YMMV / Diary of a Wimpy Kid

General/The books

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Greg's idea of a catchphrase in Double Down, which is "Bite my biscuits!"
  • When talking about the Wizard of Oz play his school is putting on, Greg says that getting to peg Patty Farrell with apples in front of a live audience would be a dream come true. He means he wants to throw them at her, but "pegging" also refers to a certain sexual act.
  • In Wrecking Ball, a construction worker carries a magazine with him and goes to the bathroom in the Heffley house. Greg got the feeling that he wasn't going up there to go number one. He likely just assumed that the construction worker was going to do number two and spend quite some time, or even use the "bathroom break" as just an excuse to read. However, if the context was something like American Pie, it would allude to masturbation to a sleazy magazine.
• Adaptation Displacement: It used to be a very obscure webcomic on a site meant for elementary school-age children. Now it's a wildly popular book series with several movie adaptations.
• Adorkable:
  • Rowley is a naive and gullible Kiddie Kid who doesn't have a mean bone in his body. While his friend Greg finds him too childish, Rowley is actually portrayed as one of the most likable characters and even becomes a Clueless Chick-Magnet on more than one occasion.
  • Even Fregley can come off as this to some. His glasses, goofy grin, social ineptness, and kooky personality can be seen as endearing, and his Friendless Background will make one feel sorry for him.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Given that everything is written from Greg's perspective, it's inevitable.
  • We all know that Greg is an Unreliable Narrator who over exaggerates the cruelty he suffers to downplay his own Jerkassness, but some people take it one step further and categorize Greg as a sociopath. Perhaps in response to this, later books show he does have occasional Pet the Dog moments not motivated by greed, such as the end of Cabin Fever where he goes out of his way to deliver a wrapped present to the church toy drive, or a point during Hard Luck where he hid a diamond ring worth millions specifically to keep his family from breaking apart from the fighting.
  • Manny is a horribly spoiled child due to his parents' unrealistic favoritism towards him (to the point where he never gets punished in the slightest for even committing the most immoral of acts). It is also shown that Manny is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who acts friendly when they're around and considering that neither Greg or Rodrick are saints in particular, he's favored due to the parents thinking he's the sweetest kid in the house. However, in regards in Cabin Fever, was Manny willing to have his family killed for not tying his shoes or was it for no real reason whatsoever and made up the "excuse" because he knows his mother will easily forgive him no matter what, even if whatever he did was for the pettiest of reasons? For that matter, was he actually willing to have them killed or was it that he thought cutting off the power would only cause prolongued, mild annoyance rather than pose the danger of death?
  • Frank is either a Jerkass who mistreats his sons or just an occasionally stern but well-meaning father, just like he is in the movies.
  • Greg often claims that his parents and grandmother favour his little brother Manny. However, is this true, or is it just that they baby him due to his young age and Greg perceives it as favouritism out of jealousy?
  • Albert Sandy's main shtick is telling Greg, Rowley, and other students wild, untrue things. Is he lying, or is he very gullible and actually believes his wild stories?
  • Is the story Frew tells in "Old School" about his parents having him wake up at five o'clock six days a week to study against his will true, a lie, or an exaggeration?
  • Did Greg's bunkmates in "Old School" intentionally hang him out to dry after their chaperone, Mr. Jefferson, found the fish they'd put in the toilet or were they just feeling too awkward about the situation to say anything until it was too late? They still work as a team after this, after all.
  • From the perspective we see in the story, most of Greg’s friends and family are portrayed as idiots at best, and assholes at worst. However, as mentionned above, Greg is an Unreliable Narrator, and since the story is a retelling from his perspective, then are Greg’s friends and family really as bad as Greg portrays/sees them? Or is Greg deliberately exaggerating their worst traits and writing them as unlikable jerks to make himself look better by comparison?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: In The Third Wheel, Greg hates the plates at a kiddie restaurant called Corny's, because they depict a cowboy saying, "Come back soon, y'all". Does he hate this picture because the restaurant is a Suck E. Cheese's and thus he doesn't want to come back? Does he not want to be told what to do? Does he feel ridiculed being spoken to by a cowboy and/or referred to as "y'all"? Or does he just find the cowboy ugly?
• Animation Age Ghetto:
  • The books were originally intended to appeal to all ages similar to many classic comic strips with their witty comedic writing and dramedy slice of life storylines. They were even intially going to market it towards adults. However, after the books became popular to kids and due to the fact they had a cartoon art, they started slowly shifting more towards kids with wackier storylines and modern day pop culture references.
  • Due to the books' cartoony art style, they haven't been taken seriously by many book critics even though they have plenty of interesting insights for adults as well as kids. If you were to talk to someone about Diary of a Wimpy Kid as an adult, they would probably think of you as weird, whereas with books like Harry Potter are seen as normal literature for adults. In fact, some moral guardians have attacked the books despite the books being aimed at kids 8-12.
  • This may be the reason why the books were adapted into live action and not animation until Disney acquired the rights to it by buying 20th Century Studios, despite being based on a cartoon since that way the movies could appeal to a pre teen crowd who thought animation would be too childish for them and were starting to watch live action media aimed at an older audience.
  • This could be a possible reason as to why the animated movie got negative reception, since it was being compared to the live action movies by critics and not the books despite being based upon and being more accurate to the books, albeit with some major scenes left out.
• Anvilicious:
  • The Meltdown opens up with a huge Author Tract about anthropogenic climate change.
  • Due to Jeff Kinney's personal thoughts on the subject, every book after The Long Haul (including Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid and besides Double Down) has had at least one anti-technology or device scene.
  • In a similar vein, Jeff Kinney expresses very explicit anti-A.I. views in No Brainer, writing in a robot that replaces some janitors at the school. Greg worries about what the future will be like if jobs get replaced by AIs, and especially fears the direction education is headed in when the robot becomes the new principal.
  • No Brainer is also one long Author Tract about poorly funded schools.
• Ass Pull:
  • In The Last Straw, Greg is suddenly revealed to be wearing contact lenses, and he then has to wear backup glasses. His eyesight was never brought up before or after the reader learns this. The only reason why this was even introduced seems to be so the glasses would cause Holly to mistake Greg for Fregley.
  • In The Getaway, regarding Manny having a box jellyfish in his bucket. Greg never mentions Manny bringing the bucket with him on the snorkeling trip, and it appears briefly in one picture. Also, why would he need to bring it with him on a snorkeling trip?
  • Pretty much anything random that Manny is revealed to be skilled at is this considering that nothing is ever shown to build up how he masters this stuff, like Manny knowing how circuit breakers work, how to drive a car, and even being able to build a house with working water and electricity.
  • In No Brainer, a construction worker finds the money former Principal Larry Mack hid in the walls of Greg's school, and the school is reopened as a result, which is especially strange when the first person to bring up the money was Albert Sandy.
• Badass Decay: Rodrick was originally just a Jerkass Big Brother Bully who despite not being the sharpest tool in the shed, at least had a few smart moments here and there (and he seemed smart enough to trick Frank into doing his own schoolwork for him). Starting with The Long Haul, he's become a Dumbass Teenage Son on his best days and an Insufferable Imbecile on his worst.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Greg himself. Due to his less than desirable traits, he's either seen as an unlikable protagonist who really shouldn't be rooted for, or a sympathetic character with a hard life who's balanced out by those same traits.
  • Both Susan and Frank also fall under this. They are either seen as funny characters who show plenty of times that they love their sons despite their shortcomings, or they are seen as neglectful idiots who are too irresponsible and too oblivious to raise their sons and are the source of Manny's Spoiled Brat status.
  • To a lesser extent, Rowley. Some like him for being one of the few genuinely nice characters in the series, while others find him too dumb to even sympathize with.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Those who are more familiar with the movies than the books are likely going to hear the cast of the first three films, including Zachary Gordon as Greg, Devon Bostick as Rodrick, Robert Capron as Rowley, Steve Zahn as Frank, Rachael Harris as Susan, etc.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • In Old School, when his father moves in for a while, Frank becomes a shrew who gets on his sons for the smallest things just to look good. He remembers stabbing his best friend's butt with a spork over an argument, leading to his friend's mom spanking him. It's very humorous to see after all the times he's been neglectful and controlling of his sons.
  • In Big Shot, Susan signs Greg up for a basketball tournament despite his protests and Greg comments that he's pretty sure she's just trying to relive her own glory days through him. However, after finding out Greg sucks at basketball, she trades him over to the rival team after one of their players get injured with the belief that his bad play will cause her team to win. Unfortunately for her, Greg actually makes the final winning shot, leading to him celebrating with his new team while Susan has to drive home in shame. After the myriad of events that Susan roped Greg into over the series, it's very satisfying to see one of her busybodying plans finally backfire on her for once.
• Character Rerailment: After spending the past few books Flanderized into a total moron, Wrecking Ball brings Rodrick’s Jerkass traits back to the surface and even features Löded Diper again, though he still comes off as a moron. Diper Overlode, A Day in the Limelight book for him and the band, continues this while treating him with more sympathy than usual.
• Cliché Storm: The later books of the series began to revolve more on Greg and his family issues than Greg's middle school life, and stories that involve them are pretty much just typical sitcom based stories involving them getting into trouble via Idiot Ball that has been done to death that it tends to overshadow the elements of what made the series stand out and makes it seem more like a Malcolm in the Middle rip-off.
• Contested Sequel:
  • Did Dog Days start the series' decline? Some enjoy hearing about Greg's summer and find it as good as the previous books, while others don't like the lack of school-related plots and think it cheapens the ending of The Last Straw.
  • The Long Haul. Some like it for its relatable plot while providing plenty of funny moments, while others hate it for adding some unrealistic elements to a series that was mostly grounded in reality (such as the pig), the shift in focus from Greg's middle school life to his family life, as well as its shallow conflict, and is seen by some fans to be where the series really started going downhill. The film version, on the other hand...
  • Double Down cranks up the Random Events Plot nature while also trying to be a return-to-form with plenty of continuity nods to the first book. Reception is divided between those who think it's too disjointed and wacky to feel like a classic book, and others who appreciate it being a more comedic and light book in a long string of vacation stories.
  • The Deep End. Much like The Long Haul, some like it for its relatable plot while providing lots of funny moments while others hate it for adding even more unrealistic elements to a realistic fiction series (such as Manny somehow being able to operate a machine). Not helping is that this book came out a year after the equally divise Wrecking Ball.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The Mad Pantser pantsing the vice principal. So offensive, so uncalled for, and yet so funny.
• Crossover Ship: Some fans ship Greg with Nikki Maxwell from Dork Diaries, likely because both Dork Diaries and the Wimpy Kid series are about the misadventures of middle school kids who keep diaries that they recount their escapades in, despite the massive Fandom Rivalry.
• Designated Hero: It's not uncommon for Greg's detractors to accuse him of being this. While whether or not we're supposed to like him is debatable, he's supposed to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who - Jerkass tendencies aside - still cares deep down. However, he says and does a lot of questionable things throughout the series. In the first book, he gets Rowley in trouble after chasing the kindergarteners with worms. In the second book, he deliberately pretends that Chirag is invisible For the Evulz. And in the fourteenth book, he celebrates his aunt's death just because she left behind a lot of money.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Fregley's behavior (odd ways of expressing himself, no concept of societal norms, supposedly very smart but unable to cope with a school environment) suggest being on the autism spectrum, attention deficit disorder, or both. He is put in homeschool but the times he attends school events, he creeps others out.
  • While it's tied to the Ron the Death Eater reading, enough fans diagnosed Greg as a sociopath due to his manipulative tendencies and lack of empathy that Jeff Kinney himself debunked it.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Rodrick. Usually the Big Brother Bully falls easily into The Scrappy, but Rodrick is not that bad... Being a "cool" guy who likes music and a charismatic Mr. Fanservice. Fans claim that he's a "saint" compared to the rest of the family and is just a victim mistreated by his parents. Except that, even in the movies, we see him acting like a Jerkass much more than all his family members (including Greg), since Frank and Susan are never abusive or malicious, while Rodrick clearly takes pleasure in bullying Greg, as seen in many scenes before his Character Development.
  • Greg himself. Every character who is mean to him gets hated and demonized by fans (except Rodrick), even when it's clear that Greg, who is far from a nice guy, did something to deserve it.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • In the early 2010s, there was a huge fandom rivalry between Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Harry Potter, most likely due to Diary of a Wimpy Kid being considered antithetical to the Young Adult Fantasy literature of the time. The rivalry mostly consisted of Middle and High school aged fans as well as parents and teachers.
  • Fans dislike Dork Diaries for being seen as a vastly inferior copy of the series.
  • A slightly less heated rivalry has built up between Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate, as they both revolve around prideful and lazy sixth-graders who enjoy drawing comics and they both had islands based on them in Poptropica. Naturally, fans often debate over which is the better of the two. In fact, the most prominent subreddit for Diary of a Wimpy Kid memes (r/LodedDiper) and the most prominent subreddit for Big Nate memes (r/ENSLAVETHEMOLLUSK) have something of a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis relationship. However, as of late, this rivalry has cooled down, and Wimpy Kid and Big Nate are more or less Friendly Fandoms. It helps that Jeff Kinney has said he likes Big Nate.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some people just read the first four books and completely ignore the others.
• Franchise Original Sin: Since it began, the book series has run primarily off of Greg being a complete Butt-Monkey and having an endless stream of unfortunate events happen to him. However, the first few books actually had plots that connected these events, while the more recent installments often consist of blatant Random Events Plots without an overarching storyline.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Oddly enough with Sonic the Hedgehog, most likely due to both fandoms being prominent in the deviantart community in the early 2010s.
  • Many Diary of a Wimpy Kid fans also tend to be fans of Captain Underpants due to the fact that they were at the height of their popularity during the time, along with both series having similar art-styles and characters.
• Genius Bonus: Two of the secondary characters in The Meltdown are the Garza twins, who have their own made-up language that nobody but them can understand. This is a real phenomenon known as cryptophasia. However, it very rarely lasts as long as it did in the book.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The books and the movies are extremely popular in Singapore. It's actually so popular among Singaporean crowds, Fox decided to release the sequel over there 8 days before the US and the rest of the world.
  • They're also extremely popular in India, to the point that Jeff Kinney has travelled to India several times to promote some of the books.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A lot of Greg's Jerkass behavior towards Rowley becomes much harder to read when one considers the fact that the latter's actor, Robert Capron, would later go on to develop an eating disorder due to a bunch of Jerkass kids making fun of him for his weight.
  • An early book has a scene where Greg throws out eggs he doesn't want. What used to be a funny moment has now become cringe-worthy to read when one considers the fact that Robert Capron's (Rowley's actor's) eating disorder would get discovered after throwing away a ham-and-cheese sandwich his dad made.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Throughout the books, Greg keeps talking about how he's going to be "rich and famous" one day. Fast forward to 2023 and the endless number of awards and all the books that have been sold have not only made Diary of a Wimpy Kid one of the best-selling book series but also one of the most iconic.
• Ho Yay: In The Last Straw, Rowley sends Greg a valentine in the mail with a little candy heart attached to it. Greg seems weirded out at the gesture, remarking, "Sometimes I just don't know about that boy."
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Rodrick stating (as part of his attempt at advice to Greg about Holly) that he "knows" tons of girls are secretly into him, portrayed in context as him being deluded, is amusingly apt in light of the many Real Life fangirls he has.
  • In The Long Haul, Greg suggests that the family rent an RV to carry their stuff in on the trip. This is shot down by Susan due to the gas mileage that RVs get. In The Deep End, the family uses Uncle Gary's RV for their road trip.
  • Hard Luck features an Imagine Spot where a grown-up Greg pays for an expensive meal at a restaurant using a simple drawing of a house. Look and behold, the rise of non-fungible tokens in early 2022, and an entire NFT restaurant, the Flyfish Club, is set to open in New York. This is even acknowledged and lampshaded on Jeff Kinney's official Twitter account.
  • In one book Greg tries to justify his not bothering to exercise with the idea that "in the future there'd be a pill to make everyone buff anyway" so it's pointless. Seemed impossible, right? Apparently not.
  • In The Long Haul, Susan mentions that she once dyed her hair blonde once. Her actress for the first three movies, Rachael Harris, would later go on to dye her hair blonde in real life.
  • In the first book, Greg comments about how a comic-strip author would use his strip as a personal soapbox. Kinney has been accused of doing just that.
• Hype Backlash: It didn't take long for the series to become popular, selling more than 200 million+ books worldwide and receiving positive reviews from both critics and readers. However, the divisive humor and characters has made some question whether the series deserves to be popular or not, deeming the series as average or okay at best and mediocre at worst.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Greg is lazy, self-centered, a Small Name, Big Ego and a bad friend to Rowley... but he suffers from Middle Child Syndrome, gets picked on by bullies at school and Rodrick at home, nobody likes him, he never gets anything nice from his relatives, and Rowley's parents consider him to be a bad influence on their son (though, to be fair, they're not wrong). It's really easy to see why he's prone to Jerkass moments and he’s so overall pathetic that sometimes you can’t help but feel for him.
  • Rodrick is a huge bum who mistreats Greg on a daily basis, but he has his occasional woobie-ish moments, particularly in the movie version of Rodrick Rules or when he got blamed for something that was clearly Manny's fault. He even loses his chance of getting Heather Hills to like him (although considering the type of person Heather is, that was probably a good thing).
  • Manny is also sort of this. He's a Spoiled Brat who almost made his family freeze to death and constantly makes his brothers' lives a misery, but the reason he does that stuff and gets away with it is because Susan and Frank spoil him to the point that they never tell him anything that is right from wrong, and they have never once punished him for anything that he does wrong in this series. It has even rendered him completely friendless. For a kid who's never been raised to know what is right from wrong, Manny may not have the best future ahead of him compared to his brothers.
  • Frank is a strict, bad-tempered, and shallow jerk who tries to force his sons to be the people he expects them to be, but he gets made fun of by his boss and coworkers because of how wimpy and pathetic Greg is. In the fourth book, his dad lied to him about what happened to his old dog for all his childhood. The third movie has him get lied to by Greg and at the scouting trip, the rival troop makes fun of him.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Greg has definitely become this in recent years. He's been paired with Rowley, Holly, Patty, Angie and even his own family members.
  • Though not to the same extent as Greg, Rodrick is slowly starting to become this. He's been shipped with Heather, Bill, some of his bandmates and much like the Greg example above, his own family members.
• Love to Hate: Greg is an insufferable, selfish Jerkass who often brings his own terrible luck onto himself, but his hilarious inner monologue and occasional Pet the Dog moments perfectly balance out his negative traits and make him a genuinely engaging protagonist.
• Memetic Badass: Manny is often jokingly portrayed as a brilliant mastermind, or even a god-like being. One popular meme compares him to Thanos.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page. Has especially become the case since the late 2010s and early 2020s, when a good chunk of the books' target audience became more active on social media.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Fans like to exaggerate Manny's bad tendencies and make him into either a God or a killer.
  • Greg is often generalized from being a Jerkass to an outright sociopath.
• Moe: The movie version of Holly Hills, which portrays her as a lovable, sweet Girl Next Door who likes and loves everyone, despite being one of the most popular girls at school. She even signed Rowley's yearbook saying "you are so cute," with "cute" being underlined three times.
• Moral Event Horizon: In the first one, a gang of teenage bullies make Rowley eat the cheese. Keep in mind, in the book, Rowley was temporarily traumatized by the incident.
• Movement Mascot: Manny Heffley became the face of an anti-police brutality movement on TikTok in 2020, with people drawing or painting graffiti of Manny's head next to leftist slogans. "The Manny will not be televised" became a rallying cry, based off the Gil Scott-Heron poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The first book features the moldy cheese that lies on the baseball court for a very long time. And then Rowley is forced to eat it... In Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid, it is revealed that Rowley is now too grossed out to eat anything containing cheese.
  • Old School has the most out of any book in the series.
    • Rowley getting a tooth lodged into his forehead.
    • The stew at Hardscrabble Farms is all the leftovers at the end of mealtime combined, and has been around since Greg's dad was Greg's age. A girl named Melinda tries to get sent home early by eating it and gets food poisoning.
  • Greg and the pig throwing up in Double Down.
  • During the climax of The Deep End, the RV's septic tank overflows, flooding the living area with the contents of the RV's toilet.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Fans will never forget about Manny's actions in Cabin Fever, with him shutting off power to the house (except his room) during a blizzard and leaving his entire family to starve and freeze to death all because they never taught him how to tie his shoes.
  • Frank's most memorable moments in this series are in The Last Straw, where he selfishly tries to toughen up his son to make him look good in public, to the point where he tries to send Greg to a military school to have him shaped into a person more to his liking. He is more concerned about what he wants his son to be rather than what his son wants to be. Even though he redeems himself in the movies, it still doesn’t change what he did in the books.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Manny's drawings after accidentally watching Rodrick's horror movie in Rodrick Rules, one in particular depicts a scary, demonic face with fangs that takes up an entire piece of paper. Greg comments that it was enough to give him nightmares.
  • Greg once has imagine spots of people getting shot out of an airplane and himself being tied up and killed by a spider in The Getaway.
  • Rodrick buys a plastic witch that cackles loudly while its eyes glow red in Double Down. Greg's dad takes out the batteries, and yet the witch still cackles.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The defense that "It's a journal, not a diary!" was used by another 11 year old kid before Greg existed.
  • The comic strip Wacky Dawg stopped being funny when the comic stopped making jokes and was about the dog essentially became a mouthpiece for the opinions that the creator had. Something similar has actually happened in real-life Newspaper Comics, Mallard Fillmore and Non Sequitur, decades before the first book.
• Once Original, Now Common: The initial premise of the series was that it was a cringe-inducingly nostalgic look back on middle school. As such, Dog Days was designed as a Formula-Breaking Episode, being the first one to take place entirely outside of middle school. However, as more books continued to be published, more of them took place outside of middle school, and their plots got so outlandish they ceased to be nostalgic. Due to the books' divergence from the initial premise, the original intention of Dog Days as a change of pace is lost on most new readers.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Almost everyone loves the books. The print publishers chose to market it as a kids' book but Word of God is that it was written as a nostalgia trip for adult readers "...like The Wonder Years".
  • When the books were first released in print form in the late 2000s, they quickly gained a fandom from the parents and teachers of the kids who read the book. It was quite common to see news articles talk about the adult fandom of the books and a lot of fan blogs were actually by parents and teachers who loved the books.
  • Additionally, the books had a notable fandom of people who were fans of newspaper cartoons and other comic strips due to the references to cartoons and cartoonist culture in the books.
  • Some of the problems that Greg faces involve issues that only older readers would be able to relate to; for example, in the webcomic, Greg loses his progress during the game Twisted Wizard because his mom turned the console off, and the game doesn't let you save. How many children do you think are familiar with older game systems that lack a save feature anymore, especially in the age of autosaving and flash memory?
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Hey, Angie is Carrie! And Rodrick is Jasper Jordan/killed William Easton!
  • For fans of the Disney Channel, Holly and Chirag later became adopted siblings.
  • And Holly eventually moved to California and grew up to be Tory Nichols!
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In more recent books, Manny’s status as a Spoiled Brat has begun to be heavily downplayed, to the point where he acts more like a normal child who looks up to his brothers, due to him becoming Out of Focus.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Greg usually acts like a self-absorbed jerk, and even treats his best friend (whom he doesn't even like) poorly. While this is not unrealistic behaviour for a teenager, some viewers paint him as a sociopath for it. However, while he is selfish, irritable, and short-sighted, he does have some moments of humanity that reveal that he is capable of caring for others. This got so massive that Jeff Kinney responded to it by stating Greg is not a sociopath, and he based the character off himself as a child. This response didn't help, as now some people think Kinney himself is a sociopath.
  • While Manny is a Spoiled Brat who has displayed signs of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, the fandom turns him into an outright psychopathic Enfant Terrible. Even on this very wiki he is seen as the Token Evil Teammate of the Heffley siblings because of his actions in Cabin Fever, despite the fact that he becomes Out of Focus after that, and in most books he's not much worse than Greg and Rodrick.
• The Scrappy:
  • Manny could rival Caillou for the title of "most despised child in fiction". He is seen as an obnoxious Spoiled Brat who is never punished for his misdeeds, even when we leaves his entire family to die in Cabin Fever. There is currently a subreddit called r/fuckmanny with over 50k members.
  • The unnamed pig the Heffleys get in The Long Haul is often seen as a terrible addition to the series. He usually fails to be funny because most of his gags revolve around him being a useless source of trouble in a series that's already overusing "the family gets into trouble via Ass Pull" plots, and/or acting unrealistically human-like, which is just jarring in a series that's otherwise grounded in reality. It doesn't help that he only became the family pet due to the insistence of Spoiled Brat Manny, and then became overused to the point where even those who didn't hate him in the first place think he overstayed his welcome. It's likely the backlash against the character was the reason for his absence from The Getaway, and him running away from the Heffley family and not being found in The Meltdown.
• Seasonal Rot: The books have been accused of this after "The Long Haul" when they became a little more detached from reality, Mean-spirited, refusing to let anything develop, and with more and more soap-boxing. The more continuous and less episodic nature of the storytelling in the later books also received mixed reception from fans, with some feeling that the newer books no longer feel like an actual journal of a normal person's life.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Susan Heffley gets hit with this a lot. Fanart depicting Susan often gives her Hartman Hips and a massive bust, even though she's not particularly curvy in the books or in either of the movies.
  • Rodrick also receives this from time to time. In both the books and the movies, Rodrick has a very thin physique, but some fanfiction writers- particularly those who write "Rodrick x Reader" fanfics on sites like Wattpad- will describe him as having "abs" or "strong arms".
• Sequelitis: Many fans of the series think the books have been getting progressively less funny and more boring with each new installment. It doesn't help that a new book comes out every year, and much like your average sitcom, nobody is allowed to grow up or change. Jeff Kinney has stated on Twitter that he wants to write "at least 20" books. Fans have also shown annoyance at the lack of character development, disappearances of fan-favorites, no changes in the status quo, Flanderization, overreliance on cynicism, increasing cartoonishness, detachment from the original focus on the story being Greg's journal, convoluted stories and the random (if not, ridiculous) attempts at continuing the series, as well as storylines being recycled.
• Ship Mates: Despite the fact that Heather hates him (in the movies at least), some Greg/Holly shippers like to ship Rodrick with Heather due to both being jerks towards their younger siblings.
• Spiritual Antithesis: This series can be seen as one to Doug, as the main protagonist of both series write in a journal to log current events in their lives. Both series are told from their point of view, along with many eccentric side characters. In addition, both series take place in the present day in which they were originally written (Doug in the 1990s, Diary of a Wimpy Kid in the mid to late 2000s.) However, while Doug Funnie has a more idealistic view on his life experiences, Greg Heffley is more cynical. Also, Doug is overly concerned with some events going wrong, but nothing entirely bad happens to him. Conversely, Greg wants his life to be like what he wants, only for life to bite him in the butt at the worst possible moments.
• Squick: In the first book, Rowley is forced to eat the moldy, bacteria ridden slice of cheese that had been lying on the school's blacktop for a year and a half.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The introduction of an unrealistic-behaving pig to the family in The Long Haul, which was already one of the more divisive entries in the series, was this to many fans, considering the series is rather down to earth. Ascended with The Meltdown making a clear mention that the pig was put in a kennel for Christmas vacation, and he ended up running away, explaining why he was absent from The Getaway without a mention.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The very end of The Last Straw introduces a new girl into Greg's and Rowley's life, only to have her dump both at the beginning of Dog Days. That's a shame, since giving Greg a female friend could've changed his outlook and bring out a softer side to him. It could've also been a great opportunity to do a Power Trio status. Humorously, the third movie which adapts Dog Days has Holly, who this time around is nicer to Greg and shares a surprisingly similar chaotic home life to him, filling in the role fans wanted the new girl to have by joining him and Rowley on summer fun times.
  • Greg doesn't really seem to get the fact that you can have more than just one friend, and most of the characters who could've filled Greg's social circle (Fregley, Chirag, Tyson, Christopher) end up being One-Shot characters at best or they simply forget Greg at the end of it.^note When Susan does suggest Greg to befriend some other kids in The Meltdown, Greg outright refuses because he looks down on others for extremely petty reasons and thinks that Rowley is all he needs. In the movies though, Fregley and Chirag seem to be part of Greg's circle of friends and help him out with some of his plans.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Double Down mentioned the Cheese Touch for the first time since Rodrick Rules. This would seem like a perfect opportunity to mention Jeremy Pindle, as he was the last known person to have the Cheese Touch and it was never explained how he was affected after Greg passed it down to him. Instead, we just get a story about kids trying to relive the Cheese's glory, and Pindle remains a What Happened to the Mouse?.
  • The movie-making scenes in Double Down come in at the very end of the book, and all that happens is Greg and Rowley are chased by geese after they film the introduction. Considering the rest of the book is more of a Random Events Plot than usual, previous parts of the story could have been brought up again here. What if Greg's movie were an adaptation of a Spineticklers book? What if he tried multiple different genres of movies before deciding on a horror film? What if he composed a soundtrack with his French horn? What if his weird dreams gave him ideas for things in the movie? There's a lot of potential that the book doesn't go into.
  • If it weren't for Status Quo Is God, Wrecking Ball could’ve been a good opportunity for a new direction for the series to go in. Greg saying goodbye to all his friends as his family prepares to move to a new neighborhood has a particular "series finale" vibe. The move would've also meant a new supporting cast, particularly after most side characters had been sidelined for the past few books. Unfortunately, this gets reversed at the very end of the book, dooming Greg to Surrey Street once again.
  • No Brainer revolves around Greg's school facing increasingly severe budget cuts and eventually getting shut down. It has a genuinely interesting and unexpected last act that feels like it's setting up a status quo change. Greg's moves to school in Slacksville; turns out he quickly impresses the students there because the Slacksville education system is even worse than his old one. It even gets him a girlfriend and for a while, he seems to be genuinely enjoying his time in school. As for Rowley, he's been transferred to a fancy tech school, which we don't ever see him at. Everything gets quickly reverted in the last few pages.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
  • While it's a stretch to call it outright bleakness, the sheer amount of unlikable characters and excessive stupidity from everyone can really be a bother when trying to find something to root for and keep going, especially due to severe Aesop Amnesia and total lack of character development to preserve Status Quo Is God. This is further exacerbated as the characters become worse from Flanderization. Despite being sold as realistic fiction, the story is set in a cynical world of incompetence where bad things happen to good people, although this world is interpreted from Greg's obvious Protagonist-Centered Morality. It worsens in later books when most of humor revolves around the Heffleys having bad luck. The movies, however, attempt to fix this by giving the characters better personalities and character development, as well as lessening some of the stupid moments, even having Greg and Rodrick reconcile after their biggest schism in the Rodrick Rules movie, as they now treat each other much better. It even carries over into Dog Days, where Greg is horrified at thinking Rodrick was being loaded into a garbage truck, and upon seeing his brother is okay, hugging him tightly, to which Rodrick is obviously touched.
  • The six biggest offenders are:
    • The ending of Cabin Fever, wherein Manny's Jerkass tendencies are taken up to eleven as he cuts off the power to the house in the middle of a blizzard with the exception of his own room, leaving the rest of his family to die and yet he still doesn't get punished.
    • Hard Luck focuses on everyone being a jerk to each other and takes the books' cynicism up to eleven. Events include the teachers starting the Hero Points program to bribe kids into being nice (which leads to doctored points), Abigail using Rowley to make her ex jealous and dumping him without a word, Susan's family nearly tearing themselves apart because of a ring, and despite feeling a bit bad for Rowley, Greg learning nothing from all of this.
    • The entirety of The Long Haul. The book's plot is mostly a series of misfortune events caused entirely by the family being completely idiotic or some form of Ass Pull. The film version is even worse and is one of the reasons why fans disown the movie, besides the changed cast of course, given that the first three movies notably made the stories less of a hassle to sit through.
    • The entirety of The Getaway, for many of the same reasons as The Long Haul. Yet another series of unfortunate things happening to the family who just want to relax, with most of their misfortunes either being caused by their own idiocy or just bad luck.
    • The last two pages of Wrecking Ball end up ruining the Heffleys' chance of having a new home after all the trouble they went through. Just when things were finally looking up for them, they just had to get messed up again. It's telling that the next book The Deep End finally gives them a Vacation Episode that ends well, though they suffer mightily to get there.
    • Most of the jokes in No Brainer just revolve around Greg's school getting even worse until it's eventually shut down.
  • Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid is centred heavily on Greg mistreating Rowley by being a manipulative, mean, and selfish jerk. Despite this, Rowley stays friends with Greg.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Rodrick's supposed to be a Jerkass Big Brother Bully to Greg, but quite a few fans feel sympathy for him because he's an even bigger Unfavorite in the family than Greg and the latter may be a bit too unlikable to take the side of.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Greg himself. While whether or not we're supposed to like him is debatable, it's made very clear that Jerkass tendencies asides, he's still a good kid deep down. However, considering how much as a full-blown Jerkass Greg is, some fans found it hard to root for him whenever he gets screwed over. For example, in the fifth book, we're supposed to feel sorry for Greg because he and Rowley are no longer friends. However, because of the way he treats Rowley, them no longer being friends can be considered Laser-Guided Karma for Greg.
  • Susan. She's supposed to be a Misplaced Kinder Garten Teacher who still loves her family deep down, but she embarrasses Greg and (to a lesser extent) Rodrick so much, that it can be hard to root for her.
  • Frank has his moments. For example, in The Last Straw, he's supposed to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only wants to send Greg to Spag Union because he wants Greg to be more like the Warren kids. However, considering he's only sending Greg to military school just to look good in front of his boss, it makes him come off as a selfish Jerkass instead.
  • While Greg has unquestionably wronged Rowley more, some think Rowley also wrongs Greg on occasion and never gets any direct consequences for it, such as when he became popular because of Greg's Zoo-Wee Mama comics and never gave him any kind of credit, or when he anonymously turned in Greg for vandalism they both accidentally committed (though Greg thinks he simply didn't realize he never identified himself).
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Greg is very unlucky and unpopular in-universe, but is liked by fans for being a Jerkass Woobie at worst and a relatable "loser".
  • Rodrick is the Black Sheep of his family, is considered a "lame" musician, and is repeatedly rejected by Heather, a girl he has a crush on in the third movie. However, to many fans, he's the coolest character in the series, thanks to his Troubled, but Cute appeal, his interest in music, and the Adaptational Attractiveness and Character Development he gets in the movies.
• The Woobie:
  • Rowley, since Greg constantly takes advantage of him.
  • Sweetie when he becomes overweight and immobile.
  • Fregley turns into this in Hard Luck, when it's revealed that he has no friends. It's so bad that even Greg (yes, the same Greg who previously used him to make Rowley jealous) feels a bit bad for him.
• Woolseyism:
  • In the first book, Manny can't pronounce "brother", so he calls Greg "bubby". Greg is embarrassed.
    • Icelandic: there are two words for "brother": bróðir (standard) and brói (informal, equivalent to English "bro"; Greg himself uses it). Manny's nickname for Greg is klói, which sounds similar to kló (an informal word for "toilet").
  • In the first book, a boy named Preston Mudd is named "Athlete of the Month" and has his picture put up in the hall with "P. Mudd" underneath it- which results in other kids calling him "Pee Mud".
    • Spanish: his name is Preston Zonn, and the other kids call him pezón ("nipple").
    • Polish: his name is Kris Bell, and the other kids call him both kabel (figuratively "snitch") and kibel ("toilet").
    • Italian: his name is Preston Shasott, and the other kids call him pisciasotto ("pees himself").
    • Icelandic: his name is Einar Páll Lárus Ingólfsson, and the other kids call him epli ("apple"), derived from his initials.
  • In Rodrick Rules, a student named Peter Uteger is mocked for his initials being "P.U."
    • German: his name is Peter Puttmann, and his initials are "P.P.", sounding like pipi ("pee").
    • Polish: his first name is Bill and his initials are "B.U.", so it sounds like booing.
    • From the same book, Greg recounts how he was kicked out of Rowley's house for saying that his dad smells like a woman, which seems like an extreme reaction. In Spanish, he instead says that he smells like a "cerdo" (pig), which makes the reaction a lot more understandable.
    • Italian: his name is Walter Creger, and his initials are "W.C." as in "water closet".
  • In The Long Haul, after the school bans the Underpants Bandits books, some kids sneak in their own copies. One kid brought in a Japanese version of a book and an illustration is shown of it. When the book was translated into Japanese, the bootleg copy was changed to Chinese.

The live action movies

• Abandon Shipping: In the fandom's early years, Greg/Angie was a very popular pairing. When Rodrick Rules and Dog Days came out and promoted Holly to Greg's love interest, many fans abandoned the Greg/Angie ship in favor of Greg/Holly.
• Accidental Aesop: The Long Haul movie has one: while online pictures/videos of someone getting into embarrassing situations can be hilarious, the subject of said picture/video will hate having one of their most humiliating moments immortalized where anyone can see it.
• Adaptation Displacement: To a small but notable extent, some older audiences are more familiar with the movies than the books due to the fact they watched it with their kids.
• Awesome Music: The movies have a surprisingly stellar lineup of indie/garage rock/power pop songs in their soundtracks.
  • The end credits song for the first film, "What Do You Want From Me" by Forever the Sickest Kids.
  • Greg singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in the first movie.
  • In the second movie Rowley does a lip sync to "Tik Tok".
  • The song "Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah" by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones during the montage of Greg and Rodrick cleaning up the house in the second movie.
  • Rodrick's band singing their original song: Exploded Diper. Even better when you consider that in the books, Greg described his music as horrible.
  • In the third movie, Rodrick does a rock cover of Justin Bieber's Baby.
  • Also, "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys (during Rowley and his mom's dance in the first movie), "When They Fight, They Fight" by Generationals (near the end of the first movie), "Danger! High Voltage" by Electric Six (when Rowley and Greg suit up at Halloween), and "This is War" by Ben Kweller, among others.
  • But let's not forget Theodore Shapiro's main theme from the first movie, which manages to capture the peppy and chaotic nature of Greg's life. Additionally, despite Edward Shearmur taking over composing duties for Rodrick Rules and Dog Days, he still kept this theme, with his versions being just as great.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: One of the main reasons why Devon Bostick's role as Rodrick is so remembered is because of all the shirtless scenes he gets throughout the movie.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Chirag dressing up as Holly to prank Greg for ignoring him in the movie version of Rodrick Rules. To put things into perspective, in the book, "The Invisible Chirag" is a prank that was started by Greg and went on for a few days, or even a few weeks. In the movie, it gets only one scene without much importance to the plot. Even weirder is, how did Chirag set this up when everyone was in on the prank? Why did he choose to dress up as Holly instead of doing something less time consuming? Why did some kids pop up out of nowhere just to laugh at Greg?
• Broken Base: Are the movies (well, the first three — the fourth one is majority agreed to be bad) good adaptations of the books onto the big screen and feature a much more truthful light of Greg's actions, or are they just as overblown and inane? Particularly, Dog Days gets a lot of flak from people who were put off by the fact the film was rushed as soon as possible so the actors would have one last role before growing too old.
• Critical Dissonance: The first three movies, as even audiences agree that the fourth one is bad, were given mixed reviews and were deemed mediocre from critics, whilst audiences and fans of the book meanwhile loved them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: While The Long Haul movie is mostly despised, a handful find Mr. Beardo and his persistence to screw over the Heffleys at every opportunity one of the film's few highlights.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • The movie trilogy is quite popular amongst the fanbase. However, practically everyone ignores that The Long Haul reboot film ever happened, perhaps even more so than the book it was adapted from, largely due to the replacing of the original actors which led to bizarre casting choices, the Denser and Wackier tone and the painful attempts at being hip with the kids, especially for a series that was beloved for being timeless.
  • Taking it further are fans who ignore even the books in favor of the first three movies due to them being Lighter and Softer with the "Shaggy Dog" Story toned down. Given that it's easy to view the first three movies in their own continuity with the fourth as a soft reboot, many fans of the films like to believe that Greg's adventures ended with the Dog Days movie instead of him getting into further trouble shown in the further books and movie.
• Fanfic Fuel: In the second movie, Holly is revealed to have a spoiled younger sister. If Greg and Rodrick like Holly and Heather, who knows what Manny would think of Holly's kid sister?
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: A deleted scene from the first movie, seen on the DVD special features, shows that despite the negative stigma behind the Cheese Touch, Greg sees it as a cool thing, since him and Rowley are no longer physically harassed due to Greg having it, and they even get their own table at lunch. Many fans wished this scene would've made it into the final cut, as it allows Greg and Rowley to have a bone thrown their way.
• Fanon:
  • Due to her blonde hair and similar appearances, it's common for fans to assume that the little girl who told everyone that Greg had chocolate on his pants in the second movie is the spoiled little sister Holly was talking about.
  • Fanart and fanworks often depict the Hills parents as being similar to Frank and Susan, with Mrs. Hills being an amazingly embarrassing parent and Mr. Hills being a Perpetual Frowner.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Heather get the Adaptational Jerkass treatment in the movies and makes it very clear that she hates Rodrick (despite him having a crush on her). That hasn't stopped the fans from shipping them together due to obvious reasons.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • A common complaint about the film adaptation of The Long Haul is that it's filled with Product Placement for things like memes and YouTubers. The thing is, the movies always had product placement (i.e., in the first movie, if one looks closely, you can see Ice Age playing on the Heffley's TV screen). The original film trilogy, however, largely kept such references to a minimum and had enough additional redeeming factors in their stories to make the inclusion of such references a small and easily missed price to pay. The Long Haul, however, contained such a gratuitously large number of such Product Placement and timely references that, when combined with the general low quality on display throughout the rest of the movie, made the movie come across as desperately trying to stay relevant and no longer possessing any of the redeeming charm that the original film trilogy had possessed.
  • One of the many reasons why The Long Haul movie is so hated is because of its over-usage of gross-out humor. However, both the books and the first three live-actions movies always had a few gross scenes here and there (i.e., for example, the live-action Rodrick Rules movie has a squicky scene where Greg gets chocolate on his butt). The key difference is that, as previously established, the earlier material had the gross out humor largely occurring 'here and there' while also allowing plenty of other forms of humor to take the spotlight alongside the more redeeming sincere elements, whereas The Long Haul contained an overly large number of lowbrow gross-out humor and very little of the redeeming charm and less squicky forms of humor that had allowed the previous earlier to be so beloved.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The scene at the end of Dog Days where Rowley is seen shirtless at the pool becomes much harder to watch when one considers the fact that during a screening of the movie, a bunch of little kids would laugh at that scene (due to Robert Capron's man-boobs jiggling on the screen), which culminated in Capron developing an eating disorder that went un-noticed until he got caught throwing away a ham-and-cheese sandwich.
  • Rodrick getting replaced by someone else in the Rodrick Rules movie becomes this when one considers the fact that five years later, Rodrick's actor, Devon Bostick, would indeed get replaced in real life.
  • Speaking of Rodrick, him calling Rowley "baby hippo" in the first movie and "chunky cheese" in the second goes from funny to cringe-worthy due to the above-mentioned fat-shaming Robert Capron suffered from during a screening of Dog Days.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Greg and Rodrick bonding in the second movie is already sweet enough but it becomes even sweeter after February 2019, where Devon Bostick posted a picture of him holding Zach with him saying, "He's my brother from another Susan. Love ya, Zach!"
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the first movie, Rowley rejects Greg's offer to get ice cream. Robert Capron would go on to play a character who becomes obsessed with an ice cream truck.
  • Speaking of Robert Capron, this won't be the last time he plays a character who breaks their arm. Twice.
  • In the first movie, Greg has various ImagineSpots of him being buff. Fast forward to 2023 and it'd be hard to believe that the now-buff Zachary Gordon used to be so scrawny as a kid.
  • In the second movie, Rowley lip-syncs the song "Tik Tok". A few years later, an app of the same name came out that is known for videos of people lip-syncing songs.
  • Rodrick is mostly portrayed as a typical emo-teen through the entirety of the film franchise, most evidently shown with his scary "devil worshipper" story. Many years latter, Devon Bostick would play a character who works for someone (tragically) declaring himself as "Death, the Destroyer of Worlds".
• Ho Yay:
  • From the first movie:
    Rowley: Hey Bryce, cute butt!
  • Rowley and Greg have many moments between each other, especially since Rowley bought them both a friendship locket that’s clearly made for girls.
  • In the first movie, there’s a scene where Greg wears a particular outfit to school only to walk into his class to find out that Rowley is wearing the exact same outfit as him as he "wanted to be matchers" much to Greg’s dismay. To make matters worse, everyone in the class begins singing, "Greg and Rowley sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" causing Greg and Rowley to look at each other awkwardly.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • There exists a significant portion of people who love the first three Diary of a Wimpy Kid films solely because of Rodrick Heffley; not only because he's a hilarious character, but also because he's a charismatic, edgy rock musician portrayed by the dreamy Devon Bostick.
  • To a small but notable extent, much like the Rodrick example above, some people only love the first three Diary of a Wimpy Kid films because of Steve Zahn's hammy performance as Frank.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Canon Foreigner Angie has earned some attention from the shipping community. She's been shipped with Greg, Rowley, Chirag, Holly, Patty and even Fregley.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The trio of bullies in the first film are even more unsympathetic here than in the books. Force-feeding the moldy cheese to Rowley notwithstanding, they don't even bother caring about Greg's claims that he's lactose-intolerant, continue their attempt to force feed him too prior to Coach Malone pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment.
  • Beardo does seem sympathetic throughout The Long Haul — that is, until he steals some of the Heffley family's personal belongings to get back at them.
• Narm: From the first movie, the scene where Greg delivers a speech about how the Cheese Touch has torn their school apart is supposed to be an emotional moment but it's a little hard to take that scene seriously when one considers the fact that Greg is talking about a piece of moldy cheese that's been left on the blacktop for God-knows-how-long. It doesn't help that the second movie has him giving it to another kid.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • In the second movie, Greg eats the melted chocolate on his bum because everyone thinks it's poop. Even though it isn't, it's still really gross.
  • One of the many criticisms about the Long Haul film (besides the replacement cast) is the overuse of gross-out humor, which wasn’t present in the original three films.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: It's damn-near impossible to talk about The Long Haul movie without mentioning the sheer amount of backlash towards the new cast. This is especially the case with Charlie Wright, who received tons of hate mail and death threats.

• Questionable Casting:
  • Even ignoring the #NotMyRodrick controversy, Charlie Wright being cast as Rodrick in The Long Haul is simply baffling to many people, since he doesn't look like any of his co-stars or the character he’s supposed to be playing. It didn’t help that he couldn’t play the version of Rodrick people liked, he instead had to play a completely different character. Some viewers unfamiliar with the first three movies thought Rodrick was adopted. Lastly, unlike the other pre/teenage cast members, Devon Bostick has barely aged since the third movie.
  • The recasting of Susan from Rachael Harris to Alicia Silverstone didn’t do any favors either; like Rodrick, her version of Susan did a complete 180 from the original, and in the worst way possible.
  • Also the re-casting of Greg from Zachary Gordon to Jason Drucker. The fact that this is supposed to be a sequel/follow-up to Dog Days, yet Greg looks even younger in The Long Haul than he was in the original first film. Same can be said with Rowley to a lesser extent.
• Sequelitis: While the other movies have a mixed reception among the fans, The Long Haul is universally agreed to be terrible, between the controversial casting changes, the fact that it's an adaptation of what's considered to be the start of the series' Seasonal Rot, and the over-reliance on things like memes and social media.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Although they don't interact much and she mysteriously disappeared in the sequels, some fans like to ship Rowley and Angie together so that they can be a Beta Couple to Greg and Holly.
• Squick:
  • The Running Gag of all the Diaper Hands jokes with Greg in The Long Haul might be hard to look at, depending on how strong your stomach is.
  • Also, in Dog Days, the Heffley family eating pot roast that Sweetie chewed on.
  • Greg eating the melted chocolate on his bum is this both In-Universe and out.
  • Greg getting covered with cheeto dust in The Long Haul movie is either this or a funny moment.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The general reaction to the reveal that the film adaptation of The Long Haul would have an entirely new cast. The original cast members had grown up significantly since the last movie, so this was to be expected; though why they replaced the adult cast members is anyone's guess^note  Reportedly, Steve Zahn and Rachael Harris were approached to reprise their roles, but both declined due to scheduling conflicts. This reached the point that the first trailer still has more dislikes than likes overall. Possibly the largest point of contention when it comes to the live-action adaptation of The Long Haul is replacing Rodrick's wildly popular original actor Devon Bostick with newcomer Charlie Wright (Bostick even made a video of himself reacting to the trailer). It got to the point where the hashtag "#NotMyRodrick" went viral on Twitter. And when it was finally released in theaters, it got abysmal reviews (19% on Rotten Tomatoes; 41 on Metacritic) and was the franchise's lowest-grossing open, to the surprise of no one. As of December 23, 2017, the trailer has 4.5 times more dislikes than likes. As of the same day, most of the video's comments include or only feature the hashtag #NotMyRodrick.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Manny. Because Greg improved his relationship with his dad and his older brother, it would've been interesting to have Greg improve his relationship with Manny and expand on the latter's character more (and maybe even have him take a level in kindness like Rodrick). But Manny doesn't do anything in the movies outside of a few throwaway jokes here and there.
  • Many fans wished that Angie would appear or at least get one mention in the sequels.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The third movie gives us an Odd Friendship in Patty and Holly. Patty still acts like a Jerkass to other characters such as Greg and Rowley, but can be seen acting friendly to Holly, as the two are seen having friendly talks and playing tennis together. This could have been used to give Patty some Hidden Depths that would explain why Holly is willing to be her friend, and maybe even trying to act friendlier to Greg for Holly's sake, but their friendship mostly goes unexplored. It doesn’t help that she isn’t seen much after the tennis game.
• Tough Act to Follow: The Disney+ movie isn't as well-liked as the first movie (and the first three live-action movies in general).
• Vindicated by History: The first three films have received this in spades. Back when they were released, the films received mixed-to-negative scores from critics and audiences and were largely forgotten about in the immediate years that followed. In more recent years though, opinion towards the films has begun to soften considerably, with many, particularly fans of the books, growing fond of the films and appreciating them for their casting, faithfulness to the books, Character Development and having their share of genuinely great and humorous moments. Appreciation and fondness towards them has only grown more over time, partly thanks to glowing reviews from the likes of internet reviewers such as L.S Mark and Browntable.

The 2021 animated movie

• Critical Dissonance: The animated movie received favorable reviews by critics, whereas audiences and fans of the series gave it more of a negative reception. It currently holds a 73% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, while it has a lower 38% audience score.
• Hilariousin Hindsight: Considering the fact that Disney is now making live-action remakes of animated films, and that Disney now owns 20th Century Fox, which made the first film adaptation of the book which was depicted as being live-action, then this technically makes this their first animated remake of a live action movie!
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: One criticism regarding this movie is that compared to the live-action movies, it's too short (with a runtime of only 58 minutes), which has the side effect of rushing the story by removing various elements between the Halloween scene and the climax.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the animated adaptation is that while it's nowhere near as good as the first three live-action films, it's at least better than The Long Haul and is a faithful (if very rushed) adaptation, if little else.
• Squick: The animated movie adapts the scene where Fregley apologizes to Greg for chasing him around with a booger by putting it on the letter so Greg can get him back. But, instead of being a tiny booger like it was in the book, it's a giant green lump of stringy snot. No wonder Greg blacked out after touching it.
• Special Effect Failure: As a result of the voices being recorded during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the audio quality tends to be all over the place. Susan gets hit by this the worst, as a lot of her lines sound like they were recorded over a video call.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The film cuts out the Safety Patrol story in the first book and first live action movie, which didn't sit well with a lot of fans due to it playing an important role in what causes the friendship of Greg and Rowley to break up. In the Disney+ movie, Greg and Rowley's friendship is broken from Rowley gaining popularity over the "Zoo-Wee-Mama!" comic that Greg came up with but willingly gave it to Rowley, which makes their break up feel very underwhelming.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot
  • Rowley suggests that if he and Greg act in the Wizard of Oz play, they'll make some friends who'll let them sit at the lunch tables. Greg dismisses the plan, saying it'll take too long to work. This is a major scene in the original book, but this is the extent it's brought up in the film. Rowley also mentions participating in the wrestling unit, a story arc from the first book, and wanting to run for student council (a plot from The Third Wheel). None of these arcs happen in the film, which could have helped pad out its run time (it's barely under an hour long).
  • Regarding the Safety Patrol subplot being removed, it might have helped a bit if the film brought in and re-contextualized more scenes from the book that were left out of the first live-action film (such as Greg and Rowley's failed Haunted House during Halloween and their failed ambush on the Whirley Street kids in the winter) to not only provide a stronger build-up to Greg and Rowley's falling out, but also to have the film stand out from its live-action counterpart.
• Uncertain Audience: While the movie is an adaptation of the first book, most of the content that was adapted from the first book barely changed from their original presentation with little new content added, which ends up making this movie not particularly entertaining for fans of the series since they've already seen those moments. Meanwhile, newcomers aren't likely to find the movie entertaining due to the movie's basic jokes and rushed plot that make it it hard to get into.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Many fans feel the designs in the CGI animated film trying to be faithful to the book designs comes off as unsettling. While the heavily exaggerated, ugly, noodly look of the characters look just fine in a flat 2D plane, in a fully 3D space, they come off as being incredibly off-putting and creepy looking instead. Manny in particular has received the most accusations of being this, with many finding his design to look terrifying in 3D.
  • The scene where Greg does a Dreamworks Face looks really off◊.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Rowley in the animated film, when he joins the school newspaper and publishes the "Zoo-Wee Mama!" comic strips despite them being originally Greg's idea, unfairly earning him fame and popularity. While one can argue that Greg wasn't a good friend to him because he broke Rowley's arm, Greg was right to call him out for copying his ideas instead of coming up with something original as he had suggested Rowley do. In the original book, "Zoo-Wee Mama!" was an idea of both Greg and Rowley, so at least Rowley had some ownership of the idea in that version (even if he should've credited Greg a little), and in the live-action film the comic was entirely Rowley's idea and Greg had no involvement in that.

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