Characters / The Nostalgia Critic: The Critic

aka: The Nostalgia Critic The Critic Tropes N To Z

Main Character Index | The Critic | Doug's Characters | Malcolm's Characters | Tamara's Characters | Other Characters

A sarcastic, bratty mess who likes his temper tantrums. The Nostalgia Critic is a reviewer of film and television from The '80s and '90s and the show's star.

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A

• Abusive Parents: His parents (and various mentions of other family members suggest they weren't too great either) broke him really bad, making him an easily scared, naive, weepy Psychopathic Manchild who thinks parents shouting at each other happens all the time and has children getting hurt as a Berserk Button, but they've done a couple of nice things for him that keep them out of "totally irredeemable" territory. Plus both of them have died (at different points) and he sounded completely destroyed hearing and talking about it.
  Critic: Yeah, I remember the last time I said "this is the nineties, old man" to my Dad... (shakily and looking traumatized) i-it really was the last time.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • In a post-Plot Hole review of Twilight, he says it made him realize he can't keep obsessing over the past, needs to move on, and wants to go back to being the universe instead of having a physical body. Come “The Review Must Go On” and all that's forgotten about.
  • Mara Wilson is gonna be angry that you had to learn about child stars again, Critic... Even then you didn't learn, agreeing with Zordon in Turbo that all child stars know how to do is go crazy, being mean to Anna Sophia Robb by focusing on her looks in a negative way instead of her acting, and adding a rimshot to mocking fun of Dakota Fanning.
    • Lampshaded when he lazily says "insert Mara Wilson revenge joke here" in "Top 12 Santa Clauses" but then a clip of her laughing still scares him.
  • In Scooby-Doo and To Boldly Flee, he actually talked to people and took the chance to make friends/strengthen the relationships he already had, not to mention helping everyone in the Plot Hole. The reboot made him more isolated, the Santa Christ call implying out of guilt.
  • His very potent determination to never hurt people again (and succeeding at being a Big Good) was replaced with maiming cats, more personal insults, hitting kids, suggesting torture that not even the devil thought of, and beating three people to near-death with a baseball bat. He acknowledged this in "I'll Be Home For Christmas", where he apologized to Chester for the ill-treatment and wants to be good even if he fucks up.
  • Lampshaded anvil-hard in the video he sent to the Nerd roasting. “Even though we ended at a good place in To Boldly Flee, I still hate you!”
  • He says "a director can make a bad film" in his AI soapbox speech, but Burton very nearly manages to teach him that lesson in Alice in Wonderland (2010), fucking up in Critic's eyes before it can sink in. It's so Call-Back-like this may be intentionally using the trope.
  • In Christmas With The Kranks after a sad speech about changing, self-loathing and how at least if you're aware of the bad things you've done you shouldn't hate yourself so much, he goes right back to arguing with Tamara and Malcolm and treating them badly.
• Aggressive Submissive: A force of nature personality coupled with an Extreme Doormat need to be loved will make you one of these. In PQH, he's technically the General's boss, but tells him he's into being leashed and wants to be invited to a BDSM party.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • Variant in Future's End when Snob tells him in basic terms to do his Sex Slave job again. He breaks down crying immediately, but kneels down and unzips anyway.
• The Alcoholic: Even though even Doc Brown would probably laugh at him for not being able to handle his drink, booze pops up a lot in his show. In It, Critic gets wasted from his Stephen King Drinking Game and can barely speak in coherent sentences midway through the review, Dr Smith his father gets concerned that he could end up dying.
• Alcoholic Parent: His mother calls him up when she's been drinking and insults him horribly.
• Allegedly Dateless: Reboot only. He's so sex-starved that he uses Rogue figurines as wank tools, but he has people feeling him up all over the place.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Gender-inverted. He has a Masochism Tango-like relationship with The Nostalgia Chick, he sees no problem with the attractive inmates from Chicago snuffing him out, got attracted to Tamara after she tortured him and gave her a job to make his “I just watch him because he's pretty hurting” demographic happy, and his prom date ended up raping him. Hyper Fangirl actually had Right for the Wrong Reasons, thinking he would love her because she pretended to like the things he did, but Doug saying in commentary that Critic had been close to falling for her because she kidnapped and hurt him.
• All Take and No Give: What gets him into so much trouble with Rachel, Malcolm, Tamara and the Hyper Fangirl. He wants them around to be abused and stroke his ego, but when they either snap from mistreatment or (in the case of the last) feel like they have a chance with him, he gets pissed off.
• Alter-Ego Acting: The Critic's name is Doug, but he's still a fictional character whom Doug Walker plays. Critic and Doug have talked at least three times, and post The Review Must Go On they're slightly bitter at each other. In a 2017 youtube trailer, Critic called Doug the character.
• Ambiguously Human: Maven insults him by calling him a "reanimated dead guy", he randomly changes into a South Park version of himself out of anger at the end of "Top 11 South Park Episodes", the "Why Do We Love Zombies" title card averts Beauty Is Never Tarnished by having his face decay, and he manages to be fine with being burned alive in "Ghost Dad". Shyam-amon calls him "mortal" in "Devil", but he's not exactly the best judge.
• Amazon Chaser: Put an Action Girl in a movie (but don't chickify her) and he'll fall in love. Tamara in The Wicker Man (2006) uses this to her advantage, as while she's cutesy and silly with Snob and Spoony, she tortures Critic and it gets her a job with him.
• Am I Just a Toy to You?:
  • His screaming at the Chick about does she even care about him goes into this trope when Word of God confirmed they had sex in the FernGully: The Last Rainforest review.
  • An Interplay of Sex and Violence version at the end of The Wicker Man (2006), as he runs after Tamara to yell at her... not for torturing him, but for leaving afterwards and not giving him a chance to give her a job because views go up when he's in pain.
• Animals Hate Him: In the mindfucks list, a toy puppy turns into a giant gorilla to kill him. Close to being justified, as whenever there's a movie with an animal in the lead, he usually wants them dead.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Played with. He's annoying, but The Other Guy keeps him in place through disproportionate means, like punching him back into a review.
• The Anti-Grinch: Ever since his first Christmas special, the Nostalgia Critic has displayed a love of Christmas so much that his love for it has become a Running Gag. His over the top admiration for it becomes more and more extreme, including Implied Death Threats in a rocking Power Ballad (that he tried suppressing with a Chill-Pill patch), turning into a giant-head and nuking the Earth one episode and turning Malcom into a zombie, and flying to Planet Sha7u#o?WZ, breaking the light barrier, warping the speed of time, shattering every conceivable ozone layer and then destroying the planet with sheer enthusiasm just so he could show that he loved Christmas more than See-Sea Cuckooblocks just as she was being awarded the title of "The Biggest Lover of Christmas in all the Galaxies."
• Anti-Hero: He's arguably one of the few characters to be anywhere on the scale, depending on the episode in question:
  • He's a Classical Anti-Hero most of the time.
  • He eventually settles on Knight in Sour Armor in To Boldly Flee since he has genuinely altruistic motives and no real Kick the Dog moments other than indulging Chick's hate of Lupa by giving her Lupa's number so they could prank call her. Earlier on...
  • He arguably leaned towards a Pragmatic Hero since Suburban Knights, as he genuinely cares for his team mates and shows both courage and surprisingly strong leadership in the final battle.
  • He ventures into Unscrupulous Hero & Nominal Hero when he's angry, and has stayed here since coming back from the Plot Hole as he's the devil's favorite. Lampshaded in Spawn when Kermit-Devil wants him to be the leader of the demon army because he's so awful.
• The Anti-Nihilist: The world sucks and he's all too aware that he's useless, but he still mostly wants to do good.
  Critic: It's like trying to save a sinking ship with a bandaid. Anything I try to do would be completely pointless. Save me.
• Anti-Role Model: Doug tries to make it very clear that you shouldn't think of Critic as a badass or someone to look up to, with his Hair-Trigger Temper and disproportionate aggression to things that don't really matter. It's common for others on his show like Rob, Rachel, Malcolm, Tamara, or any of his more sane co-producers to roll their eyes while he goes batshit over a movie.
• Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: Post-reboot, one of the most meta examples. Critic is still broken and pathetic, but he treats his underlings like his dolls, characters are created to make things go his way, he can insult Doug whenever he wants, and he doesn't always fail when he rebels against actually being a character.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: At the end of To Boldly Flee he merges with the Plot Hole threatening the Awesomeverse and sacrifices his physical body but essentially becomes the universe itself.
  • Ultimately subverted in "The Review Must Go On", where it is revealed that the Critic was actually stuck in a purgatory that the Plot Hole created from his subconciousness because his own mind was unable to comprehend that he would commit such an act of heroism. This ultimately leads to the Critic escaping back to his own world.
• The Atoner: This trait is especially apparent in To Boldly Flee, as even the trailers had his lines about finally having a chance to make up for his mistakes.
  Optimus Prime: I died for your sins.
  Critic: And clearly I will only die for mine.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: As part of Hypocritical Humor, he gets distracted by a housefly in Ferngully II. In other reviews, he'll get caught up in a sketch if the movie is too dull. Doug has stated in multiple vlogs that he's almost certain he has ADD, so that would explain why Critic can't seem to keep much focus on anything. There's a moment in The Uncanny Valley review where he goes all out on this trait.
  Critic: Well that's something reviewers don't do, lose focus. Like the time I saw Vin Diesel at the premiere of Fred 3, neither of us would admit why we were actually there but- you might have noticed an edit there, because I got distracted with nothing to do with what we're talking about, my apologies, now let us return to our review Wicker Man II: I Was Really Ghost Rider- you might have noticed another edit there but that happens when you have years of sexual repression building up and then all you can think about is Jessica Lange dressed up as a snowman with her big- you might have noticed another edit... and I'm just gonna stop there.
  • In the Star Wars edition of Hotshot, he admits he's feeling bouncier than normal and is having a new idea every few minutes.
  • In the “trying to look cool in leather” ending of The Matrix, he gets distracted by Jim walking by, and Malcolm has to grab his chin in order to get him back to 'reality'.
  • In his review of Catsand Dogs, he quickly loses focus when he has a piece of string in front of him or is told to fetch a ball.
  • In the review of his home movies, he unknowingly thinks his child self really needs ritalin.
  • When the grandfather in Spy Kids 3D gets distracted by a butterfly, he gets annoyed because of the "reinforcing ADD stereotypes".
• Attention Whore: The Nostalgia Chick gently bitches about his hogging all the limelight when he shows up dressed as Tim Curry in her review of The Worst Witch. The beginning of Dawn Of The Commercials has him lapping up the praise of a huge crowd and choir music (because he's doing another commercials) like he's some kind of messiah. In “Old vs New: Spider-Man”, this is the reason why he doesn't just unfriend Hyper and be free of her guilt-tripping. By the time he's realized his own safety is more important, it's way too late.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: This was the lyric playing when he tried getting up the courage to hold the Chick's hand in "Thanks For The Feedback".
  Oh, but he watches so sadly. How can he tell her he loves her? Yes, he would give his heart gladly...
  • In a more toxic fashion, while he treats Malcolm and Tamara horribly, a lot of episodes (especially Matrix Month) show that he needs them and trusts them to take care of him.
  • Chester can be the punching bag, but Critic is the only one to look after him at all, and has told him straight up that he appreciates the bum's kindness.
• Ax-Crazy: Can be set off into crazed violence by sufficiently poor movies, and is pretty manic-depressive otherwise. Gets worse after he has to come down from being happy in the Plot Hole, as it's implied that he decides to check himself into an asylum after a particularly homicidal breakdown in the Master of Disguise review. Later on, his threat to Sci-Fi Guy to do a crossover with him (and do all the work) or else next time they're at a con he'll slit guy's wrists and leave him in a bathtub, is... special in creepy. Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer is entirely based on what will happen if you control him too much and then suddenly take the Restraining Bolt away.

B

• Babysitter from Hell: Despite having babysit kids fine in the past, he treats Evilina horribly in The Cat in the Hat. Which should be fitting considering where she lives, but she doesn't seem to enjoy it very much.
  • Expands beyond Evilina in Jurassic Park III, as he says that whenever he feeds babies, he leaves the food five feet away from them because they're lazy and should work for their own meal.
• Back from the Dead: Commits a Heroic Suicide in To Boldly Flee, but convinces Doug to bring him back in "The Review Must Go On". He regrets this by Son of the Mask, but Evilina tells him he has to stay alive because killing him off got complaints the first time.
• Badass Unintentional: When he's trying to do anything, he's a Failure Hero. By accident however (or when he's pissed enough), he's exploded cities, come back to life after getting killed and can tell the death star to blow up a DVD.
• Bait-and-Switch Tyrant: In the Transformers-Bratz arc, after he wakes up from getting chloroformed, he hides angrily in the bushes, shoots the Chick with a tranquilizer dart and sinisterly says it's his turn. It turns out that he just wanted to pretend he had power while trying to give her a self-esteem boost.
• Bait the Dog:
  • For the first fifteen minutes of Lupa's “A Talking Cat” review, he seems nicer and more toned down from his comeback self; lets her talk the most, actually apologizes when a joke makes her sad, and submissively backs down from annoying her when she threatens to punch him. but then in the halfway point he shoots her, and while she shoots him back later, he does it again before the episode ends
  • In the Transformers 4 crossover, he's bored and lets Erod runs the show for the first half of the review. But when Erod goes to bust the dvd early, he shoots the hammer out of his hand, reminds him who everyone comes to see and displays electric powers. He's also completely fine with killing Bay even when he thinks Bay is human and torturing Erod for not much reason.
• Balls of Steel: At the beginning of his Bridge to Terabithia review, he says that when he mentioned he would review the movie in his "Princess Hate" editorial, people responded "If you touch that timeless treasure, I will impale your testicles on a set of toothpicks." He says that he no longer has any feeling down there because of the past abuse of his testicles, which he then shows.
• Basement-Dweller: It's a lovely house, but he lived with his mom until she died.
• Beauty Is Bad: Diamanda showed great restraint in not blowing up his head when he freaked at the site hiring scary-looking people like her.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Parodied for silly laughs. With all the suicides, shots to the head and occasional getting the shit kicked out of him, you'd think he'd at least be a little scarred. Averted in the “Why Do We Love Zombies” title card though, with his eyes milky white, skin greying and blue, and a ton of lesions. He is truly a zombie after all. While it never actually happens, a lot of Zod's threats to Critic are heavily based on averting this, with Eye Scream, “spilled organs”, castration and general mutilation until he no longer looks human.
• Became Their Own Antithesis:
  • To Boldly Flee being mostly a Star Wars analogy, he was the hero who The Emperor (played by Rob) wanted dead and gone. Even before that, in the Titanic movie review, he was the troubled Darth Vader to Rob's controlling Emperor. In the Star Wars version of Pop Quiz Hotshot, he's the Emperor (with the General as his Darth Vader) and relishes the power.
  • "Christmas With The Kranks", "The Uncanny Valley", and "I'll Be Home For Christmas" have him acknowledge his change into a more aggressive and abusive individual, in that he's tired of screwing up all the time, but Character Development isn't always positive and he can't help being broken.
• Because I Said So:
  • In the phone call with Rachel in The Shining, where she's not even doing anything wrong, just phoning because of the Guilt Complex he's made her have, he loses his temper and makes up rules to “keep her from distracting him”.
  • Turns out to be the case in Ghost Dad, as he's making up rules for Tamara/Malcolm to humiliate themselves with to punish them for torturing him.
• Being Good Sucks: Played with, as his very conscious decision to atone for his mistakes and sacrifice himself to save the world got turned into a parodox by Real Life Writes the Plot, so he gave up and miserably Took a Level in Jerkass. But in I'll Be Home For Christmas, he rants that being nice to people who want him dead is going to be so hard, and he'll fuck up, but he still wants to try because he has to get better.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Inverted. Whenever religion gets brought up, the ditziness is downplayed and he'll have intelligent things to say.
• Beneath the Mask: He's really scared of someone manipulative going inside his head and finding out all the nasty stuff he's feeling, so puts on a front and settles for complaining about being Not Evil, Just Misunderstood. Enforced in Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, as a chill patch makes him cute and safe and marketable about his love for Christmas, but when Tamara rips it off he turns into an embodiment of his Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant traits.
• Berserk Button:
  • The "Bat Credit Card" and Doug drive him to psychopathic rage. By Christmas With The Kranks/Bunny Boobies, both still make him angry, but he's more pissed off and upset that people keep wanting him to do both freak outs over and over. (Doug said in a 2012 interview that the former meme has given him a twitchy eye.)
  • Since the show began again in 2013, the Critic despises TMZ.
  • Even after the reboot, he hates it when people bring up Doug. In the "Disney Afternoon" episode, when Malcolm said how good Doug was, there was a cut and Malcolm nursing a black eye and couldn't feel much in his mouth.
  • He would also kindly like you to not say the proper name of DT because the theme song finally got out of him.
  • Anyone but himself bringing up Demo Reel. Dr Hack at the end of Sailor Moon got a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown for saying the show's concept would make him money, and Yo in Pop Quiz Hotshot uses it to intentionally make him Change the Uncomfortable Subject.
  • He's really tired of the 'beam/portal in the sky' cliche in movies and it will get a reaction out of him if it shows up. Subverted with Iron Man where he's simply surprised to see it in something made much earlier.
• The B Grade: Inverted. An A- was such a rare occasion that he got a trip to Chuck E Cheese whenever that happened. The bullying and always moving to new places probably had something to do with it.
• Big Bad: The closest thing to one in Kickassia and "The Review Must Go On".
• Big Eater: If all the junk food in the first Commercials Special is any indication, especially as he'd been sitting in the same place and stuffing himself for a week.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: He doesn't see the big deal about having a coffee, beer, pepto-bismal, Chinese food and pizza slurpie, or sugar-frosted burrito-stuffed hotpockets with lard on the side and butter taken from real liposuctions. No wonder Santa Christ had to cure him from diabetes.
• Blessed with Suck: The Matrix Revolutions calls his increased meta (and reality warping) skills in the reboot “ruining”, which he uses to his advantage but makes him crueler and even more depressed than he was when he didn't know he was a character.
• Blood Knight: A lot more pronounced in reboot. Against his will to be fair to him, as in Maximum Overdrive he craves the violence, but also doesn't want to be stereotypically male and realizes he should question it. Just doesn't want to.
• Brainless Beauty: For a time in The Last Airbender. He's been talent-bended so he has no emotion, but it also makes him coincidentally do everything he's told, and sets the blue Puppy-Dog Eyes on full-time.
• Brains and Bondage:
  • He's a Genius Ditz masochist who loves aggressive women. In the first Nerd Rant, he's proud of how he tortures himself.
  Critic: So what's the point in seeing The Lost World? For you, none. For me, I'm a glutton for fucking punishment.
  • When Tamara is thankful she doesn't have to be the Ana in a 50 Shades review, he complains at her that ballgags are surprisingly comfortable. When she asks how would he know, he lies “...research”.
  • In Pop Quiz Hotshot, he's smart enough to keep a Hostage Situation going without getting arrested (though in Critic-show he's threatened with it a couple of times) and wants to be on General Anesthetic's leash as well as be invited to one of his play parties.
  • In Suicide Squad (2016), while Joker annoys him, he's perfectly happy with lime green anal beads until Joker reveals they've been used.
• Break the Cutie:
  • It turns out that the fuck-up lists were breaking him. He stopped fighting it at the beginning of the third episode, and at the end his frustration over Battlefield Earth leads into a screaming tantrum about everyone being horrible. Even Douchey feels bad for him.
• Break the Haughty:
  • After his psychotic creeper-dom in "The Review Must Go On", the Son of the Mask review gets him lower than even the beginning of Scooby-Doo. He's looking through garbage cans for stuff to review, goes back to bitching at the audience for wanting to see him suffer, is constantly scared by the movie to the point of Exhausted Eyebags (which is a first), begs Santa Christ to help him but gets abused, is told he's meant to suffer, suffers a heart attack and doesn't look especially happy about surviving it, begs Satan and his daughter to kill him but gets refused, plus a reference to his To Boldly Flee death has him crawling on the floor and crying so hard he sounds like he's about to choke.
  • Somewhat in the Man of Steel review, as he treats Joe terribly and would very much like to think he's Superman given the Superman Returns speech playing in his head, but Zod makes him scared, mocks him for a crappy speech and the episode takes no interest in him after he's being held hostage.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He knows how to take over the world but doesn't want to tell, and he can learn languages really fast when he's obsessing over something meaningless, but mostly he hasn't got the will or the self-esteem to change his life for the better. He got off his ass and succeeded in To Boldly Flee and a few months after, but even that got retconned.
• Broken Pedestal: With Santa Christ. In Son of the Mask he's disappointed to learn that the guy actually has a dark side, and said dark side is mostly focused on being cruel to him.
• Broken Record: When Rob is yelling at him (or dragging him off in the alternate scenes) at the end of Speed Racer, mostly all he can do is beg he's sorry over and over in a tearful high pitched voice.
• Broken Tears:
  • Son of the Mask has his crying disturbingly realistic for once, with choking sounds, a red face and dropping out of camera to the floor so nobody can see him.
  • His crying in Food Fight is painful as well, as he's curled up on the floor, clawing his scrunched up face and emitting noisy sobbing.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He is a comedic character that is eccentric, erratic and over-the-top but he's very straightforward as a critic and is strongly passionate about the things that he's talking about. Though he does get easily distracted by the random and wacky shenanigans that happens around him.
• Butt-Monkey: Word of God says he was created to suffer. Deconstructed in Scooby-Doo onwards, where he breaks down over how hellish his life is and wants nothing more than to do something good for once. He tries to act like a successful Mean Boss during crossovers, and either the others get the upper hand or his own attitude does him in. Hyper and Devil Boner also mock him for his Distressed Dude status at their hand, beaming with pride at the other for holding him hostage so well.
• Byronic Hero: An impulsive cynic who has a Trauma Conga Line backstory. He wants to be good, but his self-loathing, whininess and temper keep getting in the way.

C

• Came Back Wrong: Aside from the far more cruel actions after coming back, multiple episodes have called him a zombie, and Matrix Month confirmed he was a Reality Warper with his Plot Hole powers being called "ruining".
• Came Back Strong: There are plenty of things off, but in terms of the fourth wall he's a lot more aware of who's running the show, and what he can do if things don't go his way.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: He might have Undying Loyalty, but his promise to Chester that he'd keep the Search For The Necronomicon just between them lasted for about twenty seconds.
• Cannot Spit It Out: The look on his face after he just can't get up the nerve to hold the Chick's hand in "Thanks For The Feedback" (and she doesn't notice) is almost depressing.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': The Critic never suspected that God would be watching his "Old vs. New" video of The Ten Commandments (1956) vs. The Prince of Egypt. He thought God was a benevolent and kind being, but God didn't let him get away with that statement.
  God: "Your ass is grass."
• Can't Hold His Liquor: In the Snob/Phelous crossover, he was drunk and weepy by 6pm, not even knowing who Rob was, messier than usual, craving Ninja Turtles (even the third movie) and crying that he used to like The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. Snob called it "shockingly depressing" and Phelous wanted to hang himself. He compares Eight Crazy Nights to that time he puked from having too much eggnog.
• Cassandra Truth: When he tries to put Rocky's message of "people can change" to the real world, he gets punched and shot at.
• Caustic Critic: The fact that he's a Deconstructive Parody of one, focusing on how miserable the job is, has become more clear as time goes on. He tries to make strong points about things in movies in a way that is so abrasive and bitterly hostile that sometimes he looks ridiculous as a result.
• Character Development:
  • As probably part of Misery Builds Character, his attitude towards Harley Quinn and the Joker's relationship. In his Top Eleven Animated Women, he has the hots for her (naturally) and likes the couple because it "gives homicidal maniacs like him a chance". In his Top Eleven Batman Episodes, he feels sorry for her, talks about how the pairing sums up Domestic Abuse in a nutshell and his one complaint about the episode is the fanservice of doctors in mini-skirts.
  • In his first top eleven, the Scariest Nostalgic Moments, he calls the Villain Song in Care Bears In Wonderland gay and mentions that if you watch Care Bears long enough you see the face of the devil. When he actually reviews the three movies, he of course still thinks they're sickeningly sweet but is a lot more mature about explaining his problems with them.
  • He started being calmer(ish) and giving a general review at the end of his episodes after The Garbage Pail Kids Movie became the utter pinnacle of badness in his eyes.
  • After the My Pet Monster debacle, he's learned not to be entitled and complain about having to watch something when it's a movie he actually bought or rented.
  • invoked Compare the reviews of A Kid in King Arthur's Court and Alien: Resurrection. The former has him salivating over a case of Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading between two young-looking sisters and the latter a few years later has him irritated over how it was just advertised to get the male demographic in.
  • All of the above become a plot-point in To Boldly Flee, when Doug tells him that he's evolved over the years from an abrasive comedy character into a decent and three-dimensional person.
  • Part of the speech at the end of Christmas With The Kranks is addressing people who think his development has been undone since TBF, sadly noting that he has changed from then, in quite a few ways, but development doesn't always mean being a better person.
  • He's gone from being ashamed of the fact that he's been crossdressing for ages, to accepting that he enjoys it and it's just what his show does.
• Character Filibuster: If his "child abuse" Berserk Button gets hit, the review will stop for a few minutes so he can get all his rant out.
• Characterization Marches On: Going from a happy, fanboying proto-Chester to a manic-depressive cynic, to Atoner for the death of Ma-Ti, to self sacrificial saviour of the Awesomeverse, to an abusive, depressed, condescending Meta Guy with too much power.
  • In the Super Mario Brothers movie, he's grossed out by the big bertha and makes no fuss about the Satellite Love Interest either being a Damsel in Distress or getting a flame thrower at the end. Watching it now, it's just... strange.
  • Also in the early days, he talked about kids' short attention spans and getting easily bored. With his hate for Filling the Silence, can you imagine him saying that now?
  • In his second Nerd rant, he doesn't even know what a compliment is. Fast forward to now and he's desperate for a movie to give him something good to say.
  • Something that applies to both Critic and Doug, but when they did a segment on how much they liked a film (think until about early 2010), their tone was more muted and Critic in the “Top Five Video Game Movies” practically sounds like he's on downers. After that, Doug let his absolute love for movies shine through everything, letting us get the keetish fanboy we know and enjoy.
  • In 2007/2008 days, take a drink for how many times he calls anything he doesn't like “gay”. In later years, aside from having open crushes on men, even by Captain N he was apologizing for bottom of barrel gay jokes.
  • It's weird to see him go on about how much he loves basketball in Space Jam, when he makes it pretty clear he's not a sports guy later on, and Rob's mocked Doug for showing no interest in sports in a few vlogs.
  • Lampshaded in Christmas with the Kranks when a pre-character-based Critic tells 2015 Critic (who sadly admits his character development is fucked, but has a lot more depth) that "a white wall is our whole identity".
  • Old "Top Ten Hottest Animated Women"-era Critic had no empathy for Harley and related to the Joker. Actual Critic relates to Harley and has played Catwoman and Poison Ivy for reference scenes with no Queer People Are Funny.
• Character Tics: Puckering his mouth when he's thinking, giving a Death Glare with his mouth slightly open when he's trying to be angry but failing, and rubbing his chest any time he feels particularly naughty. The last is a Doug thing, as Ask That Guy does it and he himself is prone to it too. Reboot introduced clawing at the walls when he's in a particularly crazed-angry mood, as well as a wide-eyed pout when he's smugly trying to act innocent after he's said something shitty. He also bounces and shakes his fists when he's excited.
• The Chew Toy: Part of the fun is seeing just how much he can suffer through a bad film before he'll snap completely.
  • Not that he doesn't often deserve it, but the other contributors really do enjoy humiliating him. Even a long-dead guy has his fun.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He gets upset at unneeded fanservice, princesses, damsels in distress, male-dependent women and so on, but he'll make it clear if he's attracted to a (usually toppy or curvy) lady.
  • A good early example would be A Kid In King Arthur's Court, as he creepily leers over the two sisters and wants incestuous lesbian sex, but also coins "dumbass in distress disorder", calling out films like this and others for having a strong woman in the first two acts yet needing a man to save her in the third.
• Chummy Commies: He can't say it much in his own show, but "Bunny Boobies" has him wanting to go to Romania because he likes communism.
• Closet Key: For Malcolm, who acted in the first Hyper vlog that this is his first crush on a guy and is “coming to terms” with it.
• Close to Home:
  • A lot of his choices in the “Top 11 New Halloween Classics” are about people descending into insanity, or locked in their crazy not being able to get out, and making the relating explicit when he sadly says the scariest monsters are human and he (or anyone else) could act like one at any time.
  • In his top 11 Gravity Falls episodes, he relates to Pacifica in Northwest Manor Mystery because she's more fragile than she seems, and speaking of, Not What He Seems because of the being scared and not trusting reality.
  • In ''Is A Charlie Brown Christmas Overrated", he likes the special for the fact that he can relate to not particularly happy childhoods and emotional confusion.
  • Gaston is one of his favorite villains because he can relate to Belle being the victim of someone who won't take no.
  • He's made a lot of references to getting molested as a child, and Freddy Got Fingered's scene of essentially mocking sexually abused children makes him outright say he was just in the worst mental place he's ever gone to. He's also notably very quiet, himself and not the parody of earlier scenes, but not raising his voice at all.
• Cloudcuckoolander: The Critic can be just as eccentric as the wacky personalities that he surrounds himself with and insanely over-the-top in his comedic antics.
• Cloud Cuckoolanders Minder: Usually serves this role for Chester, in that he'll look after him but sometimes take advantage of his need for drugs.
• Color Motif: Blue. The lighting is often blue (because Doug apparently sucks at white balance), the wall went from a warm yellow-orangey in prime to white in reboot and then to a cold blue when people complained, he's got Innocent Blue Eyes, and he exploded into blue particles when he died.
• Compressed Vice:
  • In Tank Girl he goes on about how he can't deal with looking at beefcake, but before and after he's both given and appreciated Female Gaze.
  • Christmas Story II has the plot be Critic potentially losing his love for Christmas because of the bad movie, when 1) even he lampshades that will never happen and 2) the whole plot of the last review had the problem be that he loved Christmas too much (plus in the next week's editorial he rushes through it because again, wants it to be Christmas faster, and the Care Bears Nutcracker beginning has him suffering Christmas withdrawal).
  • In The Purge, he suddenly has a huge issue with being redundant, with even Malcolm asking why he'd risk his own life for that. Might just be self-righteous hypocrisy instead, considering he's doing the crossover that Film Brain demanded and he slaps Casper off after he says the above, but it's not made clear either way.
• Condescending Compassion:
  • After strawing him, ignoring him and having very little empathy, he eventually explains to Joe why Joe likes Man of Steel. Zod mocks him for the sad attempt at being a hero right afterwards.
  • Played for Laughs in “When Is A Movie Just A Movie” when his point is good (there are bigger problems than just movies) yet slathers on the condescension about how you can choose to not be effected by a movie. His ending is that he's the one with final say over which film is worth getting upset over though, so it's not irritating.
  • “Why Do We Love Stupid” starts with him talking about the Dalai Lama's video on how compassion isn't weak but not quite getting the gist, using it to assume his “all comedy is misery” thing again.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror:
  • The bad upbringing gives him a few moments, like thinking every family have regular giant arguments at dinner, rape not being considered a special type of evil or defending kinky fantasies at a very young age.
  • He's also been taught to think that friendship is getting punished if you don't do what the more important one says.
  • Talked about in the most melancholy way possible in “Why Do We Love Zombies”, saying the real horror is just... getting used to the fear and how it beats you down.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Between his religious belief and wanting scientific proof that God exists. Mostly this is kept to the background not to offend anyone.
  • In Maximum Overdrive, he really wants to be a Blood Knight and perv on the violence, but also really wants to not be confined to his gender as his other hand keeps making him read Jane Austen whenever there's a violent scene.
  • With Hyper. On the one hand he's scared of her, hates her enough to not even consider her a real person, has issues with kidnapping, and wants her gone. On the other hand he's tired enough to Show Some Leg/offer friendship in hopes that she'll leave him alone and not hurt him more. On the other other hand, even before Stockholm Syndrome kicked in he indulged her because she gave him attention.
• Constantly Curious: In the first two commercial specials, even though he figures that the two 1800 numbers are run by pedophiles, he calls them anyway. (And doesn't hang up even though he's disgusted, but that's a different problem.)
• Converted Fanboy: Took a bit longer to love Avatar: The Last Airbender, Adventure Time and Steven Universe than Doug did, but regularly praises them for progressiveness and not talking down to kids.
• The Corrupter: He has this unintentional ability to turn otherwise basically decent people into sadists. (Like Lewis and Doug agreeing that Linkara put the idea to rape Critic into Spoony's head.)
• Corrupt the Cutie: He was a Catholic schoolboy, and while he's still religious, now he has an active sex life that isn't so big on Safe, Sane, and Consensual.
  Critic A: ["apologizing"] What would Jesus do?
  Critic B: [instantly horny] Take me!
• Cosmic Plaything: He really should stop pissing off beings with more powers than him. Deconstructed after To Boldly Flee, as when he's finally happy and at peace, the universe (i.e CA needing money) made his sacrifice a paradox and brought him back, giving him all the issues.
• Cosplay Otaku Girl: A Rare Male Example. An M Bison costume that he brags got him tons of pussy, a stripperiffic Link outfit, and, for his review of The Transformers, an Optimus Prime suit with a conspicuous crotch bulge that we get to look at every now and then.
• Crazy Jealous Guy:
  • For Chick. He can't always stop it coming through the stronger I Want My Beloved to Be Happy feeling. He's wary over her obsession with Todd, gets all growly when she fawns over JewWario in Suburban Knights, and looks close to tears (to her credit, so is she) when he mentions she doesn't always return phone calls or emails.
  • In Pop Quiz Hotshot, he gets possessive over anything that he considers his, from the Alf doll to General Anesthetic.
• Crazy-Prepared: “What You Never Knew About TMNT” is a video Critic just so happened to release in case he got captured by a crazy fan.
• Crazy Survivalist: He prepares with his gun, a police jacket, a S.W.A.T helmet, knuckle dusters and a baseball bat to watch Secret Of NIHM 2.
• Creepy Shadowed Under Eyes: When an episode gives him black smears under his eyes (and it's not just Doug looking tired with no help), then it's a sign he's breaking harder than normal.
• Criminal Amnesiac: The Reloaded reviews have him constantly attack himself for being "too gay", the friends that had helped him atone in To Boldly Flee, make racist comments towards Ma-Ti and not care one bit about said planeteer's death.
• Crusty Caretaker: The only other job he's had is Doug's factory cleaner gig (this was when Doug was still in school) and he got in trouble for hitting on "Amanda" too much.
• Cute But Psycho:
  • Sometimes sweet, sometimes blowing up an entire city by accident because of a tantrum.
  • Getting a So Proud of You from the Devil for a torture suggestion makes him giggle about having a lot to work with.
  • “Psychotic princess” is the only way to describe him in Pop Quiz Hotshot, as he gleefully kidnaps people to force them to be his friends, and keeps asking if he looks pretty in the winning tiara. He does.
• Cute Glasses Boy: It's not that Doug isn't attractive anyway, but his glasses make him look very baby-faced.
• Cuteness Proximity: He squees himself into teenage girl mode when he sees Snuffaluffagus in Sesame Street.

D

• Dark and Troubled Past: Adds another level of funny when you get that he has all these things he could justifiably complain about and he chooses to focus on shitty movies instead.
  • Lampshaded in “Top 11 New Halloween Classics” where he says fucked up shit happening with family might not have happened to you much, but he's got a history.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Doug said once that he chose the black suit jacket to establish the Critic as the asshole to the * Dark Secret: Accidentally strangling a hooker to death after Kickassia and while still in Reno. He admits this while thinking the camera's not on yet.
• Dark Messiah: He's friends with the devil, sold his soul, has saved the world three times and Man of Steel involves him being compared to Superman right before he has a screamfest about how the movie sucks.
• Deal with the Devil: He's so desperate to have to have Sequel Month erased from his memory that he'll do whatever Sage tells him to do. He traded his soul away to Malcolm's devil for the ability to do a Zod impression, which showed how little anything means to him post-retcon.
• Death by Despair: After fully breaking down about how his life has gone nowhere, he gets about an inch away from it in his first commercials special.
• Death by Materialism: Downplayed. He doesn't die for being Only in It for the Money in regards to Foodfight!, but he does end up in a worse place of sanity than he was already.
• Death Seeker: You know, you could just leave the room or switch off the TV instead of trying to off yourself constantly.
  • "Return was never an option" in To Boldly Flee. He's so given up that others start to notice, with Mickey outright telling him to not think about the Plot Hole.
  • After his brief period of happiness in the Plot Hole, it's got even worse. In Son Of The Mask he's begging Satan to see sense and just let him die again.
  • Right after Evilina tells him her dad will kill him if he finds out he left her alone, he agrees to come back, but looks over the horizon, stays that little extra longer and hits her later. And in Devil he outright goads who he thinks is the Devil into killing him.
  • In Ghost Dad, while he's only pretending to have died to torture Malcolm and Tamara, he still poured gasoline all over himself and has nostalgic feelings over how nice it is to be dead.
• Defiant Captive: Until he sees all the boy-pandering comics and Stockholm Syndrome starts setting in, he gets in a few sarcastic comments to Hyper about the assassin pointing a gun at him or how long she's planning on keeping him for.
• Deliberately Distressed Damsel: Hams it up like a stereotypical maiden when he thinks Todd is a "masked intruder" there to rape him, and sulks big time when he founds it's just time for a crossover.
• Demonic Possession: In the AVGN vs. NC Final Battle, he gets possessed by the devil when he's losing and can only be killed for a short period by Super Mecha Death Christ.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • In his own reviews, Doug writes Critic as an Extreme Doormat who'll always end up giving in to other contributors demands for a crossover. In others (like The Rap Critic's review of Shaq's album), he'll have the stones to ignore any request.
  • Even with the Bait the Dog moment of being nice then shooting her for no reason (which Doug lampshaded in the bloopers as grosser when he does it to a woman than vice versa), he's a lot less Troubled, but Cute in Lupa's "A Talking Cat" review, making more casual jokes and not treating her like he does Rachel or Tamara.
  • He was always ditzier and more childlike in the Child's Play reviews with Phelous. Ended up contributing to their Dramatic Irony dynamic Phelous is Wrong Genre Savvy because he thinks Critic is still a cowardly manchild, but in reality he's an atoning Death Seeker in To Boldly Flee though, so Tropes Are Not Bad.
  • In “The Review Must Go On”, when the Creator tells a seething Donnie that he'll be more understanding as the Critic, review!Critic mocks that the only 'understanding' videos are the editorials and the rest of the time he's even nastier than before.
• Despair Event Horizon: He's already well past it when The NeverEnding Story III begins. He approaches it at the end of My Pet Monster and start of the following "Nostalgic Commercials" video, falling over the edge near the end.
  • The death of Ma-Ti in Suburban Knights slowly eroded away what was left of his sanity and it all came to a head at the beginning of the Scooby-Doo review.
  • From "The Odd Life Of Timothy Green" to "Does Romeo And Juliet Suck", he hypocritically (because he's gone right back to square one) preaches of how people grow up and learn to adapt. But all the misery comes flooding back in Son of the Mask and he begs for death, so after that, nothing more is said about learning from your mistakes.
  • All the meta from The Last Airbender hurt him a lot more than he let on in that episode, as in the next editorial he ends it talking about fighting too hard for your freedom makes your prison bars so much stronger.
  • There's a whole swathe of events to choose from, but whatever happened before “Why Do We Love Zombies” got a speech about getting used to depression and giving in, letting it destroy you.
  • Confirmed by Doug on the commentary, Critic almost kissing Hyper was going to be a stockholm version. Luckily Bennie reverses it by revealing her plan, but there are still issues post episode.
  • In the Bad Future of 2019, he's completely alone, cries in front of Snob (who owns both him and the site) and has clearly crossed it a long time ago with no hope left at all.
  • As his seventeen year old self is still a Wide-Eyed Idealist despite everything that had gone on, Scooby Doo seems to confirm that it was the prom night rape that finally broke him to make him bitter and cynical.
• Determinator: He'll run all the way from Chicago to Philly to fight the Nerd (which apparently takes two weeks) and he won't even get tired.
• Determined Defeatist: He knows he's pathetic, but carries on because at least he's resilient.
• Defiled Forever:
  • Other than Chick going into Don't You Dare Pity Me! mode and wanting revenge, he's the only left broken over getting raped by Spoony. Even if To Boldly Flee where he's trying to save him, the spooning is still on his mind.
  • While the two weeks that Hyper held him captive is more of a Did They or Didn't They?, he was really fucked up by what she did to him, and always backs away when they're in close contact.
• Depraved Bisexual:
  • Slots into the role a little too well in "The Review Must Go On", as he coos that Doug is cute, rides Mark Wahlberg's fake penis in Boogie Nights just to freak him out, threatens him while calling him 'Tinkerbell' and behaving like he's checking off a lot of items on the Domestic Abuser list.
  • The first couple of retooled Pop Quiz Hotshot episodes had him hitting on all the male contestants he kidnapped, and flirting with General Anesthetic, first wanting to be invited to an S&M party and second asking if he looks pretty in a pink tiara.
• Desperately Craves Affection: In “Cats And Dogs”, the abusive mother gets him to play fetch with her like he's a dog, and he realizes how pitiful it is to be happy about this when he's literally got the ball in his mouth.
  • Even though Santa Christ treats him awfully (confirmed by Walkers), Critic still gets upset at D-Bag kicking the former in the balls because "that's one of my friends".
  • There are hints from the beginning, but Kranks outright says he started the show because he wanted abusive people to like him.
• Dirty Coward:
  • In Ghost Dad, he openly says he hopes his making Tamara and Malcolm feel shit about themselves will give him enough time to run to his car like a coward. it doesn't.
  • In the “Best Avatar Episodes”, he says “the needs of me outweigh the needs of you” to Malcolm when he leaves him to die.
  • When Bay shoots at them in the Transformers 4 review, he runs off to get the Electric Torture chair that he rigged up and tells Erod to draw his fire.
  • In The Passion of the Christ, he immediately betrays Santa Christ. Though this is less dirty than most (he didn't want to get tortured and it's not like Santa Christ hasn't been horrible to him for a while), he's still cast as the Judas.
  • In Hocus Pocus, he says the best way of dealing with the witches is "running away like a pussy".
• Disappeared Dad: He's mentioned very rarely and Critic still lives with his mom. There's been a few hints that the parents got divorced. (This is in-character of course, Doug's dad - Barney Walker - has helped out a lot with music and such, therefore gets thanked in the credits.) In a 2015 Last Angry Geek episode, it was revealed that Dr Smith was his father, and he'd died of cancer not too long ago.
• Dissonant Serenity: Before he goes into Lack of Empathy, his We Wish You A Turtles Christmas post-explosion demenour is pretty blissful, knowing this day would come.
• Distracted by My Own Sexy: When he's being all determined to face down the Nerd at Digital Press, he checks out his reflection in a shop window.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Dulcia of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie defeats a mob of "giant black chickens" by swinging two stick-weapons "throwing them into some kind of hypnotic trance":
  Critic: Yeah, how's that supposed to put you in a trance, taking two sticks and putting them up and down, up and down, up and down, [cut to Dulcia in her Battle Bikini] up and down...up and down... [picture slowly zooms in on her breasts]...up and down...up and down... [gets his hat knocked off] [Beat] You win this round, Dulcea.
• Distressed Dude: Critic has been kidnapped, held hostage, or beaten up at least once by almost every character he's interacted with. Perpetrators include characters from the movie he's currently reviewing, his fellow content creators, sketch characters, and, according to a Noodle Incident in the Cats and Dogs review, a child that he babysat. This is a common enough trope in the series that it's been lampshaded multiple times. Hyper Fangirl and Devil Boner even bonded over kidnapping Critic as a couple's activity.
• The Dog Bites Back: After getting beaten on by Casper for a whole episode, he puts on a Ghostbusters uniform and hunts him down.
  • Likewise, with "True Internet Story", where he kicks the shit out of the Last Angry Geek for making wild accusations about his personality and earlier life.
• Domestic Abuse: In The Shining, it takes him no time at all to slip into abusive husband role to Rachel. She also acts like an abuse victim, rationalizing his behaviour and carrying on trying to help even when she's crying and he's toying with her.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In "Why Is Loki So Hot", he gets pissed about himself being put on invoked The Woobie list ^note despite the fact that he isn't, he's on Jerkass Woobie after reading that it means a character you feel bad for.
• Driven by Envy: He destroys Demo Reel and gives a bad review to The Uncanny Valley just because he doesn't like that daddy wants to do other things that doesn't involve him for a change.
• Dragged into Drag: According to Spoony in his Captain America video, he forced Critic to dress up like a dirty ballerina during Spooning With Spoony 2 and took pictures for blackmail.
• Dragon with an Agenda:
  • The other contributors think that he's the (ineffectual) Mean Boss of the site. In reality, it's The Other Guy (who answers to Michaud, who kidnapped him for BarFiesta and dismissed Critic as a monkey) and Critic's just a puppet with woefully poor self-esteem.
  • Comes back in Sage's Speed Runner episode, where Critic kidnaps Sage and wants to keep him, but when Rob comes in and punishes him he's having a complete breakdown.
• The Dreaded:
  • Malcolm tweeted after "The Worst Christmas Special Ever" that Critic now wants everyone to fear him.
• Driven to Madness:
  • And Batman & Robin drives him 'batshit insane', until he takes some pills. "Tranquilizers. Always come prepared when Schumacher is involved."
• Driven to Suicide: In Spoony's review of Captain America, he asks for the Critics opinion on the movie, making sure he knows that if he doesn't, he'll get blackmailed with crossdressing pictures from when he was roofied and raped. Cut to a shot of the Critic's elevated feet dangling from side to side while squeaking from a rope is heard.
  Spoony: "That's the coward's way out, and you know it, Critic!"
  • After his "Superman Top 11" review, the Critic mentions how the movies always make him smile, before remembering the tragic fates of Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder and the World Trade Center.
    "I'm the Nostalgia Critic, I'm going to go kill myself."
    • Not all Superman movies make him smile. From his Superman IV review. "How long is this movie again?" "Hour and a half." "BLAM!"
  • Bio-Dome made him slash his wrists, although either he or someone else put plasters on them afterwards.
  • The songs in The Pebble And The Penguin make him feel so dirty that he takes a bath with a toaster.
  • It's made clear in To Boldly Flee that he's trying to toe the line between wanting to die (plus that look of peace when he actually does) and wanting to fix his mistakes.
• Drunk with Power: Seeing as how he has so little of it usually, when he does get the faintest whiff of power he'll try and cling to it as hard as he can.
  • Less sympathetic in the reboot, as he says "power is always sexy, because the more of it you have, the more you can get whatever you want" in "Why Is Loki So Hot", and Doug confirmed in his "Disney Afternoon" commentary that having Tamara and Malcolm as essentially his toys to dress up was feeding into Critic's hunger for power.
  • At the beginning of Sharknado, he makes Snob say he needs Critic's help, just so he can be all giddy at the thought of it.
  • In the second episode of Pop Quiz Hotshot he openly connects his Critic suit to having power and forcing people to do things for him.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: He pinches The Nostalgia Chick's ass—while almost unconscious himself.
• Dumb Struck: Because Doug lost his voice again, Alone in the Dark (2005) was so awful that Critic lost the ability to talk.
• Dying Alone: While it doesn't win the round, a CAH panel had Lewis use a card that said “Hello I'm the Nostalgia Critic, I'm dying alone and in pain so you don't have to”, and Doug nods happily.

E

• Entitled Bastard: Mixed with Ungrateful Bastard, in The Monster Squad he tells Tamara that he'll probably need saving in the third act and if she, a “worthless sack of nothingness” could do it that'd be great.
  • In We Wish You A Turtles Christmas, he demands Tamara do her Dorothy impression even when she's dying from the explosion, and uses her as a footstool when she complains at him.
• Endearingly Dorky: His resident Loony Fan Hyper Fangirl falls in love with the Critic because of his nerdiness, love for retro media, and his "half-professional, half-grungy clothes" (quite similar to her love for the Once-ler). Critic is not happy about this.
• Establishing Character Moment: Cartoon Allstars making him so miserable that he sees no other way out than to shoot himself in the head.
  • And a more subtle one at the beginning. Even though seeing the movie "brings back a pool of disappointing memories", he's smiling when he says he has to watch it again.
  • And another near the end. When the characters refuse to stop hammering the moral in, he starts to disagree when they say he should believe in himself and that they care about him.
  • The reboot gets foreshadowing for later cruel out of the way quickly, as he bitches on a random guy's looks, calls the audience "uniquely lazy", talks like Ask That Guy when making a NAMBLA reference, and kills a kitten all in first few minutes.
• Ethical Slut: He thinks everyone, regardless of age or gender, should just have loads of sex and let the stigma of sluttiness as a bad thing die out. A few Pop Quiz Hotshot episodes have him happily calling himself a ho.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • As much as he couldn't stand the Nerd, calling him The Irate Gamer is going too far.
  • He does a Not Me This Time when Todd, Jesu, Y and Rollo T accuse him of making them watch The Last Airbender. He doesn't even know who they are.
  • Even he couldn't bring himself to insult Sesame Street.
  • As bloodthirsty as he is in the Pop Quiz Hotshot pilot, he starts getting a little disturbed by John's offscreen messy death as time goes on. In other episodes, when he's running the show, he's creeped out by the “spazzies” (violent animations done by Doug) and offers whoever made them some of his meds.
• Even Nerds Have Standards:
  • The dorky dancing Peter does in Spider-Man 3 is too geeky even for him.
  • Subverted in the Harry Potter book launch. After spending the majority of the video bitching about it, he has a Freak Out Squee larger than anyone when the books start coming out.
  • There's an affectionate potshot at erotic fanfic writers when George Lucas and Carrie Fisher are the couple in Hook.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Only known as The Critic most of the time. Although Rob/The Other Guy will occasionally call him by his real name.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • He usually “jumps at the opportunity” to make a dick joke, but the one in The Adventures of Pluto Nash is so half-assed that he just wants to relish the next one and pass this over.
  • Doug has said plenty of times that he loves anything to do with gender role reversal, but Critic has no patience for cartoon Zelda's ep about it because they'd already switched it up.
  • He has Conditioned to Accept Horror issues, but side-eyes Hyper being fine with her brother burying her alive.
• Everyone Hates Math: He can't remember any algebraic equation from school.
• Evil All Along: Subtle retcon in The Shining, as before then the reboot was always unclear whether Critic was supposed to be good but really didn't come off that way, or Came Back Wrong and he didn't know what he was doing, or Then Let Me Be Evil. Rachel telling him that she wished she could say that he was once nice to her but that wouldn't be true, proves it a mix of the last two.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When he talks about knowing Mormons in "Top 11 South Park Episodes", he's throughly confused over how anyone could be "unusually nice, and ethical, and not angry, and just... pleasant".
  • Lampshaded in The Shining where he just wants to attack Stephen King because he's making his living by entertaining others.
  Critic: Oh-ho, we'll show him, won't we Pennywise?
• Eviler than Thou: After a long chase scene in BMX Bandits, he admits Diamanda is darker than him, but that he still wants someone shot to alleviate the boredom.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In “The Review Must Go On”, his voice was smoother and deeper as he took control over Doug. And whenever he thought Doug was wriggling out of his power, it only got lower and more threatening.
• Extreme Doormat: While he's a brat who loves starting arguments, he falls apart with little provocation. He's aware of this.
  Critic: I just do what everyone tells me to do in the hopes of feeling less insecure.
  • Subverted in The Top 11 Strangest Couples, as when Little Kuriboh is in bed with him, he lets him touch him despite his discomfort, but throws the other man out when his chest gets groped.
• Extreme Omnisexual: In “The Sixth Day”, he disgusts Sci-Fi Guy by assuming Arnold would “test out” the really creepy doll, and has an Ask That Guy moment when he shrugs and reasons “a mouth is a mouth”. There are also two Critics in the end (...just go with it) and they both want to fuck each other.

F

• Failure Hero: It's very rare that he'll get what he wants or win.
• Fainting: The emotional kind is played for laughs in his review of Judge Dredd, The Wizard, the "I love you, wife" line from Lost in Space and he uses fangirls from Disney movies to do yet more swooning over Will Smith in Independence Day.
• Fallen Hero: In terms of symbolism, To Boldly Flee had him in a Peaceful in Death Crucified Hero Shot as he sacrificed himself before practically becoming God, while Son of the Mask had him prostrate himself in front of the devil and weepingly begging for death. In terms of personality, the reboot started with him maiming a cat and it only got worse from there. The Master Of Disguise◊ dropped another anvil.
• Fanboy: Whenever there's something he likes, or at least a hammy Guilty Pleasure, he'll be gleeing and enjoying himself immensely. When he's faced with Don Bluth himself in Conquest Of The Commercials he goes super sonic Squee before he realizes Don is pissed off with him.
• Fan Hater: While Doug himself is fine with people liking things he doesn't like, Critic frequently judges anybody who enjoys films he considers stupid. Several reviews have given him some insight as to why people enjoy films he hates (such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas!), but he often rejects them and insists he's always right. In the case of Eight Crazy Nights, he finds the fans so annoying that he outright kills them!
• Fantastic Racism: Where he's not actually being racist himself but accusing others. In Monster Mash he accuses Maven of not allowing zombies like him to get get married in Florida, and there's a joke in “Why Do We Love Zombies” about raising zombie awareness.
• Feigning Intelligence: In The Dark Knight Begins Rising when he spews off social issue gibberish analyzing just to get back at The Last Angry Geek (and Doug, and Sage) for pointing that coming back from the Plot Hole has degraded his smarts.
• Fetish: Plenty. As stated in a few reviews; masochism, being humiliated, dildos, roleplay, bondage, fingering, licking whipped cream off a hot body, the Chick's firey temper and six-breasted cats from outer space. Plus he's mixed between knowing Eyes Wide Shut style orgies are creepy and abusive, but also wanting one to happen to him.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Early in Suburban Knights, he vehemently denies the existence of magic. Linkara, who carries a magic gun he only moments ago shot Critic with, gets reasonably angry at this.
• Fluffy Tamer: He hates meant-to-be-liked animals in movies (and they usually hate him right back), but falls completely in love with the gross ones, like the targ from Star Trek III.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The foolish to the Other Guy's responsible. He's the Hotblooded Psychopathic Manchild who gets wasted by 6PM.
• For the Evulz: In “The Plot To Frozen 2”, his reasoning for spoiling everything that's going to happen is that he's an asshole.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He, Tamara and Malcolm have a dysfunctional abusive friendship, and they hate having to deal with his outbursts and complete disregard for their safety. Whenever they have the opportunity to take violent revenge on him, they seize it.
• Freudian Slip:
  • From the A Kid in King Arthur's Court review.
  Nostalgia Critic: Hey, they're actresses first and sisters second, and that's good enough in my porno—book.
  • Barb Wire: "I remember it so you don't boobies! I mean, boobies, in the boobies boobies..."
• Friend to Psychos: Explicitly to the Devil in Spawn, as he says going down to hell was fun and he should do it more often.

G

• Gag Penis: Thanks to Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Critic is unable to stand up from his chair and walk away at the end of his review of The Phantom. Even he's embarrassed by it. It's also big enough that it keeps thumping against the desk during his review of Blank Check.
• Genius Ditz: He's silly, gullible and not all there, but he's eloquent when not swearing up a storm, is very fond of black-and-white movies, can apparently follow black hole theories, is disgusted by the lack of history awareness in The Magic Voyage and has a brain when it counts.
• Genre Savvy: "I know how this works. If I say the entire title that means that I've got to review it next week." He always ends up saying it anyway.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: In episodes like "A Kid in King Arthur's Court," he gets turned on thinking about lesbian subtext...even if they're also sisters. He justifies it by saying they're just actresses, "and that's good enough in my porno— I mean, book."
• Girls Have Cooties: Before he hit puberty early, they were cootie-filled loudmouth annoyances.
  Critic: I don't know, maybe it's my inner little boy, but I just hate this fucking character [Webby], with her pwecious little bow and her cutie-cute dress and those cootie-filled eyes... boys forever! No girls allowed! I'm never going to like girls until the day I die! [shows cleavage] Aww shit, boobs ruin everything.
• Go-Go Enslavement: In the Game Heroes promo. He's surprised and scared that he's wearing a different shirt, so he must have been unconscious and at least shirtless at some point.
• Going Commando: When he creams himself at the end of The Worst Witch, he sults that he's wearing a white suit so it's no problem.
• Go Mad from the Revelation:
  • He does this in his Jingle All the Way review. He has a "WE DON'T CARE" outburst when the chase scene pisses him off.
• Gold Digger:
  • Manchild version, mixed with commentary-confirmed Stockholm Syndrome. As soon as he sees that Hyper Fangirl has a ton of Testosterone Poisoning comics, he says he's under-estimated the perks of dating a psychopath. Thankfully by the end he's thinking with his head brain, not his dick brain and tells her he'll never be into her.
  • In Demolition Man, when Malcolm comes up with a good idea for the seashells, Critic tells him they'll marry and Critic can mooch off his money.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Part of why he's a Mean Boss. This is the only thing he has so he's freaked out by people going into his territory and doing it better than him (or so he thinks).
• Growing Up Sucks: A slight variation of the trope, in that every stage of his life has proved to be a disappointment:
  Critic: "When you're a kid all you can think about is being in high school. When you're in high school all you can think about is being in college. When you're in college all you can think about is being an adult. And when you're an adult all you can think about is being a kid again. LIFE FUCKING SUCKS!"
• The Grunting Orgasm: Albeit not a very masculine-sounding one. Whenever he acts out an orgasm, it's about as high-pitched as you can get. Lampshaded by Doug's dad (because he'd been insulted by Doug previously) in the 8 Crazy Nights behind the scenes video.
  Mr. Walker: You know with those sounds you make Doug you must have one hell of a home life.

H

• Hair-Trigger Temper: Before he mellowed out in later episodes, he was an extremely moody, temperamental and hostile manchild who usually had moments of insane and manic fits of rage when a movie he reviews disturbs him or gets too stupid or confusing.
• Happy Place: Catherine Zeta Jones wearing a tie, glasses, a baseball cap and a long sweater is the best ever image he can conjure up. As a kid, it was a naked April O'Neil covered in whipped cream and chocolate sauce.
  • Less sexually, commercials. As he puts it: "It's like they exist in their own little world, a world that wants to scam you and be nice to you at the exact same time. Something about them strangely gives me comfort."
  • Darker and Edgier in Disney Afternoon, as he's trying very hard to forget that commenting on cartoons is a current thing he does, and gets violent or depressed at any intrusion of reality.
  • At the end of The Shining, of course parodying the movie, the inside of Critic's head is a house, with a wall full of demented pictures, and himself surrounded by people.
  • When he's knocked out with a baseball bat in Planet of the Apes (2001), he's happily skipping in a purple meadow with birds flying behind him and pretty music playing.
• Has a Type: Aside from being an Aggressive Submissive Amazon Chaser, he tends to like shorter brunettes, the more fucked up in the head the better. A joke in The Uncanny Valley review lampshades this, as he's so repressed that his fantasy is the very blonde (but still playing psychotic) Jessica Lange. He also likes confident and charming black men like Will Smith and Ernie Hudson.
• Hates Being Alone:
  • In Judge Dredd, when given the choice of living in an abusive care home or walking alone until death, he chooses the former.
  • He kidnapped Malcolm so that he could have a Token Black Friend, and installed a chip in his head so that he blows up if he tries to leave Chicago.
  • In Alvin and the Chipmunks, he's disappointed at having to do the review on his own and with nobody to bounce off of.
• Hates Being Touched:
  • He gets really skeeved by touchy feely in the reboot. So naturally he gets nearly everyone in his personal space, from Santa Christ to catwomen.
  • In a specific-person example, he's shrunk back from Hyper twice when they've had a close conversation (mostly involving trying to get her to apologize for what she did to him), and just holding her hand in one of her vlogs makes him shudder.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Zig-zagged. While he sometimes gets into sexually-charged situations with male producers without making a big deal of it, he just as often catches himself fawning over male actors (notably Will Smith and Hugh Jackman) and reminds the audience and himself how attracted he is to women.
  Critic: [slaps himself after fantasizing about Will Smith] BOOBS! YOU LIKE BOOBS!
• Hearing Voices: The voices of the kids who bullied him over Doug echo in his head, alongside genuinely creepy laughter.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: In the Chick's Worst Witch review, despite the ridiculous wig, he manages to pull off an all-white suit quite impressively. Chick gets a little annoyed by how Elisa and Nella suddenly fangirl over him when he arrives.
  • He looks better in Linkara's shirt and tie than Linkara does.
• Heel Realization: At the ending of Matrix Revolutions, Malcolm and Tamara are themselves again, and Critic notices that they haven't smiled in a while, and that's his fault. Though he's abusing them even harder by Demolition Man.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue":
  • Critic in the title cards is far more villainous, masculine and competent than our version.
  • In The Matrix review, he's The Chosen One and it's his destiny to tell people why the film wasn't actually that good. As one can gather, when he complains about it Tamara tells him he wrote it so shh.
  • Lampshaded in-universe at the beginning of Sharknado, where Snob says he doesn't actually need Critic's help, he's just following the script Critic wrote.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Also, the Critic's "mourning" of Tom and Jerry a la Hamlet seems to have him rather depressed.
  • The Garbage Pail Kids Movie has him starting the review feeling like he just got raped.
  • The Critic opens the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog review like this, apparently still in shock from the insanity of the show.
  • Another one happens in his My Pet Monster review, where in the end he gets asked by the producers of the movie why he is reviewing kids movies and getting incredibly wound up by them at the age of 28. He decides he needs ask himself some hard questions, and spends the credits just sitting on a chair while sad music plays. The depression lasts until the next week where he's pigging out on junk food, his self-esteem is six feet under and he would have given up completely if it hadn't been for an epic He's Back! number.
  • Baby Geniuses had him aimlessly wandering around Animarathon recalling that the movie was so horrible it left him unable to review it. He scares a random cosplayer, angsts a lot in his hotel room, punches a guy's lights out, screams at the convention audience in his Q&A panel and stares at the wall three times, each time forcing himself to look away. He snaps out of it when he realizes that his inner monologue counts as a review.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of To Boldly Flee, The Critic joins with the Plot Hole to save the universe.
• He-Man Woman Hater:
  • He plays himself up as a sexist he-man in Catwoman (2004), which only draws the ire of the catwomen.
  Critic: Suck my sexist women-bashing chauvinistic stripper-watching porn-loving overly paid dick!
  • Lampshaded and played for laughs in the The Monster Squad review, as he starts out the episode with “boys rule!”, praises treating the sister badly because “that'll teach girls for not indulging our prejudice” and treats Tamara awfully throughout.
• He's Back!: After spending the his first commercial special depressed and ready to quit reviewing, he sings a kickass song and says he's proud of his patheticness at the end. It might not have lasted, but it was still a proud moment.
• Hidden Depths: He knows his Chinese, he plays the clarinet, his childhood idol was Mary Poppins and he's a Shakespeare and Greek Mythology buff.
• Holier Than Thou: To dig the knife into Sage even more after the events of The Guyver, Lady Death reveals that he keeps sending the guy rosary beads because he still thinks he's evil.
• Honor Before Reason: He couldn't stop himself from saving a little girl in Care Bears II even when he knew it was a trap (thus getting himself kidnapped), and he still tried to protect his team against Malachite even after his groin must have been smashed into jelly.
• Horrible Judge of Character: While easily being able to spot Obviously Evil in the movies he looks at, he's not so good when it comes to people in his own life. The Nostalgia Chick and Ask That Guy with the Glasses are perfect examples.
• Hotblooded: He finds it incredibly difficult to hide any emotion, whether it's happy, depressed or angry.
• Humiliation Conga: Pretty much the entire reason for the existence of the James and the Giant Peach review is because the Critic was forced at gun-point to give a positive review of a movie everyone liked to rectify the public's shameful opinion of his first (and probably last) Let's Play, which was posted a week earlier.
• Hypocrite:
  • Doug put "Is It Right To Nitpick?" up on facebook noting the irony of Critic preaching about the subject.
  • Sage calls him right out on this new trait in The Guyver, telling him he has no right to bitch at other people (which he did) for enjoying something stupid and not letting anything go considering he does both things all the time.
  • At the end of "When Is A Movie Just A Movie", after saying that it's your own problem if you get hurt by a movie and playing the invoked MST3K Mantra song, he says that he's allowed to get upset at movies.

I

• Iconic Item: His tie has become this, and his gun to a lesser extent. The former becomes somewhat important in Scooby-Doo, where it's only half-done when he's broken but tied properly when he's giving the poker game a shot.
• Iconic Outfit: Baseball cap, white t-shirt, black suit jacket and a loose red tie. (And jeans of course.)
• Identical Stranger:
  • He shared a great resemblance to comic book writer Ed Brubaker, known for his run on Captain America. And yes, that does make his review of the Matt Salinger Captain America movie hilarious for those that follow Captain America more than they do the Critic.
  • In the Transformers 4 crossover, Erod gets him confused with Edward Norton.
  • In "Curse of the Commercials," he's shocked how much a kid in a McDonald's commercial looks like him as a child, and wonders if he had a twin brother he never knew about.
• I Gave My Word: He might despise the movies he's forced to sit through, but if he's promised to do them then he'll try his best to get through the pain. Even for the ''Star Wars Holiday Christmas Special" he only put up a bit of fight before giving up and doing his job.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • At the end of Surf Ninjas, after having a Dying Dream where he likes it, he says he'll never like anything ever again. The next episode after was the "Top 11 Nostalgic Animated Shows", so that really didn't last.
  • He feels guilty and confused over driving the analysts in The Cat in the Hat to suicide, but quickly gets over it. Later in The Lorax, he references it being his fault that they died but doesn't feel bad.
• I Hate Past Me: Christmas With the Kranks has the Critic travelling back to 2007 so the review would be a "no effort deal' like his early videos. Eventually he has arguments with his past self and his modus operandi. But at the end, he remembers why he did the reviews in the first place (to be loved).
• I Just Want to Be Beautiful: In his "Where the Wild Things Are" editorial, he briefly mentions feeling ugly and imagining himself as pretty.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The business in the James and the Giant Peach was partly Happiness Is Mandatory and partly he really needs people to like him again. Another instance of showing just how bad this is, he's overflowing with joy at the end of the Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland review because "he's never felt so loved". Seeing as he's only being celebrated because he didn't make a Finding Nemo joke... oof.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: He kidnapped Malcolm to force him to be his Token Black Friend (and chloroforms him occassionally when he gets mouthy) and Pop Quiz Hotshot has him kidnapping people because he's never had any friends and craves them.
• I Just Want to Be You:
  • He went from having an open crush on Will Smith in the Independence Day review, to saying every guy is jealous of Smith in After Earth.
  • In the Top 11 Disney Princess Conspiracy Theories, he includes himself in wanting to be like one of the Disney princesses.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: The videos after Ma-Ti's death in Suburban Knights, especially the Scooby Doo review show how much the guilt is affecting him to break down that much.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Taking Testosterone Poisoning and Real Men Eat Meat to the overcompensating extreme, he takes a bite out of a heart in the beginning of Demolition Man. In David Bowie's Codpiece, he calls eating “people” delicious.
• Immortality Hurts: In Son of the Mask, Evilina strongly implies that to punish him for his stupidity in coming down from the Plot Hole, he'll have to live forever. (Until her dad comes for his soul anyway.)
• Immune to Drugs: He's taken ketamine, mixtures of nyquil and vicodin, tylenol and hell knows what else, and he hasn't been found dead yet. He also survives the “90% morphine” fuckitall at the end of Blues Brothers 2000, only forgetting his own name for a while whereas commercial!Tamara died from it.
• Improbable Weapon User: The “Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes” confirms that his weapon is meta, that being the only way he can protect himself with everything else failing.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Particularly bad reviews will have him reaching for stuff like Jack Daniels or Jagermeister. Titanic: The Legend Goes On had him reaching for progressively larger bottles, culminating in one larger than he was. When he reviewed The Legend of the Titanic, he had a skyscraper-sized bottle flown down via helicopters.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: His screaming rants are akin to little boy tantrums and Doug revealed he shouts at things because what's on the screen is scaring him, he can't hold onto being the "bad guy" for very long and he's easily prone to crying.
• Inelegant Blubbering: His knowledge of a traditional breakdown is one where you're puffy-eyed, sniffing, snorting and can barely talk.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He finally breaks down and says in the CR crossover that he doesn't want anyone going into his territory because they'd do it better than him, while the "Commercials Special" goes into his lack of self-esteem even more.
  • Doug talks about it and Critic's relationship with others in the To Boldly Flee commentary.
  I usually find with a lot of insecure people, their closest friends, the people they depend on the most on for love, they can be the nicest to, and they can be the cruelest to.
• Informed Flaw:
  • He's regularly making fun of himself for "screaming every other line", which is funny, but hasn't been relevant for the past few years. Justified in To Boldly Flee, where he uses it as an excuse of why he hates himself and nobody needs him.
  • A slightly confusing joke in Alice in Wonderland (2010) has Malice (for the second time) assuming Critic escaped from an asylum, this time because of the way he's dressed. Critic then reacts by telling her when she's dressed weird it's crazy, when he dresses weird it's avant-garde. A messy suit really isn't all that strange. again explained later, as in The Lorax he's forced to realize that it has nothing to do with "avant-garde", his clothes were picked out just to appeal to female viewers.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Much like Horrible Judge of Character; fine with movies but sucks in real life. He doesn't get that being nice to Luke in front of Film Brain, congratulating the Chick on being a female version of him or assuming Chester didn't need the residuals of the Big-Lipped Alligator Moment meme, would most definitely piss them off.
  • He's been on purpose mean to Chester plenty of times, but genuinely feels bad about attributing his mental illness to assuming he's an alien at the end of Dreamcatcher.
• Insufferable Genius: The Critic is a pretty intelligent and rational person but he can also be very stubborn, arrogant and opinionated at the same time.
• Insult of Endearment: In FernGully: The Last Rainforest, the Chick called him a "stupid sack of shit" in the fondest tone she's ever had.
• Internalized Categorism: He's Catholic and yet the religion is one of many on the list he's prejudiced against. The reloaded reviews, especially regarding To Boldly Flee, are one of the more literal examples of internalized homophobia, as he ends up bitching a lot about whoever made this (i.e himself) must be gay.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: He's a girly, overgrown kid with a vast array of cuddly toys. In Garfield 2 he thinks turning the estate into a spa "sounds lovely".
• In-Universe Catharsis: Shooting things mainly. When he was a child, it was particularly goofy acting, the kind that he would want to bury from the public forever.
• In Vino Veritas: Phelous and Snob get pretty shocked when they see him vulnerably hanging onto The Other Guy and totally wasted in their "Troll 4" review. We aren't, because we've seen it before — just a facade.
• I Want to Be a Real Man: So desperate to be manly in reboot especially, though as he admits in "David Bowie's Codpiece", the only manly thing he feels he has is a penis, which is why he wears tight pants to accentuate it.
• I Work Alone: In Bloodrayne, he hates having to follow the tradition of having Linkara and Spoony review the movie with him, and tells them to piss off with no slapstick like before. They get their comeback with a pie in his face.

J

• Jaded Washout: Best summed up here:
  Critic: Look at you, you had such dreams ahead of you, such promise, you were perfect back then — okay you had stupid glasses, teeth like a chipmunk and a dumb and dumber haircut that only got dumb and dumber — but you had such hope.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's stubborn, egotistical and prone to anger and extreme violence. He fiercely protects kids but has no patience for annoying dogs, he trashes other people's nostalgia but can't make it through Follow That Bird without squeeing, he's demanding of Chester but is the only one to give him money and a place to stay, he's a bastard to people but is so very loyal to the ones he cares about, he has a temper but heartwarming moments come regularly... let's just say this guy can get complicated. His review of I'll Be Home for Christmas shows that in a stark contrast to D-Bag, he genuinely cares about the people in his life like Santa Christ and Chester. It's especially heartwarming with the latter since he threatened him to hurt him if he didn't make another Bum Review and yet in the end, he tells him to take his time. He also decides to let him and his fiancée stay in his house.

K

• Kick the Dog:
  • Played for Black Comedy, but how he treats animals - gleeing when dogs have a chance of dying, throwing rocks at pets to see if their owners laugh, chucking a spider through a window because he's scared of it - will remind you that he's a Psychopathic Manchild if you ever forget it.
  • In Master Of Disguise, he tosses out a "happy birthday" to Rachel (which is all she wanted) after he beat the shit out of her and fired her.
  • Mocking a fourteen year old girl for quite a few minutes because she was “too pretty” in Bridge to Terabithia. He lampshading the audience's “wtf” reaction by mocking another kid in The Shining and letting them know it was at least meant to be a douchey thing that he was just going to be doing now.
  • In the Man of Steel review, making it very clear he doesn't care about Joe's abuse, especially given his own history. And when Joe actually wants to explain something, ignores him completely for a picture of naked Emilia Clarke.
  • Literally in the original Face/Off ending, as Rachel is in a box about to be shipped off to California, and he kicks it while saying "good riddance".
  • Even after everything that happened in The Guyver, according to “Lady Death” he still sends Sage rosaries because he doesn't get that, out of the two of them, Sage isn't the one in need of help here.
  • In The Dark Knight Returns, gleefully making Brian sad by reminding him that Critic is still more popular after getting caught out for his Took a Level in Dumbass moment of thinking Two Face liked the number three when he kept wanting sets of two.
  • Knocking Chester out with a baseball bat in “Nostalgia Critic Talks Transformers 4” was bad enough, but hitting him again just for believing his “be nice” speech was just mean.
  • In Disney Afternoon, shoving Malcolm's hurt shoulder because Malcolm is suffering from the beatdown Critic gave him and hasn't learned how to repress pain yet.
  • Literally again in the TMNT Christmas Special, when he's using Tamara as a footstool and kicks her in the back when she talks.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Usually done with The Last Angry Geek. Like when Geek put massively pricey, not needed shoulder pads on his bill, he said he was going to stop the Geek's show.
• KidAnova: After calling a kinky fantasy starring April every kid's dream, he defensively reminds people that he was an early bloomer.
• Kiddie Kid: At first it sounds like he's being sarcastic about acting like a monkey in eighth grade, but then he turns out he actually did.
• Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: When he watched Cool World as a young'un, he ran for the exit like the screen was on fire.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: In "Holiday Clusterfuck", he steals a woman's money after the Christmas stress drives her to suicide.
• The Klutz:
  • He managed to get three slashes on his right arm visible at 6.24 in the Catwoman (2004) review, bruises on his mouth in the Jurassic Park review and a big cut across his neck at the beginning of Turbo. In the Son of the Mask commentary, Doug asked very strongly to ignore them, especially marks from where he can't seem to stop hurting himself shaving.
  • Parodied when Phelous throws a sock at his head. He falls around his house so much that he ends up shooting himself with his gun.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": He was as shocked as we were when he got to interview the crew of Animaniacs and they had actually liked his stuff. Same thing happened for Ebert enjoying his tribute and "Christopher Walken"/"Vincent Price" knowing who he is.

L

• Lack of Empathy:
  • In his amnesia state for the anniversary reviews. He's confused as to why everyone is mourning Ma-Ti's death in Suburban Knights as a "small Indian boy is no big loss", and he only just barely stops himself from calling To Boldly Flee-Critic a girl for showing off emotion.
  • In Captain Planet, his initial reaction to “making people feel better” is “who gives a shit?”
  • Subtly played in The Last Airbender, as Critic gets all the memories from Doug's vlogs (which would include the times he talked about having nightmares, how it feels to be a failure, and knowing about grief) and feels pain, but when they meet up and he's back to Hot-Blooded, ignores Doug's repeated attempts to have Critic actually get his name right.
  • Despite having a horrible childhood himself, he cares nothing for Joe having flashbacks to his father abusing him.
  • When he kills a Happy Madison audience in Eight Crazy Nights, he fakes a moment of silence for them and deadpans a “that was fun”.
  • While trying to get Rachel back in the beginning of Face/Off, he tells her to “throw away your future for my personal needs”.
  • Commercial!Malcolm asks him for help because Commercial!Tamara's foaming at the mouth, but Critic doesn't even look at them because he's too busy getting on his Blues Brothers soapbox.
  • In the TMNT Christmas Special, his love of Christmas destroys the world. He's upset about this for a second until he's more interested in doing a review. He also treats a hurting Tamara like a punching bag, though he gets punished by being eaten by zombie for that.
  • Chester dies in The Phantom of the Opera (2004), and while Beth and Tim are horrified, Critic doesn't care and calls “murder a total aphrodisiac”.
  • In "Smurfs 2'', when he doesn't care about her abusive grandfather, Tamara stays disgusted at him for the whole review considering his own past.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Usually he wouldn't deserve getting beaten and tortured with a pitchfork by an Ax-Crazy guy who was pretending to be blind, but after stating that he was about to bludgeon said guy to death just for a movie, he kinda does in this instance.
  • In 2019, he gets a deliciously nasty punishment for being obsessed with money, rejecting his Plot Hole happy ending and being both sexually repressed and abusing his underlings because he needs power: having the site getting taken over by Snob, and being forced to do nothing but be his Sex Slave.
  • In Food Fight, his sole motivation for doing the film is to get himself a ton of money and hits, yet when he gets told it didn't work because the net is fickle, he has a meltdown.
  • As cruel as it is, he doesn't give a shit when Donnie's mom killed herself for his Aesop Collateral Damage, so it makes sense that he Never Got to Say Goodbye to his own mother.
  • In the TMNT Christmas Special, he's been abusing Tamara the whole episode, and gets his just desserts by being attacked by zombie-Malcolm.
• Laughing Mad: In The NeverEnding Story III review, after finishing the movie and getting mad, in Chairman Of The Board where he laughs manically when he gets the meaning of Edison's name, when Jingle All the Way ruins the one funny joke they had and when Zack shows his new haircut in Saved by the Bell. That last one gave him an orgasm.
• Last-Name Basis: Everybody, friend or foe alike, unfailing calls him 'Critic'.
• Leaning on the Furniture: In a brief cool moment, he leans against the wall while the Grinch narrator is talking.
• Licked by the Dog: Even though they have their arguments, Chester always calls him nice and will be the first to defend him. Lampshaded in "I'll Be Home For Christmas'', where he says Chester has always been kind to him, and he's been more… mixed in response.
• Likes Older Women: As a sign of how desperate he is (and how pretty the grandma looks in “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”), he asks in said review if any attractive eighty year old women are single and gets roundly booed.
• Limited Wardrobe: According to the drawing in the Willy Wonka episode, he's worn the same clothes since kindergarten.
• Literal-Minded: To give an example from James and the Giant Peach.
  Earthworm: Remember what your parents said, James!
  Critic: ..."Look out, a rhino"?
• Little Bit Beastly: Coming back from the future of seahorses gave him a temporary tail, though we don't get to see it.
• Living on Borrowed Time: Post-reboot, he's soulless, has accepted he's going to hell, and two episodes (Maven's "Monster Mash" and his "Why Do We Love Zombies") cast him as a zombie, reminding everyone that he's not meant to be alive. In the former review, Maven literally calls him a "reanimated dead guy".
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • He complains in his Ernest Saves Christmas review that nobody ever tells him things like why the dinosaurs died out.
  • During Bloodrayne, in a nod to Doug being on his honeymoon and so not being involved when the firing actually happened, Critic too is totally confused when Linkara starts to go on about the Elephant in the Living Room regarding Spoony.
• Lonely at the Top: Ever since coming back from the Plot Hole, he's more alone than ever and doesn't even have Rob or other producers trying to look after him. Episodes like The Master of Disguise or Son of the Mask feature this issue prominently.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Evidently the only way his parents could give him any kind of love was to give whatever kind of toys he wanted.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Even in 2009 he was forced to admit that his sex life is a complete clusterfuck.
  Critic: Ain't love a bitch?
• Loser Protagonist: He lives with his abusive mother, has a load of issues, his job is the only life he has and the other one was being a Crusty Caretaker, doesn't particularly have a lot of talent and has No Social Skills. The knowledge of all this hits him like a ton of bricks in Scooby-Doo and he spends To Boldly Flee trying to fix it.
• Lovable Coward: He gets freaked out constantly and driven to tears by things he could just turn off, but he's fun to watch.
• Lovable Nerd: Being played by Doug certainly helps.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Soulless getting tortured because of him gets a grim but happy smile, and that's what we end The Cat in the Hat review on.
• Love Redeems: Disney can bring him back from being a psychopath and his enjoyment of Christmas can never be broken.
• Lust Object:
  • Spoony has lust for everyone, but he's really proud to have Critic as a conquest. And we're guessing he didn't blackmail others or break into their houses.
  • The Hyper Fangirl storyline is all about how he's one for said fangirl, who keeps breaking into his house with the intent to make him her romantic property, which he's violently against to the point of threatening to kill her for not leaving him alone.

M

• Made a Slave: In 2019, Snob takes over the site and Critic is forced to do nothing but serve him sexually.
• Made of Iron: Lampshaded (and meta'd) in “The Best Avatar Episodes” when Critic complain-asks how his body can take so much abuse.
• The Mad Hatter:
  • Already crazy in the original run, in the reboot, he's more accepting/embracing his growing crazy (partly because he has more power) and openly says at the end of the Ghost Rider (2007) review that "a new year of madness is on the way".
  • Lampshaded in Alice in Wonderland (2010) when the Cute and Psycho Malice assumes three times that he's escaped from a mental asylum, and Critic never gets offended like a normal person would be.
  • Lampshaded loudly and violently at the end of “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”, where Critic is free from sedation chains and it morphs him into an Ax-Crazy Riddler rip-off who sings about how much he 'loves' Christmas.
• Madness Makeover: “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” does it a bit differently. Sedated Critic is in a safe jumper, with sparkling eyes and a pretty smile, openly saying he needs to be marketable. When he's free from this, he doesn't go into normal clothes with Sanity Slippage or anything, but all the batshit coming out at once turns him into the Riddler.
• Madness Mantra: All he could write while watching Bio-Dome was "why why why why why why...", and in Drop Dead Fred, after the friend praises the lead for her craziness: "No! No! No! No! No! No!..."
• Manchild: Doug seems to put the Critic's mental age at about twelve. A few examples of this being he still believes in Santa, hiding under the desk when he's afraid and he also still eats at Chuck E. Cheese's. Lampshaded in “Rise Of The Commercials”, where he's too busy laughing to say anything about the women's douching commercials, and demands to go to the next one because he's too immature.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • In "The Review Must Go On", as he wears Doug down and doesn't care that he's hurting him, insult-threatens him when Doug actually does try leaving, brightens up when he gets what he wants, but goes low and threatening again when Doug has another condition.
  • He succeeds for a while in Ghost Dad being awful to Tamara and Malcolm, but fails when he decides to tell them everything, as even Tamara points out. Whether this comes from extreme stupidity or masochism (or both) is left unanswered.
• Married to the Job: Talking about Zelda in the cartoon, he tells her to back off pushing away loved ones so she can work more because he owns that.
• Master of the Mixed Message:
  • To the Hyper Fangirl. Not because he has any feeling towards her, but he doesn't help her deluded viewpoint when he pretends to be her friend (because he likes rejecting her attention), threatens to stalk her back (because he thought that would scare her) or when he admits to her that he wears silk boxers (because she asked and he's a vain puppy).
    In a con panel, when she's forced him to “build a snowman” with her (to clarify he even asked her would any answer make her leave him alone and she said no), he gives her a hug and skips off with her, and then runs back alone after pushing her off the balcony.
    The way he tells it, it was Show Some Leg to placate her and he wants to pawn her off to anyone he can because she's awful, but making her his silent business partner probably wasn't a good idea.
• Mean Boss: Deconstructed. Whenever someone's done something that's more his area or something's already done, he'll pop up and be a pain in the ass. However, he answers to puppet-master The Other Guy, he'll crumble and have a breakdown under any type of argument, he's revealed that he does this because he's so deeply insecure and when he thinks Lupa listened to what he had to say, he was the most optimistic about life that he's ever been. Rachel tried to kill him for forgetting her birthday as part of the running joke. Critic knocked her out and fired her. Crosses over with Psychopathic Manchild when it comes to Malcolm and Tamara, as he routinely forces them to dress up in childish costumes and play along with his crazy, and taken to new heights in Demolition Man, as he makes them find out how the three sea shells work, and says that he has two spinal cord removal machines, one for each of them.
• Messianic Archetype: After he took on the Plot Hole. He'd still snark, but protecting the universe did his temper, self-worth issues, intelligence and maturity a world of good. Completely reversed when he came back down though.
• Meta Guy: Deconstructed. He came back through tormenting his creator, and while straddling the fourth wall has given him more power and made him more dismissive of his own character and plot devices, it's also made him sadder and crazier because it's a defence mechanism that doesn't always work.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: He blew up a planet with his love for Christmas in the Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas review.
• Miles Gloriosus: Aang killed Shyamalan in The Last Airbender and the Devil killed him in Devil, but Critic (who was the Distressed Dude both times) takes all the credit for it in After Earth.
• Miles to Go Before I Sleep: He admits in the Gordy review that he's so tired.
• Mister Seahorse: The Nostalgia Chick forced him to get preggers through fairy sex one time.
• Momma's Boy: Him getting a phone call that she died is genuinely Played for Drama, and even when the Jump Scare Running Gag comes back he's screaming about the unfairness.
• Mood-Swinger: He's a bit like a Hollywood-style manic depressive. Particularly evident in the first part of Disney Afternoon, where he goes from giddy excited over the shows to anger just when the (younger) Malcolm and Tamara dare to not know exactly what he's talking about.
• Motive Decay: Critic's reason for bashing Stephen King went from “he's a great writer but the adaptations can be really silly so let's point those flaws out” (The Langoliers) to “I just want to rip on something that's entertaining to people” (The Shining). The Took a Level in Jerkass change was heavily lampshaded, to the point where he has to go catatonic when he realizes that King did something better than Kubrick.
• Mr. Exposition: Is a very bored one to both Evilina in The Cat in the Hat and Malice in Alice in Wonderland (2010), as they don't know Hollywood's relationship with Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton's formula respectfully.
• Mr. Imagination: He manages to outdream Stanley in the A Troll in Central Park review. Only his dreams are slightly more... painful to the titular troll. And when he can't stop himself from imagining the babies between Goliath and Elisa, he bitches that his mind never does what he tells it to.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: In late 2011/early 2012, there's been a reference in a lot of episodes about wanting to be or acting like a father.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • He has a crying fit when his Nintendo disappears after he stops playing it.
  • In his third Nostalgic Commercials special, he orders an off-screen minion to inject five people with diabetes (however that's supposed to work...) then stops and says, "Dear God, I think I might be horrible."
  • Accidentally killing Mary Poppins, his first childhood icon, crushes him.
  • After making the obligatory gay joke about Bert And Ernie, he breaks down to all the cast of Sesame Street and apologizes for trying to review the first show he ever saw.
  • The lyrics Lindsay used at the end of "Thanks For The Feedback" implies this:
  "Baby come back, you can blame it all on me. I was wrong..."
  • He breaks down immediately after shooting Floss for no reason other than getting a sad ending.
  • If he didn't regret forcing Doug to bring him back by the time Santa Christ decided to be vindictive to him, then there's no doubt he did when the devil's daughter decided it was crueler to leave him alive.
  • In an example where he hadn't done anything wrong, hearing that his dead mom didn't tell him about her illness because she knew he was a workaholic makes him look like he's dangerously close to crying right there and then.
  • Twice in The Passion of the Christ. First he betrays Santa Christ and leaves crying, and then when Santa Christ flips the bird at him and he tells the torturers to carry on, it cuts back to present day where he calls the flashbacks gross and gratuitous.
  • In a moment of pouty lucidity, he realizes at the end of Disney Afternoon that bringing Malcolm's mom in “to be authentic” is probably going too far.
  • In Spawn, he has a moment of regret for helping the Devil take over the world, but when it's revealed the latter's army is a load of Kermits, he assumes it won't be so bad.
  • He treats the abuse kids, Melody and Cliff, really badly in Monkeybone, but when he finds out their parents are Aunt Despair and Uncle Lies, he connects the dots and feels bad. He makes it up to them in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and when his anxiety explodes after trying to keep the peace and getting his cereal mocked, scaring them, he’s horrified with himself for “ruining everything”. Luckily for him the other adults tell him it’s alright.
• My Greatest Failure: Ma-Ti's death in Suburban Knights made him disquietingly obsessed with responsibility and consequences.

N

• Necktie Leash: Done more and more as times goes on, but averted in his review of Batman & Robin. They took it away so he wouldn't hang himself.
  • In their battles, The Angry Video Game Nerd had a special fondness for pulling it for the sake of pulling it.
  • Three words, given by Spoony: "ride the pony".
  • The Game Heroes also pull his tie while forcing him to promote their t-shirts. Slightly unnecessary as he's also tied up, at gunpoint and clearly not going anywhere, but nobody's complaining.
  • Even the fans join in the fun during the Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea credits, to punish him for his dislike of Howl's Moving Castle.
  • Santa Christ in Took a Level in Jerkass mode pulls it in Son of the Mask, with Rob saying later that moment is one of his favorites.
• Nervous Wreck: He's pretty easy to stress out.
• Never Bareheaded: He rarely takes off his hat on the show. Exceptions are his Batman and Robin review and his Siskel & Ebert tribute.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Along with the Friendless Background Freudian Excuse, the second episode of Pop Quiz Hotshot had him say three times that he had to kidnap people before they could capture him themselves (context: he's been a Distressed Dude a lot).
• Never Hurt an Innocent: He's seriously upset when Quest for Camelot makes him kill innocent Disney characters.
• Never My Fault:
  • When Dark Side Of The Internet ends with the aesop that people can't just act like nothing is wrong because cyberbullying keeps happening, he gets angry and complains that it's his right to dodge responsibility.
  • While he might know it deep down (as he's the one who wanted Tamara to hurt him in the first place), he tortures and humiliates her and Malcolm whenever they try and get back at him for making them suffer originally, and never fully acknowledges the last part is why they try and hurt him back.
• Nightmare Fetishist: His perfect ending for the Santa Claus movie (an awkwardly sweet piece of camp) would be that it was all a Dying Dream caused by being out in a blizzard.
  • What later causes Tamara to be hired in-universe; he realizes people find his pain sexy, and after she succeeds in her scheme to make him talk about the Bee Torture scene in The Wicker Man (2006) and why it became a meme, he decides she's worth keeping around.
  • He's delighted to be playing the Emperor in the PQH Star Wars edition, and to be saying all the Cold-Blooded Torture lines.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Who wants to know where he got that skull from and what he's actually drinking?
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: He could never resist a challenge from the Nerd, no matter how hard he'd got his ass beat the previous time.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • He hates his audience for being sadistic, ungrateful pricks^note Note that Doug loves his fans. but will put himself through an ungodly shitty film because they requested it all the time. This usually doesn't end well for him.
  • Even though the Ghost Of Christmas Future has been an annoying, stalker-like bastard throughout the Babes in Toyland review, when the Critic sees that he's depressed, he acts very fatherly and comforting towards him. He then makes the mistake of letting the ghost choose what movie he should suffer through next, and the ghost immediately picks How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
• Non-Action Guy: Even with his gun, whenever he gets into a fight, he mostly ends up on the ground or running off making girly whimpery noises.
• No Sense of Personal Space:
  • With the Chick. Seeing as how she's just as bad, she doesn't seem to mind too much.
  • In Star Trek Insurrection, he was close enough to That Sci-Fi Guy to look particularly molesty. Not to mention they were lying in bed together.
  • With Tamara in the Disney Afternoon episode, who so doesn't enjoy it that she lets out a scream when he suddenly hugs her. It's up for debate whether he's too wrapped up in his cuckoo to notice, or is just doing it to make her feel vulnerable.
• No Social Skills: In Steven Universe vlogs, Doug compared Critic to the heavily-autistic-coded Peridot.
• No Sympathy: To girls sexually abused in Canada. He makes fun of the awareness psa in “Dawn Of The Commercials” for being a killjoy, repeats the joke in The Purge review saying it'd be unsafe to go there, and brings it up again in “Rise Of The Commercials”. The sexual abuse statistic is one in two girls by the way.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Although he's shown a lot of attraction to the Chick before, he's more annoyed that even she enjoys Moulin Rouge! than anything else. He doesn't even seem to notice that she's wearing burlesque.
• Not So Above It All:
  • At the end of his Lost in Space review, he rants to the first appearance of Dr. Smith about nobody can trust him, but then he's easily manipulated and gets shot by his own gun. This gets explained (and quite sad) many years later when it's revealed Dr Smith is Critic's dad[[/spoiler.
  • He calls out the Care Bears for falling for Christie's and Darkheart's trap, but her screaming breaks him down and he goes to help, getting bagged in the process. He can't resist their The Power of Love moment either, and shouts out for Santa Christ.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain:
  • Shown in Kickassia where he's willing to commit mass murder-suicide through dynamite if anyone threatened the power he'd finally managed to gain.
  • Erod gets a reminder in the Transformers 4 crossover, having electrocuted Critic onto his knees, but then when Critic's eyes are replaced with electricity (which then go to his hands), he says he forgot Critic has ambiguous Came Back Wrong powers.
• Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: In the Masters of the Universe review. Even Doug and Rob admitted soon after that the review was not one of their finest moments, and maybe it's not a coincidence that the Critic character started getting progressively girlier in later episodes.

O

• Obliviously Evil: Played with in reboot. He'll do something wrong, get called out, and then openly and maliciously continue doing the awful thing. Like The Shining, he treats Rachel and Malcolm terribly in the opening, is genuinely disappointed when they leave, but abuses her and tries to kill him when they come back.
• Older Than They Look: Lampshaded when he's hitting on Catherine Zeta Jones. He tries to get with her by saying he's really eighty four. (He's really thirty+ but looks like a teenager with a beard.) In the Hocus Pocus behind the scenes, when he's shaving his beard off, Doug mentions that people think he looks younger without it and that's only because his “chipmunk cheeks” are more emphasized.
• One-Note Cook: He can only make cereal. Lampshaded in "Fuck Ups Part Three" where he notes he should probably spend more time in the kitchen and less time gobbling junk food. A trait he apparently shares with Doug, who admitted in the AT vlogs that he can only make Mac and Cheese.
• Only in It for the Money: In the reboot he's almost refreshingly shameless about it, telling various women that they need to be exploited for views, bringing in a Dr. Hack so he can lazily stick to a formula while making loads of cash, and in Foodfight!, has literal money signs in his eyes when he realizes he can make a profit of getting on the bandwagon. the last one ends up biting him in the ass.
• The Only One Allowed To Insult You: When he thinks Linkara is calling The Nostalgia Chick a wussy, he tells him he's not allowed to insult her in that way.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In Kickassia (and it lasts throughout the show), Film Brain starts to realize there's something wrong when Critic says for the first time that he doesn't want to review movies anymore.
  • Even disregarding angry cluster f bombs, swearing is a fairly natural part of his vocabulary. So when he goes Goshdang It To Heck or doesn't swear at all, something's either gone very wrong or very right.
  • If he thinks a child getting hit is funny rather than horrible, you'll know the child character is incredibly annoying.
  • Speaking of children, he sold his soul in early reboot, which might explain not regretting hitting Evilina in The Cat in the Hat and the pedophile jokes in Sailor Moon.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: When Doug did top elevens or tributes in the earlier days, he could never quite stop his real Chicago drawl coming through Critic's broad everyman accent. Luckily he eventually managed to hide it completely. (Except in bloopers obviously.)
• Opinion Myopia: Sometimes acts like almost everyone agrees with him, even if the movie was pretty popular like the first two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. There are plenty of other times he fully acknowledges a Broken Base and offers his take.
• Oral Fixation: That joystick can't have tasted all that nice. Exaggerated in Critic Tank when he's a judge openly pushing and pulling the pen into and out of his mouth.
• Out-of-Character Moment:
  • In the middle bit of Airborne, he comes across (unintentionally) as a bit of a Heteronormative Crusader who thinks the lead isn't a proper man because he wants to be a pacifist and not fight. He gets out of it near the end, but it was a weird period for a Sissy Villain who hates morals of "solve problems by fighting".
  • In the Tank Girl review, he freaks over a possibly horny woman director wanting a Shirtless Scene for a man. He never acted like that before, he's never acted like that again and he's even made much use of the Female Gaze himself.
  • In the Child's Play 2 review; "Yeah, when you're going to tie up a child, do it for the same reason I would. To beat him." Because that sounds like the guy who invokes Godwin's Law on someone who is an asshole to their kids and then leaves them.
  • Early reboot Critic could be a sexist asshole like he was in earliest prime days, but is "proud to be a sexist" rant in Catwoman was extreme and in later years he went back to at least trying (his abusing Rachel and Tamara is meant to be a bad thing).
  • When Soulless is pressuring him with an Annoying Laugh and everyone is waiting for him to come out with it and praise Jim Carrey in The Grinch, he acts more like a Shrinking Violet than usual Hot-Blooded, hiding his face while begging it to stop and only raising his voice once. Considering his lack of soul at this point, it makes sense.
  • “Top 11 GOOD Things from the Star Wars Prequels” is one of those editorials where it can't be considered as anything but Doug instead of Critic talking, as it's all about appreciating the good bits in something considered bad, even Malcolm has expressed discomfort on how much Critic can dig his claws into actors, and while one of the spots was less Jar Jar as the movies went on, it was only a week ago that Critic had bombed the creature in an act of crazy.
  • Although Doug defended it (and then pushed the thread into Canon Discontinuity), his conclusion in Dawn Of The Commercials that men can't and have no idea when they're getting hit on doesn't match at all with his history (Spoony, prom night, the massive amounts of Homoerotic Subtext and Ship Tease with nearly every producer) or his future (the Hyper Fangirl storyline where he hates her for always ignoring him when he says no).
  • A couple of 2013 episodes had Critic see crossdressing as gross and humiliating, even though he'd done it plenty of times before. By 2014 he was back to being proud that everyone on his show was into crossdressing and gender fuckery.

P

• Papa Wolf: Even if he thinks the kid's a Bratty Half-Pint, treat a child badly or don't take responsibility, and Critic will hate you.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Because making fun of Lupa's death threats would just make Doug look terrible, Critic is a lot kinder to the Dark Side Of The Internet than the other 5th year segments, and outright says after her part that he can't find anything to make fun of. It's also the only one he calls flawless.
  • After a long while of treating them terribly, he's glad that Malcolm and Tamara are smiling for a change at the end of The Matrix Revolutions and agrees to go out for a drink with them.
  • He tells Chester in "I'll Be Home For Christmas" that he's sorry for not always taking best care of the bum, and thanks him for always being kind despite that.
• The Perfectionist: One of his major problems is that he always expects too much out of everything and so sets himself up for disappointment.
• Persona Non Grata: In his review of Jaws 3-D, NC states that due to an incident, he can never go back to Nevada.
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • In his Quest for Camelot review, he got so angry with the movie for not explaining anything that he accidentally caused a massive explosion that destroyed an entire city. Twice.
  • In the TMNT Christmas Special, his Christmas obsession destroys the world. Mixed with Reality Warper again as he casually tells Tamara he'll make it non-canon.
  • For Christmas 2016, his love for the holiday went to the extreme of happily destroying an entire planet.
• Perverse Sexual Lust: For Catherine Zeta Jones, as we find out in his Top 11 Villain Songs video. It's an inverted example as the Critic is a fictional character while Catherine Zeta Jones is a real life actress.
• Phrase Catcher: On occasion, his getting something wrong about something has led him to be labeled an "anti-[INSERT NOUN HERE]-ite". Mainly occurs in the Fuck-Ups videos.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: His intelligence and competence will vary depending on who he's with and if it's funny for him to be stupid or not.
• Pink Means Feminine: His bedroom has pink curtains. Amusingly, the first time we saw them was when he was writing in his diary like a teenage girl in the My Pet Monster review.
• Playing with Fire: When reviewing the "Top 11 Avatar episodes" he learns to firebend. Unlike the powerful blasts Dante Basco shot, Critic was firing Mario-like fireballs. Firebending was also what he tried in “Top 11 Adult Jokes We Never Got As Kids”. He failed there too, blowing up the guy overseeing him by accident.
• Please, I Will Do Anything!: Quite frequently. He did it when Tom and Jerry were going to sing another song, when he was made to review the Star Wars Holiday Special and even though it wasn't begging, he did say he would give Devil Sage everything if he took his memories of Sequel Month away. By Hyper's 2015 Midwest Media Expo vlog, he's exhausted enough of this Abhorrent Admirer storyline to ask even if he did whatever she wanted would she leave him alone. When she says no, he pretends to be into her until he gets the chance to push her out of a window.
• Plot Armor: Notable in Alice in Wonderland (2010), where he dope slaps a woman who has killed three people for much less and just gets away with her being pissed off at him and holding her knife to him as warning.
• Politically Incorrect Hero:
  • He was like this at the start, making sexist and ableist jokes a lot, but starting 2009 he started to develop and call stuff like that out.
  • The Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee reviews were less genuine analyzing of the flaws and more attacking the men for being "pansy", making rape jokes with the Chick and bringing up Joe's, Malachite's and Ma-Ti's ethnicities like they matter.
  • In The Shining, he takes great joy in making Rachel hysterical, and chases down Malcolm with intent to kill him just because it's rule that Black Dude Dies First.
  • He's in unrepentant sexist asshole mode in The Monster Squad, not allowing Tamara in his boys club, calling her worthless to her face, leaving her vulnerable to the reality monster, and when she kills it doesn't thank her.
  • He shocks Film Brain in Forest Warrior by agreeing with Chuck Norris's homophobia, calling him misunderstood and the world has turned against him. (to clarify, Doug gets past this potential shitstorm with much Sarcasm Mode about how Chuck Norris is in a Transparent Closet, and Critic's meant to be an oblivious idiot)
  • The Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes is a pretty good sum-up of his racist tendencies, with leaving Malcolm to die, his only insult to Dante calling him a “Filipino Benjamin Button”, and confusing him with Dev Patel.
  • In TMNT 2, to make fun of Bay's misogyny, he tries to get Tamara to dress up like Harley, and when she refuses, replaces her with Aiyanna.
• Prematurely Balding: Lampshaded this, noting that he used to have a mop of hair back in high school. He promptly breaks down in tears.
• Pretty Boy: He and others certainly think so: he calls himself pretty rather than handsome in his Battlefield Earth review, Spoony made him dress in drag and took pictures while raping him, the Chick went into bad touch land after chloroforming him, the Game Heroes had fun manhandling him while he was their Distressed Dude and both Linkara and Film Brain have fairly obvious crushes on him. The Wicked Witch in the first reboot commercial episode uses her "my pretty" line on him.
• Prima Donna Director: Goes right back into Mean Boss mode with Rachel and Malcolm, and comes to a head when he demands Rachel to come back from California to shoot her punishment death scenes because he accidentally deleted the video. Thankfully, as she's now away from him she can say no and do things her way. And in the beginning of The Shining review, he makes Rachel and Malcolm haul the heaviest props, and chipperly expects them to arrange them in order of his least and most favorites.
• Princess Phase: Ironically, considering he hates the Princesses Rule trope, but he's said he wants to be like the Disney Princesses, keeps asking if he's pretty in a tiara over on Hotshot, and wants The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle to treat him like Snow White.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Turbo consists of him being one to the fans, while also insulting them. The power of his sappy speech about how the franchise was never meant for him is subverted in the ending theme song which has the line "this song is here to praise your heroes and suck up".
• Prone to Tears: Luckily he mixes this with more Hotblooded tropes, but he breaks down in tears often for no reason. The Honest Trailers parody in Planet of the Apes (2001) calls him a crybaby.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • He drives himself crazy trying to decipher the Nerd's "compliment", but when he's ready to give up and admit that the Nerd might be a nice guy, he finds the insult.
  • When he's ready to snap and cry because he thinks he and his world is all Alec Baldwin's delusion, he's only a couple steps away from the truth.
  • Played for sadness in “Why Do We Love Zombies”, as a year after talking with his creator about him being a character (which was sweet, just went wrong a few months later), he comes to the conclusion that he can never really be safe.
• Prophet Eyes: When he merges with the Plot Hole in To Boldly Flee, and used three more times in reboot title cards for Fallen Hero purposes. He's demonic in Master Of Disguise, useless in The Last Airbender, and just decaying in Why Do We Love Zombies.
• Proud to Be a Geek: He calls himself enough of a dork to purchase the Tom and Jerry limited edition DVDs.
• Psychotic Smirk: He spends most of “The Review Must Go On” with this.
  • In The Purge title card. Another case of Covers Always Lie, as for once he's not actually the villain in an episode, Film Brain is.
  • He has a very creepy one in The Shining when Rachel turns into a Hysterical Woman, enjoying her fear and doing whatever he can to make her more scared.
  • He has one in the Transformers 4 crossover when it turns out he rigged Erod's chair to electrocute him every time he tries to bring logic into the review.
  • He looks a little too evil-happy in Fantastic Four when he learns he can summon explosions at will.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He's like an angry twelve year old kid with a gun. During his Disneycember review, Doug says he took a lot of the character's "pathetic whiny brat in a grown person's body" part from the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland.
  • The Pop Quiz Hotshot pilot has him gleefully taunting a contestant about to die, fake crying and even the host compliments him on his bloodlust.
  • Taken to new heights in Disney Afternoon where he makes the studio look like his bedroom, pretends to be a kid coming home from school, dresses Malcolm and Tamara up in what a white boy thinks black kids and girls would wear, and gets violent if anyone tries to break his delusion. Even when he comes out for a while after being sad about nothing changing, he still goes right back to childlike at the end.
  • In "Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakuel", he's in Control Freak mode wanting a successful formula, and whips the D'aw Girls out of the room.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Usually a side-effect of when he's really suffering, and not just because of bad movies. Turns into Quivering Eyes occaisonally.

R

• Raging Stiffie: The target of the odd joke or two.
• Raised as the Opposite Gender: He was raised as a girl for a short while in childhood and his identity issues are a bit of a Running Gag.
  Critic: Now granted I didn't grow up as a girl... for long. [looks embarrassed and about to cry] I have a history.
• Rape as Backstory: On his prom night, even. Low blow. That trauma monkey plushie also raises a few questions.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: He's incredibly pale (he even disappears due to Cool as Ice being far too white), and is at least meant to be attractive. The downside of this is that it makes it very obvious when Doug demonstrates his lack of familiarity with sunscreen.
• Reality Warper:
  • Word of God is that he's spending his time trying to learn how to transform himself into different things, not just being a muppet. By the Linkara cameo in December, he mostly seems to have got it to work.
  • There's a few hints in the reboot that he still has this power, like at the end of “Top 11 South Park Episodes” where he changes into a South Park version of himself, or After Earth where he brings out the muppet Critic from the Plot Hole, or the numerous Your Mind Makes It Real moments. Confirmed in The Matrix Revolutions, where he has the power of “ruining”, creating the Plot Hole again (or a blue hole very similar to it) and making things go back to normal with no more Sickly Green Glow, no more fetish gear, and everyone at least having a personality.
• Really Gets Around: Just not quite in the way he wants. This quality increased for insecurity reasons in 2012. In the PQH Star Wars edition, he's glad for "what happens on [], stays on []" rule.
• Real Men Hate Affection: In his amnesia persona, he complains that TBF!Critic gets "too much" Character Development, and is disgusted with him for telling the Chick how depressed he feels.
• Real Women Never Wear Dresses:
  • Believes in this pretty heavily. As an example, Princess Peach using a frying pan to knock out an enemy disgusts him. As another example, he calls the possessed person in Star Trek with "no emotions, no feelings and no needs" the perfect woman. Although like Chick and Lindsay, this is just meant to be the character being an idiot and not Doug's real feelings on the subject. In Doug's own reviews of Disney movies, he even argues why leads like Ariel, Cinderella and Snow White aren't the feminist nightmares they're made out to be.
  • His reason for hating the women in Pearl Harbor is that they giggle. Not what they're giggling about, not that they do it too much, not that they're flat characters, just hates them from the first laugh.
• Redemption Rejection:
  • When Sage calls him out in The Guyver on having being an insulting invoked Fan Hater ever since his return, they argue and have an angry staredown, giving him ample opportunity to be a good person and apologize. But instead he walks out in a Downer Ending.
  • Goes all out at the end of The Uncanny Valley, as Doug^note And this was purely written by Doug for the DVD, no Rob involved. writes two hope spots where Critic angsts about possibly being fixable but is completely unable to.
  • At the end of Alice in Wonderland (2010), Critic makes a move (with familiar triumphant music) to understand that all artists can make good things, but then Burton lets him down again and he angrily says he forgot what he was supposed to have learned.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Does this to himself. The Nostalgia Critic's the red oni, to the real life Doug Walker's blue oni.
  • Nicely swapped round with Linkara in Star Trek Insurrection. To perhaps show Critic has grown up a bit, he shouts very little and tries to be optimistic while Linkara spends a lot of time angry and yelling.
  • He's the blue oni to Erod's red for the first half of the Transformers 4 crossover, coming off as bored and jaded in comparison to the latter's more exaggerated hammy persona. At one point when Erod is ranting, he puts on headphones and listens to “Pig Power In The House”. this turns out to be Bait the Dog, as he shoots Bay when Erod can't, has evil electric powers and does an old-school bat credit card reaction.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: The reviewing variant. By Son of the Mask, he's been reduced to wandering around in the snow and finding movies in trash-cans.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Male version. Whenever someone else (Game Heroes, Spoony, Chick etc.) makes him the victim.
  • In the “Is Eyes Wide Shut Artsy Porn” title card◊, he's shirtless, but hiding himself and looks terrified.
  • In the executive-demanded music video at the beginning of Jem, he's fine dancing in drag and making flirty poses, but when the camera starts to do some Female Gaze he gets uncomfortable and twitchy.
• Reluctant Psycho: In “Top 11 New Halloween Classics”, he describes the feeling quite succinctly as “imagine you're at the Mad Hatter's tea party, but you're tied to a chair and aren't allowed to leave”. The priest in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle notes that Critic isn't so much slipping in sanity, it's that he was always broken.
• Repressed Memories: From the review of Hook: "I have the same unquestioned repressed childhood memories that everyone has." Beat "What?"
• The Rival: To The Angry Video Game Nerd, who really doesn't know why he hates him so much.

S

• Sad Clown: Under all the jokes and snark, he's really quite depressed. He even takes it one step further by feeling insecure about his abilities for comedy.
  • In particular, the Canada commercials jokes are not well-liked (especially the rape whistle one, as girls getting abused is more important than a "killjoy PSA") but in The Purge he said he made them because he was scared. "Battle Of The Commercials" had him clarify this even more.
  • He literally says in Christmas with the Kranks that he thought if he could make people laugh, they'd stop hurting him and it would fix things.
• Sand In My Eyes: In Romeo and Juliet, Why is Arthur Christmas a Masterpiece?, The Looney Tunes Show - Good or Bad? and the E-Sults advertisement, his eyes are red and worn-out looking, a bit like he'd just been crying before filming. In no video is this addressed.
• Say My Name: "NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD!!!"
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Very often and typically for long periods of time.
• Secretly Wealthy: Sage is actually shocked when he sees it all come through. So much so that he offhandedly tells Critic to go jump off a cliff afterwards instead of using the More than Mind Control to his advantage.
• Security Blanket:
  • The big monkey toy with a tie. Behind the scenes show it's always at the studio, the opening of Pop Quiz Hotshot has him cling onto it while rocking back and forth, and Doug has talked before about how when you're mentally ill and in a panic, you can imbue stuffed animals as the only safety you have.
  • Literally in the TMNT watching during the Transformers 4 crossover, as he wraps himself in a pinkish purple duvet and is nearly crying with happiness. He also trails it along with him when they go back to the review.
• Selective Obliviousness: In some ways he knows the Chick better than anyone, but he blinded himself to what she was doing in Kickassia because he thought she had his Undying Loyalty, he assumed she would feel the same pride that he did when he sat through a bad movie, and he views her as a lot tougher than she really is.
  • Not just with Chick. He's pretty good with denial as a whole, like when he was complaining about his job for years but only sank into major depression when a director inadvertently made him realize his life was meaningless.
• Self-Serving Memory:
  • He remembered Kickassia as becoming a God when he just sat on his ass all day, and the titular crossovers as teaching Linkara, Chick, Phelous and LordKaT a lesson about going into his territory when in reality, he broke down in all of them and had to be comforted.
  • He tells Shyamalan in After Earth that he killed him twice, but that's not remotely true. Aang killed him in The Last Airbender while Critic was useless, and the Devil sent him back to hell in Devil while Critic was a Distressed Dude about to get talent bended for the second time.
  • Intentionally bullshit in his speech about Food Fight, with the camera zooming in while he talks about doing the film for us (when his face was literally on a hundred dollar bill twenty minutes ago) and then it cuts to him being upset because Malcolm is telling him that he didn't get money because the film's passé.
  • Inverted in The Lorax (2012) when he asks the analysts didn't he kill them both in The Cat in the Hat. He didn't actually kill them himself, he just drove them to suicide.
  • In Scooby Doo 2, he tells Roger-in-disguise that the first movie nearly killed him, when even flashbacks show the context that he tried to commit suicide from self loathing and that it was a Taking You with Me.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man:
  • Sensitive Guy to the Other Guy's Manly Man.
  • He also acted as the Sensitive Guy to The Angry Video Game Nerd's Manly Man in their crossover.
  • He also has this dynamic with Snob, especially in The Passion of the Christ where he's nervous and guilty about what happened to Santa Christ and Snob is snarky and thrilled.
• Serial Killer: Technically, he is this, even if he's never called one In-Universe, as he has murdered numerous people over the years, from Dr. Bitch Spasms, to Lucky the Leprechaun, to the Madison family in Eight Crazy Nights, to destroying entire planets with his love of Christmas.
• Seriously Scruffy:
  • In Mad Max: Fury Road, as he gets more stubbly as the review goes on. It's unclear whether the amount of work caused Doug to forget shaving again, or it was to parody Max's Perma-Stubble.
  • In What You Never Knew About National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, his clothes are askew and he hasn't shaved because he doesn't actually want to do a video and just wants to celebrate Christmas.
• Sex God: The idea that he's really good at oral (due to Doug's Oral Fixation with the Ask That Guy pipe and fellating joysticks as Critic, plus many other objects) was given a nod in The Last Angry Geek's Bad Future episode, as the site has been taken over and all he's allowed to do is give oral as a Sex Slave.
• Sex Is Violence:
  • He looks suspiciously post-coital after he causes a mass explosion. And the chaos ^note he specifically calls it a "gangbang of your consciousness", making it even more obviously the trope of the "Pink Elephants On Parade" makes him exhaustedly ask "Was it good for you?".
  • Also, Star Trek: Insurrection has him pawing That Sci-Fi Guy enough to raise some eyebrows. What makes it this trope is that three episodes before, Sci-Fi Guy killed him.
• Sexy Coat Flashing: Done in his review of the Flinstones Movie, where he acts out Halle Berry trying to comfort the audience.
• Sex Slave:
  • In the Bad Future, he's not allowed to do anything but prostitute himself for Snob's pleasure.
  • In The Wicker Man (2006), he asks if he can vacation on Summerisle when he hears that he'd have no responsibilities other than to have sex, Stay in the Kitchen and not talk to anyone.
  • In her fourth vlog, Hyper blissfully wants to control and break down Critic's brain so he'd be in love with her. Malcolm admits that would be a possibility for him as well.
  • In The 6th Day, That Sci-Fi Guy accidentally creates a clone of the Critic, who has a 50% chance of being beamed back to original Critic's place and having to be this for him. (And no we're not making that up.)
  • If you know Alice: Madness Returns (where Malice comes from), there's a Black Comedy reference when she asks if he's escaped from the same asylum she did. The villain of the sequel owns an asylum and is a pimp to both girls and boys there, so on top of realizing/assuming Critic's mentally ill, she's also assuming he's a victim of that too.
• Sexy Stewardess: In the first DVD menu, he bizarrely (but not problematically) dresses up like a flight attendant who has a lot of skin showing.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: He can't seem to stop himself, even when there's a gun to his head.
• Show Some Leg: In Shark Jumping, she's his silent partner that he wants to pawn off, and he tells Beth and Tim that he did it to get her to leave him alone and that he hates her.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: He really wants to do a review with JesuOtaku in the Heavy Metal episode, and denies being attracted to him just because he's a guy who wants to do a crossover with a girl. (And then he turns into Shipper on Deck for CR/Phelous.)
• Signature Headgear: His baseball cap. He's one of the few men over the age of twenty who can make it look cool.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Although he's an easily emotional, giggly kid himself, he's nearly never impressed with The Power of Love, a lot of picks for his Top 11s are actually kinda sad and he has a big rant about believing in dreams in his A Troll in Central Park review.
• Silly Rabbit, Romance Is for Kids!: No question that he likes the Determinator kind of love, it's mushiness that he can't stand.
• Sinister Surveillance: He managed to get a camera into every site member's house, so he'll know when they're apparently trying to steal his spotlight.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: The only episode where he didn't swear was in Follow That Bird, which is very sweet.
• Sissy Villain: He's a pathetic jackass, but not because he's "sissy". That's just part of his personality. In the Transformers 4 crossover, he badass boasts that he's the Nostalgia Critic, he's the original movie basher and his face used to be the site logo, but then ruins it by obsessing over wondering how Erod thinks he looks like Edward Norton.
  • Really pronounced in Pop Quiz Hotshot, as he's obsessed with how pretty he looks in a tiara, hits on most of the men and is accepting of how he's fucked up in the head.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: The Angry Video Game NEEEEEEEEEEEERD!!!
• Skewed Priorities: He thinks child abuse, even the more minor stuff, is worse than rape. Done intentionally, as while the Critic complains about the Starchaser sexbot abuse scene as creepy for the kids, Doug rants on the commentary about the disgustingness of her character being forcibly changed from unwilling to slut.
  • Confusing Kyle and Paw in the Les Miserables review, he thinks bread stealing is worse than rape and murder. Doug in the bloopers doesn't go that far, but he does think that french bread is the best thing ever.
• Slouch of Villainy: When Doug gives him the answer he wants in “The Review Must Go On”.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: CR made a pointed comparison to Critic and Baby-Doll from Batman: The Animated Series, trying to get him to see that he'll end up as a White-Dwarf Starlet if he keeps on stressing about people taking his job.
  • More generally, and overlapping with Came Back Wrong, the main Story Arc in the reboot. Sometimes it's played for Black Comedy, while at other times (like The Guyver) it's played for angst, and episodes like The Shining, it's there for horror.
• Small Name, Big Ego: No matter how many times it gets beaten out of him, he's an egotistical prick. What makes a little more interesting, though, is his self-esteem is pretty low and pathetically easy to break. Critic Tank (a Shark Jumping episode) self-deprecates that he turned loving the sound of his own voice into an online empire, but can barely pay his rent on time.
  • In the DVD review of The Review Must Go On, he's firmly up his own ass, calling it an astounding achievement and knocking away any chart proof that it was pretentious and egotistical. This comes back at the end, lampshading that he's biased but calling it amazing before he gets a smackdown from Doug.
• Smart Ball: Invoked in The Chipmunk Adventure. When he gives a too-well-reasoned argument about the Chick growing out of the site-planned Girl-Show Ghetto and doing her own thing, Chick meta-brags that what he's saying sounds like her writing.
• Smarter Than You Look: He doesn't have a whole lot of faith in his intelligence, not helped by all the mistakes he makes, but he really is smarter than he seems.
• Soapbox Sadie: Nobody can accuse of him of not genuinely caring about kids, racism or sexism (and if you have for the first one, what have you been watching?), but it's like he can only be OCD-like about one of those things an episode, while the rest get pushed to the side slightly.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: In Prime, he was never too lucky on who he was a Lust Object to, but at least he was happy to be a sexually active Mr. Fanservice. Not so much in reboot where all he wants is women he can humiliate, Rogue figurines to give him handjobs, and to stalk Emilia Clarke, but catwomen, men and witches get in his personal space, Rachel and Malcolm both grope him when he doesn't want them to and even Zod's threats are based on mutilating his looks until nobody recognizes him as human.
• Some of My Best Friends Are X: Parodied when people accuse him of being an anti-groundite. He goes on to say they're hard-working, have feelings and some of his good friends are floors. His own floor then tries to shoot him.
  • Real life example with Sailor Moon, as in Connecticon Doug mocked the people who didn't like the review with the fact that he's become friends with some of the cast.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Showcased in The Room (2003) where he ends up shouting the "Dead Parrot Sketch" from Monty Python's Flying Circus, and uses a quote from William Shakespeare seconds later.
• So Proud of You: Doug most likely knew that Lindsay didn't invent the concept of The Smurfette Principle, but Critic acted like the Chick did.
• Sore Loser: When he loses the third match against Angry Joe, he's a whiny, angry brat who accuses Joe of cheating.
• The Soulless: He lost it to Malcolm's devil in return for a good Zod impression.
• Speech Impediment: He starts stammering when he's scared or nervous.
• Speak of the Devil: He pops up in the Chick's review of Transformers when she says the word "manchildren". Also when Maven says the words "nostalgia nostalgia nostalgia" in her Count Chocula review.
• Split Personality: Done in the more realistic fashion. Three times now something bad has happened to really trigger him off, he'll react with intense distaste (Hearing Voices with the Doug bullies, long angrish with how childish The Haunting (1999) was, exploding cities with Quest for Camelot) and then he'll come back with apologies or would have to be made aware of what he just did.
• Squee:
  • As the "Follow That Bird" review proved, he can go higher than a teenage girl when he's excited.
  • He even squees the trope name in his review of Alaska. The image of him bouncing is a pretty popular reaction gif on tumblr.
  • While it gets steadily darker in reboot, he always gets little boy excited over Christmas.
• Stalker with a Crush: In his teenage years, he broke up with someone three times.
  Nostalgia Critic: How many times can you break up with someone before they turn into a psycho and start stalking you? *looks around scared and whispers* Three.
  • He himself approaches stalker territory when he first pretends to be Rasputin to have a conversation with the Chick and secondly hides in the bushes to capture her and make her watch Bratz. She finds the former endearingly annoying and doesn't seem to mind the latter, however, probably because she chloroformed him first.
  • He's a fully fledged stalker to Emilia Clarke, having her number on speed-dial despite her hating him in the commercials special, and ignoring Joe in Man of Steel to look at naked pictures of her.
  • In North, he says he's familiar telling people to stop following him or he'll call the police.
• Steel Ear Drums: Played straight most of the time and subverted once. All that shooting in close spaces doesn't affect him, but a girl's annoying voice pierces right through.
• Stepford Smiler: A mix of type C/type A.
  • A good example of stepfordness is in the beginning of The Blues Brothers video game where he's waking up in the morning. In Last Angry Geek's review of Spider-Man and the X-Men, where Brian asks whatever happened to Dr. Smith and Critic (with a giant frozen smile) tells him “Cancer. Very sad.”, and it cuts back to Brian mouthing “ouch”. If it weren't for the much sadder take at the end (where he also reveals Dr. Smith was his father), one would assume Lack of Empathy.
  • The Psychopathic Manchild version for the first half of Disney Afternoon, especially when Malcolm is unconscious, he has blood on his hands and his response to Tamara wanting to take Malcolm to the hospital is a Dissonant Serenity “it's too late for him”. It's only when reality breaks in that he's still commenting on cartoons that he calms down, and even that is just sadder and more cynical.
• The Stoner:
  • While he bears none of the character traits associated with the trope, he does make a few references. His plan for the 100th episode was to show a crummy clip show and smoke some pot. He's also on an ongoing search for "Pot Land" according to his review of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.
  • When he sees Malcolm and Tamara in bunny ears, with guns and hiding behind the desk, he says he usually has to take something to see stuff like this.
  • In The Sixth Day crossover, he asks how long it takes for a powdered horse scrotum to leave your system after you smoke it.
    That Sci Fi Guy: Um, I'm just gonna move on.
    Critic: Yeah, you better.
  • In Iron Man's Coke, he snorts some coke to calm himself down from getting annoyed that the challenge was done too fast.
• Strawman Emotional: In his worst moments. The fact that he doesn't seem to even realize he can be like this makes it easier to stomach.
• Straw Hypocrite: Goes into this territory a lot in reboot, like when he says “I'm not one to disagree with other's opinions, unless they're stupid and not mine”, when nearly all of his (intended) Finale Season had him learning the opposite.
• Stubborn Mule: He calls himself a stubborn old curmudgeon in the "Willy Wonka" Old vs New.
• Stupid Sexy Keith David, Hugh Jackman and Will Smith.
  *slaps himself* BOOBS! YOU LIKE BOOBS!
• Survival Mantra: Until the Burger King runs away in terror from Twister, "elephant" serves as his call back to reality.
• Sweet Tooth: He downs an entire bag of candy in Nicktoons.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: It's his show, so we get to see him break down, fanboy, be a victim, be a jackass, be smart, be dumb... the works. If we knew him from Film Brain's POV for example, he wouldn't nearly be as likable.

T

• Take a Third Option: When Spoony gives him a choice of reviewing the Reb Brown's Captain America movie or letting the forced crossdressing pictures of Spooning With Spoony 2 leak out, he chooses a noose instead.
• Take This Job and Shove It: When he didn't get promoted in his Crusty Caretaker job, we get to see Doug's video of that "I QUIT!" Shirtless Scene.
• Talkative Loon: When he gets worked up.
• The Tease: An aesop that comes up every now and then is that he can be as slutty and attention seeking as he wants, doesn't mean he's not allowed to be traumatized by abusers like Spoony and Hyper.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Literally. He takes pills that he owns to make him sound like Kevin Conroy, and his voice drops much lower as well as his balls.
  • He almost certainly was trying to invoke this at the beginning. Sexist, homophobic, a lower-pitched voice, still wasn't smart but had much more common sense, owned a Hair-Trigger Temper, slobby, easily bored and none of the femmy, childish behavior we know him for.
  • Darker in The Shining, as right after admitting his dick both doesn't work anymore and is the only thing keeping him a man, he has a more masculine costume change, has zero patience for any talk of feelings, and acts like an abusive partner to Rachel.
  • Realistically (especially for someone Raised as the Opposite Gender) in "Old vs New Cinderella'', as right after Devil Boner calls him full of estrogen and Hyper's "ladyfriend", he suddenly gets more concerned about his masculinity being undermined, when he was fine talking about "girl movies" before.
• That Man Is Dead: In the beginning of Forest Warrior, he refuses to do the Chuck Norris Running Gag because that was the old him, and the new version needs to create new memes that he can be obnoxious about.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: To Boldly Flee-Critic complained because "everything [he does] has a negative impact on someone" and was desperate for a way to fix it. But his fixing got screwed over by The Review Must Go On making it a paradox, and reboot-Critic practically makes it his mission to hurt people. Sage calls him out on this, but Critic ignores him.
  • For an example that happened in the same review, the realistic happens for the Master Of Disguise breakdown and he gets in trouble, but he lucidly punches Rachel in the gut at the end of the episode and leaves her on the ground, not caring what that must look like in context.
• Thinking Tic: Has a tendency to pucker his mouth when he's thinking something over.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: The Bad Future 2019 in Geek's Future's End episode gives the implication that he's in permanent about-to-cry mode. And he actually does when Snob shows up.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Santa Christ showing up to erase his memory of The Star Wars Holiday Special. And "Poor Critic" at the end of his Commercials Special has him getting his self-confidence back.
  • In the NickComs episode, Tempting Fate actually works in his favor for once and gives him The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
  • After being so deathly boring for the majority of time, Junior gets funny and stupid with Arnold in a dress and spouting one-liners.
  • Double Team more than satisfies him with the "BEST! DEATH! EVER!".
  • After going through hell with Sequel Month, he gets to enjoy himself with Dungeons & Dragons (2000).
  • Considering how depressed he was that he couldn't muster up the courage to talk to the Chick during the failure date, their relationship becoming Dating Catwoman probably counts.
  • In To Boldly Flee, his creator telling him how good of a character he became. Plus saving the world.
• Too Dumb to Live: Plenty of instances. Examples include taunting Disney villains, tempting an angel to kick his ass and God to strike him down, trusting people he shouldn't and following the orders of Sage when he believes he's the devil.
• Took a Level in Badass: In To Boldly Flee. Suicidal motivation aside, he stood up to Mechakara even when he was frustrated, terrified and being held at gunpoint.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Not a bad thing, but he wasn't always lacking in a lot of common sense.
  • His IQ dropping since the intelligence of the Plot Hole appearances has been lampshaded twice, with Doug complaining that he's been written so stupid and it taking him twenty-two seconds to realize Sage calling him an airhead in the Guyver review.
  • Again lampshaded in "The Dark Knight Returns", where he quips that Two-Face (who has two bombs, and wants 22 million dollars in the next 22 minutes) must really like the number "3". Last Angry Geek quietly corrects him. He also later confuses LAG for Linkara, and runs off at the end of the review.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Steadily until To Boldly Flee, lampshaded by Doug himself. But...
• Took a Level in Jerkass/Sanity Slippage: Things started to go wrong really quickly. There was "The Review Must Go On" where he gaslighted Doug, "An Odd Life Of Timothy Green" where he killed a cat, and both "Son Of The Mask" and "Food Fight" have him broken to a degree that the Scooby-Doo breakdown can't reach. The "Master Of Disguise" review had Surprisingly Realistic Outcome when he's forced to go an asylum for a freak out, then he went Jack Nicholson on Rachel during The Shining review, and it's just gotten worse from there. He's seriously injured Malcolm for extremely petty reasons, and outright MURDERED the Happy Maddison audience. He's reached a level of Ax-Crazy that is unprecedented by anything seen before. Perhaps taking him out of the plot hole WASN'T the best idea.
  • Lampshaded in The Shining, as when he's abusing Rachel on the phone, she snarks back that he's never been nice while she's known him.
  • "The Dark Knight Returns" review intentionally contrasts his excited righteous happy post To Boldly Flee, with his smugly insulting, stupid, going-through-the-motions personality in current times.
  • The Sanity Slippage was lampshaded in Ghost Dad, where he says he can't talk about the twist because he already has fears about his mental health and doesn't want it to get worse.
  • Disney Afternoon is all about him losing it. He desperately wants to recreate his childhood, even before violence happens he makes Tamara back off because he's so angry about her thinking he was talking about the Saturday morning version, and he's even more of a Mood-Swinger than usual. It's only really when reality hits that “nothing's changed” and he's still stuck in a job commenting on cartoons that he moves into the more normal depression and not just being stepford psychotic.
  • By The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, it's got to the point where other characters are forced to realize he was never really sane.
• Too Kinky to Torture: When he's parodying being a Distressed Dude in the Sidekicks review, he sounds less defiant and more excited about being electrocuted.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He has a rarely-mentioned obsession with breakfast cereal, which shows up in his cereal mascots review (obviously) and a crossover sketch with the Nostalgia Chick and The Maven of the Evantide.
• Tragic Hero: Tragically funny. He genuinely wants to be a Nice Guy or at least feel more optimistic about things, but he can never quite quell his temper. Played for Drama in Scooby-Doo and To Boldly Flee.
• Tragic Monster: Gets so close to it in “Why Do We Love Zombies”, as the ending has him as a zombie, the title card has him as a gored zombie, and there's a Despair Speech about humanity being beaten out of him.
• Transparent Closet: The door will be opened and closed for Rule of Funny and Rule of Cute. Sometimes he'll valiantly attempt to be all about the boobs, other times he'll fangirl guys without the slightest bit of regret. Lampshaded bitterly in the Les Miserables review, where he, Paw and Kyle fall out of a closet and he says “enter coming out of the closet joke here”.
• Trauma Conga Line: It is profoundly entertaining to see what horrible thing will happen to him next, either in the present or in his childhood.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: The Guyver review makes a point of him not remembering Kickassia, Suburban Knights or To Boldly Flee as well as he should. Just what he's forgotten about remains to be seen. Bloodrayne has him not being able to remember the big fight in Suburban Knights.
• Trigger-Happy: This bites him in the ass twice; when he panics and shoots Santa Christ in Kickassia and when he kills his childhood icon, Mary Poppins, after Quest for Camelot.
• Trophy Wife: He wants to marry Malcolm and leech off his money in Demolition Man, and he's for a moment okay with being Hyper's hostage boyfriend when he sees the inside of her Big Fancy House.
• Troubled Abuser: He's horrible to Rachel, uses Malcolm and tries to break down Tamara, but there's something horribly wrong with him and he's been abused himself and still has issues over this.
• Troubled, but Cute: He's a slutty Mr. Fanservice with an abusive past, stockholms for rapists and abusers, tries really hard to be good but can't make it (after he did in To Boldly Flee, Real Life Writes the Plot and did a retcon), is mentally ill, stuck in a job he hates and abuses others to make himself feel better.
• Troubled Child: "I had issues." Made explicit in "What Happened To Great Disney Villains", when he says he used to be like Sid in Toy Story.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The first nod to his abusive childhood was him saying that he shot his Ninja Turtle doll.
• Tsundere: Showcased in pretty much the entirety of the "Follow That Bird" review.
  Nostalgic Critic: Big Bird! Oh my god! He is just as big as I remember him! Some things never change when you're a chi- IT'S A MAN IN A COSTUME! ...A big...loveable...heartwarming costume...
  • In Alaska he switches between horror at polar bears eating people to fawning over the movie's animal lightning fast.
• Twitchy Eye: Towards the end of his "lawyer tastes like deep-seated insecurity and bitterness" joke in Jurassic Park. Only Doug knows why. Referenced in The Monster Squad where he says “we all get nervous twitches like that sometimes”. Quite understandably, his whole face is a twitching mess in the Man of Steel review when Joe is giving Zod ideas on how to torture him. When he's hallucinating at the start of The Christmas Tree review, his eye jolts in time to his tapping of the coffee machine.

U

• Uke: Even Chester lampshades the implications of "Nerd-On-Critic action". Not to mention that if he spends any time with a woman, it'll end up in Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy. Also heavy with the Snob, as he's been the Sex Slave in the Bad Future and Brad makes jokes about Critic being naughty and needing spanking from "daddy".
• Undying Loyalty: As lampshaded by Ma-Ti in Kickassia. If he does actually care for someone, he'll cling on tight and do anything for them.
• Unfazed Everyman: Despite his cowardice, he's perfectly accepting of characters from the movies he's watching talking to him.
• Ungrateful Bastard: As a Became Their Own Antithesis of his Undying Loyalty in pre-reboot. He never thanks Rachel, Malcolm or Tamara for what they do for him, and he lampshades in Nerd's roast that while Nerd saved him twice in To Boldly Flee, he still hates him because he has to.
• Unkempt Beauty:
  • He looks much better with a rumpled suit and baseball cap than he does in 'proper' clothes.
  • Defied in The Shining, as he wears a flannel shirt, no tie, is more beardy and loses his glasses, meaning he looks more masculine and people won't be distracted by the usual flattering clothes.
  • Deconstructed in The Lorax (2012), where he realizes he's dressed the way he is to attract a female audience, and he's just as packaged as the new Onceler.
• Unreliable Narrator: Reboot has him having hallucinations, explicitly reality warping to fit what he wants and going through Sanity Slippage far worse than anything previously, so suffice to say he's not always right about what goes on.
• The Unsmile: The very beginning of "Top 12 Santa Clauses". He's genuinely excited, but can only grimace uncomfortably.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Maybe it's a good thing that he never wins, because when he does (and that's rare), he acts like a prick.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • In response to the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, the Nostalgia Critic shoots the show so many times it literally goes up in a giant explosion.
  • And then again for Blank Check.
  • For Quest for Camelot he gets so angry that the movie keeps making shit up with absolutely no explanation that his anger destroys a town with a nuclear explosion. Then it happens again mere moments later when one of the characters makes a horrible Dirty Harry pun.
  • The NeverEnding Story III certainly did piss off the NC to no end, but the last straw was, instead of the theme song to the series, they place Rockbiter singing "Born To Be Wild" during the motorcycle scene on the end credits. This sends the NC laughing all the way to Home Depot, buying a crowbar, coming home, and then mercilessly beating and raping the DVD to pieces.
  I'm fucking the DVD! I'm fucking the DVD!
  • The Master of Disguise sends the NC laughing uncontrollably in reaction to its "a little wiener and some tiny nuts" joke to the point where it sounds like he's wheezing really hard before he goes outside and beats three people to near-death (including the cameraman) with a baseball bat.
  • In Dragon's Lair, he has a crying breakdown when his happy ending gets ruined.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Not in the "was nice but is now evil" way, but the "hoped for far more than this" version.

V

• Vanity Is Feminine:
  • He frantically paws at his face before running off to print out pictures of it in the photocopier. This is apparently his secret hobby.
  • In Hyper's second vlog, he gets distracted from hating her by happily going on about how nice silk feels.
  • In the Shark Jumping review of Glee, the only thing that tempts him to do singing again (though he still refuses until the end) is being promised “fabulous costume changes”.
• Verbal Tic: The Critic has an extremely prevalent one that typically appears multiple times in the span of every single review. Once you notice it you'll hear it all the time. ^note  It's "on top of that".
  • He will almost always provide a summation of his review along the lines of "The <noun> is <adjective>, the <noun> is <adjective>, the <noun> is <adjective>... In short, it's an <adjective> <noun>."
• Villain Protagonist: There are a lot of signs that he Came Back Wrong from the Plot Hole, hitting kids, his reason for hating Stephen King downgraded to "he entertains people", and suggesting torture that even the devil is surprised by. Notably, in Blues Brothers 2000, he refuses to help someone dying because he wants to get ranting about the movie off his back, and the camera follows him while keeping the said dying a Meaningful Background Event.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Chester. Critic steals Chester's drugs and lets him search for the necronomicon by himself while Chester is somewhat of an Ungrateful Bastard who will blow up cities just to upset Critic. However, Critic gave Chester a job, a safe place to stay and is the only one on the site to give him money, while Chester will be one of the first to defend Critic against anyone else.
• Vocal Evolution: The Nostalgia Critic's voice was much more drawling and manlier in his earlier episodes with Doug's real Chicago accent coming through, with almost none of the high-pitched screaming and animated excitement he'd become known for.
  • His Arnold Schwarzenegger impression is improving as well. Impressions in his Schwarzenegger month videos are deeper than his earlier reviews, and pretty close to the real thing.
  • His female voice got better too. In early reviews, it was just slightly more high-pitched than his child voice. In 2011 it sounded like a woman was talking.
    • Inverted too. Doug used to be able to do both the male and female sex noises in an especially porny episode of Ask That Guy and for a joke in Jaws 3. But for the sex gag in 8 Crazy Nights he had to get Rachel to do the female voice.

W

• Walking Disaster Area: Computers, stuffed animals and kitchen appliances have all blown him up or gone wrong in some way before he even managed to touch them.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Played for Laughs in The Shining, where he wants a medal for not making racist pedophila jokes about the little boy and the black guy called Dick.
• Weak-Willed: In the Top 11 Cereal Mascots, he goes out (twice) immediately to buy something because advertising told him to. And Devil!Sage manages to control him easily even after he's said he's not the devil.
• Weight Woe: As he gets thinner, he insults Hollywood Pudgy actors more and more. Even The Cinema Snob doesn't escape in the review of Paranoia. In the Dragonbored review, he even bitches that Jimbroth (obviously played by Doug) is too doughy and could only bench-press two pounds at most.
• Weirdness Magnet: Being the main character of of the site, everything bad in their world seems to happen to him most of the time (when it's not happening to Linkara). Played for Laughs in the Fantastic Four (2005) review, when a meteor occurs just outside the studio.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: He says the line to Lupa in Suburban Knights and immediately regrets it, and Phelous says it to him in the Child's Play II review, putting him in the girl spot and all.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: It's great that you want the Chick to be proud of herself, but forcing her to watch Bratz is kinda harsh.
• We Used to Be Friends: “Nostalgia Critic Talks Transformers 4” has the Critic/Chester friendship completely gone, with Critic knocking Chester out so he can have his rant, and when Chester buys into the pretty speech, Critic kicks him again showing what he's really like.
  • One that isn't actually his fault for once, but Film Brain was his confidant in To Boldly Flee, but tries to kill Critic in the Purge review.
  • Maven happily eats cereal with him in a crossover before he died, and had a skull with a baseball cap as remembrance for a while, but is completely disgusted with him a couple years later. For his part he calls her a prejudiced bitch when she forces him to leave.
  • Discussed in Can An Ending Ruin A Film, where he compares bad endings to a good friendship being over down to one bad decision.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Their prettiness is lampshaded by Lindsay in the Moulin Rouge! review.
  Lindsay: Your eyes are so blue.
  Doug: I know, you just look at them and…
• When He Smiles: Look at the top picture of the three Critics on his blip page. The first is him being goofy, the second is him looking angry while pointing a gun, and what does the third involve? A cute smile with his dimple showing.
  • Played darkly at the end of The Cat in the Hat. First time he grins at all in the episode (as he spent it very dead-eyed and depressed) is when the Devil is proud of him for suggesting torture.
  • Used for sad effect in The Dark Knight Returns, as his first eyes-meeting genuine grin in ages is a Call-Forward comment about how deep and awesome Demo Reel will be.
• White Male Lead: He doesn't fit the description (you couldn't really view him as privileged other than having a fair amount of money and he's not overshadowing any minority), but he views himself as one.
  • Played straighter in the reboot, as he gets the most airtime, often explains the obvious to the bad guys, and the black guy and woman are relegated to one-note characters on the side.
  • In "Disney Afternoon", he forces Tamara and Malcolm to dress up like what he thought girls and black men wore in the nineties (hair decorations to the extreme and "ghetto" respectfully). They tell him instantly how wrong his perceptions are.
  • Lampshaded in The Monster Squad review, as Malcolm asks why he gets the most focus seeing as how he's the least interesting of all the characters on the show.
• White Man's Burden: In Care Bears Nutcracker, Malcolm tells Tamara he loves the White Guilt movies (like Film/12YearsASlave) because Critic tries to make up for his own racism by always taking him out for dinner after.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: On the TGWTG Vol. 1 DVD, he dresses up like an airline stewardess.
  • Douchey has a picture of him wearing Marilyn Monroe's dress, which Critic gets embarrassed by.
  • He once dressed up as a female irish janitor and recorded things in the girls locker room.
  Critic: Why don't you just forget I said that?
  • And there's Suburban Knights, where he wears a very skimpy costume. Critic didn't know what he was doing, but Doug evidently did.
  • When his early teenager self says "I like to wear women's clothing" and dresses up in a blonde wig, present!Critic's already high embarrassment goes through the roof. When his memory has been tampered with and he goes back to them, he calls 12 year old Doug in drag “a young man trying to work some things out”.
  • The cheerleading outfit in Christmas Story II was to prove a point (if a fanservice one), but the accompanying vlog has him put the mini-skirt to his waist and swing it around curiously. Hyper then interrupts, lunging at him and making him freak before the video cuts out. It also got spoilered in the "Carpet Diem" vlog, as the review aired a few days later and Doug says that because he's been in drag a million times and will be again, the fans mock him constantly and say he's Transgender.
  • In his DVD review of The Cinema Snob Movie, he dismisses a guy “having an interesting night-life” (with women's clothes) because dude hasn't got the hips for it.
  • Lampshaded in The Monster Squad where Critic dismisses Tamara crossdressing because everyone crossdresses on the show.
  • In the Princess Diaries II commentary, Doug reveals that when the characters were walking by the Jack Nicholson head, that was actually him with a pink dress shirt wrapped around his legs. Even Malcolm was impressed with how much his bottom half in pink looks like Anne Hathaway's legs.
  • In The Phantom of the Opera (2004), his immediate reaction to Beth being missing is to tell Tim to get in the Christine dress.
  • Aside from the pink gear in the beginning of the Jem review, he eye-rolls at the girls complaining about having to try on dresses and having someone do your make-up because both those things are fun.
• Who's Laughing Now?: He's killed people who bullied him about Doug.
• Wicked Cultured: He may have lost out on smarts, but he knows opera, theater, how to take care of himself, and has a fuckton of beautiful art in his house.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Due to that scene in A Clockwork Orange, he shoots the lead in Singin' in the Rain because he thinks he's a rapist.
  • A bit more noble example occurs when he tries to shoot Lady Tremaine for her abuse of Cinderella.
• Windmill Crusader: As he so paranoidly put it...
  Critic: Hel-lo I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it so you don't have to. But that hasn't stopped people from trying!
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: He was never great friends with sanity, but could always be relied upon (even if it took a while or a beating) to crash on the ground and do the right thing. Post-reboot however, he's got power learned from "The Review Must Go On" and Word of God has even apologized when Critic in The Shining proved too scary for Rachel to handle.
• The Wonka: His number of issues are a mile long, but people follow him willingly and he's genuinely great at his job. Just don't tell him that last part or he might cry.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He pouts pretty hard when he learns his temper tantrum destroyed a whole city in Quest for Camelot.
• Workaholic: Doug being Doug, this creeps into Critic every now and then. Like in Ghost Dad, he says death is no excuse to stop working, or the Gut Punch in Jurassic Park III, when the doctor says his dying mom didn't want to bother him from his work.
  • Played for Laughs in Linkara's Welcome to Night Vale parody as the podcast believes he's just doing clipless reviews to work himself and Malcolm/Tamara to death.
• Worthy Opponent: The Angry Video Game Nerd. He even says "You are indeed the most worthy adversary" during the second episode of the feud.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger is probably the only reoccurring person in his reviews that he can both make fun of and have affection for.
• Would Hurt a Child: He makes Evilina cry twice in The Cat in the Hat, once by hitting her and yelling at her for crying, and in The King and I he dances happily at the thought of a teenage girl getting whipped.
  • In his review of Bridge to Terabithia (2007), he points out how much Jesse has to put up with all the shit from the male bullies in his class, and after Leslie dies, the bully says a line so unforgivably insensitive towards Jesse's situation that sends the Critic off on a tangent where he feels it is totally Justified to strike that kid. Jesse immediately sends the bully reeling with a right hook when he returns to the review. He also spends an extortionate amount of time mocking Anna Sophia Robb's attractiveness for no reason, the nastiness of which he lampshaded next review in The Shining.
  • After a fairly bittersweet Friend to All Children editorial on why you should lie to your kids about Santa, he reminds everyone of what he's now like by not caring that he made children cry.
  • Played for stepford horror in Maven's “Monster Mash”, as a “cute little girl” thought he was the Angry Video Game Nerd and he bludgeoned her to death.
  • Lampshaded in Maximum Overdrive, where he shows you the one shot of a child's head exploding “because he has a sick obsession for violence that he should probably question more”.
• Would Hit a Girl: Mostly The Nostalgia Chick. Naturally, she likes beating on him just as much.
  • Although it seems he only does this with women who can give as good as they get. He's disgusted with Good Burger for Carmen Electra getting beaten up and having it played for laughs, which causes irony for later, as he hits Rachel and Tamara a lot and while Tamara will usually get her own back eventually, Rachel cried when he was scaring her and stayed down when he beats her outside.

Y

• Yank the Dog's Chain: Looking forward to The Neverending Story theme at the end of The Neverending Story III Escape From Fantasia, Critic? How about a montage of the worst scene in the movie instead?
  • When he starts to be sure that Jingle All the Way has ended on an at-least-not-so-bad note, the movie proves him wrong. He doesn't take it well.
  • He was on the verge of solving world hunger and cure all unknown diseases when DuckTales popped into his head and broke all concentration.
  • After having an adorably fun time with the creators of Animaniacs, he fucks up at the end because of an immature request.
  • In Simon Sez, when Obscurus Lupa accepts him not wanting to do a crossover with her, he's almost heartbreakingly delighted that someone actually listened to him. Of course she's only messing around.
  • At the end of Exorcist II: The Heretic review, the "great spirits" let him know that he doesn't have to do Nostalgia-Ween anymore. What he has to do instead? Doug's 1st Movie. And not even that exchange was enough, as 2013 brought another Nostalgia-Ween that portrayed him as both a psychotically racist Domestic Abuser and a depressed zombie.
  • As soon as he says he doesn't want anything more to do with Doug after making it through without having to hear the dreaded theme song, guess what plays?
  • He spends most of Star Trek month paranoid that Linkara will show up and nitpick in his usual way. When he thinks it's over and he's free, guess who shows up?
  • The Critic is overjoyed that the next film he is going to review is The Avengers. He thought it would be the Joss Whedon project, not the film adaptation of the British spy series.
  • Particularly painful for him is his happy ending in To Boldly Flee getting retconned into a paradox. Two years later and he's still bitter, even as he's forgetting details about what happened.
    • He was also ruling over an entire universe, but then as shown in Dawn Of The Commercials, he had to go back to living with his abusive mother until she died in Jurassic Park III.
• Yaoi Fanboy: He sees the Ho Yay in Superman/Lex Luthor, Frodo/Sam, Simon Cowell/Ryan Seacrest, Batman/Robin and Leonardo/Raphael.
• Youthful Freckles: Not on his face, but the rest of his body. Which is fitting for how many times he's taken his clothes off.
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: As pathetic as he is and as pathetic as even the gun is (according to Word of God), you can't really say he doesn't leave an impact when he's genuinely pissed off.

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