Trivia / Brows Held High

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • His episode on A Midsummer Night's Cream (the porn parody of A Midsummer Night's Dream) is practically a public apology for his earlier episode on The Girlfriend Experience. Kyle (an outspoken progressive feminist) apparently deeply regrets his mockery of pornstar Sasha Grey's acting ability in The Girlfriend Experience, not to mention a few lines in his review that could be construed as slut-shaming. ^note  The video was made early in his career, when he often indulged in Alter-Ego Acting as a pompous Insufferable Genius In the latter review, he tries (read: tries) to avoid making an Obligatory Joke about pornstars being horrible at acting, acknowledging that they work in a tough industry and deserve just as much respect as anyone else.
  • When it became clear that his political perspective on films was taking up more time in his videos than actually discussing the movies they were about, Kyle started the sub-series Cinema Antifa, specifically dedicated to analyzing movies from a political viewpoint (in this case, depictions of fascism and how they relate to real-life discussions of them) while also occasionally admitting that neither he nor the viewer needed to pretend that these subjects were fun to discuss. Tragically, it ended up being for naught, as the videos earned him so much bullying from fascist apologists that he was forced to take them down and cancel the series.
• Bury Your Art:
  • Kyle's largely turned against his pre-Melancholia reviews, feeling he was trying too hard to be funny over being informative. As such, many of them on Channel Awesome had disclaimers saying that the video is "a work of satire and does not reflect the critical opinions of the author". At the beginning of the Taxidermia review, Kyle mentions that he's been hesitant to upload his older episodes to his YouTube channel, since the show has moved away from being a straight Caustic Critic show into more analytical ground, and those early episodes don't reflect that. Save for his episode on Kenneth Branagh, most of them were not imported to his YouTube channel when it became his main platform.
  • After both episodes of his "Cinema Antifa" series on Casablanca and Triumph of the Will were subjected to endless pestering by fascism apologists, Kyle made both videos private and declared the series a mistake. The stealth pilot episode on To Be or Not to Be is still up, however.
  • Kyle's video on The Color of Pomegranates was removed after he received a scathing retort to his dismissal of the movie as a meaningless Mind Screw and his description of Sergei Parajanov as "some creepy guy" in light of his sexual assault charges. Said reply pointed out that Prajanov was a bisexual man and opponent of Soviet censorship whose charges were likely fabricated by the government to persecute him, and that the movie was explicit in its symbolic portrayal of Armenia's dying culture and history as a result of The Armenian Genocide and years of Soviet occupation, with all of this being explained in a companion documentary accompanying the film that Kyle likely neglected to watch. Kyle ended up pinning a particularly thorough comment documenting the criticisms, responded that he was genuinely sorry for the way he ended up portraying Parajanov in the essay, and then eventually deleted the video altogether.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • He sings most of the review of The Man Who Fell to Earth, to the tune of various David Bowie songs, along with The Nostalgia Chick, Todd in the Shadows, Lupa and JewWario.
  • He also has one of the best solos in The Nostalgia Chick's Les Misérables review.
  • Oancitizen opens the Channel Awesome Holiday Greetings with a one-person quartet choir.
  • Teased in To Boldly Flee, where he desperately wants to show off his singing talent, but doing so would blow his cover as a mute.
  • Likewise in The Nostalgia Critic's review of Moulin Rouge!, where he gets really angry to find that he wasn't invited to sing in their musical review.
  • After not being allowed to sing became something of a running joke ("It is literally the only character trait that Doug has ever written for me!"), his character was justifiably smug about being prominently featured in the Nostalgia Critic's Les Misérables (2012) review.
    Oancitizen: [to the tune of "At The End of the Day"] I might have known the cat had claws, I might have known the bitch could bite, I might have guessed your singing secret—
    Linkara: Okay, if you're going to insult me, don't do it in song.
    Oancitizen: Fine. I'll just say it's my time to shine and shut the door on you. [Does so.]
  • He decided to make his review of Beauty and the Beast a musical, parodying the Disney version despite it being mentioned that's not the one he's reviewing.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: In his video on Guy Ritchie's Revolver (2005), he refers to Vincent Pastore at one point as "Sal from The Sopranos". While Pastore's character in The Sopranos is legally named "Salvatore Bonpensiero", nobody in the main cast calls him "Sal"; he always goes by his Mob nickname "Big Pussy", or just plain "Pussy" for short.^note  It's "Pussy" as in "Pussycat", since he got his start as a cat burglar.
  • He claims The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is about an alien coming to Earth and become corrupted by human vice. However, according to David Bowie to himself, it's about a rock star who is Touched by Vorlons and attempt give people hope with his music but ends up falling victim to Acquired Situational Narcissism before being killed.
• Corpsing: He tries valiantly, but The Cinema Snob cannot keep a straight face when Kyle refers to Coriolanus as "Gloryhole Anus".
• Creator Backlash:
  • His moniker. As of the Mister Lonely review, he's dropped it from the title sequence and goes by just his real name.
  • When he posted the old review of The Girlfriend Experience on TGWTG, some comments came in, which he agreed with about the review coming off as Slut-Shaming, and he contemplated removing the review altogether. He did say the intent wasn't to mock Sasha Grey for her adult film work, but the message he meant didn't come across clearly.
  • Kyle's expressed regret about his Primer review, feeling he was way too hard on the film.
  • He also turned against the Spring Breakers episode just a day after its release, admitting it wasn't his best work. While he considered doing a follow-up video to it, Kyle eventually decided on just covering those aspects next time he reviews a Korine film.
  • He's called his review of The Man Who Fell to Earth a "an embarrassing poorly mixed vanity project piggybacking off of a true artist's talents."
  • He came to regret his stated goal of getting "people in nerd culture to explore highbrow culture", due to toxicity from the former mixing with snobbery from the latter.
• Fandom Nod: The Origin of Escargoancitizen, a live-action fan fic about Oancitizen turning into a snail, which was written In the Style of Uzumaki. Escargoancitizen has also made appearances in few other places, including a cameo in To Boldly Flee.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Kyle has somewhat of a following in Russia, if the various Russian subs found on YouTube are any indication. So do most of the TGWTG contributors, though.
• Missing Episode:
  • The sans-commentary version of "The Girlfriend Experience" (which he felt completely misrepresented him) and "What Is It?" which got removed after Crispin Glover took umbrage at its existence. ^note "What Is It?" is not commercially available in any format, and it is only shown by Glover himself at private screenings. Kyle admitted in the review that the version he watched was by necessity pirated.
  • His Pinocchio episode also has gone missing, however a few reuploads of the review can be found on Youtube.
  • For whatever reason, he deleted his review of Steve McQueen (director)'s Shame.
  • After Blip shut down and he permanently moved to YouTube, many other reviews simply never got reuploaded due to his dislike of them or for copyright reasons. Some such as Zardoz are downright impossible to find (if not by the help of his Russian fans...) and he claims to have never been able to reedit his "Between The Lines" episode on The Beatles well enough to suit the demands of the site's copyright standards.
• Real Song Theme Tune: "Procession of the Nobles" from Mlada by Rimsky-Korsakov.
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: He's somewhat bemused by all the fangirls and Slash Fic he's received already.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: In the Blip era, What Is It?, as noted above. In the YouTube one, most of his early work is not found in his account due to "copyright bots."
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kallgren stated that, at one point, he thought of being an actor.
  • During the break between Melancholia and Mister Lonely, Kyle suggested a temporary series where he would rewatch the films he reviewed early on and recap them with a new perspective. He eventually discarded that for a new Between the Lines.
  • There was going to be a joke in the Mister Lonely review involving the scene in Grizzly Man where Werner Herzog listens to the recording of Timothy Treadwell being eaten, only with the audio replaced. Kyle ended up cutting the gag out.
  • Another canceled video was one where Kyle would review Citizen Kane while drunk. In his own words, "getting sloshed for a joke just came off as sad the more I thought about it."
  • The "Between The Lines" episode on Batman originaly started out as a Linkara-style voice over of his origin story, but was cut for being indulgent and unintentionally evoking the Aurora massacre.

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