- Ear Worm: Pretty much all of Nirvana's hits.
- Face of the Band
- Hype Backlash: He's so often described as one of the most important musicians of the last twenty years that this reaction often comes about.
- Memetic Outfit: His fuzzy sweater from MTV Unplugged.
- Too Cool to Live
- True Art Is Angsty
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: Cobain himself admitted that even he wasn't entirely sure what some of his lyrics were about.
- Wangst: Kurt complained an awful lot even for someone with his problems (drug addiction, medical ailments, marriage difficulties etc.) and made his childhood out to be much worse than it actually was.
- The Woobie
- Yoko Oh No: As stated before, much of the fandom thinks that Courtney Love killed him, directly or indirectly.