Web Video / Demo Reel

"We don't make films. We remake them."

Demo Reel is a short-lived original web series for Channel Awesome. Starring Doug Walker alongside Rachel Tietz and Malcolm Ray (both of whom would later appear in The Nostalgia Critic alongside Doug when he resumed making more episodes), it was Doug's next big series following The Nostalgia Critic. It is notable in that it was filmed in a proper Chicago studio, rather than in Doug's basement as The Nostalgia Critic was.

The story revolves around Donnie DuPre (played by Doug), the founder of an independent film studio called "Demo Reel", who remakes famous films badly on purpose for reasons later disclosed. He is joined by Rebecca Stoné (Rachel) (note that her name is pronounced "stone"; the accent is silent), an actress who's been burned by how Hollywood treats women; Tacoma Narrows (Malcolm), an up-and-coming writer who thought Donnie would get him some fame; and cameraman Karl Copenhagen and make-up artist "Quinn", East German and Irish nationals respectively.

The series premiered on October 30, 2012, and was cancelled on January 22, 2013 in favor of resuming The Nostalgia Critic two weeks later. It can be viewed here.

Later, Brad Jones' Demo Reel was made as a spoof on April Fools' Day 2014. The Twilight-Tober episodes in 2021 also contain a series of stingers where the cast of Demo Reel try to enter the real world.

We don't write tropes. We rewrite them:

• Accentuate the Negative: Slammed in "Blue Patches", as Donnie yells at the family and in extension, reviewers and nerd culture, for only thinking about how they can best mock everything they don't like and not about the emotions or people behind them.
• Action Prologue: The first episode begins with a Stylistic Suck-heavy remake of The Sixth Sense before the actual show starts, which is half remake of The Dark Knight Trilogy movies and half getting to know the characters behind the scenes.
  • The second episode does the same, it begins with a Stylistic Suck-heavy remake of Taken but the primary focus is on the plot and the remake of Wreck-It Ralph.
  • Again, the third episode begins with a parody with Skyfall - the episode's primary focus is the plot and the remake of Lost in Translation.
  • Transformers starts off with a parody of Mission: Impossible (1996), although it has a bit more connection to the rest of the series than the others, as it begins Karl not caring about how his gaze-y camera makes Donnie uncomfortable.
• Acting for Two: In-Universe, Donnie, Rebecca, and Tacoma play multiple roles in the remakes.
  • Taken to an absurd extent in the "Wreck-It Ralph" episode, thanks to Tacoma being sick with vampire bird flu and Rebecca running around on a sugar/amphetamine high, leaving Donnie to have to fill all the parts
  • In the Skyfall parody, Donnie plays James Bond and a random mook via green screen in the same shot.
• Actor Allusion: In the Lost in Translation episode, Donnie and Uncle Yo run into a cosplayer dressed as The Nostalgia Critic. Donnie has no idea who she's supposed to be; Uncle Yo quips that she's dressed as some homeless person.
• Adam Westing:
  • Rob Paulsen is depicted as so sick of doing "Yakko's World" that he uses cheap tricks to escape crazed fans requesting he sing it. Though, given how Donnie is, it could just be a facade. Paulsen in reality is worried for the day people stop asking him to sing it.
  • Doug, Lewis, and Lindsay in The Review Must Go On: Doug's slightly crazy and self conscious about his decisions. Secondly, Lewis is crazy, believes that Pollo and others are real, and is obsessed with making cybermats. Additionally, Lindsay is willing to send Nella out to kill Doug, just so she can keep the Nostalgia domain. On Twitter where everyone (including producers) was spitting fire over the special, both Lindsay and Lewis told people that Doug was the one who wrote their lines, they weren't that mean and they had no idea what was happening.
• Adult Child: The patriarch of the family that took Donnie captive in "Blue Patches". Not only has he passed on his childish obsession with Donnie to his wife and daughter, but he wears sock monkey-themed pajamas and sleeps with his wife in a bed that uses SpongeBob SquarePants pillowcases.
• Arc Number: 42. Rebecca has had 42 jobs and Donnie claims to be 42 years old.
• Aerith and Bob: Tacoma is pretty unusual for a series that names the rest of its cast things like Donnie/Jimmy, Rebecca and Karl.
• Aesop Collateral Damage: Donnie's mother dying (based on real life Elizabeth Hartman's suicide) is retconned to be punishment for Critic in “The Review Must Go On”. Donnie even lampshades how sick this is, but the Creator has No Sympathy.
• All Abusers Are Male: Invoked but averted. Rebecca thinks Shakespeare was a creepy boy loving pervert but she's both slightly ditzy and has a bad history, while Adam pretends he knocked Donnie out because he was an intruder staring at his teenage daughter, but in reality he and his family want to keep him.
• All Men Are Perverts: Even when he's kidnapped and tortured, Walter still has the hots for Rebecca.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's left unclear if Donnie is lying about the pre-nup/family deal because he doesn't want to talk about his mom, or if it's true and his life is even more of a Deus Angst Machina.
• Ambiguously Trained: It is implied that Karl Copenhagen and Quinn may or may not have been members of the East German secret police and the IRA respectively. Ask and they'll deny it.
• Aroused by Their Voice:
  • In-movie, Harvey's smooth-talking voice makes Rachel orgasm even when she knows they're about to die.
  • During the Lost in Translation episode, at least three cosplayers find Karl's manner of speech to be this:
  Listen to me, Herr Director; grow an accent.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: Rebecca and Tacoma confirm audience fears when they react with visible disgust to Donnie casually relating to the rape scene in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
• As Himself: Rob Paulsen, Uncle Yo, Egoraptor, Doug Walker, Lewis Lovhaug, Brad Jones, Lindsay Ellis, Nella Inserra, and Rob Walker.
• Aside Glance: Donnie looks faintly guilty at the "Writer-Cinematographer-Director-Actress-Caterers" picture where he's wearing lipstick.
• Ass Pull: The in-universe reaction to the Donnie-Critic ending. Donnie has a rant on how awful it is, and Critic in his review of it calls it a complete cop-out akin to the ending of Lost (which Doug hates) and says it's hard to buy that this was the intention the whole time when the last twenty minutes literally showed that this wasn't the intention the whole time.
• Author Appeal:
  • With Doug's taste for dominant women, it's no surprise that Rebecca gets to handle a lot of huge guns.
  • There's something to be said for a show where even the priss-hating war criminals hold hands when one is sick.
  • Good-Looking Privates. Rebecca's a security guard, Karl used to work for the Stasi and Quinn for the IRA, both Rebecca and Tacoma get pushed into army gear in “Wreck It Ralph vs Angry Birds”, Donnie and Tacoma are in tight-fitting police clothes for “The Dark Knight Begins Rising”, and all three are in military clothes for a scene in “Transformers”.
• Author Tract:
  • Doug made the show like an intersectional feminist's wet dream, attacking most aspects of racism, sexism and homophobia in both nerd culture and Horrible Hollywood (plus Accentuate the Negative), and reveling in sex-positivity for pretty much everyone.
  • An alternate title for the show could be: "Doug Walker Is Really, Really Sorry About Making Fun Of Child Actors", given that Donnie has traits of Jake Lloyd in terms of being an embittered Former Child Star.
  • Doug's also talked about it's his apology for being a bad director, as Donnie is awful but has his reasons, and Doug really tried to be better doing the show than the breakdown-induced messes he made in the movies.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: When Collins wanted Demo Reel destroyed and Donnie to have a miserable ending, The Review Must Go On probably wasn't what he had in mind.
• Behind the Black: When Donnie chases Rob Paulsen to get him to sing "Yakko's World" for him, Rob "hides" in the middle of open hallways by standing where the camera won't see him, even standing right in front of Donnie while Donnie has the camera pointed at himself.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Stunad", according to Rachel, means the "bimbo who takes the heat if the [mob] organization is found out". In addition, Carl will often slip back into speaking untranslated German.
• Bittersweet Ending: Tacoma's and Rebecca's film sequel to “Blue Patches” has the two characters from the film getting back together, but Rebecca's character has a heart attack from all the abuse she suffered over the years and she dies. What makes it sweet rather than just bitter is that she tells him to live for her, and he delivers a touching tribute at her gravestone.
• Blackface: Referenced in the first episode, where Tacoma isn't sure if his wearing whiteface as the joker is offensive or not. Rebecca tells him that white people have done a lot worse to him, and that him wearing whiteface is pretty low on the offensiveness scale.
• Blatant Lies: Originally, Tacoma saying he respects Donnie as an artist. He doesn't at that point. By the beginning of "Lost In Translation", he admits Donnie's idea of remaking the film at an anime con is brilliant.
  • Hinted at through his Stepford Smiler tone, Donnie's opening spiel about doing Demo Reel so he can get fame and fortune in Hollywood. Everyone finds out later that he wants to get back at the industry, not be a part of it.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: "We vow to show what our cinematic skills are capable of, and there is no doubt that we have quite the wide range of talent, including directors, actresses, directors, writers, directors, cinematographers, directors, caterers, and writer-cinematographer-director-actress-caterers."
• Breaking the Fellowship: Donnie leaves Tacoma and Rebecca at the beginning of episode three. This doesn't turn out well for him at all, and it doesn't take any of them long to miss each other.
• Brick Joke: In the first part of "The Dark Knight Begins Rising" Tacoma complains about their goals by saying "most people need a flow chart to understand the plot of one Nolan movie.". After the Ass Pull filled climax, Tacoma (as two-face) presents a flow chart of all the plot twists in the TDKBR as Batman, Catwoman, and Bane watch in confusion.
  • During the Blair Witch Hangover Karl leaves an answering machine message threatening Quinn if he finds out he has been drinking without him. At the very end of Blue Patches Karl finds out that the studio’s “bottomless supply of Irish Whisky” has run dry:
  Karl: *Beat* QUINN!!
• Broken Aesop: After the result of The Review Must Go On, Blue Patches's message of "you can't let your past consume you and you need to be excited for the future" is more than a touch awkward.
  • It also breaks the whole "Critic is evolved enough to make his own choices" message of To Boldly Flee. His decision to make his life better and change was explained and completely his own, and turning it into a paradox that he didn't understand makes him ironically bend to the whims of the real writer.
• Broke the Rating Scale: The movie Jingle Sell was garnering a 0.2/10 rating on IMDB which is impossible as the lowest score anyone can give is 1/10.
• Buffy Speak: They take perfect films and make them even more perfectier.
  • Donnie just does this a lot. Played for ditzy laughs in “The Dark Knight Begins Rising”, but gets a bit sadder when he's trying to connect again with his wife. He's well aware that it makes him sound stupid.
• The Cameo:
  • Donnie's wife's voice is heard in episode 3, played by Mara Wilson.
  • Donnie makes one in the Bum Reviews Film/Elf episode.
  • A miserable and silently drinking Karl and Quinn show up in Critic's The Wicker Man (2006) review. Don't ask, we don't know why either.
  • At the end of a Hyper Fangirl vlog, Malcolm playing around gives us Tacoma with half his face burned off.
• Casual Kink: Before he realizes he's being kidnapped, Donnie thinks a gun to his head is a treat from Tacoma and Rebecca.
• Central Theme: Barring “The Review Must Go On”, coping with the past. Whether it's Horrible Hollywood, being a Shell-Shocked Veteran or Abusive Parents/Creepy Uncle, don't let it destroy you.
• Cerebus Retcon: Rebecca's choices of one-woman-shows are expanded into something more serious. Hamlet because she figured nobody would remember the women who played the role, and Titanic because she'd suffered so much sexual shit that she needed to get some control back.
  • In the pilot, Carl always saying "before ze wall fell" was played for laughs. In Transformers, he tells Tacoma that the falling wasn't a good thing, because his family was either lost or killed in the crossfire.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Possibly the fastest case of this in history; the episodes following the light-hearted first one are a lot darker and more emotional. Made deliberately it seems, from Doug skipping a week of updates to revise and refilm Episode 2.
  • Even the original second episode dived into angst, horror and social justice issues, with Karl revealing he had a family before the wall fell, a pig getting loudly slaughtered in front of Tacoma and Donnie, and Rebecca fighting against being put in a objectifying role.
  • Lampshaded by Quinn who, after watching a depressing conversation between Tacoma and Rebecca, tells them he's going to watch Angela's Ashes so he can remember how to laugh again.
  • Things get even darker in The Review Must Go On, where Demo Reel and its entire cast are revealed to be part of a kind of purgatory conjured up to torture the Nostalgia Critic.
• Chained to a Bed:
  • Medical variant. The family in "Blue Patches" keep Donnie helpless and lying down by feeding him muscle relaxants.
  • Making the above creepier, also implicit in his Rape as Backstory. In Transformers he said an intense rape like Lisbeth in The Millennium Trilogy never stopped him, which would mean he was handcuffed to a bed and assaulted.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: The only information Donnie lets out about his mother is that she was an actress. Any other questions he dodges.
  • He has a talent for it. As soon as Tacoma wants to do something heavy on psychology, Donnie forcibly decides to do a ridiculous version of Batman instead.
  • Doug acts suitably Donnie-like when he dodges the question of why he watched The Odd Life of Timothy Green in the first place.
• Chekhov's Gun: Tacoma's investigative journalism background gets introduced in episode two, and in episode three he uses it to find out Donnie has no public records.
• Chickification: In-movie, Catwoman goes from badass in the original to a Dirty Coward who watches Batman and Bane fight.
• Christmas Episode: "The Blair Witch Hangover" was released Christmas Eve, and involves Hollywood sexism, scary woods, a painful cliffhanger and Donnie really badly missing his mother. Fun for everyone!
• Clothing Damage: Donnie somehow lost his Donkey Kong t-shirt somewhere along the way from the house to the studio.
• Comically Missing the Point: "I thought MY twists were bad", and "What the hell did I just watch?" are seen as positive criticism.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch:
  • Invoked by Doug who called out the people who had just watched the trailer and decided to hate it without even seeing it.
  • In a vlog, Rachel brought up a confusing complaint; that people thought characters talking about their abusive families or estranged marriages or dead mothers weren't funny. Along with Doug and Rob, she tried to politely as possible tell them that if they actually listened they would understand that it was a drama show and not meant to be funny.
• Complexity Addiction: Because Collins would rather go for the emotional pain, he didn't just kidnap Donnie, hold a gun to his head and force Rebecca and Tacoma to give up Demo Reel in exchange for getting him back.
• Contrived Coincidence: Sure is lucky that Doug got The Odd Life of Timothy Green instead of “The Odd Couple” during his Demo Reel writer's block, and that the guy on the other end was a douche.
  • Doug also has to be alone and vulnerable in order for Critic to get at him, so off Rob goes to New York City and the only time he gets in contact with Doug, Doug is unconscious from the pills that he took.
  • In his review, Critic brings up that the Critic outfit just so happens to be laid out neatly for when the takeover happens.
• Cosmic Retcon: According to the last episode, Donnie and his friends were real in their own continuity until writer! Doug needed an excuse to end the series and resurrect the Critic. The whole thing about this series being a kind of Purgatory inside the Plot Hole is explained as being an Ass Pull he threw together at the last minute. All a very thinly veiled Reality Subtext, of course.
• Creepy Uncle: Rebecca's Uncle Frank, who she drunkenly reveals sexually abused her when she was young. Tacoma is understandably horrified, but Rebecca seems to be coping as best she can.
• Cruel Twist Ending: What else can you say about an epilogue that answers "You tell them Donnie DuPre is coming. You tell them Jimmy Boyd is coming!" with "sorry, you're neither of those people, bye now"?
• Cry into Chest: When Rebecca finally collapses into a Saved by the Bell-inspired meltdown, Tacoma is her chest of choice.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Rebecca to Tom Collins.
• Dancing Is Serious Business: The Supervillain Shuffle in the Dark Knight episode.
• Dark Reprise: Of all things, the Pokemon theme song. The first time is with Uncle Yo, where Donnie's so happy at these people giving him love. But the second time is with Egoraptor after Yo is mad at him, and he just looks like he wants to hide in a corner.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Cameraman Karl Copenhagen, a secretive East German who Donnie says used to work for somebody named "Stasi". Also Karl's assisstant cameraman Quinn who, as he puts it, "didn't work for the IRA". It's best to take his word for it.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Tacoma's family would rather indulge criminal activities than be good people, Rebecca's parents are gaslighting hypocrites who let her get sexually abused, the crazy parents have raised their daughter to be just like them, and Donnie's dad left the family. The only sweet parent is the one who committed suicide.
• Deconstruction: Rob with a dinosaur head and interacting with Critic? Unusually Uninteresting Sight and hilarious. Carl with a dinosaur head, with threatening music, and Donnie reacting like he doesn't know whether to puke or cry? Really quite terrifying.
• Defied Trope: Rebecca and Tacoma set up pretty early on that they refuse to be the invoked Ms. Fanservice and Ethnic Scrappy. Donnie also has no interest in being the commonly tragic But Not Too Bi lead, instead making the moves on anyone he likes and having angst about everything else in his life. Sadly he falls into tradition in the end and dies.
• Did They or Didn't They?: They pushed Donnie having sex with both Uncle Yo and Egoraptor as hard as they possibly could, but didn't outright state either. In-universe at least, Doug was more than happy during filming to confirm that it was a proper Love Triangle with sex involved. Even years later in the Jupiter Ascending BTS he calls Donnie/Yo a romance.
  • Rebecca and Tacoma in their drinking-fest. We find out in the next episode that they ended up scruffy and in a dress respectively in the end by choice, the Ship Tease had hit record levels by this point, she wakes up on his legs, and she did pick up a whip with interest... Also confirmed out of universe, as Rob said later that the second season would have had Rebecca trying to deal with being in love with Tacoma.
• Disposable Sex Worker: Rachel confirmed on twitter that the body Fabrizio had wrapped in a blanket was a sensibly dressed prostitute.
• Deus Angst Machina: Donnie's life really sucks, but he tries to keep positive until the Creator fucks him over harder and retcons his life as unnecessary punishment.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The behind the scenes footage. Only seems to apply in the studio though; all other locations are in color.
• Department of Redundancy Department: As a result of Donnie's Small Name, Big Ego, he often credits himself more often than any of his other coworkers.
• Description Cut: Played for Drama in “The Blair Witch Hangover”, with Donnie wanting his friends to give the eulogy at his funeral as “no doubt [they] were the only people concerned when [he] was missing”. Cut the two having drunken fun.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Having your corporation be threatened isn't really an excuse for kidnapping someone and leaving them to either get killed or die slowly from starvation.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The cheating spouse subtext of the Uncle Yo/Donnie/Egoraptor plot of episode three is not subtle.
  • Tom Collins also comes off like a creepy ex to Donnie, with heavy breathing down the phone and obsessiveness, and Yo assumes Donnie's damage is an abusive Hollywood ex anyway.
• Don't Go Into the Woods: The forest from Suburban Knights has got creepier since the last time we saw it.
• Double Entendre: Donnie feeling Tacoma up and complimenting his "sensitive ways" in Transformers, and, in Lost In Translation, Quinn and Karl accusing the bisexual guy of both sucking and blowing. There's also Rebecca calling Tacoma a “tasty black man”, the loadedness of which makes Malcolm corpse.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: Pointedly averted. Donnie/Egoraptor can't be classed as rape, but the whole consent thing was definitely a gray area, and it's treated like one. When Donnie finds out that he was the only one drinking in their time together, he acts like a complete Ice Queen while the other man is blissfully unaware of what happened.
  • Adam (and his wife and daughter) are treated like non-comedic horrible people for taking any excuse to touch Donnie when he doesn't have the muscle strength to fight back.
• Downer Beginning: Episode three (properly) begins with Donnie's Heroic BSoD and the three arguing. It ends with Donnie getting captured by the baddies.
• Dramatic Irony: Donnie can actually make a much better movie by everything going wrong for him than when he actually tries to parody something.
• Dramedy: Settles into the genre at about episode three.
• Drowning My Sorrows: A common pastime. Donnie has wine glasses and brandy snifters all over his office, it's Quinn's solution for everything, Karl gets even more threatening when he's denied his booze while having to look for a certain kidnapped director, Rebecca turns out to be a Lady Drunk, and while Tacoma initially disapproves of alcohol to numb the pain, he quickly joins in with the drinking.
• Dull Surprise: Doug as the Plot Hole in “The Review Must Go On” might have been going for wise, but just comes off bored. What's amusing is that he's acting against himself, and Doug-as-Donnie is acting his fine ass off.
• Dying Alone: Whether the final part of Donnie dies in the Critic room or in the Plot Hole, he has nobody left at either point. It would have been kinder if he just died in the forest like he was planning on doing.
• Dysfunctional True Companions: Episode 2 set the team up as this. They're all outcasts in their individual families and managed to form a tight knit with one another.
• Eagleland: Type two application of type one. To get people watching his stuff and pander to the lowest common denominator, Donnie puts American flags everywhere in the spoofs.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: While there's hints that he's putting on a brave-if-sociopathic face, it's a little difficult to meld Donnie's episode one speech about sucking up his wife's money "for women's lib" to the phone call in episode three where his desperate attempts at improving his marriage fail miserably.
  • The first episode in general didn't seem to be sure if Donnie was a sleazy, Uwe Boll-style bad filmmaker or an earnest, Ed Wood-style bad filmmaker. As the series went on, the character ended up abandoning both personalities.
• Elephant in the Living Room: According to Welshy's farewell, the show itself in-universe for TGWTG. When Fat Grandma reads the “story of Demo Reel”, Linkara complains that he's going to get fired if she talks about it.
• Ensemble Cast: Everyone has their own Character Focus scenes and storylines. Even when Donnie is suffering on his own, there's equal time to Quinn/Rebecca/Tacoma talking about stuff and Karl trying to find him.
• Erotic Eating: Donnie and pocky make a lovely couple, with him chewing, nibbling, licking and twiddling it around his fingers while he flirts with Yo and asks for Slash Fic.
• Establishing Series Moment: Rebecca and Tacoma talking about the ethics of white-face sets up that the show's going to be big on social issues.
  • For better or worse, Donnie successfully manipulating Tacoma with bedroom puppy eyes signified Doug had finally got his wish for a series with a lot more gay ^note that was treated as normal and not a fetishizing joke in it.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: The Downer Ending retgoned everyone, and every cast member says the characters are never coming back. Given a morbid nod in Smarty's Cards Against Humanity stream, as he's nervous that Doug had the “a pile of squirming bodies” card to “what's really inside the Plot Hole” and tells him that's dark. (Doug actually had “three months in the hole” and called it a little too fitting if off by a couple months.)
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Consensually even! Karl has a foursome at a con while Donnie gets laid by both Yo and Ego. Rebecca is very interested in Donnie's mouth after he gets her to wear the swim cap while Donnie compliments Tacoma's sensitive ways when he gropes him. Plus, after the sex in A Blair Witch Hangover, Tacoma/Rebecca were going to be a couple in the next season.
• Everyone Is Bi: Apart from Rebecca (as there was no other girl she could hang out with), everyone had at least one moment full of Homoerotic Subtext. Donnie was conceived as bisexual from the start.
• Everyone Has Standards: The rest of S.W.A.G. is horrified to find out what the head of the organization did to Donnie (kidnapped at gunpoint and dumped in the woods to die). Everyone but him promptly leaves the group..
• Exact Words:
  • Donnie promised that the audience wouldn't see what Alfred sees in the end of "The Dark Knight Begins Rising".
• Face Framed in Shadow: Used to creepy effect on both Critic and Doug in “The Review Must Go On”. Donnie on the other hand is always completely in the light.
• False Reassurance: Quinn tells a very scared, very tearful about-to-die Donnie that he'll know where to find them, implying that any of the characters will be around in some capacity. Turns out he was lying; Rachel, Malcolm and Rob have all confirmed everyone is dead.
• Family of Choice: As Donnie says (before they all die), he's decided that the only important people to him are the others, and not the abusive biological families who have hurt them.
• Fan Disservice: Let's see... Donnie on a bed, looking all nice and rumpled, unable to move, surrounded by people with No Sense of Personal Space? That would be great if said people were his shippy friends and not creepy Psychopathic Manchildren forcing him to remember the worst period of his life.
• Fanservice: It doesn't take much to figure out why a large portion of the fandom very much enjoyed a filthy, crying Donnie crawling around a set of woods.
  • In Transformers, Karl showing off his neck and chest in just one unbuttoned shirt and an apron.
  • The Lost in Translation parody starts off with a shameless shot of Donnie's ass while he's in bed.
  • Tacoma in Belle's dress from Beauty and the Beast. Rebecca loved it, and so did the fangirls.
  • Except for Karl (who has fanservice of his own), tight t-shirts that show off the arms are a big thing with the male cast.
  • Donnie and Tacoma in Fair Cop uniforms in The Dark Knight Begins Rising.
  • Rebecca isn't completely left out, as she does a few complimenting gymnastics in episodes one and four.
  • She also gets wrapped up in Screw Yourself offscreen at one point, ignoring the presence of Carl.
  • There are at least four instances where Doug's crotch is the only thing in frame. So if you liked the Panty Shot in Suburban Knights, you'll enjoy this show too.
• Female Gaze: Used by Carl's camera on Donnie to make a Male Gaze point. When Donnie and Tacoma complain about the close-up on Donnie's face in the Mission: Impossible sketch, Carl backs up but later has close-ups on his crotch, ass and arms when he's never in any state to be objectified.
  • Donnie outright wanting Slash Fic of him seemed like a very obvious way of increasing the already large female audience.
  • With Donnie's open bisexuality, Tacoma and Quinn in tight muscle shirts; the former also in a dress, Karl's accent, Rebecca being a relatable badass, plus all the angst, Ship Tease and sexism-in-Hollywood commentary, Demo Reel was probably the most female-aimed show Doug had.
  • In an amusing bit of proof over who the show was catering towards, the filming of the Lost In Translation episode had Doug confirming Donnie and Ego having sex, which was met with such whooping from the women of the panel that he had to wait until they settled down.
• Financial Abuse: Tacoma's mother makes him pay each minute to talk to her, and if that's not enough, leaves him hanging on the line while she does housework.
• Five-Token Band: Donnie the bisexual, Tacoma the black guy, Rebecca the woman, Karl the German and Quinn the Irishman.
• Foil: Donnie and Rebecca. She's got another connection regarding being a Replacement Goldfish for his mother, they've both been sexually abused by Hollywood but she goes angry feminist (while still very much enjoying sexy on her own terms) and he goes happy slut, Karl has Donnie as his Morality Pet but exploits him for fanservice, while Quinn has Rebecca as his but just films her face when she reads, he goes through Sanity Slippage while she has Sanity Strengthening, they've got both brain-intelligence issues but are smarter than they appear, and neither of them are respected in death.
• Force Feeding: The muscle relaxants get pushed into Donnie's mouth before he has a chance to refuse them.
• Foreshadowing: While Donnie is talking about his wife in episode one, there's a long, focused shot of him in black and white footage looking alone and utterly miserable, hinting for the second episode that he's not telling the truth about being Happily Married.
  • Rebecca is pretty happy-go-lucky and bouncy in the first episode, all except for the two scenes where Donnie unintentionally snaps at her and makes her feel stupid, then she gets cold and snarky. She may have accepted people thinking she's a dumbass at first, but she still hates it.
    • She also irritatedly assumes that whoever's watching thinks a woman can't play Hamlet, even though the first actress to play the character was Sarah Siddons in the 1700's, and the trend continued.
  • In Donnie's last scene for episode one, check out the empty wine glass by the computer. Almost everyone being alcoholics will get more focus later.
  • Mara Wilson as Donnie's wife in episode three winds up for the reveal of his backstory: she's a Former Child Star whose mother died while she was filming Matilda and still gets hate for her bad performances, while he's a Former Child Star whose mother killed herself while he was filming and he gave bad performances which people hated him for, and so he changed his name to stop the abuse.
  • Donnie goes from grudging about Tacoma's ending to relieved when he hears him complain about the finale of The Dark Knight Rises.
    • The same thing happens in reverse earlier, as he's happy with Tacoma's idea of Wuthering Heights until "diving into the psychological" is mentioned. Now why, as he'd be the lead, would that be a deal-breaker for him?
  • With the Transformers episode meant to air before Wreck It Ralph vs Angry Birds, the camera focusing particularly on Rebecca's reaction to Donnie's casual Rape as Backstory is meant to foreshadowing the reveal of her own.
  • Donnie sounding like he's going to cry when he tries to explain why he loves his favorite movie seems weird at first, but is totally justified once you find out who was in it.
  • The first three movie remakes, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Wreck-It Ralph and Skyfall, give their own hints towards the finale. Rachel Dawes died tragically and Donnie made her come back to life, Vanellope is a child that needs protecting, and Skyfall is the Freudian Excuse film of the Bond franchise.
  • Donnie wanting to remake movies better ever since he was a kid, and how Hollywood has it coming if he actually destroys them.
  • Donnie wouldn't be able to have loads of answers to open-ended movie finales if he didn't know the inside workings of Hollywood.
  • Rebecca complaining that she's in her early twenties and her career already seems going down the drain makes the parallel between her and Donnie's mom clear.
  • Also out of universe, Doug's con responses to why he wasn't in Hollywood went from (before Demo Reel started) he just liked having control over stuff to (while the show was happening) someone like him wouldn't survive in the industry.
  • Written!Critic calls Doomsday Machine "downright savage at times" seconds before he comes into his own life and starts ripping into Doug.
• Friendship Moment: In the first episode, Donnie showing Tacoma and Rebecca how to do the perfect Bane impression. In the second, sharing a ready-made thanksgiving dinner after killing a renegade vampire turkey.
  • Karl and Quinn get a few in the second episode, including fond reminiscing of many a Noodle Incident.
• Freudian Trio: Donnie (Ego - in more ways than one), Rebecca (id), Tacoma (Superego).
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: At the end of the first episode, when Donnie puts his camera down to continue editing, he places it next to the letter he was previously reading out loud.^note missing the threatening message at the bottom despite it being BOLD black words If one were to look closely at what was typed down on the paper, it's the last page to the the Nostalgia Critic review of To Boldly Flee.^note This review was part of the Nostalgia Critic Reloaded DVD, where he reviewed his movies in the Plot Hole, unable to recognize himself due to amnesia. It seems that was filmed around the time the first episode of Demo Reel was being produced.
• Funny Background Event: Happens as often as Gilligan Cuts.
• Gainax Ending: "The Review Must Go On" was very dark, with Donnie terrified with all his friends are disappearing, a threatening Critic forcing a miserable Doug into bringing him back, lots of creepy angle shots, Donnie finding out that his horrible life has just been punishment for someone else and having to leave his family and friends in the purgatory created by the Plot Hole. But happy rocky instrumental music for the last few minutes, so yay?
• Gaslighting:
  • Critic to Doug in "The Review Must Go On". Doug tries multiple times for a Shut Up, Hannibal!, even going as far to nearly kill himself with pills to make Critic go away, but Critic drags him down regardless. "You got so sick and tired of it, you forgot you enjoyed it" contradicts itself for a reason.
  • Rebecca's parents abused her in a lot of ways, but made her feel like she deserved it for being “not being normal”, and she's the one who still has to beg for any kind of company with them.
• Gender-Inverted Trope: To satirize the sexist "fake geek girl" controversy going strong at the time, Donnie is about as clear a fake geek boy as you can get; not knowing anything about pop culture but pretending he does, flirting to get his way, soaking up knowledge of a Nice Guy and then pretending that knowledge is his own to get laid again. But he's played very sympathetically, and he's so lonely that even though he did the wrong thing you're meant to empathize.
• Gilligan Cut: Happens a lot.
• Good-Times Montage: The Creator shows one to Donnie/Critic, but it ends up being subverted, as it lasts for about five seconds and half of it is either out of context scenes or brought him more pain.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Via Turkey Cam, we only see blood spurts.
• Happy Ending Override: The happiness earned in Blue Patches is completely undone in The Review Must Go On.
• The Heavy: If Tom Collins hadn't sent his colleagues to scare Rebecca/Tacoma and kidnap Donnie, then Donnie would have come home from the con happy, his secrets never revealed and the production would have kept on plugging out shitty remakes.
• Held Gaze: A few get shared between Donnie and Tacoma, Donnie and Uncle Yo, and eventually Donnie and Karl. You might notice a common theme here.
• Hollywood Homely: invoked Discussed. And by "discussed", we mean Rebecca really lets loose on Being John Malkovich frumping up the cute Cameron Diaz and expecting the audience to buy that she's the ugly one, when actual average-looking women go without a job because "they're not pretty enough".
• Homoerotic Subtext: Given that Donnie was conceived as bisexual from the start, the show is the queen of the site for this.
  • Donnie using Puppy-Dog Eyes to try and convince Tacoma to let them do the Supervillain Shuffle.
  • When they've managed to get him to not quit, Donnie pushing Rebecca down out of view and giving Tacoma a winning smile.
  • Plus in-movie, Alfred played by Tacoma flounces off after telling Bruce played by Donnie that he's keeping the jewelery.
  • Donnie breathing heavily behind Rob Paulsen's shower curtain goes beyond regular fanboying and into narrowly averted I Have You Now, My Pretty mode.
  • In the "Mission Impossible" segment of Transformers, Tacoma questions Carl's need to always film Donnie in close-up, which Carl responds to by filming Donnie's crotch later. We also have Donnie instantly pawing Tacoma again to get what he wants (praising his sensitive ways) and Tacoma giving in much faster than in the pilot. And after Tacoma quits again from the racist twins, Donnie's practically on his lap begging him to stay. Plus if that's not enough, Tom Collins has some serious psycho ex boyfriend vibes towards Donnie.
  • In "Wreck-It Ralph vs Angry Birds", Donnie sounds like he's going to cry when he sees Tacoma sick, and the two share a tender cuddle before the former kisses the latter on the head.
  • The alternate takes for this scene had Donnie and Tacoma so close it looked more like Donnie was aiming for a blowjob than actually wanting to do his man proud.
  • Even with Rebecca right there and falling into her food coma, the boys still pay more attention to each other than to her.
  • Doug outright confirmed in behind the scenes that Donnie/Yo/Ego was a Love Triangle, and you also have Karl filming Donnie's ass in a Gender Flip of the movie's Scarlett-behind shot, Donnie's bisexuality shown with shameless innuendo, and Donnie being hesitant in hugging a a female con-goer but glomping a man right after.
  • Donnie is almost swooning when he realizes that Karl came back for him, and doesn't buy his "I just did it for a paycheck" excuse. In grosser news, Adam is into Donnie as both an adult man and a child, feeling entitled enough that he doesn't think memorizing a kid's bone structure is icky.
  • “The Review Must Go On” could easily be summed up as “Clingy Jealous Girl (Critic) convinces her ex (Doug) to Murder the Hypotenuse (Demo Reel)”.
  • They even got a moment in the ending, with Karl making a kissy face at Donnie while Quinn is lying to him that it'll be okay.
  • Quinn and Karl also have their turn, with Karl holding Quinn's hand when he gets sick and Donnie taking the two not going out together as one more sign that he's losing it.
  • Even long after after the show was buried and he (along with many others) made plenty of gay jokes at its expense, Doug still drew art of Donnie/Yo◊.
  • In the Resident Evil LP alternate takes, Donnie appreciates Karl's torture skills very much and tells Porter "hiiii" in a predatory way.
• Holding Hands: When Quinn is sick from the turkey, Karl holds his hand and tells him to rest.
• Hope Spot: Just when Donnie is about to give up and die, the girl's laughter leads him to a house. He's obviously happy about this until he goes inside and... gets knocked out.
  • In "The Review Must Go On", when all of his friends are disappearing, he realizes with a relieved smile that Karl's still around. He sees the camera-man with his back to him, everything seems to be looking up... and then Karl turns around to reveal the dinosaur mask.
  • Rebecca tells Donnie that his precious show hasn’t been a waste of time. Cue hopeful smile and she foots in mouth by saying it’s great padding for her resume.
• Horrible Hollywood: Donnie's real reason for wanting to make remakes of films.
  Uncle Yo: [very hungover] Hey, Donnie. How come you want to make movies if all you do is criticize them?
  Donnie: [also hungover but not quite as bad] Well, in my opinion, Hollywood's got it coming.
  Uncle Yo: So, this is an independent filmmakers crusade against Hollywood? Have you ever tried going out there?
  Donnie: I don't need to. I know there's bad stuff out there.
  Uncle Yo: What, like an ex?
  Donnie: Just bad stuff. Everything I've heard about Hollywood has never been good. You know, they make these movies, they're supposed to make you feel really good, and make you escape the pains of your real life, but when you go to Hollywood, the pain is there. It's always there and Hollywood never lets you forget that.
  • For the fourth episode, Rebecca gets a big speech about the shoddy treatment of actresses in the industry that Rachel said was half written by the Walkers and half improvised from her own experiences.
  • Less explicit than the other two, but Tacoma realizes that black actors tend to get the shaft, and so tries to act more politically correct to not get in trouble.
  • Ends up being the entire point of the show, as Donnie was a Former Child Star, called Jimmy Boyd, whose mother (a tribute to real life actress Elizabeth Hartman) killed herself because Hollywood is so terrible to older women. Jimmy got abused so badly that he changed his name and created Demo Reel to make bad movies on purpose, trying to destroy the thing that killed his mom.
• Hypocrite: Rebecca's parents don't agree with her career "choices". Fine, especially understandable as one of those "choices" was Sexual Extortion porn. What makes this hypocritical is that they intentionally left her with her sexually abusive uncle, and take no responsibility for the damage they caused.
• Ignored Aesop: Donnie had a meta-filled passionate plea on how awful Accentuate the Negative is and how people shouldn't obsess over something miserable from the past, but with a certain comeback you'd think that rant never happened.
• I Have Your Wife: Subverted. Tom Collins gets really slimy on the phone to Tacoma, and makes him think something awful will happen to Rebecca (who's alone at the warehouse), but in reality, he's the one who gets beaten up on the way there and she's fine.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Kinder than most, but Uncle Yo still immediately asks for alcohol after a not-totally-sober Donnie introduces himself with “to make your poop rocky, do it with pocky”.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: In the pilot Bane gives two reasons for basing his opperation out of an Arby's: the first is that the chain is so culturally irrelevant no one ever actually eats there, and the second is that everyone loves their curly fries.
• In Medias Res: "The Blair Witch Hangover" starts off with Tacoma apologizing to Donnie and saying they "get it now". Because he and Rebecca got stinking drunk, neither they or the audience get what he's talking about until the next episode.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: The Dark Knight Rises is mocked for Bruce leaving the other prisoners to rot after escaping the pit. He actually throws a rope down to the other prisoners right after. The Skyfall parody mocks that Bond did not simply kill Silva and his two guards when he was ordered to shoot the glass of scotch off of Severine's head. However, the reason Bond didn't do this in the film itself is because he was given a Flintlock Pistol, which has only one shot per round, plus the henchmen held a gun to Bond's head to ensure he only aims for the whiskey. However, mistakes and flubs like these can be attributed to Donnie's terrible directing.
• Ironic Echo: In "Wreck It Ralph vs. Angry Birds", Tacoma tells a despondent Rebecca that at least she's not hurting anyone by acting in a company that makes bad movies but has fun doing it. In "Blue Patches", Donnie numbly rants that he had fun acting, wasn't hurting anyone and didn't know why people hated him so much.
  • When he's getting told everything about what he really is, Donnie has the same beaten down puppy face as Critic did when he realized he was just a character in To Boldly Flee, and faces the Plot Hole in the same way too. Only instead of getting a You Are Better Than You Think You Are boost and being at peace having saved the world, he's been torn down completely and his fate is losing himself.
  • In To Boldly Flee, Critic started to get hints that he was just a character, heard a sound, got scared, it turned out to be Doug and they had a sweetly calm if intense conversation. In "The Review Must Go On", Doug is having writer's block, sees shadows on his walls, and Critic carries on messing with him with almost sadist delight. According to Doug's commentary, both this and the above example were intentional "subverting" the nice moments of the movie.
  • In an example that turns nicer, Donnie accidentally slut-shamed Rebecca by bringing up her one-woman-show of Titanic and asking why she'd do that but not play like Megan Fox in Transformers. In "The Review Must Go On", it's used as one of three examples to show how cool he thinks she is.
• Irony: The most grounded show on the site, where abused turkeys make up a plot instead of evil teddy bears, where people are exhausted after badass moments, where if someone feels like they're going crazy they seek help, is a purgatory where nothing is real.
  • More happily, Transformers has Donnie being at his most shamelessly gay when the spoof is a Bay film and he's playing the lead.
  • For an extra dose of cruel, the Critic that torments Doug in "The Review Must Go On" comes out of a review ("Doomsday Machine") where he was nice and cared about minorities getting slammed.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Donnie stands and slams the table in anger when Tacoma tells him they're more hated than the people making A Christmas Story II.
• I Want My Mommy!: Dramatic version. When spending too much time in the forest breaks Donnie, he reminisces over how bright and happy his Mom used to be and begs for some of the hope she always had. Made even darker when it's revealed she committed suicide because her acting career was in decline
• Jekyll & Hyde: In an interview, Doug referred to "The Review Must Go On" as an updated version of the tale where Hyde wins. In contrast to how he complained about the trope always getting played OTT in "The Top 11 Dumbest Spiderman Moments", he acts it out a little more realistically.
• Kick the Dog: The SWAG guys who kidnap Donnie evidently forced him out of his warm-looking jacket, as he's wearing it in the car but is only in two light shirts when he wakes up in the forest.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Karl to Tom Collins. Considering what the latter did to Donnie, Karl loses no sympathy points.
• Kill the Cutie: Donnie was Doug's most optimistic character aside from Chester and gets squashed. Tacoma is adorable too and dies as soon as he was going to tell Donnie something nice. Rebecca, Karl, and Quinn fall under Too Cool to Live.
• Knight of Cerebus: She's not a villain, but any time Donnie's mom gets brought up, the scene turns ridiculously depressing.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After Donnie is restored to his former life as The Nostalgia Critic he chooses Douchie McNitpick to enter the plot hole and stabilize the Awesomeverse where he is then given the Sisyphean task of finding and fixing all the little flaws of the kind he used to enjoy pointing out to the Critic.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "The Blair Witch Hangover". When Tacoma presses play one time, it cuts to Donnie at night, and Donnie for his part realizes he's nattering to an inanimate object.
  • Once Donnie decides in Transformers that Rebecca is worthy of respect, the Demo Reel camera instantly makes his crotch fill up the screen, signifying any Male Gaze is over and Female Gaze reigns from now on.
• Left Hanging: For one, more details on Donnie's marriage and what he did to make it fail would have been nice.
• Like Mother Like Son: Donnie's life parallels his mother's. She was a star and Wide-Eyed Idealist until her husband walked out on her and her son. The roles dried up with nobody wanting her because she was middle-aged, and she battled depression until she killed herself. Donnie was a small star for a while, but even though he fell after the death and got abused, still kept his optimism. We see him when he's apparently 42, his marriage is failing and he hits depression at “Lost In Translation”. Then not even the universe wants him around and he dies, having been told he never existed anyway.
• Lighter and Softer: Donnie's remakes compared to the originals. Nobody ever dies in them, and if they do, they come back in ways that don't make sense.
  • While Donnie himself is a far darker mix of Mara Wilson's and Jake Lloyd's backstories (neither of them had a suicidal mother thankfully), his revenge business is a lighter version of Lisbeth's from The Millenium Trilogy. While she got raped horribly and rapes men right back, nobody would like him if he did that, and so while he gets raped like she does, his punishment for other actors is limited to stalking them.
• Lonely Together: The reason why the cast became friends. Nobody else wanted (or respected, in Rebecca's case) them, so they banded together instead. It's sweeter than it sounds.
• Love Triangle: The entire basis of the Lost In Translation episode. Doug even said during con filming that Egoraptor "stole" Donnie away from Yo.
• Lowest Common Denominator: In-universe, because Donnie has very little knowledge of geek culture but wants to pretend he does, he vetoes Tacoma's suggested movies of things like Wuthering Heights in favor of trying to pander to the mainstream.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: In Transformers, after Rebecca’s speech about being human, Donnie changes her outfit from bikini to business suit. She eye rolls and he slowly gets better in being less of an Innocent Bigot.
• The Mafia: The warehouse that Rebecca works in as a security guard is mob controlled. DuPre's and company do not notice this as being a problem, especially where there's a murder happening in the next room over. This scene was called back to by Doug in the Christmas Story II BTS vlog.
  Doug: We're like the Demo Reel crew again, a bunch of weird stuff is happening next door and we're like "we won't ask we won't ask"
• Mangst: Whether it's femmy men, women or hardened former terrorists, everyone tries to be a good person and deal with their issues by themselves or with a quiet conversation with someone they trust. Donnie's breakdown only comes when he thinks he's in his own Snuff Film.
• Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication: Subverted. A pissed off Rebecca tries to beat the SWAG leader to death, and when Tacoma does his best to stop her because "they need a verifiable mugshot", she throws him off.
• Meta Guy: Uncle Yo takes on the role in episode three, asking Donnie the fan complaint of why he made a movie parodying Batman if all he wanted to do was point out the flaws.
• The Mockbuster: The main output of DuPre's studio.
• Mood Whiplash: Episode five starts off fairly easy, with Rebecca and Tacoma finding out that Donnie's a terrible Former Child Star and planning to tease him mercilessly, while Donnie wakes up with a crazy-but-initially-amusing family of fans. But then we find out Donnie's mother killed herself while he was filming the movie he's having to watch with the family and every bit of humor dissipates.
  • Until Rebecca gets so drunk she's talking about Uncle Frank in a fond way, "The Blair Witch Hangover" regularly went from her and Tacoma being the happiest they've ever been partying with booze, to Donnie alone and experiencing epic Break the Cutie in the woods.
  • Lost In Translation has Donnie go from the WAFFiest scene ever where he sings Pokemon with Yo and the crowd, to being on the phone with his wife and getting reminded that she doesn't love him.
• Moonwalk Dance: Rachel performs a quick moonwalk in the second episode of the series.
• Moral Myopia: In To Boldly Flee, a big deal is made about Critic having reached Character Development if he doesn't take the selfish option and destroy the Awesomeverse. But in "The Review Must Go On", the opposite happens and it's seen as the right choice even though Donnie cries over it, he loves his friends and everyone dies in the end. It also means, dishearteningly, Ma-Ti was right about Critic.
• Musical Spoiler: When everyone is introducing themselves, music suited to their personality plays. Tacoma gets sturdy trumpets, Rebecca is underscored with a bouncy violin that turns sad, Carl and Quinn both have a German choir... but Donnie has silence. That's because he's not telling the truth about his situation.
  • The theme song change too. When the show turned dramatic like how Doug had envisioned it to be, the music went from a rocky cover of Auld Lang Syne to a dark-Western-like guitar riff
  • The mournful drone playing while Tacoma apologizes to Donnie appears again when he and Rebecca find out what happened to Donnie's mom.
  • When Donnie gets overpowered by Critic, it goes from sad strings to a hellishly ethereal metal version of "The Review Must Go On".
• Music Box Intervals / Ominous Music Box Tune: Christmas version, with the Yandere family.
• My God What Have We Done: Both Rebecca and Tacoma feel terrible for indirectly teasing Donnie for his bad movies when they find out his mother killed herself.
• Mythology Gag: Donnie doesn't recognize who a con-goer is supposed to be dressed as when she wears a cap, glasses, jacket, white T-shirt, and red tie.
  • More seriously, Tacoma telling Donnie that he's destroying the things he loves brings to mind Critic's breakdown in To Boldly Flee about everything he does having a negative impact on someone.
  • In the "credits" for Donnie's version of The Sixth Sense, the music is apparently being performed by Randy Newman- or more accurately, Doug doing a horrible impression of Randy Newman. Doug has openly admitted several times to hating Newman's work, and a minor running joke in the Nostalgia Critic involved him doing a similarly horrible impression of Randy Newman singing songs on mundane things like foxes looking at bags or officers stuttering in front of ladies.
• Narrative Filigree: For instance, in one shot of "The Dark Knight Begins Rising", a game of Risk is prominently displayed in the background. What does it have to do with what's going on? Nothing at all, these characters are just dorky.
• Nice Guys Finish Last: Rebecca, Quinn and Tacoma all get erased in “The Review Must Go On” immediately after they have a moment of trying to show Donnie that they love him. And then there's Donnie himself, who was nicer than Critic even in his later days, but still has to give up his life.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The scene in the trailer of Bane and Batman talking gibberish is nowhere in the hour-long premiere.
  • Because Rob cut the planned episodes from eight to six, neither the Twilight parody or the scene with Rebecca in Donnie's hat and glasses got to be seen either.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Donnie DuPre was born Jimmy Boyd, a parody of Jake Lloyd. His mother, Elissa Hoffman is a reference to A Patch of Blue star Elizabeth Hartman who died in a similar manner. Because of this, there's a clear influence of Mara Wilson, whose mother died of cancer during filming of Matilda, in his backstory.
• "No More Holding Back" Speech: “Alright, S.W.A.G., you called down the thunder, well, now you got it. *Holds up video camera* You see that? It says that I’m a film maker. Take a good look at it S.W.A.G. because that’s the way you’ll never end up. The Swedes are finished; you understand me?! I see a Swedish flag, I kick the ass wearing it! So run, you cur! RUN! AND TELL ALL THE OTHER CURS THAT DONNIE DUPRE IS COMING!! YOU TELL THEM JIMMY BOYD IS COMING!! AND FILM’S COMING WITH ME, YOU HEAR!! FILM’S! COMING! WITH ME!!"
• Non-Indicative First Episode: Thanks to a retool following the premiere episode, an amusing parody of Batman doesn't exactly cry out that they're later going to be dealing with abusive pasts, the many problems of Hollywood and maternal suicide.
• Non-Indicative Name: "Lost In Translation (Bromance Version)". Donnie/Yo is a complete Queer Romance, with none of the trappings or jokes of the bromance genre. Doug made no secret of how gay it was supposed to be, calling it a Love Triangle in filming, and the tagline coming right out and admitting it was a romance.
• No Sympathy: Because he's not allowed, the Creator is completely unfeeling towards Donnie's fear, confusion, tears and Rage Against the Author.
  • Earlier we have the family holding him hostage say that his mother dying during the production of Jingle Sells isn't an excuse for turning in a bad performance.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We don't see what was in the woods with Donnie in "The Blair Witch Hangover" until the next episode. Until then all we know is that something was giggling and howling and something knocked him out at the end.
  • The fact that we never see the mysterious little girl from the front (or for more than a couple seconds at a time) makes her a lot creepier, as well.
  • Also works to make SWAG more threatening. Until the ending, the leader was only seen as a white silhouette on a black wall, the minions who try and freak out Tacoma and Rebecca all wear masks, and who knows how many people were in the car with Donnie.
  • Critic's first “appearance” in The Review Must Go On. He's a shadow just lurking behind the corner, and when Doug notices, he rushes off. Of course his behavior is still terrifying when we do see him.
• Obvious Stunt Double: A few years after the show, Brian tweeted that Doug wanting to avoid this (because if he drew the pictures of the Demo Reel gang then everyone would know it was him who drew them and not Rachel) was the reason why he (Brian) drew them instead.
• Official Couple: If the show had continued, Tacoma and Rebecca would have got together. Which makes all the secrets about wanting Rachel and Malcolm in Critic to be a couple amusingly ironic.
• Oh, Crap!: Tom Collins' reaction to finding Donnie alive and pissed.
  • Donnie knew he was in deep shit when he woke up with bottles in his hand and Egoraptor sleeping next to him instead of Uncle Yo. His groan when he'd remembered everything certainly sounds like this situation has happened before.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Inverted. Twice, Donnie has to be forced to leave by someone who has more right to feel that way than he does: a sick Tacoma suffering from vampiric bird flu, and the whole team when they're about to fade away forever in the Plot Hole.
• Prayer Is a Last Resort: Donnie calls it the final act of desperation after eating leaves, drinking urine and committing possum-cide. When it doesn't seem to work he tries praying to Satan, which also doesn't work.
• Precision F-Strike: As the stronger swear words in the show are usually bleeped out, Donnie telling the father how fucking sorry he is that he couldn't give a good performance after just finding out that his mother died packs more punch.
  • The Swag Leader's uncensored calling Tacoma, Rebecca and even Quinn all “girly bitches” is there to hammer in how homophobic and sexist he is.
  • Donnie also calls Doug a "son of a bitch" before he starts ranting how hellish his life has been and making him Critic means he has nothing to show for it even though he's tried so hard to be good.
• Primal Fear: Donnie Hates Being Alone and has a history of Sanity Slippage with a destroyed dead mom to boot. So what happens in "The Review Must Go On"? All his friends start disappearing (for extra pain points, Tacoma does right after he says he'll stay until the ambulance comes) and anyone who's left doesn't even remember the person existing.
  • Much like John Smith in Human Nature/Family Of Blood, losing yourself and personality because everyone wants you to be someone else.
  • Tom's way of scaring Tacoma; preying on his image of Rebecca as a young, vulnerable woman alone at night. Nothing happens to her because Tacoma's the one walking into a trap, but you can imagine the scenario put in his head.
• Pretentious Pronunciation: Rebecca Stoné's name has a silent accent.
• Princesses Rule: Doug and Rob just can't resist.
  Natalie Portman!Rebecca: I'm gonna be elected Queen!
  Ethan!Donnie: Don't be ridiculous, nobody likes queens.
  Natalie Portman!Rebecca: Ohh...
• Queer People Are Funny: not in-universe, which was a TGWTG rarity in how openly casually bisexual Donnie was and zero jokes being made out of him or the Love Triangle in the “Lost In Translation” episode, but when everyone outside of it (from Critic to Snob to even Jimbroth) trashes the show they mock the gayness most of all.
• Queer Romance: Despite not being allowed to show the fun parts, "Lost In Translation" is all about the Donnie/Uncle Yo love. Sadly like most in the genre, it ends in disappointment, as they make arrangements to meet up a few months later but Donnie gets erased before then.
• Quit Your Whining: In a rather gentle way considering what he's like, Karl tries to get Donnie out of his depression at the con and make the movie he wanted.
  Karl: Are you going to film this movie or what?
  Donnie: What’s the point? You heard Rebecca and Tacoma. They’re not gonna like it anyway...
  Karl: As if that has ever stopped you.
• Rape as Backstory: Both Donnie and Rebecca were sexually abused in the past, and it's less the rape that's the focus and more how they cope with it (Donnie being hypersexual and needy, and Rebecca's feminism).
• Rape as Drama: The treatment of rape in this show is certainly more serious than Doug's other work (who acted like it was tragic comedy). Rebecca has serious damage from being sexually abused by her uncle, Donnie's casual acceptance of his own rape disgusts everyone and even he acts a lot colder to Egoraptor – who didn't do anything malicious, was just a keet - after discovering he was the only one drunk after their rebound sex, the Loony Fan family are treated like villains for enjoying every chance to take advantage of helpless Donnie, and Collins exploits Tacoma's worry over Rebecca's issues to make him think he'll do something bad to her.
• Rationalizing the Overkill: The SWAG leader assumes that kidnapping someone at gunpoint and leaving them to starve to death slowly in an abandoned patch of woods is justifiable punishment for his territory getting threatened.
• Reality Subtext: Donnie wants Slash Fic about him. If you're up to date on your fandom, you'll know Doug and his characters combined practically own the slash-heavy Kink Meme, and Doug has given every delighted blessing for this fact.
  • In-universe, Tacoma wrote the perfect Wreck-It Ralph speech because it summed up his family situation. Donnie, same thing, proving he can act if the words mean anything to him.
  • The film Donnie's mother starred in, Blue Patches, resembles A Patch of Blue right down to her name sounding like the actress in the latter movie, who also committed suicide later over the claim that "Hollywood destroyed her." Not coincidentally, said actress also voiced Mrs. Brisby in The Secret of NIMH, Doug's favorite animated film.
  • The Donnie/Rebecca argument in Transformers sounds very much like an argument Doug/Lindsay had in the To Boldly Flee shooting. Like Donnie not getting why Rebecca thought being slutty for an audience was a bad thing because he had no problem with it himself, Doug couldn't understand Lindsay's annoyance with her costume because he was taught all sexual attention was a good thing.
  • As seen from convention answers and both the Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee commentaries, Doug doesn't have the greatest confidence as a director, and Donnie's... lacking in that area was his way of poking at himself.
  • In a thankful case where the reality is less depressing, Donnie is all about Oops! I Forgot I Was Married for Domestic Abuse reasons, but Doug has to be reminded of his wife on several occasions just because he really loves flirting. (And even better, she's often close by or in the same room and is usually happy to watch him do it.)
  • The family, Collins and abusers felt like they were entitled to have Donnie. Donnie is played by the guy who had fans asking on his second con ever if they could take him home and keep him.
  • When Donnie is kidnapped, Karl tears apart the forest trying to look for him and is both raging and heartbroken when he thinks he's dead. It's just common sense to think that big brother Rob would do/feel the same if little brother Doug went missing.
  • Rebecca's rant on how the industry hates women was partly scripted and partly based on Rachel's real experiences in the modelling and acting industry.
  • When depressed and talking to Yo at the con, Donnie wistfully-slash-sadly says he always keeps busy to distract himself. This being Doug's "work ethic" is well-known.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: According to Doug's commentary, "The Review Must Go On" happened because he was told Critic had to come back. Demo Reel could stay and he could bring the character back however he wanted, but he had to do reviews again.
  • Even after "The Review Must Go On" came out, Rob gave a load of details of what they were planning to do in later seasons (Rebecca wanting to take things to the next level with Tacoma, more detail into Quinn and Karl's relationship, RL!Doug playing with Donnie more, Lindsay and Lewis in dramatic roles etc.), which makes it look like the only reason character!Doug suffers writer's block is because he has to.
  • As Doug mentioned in his Scooby Doo commentary, both he and Rob keep forgetting to take their wedding rings off having recently got married (not to each other), so wanted the next characters to have done the deed. Donnie's marriage is in tatters and Karl's family are dead, but still.
  • The only reason Donnie lies a lot is to try and stop people from prying into his personal life and not upset them (like how even in Blue Patches he doesn't tell friends about the family). Doug in vlogs has talked about how it's beneficial to lie so you don't freak anyone out.
• Real Men Cook: Only the war veterans Karl and Quinn have any capacity for cooking. Mafia man Fabrizio too, though it's best not to ask what's in the meatballs.
• Real Men Hate Affection: Shamelessly averted, as while Donnie, Tacoma and Uncle Yo don't fit the "real man" stereotype so cuddle tons, Quinn and Karl do, and there's still a sweet moment in "Wreck It Ralph vs Angry Birds" where Karl holds Quinn's hand when he's sick.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Donnie gives an epic one to the Yandere family after he finds out that they've been keeping him captive by dosing him with muscle relaxants.
  Donnie: You people! You never mean anything by it when you really think about it; it’s when you don’t think about it that your inner dicks come out!
• Retcon: Both the show and Critic's arc get smacked nonsensically with "Donnie is a purgatory for Critic whose trying to be good was a paradox". It makes no sense, and Doug confirmed this was intentional bitterness.
• Ret-Gone: The ultimate fate of the Demo Reel cast sans Donnie. It turns out that the Demo Reel universe was an illusion created by the Plot Hole to teach the Critic (who assumed the identity of Donnie DuPre) a lesson because it felt that it didn't really believe that he turned good. Once the Critic steps out of the Plot Hole, the Demo Reel universe and everyone in it disappears for good.
• Revenge: The bad movies Donnie makes are a passive-aggressive way of getting back at Hollywood for destroying his mommy. Darker and slightly less sympathetic is his stalking actors (like Rob Paulsen) because he was abused and he thinks they should be treated similarly.
• Riches to Rags: Elisa Hoffman went from winning an Oscar to living in hotels with her son, and Donnie went from celebrity life to having to leech cash off his wife.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Uncle Yo assumes that Donnie's being a brat about Hollywood because his mom told him not to go there. He's on the correct lines, but the truth is far more painful.
  • Critic's line "and we all know what [Demo Reel] was, what Donnie was this whole time...". In his mind he's bullcrapping about Doug really loving him the best, but 1) Donnie = Critic was admitted as Doug being angry at fans and 2) Rob confirmed it was more like Donnie = Doug, so he's got a point about how important the show and character were, but his conclusion was wrong.
• Running Gag: The silent accent in Rebecca's surname.
  • During Blue Patches episode: “Say you’re sorry, Liz.” / “Sorry.”
  • The cups with letters on. Until “The Review Must Go On” where Donnie has the “D” cup but the letter disappears, a character will never drink from the right initialed cup.
• Say My Name: Everyone really seems to like saying Donnie's name, perhaps to hammer home the irony that it's not his real one.
• Security Cling: In the first of many ship teases, the Sixth Sense parody has Donnie and Rebecca on a very small bed and huddling together out of fear from the ghosts.
  • Also in the pilot, when casually threatened by Quinn, Tacoma hides behind Donnie for protection.
• Self-Deprecation: Donnie talks about how making videos on the internet doesn't bring in much money (no money actually), so he has to get support from his wife.
  • Doug writes himself as fairly awful and pitiful in “The Review Must Go On”, as he falls over getting the garbage out, is nostalgic for the Critic after months of bragging about To Boldly Flee being the perfect ending, rants like a crazy person in his room after watching the movie, is broken down by Critic's creepy to the point where he's taking enough pills “to kill a baby rhino”, gets his own heartwarming words about said character evolving twisted around, falls into the same trap with Lindsay as Critic did with Chick in Kickassia, has Donnie act like the Creator's words are coming from a hack, and forces Douchey to be the Plot Hole.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: PG version. Bane's henchmen in-movie (played by Doug/Donnie and Rachel/Rebecca) wear eyeliner, carry guns and show off more skin with a tight black t-shirt and sleeveless black top respectively. They obviously don't do this as any other character.
• Sexual Extortion: Rebecca was made to do porn in the past because of some vague financial problems.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Hinted for laughs with Donnie/Rebecca in the pilot, but treated as an Oh, Crap! moment when Donnie wakes up to find he "cheated" on Uncle Yo with Egoraptor.
• Ship Tease: Loads between the three mains. Donnie and Tacoma share held gazes a-plenty, Donnie "flirts" with Rebecca saying she should shave her head, and Rebecca acts like a Violently Protective Girlfriend when she sees Tacoma is sick from the vampire bird flu while he... tries to protect her likewise.
• Shirtless Scene: As is to be expected of him, Doug shows off his chest while playing Braveheart in episode one.
• Shout-Out: Donnie DuPre is named after Don Dupree, a producer of Siskel and Ebert and The Movies.
  • In the first episode, Tacoma mentions to Donnie that they can't make an ending where it is revealed that Batman is an alien from Zeist
  • Donnie is warned that "a disaster beyond your imagination will occur" if he doesn't stop remaking movies.
  • During the Hero's Duty takes, Rebecca recites Jessie's I'm So Excited breakdown from Saved by the Bell.
  • The hunt for the turkey features a ton of horror movie references. And Ghostbusters (1984).
  • The Donnie/Tacoma "I shall avenge you" was an ultra-gay version of the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan scene with Khan and his right-hand man. Also doubles as foreshadowing, as Donnie and Khan have a motive in common.
  • Donnie's No Holding Back Speech about accepting both his names and love of film-making is lifted from Wyatt Earp's “hell's coming with me!” speech in Tombstone.
  • In Transformers, Donnie trying to make Tacoma not mad at him (again) is parodying the “people of the land” scene in Blazing Saddles, just insulting white fanboys and being a lot more cuddly.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: In the first episode, Rebecca Stoné describes her thoughts on her one girl show of Hamlet, until she decides that Shakespeare is a perv.
• Show Within a Show: Demo Reel productions is a different beast from Demo Reel the webseries. More focused on comedy and pandering for one thing, even after they decide to make their own films.
• Slut-Shaming: Accidentally happens between Donnie and Rebecca in Transformers, as he loves being a slut and doesn't get why she won't parade herself, and Rebecca getting angry because she just wanted one job where she wasn't treated badly.
• Sickeningly Sweet: Karl and Quinn both require drinks at Donnie's, Tacoma's and Rebecca's group Squee over managing to do the Bane impression.
• Signature Line:
  • Fans joke that Quinn's response to Tacoma and Rebecca's angst - "My God this is depressing, and I'm Irish! I'm gonna have to put on Angela's Ashes, just so I can remember what it's like to laugh again." - is a good summation of the series in general.
  • Donnie's "I really wish someone would do a Slash Fic of me" gets gleefully trotted out whenever there's newbie complaints about fangirls writing fic about Doug's characters.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: The producers of “Jingle Sells” didn't care one bit about Jimmy's mental state after his only guardian killed herself, making him still shoot scenes with fake parents and not wanting it to be talked about as it would “dampen the mood”.
• Society Is to Blame: When reeling from the reveal of Donnie's backstory and figuring out that he made bad movies as revenge, Tacoma sadly calls it the way of things. Thankfully Rebecca still has fight in her and convinces him to write a good movie as a gift for Donnie.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Quirky, waltz-like music plays over Tacoma and Rebecca getting completely rejected by their parents.
• Space Whale Aesop: "The Review Must Go On". Writers, don't abuse your characters and then kindly break the fourth wall telling them they're important, they'll just for whatever reason go insane and make your life hell.
• Spell My Name With An S: In Episode 1, we see the cameraman's name written on-screen as "Carl". In "The Review Must Go On", we see Doug's script writing it as "Karl".
• Spoiler Title: The Review Must Go On. Average humans are able to remember the song in the Moulin Rouge! review so it's a Foregone Conclusion that Critic will return, but depressingly so.
• Stepford Suburbia: On a familial level, the Yandere family that finds Donnie (Adam, Jill and Liz); they seem sweet if eccentric. Then you find out they are holding Donnie captive by feeding him muscle relaxants.
• A Storm Is Coming: Just before it cuts to Doug, thunderstorm effects play on the soundtrack as Donnie gets scared by what will later become the Plot Hole.
• Story Arcs: The leader of SWAG wanting to destroy the cast's show and Donnie's Mysterious Past.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Donnie and Rebecca confuse Batman with Dracula.
• Stylistic Suck: The parody scenes.
• Sudden Downer Ending: "The Review Must Go On", the show's abrupt finale reveals that Donnie DuPre was the amnesiac Nostalgia Critic this whole time, still trapped inside the Plot Hole, and the Demo Reel universe was a purgatory created by the Plot Hole to teach the Critic a lesson. All that stuff our characters went through in the series? It didn't matter in the end. It was all fake. And when the Critic steps out of the Plot Hole, the Demo Reel universe disappears forever.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: As it turns out, your co workers will be not be happy to stay around your business, when you do things like kidnap a rival production's director/owner, and abandon him in the woods.
  • After escaping from the yandere family and having a big badass moment with the SWAG leader, Donnie's exhausted. As most people would be, even if they hadn't been kidnapped twice.
  • When Donnie thinks he's going crazy in "The Review Must Go On", he tells his remaining friends so they can try and help him, and an ambulance is called so that he can get better in a mental home.
  • Only a little bit of reality as it doesn't kill him like it should/he wanted, but after, y'know, taking a load of tranquillizers, Doug's sleeping and upon waking up rubbing his head painfully like he'd passed out.
  • After getting a stalkery call from Tom Collins in the Transformers episode, Donnie immediately goes to his friends to see if Demo Reel actually did anything wrong.
  • Tacoma's and Rebecca's film sequel to “Blue Patches” has Rebecca's character's heart give out when she gets excited, the doctor explaining that's what happens when the body gets used to constant abuse and can't handle any more strain.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Liz. She's a Creepy Child, laughed at Donnie when he was scared or wanting to die, has even less boundaries with him than her parents do, and like them doesn't learn anything, but her dad blames her for everything and no wonder she acts like a little demon when she has them to look up to.
• Take That!: To The 700 Club in the first episode.
  • In Blue Patches, Doug-as-Donnie rips into how the Critic used to be and anyone else like that; people who just obsess over the past and stew in dredging up painful memories for themselves and others.
  • Being John Malkovich gets slaughtered for just frumping up Cameron Diaz and expecting that to be "ugly".
  Rebecca: But no, let's give the role to the cute one and praise her for being "edgy".
• Tap on the Head: Exploited by Adam and his family, who use their beating Donnie over the head and the pain he'd feel as an excuse to hide that he can't move because they drugged him.
• Tempting Fate:
  Tacoma: Think we’re safe.
  Karl: Unless they’ve figured out how to open doors. *Doorknob starts jiggling*
  Tacoma (grabs doorknob to keep door shut): You just had to say it, didn’t you?
  • Take a wild guess what the fandom did with this line:
  Donnie: I really want someone to write a Slash Fic about me.
  • Considering what was found, Donnie telling Tacoma to figure out his reasons for paranoia probably wasn't a good idea in hindsight.
  • Rebecca asks “what could go wrong” when she, Quinn and Tacoma get ready with booze and fire-arms. Surprisingly, nobody calls her out on this.
• There Are No Therapists: Finally semi-averted in “The Review Must Go On” when Donnie plans to get himself to a mental hospital because he thinks he's going crazy, but he never gets that far.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Donnie's character in Taken goes a bit overboard in his threats towards the pizza guy.
• A Threesome Is Hot: In the Lost In Translation episode, Karl has a threesome with a couple of cosplayers, and when Donnie asks to join in, refuses him.
• Together in Death: Possibly the only show where a character is near giving up and wants to be with his mother instead of a romantic interest.
  • Tacoma, Karl, Quinn and Rebecca at least fade away in the Plot Hole together.
  • In an interview talking about the plans for later seasons, Rob talked about how Rebecca was going to want to be in an Official Couple with Tacoma, ask Karl for advice and he would be touched by a German 'love story' where the couple killed themselves to be together.
• Toilet Humor: Aside from Tacoma walking in on Rebecca because he thought she was crying, very little considering Doug has always liked this style of comedy.
• Too Happy to Live: "The Review Must Go On" starts with Donnie peacefully humming to himself, and Rebecca and Tacoma acting like Sickeningly Sweethearts, so of course they all have to be crushed like bugs.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Donnie's mother gets this treatment from both her son and his friends, which is justified considering he only knew her when she was trying to look after him, and they can see how much the loss of her is torture to him. plus she's based on a real person who killed herself, and anything else would be disrespectful.
• Troubled Child:
  • Donnie's backstory of his mom committing suicide and leaving him alone in the world to get abused for thirty+ years.
  • Rebecca's too. Her parents went out on trips all the time, and out of ignorance or malice, left her with her sexually abusive uncle. And when she shows understandable damage, they call her a freak.
  • Liz. A girl who can't be older than in her teens warped by her mentally ill parents and has no qualms about leading a depressed adult to her house, keeping him prisoner and invading his personal space.
  • Karl had a family back in Germany, but they were either killed or lost when the wall fell. He still wears his wedding ring, and it creates a reason why he treats the rest of the Demo Reel cast like children.
• The Unintelligible: During the Batman scene, all characters get this. But only in the trailer.
• True Companions: The cast and crew are closer to each other than their real family....which shouldn't be too hard because Tacoma, Donnie and Rebecca families all hate them.
• Unfortunate Implications: Discussed In-Universe. Donnie had Tacoma play in the Dark Knight episode, 1) Alfred, a butler, 2) the Joker, a madman that seeks the dissolution of society, and 3) Harvey Dent/Two Face, Bruce's romantic rival that "steals" Dawes from Batman, and 4) Bane. In other words, all of his roles are evil except the one that's servile.
  • Tacoma is worried about wearing white-face for his Joker role until Rebecca points this out; he then declares that "you Crackers have it coming."
  • In one of the more subtle moments of commentary against racism, Donnie takes away and dubs over Tacoma's voice for both Bane and the Joker, and is portrayed as an asshole for it.
• Unholy Matrimony: In the Resident Evil LP alternate takes, Donnie gets off on Karl torturing the interns.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The blonde cosplayer. She flirts with Donnie, gives him her card and gives him a smile as she leaves, but as she's a Shrinking Violet and he's used to people instantly going for him, he takes this as rejection and slides back into misery.
• Vocal Range Exceeded: Rebecca in "The Dark Knight Begins Rising". Although this was during the Show Within a Show, so it was probably an in-universe application of Hollywood Tone-Deaf.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Turns out that toothpaste isn't safe to use for a meal. Poor Donnie.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Rebecca's parents never bothered to attend the loads of school plays she was in.
• Wham Episode: "Lost In Translation (Bromance Version)". The true companions fight and separate, Tacoma finds out that Donnie doesn't technically exist, the story arc of Donnie's Mysterious Past is started, and the end has him getting kidnapped.
  • "Blue Patches" for The Reveal of Donnie's backstory, his realizing that he can't obsess over the past anymore, Tacoma and Rebecca proving once and for all that they have talent, and the SWAG leader going insane.
• Wham Line: "Donnie DuPre... does not exist. No birth certificate. No records."
  • "All our hopes rest on the Nostalgia Critic."
  • "Donnie DuPre looks up and sees the Plot Hole."
• Wham Shot: The newspaper headline in "Blue Patches". Nominated Star Leaves Behind Legacy, Son.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Donnie goes straight from a flirting introduction with Egoraptor to waking up sprawled out on his bed with more booze in his hand. He gets what happened pretty quickly though, as his Oh, Crap! reaction to seeing not-Uncle Yo in the other bed shows.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Carl seems to hold this belief, as he's sickened with Rebecca for accidentally injuring her cat, but slaughters a pig right in front of Donnie and Tacoma, and would have been more than happy to do the same to the turkey.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Carl briefly but firmly calls out Tacoma and Rebecca for prying into Donnie's personal life.
  • Lewis is exasperated when he asks Doug why on earth he watched The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Doug doesn't answer and changes the subject.
  • Donnie has a breakdown aimed at the Creator over how awful his life has been. The Creator is not sympathetic.
• What You Are in the Dark: Because he doesn't want to let the past torture him anymore, Donnie refuses to hurt the family or become what they are. He even chides himself for being unfair to them after rambling that they should stay in the corner and not blink.
• White Mask of Doom: The mooks who beat up Tacoma wear them.
• A World Half Full: The show can go to some really dark places, and you'll be disappointed if you're expecting a comedy, but our heroes are good people, learn from their mistakes and stick together because they love each other.
• You Are Not Alone: In the second episode, Donnie really doesn't want to leave Tacoma alone and sick, and has to be forced into going back to work on the movie.
• You Bastard!:
  • After Doug admitted Donnie = Critic was an attack on the fans demanding the latter back, Donnie's rant becomes a mainstream plea to the mainstream fandom as to why his tragedy means so little to them.
  • "The Blair Witch Hangover" had an instance used more subtle. It's a well-known fact that fandom loves seeing Doug's characters in pain, and the show plays that aspect for drama. The people who kidnapped Donnie left him a camera, so when he's dead from starvation, a wild animal or giving up because his depression over his mom is getting worse, someone can watch the tape and see him degrade.

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