Characters / The Guild

The Knights of Good

The Knights of Good

An online gaming group (or Guild) in an MMORPG, similar to World of Warcraft

Tropes shared by all of them

Codex/Cyd Sherman (Felicia Day)

The Guild's Healer and the show's focus character.

"I'm an ego half-empty kind of girl"

• Beware the Nice Ones: When her boyfriend dumped her for another man she set fire to his cello. Also when she snaps at Vork and Bladezz in the Season 3 finale. She intimidates both of them enough that Vork apolgizes to her and Bladezz apologizes to Tink.
• Break the Cutie: The ending of the Season 2 finale. Which, combined with the above trope does not bode well for those involved.
  • Indeed, it does not bode well. The Season 3 Finale has her finally snap as a result of the stress and (possibly?) develop a take charge Split Personality
• But Not Too White: Felicia Day's snow-white skin plays into the character at times - going out in sunlight is a pain for Codex, with Tink mocking her for spontaneously developing freckles. Then there's Riley telling her that her skin is "dungeon slave pale"...
  • On the DVD cast commentaries, even the other actors point out how pale she looks in certain scenes.
• The Cast Showoff: Codex and Felicia Day in real life can both play the violin.
• The Cutie: Felicia Day all the time, obviously, but she really plays it up in Codex's vlogs at the beginning of each episode.
• Dating Catwoman: In a one night stand with Fawkes she hoped would be more. In the end it turned out he was, in her own words, "a total d-bag" though she tried to keep up appearances to avoid embarassment.
• Extreme Doormat: A huge part of the show is her attempting to grow out of this, with one of the biggest conflicts in the first two seasons arising from her being too passive to firmly tell Zaboo she's not interested (and him being too clueless to take a hint.) She often ends up backpedaling every time she makes some progress, but her Character Development is still obvious if you compare the first and second seasons.
  Codex: "Of course, one time I got caught holding the door open after an orchestra concert for 25 minutes straight, so I'm not really the best measure of assertiveness."
• Informed Flaw: Zaboo insinuates that she has poor hygiene, but it's not really demonstrated considering her well-groomed hair...
• Ms. Fanservice: Played up for the music videos
• Morality Pet: To most everyone.
• Only Sane Man: Compared to the rest of the Guild, when they are online. She's not always a reliable decision-maker in real life, however.
• Prone to Sunburn: Or freckles. Codex is very concerned about her “extended” time in the sun when she confronts Tink on the basketball court.
• Self-Deprecation: Most of her webcam monologues.
• Team Mom: Slowly evolves towards this throughout the series.
• Token Good Teammate: Online she and Vork are the only ones who aren't in it just for the loot, and haven't set up things like an extra account (Clara), engaged in cyber-stalking (Zaboo), spitefully deleted another account (Bladezz), or used extortion (Tink).

Bladezz/Simon Kemplar (Vincent Caso)

The Guild's Rogue

• Big Damn Hero: In the Season 1 finale he steps in to help take Zaboo’s mother down just as the rest of the guild is running out of things to say to her.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He’s a typical snotty teenaged gamer boy. He spends a good amount of time pulling nasty tricks on the rest of the guild (stealing the guild bank, deleting Tink) but they never truly consider ejecting him from the guild or their real-life social circle.

Clara/Clara Bean (Robin Thorsen)

The Guild's Mage

"Lie and good things will happen"

• Abusive Parent: Of the criminally neglectful variety. Clara leaves her kids in the car (What? She cracked the windows), let’s them run around restaurants and shopping malls unattended, and leaves them in the care of a very questionable babysitter so she can attend a pole-dancing class.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: She often forgets what’s going on or what she is supposed to be doing when she sees something interesting. At the hotel she forgets she’s not supposed to be eating from the minibar ten seconds after being chided for it. And she completely abandons her t-shirt business when she sees steampunk for the first time.
• Big Beautiful Woman: She's a full figured Manic Pixie Dreamgirl who got married and had kids, but never grew out of her wild tendencies. While the skinny but spineless Codex spent a whole season pining for the hot stuntman Wade, Clara ended up making out with him shortly after she met him.
• Big Fun: Clara is easily the biggest partier out of the group. She sets up the kegger at Codex’s house and is the one having the most fun. In season 5, she laments that she can’t partake of the Con parties due to being pregnant.
• Comedic Sociopath: Her extreme behavior in Season 2 was due to living on the internet and alcohol for several days straight, but she only got to that point through lies.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: What happens when this trope gets married and has kids.
• Stepford Smiler: Clara's friendly demeanor and constant smile hides a criminally neglectful mother who creates a character just to attack Vork and who makes out with a man she knows Codex wants. Not to mention that she's married.
  • Alternate view: She's just all id and no superego. She doesn't stop to think about anything beyond her own nose and just does what she wants at any given time.

Tinkerballa/April Lu, or possibly April Lou with last name unknown (Amy Okuda)

The Guild's Ranger

• Alternate Character Interpretation: She may or may not be a clinical sociopath.
• Asian and Nerdy: She may date a lot and have Bladezz wrapped around her finger, but she still plays an MMORPG obsessively.
• Break the Haughty: At the end of Season 2
• Brutal Honesty: Emphasis on the brutal part.
• The Cast Showoff: In the music video. Amy Okuda is a professional dancer.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: To a degree, especially in the 5th season.
• Do Not Call Me Paul: She has a name. She just refuses to let anyone in the series know it. Or anything else about her for that matter. Even Zaboo was only able to find out that she's a pre-med student.
  • Her name is finally revealed in Season 5.
• Jerkass: But gradually softens into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold thanks to her Guildmates.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate / Dr. Jerk: She's pre-med. God help us all. She actually switched to fashion design two years previously.
• Ms. Fanservice: Music videos only until Season 5 where she sports several revealing cosplay costumes. Then Season 6 opens with her in a bikini.
• Mysterious Past: She refuses to tell the others her real name, has a Post Office box as a mailing address and gives the storyline of Ugly Betty as her life story. We eventually get a big chunk of her backstory in Season 5.
• Pretty Freeloader: Tink uses Bladezz like this (see below). In Season 6 she does this with a lot of men.
  • Though subverted when its shown she doesn't know how to maintain it.
• Stripperiffic: In the music videos. Some of her cosplay outfits in Season 5 are this as well, with one of them being the Slave Leia outfit.
• Tsundere: Very tsun-tsun to most everyone; Codex can bring out the dere-dere.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Goes into this when she starts developing genuine feelings for Donovan.

Vork/Herman Holden (Jeff Lewis)

The Guild's Warrior and leader

"Women. Can't live with 'em...They will not go out with me."

• Alliterative Name: Offline.
• Extreme Omnivore: Found Object Stew, which a homeless person took one bite of and summarily rejected.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: While on the road, Vork stops by an elementary school to use the wi-fi connection. A teacher is not too happy to see a strange guy in a creepy van full of electronic equipment talking to a kid.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Ambiguously when confronting Kwan, hilariously in "Game On".
• Running Gag: Every time he is forced to leave his found Wi-Fi spot in Season 3, he runs over a trash can.
• The Alleged Car: Vork's van, which was shown to barely even run on the Season 3 outtakes.
• Omniglot Subverted. He may very well, as he claims to speak all languages but from the evidence he speaks them all badly
• The Stoic: His lines are funny on their own (most people couldn't even say them with a straight face), but Jeff Lewis's Serious Business delivery takes the humor up to eleven.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Vork runs The Guild like a military unit, or at least tries to. The others mostly just tolerate his behavior while continuing to do their own thing.
  • Notably, while arguing over how to design their Guildhall in Season 4, while Clara and Tink want a fairy princess castle and Bladezz wants one that looks like a Heavy Metal video, Vork only wants a boring gray castle that looks like a dungeon because it would be more easily defensible..from a kind of attack that doesn't exist yet.
• Vetinari Job Security: You'd think that somebody more personable would make a better leader, but Vork's anti-charisma makes him an effective unifying force.

Zaboo/Sujan Balakrishnan Goldberg (Sandeep Parikh)

The Guild's Warlock

• Abhorrent Admirer: Exaggerated and Played for Laughs. He goes far, far beyond even the most extreme examples of this trope, but somehow manages to be a genuinely nice guy, albeit one with zero emotional maturity and no idea how to survive in real life.
• Bollywood Nerd: Subverted. He has the intelligence and computer savvy but not the work ethic or the resulting success.
  • Then again, there is Game On
• Carpet of Virility: Averted slightly. He has a very hairy chest, but is the definite opposite of virility.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The reason Zaboo comes off as a likeable character instead of an intolerable creep is because his stalking is ultimately so harmless that it inspires laughs, as well as plenty of sympathy.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Thinks of himself as playing this but through Seasons 1 and 2 it's actually deconstructed.
  • In Season 3, however, Zaboo attempts to find another outlet in Riley, who turns out to be just as bad for completely different reasons.
  • In Season 4, Zaboo tries instead to be Just Friends with Codex, which he ends up deconstructing as well (up until the last episode of the season, where he reconstructs it and possibly reconstructs Dogged Nice Guy again if Codex's "litmus test" ends up meaning anything).
• Mr. Fanservice: Only in the music videos, especially "Game On".
• Freudian Excuse: Zaboo was smothered by his mom (she breast fed him until he was eleven), and therefore has no idea how to survive on his own. This makes him extremely codependent and nearly incapable of understanding that his crushes only go one way, something that is not helped by Codex's Extreme Doormat tendencies.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Played for laughs because he's obviously not dangerous.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Especially when you weren't too sane to start with. He's so crazy for Codex he makes the rest of the guild look almost sane. Of course, his severe mommy issues might be part of it. He comes off as much saner after he gives up on her, though it could be said he's still insane for staying with Riley.
• Masochism Tango: His relationship with Riley is extremely unpleasant for him physically and mentally.
• Parental Incest: Borderline case. No actual sex but as noted below she breastfed him until he was 11. Also bathed him, even as an adult and he admits to having seen her naked often enough that he thinks it's a normal thing.
• Took a Level in Badass: After being the show's Butt-Monkey for most of the current three seasons, he first flips out and trashes all of Valkyrie's equipment, then during the LAN Battle against the Axis takes down a third of their opponents without breaking a sweat.
  • Definitely demonstrates this in Series 5 where he ends up ruling the Convention with an iron fist.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: His mother breast fed him until he was 11. His angst about how his mother has perpetually stunted his growth into an adult caused him to attempt suicide. Her overbearing love has been directly stated as the reason he stalks Codex so aggressively, because it's the only way he knows how to love someone. Ironically, the moment his mother leaves it switches from "not allowed to grow up" to "refuses to grow up". He seems to use Codex to avoid responsibility, to the point where she has to suggest that in life he is a "starting character" and has to do some "serious leveling" before she could possibly be remotely interested in him. And rather than attempting real personal growth, he tries to rush through it as quickly as possible (a few days was "sorry I took so long") with superficial changes like lifting "weights" and talking about sports. There seems to be the implication that he is as genuinely afraid of growing up as he was adamant that his mother allow him to do it.
• Twofer Token Minority: "I'm a Hinjew."
• Verbal Tic: His constant adding of "'d" to the end of words.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: In season 5 his scheme for seat saving at the convention gives him a lot of power and it quickly goes to his head. The fact that he has to constantly supervise the system means that he goes days without sleep and it makes him even more unstable than usual.
  • By episode 7 he is acting like The Don and is even stroking a toy cat.

Mr. Wiggly/George Bean (Brett Sheridan)

Clara's husband and so far totally inadequate replacement for Tink

• Achievements in Ignorance: Manages to take down Kwan, the Axis' strongest player basically because he doesn't know what he's doing.
• Dumb Jock: It's pretty heavily implied he was this in high school. Before they got married and had kids, he and Clara apparently went to wild drunken parties all the time, and doing push ups on Clara's command for her entertainment. He's pretty all together these days, just completely oblivious to games.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Clara chose his avatar’s name. He is very displeased as it’s her pet name for his penis, which she promptly tells the guild in a hot mike moment.
• The Load: He’s not just worthless in game, but he actively gets the group wiped in boss raids.

Axis of Anarchy

Axis of Anarchy

The Knights of Good rivals in Season 3

Fawkes (Wil Wheaton)

The leader of the Axis

• Berserk Button: An odd one. he flips out when Codex says she's his equal. On the other hand, considering he's a Nietzsche Wannabe it makes sense.
• Man in a Kilt: Codex even sarcastically refers to him as "Highlander" at one point.

Venom (Teal Sherer)

"God, I hate you guys. There isn't a natural disaster big enough to kill all the people I hate, including all of you."

The wheelchairbound woman in the Axis.

• Manipulative Bitch: She has no qualms about exploiting her disability to get her way. She's screwed over Vork at least twice by this means. She also threatens to harm herself if something doesn't go her way.
• Shout-Out: the quote above, to World of Warcraft memetic hero Sebudai.◊

Bruiser (J. Teddy Garces)

The Black Latino member of the Axis

• The Brute: Out of game. In game, implied to be the healer.
• The Bus Came Back: At the end of Season 3, Bruiser continues to date Bladezz's mom, yet doesn't show up again. Finally comes back in Season 6 to torment Bladezz once more, and also to act as Floyd's enforcer during the riot at The Game's headquarters.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: After the Axis is defeated he appears to warm to Bladezz but winds up bullying him anyway

Kwan (Alexander Yi)

The Asian, non-Englishspeaking member of the Axis

Valkyrie (Mike Rose)

The Ambiguously Brown member of the Axis.

• Ambiguously Gay: Leaning toward Transparent Closet.
• Camp Gay: If he is, indeed, gay.
• Cross Player: Valkyrie. Codex makes a very half-assed attempt to make fun of him for it. It later turns out that he's using the "I like to look at a girl's ass" line to compensate for being pretty transparently Camp Gay.
• G.I.R.L.: He plays a female character. And when you count his alt Artemis, he plays two!
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: When asked why he plays two female characters, he awkwardly responds that he's a "girl-loving guy," right before complementing Codex's shoes.

The Game HQ

The Game

The eponymous company that produces the MMPORG the Guild play, or more accurately, the people who work for it.

Floyd Petrovski (Ted Michaels)

Creator of The Game

Theodora

Gaby

Donovan

• Dogged Nice Guy: Seems like this to Tink... at first.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: Might be this to The Game, as he leaked the new expansion to the public.

Other Characters

Riley (Michele Boyd)

Wade's roomate and on-off "fuckbuddy". In a relationship with Zaboo during season 3 until the finale, when she hooks up with Venom.

• Lad-ette: Likes playing Halo, paintball, and sex.
• The Rival: How Codex seemed to view her until recently. Riley for her part barely seems to notice Codex.
• Yandere: Graduated to this when she "kills" Zaboo for having missed giving her a footrub.

Wade Wei (Fernando Chien)

Codex's neighbor and romantic interest in Season 2

• Affably Evil: Though more Jerkass than outright evil, Wade ends up having a friendly conversation with Zaboo while, at the same time, beating him up in the middle of a party.
• Jerk Jock: He openly states that he does not think that Codex is worth fighting over. To her face. In her house. Surrounded by other party goers. While smiling nonchalantly.
• Lightning Bruiser: Once he learns to stop pulling his blows.
• Nightmare Fetishist: He's gleefully proud of his ability to trick people into thinking he's snapped his spine, broken his neck or just has an eyeball hanging out of its socket. That last one proves too much for Codex.
• Put on a Bus: Leaves the show in Season Three to work in Vancouver..

Zaboo's Mother/Avinashi (Viji Nathan)

• Big Bad: Or the closest thing to it, in Season 1.
• AbusiveParent: Psychologically, to the extent that Zaboo attempted suicide to escape her.
• Evil Matriarch: She microchipped her son, punched out Codex the first time they met and had her driven out of her apartment.
• Parental Incest: She breast fed Zaboo until he was 11, took him to the ladies restroom with her until he was fifteen, bathes him and makes him feel her breast for polyps.

Dena (Tara Caso)

Bladezz's little sister

• Bratty Half-Pint: Dena exists to snark at everyone, especially her brother.
• Hidden Depths: Electric bass, beading, dioramas of civil war battles.
• Strong Family Resemblance: If it weren't for the wide age difference it could get hard to tell her and her brother apart. One's boyishly cute, the other's girlishly pretty. The jury is out as to which applies to who.
• Teen Genius: The girl reads, and understands, Sun Tzu.

Nik (Toni Lee)

Kwan's translator, hand masseuse, and presumed girlfriend

Madeline Twain (Erin Grey)

A former star of Vork's favorite TV show, currently dating Vork

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