The Nostalgia Chick/Tropes A-F
A
- Abduction Is Love: What she wants to happen by making Todd her "damsel". It hasn't quite worked so far. Seventh time's the charm?
- Accentuate the Negative: Probably the only one on the site to use it as a character trait and a plot point. The Dark Nella Saga was partly about how fangirling is awesome and establishing that the Chick finds being positive about something is beneath her "level of academia". She still thinks this, but is defrosting slowly and can talk about things she likes in small doses. Just expect her to gag on the words "nice" and "good".
- Acceptable Targets:
- Pointed out In-Universe. Mulan can get forgiven for bad implications because the Huns don't exist anymore.
Nostalgia Chick: So our bad guys are of a non-Chinese ilk, but they're also a sort of non-in-existence-anymore ilk, so Disney gets a free pass on this one. You're not really going to see the hun lobby over here going "heeey!". |
- She has a few in-universe ones herself. Bear in mind that this is the Chick talking, not Lindsay.
- Leonardo DiCaprio's squealing fangirls (when he was a bishie) come under a lot of ridicule in her The Man in the Iron Mask review. Fangirls in general are made fun of because she's so self-loathing. Fanboys too, due to her Played for Laughs misandry.
- Her Labyrinth review involves some potshots at LARPers:
- She has a few in-universe ones herself. Bear in mind that this is the Chick talking, not Lindsay.
"She seems to be the loneliest LARPer in town, and that's saying something for her social skills... or acting skills, for that matter." |
- While tearing apart Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas:
Chick: It's like...it's like... bad Fan Fiction. [[[Scare Chord]]!] |
- Andrew Lloyd Webber, mostly due to her intense dislike of Love Never Dies.
- Rent and by extension, hipsters. She has a particularly funny, vitriolic rant about the latter in her "Top Ten Songs About Fucking".
- Also, furries.
- Elisa is having a lot of fun bashing Twilight in her Maven Of The Eventide reviews.
- Acrophobic Bird: The bird not giving Thumbelina a lift and thus making the movie much shorter really pisses her off.
Nostalgia Chick: You have a bird! You have twenty fucking birds! Doing the can-can! Is he really such a fucker that he won't give you a ride? ...apparently he is. |
- Acting for Two: In the NChick labs, Nella is in the same room with her Mad Scientist self while Elisa plays both The Makeover Fairy and Dr. Tease. Elisa has lampshaded this in a formspring question, saying that the Makeover Fairy was too obsessed with looking good to notice a woman looking almost exactly like her.
- Actor Allusion:
- When the lead lady in Grease II sings that she wants "a devil in skintight leather", the Chick asks "Oh really, Michelle Pfeiffer?" before cutting to a picture of Catwoman.
- In the Newsies review, she says that Christian Bale's dancing got better before cutting to a deranged Bateman killing scene from American Psycho.
- In-film, the Genie's constant references to Robin Williams's other roles gives her a migraine.
- Actually Pretty Funny:
- In her "Top Ten Disturbing and Inescapable Christmas Songs" video. Despite not liking most parodies of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", she did admit that The Phantom of the Opera version ("The Phantom gave to me... a mask") was kinda funny.
- The Meat Loaf Actor Allusion joke almost redeemed Spice World for her.
- The Sweet Polly Oliver jokes in Mulan are the best bits in the movie.
- As to be expected, Tim Curry's song in The Worst Witch turned the film from shitty and boring to "gloriously shitty" for five minutes.
- She can't help but giggle at the one Genre Savvy line ("Because we invaded their land and cut down their trees and dug up their earth?") in Pocahontas.
- Adaptation Decay: In-universe. As she grew up with the 1972 version of The Lorax, the 2012 remake was an extra horrific case of this.
- While she admits that Peter Jackson's version of The Lord of the Rings is excellent if flawed, she can't stand the Bakshi adaptation.
- Adaptation Distillation: Nella might love The Hunger Games books (Lindsay likes the first book but hasn't read the rest), but she thinks the movie was better for toning down the Love Triangle.
- Adaptation Dye Job: In case you didn't know, the real John Smith was a short, ugly brunet, not a hunky blond.
- Alliteration: She calls Thumbelina a tiny, titular twit.
- Aesop Amnesia: The Chick won't stop mistreating people, Nella won't stop being an Extreme Doormat and Dr. Tease won't start taking responsibility for her experiments. Of course, a Dysfunction Junction is much funnier than a group of sane, nice ladies.
- A genre of the Disney sequels involve the characters or their children learning the exact same thing as they did in the first movie.
- Affectionate Parody:
- Her Heroic BSOD about how pathetic reviewing makes her life could be considered a funny nod to the Critic's BSOD about the same. While he angsted about it for the whole episode after and got a bone to get him out of his funk, hers was never brought up again.
- Shrek not being like this (at least in her view) is what bothers her the most about the movie.
- The whole Dark Nella Saga is basically a riff on X-Men's "Dark Phoenix" storyline.
- All Animation Is Disney: She has to keep saying during the Anastasia review that it wasn't Disney-made. Although she says later in her Thumbelina review that she can't blame the thought:
Chick: This was Don Bluth throwing in the towel. This was him saying - all right, Disney, you win — with your princesses, and your musicals, and your Coming Of Age stories with sweeping, snarky romances — you win. If you can't beat them, join them. Copy the Disney formula and marketing strategy, and you will make money. |
- All Men Are Perverts: Brian The Sexual Predator is a Black Comedy version, and all Dan (the forgotten roomie) thinks about is boobs.
- All There in the Manual: On her formspring, Elisa answers a lot of questions about characters, influences and future plans. And her love of skulls.
- All Women Are Lustful: The scrabble game that the Chick and Nella play in Grease II is rather... one-track minded. Words on there include such lovelies as "rimjob", "ho" and "doing it".
- Also in that review, the Chick is confused as to why the students are singing about reproduction when that's the most boring part of sex.
- In Teen Witch, she gets embarrassed at a softcore make-out scene because she thinks she must have accidentally switched it to Cinemax again.
- Alternate Aesop Interpretation: In-universe, she sees The Christmas Shoes as a depressing tale about a little boy who can't come to grips with his mom dying, so he buries himself in the thought that shoes would matter.
- Alternate History: Her theory for Bratz is that it took place in a world where Hitler won and everybody was segregated. Yes, she hated it that much.
- Alpha Bitch: "Every school has them."
- The Makeover Fairy is one. So is Dr. Tease, to a certain extent. The Chick herself has her moments, too.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: In-universe.
- The mother of Thumbelina lets her get into trouble because she's pissed that she only got a very tiny teenager as a daughter. And the bird is an asexual co-dependant who thrives on the relationship drama of others.
- The plot of The Great Mouse Detective is Rattigan trying desperately to prove to Basil that he's moved on from their break-up.
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show is really about a tragic child-molester.
- Fairuza Balk isn't really acting in The Craft, she's legitimately batshit crazy.
- She's made a Running Gag about the villain in Mulan being a child molester.
- The Lion King's Scar is homosexual.
- The Little Mermaid isn't a coming-of-age story; it's the story of an overprotective dad learning to let his daughter go.
- Barbie has ADD because she goes through so many jobs.
- Ambiguously Brown:
Nostalgia Chick: Pocahontas, who seems to be an expert at posing dramatically, doesn't seem to have any real ethnicity of which to speak. She doesn't look particularly Native American. Mostly, she just looks like a kind of a-ethnic mush of unparalleled hotness. |
- Ambiguously Gay:
- In the commentary, Lindsay has this to say on Rattigan from The Great Mouse Detective:
"I'm not into the whole, like, homoerotisism and slash, well, Slash. I'm not into that, but this movie seems so homoerotic to me. Like, look at the way he stands, y'know, and he's so obsessed with Basil..." |
- She also has this view on Starscream from Transformers and Scar from The Lion King.
- Analogy Backfire:
- She notices how the examples of love conquering the impossible referenced at the start of Don Bluth's Thumbelina backfire drastically:
Jaquimo: Samson loved Delilah... |
- And There Was Much Rejoicing:
- Angst? What Angst?:
- One of the many things that piss her off about Belle in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. Instead of acting like someone who just lost everything, she's now walking wistfully around the castle and behaving like the Beast's life-coach. "Every time I try this on a damsel, it never pans out."
Chick: Wow, I sure do have a bad disposition. I think I need to be fixed. |
- She also mentions this in her The Little Mermaid review, claiming that Sebastian should have PTSD after his near-death in the kitchen, rather than just seeming "put-out" with Ariel afterwards.
- Angrish:
- She goes into crying gibberish when she's trying to get Will Smith out of Shark Tale.
- Flailing screaming fits occur when the BLAM sign won't leave her alone in Xanadu, when the fake-outs in the She-Ra: Princess of Power movie just keep happening and when Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas makes Belle an Extreme Doormat who just wants to fix the Beast.
- Her Driven to Madness rant on Roland Emmerich rivals Critic's usages of this trope for effect and lack of sanity. Mostly for the Motor Mouth-ing and how she doesn't even pause at the right places.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: From The Fifth Element. "Alright, she has to beg him to say I love you, even though he's known her for like a day and a half, and he can't do it on his own, he has to do it when everyone's almost dead, just like a man." So who do we know is in love with her but couldn't spit it out onscreen?
- Animal Wrongs Group: In the review of Milo and Otis, she spends a fair amount of time making sure people know the difference between PETA (who she calls as like being the slutty girl in drama class, always doing weird sexual shit for attention) and the guilds who do things humanely.
- Animation Bump: If she's got absolutely nothing to praise about a movie, she'll at least mention if there's a pretty animated scene.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Calls the bratty sister in Hocus Pocus a "beastly child".
- Anti Goggles: While Maven still coos over the Has Two Daddies aspect of Interview With a Vampire, she firmly denies any Homoerotic Subtext other than that.
- Anvilicious: Pointed out In-Universe.
- She calls out the singers of "Do They Know It's Christmas Time" for being ridiculously condescending.
Nostalgia Chick: Okay guys, I get it. The hyperbole is a good way to get people's attention, but you don't think that just maybe referring to Africa as a famine-ravaged wasteland and consigning an entire continent to 'chimes of doom' might be a bit patronizing? |
- In Mulan:
Chick: Y'know, let's go ahead and use the word honor no less than fifty times. |
- While Grease had at least a sort of "tee-hee sex" thing going on, Grease 2 makes it eye-rollingly obvious.
- In Sarcasm Mode, she calls the "some war" subplot in Hair (theatre) subtle while the movie focuses on a grave with the war imprinted right in the middle.
- Applied Mathematics: The "women = evil" version pops up in "The Top Eleven Villainesses".
- Arc Words: She's been told by Nella in one episode and Dr. Tease in the following that she "has to embrace her inner fangirl". It turns out that while she doesn't (even though she needs to), that was what defeated Dark Nella.
- Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: In "Wild Wild West", she questions the wisdom of making Loveless a paraplegic, then shows several clips from the TV show, where Loveless was played by Michael Dunn, a well known dwarf actor.
Chick: That's right, the original Loveless suffered from male pattern baldness. Awkward! |
- Armor-Piercing Slap: She cheerfully thanks the movie when Anastasia slaps Dimitri.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
- Her review of top movie villains included captions listing the various characters' prosecutable crimes. Amid such offenses as "Treason", "Manslaughter", "Conspiracy to Genocide" and the like are occasional mentions of "Littering" (discarding a bone from dinner) or "Animal Cruelty" (squashing bugs).
- When she demonstrates how unsuitable George Carlin is for voicing a Disney character, the profane clips end up with him expressing his disgust for people named Todd.
- Artifact Title:
- Her username, The Dudette. She got that nickname when she first joined only because of her and Mike Ellis' identical last names and mutual love of The Big Lebowski. Despite a couple years in which her section in the members was labeled under that name, she hasn't been called The Dudette since she first joined the site.
- Later it was changed to "Team NChick" to more accurately preview what to expect in her section. Especially nowadays, as Nella and others have since joined her in reviewing, making sketches and out-of-character specials.
- Artistic License Physics: In the vlog for Super 8, Lindsay and Nella have no idea how a pick-up truck can survive crashing into a train while the train goes flying everywhere.
- As Herself: Disregarding Vlogs and such, before "Playing God" where the Chick character cemented, Lindsay would do more the overview type videos (like The Smurfette Principle) as half the Chick when she wanted to be funny and bitchy and half putting that aside when she actually wanted to talk about real issues. She also did this at the end of her video about TLC, even taking her hair out the usual Girlish Pigtails.
- She did her top ten list of Guilty Pleasure movies as herself.
- As You Know: In the Ever After review, she reminds us why she likes to spy on Nella. For entertainment naturally.
- Aside Glance: Does it three times while Lord MacGuffin goes on about Spice and the MacGuffin. She also does it in the Anastasia review when Rasputin tells her he "only wanted a Russia of flowers and rainbows and where children danced in lollipop fields".
- Attempted Rape: She says Danny was "just a little rape-ish" in the Grease review. That phrase comes up again when Nella defends Kirk in their Star Trek battle.
- She also had a huge twitter rant about how it gets used in YA novels to get the male and female lead together with no trauma.
- Audible Sharpness: Noted and parodied in Maven's review of Underworld, ending with a bunny mooing.
- Audience Surrogate: You could take Bella out of Twilight, insert yourself and lose nothing.
- Women relate to Meg Ryan and her shrill, annoying voice. She on the other hand relates to a delicious cup of coffee.
- Audio Erotica:
- Whenever there's a male singer that she likes, she'll completely forget what she was doing when he starts singing.
- Sean Connery voicing an incredibly pimp dragon in Dragonheart: "I think I just came!"
- Hugh Jackman's "Rich, creamery butter" from Kate and Leopold is so sexy, it drives a number of TGWTG'ers to suddenly desire butter. The Nostalgia Critic even starts fondling a stick of it, with the episode's Hilarious Outtakes dedicated to him and his butter.
- Parodied with her lust for Phelous's voice. At the end of The Lion King, the credits ask him to marry her and take his time saying his vows.
- Author Appeal: She has a tendency to get mad crushes on anyone/anything blue.
- Author's Saving Throw: Invoked. After the MacGuffin controversy following the Dune episode, Lord MacGuffin spent longer talking about what constitutes as one in the Chick's review of The Fifth Element.
- They also did it for the Nella abuse. After people were Comically Missing the Point that it was all satire, Lindsay did a "Thanks For The Feedback" video explaining that the Chick has insanely low self-esteem and so Nella gets paid to be badly treated, therefore making the Chick feel good about herself.
- Having caught a load of flak for her comment about The Little Mermaid ("Ugh, I hate this film, 'I sold my soul for a vagina and a man I don't know!'"), when she comes to review it, the Chick's bashing of the movie is balanced by (almost) all the other women of TGWTG defending it. They're even holding an intervention to help her get over her hatred for it.
- Autobots Rock Out/Theme Music Power-Up: She can't help but dance to those oh so 80s songs in Transformers: The Movie.
- Awesome Music: Pointed out In-Universe.
- The "Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego" theme song.
Nostalgia Chick: Wherever she is, it must be in the land of epic! |
B
- The Baby Trap: Referenced in Maven's review of Interview With a Vampire, as she tells Lestat that vamping Claudia to keep Louie around was a naughty idea.
- Bad Bad Acting: The Chick uses her friends to act out scenes from Showgirls that she can't show directly. Granted, it's not much worse than the actual thing.
- Bait and Switch:
- The "PUPPIES!" running gag usually served as this.
- In Cruel Intentions Cecile's boyfriend is disliked because he's bla...nd.
- In Freddy Got Fingered, after Gordy spins a newborn by its umbilical cord, Oancitizen gpes "This has to be the second worst thing I've seen involving a newborn baby. The first is this" Cue teenage!Lindsay's doll thumping down the stairs instead of this (if you're at work, keep your speakers down).
- Bare Your Midriff: She calls attention to Pocahontas's friend's "kinky little midriff".
- The Beautiful Elite: Disney.
Chick: Be Yourself, live your dream, you beautiful, unique, coming-of-age, perfect-bodied, perfect-haired, easy to sell piece of marketing you. |
- Be a Whore to Get Your Man: The Grease review discusses and mocks this in great detail.
Chick: Hi, I'm your Nostalgia Chick, and I'm here to tell you the story of an incredibly high-maintenance girl, an incredibly dense guy and the secret to success in any relationship: I'm talking of course about makeovers. |
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Not looked at in great detail, but one of Maven's theories for Seth in From Dusk Til Dawn being seen as likable despite all he's done is that, well, he looks like George Clooney.
- The Bechdel Test: When Lindsay and Nella review X-Men: First Class, Lindsay points out that it is one of the only superhero movies to pass the test and then tells her audience to look up what the test is.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: On Anastasia: "Ah, animosity! It must be love!" Not a word out of you, shippers.
- Bellisario's Maxim: Used by The Chick in reference to Pocahontas:
The Chick: And the movie leaves us with question like, why the hell are there moose in Virginia? Where the hell did all those majestic cliffs go in the interim five-hundred years? Why doesn't listening with one's heart bridge language gaps anymore? Why does Pocahontas lack a real nose? Was she really fathered by Lord Voldemort? Really, it's better not to think about it. The Great Mouse in the Sky certainly doesn't want you to. |
- Same goes for The Rocky Horror Picture Show:
Chick: Shh, just enjoy it. |
- Better by a Different Name: Pointed out In-Universe.
- She says Spice World is a movie with at half the ambition of A Hard Day's Night, a quarter of the budget and at least two percent of the talent.
- She openly gets a sense of "deja-Disney" at "Let Me Be Your Wings", comparing it to "A Whole New World".
- Hercules was better done by both Superman and Rocky. Also inverted; The Emperors New Groove did Hercules better.
- She ends her Hocus Pocus review with "Go watch The Crucible!"
- Mean Girls took all the witch crap out of The Craft and was a better movie for it.
- Not Another Teen Movie has far more likable characters than She's All That.
- According to Maven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was more enjoyable when they took out the demons and called it Clueless.
- She liked What Women Want a lot more the first time they made it, when it starred Bill Murray, and was called Groundhog Day.
- The Lion King is Bambi with an actual plot.
- The new version of The Lorax has already been done. It was called Wall•E.
- Betty, Veronica and Archie Switcheroo: In early videos, the Nostalgia Critic crushed on the Nostalgia Chick, who held a candle for Todd in the Shadows. It's a case where the introverted and broody Todd would be the Betty by default, given Doug plays the part of the Caustic Critic, and in a later video Lindsay hesitates to call him an "ally" to a vengeful Mara Wilson.
- Bias Steamroller: When it comes to comparing Disney vs. Warner Brothers, she'll always be on Disney's side.
- She'll also complain if something became successful partly due to an Estrogen Brigade or if there's a fangirl in the movie (ala The Little Mermaid). This is a complete in-character use though, to demonstrate the character's self-loathing and hypocrisy.
- Big Applesauce: Being a New Yorker, she's always sure to point out when movies make the city far too clean.
- Bigger on the Inside: The inside of that fridge is surprisingly spacious. The Chick has enough room to stretch out her arms during the review of Roland Emmerich's films. There's also room in there for Dr. Tease, who sneaks up on the Chick from offscreen while both are in the fridge.
- Non Sequitur Scene: Trope Namer, which she is quite proud of, and uses this as an actual weapon in battle. According to CR, whenever someone else uses it, they owe her money.
- Although it turns against her in Xanadu and drives her crazy. And again in her crossover with Obscurus Lupa, popping up when she says she doesn't have time for stupid internet memes.
Chick: *with Death Glare* Point taken. |
- Big No:
- During her "Top Ten Disturbing and Inescapable Christmas Songs" when "The Christmas Shoes" starts playing.
- She also does it when Nella's last words are "Kirk was the best!".
- And she does it again when Dark Nella grabs her in the tunnel.
- Big Word Shout: The ticking octopus in the Peter Pan sequel drives her to screaming "HAAAAATE" over and over again.
- Big Yes: After she's directed all the characters in Pocahontas to create the perfect set-up for the movie's climax.
- Bile Fascination:
- Invoked - out of character, Lindsay and Todd in the Shadows go to the Green Lantern movie to see why it's being reviewed so badly and being compared to Transformers 2.
- Lindsay also got addicted to Jedward while in Ireland, and plans to ask for their songs to be played when she's next on Radio Dead Air. Nash's response was justified.
- In Teen Witch, she can't do anything but watch in Jaw Dropped horror and awe at the Pretty Fly for a White Guy rap numbers.
- Invoked - out of character, Lindsay and Todd in the Shadows go to the Green Lantern movie to see why it's being reviewed so badly and being compared to Transformers 2.
- Bishonen: Leonardo DiCaprio is so goddamn pretty, pale and puppy dog eyed he almost looks like an anime character at some points.
- Biting the Hand Humor: On Spice World:
Chick: And this movie haaates the media. Kinda ironic considering what made the Spice Girls in the first place. |
- Black and Gray Morality: At one point there's a story arc about Nella turning evil and attacking the Nostalgia Chick. The trailer for this arc describes it as battle between evil (Dark Nella) and "slightly less evil" (N Chick).
- Black and White Morality: Made fun of in her She-Ra review.
- Black Comedy: More or less her signature element. One wonders if Sarah Silverman was a big influence on her; their comedy and even their personas are eerily similar.
- Black Comedy Rape: One of her favorite sources of humor. And she usually does it so very well.
- "We're not Spoony! We can't get away with that kind of shit!"
- Black Dude Dies First:
- She and Nella call it "Dead Bro Walking" on their X-Men: First Class review.
- The term pops up in the Super 8 review, about the guy who survives the train crash, explains the danger to the kids and then gets shot by a white military dude.
- Non Sequitur Scene Episode]]: Sees Xanadu and Teen Witch as completely plotless messes.
Chick: [while trying to fend off the BLAM sound] No, no, stop it! That doesn't work! No, no, I said no! It doesn't work. The movie has to have some form of cohesion. In a movie where shit keeps happening and nobody ever mentions it again, it just doesn't work. ...kay? [The sound comes up again.] [Chick screams and flails.] |
- Blatant Lies:
- The other roommate Tammy allays Nella and the Chick's fear that the Wii Fit involves physical exercise:
Nella: But it says "fit". |
- In the "Top Ten Hottest Animated Guys", Chick tries to assert that she likes "real men", not animated or weak ones. She cuts to Todd singing along to Katy Perry on his computer with junk food in his mouth, but we've known even before this that she has the hots for projects, making woobies even woobier and submissive sex bots she can control.
- Bleached Underpants: Part of the reason why she takes great joy in trashing Disney so much is that they never admit to doing anything wrong and just hide embarrassments away.
- Bloodless Carnage: When a guy dies in Pocahontas, she's horribly confused that he just seems to get shot in the spirit.
- Blooper: During the Bratz episode, when the Critic is reasoning with her about why he made her do the movie, he pushes the door and she pulls, which should actually open the door but it remains closed.
- As was lampshaded in her review of The Craft, her hair length will change drastically over the period of an episode.
- Blue and Orange Morality: Word of God states that the Makeover Fairy and Dr. Tease aren't so much evil, they just have different priorities than normal people.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: In the vlogs, saying Jew Wario's "I like it" (from Kickassia) in his same tone of voice is popular.
- The Chick's signoffs in the early episodes were borrowed from the Critic's "I remember it so you don't have to."
- Bound and Gagged:
- Although we don't see him, Spoony was tied up and gagged with extension cord at the start of his and the Chick's riff of Dune.
- Todd in the Shadows makes a few appearances when the Chick has adducted and tied him up in an attempt to invoke Abduction Is Love.
- In one more Dude in Distress moment, the Critic's struggly chloroforming by the Chick is still treated as a fanservicey Never Live It Down by the fandom.
- Of course it isn't just the boys who have been subjected to this; Dark Nella tied the Makeover Fairy up in the bathtub to torture her (i.e scrub off her make-up), she herself got chloroformed by the Chick and wrapped up with toilet paper, and bound the Chick's hands with a bowtie when taking over the show to bash Tron.
- A Boy and His X: Lindsay's a big fan of the genre (even though her character isn't) and would have just rather Super 8 been about that instead of a monster, an army and kids with daddy issues.
- Brain Bleach:
- In-universe, she and Nella really need some after witnessing the horrors that is foot-binding.
- The Chick looks ready to throw up at the thought of Frollo "getting his freak on".
- She also has trouble repressing her disgust at the prospect of Nick Cage's "sex face".
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In the Anastasia review.
Chick: Russia has the most painful, complex, painfully complex histories in all the world. |
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Almost constantly used.
- In Pocahontas: "Her design was based off the looks of models like Naomi Campbell, Christie Turlington, Barbie... and Janice from The Muppets."
- Teen Witch, when trying to give advice to the lead with better ways to use her magic: "Help the less fortunate? Give the homeless a new lease on life? Get Reagan impeached?"
- In the "Top Ten Worst Disney Sequels", she lists all the actresses 2002-era Disney could afford. Most of them are the normal interchangeable generic stars, but Your Mom and "Bea Arthur" are in there too.
- Breaking the Reviewer's Wall:
- During her review of Anastasia, people who have been portrayed in the movie keep bugging her about their characterization problems.
- Inverted in her review of Hercules. She tearfully asks why nobody is listening to her after she demands the movie to explain its Fridge Logic problems.
- Breathless Non-Sequitur: "Also, Pocahontas was twelve."
- Brick Joke: Tammy hanging upside down in the Hercules review is referred to at the end of the third "Thanks For The Feedback".
- Broken Aesop: Part of her problem with The Lorax: the trees are all dead and people have to buy clean air, but the town Ted lives in seems to look and operate fine anyway. As a result, the message winds up being less about the importance of sustainability and more a combination of "trees are awesome (for some reason)!" and "I hate having to pay for stuff."
- Buffy-Speak:
"And then he gnaws his way through China like a spiteful... gnawing... thing." |
- Bullet Time: Parodied in Maven's review of Blade. She brags that she just invented "garlic time".
- But Wait! There's More!: Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas just had to get backstory in so they could fuck up the canon of the first movie even more.
C
- Call Back: Her "NChick Labs" segment is full of these, referencing the Makeover Fairy, the scientists, Lord MacGuffin, and the confusion about MacGuffins. Also, "We, Fit" calls back to the Hercules review.
- In her Kate and Leopold review, smitten over Hugh Jackman, she sensually unwraps a stick of butter over the sounds of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," just like she did with a banana in her Labyrinth review.
- There's also a Call Back to The Nostalgia Critic's Independence Day review, where he fawns over a hot man and then shouts "Boobs! You like boobs!" in a pained way. This time it's even less convincing.
- Way back in Teen Witch, she says "Godlike powers are fun and all, but only when you use them on the things that truly matter" and sarcastically agrees with the movie's message of it's all about boys. In Playing God, it turns out that she and Dr. Tease did in fact play God to make herself a robot Sex Slave.
- In her Kate and Leopold review, smitten over Hugh Jackman, she sensually unwraps a stick of butter over the sounds of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," just like she did with a banana in her Labyrinth review.
- The Cameo: The accordion comes back when the Chick plays it in Spoony's "Final Fantasy X-2" review, totally oblivious to his suffering.
- She appears in the Critic's Fern Gully II review to bluntly say no to reviewing it with him. Made even funnier by his fawning build-up.
- She confuses the fuck out of Linkara in the "Daredevil #306" "Previously On..." by not being recognizable before tying her hair up.
- She pops up in Todd in the Shadows's review of "E.T." to first insult his taste in music and then to hit on him again. (she appears in many of his videos to be rejected afterwards)
- She does the "forget about it" thing while playing with her puppy in Sad Panda's "Forget About It: Resident Evil".
- Elisa dresses up like a Misfit for Benzaie's "Top Five Murder Attempts In Jem And The Holograms".
- Elisa and Nella appear for a scene each in Suburban Knights, both as Butt Monkies.
- They also appear as their scientist personas to explain "Gold Fever" to The Nostalgia Critic in his "Raiders Of The Lost Arc: DuckTales (1987)".
- Some episodes have plenty of cameos from other people (such as Les Miserables, Grease, The Little Mermaid, Kate and Leopold, What Women Want and the TLC and Roland Emmerich episodes).
- The Cinema Snob reads Roger Ebert's "this movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned alongside barrels" quote about Freddy Got Fingered.
- Canon Defilement: In-universe, this is what she thinks Enchanted Christmas did to the original Beauty and the Beast. She likens to it to a clammy uncle touching you in places you'd rather not be touched right now and calls it "worse than seven holocausts".
- Canon Discontinuity: The "White Rapping" episode of Thanks for the Feedback.
- Captain Obvious: "Here's the thing about rape: it sucks."
- While trying desperately to understand why Frollo is considered hot:
Chick: And he kills people... he's a bad boy!" |
- Cash Cow Franchise: Her opinion on Cinderella.
Chick: You insipid twat, stop making them money! |
- Wolverine is only second to Spider-Man as Marvel's fattest cash cow.
- Camp: Rita Repulsa only gets points for this.
- Caption Humor: Always for extra snark.
- Cats Are Mean: She likens them to those groups of bitchy girls at the office who talk about you behind your back.
- Invoked during her "Songs About Fucking" review, when discussing how a kitten called Otto deleted the original score to "Love Never Dies". A photo of a kitten pops up, accompanied by a tiny evil giggle.
- Censor Box: She uses boobies to censor exposed tracts of land in her Showgirls review.
- Chekhov's Gun: In the Chick's review of Showgirls, Nella sings a song about the movie and mentions "Chekhov's Stairs that have been there since act 1."
- The mayonnaise that Lord MacGuffin is seen injecting with plot-devices is later used as...a plot device. Specifically a portal. It also brings Lord MacGuffin Back from the Dead.
- Chewing the Scenery: The ladies can chew with the best of them, especially Nella and especially when she's evil, but the Chick will point it out any time an actor does it.
- Chick Flick: She has a whole month of Meg Ryan movies to prove to the Makeover Fairy that she's girly enough to stomach them. She manages two and then craves some Transformers.
- Chippendales Dancers: The title card for the "Top Ten Hottest Animated Men" shows the very pleased Chick getting a show from shirtless Nightcrawler, Megamind, the Beast and... Hades.
- In his song for The Worst Witch, the Critic asks why bother dressing up like a Spartan warrior when you can have a better time at a Chippendale bar.
- Chirping Crickets: She inserts them every time there's a confusing Plot Hole in Hercules.
- Christmas Episode: "The Top Ten Disturbing And Inescapable Christmas Songs", Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, A Very N*Sync Christmas and The Christmas Shoes.
- Christmas Songs: Did a top ten of the most inescapable and disturbing ones. She went... kinda crazy.
- Color Wash: X-Men The Animated Series is reviewed with a muted color panel...until Dr. Tease gives the Chick some Truth Serum and everything becomes colorful and perky.
- Collective Groan: Whenever she makes an Incredibly Lame Pun.
- Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: In-universe and defied. She's put her foot down about never doing Sailor Moon because she didn't grow up with it, says she wouldn't do it justice and hates it so much "I now hate sushi by cultural association."
- Complexity Addiction: Lampshaded in a blacker way than most when a guy in Showgirls worries about his girlfriend being pregnant.
Chick: Why not just push her down the stairs and hope for the best? |
- Content Warnings: Because of the scenes of animal cruelty, Milo and Otis remains the only video with a "not for the fainthearted" bit in the description.
- Continuity Snarl: Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, oh so very much. "This whole mess doesn't remotely fit... MOVING ON!"
- Contrived Coincidence: She notes that the chances of Leeloo falling right into Bruce Willis's cab in The Fifth Element were great odds.
- As much as she loves Les Misérables, she can concede that there are a lot of coincidences that take place.
- Convenient Miscarriage: She gets pissed off when Crossroads cops out with this after making her think they'll go the rarely-done adoption route.
- Conversational Troping: Occurs at times, such as discussions on what is a MacGuffin.
- Corpsing: The Chick once did a tribute video to Team N Chick's tendency to nearly laugh while in a scene. Out of all of them, Lindsay is probably the most guilty of this, particularly in crossovers with the boys.
- Cosmic Deadline: Discussed by The Chick and Nella when they are talking about X-Men: First Class, concluding that much of the conflict that was slowly building up throughout the film was rushed into the open in a heavy-handed way as the ending approached.
- Courtroom Antics: When people throw things at Beast in X-Men: "Hey, who let the assholes into the courtroom?"
- The Cover Changes the Meaning: She slowed down the voices of Alvin and The Chipmunks' "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" and added creepy images (including her silently going insane) to show how it could be considered incredibly disturbing.
- Creative Closing Credits: Spice World doing this doesn't impress her that much.
Nostalgia Chick: We know the movie was Spice Crap! We did that on purpose! |
- Creator Thumbprint: She loves robots and aliens, and movies that follow Show, Don't Tell.
- Creator Worship: Played for Laughs in-universe with her review of Pocahontas. "Disney is just and good."
- In "Dreamworks: Rise Of The Eyebrow", they fearfully tell Jeffery Katzenburg that he is a God amongst men and ask that he not hurt them.
- Creepy Child: She makes the Littlest Cancer Patient in The Day After Tomorrow worse by focusing on his big eyes and impersonating him with a voice that sounds like the twin girls from The Shining.
- Cringe Comedy: "A Date With Doug" is something you need to watch between your fingers.
- Crosses the Line Twice: Her NChick Labs segment actually defies and lampshades this in-universe when they mention the Rape Rap.
Nella: We're not Spoony! We can't get away with this shit! |
- Crossover: Fern Gully and The Chipmunk Adventure with The Nostalgia Critic, Honor and Glory with Obscurus Lupa, Crossroads and From Justin To Kelly with Todd in the Shadows, and Freddy Got Fingered with Oancitizen.
- Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Parodied. At the end of the girls' My Little Mermaid review, in which Elisa and Nella tried to persuade the Chick to appreciate the film, the girls sing "Part of Your World." The Chick suddenly stands up and passionately joins in, Elisa and Nella beaming with pride. Then she notices the VHS cover of the film.
Chick: Is that an erect peni- *credits* |
- Cry for the Devil: Maven feels sorry for Richard in From Dusk Til Dawn, thinking that hating him would be like hating a puppy because he was obviously ill and should have been institutionalized instead.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Nella's Lunar Bear from the My Little Pony review.
- Cue the Sun: When Thumbelina does this.
Chick: Nice winter. It only lasted like a day and a half. |
D
- Damsel Scrappy: Pointed out In-Universe.
Chick: And like all animated heroines she has a tendency towards fainting. Boom! Unconscious! |
- Dance Party Ending: At the end of her "Dreamworks Vs. Disney Part Two" video to parody Dreamworks's use of the trope.
- Damned By Faint Praise: She says that calling a song in the My Little Pony the best one is like calling Revenge of the Sith the least bad Star Wars prequel.
- Calling Dragonheart the best out of the boy and his dragon movies isn't saying a lot.
- Date Rape: The Chick gets roofied by Brian The Sexual Predator in the "Top Ten Disturbing and Inescapable Christmas Songs", and she herself is slightly too happy about Todd getting wasted on their date.
- Dawson Casting:
- She says "High school, Grease? Really?" There's a quick montage of the cast's ages at the time, none under 25. Same thing goes for Grease II, although she's still grossed out by the "student" asking the teacher for a lay.
- Lindsay occasionally plays herself (or rather, the Chick) as a mopey teenager in flashbacks.
- Deader Than Disco: She says Xanadu caused the death of roller-skates.
- Death Glare: Nella does it a few times to the Chick in the Grease II review. The Chick herself is also good at shooting them, to Nella and Critic especially. Guess who are the ones withering?
- Deconstructive Parody:
- She plays with All Girls Want Bad Boys by mixing it in with Weakness Turns Her On and The Baroness.
- She also messes with I Can Change My Beloved. The Chick character is less Love Martyr and more Broken Bird who hates having emotions and wants someone to control.
- Defictionalization: Her idea for a Disneyfied Anne Frank.
- Department of Redundancy Department:
- She says "gets killed to death" in her Dragonheart review.
- And in her discussion of The Lion King 2 we get:
Lindsay: Why didn't Scar sire any cubs? Is it because he's gay? Or sterile? Or gay? Or is it 'cause he's gay? |
- Why is Mel Gibson in charge of advertising women's products, anyway? "Things like yogurt. Tampons. The Cooking Channel. [beat] Yogurt."
- Depraved Homosexual: She thinks Forte in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas has a bizarre co-dependent crush on the Beast.
- Description Cut: She describes Hugh "Wolverine" Jackman as one of the manliest men in Hollywood. Cut to a montage of Jackman from his very, very unmasculine Broadway career.
- Designated Girl Fight:
- In the TGWTG brawl, she fights That Chick With The Goggles (offscreen, because Doug isn't a dick and she and Krissy would have been uncomfortable) while Spoony and Bennett watch and take pictures.
- Later in the same video, she and Little Miss Gamer get into a pillow fight.
- Designated Hero:
- She points out that Hercules's "I Want" Song is about being adulated rather than helping people, he welshed out on the deal at the end and that Zeus is just insufferable.
- A reason why she dislikes the Disney Peter Pan so much is that the titular character's dickery is meant to be charming.
- She's also pissed off at the Lorax turning from a benign pleader to an attempted murderer.
- Speaking of murderers, Maven doesn't like Seline from Underworld that much because she kills nearly every guy in sight.
- Designated Protagonist Syndrome:
- She says one of the main reasons why Hercules sucked was because the lead wasn't a compelling character.
- The two leads in Pocahontas are only good for posing dramatically.
- In The Little Mermaid, the only character she cares about is Triton, because unlike Ariel he actually has Character Development.
- She notes that in the first half of the My Little Pony movie the villains have more screentime and actual conflict than the ponies, whom she can't even tell apart.
- Development Hell: There was talk of making a home site (like Angry Joe's, a place for stuff that they couldn't put on TGWTG) last year, but it hasn't come into fruition yet.
- Did Not Do the Research: Rather often, although that might be intentional to show the character of the Chick as something of a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
- Discontinuity Nod: "We do NOT talk about the RAPE RAP!"
- Discriminate and Switch: Selma Blair's mom wants her to keep away from Sean Patrick Thomas. Why? "You guessed it -- he's blaaaaaaaaaannnd."
- Inverted in Baby Whatever, as she starts discussing how differently gendered toys lead to systemic sexism "which is innately... hilarious!"
- Disney Death: When Anastasia thinks Dimitri has died.
Chick: *sniffs* Why do they never check the pulse? |
- She's disappointed when the annoying bird in Thumbelina only turns out to be unconscious.
- Disneyfication: Pointed out in places such as her reviews of both Pocahontas and Hercules, for history and myth, respectively.
Nostalgia Chick: What's more American than sanitizing your own history to the point where it's no longer recognizable? Puppies!. |
- In the "Top Five Least Worst Disney Sequels", she makes her own kiddified Anne Frank story where there's musical numbers and Everybody Lives Happily Ever After. So if the next few generations see that movie onscreen, they'll know who to blame.
- Disney Princess: Did an episode on their marketing and trends. (And their horrendous song.)
- Disney Villain Death: In her "Top Ten Disney Deaths", she advises the villains to stop having fights on high places as it never works out for them.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- The Chick breaks into Spoony's house, stuns him in the jaw and ties him up all because he likes Dune.
- Her way of dealing with the Critic annoying her is to chloroform him with a delightfully rapey smile on her face and likewise, he returns the favor by locking her in his basement and making her review Bratz. (True, it was a kinda sweet Secret Test of Character, but still... harsh.)
- On Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty.
Chick: Why is Maleficent mad? She got snubbed to a baby shower. |
- Dude in Distress:
- Sums up He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in the She-Ra movie nicely:
"And for the rest of the movie, we pretty much go in circles of capture. He-Man gets captured, He-Man escapes, He-Man gets captured, He-Man escapes, and our new wacky rebel friends have wacky adventures trying to bust him out." |
- In-universe, Critic, Spoony, Todd and SadPanda have all had their turn because of the Chick. Their fangirls are grateful.
- The Ditz:
- What she thinks of Posh Spice, and the Spice Girls in general.
"Vain and stupid. Girl power!" |
- She uses Jessica Simpson's "tuna or chicken" quote to demonstrate her stupidness in the Guilty Pleasure episode.
- Sarah Jessica Parker's powers in Hocus Pocus are that of all-mighty stupidness and boy-craziness.
- One of the worst things about Ariel is that she's dumb even for a teenager.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Chick and Critic might have been talking about the former was brought in to do girly stuff and stopped doing it, but the undertones sounded an awful lot like two people trying really hard to not discuss an issue-laden break-up.
- Less woobie and more like the usual use of the trope, but Lindsay and Nella getting hit with sausages and showered with mayonnaise during their Madness Montage that was courtesy of Freddy Got Fingered.
- Dogs Are Dumb: At the end of her epic rant about Roland Emmerich movies, she calls Boomer from Independence Day the dumbest dog in America and asks if he wants an easy death.
- Domestic Abuse: Played for dark laughs when Brian The Sexual Predator was beating on Nella during the "Top Ten Disturbing And Inescapable Christmas Songs".
- Don't Shoot the Message: In-universe, how she feels about PETA. She cares deeply for animals (much more than humans anyway), but hates PETA for being Attention Whores.
- Don't Think, Feel: Pocahontas doing this to explain how the language barrier gets sorted confuses her greatly.
- Dork Age: In-universe. She calls the mid-nineties era, the point where Disney was releasing a fuckton of -quels, a "dark, dark time" for the company.
- Double Standard Abuse (Female on Male): Averted. Chick and Maven beating on Dan (with his face offscreen) might be seen as funny when it would be horrible the other way round, but they've been established as terrible people with issues so they can get away with it.
- Dramatic Thunder: Every time she says..."virgin" [CRACK!] in her Hocus Pocus review. Towards the end, she's just doing it for the hell of it.
- Dramatic Wind: In Pocahontas:
Chick: Maybe she's standing on a five thousand foot cliff, posing dramatically while fluorescent leaves swirl all around her boooody." |
- Dreamworks Face: Examined in her "Dreamworks vs. Disney" episode.
- Drinking Game: Has one for Hercules as a family ritual. The objective is of course to get totally smashed.
- Dropped a Ladder on Her: The way Nella goes.
- Dropped a Bridget On Him: She has her doubts about Mel C of the Spice Girls really being a woman.
- Duct Tape for Everything: It can apparently be used for slings, waxing your legs, cleaning the dog, whitening your teeth or tying up the guy who wants nothing to do with you.
- Dueling Movies: Discussed in "Dreamworks vs. Disney", even though she (probably intentionally) gets a lot of the dates wrong.
Nostalgia Chick: Funny thing is, they [Dreamworks] never seem to have much interest in Pixar, save for perhaps how they can steal business from them that makes movies suspiciously like... |
- Dull Surprise:
- She compares the lead in Xanadu to the acting in the famous Troll 2 scene.
- The girls in The Baby Sitters Club:
Subplot girl: Oh my god, guys, I have a problem. |
- Dutch Angle: In the "Guilty Pleasures" episode, she leans forward to tilt the camera in order to talk about Battlefield Earth.
- DVD Commentary: She's been doing them ever since "Kirk vs. Picard".
- Dying Town: Her "plague wiping everyone out" theory comes up for Paris in Thumbelina and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II.
- Dysfunction Junction: The star is a neurotic sociopath, her sidekick is an abused Butt Monkey that is in danger of going evil if she takes her glasses off, and the cast also includes (or has included) a Sex Bot that wants to die, a fairy that tortures people through makeovers, a Small Name, Big Ego Mad Scientist Psychopathic Womanchild, an Anything That Moves rapist and the occasional cameo from a pathetic wreck who brings the Tsundere in the above mentioned sociopath.
E
- Eagle Land: Bitching about America but also being pretty stereotypically American herself (Played for Laughs of course) is a regular thing in her show.
- Earn Your Happy Ending:
- Summed up in her review of Thumbelina, where the despairing heroine is surprised to find her prince Cornelius alive and well - "Things are impossible! Things are... oh! Hi dead boyfriend! Thanks for coming along and proving my pessimism wrong and not making me work for that happy ending!"
- Also referred to in the "Top Five Least Awful Disney Sequels", where she says that Cinderella 3 is a better story than the first film, because Cinderella has to take action herself to overcome her problems and reach a happy ending. She also gives quite a line about how she feels the original film did not do this.
"Cinderella has the morality tale nutritional value equivalent of Fruit Loops. It is the Revenge fantasy where you show up to your high school reunion in a white limo and 40 pounds lighter wearing furs, all under the guise if innocence and martyrdom." |
- Ear Worm: Pointed out In-Universe.
- "You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift and "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha have this effect on the Chick.
- "Oh no... it's this musical number... It's just so hard not to sing along with-LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS!"
- "You're The One That I Want" is as bad as "Part Of Your World" for songs that you just have to sing along with.
- Easily Forgiven:
- She comments on how quick and painless the one line is of Sarah forgiving Hoggle for giving her the drugged peach.
- When Cinderella happily gives Anastasia some advice in Cinderella II, the Chick plays the scene where the sisters are ripping her dress to shreds.
- Eats Babies: She requests that the witches in Hocus Pocus not refer to the child as a snack.
Chick: Please don't act like the child is an hors d'oeuvre, I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most states. |
- Egregious: She uses the phrase "perhaps the most egregious example is..." during her review of Hollywood Science. Now drink up!
- Used by Nella in Top Ten Disney Deaths:
Nella: I just know I would kill for a grilled chicken Greek salad. |
- Eighties Hair: Given this by the Makeover Fairy for their Jem review:
The Chick: And sticky... |
- Either or Title: used in "Disaster Movies of Roland Emmerich".
- Electrified Bathtub/Harmless Electrocution : To parody What Women Want, she throws a Play Station 3 controller into a bath full of men's stuff, gets electrocuted but doesn't die, and gains the power to read guy minds.
- Empathic Environment: A wolf howls when Maven decides to call Lupa (who she thinks is a wolf) in the Underworld review.
- Ending Fatigue: Pointed out In-Universe.
- She does this in Teen Witch and then inverts it when the film just ends.
- She-Ra: Princess of Power too: "This movie has more fake-outs than Return of the King!"
- This tends to happen quite often with her. Even Labyrinth wore out its welcome.
- Grease is also way too long.
- Epiphany Therapy: For She-Ra: Princess of Power.
Chick: BY THE HONOR OF PEP TALKS! |
- Esoteric Happy Ending:
- Her in-universe view on She's All That. That bully guy will never hear again and the tepid puddle of a relationship between the two leads won't last.
- Comes up again in The Fox and The Hound Lighter and Softer midquel. Aww, how fun, a happy ending where they've got crickets to chase. ...wait, they're still babies, they're still going to be torn apart soon. Damnit.
- Estrogen Brigade: Leo's band of slathering fangirls was what made The Man in the Iron Mask successful. Or at least in her opinion.
- Ethnic Scrappy: In her review for the The Fifth Element she asks why Chris Tucker hasn't been mercy-killed yet.
- The black girl from The Craft is the most annoying character because her only trait is her race.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: When Earth Girls Are Easy sings about how great it is to a blonde, she plays with her brown hair and sulks.
- Everythings Better With Bunnies: After a drinking session, she and Nella wake up surrounded by them.
- A bunny also appears playing the Wii Fit game... and is actually pretty good at it.
- There is also a bunny in the Top Ten Evil Nostalgic Characters video.
- A bunny also appears playing the Wii Fit game... and is actually pretty good at it.
- Everything's Better with Monkeys: After having not too much to say on The Wicked Witch Of The West, she says "here's some monkeys" and the remaining time is dedicated to monkeys dancing set to "Yackety Sax".
- Monks is just a few letters off from "monkey", so that makes them funny, right? not really.
- Everything's Better with Penguins: In a moment of immaturity, she laughs at the nuns' habits in Sister Act because they're so penguin-like.
- Everything's Better with Princesses: When talking about them in Ever After.
Chick: But what does it mean to a princess? That you are treated like royalty? Or that you are a monarch that wields power... or at least you will when your father and/or mother dies. |
- Everything's Worse with Bears: In Milo and Otis, she plays the Japanese-only scene when the baby bear basically mauls the poor pug.
- Precious Puppies: "Puppies!" ("YAAY!")
- Eviler Than Thou: Mocked in her review of She-Ra.
Chick: I love it when evil is measurable! |
- Evil Is Cool:
- Hades was the best character in Hercules by far to her, as was Ursula in the The Little Mermaid. Magneto in X-Men was "the fucking BOMB!"
- Evil Is Sexy:
- She wonders why the world's greatest thief is so hot.
- Mirage is the only sexy villain in the Aladdin universe.
- A cut joke in The Worst Witch review would have been a Call Back to the Fern Gully review and her kissing a photo of Hexxus.
- JesuOtaku outright name-drops the trope in "Top Ten Hottest Animated Guys".
- Evilly Affable: Carmen Sandiego again.
Chick Sure, she steals things that are pretty hard to steal, but then she gives you clues on how to find her, just because it's sportsmanlike. |
- Evil Laugh: When there's a particularly Obviously Evil shot of Nomi smirking in Showgirls, she kindly dubs it with this.
- Evil Versus Evil: Directly pointed out in the Dark Nella trailer. (Nostalgia Chick being the slightly less evil)
- Executive Meddling: She's willing to admit that creative thought probably wasn't allowed in the Disney sequels, but she's still going to tear them apart.
- Excuse Plot: She says that the main "plot" in Grease was just to facilitate cool dance numbers.
- Expository Theme Song: The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers intro tells us everything we need to know about Rita Repulsa.
- Extreme Doormat: To her immense distress, Belle became this in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.
Chick: C'mon, monster who destroyed my life and took everything, let's go ice-skating! |
F
- Face Palm: After discovering that the only Meg Ryan non-Chick Flick was City of Angels and she'll have to review it.
- Fair for Its Day: Discussed and invoked in her review of the Disney short Der Furher's Face. She notes that the Disney propaganda pieces of World War II seem much more mindful of their greater cultural implications than their Warner Brothers counterparts, and while they're still kinda offensive, they seem to be greatly toned down and more humanizing than other propaganda pieces of the time.
- In Song of the South, a caption states confusion as to why the crows in Dumbo were hated so much, as they really weren't that bad.
- Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Pointed out In-Universe for The Little Mermaid.
Chick: I sold my soul for a vagina and a man I don't know! |
- She also taken Ke$ha and the Spice Girls to task for their belief that objectifying men and treating them like shit equals feminism.
- Showgirls gives us "stripper = slutty and irresponsible".
- Fake Brit: The lead in Grease 2. She has to keep correcting herself when she calls him Australian instead.
- Fan Disservice: In the Dune review, she recoils in horror at seeing Sting in a "galactic speedo".
- As much as she's a Yaoi Fangirl, underage boys being flamboyant and having Female Gaze on their bodies is not something that makes her happy.
- She shudders plenty at Nick Cage trying to be sexy in City of Angels.
- Fanon Discontinuity : The Maven has firmly decided that Underworld: Rise of the Lycans never happened.
- Fandom Heresy: Having said that says she actually quite likes the much maligned 2005 film version of Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy, she challenges Guide fanboys to a fight if they have a problem with it.
- Fandom Rivalry: Parodied in-universe with Nella and Nostalgia Chick's "Kirk vs. Picard" debate.
- Also parodied at the start of The Chipmunk Adventure, where both Critic and Chick are hiding from their Fan Dumb and end up arguing about who has the craziest fans.
- Fan Service:
- Her cameo in That Jewish Guy's "Eight Myths of Hanukkah". Those are some darling stockings, dear.
- Being a Manipulative Bitch and pretending to be The Vamp for both "Linking Up With Linkara" and Angry Joe's second edition of "Hotel Awesome".
- Parodied but still done in an equal opportunity way for The Worst Witch. For the guys: Chick and Elisa are in Sexy Whatever Outfits while Nella is a "sexy Velma". For the girls: The Nostalgia Critic channelling "Sweet-Transvestite" Tim Curry and singing about the virtues of everyone being slutty.
- Neither Lindsay or Elisa are shy about showing off their cleavage, (although Lindsay's retrospective commentary on her first review includes some snarking at herself for showing off so much). Elisa wears corsets as Maven of the Eventide and (a pleather catsuit for the Underworld review), and Lindsay as the Chick often wears low-cut tops.
- More equal opportunity stuff in The Chipmunk Adventure. Chick gives us a flash of her censored breasts, and Critic naturally has a Shirtless Scene.
- Chick showing off her Dominatrix side again at the end of Freddy Got Fingered and spanking an ukey Luke.
- Fascinating Eyebrow: She spends most of the "Dreamworks Vs. Disney" video talking about Dreamworks's tendency to have characters doing this on posters.
- Fat and Skinny: Nella and Nostalgia Chick. Nella is the idealistic, happy Big Fun, while the Chick is the cynical, bitchy Broken Bird.
- Faux Action Girl: The complaint comes up in Maven's reviews of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and Underworld. In the former, she points how Buffy always has to get saved by guys. In the latter, she loses her temper over Selene fainting.
- Faux Horrific: Like her colleagues, she'll scream or recoil at "scary" things on the screen.
- Female Gaze:
- When confronted with David Bowie's AREA in Labyrinth, she warns the young fanboys that she'll be focusing on that for most of the review.
- Generally, if there's a male actor that she likes (Patrick Stewart in Dune, bishie-faced Christian Bale in Newsies, Sean Connery in Dragonheart and Jeff Goldblum in Earth Girls Are Easy), she'll usually pan the movie but freely admit to watching just for them.
- She's also rather disappointed when "the one hot guy in the movie" is the only one not crossdressing.
- Like its Spear Counterpart for Male Gaze, the "Top Ten Hottest Animated Guys" is all about this trope.
- To go with the Vampires Are Sex Gods theme, Maven has many pictures of deliciously broody, half-naked vampire boys in her reviews.
- She squees hard over the male Wet Sari Scene in Om Shanti Om.
- Feminist Fantasy: Points out that Ever After is pretty much just a feminist retelling of "Cinderella".
- Fisher King: She lampshades how ridiculous it is for Scar in The Lion King to cause a drought so quickly.
- First Installment Wins: In-universe. Naturally she likes most of the original Disney movies compared to the sequels, but she also has to admit The Little Mermaid is much better than its follower.
- Five Woman Band:
- The Hero: The Chick. (Or at least, a Villain Protagonist)
- The Lancer: Nella. (Also an abused Butt Monkey)
- The Smart Girl: Dr. Tease and Dr. Block. (A Know-Nothing Know-It-All and The Chew Toy)
- The Chick: The Makeover Fairy. (i.e a Psychopathic Womanchild)
- The Big Guy: ...Nella again. (She's the most likely to punch someone.)
- Fix Fic: Sort of how she sees Cinderella III. She admits that the concept only really works if you don't like the original movie's plot; she doesn't, and finds the characters' earning their happy ending to be an improvement.
- Flat What: Used in the Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas episode.
Nostalgia Chick: What...ever justendalready! |
- Also in Showgirls:
Nostalgia Chick: Seriously, we're losing the track of the...what? |
- And in The Lorax, when she founds out that the movie is dedicated to the Lorax's and the Once-ler's "bromance".
- Flipping the Bird: Does it when she demonstrates how Shrek was a "fuck you!" to Disney.
- Follow the Leader: Pointed out In-Universe.
- She criticizes Don Bluth when he tried to imitate Disney with "Thumbelina" and "Anastasia".
- On one of her most hated movies:
Chick: All The Little Mermaid did was put that godforsaken Disney musical 90s formula in place. |
- She gets annoyed by how the Cinderella story gets told over and over and over...
- When talking about Dreamworks:
Chick: Think about it! Aladdin is the proto-typical Dreamworks movie. Family films got a good case of distinctive voice actor-itis after this. |
- Discussed in Lindsay and Nella's vlog of The Hunger Games, where they concede that the concept is similar to Battle Royale, but the two franchises are saying completely different things about in society.
- On the subject of reviews, when people ask Lindsay for advice on how to get in the business, she tells them to not act like Doug because the "angry reviewer" shtick has got stale and he's one of the few who can make his character's temper look genuine.
- Forced Meme: "Everybody got AIDS and shit."
- The only reason why Non Sequitur Scene was created was that she wanted to create a trope on this site. She was very happy when she succeeded.
- Foregone Conclusion: She says the scene in "Enchanted Christmas" where the Beast nearly destroys the rose is completely pointless if you saw the original's ending.
- She also said that the romantic story in Titanic needed to happen because everyone knew how it was going to end.
- Foreshadowing:
- Her Xanadu review mentions her love for aliens and robots and has her finally getting pissed off with just doing girly shit. The next episode was a four part arc, starting with Transformers: The Movie and the Critic yelling at her for going into his territory.
- "Inside the NChick Labs", with Nella's lessons in identifying evil:
Brian: Why do we need to know this? |
- In "Kirk vs. Picard", Nella says Squee gives fangirls power. Squee is what defeats Dark Nella.
- In the N*Sync Christmas album review, she gets in her car and the songs of the season start playing, screaming in terror when "The Christmas Shoes" start playing. Guess what she reviews the next week?
- At the end of What Women Want, she snorts at the idea of treating men with respect and less objectification. The next week, she makes a list of the "Top Ten Hottest Animated Guys".
- There'll be usually some hint as to what the following review will be on her twitter, you just have to guess.
- Showgirls taught her that the person you raped probably would have wanted to put out anyway. Add in some Sanity Slippage and we're betting Todd is cursing that movie.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: "Rest in peace, y'all get a hat. With a candle on it. Now to go off and develop a million more characters!"
- For the Evulz: The huns apparently invaded China out of spite.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: Her opinion on Spice World
Chick: Does it have a plot? No! But it does have at least four subplots, each one more painfully useless than the last. |
- Fourth Date Marriage: She uses Enchanted's parody scene of the trope to make fun of Thumbelina agreeing to marry her fairy boy when they've just met.
- Franchise Killer: Grease 2 killed any chance of a sequel and a TV series.
- Freud Was Right:
- Upon seeing Skeletor's rather, uh... phallic weapon.
Chick: Woah honey, watch where you're pointing that thing! |
- In Pocahontas, John Smith is so potent that he has to ride on a giant phallic symbol.
- Fridge Logic: Pointed out frequently in her reviews.
- Taken to extremes in her Driven to Madness Angrish rant on Roland Emmerich:
Chick: It gets even worse in 2012 when we find that the earth or at the part under California like one of those hollow Nestle milk balls, California's just disintegrating into the nothing f-falling into- the world isn't hollow b-but here is why The Day After Tomorrow was the worst offender see 2012 is really stupid in broad strokes the stupidist. It tries to back itself up with the science but really no it's just stupid at the same time it's just- it's not even trying to be... anything other than... idiotic see the wonderful thing... about this movie... is that we now know that buildings cannot stay standing with giant gaping holes in them what did Godzilla just... did he knock... did he knock a hole through the met-life building and then daintily stepped through it? Doesn't- doesn't make sense that it's just a hole it it it should just be gone. And in Godzilla the-there are little frustrating things that I think are meant to be like comic relief moments, trying to make fun of New Yorkers thinking they know everything. And I'm thinking where the hell are they trying to get to that they're trying to give directions in the first place isn't their objective here to just not die? Where are they trying to get the Frenchman. Then the stupidest thing happens. There are three suspension bridges closer to the Brooklyn bridge and that brings us full-circle what suspension bridge is a non New Yorker most likely to have heard of? The Brooklyn bridge! They didn't even need that line to piss me off! And I don't need to be thinking that he could be going to the 59th street bridge which is in fact much closer and much bigger and more practical for catching Godzillas! [whimpers] And that tsunami? That results from the ocean current? And the split from California isn't happening where the fault line is in the San Andreas mountains it's happening in the city where the people are cos we need to end act one in LA and the Atlantic current causes tornadoes on the complete other side of the country? Whether patterns in LA come from the pacific ocean and it's surrounded by mountains on all sides. And- and the lady survives the helicopter crash and yet there are no charred bodies scattered around the streets never once does the child have to behold the remains of the horrified- how did he catch Godzilla with that little fishing lure from so far away?! And the Russian ship makes it all the way down 5th Avenue a-and the end of the movies the wolves thrown in there for good measure chasing Donnie Darko. Wolves that are set up two shots from an hour earlier! Is this the dumbest dog in America? He's just standing there! People running, screaming dying all around him does he just want an easy death? |
- The same thing happens in her review of The Lorax, although that drives her to Drowning My Sorrows and not a parodied Despair Event Horizon.
- She does this in a slightly saner way in her review of Pocahontas, asking questions like why are there moose in Southeast Virginia, why doesn't listening to your heart bridge language gaps anymore and so on.
- Fridge Horror: From the forums.
Lindsay: ...There have been lots of studies done on the idea that when a guy says he "wants a girl with a sense of humor", he means he "wants a girl who thinks I'M funny". |
- Friendship Moment: They're rare, but they do happen, like Nella and Elisa just wanting the Chick to not be lonely anymore (even if there is an ulterior motive) or the Chick showing affection for Nella's Woman Child-ness.
- Fun with Acronyms: How Tammy sells the Wii Fit to Nella and the Chick: "Food Is Tasty".
- LINETS is Love Interest Non-Essential To Story.
- Fur Against Fang: Maven and Obscurus Lupa have an argument like this in the former's review of Underworld (she's convinced that Lupa is actually a werewolf), with Slobs Versus Snobs thrown in there too.
- Furry Fandom: She delivers a huge Take That to the furries in her "Top Animated Villainesses" review, with no apology.
Nostalgia Chick: ...NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat. |
- As is her wont, this turns into Hypocritical Humor later, as her sexual awakening was Batty from Fern Gully. She's very much ashamed of this.