YMMV / John Mulaney

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • A lot of people were surprised to find out that not only are JJ Bittenbinder and his classes on "STREET SMARTS!" real, but John was not exaggerating Bittenbinder's cartoonish mannerisms.^note It wasn't even the first time that Bittenbinder had been referenced in pop culture; Illinois native Bob Odenkirk had parodied him decades earlier as "F.F. Woodycooks" on Mr. Show. The actual Bittenbinder is apparently not a fan of his depiction in John's routine, either.
  • The part of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where Ice-T's character learns about sex addiction happened exactly like John described it during his New in Town bit. Even the specific phrasing of "bets the house on the ponies" is intact.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Towards the end of The Comeback Kid special, John interrupts his story about meeting Bill Clinton to describe at length the climax of The Fugitive. It barely ties into the anecdote and isn't mentioned again for the rest of the special, although there is one moment earlier when he suggests "I didn't kill my wife!" as a hypothetical way to show how punchy 'my wife' is as a phrase. Although it was probably meant as an Overly Long Gag.
• Catharsis Factor: His rant about the cost vs. the utility of many college degrees in the 21st century.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • In Kid Gorgeous he says Detective Bittenbinder "could look at a child and guess the price of their coffin." Lampshaded almost immediately as half the audience gasps.
    Mulaney: That line never gets a laugh, but once you write it, it stays in the act forever.
  • Also from Kid Gorgeous, his impression of George Bailey kicking the shit out of Uncle Billy, demanding to know what happened to the missing money. It'd be less funny and more disturbing without the context of a notoriously wholesome movie, or a clean-cut actor like Jimmy Stewart.
    Mulaney: (Jimmy Stewart voice) "Where's the money?! Where's that money, you fat motherfucker?!"
  • "Baby J" begins with a bit about John wishing one of his grandparents would die when he was a child so he could get attention. Already shocking, but then he elaborates on which grandparents would be worth "sacrificing" for such a cause, and insists the audience has likely thought the same thing when they were children. This establishes the dark tone of the special right off the bat.
  • In "Baby J," his anecdote of snorting coke off a diaper changing station elicits audience groans, so he doubles down by insisting they're not built for holding a human baby and were made to snort coke off.
  Mulaney: When you're a cokehead, you see the world in terms of surfaces.
  • It even becomes a Brick Joke when he takes his newborn son into the bathroom and uses the diaper changing station for its intended purpose.
• Fountain of Memes: Every routine this man has done is ridiculously quotable.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • His references to his alcoholism and drug abuse throughout his routines, such as in The Top Part where he recalls getting blackout drunk every night and doing crazy things and New In Town where he riffs on how his former addiction surprises people due to his straight-laced appearance and what it was like when he quit drinking, are a lot harder to watch after John relapsed and attended rehab in late 2020 for cocaine and alcohol addiction.
  • Another story in New In Town made harsher due to his later relapse is "The Xanax Story," in which he lies to a doctor to get anxiety medication and gets an unnecessary prostate exam as a result. Mulaney would later reveal that on top of cocaine and alcohol, he also abused prescription drugs, including Xanax. "Baby J" includes a much darker anecdote about him seeking out an unprofessional doctor who sexually harassed him, because he would at least easily prescribe John the drugs he wanted.
  • The bits in which he professed his gung-ho affection for his then-wife Anna, specifically the ones about how great it feels to call Anna his wife and his "my wife is a bitch and I like her so much" bit, become more sad after he divorced Anna in 2021.
  • His tendency of high-energy sprinting around the stage in earlier specials is harder to watch, as he heavily implies in "Baby J" that he only opened shows that way because he was on drugs, hence why the 2023 special is more low-key.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: He did a bit in The Comeback Kid on his real estate agent pushing him to have a baby and John insisting he doesn't want one at the moment. In 2021, John had a baby with Olivia Munn, and his later bits are quite affectionate about that son.
• Heartwarming Moments: Just about any time he mentions Anna in his pre-divorce bits, but special mention to his comments in "Kid Gorgeous." When asked if John could make fun of her in his act, Anna said that it was okay as long as he didn't say that she's a bitch and that he doesn’t like her. John's response?
  "I would never say, not even as a joke, that my wife is a bitch and I don’t like her. That is not true. My wife is a bitch, and I like her so much. She is a dynamite, five-foot Jewish bitch, and she is the best."
  • Toward the beginning of Baby J, he notices an 11-year-old boy in in the audience, and spends a moment talking directly to them. John treats the kid, named Henry, very respectfully, as well as bluntly telling him not to do any of the stuff he spends the special talking about (his drug addiction).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • His bit from "New in Town" discussing why an Ocean's Eleven movie with a team of women wouldn't work ("Because two would keep breaking off to talk shit about the other nine"). Not only was an all-female ''Ocean's'' spinoff made, but a common complaint about the film is the lack of conflict between the team, leading to less tension over whether or not the heist will be successfully pulled off.
  • During The Comeback Kid special, he talks about the phrase 'why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?', which he considers to be a rather confusing metaphor, because "you're not allowed to milk a cow that you don't own". He then imagines a scenario where, 'a hundred years ago in some village', a thief sneaks into a farm at night to milk a cow. Years later, a movie would come out with that exact premise.
• LGBT Fanbase: Many fans of his comedy (especially on sites like Tumblr) are young members of the LGBT community, in part due to his many jokes about being Camp Straight (saying he was supposed to be born gay and God just "forgot to flip a switch") and references to musical theater. However, this took a hit after one of his 2022 shows featured Dave Chappelle, who had received a lot backlash for his support of transphobic ideas (at one point even declaring himself to be "on Team TERF"). He seemingly alludes to his gay fanbase in Baby J when he tells adults who don't know him to ask their daughter who he is, "or your son if he's not an athlete."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Salt and Pepper Diner bit, which has become fuel for animatics, like this Homestuck one. ^explanationWhen Mulaney was 11, at a diner he and his best friend ordered 7 plays of the song "What's New Pussycat?" by Tom Jones. After that, they added a play of his song "It's Not Unusual"... then 13 more plays of "Pussycat"!
    • After that routine became popular, many fans would try to replicate it in restaurants that had jukeboxes. Special mention goes to the actual Salt and Pepper Diner in Chicago, where it got so bad that even after they removed the CD that had What's New Pussycat and It's Not Unusual, people replicated the prank with different songs, which led to the restaurant permanently unplugging the jukebox.
  • It's also become popular to create videos of the "The One Thing You Can't Replace" story with various fictional characters in place of John and his peers, such as Swerve from The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye or McCree from Overwatch. ^explanation John told a story about how he went to a party held by the son of a jerkass teacher in high school wherein some of the attendees decided to trash the place as revenge. During the party, a kid took a running leap onto a pool table (breaking it), another kid took a shit on the teacher's computer, John drunkenly instigated a riot detailed in Refuge in Audacity on the main page, and someone stole some antique photos. He later found out that this person turned out to be another friend of his, and they apparently made a habit out of doing it at parties they attended.
    • Drop a forty on the floor and yell "Scatter!" ^note From the "The One Thing You Can't Replace" bit, some people use it when they have to separate from their friends
  • The "terrified of 13-year-olds" bit is also popular fuel for animatics, such as this Mob Psycho 100 one. ^explanation The bit has him explain that he doesn't like 13-year-olds because "they make fun of you, but in an accurate way". He then describes an example of a group of them making fun of his high-waisted hips, which culminated in him yelling "No! That's the thing I'm sensitive about!".
  • The One Black Coffee bit has been turned into an alignment chart, like this one◊ for Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
  • A reaction image of him screaming "NO!" during the "Delta Airlines" bit, which was even acknowledged by him during a Tumblr Q&A.
    • It’s become popular to substitute words in the "Delta Airlines" bit, as seen in this spoof about DC Comics
  • "STREET SMARTS!"
    • "Now you've thrown him off his rhythm!"
    • Due to the overlap between the release of "Kid Gorgeous" and Avengers: Infinity War, gifsets of someone (often Loki or Peter Parker) confusing Thanos using the Bittenbinder Method have become incredibly common.
  • "THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT YOU'D SAY, YOU DUMB FUCKING HORSE."
    • "If [X happens] I will stomp [Y] to death with my hooves!"
    • The horse really is in the hospital. ^note His "There's a Horse Loose in a Hospital" skit is a satire on the Trump administration. When Trump was hospitalized after being diagnosed with COVID-19, so many people on Tumblr made some variant of this joke that John wound up trending.
    • The horse has left the hospital!^note Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in the 2020 election.
  • Pretty much any of his lines work great as reaction images on Tumblr, particularly "I said no, you know, like a liar" from his "The One Thing You Can't Replace" bit.
  • It's a common joke for fans to confuse John with Grant Gustin due to how similar both men look.
  • Replacing Spider-Ham's lines from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with jokes from John's routines, or vice-versa.
  • John Mulaney killed Princess Diana ^note Due to John misstating his age and where he lived (he lived in Chicago but his family was vacationing in Wisconsin at the time) when Princess Diana died.
  • His "No!!!" and "YEAHH!!!!" from his bit in Kid Gorgeous about working with Mick Jagger on SNL is a popular alternative to the Drake Meme.
  • "Now we don't have time to unpack all of that!"^note From his description of his dad's... odd sex talk, specifically his reaction when the elder Mulaney said that "When [Leonard Bernstein] was holding back the gay part, he did some of his best work". Frequently used as a reaction image whenever something has a lot of bizarre details in it.
  • Not unless a buncha people get really cool about a lot of stuff really quickly. ^note  often used by LGBT people when their homophobic family asks about their love life.
  • "WE'RE WELL PAST THAT!" ^note Often used as a reaction when newcomers to a fandom are reacting to problematic, poorly-written, bizarre, or exasperating parts of the story that old fans are used to by now.
• Play-Along Meme:
  • One of John's standup bits is about how he was bullied as a child for being Asian-American (which he is not) and was often mistaken for a woman, capping with him calling himself a "proud Asian-American woman." As such, fans will often jokingly celebrate John as an example of female Asian-American representation in comedy.
  • Another had his mother accuse him of having something to do with the death of Princess Diana (even though he was in Wisconsin and twelve) and now whenever a member of the British monarchy health declines, fans demand to know if John had anything to do with.
• Signature Scene: "The Salt and Pepper Diner", "The One Thing You Can't Replace", "Street Smarts", or "There's a Horse Loose in a Hospital", thanks to their popularity as memes. If you know one John Mulaney skit, chances are it's one of those.

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