Comics
See the comics' respective pages.Articles
- The description in "The 1980 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
" for the Superman balloon◊ contains the following nod to Superman: The Movie:1980 was also the year the largest balloon in Macy's history (at least up to that time), the Superman balloon, made its debut. It was created by Goodyear and made out of tire rubber. How did it play out? What did Ed say about it? You'll never know, because the tape ended before the parade got to his spot. Unless Superman flew around the world really fast, turned back time, and positioned himself into the parade earlier, that's all we got. (I just checked; he still hasn't.) - The "Spring 1984" chapter of "The Ancient Lost Art of TV Guide Advertising" accompanies an ad◊ for Carbon Copy, a movie starring Steven Segal as a Jewish businessman with an estranged African-American son, with the lyrics to "My Black Son", a song from the Family Guy episode "Road to Rupert".
- "The Ads of the Star Wars Holiday Special" ends a description of a CBS Newsbreak segment with, "And that's the way it is."
- When pointing out in the review of the third Nemi book that the English translations are in British English (and in turn, sometimes convert the Norway-specific references of the original to England-specific), Peter quotes this Dave Barry column.
- Part two of "Who is Archie Comics' Most Obscure Character?" describes the addition of an ally like so:She introduces herself as Clarissa, and explains it all...
- From the Tandy Computer Whiz Kids review:
- Peter calls one of the students, "Napoleon Dynamite Before He Needed Glasses."
- The kids' unrealistically high levels of enthusiasm for school-related activities prompts Peter to quote the Animaniacs episode "Baloney and Kids":
"I love school so much, I wish I could marry it!" - What Powell's Throws Out, Part Six contains an old Cheetos tagline at the end of this paragraph:Here◊'s an example of a bad cover. Oh, it wants to be cool, so desperately, taking a drag from its cigarette between two fingers of its Power Gloved hand, wearing its suuuun-glasses at night....but being seen with it isn't going to get you a date, no sir. It's not easy being cheesy.
- In the second page of "So You Want a New Mario Game, Do You?", Peter comments on Super Mario World Plus 5's premise: "Training?? Mario didn' need no steenking training!"
- "Jack Valenti's Movie Ratings System" begins with Peter typing up a speech from the Freakazoid! episode "The Chip" about what each rating means. Additionally, the URL of the article references a running gag in that episode about Valenti's cheeks.
- In "When Disney Magic Goes Wrong":
- Peter lists the allure of "great power WITHOUT great responsibility" as one of the reasons little girls have Princess Phases.
- Peter refers to Princess Aurora's segment as, "Sleeping Beauty 1 1/2".
- During the scene featuring a duke acting as a comedic foil to Aurora, Peter refers to him as "the Duke (of hazards, apparently)".
- After Aurora accidentally knocks over a stack of papers, Peter has her curse, "Ohh, hamburgers!"
- When Princess Jasmine's segment makes a Call-Back to the scene in Aladdin where guards fall into a pile of "discount fertilizer", Peter refers to the man shoveling the fertilizer as, "a familiar-looking poopsmith."
- From the "For Your Consideration" bribery article:The only way to get into the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences is to either be related to an academy member, or to save the life of an academy member.
- "Cinderella Gets Weird" claims that Cinderella III: A Twist in Time came out before Mulan VIII: The Prozoids Fight Back and after Aladdin IV: Jafar May Need Glasses.
- "Super Bowl Past-Blast: 1985" ends its first paragraph with, "Great Scott!"
- The Full Experience article about 4Kids' One Piece has Luffy boast, "I'm gonna be KING OF THE PIRATES! I'm working on my roar!"
- Peter's review of the Free Spirit (1989) Halloween Episode mentions the Bootleg Zone as one place lacking the Missing Episode.
- Peter asks in his run-down of the revised first draft of the Free Spirit pilot if Tina Belcher wrote the deleted scenes of Winnie and TJ admiring each other's butts.
- In Creating the Perfect Tagline, Peter challenges the reader to remember the tagline for Aliens before showing a poster for the movie◊ photoshopped to say, "This Time, It's Not Dangeresque 1".
The Island of Misfit Christmas Specials
- From the review of A Snow White Christmas:
- After learning that the special focuses on Snow White's daughter, and that said daughter has the exact same name as Snow White, Peter remarks, "I guess that makes the Queen Snow White like Cranky Kong or something."
- Later, he borrows some lyrics from "The DK Rap" and a Saved by the Bell promo to describe the giants in the special.
- Once the cartoon finishes, Peter claims that after watching that and various other cheesy programming from The '80s, he now has "...more sympathy for poor Sam and Lindsay Weir than [he] did before."
- Sonic's Christmas Blast contains the line "BOW DOOOWN, BOW DOOOWN, BEFORE THE POWER OF ROBOTNIK CLAUS! OR BE CRUUUSHED, BE CRUUUUSHED, BE CRUUUUSHED, BY HIS JOLLY BOOTS OF DOOOOOOOOOM!"
- From the review of For Better or For Worse: A Christmas Angel:
- Peter makes this comment on Taylor from The Elf on the Shelf Presents: An Elf's Story:Taylor doesn't believe in Santa, or Elves on the Shelf. His individuality is a threat to the spirit of conformity and he's just asking for a visit from the Buddy Bears.
- Peter also says that after Taylor realizes he upset his sisters when the Elf on the Shelf disappears after he pushed it off the shelf, "he grows the strength of ten Grinches, plus two."
- Peter says of Laura Lindsey from 12 Wishes of Christmas:It's not just you....Laura looks like a human Derpy Hooves in a lot of these shots.
- In Ted E's Thanksgiving, when Ted E. Bear realizes that he can just deliver presents while Dracula is busy with his re-election campaign, Peter comments, "It's a job so easy, a Geico Brand Caveman could do it."
- During the [Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July review, Peter describes what the North Pole was like before Santa Claus came along:
- From the Cricket on the Hearth review:
- The sight of old Crockett makes Peter go, "Looks like Jabba the Hutt's lost some weight."
- As Crockett introduces himself to Caleb:The cricket mentions that his name is Crockett. Crockett Cricket. Killed a bear when he was only three.
- Screencaps of anthropomorphic dogs watching a cat sing have lyrics from Rover Dangerfield written underneath. Peter's comments about the song itself reference Oliver & Company:The odds of this being part of the original novella are about as good as a Bette Midler poodle appearing in Oliver Twist.
- The "Why was it such a misfit?" section ends with a modified version of a quote from another Rankin/Bass Productions special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:As for the rest of the story, they didn't go down in history.
- In "Siskel and Ebert's Holiday Video Gift Guide" Peter makes note of the LJN logo on the bottom left corner of the VideoArt box◊ being displayed, saying, "Any angry nerd who plays video games knows what THAT means."
- In "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't", when Fortran unveils his robot workers, Peter comments on their design being similar to ALPHA 5, adding "Why don't we just replace the reindeer with Bulk and Skull while we're at it?"
- Some of the descriptions the review of Lady Gaga & The Muppets' Christmas Spectacular gives the costumes include:"some kind of hungover version◊ of Madison the mermaid"
"a hipster WWI airplane pilot◊ with the combined hair-frizz of ten Winnies plus two"
"Queen Elsa after getting hit by lightning◊" (in this case, referring to RuPaul instead of Lady Gaga) - In the review of Chuck E. Cheese in the Christmas That Almost Wasn't, Peter responds to the sight of a "Jennifer Grey" credited◊ as Associate Producer with, "Back to the corner with YOU, Baby!" This references Dirty Dancing, the lead actress of which was also named Jennifer Grey.
- From the review of Raggedy Ann and Andy in the Great Santa Claus Caper:
- Peter declares, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" after he finishes describing the Cold Open.
- Peter lists "Pikachu's tears" as something that apparently can't dissolve Gloopstick.
- In the Andy Williams and the NBC Kids Search for Santa review, after Williams declares through song that he's giving the kids love for Christmas, Peter makes the following reference to the Star Wars Concept Album Christmas in the Stars:"Don't scoff. Everybody knows love is what you get a Moon Frye for Christmas when she already has a comb."
- During the Annabelle's Wish review, as a joke, Peter initially claims that, instead of wishing for Billy to be able to speak again, Annabelle wishes for the world's most comfortable underwear, complete with the underwear landing on her face.
- For the Yes, Virginia trilogy, while the article on the 1974 cartoon special opened with Virginia's actual letter, the subsequent ones instead used fan letters featured on The Ren & Stimpy Show and The Simpsons with Virginia's name in place of Anthony Raspanti's and Professor Lawrence Pierce's, respectively.
