The Nostalgia Critic / Tropes O to S

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Tropes A to C | Tropes D to G | Tropes H to N | Tropes O To S | Tropes T to Z

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O

• Obligatory Joke:
  • In Alice in Wonderland (2010), he says he bets Malice could do a more Tim Burton style sequel to Alice than the movie could. He then tells the audience “c'mon, you all knew we were going there”.
  • In Doug's spotlight video for The Dom Reviews, who didn't expect that there'd be fetish/Safe Word/wanting a dom jokes coming from him?
  • Mocked in “Cats And Dogs”, where making an easy joke about Alec Baldwin being unlikable gets treated like a penalty in a football game and he has to say something nice about the film.
• Obligatory Swearing: Some of the editorial titles, like “Is Juno Any Damn Good”, or “Should We Scare The Shit Out Of Our Kids”, or “WTF Is Up With The Ending Of The Graduate”.
• Obviously Evil: Pointed out in his review of A Kid in King Arthur's Court - "By the way, did I mention that I am the villain? No? Because I don't have to!"
  • He does that again in The Lost World with the Men in Suits.
  • And in Quest for Camelot, where the villain has a far more sinister character design than the others knights around him.
  • And in "The OTHER Titanic Animated Movie" when he points out that the villain has both an evil mustache and an eyepatch.
  • Parodied in the Sailor Moon review:
  Jedite: Please get into this evil device, which is in no way an evil device.
  • In Free Willy, he points out that one of the henchmen manages to look sinister eating popcorn.
  • The villain in Rover Dangerfield.
• Official Couple:
  • In The Lorax commentary, Doug decided that the analysts were married and Black Willy Wonka is very committed to the role. When Rob teasingly complains about it in the Alvin behind the scenes, Doug tells him "you know how many ship you two". Plus Malcolm is totally game.
  • Doug has given approval for both Critic/Nerd and Critic/Snob. For the latter, there's also Critic being Snob's Sex Slave in a Bad Future, and Brad joking in streams that Critic is his naughty boy who needs spanking.
  • While Hyper still can't get over wanting to control Critic (as Doug in Connecticon said, she thinks it's "keeping her options open"), HyperBoner go off together at the end of Mad Max: Fury Road, and are still a couple by The Phantom of the Opera (2004). They're a Sickeningly Sweethearts Battle Couple in Cinderella Old vs New and married as of the Chipwrecked review and even Tamara ships them.
  • From Freddy vs. Jason, Bay/Snyder. In that review Snyder calls him his bae, and in TMNT 2, Snyder is in Bay's ass.
  • From "I'll Be Home For Christmas", Chester and his Distaff Counterpart girlfriend Doe.
  • Aunt Despair was on her own for a couple of episodes, and then Doug decided to make her Uncle Lies' wife, creating the Dysfunctional Family.
  • In Suicide Squad (2016), Critic decides to pair Harley off with Bill instead of the Joker.
• Offstage Villainy: The gap between Small Soldiers and The Princess Diaries 2. They couldn't actually show Hyper kidnapping Critic, taking him to her place, and doing enough awful things that he's terrified into pretending to love her. So. They used that gap, she never actually touches him and he only mentions a couple of things she's done to keep him there.
• Off with His Head!: Lucy references her Satellite City tastes of wanting to behead cute people and then snuggle, singing The Wall fills her with the urge to decapitate. For good reason, Critic looks pretty anxious at this.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • An EXTENDED Oh, Crap!. In his review of The Room (2003), he laughs at Tommy Wiseau's performance and asks where the real actor is. As he realizes to his horror that Tommy Wiseau IS the lead actor, his smile slowly fades into a face of pure horrific stupefaction.
  • And another when at the end of his "Old vs. New" of The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt. As God reveals that he was upset with one of the judgments, the Critic's face goes through about ten priceless seconds of varying degrees of "...I'm fucked, aren't I."
  • Linkara's initial reaction to Nostalgia Critic at the beginning of their crossover review for Superman IV was FULL of this.
  • This is his initial reaction to the Captain Planet AIDS episode.
  • "...Bothell, Washington? You're bluffing. You don't really have those videos."
  • This is his reaction when, after running through the hotel, screaming like a maniac (albeit pausing to do a Q&A), and hiding in Sci-Fi Guy's hotel room, he turns on the TV...only to see Linkara glaring at him, ready to do a Star Trek crossover review with him, something he had been trying to avoid the entire month.
  • In the contemplating scene of "Disney Afternoon", he's okay with the trends from the 80s coming back, but what breaks him (for the third time) is the fact that he's still watching cartoons and commenting on them.
  • After the unseen audience accuses him of clickbait in The Plot To Frozen 2, he tells them they can pick whatever film they want him to do. They pick the 2014 TMNT movie and he cockily calls it child's play, but then groans in pain when he sees the Nerd holding it.
  • Being the selfish assholes that they are, in Fantastic Four, Critic/Tamara/Malcolm don't care when Cthulhu wants to destroy the world, but only decide to do something when Rob tells them he'll come after them.
  • In the stinger for Hyper's first vlog, he sees all the “marry me/hold me” captions she's putting on the video and intones this can't end well.
  • In Hyper's third vlog, even Rob tries to hide behind the couch to try and stop her from talking to him.
  • In Hyper's Midwest Media Expo vlog, when he sees her he's immediately disgusted and tries to hide behind a chair.
  • At the end of Speed Racer, Critic goes from twitchily wanting to keep Sage to utter terror when Rob comes in.
  • Downplayed in Mad Max: Fury Road, Curiosa gets exhausted from the sign of the misogynists approaching, and Hyper's still The Dreaded to Critic.
• Ominous Latin Chanting:
  • The scene where the Nostalgia Critic realizes where he has to review Good Burger.
  • He also uses it for the moments in the Drop Dead Fred review when he asserts that it's really a horror film.
  • He refers to it as "The Dramatic Choir" in his Top 11 Best Cliches, listing the different variants: actual Latin chanting, gibberish that sounds like a dead language, English made to sound like a different language, and plain old oohs and aahs.
• Ominous Music Box Tune:
  • Evilina had one for her leitmotif, which also played over Critic begging to die in Son of the Mask and his princess editorial, and there's another backing his promoting the Super Mario Comics.
  • A For Whom The Bell Tolls version in The Lorax, when straw fan laugh over obnoxious lines from the film. And again when they're throwing rubbish on the floor and Critic is speechifying over it.
  • A One-Woman Wail variant plays over the entirety of this video where he essentially just brags about how good his parodies (of Star Wars, Power Rangers, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Shining specifically, there are of course more not included) are.
  • A few discordant music box notes play during Joe's abuse flashback in the Man of Steel review.
• Once an Episode: Lampshaded miserably in the Scooby Doo episode, where he self-deprecates that he does the "talk over the trailer" sum up before getting to the review proper every time because "what's the point of trying to change anything?"
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: The ghost of Mako seems to have it out for the Critic since the TMNT review. Lampshaded thusly:
  Critic: Good God, I've never had a dead person annoy me so much!
  Casper: TIMING!
  Critic: ...except for him!
• Once More, with Clarity: In Food Fight, Critic comes home from an earlier review and has a dementedly gross Catwoman-style breakdown. Sad, but he does that for movies and it's extreme but to be expected. But then we get to the ending of the review, where Tamara tells him it was a waste of time and nobody will care so he'll get less money, and the breakdown clips are shown again, this version much sadder because karma humanized him a little.
• Only Sane Woman: Tamara's movie character in Pixels, looking like she wants to be dead during most scenes of the film and actually taking over from Critic to rant at the others.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Normally when the Critic has to suffer through a poorly made film, he usually reacts with aimless screeching with a side of Ham and Cheese. So when a movie comes along like Freddy Got Fingered, which ic so bad that it could drive The Nostalgia Chick and Oancitizen into hysteric fits after watching it, you know something is seriously wrong when throughout the entire review all of his insults and acts of aggression is cold, subdued and passive, taking out his rage by murdering his cast not unlike Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men.
• Open Secret: In the first Hyper vlog, Malcolm asks her to keep his Critic crush a secret, but both Tamara and Critic seem to know about it anyway, Tamara encouraging it and Critic using it to his advantage.
• Operation: Jealousy: He thinks this is happening with Dexter in Good Burger, as Monique looks like the female version of Ed and they're on a double date.
• Orphaned Set Up: Subverted in Garfield, as if you only watch Critic then you'll think that the Yo being angry at him joke had no follow-through, but it got resolved in Pop Quiz Hotshot.
• Out-of-Context Eavesdropping:
  • Invoked by Hyper in Christmas Story II who, as she said to Bennie, just wants to hurt the Critic somehow, listens in to the Critic's hyperbole of saying the movie has put him off Christmas, is delighted to find something she can use, but uses “just trying to help” to her advantage and gets her way.
  • In Mad Max: Fury Road, the meninists either don't know or don't care (probably the latter considering what they're like) about Critic's history with Hyper, and take his irritation with her as "telling off the feminazi". He makes his disgust with this obvious.
• Out of Character:
  • As the character personas hated each other, Rachel's farewell video is very clearly dedicated to Doug and Malcolm and a Call-Back to Demo Reel, instead of anything to do with Critic.
  • Occasionally in top 11s or editorials it'll clearly be Doug talking instead of Critic, but the situation will still work for Critic's personality. Like “The Top 11 Best Simpsons Episodes” where he talks about having a hard time at school.
• Overcrank: The premise behind "Scary Slow-Mo", where he plays a scene slowly to make it more scary.
• Overly Long Gag: He has a tendency towards this. Some of the more prominent examples:
  • BLOOBITY BLOOBITY BLOOBITY BLOOBITY, BLOOBITY BLOOBITY BLOOBITY BLOOBITY, BLOOBITY BLOOBITY BLOOBITY BLOOBITY, BLOOBITY BLOOBITY...
  • The Critic himself has arguably been guilty of OLGs from time to time. The "laughing at Zack" and "Becky memorial" bits from Saved by the Bell, and the "bunny boobies" bit from Space Jam all dragged a bit.
  • As well as Mr. Tachanova Humpascheier Rickydicky Hamstermaster Pollywolly Wannabingbangme Supercalafragalistic Knickknackpaddywhackgivethedoga Bananafanafofresca Hickorydickoryhockitypockitywockitywhack Angelina Francesca the Third. ("It's Tatapolous.") Whatever.
  • Tone Lōc? Tony Lock? T. One Lock? Tone-Loc Picard?
  • The outbursts of "no" during the Drop Dead Fred review, going on for quite a while, ranging from loud and angry to quiet and disbelieving and back again.
  • The alien from Independence Day asking if it is an old girlfriend ("Stephanie?").
  • Both the Critic's reaction to Apollo getting beat up and the clapping scene in Rocky IV get really drawn out.
  • From the review of The Room (2003), the Critic's response to Lisa questioning if Johnny is dead.
  • Spoony-as-the-Critic's crazed laughter in "You're a Dirty Rotten Bastard".
  • Drs. Insano and Smith's maniacal laughter in the The Secret of NIMH 2 review.
  • Soundwave talking about being in his own romantic comedy film in Raiders of the Story Arc: [[Transformers.
  • While reviewing Eight Crazy Nights, the sequence where he hears Whitey's voice, praises it and is astonished to learn it was done by Adam Sandler lasts for three minutes and forty-five seconds.
  • From his review of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, "Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down..."
  • At the end of The Purge, the shock of seeing Pinky And Brain animated and voiced by the actors wears off after a bit, and all you're left with is childhood cartoon characters swearing at each other. Doug realizes this in the commentary, saying that he can see how it's a lot like a Family Guy skit.
  • In his review of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the Critic says a barrage of disbelieving "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO, NO!" during the raft scene.
  • In his review of Jurassic Park III, the Critic mocks the unsuccessful jump scare scene on the plane by repeatedly recreating the jumpscare with a raptor saying "Alan!" The gag runs nearly two minutes and is referenced again at the end of the review.
  • In "Dawn of the Commercials", when he looks at a commercial from Canada involving a baby shower and is shocked to learn that it is actually a rape PSA, he sits there for six seconds with a frozen smile on his face — and keeps that smile as he says, "What the fuck, Canada?"
  • At the beginning of his review for Felix the Cat: The Movie, the Critic delirious raves about the movie: "If a piece of shit took a piece of shit, and that piece of shit took a piece of shit, and that piece of shit took a piece of shit, AND THAT PIECE OF SHIT TOOK A PIECE OF SHIT, AND THAT PIECE OF SHIT MADE A MOVIE — AND THAT MOVIE TOOK A PIECE OF SHIT, THIS IS THE PIECE OF SHIT YOU WOULD SEE!"
  • In Princess Diaries II, Critic's and Hyper's Almost Kiss is agonizingly long, although it's somewhat justified, both trolling the audience and showing that Critic doesn't actually want to do it.
  • In The Happening, the Toilet Humor with classical music joke about Zoeey Deschanel.
  • The laughing in Lady in the Water goes on for even longer than the same in Saved by the Bell.
  • Two minutes into the Cats And Dogs real review and even Doug is wanting Rob to shut up with the Goldblum impression.
  • In the Dreamcatcher behind the scenes, Doug drives a joke into the ground and fake-cries when Rob calls him out.
  • The end of the A Muppet Family Christmas review where Michael Kaine (played by Walter) gives Critic a very long and confusing lesson on properly making fun of him.
  • The "Where is the proof" joke in his Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within review goes on for 2 minutes and 50 seconds, plus another half a minute lampshading how long the joke was.
• Overreacting Airport Security: He complains that he gets uncomfortably felt up at the airport and a rescued Geordi doesn't even get searched.
• Overused Running Gag: In his review of Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, when the Critic portrays the scene of Little Nemo piloting a blimp as the Hindenburg Disaster, a disclaimer acknowledges that the joke has been overused, and claims that it will be the last time he will ever use it. (It wasn't, he used it again in Gordy.)
  • Doug has said he's got seriously sick of the "Bat Credit Card" joke and will only do it once at cons, and sometimes not even then if he's in a bad mood or has blown his voice out again. A lot of the time he just says he's too exhausted. The tiredness of it was lampshaded at the end of Rover Dangerfield, where he screamed the line as the Nostalgia Kitten and immediately got shot. In Christmas With The Kranks, he bashes every one of his old memes, but saves the most venom for this one, telling off old-Critic for just doing it for the sake of pandering.
  • 'Platypus Bunny' had a short life-span, as the Guyver review with Sage mocked it by having him whine that it was the new thing while 'Of Course!' was boring, and being portrayed as the asshole.
  • If you watch con videos, for obvious reasons he doesn't seem to enjoy receiving rape whistles (at one point hoping he wouldn't have to use it). He got another one at the opening ceremony for Fan World, and thanked those who watched him but apologized to anyone who had no clue of the reference. This might have contributed to why he retired the "scary Canadian PSA" joke in the next commercial and explained that the things they talked about scared him too much.

P

• Pac Man Fever: Noted in Suburban Commando, where an arcade game shown is portrayed as a game where you fight aliens while the Critic recognizes it as After Burner, which has nothing to do with aliens.
• Paddleball Shot: Chastises The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl for abusing this trope, featuring largely random special effects that only exist to pop out towards the audience.
  "You know, sometimes, [3D] can be a good thing, like flying through the skies in How to Train Your Dragon, or experiencing breathtaking worlds in Avatar. But then every once in a while, you get the YouTube Poop of 3D, where every so often, they just go, 'FUCK YOU, WE'RE 3D! FUCK YOU, WE'RE 3D!'"
• Painting the Medium: In Moulin Rouge!, the Guilty Pleasures song is the only one where they look down the barrel of the camera, i.e it's more directed to the audience than to Critic.

• Parental Hypocrisy: In-universe (because Doug's real mom was just sweet and religious), Critic's mom yells at him for swearing but is abusive enough for him to consider her a monster for most of his life.
• Parental Neglect: Aunt Despair and Uncle Lies swap between this and Abusive Parents, as aside from the actively shitty stuff they do, in Rise Of The Commercials the latter lets his daughter play in the snow until she's frozen solid. Aunt Despair literally pawns off her niece with Critic at the end of Balto (who obviously can't take her so gives her to Chester) and floors it with Uncle Lies after her pretense that both the girl's "real parents" died from autoerotic asphyxiation backfires.

  Uncle Lies: What took you so long?

  Aunt Despair: A child's mind is very delicate, floor it!

• Paper-Thin Disguise: Naturally brings this up in the Sailor Moon review, where Serena is unable to tell Tuxedo Mask's very obvious identity. He also notes this of Sailor Moon herself.
  • In The Matrix, Malcolmus and Tammity are clearly just Malcolm and Tamara in a lot of leather. When Critic scoffs, Tamara reminds him this wasn't their idea and he wrote it.
  • Critic and Nerd hide from a foot clan chasing them by dressing up in fedoras and trenchcoats that just so happened to be available on a rack.
• The Parody Before Christmas: In the review of the 1986 film version of Babes in Toyland, the Critic makes a joke when he sees that Santa Claus is played by Pat Morita, having him call his deer "Now, Egg Roll! Now, Fried Rice! Now, Mushu with ham! On Wonton, on Dumpling, and Moo Goo Gai Pan!"
• Parody Commercial: One of Nostalgia Critic's occasional jokes is to make one out of one of the items in the work he reviews.
• Passed in Their Sleep: In Jurassic Park III, the doctor reassures Critic that his mom died in her sleep, not that this helps.
• Past Victim Showcase: While talent-bended Critic isn't dead, Shya still grabs him off the floor and presents his Empty Shell-ness to Rachel and Malcolm.
• Perpetual Smiler: Doug in his out-of-character videos often can't seem to stop smiling, even when he's raging about something.
• Perverse Sexual Lust: Referenced in his review of Space Jam. He was really weirded out by how sexualized Lola Bunny was, given that she's an anthropomorphic rabbit. He had to reverse this in a later review.
  Nostalgia Critic: Remember how I said that people don't want to fuck bunnies? Apparently, some people do.
• Perverted Drooling: Malcolm and Tamara both love the fact that the Hyper Angry Bird fanart is drooling in the Osmosis Jones behind the scenes.
• Personality Powers: As per the cliché, Fantastic Four (2005) gives Critic, Malcolm and Tamara fitting powers. Tamara's most likely to act on violence so gets Super-Strength, Malcolm likes having control so can turn anything he wants into a video game character, and Critic gets a Slasher Smile at being able to create explosions.
• Pet-Peeve Trope:
  • Not up to Berserk Button levels, but he always points out when kidnapped people are far too relaxed in their situation when they should be at least afraid. These comments tend to be foreshadowing Hyper making an appearance in the next episode so it'd make sense for Critic to be irritated about, but it annoys Doug in his own vlogs too.
  • Every time As You Know appears, he repeatedly insists how it's a sign the movie is going to be awful.

• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Seriously, what is Tinkerbell made out of? The Critic points out that she could have easily solved everything in the movie by having her beat the living snot out of Captain Hook at the rest of the pirates.
• Please, Don't Leave Me:
  • Critic is so desperate and lonely by Master Of Disguise that he spends about two minutes begging a personification of a fart joke not to leave him alone.
  • The first thing Critic says to Tamara in the bar is telling her off not for torturing him but leaving afterwards.
  • In Cinderella Old vs New, Benny gets more upset than he should at Hyper dating Devil Boner and effectively replacing him as her assassin, and tries to take her out.
  • Parodied in Doug/Rob’s commentary of The Secret Of NIMH 2, as Doug is playing up the annoying, Rob firmly asks if he actually wants Rob to leave, and Doug immediately goes small and contrite “no”.

• Police Are Useless: Critic's various illegal actions only occasionally land him in hail, with Rob apparently bailing him out a lot. He never gets the police to arrest his other tormentors, though, namely his stalker and kidnapper Hyper Fangirl, though she might have enough money as to not worry about it. Of course, much of this is because the characters getting imprisoned and kept from these wacky antics wouldn't be as funny.
  • He's happy Transformers (2007) confirms his belief that police are evil.
  • When the policemen in The Matrix beat the shit out of Morpheus, Critic points out “not much has changed since 1999”.
  • In Demolition Man, he references all the real life cases of white police men killing black people by saying (when the film police don't hurt Snipes's character) “yeah, this is what every minority wishes the LAPD was like”. Also discussed by Malcolm in the behind the scenes, as he talks about police in other countries giving all the verbal warnings, and police in America having essentially a “shoot first, ask later” policy.
  • Used as a joke in his review of Night of the Living Dead (1968), as the black guy gets shot and he gleefully calls it like Baltimore nowadays before the audience boo him.
  • Referenced in Blade, as the police in the (black) woman's apartment gets a "you're black, so you're probably under arrest for something".
  • Referenced in Ghostbusters, as Abby says "isn't that like telling people not to be cops because they might intimidate people". Cue Patty responding "what do you mean might?"
  • Referenced in TMNT 2 where a cop has a gun on the turtles and calls them monsters, and Nerd says "green lives matter".
  • Joked about in Terminator 2: Judgement Day when S.W.A.T officers mercilessly shot Dyson, leading Nostalgia Critic to say that it is "1991 L.A moment."
• Political Overcorrectness:
  • Discussed in "When Does A Joke Go Too Far". It was very on the side of "people are crybabies and should be offended", but Doug said in a later vlog that he did it intentionally to get meninists on his side and then sweep the rug out of them in Mad Max: Fury Road.
  • Discussed further in "Does PG Mean Anything Anymore", as he says you can't act like the insane rating system is "world's turned PC", because a politically correct rating system would at least make sense.
• Politically Correct History: In Wild Wild West, he likes the idea of a trans woman in the film's brothel, but it wouldn't happen in those times and the crossdressing jokes are really unfunny.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The meninists in Mad Max: Fury Road and Ghostbusters (2016). While there are others in both reviews that annoy/try to kill Critic, they're always seen as the main villains, and they get ripped into by Devil Boner in the former and find they can't be misogynists to a little girl in the latter.
• Polyamory: Despite his many sex issues, Critic has a lot of partners (both male and female) at the same time, wants attention from everyone, and being mono has never come up as a needed thing.
  • Hyper is married to Devil Boner but lives with Benny, as well as seemingly having hearts for Bill. The former four all live together, and Doug and Tamara said at a panel she likes her options open.
• Poor Man's Porn: He's very obviously masturbating to George Takei's autobiography in the group review of The Last Airbender.
  • Tamara's scientist character in Fantastic Four (2005) also puts away a magazine with a sexy cover for safekeeping.
• Portmanteau:
  • In his Batman & Robin review, he said the movie was "horribafuckus", combining the words horrible and fuck.
  • In his Full House review, he said the show was manufactured precious shit... or "precshit", as he liked to call it.
  • Similarly, in his Home Alone 3 review, he said many of John Hughes's '90s movies tended to fall into the category of slapstick shit, or "slapshit", as he liked to call it. He repeats this same joke in Christmas with the Kranks when he's being awkward in the past.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure:
  • He makes a really bad Doctor Who TARDIS sound effect in The Shining review, sounding more like one of the Three Stooges. Doug excused this by admitting he's only seen one episode and that was the Doctor-lite Blink.
  • In-universe during Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes, a Running Gag is Tamara clearly not knowing the Avatar series, and when she researches enough to be in a Toph costume, Dante Basco is out of his Zuko phase.
  • Tamara actually made a series about popular movies she's never seen, starting with Return to Oz. In the Anime Iowa panel, she and Doug have a giggle about all the comments claiming she's lying about having not seen [whatever movie] and Doug confirms that she really hasn't watched anything. And in The Blair Witch Project, Malcolm said he hadn't seen that many movies either, making her Squee.
  • In Devil real thoughts, Doug talked about Rachel being like Tamara and not really knowing anything nerdy, but knew everything Tolkien related, more so than boys who would call her a fake geek.
• Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Twisted in Disney Afternoon when he's recreating his 90s bedroom in the studio, with nostalgia figurines, junk food and posters like Batman Returns, Terminator 2 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the walls. Twisted because the posters themselves don't give clues to his personality, it's the fact that he's recreated his 90s bedroom.
• Postmodernism: With a few retcons in there, "The Review Must Go On" and the aftermath. The characters (Critic and Donnie) know full well it was an Ass Pull and they're not the same person, but it still happened and they're bitter, Critic is nastier and Donnie went insane.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Doug's To Boldly Flee speech was notoriously sweet, but it made Critic think that the entire TGWTG world is on his shoulders, and if he leaves that world ceases to exist.
• Power is Sexy: The Critic is consistently attracted to curvy brunettes who like dominating, and his guy crushes were always confident and self-possessed.
• P.O.V. Cam: In “The Review Must Go On”, Critic points out that there's a ton of weird “stalker cam” when Doug's alone in his house and how it makes you feel like you're watching something you shouldn't. “Which according to some critics is appropriate.”
• P.O.V. Sequel: Essentially the fifth Hyper vlog to the Christmas Story II review. It reveals she was still actually in the studio when Santa Christ talked to Critic, and went from smiling smugly when Santa Christ called him a douche, to seething when Critic said she had to be punished, to back to smug when that got cut down. It also explains why nobody is on Critic's side (he's treated them like shit too much), and proves Hyper's still deluded and dangerous, still wanting to stalk him and having a Self-Serving Memory about what happened at the end of Princess Diaries II.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Although NC gave Little Monsters a lot of criticism for its use of constant swear words in a kids movie, he gave credit to the "Holy shit!" line that the girl gives when she sees the monster entrance, since it would seem like a legitimate reaction.
  • After it's revealed in The Nutcracker in 3D that Critic went the entire 2018 season without saying "fuck," and Tamara aks him if he's going to keep that up, Critic naturally replies with, "Fuck, no."
• Pre-Climax Climax: Unfortunately no details, but he calls "inevitable death sex" the best kind of sex.
• Prequel:
  • In a surreal moment, he crossed over with Doug's AT vlog of “Business Time”, with the magic of the show transporting him to Alcon, setting up “The Guyver” review.
  • Whether it's to the Scooby-Doo review or To Boldly Flee (it came out before the latter, but makes more sense if it's before the former) is anyone's guess, but the Child's Play 3 review is also a lead-in/finale. It self-deprecates all the Overused Running Gags, kills off Casper and meta's Plot Holes, Doug's wedding ring and meta jokes themselves, but also has Critic in Extreme Doormat mode, whimpering whenever he's snapped at and has death on the brain.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Vanilla Ice's character in Cool as Ice, supposedly.
  • Mocked in Care Bears Nutcracker:
  Grumpy Bear: (covered in soot) Because I like to be black.
  Critic: You and most white suburban teenagers.
  • In the Phantom behind the scenes, Malcolm claps Doug's attempt at twerking for Beth and Tamara.
  • Called out seriously in Freddy vs Jason, as the two middle aged white guy writers have no idea how black teenage girls talk, and Critic asks if “we white people can stop being such white people”.
• Pretty in Mink: Parodied in the review of the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special, when he noticed that Skeletor's wand could create parkas with fur collars out of thin air.
  Skeletor: My wand can do anything! It can kill people, destroy cities, and make fashionable fur coats!
• Pretty Little Headshots: For comedy, time and sanity purposes (because only a minority of people want to see his brain splattered on the wall), if he gets shot in the forehead there'll be only be a small hole there with a tiny bit of blood. If he gets shot in the side, there'll be nothing.
• Previously on…: In “Nostalgia Critic Talks Transformers 4”, after knocking Chester out, Critic does a quick summary of the Transformers-review storyline to catch everyone up to speed.
  • “What You Never Knew About TMNT” plays the end of the Small Soldiers episode at the beginning, explaining that Critic has been missing for a week. It's only the following week that it's explained that he's being held as a Captive Date by Hyper.
  • “The Saga Of Hyper Fangirl” on the DVD serves as this, picking out most of the moments (up until Christmas Story 2) in the arc where she hurt Critic in some way. Fitting, as Doug's complained that people have conveniently forgot about said moments to make Critic look like the bad guy.
  • The WTR: Teddy Ruxpin has a brief montage of his run-ins with the bear to remind people of why he's traumatized by it.
• Primal Fear:
  • In the "Top 11 Disney Villains", he talks about Gaston being scary because he's not evil for the sake of being evil, just Entitled to Have You and used to getting whatever he wants. In "What Happened To Great Disney Villains", he calls him his favorite villain because he's been the victim of people like that. Cue Hyper in the next episode.
  • If you feel like you're useless and haven't made anything out of your life, then the commercial special angst will hurt quite a bit more.
  • Most people have felt alone and isolated at one point, so the Scooby-Doo review resonated strongly with plenty of his fanbase.
    • Plus it's not explicitly stated, but old Critic is clearly ^note from his shakiness, more quiet personality and inability to remember anything from his childhood suffering from early dementia at this point. So Critic has that to look forward to now.
  • Women were apparently more scared of The Shining review than men were, including Rachel, as Doug had to apologize to her and several con guests for playing the part of “abusive threatening psycho boyfriend” far too well.
  • Outright stated in “Why Do We Love Zombies”, as his analysis comes to the conclusion that it's getting used to the terror, and that's a different and deeper kind of fear than immediate scare.
  • In a prequel to nostalgia-ween, “Is Eyes Wide Shut Just Artsy Porn” talks about the most truly terrifying thing being the subconscious.
  • This is the trope that makes him love Paranorman so much as “it's finding that the scariest part of the scariest creatures is that, they are human, and any of us can become these things at any time.”
  • “Reality” in The Monster Squad. It makes Tamara scream when she sees it first, and terrifies the boys with things like student loans and bills to pay.
  • Both sides in Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, as Critic's “mental illness” has to be kept under sedation so that he can behave and be marketable, but when the Restraining Bolt is taken away, he shows there was a good reason for the sedation.
  • With the accompanying vlog and Doug at a later con confirming that a) Hyper was just manipulating Critic after his speech and b) Critic was in the right because Hyper's been awful to him, the last five minutes of A Christmas Story 2 review turn into abuser tactics (helped along by Santa Christ) making their victim feel awful and alone.
  • Both used and subverted in Old vs New: Cinderella as Critic (whose fear and hate of animated Tremaine has been around since 2008) says "what's scarier than a middle aged woman obsessed with housework", but Hyper thinks "virtually anything".
  • Briefly, but in "Something Original" (the opening of Wild Wild West review), the guy who creeps on Jessie and keeps trying to touch her becomes invincible. For obvious reasons this really scares her.
  • In the behind the scenes of Labyrinth, both Doug and Malcolm agree that the concept of Ask That Guy as a father is terrifying.
• Princesses Rule: One of his biggest pet peeves. In any movie or TV show where a character is called a princess but is not shown to be the daughter of a living, active monarch, he will mention it and attack the character for it. For instance, in the review for Felix the Cat: The Movie, he scratches his head over why Princess Oriana is a princess when her parents are dead and she is ruling the nation, then theorizes that she had her first name legally changed to "Princess" so she could keep the title. He finally examines this trope in detail in the editorial video "What's with the Princess Hate?".
• Product Placement:
  • Most of the 2012 Critic episodes have had advertisements cutting him off in the middle of the review. Out-of-universe it's because Doug needs a little bit more money (caused by blip.tv changing the amount of money they pay to creators on a regular basis), but in-universe it's been implied that while Critic acts annoyed by them, he secretly likes being a corporate whore.
  • In Conquest Of The Commercials, he gushes about how Dragon's Lair should be turned into a movie, the point being that it is.
• Property of Love: In Princess Diaries 2, Hyper changes her normal shirt for a blue “HE'S MINE” with an arrow pointed at Critic. Not only is he not hers, but the whole time they've been doing this, she's had Benny follow him with a gun to make sure he behaves.
• Prophetic Names: The Critic wonders if Richie Rich or his dad's lives would have been different if they had been born named "Poor E. Broke." Chester A. Bum claims that it's his legally born name.
• Protagonist-Centred Morality:
  • The AI review and commentary had a huge dose of this, as it's not okay for TMZ to mock celebrities, but reboot Critic does it so much that even Malcolm in the Man of Steel behind the scenes video pointed it out, and Doug in-commentary thinks the celebrities (including child stars) that he mocks are “asking for it”.
  • Even before they find out that Bay is a transformer, both Erod and Critic (although Erod can't actually do it) think that just because he makes bad films they find bad it's okay to kill him.
• "Psycho" Shower Murder Parody: In her fourth vlog, to show off that she's a creepy jerkass, Hyper sees Doug walking around, sneaks up on him, and pretends to stab him while making Psycho string noises.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • THIS! IS! SONIC!!!
  • WHAT'S! THE! JOKE?!
  • (In a pitched-down voice) YOU! ARE! ''SCUM!!''
  • WAH! WAH! WAHHH!!
  • (As stated earlier,) GO! BACK! TO THE LESBIANS!
  • JUST! EX! PLAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • YEEES! BATTLEFIELD! EAAAAARRRTTTHHH!!!
    ** THIS! MOVIE! WAS! OKAY!
  • TELL! A STORY!!!
  • (In Slow Motion) PLEASE! MOVE! FORWARD!!
  • NOTHING ABOUT THAT SCENE MAKES ANY! FUCKING! SENSE! WHAT! SO! GOD! DAMN! EVER!
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The "Storm" movement of the William Tell Overture plays when he rants over the Blues Brothers SNES game and when he destroys The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia DVD.

Q

• Queer Colors: In his "Grading Cartoon Intros" episode, he interprets the rainbow color schemes in the She-Ra: Princess of Power title sequence as showing gay pride, compared to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, who Critic perceives as stuck in a Transparent Closet.
  NC (as She-Ra): We even have rainbow-colored characters, because...we're not afraid to hide our pride over here. You're so deep in the closet, you're tap dancing with R. Kelly.
• Queer People Are Funny: The reviews of Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee are less about the plot problems and more about Take Thating at all Female Gaze homoerotic Ship Tease they involved. Strange, considering how Doug's gone on record gushing about his that-way-inclined audience.
  • Genderqueer are included in the mocking too, as in Catwoman (2004), Malcolm with the Tina A tits is referred to feeling like a catman in a catwoman's body, gets treated like the Butt-Monkey, and Critic makes sure to scowl at him the most when they're all slow-dancing.
  • "The Strangest But Best Couples" has mocking of Critic's new homophobia too, but it's still meant to be amusing when LittleKuriboh (who when he came out as bisexual got a big backlash) touches him all over and then gets kicked out when Critic had wanted to humiliate a "sexy female guest" instead. Same thing at the end when Kirphober thought he was Kuriboh.
  • The first Hyper Fangirl vlog has Malcolm (in character) say he has a crush on Critic, and that while they have a bromance now, he'll tell Critic his real feelings eventually. As all Critic does is make him a pathetic abused Butt-Monkey, the Cringe Comedy is just too much.
  • Right off the bat in Jupiter Ascending, as the joke is that since Lana Wachowski is a trans woman (and Tamara a cis woman is playing her), they should get a man to play her instead. Critic is at least better later on though (and not soon after Doug had a rant that included trans people needing representation), when he sincerely congratulates her on transitioning and raising awareness, but that she really needs to write women better.
  • A lot of the Sharkboy and Lavagirl behind the scenes consists of Barney dressing up as Rachel (because they're recreating the Face/Off review) and everyone thinking it's hilarious. Rob especially contributes his “neuroses” to the fact that both Doug and his dad have worn mascara, and says “I think fairy is a good word here”.
  • Notably averted in Hocus Pocus, as Doug spends most of it in drag when he plays Winifred, yet there's not a single "man in drag" joke to be found and she's treated like a woman who people are attracted to.
• Questionable Casting: The Critic points this out in-universe when he sees someone famous in crappy movies or shows.
  (As Eric Idle in Casper): I'm far too talented to be in this movie!
• Questionable Consent: In Princess Diaries 2, how much Critic actually wanted to be in the second Almost Kiss was already up for debate before Doug confirmed he never had feelings for Hyper at all and was just stockholming.
• Quizzical Tilt: Parodied in The Thief and the Cobbler review when Tak and Yumyum look at each other while tilting their heads left and right, Critic mimics them until his head does a full rotation.

R

• Race Lift:
  • In Jurassic World, white Chris Pratt Owen is played by black Malcolm.
  • Discussed in "Is Whitewashing Still A Thing'', specifically talking about how making a white character black is not the same as turning a black character white because America is 63% white and things still aren't on equal playing field yet.
  • In Dragonball Evolution, Critic comments on Goku being played by a white guy, and Kuriboh and Masako get jokingly offended as white men. The First Viewing also has Rob dubbing the only Japanese people in the film as scared they'll get replaced by white people.
  • The Batman Forever review references how Demo Reel cast a black man as Two Face.
• Racial Face Blindness:
  • In the Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes, Critic confusing Dante Basco with Dev Patel angers Dante enough that Critic is punched down into the comment section.
  • In his made up plot of Frozen II, Anna confuses a random black woman in a green dress for Tiana, and thus gets exiled for being racist.
  • With women instead of race, but bizarrely, one of the comments for The Phantom of the Opera (2004) mistook Beth and/or Tamara with Lindsay. The three look nothing alike aside from being white women with brown hair.
  • Contrary to what some fans believe, Heather, Lindsay and Rachel are all different women.
• Rage Against the Author:
  • Inverted with The Last Airbender, with Doug raging against Critic being an idiot, but having so little power now he can't do anything about it.
  • Played straight in the “Review Must Go On” DVD review, as he hopes Doug won't get his conscience back, making him say it's only okay and not the masterpiece he wants it to be, and realizes that's just happened, has a Freak Out and calls him a puppet master.
  Doug: Eh, this review's meta enough already. [closes it out]
  • A running thread is Critic taking out his rage on Doug by stealing his identity, calling him the character in the youtube 2017 intro and one of Doug's Express VPN ads having a Call-Back to TRMGO.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • Throughout the entire Felix the Cat review, he is clearly suffering from the film's horrendous animation, bullshit plot, painfully obnoxious characters, ear-torturingly annoying voice acting and musical numbers, and random, unexplained plot points and events. But what really pushes him over the edge is the princess' pun at the very end.
  • The Patch Adams movie angered Critic to such an unprecedented and completely justifiable degree:-
  Critic: I know a person really was murdered in real life, but it wasn't the same way, it wasn't the same time, and it wasn't even the same gender as they're saying here. And what is so strange about this is that it totally proves why the method they're so poorly trying to convey to us wouldn't work! People do make bad choices when they're emotional, and bad things do happen! Again, the real teachings of the real Hunter Adams are much smarter than this. And by trying to simplify it to such a disgusting, fictionalized degree is absolutely HORRIBLE. Let me tell YOU something, movie. Maybe YOU should have been "emotionally invested" when you were representing the life of a man, his theories, his friends, his real life practices, and his actual hard work! FUCK...YOOOOOOOUUUUUUU!!!
• Rage Judo: Used on him by Linkara when they had just finished panning Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and the Critic has compared Linkara's special effects to the movie's.
  Critic: Get over it, you comic geek! Your special effects suck.
  Linkara: Bat-credit card!
  Critic: A BAT CREDIT CARD?!! I'LL KILL YOU!!! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!! (goes crazy and shoots things)
• Rape as Drama: He can't spoil two of them, but his best Stephen King movie list has three movies with sexual assault/abuse in them, and he discusses how well they're done as a Primal Fear and something the main character has to deal with the memories of.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Defied. He sarcastically sums up how Costner's character in Waterworld can be considered a good guy because despite all the horrible things he's done, he didn't take a woman's body when she didn't want it.
  • Squickily, defied with pedophilia too. While he's sane enough to know it's obviously evil, watch his review of The Tommyknockers. Cheating and bailing out of your responsibility towards a lost child is seen as worse than someone getting jailed for touching kids.
  • By omission in the Mad Max: Fury Road review, as the extent of awful is misogyny from the meninists, overzealous fanboyism and Impractical Joe calling Curiosa a whore. Critic also only briefly mentions the wives, although their inclusion is defended against the meninists not wanting women in movies.
  • In the improvised Hyper vlogs, Malcolm enables her a lot, but is made very uncomfortable when she blissfully-ignorantly wants to 'surprise' Critic in his hotel room, or Mind Rape him into loving her.
  • Fitting their characters, Critic and Devil Boner complain about the tree rape scene in "Evil Dead: Old vs New", while Hyper sees nothing wrong with it.
• Reaching Between the Lines: Two characters who aren't in the same frame usually act as if they're talking by a video link, though the Critic throws something at Ask That Guy with the Glasses and knocks him out and he's able to fire his gun at Linkara and hit the wall behind him. He also appears to interact with the physical frame of M. Bison saying "OF COURSE!" and The Cinema Snob's musings on Manimal. Lampshaded by Phelous in the Child's Play (1988) review when he comments that the sock he threw at the Critic got much whiter in the Critic's frame than it had been in his.
• Reality Subtext: In-universe, the Mentos commercial in Rise Of The Commercials has Critic's character make Tamara's, Jim's and Malcolm's characters feel like shit, and when he stalks off, they eat the candy and give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown (Tamara even screams in his face), just like what tends to happen in Critic's universe anyway.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Minor instance, since January 2012 some of his reviews have ads into the middle of the video as well, so he works this into the script of the reviews.
  • The ending of the A Simple Wish review, where Mara Wilson herself appears and delights in handing the Critic his comeuppance for making fun of her simply for the movies she appeared in... resulted from Mara being hurt about Doug's "fans" harassing her over Critic's Accentuate the Negative opinion about her acting, and Doug made up with her and she agreed to appear in his next review.
  • The only reason why Critic was "busy training" in the “Top 11 Adult Jokes We Never Got As Kids” was because Doug's home area had a lot of power outages that summer and he couldn't do a proper editorial.
  • To a lesser extent, Tamara had to do a half-day of filming After Earth because she was the only one going to vidcon, so Hyper Fangirl tells everyone that she can't be there long because she's getting a face tattoo of Critic's neck.
  • In his review of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, the Critic had taken one potshot too many at TMZ, and they retaliated by employing him. According to the Critic's colleagues, TMZ really was offended by his criticisms of the news network and demanded that any such videos, like the "Top 11 South Park Episodes", be removed (though they can be found on Blip). The skit of him being "employed" by TMZ was made in response to that.
  • Acknowledged whenever he talks about Demo Reel and TRMGO, knowing it wasn't the intention and he wasn't meant to come back.
  • Doug and company moved studios at the end of 2018 just because bigger place, but Critic’s motivation ends up being that he wanted to escape from being Aunt Despair’s and Uncle Lies’ resident emotional punching bag.
• Real Men Cook: Inverted as a point of pride in "Rise Of The Commercials", where he says the boys toys ovens were better than the girls toys ovens because boys couldn't eat the stuff they made and live.
• Real Men Eat Meat: Parodied to overcompensating extremes in the beginning of Demolition Man, as he eats a heart and ends up with blood smeared on his mouth.
• Real Trailer, Fake Movie: In The Cat in the Hat review, at the point in the movie where the Cat does his Carmen Miranda dance number, Critic first suspects that the movie is just some wacky episode of To Catch a Predator, then eventually comes to the conclusion that this is supposed to be one of those fake trailers that appear in Tropic Thunder, "The one that looks real but is so goddamn stupid it couldn't possibly exist, except this one actually exists and you should cry because of it."
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gets a few in the Ponyo review, mostly centered around how he's too worthless to try and criticize the great Miyazaki.
  • The improvised cry-rant in Scooby-Doo ends up being this at everyone, from himself for being stuck in a such a shit life and being so fucking stupid, to the audience who watch because they're sick, to the site owners who make him do this to get ratings.
  • He directs one at Michael Bay in the Pearl Harbor review, then another to TMZ in "Top 11 South Park" as well as anyone who watches the show. Doug ended up embarrassed by both of these, as the former was him being angry about something that the movie actually got right and he was wrong about, and the latter he felt was bratty and cruel.
  • In his The Cat in the Hat review, he delivers one to Soulless (who basically is the embodiment of everything wrong with the Dr. Seuss movies), calling him out on all his corporate money grubbing ideology.
  • Is on the receiving end of Welshy's biting "you shouldn't bring a character back to appease fans" speech in said person's farewell video, and his only complaint is backhanded comments.
  • He rips into Hyper after she (again) won't leave him alone in Christmas Story II, angrily pointing out that being kidnapped and stalked doesn't put him in a loving mood, but she pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit and he's made to apologize to her.
  Critic: I HATE YOU! I hate everything about you! If there was a likeability scale between 1 and 10, you'd be negative Pi! You'd be outlawed in 28 states just so people don't have to talk to you again! If they were to make a cologne out of you, it'd be called Essence of Annoying! If cancer got cancer, you'd be the one they would name it after! Knock knock!
  Hyper Fangirl: (dejected) Who's there?
  Critic: Nobody! Because nobody would ever want to see you! When people ask monks what the meaning of life is, they'd say stay away from your dumb ass! You're Beethoven's lost symphony, Death to Joy! Would everyone in an orange sweater, brown hair, glasses and a likeable personality please raise their hand?
  Hyper Fangirl: [raises her hand]
  Critic: You're too stupid to even get that joke [he pulls down an evolutionary scale chart. Hyper Fangirl’s going the other way, and under the name Homo moronicus]! On the evolutionary scale, you're the only one that's walking backwards! You're the Surgeon General's warning on every pack of cigarettes [Suddenly he's a cheerleader]! Gimme an I, gimme an H, gimme an A-T-E-U [He’s back to his normal clothing]! IIIIIII HAAAATE YOOOUUUUU!!!!
  • In his Mad Max: Fury Road review, the ultra-macho Devil Boner delivers an absolutely vicious one to the Meninists who complain (only online, of course) about how a female lead "ruined" Fury Road, and how women getting more prominent roles in action flicks have them Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence.
  Devil Boner: Hey, here's a thought: If you have to complain about how someone's stealing your manhood, chances are you never had your manhood to begin with! What'r ya, five?! Ya afraid ya gonna get cooties?! And how's that working out for ya, anyway? Are women just falling at yer feet because ya bitch and complain about them online? Real chick magnet, guys. You must get laid a LOT! You know what? Keep living in yer mama's basement, because the grown ups are gonna make a more badass world, and we don't need your crybaby tears pussing it up!
  • Critic dishes one out to none other than Creator/Disney in his review of Frozen 2 for an extreme Writer Cop Out during the climax.
  ...Yyyep. Even though nobody was in the kingdom, and they made a big deal about how this was "the only way to bring balance back”, there are no repercussions, no loss, no sacrifice, and NO responsibility, for any of their actions. (while smiling and nodding) You know what? Fuck off, Disney! You can’t tap into something like this, make such bold claims, and then TOTALLY puss out in the end. At least [Kristoff’s] 80’s ballad went all the way. This is tackling something super adult, extremely complicated, CLEARLY outside your comfort zone, and then shrugging, “Ehh, we’re just a kid’s film! Just feel bad around Thanksgiving and you’ll have done your part.” Bull! Fucking! Shit! Look… It’s fine if you wanna grow up your fairytales. But if you don’t support that growth, you’re not “breaking down barriers”, you’re keeping people in those fairytales! I’m not gonna pretend I’d be 100% okay with these actions if they went all the way through but, if that’s the lesson you’re committing to, fucking commit to it! You don’t say “the boy cr[ied] wolf and then he saw something that looked like a wolf but it wasn’t, it was a rabbit”. The wolf eats the sheep, and a lot is lost. And you’re pretending you’re saying something as profound, but by backing out of it, you’re not. It’s as bad as saying “characters that die can easily come back”—why am I even humoring you with that possibility?
• Rebus Bubble: In the Saved By the Bell review, Duck + Oil = Gravestone.
  • He does another one for the Other Titanic Movie, questioning how the mouse put Human Female + Mouse = Racist.
• Record Needle Scratch: Occurs in the Jack Frost review when he spots a chained-up Superman toy with Batman's head. Also happens in the Man of Steel review, when during the opening song, Superman states he killed a man.
  • Also occurs in the review of Secret of NIMH 2, during a skit when the Critic hypothesizes how Jesus would react if he was asked as a child to die for our sins.
  • Another instance is during the Good Burger review, when the Critic discovers Abe Vigoda is in the film.
  • It happens during the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie review, when the Rangers use their new power to bring Zordon back to life, causing the Critic to exclaim, "Wait a minute!"
  • In his "Raiders of the Story Arc" episode on X-Men: The Animated Series, after he points out that other reviewers have done stuff he already reviewed, he says it's not like he's doing his own Dark Nella saga. Right on cue, a Dark Rob comes in with Ave Satani playing, only for the Critic to tell him off, resulting in yet another instance of this trope.
• Recursive Canon: NC has some problems with this occurring in the Double Dragon (1994) film.
  • In the Hyper Fangirl vlogs, Tamara and Hyper Fangirl (who is played by RL Tamara) talk to each other and don't get on, and Doug and Critic co-exist in general; ever since “The Review Must Go On”, their meetings and allusions to each other aren't exactly as sweet as the To Boldly Flee talk.
  • Some (but not all) sketches or sketch characters are Critic writing them in-universe (like fathers played by him abusing their daughters played by Tamara) or ic Rachel/Malcolm/Tamara pretending to be other people (like Katara, Sokka or Elsa) to fuck with Critic's head.
  • The Alice in Wonderland (2010) review has a standard skit from Malcolm, but Critic and Malice are actually watching it from Burton-Land and when Critic says You Look Familiar, Malcolm instantly changes to Carrot Juice.
• Recursive Reality:
  • In Is There Another Good Shyamalan Movie?, a character who knows he's a character, is depressed about the notion that he's in a story and all his actions are pre-determined.
  • Doug created Hyper to Take That! at girls who act creepy towards him at cons, and in this video and again, Hyper makes a lot of people uncomfortable at cons.
  • As is often the case with popular sketch characters, the abusive parents started out in Critic's imagination (as he was in a “dark place” after his mom died) but interact with him in “Cats And Dogs”, though still acting like his own shitty parents.
• Redundant Parody: In the Pearl Harbor skits, Rachel and Malcolm are playing the "offensive Ms. Fanservice" and "offensive ghetto guy" stereotypes respectively, but aren't given anything to do outside of that, so become somewhat offensive themselves. Rach realized this on Twitter, saying she wanted to Gender Flip the stereotypes around but nobody listened to her. Same thing happened in The Haunted Mansion (2003) with the Zod sketch, as Tamara would have preferred the director role over the easy route of making her the stripper.
• Redubbing:
  • Partly done to a scene from Star Wars, with Darth Vader's lines are replaced by... Sailor Moon.
  Darth Serena: How can that be!? If my mom finds out, she'll cut my allowance!
  • Done with the review of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie when Rachel physically performs Rita, Doug dubs the voice, to Rachel's relief. It allowed her to just say whatever she wanted and she didn't have to scream the entire time.
• Reed Richards Is Useless:
  • The Critic points the professor in We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story could make much better use of his Time Machine than entertaining children.
  • Parodied in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) review, where the gun the Nerd invents to stop Krang can change someone into a completely different person. Because of that, they can completely change the world using it, or they'll never use, comment, or reference it again. They decide on the latter.
• Reference Overdosed
• Remember the New Guy?: Spoofed in his review of The Smurfs 2 with Bill^note "Mmmhmm", as a response to the film using this trope with two of Gargamel's minions.
• Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: During his review of Inspector Gadget (1999), when Gadget comes back from the dead simply by "having the heart."
  Critic: That's right. Even though it defies everything logical and everything scientific, Inspector Gadget comes back to life simply through the will of heart. ...I said simply through the will of heart... ...Simply through the will of heart! ...Excuse me.

He then runs off and berates Ma-Ti into saying his famous line again solely for the purposes of this Running Gag. Ma-Ti is certainly not happy to do so.

• Replacement Flat Character: As Rob acknowledged in the behind the scenes, the "Aw Girls" are like Hyper, just nicer and less fucked up (like they actually enjoy things instead of obsessively stalking). Lampshaded with the "D'aww Girls", who are even flatter and the Aw Girls complain about them.
• Replacement Goldfish: In Out of the Shadows, Tamara refuses to dress up as Harley Quinn for Critic's whim, and he replaces her with Aiyanna.
• Resentful Guardian: Any mention of his mother, even in the WTR: Teddy Ruxpin episode, has a good chance of her not actually wanting him around or using him as an emotional punching bag.
• Restraining Bolt: Critic's “chill pill patch” in “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”. It's to keep him completely under control, and when Tamara thinks it's awful and takes it off, he shows her why he needed it in the first place.
• Retcon:
  • Catwoman (2004) noticeably tried to make Critic manlier than his previous In Touch with His Feminine Side persona pre-comeback. He compares the movie experience to feeling embarrassed for a boy failing at football, the therapist (the only other cis guy) is a lisping idiot, he forgets that he's been slut-shamed (mostly by Douchey) for no reason, and he makes a point of not knowing why he owns a Sex and the City game.
  • In the A Christmas Story 2 review, Critic calls Hyper his psychotic “kinda ex girlfriend”, but confirmed Stockholm Syndrome aside he was always adamant that he'd never be her boyfriend.
  • Retcon of the retcon. In “The Review Must Go On”, a very angry Donnie was told that he had to go back to being the Critic while the others would die in the Plot Hole. That whole thing was admitted by Doug to be a Take That, Audience! which had no basis in canon, and Critic brings up several times how livid he is that his happy ending got screwed over while a few Demo Reel characters have made appearances. Don't take this for anything being made better though, as everyone is still miserable.
  • Critic/Nerd were mature enough to have made up at the end of To Boldly Flee, but since then they've dialed way back in time, with Critic lampshading in a roast that “even though we were in a good place at the end of TBF I still hate you”.
• Retirony: In his Hook review he's angry because a coconut that Peter cut in half with his sword had just two more days until his retirement.
  • Referenced several times in Alone in the Dark (2005) with Spoony and Linkara.
  Linkara: And it probably doesn't help that the security guard has just two days left before retirement.
  Later...
  Spoony: And it's probably a bad thing to mention that every single one of these soldiers has just two days left before retirement.
  Later still...
  Spoony: And you know, what makes it really tragic is that everyone in the city had just two days left till retirement!
  Linkara and NC: Shut up!
• Retool: Several.
  • At first, the Critic just made fun of what he was reviewing, while offering opinions along the way, and the comedy came from his over-the-top reactions, out of nowhere reactions, references, or wordplay. After 2010, the show started incorporating a story arc/partially serialized format rather than the completely episodic format he'd had previously.
  • After the 2013 relaunch, the show started shooting in a studio rather than a house, and used skits with multiple actors rather than quick gags with just the Critic. The series also had reviews every 2 weeks, with editorials in between the regular reviews. The Critic also started being more analytical and started reviewing newer movies after they were released to home media rather than waiting several years.
  • In 2015, Doug started doing "clipless" reviews, taking the skits into overdrive with having the actors in the show recreate scenes from the movies.
  • In 2017, Doug started going back to the initial "a review every week" format from the first 5 years of the show, but with the skits and analytical style retained.
  • Unfortunately, in 2020, Doug and his crew had no choice but to shoot in their house in the wake of COVID-19 Pandemic, resulting in them unable to make full skits and no recreation of certain movie scenes, which is basically like his episodes after 2010 (but before 2013). The unexpected retool due to the pandemic would be lifted in August 5th, 2021 for the review of Cats.
• Retroactive Wish: Actually granted in the Nostalgia Critic's SNICK episode, while talking about how screaming loudly in every other sentence isn't funny.
  Nostalgia Critic: Anyone who does it should be shot (is shot in the forehead), un-shot (bullet hole disappears), and given a bag of money (bag of money appears)! (offhandedly) How about some lounge music? (lounge music plays) Yeah, that's nice.
• Revenge by Proxy:
  • Critic outright states this is what he's doing by making Rachel a Broken Bird and trying to kill Malcolm in The Shining, as “someone has to pay” for what's happened to him.
  • After his mom dies, he doesn't even get to hear her last word and he sees his beloved T-Rex get a bridge dropped on her all in the space of ten minutes, Tamara has to play his abused child. As he lampshades, he's in a dark place.
  • In Matrix Reloaded, Black Willy Wonka says Tamara and Malcolm were taken over because Critic trusts them. This is what partly makes Critic be nicer to them at the end (though that doesn't last long), getting it's his fault that they're so sad.
• Reviewer Stock Phrases: Tends to drive the point home by putting "whatsoevers" at the end of sentences (safe to bet that during his career he has used the word more than most people will ever use it in their entire lifetime).
• Rewatch Bonus: There are a number of character important lines in his reviews that you can miss on the first go.
  • After Rachel calling Critic out in The Shining that he's never nice to her, and how easily they both slip into the abusive husband/abused wife roles, her behavior in Master Of Disguise makes a lot more sense.
  • Being one of the rare episodes with all three people in the same room for the whole review, Disney Afternoon at least needs a few rewinds to get everyone's comments and reactions to each other.
  • After character Malcolm's Sokka outfit in “The Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes”, pay attention to 'Sokka' and 'Katara' in The Last Airbender and how similar they are to character Malcolm and character Rachel. Sokka/Malcolm lets Katara/Rachel take the lead and is pretty easy-going, though knows that Critic is an asshole coward. Katara/Rachel gets upset at Critic's behavior, punishes him for it, and has a vengeful streak (see Master Of Disguise) that she blames on Shyamalan but is really just putting Critic in his place.
  • Dr Smith being Critic's father oddly makes sense, with kindergarten Critic drawing his parents as monsters, Smith expressing concern for Critic's drinking in It, and Critic's mix of both affection and disdain for him.
  • Discussed in the Mad Max: Fury Road commentary, where Doug says he loves the ones with a lot of people in them, as you can watch them a million times and still notice something new.
  • The joke in The Smurfs about Critic having apparently kidnapped Malcolm and that's why he stays, gives an extra boost to him having a crush on the Critic but also wanting to hurt him, why he latched onto Tamara so hard, and why he's either the victim or going along with anyone.
  • In the Phantom commentary, Doug says that he was wary about having Hyper regress and chase after Critic again, but it made too much sense regarding what happens in the play and the fact that she's dating Devil Boner casts a whole new light on what she does in the episode.
  • Devil Boner, Benny, and Critic's awful collaborative fanfiction makes more sense and gets a lot funnier when the ending reveals it gave Kathleen Kennedy the idea for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and each of their parts represents a different film of the trilogy.
• Rhymes on a Dime: For his review on the remake of The Grinch. Doing it all couldn't have been a cinch.
• Rhyming with Itself: In the Guilty Pleasures song of the Moulin Rouge! review, Critic rhymes "hell" with itself.
• Riding into the Sunset: At the end of the True Grit review, complete with cowboy hat.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Critic asks Evilina if The Cat in the Hat has broken him. Yes, but he thinks it's because he can't tell jokes anymore, the audience knows that's the case when he hits her later and gets happy on Soulless's torture.
  • "Is Tree Of Life Full Of Bullshit" was twitter criticized by Kyle for this reason, although he deleted the tweet soon afterwards.
  Kyle: Doug eventually arrives at a truth, but does so without really discussing the thing he ostensibly wants to discuss.
  • In the Princess Diaries 2 review, Critic is willing to give it up to Hyper Fangirl because she's made him think they have a lot of the same media likes in common. That completely blows up when it turns out she's faking it, but they really aren't so different Hyper Fangirl's choice to stalk Critic was shot like a Review Must Go On parallel, 'Tamara' was as frustrated with her as Doug is with Reboot Critic, and Critic admits in his Uncanny Valley review that his own creeping into a person's bedroom ended badly.
• Right-Hand Cat: Chaplin walks across Rob’s lap for a stroke in the X-2 first viewing and he comments that he feels like a Bond villain.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Literally. When the horror of Baby Geniuses 2 puts him in a comatose state right before he has to do a panel, brentalfloss and Uncle Yo prop him up in a chair, speak for him, and pretend to be his arms. They end up arguing over whether Critic liked his BrentalFloss or Uncle Yo crossovers more.
• Rimshot: The Les Misérables (2012) review has Paw not being able to do it and Critic being the only one who can create the noise, leaving Paw to look sad. He eventually manages when Critic bitterly says “enter coming out of the closet joke here” when they fall out of a closet.
• Rogues Gallery: This image has just a few of the people who have tormented Critic over the years. No surprise, most of the pictures are from reboot.
• Romanticized Abuse: He has this habit of seeing rapey scenes (except when it comes children), both male-female or female-male, as a little creepy but mostly just acceptable softcore porn. Let it be stressed that this is just the Critic talking, not Doug. For an example, in Top 11 Strangest Couples Khal Drogo and Dany from Game of Thrones gets a mention while he voiceovers “today's best couples are weird, quirky, out of the norm...”, despite the former raping the latter at one point. Showing his confusion about Bowie's motivation (wanting Sarah to to him but him being her slave), he wonders if it's a Fifty Shades deal, and says “to be fair if there's any man who can pull that off...”
• Rooting for the Empire: In-universe, he and Todd in the Shadows start hoping that Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wiz will win after she gets the first musical number they've enjoyed all movie long.
  • He even openly admits that Bio-Dome is making him root for the bad guy.
  • Fennah’s monsters in the Trial portion of the Wall, bring up the point that they wanted more designs like their own, and they’re bored of Alice they want the Hatter.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: The Critic's "Top 11 F* ck Ups" notes his spelling errors from time to time. It even has a deliberate one, Lampshaded by Douchey McNitpick, at the end.
  • Subverted in the commentary for The Care Bears Movie. Doug points out that "penguin" is spelled wrong in a caption, and asks why Rob didn't catch it, because he should know that Doug is "dyslexic as hell." The word was spelled correctly.
  • The Phantom of the Opera (2004) commentary has Doug point out that he fucked up some of the captions, the most amusing being them calling Critic "innocent" when the song was calling him "insolent".
• Rousing Speech: Double subverted by Critic's many many many speeches in the reboot. He never gets listened to, and they're usually condescending or hypocritical, but with sappy music and an exaggerated Sincerity Mode voice he's meant to be the one in the right. Luckily, from The Last Airbender onwards, Doug listened to the complaints and had others mock Critic for them, or Rachel/Tim Burton (to name a couple) being the ones to give the speech while Critic sulks. In an amusing hindsight moment, Rob gently teased in the Suburban Knights commentary that Doug really isn't good at speeches and just tends to ramble until he stumbles onto a point instead. Even Doug said in a Christmas Tree behind the scenes that he always regrets writing long speeches for himself because they're hard to remember.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Critic likes this.
  • He has cited it as a positive point for the Zelda animated series, and is annoyed whenever he reviews a subject in which royals don't use their power to resolve a conflict (such as A Kid In King Arthur's Court).
  • In his “Are Kids Shows Now Better Than Ever”, he praises Princess Bubblegum and the show's portrayal of her as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who actually does stuff. The sexuality representation with her and Marceline also makes him like her more than most ruling princesses.
  • The Top 11 Disney Princess Conspiracy Theories is positive towards all the princesses, but he saves special praise for Mulan, saying she might not technically be a princess but is the most badass out of all them. A nice surprise seeing as how Doug doesn't even like her movie that much.
• Rule of Cool:
  • The Critic came back from the dead because Optimus Prime died for his sins.
  • Bites him in the ass during X-Month, as he asked for a cool animated intro with all the characters fighting and flying around, and when the month is done, Hyper, Satan, Santa Christ and Stan/Dad Lee all complain that they haven’t been written to do all that in real life.
• Rule of Funny
  • The "You're A Dirty Rotten Bastard" episode has quite a few Fridge Logic issues (Joe being President Evil, Canada being nuked, certain people being happy bunnies when they had problems that in no way related to the Critic, Critic has said many times that reviewing makes his life suck more etc.) but you've got to remember that it was just a way to make the Critic look like the biggest douche and loser in all of creation. Doug being Doug of course, he eventually had to get character in there as well, as Rob confirmed on Scooby-Doo review that Santa Christ was telling a story that he'd willed into existence.
  • He states in his third "Top 11 F*ck-Ups" video that the main reason he referred to Dunston as a monkey instead of an ape was because the word "monkey" would get more laughs than the movie could ever provide.
  • Discussed in Jim's prop making video of Blade, as he says that when he makes stuff, he has to factor in how long the joke will last and how durable the object depends on if it's a quick gag or going to be used the entire time.
• Rule of Three:
  • At the end of the Jack Frost (1998) review:
  Critic: The premise is stupid, the premise is stupid, oh, and did I mention the little fact that the PREMISE IS FUCKING STUPID?!
  • In Alice in Wonderland (2010), Malice assumes three times that Critic is psychotic enough to have escaped from the same asylum she did. He always avoids the question.
• Rule 34:
  • In the Adventure Time vlog Incendium, Doug goes gaga over Keith David's voice again, and when his wife flirts with him about it, Jason recommends marriage counseling while Jori tells fanfic writers to have fun.
  • In the Christmas Story II behind the scenes, when Doug is in his cheerleader outfit and says he's catering to a very specific fantasy.
  Rob: [regarding all the crossdressing Doug's done] The evidence is really building up.
  Doug: You've had a case for a while.
  Rob: I'm collecting it all in a folder, which I will sell to the best fanfic writer out there.
  • Referenced twice in the Fantastic Four behind the scenes, as Rob says that Tamara having Super-Strength is going to be a fetish, and later Doug (in his terrible outfit) crunches up food in his chest area and says somewhere he's creating a very new kind of porno.
  • In Jurassic World, he mistakenly words a rant like he wants to have sex with dinosaurs, and a manip fanart immediately pops up.
  • In the vlog for Frybo, Rob mentions Doug's creepy smile, uses a bad wording, and then grudgingly assumes that there will be fanfic because people would want Doug to “come at them”. Amusingly this is right before him wanting Brain Bleach about Doug's tamer jokes about wanting to be pantsless in a Finnish con.
  • Actually deemed too much in the behind of scenes of Cats And Dogs, as Malcolm tries on a spiked collar and everyone deems it creepily fetishy.
• Rule 63:
  • The title card for Moulin Rouge! involves a genderswapped Critic dressed like Satine but with his tie, hat and jacket still on.
  • In Blues Brothers 2000, Doug's ex Dayna is deemed “sexy female Critic”, with a camisole instead of a t-shirt.
  • Hyper was originally intended to be a female version of Douchey, but developed her own brand of terrible and insanity.
  • Doug has said at a few cons that he really enjoys fanart where he's genderswapped and would love some more.
  • When the Chipettes come in during the Squeakel, he talks about the rule of genderswapping, and mentions how much Tumblr likes doing that.
  • In a Q&A video, Rachel (vaguely) talks about how there should be a genderswapped Jesus Christ Superstar and how a woman needs to play Judas.
• Running Gag: Many. Somewhat subverted, because Doug believes there is a limit to reusing gags before they become boring, and so, a lot of these already become artifacts before long.
  • OF COURSE!!!! ("you guessed it: taking over the world")
  • A-CHUCK-A-NORRIIIIS!
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment! Shared with The Nostalgia Chick.
  • Elephant. *Burger King pops up*. Sometimes intentional, sometimes invoked just to make the weirdness stop.
  • Lampshaded in the Critic's review of Suburban Commando, after criticizing the movie's weak running gags. "But who am I talk about running gags? Big-Lipped Alligator Moment-Elephant-Chuck Norris." (the BLAM logo, Burger King and Chuck Norris appear in rapid succession).
  • "How many times are we going to see this kind of scene..." *arbitrarily large number appears on screen* "Okay, I'm gonna kill myself now."
  • "I'm Acting!" or some variation on it.
  • During Nickelodeon Month: ADVENTURE HO!
  • "Well, at least they didn't do something like (names a lousy thing)." Movie does do lousy thing, pissing him off.
    "You know, I really need to learn to keep my fucking mouth shut."
    • As another form of the above, he gushes about an unexpected cool/funny/awesome thing, then the movie does something to ruin it, and he tries desperately to keep smiling.
  • The Blackadder clips for good news/bad news jokes: something good happens ("Hurrah!"), something bad happens immediately afterwards ("...Haroo.")
  • KHAAAAAAAANNNNN!!!
  • "JOKE ABORTED"
  • Whenever Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up... PUT THAT COOKIE DOWN, NOW! He'll also comment it with a heavy Arnie accent, with the most common lines about eating kids.
  • It's only a model.
    • Monty Python montages seemed to have been a trend to him these days. The Conan reviews use the "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" and The Swamp Castle scene.
  • "ZUUL, MOTHAFUCKA! ZUUUUUL!"
  • TIMING!
  • BAD TOUCH!
  • I WAS FRO-ZEN TODAY!
  • DOUCHE
  • The Nelson Laugh was one for a little while, having already been used in the 90's Sports Movies, The Star Wars Holiday Special and Care Bears movie reviews.
  • Whenever Tim Curry is mentioned, chances are the song Sweet Transvestite is going to play, and/or a picture or video clip of Dr. Frank N. Furter will be shown.
  • "Drat, I've been defeated by the Power of Love!"
  • The Critic demanding an answer to the question "WHAT! ABOUT! [Name of pet placed in peril during the movie]!" and being answered with a heavenly voice saying "[Name of animal] will live", leading to the Critic throwing his arms in the air whilst screaming in joy.
  • SCAAARYY SLOOOOW-MOOOOOOO.
  • "Is the terrible creature known as... MAN?! *Scare Chord* ['50s newsreel-style Could This Happen to You? warning follows.]
  • When the movie makes a bad attempt at slapstick, there is Wah-Wah music and an exaggerated shrug from The Critic.
  • Using the Goofy scream when someone falls off something. (and in another way as listed in Soundtrack Dissonance)
  • In the Care Bears 2 review: DARK HEART!!! ^note  After the point where Dark Heart says his name in a deep, evil voice.
  • The Hindenburg Disaster.
  • CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!
  • (annoying noise/speech) Critic deadpans. (Auditory annoyance continues) "Shut up." (Auditory annoyance worsens) "Shut up!" (annoyance reaches critical mass) "SHUT UP!!"
  • In his "Doug's 1st Movie" review: "But I digress", gradually getting more aggravated every time he says it.
  • From the review of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Genesis?!
  • Star Trek Month had a running gag of the Critic trying to avoid Linkara making a cameo, fearing he would just completely geek out over every detail.
  • Abbott!
  • Fucking BUBBLES!
  • Whenever something bad happens to a character that the Critic doesn't like (usually the annoying comic relief), such as getting punched or even getting killed, the Critic will rejoice and request to see the clip played over and over again, until he is satisfied.
  • "Y'know, for kids!" invoked
    • And after the revival: "A FAMILY PICTURE"
  • The "Goodnight Everybody!" clip from Animaniacs any time there's an innuendo in a movie intended for kids.
  • The Critic was asked to review the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, TMNT. He made fun of Splinter's voice, saying he sounded like he'd smoked an entire carton of Marlboros... not knowing his beloved voice actor, Mako, had recently died of throat cancer. The fans who were familiar with Mako's work... reacted poorly. Since then, any time Mako has come up in a review, the Critic has made sure to only speak of him with the highest praise (including showing Mako's head wreathed in light with an angelic choir singing in the background).
  • Extreme excitement represented by a a crowd cheering so hard, one guy foams at the mouth and passes out in excitement.
  • Starting from The Cat in the Hat, a bored rimshot after he makes a invoked Dude, Not Funny! joke, usually involving digs at child actors.
  • "You got no money, you got no talent, you don't even have the other Blues Brother! Unless you have an X for me to do, count me the fuck out!"
  • Insults taking the form of a Snowclone of "Anti-Semite" (e.g. "Anti-Dolphite" or "Anti-Groundite") getting directed at the Critic for getting his facts wrong about something.
  • As of 2014's Nicolas Cage Month, playing "Hallelujah" when Cage appears, and playing him out to the Looney Tunes theme with a sound byte from the film instead of Porky Pig's line.
  • Everyone once in a while Doug would do a running gag, where the "viewer" would get bored of the review (Or if the review is too painful and NC initially suggests watching something else) and switch to porn.
  • In revival (and starting in Reloaded), Critic having a Servile Snarker manservant to serve him drinks, jokes, or menus. Also that the guy has a different name in every incarnation.
  • For a while after Princess Diaries II, struggling not to fall into a gender stereotype by loving really gory Testosterone Poisoning scenes and trying to read Jane Austen novels to balance it out.
  • A BAT CREDIT CARD?!?!?!?
  • "Catherine ZZZZZZZEEEEETAJOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNZZZZZ! I don't care if _____; ONE DAY YOU WILL BE MINE!"
  • Hyper Boner's extreme nicknames for each other, with him getting Sickeningly Sweet (i.e Turtle Duck) names from her and her getting Testosterone Poisoning(i.e spiky chain) names from him.
  • There are various episodes in reboot where the Framing Device is "Critic wants a formula so he can coast and still make cash".
  • "The greater good".
  • Criticizing the phrase As You Know, and showing movie clips that say this, up to seven clips in a row.
  • If he's reviewing a movie that includes a snooty character obsessed with tradition, expect to hear a mocking "most unorthodox" at least once.
  • The Critic tends to poke fun at Christmas showing up in places that probably haven't even heard of Jesus, thus making its coming into existance a little illogical.
• Running Gagged: The Critic has had various jokes that he used at the beginning of his run, only to cycle them out and exchange them for new ones.
  • With one — his showing of a clip M. Bison saying "Of course!" when a character expresses a desire to rule the world — he refuses to show it because it's been overdone, only for the clip to force its way onto the screen despite his protests. In the commentary for the review, Doug Walker mentions that he tries to be mindful of if he's overusing a joke to the point where it isn't funny, at which point he tries to mix things up a little and keep it fresh.
  • On that point, one of his reviews did end with its respective Running Gag (a Flanderized-to-the-point-of-uselessness Patch Adams called "Bitch Spasms") being blown away (and the cadaver being left on the ground as a Brick Joke for a future episode), the review for Jurassic Park III finishing (at least apparently for now) the "Motherfucking T-Rex" gag (on the moment that the T-Rex gets its neck snapped by another dinosaur. It do, however, gets a glorious resurrection as Awesome Music for the Rexy-vs.-Indominus fight on the Jurassic World review), the review for The Lost World kills the newsreel-style Long List of how humans screw up nature that had pervaded several nature-related film reviews with the critic belting out a Big "SHUT UP!" and rambling about how annoyingly Anvilicious films get when they try to (continuously) hammer this point.
  • "Bat credit card" was killed by Linkara when the critic made a cameo in his review of a tie-in comic. Linkara Reconstruction the meme by explaining Batman is filthy rich, uses secret methods to spend that money on crimefighting in ways that cannot be traced back to Bruce Wayne, is known to purchase items while fighting crime if he needs them, and is obsessed with putting his bat brand on everything he uses. With all those traits to him, a Bat credit card is actually rather logical and practical for him to have, so what's so anger-inducing about it? The Critic is speechless.** In one episode, he refuses to do the Chuck Norris gag because he sees it as the kind of humor he wants to move on from.
• Russian Reversal:
  • In the Rocky IV review.
  Drago: If he dies, he dies.
  Critic: In Soviet Russia, evil catchphrases say you.
  • In the Doomsday Machine review:
  Major Bronski: What is this? Sophisticated Americans suffering from false modesty? In Russia, we are more matu-[there’s an unexpected jump cut to a few seconds later, likely from the poor condition of the film; this catches Critic off-guard]
  Critic: Whoa! In Soviet Russia, jump cuts jump YOU!

S

• Sadistic Choice:
  • The adbreak cliffhanger of Man of Steel. Zod tells Critic that if he doesn't hate it his corpse will be mutilated beyond all human recognition, and Joe tells him that if he goes back on his word then the internet will hunt him down like a animal.
  • In the Nerd DVD review, he considers either being on said DVD on par with being whipped in the street and being called fat.
  • While talking about the Saw movies in the “Top 11 New Halloween Classics”, he admits he really isn't sure whether he'd do something terrible or refuse and die painfully.
  • In the Sixth Day crossover he did with That Sci Fi Guy, there's a clone of Critic and when faced with either cleaning TSFG's house or being the original's Sex Slave, he tries to leg it.
  • In "Old vs New: Evil Dead", Devil Boner threatens Critic with gory bullet to the brain if he doesn't choose the remake, and Hyper happily threatens to destroy his groin if he doesn't choose the original.
• Sadist Show: The character was created to suffer. First it was just bad movies, now it's bad movies and well, life in general. Doug even said in an interview that most people just keep watching to see the Critic get tortured all the time. With the addition of regular other characters, they suffer too, either because of Critic or because of their own issues.
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual: Name-dropped by Rob in the 50 Shades Sibling Rivalry when he's talking about BDSMers hating the book because consent is far more important to them than the book portrays, and then has to explain to Doug what the term means.
• Safe Word: In the 50 Shades of Grey Sibling Rivalry, Rob starts off explaining to Doug what this means (as he had to explain Safe, Sane, and Consensual) but Doug knows about that because if you say just stop while playing you're usually just getting into character.
  • In The Passion of the Christ, he's sure that hardcore s&mers love the movie, and that the Safe Word is "ow my fucking ribs".
• Sanity Slippage: The Critic attributes Charlie Sheen's mental breakdown to Food Fight, where he voices protagonist Dex Dogtective.
• Sarcasm-Blind: The Nostalgia Critic's younger self.
  Old Nostalgia Critic: Well thanks for being the voice of reason here.
  Young Nostalgia Critic: No problem.
• Sarcasm Failure:
  • "I got nothing." Or some variation thereof whenever the Critic encounters something bad enough that even he can't think of a response.
  • In Ferngully 2, he can't even make fun of one of Batty's impersonations, as he doesn't even recognise it.
• Sarcasm Mode:
  • The entirety of the Surf Ninjas review, which was actually All Just a Dream.
    GENIUS!!!
  • Also, the end of the Good Burger review, until he breaks out of it with much rage, complete with Demon Head.
  • The Critic has a knack for questioning, in a deadpan, unamused voice, who the villain is in an animated movie when said villain is talking amongst a crowd. Also happens in the review of The Phantom.
    Oh. My. I wonder where his hide-out is.
  • His review of James and the Giant Peach is peppered with this, considering the Critic was trying to pander to the audience and give a positive review, with guns coming out from every direction if he were to talk out of line. Because he really didn't like the movie, it didn't work.
  • A particularly random instance of this was when, in The Lorax behind the scenes and they were looking for Hyper's outfit, Doug sarcastically flailed "nobody's ever said anything mean about me ever, especially sexual".
  • In the Mad Max: Fury Road commentary, Rob sarcasms that it's so much harder being a white male than what Tamara or Malcolm have to deal with constantly, and Doug says that there will probably be a white guy who'll listen to this and feel vindicated. And then realize it was sarcasm and deem them traitors.
• Say My Name:
  • JOOOONAAAAASSSSS!!
  • CASPEEEEEEEEERRRR!!
  • Lucas! Darling...
  • "NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD!"
    • "CRITIC! How dare you come here."
  • "MAAAAAAAAAAAAARA WILSOOOOOOOOOOON!"
  • GUUUUUMMMMMMIIIII BEEEEEEEAAAAAARRRRSSSS!!!
• Scandalgate: Roomgate, after his review of The Room (2003) got taken down. This scandal has been resolved, and the review is back up on TGWTG. After finding his home videos at the beginning of Alice in Wonderland (2010), he refers to the end of A Simple Wish review as WilsonGate.
• Scare Chord: One happens in the Les Misérables (2012) review, when Kyle tells Critic to leave Colm Wilkinson alone and Critic says he will, but only for the moment.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: In the opening splash picture for Rock-A-Doodle and The Secret of NIMH 2.
• Schedule Slip: In-universe, Chester's absence from reviewing is explained in "I'll Be Home For Christmas" as he hasn't had the time because he's being a good boyfriend.
• Scenery Porn: The 2016 Gravity Falls Nostalgiaween opening has some beautiful time lapse shots of Chicago.
• The Scottish Trope: Whenever the Critic says the word "elephant" (but not "elephants"), The Burger King's face flies into the screen, and whenever he mentions Chuck Norris, we're treated to a picture of Chuck Norris over a backdrop of fireworks with a voice saying "A-CHUCK A-NORRIIIIIIISSSS!!" And, as the Critic points out in his review of Free Willy, if he says the full title of a movie, he has to review it next week.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Critic's variations of "I'm acting!" in Good Burger. "And I ain't acting, I'm really going home! Fuck this movie!"
  • In Rock-A-Doodle, after the Duke of Owls is turned tiny, he says he turned into Cartman, and says, "Screw this movie, I'm going home." Then another scene, followed by, "No, screw this movie, home."
  • When reviewing the The Star Wars Holiday Special, he tries to bail out of his introduction in order to get away from it.
  • He tries to leave Little Nemo early on, but Rob punches him back into the review.
  • In The Cat in the Hat, at a certain point he even gives up on the review, but goes back.
  • Quite reasonably, Clone Critic tries to bolt in “The Sixth Day” review when That Sci Fi Guy coin-tosses to decide if Critic will be his house slave or present Critic's Sex Slave.
  • At the end of Bridge to Terabithia, both Rachel and Malcolm have hit their patience level with Critic and decide to audition for CollegeHumor. They also leave again in The Shining when he's treating them even more like slaves than usual and expects them to spend their time arranging his props from most favorite to least.
  • Doug vanishes in the opening of The Last Airbender, not wanting to do his reviewing job any more as he doesn't want to deal with that movie.
  • At the end of Hyper's fourth vlog, Brad and Rob literally run out of the studio at the sight of her, Rob calling her scary.
  • Tamara at the end of The Monster Squad, complete with Flipping the Bird and going off to audition to be a tomboy, when Critic is an Ungrateful Bastard about her saving him.
  • In Christmas Story II, when Critic sees Hyper under the desk, he without talking locks her in the review room and moves to the couch.
  • In Mamma Mia!, Rob, Tamara and Malcolm make to leave while reading the script, and actually do when Critic wants to talk about chick flicks.
  • In Hyper's Midwest Media Expo video, Malcolm runs off when she tries to get him to give her Critic's hotel number.
  • In Linkara's "Shadow Of The Bat #57" episode, both Tamara and Malcolm ask if they can work for him because they hate that they have to keep dressing up for Critic.
  • In Event Horizon, Critic wants Tamara to check his ass, and that makes her want to go and be a back up singer for Brentalfloss. She still does it though.
  • Subverted with Hyper in The Phantom of the Opera, as she storms off, but comes back mad that Critic didn't crawl after her.
  Hyper: [angry] He didn't chase me after I left, am I not worth it?
• Screw Yourself:
  • In Maximum Overdrive, Tumblr gets a more affectionate nod when he says they probably like the idea of “Stephen King on Stephen King”.
  • In The 6th Day review he did with That Sci-Fi Guy, there are two versions of Critic. Clone Critic thinks the original looks sexy, and original Critic wants the clone as a Sex Slave.
  • In a Fandom Nod to people noticing how Critic was acting so seductive at Doug in TRMGO, the review has Critic admitting it's a little weird that they have so much chemistry.
  • In The Phantom of the Opera (2004), when Doug Fandumb and Doug Crawford are singing at each other, Beth says this is the only time she believes the chemistry.
  • In the opening music video for Jem, Doug gives us the fanservice of two Critics in pink drag kissing each other.
• Security Cling: He touches upon the downside of this in his review of The Haunting (1999)
  And when the only person you can cuddle up with may or may not have the hots for you, it makes the scene more uncertain and therefore uncomfortable.
  • Critic hides behind Santa Christ in Son Of The Mask, and despite Doug being the Big Little Brother to Rob, still manages to look tiny.
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: In “What You Never Knew About Ghostbusters”, he says he's seen the film more times than he's seen the sun.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • When Doug was informed that Roger Ebert liked Junior, he responded with "Roger Ebert liked my video; that shows how senile he's getting!"
  • His review of James and the Giant Peach opens with a big segment making fun of how poorly-received his Let's Play was.
  • He's also taken a couple of potshots at his own speaking voice, what with Zack (in the Revenge of the Nostalgic Commercials) listing him as "Obnoxious High-Pitched Critic", and the Bum calling him "an even more high-pitched Sam Kinison" in the Kickassia Bum Review. In the Event Horizon behind the scenes, he complains about how people tell him they loved The Good Son review because they didn't have to hear him talk.
  • From his review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
  "Good God, this is just watching a bunch of footage and seeing someone comment on it."
  "Who the hell would want to see that!?"
  • The old home videos made by a teenage Doug that Mara Wilson shows in A Simple Wish are definitely this.
  • Reboot generally isn't shy about invoked Money, Dear Boy or Pandering to the Base.
  • He's poked fun at his head-twirl Character Tic a few times, the reloaded reviews deciding to mock it for how 'gay' it is.
  • Zig-zagged in the reloaded reviews of his anniversary movies, which slowly morph from complaining about actual plot issues to at the end whining that the creator must be in a Transparent Closet because of all the gay involved.
  • Despite a big Take That, Audience! beforehand, he relates to The King and I, saying "we'll continue to put as little focus on our main character as possible".
  • In The Last Airbender, Shya-Amon threatens to bend out “what little talent [Critic] had to begin with”.
  • In Man of Steel review, Joe gleefully proves that Critic sounds like a screaming goat when he yells.
  • To parody Blues Brothers 2000, the opening of the titular review has Critic trying to “recreate the Glory Days of [his] first review”, with no footage of Cartoon All-Stars, replacing the void with guest stars and doing this when nobody asked him to.
  • Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is big on it, with his starting off the episode yelling at the audience for being entitled, Mike J saying he's mediocre but getting all the views; also that he re-reviews too much, and the Ghost Rider pony comes in to slam him on the head.
  • The Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes has a Freeze-Frame Bonus in Jason's book about how Doug's not been eating because he's been too busy working. Something he's well-known for, to the point in MomoCon where he had to clarify he's so thin because food would be a distraction from work, not because he has an eating disorder.
  • In Mamma Mia!, Critic is nervous about telling the others he wants to talk about a Chick Flick, and they yell at him for being an idiot, referencing Doug's badly-received history with girl movies/shows, especially Sailor Moon.
  • Inverted in the AVGN movie where he pours (sarcastic) praise on some guy who looks exactly like him and had one second of screen-time.
  • “Thirty Something Nerdy Critics” is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, admitting that Doug and James are both too old for this and are privileged white men complaining over nothing.
  • Tamara and Malcolm the characters have complained multiple times about having no agency because Critic treats them like dress-up dolls in his story sections.
  • In “The Reviewers”, he introduces the main character as trying to get famous “despite the fact that he has nothing going on for him” adding on “so pretty much most webcritics”. Cut back to him defensive and looking grouchy, repeating “most”.
  • In Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, especially with Doug saying later that he really is that messed up, Critic needing his obsessions controlled with a chill pill patch or else he'll be a hell-demon terrifying people.
  • The Matrix Revolutions: Critic's reality warping power is ruining according to Chester, who brings up several skit heavy reviews as examples of how he has good ideas but the execution often sucks.
  • The Review Must Go On DVD review is full of it, the biggest being Critic meta-ing that his saying it's brilliant is the result of his writer not having a conscience, and having a Rage Against the Author when he gets it back and makes him say it's only okay.
  • The Honest Trailers parody at the beginning of Planet of the Apes (2001) is the holy mother of Self-Deprecation, mocking everything about himself from the fact that he's a Cash-Cow Franchise for CA, to that he doesn't deserve all his guest stars, to people wishing he was dead again.
  • In the Was That Real of Hammerman, he says just because you can do something with a popular name doesn't mean you should, before going off to do a Let's Play Crossover of Bart's Nightmare (while wearing his Melvin costume) with the Nerd.
  • In his review of his old home movies, he calls 12 year old Doug in need of Ritalin. Adult Doug has said a couple of times that he has un-medicated ADD.
  • In Christmas with the Kranks, while there's plenty of complaining about his old meme-heavy 2007-era self, as soon as he gets back to 'reboot era', he also acknowledges the nastier tone by almost instantly going back to the rape whistle joke.
  • In Jem, he says "you signed a contract that completely screwed you over? Now you really are an internet star!"
  • In Wild Wild West, he asks why anyone would cut to someone just sitting down, before adding a ridiculous number of how many times he's done the same thing. Also serves as Take That, Audience!, as Doug has said numerous times he doesn't like white wall reviews.
  • In the 2016 Nostalgiaween Gravity Falls opening, Critic takes on the role as Grunkle Stan, welcoming Malcolm and Tamara to the falling apart Channel Awesome.
  • In TMNT 2 behind the scenes, Doug has a fake cry over never being happy and why is he still talking about turtles years later.
  • Both on Critic and Doug As Himself, there's lots of mocking what an Ass Pull The Review Must Go On was (even in TRMGO itself), and that trying to act like Donnie = Critic was planned/makes sense is stupid.
  • In Cool World, he mocks his speech-giving by giving another one, and it turning out that everyone has left him because he prattled on so much.
  • One of the movie-squitos calls the Flinstones Rock Vegas review a complete waste of time.^note Like Clockstoppers, it's an admitted filler before Suicide Squad.
  • Rob in real life is the VP of Channel Awesome, and has more company power behind the scenes than Doug, and one of his main roles is a Corrupt Corporate Executive Chart Guy.
  • While talking about the bad green screen and rushed color correction of Justice League, he puts his Suicide Squad review in the corner and comments that a major movie shouldn’t look like a done in a week with no budget review.
  • He's lampshaded that he can be awkward going from storyline to review, with other characters complaining he was just in a conversation with them.
  • Doug’s living room is… colorful, with bright red couch and a deep blue wall, and he lampshades in “Critters” it can make only one eye bleed.
  • In his review of Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, Critic pulls up a cringe meter to measure how cringe-worthy the MC Hammer "Can't Touch This" clip stacks up. The highest level on the meter? Nostalgia Critic
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: He uses this trope word for word in The Secret of NIMH 2, pointing out that nothing that happened in the movie would have happened if the townspeople hadn't praised Timmy to be some hero in the first place.
  "So let me get this straight: Timmy's great destiny was to stop a jealous mastermind who wouldn't have been a jealous mastermind until he had heard that Timmy had a great destiny. In other words, if they DIDN'T FUCKING BUILD HIM UP, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED! TALK ABOUT A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY, YOU DUMBASSES!"
  • Douchey McNitpick's name.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:invoked Critic and Rachel have an argument at the end of The Nutcracker review that all his fans like him just for his Hair-Trigger Temper and use of Cluster F-Bomb, and he reveals that he actually hasn't even used a Precision F-Strike in over a year. In the denouement Tamara asks him if he plans on continuing it and he says "Fuck no, but it's nice to know I don't have to."
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Critic (despite his many gender issues) and Malcolm is soft As Himself, compared to Rob's more "abusive Team Dad" characters, and Devil Boner/Benny/The Devil who are all Real Men Wear Pink.
• Separated by a Common Language: Lampshaded by MikeJ in the Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance bloopers.
  Mike: Can you tell an American wrote my lines?
• Sequel Episode: Son of the Mask followed The Review Must Go On, with Critic deeply regretting coming back, Evilina telling him that To Boldly Flee won't be happening again, and Santa Christ telling him he blew a chance at happy so deserves to suffer.
  • The Last Airbender to “The Review Must Go On”, just in a different way that Son of the Mask. While that dealt with Critic's issues coming back, Airbender is more about making the Doug/Critic ...issue go From Bad to Worse, and TRMGO had them at pretty bad odds already.
  • Ghost Dad to The Wicker Man (2006). Critic wasn't a ghost, he was just pretending to be because he wanted to punish Tamara and Malcolm for torturing him in the latter episode.
  • Essentially The Lorax is one to The Cat in the Hat, as it's very much the same opinions and jokes recycled (even lampshaded by the focus group guys, "this again?") just without the Devil or Evilina to provide any darkness or someone for Critic to be abusive to.
  • "Old vs New: Amazing Spider-Man" continues from The Lorax, with no other characters but Black Willy Wonka and the Hyper Fangirl still both around to freak the Critic out.
  • Blues Brothers 2000 to When Is A Movie Just A Movie, specifically proving Critic's hypocrisy on these things.
  • Bloodrayne to Alone in the Dark (2005). Critic tells Tamara and Malcolm that it's a tradition to review Uwe Boll movies with Linkara and Spoony, and he's miserable over it.
  • The Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes is set right after the episode on the worst, but has more in common with The Last Airbender, with Malcolm revisiting his Sokka persona, Critic hiding in that episode's title card, and the big meta portion in the middle explaining that Critic protects himself with fourth wall references, a Story Arc that became apparent in Airbender.
  • The Monster Squad to Disney Afternoon, both having Critic trying desperately to be a kid again, dragging others into the illusion, and the former having “reality” as a literal monster.
  • Forest Warrior to The Purge. It also serves as a wrap-up to the ongoing-since-Kickassia Critic/Film Brain storyline, as Film Brain finally gets his crossover and Critic tells him that he loves him. Yes in that way, as he reassures.
  • In terms of editorials, "Is Weird The New Brilliant" is one to "Are Kids Shows Now Better Than Ever", adding how brilliantly depressing Bojack Horseman is, as well as respecting My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic for the thoughtful morals.
  • Fan4stic is a sequel to the Fantastic 4, with Critic wanting to be their trio again, just Darker and Edgier.
• Sequel Hook: Devil Boner put an engagement ring on Hyper's finger at the end of Green Lantern (2011). The payoff occurred five months later when they get married in the 'Chipwrecked'' review.
• Sequelitis: In-universe, and probably out too, The Critic did not enjoy Sequel Month.
  • Also, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter ("So when I heard that there was another movie, I got excited as hell. I loved the first one and I couldn't wait to see another one. It blewed.") and the third and fourth Jaws.
  • Disneycember 2016 had Doug review all the direct to video Disney sequels, and a few months beforehand he posted a selfie of himself crying surrounded by the DVDs.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • He notes that Bastian's father apparently forgets he knows about Fantasia in The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia after learning about it in the previous film.
  • In-verse, Critic nonchalantly calls Shyamalan "Ma-Ti" in Signs, which doesn't fly with his crippling Survivor's Guilt in Suburban Knights, To Boldly Flee or anywhere else.
  • In "Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue," Critic refers to almost all of the characters featured in the special as cherished cartoon icons, including that Alvin and the Chipmunks are part of the embodiedment of childhood, and is absolutely mortified that Simon knows what marijuana is. Later in his and The Nostalgia Chick's Crossover review, "The Chipmunk Adventure," Critic dismisses The Chipmunks as creepy rodent-people, and complains that Simon is nothing but a whiney little bitch who should have contacted authorities for sensing something is amiss with the balloon race.
  • On top of all the other problems, the "men can't get or don't notice being sexually harassed" message in "Dawn Of The Commercials" doesn't even hold water for reboot Critic, let alone his prime self, as we've both seen and heard him feel awful about getting groped many times and all genders feeling entitled to him.
• Series Fauxnale: Scooby-Doo video is filled with references to past reviews, has returning characters including Roger the angel from the Christmas special, consists of Critic interacting with his younger and older selves, all three making a Heroic Sacrifice/Heroic Suicide to save the world, has a lot of intense acting from Doug when it comes to Critic's depression reaching boiling point, and it ends with Critic making the effort to join in a poker game and was meant to be his last review as the Nostalgic Critic. Come January 22nd, 2013, he announced the character would be coming with more reviews but different rules.
  • Referenced at the end of The Princess Diaries 2, as he says the episode provided a natural ending for the Hyper Fangirl storyline, but if fans demand it he'll bring the character back. No similarities to his own situation intended.
• Serious Business: In-universe, Man of Steel. Critic walks to his desk in Mundane Made Awesome while fanboy tweets either complain or praise the movie and he acts like he's giving people a voice. The joke here is that Doug's already done a Zod Review and Sibling Rivalry on the film, and it really doesn't matter in the long run.
  • Double in Spoony's Captain America review, as he threatens Critic with pictures of the rape if he doesn't give his opinion on the movie, and Critic commits suicide instead.
  • After Earth was originally going to have a renactment of the “Papa's Got A Brand New Badge” scene from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but Doug didn't want to do it as he felt like it was too serious subject matter for a dumb review. To put this into perspective, he was totally okay with using a dead mom scene in the middle of a joke a few weeks back.
  • The beginning of Dawn Of The Commercials, as Doug backtracking on his choice to only do three commercial specials is met with a giant crowd applauding and a heavenly choir.
  • In his ice bucket challenge, he acts like doing it and providing easy fanservice (and he doesn't even, giving a bucket version of Mic Drop at the end) is some great cost which he had to cave in for, when even actual ALS sufferers have done it with no fuss.
  • In “The Review Must Go On” review, despite being in arrogant mode and lampshading that he's biased, even he points out that it's played less like wanting to do a show again and more like Doug is being hounded and then making a Deal with the Devil.
  • Bloodrayne. Linkara and Spoony feel it when Critic (slowly) takes the DVD out out the case and run over to Chicago while epic music plays.
  Critic: Christ, you guys are so dramatic.
  • In Mad Max: Fury Road, the fanboys kidnap Critic because he doesn't think the film is the best, and try to kill him when he enjoys Beyond Thunderdome the most.
  • Played with in "Old vs New: Evil Dead", as Hyper Boner fight over which Evil Dead movie is best, but actual problems peek in too, like her need for attention, lingering "feelings" for Critic, and his temper and his stubborness.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: In Freddy vs Jason, Hyper glomps Devil Boner onto offscreen and from the sounds and Critic's disgusted reaction, clearly have a fun time.
• Sexual Extortion: When Hyper is singing about not giving up on Critic until he belongs to her in The Phantom of the Opera (2004), she sings that she'll use coercion and “no more fun and games, I will make him mine”.
• Sex for Solace:
  • Towards the end of his first run, there was a lot more jokes on the patheticness of his sex life, from constant failed one night stands to catching a couple of stds.
  • To distract himself from all the Love Hurts talk in “Is Eyes Wide Shut Just Artsy Porn”, he runs off at the end for a night of canon anonymous sex.
• Sex Is Evil: The reboot has strong vibes of this. Critic was always abused in the original run, sexually included, but he was an Aggressive Submissive who loved flirting and showing off skin. In the reboot however, both he and Zod are castrated, crossdressing is seen as worse than racism, Critic Stepford Smilers to the catwomen that he has to get some Male Gaze in just to get viewcounts, and Evilina is sexualized despite being a little girl. Even crosses over to Bum Reviews where Critic isn't even shown but apparently he's so sex-starved that he makes a Rogue figurine give him handjobs.
  • Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: In the Fandom Nod-heavy “Uncanny Valley” review, Critic lampshades and explains the above as he's been sexually repressing himself since he came back and it's killing him.
• Sexual Karma:
  • In The Last Angry Geek's Bad Future portion during the Future's End review, Critic's obsession with money and power comes back to bite him hard when Snob takes over the site and forces him to be a Sex Slave.
  • For wanting to be like Spoony in Top 11 Strangest Couples and put Monica Rial (plus Brina Polencia later) in his own position back then, he gets a gropey Little Kuriboh and Kirphober (who thinks he's Kuriboh) instead.
• Sexophone: In a direct nod to the Spooning With Spoony series, one plays in The Top 11 Strangest Couples when he's in bed and talking in a sultry voice about Valentine's Day being the sexiest time of the year.
• Sexy Soaked Shirt: Doug even said in a commentary that he had to sell the old Critic jacket because he was getting it soaked too much. Fan Disservice in Ghost Dad, as he's soaked from top to bottom with gasoline and lights himself on fire.
• Sex Sells: The “Is Eyes Wide Shut Artsy Porn” editorial starts with him wanting to talk about fear of the subconscious, getting booed, and getting viewers back by grittingly adding on “with orgies”. Doug does the same thing in his preview, neglecting to mention that there's a lot of discussion on nightmares and twitchingly going for the fanservice angle.
• Sexy Whatever Outfit: In the Son of the Mask commentary, Doug has a rant that will more than likely get women seething, as he says it's not the men who want to see sexy costumes who are at fault but the women who have to buy them and it's just supply and demand. That it's such a departure from “guys ally yourselves with ladies and slut it up on Halloween” doesn't help.
  • According to their vlog "Unlimited Beers", Rachel talked about Doug trying to find costumes for her and getting upset because there was nothing but "Sexy [Blank]", and she was like "…yeah that's a thing".
• Shameful Strip:
  • The “Is Eyes Wide Shut Just Artsy Porn” title card has Critic naked, trying to cover himself and looking scared while the masked men from the film are behind him.
  • In the “Trip It” sketch of Rise Of The Commercials, Tamara and Malcolm characters sue Doug's character and for some reason cue Naked Freakout. He tries desperately to cover himself and they're seen happily wearing his clothes and smoking cigars.
• Shameless Self-Promotion:
  • The Critic identifies Kazaam, Moonwalker, and Sidekicks as these (though the latter is subverted in that a family member directed the film instead of the person himself).
• Share the Male Pain: When the robot in Power Rangers gets kicked in the nads, he jumps up in his chair out of sympathy hurt.
• Shared Universe: Pretty much THE start of the Reviewaverse.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Hyper and Devil Boner in "Old vs New: Cinderella'', with the twist that they're both Ax-Crazy. They even bond over who held Critic hostage the best.
• Single Tear: While watching Tom And Jerry talking... singing... about being friends!!
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Malcolm was in none of the promotional materials for the Mad Max: Fury Road review, leading to people who wonder what character he would be. Turns out he, Jim and Jason are the villains of the episode: meninists.
• Slow "NO!": It happens in a few episodes.
• Shadow Discretion Shot:
  • Styled like the show, the thirteen seconds of “Top 11 Adult Jokes We Never Got As Kids” is just Critic's shadow, along with another person, and said shadow of Critic blowing up with the other guy, looking nervous and running as fast as he can.
  • In Hocus Pocus, because obviously you can't hang Doug, Tamara or Beth, the witches' dead bodies are shown in shadow on the wall.
• Share the Male Pain: In Alice in Wonderland (2010), whatever Malice did to Danny Elfman makes Critic's hand very quickly go to his crotch in sympathy.
• Ship Mates: Used in-universe by the analysts for the “Hyper Fangirl” song in The Phantom of the Opera (2004), as they tell her she should keep going after Critic and that Devil Boner and Lady Love Embrace can be paired off together. In reality of course, Critic has told Hyper no millions of times, and Hyper Boner seems actually happy.
• Ship Sinking: Like Chick/Todd, you'd think this would be obvious considering stalkers shouldn't really get what they want (and Doug had said at a con that the Story Arc would be “miserable” and “[Critic's] never going to love her back”), but “The Princess Diaries 2” review stomped out any sign of Critic/Hyper Fangirl when she kidnaps him, manipulates him and he tells her straight up that he'll never love her. The commentary also helped by confirming that any hint of like Critic might have had for HF in the review was just Stockholm kicking in.
• Ship Tease:
  • In Pixels, when he says this review isn't going to be 50 Shades of Grey, Tamara's offscreen shout of relief and Critic's response of trying to tell her that being in bondage is fun, gives off the impression that they've had this conversation quite a few times since Jurassic World.
  • In The Matrix, Tamara's catsuit rips and Critic immediately checks her back to see if anything private is showing.
  • In even earlier lampshading of how all her characters seem to be in love with him, Reloaded has Tamara out of nowhere tell Critic that she wants to jump his bones. He's upset at the random and unwanted groping, but also disappointed that he's not the only one she has the hots for.
  • Tamara lampshaded the fact that every character she plays is in love with a Doug character here.
  • The Cinderella Old vs New episode has Benny quivering when he sees Hyper has "replaced" him with Devil Boner, her boyfriend. In context, she replaced him as her "outlet for mindless violence," but his reaction and subsequent fight with Devil Boner makes him come across as a jilted lover.
  • As with most of their crossovers, Snob/Critic get going pretty early on in Dear Santa. They tell the gay best friend parody (who literally calls them "lover boys") that they're doing fine and don't need break up advice. In the bloopers, when Snob mentions the abusive wooden spoon indentions on his ass, Critic takes a look.
    • In the same episode, Santa Christ blushes from a sassy smutty letter from Fat Grandma.
• Shirtless Scene:
  • Two words: "A GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENIUS!"
  • Subverted in an editorial promo where he's about to give the female fans what they've been missing and the video ends before he shows anything.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Played for dark laughs in the James and the Giant Peach review. He got sent to jail for the below-average Let's Play, didn't exactly have a good time (his jacket and tie are missing), even Chester acts entitled at the press conference, has to be good for a movie he doesn't like because he doesn't want to A) be shot and B) have everyone still hate him. In the end, he gives his honest opinion that he can see why people like it but it's not for him and he gets killed for that.
• Shot at Dawn: Technically what was going to happen to Critic in Mad Max: Fury Road, as his phone says it's seven in the morning and the fanboys were going to shoot a chained up man on his knees.
• Shout-Out: Now has its own page.
• Show, Don't Tell:
  • Doug likes the skits partly (also because they apparently teach him about himself) because they actually show his point about whatever movie, instead of just having to talk about it in front of a wall.
  • Curiosa defends Mad Max: Fury Road as just because there's not a lot of talking, doesn't mean they're not telling the story through strong acting and visuals. Doug also thinks this about the review itself:
  Doug: I love it because everything's like, in way or another, addressing the movie, and that's another reason why I love this review. We're doing it without showing any clips, but we're constantly commenting on the movie, through satire, through talking, through visuals, constantly having to talk about aside from me being in front of a wall saying I like or hate this.
  • Both Critic and Hyper point out the Hannibal film tells you how hard and objectified it is to be a woman, while Silence showed you and was far more terrifying for it.
• Shower of Angst:
  • During his psychotic meltdown during his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies (the original three live-action ones) review.
  • The post-rape version was referenced by Rob (with Doug shuddering like he feels dirty) in a panel where Hyper comes in and Critic has to pretend to be into her to get her away from him, i.e push her off the balcony.
• Shower Scene: In the DVD menu, Rob barges in on him while he's showering. Critic's rather freaked by this.
• Show Some Leg: In Hyper's second Midwest Media Expo vlog, after refusing her again fails for the millionth time, Critic hugs her and goes off to “build a snowman” with her, but runs back in having pushed her off the balcony and shuddering like more happened (with Rob asking if he needs a shower).
• Shown Their Work: Has his own page.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: The Critic gets a pretty epic one against Soulless in his The Cat in the Hat, turning his corporate Hollywood crap back at him in a "The Reason You Suck" Speech that drives him into a Villainous Breakdown.
  • Subverted in The Review Must Go On. Doug instantly takes Critic on his challenge to make him go away, but Critic keeps on hounding him.
  • Inverted in After Earth, when Malcolm Will Smith tries to give him a motivational speech about how he has something to live for, but Critic has no time for it, calling him completely unoriginal.
  • He was on the receiving end in Welshy's farewell video, on a rather important subject.
    Critic: So what, you're just going to keep coming back?
    Welshy: Heh, you did.
    Critic: Goddamnit!
• Sickening "Crunch!": When Critic slams Malcolm up against the fridge at the start of The Christmas Tree review, Malcolm's spine makes this sound. Luckily for him, not so much for Critic's sanity, it's all a hallucination.
• Sickly Green Glow: "Matrix Month" swaps out all the blue lighting for an increasingly green tinge, to go with the franchise's color scheme.
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Gives this opinion in his review of The Purge, saying that cynicism does not equal maturity or intelligence, and how the bleak dystopian vision of the movie's future is not only implausible, but pointlessly dark.
• Sincerity Mode: He usually ends his reviews with a much more honest and less jokey review of the movie, seriously saying what the overall problems are and, in many cases, acknowledging the movie's good points.
  • He will occasionally interject a genuine compliment into an otherwise negative review, preceding it with "I'm serious" so it is not mistaken for sarcasm. An example is his high opinion of the "Smooth Criminal" sequence from Moonwalker.
  • The Critic also admits that the big plot twist in Baby Geniuses 2 is actually pretty good, and that he was legitimately surprised by it.
• Signing-Off Catchphrase: ends and begins his reviews with his beginning catch phrase.
  "I'm The Nostalgia Critic. I remember it so you don't have to."
• Silent Credits: Done for his 'Farewell to Roger Ebert' tribute.
• Silent Protagonist: Corey Taylor in The Wall review, something he angrily lampshades at the end.
• Single-Issue Wonk: In the Critic Reloaded reviews, the amount of times he complained about the Ho Yay in Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee quickly hit double digits. Whether it was Dramatic Irony or a Stealth Parody of fanboys, it quickly got tiresome.
  • Doug can be nice about how it helps marginalized voices, and even admitted he wants an Instagram of his own, but for the most part, Critic really loves New Media Are Evil.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • The ending for Small Soldiers treats the idea of sitting through The Princess Diaries II as the torturous big deal instead of Hyper breaking into his house, although this is subverted from the latter episode onwards where he's pissed off at her and she keeps him for two weeks before deciding to review it.
  • Called out in "Is Whitewashing Still A Thing'', discussing how people were more interested in complaining about changes from the book than the films using regular sized actors instead of actual little people.
  • In Dreamcatcher, as someone with OCD himself, he talks about how even an OCD person wouldn't let a bomb go off because a box needed to be symmetrical.
  • A Take That! in “The Amazing Spider-Man”, as he starts off saying he has a controversial opinion, and has to downgrade to not actually controversial just petty geek shit.
• Skyward Scream:
  • Hilariously done in the Saved by the Bell episode.
    Nostalgia Critic: OILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!
  • Even funnier was The Reveal that Jimmy from The Wizard grew up to be The Angry Video Game Nerd.
    Nostalgia Critic: NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD!!!!!!
• Sleep Cute: Subverted in Christmas Story II, as Hyper rests her head on a sleeping Critic's shoulder, but it's ignoring what he said even just a few minutes earlier about trying to get her to agree she should stop trying to get with him, and she knows what she did is wrong (even looking to see if anyone's around beforehand and trying to look innocent when she thinks he's stirred), leaving him alone to wake up lonely and wanting more attention from her.
• Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters: Very much on the character-driven end, with even the "love/hate relationship with job" arc coming through in character reactions.
• Slobs Versus Snobs:
  • One of the ways Critic and Ask That Guy are contrasted. Critic tries his best to be down with the everyman, but is really a rather nice snob, while Ask That Guy pretends to be a high-class gentleman, but is really a filthy hedonist.
  • The Amadeus editorial gives Critic and the Ask That Guy-esque Uncle Lies this dynamic, as UL is too haughty for his own good and mocks Critic for getting info from movies and being on Tinder.
  • The basic conflict between the Sweater Family and the Bum Family, as the former are rich abusive parents who look down on the former for being dirty stoners.
• Slow Clap: The Critic points out its overuse in various sports movies in his 90s Sports Montage, and later on appears to initiate one in Rocky IV.
• Slut-Shaming: If he's ever angry at someone (both genders), the usual shamey words flow freely from his mouth. In return though, Douchey's called him a whore a few times too, Spoony's called him dirty to humiliate him further after getting spooned, and in real life the only person Doug calls a slut is himself.
  • Played straight in Sailor Moon, where it was only two minutes in and he was already ragging fourteen year old girls for “looking slutty”.
  • In his “Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes”, Azula didn't even sleep with anyone, is still a fourteen year old girl, and he calls her an “evil whore”.
  • Doug getting this a lot from people who are no fun was referenced in the Lorax behind the scenes when he was getting called out for creating Hyper and he sarcasmed nobody's ever said anything sexually bad about him at all.
• Small Reference Pools: A somewhat strange example is the 2010 Christmas special, where in the commentary Doug apparently thought he was the first person ever to think of doing a twisted inversion of It's a Wonderful Plot. Needless to say, the fans soon put him straight on all the existing examples.
  • Also referenced in some reviews where he gets irritated at the fans who have no idea what he's talking about. "Go watch a black and white movie!"
• Smug Super: Being not very nice people anyway, giving Critic, Tamara and Malcolm superpowers for a weekend in the Fantastic Four (2005) review just makes them take even more levels in jerkass.
• So Bad, It's Good:invoked
  • His opinion on The Room (2003), Babes in Toyland and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), to the point where he suggests it because of it. Out of character, Doug Walker declared Devil one of the worst movies he saw in 2010, but recommended seeing it for this reason.
  • Doug and Rob recommend watching The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia in their commentary to see all the hundreds of other horrible things that they didn't have time to mention without making the review three hours long (for a hour and a half long movie).
  • His review of Dungeons & Dragons (2000) starts with him saying that this is probably one of the worst movies ever, which is exactly why it's one of the best movies ever and why people need to see it.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Done to keep the Black Comedy going. You'd think somebody would come in to give kid Critic a break, but nope. Not to mention Aunt Despair and Uncle Lies' poor kids.
• Solemn Ending Theme: The ending to the My Pet Monster review when The Critic stares out his window and re-evaluates his life.
• Something about a Rose: He has one in My Pet Monster, but it's played more feminine snobby theater goer than sexy boy.
  • Malcolm's Devil is first seen with a black rose stapled to the wall behind him.
• Something Else Also Rises: During his review of Tank Girl, when Rebecca and Jet kiss, his hat flies off his head with an audible pop, followed by an immediate Lampshade Hanging:
  "This movie just went up a notch. Or at least... something went up a notch."
  • Also, during the Full House review, this:
    *creak, poing!*
  • Befitting a couple who have a penis gun, Devil Boner's gun shoots when Hyper is on top of him (offscreen obviously). Critic is disturbed and calls the "fight" a draw.
• So Okay, It's Average: Several in-universe examples.
  • The Critic's reasoning for why Waterworld was a bomb at the box office. He even says that it's not bad as an action movie, but ultimately fails to live up to its high budget (which the movie didn't even manage to reach in cinemas).
  • Cloverfield. Everything about it is adequate to him.
    "How's the monster? It's okay. How's the acting? It's okay. How are the special effects? It's all okay! It's like a giant flaming nuclear ball of adequacy!"
  • He found Ferngully 2 to be quite the forgettable movie, which had no reason to exist beyond milking cash out of those who bought Ferngully.
  • Song of the South, in "Return of Nostalgic Commercials": "See the movie that that millions of people around the world are calling...OKAY!
  • According to "Top 11 Nostalgia Critics I Will Never Do", this is why he refuses to review Toys.
  • Doug has said he gets how important it is to women and little girls, but Rob thinks Ghostbusters (2016) is a "chart movie" and really forgettable.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: He sings "Pure Imagination" over the tunnel sequence of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory to demonstrate how out of place it is.
  • He also plays whimsical, uplifting music from a scene in Jack that doesn't warrant such music over the ending of Marley & Me for the same purpose.
  • A rocky guitar instrumental of "The Review Must Go On" is played over his explosions-heavy opening theme, but the actual lyrics were about Critic hating his job, carrying on because he has to (thus parodying the Queen and Moulin Rouge! versions), and foreshadowing his end.
  • In "What's With All The Princess Hate?", the Ominous Music Box Tune for when he begged to die in Son of the Mask plays over his speechifying.
  • Another slow Ominous Music Box Tune is playing over his gushing over how the Super Mario Comics don't suck, until he starts squeeing over Toadstool and then it turns into a more apt guitar. Then it goes back to sad music once the Squee stops.
  • "Paranoia"'s piano soundtrack plays over the usual flames at the end of "Top 11 South Park Episodes", making it an oddly foreboding promo. and seeing as how he has a moment of crying over Demo Reel's retcon in the review, it turned out fitting
  • As pretty as it is, you wouldn't think a flute version of Scarborough Fair would be the first choice to play over a segment talking about the Batman/Catwoman relationship.
  • Lambasted in his review of The Purge for playing calming music while showing rapid-action violence on-screen.
  • Lampshaded when he gets very uncomfortable with the synthy pop song playing at the end of the The Monster Squad review, and asks to switch back to his own depressing, more fitting theme song.
  • Invoked in “Rise Of The Commercials”, where the happy Mentos commercial music plays over boss Doug getting the shit beaten out of him by Jim, Malcolm and Tamara.
  • While suitable for a lot of it (given sadness of To Boldly Flee and horror of The Shining), a creepy One-Woman Wail plays during this video and really doesn't go when he's comparing his Turbo review to Power Rangers.
• So What Do We Do Now?: The self-esteem bollocking from My Pet Monster really scared him about where his life was going.
• Smoking Hot Sex: After his fangasm in the Double Team review, he smokes a cigarillo.
• Smoking Is Glamorous > Of Course I Smoke: Unless it's pot, when he tries to smoke to look suave he'll always end up having a coughing fit.
• The Smurfette Principle: In their vlog "Unlimited Beers'', Tamara and Rachel discuss being the only women, saying it's hard sometimes, but it's also cool giving women representation and Doug tries his hardest to make them feel safe.
• Space Whale Aesop: Parodied. "The moral of the story is: don't fall into a bucket of cream!"
• Speak of the Devil:
  • As revealed by Elisa (as The Maven of the Eventide), the Critic appears whenever somebody says "Nostalgia" three times. They're both startled.
  • Downplayed example with Hyper, as it tends to be whenever Critic makes a point about kidnapping (usually about the victim being too calm), she'll show up in the next episode.
  • According to Andre in the TMNT II behind the scenes, Doug immediately pops up if you're saying nice things about him.
• Special Edition Title: The review for Deadpool 2 has an opening with the usual visuals for Season 11, except it starts out with "Channel Unicorn" ("Now That's an Horny Horse") replacing the Channel Awesome logo, and the credits themselves are replaced by tongue-in-cheek parodies, right in the style of a Deadpool movie opening.
• Special Effects Failure: The Critic points it out in-universe in the The Legend of Zelda show, Red Sonja, Captain N: The Game Master, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Tank Girl, Rock-A-Doodle, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, Pound Puppies, The Pebble and the Penguin, Ernest Scared Stupid, The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia, Dungeons & Dragons (2000) and the first Spider-Man movie. He also insults Linkara for having bad effects as well in the Superman IV review.
• Special Guest: Carrying over from Conquest of the Commercials, Don Bluth teams up with critic on a retrospective of Dragon's Lair (and to plug the kickstarter for a follow-up). Both the Animaniacs tribute and Freakazoid! review feature Tom Ruegger and Paul Rugg, and the X-Men: The Animated Series review features the creators of said show.
• Spell My Name with a "The": He used to be The Nostalgia Critic, but dropped the "The" after his comeback.
• Spiritual Antithesis:
  • In terms of episodes, Eight Crazy Nights to The Grinch. The latter had the moral being that anyone could like what they wanted for whatever reason and that would eventually sink into Critic in what was meant to be his finale. The former had a Deep South group of Happy Madison fans who laughed at the movie and anything shit-related, and for this reason Critic lured them into a bathroom to kill them all. To help out with the comparison, Doug posted The Grinch on facebook a few days after 8 Crazy Nights, saying it was becoming one of his favorites.
  • Generally, the reboot to Demo Reel. Tacoma made sure it was okay with the others that he was in white-face and was so smart that he got a Pulitzer right out of college, The Shining has Malcolm pretend to be a white stereotype to avoid getting killed, while on the whole getting dumb Butt-Monkey characters; Rebecca was openly feminist due to how bad she'd been burned by Hollywood, it was noted by Doug that he just gave Rachel ditzy Cute and Psycho roles; Donnie clung onto the other two and called them his best friends immediately, Rachel lampshaded that Critic treats them like crap.
• Spit Take:
  "WHAT THE HELL!? Did they just talk? Did Tom & Jerry, one of the most famous silent duos of all time, just speak to each other?? No. No, no, no, no no no, it's gotta be a mistake. I gotta be hearing things. I'm gonna just go ahead and eat my customary 3-pound watermelon and drink my traditional pitcher of sangria both at the same time while I confirm how wrong I was about this ridiculous misunderstanding..."
  • Also done in his Video Game Review, when he partakes in the Nerd's favourite beverage during the opening.
  • After performing one in his Milk Money review, he lampshades it by yelling, "Why is it I'm always drinking when a scene like that happens?"
  • During the review of The Room (2003), he does it when Johnny askes another character how their sex life is.
  • The Critic tries but fails to avert this in his review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He manages to prevent himself from spitting out his drink after hearing Lieutenant Ilia mention her oath of celibacy, but he spits it out when she asks Captain Kirk, in Johnny's voice, how his sex life is.
• Spoofed with Their Own Words: As comments have noticed, The Lorax review was eerily similar to the actual film; generic corporate bad guys, no sense of subtlety, a heavily one-sided message, and a dark, bittersweet ending subverted with an over the top happy one. Add that onto Critic's previous heavy lampshading of his own pandering and desperation for money, as well as realizing in the review that he's just as packaged as the new Once-ler, and you've got a truckload of meta. Doug and Rob confirm it in commentary, saying they're doing the exact same thing as the movie, just against it, and that's the point.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: In Hocus Pocus, Doug spends more of the episode as Winifred than he does as Critic, and even has a song number. Tropes Are Not Bad, as he had a great time.
• Springtime for Hitler:
  • The Critic's explanation for why Home Alone 3 was written by John Hughes.
  John Hughes:"There! I did it! I wrote the worst Home Alone script ever. I know I'm contractually obligated to write at least one more movie, but this script is so terrible no studio would ever buy it. Haha!"
  Producer:"We'll take it."
  John Hughes:"My career is over!"
  • In the 2020 commercial special, Critic is aghast at a Diet Coke ad where a man talks at length about his girlfriend's panties, particularly how they remind him of the ones he'd see in his family hamper as a kid. Critic imagines the pitch meeting, where a lecherous agent pitches the idea, and the executive nonchalantly accepts it because he wanted to get fired anyway.
• Squee: The Critic's reaction to Follow That Bird when each of the Muppets is introduced. As hard as he tries to be snarky and sarcastic, he breaks down admitting that he loves the Muppets too much to make fun of them.
• Squick: His in-universe reaction in the Conan reviews to a segment where Arnold says that working out is "like cumming": "CONAN: THE CUMMER... EW"
• Stalking Is Funny If Its Female After Male:
  • Similarly to the Catwoman (2004) review plot, hard to imagine a male Hyper Fan getting encouraged to stalk a female Critic, and fandom then calling him adorkable, sexy, joining his fanpage, or shipping the two of them. In-universe however it's always played as disturbing and kind of sad, especially as it becomes clear to even Critic in The Princess Diaries 2 that she's seriously mentally ill and in need of help.
  • While the others never exactly tell her off, they're still uncomfortable with her and the lack of What The Hell Hyper is attributed to the fact that while Critic may be the victim here, he's abused them enough (or just acted like an asshole enough in Santa Christ's case) for them to not care.
• Stalking is Love: Or at least Hyper Fangirl thinks so. When Critic screams at her but makes the mistake of saying that he'll find her and stalk her back, he realizes that she'd enjoy that and she eagerly agrees.
  • Doug will sometimes say at cons that the Hyper/Critic thing is a love story, but always clarifies that it's a miserably fucked up one and Hyper/Devil Boner are the real romance.
• Stalker Shrine: Showing how self-absorbed she is, in Shark Jumping, Hyper wants to throw Beth and Tim's furniture into the dumpster and make their house into a shrine for the Critic.
• Stalker with a Crush: Like Doug in “Top 10 Films I Like But Everybody Else Hates”, Critic likes The Cable Guy because it's cathartic to see all the people creepily obsessed with him be portrayed as a wackily comedic Jim Carrey.
• Stalker without a Crush: The Ghost Of Christmas Future is just a little too obsessed with getting the Critic to do what he wants.
• Standard Hero Reward: Discussed in the "Top 11 Dumbasses In Distress".
• Standard Snippet: Dance of the Hours plays during the Inspector Gadget (1999) review.
• Stating the Simple Solution: In the crossover for Star Trek Insurrection, Linkara has taken over the tv and plans on continuing with the review and go at Nemesis. Critic is horrified and cannot take it when Sci-fi Guy, whose been standing in the corner for the review, tells him to just turn off the tv. It works.
• Status Quo Is God: Deconstructed. In Scooby-Doo, Critic slams into the Despair Event Horizon about there's no point in trying to change anything because he's a Cash-Cow Franchise and the site needs his pain for ratings. At the end of the episode and in To Boldly Flee, he actually does change, and succeeds, getting his happy ending, but Real Life Writes the Plot and the reboot has made him miserable once more about nothing changing and still having to do things for money.
• Stay in the Kitchen: In what's a big dose of Early-Installment Weirdness (and later on, like Harley Quinn, Cinderella would become Doug's go-to-example of relatable abuse victim), he says in "Top 11 Disney Villains" that "making a woman do chores isn't that bad". In The Wicker Man (2006), his sub side pops up and this trope mixed with Sex Slave is his dream vacation.
• Stealth Insult: Other producers have noted that since Doug said (pre-reboot) that he would only do films that they have done if he thought they hadn't said all that was needed, constantly picking movies they reviewed (mostly from Mike J, the Chick, Film Brain or The Blockbuster Buster) means he didn't think they were good enough.
  • Critic calling Santa Christ "the only good, decent person [he] knows" in Son of the Mask, ignoring everyone who listened to his angst and looked after him in To Boldly Flee.
  • In “When Is A Movie Just A Movie”, he asks “when is it right to say this is a horrible representation of reality”, showing Patch Adams, a film he got pissed off with, and then “when is it just a movie”, showing Pocahontas, a film that Lindsay thinks is gross.
    • In “When Is A Movie Just A Movie”, he claims his life has no writer, when he knows he does and even gets upset about this fact at other times.
  • Only stealth because he doesn't say Trump by name but in Garfield 2, he sarcasms "who would be stupid enough to give uncontrollable power to a dumb orange narcissist with no experience whatsoever", and mocks his inaugaration size.
  • Hyper crossdresses as Critic on Halloween, and Devil Boner dresses up as her, meaning their scary costume is the Hyper/Critic ship.
  • In his and Film Brain's Forest Warrior review, the whole "Chuck Norris wants to put himself in every man" shtick is pretty obviously this towards the eponymous movie star. Critic seems oblivious to it, intending it as a compliment, but Film Brain is implied to be playing dumb to facilitate the insult.
• Stealth Parody: With Demo Reel on the way and Doug fast filling up the TGWTG Ho Yay page all by himself at this point, not to mention giving his full support to the shipping community, the Reloaded reviews of Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee come off like poking fun at the fanboys who complained about all the female/queer-aimed fanservice in said movies.
• Stealth Pun: He decides to represent Ponyo as an over-the-top Omnicidal Maniac demon for his review of the eponymous movie...with an obsession with HAAAAAAAMMMM!
  • Spoony makes a cameo in the Richie Rich review when the Critic makes a Noah joke. Why? Because Spoony's real name is Noah.
  • Casting Critic as a zombie (in his zombie editorial and Maven's “Monster Mash”) works in both ways; he's a Franchise Zombie because his show was meant to end in To Boldly Flee, and of course that he died properly and is now alive but Came Back Wrong.
  • Devil Boner's car is called "Satan's Little Chubby". Chubby is another word for boner, so he basically called his vehicle after himself.
• Stepford Smiler: From everything Critic's said about her, his mom appears to be the unstable kind, child-him calls her a monster but she yells at him for swearing, and she's alcoholic but a middle aged woman obsessed with a clean house is a Primal Fear to him.
• Sting: Doug often plays "Shock Horror (a)" by Dick Walter (also frequently heard on The Ren & Stimpy Show) when something he considers shocking appears on the screen. Some examples of when it's played include:
  • The female duck's bare breasts in Howard the Duck.
  • Realizing Jake Lloyd from Jingle All the Way was also in The Phantom Menace as Anakin and jumping out a window.
  • Showing a picture of the dog and dolphin hybrids at the very end of his Zeus and Roxanne review.
  • From ''Return of the Nostalgic Commercials, "Wunder Boner".
  • "The creature known as... MAN!"
• The Stinger: Usually of the "funny quote after the credits" type, but in the Zeus And Roxanne review he follows it with a Brick Joke after playing with the audience's expectations.
  • Another Stinger is actually a two minute pitch of the new upcoming DVD and appearances at cons for the special people that love him so much. This is actually Doug Walker, not Nostalgia Critic.
• Stock Footage: "OR DO THEY?!"
  • Two clips from the Casper review were re-used in subsequent episodes: "TIMING!" and "Exposition, exposition..."
• Stock Money Bag: In his review of "the worst Christmas Special ever", Doug gets irritated at the caretaker in The Christmas Tree who pays the patroness of the orphanage two money bags all the time. The character doesn't even mention the amount of money. He just says: "Here are your two money bags, miss."
• Stock Sound Effects: Two notable examples include whenever there is a fight scene and punching is involved or whenever he fires his gun.
• The Stoner: The 2017 intro has both Aunt Despair and Uncle Lies 60s surfing on a huge blunt.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: He has this view with dorky white guys, like Pauly Shore and Vanilla Ice.
  • He was raised Catholic (is agnostic now), but calls out people who use the Bible as a defense for what they don't understand (Film/Gordy) or that think the rest of the world is evil because they're not the same religion (Exorcist II: The Heretic).
• A Storm Is Coming: Dramatic Thunder is the first thing heard in the Sailor Moon review. While it was intended to be just Mad Scientist noise, it ended up quite fitting considering the episode's controversy.
• Story Arc: His massive insecurity with his job. It was set up in Full House where he complains at his fans for not appreciating what he does for them, comes out when he gets upset at other contributors for stealing it and being better than him, ran through Kickassia when he would rather commit mass murder-suicide than lose the power he had for once gained, he breaks down to CR about his Inferiority Superiority Complex and got pushed to the forefront in the My Pet Monster / "Commercials Special" double parter. It's also the thing that leads him to his breakdown in Scooby-Doo and making his life better in To Boldly Flee. Or at least until the retcon of that happiness, it comes right back in Son of the Mask.
  • In the (meant to be) Finale Season, reviews like Moulin Rouge!, The Grinch and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom all had the aesop "Critic learns people can like different things",^note Although this is unintentionally undone in reboot. culminating in Scooby-Doo where he innocently asks Roger why Guilty Pleasures are a thing.
  • In a lighter, sillier example, the Nerd/Critic rivalry. Light because it ended in a kickass brawl and didn't include near-Death by Despair.
  • Definite now that Doug says they're finished, the "fuck-ups" lists provided a progression from "I'm unbelievable, I am your Jesus" to giving up and breaking down so hard that Douchey decides to leave him alone.
  • The reboot does this in a more Plot Threads manner, with more wham and sequels. Some episodes will focus on what Critic sees not being completely real, others will have his increasing need for money or how much nastier he is to actors and fans of things he doesn't like, then there's his increase in power since “The Review Must Go On”, Santa Christ being a different kind of Fallen Hero to him, his bad treatment of Tamara, Rachel and Malcolm and so on, but they all come down to one thing: he's going through serious Sanity Slippage.
  • The Lorax review started another one, with a Straw Fangirl falling in love with the Critic, and the Spider-Man review continues with it, the ending consisting of yet more Sanity Slippage as she decides to make him fall in love with her whether he likes it or not. Doug said at momocon it would go on for a while, and wouldn't exactly be happy.
    Doug: "What would the Critic and a love story be? And I just thought it had to be something miserable."
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Hyper and Black Willy Wonka happily threaten to caramelize someone's insides until they're stretchy and sweet. Critic lampshades that he doesn't like how that's becoming a thing.
• Strangled by the Red String: Invoked in The Happening, as Tamara and Jim decide they're madly in love “despite having no chemistry whatsoever”.
  • In "Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakuel", Critic demands the D'aw Girls suddenly be in love with Malcolm.
• Straw Character:
  • A lot of the arguments that Joe says in Man of Steel are just there for Critic to get the upper hand complaint on. RL Joe understood this, as he said on twitter that one day he'll give a proper defense. Doug at least realized in the commentary that he had given himself most of the talking and apologized, while Joe let him off but said "If I had free range, I would counterpoint everything you said".
  • At least Joe got off slightly better than the villains of Peter Soulless and the AI crew, who Critic fights with and speechifies to, and they never show any sign of humanity or logical argument. The TMZ people have it dangerously close to libel, as they were based on real people and Critic complains that they have no thick skin when in reality nobody wants to hear a screaming manchild call their fans obsessive virgins.
  • Subverted with Tim Burton, who starts out as this, but then is allowed to tell Critic that not all ideas work, and after the shrine is revealed, Critic's the one who gets to squirm and Burton tells him that yes he'll make a lot of crap, but he'll also make really good movies. All the more impressive as the real review has Doug being so angry at the version of Alice in Wonderland (2010) that he scares himself, and calls his review like therapy; all the makings of 'Seuss review' territory.
  • In The Lorax commentary, Doug and Rob admit the execs were complete cardboard cut-outs for Critic to fight against, but Rob makes fun of anyone who complained.
  • Happens again with Schmuck in The Matrix, who is stupid, rambles on about nothing, is never allowed a counter point to Critic's complaining, and even blows up from a Critic speech stating the obvious. Lampshaded in Reloaded, as he says he can't die because he's such an easy and cliched character to write.
  • Daredevil has Orlando playing “The Angst” and Tamara playing “Angsteen”, just so Critic can lecture them about superhero tropes and Angsteen can fulfill her Stuffed in the Fridge duties.
  • Bay in the Transformers 4 review, as he turns out to be a transformer himself (who Critic shoots when Erod is too good for that) and Erod/Critic rant at like he's the devil for 'destroying' fanboy franchises. And he later dies from a mix of Electric Torture and stabbing in the heart.
  • Lampshaded and defied while reviewing Dark Side Of The Internet, where he wants “the people being offended are just whiny pansies and the actual bullies themselves are big losers”, but is upset to hear talking about pedophilia, people not being able to laugh comments off, and Lewis stating that words are important.
  Critic: [weakly, in his Linkara impression] ...nyah.
  • There's a group of Deep South fans in the Eight Crazy Nights review who love the film, are treated like guffawing, pig-grunting morons who have to have "feeding time", and Critic kills them with zero regret, calling them a "typical Happy Madison audience" who "shouldn't live".
  • A bunch of fans in The Lorax (not including Hyper who is on her own), who watch the film, laugh at it while Critic is lone wolf guy 'sticking up' for the story and throw rubbish on the floor while blissfully commenting that they're not evil like the movie's bad guy. They also get bored of the film and start laughing at Grown Ups 2, and finish the review reading the book because Critic/Black Willy Wonka want them to.
  • Played straight and then subverted in Alvin and the Chipmunks with the "aww girls", as at first their "we don't want to analyze we just want cute stuff" sounds concerning, but they hold their own, especially in the song where they call the boys out on Nostalgia Filter.
  • Subverted with 2007 Critic in the Christmas with the Kranks, as he's obnoxious thanks to his 2007 traits, and a stand-in for dudebro fans (he's horrified by his newer self in a dress for example, and Doug has complained about male fans never letting him be femme), but gets a big sad moment at the end and just wants people to like him.
• Straw Feminist: A corporation full of the easily offended type are one of the fan groups in the Ghostbusters (2016) review. Subverted in the Wonder Woman (2017) review, as not only does Critic refuse to keep the political discussions going, but the only one who has issues with the movie not being feminist enough is a man being offended for women who don't seem to mind it.
• Straw Misogynist: The "meninists" in the Mad Max: Fury Road and Ghostbusters (2016) review are every worst trait of online sexism rolled into three morons. They don't do any of the "manly" things they insist should be men only, and they've never actually spoken to a woman in person. Even Devil Boner, a character designed to be Testosterone Poisoning made manifest, can't stand them.
• Strawman Has a Point: In-universe. Amongst other things, one of the Critic's main issues with Patch Adams is how the movie keeps trying to set up anyone who doesn't agree with the titular character's "laughter is the best medicine" policy as wrong, humorless, evil, or any combination of the above, yet he points out that Adams (the character in the movie, not the real Patch Adams, which he emphasizes) acts very unprofessional and that a lot of the people who frown on his manners are perfectly right in pointing this out to him.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • He lampshaded his show's tendency to do this by complaining in Planet of the Apes (2001) that he'd like to go a day without an explosion.
  • When he blows up a door with anger in Christmas With The Kranks, he looks at his hands, in a call back to the Fantastic Four review, and says he has to have his exploding problem looked at.
• Stunned Silence: The Critic is left absolutely speechless when he hears Eric Idle singing in The Secret of NIMH 2. He tried to say out some kind of reaction, but just couldn't think of any words to say.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Will Smith; the Critic has to snap himself out of fawning over him ("BOOBS! You like boobs!"). For the audience, that joystick licking in the rematch against Angry Joe. A whole load of fanboys went "I'm not gay but..."
• Stylistic Suck: The deliberately crappy title card for Sequels Month.
  • In the Les Misérables (2012) review, brentalfloss adopts the singing style of Russell Crowe, much to the horror of the Critic, Oancitizen and Paw.
• Subverted Catchphrase: Done several times
  • In the review of A Kid in King Arthur's Court, he hits himself on the head with a book
  • The review of Garbage Pail Kids, he starts out by hiding his face in his hands, then saying "I got nothing".
  • Barb Wire: "I remember it so you don't boobies
  • A bitter joke in a Team Four Star video had Doug saying he remembered it because people didn't bother watching Demo Reel.
• Suckiness Is Painful: His whole schtick, really, is suffering through bad movies until they drive him to rage, weeping, drinking, attempting suicide or trying to escape the review . In The Flintstones, a couple of the puns are so corny they physically hurt him, as did one Plot Hole in Bio-Dome.
  • Alone in the Dark (2005) gave him a stroke.
  • Subverted when reviewing Baby Geniuses 2. He fakes being comatose to Brentalfloss and Uncle Yo so that he can save money in his hotel room.
  • Apparently this can happen in real life too, as when they were watching Cat In The Hat, getting to the dirty ho joke, Rob grabbed Doug by the neck and shook him/shouted in his face. For obvious reasons Doug called a break.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Lampshaded in the review of Barb Wire when Barb snarks about his ex and their wife:
  Barb Wire: "I'm sure you'll have very strong and smart children."
  Critic: "If they stay out of sequels..."
• Sugary Malice: Mary Poppins 2.0 keeps Critic under her thumb with calm cheerily sweet-sounding threats to dust him if he dares to complain about changing the Disney formula.
• Suicide by Cop: In Devil, despite the Devil being Shyamalan, Critic doesn't know that at one point and dares the former to try and kill him, complete with Drone of Dread.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • Double subverted in "Disney Afternoon" where he tries to be a teenager and posit that "watching children's cartoons and commenting on them" isn't something he does currently, but the reality quickly catches up to him. He goes right back into the escape a bit later however, and the ending of the episode has the trio doing their homework.
  • In Mad Max: Fury Road, Devil Boner assumes the meninists are gay because while that's not a problem, they got some serious rage issues with women. They reply that they're “not anti-gay” and are “fair in [their] hatred”, which would work fine if he asked about homophobia but he didn't.
  • Going with his issues of being originally a girl, his "I'm not a woman" lines are phrased like this.
• Surprise Incest: Non-consensually, but Doug confirmed that a) Critic and Ask That Guy are related, b) Ask That Guy is Back from the Dead as Uncle Lies, and c) Hyper is Uncle Lies's daughter, which means Hyper molested her uncle.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • When the Critic points out that the protagonists of Bio-Dome are moronic losers with no jobs and really shouldn't have a nice house and hot girlfriends like they do in the movie, '90s Kid shows up to inform him that that kind of thing happened all the time in the '90s. However, he's interrupted when his landlord shows up with an eviction notice. And a battering ram. And a sawed-off shotgun.
  • His phone conversation with the director for My Pet Monster, which started with him calling the director to ask why he would make such a stupid movie, and the conversation turns to him trying to explain that he watches old movies to point out their shortcomings ("It's kind of my job."), and ends in depression which inspires the next episode where he eats junk food and watches old commercials.
  • Played for Laughs in the Heavy Metal crossover, as, taking a cue from a girl's horniness after her father is killed, Diamanda kills another girl's dad to see if said girl will sleep with her, and gets punched instead.
  • Also in Princess Diaries 2, from another angle, Hyper is really disappointed to learn that Critic had never fallen in love with her at all, he just had Stockholm Syndrome because she distracted him with things that would pander to his inner Manchild.
  • In the beginning of Bridge to Terabithia, he reveals that all the groin attacks he's suffered over the years has made that area not function as well as it should.
  • Despite the un-reality of Zod being castrated by Superman (in Man of Steel review), he still doesn't magically heal up, and more than a year later it's destroyed enough to make his porn co-star scream in horror.
• Surreal Horror: Doug crossed over with Fennah for The Wall, who specializes in this sorta thing.
• Swiss-Cheese Security:
  • The Hyper Fangirl responds to questions of “how did you get in the studio” by saying she just walked through the front door and lampshades that Channel Awesome never locks anything. This flippancy also foreshadows her Moral Event Horizon in breaking into Critic's actual house and kidnapping him.
  • Lampshaded by Doug in the Lupa crossover bloopers for “A Talking Cat”.
  Doug: How does everyone get in here? How does everybody hack my program, it makes no sense!
• Sympathy for the Devil:
  • Despite him abusing them from beginning to end of the episode, when Critic is catatonic in The Shining both Rachel and Malcolm manage a shred of pity for him.
  • In Princess Diaries II, Critic himself sounds like he's going to cry when Hyper just can't comprehend that what she feels isn't love and she has a Villainous Breakdown trying to watch the movie again, although as he makes it clear even seconds later, is very relieved to be free from her version of romance.
  • In The Phantom of the Opera (2004), despite her stealing Chester's coat, wanting to throw Beth/Tim out of their house and the execs having a song where they openly say they have to tolerate her because she's popular, they all feel a little bad for Hyper when her plan of being the lead so she can get close to Critic blows up in her face. Though like the above, it doesn't last long and the behind the scenes has them all laughing at Analyst One's lacklustre attempt at making her feel better.
  • Inverted in The Review Must Go On DVD review, as he lampshades that he's acting like a hell-demon in the episode, and yet he ends up feeling bad for Donnie's Trauma Conga Line and his (also acknowledged) Ass Pull death.
  • The alternate scenes for Speed Racer has Malcolm tell Sage that Critic installed a chip in his brain so that he'd blow up if he left Chicago (along with the Continuity Nod to The Smurfs about Critic kidnapping him), but doesn't agree when Sage calls Critic a complete asshole, implying that he knows Critic is a Troubled Abuser with kidnapping issues himself.

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