Americans Hate Tingle: Hulk Hogan was never able to really appeal to the core audience of WCW. They brought him in doing the exact same face routine that he did in WWF, and the reaction went from mildly positive to flat out booing him. This is partly because Sting, in WCW, was the guy that the fans refused to boo and expected to be the invincible hero, partly because they preferred the southern "wrasslin'" style to the northern "sports entertainment" style, and partly because he didn't treat the long term WCW guys with respect.
Creator's Pet: From hanging out with Wrestlecrap inductee wrestlers, to celebrity guests like Dennis Rodman or Donald Trump. Pretty much everyone the writers have desperately wanted to put attention on has been Hogan's good friend.
Hogan's now-legendary Face Heel Turn at WCW's Bash at the Beach 1996, which led to the rise of the nWo.
The completely unexpected fan response at the nWo's first WWE appearance led Hogan into a match with The Rock at Wrestlemania X8 - a match which not only stole the entire show, but once more put Hogan at the forefront of the wrestling business (and it was a damn good match, to boot).
Hogan vs. Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania XIX in a street fight. Another show stealer and arguably the best match on the card that year, outshining everything else on the card.
Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: During his last run as the WWE Champion, Hogan was dragged through an arena by The Undertaker while chained to his motorcycle. On the next Smackdown!, Hogan was going to make bruised but not beaten speech to the crowd. But from the very moment his music kicked up, they would. Not. Stop. Cheering. He motioned several times that he had the mic and needed to talk, but they kept cheering. The show went to commercial, came back a few minutes later, and they were still cheering. Hogan dropped the mic, and went to the turnbuckle to gather himself because he was so touched by this response, that he started crying. And where did this enthusiastic response come from for the All-American face? Montreal, Canada.
He's also inexplicably popular in Canada, despite their general disposition towards technical mat wrestlers and the Hart Foundation 97 angle making the All-American Face a bad guy in Commonwealth nations. Hogan's two battles with Rock in Canada probably began the process of rebuilding bridges burnt by the Montreal Screwjob. This was especially apparent at Wrestlemania X8 in Toronto, Canada.
Somewhat subverted as he was the biggest draw in wrestling at the time, invincible certainly for the audience, but not very boring until later years at least.
One of the reasons that Hogan stayed interesting for so long was that Hogan's Strictly Formula main event matches were few and far between. Unlike today's wrestling atmosphere, a main event featuring World Champion Hulk Hogan was something rare and special.
The problem with this didn't really become apparent until his time in WCW; a good portion of WCW's fanbase had it in for Hulk and all things WWF from day one, and when Monday Nitro was started with main-event-quality matches every week and WCW started airing Pay-Per-View events every month, Hogan's formulaic work quickly became overexposed. Thankfully, a truly shocking Face Heel Turnmay have saved his career.
His invincibility hit particularly egregious levels during Uncensored '96 just prior to turning heel. He and Randy Savage took on the Four Horsemen AND the Dungeon of Doom (a total of EIGHT men) and squashed them.
Subverted in his 2002 run. While he did win the title from Triple H, he lost it shortly afterwards to The Undertaker, and would go on to have a loss to Kurt Angle at KOTR by TAPPING OUT, and was finally destroyed by Brock Lesnar and would leave television until early 2003
Generic Doomsday Villain: Hogan remained invincible even as a heel. See more information about Starrcade 1997 to see why. Like his 2002 face run, his heel run before that subverted this as he lost to The Rock at Wrestlemania X8, leading to his face turn.
WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN (fill in the blank)-MANIA, RUNS WILD ON YOU?
24-INCH PYTHONS
The Apple Pie Indian Strap Match (see below).
"YOU'RE NOT READY, BROTHER"
Pretty Much Everything involving Hulk's victory over Gawker
Narm: Some of his promos. The end of his four year title reign to Andre (with help from debuting Evil Twin referee Earl Hebner) is a pretty good example. Hogan has tears running down his face as he babbles incoherence like "HOW MUCH FOR THE PLASTIC SURGERY, MEAN GENE" and "WHEN I TURNED AROUND THEY WERE IDENTICAL!"
The night after Bound for Glory and Hogan's heel turn, Bischoff and Hogan come down to the ring with Hogan reusing his "Hollywood" gimmick complete with smug air-guitar. The big difference now, however, is instead of playing on the World Title like he would back in WCW, he's now playing on crutches and is mugging the camera with it at every chance he can. If ever the smarks needed an image that encapsulated their feelings on Hogan in TNA, there you go.
From the 1985 "Wrestling Classic": "Ya wanna get in there for some ring-a-ding-ding, Piper?!"
Protection From Editors: Due to his popularity and success, Hogan was often almost always able to exercise some creative control over matches and angles involving him; this was actually part of his WCW contract, and is believed by some to be (at least in part) responsible for the infamous finish to his match with Sting at Starrcade 1997.
This backfired on him during the infamous Summerslam match with Shawn Michaels. While it was initially agreed upon that the two would trade victories in two matches, Hogan managed to use his bad knee as reason to nix HBK's victory match altogether. As a result, HBK hilariously oversold everything, making Hogan's offense look like a joke.
It also made Shawn look like a completely unprofessional ass, as it cannot be disproved that Hogan really wasn't having troubles with the knee since he had been known for having problems with it.
Unless that was Hulk Hogan's final match of all time (which it wasn't), then it can only be interpreted as a lame excuse. At most, this would have caused the rematch to be postponed, not canceled entirely. In addition, it would not have prevented him from losing the match he did have with HBK and giving up his own victory match.
Though Hogan also politicked to get HBK into a very forced and random Face Heel Turn and pretty much did HBK no favors during their angle together. Many also state that HBK winning that match would have been best for business and that Hogan's victory really benefited only Hogan so Shawn might been little miffed already at Hogan pulling his usual shenanigans.
Making it even more defensible (for Shawn), Hogan only did two or three television appearances to build the match, leaving most of the buildup to Shawn. Shawn, being Shawn, made the best of this delivering at least two promos (Who's Your Daddy Montreal? and Hogan on Larry King) that rank among the best heel promos of all time, but still... Shawn basically turned himself face during the feud as far as the Smarks were concerned by lampshading Hogan's indifference to the fans and the business.
The original plan (at least for Hulk and Vince) was for Hogan to steamroll Shawn on his way to a match with Steve Austin. When Austin informed them he still wasn't stupid enough to eat a legdrop to set up a nonexistent return victory, plans were changed to a two match Hogan-Shawn series, then the second match was dropped when Hogan refused to lose the first.
Snark Bait: The feud in WCW between Hulk Hogan and the Dungeon of Doom largely falls into this category. Certainly wasn't helped with Hogan's Large Ham tendencies taken to previously thought impossible levels.