That Guy With The Glasses

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Teamshot circa April 2011.[1]
"Hello, I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it so you don't have to."
—The Nostalgia Critic

Doug Walker is That Guy With The Glasses, part of Channel Awesome. Best known for being The Nostalgia Critic, a somewhat cynical man who reviews some of the shows and movies we grew up with in The Eighties and The Nineties. There's stuff like Pokémon the First Movie, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Drug PSAs, and the infamous Batman and Robin. He also has other features on his site, such as "Bum Reviews", in which another of his characters, a homeless guy named Chester A. Bum, "reviews" recently released movies. Another is the "5 Second Movie" series in which he edits together a very brief collection of clips from the given movie to give an overall summary. For instance, he summarized The Matrix thus:

Neo: Whoa.

He's also notable for a "rivalry" with The Angry Video Game Nerd which was chronicled in 5 of his videos (which some fans took a little too seriously). It (temporarily) climaxed as a brawl between the two (with Captain S joining in for no apparent reason). Then each had to "do the other's job" and review a terrible video game/nostalgic movie. The Critic seemed to come off worse (i.e. he suffered more) in his review of Bebe's Kids. He ultimately challenged the Nerd to a fight to the death that occurred on October 10, 2008. The fight ended with the Nerd victorious, although it foreshadows the Critic's return, even finishing with "The End?" on screen.

There has been a reprise video that turned into a Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Gamers Vs Critics, showdown of awesome. It is known as the TGWTG anniversary brawl. Later, the Critic and the Nerd teamed up to review an awful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles concert video, but their hostilities seemed to rekindle at the end.

In addition to his own videos, Walker also hosts a number of other pop culture reviewers on his site. You can find a list of most of them (or at least the ones we tropers remembered to add) here.

The site spun off into Blistered Thumbs in November 2010, for gaming-centric videos and article. It shut down in January 2014.

Contributors who have left Channel Awesome get their pages and videos deleted off the site.

Please restrict examples from the following shows to their respective pages, unless they're from non-anniversary special crossover videos.

Subpages and Related Pages:

Tropes used in That Guy With The Glasses include:

A-H

  • Accentuate the Negative: Much of the site, especially the more informal reviewers.
    • Reportedly, not all producers find everything as bad as their in-character reviews indicate.
  • Adorkable: Everybody.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: According to Zod in Merry Zodmas part 3, Braniac only went crazy after they loaded Windows Vista onto him.
    • Mechakara from Atop the Fourth Wall is another example.
    • The Nostalgia Critic's Microwave was struck by lightning and now hates him.
  • All Gays Are Pedophiles: Doug's riffing on "Boys Beware" mocks this belief mercilessly.
  • All Love Is Unrequited: Getting to be a big thing between the characters. Everyone wants Lupa, especially Todd who obsesses over her. The Chick goes to extreme measures to try and get Todd to love her and all of them have failed. Linkara wants to win the Chick's heart but she and Marz only pretended to sleep with him for fun. Critic and Chick have some kind of relationship, but he's totally in love while she just cares for him very much. Linkara also has at least a fanboy crush on Critic but Critic dislikes him, and Film Brain wants Critic to be his, but Critic very rarely realizes his existence. Spoony wants everyone.
  • All Men Are Perverts, All Women Are Lustful: They're a pretty horny bunch. Seeing as how they're all nerds, this is to be expected.
  • And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Spoofed by name when the Critic and the Chick review Fern Gully. Also spoofed by the question-answering title character of Ask That Guy With The Glasses in one episode of his show
  • And You Were There: Subverted at the end of his Surf Ninjas review, where he is surrounded by his friends after having a dream where he reviewed Surf Ninjas and liked it. He tells his friends that they were there; then, when one asks "Really?", he says, "No."
  • Angrish: Lampshaded in the AVGN/Critic review, in which The Angry Video Game Nerd points out to the Nostalgia Critic that he's too angry to come up with a coherent way to express his distaste over how ugly Master Splinter looks.
  • Anti Villains: At least in the two specials. Doug has said that when he's writing them, he draws from the Batman Rogues Gallery: they're all horrible people, certainly, but they're sympathetic too and will look after each other in a sometimes manipulative, Tough Love way.
  • Anvilicious: In-universe, reviewers have sometimes criticized something they were reviewing for being this.
  • Apocalypse How: Class 0. In a Christmas special linked from the Nostalgia Critic's section of the site, there's an alternate timeline where President Angry Joe completely annihilates the country of Canada with one press of a button.
  • April Fools' Day: The site pulled a particularly effective one on April 1, 2009 when all of Walker's characters swapped videos: That Guy With The Glasses lowered himself to review a movie enthusiastically and asked for spare change, The Nostalgia Critic was horrified by the questions asked of Ask That Guy With The Glasses, and Chester A. Bum remembered The Neverending Story though he didn't remember why. Ask That Guy also claimed not to be good at impressions.
  • Arch Enemy: The Nostalgia Critic and The Angry Video Game Nerd, before their reconciliation. Also, Dr, Insano appears to be an arch-foe of both Spoony and Linkara.
  • Artifact Title: Originally a site to hold Doug Walker's (also known as That Guy With The Glasses) videos, the site pretty soon after introduced other contributors to write articles and host videos, most of whom do not have glasses.
  • Awesome McCoolname: From Fanfic Theatre, we present, "Robot B. Wonderful".
  • Bad Boss: "In-universe", the Nostalgia Critic (and Rob, The Other Guy) runs TGWTG, so if someone's reviewing something particularly painful, it's probably because he made them do it. Nonetheless, he gets outwitted and walked over quite a lot.
  • Berserk Button:
    • In the "Dragonball Evolution: Epic Review" done by Paw and his crew, Y goes into a massive rant when Roshi explains the plasma blasts from the palms as "airbending"...
  • Better Than a Bare Bulb: Half of Phelous and Linkara's The Airzone Solution review and Phelous and Film Brain's Lockjaw review have constantly lampshade the set-up of crossover reviews.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Spoony and Linkara show up when the topic being reviewed is so bad for the Critic that a friend (or two in the case of Alone in the Dark) is required to make it through the review. The Critic is not happy about this.
  • Big Good: Santa Christ
  • Big No: Panda, to Smarty's death in episode 4 of Panda Q&A.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: According to Merry Zodmas, Kryptonians grow their heads back after consuming a radioactive beverage.
  • Black Comedy:The Most Disturbing Aristocrats Joke Ever.
  • Black Comedy Rape:
    • Zig-zagged in all three "Spooning With Spoony" segments. The horror and Spoony's smug objectification of everyone provides the funny, not specifically that they were raped. Also as a bonus, The Nostalgia Chick and The Nostalgia Critic are the most traumatized, yet Lindsay and Doug came up with their respective episode idea.
    • Averted in "Ask That Guy VIOLATES Ma-Ti" when it looks like this will be the case, but Ma-Ti fights back and then points out how sick it is that anyone wanted to watch that video. He then rapes Ask That Guy because that's what people want.
  • Non Sequitur Scene Episode]]: Cool World, to Linkara and Marz Gurl. Arguably the review too.
    • The Bjork Show. There's a genie, and jump cut teleportation, and a rotting bologna sandwich?
  • Brick Joke: Arguably, "Go Watch Porn" and LordKat's seductive strawberry eating in the Dragonball Evolution review. Both were alluded to in the MAGFest Q&A video, which was probably recorded afterwards.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Lee craps himself when he sees King Hippo in Punch-Out!! for the Wii.
    • Linkara, Nash, and FilmBrain have their "pants to be darkened" gag from their review of the 2011 Wonder Woman TV pilot.
  • Broken Aesop: By the truckload.
    • There's even a Broken Spoof Aesop in "You're a Rotten Dirty Bastard". The whole message of the special is that the Critic makes everyone miserable and the whole world would be better off without him, especially his fellow site contributors. Except President Angry Joe blows up Canada and probably kills Phelous, which is offhandedly mentioned within the special itself.
      • Although, considering how often Phelous dies in his own reviews, it was probably just a minor inconvenience...
        • And The Other Canadian Contributors And Family Members Who Live In Canada Also Died, And Nobody Knows If Phelous Shares His Cloning Facilities With Them.
  • Butt Monkey: Ma-Ti.
    • Melvin, Brother of the Joker.
    • The Critic: He tries to throw his weight around in crossovers, but either the others get over him, or he defeats himself.
  • Blessed with Suck: Phelous, apparently. Lampshaded in a crossover: Angry Joe thinks its awesome he comes back to life after he dies at the end of every review. Phelous, given what he has to review, disagrees.
  • Casanova Wannabe: Site exec Mike Ellis in Benzaie's crossover sitcom.
  • Catch Phrase: Many. See the character sheet for specific ones.
  • Cat Fight: The entire male crew on the site loves cat fights, as shown in the review for Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
    • Doug proposes one to settle the tie between Nostalgia Chick finalists. They refuse and he is forced to simply pick one.
  • Caustic Critic: About half the site.
  • Closer to Earth: The concept is smashed, shredded and shat on with this site. The women are just as crazy and fight-happy as the guys.
  • Cloudcuckoolander:
    • Tommy Wiseau in "The Tommy Wiseau Show" has shades of this. Poodles.
      • Even moreso in Lupa's "A Day in the Life of Tommy Wiseau".
    • Bargo. If you watch "Coffee With Bargo", you'll see why.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: There is no shortage of swearing from many of the reviewers in their own individual shows.
    • Also, when the Nostalgia Critic and The Angry Video Game Nerd team-up to review The Making Of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Coming Out Of Our Shell video, you can bet they lay on the swearing but thick.
    • In fact, Linkara has been given grief by some fans for NOT swearing.
  • Collectible Cloney Babies: On Channel Awesome, it's revealed on Paw Dugan's music reviews that his girlfriend Elyse, aka Maven of the Eventide, collects Phantom of the Opera plushies. She hijacks several of his reviews in revenge for one of his darts hitting her favorite one and "killing" it. They eventually make up, though, when covering Fantasia 2000.
  • Comic Trio: The Critic, Spoony and Linkara in Alone in the Dark. They even parody The Three Stooges at the end of the review. Hell, if they had bothered to put shadows in front of the clips, the whole thing would have been one epic MSTing.
  • Continuity Lock Out: With the sheer volume of shout-outs, callbacks and cameos on display, and a frankly intimidating number of shows available, god knows what the site looks like to people who've just found it.
    • Case in point: two major plot points ( Black Lantern Spoony's creation and original Spoony's resurrection) from an arc in Spoony's videos don't make any sense unless you watch two random non-consecutive Linkara videos.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Critic punishes the Nostalgia Chick for reviewing non-girly movies (and chloroforming him) by making her watch Bratz.
    • In a slightly more proportionate example, he punished Spoony for raping him in Spooning With Spoony 2 by making him do Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge again.
  • Costume Copycat:
    • Linkara impersonates the Critic to review Superman IV. The Critic is not impressed.
    • The Critic impersonates the Cinema Snob in the Leprechaun review. The Snob is also not impressed.
    • Doug has occasionally gone to events dressed as Linkara, who will shortly after appear as the Green Ranger and confront him on this.
    • Phelous and Nostalgia Critic dress as the other in the Child's Play review but got the skit wrong.
  • Crap Saccharine World: The sockpuppet Fluffy Cloud Heaven...with sex slaves as told in Coffee with Bargo.
    • According to the That Guy Riffs of Casper, the friendly ghost killed several people and committed and/or was witness to various other atrocities, that weren't gone into because 'it's not that kind of story'.
    • The alternate timeline in You're a Dirty,Rotten Bastard probably counts: Angry Joe blew up Canada.He was applauded
  • Cringe Comedy: The Critic and the Chick's hideously awkward date in "Thanks For The Feedback: Date With Doug."
  • Crossover: Amongst TGWTG's reviewers, there are far too many to list here. However, of note is a very special guest appearance by non-Channel-Awesome personality Brental Floss for the Nostalgia' Critic's Musical Moulin Rouge review (Along with Linkara, Phelous, and Team Nostalgia Chick)
  • Culture Clash: According to one of Spoony's vlogs, this happens to Benzaie when he's introduced to the concept of sales tax.
    • Though technically the issue wasn't the sales tax itself, variants of which exist in many other countries. It's that in Europe said tax is usually already included on the product's price.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Many members of the site's "B-team" came together to review Dragonball Evolution while they were attending a convention. For some, it was their first appearance in a video in months. It was also a movie that many people had wanted the Nostalgia Critic himself to review, so it got a lot of attention when it came out.
  • Death Glare: Linkara withers under the Critic's glare when he's caught pretending to be the Critic in their Superman IV review.
  • Death Is Cheap: In the case of Phelous and the Nostalgia Critic. Both Lampshade Hanging it too.
  • Death World: Krypton, both canonically and according to Zod. Zod mentions frequent meteor showers and acid rain that melts the heads of any children foolish enough to play in it, and uranium slurry as a food instead of snowcones.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: In the Bad Movie Beatdown Cinema Snob of McBain.

Cinema Snob: And you know else they're evil? One's called Hans. Ahh, God bless foreign xenophobia.

  • Depraved Bisexual: Spoony in his Spooning With Spoony videos. He's had post-coital conversations (some rohypnol-induced) with the Nostalgia Chick, That Chick With the Goggles, Benzaie, the Nostalgia Critic, Angry Joe, and Bennett the Sage.
  • Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Nash and Nella broke into the TARDIS. The Doctor was....not pleased.
  • Don't Explain the Joke: Epic Fail.
  • Dramatic Ellipsis: Notable to the point of overuse in "Fanfic Theatre" review of Until the End of Time and the Linkara/Spoony crossover review of Warrior #1.
  • Driven to Suicide: The Linkara/MarzGurl Cool World review opens with Linkara preventing MarzGurl from suffocating herself with a pillow, the result of an ill-advised attempt to watch the movie alone. MarzGurl has a second attempt foiled by Linkara, and she returns the favour later.
    • The Nostalgia Critic also attempts to kill himself (despite precautions taken to prevent him from doing so) so that he doesn't have to watch Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin. He is stopped by a guy in an increasingly bloodstained lab coat.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Some of these people need a really good therapist.
  • Enforced Method Acting: Chester A. Bum's live appearance during Transmission Awesome has Walker trying very hard (in character) to annoy his friends. He succeeds.
  • Epic Hail: The Nostalgia signal.

Linkara: No one should have to watch Uwe Boll alone, especially with Spoony.

  • Erotic Eating: LordKat of Until We Win eating a strawberry in the Dragonball Evolution joint review.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: In the Brawl: "Et tu, Lee from Still Gaming?" Echoed later in Kickassia.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Linksano may very well be evil, psychotic and out to kill Linkara, but as shown in Linkara's joint review with Film Brain on the movie The Spirit, he will not condone the murder of kittens.
    • While he's made jokes about pedophilia, vaginal bleeding, and that whole thing with the strawberries in the past, LordKat was appalled at the "Can we rape them?" line from Hudson Hawk.
    • Even Ask That Guy was horrified by Bennett the Sage.
  • Everyone Is Bi: Most likely aided on by the Ficdom, if it makes for laughs or Fan Service then anyone can express an interest in their own gender.
  • Face Palm: Y: Ruler of Time, does this in his review of Hana Kimi, after the school's doctor discovers that Mizuki is actually a girl passing for a boy, not because he is a doctor, and therefore has vast knowledge of human anatomy to identify her as a girl with a glance, but because he's gay.
  • Fan Disservice:
    • Sage's "Diet Sexy".
    • "That isn't you eat a strawberry seductively..."
  • Fascinating Eyebrow: MasakoX has a tendency toward it.
  • Fat and Skinny: Sean Fausz and Paw, respectively, who do a fair amount of crossovers.
  • Female Gaze: The women give out as much Fan Service as you'd expect them to, but it's mostly the men indulging in it. Especially Doug. In fact, it seems that when Channel Awesome tried to increase its female audience, they discovered that "cute nerdy guys who review interesting things, offer fanservice and suffer appealingly" is the answer.
  • Ficdom: Has a name - the Secret Treehouse - and its tropes could fill a page of their own.
  • Follow the Leader: A minor example - after That Guy's Bum Reviews' success, the other reviewers started to use their own Bum characters.
    • Also, after The Nostalgia Critic started having unique cartoon title cards for his videos, more and more contributors to the site seem to be getting their own cartoon title cards as well, including Linkara, The Nostalgia Chick, Marz Gurl, Phelous, The Cinema Snob, and now Mike J, JesuOtaku and Todd in the Shadows.
    • In their commentary for the joint Critic/Chick review of Fern Gully, Doug and Lindsay note that it was probably the first time two of TGWTG's reviewers had appeared together in the same frame. Since that review, multi-reviewer crossovers have become commonplace.
    • There are also a number of people not from the site who have started doing their own satirical reviews.
  • Foreshadowing: In his Battlefield Earth review, the Nostalgia Critic implies that there are two Sci-Fi films that are as bad or even significantly worse than Battlefield Earth. Doug has since revealed that one of the films in question is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, but is keeping his lips sealed as to what the second film is.
  • Freud Was Right: In the Coffee With Bargo segment this is implied about Alice in Wonderland.
  • Fridge Logic:
  • Frivolous Lawsuit: The site was threatened with one for its review of The Room. The Critic made an awesome sketch out of it.
  • Full House Music: Mocked by the Critic during its use in Saved by the Bell and, of course, Full House House.
  • Funny Background Event: The review of Interstella 5555 always has one of the four reviewers dancing in the background.
  • Furry Fandom: Several in-universe critiques.
    • Bennett the Sage has harsh words to say after reading a TMNT/Gargoyles crossover Slash Fic Lemon. The fact that his next target is Oscar may have contributed.
  • Gag Sub: From the Star Wars Holiday Special review Doug Walker did:

Wookiee mother:Junior, come over here and eat your yak testicles!
Young Wookiee:They taste like diarrhea. I wish I was adopted!
Elder Wookiee/Wookiee mother:You were adopted! You're just a Sand-Person we glued hair onto! Now eat your dinner, you abomination!

Lee: No matter what game I play or anime I watch, Wendee Lee will always be there, taking the job away from another starving voice actor.

  • Hotter and Sexier: In a fucked up, crossing so many lines way, Spooning With Spoony II compared to the first one. While the first had Benzaie naked in a bowtie, it was mostly Spoony holding a twisted interview. The second had both Spoony and Critic showing skin and Spoony talking mostly about how he fucked Critic and Joe out of their minds.
  • Hype Backlash: In-universe, Lee from Still Gaming is about to put Neon Genesis Evangelion on his and Dena's top anime theme songs, but he changes his mind when he realises the lyrics are about Shinji...

Lee: Shinji is a piece of shit! And EVA is overrated.
Dena: DUDE! You... you can't say that, you're... you're gonna piss people off.

I-P

  • Idiot Ball: Pointed out and named by Linkara in his crossover with Film Brain:

Film Brain: "Finally they get back to the idea of killing The Spirit, which of course they plan to do by having Plaster cut him up to tiny little pieces that they will post all over the country. Or you know, they could just blow him up."
Linkara: "Shh! The Octopus is holding his idiot ball!"

  • Improv: The Nostalgia Critic is the only one of Doug's shows that requires a script. Ask That Guy and Bum Reviews are completely spontaneous.
    • Spoony also does some of his videos without a script
  • Inferred Holocaust: Linkara and the Critic point out Superman getting rid of all the nukes in Superman IV would lead to Israel getting invaded on all sides and the Soviet Union and U.S. going at it with conventional warfare.
  • Insane Troll Logic: What Bennett used to figure out Linkara's teenage fanfiction penname.
  • Internet Mimic: A large number of community members have handles like "That (Person) with the (Noun)". Linkara even called himself "(Ask) That Guy With The Hat" in his Ask That Guy segment.
  • In the Style Of: Many of the critics will, on occasion, do reviews in the style of other critics. Most notable: Linkara, Film Brain, and others have done reviews In the Style Of Chester A. Bum.
  • Jeopardy Thinking Music: Used in the Nickcoms video, and again in his North review when playing "Spot the Joke."
  • Killed Off for Real: Melvin, in the live donation drive.
  • Kung Fu Jesus: Giant Robotic Donkey Kong Jesus Riding A Puff Of Smoke, to be precise. Originally from the Cloverfield trailer review as to what he wanted the monster of that film to be, later on it fights Super Mecha Death Christ "whatever version you are at the moment" in the 1st anniversary brawl.
  • Lampshade Hanging: After Linkara says he saw the Nostalgia Critic signal in the sky, during his Alone in The Dark review, the Critic wonders out loud why he installed the thing in the first place.
    • In his review of Lockjaw, Phelous manages to Lampshade the act of hanging a lampshade. When Film Brain calls out how stupid it is that a character would willingly watch bad movies, Phelous just puts a lampshade on his own head.
  • Large Ham: A lot of it.
    • Despite Ask That Guy With the Glasses and Dominic being quite constrained, Doug is otherwise a very Large Ham (besides the Nostalgia Critic and Chester A. Bum, there's Spider-Smith from the Lost in Space review, Casper from the eponymous film, both characters in "The Tommy Wiseau Show", Douchey McNitpick and the pirate in How to be a Pirate).
    • Joe is pretty over-the-top too. His constant use of green screen and explosions doesn't help matters.
    • Diamanda Hagan, Obscurus Lupa and Team NChick are all pretty wonderful at mugging and/or chewing scenery.
    • Let's be honest and say that most members have indulged in it, and some use it as their entire persona (Linkara and Marz Gurl come swiftly to mind).
  • Let's Play: Besides Spoony's SWAT 4 and Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh LP, Paw does one of King's Quest V Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder and Alice in Wonderland for the Commodore 64 and Linkara plays Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, which finally concluded in March 2010.
  • Like Brother and Sister: Whenever The Nostalgia Critic and The Nostalgia Chick are together. They perfectly illustrate a breed of cooperative psychosis only known to siblings.
    • Doug and Lindsay act like little kids when they're together too, although obviously they're much nicer than their characters.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: The character sheet doesn't even cover all of the contributors, and it's still growing. The size of the First Anniversary Brawl's cast list is starting to look unimpressive. Kickassia seemed to have as many cameos as main characters.
    • According to the video announcement, the contributor list will only expand farther as the Blistered Thumbs website opens, since they're looking to add to the conclave.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover:
    • The One-Year Anniversary Brawl in May 2009, which featured over a dozen characters from the site as well as The Angry Video Game Nerd, Kyle Justin, and Ma-Ti from the Captain Planet and the Planeteers review, just 'cause. This was followed by various smaller crossover videos.
    • Then, in September, the Critic, with Spoony and Linkara (thanks to the Nostalgia Signal) review the Alone in The Dark film by Uwe Boll.
    • In January 2010, a large portion of the site finally reviews Dragonball Evolution, with no escape (except for Masako X), all according to the Critic's [2] plans.
    • Kickassia and its week of filming crossovers in Reno also employed this.
    • The 2009 charity drive employed this, as did Spooning With Spoony 2 (filmed during said visit to Doug's house).
  • Medium Awareness: Often used in the interest of comedy.
    • In his review of Fern Gully with the Nostalgia Chick, the Nostalgia Critic would look around in confusion when the Non Sequitur Scene was mentioned as a graphic would appear and a voice would announce, "A Big-Lipped Alligator Moment."
      • Called back to in the review for Superman IV when Linkara reacts with confusion to the emblem's appearance, which the Nostalgia Critic promptly notes was created by the Nostalgia Chick.
    • One of the features of the Kickassia DVD that the Critic promotes is the absence of "that annoying caption", pointing to the tag reading "ThatGuyWithGlasses.com", and flicks it off-screen. It comes back to attack him.
    • In the Critic's Tranformers 3 review, he asks the judge to forbid Chester A. Bum from using jump cuts, and asks "How is he even doing that, anyway?"
  • Milking the Giant Cow: MasakoX does it so often that Little Kuriboh made a dance of it.
  • Mind Screw: "Coffee With Bargo". Godlike penguins and robotic unicorns running at the speed of light. The sequel adds in Bargo as a tranvestite male lesbian heroin addict and panda bears in Ronald Reagan masks.
  • Misaimed Fandom: Addressed in-universe by Y Ruler of Time in "Reaction Shots" with various series:

What To Take From It: Death is but another aspect of life, but the nature of the soul is eternal and meddling with it can have consequences.
What We DO Take From It: BANKAI!

"Symbolism!"

Linkara: Son of a bitch!
Sage: So you can swear.
Linkara: Yeah! And I can also say fu- (Sage gags him with a sock)

    • Later, during the 2010 Charity Drive...

Linkara: I will say "fuck" live on U Stream if we hit $40,000.
Brad: You just did.
Linkara: ...no, I didn't.


Q-Z

Nostalgia Critic: His goal is, you guessed it, to Take Over the World.
M. Bison: OF COURSE!

    • Most of the contributors have their own running gags, but the M. Bison gag is near universal.
    • Non Sequitur Scene!
    • Pee Wee Herman's "This is crack."
    • "It's only a model."
    • Lee from Still Gaming has the "Wendee Lee count".
    • Whenever someone comes into NC's place, he'll ask "How did you get in here?" To which the response will always be a variant of "I broke in."
    • Tommy Wiseau's very existence appears to have become a running gag across much of the site, especially after the The Room fiasco.
    • Love scenes have a song from Birdemic, Damien Carter's "Just Hanging Out (With My Family)", played over them.
    • A gag that shows up every now and then under a few reviewers is the "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad." scene from The Wizard (film).
    • Reviews in the early part of 2012 seem to enjoy using Big Sean's "Dance (A$$)" (whose opening line consists of "ass" repeated 20 times in a row) to make a downfall-of-society/MaleGaze point.
  • Sad Clown: A lot of the TGWTG contributors have had bad experiences (depression, heart conditions, attempted suicide and so on) and use Black Comedy to blow a raspberry to the sucky things in life.
  • Sarcasm Failure: In episode 2 of That Guy Riffs, after a cow jumps over a moon.
  • Scare Chord: Used humorously on occasion, such as in the Fern Gully review.

Nostalgia Critic: "Could this be that naive creature known as..."
Critic/Chick: "MAN?!"
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Nostalgia Critic tries to quit the Fern Gully review and leave it to the Chick, but she doesn't let him go.
    • He also tries to run away at the start of his review of The Star Wars Holiday Special, but Rob catches him.
    • During the Spoony/Lordkat Pumpkinhead "Until We Win" episode, Spoony is so disgusted by the game's moon logic that he tries to quit, but then remembers that the two of them are trapped in "The Black Hole" (which looks like a hotel room) and can't leave.
  • Self-Deprecation: Doug's parody of Hitler Parodies is loaded with this. "This is why Spoony won that Open Web Award!"
    • "Thanks for the Feedback Episode 1: Date With Doug" paints the Chick as an obsessively geeky shut-in - Nella says that at least going on a date will get her out of the apartment for more than three hours - and the Critic as just as socially awkward, if not more, and unable to arrange food more complex than cereal.
    • The credits to the christmas special reveal that the CGI shot of Canada blowing up was done by Phelous...a Canadian.
    • It seems that all of the contributors will portray themselves as jerks, idiots, losers, creeps, stalkers, social inadequates or nerds if it's cogent to the review or more entertaining that way.
  • Sequelitis: Mike J's in-universe raison d'être.
  • Serious Business: The Critic and the Chick beat the hell out of each other over who gets to review Fern Gully. The Critic tries to kill himself rather than watch Batman and Robin. Film reviews are a serious business.
    • The Game Heroes kidnap the Critic and scare the shit out of him just so they can get more sales on their "hero" t-shirts.
  • Shameless Self Promotion: Anthony Ragusa invades Panda and Welshy's Q&A session just to promote his show.
    • Also, Linkara with his comic, Revolution of the Mask. He even programs clone Spoony to shamelessly promote it for him.
  • Ship Tease: A lot of it with Nostalgia Critic and Nostalgia Chick, and Linkara and Marz Gurl. Todd in the Shadows has a bad case of unrequited love for Obscurus Lupa; Romance on the Set led to The Nostalgia Chick developing the same for Todd (Todd edges into Stalker with a Crush; the Chick jumps in head-first). There's plenty of other examples.
  • Shock and Awe: Several characters exhibit this across the site, including N. Bison, Dr. Insano, Dark Nella, and Angry Joe.
  • Shout-Out: Done in the Critic, Linkara and Spoony's review of Alone in The Dark when they used a photoshopped picture of one of the Three Stooges openings. They also ended the review with appropriate music and slapstick antics.
    • Also in Alone In The Dark, the trio throw a Mortal Kombat joke after a guy falls into a spiky pit. Said guy is played by Ho Sung Pak, who did the motion capture for Liu Kang in the original Mortal Kombat games.
    • Also in Alone In The Dark, Spoony wears a Castleton T-Shirt and claims to be "from the future".
  • Sidekick: Most of the contributors work alone, but some of them work with a sidekick. In most cases, this is an inanimate object (Burton the Robot for Spoony; Pollo for Linkara; Beary for Benzaie; the Film Brain puppet for Mike J), but there's are also a few flesh-and-blood humans such as Nostalgia Chick's BFF Nella (also Elisa and others that appear less often, now collectively known as "Team NChick"), Lisa Foiles for Joe, and LPer Pushing Up Roses for Paw.
  • Silence Is Golden: The Critic lost his voice again, so he decided to show "Ask That Guy VIOLATING Ma-Ti" in this fashion.
  • Slapstick Knows No Gender: The women get into just as much silly fights (especially The Nostalgia Chick) and Toilet Humor as the boys do. They do get flack for this from some fans, though, as the Fern Gully review was seen as women abuse and Lindsay mentions in the Honor And Glory commentary that they got some shocked comments about the fart jokes.
  • The Smurfette Principle: The site suffered from this quite badly in the early days, and the Nostalgia Chick contest was created to get more women and more women viewers. Now though, a lot of just-as-crazy females are around and they've cottoned on how to really get more girls watching, which has proved a success according to Michaud.
  • Sound Effect Bleep: Lee (at least in his "Still Gaming" shows), whenever he uses more profane language.
  • Special Effect Failure: In the review of Alone in the Dark, several points are criticized in-universe for seemingly intentional flubs with edits, like a villain getting killed by a CGI bullet that went nowhere near him, letting a shot of a dead character moving her head stay in the film, and the absence of any damage or gore from an unseen monster attack in the last scene.
  • Spin-Off: Gaming-related material has been given its own Channel Awesome site, Blistered Thumbs.
  • Spiritual Successor: The Last Airbender review for the Dragonball Evolution review.
  • Springtime for Hitler: According to their commentary, The Cinema Snob and Phelous' review of Troll 4 was supposed to be a deliberate feeding of trolls, due to the overuse of cameos, and, there not being a Troll 4. It actually had rather few negative comments. Brad and Phelan were sad there wasn't an Internet Backdraft on that video's comment section.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: This is one of Phelous' main running gags, placing wacky and upbeat music to violent and gory scenes, as well as adding cartoon sound effects.
  • Squee: JewWario is fond of doing this around cats. His review of the Ouendan series has an world-shattering atomic Squee.
    • As the Nostalgia Chick's character develops, she's come to say that her sidekick Nella's role is to add fangirly squeeing to her reviews, because the Chick is a serious academic and such things are beneath her. The mask slips quite often, though. This was even a plot point in her "Dark Nella Saga".
  • Squick: In-universe, Spoony and Linkara's review of Warrior, which ends with the comic's title character appearing to rape Santa Claus. Even Noah is lost for words.
  • The Stinger: Since the Battlefield Earth review, most of the entire site's featured reviewers end their reviews with the Channel Awesome logo accompanied by a silly/strange quote from the review.
  • Suckiness Is Painful: A recurring theme, especially for the Nostalgia Critic.
  • Sure, Let's Go with That: Quoted verbatim several times in Linkara and MarzGurl's review of Cool World in response to the movie's increasing amount of bizarre and improbable plot twists.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Critic notes that in Stephen King's It, virtually every non-main character happens to be a total idiot and/or asshole. He wonders what's wrong with them that they become such asshole magnets.
  • Synthetic Voice Actor: The Nostalgia Critic is forced to use this after the Alone in the Dark movie left him literally speechless... again.
  • Take Over the World: Mocked constantly from all corners with M. Bison from the Street Fighter movie saying "Of course!"
    • In Kickassia, this is the Critic's ultimate goal.
  • Take That: In Lanipator's review of Final Fantasy Unlimited, he says: "I mean, It's Final Fantasy! Everything with Final Fantasy on it is pure quality, right?" Cut to clips from Final Fantasy XII ("I'm Captain Basch!") and then a silent Lanipator.
    • The review of the best anime themes of all time includes Neon Genesis Evangelion, not because Lee likes the show or it has a lot of fans or he even likes the music, but just to point out that Shinji jerks it over Asuka's bed. He doesn't hate the show overall though, he's just cold toward Shinji (which he says the theme song keeps promoting).
    • The Nostalgia Critic is so traumatized by watching Uwe Boll's Alone in The Dark that he claims in the review that his doctor says he may never speak again thanks to it.
    • When it became clear that the Nostalgia Critic's review of The Room was taken down for "copyright infringement" (despite obviously being protected by fair use), a parody video was made called "The Tommy Wiseau Show". Wiseau himself is let off fairly lightly, almost to Affectionate Parody levels. A fellow named "John" from TheRoomMovie.com, however, is given perhaps the most brutal evisceration of Doug Walker's online career, being portrayed as a raging, paranoid, and greedy lunatic, obsessed with money and Wiseau's "good image". The video even ends with him crying "I'm John from TheRoomMovie.com!" over and over again, as if he might want his fans to... "get in touch" with him. It's pretty obvious that TGWTG had some unpleasant dealings with him after the review was taken down...
    • CR delivers an excellent (yet affectionate) one when talking about Wayne's World.

"Yeah right, like some random guy from Chicago can become famous just by talking about movies, making funny faces at the camera, and spouting absurd catchphrases. And not only that, but become a huge trendsetter too. Ridiculous."

    • Welshy does not like Kate Austen from Lost, or Rose from Doctor Who.
    • The Nostalgia Critic did one to his nastier fans with a character called "Douchey McNitpick".
  • Talking to Himself: "The Tommy Wiseau Show" has Doug doing this to Tommy Wiseau's... "quirky" acting. But that's just an Affectionate Parody compared to John from TheRoomMovie.com, who took down Doug's review of The Room due to copyright violations.
    • Having shaved off his beard at one point, he explains that he lost a bet to Ask That Guy, who appears and has (obviously) also shaved due to a misunderstanding. When Chester A. Bum pops up too, Doug is having a three-way conversation with himself.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: "Don't you EVER bring logic into this movie again! This is Fern Gully, BITCH!"
    • "We play Magic: The Gathering, BITCH!"
    • "I have passion panties, BITCH!"
    • "It's MAGIC, BITCH!"
    • "I'm Eight-Bit Mickey, BITCH!"
  • Top Ten List: Top 11, in fact.
  • Troper Critical Mass: Non Sequitur Scene became a trope literally hours after The Nostalgia Chick first said it. Kickassia, a no-budget film about nutcases taking over a tiny country, has a longer page than some blockbuster movies or series, plus long Funny, Heartwarming and Awesome Moment pages. Tommy Wiseau apparently crossed the Moral Event Horizon after taking down the The Room review. For God's sake, look at the size of this page!
  • True Companions: If anyone is unfairly treated anywhere, they'll all band together to help. Expect a lot of Papa Wolves and Mama Bears.
    • And in-character, Doug calls them like a dysfunctional family - filled with horrible, fucked up people - who snipe all the time but still sorta love each other despite everything.
  • Two Guys and a Girl: Paw Dugan, Todd in the Shadows and Pushing Up Roses in the Head review, popularly a One True Threesome for a section of the fans ever since.
  • Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: The first-year anniversary video had not just NC and AVGN fighting, but just about everyone on the TGWTG site taking sides of reviewers and gamers.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Y Ruler of Time points this in-universe out in the manga Alive when the supervirus they're dealing with came from Africa after a man ate a monkey and they call the virus Black.
  • Unperson: That Aussie Guy, who was actually a pretty big mover and shaker on the site back in its earlier days—he co-founded Transmission Awesome, and helped get Blistered Thumbs off the ground. He was even flown in from Australia to appear in the Brawl. But then his videos were completely removed from the site and all traces of him were expunged from the Channel Awesome Wiki. This was done very quietly at first, in hopes that nobody would notice (all very 1984), but eventually enough people asked about it that Mike Michaud had to offer a (vague) explanation: He was released from the site, and all traces of him (except for the Brawl) are gone for "legal reasons."
    • His name was censored out of the episode of "Masterpiece Fanfic Theatre" that featured a story about the TGWTG gang.
    • The fact that he is still in the Brawl leads to some confusion for those who became fans after his removal from the site: watch the video of the Brawl because of its nigh-legendary status, and wonder who the heck this guy is whipping a boomerang around the room.
    • Apparently he spread a lot of gossip around during the year 1 shoot, and hated certain contributors for no reason whatsoever.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The Critic points out no one pays attention to four turtles playing music.
  • The Verse Many of the reviewers' shows are set in the same universe and have common characters such as Doctor Insano.
  • Video Review Show
  • Viewers are Morons: Discussed in the Oscar Retrospective episode of Film Conscience, namely the belief that the producers of the Oscars buy into this trope, hence the dumbing down and almost schizophrenic nature of the Oscars of current years.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Critic and The Nostalgia Chick. In fact, most of the critics tend to be excessively mean to one another (they actually all like each other in real life) with exceptions like Little Miss Gamer, who was the Nice Girl of the site.
  • What Did I Do Last Night?: The "Spooning With Spoony" and "Linking Up With Linkara" videos. Also The Nostalgia Chick's Hercules review.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: coaster flipping
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids? and/or What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: In some reviews for ostensibly family-friendly films with notably family-unfriendly content, the Nostalgia Critic will comment, "You know, for kids!"
    • Many of the website's shows deal with family-friendly subjects, but are still meant for an adult audience.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Chef Protoss.
    • At the beginning of Marz Gurl and Linkara's review of Cool World, Linkara says he needs help to fight Dr. Insano. It's never brought up again, nor does it fit in continuity with the Adamantium Rage and Warrior reviews from around the same time. Of course, Insano doesn't have a continuity as such.
  • What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: To the point where Ma-Ti is the resident Butt Monkey.
  • With Lyrics: "Songs That Don't Need Lyrics But I Added Them Anyway HA!"
    • That Chick With The Goggles also does this in her review of Ecco: Tides of Time.
    • During the opening text crawl in the Alone in the Dark review, Linkara and Spoony sing "Bo-RING. This is so boring, this is so boring, get to the show!" to the theme of Star Wars.

TIMING!

  1. ↑ The smudges are autographs. Left to right, top row: Ed Glaser, Todd in the Shadows, Paw Dugan, Linkara, Phelous, That Dude in the Suede, Handsome Tom, Jew Wario, Marz Gurl, Bennett the Sage. Bottom row: Holly Brown (TGWTG showrunner), Obscurus Lupa, Angry Joe, Benzaie, The Spoony One, The Nostalgia Chick, The Nostalgia Critic, The Cinema Snob, Ma-Ti (Bhargo), Luke Mochrie and The Inners, FilmBrain, 8-Bit Mickey, That Other Guy (Rob Walker).
  2. ↑ (who has turned down the review several times in real life)
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