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"'Two Guys' is worth going out of your way for, to get more than you bargained for."
- Slogan for the now defunct Two Guys department store chain
Taniguchi and Kunikida, respectively, but it's not like you need to remember their names anyway.
Two characters, usually in a school setting, to be the mundane Greek Chorus. They're completely ordinary... and no, we don't mean as in the Ordinary High School Student, or the Badass Normal. They're ordinary. Often the best friends of the main character (who is an Ordinary High School Student) before all the weirdness with aliens, robots, magic, demons, etc.
As the series progresses, they're involved in the plot less and less. Given what usually happens to people involved in the plot, it's probably for the best.
Their personalities usually sharply contrast, e.g.. calm/hyper, jock/geek, etc., or their appearances contrast, e.g., short/tall, thin/fat. When they don't, they will be exactly the same. Their names are often esoteric (either too complex or too simple to stand out), plus their non-involvement with the plot usually results in them being called " Those Two Guys."
Occasionally, we get a Lower Deck Episode from their point of view. Expect to ask someone Who Is This Guy Again after a few episodes.
Compare the Beta Couple, Heterosexual Life Partners, Those Two Bad Guys.
Examples:
Anime
- Ranma 1/2 has two sets of these: Ranma's friends Hiroshi and Daisuke, and Akane's friends Yuka and Sayuri. They're also basically the only people without overly complicated Meaningful Names, just very common ones, indicating how normal they're supposed to be.
- Komatsu and Hatta from Kimagure Orange Road are a standard indistinguishable perverted pair of best friends of the main character Kyousuke.
- Keigo and Mizuiro from Bleach. Possibly a subversion coming up in the pipeline, as the local Trickster Mentor Urahara mysteriously told them that it was time for them to get involved near the beginning of the current arc, although no sign of this (or even Urahara) has since appeared.
- Earlier in the series, Orihime and Tatsuki filled these roles, although Tatsuki got into the supporting cast, and Orihime is now a regular, in fact she's the whole motivation for the current arc.
- Umanosuke Tsuchida and Kazuhiko Amagasaki from Tenchi Muyo.
- Chie and Aoi from Mai-HiME are female examples.
- Another female duo would be Maruyama Shoko & Sachi Toyama from Jubei-chan.
- In Azumanga Daioh, Chiyo's two friends, Miruchi and Yuka, from before she was sent up several grades, looked like miniature versions of the two main female teachers. They even have similar names: Yuka looks like Yukari, and Miruchi looks like Minamo, a.k.a. Nyamo.
- There was also a That One Girl in the class: Chihiro, who had a grand total of one memorable scene. When another ordinary student was needed, it was usually Kaorin.
- Haitani and Shirai in Love Hina. The pair are so mundane that Keitaro, and the other characters routinely forget who they are. Lampshaded, as both seem frustratedly aware of this.
- Touji and Kensuke from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Subverted (natch, this is Eva we're talking about) in that Touji suffers a severe injury from getting involved in Shinji's lifestyle, and Kensuke harbors extreme jealousy towards Shinji; both emotionally abandon him for these reasons by the end of the series.
- That's a bit much to say. Kensuke's home was destroyed and Touji was of no more use, plus they'd already started the emotional isolation earlier than that.
- Kyon's two friends Taniguchi and Kunikida from Suzumiya Haruhi. One's tall and lecherous, the other's short and timid. Taniguchi wound up being a sort of Ensemble Darkhorse after getting a few good scenes, while poor Kunikida is just kinda there.
- Let's not kid ourselves. If the progression of the light novels is any indication, there is no such thing as a truly insignificant character in Haruhi Suzumiya. This troper won't spoil anything, but it's fairly safe to assume that Taniguchi and Kunikida are not just decoration. At the very least, they will serve their time as walking plot devices.
- Misao and Ayano from Lucky Star. At one point, Misao even bemoans that she and Ayano are essentially part of the background.
- Moe and Miwa from Tokyo Mew Mew, whose names aren't even revealed for several episodes.
- Corrector Yui has both female (Reiko and Akiko) and male (Ichitaro and Hideto) examples of this trope.
- Ryouko and Kyouko from Kaitou Saint Tail.
- Each of the Knights in Magic Knight Rayearth has her own backup duo, with whom she becomes more and more estranged.
- Alisa and Suzuka from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Alisa had a much bigger role in the Triangle Heart universe, but she was jaded, traumatized and undead, leaving one to wonder why her current incarnation keeps insisting on involvement in the action.
- This Troper suspects that it could be that Nanoha-verse Alisa was not jaded, not traumatized, and alive, which gives her an excuse to try to get in on the action.
- Subversion: Colin and Mary in Soukou No Strain looked completely set up for this role... until they died in the first episode.
- Asuka's friends Junko and Momoe in Yu-Gi-Oh GX. Their main purpose seems to be falling madly in love with every handsome dude in the school (especially Manjyome, Fubuki, and Edo).
- In the original Yu-Gi-Oh we had Insector Haga (Weevil) and Dinosaur Ryuusaki (Rex), who started as kinda-villains then faded into has-been background characters. However, when it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh, they are about as normal as anyone ever is.
- Duck/Ahiru's two friends Pique and Lilie in Princess Tutu.
- TYPE-MOON seems to play with this a bit: In Tsukihime, there is only "That One Guy" (Arihiko, who has this going on with Shiki, the main character, before Shiki becomes an Ordinary Highschool Student), though his role is exactly as in the trope. In Fate/Stay Night, Shirou also only has one (Issei), while Rin, who narrates the prologue, has three (the track team).
- Arihiko is further unusual in that he's surprisingly well-developed for a supposedly minor character. He even gets his own Day In The Limelight story in Kagetsu Tohya.
- Digiko's two otaku from Di Gi Charat are essentially this... except that they're saddled with the unfortunate but memorable collective nickname "Bukimi" (literally "Creepy" or "Eerie").
- In Digimon Tamers, Takato's friends, Kazu, Kenta, and Jeri/Juri. At least, at first. Instead of fading, they're brought into the mix eventually. (Now, Kazu/Kenta and Jeri each have a set of three friends who will fill that role.)
- In Inu Yasha, Kagome's friends from school (Yuka, Eri, and Ayumi in the anime and unnamed in the manga.) who try to help Kagome sort out her romantic entanglements (blissfully thinking she's dating a delinquent when in fact she's hanging out with a half-dog-demon.)
- Also, anytime Kôga showed up, he would invariably be followed by his two lovable lieutenants, Ginta and Hakkaku - or, in one memorable instance, preceded by them, as they hunted down Inuyasha as the only person they could think of who could beat some sense into their packleader while Kôga was being mind-controlled by Big Bad Magnificent Bastard Naraku.
- Tamiya and Otaki, the heads of the Nekomi Tech Motor Club, from Ah My Goddess; in a mild subversion of the trope, both of these characters actually manage to take the spotlight from time to time in the manga, though this is less true in the anime series.
- Suzuki and Sato, the heads of the Photography Club, from Ai Yori Aoshi.
- Naru Osaka and Umino Gurio from Sailor Moon, Usagi's classmates. Featuring quite prominently in the first season, they become less and less important over the course of the series and have all but disappeared by the last season. It's even worse in the manga, where they disappear almost immediately: as soon as Ami appears, they're gone.
- In the anime, we also had Usagi and Naru's long-haired classmate Kuri and a chubby girl that never had her name properly revealed. They stick around for some episodes of the first series and then disappear.
- Kuwabara's gang, and later, arguably, Kuwabara himself. Keiko also has two friends who hang out with her in the first story arc, and in the end, she's probably worse off than Kuwa-chan.
- Although to be fair, Kuwabara does return in the manga for one last hurrah at the end.
- Sakuno Ryuzaki, Tomoka Osakada, Satoshi Horio, Kachiro Katou and Katsuo Mizuno in The Prince Of Tennis are These Five Kids for the Seigaku team. In a sense, also Arai and the other second years aside of Momoshiro and Kaidoh.
- Shinichi and Daijirou from This Ugly Yet Beautiful World. A standard pair of perverts.
- Hilariously lampshaded in Happy Lesson, where Those Two Guys introduce themselves and are listed in the credits as Student B and Student C, complete with romanji letters showing which one's which on their forehead. Oddly enough, they may have a bit of deepness behind them; we once see the two kneeling in front of a grave with a large A emblazoned on it.
- Drake and Ted from FAKE. Subverted in FAKE II with their promotion to the Five Man Band.
- Poor Rivalz from Code Geass is That One Guy, who goes out of his way to try and do something cool and noble in the season finale... and fails. The Japanese fans nicknamed him "Air", an effective description of how relevant the poor guy actually is to the main plot.
- And yet he seems inexplicably popular in North America, second only to Clovis La Britannia, a throw-away villain from very early in the series, in a poll. This troper believes 4Chan is to blame.
- Taro, Myu-myu and the other guy from Serial Experiments Lain, often seen hanging out at the Cyberia or somewhere like that; Taro does gets some protagonism though, telling Lain what the Psyche processor is for, and then having a one-scene affair with her.
- They are more a plot-device than Those Two Guys. The series also has a straight example, namely Juri and Reika, Lain's only school acquaintances/friends apart from Arisu. Reika is outspoken, while Juri is kinda childish, for example suggesting that Arisu should date a boy for the sole reason that people wouldn't make rumours about her crush towards a teacher. Neither of the two ever learn about the massive, terrible phenomenon going on right under their noses, even when Juri was the one who first alluded to it in-series (she was seen crying her heart out after receiving an e-mail from Chisa Yomoda, who had just killed herself.. right after Chisa's death).
- Yayoi (short) and Lilie (tall) from Mai-Otome.
- Shiratori's three art school classmates in Mahoraba, two girls and one guy, are so ordinary they don't even get get named. One of the Drama CDs revolves around trying to find their names.
- Osamu Tezuka had the same two guys in nearly ever manga he did, a pair named Tic Lamune & Tucker Calpis who were deliberately designed to resemble Abbot & Costello. Tamao, Ken & Shibugaki, the boys from Astro Boy's class also fit the bill.
- In the Hayate The Combat Butler anime, no less than five girls from the Absurdly Powerful Student Council fit into this category. Three of them—Hanabishi Miki, Segawa Izumi, and Asakaze Rika—are more regular in anime appearances and are very rarely found apart. Aika and Chiharu appear much less in the anime and they lampshade this in one episode.
- In a somewhat unorthodox example, Li Syaoran of Cardcaptor Sakura managed to be both the straight man in a Those Two Guys combo (his partner is Yamazaki), a major recurring character and the Love Interest.
- And when Eriol appears, he takes Syaoran's role of the straight man in his duo with Yamazaki.
- Those two guys from Fruits Basket. They are literally so unimportant to the main plot that the poor guys aren't even given names, despite them showing up various times, mostly to make fun of Kyo.
- Izumo and Kotetsu from Naruto. Up until their involvement in the fight against Hidan and Kakuzu, they were always the ninja Those Two Guys, even to the point of remaining unnamed in the manga through multiple character popularity polls.
- Jubei-chan has two sets of these, of both genders - Sachi and Maro are Those Two Girls for Jiyu, and Kozaru & Ozaru are Those Two Guys for Ban.
Video Games
- The Final Fantasy video game series features repeated incarnations of Those Two Guys, invariably named Biggs and Wedge after two minor characters from Star Wars.
- The Turks would also be a good example, Reno and Rude acting much like a comedy duo in The Movie Advent Children.
- Of course, Biggs and Wedge are generally a minor subversion, as they tend to get killed at some point.
- An especially weird example occurs in Kingdom Hearts where Donald and Goofy objectively fill this role as 'normal' characters, despite technically being much more well-known than the Squeenix-born characters.
- Fire Emblem will have two ordinary Knights travel with the main lord of the game. They generally are not in charge, important, or in any way special. The pair were just chosen to protect the Prince/Princess when plot happened. They are always sharply contrasting, they have no late game dialog or importance, you could let them die at any point. They are a recurring theme for the series, one of the knights wears red, the other wears green. Generally, any dialog with one has the other in it as well (except for certain one-on-one dialogs that happen later on).
- Fire Emblem 9 has Oscar and Kieran, who do not appear together when you first meet them. However Kieran has a not short dialog with Oscar showing them to be another example of this trope. Since Kieran is a self-obsessed duty bound ignored self-proclaimed rival, and Oscar is a laid back lazy relaxed friendly guy who wonders what crawled up Kieran's backside.
- Subverted in Fire Emblem 7 since the "red cavalier" of the game, Kent, can support with the Tsundere female lead Lyndis (awakening her dere-dere aka "warm" side rather than the tsun-tsun aka "cold" one) and even *marry* her if they reach A level.
- Fire Emblem 10 has Edward and Leonardo, neither of which is a knight, but both members of La Resistance at the beginning of the game. True to trope, they quickly disappear from the plot, but with an interesting subversion: when everything is quickly going to hell for Micaiah and she's doubting her choices, they appear for a quick scene that drives the point painfully home that the whole country, including her old friends, are trusting her to be always right.
- Mother 3 has Lou and Bud, two minor characters who appear in chapter 1. Every time Bud says something, Lou slaps him. Odd.
- Both Osu Tatakae Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents usually feature two team members that stays constant whenever the difficulty changes, except during the hardest difficulty (where everyone gets replaced by girls). They usually follow their current leader and not the one who did most actions (they did, but not as big as the leader, who also does most poses, especially the rivalry poses in Ouendan 2). Their names:
- Ouendan: Atsushi Saitou and Ittetsu Suzuki (Red team), Tsufushi Moriyama and Kenshin Sugita (blue team)
- Elite Beat Agents: Agent Derek and Agent Morris
- And even the girls have their version of this trope. There's Aoi Kanda and Anna Lindhurst (Ouendan red team), Honoka Kawai and Reika Minazuki (Ouendan blue team), Agent Missy and Agent Foxx (Elite Beat Agents)
- Xenosaga has The Professor & Assistant Scott, a pair of Super Robot otakus trying to make it in a Real Robot world. In the first two games they only play a part in optional sidequests, but in the third they are integrated into the main plot, joining the crew & even rebuilding KOS-MOS into her final form.
- Two Knights in Medieval 2 total war will always go after your agent if he utterly screwed up. They will never kill him on screen though. Cue Yakety Sax here.
Western Animation
- Rasoul and 2/3 (Can't remember the exact amount) Royal Guards from Aladdin.
- Lenny Leonard and Carl Carlson from The Simpsons.
- Timmy's best friends Chester and A.J. on The Fairly Odd Parents.
- Pete White and Master Billy Quizboy from The Venture Bros., who are also business partners and roommates in addition to being super-scientists. In fact, most of the series' characters are foils for one another; Doctor Venture and Brock, The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend, Hank and Dean, Watch and Ward, Monarch Henchmen 21 and 24, etc.
- Code Lyoko has two pairs: the two School Newspaper Newshounds Millie and Tamiya, and arguably Sissy's two cronies, Herb and Nicholas.
- Flem and Earl from Cow And Chicken.
- Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King. They later got their own series, and their own movie.
- Several such pairs exist in Transformers Animated: Blitzwing and Lugnut, Bumblebee and Bulkhead, and Mixmaster and Scrapper.
Live Action TV
Film
- The Pirates Of The Caribbean series has two sets of these. One set are pirates (Pintel and Ragetti) who explain the convoluted plot to each other, and the other, less-used pair are a duo of Laurel and Hardy-inspired redcoats who are always debating things (Murtogg and Mullroy).
- In This Troper's opinion, they're the best bits of the movies.
- Manos: The Hands of Fate has those two teenagers who are sitting in a car making out with each other. They have no relevance to the plot in any way. It also has a pair of policemen, whose presence at least makes sense, even if they are just as meaningless.
- Robin Hood: Princes of Thieves has the two guys who first argue over which is left and which is right, then try to rob Marian and Sarah in the woods.
- Jay and Silent Bob in most Kevin Smith movies.
- Additionally, Steve-Dave and Walt "The Fanboy" Flanagan fit this role from time to time as well, though obviously not to the same extent as Jay and Bob.
- As Askewniverse movies tend to be extremely dialogue driven, any Two Guys can be up-graded and down-graded into a greek chorus.
- Mean Girls has the the other two Plastics Karen and Gretchen who devotedly follow around first Regina and later Cady.
- Star Wars: R2-D2 and C-3PO.
- R2-D2 is the real hero of Star Wars. That is all.
- Harold and Kumar's semetic duo, Rosenberg and Goldstein.
- A very early film example are Charters and Caldicott from The Lady Vanishes (and a half dozen other movies of the early 40s) who spend their on screen time mostly obsessed with the current cricket scores.
- Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure stars two of these.
- Brian Posehn and Patton Oswalt in Desperate But Not Serious appear several times, discussing which Star Wars characters are gay.
- In The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe (Sellers' colleagues from The Goon Show) pop up in a largely non-speaking capacity several times after the opening scene of a show recording, symbolizing Peter's disconnect with his old friends and his first great success out of his ambition to become a film actor, and his eventual alienation of virtually everyone he was ever close to. (Peter was actually quite close to these two guys throughout his life, but it's the kind of movie that's not interested in the good times.)
Theater
- This is Older Than Steam, the original pair being Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet. The later POV Sequel, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, subverts this.
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are also quasi-subverted in the trope-making story, as they are also unintentional evil minions. Hamlet kills them anyway.
- These two go on to inspire and inform several Greek Chorus duos, most obviously Vladimir and Estragon (Waiting for Godot), more recently, Jay and Silent Bob (The Askewniverse Films) and even more recently and obviously, Rosenberg and Goldstein of the Harold and Kumar films.
- Not to mention the near-Expy of the duo in The Lion King, Timon and Pumbaa, who then get their own Rozencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead.
- And theDoctor Who serial "Warrior's Gate" (not one of the Robert Holmes ones) has Royce and Aldo.
Literature
- Turkey and Nippers in Herman Melville's short story Bartleby the Scrivener.
- Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon frequently fulfill this role in Discworld City Watch stories.
- Not to mention their various international counterparts...every locale has an ethnic equivalent of Fred & Nobby
- Inspectors Lestrade and Gregson in Sherlock Holmes. Good enough coppers in their own way but naturally can't compare with the Great Detective. Their role in the series dwindles towards the end.
- Merry and Pippin from Lord of the Rings.
- Harry Potter, having Loads And Loads Of Characters, has several of these: Crabbe and Goyle, Dean and Seamus, Lavender and Parvati, etc.
- From The Faerie Queene, Braggadocchio and Trompart, mostly harmless nuisances who go around posing as a knight and his squire after Braggadocchio steals Guyon's horse.
- Some of Redwall's PunchClockVillains appear in pairs, but aren't nasty enough to qualify as Those Two Bad Guys. Lousewort and Sneezewort are probably the most memorable.
Webcomics
- As proof that you can pull these guys from other categories, No Need For Bushido has the pair start out as part of a small group of bandits, the first moment of menace for the Heroine and the chance for the Hero to save the Heroine for the start of a Rescue Romance (or whatever). Then we think they're out of the story. Nope, they show up later, and their oblivious-to-obvious-clues nature pretty quickly becomes a running gag before they end up finding the party and starting to help them out.
- Xander and Max from The Wotch
Web Animation
- Mr. Bland and Señor "Having a Little Trouble" from Homestar Runner. They both entered the Strongest Man in the World Contest... and only lasted a couple of seconds. They only have one line each. Strong Bad jokingly explained their lack of appearances because they were crushed by a falling concession stand. Most of their appearances are in the cartoons poking fun at the creators' old drawing style.
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