Tropes M to R / SF Debris

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Mad Libs Catch Phrase:
- "But I'm no X/not an X, I'm just a viewer with an opinion."
- Because this week, Chakotay has always been into... *dice roll* X!
Mad Scientist: His interpretation that Janeway clearly is one.
The Main Characters Do Everything:
- Not necessarily criticized (Trek uses it so frequently), but definitely mocked often. ENT taking it to the extreme of having no B cast for the first two years, and only three recurring characters.
- From "The Descent" (TNG) review:
  Chuck: ... Eventually sending just about everyone to go searching. So that leaves Beverly in command of the Enterprise with the Z-List crew members.
- In the review about the episode "The Naked Now" (TNG) he points out a scene where the Chief Engineer and her assistant are both called away from Engineering. The assistant refuses to leave his post, as he's reluctant to leave Engineering without any supervisor. But then Wesley Crusher convinces the assistant to just leave him in charge... Instead of one of the dozen qualified Engineering personnel seen milling about in the background.
- From "The Neutral Zone" (TNG):
  Chuck: Anyway, since Picard is concerned about [the three people from the 1980's] making trouble, naturally he does nothing to ensure that they stay out of trouble, because he keeps assigning important people to look after them and then calling them away - instead of someone less important to be charged with managing them. With over a thousand people on board you'd think there would be someone in charge of dealing with VIPs... but no.
- From "Loud as a Whisper" (TNG), regarding the nebulous role of the Enterprise itself:
  Chuck: The Captain's Log says that — as usual — the flagship of the Federation, tasked with exploring the unknown corners of the galaxy... is being used as a taxi.
- From the review of "Our Man Bashir" (DS9):
  Chuck: Meanwhile, all the senior officers of the station have crammed themselves into one tiny little Runabout, after pissing off the Klingons, the Cardassians and the Dominion. Surprisingly, someone actually gets the idea into their head that this would make a convenient target. [...] They try an emergency beam-out, but the explosion blows out the transporter, leaving Eddington now in command.
- From "Paradise" (DS9):
  Chuck: Paradise opens with the kind of silliness we're often prone to seeing in Trek: People doing stuff that by all rights should be done by somebody else, purely as an excuse to get to the plot. In this case, Sisko and O'Brien are scouting planets for colonization, rather than running the station and making sure said station is still running, respectively.
- From "Caretaker", Voyager's very first episode:
  Chuck: Naturally, since this is a highly dangerous situation, the senior officers of both ships beam down into the settlement. After all, we've lost most of the other senior officers; what harm is there in losing the rest?
- From "Parallax" (VOY), about Tom Paris's secondary assignment as field medic:
  Chuck: And naturally, if there's a risk of people being seriously injured, you want your best pilot going into the danger rather than at the controls of the ship.
- From "The Cloud" (VOY):
  Chuck: Janeway wants samples of the blue blob analyzed, and since this is an important matter of specialized science, she puts Seven of Nine in cha—
  Wait, sorry, Seven of Nine hasn't joined the crew yet. We need to have our first runner-up at "scientific genius", and that would be... umm... Torres. Yes, perfect choice: An academy wash-out who served as a Maquis grease-monkey, and literally cannot identify shit without a tricorder.
- In "State of Flux" (VOY), a survey team beams down to an uninhabited planet to look for food:
  Chuck: I'm kinda wondering why Carey's down here. Why is a high-ranking member of Engineering taken away from his area of expertise - all things mechanical - and put into a place where nothing is mechanical? That makes no sense, if you assume there's any kind of logic involved. Of course, there isn't, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
  Pity that they had to send down a grease-monkey, 'cause you know who would've been useful? Someone who's studied bio-chemistry, and thus could probably tell the difference between tasty fruit and poison. Of course, that would be Tom Paris, who's in sickbay... curing people of diseases with mechanical things. Is it any wonder these dumbasses are lost?!
  (later...)
  Chuck: [A Kazon ship is detected in the area, and Janeway orders them all to beam back] ...but it seems that Seska is missing. Chakotay decides that since it's possible there's hostiles in the area, he'll go off looking for her by himself, rather than sending in a bunch of people with weapons.
  (later again...)
  Chuck: Voyager arrives, and they quickly beam over Chakotay, Tuvok, Torres and Seska— No, no, no! This is a situation requiring security and engineering expertise! Where's the geologist and the morale officer, huh?
- From the review of "Resistance" (VOY):
  Chuck: So Tom Paris not only flies the ship, the most important shuttle missions, is the field-medic-slash-assistant-to-the-doctor, has 24th century lockpicking ability... he's also a commando. Oh, and let's not forget he once designed an engine that went to infinity.
  (later in the same review...)
  Chuck: Since this is an important engineering matter, it's quickly handed off to Harry to take care of, instead of one of the actual engineers.
  (still in the same review, this time regarding a multi-purpose villain)
  Chuck: Because this is a television show, Augris will be the face of these people in all situations: whether communicating to off-world aliens, performing interrogations, or searching the streets for criminals. What a micro-manager.
- From "Resolutions" (VOY):
  Chuck: Back to Voyager and the fight; for some reason, Harry's handling weaponry rather than the tactical officer, because the budget [for] another actor was spent on the monkey.
  (moments later...)
  Chuck: The Doctor has to do the beaming himself, too, because they'll be busy with the Vidiians. And I guess the transporter officer... well... must be on a cigarette break, or something.
- From "Warlord" (VOY):
  Chuck: ... With all the radiation, they have to move in close to beam them out, but Harry is working to beam through it, since he's the Transporter Chief and all that. Or, actually, NOT, but why leave it in the hands of a specialist when you can assign it to the guy who never held that position in his life?
- From "Rise" (VOY):
  Chuck: Not to worry, Dr. Vatm; the rescue team is on its way, and Voyager has the most highly-trained experts in survival and search-and-rescue techniques that you have ever seen!
  [Shot of Neelix struggling to put on a backpack]
  Chuck: ...and who all have food poisoning thanks to Neelix's cooking, so we're left with him going down instead.
- From "Year of Hell" (VOY):
  - Chuck points out a particularly ridiculous instance where within the space of 30 seconds Tom Paris is describing modifications he made to Voyager's hull (engineering) inspired by the Titanic (history) when he is suddenly called to perform field medicine and, to quote Chuck, "none of these things are even his job." (piloting) He quickly comes to the conclusion that Paris was held in a prison for savants.
  - And then, near the end of the episode:
    Chuck: The plan will involve reassigning everybody but Janeway to various ships, but she'll be piloting Voyager alone... because obviously the entire thing can be handled by just one person, especially when you have beaten it up so badly that it looks like a toy model a monkey tried to put together and then just gave up on.
- From "Demon" (VOY):
  Paris: Remind me to volunteer you to help, the next time I have to clean the warp plasma manifolds.
  Chuck: That's your job too?! At this point I'm starting to wonder if Tom's is the only name on the roster that Janeway can remember, so every time a job needs doing, she just tells him to.
- From "Drone" (VOY):
  Chuck: They start downloading knowledge into [the Borg drone] using Borg data nodes - highly sophisticated technology of the most powerful alien race that they have encountered - requiring the utmost care and handling by Voyager's most experienced technicians...
  Neelix: [Walks in carrying the Borg data nodes] Special delivery, two borg data nodes!
  Chuck: ...who are all apparently having lunch.
- From "Dark Frontier" (VOY):
  Chuck: ...and that way Tom can beam them out. Yes, Tom. Have there been so many casualties in the transporter room that there are no transporter chiefs left? Harry, Torres, and now the guy busy piloting the ship... Does the transporter chief exist solely to be shot by the bad guys?
- From "Juggernaut" (VOY): A mixed team of Starfleet and Malon is sent over to an irradiated Malon ship that's about to undergo an apocalyptic explosion.
  Chuck: Neelix gives the Malon toymaster an injection; I guess that must be his job. This place is far too dangerous for a hologram, after all; Better to send over a flesh-and-blood frycook instead.
- "Relativity" (VOY): Seven goes back in time to Voyager being constructed in space-dock. She crawls through the Jefferies Tubes, but her actions are detected by the crew, and she has to lock herself in a room.
  Chuck: [Janeway scans the room], but the door's sealed from the inside. This sounds dangerous. Hey, you know what sounds like a really stupid idea? How about if the Captain and the old guy ^notea visiting admiral! crawl through the Jefferies Tubes to go and look at this personally, instead of sending in the security officers?
- From "Warhead" (VOY):
  Chuck: Harry's got his own big dreams being fulfilled tonight: He's in the Big Chair now, handling the night shift, because naturally the person who should be in command is the person on this ship whose rank is as low as possible and can still be called an officer.
- From "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" (VOY):
  Chuck: Realizing there's a problem, [The Doctor] heads to Engineering to ask the crack team to sort it out: Torres, the engineer who works on the systems; Seven, cybernetic genius; and Harry, who just happened to be down here looking for a chance to stick his head in the warp core.
- From "Dragon's Teeth" (VOY):
  Janeway: Tom, make sure B'Elanna has enough help in Engineering. I want those warp engines back on-line.
  Chuck: She's got a whole department of engineers! The thing about the "Paris is a savant" thing is that it's a zero-effort Running Gag on my part. The show really does think that if you throw Tom Paris at a problem, problem solved. When he's finished repairing this ship and treating all of the wounded, his next job is no doubt going to be to find a way to cleanse the radiation from this planet, and maybe design the statue of Janeway that will go in the town square for that feat.
- From "Tsunkatse" (VOY): Voyager attacks a massive ship where Seven is being forced to fight her Hirogen trainer to the death:
  Chuck: They manage to weaken [the enemy ship's shields] enough to get both Seven and the Hirogen back before she has to actually deliver the killing blow. And Tom is there [in the transporter room] just in case, because the last place you'd put your best pilot in a desperate ship-to-ship fight with something much more powerful than yourself is the pilot's seat. Of course, with Torres handling weapons and Harry on transporters, it may be that Chakotay's command policy was to just have everybody pull a job out of a hat to find out what they'd be doing that day.
- "Good Shepherd" (VOY) somehow manages to play the trope straight during a Lower-Deck Episode. Chuck doesn't let them get away with it.
  Chuck: Janeway's amazed that [the three underperforming junior officers] have never gone on an away mission either, but it seems that Harren never volunteers, Billy gets a note from the doctor, and Tal is a danger to herself and others. So, Janeway announces that the four of them are going to go and explore that expanse full of anomalies. Anomalies, if you don't remember, are responsible for about one out of five things that threaten to destroy Voyager every week, and Janeway's decided she'll go accompanied by three people who have never been on an away mission in their lives, one of whom is incompetent and another who is afraid of disease, medication, and counseling. As far as ideas go, this is up there with kickboxing against grizzly bears and playing drinking games with bleach.
- "Imperfection" (VOY):
  Chuck: Well, this is it; time for the surgery. The Doctor to perform, with all his medical knowledge; Paris to assist, because of his years of tutelage; and Janeway to handle the systems, because no one knows better about inserting things into people's brains when they're knocked out.
- In "Shattered" (VOY) he points out a scene from the episode where Ensign Harry Kim is in command of the ship - despite obviously still not being trusted enough to be promoted to at least Lieutenant Jr. Grade.
- From "Strange New World" (ENT):
  Chuck: Meanwhile Archer pilots a shuttlepod down, with Reed alongside him. At this point it means that Hoshi is in command - who is terrified of Enterprise and all of its contents.
  (later in the same review...)
  Chuck: The transporter is new technology, just approved for use on human-beings in the last two months, and is designed to break them down and put them back together again. This is all done by highly-trained experts, who know how to handle this thing precisely, to avoid any problems... and who are all apparently on a coffee break, because we see Reed down there instead. After all, he's already the tactical officer, security officer, deliverer of weather reports, and the guy who rides shotgun whenever Archer takes the shuttlepod out, so why shouldn't he operate the transporter too? I mean, how hard can it be? [Cue horrific transporter accident]
- Archer seems to have demoted Hoshi to be the Enterprise's delivery girl for the jobs that the others can't be arsed to do. Moments after launching a Subspace Communications Amplifier, which needed to be checked was working properly so that Enterprise could maintain their link to Earth, he asked Hoshi to find out Reed's favourite food for his birthday, choosing her over any other random crewman, and told her to make it her top priority. It's not as though Hoshi is the damned Communications Officer!
  Chuck: Is there a medication for what you're on, Archer?
- Likewise, in "Regeneration", Hoshi has been demoted once again, and is now in charge of delivering food to Dr Phlox. Phlox then asks for her to look after his menagerie of critters, effectively demoting her to the role of Ship's Zookeeper.
- From Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:
  Chuck: [Dr. Marcus wants the Reliant to check whether they can move some inanimate pre-life-forms off Ceti Alpha 6]... But that requires going down there to check. And no matter what the era, it's always the job to send down the two senior-most officers for simple reconnaissance.
- From Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
  Chuck: Sybok places [Kirk] back in command, so he decides to do it by the book: namely, that when going into a potentially dangerous planet, you send the captain, first officer, chief medical officer, and the nearest available religious nut down for reconnaissance.
- Shows up also in Stargate SG-1, where he laments the budgetary restraints the show has means SG teams are never accompanied by airmen or mooks. That it is only the most important, highest ranking members who do everything.
- Chuck practically name-checks this trope (as "Main Crew Does Everything") in "Minefield" (ENT), an episode which contains two glaring examples of the trope: The fact that Phlox is the only one with medical training on board, and the fact that Archer is the one who goes out on the hull to help Reed and dismantle a nuclear bomb. He goes on to point out how easy it would have been to justify the use of the trope in the second case, while simultaneously giving Archer some much-needed character development.
- In his Knights of the Old Republic review, not only do the main characters do everything, it's specifically Traven Rhad who does everything.
Magic A Is Magic A:
- He gets annoyed when this gets averted.
  Chuck: All I ask is that you be consistent with your bullshit!
- Similarly criticises when this happens in Torchwood: Miracle Day, as the first four episodes featured people alive and conscious despite being reduced to severed heads, yet the very next episode has those same people being knocked out without much difficulty.
Malicious Misnaming:
- Kirk demoting Captain "Dicker" back down to XO and stealing his ship, just so the little prick learns his place.
  "Sorry, Dicker, shit rolls downhill."
- Springer pecker slaps Hot Rod after the impulsive dolt seems all too quick to forget that his last stupid stunt cost Optimus Prime his life.
  "Yeah, if you have any more feelings, feel free to keep them to yourself, Rimjob."
  "It's... it's Hot Rod."
  "No, it's Rimjob now!"
Manipulative Editing: Sometimes used for gags (see Toilet Humour for an example). His "Picard Hates Children" Running Gag of the 'I could have saved that girl'.
Mandatory Line: He'll usually point these out as they happen, often sarcastically remarking that the events at hand have so moved Harry or Chakotay that they even deliver a line!
Mask of Sanity: "Fury" opened on Janeway quoting a passage from Catch-22 while glaring at the deadness of space, only to switch to a friendly Minnesota accent when a crewman enters the ready room.
Meaningless Meaningful Words:
- One particular "burr up [Chuck's] ass" is the nebulous anti-technology philosophy of the Ba'ku (ST: Insurrection).
  "We believe that if you deny a man to beat his wife, you take something away from the man!"
- Picard's denunciation of Starfleet for relocating a couple hundred colonists ("How many people does it take before it becomes wrong? A THOUSAND? A MILLION???") kinda falls flat when you realize how many billions he's indirectly killed by denying them revolutionary medicine. Chuck concludes that Picard might want to ask that same question of himself.
  - Made even worse with an example provided by Chuck: The Federation treaty with the Cardassians. Federation colonies are now in Cardassian space and their residents are taking up arms to defend their homes (The Maquis). Despite the Cardassians flouting the treaty openly, Picard continues to defend and enforce it, making him partially responsible for those deaths. "How many colonists does it take before it becomes wrong?"
- Still fuming over "Dear Doctor", in which Archer asserts that curing an alien epidemic is akin to meddling with their evolutionary path ("We didn't come out here to play God!"). Flash-forward to "A Night In Sickbay", in which Archer demands that Phlox invent a new medical procedure to...save his beagle.
  Chuck: You have no idea what the consequences will be for this new procedure, do you? You didn't come out here to play God. Maybe you should just let nature take its course...CAPTAIN.
Medal of Dishonor:
- Hoshi's cowardice is world-renowned even a century later, as Kirk presents a redshirt with the "Hoshi Sato Cowering Chicken medal, with clusters." ("Space Seed")
- Harry Kim, winner of Starfleet's Metrosexual Award for three years running. ("Prime Factors")
- Most of Chuck's end-of-episode "prizes" could count as these, particularly the awards for annoying character and space genocide.
Memetic Badass:
- In-Universe. "Yeah, I love the Sisko is a badass jokes."
  "Bitch, you think that's it? The list of ways I'm awesome is so long, the only surface large enough to write 'em on is my dick!"
- Not to mention...
  "Shran's just lucky Sisko's not here. If he tried calling him Brownskin he'd bitch slap him so hard he'd make Weyoun'd feel dizzy"
- When talking about Picard's love of horseback riding, and how it showcases his "Officer and a Gentleman" style compared to Sisko's more "Line Officer" style:
  ''...while Sisko is probably content to ride on a Tyranosaurus."
- Sisko fighting Jem'Hadars:
  "(A Jem'Hadar) manages to disarm Sisko, unaware that this puts him in reach of the mighty Sisko fist. Given the chance to punch someone, Sisko takes it. Then shoots a few more Jem'Hadar, before just beating some with his gun. Sadly, even Sisko can take on only 15 or so genetically engineered Supersoldiers, before even he gets overwhelmed."
- Sisko designing Starfleet's most advanced warship and name it the "Defiant" JUST so that one day he might get his chance at revenge with the Borg. And according to Chuck, the reason why Sisko wasn't in Star Trek First Contact was that the Borg knew of his awesomeness and waited until he was preoccupied on the other side of federation space before attacking.
- Arguably the best example of Chuck's take on Sisko is presented during the Dominion War when Sisko takes his single ship into the wormhole and faces down a fleet of thousands of ships.
  "I don't expect to take down more than half of them but maybe we'll get lucky."
- Janeway is portrayed as a completely different kind of badass. In her case, sociopathy and outrageous over-confidence lead her to employ intimidation tactics as a default stance, charge into battle even when the odds are clearly against her, treat everyone as an expendable subordinate, and leave only destruction in her wake — and she always somehow walks away from it scot-free. Any species that comes across her remembers the experience forever in their legends - making her a living boogeyman.
- And, above all, Captain James Tiberius Kirk himself. When reviewing "Trials and Tribble-ations", he notes that Sisko thinks so highly of him, and since Sisko is a man's man, that makes Kirk a man's man's man. It's also obvious that Chuck thinks very highly of him too - whenever he's given the chance, he'll gush about all of Kirk's accomplishments, canonical and memetic alike.
  "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be on the bridge coming up with new ways of being awesome our scientists haven't even thought of yet."
- Inverted with Picard when it comes to fights ("Not in the face!"), but played straight when it comes to his speeches (even the sanctimonious ones).
  Damn, he set the Picard Speech on "kill, narrow beam."
- In his reupload of "Basics", suggests the real reason Voyager became The Dreaded throughout the Delta Quadrant was because word got around about Tom Paris, leaving everyone terrified that someone so accomplished could only be a Lieutenant! A Junior Grade Lieutenant!
  "They say that the Captain raids Borg Cubes just to alleviate her boredom!"
- Not just Sisko in DS9. From the "The Maquis, Part II" review:
  "Fish-face has no choice but to comply. With these two [Sisko and Dukat], Miles O'Brien and Kira "I can kill you with a well-placed swear word" Nerys, there's enough metric badass to tear down their shields with a strong glare."
The Millstone: Discussed in regards to Quickstrike on more than one occasion. The first time, Chuck muses that we still have no tangible evidence that him joining was in any way a net gain for the Predacons, and the second...
"He started out at rock bottom and found a sinkhole! He'd be out of his depth in a dry lakebed!"
Mind Rape: Called "The Vorlon Mind-Shit" in his review for "The Summoning".
It's like the Vulcan Mind-Meld, except instead of a gentle "my mind to your mind," it's a metaphorical "let me unscrew the top of your head, take down my trousers, and take a big ol' dump in your brain."
Misery Builds Character: Admiral Janeway was a big proponent of this trope, putting Janeway and her sister through torturous Death Traps as children. But it was all worth it to produce Starfleet's most balanced, by-the-book, and sexually regular Captain!
- Chuck savages "Real Life"'s use of this trope, pointing out that if real humans had the power to prevent or avoid misery they'd do it every time.
- Due to his similar experience with the premature birth of his twin sons, where for a time they weren't sure if they would survive, (thankfully both did), this episode's repeated insistence of this trope really pushes his Berserk Button.
  Chuck: Don't tell me that it builds. Fucking. CHARACTER!
Moment of Awesome: invoked Chuck mentions it during his review of the Stargate SG-1 Pilot Movie, he declares Teal'c betrayal of Apophis to be Teal'c's personal moment of awesome.
Mood Dissonance: Chuck likes pointing out in his Full Moon reviews that it's a lighthearted tale starring an orphan girl with terminal throat cancer, her emotionally abusive grandmother, and her only friends: a pair of death spirits.
Mood Whiplash:
- The crew of Deep Space Nine powerwalk into Vic's club to pull off an Oceans 11 heist, it's awesome... then he has Quark snarkingly comment:
  Quark: So how's that whole Dominion War thing going huh? They still control Troi's homeworld? See you're all on top of that...
- In his review of Star Trek (2009), he goes into a full-blown monologue for Nero when explaining his motives as shown in the Countdown comic, and after that, casually says that in the film, Nero is just an emo with a trident.
- At the end of his review of "Once More Into the Breach", Chuck gives a touching valediction to the character of Kor, musing over his status as a legend both inside and outside the Star Trek universe. Then, as he finishes and the Klingons who are singing in Kor's honor launch into the chorus of their song, Chuck chimes in . . . with the yodel from the Ricola cough drop ads.
Moon-Landing Hoax: One of his put-upon characters claims that the moon landing was faked—on the moon. "That's why it looks so real!"
Moral Event Horizoninvoked: Invokes this more than once regarding a villain's actions. Notably praised Nero's in the 2009 Star Trek, saying that while he didn't feel Nero was a very strong character, he did feel that the action of destroying Vulcan did do a good job of having him commit an act that would have the viewer want to see him defeating, since just destroying some random throwaway planet would not have had much effect.
Most Writers Are Male: Parodied; In a Review to a Voyager Episode, he refers to reading a Review of the Episode, where the Author of that Review explains how the Episode must of been written by Males, base on what the Female Characters do in it…Before Chuck brings up that, the Episode in Question, was written by a Woman!
- Parodied again in "The Gamesters of Triskelion" (TOS). In the episode, Kirk and Chekov use violence to overpower their captors, but we don't get to see how Uhura managed to neutralize hers, leading Chuck to make this comment:
  Chuck: And, of course, that leaves Uhura, who we know is a mere girl — despite the fact that she was brought here for a gladiatorial match — and thus has no chance of overpowering her drill thrall. No, she has to send him away to report her for misbehavior in order to stop him from interfering, rather than knocking him out. Yeah, well, what do you expect? It's a typical man in the 60's, who wouldn't dare to write a woman with that kind of dominance over a man, right? We're just going to accept this as yet another male chauvinist pig attitude on behalf of the author... umm... let me see, uh... Margaret. Well, shame on you, Margaret! Shame on you and all the other dude-bros who perpetuate these stereotypes.
The Mountains of Illinois: Carpenter Street. Captain Archer and T'pol are sent to Detroit to foil a Xindi plot. As the end credits play, the sun rises on the "beautiful mountains of Detroit".
Mouthful of Pi: Noir!Seven performing a classic Borg love ballad. ("The Killing Game")
(clears throat) "1100100111001001...♫"
Mr. Fanservice: In the review of "Duane Barry" of The X-Files, he points out the scene where Krycek picks up Mulder in his tiny red speedos. There, finally something for the ladies, and never say Chuck only shows tits on his show.
- Also mentions that Garrett Wong was saved from being ejected from Voyager in Scorpion due to being put on a list of America's Sexiest Men by a magazine.
MST3K Mantra:
- Chuck completely deconstructs this trope a new one in-universe in the preface towards his "Threshold" Voyager review. While he doesn't outright discredit the mantra (using the "nuke the fridge" scene from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as an example of when you shouldn't let one moment of stupidity ruin an otherwise enjoyable piece), he points to the "it's just fiction, so there's no point in giving a damn about whether any of it makes sense" attitude of both the Star Trek producers and a certain segment of fans as a major reason as to why the franchise's popularity plummeted during the Voyager and Enterprise era.
- See the quote under Magic A Is Magic A re: consistency in bullshit.
Muggles Do It Better: Constantly laments that energy weapons fail to do what a good old fashioned rifle could do. Subverted in the Enterprise episode Terra Nova, when Plot Armor proves to work just as well with bullets as it does with phasers.
Mundane Made Awesome: Chuck puts up trailers for his reviews on YouTube. The Star Trek trailers are set to the sweeping orchestral theme of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This leads to moments such as listening to this iconic fanfare while watching Archer stare at his dog.
Musical Gag: Used to great effect, including everything from short musical snippets to full-blown parody songs.
- Multiple instances:
  - Whenever the word "Genesis" is mentioned or relevant, there's a high likelihood that you're about to hear "Invisible Touch" by Genesis.
  - The song from the Blue Oyster Bar in Police Academy^note(It is called "El Bimbo") is used in more than one episode to accompany mentions of gay bars (as in "Wolf in the Fold") or flamboyant activity (as in Insurrection).
- "The Empath" (TOS): The Running Gag about McCoy's alcohol and drug problems is brought up, and Chuck notes that it's very appropriate considering the episode's soundtrack, which is very reminiscent of "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. He plays a short clip of from the episode, singing along to the music:
  Chuck: Come with me
  and you'll be
  in a world of pure intoxication.
  Take a hit
  and you'll see
  that your brain has taken a vacation.
- "Shades of Gray" (TNG): Riker hallucinating to the tune of "Donuts, Go Nuts!"
- "Brothers" (TNG): Yakety Sax is used during the scene where Data manages to evade the ship's entire security team while heading down to the transporter room.
- "Ethics" (TNG): Worf awaits his euthanasia while staring at the ceiling and listening to bluegrass. Well his name's Codeine, He's the nicest friend I've seen...
- "Genesis" (TNG): Chuck gives a summary of the entire plot in the form of a song. It consists of eight very short lines.
  Chuck: The crew is de-evolving /
  DARK CORRIDORS! /
  This guy thinks he's an ape-man /
  DARK CORRIDORS! /
  They're changing into animals /
  And that will be their doom /
  Oh, and here is Picard and Data /
  In yet another dark room.
- "Let He Who Is Without Sin" (DS9) begins with Odo and Sisko criticising Dax for the effect that her violent love-making sessions with Worf is having on her body. This is followed by a montage of various injuries, fights, and general violent acts from across the Star Trek shows, accompanied by Nazareth's "Love Hurts" — implying that the characters involved in those scenes were all just passionately in love (even when they are explicitly not so, e.g. Picard's torture at the hands of Gul Madred).
- "Sacrifice of Angels" (DS9): Chuck covered the opening arc of DS9 season 6 in its original story order. Several (all?) of these reviews had at least one reference to Blazing Saddles, usually in the form of a joke mirroring the film. The final episode, "Sacrifice of Angels", ends with the theme song from Blazing Saddles over shots of Benjamin Sisko returning to Deep Space Nine after retaking it from the Dominion.
- "Caretaker" (VOY): Banjo music accompanies Voyager destroying the array that would strand them in the Delta Quadrant.
- "Parallax" (VOY):
  - A montage of scenes where Janeway is posed higher than whomever she's talking with, accompanied by Alphaville's "Big in Japan".
  - Later in the same episode, Chuck's rendition of the pirate shanty "Blow the Man Down", with episode-relevant lyrics.
    Chuck: Janeway alone with Torres on the shuttle means bonding, soul-searching...
    ...Yo-ho, wedge the crack open!
    They come back but find that there's two ships there now,
    Uh-oh, looks like they're screwwwwd.
- "Phage" (VOY): One of the earliest examples. In Chuck's intro, Janeway is seen letting the Vidiians off with a just a warning - followed immediately by a sort of Musical Slapstick Montage showing the many times Voyager was subsequently assaulted by Vidiians thanks to that face-palmingly bad decision. It is accompanied with "Lollipop" by the Chordettes.
- "Non-Sequitur" (VOY): The review ends with a slow-motion montage of intimate moments between Harry and Tom accompanied by "I've Had the Time of My Life", insinuating a homosexual attraction between them. This is essentially a Brick Joke, after Chuck spends much of the review talking about how Harry seems to prefer being on Voyager with Tom over being back home with his own girlfriend.
  Final Caption: Sorry guys, but keep chasing that rainbow.
- "Threshold" (VOY): Chuck tries to understand what Paris means by "Multi-spectral subspace engine design", and he concludes that the engine might be powered by rainbows. Cut to a montage of Tom and Harry working on the Delta Flier, with rainbow colors everywhere, accompanied by ABBA's "Dancing Queen".
- "Death Wish" (VOY): The intro shows Janeway telling Q that she knows about all of the awful things he's done to humanity, but that she also knows he's never been a liar. Cut to a montage of Q lying constantly, to the tune of "Little Lies" by Fleetwood Mac.
- "Deadlock" (VOY): Chuck's not imagining things; there are two plausible explanations for why Past and Future Janeway don't get along. Either Janeway can't stand the shrill sound of her own voice, or... *cue Divinyls*
- "Tuvix" (VOY): An entire separate video, called "The Tuvix Coda", is dedicated to Janeway's experiences with mad science (performed on her own crew) accompanied by "Still Alive", the end-credits song from Portal. It fits perfectly.
- "The Chute" (VOY): The review constantly digs at the Harry / Tom Ho Yay vibes given off by the episode. This culminates in a scene where Harry holds the dying Tom's hand and lies down next to him, which Chuck overdubs with "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers evoking the pottery wheel scene from Ghost.
- "Scorpion" (VOY):
  - Harry lays dying in sickbay after being punched by Species 8472, reflecting on the last three years he's spent on Voyager. Cue Enya's "Only Time", played over a montage of Harry's many, many painful and humiliating experiences.
  - The review ends with the song "Dry Bones" (also known as "Dem Bones") as performed by The Four Lads. This is in direct reference to the Running Gag throughout this review about Torres beaming people by locking on to their skeletons - with cringe inducing results.
- "The Raven" (VOY): Chuck says that Seven's first meal being prepared by Neelix is like having her first sexual experience be in a sex dungeon with Jonah Hill in leather chaps holding up a stereo playing Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love". The review ends with that same song... punctuated by whip cracks.
- "Year of Hell" (VOY): Chuck describes how the episode's Big Bad actually contemplates the mistakes he's made in the past and even expresses regret, whereas on Voyager...
  (To the tune of The Flintstones theme:)
  Janeway!
  Captain Janeway!
  I'm the best captain in history!
  Stranding
  all my people,
  their lives are filled with grief and misery!
- In "The Killing Game" (VOY), Seven is forced to play the part of a lounge singer in a French tavern during a World War II simulation. Chuck then has her sing a love song of "her people" (the Borg), which is all just binary and hexadecimals... in harmony with himself.
  Chuck voice #1: "1-1-0-0-1-0-0-1..."
  Chuck voice #2: "4-9-4-C 4-F-5-5 6-4-5-9 4-F-5!" ^note
- "One" (VOY): Chuck says that with all the main cast except Seven and the Doctor being in cryo-stasis, the show has become about the adventures of the plucky hero and her hologram sidekick. Cue the Red Dwarf theme song.^note
- "Counterpoint" (VOY): Voyager's nemesis of the week, Kashyk, comes aboard asking for asylum.
  Chuck as Janeway: Except... you're a jack-booted fascist, spreading terror, bossing people around, hoping to lock away anyone who might know your dark thoughts, and even admit that you've hatched a scheme your superiors would be horrified to learn about, and... and... and...!
  [Cut to Janeway and Kashyk making out, to the tune of "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Foreigner.]
- "The Disease" (VOY): An episode all about Harry getting an STD from an alien woman, and then being severely punished by Janeway for it, ends with the final chorus of Tenacious D's "Fuck Her Gently" playing over a shot of Harry's bitter smile.
- "Someone to Watch Over Me" (VOY): A Running Gag in this review starts with Chuck explaining why everyone knows whenever Paris and Torres have sex - because they do something kinky with a trumpet. This joke is then repeated a couple of times during the review in different forms. The review then ends with a romantic instrumental version of the song "Someone to Watch Over Me" by George Gershwin (to match the title of the episode); specifically, a trumpet solo.
- "Equinox" (VOY):
  - Captain Ransom speaks to Seven of Nine, trying to convince her to abandon Voyager and return to Earth with the Equinox.
    Ransom: You know, Janeway's not the only captain who can help you explore your humanity.
    [*Cue 70s porn music*]
  - Later on, Seven is strapped down to a bio-bed while the Doctor prepares to dig around in her Borg implants to retrieve some code she's keeping secret - which will effectively lobotomize her. Ransom pleads with her one more time to give him the code peacefully:
    Ransom: You think this is easy for me? The sight of you on that table?
    [*Cue 70s porn music*]
- "Barge of the Dead" (VOY): We get a glimpse into the dishonorable Klingon "Hell" of Gre'Tor: Oblivion NPCs river-dancing to the tune of Funny Fux's "Inline Skates". Apparently this was the least manly thing that came to mind.
- "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" (VOY):
  - The "Blind Idiot" Translation to "La Donna e Mobile" makes its first appearance in this episode, and is referenced later in a Doctor Who review.
    Captions: The lady is furniture.
    What down in the wind?
    Changes of accent...
    and thought.
  - When Chuck is forced to watch the Doctor rubbing Janeway's... lower back... his brain shuts down and we hear a snippet of the slowed down version of "On a Bicycle Built for Two" ("Daisy, Daisy...") from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- "Blink of an Eye" (VOY): The intro uses Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker", where the chorus ("You're a heart breaker, dream maker, love taker...") is intercut with silly epithets uttered by the guest characters in the episode:
  Pat Benatar: You're a... heart-breaker!
  Episode Character: Ground-shaker! Light-bringer!
  Pat Benatar: Love-taker, don't you mess around with me!
- "Tsunkatse" (VOY): Early in the review, Chuck shows a shot from the episode where Seven and Tuvok are sitting together in a shuttle, doing and saying nothing for many long seconds. He remarks that this episode is "definitely the most successful Star Trek adaptation of a Simon & Garfunkel song" - alluding to "The Sound of Silence" - and then sings the famous first line from that song when the lights in the shuttle suddenly go out. Then, in a brilliant Brick Joke, the review ends with a long montage of scenes from the episode accompanied by the original rendition of that very same song, perfectly matching the events of the episode.
- From "Unimatrix Zero" (VOY):
  - Pretending to be mad with him, Chakotay sternly orders Paris to open a small box (which actually contains a gift):
    Chakotay: That's an order.
    Chuck: [To the tune of "That's Amore"]
    When some guy outranks you
    and tells you what to do
    that's an order!
  - Janeway gets herself assimilated by the Borg... on purpose.
    Chuck as Janeway: Yessir, this is definitely the best plan I've everrrrrrr...
    [A Borg component is screwed into her brain]
    ♫ Every day, it's a-gettin' closer
    Going faster than a rollercoaster!
- "Imperfection" (VOY):
  Chuck: If this were a Harry episode, he'd go off and sulk somewhere because he ruins everything he touches. I mean, let's face it, he's like the third Miser Brother.
  ♫ He's mister Harry Kim,
  He's mister suck,
  He's mister failure,
  He's mister screw-things-up!
- "Workforce Pt. II" (VOY): The review opens on "Everything is Awesome", lampshading the alien of the week's depraved plan to... give the VOY crew fulfilling jobs, swanky apartments and booming sex lives. The horror!
- "Author Author" (VOY): References two previous Musical Gags simultaneously, when the Doctor tells Janeway that her holo-novel character is nothing like her because the real Janeway has never executed any of her crewmembers. Cue the Tuvix execution scene (from the episode "Tuvix"), this time using a snippet of "Big in Japan" (previously used in "Parallax") instead of "Still Alive" (used in the "Tuvix Coda").
- "Natural Law" (VOY):
  In the jungle
  The quiet jungle
  Chakotay sleeps tonight...
- "Broken Bow" (ENT): In the outro, a love song is played to "celebrate" what on its face looks like Klang raping a Suliban.
- "Damage" (ENT): Tucker's favorite tune, later used as mood music for his sexual liasons with T'Pol. C'MON ERY'BODY, DO THE HAMSTER DANCE.
- "Bounty" (ENT): Chuck summarizes a conversation as Archer saying "let me go", and his captor replying "no", over and over. To punctuate it, "Bohemian Raphsody" cuts in, followed by Chuck's own lyrics:
  Phlox: I'm just a doctor, nobody loves me.
  Choir: He's just a doctor, with a barbed ding-a-ling!
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
  - A musical interlude with Chuck singing "Here's some stuff! Lets look at stuff!" in harmony with himself, to emphasize how empty and drawn-out the movie's special effects scenes are.
  - 70's Disco music accompanies Dr. "Grizzly Adams" McCoy's appearance at the start of the movie, to emphasize how dated that scene looks today.
- Chuck has trouble trying to figure out why the Klingons' theme from Star Trek III is so familiar. Later he discovers that it's Underdog's theme song.
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home:
  - The intro consists of Kirk describing how primitive and paranoid the 1980s were, which Chuck quickly follows-up with Toni Basil's contemporary song Hey Mickey.
  - Later in the same review, the same issue is brought up and followed by One Night in Bangkok.
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
  - Take me down to Paradise City, where the pool table's wet and the cats aren't pretty.''
  - The Mortal Kombat: The Movie theme kicks in during Kirk's knuckle fight with Sybok.
    NOOB SYBOK WINS
- Star Trek: Generations: A song by Chuck to recap the backstory, sung to the tune of the Wilhelm Tell Overture.
  Oh, Kirk and his crew left the show
  So Enterprise-D could boldly go
  Picard then said "make it so"
  And shit killed Yar with just one blow
- Star Trek: First Contact: Picard gets Kicked Upstairs to go comet-hunting. In keeping with the theme of Starfleet volunteering its scientists to go fight Borg, the general feeling aboard the ship is euphoria.
  (cut to the comet from VOY's credit sequence)
  Enrique Iglesias: I CAN BE YOUR HEEEEEROOOOOOOO... ♫
- Star Trek: Insurrection: Chuck gives his own rendition to "A British Tar" (a song used as a Musical Gag in the actual movie), with new klingon-related lyrics:
  Chuck: A Klingon man is a soaring soul
  As free as a charging targ
  With an energetic yell, he is ready to compel
  A bad guy to yell "Arrgh!"
  His nose should pimple and his lips should scowl
  His ridges gleam, and his odor foul
  His boobs are firm, and his hair should grow
  And his phaser ever ready for a knockdown blow!
  [Worf uses his phaser to smack a drone]
- Star Trek: Nemesis:
  - The theme from Oblivion replaces the movie's intro music, while Chuck paraphrases the speech given by Patrick Stewart in that game's intro.
  - "Cotton Eye Joe" is used to draw a direct comparison between the ridiculousness of Picard's gratuitous car chase scene in this movie, and Kirk's gratuitous car chase scene in Star Trek (2009).
- "The Wheel In Space" (WHO): When discussing the Cybermen, Chuck asserts that the Cybermen must've had their vocalizers hooked up to their backs, because they keep rocking back and forth as they talk. He posits that perhaps their lava-lamp-shaped controls make them want to break out in dance. He then overdubs a few shots of them with Haddaway's "What Is Love", which fits perfectly.
- "The Invasion" (WHO): Chuck asserts that Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart would've made a much better Major General than his superior, Rutledge, which prompts Chuck to sing a version of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Modern Major General" adapted for Stewart's character.
- Night of the Comet: Chuck accompanies an entrance by Robert Beltran wearing a Santa Claus suit with a rendition of "Hi Ho, Hi Ho" along with Voyager-related lyrics.
  Chuck: ♪Hi ho! Hi ho! I'm Chakotay, you all know! I'm dressed like this 'cause I'm Janeway's bitch, hi ho! Hi ho!♪
- The Two Towers: A montage of the physical abuse taken by Gollum durign the movie is accompanied by Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping" ("I get knocked down / but I get up again / you're never gonna keep me down").
- Dragon Age: Origins: In a brilliant example of this trope, instead of explaining everything that goes on in the many hours it took him to clear the Deep Roads, Chuck plays Men at Work's "Down Under" over a montage of events from that section of the game. They match perfectly.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: In episode 11, the circumstances are pretty well as bad as they could possibly be. Because of the actions of the Mentor Mascot / Manipulative Bastard Kyubey, a city destroying Eldritch Abomination is on its way. Three of the five main characters are dead, and the other two are well and truly fucked. As the ancient horror approaches...Yakety Sax begins to play, working to great effect to point out the Mood Dissonance between the tense scene and the fact that the giant monster is preceded by a circus troupe.
- An early video was a montage of Darth Vader's exploits, accompanied by "Major Tom".
My Friends... and Zoidberg: Exaggerated in the second part of the opening two-parter of Beast Wars, when Chuck realizes that the Maximals at that particular point in time has more "Zoidbergs" than not.
Chuck: Our heroes... and Dinobot... and Rattrap... and Cheetor... um, the five of them...

Narm: Too many specific (in-universe) examples to list, but he makes a blanket statement in his review of "Phage":
Chuck: That's pretty much Voyager in a nutshell: drama provokes laughter.
Neologism:
- "Daleks in Manhatan", best summed up as Incrazulicious.
- As for "Evolution of the Daleks", that's ridicudumb.
- "Let He Who is Without Sin":
  Quark: I have seen drier days on Ferenginar, and we have 178 different words for rain! Right now, it's "glemmening" out there.
  Chuck: Yeah, and I have 412 words that describe bad Trek episodes, and right now this one is "suck-bominable ass-slop".
- In part 5 of the "Miracle Day" review (Torchwood), we get "fiasco-tastro-fuck", describing the concentration camps set up to house and incinerate the not-quite-dead people.
Nepotism:
- Jokes that the only reason Picard tolerates Wesley is because he wants to get into Beverley's pants.
  "You can spend years of studying to be experts in your field, in the hope that one day maybe you too can have the joy of needing to answer to some teenager who failed the Academy entrance exam, but who happens to be the son of a woman the Captain wants to ride bare-back."
- He also infers that the reason Torres Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin' is that Janeway wants to "ride that Klingon ass".
Nerds Are Virgins: A few jokes about that.
- In his special video about the Prime Directive, he reflects that discussing the Prime Directive would still be nerdy even if he did it while having sex with a girl on top of the corpse of a T-rex he'd just killed with his bare hands.
invoked Never Work with Children or Animals: Chuck mentions the trope by name and then commends The Thing (1982) on how the dog which escaped from the Norwegian camp acts, as it is first shown wandering the American camp with methodical curiosity, and shortly afterwards watches the humans with interest.
New Media Are Evil: Cameras steal your soul (from his guest appearance on the two hundredth episode of Atop the Fourth Wall.)
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- In "Before and After" notes that Doctor Van Gogh, the future iteration of Voyager's Doctor, developed a radical new procedure to extend Kes' life so she could have a few more years with her husband Tom, her daughter Linnis, and her grandson Andrew. In doing so, he accidentally caused her to Mental Time Travel into the past, undoing the best years of her life, half of the people she loves to be erased from history, and the man she loves into the arms of another woman (Torres).
- Uses this exact phrase at the end of his Star Trek: Nemesis review, referring to how the creators of that movie effectively killed the Trek movie franchise for the better part of a decade.
- An almighty instance of this is pointed out in the review of "Fight or Flight," as a result of Archer getting pissy at T'Pol and insisting on going back to a ship whose occupants have been killed by a highly advanced race who siphon chemicals from their victims. Enterprise gets disabled by a ship from the race in question, and they have to be saved by another ship from the dead crew's race. It's noted that if not for the other ship showing up in time and Hoshi managing to work out their language on the fly, in the best case Archer would have gotten his crew killed, and in the worst case his actions would have led to Earth being conquered by hostile aliens, and the human race being reduced to cattle and slaughtered en masse for their chemicals.
- His (rather plausible) theory that the Breen and the Pakleds are the direct result of Doctor Phlox and Archer committing genocide in "Dear Doctor".
- In Threshold, everything the team does ends up going horribly wrong. One of the best examples is their plan to round up one of the seven escaped Infectees by beaming out the signal that mutated him. After they succeed in recapturing him, they go outside to discover dozens of random civilians showing up who've been exposed thanks to them.
- In his review of Mass Effect 2, nearly everything Shiva Shepard does, intentional or otherwise, usually ends up leading to a massive body count following in her wake.
- In "A Matter of Time", Picard decides to sentence a 22nd Century con-man to spend the rest of his life in prison, whilst trapped in the 24th Century! Except, Picard completely ignores the Temporal Prime Directive and the possibility that his disappearance from history might have caused some changes in the past two hundred years. Not to mention just letting the 26th Century Time Pod he was using return unpiloted back to the 22nd Century; joking that it probably ended up in New Jersey and in the possession of Tony Soprano's disembodied Brain in a Jar.
The Nicknamer: Chuck's inability to remember character names, coupled with his love for inventing new names for anything that moves, have produced a plethora of these during the years. Chuck also loves giving characters nicknames just to mock them. Even locations and objects receive a nickname on occasion. (See also Alternate Character Interpretation and Catchphrase.)
- The Magic Meeting Room (name for Voyager's conference room, in which the problem of the week is solved by a complete and utter fantasy).
  - The ENT equivalent of this is The Air Hockey Table.
- "Admiral Lardass", the go-to name for whatever Armchair Military type is ordering Picard around at the moment.
- Star Trek IV: Whale Iz Teh Awesum
- The Klingon Kia of Prey. (Generations)
- Despite his love for the character, he's taken to referring to Seven by a new nickname each episode, including "Lana Hugetits", "Barbie of Borg" and "Silicone of Nine."
- Repeatedly lampshades how stupid the design of the "Lego Phaser Rifles" is.
- The "Magic Off-Button Hypospray" for every instance of Instant Sedation.
  - The "Medical Phaser" for the ultimate cure for your ills. In First Contact, it doubled as a hangover remedy (Just set phasers to "Sober"!).
- The ultimate synthesis and application of Starfleet and Borg technology: a Giant Lottery Ball Machine. ("The Omega Directive")
- Sybok's bald flunky "Chickenskin", and "Yosemite God." (Star Trek V)
- Pulaski is "The Gorgon".
- The husk of the deceased Caretaker is unceremoniously dubbed "the urinal cake."
- He dubbed Q's son "Harry Potter".
- He took to calling the Borg leader "Queenie."
- Tom's an expert on so much stuff, Chuck bestows him the name "Ibid."
- Neelix is often referred to as a "hedgehog," due to his spiny hair. Or simply Shithead.
  - Der scheissekopf.
- Dr. Mind-diddler, so named because that's the extent of his character sketch. ("Workforce Pt. II")
- Another rather famous one is him calling Johnathan Archer of Enterprise by the code name of Sterling Archer, "Duchess."
- "The Andorian Incident" gave us "Vulcan Bitch" and "Colin the Andorian" (so called because of his resemblance to Colin Mochrie).
- Dr. Phlox has been dubbed "Dr. Zoidberg" as of the "Vox Sola" review, because of his long string of inaccurate judgment calls ("Curing these aliens would interfere with their evolutionary path." "These assimilated people are harmless!" "Patient confidentiality? What's that?").
- A scientist in "Evolution" is renamed "Bob Kelso," after a character his actor played on "Scrubs."
- FemShep is "Shiva", and with good reason.
- Refers to Voyager's resident sociopath crew member as "Suder the Psychotic Hamster".
- "Unimatrix Zero" is referred to as "The Worst of Both Worlds", as he says it is the exact opposite of acclaimed "The Best of Both Worlds".
- Our favorite buddy cop duo, "Weasel" and "Stretch". (DS9: "The Die is Cast")
- Captain Muttonchops from Janeway's Victorian holonovel
- Dr. Hooters Vaginski. (Back to Earth)
- John Lennon and Yoko (aka Daniel Jackson and Sha're).
- Wall-E's M-O reminds him of Monk: He likes everything clean, and prefers to remain on the line if at all possible.
- The Wonder Woman pilot lacks title overlays, so Chuck is forced to work with whatever the post-production captions can offer... ah! "Pants to Be Darkened"!
  "Kinda Zen, but we'll go with it."
- The newlyweds from "Balance of Terror", aka The hobbit and The Giant.
  "Fee fi fo fum, tonight I'm gonna get me some!"
- Eldol Figgerpopper III and Indian Bouillabaisse. ("Way to Eden")
- Captain Squidward. ("Cold Front")
- Captain Fritz Von Nazischtein. ("The Killing Game")
- Among the Xindi, only the verbose Degra is referred to by his actual name; the Arboreal is nicknamed "Snarf".
- The Always Awesome Tony Todd.
- Farscape:
  - Gilina is named "PK Tech Girl," after the episode in which she first appeared.
  - Durka gets "baldy," because Chuck couldn't remember his actual name.
  - Natira gets "Blue Oyster Cultist" before Chuck switches to Crichton's in-universe nickname for her: "Frau Blucher".
- The "Space Grinch" and "Om Nom Nom monsters." (Galaxy Quest)
- Dweeb Von Weaselsnake and Prof. Sexual Harassment (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)
- Evil Abraham Lincoln and Rothford Penguin the Third, Esq (Rebuild of Evangelion)
- Dr. Serizawa is Dr. Cyclops.
- The "Female Changeling" character in DS9 is referred to as "Sanders" for the final block of episodes. This is based purely on the fact that her skin condition resembles fried chicken.
- Chuck admits that this gives him a problem while insulting the character Satine from Clone Wars: it's way too easy to insult her by her title... because it's "Duchess," the same one he gave to Archer.
- Averted in Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations," where he says that, no, he did not make up this man's name for comedy, he really is called "Barry Wattle."
Nightmare Fuel: Referenced In-Universe in "Nothing Human", in which a Cardassian Mad Doctor is used as an analogue to Nazi doctors like Josef Mengele. When a Bajoran says that the doctor infected people, blinded them, and covered them in acid, Chuck has this to say.
"This would be Mengele on a very, very good day. If you enjoy sleeping at night, you don't want to know what a bad day was."
No Badass to His Valet: Chuck notes that Darth Vader is a cybernetically enhanced walking murder machine with magical powers, and the guy who warns him about the potential fallout over attacking the Tantive IV is talking to him like a coworker he just caught stealing office supplies.
Noble Savage: Often takes Michael Piller to task for his portrayal of Native Americans and other indigenous cultures as always being completely peaceful, englighted and mystical individuals, who can heal the Earth with the power of prayer. Chuck points out that just because they don't have technology, history has repeatedly proven that native cultures can be just as brutal to each other as their more "civilized" counterparts.
- Chuck points out how suicidal it is to disarm just because Chakotay insists that the native population of a planet are peaceful, despite being nothing but hostile until that point! However, if it's a Michael Piller script, Chakotay is always proven correct!
- In "Tattoo", the "White Men from Outer Space" that supposedly uplifted the Native Americans for sharing the same veneration of the land as them. In addition to how racist this comes across as, he tears apart this Informed Attribute, since they keep summoning powerful storms that have the side-effect of kicking nature's ass?!
- He also points out that Chakotay's backstory was written with heavy influence by a man who pretended to be a Native American, and was in fact Based on a Great Big Lie.
Non-Indicative Name: Obviously the last thing we should have expected from the Guardian of Forever is to actually... guard forever. Not let some crazy guy jump into the time portal and tamper with history in untold ways.
Spock: Perhaps your new name could be something like "Butterfingers on the Edge of Whoopsie, Did I Do That?"
Guardian: I've succeeded! Just in a way far beyond your comprehension!
Spock: Yeah, that's not working anymore.
Guardian: ...Shit.
Non-Uniform Uniform: Points out Star Fleet's fluctuating strictness when it comes to uniforms in his Ensign Ro review by adding in dialogue where Ro calls them out on having insisted she remove an earring then seating her at a table with Troi, who's wearing a low-cut body-hugger, and Worf, whose Klingon baldric covers a substantial portion of his chest.
Ro: Did you sit me next to somebody in a low-cut body-hugger as a sick joke, or are you just that brazen in your favouritism?
Noodle Implements:

In "The Outcast," he keeps coming up with ridiculous items a gendered person would need to have sex with a non-gendered person.
In "Behind the Lines", he questions Odo's addiction to "linking" with the Female Changeling five times per day. "Even Dukat took a minute to grab some Gatorade and rotate the chickens."
In "The Disease", Chuck quotes his grandfather: "Boy, don't ever put your dick in something that lights up!"
In a flashback to her first day on VOY ("Relativity") Janeway tries enticing an aged admiral with a sex act involving sprinkling Marshmallow Peeps on...somebody. Eeegh.
All ended well for the mind-wiped characters in "Workforce"...apart from the Quarrans, who are due for some horrible vengeance from Janeway involving "tarantula eggs and a surgical drill."
In "Thirty Days", it's revealed that Harry lost his dignity in a childhood accident involving a jar of mustard and a woodchipper and it wouldn't grow back.

Noodle Incident:
- "Noam Chomsky won't return my calls since the incident with the rice pudding." ("Darmok" Follow-up)
- For the two-part review of "Datalore" and "Brothers", he made passing reference to a slight.... snafu at Casa Chuck which delayed the schedule. This involved fighting off flying sharks, Moby Dick, a Kraken, several tsunamis, an aircraft carrier, and the Death Star.
  "SMILE, YOU SONOFA--!!"
No OSHA Compliance: Said almost word-for-word on the handrail's lack of safety in Enterprise's "Unexpected".
- The fact that Voyager has a "manual override" that needs power in order to work.
  Chuck: A manual override is supposed to work if everything else is broken! This is like having an emergency light that plugs into the wall or a parachute with a rope that keeps it connected to the aeroplane. You're defeating the whole purpose of making a manual override! Even in a show where cheese is destroying the ship, that's stupid!
- In the review of "The Long Twilight Struggle" he quotes this trope almost word-for-word again by pointing out that a 8ft wide catwalk spanning across a bottomless pit has no guardrails.
  - The 'Unsafe at Any Speed Award' is given to any vessel that shows no OSHA compliance.
- In "Brothers" he notes that apparently there are no safeguards in place on Orgus II to stop children from messing around with highly toxic plants in the botanical garden.
Not Helping Your Case:
- Harry's nightmares make Priscilla, Queen of the Desert look like Fight Club. (VOY: "The Thaw")
  "Yeah yeah, I know. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes a log is just a log, and sometimes a clarinet is just a long shaft of wood you wanna grab with both hands, wrap your lips around, and blow for all you're worth!"
- "Sacrifice of Angels:" The Jem'Hadar weren't vaporized by The Prophets. Turns out that it was something even more destructive — Janeway.
  Janeway: It's the Mind Bomb! It runs on the power of the human heart! [beat] I mean emotions. God! Why do you people always assume the worst?
  Sisko: So, it amplifies your emotions as a weapon?
  Janeway: After it's sucked them out of you and left you mentally soulless, yes.
Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Believes that while fans decry it whenever it's mentioned, Wolf-359 really was the 9/11 of the Star Trek universe, at which point the peaceful exploration era died. From this point on the Federation stopped acting willy-nilly with their Wide-Eyed Idealist philosophy and was forced to become more militaristic in the name of their own defence. There were now badass aliens out there who wanted nothing more than to kill them, so like it or not, they had to deal with it.
- Best shown by the Federation putting a taskforce together that lead to the creation of "USS Ben Sisko's motherfu-", I mean, the "Defiant". When asked about it, even Sisko is willing to freely admit that while it's officially classed as an escort vessel, the truth of the matter is, it's obviously a goddamn warship!
  Chuck: It's a set of guns strapped to an engine!
- But also shown in "I Borg," (The Next Generation), where he asks "What would that sanctimonious guy from season one think if he saw his future self discussing annihilating an entire race?" (in discussing if they should use "Hugh" as a weapon or not). He points out that in a pre-359 world, the Enterprise would never have considered wiping out anyone, but in a post-359 world, destroying the soulless cybernetic monsters who want to consume them all is deemed... well, it's needed enough that they can actually discuss the pros and cons of such an action, rather than simply saying "No, we're the Federation, and we don't do that."
Not in the Face!: SFDebris!Picard's standard cry whenever he takes a beating.
"Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
- "Time-traveling space Nazis. Yes, really."
- In "Death Wish" Q decides to summon important figures from human history. Sir Isaac Newton, Will Riker... and some guy from Woodstock.
- From his review of Twin Peaks, describing Agent Cooper's methods: "I normally don't use the phrase 'I shit you not', except when I'm teaching Sunday school, but in this case, I can't think of anything more appropriate."
- His video discussing several rumors of found Doctor Who Lost Episodes has him mentioning the show's distributor in Africa, Television International Enterprises... which also happened to have been created by the founder of the SAS as both a means to keep spreading British culture as well as serve as cover for a mercenary company. He also casts doubt at claims that TIE had access to some of the episodes during a particular time period since a that point, the founder was busy plotting to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.
- From the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan review:
  Chuck: More [consoles] go up, and soon the entire bridge is filled with smoke. The irony of all this? There's a 'No Smoking' sign on the bridge. I'm not joking.
- "The Nth Degree": Mentioning that Barclay becoming smarter mirrors the plot of a certain science fiction work... a Japanese TV show:
  Chuck: "As seen on the Spectreman two-parter, "Billy Don't Be A Monster and Genius Monster Norman", I swear I'm not making this up."
- He had to invoke this several times in the video "The Chimney of Surprise", which isn't a review, but rather an explanation of the events which led to him having to take a break from making them. It starts with his house having building issues which range from lethal stupidity on the part of prior occupants to actually appearing to defy the known laws of physics — to the extent that some of the YouTube commenters wondered if it was designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson, while others suggested it was actually an SCP. Things just get weirder from there, culminating in a previously-unknown (and half-built) chimney collapsing through a ceiling.
- While reviewing Battlefield Earth, he states that he's not making up the character name Johnnie Goodboy Tyler, nor the fact that he's played by Barry Pepper.
"Not So Different" Remark:
- Points out the Bynars remove a baby's brain at birth and implant cybernetic relays so they have their individuality stripped away. No different than the Borg. He also plays it for laughs when he points out to Chuck!Picard that since they only do this to children, they're better. Chuck!Picard is stumped on if they're right or not.
- Points out the ex-Borg from "Unity" want to forcibly strip away the individuality of the other ex-drones who are attacking their community, in order to create a unified harmony between themselves ones again... which he speculates might be how the Borg started in the first place.
- His Coda for Tuvix draws hilarious comparisons between Janeway and GLaDOS from Portal.
- Jokes about "Janeway of Borg" given her penchant for assimilating lowlifes into her motley collective of misfits.
- Points out how the Borg Queen attempting to control Seven in Dark Frontier is contrasted with Janeway giving her an direct order in the same scene, because Seven must decide now who she wants to boss her around for the rest of her life.
- "Latent Image" gives us a segment called "My Way or Janeway", contrasting his Crazy!Janeway with the actions of the real Janeway in that episode. He stops doing this halfway through because he thinks Janeway actually went beyond even the realms of his parody when she ordered all evidence of Ensign Jetal to be erased from existence.
- In "The First Duty" he notes that Nick Locarno is essentially the young Picard, who never had the mentor in Boothby that lead him to eventually confess for his misdeeds. Locarno, much like the younger Picard seen in Tapestry is intelligent, a natural leader, but reckless and undisciplined. Both have similar scenes where they try to bring Wesley around to their way of thinking, hence his dilemma over trying to figure out what version of Picard he should listen to.
- In "The End Of Time", during the brief recap of the end of "Waters of Mars", he highlights the Doctor's capacity for evil by overlaying the Master's Evil Laugh while the Doctor gives his "Timelord Victorious" speech;
  The Master: (voiceover) There is some evil in all of us, Doctor... even you.
  The Doctor: No!
- In "Up The Long Ladder", Picard intentionally destroys two unique cultures by forcing them together for the greater good, with their own feelings on the matter considered completely irrelevant by everyone and essentially states that they either comply with his wishes or he will leave them to die. Chuck points out that this is exactly the same mentality that the Borg have.
- In "Hide and Q", Picard gives Riker a pat on the back for refusing to save a dying little girl. He jokes that Picard's position is that she needed to die and that they must remove the weak from the herd, then morphs him into a Dalek.
- In his Legend of Korra review, Chuck rebuts Tarrlok's in-universe use of this trope on Korra. He points out that while both characters go to extreme lengths in pursuit of their own goals, Tarrlok's extremism is a sign he's failing as a government leader, antagonizing broad swaths of the populace and leaving them without non-violent means of protest. Korra, by contrast, is only resorting to intimidation because Tarrlok is unbalancing society, something which the Avatar's job description requires Korra to correct by any means necessary.
No True Scotsman: One of Chuck's Berserk Buttons are fans who sneer down at others for not sharing their own opinion as not being "true" fans as well as fans who dismiss any other opinion as automatically being because the others guys were too "stupid" to get it.

Obligatory Joke:
- From Evolution of the Daleks upon Dalek Caan's escape via emegency temporal shift.
  The Doctor: CAAAAAN!
- Spock learning that he's just been jilted by his fiancée... for someone named Stonn. ("Amok Time")
  Zachary Quinto: STOOOOONN!
- And the genuine article, Shatner himself: (Wrath of Khan)
  Kirk: MISTER TAMBOURINE MAAAAAN!
- In "The Conscience of the King", Kirk comes across the murdered Layton and, lacking a Doctor with a good baked beans recipe, grimly says, "He's dead, Me." Also, Kirk's reminiscence of how different he was 20 years ago. ("You wouldn't even recognize me, I was Chris Pine.")
- Spock's inner thoughts while listening to a hippie's jive speak. ("Way to Eden")
- Kirk's confident that he and the crew can time travel safety, as they've done it one other occasion. (IV)
  McCoy: (But Jim, what about "Assignment: Earth"?)
  Kirk: (Backdoor pilots don't count.)
  - He bites his tongue when Sulu remineces that he was born in San Francisco. ("Too easy.")
- In Final Frontier, Kirk intones, "I've always known I'll die alone. Or with some bald French guy."
- Kirk laying down the heavy news: The Klingons have a ship which can fire while cloaked. (Star Trek VI.)
  Sulu: Surely not...?
  Kirk: Yes, it can. And don't call me Shirley.
  - During the Khitomer Conference, we get Scotty quoting the Kool-Aid man as a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner (HOHYEAAAHH!!), and Kirk stealing the mic from his own President.
    "Yo Prez, imma real happy for you and imma let you finish..."
- A number of digs at James Cromwell in "The Hunted".
  "The Angosians dedicate their lives to peace and pure pursuits - like a seventies porn career."
- When Data wanders on-set in a bowler hat and silk vest, Chuck assumes he's gone into pimping. ("Time's Arrow")
  Data: I do hope for both our sakes you do better tomorrow, Candy, for neither of us wishes that Data does slap a bitch.
- After Picard delivers his scathing rebuke to Wesley in "The First Duty":
  Wesley: So you care about my "doodie"?
  Picard: Save the toilet humor for Riker.
  Wesley: Don't you mean number one?
  Picard: Damn it, this is serious! You're in—
  Wesley: Deep "doodie"?
  Picard: Get the hell out!
- A double whammy in "Where No One Has Gone Before", when Picard is tempted to remain in uncharted space for awhile and poke around.
  "There could be whole new species out here for him to find and surrender to! —But they could end up getting stranded out here and having to spend the entire rest of the series trying to get home. And who the hell wants to watch that crap?"
- Barclay trying to relax in his quarters with taped sounds of whalesong, birdsong and the like... ("Realm of Fear")
  Barclay: Computer, more birds.
  The Byrds: To every thing, turn, turn, turn...
- Chekhov's magic ability to turn reporters into nurses. (Generations)
  "You and you. You've just become nurses, let's go." (leaves)
  Chuck: The only time Chekhov's ever said that line was to two hookers on Risa!
- When Worf deactivates Data with a palm-sized phaser, it sounds like a car lock remote. (Insurrection)
  - Similarly, when Spock arrives on the Abrams!Trek Bridge, it boots up like a Mac.
- When Nemesis pans over the Romulan Senate in session, Chuck explains that they're voting to add a second hairstyle to their species.
- What score did he give "The Magnificent Ferengi"? You get seven guesses.
- From the In The Pale Moonlight intro:
  Vreenak: It's a FAAAAAKE!
  Chuck: OK, everybody got that out of our system now? No need to fall back on any hackneyed internet memes, right? Especially once we realize that every time you masturbate, God does indeed kill a kitten, and I for one welcome our Domo-Kun overlords, and remind my fellow earthlings that All Your Base Are Belong to Us because IT'S A TRAP!!!
- When the President of Slug-o-Cola consults Quark on a new ad campaign, a lightbulb goes off: New Slug-o-cola! ("Profit and Lace")
- "Projections" (VOY): Being on Voyager is destroying the Doctor's brain.
  "Yeah, Welcome to My World, Doc."
- "Coda": Go back to hell, coward!
  Chuck: What, to the beginning of the episode? NooooooOOOOOOOOOOooooo...!!"
- In "Scientific Method", Chakotay's hair starts to fall out in streaks, making it resemble a certain celebrity hairstyle. Donald Trump, anyone?
  "Let me tell you the story of how I pitied the fool..."
- Tuvix commenting that he feels like he's being dragged before the Numerian Inquisition.
"Impossible. Nobody expects the Numerian Inqusition!"
- "Year of Hell", otherwise known as TNG's first season.
  - Annorax presenting an unusual offer to Paris and Chakotay: ("Year of Hell")
    "When I first encountered your vessel it was badly damaged, barely functioning. What if I told you in a blink of an eye, I can restore her to its former condition?"
    Chuck: All we have to do is... let the episode end, and you'll be right as rain next week. Trust me, I know it doesn't make any sense but it always works that way for you.
  - Neelix's new menu item, "Elixir of Endurance." It provides +40 HP and 5% damage reduction.
- From "Counterpoint", in a scene between Janeway and Inspector Kashyk:
Chuck: One is a jackbooted oppressor sowing fear and hopelessness everywhere... and the other's an inspector. Thank you Joke Formula Number 97!
- "The Thaw"'s Clown chops a log in half with his guillotine, proving that "no matter how wooden Harry is, he's still not safe."
- "You know how to kiss, don't you , Captain? Just put your lips together and blow... like this episode." ("Persistence of Vision")
- "We were in the middle of the Central American jungle looking for the ancient Rubber People." ("Tattoo")
  Chuck: Oh, the Trojans.
- He goes hog wild in "Living Witness". Of course, if you're among those who've actually seen the episode, did you expect any less?
  Curator: Voyager had many weapons at their disposal, including species they'd assimilated along the way.
  Chuck: The means is called a "com-badge".
  Curator: Now, what you are about to see is graphic and unsettling...
  Chuck: Ah, this must be Neelix's cooking show.
- A Jeffries tube leads to a wet bar in "The Killing Game Pt. 2", prompting Chuck to comment that this was Scotty's architectural dream.
- Past!Janeway standing agape at Tom's cheesy Captain Proton sim. "Were these characters always this ridiculous?" ("Shattered")
  Chakotay: Oh no, no Torres used be a lot worse than she is n— oh, you mean these guys.
- In keeping with a running gag involving the high-strung Janeway confessing her past and present criminal activity by accident we got this exchange from "Bride of Chaotica". Tom confirms that Doctor Chaotica has a death ray at his disposal, causing Tuvok to deadpan, "A pity we don't have one." Cut to Janeway cloaked in shadow, who grimly replies, "...Yes. Isn't it just."
- It isn't long into the episode that Chuck realizes there's not much difference between VOY's pastiche of juvenile, B-movie sci-fi and the average Voyager script. This inevitably leads into a "Dark Overlording" competition between Chaotica and Janeway.
  Chaotica: (nodding understandingly) Ah, because of the incompetence of your inferiors.
  Janeway: Preach it, brother.
- In "Azadi Prime" he was obliged to note that the Spherebuilders did not design T'Pol's implants.
- "Carpenter Street" (ENT) opens with Leland Orser picking up hookers, because it's always best to write what you know! ("Right, Brannon?")
- invokedTucker muses that he never thought the NX-01's voyage would come to an end, and Chuck completes the thought. ("These Are the Voyages...")
  (southern drawl) "Man, when they didn't cancel us after "A Night in Sickbay", I figured we were bulletproof!"
- Immediately after Colin Baker's famed admonishment to the fans, "I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not," we cut to a BBC newscast from February 27, 1985 announcing the 18 month hiatus of Doctor Who. Boom.
- The Adherents of the Repeated Meme talking entirely in retired internet memes.
- Among the confidential items in UNIT's vault is the "missing" Doctor Who serial "Fury from the Deep". ("Day of the Doctor")
  Chuck: SON OF A—!!
- Oswald Dane's insistence that pharmaceuticals be handed out without cost to relieve everyone's pain. ("Miracle Day 3") Chuck replies with a shout, "Great, where's my share?"
- In his ultimatum to Night of the Comet, he promised not to make any Star Trek gags as long as the movie didn't either.
  Sam: (upon seeing Robert Beltran) Beam me up, Scotty.
  Chuck: Oh, so that's how it's gonna be, huh, movie?
  - "Hi ho. Hi ho. I'm Chakotay as you know. I'm dressed like this 'cause I'm Janeway's bitch. Hi ho, hi ho hi ho hi ho..." ♪
- Senator Warren wants to know what America is to think of a superpowered vigilante, stabbing people with needles left and right, and who is answerable to no one.
  Diana: You could suggest that a country in a double war, facing a double-dip recession, and double digit unemployment—
  Chuck: —That Double-Ds are the answer?
Obviously Evil: When Silverbolt expresses misgivings about the implications of using the Predacon's activation phrase of "Terrorize", Chuck remarks that he's feeling like a soldier for House Bolton right about now.
"He's got this feeling that carrying a banner with a flayed human being on it might make him the bad guy."
Obvious Stunt Double: He highlights this in his reviews when it pops up, but also explains why it does with older shows. Basically on old, small, fuzzy tv sets of yesteryear the technology meant that even the most superficial resemblance could be gotten away, but as technology advanced and we got better and bigger televisions it became more noticeable when a non-lookalike stunt "double" was used. Also, back then most people didn't have means to record television, so any mistake would be quickly forgotten about.
Offscreen Villainy: He calls out the 2011 Wonder Woman pilot for a particularly bad case of this. We're told a character is a drug dealer, but all we see of him is being chased down and brutally captured by Wonder Woman (who throws a lasso around the guy's neck, lifts him up in the air, slams him down onto concrete, stabs him with a needle, and has to turn him over to the police before she can do anything else), and then being tortured by her in his hospital bed. It doesn't help that this rendition of Wonder Woman definitely seems like the kind of person who would go after someone without any real evidence.
Off with His Head!: Pointed out oh so very many times in the review on the pilot of Game of Thrones.
Older Is Better: Regarding the Temporal Cold War arc on Enterprise, Daniels says that he can travel through time physically while Future Guy can only project his image due to being based earlier in the future and using less advanced technology. Chuck notes how little sense this makes when Kirk already could take the entire Enterprise into the past on several occasions without any outside help.
The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: From "Blood" of The X-Files: When Scully wonders who might be testing LSD-M on poor citizens and relaying subliminal messages purposely, SF Debris happily enlightens her: "Evil people, duh! Who else? You know, men who sit at long tables in poorly lit rooms full of cigar smoking, talk about how they're going to controool the wooorld!"
Omniscient Morality License: Doesn't like the tendency in Trek to take complex moral issues lightly, find easy solutions, and for the show to essentially run on the principle of "whatever our protagonists think is right and the ones who disagree are always wrong", especially since it's not uncommon for the main characters to take inherently contradictory or outright opposite stances in different episodes. This is why Chuck often plays the Commander Contrarian role regardless of whether or not he otherwise might have actually agreed with the stance taken by the main characters (for instance, if their reasoning for said stance was properly presented instead of just assumed to be true because they're the good guys) and why he praises episodes that do a good job of acknowledging that there aren't always clear cut answers to some of these questions.
- More seriously, he brings up and discusses this trope in The Legend of Korra and whether Korra has one. He concludes that while a person like the avatar would be horrific in our world, in the Avatarverse there are different rules and the Avatar is chosen and empowered to be the kind of person who would use such a license responsibly.
Once Done, Never Forgotten:
- Troi crashing the Enterprise-D makes her the butt of many jokes.
- B'Elanna takes no end of razzing for her failure, despite the assistance a tricorder, to identify manure on the old truck from '"The 37s".
- Chuck outright states in "Similitude" (ENT) that he will never let Phlox forget how he effectively committed genocide in "Dear Doctor".
- Data thinks fish are amphibians - this is constantly brought up when Data is supposed to be The Smart Guy but proves useless in that roll "The Outrageous Okona".
Once Original, Now Common: Mentioned In-Universe in the review of The X-Files Pilot. SF Debris claims that the show is one of the best TV product of and biggest influence on The '90s, and that today it might seem uninspired or cliché, however, when it first aired, it was very innovative.
Only a Flesh Wound: He points out that weapons seems to be getting weaker and weaker as time progresses in the Trek universe.
Only Known by Their Nickname: Subverted in the first part of his review of the Voyager episode "Disease". In response to a rhetorical statement he poses on behalf of the audience:
"Now I know what some of you probably want to say. "Come on, SFDebris, give it a rest, you're reaching." To which I have two things to say: First, you can call me "Chuck", we're all friends here. And I'm fully aware that as a personal name, "SFDebris" sounds like the secret identity of a Silver Age DC villain."
Only Sane Man: Malcolm Reed on Enterprise, and Tom Paris on Voyager.
- The Doctor on Voyager, despite his raging ego frequently comes across this. Particularly his reaction in "Time and Again" to be the last person to know that Kes and Neelix came aboard. And there is now another crew. And Captain Janeway is missing.
- Worf often served this role, particularly in "Where No One Has Gone Before" where he points out the crew is relying on the guy who got the Enterprise stranded at the edge of the galaxy in the first place to rescue them.
- Taken further in "Darmok" where he has Worf berate everyone for constantly dismissing his suggestions to shoot the threat, in favour of some highly convoluted plan which only makes things worse, only for them to hypocritically solve the problem by ordering him to shoot them.
- Hogan is depicted as one in a montage in "Basics", the episode in which he died.
Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
- His attempt to replicate Lister's Scouser accent is... well, interesting. Perhaps wisely, with Captain Picard he only imitates his precise way of speaking rather than his accent.
- And his attempts to do Scotty's accent are more Irish than anything else.
- The British accent he sports for Reed and Bashir is actually fairly spot on in terms of their Received Pronunciation.
- His take on Scottish accent is self-depreciatingly lampshaded in his review of "Enter Macbeth":
  Chuck: Yes, in my world, all Scotsmen sound like pirates.
Operation: [Blank]:
- "Emergency Landing Plan Ostage-hay Elp-hay" (Star Trek V)
- Worf and Riker's "Operation Accomplish Nothing" ("Descent").
- Troi's "Operation Fender Bender" (Nemesis).
- Ben Sisko's counter-offensive is dubbed "Operation Hammertime". ("Sacrifice of Angels")
- "Profit and Lace's" Operation Seppuku, as in they might as well all do that, or follow Rom's plan, it's a toss-up.
  - Soon to be followed by "Operation Operation".
- When you murder the Gods of drug-fueled supersoldiers, they tend to be indiscriminate in their retribution. Hence a Starfleet Admiral's choice to order a Code WAAAAAAAHHH! ("The Die is Cast")^note.
- Chakotay's plan, "Operation Common Sense". ("Scorpion")
- "Operation Fruit Fly" ("Year of Hell"), which Janeway stupidly agrees to.
- Operation Remove Moral Dilemma ("The Thaw").
- Operation I DON'T NEED A REASON JUST OBEY ME!, courtesy of... aw hell, you know who. ("Unimatrix Zero")
- He mocks Janeway naming a plan to break into a Borg ship "Operation Fort Knox," as it implies they'll fail. "What were your other choices, 'Operation Titanic,' or 'Operation Enterprise's Fifth Season?'"
- "Operation BOO-YAH!" ("Scientific Method")
- Plan "Leap Before You Look". Shockingly, it fails ("The Void").
- "Mission Implausible." ("The Killing Game Pt. 2")
- Jonathan Archer's Operation Mugging. ("Damage")
- Red Dwarf Plan Alpha: Run for it.
- The American health care system, aka "Operation The Hell With It". ("Miracle Day")
Opinion Myopia: Really calls this out in his introduction video for the Star Trek: The Motion Picture review.
Other Me Annoys Me: As he noted about whenever Janeway met various dopplegangers;
"Whenever we get two Janeways in the same room, they will always argue with one another."
Out-of-Character Moment: Notes in "The Bonding", how strange it is that given Picard's long history of interest in archaeology (having almost chosen it as a career over Starfleet), he seemingly has no idea about the archaeological mission that his own ship is taking part in until it's half-underway, then acts completely uninterested when Data explains it to him.
- In Nemesis, comments on the stupidity of Picard casually breaking the Prime Directive by driving a dune-buggy around on a Pre-Warp world, having Worf laser-gun down a bunch of the attacking locals, before escaping in a shuttle. All this leads him to believe that Picard doctors his Log entries.
Overly Narrow Superlative: In his Return of Harmony Part 1 review regarding Pinkie's corruption:
Chuck: ...When she falls into a mud puddle, Discord explains that, like her friends, the balloons are laughing at her, not with her. Well, Pinkie Pie is not the most stable person... *Discord appears* ...named Pinkie Pie...
- From the Tenth Kingdom review: "Weaponized tactile alchemy isn't always easy to pull off on the fly."

Paper-Thin Disguise: A running gag in the SWTOR playthrough is that everyone knows that Miralukan Rex-Dart is an alien despite the fact that he's trying to pass himself off as a human with prosthetics. Being blind, he's also terrible with disguises in general and at one point wears a bright yellow outfit with the Sith Empire emblem on it.
Parallel Porn Titles:
- Deep Throat Nine. ("The Defiant")
- Buffy the Vampire Layer, Dr. Horrible's Super-Long Dong, and Sex Dollhouse
- Bi-Curious George Meets the Man with the Yellow Hat. (The X-Files: "Beyond the Sea")
- Field of Wet Dreams. ("People will come, Ray!"), The Hunt for Miss October and The Empire's Got Back (TNG: "Evolution")
- In "Fair Haven", he took umbrage with the EMH — a sentient program with missing genitalia — claiming he's no different from Janeway's Ken doll boyfriend on the holodeck. For a follow up, the Doctor boasts that he, too, stars in holographic porn including the the award-winning Orgasms Without Borders.
  "Please state the nature of this sexual emergency." *Bow Chicka Wow Wow* ("Life Line")
Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Dinner at the Dukat's. ("Sons and Daughters")
Kira: Please pass the salt, you murdering fascist!
Dukat: Glad to help you, you crinkled-nose uptight bitch!
Kira: So what's on the agenda today? Murdering babies or just fathering illegitimate ones? No offense, Ziyal.
Ziyal: ...Can we not do this?
Dukat: Major, is it true that you're so frigid, First Minister Shakaar's penis now has twelve words for snow?
Kira: When you go around on your rape sprees, are you worried that you’ve sired so many bastards, you may accidentally be plowing one of them, or are you just happy that you're finally doing something with your abandoned children? Again, no offense, Ziyal.
Ziyal: Would anyone like to see my sketches?
Kira: I bet your father would like to see your—
Dukat: Please pass the salt back, you filthy shrew.
Kira: Why don't you just come over here and take it and claim that it was for the good of the Bajoran people?!
Dukat: Same time tomorrow?
Kira: I look forward to it.
Patrick Stewart Speech: In "Sleeping Dogs," Chuck says that Picard is so good at speeches, he could have been able to rally Custer's men at Little Big Horn to victory. If it were Archer, the Indians would have gone "Yeah, this just isn't worth it." and left.
Periphery Demographic: His My Little Pony review mentions that it was requested several times before he realized they weren't kidding.
Perfect Pacifist People: Chuck rips into this trope for the Insurrection review, both the "rural perfection" version in the film as well as the older "technological perfection" espoused by Roddenberry. He wonders why the hell everything is so clean if they're so agrarian (technology is to thank for our current concept of "clean", even modern farm work is incredibly dirty); moreso, he wonders how they even managed to kick out the Son'a if they're so "pacifistic" and the Son'a aren't.
Pet the Dog: When asked to do a review of a good Voyager episode, he gushed over "The Thaw" - though still taking the time to snark at Harry Kim's questionable sexuality, of course.
- He quite liked "Projections" from Voyager as well.
- And he even answered the question of 'what would be a good Enterprise episode?'. The episode "Damage", apparently.
- The earliest example of Chuck proving he has a soft side was in his review of "The Cloud", where, unprompted, he goes out of his way to praise the cast and director, noting that most of them tried their best and that the terrible writing wasn't their fault.
- He spares Neelix a Stupid Neelix Moment in "Tattoo", partly because of the Chakotay-focused plot in the episode outdoes Neelix, but also because Neelix's eye was pretty badly hurt.
- In the Voyager Episode "Demon", after making sure there were no other Members of the Crew about, vocally sides with Neelix against Tuvoc, over Neelix taking a small Book of Parables with him when the Crew are confined to few decks to save energy.
- Even gives Braga some kudos in Dark Frontier pointing out that his introduction and handling of Seven's character was actually a very smart move as her character perfectly incorporates some of the best traits of Odo, Spock and Data as well as her own character arc, which is a stark contrast to the usual Static Character you find on Voyager.
  - He also defended Threshold (the short-lived show, not the Voyager episode, that has no redeeming qualities) which many people had written off purely because Braga was involved with its production.
  - Actually, while Threshold the episode is nonredeemable, he does praise Robert Duncan McNeill for acting his heart out and doing his best - as Chuck points out, it's not his fault the episode sucked so much.
- Gave "The Void" a score of 9/10, noting that it might have taken 6 years and come only a dozen episodes from the end of the series, but Voyager managed to finally realize what the show was supposed to be about!
- Chuck gives Jeri Taylor a lot of flack for her Janeway-worship, but he praised her for her rewrite of "Chain of Command".
- He does have pity for Garrett Wang and the way he was treated.
  "I'm not above kicking a man when he's down but I do feel sorry when somebody keeps pushing him over first."
Planet of Hats: A regular target of Chuck's ire. In his review of "The Magnificent Ferengi," he says that if Raiders of the Lost Ark had been a Trek two-parter, Germany would've been painted as Mordor for the rest of the series.
Plot Armor: Directly referenced in "Starship Mine," where a minor character is killed by a phaser blast but Geordi, shot by the same gun, will eventually be fine. "That's why character shields are the most important part of Starfleet's arsenal."
- Also how we've seen people survive much worst blasts and be fine, whereas Nog got hit once and lost a friggin leg!
- Especially when Tuvok is only a few feet away from an exploding torpedo in "Year of Hell" and yet his permanent injury is blindness. "Imagine if the torpedo had actually collided with him! It just might have killed him!"
- He also exclaimed, "Character Shields are failing" during the season 4 Killer Finale of Andromeda.
Plot Immunity: Lampshaded when Dukat threatens to pitch Garak over a railing in Quark's bar. ("In Purgatory's Shadow")
"Don't bother flipping him over that, Dukat. He's not some nameless character, he's a Special Guest Star. He could survive a fall of at least five stories and get away with only a limp and a clever quip."
- In First Contact, this turned out to be Picard's reasoning in splitting his away team as he did.
  "Data! You and I are the ones with the best agents, let's beam up to the ship and check it out!"
Poe's Law: Invoked in the review of "Clues," when Chuck (as Data) offers an increasingly ridiculous set of hypotheticals — all of which are taken from plotlines in other Trek episodes.
- An awesome subversion of the trope comes from "A Night in Sickbay":
  Archer: Will Porthos need any special treatments, any special diet, having the petuitary gland of a chameleon?
  Phlox: You may have trouble finding him occasionally.
  Archer: ...You're joking.
  Phlox: ...Yes, I am. Ha ha.
  Chuck: You DO NOT joke about something you are dumb enough to actually say.
- The first time Chakotay walks onto the set in "Barge of the Dead", Chuck groans that we're in for another Indian legend about whatever he's holding. Chakotay, Leaning on the Fourth Wall a bit, jokes, "it's what my ancestors used to call a monkey wrench."
  Chuck: I officially like you, episode.
- As Chuck is quick to remind his critics, Regular Janeway frequently exceeds Parody Janeway. ("Year of Hell")
  "Yes, Parody Janeway is crazy, but there was always a method to her madness, while Regular Janeway feels madness by itself is just fine, thank you very much. She has stared into the abyss as it has stared into her... and the abyss said, "JESUS!"
- It really is astounding how far Chuck's interpretation has extended from VOY. In "Liars, Guns and Money" (Farscape), we're introduced to Scorpius' moll, a spider-woman who fits every criteria for Janeway's aforementioned weaponized tarantulas (which apparently got loose in the Uncharted Territories at some point. Thanks, Cap'n!)
- On the other hand, Chuck's Janeway is often more intelligent than the genuine article, particularly when negotiating terms with implacable enemies. ("In the Flesh")
  Spoof!Janeway: Of course we'll give you the information on how the only weapon in existence that can stop you from invading the Federation works! And after that, would like me to carry you back to Fluidic Space piggyback-style? ♥ ...Jackass.
- The same goes for Picard's hatred of children. When Riker admitted to letting a small girl die (in "Hide and Q"), Picard greeted him with an "'Atta boy!"
- invoked Chuck noted the bitter irony of ENT turning out to be a bad dream i.e. holodeck program, something Trekkies such as himself were (sarcastically) hoping for all along.
Political Correctness Is Evil: In the review of the Star Trek: Discovery episode "Through the Valley of Shadows", Chuck discusses how a number of fans had taken offense to Pike's horrified reaction to seeing his future (with the incident that left him fully paralyzed in his iconic chair), claiming that it represents an overly negative view of people with disabilities. Chuck points out that there is nothing remotely ableist about showing a character traumatized by a traumatic event.^note
Precision Crash: From the review of "Rise" (VOY):
Chuck: It might surprise you to learn that somehow, the unprecedented happens. Yes - the shuttle crashes! [...] Well, they do have good fortune: Not only does everyone survive this crash uninjured, but they're right next to where Dr. Vatm is. He's knocking on the door, wanting to come in. After they've crashed. Yeah, he heard the crash and came here, sure, but just in the time that they have been knocked out, which is anywhere from (on-screen implication) about 10 minutes, to (if you want to be generous) an hour. Basically, they had to hit a target the size of Disneyland while completely out of control. That's like scoring a hole-in-one while blindfolded.
Precision F-Strike:
- Delivers a rather chilling one at the end of his rant in "Real Life" about what it feels like to almost, or actually, lose a child.
  "So don't tell me it builds. Fucking. Character."
- In his review of "Howard the Duck", the titular character starts freaking out upon being given a plate of eggs, claiming he's being subjected to cannibalism:
  "...it's a chicken egg, you fucking idiot."
- "Yeah, this is the moment when the series turns to the audience and says '...you think you know magical girls? Fuck you'."
- Sayaka: "You tricked us, didn't you?...", Kyubey: "Not necessarily.", Chuck: "Oh fuck you."
- Janeway earned one for forbidding B'Elanna to induce a religious near-death experience, in a series where senior officers routinely risk their lives for personal reasons. ("Barge of the Dead.")
  "You wanna talk her out of it, fine. You're gonna force her not to do it? Fuck you, Captain!"
Protagonist-Centered Morality: Feels this way about Nara from Exo Squad, where she abandons her post, lies about it, puts her squad in danger, accelerates the plans for the enemy Grav Shield, which then gets several ships full of people destroyed, all because she was concerned for her family... even though several other collaborators with the same motivation do so and are condemned for it (or at least, face the consequences of their actions).
Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Chuck describes Kaliyo Djannis of Star Wars: The Old Republic as a good simulation of having a psychotic girlfriend, being both clingy after a single night out together and totally amoral and treacherous.
Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "Must... resist... urge... to... make sex joke in teaser! ...urk ...have whole review to make them!" ("Code of Honor")
- The NX-01's armor going "offline" in ENT's pilot. At first, Chuck tries explaining why ceramic armor — though it does run on electricity — can't be brought back "online" like deflector shields can. It then dawns on him that this is VOY's 'shout out shield numbers' standard battle sequence all over again, except with more nonsense words. ("Broken Bow")
  (hysterical) "You! BROKE IT! It's! GONE!!"

Questionable Casting: Invoked while discussing the decision the director of "Code of Honor" made to cast the aliens of the week entirely with African-Americans:
Chuck : The script makes numerous comparisons to Earth:
Data: That is from an obscure language known as French.
Picard: ...and [the Ligonian society's] unique similarity to an ancient Earth culture we all admire. On behalf of the Federation, therefore, I would like to present this token of our gratitude and friendship, from China's Song Dynasty.
Data: For example, what Lutan did is similar to what certain American-Indians once did, called "Counting Coup."
Chuck : So, of course... the director interpreted this to mean that everybody was black.

Rape as Comedy: At the end of "Broken Bow", Chuck mentions that a scene where Klang strangles one of his Suliban captors looks disturbingly like a prelude to prison rape. This is then played for laughs during the outro.
Rape as Drama: Condemns the use of this in Star Trek: Nemesis, where the villains mind-rape/actually rape Deana Troi just to show how unpleasant they are and how much time they apparently have to spare.
Rape as Backstory: Wonders why Tasha Yar barely reacts to her abduction in "Code of Honor", which is completely at odds with the fact she spent most of her childhood dodging rape-gangs.
A Rare Sentence:
- In the DS9 review of "Indiscretion" he calls switching from Kassidy and Sisko's relationship issue to a Kira and Dukat scene as a "less volatile situation" and notes this is the first time the later pair has ever been described as that.
- Expresses praise for WALL•E's zero-G dance, "the kind of heartwarming image that can only be achieved by a trash compactor trying to slalom around flame jets the size of a small garage using only a fire extinguisher. "
- "Well, reinvigerated, Pinkie is determined to establish her bona fides as the one-and-only best party planner around. And there's a sentence that I really never imagined I'd say in my science fiction review show."
Really Dead Montage: Chuck, believing that Kirk deserved better than what happened to him in Generations, gives him a fitting sendoff — courtesy of Journey.
- Following his (latest) death in "Scorpion", we see a montage of Harry Kim's numerous beatings/deaths/humiliations throughout the show as Enya's "Only Time" plays. ...Epic.
- Not satisfied with Data's rather flat death and lame wake in Nemesis, Chuck throws together a montage of Data dreaming and experiencing human things while the narration of Jor-El from Superman plays.
Real Men Wear Pink: "The cooking is being left up to a man who is manly enough to do so, yes, Jet Black. So named because Awesome McAwesomepants was already taken." He also grows bonsai trees in his spare time.

Relaxo Vision: For the grimmest parts of Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Alien he puts up a video of two cute kittens wrestling.
- Despairs of pulling this off with Zardoz thanks to the film being so damn casual about depicting sexual violence, and thus requiring more cautious editing than the rest of his previous projects combined, it's not surprising Chuck just resorted to black screens for chunks of it.
Reset Button: Voyager lives on this trope, so of course Chuck brings it up, and that's even what he calls it. "The creators of Voyager fear change," as he put it.
- Spoofed again in "The Child."
  Pulaski: She had her baby yesterday. If I were to examine her now, I would not be able to tell she had a baby, or had ever had a baby. It was as if the incident never happened.
  Chuck (as Picard): Yes, well, it's your first Star Trek episode, you'll get used to it.
- Lampshades that the entire plot of "Cause and Effect" revolves around this:
  Chuck: Look at this, Star Trek uses the reset button so often it's become a plot device.
- Discussed at length in the "Year of Hell" (VOY) review, especially in comparison to those times when a Reset Button was used correctly (to great success, and a Hugo Award) in TNG. Chuck's view is that you can use a Reset Button successfully only if something (e.g. a character's memory of the events) carries over to the rest of the show.
Retcon: Whenever characters say something that demonstrates ignorance of the events of Enterprise, he will imagine the character proclaiming "Jonathan Archer is dead to me/us."
RetGone: In "Cold Front", surmises that Enterprise should have been a Bittersweet Ending with the crew making the ultimate sacrifice, removing themselves from the timeline to end the Temporal Cold War, thus explaining why no-one had ever heard of them in the 24th century.
Retirony: Lampshaded during the review of "Innocence" (VOY), where at the beginning of the episode a Goldshirt lies dying and decides to mention that he has no family back home, nobody to miss him.
Chuck: Geez, it's like you want the script-gods to kill you. "I gotta make it! I'm just... two days to retirement!"
Rich Recluse's Realm: The Shadow's Journey explains how George Lucas ended up creating one of these by accident: during the production of the original Star Wars trilogy, his dream project was Skywalker Ranch, a paradise where independent filmmakers could work away from the interference of major Hollywood studios. Unfortunately, Lucas' original goal ended in failure: the facility was so advanced that the only filmmakers who could reliably use it were big studios, and the Ranch's remoteness discouraged indies from making the journey. In the end, it became a base of operations for Lucasfilm — if only because it was already there and couldn't be sold. Like Charles Foster Kane, Lucas then left the spotlight for a long period of time, driven by a massive Heroic B So D prompted by the collapse of his marriage.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: How he describes Kamina's The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right tendencies.
Chuck: Kamina has been known to be right despite all reason. He's very much like a man who decides he's going to get to the moon by digging a tunnel in order to get there... only to wind up falling into a cave containing a perfectly functioning alien spaceship. The journey may have been deeply flawed, but you can't argue with the results... no matter how much you want to.
Rock Bottom: Ten minutes into reviewing the (TNG) episode "Masks," Chuck consoles poor Picard.
"You may have lost the ship, but at least you still have your dig— (Picard turns, wearing a goofy faux-Aztec mask) ...ni...ty."
- Picard's reaction when he sees the wreckage of the Enterprise-D.
  Chuck (as Picard): What a day. I get beaten up by Soran, accidentally kill Starfleet's greatest hero... I can't imagine how could this day could possibly get any— The hell?! WHAT THE GOD DAMN HELL HAPPENED WITH THE— [sputters incoherently] ...SHIT!!!
- "It seems like Sisko's lost just about everything; I mean, his ship, his station, his hair...oh crap, and his son, too! Sisko, keep an eye on your pants, someone might try to steal those, too."
- "Giving Neelix a Bridge station to manage, sigh. That's it, ("Unimatrix Zero") you have officially bottomed out. You can not get any more ridiculous. [Borg Klingon appears] That's it, I'm too old for this shit."
The Roleplayer: In his video game reviews, he seems to enjoy getting into the character he's playing.
- For Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, he plays Morgan, playing up the wealthy Nigerian descended from royalty who likes money. And frequently needs a freaking drink.
- In an almost meta sense for Mass Effect 2, setting up Shepard's background and in-game choices such that Shiva Shepard is cursed to be the Sole Survivor whilst everyone around her dies brutally and ingloriously (until some judicious Save Scumming redeems the suicide mission).
- In Dragon Age II, Hawke has a rule: she only kills in self-defense. Which is why she doesn't execute Anders for blowing up the Chantry. Despite Sebastian threatening to leave over this, Hawke sticks to her principles. Then, when Anders returns to offer his assistance in the final battle, Hawke makes it clear that not summarily executing him does not equal forgiving him, and tells him again to fuck off.^note
- His hero for Dragon Age: Inquisition is Harold the Lesser, unloved and unwanted son of a noble family who's always been told he's utterly useless. Harold spends much of his time lamenting that he's been unwillingly made the crux of world-shattering events, that he's the last hope for all of Thedas, dejectedly claiming that if that is the case, he's only going to screw it up and get everyone killed. Though the unshakeable faith the rest of the Inquisition has in him and his own drive to simply do the right thing for the right reasons seems to slowly be revealing the hero buried deep within poor, dumb Harold.
Ron the Death Eater:invoked Let's look at the scorecard: We have Janeway, a low-functioning sociopath and nymphomaniac who stranded her own crew in space in order to amass an army to take over the Alpha Quadrant as a a first step toward converting the Federation into a vehicle for galactic conquest. On the other side, we have the unholy trifecta of Phlox, T'Pol and Archer, who are collectively responsible for the creation of some of Star Trek's most vile enemies.
Rooting for the Empire: Invokes this everytime an episode introduces a character who actually will call Janeway out on being such a damn idiot and/or mistreats Hedgehog. Naturally, he approves of this.
Hirogen: (to Neelix) If it were up to me, you'd already be dead!
Chuck: I've been sayin' that in every episode Neelix appears in.
Rule of Sexy: Kim Cattrall's replacement of Kirstie Alley in Star Trek VI:
"It could be argued that the events to come would've had even more of an emotional impact if it had been Saavik and not Valeris in the role. However, this can be forgiven because...Valeris is hot."
- Why did Crichton decide to unlock Aeryn Sun's restraints and ask her to come with him in the premiere episode of Farscape:
Chuck: Because... because it's Claudia Black, for god's sake! The woman's a hottie with a voice that can cause a man's fly to open by itself!
Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Another snark-target that he consistently approaches. Neelix gets the worst of it, being continually referred to as a hedgehog, but the Forehead of the Week is often up for mockery. Such as people who have feathers for hair, guys with six extra nostrils going up their forehead (as in "Warlord"), aliens with "coat-hook" tusks sticking out of their chins, and the inexplicable feature of aliens with a bridge of flesh between their nose and their chin, obstructing their own mouth.
Chuck: As though it were an evolutionary feature just to prove that God loves fuckin' with atheists.
- And he takes issue with the Andorians in Enterprise being given rubber foreheads, as if the blue skin and antennae weren't enough to tip us off that they were aliens.
- Shows how this can backfire in an "Unfortunate Implicationsinvoked" manner in his review of "Alliances" (from Voyager), where the darker-skinned, more heavily costumed aliens (the Kazon) are viewed as animals, and Janeway tries to make an alliance with the alien race that only appears in this episode, thus using much lighter makeup and less elaborate forehead. So it can (he points out) come across as Janeway making an alliance with white people to fight dark-skinned barbarian idiots.
Chuck!Janeway: Of course we'll make an alliance with you, you're white!"
Rule 34: Game of Thrones: "By the way, 'Screw you and the horse you rode in on" is only a figure of speech. Don't expect her to literally screw the horse! Though this might have inspired the Game of Thrones/My Little Pony Slash Fic I'm sure somebody has written somewhere."
Running Gag: Chuck has enough of these that it now has its own page.
Russian Reversal: Referenced in relation to the Soviet-built Tsiolkovsky in "The Naked Now".
(as Picard) You know, number one, in your country, you send ships into space, but in Soviet Russia, ship sends YOU into space!... Hey, where are you all going?
Well, looks like they're screwed; unable to muck with the tractor beam that can only pull things...it looks like that ship seeking boulder is going to take out the Enterprise and Tsiolkovsky, which won't make them happy back in Soviet Russia. Wait, that's it! In Soviet Russia, tractor beam will PUSH!

SF Debris / Tropes M to R

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