Characters / The Office (US): Main Characters

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As a whole

• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The five main characters fit here:
  • Cynic: Dwight — hostile, critical, lacks compassion
  • Optimist: Michael — disregard for consequences, childish, overconfident
  • Realist: Jim — calm, mediator, humble
  • Apathetic: Ryan — aloof, insensitive, enigmatic
  • Conflicted: Pam — full of self-doubt, indecisive, empathetic
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Reflecting their aforementioned philosophy above, Dwight is the Choleric Control Freak, Michael is the Sanguine Attention Whore, Jim is the Phlegmatic Nice Guy (mostly, anyways), and Pam is the Melancholic conflicted individual.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The three main male characters:
  • Nice: Jim, who, despite his mischief and pranks on Dwight, is nonetheless a fairly Nice Guy overall, and the most pleasant and level-headed of the three.
  • Mean: Dwight, the most unpleasant, hostile and unfriendly most of the time, bordering on Evil Genius towards his co-workers.
  • In-Between: Michael, who tries to be friendly but is often selfish, obnoxious, Innocently Insensitive, and a jerk to Toby.

Michael Gary Scott

"Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy, both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me."

Played by: Steve Carell
Seasons: 1-7, 9^note "Finale"
"Guess what, I have flaws. What are they? Oh, I don’t know. I sing in the shower. Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I’ll hit somebody with my car. So sue me."^note "No, don't sue me. That's the opposite of the point that I am trying to make."

Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton.

UK counterpart: David Brent.

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• 419 Scam: Michael has a habit of falling for these, to the point where Pam jokes he is "sponsoring twenty Nigerian princesses."
  Michael: ... when the son of the deposed king of Nigeria emails you directly, asking for help, you help! His father ran the freaking country!
• Abhorrent Admirer: He tends to barrel forward with almost any crush he has, often going straight to borderline Stalker with a Crush. Not to mention the very awkward scene where he tried to kiss Pam (because they were both lonely), making Pam cringe.
• Accidental Innuendo: In-universe. He does not stop and think that some of the well-intentioned things he's saying could be potentially offensive. Like choosing "Little Kid Lover" as a username.
• Accidental Truth: In one episode he pretends to have depression, and acts like he is going to commit suicide, while he has a hidden object that will cushion his fall, without knowing that this object is not actually going to cushion his fall, and he can really die if decides to jump, in addition to when he starts to talk. , is implied that he really has depression.
  Jim: Oh. He's going to kill himself, pretending to kill himself.
• The Ace: At sales. It's mentioned several times that his sales record at Dunder Mifflin is virtually untouchable.
• Adaptational Attractiveness:
  • David Brent won't be winning any beauty awards, whilst Michael has a more well-designed face, is taller, styled better and in much better shape. Michael also noticeably has more relationships and sexual adventures than Brent.
  • This becomes much more notable with the second season; during the first, Michael's hair is seemingly thin and slicked back and he's often seen sans suit jacket in larger shirts that make him seem quite a bit bulkier than he is. By the second season his hair is fuller, he looks healthier and even younger overall and the choice in suits fit him better and make him look slimmer. In their podcast, Angela Kinsey and Jenna Fischer note that this was due to Steve Carell getting in shape and hitting it big with The 40-Year-Old Virgin, a film in which Carell's co-stars ironically remark that he doesn't look forty..
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Compared to David Brent, his UK counterpart: David is a Mean Boss with a genuinely nasty and self-centered attitude, while Michael is more of a well-meaning Stupid Boss.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul:
  • Compared to David Brent, he generally has a much better relationship to his employees. While David Brent is just barely tolerated by the people at the office, who all harbor some level of disdain for him, the people at Dunder Mifflin genuinely do like Michael, though to varying degrees, even if they're frequently annoyed by his antics.
  • His relationship with Jan, compared to their UK counterparts David and Jennifer, is probably the biggest difference. David Brent and Jennifer has a strictly platonic relationship. Jennifer is also far more patient with the even more clueless Brent, and though they end on awkward terms, it's because Jennifer fires David, not because she went off the deep end after a period of dating.
• Aesop Amnesia: Has a mind-boggling ability to completely forget practically every lesson he ever learns almost immediately. This finally starts to turn around when Steve Carell made his decision to leave The Office.
• Ambiguously Bi: Michael has been known to be a womanizer and has had relationships with Jan and Holly, but he also seems to have a big crush on Ryan.
  Diane Kelly: Mr. Scott, who is this other woman "Ryan" who you refer to as "Just as hot as Jan, but in a different way?"
• Analogy Backfire: Oh, so prone to these, to the point that practically any analogy he makes ends up in his face. Dwight especially loves doing this to him, sometimes even when Michael's in the middle of making his arse-backwards statement.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Many episodes end with a Michael monologue in his office, where he makes an attempt to sum up what he thinks was the episode's Aesop in a philosophical way. It usually ends up in Metaphorgotten territory.
  (at the end of "Grief Counseling") There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown.
• Attention Whore: Michael will even try to make someone else's wedding about him. During one wedding, he even tried to make a man in a wheelchair standing up and walking his daughter down the aisle about himself.
• Babies Ever After: Per supplemental material, he and Holly have three kids together (and are expecting their fourth!) by the series finale. When he shows up in the finale, it's mentioned that he has two cell phones because he takes so many pictures of his kids. He really just wanted to do the family plan, as before he didn't have five friends for a prior plan.
• Back for the Finale: To be the best man (or "bestest mensch") at Dwight's wedding.
• Benevolent Boss: He likes to think of himself as one of these (and, in all fairness, he does genuinely try), but he's so bad at it that he ends up being a Stupid Boss instead. Though he comes close occasionally, even having moments where he actually is helpful. (Supporting Pam after her failed art gallery show, for instance.) Also, almost every boss that replaces him when he leaves prove themselves to be incompetent, stupid, Ax-Crazy or downright evil, so at the very least he is the nicest by comparison if nothing else.
• Berserk Button:
  • Especially in the earlier seasons, any indication of rejection or liking others more then him will quickly send him into a petulant rage.
  • Never, ever insult Michael's car. You'd instantly regret it.
  • NEVER badmouth Dunder Mifflin or criticize Michael's management style behind his back to your classmates, especially if you are an unexperienced employee who does not perform well. That's a very valuable lesson, and Ryan learned it the worst possible way.
  • If your name is Toby Flenderson, just steer clear.
  • If you're an authority figure above Michael, do not try to be more fun than him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Overlapping with Beware the Nice Ones, Depending on the Writer and your view of him. Nevertheless, while he's usually conflict-adverse due to his childishly playful nature and desperation for people to love him, if he's backed into a corner and you've managed to get on his bad side, watch out; he can be surprisingly effective and dangerous. As an example, see his response on learning that Dwight had been trying to steal his job behind his back, which results in him launching a long-game with the end result of Dwight squirming on the floor of Michael's office tearfully begging not to be fired.
• Big Eater: Though it doesn't come up a lot, Michael has a surprisingly big appetite. Once eating an entire family size chicken pot pie for lunch, and downing a sweet pretzel covered in 18 different toppings.
• Big "NO!": When Toby returns, Michael loses his shit.
• Birds of a Feather: With Holly. Both are dorky individuals who love making jokes and doing impressions. They can also be Innocently Insensitive.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • He's the single most successful salesman in Dunder-Mifflin history, and every time we see him make a sale, he is incredibly good at pitching and selling the company's service and has a great rapport with almost all of his clients. This is why corporate had him promoted to Regional Manager, a position which he seemed to have been a perfect fit on paper, but is largely incapable of doing properly.
  • Due to (or despite) his strange and distracting managerial style, the Scranton branch goes from being the worst performing branch in the company at the beginning of the series, to the most successful branch by season 5. Even prior to the start of the series he had raised the branch's profits by 17%.
  • He is genuinely able to act as a man in his position should (as Roy's attempted attack on Jim and the watermark incident prove), it's just a matter of untangling him from his skewed beliefs enough to get him to do so.
• But Now I Must Go: He gets engaged to Holly and he moves to Boulder, Colorado to live with her.
• Camp Straight: He's very conscious about his appearance, wearing nice suits and staying in shape, which coupled with his flamboyance, his being a middle-aged bachelor and his aforementioned interest in Ryan might lead him to get pegged as gay, except he's linked with numerous women over the course of the series. Interestingly, this seems to have been a lifelong trait, since we see him in a suit with slicked-back hair in the video of him on a TV show when he was a child, and Phyllis says that in high school, the majority of his peers assumed he was gay due to his mannerisms and unusual interest in his appearance. However, in "Gay Witch Hunt" he makes the excellent point that, as an extreme Attention Whore, if he were gay he'd be very Camp Gay.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Whether it's Jim's crush on Pam, Oscar being gay, or news that the branch is closing, Michael is incapable of keeping a secret for more than ten minutes, often by dropping incredibly obvious hints within earshot of others. On the other hand, he will never mention some things that he really should have earlier because he sees them as unimportant or is trying to keep people from worrying (when regardless they should know what's going on).
  • A rare inversion occurs in "The Duel", where Michael found out about Dwight's affair with Angela, but managed to avoid telling Andy for some time. Feeling things have gone on long enough, he then takes Andy aside and privately tells him.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Well, he can tell them reasonably well in the right conditions (as seen in "The Client"), he just can't come up with good ones himself or reliably tell one when put on the spot. Even when he can tell it right, he immediately goes overboard and will try the same joke again and again long after if it was funny.
• Can't Take Criticism: A major trait of his. Since he views his employees as his family, if they push back against him, he interprets it as being rejected by his loved ones and gets a severe case of hurt feelings, even if they're just kidding around, like joking about prison being better than Dunder Mifflin in "The Convict" or the roast in "Stress Relief".
• Casanova Wannabe: His "Date Mike", persona does about as well with attracting women as David Brent. Subverted when he doesn't try as hard and actually acts like himself.
• Catchphrase: "That's What She Said!"
• Chandler's Law: He repeatedly misuses this at improv classes, on the grounds that you can't top pulling out a gun for drama.
• Character Development:
  • While he very gradually grows as a person over the course of the show, it really ramps up in season seven where he gets closure with all of his past girlfriends, finally sees Ryan and Todd Packer for what they really are, and rekindles his relationship with Holly.
  • He is a very calm and collected person at Dwight's wedding, showing how much Holly and his kids have matured him.
• Characterization Marches On: In addition to his embarrassing sense of humor and neediness, his Season 1 characterization is a lot more selfish, bitter and antagonistic, and he's genuinely unlikable at points. In later seasons, while he never quite loses the neediness or the cheesy jokes, he generally becomes a bit sweeter, nicer and more of a romantic, and the latter two points are usually explained/justified as being a result of his loneliness and desperate desire for friendship and love. While he can often still be kind of a self-centered jerk (otherwise premise of the show wouldn't work), post-Season 1 it generally tends to be presented more as the result of cluelessness, thoughtlessness or immaturity rather than outright malevolence.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Michael has some very strange thought processes. He completely lives in his own world, where things work a bit differently than they do in real life. It's what makes his attempts at being a Benevolent Boss backfire most of the time.
• Comically Missing the Point: Often, for example when Oscar is outed as gay and Michael wonders if Gil, Oscar's "roommate" knew. Even in improv class, which he treats as a matter of "winning" by introducing material that shuts down the other players, when the point of improv is to build on others and not lose momentum.
• The Con: He mentions not being able to attend college because he lost his savings in a pyramid scheme.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Prone to this, especially in talking head segments at the end of episodes.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Experience in sales done with a few repeat clients in a highly personal manner doesn't translate into telemarketing very well since telemarketing involves rapid fire calling rather than building a personal rapport, as Michael finds out in "Money". Also a key part of his character, considering he was promoted to Regional Manager because of his sales skills, which didn't exactly convert to managerial skill in his new position.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • There are a couple of times when he is genuinely angry, and dear Lord, he can be terrifying when that happens. The shift is big enough to get a just as angry Stanley to back down.
  • He's able to cow Dwight when he appears to be gunning for his position in an early season.
  • He also shows an outright awesome level of negotiating skills when his fledgling paper company comes at odds with the new Dunder Mifflin management. Up until this point, he'd bumbled his way through every negotiation attempt, but then he suddenly demonstrates enough business acumen to completely rock David Wallace's resolve. To achieve this, he often needs to be backed into a corner before it comes out:
  David: Here's the situation. Your company is four weeks old. I know this business. I know what suppliers are charging. I know you can't be making very much money. I don't know how your prices are so low, but I know it can't keep up that way. I'm sure you're scared. Probably in debt. This is the best offer you're gonna get.
  Michael: I'll see your situation and I'll raise you a situation. Your company is losing clients left and right. You have a stockholder meeting coming up and you're going to have to explain to them why your most profitable branch is bleeding. So they may be looking for a little change in the CFO. So I don't think I need to wait out Dunder Mifflin, I think I just need to wait out you.
  • Effectively puts both Ryan (his corporate boss) and Jim (his co-manager) in their place when it comes to operating the Scranton office. It's his office damnit. In the former case, when Ryan threatens his territory and knowing that his people skills trump Ryan's, he brings the founder Robert Dunder into the office and directly exploits Ryan's lack of people skills in a conversation outside the conference room:
    Ryan: We have actual work to do.
    Michael: Fine. Then I will call David Wallace, and you can explain to him why you threw the founder of the company out on his ancient butt.
  • When Sabre's "sales is king" policy makes the sales staff act like a bunch of cocky jerks only concerned with money (Phyllis even called Michael "numb-nuts"), he decided to not reward them, and instead gave the leads to the other employees, who proceeded to hide them around the office.
  • He can be surprisingly crafty when he really wants something. After Jim and Pam turn down his offer to have dinner at his place too many times under the pretense of prior plans, he pretends everyone has to work late one night so they can't make plans, "angrily tells off" corporate that night and sends everyone home, then asks Jim again and reminds him that he didn't have any plans. Forced to say yes, Jim admits to the documentary crew it was a clever plan.
• Depending on the Writer: How much he is sympathetic or an unlikable jerk. The episodes "Dinner Party" and "Chair Model" are great examples: in the first, he is portrayed as a sympathetic man suffering from Domestic Abuse, while in the latter, which is the next episode, he completely ignores his employees problems, demands that they find a date for him and then insults said dates when they do not live up to his high standards. You can even tag specific writers to specific versions of Michael. B.J. Novak (credits include "Diversity Day", "Sexual Harassment" and the aforementioned "Chair Model") preferred immature, self-centered Michael, while Mindy Kaling (credits include "The Dundies", "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" and "Diwali") specialized in Michael as sympathetic.
• Desperately Craves Affection: This is what drives Michael to his antics in the office and why he simply can't be a boss.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Whenever there's a fire in the office, Michael is always the first to run out, not caring how his employees are doing.
  • When his "Golden Ticket" idea looked like it was going to cost the company, he let David Wallace think it was Dwight and then tried to convince Dwight that it would be in his (Dwight's) best interest to take the fall.
• Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: Falls into this when he suffers from a very mild burn on his foot and ends up using crutches. Throughout the episode, he acts as if it was ten times worse than Dwight getting a concussion from a car accident earlier.
• Don't Explain the Joke: He loves to subvert this trope.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • Some of his more lucid moments have Michael realizing that he doesn't receive the respect that is due to him by merit of his position if nothing else. Such moments are typically staggering enough to his normal behavior that he tends to act like a man with his job would normally, and as such, have a few moments of awesome.
  • Often claims this in moments when he doesn't deserve it. After the "Golden Ticket" is shown to have actually gained the company exclusive rights of a huge client - and after he had basically forced Dwight to take the fall when it was considered a terrible idea, and who was now hailed for "his" idea - he literally demanded this trope.
    David Wallace: What is it you want?
    Michael: I'll be honest, I would like all the credit... with none of the blame.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Stopped clocks are right twice a day, and even Michael Scott stumbles into some legitimate points one or twice a season. Witness:
  • His advice to Jim on the Booze Cruise: "BFD. Engaged ain't married. Never, ever, ever give up."
  • His response to Andy's anger about having told Erin about his former engagement to Angela: "You didn't tell her you were engaged to someone who sits six feet from her? That's, like, Mr. & Mrs. Smith crap."
  • He correctly surmises that after Roy attacks Jim, Darryl is attempting to use the incident as leverage for a pay raise.
  • He stands up to the disaffected customer in "Product Recall" correctly noting that his apology and offer of free paper is fair in the circumstance and that requiring his resignation as a regional manager is completely unreasonable.
  • His attempt (in deleted scenes) to claim that Meredith was drunk when he hit her with his car actually turns out to be a reasonable argument.
  • His speech to Stanley at the end of "Did I Stutter?", when he reasonably points out that however little Stanley thinks of him, he has to treat him with the respect due a boss.
  • He has David Wallace on the ropes while negotiating their jobs back, explaining in detail exactly why Michael Scott Paper Company is a direct threat to Dunder-Mifflin and David himself.
  • He does have some grounds to question why Pam and Jim, both salespeople, did not inform him of their pregnancy. 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.
  • Everyone attacks Michael's obsessions with the idea that Donna wants him to kiss her again, and later that she's cheating on him - both of which turn out to be correct.
  • Meta example - As it turns out, both Dwight and Michael are correct in "The Secret" to assume that Oscar is faking sick to get out of work. Dwight is just so excited about this that he misses The Reveal - that Oscar is gay.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Noted by Jim in reaction to Josh Porter leveraging his position at the Stamford branch to get a better job at Staples, thus putting his employees (who'd thought that their jobs had been saved from the cuts) unexpectedly out of work: Michael Scott, for all his faults, would never do that to his people.
  • For all his awkwardness, he's genuinely taking aback by the reveal that Oscar is gay. Michael is immediately ashamed of himself for using a homophobic slur and apologises to Oscar for his behavior. Even though it makes things worse and he accidentally outs him, he genuinely tried to atone for his behavior.
  • Though he is initially onboard with framing Toby for drug possession, he foils his own plan when the cops show up to bust Toby, realizing he's gone too far.
  • The night before Jim and Pam's wedding, he disgustedly dismisses Jim's brothers' jokes as inappropriate.
  • Even though he hired Luke to be on good terms with his half-sister, he is clearly shocked when Luke sabotages his employees' sales and becomes very creepy when interacting with them, leading to Michael spanking and then firing Luke.
• Everything Is Racist: Especially when trying to approach Stanley, Darryl, or Oscar.
• Extreme Doormat: He wants to be beloved by his office workers and to that end he regularly brushes off almost every major and minor rule infraction committed by them, such as Jim's many pranks against Dwight or the time Dwight started a fire in the office to test the office's emergency preparedness. When he does need to discipline a worker he will be as indirect as he possibly can, as seen when Stanley openly disrespected him during a meeting and Michael spent the entire episode trying to not to chastise him and starts crying when he finally has to.
• Fan Boy: Is a big one for Saturday Night Live. At least two of his most famous lines^note  "That's what she said!" and "Dwight, you ignorant slut!" are references to the show's sketches and he once dresses as Will Forte's MacGruber character for Halloween.
• A Father to His Men: One way he's Wrong Genre Savvy is that he often tries to behave this way with his employees, making attempts at a Rousing Speech, or treating them like wayward children who need guidance. In "The Convict", he even calls them "babies" when they refuse to take his Scare 'Em Straight character Prison Mike seriously.
• Food as Characterization: Michael's preference for chain restaurants is a sign of his immaturity and lack of sophistication; for example, when he goes to New York City on a business trip, he gets a "New York Slice" from Sbarro, and uses the local Chili's both when he has a meeting with a potential major client, and when hosting the annual Dundie awards.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: He's a major believer in "love at first sight" and tries to rush many of his relationships. He proposes to Carol on only their ninth date, and is soundly rejected. He eventually averts this by taking Jim's advice to slowly court Holly, whom he does have an instant connection with, and allows their friendship to slowly turn into a relationship.
• Freudian Excuse: He never experienced love or friendship growing up and attempts to have the office act as a surrogate family to compensate.
  Young Michael: When I grow up, I want to have 100 kids, so I can have 100 friends and nobody can say no to being my friend.
• Friend to All Children: He is very fond of children (babies, too - he tries to hold one every day) and wants to have his own kids (and by the end of the series he does). He even chooses "little kid lover" as his online dating username so that people will know where his priorities are. Oops.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Not as much as Dwight or Andy but he does fit the criteria for Proximity, Pity, Supervision, and the rare Caring. The other workers hold an immense dislike for his antics and somewhat dread any social involvement with him. This does diminish throughout the series, partly because they become aware of why he is like this and his Hidden Depths, and partly because other managers tend to show them Michael is certainly not the worst person they could work for. Early in the show, of the whole office he was the only one not invited to Jim's party (even Dwight was invited).
• Friendless Background: Much to his chagrin. He even states the lunch lady was his only friend in the fourth grade at school.
• Genius Ditz: For all of his incompetence, when Michael is good at something, he's really good at it. Particularly sales, ice skating, and being great with kids. In "Dream Team", he recounts that he "scored more goals than anyone else in the history of the hockey team" after being told by his math teacher that he was on the verge of flunking out of high school.
• The Gloves Come Off:
  • When he isn't trying to impress everyone, he's a good worker and boss. This confused Jim as he made a pie chart analysing his work schedule and shows that Michael spends more time avoiding work than actually doing it. When he does work, it's enough to keep his job.
  • In "Did I Stutter", he lays down the law on Stanley by telling him that he finally accepts Stanley's hatred of him but regardless of the animosity, Stanley cannot speak to him in such an aggressive manner under any circumstances.
  • In "Murder", he organises a murder mystery game for the office workers and tries to keep the game going when everyone remembers the rumors about Dunder Mifflin filing for bankruptcy. Jim confronts Michael and tries to tell him off for not taking the situation seriously, only for Michael to tell him "shut up" as he's trying to keep morale up while everyone is distressed and worried. It doesn't matter if the game is childish, everyone has gotten distracted and has cheered up for a while.
• Has a Type:
  • All his most important love interests (Jan, Carol, Holly) are blondes. He also briefly dated Pam's mom who was blonde as well. Made obvious in "Casino Night" when Carol and Jan stand side-by-side and look like mirror images of each other.
  • Michael rarely misses a chance to remind people he likes big boobs, and two of his "cons" about Jan were that her chest was "nothing to write home about" and she was lacking in "chesticles." Jan is well aware of this and gets a boob job in an attempt to win him back (and it works, at least for a little while).
  Michael: [To Pam after she had told him not to get back together with Jan.] You made a good argument. Hers was bigger.
• Hidden Depths:
  • "Michael's Birthday" and "Threat Level Midnight" show that he's a natural at ice skating, having played for his high school's ice hockey team.
  • "Moroccan Christmas" shows he's great at making drinks.
  • In "Email Surveillance", he's shown to be quite good at karaoke.
  • For all his faults as a boss, he's a fantastic salesman (he even manages to impress Jan with his skills at one point).
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Michael Scarn, international superspy and the hero of Michael's movie, Threat Level Midnight.
• Horrible Judge of Character:
  • Even if everyone else hates Todd Packer for being a complete Jerkass, Michael sees him as a friend. Subverted in the episode of the same name, where Michael decides that Todd has gone far enough.
  • Even if Ryan has proven many times to be lazy, incompetent, and unrealiable, Michael still thinks highly of him and keeps insisting on bringing him back. Just like with Packer, he eventually comes to realize how much of an ass Ryan is and ends up delivering him an ultimatum to carry the point how he no longer respects him.
  • He considers Stanley a good friend, even if it's pretty obvious Stanley can't stand him. He sees both Stanley and Darryl as Street Smart mentors just because they are the only Black male employees. Unlike Stanley, Darryl at least tolerates Michael (sometimes) and mostly humors him for his own amusement in teaching him nonsensical "black man phrases".
  • Kevin originally applied for warehouse worker. Michael hired him as an accountant because he saw something in him. He saw wrong.
  • When gathering the office employees for a game of basketball against the warehouse, he enlists Stanley while passing over Kevin. Stanley turns out to be a terrible player who can barely dribble the ball while Kevin is an excellent shooter who can make long range jump shots with ease.
  • He never notices the blatant Everyone Can See It, until Jim tells him that he has feelings for Pam.
    Michael: Really? You're kidding me? You and Pam? Wow. I would have never put you two together, you really hit it well? God. I usually have a radar for stuff like that.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • 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. This is even emphasized by having the camera linger on him briefly after he's done talking.
  • The words he says to Toby when he kicks him out of Diversity Day:
    Michael: This is an environment of welcoming. And you should just get the hell outta here.
• Idiot Ball: Even for Michael, driving his car straight into a lake in Dunder Mifflin Infinity just to prove a point about technology (specifically, that the GPS that led him into the lake was unreliable) was unbelievably stupid.
• Idiot Houdini: If it was real life, he would be fired within the year, at most. Or better, not be promoted at all. In The Office, he manages to stay regional manager at least seven years, largely because despite his incredibly unorthodox management style, he ends up making his branch extremely successful.
• If It's You, It's Okay: With Ryan.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Is fond of doing this when it's grossly inappropriate. He finally gets it right when he delivers it to Gabe in regards to Erin in "Viewing Party".
• Ignored Aesop: No matter how many times people, including his mentor Ed Truck and Holly, explain to Michael he has to stop treating his employees as his friends rather than his subordinates, Michael will refuse to do so.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: His stated reason for becoming a salesman, and the reason why he acts the way he does.
• The Illegible: Michael has such terrible handwriting that even HE sometimes struggles to decipher it. In "Company Picnic", he reads his love note to Holly and refers to them as "soup snakes."
  Michael: That can't be right. We're soul mates.
• Important Haircut: In the series finale, Michael's hair is very visibly graying. A minor running gag in the show that was mostly left relegated to deleted scenes was that Michael dyed his hair to appear younger. Now that he's settled down and happy, Michael doesn't need to do this anymore.
• Innocent Bigot: He says the most insulting things to minorities such as Stanley and Oscar (the only black and Hispanic/gay persons in the office, respectively) but he constantly gets away with it because he really does mean well.
• Innocently Insensitive: A large component of his sense of humor. Made worse by the fact that his underlings (constantly) point how much his jokes offend them, he refuses to change his choices of joke-worthy material.
• Insufferable Imbecile: On his worst days. He's a socially clueless Manchild and his extreme ignorance often make him inconsiderate and insensitive to It's All About Me levels. In short, he's not the "World's Best Boss".
• It's All About Me: It's not that Michael doesn't care about other people... it's just that he has problems grasping the idea that not everything has to be about him. If a situation centers on someone else, he'll immediately try to grab the attention or at least share the spotlight, no matter how inappropriate it is. Early on, he's actually unsure of what "open-mindedness" means. A large part of his character arc is eventually coming to the realization that no, the world doesn't revolve around Michael Scott.
• Jerkass to One: When he insults someone, it's usually unintentional... unless he's talking to Toby, since his hatred for Toby is a Running Gag.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's generally selfish, shallow, and obnoxious whether he realizes it or not. However, his employees all consider him a genuinely nice guy at heart and will rally around him when he needs it as a result. Take his guilt over the Prince Family Paper Company, for a start. In turn, if the wellbeing of his employees is on the line, Michael will always step up to do the right thing. Lampshaded by Jim when a rival branch manager sells out his employees for a promotion:
  Jim: Say what you will about Michael Scott, but he would never do that.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Also depends on the story. Really only in the legal sense is he a Houdini, as the show makes it rather clear that most of the people he knows try to avoid being around him if they have a choice in the matter, so he suffers in that regard.
  • Though initially against the plan, he ends up being complicit in Jim and Dwight's scheme to trick Todd Packer into going to Florida under the false pretense that he had a promotion. And he moves to Colorado with Holly very shortly afterwards, meaning that he never has to suffer the consequences of this. Though Todd Packer was such a complete tool, not to mention he had just insulted Holly to Michael's face, that it's unlikely anyone in- or out-of-universe really minds.
• Kick the Dog: Whenever Toby is around, mostly in regard to his divorce.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Is the only one apart from Angela to get upset over her cat Sprinkles' death.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: This might be one of his defining character traits: he's remarkably ignorant of most things to the point of delusion (one shining example shows him claiming to be a regular in all of New York's fineries, and then promptly listing all of the tourist trap restaurants in Times Square as his favourite locales), but it doesn't stop him feigning brilliance on whatever subject he's talking about. And his "research" for any given topic generally consists of watching TV shows or movies, or doing internet searches.
• Large Ham: Micheal sees himself as the life of every party. While most people would strongly disagree, he's is an extremely dramatic man, joking, playing and yelling in every scene. It's only when he realises that he's fucked up that he becomes calm and restrained
• Lethally Stupid: His antics in the warehouse fall under this category. Aside from more mundane dangerous activities such as pushing a ladder out from under someone for the sake of a joke, he absolutely refuses to accept that the heavy machinery are not toys, and that he cannot and should not use them. Even when told in no uncertain terms directly to his face, multiple times.
• Like Brother and Sister: His relationship with Pam is sort of like a crazy big brother. Protective and loving, but she has most of the responsibility. Best seen when he shows up at her art show when no one else does, and tells her how proud he is of her.
• Malaproper: Often he uses the wrong word in a common phrase - for example in one episode he opens a casino for charity in the Warehouse; stating that he considers himself "a great philanderer". ^note He means "philanthropist". Though, considering the amount of girlfriends and casual hookups Michael has throughout the show, the former isn't really that far off base. In another episode, he comments that a red wine he was drinking had kind of an "oaky afterbirth" (he hopefully meant to say "aftertaste").
• Manchild: He often comes across as a clueless teenager in an adult's body. Lampshaded by Pam, who notes that Jan basically has to treat him like a 10-year-old. A deleted scene from Fun Run takes this to an extreme - Michael seeks treatment from his paediatrician for dehydration (even in the aired version he is shown with a sucker in his mouth).
• The Match Maker:
  • Subverted in that Michael believes he's the one who first put Jim and Pam together. After they have their first child and attempts to do the same to the rest of the office.
  • He tried to be this for Erin and Kevin in one episode, even after Erin tells him that she likes Andy. As usual, he was completely wrong.
  • In "Blood Drive", he insists that the singles mixer he's staging for the business park is to help other people find love, when it's really just a ploy to reconnect with the woman he met in the bloodmobile.
    Michael: I am going to be Cupid. And I'm going to shoot my sparrow at unsuspecting victims and they are going to get hit and say, "I'm in love. I was hit by Cupid's sparrow." Funny little bird, but he gets the job done.
• Mean Boss:
  • An interesting example where he tries to be a Benevolent Boss (and at times is), but his giant ego and immaturity make him greatly disliked by his workers.
  • Played straight, after breaking up with Jan, and before meeting Holly, where he openly acts like a jerk to his employees, instead of just being Innocently Insensitive, and goes as far as blaming Pam for things that are his fault, and forces his employees to get him a date.
• Metaphorgotten: Any time he tries to come up with a clever analogy, it's always poorly thought out and gets hilariously derailed, with his observation in "The Coup" probably being the most epic example.
  Michael: Business is like a jungle, I am like a tiger, and Dwight is like the monkey that stabs the tiger in the back with a stick. Does the tiger fire the monkey? Does he transfer the monkey to a different branch? [eyes light up] Pun! There is no way of knowing what is going on inside the tiger's head. We don't have that kind of technology.
• Mistaken for Gay: According to Phyllis, she and Michael's classmates in high school thought he was gay due to the outfits he wore.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: The former Trope Namer; he picks "Little Kid Lover" as his dating username to show that he's good with children, and the poor guy doesn't realize what it really implies until it's too late.
• Money Dumb: Michael was mentioned to be in debt before, but in Season 4's "Money", he is shown to be having to take a second job to pay for his debts, not helped by his live-in girlfriend Jan wasting their money and having no idea of the debt issue. When Oscar analyzes his spends, he realizes that Michael's issues come from unnecessary purchases.
• Never My Fault: When someone (usually Pam) explains that a problem happened because of him, he'll quickly deny it and/or turn the blame on the person in question (or Toby). A big example of this is in "The Merger", when one of the Stamford employees, Tony, quits on the first day at the Scranton branch, telling Michael in no uncertain terms that's it because he can't deal with his antics. This leads Michael to rant that Dunder Mifflin doesn't hire quitters and fire Tony in a pathetic attempt to save face, since letting him quit would mean admitting it is his fault and that he's not the awesome boss he thinks he is. All this does is earn Michael a phone call from an annoyed Jan, who says he should have just let Tony quit, because now they have to give him severance pay.
• No Social Skills: He does not think before he speaks. When in a counseling session with Toby, he even claimed to have been raised by wolves at one point. It would have certainly explained a lot.
• Not Good with Rejection: A platonic version. He's desperate for everyone around him to like him and be his friend, and he can spiral into both despair and vicious rages if it seems that people don't like him.
• Oblivious to Hatred: As part of his lack of self-awareness. He considers all his employees his best friends (except Toby) but they just find him annoying most of the time. Especially played straight with Stanley, until Michael learns the truth in "Did I Stutter?".
• One-Hour Work Week: Michael manages to pull this trope off despite the show taking place at his job. He seemingly has no administrative duties and has all the time he wants to spend on his frivolous hobbies, activities and meetings. "The Fight" explains that his main responsibility is to simply sign a few papers at the end of every week, which he always childishly puts off to the last minute.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • His adoration towards Ryan is pretty much universally known. Thus it's a big surprise when Michael insults him in front of his own class when Ryan badmouthed the paper industry, but more specifically, him.
  • Generally any time Michael stops acting like a goof and starts acting like an actual company manager would. For example, when Stanley made it clear he and Michael would never be friends. Rather than overreact dramatically, Michael accepted that, but countered that he is still Stanley's boss and needed to be treated with at least some respect from him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Michael invading Stanley's privacy and telling the office that he cheated on his wife. Despite the fact that Michael is portrayed as being in the wrong for invading his privacy, it's hard to feel too bad for Stanley when Michael tells everyone that he cheated on his wife. Because, after all, he's the one who cheated on his wife to begin with.
  • When his nephew, Luke, finally gets on the last nerves of everyone in the office, Michael responds by giving him a spanking. In front of the entire office. While it is extremely unprofessional and dumb, considering how much of an idiotic douchebag Luke was, it's hard to argue that he didn't deserve to be humiliated like that.
• Parental Substitute: To Erin, who doesn't have parents.
• The Peter Principle: A textbook example. He was and still is a great salesman, which is how he got promoted to management, a job for which he has absolutely no aptitude.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: A perfect example of The Peter Principle in action. He was a very good salesman who got promoted to regional manager, a job in which he is completely in over his head. He does have his moments of clarity, in which he's actually the Benevolent Boss he so desperately wants to be, but those moments are few and far in between.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: He's clearly racist and mysoginistic, especially in the first few seasons, but in a subconcious way. It fits into his general lack of social skills.
• Put on a Bus: Towards the end of season 7. But he returns Back for the Finale to be Dwight's best man (or "bestest mensch") at his wedding.
• Progressively Prettier: In the first season, Michael was made to look a bit sleazy, with tightly slicked hair to give off the illusion that he was balding, and overly tight neckties to make it seem like Michael was a bit pudgy. However, as Michael became a more sympathetic character, his appearance cleaned up to match.
• Redundant Romance Attempt: Unaware that he's being romantically set up, he's quirkily joking his way into the heart of Pam and Jim's friend. When Michael learns the truth, he exits the bar, unbuttons the top button of his shirt, puts on a backwards hat, and re-enters as "Date Mike," whose antics are so obnoxious the girl leaves early.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Sometimes.
  Michael: Have any of you talked to Dwight?
  Stanley: Oh, sure, we talk all the time.
  Michael: Really?
  Stanley: No.
• Shipper on Deck: He has been a huge Jim and Pam fanboy since the day Jim told him about his feelings for Pam.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: He and Holly definitely have their moments.
• Sleeping with the Boss: His rather rocky extended relationship with his boss Jan.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • He vastly overestimates the amount of impact he has on his employees.
  • In "The Fire", he claims to be both Street Smart and Book Smart. Needless to say, he's neither, since he's not savvy enough to be street smart, and too ignorant to be book smart.
• So Unfunny, It's Funny: His attempts at intentional comedy almost always end up as this, because they're so clumsy and unoriginal.
• Stepford Smiler: He likes to act as the funny guy who's always joking around but he's actually a deeply lonely man who Desperately Craves Affection (at least until he meets his "soup snake", Holly).
• Teeny Weenie: Michael Scott is many things, but according to Pam (who accidentally walked in on him while he was changing clothes at one point) and the warehouse crew, well endowed is definitely not one of them.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: This is a big issue in his romantic relationships, as he thinks that instead of building a relationship from the ground up, he's supposed to sweep a woman off her feet with a Grand Romantic Gesture. It utterly fails with Carol (the Rejected Marriage Proposal and the ill-advised Photoshopping of himself into a family picture), then fails with Jan up until she realizes how easy he is to manipulate. He makes better progress with Holly after Jim convinces him to reject this line of thinking and try establishing a friendship or at least commonalities with her first.
• Too Dumb to Live: He doesn't see the potential danger in his worst Idiot Ball moments.
  • He tries to eat unidentified mushrooms he found in the woods.
  • To demonstrate the risk of depression and suicide, he was about to jump off the roof, thinking he would have been safe if he can land on a bouncy castle. Thankfully, his employees find out about the hidden castle before he could jump and talk him down from the roof.
    Jim: Oh. He's going to kill himself, pretending to kill himself.
  • He drives his car into a lake to prove a point about technology.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In Season 2 he starts doing things for his office like taking them out to Chili's for the Dundies, and hosting a casino night. Michael also shows his sensitive side around kids in this season. By the end of the series, he is a very different character.
• Two First Names: His first and last name can both be used as a given name for a male. He shares this trait with his British counterpart, David Brent.
• Ultimate Job Security: Played with constantly. Many of his antics are seen as counter-productive and a drain on the company's resources and it's noted on several occasions that his job consists mainly of a few minor administrative tasks (which he still manages to struggle with). His job is under threat on more than one occasion during the series and several of his bosses at corporate admonish him over his lack of responsibility. However it's shown on several occasions (notably in "The Client", "Initiation" and "Golden Ticket") that Michael is responsible for singlehandedly pulling in some of the company's biggest clients and his office is probably the most unified of all the branches making him far too valuable to the company to let go. Significantly, Michael only ever leaves the company of his own volition.
• Ungrateful Bastard: On various occasions. Even when his workers go along with his crazy ideas, he'll often wind up complaining, yelling, and acting like a Spoiled Brat.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Varies throughout episodes, but in general he fits this description, as an immature, self-centered, incompetent Work Com supervisor.
• Verbal Tic:
  • "That's what she said" veers into this on occasion, especially in "The Deposition", where he does it in response to something he said himself and doesn't even seem to realize he's doing it.
  • When he's lying or being forced to agree to something, he tends to mutter "yesh," and for the most part, this fools nobody.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Generally, what is Genre Savvy in Michael's head is actually Wrong Genre Savvy in the real world, and vice versa. A recurring theme is that he correctly behaves like the lead character in a comedy, but it's the wrong kind of comedy. He either thinks he's the funny, inspirational cool boss and The Ace in a feelgood Work Com, or the plucky underdog hero in a Romantic Comedy (basically, he thinks he's either Robin Williams or Tom Hanks, depending on the situation). Instead, he's the Pointy-Haired Boss in a Cringe Comedy.
• You Were Trying Too Hard: Whenever Michael is relaxed in a social setting and isn't trying too hard to win people over, he's very likeable and pleasant to be around. It's best shown in "Happy Hour", when Jim and Pam secretly set Michael up on a date with Pam's friend Julie. He initially charms her because he has no idea it's a date, but then he turns her off when he finds out and goes into his obnoxious "Date Mike" persona.

Dwight Kurt Schrute III

"Nothing stresses me out. Except having to seek the approval of my inferiors."

Played by: Rainn Wilson
Seasons: 1-9
"Last week I gave a fire-safety talk, and nobody paid any attention. It's my own fault for using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is boring. People learn in lots of different ways, but experience is the best teacher."

Sales Representative/Assistant (to the) Regional Manager/Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton.

UK counterpart: Gareth Keenan.

---

• Adaptational Nice Guy: Compared to Gareth Keenan. While Dwight is socially awkward and strange, Gareth is genuinely off-putting and unkind. Notably, while Dwight is fairly respectful of the women at the office, Gareth makes frequent advances towards his female co-workers, and is under the deluded belief that he's some hard-partying ladies' man on his free time.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Dwight and Jim's relationship is far better than how Tim and Gareth's was in the original. Even with all the pranks, there's certainly a genuine fondness between the two, while Gareth and Tim genuinely can't stand each other, with the only nice thing Tim does for Gareth (recommending him over himself for a promotion) ends up making Gareth even worse to be around.
• Affectionate Nickname: Called "possum" and "D" by Angela.
• Agent Mulder: Dwight seems to be the most willing of the office to believe in cryptids, including vampires, zombies and the Sasquatch.
  "I don't have a lot of experience with vampires, but I have hunted werewolves. I shot one once, but by the time I got to it, it had turned back into my neighbor's dog."
• Ambiguously Christian: The Schrute family has 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 Thor to help him find the employee who left the joint in the parking lot, the Schrutes may practice some kind of Neo-Paganism ^note It's possible that the Schrutes practice Urglaawe, which is a form of Germanic paganism filtered through a Pennsylvania Dutch cultural perspective, ergo why the Schrutes can be of Amish extraction while also being polytheists.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed, but a lot of what keeps Jim's fondness for pranking him from seeming too mean is that - initially at least - he's often just taking Dwight down a peg or two; most of his pranks come after moments where Dwight has been particularly arrogant, insufferable or abrasive.
• Babies Ever After: By the series finale it's revealed that Angela's son Phillip was conceived with Dwight and they become a loving family.
• Bad Liar: Dwight has many impressive skills. Deception is not one of them. In "The Coup", even ultra-dense Michael can easily figure out that Dwight is lying about skipping work for an emergency appointment with a dentist named "Crentist".
• Bears Are Bad News: A firm believer in this trope. If Dwight's not preparing for a terrorist attack to spontaneously strike the workplace, odds are he's preparing for a bear attack.
• Berserk Button:
  • If you value your life, don't ever talk badly about Angela in his presence.
  • A very hypocritical one, but when Micheal calls him an idiot during his roast, he immediately switches from blind servitude to deliver a short but vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Big Eater: In "The Coup", he orders a meal large enough to feed an entire family.
• Birds of a Feather: Dwight and Angela are both antisocial puritans that have it in for the series' protagonist couple (Jim for Dwight and Pam for Angela).
• Brutal Honesty: In "Pam's Replacement", Pam even starts taking advice from Dwight because he's the only one she knows for sure is being honest with her.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Dwight's the most-successful active salesman at Dunder-Mifflin, and yet his quirks are far more pronounced than Michael's. He's also competent enough at farmwork that the combined income from both jobs left him wealthy enough to buy the building.
• Butt-Monkey: Exemplified in the penultimate episode of season four, when Michael leaves the office. Dwight (accurately) announces that he is in charge of the office for the day. Stanley simply stands up and leaves. Over the course of the episode, so does every other employee except Angela.
• Catchphrase: "Idiot." Also begins countless sentences with "Question...", "Fact..." or "False..."
• Character Development: In Seasons 8 and 9 Dwight learns to appreciate his coworkers more. Examples:
  • When he's putting together a team to go to Tallahassee and gets saddled with his least favorite people in the office, but soon recognizes that even they have traits that he can appreciate.
  • When he tries to hire one of his personal friends to pick up Jim's slack (as he is busy starting another business), and when he finds out that none of them would be even remotely competent, he realizes that he holds his coworkers to a far higher standard than his friends.
  • By the time he is appointed Regional Manager again near Season 9's end, everyone in the office is actually happy for him, and among his final words in the series is him admitting that he does get along with his subordinates.
  • By the second half of the final season, Dwight actually considers Pam and Jim his close friends, and they are both happy to admit the same (even if they are still prone to pranking him). Dwight, without pause, tells Pam he thinks Jim would be best choice for Regional Manager, and Jim says this of Dwight to David Wallace. After Dwight's promotion, he immediately asks Jim to be his number two.
  • In the finale, he even asks Jim to be his best man over Mose and any other family members present.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Dwight used to be an almost blind worshipper of Michael, eagerly doing all his requests, but in later seasons he grew increasingly dedicated to surpassing and taking the Regional Manager job for himself.
  • Early on, the fact his family had a beet farm while growing up was just a minor tidbit to his character background and he seemed to have a mostly normal upbringing. By the later seasons, it's made clear that the Shrute family lives almost completely detached from regular society, to the point that it was only after working at Dunder Mifflin and dating Angela that Dwight was introduced to things like monotheism and preventative medicine.
• The Chew Toy: Dwight's relationship with both Jim and Michael. Both regularly manipulate Dwight into doing whatever they want so they can slack off at work.
  • Jim has next to no respect for Dwight, so Mr. Schrute routinely finds himself to be the go-to guy when Jim is bored and in a pranking mood (though he does, it has to be said, tend to bring much of it upon himself). Dwight does, on rare occasion, get his own back.
  • With Michael, it's love-hate; he loves Dwight's obsession/idol worship of him and does everything he can to keep it, but he hates the kiss-ass sycophancy that comes with it and so dismisses Dwight as a friend and any of his attempts to gain authority, real or imagined.
• Chronic Pet Killer:
  • Euthanized Angela's cat Sprinkles because it was weak. Dwight really thought he was doing both the cat and Angela a favor, though. He also shot a "werewolf" that turned back into the neighbour's dog. And while volunteering at the animal hospital, Dwight euthanized over 150 pets by himself.
  • Angela had asked him to take care of her cat because he was the only one she trusted. He decided that Sprinkles' quality of life was too low and put her in Angela's freezer - while she was still alive. Sprinkles then proceeded to throw up her medication, choke on the vomit and die.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Dwight is someone who, while his behavior is mostly predictable, seems to have motivations and an internal monologue that indicate that he is one of these.
• The Comically Serious: Everything is Serious Business for him and this is often, if not always, Played for Laughs.
• Competition Freak: Dwight went as far as taking on a computer (which he thought was sentient, by the way) in a contest who could get the most sales before the end of the day. Somehow, Dwight won. Near the end of the series, Dwight becomes Regional Manager, and Jim becomes the Assistant to the Regional Manager. When Jim decides to take on his own assistant and hold a competition to determine who it would be, Dwight eventually can't help but compete and win.
• Consistent Clothing Style: Dwight's office attire generally consists of brown/tan suits with short sleeve button down shirts in various earth tone colors and a matching tie. When made to wear white long sleeve button shirts by Charles Miner, he expresses serious discomfort with the change. He does wear the occasional tuxedo for formal occasions such as his aunt's funeral and his wedding.
• Control Freak: He greatly dislikes letting anyone share his status or have more authority than him, not even letting his girlfriend Angela share it when they plan for Dwight to take over the branch. He also tries to dominate every situation he finds himself in and twist it to suit his own idiosyncratic preferences.
• Crazy-Prepared: He has a large amount of weapons hidden around the office in case of attack. Also, he has a wig for every person in the office, because "you never know when you need to bear a passing resemblance to someone". He even has a pitchfork in his car in the event of a lynch mob.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Occasionally, Dwight's paranoia and preparedness for seemingly unlikely scenarios turn out to be correct:
  • He stashed weapons all around the office in case of an attack, which became very useful in "The Negotiation" when Roy attempts to assault Jim and Dwight is able to subdue Roy by pepper spraying him.
  • "Customer Surveys" has Dwight discover he registered poorly in customer surveys and he insists to everyone that the scores were tampered with to sabotage him. Everyone treats it as one of his usual delusions, but then it emerges that Kelly did sabotage his (and Jim's) reviews because she was mad at him for not attending one of her parties.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Played with. Dwight likes to think he's the "hidden badass" part of the trope, but the joke is often that there's a gulf between his true abilities and his perception of his true abilities, meaning he's often more just the "crouching moron" part. He is often shown to tout his martial arts prowess and the fact that he's Crazy-Prepared for any eventuality — however, on several occasions it's shown that his abilities in both are less impressive than he wants others to think. He memorably gets defeated by Michael, a complete novice, in karate on one occasion, and his preparations for violent conflict (most notably by hiding a massive arsenal of weapons around the office) are massively out of proportion for the actual likelihood of such conflict occurring within the regional branch of a mid-level paper company. While he does rise to the occasion on at least one occasion by using his pepper spray to deter Roy from beating up Jim, this is played more as a stopped clock being right for once rather than Dwight being the actual badass he has deluded himself into believing he is. This trope actually does come into play (albeit on a much-smaller scale than he wants to think) with regards to his sales abilities, however, which despite almost everything else about him are genuinely impressive.
• Determinator: In "Tallahasee" he tries to make it through a Sabre seminar even though he's in pain from an appendicitis. Later in the day he still tries to give a presentation just a few hours after having an emergency appendectomy.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Dwight tends to fall into this in his reactions to a lot of Jim's pranks; many of them would probably be unsuccessful, or at least less successful, if he were able to just roll with the punch and walk away, or even genuinely laugh it off. But he usually makes things worse for himself due to both his gullibility and his utter lack of a sense of humor about himself and Dunder-Mifflin, leading to him getting more engaged with and entangled with worse outcomes.
• Ditzy Genius: 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.
• Dumb, but Diligent: In contrast to Jim, who is Brilliant, but Lazy, Dwight, while not unintelligent, is very socially inept, gullible and lacks both social and self-awareness. Nevertheless, he manages to make a success of his career simply through his tendency to never give up or accept "No" for an answer. His interpersonal skills are inappropriate, sometimes even illegal, but he has a high level of passion for everything he does.
• Encyclopaedic Knowledge: Dwight is an expert on "bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica". He knows the company's paper stock like the back of his hand and acculumates whatever intel he can find on people to an invasive degree.
• Enemy Mine: Prior to befriending Jim, there were a few things that would make him enter into this with Jim - the opportunity for a major sale (when Robert California closed the Binghamton Branch while drunk, for example) or Todd Packer being the most notable.
  "Jim is my enemy, but it turns out Jim is also his own worst enemy. And the enemy of my enemy if my friend, so Jim is actually my friend. But because he is his own worst enemy, the enemy of my friend is my enemy. So actually, Jim is my enemy. But..."
• Even Evil Has Standards: After initially hazing Ryan, he takes him on a sales call, in which Ryan not only loses the sale, but apparently gets told that they didn't like him rather harshly. Dwight consoles Ryan by saying honestly "they didn't have to say it to your face". He's then more than happy to join in when Ryan throws eggs at the building in frustration.
  • When he and Ryan are plotting against Jim, trying to remove him from the regional manager position, Dwight is appalled when the temp suggests enact a Saw -type scenario as revenge. Even he considers it too crazy and brutal.
  • Though willing to help Angela seek revenge against the person whom her husband is cheating on her with, Dwight is horrified when Angela wants to have the target murdered and reluctantly convinces her to change it to a kneecapping. He becomes even more horrified when he realizes that the target is Oscar. To him, harming a coworker is too far.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Dwight has never heard the phrase "Live and Let Live" before and doesn't understand what it means when he does.
• Fire-Forged Friends:
  • He and Jim go from rivals to friends in the final season, to the point that Dwight makes Jim his Best Man at his wedding.
  • Dwight and Andy also didn't get along for the first few years. It wasn't until they realised Angela was cuckolding both of them that they put aside their differences and eventually grew to like each other.
• Flanderization: Dwight's social skills got progressively worse over the series. By the final season he needed help from his female colleagues at selling papers to women, despite being the company's top salesman.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Fits the bill for Proximity and Supervision. Dwight is easily the least liked person in the office, with even friend hungry Michael trying to avoid him if he can help it. Most of Jim's pranks work largely due to nobody in the office being willing to support Dwight if he catches on or keeping quiet so he doesn't figure it out. Ironically, Jim and Pam seems to be about the only ones in the office willing to treat Dwight as a friend.
• Germanic Efficiency: He's German-American, and prides himself on his work ethic, productivity, and no-nonsense attitude.
• A God Am I: Dwight calls himself "the King of Kings" of sales because thinks of himself as Jesus, something reinforced when he does a Tableau of The Last Supper so he can play Christ in the center.
• Happily Married: With Angela as of The Finale.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Dwight loves putting on a show of having reforemd, only to later confide in the cameras that he's learned nothing and will eventually betray everyone when they least expect it. Subverted in that everyone knows this is how he acts, but he's often so poor at it they just brush it off.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He is an able entrepreneur. His antics aside, his farm and motel are actually well-managed.
  • To say nothing of adding becoming owner of the office complex to the mix. He juggles this, the above two jobs, and being the most effective salesman in Dunder-Mifflin with seemingly no trouble at all.
  • He's pretty good at basketball, yet not so good in martial arts (despite his boasts). He does obtain a black belt near the end of the series, so he may well have improved, or is better than his onscreen attempts to show off his skills make him seem.
  • Despite turning the office into a near living hell for his "subordinates" whenever he's Regional Manager, it's pointed out that the office as a whole runs very well under Dwight's watch. When he becomes Regional Manager at the end of the series after learning to respect his coworkers, he manages to bring that efficiency without sacrificing morale (he even brings back Devon!)
  • While Dwight can be seen as off-putting by a lot of people, he's surprisingly good with and quite fond of children and babies, including Jim and Pam's baby, Cece. This is best seen in the episode "Viewing Party" where Cece keeps crying and Dwight takes her from Pam and does a simple hand motion that stops her crying and causes her to fall asleep within seconds. Pam even notes that she "loves him" much to Jim's despair.
  • It's occasionally implied that at least sometimes he's fully aware that Jim's having him on, but he just goes with it for whatever reason.
  • He's also extremely skilled at impressions, able to suprisingly convincingly mimic most of his coworkers.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Some of the things he says about his childhood are pretty horrifying, including years of being shunned (starting when he was four- because he forgot to save the excess oil from a tuna can) and performing his own circumcision (okay, you can uncross your legs now).
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: With Angela who stands 5'1 next to his 6'3.
• Hypocrite:
  • He is irritated when Jim dresses like Dwight and imitates him mockingly in one episode, he also tells Jim that "Identity theft is not a joke!" only for the episode to end with Dwight trying to impersonate Jim. In a later episode Dwight pretends to be Andy in order to annoy him, similar to what Jim did to him earlier, and in "Scott's Tots" part of his plan to get Jim fired is posing as Kevin, Stanley and Toby in phone calls to David Wallace.
  • He tells Meredith's son that he does not have games on his office computer because that would be inappropriate. But in a later episode, he plays Second Life during work. However he himself doesn't consider it a "game." He later sets aside an entire desk just for gaming when he creates Mega Desk while Jim and Pam are away on paternity and maternity leave.
  • In general he is a stickler for rules and an enthusiastic authoritarian... right up until the point where the rules start constraining his interests and the authority figure is someone he dislikes or disapproves of.
• Hypocritical Humor: During "Niagra", Dwight talks with a group of kids about how he believes Jim only got the co-manager position due to "kissing the boss-man's butt". Kind of a dubious argument for Dwight to be making, considering his being a Professional Butt-Kisser to Michael is one of the strongest aspects of his character.
• Idiot Houdini: He has done numerous things over the course of the show that would have gotten him fired at best and is not only never disciplined for them but ends the show as the office's regional manager.
  • There's honestly no logical explanation for why corporate didn't fire him (or why Stanley didn't sue him, or why the police didn't arrest him) in "Stress Relief" (other than Status Quo Is God, of course). First, he intentionally started a fire in the office that not only led to people damaging corporate property in the panic, but almost killed Stanley, who has a heart attack from the stress. Then, after inexplicably not being fired, he costs corporate 3,500 dollars a day or two later when he deliberately destroys a CPR dummy. And he's still not fired. Top salesman or not, you've got to expect that he'd be fired and sued immediately in Real Life.
  • He also somehow failed to suffer any consequences whatsoever for assaulting (and then subsequently terrorizing) Jim to the point of drawing blood in "Classy Christmas." In fact, Michael and Holly wind up reprimanding Jim for the whole thing (granted, this was after he accidentally broke a window in the office trying to lob a snowball at Dwight with a lacrosse stick. Not cool- but nowhere NEAR as bad as what Dwight did to him.)!
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Showing off a family heirloom holster and an antique revolver he hopes will impress Jo, Dwight displays staggering incompetence with a gun for a man with Crazy Survivalist tendencies. He accidentally discharges the firearm in the office; thankfully, the damage is limited to bursting Andy's eardrum and putting a small hole in the floor.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Frequently insists that his coworkers be referred to as his subordinates, even when that's not really the case and this fact is pointed out to him.
  • In the earlier seasons he always referred to himself as "Assistant Regional Manager" despite others- frequently Michael, the actual Regional Manager- reminding him that his actual title is "Assistant to the Regional Manager". In both cases, his concern seems to be less about accuracy and more I Reject Your Reality, trying to pretend he has more authority than he does until everyone just accepts it.
• Insufferable Genius: Downplayed; he's a great salesman with a gigantic ego. However, he considers himself to be a genius in other ways which are far from the case, meaning he's mostly just the 'insufferable' part.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While Dwight may deserve a few of Jim's pranks when they act as Laser-Guided Karma for his rude behavior to his coworkers, "Conflict Resolution" has Jim himself realize that the sheer number and excess of many of them is uncalled for and Dwight has a right to be angry about them.
  • Dwight thinks he's this with regards to his insanely dangerous fire drill. However, while he does have a bit of a point in that his co-workers failed to cover themselves in glory at the time, an objective reading of the situation clearly demonstrates that this was mainly because he stacked the decks against them from the start. The scenario he set up would likely be near-impossible for them to survive had it been real, and was full of secret - and at times contradictory - little traps that were almost unavoidable (note that at one point he mocks everyone for not trying to call the fire department — despite Pam having attempted to do so, revealing that he's sabotaged the phone lines and that they can't phone the fire department). Furthermore, while he claims he was trying to give everyone instructions on how to get out, that was mainly in the form of unhelpful quiz questions, and he ultimately spent most of the drill strutting, mocking and crowing about their ineptitude rather than taking charge of the situation and maintaining calm, which was his actual job in the situation as safety manager. Any point he might have is ultimately minor compared to the "jerkass" part of what he was doing.
  • Dwight isn't afraid to fat-shame some of the more overweight staff. Then again, their workplace is above ground floor and the elevator has broken down at least once, so keeping the staff fit enough to climb the stairs isn't the most ludicrous demand he's made of them.
  • In the episode, Initiation, he brings up a fairly good point to Ryan about how sometimes failure is completely out of your control:
    Ryan: They really didn't like me.
    Dwight: They did not. But they didn't have to say it to your face.
    Ryan: I don't get it. I don't get what I did wrong.
    Dwight: Not everything's a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail.
  • In one episode, Dwight publicly fires Kevin when he takes over. Everyone tries to defend Kevin but Dwight shuts them all up by simply asking If anyone can make a case for Kevin staying based on his merit. Although Kevin is liked, he's underskilled for his career and has only stayed for this long because Michael has trouble firing people. Dwight explained later on that Kevin was bad at math, organization, timekeeping, and hygiene. A deleted scene also revealed that Kevin was so bad at math that he made up a numerical system that only made sense to him, which undermined the business.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: 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 Brutal Honesty and lack of social skills, he comes across as rude. 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).
• Karma Houdini: Between his impeccable sales record, his unrivalled work ethic and general pity, there's always something keeping the rest of the office and their superiors from seriously reprimanding Dwight. See his entry on the main page under this trope.
• Kavorka Man: Despite his rather questionable fashion sense, behavior and general ethics, Dwight has had several relationships with Angela and easily scores a one-night-stand with one of Pam's attractive friends. Said friend even came back for more, only to find Dwight talking with another woman the following day, again quite successfully from the looks of it. And then there was that entire women's basketball team in "Night Out", alongside a farm girl named Esther that reciprocated Dwight's bizarre courtship ritual.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: While not exactly stupid, he has an over-inflated impression of exactly how intelligent and knowledgeable he is, and tends to pontificate with unearned and often unwarranted confidence on various topics despite showing some significant gaps in what he considers to be his areas of expertise. In particular, for a supposed survivalist who loves to brag about how proficient he is with weaponry and prepared for combat his knowledge of gun safety and proper gun handling is shockingly low (no real artillery expert would ever assume a gun not to be loaded, or have their finger on a trigger when they don't intend to fire, both things that Dwight has done), and when he's strutting around doing a drug investigation as a volunteer sheriff's deputy he fails to spot Creed referring to the specific strain of marijuana used in a joint). Furthermore, even those areas of knowledge he does possess are usually not very applicable to his actual circumstances or he doesn't know how to use the knowledge he has that is relevant appropriately, making him look foolish; despite what he seems to believe, his knowledge of military strategy, survival skills and animal behavior is more or less completely irrelevant in the white-collar mid-level suburban paper company he works in.
• Large Ham: Dwight has never met a situation he doesn't consider Serious Buisness. A good chunk of his dialogue is long, dramatic speeches that would fit pretty well in a crime thriller. Not so much in a mid-size paper company.
• Lawful Stupid: Treats even the most trivial rules with the utmost importance. A joint at the parking lot is enough to have him don his (voluntary) sheriff uniform and subject the entire office to interrogations and drug tests. Another time, Jim tells Dwight that wasting valuable office time is against the rules and Dwight goes as far as peeing in a coke bottle at his desk and sneeze with his eyes open, simply not to waste time. Justified since he is actually a Competition and Control Freak and his extreme emphasis on the rules is as much about intentionally undermining or irritating others to advance his own agenda as it is any actual Uber-respect for the rules; notably, he quickly finds himself chafing against the same rules he pompously insists others should follow the moment they start constraining him.
• Lethally Stupid: He always thinks he's doing the right thing, but his actions are often dangerous to other people around him. Examples:
  • Killing Angela's cat because she was in pain.
  • Bringing various weapons to the office (such as crossbows, mace and large knives) and hiding them in random places.
  • Firing a Smith & Wesson revolver instead of a starter's gun for a fun run.
    • Backs even that up later by firing another gun. In the office. Resulting in Andy's temporary hearing loss.
  • Shooting Stanley with a bull tranquilizer.
  • Putting the staff through a fire drill... by setting an actual fire in the office and sabotaging most of the exits and the phone lines.
• Like Brother and Sister: There are moments with Pam where Dwight actually tries to be as supportive as possible towards her. By the end of the series, the two are pretty much like siblings. It gets to the point where Dwight struggles to see why anyone finds Pam attractive.
• Manchild: He acts more like an overgrown high school nerd than the responsible adult he presents himself as.
• Manipulative Bastard: On occasion. One of his schemes to sabotage Jim in season 6 actually succeeds, and spends much of that season trying to get Jim fired or make him look bad.
• Munchkin: In the episode "Murder," he and everyone else in the office play a murder mystery dinner party game set in Savannah, Georgia. He draws the Butler character but immediately abandons it to play a hardass detective.
• Nazi Grandpa: Repeatedly hinted that his grandfather was a German war criminal, to the point that the Shoah Foundation protested Dwight's visa to visit him in Argentina.
• Nerd Glasses: Has both the glasses and the look.
• Nerd in Evil's Helmet: If Dwight has a chance to perform for the camera or make a pop culture reference it will often be something villainous, and he will invariably take it way too far- case in point, his homage to Silence of the Lambs when he pretends to be Hannibal Lecter by skinning the face off a resuscitation dummy and wearing it as his own!
• No Sense of Humor: Everything is Serious Business for him, which makes him a perfect target for Jim's pranks. The major exception is in "The Injury", when part of his Not Himself behavior after his concussion is that he starts telling jokes, even beating Michael to a That's What She Said quip.
• No Social Skills: Comes with being raised on a beet farm, far away from society with a family that shunned him for two years (starting when he was four years old) for not saving excess oil from a can of tuna, just to name something. This is what he has to say about Angela:
  Dwight: She introduced me to so many things. Pasteurized milk. Sheets. Monotheism. Presents on your birthday. Preventative medicine.
  • When Dwight demonstrates his people skills on Nellie, his choice of words borders on sexual harrassment, with Nellie pointing out that Dwight sounds like he's a serial killer.
• Not So Above It All:
  • As much as he tries to avoid doing so, he does occasionally find himself involved in the antics of his fellow employees - among other things, he was a part of the Lip Dub of "Nepotism", he was one of the many people trying to see what Stanley would notice, and he was willing to help Jim and Pam trick Michael into believing he'd slept the entire day after the latter had eaten an entire chicken pot pie (mostly because he had to bring one of his horses to the vet and needed to leave early).
  • Despite being The Comically Serious in relation to Jim's pranks, Dwight's not averse to winding up Andy who is considerably more touchy than him.
• Number Two: To Michael, but noticeably refused to be Deangelo's number two by season seven.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Occasionally. In "Office Olympics", when Michael offers to rent his spare room to Dwight, Dwight intentionally annoys Michael into withdrawing the offer because he doesn't want to have to say no.
• The Paranoiac: Dwight tends to believe that everyone else in the office has (or even, should have) just as much of a Chronic Backstabbing Disorder as he does and acts accordingly, plotting against others in the workplace and assuming that they are plotting against him; he is a security freak to the point that he doesn't let anyone walk behind him for fear of being attacked from behind, and hides numerous weapons around the office in case someone actually does; he is a Professional Butt-Kisser of the highest order yet mostly so he can abuse his power and further his own career, and ultimately plots to replace his own boss; he entertains numerous crazy fantasies and conspiracy theories whilst simultaneously pointing out the (perceived) stupidity of other peoples' more mundane ideas; and, like many paranoids, his behaviour and attitude becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as it just leads to almost everyone in the company disliking, undermining and pulling pranks on him.
• Paste Eater: In "A.A.R.M." it's revealed that he snacks on Dunder Mifflin paper enough to know which stocks are the most flavorful, with the fact that Angela's son eats Dwight's preferred paper being one of the things that makes Dwight think he's the father (which, of course, he is).
• Perpetual Frowner: "I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life."
  • When Pam tells him that he should smile more when doing in-person sales calls, Dwight gives the most psychotic smile imaginable.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Was this until "The Coup", and then it was on and off until the Michael Scott Paper Company arc, where it seems he lost all of the respect he had for Michael.
• Properly Paranoid: Downplayed. As mentioned above, Dwight keeps numerous weapons hidden around the office in the event of an assault. In "The Negotiation" when an enraged Roy enters the office and attacks Jim, Dwight stops him with the pepper spray. This leads Dwight to smugly ask Who's Laughing Now? when he notes that his coworkers mocked him for carrying pepper spray around. However, it should be noted that this is pretty much the only violent altercation in the show's run where one of Dwight's weapons actually comes in useful, and the sheer amount of weaponry and contingency plans for incredibly unlikely scenarios he has make this more a case of a stopped clock being right for once rather than an indication that Dwight's paranoia is actually based on sound principles.
• Psycho for Hire: Whenever Dwight is given a personal task, he'll be sure to turn it into some complicated action-plot.
  • When Angela suspects that her husband is cheating on her and wants to hire a private eye, Dwight puts her in contact with one of his unhinged friends. Said friend came dangerously close to bludgeoning Oscar with a pipe.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Dwight and firearms seem to be a bad combination. In "Survivor Man" he watches Michael through the scope of his hunting rifle- with the safety off (only when the camera crew apparently question him about what he's doing does he actually think to check it). And then there's the accidentally-discharging-a-gun-in-the-office incident mentioned above.
• Refuge in Audacity: For example, sending the entire office into a panic by tricking them into thinking there was a fire for the sole purpose of running a realistic fire drill.
• Relationship Revolving Door: With Angela. They had a secretive relationship in Seasons 2 and 3. Dwight torpedoed it in Season 4 when he killed her cat, only for the two of them to go back to having a secret affair by the end of the season. In Season 5 Dwight puts an end to it when he finds out Angela had slept wih Andy at least twice. In Season 6 Dwight considers restarting the relationship, but is quickly distracted by Pam's friend, whom he notes is better girlfriend material. Angela marries Senator Lipton in between Seasons 7 and 8, effectively putting an end to her and Dwight, only for Dwight to notice their baby looks a lot like him. Towards the end of Season 9 Angela divorces the senator and admits she's still in love with Dwight, who cancels his own engagement to be with her. The finale revolves around their wedding.
• The Rival: Jim. Andy, initially, but they become good friends in season 5.
• Rules Lawyer: He has a tendency to come up with ridiculous, pedantic and arbitrary workplace rules and demand that they be followed to the letter. Which often backfires on him in his rivalry with Jim, since Jim is quick-witted enough to turn them on Dwight in a way that Dwight feels compelled to follow even if they're to his detriment.
• Serious Business:
  • Dwight treats everything in his life with absolute seriousness, especially his job.
  • Never ever disparage Battlestar Galactica in his presence.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Even more than Michael.
• Smug Snake: Being number two for the boss and having the highest sales in the branch has contributed to Dwight's egomania. Granted, the rest of the sales team are too lazy to compete with Dwight.
• The Social Darwinist: Dwight tends to view practically everything in his life - from his career to his relationships to his dealings with the world at large - as if every interaction is a vicious zero-sum dog-eat-dog competition in which there are no rules, no quarter can be given or expected and from which only one survivor can emerge triumphant, and as if he is locked in constant combat with those around him.
• The Starscream: Starting from "The Coup", when Angela demands that he take over.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Dwight feels this way about anything that "elevates" women to the status of men.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: He and Angela. Both have ridiculously conservative values, don't get along with anyone who is their equal or inferior and barely tolerate their superiors. Dwight also has moments of this with Andy, Kevin and Creed.
• Super Gullible: He apparently suffers from Aesop Amnesia every time Jim pulls a prank on him, and always falls for Jim's tricks and ridiculous lies. At least one episode subverts this when Jim flat-out tells Dwight he's about to punk him, to which Dwight gives a resigned "I know" and takes the prank on the chin.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Dwight and Jim occasionally have to work together when faced with someone who annoys them more than each other (such as Todd Packer and Deangelo Vickers). It's also shown that they actually make a very effective sales team despite their personal animosity.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: While he was always antagonistic towards Jim for the first several seasons, he goes even further in Season 6 when Jim is promoted to co-manager and seriously plots to get him fired from his job. Indeed, this was such a detour into villain territory that this subplot was quietly abandoned due to poor reception.
• Took a Level in Kindness: For most of the show, he's a selfish, power-hungry jerk with occasional Pet the Dog moments. In the final season, he evolves into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who genuinely cares about his co-workers and is open about his friendship bond with Jim and Pam.
• Tsundere: To Angela.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: The few times Dwight was given control of the office, he demonstrates how authoritarian he is by imposing the most inane rules imaginable. It goes from silly to shocking when Dwight fires a gun in the office, causing corporate to effectively blacklist him from ever taking a management position (though Dwight's refusal to take no for an answer impresses Jo enough to let him interview for the job, if only out of pity). When Dwight gets offered the manager position once more, he still imposes some bizarre rules on the branch (such as setting up a password-encrypted security system), but this time he's making the effort to treat his staff like people rather than drones.
• Troll: He's usually the victim of this from Jim but he sometimes trolls Andy by wearing a Cornell university shirt.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: He's quite average and a bit dorky-looking compared to his later wife - the petite, pretty blonde Angela.
• Ultimate Job Security: He even fired a gun in the office, and the worst punishment he got was being barred from the Regional Manager position, and Jo even lifted that when she saw how dedicated he was to getting the job. The fact that he owns the building the office is located in adds into the situation. Even earlier, in season 5, he deliberately started a fire and blocked all the exits (except for one) and all he had as punishment was to get everyone to sign a piece of paper (which he tricks everybody into doing).
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Back and forth with Angela. Andy, Senator Lipton, Isabel and Esther all get suckered into being romantic false leads. Dwight also tries seducing Nellie, though he doesn't have any intent on following through.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Dwight's relationship with Jim is... complicated, to say the very least. On the one hand, the two are always feuding and annoying one another that can cause problems in the workspace. On the other hand, the two can actually be an effective team when they can put their differences aside. However, the two of them eventually manage to become good friends as the show progresses, with Dwight even having Jim as his best man during him and Angela's wedding.
• Worthy Opponent: With Jim. When Dwight suspects his sperm count has dropped due to an electromagnetic leak in the office, Jim tells Dwight that he just made him believe that as a joke. Not getting what jim was saying, Dwight assumes Jim concocted an elaborate scheme to keep Dwight from reproducing, to which Dwight praises Jim for his deviousness.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Dwight treats real life as if it were a different genre of fiction. He treats the threat of layoffs as if he were participating in a competitive reality TV show like Survivor, keeps a variety of weapons in strategic hiding places throughout the office as though violent attacks were imminent, and at one point describes a detailed robbery plan that would be Genre Savvy if he existed in a crime thriller.
  • In general, he seems to view his life and interactions with those around him as if he's the protagonist in a story which somehow combines a 1980s greed-is-good business thriller in which he must ruthlessly betray, crush and annihilate all competition in order to secure the powerful corporate position (which isn't even as powerful as he thinks it is) and a kind of nineteenth century pre-industrialisation rural survivalist narrative in which man must battle the elements of nature. As opposed to being, well, a low-level white collar employee of a slowly failing mid-level paper company in a comfortable twenty-first century industrial urban city.
• Yes-Man: To Michael in the first seasons. This stems from a mix of Hero Worship and a desire for authority, which he thinks being Michael's Yes-Man gives him.
• You Are in Command Now: He's been given command of the office a few times (though none of them have stuck), such as when Michael left for the New York job and when Michael leaves for good but is almost immediately removed because of the aforementioned gun incident and two years later the new CEO David Wallace gave him another chance by promoting him after Andy's departure, and this time Dwight didn't screw it up.

James Duncan "Jim" Halpert

"Right now this is just a job. If I advance any higher in this company, then this would be my career. And well, if this were my career I'd have to throw myself in front of a train."

Played by: John Krasinski

Seasons: 1-9

"I mean, I always knew that the branch would shut down someday. I just figured it would be because Michael sold the building for some magic beans."

Sales Representative/Co-Regional Manager/Assistant to the Regional Manager/Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton.

UK counterpart: Tim Canterbury.

---

• Aborted Declaration of Love: Jim was ready to confess his feelings for Pam as early as the Season 2 Christmas episode. After a complicated setback, he pockets the love-letter he'd planned to give Pam and didn't give it to her until the end of Season 9.
• The Ace: One of the best salesmen in the company, a Chick Magnet to the point that he's arguably the most handsome man in the office, gets away with every prank he pulls, and gets the girl of his dreams. Jim is likely the most conventionally successful person in the office.
• Agent Scully: Doesn’t believe in ghosts to the point where he gets into a full-blown fight with Pam when she says that she does.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Averted. Jim dated former cheerleader Katy, but only to distract himself from Pam.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Halpert is typically a Jewish surname, and his Deadpan Snarker nature fits with that, but there otherwise isn't any suggestion that he's Jewish, and the kilt his dad wears to the Jim/Pam wedding points to the family being Scottish (in which case Halpert might just be an alternate spelling of the British name Halbert). Given Dwight's implied Nazi connections, this would add a layer of Mel Brooks-styled comedy to their feud.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: The Season 2 finale has Jim giving Pam one, which pains the both of them as they know it can't go anywhere since Pam is still engaged.
  Jim: I’m in love with you.
  Pam: What?
  Jim: I’m really sorry if that’s weird for you to hear, but I needed you to hear it. Probably not good timing, I know that. I just…
  Pam: What are you doing? What do you expect me to say to that?
  Jim: I just needed you to know. Once.
  Pam: Well, I um… I… I can’t.
  Jim: Yeah.
  Pam: You have no idea…
  Jim: Don’t do that.
  Pam: …what your friendship means to me.
  Jim: Come on. I don’t wanna do that. I wanna be more than that.
  Pam: I can’t. I’m really sorry if you misinterpreted things. It’s probably my fault.
  Jim: Not your fault. I’m sorry I misinterpreted our friendship.
• Audience Surrogate: Jim is the one who most frequently reacts to the insanity around him, mostly by throwing Aside Glances as the camera.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • He loves messing with Dwight for his own amusement but he ultimately sees Dwight as a friend and will look out for Dwight's best interests. Like when he physically fought Dwight to prevent him from going into a meeting where he'd be scapegoated and fired and putting together the ultimate bachelor party so that Dwight can make peace with Kevin and stepping aside so that Dwight can have Michael as his best man.
  • Jim doesn't think too highly of Michael, but in spite of that he manages to find the occasional moment where he can praise him. The crowning moment being when he figures out Michael is about to leave forever and Jim lets him know he's been the best boss ever.
  • After Athlead drove a wedge between him and Pam, Jim agrees to marriage counselling, only to have to go to a meeting that would potentially undo all the counselling they'd been working on. When Pam rushes out to meet him at the taxi, Jim realizes then and there what matters most to him and kisses Pam passionately, brushing off the meeting.
• Babies Ever After: By the series finale, he has daughter (Cecelia) and son (Phillip) with Pam.
• Batman Gambit: A lot of Jim's pranks on Dwight can only fully work if Dwight reacts a certain way, like using the "gaydar" on himself in "Gay Witch Hunt". But Dwight - since he's Super Gullible and has very specific obsessions and thought patterns - almost always does exactly what Jim expects him to do.
• Birds of a Feather: With Pam, both being apathetic about their work, and aware of being more normal and reasonable compared to their quirky coworkers. They are also both considered the most attractive and desirable people in the office, but don't have much social life outside of work and find themselves in relationships that they're not fully committed to.
• Break the Haughty: Turns out challenging Dwight to a snowball fight was a very bad idea. Jim spends two episodes nursing a bloody nose and fearing for his safety.
• Brilliant, but Lazy:
  • As noted by Pam in "Office Olympics", when Jim gets excited by something, he really gets into it and does an amazing job. Sadly, he works at Dunder Mifflin Scranton, so that doesn't happen often.
  Jim: Right now, this is my job. If I advance any higher, this becomes my career. And if this is my career...I would have to throw myself in front of a train.
  • When Sabre took away sales caps, he turned down a management position because he could make more money from actually giving attention to his job. Then the trope is re-proven when sales caps are reinstated, and when he finds he hit his he immediately goes in to slacking off again.
• Bully Hunter: Downplayed, and more like "Jerk Hunter", but part of what takes some of the potential meanness out of Jim's tendency to prank others is that he usually targets people who are themselves being jerks. For example, several of his more notable pranks against Dwight tend to come after Dwight has been particularly arrogant, obnoxious or high-handed about something.
• Butt-Monkey: After getting with Pam, Jim's cool underdog image is push aside and his awkward moments are played up^note It's possible the documentary crew deliberately invoked this to keep him sympathetic. He's forced to confront Karen after getting suckered into a prank that backfired. He makes a fool of himself while trying to discuss "Angela's Ashes" with Pam's "Finer Things Club". His attempts at leadership expose his similarities to Michael and make his co-workers turn against him. He makes a bad first impression on Michael's new boss. He accidentally reveals that Pam got pregnant out of wedlock in front of her conservative grandmother. Then there's the snowball fight...
• The Chains of Commanding: 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.
• Character Development: He starts as a Brilliant, but Lazy prankster who takes no risk to a more professionally active and ambitious man Happily Married to the woman he had a hard time to confess his love and became Fire-Forged Friends with his favorite target for pranking.
• Chick Magnet: There's Pam, of course, but he also dated Katy, Brenda, and Karen, who even went from "what's up with that guy?" to crushing on him in one episode. There's also Cathy, who unsuccessfully tries to steal him from Pam, and all the other women in the office (sans Angela) admitted that if they had to do it with someone, they would pick Jim.
• Consistent Clothing Style: Jim's office attire generally consists of blue/white long sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled up more often than not and a simple solid black/navy necktie. His choice of attire generally reflects his passion for the job, as he wears much more refined suits when he's feeling ambitious.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mostly directed towards Michael and Dwight, especially during conference room meetings.
• Deuteragonist: With Michael. Most of the shows main plots revolve around those two characters, and they get the most attention. Jim also sticks around from the beginning of the show til the end while Michael leaves in season 7, and Jim serves as the Audience Surrogate.
• Double Date: Jim and Pam get suckered into double-dating Michael and Jan, then Phyllis and Bob Vance. Both convince the two that they should avoid double-dates with their co-workers, to the annoyance of Erin when she starts dating Pete.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Jim's love confession to Pam doesn't work in his favour at all. It's only after a year of keeping Pam at arm's length before gradually repairing their friendship that Pam reveals she loves him back. Jim is then at a crossroads on whether he should move to New York with his new girlfriend and a cushy job or stay in boring old Scranton with the woman he truly loves. He chooses love.
• Enemy Mine: Jim will team up with Dwight whenever an outsider gives their branch any grief.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Michael once commented on how good looking Jim is.
• The Everyman: An easily relatable average guy.
• Everyone Can See It: With Pam. Michael being the exception.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As much as he pranks and mocks Dwight, he strongly disapproves of Michael's treatment of him, notably in "Drug Testing" and "Golden Ticket". Probably at least in part because whereas Jim's actions are in response to Dwight's Jerkass behavior towards him, Dwight practically worships the ground Michael walks on (most of the time).
  • Jim tends to avoid doing anything that involves putting Dwight in serious physical danger, causing him genuine distress, or threatening his job, and is usually among the first to step in if Dwight is in danger of any of those from another source.
  "(Dwight climbs a power pole) Oh, he'll be fine. I made it up there."
  • He looks after Michael in the same vein and in the end, tells him how much he actually appreciates him as his boss.
  • When Michael finds something foul on the floor in his office, the crew immediately ask jim if he left it there as a prank. Jim denies it and say that sounds too disgusting to be one of his pranks.
• Everyone Knows Morse: Jim and Pam went out of their way to learn Morse Code so they could make fun of Dwight without speaking.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Jim gets a haircut when he applies for the corporate position in New York. In future episodes he would sporadically put more effort into his appearance whenever he's feeling ambitious, with his trademark scruffy look eventually being phased out.
• Fire-Forged Friends: He and Dwight go from rivals to friends in the final season, to the point that Dwight makes Jim his Best Man at his wedding.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Jim puts no effort into his Halloween costumes. Dwight's the only one who doesn't find it amusing. Subverted when Pam convinces him to dress as Popeye to her Olive Oyl.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Phlegmatic.
• The Gadfly: Loves playing pranks, preferably on Dwight. It's partly to keep Dwight's ego in check, partly to alleviate the boredom of the office.
• Gaslighting: One of his more frequent methods of messing with Dwight. It helps that Dwight is extremely gullible. His more notable examples include:
  • Paying everyone in the office to call Dwight "Dwayne" all day.
  • Moving Dwight's desk an inch every time he stepped away from it.
  • Telling Dwight that a Ben Franklin impersonator is actually the real thing.
  • Convincing Dwight that he's selling a packet of magic beans, then swapping the potted seeds with fully grown beanstalks immediately after Dwight plants them.
  • Asking an actor friend (who happens to be Asian) to go to work in his place and pretend to be him. He goes as far as to give said actor extensive background information on himself, gets Pam to kiss him and even photoshops a family photo to show Asian Jim and Pam with two Asian-looking children.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Jim lets Dwight believe that he poisoned the latter shortly before Dwight's appendix suddenly became infected. Dwight ends up being wheeled out of a seminar on a stretcher accusing Jim of trying to kill him, which Jim frantically denies.
  • When Michael meets Holly, Jim advises him to be patient and let their relationship flow naturally, instead of forcing a Fourth-Date Marriage. Unfortunately, this advice works so well that when Holly tries to send hints to Michael, he doesn't take them.
• Groin Attack: Jim says that one of the upsides of riding a bicycle to work is that it's "cheaper than a vasectomy".
• Happily Married: With Pam as of early season 6. They go through a couple of rough spots - especially in season 9 - but the marriage survives.
• Has a Type: He briefly dated Katy (the handbag saleswoman first seen in "Hot Girl"), who, as a demure, petite woman with long, light-colored hair, was similar enough to Pam to be dubbed "new and improved Pam" by Michael. Averted with his other major love interest, the dark-haired, feisty Karen (though it's implied that after he went to Stamford, he was specifically trying to avoid a relationship with anyone who would remind him of Pam).
• Hoist by His Own Petard: There are the rare moments when Dwight is able to turn the tables on Jim. Such as Dwight handily defeating Jim in a snowball fight and turning the guy into a paranoid wreck. Or when Jim tried tempting Dwight with his credit card number and security code, only for Dwight to use the information to send a very expensive bouquet of flowers to Pam, meaning Jim can't use the act to get Dwight in trouble.
• Hotter and Sexier: Compared to his UK counterpart Tim Canterbury, a plain-looking man of average height and build with a high-pitched voice. Jim on the other hand is tall and handsome with a deep voice.
• Idiot Ball: He picks up the idiot ball when he becomes a co-manager, ultimately culminating with him outing Pam's pregnancy to her overly-traditional grandmother. Whether it's the position itself, or finding that actually trying to manage the cast of characters that make up the office that drives one to idiocy is up for debate.
• In-Series Nickname: Andy calls him "Big Tuna" or sometimes just "Tuna" ever since he saw him eat a tuna sandwich for lunch.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: When his personal ambitions take their toll on his marriage, Jim finally decides to step back from Athlead and spend more time with Pam.
• Jerkass Ball: When Jim's biggest prank on Andy drives the latter into punching a wall and forcing him to undergo anger management, Jim continues to get under his skin completely unprovoked.
• Jerkass Realization:
  • Once Michael starts listing off all of the pranks he's pulled on Dwight over the years, Jim slowly realises that he's been incredibly mean to Dwight and even if Dwight "deserved it", if nothing else the sheer number of pranks he's pulled were excessive and the fact that he could waste entire days doing nothing but screw with Dwight is just sad. More poignant was that Dwight was trying to get Jim fired or at least transferred for all of these pranks and it dawns on Jim that the real reason he's been doing this is because he's become miserable at work and they are what he does to pass the time so Dwight might even be right.
  • When discussing marriage counseling with Toby, one of Toby's comments makes him realize exactly what he's been putting Pam through by splitting his time in Philly. This is the point where he starts to work on fixing things.
  • On a more minor level, at several points in Season Five strangers (such as with the nursery manager and the nurse at the hospital) point out how annoying and unpleasent his Deadpan Snarker personality can be. He's clearly shocked and abashed each time.
• Jerkass to One: He regularly picks on Dwight, but is rarely mean to other people unless they need to be humbled.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed. Some of his pranks on Dwight are genuinely mean-spirited, but most would agree he's a Nice Guy. When Dwight goes through a depression over Angela dumping him, Jim holds off on the pranks and supports Dwight by staying at his bed-and-breakfast and reassuring him that he knows how it feels to watch someone you love be engaged to another.
• Karma Houdini: Most of his pranks should have gotten him reprimanded. More than a few of them should have gotten him fired. And a small handful of them (particularly when he tried to lob a baseball at Dwight) should have ended in his immediate arrest.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After getting away with pranking Dwight for years, he gets a pretty humiliating comeuppance in the snowball fight episode.
• The Killjoy: As part of his co-manager arc, Jim of all people is annoyed of Michael's antics during the "Murder" episode because of the company being in big financial trouble while Michael is wrapping people in to play a murder mystery game. When Jim tries to call Michael out for that, Michael yells at him to shut up and tells Jim that their employees need that game. Jim realizes the importance of the game^note it distracts them from the bad news and relieves the stress from potentially losing their jobs and encourages the others to continue playing it.
• Last-Name Basis: Affectionately refers to Pam as "Beesly", even after they're married. He similarly uses "Filipelli" when he's dating Karen.
• Lonely at the Top: When he briefly became co-manager alongside Michael. Even Pam struggles to side with him on some of his decisions.
• Mellow Fellow: Jim is laid-back and hardly ever raises his voice. That being said, he can lose his temper when a source of annoyance persists.
• Men Don't Cry: Jim cries precisely twice in the whole series; the first when he's giving Pam a love confession knowing that she'll be marrying someone else. The second when he figures out Michael's planning to leave a day earlier than he promised, during which he makes sure to tell his boss how much fun he had working for him.
• Mirror Character: Whenever Jim gets the chance to be in charge of the office, there are hints that he could turn into Michael if he's not careful.
  • Jim tries to be a different kind of manager than Michael. But he ends up taking residence in Michael's office, gets annoyed by Toby, initially tries to call an impromptu meeting in the conference room, and finds out that his way of handling a simple task (birthday planning) makes things unnecessarily complicated and troublesome. At one point, Phyllis even accidentally calls him "Michael". It's really hammered home by the end of that episode, when Michael reveals that he actually once tried to do the exact same thing Jim did of organizing multiple birthdays into one big party. Jim remarks that he doesn't see himself at Dundler-Mifflin in 10 years, to which Michael says that's what he said back when he was in Jim's shoes.
  • After being promoted to co-manager Jim points out that Michael is too timid to communicate unpopular decisions to his staff, which Jim himself learns is easier said than done.
  "Is there something about being a manager that makes you say stupid things?"
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • Mentioned by a few characters. It doesn't help that during a game of Who Would You Do, Jim jokingly said Kevin. His disinterest in the women he's dating being another contributor, since at least two of them were incredibly attractive.
  • In season 3 Roy admits that he only tolerated Jim's friendship with his fiancee because he thought Jim was gay.
  • Todd Packer asked Jim if he is "still queer", though that's a pretty standard remark for Packer to make towards any guy.
  • Creed also seemed to think Jim was gay, despite knowing of his relationship with Pam and trying to hook Jim up with his daughter just a few seconds before.
• Moving-Away Ending: Jim and Pam move to Texas in the series finale.
• My Own Private "I Do": On Maid of the Mist. Apparently, he got the tickets as soon as he saw the YouTube video of the wedding dance routine.
• Nice Guy: Pranks on Dwight aside, Jim is probably the most pleasant worker at the office. He is one of the few to appreciate Michael as both a boss and a person, he's Happily Married to Pam, and he even becomes the best of friends with Dwight.
• Noob: At Call of Duty. He accidentally kills his own team members, gets stuck in corners and wants to snipe in Carentan.
• Not So Above It All: Jim believes he can do Michael's job better than he can. Then he gets promoted to co-manager and finds out that announcing unpopular decisions will cause enough pressure to make him beg for the staff's approval.
  • In the opening for Season 7, it seems like Jim's unenthusiastic about participating in the "Nobody But Me" tribute video the rest of the staff are doing, until he suddenly starts lip-synching in the most animated way possible.
• Oh, Crap!: Due to being the closest embodiment of No Fourth Wall on the show, Jim's tend to be most visible. He gives a particularly spectacular one when Michael successfully tricks him and Pam into having dinner at his place.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Almost nobody ever refers to him by his actual first name, James.
  • Andy insists on calling Jim Big Tuna.
• Only Sane Man: While Jim is probably the most likely out of the entire Dunder Mifflin staff to point out his coworker's foibles and snark about them, he is more than willing to indulge them for his own amusement whenever he's bored, which is often. In later episodes, though, Jim has shown that he's not immune to picking up the Idiot Ball, especially when he's put in charge of anything, and he and Pam go through a good deal of drama in the final season due to their inability to communicate.
• Pet the Dog: 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 crashes the party and embarasses himself by trying to sing a karaoke duet by himself, Jim sings along with him out of pity.
• The Prankster: Though he usually limits himself to Dwight (or occasionally Andy). He tends to play pranks out of boredom, but occasionally because they're driving him crazy and pranking them allows him to turn their insanity into comedy. How sympathetic Jim is depends a lot on how funny his pranks are and how much the victims did to deserve them in each episode.
• Precision F-Strike: Jim lets one out when Michael makes it clear he's dating Pam's mother. Funnily enough, he was cursing under his breath but the censor bleep made it sound more audible than it needed to.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue to Dwight, Michael and Andy's Red Onis.
• The Rival:
  • To Dwight, though there are occasional moments where they get along.
  • During his brief stint as co-manager, Jim forms one with Michael. When Michael falls into a koi pond, Jim does nothing to help him because he was annoyed at Michael's one-sided idea of teamwork.
• Roommate Com: While establishing Athlead, Jim and Darryl briefly try being roommates at an apartment in Philadelphia. Turns out Darryl is very neat and territorial while Jim is very slovenly and oversteps his boundaries.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • After Pam rejects him in the season two finale, Jim - hurt by her rejection and not wanting to see her married to someone else - feels there's no reason for him to stay in Scranton and takes a promotion at Dunder-Mifflin's Stamford office to get a new start. He stays there in the first quarter of season three before coming back after Scranton absorbs the Stamford office.
  • In one episode Jim bites his lip every time he speaks. When it happens three times within the hour he loses his temper and declares that he's leaving early, right in the middle of a talking-head.
• Second Love: To Pam — she was originally engaged to Roy, but after spending time with Jim more and more, getting tired of Roy's selfishness, and having a Green-Eyed Epiphany, she eventually became an Official Couple with Jim.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: Cathy tries to slip into Jim's bed, but he sees her coming and counters her at every turn, eventually getting Dwight to kill the mood.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: When his two brothers make a first appearance in "Employee Transfer", it's clear that Jim is sweet, thoughtful, and encouraging in contrast to his brothers' mean (with a minor Pet the Dog moment), thoughtless, and discouraging attitudes.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Dwight, naturally. Ryan also becomes one for Jim in Seasons 4 and 6.
• Stepford Smiler: Jim is a snarker who enjoys lightening the mood with with pranks and jokes, and looks to be a fairly laid-back and easygoing guy. But in the season 4 episode "Money", he reveals to Dwight that for the entire time Pam was engaged to Roy, he was absolutely miserable and unable to enjoy much of anything.
• Straight Man: Jim in particular serves to balance the insanity that is Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: While Jim is one of Dunder Mifflin's best employees, he hates working there because he finds selling paper to be incredibly dull. Eventually, he decides to join his friend from college in forming a sports marketing company.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Jim's reaction to Dwight and Angela kissing.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: His co-manager arc in season 6 is intentionally written that way, as Jim becomes much more serious at work due to the new responsibilities he has gotten. He becomes less caring for the other office staff other than Pam, which culminates in him getting humbled and realizing what good Michael is really doing for the office.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Pam in the early seasons, especially in Season 2 when Pam's wedding date with Roy becomes official. A lot of critical speculation said that its resolution would destroy the show. Its continuing strength even after dealing with the UST is a testament to the writing team.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Jim accidentally convinced Pam's father to leave her mother. At their wedding, Pam's father brought his new sugar-baby along, understandably agitating Helene. Helene would then make the unwise decision to shack up with Michael, creating some unnecessary drama between Michael and Pam.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: As noted above, his relationship with Dwight gradually evolves into one of these. Even before this, however, for all his pranking he typically shows more concern for Dwight than you'd expect. Presumably it wasn't for the pranks Jim wouldn't be quite so sympathetic to Dwight's problems.
• Wacky Marriage Proposal: He proposed to Pam at a gas station. Outside. While it was raining. Despite the strange timing, she happily accepted. It helps that he promised to propose at a moment she'd least expect it and was leading her on for months before he finally popped the question.
• Worthy Opponent: With Dwight.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: When Jim gets transfered he starts pulling his pranks on Andy, clearly expecting to start up the same dynamic that he had with Dwight. Unfortunately for Jim he didn't count on Andy having genuine anger issues.
• You Are in Command Now: Avoided. When Jo offers him the Regional Manager position sometime after Deangelo was incapacitated, Jim turns her down, reasoning that the Office was running smoothly enough without anyone needing to be in charge. It's also possible that he remembers the last time he had that position.

Pamela Morgan "Pam" Beesly-Halpert

"I just... I don't think it's many little girls' dream to be a receptionist."

Played by: Jenna Fischer

Seasons: 1-9

"When a child gets behind the wheel of a car and runs into a tree, you don't blame the child. He didn't know any better. You blame the 30-year-old woman who got in the passenger seat and said; Drive, kid. I trust you."

Receptionist/Sales Representative/Office Administrator of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton.

UK counterpart: Dawn Tinsley.

---

• Ambition Is Evil: An interesting case. Averted in the first four and a half seasons in which her artistic aspiration is treated as one of her more positive qualities but played painfully straight after that. She quits her job to help Michael poach clients from her former co-workers in order to get promoted to sales. It's elaborated a bit that Pam frequently gets bored where she is and the bottled up frustration causes her to make too big a jump forward. As a result she also often runs out of steam and gives up on the thing she was ambitous for after she finds out it's harder than she thought. Ultimately the job she sticks with is one she made up that amounted to what she was already doing as a receptionist but without having to make calls. Worth noting is that when she contests Jim's plans to move to Philadelphia so he can start a new business, Pam is shown to be the more sympathetic of the two.
• Babies Ever After: By the final season she has a daughter (Cecelia) and a son (Phillip) with Jim.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Pam, realizing that she's not cut out for sales, claims she's been the (previously non-existent) Office Administrator for months. Gabe tries to meekly get her to admit that she made up the promotion, but she remains assertive and orders Gabe to either call her bluff or give her the job. He gives in.
  The first lesson of watching World Poker Tour at 2 AM: you play the opponent, not the cards.
• Berserk Button: Do not call her "Pammy". And definitely don't date her mother if your name is Michael Scott.
• Best Friend: Aside from Jim, she's also one to Dwight. He said this in the show finale.
• Betty and Veronica: In the third season, she's the Betty to Karen's Veronica, being rather meek, quiet, and risk adverse.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Especially in later seasons, when she has learned to stand up for herself.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: In early seasons, she seems a sweet Shrinking Violet but often helps Jim pranking Dwight.
• Big "NO!": When Pam realizes who Michael has been dating while she was on her honeymoon.
• Birds of a Feather: With Jim, both being apathetic about their work, and aware of being more normal and reasonable compared to their quirky coworkers. They are also both considered the most attractive and desirable people in the office, but don't have much social life outside of work.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Despite her typical niceness, she has a selfish and passive aggressive streak, having a fairly low opinion of her co-workers aside from Jim, Oscar, Toby and Darryl. Not to mention that she likes being The Gadfly along with Jim.
• Bookends: On her last day of work, Pam answers the receptionist's phone with "Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam".
• Break the Haughty: After becoming more ambitious to the point where she thinks she's better than the rest of her co-workers, Pam gets into sales and finds out that she's nowhere near as good at it as the rest of the team.
• Butt-Monkey: Mostly in the early seasons when she's much more of a Shrinking Violet, 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.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Is something of Pam's reoccurring flaw to the point where she can almost be a Master of the Mixed Message at times. Due to coming out of a controlling relationship with Roy, Pam has a hard time firmly speaking her mind and being honest about her feelings. This leads into dramatic results in particular in the final season when Jim starts pushing for a new business venture in Philadelphia; Pam is relunctant to tell him about her struggles raising their kids by herself or her desire to remain in Scranton and Jim takes this silence as Pam supporting his actions.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Pam can snark with the best of them, but when it comes to ice-breakers she tends to fall flat.
  I got Erin a new computer, because the one at reception sucked. I should know. And I don't wanna say the other one was old, but its I.P. number was one!... Right?
• Cathartic Crying: Pam tends to keep her cool during most situations - usually reacting with bored resignation - but when she's faced with the reality of how holepess her situation can be, she'll let them loose. A key moment being when Pam starts crying in the middle of a talking head while discussing how much of her childhood dreams are unattainable.
• Character Development:
  • Pam learns to gain a backbone and be more honest about her true feelings concerning both Roy (her ex-fiancee she doesn't love anymore) and Jim (her One True Love). She became also more assertive even to the point of being brutally honest sometimes.
  • Profesionally she learns to be adaptive about her artistic dream (going a while in a school to improve her skills though it's not worked). And in the office being tired to be receptionist, she changed to be a salesman and then the office administrator.
  • Pam started out as very sullen towards her job, but by the start of Season 7 she's married to a man she loves, has a baby and was promoted to saleswoman, so she's got a more positive outlook on her situation, which she demonstrates by participating in the "Nobody but Me" tribute video.
  • In the show finale, she finally gave up her still persistent insecurity and self-doubt, she fully support Jim in his ambitions outside Scranton selling their house to go in Austin ready herself to moving forward.
• Characterization Marches On: After the earlier seasons implied she's not very athletic nor had any interest in sports, "Company Picnic" in season 5 reveals that she's a whiz at volleyball and played the sport all through high school.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder:
  • She's generally the one who has to take on this role for Michael, but even then she still has a hard time keeping him on the ground.
  • When she's not antagonizing Dwight, she is also sometimes this to him, particularly when he gets a concussion.
• Crying Wolf: Pam uses her second pregnancy to get out of boring situations by shouting "I'm going into labor!". Unfortunately - due to her social circle being who they are - she ends up pulling this one on everybody and they call her a liar on the last one. Then Pam gets the carpet wet and everyone realizes she's not lying this time...only for a water bottle to fall out of her shirt.
• Deadpan Snarker: Steadily became more of one over time.
• Did They or Didn't They?: It's implied in a Season 7 episode that Jim and Pam had sex at work, but both deny it. Come Season 8 and Pam is heavily pregnant.
• Double Date: Jim and Pam get suckered into double-dating Michael and Jan, then Phyllis and Bob Vance. Both convince the two that they should avoid double-dates with their co-workers, to the annoyance of Erin when she starts dating Pete.
• Dude Magnet:
  • Was engaged to Roy; Jim spent three years in love with her before hooking up; Brian the boom mic guy has a crush on her and so does Toby; Andy and Ryan tried to ask her out; Kevin considers her the hottest woman in the office. Michael has also expressed his attraction to her a few times. Creed has stated his desire to see her topless. The Ben Franklin impersonator hit on her after only one hour.
  • She also dated Danny Cordray (Timothy Olyphant) and Kelly's cartoonist friend. Subverted with the former who ends up dumping Pam after their second date because she is too "dorky". Also subverted with Dwight who apparently thinks she is "plain"; when he stands up for her, he tells Danny that Pam is "One of the plain hearty women of Scranton that make this city great. And so what if she doesn't wear makeup? We like her better that way!"
  • Subverted when Ryan moves up to corporate and tries to be a slick New Yorker. He describes her as a seven for Scranton but maybe a six for New York.
  • She is aware of this and in one episode she gets jealous when an attractive woman named Katy comes into the office and becomes the new Dude Magnet among the male co-workers, including Jim. It doesn't help that Kevin outright tells Pam "She's much prettier than you".
• Enemy Mine: Pam doesn't think very highly of Ryan, but during the brief period where they were working for Michael's ill-planned paper company the two gradually form a sense of camraderie. Given Ryan's erratic and insufferable personality, this doesn't last.
• Everyone Can See It: With Jim. Phyllis and Angela straight up tell Pam they're aware of the sexual tension.
• Everyone Has Standards: Like Jim, Pam enjoys a good prank, but she'll draw the line at some of Dwight's outright harmful ways of messing with people, such as the time he tried to suffocate Clark for a laugh.
• Everyone Knows Morse: Jim and Pam went out of their way to learn Morse Code so they could make fun of Dwight without speaking.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: After she starts going out with Jim in season 4, she wears her hair down and ditches the button-up shirts. She reverts back to her old look once she has a baby due to the maintenance, but she still finds moments to get dolled up.
• Extreme Doormat: Pam tolerates absolutely everything Roy does while they're together, no matter how insensitive or borderline abusive. She gets better, to the point where Pam has no reservation telling Jim when she disagrees with him.
• Fatal Flaw: Pam's biggest flaw, especially in the early seasons, is that she's afraid of taking any risks. A big part of the reason she refuses to leave Roy for Jim is because the two of them have been together for so long and she was afraid to disrupt her life. It's also why she remains a receptionist at Dunder-Mifflin for so long even though she hates the job. Why she gets better about it in later seasons, it occasionally creeps up again such as when she expresses worry that Jim's new marketing startup will flop and they'll lose their investment.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic
• The Gadfly: Like Jim, she likes to mess with Michael and/or Dwight for her own amusement.
• Girl Next Door: A big part of her appeal is how approachable she is, combined with her obvious but understated good looks.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: A variation occurs in Season 2. When Pam lets her hair down she goes from being quietly pretty to breathtakingly gorgeous. Michael notices, which causes Pam to quickly tie her hair up again. Invoked in a Season 4 episode where Pam loses her contact lenses and comes to work wearing thick glasses. Everyone comments on how ugly she looks, except for Kevin who has a librarian fetish.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: Pam first noticed her feelings for Jim when he began a relationship with Katy, a purse saleswoman. She also burst into tears when Jim was dating Karen.
• Grew a Spine: Pam comes out of her shell towards the end of Season 3 after running over a bed of hot coals, leading to a public chewing out towards everyone treating her like a doormat, but especially towards Jim for quitting on their friendship.
• Guilty Pleasures: Ryan's awful poetry.
• Happily Married: With Jim as of early season 6. They go through a couple of rough spots, especially in season 9, but the marriage survives.
  When you're a kid you assume your parents are soul mates. My kids are gonna be right about that.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Pam gets the attention of jus about every man who isn't Dwight, Daryl or Stanley. Even Oscar jokingly implied he would go straight for her.
• The Heart: Pam gives Jim a reason to come to work. She also keeps Michael from embarrassing himself more than he typically does and she's able to get on Dwight's good side from time to time. Then Brian the boom guy starts interfering with the documentary because Pam's distressed and she gets the closing speech in the finale.
• Heroic BSoD: Pam gets an especially tense one when Jim surprises her by purchasing his parent's old house without telling her. She tries to hide it knowing that Jim meant well, but it's clear she's pretty disturbed that he would make such a massive decision without telling her beforehand. Come Season 9 and it's revealed to be one of several bumps in their marriage that's convinced Pam to seek out couple's counselling.
• I Hate Past Me: Pam's self-assessment in the finale.
  I didn't watch the whole documentary. After a few episodes, it was too painful. I kept wanting to scream at Pam. It took me so long to do so many important things. It's just hard to accept that I spent so many years being less happy than I could have been. Jim was 5 feet from my desk and it took me 4 years to get to him. It'd be great if people saw this documentary and learned from my mistakes. Not that I'm a tragic person. I'm really happy now. But it would just... just make my heart soar if someone out there saw this and she said to herself "Be strong, trust yourself, love yourself. Conquer your fears. Just go after what you want and act fast, because life just isn't that long."
• Imagine the Audience Naked: After walking in on Michael with his pants off, Pam does not recommend this.
  If anything, picture them with more clothes.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • Pam says as much when Jim applies for the corporate job in New York, knowing that he'd have to move away from Scranton and Karen would have him all to herself. To her joy, Jim throws it all away for Pam because she makes him happy.
  • After Jim steps away from Athlead to save their marriage, Pam feels guilty and resolves to make it up to him. One year later she sells their house so he can move closer to Athlead's main office and have the best of both worlds.
• Jerkass Ball: Pam's first instance being in the Season 2 Christmas epsiode, when Jim got her as a Secret Santa and went out of his way to make her a meaningful gift. As soon as Michael enacted his mean-spirited "Yankee swap" game, Pam swapped the gift for an iPod rather than protest the idea.
• Like Brother and Sister:
  • Her relationship with Michael. She often behaves a lot like a little sister who has to take care of her stupid big brother. Best seen when she races to the airport to hug him goodbye.
  • With Dwight. There are moments where Dwight actually tries to be as supportive as possible towards her. By the end of the series, the two are pretty much like siblings. In the finale, Dwight even says she is his best friend.
• Love Martyr: How she comes across in her scenes with Roy in the first two seasons, since she tries to be the dutiful girlfriend but he's too self-centered and insensitive to care.
• Lust Object: Occasionally seen this way by her male-coworkers, especially Kevin. Even Michael thinks she's the only "hot one", while he belittles the appearance of all the other women in the office (including the conventionally attractive Karen).
• Master of the Mixed Message: A major theme in Season 2 is how she acts this way towards Jim, initiating interactions with him in a flirtatious way (despite being engaged to Roy), but then behaving a bit coldly if he initiates anything. Best exemplified by how she literally makes a point of hanging out with Jim in his bedroom in "Email Surveillance", then one episode later in "Christmas Party" she doesn't try to get the teapot he bought for her back in the "Yankee Swap" game, hurting his feelings.
• Moving-Away Ending: Jim and Pam move to Texas in the series finale.
• My Fist Forgives You: Pam whacks Michael after he dumped her mother on her own birthday.
• My Own Private "I Do": Breaks down shortly before the wedding as their friends and family are driving her crazy. Luckily, Jim had tickets for the boat ready.
• "No More Holding Back" Speech: Pam's Character Development kicks in with this at the end of the Beach Episode.
   I wanna say something; I've been trying to be more honest lately, and I just need to say a few things...I did the coal walk! Just...I did it! Michael, you couldn't even do that! Maybe I should be your boss? Wow, I feel really good right now.
  Why didn't any of you come to my art show? I invited all of you. That really sucked. It's like sometimes some of you act like I don't even exist.
  Jim, I called off my wedding because of you. And now we're not even friends. And things are just, like, weird between us, and that sucks. And I miss you. You were my best friend before you went to Stamford. And I really miss you. I shouldn't have been with Roy. And there were a lot of reasons to call off my wedding. But the truth is, I didn't care about any of those reasons until I met you. And now you're with someone else. And that's fine. It's...Whatever. That's not what I'm-I'm not...Okay, my feet really hurt. The thing that I'm just trying to say to you, Jim - and to everyone else in the circle, I guess - is that I miss having fun with you. Just you, not everyone in the circle. Okay, I am gonna go walk in the water now.
• Oblivious to Love: She appears innocently unaware of Toby's heavy crush on her and treats him as little more than a friend, though it is debatable how much of this is just her politely deciding to ignore the elephant in the room.
• Odd Friendship: With Michael, Dwight and Angela, though all three friendships are off-again, on-again. She is notably one of the few who will ever play along with Michael and Dwight's odder moments, such as Dwight's Recyclops act. She cheered him on while everyone else was just resignedly annoyed.
• Only Sane Woman: Oscar labels himself, Toby, Jim, and Pam as Dunder Mifflin's 'Coalition of Reason'.
• Pet the Dog: One of Jim's prank on Dwight that involves Pam's assistance has her write messages to Dwight while she's pretending to be a sentient computer which is competing with Dwight. Dwight does end up winning against the computer. But since Angela is breaking up with Dwight, he's crushed at the moment, and Pam writes to Dwight "You beat me. You are the superior being." to give him some comfort.
• Plucky Office Girl: Her dream was always to be an Happily Married artist, but at the start of the series, she's a receptionist who has to put up with an insane boss and co-workers that treat her like dirt, and a fiancé that hardly shows interest in her at all. A confidence boost and a new relationship at the start of season 4 turn things around for her, though. The artist thing doesn't work out, but she does end up Happily Married and with a job she likes.
• Retcon: Her name has been changed in canon three times without even counting going from a maiden name to taking Jim's. Her last name has been spelled differently multiple times in the first two seasons, and her middle name inexplicably changes from Jean to Morgan.
• Sexy Secretary: Her male co-workers regard her as one.
• Sexy Sweater Girl: As a receptionist. Mostly cardigans (check out the photo) but starts to wear more form-fitting turtlenecks as she gains confidence. She switches to suits when she starts working in Sales. Roy also says that as part of her "artsy-fartsy" identity in high school, she wore turtlenecks.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: The first time Pam lets her hair down, Kelly compliments her looks, Michael makes an inappropriate remark and Jim stares wistfully at her.
• Shipper on Deck: For Andy and Erin. She also ships Oscar with Matt from the warehouse: "Yes, they're the only two gay guys I know. But they should be together." For Michael/Holly and Dwight/Angela as well.
  • Pam reluctantly tried to pair up Michael and her former landlady, simply because Michael's wangsting over his latest breakup was annoying her more than usual.
• Shrinking Violet: In early years.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: The reason she likes Jim is because he's funny, it's easy to talk to him, and he encourages her aspirations.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Angela. The animosity is mostly one-sided, but Pam understandably doesn't want to try building bridges with her outside of sending mass invitations.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Downplayed. While Pam isn't exactly egotistical, she does have a tendency to look down on the rest of her co-workers despite the fact their jobs and skills are considerably more vital to the branch's operations than hers are. In fact, during her time as a receptionist she has to go out of her way to keep Dunder-Mifflin from installing a new phone system that would make her job redundant.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Pam doesn't go out of her way to look attractive, precisely because she's in a workplace where sexual harassment is all but encouraged by a boss who doesn't know the first thing about how to talk to women. Michael goes as far as trying to kiss Pam at one point.

Usually the day we talk about sexual harrassment is the day everyone harasses me.

• Spanner in the Works: Back when she was receptionist, Pam would come up with ways to keep Michael from interacting with the Techstar salesman, as the new phone system they've developed would put her out of a job. Jim naturally helps.
• Straight Man: Along with Jim she is this to the wackiness that emanates from various corners of the office.
• Team Mom: As Michael's Minder, she sometimes ends up with this role when he needs help with his ill-conceived attempts to be the Team Dad.
• Took a Level in Badass: She starts off as an insecure Extreme Doormat in the first three seasons, until the episode "Beach Games" where she finds the courage to run barefoot across the hot coals and then to tell everyone how she really feels and give a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her co-workers. She becomes much more confident in later seasons.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Downplayed. After she learns to stand up for herself and gains more confidence, she sometimes takes it too far and starts acting smug.
  • This fades away when Pam realizes she's not cut out for sales. After being on maternity leave, she's outright ecstatic to hang out with her co-workers.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: With Jim in season 3. She turned him down in favor of her marriage with Roy in season's 2 finale, but realizes this was a mistake when Jim transfers to Stamford and comes back with a girlfriend.
• Verbal Tic: "Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam" became this out of habit. Pam admits that she sometimes answers her home phone in this manner.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Pam doesn't appreciate the compliments she gets from Michael and Kevin regarding her looks.

Ryan Bailey Howard

"Robert, you got your sheep and you got your black sheep - and I'm not even a sheep. I'm on the freaking moon!"

Played by: B.J. Novak

Seasons: 1-8, 9^note "New Guys" and "Finale"

"I'm in love with Kelly Kapoor. And I don't know how I'm gonna feel tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, but I do know that right here, right now, all I can think about is spending the rest of my life with her. Again, that could change."

Temporary Worker/Sales Representative/Vice President of Sales (Corporate) of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton.

UK counterparts: Ricky Howard, Neil Godwin (in season 4).

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• Addled Addict: Downplayed; later in the "VP" arc it's heavily implied that he develops an addiction to cocaine which is partly what fuels his increasingly desperate and incompetent conduct.
• Advertised Extra: Ryan has been part of the opening credits since the first season despite being an ultimately minor character with shifts in role and personality to justify his place there. His inclusion in the opening credits was sometimes questioned in later seasons, as he's now considered to be even less significant than other characters whose actors are not mentioned in the opening credit. He has been removed from the opening in season 9, but only because his actor BJ Novak has left the show rather than acknowledging that Ryan's role had diminished.
• The Artifact: He has been part of the opening credits since the first season despite being an ultimatey regular character with shifts in role and personality to justify his place there. There has been some Lampshade Hanging in the seventh season about how Ryan does not even have a real position in the office anymore nor does he bother to do any work. He has been removed from the opening as of season 9, but this is because BJ Novak has left the show rather than acknowledging that Ryan's role had diminished. Novak was actually a writer and executive producer for the show, and this was deliberate as he preferred having a somewhat smaller part to focus on the other jobs.
• Awesome, but Impractical: A big problem with a lot of Ryan's business ideas is he focuses on making everything cutting edge, innovative, and cool without any concern as to whether the features are actually practical. Both Dwight and Jim question whether his new Dunder-Mifflin website really needs a social networking feature and Oscar points out that WUPHF's technology would be better as a service for emergency services to use for alerts than an app for people to send messages to each other.
• Back for the Finale: Ryan is absent in season 9, save for returning in "Finale" when Ryan attends Dwight and Angela's wedding.
• Bad Boss: His time as VP is characterised primarily by obnoxious arrogance, spiteful bullying, and increasingly incompetent and unethical conduct.
• Beard of Evil: His rise to the heights of corporate executive and corresponding egotistical jerkassery are accompanied by the growth of increasingly douchey facial hair.
• Big Bad: Of Season 4, after ascending to the VP position and letting his ego get the best of him. Also the straightest example in the series, due to him becoming an actual criminal in the process.
• Birds of a Feather: A dysfunctional example with Kelly. They start off as Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl, but as the show goes on, it becomes clear that their relationship is The Masochism Tango because they are both vain, petty, superficial, and immature.
• Bookends: The intros would always have a shot of Ryan holding up a garbage bag, which audiences 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.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: His relationship with Kelly is this to a T. Whenever they're together, Ryan is completely disinterested in what Kelly wants in the relationship and will dump her as soon as something better comes along. But then when Kelly stops pining for him and shows interest in someone else, he attempts to win her back and succeeds, starting the cycle all over again.
• Catchphrase: Whenever he shows up at the Scranton office in Season 4, he loudly proclaims "How's my favorite branch doing?" The longer the series progresses, the more smarmy and insincere it sounds.
• Characterization Marches On: 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. After being promoted to VP of company sales, he became incredibly rude, selfish and egotistical. After being fired from his VP position and forced to become a temp again, he remained sarcastic and rude while also becoming openly uncaring about his job.
• Color-Coded Characters: Most of his outfits are predominately blue or contain at least one item of blue. When he takes Jan's job, he starts wearing less items of blue, instead opting for darker colors.
• Composite Character: Although he is originally based on Ricky Howard from the UK show, when he takes Jan's place in corporate in season 4, his role and behavior become similar to that of Neil Godwin.
• Dark Is Evil: Well, "Dark Is A Massive Douchebag", anyway; his arc as VP and subsequent uptick in power-mad assholish egotism corresponds with a tendency to wear expensive black suits with matching black/dark coloured shirts. When he loses the VP job he maintains some of the jerkass tendencies but loses the intimidating get-up, to symbolise the fact that no one is going to put up with him throwing his weight around.
• Deadpan Snarker: In the early seasons, this was one of his defining characteristics, particularly on Confession Cam. He still maintained it to a degree even after he got Drunk with Power and let his ego run wild.
  [Phyllis introduces Bob to the Dunder Mifflin staff]
  Kevin: Kevin Malone.
  Bob Vance: Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration.
  Stanley: Stanley Hudson.
  Bob Vance: Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration.
  Ryan: Ryan Howard.
  Bob Vance: Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration.
  Ryan: What line of work you in, Bob?
• Didn't Think This Through: He was clearly desperate to make the website work, both because it was his brainchild and because if it failed, his job would have been on the line. But telling everyone to take the sales they made through their clients personally and credit them to the website as well (to make it look like the website was working) wouldn't have fooled anyone for more than a month at most. As soon as an accountant tried to reconcile sales figures with accounts receivable, the jig would have been up.
• Drunk with Power: He very quickly starts throwing his weight around with his former co-workers and acting like an asshole after getting promoted to VP. This, of course, makes his ultimate downfall into positions lower than the one he was promoted from all the more humiliating for him, as few of the people he lorded over are inclined to think well of him when he comes crawling back.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Lampshaded. Ryan confirms Angela's boyfriend is gay because he liked Ryan's pictures on facebook. At three in the morning. Not to mention Michael's man crush on him.
• Everyone Has Standards: At one point, Creed asked for his help in setting up a blog. He instead set up a Word document disguised as a blog, to "protect the world from being exposed to Creed's brain". He describes the contents as being "pretty shocking, even for the Internet."
• Face–Heel Revolving Door: After going to jail for fraud, he returns to Scranton as a member of the team. Since then, he's been switching between "member of the team" and "barely conceled manipulative malice" seemingly every other episode.
• Faux Affably Evil: He tries to come off as funny and polite up until he gets even the slightest chance to stab his "friends" in the back.
• Feigning Intelligence: As Regional VP, he turns out not so competent or confident in his position, and the use of "business buzzwords" doesn't hide it.
• Foil:
  • To Michael. Both were put in management positions they were completely unsuited for. But while Michael attempted to make up for his shortcomings by being overly friendly towards his employees, Ryan became a complete jerk who was willing to break the law to hide his failures.
  • Also to Jim. Both hate working at a paper company as they see it as wasting their lives, both engage in on-again / off-again office romances with a female co-worker, both jump at the chance to be promoted in order to get out of the office only to make a mess of it, both have crushes on Pam, Jim in season 1 sees his job as temporary while season 1 Ryan is literally a temp etc. The difference is that Jim is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who plays pranks on coworkers out of attention or boredom (and mostly against Dwight) but still values them as people, while Ryan is a shallow narcissist who acts polite to others on the surface but doesn't actually care about anyone but himself except, to a limited extent, those who care about him.
  • His character arc has him swing in the opposite direction to Andy. Andy started out as a hotshot, but eventually became a nice guy who rose to a management position. Ryan started out as an introvert who then became a hotshot and ended up hitting rock bottom. Both also show an attraction to Erin, but Andy's interest seems genuine while Ryan is clearly just looking for a score.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Especially in later seasons, no one in the office cares at all for him, save Michael's creepy man-crush on him, his Relationship Revolving Door with Kelly and the hints of an Odd Friendship with Toby. In season 8, everyone encourages Kelly to date Ravi, simply because he's not Ryan and anyone is better than him (Pam outright tells Ryan that he's not a good person, and even the ones who never met Ravi prefer him over Ryan). In "The Fire", Dwight mercilessly mocks him after finding out that the fire in the office was caused when Ryan made a dumb mistake in the break room (using the wrong setting on the toaster oven), and no one steps up to defend him, not even Michael. Later, after he conned his way to management and acted like an asshole to everyone - coming up with a business plan that would potentially make all the sales staff redundant - he burned all his bridges. Even Michael and Kelly gradually got fed up with how much of a Jerkass he is.
  Darryl: Oh, in the warehouse we use code names for people we want to talk about. Andy was Jelly Roll. Mike was Dennis the Menace. Ryan was douchebag.
  Ryan: Hey, that's not a code name. That's just an insult.
  Oscar: Plus everyone would know who you meant.
• The Generic Guy: During the first two seasons his defining characteristic was being The New Guy. He finally got more focus starting in Season 3.
• Going Native: 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.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: He grows a Beard of Evil after being promoted and promptly shaved it off when he realized Michael was growing one to mimic him.
• Hate Sink: Starting with season 3 and reaching its apex in season 4. Ryan becomes increasingly more arrogant and condescending to everyone around him, culminating him abusing his power as VP and getting the entire office unwittingly involved in an embezzlement scheme.
  • Zig-zagged for the rest of the series. Ryan has some friendlier moments (him bonding with Michael and Pam in season 5, or him pulling the plug on his latest money-making scheme in season 7), but in general he's the same narcissistic asshole as before, and it gets to the point that even Michael reaches his limit with him.
  • Ryan hits his zenith in the finale, when he feeds a strawberry to a baby with a food allergy and then abandons him so he can run off with Kelly once more.
• Hey, You!: In the early seasons, a lot of his co-workers just called him "Temp" or "the Temp". Stanley refers to him as "the kid" at least once.
• Hidden Depths: Apparently he is quite the poet. In "Angry Andy" when Kelly gets a new boyfriend, he is jealous and writes a poem about her. He refuses to read it when Pam asks him to, however she and Jim dig it out of the trash and upon reading it start crying (though it's implied to be pretty awful regardless).
• Hipster: He has settled into this characterization starting in the sixth season.
• If I Can't Have You…: He's almost a perfect version of this when it comes to Kelly:
  Ryan: Maybe we weren't right together but... it's weird. I'd rather she be alone than be with someone. Is that love?
• Informed Ability: He is sometimes credited as being clever or talented for how far he got in the company but in actuality his ideas were all stolen and unsuccessful. Even the website idea actually came from Dwight attributing his failure as a saleman coming from companies leaning more on the internet over time.
• Informed Attractiveness: Ryan as "hottest in the office." It's mostly Michael and Kelly's crushes on him that inform this, and Ryan himself. Michael describes him in his diary as "just as hot as Jan but in a different way".
• It's Not Porn, It's Art: Ryan's photography.
• 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. 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.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While it's clear he's a Know-Nothing Know-It-All most of the time, he's correct that the primary reason for Dunder-Mifflin's struggles is that the company refuses to pivot its business strategy towards a marketplace that is becoming more and more paperless. Similarly, his idea to upgrade the Dunder-Mifflin website is a good one, as when Jim shows the current site to the camera crew, it's completely outdated and nonfunctional even by the standards of 2007. The problem is he goes over-the-top with it, lashes out at people when it proves more difficult than he thinks, and ends up willing to go to unethical lengths to make it seem more successful than it is.
  • He's not wrong on how Michael's behavior is wildly inappropriate.
  • Ryan had every right to be mad at Kelly for lying about being pregnant just to go on a date with him.
  • When giving Jim a verbal warning, he's not entirely wrong that Jim isn't exactly the most motivated person around Dunder-Mifflin and could probably make more sales if he put more effort and enthusiasm into his job, but the warning itself is clearly based on spite, envy and insecurity over Jim's criticisms of his website initiative and better relationship with David, and he subsequently goes way overboard in targeting him.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: 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 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.
• Manchild: Compared to Michael, who's like a really dense 12-year-old, Ryan is more comparable to a 14-year-old who's fairly bright but has no awareness of how the world really works or his own flaws and limitations.
• 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 shallow, vain, lazy, vindictive, manipulative, condescending, callous, 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.
• Nerd Glasses: Ryan starts wearing big thick rimmed glasses after they started becoming trendy.
• Only Sane Man: Early on he had this role, even sometimes acting as the Audience Surrogate.
• The Peter Principle: Played with. On paper he's a good example of this, because he has far more qualifications than anyone else in the office which might seemingly make him perfect for a promotion into Corporate, but screws up once he's there. However, there are several signs that he's not well-suited for the job in the first place — most tellingly, it's established that after being made a salesman at Dunder-Mifflin he never manages to make a single sale. Unlike Michael, a genuinely talented salesman who was over-promoted to manager, Ryan doesn't even have that.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: In season 4. He tries to cover it up with excessive use of office buzz words and hip terminology, but he obviously has no idea what he is doing.
• Put on a Bus: Left the office to pursue Kelly in season 9, though he came Back for the Finale.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Starts wearing nice suits once he gets Jan's corporate job, but soon his suits start to reflect how much of a jerk he's become when he stops wearing ties and starts looking more disheveled due to his drug habits and stress.
• Small Name, Big Ego: One attribute he's picked up from Michael.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • Shortly after dating Kelly, Ryan becomes increasingly disdainful of the people around him. A key moment being when he told Kelly flat-out that he didn't have any long-term plans for them and she ran off in tears. When Pam called Ryan out, he curtly told her he had no regrets. This is lampshaded at one point, where Jim notes that he liked Ryan a lot better when Ryan was just a temp, to which Ryan can only agree. This carries over into Season 3 after his few attempts at kissing up to Dwight and Stanley backfire on him and he competes with Jim for his old desk. The final scene was Ryan accepting a corporate job and gleefully ending his relationship with Kelly without even looking at her.
  • In season 4. 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.
  • From Season 5 up until the finale, Ryan gives hot and cold signals to Kelly. He successfully gets back into her good graces, only to make her dump Darryl and give him money so he can go travelling. After Kelly finds a better suitor, Ryan openly admits that he doesn't want her to be happy if it means he gets nothing out of it. In the finale, Ryan gets Kelly back once more by endangering a baby's life.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: He starts off as a smart student who is also reasonable enough to be the Only Sane Man. His intelligence gets more and more questionable as the show develops, due to his lack of talent when it comes to closing sales. This gets especially noticable in Season 4 when he starts taking drugs. In later seasons, he's just an incompetent and immature Small Name, Big Ego.
• Two First Names: His first and last name can both be used as a given name for a male.
• What, Exactly, Is His Job?: His positions at the office were clearly shown throughout the first five seasons, but in the sixth season he phased into having no clearly indicated position in the office. The seventh season episode 'The Inner Circle' lampshades this and has him temporarily pretend to be Kelly's supervisor for Deangelo to give the appearance that he actually does work at the office. What's more, Jim eventually exiles him to the supply closet and that's where he stays for the rest of his run on the show.
• White-Collar Crime: Ends up misleading Dunder Mifflin's shareholders (aka committing fraud) when his website fails.

Andrew Baines "Andy" Bernard

"Andy Bernard does not lose contests, he wins them. Or he quits them because they are unfair."

Played by: Ed Helms

Seasons: 3-9

"I went to Cornell. You ever heard of it? I graduated in four years, I never studied once, I was drunk the whole time and I sang in the a cappella group Here Comes Treble."

Sales Representative/Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton.

UK counterpart: David Brent (in season 9).

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• Acquired Situational Narcissism: After getting some positive online comments in regard to his banjo playing in the documentary promos, he decides to quit and become a performer.
• Ambiguously Bi: In "Gossip", he's shown to be quite unsure about being straight, to the point of being conflicted on believing or not the false rumor that he was gay, and genuinely unsure about whether he would reject Brad Pitt.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • He rips his scrotum while trying to do a split at the night before Jim and Pam's wedding and landing on his car keys. This is Played for Laughs, of course.
  • Andy's doing a Parkour high jump right on top of an empty cardboard box.
  • His bloody nipples during the rabies fundraising race.
  • Andy trying to break a steel golf club over both of his legs.
• Berserk Button: In the earlier seasons, he really doesn't like pranks.
  "I need to know who put my calculator in Jell-O, or I'm gonna lose my freaking mind!"
  "A lot of people here for some reason think it's funny to steal someone's personal property and hide it from them. Here's a little newsflash! It's not funny! In fact, it's pretty freakin' unfunny! [screams in Angrish and punches a hole in the wall]"
  • Making light of Cornell University, such as when Dwight showed up wearing a Cornell sweatshirt despite "not being a Cornell man," can really set him off.
• Big Bad: In Season 9, thanks to him returning to being an asshole and neglecting his position as manager.
• Birds of a Feather: Was this with his Love Interest Erin until season 9. Being both goofy, eccentric, and easygoing, they get along well.
• Breakout Character: His role gets bigger and bigger as the series progresses, even resulting in a Promotion to Opening Titles in mid-Season 6.
• Butt-Monkey: Jim's cell phone prank, getting marooned on Lake Scranton, tearing his scrotum while dancing, falling neatly into an open box while parkour-ing, getting sunburnt while sailing to the Bahamas his second day on the water, and finally, being made into a meme.
• Cannot Spit It Out: With Erin. Though lately, it seems that he's gotten over her.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • After going through Anger Management, he faces some pretty big Villain Decay and goes from an obnoxious Manipulative Bastard to an eccentric yet likable guy.
  • Seasons three and four imply that, a few screw ups aside, he's mostly a competent employee. By season six, he's consistently said to be the worst salesperson in the office aside from Pam.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Even for an Ivy League graduate selling paper in a small Rust Belt city right behind the Poconos he's prone to silliness. Out of everyone in the office, he's the most likely to join Michael and Dwight in their bizarre antics, including their fake Mexican standoff and doing parkour around the business complex.
• Competition Freak: Both him and Dwight have this as one of their defining traits, at least until Andy goes through anger management.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: He later becomes this towards Erin, making him no different from her previous boyfriend Gabe. After ditching and neglecting Erin for three months when he was in the Bahamas, he becomes possessive of her, going secretly through her cell phone and later trying to fire Pete when he finds out about their relationship.
• Decomposite Character: Season 9 puts him on the receiving end of this trope. While he wasn't originally based on a UK character, not to mention that spot already being taken up until late Season 7, his change in characterization after becoming more confident and his final arc in the series, combined with a previously mentioned incompetence, make him even more similar to David Brent than Michael Scott was.
• Derailing Love Interests: Bizarrely, despite having earlier put Gabe through this so Andy could end up with Erin, Season 9 pulls this with Andy so that Erin could be paired up with new character Pete instead.
• The Dilbert Principle: Was promoted to Regional Manager between Seasons 7 and 8 despite being repeatedly shown to be the worst salesman among the cast. A rare positive example in that he seems to be much more competent as a manager than a salesman (pre-Season 9, anyway).
• Failure Knight: He's desperate for power, status and respect. This alienates most people — but when the office discovers that he was neglected by his parents and is desperately trying to get their respect vicariously, they start treating him with more kindness.
• Formerly Fat: In "Livin' the Dream: Part 1", Andy mentions he was an overweight child, as he ended up breaking several pool diving boards.
• Fratbro: Andy was a former Frat Bro at Cornell and was in an a capella group. He often gives his co-workers silly nick names and even has several of his own ("Nard Dog" being the most common). It seems he was pretty popular at college but not so much in the workplace.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: There are points where he's even less liked than Dwight. Fitting considering that he's just as annoying and bizarre but lacks Dwight's business acumen.
• Hate Sink: For most of season three, he's an obnoxious, ass kissing Manipulative Bastard who acts as an antagonist for Jim and Dwight. Once he's sent off to anger management, this aspect of his character is dropped as his Character Development kicks in.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Throughout the series Andy sings songs clearly not meant for his vocal range, including "Zombie" by the Cranberries, "Stayin' Alive" by The Beegees and "Closing Time" by Semisonic. His singing of "Zombie" is especially notable as it ultimately led Jim to play the prank on him that caused him to have an angry outburst, putting him in anger management and ultimately contributing to his Villain Decay.
• Hot-Blooded: Until he goes to anger management. Though, once he gets pushed over the edge, his anger issues resurface.
• Hypocritical Humor: Andy tells Oscar that he will use his breakup with the Senator as inspiration for sad scenes, which causes Oscar to ask why Andy doesn't use his own breakup with Erin as inspiration. Andy then criticizes Oscar for bringing up such a painful memory.
• Iconic Sequel Character: It's easy to forget that he doesn't appear until season 3, since he quickly becomes a fairly prominent character since his introduction, even replacing Michael as regional manager after he leaves.
• I Minored in Tropology: While his major at Cornell was Economics, fitting for a salesman, he minored in Women's Studies.
• Irony: After spending most of the back-half of Season 9 making pathetic attempts to break into show business, "Finale" reveals that he became a popular Breakout Character in the In-Universe documentary, meaning he didn't even need to bother with the commercials and student films and America's Next A Capella Sensation.
• It's All About Me: Pre-anger management and much of Season 9.
• Ivy League for Everyone: He went to Cornell and makes a point of mentioning it constantly, though, as one of the less-famous schools in the league, this might not impress people as much as he thinks.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: 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.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He was initially a Manipulative Bastard, but after going to Anger Management he Took a Level in Kindness. Come Season 9, with Andy getting accustomed to being the new boss, Andy Took a Level in Jerkass again.
• Manipulative Bastard: Initially. At least successfully around Michael, when he makes him believe that Dwight is untrustworthy and convinces him to fire him.
• Mean Boss: In season 9, he doesn't treat his subordinates very well, especially Nellie, and later Erin and Pete, after he comes back from his boat trip. He also felt zero guilt over accepting a bonus paycheck when the branch turned a higher profit during the time he was out at sea.
• Memetic Mutation: Becomes a rather unflattering one in-universe. By the events of "Finale", he's made peace with it, and even managed to make it work for him a bit.
• The Nicknamer: Consistently calls Jim "Big Tuna" (or simply "Tuna") after seeing him eat a tuna sandwich on his first day at Stamford. He also called Ryan "Big Turkey", presumably for the same reason. He called Pam "Pama-lama-ding-dong" when he flirted with her (a name Michael had also used). In season 9, he calls Pete "Plop", because he supposedly defecates a lot.
  • He also was the recipient of a bunch of Frat Bro nicknames at Cornell that he proudly uses. "Nard Dog" is the most famous, but there were also names like "Boner Champ", "Puke", "Ace", "Buzz" and "King Butt".
• Not as You Know Them:
  • Changed quite radically between the 8th and 9th seasons, into a more confident and assertive but much less sensitive and likable figure. Notably he became much more hostile to Nellie in part to make her more sympathetic.
  • A lesser, but still notable, example is that, in early Season 8, Andy proved that, while he was still naive as a boss, he was willing to learn and fully capable of handling completely unreasonable circumstances (like being demanded to double profits at the drop of a hat, or having the entire warehouse staff quit at once and having to deal with Darryl being completely uncooperative about resolving the situation). In Season 9, everyone seems to start treating Andy like a complete imbecile near the level of Michael Scott.
• Odd Friendship: With Darryl.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: After he gets promoted to regional manager. When he first took over, he was actually shown to be a bumbling but decent boss who the others liked working with, but in season 9 his entire character took a sharp turn. He terminates a major account on a technicality and the office works better during the three months he's not there.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: In season 3, he rivals Dwight to become Michael's Number Two, and he's an even more shameless sycophant than Dwight.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: In mid-Season 6, thanks to the trope below and Ed Helms having a starring role in a blockbuster comedy.
• Relationship Revolving Door: With Erin. They ultimately break up permanently in the final season.
• The Rival: To Dwight. Initially they are very hostile to each other, but after Andy's Character Development, it becomes more of a Friendly Rivalry, at least when they are not interested in the same woman.
• Small Name, Big Ego: At first. After going to anger management, his confidence drops to practically nil. He becomes too overconfident again towards the end of the show, after he receives a compliment about his musical talent and immedietely quits his job to become famous.
• Stalker with a Crush:
  • To Angela, in season 4. Even if she's not interested at first, he keeps insisting to make her change her mind, giving her presents and trying to Serenade Your Lover. He also says things like "All night dreaming about Angela's smoking hot body", and does things like scratching her back as an excuse to touch her (because she said her back was itchy). He would also be a case of Abhorrent Admirer, but eventually convinces her to date him.
  • To Erin, even when he's dating Jessica in season 8. When he sees Erin getting into Robert's car after a party, he follows them. He eventually even follows her to Florida to win her back.
    Erin: Wow. Andy is such a weird stalker. Following me home like that when he has a girlfriend? I should get a restraining order. [squeaks]
• Stalker without a Crush: In season 3, he constantly pesters Michael to get his approval, to the point that even Michael eventually finds him creepy and needs to hide behind a door to avoid him.
• Teeny Weenie: According to Meredith in "Sex Ed" and "Search Committee".
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In the final season. Managed to get his Kindness back by the time "Finale" rolls around.
• Took a Level in Kindness: 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 nicest characters.
• Two First Names: His first and last name can both be used as a given name for a male.
• The Unfavorite: Especially evident when Andy's parents and little brother attend his garden party. Foreshadowed way before that when he explains that he was originally named Walter Jr. but was renamed Andrew because his younger brother "fit the name better".
• Upper-Class Twit: A rare American example.
• Verbal Tic: Tends to drop into a posh English accent and faux-Shakespearean dialogue whenever he's feeling confident, e.g. addressing woman as "Milady." At one point he greets Pam and Jim with "Milady. Mi-tuna."
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Really wanted to impress his family with being new manager of Dunder-Mifflin in a garden party. He doesn't get it from his father. He seems to get over this when his father single-handedly ruined the Bernard family in a single night and left him to pick up the pieces, leaving Andy with zero concern with his father or what he thinks. Unfortunately, this also added to Andy's season-wide descent into a Jerkass, making it debatable as to whether this really was good for him.
• White Anglo-Saxon Protestant: Is a trust-fund baby from a wealthy New England family.
• Yes-Man: At first. After anger management, his friendliness with Michael becomes more due to being a genuine nice guy than this trope.
• You Are in Command Now: Andy's the new official manager of Dunder-Mifflin in the show's final two seasons.

Bob "Robert California" Kazamakis

"I will not be blackmailed by some ineffectual, privileged, effete, soft-penised debutante. You wanna start a street fight with me, bring it on, but you're gonna be surprised by how ugly it gets. You don't even know my real name. I'm the [bleep] lizard king."

Played by: James Spader

Seasons: 7^note "Search Committee"-8

"You see; I sit across from a man. I see his face, I see his eyes. Now, does it matter if he wants a hundred dollars of paper or a hundred million dollars of deep-sea drilling equipment? Don't be a fool. He wants respect. He wants love. He wants to be younger. He wants to be attractive. There is no such thing as a product. Don't ever think there is. There is only... sex. Everything is sex. You understand that what I'm telling you is a universal truth?"

Chief Executive Officer of Sabre and Dunder Mifflin, replacing Jo.

---

• Above the Influence: In "Christmas Wishes", it seemed for awhile that he would try to take advantage of Erin's drunkenness when he offered to take her home, considering the divorce he was going through, a few comments he made to her, and the fact that he convinced her to drink in the first place. But no, he drops her off, gives her some advice, and leaves, much to the relief of Andy, who followed them suspecting the same thing.
• The Alcoholic: Somewhat. It isn't a normal part of his personality, but he definitely has his episodes. The primary one was in "Turf War", where he comes into the office hungover, and it is explicitly mentioned that he got drunk the night before out of depression about his divorce, and among other things, shut down another branch and tried to hit on Nellie.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • Especially played up in the 8th season finale, Spader's last episode as a regular. He hijacks Oscar's "It gets better" video, drinks a coconut and penis-flavored energy drink (lamenting the fact that they added coconut), and kisses Andy on the lips.
  • Deleted scenes from the episode Free Family Portrait Studio would have destroyed any and all ambiguity, as there was a sub-plot where Robert compliments Jim and Pam on their intimate relationship, and then says "I want to be part of it" and invites them to come to his home on Saturday night. Eventually he decides to cancel but he confirms that yes, he was asking for a threesome, and he only decide against it because he had started to see Jim and Pam less as subordinates and more as equals and "without the underlying power dynamic I'm just a guy f*cking two parents."
• And Starring: Spader gets an "And James Spader" credit as of Season 8.
• Badass Boast: Low-key but nevertheless chillingly accurate:
  Andy: [when Robert is just sitting in his office while he himself is having a difficult personal conversation with Erin] I hope this isn't making you uncomfortable.
  Robert: I am never uncomfortable.
• Charm Person: His skills at persuasion border on the uncanny— he manages to convince Jo to give him her job over the course of a single conversation.
• Cloudcuckoolander: In a different way from other characters on the show. His modus operandi is to make himself unpredictable and unreadable to keep everybody on edge around him, such as provoking rivalry between office members, giving employees tasks he works to undermine, and delivering a kiss on the lips to Andy as a goodbye. He even claims that Andy doesn't know his real name, and introduces himself with a different name to David Wallace, making it unclear which name is real, if either, or how many names he's used.
  Jim: Robert California will walk around the office and just strike up a conversation with a random person. It's intense and creepy; but also weirdly exhilarating.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: To Michael. While Michael was an awkward, childish, and excitable boss who was secretly brilliant in his field and wanted everybody to be his friend, Robert is a genius who makes bad decisions and maintains a stoic yet dominant demeanour and tries to keep the people around him uncomfortable and subordinate.
• Creepy Monotone: He rarely goes outside of his cold, measured manner, even when actively threatening people.
• Dirty Old Man: He's obsessed with sex, to the point where his farewell has him mention how he's going to be spending time with numerous young women of various nationalities who happen to be in peak physical condition. Nellie also implies that Robert propositioned her via a drunk-dial.
• Fan of the Underdog: Not so much one himself, but he does invoke this trope in his making Andy Regional Manager, claiming that it works on the "unexceptional".
• Last Episode, New Character: He is introduced in the season 7 finale.
• Manipulative Bastard: He managed to talk Jo - previously established as far from stupid herself - into giving him her job. Jim is both amazed and quietly terrified by this.
  Jim: [during Search Committee, right after his interview] He creeps me out. But I think he might be a genius.
  • In The Season 8 Halloween party episode he spends the entire party ambling around quietly finding out what everyone's deepest fears are, and then improvises a ghost story designed to play on all their fears and also bring them all together as a group, releasing all their tensions, and incredibly, it works, thereby combining this trope with Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Seemed to ping-pong in and out of this trope for awhile, Depending on the Writer. After his divorce with his wife, however, he dove headlong into this trope, making a series of bizarre decisions that drove Sabre into the ground, Dunder-Mifflin only surviving due to the intervention of Andy and David Wallace.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: In season 8.
• Put on a Bus: In the season 8 finale, he convinces David Wallace to give him a new job, "helping" undereducated Eastern European high school gymnasts. We won't be seeing him again, but dear, oh dear, those poor gymnasts...
• Really Gets Around: While he seems predominantly attracted to women, there's hints that Robert is bisexual or even pansexual. During his house party, he tries to get Ryan and Gabe into a three-way.
• Serious Business: He has some sort of intense obsession with Sesame Street (or as he calls it, "The Street"). He cites a short film he saw about paper production on the show as a qualification to work at Dunder Mifflin, thinks the rise of Elmo on the show is a sign of how "ours is a cultural ghetto", and his son is named Bert.
• Slave to PR: It doesn't come up much, but some of his decisions are apparently tied to Jo's legacy. Notably, despite not believing that the retail store idea would work, he had to go along with it anyway since Jo endorsed it (though he got around that by claiming that one of the employees in charge of the project botched the execution).
• Slimeball: While he oscillates between being a Pointy-Haired Boss and Manipulative Bastard, he regards almost everything in terms of sex. Whenever he talks to his staff one-on-one, they usually go away with a vague feeling that they've somehow been sexually harassed regardless of the topic of discussion. He even tries to start a naked pool orgy at a party he hosts at his house, much to the extreme discomfort of the guests who all work for him.
  Robert: There is only sex. Everything is sex. Do you understand that what I'm telling you is a universal truth?