Series / The Goldbergs

Like your family was so cool in the '80s.

"When it comes to my childhood, I may not always remember exactly when something happened or exactly who was there. But I do know that it was nineteen eighty-something and it...was...awesome."

— Adam F. Goldberg

The Goldbergs is an American period sitcom on ABC. The first episode premiered on September 24, 2013 to a viewing audience of 8.94 million viewers. The show revolves around the life of 12-year-old Adam Goldberg (Sean Giambrone) and his family during the 1980s. He regularly has to deal with his older sister Erica (Hayley Orrantia), older brother and middle child Barry (Troy Gentile), and parents Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and Murray (Jeff Garlin). His maternal grandfather "Pops" (George Segal) is also a member of the main cast. The show features a mix of traditional camerawork and "home video" footage taken from Adam's camera.

Not to be confused with the 1929–55 radio/TV sitcom The Goldbergs, nor with professional wrestler Bill Goldberg.^note Though he does have a recurring role on this show as Coach Nick Mellor. A spin-off of the series, Schooled, ran for two seasons.

The show was announced to be wrapping after 10 seasons in 2023.

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The show provides the following tropes:

• The '80s: This show is essentially a nostalgia listicle in television form.
• '80s Hair: Beverly's hair, which bounces constantly when her head moves.
• Aborted Arc:
  • The last few episodes of season four have Uncle Marvin moving in with the family and starting work at Murray's furniture store. When the next season starts, he seems to no longer be living with the Goldbergs, and his job at the furniture store is only shown once after. Possibly justified as a result of unreliable narrator.
  • The same season has Murray promise Erica that he'll finish his last year of college when she leaves for it. This is never brought up again the following season.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Adam's gym teacher, Mr. Mellor, keeps calling him Goldfarb, even when his name's written on the gym shirt. It's only until Adam does one pull-up on the fitness test that the gym teacher calls him Goldberg. This becomes a Running Gag as time goes on. Every so often the main conflict of the show is Adam vs. Mellor. Once Adam masters the particular skill Mr. Mellor wants him to, he calls Adam by his real name.
  • Mellor, however, consistently refers to Erica and Barry as "Goldberg".
    Mellor: (To Adam) "Nice one, Goldfarb!" (to Barry, right after) "Walk it off, Goldberg!"
  • Happens with Pop-Pop calling Adam "Barry."
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: When Bev's cookbook gets published, she assumes it's a big success and that she is now a big celebrity that can do anything she wants. It gets so bad her family stages an intervention. It's only when she attends a book fair and no one shows up to her booth that she realizes that she's not the big star she thought she was.
• Acoustic License: Averted in "Bachelor Party" when Barry, Adam and the JTP go to a nightclub, and the music is so loud it renders their dialogue inaudible to the audience, so it has to be subtitled.
• Actor Allusion:
  • In one episode Adam starts a Highlander fan club and asks the shop teacher to be the club's sponsor. The shop teacher is played by Clancy Brown, who was the Big Bad in Highlander. Later when a second Highlander club is formed the teacher insists "There can only be one...Highlander club." Plus he claims that the Kurgan was "misunderstood".
  • Rick Springfield plays the karaoke bar owner in "RAD!", so naturally "Jessie's Girl" gets played a lot.
  • Eagles radio announcer Merrill Reese played the school's play-by-play announcer in the episode, "Hail Barry".
  • In the season 7 premiere, "Vacation", Anthony Michael Hall cameoed as Rusty the Security Guard, an allusion to his role as Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon's Vacation.
    • Hall also plays a cool guidance counselor in "Game Night", who confides in Adam that he used to be a nerd like him. He then produces a photo of himself as a teenager, actually a still from Sixteen Candles.
  • "A 100% True Ghost Story" has Barry try to throw a The Rocky Horror Picture Show-themed party. Barry Bostwick (Brad Majors in the movie) plays Professor Majors, who denounces the movie for an offensive portrayal of scientists.
    Majors: [looking at the invitation] Why is this guy walkin' around in his undies?
    Barry: That's Brad. He's a doof.
    Majors: You're a doof! [student drops some papers] Dammit, Janet! [takes his glasses off]
  • Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee played Professor Lee in the episode, "Preventa Mode"; Mötley Crüe's 1985 hit song, "Home Sweet Home", played at the end.
  • John Oates plays a janitor with a band in "Oates and Oates", which has Barry claiming to be able to get Hall and Oates to perform at a telethon.
• Actually a Good Idea: Uncle Marvin buys the Goldberg kids beepers. Barry decided to use his to set up a grass mowing business. Erica is about to criticize him before admitting it's not a bad idea. On the other hand, Barry's advertisement promises to cater to his customers' "grass needs" which he doesn't realize has another meaning.
• The Ace:
  • Ruben Amaro, Jr., even to the point he plays Ball Ball better than Barry does!
  • Brea Bee is described as "The most popular girl at William Penn Academy" according to the school's yearbook; she is smart and athletic, and a talented actress, despite her having limited experience with acting.
    • Broken Ace: However, she comes from a divorced family and is raised by her mother, has to wear her orthodontic headgear at night, and has to work an afterschool job, compared to Adam's privileged lifestyle.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Adam's actor's hair is significantly lighter than the real Adam F. Goldberg's.
• Aesop Amnesia: Many characters constantly learn the same lessons again and again. This is explained by the fact that Adam is always jumbling everything up in his narration, explaining such things as seeing 1983's WarGames in theaters only a few episodes before seeing 1989's The Wizard in theaters in the exact same season.
• Affectionate Nickname : Beverly refers to all her kids as "schmoopie" or "boopie."
• Age Lift: In Real Life, Adam is six years younger than Barry and eight years younger than Eric, so the older siblings were aged down quite a bit to make them all grade school aged when the series began.
• The Alleged Car: Murray's car in "Bachelor Party", whose doors didn't open, making car pooling impossible for Bev when she has to use it. She buys him a Bitter, a rare Austrian sports car, to replace it; Murray at first wanted to return it, but changed his mind when people started complimenting it. Then it breaks down shortly afterwards, and because it's so rare, it's impossible to find parts for it, so it remained undriveable from then on.
• All There in the Script:
  • Valley Erica's last name is "Coolidge", according to one of her food containers in the episode, "The Scrunchie Rule".
  • Christie Brinkley's character in "Vacation" is named Aleah Welsh in the end credits.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents:
  • Beverly, of course. Murray also has his moments.
  • Pops still can embarrass his daughter, Beverly.
• Ambiguously Jewish: While the real Goldbergs are Jewish, the fictional ones aren't obviously Jewish. The family is named Goldberg, and Pops uses a lot of Yiddish words, but it's never a plot point. While this becomes significantly less ambiguous as the show goes on, the word "Jewish" is never specifically used to describe the Goldbergs.
  • The family makes no effort to keep kosher — Beverly prides herself on her shellfish and puts cheese on everything, including meat. Additionally, they practically lived in their local Chinese restaurant where Barry had a dish (containing an excess of pork) named after him. On the other hand, this isn't particularly indicative—as is the case today, most American Jews in The '80s were either Reform or non-observant, and many ate pork regularly. European viewers, more used to Jewish neighbours who maintain full religious custom, can be disorientated and puzzled by this.
    • In "Dinner With The Goldbergs", where the Goldbergs are The Family From Hell in a restaurant ^note  Or maybe The Family From Gehinnol, Pops makes it clear that he keeps kosher... and Beverly orders shellfish anyway.
  • In one episode where Adam and Dana have to take care of a Cabbage Patch Kid for health class, Beverly butts in trying to be the best bubbie, or grandmother.
  • Erica wants her stage name to be "Rikki Gold" because "Goldberg is... you know."
  • "A Christmas Story" confirms that the Goldbergs celebrate Hanukkah. Pops gets uncharacteristically offended when "Super Hanukkah" basically becomes Christmas in everything except religion. Their neighbors the Kremps are awkwardly unsure about whether or not inviting a neighboring family of a clearly non-Christian background to a Christmas celebration would be offensive to them.
  Hello... Goldbergs! We've been expecting you! Happy Chris... Winter Fest... Yule...
  • In the same episode, Beverly invites the Kremps to the Chinese restaurant with the Goldbergs.
    Mrs. Kremp: Who even knew restaurants were open today?
    Beverly: We knew. Chinese on Christmas, it's kind of our thing.
  • In the episode "Tasty Boys", Barry and Adam mention that the members of the Beastie Boys are fellow "members of the tribe".
  • In "The Dirty Dancing Dance", Murray mentions that he stepped on a glass at his wedding.
  • In "Big Orange," Barry pays Adam and Erica to investigate who destroyed his favorite shirt with $7000, and he states that all of it is his Bar Mitzvah money.
  • In "Fiddler", Murray calls the (Jewish) cast of Fiddler on the Roof "our people" when insisting that Adam play the lead role in an upcoming school production.
  • In "Bill's Wedding", Murray is in the local courthouse to witness a civil partnership and emphasises to the registrar that his hand will not go anywhere near a Bible.
  • Throughout the series, Beverly is called a yenta numerous times, and is shown to have yenta friends and a "yenta-dex".
• Anachronism Stew: The show refuses to say specific years, as each episode begins with present-day Adam saying the date followed by "1980-something".
  • The exact year is deliberately left ambiguous. For instance in one episode Adam and Pops are wearing Ghostbusters costumes, which would put the time 1985 or later. But in another episode Murray is watching the Phillies in the World Series which would put it in either 1980 or 1983. Yet everyone is the exact same age.
  • Adam's room uses a Miss Piggy calendar from 1982, always set to the month the episode airs in.
  • The pop culture (obsession with The Karate Kid, for example) would place it around 1984-1986, yet Barry wanted "pump" running shoes, which weren't introduced until 1989.
  • And then an episode takes place with the theatrical debut of Return of the Jedi as a plot point, which was released in 1983.^note  In fact, there's another anachronism in that episode ("A Wrestler Named Goldberg"); Barry joins the wrestling team and thinks it'll be like WWE (referred to by its earlier name of WWF in the episode), coming up with a wrestling name and trying to hit people with chairs, et al. WWE didn't really hit its level of popularity until about 1984, and "WrestleMania" and those stuffed WWE buddies didn't exist in '83 either.
  • Staying with movies, one episode involves Adam wanting to see Poltergeist while Beverly suggests The Great Mouse Detective; they came out in 1982 and 1986 respectively. To be fair, Adam said Poltergeist was playing in the dollar theater, so it was probably a re-release.
  • Another episode takes place on Adam's birthday, showing Murray Goldberg and Pops watching Geraldo Rivera "Al Capone's Vault" special. The special aired April 21, 1986.
  • The Thanksgiving episode features Uncle Marvin buying a DeLorean. Early on, Adam asks Marvin if it can travel through time, an obvious nod to Back to the Future, but later on Pops hears news reports on the arrest of John DeLorean for drug trafficking. That happened in October 1982, three years before Back to the Future premiered.
  • One episode involves the Mondale-Reagan presidential election of 1984. This same episode also mentions America's Funniest Home Videos, the premiere special of which aired in 1989,^note Thus, creating another minor anachronism in that episode ("Just Say No"), as AFV didn't become a regular series until January 1990, two months after the special aired, and was actually identifiable with 1990s pop culture (although the premiere special did place among the Top 20 most-watched shows on the week it aired in November '89). In fact, the clip of original host Bob Saget that was used in the episode was taken from a 1990 episode. and American Gladiators, which also premiered in '89.
  • However, the most egregious example would come from "The Adam Bomb", which has the fall of the Berlin Wall (which occurred, albeit in 1989, in November) take place in April.
    • An episode in season 6 of the Goldbergs also features Murray watching the fall of the Berlin Wall on the news, a full 4 seasons after everyone should have already experienced it.
    • Likewise, the Ferris Bueller's Day Off episode, which has homecoming take place in April. The Homecoming game is the first game a football team plays at their home school, as opposed to away. By April, football season is over.
  • The usual "April Nineteen Eighty-Something" date isn't given in Season 3's "A Kick-Ass Risky Business Party." However, Martika's "Toy Soldiers" plays as a running theme throughout the episode, and it was released in January of 1989. The ending shows Adam and Dana watching Halley's Comet, which last appeared Feb. 9, 1986.
  • Lampshaded in an episode that shows the Times Square New Year's Eve ball dropping on TV. Right as the year is being shown, Barry stands in front of the screen, blocking the final digit. Done similarly in the season 4 finale, where Erica's graduation cake reads, "Class of 198_," where the last digit has been sliced out of the cake.
  • The closest any character comes to explicitly mentioning the year is in the episode "Wingmom". During a conversation with Adam, Erica tells him that Pops is 80 years old, and that he was born in 1903...you do the math. (The creator states that this exchange was worded very carefully however, so as to leave open the possibility that it was an exaggeration.)
  • The episode "The Darryl Dawkins Dance" revolves around Adam watching The Transformers: The Movie in the cinema, and the movie was released in 1986, but in the same episode a Fortress Maximus figure is shown in Adam's Transformers collection, which was released only one year later, in 1987.
  • In "Stefan King," As part of the Misery Whole-Plot Reference, Adam begs Beverly not to break his ankles, referencing one of the most famous scenes in the movie. However, that scene replaced a different scene in the original novel, where Annie cuts off Paul's foot instead. The novel was released in 1987, while the film was not out until November of 1990.
  • In one episode, there's a quick display of a small flag of South Africa. It's the current flag with a sideways Y that's been used since 1994. The South African flag flown in the '80s had three horizontal stripes with three smaller flags in the center.
  • In the episode “Agassi”, Barry goes on about Andre Agassi’s “mullet”. While the hairstyle was popular in the ‘80s (and worn by Andre Agassi), the term for it was invented by the Beastie Boys for their 1994 song “Mullet Head”.
  • "I Rode a Hoverboard" largely revolves around the eponymous hoverboard from Back to the Future Part II. However, that movie came out on November 22, 1989, meaning that hoverboards were in the public awareness for only the last 40 days of the decade.
  • The Nintendo Power Glove prominently features in a few episodes since the second season, even though it was only released in December 1989, during the final month of the 80s.
• Angry Dance: In "The Dirty Dancing Dance", Barry encourages Erica to do one like on Footloose, and demonstrates by doing the warehouse dance in the school gym.
• Annoying Younger Sibling:
  • Barry and Erica sometimes see Adam as this.
  • And Erica sees Barry as such, too.
  • Murray's younger brother is this.
• April Fools' Plot: "The Adam Bomb", in which an Escalating War against the Goldberg brothers gets out of hand.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: In "A 100% True Story", Murray makes fun of Beverly for believing in ghosts, yet freaks out when she touches his "lucky wall" while watching football, thinking it affects the outcome of the game.
• As Himself:
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic appears as himself in the episode "Weird Al."
  • The boys meet Hulk Hogan in "WrestleMania".
• Ascended Extra: Geoff started out as just one of Barry's occasionally-appearing friend crew, and was promoted to main cast when he and Erica became a couple.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: In the episode "I Lost on Jeopardy!", Adam studied Press Your Luck's board patterns hoping to win a lot of money, but Murray stopped it, saying that it will never work. Cue the Philly News 7 report about how Press Your Luck contestant Michael Larson winning using the same method Adam was going to use.
• Back for the Finale:
  • In the penultimate episode of the series, Adam's past girlfriends - Dana, Jackie, and Brea - all make brief appearances.
• Bad Liar: Barry couldn't lie his way out of a wet paper bag to save his life.
• Based on a True Story: The whole show is basically Adam Goldberg's video autobiography of his life in The '80s. Proven with the Real Life videos at the end of each and every episode (or, ocasionally, interviews with the now older Real Life counterparts of the characters).
• Batman Gambit:
  • Adam gets Murray to buy him a fencing sword by taking up the fencing team. All so he can have a prop for his Princess Bride scenes.
  • One episode has Barry and his friends get Adam to try and hack the school computer to change their grades. Adam doesn't know how, so he tricks them into actually studying for the history test.
  • Happens again on "In Conclusion, Thanksgiving" when Adam finds out that Murray gets teary-eyed listening to "Cat's in the Cradle," using it to get a new lens for his camera. Beverly finds out and uses it to have Murray invite Pop-Pop over for Thanksgiving.
  • In "Deadheads", inspired by an episode of What's Happening!! when Rerun tries to bootleg a Doobie Brothers concert, Barry brings several cassette recorders to a Grateful Dead concert to get himself and the JTP kicked out, leaving them no choice to go to a Fat Boys concert. Unfortunately for Barry, he learned that the Grateful Dead allow their fans to bootleg their concerts, and when he admitted to his plan, the JTP calls him out for this, and Barry gets kicked out the group.
  • When Adam and his friends want to vandalize the school statue as a school prank. Adam goes to Beverly to convince her to help him, but Principal Ball stops them, having heard an anonymous tip about the plan, but it turns out the whole thing was a plan by the students (except for Adam) to get him out of the school so they can pull a prank inside the school.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: In "Angst-giving", Marvin pretends to be delivering a heart in order to get a free bus ride for him, Erica and Barry. In The Stinger he tries the same thing to get into the movie theater, which doesn't go as well.
• Big Brother Bully: Barry has been shown to be this to Adam, but lets him take off his glasses first and never actually hurts him. He goes full throttle in "For Your Own Good" when Adam asks him to be his bodyguard on the school bus and Barry becomes the new bully instead.
• Big Brother Mentor: Barry's advice to Adam is...usually not very good.
• Bilingual Backfire: In 'The President's Fitness Test,' Erica has a French exchange student over. Barry has Erica translate pick-up lines for him, only for her to mess around with it. Eventually, Pops can't stand it and tells Barry what he's been saying, much to both his and Erica's surprise.
• Birthday Episode: Adam in "You're Not Invited".
• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: In “Adam Spielberg”, Barry grabbed a bottle of Donkey Kick Sauce at Donkey’s Place for his cheesesteak, liking its cool-sounding name. But he didn’t know that the Donkey Kick Sauce is a very spicy sauce, which was brought up by the Crusty Old Man who worked there when he leaves.
  Crusty Old Man: He chose poorly.
• "The Breakfast Club" Poster Homage: The fourth season had a poster with the titular family in the poses of the characters from The Breakfast Club, since the season premiere referenced the film.
• Brick Joke:
  • In the pilot, Beverly tells the cop who arrests Pops and the boys "Memorize this face. it will haunt your dreams!" The same cop later appears several times throughout the series, always frightened and/or annoyed when Beverly arrives.
  • In the episode "Cowboy Country", while Bill and Murray argue about which football team is the best, Barry says, "Can't we all agree the Giants suck?" In the later episode "Bill/Murray," after Barry and Lainey were kissing in the broom closet, Bill and Murray have to visit principal Ball. Ball reveals he is a fan of the Giants, to which Bill and Murray start laughing, saying that they suck. This starts their friendship.
  • In "Edward 'Eddie the Eagle' Edwards", Adam and Barry get in an argument over the difference in sounds between Sarcastic Clapping and actual applause after Barry mistakes Adam's sarcastic clapping for applause. Later, in "Have a Summer", they get in another argument over what showers sound like after Barry makes a shower sound when threatening to put Adam in the locker rooms showers for Freshman Fear Week.
  • The Heart song "Alone" is heard when Geoff is longing for an uninterested Erica in season 2. Two seasons later, it is used again when the situation is reversed.
  • In "Sixteen Candles", Ruben accidentally makes a hole on Adam's floor and covers it up with a rug. In The Stinger, Adam tricks Barry into stepping on the hole.
• Brief Accent Imitation: In "The Beverly Goldberg Cookbook", Beverly starts speaking like Julia Child while shooting a video on her cookbook.
• Brutal Honesty: Murray is blunt about the truth, especially when it comes to Barry being a moron.
• Buffy Speak: According to Murray in the episode "The Tasty Boys", Beverly calls a hammer "the poundy thingy".
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Dana, who left at the end of the second season, returned for a few episodes in season 7.
  • Valley Erica came back in "A Fish Story" after being briefly absent for season 7.
• Buses Are for Freaks: In "Schmoopie’s Big Adventure", Barry has to take the bus because the car has a boot on it due to Erica not paying her parking tickets. He complains of all the improbable things that people do on the bus, such as fighting, shaving (not always just the face) and even cooking.
• Butt-Monkey: Barry is shown to be this at times, sometimes at his own doing.
  • Adam is just as likely to get his own moments as well.
  • Virginia "Ginzy" Kremp, as the series goes on.
• Calling Me a Logarithm: Adam is confused when Beverly mashes up Nintendo and Atari to make Nintardo.
• Calling Your Attacks: Barry does this when performing his version of "kara-te". Lampshaded by Adam:
  Adam: You know, I was thinking, it might be better if you didn't call out your moves first.
• Calvinball: Ball-Ball, a completely nonsensical game with a foam football that Adam and Barry made up. The many, many rules are made up so Barry can win every single time.
• Can-Crushing Cranium: Barry attempts it in "Animal House", but can barely bend the can. He finally achieves it in The Stinger.
• Captain Obvious: In "Parents Thursday," Geoff informs Erica with an up-close play-by-play of Beverly's actions that a blind person can understand or sounds too evident if it played out on radio.
• Casual Sports Jersey: Barry mostly wears a sports jersey that he nicknames Big Orange. When his mother and girlfriend "accidentally" damage it, he has a mental breakdown and claims that he'll never be happy again.
• Celebrity Lie:
  • When Beverly becomes regional manager for Hands Across America, she claims that she got Scott Baio to come to convince Barry and Erica to take part. When she can't, she claims to have gotten a bigger celebrity - a Benjamin Franklin impersonator.
  • To get to Ren, who is producing an Earth Day telethon, Barry claims that he can get Daryl Hall & John Oates; when he can't, he and Adam try to impersonate them, which is ruined by both of them dressing like Oates.
  • When Erica is suspicious of Beverly getting the family a trip to Miami in "Airplane!", Bev tries to get her to agree by dangling the posibility of meeting Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. In reality, Bev is taking the kids to a cousin's bar mitzvah to show them off to the family.
• Celebrity Paradox: Charlie Sheen shows up in the "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" parody episode reprising his role from the film. A funny cameo, but logically confusing considering that the movie exists as fiction in the show and the characters have seen it.
  • According to Word of God, the show's creators take this trope into consideration whenever they cast a big-name actor to appear as a character.
• Chirping Crickets: Happens in "Let's Val Kilmer This Car" when Barry asks Matt on how he's going to take Lainey to prom. Justified due to Johnny Atkins releasing crickets in the school as a senior prank.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Murray takes off his pants as soon as he gets home and lounges around in his shirt and briefs.
• Comic-Book Time: A variation, as the characters do age but not in any way that could be considered consistent. For example, in season one Adam is directly stated to be in seventh grade, and Erica is implied to be in eleventh grade (tenth at the lowest). Despite this, Adam doesn't graduate middle school for three years, and despite the three years of progression Erica is still a senior when he enters high school. This is justified by the "1980-something" setting of the show, implying that Adam is mixing up some details in the story.
• Conlang: "The Strangest Affair of All Time" reveals that Adam and Dave Kim made one up based on R2D2's beeps.
• Continuity Nod: A brief reference to Erica's fake ID from "Love Is a Mix Tape" occurs in "Lucky."
• Cool Car: Aleah Welsh's red Ferrari in the season 7 premiere, "Vacation".
• Cool Old Guy: Pops, of course.
• Coordinated Clothes: In "Couple Costumes", Adam and Dana dress as the alien and Ripley from Alien, respectively, for Halloween. It is also revealed that Beverly always dressed to match Adam's costume against his wishes; this year she went as the Predator, using the Alien vs. Predator comic book as an excuse. (Adam chose Alien thinking it was mom-proof.)
  • In "Stefan King", Barry puts on an Audrey II costume, to Erica's Audrey. His original plan was to be Harry.
  • In "Mister Knifey-Hands", Geoff wants Erica and him to dress as a package of Halls cough drops and a can of Quaker Oats, so they can go as Daryl Hall & John Oates. He also suggests similar pun-related costumes.
• Crossover: "The Wedding Singer" confirms that the show takes place in the same universe as The Wedding Singer, up to and including Barry and Lainey winding up on the same plane where Robbie serenades Julia with "Grow Old With You".
  • Following the cancellation of Schooled, Wilma Howell made an appearance in "Bevy's Big Murder Mystery Party" as a college professor for Erica and Barry.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In-universe and in real life, this was pretty much what the 1984 presidential election was for Erica, with Walter Mondale winning only one state.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Or in Adam's case, broke his arm dancing to George Michael on camera.
• Danger Takes A Back Seat: In "Island Time", Bev surprises Glascott on the back of his car to convince him to convince Adam to go to college.
• Dating What Daddy Hates:
  • Barry is this to Lainey after her father forbids her from dating him after her father, a Dallas Cowboys fan, is insulted by Barry and Murray, who are diehard Philadelphia Eagles fans.
  • One episode has Erica dating Johnny Atkins who really irks Murray because the guy transparently wants the one thing from Erica.
• Death by Adaptation: On the show, Pops and Murray both die in the Eighties. In real life, Albert "Pops" Solomon died in 1995 and Murray Goldberg died in 2008.
• Dedication:
  • The season 1 episode, "A Wrestler Named Goldberg", was dedicated to The Ultimate Warrior.
  • The season 3 episode, "Big Orange", was dedicated to Ed Snider, the founder of the Philadelphia Flyers.
  • Season 5's "Hail Barry" was dedicated to the Philadelphia Eagles, who had won Super Bowl LII a few weeks before the show's original broadcast.
• Did I Mention It's Christmas?: In the talent show episode Christmas decorations are on display in the school gym, but no mention is ever made of it, and it has no bearing on the plot. Also, there are no decorations at the Goldbergs' house. (See Ambiguously Jewish above.)
• Did Not Get the Girl:
  • Barry and Lainey cancel their wedding because they both realize they were marrying too young. Older Adam points out that they will cross paths again, but as of the series they are no longer a couple.
  • In "Bill's Wedding", Ren breaks up with Barry after reconnecting with her old boyfriend.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Erica's song demo in "Spaceballs" is the show's theme.
• "Die Hard" on an X: Invoked on "Yippee-Ki-Yay, Melon Farmer", as Adam and Marvin discuss their own Die Hard film, and Adam presents a long line of these as potential plots. Eventually, they do "Die Hard on a Treehouse" as a proof of concept trailer.
• The Ditz: Barry.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In "I Lost In Jeopardy", Erica treats applying to game shows like she was applying to colleges.
• Domestic Appliance Disaster: In "Smother's Day", Barry and Erica try to make Beverly breakfast in bed after forgetting Mother's Day. Unfortunately, all they manage to do is set the kitchen on fire. Bev is touched nonetheless that they at least made an effort.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Many of the jokes go out of their way to explain the reference or punchline, especially in the later seasons. Special mention goes to one episode where Adam goes out of his way to describe the personalities of the characters others are dressed up as instead of saying "Thanks, [character]." This is partially justified, since the intended audience is those who are unfamiliar with the 80's.
• The Dreaded: Beverly's got this reputation at her kids' school, especially to Principal Ball.
• Dreadful Musician: Adam gets the lead in the school play, despite his cracking voice. He does, however, have enthusiastic dance moves.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The show originally featured a lot of "found footage" taken from Adam's compulsive camerawork, which is something the real Adam did a lot (this is where the footage at the end of episodes comes from). However, this was abandoned towards the end of the first season, and the real aspects are usually before the credits. Adam usually is only seen recording in this fashion in the season finales after that.
  • The first episode had Pops cause a car crash due to what's implied to be the start of Alzheimer's disease. This aspect of the character was significantly toned down in favor of making him more of a typical Cool Old Guy.
  • In the pilot, Murray has a heart condition that forces him to stop yelling and take deep breaths whenever he gets too mad. He never does this in any other episode of the series, and this is never brought up again.
  • The pilot had a gimmick of translating Murray's thoughts with onscreen subtitles (showing that he meant his rants and insults with love), and it was even featured in the advertisements leading up to the show's premiere. This was gone by the second episode.
  • Also in the first episode, Adam talks about wanting to learn to "get freaky" and not wanting to die before he cops a feel, and wanting Waffle Girl's "Sweet Delicate Boobs". That element of raunchiness was never seen in the show after that (besides a brief Call-Back in a later episode where he meets Waffle Girl again).
  • In the first season Thanksgiving episode, Beverly says Marvin is the only family member Murray has left. Murray, Senior is later shown to still be alive and shows up in later episodes.
• Easily Forgiven: Adam vandalizes a statue outside of the school, having found it when it was locked up, but doesn't get the statue back on tight enough and causes it to fall on the motorcycle of a teacher, who now has to take the bus to school. But the teacher easily forgives Adam, knowing he really is a good kid.
• Eccentric Mentor: Barry anytime he tries to teach Adam about being a man.
• Egg Sitting: Done with Cabbage Patch Kids dolls in "Happy Mom, Happy Life". The conflict arises when Beverly sees this as an early chance to be a doting grandma, and utterly takes over the assignment from Adam and Dana.
• Election Day Episode: "It's All About Comptrol", where Beverly runs for city comptroller on a whim.
• Embarrassing Damp Sheets: One of the mistranslated lines in Barry's French song in "The President's Fitness Test" is shown to us on screen as "I pee-peed the bed!".
• Embarrassing Old Photo: In "The Adam Bomb," Barry plasters one of these all over Adam's room. The real one is shown in the credits of the episode.
• Embarrassing Relative Teacher: Beverly becomes a substitute teacher in the fourth season, much to the horror of her kids, who already get enough of her smothering at home.
• Empty Chair Memorial: When Murray is revealed to have died in "If You Build It", the camera focuses on his empty easy chair.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": In her appearances, Adam only refers to Zoe McIntosh as "Waffle Girl".
• Everyone Is Christian at Christmas: To show up the Kremps, Beverly turns Hanukkah into "Super Hanukkah", which basically turns it into Christmas. Pops is not too happy about it.
• Exact Words: In one episode, Beverly promises to Principal Ball she won't show up at the school to talk with him about anything. She later shows up outside his kitchen while he's eating dinner with his family.
• Family Title
• Fan Dumb: In-Universe, Murray is the Chicken Little version of this trope when it comes to his favorite team, the Philadelphia Eagles. He considers the season over on the first play of the first game.
• Fictional Counterpart: Philly News 7 was based on WPVI's (the ABC-owned station in Philadelphia) Action News.
• Fishing Episode: "A Fish Story". After seeing the Kremps come back from fishing, Bev forces Adam and Murray to go on a fishing trip so they can bond and shoot it with Adam's camcorder as proof. They instead fake one at a camping supply store. The tape fools Beverly; unfortunately, she had invited the Kremps over to cook the fish they (didn't) caught.
• Fix It in Post: Adam keeps saying it while shooting his movie in "Adam Spielberg". By the end it becomes a Madness Mantra, as he is left with no usable footage to fix.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
  • Erica is the most responsible of the Goldberg children, usually having to help Barry and/or Adam out of trouble.
  • Adam can swing either way. When dealing with Erica he's usually the fool, but compared to Barry he's usually responsible.
  • Barry is the least responsible of the children. He's the most likely to get into trouble and need help from the others.
  • Also shown in the Thanksgiving episodes is Murray being the responsible to his younger brother Marvin's foolish.
• Forgotten Birthday: "Sixteen Candles" has Bev and Murray forgetting Adam's sixteenth birthday because of the drama about Barry getting engaged and Erica dropping out of college.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Invoked in "Off-Campus Lunch", which begins with Barry and the JTP at the video store looking for body-swapping movies to watch. This gives Barry the idea to give Geoff his college ID so he can eat in the cafeteria. This leads to Geoff becoming Big Man on Campus by pretending to be Barry. A jealous Barry then pretends to be Geoff as a nerd. In The Stinger, Erica and Barry pretend to be each other.
• Frozen in Time: "It was mid-April, 19-eighty-something..." The show purposely plays loose with the timeline in order to cram in as many '80s references as possible and to keep the family in a specific era as long as possible.
• Full-Name Basis: Dave Kim. Even his mother calls him this.
  • Also Ruben Amaro Jr. (and Sr.)
  • Matt Bradley, too.
• Gender Flip: The real Adam Goldberg has two older brothers, Eric and Barry. To gain a female audience, the executives asked Adam that Eric be changed to Erica instead. This was lampshaded in-universe when Adam created a video game based on his family's life but (at Erica's insistence) Erica was changed into a boy named Eric.
• The Generic Guy: Dan, a recurring minor character, exists specifically to fulfill this role. Lampshaded heavily.
• Gift of Song: In the episode "Hanukkah On the Seas", Geoff's sister Joanne announces her plans to drop out of college and become a singer, and punctuates this point by performing Elton John's "Your Song" - badly - for her parents as her Hanukkah present.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • In "RAD!", Barry says he'll be responsible with the savings bond Pops gave him. Cut to him trading it for a BMX bike.
  • In "Mister Knifey-Hands", Erica tries to rent a keg for the high-schoolers, but the clerk won't give her one because she's still underage. He suggests filling it with non-alcoholic beer, and she says that only a loser would do that. Cut to her offering the keg to the high-schoolers, assuring them that it's full of real beer.
  • In "Airplane!", the kids assure Bev that they took Pops back home; cut to Pops still waiting in their living room.
• Girlfriend in Canada: Barry claims to have one of these that he met in summer camp. The rest of the family mocks him mercilessly, and Erica notes that she was at camp with him but never saw his supposed girlfriend.
• Girly Run: Barry. One has to see it; a description does not do it justice.
• Go to Your Room!: Adam apes Andrew Dice Clay and his telling of Old Mother Hubbard to Pops. Pops doesn't like the punchline and tells Adam to go to his room!
• The Golden Rule: The Goldbergs have their own version: "Do unto others and they will do unto you." Barry always thought it was "do unto others before they do unto you."
• Green-Eyed Monster: Happened to Adam in "Who's Afraid of Brea Bee?", when he becomes jealous of Brea's superior acting abilities. In an attempt to steal the spotlight from her, he sabotages the school play on opening night; it backfires on him.
• Group Costume Fail: In "Oates and Oates", Adam and Barry are supposed to be disguised as Daryl Hall & John Oates, but because Barry couldn't tell which was which, they both end up dressed as Oates.
• Grumpy Old Man: Pop-Pop (Murray's father) is this.
• Guilty Pleasures: Probably lots, but The New Kids On The Block are referred to as this.
• Gym Class Hell: Mr Mellor is an interesting example. Played straight when putting Adam through torment and deliberately getting his name wrong as "Goldfarb" - but he shows interesting aversions, such as genuinely trying to give pastoral guidance to Adam even when it inconveniences him, and displaying well-intended ineptitude when genuinely listening to his pupils' criticisms of the delivery of PE teaching at their school, and periodically allowing them to try to improve the classes. If only to demonstrate that his way is better.
• Hanukkah Episode: Season 3's "A Christmas Story" involves family matriarch Beverly creating "Super Hanukkah" in an attempt to celebrate more like the family's Christian neighbors.
• Happy Birthday to You!: In "Han Ukkah Solo", the fact that old ladies get paid every time "Happy Birthday To You" is sung gets mentioned in the plot.
• Her Boyfriend's Jacket: In "The Age of Darkness," Adam the narrator recalls Drew Kremp giving Erica his varsity jacket as the bonafide teenage romantic gesture...which almost right away is negated after he dumps her.
• Hollywood Hacking: Played with. Barry and his friends want Adam to hack the school to get them good grades. Adam has no idea how to do any computer hacking, so he does the next best thing: hack their brains by tricking them into actually studying for their history test!
• Hopeless Suitor: Barry was originally this to Lainey in season 2 until they finally got together.
  • Geoff Schwartz was also this to Erica despite his best efforts, until he and Erica got together too.
• Hopeless with Tech: "A Fish Story" shows that Murray has trouble with high-tech gadgets like the matrix dot printer, the walkman and the answering machine, resorting to Percussive Maintenance out of frustration.
• Humiliation Conga: In "The Kremps," Barry finds a recording of a phone conversation between Erica and a friend, in which she talks about wanting to get together with the new neighbors' eldest son^note Barry and Erica had been fighting over the phone for part of the episode, Erica had caught Barry calling a 976 number earlier that episode and threatened to tell their parents.. When Erica tries to grab the answering machine, both siblings fight for it and accidentally send it flying onto the floor, resulting in another part of the call playing in front of Erica's crush. Barry and Erica start fighting, while Beverly tries to break them up, she sees that Murray has fallen asleep, leading to a bleeped Precision F-Strike that results in an Oh, Crap! expression from Beverly as everyone looks in shock.
  Beverly: Murray, wake the f**k up.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine:
  • Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin's other character's wife, appears in one episode as Real Life talent agent Edie Robb, although she and Garlin's character don't have any scenes together.
  • In season 7, Sadie Stanley begins recurring as new love interest Brea. She and Sean Giambrone previously starred together in the live action Kim Possible television film as Kim and Ron.
  • Adam's girlfriend in the final season is played by Isabel Gomez, who worked with Giambrone on Big Hero 6: The Series.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode title is a line of dialogue spoken in the episode.
• The "I Love You" Stigma: The second season finale, "Goldbergs Feel Hard" is all about this. Barry warns Adam about saying it to Dana, but then says it to Lainey and gets upset when she doesn't say it back. Adam, meanwhile, tries to retrieve a love letter she left Dana. All the while, Beverly pressures Murray into telling Erica he loves her, then gets upset when Erica doesn't say it back.
• I'm Standing Right Here: In "The Prettiest Boy In School", Beverly tells Geoff he's the way he is because he has no mother. Geoff's mother, one of Bev's best friends, is right there in the room with them.
• In Another Man's Shoes: In "Dance Party USA", Erica returns to her former nerdy look after getting Barry's pink eye and accidentally breaking her teeth. This leads her to be treated as a loser, making her realize that is how her brother is treated every day.
• Indy Hat Roll: Spoofed in "Adam Spielberg" with Barry and a cheesesteak he stole. The door ends up pinning his arm and he has to go to the hospital.
• Initiation Ceremony: In the Season 3 finale, "Have A Summer," all the 8th graders are thrown by older students into the showers as part of Freshman Week. Adam gets out of it by bodyslamming Barry in an adrenaline fueled frenzy, which humiliates him in front of the school. Barry later reveals that only the cool kids get thrown in the shower, and he never got hazed when it was his time.
• Innocent Innuendo: In "Hogan Was My Grandfather", Erica and Barry prove to Beverly that they can be self-reliant by making one of Bev's signature breakfast dishes, eggy in the hole (a fried egg inside a hollowed-out slice of toast). They proudly declare that they can "eggy our own holes".
  • In "Dinner With The Goldbergs", Pops is chatting up another family at the restaurant when he yells this across the room:
  Pops: Hey, look at the size of Gary's giant filet!
• Insult Backfire: In the Season 4 premiere, based off of The Breakfast Club, Adam tries to play up his bad boy persona, even using the same Barry Manilow comment Bender uses in the film for Principal Ball. He replies that he's "quite the fan-ilow".
• Ironic Name: Apparently, Murray's middle name is Christian, but the family is implied to be culturally Jewish.
• It's Always Spring: Some episodes are explicitly dated to wintertime, but except for the third-season episode "A Christmas Story" there is never any snow on the ground, the leaves are always out on the trees, and the characters never wear heavy coats. Finally averted in "Snow Day" when it's all about the kids finally getting a snow day from school. There have been a few aversions since then, notably in “Yippee Kai Yay Melon Farmer”, which realistically showed patchy snow on the ground and a half-melted snowman at Christmastime.^note  The average temperature in the Philadelphia area during winter is slightly above freezing, so periods of snowfall followed by periods of melting are common.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: In the Christmas Episode "It's a Wonderful Life", the JTP get tired of Barry being a bad roommate, and inspired by It's a Wonderful Life, pretend they don't know who he is. Later, when Barry falls asleep while watching the movie, he dreams that the other members of the JTP would be successful if he never existed.
• It Makes Sense in Context: A lot of Pops' humor in "The Darryl Dawkins Dance" comes from the fact that he's irritated that his grandson won't hit him with a car. What happened was that in this episode, Adam saw Transformers: The Movie, in which Optimus dies, prompting him to make a fan movie to right that wrong, in which Pops played Optimus Prime. Before he got to that, Murray gave Adam a brief death talk, saying that Adam shouldn't worry about dying until he's an old man, which caused Adam to begin worrying about Pops dying. So when Adam and Pops got to filming later, Adam changed the script so that Pops wouldn't have to get hit by a car, a script change that made Pops mad. The rest of the episode has jokes based around the absurdity of a man mad that his grandson won't run him over with a car.
• I Want Grandkids: In "Sixteen Candles", Beverly tries to convince Lainey and Barry to not get married, but then Lainey starts talking about having children, which gets Bev crazy about becoming a "bubbie".
• It Will Never Catch On: Inverted when Beverly found out Gimbles was going out of business.
  Beverly: Gimbles is the biggest shopping chain in America! That's like saying Blockbuster Video shut down, or B. Dalton Books, or Circuit City. It's impossible!
  • Played straight in "Yippee-Ki-Yay, Melon Farmer!". Adam and Marvin are coming up with concepts for a Die Hard-inspired film; when Adam comes up with "Die Hard on a bus", Marvin dismisses it as too silly.
• Jerk Jock: Barry attempts to be one when he becomes a jock, but the actual head jock is more of a Lovable Jock and Big Man on Campus who helps Adam up after Barry pulls the Jerk Jock routine on him, and chastises him.
• Jewish American Princess: Erica. She can get very demanding and imperious.
• Jewish Mother: Beverly. Definitely Beverly.
• Kavorka Man: Albert.
  • To a lesser extent, both Adam and Barry as the series goes on. Both have multiple romantic interested specifically stated to be out of their league, despite their eccentricities and social awkwardness.
• Kicking My Own Butt: Barry when he confronts the Meadowbrook Mafia in "Just Say No".
• Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films:
  • In "Mini Murray", Adam tricks Pops into taking him to see Poltergeist by saying it's The Great Mouse Detective. While Pops is confused by the lack of mice, Adam is horrified and gets scared of things like clown dolls.
  • In "Mister Knifey-Hands", Jackie's parents let Adam see A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), since he claims he's old enough to handle it, and ends up having nightmares and trying not to fall asleep.
• Lampshade Hanging: The show is fully aware of its Strictly Formula being and leans into it accordingly.
  Pops: History has proven when you involve your mom, it ends badly, haven't you learned that by now?
• Laugh Track: In "The Wedding Singer", Adam shoots a video of Lainey saying goodbye because she's running away from marrying Barry, but he can't handle the emotional content and adds canned laughter, as well as "oohs" and "aws", to make it funny.
• Like Brother and Sister: Adam considers Emmy a sibling (one he actually likes), despite Barry trying to convince Adam that a guy and a girl can never just be friends.
• Limited Wardrobe: "Big Orange" is all about Barry's favorite orange Flyers shirt. Even with Lainey and Beverly getting him to buy new clothes...he's right back in it!
• Line-of-Sight Alias: Shrimpson.
  • "George! George Glass" has Adam wanting to do this to impress Waffle Girl, but Erica beats him to it by saying her new boyfriend is Jordan Wahlberg. Of course her facade falls apart in front of the JTP. (The episode title refers to a famous instance of this from The Brady Bunch, which is name checked by the show's characters.)
  • In "Adam Spielberg", Adam names his Indiana Jones fan film "Indiana Jones and the Thunder Glove of the Prime Mutant" after looking at his toy collection in his room. (In order, a Lion-O figure, a Nintendo Power Glove, an Optimus Prime figure, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.)
• Lipstick Mark: Parodied on "The Strangest Affair of All Time" when Jane finds a stain on Formica Mike's collar from one of Beverly's meals, which she has been using to sway Mike, as Jane is a Lethal Chef. Mike tries to pass it off as him having an affair.
• Logo Joke: Instead of the normal Adam F. Goldberg Productions logo, "12 Tapes for a Penny" was produced by "Doug Fell Productions", to keep with the episode's gag of using fake names.
  • The episode, "Agassi", was credited to "Chadam Productions", named after Chad Kremp and Adam himself.
• Love Epiphany: Erica realizes she likes her Hopeless Suitor Geoff Schwartz...just as Geoff finally moves on and starts dating someone else.
• Love Letter Lunacy: Adam in "Goldbergs Feel Hard" tries to retrieve the letter he left Dana in her locker.
• Mama Bear: In Couples Costume, Beverly, in a Predator costume, helps Adam look for his Green Lantern ring in a haunted house while not only fending off the monsters (Frat boys in costume), pulling Erica off a makeout session, and carrying Barry in her arms after he sprained his ankle.
• The Mentor: Pops dispenses wisdom to everyone from time-to-time, but mostly Adam.
• Missing Mom:
  • Lainey's mother left when she was young, leaving her to be raised by her father.
  • Murray's mother also left his father when he was small.
• The Movie Buff: Adam.
• Movie-Making Mess: The main plot of "Adam Spielberg", in which Adam tries to make his own Indiana Jones fan movie, but then he suffers a mental breakdown during production, and at the end, he decides to stick to writing scripts, which was his strong point.
• Moving the Goalposts: In "Deadheads", Barry had Matt Bradley perform several impossible tasks to join the JTP. To Barry's shock, Matt managed to complete them.
• Ms. Fanservice: Erica, full stop, in "Who Are You Going to Telephone?" The odd part is that she was dressed as Jane Goodall for her Halloween costume, though Goodall never bared any midriff. In fact, if her shirt was plaid and the shorts were denim, she would have been more believable as Daisy Duke.
• My Beloved Smother:
  • Beverly again. Hell, Narrator!Adam even calls her that.
  • Betsy Rubenstone
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Dave Kim is frequently subjected to this by Adam.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: When Barry is trying to hit on the French exchange student staying with the Goldbergs, Erica "translates" his rap song into French for him. He performs the piece blissfully unaware that he is confessing his lifelong bed-wetting habit which has defeated even the strongest rubber sheet.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Adam wins his fencing match in the episode, "As You Wish" by quoting that line repeatedly.
• Mythology Gag: In "Baio and Switch" the Ben Franklin impersonator references something happening in the year "seventeen eighty-something"
  • In "Double Dare", Dave Kim remarks that Adam's voice is unfit to ever be on television. This joke contains multiple levels of Fridge Brilliance.
• New Job Episode: In "Food In a Geoffy", Geoff is told to do something to curb his constant stress, and inspired by a comment from Murray about food delivery, he decides to start a food delivery business with Barry as the CEO and the rest of the JTP as employees. The business involves the customer placing an order for a restaurant, Geoff getting the food the customer ordered and delivering it to the customer's house (Think GrubHub or Doordash but without modern technology). The business ends up stressing Geoff out even more (not helped by the JTP's inexperience in any kind of business), and Erica urges him to shut it down.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The early advertisements made it out to be a wacky 80's period piece full of pop culture a la "That 70's Show." The 80's are really just background. It's really a character driven comedy about the family. In fact it could easily be updated to modern times and you could have the exact same show.
  • Averted after the second season when the show became much more pop-culture oriented with almost every episode being built around a show, movie or celebrity from the '80s.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Murray's attempt at scrapbooking.
  Erica: It looks like something a 10-year-old serial killer would make.
• No Indoor Voice: The Goldbergs, as opposed to the Kremps.
• Not So Above It All: Barry makes fun of Adam and his nerd friends for playing Dungeons & Dragons, but he has his own character sheet made up and has memorized the rules... just in case they ever ask him to play.
• Nostalgic Narrator: Adam narrates every episode, and the entire premise of the show—and much of its humor—depends on nostalgia and the awkward naïveté of Adam's adolescence.
• The Not-Love Interest: Adam's best friend Emmy. Her introduction episode had a classic She's Not My Girlfriend setup but it ends with the two reaffirming that they just want to be friends. The stinger during the credits confirmed that they did indeed only remain friends.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The Goldbergs get into some wild hijinks (like trying to take a mattress home, untied, on the roof of their car as Erica and Barry hang out the windows to hold it down while Adam desperately holds onto his siblings from inside) and the Narrator will occasionally interject to let the audience know these things really happened to the family.
• Not So Stoic: One episode features everyone gathering around to watch the infamous anti-war TV movie The Day After. While watching and afterwards, most of the cast is appropriately scared and paranoid of nuclear war, but Murray appears to pay no mind; while most of them are saying how the movie makes them scared, Murray only remarks that Steve Guttenberg has a lot of range. Barry spends the episode attempting to get Murray to take this stuff seriously, only for Murray to blow him off each time. When Barry ultimately has enough and flees to his room, Murray walks in and admits that he is scared too; he feels it's his duty to keep his family safe and out of harm's way and the idea that there's something out there that he wouldn't be able to protect them from scares him more than anything.
• Oh, Crap!: Whenever something's that kind of moment, Adam screams out "Oh balls!"
• Once a Season:
  • So far, every season has featured one episode that parodies a classic 1980's movie...Goonies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Risky Business, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, respectively.
  • Also once a season is an appearance by Uncle Marvin during Thanksgiving.
  • Also at the end of the season, Adam is seen taping one of the happy moments at the end of the episode as Narrator!Adam remembers it'll always be 1980-something to him. The camera is zoomed in on as we get a montage of clips from the season which have the show footage mixed in with the original home footage.
• Once per Episode: This is about how often characters swearing gets bleeped out.
• One-Steve Limit: Adam occasionally calls himself Adam F. Goldberg and says he has to include his middle initial because the older unrelated Adam Goldberg in school doesn't like sharing his name.
• Only Sane Man: Matt Bradley is the most down-to-earth member of the JTP. Barry often ignores any rational idea Matt has for no real reason, and denigrates him the most.
• Operation: Jealousy: A non-romantic version in "The Return of Formica Mike". Adam wants Erica to help her rewrite a musical they once worked on for the school play; when she refuses, he hires Barry instead, knowing that he would make ridiculous changes and she would take over.
• Parental Favoritism: Beverly and Murray aren't ashamed to admit that Adam and Erica are their respective favorites. Everyone is also aware that Barry is The Unfavorite.
• Parental Substitute: Beverly is this to Lainey.
• Performance Anxiety: In "The Beverly Goldberg Cookbook", Bev and Adam go to a public access TV studio to do a cooking show. Adam, despite having acted in dozens of his own videos, gets stage fright when facing the TV cameras and completely freezes up. After a few minutes, he finally faints.
• Person as Verb: Marvin has screwed up so many times "pulling a Marvin" has become a family expression.
• Piss-Take Rap: Barry "Big Tasty" Goldberg's specialty.
• Pixelation: Every time a character swears, their mouth is pixelated. It has been Played for Laughs in at least four occasions, where pixelating the mouth was completely unnecessary. The first was a school mascot, the second a ventriloquist dummy, the third an Audrey II costume, and the fourth when the character is facing away from the camera.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: In "Hogan Was My Grandfather", Pops tries to spice up his stories of WWII for Adam by retelling episodes of Hogan's Heroes. Unfortunately, Adam then retells those stories at history class and is found out by his teacher, who happened to be a Hogan's fan.
  • In "The Opportunity of a Lifetime", Erica, Lainey, and Valley Erica form a girl band, The Tangles, and they performed their song, "Rockin' Out", in front of a crowd at CBGB. What they didn't know is that "Rockin' Out" sounded like Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", and they're also unaware that their band name and their clothing style were copied after The Bangles and Madonna, respectively.
• Plane Awful Flight: As expected, the Goldbergs make riding a plane sheer hell for everyone in "Airplane!" Adam annoys the flight attendants by quoting Airplane! endlessly; Barry bothers the guy sitting between him and Ren and wants to show off his machismo to the pilot; Bev and the kids argue over the PA system; and Murray, who is sedated for the flight, wanders into the restroom and blocks the door, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
• Planning with Props: Adam uses his action figures to plan for his Two-Timer Date in "Baio and Switch". He's Leonardo, Dana is Princess Leia, Emmy is The Incredible Hulk and David Kim is a Transformer.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Adam delivers several of these to Emmy throughout the series.
• Playing Pictionary: In "Geoff's New Hat", Beverly becomes obsessed with playing Pictionary, to the point that she starts communicating only thorugh drawings. Eventually she ropes Murray into playing with her against Bill and Delores, and even though they are horrible artists, they know each other so well they are able to guess what their random squiggles mean.
• Poke the Poodle: Barry's first attempt at a senior prank in "Let's Val Kilmer This Car" is to sew long pants on Mr. Mellor's shorts.
• Ponzi Scheme: When Barry sinks a golf cart, he decides to replace it by stealing one from another course, then replace that one with one stolen from another course, and so forth. His friends outright state that it's a Ponzi scheme, but Barry mishears it as a Fonzie scheme.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The season 5 episode, "1990-Something," acts to set up a series starring the staff of William Penn Academy, only in the 1990s. Beverly makes a Required Spinoff Crossover.
• Precious Puppy: Season 3 introduces Lucky, a dog that the actual Goldbergs had in the 80s.
• Precision F-Strike: Delivered, and bleeped, nearly Once an Episode. Usually it's from Beverly, but nearly everyone has gotten into the act.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Invoked. In “A Wall Street Thanksgiving,” Adam is hit with a hard dose of this in playing the legendarily bad E.T. game.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: AJ Michalka (Lainey Lewis) is promoted to series regular in Season 3, after having more or less acting as a Fake Guest Star for most of Season 2.
  • Sam Lerner (Geoff Schwartz) was promoted in season 5, replacing AJ Michalka. This makes sense, as Lainey went to college by that point.
• Pro Wrestling Episode: "A Wrestler Named Goldberg" and "WrestleMania".
• Pro Wrestling Is Real: In 'A Wrestler Named Goldberg,' Murray has to break it to Barry that it's not real, even when he's coming up with a finisher and backstory.
• Put on a Bus: Lainey and some of the school staff (including Coach Mellor and Mr. Glascott) to appear in the spin-off Schooled. Some characters, such as Mr. Crosby (Clancy Brown) and Johnny Atkins (Sean Marquette) appear on both semi-occasionally.
  • The Bus Came Back for all these characters, save for Coach Mellor, after Schooled was cancelled.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Some plots points are occasionally criticized as being too outlandish or goofy even for a sitcom. Adam F. Goldberg counters such criticism by saying that not only did such things happen to him in his childhood, he has video evidence to back it up.
  • In one episode, Pops gives a hilarious, rambling wedding toast on video that seems almost too outlandish to be anything other than fiction; The Stinger shows the video of the real Pops saying it verbatim.
    Real and fictional Pops: My appendix burst inside without causing me any pain. I have one large scar across my abdomen and one scar all the way down my right side. And I had one of my kidneys removed. [beat] Can I erase that part about the kidney? That's all I have to say.
• Real-Person Cameo: Creator Adam Goldberg based the bus bully in "For Your Own Good" on We're the Millers producer JC Spink who used to bully Goldberg when they were kids. Spink cameos in the episode as the school bus driver.
  • In "Double Dare", the real "Handsome Ben" Bauman and "Regular Amy" Gross cameoed as the Double Dare producers.
  • In "Crazy Calls", the real Michael C. Levy and Michael Z. Levy cameoed as the two computer technicians after Beverly cheesed one of the computer's floppy drives.
  • In "Agassi", Chad Kremp, Adam Goldberg's real-life friend, appeared as his father, Mr. Kremp.
  • The real-life Jackie Geary (Adam's first prom date and eventual girlfriend) has a recurring role as Jackie's mother, Mrs. Geary.
  • As the Real Life Jackie Geary, so too does Emmy Mirsky with Emmy's mom, Serry Mirsky.
  • "The Goldberg Gals" features the real Beverly Goldberg and her friends as a group of friends in the same restaurant as Sitcom-Beverly and her friends, clearly bothered by their presence.
  • The real JTP (Barry Goldberg, "Madman" Geoff Schwartz, "Naked" Rob Smith, Andy Cogan, and Matt Bradley) played against their sitcom counterparts in the JTP Bowl at the end of "Hail Barry".
  • The real Ruben Amaro Jr. has appeared, playing his own father in the 80s.
  • R. D. Robb had a cameo as a headshot photographer who was actually implied to be himself (albeit the character had the name Paul Sirochman), since he mentions his real-life success in A Christmas Story. His mother, Edie Robb, who is a Hollywood manager and the reason for E. D.'s success, is also a character, although she was played by Susie Essman.
  • The real Brea Bee played her mother, Vickie Bee (spelled "Vicki" in the show itself), in the episode, "Dee-Vorced". Bee earlier played an unrelated character, Mrs. Vanica, in the season 4 episode, "The Spencer's Gift".
• Real-Person Epilogue: Episodes usually end with a clip of one of the real Adam Goldberg's home videos. In later seasons, The Stinger featured interviews with some of the real people depicted on the show.
• Recognition Failure: In "Oates and Oates", Adam and Barry pretends to be Hall and Oates, but Barry mistook Daryl Hall (the tall blond one) for John Oates (the short one with the mustache), and so they both dressed as the same one.^note  John Oates is then treated to the reason why Garfunkel and Oates named themselves after the second-stringers.
• Reflexive Remark of Reverence: Barry's group of friends is known as the Jenkintown Posse, usually abbreviated as JTP. Whenever Barry calls them the JTP, the others immediately chant back "JTP!", and anyone else joining the chant is called out for not being a member. This is shown to be Serious Business for the group, as whenever they don't chant "JTP!" back at Barry, it means that he's majorly screwed up his friendships with them.
• Retcon:
  • The first Halloween episode plot deals with Adam breaking his childhood tradition of trick-or-treating with Pops. In season 3's Halloween episode, it's stated and shown via flashbacks that Adam had always (reluctantly) trick-or-treated with Beverly.
  • A line in "I Rode a Hoverboard" reveals that Lainey's father is a crooked lawyer. In later episodes, he is shown to be a tile salesman. The episode also portrays the family as never having eaten Chinese food before, but an earlier episode shows Murray and Barry having some at the furniture store.
  • Lainey's mother was mentioned in a few early episodes of the show, before it being changed to her father raising her alone.
  • The episode "Fonzie Scheme" is about Beverly realizing that Murray has absolutely no hobbies. However, it's later shown in the episode "Bohemian Rap City" that Murray is an avid stamp collector and has been since childhood.
• "Risky Business" Dance: Barry tries to do it in "A Kick-ass Risky Business Party", but he keeps slipping and running into things, while Beverly warns him against "Tom Cruising" all over the house. Later Beverly herself does the dance (fully-clothed) to embarrass the other kids and break up the Wild Teen Party.
• Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow: Johnny Atkins is a big fan of Rush and considers them superior to the mass-produced pop music the others listen to.
• Romance on the Set: Invoked in the episode, "The Greatest Musical Ever Written"; after the JTP told him that Adam and Lainey's "showmance" could turn into a real romance, Barry sets out to sabotage the school production of The Phantom of the Opera to keep Adam from kissing her.
• Romantic Fake–Real Turn: In "Island Time", Barry and Ren pretend to be a married couple so they can take advantage of the honeymoon package. As part of the ruse, Ren gives Barry a big kiss, but Barry takes the kiss as something more.
• Rousing Speech: Barry gives one (with a tip of the cap to Election) in "The Other Smother" to get elected class treasurer. It's basically a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about moms who interfere in their children's lives, and even his opponent gives him a standing ovation.
• Running Gag:
  • Whenever Beverly goes to complain to someone, she starts out by saying "thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice," which is followed by the other person pointing out that she just barged in at an inopportune moment against their will.
  • Similarly, Barry often injects himself into conversations with the line: "You've come to the right place." when in fact nobody asked for his help.
  • The Goldbergs blowing through the stop sign at the end of their street.
  • Pops gives advice, which is then either ignored, misinterpreted, or taken way too literally.
  • In later seasons, Pops' first appearance in most episodes shows him holding a martini.
  • One of the less successful ones has Adam constantly making reference to adding an F to his name to differentiate from the other Adam Goldberg at his school. Halfway through the season and they've pretty much run it into the ground. The Spencer's Gifts had a clever reworking of the gag though that lampshaded how tiresome it had gotten.
  • Whenever somebody asks Murray for something that they expect him to be against and he actually shows his support, they ignore the fact that he's showing approval and continue trying to convince him.
  • Someone (usually Adam) reenacting the boombox scene from Say Anything.... It gets mentioned at least once that it's become the Goldbergs' "thing".
• Safety Worst: Bev is like this towards Adam, her youngest.
• Satiating Sandwich: In "Adam Spielberg", Barry takes Murray in a search for the best cheesesteak sandwich in the world, calling it the "Hoagie Grail".
• Self-Parody: "8-bit Goldbergs" is about Adam making a video game based on his family. The episode has many winking references to the making of the show itself, including having Erica's character be changed to Eric, just as the real Eric Goldberg was made into Erica. It also acknowledges many of the criticisms towards the show, like how cartoony the characters come off.
• Series Continuity Error: After Erica gets engaged to Geoff, Beverly registers her at Gimbel's...which was established as going out of business in an earlier episode.
• Shared Family Quirks: Brothers Murray and Marvin both speak in a squeaky voice that sounds like hyperventilating when under intense emotions like shock or sadness.
• She Cleans Up Nicely:
  • Until the ninth grade, Erica had to wear Nerd Glasses and braces, and had stringy hair. Now she's among the hottest girls in school.
  • Gender Flipped with Adam in "The Prettiest Boy in School". For his senior year, he starts wearing contacts and styling his hair, attracting the attention of the popular kids.
• Shipper on Deck: Inverted at times with Erica as she's not a huge fan of Barry and Lainey together, but she knows how happy they make each other and will support them on occasion.
  • Pretty much everyone (at least Beverly, Adam, Barry and Lainey) are rooting for Erica to figure out a way to be with Geoff. Murray is the earliest example given that when Geoff was into Erica and she didn't want to reciprocate his feelings, Murray supported the idea of them being together because Geoff was someone safe that he wouldn't have to worry about Erica being with.
  • It's strongly hinted that Evelyn is only dating Geoff to force Erica to finally admit her feelings for him.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product:
  • When Beverly loses the Cabbage Patch Kids doll for Adam's Egg Sitting assignment, she buys one from a man selling toys off the back of his car. It ends up being a "Lettuce Crop Kid" with an ugly, badly designed face.
  • Murray buys WrestleMania tickets from a scalper, but a closer look reveals that they are actually for "Whistlemania". The same scalper also hawked Ander the Gaint t-shirts.
• Short Cuts Make Long Delays: In "Angst-giving", Marvin was supposed to drive Erica and Barry home from college. What was supposed to be a five minute drive leaves them stranded in Tennessee.
• Shout-Out:
  • A poster for Fanboys (which Adam F. Goldberg co-wrote) appears in "12 Tapes for A Penny" and "Spaceballs".
  • "Who's Afraid of Brea Bee?" is a reference to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Significant Name Overlap:
  • A few episodes have Adam mention there's another boy named Adam Goldberg at his school who's also into AV, and that they're rivals on principle.
  • Erica's roommate the first time she attends college (and later her and Lainey's bandmate) is also named Erica, nicknamed "Valley Erica".
  • Exaggerated in the episode "The Steve Weekend", where Barry's exes show up to Erica and Geoff's combined bachelor/bachelorette beach weekend and all three of them have gotten together with guys named Steve (well, two Steves and a Stephan, but close enough). Including the aforementioned Valley Erica.
• Sitcom Archnemesis:
  • Beverly to Betsy Rubenstone.
  • And now we can add Mrs. Kim to that list.
  • And Jane Bales, described as "the only one in town more Beverly Goldberg than Beverly Goldberg."
  • Murray has business rival Formica Mike, the Formica King.
• Skewed Priorities: In "Couples Costume", Adam runs to Beverly and tells her that Barry broke one of his bones in a haunted house and that he can't move, which worries her a bit. But when he says that Erica hooked back up with a frat boy that she dated, she borrows the Huang family's catchphrase: "Oh, HELL no!"
• The Smurfette Principle: Adam F. Goldberg's real-life brother Eric was changed into a sister named Erica. Word of God says this was to show some of the trends and fads that were issues for teenaged girls in the '80s, since they already had one teenage boy and one junior high boy in the cast.
• Snipe Hunt: In “Quaker Warden”, Principal Ball offers Beverly the archaic position of Quaker warden in the hopes that the difficult accreditation process would keep her busy for the rest of the school year, if not longer. To his horror, she completes it in one day, apparently by annoying the Quaker elders so much they gave it to her so she’d leave.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Adam's bully JC Spink was originally played by child actor Cooper Roth in the first season and then replaced by teen actor Zayne Emory for the second season when the writers needed to show that JC had physically matured faster than late-bloomer Adam.
• Soda-Candy 'Splosion: In "Family Takes Care Of Beverly", Barry stops Erica from consuming Diet Coke and Pop Rocks. Citing the urban legend, he claims that Erica owes him a life debt and makes her help him in his quest to win Lainey's affections. Later, after she rejects him, he tries to commit suicide by mixing the two. This doesn't work, but he has stomach trouble the next day.
• Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Beverly with Chad Kremp's mom in the Kremps' first episode.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • In "Lainey Loves Lionel", Barry tries to recreate the video for Lionel Ritchie's "Hello", in which a blind woman makes a clay bust of Ritchie. Trouble is, Barry's sculpting skills are lacking, to say the least, and the results are horrifying to look at. The reveal of each bust is made ten times funnier by having Ritchie softly sing "Hello" after each one.
  • In "Smother's Day", Barry and Erica try to make it up to Beverly for forgetting Mother's Day by cooking her breakfast. The soundtrack for this is "The Greatest Love Of All" by Whitney Houston, an apt selection for such a heartwarming moment... except that the scene shows the stove on fire, the dishwasher overflowing, and the kitchen in general disarray, as Erica and Barry scramble to clean up the mess.
• Speak of the Devil: In "The Beverly Goldberg Cookbook", there's a Running Gag that whenever anyone says "college", Murray appears seemingly out of nowhere. This leads to a gag where Erica has to mute out each instance of the word college, which then appears subtitled, in a long speech where it's used repeatedly.
• Stag Party: Barry wants a wild bachelor party like the one in Bachelor Party, which unfortunately proves impractical. Uncle Marvin takes him to a nightclub promising a wild time, but he and the JTP find it too loud and crowded. Eventually, they just go to the arcade and have a reasonably good time.
• Stage Mom:
  • In "The Adam Bomb", Beverly wants to be Erica's "momager".
  • In "Fiddler", Murray forces Adam to be on the school's staging of Fiddler on the Roof, even though Adam prefers happier musicals. Murray becomes as overbearing as Bev, trying to force Adam into the lead role of Tevye. In the end, it turns out it was because Murray played Tevye as a child, and it was one of the few times his father was proud of him; Murray just wanted to have that in common with Adam.
• Start My Own:
  • After getting kicked out of the JTP in "Deadheads" for his failed Batman Gambit, Barry tries to start a new posse, the Jenkintown Awesome Group (JAG) with Johnny Atkins, Sergei, and Dan, whom Barry calls "Naked Dan". But it didn't work out, as he misses being with the JTP, and eventually rejoins them.
  • After Erica is kicked out of an acapella group in "A Fish Story" for being too demanding, she tries to start a competing acapella group to beat them. When she fails to find suitable signers, she next tries to join the JTP's own acapella group, started when Barry was rejected by the same group as Erica (for not only having no singing skill, but also due to the fact that it was an all-girl group). Unfortunately, none of the JTP have any singing chops... save for Andy, who has a beautiful soprano voice. Eventually, Erica just apologizes and rejoins the original group.
• Stock Footage: After Jeff Garlin left the series in the middle of season 9, Murray was seen in a small handful of episodes afterwards recycling small clips of his prior appearances (and the use of a body double in some cases).
• Strictly Formula: If you pay attention, you'll notice that near every episode follows the same basic plot line: 'one or two of the family members creates a conflict of some kind, escalate it until one (or both of) them end up screwing up royally and hurting a friend/family member in some way, only to then somehow end up repairing their bonds by the end of the episode.' There may be some divations^note such as the family member is already going through something and the other family members are oblivious/ignorant of it until say family member explodes and then they help them through it but the basic idea is usually the same.
• Stunned Silence: Adam goes into this when watching The Transformers: The Movie as many of his childhood icons die.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • Adam's videos, based on the ones the real Adam Goldberg made as a kid (such as his Space Camp video or Transformers fan film). They look exactly like what a youngster in the 80s with a camcorder and no formal filmmaking instruction would make.
  • Barry's attempts at making a bust of Lainey in "Lainey Loves Lionel".
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Usually, at least once an episode, a character will be muted by the classic "bleep" when they swear. By Series Four, even the back of Beverley's head is visually bleeped when she swears.
• Staircase Tumble: In "Goldberg Girls", Geoff puts rose petals on the stairs as a romantic gesture for Erica. Unfortunately, she slips on them and falls down the stairs, as does Murray later on.
• Surprise Party: Happened with Bev and Murray twice.
  • In "Globetrotters", Beverly decides to throw Murray a party for his 50th birthday, but knowing he hates parties, she decides to tell him about it in advance. All goes well until Murray decides to take a two-hour nap, missing the party. So he makes it up to Bev by throwing a do-over party.
  • Three seasons later in "Pickleball", Bev finds out Murray is actually a year younger than everyone thought he was and realizes this means that he gets to have another 50th birthday and throws another party, despite Erica's and Pops' constant objections to it based on Murray hating parties. It goes better than the last one, even getting Murray to open up about his birthday-less past.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Several characters, namely Barry and Adam, attempt to pull off certain tropes (especially ones they see on tv) but they either fail miserably, make things worse or insult other people in real life.
• Swear Jar: In "Deadheads", Bev institutes one after Adam swears. Erica and Adam then trick her into swearing constantly so she can fill the jar and use the money for a trip to the Bahamas. Bev figures it out and starts a "Baditude Jar" for Erica and an "Adam Jar" for every nerdy thing he says. This leads to a "jar war" where all three make each other pay for anything they say.
• Teacher/Student Romance: In "Preventa Mode", Erica suspects that Barry is only getting good grades because he is dating Elana Reid, the sociology teacher. Geoff calls the JTP that Barry became "Hot for Teacher", and due to the JTP being unable to keep the news a secret, word of Barry dating Elana then spreads around campus.
• Technology Marches On: invoked A source of some of the show's humour. "I Drank the Mold" features Erica and Barry trying to get their dad to buy them a CD player ($900 plus tax, if anyone remembers the early-runner prices for gadgets), with Barry even claiming that there will never be anything more advanced. At the end, they also have a run-in with a Discman, which was famous for skips. Adam's boxy video camcorder counts as well.
• Terrible Artist: Barry in "Lainey Loves Lionel".
• Thanksgiving Episode: There is a Thanksgiving episode every season. Beverly is the only person in the family who takes Thanksgiving seriously, as she used to make Thanksgiving dinner with her mother, and continued to do so after her mother died.
  Beverly: It's Thanks-[bleep]-giving!
• That Nostalgia Show
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Barry in "The Adam Bomb".
  Barry: I feel anger!
• Then Let Me Be Evil: In "12 Tapes For A Penny", after Adam scams Columbia House to get loads of music tapes on the cheap, Beverly blames Erica, even after Adam confesses to it. Erica then decides that if her mom is going to blame her for everything, she's going to show how bad she can be.
• They Really Do Love Each Other: Murray and Bev have a heartwarming moment at the end of "The Ring" when they finally kiss on camera, much to the squick of the kids.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: In "Pickleball", Principal Ball forces Adam to be on the school's new pickleball team. Adam goes up to challenge one of the teammates, who immediately hits Adam with the ball, and tell him, "Welcome to the pickle, bitch!"
• This Is Going to Be Huge: In "Mom Trumps Willow", Adam is hyped to see Willow, convinced that it's going to be a huge, game-changing movie like the Star Wars movies, even thinking it will be a trilogy. Then he actually sees it and is underwhelmed (although he warms up to it at the end).
• This Is My Side: In "Beverly Goldberg's Cookbook", Barry and Erica divide their dorm with tape after they've been driving each other crazy. Unfortunately, Erica's side is the one with the door.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: Adam dares Barry to stick his tongue on a pole in "A Christmas Story" as a Whole-Plot Reference to A Christmas Story. Barry gets even by pushing Adam's lips to the pole.
• Too Dumb to Live: Barry veers into this territory at times: in the pilot episode, when he drives his grandfather's car for the first time (with the rest of the family in it), he accidentally drives into the garage door when he is supposed to back out of the driveway (to which Murray intones "I raised a moron"). In "The Kremps," Adam "challenges" (tricks) Barry into climbing up the tree in front of the house... twice.
• Transatlantic Equivalent: The Goldbergs concerns an over-the-top Jewish family living in Pennsylvania, USA. Then there's Friday Night Dinner, revolving around an over-the-top Jewish family resident in North London (UK). Paterfamilias Murray Goldberg is most comfortable when not wearing trousers. Meanwhile in England, Martin Goodman goes naked to the waist at every opportunity. Between the two fathers, you would get one fully dressed middle-aged man. Jackie Goodman is also, in a slightly more restrained British way, as much of a Jewish Mother and My Beloved Smother as Beverley Goldberg.
• True Companions:
  • The Jenkintown Posse (JTP), originally consisting of Barry, Geoff, Naked Rob, and Andy. Matt Bradley later joined in season 4 as the resident chill member, despite Barry's initially feeling threatened by the presence of a genuinely cool guy in his group.
    Barry: JTP!
    Geoff, Naked Rob, Andy, and Matt: JTP!
  • Beverly would have her own group in Season 5, called the Frentas (AKA The Goldberg Girls), consisting of herself, Essie Karp, Virginia Kremp, and Linda Schwartz. Frenta is a portmanteau of the words "friend" and "Yenta".
• T-Word Euphemism: In "Dee-Vorced", Narrator!Adam called divorce "the D-word", and mentioned that Beverly was uncomfortable with saying it.
• Two-Teacher School: Surprisingly averted, given that the show is somewhat modeled after 80's shows that were often guilty of this. At least six faculty members are well-developed characters, and all teach different subjects. Additional teachers have appeared briefly or been referenced.
  • The real life Jenkintown School District is extremely small, consisting of one campus from kindergarten through 12th grade, housed mostly in one building.
• Two-Timer Date: Adam in "Baio and Switch", when he invites both Emmy and Dana to the dance. He watches a bunch of TV episodes with the same premise for ideas, but finds that they all end in failure. He plans the whole night out with Pops, who claims to have actually achieved it for real. Unfortunately, both girls find out and cancel it before Adam gets a chance to carry it out. They do eventually both go with Adam after he gives them a heartfelt apology.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: In what other universe but the magic world of television would these parents ever happen? (Interestingly, Jeff Garlin isn't exactly as attractive as the real Murray, but the real Beverly was about that hot.)
• Uncanny Valley: In the eighth series, the producers have got around the sacking of Jeff Garlin from the show by splicing in surplus footage of Garlin playing Murray, augmented by CGI technology. Those who have seen these scenes agree that it almost but not quite works, so that the finished scenes look just wrong enough to be a little weird and unsettling.
• Unreliable Narrator: Narrator!Adam can never seem to remember the exact year whatever story he's telling happened (see the page quote). This is probably why he gets certain cultural phenomena crossed up, like thinking the Phillies were playing in the World Series the same year Ghostbusters was out.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Erica and Geoff Schwartz.
• The Unsmile: In "Weird Al," Barry and Erica try to help Murray with depression, even asking him to smile. When he does so, they're horrified by it.
• Unusual Euphemism: Murray tries to have "the talk" with Barry using the names of baseball players instead of the actual body parts involved.
  Barry: Oh yeah, you're a Mike Schmidt!
  Murray: Get your head out of your Orel Hershiser and get back down here!
• Vacation Episode: A couple, including the season 7 premiere "Vacation", as well as season 8's "Hanukkah On the Seas".
• Valley Girl: Valley Erica, Erica's college roommate, who is introduced in season 5.
• Vanity License Plate: Uncle Marvin's DeLorean has one reading "CHX DIGIT."
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Premise of the show. To preface this fact, most episodes end with real-life home movies filmed during the decade from which the series is set by creator Adam F. Goldberg featuring his family.
  • In-Universe, this happens with Adam and Uncle Marvin going to see The Wizard and Marvin saying it's based on a true story.
• Very Special Episode:
  • Season 4's "The Day After The Day After", when Barry and the JTP become afraid on a possible nuclear war after watching The Day After.
  • Season 8's "Eracism", in which Adam becomes aware of racism after he watched Do the Right Thing at the local movie theater.
• Vocal Evolution: Sean Giambrone, Adam's actor, both in character and real life, has gone through puberty between seasons 2 and 3, making his voice deeper and more nasal.
  • A plot point in one of the episodes when the school choir teacher wanted an all-boys concert. All of the auditionees' crackling and off-key voices made the teacher panic about sounding terrible in front of their parents, so when the showbiz news reveals that Milli Vanilli were caught lip-synching, Beverly decides to make the choir teacher consider making the boys mouth along to recordings.
• Wacky Fratboy Hijinks: Subverted in "Animal House". Barry expects joining a fraternity to be like Animal House. He goes to one and acts like Bluto, which only gets him thrown out.
• Wax On, Wax Off: Spoofed on "The Kara-te Kid" when uncle Marvin makes Adam and Barry clean his apartment. They think he's teaching them karate like Mister Miyagi in The Karate Kid, but in the end Marvin confesses he just lost his cleaning lady.
• Waxing Lyrical: In one episode, after watching the Royal Wedding, Beverly wants to renew her vows. Murray doesn't want to come up with new ones, so he steals the lyrics to the Family Ties theme song and passes them off as his own. Bev eventually finds out and gets back at him by using the lyrics to The Facts of Life
• We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies: In "We Didn't Start The Fire" (appropriately enough), both Adam and Barry want to sing the titular song at the holiday talent show, only Barry can't get the lyrics right. Eventually, they compromise and Barry sings a version with lyrics specific to the school, while Adam plays a slide show behind him.
• Wedding Episode: "Bill's Wedding", where Bill tries to marry his fiancee in a quiet civil ceremony when Beverly catches wind of it, drags them out of city hall, and with the help of Jane Bales, plan a last-minute elaborate ceremony in the Goldbergs' backyard.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Albert to Murray, his son-in-law, in "You're Underfoot."
  • "Well Done, Daughter!" Guy: In "La Biblioteca Es Libros?" Erica is aghast that not only has Murray failed to acknowledge the good job she does at work & not shared a celebratory beer, he shrugs off Barry's incompetent, moronic, & Noid-esque job as a Domino's delivery boy. Murray makes up for this by coming to her room, congratulating her for her hard work, & shares two beers w/ her, although Beverly catches them & Murray sprung into Dad mode by punishing her for the beers in her room (& silently mouthing "I'm sorry.").
• What the Fu Are You Doing?: Barry's attempts at karate in "Kara-Te". He eventually manages to break a board, but Adam secretly used balsa wood.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In "Deadheads", the JTP called out Barry when his attempt to get them kicked out of a Grateful Dead concert backfired.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • "Goldbergs Never Say Die" is one to The Goonies.
  • "Barry Goldberg's Day Off" to Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Deconstructs the premise by showing how Bueller's antics would play out in real life.
    • Complete with Charlie Sheen reprising his role as the guy in the police station.
  • "A Kick-ass Risky Business Party" to Risky Business.
  • "A Christmas Story" to, well, A Christmas Story, with Adam and Barry reenacting the Tongue on the Flagpole scene and the episode ending with the Goldbergs and the Kremps having a Peking Duck Christmas.
  • "The Dirty Dancing Dance" borrows from both Dirty Dancing and Footloose, with Erica and Barry, respectively, trying to make their favorite film the theme for the school dance.
  • The season 4 premiere is to The Breakfast Club.
  • "Stefan King" is a tribute to the writings of Stephen King, with Adam's plot a parody of Misery^note While the movie version is from 1990, the original novel was published in 1987. Also, Adam dressed as Pennywise the Clown from King's novel, It.
  • "The Kara-te Kid" to The Karate Kid. It ends with Adam and his rival of the same name acting out the final battle from the movie and knocking each other out with a crane kick.
  • Season 5's premiere, "Weird Science", is this to, well, Weird Science.
  • Barry's plot in "Adam Spielberg" to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  • "Sixteen Candles", the Season 6 premiere, to - yes - Sixteen Candles.
  • "Major League'd" to Major League.
  • The main plot to "This Is This Is Spinal Tap" is this to This is Spın̈al Tap.
  • The season 7 premiere, "Vacation", to National Lampoon's Vacation.
  • The subplot with Barry, Erica, and Marvin in "Angst-Giving" is this to Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
  • "Schmoopie’s Big Adventure" is this to Pee-wee's Big Adventure. In fact, Bev intentonally invokes this by stealing the bike she gave Adam so he can relive the plot of the movie.
  • The season 8 premiere, "Airplane!" to, well, Airplane!
  • Season 9 episode "The Strangest Affair Of All Time" to Dynasty (1981), with Beverly's rivalry with Jane Beales ending in a fight in a swimming pool.
  Vic: It's like Dynasty but with smaller hats!
• Who Writes This Crap?!: In The Stinger for "Weird Al," Adam sends a demo of a Barry themed cover of the song "Wang Chung (Everybody Have Fun Tonight)" to Weird Al. It doesn't work for him since there's really no context to who's being talked about.
• Who's on First?: Pops tries to teach Barry the original routine in "We Didn't Start The Fire". It takes Barry two hours to get it.
• Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Every time Uncle Marvin shows up, he's already got a new job/get-rich-quick scheme. When he moves into the Goldberg home and gets a job at Murray's furniture store, he doesn't give them up.
• Wild Teen Party:
  • Barry and Lainey try to have one inspired by Risky Business in the episode "A Kick-ass Risky Business Party".
  • Barry throws one in the first season finale "Livin' On a Prayer".
  • In "MTV Spring Break", Barry and Erica go to Pops' retirement center in Fort Lauderdale for spring break, only to find that it's 90 minutes from the beach, and the rules for the center's pool are too strict. So they decide to break into the pool in the middle of the night and have their own private party. Unfortunately, Pops calls the police and unwittingly gets his grandchildren arrested.
  • In "Sixteen Candles", Erica throws a party like the one in Sixteen Candles for Adam, with the ulterior motive of getting their parents angry at him instead of at her.
  • In "Dave Kim's Party" Adam throws a wild party at Dave Kim's (against his wishes) to impress Brea, but it goes out of control.
• Xanatos Roulette: Erica in "The Other Smother".
• You Meddling Kids: Beverly quotes this in "Big Orange" when confronted with the fact she ruined Barry's favorite shirt.
• Young Future Famous People: Junior high aged versions of political commentator David Sirota and film producer J.C. Spink (Adam's bully) are recurring minor characters on the show, as well as a couple of appearances of high-school-aged Bradley Cooper. Former MLB player and Phillies GM Rubén Amaro, Jr., has also been a character in some episodes. Justified in that all of them attended school with Goldberg in real life with the exception of Cooper, who didn't go to the same school, but grew up in Jenkintown at the same time as Adam.
  • This trope applies to Adam, as well as girlfriend Jackie Geary, who has worked as an actress since the early 2000s, appearing in a wide range of work such as NCIS, 13 Reasons Why, and White House Down.
  • While not exactly "young", nor "famous" per se, Susan Cinoman's career as a writer and dramaturgist is notable enough to make her have her own Wikipedia page (she wrote her first play in 1991).

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