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  • Big Bad Wannabe: He's a blatant wannabe of Vince McMahon and is being pushed as a top heel on both RAW and Smackdown. He comes up short however since Vince is the head of the company and the Big Bad and Evil Overlord of WWE, Laurinaitis is just a manager whose no different than other heel GMs who were "Mr. McMahon wannabes" in the past(he isn't even the only one to have run two shows at the same time). And just like past GMs his job is constantly threatened when he goes to far, with him barely managing to keep it on more than on occasion. Given the track record of past heel GMs, he'll probably be fired and replaced by another eventually.
    • After Over the Limit, he's even less intimidating, either hobbling around on crutches or zipping around on his Old Man Potter wheelchair.
  • Complete Monster: Has definitely become this. In addition to his sadistic actions to several WWE superstars and Teddy Long, he threatened Teddy Long by putting his girlfriend in a match with Kane! If that didn't push him over the Moral Event Horizon, threatening to cut off the college fund of Teddy's three grandchildren if he didn't work for him.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: He wrestled against "Mean Mark," who was being managed by Theodore Long, in 1990 with WCW, in a match announced by JR. "Mean Mark" is now the legendary Undertaker, and John is a WWE authority figure and Teddy is his archnemesis. JR changed his gimmick and is now an announcing legend.
  • Never Live It Down: His stint in WCW with Shane Douglas as the skateboarding tag team "The Dynamic Dudes" is always brought up by CM Punk and John Cena. Too bad most fans, young and old, didn't watch early 90s WCW.
    • Brick Joke: During the 2011 Slammy Awards they finally show video clips of this period, set to "The Touch" by Stan Bush.
  • Retroactive Recognition/Early-Bird Cameo: Careful examination from the segment from several years back where Randy Orton punted Vince McMahon will reveal it as John Laurinaitis' first appearance on WWE programming.
    • He was also name-dropped by CM Punk in his now-infamous Worked Shoot promo as one of Vince's "gladhanding, nonsensical, douchebag yes men" - possibly setting up the two's current feud nearly four months before it started.
    • Even earlier than that, he was seen when after Kane had lost his mask and went berserk on everyone. When Kane at one point tombstoned Linda McMahon on the stage, and he was one of the people trying to stop him.
  • The Scrappy: Many fans, marks and smarks alike, hate Laurinaitis due to him being boring, rather than being a Heel, due to his bland character, his Dull Surprise acting performance, and his lack of charisma, mic skill and his constant botching of words, along with his voice and relying on listing his job title every night in order to get cheap heat.
    • Creator's Pet: It Got Worse when he became general manager of both shows, and recently has been the center of attention and storylines, and is currently going to main event a PPV against the company's top face, John Cena.
      • And now he got a pinfall victory over Cena and is still GM as result. Not to mention that the IWC hype for him since he used to be a wrestler and thus "would be able to actually wrestle his opponents", turned out to be Informed Ability as he just has typical authority figure matches, even in a main event match against John Cena. To add, Vince McMahon himself, along with his son Shane McMahon, despite never being full-time wrestlers and not even needing to wrestle at all, put on MUCH, much better matches than Laurinaitis did. Meaning that Laurinaitis is just simply a god awful performer overall.
  • X Pac Heat: Even marks, who normally watch wrestling as if it were real and hate heels solely based on what they did onscreen, simply hate Laurinaitis because they find him boring and believe he is making the product boring. See The Scrappy above.
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