Shout Out / The Nostalgia Critic

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• According to Rob Walker, the ominous shot of the balloon in the review of It (1990) is meant as a Homage to the "Mr. Flibbles" shot from Red Dwarf. Additionally, when the Critic is getting increasingly drunk, he does the Vitameatavegamin routine from the famous I Love Lucy episode "Lucy Does a TV Commercial".
• The entire We're Back! review is an Homage to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• In the review of The Room, at the end:
  Nostalgia Critic: Oh my God, I've traveled back and forth so much that it must have altered the present! What if the machines have taken over? What if humans and apes have switched places? What if all cops are judge, jury and executioner? What if Chris Tucker's a sci-fi radio announcer in a dress?
  • Also, after the point in the movie where Johnny kills himself and Lisa asks if he's dead, he quotes Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketch to answer the question.
• In the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers review, the Critic's asks Adam about "Going into anime", which is quite true in that Johnny Yong Bosch (Adam's actor) went on to become one of the most well-known anime voice actors today.
• In his Red Sonja review, the Critic references Brigitte Nielson's relationship with Flavor Flav a few times... Even though she ended up marrying someone else.
• Whenever actor Tim Curry is featured in any show/movie that the Nostalgia Critic reviews, it's often accompanied by either a picture/video of Dr. Frank N Furter and/or the song Sweet Transvestite playing.
• The end of the the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory edition of "Old vs. New" is a spot-on recreation of the ending to "Duck Amuck". Notably, the Critic is largely inspired by Daffy Duck (as made clear in his Animaniacs interview).
• In the Top 11 F* ck Ups video, the Critic acknowledges that he repeatedly called the forklift in Barb Wire a bulldozer, and says that because of it he missed out on the obvious reference.
• In his review of A Troll in Central Park, the Critic shows a house imploding after the movie is shown to its wall. The father responds with "should've rented Iron Giant".
• In his review of Mr. Nanny, he mentions that Precious was a good movie.
• In his review of It, while drunk, he quotes some of Lucille Ball's lines from I Love Lucy when she got intoxicated from drinking vitamin tonic.
  • In the It (2017) review, the speech given to Mike when he joins the Loser's Club is the same one from Ghostbusters (1984)
• The title card for his review of The Pebble and the Penguin shows Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private carrying off Hubie.
• He ends his 10-Minute Retirement by singing Poor Jack of all things! And the lyrics are almost entirely preserved, save for necessary changes. ZERO even shows up to give the Critic a Santa Claus hat!
  • From the same episode, the title card has the art style of the Red Bull commercials (with wings to boot).
  • When he's angsting at the end of the My Pet Monster review, the "Lonely Man" theme to The Incredible Hulk (1977) plays.
• In "You're A Dirty Rotten Bastard", Angry Joe blows up Canada while he was President, kind of like when Ren blew up Australia.
• In his review of Ernest Scared Stupid, he made a reference to Trogdor.
• In his review of Inspector Gadget (1999), when making a gag about what the Gadgetmobile would sound like if voiced by Chris Tucker, the Gadgetmobile got pissed about Gadget touching his radio.
• A Shout-Out to Star Trek: Enterprise in the review of Ferngully: When Crysta and Zak put their hands together and a sphere of light forms around said hands, the Nostalgia Critic and Chick do the same—and then the Chick says "Now you're pregnant."
• His Catchphrase, "Why top eleven? Because I like to go one step beyond," is a reference to a similar catch phrase on the now forgotten TV show One Step Beyond.
• From his review of Captain N: The Game Master:
  Nostalgia Critic: (smiling) Oh yes! I remember that magic element that was mean to bring back the evil that was almost destroyed... in fact, I was there. (background music starts to play; serious expression) I was there when the strength of men fell.
  (flashback starts, cut to Mount Doom)
  Nostalgia Critic: Throw it into the fire!
  (Mario stares quietly with the element in his hands, thinking)
  Nostalgia Critic: (desperate) Destroy it!
  Mario: (calmly) A-no. Suck my big fat meatballs! (Mario runs away)
  Nostalgia Critic: Mario... MARIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
  Nostalgia Critic: (narrating; flashback ends) It should have ended that day, but there were no strength left in the world of plumbers. (back to normal) Anyway...
• An obscure gem in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog review:
  Nostalgia Critic: ...who seems to live in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wrong.
• From his review of "Milk Money", after pointing out everything that's wrong with the scene of the prostitute in the classroom, he then screams "HALLELUJAH! ...HOLY SHIT! Where's the Tylenol?"
• The title card for the "Care Bears in Wonderland" review has the Critic in a bloodstained blue dress and cutting off a Care Bear's head with a knife.
• In His "Avengers", review, he makes a nod to Andy Panda and Winnie the Pooh.
• Double one in the Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue review. Critic dubs the puff of smoke with George C. Scott's voice due to them sharing an actor, followed by a clip from A Garfield Christmas of Garfield saying "Bizarre".
• In his review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, during the muddy fight scene between Sonja and Mileena, his brother, Bhargav, and another guy pop in on-screen and loudly ogle the two chicks.
• His Running Gag "You know--for kids! is from The Hudsucker Proxy.
• In his review of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, when Sulu says not to call him "tiny", NC quips that instead of saying "tiny" we should say "Takei". This is a shout-out to George Takei's campaign against Tennessee's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill.
• In his review of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, he believes that the Cowardly Lion has been cast in the role of God due to similar appearances.
  "I'm the messiah, I'm the messiah, hallelujah!"
• In the Alone in the Dark (2005) review,
  • Linkara at one point says "I need scissors 61!".
  • They used a photoshopped picture of one of The Three Stooges openings. They also ended the review with appropriate music and slapstick antics.
  • The trio throw a Mortal Kombat joke after a guy falls into a spiky pit. Said guy is played by Ho Sung Pak, who did the motion capture for Liu Kang in the original Mortal Kombat games.
  • Spoony wears a Castleton T-Shirt and claims to be "from the future".
• In the Alien: Resurrection review, when Ripley is being resurrected after two hundred years, the Critic muses about how may rap battles could come from such a concept.
• During the Mr. Magoo review, he labels one ambiguously ethnic character "the Kwisatz Haderach of stereotypes, offending all at once".
• The Scooby-Doo review had many parallels to the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation: there is a convergence of past, present, and future which threatens all of humanity; Roger says the line "All good things must come to an end" just as Q did; and it ends with the Critic joining a poker game and realizing he should have done so long ago.
• In the Pearl Harbor review, Michael Bay takes all the copies of his film in a bag and drags it up a flight of stairs with great difficulty, reminiscent of the famous scene in The Mission when Rodrigo Mendoza trudges through the jungle and then climbs up a waterfall while dragging a net containing his armor and weapons as penance for killing his brother.
• In his review of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, he uses a Jeff Goldblum quote from the first Jurassic Park to describe how the sequel was made:
  Nostalgia Critic: And you know what, Mr. Spielberg? Before you even knew what you had, you packed it, you packaged it, you slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now [bangs table] you're selling it, [bangs table] you're selling it!
• During the editorial "Why is Loki So Hot?" he pulls up this very wiki's The Woobie trope page in-universe clearly trying to hide the fact that he doesn't know what the term means, and is dismayed to see that he's on there himself.
• During his A.I. review, he refers to David's potential death as being sent to silicon heaven.
• If you look closely in the intro for the Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie review, you could see Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop.
• In the review of Devil, Santa Christ defends his screenplay by claiming that Cthulhu is all the rage these days. Guess who just wrote a book concerning said character?
• For The Christmas Tree, the Critic recites a version of Criswell's opening narration for Plan 9 from Outer Space.
• In his Face/Off review, the gummi bear that shoots Malcolm is wielding a M739 LMG.
• Ghost Dad has the Theme From Sorcerer playing, when Cosby gets into the Satanist's cab.
• The Foodfight! review begins with a Flash Forward to the Critic's Anger Montage highly reminiscent of that of pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, ending in the Critic smashing some of the products advertised in the film with a frying pan and curling up in the floor sobbing bitterly.
• The Uwe Boll reviews (Alone in the Dark (2005) and Bloodrayne) make absolutely no attempts to disguise the fact that Spoony, Linkara, and the Critic, when working together, are essentially The Three Stooges.
• During the The Monster Squad review, the "Ancient Book of Ancientness" that the Critic uses to fight Reality is Journal #3.
  • The Token Troop's "adorable pet mascot" is an Appa plushie.
• The intro for "Matrix Month" shows, in addition to words and random Japanese letters, small sprites of Pac-Man, a ghost, and the Triforce.
• In his review of The Matrix Revolutions, he notes that the leader of the machines takes a form similar to The Time Baby.
• In his Kickassia review, he makes fun of the scene where Film Brain hurriedly warns the Critic (or "Cricket", according to the Critic reviewing the movie) about the conspiracy to kill him, by doing an impression of the Micro Machine Man from the Micro Machine commericals, Motor Mouth and all:
  Critic: This is the Micro Machine Man here, and I'm going to tell you about this evil plan right here. I'm going to tell you about how all these people over here are trying to take you, and they're trying to sabotage you, and are going to try and take you down. You better buy it, 'cause remember, if it's not a Micro Machine, it's not the real thing.
• When Aunts Spiker and Sponge attack a car that James is standing on in James and the Giant Peach, the Critic says "Heeeere's Peachy!"
• The clipless reviews of movies like Jurassic World, Pixels and The Force Awakens are done in the style of Home Movies.
• During his Fantastic Four (2005) review, the NC got the ability to create explosions at will. His name "Sparky Sparky Boom Man" is a direct reference to Combustion Man from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
• In his review for Cats & Dogs, NC gets a penalty flag for making a too easy joke about Alec Baldwin. The show's announced like it's a football game, with one of the announcers saying "Right you are, Ken."
• In Battle of Commercials, some of Kid!Malcolm's black magic incantations include "Wingardium leviosa" and "Asante sana, squash banana."
• When Malcom gets punched in the face in the Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel review, the slowdown effect sounds remarkably similar to Killing Floor's "Zed Time" slowdown effect.
• The Critic's freak-out at Amanda Waller in the Suicide Squad (2016) review turns into a reference to Daniel Day-Lewis' famous "The Reason You Suck" Speech from There Will Be Blood, with a good Lampshade Hanging at the end:
  Critic: I-drink-your-milkshake! SLUUURRRRRP! I DRINK IT UP!
• The Season 10 intro is based off that for The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest.
• Wonder Woman confronting Aires with the God Killer in the Wonder Woman (2017) review is lifted straight from Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century:
  Wonder Woman: And brother, when it disintegrates, it disintegrates! (sword disintegrates) Well, what do you know. It disintegrated.
• Another Looney Tunes shout-out: in the Norm of the North review, the Critic's freak-out over not knowing where Bill is is taken straight from Chuck Jones' The Aristo-Cat, from the camera angles to the backgrounds.
  • He also introduces "Talent Replacer Bot 9000" to explain how it writes films. It notes that it uses a particular process for Rob Schneider films and directly references South Park's parody trailer for Rob Schneider films.
• Three times a charm! In his crossover review of The Sorcerer's Apprentice with Some Jerk with a Camera, Critic!Nic Cage and Walter!Jay Baruchel respond to meeting Leopold Stokowski with, of course: "Leopold!" "L-L-L-Leopold!"
• His review of Bridge to Terabithia has a number of Return of the Jedi jokes.
• He points out that the villain's name in Totally Spies!: The Movie is Wakko's catchphrase, "Faboo".

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