Web Video / Musical Hell

Greetings, mortals!

A Video Review Show created by Christi “The Diva” Esterle in 2012, Musical Hell is hosted by Diva, a demon With An F In Evil who has been shuffled off onto a small expansion shelf somewhere between the third and fourth circles of the Inferno. There, her job is to evaluate and punish the sins of the worst movie musicals ever created. The series posts once a month to RVT, RT Gomer Productions, and its own site.

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Musical Hell runs in tandem with Know the Score, a Lighter and Softer companion piece that discusses soundtracks, film and stage musicals, theme songs, and any other form of “dramatic music” that happens to strike Diva’s fancy.

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Musicals on which Diva has passed judgement:

• Annie (2014)
• The Apple
• Arabian Knight^note  The musical version of The Thief and the Cobbler released by Miramax in 1995.
• At Long Last Love
• Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
• The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
• Burlesque
• Camelot
• Cats (2019)
• Can't Stop the Music
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• A Chorus Line
• A Christmas Carol: The Musical
• Christmas is Here Again
• David Copperfield (1993)
• De-Lovely
• Descendants
• Descendants 2
• Dick Deadeye, or Duty Done
• Disco Worms (Crossover with Archer Slam-BAM)
• Doctor Dolittle
• Elf Bowling
• The Fantasticks
• Freaky Friday 2018
• From Justin to Kelly
• Geppetto
• Glitter
• Grease 2
• Happily Ever After
• Hi-Tops
• High School Musical (Crossover with DJ Soundbite)
• Home on the Range
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
• I Kissed a Vampire (Crossover with Jess World)
• In Search of the Titanic
• Jekyll & Hyde
• Jem and the Holograms
• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
• Joyful Noise
• The King and I (1999)
• La La Land
• Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return
• The Lion King (2019)
• A Little Night Music
• The Lorax
• Lost Horizon (1973)
• Love Never Dies
• Love's Labour's Lost
• Mame
• Mamma Mia!
• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
• Man of La Mancha
• The Mighty Kong
• The Music Man (2003)
• Nine
• The Nutcracker in 3D
• Paint Your Wagon
• The Pebble and the Penguin
• Pennies from Heaven
• Pete's Dragon (1977)
• Peter Pan Live!
• The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
  • The Phantom of the Opera (1991)
• Phantom of the Paradise
• Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night
• The Pirate Movie
• Pokémon Live!
• Popeye
• Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical
• The Princess and the Pea
• Quest for Camelot
• RENT (Crossover with Rufus Reviews)
• Repo! The Genetic Opera
• The Return of Captain Invincible
• Rhinestone
• Rock-A-Doodle
• Rock & Rule
• Rock of Ages
• Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1998)
• Sci-Fi High
• Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire
• The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue
• Sextette
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• Shock Treatment
• The Singing Detective
• Sleeping Beauty (1987)
• Spiceworld
• Stage Fright (2014)
• Strange Magic
• Sunday School Musical
• The Swan Princess Christmas
• The Swan Princess: A Royal Family Tale
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells
• The Ten Commandments: The Musical
• Thumbelina
• Titanic: The Legend Goes On
• A Troll in Central Park
• Walking on Sunshine
• The Wiz
• Xanadu
• Yellow Submarine
• Z-O-M-B-I-E-S

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Musical Hell provides examples of the following tropes:

• Accentuate the Negative: The series premise is identifying and punishing the “sins” of its subjects. Inverted with the “Saving Grace,” which highlights positive elements that shine out in spite of the rest of the film.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Diva will admit it from time to time. On a higher note, there are the "Saving Graces".
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: The 2003 version of The Music Man gets sinned for failing to bring up a crucial bit of Marian's backstory that explains why she was willing to give Harold the benefit of the doubt.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The Lion King (2019) gets a sin for its depiction of Timon and Pumbaa - among Diva's other complaints about their portrayals, she notes that their cheerful hedonism is gutted in favor of a more nihilistic portrayal.

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• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: In The Ten Commandments: The Musical, Diva implies she was cast out of Heaven due to participating in a rebellion while she was drunk.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Probably to be expected in this case.
• All There in the Manual: In a response to a comment on her review of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return, Diva established that Musical Hell is located "on a small expansion shelf somewhere between the Third and Fourth Circles." Due to changing times, the Inferno has had to develop new space to accommodate modern sins like texting while driving, playing Face Hunter decks in Hearthstone, and of course, terrible musicals.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Before her review of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return, Diva justifies her "personal bias" with this trope:
  Diva: I'm a demon. I don't. Do. Fair.
• Anachronism Stew: Diva notes this in her commentary of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Golden Films):
  Diva: Ahh, nothing says medieval Paris like mid-19th century can-can music... we're only one minute in, and already the costumes have gone through fifteen different time periods.
• Anvilicious: Diva marked down Pennies from Heaven for this trope, noting that it hammered the contrast between the cheery 1930s popular songs and the backdrop of the Great Depression constantly, while noting that it said nothing of any substance about the era other than "everything sucks".
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Diva doesn't take ripoff films very well.
• Artistic License: In Phantom of the Paradise, when Swan is getting an inebriated Phoenix to sign a contract, Donna argues that the fact that Phoenix's aforementioned inebriation counts as being under duress, making said contract null and void. Diva counters that it's not like the movie would know that.
• Ascended Demon: Donna implies at the end of the Portal 2 review that Diva might be able to go back to Heaven one day.
• Badass Decay: invoked Diva cites Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street for this for adapting out Johanna's shooting Mr. Fogg.
• Berserk Button: Descendants and The Lion King (2019) annoy Diva with their misuse of "Be Our Guest", with the former's Totally Radical Two Decades Behind rap cover getting a sin to itself.

  Sin Card: DID YOU JUST

  • As shown in the Hi-Tops review, Donna has issues with how the stage show's version of Heaven is presented, especially in regards to Heaven's robotic-looking guards.
• Bigger on the Inside: From her Spice World review:
  "Even if these gals were Elvis, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Beyoncé and the opposition's kid all rolled into one, I still would not believe that's the inside of their bus, unless there's a Time Lord spice somewhere in the mix.
• Big Red Devil: Diva is drawn as a female version of one. The Legends of Oz intro even notes all the characteristics that build the trope.◊
• Bizarre Human Biology: In the review for Glitter, Diva makes the off-hand comment during the closing that the film "makes me sick to my three-and-a-half stomachs".
• Broken Aesop: Diva notes this in regards to one of the songs featured in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells:
  Diva: Also, the whole "violence is not the answer, music is the path to enlightenment" message is a bit incongruious for a franchise based on beating things up. I feel like this whole song was just a stop to the "Think of the Children!" crowd.
• Broke the Rating Scale:
  • Diva admits that the pyramid scheme used to finance Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return was so heinous that "it was out of [her] jurisdiction" to sentence the producers the typical Cool and Unusual Punishment, instead sending them off to the Eighth Cirlce of Hell for a more "old-school" punishment.
  • Diva doesn't even dignify certain mockbuster films with a proper review, instead giving them a MST-style commentary. Why bother giving a thoughtful critique on something that isn't even trying to be good?
  • Home on the Range was the very first film to get a sin before it even began, due to its epic failure being a major cause of the decline of hand-drawn animation.
  • Arthur from Pennies From Heaven is the first single character to get two sins solely for sheer unintentional loathesomenes, and Diva straight-up calls him the most detestable lead character she's ever seen in a musical, including intentional Villain Protagonists such as the Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd.
• Call-Back:
  • Diva brings up Pierce Brosnan's lack of singing talent, first touched upon in the Mamma Mia! review, a few times, notably in the Grease 2 review ("Ugh, it's like an entire chorus of Pierce Brosnans!"), as well as when she touches upon The Bee Gees' lack of acting prowess in the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band review.
  • During the Rock of Ages review, exactly ten episodes after her review of The Pirate Movie, Diva feels like she owes an apology towards the Pirate King and his attention-grabbing crotchpiece when she gets to Stacee Jaxx's introductory scene, in which he's seen with an even more outlandish crotchpiece.
  • Sometimes Diva will say something is the "worst * I've ever seen, and remember, I've seen this" Cue clip of a similar clip from a previous review.
• Catchphrase: "Greetings Mortals, welcome to another session of the infernal court in Musical Hell~ I'm Diva, your judge, jury, executioner and— [title that relates to whatever musical she's reviewing]"
• Caustic Critic: While she will give a musical credit in the form of Saving Graces if she likes something in it, and she's not as brutal as most, her angel counterpart Donna calls her out on being harsh towards certain musicals even if they're energetic and harmless.
• Christmas Episode: Six so far: Mame (though only one sequence/song in it involves the holiday, it's "Close enough for government work"), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — The Movie, The Swan Princess Christmas, The Nutcracker: The Untold Story, Christmas is Here Again and Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.
• Classically Trained Extra: One of the main sins of Spice World was its criminal misuse of a supporting cast far more talented than the leads, including Roger Moore, Richard E. Grant, Bob Hoskins, Meat Loaf, and Rocky Horror creator Richard O'Brien.
• Cliché Storm: Burlesque jams in so many overused clichés that she lets the audience fill in the blanks.invoked
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Even outside the Infernal Court for Musicals - Diva says that High School Musical was only used in Hell to punish suicide bombers and texting while driving.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Paint Your Wagon has Diva struggling to find a word to describe Lee Marvin singing. Cue Christi Esterle on Jeopardy! saying "What is monotonous?"
    Diva: Thank you, unbelievably intelligent and attractive mortal!
  • Not a direct one, but as pointed out and shown in this video, Diva was given a brief break from her job in March 2016 due to Christi winning a trip to New Zealand in said episode.
• Critical Research Failure: Diva points out that Pennies from Heaven tries to call the upbeat pop songs of the 1930s hypocritical due to being written amidst the hardships of The Great Depression, ignoring the quite obvious fact that many of them were written because people wanted some light relief to counterbalance those hardships.
• Crossover:
  • Along with the ones listed in the episode list, Diva helped JessWorld review Across the Universe (where her sin routine was cut by the other), Ursa in the Stuff You Like episode on Portal 2's Greek mythology, and tormented DJ Soundbite's alter ego David Green into a Glee review.
  • She also did one with That Long-Haired Creepy Guy, during the latter's retrospective of Jem and the Holograms.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • The final line of Annie leads Diva to react with "Oh, for f" before "The Verdict" interrupts the profane tirade.
  • In the "crowd sourced recap of the original" in Tentacolino, DJ Soundbite ends it, and starts a "WHAT THE" before he is cut back to Diva.
  • At the beginning of the Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical review, Diva wakes up with a massive hangover to discover Donna, her Musical Heaven counterpart, getting the review under way, and exclaims "WHAT THE F-" before Donna cuts her off with "Ah-ah-ah! Language, Diva darling!"
• Dance Party Ending: At the end of the King and I episode, complete with Creator Cameo.
• Dancing Bear: Diva accuses the 2013 stage adaptation of King Kong of being this, which she states "has one very large and impressive puppet to reccomend it, and absolutely nothing else."
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy:
  • Diva marked down The Nutcracker in 3D for this, pointing out that the fantasy world was inexplicably more depressing than the real one... despite the fact that the film is set in central Europe right around the time the Nazis and other tyrannical governments were rising to power in real life.
  • She also looked down on Pennies from Heaven for this reason, calling it a "depressing, nihilistic slog" and even refusing to hand out her usual sentence at the end, reasoning that suffering through it was already punishment enough.
• Deadpan Snarker: And how. Her MHTV videos shows Diva honoring this trope in full force.
• Designated Hero:
  • She considers Hubie to be this in her review of The Pebble and the Penguin. First, he's attracted to Marina for some rather shallow reasons, which makes him come off as no better than Drake, who doesn't make any pretenses about why he wants her for his mate. Then he pesters Rocko, openly mocks his dream, and lies to him.
  • Arthur (from Pennies from Heaven) is marked as the film's very first sin for this reason - as a possessive, perverted creep and incorrigible cheater, he's pretty much impossible to root for.
• Designated Villain:
  • Mentioned by trope name in respect to Benny the landlord from RENT, who is portrayed as a puppet of the corrupt establishment for wanting the heroes to pay him the rent they legitimately owe him.
  • Z-O-M-B-I-E-S features an example of this so blatant that it results in one of the few moments where Christi Esterle actually breaks character as Diva to call it out. After spending most of the film with zombie-hating humans as villains, the final antagonist ends up being a zombie-rights activist who plans to conduct a disruptive but by all appearances completely nonviolent demonstration in support of her cause; even the other zombies chide her for rocking the boat too much.
  • The Board of Governors in Jekyll & Hyde are treated as villains for being rich and snooty and cutting Jekyll's funding, believing his work to be dangerous. Diva is unamused; pointing out that their snobbishness is hardly their fault given that they've lived their entire lives in the elitist Victorian upper-crust, they're absolutely right that Jekyll's research is dangerous (we wouldn't have a plot if it wasn't!), and only one of them, a Pedophile Priest, actually does anything straight-up bad.
  • Keith in La La Land is treated as a sellout by his rival, the protagonist Sebastian (and seemingly the movie itself), simply because he prefers modern forms of jazz music, whereas Seb is a die-hard traditionalist.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Diva namechecks the former trope name, Twenty Minutes with Jerks in her review of Stage Fright, as an example of the trope done poorly.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Male:
  • At Long Last Love got a sin for this.
  • She also notes this in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,^note Which is a complicated take on this trope, as noted in the work page. but doesn't count it as a sin because "that's how it goes in the source material".
• Downer Ending: Referenced in the De-Lovely review when Gabe asks Linda if she's ever seen a musical without a happy ending, implying the answer should be "No". An unamused Diva promptly cues a montage of the implication that the MC and several other characters die in Nazi concentration camps in Cabaret, Jean Valjean dying as Marius comforts a sobbing Cosette in Les Misérables, a grief-stricken Maria asking how many people she can kill with Chino's gun and still have one bullet left for herself in West Side Story, the crucified Jesus wailing "My God, why have you forgotten me?" in Jesus Christ Superstar, Christian crying over Satine's dead body in Moulin Rouge!, and Toby slitting a despairing Sweeney's throat as the latter cradles Lucy's dead body in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
  Diva: Ye-eah, I'm not exactly on board with your logic there, Gabey.
• Dull Surprise:
  • Val Kilmer gets criticized for this in The Ten Commandments: The Musical, with Diva saying his performance is lacking the charisma and inner fire you'd expect from somebody like Moses.
  • David Hasselhoff receives criticism for this in Jekyll & Hyde, since he fails to give the emotional intensity that's pretty much required for the title characters.
  • In her review of The Phantom of the Opera (2004), Diva criticizes Emmy Rossum for failing to give Christine "more than two facial expressions".
• Ear Worm: The ones found in Mamma Mia! are especially vexing to Diva, as is “Wonderful Christmastime”, which turns up in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — The Movie.
• Early Installment Weirdness:
  • Diva wasn't represented by her iconic Big Red Devil avatar in the earliest installments; instead, she spoke over a static image of John Martin's "Fallen Angels in Hell". She decides to make the switch in her review of Geppetto, and later lampshades this in her review of Tentacolino.
  • Diva is more haughty and superior-sounding in the first few installments, before her harried Punch-Clock Villain persona was established. Christi herself finds Diva being Ear Wormed with ABBA songs in Mamma Mia! a Establishing Character Moment for the way she wanted to go.
  • She notes in her commentary for Mamma Mia that this was before she introduced the "Saving Grace", otherwise she would have put "Slipping Through My Fingers" in that category.
• Elvis Impersonator: Refers to herself as a copyright friendly Elvis Impersonator at the start of her Rock-A-Doodle review.
• Ending Fatigue: The last and greatest sin of Can't Stop the Music was the fact that its entire last third consisted mainly of, to quote Diva, a "self-congratulatory victory lap" for the main characters.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Frequent, noted by terse and at times profane sin cards ("SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK?") and possibly Diva falling into Angrish.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Diva can get rather repulsed by some of her subjects, especially movies that are lazy, cynical cash grabs.
  • While acknowledging that his film adaptation of A Little Night Music was terrible, Diva couldn't bear to condemn Hal Prince.
  • The ending of Glitter features, for the first time, Diva getting genuinely angry at a film, arguably to the point of Christi Esterle herself breaking character. Specifically, she was incensed by the fact that the film blames the heroine's breakup with her psychologically abusive boyfriend (and his subsequent murder at the villain's hands) on her, with Diva stating it's in the running for the worst film she's ever reviewed due to this.
  • In her Annie (2014) review, Diva took a moment to call out those whose gripe with the film was the title character's Race Lift... before hammering it with a great deal of criticisms of her own.
  • Diva was shown to be disgusted with the producers of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return financing the film using a pyramid scam. She delegated their punishment to the Eighth Circle.
  • Before said review of Legends Of Oz, she acknowledges that the people behind the films featured on the show (sans this particular one) were "just trying to trying to make a good movie, or at least a movie popular enough to make money, and no true malice was involved in their actions." In later reviews, she's even spared creators from punishment when she deems them having suffered enough (Richard Williams for Arabian Knight) or not having had enough control of the project to bear responsibility for its problems (Don Bluth for The Pebble and the Penguin).
  • When confronted with Michael Jackson saying "is today the day you're gonna help me get down from here?" in The Wiz, Diva asks her bailiff if there's any joke she could make that wouldn't be overdone and/or "tasteless even by our standards".
  • At the beginning of the Z-O-M-B-I-E-S review, a poster is shown of Descendants 3, Diva points out that she's not reviewing that one yet, asking to let Cameron Boyce rest in peace for a while first. She later lays into the film itself for how it severely botched its attempt at making a racism allegory.
• Everyone Has Standards: Yellow Submarine has Diva forgiving of the psychedelia, but not how the Beatles Failed a Spot Check (downright named as such in the sin card) - they walk by a hill of sleeping Blue Meanies to a hideout, but only when they look outside it they notice the place is surrounded by sleeping Blue Meanies!
• Evil Laugh: Mostly done by Diva in the crossovers, aside from when she sees The Phantom of the Opera (2004) is the next assignment.
• Evil Is Petty: “I’m a demon. I don’t do fair.” Best example when Diva forced the guy who plays DJ Soundbite to review Glee as retaliation for the High School Musical crossover.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: invoked If there's a bad guy in a weird and/or stupid outfit, you can bet she'll comment on it.
  • She's not impressed with some of Erik's outfits in The Phantom of the Opera (2004). For example, she says he's dressed like "Skeletor The Gay Blade" during "Masquerade".
• Fallen Angel: It's heavily implied at the end of Portal 2 that Diva may be one and that she may have a way back.
• Le Film Artistique: Diva considers Nine to be an example of a bad one that aims for being deep and meaningful but just comes off as sleazy and pretentious.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: If she's feeling lazy, she'll just condemn those involved with the current offender to this.
• Foil: Donna, the angel host of "Musical Heaven". Even the name, as Diva and Donna are both terms for opera singers.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the session for The Pirate Movie, Diva points out that Mabel "dresses like a reject from Xanadu", the same Xanadu she ended up taking on sometime later.
  • The second episode, Lost Horizon, shows posters for films in the 1970s "dark age of musicals", all of whom wound up reviewed (Mame, At Long Last Love, The Wiz and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).
  • In the review of the 2003 version of The Music Man, Diva castigates the producers for remaking a good stage-to-screen adaptation instead of taking on one of the many bad adaptations of good musicals, accompanied by a montage of the posters for the big screen versions of Man of La Mancha, The Wiz, and A Chorus Line... all three of which later get their own days in the court of Musical Hell.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Diva notes that some of the problems of Love Never Dies - particularly songs that draw out for too long and a number that uses out-of-place yet out-of-date rock instruments - had been seen in Andrew Lloyd Webber's previous, more successful works, but have become particularly egrigous by the time the musical had been produced.
  • She also admits in her review of The Phantom of the Opera (2004) that the original Andrew Lloyd Webber show "has always been more style than substance", but argues that "good directors can find emotional and dramatic truth even in superficial material". Joel Schumacher, on the other hand, "has no idea how to stage a song effectively", which in turn reduces the musical to "a series of lavish music videos" that "never rises above the empty spectacle its critics have always dismissed it as".
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Twice, in the very first episode with a Long List of reasons the relationship won't last, and in Sunday School Musical with "the other side's" disavowed list (along with said movie, there is Jack Chick, al-Qaeda, "those Osmond fools" and "that weird bit in Ezekiel with the flaming wheel").
• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: Diva finds one in Yellow Submarine:
  Diva: Seeing John Lennon age into an old man is a bit awkward in retrospect...
• Fun with Subtitles: Diva occasionally likes playing with how she names the sins.
• Gateway Series: Diva acknowledges this being the case for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with younger audiences and theatre, being a popular "crowd pleaser for a family audience".
• Good Counterpart: Donna, the angel who heads Musical Heaven introduced in the review of Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: "Hell", for obvious reasons, is "here". Any blasphemous complaints use demonic replacements such as "Beelze H. Buub"... with the exception of "Opposition Damn It!"
• Guilty Pleasures: Repo! The Genetic Opera, Jekyll & Hyde, RENT, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street are ultimately acknowledged as such, with the last of these being the first movie to receive two Saving Graces.
• Gulliver Tie-Down: The title card for her review of The Secret of NIMH shows Diva tied up with the mice protagonists on top of her.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Titanic: The Legend Goes On gets sinned for portraying William McMaster Murdoch, one of the greatest heroes of the RMS Titanic sinking, as a snide jerkass.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: "What the Here?" among many others. Sometimes, inverting the side ("Speak of the angel..."). It backfires when Diva calls Donna "goody two hooves", as she replies "I don't have hooves!"
• Hot as Hell: Diva is drawn as a sexy Big Red Devil.
• Hypocrisy Nod: Diva does one whenever she complains about credits or post-production.
• Idiot Ball: Such moments are highlighted, usually with Dot Warner saying "Whoa, dumber than advertised!". If it's unbelievably stupid, the Face Palm scene from The Naked Gun 33 1/3 will play afterwards.
• I'm Going to Hell for This: Subverted, of course.
  I'm in Hell already, I can use that joke.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Peter Pan Live leads to Diva Drowning My Sorrows in tequila. She starts the next episode hungover and with Donna having opened the case. Later, Beauty and the Beast: the Enchantment Christmas reveals the court's emergency protocols (a cocktail drink) and 'dire emergency protocols' (a bottle of scotch).
• Infernal Bureaucracy: Naturally. It is Hell, after all.
• Informed Ability: Nine gets sinned for failing to adequately demonstrate Guido's genius and appeal to women.
• In Name Only: Upon seeing that The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Golden Films) was "adapted" from the Victor Hugo novel:
  Diva: Well, adapted in the sense that we took the title and a couple of ideas, then filled the rest out with cartoon cliches and bad songs.
• Innocently Insensitive: When passing judgement on Z-O-M-B-I-E-S, Diva says the producers are sentenced to "the same time-hopping expedition as that guy from The Twilight Zone movie." Naturally, a few viewers thought she was talking about the infamous helicopter crash. She has since clarified (in the comments) that she meant the character, and not Vic Morrow.
• Ironic Hell: Her punishments tend towards this, with a side of Cool and Unusual Punishment.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: Invoked in her review of The Lion King (2019) - many shots were ripped straight from 1994 original, but stripped of their charm by Jon Favreau's insistence on photorealism.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In her review of Arabian Knight, it seems as though Diva gave Harvey Weinstein - who by this point had been convicted of rape - a slap on the writst... until one remembers in her review of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return that serious Real Life crimes are out of her jurisdiction, and she instead leaves these offenders to the lower Circles of Hell. While Diva can still condemn him to eat all his desserts with mustard for butchering The Thief and the Cobbler, Weinstein can expect that to be the least of his worries.
• Lame Pun Reaction:
  • Eventually counts the myriad puns in Rock and Rule as a sin after one too many of them.
  • Diva receives boos in her review of The Music Man after she says Hill decides to "face the music". She's unapologetic in the face of this disdain.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Diva admonished The Wiz for assuming viewers would already know about The Man Behind the Curtain, and revealing him too early in the film as though passing him off as a Foregone Conclusion.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase:
  • “Greetings, mortals, welcome to another session of the infernal court in Musical Hell. I’m Diva, your judge, jury, executioner and [something pertinent to that episode’s topic]."
  • "This is the most [superlatively illogical description of whatever is happening in the musical Diva's watching] I've ever seen, and remember, I've seen this. [cut to something such occurrences can be compared to, sometimes with a Call-Back to a previous episode.]"
• Minimalist Cast: Diva's usually the only character featured on the show (useless you count her angel counterpart Donna, and even then, she's rarely in the show).
• Minion with an F in Evil: She tries, but she’s not very good at it. She even identifies with a character in Happily Ever After precisely for this.
• The Mockbuster: Her very first episode discusses on this, given The Legend of Titanic is one for the James Cameron movie. On "Musical Hell TV," she's done full-length commentary/snark tracks for four mockbusters, The Secret of Anastasia, The Secret of Mulan, The Secret of the Hunchback and Beauty And The Beast.
• Monster Clown: Diva offhandedly comments in her Home on the Range review that "all clowns are demons in disguise", and that she attended clown college, receiving high marks in cannibalism.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • "The Verdict" at the end of each review is accompnied by Dramatic Thunder, and so its not uncommon to see an upbeat ending number being interrupted by this ominous thunder clapping.
  • The Music Man get sinned for its uneven tone, in particular the abrupt transition to "Shipoopi" from a more somber scene of Hill being reflective.
• MST: Musical Hell TV, which ranges from music videos to mockbuster animations.
• Narm: invoked
  • Diva refers to the opening number of The Ten Commandments: The Musical as a "treasure trove of unintentional humor".
  • She criticizes the 2003 version of The Music Man for trying to portray Mayor Shin as a more serious and menacing character... while not changing his silly dialogue or the fact that he's fundamentally a pompous blowhard.
• Necessary Weasel: In her review of Yellow Submarine, Diva notes how the very concept of musicals - characters bursting into song whenever they become emotional - is inherently "peculiar".
• Noble Demon: Diva never fails to call out a movie for Moral Dissonance, especially regarding racism and sexism, or at Hi Tops for not living up to its Christian message.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: In her review of the "Staller version" of Phantom of the Opera, Diva feels the need to clarify that none of Abe Hirschfeld's antics were jokes on her part.
• No True Scotsman: La La Land earns a sin for treating Sebastian holding this viewpoint with regards to jazz musicians as a positive thing.
• Obligatory Joke:
  • "Gaston" in The Legend of Titanic. Also defied, as Diva finds too easy to use Monty Python and the Holy Grail clips on Camelot... before being basically forced to use "GET ON WITH IT!".
  • Also on the topic of Monty Python, Diva lampshades her reference to the Spanish Inquisition sketch in her Man of La Mancha review in a similar manner.
• Oh My Gods!: “Sweet Lucifer!”
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending:
  • Diva points out in her review of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas that the film treats the two leads getting married as a happy ending, despite the fact that the Chicken Ranch Girls are now out of the job and the powerful men who utilized their "services" and then turned against them got off scot-free.
  • Similarly, she notes in Love Never Dies that the only character to get a happy ending is the Phantom, who arguably deserves it the least of anyone.
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • We can tell something is wrong with Diva from the very opening seconds of the review of Sci-Fi High: The Musical when her usual "Greetings, mortals!" opening speech sounds much more harried than haughty. Sure enough, she breaks off halfway through with "I'm Diva, your judge, jury, and run, run while you still can!"
  • Diva gets so annoyed by the drawn-out Love Theme of Beauty And The Beast (which by this point went into its Truck Driver's Gear Change) that she breaks The Scottish Trope and imitates God, mentioning Him by name. Justified, because this was an unscripted commentary where she wasn't keeping in-character to begin with.
• Overly Long Name: “Diva” is a pseudonym; her true name is apparently two hundred and sixty-seven syllables long.
• Painful Rhyme: In her review of Jekyll & Hyde, she complains about a song trying to rhyme "hard" and "facade".
• Periphery Hatedom: Diva will sometimes review a musical she admits to not being the Target Audience for, such as The Wiz, Pokémon Live!, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells. She justifies the latter by stating that the Target Audience is a Fleeting Demographic that will hate it as they grow out of it anyway.
• Pet-Peeve Trope:
  • Diva's biggest ones are Idiot Plot and Third-Act Misunderstanding, which more often than not, leads to a sin.
  • As seen in her commentaries, the Truck Driver's Gear Change grates on her, as it draws out songs that are already too long and not good enough on their own merits to warrant it.
• Plot Twist: Each plot twist, no matter how sudden or forced it is, is highlighted with a clip of the Shyamalan Expy exclaiming "What a twist!" from Robot Chicken.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: In The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Diva notes that she sees very little difference in moral character between the Rabid Cop hero and the sleazy reporter villain.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Diva is ultimately just a demonic bureaucrat doing her job. As Christi explains she based the entire personality of Diva on that of the literal Punch Clock Villain of Ralph Wolf from the "Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog" fame.
  • Complains in her Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band review that no realistic villain would consider themselves evil, apart from demons but it's their job.
• Rage Against the Author: Once Diva finds out A Troll In Central Park is a Patreon request:
  Diva: Stupid high and mighty mortal, don't know where she gets off with her cheap editing software and her Jeopardy! money...
• Really 700 Years Old: According to the intro to Rock of Ages, Diva is a "child of the '80s...well, 2080s...BC...it's close enough."
• Reassigned to Antarctica: According to the Musical Hell site, Diva isn't sure if reviewing bad musicals is their punishment or hers.
• Record Needle Scratch: Heard as Diva's attempt at watching the original The Music Man changes to the 2002 ABC remake ("OK, who is messing with my video files again?").
• Review Ironic Echo: Her review of Love Never Dies gives us this gem:
  Erik: I want to know what you think.
  Diva: Heh, you asked for it.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Appears as chibi cartoon in a crossover with Miss Nightmare to review Shrek: The Musical.
• Rule of Seven: As Christi notes in one of her commentaries, Diva usually tries to note seven sins per film, appropriately enough. However, films may rack up more sins, with particularly abominable works earning as many as ten.
• Running Gag:
  • The review of From Justin to Kelly has Diva wrongly assuming the movie's over, only to be corrected by her bailiff.
  • In multiple episodes, Diva introduces a musical number from the case under examination by saying the characters explain a point of the story or their own personas...
    Tamatoa: In song form!
• The Scrappy: Diva lists these characters as sins, and often subjects them to The Verdict at the end of each episode.
• The Scottish Trope: God and Heaven are "the opposition", while Jesus is only referred to as "the opposition's child/kid/son". Satan is "The Boss."
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Spice World breaks Diva, who goes on to leave early and skip work the next day... Only for it to manifest anyway by shifting her screening of The Music Man with the remake.
• Ship Tease: With her angelic counterpart Donna.
• Shared Universe: Kinda. The show is set in Hell, which could be considered another dimension, but Diva does consistently interact with the Reviewaverse. It's more than likely the Hell of the Reviewaverse.
• Shout-Out: Monty Python clips are brought up in abundance.
• Signing-Off Catchphrase: "This session of the Infernal Court in Musical Hell is now adjourned." (With added words such as "thankfully" if it was a particularly terrible musical.)
• So Okay, It's Average:
  • Diva was surprised when she found Rock and Rule to be this, and doesn't condemn the characters or production staff to anything, instead opting to order them to study self-help books.
  • She has this reaction to Repo! The Genetic Opera, concluding that it's neither as bad as its detractors say nor as good as it wants to be. It has one of the lowest sin counts on the show, and was awarded its first-ever Saving Grace.
  • Rinse and repeat with La La Land, which is the first film to lead off with a Saving Grace rather than a sin for the beautiful production design, earns only six sins (most of which relate to a single character), and is one of the few where Diva orders no punishments at the end. What Diva found to be an unsympathetic male lead and a bland, low-stakes plot, however, earned it a hearing if nothing else. This seems to have been a deliberate Breather Episode, as next on the agenda? Cats 2019.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Throughout the Rock of Ages review, Diva constantly mispronounces Julianne Hough's last name like "how", when it's actually meant to be pronounced like "huff".
• Strangled by the Red String: invoked In her The Music Man review, she criticizes the lack of chemistry between the two leads.
• Strawman Has a Point: invoked One of the things she sins Jekyll and Hyde for is setting up the hospital's board of governors as a bunch of stodgy, hidebound snobs who hamper Jekyll's research, even though they turn out to be completely right.
• Stylistic Suck: Her review of Love Never Dies discusses this. When she sins "Bathing Beauty" despite its inanity clearly being deliberate, she explains that without something entertaining, deliberately bad is just... bad.
• Subverted Catch-Phrase: Diva refuses to do the last part in Burlesque, feeling the movie doesn't deserve it, and is unable to do so in Sweeney Todd as everyone starts pushing her to do said movie. She also does a Blah Blah Blah version in A Troll In Central Park to get it over with quickly, and in "Tentacolino", after "Greetings, mortals!", she comments on the original episode, and how weird it looked after three years.
• Suckiness Is Painful: Expected from musicals who deserve an infernal judgment. A good indicator is whether Diva eschews the opening phrase or adds something to the closing one. The Sextette review downright starts with her saying "I'm not gonna lie, this review's gonna hurt".
• Tempting Fate:
  • She decides not to punish The Apple and its makers because she finds it So Bad, It's Good and mockingly asks what her superiors are going to do about that. Cue the reveal of her next assignment: The Swan Princess Christmas. "Oh, me and my big maw..."
  • Diva makes this mistake a lot. At the end of her review of The Phantom of the Opera (2004), she declares the movie to be the worst possible thing that could happen to the musical...then she sees her next case.
    "Oh, fuck..."
  • Sweeney Todd is alright, better than the Disney knockoffs Diva usually gets assigned with. Then it's shown The Princess and the Pea is the next case.
    Why do I keep saying this kind of thing?
• Torches and Pitchforks: The mob from The Phantom of the Opera (1925) comes after her as she tries to explain Shock Treatment's complex relationship with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, ultimately deciding that it's best described as a Spiritual Successor. It doesn't placate them ("Oh, you people are impossible"), but she soldiers on with the review anyway.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: If she sees something exceptionally good about a musical she's reviewing, she'll list it as a "Saving Grace."
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: Diva gets exasperated when this appears in bad musical numbers, such as the intro song of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Golden Films) or the Love Theme of Beauty And The Beast.
• Unfortunate Implications: Diva suggests this being the case of the titular character of A Troll in Central Park reacting inappropriately to being kissed by a toddler, with romantic "visual language" and "dialogue" being used for what was supposed to be an "innocent and platonic relationship".
• The Unintelligible: Diva's bailiff, who talks like the adults from the Peanuts cartoons.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Diva's criticisms of La La Land focused mainly in the male protagonist, Sebastian, who is supposed to be a tragically under-appreciated genius, but whom she finds to be a pretentious Know-Nothing Know-It-All with a white savior complex.
• The Unpronounceable: As mentioned, Diva's real name is 267 syllables long... but even she can't pronounce "Terrance Zdunich."
  • She made a joke suggesting that the name of Prince Chulalongkorn of The King and I was such by having several other YouTubers struggling to read it, but Diva grew to see the joke as needlessly offensive to Thai people, which resulted in her taking down her review of the film.
• The Voice: Artistic representations exist, and she’s been known to manifest as a burst of flame or inside an inanimate object, but Diva herself is never seen onscreen. Christi herself said the two recurring clips listed on Idiot Ball are to compensate how Diva can't use facial expressions.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In Diva's opinion, Gene Kelly's Old Master character in Xanadu would've made a much more interesting protagonist than Michael Beck's wangsty wannabe artist.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Diva list several examples of this for Geppetto, mainly not exploring the town's reaction to a sentient wooden puppet boy in more detail and especially the town where the population's children are created by a machine to be absolutely perfect but that serves no other function than to teach Geppetto that having a kid that's perfect isn't what it's cracked up to be, despite being what Diva describes as a "speculative fiction gold mine".
  • Diva believes that Popeye would have otherwise been worthy of its cult classic status - with Robert Altman's improvisational Signature Style suiting that of the original Fleischer Bros. cartoons - had it not been a musical.
• Waxing Lyrical: The very first instance of her Catchphrase is "Judge, jury and executioner here, far, wherever you are".
• Wham Episode: The review of Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical goes more in-depth about Diva's past and feelings towards her position than other episodes. It introduces Donna, head of Musical Heaven. Her interactions with Diva reveal that Diva used to have a lot more faith in musicals (and possibly that she is an Fallen Angel), implies that Diva wants to go back to that time but doesn't believe she can, Donna encourages Diva to rethink her chosen path.
• WTH, Casting Agency?:
  • Diva sins the 2003 TV movie version of The Music Man for casting Matthew Broderick as Harold Hill, pointing out that he doesn't have the energy or singing voice for the role.
  • She points out that The Antagonist of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is played by Dom DeLuise, who in any other work would be pigeonholed into a Big Fun Nice Guy role.
    Diva: Oh, there goes my last lingering shred of confidence in the film.
• World of Weirdness: Since the show's setting could count as the Hell of the Reviewaverse, yes. The Reviewaverse is weird. For one thing, it frequently interacts with Hell.
• Yellowface: Diva cites Lost Horizon its first sin for casting John Gielgud as the Tibetan Chang once his name comes up in the opening credits.

Know the Score contains examples of:

• Catchphrase: "Hi, I'm Diva from Musical Hell, and I know the score!"
• Lighter and Softer: Rather than playing the role of Caustic Critic for musicals that are at best misguided or weird and at worst borderline unwatchable, Diva explains what makes some of the best musicals what they are or examines the use of popular musical theatre narrative tropes (for example, one video is devoted to the Eleven O'Clock Number, another to the concept of the "I Am" Song and "I Want" Song).
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The opening theme is "O Fortuna".
• Public Domain Animation: The title sequence.
• Signing-Off Catchphrase: "I'm Diva, I know the score, and now so do you."
• Title Drop: It's right there in her opening and closing lines: "I know the score!"

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