Todd In The Shadows / Tropes J to M

This page covers tropes in Todd in the Shadows.

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to F | Tropes G to I | Tropes J to M | Tropes N to P | Tropes Q to S | Tropes T to V | Tropes W to Z

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• Jaw Drop:
  • Happens twice in "Deuces"
    • The oral sex reference, preceding his Shower of Angst
    • The line about Ike Turner
  • Happens in "The Time (Dirty Bit)" when the "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" sample is cut off by a electronica beat.
• Jeopardy! Thinking Music: Used in the "Replay" review when he tries to figure out how to pronounce "Iyaz", then again in the "The Time (Dirty Bit)" review when trying to figure out what they plan to rhyme with "maggots".
• Joke and Receive: During his "Blurred Lines" review, Todd states that the song samples "Got to Give it Up". About a year and a half later, Robin Thicke and Pharrell would be indicted on plagarizing "Got to Give it Up".
• Just a Kid: Todd calls Ariana Grande's brags about being a Sex Goddess in "Bang Bang" "cute", likening it to a little girl wearing her mom's makeup. She's 21, but Todd finds her youthful looks and The Cutie persona just make her seem too young—not in a jail-bait kind of way but like an Adorably Precocious Child.
• Just Eat Gilligan: One of his complaints about "Telephone".
  • He also composes, on the spot, a similarly toned song, "Itchy Leg".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:invoked Todd points out that he was lucky to find whatever footage he could use for his review of "Monster Mash", saying that the movie that Bobby Pickett had a major appearance in is extremely difficult to find on any media format, and that his Boris Karloff impression was so spot on, that Boris himself even once sang the song, but any video footage of that has been long lost to history.
  • Discussed during his OHW of "Disco Duck", talking about how odd it is that he is still able to find so much performance footage of Rick Dees, including his failed follow-up. And acknowledges that he would have covered the Looking Glass's "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" by now if he could find any footage of them.
• Last-Second Word Swap: "I love beating Chris Brown as much as he likes beating... eggs for his famous homestyle breakfast"
  • A more subtle one, from the same review: "In February of 2009, the pop world was shocked when rising R&B superstar Chris Brown viciously and brutally assaulted his...chances for a long term career"
  • Subverted, in "Top 10 of 2011". "If there's a single person in the universe who doesn't like this song (Fuck You by Cee Lo Green), I haven't met them and I don't care to. But if you're out there, whoever you are, wherever you are... I disagree with your opinions. [beat] And fuck you."
• Large Ham: Cinemadonna gave us two examples: Dave or "Dasheill" from A Certain Sacrifice is a bad acting example of this trope. Dangerous Game gives a narm-y example in the character of Francis Burns, with Todd comparing him to Tommy Wiseau in the end.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: "Back In Time" by Pitbull was so unbelievably horrible that he asks J to help him out and neuralizes his mind to make him forget that he was even reviewing the song.
• Les Yay: invoked Even Todd notices the subtext between Miley and Lily in Hannah Montana: The Movie.
  • Ariana Grande sings "Shake what yo mama gave ya." He takes as a sign that her and Jessie J might be trying to hit on each other.
• Let's See YOU Do Better!: In what probably is a parody, Todd tries to make a song with an acoustic guitar. Epic Fail ensues, particularly for the thing being out of tune, and he gives up saying "guitar isn't my instrument".
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Todd's reaction to St. Elmo's Fire (the movie, not the song).
• LGBT Awakening: Inverted. He described "Born to Run" as the song that caused most straight guys to realize they're straight, hence why he was so baffled that Frankie Goes to Hollywood, one of the most Camp Gay bands of The '80s, decided to cover it on their appearance on Saturday Night Live.
• Limited Sound Effects: Used to complain about repetitive / overtly simple beats. Example, describing the sound of Alicia Keys' "No One"
  Todd: Bash, thud, thud, thud, bash, thud, thud, thud, bash, thud, thud, thud, bash, thud, bash, bash, HONK!... HONK!
• Line-of-Sight Name: 70's rock band Wild Cherry named themselves after a box of Luden's cough drops and never bothered to change it.
• List Song: Discussed in the "Body Like a Back Road" episode, where he says that contemporary Country Music songs praising rural life have " devolved into just lists of things". He then plays clips of "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16", "Chicken Fried", and "American Kids" as examples.
  Todd: This stuff is barely even songs anymore. It's more like a game of I Spy during a road trip in the middle of nowhere.
• Literal-Minded: He's been accused of this, and discusses it in "E.T.". Then he tries to see it as "falling in love with a let's say, black, guy" instead of Boldly Coming... making Kanye's guest spot even worse! (see Unfortunate Implications below)
• Losing Horns: Used in the "Black and Yellow" review when he points out that the song was used as an anthem for the Pittsburgh Steelers, but that they lost.
  • In "Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2020", he says the Jawsh 685 sample on Jason Derulo's "Savage Love" reminds him of this.
• Loud of War: In the intro to "Club Can't Handle Me", the Critic threatens Todd with the dreaded "Hoedown Throwdown" if he didn't get back to reviewing music.
• Love It or Hate It: This is how he feels about The Black Eyed Peas. If they did a good song in his opinion, he loves it. If he doesn't like it, he really doesn't like it. invoked
• Lyrical Dissonance: He calls this on Stephen Stills' "Love The One You're With".
  • And says that "We Can't Stop" is the most depressing party song ever.
  • "Pompeii", an epic and upbeat song with a catchy choir... whose lyrics are told from the point of view of two victims of the Vesuvius eruption.
  • "Timothy" by the Buoys (and written by Rupert Holmes, the "Piña Colada Song" guy), as documented on One Hit Wonderland, is an upbeat-sounding pop rock song about three miners (Timothy, Joe, and the narrator) trapped in a cave-in. As hunger sets in, the narrator blacks out; when he comes to, he and Joe have been rescued, his stomach is "as full as it can be," and Timothy is nowhere to be found. Yeah...
    Todd: (genuinely horrified) They ate him... They ate Timothy... This was a Top 40 hit!
• Madonna-Whore Complex: He discusses this mentality when reviewing "Sexy Bitch", and compares it with Akon's alternate viewpoint: "Bitch-Whore Complex". Or is that "Chick"?
• Manipulative Editing: Played for laughs: he will often have the target of the review (or another celebrity) carry out a punchline or two.
• Meaningful Name: When covering the Carpenters' Passage on Trainwreckords, he got a bit of mileage out of the fact that their cover of "B'wana She No Home", an upbeat jazz number in which the singer threatens to have her housekeeper deported back to Ecuador if she doesn't follow her orders exactly, is sung by somebody literally named Karen, especially given that the sleazy satire of the original version by Michael Franks seems to have been scrubbed out.
• Medium Awareness: Apparently he can see the subtitles on-screen.
  Todd: Fix that.
• Meet the New Boss: Invoked and quoted in the Top 10 Best Pop Songs Of 2012 when he celebrates having no Katy Perry songs on the list that year and declares the end of her reign... and lists a Ke$ha song instead.
• The Mentor: Kyle Kallgren often plays this role when doing cameos, whether it's chewing Todd out for abandoning "Sexy And I Know It", advising him to reach deep inside himself and pull out what he really needs to say (advice that ended in a video about groin shots, but points for trying), or talking him through his breakdown at the beginning of his 2013 Top 10 Best video.
• Memetic Loser: Invoked in the Trainwreckords episode on Ringo the 4th by Ringo Starr. Todd seems to go with the popular consensus of calling him the least talented Beatle, at least songwriting-wise. However, he states that Ringo's entire charm was being an underdog, pointing out how Ringo himself was aware of his memetic loser status and even plays into it.
• Metaphorgotten: He points out that the metaphors in "Carry Out", "Eenie Meenie" and "Your Love Is My Drug" are extended to the point where they stop making sense.
  • Todd himself falls victim to it in his "Scream and Shout" review.
    Todd: Going from those other bands to this is like going from eating at the Ritz to chewing on some disgusting Hungry Man TV dinner. Even for processed frozen food, that stuff's not good. You sure you don't wanna get, like, the Boston Market dinners or the Stouffer's? I mean, it's right there next to it. Why the hell would you want that Hungry Man crap?! 'Cause it comes with a brownie? You realize when you open it, the corn is just gonna have slopped over onto the brownie. That's just gross! [Beat.] Sorry, I bought some groceries the other day I regret.
• Mind Screw: His reaction to the music videos to "Bad Romance", "Alejandro" and "S&M".
• Misplaced Accent: In the Trainwreckords episode on Be Here Now, he puts on a Cockney accent when impersonating the Gallagher brothers...who are from Manchester.
• Mixed Metaphor: He criticizes "Holy Grail" for this, particularly the line that conflates the "cup runneth over" metaphor from Psalm 23 with the Holy Grail.
• Moment of Awesome: Invoked by Todd, who considers the fact that he has just successfully transcribed "Whip My Hair" to piano an achievement comparable to mastering the classic symphonies.
  • In a commentary, he admitted that when he was playing it, he actually was using information he found on the Internet. He originally did figure it out by ear, but when it came time to do the review, he had forgotten how.
• Mondegreen Gag: Often donein his reviews.
  • Ever heard of "Yellow Is My Drug" by Kesha? The song she did with Coldplay?
  • "I'm a bee! I'm a bee! I'm a I'm a I'm a bee!"
    Todd: You're thinking it, I'm thinking it, Vice President Biden is thinking it.
  • Eenie meenie miney mo lava...?
  • Throw my head on a plate for ya!
  • One, two, three, why don't me, you, and me...
    Todd: How many Britneys are there in this equation?!
  • Subverted on "Club Can't Handle Me". The lyrics are so incoherent that he looks them up, only to find that they are the lyrics proper.
  • He actually called The Black Eyed Peas out on this during "The Time", on the grounds that they'd screwed up a line from the source material.
  • Ass, ass, ass and ham, ham, ham...
  • Any attempt before finding out Kanye is singing "I'm tryin' to bathe my ape in your Milky Way".
  • Likewise, the opening line of Ne-Yo's chorus in "Give Me Everything" (which he finds shocking, as Pitbull is supposed to be The Unintelligible there!).
  • Becomes a Running Gag in Flo Rida's "Whistle". Todd says that he's checked numerous lyric websites, and almost all of them have different lyrics because none of them can figure out what he's actually saying.
  • Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball": "All I wanted was to break you off / all you ever did was raaaape me".
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The "Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 2010" ends with Todd drunk dialing and sobbing on the phone to Lupa only for it to be a very confused and not entirely upset with this turn of events LordKaT on the other line.
  • In "Give Me Everything", he says Ne-Yo is too depressive for such a party song. (to drive his point home, he even plays other songs by him... and starts to cheer after "So Sick"!)
  • In "Lighters", cutting from Eminem's angry verses to Bruno Mars' cheery and triumphant chorus. (even asking if Em listened to Mars' parts before writing...)
  • Todd puts two Rihanna songs in his Worst list of 2012, besides saying he is sick of her, and mentions Drake as a runner up that almost made on the list. Guess which are the two artists that made the top of Best of 2012, where he goes from being bored or disgusted by them in the worst to having no words to describe how much he admires the top song.
  • He goes straight from discussing how Alex Clare's "Too Close" helped him understand the merit of dubstep in a pop context, to dismissing the song as garbage.
  • Todd enjoys the upbeat, cheerful, almost comical monk chanting heard throughout all of Bastille's "Pompeii", but spends the review trying to make sense of how the music and lyrics fit into the theme with everything that the city of Pompeii and its destruction have been known for. First he looks up the lead singer's interpretation of the fears of stasis, and one's life no longer going anywhere. Basically, considering the possibilities of how to get your life out of a rut and move on. Then he reads an article that says the lyrics are being spoken between two corpses. The actual victims of the Pompeii disasters. The mood of the review goes south really fast.... then immediately changes right back to happy again with the chanting.
  • In the opening of his Worst Hit Songs of 2014 video, he talks about how he tried to be more positive with his reviews that year after people told him that they felt he had been getting too negative in 2013 and hard to watch. He claims he succeeded, but his mood changes quick.
    Todd: Yeah, see, we have fun, don't we? No, no, I did enjoy reviewing music this year more than I did the year before, and I'm glad and I think it was...more positive to watch, and I want some goddamn credit for that because 2014 was even worse!
  • The Weeknd invoking The Hills Have Eyes (1977) in his cheating song sends Todd flying off his stool.
    Todd: That's like if Rihanna wrote her song about S&M and started singing about Leatherface!
  • In the One-Hit Wonderland video about "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Todd sadly discusses lead singer Holly Johnson going public with his AIDS diagnosis in 1993, and bows his head in a moment of silence...before promptly informing viewers that Johnson is alive and well and once again performing in 2024.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song: In his "Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2021", Todd notes that Tate McRae's "You Broke Me First" sounds like its own movie trailer cover version.
• Motif Merger: Todd does his "playing the reviewed song" intro whenever crossing over with other reviewers from That Guy With The Glasses. For example, he plays Film Brain's "Ready to Roll" over the BMB opening sequence, "It Wasn't Me" after he and The Rap Critic accept to review the song, and "I'm Not a Girl Not Yet a Woman" when he and The Nostalgia Chick review Crossroads (2002) (though the Chick decides to join him at the piano).
• Moving the Goalposts: He initially refuses to do a review of PSY's "Gangnam Style" because it's "just a stupid YouTube meme" and he only reviews songs that chart on Billboards... before it's revealed that it charted at #2 on Billboard Hot 100. He then calls that a fluke and says that a real song would get radio airtime. When it's shown that not only does it have airtime, but PSY has done live performances of it on American talk shows, Todd is left floundering for reasons not to review it before giving up and reviewing it anyway.
• Music Is Politics: Chumbawamba's entire existence had been to promote true anarchy and defy this trope in almost every way they possibly could. Todd points out that after EMI signed them on (a company that they themselves railed against with an album called Fuck EMI back in the 80's,) they did everything they could to remain popular while still doing what they want, even going so far as to deliberately make sure that their follow-up album after their hit single "Tubthumping" tanked, and going on TV talk shows and encouraging people to shoplift their albums and whatnot.
• Music Video Overshadowing: Todd discusses it in the One Hit Wonderland Episode for "Here It Goes Again" by OK Go, whose music video consists of a synchronized routine done by the band members on treadmills. Todd notes that while most bands receive more plays on Spotify than YouTube, the inverse is true (due to them creating similar, viral-type videos). Todd notes that this makes them more similar to a film production company than a band.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg / Especially Zoidberg: Todd treats Young Money's "Gudda Gudda" in this fashion - separate from the group as a whole, but still the worst out of all assembled.
• My Greatest Failure: Todd brings it up when he reviews Kilroy Was Here and explains how he doesn't like Styx.
  Todd: I don't like Styx. It's part of the music critic exam, you can't be a critic and like Styx. My little brother likes Styx. He's seen them in concert like, twice, he's got their t-shirts... I failed him.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: To Chris Brown.

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