Serves as the titular character who is a pink and black spotted dog (of no known specific breed) who saves his owners Muriel and Eustace from all the creatures. No matter if they're Nightmare Fuel, Uncanny Valley, or just plain weird.

• Adorkable
• All Men Are Perverts: Even the dogs! In one episode, Courage is scrambling around a laboratory and opens a door with a woman showering in it. He closes it, but doesn't leave before getting a second glance.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife
• Amusing Injuries: Courage takes a lot of pain in many episodes (most notable perhaps in Mecha-Courage), but he's usually okay, and even laughing (albeit as if slapped silly).
• Animal Reaction Shot: At almost everything he finds scary it instantly cuts to him scream with his mouth open. Different things happen during the screams each time so that each scream doesn't get repetitive.
• Anti-Hero: Though just barely. Would be a straight hero, and often is, if not for his massive cowardice.
• Badass
  • Badass Adorable
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: "I know something fishy is going on, or my name is (insert random weird name). And it's not!"
• Butt Monkey
  • Iron Butt Monkey: At times.
• Captain Obvious: In the early episodes. Though he got better as the first season went on, this probably contributed to him becoming a Speech Impaired Animal in later seasons.
• The Cassandra
• Catchphrase: Several, with "Aaaahhg!" and variations thereof being the most common.
  • "The things I do for love..."
  • "I know I'm not gonna like this."
  • "Nooooooo!"
  • "YES!!"
  • "What do I do? What do I do?
  • "...or my name is [strange name] and it's not."
• Civilized Animal
• Cool Pet
• Deadpan Snarker: When he can talk.
• Determinator: No matter how terrified he is or how powerful his opponent may be, Courage will never back down. Best exemplified in the battle with Mecha-Courage.
• Dogs Are Dumb: Inverted. Courage is one of the smartest characters in the show.
• Evil-Detecting Dog
• Gag Nose: With a zigzag on it.
• Genre Savvy: He KNOWS when something's wrong.
• Heroic Dog
• Humanlike Foot Anatomy
• Ironic Name: Although he does prove otherwise.
• Large Ham
• Lovable Coward: Strangely subverted as he seems to prove his name more then the Cowardly part of the title. Therefor, he's more like a...
  • Cowardly Lion
  • The So-Called Coward
• Loyal Animal Companion: No matter how scared Courage gets in an episode, he lists Muriel's safety over his own.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: How he defeats the Villain Team Up.
• Made of Iron: He never seems to have any permanent bruises from his injuries.
• Meaningful Name: Despite all his screaming he doesn't run away when his owners are in trouble.
  • "Courage is not having no fear. Courage is fighting and overcoming your fears."
• My Greatest Failure: his unability to save his parents deeply affected him, and remembering the event was enough for him to have an Heroic BSOD
• Narrative Shapeshifting: Mainly uses this to try to tell a story to Muriel or Eustace. It is unknown if this is just an ability Courage is able to do, as it's mainly used for laughs. But on rare occasions he uses it to get himself out of a jam
• Nice Guy
• Parental Abandonment: Rather a sad story, revealed in the last episodes of the series when an evil doctor rocketed his mom and dad in hopes to create a race of super strong space dogs. Luckily Muriel found him as a baby in a nearby alley.
• Phrase Catcher: "Stupid dog!"
• Silent Snarker: In his non-speaking moments.
• Rubber Man: He is able to change into different forms & infact, he does that often.
• Speech Impaired Animal: Subverted in the early days of the show, where he spoke more freely usually. Due to perhaps Executive Meddling he played it more straight later.
  • Even in the later seasons, it's occasionally subverted. Notably, the episode "Muted Muriel" cheats a bit by having him explain to Muriel, in perfectly coherent English, how the Monster of the Week needs to be staved off.
• Talking Animal: He was very talkative during the first season. But afterwards the creators decided to try and make him not quite as chatty and mostly saying one liners now and then.
• Undying Loyalty: To Muriel.
• The Unintelligible: As the series went on, Courage spoke coherent English less and less, to a point he would just babble and other characters would know what he was saying (except Eustace and Muriel, of course). In the later seasons, the gibberish-to-English ratio tipped towards the former to a major degree.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting
• Wild Take: Frequently.

A sweet old lady of Scottish descent who found Courage abandoned by an alley and took him home. She is constantly in danger from the things that come to Nowhere but she always smiles at some point during the episode. And she loves Eustace despite his Jerkass personality. She also loves using vinegar in all of her cooking, and in an early episode picked up playing the sitar and also has a fondness for tea.

• Beware the Nice Ones: Once successfully defeated KATZ when he was strangling Courage.
• Blind Without 'Em: Shown in "Muriel Meets Her Match".
• Bratty Half-Pint/Spoiled Brat: When she was a child, as seen in the episode "Little Muriel".
• Captain Oblivious
• Catchphrase: "Oh my!"
  • Courage! So good to see ya"
  • "[[name of the dish]]...with a wee bit of vinegar"
• Cool Old Lady
• Deadpan Snarker: Sometimes around Eustace.
• Distressed Damsel: She is commonly the only reason Courage goes so far to try to beat the many villians that attack the Middle of Nowhere.
• The Ditz: Although she means well, she seems to not be that very smart and never seems to expect all the horrible things that head toward their house.
• Friend to All Living Things: Her fatal weakness.
• Genre Blind
• Granny Classic
• Housewife
• The Ingenue: Usually too innocent to realize she's in danger.
• Iron Buttmonkey: Muriel can take a lot of wear and tear, in sharp contrast to her husband's frail frame. This was lampshaded in "Muriel the Magnificent".
• Mama Bear
• Morality Pet: Is one of the few things that Eustace cares about. Sometimes.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Currently, Muriel has white hair from old age. Whenever a younger version of Muriel appears, her hair color is never the same; it has been shown brown (in a flashback), red (in what was either a painting or photo), blonde (in a dream sequence), and even white (when she was actually turned into a child)!
• Never Mess with Granny
• Nice Lady
• Opaque Lenses
• Parental Substitute: To Courage, of course.
• Rolling Pin of Doom: Her Weapon of Choice.
• Sesquipedalian Smith
• Too Dumb to Live: Most of the time, though she does have her moments of clarity (ex. Family Business).
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Pretty much became a female version of Eustace after having her kindness removed by an exterterrestrial brain in "Car Broke. Phone, Yes?". However, she managed to get it back by the end of the episode.
• Trrrilling Rrrs: Does this sometimes.
• Weirdness Magnet

A self-proclaimed farmer that tends to be grumpy and isn't really a nice guy to anyone. He thinks he can fix anything and grow anything but this is never the case. He also has a greed for money. Although early on with no backstory whatsoever he seems to deserve what happens to him in each of the episodes when you learn he didn't have that great of a childhood with a non-loving mom and an always better Big Brother he turns into more a Jerkass Woobie and depending who you are you may actually feel sorry for the guy.

• Abusive Parents: His mother.
• Anti Role Model
• Anti-Villain: Type II
• Asshole Victim: Most of the time, but there are a handful of episodes that say otherwise.
• Bald of Evil: He's very embarassed about his hair loss.
• Berserk Button: Cheating him out of money, and messing with his hat, chair, or truck.
  • Courage's mere existence seems to be one for him.
• Big Bad: He's this in an episode wherein he assembles a team consisting of himself, Katz, the foot fungus gangsters, the queen of the black puddle, and the weremole in an attempt to kill Courage, luring him into that situation by holding Muriel hostage above a boiling pot.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: While the rest of his Five-Bad Band is attempting to kill Courage, he just watches from the sidelines.
• Big Eater
• Blind Without 'Em
• The Bully
• Butt Monkey: Eustace totally deserves everything that happens to him.
• Captain Oblivious
• Catchphrase: "Stupid Dog!", "Ow, Wicket!", "Big deal", "Who the heck are you?", "Blah Blah Blah", "Muriel! Where's my dinner?!" etc.
  • Eustace apparently has the greatest amount of catchphrases than any other character in the show, possibly in all of Western Animation.
• The Chew Toy
• Cool Mask: That he uses to scare Courage and a Monster of the Week.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas
• Evil Old Folks
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul
• Flanderization: From grumpy and selfish to a Psychopathic Manchild.
• Freudian Excuse: And how. His mother is much worse than he is and his brother was The Ace and rubbed it in his face his entire life (his brother's entire life that is). The end of "The Curse Of Shirley" has his 'true self' shown to him by a mirror (well it was broken but considering it was supposedly magic). What was it? A sad little boy. No wonder he's so screwed up.
• Get Rich Quick Scheme: Tries this many times, never works out for him.
• Greed: Many episodes have him obtaining (only to lose it later), wanting, or basically bathing in money he found.
• Grumpy Bear
• Grumpy Old Man: Should be obvious with what he does for most of the series.
• Hair-Trigger Temper
• Iron Butt Monkey
• It's All About Me
• Jerkass
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rarely. See Pet the Dog.
  • Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk: Most of the time.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold: He doesn't seem to care about his wife or dog, yet he doesn't leave them or throw either of them out of the house.
• Lack of Empathy / No Sympathy
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Well, nix the "justice" part.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He gets struck by this almost every episode...Eustace is literally karma's punching bag.
• Lazy Bum
• Lazy Husband
• Lean and Mean
• The Load: On most trips.
• Man Child: He's basically a Bratty Half-Pint in an old man's body.
• Meaningful Name: Eustace Bagge could be interpreted as 'Useless Baggage' which is what he is during most adventures.
• Never My Fault
• Nice Hat
• Opaque Lenses
• Perpetual Frowner
• Personal Raincloud: In "Curse Of Shirley".
• Pet the Dog: Sometimes, though none of these moments involve Courage.
  • In "The Demon In the Mattress" he helps Courage to save Muriel when she was possessed by a haunted mattress.
  • In "Mother's Day", when his mother is desperate about her hair loss, he tries to comfort her and tells her that she looks good to him no matter what.
  • In "The Curse of Shirley" a hallucination caused by the curse has him see Courage as himself as a young boy with no hat. So he gives him the hat in order to protect him from the rain.
  • In "Katz Kandy" he also defends Muriel and even puts up a fight with Katz.
  • In "The Mask" he seems genuinely concerned about Kitty's past, and reassures Muriel when she worries about her faults.
• Psychopathic Man Child
• Running Gag: Him pulling out a green mask and yelling "BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!" to scare Courage whenever he feels like it.
• Screw Politeness, I'm A Senior!
• Small Name, Big Ego: "I'm a farmer! FARMER, FARMER, FARMER!"
• Smug Snake
• Strong Family Resemblance
• This Is My Chair
• Token Evil Teammate
• Too Dumb to Live
• Took a Level in Badass: In "Katz Kandy".
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In "Ball of Revenge".
• Ungrateful Bastard
• The Unfavorite
• Villainous Glutton: A rare skinny example.
• Villain Protagonist: By the end of the series, he's pretty much this.