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Honest Trailers / Tropes E to M

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Main Page | A – D | E – M | N – R | S – Z

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    E 
  • Early Game Hell: invoked The Honest Game Trailer for Monster Hunter describes learning how to play the game as "learning how to swim by getting thrown into a shark tank with a lifevest made of ham".
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Their Honest Trailer for The Phantom Menace is spoken with much more enthusiasm than we'd see later, and it was narrated by comedian Ptolemy Slocum, instead of Gannon Nickell or Jon Bailey. It also doesn't have the "Starring" part at the end. And expectedly, it doesn't have the "something to say with my awesome voice" bit.
    • The first musical-based Honest Trailers for Les Misérables (2012) doesn't have lyrics appearing on the bottom of the screen, and was performed by the Honest Trailer crew instead of guest performers.
    • The first couple years kept the name of the movie at the end of the trailer. Later trailers would have it changed to a pun based on the film.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Incredible Hulk (2008) points out how, despite technically being the second entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it lacks many of the cinematic universe entry tropes that became Marvel movie staples, such as only making vague references to the comics and only making slight hints at future sequels instead of blatant ones.
  • Ear Worm:
    • They criticize the song "My Heart Will Go On" in Titanic, that "stupid f***ing song that briefly tricked you into thinking Céline Dion was hot."
      Celine Dion: Near... Far... whereever you are...
      Narrator: Good luck getting that out of your head!
    • Frozen's "Let It Go", or as they sung it "Get it ouuut, get it ouuut, get this song out of my head!"
    • Similarly, "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid (1989): "You'll never get it out your head, you'll sing the words until you are dead! Even when you sleep, it plays on repeat, it's so catchy!"
    • The Honest Trailer for Shrek credits it with turning "All Star" by Smash Mouth into this.
    • The Honest Trailer for A Star Is Born (2018), during the song parody segment:
      Narrator: ...in a story that really drives home the destructive power... of having the same two songs from the soundtrack stuck in your head for months. ["Shallow" begins to play] Oh no, don't do the music! No! It's almost gone! Stop!
  • Easily Forgiven: The Honest Trailer for Black Widow (2021) suggests that Malina gets forgiven too easily for her part in forcibly recruiting a multitude of young girls into becoming assassins.
  • Ending Fatigue: invoked
    • Parodied at the end of their The Lord of the Rings trailer, which ends three times.
      • Second ending: "A film that took so much of Peter Jackson's life, he didn't want it to end, prompting five completely separate endings that go on and on forever, making it really hard to hold in your pee."
      • Third ending: "A film with such fake emotional states, Gandalf will sacrifice himself for his friends, only to somehow come back to life, making it not really a sacrifice. And a story where the protagonists can't win their own battles without convenient ghost armies, living trees, and magical eagles.
        Narrator: Ugh, I can't believe we're only halfway through with this Peter Jackson nerdgasm.
    • Also parodied in the Zack Snyder's Justice League Honest Trailer, which is exceptionally long at 9 minutes and 24 seconds(including the parts about the sponsors and reading comments). The narrator lets out an "Aw, c'mon!" after realizing that it's not over at the start of Part 6, and at the start of Part 7, complains that Part 6 would have been a good place to end it. A little over seven minutes in, the narrator has a compilation of all the times the characters say "mother box" so he can take a bathroom break.
  • Enraged by Idiocy:
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • invoked In the Honest Trailer for Split, The Reveal that the movie is a Stealth Sequel to Unbreakable makes the narrator wonder if this means all the M. Night Shyamalan movies take place in the same universe, even Avatar: The Last Airbender.
    • invoked The Honest Trailer for WandaVision pokes fun at the insane, sprawling fan theories that kept cropping up like weeds before the series premiered and between episodes, many of which turned out to be wrong, such as Mephisto turning out to be the villain behind it all and Evan Peters appearing as Quicksilver again heralding the multiverse with the X-Men.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: invoked
    • In Gone Girl, "Ben Affleck will get his revenge [on his vicious sociopath of a wife] by staying with her to start a family?"
      Narrator: What!? Why would he do that!? Run, dude!
    • In Gravity, even though the heroine survives and makes it back to Earth alive, the rest of the world is still undergoing a Kessler Syndrome which has already destroyed multiple low-earth orbit space stations, destroyed any and all forms of long-range satellite communication including website stability, render GPS tracking useless, and ultimately keep humanity trapped on Earth for centuries at best.
      Narrator: ...Guess we won't be going to Mars anytime soon.
    • The Honest Trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home points out how the villains being turned good artificially probably won't work out since they get sent back to a universe where they've already ruined their lives.
      Narrator: Thanks, Spider-Man! Norman Osborne may have lost his son, company and reputation, but now he'll be able to feel crippling regret over it.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: invoked In the trailer for Aladdin (2019), the Narrator expresses disdain for the character of Prince Anders, a ridiculously stereotypical Scandinavian who only exists seemingly to give a white actor a part in the film.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Honest Trailer for The Boys (2019) points out how the show likes to give evil characters children to evoke a sense of sympathy from the audience.
    Narrator: I hear Season 2 has a literal Nazi join the team. But don't worry; I'm sure she wants to have kids some day!
  • Even the Guys Want Him:
    • Both narrators really wanted Katniss to choose Gale instead of Peeta.
      Gannon Nickell: I mean, I'm not gay, but I would totally s*** Gale's d***!
      Jon Bailey: I would totally choose Gale... ah, I mean, if I were Katniss... ah, screw it! Gale is hot and I would make out with that face in a heartbeat!
    • Also, Poe Dameron, who both agree has a beautiful face and that is a high point of the movie.
    • The narrator clearly has a thing for Captain America, as evidenced by the trailer for Captain America: Civil War.
      Narrator: Ninety years old and this guy is still a virgin? Someone please have sex with Captain America already. Hell, you know what? I'll do it! I'll bend over right now!
  • Even Nerds Have Standards: In the Honest Trailer for The Last Jedi both the Epic Voice Guys, despite being big Star Wars fans, completely diss Solo (though the current Epic Voice Guy later did an Honest Trailer for it anyway).
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • The Narrator will read even the most embarrassing comments (such as "I wear poopy pants!") absolutely deadpan, but comments that screw with his taste in movies ("I LIKED Fantastic Four", "M. Night Shyamalan is the greatest director of all time", "Jar-Jar Binks is the greatest Star Wars character") will cause him noticeable cringe and he will sometimes even refuse to read them.
    • When having trouble finding anything to make fun about Logan, Epic Voice Guy calls Deadpool (2016) for some help. Deadpool ends up refusing to "shit on Logan".
    • In the trailer for After Earth, The Narrator gets so outraged with the absurdity of the plot that he quits narrating mid-way through the trailer.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Invoked
  • Evil Laugh: In the Doom trailer, while explaining the first two games' Nintendo Hard difficulty:
    Narrator: ...because masochism is what video games were about in The '90s. No big deal if you die, though. You could always just respawn at the last checkpoint... AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE LEVEL! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
  • Evil Lawyer Joke: The title of "most inherently evil main character you've ever played" of course goes to Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Honest Trailer for World War Z finds it so painfully generic it's simply retitled Brad Pitt Zombie Movie.
  • Exact Words:
    • In the Star Trek Into Darkness Honest Trailer, they read the title as one single phrase instead of pausing between the title and subtitle.
      Narrator: Are we sure we don't want to put a colon in there?
    • In the closing section of the Taken video, when performing fan-requested lines, he responds to a comment asking "say you're a smelly pirate hooker in your next video" by saying "You're a smelly pirate hooker in your next video."
    • At times he'll even say exactly what they request, but also add a little something extra. For example, in the Mad Max: Fury Road trailer, the last request is "I liked Fantastic Four!" He says it, but immediately adds "Uh, no, I didn't!", and later he responds to a request that tells him to say "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made" by saying just that... while adding on "said no one ever." And eventually, a request for "M. Night Shyamalan is the greatest director ever" has the narrator struggling to say it, and retching upon conclusion. A similar request for "Jar Jar Binks is the best Star Wars character" has the narrator struggling to say it again, but in that case he refused to finish it.
    • In the Terminator Genisys trailer, a user named DeathBySausage left a request saying "Say my username". So the narrator says "my username".
    • In the Honest Trailer for M3GAN, the narrator pronounces the title as "Muh-THREE-gan" instead of "Megan", like it is in the movie.

    F 
  • Failed a Spot Check:
    • In The Dark Knight Rises, the narrator makes note that Bruce Wayne apparently "never conducts background checks on his maids or his board members."
    • In Breaking Bad, Hank Schrader is Walter White's "brother-in-law cop who's terrible at telling jokes, and even worse at recognizing that his own family is running a crystal meth empire."
    • In Grand Theft Auto V, the narrator notes a "racially unbiased police force" as one of the more unrealistic aspects of the city... while showing as an example a black guy wandering around with a rocket launcher in hand in front of a cop while said cop does nothing. Apparently, the city has no gun control laws or even weapons ordinances either, and it never occurs to the police to worry about seeing people carrying military-grade weapons around unless they actually start using them.
  • Fake Nationality: invoked
  • Fan Disservice:
    • The narrator's love for boobs finally catches up to him in the second Game of Thrones trailer, where Cersei's public shaming removes pretty much any titillation seeing her naked might have had. And then he sees Melisandre's boobs. After she's revealed to actually be a really old woman.
      Narrator: AH! My eyes! They burn!
    • The Honest Trailer for Showgirls points out how unsexy it is, despite being about strippers and full of intended Fanservice:
      Narrator: Do you like sex? Well, not for long. Thrill as Showgirls teases you with nudity, then beats you over the head with it until everyone has the appeal of raw meat. In a film that robs boobs of all their mystery, treats sex as a cheap commodity to be bought and sold, and depicts love as something that happens between a man and a particularly aggressive fish.
      [shows a clip from the infamous swimming pool sex scene]
      Narrator: Be careful, kids; that's not how sex works. But it's exactly how you get a yeast infection.
    • The Honest Trailer for Game of Thrones Vol. 3 once again brings up some of its nude scenes that are less pleasant for the eyes, such as (again) real, old Melisandre naked and Maisie Williams' nude scene:
      Narrator: We've known her since she was 14, you sickos!
  • Fanon Discontinuity: invoked At the very, very end (as in, five seconds before the end of the video) of the Honest Trailer for The Bourne Trilogy (Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum), the narrator realizes they forgot that there was a fourth movie starring Jeremy Renner ("admit it, you did too").
  • Fat Comic Relief:
    • Sums up Kevin James in Grown Ups.
      Narrator: Fat Kevin James is fat! [montage of Kevin James making fat jokes] Did we mention he's totally fat?
    • Also Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect.
      Narrator: If it seems mean-spirited and lazy to laugh at a girl for being fat, don't worry! She does it to herself, so it's totally okay! [montage of Fat Amy making fat jokes] Hehe! Get it? She's fat!
  • Faux Action Girl:
    • The description of Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) in the Batman Forever Honest Trailer:
      Narrator: She's got brains, brawn, and she's not using either of them, because all she does is perv out on a stranger in a rubber suit.
      [montage of Meridian trying to seduce Batman]
    • The Honest Trailer for the first three Indiana Jones movies notes how Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark, despite being set up as being as tough and smart as Indy, keeps getting captured throughout the movie.
  • Faux Horrific:
    • In the Honest Trailer for The Conjuring movie franchise, the narrator laments that, unlike the movie versions, the actual Ed and Lorraine Warren probably were fakes and wonders if ghost hunters on TV today are as full of it - and then starts screaming in horror upon seeing footage from Ghost Adventures:
    Narrator: It's horrible! Make it stop, please! Nun, take me away!
    • In the Honest Trailer for Bird Box, the narrator thinks the movie's monsters, which are never seen shown on screen, are underwhelming and that the film makers should have stuck to the original design - then changes his mind when early designs of the monsters are shown and remind him of his greatest terror: the dancing old guy from the Six Flags commercial.
  • Female Gaze: Referring to Lewis who "can't resist male nudity" in RoboCop (1987): "Baaawllz!"
  • Fight Scene Failure: invoked
    • The Superman IV: The Quest for Peace Honest Trailer mocks the movie for the ridiculously filmed fight scenes between Superman and Nuclear Man, describing them as "some of the most poorly executed sissy fights ever put to celluloid".
    • The Honest Trailer for Iron Fist shows ways the show masked Finn Jones' lack of martial arts training when the show was made, making the use of stunt doubles pretty obvious, like setting fight scenes in the dark, having Danny wear some sort of mask during them, use weird camera angles that either don't really show Danny or show him from above, or just having Danny use his fist power to overpower his opponents or giving some of the bigger fight scenes to the co-stars.
  • First-World Problems:
    • In Grown Ups, "Adam Sandler has Adam Sandler problems: he's too rich, and his wife is too hot."
    • Also done with Jasmine in Aladdin, who has "the ultimate first world problem."
  • Five-Token Band: The honest trailer for the XXX Franchise remarks how protagonist Xander teams up with a team of multi-ethic world celebrities, to increase worldwide ticket sales.
  • Flanderization:
    • The Narrator notes that, as the Saw franchise continued, the "cool, well-thought-out traps" of the first movie "turned into complete parodies of themselves", and "horrific violence happening offscreen" became "the star of the franchise".
    • 'In the trailer for The Simpsons Movie, the narrator points out how in the show Homer started as a flawed, but caring father, but by the time the movie got made he had evolved into an irredeemable jerkass crossed with Wile E Coyote.
  • Flame War: Due to how divisive the film was, the Honest Trailer for Ghostbusters (2016) defied it and turned off the comments ("You brought this to yourselves!").
  • Flat Character: invoked The Maze Runner has Thomas, "the handsome, brave protagonist... and that's really all there is to say about him."
  • Flat-Earth Atheist: The Honest Trailer for the first three Indiana Jones movies point out how strange it is that, despite living in a world where Christianity, Judaism and (an offensive version of) Hinduism are all shown to be real, Indy says he doesn't believe in magic or "superstitious hocus-pocus".
  • Fold the Page, Fold the Space: Described in the "Starring" part of the Honest Trailer for the first season of Stranger Things as "The Only Way Pop Culture Knows How To Explain Alternate Dimensions".
  • Follow the Leader: invoked
  • Forgot About His Powers: The Honest Trailer for Pacific Rim claims that the pilots of Gipsy Danger forgot about their game breaking sword.
  • Four Lines, All Waiting:
    • Because Watchmen (2009) tries to adapt the whole 12-issue graphic novel as one single movie, it gets so many plotlines that its Honest Trailer describes watching it as feeling like binge-watching an entire season of Lost by watching every episode all at once.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Predator complains that the movie has no less than five different plotlines, which bogs down the story.
    Narrator: Did you love the razor-focused intensity of the first and only good one? Well, too bad, because this is about a team of outcasts being hunted by an alien, and a Predator rebelling against his own people to save the Earth, and an autistic boy's unlikely gifts, and one soldier's quest to clear his name, and a biologist unravelling the mystery of human-Predator evolution - all. At the same. Time..
  • Franchise Killer: invoked
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • Invoked regarding Terminator 2: Judgment Day, "an amazing film with horrible consequences", namely, the overvaluing of sequels, stars and CGI that has only incrementally improved since then, rather than the story that made all those things work.
    • In the Star Wars trailer, the narrator points out the similarities in Wangst between Mark Hamill's role as Luke Skywalker and Hayden Christensen's controversial portrayal as Anakin. In the same video, he points out that the movie turned Hollwood towards similar special effect-filled action blockbusters, which were a huge deal at the time but are now released every single year.
    • The Honest Game Trailer for Halo remarks how the games established several first person shooter gameplay features that some feel nerfed the genre by making the games too easy, such as regenerating health and frequent checkpoints.
      Narrator: Back in my day, when we died, we played the whole level all over again. It was super-boring and we liked it!
    • The Honest Game Trailer for Gears of War shows how the game set the tone for several later third person shooter games with huge, muscular protagonists and brownish color filters.
    • While the Honest Trailer for Jaws is very positive about it, it also points out how the film became an early example of great movies getting unnecessary sequels that just keep coming whether viewers want them or not and inspired countless crappy shark horror movies.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Blair Witch Project mentions its viral marketing made of Missing Persons posters that accidentally had people believing the actors were missing and inspired the viral marketing tactics used today.
      Narrator: This movie basically invented catfishing, good job.
    • While the Honest Trailer for The Empire Strikes Back is very positive about the movie, it points out how its somewhat darker and more serious tone has resulted in the title being used to describe any movie sequel that's darker than the predecessor. Similar to the Wangst of Hamill and Christensen described above, the Narrator gets his mind blown again when he realizes how similar the jumping and flipping Yoda trains Luke to do is to Yoda's lightsaber fight in Attack of the Clones.
    • The Honest Trailer for Return of the Jedi suggests that the movie is to blame for various issues fans have with the franchise, such as cementing the movies' habit of recycling the plot points of Rebels attacking an evil space station and people walking through deserts from A New Hope, permanently making the franchise more childfriendly overall and placing emphasis on the Skywalker family drama.
    • The trailer for Batman Returns points out how this movie is in fact guilty of several of the things that made its two sequels by Joel Schumacher, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, so universally hated, like kinky characters, cheesy dialogue, and campiness (like the Penguin using an army of pinguins to bombard Gotham).
  • Franchise Zombie: invoked
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Freudian Slip: In the Top Gun trailer, the narrator tries to impersonate an easily impressionable consumer of military propaganda after mentioning all the things "you love about present-day America", but his attempt doesn't go as smoothly as he'd hoped.
    Narrator: Hell yeah! Let's go kiss some dudes! I mean, kiss some ass! I, I mean, buy some planes! Yeah, that's what I meant.
  • Freud Was Right: Invoked in the Honest Trailer for Man of Steel about the Kryptonian ships, which the narrator describes as "shaped like wangs," and this delightfully twisted punch line:
    Lois: It (the Kryptonian Key) won't go all the way in!
    Narrator: Heh heh heh... That's what she said!
  • Fridge Logic: Invoked often.
    • In The Dark Knight: "Wait, why didn't they just blame the Joker for all these deaths? He's been killing people for the entire movie!"
    • In Inception: "If Cobb couldn't enter the country, couldn't Michael Caine just fly the kids out to him? Oh, whatever."
    • In The Notebook: "So wait, he wrote her hundreds of letters but couldn't just call her once?"
    • In Harry Potter: "If magic is supposed to be secret, why is there a doorway in the most highly-trafficked subway station in London? Why are all the bad boys in one house? Why don't they just expel them? And why isn't it disturbing that this rat on Ron's lap is actually a grown man?"
    • And in The Dark Knight Rises video, RedLetterMedia appears to pick apart its plot holes just like they did with Prometheus.
    • Done in the Five Nights at Freddy's with the fact that keeping the doors closed takes more energy than keeping them open, only for Bonnie to Jump Scare him (again).
    • In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, they point out that despite having infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. all the way to the upper ranks, HYDRA made no attempt to stop Fury from reviving Captain America and forming the Avengers, despite the fact that this would pose a threat to their future plans.
    • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, they wonder who took the time and effort to design logos for video clips of the future Justice League members.
    • In Memento, they wonder how the main character, Leonard, can't remember anything since the death of his wife, but can still remember the details of his amnesiac condition.
    • In the Honest Trailer for Us, they list several questions concerning the logistics and existence of The Tethered, though they first acknowledge that it works very well as an allegory.
  • "Friends" Rent Control: Brought up, appropriately enough, in the Honest Trailer for Friends.
    Narrator: Watch these sporadically unemployed 20-somethings live in multi-million dollar apartments.
  • From Bad to Worse: The Honest Trailer for Batman: The Killing Joke describes the adaptation's failed attempts to address some of the rather controversial parts of the graphic novel; more specifically, its bad treatment of Barbara Gordon. Unfortunately, the way they "fixed" it meant giving the story a long, unnecessary prologue with more and worse sexist implications than the original story that ultimately contributes nothing to the story people actually came to see.
    Narrator: Fans loved The Killing Joke comic for its twisted Batman-Joker storyline, and criticized it for glossing over Barbara Gordon's victimization and torture. Now, Warner Brothers is fighting fire... with gasoline. [...] So... problem solved. By creating many, many more problems.
  • Furry Confusion: brought up in the honest trailer for A Goofy Movie:
    Narrator: Welcome to the world of Goofy. Where the fish are fish, the birds are birds, and everyone else is somewhere on the spectrum between dog, cat and man.

    G 
  • G-Rated Sex: The Intercourse with You song and "Do Me Eyes" in The Lion King (1994).
  • Gag Censor:
    • During the trailer for Titanic (1997), Rose's breast during the nude scene is censored by James Cameron's face.
    • During the Honest Trailer for Showgirls, nipples are censored by Hal Rudnick's face.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Witcher (2019), when suggesting that Anya Chalotra got a "Daenerys post-Season 1 'my eyes are up here' contract", show a scene from Season 1 when her breasts were displayed, but censor them with the headline of an article about why there was less sex and nudity in Season 2.
  • Gambit Roulette:
    • The trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice neatly lampshades that Lex Luthor's evil plan is very much this trope, to the point the narrator asks for a list to recount its steps.
      If any one thing in this impossibly intricate plan over which I have almost no control over anyone's actions goes wrong, I'm screwed.
    • Zemo's plan in Captain America: Civil War is just as much, complete with the narrator asking for a similar list to the above.
    • In the trailer for Total Recall (1990), Cohaagen's plan is relatively simple compared to the above two (to the point that no outline is needed), but the trailer points out that it relies on rather improbable events that are outside of Cohaagen's control. Cohaagen lampshades it by saying, "Frankly, I'm amazed it worked."
  • Game-Breaker: invoked The Honest Game Trailer for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard argues that the game is only at its most terrifying and suspenseful until you get access to more powerful weapons, at which point all that goes out the window.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain:
    • The description of Steppenwolf in Justice League:
      Narrator: He's got a generic look, a generic motivation, and super-generic dialogue [...] How is it possible they ripped off everything from The Avengers except the good villain? Come on, Joss; it's not stealing if you do it from yourself.
    • The trailer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe draws attention to how a lot of the villains from the movies in this franchise tend to be rather bland, underdeveloped, or just an evil copy of the hero. And the few that are memorable are promptly killed off.
    • The Honest Trailer for SHAZAM! (2019) points out how the Seven Deadly Sins could have been very interesting villains, with each one of them representing a different flaw of humanity, but instead we got seven pretty much indistinguishable monsters that are just interested in eating people.
    • The MCU suffering this is brought up again in the trailer for The Marvels (2023), which doesn't even mention the villain until the stinger, when the narrator realizes he forgot to cover her. And his description of her goes: "Big hammer, makes this dumb face a lot, dies, never to be seen again. Classic MCU".
  • Genre Blind: In the Honest Trailer for Alien: Covenant, a list of idiotic decisions made by the movie's characters includes having shower sex in the middle of a horror movie.
  • Genre-Busting:
    • The Honest Trailer for Zootopia, pretty accurately, describes it as a kid's movie/noir crime thriller.
    • The Honest Trailer for Cruella describes it as "the world's first reimagined period satirical coming-of-age revenge heist comedy drama... thriller, that's also a prequel".
  • Genre Relaunch: The Honest Trailer for The Conjuring films credits them with being a return to more competently made horror after years of mediocre Found Footage horror movies.
  • Genre Throwback: The Expendables, "the only 80s action movie to come out in 2010".
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: invoked
    • The Honest Trailer for Warcraft (2016) mentions that the movie was somehow hugely successful in China:
      Narrator: So if you love the Warcraft games for their plot, but hate the sense of humor that made them so endearing, or if you just love to watch a bunch of dudes looking at maps, horses getting wrecked, and magic guys covered in swirly stuff, then according to the box office, you're probably Chinese.
    • The Double Feature Honest Trailer for Pacific Rim: Uprising and Tomb Raider (2018) suggests that the former was only made because the preceding movie overperformed in China.
    • The Honest Trailer for Kung Fu Panda suggests that the franchise is so big, with two sequels, five shorts, eight video games, two animated series and a theme park ride, because it's so popular in China.
    • The Honest Trailer for Godzilla vs. Kong suggests that the movie became such a hit in China because the big final battle destroys a big part of Hong Kong.
  • Gilligan Cut:
    • For Dark Souls, we have this:
      Narrator: So traverse the light, and fulfill your destiny... as one of the A-holes who won't shut up about beating the game. Oh, good for you, do it with a Rockband controller, then we'll talk.
      [shows actual footage of a player beating the Darklurker with a Rockband guitar controller]
      Narrator: Okay, wow.
    • In the Starcraft 2 Honest Trailer, the narrator describes the combat system as being marking the units and right-clicking on the enemy.
      Narrator: Pssht, how hard can that be?
      [video clip of a guy playing the game and typing at lightning-fast speed]
      Narrator: Uuuhhh... yikes.
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot: The narrator's take on Maleficent redefining the original story's concept of "true love's kiss" as being between Maleficent and Aurora:
    Narrator: If your movie comes after Frozen, true love only exists between two girls. [Beat] Aw yeah.
  • Girl-Show Ghetto: invoked The Honest Trailer for The Princess Bride draws attention to this problem:
    Narrator: Dive into the film that every kid is guaranteed to love, with a title that every boy is guaranteed to hate.
  • Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: The Honest Trailer for William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet is written mostly in iambic pentameter.
  • Groin Attack: The Honest Trailer for Total Recall (1990) calls Lori "a highly skilled crotch assassin" while showing clips of her elbowing, kicking and stomping Quaid below the belt.
  • Growing the Beard: invoked
  • Gun Porn:
    • Rather than give characters funny nicknames, the Starring part of the Honest Trailer for The Division lists a bunch of pimped-out firearms and, at the end of the list, just calls the bland, non-descript characters in the game "Whatever".
    • The Ratchet & Clank Honest Trailer lists the many kinds of cartoonish guns featured in the games.
  • Gushing About Shows You Like: invoked

    H 

    I 
  • I Am Not Shazam: invoked
    • "Meet Link, the iconic hero idiots still refer to as Zelda." Ironically, the narrator still credits him as Zelda in both the Ocarina of Time trailer and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild trailer.
    • The Honest Trailer for Doctor Who (Classic) addresses the invokedFandom-Enraging Misconception of referring to the Doctor as "Doctor Who", pointing out that it's not so odd to do so since the character was actually credited as such for several years.
  • I Can't Believe I'm Saying This:
    • At the end of the Gone Girl Honest Trailer, the narrator remarks that the movie could have used more Tyler Perry, a.k.a. "Madea A Good Movie For Once", and is surprised that he actually said that.
    • During the The Social Network Honest Trailer, the narrator wishes for another Facebook movie and is surprised that he said that.
  • I Resemble That Remark!: In the Honest Game Trailer for Grand Theft Auto V, the narrator flies into rage when denying that games like this turn people into violent sociopaths.
  • Identical Stranger: Characters from one film are often credited as similar characters from another film.
  • Idiot Hero: The remastered Avatar derides Jake Sully as stupid, includes a brief montage of people calling him stupid, and says that if he let the Na'vi get curb-stomped in their first battle and got "bailed out by birds in the end," he's "an extremely dumb hero, even by chosen one standards."
  • Idiot Plot: invoked
  • Ignored Expert: The Honest Trailer for Aliens points out how many characters don't find Ripley's advice credible even though she has survived an encounter with the Xenomorphs already.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: "To get back his children, Cobb's team will have to fight anonymous dream soldiers who have no idea how to hit anything with an automatic weapon, or duck."
  • In a World…: Most trailers start with variants of this, along with describing the source book or director.
    • For instance, Avatar starts with "In a world created by fat computer programmers, comes a film so epic it increased ticket prices three whole dollars."
    • World War Z arrives "In a world where zombies have already infected every facet of pop culture..."
    • The Honest Trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road contains almost all the cliches from movie trailers:
      In a World of wall-to wall CGI, where practical action is a thing of the past, a masterpiece of handcrafted death and destruction will rise...
      ...one woman will rise against him.
      Together, they'll embark on a two-hour game of Mario Kart from hell...
      Journey to a wasteland...
    • The Spectre trailer tweaks it starting with "In a year with four different blockbuster spy films, the great granddaddy of them all is back, and it's bringing absolutely nothing new to the table." They also bring their own version of the "If you only see one movie this year..." line:
      Narrator: If you only see one movie this year about a hero who belongs to a different era, battling a sleeper cell inside his own organization, with their own octopus logo, against a former that was presumed dead in the snow... you should probably just rewatch The Winter Soldier. It's way better anyway.
    • The opening for the Honest Trailer for The Purge movies:
      Narrator: In a world full of senseless violence, political strife and corporate greed, three movies about those things also exist.
    • The Honest Trailer for It: Chapter Two opens with "In a world going through its second Stephen King-assaince", referring to how his books have become a such a hot source for adaptations lately.
    • The Honest Trailer for Birds of Prey (2020) opens by pointing out how Warner Bros. have started moving away from the story set up by Suicide Squad (2016):
      Narrator: In a world where Warner Bros. wishes Jared Leto never existed...
      [displays article about how the upcoming James Gunn Suicide Squad movie looks better than the previous one]
      Narrator: In fact, where all of Suicide Squad was a lie, forget it ever happened.
    • The opening for the Tiger King Honest Trailer:
      Narrator: In a world where the quarantined masses cry out for entertainment...
  • Indecisive Medium: The trailer for Cats has the narrator wonder why the movie choose to keep the constraints of a stage production, rather than embrace the new medium and make full use of it.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp points out how Sonny Burch, a normal guy with no superpowers, is hopelessly outclassed by the superpowered heroes and his also superpowered rival villain Ghost.
    Narrator: He's going after four of the smartest people in the MCU with nothing but a cell phone and a dream. Oh, come on, Iron Fist could beat this guy. [shows an article about Iron Fist being cancelled after two seasons] Iron Fist.
  • Improbable Infant Survival: In Jurassic Park, relive the "electrifying excitement of watching a child in constant peril, who cannot die."
  • Incurable Cough of Death: In Breaking Bad, meet chemistry teacher Walter White. "He's got the kind of cancer that makes you cough a lot." [Cue an Overly Long montage of every instance where Walter White explodes in a coughing fit]
  • Informed Ability:
    • The Honest Trailer for WandaVision points out how, contrary to what Agatha's theme song "Agatha All Along" claims, she really wasn't that clued in on what was happening:
      Narrator: [to the tune of "Agatha All Along"] ♫ "It's been Wanda's repressed trauma all along, but Agatha kinda nudged her in that direction" ♫ [normal speech] doesn't exactly top the charts though, huh?
    • The Honest Trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings remarks that Shang-Chi, despite being set up as a martial arts master, keeps getting defeated by other fighters throughout the movie.
  • Informed Deformity: Invoked again in Ready Player One (2018), which takes quite a jab at Samantha's supposedly ugly birthmark:
    Narrator: But she's got a birthmark. A faint discoloration on her face, and you can barely see it in most lighting? No, the humanity! No look away, it's so horrible!
  • Ink-Suit Actor: The Honest Trailer for Moana describes Maui as "an all-powerful, charismatic, brawling, tattooed demi-god. So, pretty much The Rock".
  • In Name Only:
    • In World War Z, "get ready for the big screen adaptation of the best-selling novel that's got everything you loved about... the title, and [absolutely] nothing else." Later on in the video, a list scrolls by of all the book's awesome moments that were left out of the film.
    • The trailer for Spider-Man (Japan) points out how it has virtually nothing in common with the American Spider-Man, other than the suit, name and basic powers of the hero.
    • The Honest Trailer for Masters of the Universe points out how, despite being a movie adaptation of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983), pretty much all hero characters besides He-Man himself, as well as several villains, are Adapted Out, the setting is changed to present day Earth, and half the movie is about two new characters and their romantic subplot. The narrator openly wonders if it’s even a He-Man movie at all.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Shining opens with the Narrator stating how Stanley Kubrick threw the novel into the trash.
    • The opening of the Honest Trailer for Starship Troopers:
      Narrator: Not at all based on the classic sci-fi novel...
    • The trailer for Street Fighter points out how, despite having characters that share the names of the characters from the video games, the movie turns the fighting game into a war movie that barely has any one on one fights.
      Narrator: Look, no-one's expecting you to do the bonus level where you fight a car or whatever, but could you maybe put some street fights in your Street Fighter movie? You had one job!
  • Insane Troll Logic: The Honest Game Trailer stinger for Team Fortress 2 uses weird math formulas to deduce a sequel, in a parody of the "Half-Life 3 confirmed" meme.
    Narraror: [at the end of the Team Fortress 2 trailer] "Team Fortress" has twelve letters in it, and has nine character classes in the game. Twelve minus nine equals three... Team Fortress 3 is confirmed, you guys!
  • Insistent Terminology: In the Honest Trailer for A New Hope, they insist on referring to it as Star Wars ("the first one"), likely because the subtitle was added later (though later Honest Trailers refer to it as A New Hope).
  • Instant Expert: In the The Force Awakens trailer, the original Epic Voice Guy accuses Rey of being one, and that it makes her less interesting. Even calling her a MaRey Sue during the Starring section.
    Epic Voice Guy: She's a multilingual, expert mechanic, ace pilot, force-using badass—
    Original Epic Voice Guy: —Who's so good at everything, it makes her character completely un-compelling.
  • Intercourse with You:
    • Frozen's Honest Trailer rewrites:
      • "Love Is An Open Door" as:
        "We are about to poooooooorrrrk
        Totally gonna pooooooork"
      • "Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People" gets rewritten as:
        "I'm kinda turned on by reindeer..."
    • The Lion King (1994)'s Honest Trailer has this "slow jam" to remix "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?":
      "We are going to pork tonight (Lions are gonna pork!)
      Yeah, we are totally gonna pooooooork
      It was nice to be childhood friends with ya,
      But now it's time to pooooooork"
    • And then there's The Little Mermaid (1989), where "Kiss the Girl" is rewritten as:
      "Sha la la la, go for it dude
      Her fish friends set the mood
      For you to pork the girl
      Sha la la la, why not raise the stakes?
      Do carpet match the drapes?
      Find out and pork the girl."
    • Aladdin's "A Whole New World" becomes an "I'll Pork This Girl."
  • Invincible Hero: The Honest Trailer for Black Adam remarks on how the character's incredible power and indestructability takes away all the tension from the movie since he clearly can't be defeated and describes him as "a video game character with infinite health and five stars on GTA":
    Black Adam: No point in fighting. We both know no-one can stop me.
    Narrator: [bored] Yeah, we know. Can we just end the movie, then?
  • It's Been Done:
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks!: invoked LEGO Marvel Super Heroes and LEGO Batman both get mocked for being purposely made so easy to play since they're made for small children.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: invoked
    • In the videos for the Five Nights at Freddy's games, the narrator gets increasingly annoyed by how similar the games are since they use pretty much the exact same basic mechanics every game, with the exception of the fourth one, where you can finally move.
      Narrator: Security cameras, furries, jump scares, blah blah blah blah blah, you get it by now.
    • In the Spectre video, the narrator dully lists all the standard James Bond tropes, like gadgets and cool cars.
    • The Honest Trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse jabs at it for recycling so many elements from the previous X-Men movies, like another Wolverine origin story, another Quicksilver sequence and another Dark Phoenix story.
    • In addition to complaining how Dead Rising 4 has lost many of the things that made the series unique, the Honest Trailer notes that the game is set in the same town in the same mall as the last game, with the same main character, pretty much the same gameplay and a similar plot.
    • After pointing out all the many, many things that are essentially the same in Mass Effect: Andromeda as in the original trilogy, despite it being set in a whole different galaxy, the narrator says that the best thing you can say for the game is that, well... it sure is another Mass Effect game.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Lion King (2019) points out how it doesn't do anything new compared to the 1994 original, and has none of the charm from that movie to boot.
    • The Stinger in the Honest Trailer for The Rise of Skywalker laments how same-y movies have gotten now that the same company are producing most of the big movies being released, showing how the movie and the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies feature similar tones and major story beats; specifically, the fast talking of Guardians of the Galaxy and the portals scene from Avengers: Endgame (compared to the scene where several ships appear in the nick of time to fight the First Order).note 
    • The narrator points out that Zack Snyder's Justice League has the same plot, setting, characters and themes as Joss Whedon's cut. Considering how much the narrator dislikes Joss Whedon's cut, this is not a compliment.
    • The Honest Trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings points out how MCU movies tend to feature big, special effects-heavy final battles even though the novelty value is pretty much gone:
      Narrator: Because while an emotional, expertly choreographed martial arts showdown between father and son is cool, isn't it way cooler when a bunch of weightless polygons smash into each other? No? Then why does it keep happening?
    • The Honest Trailer for Moon Knight (2022) remarks on how it recycles plot elements from other MCU movies and TV series that came out within the last year, making it all feel repetitive. Specifically, a final battle involving giant monsters, previously done in Eternals and Shang-Chi, and a scene where the hero meets an alternate version of himself (also done in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Loki (2021) and Spider-Man: No Way Home):
      Narrator: I mean, who says they're running out of ideas and the genre's eating itself? Me. I say that.
    • The Honest Trailer for Blue Beetle (2023) calls out the movie for recycling all the Superhero Origin tropes and plots that so many superhero movies before it already used, to the point that the only new element the movie brings is it's references to Latino culture. It also criticezes the movie for using a climax in which the hero fights a villains with similar powers or a similar suit as him; something that has also been done to death at this point.
      Narrator: Look, it's not a bad film, but we just watched 30 superhero origins in the last 10 years.
  • It Will Never Catch On:
  • I Warned You: The voice asks if people really want to see an Honest Trailer for Undertale. He follows it up with "Don't say I didn't warn you." The Honest Trailer eventually gives away a huge spoiler for the game.
  • It Was His Sled: invoked The Honest Trailer from Spider-Man: Far From Home notes how the reveal that Mysterio is actually evil won't really surprise anyone who knows that he is a prominent villain and member of the Sinister Six in the comics.

    J 
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: invoked The trailer for Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) asserts that the real "ridiculous, over-the-top villain" is not Freddy or William Afton, but Mike and Abby's Aunt Jane.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: A third of the Avatar trailer is trying to summarize the premise but having to speed up the video to get through all of it.
  • Jitter Cam:
    • The Honest Trailer for The Hunger Games states that in it "the poor struggle for survival in unnecessary shaky-cam, but can still somehow afford futuristic projection thingies."
    • The Honest Trailer for the Mission: Impossible film series cites "shaky cam" as what J. J. Abrams brought to Mission: Impossible III.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Bourne Series describes the intense, up-close and shaky photography of the fight scenes as "strapping a GoPro to a meth head":
      Narrator: Man, that is shaky. This is really hard to follow, guys. I'm getting kinda dizzy. Eugh, why did I think it was a good idea to sit in the front row? Oh, I think I'm gonna be sick! [chokes]
    • John Wick is praised for not relying on this or quick cuts to make good action scenes; as contrast, they show a clip of Taken 3 using both shaky camerawork and several cuts and camera angles just for a shot of Brian Mills jumping over a fence.
      Narrator: Man, that must have taken them a while. [chuckles] I mean, seriously, that was, like, 14 different camera angles.
  • Joke Exhaustion: In the trailer for Spectre, the "Starring" section begins with a string of six different punny names for the main character — one punning on "James Bond", followed by puns on each of Daniel Craig's predecessors in the role, and all riffing on the fact that he didn't seem to be enjoying being James Bond very much anymore.
  • Jump Scare: Used as a Running Gag in the Five Nights at Freddy's trailer.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: invoked
    • In the Honest Trailer for The Greatest Showman, the narrator gets bored with the "talky parts" and just fast-forwards to the next song.
    • During the HBO Max segment of the Honest Trailer for "Every Streaming Service", the narrator laments that, even though the service has all of HBO's acclaimed dramas, great shows from [adult swim] and several movies in The Criterion Collection, a lot of its customers are probably only using it to rewatch Friends "for the nine-hundredth time".
    • The Honest Trailer for Godzilla vs. Kong, after first ranting about the inconsistenties about the human characters between the various movies of the MonsterVerse, the narrator claims to not even care about those humans; watching the titular monsters is much more interesting.
    • In the Honest Trailer for Season 2 of The Witcher (2019), the narrator is disappointed by how the season focused more on Character Development and deepening relationships than the previous season's Monster of the Week stories:
      Narrator: Sorry, can't relate; haven't grown since the eighth grade. Now go fight something I used to doodle in my notebook margins! [scene of Geralt fighting a monster] Oh yeah, that's the stuff!
  • Just Keep Driving / Seen It All: In Skyfall, the opening action scene is described as being so action-packed, you'll forget to ask yourself, "Why didn't the conductor stop this train when its entire back carriage was ripped off? And why aren't these people scared?"

    K – L 

    M 
  • Made of Iron: The Honest Trailer for The Batman (2022) describes Batman as "both psychologically vulnerable and physically invincible," before showing him crash into an overpass, bounce off a bus and a car and roll on the ground before getting up practically unharmed.
  • Madness Mantra: The Stinger for Skull Island: Rise of Kong's Honest Trailer is just the Epic Voice Guy repeating "Forty US dollars!" over and over again in an increasingly despairing tone, unable to comprehend how such a terrible game costs that much.
  • Male Gaze:
  • Malicious Misnaming:
    • Apparently, Deadpool has the Narrator's number in his contacts listed as "Fat Betsy (Don't Pick Up)".
    • The Iron Man 3 trailer repeatedly calls Tony Stark "Regular Man" due to disappointment at how little time he spends inside the Iron Man suit in the film.
  • Magic Versus Science: The Honest Trailer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe lampshades how the movies make a point of explaining magic as science, but the science is so advanced it's basically magic.
  • Manipulative Editing: They're not always so honest and sometimes will adjust elements of shots.
    • For instance, when they complain that first half hour of The Avengers is surprisingly boring, they use a seeming casual shot of Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Banner on a quiet dock, when in the actual film the audio in the background is of the Helicarrier taking flight.
    • This is particularly bad on Thor: The Dark World. To elaborate: they say that Heimdall can see everything (which is true). "Except for this spy", "Thor's girlfriend" and "this gigantic ship directly above him". While it is true, the spy is, well, a spy. The fact that Jane can't be seen is treated as something extremely suspicious and Thor immediately sets out to find her. And for the ship, well that's because he was distracted taking down another, equally gigantic, invisible ship. On foot. With a dagger.
    • A minor one in the Until Dawn Honest Trailer, which names zombies as one of the horror movie tropes that appears in the game and shows a shot of a dead, rotten body with a rat crawling out of its mouth. In the actual game, that's not a zombie at all; it's just a plain, dead body with a rat inside it.
    • In the Honest Trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the narrator mocked the idea of the Harry Potter franchise going to America, yet still having many of their actors be British. Many of the actors shown are not British but actually Irish (Ronan Raftery and Colin Farrell). Katherine Waterston was born in Britain from American parents, but is a dual US/UK citizen educated in New York and with a mostly Hollywood career. Carmen Ejogo was born in Scotland and is a Scottish actress but she has a mostly Hollywood career since 2000 and currently resides in New York.
    • Invoked in the Honest Trailer for Obi-Wan Kenobi, which suggests that it's only able to make the Star Wars prequel trilogy movies look good by cutting just the highlights into a three minute long recap montage.
  • Manly Tears: The Honest Trailer for The Flash (2014) mentions Kevin Smith's being driven to tears by the series' emotional first season finale. The narrator also struggles to hold back tears about the same scene.
  • Medal of Dishonor:
    • The Honest Trailer for Cars and Cars 2 points out that the latter became some less than thrilling "firsts" for Pixar, like their first movie not to get nominated for the Best Animated Feature Academy Award and their first movie to get a "Rotten" score on Rotten Tomatoes.
    • After Earth is such a bad movie that its Honest Trailer is the only one Epic Voice Guy doesn't finish narrating and rage-quits halfway through.
  • Medium-Shift Gag: Superman IV and Top Gun are made to look like they were taped on an old video cassette, and Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Entourage, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are formatted in the style of a television preview.
  • Melting-Film Effect: Seen Once per Episode during the "The following is an Honest Movie Trailer" part.
  • Meme Acknowledgmentinvoked:
  • Memetic Loser: invoked In the Honest Trailer for X-Men: The Animated Series, the "Starring" section includes "Sentinels Sucking At Their Jobs", showing clips of the Sentinels being trashed by X-Men or being klutzes.
  • Merchandise-Driven:
    • The LEGO Movie, though it's not treated as inherently negative or hurting the film — just inevitable.
    • Mocked to hell and back, of course, with the trailer for Minions, which even draws parallels to The LEGO Movie — while the latter was at least "fun" despite its "shameless marketing", Minions is nothing but "a cynical studio branding exercise" for Universal and Illumination, and more of an expensive promotional campaign than a genuine film.
    • The "Starring" part of "Frozen Fever" lists "the reasons Disney needs to keep Frozen relevant", such as an upcoming Broadway musical and a theme park as well as a ton of ordinary groceries and other goods with the Frozen brand slapped onto them, such as vitamins, canned soup and duct tape.
    • Disney Infinity, which they describe as "the biggest clusterf*ck of brand synergy since Kingdom Hearts", except all the characters are "sold separately". They proceed to chew the game out for the high cost of characters and in-game objects.
    • The Honest Trailer for Space Jam mocks it for apparently having been made mostly to market Looney Tunes and Air Jordans. Its sequel, meanwhile, gets reamed for its ridiculous amount of product placement both within and outside of its production company, to the point where its "Honest Title" is even listed as It's Not TV, It's an Ad for HBO.
    • For The Emoji Movie, the biggest complaint is how the movie is obviously meant to be one big advertisement, with things like plot and character development being considered less important and being degraded to last place.
    • The Honest Trailer for Return of the Jedi states that the Ewoks were inspired by puppy dogs, bear cubs, and toy sales.
    • The Honest Trailer for The Transformers: The Movie draws attention to how the movie killed off several major Transformers, including Optimus Prime, mainly to just wipe out the existing toy line and make room for the new one.
  • Milestone Celebration:
    • Lampshaded in-universe on the 300 trailer.
      Narrator: Can you believe it? We made 50 of these dumb things.
    • They celebrated reaching 100 Honest Trailers with the trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey with a special opening that followed the comment flooding at the beginning.
    • For the 200th Honest Trailer (Logan), there is also a special opening that followed the comment flooding at the beginning, a new title card, and the return of Deadpool (incidentally whose first appearance, the Honest Trailer for his film, was the 150th Honest Trailer).
    • For the 300th Honest Trailer, they tackled the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
    • For the 400th Honest Trailer, they made a similar video covering the DC Extended Universe.
  • Minimalist Cast:
  • Misaimed Marketing: invoked
  • Missing Mom: In the A Goofy Movie trailer, the narrator wonders where Max’s mom is after first praising the movie for having a protagonist with an actually alive parent.
  • Missing Trailer Scene: invoked The Honest Trailers for Rogue One and Justice League have a "Not Starring" bit showing some of the scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor but still appeared in the trailers.
  • Money, Dear Boy: invoked Sometimes used as an explanation for why good, respectable actors take roles in bad or mediocre movies.
  • Monochrome Casting:
    • The Lord of the Rings "will strive to prove that people of all walks of life can work together, as long as they're all white (Seriously, even when they die, they come back whiter)."
    • Alice in Wonderland (2010) has "really, really, really white people".
    • In Entourage, "almost everyone [in Los Angeles] is white".
    • The Honest Trailer for Home Alone invites viewers to "Travel to the all white part of Chicago".
    • The Honest Trailer for The Kissing Booth and The Kissing Booth 2 points out how their version of Los Angeles is "so white, you'll swear you're actually in South Africa", because invokedthat's where the movies were filmed.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • The opening for the Honest Game Trailer for God of War:
      Narrator: [footage of a Mickey Mouse game, told in a happy voice] From David Jaffe, one of the developers behind Disney's Mickey Mania...
      [sudden cut to gory footage of God of War, normal epic voice]
      Narrator: ...comes a game of sex, violence and betrayal that's absolutely nothing like Disney's Mickey Mania.
    • "From the company that owns a monopoly on teenage girl fantasies comes the only film about starving children... with its own delicious sandwich diet!" from the The Hunger Games: Catching Fire trailer.
    • The Honest Game Trailer for Dark Souls and Dark Souls II:
      Narrator: [speaks in a lighthearted tone and shows clips from cuddly-looking games] Some people play games to relax. Some play for fun. [switches to his usual epic voice and shows clips from Dark Souls] Others just want a game to f*ck them 'til they love it.
    • The Honest Trailer for Terminator 2: Judgment Day opens with describing it as "another adorable kid and their pet robot story" in the vein of R2-D2 in Star Wars, The Iron Giant and Short Circuit, before cutting to scenes of the T-800 tearing flesh off of his arm to expose his android skeleton and noting "only this one's fucking intense!"
    • The beginning of the Honest Trailer for Magic Mike rapidly cuts between the flashy performance scenes and the darker, more dramatic plot points.
      Narrator: [upbeat] Meet Magic Mike! He may not be a wizard but he is a hot dude with all the right moves. [somberly] Who struggles to overcome social stigmas about his job and can't seem to raise enough money to start his dream business no matter how hard he tries.
    • Lampshaded in Furious 7, where they go straight from talking about how touching and heartfelt Paul Walker's sendoff was to the puntastic "Starring..." credits.
      Narrator: I honestly never expected a Fast and Furious movie to make me cry. That was really well-done. So... This is an awkward transition, but... who's ready for some car puns?
    • The trailer for the 2016 Emmys does a major one from dark and depressing to bright and uplifting when describing Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a.k.a. Wacky Room:
      Narrator: [black and white footage, serious tone] She was abducted by a sexually abusive cult leader. She was trapped in a bunker for years. Now she's out, and she's looking for... [color footage, happy tone] a job and a boyfriend!
    • Similar to the Magic Mike example above, the Honest Trailer for The Incredibles quickly swings between happy and depressed when listing elements of the movie:
      Narrator: [uplifting tone] Experience a film that's got a little bit of everything, from Silver Age comic book heroes, [somber tone] to a dark snapshot of a dying marriage, [uplifting] slick, retro James Bond style [somber] to the portrait of a midlife crisis, [uplifting] the warm glow of familial love [somber] to the soul-crushing, modern-day workplace. Once again, you'll pay Pixar to yank your heart around like an emotional yo-yo.
    • The Honest Trailer for It (1990) opens with the narrator announcing ABC's programms of November 18, 1990. It's mostly sitcoms and other funny shows, but in between are parts 1 and 2 of "the miniseries about the clown that eats your children". The narrator notibly switches from a cheery voice to a creepy one when announcing "IT", and the background music also suddenly changes.
    • The Honest Trailer for Mulan points out how the movie constantly switches between a grim war story, and the hijinks of a G-rated Eddie Murphy.
    • The Honest Trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever opens by lampooning how the movie gives the late Chadwick Boseman a dignified sendoff while also squeezing in setups for upcoming spinoffs and sequels:
      Narrator: In a universe full of characters past their prime, gone for good, or just 'No',note  the MCU will mourn the loss of a real-life hero... [upbeat] between setting up Ironheart on Disney+, Thunderbolts in theaters next year, Black Panther 3, coming soon, and screw it why not? Black Panther 4: Son of Black Panther. You can't be sure of anything in this life, except for death and Disney sequels.
  • Motive Decay: Commented on in the Game of Thrones trailer.
    Narrator: ...and Daenerys Targaryen, a super-hot queen obsessed with her dragons ("WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?!"). She's out for vengeance against the people who killed her family. Eventually... one of these days... can we just fast forward to that part?
  • Motor Mouth:
    • The narrator does this in the Honest Trailer for Avatar when describing the movie's setup.
    • In the Five Nights at Freddy's 3 video, the narrator gives a Long List of plot holes and questions the game never properly answers, his speech being more and more sped up as he goes.
  • Moveset Clone: The Honest Game Trailer for Super Smash Bros. credits such playable characters, such as Link's counterparts Young Link and Wind Waker Link, as "Attack of the Clones".
  • Mr. Exposition:
    • In Inception, Arthur is "a sidekick whose only job is to explain the plot."
    • In Suicide Squad, Rick Flagg is "a chicken chomping exposition machine who blurts out whatever the plot needs him to."
    • In Doctor Strange (2016), Mordo "is just kinda there to explain things".
    • In Power Rangers (2017), Zordon "is there to do two things: dump loads of exposition on the audience, and... Okay, he's only here to do one thing."
  • Mr. Fanservice:
    • In Titanic, Jack is "an unrealistically sexy peasant."
    • "In Jurassic Park, "And re-witness the GOLDBLUM." (Steamy music plays over shots of Malcolm lounging around with his shirt ripped open.)
    • In Man of Steel, the narrator first calls out Henry Cavill for his uninteresting acting, but then sees him shirtless and forgoes his criticisms.
      Narrator: My god, what a beefcake.
    • The Hunger Games films have a Running Gag of the narrator finding Gale hot.
      Narrator: I mean, I'm not gay, but I would totally s*** Gale's d***!
    • In The Force Awakens, "Poe Dameron's beautiful face" is credited as one of the highlights of the movie.
    • In Captain America: Civil War, Chris Evans is referred to as a beefcake and the narrator volunteers to have sex with Captain America.
      Narrator: Ninety years old and this guy is still a virgin? Someone please have sex with Captain America already! Hell, you know what? I'll do it! I'll bend over right now!
  • Ms. Fanservice:
    • In Titanic, Rose is "a first class suicidal pair of boobs."
    • In Avatar, "Meet Neytiri, but more importantly, meet her side bluebs."
    • In The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) doesn't escape their oogles either.
    • Black Widow in The Avengers is referred to as "Leather Boobs", mocking her tight-fitting leather Spy Catsuit.
    • Emma Watson is credited as "your first erection" while playing Hermione.
    • Mystique: "Wait, is she naked? She's totally naked, right? Man, somebody got to paint that on her BEWBS, to make them, you know, BLEWBS... [Beat] I am so lonely."
    • Refers to both Daenerys/Emilia Clarke and Margaery/Natalie Dormer in Game of Thrones as "super hot".
    • In NieR: Automata, 2B is noted for her "bigger android butts" and "thick, thick robo-thighs".
    • The Honest Trailer for Wonder Woman describes the title character as this, but also stresses that's far from her only good quality:
      Narrator: She's optimistic, confident, iron-willed, vulnerable, uncompromising, and just... so hot! I-I can say that, right? I mean, I don't wanna come off as James Cameron,note  cuz it's definitely not the only thing that she's got going for, but damn!
  • MST3K Mantra: invoked Invoked by Deadpool in his Honest Trailer for Honest Trailers (during the Deadpool 2 Honest Trailer), where he makes fun of their habit of nitpicking logic points:
    Deadpool: Well, actually, if Cable changed the future, he wouldn't have to travel back in the first place.
    Narrator: Yeah, good point.
    Deadpool: No, you pedantic horsec*ck! It's a movie about a cyborg cartoon with huge pouches and tiny feet; stop pretending it's the real world!
  • Mundane Made Awesome:
    • At the end of the video, viewers can submit comments of quotes they'd like hear the narrator say in his awesome voice. They're often random things, like "poop fiddles".
    • The STARES in Twilight, which are put to epic music.note  They later make a return in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Honest Trailer in the form of S.T.A.R.E.S.,note  even using the same epic music.
    • In Skyfall, Bond uses the latest technological gadgets, which include a gun, a knife, a shotgun, an old-timey gun (a revolver), and a tracking device "larger than the one Bond used in the 60s'." Averted, however, in the trailer for the next Bond film, Spectre, where the narrator couldn't sound more bored while he "checks all the old tropes off the list."
      Narrator: [with half-hearted amazement] The car! The gadgets! The catchphrases! Aaand underdeveloped female sex objects.
    • Mad Max: Fury Road: "A two hour chase scene ensues when they dare... to turn... left!"
    • The Social Network gets praised for taking scenes that could have turned out really boring and made them cool:
      Narrator: ...[i]n this masterpiece of crap that proves Aaron Sorkin could making boring litigation exciting, David Fincher could make applying for an internship look awesome, and Trent Reznor could make rowing down a calm river feel epic.note 
  • Musical Episode: Les Misérables (2012), the narrator lampshades how annoying it is that the characters convey things in song that would be done perfectly well with normal dialogue.
    Narrator: Seriously, they sing everything. So to hit that point even harder, we thought we'd sing the rest of the trailer. [And they do]
  • My Friends... and Zoidberg:
    • The Grown Ups trailer describes the actors as "an All-Star Cast of comedic actors... and Rob Schneider."
    • The Kingdom Hearts trailer features "some of Disney's most beloved characters... and also Quasimodo" and "your favourite Final Fantasy heroes... and also Vivi".
    • The segment for The Martian in the Honest Trailer for the Oscars names Ridley Scott as "the director of all your favorite science ficion movies... and also Prometheus".
    • The Sound of Metal segment from the Oscars 2021 video begins: "Meet Ruben, a hardcore rocker who loses his hearing, which is a nightmare scenario for a musician... and, I guess, pretty bad for drummers, too."
  • My God, What Have I Done?: The narrator realizes with mounting horror that the Sonic franchise hasn't just produced an increasing number of mediocre-to-terrible games, but indirectly created the "terrifying hell-pit" that is its fandom, including Chris-Chan.
  • Mysterious Stranger: Funnily invoked with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: "A mysterious stranger appears from the sky, a mysterious stranger appears at sea, a mysterious stranger appears on land, and three mysterious strangers go looking for the other mysterious strangers."

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