Cerebus Syndrome/Quotes

"How do you even begin to separate the horrible from the fanciful in this place anymore?"

—Riff Trax of Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban

Haley: We were a lot safer when we just made fairly obvious jokes about the rules!

Vaarsuvius: I blame Cerebus.

—The Order of the Stick

Robin: I pulled the drama tag, so we now get backstories, we get fleshed out personalities and become real people.
Amber: You're not making any sense. You're saying that pulling this thing you made up retroactively changed my past?

Amber: You're saying that solely because you did some imaginary thing, my earlier life rewrote itself to force me through a history of domestic abuse and violent relocation.

Robin: Maybe.

Amber: [Punches Robin]

—Shortpacked

Toy Story: A couple of toys get lost and then found. The only folks who cry are the animators who make 2D films as they watch their future crumble.
Toy Story 2: We watch as a toy is abandoned by her beloved owner and we get to see her heart shattered during a Sarah McLaughlin ballad. Tears flow like rain.
Toy Story 3: All our heroes learn that everything they love will eventually leave them behind. The demand for antidepressants for preschoolers skyrockets.

Toy Story 4: Woody is stabbed by a gang of rogue toys only to discover that his voice box has cancer. His death is very painful, it lasts 90 minutes, and Pixar shows the whole thing. No one ever smiles again.

—Cracked chart: The Sadness of Toy Story Measured in Tears

Virus: Never turn a funny comic into a serious epic drama. We have a murder-suicide pact that says if we ever turn into a drama, we're going to end it all rather than inflict that on the world.

Eastwood: No, I said I was going to murder the rest of you, change my name and spend the rest of my days as a painter in Brazil.

—The authors of Exterminatus Now

Seriously, I'd make an effort to get out. The drama tag you pulled? We're looking at a limited lifespan here. Sure, it's manageable now, but soon you'll have backstories and love triangles and then love pentagons and then super-horrible secrets are revealed that change things forever... this store will end up so miserably Emo that no sane being will be able to stand it. Everyone will just leave.

—Head Alien, Shortpacked

Quit whispering in my ear, Cerberus!

—The author of El Goonish Shive

"At first, the comic was filled with silly one-shot stories and goofy jokes, but later on, all that fell by the wayside as a stronger and much more compelling storyline over took the series."

—The Irate Gamer summing up the trope when talking about Kinnikuman.