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• Anvilicious: Colbert deconstructs conservative "artist" Jon McNaughton's masterpieces here
  Colbert: It's like Where's Waldo?, but what you're looking for is the slightest hint of subtlety.
• Award Snub: Stephen is fond of complaining about perceived snubs for awards, including some that his show doesn't even qualify for.
• Awesome Ego: Sir Rev. Dr. Colbert himself.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment: On April 27th, 2010, Colbert executed the "Greatest Pun of All Time" (3:30) after talking about sheep on meth getting tasered who could have their own TV show called "Breaking Baaaaa". This led to a balloon drop, giant muscular men carrying him over to an Egyptian-esque tent, fighting a man with a giant bull for a head to the death, and ended with him lying in the company of beautiful women who fed him grapes and fanned him. It was fucking awesome and must be seen to be believed.
• Cargo Ship: Stephen/Sweetness (his gun). And it's canon!
• Crazy Awesome: He gets lifted up into the air with Andúril shouting that he'll have Lou Dobbs' audience while leaves are blown onto the set and cheesy lightning effects surround his body.
  • This is a Running Gag for whenever a pundit's show gets cancelled. Done again when Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show was cancelled. It failed that time; Stephen's body "rejected the pomposity."
• Critical Research Failure: Played for laughs.
  • A particularly egregious case with Sarah Palin and "Paul Revere's Fomus Ride" Fans of American History, don't click that link.
• Crowning Music of Awesome:
  • "You are the best! Keep fighting and trying! To pass the test! So try to keep fighting! Fight your best fight, and try to fight best! Try your best, try to fight through the test!"
  • I'm right behind you now, Charlene
• Drinking Game: Inverted. The "official" Colbert Report drinking game is to take a drink every time Stephen criticizes America. "That's right; he doesn't. Stay sober and vigilant!"
• Dude, Not Funny!: This was the room's reaction to his act at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner. The general public felt otherwise.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Stephen's lawyer and father of Harry Potter, Trevor Potter, who, from the moment of establishing Stephen's PAC (and later, SuperPAC) may just be the first Real Life lawyer to have fans.
• Fan Community Nicknames: The Colbert Nation, "And who are the Heroes? The people who watch this show."
• Fan Yay: So much so that he once recieved Gay.com's "Man of the Year" award.
• Foe Yay: Jon Stewart. Colbert regularly criticizes Stewart at any chance he gets and Stewart in turn acts a lot like Colbert's enemy on the Report, despite the fact that the two are best friends in real life.
  • Don't forget Rain. Colbert thinks he's adorable.
• Fridge Brilliance: In one episode, Stephen compares Barack Obama to the Troll from The Three Billy Goats Gruff. What is the most famous trait of DnD trolls?
  • The recurring 434-part series "Better Know A District" is innovative because it gives U.S. representatives 15 minutes of fame that would otherwise never receive it.
• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: Stephen opened his 10/24/12 episode with jokes about people stocking up canned meat and boarding up their windows in anticipation of Donald Trump's "big revelation" about Obama. After the episode was filmed, storm-trackers confirmed that Hurricane Sandy would make landfall and merge with other weather patterns, forcing most of the Eastern U.S. to batten down the hatches and really stock up on non-perishables.
  • The December 11, 2012 episode opened with Stephen saying "It is now legal to carry a concealed weapon in all 50 states. So, if you are in one of them, be careful.". Three days later, a mass shooting occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, in which 20 children and 6 adults were killed, making it the second deadliest mass shooting in a school setting, and is now viewed as the tipping point in the debate on gun rights.
• Genius Bonus: The fireplace in the "interview room" is inscribed with the latin phrase "VERDI QUAM ESSE". This means "To seem rather than to be". This is both a Take That against politicians and the media (and if you're cynical enough, any successful person in society) for pretending to be whatever will garner public support; and also, as a reversal of the state motto of North Carolina, is rallying support from his home state (South Carolina) by mocking the motto of the Carolina he's not from.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Colbert used absurd word association chains to predict the 2005 Oscars. For Best Picture, he made a chain that clearly led to Brokeback Mountain, but suddenly predicted Crash instead. All of his predictions were right.
  • The show was conceived as a parody of The O'Reilly Factor, which made it ironic when O'Reilly introduced a new segment in 2007 called Pinheads and Patriots (which also became the title of one of his books). The segment consists of O'Reilly expressing his approval/disapproval of various people/things, much like the Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger segment Colbert has been doing since his show debuted in 2005.
  • One thing that shows what a sharp satire the Report is is the fact that even though it was meant to be an O'Reilly spoof, it also in large part predicted the rise of Glenn Beck, whose first TV show (on HLN) debuted three months after the Report. Beck rose to greater prominence with his Fox News show three years later, and the similarities between him and Stephen didn't escape Stephen's notice.
  • The night of the show's first ever episode (October 17, 2005), The Daily Show did a pre-show toss in which Jon Stewart asked Stephen if he was ready. Stephen answered, "Very ready. Feel like I've been doing this show for years. Six years, in fact. I feel like the first two years were pretty good, started out strong. Then I hit a bit of a lull, had some substance abuse issues, came back, and for the last four years - strong as an ox."
    After about two years (in August 2007, to be exact) Stephen hurt his wrist and (in character) got addicted to painkillers. As of October 17, 2011, the show has been on for six years.
  • In 2008, Colbert interviewed Mark Sanford and declared him the most boring governor in America. The next year, Sanford went "hiking the Appalachian Trail" on National Nude Hiking Day.^note Actually, he went down to Argentina to meet his mistress.
• Ho Yay:
  • Upon NOT having his show called out for intolerance by GLAAD's television report, he concluded that one of his staff members had to be gay... and by process of elimination he determined that it was apparently himself. Surprisingly, he didn't put up much of a fight to this revelation...
  • And then in a later episode that week, he delved into a quite detailed fantasy about how to eliminate gay marriage- encouraging his straight male viewers to go to gay bars and become friends with gay men, living in a cottage in California and opening up a dog grooming parlor, and ending up with him getting engaged to an apparently Jewish man named Jonathan, before then leaving him at the altar with the words "NO WAY, I'M NOT GAY!" He then proceeded to cry about it.
  • Not to mention the muscular shirtless cameraman hired from RentBoy.com. He didn't say you could stop dancing!
  • The March Fourth, 2011 episode had an appearance by Jimmy Fallon as a promotion for his and Stephen's flavours of ice cream, Late Night Snack and Americone Dream. After they sang a song about friendship based on ice cream metaphors, it got...unsubtle.
    • It's not as if that's a bad thing.
    • They're both pretty torn up about their 6-month best friendship ending... enough to break out into a duet.
  • There is a lot of slash material pairing him with Jon Stewart, for obvious reasons.
• Magnificent Bastard: Stephen is this comedy-wise (one-liners, quick comebacks), leading to some... interesting Wild Mass Guessing.
• Marty Stu: Tek Jansen, hero of Colbert's Space Opera novel, which is presented on the show in the form of animated shorts, and has inspired a Spin-Off Graphic Novel.
• Memetic Badass: Stephen Colbert isn't afraid of the truth. The truth is afraid of Stephen Colbert... and rightfully so.
• Memetic Sex God: He recieved an award for 5 Years of Sexcellence from his many Fan Girls.
• Misaimed Fandom: Sadly, there exist people who somehow take Colbert at face value.
  • There are many neocons who take everything Colbert says in-character at face value. And even after they're told that he's just Alter Ego Acting, they refuse to believe it.
  • Much like The Daily Show, many people watch The Colbert Report as their primary or only news source.
• Moral Event Horizon: Parodied. In order to be named Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person In The World" Colbert promises to slap a baby. With a puppy. The actual slapping is conspicuously covered up by a "Technical Difficulties" screen...
• Narm: Quite intentional.
• Nightmare Fuel: Invoked by Colbert when the London 2012 Olympics mascots were revealed.
  Colbert: Truly they embody the Olympic dream. Because technically, a nightmare is a type of dream.
• Painful Rhyme
  Colbert: And this next ad reaches out the Latina vagina. ( 'Vagina' rhymes with 'latina.' )
• Squick: Bringing up the controversy of Summer's Eve feminine wash commercials: "What you are about to see...you cannot un-see."
  • A callback was done in August 2011 when Jeff Bridges did a fake commercial for the product.
• Strawman Has a Point: Often done intentionally. And quite often (accidentally) by Colbert himself. Because Colbert is a professional comedian with his own talkshow, and quite a few of the guests he brings on are authors, or otherwise un-charismatic and poorly trained to defend their point from critics, Colbert comes out on top of quite a few arguments with people who are supposed to strike back at him.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: When Colbert realizes Jesus was a Liberal Democrat (fittingly on an episode before his Christmas Break)
  Colbert: If we are going to be a Christian nation, that doesn't help the poor, we have two choices. We can either pretend Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we can admit that Jesus told us to serve the poor, without condition, and then admit, that we just don't wanna do it.
  • He also makes incredibly heavy-handed arguments against Objectivism and the idea that you can owe nobody anything, but it's generally all in the theme of unity and helping each other.
• Tear Jerker: Stephen's email to Steve Jobs is a rare moment of somberness.
• True Art: When Steve Martin, an art collector himself, visited to promote his newest novel about the art world, Colbert devoted the whole episode to art. Later, Colbert wanted Steve to buy the recursive portrait that hangs over the fake fireplace and enlisted the help of Frank Stella, who declared the picture "Art", Shepard "Obey Giant" Fairey who embellished the painting with stencils, and Andres "Piss Christ" Serrano who further enhanced it (with a marker, get your minds out of the gutter). Steve eventually bought the arted-up "painting" for $20, and Colbert put a hi-res original online so other artists can enhance it; the first person to do so was William Wegman, who (naturally) added one of his dogs.