes his mind and says he'll always beat on it, and Rob likewise on Man of Steel, just to see fans complain.
    • On the topic of The Dark Knight Rises, Doug brings it up again in the World On Fire vlog and refuses to believe Rob when Rob says enough time has passed and they're less likely to get negative comments for bashing it.
  • Skewed Priorities: In "Memory of a Memory", he says he's a lot more obsessed with the importance of the fries than the apocalypse imagery. And later on during the glasses mess in "Holly Jolly Secrets", Jason figures that he's obsessing about the fries and glasses "as a way out" of discussing bigger problems.
    • He's also tried to point this out in fandom, saying there are plenty of reasons to not like him, but differing opinions on TV shows aren't one of them.
  • Slasher Smile:
    • Has an impressive one that shows all of his teeth at the end of "BMO Noire" when he pushes Jason down on the ground.
    • In the Cinderella Sibling Rivalry, even though the character is dead, he naturally goes Ask That Guy when he says "yes" and smiles like this.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: He and Rob have teased himself more than once about how ironically he was cynical as a child/early teenager, but as an adult he's been The Pollyanna to the point of getting in trouble over it.
  • Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters: Doug is a bigger fan of characters in a story rather than the plot. He says that he can last through a mediocre story if the characters are interesting, and his shows do focus more on character interaction & analysis rather than having a deep plot. Rob on the other hand loves plot a lot more than characters (his original version of To Boldly Flee had none of the Chick/Critic/Film Brain scenes talking about emotion for example), and according to Lewis, this difference in opinion is the cause of a lot of writer arguments between the two.
  • The Smurfette Principle: He happily notes the inversion with Adventure Time, realizing that as of "Video Makers" Finn and Jake are the only boys in a sea of female friends.
  • So Bad, It's Good: His in-universe opinion of Suicide Squad (2016) is that it's his own version of Moulin Rouge!,note  he knows it's stupid and can't defend it against criticism but it looks really good.
  • Speed Sex: Mentioned in "Root Beer Guy", as Doug says "unless you're doing it really well or really poorly you can't have sex in five minutes!"
  • Squee: Korrasami being a thing in The Legend of Korra has him bouncing around in joy.
    Doug: All the people that are against it like yeah the show's fun and cool and everything, like oh! She was bi, bitches! Like all of a sudden you were watching a bi character the whole time so hah!
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Rob will usually take over and lead Doug in the Sibling Rivalry or Korra vlogs, especially at the end of the Guardians of the Galaxy vlog where he talks about a painting he and his friends did. Not a bad thing, a lot of people are more comfortable with Rob than Doug, but noticeable.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Jokes in the Super-Promotion at the end of Man of Steel that Jennifer Lawrence has been on his mind for a while and he should see someone.
    • He's talked about his own a lot, and said in the Love Letters vlog that Hyper isn't exactly entirely fictional.
    • He used to think Jim Carrey's character in Batman Forever was not realistic until he met fanboys of his own like that.
  • Stalking is Love: Played for laughs in Paper Pete, as he teases in cutesy voice that being watched while he sleeps makes him feel loved.
  • Stealth Insult: At the end of "The Other Tarts", Jason's segue into the next episode is calming Doug down by calling him pretty. For those who know "To Cut A Woman's Hair", Jake tried to do the same to the evil vain tree witch.
  • Stepford Smiler: Lindsay Ellis has talked about how he needs a Happy Place to escape from everything, and has a talent for turning a blind eye to crappy things going down.
    • Exaggerated at the end of "Red Throne", where Jori gets up to leave, and he screams at her to stay and smile while she cries, and he crazy talks to the audience that it's a happy family.
    • In Inside Out he actually talks about this, saying at least now he can acknowledge sadness, but ten years ago he used to want to force everyone to be happy and upbeat and optimistic because that would make everything alright.
    • In Bottomless Pit, he talks about how there are big bonuses to lying, especially when hiding depressing feelings and how it's healthier to not talk about them.
    • In Patch Adams real thoughts, he acknowledges this when he has a brief freak about the holocaust being the rehearsal for what Trump will do, and then tells himself off saying he promised to act happy.
    • Talked about again in the 2017 livestream, as he acknowledges his SK and TBF breakdowns and how he was too wrapped up in trying desperately to be positive that he didn't pay attention to Lindsay and company's frustration.
  • Stepford Suburbia: Played for the occasional laugh in his videos, to explain why nobody is noticing the crazy man flailing across the street, the other crazy man with a gun, or the poor homeless guy freezing to death on a snowy night.
  • Stockholm Syndrome: In the real review of Osmosis Jones, Rob jokes about the animators having this when they're "forced to PR" good things about the movie, and cocks an imaginary gun at Doug. Discussed in Alone At Sea, as Doug is surprised they went there with Lapis, mixing the abuse effects with actually missing the abuse.
  • The Stoner: He's more than happy to talk about watching movies while being high, mostly in younger days.
  • Stop Being Stereotypical: This is his problem with Enchanted. He states that by the 1990s/2000s, Disney's princesses and female leads weren't ditzy damsels and Enchanted was acting like they were.
    • Inverted with Jori and Bubblegum, as the reason why she hates the character is because she doesn't act like a stereotypically cute princess. As soon as PB does something flawed or For the Greater Good in an episode, she'll be declared as pure evil.
    • When Transformers: Age of Extinction makes up a stupid white friend instead of black like before, Doug calls the film racist against white people.
    • In Black Panther, after Doug goes on an opening tangent about Pink Panther, Rob teases him that he's the kind of white boy the film was mocking, and Doug mentions later that the villain was the best because you know exactly what led up to him thinking what he does.
  • Stupid Sexy Flanders: Some male fans get angry about finding the fanservice he does as either himself or his characters (especially Ask That Guy) hot.
  • Strangled by the Red String: invoked Like everyone else, he hates Batman/Batgirl sex in The Killing Joke, and would believe more that Batman and Commisioner Gordon are fucking instead.
  • Straw Fan: In a load of vlogs, he does the Take That, Audience! bit by doing a Douchey voice along with rapidly waving his arms around typing on an imaginary keyboard. Both Rob and Jason have told him off for it.
  • Streetwalker: In the Alvin And The Chipmunks real thoughts, Rob puts the surreal image of the chippettes as angry prostitutes in Doug's head and he acts it out.
  • Suckiness Is Painful: Subverted in "Prisoners of Love", as he told Brad the show was hurting him and Brad figured that meant it was awful, but in reality he had no idea why it was making him feel worse than normal.
  • Suicide as Comedy: A whole episode and title card dedicated to suicide jokes right after JewWario killed himself, and after Rob promised they'd lay off, proved a notable example of this trope not going over well.
  • Sweet Tooth: According to Coach Steven, and he's quick to point out that he runs a lot as well, he has a doughnut every morning.
  • Take That!: 'The Wand'' has Doug joking about having gay dreams in regards to Sean Hannity, someone well known for his homophobia.
    • In "Betty", when asked if he needs a gun in order to research it, he laughs that the NRA says he does.
    • In Tiger Millionare, they end up talking about Hulk Hogan's tirade (Doug hasn't heard it yet) and while Rob admits it was totally racist, he doesn't care enough and says tumblr can be the ones to argue about it.
    • In Stick, Doug calls Karen a bitch for being a Faux Action Girl and then when he backtracks to the assumed complaints that he still likes her, Rob snarks that he's angered tumblr.
    • In Last Action Hero, Rob talks about sanitizing violence ("if you're gonna shoot somebody then really frigging shoot somebody") before saying to the camera "take that one out of context" and Doug cackles like it's a dig at someone.
    • In Ghost Rider real thoughts, Doug says that Bill Clinton is so charming he could get away with murder, "and probably has".
    • In the 50 Shades Darker review, Rob complains about the rapey boss doing his sexual harrassment in front of HR, and Doug says it makes sense with Trump as president.
    • In the first viewing of Balto, Doug compares the evil dog to Trump and the other dogs are politicians having to pretend to like him.
    • In "Thor: Ragnorak" he gets frustrated with it seeming like every male director in Hollywood is a sex fiend/predator.
  • Take That, Audience!: "The Northern Air Temple" and "The Waterbending Master" have a bit of passive-aggressiveness thrown at the fandom for taking him at his word when he said there'd be a vlog everyday. Other videos have expressed annoyance at the constant "[whatever you say] will come back!" nature of the comment sections.
    • Has an odd moment in "Return To Omashu", where he, assuming that people don't like him praising something, tells the audience that if they want to see tired old rage at something, go to Critic.
    • Has an Epic Fail in "Zuko Alone" where he yells at the people who yelled at him for getting the Earth Kingdom name wrong, but then gets confused as to what the opening called the four areas of the world.
    • When Dante Basco complimented his vlogs but got confused, thinking he was the YouTube poster, Doug sympathized, apologizing for the millions of fans going after him to "pearl harbor" his mistake.
    • At the beginning of "Lake Laogai", he doesn't even bother trying to say the title because people will just yell at him anyway, ignoring that most are just annoyed because the foreign names really shouldn't cause this much pain.
    • In "Tales of Ba Sing Se", Rob tells the comment section that they're wasting their time giving spoilers everywhere because Doug won't read them for that exact reason.
    • At the start of "The Ember Island Players", he begins explaining in what order he does the vlogs, but then cuts himself off with a "what do you care?".
    • Tons in "Into The Inferno"/"Avatar Aang", with Rob indulging in a full-blown sneer to the camera at one point.
      Rob: You go first, because I'm not allowed to have an opinion until you say something.
      Doug: I didn't say that!
      Rob: No but everyone else did.
      Doug: Oh. Them I don't care about.
    • The end of the season 2 finale Korra vlog has them complaining at fans for complaining about them complaining, and saying it's just because they care, missing the point that people got annoyed at them mostly for calling Korra a bitch constantly.
    • In "Henchman", after Jason compares the Marcy/Finn/Jake situation to some women brainwashing their boyfriends and male friends hating them for that, Doug assumes that the comment section will explode in sexism.
    • Gets into paranoia territory in "The Other Tarts", when he concocts a scenario about an angry fan copyrighting "Jakeisms" and then tells Jason that people will get offended by anything. Jason just wonders why he's so angry.
    • Twice in "The Real You", as Jori first calls out fandom for encouraging Doug's crazy, and then Doug goes on a rant about anyone who found the "men can't get sexually harassed/women should expect it" Running Gag of the last commercial special painful.
    • In "Guardians of Sunshine", the Douchey voice is used in advance for anyone who might be upset with him sitting on a cat.
    • More low-key, but he has a tendency to ask for gifs and then mock the people who do them for actually listening to him.
    • Amusingly subverted when he has no idea what Incendium means and asks the audience to let him know, then calls them fools when Jori gets up to find out, then immediately backtracks with apologies when she can't find anything on it.
    • Also cutely subverted in "Wizards Only Fools". Doug says the title wrong, forgetting the "s" at the end, Jason calls him out and Doug spends about a minute backtracking saying the viewer is probably very nice.
    • In "Shh", when Jori doesn't talk and wears a bikini top (a shirt with a printed bikini top, not an actual bikini), Doug assumes that all the people who hate her will think this is her best episode because she looks good and stays silent.
    • At the end of Korra season three premiere vlog, they go into complaining about Michael Bay, and Doug tells the audience that he knows they probably wanted to see his reactions to Transformers 4 first, but he doesn't give a shit.
    • In "Simon And Marcy", he tells all the assumed people who (might) bitch at the length of the vlog "that you still watched it so nyah!", while Jason and Jori just groan at him.
    • In the re-review for "A Glitch Is A Glitch", Doug was apparently shocked ("it was like an April Fool's joke on us because we didn't think anyone would fall for it") at how many people in the comment sections thought the joke review of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic pilot was reviewing a real Adventure Time episode.
    • In Boss Mabel, Rob talks about how they put a lot of effort into a series or a video, and their fans will be like "just give us the crappy stuff".
    • Parodied at the end of "Golf War", as Doug says he's contractually obligated to be nice and really can't stand us, but Rob Mickey-Mouse-Voices Big "SHUT UP!" and Doug corpses.
    • Lampshaded in Scare-Oke, as Doug does his usual screechy voiced flaily armed commenter, and Rob asks why he's got to pick on their own fans.
    • The Mad Max: Fury Road Sibling Rivalry has the Walkers also talk about Pitch Perfect (and liking it) and Doug mocking the dudes who'd call him a Category Traitor just for doing anything as small as enjoying a female-led film.
    • When Doug talks about watching Mortal Kombat: The Movie as a teenager and realizing sexism was a thing, Rob Sarcasm Modes that he's a social justice warrior to Take That! at the part of fandom that think any mention of sexism as a bad thing is Political Overcorrectness.
    • In Steven and the Stevens, they mock the people who think they can actually get him back (when his opinion on something has pissed them off) with the Doug theme tune.
    • Amusing in the real review of Good Burger, as Doug can't think of anyone who actually defends the film, but Rob gets into a lecture at those people who he thinks would complain at him for thinking it's crap, despite no mention of them existing.
    • In Secret Team, Rob assumes there'll be complaints because he mocked people who watched cartoons in the last vlog, and then they go the other way saying mentioning it would get the complaints and there was probably none before.
    • In Sworn To The Sword, Rob admits that the new opening shocked him and when Doug pets him saying things have to change, Rob goes "no! You should always be in front of a white wall!". Also subverted when Doug likes a tumblr post that showed the evolution of the wall color.
    • His whitewashing editorial got a lot of condescending bigots coming out of the woodwork, and he mentions the hate he got from them in the real thoughts on Face/Off.
    • Doug more than Rob, but they've both expressed frustration with people watching but not actually listening, like in the above Face/Off real thoughts where Rob mentions that he can fuck up and people will blame it on Doug.
    • The Ferngully real thoughts review has a rant about both the people who call them SJWs and Fox Monsters, and how both sides have gang mentalities and it's better/more fun to be in the middle.
    • In a Fan World panel, when asked how long how long he'll be doing this, Doug said that he got shit for trying to quit before, so will be doing it until he's dead.
    • Doug really hated the 2019 remake of The Lion King, with both him and Rob expressing disgust to each other in the theater when the film ended to strong audience applause. In his personal thoughts and his Disneycember review he chastised anyone who actually felt emotionally moved by the film compared to the original, and even used a quote from the original to describe his reaction to them:
    Timon: Lady, have you got your lions crossed.
  • Take That, Critics!: When talking about satire in Last Action Hero, To Boldly Flee gets brought up and they complain that if you think it's bad satire then fine, but the "you're just ripping off movies" complaint is stupid because they were satirizing.
  • Talkative Loon: He lampshaded his tendency to make rants that probably don't even make much sense to him by telling Jason in "Billy's Bucket List" to not try and make sense of his ramblings because he'll only get hurt.
  • Tantrum Throwing: In "The World's Most Frustrating Game Show", he threw someone else's crutches on the stage to show his displeasure at the Doug theme song.
  • Tear Jerker: invoked He can get through Grave of the Fireflies and Schindler's List alright, but Wolf's Rain always makes him cry.
    • He shared this on facebook and called it the saddest fanart he'd ever seen. For good reason too.
    • "I Remember You". He says in the episode that if it had gone on five minutes longer then he would have broke down crying, and he mentions in a few other vlogs how it just seemed to rip out his heart.
    • According to "Top Ten Favorite Movie Moments", the ending of Fearless (1993) got him crying (the rest of the film is really heavy for him but kept him dry-eyed), and he says that's rare for a movie to do.
  • Tears of Fear: Joked about in one story, where he reenacts an encounter with a fursuiter who wouldn't leave him alone, and he fake-cries in scared frustration trying to get him away from his room.
  • Tears of Joy: At the end of "Top 11 Favorite Critic Episodes", where he thanks fans for all the support Critic's ending was getting, and telling them they make him feel like he's on top of the world.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • When he announced he was gonna start an Adventure Time Vlog, he dismissed claims that he would not be able to talk about the show and that he would have a lot to talk about them...
    • In his Korra vlog for "The Stakeout," he lamented that the show was being "too safe" and wanted it to take more risks. Cue the very next episode including the gruesome scene of Zaheer killing someone by bending the air out of their lungs.
    • He's states in his Watermelon Steven V-log that Rob won't be able to make the next three or four episodes and says he hopes nothing too important happens. The next three are Rose fully appearing for the first time Peridot's introduction and Steven fusing with Connie.
  • Testosterone Poisoning: Most of his characters are either pretty femmy or neutral, so when he creates a persona that's meant to be manly, it'll either come off as an over-compensating guy in the closet or have all the stereotypically worst traits of masculinity (bigotry, hardass shouting, acts like he's seconds away from a heart attack) played for laughs.
  • The Tease: He likes his flirting. A lot. All for lampshaded fun, though.
  • Terms of Endangerment: Played for laughs when Rob calls Doug "honey" or "darling" to shut him up and make fun of him for anything.
  • Theme Naming: His cats are named Chaplin and Buster. While Chaplin was named after Charlie Chaplin, Buster was already named, and Doug took it as a sign to adopt him because he already had plans to name his next cat "Buster" after Buster Keaton to maintain the "silent movie stars" theme. Even better, his friend Brad Jones has a cat named Lloyd.
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: Talking about kids who were bullied in Gold Stars, he says there's usually either two paths they choose, the "I'm stronger and not going to hurt anyone else because they shouldn't go what I went through" path or the "angry 'this is what I went through/this is all I know' so I'm going to spread it to others" type.
  • Therapy Is for the Weak: Subverted in the "Movies Everyone Disagrees With You On" panel at Animecon 2015 where he said you can learn more about yourself through what movies make you emotional than through psychiatrists, but jumps to point out that there's nothing wrong with psychiatrists, it's just different methods that he prefers.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • Mocked in-universe during his Wreck-It Ralph review, where because he has a new house, new shows (this was when he was riding high post-Critic death) and a new studio, he gives people a set point for "the moment where it all went downhill".
    • Also complained about in Midwest Media Expo 2015, saying "any time you try and introduce anything new, there's usually kind of like of a backlash; what's this thing I don't recognize it I hate it because I'm the internet." According to a later Finnish con, he actually warned Tamara that she might get a lot of abuse for her first appearance.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: After relating to her with regards to Jasper, Doug's disappointed that Lapis is usually just there at the end of season three.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Invoked during his Avatar: The Last Airbender vlogs, as he thought it would have been much more interesting if Zuko and Jet had actually joined forces, rather then the rivalry we ended up getting.
    • While he likes "Marceline's Closet", he's a little disappointed that it wasn't a Coming-Out Story.
    • In the real thoughts for Devil, he thinks the premise of being trapped in an elevator is great for claustrophobia/paranoia issues, but then it got fucked up with the addition of the devil.
  • Thick-Line Animation: All of Doug's drawings and animated works.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: In "Endgame", when Rob starts in for the third time in a row about the pronunciations, Doug groans that they really shouldn't go out on this and starts pinching his face when Rob goes through with it.
    • In "Thank You", gets to be on the other side of it when Jason fears they'll get stoned when Doug starts in on an MRA/gender issues rant about how sexism is going the other way because "men have it bad because they're forced to be manly".
  • Third Wheel:
    • A common joke in Adventure Time vlogs (when it's not Doug/Jason or Threesome Subtext) is for Jason and Jori to be kissy Happily Married and Doug to be awkwardly left out.
    • In the Christmas With The Kranks real review, he mentions sleeping on a friend's couch for college commuting, and the couple in the house making out while he was in the same room with them.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: In Event Horizon real thoughts, Rob and Doug disagree on when the movie came out, and after Rob looks it up, shoves his phone in Doug's face with a "1997 BIATCH!"
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: In the "Sibling Rivalry" for Iron Man 3, he stares off sadly into space at least five times while Rob does most of the talking.
  • Thou Shall Not Kill: Subverted, as he says a lot of times (and this is why he likes Bismuth) that this is a bad idea because at some point someone will hurt you and you might have to defend violently.
  • Threesome Subtext: Doug, Jason and Jori in the Adventure Time vlogs. Jason and Jori are of course married and lampshadedly act like his parental substitutes, but Doug still flirts with both of them and Jori's game to act like a Yaoi Fangirl for Doug/Jason. All very much noted in the "Fionna And Cake" vlog.
  • Token Minority: In Ghostbusters 2 real thoughts, he talks about SU being so good and helping because the lesbian non binary gems are actual fleshed out characters instead of nothing tokens that 90s shows tried to cram in.
  • Tom Hanks Syndrome: When asked about the Cerebus Syndrome of his work at Youmacon 2012, he gave the typical response of he just enjoyed the more dramatic parts of To Boldly Flee and Demo Reel, wanted to do more like that, and was excited to go into new territory.
  • Too Much Information: A common criticism of him is that he gives too much of himself away and blurs the boundary lines between fan and creator. Like in Avatar vlogs, there's not really much people can do to help when he says he has nightmares before shoots.
    • Lampshaded by Jason in "Mystery Train", after Doug says he drank underage, he tells him they're not meant to admit they do bad things on the vlogs.
    • From the "How To Train Your Dragon 2" Sibling Rivalry, Rob does his big brother job and embarrasses Doug by telling everyone that Doug has a small bladder.
    • In the 2013 stream, he shoots any down any prospect of him being on twitter, because at least with facebook he has the filter of sitting down and writing things out, and twitter would just make him spill all the things (during bad meetings was his example) that people don't need to hear.
    • In his Top 11 Movie Moments, he starts talking about being a workaholic to the extent of Patton and that he really does have a problem, but cuts himself off and apologizes for going personal.
  • Too Smart for Strangers: Rob drops some aversion in Shadows of the Grass, saying that if Doug got murdered, there'd be a 63% chance of it being someone he knows.
  • Torture Chamber Episode: He loves them, not so much for the Torture Porn aspect, but for that the hero has survived something awful and they'll be stronger for it.
  • Toxic Friend Influence: Teased about in "City of Thieves".
    Jori: I like that she's the crap friend, that bad influence that mothers like to tell their children about.
    Jason: Oh, like Doug!
  • Trademark Favorite Food: He has an Ecto Cooler problem. An amusing Fan World story is him and Brad talking about because Doug hating Crystal Pepsi, Brad wouldn't let him have any Ecto Cooler.
  • Tranquil Fury:
    • Referenced in "Message Received", as he says people with actual power (and are scary with it) don't need to shout at you.
    • People acting like the animated version of Cinderella was weak and passive gets him pretty angry, but he always tries to calmly explain why she was more relatable than the live-action version.
  • Trigger-Happy: In the space game, he, Leo, Smarty and Nash play at the donation drive. They tell him over and over again not to waste their ammunition, and he immediately opens fire at the docking station to piss them off.
  • Trolling Creator: In The Diary, at the end, he says we'll just have to wait and see whether they'll be cruel enough to make us wait for another year before new AT vlogs. They're not.
  • True Art Is Angsty: Doug went through this invoked phase during his high school/college years and made a few short films during that time, which he now considers Old Shames to poke fun of.
    • Although he still has a fondness for the trope. Demo Reel was five years in the making and had a lot of taken-seriously sadness dealt to sweet, normal people, and his bittersweet character list surprised those who assumed Daffy Duck would be on there.
  • Twitchy Eye:
    • While he still likes the joke just for the fact that some enjoy it, he has some issues with the bat credit card.
      Doug: Every time I hear someone say "bat credit card", like my eye will twitch.
    • In "Thank You", he says that he's also developed a tic for when he hears bird-sounding alarms because it reminds him of getting up for school.
    • In the Sharknado Mythbusters parody filming, he was twitching and shaking so much that both Rachel and Brad were worried about him.
    • In "Real Thoughts On Son of the Mask", he gets twitchy just before Rob beats him down again with the monkey.
    • In the real thoughts of Face/Off, you can see him twitch when he thinks Rob is going to run a hand down his face again.
  • Unable to Cry: Discussed as An Indirect Kiss, as Doug talks about for some people it's hard to cry, and even when you know you need to and that it would be healthy to get it out, often you have to wait until a certain time.
  • Un-Cancelled: That Guy Riffs initially ended in 2011 (not counting a DVD-Exclusive episode in 2015) only to be brought back in 2017 now as "Nostalgia Critic Riffs" due to the site's rebranding.
  • Understatement: Marceline's mind-raping sexist abusive boyfriend in "Memory of a Memory" gets the label of "kinda a jerk" from Doug.
  • Unsuspectingly Soused: At his con stories panel, he talked about an early convention where there was a green screen party with punch that he didn’t know had Everclear in it and he had been unknowingly mixing it with rum. He says he was utterly hammered, Rob (who was also drunk but less so) had to lead him to bed and because he felt like an asshole showing up late and hungover to a panel, vowed to never drink at cons again.
  • The Unfavorite: Joked about in the Shining commentary. Doug says "I went home to find pictures of me as a kid and you guys didn't have a lot" and his father replies "we have a ton of Rob".
    Doug: I'm not inviting you on commentaries anymore. You've said like two things and they have both been insulting to me.
  • Unmanly Secret: Although he likes femminess so much that it's almost a Creator Thumbprint, in "Princess Cookie" he embarrassedly admits that he was like Jason/Jori's son (who they thought was gay) and played with a load of girly toys when he was a kid.
  • The Unsmile: He has a a load of appealing smiles, but he and Rob mock the "really wide, showing teeth, crazy eyes" one in "Frybo", Doug joking it was inspiration for the Burger King, and Rob calls it soulless but happy.
  • Values Dissonance: Invoked in the Alvin And The Chipmunks real thoughts, they veer off to Gene Wilder and get so uncomfortable at Silver Streak because Black Face.
  • Values Resonance: invoked
    • In Beach Party, partly because they have nothing else to talk about, Doug wants to bring back an old Narm Charm Adam West-Batman advert about equal pay to show that nothing's changed.
    • In the real thoughts for Batman Forever, they talk about Falling Down being the Angry White Man movie and would work better in the time of "white guys shooting people on the regular".
  • Verbal Backspace: When trying to get Jason to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender in "Paper Pete":
    Doug: [perky] Or watch my vlogs they're just as exciting [no pause, goes serious] that is not true just watch the show.
  • Violence Discretion Shot: When they don't end up with Doug being actually slapped, a few vlogs end on Rob about to (not actually) beat him, like The Purge real thoughts has Doug being silly and it cuts just as Rob pretends to punch him in the neck.
  • Vocal Evolution: The Critic lost Doug's Chicago accent and become broader, Ask That Guy's voice become posher and Chester's voice is a bit lower now.
  • Weight Woe: A skinny guy already, he was proud of losing weight through Creator Breakdown means in To Boldly Flee (not eating and spending time working out when he should have been sleeping) and while he's lost even more in 2013, creating concern in fans, he said in the donation drive that he thinks he's got fatter.
  • Weirdness Coupon: Has stated his neighbors and people at conventions generally just react to the crazy stuff he does for the Nostalgia Critic have stopped questioning it after seeing it's him. Special note goes to the Casper review where most of those involved had no idea what was going on.
  • We Used to Be Friends: He's a fan of stories about close friends or siblings drifting apart, but he's not sure why.
    • Brought up again with Rob in the same room. Rob lampshades the snub by threatening to bloodbend him.
  • What Could Have Been: The April Fool's Day review of the My Little Pony pilot was originally going to be Doug and Jason swapping clothes and personalities, but Jason nixed it because he wouldn't know where to start in acting like Doug.
  • When I Was Your Age...: Used as apology (somewhat) in the Fantastic Four (2005) stinger, where he says back when he was an illustrator, he would have loved the hundred dollar prize money that they're offering in their DVD contest, but times are harder nownote  so they're giving 300 instead.
  • When You Coming Home, Dad?: In Aladdin and The King Of Thieves, he thinks Disney failed in doing the Disappeared Dad trope well, and recommends Adventure Time with Finn's dad because that was complicated and relatable.
  • White Guilt: Played for Laughs at the end of Bubble Buddies where Doug says "white people fuck up everything, our apologies". In Same Old World, he laughs that white men from suburbia are always the bad guys because "we mess up everything".
  • Wholesome Crossdresser:
    • Invoked for much fanservice. He was a stripperific Link in Suburban Knights, a Sexy Stewardess in the first TGWTG DVD menu, in behind the scenes videos has taken great joy in how much he and the other guys wear women's clothing, and he's regularly teased by friends and Rob for acting more like a woman in a guy's body than a stereotypical man.
    • He pretends to put on a maid's costume at the end of Apple Wedding, and Jori wails that he looks better in it than she did.
    • In the Pixels commentary, Doug praises Tamara's black dress, and she says he can borrow it to wear if he wants.
      Doug: Trust me I will.
      Rob:' Trust me he has.
    • He spends more time in a Winifred costume in Hocus Pocus than he does in the Critic outfit, and even people who didn't like the review admitted he was an eerily good Bette Midler. (He's also a female teacher with a wig and lipstick for about ten seconds.) His friends encouraged and said he looked pretty, and he's talked in cons how pleased he was when he saw how he looked.
    • In the Indy Pop Con 2016 panel, his dad says that whenever he (Barney) has to wear a dress it's suffering, but Doug doesn't think it's painful at all.
    • He's genuinely happy that the skinny alien in Stitch might be the first open crossdresser (Mulan doesn't count) in Disney.
    • According to Tamara at Fan World, he still owns and wears the cheerleader costume.
    • A few behind the scenes has him fall in love with a particular dress and put it away for him or someone else to wear in a later Critic.
    • At Conbravo he talked about how he just likes crossdressing and Malcolm knows more about the Drag Scene than he does.
    • In Aiyanna's Awesome Stream sketch, he dresses up as Tamara (complete with 90s choker), Aiyanna (with matte black lipstick) and Heather. They were all delighted.
  • Who Would Want to Watch Us?: Invoked for a joke in "Paper Pete", and with Doug being himself, quickly goes into people watching him when he's asleep and his getting comforted by that.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: He wants to see more deconstructions of it, of kids who feel like they have to be the adult and the problems that come from that.
  • The Woobie: He really loves playing these, whether they're pure woobie or the jerkass kind. The only characters of his that don't have issues of some nature are Dominic and Raoul Puke. The former is a bartender dealing with the personal problems of video game characters and the latter is a druggie. That should tell you something.
    • He falls in love with Zuko within the third episode of Avatar because he can identify with the character's anger, pride, angst, impatience and deceitfulness so much.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
    • Noted in "The Deserter", as he admits that if he had Fire Nation powers he'd use them to bully people.
    • In Condemned, he talks about how an audience can relate to the "destroy the world" motivation because he thinks everyone has that dark emotional moment (of bad things happening and just wanting to nuke shit) and a lot of people don't get out of it. Way back in 2012's review of The Dark Knight Rises and talking about the Joker being an example of said motivation, he mentions how you don't want to be on his side because you want people to be good, but it's hard not to be and you can see where he's coming from.
  • Women Are Wiser: In his As Himself review of Paranormal Activity 3, he not-very-seriously calls the films anti-men for always having them be idiots.
  • Workaholic:
    • Rob said on a forum post that Doug's fiancée (now wife) doesn't get to see him as often as she'd like because they're always working. And with that in mind, Doug himself understandably gets a bit frustrated with people who call him "lazy".
    • It's a little painful to hear his To Boldly Flee commentary, where he's apologetic but also genuinely confused as to why the others didn't want to let their work hurt them. For his own part, he actually thought starving himself and going without sleep was the logical way to get work done faster.
    • To the surprise of nobody, he related to the business-men in "Business Time" and felt sad when they had to be forced to stop working.
    • In one of her videos, Rachel surmised that Doug wasn't human because nobody else she knows could come back from an England con and then work for twelve hours, and Kyle/Paw in the Les Miserables commentary recalled he said the quote below before filming the episode.
      Doug: Just warning you now, I am going to this con to work. I will have no time to relax. This could possibly be To Boldly Flee like crazy hours. So let me know if you're not able to commit to it now.
    • At Shadocon 2012 he tried to explain himself, saying although he should probably take more breaks because age is making him hurt more, he can't because he's totally screwed if he doesn't get as much as he can from the internet gig before it dries up.
    • In "The Suitor" he admits to identifying with Bubblegum where her eyes are all wrinkled and she's fallen asleep on the job, as he's had "nights... mornings like that".
    • When Tamara and Malcolm bleerily tweeted about a 5AM work call, Todd said that was pretty common for a Doug production.
    • In a post about leaving CA, Lupa mentioned that when she was terrified of paying her bills he flippantly suggested to be like him and do daily vlogs (and in another post she clarified this was after the "Talking Cat" review, where he'd been sweet to her until Michaud had cornered her about midrolls).
    • At a 2012 Q&A with Little Kuriboh, he talked about even if he's feeling too depressed or exhausted to work, his "work ethic" is that he'll do it anyway because 1) not meeting deadlines would make him feel worse and 2) something different might come out due to the change in mood.
    • He spent twenty seven hours with no sleep editing the Man of Steel review, and was actually disappointed when he found out that Noah had beat him with 32.
    • In the "Top 10 Favorite Movie Moments", he talks about people telling him he's this, and how he goes between thinking he can work even harder and realizing that they're right.
    • Took part in some Adam Westing during the "Best 11 Avatar Episodes", ranting in the book Jason was reading about editing the video for five days with no food or water.
    • He laughs that he identifies with The Wind Rises (and loving to just work so much that sometimes he doesn't think of consquences for other things) so much that he's doing a video on his day off.
    • Not surprisingly, he loves other workaholics who "are really happy about a lot of work".
    • In Fan World, he talks about a time he had to do the Bat Credit Card joke and Rob accidentally punched him, giving him a nosebleed. Instead of excusing himself to bleed, he stayed in the panel until he snorted all the blood back.
    • While he relates most to Mr Peanutbutter from Bojack (the manic optimism), he also relates to Princess Carolyn cos of how much they both work.
  • World Gone Mad: The general idea in the post-election real thoughts, as Doug intentionally wears a Cheshire Cat t-shirt and ends it with "we're all mad here".
  • Worst Aid: He hates the "just breathe" asthma movie advice, as he has asthma and when he has an attack his lungs literally close up.
  • Would Hit a Girl: At the end of "To Cut A Woman's Hair", Doug goes off to beat (of course not really) on Jori when she disagrees with Jason's comfort that they still love him.
  • Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Played for Laughs at the end of "We Fixed A Truck", as Doug looks progressively sadder when Jason yells at him, but gets a smug smile on his face when Jason feels guilty for it.
  • Writers Cannot Do Math: One of the reasons he says why he's not allowed in the business side of CA, numbers confuse him.
  • Wrong Insult Offense: In "Sock Opera", Rob bitches that Doug hates everything and Doug says he doesn't and is just scared of everything. Rob says sorry with the sock puppet and subject is changed.
  • Yaoi Fanboy: He always perks up when there's mention of gay, and Rob complained about his sweetly written To Boldly Flee scenes getting turned into slash fodder as well. (Like the Luke/Snob talking scene wasn't meant to be them in bed together.)
    • At Fan World, he told how he actually found out about "yaoi". He accidentally went to a panel room about it, full of fangirls who squeeed at him and were so grabby he had to flee.
  • "YEAH!" Shot: Parodied at the end of "Serious Steven", where Doug tries to do a freeze frame ending but Rob (genuinely, not faked) slaps him out of it and it ends there.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: The basic gist of his big rant in "The Ice King's Glasses Issue". You are worth more, you have the right to be happy, life is going to be full of things that hurt you so don't let First World Problems get you angry.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: In his "Top Ten Films I Like But Nobody Else Does", he says he's one of the few people who find this trope really creepy.
    Doug: If someone's born to be the bad guy, that's a fucked up plan.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Even Brianna (Jason and Jori's daughter) gets in on teasing Doug's lack of memory when he doesn't remember the bears in "When Wedding Bells Thaw" and she asks offscreen if he's serious.
  • You Just Had to Say It: In "Conquest of Cuteness", Brianna giggle-interrupts Jason's asking Doug if he remembers the flashback in "Memories of Boom Boom Mountain" (because Doug's memory issues mean he clearly doesn't) and Jason tells her he's aware of what he just said. Doug just looks confused.
  • You Monster!:
    • In "Real Thoughts On Casper", when Rob (who hates the film) finds out that it has a following and Doug is happy that he'll be the one getting trashed, he reminds everyone that Doug likes Batman Forever, Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3 to get all the hate back on Doug, and Doug calls him a monster.
    • When Doug talks about laughing at Gurgi's death in The Black Cauldron, Rob calls him a monster and amusingly there's a notable edit before Doug gets back to talking about Dungeons & Dragons (2000).
  • Yuri Fan: In "What Was Missing" he gets very fascinated and excited about the possibility of Marceline and Bubblegum being canon lesbians, and stops his Bubblegum hatred for a while to instead view (and enjoy) her as a gay woman dealing with a needy boy and her like of girls.

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