Note: The Onion often uses YMMV items and Audience Reactions in an In-Universe setting. Those used In-Universe as a Trope can be kept on the main page. To make this so, just put or Pot Hole "In-Universe" within the example (where appropriate of course). See In-Universe for more.
For those not used In-Universe, here's a list of YMMV Tropes and Audience Reactions relating to The Onion.
YMMV Tropes with their own pages
- Awesome Music: The Factzone's intro
. - Alternative Character Interpretation:
- It's possible the subject of this commentary is willingly being Genre Blind to the point of savviness so she can be with someone she loves.
- In "Animator Misses The Birth Of His Child So Mr. Incredible Could Have Consistently Sized Penis Bulge", is Jamie Klein the victim of long working hours at Pixar, or is he a workaholic who got so engrossed in his work that he neglected his wife and newborn son? Would Pixar have let him go to see his wife while she was in labor if he'd asked?
- In "Area Liberal Worried His Asian Dry Cleaner Doesn't Like Him" does Rei Luo not remember who Steve Bern is, or does she not know English well enough to understand most of what he's saying (or what the interviewer is saying) and thus doesn't have an opinion on him?
- It's possible the subject of this commentary
- Anvilicious:
- Most of "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule" is dedicated to having the narrator repeatedly insist how evil the September 11th attacks were, which wouldn't be too over-the-top if the narrator weren't God.
- Just the title of "Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell" tells you the 9/11 hijackers were evil, but in case that weren't clear, the article goes into excruciating detail describing the tortures they have merited in Hell, driving the author's point home and home and home with every horrific detail.
- "'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" is an article that the Onion posts which bluntly states that mass shootings in America could be prevented without a hint of subtext. What really makes it anvilicious is the fact that The Onion posts the exact same article whenever there's a mass shooting, meaning the already unsubtle article has been put forward to readers over and over again. The repetition is intentional, demonstrating the author's point that all these separate incidents come from the same root causes.
- During a time when they sometimes had to publish the article no less than three times a day the editorial staff basically admitted that they know the "gag" has been overdone but can't retire it until something is actually done about it.
- Twice when they published a new version of the article, they also pushed every previous instance to the front page.
- "It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible" is a scathing indictment of how many newspapers are reporting on transgender issues in such a way as to incite a moral panic.
- Most of "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule
- Bizarro Episode: ‘We Get The Food And Then We Eat The Food Until All The Food Is Gone,’ City Of Chicago Announces Unprompted.
- Broken Base: Ending their Diamond Joe series in favour of more critical articles on Joe Biden in 2020. A welcome change from their apolitical, uncritical and almost fantastical portrayal of him to a more grounded one with genuine criticisms of Biden's character and campaign? Or a step-down from the hilarious wild comedy to unfunny and nonsensical attacks on Biden meant to pander to Bernie supporters?
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- Many, many articles, such as an article where people resort to cannibalism after being stuck in an elevator for only a few hours.
- Some of the "What Do You Think?" responses. See "Bernie Porter" in this one.
- "Overcome Stress by Visualizing it as a Greedy, Hook-Nosed Race of Creatures" tells you to do exactly that, and also imagine those grabblers disintigrating into ash, like in a fire, and being blown away by a purifying wind.
- Trump's Missing Jan.6 Phone Logs includes him attempting to contact Ashli Babbitt.
- The placeholder sentence for the books is "Passerby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood." Not funny on its own, but when mixed with the Non Sequitur captions that were apparently in the article (such as "I don't know which boatload of sailors I love!" or "Can we discuss this after I pee?") and the similar apparent titles to them are hilarious.
- Genius Bonus: If you're a history buff, Our Dumb Century is full of this.
- Jerkass Woobie:
- Russ Kunkel in "Loved Ones Recall Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer". Diagnosed with terminal cancer, he's completely unable to Face Death with Dignity, which shows how pathetic he is, but also makes his story even sadder.
- Brooke Alvarez from the IFC series. She's basically an Alpha Bitch who treats everyone around her like dirt and generally seems to think everyone else is a massive idiot...then it's revealed in season 2 she was a Russian girl who was forced to become a child cosmonaut by the Soviets (with all sorts of torturous treatments) and had to battle a vicious chimpanzee while in orbit. Her own mother noticed the changes after she came down to Earth — a hardness around her and constant night terrors involving her fighting chimpanzees. By the end of the episode (and after repeated denials it affected her, with Jane Carmichael, Tucker Hope and O'Brady Shaw repeatedly bringing it up; in Carmichael's case it's a case of The Dog Bites Back, having grown tired of Brooke's attitude towards her), she ends up having a mental breakdown and being taken away for treatment.
- Russ Kunkel in "Loved Ones Recall Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer
- Magnificent Bastard:
- "Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation": Chad Carter is an 8-year-old with leukemia who, after finding a loophole on the Make-A-Wish Foundation charter, decided to wish for unlimited wishes. Now gaining whatever he wants, Chad's wishes are costing the foundation 5 times its annual budget, with him being uncaring that it could lead to it filing for bankruptcy. When interviewed, president of the foundation Dean Feinglass answered that when Chad found out they had a legal team, he just wished them away, and that he wished to have the best oncology care possible from them to continue wishing as long as possible.
- "The Onion Reviews 'Interstellar'": The terrible truth of Christopher Nolan is his stealing of Peter K. Rosenthal's film ideas. When Peter presented him with Interstellar for feedback, Nolan stole the film, returning the case with a copy of The Prestige and passed Interstellar off as his own movie while getting the entire cast and crew to go along with it. Having previously stolen Inception, Nolan still manages to have Peter consider him a friend despite constantly stealing his films.
- "Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation
- Memetic Mutation:
- Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure has become a term of endearment on Tumblr and other sites. "Cinnamon roll" or "precious cinnamon roll" has also become shorthand for The Woobie, or for anyone so precious and cute that the speaker would fight to the death to protect them from Woobie status.
- Another one from Tumblr is to take screencaps from a variety of shows and use Onion headlines as matching captions.
- "'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" gets reposted with the same bread text whenever there's a mass shooting in the US, which has caused people to start linking to it by themselves.
- A variation on "The Onion just straight up reporting the news again" is often used in response to their Trump-era articles due to the site growing a stronger and more honest progressive voice than some mainstream media outlets during this period.
- People getting outraged over Onion articles on social media not realizing that they're satire. So much so there is an entire subreddit for this.
- A crop from one of Kelly's political comics◊ about drug legalization featuring a man labeled "SICKOS" looking through a window shouting "Yes... ha ha ha... YES!" has become a rapidly popular reaction image.
- Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure
- Retroactive Recognition: A pre-SNL Alex Moffat has a small part in "Hostages Freed After Tense 7-Minute Standup Set".
- Steven Ogg, just a year or so before Grand Theft Auto V, voiced an in-universe promo on the IFC series (specifically for Gut Check with O'Brady Shaw).
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- The "Ask A" columns generally feature the columnists ignoring the letters and writing about their own lives, areas of expertise or other things- for example, "Ask The Dauphin" involves the Dauphin acting like a Royal Brat. Said columns might have been even funnier if the columnist had actually tried to respond to the letters in their own way, such as said Dauphin answering the second letter by suggesting that is only natural that inferior people like commoners could become criminals.
- "Man Doesn't Know How Parents Ever Going To Pay Off Massive Student Loan Debt" could potentially have been a commentary on how the man's parents are still stuck dealing with their own student loans, but the loan in question belongs to the man himself, instead making it a parody that makes fun of the man for being spoiled and lazy.
- The "Ask A" columns generally feature the columnists ignoring the letters and writing about their own lives, areas of expertise or other things- for example, "Ask The Dauphin
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Starting in the late 2010s, many news-overloaded Americans don't find the Onion funny anymore, due to many articles being in turns eerily prophetic, painfully relatable, or overtly anvil-dropping.
- Unintentional Period Piece:
- "Area Man Consults Internet Whenever Possible", written in 2000, is supposed to be a satire of people who are obsessed with the Internet. Area Man uses the Internet to do things like check on movie showtimes, look up word definitions, and find food recipes. Within a short few years, people everywhere would use the internet for stuff like that all the time.
- Inevitable in articles on political figures when they're out of office, such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama or Donald Trump.
- The column "When You're Feeling Low, Just Remember I'll Be Dead in About 15 or 20 Years", "written" by Donald Trump, reads quite a bit differently after Trump ascended to the presidency, just under four years after it was published, and made it much more difficult for him to disappear into history.note
- "Area Man Consults Internet Whenever Possible"
- The Woobie:
- Ryan and Rebecca Lewis from "Daddy Put In Bye-Bye Box": When they're 5 and 3, their father dies from what is implied to be stomach cancer-and the kids have no idea or even that he was sick at all. They think he's sleeping like Snow White and will run back home to read their bedtime story. Even worse, their dad isn't the only death in the family: their cat Muffin, their grandmother Sarah and their uncle Brian are all dead. For such young ages, they've seen a lot of death. The article ends with their mother about to tell them the truth.
- Jean Teasdale. While she is oblivious, naive, refuses to take responsibility for her actions, and not very smart, there's no doubt her life sucks: She grew up in a Dysfunctional Family that broke apart when her father cheated, she was bullied and sexually assaulted at school, she barely graduated, her husband Rick is a Jerkass who only married her because her parents caught them having sex and treats her badly, she desperately wants kids but Rick hates kids (and it's implied that she only sees the fun parts of parenthood), she's never left her crappy suburban hometown, she can't keep a job, and the column is pretty much the one thing she has. What's more, she is aware of how bad her life is but is actively trying to repress her emotions about leaving and starting over. Ouch.
- Joan from "New Mommy A Lot Prettier". Not only does her husband cheat on her with a younger woman, kick her out of their house and not help her financially, he and his new partner are also turning her children against her with treats, toys and lack of discipline. When we see her, she's obviously stressed and depressed, frequently breaking down in tears as her kids complain about her making them do chores.
- Bitek Okoye from "Get Me Out Of This Godforsaken Hellhole." His parents and brothers were killed in a gasoline explosion, while soldiers threw his grandmother out a window. He lives in a slum without electricity or basic necessities, threatened by criminals, police and soldiers. He's destitute, frightened and desperate to live anywhere besides Nigeria.
- Ryan and Rebecca Lewis from "Daddy Put In Bye-Bye Box"
