Pandering To The Base / The Nostalgia Critic

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• Even in 2009 he regretted doing this, asking if his audience just had multiple personality disorder when they yelled at him for doing what they wanted.
• Invoked, parodied and lampshaded for his review of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, mentioning the Milestone Celebration of its 20th anniversary repeatedly. Not only does he feature Rita and Zordon and break out the special effects to fake fight scenes with one of Rita's monsters, but he also gets Linkara to make a cameo. The parody and lampshading elements include the Critic calling "Pandering time" instead of "Morphing time" when he jumps into action, and a new song parodying the original Mighty Morphing theme including the lyrics "this song is here to praise your heroes and suck up". The pandering turned out to not have worked (for whatever reason), as Doug said in the Boss Mabel vlog that the episode didn't get many views.
• Also invoked for his review of the film adaptation of James and the Giant Peach, which was released after his Let's Play of The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare. The Critic's Let's Play was considered by many to be the absolute worst Let's Play ever, and in-universe, resulted in the Critic being sent to Internet State Penitentiary. The Critic tries to endear himself to the public again by doing a positive review of a well-known and loved film, to wit, his review of James and the Giant Peach, in which he tries desperately not to say anything negative about the film, in hopes of restoring his image in the public's eye. But, because he didn't like the movie, it didn't work.
• Lampshaded with the Bloodrayne review, as Critic really doesn't want to do the “three schmuckheads” thing again, and Linkara/Spoony treat it like it's Serious Business. Confirmed in the 2017 livestream where Doug says that while he liked working with Lewis/Noah, Boll is so boring that he had no passion for the reviews.
• Joked about in the Matrix Revolutions behind the scenes, as Doug says depending on the views, Tamara might be in leather a lot more to please the fanboys.
• In Mamma Mia!, Malcolm, Rob and Tamara complain that he won't get any hits reviewing the movie, and Malcolm says that to get good hits, he has to have superheroes, fart jokes or Nicholas Cage.
• Lampshaded at the end of Children of the Corn (1984), where because the audience refuses to only have two nostalgiaween reviews, he extends it to the first week of November “just to keep you happy”.
• Both Tentacolino and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle were demanded for ages (even though he said no to the first one), and when the reviews came this was acknowledged in-universe, the former with Critic angry because he'd rather do a Marilyn Monroe movie, and the latter with him having a breakdown because he kinda likes it.
• His review of TMNT and Pokémon: The First Movie could be seen as this. In the real thoughts review, Doug refers to the TMNT review as the first time he bowed down to fans and did what they wanted (and then got trashed for it), a start of a trend that he regrets.
• Also, by popular demand, the Critic finally reviewed The Movie of his childhood torment, Doug, and boy, did he not like what was in store for him (save for one character and one scene each in the entire film)!
• Before comeback, he stated (at youmacon) the reason why they released all the Critic DVD exclusives on the site is because “we knew there'd be backlash like [in whiny voice] bring the Critic back! We don't care if you're running out of ideas, just feed us!” and they needed to sate those people.
• Some fans have accused Doug of bringing back the Nostalgia Critic due to this. In reality, it was more a Be Careful What You Wish For version, as he said in commentary that he connected Donnie/Critic due to all the demands to bring Critic back, and hoped everyone who 'asked' was pissed off about it.
• He explains to the catwomen in said review that breasts even covered up would guarantee him more views.
• Rob confirmed that Doug only did Sailor Moon because of fan demands, which shows just how badly this can go when you do so little research and, as Doug said on his post, look for stuff to criticize.
• He was accused of this not even an hour after he released his review of Sharknado (2013) for Nostalgiaween. Brad Jones casually admitted later that he was only asked to do it by Doug "because it was popular at the time". Doug himself revealed later (at an Anime Midwest panel) that Michaud had ordered him to do it.
• The Word of God reason why he talked about the show so much in his The Last Airbender review, plus the running gags based on it.
  Doug: I have so many people from the Avatar audience are watching me now that I have to mention the show.
• Lampshaded with the opening of Dawn Of The Commercials, with a giant fake audience begging him to do another special (that's actually about something nostalgic no less) and him basking in the attention. Also subverted at the end, where he admits that making fun of nostalgic stuff feels good and wants to do more, but Joe convinces him to do Man of Steel instead.
• After the reaction to the trilogy of Doug interpreting something differently, then discussing how people get too involved with fandom, and finally just giving a call-out, his plan to replace regular editorials with quick Cracked-style lists about easter eggs in popular nostalgic movies (with editorials "every once in a while") seems like an effort to appease.
• Despite Film Brain wanting to do it, Doug said in the “Dad's Dungeon” vlog that he'd got so many requests to review Foodfight! that the fans were going to win eventually. And they did.
• Bloodrayne with Critic/Linkara/Spoony reviewing an Uwe Boll movie again, stooge slapstick, Snob in a few cameos, an “Adamantium Rage” joke from Linkara and minimal Malcolm/Tamara. Critic seems to be aware that this trope is in play, as he's depressed about having to do it and calls out Linkara/Spoony for arriving like it's a big deal.
• Doug literally tagged the Small Soldiers review as “after years of requests”, and as a bit of extra info, people had actually voted for it to be his finale, but Doug had declared The Points Mean Nothing and did the far more apt^note What with it being a franchise with ridiculous nostalgia value. Scooby-Doo movie.
• Doug says in The Purge behind the scenes that he wants to do The Princess Bride because everyone is demanding it.
• Gets the insulting Be Careful What You Wish For right the way in his Ghost Rider 2 review, complaining about how ever since he did the first one, people have been whining about wanting him to do the second one, and now he'll give into their entitled bullshit. The record number of cameos - Malcolm's devil, Evilina, Devil Boner, Angry Joe, MikeJ doing the crossover with him (and insulting him every chance he gets), Film Brain, and the Ghost Rider pony - are shameless in pandering as well.
• "Top 11 Worst Avatar Episodes". The preview has Doug lampshading the clickbait title, and also quasi-spoilering how special the ending is a To Be Continued featuring Dante Basco just to get people going over to Maker a day early to watch.
• Care Bears Nutcracker was sixth on his “Top 11 Movies I'll NEVER Review'', but it's the last review of 2014 given the millions of requests for him to do it, even after that list.
  • He also ended up reviewing Cats Don't Dance and A Goofy Movie, which also showed up on the same list.
• At the end of the 50 Shades Sibling Rivalry, Doug tells all the people demanding that he'll most likely do a Critic review of the movie and take off his clothes at least once. When the last film of the trilogy was done, Rob demanded that Doug do a review and while Doug's main reaction is "I don't wanna!", he caves a little because all the fanservice will get views.
• He completely lampshades “The Plot To Frozen 2'' as “clickbait designed to get more views” and does it even more with telling the audience to pick something for next week: the 2014 TMNT movie with the Nerd. (Plus in Doug's stinger, you only get a preview of the episode if you come to the next con he's at.)
• Given that Doug's been complaining for years about how much he hates doing the Bat Credit Card reaction, and Critic himself hasn't done it in a long time, doing it in the Transformers 4 crossover has huge shades of this.
• The “Real Thoughts” series seems a lot like a plan to combine Sibling Rivalry and Critic into a new popular thing to get hits, especially given that you can request movies for them to give their real opinions on. They might be aware of this, as they've been Money, Dear Boy gleeful about views in at least two episodes.
• In the t-shirts advertisement at the end of Osmosis Jones review, Doug openly says “you asked for them, we're caving under peer pressure like pure bitches”.
• Pixels was another breaking of his “anything not in theaters” rule, and the tagline says it was “due to popular demand”. He also spends a few minutes beginning the review with proof that there was literal demand.
• In January 2016, Doug revealed that they had got a strike, could get no money from videos (though this got sorted about a day after posting the video), and the only reason why they were doing Critic videos were because fans wanted them.
• After ages of refusing, he finally gave up and did Tentacolino. Naturally this gets acknowledged in the review, with people demanding he do it and Critic getting pissed off because he'd rather do a Marilyn Monroe movie.
• In Disneycember 2016, he talks about how he really didn't want to give in to people demanding he do the sequels, but finally he is and hopes we appreciate him.
• Tamara only did Creepshow (a film not many have seen) for TNS because the comments were abusing her too much for not seeing "classic" movies.
• "Evil Dead Old vs New" had both sexual fanservice in Critic spending the review tied up, and the non-sexual kind in how it was all about One True Pairing Hyper Boner's relationship.
• He did The Emoji Movie, a movie with no nostalgic tie-ins, because of so many requests to do it, and people also suspect some meddling to get subscribers back. He later acknowledged that it provoked fans to request The Boss Baby as his next review.

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