Characters / Dan Vs Main Characters

Main Character Index | Main Characters | Recurring Characters | Antagonists

Beware of spoilers!

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In General (Dan, Chris and Elise)

• Freudian Trio: Dan is the Ego, Chris is the Id, Elise is the Superego.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Chris is friendly and helpful, if a bit passive (nice), Dan is ill-tempered and rude to everyone around him (mean), and Elise is the Only Sane Woman who can be just as dangerous and vengeful as Dan (in-between). This is reinforced in Dan's case, in which he wears a t-shirt with the label "Jerk".

Dan Mandel

Voiced by: Curtis Armstrong

The main protagonist of the series. Foul-tempered, Dan usually swears revenge against anything that bothers him one too many times. He lives in a small and dirty apartment and takes mediocre care of himself. Having few likes and even fewer people he likes, Dan is getting revenge one annoyance at a time.

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• Accidental Murder: In "The Barber", he accidentally killed Mike due to pushing a barber making him drop his scissors on a bottle of hair spray.
• Ambiguously Bi: ...Or maybe just plain confused.
  • One episode had him actually bring up "cooties" unironically, and this was after an entire episode where he had a girlfriend.
  • He also calls Colby 'dreamy' and 'dreamboat' in "The Family Camping Trip". And claims he lost his fight with him because he got lost in his captivating eyes.
• Angry Fist-Shake: Whenever doing his Skyward Scream, he furiously shakes is fist up in the air.
• Anti-Hero: Dan is a Nominal Hero if not an outright Villain Protagonist.
• Anti-Villain: As of "Anger Management", he is Type 1 with shades of Type 3 for trying to destroy the world to kill a family of squirrels.
• Anti-Role Model: A diminutive, angry, antisocial shut-in whose Only Friend barely tolerates him. He even wears a Fun T-Shirt that reminds the viewers about what a jerk he is, like if it were a label. He was also designed after the worst qualities of one of the show's creators, being a strange example of an anti-Author Avatar.
• Author Avatar: An interesting case where the writer's worst qualities are manifested in him. In this case, he is a representation of Dan Mandel, the creator of the show who is named after him.
• Ax-Crazy: Downplayed. Even though, Dan is possibly mentally unstable to the point of pure aggression, but has no intention of committing murder.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • Even though Dan typically treats Chris poorly, he does care about him greatly, even if he won't readily admit it. This was best shown in "The Boss". There, Dan finds a successful career as a temp, calling the company's debtors and late-fee holders and persuading them to pay their debts. His boss takes a huge shine to him after he blows up on a dense customer over the phone, providing him a huge corner office on his first day and telling him that he's going places. At her behest, Dan chews Chris out over insignificant things, and when she tells him that she's a real-life demon, he's totally fine with it and is even happy to be going into big time evil (and assures Chris that he'll make him his admin assistant after he's transformed into a demon himself). However, Chris walks in at the wrong moment and sees her in her true form, and she instructs Dan to capture him and bring him back to be killed because he knows too much. Without any second thoughts, he turns on her and all she can offer in order protect Chris, pretending to happily follow her plan only so he can attack her with holy water, showing that he truly does care about his best friend.
    Dan, dragging an unconscious Chris into an ambulance: Ugh, seriously, if this doesn't work, I'm leaving you.
    Dan, immediately looking remorseful: (whispering to Chris) I would never leave you.
  • Dan often insults and belittles Elise, but there are signs that he cares about her more than he lets on. They can and do work together when the situation calls for it, such as in "The DMV" — Dan even apologizes for having been rude earlier and thanks her for helping him and Chris escape the labyrinth, to which she congratulates him on good teamwork and they high-five. The two of them occasionally get along very well, seen best in "George Washington" when Dan crawls into Chris and Elise's tent because he can't sleep; when he expresses anxiety that his last plan didn't work and how it's keeping him awake, she's downright motherly with how she invites him inside, assures him that he'll get revenge, and when he curls up beside her and asks her to tell him a story, she happily obliges. At the end of that same episode on the drive home, they park the car and stargaze together while Chris is in the grips of prairie madness. They feud while stuck in the snowed-in cabin in "The Ski Trip" before their mutual anger dies down and they both talk about their more vulnerable feelings with each other. Dan admits that he doesn't at all enjoy being as angry as he is and Elise expresses her worry that maybe she should look for a safer job (although she gets cold feet and says she's a fisherman instead of a secret agent) — Dan tells her that not only is her job necessary to keep people alive, but that as the best in the world, she has a responsibility to carry it out; when she's genuinely reassured and thanks him for his input, he pulls his will out of his pocket and begins to add her to it (until she realizes that he's writing on the back of the map they need to escape). In more than one episode, he even refers to her as his friend.
• Badbutt: Although it doesn't stop him from hitting Refuge in Audacity, it's pretty obvious that Dan would be a lot more vulgar and obscene a character if only he wasn't the star of a PG rated show on a children's network. Many fanworks will portray him as Sir Swears-a-Lot; despite being clean enough to pass the censors on a kids' network, one of his letters has been described as riddled with profanities, and he does use the word 'suck'.
• Berserk Button: Don't get us started.
  • His car getting harmed in any way is what usually causes him to snap.
  • In one of the funniest cases of Irony ever, calling him angry makes him angry.
    Dan: Who's angry!? How dare you! I'll strangle you!
  • Also, if you betray him, you will suffer.
• Big Bad: He is the main conflict maker of his show. Downplayed, though since most of those who oppose him aren't much better. Unusual, considering that Dan's the main character.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Dan's the little guy, Chris is the big guy.
• The Blacksmith: Dan secretly had the ability to expertly craft arrowheads out of silver.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Dan's moral code functions in a bizarre manner that is about as random as his overall intellect. This shows up in how and why he seeks revenge against others.
  • He will not take action unless he has been wronged in some manner. His Hair-Trigger Temper means the actual slight can be incredibly small but he needs an actual provocation to take action.
  • His pursuit of revenge can go to utterly insane lengths but the actual revenge will not exceed what Dan feels is equal to the inciting incident, such as tracking a man down over the course of months to key his car.
  • Some cases have it that it's not the action in itself that sets him off but the sentiment behind the action. His feud with the Burgerphile manager is a good example of this one.
  • His revenge schemes aren't just about getting even but are often about legitimately doing something about a problem that is bothering him.
  • It does seem he keeps to Never Hurt an Innocent in his plots as anyone he deems a bystander will be left alone or maybe even helped if Dan feels the urge.
• Book Dumb: Neither Chris nor Elise are entirely sure if he's an idiot or a mastermind. Chris describes him as having an intricate, but random collection of knowledge. Dan knows who crafted Mt. Rushmore and that the person's son was the one to complete it, but guessed Ecuador, regarding where it is.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He proves himself to be a tremendously clever and competent person time and time again, but only ever chooses to use his talents for the sake of petty revenge. Thanks to that, he's a bitter, prospectless loser.
• British Teeth: Although not British himself, Dan's teeth are notably jagged like fangs and somewhat yellowed. They're also extremely sensitive to where it didn't take Elise any force at all to rip one out. Justified as Dan is known to have very poor hygiene habits.
• Broken Ace: Shows astonishing aptitude for a wide variety of things, and pulls off extremely intricate and high stakes schemes Once an Episode, but seems to only be able to utilize his talents for the sake of getting revenge on stuff that annoys him, and is otherwise completely incapable of doing anything productive with himself.
• Butt-Monkey: Not to Chris' extent, but his haplessness is what starts his crazy adventures.
• Catchphrase Insult: His favourite insult, "JEEEEERKKK!!!!!"
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Aw c'maawwwwwn!" and "It's not about the X/X, it's about the principle!"
  • "And besides/Also, shut up."
• Comedic Sociopathy: It's quite amusing to see an angry jerk like him get revenge at even the slightest thing that bothers him.
• Cosmic Plaything: Zig-zags. Usually, fate would be cruel to him just to move the plot forward.
• Crazy-Prepared: An odd presentation. Dan has evacuation plans and various keys (some obtained via questionable means) stashed in various places. In spite of this, his revenge plans are often ill-formed, to the point that he forgot the drill he needed to drill into a bank's vault.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: When sufficiently motivated, Dan can do just about anything. Otherwise, he's a hopeless weirdo.
• Cuteness Proximity: The reason why he can't stay mad at Mr. Mumbles. In "Technology", Dan refuses to buy a computer. One of workers shows that all he needed was a couple adorably odd cat videos to get him to buy one which he uses solely to watch cat videos... until it stops working and becomes obsolete, that is.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Hinted at. It is implied that his parents and grandma were terrible to him, among many other problems.
• Dark Is Evil: Zig-zagged. He has black hair, wears a black fun t-shirt, and is a vengeful Villain Protagonist who will flip out over the slightest of reasons, regardless if they're related to his revenge schemes or not. That said, he tends to occasionally lean over the opposite direction by being a genuinely loyal and good-hearted person deep down and being on the right about his initially imaginary and trivial problems.
• Deadpan Snarker: Dan certainly knows how to comment on the idiocy of others.
• Depending on the Writer: How sympathetic he's portrayed depends on the episode and what he usually does. There are moments where the audience do want to see him prevail against whoever he felt wronged him. On the other hand, there are also moments in which it's nice to see him get a little comeuppance once in a while when he really crosses it (such as in "The Monster Under the Bed"). He also seems to shift between being the Jerkass Woobieinvoked and Villain Protagonist depending on the episode.
• Determinator: It doesn't matter if his friends get in his way. It doesn't matter if you have an entire army of guards. It doesn't matter if karma points a laser gun at him. Betray him & he will see to it that you suffer.
• Does Not Like Spam: Being a Manchild, Dan really hates vegetables, especially broccoli.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Black hair? Check. Pale skin (as a possible sign he doesn’t take care of himself?) Check. Definitely rather nuts? Big check.
• Enemies List: Anything he can't immediately pursue vengeance on goes on the list. It's a big list.
• Escape Artist: Dan is shockingly good at getting out of tight situations. He got out of being chained to the wall with nothing but a double-jointed left thumb and a lot of pulling, got out of leg shackles by biting it, somehow got out of a Siberian slave labor sweatshop, somehow got out of a straightjacket and face muzzle off-screen, and once chewed his way out of being duct-taped to his chair from leg to shoulder and later out of a locker! About the only place that might be able to contain him for any lengthy amount of time is prison or threat thereof.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Mr. Mumbles is the only creature he treats with any kindness. Also despite treating Chris like absolute shit, Dan does consider him a friend.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Dan never resorts to homicide in his plans and is disgusted with Chris whenever he suggests it as a logical extension to Dan's current scheme.
  • Its a bit zigzagged on the murder part, as even as early as the pilot, Dan occasionally does plan to kill someone. He's just disturbed when Chris suggests it.
  • Dan's also rather shocked when Chris admits that he'd kill for bacon.
  • And refuses to collaborate with Elise's parents in getting back at Chris, because he doesn't trust "people who'd bump off their own son-in-law." That's not what their plan entailed; they've just indicated that they'd be willing to.
  • He also admits he finds himself frightening at times in 'The Boss'.
    Dan: Some of the things I say are disturbing, even to me! Especially to me.
  • He also turns on his boss immediately when she demands that they kill Chris to cover up the fact that she's a demon despite the fact that Dan had been making good money, enjoyed working with her, and was excited about his long-term future if he continued to do so. Earlier in the episode, he was willing to fire Chris for these same reasons, but he drew a line without any second thoughts when he heard what the boss was asking for.
  • While infiltrating the new fancy restaurant in revenge for replacing his beloved sandwich shop, Dan is horrified to discovered the chefs keep live rabbits and lobsters before it's time to cook them. He promptly frees them both.
  • In "The Dinosaur", Dan ultimately refuses to kill the titular creature, since he relates to its sloth, gluttony and misanthropy.
  • As covered in his Blue-and-Orange Morality, he tries to keep the degree of his revenge equal to the crime; he won't try to completely ruin your life if you just shorted him a few change at the store. That being said, this also depends on his perception of the severity of the crime, not the actual severity itself, so sometimes this can work counter-intuitively if a relatively minor slight is seen as more severe to him than it actually is.
  • Finally, it must be pointed out that as absolutely mental as he is, Dan makes an effort (for him, anyway) of never firing the first shot. He never flies into a rage against anyone he perceives to be innocent, as shown when he was nice to Hortense despite being at war with her employer, and he never attacks unless he is (or at least perceives himself to be) provoked.
• Evil Versus Evil: Many of Dan's adversaries are generally unpleasant enough to where the audience can at least mildly understand his motives.
• Evil Virtues: Dan's defining virtue is Determination. Once he sets out to get revenge on someone or something, nothing can stop him. Also, more subtly, Honor. While most wrongs could easily be repaid, to him, it's a matter of being wronged in the first place. An excellent example is when the manager of his favorite burger joint refused to admit he got Dan's order wrong and refund him or correct it. While Elise and Hortense, the counter girl who Dan is sweet with, both are willing to buy him another burger, that's not the issue to Dan. To him, it's that the guy didn't admit he's wrong and do anything about it, ergo he provided bad customer service.
• Expy: Chris Pearson (the person, not Dan's friend) once referred to Dan as "Calvin as a grownup, if his life had gone horribly wrong."
• Freudian Excuse:
  • It's hinted that he became the revenge-obsessed jerk he is because his parents didn't treat him very well. In "Anger Management", it's heavily implied; he goes through anger management class and gets the task to click on a button when he sees something on the slideshow screen that ticks him off. Pretty much everything does, but he goes absolutely berserk when a flowery screen with the word "Mother" on it comes up.
  • There are hints that he was raised by his grandmother and several instances show the two did not get along.
  • The Series Fauxnale shows that a large of his drive for revenge stems from the need to stick up for himself, a brutal lesson he learns from the summer camp he and Chris attended (and where they first met and became friends), run by a Social Darwinist Jerkass.
  • There are occasional references to overall bad things happening to him in the past, such as his dentist convincing Dan's parents he needed a root canal at five years old.
• Fun T-Shirt: What the front of his shirt says describes his attitude perfectly.
• Genius Ditz: He can be rather smart at times, despite his impulsiveness.
• Going Commando: In "The Bank", it's revealed that Dan has at least removed his boxer shorts on occasion. Interestingly, Chris was aware of that.
• Good Is Not Nice: Downplayed. He can come across as being a vindictive jerk, but he truly is a good person when he's not actively trying to screw over people who slighted him.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: His anger issues and vindictiveness are the entire basis of the show. Even aside from the episodic revenge quests, minor problems and issues often send Dan into a raging rant.
• Hates Everyone Equally: While his hatred towards humanity is somewhat justified, Dan nonetheless hates everyone around him, which makes it all the more amazing how Chris managed to befriend him for so long. The only exceptions to his misanthropic behavior are those who acted nice to him (Hortance) or are animals (Mr. Mumbles).
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Dan usually flip-flops between being an Anti-Hero to a Villain Protagonist when coming up with his revenge schemes, but he'll sometimes be right about his delusions, deeply cares for Chris and somewhat Elise despite his coldness and hostility towards them, and will refuse to (intentionally) murder anyone to get in his way.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Chris. They met back in summer camp and became "friends for life".
• Hidden Depths:
  • Has a surprising knowledge of Shakespeare and a somewhat eclectic collection of other topics.
  • In "Anger Management," Dan is able to empathize with Amber over her rage making her feel "helpless" and "ineffective", implying his rage stems from similar deep-rooted feelings of smallness.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Dan is implied to have had one hell of a childhood. No surprise there, given what he's like, and it's all Played for Laughs. Whatever happened was bad enough to send a psychiatrist running and screaming.
  Psychiatrist: Stooooooooop! STOP IT!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!! What is wrong in your brain?!
  Dan: Hey pal, if you didn't want to know about my childhood, you shouldn't have asked.
• Hot-Blooded: He is known for having a fiery temper.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Dan slightly resembles Curtis Armstrong circa the early 1980s, particularly his role as Booger in Revenge of the Nerds.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Depending on which episode, sometimes Dan's wild accusations have some truth in them.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The "Jerk" part is written on his shirt, but sometimes Dan will even help victims of villains, and he has genuine Pet the Dog moments with his kitten. He has a soft spot for animals too. He currently provides the page image.
• Kavorka Man: Despite his looks and appearance, he has occasionally charmed some women, Hortense being the main one (becoming his girlfriend temporarily).
• Karma Houdini: He often gets away with being a terrible friend to Chris, through making him break the law and putting him through painful injuries. Even more so considering that Elise disapproves the way Dan treats Chris and one of her beserk buttons is watching someone hurt Chris, and yet she usually doesn't give Dan any repercussions regardless.
• Knight Templar: He can be rather ruthless when planning out his revenge.
• Large Ham: The start of every episode has him doing a Skyward Scream Title Drop of the episode's name. And on top of this, Dan tends to scream angry a lot.
• Laughably Evil: It's just too hard not to laugh at how he gets revenge on a state, art, technology, and even a dead president over the most comically petty reasons ever.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Betraying him is a really bad idea.
• Manchild: He's a grown man and the star of a TV show targeted for children (or preteens), so what he does is very parallel to what children do. He refuses to eat vegetables and hates working even to save his own ass from being evicted from his apartment. Dan frequently makes Chris and Elise pay for his meals as if they're his parents.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Dan's usually successful in his goals, but most of his victories turn out to be pointless or make things worse than he intended.
• The Napoleon: He is shorter then most characters in the show, has a huge temper problem and a thirst for vengeance, and doesn't like to be reminded of it.
• Never Gets Fat: He is in decent enough shape for someone whose diet consists of nothing but junk food and who never exercises.
• Never My Fault: Cannot admit when his methods or actions inconvenience him or anyone else.
• No Indoor Voice: Whenever Dan is angry (read: very often), he tends to shout loudly about his frustrations. His trademark Skyward Scream at the beginning of every episode is self-explanatory.
• Older Than They Look: He can easily pass for a teenager, due to his small stature.
• The Paranoiac: Dan is very paranoid, though sometimes he turns out to be right.
• Picky Eater: Dan eats a very limited diet of only turkey sandwiches, plain hamburgers, cookies, and candy.
• The Pig-Pen: Dan never showers or brushes his teeth. He even states that he only goes to the dentist once a decade. Not to mention that his apartment complex is an absolute dump, almost literally.
• Properly Paranoid: When he speculates about something when being seemingly paranoid and suspicions built out of rage, he's sometimes right that the people he seeks revenge on are evil. Special mention goes to the dentist and the Burgerphile boss.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He often wavers between this trope and the above Manchild trope due to his jerkish behavior.
• Pyromaniac: His first answer to almost any problem is to burn it.
• Revenge Before Reason: His bread and butter. He'll frequently intact his revenge on anything that sets him off no matter how petty it is.
• Skyward Scream: How he opens each and every episode; whenever something has wronged him, he'll scream the episode's name out while the camera pans up to the sky. He currently provides the image page.
• Smarter Than You Look: Dan is well versed in Shakespeare's works, even naming his teddy bear Brutus. In "George Washington", Chris points out that Dan has a very intricate but utterly random collection of knowledge. For example when asked who carved Mount Rushmore, he gave the correct name immediately without even thinking about it, as well as the fact that his son had to complete it. However, when asked which U.S. state Mount Rushmore was in, Dan guessed Ecuador.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Casually peppers his rabid language with Latin and unusally verbose wording.
  "Your lies unspool as they spill from your lips, ya giant toolbox!"
• Small Name, Big Ego: Dan may not be famous or popular in-universe, but he firmly believes it's his way or the highway in any given situation. This attitude is mostly on display in "Stupidity" and "Parents," where Dan attempts to teach people to think in his particular, "Dannish" way.
• Start of Darkness: While its suggested his difficult home life led him to act out, his experience at an abusive Summer Camp directly caused his obsession with revenge.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: His reaction to Elise's ex-boyfriend Colby in "Family Camping Trip".
• Super Drowning Skills: In an episode "Dan vs Beach" in front of perplexed Chris he nearly drowns still being conscious and unharmed after their boat crashed far from shore. One of the enemies on his list is the "deep blue sea", and he has a negative attitude towards water bodies if they somehow interfere with his plans.
• Tan Lines: Dan sports a pretty strong farmer's tan due to never taking his T-shirt off.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Not that he was ever a nice person, but his Pet the Dog moments get a lot less frequent in Season 2. He also spends a lot less time fighting people worse than he is.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Plain hamburgers, turkey sandwiches and cookies.
• Trash of the Titans: His apartment is extremely messy. He even states that it gets even messier when he is away.
• Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Dan is a vindictive, cantankerous jerk whose hygiene is absolutely horrendous. He only goes to the dentist once a decade and has his home loaded with junk.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Towards Chris for all the hard work he does in helping Dan exact revenge.
• Unstoppable Rage: If you have contributed to making his day worse, he will see to it that you get your comeuppance.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: A short-tempered, self-centered, vengeance-obsessed lunatic. The only thing that even comes close to making him sympathetic is the occasional Pet the Dog moment and that the people he seeks revenge on are sometimes worse than he is.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Downplayed example. "Summer Camp" reveals that he was much more patient and kinder (for Dan anyway) when he was a child, especially when he first met Chris. Given that the summer camp marked his first (or one of his first) instances of swearing vengeance, it appears that a lifetime of facing other Jerkasses and bad situations very much soured him. In his own words, he used to be a "real play-by-the-rules sort of kid".
• Villain Protagonist: While it depends on how sympathetically he is portrayed, he is nevertheless a vindictive asshole and the main character.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Chris. He can be very bad to Chris but proves he honestly cares at times.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Dan can shrug off pepper spray and smashing his head into a bullet-proof window doesn't affect him. When he eats any lactose, he is in such terrible pain he resorts to crawling.
• Weirdness Magnet: A good amount of absurdity follows him, usually in the form of bizarre misfortune.
• With Friends Like These...: He hardly has much respect for Chris and even uses him as bait for many of his vengeance schemes.

Chris Pearson

Voiced by: Dave Foley

Dan's slightly dimwitted and gluttonous best friend, Chris tries to live out a normal life while also operating as the reluctant and unwilling sidekick to Dan's schemes. Dan's only real friend since childhood, Chris assists Dan with whatever scheme he has, whether he wants to or not.

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• Anti-Villain: He's not evil, just too weak-willed to avoid getting roped into Dan's Zany Schemes.
• Author Avatar: Like Dan, he is based on and named after one of the creators of the show, Chris Pearson.
• Berserk Button: As shown in "The Telemakater", You do NOT ask Chris to make cocoa in the middle of the night, and then LEAVE before it's ready. ("SIT DOWN!"). This manages to intimidate Dan of all people into joining in on his cocoa, implying that even a short-tempered jerk like him wouldn't want to upset Chris when it comes to cocoa.
• Beware the Nice Ones: In "The Lemonade Stand Gang", he puts his foot down at both Elise and Dan continuing to sink lower in their war against the Lemonade Stand Gang; he correctly realizes going lower will simply cause things to get worse. They need to go higher to win. His plan works and the Gang is busted by their parents; Dan actually compliments Chris afterwards.
• Big Eater: So much so, that when Dan tried to give him motivation into chasing someone by telling him to pretend they were a sandwich, he stops to ask what kind of sandwich. Implied in "Anger Management" to be brought on by his repressed anger at everything life does to him.
• Bumbling Dad: Subverted due to the fact he isn't actually a father, but he is still shown to be less competent than his wife.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Chris is forced into Dan or Elise's antics, is hated by Elise's parents, and generally gets punished for Dan's punishment.
• Character Catchphrase: "Dan, you have done a LOT of questionable things..."
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He might be rather dimwitted, but he has picked up a couple of tricks from Dan, so don't underestimate him.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not as much as Elise or Dan, but he freuqnetly makes sarcastic comments in regards to Dan's behavior
• Depending on the Writer: His intelligence, as well as his willingness to follow Dan, tends to range from episode to episode. In some episodes, he's a snarky Straight Man who gets roped into Dan's shenganigans against his will. In others, he's a simple minded klutz who's completely codependent with Dan.
• Distressed Dude: Sometimes his own wife needs to save him from danger.
• The Ditz: Downplayed. He can be pretty average (especially when it comes to evaluating Dan’s tactics) but he tends to be not so bright at times.
• The Dragon: Although not technically evil, he serves as Dan's second-in-command.
• Dumb Muscle: Occasionally borders on this, and Dan treats him like it even more often. However Chris is not really muscular.
• Gentle Giant: In contrast to Dan, he is a tall and friendly man.
• Guilt by Association Gag: Chris is often wrongly accused of being an "accessory" to whatever crime Dan has committed and punished as well.
• Happily Married: To Elise. Not that her parents like the idea so much since they're obviously trying to get rid of him, even if it possibly means they have to kill him.
• Henpecked Husband: He gets scolded and rebuked by Elise in some way in almost every episode, especially if it's because Chris helped out Dan do something immoral.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Dan. The Series Fauxnale even shows them becoming best friends for life back in summer camp.
• Iron Butt Monkey: You'd think he'd already be dead after eating a poisonous meatloaf, falling off a roof, taking a dart from a ninja, taking an epée across the eye, going in a coma after eating far too much bacon, and so on.
• Ink-Suit Actor: He looks almost identical to his voice actor, Dave Foley, only taller.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Chris is a sweet, humble and feeble young man with light blue eyes.
• Morality Chain: Subverted. Chris tries to be this for Dan, but Dan just refuses to listen. And Chris is too much of a pushover to refuse to help... usually.
• Nice Guy: He's a pretty nice fellow if not an Extreme Doormat who has endure the insanity brought by Dan.
• No-Respect Guy: Is married to a woman whose parents despise him, practically forgotten by many students in high school, and even Dan hardly treats him with much respect.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: In "Canada", he can transform into a bear, as part of his 1/16 Canadian heritage.
• Token Good Teammate: Out of him, Dan and Elise, he's by far the kindest, having very little morally dubious deeds on his resume and often goes along with Dan's vengeance-related plans.
• Too Dumb to Live: Eating a poisonous meatloaf (even after Dan had explicitly explained that it was poisoned while discussing his scheme to destroy the animal shelter across his street) in "Animal Shelter" was perhaps the stupidest thing he has ever done.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: He's not ugly, but he is a little overweight and appears to have a gap in his teeth. Elise, on the other hand, is a very beautiful woman.
• Uneven Hybrid: Since Chris is 1/16th Canadian, that means he's 1/32nd bear. He can even take advantage of that and transform.
• Undying Loyalty: Chris has an EXTREME amount of tolerance to Dan despite what the latter does on a regular basis.
• Vanity License Plate: His car has a license plate called "PUSHOVR".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He's treated like shit by, and constantly bickers with Dan, but has remained best friends with him through thick and thin.

Elise Pearson

Voiced by: Paget Brewster

Chris' wife and a friendly-ish acquaintance to Dan, she is unhappy with her husband's friendship with Dan, but knows he usually won't say no. She is as dangerous as she is attractive, being a quasi-government spy, something Chris is unaware about.

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• Action Girlfriend: She is Chris's wife and a spy working for a secret organization, a fact that she tries to hide from her husband. Even as a housewife, she can put anyone down easily, which is why Dan doesn't add her to his revenge list because he's too scared of her. In "The Telemarketer", he's shown erasing her from the list after seeing her beat a man senseless.
• Badass Bookworm: She's smart and knows how to kick some butt.
• Badass in Distress:
  • "Technology": Where she's captured and brainwashed; she's rescued and has her mind restored by Dan
  • "The Magician": This time rescued by Dan's proxy, an amateur magician.
  • In "The Dinosaur"; this time, her brother is the one who saves her.
  • "The Common Cold"; Is captured and Bound and Gagged by a former supermodel turned supervillain. It's Chris who ends up saving her (and Dan) after he and Dan are captured, too.
• Berserk Button:
  • Do not try to sell her or someone else things over the phone at her home. She will beat up telemarketers who call her home after they've been warned.
  • Calling her junior. Pretty much incites the least violent reaction from her while still pissing her off.
• Captain Ersatz: A redheaded Action Girl who works as a spy. In other words, she's an adult Kim Possible.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Both her hair and eye color are purple.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Elise's dad Don despises Chris, but she married him, anyway.
• Deep Cover Agent: She's the top operative for a shadow quasi-governmental agency specializing in arms deals, espionage, and assassinations undercover as a simple wife of a dopey man.
• Depending on the Writer: How she feels about Dan can differ from episode to episode. Sometimes she gets along with him, sometimes she hates him.
• Determinator: She refuses to give up winning the dance competition, no matter what gets in the way, be it Dan's revenge plot, having no alternative, or Chris' broken ankle.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Elise and her mother share the same name, so her parents sometimes call her Junior.
• Extreme Doormat: A downplayed variant, interestingly enough. Chris gets away with a surprising amount of stuff nobody else could under her watch (including her own family).
• Flanderization: In the first season, despite their animosity, Dan still considered her as a friend, and she would often begrudgingly enjoy working with him on the rare occasions their intentions overlapped. By the second season, they both clearly hate each other, and it seems the only reason they ever willingly interact is because neither wants Chris to abandon them.
• Gamer Chick: "The Mechanic" shows she is highly competitive when it comes to video games.
• Hero of Another Story: She's a secret agent who is usually out on some mission while Dan is plotting revenge against his offenders.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: She has a slim waist and her boob-hip ratio is equal.
• Ink-Suit Actor: She looks quite a bit like her voice actress, Paget Brewster. The only difference being the hairstyle and color.
• Little Black Dress: In "The Restaurant" and "The Magician".
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The masculine girl to Chris' feminine boy.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: She wants to have kids soon, while Chris is scared of the idea.
• Mysterious Past: When asked about what her summer camp was like, Elise reminisces her Training from Hell, but doesn't really say this outright. Also just how she became a member for a quasi-government agency.
• Ninja: She shows some definite ninjutsu skills and often has dressed like one when performing stealthy operations. Most notably, when she fought against her mother, who was a skilled hitwoman for the mafia with a robotic battlesuit (though neither were aware of who each other were at the time.)
• Not So Above It All: Despite seeming being the Women Are Wiser of the show, she does seem to be a lot like Dan (just with better social skills and better socially adjusted). For example:
  • In parts of "Elise's Parents", she's just as crazy, if not more so, than Dan.
  • In "New Mexico", she helped Dan destroy New Mexico because, when she was a kid, road runners stole her candy, and a cactus popped her balloon. She even did a Skyward Scream.
  • She also copies Dan's "I'm awesome!" declaration in "The Family Camping Trip".
  • In "The Magician", she has an odd phobia for all stage magicians (revealed to be from a childhood incident involving antagonist magician in his younger years doing a knife-throwing act.)
  • When Chris gets smacked in the face with a fencing foil, Elise all but spells out that she left the responsible party tied up on a cargo ship headed for Central America.
  • When the kids blow up the car (and hurting Dan and Chris) in "The Lemonade Stand Gang", her plan of vengeance was to ship the kids to a labor camp in North Korea so they'd never be found.
  • When Dan was determined to ruin her dream of winning a dance competition, she sent him to Penbroke, a lawless ghost-town populated by dance-fighting monsters.
  • When Dan snubs her by piloting the giant robot himself instead of letting her do it as they agreed on earlier in "The Mechanic", she enters the tournament with a hi-tech mech of her own to crush Dan.
• Omni Disciplinary Scientist: Elise is highly skilled with technology, chemistry, and biology, as part of her work.
• Only One Name: Since Chris's last name is revealed to be Pearson, Elise's own maiden name is unknown.
• Only Sane Woman: In spite of her Not So Above It All moments, she's mostly more mature and stable than many of the other characters of the show.
• Resized Vocals: When Elise is shrunk by Dan after he steals her shrink ray she was going to use to destroy a super-market, her voice inmediately becomes squeakier and higher-pitched.
• Saying Too Much: She often says a lot of information about what she really knows that others don't. And if she's mildly confronted about it, she casually shrugs it off.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: While Elise is perfectly willing to act inline with her shadowy employer (and has a history of Disproportionate Retribution), in "Technology," she ditches her mission of enhancing the site's security when she realizes Ditmer's plan to operate a wide-range mind control device on society - against her boss's orders.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: She was considered this in the second season when the episodes focused more on her.
• Technicolor Eyes: Her eyes are purple to contrast with Chris's blue eyes and Dan's green eyes.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She and Dan frequently get into fights when they're trying to take out the Monster of the Week.
• Training from Hell: While Dan and Chris went to a corrupted summer camp, Elise was trained as an agent by jumping over saw blades and other No OSHA Compliance material.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: While more of a married women than a girlfriend, hurting Chris will end with you being shipped to some unknown country, bound and gagged, (North Korea and Guatemala were mentioned) with a horrible fate awaiting the rest of your life.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Gender-Inverted. She tells Dan that growing up, she could never please her parents no matter how hard she tried, even when she received straight A's, full college scholarships, and became captain of every possible sports team. She implies that this pathological desire to be the best is what drove her to become a top secret agent before quickly backtracking when Dan questions it. If her need to make everything in the house absolutely perfect whenever her parents visit because she both anticipates and dreads their inevitable nitpicking is any indication, she hasn't grown out of it.
• Your Size May Vary: Her butt keeps changing size depending on what she's wearing.

Mr. Mumbles

Voiced by: Paget Brewster

Dan's pet cat, who he received in the episode Dan Vs. The Animal Shelter and becomes a fourth main character. She seems to understand Dan quite well.

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• Amplified Animal Aptitude: Mr. Mumbles definitely knows what Dan's saying at times.
• Generic Cuteness: Pretty much just looks like any other adorable cat.
• Morality Pet: Literally, for Dan. She is the only being in Dan's life that he shows consistent kindness to (even his best friend Chris gets vitriol and spite from Dan).
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Dan names her Mr. Mumbles before he learns she's a girl.

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