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• Anvilicious
• Base Breaker: Debra. To her fans, she's a beleaguered, long-suffering heroine with the virtues of a saint. But to her detractors, she's a hypocritical Smug Snake and Karma Houdini
• Freud Was Right: Used in "Marie's Sculpture" with Marie's...rather "feminine" abstract statue.
  Marie: Oh my God, I'm a lesbian.
• Fridge Brilliance: In the epilogue to "The Angry Family", we learn that Michael's story was based on an animated TV series called "Monster Maniacs", not the Barones. Suddenly it all makes sense why a character based on Robert wasn't in Michael's book: There probably wasn't a fifth character in that "Monster Maniacs" show.
  • It may seem rude for Frank to ask Marie for food when she's upset or angry, but Marie loves to cook, so Frank may very well be trying to calm her down and/or try to get her mind off what's making her upset by getting her to do something she loves. Jerk with a Heart of Gold indeed.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In one episode, there is a rather unpleasant scene where Ray tells Debra that he found out that their daughter Ally has been bullying another girl on the school bus. Debra shrugs it off, saying she doesn't think it's a big deal and that it's just kids being kids. When Ray asserts that bullying is indeed a big deal and notes that he and Robert are still scarred from their own experiences, Debra smirks and calls him a wuss, and then starts calling Ray names while the studio audience laughs, this scene is considerably less funny today due to the rash of bullying-related suicides over the past few years.
  • One episode revealed that Debra (and Marie) would tell their kids to think less of their fathers and covertly try to make themselves as the more adored and likeable parent. The episode treats this as a sneaky but wacky act on their part. In real life this is called Parental Alienation Syndrome, and is fond in many mean-spirited and bitter divorces.
• Informed Wrongness: Ray in practically every episode of the later seasons is portrayed as being wrong no matter what, whether or not it actually makes sense. Even in episodes where Debra does the exact same thing or does something worse, Ray will inevitably be the one forced to apologize and/or the one who gets humiliated at the end of the episode.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks: Initially, the sitcom was highly-touted by critics as a great new show that wasn't as popular as it deserved to be. Once the ratings started growing and the show became huge, the series was now considered an easy target for people mocking "modern sitcoms".
• Jerkass Woobie: He was usually The Woobie, but Robert did have some Jerkass moments.
  • Ray as well. Not only does Debra become harder to live with as the series progresses, but Marie's smothering really screwed him up. For just two examples, he mentions having nightmares about a "crazy tree lady" who followed him to school (which Robert reveals was Marie), and she held him back a year in pre-school just because she liked their walks to it. And consequently, he is a lazy, whiny, immature Mamas Boy.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Robert/Amy shippers vs. Robert/Stefania shippers.
• Strawman Has a Point: As the seasons went on, Ray generally morphed into the show's main strawman. A lot of times the show would seemingly attempt to paint Ray's opinion as the "wrong" one, even though Ray often did have a good point.
• Too Good to Last: Avoided; initial worries among critics were that this unusual — at the time — family comedy would go the way of the dinosaur within one or two seasons. It lasted nine.
• Wangst: Debra, especially in the later seasons.
• The Woobie: Robert as the show's resident Butt Monkey. Constantly made fun of by Ray and Frank, neglected by Marie as a child, divorced, and constantly trying and failing to get away from his parents. Perhaps the hardest episode to watch for a Robert fan is the one where Marie, Judy, Stephania and Amy force him to sit down and listen as they discuss every single character flaw they can think of, even if they aren't actually flaws and are just things about him they personally dislike.