Inevitably, just like in Square Root of Minus Garfield, there are bound to be some negative references amongst all the Shout Outs.
- "Principal Argument"
edits a Nerf NOW!! strip where, after Morgan draws a particularly bad Guest Comic, Jane decides to pretend it never happened. In this version, Jane and Morgan respectively represent Matt Groening and Ken Keeler arguing over The Simpsons episode "The Principal and the Pauper" and its notoriously Status Quo Is God ending. - Reply All has unsurprisingly been taken to task a few times:
- "Reply Dril" makes fun of the baffling decision to have Reply All run in a "condensed" form, which amounts to taking one panel from the four-panel strip and putting it out of context. It is likened to a nonsensical Twitter post, so this strip replaces the dialogue of a strip with an actually funny nonsensical Twitter account - dril.
- "Every Day's A Holiday In Reply All Valley" makes fun of how everyone is "constantly rolling their eyes, even when their eyes are shut," but then there's the protagonist, whose irises "ARE FLOATING IN FRONT OF HER FOREHEAD. WITH EYELASHES ATTACHED TO THEM."
- For this strip, the author took it upon themselves to recreate a strip in their own style, flat-out stating that even their worst artistic efforts are better than any Reply All strip.
- These strips also throw in jabs at Reply All. The latter strip also jabs at Sonichu and My Immortal.
- "Reply Dril"
- "Pearls Before Fine" references the Fine Bros' infamous React World project, though the target is moreso those who can't stop bringing them up than the Bros themselves.
- The aptly-titled "Mario Plus Bad TV" takes aim at shows the author doesn't like, via Brawl in the Family (though its iToons Explained page acknowledges that their opinions have since changed).
- "Sandra Minus Woo" declares Sandra to "have reached Donald Trump levels of insanity" after Woo gets the obligatory "minus'd" treatment.
- This comic, while mostly self-deprecating, also throws in a barb at Fox for good measure.
- This strip replaces the eponymous spies of Spy vs. Spy with two versions of the Grinch: one from the 1966 animated special and the Jim Carrey-portrayed Grinch from the live-action film. Predictably, the live-action Grinch loses.
- Fred Basset gets frequently ripped on for being boring and unfunny.
- "A typical Gilchrist comic" is a jab at how Guy Gilchrist handled Nancy, which is widely seen as paling in comparison to Ernie Bushmiller's classic strips.
- "Nancy Hates Reboots" is this to, well, reboots, taking the original strip's Spring-related punchline and changing it to reference Final Fantasy VII Remake specifically (though the author freely admits that they hadn't played the game yet at the time they made the strip).
- This comic called out a fellow iToons contributor for frequently submitting Nancy edits (though, to their credit, the contributor in question found the comic Actually Pretty Funny, and later did scale back on the Nancy edits).
- "8 Out of 10 Pearls" swaps out Anderson Cooper for Jimmy Carr, whose laugh Rat describes as sounding like "an asthmatic howler monkey choking on a papaya".
- "Spinal Cord Futures" satirizes the irony of the original strip, which "makes you twist your neck unnaturally to read it"; for this remix, the author rotated the two panels so that readers wouldn't have to do so.
- "Tall Girl" is a stab at the similarly-named movie, referencing how tall Emmy Lou appears to be. As the author writes:Jodi thought she had it bad? Emmy Lou is probably 6'3".
- Invoked in "You're a Laughingstock, Martin"note .
- Then deliberately subverted in a strip based on it, "You're a Laughinstock, Liane (a South Park-based strip, using screencaps from an episode).
- Played straight in "You're a laughingstock, Cool Cat" (two guesses as to what this is a jab at).
- Then deliberately subverted in a strip based on it, "You're a Laughinstock, Liane
- "The average daytime talk show nowadays" is pretty self-explanatory, replacing the original dialogue with a dril tweet in a similar fashion to "Reply Dril" above.
- This comic changes the punchline of a Broom Hilda comic so that the book the eponymous character attempts to read from that horrifies her companions is the infamous Sonic Live! comic.
- "The Ideal Travel Destination" (that being Hell) has this to say:Why not? It's got red hot beaches, a shining crimson sky, and all the hotel TVs show Riverdale nonstop!
- Also of note is that it's the 666th strip. Make of that what you will.
- "Percy Jackson Syndrome", which swaps out Harry Potter for (you guessed it) Percy Jackson, claims that "those religious guys" were right about "Harry Potter being bad for you", most likely referring to J. K. Rowling's fall from grace.
- Three consecutive submissions by the same author fall into this trope:
- This one is an unsubtle stab at the short-lived Quibi, which Popuko prepares to smash with a hammer.
- "The word "irony" doesn't begin to describe it" takes aim at the infamous HeadOn commercial.
- "Ballot Blues" has eight edits of the same Nerf NOW!! strip, where Jo pulls a ballot, see's what's on it, and decides he'd rather cover My Hero Academia than whatever was on the ballot. The topics thus satirized include Twitch and The Last of Us.
- This was followed by "Ballot Blues 2: Electric Boogaloo" (by a different author), which includes Electronic Arts and Velma in its hitlist.
- This was followed by "Ballot Blues 2: Electric Boogaloo"
- This one
- "Sideshow Gwen Roberts" mocks Archie Comics, which, in the author's words, "tends to still use a lot of outdated and problematic tropes".
