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  • Ass Pull: The ending of the "Save Rock and Roll" video, where the band confronts the monster in the briefcase that had absolutely no prior foreshadowing...since they only just thought to include the element of a greater threat than Courtney's gang into the final video instead of hinting at it sooner.
  • Audience-Alienating Era: Some parts of the fanbase feel that Fall Out Boy has entered this in their post-hiatus output, citing a heavier emphasis on the pop end of their music. More recent releases have more emphasis on electronic elements compared to their regular instruments...or their regular instruments are distorted to such a degree that they wouldn't be recognizable as traditional rock instrument playingnote . "Young and Menace" was so contentious upon its debut that they had to go out of their way to mention that it was the only song like it on the album.note . Some of these fans have compared Fall Out Boy's current status to that of Maroon 5 and their post "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" output. Some of these fans have compared the alienation they feel about Fall Out Boy continuing to focus on mainstream audiences instead of solely to rock fans in their fanbase, or at least trying to find a happy medium between the two, to alienation in Weezer’s fanbase prior to 2014note  and in 2017note .
    • To summarize: whether or not you think that post-hiatus Fall Out Boy is in a Dork Age is dependent on what you think of modern pop music, rock bands experimenting with modern pop production, rock bands trying to appeal to mainstream audiences, rock bands changing their sound to stay appealing to mainstream audiences in a time where less rock bands in general get played on the radio, and other related factors. There are still many fans who think that FOB has been in an Audience-Alienating Era since "From Under The Cork Tree"!
  • Awesome Music: A lot of their songs are this, including "The Phoenix", "Centuries", "Sugar We're Going Down Swinging", "Thnks fr th Mmrs", "This Ain't A Scene, This Is An Arms Race", and "Love From The Other Side".
  • Broken Base:
    • The first single release off of every new Fall Out Boy album since Infinity On High consistently evokes strong, polarized reactions from the fanbase.
    • Over Folie a Deux, though you'll find more people defending it these days than when it was first released. More generally, people who don't like the direction Fall Out Boy has taken since Take This To Your Grave/From Under The Cork Tree versus...everyone else. Less generally, between people who only like Take This To Your Grave/From Under The Cork Tree, those who only like their pre-hiatus material, and those who like everything. Which albums fans in the latter camp prefer, obviously, vary based on personal preference, due to the amount of genre-shifting they've done over the years.
    • Over their post-hiatus poppier sound compared to their older material. Some fans are fine with the switch because it's Fall Out Boy, they weren't exactly not poppy before then, and they're known to switch things up. Some don't like the switch because they feel that less use of their main instruments and a heavier focus on outside instrumentation & samples makes it sound less originalnote . More examples of fandom complaints about Fall Out Boy's shifting sound over the years can be found in the They Changed It, Now It Sucks! section.
    • Is their song from the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot good or awful? General consensus seems to be that it's a bad remix/cover of the original, with some adding that it's more of Fall Out Boy on autopilot than them actually putting any heart into itnote . Patrick's vocals were also a point of contention, with some finding them great and others finding them uncharacteristically awful from him. There is a small section of fans who actually like it. The biggest point of agreement was that Missy Elliot's guest verse was good...unless you're a Fall Out Boy fan who doesn't like it when they work with rappers.
    • Fall Out Boy's habit for experimentation leads to yet another contentious song among the fanbase: 'Young and Menace.' While Fall Out Boy dabbled before in electronic music elements like sampling, it comes across more strongly in this track which features stuttered vocals and a drop. While most of the elements are actually done with traditional rock instruments and effects, that hasn't stopped the "old school fans who don't like new Fall Out Boy material for perceived lack of depth versus everyone else who liked the song" conflicts.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Take This To Your Grave's distinctive cover has all the band members and their names on the cover, an uncommon move. This was done to show that, despite Pete's perceived frontman status, Fall Out Boy as a group was the most important thing. After the band gained mainstream success, the media swarmed in on Pete (who took on a more active frontman role due to the rest of the band's reluctance to do interviews and the like). While Fall Out Boy post-hiatus gives much more consideration to the group instead of merely Pete when it comes to interviews, on-stage banter, and the like, that means it took them a decade to get back to their original intent for the group's representation.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The Weekend Nachos song "Hometown Hero", released in 2011, is a massive diss at Pete. The message to be taken from the song is: "You sold out of the Chicago hardcore scene, but now your famous band is broken up, you're washed out, and nobody cares about you anymore! Stop trying to reconnect with the friends you ditched and get fucked!" In 2013, Fall Out Boy came back together, regained mainstream prominence, gained loads of new fans on top of the diehards who stuck around during the hiatus. Pete rebounded massively from his divorce and other issues that cropped up to play again with Fall Out Boy, relaunch his successful record label, and deliver his second son by hand. So much for nobody caring! (Though arguably if nobody did, Weekend Nachos wouldn't feel the need to make an entire song about him.) It’s even more hilarious if you take in mind that fact: on another song released in the same year, “Jock Powerviolence”, they collaborated with Patrick.
  • Hype Backlash: Take This To Your Grave, the band's first album, is highly considered to be not only one of the band's best albums (if not THE best), but one of the best pop-punk albums EVER. To say that fans of their later material are somewhat disappointed that people seem more inclined to overhype what they perceive to be an above-average pop-punk album at the expense of their other works would be an understatement.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Many fans think that the quality of the albums is negatively proportional to how popular they are, which would mean essentially that they haven't done anything good since Take This To Your Grave...or From Under The Cork Tree, if they're feeling charitable.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Because of Patrick's singing style, you sometimes won't know what the hell he's saying. This has started some common fandom in-jokes like the unofficial fandom holiday, Heavy Irish Pepper Day (by way of "Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner", which falls on February 4th each year.) The band and other acts associated with have acknowledged the mondegreen based in-jokes, most notably with having their official comeback in 2013 fall on Heavy Irish Pepper Day.
    • Everything about "Sugar, We're Goin' Down", whether it's the constantly misunderstood chorus or references to the verses. (Amusingly, Patrick has admitted to slurring the lyrics to the chorus, because he thought they sounded better.)
    • Another inside joke about Patrick's singing, from "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race": I'M A LITTLE MAN, WHO'S ALSO EVIL, ALSO INTO CAAAAAAAATS.note  Heck, there's even a cute cat picture site named Also Into Cats, they even posted about the Fall Out Boy comeback.
    • Now, courtesy of "Centuries", we have "We've been here forever and here's the frozen fruit."
    • "Thanks, Pete", from the band's acceptance speech at the 2014 Alternative Press Music Awards, became popular, especially on Tumblr, due to Pete actually holding up Patrick to the tall microphone. It even became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, and the band added a T-shirt with the phrase to their official merchandise.
    • Pretty much the entirety of "The Last Of The Real Ones", which can be summed up as two guys dressed up in llama suits doing the slo-mo Team Power Walk and murdering Pete Bound and Gagged in the back of a car with a shovel.
    • I can't believe Fall Out Boy played a Fall Out Boy song at the Fall Out Boy concert. Explanation 
  • Moment of Awesome: That one incredibly long note in "The Take Over, The Break's Over." Also, Patrick's voice, generally.
  • Nausea Fuel:
    • Pete eating that apple-heart and then vomiting up blood and a snake in the "Just One Yesterday" video.
    • In the "Save Rock and Roll" video, a fan gets disemboweled right before their very eyes by Xibalba.
  • Narm Charm:
    • While many found the "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" music video to be very unnerving, keep in mind, that's 2Chainz in the music video, burning most of Fall Out Boy's backlog for no apparent reason.
    • The guest stars seem to cause a lot of it: the death of Big Sean in "The Mighty Fall" is less scary considering he raps his way through his verse which doesn't fit the mood of the scene (and this is right after he snaps a kid's NECK.
  • Questionable Casting:
    • Patrick, what are you doing on Law & Order and House?
    • Not to mention Pete on CSI: NY and Californication! And One Tree Hill.
    • People have plenty to say about Pete's appearances on TV (especially One Tree Hill) for one huge reason. People also have plenty of things to say about Patrick's appearances on TV for a completely different reason.
    • On Fall Out Boy's last headlining tour, Believers Never Die Part Deux, 50 Cent was an opening act for three shows. While some people weren't pleased, most were just very confused as to why a major rapper would be willing to open for Fall Out Boy on a lineup that also featured All Time Low, Cobra Starship, Hey Monday, and Metro Station (though some people were very pleased he was replacing Metro Station on the dates he was scheduled for).
    • Hollywood Holt's brief run opening for the band on the first two and last three dates of the Save Rock and Roll small venue tour was also confusing, but caused way more anger than 50 Cent ever did, to the point where he left the tour before the second to last show. Mind you, having a song about twerking and responding to nearly every negative tweet about him with even more negativity to the point of threateningly inviting those who tweeted their displeasure with him during the show to meet him at the merch table didn't exactly change minds about him.
    • Patrick, what are you doing on a Weekend Nachos song doing hardcore screaming? Trohman also guested on "Hometown Hero" on that same album; ironically, that song was an extremely venomous attack on Wentz, calling him a sold-out, washed-up has-been who "peaked at 23 years old"...as in around the time Take This to Your Grave came out. Yikes. To make the guest spots on that album even more strange, the entire album is fairly indicative of the trends that cropped up in Chicago hardcore that lead Pete, Patrick, Andy, and Joe to bail from that scene and start Fall Out Boy in the first place. However, it is known that Fall Out Boy as a whole still keeps in touch with many of their old hardcore friendsnote  "Jock Powerviolence" (the song that Stump appears on) is a more general attack on people who accused Weekend Nachos of being a bandwagon act despite the fact that power violence was never a commercially viable genre, to begin with. Stump's passage reads like it could have just as easily been aimed at the people who called Fall Out Boy sellouts and "industry whores"note .
    • Even with previous rap precedent, Fall Out Boy touring with Wiz Khalifa and Hoodie Allen for the Boys of Zummer tour has got this reaction. While there are reasonable complaints about why Fall Out Boy is touring with someone with rather blatant misogynistic lyrics when they've traditionally avoided that in their music and their touring partners, others have been sadly and unexpectedly racist.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Those who don't like Pete probably still have their reasons for keeping him in the heap, but those who think he's an irritating attention whore don't have that much ground to stand on these days. His status as The Face of the band has been de-emphasized for the whole band taking part in promotion and interviews, and parenting has given him perspective and a grounded attitude. It also helps that he's no longer a darling for celebrity tabloid rags and that, while Fall Out Boy is still popular, they're no longer as all over the place as they were in the 2000s. As for his bass playing, the jury is still out on that one.
    • The band itself counts, as when they first came into the limelight, songs like "Dance, Dance" had many in the music community writing them off as little more than a pop boy band doomed to quickly fade. Cue many eating their words in utter shock to find out songs like "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light 'Em Up)" and other post-hiatus hits were by the same band.
    • Some people who didn't like Fall Out Boy's Ghostbusters (2016) song felt this way when they found out that "Who's the (Bat) Man" in The LEGO Batman Movie wasn't sung by Will Arnet as Batman...but as Patrick singing in the style of Will Arnet's Batman voice.
  • Retroactive Recognition: A fresh-faced Kim Kardashian is the Love Interest in "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs," back when she was still just another controversial socialite rather than the ubiquitous name that she is today.
  • Sampled Up: For "Fourth of July", Fall Out Boy got permission from Son Lux to sample their song "Lost it to Trying". "Fourth of July" is more popular, to the point where some people don't realize "Lost it to Trying" came first.
  • Signature Song: "Sugar, We're Going Down", "Dance, Dance", or "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" are all recognized as the hits that launched the band to stardom in the 2000s. Their post-hiatus output is probably defined by "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark", "Centuries", and "Uma Thurman", for better or for worse.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
    • "Novocaine" from AB/AP and "The Phoenix" from Save Rock and Roll have the exact same electronic-influenced instrumentations. Gets better with this remix of them where they blend so perfectly into each other. You'd probably confuse the two if you weren't already familiar with them.
    • "I Don't Care" from Folie a Deux is strongly reminiscent of "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode.
    • "The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes" from Take This To Your Grave has a near identical chorus to Taking Back Sunday's "Cute Without The E (Cut From The Team)" which came out a year prior.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Ever since Infinity on High, or arguably From Under The Cork Tree, Fall Out Boy has unabashedly explored pop avenues that other rock bands wouldn't even touch, to the point where nowadays Fall Out Boy has separate single releases for pop and rock radio. Arguably, this is part of why they've continued to last as long as they have, but each album cycle is always going to evoke this trope due to fans and casual listeners usually having a stricter definition of what rock means...even if Fall Out Boy has even to this day been considered a pop punk/pop rock band.
    • For American Beauty/American Psycho: The first single released off of the album, "Centuries", is pop-heavy way off the gate with a heavy Suzanne Vega sample, so naturally it's got a lot of vicious comments on the video. The title track also got complaints on its release because even though it's ostensibly a rock song that's gotten favorable comparisons to 70s stuff, there's also a constant EDM undercurrent. This is due to it being a collab with SebastiAn.
    • Within mere hours of the video release for "Immortals", it's been barraged with comments about being too cutesy and poppy, with people attributing it to being made for a Disney movie, Big Hero 6. However, considering that movie has heavy themes of coping with loss and the impact people still have on other's lives after their deaths, the song becomes a lot less "cutesy" when you put the lyrics in the context of Big Hero 6's narrative.
    • In examples of the trope that don't involve complaints about the poppier parts of FOB's back-catalog: the trope was evoked for the release of the first song off of Infinity on High, "Carpal Tunnel of Love", which was arguably the heaviest song on the album, along with the entirety of PAX AM DAYS, a punk rock EP. A lot of these complaints weren't coming from fans that preferred the pop end of things either, though they do sometimes come from that end.
    • While most fans like their cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", many were disappointed to see that the events listed weren't in chronological order like the original.
  • Vindicated by History: Folie a Deux, which was adored by critics and massively divisive upon its release, has rapidly become one of their more popular and well-loved albums since the end of the hiatus. Doesn't hurt that Save Rock And Roll, which was almost universally adored by the fandom, sounds rather similar. Fans also appreciate Patrick's vocal delivery on top of Pete's lyrics, including his social commentary and self-referential lines about his life following off of themes touched on in Infinity On High. Unfortunately, there are still some fans that don't like it, but they've had broken bases with every one of their albums, so it's nothing new. Even more unfortunately for the fans that like Folie, the band is still rather reluctant to embrace it due to the backlash it got in its first release. In their post-hiatus tours, "I Don't Care" is the only song from the album guaranteed to be played, with "America's Suitehearts" and "Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes" joining it very rarely.
    • In 2023, however, "Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes" and "Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet" have become touring staples for So Much (for) Tourdust, and during the 8-ball segments of the show, when there are multiple 8-balls, "27" was very likely to be replayed. Many fans see this as the band finally embracing the album just as much as they are.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Infinity on High has 'You're Crashing, But You're No Wave,' which is a song about the rigged court case against African American civil rights activist, Fred Hampton Jr. Some people have also interpreted the lyrics as taking imagery from To Kill A Mocking Bird.
    • Folie à Deux also has some songs that deal with both political and social issues, as well as taking on social commentary narratives, though most of the lyrics that contain political overtones were purposefully left vague so people could interpret them differently from others as to not drive some away from the album overall.
  • Win Back the Crowd: Fans that were less than impressed by MANIA and other post-hiatus perked up a bit for the Lake Effect Kid EP. They rerecorded an old 2008 demo of the same name for it and worked with Sean O'Keefe for the first time since their first album 15 years prior! The song itself remains virtually the exact same as the original demo, just in better quality and without Clinton Sparks yelling, "GET FAMILIAR" over it.note  The EP also features "City In A Garden", another song more evocative of earlier material that's one big love letter to their hometown of Chicago. This is very fitting as the EP release was done close to them doing their biggest headlining show to date at Wrigley Field with a very nostalgic intro. They also opened the MANIA Experience, interactive art exhibit based on MANIA with various installations, including one where fans could leave messages for the band. Band members would make surprise appearances "under glass" in the middle of the room, including Andy and Pete. They took this even further with their first post-MANIA album, So Much (For) Stardust, which had a very positive reception and was often hailed as a return to the band's pre-hiatus greatness. It even became their best-reviewed album on Metacritic.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?:
    • While Fall Out Boy usually refrains from outright profanity and vulgarity, they don't shy away from referencing sex in their music. That didn't stop Kidz Bop for wanting to put "Dance, Dance" on Kidz Bop 10. The band and their manager weren't pleased, especially since Kidz Bop technically didn't need their permission to use it. Kidz Bop eventually dumped the track from the list.
    • As is the case for many other mainstream musical acts, children are enough of a Periphery Demographic for Fall Out Boy to where they're tied with the Backstreet Boys and the Black Eyed Peas for six Kids Choice Awards nominations.

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