British Sitcom written by Graham Linehan (of Father Ted and Black Books fame), set in the fictitious Reynholm Industries, a prominent London-based corporation filled with "a lot of sexy peoplenot doing much work and having affairs". Unfortunately for them, the "standard nerds" who make up the IT Department are not part of this glamorous world. Consigned to the squalid basement, they're looked down upon and disregarded by everyone else despite their skills keeping the entire place running smoothly.The series ran for four seasons. It focuses on the team of Roy (Chris O'Dowd), the surly and slovenly comic book fan; Moss (Richard Ayoade), a naive, innocently tactless and stereotypically geeky mother's boy; and the new 'Relationships Manager' Jen (Katherine Parkinson), a twitchy career-woman who, despite her complete lack of technical understanding and computer know-how, almost possesses a valuable ability the two geeks sorely lack — social skills.Frequent guests included Chris Morris as the aggressively eccentric (to the point of complete madness) company chairman Denholm Reynholm, Noel Fielding as reclusive Goth sysadmin Richmond Avenal, and Matt Berry as Douglas Reynholm, Denholm's extremely promiscuous son who takes over the business in series two.The series is produced in the classic Britcom mode (as opposed to the more naturalistic style popularised by The Office and Extras), despite it going out of style in UK television. It has a loyal following and often did pretty well in the audience ratings. An American remake was commissioned with Joel McHale as Roy and Richard Ayoade playing Moss again. It was leaked and can be found online. The German remake ran for exactly two episodes due to bad actors, badly translated puns and therefore bad viewer numbers.Has a character page under construction.
Sometimes missed by American audiences who might not realize this isn't just the British way of pronouncing it. But listen to how Moss and Roy pronounce the word, and how Roy cringes every time Jen says it with the accent on the 1st syllable instead of the 2nd.
In one episode, when recommended a restaurant called "Messy Joe's" to Jen, Moss pronounces it "Meh-SEE-joes", causing Jen to think it was an Italian restaurant.
Acting Unnatural: Moss and Roy after Moss shoplifts the Grand Designs DVDs in "Bad Boys". Moss, Roy, and Richmond in "The Dinner Party" in a slightly different variation where Jen tells them to try and look normal to keep up appearances.
Actually Not A Vampire: Richmond the goth. Nocturnal, sensitive to sunlight, kept locked in a dark basement as a "punishment"... when Jen cuts herself, he pounces on her hand and does... something to it as she screams in terror, only to discover he's put a bandaid on it.
Combined with Groin Attack in Douglas' electric pants he has to wear as part of his sexual harassment suit settlement with Jen. They malfunction horribly, sending random jolts of electricity in his balls with increasing regularity.
Douglas: It's like being tazed in the balls, only painful.
A-Team Montage: The pilot episode uses this - with the A-Team music included as a Brick Joke since Denholm had mentioned the A-Team earlier when telling the IT Department how much he loved teams.
Bad Liar: Moss. Any time he tries to lie on Jen's behalf, he freezes for a few seconds before blurting out "She's dead!"
Jen herself isn't much of a criminal mastermind, doing things like faking a phonecall on a disconnected phone or faking typing on an unpowered computer. She's just lucky that whenever she's lying to anyone in power they're usually too dumb to notice.
Bang Bang BANG: Averted when Douglas shoots himself in the leg - it's so loud the ensuing ringing noise drowns out the dialogue for a few seconds.
Bait-and-Switch Comment: Roy and Moss are pranking Jen into believing she's holding onto The Internet so she can present it to the shareholders:
Moss: I spoke to the Elders of the Internet not one hour ago. I told them about Jen winning Employee of the Month, and they were so impressed that they wanted to do whatever they could to help.
Jen: Wait a minute... "The Elders of the Internet?" The Elders of the Internet (excitedly) know who I am?!
Bedmate Reveal: A threefer at the end of series one. Jen with Moss, Roy with the therapist who looks like his mother and Denholm with Richmond.
The Bet: Roy, annoyed that "have you tried turning it off and on again" has become "like a bloodycatchphrase" bets Jen £100 quid that he can go the rest of the day without saying it. And then walks straight into a situation involving a malfunctioning bomb-disposal robot.
Beware the Silly Ones: Douglas may seem like a harmless, if sexually crazed, moron, but his memories of his last moment with his dead wife involve her screaming for help because he was trying to kill her.
Big Ham: Damn near everyone, though special mention deserves to be given to the Reynholms, who deliver a good two thirds of their dialogue in energetic shouts.
Black and Nerdy: Moss. What better visual shorthand could there be for this trope than an afro with a side-parting?
Cuke from the same episode. "It's like heaven in a can!" (oddly enough, later episodes just referenced Coke instead of Cuke).
Played straight and averted simultaneously in the same episode when Roy orders a "Bacardi and Cuke" at the bar.
Jitter from series four.
A lingerie catalog called Penelope's Fancies
Blatant Lies: "I love that you used to be a man! It's your thing! I love thinking about that operation that you had!"
Break The Motivational Speaker: Roy and Moss stress out the man they bring it to talk about how to prevent losing one's temper while stressed so much that he loses his temper at them.
Brick Joke: Several per episode, no reference ever seems to be wasted.
"Calamity Jen" probably has the most obvious examples.
In "The Work Outing" Roy gets caught in the handicapped bathroom at a theater and pretends to be disabled so he won't get in trouble. He tells the theater staff and police that his wheelchair was stolen by a bearded, red-haired man with glasses. Later, the police see a man matching that description leaving the theater and quietly take him away. In the same episode, Moss is caught using the employee bathroom and is mistaken for a new employee. Later, Jen goes to a party at the theater to find Roy in a wheelchair and Moss tending bar.
Another episode has Moss have a Eureka Moment, in which decides it would be better to leave his phone in his shirt pocket rather than his back pocket, for easier access. Later in the episode, he leans down to flush the toilet and his phone falls out. Even later in the episode, Moss gets stuck in a toy crane machine while trying to get an iPhone, and it isn't until the end of the episode that Jen realizes she forgot to get him out.
Brilliant, but Lazy: Roy's entire work-ethic. In one episode he hooked up a tape-recorder to the phone with his side of the conversation pre-recorded, simply so he didn't have to bother answering the same old inane IT questions again and again.
British Brevity: Like most UK comedy shows, only has six 30-minute episodes per season. It will end in 2012 after four seasons and a special.
Broken Ace: Richmond was once one of Reynholm Industries' top executives, before being sent to the basement after becoming a Goth.
Broken Glass Penalty: Moss was sued by his mother for accidentally breaking the patio window when he was a child.
She even held a Kangaroo Court where she was both prosecution and judge (possibly of the Hanging Judge variety) with a viewing gallery for the cats.
Denholm, who is mad as a box of frogs yet runs a company so large that the takeover of ITV casts barely a ripple and was taking money from the pension fund.
Douglas asks Moss to call 999 in Series 3, to which he responds that that isn't the number anymore, and starts to sing the jingle from Series 1, Episode 2. "0118 999 88199 9119 725... 3"
In the third series, Jen sues Douglas for sexual harassment. During the settlement meeting Jen is wearing a large pair of sunglasses that cover her eyes entirely causing Douglas to accuse her of sleeping at one point which she immediately denies. In the last episode of series four when Douglas' wife is divorcing him, she wears a similar pair of sunglasses to the settlement meeting. During the meeting Douglas suggests she is wearing the glasses to hide her fear, but it's then revealed she's actually just asleep.
The plot of The Haunting of Bill Crouse is briefly mentioned in the episode The Speech.
Jen: "I've won employee of the month."
Roy: "I thought you had already won that."
Jen: "No, everyone thought I was dead."
And again in "Aunt Irma Visits", where Moss reveals that he was forced to attend therapy sessions after making that up, as it was seen as a sign of serious mental disturbance.
Camp Gay: "A gay musical... called Gay. That's quite gay."
For Roy: "Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?" - lampshaded in "Bad Boys", when he realises that he says it a lot and starts worrying that it might be a catchphrase.
For Jen: "Taxi!" - usually heralding the end of the episode, or at least her subplot.
Moss keeps asking for a White Russian, despite not knowing what it is.
Chekhov's Gun: At least one per episode, it's hard to find one where a comment or event will not return later to catastrophically affect the plotline. Bonus points for Douglas randomly looking into a drawer he never opened before and finding his grandfather's service revolver in it, making it a literal example of the trope.
Chew Bubblegum: Naturally, Moss gets to say a suitably geeky variant.
I came here to drink milk...and kick ass. And I've just finished my milk.
Chew Toy / Butt Monkey: Roy, who's arguably the most notoriously unlucky of the cast, qualifies as either of these, depending on how sympathetically he's portrayed in any of the episodes.
Church of Happyology: Beth Gaga Shaggy and the Spaceologists, whose opposition to the massage industry parallels Scientology's hate of psychiatry. The show's Guy Fawkes mask is very prominently shown throughout the episode, of course.
Jen shouts a string of mostly profanity at a Japanese executive after he stomps on her injured foot by mistake. The executive is confused for a bit . . . until his interpreter begins to repeat the tirade for him in Japanese. Played for Laughs even more in that all the cursing by Jen was bleeped out - to the characters and not just the audience, as it is revealed one of Denholm's subordinates was slamming a big red "Profanity Button" on the wall at every cuss word. Denholm follows this up by immediately turning to Jen and shouting "You fucked up!" at her, which the subordinate is too late to bleep out.
And in Series 2, Roy's outburst at Denholm's funeral when his phone vibrates so violently that he thinks he's having a heart attack.
Jen: "You need to pretend to be normal people, yeah? Keep the conversation about things that would interest everybody. You know, nothing about memory or RAM."
Continuity Nod: While most episodes are fully autonomous from each other, the amount of continuity nods and in-jokes increases throughout the seasons.
Somewhere between this and Brick Joke is the new emergency services number. Brought up and used for jokes in the first season, then not referred to again for two whole seasons.
The "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?" conversation makes a comeback in series 4.
A minor one, when Jen applies for a new job, she references that she knows and is a fan of Guided By Voices, a band she admits she wouldn't know if she wasn't at the IT. This is a nod to the song "Game of Pricks", by the same band, that appears at the end of The Dinner Party episode.
"Reynholm vs. Reynholm" has a bunch, including a reference to Douglas's fight with his transsexual ex-girlfriend, Roy testifying about getting kissed on the bottom, and the return of Richmond.
Countdown: Moss wins Countdown and joins 8+, a swanky, exclusive club of Countdown winners, where he participates in the illegal, unlicensed and highly dangerous Street Countdown.note Unless you dress up warm for the chilly air. Then you're probably fine.
Crazy-Prepared: Denholm creates a tape that predicts his son Douglas dramatically gatecrashing his own funeral and chatting up a random woman during the process, which of course, happens to a tee.
Graham Linehan appears in the chaos at the end of Jen's Employee of the Month speech, as a member of the Mariachi band in the episode "Fifty-Fifty," and the "Blind Irish Sorcerer" from "Men Without Women."
The producer makes a cameo at the beginning of series 2 as the gay, disabled man who comes on to Roy. Bonus points because of the fact that he actually IS disabled.
Damned by Faint Praise: The reviews for Gay! A Gay Musical: "The audience applauded;" "More than tolerable;" "Not as long as some musicals"
A Day in the Limelight: The season 4 finale "Reynholm vs Reynholm" focuses primarily on Douglas - while Jen is still heavily featured, Roy and Moss have only very brief appearances.
Delayed Reaction: Lampshaded. Roy continues to promise Jen that one of these days, they'll prove she knows nothing about computers, even after Moss shows him that the computer she'd been pretending to use wasn't plugged in. When he storms out, Moss tells Jen "He'll realise in a minute," and they patiently wait until he leaps back through the door gesticulating wildly at the plug.
Description Cut: In "Jen the Fredo", Jen assures Roy that businessmen are different from what they were in the seventies. Cut to Reynholm laughing with a pack of visiting businessmen, apparently having just finished a discussion about their balls.
Digging Yourself Deeper: Roy tells the psychiatrist she looks like his mother, and it's all downhill from there. Waaaaay downhill.
Digital Piracy Is Evil: An anti-piracy ad compares digital piracy to stealing a handbag, a car, a baby, killing a policeman, then stealing his helmet to defecate in, then sending it to his grieving widow, and re-stealing it from her. The ad ends with an FBI agent shooting a young girl in the head after catching her downloading a film from the internet.
Jen and the smokers being banished to increasingly desolate places in "Moss and the German" is played like a Soviet forced resettlement.
Also in "Italian for Beginners", Moss giving birth to an iPhone.
Double Standard Abuse Female On Male: In the first episode, a woman gives Roy a rather brutal beating using her shoes. Jen defuses the situation (after letting it go on for a while) but noone seems to be seriously concerned by it.
Double Standard Rape Male On Male: Jen summarily dismisses the trauma of Roy having his butt kissed by a masseur and Moss being kissed against his will by Douglas.
Somewhat subverted in the first case. Every character save for Jen takes what happened to Roy very seriously.
Drop-In Character: Richmond. At one point Jen apologises that "I keep forgetting you work here."
Early Installment Weirdness: A key element of series 1 is the relationship between the IT department and the rest of the company: the IT department are generally shunned by the general staff, who are only interested in them briefly when they want their computer fixed. This is phased out from series 2 onwards however, which simply uses the IT department setting to do wacky sitcom shenanigans. Referenced by Graham Lineham in the DVD commentary for Episode 1 Series 2.
Douglas Reynholm makes his grand entrance by gatecrashing his father's funeral, Skyward Screaming in fake emotional pain, starting a fight with the priest and chatting up Jen.
And even horndog Roy doesn't want anything to do with Judy
Explain Explain Oh Crap: Moss, after posting a question to the general IT community about whether his and Roy's embarrassing symptoms might be the result of sympathetic PMT;
Moss: Don't worry Roy, they wouldn't use something like that against us oh God yes they would ahhhh
The Face: Jen is the socially capable Nerd Nanny for the IT Department. She has no computer skills but unlike the rest of the cast, she has social skills. Well... more so that them, anyway.
Jen or Roy frequently bury their faces in their hands be it for their or anybody else's stupidity.
When Roy and Moss ran into a bomb disposal robot, the entire company facepalmed for them.
Fail O Sucky Name: Peter File. Say it out loud (in an English accent... the fact that the joke doesn't work in an American one is lampshaded by Moss, who suggests he move there).
Fan Disservice: In-Universe, Jen distracts some co-workers by pointing out a shirtless builder. When they get up to look, it's just a flabby guy giving them a gormless look.
Fashion Hurts: Jen demonstrates this with a pair of too-small shoes.
Fawlty Towers Plot: Roy uses a handicapped toilet and accidentally yanks an emergency signal. When the cinema crew kick the door down to get to him, he pretends to be disabled. This snowballs into him getting loaded onto a bus on a wheelchair, bound for Manchester with lots of other disabled people.
Jen tells Moss to tell a man she had a bad date with that she's busy in order to avoid him. He tries, but when that doesn't work he tells the man that that Jen is dead. This snowballs until the entire office thinks she's dead. Jen mistakes the monuments and grievances as celebrations for her winning Employee of the Month.
Felony Misdemeanor: Jen will often laugh at a situation usually Played for Laughs while everyone else treats it a Serious Business. She is called a monster for laughing at a man's crossed eyes and for a masseur kissing Roy's ass.
Jen breaks up with a man for looking like a magician.
Flanderization: Jen, who started out knowing "the basics" about computers in series 1, but knew next to NOTHING about computers by the time series 4 came around.
Flashback Stares: Richmond does these when telling his story. Parodied repeatedly as everyone else slowly leans into shot staring in the same direction and looking confused.
The Fun in Funeral - Douglas burst into his father's funeral, ran up the aisle screaming"FATHERRRRRRRRR!" and got into a slap fight with The Vicar. This was after Roy's phone went off in his pocket making him think he'd had a heart attack, and Moss had compared the death to losing a pen.
Roy telling the widow that he is sorry and to move on.
A flashback in Richmond's introductory episode shows Richmond attending Reynholm's father's funeral in full makeup (Reminiscent of Alice Cooper) and giving Reynholm's elderly mother a Cradle Of Filth album to cheer her up
Gag Sub: The official DVDs of the show have an option for 'l33t' subtitles, which vary from Leet Lingo to ROT13 to Base-64 encoding depending on the episode.
Genius Ditz: Moss demonstrates extraordinary intelligence, memory and mathematical ability... it's a shame he's a Cloudcuckoolander too.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: In 4x1 ("Jen the Fredo"), the visiting out-of-town businessmen say "Eiffel Tower" a few times while high-fiving. "Eiffel Tower" can mean a high five in a different context.
Gilligan Cut: In "Are We Not Men?" Roy promises Moss he won't go in too deep pretending to be a football fan. Cut to them attending a match.
Girlfriend in Canada: In "Jen The Fredo", Moss talks about a girlfriend he had "on holiday", causing Roy to snap "They're always on holiday, aren't they Moss?".
Go Look at the Distraction: The entire plot where Roy is stuck under an employee's desk. Moss fails at this completely because what he says isn't much better than actually using the phrase "Go Look At The Distraction." (Jen employs a different method.)
Denholm Reynholm: "Gentleman, when I first started Reynholm Industries, I had just two things in my possession: a simple dream, and six million pounds. Today, I have a business empire the like of which the world has never seen the like of which. I hope it doesn't sound arrogant when I say, that I am the greatest man in the world."
Hacker Cave: the office basement where the IT department is located.
Subverted, as most of the equipment is simply being stored there and is not in use or working in any way.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Denholm is normally very friendly with his staff, even the shunned IT department. Just make sure you aren't STRESSED and can work as a TEAM.
Expanded upon even more in this series of phone conversations:
"Hello? What? Well if you can't work as a team you're all fired. That's it, you heard me, FIRED! Get your things and go."
"Hello, security? Everyone on floor 4 is fired. Escort them from the premises. And do it as a team. Remember, you're a team and if you can't act as a team, you're fired too."
"Dom, get on to recruitment. Get them to look for a security team that can work as a team. They may have to escort the current security team from the building for not acting like a team."
Handshake Substitute: Moss and Roy quietly fist bump after the panic caused by the destruction of the "Internet".
Happy Dance: Moss and Roy's reaction to Jen falling for their "Internet" prank.
Have I Mentioned I Am Sexually Active Today?: Moss does this when he has to pretend to be married, several times going out of his way to mention all the frequent and amazing sex that goes on in his marriage.
In the last episode of series 1, Jen is trying to tell the boys that she is 'getting a visit from Aunt Irma' and Moss keeps misunderstanding her. Roy finally comes up with a pop-culture reference, which gets through to him.
Douglas also comes up with several euphemisms for boss later on, but gets off track.
Hypocritical Humor: Jen frequently chides Roy for not being honest and telling the truth to the girls he dates but she is shown through the entire series to weave one enormous ball of lies after another. And she's not even good at it.
I Need a Freaking Drink: Done by Jen (without words, she just rapidly gulps down her glass) in Friendface while Delena is going on about how awesome her life is and how perfect her marriage is.
I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Jen frequently claims an "office RAM emergency" to skip the boring staff meetings.
I Like My X Like I Like My Y: "I like my women like I like my toast. Hot..." "And consumable with butter, you don't have to remind me."
I'm a Humanitarian: An ad reading "I want to cook with you" is not what it seems.
Juggling Loaded Guns: Douglas opens a random drawer and finds a unloaded revolver. Whilst attempting to conceal it, he accidentally shoots himself in the leg after putting bullets in it, and spends the rest of the episode trying to hide his injury from his staff. Amusingly, that happens after he checks if it's loaded by putting the gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger five times. He is supposed to be Too Dumb to Live, but damn. In The Stinger, Moss waves the gun around to drive off the bullies in the park. "I've got a gun! I've got a ruddy gun!"
Douglas, a fat, hairy oaf with mild mental retardation, has a pretty good record with hot women, with Jen and a few rumours and court cases being the exceptions.
Roy manages to snag dates, hook-ups and even relationships with some seriously hot, model-calibre women throughout the series, despite his dead-end job, scruffy appearance and geeky demeanour. However, his relationships never last.
Large Ham: Both Reynholms. "FATHERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" Douglas comes across extremely unintelligent and oafish at first, but becomes more eccentric like his father in series 4.
Laser-Guided Karma: Through an improbable series of events, Roy ends up walking the streets dressed as a tramp begging for 50p for a phone call to allow him to get back into the building. Then he meets the very tramp he'd heckled earlier for their improbable story.
Left the Background Music On: Twice in "The Haunting of Bill Crouse" Moss seems to have a dramatic epiphany accompanied by a DUN-DUN-DUUUN!, only for the music to turn out to be his mobile phone's ringtone.
Line-of-Sight Name: How Roy comes up with his football team name when he sees a ham, and says "West Ham", but subverted in that West Ham is a real team.
Roy loses his shirt and jacket, gets thrown out of the building and becomes a wandering tramp living in a cardboard box. Jen had been gone for 2 hours.
The Loins Sleep Tonight: Roy suffers this when he can't get some disturbing images out of his mind.
Love Potion: Subverted, in that the "potion" is actually just Rohypnol, and lampshaded in The Previously on a later episode, where the narrators point out that Rohypnol doesn't cause arousal - just tiredness. Pre-lampshaded (and possibly making the later example a Hypocrisy Nod) when Moss asked Jen if she was drinking it because she was having trouble sleeping.
Denholm: I am declaring war... what am I declaring war on? Stress. Stress is a disease, people, and I am the cure. ...I'm a doctor with a cure. No! I'm a general, and it's still a war! ...a war on disease!
My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels: Jen cannot speak italian, despite her misguided belief that she sounds like she does which is sort of the same. Moss reminds her that italians and people who speak italian would strongly disagree.
An italian businessman Jen tries to translate for but fails catastrophically proves Moss's point.
No Periods, Period: Heavily averted; an episode from Season 1.0 focuses on Jen experiencing an angry period, with Roy and Moss discovering the male period and that theirs are syncing up with Jen, demonstrating sympathy symptoms and eventually culminating in worldwide computer technician riots.
No Social Skills: Roy and Moss. Jen's job is based on the fact that she's (marginally) better at socializing than them, and she certainly likes to think she is, but in truth she's practically as socially awkward as they are — she just lacks their overt geekiness.
Noodle Incident: In the second episode of the first series Moss and Roy reference an incident in which a unattended soldering iron caused a golf... I mean fire.
One of Roy's girlfriends told him, in detail, how her parents were killed in a fire. At a Seaparks, while watching a sea lion show, in an outdoor ampitheatre with at least a dozen exits. Roy spends most of the episode trying to figure out how it's possible. Eventually he does, after building a scale model of the ampitheatre - but before he can tell anyone, the model burns out of control, putting him in hospital, and he refuses to talk about it.
That time Moss lost his glasses in Amsterdam.
"Eiffel tower!" *high fives*
"Do you think it would be helpful to role play?" "It certainly helped me learn how to buy sandwiches." (The incident not so much being the role play as whatever Moss did that prompted its necessity.)
Obfuscating Disability: Roy in 2.1 does this to avoid getting in trouble for using the handicapped toilet.
Otaku Surrogate: Jen may be building up to be a subtle or soon-to-be uncloseted example, judging by the decorations in her office (the most obvious being the poster on the wall to the right of Jen starting in late Series 3, but a Freeze Frame Bonus shows a few significant examples on her shelf).
Out Of Order: Series 3's episodes were changed in broadcast order; especially noticeable when the episode resolving the series 2 cliffhanger that opened with a recap of said cliffhanger was broadcast third in the run.
Overused Running Gag: Roy frequently gets sick of saying "Have you tri-" oh you know what he says. They actually turned his annoyance at his own catchphrase into a Running Gag in its own right.
Perky Goth: Richmond, at times. At others he's capable of making everyone else thoroughly depressed.
The Peter Principle: Jen is the poster girl for this. Not only is she not competent for the job she does have (she became head of IT by lying on her nonexistant computer skills) but she keeps applying for jobs she is even less capable of handling, Hilarity Ensues of course!
It's even lampshaded by multiple characters in one episode: "It's not for you, Jen."
Platonic Prostitution: Moss tells about the time he and Roy were so drunk in Amsterdam that they hired a couple of prostitutes, but were too scared to do anything so they took them to a fair instead. In the end they only charged them half price.
Public Exposure: In the third season finale, the company decide to do a sexy calendar to raise money for a charity for the "boss-eyed". Roy's original attempt to use the ladies from Floor 7 is stopped by Jen, the attempt to do grannies fails and the "geek" calendar produces unattractive male geeks, instead of the Tina Fey sort.
Reset Button: If it wasn't for Richmond's later appearances, "The Red Door" would be a textbook example. Jen finds Richmond in a room off the IT office, to where he had been banished from the office mainstream a few years before. She encourages him to rejoin the office; Reynholm reinstates him, then capriciously changes his mind and sends him back to IT. Moss has taken Jen's suggestion to clean the basement's window and let the daylight in, which makes Richmond retreat back behind the red door.
Moss' appearance as a guest on a BBC current affairs program, inspired by Guy Goma.
The German Cannibal was inspired by the case of Armin Meiwes.
RPG Episode: Very surprisingly given the setting but the one time an RPG is a major plot element it is an old fashioned 'pencil and dice' Tabletop Game (implied to be Dungeons & Dragons itself) rather than a computer game.
The packaging for the limited edition Season 1-4 DVD boxset is designed to look like an RPG rulebook.
Prime: "The first rule of Street Countdown is... that you really must try to tell as many people as possible about it! It’s a rather fun game and the more people we tell about it, the better."
Rule of Funny: When it comes to Jen's towering ignorance about computers.
Rule of Three: Played straight, as Linehan's other series all feature three main characters. Averted, as it's the first of his Channel Four sitcoms to make it to a fourth series. But it's his third sitcom for the channel! My head hurts.
In another example, the catchy new emergency services jingle is said thrice; twice by the advert, and once by Moss.
Running Gag: It is never made explicitly clear exactly what Reynholm Industries does.
Sanity Ball: Depending on the episode, it can be held by either Roy or Jen, and in some very specific situations, even Moss. Generally speaking, Roy and Moss tend to lose it over geeky things or matters of social interaction they are ill-equipped to handle, while Jen will go completely crazy over something which is seemingly more 'normal' but which she just goes way overboard in taking seriously.
Scrabble Babble: Moss plays the word "TNETENNBA" during a game of Countdown and wins.
In one scene, Jen tries to distract an office full of women by telling them that a builder outside the window has taken his shirt off, "just like in ads" (a reference to the Diet Coke Hunk). It's true — but the builder is not hunky.
Roy loses his T-shirt because of Moss's trick (he spilled coffee on it), and he had to lend his jacket to a lady who was cold (emergency situation). He ended up running crazily in the premises. Not exactly eye candy, but it's not Fan Disservice either.
Every piece of British 80s computer gaming nostalgia ever. The range runs from an Underwurlde poster on the wall to huge piles of Spectrum ZX81s to the menus from the DVD release being ripped off from Head Over Heels.
The menus of the DVDs are also shout outs in their own right:
Season 1.0 menus have animations of the cast in ZX Spectrum graphics.
Season 3.0's Episode Selection menu has a Grow Cube-style, IT Crowd themed animation.
Season 4.0's menus feature "levels" identical in design and gameplay to Vectorpark's Windosill.
In one episode, Roy tries to break up with an old girlfriend who wears a lot of make up which melts when she cries making her look like The Joker. The episode ends with Douglas hitting on her in the same manner as Heath Ledger's Joker hitting on Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight, scars and all.
Peter File's unfortunate name is a call back to a similarly named person in the infamous Brass EyePaedogeddon special.
The IT department's set is decorated with various Alternative Comics and their related merchandise:
Small Name, Big Ego: Judging by Denholm and Douglas, this is a Reynholm family trait.
Jen also displays some qualities from this trope, being neither quite as competent, upwardly mobile or deserving of being such as she seems to believe she is. It particularly kicks in after she wins Employee Of The Month in "The Speech", however.
Snap Back: The cliffhanger of Series 1 (which even ended with "To Be Continued...") was never continued in Series 2.
Moss telling an unwanted suitor of Jen's that she was dead to keep him away from her.
Also seen when Roy says that he's disabled, and Moss that he's a barman, both due to being caught using the wrong toilets, and having to keep up the lie for the rest of the episode.
Snub by Omission: An Overly Long Gag during a company meeting where the Boss goes around thanking all the departments, such as the lawyers and the accountants and even the janitors, but not our titular heroes. Upon each announcement, he describes something that could potentially describe IT, only for it to be another department.
Taken to extremes when he's filling the champagne glasses of Roy, Moss and Jen while talking about "these three people," - and then turns to the toilet cleaners. One wonders if he really had been trying to praise them while messing with them. He later sincerely thanks Roy in the corridor later in the episode, so it's possible.
Inverted at the end of the episode, when the three unexpectedly show up at a work party at a glitzy nightclub, and the boss immediately ditches who he's with in order to hang out with them.
Sophisticated as Hell: "Jorg... such fire! I am too tired for revolution. And we've walked f***ing miles!"
Sound Effect Bleep: Subverted mercilessly. A character's vitriolic tirade is full of bleeped-out swear words... then Denholm congratulates an employee on "being so quick on the Profanity Buzzer", which we see is a labelled button mounted on Denholm's wall. Later in the episode, another F-bomb is dropped, and the employee is a second too late on the buzzer.
Springtime for Hitler: Moss and Roy feed Jen a bunch of ridiculously nonsensical IT 'facts' to use in her Employee of the Month speech, in an attempt to utterly embarrass her. Too bad that nobody in attendance at the speech is computer-literate enough to notice anything remotely wrong. It ends up working out for them when she breaks 'the Internet' and sparks a major panic, however.
Stage Magician: Jen breaks up with her driving instructor boyfriend because of his uncanny resemblance to a stage magician, looking like an expy of David Blaine.
Status Quo Is God: The three will never escape their basement office ghetto or get any respect from the rest of the company.
Despite reporting catastrophic losses nearly every episode in addition to the embezzling of Denholm and squandering of Douglas, Reynholm Industries is still very much in business.
Stock Sound Effect: There's a surreally justified version in one episode, where Moss has a concussion and has lost his memory. When he knocks his head again and regains it, there's a close-up on his eyes opening, accompanied by the most hilarious possible choice of music: the Windows XP log-on tone...
Straw Feminist: Jen in "Calendar Geeks", who convinces the girls on seventh to make a nude calender featuring unemployed men or grannies instead of them, arguing it's "oppressive" and "sexist". Of course, when Douglas tells her she'll be accountable if it's not a success, she immediately tells Roy to use them, calling it "empowering". It appears to be a combination of jealousy, and screwing Roy over by forcing him to photograph old women until she is made responsible for it.
And when she ropes in Roy into not quitting the project because of the old ladies fiasco, she quickly shifts it away from using attractive women to nerdy male geeks. The project fails as badly as you would think.
Stupid Crooks: The bank robbers dupe Roy into being their getaway driver by keeping him completely oblivious to their motives, and are surprised when he calls the police on what he assumes to be an unrelated robbery.
Stylistic Suck: Douglas's Star Trek-inspired sex tape; the acting is bad, "female Spock" puts on her ears just as she comes into frame, and the boom mic is briefly visible in a shot.
Suspiciously Specific Denial: Douglas Renholm will often ask someone out of the blue if they heard the rumor that he murdered his first wife and deny it in the same breath.
Team Mom: Jen. Roy is offended at Jen's suggestion that he and Moss need her to take care of them, but when she leaves for a job interview at another company, Moss goes amnesiac and gets his hair singed while Roy becomes homeless and starts sleeping in an old box on the street. All in the span of merely two hours.
Technobabble: The very first time we meet Moss he gives us an earload ("Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot? You see, the driver hooks the function by patching the system call table so it's not safe to unload it unless another thread is about to jump in there and do its stuff. And you don't want to end up in the middle of invalid memory!"), which is an accurate description of a common problem with Windows drivers. This is in contrast to Roy's rather more concise troubleshooting.
Played straight with the recorded phone response of "Have you tried turning it off and on again?", even in cases where the problem is slightly more complicated.
This Isn't Heaven: In one episode Douglas has a near death experience. His father is welcoming him towards a big white door, and it's all very white and glowy. Then Hitler pokes his head out, and Renholm tries to explain that "we're having a fancy dress party in Heaven".
Token Trio: Defied Trope. One of the Male characters is black and the other is Irish, but, aside from a few token mentions of the latter, ethnicity never really comes into play. Unless Nerd is an ethnicity. Jen often tries to be The Chick but fails miserably.
Too Dumb to Fool: Why Roy and Moss's plan to humiliate Jen backfires - none of the senior staff know anything about computers either. Some of them do know a bit more then Jen (or at least are less gullible), as none of them bought that when you type Google into Google, it breaks the internet.
Training from Hell: Nerd-style. In series three, Moss is having trouble with some bullies in the park he walks through to get to the office. Roy tries to help him with some roleplay, upon which Moss bursts into tears as it was "too realistic". He eventually solves the problem when he finds Douglas's grandfather's old service revolver...
Transhuman Treachery: Douglas experiences a humorous small scale version of this when he starts destroying his office with his new robot hand and laughs maniacally.
Moss: I would have used my robot hand for good!
TV Genius: Averted with Roy, played straight with Moss.
The laptop company's phone support agent. Merely asking Jen to hit delete was a two minute ordeal.
Unsettling Gender Reveal: Double Subverted when, in a B-plot, Douglas embarks on a successful relationship with a post-op transsexual — but it comes crashing down when he realises that she was saying "I used to be a man," not "I'm from Iran."
Unusual Euphemism: "I've got a motherflipping gun!" and "I had to walk all the way down the motherfudging stairs."
Wall Crawl: Richmond occasionally does this. He has magic goth powers or something.
What, Exactly, Is His Job?: Richmond has no idea what his job is. He learned the pattern of blinking lights on the servers, but he doesn't know what any of it means, and pretty much everybody had forgotten he was even there aside from Roy and Moss who did everything they could to prevent him from leaving his room to depress everyone.
Jen pronounces "computer" with the emphasis on the first and third syllables (rather than as more commonly on the second syllable). This serves to highlight her lack of expertise and interest in the area.
In series two, when discussing Jen's boyfriend Peter File's unfortunate name, Moss mentions the US pronunciation "peh-duh-fahyl" in comparison to the UK's "pee-duh-fahyl".
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