The Nostalgia Critic/YMMV

A list of some of the Subjective Tropes found in The Nostalgia Critic's works and his audience.

---

• Actor Shipping: Doug has been shipped with pretty much everyone. What makes this less uncomfortable is that he's fully admitted to pandering and being a flirt at cons and interviews.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the Critic a woobish, bratty, bisexual with deep parental issues showing off his masochistic tendencies by watching bad movies from his childhood... or is he just an angry twenty-something-old making hyperbolic remarks towards movies from the eighties and nineties?
  • When he breaks down in crossovers, is it genuine or is he pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit because he's a good actor and knows what the reaction will be?
  • Does he hate the Todd/Chick thing because he's jealous of the overbearing attention she's giving him, worried about her Sanity Slippage, or both?
• Author's Saving Throw: He made a lot of derogatory gay jokes in his early days. But luckily, when Doug started making use of Ho Yay and Female Gaze, these died out.
  • Also sorted out with the Critic himself. Characterization Marches On and suddenly a lot more focus is put on his sissiness and patheticness, but with good writing, good comedy and Doug's charm and actually decent acting skills, he's a much more interesting character than he was in the beginning.
  • Santa Christ is still a Big Good who everyone squees over, but he was made less of a Parody Sue by having him display Beware the Nice Ones and the ability to hold a long (if well-deserved) grudge.
  • A few people complained that he over-relied too much on film clips instead of jokes, so Doug made this a character trait. When the Critic got called out on the above in Star Trek month and couldn't use footage from other stuff, he had no idea what to say.
• Awesome Music: "Poor Critic", which gets him his confidence back at the end of the first commercials special.
  • The operatic-singing at the end of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. The fact that there's a singing shit on the screen didn't matter, people still wanted to fuck his voice.
  • All of the songs in the Moulin Rouge musical review!
• Base Breaker: Santa Christ. Some fans love him because he's a Parody Sue. Other fans don't think he's that funny.
• Canon Sue: Santa Christ is a combination God Mode Sue, Purity Sue, and Black Hole Sue. Of course, this was probably intentional.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Think about it logically. If he really was screaming down the house every week like people say he is, Doug's voice would have been shot a long while ago.
  • Quite a few people are praising Mara for "finally giving Critic some punishment". Guess they didn't notice he's a Failure Hero who gets Disproportionate Retribution for nearly every bad thing he does.
• Complete Monster: His interpretation of the adulterer on The Tommyknockers, especially after he leaves the search for a missing child just so he can have sex.
  • From a biased six year old's eyes with admitted issues, his parents.
• Continuity Lock Out: He doesn't have the long storylines that others do, but his show is probably one of the most character-based on the site and he's started being fond of call backs first set up from at least a year ago. He's also in plenty of cameo appearances, which usually tell you things about the character as well. Of course, this doesn't apply to the section of fans who watch just for a trashing of a movie.
• Crazy Awesome: Not only is Santa Christ both Santa and Jesus, he rides a rocket ship, hangs out with Mr. T, played bass guitar for Aerosmith, and reads stories to sick kids.
  
  He also atoned for all our sins, saved puppies from a fire, goes surfing in space, makes really good fondue, shoots lasers from his eyes, mends your curtains for free and fights monsters for fun.
  
  In the review for End of Days, he shows up and gives the Critic a Sega Genesis. No real reason, he's just that awesome.
  
  He even turned THE DEVIL HIMSELF into a box of Ho Ho Ho's.
• Critic In Leather Pants: Nice to know that fangirls will forgive you anything if you're cute and cry pretty.
  • Critic The Death Eater: On the other hand, the Fan Dumb example of his care for children being turned into pedophilia is just one instance of people making him out to be far worse than he is.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The Critic's "Tickle Me Amy" doll in Congo manages this within the space of 30 seconds.
  • Putting up pictures of starving children that could have been saved with the money wasted on Tank Girl, and then dubbing it a "Big Lipped Starving Children Moment".
• Ear Worm:
  • "Holiday Clusterfuck" will never leave your brain. Ever.
  • And if that eventually does subside, "Everyone's A Whore On Halloween" is here to take its place.
  • And Santa Christ's theme song. Being set to The First Noel doesn't help.
  • "Boring" from the Junior review.
  • The Top 11 Villain Songs and the bridge song, "Death Death (Devil, Devil, Devil, Devil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil Song)" by Voltaire
    • Another Voltaire song, "When You're Evil", is used as the intro to the countdown in his Top 11 Disney Villains review. I guess Doug is a fan.
  • His Cluster F-Bomb song describing the terrible Batman and Robin movie is also quite catchy.
  • His parody of 'Zack he's a legomaniac' in Revenge of the commercials.
  • His Thriller parody in the Casper review: "'Cos this is filler! Filling up the time! An hour and half is just too much for uncreative minds! Woo-hoo!"
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Ma-Ti.
  • Rob Walker, real life brother of Doug Walker, is fairly popular too.
  • Also, Orlando Belisle, Jr. who had portrayed the Critic's Guardian Angel as well as Malachite.
  • People already want more Mara Wilson
• Everybody Remembers the Stripper: To be as nice as possible, all people seem to remember about the "Surf Ninjas" review is either "I died for your sins" or his "GEEEEEENIUS" Shirtless Scene.
• Evil Is Sexy: (Having kidnapped the The Nostalgia Chick) "I am the master, and you are the subordinate."
  • The Other Guy is quite appealing when he's being a smarmy Bad Boss to Todd or being a "dark, shadowy puppet-master" that controls the Critic.
  • At the end of A Simple Wish, everyone agreed Mara Wilson looked hot joining the long list of people who could make the Critic scream and cry.
• Fan Dumb:
  • It is very easy to encounter people on the Internet who believe he is never wrong, even though he admits he exaggerates for entertainment value.
    • It gets worse when people repeat his opinions without ever watching the movie he's reviewing.
  • Many people believe his feud with James Rolfe is real, even though they collaborate on projects all the time. It is merely The Nostalgia Critic who hates The Angry Video Game Nerd.
  • His Facebook wall gets a fair amount of creepers too. One young lady casually asked if she could kill him and make a sofa out of his skin.
    • And one very clingy girl said he was her one true love and quoted "Hellfire". Trolling or not, that's a new one.
  • Conversely, some women have gotten upset at his fiancée because he's going to marry her. They've said some pretty nasty things about her.
  • In his Casper the Friendly Ghost review, he made a fuss about how he was so very creeped out by Casper saying "Can I keep you?" to a sleeping girl. Cue a long list of people in the comment sections (and apparently at conventions) asking if they can keep him.
  • He went on holiday for three weeks for the first time in years. Because he still wanted to get videos out, he put a few commentaries. Cue fans whining that they didn't get a Critic, he's obviously getting tired of his job and he obviously doesn't appreciate us. Yeah, that's completely fair.
  • Even though Doug has tried ridiculously hard to make it obvious, there are still those who believe he is the Critic and that there's not much difference between the two. Even though, discounting all those times Doug's proven he's a Nice Guy, logically the Critic wouldn't even be able to exist in real life with all his instability.
  • Some people are only too happy to ignore the oft-repeated message (both from the Critic and Doug) that "this is all just opinion and you're allowed to like or dislike whatever you want, as long as you can explain it."
  • The Bart's Nightmare LP and Retsupurae riff resulted in some massive entitlement. Despite Doug wanting to get something out for the audience while he was on holiday and the riffers trashing him and the site in every possible way (including some nice transphobia where they thought Iron Liz was Doug in a wig even though they look nothing alike), "fans" were only upset when they got bashed.
  • Because of the Double Standard and how focused he is on looking after kids, there are some who insinuate that the Critic must be a pedophile.
  • A particularly sad example is "fans" bothering Mara Wilson (the child star of Matilda) with constantly talking about how the "Critic thinks her movie sucks". She now thinks Doug hides behind a thinly veiled character to just be horrible to people, when the opposite is true.
    • That doesn't seem to be the case any more, though.
  • As a legitimate Take That to All The Tropes predecessor TV Tropes, you'd be surprised at how many TV Tropers take the above examples of Fan Dumb and will and can make it a staple of their writing in regards to their site. In addition to that, no one is allowed to talk flak about anything atrocious or at least bad that That Guy With The Glasses/Channel Awesome has done in the past, and many TV Tropers are die hard fans of the former, praising every word and opinion that comes from the NC's or otherwise mouths, with a brutal disposition against anyone who isn't a fan of them or disagrees with them.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Within a day of the episode showing, fangirls were shipping Mara Wilson and Critic. In their defense, he has a habit of having pretty women putting him in his place and making him suffer all sexy-like.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment:
  • As mentioned on the main page, Mako in the TMNT review. "He sounds like Mr. Miyagi when he smoked a million Marlboros" becomes less funny after you realize his VA died of throat cancer.
  • He made a few jokes directly at the expense of Michael Jackson in his Moonwalker review. However, even those few jokes range from a bit awkward to just plain uncomfortable after said celebrity's death over two months later.
  • His rant about oil in the Saved by the Bell review is hard to watch now given the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, especially the Becky bit.
  • There's his comment in the review of It about the girl of the group being "easy to get into". The book actually has the girl engage in underage sex.
  • From the Godzilla review:

"Yeah, The World Trade Center Bombing. I'm sure that's the only huge disaster New York will ever.... um.. alright I'm bailing out on this one"

• • In The Wizard review, he makes a Running Gag of being a twenty six year old guy with a crush on the kid Lucas. This is made extremely awkward by the actor who played Lucas going on to be a child molester.
  • In-character and if you're invested, the first True Internet Story painted a ridiculous life history for him, sponging off his parents and just generally having a cozy time. ...not quite. Which might be why Critic beat the ever-loving shit out of the interviewer at the end.
  • It's also funny in a Black Comedy way, but in the early stages of his battle with the Nerd, there's a throwaway line about his job not being easy. It's pretty much just a throwaway line that lets him lead up to the challenge of the Nerd having to do a movie review. Oh Critic, you have no idea how much it'll get worse.
  • When talking about the Child Catcher in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", he says his parents told him to stay away from strangers. Knowing what we know now, he would have probably been better off with a stranger.
  • In his Alone in The Dark review, they point out how the Big Damn Heroes start shooting the zombies without knowing why they're there and that they might just be innocent civilians. Then they show a few minor TGWTG characters walk into the scene and get shot. One of them is Ma-Ti...
• Growing the Beard:
  • The Nostalgia Critic started out reviewing parts of the movies, and not the entire thing, but as his videos went on, the jokes eventually developed and the reviews eventually covered more of the story. While still fairly low by say, television standards, his production values have increased dramatically since starting the site. His review schedule has been consistent too.
  • Arguably, the Critic really started catching fire around the time of Batman and Robin, probably the most solid of his early reviews and one of the first done expressly for the site.
  • As... bizarre as it sounds, character-wise, he was cemented and made consistent (i.e being more as like we know him today) from Follow That Bird onwards.
• Gannon Banned: Referring to Doug's most well-known character as the Nostalgic Critic is a surefire way to get yourself flamed to a crisp on the site's forums.
• Genius Bonus: The Roots homage in the Bebe's Kids review.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In his review of the animated version of Titanic, at the point that the dolphins appear, he blatantly states they're the happiest of earth's creatures and even makes references to Flipper. Four months after the review's release, The Cove makes its debut. Cue the instant Fridge Horror.
  • Nearly every attempt in his reviews to wring sympathy out of him comes across as this after Change the Channel and Not So Awesome
  • Likewise, his Pre-To Boldly Flee portrayal of his parents as Abusive Parents is this considering how much the death of his mother affected him.
  • At one point in the Lady in the Water review, he laughs for a really long time, at one point saying "I can't breathe!". In 2020, that phrase became a rallying cry against prejudice.
• Hate Dumb: While you get all the usuals, there's a section that hate him and are... attracted to him as well, so they want to hurt him. The Hate Fic "Beer Enema" is a perfect example of this.
  • Last year, a few of these people apparently found his number and address. Nothing bad has happened and Doug is safe so they were probably just bluffing, but it's still pretty scary to think about.
• He Really Can Act: Not just probably being the most in-fully-fledged-character on the site and disregarding Kickassia and Suburban Knights, Doug really did well in the first commercials special. Fuck, he even produced tears.
  • A lot of it is down to Fan Dumb, but there's something to be said for how many people believe he really is suffering badly in real life when it comes to some of the movies he watches.
  • All the more apparent when he interacts with con-goers. Nobody's taking it seriously of course, but while he's in-character making woobie faces or whatever the situation calls for, if the audience is meant to be - say - an angry mob, they'll be laughing instead.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks: Par for the course with any critic.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During the review of The Room, the Nostalgia Critic is visited by colleagues from the future who warn him that he "must not review this movie". Guess what? He later had to take the video down, because he was threatened with a lawsuit about the review.
    • After getting said threat, the Critic decides to satirize the situation with an impression of Tommy Wiseau doing a "Tommy Wi-show." More than a year later, Wiseau actually does come out with The Tommy Wi Show with the the help of Machinima.com.
  • In the Spoony/Critic/Linkara review of Alone in The Dark, Spoony enjoys typing "I like to wear women's clothing" into Critic's computer. In his review of Captain America, he casually reveals that he made Critic dress up as a dirty ballerina in Spooning With Spoony II. Black Comedy because the Critic hung himself, but still funny all the same.
  • In the "Jingle All the Way" review, the Nostalgia Critic jokes that "I'd just be upset if my father was Arnold Schwarzenegger." In light of Arnold's scandal, this joke suddenly became way funnier.
  • His Teddy Ruxpin review is very similar to Board James's review of Mr. Bucket, complete with a similar Groin Attack.
  • Bhargo's characterization of Ma-Ti has been purely for fun... and now, Hollywood producers are interested in making a Captain Planet and the Planeteers movie! Doug joked that they should just get Bhargo to play Ma-Ti in that as well!
  • This little piece of Tempting Fate (or at least tempting The Hub.): I mean, come on! When's a balloon ever going to be intimidating?!? I-
  • On Doug's Top 10 Movies he hates and everyone loves he lists Moulin Rouge as his number one. Guess what movie The Nostalgia Chick and Brental Floss team up to review?
  • The Nostalgia Duo's complaining about Batty in Fern Gully takes on a whole new amusing twist when Nella and Elisa find out much later that the Chick has major Perverse Sexual Lust for him.
• Ho Yay: Spoony/Critic/Linkara in the Alone in The Dark review. There's one such moment when Spoony forces Critic's computer voice to say "I like wearing women's clothing" (serving as lulzy foreshadowing to SWS2 where he made Critic dress up like a dirty ballerina) and Linkara looks rather interested.
• Hollywood Pudgy: He's a skinny guy, but he's got enough puppy fat to piss people off. Parodied in the Chick/Critic crossover of The Chipmunk Adventure when he mentions his manboobs and lifts up his shirt to reveal a perfectly slim chest.
• Hype Backlash/He Was About to Pan It, Now He Sucks: Doug Walker put Matilda as #3 on his "Top 10 Movies I Hate but Everybody Else Loves" and said that he was going to make a scathing review as The Nostalgia Critic, which angered so many fans that he decided to cancel it.
  • He has apparently gotten a lot of flak for reviewing Last Action Hero
  • The fans really wanted him to review TMNT. When he finally did, at least half the fans got mad at him (though for some, it wasn't so much the review as it was the infamous Mako joke)
• Iron Woobie/Jerkass Woobie:
  • Mainly because of Doug's delightful obsession with making him look like a pathetic failure most of the time. No matter how many breakdowns, rages and general shit he's gone through, he's strong willed and will always eventually come back fighting.
    • Doug says that the Critic is "pathetically proud and proudly pathetic".
  • Showcased in the Baby Geniuses review. He randomly attacks pedestrians for no reason, but we're also hearing his Inner Monologue at the time, and he's seriously in need of a hug.
  • The Cartoon Allstars commentary adds another element to it: he yells at things because he's desperate and scared, not necessarily because he's "rargh, angry".
  • Almost calculatingly done in the promo the Game Heroes did. He's kidnapped, tied up, treated badly, manhandled and is terrified to the point of tears. When was this released? The day Kickassia premiered, where the sympathy-inducing bits wouldn't start for a few days yet.
• It Gets Better: The early videos are incredibly slow-paced, he shouts more, the jokes aren't fantastic and the character isn't exactly interesting. But then he starts challenging the Nerd and the quality in everything improves from there.
• Just Here For Suffering: Hell, even Doug thinks the main reason why people watch the Critic is to see him work himself into a tantrum, cry and/or get victimized.
  • Doug may have learned the hard way that this is not necessarily the case, as his Long Play of Bart's Nightmare (featuring him playing the horrible SNES game complete with cursing and palpable frustration) was met with... well, less than widespread approval. Thankfully, the next review, James and the Giant Peach, got it right again with jailtime, meekness and gun-induced Happiness Is Mandatory.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: In the fic world, nearly everyone on the site has had a go with him. And it's not just limited to the site either. As of writing; a giant squid, Goliath, Lady Gaga, Velma, Christopher Walken and Turl!Spoony have all had their fun with him. Yeah, he tends to bottom a lot.
  • You really do get the impression sometimes that the fanfic writers think his proper place is bent over his desk.
• Memetic Molestee: He's a bit like the fanfic fandom's designated rape victim. Not for Hurt/Comfort purposes, just for funsies.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Where are you?" from Red Sonja, due to Bridgette Nielson's bizarre facial expression as she says the line.
  • "Frying the coke."
  • PUT THAT COOKIE DOWN! ~Down! Down, down, cookie down! Down, cookie down! PUT THAT COOKIE DOWN, NOW!~
  • "(CHRIST!) I WAS FRO-ZEN TODAY!"
  • The evil popcorn man.
  • "ZUUL, MOTHERFUCKER, ZUUL!"
  • But wouldn't you say his most well known one comes from a certain mad general talking about his desire to take over the world?
    • "OF COURSE!"
  • "Ride the pony". Thank you Spoony!
  • "TASTE THE RAINBOW, MUTHAFUCKA!"
  • ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS!, ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS! WOO-HOO!
  • For whatever reason, "50 Impressions in 50 Seconds" gets a lot of use in Youtube Poop.
  • "...fucking bubbles!!!..."
  • "FUCK YEAH SPARKLE SPARKLE SPARKLE!"
  • The Squee moment in Alaska is often used as a fangirling gif on tumblr.
• Memetic Sex God:
  • Due to Ask That Guy licking his pipe and Doug's love of blowjob jokes, it has become heavy fanon that he's really good at oral. His totally necessary fellating a joystick in the rematch against Angry Joe didn't exactly help this perception.
  • Not forgetting the whole "everyone loves seeing him in pain" thing.
  • Every time he shows off his tenor voice, a girl's ovaries explode.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • This just in, the character is not a inspirational badass role model, he's a manic-depressive, pathetic manchild who reviews crap because he has nothing else in his life.
  • Of course it's not just fanboys who are guilty of this. The worst case scenario for fics is that he'll just be an air-headed pretty boy who does nothing but cry and be in need of saving.
  • While of course humor is always subjective, the entire point of the LP was that Critic thought it was going to be the easiest thing he ever did and so failed miserably like he does at everything. If he did it perfectly, it would have been out of character.
    • Confirmed gently as "Critic's an idiot who has no common sense" by Doug in his commentary.
  • Also, his show is not meant to be about a professional critic, it's comedic first and foremost, and thus complaining about the Nostalgia Critic "not being a real critic" is to miss the point.
• Moe: Cute? Check. Big eyes? Check. Subby? Check. Weak generally? Check. Socially awkward? Check. We could go on all night.
• Never Live It Down: Doug has admitted to regretting "Bat Credit Card" and the review it came from because having to do the joke constantly does a number on his voice and he felt he could have done better with the episode. But unfortunately it'll be a cold day in hell before Critic/BCC stop getting associated with each other.
• No Watson, Only Doyle: The Change the Channel controversy means several long-time contributors no longer show up in his show. There is no in-universe reason as to why that is. 
• Padding: Doug's been known to occasionally make a few jokes about a movie, and then stretch them out a tad too far.
• Pandering to the Base: His review of TMNT and Pokémon the First Movie could be seen as this.
  • Also, by popular demand, the Critic finally reviewed The Movie of his childhood torment, Doug, and boy did he not like what was in store for him (save for one character and one scene each in the entire film)!
• Periphery Demographic: Let's be honest, a fair amount of fangirls (and guys) just watch him 'cuz he's cute and suffers in an appealing way, not because they care about what he's reviewing.
• Reviews Are the Gospel: A lot of people tend to take his words as absolute law.
• Rewatch Bonus: There are a number of character important lines in his reviews that you can miss on first go.
• Ruined FOREVER: For every update Walker makes, there will be a part of his Fan Dumb who claims that the newest review/video/special sucks and that he's losing his edge.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: He's right, stuff that is made for kids needs actual effort, you can't just half-ass it due to the assumption that children are dumb.
  • The amount of times he's stopped the review to complain about children getting mistreated is far too high to count, but the Close to Home aspect is never forgotten so it never comes off as an Author Filibuster by Doug.
• Special Effect Failure: While it can be argued this happens a lot with his low budget effcts, a glaring example is in the Garbage Pail Kids review towards the end. When the DVD is floating in the air, much of the DVD's edge has green screen residue on it. He admits that he needs practice with software, but he is practicing.
• Squick: As hilarious as the "Neverending Story 3" meltdown was, we really didn't want to see the spit coming from his mouth up close.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: As well as people who complain when he does an episode on commercials, films at a con, does top elevens and so on, there are also those that want him to go back to his early "manly" characterization of hating everything, screeching his rage all the time instead of analyzing why the film was bad and not giving any good points.
• Undermined by Reality: The entire show became this in the wake of Change the Channel and Not so Awesome. 
• Vocal Minority: Most people who find him attractive wouldn't dream of A) hurting him B) being a creeper C) insulting his fiancée. Trouble is, a few would do all those things and they're the loudest.
• Villain Sue: Played for Laughs. Critic in the title cards is hard-lined, psychotic, is willing to belt kids or perform coat-hanger abortions and gets away with everything. The real Critic... doesn't.
• Wangst: Played for laughs when he gets news that a friend of a very distant relative has just died.

Critic: [crying] Feel bad for me!

• What an Idiot!: In his '08 Halloween Special, he gets a baseball bat instead of his usual weapon, thus allowing Teddy Ruxpin to wake him up with his own gun in his mouth and later kill him.
  • In the Star Trek III episode, with his complaints about never being listened to, you'd think he would have to started to realize something was wrong when The Sci Fi Guy was being far too nice to him when he was about to die.
• The Woobie: Dark Rob. It probably helped that Rob actually looked really good in the Edward Scissorhands-style outfit, which always helps win people over.
  • Ma-Ti and Dr. Smith, although Ma-Ti's woobie-ness got played out far more in a certain special.
• Yoko Oh No: Some of the creepier Nostalgia Chick fanboys clearly see him as a threat, even going as far to respond to the awkward date with threats of killing him in his sleep. And, of course, it goes the other way as well.
  • Doug's poor fiancée, Robin, gets a lot of hate, and she hasn't even appeared in any videos (that doesn't mean, however, that she is below making a voice-over cameo).
    • Which is sad, considering what she does for a living (she works with disabled children). And like her partner, she's really pretty when not dressed up.
    • The hate has died down somewhat since the Transformers III review, where, courtesy of her, his neck sported a big hickey and scratch marks.