Trivia / Demo Reel

• Approval of God: Tamara likes the idea of her character being Rebecca's unseen girlfriend who she lives with outside of the series.
• Colbert Bump: "Blue Patches" got more people aware of A Patch of Blue and Elizabeth Hartman. Considering how she ended her life, that's pretty sweet.
• Corpsing:
  • You can see Rachel starting to crack up after her "peaches are fuzzy" line in episode two.
  • You can also see her strain really hard not to laugh behind her hands at Donnie's Thanksgiving prayer.
  • Malcolm's struggling not to giggle when she calls him a "tasty black man".
• Creator Backlash: Not for Doug, but for Rob. While Doug had wanted to do it for five years and literally bounced every time he mentioned getting to create something new and dark, it was viewed by Rob as just something to do while getting the game show ready. While Doug has never outright disowned the show, he did later tacitly admit during his Nostalgia Critic review of Christmas with the Kranks that he shouldn't have tried replacing that show with this one, seeing how they were really nothing alike.
• Creator Breakdown: The more the show went into Donnie's backstory the more it became apparent that Doug was writing about his own regret for mocking child actors like Jake Lloyd and Mara Wilson. There's also the fact that Donnie sucks (intentionally or not) as a director and Doug's not-so-great directing skills caused a lot of issues on the anniversary movies, and Donnie having a lot of people creep on him while Doug has expressed discomfort with being objectified by fans plenty of times. As Rob said later, he left Doug to write everything regarding Donnie because they were so much alike.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Doug said while filming it that the Lost in Translation episode was his favorite.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • In Midwest Media Expo 2015, Doug called the scene where Donnie is breaking down about his mom in the forest at night the hardest thing he's ever had to do emotionally (because there was so much to get across and he legit felt like he was dying from cold), which he felt made the sadness come out better.
  • In the same panel, Malcolm picked his most emotionally draining scene as well and his was when he cried in the Blue Patches sequel. He says he had to go to some bad stuff in his life and was genuinely forming tears, even when Doug said they could fake it if he wanted to.
• Fandom Nod: One of the early criticisms of the show (that didn't have to do with the Nostalgia Critic) was that the series premise was too similar to Be Kind Rewind. Doug eventually hung a lampshade on this in the show.
  • Fans noticed that Rob always got the most fanservicey shots of Doug, whether it was him in the shower or just showing he had legs. So, in Transformers, Karl's camera being in love with Donnie gets lampshaded in the first five minutes.
  • Doug's characters have been shipped together since the dawn of fanfic writing, so that might be why Critic acts so seductively against Doug in The Review Must Go On.
• Incestuous Casting: This was the show where Doug and Rob took their teasing Incest Subtext and turned it into in-character flirting. In one scene, Donnie actually asks Carl if he can join in on him having sex.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Rebecca is usually a damsel in their movies, but is a Badass Adorable security guard outside of those.
• Lying Creator: Doug explained the Transformers episode not being shown in order as “it wasn't furthering the plot”. When it came out on DVD, and people found out that it actually foreshadowed a load of sad backstory and had Donnie even talking to his friends setting up SWAG (something that if you only watched the aired episodes, they suddenly always knew they were behind the shit going on), they guessed that the actual reason was that an episode using Michael Bay to talk about privilege probably wouldn't go down well in the comment section.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Demo Reel was Doug's dream project, something he described as wanting to do even before he created the Nostalgia Critic. The show ended up suffering Tough Act to Follow and a good chunk of fans not quite being on board until it was too late.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Retroactively. In this show, Jim Jareoz plays an Irish badass Hidden Heart of Gold former member of the IRA. In the Critic reboot, his two main roles are the simpering condescending Catwoman (2004) therapist and the lisping loud flamboyant Creepy Crossdresser head of TMZ.
  • Rachel wasn't shy about expressing her delight with playing badass ladette Rebecca, gushing about how Doug was the first director to even just let her wear comfortable clothes.
• Prop Recycling: The Catwoman costume Rebecca wears in The Dark Knight Begins Rising (as Anne Hathaway's portrayal) is later reused when Rachel plays Michelle Pfeiffer in the Nostalgia Critic Catwoman (2004) review.
• Real-Life Relative: The Fanatic Fan Family is played by the real-life Laws family, friends of Doug Walker who threw him a bone by co-hosting the Adventure Time Vlogs with him, in addition to having occasional cameos in other Channel Awesome productions.
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: Bless his heart, Doug was shameless this time around and outright asked for Slash Fic in-character. Fandom eagerly obliged. He then used his extra spot in The Uncanny Valley DVD extra to read Donnie/Yo Slash Fic.
• Schedule Slip: Slightly. The second episode missed a week because Doug Walker wanted to tweak the show's direction. The second episode ended up focusing more on the actual characters and put the parody scenes on the back burner. The 4th episode came after 3 weeks. On a grander scale, see above.
• Screwed by the Network: Fans of the show got really pissed when the volume 4 TGWTG DVD advertisement came out, and we were told we wouldn't be getting any episodes (except the missing one) or commentaries, just bloopers.
  • The site's design (the redesign was "for real this time" promised in September 2012 but only happened at the end of 2014) resulted in the show getting shunted to the "specials" section, along with Doug's obligatory Disney-movie-per-day series pushing any episode off the front page.
  • For whatever reason the planned eight episode first season got cut down to six episodes, only five of which actually aired on the site.
• Throw It In!: Happens every time. Donnie keeps adding details to the script to justify their resources like "The character grew a goatee" or "One-glove Batman", and the list keeps getting bigger.
  • The actress rant in episode four was half written by the Walkers, half improvised by Rachel because of her own experiences in the industry.
  • The moonwalking in episode two and the "I speak cat" scene in episode one were also both improvised by Rachel. For the latter, speaking cat was actually the thing that got her the role in the first place, and Rob just asked her to do it again for the ep.
• Tom Hanks Syndrome: Critic had emotional stuff, especially towards the end, but the Walkers wanted to write and act in more serious work. Years later, they both named a Demo Reel scene (Doug having a breakdown in the woods, Rob having to say goodbye in TRMGO) as their most emotionally draining acting experience.
• Trolling Actress: Doug won't say anything about anything, but Rachel likes to tease that the show will come back. Doug talked in a 2015 panel about how he wants to do at least one more episode (and bring back Rachel for it) though, which has fans of the show waiting with slightly terrified baited breath.
  • There was a Demo Reel reunion (of sorts) in January 2017. It came at the end of the Let's Play Awesome Resident Evil 7 Demo.
• Troubled Production: There were a lot of problems with the studio they worked on, ranging from the humidity of the studio warping their sets to their difficulty in audio echo control to the props they had to work with.
  • There were a lot of computer issues while writing the script of the pilot and quite a few scenes were lost, which would explain why said episode was more comedic while the rest were far darker.
  • Continuing from all his anniversary breakdowns, Doug essentially doomed himself before DR had even started, saying in the To Boldly Flee commentary that he was going to work himself sick because he had really wanted this new show to go the way he had always dreamed. Even two years after it had ended, he and others who had worked on it admitted that he was fretting a lot because he wanted certain scenes to be perfectly emotional.
  • The Walkers did learn their lesson in one respect though. Both Lindsay and Allison have gone on record to say they hated their characters in their anniversary specials and didn't get listened to when they had complaints (Allison even said they only know the “swoony girly” type or the “tough bitch”). In this show, it was said that both Rachel and Malcolm had a hand in the scripts and could improvise anything emotional, which was why Rachel continually expressed delight with Rebecca's character.
  • Doug also tried to improve on his scheduling, saying this is where he started doubling the hours he told people they would be working, so they could either have the time if things went wrong or be done early and be happy.
  • At some point over the course of the show's production, Channel Awesome management told Doug that it's icy reception had begun to cut into the view-count and ultimately profits for the site, and that he had to bring the Critic back in order to sate fans and their own business interests, which ultimately led to the show being cut short, and the hasty ending.
• Typecasting: The sexist type is discussed. The two examples are Kathy Bates; psychos and smarmy bitches, and Meryl Streep; shrews, cartoons, cougars and MILFs.
• Underage Casting: Donnie is 42, and Doug Walker is about ten years younger. As Doug makes no attempt to make himself look older, it's a weird age choice.
• Voice-Only Cameo: Mara Wilson lends her voice to play Donnie's wife when he calls her in one episode.
• Word Of Bi: Rob confirmed it for Donnie after the pilot,^note Doug would confirm it at Shadocon in the filming of his said-to-be favorite episode when all he had done sexuality-hint wise was manipulate Tacoma with bedroom eyes. He'd go on to do much more.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Doug wanted Lewis Lovhaug and Lindsay Ellis on the show to play different people other than themselves or TGWTG characters, and prove again they could do drama.
  • As much of a Downer Ending as The Review Must Go On is, it could have been even worse. Brian wanted Fabrizio to return to the studio in The Stinger, only to now find a completely abandoned warehouse. This was replaced with a more humorous alternate take of Brad Jones' phone call scene, with Brad asking Doug when he's going to bring back Melvin.
  • Karl and Quinn would have assembled a team of film crew/mercenaries called "The Commendables" who would go on missions across the globe.
  • Doug mentioned in the A.I. commentary that he would've gotten around to having a TMZ-centric episode had the show continued. And due to his regret that the Critic episode was so cruel, and Demo Reel's A World Half Full optimism, it probably would have been Lighter and Softer than AI.
  • If Doug had the money for a studio, and the confidence and popularity for actors and an audience, the show could have aired in 2008. He'd been wanting to do it the entire time of Critic.
  • If he hadn't left the site, Bhargav would have played Tacoma in a major Playing Against Type example.
  • According to Mr Walker at a 2015 panel, Tamara very easily could have been Rebecca as Doug/Rob couldn't decide for a while whether it would be her or Rachel. A DVD shows Tamara's improvising audition with Doug, and her version is a lot more conniving and obliviously mean than how Rachel-as-Rebecca turned out.
  • Fard Muhammad (the boss in Dragonbored) didn't win the audition for Tacoma, but Doug/Rob liked him so much that they'd already written a role for him in early season two.
• Writer Revolt: "All our hopes rest on the Nostalgia Critic. People will love that" was a clue of Reality Subtext. On the commentary, Doug talked about how even though he was given the choice to keep the show, Critic still had to come back to get the site back on good terms with money.

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