Hilarious In Hindsight / The Nostalgia Critic

• In his review for Space Jam, he rants about how the film presents Lola Bunny as a "sex symbol", with one complaint in particular addressing her "bunny boobies". He severely underestimated how popular Lola was in (and even outside) the Furry Fandom: when Space Jam: A New Legacy was announced many years later, one of the most prominent complaints was about how Lola was redesigned to be Tamer and Chaster, including removing the aforementioned "bunny boobies". In his review for Robin Hood, another incredibly Popular with Furries movie, he would finally admit how hilariously wrong he was about Lola.
• In the 2007 Harry Potter video, he's snide at a man in a skirt (though deeply apologizes when he finds out the guy's Scottish). Funny years later considering Doug's pride at rocking mini-skirts.
• In Kazaam, he rhymes a little and says "see I can do it too, it's not hard". Turns out Doug genuinely doesn't find it hard, saying the totally-in-rhyme review How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was really easy for him.
• There's something funny about seeing Critic in the dino mask during "Top 11 Disney Villains" after Dino Rob has become such a staple.
• In 2009's Nick-Toons episode, he said he was starting to get out of the Nick phase when Aaahh!!! Real Monsters came out. Funny when Avatar: The Last Airbender became his favorite show as an adult, and he loves Korra too.
• The "I'm drinking my coffee/and now I'm going to sleep" line in Rock-A-Doodle makes a lot more sense when Doug says in the brothers' vlog of the Steven Universe episode "Chille Tid" that coffee actually makes him tired and thought that was the same for everyone.
• Mocking Full House for "solving everything in a one minute speech" becomes amusing in the 2013 era where he did "speeches with sappy music" so much that he eventually started mocking himself.
• Critic making fun of how shitty his white wall is as early as 2009 is pretty fun when you know how much Doug dislikes "white wall episodes".
• If Douchey was so offended by Critic wearing eyeliner, imagine how he would react to Devil Boner's naturally racooned-eyed face.
• In the first fuck-ups video, Critic beats up Mike Ellis, a former manager of Channel Awesome. Cathartic in hindsight when all the bad management came out and Ellis had defended The Distressed Watcher.
• During the review of The Room, the Nostalgia Critic is visited by colleagues from the future who warn him that he "must not review this movie". Guess what? He later had to take the video down, because he was threatened with a lawsuit about the review. For the record, this is the only review of his that it's happened to.
  • After getting said threat, the Critic decides to satirize the situation with an impression of Tommy Wiseau doing a "Tommy Wi-show." More than a year later, Wiseau actually does come out with The Tommy Wi-Show with the help of Machinima.com.
• In the Spoony/Critic/Linkara review of Alone in the Dark (2005), Spoony enjoys typing "I like to wear women's clothing" into Critic's computer. In his review of Captain America, he casually reveals that he made Critic dress up as a dirty ballerina in Spooning With Spoony II. Black Comedy because the Critic hung himself, but still funny all the same. In more general terms, while Spoony was doing it to embarrass Critic, Critic really does enjoy dressing up in girl's clothing, and has done since he was a teenager.
• The Nostalgia Duo's complaining about Batty in FernGully: The Last Rainforest takes on a whole new amusing twist when Nella and Elisa find out much later that the Chick has major Perverse Sexual Lust for him.
• In Last Action Hero, the Critic tells the kid to "leave the plotholes to me, it's my job." For a while, it really was his job.
• Doug commented on the possibilities of Superman using his Kiss Memory Wipe powers from Superman II on his Rogues Gallery. Robot Chicken seemed to have the same idea.
• When reviewing The Langoliers, based on the Stephen King story, a character remarks on the nature of how time passes makes time travel impossible, meaning some can't go back and say, try to stop Kennedy from being assassinated. Critic says that sounds like an awesome idea for a story. King later did exactly this with 11/22/63.
  • In the same review, the Critic talks about the writer/director of the miniseries, whose name is Tom Holland.
• In his review of Red Sonja, he begins by apologizing for making fun of Mako in his TMNT review the previous week, mentioning that Mako did voices for shows like "Avatar: The Last Airbender, which [he] had never heard of". Come 2013, and not only has he heard of the show, but he's watched it all the way through and it's now his favorite TV Show of all time.
• Speaking of Mako and TMNT, a few months after the backlash of Doug's comment in the review, IGN reviewed the first four films when they were released on Blu-Ray, and also made a negative comment about Mako's performance as Splinter, saying that he "sounds like a drunkard". Despite this, it generated little to no backlash whatsoever.
• In the Moulin Rouge! musical review, Oancitizen has a cameo where he loses his cool at the fact that he was denied the chance to sing. Cut to 2013, and he stars in another musical review, this time of Les Misérables (2012).
• In "The Review Must Go On" Critic allows Doug to do all his new show ideas except for Demo Reel. A few months later, Doug promises that Critic will make an appearance in every episode of the game show. He's also in the opening credits of “Shut Up And Talk” (from Greg Sestoro's episode). This was even more amusing because it was one of the first shows Doug made now that he was free of Critic.
• Shortly after declaring January 2014 Nicolas Cage month, Community and Hollywood Game Night both did episodes that centered around him (a subplot and a single minigame respectively) that aired in January.
• During his review of Hook, Critic makes a joke about whether or not the writers of Lost came in at some point. This is kind of funny, considering they actually did.
• In "Top 11 Damsels in Distress", Critic complains about Peach being helpless in every main game, and her role in Super Mario Bros. 2 didn't count since that was a dream. Come Super Mario 3D World, she's once again playable and not a damsel in distress, and it wasn't a dream this time.
• “The OTHER Animated Titanic Movie” had Rob playing Emperor Palpatine, with Critic as his Darth Vader. Fast forward to To Boldly Flee, and Rob is playing a Palpatine expy, with Snob as his Darth Vader seeing as Critic was quite preoccupied with saving the world.
• Neither Doug or JesuOtaku knew that the latter was a trans man at the time, so the Heavy Metal review's criticism of "a guy must want to do a crossover with a woman because he has a crush" is at best amusingly awkward.
• In the review for The Lorax (2012), he responds to the very reclusive Lorax by saying "My god, we've finally found Bill Watterson!" A month later, this came out.
  • He complains about a twenty something voice coming out of the main kid. Fast forward to the Gravity Falls vlogs and Rob/Doug taking a while to get used to Dipper's far-too-adult voice. They acknowledge the Hypocritical Humor of getting over Dipper's voice but hating most "adult male voices kid" features in The Lorax (2012) real thoughts.
• It's amusing to watch Critic dismiss The Cinema Snob's increasing crazy in Bloodrayne knowing that it'll end up biting him in the ass.
• Critic's Gay Panic over LittleKuriboh in bed with him at the start of “The Top 12 Strangest and Best Couples” becomes amusing when one watches a 2012 Kami-Con panel with Doug and LK, and finds that Doug is the one flirting with Kuriboh because he's weak for British accents.
  • When Critic throws Little Kuriboh out of the room, he yells "go back to Team Four Star". Due to issues with his Blip account, as of September, 2014, Little Kuriboh's work is now hosted by TFS.
• The "Top 11 South Park Episodes" list involves an doth protest too much-overload of Critic telling everyone You Need to Get Laid. It turns out later that he's been pretty starving for sex himself, even going as far as to use a Rogue figurine as a wank toy.
• In The Princess Diaries II, Critic picks up Demolition Man to prove to Hyper that he's also no stranger to liking mindless crap, but at least he admits it and wants better stuff too. But when he reviews it, he's in blissful Testosterone Poisoning mode (even starting by eating a heart) and complains about female-heavy tumblr ^note something that Doug admitted he was baiting them for and got disappointed when they ignored it for most of the episode.
  • On the subject of the Demolition Man review: the cameo from Devil Boner mentions fighting political correctness, while the next major appearance from him shows him completely annoyed by the meninist movement and giving a huge "The Reason You Suck" Speech against them for acting so offended by strong women.
• Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance had a load of cameos, with Critic bitching about the audience being entitled and demanding whatever they want from him. That bitter pandering becomes amusing when Kyle released the first part of his Beauty and the Beast (2017) musical review, with just the first song number involving over thirty cameos.
• In the opening of the Blues Brothers 2000 review, Rob finds it ridiculous that Critic is going to re-review Cartoon Allstars To The Rescue despite not having any clips of the movie to show, as a parallel to how the movie feels incomplete without John Belushi. Critic would begin doing divisive but still very popular clipless reviews the following year.
• Whether intentional or not, Doug's review of the Daredevil film did come out a month before the Netflix show was released.
  • During the review proper, he comments on Matt and Elektra's kiss in the rain with "Wow, I'm sure this is the first time a superhero who wears all red is kissing his girlfriend in the rain, but we'll be remembered better for it." Exactly a year after the review, season 2 of Daredevil was released and has Matt share a first kiss with Karen Page in the rain.
  • NC's criticism of Matt and Elektra's playground fight becomes this after the second season did a similar fight scene, only there, it's with Matt and Elektra breaking into Fogwell's Gym, the fight is their form of sexual foreplay, and they're already in a relationship when it happens.
  • At one point, Matt tries to calm a frightened kid by saying, "I'm not the bad guy, kid." NC mocks him, saying "Why is it just because I dress like the devil, everyone assumes I'm the bad guy?" Three and a half years after this review, season 3 of Daredevil has Wilson Fisk send the show's version of Bullseye (who is here an FBI Agent) out to impersonate Daredevil and commit murders to tarnish Matt's reputation.
• During his review of Home Alone 3, he says, "What is this? Die Hard 5? What does this have to do with Home Alone?" Then in 2013, there really was a Die Hard 5. There's also the fact of Critic associating a gritty action movie with Home Alone; while associating Die Hard with Home Alone is not unheard of, this became even funnier in 2012 when various reviews of the James Bond film Skyfall compared its climax with Home Alone for also featuring boobytrapping a house.
• In his "Top 11 Coolest Cliches" video, when pointing out the Dramatic Choir cliche, he ends up mentioning if there would be a Star Trek choir singing in Klingon. There's actually a track on the Star Trek Into Darkness soundtrack entitled "The Kronos Wartet" that happens to be sung entirely in Klingon!
• His going on forever in the Sailor Moon review about the transformations being Male Gaze fanservice becomes more amusing when Viz Media didn't even allow men (unless it was being a girl's partner) to the premiere party of Sailor Moon Crystal. Guess it really wasn't intended for men after all, Critic.
• In The Wicker Man (2006) review, at the end of the intro, "Nicolas Cage" says, "[I]f they ever made a live-action ''Winnie the Pooh'', I'd play Eeyore." (Except when that time came, Brad Garrett voiced Eeyore instead of Cage.)
• In the Steven Universe vlog of "Gem Glow", the after-the-fact intro notes that the DVD that they based the vlogs on had the wrong order and they'll sort it out. Understandable, but it makes the in-vlog Rob mocking that they should never read the comments to get names right (even though they had) amusing because they probably wouldn't have found out the fuck up if they decided to do that.
• Doug and Rob's Gravity Falls vlog of “Little Gift Shop Of Horrors” was filmed before the vlog finale but came out the same day. The former has Rob tiredly ask why Doug is obsessed with gay stuff and Doug respond with the fact that legit gay characters are awesome, which makes it amusing when they talk about Korrasami in the latter, and Doug is bouncing around excited and Rob is happy but also more dismissive because Japan did it first.
• In the review The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Kelly kicks a Velociraptor through the window, followed the Nostalgia Critic calling it out for being Narmy, and by a photoshopped image of stock dinosaurs scoring her high for that. In LEGO Jurassic World, Kelly does this, followed by a cheesy 'Ta-Daah' sound, then Ian, Sarah, and another Velociraptor scoring her. But only Ian and Sarah score her high. The Velociraptor isn't as impressed.
• In the Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie DVD review, he gets a fan video asking “you know that Nerd battle we all hated originally? When you going to do another one of those?”, making him drop his phone in disgust. While not a battle, they did do another review together (TMNT 2014), lampshaded as Pandering to the Base.
• During his review of Fantastic Four (2005):
  • He dismissed the then-upcoming reboot as merely going to suck. When it did come out, not only was it panned by critics and audiences alike, but many have said that it's actually worse than the 2005-2007 movies. This was referenced in the Mammia Mia! review and Critic eventually panned the 2015 film himself in 2017.
  • From the same review, an offhand joke is made about Stan Lee secretly being the Watcher, due to his constant cameos in Marvel Comics films. Come Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, it turns out that Stan Lee is actually an informant working for the Watchers.
• Fantastic Four (2015): The review ends with with a joke about how the Fantastic Four will never join the MCU. Following Disney's acquisition of Fox, the Fantastic Four is finally set to make their MCU debut in 2025.
• In the review of the 1990 Captain America, made in 2009, he said: "But to be fair, this is a very tough superhero to pull off. I mean, what guy could honestly look the least bit intimidating in that ridiculous outfit?" Now, fast forward to 2011...
• In his list of the Top Halloween guilty pleasures, he mentioned The Night That Dracula Saved the World (AKA, The Halloween That Almost Wasn't) at #9. A few days later, the same special got the RiffTrax treatment.
• In "Conquest of the Commercials," one of the things he talks about is Segata Sanshiro, comparing him to Chuck Norris. Just several months ago, those two had that fight on DEATH BATTLE!.
• In the first Commercials special, the Critic begs Hi-C's Ecto Cooler to make a return to stores. With the Ghostbusters (2016), he got his wish!
• In Labyrinth, the Tamara-daughter is reduced to the fetal position after watching 80s movies like Return to Oz. Cue her series Tamara's Never Seen where she As Herself reviews that movie, and it really does terrify her.
• In the 2010 charity livestream, Doug joked that he'd be the cute one in a trope boy band. When he and his team were filming Alvin and the Chipmunks, Aiyanna said he had fulfilled that dream finally.
• At the end of Alice in Wonderland (2010), the review points out Tim Burton's tendency to just cast white people. A few years later, Burton acts much worse than his parody version when the subject is raised.
• Tamara getting into the Gummi Bears theme song in Disney Afternoon becomes funnier when she does a crossover with Andre the Black Nerd and accidentally admits to forgetting all about that segment of the review.
• In Freddy vs. Jason, Critic wants Devil Boner and Hyper to fight each other, and they refuse. The next episode to feature the couple, Old Vs New: Evil Dead, has them arguing over which Evil Dead movie is better and and forcing Critic to help them stop fighting.
• In a similar vein to the Ganonator example, when he did his review of the The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, he put his face on Indiana Joe, when he does he says "GIVE ME A FACE YOU BUNGHOLES!", not the exact quoting, but still.
• More fun with the NC: in his Batman & Robin review, he woefully comments how the money used in special effects could be better used to feed starving children. The same concept was elevated to a Big Lipped Starving Children Moment in his Tank Girl review - one year later.
• During the NC review of Pokémon: The First Movie, he makes a comment about all the good shows he had in his day like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Care Bears. Over the next year or two, he has reviewed both Care Bear movies and complained about how awful they were, and he wasn't too kind to The Chipmunk Adventure in his crossover review of it either (though he did later praise it compared to the later Alvin and the Chipmunks movies).
• Also from the Pokémon: The First Movie review, the critic complains about how ridiculous it was that one character was revived with the Pokemon tears, he mentions that at least in the Disney movies (Putting The Lion King as an example) the characters remained death and weren´t resurrected by tears. In Tangled, a new Disney movie, one of the main characters is resurrected thanks to the healing power of a tear.
• Another, minor example from his Super Show review was his comment on Carland. It's a little more developed than that, but still...
• In the review of The Pebble and the Penguin when noting a character named Rocko, he states that his modern life is no longer in reruns. Not long after that same year, Nickelodeon debuted their The '90s Are All That block, which features reruns of many Nicktoons, including Rocko's Modern Life.
• Doug was massively squicked when his dad made fuzzy pink handcuffs for Tamara to wear in the Pop Quiz Hotshot pilot. Fast forward a few years and look how delighted he is.
• In the Suicide Squad (2016) review, Rick Flag!Doug snarkily remarks to Amanda Waller "Let's see if Wonder Woman does any better". Oh yeah, it did.
• In his Good Burger review, he claims that "Mondo Burger is people!" a year before Mondo Owada turned into Mondo Butter.
• The iconic Nostalgiaween jacket is now shared with (and more commonly associated with) David S. Pumpkins. This is later lampshaded in the Hannibal review.
• Battle of Commercials contains a Stranger Things-themed parody of the Eggo Waffles commercials, which the show itself did a year later to promote the second season...just minus the murder.
• In his "Top 11 GOOD things about the Star Wars Prequels" video, he calls Palpatine "The Tim Curry of the Star Wars universe". Curry actually voiced Palpatine in the final seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
• In his Dragonball Evolution review alongside LittleKuriboh and MasakoX, they mock a particular scene in the movie in which Goku slides over the hood of a car with his head. In the Dragon Ball Super episode released after this review, Goku actually does a similar technique in his battle against Kefla, only this time he instead slides over a massive ki blast fired by Kefla with his hands holding a Kamehameha.
• In Black Panther (2018), Rob compares Doug to Bucky a few times. What they probably don't know is the way Critic and Bucky get treated by fandom is not actually that different, as they're both conventionally attractive fuck ups who suffer in canon and are made to suffer even more in fan stuff.
• In the 2013 editorial "What's With All the Princess Hate?", he mentions how queens in Disney franchises are rarely depicted as main characters or marketed like the princesses are. This was before Frozen, where Elsa is crowned Queen of Arendelle and is just as heavily marketed as (if not moreso than) her sister Princess Anna.
• In a Paranormal Activity review, Doug not seriously says the film is sexist towards guys and wonders if he's a meninist. Fast forward to some years later when meninists are an actual thing, and he's decidedly not, putting meninists as villains in Critic.
• In many videos he took delight in pointing out and mocking obvious forms of Product Placement. Channel Awesome and The Nostalgia Critic eventually became notable enough to attract direct sponsors like Dollar Shave, Black Tux and Stardust, and as such many of the videos now have built in ads.
  • This alone becomes more hilarious once you realize that in early 2019, Doug's ads in between reviews started to become more crazy and surreal, being more of a parody rather than a proper ad of the featured product.
• Part of the main theme of The Sorcerer's Apprentice review is to not live up with the Nicolas Cage hype including The Critic refusing to go to a Slipknot concert despite that being the only call that was genuine. A year after the review, however, Nicolas Cage would be featured in prominent roles such as Mom and Dad and Mandy (2018) featuring his signature Large Ham as opposed to underacting like in the films of the previous past few years, which many critics have called a return to form (in the latter film, he gets to show off his true acting talent). Guess people have cried wolf indeed.
• He jokes in "Grading Cartoon Show Intros" how He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) made him doubt if he was straight, then he becomes confused that apparently enjoying She-Ra: Princess of Power makes you gay. He also makes a joke that while He-Man is in a Transparent Closet, the cast of She-Ra isn't afraid to "hide [their] pride," referring to all the rainbow colors prominent in the title sequence. The reboot of the latter show premiered a couple months later, boasting a large amount of gay representation that garnered a huge LGBT Fanbase.
• In his review of Maleficent, he compares King Henry's wispy voice and his Scottish accent to Scrooge McDuck, and then claims that David Tennant (who would voice Scrooge) sucking helium balloons would be more intimidating. In the Brazillian dub of Ducktales, Scrooge is voiced by Hélio (helium in Portuguese) Ribeiro.
• When reviewing Patch Adams, he jokes about Adams being inspired by a dead fictional girlfriend. A year later, the infamous Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax would break.
• In his review of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, he questions how anyone would fall for "I'm over there". as a distraction. In The Country Bears review, he successfully distracts his pursuers with that very tactic.
• In his Nicktoons episode, he made a joke about Mrs. Bighead from Rocko's Modern Life being transgender due to her raspy male-sounding voice. In the 2019 revival movie "Static Cling", the Bigheads' son Ralph would come out as transgender, changing his name to Rachel and gender to being a female.
• Yes poor Critic at the beginning of Food Fight for having that bad of a breakdown, but Doug admitted Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns was his first crush, and there's something really funny about being so good emulating the first person you were into.
• In "The Review Must Go On," Doug thinks Lewis is crazy for talking to his sketch characters like they're real. Later we'd get the Hyper Fangirl vlogs which showed a sketch character interacting with the NC cast, including her own actress (an action which has parallels to TRMGO in itself).
• The Small Soldiers review introduces Devil Boner, and ends with Hyper, still deep in Mad Love, kidnapping Critic as a lead-in to the Princess Diaries 2 review. Devil Boner would eventually become Hyper's true love.
• The Nostalgia Kitten bit at the end of his Rover Dangerfield review became this when Doug adopted a cat named Chaplin in 2019 and another named Buster in 2020.
  • It's also more amusing to watch the Cats & Dogs review, where Critic mocks how clearly unfocused the animal actors are, after watching Doug try to use Chaplin in videos (in one ad break, Doug follows Chaplin around the house trying to dub his voice for the ad, and cracks up at how much Chaplin clearly doesn't want to be a part of it).
• Invoked with the Stamps.com sponsorship in the Spider-Man 3 review. The script Doug was given was written long before the COVID lockdowns, and he can't help but laugh at lines about not going to the post office, which is not something anyone would want to be doing at the time.
• In Doug's review of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, he gives Cindy Lou Who's singing voice a thrashing. Cindy Lou Who was played by a young Taylor Momsen, who by that point was already the frontwoman of The Pretty Reckless and had significantly improved her singing voice.
• In his Old vs. New review of The Karate Kid (that compared the original 1984 movie and the reboot), in a Bait-and-Switch joke, he says "Who would've thought that years later a spin off will come around that will not only be intriguing, but just as good as the original. I am of course, talking about The Karate Kid... cartoon". He quickly adds that he was joking, but three years later, Cobra Kai premiered that actually fits the description in a more sincere manner.
  • Also from the same review, he makes fun of the Wax On, Wax Off scene by commenting how "Wax Off" sounds like "whacks off". In the intervening years, people have pointed out that the remake's "Jacket off" sounds even worse ("jack it off").
• In his review of the DuckTales (2017) pilot, when Della's existence is revealed, he jokingly said that he just assumed that the triplets were "clones, spawned in a laboratory of comedic sidekicks". He was right on the money that one of the kids is a clone four years later in the show's Grand Finale. However, instead of being any of the triplets, it is actually Webby. Sort of.
• In the Fox Kids review, after talking about Beast Wars and Beast Machines, Walter then warns Michael Bay to stay away from adapting them. After Bumblebee ended up proving to be enough of a success that it was ultimately made a Continuity Reboot, the next film, Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts will also have less of Bay's involvement.
• In the review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Angry Joe's rants about how Superman's death is unearned due to him being mainly used for only 2 movies while being Out of Focus in both of them, making it obvious that the drama from his death is nothing more than cheap melodrama and he is going to come back in the future. He then goes on a tangent about how if The Hero Dies is going to happen, he has to undergo Combat Breakdown while fighting the battle of his life instead of an Anti-Climax which gives the audience tension that their hero is really going to kick the bucket this time, the funeral has to be surrounded by his family, friends and colleagues while having a connection built with the audience over many movies. Avengers: Endgame would have Iron Man fit every one of those criteria.
• In the review of Mad Max: Fury Road, The Nostalgia Critic compared it to a Roadrunner cartoon... Then, in Space Jam: A New Legacy, Roadrunner and Wily E. Coyote are in Mad Max. When he came to review the latter movie, the Critic heavily lampshades this.
• The entire review of Hancock as the intro notes it was made and just being edited the morning after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. Thus, Critic has "notes" on what jokes he missed on why some stuff comes off even more hilarious.
  • Case in point: The opening line of the review summing up the character as "a hero people want to like but can't because he's too violent" which gets the first of many "slap meme" notes on a missed joke.
• In his editorial on Batman: The Killing Joke, the Critic mentions how awesome an idea "Joker: The Musical" would be. On June 14. 2022, Joker 2 was indeed revealed to be a musical.
• In his review of A Muppet Family Christmas, Critic expressed his distain for Robin, stating "There's a reason they replaced you with orange you." And it cuts to a picture of Walter. Since that review, Walter's puppeteer, Peter Linz, has taken on the role of Robin.

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