YMMV / Chris Jericho

• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • His early WCW "white-meat" babyface run. His reign as Undisputed Champion is something of one too, looking so weak he was barely able to beat midcarders and taking a backseat to Triple H and Stephanie McMahon's bulldog Lucy in the build-up to the WrestleMania main event WWF Championship match.
  • His 2015 return constituted a minor one as he was well into his 40s and still doing his usual shtick. This led to some people calling him (and referring to that period as) Cool Dad. Even when he turned heel it wasn't of any help, the nadir of it being him defeating AJ Styles at WrestleMania, a result that didn't help any of those two men. Thankfully got out of it once he adopted the scarf-wearing Gift of Jericho persona, and really got out of it when he became The Alpha in NJPW and AEW.
  • His 2020 run in AEW post-world championship, with Jericho's ring work increasingly deteriorating from both the expected effects of age and very obvious weight gain, as well as engaging in underwhelming comedy feuds which, for many, fell flat. A stark contrast to his initial run in AEW from 2019-early 2020 which many had called a career high point.
• Awesome Music:
  • When Jericho joined the WWE in 1999 he used for his theme "Break the Walls Down". Prior to this at WCW he used an instrumental version of Pearl Jam's "Even Flow".
  • His "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune in NJPW and AEW, "Judas", oozes this from its pores; best exemplified when MJF barred the use of the song as Chris' entrance for a match. The crowd didn't care as they sang the song, anyways.
• Awesome Ego: During most of his career, really, but definitely exuded this with his "Gift of Jericho" persona.
  Jericho: Drink it in, maaaaaaan...
• Base-Breaking Character: A lot of 70's and 80's veterans really, really hate Jericho's guts. Superstar Billy Graham especially. One commentator suggested that most veterans really hate most wrestlers who, like Chris, came up during the Monday Night Wars and the Attitude Era, but mostly keep quiet about it because the others are either too powerful (e.g. Triple H and Shawn Michaels), are members of respected dynasties (e.g. Dwayne Johnson), or are just that popular (e.g. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin) and single out Chris as a safe target.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: It helps that Jericho is one of the few wrestlers who can successfully play both an entertaining Hero and Villain. Plus his incredible in ring skills.
• Evil Is Cool: Loves being a heel.
• Fountain of Memes: Nearly every word Jericho says gets turned into a meme.
  • Jericho himself is very aware of the memes, if his non-WWE Facebook page is to be believed.
• Growing the Beard: While Jericho had always been considered a great wrestler with good mic skills, his feud with Stephanie McMahon and subsequently Triple H was what really helped to turn him into the white hot trash-talking grassroots Anti-Hero of the Attitude Era that many people still know and love nowadays.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Jericho sticking up for the women after Michelle McCool and Melina's match at Night of Champions 2009. It took several years, but today both women putting out an awesome match would be par for the course after the WWE higher-ups decided to shy away the chickification of its female divisions and treat them as serious competitors instead of just eye candy.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This comedic segment from the 2000 "Break the Walls Down" video shows Jericho in a suit talking about cutting the comedy and taking things serious, a Hilarious in Hindsight moment considering his character would evolve into that for real in 2008.
  • "I'm bigger than Raw. I'm bigger than SmackDown. I transcend the entire WWE. I'm omnipotent. I go where I want, I do what I want, because I'm the best in the world at what I do." These were the words of Chris Jericho on July 12, 2009. Fast forward over eight years later, he's gathered enough clout to go through WWE and New Japan Pro-Wrestling almost at will, wrestling at Wrestle Kingdom 12 and later appearing on the 25th Anniversary of WWE Raw in January 2018, all while he's supposed to be a member of the SmackDown roster.
  • Despite giving the impression that he would never leave the WWE, Jericho slowly began drifting away from the promotion that made him a household name by wrestling for NJPW and later AEW - the biggest competing promotions against WWE at this point in time. This "betrayal" of his makes it all the more fitting that his current theme since 2017 in all his non-WWE wrestling appearances is named "Judas" - the Apostle who betrayed Jesus.
• Ho Yay:
  • During the WWE Draft in the late spring of 2005. Jericho was hosting the first round of the draft on Raw, and John Cena was the first Superstar selected from SmackDown. It's not enough to say that Jericho was thrilled to have Cena on the show; he practically squealed with glee when he heard Cena's music. The perky, tomboyish hairstyle he was sporting that night only made things worse.
  • With The Big Show, when they teamed up in 2009. When they were forced to split up after losing the Tag Titles due to being on separate brands, the writers handled the split as if they were a couple separating.
  • His alliance with Kevin Owens has shades of this, ranging from Jericho singing Kevin's praises as Universal Champion to asking him to give him some love before a match.
  • The start of Chris' hilarious video package on the go-home show before his AEW championship defence against Cody saw him kiss Sammy Guevara on the side of the head, spoofing the way Cody had done that exact same thing to his wife Brandi in his own video package earlier. When discussing the video, Bryan Alvarez just straight-up referred to Sammy as Jericho's wife.
  • At the 2008 Great American Bash, Chris Jericho interrupts an already quite short Divas' Championship match to cut a promo about Shawn Michaels (and the match's shortness was likely due to being cut to make room for said promo). Whose celebration is interrupted? Michelle McCool. Literally the next year it was Chris Jericho backstage coming to Michelle's defence for one of her matches being "better than the guys".
• Jerkass Dissonance:
  • Chris Jericho's final WCW match was in Peoria, IL in a tag match teaming with Eddie vs. Rey and Kidman. Before the match, Jericho said that if he got pinned he'd leave WCW. After the match, all four wrestlers hugged in the ring. There were fans in near tears, as was Jericho. Kidman started a Jericho chant. Jericho said that he was overwhelmed by the response, but he still thinks that Peoria sucks.
  • In his 2012 return to the WWE. By that point the nostalgia had set in, and Chris couldn't get the heat to last until he started to insult Punk's family and crossed the Moral Event Horizon by dumping alcohol all over Punk and promising to make him an alcoholic. Then when his feud with Punk ended it went back into nostalgia territory, so when Chris returned again in 2013, he wisely did so as a face.
• Love to Hate: As a heel, he's really, really good at it.
• Memetic Badass: Has become this to the IWC. He got into real-life physical altercations with both Goldberg AND Brock Lesnar, and walked away from them unharmed (and in Goldberg's case, took him to the floor with a front facelock!). Now we can add Hunico/Sin Cara Dos to the list, a man who has gotten into (and won) many backstage fights in recent times.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "ARMBAR!"
  • "....all these hypocrites!"
  • And perhaps his greatest contribution to the English language - "assclown".
  • "ASK HIM!"
  • "It will never, EEEEVVVERRRR happen again!"
  • Do you understand what I am saying to you right now?
  • Chris Jericho invented [X].
  • STUPID IDIOT(S)
  • ...the gift of Jericho. Drink it in mmaaaannnnnnnnn.
  • You're going to get... *a really long and awkward pause* IT.
  • You know what? ...YOU JUST MADE THE LIST!
  • And of course the ever classic, "WELCOME TO [Placeholder] IS JERICHO!!!!
  • "A little bit of the Bubbly."
  • Him losing the AEW World title thanks to a luggage mishap during his celebration dinner of winning it sparked a firestorm of memes. The fact that it happened in Florida, made it even better.
• Mis-blamed: He and Lance Storm weren't really popular with The Rock 'n' Roll Express after performing their finishing move in Smokey Mountain Wrestling. Lance Storm actually told Jericho it was a bad idea but Jim Cornette (The Owner/Booker) gave them the okay.
• Moral Event Horizon: As far as WWE goes, Jericho crossed it when he made things personal in his feud with CM Punk by exposing the drug and alcohol problems of Punk's family, promising to make Punk an alcoholic, and then attacking him by breaking a bottle of Jack Daniels on the back of Punk's head. Even heel-leaning announcer Michael Cole couldn't find it in himself to support Jericho after the first part, and actively rooted for Punk with the rest of the announce team for the rest of the feud.
• Never Live It Down:
  • In-universe. In kayfabe, no one, from Randy Orton to Danny Masterson, will let Jericho live down his WrestleMania 29 loss to Fandango.
  • Out of universe, the time he nearly caused an international incident by kicking a flag to get heat in Brazil without knowing that it was illegal there, and had to actually be suspended for 30 days to appease the authorities. This also cut off a potential feud he had with Randy Orton (ironically, Orton himself would be sent off on a Wellness Vacation around the same time).
  • His loss of the AEW World title in Florida, due to a luggage mishap on his first night of even holding the belt is probably never going to leave him.
• Older Than They Think: Fans shocked to see Jericho brazenly stray from WWE to show up in NJPW and at All In after having only appeared working in Vince McMahon's organization for ages have either forgotten or are too young to remember that Jericho first hit it big in WCW back in the 90s (and even wrestled in ECW before that).^* Admittedly, the shock may have more to do with the fact that Jericho had gone on record in the past to state that he would probably work with WWE for the rest of his career out of gratitude for giving him the chances that WCW didn't, rather than just seeing him in another promotion. Then it became even more shocking when he cut off his ties to WWE for good (for the time being, at least) to sign in with All Elite Wrestling, the promotion created in the wake of All In's critical appraisal.
• Rooting for the Empire: Jericho tends to get a lot of positive crowd reactions as a Heel, due to being hugely entertaining and widely respected as one of the best all-around workers ever. The night where he introduced the Inner Circle, the few scattered boos from the crowd were drowned out by the cheers and chants of "THANK YOU JERICHO!".
• Special Effect Failure: Under close inspection, the Jack Daniels bottle he smashed over CM Punk's head appears to explode well before impact.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Jericho's main WCW theme, which was a Suspiciously Similar Song version of "Evenflow" by Pearl Jam.
  • His first WCW theme is less "suspiciously similar" and more like outright theft. It's just an instrumental version of "All The Days" by Mammoth.
• Vindicated by History: On paper, Jericho's reign as Undisputed Champion looks a lot better a decade after the fact, as the details of his feuds are forgotten by the younger generations of fans on only the facts that he held the Championship the longest and went over both The Rock and Steve Austin are remembered. There's also the fact that in comparison to, say, Rey Mysterio's 2006 reign as World (Heavyweight) Champion, which had him losing non-title matches left and right, with combined with Rey winning it during the infamous "Eddiesplotation" angle played a hand in his reign being perceived as weak, Jericho only lost during his reign three times, two of them by DQ, and the third one being the match with Triple H at WrestleMania in which he lost the title. Also, compared to Seth Rollins and his world title reign, widely considered THE worst chickenshit heel world championship reign in recent times, Chris Jericho's Undisputed Champion run comes off looking slightly better, especially considering Jericho's reign didn't last as long, thus avoiding Arc Fatigue.
  • Another example is Wrestlemania 18. Despite being the undisputed champion in the “main event”, he actually argued AGAINST his match going on last. He said that no matter the order, the REAL main event would be The Rock versus the returning “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan. Management (and reportedly his opponent HHH) shot the idea down. Needless to say, he was proven right, the match most remembered that PPV was Hogan/Rock.
• Win Back the Crowd: Jericho's AEW run had started out well, but by late 2021 he was attracting criticism for letting himself get out of shape and his ring work slipping. For his match against Eddie Kingston at Revolution 2022 he managed to get back into impressive shape (even having a visible six-pack again) and massively improved his workrate to put on what has been considered his best match in years- possibly even his best of his entire AEW run. He'd continue to garner praise for his renewed ring work for the rest of the year, especially during his run as Ring of Honor World Champion. He was even voted at #8 in the "Most Improved" category of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards for 2022, a category usually reserved for younger wrestlers who are still growing into their role.