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Musical Hell / Tropes A to F

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Main: Musical Hell

Navigation: A - F | Tropes G to L | Tropes M to R | Tropes S to Z

  • Accentuate the Negative: The series' premise is identifying and punishing the “sins” of its subjects. Inverted with the “Saving Grace,” which highlights positive elements that shine out in spite of the rest of the film.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: There was one joke in her review of Descendants that got a laugh out of Diva:
    Evie: Are you stalking me?
    Doug: Well, technically... yes.
  • Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole:
    • The 2003 version of The Music Man gets sinned for failing to bring up a crucial bit of Marian's backstory that explains why she was willing to give Harold the benefit of the doubt.
    • Among her numerous complaints with Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is that it needlessly expands the fake Slugworth into the fake Big Bad, which renders both his villainy and the climactic twist nonsensical.
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The Lion King (2019) gets a sin for its depiction of Timon and Pumbaa - among Diva's other complaints about their portrayals, she notes that their cheerful hedonism is gutted in favor of a more nihilistic portrayal.
  • Adapted Out:
  • Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: In The Ten Commandments: The Musical, Diva implies she was cast out of Heaven due to participating in a rebellion while she was drunk.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Probably to be expected in this case. Her review of Rock and Rule is embarrassing because she used to date the demon Mok summons.
  • All There in the Manual: In a response to a comment on her review of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return, Diva established that Musical Hell is located "on a small expansion shelf somewhere between the Third and Fourth Circles." Due to changing times, the Inferno has had to develop new space to accommodate modern sins like texting while driving, playing Face Hunter decks in Hearthstone, and of course, terrible musicals.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Before her review of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return, Diva justifies her "personal bias" with this trope:
    Diva: I'm a demon. I don't. Do. Fair.
  • Anachronism Stew: Diva notes this in her commentary of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Golden Films):
    Diva: Ahh, nothing says medieval Paris like mid-19th century can-can music... we're only one minute in, and already the costumes have gone through fifteen different time periods.
  • And There Was Much Rejoicing:
  • Anvilicious:
    • Diva marked down Pennies from Heaven for this trope, noting that it hammered the contrast between the cheery 1930s popular songs and the backdrop of the Great Depression constantly, while noting that it said nothing of any substance about the era other than "everything sucks".
    • Diva and her co-host, La Femme Fictionale, take umbridge with Vox Lux bluntly denouncing escapist media as nothing but a frivolous distraction from the Crapsack real world, as well as its heavy-handed plot tying its main character, Celeste's, coming of age story to the Millennial generation. This is lampshaded in the fourth sin card, Falling Anvil Warning.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Diva doesn't take ripoff films very well.
  • Artistic License: In Phantom of the Paradise, when Swan is getting an inebriated Phoenix to sign a contract, Donna argues that the fact that Phoenix's aforementioned inebriation counts as being under duress, making said contract null and void. Diva counters that it's not like the movie would know that.
  • Ascended Demon: Donna implies at the end of the Portal 2 review that Diva might be able to go back to Heaven one day. At the end of her review of The Devil's Carnival, she is finally allowed to leave Hell, although she wakes up as a live-action Christi Esterle as opposed to an angel.
  • Atomic F-Bomb: The final sin card for Glitter is simply a long, drawn-out "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"
  • Author Appeal: Whether through explicit references or simply reaction images, Christi loves to include references to her own fandoms in reviews, particularly The Phantom of the Opera and Overwatch.
  • Award Snub: invoked Diva admits that part of her dislike of Dear Evan Hansen was how it dominated the Tonys at the expense of the likes of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 and Come from Away.
  • Badass Decay: invoked Diva cites Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street for this for adapting out Johanna shooting Mr. Fogg.
  • Berserk Button: Descendants and The Lion King (2019) annoy Diva with their misuse of "Be Our Guest", with the former's Totally Radical Two Decades Behind rap cover getting a sin to itself.
    Sin Card: DID YOU JUST
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Donna, Diva's angelic counterpart, is typically level-headed and calm-voiced, but she has shown that even she has her limits as to what she'll tolerate of a musical. She was incensed by the depiction of angels in Hi-Tops and minced few words about how abhorrent she found Saturday's Warrior, culminating in her vowing to bring the wrath of Heaven down on the film's creators over Pam's fate. Even Diva (who is initially happy to see Donna's anger consume her) gets a little unnerved at the sight.
  • Bigger on the Inside: From her Spice World review:
    "Even if these gals were Elvis, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Beyoncé and the opposition's kid all rolled into one, I still would not believe that's the inside of their bus, unless there's a Time Lord spice somewhere in the mix.
  • Big Red Devil: Diva is drawn as a female version of one, albeit with a giant tuning fork instead of the usual Devil's Pitchfork. The Legends of Oz intro even notes all the characteristics that build the trope.◊
  • Bizarre Human Biology: In the review for Glitter, Diva makes the off-hand comment during the closing that the film "makes me sick to my three-and-a-half stomachs".
  • Black Boxer Stereotype: In the Music (2021) review, Diva notes that the Token Black Friend's profession of a boxing coach is so stereotypical (on top of all the other stereotypes the character displays) that the (white) filmmakers may as well have made him a slave.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: The final episode sees Diva transformed into her Real Life creator.
  • Broken Aesop:
    Diva: Also, the whole "violence is not the answer, music is the path to enlightenment" message is a bit incongruious for a franchise based on beating things up. I feel like this whole song was just a stop to the "Think of the Children!" crowd.
    • In her review of "The Scarecrow", one of the sins she brings up is this trope. The movie frames that Scarecrow can't ever marry Polly as is because then their marriage would be built on a lie. And yet, when the story ends on the note he's human now, Diva lampshades that the movie really fumbles its "Honesty is the best policy" lesson by allowing "Feathertop" to marry Polly without ever having told her his humble origins as a scarecrow.
  • Broke the Rating Scale:
    • Diva admits that the pyramid scheme used to finance Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return was so heinous that "it was out of [her] jurisdiction" to sentence the producers the typical Cool and Unusual Punishment, instead sending them off to the Eighth Circle of Hell for a more "old-school" punishment.
    • Diva doesn't even dignify certain mockbuster films with a proper review, instead giving them a MST-style commentary. Why bother giving a thoughtful critique on something that isn't even trying to be good?
    • Home on the Range was the very first film to get a sin before it even began, due to its epic failure being a major cause of the decline of hand-drawn animation.
    • Arthur from Pennies From Heaven is the first single character to get two sins solely for sheer unintentional loathsomeness, and Diva straight-up calls him the most detestable lead character she's ever seen in a musical, including intentional Villain Protagonists such as the Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd.
    • Diva ends up giving Music eleven sins, noting that it broke the scale, surpassing Glitter as the worst movie she's ever reviewed.
  • Call-Back:
    • Diva brings up Pierce Brosnan's lack of singing talent, first touched upon in the Mamma Mia! review, a few times, notably in the Grease 2 review ("Ugh, it's like an entire chorus of Pierce Brosnans!"), as well as when she touches upon The Bee Gees' lack of acting prowess in the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band review.
    • During the Rock of Ages review, exactly ten episodes after her review of The Pirate Movie, Diva feels like she owes an apology towards the Pirate King and his attention-grabbing crotchpiece when she gets to Stacee Jaxx's introductory scene, in which he's seen with an even more outlandish crotchpiece.
    • Sometimes Diva will say something is the "worst I've ever seen, and remember, I've seen this" Cue clip of a similar clip from a previous review.
  • Career Versus Man: Diva sins Country Strong for insisting that Chiles accepting an opportunity that few artists get would lead to a life of hollow superficiality and eventual ruin and that the best thing for her to do would be to give up her dreams and just do Beau thinks is best.
  • Carnivore Confusion: In The Fearless Four, when Gwen is the one to show concerns over promoting sausages, Diva counters that as the only obligate carnivore of the group, she should be the last one to care.
  • Cast of Expies: Diva's second sin for Titanic: The Legend Goes On is for its cast of blatantly unoriginal characters.
  • Catchphrase: "Greetings Mortals, welcome to another session of the infernal court in Musical Hell~ I'm Diva, your judge, jury, executioner and— [title that relates to whatever musical she's reviewing]"
  • Caustic Critic: While she will give a musical credit in the form of Saving Graces if she likes something in it, and she's not as brutal as most, her angel counterpart Donna calls her out on being harsh towards certain musicals even if they're energetic and harmless.
  • Celestial Bureaucracy: Well, infernal, not celestial - it is Hell, after all.
  • Character Derailment:
  • Characterization Marches On: In early episodes, Diva was still unmistakably witty and sarcastic, but she was played as more stoic, haughty and impersonal. Before long, however, she started becoming more animated and conversational, showing more frustration with her job and more emotional investment in the material she had to pass judgment on.
  • Christmas Episode:
  • Classically-Trained Extra:
  • Cliché Storm:
    • Diva name checks this as the first sin of Rock of Ages, calling it a checklist of archetypes and points out that one could piece together the whole story just by looking at the character titles on the DVD cover.
    • Burlesque jams in so many overused clichés that she lets the audience fill in the blanks.
  • Clumsy Copyright Censorship: Donna stops Diva from sinning Phantom of the Paradise for its blatantly obvious and imperfect attempts to change Swan's record label from Swan Song to Death Records due to the former name getting co-opted by Led Zeppelin's own label, saying that the filmmakers did the best they could under the circumstances.
  • Composite Character:
  • Compressed Adaptation: She sins the "Staller" Phantom of the Opera for distilling what was a few months of events in the original novel to merely around 24-hours.
  • Content Warnings: Her review of Music (2021) includes a warning at the video's beginning that some scenes in the movie (specifically the musical fantasy sequences) may trigger photosensitivity. She also twice warns that the movie includes scenes of disability abuse, specifically restraint: once at the beginning of the video, and again immediately before discussing the issue so she can give a timestamp for viewers to skip to if the subject triggers them.note 
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Even outside the Infernal Court for Musicals - Diva says that High School Musical was only used in Hell to punish suicide bombers and texting while driving.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
    • Cites this as one of Sleeping Beauty's biggest sins. She notes that while the Evil Fairy in the original story was not invited to celebrate the title character's birth because she hadn't been seen in fifty years and was understandably presumed dead, the film has her not invited because the King lacked golden dinner plates for all nine fairies in the land. The idea of him making another for her never crosses his mind.
    • Diva nearly hits her Rage Breaking Point in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure when the Oogieloves convince the balloons to return to them in the climax by blowing kisses at them, which nullifies the inane adventures that they undertook to get them throughout the film.
  • Creator Cameo:
  • Crossover:
  • Curse Cut Short:
    • The final line of Annie leads Diva to react with "Oh, for f" before "The Verdict" interrupts the profane tirade.
    • In the "crowd sourced recap of the original" in Tentacolino, DJ Soundbite ends it, and starts a "WHAT THE" before he is cut back to Diva.
    • At the beginning of the Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical review, Diva wakes up with a massive hangover to discover Donna, her Musical Heaven counterpart, getting the review under way, and exclaims "WHAT THE F-" before Donna cuts her off with "Ah-ah-ah! Language, Diva darling!"
  • Dance Party Ending: At the end of the King and I episode, complete with Creator Cameo.
  • Dancing Bear: Diva accuses the 2013 stage adaptation of King Kong of being this, which she states "has one very large and impressive puppet to recommend it, and absolutely nothing else."
  • Dawson Casting: invoked
    • Diva notes that Sextette tries and utterly fails to pretend that Mae West, who wrote the script and was eighty-five when it was released, is no older than her male co-stars. She calls the end results so disconnected from reality that it's painful to watch.
    • Diva discusses the trope in Dear Evan Hansen, noting that twenty-somethings are frequently cast as teenagers due to their experience and not being bound by child labor laws and changing body chemistry. It doesn't work for Ben Platt as Evan, who was 27 during production, as he doesn't pass for an authentic teenager on-screen and, in fact, looks far older when Evan displays overwrought emotions.
  • Deadpan Snarker: And how. Her MHTV videos shows Diva honoring this trope in full force.
  • Designated Hero:
    • Diva considers Hubie to be this in her review of The Pebble and the Penguin. First, he's attracted to Marina for some rather shallow reasons, which makes him come off as no better than Drake, who doesn't make any pretenses about why he wants her for his mate. Then he pesters Rocko, openly mocks his dream, and lies to him.
    • Diva sins Home on the Range for its obnoxious protagonists, Maggie and Buck, both of whom are nasty to each other and other characters, even comparing them to Woody from the infamous first cut of Toy Story.
    • Arthur (from Pennies from Heaven) is marked as the film's very first sin for this reason - as a possessive, perverted creep and incorrigible cheater, he's pretty much impossible to root for.
  • Designated Villain:
    • Mentioned by trope name in respect to Benny the landlord from RENT, who is portrayed as a puppet of the corrupt establishment for wanting the heroes to pay him the rent they legitimately owe him.
    • Z-O-M-B-I-E-S features an example of this so blatant that it results in one of the few moments where Christi Esterle actually breaks character as Diva to call it out. After spending most of the film with zombie-hating humans as villains, the final antagonist ends up being a zombie-rights activist who plans to conduct a disruptive but by all appearances completely nonviolent demonstration in support of her cause; even the other zombies chide her for rocking the boat too much.
    • The Board of Governors in Jekyll & Hyde are treated as villains for being rich and snooty and cutting Jekyll's funding, believing his work to be dangerous. Diva is unamused; pointing out that their snobbishness is hardly their fault given that they've lived their entire lives in the elitist Victorian upper-crust, they're absolutely right that Jekyll's research is dangerous (we wouldn't have a plot if it wasn't!), and only one of them, a Pedophile Priest, actually does anything straight-up bad.
    • Keith in La La Land is treated as a sellout by his rival, the protagonist Sebastian (and seemingly the movie itself), simply because he prefers modern forms of jazz music, whereas Seb is a die-hard traditionalist.
  • Developing Doomed Characters: Diva namechecks the former trope name, Twenty Minutes with Jerks in her review of Stage Fright, as an example of the trope done poorly.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire, Diva points out sveral holes in the villain's plan to stage a vampire ritual as a publicity stunt, namely that a) he had no real long-term goal for what to do with his kidnaped victim, Daphne, and b) the vampire groupies he conned into working for him with the promise of immortality would catch onto his ruse once they started aging.
  • Doing It for the Art: Country Strong gets a sin for Beau having this attitude in regards to his music. Diva notes how popularity is not an indicator of lacking artistic value, anymore than obscurity is an indicator of its presence. She also gives a sin to the movie for using this to excuse Beau acting condescending and sexist towards Chiles.
  • Double Entendre: The ample use of it in Sextette annoys Diva so much she gives the film a sin.
  • Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • Downer Ending: Referenced in the De-Lovely review when Gabe asks Linda if she's ever seen a musical without a happy ending, implying the answer should be "No". An unamused Diva promptly cues a montage of six unhappy endings to well-known musicals:
    Diva: Uhhh...
    [cut to the final scene of Cabaret]
    MC: [dressed in a concentration camp uniform, singing] Auf wiedersehen...
    [cut to the final scene of Les Misérables (2012)]
    [Valjean dies as the ghost of Fantine stands by him; Cosette breaks down crying as Marius tries to comfort her]
    Fantine: [singing] Take my hand... I'll lead you to salvation...
    [cut to the final scene of West Side Story (1961)]
    Maria: [brandishing Chino's gun at the assembled Jets and Sharks as Tony lies dead on the ground behind her] How many can I kill, Chino? How many!? And still have one bullet left for me?...
    [cut to the final scene of Jesus Christ Superstar]
    Jesus: [writhing in agony on the Cross] My God, why have you forgotten me?...
    [cut to the final scene of Moulin Rouge!]
    [Christian holds Satine's dead body and begins sobbing loudly in grief]
    [cut to the final scene of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]
    [Toby slits Sweeney/Benjamin's throat with his own razor, the latter too consumed by the horror of having murdered his long lost wife to resist]
    Diva: Ye-eah, I'm not exactly on board with your logic there, Gabey.
  • Dull Surprise:
    • Val Kilmer gets criticized for this in The Ten Commandments: The Musical, with Diva saying his performance is lacking the charisma and inner fire you'd expect from somebody like Moses.
    • David Hasselhoff receives criticism for this in Jekyll & Hyde, since he fails to give the emotional intensity that's pretty much required for the title characters.
    • In her review of The Phantom of the Opera (2004), Diva criticizes Emmy Rossum for failing to give Christine "more than two facial expressions".
    • Diva sins The Lion King (2019) for its CGI animals' lifeless expressions and minimal body language.
    • Diva sins Lost Horizon for its bored cast, pointing out that it's hard to get invested in the story when the actors are so disinterested.
      [Regarding the rioters in the opening] "What do we want?!" "I don't know." "When do we want it?!" "Well, whenever."
      [Regarding Peter Finch's big solo] "I'm as bored as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
  • Ear Worm: The ones found in Mamma Mia! are especially vexing to Diva, as is “Wonderful Christmastime”, which turns up in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — The Movie.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Diva wasn't represented by her iconic Big Red Devil avatar in the earliest installments; instead, she spoke over a static image of John Martin's "Fallen Angels in Hell". She decides to make the switch in her review of Geppetto, and later lampshades this in her review of Tentacolino.
    • Diva is haughtier and superior-sounding in the first few installments, before her harried Punch-Clock Villain persona was established. Christi herself finds Diva being Ear Wormed with ABBA songs in Mamma Mia! a Establishing Character Moment for the way she wanted to go.
    • She notes in her commentary for Mamma Mia that this was before she introduced the "Saving Grace", otherwise she would have put "Slipping Through My Fingers" in that category.
  • Elvis Impersonator: Refers to herself as a copyright friendly Elvis Impersonator at the start of her Rock-A-Doodle review.
  • Ending Fatigue: Expect Diva to sin a movie if its ending goes on too long. She considers this the last and greatest sin of Can't Stop the Music as its entire last third consisted mainly of, to quote her, a "self-congratulatory victory lap" for the main characters.
  • Enraged by Idiocy: Frequent, noted by terse and at times profane sin cards ("SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK?") and possibly Diva falling into Angrish.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: invoked
    • Diva names Brent Spiner's performance as Stromboli as Geppetto's Saving Grace. In contrast with Drew Carey being clearly uncomfortable as the title character, Spiner is having a ball hamming it up as Stromboli.
    • Diva finds Mordred in Camelot a breath of fresh air, as he is a disarming Card-Carrying Villain and the only character not devoted to playing the story dead-seriously. The only reason he's not the film's Saving Grace is that he shows up too late to make a difference.
    • Diva names Beef as Phantom of the Paradise's Saving Grace, commending Gerrit Graham (and singing double Ray Kennedy) for going all in with the character. It helps that while Beef is a Camp Gay stereotype, the film plays up his Prima Donna attitude more than his sexuality.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending:
    • Diva gives A Troll in Central Park its last sin for its ending, in which Stanley uses his Green Thumb to overrun Manhattan with vegetation, comparing it to the original Downer Ending of Little Shop of Horrors.
    • Diva doesn't find the ending of Country Strong, wherein Chiles gives up a promising music career to instead sing in filthy bars with Beau, to be particularly happy. She even speculates that Chiles will likely end up doing drugs and alcohol like Kelly did anyway, due to how miserable her life is.
    • She gives a sin to the ending of Saturday's Warrior where the protagonist goes back to his abusive family and his little sister Emily is born. Diva predicts that she'll end up beaten and abused by her father, ignored by her mother and raised by her siblings and constantly compared to the Too Good for This Sinful Earth Pam.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Diva can get rather repulsed by some of her subjects, especially movies that are lazy, cynical cash grabs.
    • While acknowledging that his film adaptation of A Little Night Music was terrible, Diva couldn't bear to condemn Hal Prince.
    • The ending of Glitter features, for the first time, Diva getting genuinely angry at a film, arguably to the point of Christi Esterle herself breaking character. Specifically, she was incensed by the fact that the film blames the heroine's breakup with her psychologically abusive boyfriend (and his subsequent murder at the villain's hands) on her, with Diva stating it's in the running for the worst film she's ever reviewed due to this.
    • In her Annie (2014) review, Diva took a moment to call out those whose gripe with the film was the title character's Race Lift... before hammering it with a great deal of criticisms of her own.
    • Diva was shown to be disgusted with the producers of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return financing the film using a pyramid scam. She delegated their punishment to the Eighth Circle.
    • Before said review of Legends of Oz, she acknowledges that the people behind the films featured on the show (sans this particular one) were "just trying to make a good movie, or at least a movie popular enough to make money, and no true malice was involved in their actions." In later reviews, she's even spared creators from punishment when she deems them having suffered enough (Richard Williams for Arabian Knight) or not having had enough control of the project to bear responsibility for its problems (Don Bluth for The Pebble and the Penguin).
    • When confronted with Michael Jackson saying "is today the day you're gonna help me get down from here?" in The Wiz, Diva asks her bailiff if there's any joke she could make that wouldn't be overdone and/or "tasteless even by our standards".
    • At the beginning of the Z-O-M-B-I-E-S review, a poster is shown of Descendants 3, Diva points out that she's not reviewing that one yet, asking to let Cameron Boyce rest in peace for a while first. She later lays into the film itself for how it severely botched its attempt at making a racism allegory.
    • It's implied in the Phantom of the Paradise review that even Hell considers agreements made under the influence of intoxicating substances to be invalid, including a Deal with the Devil.
    • Diva's co-host for the Vox Lux review, La Femme Fictionale, asks her for permission to skip past the film's opening Columbine inspired shooting scene as she's clearly uncomfortable making light over the grizzly scene. Diva, who earlier sinned the film for exploiting several of that shooting's long-since debunked myths, agrees:
    Diva: "I may be a demon, but I do have some standards."
  • Every Episode Ending: Every review ends with the court of Musical Hell summarizing the musical's sins and condemning the characters and/or staff involved in the musical to some sort of appropriate Ironic Hell.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Yellow Submarine has Diva forgiving of the psychedelia, but not how the Beatles Failed a Spot Check (downright named as such in the sin card) - they walk by a hill of sleeping Blue Meanies to a hideout, but only when they look outside it they notice the place is surrounded by sleeping Blue Meanies!
  • Evil Is Petty: "I'm a demon. I don't do fair." Best example when Diva forced the guy who plays DJ Soundbite to review Glee as retaliation for the High School Musical crossover.
  • Evil Laugh: Mostly done by Diva in the crossovers, aside from when she sees The Phantom of the Opera (2004) is the next assignment.
  • Fashion-Victim Villain: invoked If there's a bad guy in a weird and/or stupid outfit, you can bet she'll comment on it.
  • Fallen Angel: It's heavily implied at the end of Portal 2 that Diva may be one and that she may have a way back.
  • Fake Interactivity: Diva feels that the filmmakers using this in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure just reeks of desperation. She notes that far-more successful Audience Participation efforts, including screenings for The Rocky Horror Picture Show & The Room, along with pantomime theatre, developed naturally.
  • Filling the Silence: Diva cites Arabian Knight's first and greatest sin for giving Tack and the Thief, who were originally conceived as The Voiceless, ceaseless voiceovers, pointing out that they are annoying and unnecessary, not to mention insulting to the audience and the animators.
  • Le Film Artistique: Diva considers Nine to be an example of a bad one that aims for being deep and meaningful but just comes off as sleazy and pretentious.
  • Fight Scene Failure: Diva cites Popeye for its unimpressive fight between Popeye and Oxblood Oxheart.
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell: If she's feeling lazy, she'll just condemn those involved with the current offender to this.
  • Foil: Donna, the angel host of "Musical Heaven". Even the name, as Diva and Donna are both terms for opera singers.
  • Follow the Leader: Diva calls out Journey Back to Oz for this for cribbing too many elements from the 1939 film.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In the session for The Pirate Movie, Diva points out that Mabel "dresses like a reject from Xanadu", the same Xanadu she ended up taking on sometime later.
    • The second episode, Lost Horizon, shows posters for films in the 1970s "dark age of musicals", all of whom wound up reviewed (Mame, At Long Last Love, The Wiz and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).
    • In the review of the 2003 version of The Music Man, Diva castigates the producers for remaking a good stage-to-screen adaptation instead of taking on one of the many bad adaptations of good musicals, accompanied by a montage of the posters for the big screen versions of Man of La Mancha, The Wiz, and A Chorus Line... all three of which later get their own days in the court of Musical Hell.
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • Diva notes that some of the problems of Love Never Dies - particularly songs that draw out for too long and a number that uses out-of-place yet out-of-date rock instruments - had been seen in Andrew Lloyd Webber's previous, more successful works, but have become particularly egrigous by the time the musical had been produced.
    • She also admits in her review of The Phantom of the Opera (2004) that the original Andrew Lloyd Webber show "has always been more style than substance" but argues that "good directors can find emotional and dramatic truth even in superficial material". Joel Schumacher, on the other hand, "has no idea how to stage a song effectively", which in turn reduces the musical to "a series of lavish music videos" that "never rises above the empty spectacle its critics have always dismissed it as".
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Twice, in the very first episode with a Long List of reasons the relationship won't last, and in Sunday School Musical with "the other side's" disavowed list (along with said movie, there is Jack Chick, al-Qaeda, "those Osmond fools" and "that weird bit in Ezekiel with the flaming wheel").
  • Fun with Subtitles: Diva occasionally likes playing with how she names the sins.

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