The Nostalgia Critic / Tropes T to Z

---

We remember the main page so you don't have to!

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to G | Tropes H to N | Tropes O to S | Tropes T To Z

---

T

• Take a Third Option: In "Old vs New: Cinderella", they chose Ever After when the two films had a tie. Everyone also gives a reason for it winning that fits their characters, like Devil Boner loves it because he hates magic and there's a woman who fights, Benny likes it because there's enough changes but still stays true to the heart of the story, Critic enjoys because Cinderella is strong but interesting and relatable as an abuse survivor, and Hyper's happy for a complicated evil villain as well as romance and dress porn.
• Take Over the World: Mocked with the M. Bison "OF COURSE!", of course.
• Take That!: Has his own page.
• Take That, Audience!: Occasionally, but more so since the revival.
  • In "Top 11 Fuck Ups", we are introduced to Douchey McNitpick, who represents the more hostile side of the people that point out the Nostalgia Critic's mistakes, and he proceeds to bitch and moan about every little screw-up he finds in the Critic's videos. At the end, the Nostalgia Critic tells his viewers to point out his mistakes politely, and not be belligerent like McNitpick, right before he gets fed up with his whining, warps over to his house, and tears Douchey a new one.
    • In the "Next Top 11 Fuck Ups", Douchey becomes much more of a take that. He doesn't complain quite as much, but he's established as just living in a world of nothing but World of Warcraft, pornography, and criticizing the Nostalgia Critic. He also lives with his mother...and apparently masturbates to the green M&M.
  • In his review of Digimon: The Movie, the Critic and his guest JesuOtaku say that nobody would want to look at a screen for almost 30 minutes, before uncomfortably realising they may have insulted their viewers, and awkwardly move on to the next joke.
  • In one of the post-TBF retrospectives on the DVD, Rob called out the people who didn't believe that Doug improvised the Tom and Jerry/Hamlet speech and that Rob must have done it for him.
  • In "The Review Must Go On" commentary, word was that Donnie = Critic was an attack on the fans who demanded Critic's return. And as a bonus, the only time Doug is pissed instead of sad, scared or beaten is when he's complaining about said demands.
  • Forty seconds into the reboot and he called everyone "uniquely lazy" for obviously not knowing who St. Valentine was.
  • Evilina sparing the Critic from the death Critic begs for in the Son of the Mask review, saying it was tried but didn't go over too well the first time.
  • In his review of The King and I, the Critic mocks commenters who complain about the color of his new background wall.
  • In "The Looney Tunes Show: Good Or Bad", he impersonates a typical person reacting to change (something TGWTG tried their best to do by giving Critic a good send-off and having more original shows) by pretending to be a baby on the floor and wailing that he hates it.
  • The Cat in the Hat review begins with the Critic attacking the overzealous brony fans, who apparently went crazy in the Son of the Mask review thanks to one show reference.
    "We're not turning this video into another brony message board!"
    • He also says that people don't know what's best for themselves, and continually giving them the same crap will manipulate them into never knowing what was different and will result in them asking for the same crap.
  • In the advertisement for the volume 4 TGWTG DVD, it starts off with Dominic talking over the standard Video Game Confessions music, but then realizes that's not good enough for the audience, and it goes into the heavy metal, explosions-happy, shaking NC opening montage.
  • Gets it right out the way in "Top 11 South Park Episodes" (a video topic he even let the fans decide on), as Malcolm, Yo and Rachel are shown as nerds at computers just waiting to bash him, and he yells at them for thinking their favorites will be on the list. Also comes back at the end, where they all scream at him until he turns into a South Park character and screeches at them to get laid.
  • He and Blip have recently created a youtube channel dedicated to holding 'video take thats' for people to link annoying internet people to, titled simply 'Esults'.
  • Literally in The Master of Disguise, as two guys get pretty simple beatdowns in comparison to you (the person with the camera), and beating you down actually gets him back to... clearly not sane, but he merrily tosses the baseball bat away afterwards.
  • He managed to do it in song for the Les Misérables (2012) finale, calling everyone who believes in Reviews Are the Gospel “giving up” and following him.
  • After absorbing Doug's vlogs of Avatar in The Last Airbender, he also absorbs the Walker Brothers' bitchiness towards anyone who just wanted them to pronounce the character's names right. (though he at least admits fault later by saying he won't bash Shyamalan for the names as he's been awful there himself)
  • In “WTF Is Up With The Ending With The Graduate”, he quite cheerfully says he's got an opinion on the ending and asks the audience if they want to hear it, they say no and he grumpily moans too bad because they clicked on it anyway.
  • In Sharknado, he starts out doing a "Boomer will..." joke, but gets bored halfway through and tells everyone they should just be grateful for him doing a "Zuul, motherfucker" last review.
  • The Super-Promotion at the end of Man of Steel assumes the internet can't concentrate on anything longer than two minutes.
  • Huge in the commentary for The Shining review. Doug compares the review to a hypothetical Shining-themed episode of his much maligned former show Demo Reel because it had a consistent storyline with similar themes, and he theorized that viewers gave the review a pass because "...I was in the Critic outfit. If I was wearing the Donnie hat, people would be saying 'How could you?! What were you thinking?!'".
  • The Uncanny Valley review has him saying that none of the audience can stand a show/anthology with new characters that doesn't involve him, before cutting to Demo Reel. And when the Straw Critic in The Reviewers calls the main characters f*ggots after saying they can't get mad because it's just constructive criticism, Critic bemoans that sounds like the Tuesday's fanmail he gets.
  • Tamara plays his straw fangirl in The Lorax, who is suddenly attracted to him because he's hipster porn, and lets him get away with bashing her and her fanart because pretty. While there's truth in it, Rob called him out in the BTS for being defensive and mean-spirited about it. The “not listening” call out got more pronounced as time went on, as she doesn't care in the slightest about him not wanting her back, she remembers props used in reviews but none of his actual issues, and she has a Villainous Breakdown in Princess Diaries II about having no clue what he's interested in.
  • Lampshaded by Linkara in ''Superman: For The Animals”, much to Critic's anger.
    Linkara Critic: I'm going to repeat the same memes over and over again, it gets funnier every single time. I'm gonna make funny faces at the camera because my audience are babies!
  • In Welshy's farewell video, he takes part in a particularly snide comment about how you shouldn't bow down to fans demanding you back.
    Welshy: I'd hate for them to bring the character back just because the fans demand it, or just because they're bowing to peer pressure and give in just because the fans demand it. Just sometimes you shouldn't listen to the fans, sometimes you should stick it out... Don't you agree?
    Critic: Oh great, how much longer am I going to have put up with these backhanded comments?
  • In "Why Is Loki So Hot", he spends a lot of time trashing anyone who writes him in Slash Fic, something that fandom was confused about as Doug was previously so pro-slash that even Rob had yelled at him for it.
  • In the midst of congratulating a girl he liked, Rob revealed that on quite a few cons, people who were there to look after Doug just creeped on him and put their own need for a Critic fix over helping him with anything.
  • His Ice Bucket Challenge throws a lot of shade on people wanting him to get wet for a “corny Harlem Shake challenge”, and the tagline warns it won't be what you're expecting even though he's caving in. a Cool as Ice DVD falls on his head instead of water
  • In the Princess Diaries 2 commentary, after hearing that someone made a gross joke about Robin Williams' suicide, Doug sarcasms “imagine someone writing something really dark and mean spirited in the comments”.
  • Subverted in “The Top 11 Best Avatar Episodes”, as Doug in the Freeze-Frame Bonus book starts spewing venom at you for pausing the video and still reading it, but apologizes for exploding because he hasn't had food in days.
  • He starts off his Ghost Rider 2 review with “I remember it because you people wouldn't fucking shut up!”, also calling the fandom “barking dogs of entitlement”. Also, MikeJ insults both the Critic and the fandom by saying that Critic's really not a great reviewer (something even Critic and Doug agree with) but everyone watches him anyway.
  • In “Is Eyes Wide Shut Just Artsy Porn”, the audience boos him when he wants to talk about something personal, but cheers when he adds on that there'll be talk about sex.
  • When he asks in “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” if Cityville was the town the Powerpuff Girls fought crime in, bitchy correcting comments creep up and he stops them with “I know, it's a joke.” More seriously, and with Self-Deprecation, Malcolm making Critic have a chill pill patch because his mental illness is scary and not marketable to the “sweet” people at home.
  • Small in What You Never Knew About National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but he notes that his fans call The Big Bang Theory “geek blackface” in a tone that suggests First-World Problems (as being mean to geeks =/= oppressing black people).
  • Lampshaded in Mamma Mia! as Tamara/Rob/Malcolm tell him to let out all his aggression he's built up on the audience as nobody is watching and it'll be like screaming into a pillow. Cut to thirty seconds later and the anger from whatever he said made him lose an eye.
  • In The Haunted Mansion (2003), after making a joke, he spends a minute wanting whoever's watching to give him a high five but then says if anyone actually does it he'll be concerned.
  • In the AVGN Movie review, the only fan video he can find (compared to the movie fanbase who get Nerd tatooed on them) is someone saying “even though we hated the Nerd battle originally we want another one”. He then drops his phone in disgust. And later on he references the Last Action Hero He Panned It, Now He Sucks! backlash, calling it terrible satire and getting booed.
  • Given that he has a big fandom on Tumblr, who love him yet point out when he does something shitty, it's safe to assume that all the digs he made at the site during Demolition Man were directed at them. Doug confirmed this in an interview, saying he just wanted to bait them ^note though he was nicer later, giving his facebook approval to a Critic/Snob boyfriends text post for example.
  • In “The Review Must Go On” DVD review, he points out the hypocrisy of fans going “apeshit” when he broke his “won't do anything still in theaters” rule, but being totally fine with him breaking the rule of not bringing Critic back. There's also more than a couple of insults regarding how few (in comparison to Critic numbers) watched Demo Reel.
  • The Honest Trailers knockoff at the opening of Planet of the Apes (2001) indulges in this along with Self-Deprecation, implying the critic is just a translation of its audience and that despite being a Loser Protagonist, viewers wanted to be like him.
  • Amongst all the mocking of MRAs in Mad Max: Fury Road, there's a moment where he trashes those in his own fandom who believe that. Furiosa saves the day, and the meninists complain that Critic should have been the one to do it instead. They also call Devil Boner a Category Traitor, something that Doug has complained about people doing to him just because he likes some chick flicks, and mock Critic for enjoying Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, which has also apparently happened in real life.
  • In the behind the scenes of Ghost Rider II, Doug complains that he has to pay close attention to scrubbing eye make-up off because if he doesn't then he just gets a load of people yelling at him for wearing something that looks like eyeliner.
  • Christmas With The Kranks is a big long Take That! at people who want nothing but a white wall, and as past Critic sadly finds out, complain about skits but don't even watch the ones where he gives them a traditional review. Plus he addresses hypocrisy about the clipless reviews, and while he's bashing his old self too, he notes the Nostalgia Filter of people forgetting about the Nerd feud, the anniversary specials and all the crossovers when they complain about reboot having skits. During the whole episode, he tries to remain positive about the older review style (and never says reboot as a whole is better either), but its flaws and restrictions show, and make it clear why it's not done the same way anymore. In case you didn't get it, the behind the scenes has Doug say his line of it's wrong to think that never changing and keeping traditions is more important than anything else, and Rob tells everyone he's actually talking about the audience.
  • In The Phantom of the Opera (2004), when Beth replaces Hyper, Critic is Captain Obvious that this happened in the movie as well. Aunt Despair asks doesn't that go without saying, and he says she'd be surprised, digging at people who complain about clipless reviews expecting them to know basic stuff about whatever the film is.
    • They also dig at Hyper's fans (the kind that actually root for her to be with Critic), saying she's popular between 12-29 year old fangirls, and a pervy 65-70 group that they don't want to discuss. The song “Hyper Fangirl” is about the execs wanting her around to indulge the inuniverse Misaimed Fandom.
  • The first few minutes of The Adventures of Pluto Nash is Critic, Tamara and Malcolm all complaining at you for clicking on the video and making them work.
  • The DVD Pixels commentary has Doug mocking anti-clipless people complaining "that they want the old days back", pointing out that means him reviewing current at the time franchises like Harry Potter, Cloverfield and Transformers.
  • In the Resident Evil LP, Doug salts about Demo Reel just being the character sketches of Critic as their own thing, but he had a different hat so people whined.
  • While more frustration than malice, Clockstoppers has him complain about people demanding him to be angry over a harmless fun movie.
  • In Suicide Squad (2016), Critic wants to go off and play in skits, but the Chart Guys drag him down "because some prefer you in front of a white wall". In the middle of the review he goes to have fun anyway.
• Take That, Critics!: Fennah got tired pretty quickly of the people who whined about his “deviantart-tier furry OCs”, phrase even stolen directly from a bashy video of the review. He also pointed out in a stream that while the review itself wasn’t his, it was an Affectionate Parody and people should probably chill.
• Take That, Scrappy!: In-universe. Unless it becomes too mean spirited (such as the treatment of Scrappy Doo in the Scooby Doo film), the Critic will eat up and rewind scenes of annoying attempts at comic relief characters being killed, beaten, or injured.
  • Dr. Bitch Spasms was a character he created for one review(Patch Adams)before killing him, assuring the audience that "He's not a recurring character".
• Taking the Bullet: In Old vs New Cinderella, a jealous Benny tries to shoot Hyper and her boyfriend Devil Boner dives in front of her. Obviously he's fine, having metal plates in his head.
• Taking You with Me:
  • If he has to endure Son of the Mask he will take the audience with him.
  • In Scooby Doo, he combines destroying the movie in every time period with a Heroic Suicide. When he gets to purgatory, he shows his Character Development by worriedly asking if the others are okay.
• The Talk: His heard version of it apparently included God injecting Adam with sperm. Because that totally won't fuck up a child's perception of sex.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Rachel's blood-bending doesn't work on Shya-Amon, and his threat to Critic was stop reviewing or be talent-bended, but when they're in the same room, Critic's allowed to just keep reviewing and insulting Shyamalan until he reaches the end of the movie. When he finishes, he even has a smug smile like he forgot he was in trouble in the first place.
• Talking through Technique: It Makes Sense in Context but in the reboot, his issues are usually explained through memes; in The Guyver, Sage tries to use his older memes as a way to make him more comfortable, in The Wicker Man (2006) he's nearly crying because he can't decide what meme to use, in Jurassic Park III “night-memes” have replaced nightmares, and he tells Film Brain in Forest Warrior that he can't do pre-comeback memes because That Man Is Dead.
• Tantrum Throwing:
  • When he gets news that his mother died and doesn't even get to hear her final words because of the dinosaur coming out of his phone, he screeches unintelligibly and chucks his phone on the floor.
  • Less understandable is in The Shining, where Rachel is just talking to him on the phone and he's losing his temper, he rips the squeaky toy out of his pocket and throws it on the floor.
• That Came Out Wrong: In Demolition Man, as the Critic describes the cybernetic G-Rated Sex as "Virtual Boy Sex".
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Reviewing The Thief and the Cobbler, he gets a phone call from Vincent Price, who manages to hold a complete conversation with the Critic despite being dead, even when the Critic tries to catch him out with nonsense. He recorded his end of the conversation years in advance with the help of an oracle.
• A Taste of the Lash:
  • In the Nerd movie DVD review, he had a choice between reviewing it and being whipped in the street by the Nerd himself. “It was a tough call” apparently.
• Tears of Fear:
  • Malcolm in Bridge to Terabithia, when he's being held captive by Rachel as Leslie and tortured.
  • In the The Shining review, Rachel is hysterical with fear over how scary Critic is acting, though it quickly devolves into exaggerated parody and Bad "Bad Acting".
• Tear Jerker: Has an episode dedicated to his in-universe musings.
  • Also, in-universe, he says that Bart's breakdown in "Bart Gets an F" to be "the saddest fucking thing [he's] ever seen on [The Simpsons]".
• Teens Are Monsters: Any school-related memories will usually involve his getting some kind of abuse, which makes his hate-on for one-note bullies slightly strange.
  • In the review of Doug's First Movie, he just can't suspend his disbelief to buy that teenage girls - the species that pick on thighs for not being perfect - would call the monster in drag "cute".
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Critic abuses Rachel and Malcolm just because he can and they only help him because they've got nowhere else to go. The same when Tamara comes in.
• Technology Porn: The description of Waterworld''s action scenes displays vaguely sarcastic excitement over the amount of contraption manipulation involved:
  Ooh, look at that stuff go! Have you ever seen so much stuff happen in the same time? Ooh, now he's spinning some stuff. That stuff must be important because that stuff allows him to do this stuff...
• Teleport Spam: Brentalfloss in the Moulin Rouge! review.
  Brentalfloss: *poof* We seem to be in a convention room of some sort. *poof* That's Disneyworld somehow... *poof* that's Honolulu... *poof* that's classified... *poof* that's the future... *poof* that's two minutes ago... *poof* that's Spoony's house... *poof* oh this is my home!
  • The Critic becomes rather annoyed by Ganon doing this for no reason in The Legend of Zelda cartoon.
    Critic: Does he have ATD: Attention Teleportation Disorder?
• Tempting Fate: Happens a lot to the Critic:
  • After condescending Chick in Ferngully and telling her to come up there, she actually does and beats the shit out of him.
  • Repeatedly asserting that such a stupid thing as The Star Wars Holiday Special cannot possibly exist. He suffered for that.
  • At the end of his Flubber review, the Critic proverbally kicks himself in the nuts when he asks if there is a movie written only by John Hughes (a co-writer for the movie) that's worse than Flubber... and he immediately gets Home Alone 3.
    Critic: (with an Oh, Crap! face) Oh, snap.
  • Little Monsters has a scene where Maurice Brian pull various pranks on kids. While the Critic is shocked by how cruel they are, he believes that the kids' parents' reactions will be funny. Oh, how wrong he is.
    Critic: That was horrific!
  • Rover Dangerfield: "Well, I suppose it could be worse. I mean, it is a kids' film; I suppose they could be singing a song right now NONONONONONONONONO—" Cue song.
  • The 2010 Christmas Special: "Wait, you're just a two-bit angel without any wings! What are you going to do to me?" [Gets a beating.]
  • Ferngully 2 wasn't all that bad in the Critic's eyes (at least, it wasn't horrifying godawful), and thinks that if he gets more sequels like that, he'll be able to survive Sequel Month. Cue The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue poster.
    Critic: OOOOOOHHH- (end credits)
    • And a video later he starts wondering where is the spectacular badness of the movie, since it is just a typical dumb sequel dumb. A mere second later...
    • And in the end he says that he doesn't even care what movie he's going to review next. Enter the Care Bears...
  • In his list of "Dumbasses in Distress" he wonders if Princess Peach will start attacking by crying. Cue Super Princess Peach clip.
  • Looks like the Critic should have probably waited until his Star Trek odd-numbered movie review season was over before gloating about the lack of a Linkara appearance...
  • Any time the Critic conjures up a disturbing mental image, and says he doesn't want to see what that would look like - right after that, a Photoshop image of that precise thing will appear onscreen such as Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mary Poppins.
  • The Odd Life Of Timothy Green: The Critic wonders in great length about why people consider the movie terrible. One viewing later, he's killed the neighbor's cat.
  • In Son Of The Mask, Critic calls Santa Christ, begging him to come over because he's the only "good, decent" person he knows. Except it turns out that Santa Christ has a nasty side, which Critic eventually realizes much to his dismay.
  • Lampshaded in the "Super Mario Bros Super Show" review, when he comments how good it is that they haven't put a rap song over the opening credits music, whereupon they do exactly that:
    NC: You know, I gotta learn to keep my fucking mouth shut.
  • In his Bridge to Terabithia review, the Critic keeps commenting on how whimsical everything is and how someone should already die. As soon as he says that, the father informs the lead that Leslie died.
    NC: (Beat) Send your angry emails to [e-mail]
  • In the "Top 11 Moments You Never Noticed in Ghosbusters" he starts off the editorial saying he wanted to do something to remember Harold Ramis and considered doing something with his most famous movie. He wondered if he should note many of the tiny details that might be overlooked and seemed to laugh it off before the title of the editorial came up.
  • The Batman & Robin review has him routinely claiming that the only way a scene could be more cliched is if X happened, then X happens. By the fourth time, he's wise to this, but it doesn't help.
  • The end of his The Last Airbender earthbender rant essentially wills Shya-amon into existence, demanding the real Shyamalan to contact him and explain why he's so awful, plus a bit too luckily predicting Shya-amon's talent bending abilities.
  • In "Old vs New: Spider-Man'', Critic fucks himself over by refusing to unfriend Hyper while she's still being whiny, not dangerous.
  • In Freddy vs. Jason, Critic wants a Curb-Stomp Battle between Hyper and Devil Boner. They're of course still wildly in love and have sex in front of him instead.
• Terms of Endangerment: Snob starts threateningly calling Critic “sugar” when they're in 2019 and Critic has to prostitute himself to make Snob happy.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The critic thought Swift Heart Rabbit from The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland was a dude, due to having blue fur, gender-neutral voice and lack of feminine features like big eyelashes for example.
  • and no bunny boobs!!
• Testes Test: The Critic imitates Zack in his review of FernGully: The Last Rainforest:
  "Yeahhh! I'm back to my normal size! Wait a minute..." [inspects pants] "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"
• Testosterone Poisoning: Doug's dislike/mocking of the trope comes to a head in the Mad Max: Fury Road review, as Impractical Joe along with his war-boys only love the film because of that and react Faux Horrific to Pitch Perfect s beating it, the meninists are straw misogynists and give Devil Boner Character Development, and even Curiosa doubts Critic's manhood when he says he wants more than just great action scenes.
  • He lampshaded his early days habit and had a Take That, Audience! in Christmas with the Kranks where "Doug wears a dress for most of it" Hocus Pocus is the one 2007 Critic is horrified by.
• That's What I Call "X"!: In his review of Independence Day, Will Smith's character says, "That's what I call a close encounter!". The screen then freezes and is followed by the credits to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
• Therapy Is for the Weak: In AI, when his child cries, Doug scornfully mocks him for wanting to see the therapist again.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: In Small Soldiers, he proves he means killing his gigapet quite literally, taking it behind his garage and shooting it.
• There Are No Therapists: There was in the beginning, as one of his running gags was complaining about therapy bills, but he went into this trope when the character got crazier. Mostly because it's much more amusing this way.
  • Also subverted in the past, as judging from the Mr. Magoo review, he either served time in a mental ward or visited someone (a logical guess would be Ask That Guy) who did.
  • Hyper has a ton of money and really could do with therapy for her many issues, but nobody, even people who know she's Ax-Crazy, has even brought it up.
    • "Old Vs New: Evil Dead" finally averts this, with she and Devil Boner going to relationship therapy under Critic (because he's supposedly the only one who understands how crazy they are) and then more successfully under Bill where they address some of their issues.
  • Subverted in Alice in Wonderland (2010) where Malice escaped from an asylum and assumes all throughout the review that Critic did the same, but if you know the game she's from where there's a new psychiatrist who brainwashes children into being sex slaves, you'll also know that sometimes this is better played straight.
  • Sort of in Christmas With The Kranks, where Critic remembers just some of the torments he faced when he was younger, and that he tried to cope with that by starting to review and hoping people would like him (despite that not working either given how much he's angsted about hating his job/life). Doug said in 2015 cons and interviews that a big reason why he does skits is to learn more about himself, plus that he finds media a better coping method than actual therapy.
  • Casually averted in the WTR of Teddy Ruxpin, as he mentions having a therapist as a kid.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:invoked Not as often as the below trope, but he occasionally notes a potentially interesting character is squandered. For example, in 3 Ninjas the boys run across a ninja with face paint who licks the blade of his sword before attacking them and is entirely silent and menacing. The Critic gets excited, until the character is defeated easily and subsequently humiliated.
  "Well thank you movie! Thank you for ruining the only possibly cool character in this entire film!"
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:invoked
  • The Critic complains that this is one of the biggest faults of Last Action Hero, as Big Bad Benedict's evil plan to form an army of the greatest villains in movie history is one of the coolest concepts in the movie but is never allowed to come to fruition.
  • He also complained that the plot of Blank Check could've been interesting (a kid winds up with a lot of money and buys a castle) but it was too bland to pull it off.
  • He accuses The Blair Witch 2 of this, saying that, if you're gonna acknowledge the film is a phenomenon within the film's universe, they should at least maybe lampshade the marketing or commercialization, but they never do.
  • He says that Heavy Metal has a lot of stories that are potentially interesting as their own film, but the anthology nature of the movie means that they stop before the story seems like it's really begun.
• Thing-O-Meter: Used a few times. The Cool as Ice review includes a White-o-Meter. In the Garfield behind the scenes, Malcolm calls Doug's Obama impersonation somewhere between Hulk Hogan and Paula Deen on the racism meter.
• Third Wheel: In the “Amazing Spider Man 2” review, as cute as he thinks Peter and Gwen are together, their interactions make him feel like the awkward one in the backseat of the car.
• Third Time's The Charm: Referenced by name during The Garbage Pail Kids Movie review, in full Sarcasm Mode since it was directed to one of the titular "kids" when pissing himself for the third time (there's actually a fourth one ahead).
  • Nostalgia Critic and Phelous cross over for all three of the Child's Play movies.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!:
  • "Queen it up, BITCH!"
  • In a variation, he frequently adds "mothafucka" in voice-over to the end of an emphatic and/or tough-sounding line from a character ("Taste the rainbow, motherfucker!"); in his commentary for the Superman IV review he says that he has discovered that you can add special extra oomph to anything by adding the word "motherfucker" to the end of it. And it's true.
  • He's on the receiving end in the Ferngully review:
    The Nostalgia Chick: Don't you ever try to bring logic into this movie again. This is Ferngully, bitch!
• This Is Going to Be Huge:
  • Mirroring Doug's real life excitement, Dr Hack “finally has the answer” to Critic's wish for a formula that will get him millions: Demo Reel. It gets him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • The sad Call-Forward in The Dark Knight Returns has Critic himself (as this is set post To Boldly Flee when he's still optimistic) get all giddy about the new, deep show with a regular cast he's planning before getting gut punched by Geek laughing and saying It Will Never Catch On.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Pro-tip - if a review starts with anything else besides "Hello, I'm The Nostalgia Critic; I remember it so you don't have to", then the general consensus is that the subject is gonna suck. More specific examples include:
  • Essentially the Critic's reaction when he sees that he will have to review the Good Burger movie to finish Nickelodeon Month.
  • Also used quite literally during the review of Pokémon: The First Movie, after the rather Gainaxic opening of the movie.
    Nostalgia Critic: I don't want to review this movie.
  • His desk-banging at the beginning of A Kid in King Arthur's Court should be an indication of what's to come.
  • Also used in Follow That Bird; however, if you watched that review...
  • Used in his Garbage Pail Kids review when he tries to describe the movie at the beginning "It's, uh... it's... uh... i-it's... it's gonna hurt. I'm not gonna lie, this is really going to hurt."
    Nostalgia Critic: I got nothing. I have absolutely nothing. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to say? "Garbage Pail Kids". Does the title even sound like it's going to attempt to be a good movie? (Long pause). I feel raped. I feel honest to God raped by this movie; it is that bad. There is no talent, no effort, nothing salvageable! Nothing salvageable about this movie at all!
  • In the beginning of his Batman & Robin review, the Critic puts a cyanide pill out of his hat just in case he needs to kill himself to escape the review. He tries to use it after hearing two lines of dialogue.
  • At the start of the Cool as Ice review, he's laughing too hard at Vanilla Ice to say it.
  • In the Tank Girl review he can't even finish his catchphrase without breaking down crying.
  • In the The Star Wars Holiday Special review he actually tries to run away before finishing his catchphrase.
  • In the Lost in Space review he tries to hide in the shower in another vain effort to avoid the movie.
  • "Hello, I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it- I fucking hate Bio-Dome, I fucking hate Bio-Dome, I FUCKING HATE BIO-DOME! I HATE IT, I HATE IT, I HATE IT! AYAYAYAYAYA—!!! ([splashed with water]) Thank you. Anyway,... I fucking hate Biodome!"
  • He's been using this trope at the end of several videos, so we know that next week's movie is gonna suck a week in advance.
  • His A Troll in Central Park review opens up with him pacing and trying to express to the viewers how horrible the movie is.
    "A Troll in Central— FUCK THIS MOVIEEEEEE! (punches himself) A Troll in Central Park!"
  • The Care Bears Movie is a slight exception; his lack of the usual opening is out of the embarrassment of having to admit that his job is to review the movie rather than the quality of the movie itself (not to say he thinks that it's a masterpiece by any means...)
  • Full House:
    Nostalgia Critic: I really hope you people appreciate what I do for you, 'cause lemme tell ya: It's not always easy! The stupid ass shit I gotta put up with, well, frankly it's more than I can bear.
  • At the end of "TMNT: Raiders of the Story Arc" he announces Sequels Month, only for his joy to quickly turn to horror. Next, the review for The Neverending Story III Escape From Fantasia beginning with him wailing pitifully at the quality of the movie and the many more to come.
  • The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue gets two. At the beginning of the video, he cocks a gun, puts on a SWAT helmet and padded jacket, grabs a set of brass knuckles and finally a Cricket bat before sitting down.
    Nostalgia Critic: BRING IT ON!
    • And then an unspoken one halfway into the movie.
      Nostalgia Critic: I have to be honest, as we near the third act of this film, I'm not seeing the spectacular badness it's supposed to have. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's bad, but it's just a basic dumb sequel bad, I mean, nothing really propels it into incredibly awful.
      Timmy: Jenny, look! What happened to them?
      Jenny: He's turned the humans into dogs!
      (Cut back to the Critic, with a dumbstruck expression. He finally drops the SWAT helmet from the opening over his hat).
  • In the Masters Of The Universe review he says:
    "So He-Man is going to use his awesome cosmic powers and medieval-style fighting moves...in the suburbs of New Jersey?" *sob* "This is gonna suck, isn't it?"
  • He begins his The Magic Voyage review raving incoherently before he can even attempt to begin his opening catch phrase. He then blows fire into the camera.
  • In “The Review Must Go On”, after her plan failed and Critic returns to his chair with an evil smirk, Lindsay boozes so hard she falls over.
  • Begins his The Master of Disguise review with an introduction that just drips this trope as he talks about how hard it is to review a bad comedy.
  • Usually, the Critic gives a primer for the movie while clips of it run in the background. For After Earth, he spends the whole primer repeatedly saying "No!" and sobbing without explaining the movie at all.
  • Coupled with Oh, Crap!, but he always hides behind chairs and couches when Hyper arrives looking for him.
  • In "Disney Sequels We Want", he mentions the Disneycember coming up (reviewing all the Disney sequels) and immediately lets out a sob.
• This Is Reality: The Critic mocks this relentlessly (or as relentlessly as possible while drunk) in his review of It.
• This Is Unforgivable!: At the beginning of the Kazaam review:
  Nostalgia Critic: To err is human... TO MAKE THE WORST PIECE OF COW SHIT TO EVER STAR A BAD-ACTING, 7-FOOT TALL BASKETBALL SUPERSTAR IS UNFORGIVABLE!!!
• The Three Faces of Adam: Scooby-Doo review. The young Critic is the hunter, with ambitious hope that's going to get crushed. The usual Critic is the lord, miserable about how his life is going nowhere. The older Critic is the prophet, losing his memories and passion but is gentle and intelligent.
• Threesome Subtext:
  • Critic, Chick and Brentalfloss in the Moulin Rouge! review. You've got Floss calling Critic "baby" when they're alone, Floss and Chick dancing together and her spanking him in "El Tango De Pretense" and a basic confirmation that Chick and Critic have had sex (real sex, not g-rated fairy rape) when he recognizes her bedroom immediately. It also doesn't help that all three of them prove throughout the review that they have No Sense of Personal Space when it comes to the others.
  • Pointedly averted with Critic, Rachel and Malcolm (their Demo Reel incarnations were built on the trope), as they try to grope him in a 8 Crazy Nights porn skit but he slaps them off.
  • Partly because they're all on equal ground for once, the Critic/Tamara/Malcolm relationship becomes this for the Fantastic Four (2005) review. They lie around on a couch together being shitty people, she gets/eats food out of Critic's man cleavage, and Malcolm creates fanservice characters for them all to enjoy. They're even all holding hands and skipping together at the start. Malcolm joke-confirmed on twitter 2018 that Critic, the Tamara character and the Malcolm character are in a poly relationship.
  • Teased in the behind the scenes of The Smurfs, as Rob jokes “Critic and Tamara going to the storage closet is one for the fanfic writers”, and Doug adds that Malcolm is there as well.
    Rob: Ménage à trois.
  • Despite Hyper Boner also being really popular on its own, Devil Boner/Hyper/Benny is essentially canon by the end of Cinderella Old vs New, and in Evil Dead Old vs New, Benny completely forgets about saving Critic so he can bond with Devil Boner and Hyper over the Evil Dead movies. By the time of Hyper's Q&A, Benny is living in their basement. Later appearances feature the three of them just as much as (if not more than) Hyper and Devil Boner by themselves, and Spider-Man has Hyper and Benny appear together without Devil Boner, frequently calling each other "dear" and "darling" to boot (albeit as part of their overly-sophisticated act).
• Three Stooges Shout-Out: Done by Doug and special guest reviewers Linkara and Spoony in their review of Bloodrayne. The title card mimicks the opening logo of the Three Stooges and their fight near the end is done in typical Stooges fashion.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: In the Les Misérables (2012) review, when Critic is talking to Rachel and Malcolm in the TV, Kyle and Paw have no idea what he's doing and don't interact with them.
  • Explicitly in The Shining review, as Critic hallucinates a bar (in which Dominic has to tell him he's actually just in the bathroom) and goes to a fucked up Happy Place at the end, where he realizes doesn't make any sense, but at least it's scary.
  • His growing insanity is made more obvious in "The Worst Christmas Special EVER", as his shoving Malcolm against the fridge is revealed to be an hallucination, and the people who he loved as his parents actually had no idea who he was.
  • The bar in The Wicker Man (2006) is the exact same bar Critic hallucinated in The Shining review, as evidenced by the same A Man Is Always Eager sign focused on in The Stinger. It would also explain why a miserable Quinn and Karl are there but don't interact or notice the guy who looks like a suited version of their dead femmy friend.
  • In Jurassic Park III, Tamara asks him to check her stomach because it's hurting, and when he sees a dinosaur come out under her shirt and shoves her off, she's understandably confused.
  • Every sign post-credits of the Maximum Overdrive review points to the Halloween (1978) parody in the opening having not actually happened.
  • Hyper's vlogs have her talking to Tamara, and Doug and Critic at the same time, and she never questions this line of reality and fiction breaking down.
  • Played for laughs in Event Horizon, as after a series of wake up dreams, he "sticks with reality" and has a cheshire cat head following him.
• Throw It In!:invoked In the review of Commando, during the fight sequence when Arnold's character and a henchman crash into a porn scene being filmed, the Critic wonders whether the footage of the two fighting actually made it into the porno.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Film Brain has been in love with Critic for years, and at the end of Forest Warrior, blushes happily when Critic says “Film Brain, I love you, and I do mean it in that way”.
• Time Skip: The Hulk commercial break shows Melody and Cliff as their usual kid selves, and then goes forward years to see them as depressed adults.
• Title Drop: Mocks its blatant use in My Pet Monster and the The Lord of the Rings film series.
• To Be Continued: Every now and then, either continuing a story over a few episodes or "I want to talk about my number one pick in more detail next week". He apologizes for the latter when he wants to do Lady in the Water, but is really giddy about it and wants you to join him.
• Together in Death: At the end of Christmas Story II, when they're doing the Critic/Hyper sleeping scene, they joke (Doug lampshading it's been a long day) that Hyper would want to slit both their throats to preserve the moment.
• Toilet Humor: In the review of Child's Play 3, Phelous banishes NC's Casper down the toilet. Phelous later brings up toilets when talking about the liquid plastic being made for a small child's toilet. Finally, at the end of the review, NC goes to use the bathroom, forgetting that Phelous had banished Casper there.
• Token Trio: Post-reboot has Critic the white guy, Rachel/Tamara the white woman and Malcolm the black man. It makes who's in charge of who very obvious.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Invoked in Blade, as Marvel execs plan Jessica Jones (2015), the Blade tv series, and Daredevil (2015), as "depressing, harsh and making you want to kill yourself" shows. Subverted though, as the Walkers both love Daredevil, and at least Rob also loves Jessica Jones.
• Too Happy to Live: Downplayed in We Wish You A Turtles Christmas, as Tamara is excited for the first day of December, but that's immediately followed by Critic destroying the world with his Christmas love.
• Too Much Information: In The Uncanny Valley review, he ends up blurting out that he's sexually repressing everything and starts describing a Jessica Lange fantasy before he cuts off.
  Critic: you might have noticed another edit... and I'm just gonna stop there.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Happens to Falkor in The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia, to the Critic's dismay.
  Critic: Oh my god, what did they do to you Falkor!? Not only to the animatronics look like the butt cheeks from Chuck E. Cheese, but the character is totally backwards. Falkor was a dignified creature; he was optimistic and wise. This abomination is a blithering idiot, he's like the flying version of Patrick the starfish!
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • Sandler in Pixels compared to Sandler in Eight Crazy Nights. While he's still annoying, his main problem is not evolving and Doug plays him with a few standards about how lazy the film is. There's certainly no manipulation photos of him being chained to a flaming menorah.
  • Both Doug and Critic seem a lot kinder to the Wachowskis after they both came out as trans women, Critic defending Cloud Atlas and saying they shouldn’t have to be role models for perfect writing, and Doug wanting to check out Sense 8 and give a positive review of Vfor Vendetta.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Apparently Film Brain's forgotten all about To Boldly Flee too, as in The Purge review he threatens to blow up the studio if Critic doesn't do a crossover with him.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Critic notes this in-universe about Kate Winslet in A Kid In King Arthur's Court:
  Critic: Don't try to class up this movie, lady. It's not worth it.
  • Berates Peter Fonda for this in Thomas & Friends because, "IT'S THOMAS THE FUCKING TANK ENGINE!!!!"
• Too Dumb to Live: The Critic's opinion of Doug's 1st Movie uses words to this effect.
• Top Ten List: Or top 11. Because he likes to go one step beyond.
  • Or Top 12, in the case of Top 12 Greatest Christmas Specials. Why Top 12? Because IT'S CHRISTMAS!
  • In his review of North, The Critic creates a top ten list of double entendres that could be added to Jason Alexander's character saying, "Here, loosen his pants!"
  • Critic refused to do a Top 10 list of jokes about David Bowie's crotch in Labyrinth. Because it had to be a Top 15.
• Training Montage: Parodied, demonstrating the Critic's claim that anything is awesome with fast editing and 80s music, he does so with his morning routine.
• Trauma Button:
  • In Moulin Rouge!, both Critic and Chick get twitchy for the couple of seconds they're at Spoony's house.
  • Doug's new learned thing of said week apparently, as in "Lady And Peebles" he calls Bubblegum's violence towards Ricardio being triggered by Lady Rainicorn getting hurt (and nearly getting sexually assaulted), and in Food Fight, the grocery store deliberately triggers Critic's breakdown by listing advertising products.
  • Also works neatly for Critic seeing Spoony with no reaction (as even in To Boldly Flee he had the issues over the spooning) in The Wicker Man (2006), and trying to be like him two episodes later in Top 11 Strangest Couples.
  • Malcolm and Doug talk about trypophobia (Doug not knowing what it is and mocking it later with the others, but being nice about it when it's just him and Malcolm) when Doug is getting hole make-up in the Matrix Revolutions behind the scenes, and the video puts in a time code you can skip to if you're cringing.
  • In “Did You Miss The Most Shocking Film In Years”, he uses the term “trigger words” as a thing that bad shocker movies try and get your publicity/attention with.
  • When talking about the rough cut of Event Horizon, he's nice enough to put a time code that you can skip to if you can't deal with the gore he's going to show.
  • In the LP of Dragons Lair, Critic says he can't deal with Bluth's Death Glare because it reminds him of morbidly abusive grandparents.
  • In Was The Mask Supposed To Be Gory, he tells people who are squeamish that they don't have to watch the video, and spends a long time on an image of a guy cutting his face to let them know what they're in for.
  • In Dreamcatcher, a mentally ill boy called Douglas is getting beaten up and he openly says he doesn't enjoy watching this followed by silence.
  • He's really upset at a RSPCA advert where they threaten to kill a dog if they don't get a pound and can't stop thinking about it to the point where he says he needs time.
  • Hyper says in the IT review that if anyone feels triggered, they can say hello to her gun trigger.
• Traumatic Haircut: Critic shaves his head bald in Norm of the North and regrets it hard. Doug was more than happy to shave though.
• Trilogy Creep: Doug wanted the commercial specials to be a three-parter, but having to bring Critic back nixed that plan. Lampshaded when he excitedly goes through the names of those three, and his energy just drops and calls Dawn “the fourth one”
  • To go with the franchise, Malcolmus and Tammity make Critic do a trilogy of episodes, and when he complains the first review was structured like a closed story, their reasoning is Money, Dear Boy.
  • In the Phantom commentary, Doug likes the idea of having three (Moulin Rouge!, Les Misérables (2012) and The Phantom of the Opera) musical reviews, but would still like to do The Wall one day.
• Trope Codifier: The Nerd was the first character reviewer, but Critic was the first to have a backstory and multiple character arcs, along with added things (canonically bi and trans with abusive relationships) to make him more vulnerable.
• [Trope Name]: This is how the Nostalgia Critic sums up how every conversation in The Avengers goes:
  Emma Peel: I'm going to start saying something clever while you...
  John Steed: ...finish your sentence.
  Emma Peel: Witty retort.
  John Steed: Topped by me.
  Emma Peel: Winking smile.
  John Steed: Returned.
• Tropes Are Tools: His list of "Top 11 Coolest Cliches".
• Troubled Fetal Position: In Food Fight, before we go back to him at the end, Critic is curled up on the floor and sobbing his eyes out.
  • In Conquest Of The Commercials, the AYDS chocolate commercial fucks him up and he retreats to a Corner of Woe.
• True Art Is Angsty: invoked While there's plenty of comedies he likes, he has a tendency to praise darker (when it's done well and has a point), depressing stuff more.
• Tour Guide Gag
• Turns Red: A rare literal example. Whenever the Nostalgia Critic yells a lot or gets more progressively flustered as the review goes on, his face will turn redder and redder.
• Twin Switch: When they fuck with the Critic in "Cats And Dogs", Uncle Lies provides the "negative review of Deadpool", with his mouth (but posher voice) over the Critic's.
• Twisted Christmas:
  • As much as he loves the holiday, his (in-universe) family don't seem to have been all that great at it, apparently exploding a flaming Santa and reindeer into the sky, twice, traumatizing him.
  • "South Park: A Woodland Critter's Christmas'' "dealt with all your Christmas favorites, like the Devil, orgies, sacrifices and abortion". Then he laughs uncomfortably and does his traumatized look.
  • Since comeback, and Doug has confirmed this being on purpose, the Christmas reviews will always have one dark and extreme episode (Eight Crazy Nights, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, We Wish You A Turtles Christmas) followed by something sad and personal (The Christmas Tree, Christmas Story II, Christmas With The Kranks).
  • In ''Is A Charlie Brown Christmas Overrated", he talks about Christmas often being overwhelming and people forgetting that it can be grim.
• Two out of Three Ain't Bad: Used in Alice in Wonderland (2010) when Malice assumes that he escaped from an asylum to prove he's not a psychotic maniac. Critic tells her he didn't escape from anything but he's still a psychotic maniac.

U

• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: "You mean a chubby, unattractive male gets a saucy, hot as hell female? Hah! In what media?"
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: His "Old VS New" segment. Overall, he compared nine original/remake pairs.
• Unbuilt Trope: As one of the first net examples of a Caustic Critic, there's a lot of examining as to why the character would do such a thing. The Critic's cynicism isn't just from bad media, but also from a horrible past that he never got help for. The jokes are done in a way you can easily laugh at him as much as with him. He's not doing the job because he thinks he's improving the world, but because he doesn't think he's good for anything else. All this suggests the average angry internet reviewer isn't so much a genius whose cynicism allows them to see the true nature of things, but rather a sad, messed-up person who needs help with their problems and needs to put others down in order to feel good about themselves. He gets a reminder of this himself in Christmas With The Kranks, hearing his 2007 self say he did this just to be liked and he wanted to fix everything (in an echo to Critic's wish in TBF), and bittersweetly telling the audience that Character Development doesn't always mean turning into a better person.
• Un-Cancelled: Four months following To Boldly Flee, Doug announced he was bringing the Critic back. The circumstances of this has been called out.
• Underestimating Badassery: Malcolm is usually a Non-Action Guy under Critic's thumb, but is also a case of Clothes Make the Superman. When he saves Critic with a lengthy speech in Matrix Reloaded, he tells him firmly not to deny his powers of pretentiousness.
• Understatement: Lampshaded during the review of A Troll in Central Park.
  Kid: "This is weird."
  Nostalgia Critic: "THIS is weird?!?!? Uh uh, weird is when your alarm clock goes off like five minutes early. THIS IS THE ABOMINATION OF ANNYOANCE!!!"
  • Pearl Harbor has a notable Captain Obvious line of "it sucks seeing people getting killed".
• Unequal Pairing:
  • Critic with Rachel, Malcolm and even Tamara. His relationship with Rachel had a load of punishing her when she hadn't done anything wrong, he uses Malcolm who is in love with him, and while he and Tamara are mutually abusive (which is why they're the Official Couple), he still has more power over her and there's been two episode sketches where she's his abused child.
  • While only a pairing in her head, Hyper/Critic is unequal on both ends. Not just because the only time where she's happy and relaxed is when she has all the control and he has to do what she wants or he'll get shot, but also because he's a creator and she's a fan and doesn't really know him at all. Her relationship with Devil Boner is far more equal, with him even being happy for her to write fanfic about him.
• Unholy Matrimony: Devil Boner and Hyper are the early-Spike/Drusilla of the Critic world, being totally in love and accepting of each other, but bonding over holding Critic hostage, starting wars in Jamaica, and having pet names like "skullcrusher". The Chart Guys and the Exec Girls are also couples with very minor moral compasses.
• Unintelligible Accent: Parodied in the Jem and the Holograms (2015) review. Malcom tries explaining to Chart Guy #1 the logic that what would make a good Jem movie doesn't translate to what would make a good Nostalgia Critic movie, he asks if he could explain it in the form of a chart. Malcom hastily draws a chart based on this idea, only for Chart Guy #1 to whisper to Chart Guy #2 that he can't understand him through his "accent."
• Unintentional Period Piece: invoked
  • The Critic will make slight mockery of a film for using something or saying something which does date the movie.
  • Inverted in his March 2012 review of Richie Rich, stating that the President of the United States calling the Riches for a loan makes it "timeless."
• Unnaturally Blue Lighting: Even Suede has teased Doug for the incessant blueness of the new Critic videos. Lampshaded in Matrix Month where the lighting gets greener as time goes on, and Critic reality warps back to blue.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Milk Money had scorn heaped on it for various reasons, but he's particularly pissed about how disgustingly easy Vee found it to out of her job.
• The Unpronounceable: The Critic (and several others) had some trouble pronouncing Tone Lōc. He also had some trouble with some names in Drop Dead Fred, including the last name of that guy from The Young Ones (Rik Mayall), that chick from Gremlins (Phoebe Cates), and the director of the film (Ate de Jong), which he doesn't even bother to pronouce. He also pronounces Hubie's name in The Pebble and the Penguin as "hubby".
• Unreadably Fast Text: In his tribute to Siskel & Ebert, after S&E's mocking of protestants in their outtakes, The Critic made a disclaimer that he isn't prejudiced against other religions, except for a really long list that scrolled across the screen.
  Critic: Especially the middle one.
  • In his review of Junior, after Danny DeVito's character asked Arnold why he couldn't have a baby, The Critic replied with: "That's a very valid question. Why not? Oh wait, maybe because of these." And the screen fills with reasons why not. The list stays on screen for only a second.
  • In his review of A Troll in Central Park, the screen fills with reasons why Stanley won't have his dreams come true. Then it cuts back to the film clips, where Gus says, "You're a coward!", which was one of the choices in the long list.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Played for Laughs. Years after Hyper Fangirl abandoned her Stalker with a Crush attitude towards Critic, Critic suddenly falls for her in the Ready Player One (2018) review when he thinks she's been catfishing him (taking a note from Wade's empty relationship with Samantha in the movie). She emphasizes the fact that she's married and is very much not interested in her, but Critic just thinks she's insecure because she has a small zit (which he considers a disfigurement).
• The Unreveal: For the Critic at the end of the To Boldly Flee review, his own identity. His realization is built up as to who The Nostalgia Cricket is, only to think that the "Cricket" is Phelous.
  • In-universe, Mr and Mrs Walker don't turn out to be Critic's parents in The Christmas Tree review, just some random people that he hallucinated to be related to him.
  • At the end of Hyper's second vlog, Malcolm slips back into his Tacoma role, sporting Two-Faced and starting to announce that bad things are happening to the Demo Reel cast because some people couldn't deal with the show. Hyper cuts him off with a “dun dun dun!” and so he never says what bad things are happening.
    • This and the in-universe Big-Lipped Alligator Moment of Karl and Quinn drinking in a bar was explained in the Resident Evil LP, the Demo Reel cast are still alive, but insane and torturing people.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: He is fervent in his belief that Rock Biter's wife in The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia is actually a cross-dresser.
  • He's not that far from the truth on that
• Unusual Euphemism: From his review of Scooby Doo: "This movie can COCK MY ASS!"
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The Critic is careful to point this out every single time it happens, and illustrates in My Pet Monster by being completely unfazed to see that his brother has the head of a dinosaur.
  • Played creepily in The Shining review, as Critic only just barely notices Malcolm in chainmail gear crashing through the window, and is far more interested in scaring the shit out of Rachel.
  • In the Hyper Fangirl vlogs, the titular fangirl doesn't seem to find it odd that she can talk to her actress Tamara, or that Doug and Critic are in the same place. But then she is mentally ill and hears voices, so it'd be a normal time for her.
  • Tamara's completely unfazed at the end of The Wicker Man (2006) when Critic gets hit with a truck inches away from her. Also justified as even Beneath the Mask she's still crazy.
  • In Jem, Critic's only reaction to Tamara stabbing Malcolm in the eye is to tell them to sing a C note.

V

• Vacation, Dear Boy: The Nostalgia Critic points out that Rob Reiner made North as an attempt to go on vacation and get paid for it.
• Vacation Episode:
  • After the first commercial special, according to Doug the following two were done when the Critic needed a break, and after that they turned into just lampshaded invoked Pandering to the Base who wanted more.
  • The Snob crossover The Passion of the Christ has Critic and him take a holiday in North Jerusalem together. It doesn't go well.
• Values Dissonance: invokedDiscussed on occasion.
  • While he understands the original True Grit was filmed in the sixties, he still wants to call PETA for the poor snake getting abused.
  • In his Sailor Moon review, he takes a tangent to explain that while the main protagonists are played for fanservice in their transformation sequences and skimpy outfits despite being 14 years old, in many parts of Japan the legal age of consent is 13, and while there are legal loopholes back and forth on how legal it is, mostly the sexualization would be acceptable. He also discusses the dub of the show keeping the sexualization of the characters but reworking the lesbian relationship of two characters into cousins and platonic love.
  • The only thing he doesn't like about It's a Wonderful Life is the sexism of acting like it's the worst thing ever for a woman not to marry.
  • In "Smurfs 2", he refuses to do a sketch that has anything to do with Mickey Rooney in yellowface.
  • In-universe, Gurgi forcing Terrin and the princess to kiss at the end of the Black Cauldron is seen as far less cute and more sexual harassment.
• Values Resonance:
  • invoked Critic finds Demolition Man as more effective in The New '10s given he finds "Political Overcorrectness vs Hates Everyone Equally assholes" a good translation of the internet.
  • “Why Does Everyone Hate The Cable Guy” posits that it just came out at the wrong time, and harassers on social media have given it a more understanding context.
  • In Hyper's second vlog, Malcolm wants to remake Spike Lee's 1989 Do the Right Thing because he thinks it's still relevant to 2014's racism issues.
  • In a “You Gotta See This” promotion for TubiTV, he praises Some Like It Hot for being a film in the 50s talking about sex, crossdressing and LGBT issues all under the guise of slapstick comedy. He even compares it to Steven Universe.
  • In "Battle Of The Commercials, he talks about how insane it is that there's a "women should have equal pay or Batman will die" PSA and women still'' get paid less.
  • In "Top 11 WTF Alternate Endings", Dr. Strangelove "had people rolling in the aisles and questioning their safety", adding in terrified shaky voice "not at all like today's politics".
• Verbal Backspace: Trans-tinged in Monkeybone as he keeps not being able to call himself a man.
• Verbal Tic:
  • Doug often uses the phrases "So the story begins with..." and "O.K., let's look at the story." as a way of starting his reviews.
  • An amnesiac Critic calls the lead actor of the anniversary movies "The Nostalgia Cricket" in each of the anniversary movies' episodes.
• The 'Verse: Aside from the Reviewaverse, reboot Critic seems to be in a world on its own. Lampshaded angrily by Doug himself in The Last Airbender, asking why he wrote said world so convoluted.
• Very Special Episode: Quite a few reviews talk about painful subjects, but nearly always have enough laughs to offset them. The top 11 lists for The Simpsons and Batman, however, don't have many jokes, so his pull-no-punches discussions on how it feels to feel like a failure at school or be the victim of Domestic Abuse stand out more.
  • Neither did Patch Adams (especially after he finds out that sexually abused and dead girlfriend was a murdered male friend in real life), which managed to push every single Close to Home button he had.
  • In the Phantom behind the scenes, Rob makes a joke that Hyper looks like she's been raped when she wears the Belle dress, and namedrops the trope.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: The "NickComs" video mocks this in-universe with the game "Guy or Girl".
  • A straighter example is with Swiftheart from Care Bears in Wonderland.
• Viewers Are Goldfish: In “Doug Talks Top 10 Worst Avatars”, he lampshades that people aren't enjoying the fortnightly reminders that editorials can be seen early on Maker, presumably because it makes them think he thinks Viewers Are Morons.
• Viewers Are Morons: The Critic really hates how most environmental movies make this assumption about their younger viewers, often constantly and obnoxiously shoving the moral of the story in their faces. It gets to the point that in his review of the second Sonic cartoon, he can barely comprehend the fact that the show has a subtle environmental message.
  • The Critic complains about this in his Captain America (1990) review, where they put the name of every place, every single time the scene shifts to another scenery. At one point he gets fed up with it and puts captions under every little thing on-screen.
  • In his TMNT review, he finds it an odd contradiction that the opening of the film briefly glosses over the Turtles' origins (which would sound pretty weird to those unfamiliar with the franchise), as apparently this movie is made for the fans, yet when Leonardo first appears, the movie features the subtitle "Leonardo" to let us know who he is.
  • At the very beginning of The Odd Life of Timothy Green, he assumes nobody knows who St. Valentine is and calls us all “uniquely lazy”.
  • According to the Les Misérables (2012) bloopers, Kyle's attempts at jokes in French were stopped by Doug because he thought the audience wouldn't get them.
  • In The King and I, a chorus of complaints rise up when he says he's going to give them a history lesson.
    Critic: Shut up! You're gonna learn something.
  • The “Is Eyes Wide Shut Artsy Porn” editorial starts with him getting booed because he wants to talk about fear of the subconscious, and getting cheered when he adds that there'll be orgies.
  • In the opening The Outer Limits parody in “Rise Of The Commercials”, he assumes nobody will get the reference but will at least remember when Simpsons parodied it.
  • In "Why Is Tom and Jerry Genius", he feels the need to tell the audience that they shouldn't eat Play-Doh.
  • From The Uncanny Valley: “nobody's written an article about online reviewing, that would require the online demographic to read”.
  • The Swan Princess has him making a reference to St. Sebastian and assumes whoever's watching needs to go to google because they have no idea what he's talking about.
  • In Doug's Shut Up And Talk video with James Rolfe, they both get very confused about people who still think they actually hate each other.
  • The not-so-subtle message of the clipless review scene in Christmas with the Kranks, as 2007-Critic is parroting fan complaints about “not real reviews“ and such, and Critic just looks over at the Hocus Pocus episode and sees the very clear criticism of the movie (in song) and deadpans sarcastically that sure he's saying nothing.
  • He's pissed off about Fantasia 2000 calling Salvador Dali "the melting watch guy".f
• Villain Decay: M. Night Shyamalan. After being a major villain in the "B-Plot" of the Avatar review, he's become comic relief as of the After Earth review.
• Villain Has a Point: After Critic's Condescending Compassion speech in Man of Steel, Zod crashes in and essentially calls it bullshit that was trying to please everyone.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • While she disappears after the review and he hit her for no reason while she watched his home videos despite him begging not to, Critic and Malice. They're both mentally fucked up in different but equal amounts, he genuinely gets upset that she kills people because she's so nice the rest of the time, and she's on the couch with him for the Downer Ending.
  • In Spawn, he has one with both the Devil, teaching him why the movie is an Anti-Role Model, and Bennie, introducing him to the former as a better assassin than a Ms. Fanservice.
  • They weren't at first, with Evilina leaving a suicidal Critic alive and him abusing her back, but ever since she moved to another state, Ghostbusters suggests they're okay, with her calling him to Squee over the 2016 movie.
• Villain Song:
  • Most, though not all, of the Top Eleven villain songs. The Nostalgia Critic defines it as "songs sung by or about the villain", so they don't all quite fit the trope.
  • Hyper's part of “Wishing This Shit Never Happened” in The Phantom of the Opera (2004) is a tragic version, singing that she wished she could go back to Critic being forced to have fun with her, and that she'll use coercion to make him hers.
• Villainy-Free Villain: His take on the antagonist doctor of Patch Adams.
  First we will heal patients... and then, the world! Mwahahahahahaha!
• Visual Pun:
  • In his The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter review, an awkward issue (suicide by one of the actors) is pointed out by... an elephant in the room. Who complains about how The Critic has been ignoring him.
  • Done again in his Ernest Scared Stupid review, where Douchey was caught in trap designed to capture trolls.
  • In his review of The Room (2003), he censors Johnny's ass with a donkey head.
  • Son of the Mask had a a terrified NuCritic locking himself in a closet and there is plenty more homophobia in the reboot when he'd been rapidly getting more bisexual before.
  • The review of Maximum Overdrive had foreshadowing — a number four lying right in the shadows.
  • In Christmas with the Kranks, Tamara has a camera on her head, in reference to her instagram name.
• Vocal Minority: Invoked in Ghostbusters, as the Priest of The Original is ridiculous about his love for the original, but even he's embarassed by the meninists.
• The Voice: Critic's mom (played by Rachel) has a line in "Dawn Of The Commercials", rubbing it in when Critic's upset that he's turned back into a Manchild failure.
  • Devil Boner takes Hyper on a date at the end of The Phantom of the Opera (2004) review, but we only see his car and hear his voice. Similarly, in Tamara's Velma cosplay video, we only hear him (and his Scooby Doo impression) over Hyper's phone.
• Vomit Discretion Shot:
  • In his Junior review, he ran to the bathroom and vomited in the toilet at the sight of baby Arnold. The vomiting occurred off-screen, though the sounds were heard.
  • When Malice is killing Danny Elfman in Alice in Wonderland (2010), Critic vomits just offscreen and wipes his mouth.
  • In the Donation Drive Spooning With Spoony 3, after finding out he got date raped again, he rushes off to throw up.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Occurred once during a scene in the Star Trek V: The Final Frontier review. The scene in question involved the Uhura fan-dance.

W

• Wacky Marriage Proposal: At the end of the Green Lantern (2011) review, Devil Boner accidentally refers to Hyper as his fiancee while beating on the Deadpool cosplayer who tried to touch her boobs. Having ruined the surprise and left the ring at home, he uses one of the maimed cosplayer's fingers as a makeshift ring to pop the question, to which she gleefully says yes.
• Wall of Weapons: The studio Doug and company film in has a big wall of swords and guns. Some of it can be seen in various Critic reboot episodes (as well as Behind the Scenes footage), and everyone's lampshaded that it looks intimidating, featuring weapons such as the G 36 C, MP 40, a Thompson Submachine Gun and a grenade launcher.
• invokedWangst: Played for laughs when he gets news that a friend of a very distant relative has just died.
  Critic: [crying] Feel bad for me!
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: In the Battlefield Earth review, the Nostalgia Critic decides he needs to "dumb himself down" to enjoy the movie properly, and starts hitting himself in the head with a hammer - but not before cutting to a cheerful "Please excuse this slight mental breakdown" card, with the music from "Holiday Clusterfuck" playing in the background.
• Weapon Twirling: Critic likes doing this with his gun, and most of the Christmas With The Kranks behind the scenes fight between Doug and Rob is Doug showing off how he can twirl a lightsaber.
• We Need a Distraction: In “The Best Avatar Episodes”, when Dante Basco is trying to kill Critic, he tells Malcolm and Tamara to dress up in Avatar costumes to distract him. Doesn't work, as Malcolm tries to protect Critic but can't, and Tamara has no idea of the show until the end.
• Weakness Turns Her On: The other TGWTG contributors like The Critic better when he's vulnerable. Spoony especially.
• Wham Episode: Has his own page.
• Wham Line:
  • In hindsight, “The Top 11 Scariest Nostalgic Moments” gave us “I used to have a Ninja Turtle, that I shot”, the first hint of many that his childhood was messed up.
  • In Nick-Coms, "granted, I didn't grow up as a girl… for long… I have a history." It might seem like a throwaway joke, but it was the start of a lot of Ambiguous Gender with him.
  • In Jurassic Park III: “we regret to inform you that your mother has just passed away”.
  • Played for laughs (though it comes back), but Malcolm revealing in The Smurfs that Critic had kidnapped him is one of those "every interaction he's had with Critic takes on a new meaning" moments.
  • 2007-Critic's line "I figured, if I could make them laugh, I could finally get them to like me, that's the only reason why I started doing this" in Christmas with the Kranks puts the entire show in an even sadder light.
  • A more uplifting one from Devil Boner in Green Lantern (2011) as he beats on a creepy Deadpool cosplayer: "This is what you get when you touch my fiancee!!!
• Wham Shot:
  • After dropping a lot of hints, finally confirming his parents were horrible in "Old vs New: Willy Wonka", showing a kindergarten picture of them as monsters tearing him apart.
  • The beginning of The Christmas Tree as it turns out that Critic is hallucinating and he didn't actually slam Malcolm against the fridge, marking the first time we see him as Unreliable Narrator.
  • Karl and Quinn miserably drinking in the bar at the end of The Wicker Man (2006). While it's not remarked on by anyone, least of all Critic, the Wham comes from the fact that they're there and alive at all.
  • Reality literally blowing up in The Monster Squad, which means everyone can go back to their own little worlds and Critic can be the sole Reality Warper.
  • Critic summoning his Reality Warper powers in Matrix Revolutions, with a copy of the Plot Hole in the air.
• invokedWhat Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: As noted by the Catchphrase "You know, for kids!" (Son of the Mask inspires the caption "A Family Movie" over some of the most Accidental Nightmare Fuel scenes)
• What Does She See in Him?:
  • He's so disgusted by Robin Williams' character in Flubber missing his wedding three times, that he suggests with all seriousness to his fiancee that she go Loreena Bobbit on his ass.
  • While Elisa and Nella try their very best to, uh, help her out, he's rather wary of the Chick's craziness over Todd.
  • Even aside from Loving a Shadow, Hyper has never explained what she actually finds appealing about Critic other than he's pretty and dresses nice. The bandcamp version of “Wishing This Shit Never Happened” adds that he was her favorite critic, and watching him rip bad movies made her life better, so she decided she loved him without actually knowing him at all.
  • Critic asks this of Hyper and Devil Boner in Cinderella Old vs New, though he's not jealous, just finds them even more irritating as a pair. At her wedding, he's the only one who doesn't offer congratulations and says all they are is a bad pun, which isn't true but justifiable for him to think.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Critic points out Death is still in the real world at the end of Last Action Hero.
  • A running gag in his review of Star Trek: Insurrection is his preoccupation with figuring out who was the Bolian from the beginning of the film.
    Critic: Who are you, blue man?
  • In his "Top 11 Dumbest Lord of the Rings Moments" video, #2 is "Saru-who?" because he really disliked how there was no resolution regarding Saruman in the theatrical version. Especially because it was filmed and would have gone in the beginning of the movie.
  • With Critic killing himself with the Plot Hole, and the Retcon of him coming back, one wonders if old Critic even exists anymore. He certainly hasn't appeared or even been mentioned in revival.
  • Clone Critic from The Sixth Day review is either being used as original Critic's Sex Slave or That Sci-Fi Guy's maid.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Rachel first gets the honors, sniding in The Shining review that she wished she could say he used to be so nice to her, but that's never been the case.
  • In The Guyver, when he's insulting the movie and Sage for liking it, Sage finally has enough and tells him to shut up because he just wanted to have some fun riffing on a bad movie and all Critic has done is insult him. Sadly it doesn't get better from there and they argue before Sage tells him to leave.
  • Snob had no patience with Critic's Drunk with Power Meta Guy shtick in Sharknado, and reminds him that he (Snob) is only asking for his (Critic's) help because it's in the script.
  • Despite being in pain and it just making him abuse her more, Tamara keeps calling out Critic in ''We Wish You A Turtles Christmas” for being a prick who destroyed the world.
• What Were You Thinking?: A common reaction by the Critic. For example, after realizing that Kazaam was a slave to a little white kid, he blurts loudly, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!"
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Parodied in the Warriors of Virtue and Mr. Nanny reviews, plus in the third compilation of old commercials, in which we learn what happened to Zack, the self-proclaimed LEGO Maniac.
• What Were They Selling Again?: Both for selling the indiegogo, which even Rob complained was too interested in being creepy than actually giving information, and for MikeJ's Fantastic Storytelling card game at the end of the Sam and Max editorial, which was lampshaded with a narrator asking what he just watched.
• What You Are in the Dark: In The Monster Squad, Tamara gets told she'll save the guys in the third act and they treat her terribly so she could have just left them to getting depressed, but she defeats reality anyway. She still doesn't get respect though.
• White-and-Grey Morality: The Nerd/Critic rivalry, mostly for how pathetically meaningless it was. Even during the fighting they had moments of being nice to each other. Doug's later writings tuned out the white, though.
• White Guilt: Discussed in "Is Whitewashing Still A Thing", as he says even though we've probably all let some sort of whitewashing slide for our benefit, you should channel your guilt into using media to make things more equal.
  • Name-dropped by Critic in Suicide Squad (2016) when he says he'll disable the Native American's chip out of white guilt.
  • Malcolm uses Critic's white guilt after Important Black Movies (12 Years A Slave/Selma etc) to get himself dates afterwards.
• White Male Lead: Addressed in the True Grit Old vs New. He calls Maddy the lead (as you'd think it would be obvious) and tells The Dude off when he starts whining.
  Critic: Best supporting character, my ass.
  • He has zero sympathy for the main character's problems in Airborne, as high school taught him it was incredibly hard to be an athletic white Pretty Boy.
• White Like Me: Malcolm dons this to get away from a crazed Critic in The Shining Mini-series review. When he gets it on, he seems to be a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
• White Mask of Doom: Given the the film, it's only fitting that they appear on the respective editorial's title card. Still creepy and uncomfortable though.
• White Sheep: Judging by what he's said, his grandfather (the one that called himself Vanessa, not the one that sounds like the villain in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and possibly his great aunt were the only nice people in his nightmare of a family. Shame they're both deceased.
• White Void Room: The purgatory Critic goes to in Scooby-Doo, where Roger resides. Despite the Hell Is That Noise drone on the soundtrack and Orlando's Slasher Smile, when Critic saves everything (again) it's actually rather friendly in the end.
• Where Did We Go Wrong?: Referenced in the RAD review, as another one of those Acting for Two conversations. Mama Critic asks if Critic got her any Burger King, when he says no, she drama queens about how he was a mistake. Cue wibble.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Fantastic Four. Critic in normal clothes narrates the Framing Device (he, Tamara and Malcolm became smug supers over the weekend) but the review is placed when they had the powers.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The review of Scooby-Doo involves a past, present and future version of the Critic teaming up to review the movie with the universe in the balance, reminiscent of the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, complete with a homage to the final scene of the series where Picard joins the Bridge Officer Poker Night for the first time.
  • Several clipless reviews, particularly Hocus Pocus, Mad Max: Fury Road, and The Phantom of the Opera (2004) use this to convey the plot of the film through the story of the review rather than straight up talking about it.
  • The review of The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle references the plot of Amadeus.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Doug, Tamera, and Malcolm have all played different genders before, they never play it as anything weird and they lampshade it constantly.
• Who Names Their Kid "Wheeler"?
• Who's on First?:
  • NC makes an Abbott and Costello routine out of the moment in Super Mario Bros. (1993) where it shows that Mario and Luigi's last name is Mario.
  • Spliced in footage from the actual bit during his review of Hook.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: In The Matrix, when he finds out the names of “people who don't like the film” are clearly just Malcolm and Tamara in leather and snides this, Tamara reminds him that he was the one who wrote it.
• Wild Teen Party: In Blair Witch II, he mentions the scene where they all get drunk as capturing his well-known feeling of being the only sober person at a party and increasingly hating everyone else.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: The Nostalgia Critic is often criticized for not offering any. This is for comedic purposes.
• Wine Is Classy: Subverted in the Critic Tank Shark Jumping episode, as Critic has a sip of wine and then immediately spits it back out.
• With Lyrics:
  • Critic's take on Double Dare which predated Doug's Theme Lyrics / Songs that Don't Need Lyrics but I Added Them Anyway. HA!
  • Suburban Commando: The Critic sings "Rip-off, this is a rip-off, this is a rip-off, are you kidding?" to the Star Wars music.
    • In the Alone in the Dark (2005) review, Spoony and Linkara use the same music to sing, "Bor-ing! This is-so boring! This is-so boring! Get to the show!" when confronted with the Wall of Text opening.
  • Sings about Spock's death to the tune of "Amazing Grace" in his "Top 11 Saddest Moments".
  • In a scene briefly ripping off E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, he sings to that films theme "ET's a much better movie..."
• A Wizard Did It: Whenever something happens for no particular reason in Moonwalker, the Nostalgia Critic points out that it is happening because "Jackson wills it!"
• The Woobie: Invoked. He feels incredibly sorry for the abused slave robot in Doug's First Movie.
  • Lampshaded in 'Why is Loki So Hot?': "Hey, how come I'm in that trope?!" although he's not
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Snob in Bloodrayne, as he kills a vampire, beheaded a load of corpses, stabbed a woman through her chest and nobody notices or cares that he needs help, not even the episode does as his 'plot' being dropped halfway through.
  Snob: What the hell is wrong with everyone?
• Would Hit a Girl: Both In-Universe and in a meta sense Doug Walker/The Critic have been very clear that they believe comedies should be based around suffering, and that it's sexist when comedy writers are reluctant to let women suffer. Appropriately, Tamara gets at least as much abuse from the Critic as Malcolm, sometimes even more. Among other things she's had her spine removed, and been fed to zombified Malcolm.
• Women Are Wiser: Twisted and subverted in “The Princess Diaries 2”, where Hyper Fangirl manages to keep Critic around (and almost giving it up) by pandering to all the stereotypical male things (like violence and porn) his boner would like, but she screws up when Benny finds a Transformers movie and she breaks down not knowing what Critic actually enjoys.
  • Played straight when Tamara's the one to point out in The Monster Squad that Critic and the others aren't boys, they're men in their thirties having mid-life-crises. In Bridge to Terabithia, Rachel gets frustrated too at Critic and Malcolm being manchildren who want to relive their childhoods.
• Working with the Ex: Doug's ex Dayna has appeared in his videos several times, and Hyper's Big Fancy House is actually hers.
• World Gone Mad: Rl Malcolm once described the reboot universe as such, what with all the “illusion” Arc Words and Through the Eyes of Madness. Possibly alluded to in The Monster Squad, where Critic is terrified of a reality monster's intrusion and Tamara outright destroys the thing.
• World of Ham: The Critic by himself was already hammy. Then he started having guests, and most are equally overblown. Rob's Santa Christ, and basically everyone played by Malcolm and Rachel qualify.
• World of Weirdness: Set in the Reviewaverse, so basically in a whole universe of weirdness. And boy, does it show how weird it can get.
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!: Called The Star Wars Holiday Special "the WORST CHRISTMAS SPECIAL EVER" until it was usurped by The Christmas Tree.
• Writer on Board: Ever since the reboot, it's been repeated subtly and not about how children should be treated with respect, creativity should be in every kids' movie and how Executives don't know what children want and deserve to be punished. See The Cat in the Hat and The Lorax (2012) reviews for prime examples.
• Writers Cannot Do Math:
  • In the End of Days review: 9+9+9=21? Even he admitted that was a massive failure on his part.
  • An in-universe example: He missed a large section of the hidden message in The Angry Video Game Nerd's forum post because he "Forgot to carry the 1."
  • In The Force Awakens review, when asking whether the Jedi Menorah has 9 lightsabers in a non-sarcastic tone, they cut to one that has 7.
  • The Critic says The Angry Birds Movie came out 9 years after the game. The game was released in 2009, the movie in 2016— a 7-year gap.

Y

• Yet Another Christmas Carol: Defied. He refuses to do one despite cajoling from the Ghost of Christmas Future.
• Yoko Oh No: Referenced by Rachel in a Q&A video, as she says when she has a new boyfriend that she wants to introduce to the internet, he'll probably dump her because of the reaction.
• You Are Not Ready: The Critic thought that the Captain Planet episode about AIDS shouldn't have played out.
• You Bastard!:
  • In his video game review for the DVD, he angrily (and quite tearfully) yells at the large portion of the audience who just want to see him suffer. It's actually a surprise that it took him so long.
    Critic: Because that's all you want to see isn't it? You just wanna see me angry! Dance monkey dance!
  • And in his review of Cop and a Half, he calls us all sick pigs for wanting him to suffer through it.
  • A slightly creepy Freeze-Frame Bonus one happens in the review of Once Upon A Forest. The second porn visit is a sex trafficking site that includes a fifteen year old girl. Knowing that he's a feminist Papa Wolf who views his audience as pretty sadistic, you gotta wonder what he's trying to say.
  • In the introduction to his review of Doug's First Movie, he calls out his fans for constantly requesting him to review the movie despite his hatred of everything relating to the show.
  • The Scooby-Doo use of this is probably the most guilt-inducing. Just read:
    Critic: Well I'll tell you who that little fuckshit is, he's the Nostalgia Critic! He remembers it so you don't fucking have to! Even though every fucking day he exists, he wishes he didn't have to, he wishes he didn't have to do this bullshit to make you watch and get good ratings! And why does it happen? Why do you keep coming back? Because you're fucking sick and I'm fucking stupid.
  • The way he does fanservice in reboot. For just one example; sure, Tamara will beat him in the crotch and it'll be uncomfortably fetishy, but he'll outright say later that people just want him to squirm for views and he's only doing it because he needs those views. So you get the pain you're there for, but he also thinks you're an asshole.
  • Malcolm gets on it in the Hyper Fangirl's second vlog, playing Tacoma who had half of his face burned off all because people couldn't deal with Demo Reel.
  • In the “Ghost Rider 2” review, the beginning rant is how he's only pandering to his Entitled Bastard fandom because they won't stop asking him.
  • In a facebook version, Doug thinks people will be nasty enough to think it's poetic justice that he was really sick in Osmosis Jones.
  • In the review of his home movies, Black Willy Wonka mind rapes Critic to make him review them, and he's doing this for you.
  • Light at the end of Why Do Good Directors Go Bad, when he tells us not to worry, he won't be as fair to Shyamalan the rest of the month, like we'd get worried at the idea of him not accentuating the negative.
  • Going with what Doug said in the Awesome Comics review about how even if he hated the movie, he'd still love that little girls enjoy it, the ending of the Ghostbusters review has Critic use Evilina's excitement about the movie to make a point to the meninists (which represent the MRA portion of his fanbase).
  • Doubling as hand biting humour, he stepfords under Restraining Bolt that he needs to hide his mental illness to be "marketable" and "not freak out the nice people at home".
• You Can Leave Your Hat On: In a DVD extra, the Critic stripteases out of his wet Ghostbusters uniform while Rob hums stripper music. He's done plenty of jokey flirty stripteases for con audiences as well.
• You Can't Fight Fate:
  • Despite cooing to Doug in “The Review Must Go On” that them essentially being together is “destiny”, he talks about how he finds this idea really scary in the Unbreakable editorial.
  • In the background track Hyper Fangirl, she says she'll win his heart “because it's destiny”, screw the fact that he doesn't want her.
• You Go, Girl!: In the “Top 11 Worst Avatar Episodes”, he explains his thought processes in not liking this trope (that it makes the girl into a statistic is the main reason) but also shows his mixed feelings on not liking it, realizing that he might only think it's preachy because he hasn't suffered misogyny, and there are plenty of bigoted douchebags out there who make it necessary.
• You Have Failed Me: The Critic does this to a behind-the-scenes guy in the first Top 11 Nostalgic F*ck Ups.
• You Keep Using That Word:
  • To the pleasure of a certain part of his fanbase, he completely got the difference between "sex" and "gender" in the Patch Adams review when voicing his disgust about the fact they gave no respect whatsoever to the murdered male friend by making him a female love interest.
  • Gets a little confusing in Alien: Resurrection, as Critic 1 assumes Critic 2 is racist because he can't accept a black guy has died in a horror movie and Critic 2 snarks back that Critic 1 clearly doesn't know what word means.
  • Mocked the “clipless aren’t reviews” people in Kranks, as he points out in a no shit way that he’s still doing commentary and analysis, just more visually.
• You Need to Get Laid: Ernest Saves Christmas, word for word: "You need to get laid, Ernest."
  • As well as the whole movie in Sidekicks.
• You Put the "X" in "XY": In Pagemaster, he says the character Adventure (a talking book, played by Patrick Stewart) puts "the 'dick' into 'dictionary'".
• You Should Have Died Instead: The Critic calls out the boy protagonist in Alaska saying this to his dad about his mom dying, and wishes he would spontaneously combust once he stormed off to his room.
• Your Head A-Splode: Lady Tremaine's stare does this to the Critic. It's also what would happen if John Moschitta (The Micro Machines commercials guy) recorded audio books.
• Your Mind Makes It Real:
  • In Pearl Harbor, Peter Soulless was just a figment of Critic's imagination as he was thinking how Michael Bay came to realize he belonged in action, not romance. In The Cat in the Hat, he's the Big Bad who gets Dragged Off to Hell.
  • In The Last Airbender earthbender rant, before he even realizes Shya-amon (who literally bends out talent) is a thing, he calls Shyamalan “a sucker of talent and good”. Either that's a ridiculously lucky Tempting Fate/Ass Pull foreshadowing moment, or this trope is in play. Explicit at the end though, where because Critic's speech gets lampshaded as being a failure, he agrees that it is, namedrops the Deus ex Machina trope and makes Avatar Aang defeat Shya instead.
  • When Critic watches a skit done by Malcolm in Alice in Wonderland (2010), he says “doesn't that guy look familiar” and 'Malcolm' instantly turns into Carrot Juice.
  • Other than the Reality Warper power at the end of the month, he tells Schmuck to “blow up in a stupid effect” and Schmuck does. Though he's alive again next episode.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Referenced his frequent kidnapping in Evil Dead: Old vs New by saying a plumber is constantly looking for him.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Lampshaded in Planet of the Apes (2001) with an astronaut woman played by Tamara, and Critic asks where character Tamara is, and the astronaut waves her gun around giving him a “duh” look. invoked
  • While various characters played by Malcolm, Tamara and Rachel can either go unnoticed as looking like the same people, every so often there'll be Recursive Canon and in Alice in Wonderland (2010), Critic lampshades that Malcolm and Carrot Juice might the same.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Twice in Mad Max: Fury Road:
  • The meninists take Critic's wariness of Hyper out of context and congratulate him on "telling those feminazis off". Critic groans in disgust.
  • They also fanboy over Devil Boner, calling him the manliest man-god of men, and while he's pleased at first, is very quickly disgusted when he finds out what they're like.
• Your Vampires Suck: During The Care Bears Movie, the Critic mocks Nicholas by saying that he's become a vampire. Not one of those sparkling ones, though, they totally suck ass.
• Yo Yo Plot Point: If you thought he was over all his job problems in the first commercial special, you'd be wrong. Perhaps justified, as singing ain't exactly proper therapy. Not so justified in Son of the Mask and beyond, as Scooby Doo and To Boldly Flee were all about Critic spanking his inner moppet job issues and getting a job he liked; helping people with the plothole.

---