YMMV / Vince McMahon

• Alternative Character Interpretation: His rare runs as a Face could be seen as him still doing what he did as heel — manipulating people, bending his own rules and using his connections for his own needs — but this time knowing he can get away with it if he'll stick to targetting Heels.
• Americans Hate Tingle: He's loathed in Canada due to the Montreal Screwjob. Canadians' hatred of Vince is limited to him personally and doesn't really extend to his company, though. Even after the Screwjob, the WWE has regularly toured in Canada and always drawn good business.
• Ass Pull: The reveal that Vince McMahon himself was the "higher power" in charge of the Ministry of Darkness as part of an elaborate scheme to strip Steve Austin of the WWF title was a dramatic one that cemented his status as the Big Bad of his own promotion and the ultimate Arch-Enemy of the top babyface in the hottest era of wrestling in the history of the company. It was also rock stupid and made absolutely no sense given prior events and motivations of everyone involved, and arguably produced, or at least reinforced the mindset that surprising audiences with "swerves" was more important than good storytelling, which caused the downfall and destruction of WCW and the slow degeneration of WWF/E storytelling for the next thirty years.
• Awesome Ego: Vince McMahon initially pissed off everyone in wrestling by swamping the cable market and telling promoters to take their old fashioned rules and stick it up their asses. He also slept with all their wives and mistresses, and later bought WCW for 1 cent. (True story.)
• Awesome Music: His entrance theme "No Chance in Hell" is so cool, he's never changed it even once. Interestingly, he only started using it by virtue of infamously winning the 1999 Royal Rumble, since that was the event's theme song, but it fit the Mr. McMahon character like a glove and has remained ever since.
• Broken Base: His match against Triple H in Armageddon 1999. Many fans like it for showing a rare event where Vinnie Mac was the face instead of heel, while some dislike it for being one of the slowest main event match in PPV history. The facts that Triple H didn't perform his Finishing Move Pedigree and that Vinnie Mac lost the match thanks to outside interference did not sit well with the detractors as well.
• Crazy Is Cool: Most 70+-year-old multibillionaires are content to sit back and bask in the glow of their wealth, but Vince will cry, piss his pants, and willingly let himself be bodyslammed by employees of his who are half his age, twice his height, and five times his weight just because he loves playing the bad guy that much. It's not much of a stretch to say that VKM would probably slice his own arm off with a buzzsaw on live TV if he thought it would get a pop from the crowd.
• Epileptic Trees: More than one internet commentator has suggested that Vince is a dark puppetmaster controlling TNA from behind the scenes as a dumping ground for any wrestlers too old/unconventional, as an end around antitrust legislation, and as a way of making his product look good in comparison.
• Fan Nickname: His name is Vincent Kennedy McMahon and his father's middle name started with a J. Still it is common for people, especially those who were around the business in the 1980s, to refer to this one as "Vince Jr." and the dad as "Vince Sr.", especially when talking about how different they were.
• Fountain of Memes: Mr. McMahon, both as a character character and a real-life figure, is memorable for being one of the most theatrical and eccentric figures in all of professional wrestling, with his larger-than-life persona and willingness to do anything crazy for attention making him intensely quotable and memorable, with an astonishing track record of all-time wrestling lines.
• He Really Can Act:
  • While Vince is more known for his work backstage or on the microphone, many agree he shows impressive talent in ring for a non-wrestler, taking a lot of carnage and selling far more abuse than a lot of iconic superstars would be willing to. When you consider that he wanted to be a wrestler and the only reason he wasn't able to pursue that dream was because of his father, it takes on a whole new meaning.
  • In a more direct application of the trope, his acting during the infamous "Poison" promos as he descends into madness, convinced Ric Flair is giving the company "terminal cancer" and that Vince has to "inject poison" via the New World Order as a Mercy Kill, is genuinely unsettling and emotionally arresting.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Whoo boy. The short summary here is that an awful lot of Vince's bizarre obsessions that showed up in his product, either put there personally by him or added in by his creative teams in an effort to please him, went from too audacious and wacky to be truly detestable to uncomfortable warning signs of a predatory monster looming in plain sight.
  • The Mr. McMahon heel character would often sexually harass and extort his female employees as part of angles and storylines. In 2022, Vince McMahon was forced into temporary retirement, then into a likely more permanent retirement in 2024, after the details leaked on a series of scandals involving, among other things, his doing exactly that in real life.
  • Of particularly disturbing note is the segment where Stephanie confronts him about forcing her to be sexually available to his business associates when she was younger which eerily mirrors the allegations that Vince forced at least one female employee to have sex with people in the company as an incentive for doing business with him.
  • On the January 24th, 2002 SmackDown, Mr. McMahon, having lost control of the WWF to someone else and blindly certain that they're going to run the company into the ground because no one but him could possibly do it right, ranted into the camera about his plans to instead kill it himself so no one else can have it through collusion and selling out to a hostile foreign enemy: the nWo. On January 6th, 2023, having been previously ousted from the company, Vince McMahon elbowed his way back onto the board of the WWE, forcing the resignations of several senior board members who might've objected including his own daughter, and began to attempt to sell the company off and/or take it private so he would no longer be beholden to anyone else, allegedly because he was blindly certain no one else could do it right and/or would rather professional wrestling die (through a sale to the Saudis or some other big foreign entity that doesn't understand the business) than lose control of it. Many comparisons were made to that specific promo when the news broke of his return. ^note  Ironically, the aforementioned move ended up costing him his creative control permanently, as when WWE was bought by Endeavor, CEO Ari Emmanuel removed him from all creative control in October 2023 after citing the aforementioned antics as a reason WWE's new media rights were lower than expected, leaving Vince Kicked Upstairs in the company he vowed to control. Another misconduct (of sex trafficking and rape) would lead to his second resignation, ensuring that any remaining control he had over WWE will be gone, likely for good in light of Vince divesting himself of all TKO stock.
  • The Monday Night Raw on June 26, 2006. As D-Generation X, Shawn Michaels and Triple H dumped crap all over Vince, Shane, and the The Spirit Squad. While funny at the time, it hits differently given the allegations in 2024. In fact, Vince McMahon's general weird fondness for Toilet Humor generally hits different in light of these allegations.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • After JoJo's Bizarre Adventure became popular in the west, people made a lot of mashups of the already memetic "it's me, Austin!" and "it was me, Dio!" clips.
  • Crossed with And You Thought It Would Fail: The Montreal Screwjob, his New Era Speech on the main page and the announcement of Mike Tyson's participation at WrestleMania XIV led to some fans thinking that this new direction was doomed and that WCW would continue to be the top wrestling promotion. Who's Laughing Now?
  • During Randy Orton's "full address" promo, Vince (along with Shane) came to back up Triple H, while The Viper was surrounded by security guard and his The Legacy stablemates Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase Jr.. Pay attention to the pairings when the security guards are taken down: Vince attacks Cody. Just a normal part of the promo back then, but 10 years later, it becomes rather prophetic.
• Love to Hate: His Mr. McMahon persona... oh, so much. Diabolical, conniving to the point of cartoonish supervillainy, but in his prime, he was possibly the best promo of his entire company, with many coming to tune in every week just to take joy in what ridiculously entertaining bit of madness he'd be up to next.
• Memetic Badass: The National Wrestling Alliance couldn't beat him. The American Wrestling Association couldn't beat him. WCW couldn't beat him. The freaking FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA couldn't beat him.
• Memetic Mutation: Long before he became an infamously crazy old man, Vince was already a Fountain of Memes. Here is a list of highlights:
  • "YOU TAKE ME TO HIM! TAKE ME TO THE SONOFABITCH!!!"^Explanationa clip from a promo where Vince runs yelling down a hallway shouting this, used as a reaction to someone hearing that someone/something they dislike is nearby and that they intend to go whoop their ass.
  • [on commentary] THAT'S GOTTA...THAT'S GOTTA BE KANE!^note A famous call during Kane's debut that followed Kane, and every other character named something like Kane, for the rest of his career whenever any of them did anything.
    • WHAT A MANEUVER!^note Vince famously could barely remember the names of any of the wrestling moves when he was taking care of commentary himself during the New Generation era, so he'd just generically gush over "maneuvers." This gained momentum when he started micromanaging his ring announcers later in his career, preventing them from listing the names of moves on the ground that he, a "genius," couldn't keep them straight so of course the mouth-breathing mongoloid fans who watch wrestling couldn't.
  • Later, in the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras:
    • INJECT THE POISON...◊^note Vince pulled some... interesting facial expressions while shooting a set of promos depicting himself descending into madness over his blind certainty no one but him could possibly handle running his company and deciding to kill his own company through bringing in the nWo rather than give it up.
    • Usually on forums when something of old news or common knowledge is talked about by someone that thinks of it as brand new info a few people would throw something like "OH MY GOD! DID YOU GUYS SEE RAW!! VINCE MCMAHON'S LIMO JUST EXPLODED!!!".
    • IT'S ME AUSTIN! (AW SONUVABITCH.)^note A famously dramatic but completely nonsensical plot twist that cemented McMahon's famous heel character, and his status as the Big Bad of WWF. Jim Ross's reaction is also beloved, because it can be read as either in-character anger and indignation over the deception or as JR breaking character to complain on air how stupid it is for Vince to be the higher power.
    • EVEN MY FAMILY, EVEN MY IMMEDIATE FAMILY BOUGHT IT!^note An infamously awkward line from the same promo.
    • Vince didn't screw Bret. Bret screwed Bret. Later modified into "Austin screwed Austin," or, "The people screwed the people," or someasmuch. (Which became an Ascended Meme, which he used on Steve Austin's podcast when talking about the demise of the wrestling territories in the 1980's.)^note The origin of Vince's heel turn came when he gave an interview intending to defend himself in the aftermath of the Montreal Screwjob. He instead came across as cold and unsympathetic, and then leaned into it, reduxing the Screwjob several times in storylines.
  • The New Era...of memes. Most of these are the result of glimpses into how Vince talks and acts "behind the curtain," especially as his de-facto monopoly, ever growing age, and the probable aftermath of multiple concussions meant his booking could and did get increasingly eccentric and the writing started to cater to an effective audience of one:
    • DAMMIT PAL^note Apparently Vince is sometimes incapable of finishing a sentence without throwing a "dammit" and "pal" or two into it.
    • HAVE SOME FUN, DAMMIT^note A complaint thrown at wrestlers unhappy with their booking and/or scripts.
    • ACHOO^note Sneezing is about the only bodily function Vince hates because it's an involuntary one the body can't control. This may or may not include punishing wrestlers for sneezing in front of him and taking it as a sign of weakness.
    • BUILDING NEW STARS^note Vince would often claim to want to elevate new talent, but would constantly get angry with them for no good reason and spitefully bury them while coming back to a tiny core of aging personal favorites instead, especially if the audience he increasingly came to hate and resent started to organically get behind them without his say-so, and doubly so if they're rejecting his latest Creator's Pet. This has held true since before the Attitude Era; if Vince wants new stars it's always on his terms, not the fans'.
    • Vince does not have time for your flippy shit◊.^note Vince is famously Prejudiced For Pecs and often delights in having smaller, more agile wrestlers squished and squashed by the huge brutes. He's also reliably skeptical when "big man" wrestlers move in an agile, acrobatic fashion, trying to get them to wrestle like lumbering giants instead.
    • Steve Austin's podcast gave us "Brass rings." That quote will probably haunt him◊ for a while.^note Vince complained on the podcast that newer wrestlers don't stand up for themselves and take initiative like they used to, seemingly oblivious to his own habit of angrily burying and punishing younger wrestlers that do.
    • MILLENIALS!^note Vince complains about young people a lot, whether younger wrestlers or younger fans not appreciating his booking. If a wrestler suddenly starts complaining about millenials in a promo, it's a shoe-in that either Vince wrote it or the writers are trying to convince you he did.
    • IT'S GOOD SHIT^note Vince's frequent defense of his eternally unfunny comedy ideas, often while trying to convince wrestlers to go along with them.
    • IT'S SO YOU^note This one comes from the attempt to "Jedi Mind Trick" Dean Ambrose into going along with the set of distasteful promos that ultimately led to his exit from WWE as a company.
  • Vince McMahon's "O" face, usually placed in memes to show excitement building as things escalate.
  • After Vince left the company amid sexual misconduct allegations, many people cut together a promo of Vince shouting “Come on out, you RAPIST!” with another of Vince then coming out.
  • A GIF of McMahon smelling money commonly has a caption added to represent (usually assumed) wealth or an opportunity to make money.
  • A GIF of Vince choking up and making a cut-off motion after being asked what The Undertaker meant to him during his documentary The Last Ride is often used in connection to questions on how things once were.
• Moral Event Horizon: When Mr. McMahon started his feud with Steve Austin, he was more or less a stodgy businessman uncomfortable with Austin's behavior. By the time he organized his own daughter's kidnapping just to get the belt off of Austin, he crossed into a psycho who'd do anything just to spite his enemy.
• Narm Charm: His Power Walk looks absolutely silly with him strutting down the ring while swinging his arms and bobbing his head in an exaggerated way. Yet the fans feel that this fits the Mr. McMahon character perfectly as it shows his confidence and insanity while not caring how others think of him. Multiple sources have confirmed that, while he plays it up for the cameras, Vince McMahon walks that way outside of kayfabe too.
• Older Than They Think: Vince McMahon's first portrayal of the evil "Mr. McMahon" character was actually in USWA in the early 90's, years before he portrayed it in his own company World Wrestling Entertainment, in which he feuded with Jerry "The King" Lawler (who was also employed by WWE at the time, in which their face and heel roles were switched), and would have Lawler fight his WWE wrestlers (who were heel "invaders" in USWA). Interestingly, Lawler become one of Vince's biggest suck-ups during the Attitude Era in WWE. (Of course, Lawler generally sucked up to the heels^note Although there was the Doink the Clown fake-arm angle with Crush, enough to the point that one time Jim Ross finally had had enough and just said, "Yeah, well, you're an ass!")

---