YMMV / The Colbert Report

• 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.
• Awesome Ego: Sir Rev. Dr. Stephen T. Mos Def Colbert D.F.A., Heavyweight Champion of the World himself.
• Awesome Music:
  • "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...
  • His duet with Julie Andrews on "Accentuate the Positive".
  • His duet with Dolly Parton on "Love is Like a Butterfly", which is also Sweet Dreams Fuel of the first order.
  • The performance of "We'll Meet Again" in the final episode.
• 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 Minotaur to the death, and ended with him lying in the company of beautiful women who fed him grapes and fanned him.
  • The next episode lampshaded it, when Stephen went on a Mushroom Samba and commented that "Suddenly, fighting that minotaur last night makes perfect sense."
• Crosses the Line Twice: Common. For example, Stephen accidentally killing Grimmy in the final episode.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • 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.
  • Hans Beinholtz, the (fake) German ambassador to the UN, gets a lot of love for his nihilistic commentary.
• Genius Bonus: The fireplace in the "interview room" is inscribed with the latin phrase "VIDERI 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, the fact that it's the exact reversal of the state motto of North Carolina ("Esse Quam Videri", "to be rather than to seem"), means he's rallying support from his home state (South Carolina) by mocking the motto of the Carolina he's not from. Alternatively, it's a reference to the fact that his fireplace holds a television screen displaying a video of a fire, instead of an actual one.
• Growing the Beard: In early episodes, Colbert is clearly a bit nervous and sometimes stumbles over his words. His early interviews are also a little awkward, with Colbert too clearly trying to set up certain jokes he's got prepared. After a few dozen shows, Colbert settles into the role and becomes more comfortable interviewing guests.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • 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.
  • In this segment, Stephen and Billy Crystal had this exchange about Pete Seeger and his nomination in the 2014 Grammy Awards in the same category for which they were nominated. Seeger died on January 27, 2014, one day after the Grammy Awards.
    Colbert: But what I really meant was that I just hope that Pete Seeger doesn't win.
    Billy Crystal: What an asshole.
    Colbert: Yeah, he is. And besides, he already won the Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1993.
    Billy Crystal: Yes, and he keeps on living! It's so selfish!
  • Many of Stephen's gags from 2009, the first year of Barack Obama's administration, about how Republicans can refuse to work with Obama became a lot less amusing afterwards, since his presidency was fraught with severe tension between him and Republicans.
  • In a 2012 episode, Stephen took a dressage lesson from Olympic champion and trainer, Michael Barisone. Seven years later, Barisone shot a former student and her boyfriend (he was ultimately tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity.)
• 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. His 2009 predictions, linked here, also all turned out to be correct (on a technicality, you could say he wasn't right about Best Actor since he changed his original answer, which was - correctly - Sean Penn for Milk, which "proud Conservative" Colbert wasn't having).
  • The show was conceived as a parody of Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor (especially noticeable when you know the program was originally called The O'Reilly Report) 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 with Jon Stewart 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 was on for six years.
  • In 2008, Colbert interviewed Mark Sanford, then-Governor of South Carolina, and declared him the most boring governor in America. The next year, Sanford went "hiking the Appalachian Trail", i.e. he went down to Argentina to meet his mistress.
  • Supporters of the #CancelColbert movement got their wish a few weeks later when it was announced that The Colbert Report would wrap up at the end of the year... because Stephen Colbert would be replacing David Letterman as host of The Late Show, having effectively been promoted to a position where he could potentially reach an even bigger audience. The irony was not lost on many.
  • In 2011 he and Jimmy Fallon did a bit where they traded Volleying Insults over each other's Ben & Jerry's Flavors, in which Colbert told Fallon, "Your ice cream is actually pretty good..., for 12:30. It's just not ready for the 11:30 timeslot yet," to which Fallon answered, "Thanks, Steve. And your ice cream is OK too...as a palate cleanser for Tosh.0." In 2014 Fallon took over The Tonight Show, and in 2015 Colbert took over The Late Show, meaning they both now have 11:30 network talk shows.
  • In 2011, when talking about the new Spider-Man being half-black, half-Hispanic Miles Morales, he flashed several other possibilities for diversified characters, including Chinese Hulk. Come 2015, we have a Hulk of Korean descent: Amadeus Cho, the Totally Awesome Hulk.
  • On April 21, 2014, following the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a sharp-eyed fan noticed the words "HAIL HYDRA" in the opening credits, the joke being that the film's plot revolves around HYDRA's infiltration of the US government and that Colbert, a Marvel fan, was bequeathed the "deceased" Captain's shield. This predates the meme from Captain America: Steve Rogers, which began in May 2016.
• LGBT Fanbase: So much so that he once received Gay.com's "Man of the Year" award (as well as several other awards from LGBT groups). It helps that one of Colbert's past roles was Chuck Noblet, an instance of a sympathetic gay man in a time when such characters were still very rare.
• Memetic Badass: Stephen Colbert isn't afraid of the truth. The truth is afraid of Stephen Colbert... and rightfully so.
• Memetic Mutation: Many of the show's moments make for popular gif fodder. Some notable ones include one of Colbert reacting in an exaggeratedly horrified manner, as well as a moment of Bryan Cranston gesturing to himself in the "Get Lucky" music video as a "who, me?" reaction image.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Sadly, there exist people who somehow take Colbert at face value.
  • There are many neocons or extreme liberals 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 or consider it an attempt at a Parody Retcon.
  • Much like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, many people watch The Colbert Report as their primary or only news source.
• More Popular Spin Off: Of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which, while beloved in its own right, doesn't quite match the heights of popularity achieved by "Colbert Nation".
• 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.
• Retroactive Recognition: The Nightly Show writer and contributor Jordan Carlos was Stephen's trope-naming Token Black Friend.
• 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: Very rarely, Colbert debates people who are truly bad at backing up their position, causing Colbert's humorously strawman arguments to win the day in spite of Colbert setting himself up to lose.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Stephen Colbert, Dolly Parton, and "Love is Like a Butterfly". Good luck to any nightmares trying to get past that memory.
  Love is like a butterfly, as soft and gentle as a sigh...
• Tough Act to Follow: The Colbert Report has not been followed by a strong successor in its old time slot. The show was originally replaced with The Nightly Show, but it lasted only 19 months. It was followed by The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, which aimed to do the same thing to Alex Jones as The Colbert Report did to Bill O'Reilly, but it was canceled after 10 months. Since then, The Office (US) and South Park reruns have filled the time slot.
• 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.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Thanks to WETA and his long collaboration with the The Lord of the Rings franchise, Colbert got to interview Smaug, with special effects on par with the movie itself.

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