Nostalgia Critic Doug Walker smirking at the camera in cap, glasses, blazer, and red tie

Nostalgia Critic

2007videoclassic

Published October 2, 2026

Nostalgia Critic is a long-running film review web series created by comedian Doug Walker, who plays a sarcastic reviewer tearing apart movies and TV from his childhood. Launched on YouTube in July 2007 with a rant about Michael Bay's Transformers, the show grew into a cornerstone of late-2000s YouTube culture and anchored the Channel Awesome critic network.

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Overview

The show is built around Doug Walker in character as the Critic, a loud, angry everyman in a shirt and tie who shreds nostalgic films, cartoons, and holiday specials from the 1980s and 1990s1. Episodes mix clip-based commentary with scripted skits, recurring gags, and crossover appearances with other reviewers who later joined his network3. The character's tagline, framing himself as the guy who remembers bad movies so viewers don't have to, became the show's signature.

Formats shifted over the years, from short rapid-cut reviews in the early YouTube era to longer essay-style episodes and themed events like Nostalgia-ween and the Disneycember series3. The Critic's rage-driven tone and self-aware low-budget production shaped a wave of mid-2000s YouTube reviewers, often sharing an audience with contemporaries like the Angry Video Game Nerd2.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (origin) / That Guy with the Glasses (viral growth)
Creator
Doug Walker
Date
2007

Doug Walker uploaded the first Nostalgia Critic episode, a review of Michael Bay's live-action Transformers, to YouTube on July 3, 20071. The channel grew quickly, but in 2008 YouTube pulled several episodes for copyright infringement and suspended Walker's account3. He moved his back catalog to his own site, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, which later rebranded as Channel Awesome and expanded into a hub for other reviewers covering film, games, anime, and comics.

How It Spread

The series grew throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s on Walker's own hosting, where it anchored a roster of other critic shows under the That Guy with the Glasses banner3. In September 2012, Walker announced that the Critic would retire, framing the final episodes as a wrap-up of the character3. The retirement lasted only a few months.

In January 2013, Walker released a short sketch titled 'The Review Must Go On' that brought the character back and relaunched the series with a new format2. Since 2015, both new episodes and the older archive have been uploaded to the Channel Awesome YouTube channel, which has pulled close to 100 million total views across more than 300 episodes3.

Timeline

2007-07-03

Doug Walker uploads the first Nostalgia Critic episode, a review of Michael Bay's Transformers, to YouTube[1].

2008

YouTube removes several episodes for copyright infringement and suspends Walker's channel, pushing him to self-host at ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com[3].

2012-09

Walker announces the Nostalgia Critic character will retire[3].

2013-01

The 'Review Must Go On' sketch relaunches the series after a brief hiatus[2].

2015

Episodes, both new and archival, begin uploading to the Channel Awesome YouTube channel[3].

How to Use This Meme

Episodes typically open with the Critic introducing a film he claims to hate, then cut between movie clips and his sketched-up reactions. Fans often quote the opening tagline or lift reaction shots of Walker screaming at the screen as reaction images in forum threads about bad movies.

Frequently Asked Questions