History Characters / TheOfficeUSMainCharacters

* IWasBeatenByAGirl: By a little girl no less in "Test The Store". He attempts to obscure the detail about his black eye...until the mother comes by forcing her daughter to apologize. He later gets another black eye after Kelly accidentally punches him. Toby is sympathetic, heavily implying he was abused by his ex wife.

* CompetitionFreak: Both him and Dwight have this as one of their defining traits, at least until Andy goes through anger management.

* PetTheDog: Anytime Jim gets carried away with his mischief, he'll balance it out with something genuinely kind-hearted. A key instance being when he held a house party for his co-workers and deliberately left out Michael, but when Michael crases the party and embarasses himself by trying to sing a karaoke duet by himself, Jim sings along with him out of pity.

* MirrorCharacter: Whenever Jim gets the chance to be in charge of the office, there are hints that he could turn into Michael is he's not careful.

* TheChainsOfCommanding: His first efforts at managing the Scranton branch are disastrous and he quickly gets a new appreciation for the difficulties of Michael's role as a result.

* AmbiguouslyChristian: The Schrute family has UsefulNotes/{{Amish}} roots, but the few times Dwight expresses any religious sentiments, they're very eclectic and hard to pin down. In fact, judging from his claim in "Crime Aid" that Angela introduced him to monotheism, and the deleted scene in "Drug Testing" where he considers praying to [[Myth/NorseMythology Thor]] to help him find the employee who left the joint in the parking lot, the Schrutes may practice some kind of UsefulNotes/NeoPaganism.

* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: He's almost a perfect inversion of this when it comes to Kelly:

** Complains about Andy "I don't understand how someone could have so little self-awareness." While he was right at that moment, Michael himself has no self-awareness at all, most of the time.

** He does have some grounds to question why Pam and Jim, both salespeople, did not inform him of their pregnancy. [[ItsAllAboutMe While this is just him making it about him as usual,]] given that it means he was about to lose two vital members of his staff for various degrees of time, it's not entirely unreasonable to expect some notice.

* AmbitionIsEvil: He's infamously ruthless, ambitious and power-hungry. Every time Dwight's in authority, he behaves like an unfeeling dictator and this isolates from his co-workers who don't desire to be his employees due to how obnoxious and egotistical he is. This hits him hard in the Season 7 finale when he does get to be interim manager, only to prove himself a liability when word gets out that he tried to intimidate his employees by ''firing a gun in the office''. Luckily by the end, he develops a more amiable demeanor as he finally becomes branch manager of Dunder Mifflin.

* DitzyGenius: Dwight may be lacking any kind of social skills, but he's got a knack for selling papers and running a farm. His sales skills were good enough to outsell the company's website. By the end of Season 6 he's become so independently wealthy he was able to buy the building he works in.

* HairTriggerTemper: While he's not touchy as Andy, Dwight's not the type of person most people would like to upset due to his HotBlooded personality and a stubborn and a rather intense attitude that he displays with others.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Dwight's default mood is being harsh and rude to everyone he interacts with, except Michael, in which case he is a suck-up. Due to his BrutalHonesty and lack of social skills, he comes across as aggressive, hostile, and difficult. Several moments in the series show that Dwight enjoys playing the evil genius when the opportunity comes, so he's definitely not a jerkass by accident. However, while his compassion isn't seen by any characters (just the audience), its effects are obvious. Almost the entirety of Dwight's relationship with Angela shows this, especially getting fired (temporarily, though he didn't know it) due to respecting her wish to keep their love a secret. He also cares a great deal about Jim and Pam (even choosing the former as his best man and referring to the latter as his "best friend" by the end of the series).

* YesMan: To Michael in the first seasons. This stems from a mix of [[HeroWorshipper Hero Worship]] and a desire for authority, which he thinks being Michael's YesMan gives him. Later seasons, he loses this trait as he finds that being a sycophant would get him nowhere in his career and behaves more rebelliously.

* ButtMonkey: Mostly in the early seasons when she's much more of an insecure ShrinkingViolet, frequently being put in extremely awkward situations by Michael, but less so after she gains confidence after Beach Games. Slightly occurs again when Michael begins dating her mother, much to her horror and chagrin.

** Pam learns to gain a backbone and be more outspoken about her true feelings concerning both Roy (her ex-fiancee she doesn't love anymore) and Jim (her OneTrueLove). She became also more assertive even to the point of being brutally honest sometimes.

* TeamMom: As Michael (and even Dwight)'s [[CloudcuckoolandersMinder Minder]], she sometimes ends up with this role when he needs help with his ill-conceived attempts to be the TeamDad.

* TookALevelInJerkass: Downplayed. After she learns to stand up for herself and gains more confidence, she sometimes takes it too far and starts acting selfishly.

* AmbitionIsEvil: Ryan was known to be a very ambitious temp who dreams of running his own business, but his laziness, arrogance, selfishness, lack of commitment, and drug addiction kept him from from succeeding. While he's not exactly evil, he is one of the less sympathetic characters on the show due to his callous treatment of others and unreliable, flighty personality.

* BirdsOfAFeather: A dysfunctional example with Kelly. They start off as SavvyGuyEnergeticGirl, but as the show goes on, it becomes clear that their relationship is TheMasochismTango because they are both vain, selfish, superficial, and immature manipulators.
* {{Bookends}}: The intros would always have a shot of Ryan holding up a garbage bag, which audieces assumed was filled with garbage unless they saw the "Basketball" episode, where it's clarified that the bag contains his basketball clothes. In the final season, Ryan is once again shown with a garbage bag, which he assures the cameras is filled with clothes.
* BrilliantButLazy: Ryan started out as a man with ambition and intelligence but ends up being the laziest coworker in Dunder Mifflin.

* CharacterizationMarchesOn: He started out as a generic, mild mannered rookie working his way through college but after being hired as a full time salesman, he becomes more snippy and sarcastic and is shown to be an insensitive and aloof boyfriend to Kelly since he has a hard time mastering commitment. After being promoted to VP of company sales, he became incredibly pretentious, rude, selfish and egotistical. After being fired from his VP position and forced to become a temp again, he remained pretentious, sarcastic, selfish and arrogant while also becoming openly uncaring about his job as well as behaving like a callous sociopath.

** To Michael. Both were put in management positions they were completely unsuited for. But while the dimwitted Michael attempted to make up for his shortcomings by being overly friendly towards his employees, the brainy Ryan became a completely smug jerk who was willing to break the law to hide his failures.

* GoingNative: Ryan was one of the most sane people in the beginning of the show; As of season 6, he has his own "quirks" like everyone else, probably from just accepting being stuck in the office for his life. His quirks mostly involves him being inconsistent with his morals, interests, fashion and personality which makes him a bit of an erratic person.

* InsufferableGenius: Ryan is undeniably very smart and can be a little arrogant and pretentious about it. Though it's downplayed, both because most of his smarts tend to be booksmarts and, even accepting that, he's still not as smart as he likes to think he is.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Ryan is very self-absorbed and tends to use people who will fall for his manipulations just to get what he wants.
* {{Jerkass}}: Simply keeping to himself and avoiding attention from his co-workers, he stops coming off as shy by season 3. Turned into a complete douchebag the next season. Now he doesn't hold back and is openly sarcastic. He goes from a contemptuous, disdainful and condescending human being to a complete sociopath who poisons his own son Drake with strawberries (which Drake is allergic to) and abandons him to continue his unhealthy relationship with Kelly. Even in earlier seasons, while it's more downplayed, his shyness and awkwardness around the others in the office can start to come off as a form of aloof superiority, and he states on several occasions that he wants to avoid forming real connections to those at Dunder-Mifflin in a way that suggests he feels he's above it.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Throughout the first two seasons he would talk about the things he had learned in business school, suggesting that he was knowledgeable in the field than his older co-workers. However, it soon becomes exceedingly clear despite his smarts, he has no idea what he's doing as he is a failure as a salesman and his website fails to attract any customers. When Michael hires him for his own startup business, Ryan's expense projections are shown to be quite faulty, as he made predictions based on fixed costs rather than anticipating the rise in expenses that would accompany the growth in business.
* LonersAreFreaks: Ryan is generally aloof and antisocial and he's not the most popular coworker due to his smugness, shadiness and pretentious attitude.
* ManipulativeBastard: On occasion when he finds the opportunity that benefits him.

* {{Narcissist}}: Ryan is completely focused on himself and has little to no regard to those around him; he shows he is willing to lie and commit fraud in order to cover up his failures, despite this only exacerbating them when he is caught; after Michael gives him a job in the office again after being fired as Vice President and arrested for said fraud, Ryan feigns reform while secretly keeping a list of everyone he thinks has wronged him (even just for snarky remarks) and plotting to ruin their careers once he climbs up the corporate ladder again (which he never does); he eventually sinks so low as to deliberately poison his own ''infant son'', whom he quickly abandons, just so he can hook up with Kelly again, and he is only concerned with ''her'' out of jealousy that she found a new boyfriend. He is selfish, arrogant, lazy, sociopathic, manipulative, pretentious, insensitive, two-faced and basically an all-round jerk who puts on a transparent facade of being a decent person, which he abandons whenever he gets status or even the illusion thereof.

* OddFriendship: While Ryan and Toby aren't particularly the most sociable among the cast, they both a level of genuine respect for each other. Even when Ryan becomes more inconsiderate and insufferable and his toxic relationship with Kelly bothers Toby sometimes, they never have conflicts with one another.

* PetTheDog: Out of all the characters in the workplace, Ryan respects Toby the most and the two get along very well and have almost no actual problems with each other. He invites Toby to a business retreat, advices Toby to punch Michael to punch when he bothers him and whenever he's paired with Toby for Secret Santa, he always gives Toby a thoughtful gift.

* SavvyGuyEnergeticGirl: Ryan and Kelly. He was an aloof and snarky temp who is one of the smartest characters, she was a ditzy and bubbly chatterbox.

* SmugSnake: He gets more egotistical and narcissistic throughout the show despite becoming one of the most pathetic characters.

** In season 4. Ryan's morality gets more and more questionable as the show develops. He puts on an air of friendliness that he never displayed before while pitching a restructure of the company that could jeopardize his former co-worker's job security. When Ryan's attempt at creating an online shopping option doesn't take off as quickly as he'd hoped, he forces the staff to do overtime hours where they'd credit their sales to the site. Oscar notes that this is a felony and Ryan pays for it by the end of the season. Not to mention his habit of going to parties and taking drugs while everyone else had to stay back late.

* {{Yuppie}}: Ryan becomes this persona after becoming Vice President of Sales because of his desperate attempt to see cool, hip and trendy which sadly never goes well with him.

* AttentionWhore: His sycophancy and histrionic nature is mainly because he's desperate for attention since his family generally isolated him as a kid.

* BirdsOfAFeather: Was this with his LoveInterest Erin until season 9. Being both goofy, eccentric, and childish, they get along well.

* HairTriggerTemper: If you have to attend anger management after punching in a wall in the workplace, you're this trope.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: He was initially an obnoxious and egotistical sycophant with anger issues and tendency to an annoy people with his insensitive attitude, but after going to Anger Management he TookALevelInKindness. Come Season 9, with Andy getting accustomed to being the new boss, Andy TookALevelInJerkass again.
* LargeHam: His love for theatrics, erratic outbursts and overall dramatic behavior makes him the hammiest character in the show. He even calls himself a drama queen.
* {{Manchild}}: Andy often acts like a selfish, dramatic and bratty child who throws temper tantrums when he feels offended or doesn't get his way.

* TookALevelInKindness: He starts off as one of the biggest jerks in the cast before he is sent to anger management. Thankfully, his time there teaches him how to keep his temper under control and be a better person to others. Once he returns, he's one of the lovably dorky characters in the show.