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The Nostalgia Critic, among others, of TGWTG.

Summary

Doug Walker, A.K.A. the Nostalgia Critic, or the titular That Guy With The Glasses, is a guy from Chicago who does film reviews with a comedic touch and in very formulaic manner. He does this on TGWTG, and was the first to post his material there; as such the site is named after him.

He started off with 5-Second Movies, which are essentially films summarized in 30 seconds or less. This was on YouTube until said videos were pulled repeatedly, even despite Walker's attempts at gaming the system by posting all the videos under different channels. Then, Channel Awesome was started by Mike Michaud.

Sometimes, Rob Walker, his brother, appears in costumes in his videos.

The Nostalgia Critic

The Nostalgia Critic is his most well-known persona and segment of TGWTG. He claims to "remember it [old movies], so you don't have to", but most would remember them anyway by watching his videos, so it doesn't make much sense.

Most of the stuff he reviews is from 1980-2000. He is known for exaggerating what he critiques in his videos, and also going over-the-top with his facial expressions - he's often used for reaction faces. Some people even critique his very critiques. For example, how he went on a 5 minute rant about how Tom and Jerry never talk, then proceeded to post a clip from the original Hanna Barberra series of Tom talking in the very same review. He also based an opinion of Hey Arnold! from just one episode.

Generally, he takes a movie from the 90s which is a fairly solid "average" (maybe a 6.0 on IMDB, as is the case with The Lost World: Jurassic Park) and portrays it as though it is the most terrible work every committed to film. This can be funny when you aren't familiar with the film, and take his exaggerations as truth; but if you've actually seen the movie in question, then you may find yourself scratching your head, wondering, "Was it really that bad?" Unfortunately, this trend is only worsening, as he seems to have depleted the supply of truly bad movies from the 90s, and is now working his way through movies that were either arguably solid, or completely obscure. He later admitted this was part of the reason why he retired the character, because there's only so many ways he can say he hates a movie.

He's been able to make enough off this Nostalgia Critic thing, which made him to quit his job in a pretty unclassy manner.

Personas

Aside from the Nostalgia Critic, Doug Walker puts on costumes of other characters for their corresponding reviews.

• Chester A. Bum: The host of Bum Reviews, a hyperactive, drug-addicted bum who reviews recent film releases. He thinks every movie he watches is the greatest movie he's seen in his life, and he describes the film's plot in in an over-the-top manner. Starting in 2010, Doug started posting vlogs alongside each episode of Bum Reviews, giving his thoughts on the movie out-of-character.

• Dominic: The host of Video Game Confessions, a bartender with an embarrassingly awful fake British accent who works at a bar where video game characters attend. He usually ignores canon when he retells the stories that video game characters tell him. Here's one where Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid mentions the death of his parents, while Solid Snake himself is a clone.

• That Guy with the Glasses aka Ask That Guy: The host of Ask That Guy with the Glasses, Doug's pseudonym developed into a character. A psychopath who dresses like Hugh Hefner and broadcasts from a classy-looking setting (currently the bar in Doug's house), he answers reader questions in the creepiest, most drawn-out manner possible. Kind of a funny concept, but gets old rather quickly.

• Douchey McNitpick: A character who nitpicks everything. He is basically Doug's strawman version of his critics. Some of the corrections which Douchey brings to light should actually have been rather obvious had Doug bothered to do any research, but this doesn't stop Doug from portraying his critics in a highly negative fashion. After three appearances, Doug retired the character.

• Melvin, the Brother of the Joker: Self-explanatory. It was based off The Dark Knight. It wasn't very popular, and even Doug has regretted creating him. He was killed off in his second appearance.

• Dr. Smith: A villain who is a parody of poorly-acted movie villains. He shouts stuff about spiders all the time.

• Casper: Yes, Casper the ghost. Except this version's an ass. He gets killed by being dissolved in water, but comes back and haunts the Critic's coffee maker.

• Ma-Ti: Played by Doug Walker's former producer and Channel Awesome co-founder Bhargav Dronamraju. Ma-Ti is based off the kid with the power of heart from the cartoon Captain Planet. He, of course, shouts "HEART!" when attacking stuff. Bargo left Channel Awesome in 2012 and Ma-Ti retired with him.

• Santa Christ: Played by Doug Walker's brother Rob. He is a cross between Jesus and Santa Claus. All he does is show up, do something awesome, fix whatever problem is going down, and leave again. As a walking deus ex machina who can get annoying fast, he's used pretty sparingly.

• Terl: Played by Spoony, this character is a joke poking fun at Battlefield Earth. A wannabe galactic conqueror who considers the Critic his archnemesis after he tricked Terl into blowing up his own planet. He also can't spell his own name - he was too busy learning how to conquer galaxies.

• Future Nostalgia Critic: The Critic's future self, a parody of Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He shows up for various time-travel related gags.

• Lori Prince: A TV news anchor from Gotham City who starred in two of Doug's older videos that parodied Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and occasionally appears for fake news broadcasts. The name is a parody of Larry King.

Running gags

Jokes that he uses in various videos. Some of them are overused, some are original, and some are from other sources. Other sites like to pick up on them, for example, TV Tropes, which outright suffers from it.

• M. Bison/"Of Course!": A classic running gag where a clip of M. Bison from the Street Fighter movie plays every time Doug mentions world domination.

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Doug's way of describing a completely irrelevant WTF scene. TV Tropes has a page dedicated to it. The phrase originated with Nostalgia Chick Lindsay Ellis, but Doug has mostly appropriated it as his own brainchild.

• The Wizard: A 90s movie about some boy playing Nintendo games. It spawned two running gags. The first is based around the "villain", Lucas, who Doug pretends to be gay for when he's doing his infamous blatant Power Glove advertisement. The other is the terrible way the main character says "California."

• The Gun: A toy gun prop.

• 'Elephant: A Nickelodeon month (see below) meme comparing a Canadian sitcom called You Can't do that on Televisions tradition of dumping slime on people who say "I don't know" to having the Burger King show up whenever Doug says "elephant".

• "I WAS FROZEN TODAY!": A scene from the movie Suburban Commando, where Christopher Lloyd gets in an argument with Hulk Hogan and randomly decides to inform him that he was, in fact, frozen earlier that day.

• Doug: A Nickelodeon cartoon with the main character being named Doug. Doug Walker was teased about this growing up.

• Bat Credit Card: A one-use-gag from Batman and Robin that Doug turned into a running gag for his reviews, mostly because his fans wouldn't let it die.

• Mako: A dead actor that became a meme as a result of Doug's cluelessness. Mako was an actor with a deep, scratchy voice who Doug made fun of when he was reviewing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, not realizing who he was or that he was dead.

• Chuck Norris: Yeah...

• Celebrity Phone Calls: Self-explanatory.

• "ZUUL MOTHERFUCKER, ZUUL!": Shouted whenever the movie cuts away to some stupid looking monster that comes out of nowhere.

Rivalry with the Angry Video Game Nerd

A while back, Doug posted a special Nostalgia Critic video addressed to the Angry Video Game Nerd telling him that his fans were accusing Doug of ripping him off. Doug then proceeded to warn that if the Nerd didn't tell his fans to STFU, there was going to be trouble. Since none of the AVGN's fans really cared about Doug's videos, it can be assumed that Doug's fans spammed James Rolfe with so many links to the video and messages like "UR GOING DOWN!" that he gave in and responded to the video. But instead of telling the Critic to GET OUT, he said that Doug was a pretty cool guy. His response was quite tepid, and it was clear that he wasn't intending to humor Doug's obvious intent to do a crossover. Doug managed to keep the feud alive by spewing out paranoid stuff and luckily for him, James decided to play along. A series of Critic vs. Nerd videos were made, ultimately leading up to a final confrontation in the TGWTG 1-year anniversary video. The battle ended when That Guy with the Glasses (the character), came out of nowhere and told them that their fighting is pointless and that they should stop. They then proceeded to review some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and the feud ended.

Vs. Tommy Wiseau

Tommy Wiseau is an actor who starred in and directed The Room, an indie film. It was of dubious quality. Doug Walker reviewed it, but it was taken down due to legal issues. Wiseau later relented and the review was re-released.

Vs. Retsupurae

In September 2011, Doug did a Let's Play of The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare for the Super Nintendo in-character as the Critic. It was mostly just a lot of high-pitched screaming as he failed miserably at the game, and is widely considered (including by Doug) the worst Nostalgia Critic episode. The same week, Retsupurae did a riff of his LP that degenerated into a 30-minute unscripted rant against Doug, TGWTG, and their fans; Doug didn't respond. A few months later, Doug recorded a commentary for the LP in which he pointed out everything he did wrong and offered advice for handling failure.

Vs. Mara Wilson

After mentioning over and over how he disliked former child actress Mara Wilson (the star of Matilda, now a blogger), Mara's followers on Twitter brought him to her attention, which made her very angry. Channel Awesome then explained to Mara that the Nostalgia Critic was a fictional character, Doug and Mara apologized to each other, and Mara made an extended cameo in Doug's review of A Simple Wish.

The End of the Nostalgia Critic

On September 14, 2012, Doug Walker announced that he was ending the Nostalgia Critic series, saying that the Critic character had run his course and it was time to put him to rest, though he might come back for specials or cameos. His next project will be a series titled Demo Reel, filmed in a warehouse studio leased by Channel Awesome. His other series, Ask That Guy in the Glasses and Bum Reviews, will continue.

Origins

Doug Walker started off as an art student who made a few comedy videos on YouTube. He started a series titled Five Minute Movies in which he summed up a popular movie with a single scene in just a few seconds, which is how he first started attracting fans. Not long after, he created the character of the Nostalgia Critic; his first review was of Michael Bay's Transformers, but after that he started reviewing older films and TV shows, starting the formula that lasted him throughout the series.

Channel Awesome, a production company co-founded by Mike Michaud, Mike Ellis, and Doug's college friend Barghav Dronamraju, picked up Doug and his material when YouTube repeatedly removed his videos for copyright infringement. They created the website That Guy With The Glasses to host Doug's videos and soon began picking up other video producers and bloggers as well.

Rise to fame

He was already popular and well-known on YouTube, with his 5 Second Videos. The site he exclusively does videos for grew in popularity. One the side, the staged, fake feud between him and the Angry Video Game Nerd, was created solely to promote both of them. Fans of the AVGN also became fans of Doug Walker.

Current status

Currently, he is creating more videos for TGWTG and making appearances at various conventions. His next series, Demo Reel, in in pre-production. He will also be producing an as-yet unnamed Internet talk show.

Famous Quote

Facts

• Doug Walker is from Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

• He was born on November 17, 1981.

• Married his girlfriend on June 16, 2012.

• Attended art class in college with webcomic artist Dan Shive.

• Because TGWTG is named after him, Doug is often assumed to be the owner of Channel Awesome. In fact, the CEO is Mike Michaud, and Doug has no official say on business decisions.

Images

The real Doug Walker.	With Casper.	An animation from his site.	Legal drama over The Room.
Melvin, the brother of The Joker.	Nostalgia Critic on ED.	Chris Bores talks to Doug Walker.	Ma-Ti.
Doug Walker and Santa Christ.	That Guy With the Glasses.	How his fans reacted to Encyclopedia Dramatica.	Classy.
Chester A. Bum.	His autograph.	Dr. Smith.	Douchey McNitpick.

Videos

Related Pages

Angry Joe

Angry Video Game Nerd

Brad Jones

Irate Gamer

Linkara

The Spoony Experiment

That Guy With The Glasses

Tommy Wiseau

TV Tropes

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