* BreakupBreakout: Due to his injury, he was barely in the Nexus at all. However, back in 2010, very few people would have guessed that Skip Sheffield would later become a bigger star than anyone else in the original Nexus. While he hasn't been center of a high profile angle the same way Barrett was, he's been far more consistently high on the card. While [[Wrestling/BryanDanielson Daniel Bryan]] is a much bigger star than Ryback, he was never really a part of Nexus, being kicked out in less then a week.
* DevelopmentGag: The name Ryback makes a little more sense if you know that he wrestled on the independents as "The Silverback" Ryan Reeves: '''Ry'''an "The Silver'''back'''".
* FanCommunityNicknames: He took to referring to his fans as "Rybackers" on Twitter.
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: A very straight example of this. As much as WWE liked Ryback, they didn't plan on giving him a WWE Championship match as early as they did, but after John Cena had surgery to repair an injury and took longer to heal than originally planned (and keep in mind that Cena's known for usually coming back ''faster'' than expected from legit injuries), they had to go to him as a backup.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen
** One can't help but wonder how different the Nexus storyline(s) - and Ryback's own WWE career - would have gone with Ryback not breaking his leg.
** International Championship Wrestling had announced a ''Thunda In Guyana'' show for May of 2017, which typically feature Caribbean independent wrestlers, but when the month arrived it was pushed back to July first with the promise of "bigger superstars in the wrestling fraternity" such as Wrestling/AlSnow, Wrestling/TommyDreamer, [[Wrestling/BrodusClay Tyrus]], Wrestling/CarlitoColon, Wrestling/BobbyLashley and Ryback.
* YouLookFamiliar: Was once part of [[Wrestling/WWEToughEnough Tough Enough season 4]], and a couple years later NXT and was part of Nexus, but broke his leg at a house show and was gone for nearly a year and a half.