Web Video / Jake and Amir

"Jake and Amir are two best friends that work together, live together, and play together. We're not really best friends, so don't type that. Yes we are. No we aren't, and we also don't live together. Whatever. Not whatever. Dinner tonight? Nope."

Description from the official website

Jake and Amir is a popular internet series of short videos by CollegeHumor. Like Hardly Working, they are filmed in and around the College Humor office and revolve around Jake Hurwitz, a usually normal guy, and his co-worker, Amir Blumenfeld, an unstable, unbalanced and generally weird Manchild who is obsessed with Jake and determined to prove that they're "best friends".

In 2020, Headgum (the podcast network where both Jake and Amir work) uploaded an unofficial "Jake and Amir" episode, where the two played basically the same roles as in the original series. In 2021, they regained the rights to their sketches, and all the J&A YouTube videos were transferred from CollegeHumor to their own channel, on which they later started making new episodes.

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Tropes

• Abandoned Catchphrase: Acknowledged in "Journal":
  Amir: Dinner tonight?
  Jake: Wow, please don't start saying that again.
  Amir: I barely say it anymore!
  Jake: You used to say it all the time.
• Abusive Parents: Amir's parents, assuming he's telling the truth. By his account in "Driving Lesson", they forced him to take driving lessons when he was four, and they threw knives at him.
• Accidental Hero: In "Baby Bjorn," Amir brings a baby of unknown origin to work and Jake tries to call the police on him, only for a cop to show up and hail him as the Heroic Bystander who took his son off his hands so he could apprehend a shooter. It's pretty clear to Jake that Amir just took advantage of the situation to steal a baby for the lulz, but when he offers a text from Amir as evidence to that effect, the cop destroys his phone.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Jake has his moments.
  Amir: (rapping) Because you Palin-comparison to Sarah! ...So, I dunno.
  Jake: That was—that's actually clever. That was kind of clever, you should write that down.
  Amir: I actually already just forgot it. Something about "Dick...Dick Cheney in your..."
  Jake: —No, all right, no, no.
  Amir: —Yeah, forget it.
• Adam Westing:
  • Rick Fox plays himself in several episodes as an egg-obsessed tractor thief.
  • Ben Schwartz's career switching oddball character is highly speculated to just be Ben Schwartz himself. In the finale, Ben Schwartz shows up as himself and all the other Schwartz appearances are revealed to be separate identities.
• Aerith and Bob: To some extent, Jake and Amir, though Amir is a very popular name in Israel where he was born. More commonly, Amir's friends will have blatantly made up names like Tracyn, Den, or Wideley.
  Jake: Who names your friends?
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Dave, who owns a motorcycle and boasts of kicking in his ex-girlfriend's teeth, effortlessly wins over Sarah, to Jake's distress.
• All Guys Want Sorority Women: This is Jake's motivation in "Frat."
  Jake: Have you ever hooked up with a sorority girl?
  Amir: No.
  Jake: Well you know what, pretty soon that's something you and I won't have in common.
• All Jews Are Cheapskates: Amir has taken it as far as demanding to be paid back for a single stick of gum or an 80-cent bag of sandwich cookies shared between four people. Inverted with his personal spending, which tends to be unwise to the tune of dropping 40k on a vacation with someone who never agreed to go.
• All Just a Dream: Zombie has Jake dreaming about Amir chasing him down and biting a chunk out of his shoulder. Subverted when he sees that his shoulder is actually bleeding, and then double subverted when Sarah tells him that Amir was gnawing on his shoulder while he was asleep.
  • Subverted in "Rapping" with the introduction of one of Amir's weirder catchphrases, in response to Jake questioning the logistics of the story in his latest Piss-Take Rap:
    Amir: —Oh sheesh, y'all, 'twas a dream!
    Jake: Was it really?
    Amir: ...Nay, it actually happened and it cost me a lot of grief and money.
  • "Away Message" and "Work Out Clothes" are both Amir's dreams.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Jake will never be Amir's best friend. If Jake likes a girl, she will probably end up hating him, apart from once, and then she died. There's also Jake's long-standing crush on Sarah, and later, Emily's absurd advances towards Jake. Downplayed with Murph and Emily: although she's openly attracted to Jake and Murph doesn't handle it well, they're otherwise a (way too) happy couple.
• All of the Other Reindeer: To be fair, the wrath of the office toward Amir is more than deserved: it's earned. They occasionally take it too far even for Jake, though, like when they attempt a Vigilante Execution at the office Christmas party.
• Alternate Continuity: Acknowledged in the intro to "Donald Trump":
  Amir: I thought we got fired.
  Jake: Right. Don't overthink it.
• Alternate Reality Episode: Though generally considered part of Jake and Amir, the two-episode series "My Super Not Chill Ghost Roommate" has Amir as a ghost haunting Jake's house rather than his coworker, with the dynamic still playing out in exactly the same way.
• Amateur Filmmaking Plot: The "Ace and Jocelyn" episodes.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: In "Mom", Amir rudely reprimands his mother for "embarrassing" him because she wants to bring cookies up for him and his coworkers.
• Ambiguous Ending: The finale ends with Amir pulling out his Abandoned Catchphrase to invite Jake to dinner one last time. It's unknown whether he accepted.
• Ambiguously Bi: Aside from his Stalker with a Crush-type behavior toward Jake, Amir's on Grindr and has apparently been with quite a few guys. However, a gay coworker who assumed that he and Amir were an item thanks to his obsessive and overly-friendly behavior quickly found out that he didn't even have a concept of homosexuality.
• Ambiguous Syntax:
  • When Amir brings his dating coach to the office:
    Dating Coach: For your two thousand dollars, I'm gonna get you to have sex with any girl you want in here.
    Amir: (uncomfortable) I don't want to have sex with girls in here, so...
  • "Rap Teacher 3":
    Jake: Hey-hey! Y'all losers can't record a song without a bomb (record-scratching sounds)-ASS CHORUS!
    Amir: What's an "ass chorus"?
• Amusing Injuries: Happens often, most commonly when either of them accidentally hit their head on their desks.
• Analogy Backfire:
  • "Graveyard," when Amir shows up at Lerona's grave with a bigger bouquet than Jake's:
    Jake: I wanna fight you now!
    Amir: Good, then, I hope it's a flower fight because then we got a real David and Goliath thing going on.
    Jake: Okay, well, David actually wins, so...
    Amir: Okay then, let's switch bouquets then!
  • In "Deals" as Amir is trying to remember the Tongue Twister slogan he came up with for his cousin's website:
    Amir: Once you say it once you always remember it, okay? It's like a lockbox like that.
    Jake: You must've said it once!
    Amir: Yeah I know, and I freakin' lost the lockbox too! So...the metaphor doesn't hold!
  • "Driving Lesson":
    Amir: I know how to drive, okay? I'm a regular James Dean.
    Jake: Jesus.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Parodied in "Drugs. No They're Not." and "Gay Marriage."
  Jake: Hey, Jake and Amir here, that might have been a silly video, but it did have an important message.
  Amir: That's right, there is nothing funny about sharting.
• And Then I Said: Parodied in "Half-Birthday," which opens with Amir apparently deep into telling a story to Jake. Jake then tells him that he can't start his stories in the middle.
• An Odd Place to Sleep: Amir has been seen sleeping at his desk, on the floor, curled up on a stone table, and on a toilet in the office restroom.
• Appeal to Familial Wisdom: "Interpreters 2 (Cheer Up)":
  Pat: (to Jake) I'm gonna tell you what my dad told me, and it's gotten me through some of the hardest times—
  Amir: SHOTS!!!
  Pat: —THANK you!
• Argument of Contradictions: A few of Jake and Amir's arguments devolve into this. "Pizza" ends with them both just yelling "Ass!" at each other.
  Amir: You're a bitch!
  Jake: You're a bitch.
  Amir: You're the bitch.
  Jake: You're a bitch's bitch. (Beat) Nothing?
  Amir: You're a...bitch. ...'s bitch.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • "Jake knows everything on that list about me, don't you, Jake?"
  • "Who is obsessed with who here?" It takes a few more episodes to sink in.
    Jake: Hey, so I've been thinking about what you said, about who's obsessed with who. And I may have stumbled across something interesting, believe it or not.
  • "Why do you hate yourself?"
  • Subverted in "Brother Part 2":
    Jake: You've kept me from my own surprise party, you've spied on me in the bathroom, you've poisoned my food...but this is a new low.
    Amir: Yes, but have I ever lied to you?
    (Long pause.)
    Jake: ...Yeah, sure. You told me you had sixty beers once, you said you never drop anything, you said you had some new girlfriend—
    Amir: Okay, shut up!
• Ascended Extra: Murph and Emily.
• Attention Whore: Amir.
• Audience Surrogate: When Jake and Amir are both acting weird, Pat tends to take on the Only Sane Man role.
• Author Appeal: Jake and Amir write the episodes according to what they find funny, which changes over time.
• Author Filibuster: At the end of "Journal", the writers respond to criticism for changing the series and using catchphrases less by having Jake represent them when Amir tells him, "In a perfect world, nothing would ever change."
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Averted in that it's the kind of Odd Couple pairing where you'd expect to see it a lot, but one of them always ruins it because they're both pretty terrible people. However, Jake sometimes shows hints of caring for Amir secretly.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Amir has threatened Jake with a hammer, stabbed him in the abdomen, kicked his tongue off and smacked him around countless times, all with little or no provocation...and that's the guy he likes. Early on, he also reacted violently to any real or perceived slight toward Jake, to the point of putting at least one coworker in the hospital. In the finale he publicly castrates himself offscreen, proving that even Amir isn't safe from Amir.
    Amir: ... I stabbed the therapist in the eye with a tack! And I'd do the same to you!
  • Keeping all of the above in mind, Jake is far more scared of Murph than he is of Amir. 'Nuff said.
• Backhanded Apology:
  Amir: Okay, I apologized for that.
  Jake: You said "Sorry you don't have a sense of humor, bitch."
  Amir: And I genuinely meant that.
• Back to Front: "Baseball."
• Bad Impressionists: Jake has a tendency to do impressions when trying to impress people. He sucks at almost all of them.
• Bad Liar: Amir. On the other hand, he's an equally bad truther.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Amir's treatment of Rotem the dog. Other animals in his possession haven't fared much better.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Quite a few of Jake's Not So Above It All moments go like this, as, for instance, when he finds out that Amir's plan to date a celebrity has gotten as far as procuring Amanda Bynes' email address.
  Jake: Jesus, dude. ...Why didn't you tell me you had an in with Bynes?! (Maniacal laughter.)
• Barbershop Quartets Are Funny: Amir arranges his own in "Barbershop Quartet." All very Hollywood Tone-Deaf.
• Battle Rapping: In the "Rap Teacher" series, Jake becomes determined to beat Amir in a rap battle. He doesn't lose so much as fail to achieve liftoff.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Amir has successfully pretended to be a CEO, a train conductor and a speaker at a marketing seminar.
• Beach Bury: Amir tries to encourage Jake to do this to him in the episode "Nantucket". He starts by piling a handful of sand onto his belly.
• Bedsheet Ghost: Seen in "Costumes" and "My Super Not Chill Ghost Roommate."
• Behavioral Conditioning: Amir denies that he did this on purpose when he kept a dog in his basement for weeks feeding her live rabbits and beating her while showing her pictures of other dogs, then brought her to "Bring Your Dog to Work Day," where she ate two other dogs.
  Amir: ...I inadvertently trained the she-bitch to hate the sight of other dogs and to love the taste of blood.
  Jake: How was that inadvertent? It was precise. It was methodical. It was illegal!
• Belated Love Epiphany: After Jake takes a new job in California, he talks incessantly about Amir to his new coworker until she demands, "Who is obsessed with who here?", causing him to realize that he's having a hard time letting go.
• Benevolent Boss: "Who's the Boss?" does a lot to explain why Amir stays hired, as Ricky is perhaps the only person laid-back enough to have put up with him for that long. He's also on friendly terms with his employees, or at least with Jake.
• Between My Legs: A variation in "Corduroy Pant" when Jake puts his foot on his desk to display his ill-fitting pants, perfectly framing Amir's horrified reaction in the crook of his knee.
• Big Brother Bully: Jake's older brother Kumail.
• Big "NO!": Among Amir's catchphrases.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Amir at the end of "Hallie Part 3" when Jake starts acting exactly like him.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Trouble has a Cantonese man loudly accosting Jake and Amir for an incident that Amir described as "the second duck thing."
  • Mickey has Amir briefly speaking to his friend Mickey in Hebrew.
• Bitch Slap: Amir's signature move.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Amir. In "Lunch" and "Lunch Meeting" he makes the same lunch order: "Jam, tuna fish, cracked pepper and vinegar on a chocolate croissant" with "a keg of what Coke is made of" (the syrup).
  Amir: Oh! Um, and do you guys...you know how turkey pastrami is like, turkey with a pastrami seasoning around it? Do you have that, but with Twinkies? With the seasoning? No. Okay. So that was just a dream of mine, then. That's fine, I was just checking.

• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: While monologuing in Snowstorm, Amir blackmails Jake by revealing he knows about a crime Jake committed in 1999.
• Blunt "Yes": Amir, when all else fails.
  Jake: So you're insulting my intelligence while you're stuck in the vending machine.
  Amir: ...Yes.
• Book Ends: The first and last episode of the "Girlfriend" arc each have Jake and Amir arguing over whether worms can be considered cannibals.
• Boomerang Bigot: Amir complains about his perceivedly ethnic facial features and alludes to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about media control.
  Amir: I'm a loser and a Jew!
  Jake: (uncomfortable) That's true, but don't...say it like that.
• Bound and Gagged: "Sandwich Email" opens with Jake finding Amir tied to his office chair in this fashion after annoying his coworkers with a lengthy email thread, in the last email of which he told them that they would have to bind and gag him if they wanted him to stop.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In "Jake and Amir's Dream": "What time is it? 4 am? 5 am? 4:05 am?"
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Ice Breakers", with a heavy dose of Dissonant Serenity:
  Amir: My name is Amir Valerie Blumenfeld, I am an unpaid consultant for this company, I once killed an innocent child, and I love mini-golf. It was not on purpose, but it's something that I live with every day.
  Streeter: What?
  Amir: That's right, I once shot three holes in one in a row, it wasn’t an accident either, the killing.
  Julie: You Monster!
  Amir: I am a monster. On the golf course, I take no prisoners. Also, I will never unsee that child's face. Every blink is a reminder and every time my eyes are open, she's just in my mind's eye, taunting me.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • From "Happy Holidays”:
    Amir: Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from Jake and Amir!
    Jake: Who're you talking to?
    Amir: Nobody...
  • From “Cousins”:
    Linford: That's me! (winks at camera)
    Jake: Who the f**k are you winking at?
• Briar Patching: In "New Girlfriend" when Amir brings his (fake) girlfriend to work:
  Amir: Ugh, don't take a photo of us and photoshop a heart around us and send an email to the company with that photoshopped heart picture with the subject "Lovebirds."
  Jake: Each of those steps is something I wouldn't do.
• Bridal Carry: Amir does it to a knocked-out Jake in "Sleeping Pills" and manages to bang his head against a computer in the process.
• Brutal Honesty: Jake's usual approach to Amir. Amir's usual approach to everybody.
• Bully Turned Buddy: Murph's first few instances of Hair-Trigger Temper were (naturally) aimed at Amir, but he increasingly became protective of him, causing him to target Jake instead. Amir often takes advantage of this.
• The Bus Came Back: CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen, who became CEO of Notional in 2009, reappears for 2014's "Relocation" with the explanation that he's spent the last five years in Ibiza but was "accessible via email".
• …But He Sounds Handsome:
  • Amir's reaction to incriminating security footage.
    Jake: All right, so that's not you dancing?
    Amir: Ah, wow, no. That looks like me though, so I can see... I'm not offended because that guy's handsome and so am I. But, holy... that was awesome, or I was ... that is... that is an awesome dance, whoever that is.
  • Subverted in "Vandalism." Amir actually just admires the unknown office vandal, who turns out to be Will.
  • Milkman "Charles Crooshtoost" denies that he's the guy who molested Jake in "Interrogator Part 2," but says that if Jake finds the person he's looking for, he should tell him, "Nice milkman outfit." They genuinely are different people, but they know each other.
• But Thou Must!: Invoked in "Bathroom Break."
  Amir: Okay, should I chill out here or you want me to wait for you?
  Jake: Just chi—(sigh) okay, I see what you did.
• Butt-Monkey: Pat Cassels is frequently the target of Amir's shenanigans, and Amir often goes out of his way to call him a loser.
• Call-Back: In the 8-part "Girlfriend" episode Jake talks to Lerona for a while about flying a kite. He says almost the exact same thing as he did in "Kite" three years earlier.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Both Jake and Amir suffer from this.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Despite his constant frustration, Jake will miss Amir's annoying presence if it's withdrawn. Particularly visible in the storyline beginning with "Sick Day," when Jake gets a new job in California, but quits and moves back solely for Amir.
• Can't Take Criticism: Amir, as demonstrated beautifully in "Suggestion Box" and its sequel.
  Jake: You're not gonna like what people have to say about you, okay? You don't take constructive criticism well.
  Amir: What the hell's that supposed to mean, I don't take "constructive criticism" well, okay, who are you to tell me this—this poison?! I, I, I—I won't hear it!
• Captain Obvious:
  • In "Eighty Cents," Dan says of Amir, "You guys noticed he's weird?"
  • Amir has his moments too, of course.
    Amir: You know, I feel like soup is just a bowlful of ingredients mixed up, blended right and served to order.
• Captive Date: Jake becomes a captive double date after Murph invites him to date alongside him and Emily and then threatens him into sticking around when Jake's half of the date proves a dead end.
• Cardboard Box of Unemployment: In "Quitting," after Jake has manipulated Amir into quitting in a huff, he finds him gathering his stuff in a box and makes the natural assumption, only to find out that their boss doubled his salary to keep him on.
  Jake: Why are you putting your stuff in a box?
  Amir: Because I have money now, I can just buy new stuff.
  (Jake is silent.)
• Casanova Wannabe: Jake.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Jake trying to talk Amir out of hitting him in the head with a hammer.
• Catchphrase: Several: "Dinner tonight?", "Oh sheesh yall! T'was a dream!" and later on, "Another day at the races..." for Amir, with "Wow..." and "You gotta learn how to be funny, man," for Jake.
  • "Jake. (Jake. Jake. Jake. Jake)."
  • (in a high-pitched voice) "'Sup?"
  • "Wha'eva."
  • "Gorsh-dam-nit!"
  • "Let me FINISH!"
  • "Mickey! My friend!"
  • "Wow, that was hard."
  • "Excuse." / "Excuse me." / "Excuse you!"
  • "Exactly right."
  • "I'm serious!"
  • "Weak!"
  • "Ass!"
  • "You want to know my name?" Technically a shared catchphrase between the characters played by Ben Schwartz.
  • From Doobs, "CURSE YOU!"
  • Even some of the extras have catchphrases: Will ("I know it's not my place") and Dave Rosenberg ("He's dead").
• Celeb Crush:
  • Jake's is Cindy Crawford. Amir claims his is Megan Fox, though he seems to be more interested in Shia LaBeouf.
  • In "Movie Date," Doob's latest name change is to "Penis Scarlett Johansson Anal." To his dismay, Amir promptly nicknames him "ScarJo".
    Jake: ScarJo's not bad! You know, if you took out Scarlett Johansson your name is just Penis Anal!
    Doobs: Oh, I would love to be just Penis Anal.
    Amir: And I'd love to take out Scarlett Johansson.
  • In "Celebrity Date," Amir plots to succeed in LA by dating a celebrity. Jake is dismissive until Amir reveals that he's obtained Amanda Bynes' email address.
• Censorship by Spelling: In the episode featuring Julia Nunes, Amir thinks that singing in front of her will work this way and fesses up to the scam he's pulling on her in song.
  Jake: Amir, she can understand you when you sing, it's not like spelling things in front of a toddler, or you.
• Character Blog: Amir's fashion blog (with contributions from Jake) and the USARice Twitter.
• Character Development: Jake starts out the series as a calm average guy and Amir as a nerd with no confidence. As Jake begins to give him attention, Amir gets more and more confident making Jake more and more angry. As for Jake, he starts to reveal deep-seated insecurities halfway through the series, becoming less of a straight man and more of a defensive douchebag.
• Cheek Copy: Amir's attempt in "Copier" is more of an ordeal than the standard representation.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Caused by Real Life Writes the Plot. From 2008–09 Sam Reich, CollegeHumor's then-Director of Original Content, made fairly regular appearances as a Sidekick and Ignored Enamored Underling to Amir. After he was promoted to President of Original Content, his appearances were limited to a single fourth-wall-breaking gag at the end of the All-Nighter episode "Hoops" (in which he complains about the sketch) before his character reappears for a major role in the finale, finally firing Jake and Amir once and for all. Despite his vast shift in status, a Continuity Nod makes it clear that it's still the same character.
• Chess Motifs: Played for Laughs in "Movie Date 2" when Doobs proposes to Jake's date:
  Doobs: Julie. Will you marry me? Knowing full well that you will be used in the ongoing chess match that is the life between Amir and myself: you the pawn, and I the queen.
• Chew Bubblegum: In Amir's script in "Table Read 2," his main character Darryl McMillionare opens by saying, "I only care about one thing: pussy, money, and cash. And I'm almost out of cash."
• Childhood Friend Romance: Jake is unsuccessful at starting one of these with Sarah, who he claims has been his friend since they were kids.
• Christmas Episode: One each year, "Christmas", "Happy Holidays", "Santa" and "Toy Drive".
• Chronic Pet Killer: Amir.
  Jake: Okay, you shouldn't own pets, man, you can barely keep yourself alive.
  Amir: Okay, don't tell me I shouldn't own pets, I've had like, ten owls in the past year.
  Jake: What happened to them?
  Amir: They're frickin' dead!
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: When Sarah Schneider and Streeter Seidell left CollegeHumor to write for SNL, their character's absences were never explained (for comparison, two extras who left the company in Real Life were explicitly killed off in-universe, with site developer Kunal Shah's "death" being a Running Gag). They did appear in the finale, though.
• Class Clown: Amir thinks of himself as this at the office, but has a hard time understanding when he's the joke. Definitely a Sad Clown to boot.
• Closet Geek: Jake is a secret Lord of the Rings obsessive.
• Closet Sublet: In "Cousin," Jake is not as surprised as he should be to find out that Amir has recently been living in his closet without his knowledge.
• Clothing Damage: Jake and Amir lose their shirts fighting each other in 'Godfather', which leads to being Mistaken for Gay.
• Clothing Switch: The actors sometimes wear the same shirts from other clips. Noticeable in the flashbacks of "Happy Holidays" and "Record Breaker."
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Amir is a particularly deranged example, but he almost looks sane compared to Ben Schwartz's characters. Quite a few of Amir's associates qualify too, including Doobs, Den and Cheryl.
  • Fired has CEO Alan Avery, who is constantly exposing himself at the office and prank-calling people, wears roller blades at all times and insists that Jake replace all verbs related to ambulation with verbs related to rollerblading.
    Jake: So I wanted to run something by you.
    Avery: Blade something by me?
    Jake: Sure.
    Avery: Say it.
    Jake: I wanted to...blade something by you. I ran into Amir last night.
    Avery: Bladed into Amir?
    Jake: I didn't, I ran into him.
    Avery: Bladed.
    Jake: We were wearing shoes.
    Avery: Blades.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Jake is constantly trying to explain social norms to Amir and encouraging him to straighten out his life, with limited success. He's even protective of Amir on occasion, usually when others gang up on him.
  Pat: (to Jake, about Amir) Has he done this before?
• Cloudcuckoolanguage: Amir's is elaborate, consisting of needless suffixes, odd arrangements, various rhymes and puns, deliberate mispronunciations and Pretty Fly for a White Guy slang. Jake is fluent, much to his own shame.
  Amir: I do nay have a legal birfday, and I def do not have a social securitay numbre, comprende, so-ay, helpay on dat-ay.
  Jake: God, I'm so mad I understood all of that.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Amir several times.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Amir behaving like a sociopath is the show's bread and butter.
• Comically Missing the Point: So many examples. To list one from "Elevator":
  Amir (to Jake): We should call our loved ones and say goodbye. [pulls out his phone and calls Jake]
  • A Running Gag has Jake confessing to an inappropriate sexual action when his intended point was to brag about where he was when it occurred.
• The Comically Serious: Paul Greenberg, the CEO. Also Not So Above It All.
  Paul: Look, I think you guys know why I called you in here. (Jake and Amir look ashamed.) I heard you can get 200 coins in Tiny Wings?
• Competition Freak: A game of office ping-pong, rock paper scissors, or Angry Birds is enough to set Jake off.
• Completely Unnecessary Translator: In "Translator," Amir goes Trolling Translator while speaking Hebrew to a girl on Jake's behalf, until she reveals, not only that she speaks perfect English, but that she told Jake and he refused to accept it.
• Connected All Along:
  • In "Dating Coach," we find out that Hallie, ex-girlfriend of Jake and brief love interest to Amir, is also Sarah's sister, which kind of gives some context to Sarah's lack of interest in Jake.
  • "Double Date" establishes a particularly weird backstory between Amir and Murph: Amir has been Murph's butler his entire life because Amir's father was employed as a butler to Murph's father and backed out of a Suicide Pact with him, causing him to owe the family a life debt.
• Conspicuous Consumption: Parodied in "Grill," where Amir claims that he got a mouth grill because "I like flaunting that I make cash," but not only did he not earn the cash in question, he didn't make any purchase at all, instead trading his real teeth for a bedazzler which he used to bedazzle a set of dentures he stole from a dying goose.
• Constantly Changing Name:
  • Doobs keeps changing his bizarre name (Penis Anthony Doubineux) in ways that keep the bizarre part intact, whether by simply switching the last name out (i.e. "Doubineaux" for "Hudson") or just adding on a string of non-names just as absurd as "Penis." Amir unfailingly manages to make a nickname he hates out of the new name, forcing him to change his name again on his next appearance.
  • Ben Schwartz's appearances are a subversion, as each actually represents a different character.
  • Amir uses a different name on each of his scrolls, such as "Amir Raymond Blumois," "Amir Judy Blumenfeld," and "Roderigo O."
• Cooldown Hug: Jake attempts this in "Nuggets" when some other employees eat Amir's lunch.
• Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship: Amir sees his relationship with Jake this way. Subverted in that Jake doesn't (always) see it as a friendship, and to everybody else it's just two losers.
• Coordinated Clothes: Amir often tries to dress to match Jake or obtain clothes that Jake already has, while Jake is horrified by the idea that people might think he coordinated with Amir on purpose. In "New Shirt" Amir admits that he's trying to ease his way into just sharing a wardrobe with Jake.
• Couch Gag: The "Hey, you're watching Jake and Amir" voiceover in the opening sequence, which typically features a quick exchange or argument between the characters. The gag is usually random but occasionally ties into the episode's content.
• Crazy Jealous Guy:
  • Early on, Amir with regard to Jake's other friends.
  • Murph. Unfortunately for Jake, Murph's girlfriend Emily has a thing for him too.
• Creator Career Self-Deprecation: In "Wingman," Jake, at a party with coworkers, says that it's good to get away from work and is promptly called out by one of the site programmers for complaining about his easy job.
• Creepily Long Arms: An occasional gag with Amir is that he can reach Jake across about ten feet of desk space.
• Cringe Comedy: The earlier episodes relied on this, feeling less like comedy sketches and more like awkward, unscripted conversations between coworkers.
• Crossword Puzzle: Jake and Amir put their heads together to solve one in the episode of the same name.
• Cruella to Animals: Exaggerated by Amir in "Fur" when he goes on a "morbid spending spree" that ends in him wearing an outfit comprised of a fur hat and coat, a mink scarf, two dead doves for shoes, a wallet made from a dead rat, and just for the hell of it an iguana that he strangled to death sticking out of his pocket.
• Crying Wolf: This happens to Amir a lot.
  Jake: Hey, all right, I'm going to call 911, okay?
  Amir: No, it's not going to do anything, I prank-call them all the time!
  Jake: I'll call it from my phone.
  Amir: I do it from your phone!
  Jake: Well, I'll just tell them you legitimately burned your face this time!
  Amir: I crank-yanked them last night with that exact line! I said, "Please come, I legitimately burned my face this time!"
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Some of Amir's most apparently checked-out babbling ends up fully checking out. In "Instagram" he correctly predicts that Facebook's attainment of Instagram and the resultant changes to its policy will result in his photos being sold to advertisers. See also "Wise," in which the apparent fortune cookie really is not a cookie at all but a "sand nut", or a nut made out of sand.
• Cuckoosnarker: Amir.
  Dan: I'm trying to give you constructive criticism.
  Amir: Ha, yeah. More like destructive cynicism.
  (Dan and Jake look at Amir.)
  Jake: ...How'd you learn those words?
• Cutting the Electronic Leash: Parodied in "The Moment," when Amir encourages Jake, who's taking pictures of the skyline, to put away his phone and enjoy the moment. When Jake actually takes this advice, he decides he himself wants a picture, borrows Jake's phone so he can take one, and immediately throws it into the water.
  Amir: Disconnect, bitch!
• Damned By a Fool's Praise: The entire point of "Donald Trump."
  Amir: And by the way, Trump wants to put a lid on immigration, illegal or otherwise, which I actually like as a moron with high standards.
• The Dandy: Jake.
• Daydream Surprise:
  • My Boy, which starts out with Jake praising and hugging Amir and then reveals that Amir was daydreaming the whole thing. Also an example of Face Doodling, since we see that someone drew a dick on Amir’s face while he was zoned out.
  • "Couples Therapist Part 1" details how Amir hopes his therapy session with Jake will go as he explains it to the couples therapist. Part 2 is a nearly shot-for-shot remake of Part 1 where the appointment goes about how you'd expect.
• Dead All Along: In "Zombie," Jake has a dream in which he finds out that Amir died the day before he was hired, and everyone else has been seeing him arguing with an empty desk.
• Denser and Wackier: Gradually becomes a Gag Series suffused with Surreal Humor after starting out as a comparatively down-to-earth, if demented, Work Com.
• Defensive "What?": Amir, unsurprisingly; see "Music Box."
• Demoted to Extra: Dave after his first few appearances as a Jerkass rival to Jake.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • Amir slips into this from time to time ("food restaurant," "book library," "group orgy") and generally repeats himself a lot.
    Amir: Wait, Jake Jake Jake Jake! Can you buy these for me? I am strapped— (holds up guitar straps) for cash! I don't have cash on me. I wish I had cash and I don't have cash and I'm
    Jake and Amir: —strapped for cash.
  • According to Murph in "Double Date," "you only YOLO once."
• Description Cut: After Amir, who's tangled in a giant net, unaccountably goes missing in "Mountain Hiker Part 2":
  Jake: (to Stanley) Shut up, okay? Amir's really scared right now!
  Amir: (holding a smoothie while talking cheerfully on the phone) Hello hello, yes! Uh, I'm gonna need another smoothie, please! Basically, you need to freshen me up. Yeah, same guy in the net.
• Dialogue Reversal: In "Pizza," first between Amir and Jake and then the other way around:
  "Forget it."
  "Forget it 'cause you're dumb?"
  "Forget it 'cause you don't know what the fuck you're talking about...ass!"
• Did You Just Have Sex?:
  Jake (to Lerona): Did you just take a shower?
  [Amir appears]
  Amir: Yes we did!
  Jake: F**k!
  Amir: Yes we did!
• Dirty Coward: The defining character trait of Amir's offscreen father. According to Amir, he went AWOL during the Vietnam war by Faking the Dead three times in 18 months and sold out over 1000 of his companions, receiving the "Black Heart congressional medal of dishonor" for his efforts. Since then he has been dealing with problems ranging in scale from embarrassment over his son's actions to a Suicide Pact he made with Murph's dad by moving away.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Amir put Rosie in the hospital for laughing at Jake.
  • Jake broke Amir's ribs over a game of Rock Paper Scissors.
  • In "iPhone Case," Amir tries to jack an iPhone on the subway, to which the other passengers not only beat him up but force him to lick his victim's shoes and take turns stepping on his face and flicking his genitals.
• Dissimile: In "Taste Test" Amir tries a pineapple and describes it as a "cold ... sweet ... wet chicken nugget."
• Distinction Without a Difference:
  Amir: Okay, ever heard of a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme? Well these are wet bitch thick creams, 99 ways guaranteed to get us paid ASAP!
  Jake: So they are get-rich-quick schemes.
• Does Not Like Yams: Amir.
  Jake: No, I'm well aware that you hate yams.
  Amir: I hate em. I hate yams.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Amir sometimes comes off as an Annoying Younger Sibling to Jake. Particularly visible in "Angry Birds" when he gets Mom (in this case, a weary Streeter) involved when things don't go his way.
    Streeter: Jake, can you just let him play? Please?
    Jake: He can get his own phone, Streeter.
    Streeter: Can you let him play?
    Jake: Streeter, he can get his own phone!
    Streeter: You can share!
  • In "Nuggets," the loss of Amir's chicken nuggets is treated like a classic cinematic Disposable Woman situation, with direct references to Mystic River and Contagion (2011).
  • The end tag of "Gay Marriage" veers into a discussion of how people who shart deserve equal rights.
  • Notwithstanding all the past occasions that Jake has expressed a desire not to work near Amir, in "Gum" his declaration that "I wanna switch desks" is given all the weight of a request for a divorce.
    Amir: This is such a small thing in the grand scheme of things. I-i-it's infinitesimal!
    Jake: It's small, maybe, in the grand scheme of things, but the grand scheme of things is what I'm worried about, okay? It's a lot of little things, like this, adding up. Also...you know you stabbed me once.
• The Dog Bites Back: At the end of “Couch for Sale”, after years of being trolled and jerked around by Amir, Mickey finally snaps and trashes Amir’s apartment.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Amir explains a joke while telling it. "A guy walks face first into a bar. A metal bar. Ouch."
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Amir alternates between this and angling for Jake's pity, which Jake points out in "Split Pea Soup." Jake isn't much better.
• Doppelgänger Dating: Space Twins has Jake dating a female Amir lookalike, appropriately named Rima.
• Dork in a Sweater: Doobs.
• Double Date: The "Double Date" series has Jake double-dating with Murph, his terrifyingly flirtatious girlfriend Emily, and the couple's completely wordless and non-responsive friend Nico. As if the pressure on him isn't bad enough, it turns out Murph only invited him because he's planning to propose to Emily that night.
  Murph: I mean, I want it to be intimate, so I figured, "What's more intimate than a double date?"
  Jake: ...Single date!
• Downer Ending: The finale refers extensively to the real production of the show through a plot about the fictional Jake and Amir trying to mastermind a web series about themselves. Unlike their real counterparts, though, the fictional Jake and Amir fail in spectacular fashion and are fired from their jobs at CollegeHumor. While clearing out their desks, they briefly seem to be onto something when they toy around with a low-budget camcorder shoot of one of their scripts—the actual early episode "Beer"—before deciding that it's not very good and throwing in the towel.
• Do You Trust Me?: Parodied a few times, since Jake really doesn't trust Amir. See "Ransom."
• Drives Like Crazy: Amir is continuously distracted and feels totally free to take both hands off the wheel at any time. If If I Were You is to be believed, this may be one of the few characteristics he has in common with his real-life counterpart.
• Drunken Song: Amir and Pat sing "Tubthumping," "Piano Man" and "Lady in Red" as they get increasingly deep into the drink supply in "Interpreters 2 (Cheer Up)."
• Dude, Not Funny!: Jake's typical reaction to Amir's attempts at humor, which include rickrolling an email thread about funeral arrangements.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Pat tries to help Jake do this in "Interpreters 2 (Cheer Up)," but he and Amir go through all the alcohol themselves.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: Amir tries this on Jake in "Los Angeles." It doesn't work.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The earliest episodes involve Hurwitz and Blumenfeld messing around with video editing, improv comedy, and brief gags, many involving Medium Awareness and No Fourth Wall. The characterization of Amir as socially inept, attention-seeking and obsessed with Jake began to emerge with "Tattoo" and "Practical Joke," and the classic opposite-desks formula officially debuts with "Beer."
• Easily Embarrassed Youngster: Amir still has this kind of relationship with his mom, to Jake's bemusement.
  Jake: You know, when you're an adult it's actually not cool to not love your mom.
• Easy Amnesia: Amir in "Amnesia."
• Eating Lunch Alone:
  • An early episode called "Lunchtime" has Jake making fun of Amir for doing this.
  • Averted in several episodes, such as Rock Paper Scissors and Choking where Amir invites Jake to lunch to avoid "eating" alone, despite the fact that he has no food.
• Eating Shoes: In "Milk Man" Amir suffers symptoms of what's assumed to be food poisoning until Jake follows the advice of a 911 operator to punch him in the stomach and an entire shoe comes up.
  Amir: That actually makes sense...because literally a second before I started complaining of pain...I ate a shoe.
• Edible Theme Naming: In "Stock Market", it's revealed that two of Amir's colleagues are named Hamburger and Lasagna.
• Elevator Failure: "Elevator."
• Embarrassing First Name: Subverted with "Doobs," who is deeply embarrassed by the nickname and would prefer to be known by his full name. Only Jake sees the redundancy in attempting Malicious Misnaming on a guy whose given name is "Penis."
  Jake: And the nickname you gave him to make fun of him was "Doobs."
  Amir: Pretty funny, right? It's like his last name, but shorter.
• Embarrassingly Painful Sunburn:
  • Jake gets one in Sun Tan after falling asleep in the tanning bed (and Amir forgets to wake him up).
  • Amir gets one in Staycation Part 2, where he gets sunburned so badly that he spends the next couple of episodes peeling.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Amir Valerie Blumenfeld.
  Jake: You know you can change your middle name, right?
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • Jake hates it when Amir calls him "Jakey."
  • A Running Gag is that Doobs keeps changing his name to increasingly outlandish, embarrassing "names" in an attempt to avoid Amir's highly innocuous Malicious Misnaming.
• End-of-Series Awareness: The Grand Finale ends with Jake and Amir finally getting fired, with plenty of Leaning on the Fourth Wall ("You guys are done at CollegeHumor!")
• Enraged by Idiocy: Jake, often. In "Time Saver" his attempt to keep a cool head in the face of Amir's latest manifestation of Insane Troll Logic results in the pressure building up until he leaps over both desks and physically attacks Amir.
• Entendre Failure:
  • When Mike, Jake's replacement at work when he briefly changes jobs, mentions a former "partner" and asks Amir if he's ever had a "BF," Amir thinks he's referring to his best friend and talks about Jake. He then suggests that Mike should be his "partner" and is put off and confused when Mike responds flirtatiously. Mike apologizes for assuming he was "out" and Amir confirms that he's not out, because they're both indoors.
  • In "Fashion Tips," Jake confronts Amir with the fact that the fashion advice he's been following is clearly from women's magazines:
    Amir: If they were really girl's magazines, would I know "Fifteen Ways to Freak Him Out in Bed"?
    Jake: ...You wanna freak guys out in bed?
    Amir: Yeah! I like scaring people, and now I can do that in bed!
    Jake: Scaring people like "boo"...?
    Amir: No, scaring people like licking their toes? Okay, really freaking them out.
    Jake: I think this is the most you have ever not gotten it, and that's saying a lot.
  • In "Wingman," Amir introduces himself to a girl Jake likes and is confused by the fact that she can see, as Jake used the word "blind" to describe how hard he'd go at it with her. Similarly, in "Movie Date":
    Jake: How on Earth is this a double date? You didn't bring anyone.
    Amir: I thought you said you were gonna split this chick in half?
• Epic Fail: While shooting the Show Within a Show web series in the finale, Amir publicly castrates himself with the slate, then leaves the footage in for the premiere.
• Erotic Dream: When Amir describes one in "Bagels," he manages to simultaneously offer too much and too little information.
  Amir: Imagine every koala ever in a bikini.
  ...
  Amir: Do you know what it's like to grow up on the street? To be hood? Or would you rather just suck off Uncle Sam and swallow what he gives you? By the way, that was my dream last night.
• Erotic Eating: Emily attempts this in the "Double Date" series. Her target, Jake, can only focus on the fact that she's eating branzino with her hands.
  Jake: You know that's not hot. Your hands probably smell like fish now.
• Establishing Shot: The classic episode formula set in the work area of the office always opens with a wide shot of the opposite-facing desks belonging to the title characters.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Unsuccessfully invoked by Amir in "Podcast Ideas."
  Amir: What's the one thing we're good at? Like, as men?
  Jake: You're not good at anything.
  Amir: That's it. Wait, say that again.
  Jake: No.
  Amir: It's perfect! It's absolutely perfect!
  Jake: You're forcing an epiphany, okay, but you're not actually having—
  Amir: Whoa, fuck you for a second.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When the lawyer in "iPhone Case" apparently tries to racially profile the mob that attacked Amir, Amir replies, "That's in poor taste."
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: "CEO" has a particularly contextually-inappropriate one.
• Excrement Statement: In "Celebration," Jake finds out that Amir has no idea how to express positive emotions. When he asks him how he'd celebrate if he won the lottery, Amir pulls down his pants and yells "GRRR! SHIT ON YA!"
• Eye Scream: Invoked by Jake when Amir cites LASIK as the reason he's ditched his glasses. When Jake describes what the procedure actually entails, Amir's horrified reaction makes it obvious that he not only never had it done but had no idea what the word meant in the first place.
• Face Palm: Jake, frequently. (On a meta level, this is Hurwitz's go-to way to hide evidence of Corpsing).
• Failed Pilot Episode: A series pilot was produced for TruTV in 2015, though it was never released to the public.
• Fake Charity: The Amir Blumenfeld Foundation for Not Giving a Shit, which in fairness makes no attempt to hide it. According to Jake, the reward for a $10 donation to said organization's Kickstarter is a shirt that says, "I donated ten dollars to a fake charity and all I got was this lousy dick."
• Fake Twin Gambit: In "Graveyard," Lerona, now a ghost, pretends to be her own surviving twin sister and is disappointed when both Jake and Amir instantly hit on "Jessica" and insult Lerona in the process.
• Fast-Forward Gag: Seen in "30 Second Debate"; Amir asks Jake a question, Jake’s answer is fast forwarded, and Amir tells him to slow down because he’s talking too fast.
• Fear of Thunder: See "Storm," in which Amir is so cripplingly afraid of thunder that he wets himself after a loud thunderclap.
• Fighting Irish: Murph.
• Finish Dialogue in Unison: Jake frequently does this to Amir. It seems to have slipped out to the way he interacts with other people.
  Sarah: Yeah, you do do that, Jake. You cut people off like, a lot. It's really—
  Jake: "—annoying," I know. But you're interrupting, and that's my pet peeve.
• Firing Day: The finale opens with a rolling shot that moves through the entire office depicting the exasperated reactions of Jake and Amir's coworkers as the two argue in their trademark style at full volume in the middle of the work day. They're subsequently called in by their boss and fired, not only for being constantly disruptive, but for barely accomplishing anything else in eight years.
• Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: Amir's various obsessions.
  Jake: You're so fast at being dumb.
• Flowery Insults: In "Angry Birds," a fed-up Jake explodes at Amir, "You are an anus of the highest caliber!" Amir remembers the insult and eventually fires it back, sort of:
  Amir: Yeah, you can share with me, you anus of the highest calendar!
• Food Slap: In "Embarrassed" Amir gets deeply emotionally invested in what he doesn't realize is an entirely one-sided conversation with Jake, who's on the phone with someone else. Upon finally catching on, he throws a cup of water in Jake's face, to Jake's confusion.
• Footsie Under the Table: Emily manages to divest Jake of his shirt this way in "Double Date."
• Foreshadowing: In "Hospital", Amir tells Jake he won't let "some quack in a van hack him up in a can". A year later in "Nose Job", that's exactly what happens.
• Forged Message: In "Ballgame," Jake deals with the unwanted company of Amir while watching a baseball game at his apartment. The end reveals that Jake invited a whole group of coworkers over, but they never showed up because Amir left a note on the door "from" Jake saying that the event was cancelled.
• Forgetful Jones: Amir tends to forget how a discussion started in the middle of the conversation or fail to remember something he or another person just said. He's also repeatedly left the house without his shoes.
• Forgotten Birthday:
  • Amir refuses to learn Sam's birthday because he's worried it will make him forget Jake's.
  • In "Jacuzzi", Amir calls out Jake for forgetting his birthday and Jake legitimately feels bad about it.
• Fourth-Date Marriage:
  • Jake's engagement to his blind date Nico in the "Double Date" series is the result of a twisted hybrid of Shotgun Wedding and Accidental Proposal. Specifically, Murph threatens Jake into proposing to Nico so that he'll be off the market and out of the Love Triangle with Emily, and Jake acquiesces on the assumption that Nico, who hasn't spoken a word to him or interacted with him in any way all evening, will never accept. Guess what...
  • In "Movie Date," Doobs proposes to and marries Jake's date Julie on the spot after finding out that she likes Amir. Since the guy hitching them is movie theater usher Sulu Candles, Jake questions the legality of this.
• Fratbro: In general, Jake is this and arguably only looks buttoned-up compared to Amir.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Amir tries to force this to happen in "Freaky Friday” by tackling Jake, hoping that their bodies will somehow switch in the process.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In several episodes if you pause at just the right time, you'll be able to see one of the photos of Jake that Amir keeps on his desk.
• Freudian Excuse: Amir's family life is ridiculously terrible, to say nothing of the five years he spent being kidnapped and living entirely on chicken nuggets.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: Amir likes doing this to Jake, who has responded with violence more than once.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Amir at the CollegeHumor office. And increasingly, Jake too.
  Streeter: Nobody likes you guys.
  Jake and Amir: We know!
• Friendship Denial: Jake with Amir. Not always.
• Friendship Moment:
  • The conclusion of the "Sick Day" story arc has Jake returning to his old job and retaking his desk opposite Amir. He then agrees to take Amir to McDonalds for dinner, and the episode ends with a hug.
    • There's also the ending to Part 3 that was cut from the YouTube upload. Amir is crying too hard to accept Jake's departing handshake, so Jake gives up and walks away. Amir catches the elevator at the last second and holds out his hand, to which Jake puts his stuff down and wraps him in a hug instead. When they get to Jake's floor Amir refuses to let go, and Jake agrees to ride the elevator with him two more times.
  • Throughout the 4-part "Brother" series Jake, who is being scammed for money by his older brother Kumail, is only angered by Amir's repeated attempts to warn him that the guy isn't trustworthy, cumulating in his accepting an invitation to go with Kumail on a "weekend camping trip," all while Amir knows firsthand that Kumail plans on ditching him that night. Jake turns up subdued to the office on Monday and talks to Amir about the fun time he and his brother had camping. In a rare moment of sensitivity, Amir doesn't call him on the lie, instead asking him if he'd like to go camping with him when he's not "camped out" from the supposed first trip. Jake eagerly jumps on the chance to go camping "again," but quietly thanks Amir, showing that he's aware of, and grateful for, what Amir is doing for him.
  • Almost in "Business Card”. Amir gets his own business card, but it’s completely worthless; it’s written in invisible ink, and even then, it only says, “Tweet at me, bitches!” with no contact info listed. Just to be nice, Jake sends Amir a tweet complimenting him for the card. Amir’s response? “Don’t fucking pity me!"
  • At the end of Fired Jake finally calls Amir his best friend. Amir ruins it by insisting that they're best best friends.
  • Subverted in Feast; Amir tries to have an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner at the office with Jake, because he doesn’t have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving. Jake says, “I can’t believe I’m about to do this,” and then… locks Amir in the office so he can’t crash Jake’s Thanksgiving dinner. Played straight in the immediate follow-up "Driving Home," which reveals that Amir somehow managed to make it to Jake's Thanksgiving anyway; after realizing that Amir's family refused to tell him where they were, Jake ultimately decides he's glad it happened.
• Funny Answering Machine: Amir's outgoing message in "Voicemail" (on his office phone, no less):
  "Hey, it's Amir. I know this is a prank call, Leron, so don't f—king bother leaving a message because I won't believe you!"
• Funny Background Event: See The Godfather, in which Pat and Sarah’s conversation is accompanied by Jake and Amir getting into a wrestling match in the background.
• Fun T-Shirt: Several recurring ones, including the actual Jake and Amir shirts from BustedTees (the in-universe explanation for their existence is that Amir pitches them himself).
• Gag Penis: Amir is implied to have one in Brother Part 1, when there’s a brief shot of him completely bottomless and the censor bar goes past his knees.
• Garrulous Growth: Amir tells an insane story about one in "Day After Thanksgiving."
• Geeky Turn-On: Jake falls for Amir's girlfriend Lerona because she's into Lord of the Rings. There's clearly a bit of Loving a Shadow in play, though:
  Lerona: Jake and I were just talking about Lord of the Rings.
  Amir: Those DVDs own hard.
  Jake: Yeah, only we were talking about the books, you f—ing ass.
  Lerona: ...I was talking about the movies.
• Gender Flip: The All-Nighter sketch "Jake and Amir's Dream" has several guest comedians briefly playing the roles of Jake and Amir, including a sequence where they're respectively played by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of Broad City fame.
• Genre Savvy: Jake becomes more savvy to Amir's ways over time...but it very rarely helps him in the end.
  Amir: Jake, meet my daughter, Emily.
  Jake: Ok, I'm going to work from home today.
  • At the end of Videos he has finally learnt how to shut Amir down when he gets too overexcited.
  • Jake will invite Amir to dinner or offer him chicken nuggets if he needs to distract him, bribe him or just plain steal back his attention. He also uses Amir's tendency to take childish games very seriously (Opposite Day, "If I flip this page you're a nerd," etc.) to his advantage, and learns to play along with the Ace and Jocelyn videos, inventing plot points on the spot to get Amir to do what he wants. On his own end, Amir occasionally shows a startlingly well-developed sense of how to manipulate Jake. See "Couch" for an example of their respective Genre Savviness clashing. Amir wins.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: "Get Rich Quick Schemes" (or as Amir would have it, "wet bitch thick creams").
• The Ghost: Quite a few characters in Amir's Noodle Incident-rich life, most notably his dad and his friend Mickey, the latter of whom briefly appeared in the finale. His cousin Leron is typically also this despite making one appearance (two if you count the real YouTube video discussed in "Gallon Challenge"; three if you include his offscreen line in "Restricted").
• Gilligan Cut: "Resume" opens with Jake sitting to the far left of an otherwise empty couch, to which Amir arrives and tries to squeeze in to the left of Jake.
  Jake: What are you doing? Sit there! Amir! Sit there! We have an entire couch, and I'm not gonna move, because I was—
  (Abrupt cut to Amir sitting to the left with Jake on the right.)
• Girlfriend in Canada: Subverted in "Girlfriend," when Jake only thinks Lerona is this (understandably, as her name happens to be Amir's cousin's name with an -a suffix pronounced as "uh," "like you're confused").
• The Glasses Come Off: When Murph takes off his glasses it's a sure sign that Jake is about to get his ass kicked. In "Table Read 2" Jake pleadingly motions for him to put them back on, to no avail.
• Glasses Curiosity: In "Glasses" Jake wears Amir's glasses while Amir looks for them, having forgotten that he let Jake try them on.
• The Glomp: Amir is a frequent dispenser of these and can be seen jumping on Jake's shoulders in two of the intros.
• Godwin's Law: Touched on in "Election":
  Amir: Okay, so red state is Nazi?
  Jake: Republican.
  Amir: Same thing.
  Jake: ...I can't decide if you're being poignant or stupid.
  Amir: ...Same thing.
  Jake: Got it. Stupid.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: In "Good Cop, Bad Cop" Amir decides to attempt this on the interns and goes instantly off the rails, having to be restrained by everybody in the room within less than two minutes to prevent him from killing someone with a hammer. He was shooting for "good cop."
• Got Me Doing It: Jake's tendency to slip into Amir's Verbal Tics and other mannerisms. When he briefly takes a job in California during the New York era, his new desk partner assumes he's using East Coast slang she's unfamiliar with.
• Gross-Out Show: Blood, urine, vomit and excrement in abundance.
• Group Hug: See Group Hug, in which Amir initiates one with a crowd of strangers.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Both Amir and Murph.
• Halfway Plot Switch: "Freaky Friday" and "Bake Sale" devote the length of the episode proper to their Stingers, which both involve Pat calling his mom to tell her about some money he stole from Jake while pretending that he earned it himself.
• Ham and Deadpan Duo: Guess.
• Hammy Herald: In "Shia," Amir ushers Mike Fink, an intern he's convinced is Shia LaBeouf, around the office by singing a rewrite of "Prince Ali" from Aladdin.
• Hand Wave: In "Compost," Jake tells a story about how one of Amir's canine teeth fell out the week before and adds, "I guess you got a veneer later?"
• #HashtagForLaughs: A few memorable ones, such as "#douchebag" and "#hashbag." Then there's Murph taking a sudden emotional dive as he updates his and Emily's "kiss Twitter":
  "#openmouth, #amazing, #shewaslookingatjakethewholetime!"
• Has Two Thumbs and...: Amir misuses the phrase several times, applying it to others instead of him.
• Hates Being Touched: Jake with Amir. Lampshaded in “Keys”:
  Jake: What did Ricky say about touching me?
  Amir: He said, “Maybe sometimes, if you ask politely."
  Jake: No, he said never.
• Headbutt of Love: Amir inflicts a very unwanted one on Jake in "Keys."
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Jake's go-to tactic for ignoring Amir. A lot of their coworkers do the same thing, understandably given their constant bickering.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": "Taxes":
  Jake: Okay, do you have any other source of income besides your salary, like do you do freelance?
  Amir: Ha, you said doodoo!
  Jake: I didn't actually—
  Amir: "Do you do"!
  Jake: Yeah well, there's a "you" in there.
  Amir: Still.
• He's Dead, Jim: A minor Running Gag has Dave Rosenberg saying "He's dead" at the end of an episode. (He's always wrong about it.)
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Or Amir wishes they were at least. He repeatedly tries to enforce the idea that he and Jake are best friends, even when Jake makes it explicitly clear that he wants nothing to do with Amir. Nevertheless, Jake ultimately spends more time with Amir than just about anyone else, sometimes willingly, and has made at least two major career decisions based on wanting to continue working with him. In "Real Estate Agent" they even shop for an apartment together, although by 2020's "Social Distance Scroll" they haven't seen each other in five years. As of "Podcast Ideas" they're back together for the foreseeable future.
• Hilarious Outtakes: The youtube channel JakeAndAmirOuttakes with Corpsing being the most promient.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Amir (see “Abusive Parents” above).
• Hi, Mom!: Amir does this in Fired after thinking he's the victim of a Candid Camera Prank.
• Hollywood Healing:
  • Averted with “Bozo”; Amir ends the episode by jumping out the window, and in the following episode, “Tampon”, he’s seen in a wheelchair.
  • Also averted with Rock Paper Scissors (in which Jake punches Amir in the stomach, breaking his ribs) and the next episode Bake Sale (where Amir is seen to still have the rib fracture).
• How Did You Know? I Didn't: In "CEO," Amir is narrowly rehired moments after being fired when his Brutal Honesty wrings a confession out of an intern who pretended to be dealing with an unplanned pregnancy so that she could get out of work to attend a rave. She concludes that he's highly perceptive, but in fact he really thought he was being pointlessly cruel to a pregnant young woman in a terrible situation.
• Hug and Comment: The ending line of the "Sick Day" arc:
  Jake: Hey, did you make out with a guy?
  Amir: Yeah, it was weird.
• Hurricane of Excuses: "Game Ideas":
  Jake: You're invading other people's privacy.
  Amir: No I won't! Again. Or for the first time. I won't, and I didn't. And I haven't. Again. Or ever.
• Hurricane of Puns: In "iPad":
  Amir: Okay, this is A to B conversation, so C your way out of it, right? C your way out of D room. That's right, get E-way. Get the F away. G, you're still H...-ere? I don't know why, because I, J, told you to K—
  Jake: He's gone.
  Amir: ...L.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: The standard logic gets inverted by Amir in "Traffic":
  Amir: It's like how you can make fun of my mom, but I can't.
  Jake: That's not how that works.
  Amir: It's 'cause I'm too close to her, but you have a lot of material to work with. She's dumb and short.
• Hypocritical Humor: Often; Amir has no sense of irony, and Jake has been known to criticize Amir for attitudes, behavior and failings that closely resemble his own.
• I Can Explain: Subverted in "Come Again”. Pat’s date catches him getting mounted by Amir, and when Amir tries to explain, Pat cuts him off and says that it’d just be easier to break up with her.
• Ice-Cream Koan: "April Fools Soup":
  Murph: It's funny, you know? You're always wondering what to expect...maybe you should start expecting what to wonder.
• Idiot Savant: Amir has a serious literary and poetic talent, to the point where Jake is sometimes reluctantly compelled to consult him for help with a love letter or Mother's Day missive. He can also solve a Rubik's cube in seconds.
  Jake: (on Amir's latest Mickey monologue) God, that was impressive.
  Amir: Thank you.
  Jake: Do you plan that out, like the "Go outside and pretend it's not Thanksgiving, feast your eyes on this," you plan that out?
  Amir: (indicating paper on desk) Yeah, yeah yeah yeah, it's all scripted.
  Jake: ...Wow, learn the alphabet!
• If It's You, It's Okay: Amir feels this way about Shia LaBeouf.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: In his initial role as Amir's Sidekick, Sam's "friendship" with Amir was even more pathetically unrequited than Amir's with Jake.
  Sam: Remember that Jake-themed birthday party I threw for you on my birthday? I was thinking about having a sequel.
  Amir: Dude, I don't even know what your birthday is.
  Sam: It's July 22nd!
  Amir: Don't tell me! Now I might forget Jake's!
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • In "Friend Quiz" Jake comes to the horrified conclusion that he and Amir really are best friends. Aside from a cursory attempt to bond with him that doesn't end well, the relationship pretty much continues as usual.
  • Amir has had several moments of either realizing that all his actions are counterproductive or coming just wide of the mark:
    Amir: Your attitude almost makes me not want to write a song and perform it for you at work!
• I Just Like Saying the Word: Amir seems to enjoy saying "yams" even more than he hates eating them.
• I Just Want to Be You: Amir to the point where he will sometimes refer to himself by Jake's name.
• "I Know What We Can Do" Cut: In Unknown Co-Worker, both Jake and Amir are fretting over the fact that they don’t know any of their co-workers’ names. Amir claims he has a great idea, and then it cuts to him enjoying a sandwich. Then he says he has another great idea, and after the cut, we see him eating the same sandwich, only with ketchup.
• The Illegal: Amir. He was seemingly born in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
• I'll Kill You!: Kelly, the girl from "Sunday Football," at the end of the video when Amir finally hits her Rage Breaking Point.
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: In "Profile Pic" with the standard roles reversed:
  Amir: Can we get two waters and—do you want anything?
  Jake: So both waters are for you?
  Amir: Four waters, please.
• Imagine Spot: In Office Fantasy, Amir fantasizes about seeing Jake get hit on by a hot co-worker, only for Jake to tell her that he doesn't go anywhere without Amir.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Kevin Bacon is on Amir's list of Top 10 Fish To Fry.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Amir, often.
  Jake: Why do you even keep a diary?
  Amir: It's not a diary, it's a journal. Now gimme my diary back, please.
• Implausible Deniability:
  • In Fourth of July Amir denies being in the office that weekend, but everything is Caught on Tape.
    Amir in videotape: Hey, security? Hey, it's Amir.
    Amir: ...See, that could be any Amir, he just said "Amir."
    Amir in videotape: It's Amir Blumenfeld, specifically.
    Amir: ...That? Oh, that is me, but...I think that wasn't Fourth—
    Amir in videotape: —And it's the Fourth of July weekend.
    Amir: You know, th-this is—that is my house.
    Amir in videotape: ...And I'm in the office. I AIN'T AT HOME, BITCHES!
  • In "Thai Menu," Jake confronts Amir with the folder where he's been keeping a list of every outfit Jake has worn since he started work, to which Amir claims that it's a takeout menu.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes:
  • Jake's attempts to be fashionable.
  • Amir's Looney Tunes jean vest.
• Improbably Predictable: Amir, to Jake.
  Amir: ... I will get out of here, right away, if you answer me this.
  Jake: Okay, Shasta McNasty.
  Amir: Uh.
  Jake: And it wasn't the best show ever on television. Now leave?
  Amir: Double or nothing.
  Jake: French fries!
  Amir: (getting up) Okay, never mind.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Downplayed via Selective Obliviousness in "BFF":
  Sarah: Listen, you and Amir being best friends is not a big deal. Why don't you just try hanging out with him and you might actually like him?
  Jake: I don't see how that's possible. I mean, he's so fucking annoying.
  Sarah: I know, I know, but just give it a shot. You never know.
  Jake: I guess. I mean, I'll try it, whatever. (Pan out to show Amir slumped next to him on the couch.) All right, let's go.
  Amir: Okay, finally! That was boring as hell! Who were you talking about?
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: "iPhone Case":
  Jake: That's a disgrace. If it's a disgrace, then you've got a case!
  Amir: You think I've got a case?
  (A lawyer pops out from under Jake's desk.)
  Lawyer: Did someone say they had a case?
• Incoming Ham: Pretty much any Ben Schwartz role. And Doobs.
  Doobs: IT IS I!
• Incredibly Lame Fun: "Kite."
  Jake: So pimp. It's just so fucking pimp. Soaring like a majestic eagle or something. Like—that's it, right up in the air, that's my kite. I'm not even explaining it right cause I'm so amped still. Like your adrenaline is pumping, it's just in the sky, you just don't let go, you can't let go of the kite. It's just the...it's the best feeling when you just see it. The wind blowing and shit. The unraveling spool. So phat, you don't even know. The phattest fucking thing in the world. Flying that kite, I owned it. It's like I owned—I was owning, all day long, all morning, and then—starting in the morning then to the afternoon, just owning the kite. Owning the sky. It was so fucking sick. Sprinting across the grass. Picturing it now it almost brings a fucking tear to my eye.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Amir’s frequent crying jags.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Parodied in "For the Wolf" when Amir tries to set Jake up so he can invoke this. This being Amir, he doesn't understand the logic well enough to pull it off.
  Amir: I never said that a wolf ate my dog, huh?!
  Jake: You did, it was the only thing you said to me, actually.
  Amir: Did I?!
  Jake: Yeah.
  Amir: Yeah! Yeah. Right. Right. ...You have to admit that would have been pretty clever, though.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Ben Schwartz's various characters are in fact different people who all appear together in the finale.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Both Jake and Amir suffer from this to varying degrees.
• Infinite Supplies: Particularly in earlier episodes, Amir regularly throws large amounts of money around. It's explained once or twice that his dad is funding him in addition to his salary.
• Initiation Ceremony: Jake's frat Upsilon Upsilon Upsilon has a particularly insane hazing process of which a few of the milder items include eating socks, chugging absinthe and getting branded with a branding iron.
• In Love with Your Carnage: When Murph apologizes to Emily for his violent Crazy Jealous Guy outbursts, she interrupts him and urges him to be more crazy. He's only too happy to oblige.
• Inner Monologue: "Thoughts" depicts Amir's profound meditations on his efforts to photograph a record-breaking bowel movement without setting off the motion censor on the toilet.
• Innocent Inaccurate: "Dave Part 2":
  Jake: What's that? What's "nose candy"?
  Amir: Me and Dave snort sugar at lunch and it makes us happy for a little time and then we sort of flatten out and get a little depressed.
  Jake: Sugar?
  Dave: It's cocaine, dad, relax.
  Jake: You guys do cocaine during work?!
  Amir: What's cocaine?
• Insane Troll Logic: Amir runs on this. For example, in "Time Saver" he uses bizarre logic to argue that you can save time by wiping before you shit.
  Amir: All I’m saying is that if you wipe before you shit, there’s not a lot of shit there so you don’t have to wipe as much!
• Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: "Gallon Challenge" and "iPhone Case." Subverted in "Auto-Tune the News"; Amir acts embarrassed by The Gregory Brothers' sampling of his needy Facebook video messages to Jake, but it gradually comes out that he paid them to do it.
• Instant Sedation:
  • In Sleeping Pills, Amir tries to knock out Jake by spiking his coffee with sleeping pills. Jake says that he doesn’t drink coffee, and in the background we see a guy take a sip from his coffee mug and instantly pass out.
  • A Running Gag throughout "Private Eye."
• Insult Backfire:
  • Amir does this so often that Jake anticipates it and tries to get around it.
    Jake: All right, don't take this as a compliment—
    Amir: Thank you.
    Jake: That's your best app idea yet.
    Amir: Appreciate it.
    Jake: It's still terrible—
    Amir: Danke.
    Jake: —it's just all your other ideas are so bad.
    Amir: Gracias.
    Jake: Okay, don't take this—
    Amir: Todah rabah!
    Jake: Fuck you!
    (Beat.)
    Amir: (under his breath) Ouch.
  • Hilariously subverted in "Movie Date 2" after Doobs proposes to Jake's date, Julia, on the spot just because he found out she had a thing for Amir.
    Doobs: I'm gonna hit it, and every time I hit it, I'm gonna think of Amir!
    Jake: No, I don't think that's the insult that you want it to be.
    Amir: (actually insulted) Yes. It is.
• Insult Misfire: "Meeting Invitation":
  Jake: (on the phone) Sorry, there's just this idiot yelling in my ear right now.
  Amir: Apology accepted! But if you don't want someone yelling in your ear, I suggest you put down the phone!
• Intergenerational Friendship: Amir's "oldest friend" Cheryl is in fact an absurdly youthful-looking 50-year-old that he met yesterday. There's also Mickey, who has a daughter old enough to be getting married in "DJ Business" (taking place in 2014, when Amir is 31 years old).
• I Reject Your Reality: Amir's approach to life.
  Amir: You know how you have a weird love affair with coupons?
  Jake: I know how you make up realities to justify the weird, stupid things you do.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Frequent.
• Irishman and a Jew: Two sets for the price of fun with the Irish Pat and Murph as frequent supporting players to the (respectively) half-Jewish and Jewish main duo.
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Amir's attempts to emulate Jake.
• Ironic Echo: Parodied in "Meeting Invitation" when Amir attempts this by quoting something Jake never said.
• Is This a Joke?: In Fired when the new CEO confronts Jake and Amir with their misdeeds, Amir becomes convinced he's on Punk'd and smashes a wall clock he assumes is a hidden camera.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Amir and Jake discussing the "Big Brother" program:
  Amir: What if I get one...and it can't talk?
  Jake: Please don't call them "it."
• It's All About Me: By his own admission, Amir literally thinks the world revolves around him.
• It's Been Done: In the episodes where Amir pitches ideas to Jake, his concepts tend to be either hilariously bad or this.
  Jake: You think you invented milk?!
• Jerkass:
  • Jake becomes one of these as the series goes on. His behavior towards Amir is typically justifiably harsh, but there are plenty of times where he acts like a completely self-centered jackass who'll exploit Amir or grandstand around others, as well as sometimes disagreeing with or mocking Amir for the sake of it (or in spite of actually being the wrong one).
  • Amir starts out as obnoxious, but mostly harmless, but his antics and overall personality become increasingly malicious as the series progresses.
  • The few times Dave appears, he exhibits Jerkass tendencies - reminiscing about domestic abuse and pursuing Sarah even when he knows Jake is interested.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Amir, to Jake's eternal disappointment.
• Jewish Complaining: Amir.
  Amir: I honestly feel like God owes me money at this point for dealing me more than a shit hand. And I'm not talking about being paid back karmically, like, uh, like with a good career opportunity, or a Love Interest. I'm talking about Him! Owing! Me! Cash!
• Jews Love to Argue: If either Jake or Amir were capable of letting the other one slide, there would be no show.
• Jumping the Shark: Discussed by Amir in "Facebook Redesign," though he alternates between the correct expression and "jumping the carp."
• "Just Joking" Justification: Amir often claims that he did something "as a goof." Jake similarly tends to defend himself by claiming that everybody else needs to "learn how to be funny."
• Kavorka Man: Downplayed but still visible with Amir, who easily charmed Diana, Hallie and Lerona and on the whole has an edge on Casanova Wannabe Jake when it comes to the opposite sex. His problem seems to lie more in maintaining relationships than in achieving them.
• Kick the Dog: Amir is constantly doing this to his friend Mickey.
• Killed Off for Real: Lerona in the "Girlfriend" arc.
• Kissing Cousins:
  • Jake brags about getting into a club by blurting out that he kissed his cousin there.
  • Amir once french-kissed Leron in front of a security camera "as a goof." It's worth noting that Leron is not a blood relative. Probably. In another episode Amir claims that he and Leron aren't cousins anymore as "he freakin' divorced me."
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Amir.
• Kubrick Stare: Amir, more than once. Jake also gets one at the end of "Valentine's Day" when Sarah gives Amir a hug.
• Lame Comeback: Amir is given to comebacks of the No, You variety, but it's Jake who is the true master. Particularly evident in the "Rap Teacher" series and in any clash with Murph.
  Jake: You know what, Murph? I've been working out, so I got news for you: you come at me, I'm gonna run away so fast that I'm gonna tell on you.
• Lap Pillow: At the end of "Ground Rules," Amir rests in Jake's lap while recovering from a Psychic Nosebleed.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The thumbnail for "Finale Part 3: Ben Schwartz 2" shows that Ben Schwartz's characters are different people as revealed at the end of "Ben Schwartz 1."
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Many times.
  • "Auto Tune the News":
    Jake: All right, focus. Focus, okay? You're in an internet video.
    Amir: What?
    Jake: Lots of people are watching it, and you look like a needy loser.
    Amir: You look like a jerk!
    Jake: I'm not even in the video, and trust me, if I were in an internet video, nobody would think I was a jerk.
  • Fired, which involves Jake and Amir trying to pitch Ace and Jocelyn as a web series, ends with Amir suggesting that he and Jake "keep this up" ("Just the two of us, making videos together at our desks. Sounds really boring"). There's also a reference to the short-lived CollegeHumor Show ("Huge news, everyone, we're on MTV!") and a subtle nod to audience reaction to the role reversal episodes:
    Jake: Just try to be yourself.
    Amir: Why don’t you be myself, huh, and I'll be you.
    Jake: Yeah, people don’t seem to like that.
  • In "Pizza," Jake complains about Amir's characterization shift in a way that seems ripped right from the comments:
    Jake: Stop saying "ass" so much. Okay? You're using it as a crutch, and it's not as funny as you think it is. Just...go back to being the needy weirdo that you used to be. All right?
  • In "Last Day" Amir tries for a Meaningful Echo and only makes Jake uncomfortable.
    Amir: It was a callback!
    Jake: It's a deep pull!
  • The exchange at the beginning of "Printer." ^note For context, a week's gap in uploads after the "Road Trip" storyline had caused speculation that the series was over.
    Amir: Where the fuck have you been?
    Jake: What are you talking about?
    Amir: What am I talking about? You weren't here last week, so I assumed you'd be gone forever!
    Jake: Why on earth would you assume that? Didn't I make a pretty big deal out of staying here?
    Amir: I guess not clear enough!
    Jake: Holy shit, dude, I take one week off. One week off in the last eight years, you put me on blast for that.
  • In several later episodes, Jake comments that Amir is running out of material.
    Jake: Poster ideas.
    Amir: Yeah.
    Jake: Don't you think we're scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point?
    Amir: (defensive) I think I can make 'em funny!
  • "Costumes Part 3," chronologically the last Halloween Episode, has this almost Beckettian exchange (which turns out to be Amir doing a "gay prisoner" character while Jake responds seriously):
    Amir: Jake, I'm exhausted. I'm tired of this!
    Jake: Me too.
    Amir: It's year in, year out, and it wears on you.
    Jake: It really does, every day.
    Amir: It's fatigue.
    Jake: It is.
    Amir: That's what it is. I feel...drained.
  • The finale consists of virtually nothing but this, as Jake and Amir attempt to make a web series based on their lives called Amir and Jake.
• Le Film Artistique: Doobs and Amir's film A Bridge Over River Queer.
• Left It In: Amir has no idea how to cut video. This comes back to bite him in the finale.
• Left the Background Music On: Murph lampshades this in “Grandma”. The episode begins with him talking about his grandma’s failing health, when all of a sudden the Austin Powers theme starts playing, bewildering him, Jake and Dave.
• Less Embarrassing Term:
  • Amir insists that his diary is a "journal," but begins each entry with "Dear Diary."
  • "Muscle Tee":
    Amir: Whoa, cool tank top.
    Jake: Whoa, cool wrong word for it!
• Let's You and Him Fight: Emily likes to see Murph get violent on Jake, to the point where she starts masturbating in public in "Table Read 2".
• Life Embellished: A web show about two CollegeHumor employees named Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, made by two CollegeHumor employees named Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld. More so early on when the two were actually employed as writers for the site, and the desks they filmed at were really where they worked; as the show was picked up by the site and gained popularity, it eventually became their full-time job, making their desks effectively just the set where they filmed their skits. Some viewers were confused about where the line was, to the point where Hurwitz was frequently asked if Amir was "really like that" (he isn't: the two are best friends in Real Life).
• Literal Metaphor:
  • At the end of "Beer" when Jake suddenly starts talking about his dying cat, Amir responds, "So sick."
  • In the Bacardi spot "Unknown Coworker," Amir tries to figure out who he "ran into" in the elevator. It gradually becomes clear that he actually collided with the guy while running into the elevator at full speed.
• Literal-Minded: One episode has Will helping Paul come up with a new password, and Paul tells him that it has to be something that he will remember, but Will won't. Will suggests using a loved one's birthday, and Paul changes his password to "A Loved One's Birthday".
• Living Emotional Crutch: Jake to Amir (and arguably Amir to Jake).
• Living Lie Detector: Amir has an uncanny knack for calling people's bluff.
• "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Amir has claimed to be dyslexic several times, and much of his spelling is more than wrong (though it's fine whenever it needs to be). Notable examples include "Jjkae" ("Jake"), "swyuidkaayce" ("suitcase") and "ozenenz" ("odds and ends").
  Jake: Then you reply, again: "I'm in tears. I am a baby in each one of your arms. Let me suckle on your tit and drink that sweet, sweet confidence juice." None of those words, not a single one, was spelled correctly.
• Literalist Snarking: As if Jake didn't have enough material from Amir without this.
  Amir: (on the phone) I have a proposition for you, Mickey. Yes, how would you like a new roommate, my friend? That's right. That's right, I am quiet, I am clean, and just between you and me, I bake a mean frittata.
  Jake: Why would you want to keep that a secret just between you two?
• Locked in a Room: Amir hopes that the Elevator Failure in "Elevator" will go this way, but they're seemingly only stuck there for a matter of minutes.
• LOL, 69: Whenever Amir has to provide a number, you can expect this.
• Lonely Bachelor Pad: "Amir Faces the Harsh Reality of Dating" shows Amir going home to a one-room furnished with a mattress, a lamp, and a lot of pictures of Jake.
• Look Both Ways: Lerona's demise.
• Loony Fan: Amir. Besides his fixation on Jake, he's worshipful toward Mike Fink, an intern whom he mistakes for Shia LaBeouf.
• Love Hungry: Amir.
• Love Triangle:
  • The Jake and Amir: Girlfriend series starts out as a Type 4, as Jake falls in love with Amir’s girlfriend Lerona. Eventually the roles of Jake and Amir switch after Jake confesses to Lerona and she chooses him over Amir ...and then gets promptly run over by a bus.
  • The "Interpreters" series kicks off one between Jake, Sarah and Pat after the latter two have a one-night stand from which Pat emerges smitten and Sarah indifferent. Jake later finds a more formidable rival in new guy Dave.
  • Emily is happily dating Murph but is also blatantly trying to ensnare Jake. Jake wants nothing to do with her, but Murph doesn't believe him.
• Lower-Deck Episode: In "Password," which depicts an exchange between Will and Paul the CEO, Jake and Amir get precisely one second of screentime. (The episode interacts with "4th of July Scroll," in which they hear the argument going on offscreen and turn their heads to look; the same footage is reused in "Password.")
• The Mad Hatter:
  • Amir is surprisingly self-aware.
    Jake: —I'm not gonna relax, why were you checking my voicemail?!
    Amir: Because I'm crazy, all right, you know that, for two years I've been annoying you and I've been insane, how can you be surprised right now?!
  • Cheryl.
    Jake: This isn't gonna happen, right?
    Cheryl: No. I'm insane. (Slasher Smile)
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase:
  • From Amir, "Bad [noun]? Nah, bad you," "[phrase]? Nah, [rhyming phrase]" or "[phrase]? More like "[rhyme or pun]."
  • "How's that for [adjective]?"
  • "How is that X?" Used by both Jake (when questioning Amir's Insane Troll Logic) and Amir (when complaining, ex. "How is that fair?", "How is that normal?")
  • "Last time I checked, [statement]."
  • "A [noun] for this [rhyming noun] makes [plural noun] [verb] [something]" ex. "A Zinfandel for this infidel makes me think, don't ask, do tell," or "A chinstrap for this thin chap makes the fat booty go clap." For some reason, this tends to get followed up with a Too Much Information confession, Jake's preferred format being "I [past-tense verb] my [family member] at a [place]."
  • Jake frequently defends his fashion choices with "Or was [person] at the [event or place] not stylin'?"
  • Amir often describes people in the form of "a [noun] and a [noun]," ex. "a pimp and a philosopher," "a coward and a fool," "a loser and a Jew."
  • Right off the bat.
  • "Holy guac, these [noun] things are ridickydonkey! I need one b-b-b-bad!"
• Major Injury Underreaction: In "Fish Scroll", Jake throws a pencil at Amir, accidentally spearing him through the throat... and Amir just continues reading his scroll.
  Jake: We have to go to a hospital!
  Amir: I'll go in a bit.
• Make-Out Kids: Murph and Emily.
• Malaproper: Amir, and to a lesser degree Jake.
• Manchild: Amir. He, among other things, still believes in Santa Claus despite the fact that he's in his late twenties (and, for that matter, Jewish).
• Man Hug: "Decision" has a particularly authentic one.
• Marijuana Is LSD: In Brownies, Amir goes on a surreal psychotic bender after eating a handful of pot brownies. Subverted in that the whole thing was just his idea for an anti-drug PSA.
• Meaningful Echo / Foreshadowing: In the Girlfriend episodes:
  Amir: Kinda crazy, huh?
  Jake: What is?
  Amir: One minute you're here; the next (simulates a crash with his hands) you're worm food.
  • "You're my boy."
• Medium Awareness: In "30 Second Debate," "Shred" and "High Five," Jake and Amir immediately react to and discuss edits made to the videos.
• Metaphorgotten: "Finale Part 1: The Idea":
  Amir: Yeah, because opinions are like assholes: you are one! And they stink, and so do you!
  Jake: Nice! You butchered that phrase!
• Mile-High Club: A Running Gag in "Airplane" is that Amir keeps lowering the bar when the other passengers ignore his request for someone to join the "Mile-High Club," establishing the "Half-Mile High Club," the "Quarter-Mile High Club" and finally the "Zero-Mile High Club," with steadily lessening levels of interaction (in the last case, none at all).
• Mind Screw: Amir drags in a Christmas present for Jake wrapped in a giant box and asks him to open it. Jake pulls it open and finds Amir inside, who is no longer standing beside him.
• Mirror Routine:
  • In "Mirror Image," Jake and Amir coincidentally sneeze at the exact same moment, which spurs Amir to start mirroring Jake's movements until a fed-up Jake manages to get him to spill water on his own keyboard.
    Amir: You're a jerk!
  • Parodied in "Cereal Thief": Jake plays along for a few seconds before abruptly taking back the bowl of cereal Amir was trying to sneak out of the kitchen.
• Miss Conception: In "Baby," Amir is convinced he's pregnant after suffering from body aches and "morning sickness" (due to food poisoning) and "passing" a pregnancy test (that he didn't take out of the box).
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • In the "Sick Day" arc, Jake's replacement at work thinks that he and Amir are dating after Amir eagerly befriends him as a substitute for Jake while having no idea that gay people exist.
    Mike: I mean, we went to the movies.
    Amir: Yeah?
    Mike: For like five nights in a row!
    Amir: So?
    Mike: We french kissed!
    Amir: Is that what that was?
  • In "The Godfather," Sarah and Pat discuss the nature of Jake and Amir's relationship, oblivious to the discussed parties beating each other up in the hallway behind them. Sarah speculates that the two may be lovers, a suggestion Pat rejects until Jake and Amir emerge from the hall, panting, sweaty and shirtless.
    Pat: ...Okay, that was—(Ending screen).
  • In "Dating Coach," Amir's dating coach doesn't so much mistake Jake for gay as arbitrarily decide he's gay, to Jake's irritation.
• Modesty Towel: "New Apartment,” Amir shows up in just a towel at Jake’s apartment.
• Money to Burn: In both "Economic Crisis 2" and "One Almond," Amir tries to use 100-dollar bills to light cigars.
• Mood-Swinger: Amir gets worse with this over time. In addition to having a Hair-Trigger Temper, it doesn't take much for him to start crying about something. Other times, he'll switch immediately back to being upbeat.
  Jake: You change moods so quickly, it's obviously a problem. Right? A version of psychosis, I think.
• Morton's Fork: Amir characterizes Jake's question about whether he deleted all of his computer files this way.
  Amir: Okay, let's say I say, "Yes, I did delete all your computer files." Then I'm like a big meanie, so.
  Jake: The other way?
  Amir: Uh, I guess the other way would be like, "All right, no, I didn't delete any of your computer files." Then it's like, ooh, I'm the asshole who deleted all your computer files and then lied about it to cover it up or something.
  Jake: Gotcha.
  Amir: You're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
• The Movie: Fired, a half hour-long special about Amir getting fired and trying to get his job back.
• Movie-Making Mess: The finale, and how.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Good luck getting the randomly tossed-off details of Amir's backstory to hang together. Done deliberately in the two installments of "My Super Not Chill Ghost Roommate," in each of which he has a different explanation for how he died.
• Mundane Object Amazement:
  • "Kite."
  • Amir attempts this while trying to stay in-character as astronaut accountant Jocelyn in "Ace and Jocelyn - The TV Pilot," but he doesn't really think it through:
    Amir: (examining office phones) Oh my gosh! What a find—what are these weird plastic rods? Who am I supposed to call with them, I have no idea—
    Jake: You know they're for calling people, but you don't—but you think they're foreign rods. But they're for calling people, definitely.
• Mundane Made Awesome: "Kite."
• Murder by Inaction: In a spoof of the famous scene from Breaking Bad, Jake attempts this in "Standing Desk" when Amir chokes on nachos.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Occasionally Jake's reaction upon physically hurting Amir.
• Narrating the Present: "Poker":
  Amir: I like this one. Her skin's a little greasy and her eyebrows are way too thick, but she's fun, and I think she likes me too.
  Jake: Okay, you were just narrating that entire thing.
  Amir: It was then that I realized I've been narrating aloud the entire time. Did the grease princess hear what I had to say about her eyebrows? We may never know.
  Stella: Yeah, I did!
  Amir: ...My mind was racing.
• Nasal Trauma: In "Nose Job" and "Lottery."
• Naughty Birdwatching: In "Sunday Football," Amir talks about his recently-acquired taste for this in a monologue that gets increasingly disturbing in response to the efforts of those around him to focus on the football game in front of them.
• Neologizer:
  • "Ace" has Jake admitting that he made up several words and used them in front of Amir just to see if he'd steal them. "Ace" (meaning "cool") and "gullies" (seemingly meaning "friends") remained part of Amir's vocabulary for the rest of the series. Oddly enough, the word "ace" really is used this way in British slang (a more specific translation would be "excellent").
  • In "Laundry" Amir introduces the verb "beef" (ex. "beefing," "having a beef") as an Unusual Euphemism for Manly Tears. This word also appears in subsequent episodes and is used by both Amir and Jake.
• Never My Fault: Amir.
  Jake: Everyone who thinks you're an asshole—everyone who thinks you're an asshole for posting mean comments and linking to porn, they're a circlejerking diva, and nothing's wrong with you?
  Amir: Yeah, exactly right.
• New Jobs As The Plot Demands: The various characters played by Ben Schwartz are a subversion, as they're actually different people.
• Nice Guy:
  • Pat is usually portrayed as a well-meaning, good-natured guy who is the hapless victim of Jake and Amir's shenanigans. That said, he has an occasionally-seen unscrupulous side, at one point withdrawing money from Jake's bank account after he hears Amir announcing his PIN number.
  • Murph is this when his Hair-Trigger Temper isn't activated. Unfortunately, the man is a walking Berserk Button.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Jake, often, with Amir.
  Jake: You are no.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In "Snowstorm", apparently whatever Jake did on March 15, 1999 was bad enough that it could put him in prison.
  • "Trouble" is about a series of noodle incidents that Amir's dad is angry about and thinks Jake was responsible for. For example, "the duck thing, the high school track fiasco, and the second duck thing".
• No Periods, Period: Averted several times. In "Jake's Cousin”, when Jake brings his 13-year-old cousin into work, the first thing Amir says to her is, "Ooh! Somebody's gonna get their period soon!"
• Nose Shove: In "Dinner Tonight" Amir sneezes a penny out of his nose, to Jake's disgust. Similarly, in "Tissue" when Jake asks him why he has a tissue up his nose, he pulls it to reveal a plastic army guy tied to the other end. In neither case does he know how the items got there.
• No Social Skills: Amir has no conception of social norms. In "Celebration," his behavior bewilders Jake to the point that he calls him "alien".
• Nostalgia Filter: Memorably articulated by Amir in "Facebook Redesign."
  Jake: You just said it was perfect. The same version you hated two years ago. You just called it perfect.
  Amir: Garbage becomes perfect over time as you get used to the garbage and forget what made it so bad.
• No Such Thing as H.R.: Pushed to its surrealist limits. Actions like firing a gun in the office merely count as a strike against the title characters. On one occasion the CEO nearly fires Amir on the spot when he catches him exposing himself to the office, only to demur when Amir explains that it's Opposite Day.
• No Sympathy: Amir and Jake frequently inflict this on each other. See "Gross Websites" and "Corduroy Pant."
• NOT!: A favorite of Amir's.
• Not Helping Your Case:
  • In "Kobayashi," Jake forces Amir to cut to the end of the story he's telling, to which Amir tells him that world record hot dog eater Kobayashi is in the staff kitchen because Amir owes him lunch. As Jake gets up to catch Amir in the lie, Amir stops him and says, "If you trusted me you don't even have to verify it with your eyes, you would just believe in your heart that it's real and you don't have to go see it." Jake is unimpressed and keeps walking. Cut to Amir feeding Kobayashi hot dogs in the kitchen while a stunned Jake watches.
  • In "Vandalism," Amir praises the office vandal as a hero (while wearing a cape) and insists that if he happens to be in the security cam footage, it's only because he was trying to stop the crime. He's not in the footage, and the vandal is Will, who was trying to frame him.
  • Ben Schwartz's characters always hesitate conspicuously when asked their names, and often assure Jake and Amir unprompted that they've never met them before. They really are different people, and those really are their names.
    Jake: Why do you introduce yourself like you're just figuring out your name for the first time?
• Not Hyperbole: Jake doesn't think it's funny that Amir taunted a starving snake, but Leron "was dying." Literally, because the same snake bit him the week before.
• Not Me This Time:
  • In "Brother Part 1" Jake's brother Kumail throws Amir's cell phone against the wall to stop him from calling Jake. Since Amir's already done this to his own phone, everyone easily believes that he did it again.
  • In "Vandalism," Will, not Amir, is the office vandal.
• Not-So-Forgotten Birthday: "Amir's Birthday" and "Jake's Birthday."
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Amir seemingly transitions into describing one of these while he's explaining how he managed to find out that the United States caught Osama Bin Laden without also finding out that he was dead.
• Not What It Looks Like: In "Toilet," Jake's response when he's caught talking to Amir while the latter is sitting in a bathroom stall with the door wide open.
• No, You: Frequently used by Amir, though Jake gets off perhaps the series' most memorable example in "Fedora" when he not only excuses a series of embarrassing selfies on his phone by telling Amir they're pictures of him, but promptly tries to embarrass Amir by showing them off to the entire office.
  Murph: Uh...Jake, these pictures are all of you.
  Jake: I was reenacting it, dude! You gotta learn how to be funny! These pictures are of you! (Murph shakes his head.)
• N-Word Privileges: Cheryl's Berserk Button is Jake casually using the word "pussy" as an insult, to the point where she pulls a knife on him. As Jake points out, she constantly says it herself ("I'm allowed to say it") and has no problem with Amir doing the same.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: In "Couch" Jake and Rosie torture Amir for a laugh by egging him into continuing a physical comedy routine that's obviously hurting him, until Jake takes it to the point of inviting him over to repeat the performance when he's in too much pain to move...at which point Amir springs up, happy, relaxed and completely unhurt.
  Rosie: He's getting smarter.
  Jake: Yeah.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Subverted in "Scissors" (Jake is immune) and "For the Wolf Shirt" (he's not, but the guilt-slinging is deliberate). Played straight in Fired.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: Many times with Amir.
  • Subverted in "Mom":
    Amir: It's like...do you have anyone in your life that just pisses you off, annoys you so much you wish you could just tell them off?
    Jake: Yes.
    Amir: ...But you secretly love them?
    Jake: No.
  • In "Online Joke," Jake gets a message from Rosie that makes him laugh, so Amir goes to Rosie's computer to find out what he wrote. He doesn't get what's funny about the line "Like a retarded chipmunk with glasses."
  • In "Ace and Jocelyn Episode 7 - Space Twins!" Jake tries to talk his new girlfriend Rima out of various stylistic choices that make her resemble Amir, which Amir agrees with because "only nerds wear glasses" and "spiky hair is for homos." She gets fed up and leaves.
    Amir: Honestly, Ace, I think I did you a huge favor, because if you think about it, she looks. A lot like. Shiiiiiiiiiiat. And I wouldn't be caught dead in public with someone who looks like that. Let's go to the D's!
  • "Video Chat":
    Amir: What did that creepo Murph do this time?
    Jake: Oh, not much, just set up this iChat thing to watch me while I work.
    Amir: (gasp) Gross!
    Jake: Yeah. Only it wasn't Murph, it was you.
    Amir: Was it?
  • In "Mountain Hiker Part 2," Amir orders several fast food deliveries to pass the time while trapped in a giant net. The second time he specifies that he's not "the freak nerd in the net" but "the cool guy in a net" and is mildly surprised by the coincidence of two guys being trapped in nets in the area.
• Obliquely Obfuscated Occupation:
  • Nobody has any idea what Amir's job is, least of all Amir himself. It's variously implied that he fills a hard-to-replace role and gets paid more than Jake, that his cousin is pulling strings to keep him employed, and that he's a glorified intern who never moved up from tasks on the level of refreshing the site's homepage repeatedly so that he can tell the programmers if it breaks. Fired, "Table Read" and its sequel, and "Relocation" imply that he's a writer.
  • By the show's revival on the Headgum channel, this applies to both stars, as the only thing clear about their current working life is that it's no longer unfolding at CollegeHumor.
    Amir: You ever expense, like, haircuts or beauty treatment as part of our job?
    Jake: What is "our job"?
    Amir: What's that?
    Jake: What is our job? What did you write as, like, our employment?
    Amir: Yeah, I don't know. It's like—I usually just write "content" or something.
    Jake: I don't know.
    Amir: I don't know.
    Jake: I don't know.
    Amir: Marketing?
• Obsessed Are the Listmakers: Amir is constantly writing bizarre lists and seeking feedback on them from Jake. In "Date Ideas" Jake speculates that he sits up at night writing them. While it's unclear what impulse drives this behavior, what is clear is that he's perfectionistic about it by inexplicable standards of his own, going as far as writing the rhyming top 10 lists on scrolls.
  Jake: Why are you pitching me anything?
  Amir: I like lists. In fact, can I pitch you a list of list ideas that I have?
• Obsessive Love Letter:
  • "Moving Part 2" has Jake and Amir stumbling on the first draft of a letter Amir wrote to Jake on their second day working together. It looks to be at least 50 pages long and quickly devolves into a transcription of "Smooth" by Santana and Rob Thomas.
  • In "Snack Attack," Pat seeks Jake's advice on what to write in an email to Sarah and ends up intently transcribing what he doesn't realize is just a standard clash between Jake and Amir, leading to lines like "I'm watching you, so don't steal anything from me" and "I'm going to break your fucking neck." She loves it.
• Odd Couple: Oh yes.
• Odd Friendship: Murph and Amir are a combination unsuitable for anything except making Jake's life hell. That, and a lifelong feudal lord/vassal relationship, apparently.
• Odd Name Out: In "High School Play," Amir claims that his nieces and nephews are named "Ryan, Brian, Cryin, Fryin, and Sandra, the Little Engine that Can't."
• Office Golf: Alan Avery in Fired.
• Offscreen Reality Warp:
  • In Carbs, Amir starts the video by claiming that he’s not eating any carbs this month. From that point on, every time the camera cuts back to him, he’s seen with a different carb-loaded food in his hand- first a sandwich, then a bagel, then a slice of pizza, then a bowl of pasta, then a plate of brownies.
  • In Los Angeles and other episodes, Amir is able to put on and take off sunglasses quickly between shots, which Jake then points out.
• Offscreen Teleportation:
  • Done in "Sick Day 3: Goodbye”. We start with Amir at home calling Jake while he’s at work; Jake tells him to come into work, and a few seconds later, Amir’s right next to Jake.
  • Done again in “Commute”, when Amir calls Jake on the way to work, and he somehow appears right next to Jake before he hangs up.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: In the finale when Jake's date jumps out of a moving limousine to get away from him, he complains that out of the six total dates he's been on in the past few years, she's the fifth to jump out of a moving car in mid-date.
• Older Than They Look: Amir's oldest friend, Cheryl, who's played by then-24-year-old Allison Williams.
  Cheryl: We met yesterday.
  Jake: He said you were his oldest friend.
  Cheryl: I'm fifty.
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: The ghost version of Amir in "My Super Not Chill Ghost Roommate" gets this all over Jake's keyboard.
• The Oner: Several episodes consist mainly or entirely of a single take, including "Phone Call," "Music Box," "Angry Birds," "Tiny Wings" and "Driving Lesson."
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Several aversions among the extras due to the cast mostly consisting of actual CollegeHumor employees using their real names, ex. Dave [Young] and Dave Rosenberg. There's even at least one other Jake and one other Amir, site designer Amir Cohen.
  • Discussed in "Script Notes" when Dan questions Amir's decision to name every character in his script "Jake." Amir replies, "We don't want to spoon-feed our audience."
  • In Ben Schwartz's first appearance, playing Amir's dating coach, he introduces himself as "Amir Blumenfeld." Amir points out that this is his name.
    Dating Coach: Everybody's name is Amir Blumenfeld, it's not a big deal—what's your name?
    Jake: Jake.
    Dating Coach: Bad example.
• One-Word Title: Most episode titles are one or two words. It's lampshaded in Part 1 of the finale (which incidentally ends with one of the series' handful of aversions, "The Last Jake and Amir Episode Ever!"):
  Amir: See? That's an episode! Another one could be, is if I'm, uh, a mime, or...I get a dog, or, uh, if I, one c—one could be if I have a snake or bread.
  Jake: You're just saying nouns.
• Only Friend: Amir considers Jake this. It's pretty much voluntary since he's highly dismissive of his other coworkers, particularly Pat and Sam, and tends to regard them as obstacles to his relationship with Jake. He also has plenty of bizarre friendships outside the office.
• Only Sane Man: Jake whenever Amir plays Rabble Rouser or when another bizarre character shows up to supplement him, particularly any time Ben Schwartz is on board. "Double Date" and "Movie Date" push his Straight Man role to its limits by surrounding him with casts so weird that Amir's presence is practically a footnote. The finale's "Ben Schwartz 2" takes the cake by putting him in the same room with every single character played by Ben Schwartz over the series' run.
  Jake: This is the worst day of my life.
• Opinion Flip Flop:
  • Amir, as seen in "Opinions," has a compulsion to agree with every opinion Jake has. Jake deliberately changes his stated opinions repeatedly, leading to Amir tying himself into knots as he tries to agree with him every single time.
  • Amir on the 2008 presidential election: "I don't know, I'm like conflicted because one guy says the other guy is bad and then the other guy says the other person is bad, so, like, I think I'm just going to vote for the last person I hear talk."
  • "Chinstrap Beard":
    Jake: This chinstrap, it's obviously a goof, I'm shaving it as we squeak.
    Murph: I don't know, man, I think it looks pretty cool.
    Jake: So do I. It does make me look quite "strapping."
    Murph: Haha, uh, I was joking. It sucks.
    Jake: Dude, I was joking too. (Laughs.) ...Tell me what to think.
• Opposite Day: Amir falls victim to a Logic Bomb when Jake says it is Opposite Day on Ground Rules.

• Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?:
  • In "Fur":
    Jake: You know, there's also a dead iguana in your pocket.
    Amir: Or am I just happy to see you?
    Jake: It's a dead iguana.
    Amir: I’m also happy to see you!
  • Amir tries this line again in "Costumes Part 4" and winds up overexplaining it.
• Orphaned Punchline: In "Audition," a number of actresses audition for a fictional CollegeHumor sketch by reading the line, "Oh wow, so I guess that's why they call it the blues." It's eventually revealed that the sketch is called "Elton John Blows Papa Smurf," so do the math.
• Overly Long Gag: Amir (dressed as a pirate version of Psy) repeating the word "Nyop" at the end of "Costumes Part 2."
• Overly Long Hug: The uncut ending of "Sick Day Part 3 (Goodbye)."
  Jake: All right, this is [my floor].
  Amir: No!
  Jake: All right, one more elevator ride.
  Amir: Two more.
  Jake: Okay.
  Amir: And the stairs.
• Painted-On Pants: Jake tries to play off his corduroy pants this way. He actually just bought them in the wrong size.
• Pass the Popcorn: Amir while interrogating Rosie in "Rosie's Appointment." He also messily eats cookies while he's rickrolling the office in "Rick Roll."
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Jake isn't above taking advantage of Amir or hitting him with a Suicide Dare.
• The Pen Is Mightier: Over the course of "Sunday Football," Amir attacks CollegeHumor video editor Kelly Hudson twice with a pen. By the end of the short she snaps and grabs the same pen, only to be intimidated out of stabbing when he actually offers her his throat.
• Personality Swap: Any time Jake's insecurity is triggered, he will begin to act like Amir, leaving Amir to take on his Straight Man role.
• Phoney Call: Amir attempts this in "On the Phone," but blows it by talking in the phone about how he's pretending to be on the phone to trick Jake. Downplayed in that he does have a listener, as it turns out he's leaving a really long message on Leron's answering machine.
• Picky Eater: Amir, particularly early on, when he ate virtually nothing but chicken nuggets.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: Amir's competence and general intelligence vary from episode to episode. In "Realizations", he can't even spell "carrot" correctly, while in "Mother's Day", he shows far more proficiency in English than Jake, and even mocks Jake for his lack of poetic talent.
• Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:
  • Amir is far more interested in having Jake as a captive audience than in working and, in fact, has no idea what his own job entails. The finale reveals that Jake isn't much better, having done pretty much nothing but argue with Amir in eight years of working at CollegeHumor, with the work we saw them do on-camera ("two auditions" and "one or two table reads") being their most palpable contributions to the company. That, and they've been coming to work "mainly only on Tuesdays."
  • Ace and Jocelyn, the astronaut accountants from outer space, are never shown doing anything related to accounting. Justified by the fact that Amir likely doesn't actually know what accountants do and just wanted to do some kind of sci-fi show.^note And even there, his knowledge may be limited.
• Piss-Take Rap: Although Amir is given to this, the "Rap Teacher" series shows that he's actually quite talented, as real-life indie rapper Hoodie Allen helps him to refine his craft. Jake's attempts to retaliate are less successful:
  Nothing makes me laugh more than the GEICO lizard,
  I like Gandalf 'cause he's a chill wizard
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Amir has made several over the series. In "Road Trip" he's less than successful at getting Jake to return it.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Amir and Cheryl act like a textbook illustration of this trope despite having known each other for only one day in "Cheryl."
• Playing Hard to Get:
  • In "Ex-Girlfriend," Jake's ex advises Amir to do this in order to get closer to Jake. It's comical how fast it works.
  • In "Snack Attack," Pat thinks this is what Jake is advising him to do in his letter to Sarah. Jake actually just broke off from dictating to him to yell at Amir.
  • In "Tinder," this is how Jake explains his Tinder match's lack of effusiveness over chat. In fact, "she" is very clearly a bot who's scamming him for his credit card info.
• Plot Hole: In a case of Real Life Writes the Plot induced by CollegeHumor moving its video production to LA, the "Road Trip" storyline explains how Jake and Amir wind up at the LA office, but clearly indicates that in the context of the series they're the only ones who go, with much of the plot revolving around Amir being singled out for departure and Jake ultimately deciding to go with him. However, in subsequent episodes the New York cast appear at the LA office with no explanation. (Elsewhere, Hardly Working explains that they moved offices by accident.)
• Potty Failure: Amir, with such regularity that it's fair to wonder if he's even continent.
• Prank Call: Amir tends to take this to Refuge in Audacity levels. In "Hotel Room" he calls room service until he's confronted by staff, cries until the hotel clerk leaves out of boredom, then immediately starts dialing again while still in tears.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Amir.
• Previously on…: Occasionally done during a story arc or multi-parter. Played for Laughs with the captions in "Brother Part 4":
  PREVIOUSLY ON JAKE AND AMIR
  SLIGHTLY LESS PREVIOUSLY ON JAKE AND AMIR
  STRAIGHT UP THE LATEST EPISODE
  THIS IS GHOSTBUSTERS 2, YALL
• Product Placement: The two have done videos for Adobe, ampm, Bacardi, BustedTees, Call of Duty, Coca-Cola, Experian, Fiat, Ford, and Gears of War. Spotify was also mentioned in a run of episodes, to the annoyance of some fans.
• Promoted to Scapegoat: In Fired, this happens to Jake, as the new CEO promotes him and then uses him as a cover to embezzle company funds, making him manager of a checking account and then having him transfer the money and cash the checks.
• Prone to Tears: Amir. Frequently pointed out by Jake.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • In "Instagram" Amir is convinced that the changes to Instagram's privacy policy will result in Mark Zuckerberg selling his photos to outside advertisers. Jake points out that his pictures aren't very marketable, citing one of him "planking at a candlelight vigil" as an example. It ends up on a can of Red Bull.
  • In both "Swine Flu" and "Ebola" Amir is concerned about contracting the aforementioned viruses, which seems irrational until further questioning by Jake reveals that he took specific, unlikely actions that could plausibly have led to viral transmission, such as french-kissing a pig while it sneezed.
• Psmith Psyndrome: In "Beerd" the word "beerd" (used by Amir to describe a beard made out of beer) is pronounced the same as "beard," but Jake can apparently hear the difference ("What's a beerd?" "Well, you know what a beard is, right?") The two then break character to discuss whether this makes any sense.
  Jake: The joke—the joke is in the spelling of "beerd," it's not gonna work.
  Amir: (pouring beer on his face) It's—look at me, it's too late! It doesn't matter if it's in the spelling, it's too late!
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Jake attempts this on Amir in "Horoscope."
• Psychic Nosebleed: Trying to figure out the logistics of Opposite Day has this effect on Amir.
• Psychic Strangle: Amir strangles Doobs through a prerecorded video in Finale Part 5 The Auditions
• Psychopathic Manchild: Amir.
• Psycho Supporter:
  • In earlier episodes, Amir physically attacked coworkers, including his own boss, for any real or perceived insult to Jake.
  • Cheryl to Amir in her two appearances.
  • In later episodes, Murph to Amir. Amir only has to hint that Jake has wronged him in some way to unleash hell.
• Pungeon Master: Amir all the time. Jake when he's insecure.
• Rabble Rouser: For someone so obnoxious and unpopular, Amir has a rare knack for this and can start a Crowd Chant at the drop of a hat.
• Rage Quit: "Monopoly" and "Jake and Amir and Catan" both end with Amir suddenly disarranging the board.
  Amir: Don't act like you didn't expect that to happen.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: Most episodes clock in at under three minutes.
• Rapid-Fire Typing: Amir can type improbably quickly, at one point writing and sending thirty-one Facebook comments while Jake is counting to ten to calm down after reading the last batch.
• "Rashomon"-Style: "DVD," in which Amir, Jake and Rosie each recount a different version of how a DVD that Pat lent to Jake got broken. It's implied that Rosie's version is the most accurate.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud:
  • In "Movie Debate," Amir pays Pat to help him have a normal conversation with Jake by listening in on their back-and-forth and feeding him lines over chat. It backfires badly when Pat gets a phone call.
    Amir: Oops. Sorry. Phone's ringing. Burb. BRB. It's my stepbrother, I need to take this. Stop talking. You're an idiot. I'm an idiot. Amir Blumenfeld is an idiot.
  • Similarly, "Jordan" has Jake sending an actor to pretend to be him at the office.
    Jordan: If you mess up, just tell him that best friends have to trust each other now more than ever.
    Amir: What?
    Jordan: "...Best friends have to trust each other. Now more than ever."
  • In "Screenplay," Amir writes a 400+-page screenplay in which the only line of dialogue is "Interior—I don't give a flaming fart." Jake's speculation that this is a typo, given that it's identical to all of the scene headers, is called into question by the reveal that Jake himself auditioned for the lead and didn't get the part.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: "Q" reveals that Amir is the author of the 4chan posts that gave rise to QAnon.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: The show's style of verbal comedy almost did a complete 180 over the course of its run, from heavily averting this trope in earlier episodes to eventually playing it up for humor with Amir's stagey, intricate monologues (some of which he admits In-Universe to scripting in advance) and Jake's tendency toward improbably detailed Secondhand Storytelling.
• Really Moves Around: Exaggerated with the Running Gag of Amir's dad moving away in response to any difficulty whatsoever.
  Amir: All right, lemme tell you a story. In sixth grade, I was bullied so hard that my dad almost moved. Instead, my teacher called a parental mediation session. So it was just me and my dad, the tormenter and the tormenter's foster mom? They all ganged up on me so hard that my dad moved.
  Jake: Sorry, your dad ganged up on you so hard that he moved?
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Amir has been on the receiving end of several. Jake actually manages to get through to him with one in "Grill."
  Jake: Why do you hate yourself?
  Amir: Excuse?
  Jake: You're on this twisted quest to change your body, mind, and spirit, you're constantly adopting new hobbies, you've had countless plastic surgeries—stop dancing! None of it is ever to any avail! At the end of the day, you're still you...and you suck!
• Reckless Gun Usage: Ransom shows what happens when Amir gets his hands on a gun.
• Recurring Extra: The two interns Vickram and Cassidy have been seen in "Rick Fox 3," "The Bet," "Nuggets," and "Barbershop Quartet."
• Recycled Title: Two separate episodes are named 'Laundry'.
• Repeat After Me: "Movie Debate." Also, "Tissue," when Jake films Amir for the benefit of his friends back home:
  Jake: Say hi, Amir.
  Amir: Hi, Amir.
  Jake: (to camera) He doesn't know that's a joke.
• Repeated Rehearsal Failure: Amir struggling to say "Get the DVD today" in the "Fired" commercial. The gag was repeated in "Vote Part 2" with "Vote for your favorite candidate today."
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Immediately prior to "Costumes," Amir has disappeared for two days and been presumed dead by everyone.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Amir does this frequently, sometimes with startling proficiency, sometimes not.
• Rhyming with Itself: Amir is called out on two separate occasions for rhyming "movies" with "movies."
  Jake: So "movies" twice, then.
  Amir: Second time it's spelled differently.
  Jake: Then you spelled it wrong.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Throughout "Pizza," Jake is frustrated by Amir's speculation that Peyton Manning did his Papa John's advertisements for free. Although Amir's argument is that he might really like pizza that much, Will points out that Peyton Manning owned 21 Papa John's locations at the time and therefore had a significant stake in the endorsement, meaning that Amir is probably right.
  • In "Compost," Jake loses a bet with Amir about whether or not "gid" (Amir's answer to the question "What's twelve minus three?") is a real word. Jake's mistake is in not specifying that the word should mean anything in a mathematical context, because it is a real word, referring to a disease affecting sheep.
    Jake: Congrats, dummy. You've accidentally stumbled upon a word.
• Ripped from the Headlines: A number of episodes have Jake and Amir discussing then-current events, such as the 2008 stock market crash, the swine flu epidemic, and the BP oil spill. This trend lead to the characters being pulled out of retirement for "Donald Trump" in 2016 and "Social Distance Scroll" in 2020 (the latter on the HeadGum channel).
• The Rival: Doobs, Amir’s lifelong arch-nemesis—who’s even weirder and less competent than Amir, if you can believe that.
• Road Trip Plot: The "Road Trip" storyline, in which Jake rents an RV drive Amir to California after he's transferred to CollegeHumor's LA office.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: In an episode of the same name, Amir cheats against Jake by turning his rock into paper at the last minute. Jake then breaks his ribs...
• Romantic Wingman: Attempted unsuccessfully in "Wingman" and "Girls."
• Rouge Angles of Satin:
  • In "Movie Debate," this is Jake's first clue that Pat is feeding Amir his lines in the conversation over IM:
    Jake: See, this is the kind of shit we should be talking about, none of this weird "go take me to dinner," all that, you know. Movies.
    Amir: (laughs) Defiantly.
    Jake: ...What?
  • Naturally, Amir isn't immune to this type of writing either:
    "Moira Fudge can't take it anymore. She organisms."
• A Round of Drinks for the House: In Fired when Jake takes Amir out drinking to try to soften the upcoming blow of getting him fired, Amir buys everyone a round in honor of "working together forever."
• Rubber-Hose Limbs: To hear Doobs tell it, Amir's dad has these.
• Running Gag: Numerous, they tend to evolve with the tastes of the writers.
  • Since 2011, Amir has taken to writing "Top 10" lists. The tamest of these include date ideas, beers, and cars to hotbox.
  • Amir will use a grating high voice until Jake yells at him to stop.
  • 2013 saw the introduction of a new extra Will, who eats his own shit. Both characters bring this up to discredit his opinions.
    Amir: You know that guy eats his own shit? Why aren't more people talking about that?
  • Jake has had homosexual encounters offscreen with his cousin, nephew, father, and his brother.
  • Whenever Jake becomes insecure, he and Amir undergo a full Personality Swap.
  • Jake giving a detailed description of something Amir did offscreen.
  • Jake offering to take Amir to the hospital.
  • Amir's shit-stained khaki pants.
  • Also, Amir's terrible odor and eating habits.
  • Many of the early videos ended with Amir saying Jake's name as if to start another conversation. The joke extended to Jake's computer software reading Amir's IMs aloud in "Instant Messages," Jake reading a note Amir left him in "Pictionary", and Jake reading through Amir's attempts to use Google (using the address bar) in "Jake's Computer."
    Jake: "Shithescomingclosecloseclose.com." Then "Jake.com." You try to sneak one in there.
  • Jake complaining about Amir's hands.
• Sanity Ball: While Jake usually has it, Amir catches it effortlessly whenever he goes off the rails.
  Jake: Hey, you come into the office any other day of the week and he's the weird one!
• Sarcasm-Blind: In "Sarcasm," Jake is able to stretch his sarcastic reply to Amir over the whole short because Amir just won't catch on.
• Say My Name: Jake's name is one of Amir's catchphrases. This is also a recurring characteristic of his phone conversations with Mickey.
  Jake: He knows his name! Okay, you don't have to say it so fucking much!
• School Is for Losers: Amir has this attitude. He even writes a terrible rap about it in "Survey."
  Math? Ha! Math was crap,
  If you wanna know why, then steal a hen.
  Learning shit is for nerds and jocks,
  Don't believe me? Ask my uncle.
  Green, blue, brown, and red,
  Go to school and you'll regret it,
  I got ninety-nine problems and a bitch ate one.
• The Schizophrenia Conspiracy: In "Amnesia" Jake describes Amir as a "paranoid schizophrenic," and he does act in a way befitting the description in "Instagram" and "iPhone 6," though it's worth noting that in the former he's completely right.
• Scolding the Fourth-Wall Breaker: In "Hoops" when his coworkers chase him into view of the mics:
  Jake: Hey—you’re breaking the fourth wall! Sam's not gonna like this. Sam's not gonna like this!
  (Cut to Sam and Jake watching the episode.)
  Sam: I don't like this. Go home, Jake.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Announcing that he's going to work from home for the day is roughly Jake's Check, Please!
• Secondhand Storytelling:
  • A common setup has Amir telling Jake a bizarre story about his life, often altering the story under Jake's questioning.
  • Quite a few episodes involve Jake describing Amir's recent offscreen actions to Amir himself. Amir's relationship to reality is tenuous enough to justify it, but the show still gets some fun out of being aware of it:
    Amir: Why are you rehashing this shit? All right, I was there.
    Jake: I know you were there.
    Amir: So you don't have to repeat it, okay, just move on!
    Jake: Okay, fine, I'm—
    Amir: (chanting) MOVE ON! MOVE ON! MOVE ON!
    Other passengers on bus: MOVE ON! MOVE ON! MOVE ON!
    Jake: How can you start chants this easily?!
• Seemingly Profound Fool: Amir has had some luck with this. See "CEO."
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Many episodes qualify.
• Selective Obliviousness: Amir pretty much knows that Jake is frequently dismissive of him, but there's a lot he chooses not to hear.
• Self-Deprecation: In Fired:
  Jake: Isn't this that TV show you tried to make a few years ago?
  Amir: Yeah, it's called Ace and Jocelyn: Astronaut Accountants From Outer Space, and it's better than a TV show: it's a web series.
  Jake: Why is that better?
  Amir: 'Cause less people watch it. (Jake nods.)
• Self-Serving Memory: In "Explanation”, Jake arrives at the office to see his Xbox 360 destroyed, and he demands Amir to tell him what happened to it. Amir’s recap of the events ends with him smashing the Xbox with a baseball bat, and then Jake showing up and saying, “This is ace! Dinner tonight?"
• Series Fauxnale: "The Finale" is this as of 2021, when (the real) Hurwitz and Blumenfeld bought back their IP from CollegeHumor and revived the show on their own YouTube channel.
• Shadow Archetype: Amir is a needy, insecure, self-centered, desperate tryhard, all traits that Jake both despises him for and shares with him in spades.
• Shame If Something Happened: "Storm":
  Jake: Okay, what if I don't wanna stay?
  Amir: Okay, what if I wanna write Sarah a love letter and say it's from you? We can all do different things.
• Shaped Like Itself:
  • "Typewriter": "If ya have to ask...then you don't know."
  • "Split Pea Soup":
    Amir: I feel like I'm being burnt alive in a cauldron, or like a bowl of hot soup was dumped on my face!
    Jake: Have you already forgotten that that is what happened?
  • Amir on the Grand Canyon: "She is grand and she is canyon."
• Share Phrase: Most of Amir's Catch Phrases fall solidly in this camp, with Jake picking them up and using them freely.
• Shell Game: In Magic Trick, Amir tricks Jake with one of these, and Jake gets increasingly frustrated that he can’t figure out the trick.
• Short-Distance Phone Call: In Chat Roulette, Jake goes on Chat Roulette at work, and against all odds, sees Amir. It’s then revealed that Amir was contacting him from under his desk the entire time.
  • In "Elevator," Amir calls Jake to say goodbye to him while they're both stuck in the same elevator.
  • Played With in "Hang Up," in which Amir talks to Jake as if they're on the phone while they're both seated at their desks.
  • "VideoGames" has Sam and Amir gaming while talking through headsets in the same room, in Jake's apartment.
• Show Within a Show: Ace and Jocelyn, a series about astronaut accountants that Amir makes.
• Silent Treatment: It's a Running Gag that Amir is very unclear on the concept, in terms of both employing it himself and understanding where it applies to him.
  Amir: And for that, I deserve this, this...silent treatment?
  Jake: Why do you think everything that happens to you is the silent treatment?
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Doobs, to Amir.
• Situational Sexuality: Amir, where the situation is that he can't find any girls on Grindr.
• Skewed Priorities: In "Copier," Amir shatters the glass of the office copier while attempting a Cheek Copy, but refuses Jake's attempts to help him and keeps going with the prank.
  Jake: Dude, you're clearly in a lot of pain right now.
  Amir: It's gonna be worth it! When it starts copying my ass!
  Jake: You're not gonna have an ass when this is all done!
• Sleep Cute: In "Driving Home," Jake and Amir fall asleep in the backseat of a car with Amir leaning on Jake's shoulder, only for Amir to startle them both awake by bellowing out the opening chant from The Lion King.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Parodied in "Muscle Tee."
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Inverted with Amir, who's actively proud of underachieving.
  Amir: Would a nerd get oh, I don't know, a 1.26 GPA in college?
• Smash Cut: Lampshaded in "Los Angeles":
  Jake (to Amir): You are not coming [to L.A.] with me.
  [Cut to Jake and Amir next to each other on a plane]
  Amir: Deal!
  Jake: Why did you just say "deal"?
• Smoking Is Cool: Amir attempts to invoke this in "Smoking," but Jake calls his bluff when he offers to light the cigarette he's holding.
• Sophisticated as Hell:
  • "Oh sheesh y'all, 'twas a dream!"
  • In "Voice," Amir complains that "my vibrato is still weak as shit."
  • Murph explaining his appreciation for elephant trunk wall sconces in "Trust Fall 2": "They're tasteful as fuck, bro!"
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Amir.
  Amir: We're all basically on a level playing field, right? So I make people feel worse about themselves, suddenly, "Hey, this is pretty neat. I'm like a good guy all of a sudden." I feel better about myself when I put other people down. It like, masks my insecurities.
  Jake: I'm depressed that you get it, yet you still wanna do it.
• Space "X": Amir on his "Ace and Jocelyn" spiel.
  Amir: We're here alone in the...space office, and I have a feeling Ace will be back, because you can’t get very far without your space wallet. Or, more specifically, his space subway card.
• Spin the Bottle: In "Double Date," resulting in a horrified Jake being forcibly kissed by Emily and Murph.
• Stalker Shrine: Amir's to Jake can be seen in "Amir Faces the Harsh Reality of Dating."
• Stalker with a Crush: Amir to Jake.
• Stalker with a Test Tube: When suffering a bout of Easy Amnesia in "Amnesia," Amir goes through his own pockets for clues to his identity and finds a lock of Jake's hair with a note detailing a plan to clone him.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Unlike the other videos, "Letter" is in Letterbox format.
  • "iPhone Case" has nothing to do with a phone case and instead deals with an attempt by Amir to jack an iPhone on the subway. The real meaning of the title only becomes clear at the end of the episode when Amir finds out that he has a "case" against the other passengers for their subsequent Disproportionate Retribution.
• Stepford Smiler: It can be argued that Amir is one of these, at least some of the time. Most obvious example being in the episode "Blowing Up”; he acts bubbly and gregarious when he’s with Jake, but whenever he goes into the other room to take a phone call he starts screaming at the top of his lungs, occasionally in Hebrew.
• The Stoner: Amir makes a list of the top ten cars to hot box (although half the items on the list are, “It doesn’t matter”). Jake is also a wannabe stoner, though it's implied he's never smoked actual weed.
• Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: Played for Laughs in "Ransom."
• Straight Man: Jake has this role down to an art form. Seen best in one of his few solo interviews with "Let's Talk About Something More Interesting”. However, certain episodes can switch this role to Amir. These episodes are mostly made to show how insecure Jake is.
• Strangely Specific Horoscope: In "Horoscope," the horoscope for Sagittarius says to "be on the lookout for hypno-killers." This saves Amir's life even though he's a Capricorn.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Amir and Pat both pronounce "Kindle" with a long "i."
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: Amir has been known to use adjectives and adverbial forms as nouns ("a dumb," "a famous," "a bitchly") and otherwise tends toward baffling constructions.
  Jake: You know what? Talk normal. Okay? "Nuclear bomb of me"? "Smile of you"?
• Strictly Formula: A few recurrent episodic themes, including Amir's rhyming scrolls and Jake's bouts of insecurity, follow predictable Running Gag patterns.
• Stronger Than They Look: Amir. Pat comments on it in "Bathroom" when Amir manages to get past him while he's guarding the door for Jake. In "Bless You" it takes the entire office to tackle him.
• Stylistic Suck: Amir's video editing and scripts.
• Subverted Catchphrase:
  • In "Ex-Girlfriend," Amir makes a (successful) play for Jake's attention by suddenly announcing, "No dinner tonight."
  • In "Ground Rules" after Jake declares Opposite Day:
    Amir: ...Breakfast tomorrow?
    Jake: Yes.
  • "Oh sheesh, y'all..." gets the Mad Libs Catch Phrase treatment a few times with "dream" being replaced with something else ("'tis a nightmare!", "'twas a road trip!") In "Hebrew" Amir starts it in English and finishes it in Hebrew.
  • In "Relocation" Will announces triumphantly, "This is finally my place."
• Subverted Punchline: Amir making puns about the candidates in the 2012 presidential election:
  Amir: Mitten Romney? I'm smitten, homney. [...] And Paul Ryan? We are tryin', but nobody's bidin' their time quite like our Vice President...Joseph Dan Quayle.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Jake will occasionally call out Amir on missing an obvious rhyme.
• Suddenly Shouting:
  • Amir's Hair-Trigger Temper has an alarming tendency to activate in midsentence.
    Amir: I don't even know why we're making a big deal of this and not talking about what type of JEANS YOU'RE WEARING RIGHT NOW!!!
  • Murph alternates between this and Soft-Spoken Sadist to make it extra alarming.
• Suddenly Voiced: Nico from the "Double Date" series doesn't utter a single word until Jake proposes to her at Murph's insistence, figuring she won't say "yes" anyway.
• Sudden Name Change: Over the original run of the series on CollegeHumor, Amir has the Embarrassing Middle Name "Valerie." As of the 2021 revival it's been changed to "Shmuel," the same name as his real-life counterpart.
• Suicide as Comedy: In "Bozo" Amir almost jumps out the office window because Jake photoshopped his head onto a picture of Little Bo Peep and put it on the staff fridge.
• Suicide by Cop: A possible reading of "Ransom" is that Amir was attempting this. The other possibility is that he's really just that dumb.
• Suicide Dare: Amir is almost a Phrase Catcher for this kind of statement. In "Reddit Part 2," a Reddit post petitioning him to kill himself ends up on the front page after being upvoted 150,000 times.
• Super Gullible: Poor, poor Mickey.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • Amir, often.
    Amir: You think I just stood in the middle of a pharmacy and peed on a box and then they made me buy the box because they saw me pee on it?
    Jake: ...I didn't think that till now.
  • Rick Fox frequently insists that he is not a chicken. Such an egregious example that despite being very visibly true, eventually even Jake starts to suspect the contrary.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: At the end of "Lottery" a family of spiders crawls out of Amir's nose.
• Swallow the Key: Subverted in the Bacardi video "Work Less" when Amir claims he did this but gestures with the key still held between his fingers. Played Straight in the "Road Trip" series when Amir tries to forestall the end of the trip by swallowing the key to the RV.
• Synchronous Episodes: "Fourth of July Scroll" and "Password". In the former, Jake and Amir are briefly distracted by Paul's outburst in the latter.
• Take Off Your Clothes: In "Bus," Jake notes that Amir tried to invoke this by pretending to be a train conductor and announcing that there was anthrax on board.
• "Take That!" Kiss: Amir from time to time. Jake in "Tiny Wings."
• Talkative Loon: Amir is among the looniest.
• Talking in Your Sleep:
  • Seen briefly in "Dave Part 2":
    Amir: I don’t wanna hug you, grandma...
  • Again in "Jake and Amir's Dream" and "Road Trip Part 1."
• Talks Like a Simile: Amir whenever he gets into a prepared standup-style monologue. In "Boot Camp" after Jake shuts him up he insists on listing just the metaphors because he worked hard on them.
• Tangled Family Tree: Amir's familial relationships are as inexplicable as everything else about his life.
  Jake: You can have female cousins!
  Amir: No, I can't, okay? Both my parents are only children, you knew that!
  Jake: You have a cousin named Leron!
  Amir: He's adopted!
  Jake: By who?
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That:
  • In "Loud Movie," Amir watches a movie that Leron shot with him as the lead. His character in the movie keeps saying lines that are perfectly-timed responses to things Jake is saying to Amir. This comes right after Amir himself has repeatedly failed to predict what Jake was about to say, leading Jake to comment, "He's better at it than you are."
  • In a few of the "Scroll" episodes, Amir's rhyming Top 10 lists progress into comments on the situation unfolding in real time, as in "Fish Scroll" when Jake throws a pencil that spears him in the throat (something even Jake didn't predict).
    Amir: "Number Two: Nah, it’s tuna. Forget tilapia, whitefish and speck. A deep-fried tuna will help you forget the pain in your neck."
    Jake: Did you know this was gonna happen?
    Amir: It’s a fortunate coincidence. "Number One: This pencil’s no fun."
    Jake: You're absolutely freestyling. (Amir holds up scroll to reveal the words "1. This Pencil's no fun!") ...You wizard. You warlock.
  • In "Finale Part 5: The Auditions," Amir manages to not only argue with but strangle Doobs through his pre-recorded audition tape.
• Tap on the Head: Wake Up has Jake slam Amir’s head on the table, instantly knocking him out.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry:
  • Amir from time to time.
  • Jake loses his filter to almost Hollywood Tourette's levels when he's self-conscious.
    Amir: Do you think that's a normal thing to wear around the office?
    Jake: You think I'm not going to go to the park during lunch? I don't commit to wearing something that makes me feel vulnerable without having an airtight excuse for every line of questioning. Does that make me insecure? You bet your ass it does.
  • Amir's writing naturally contains a lot of this.
    "I can't believe my eyes are rolling back in my head. I'm ecstatic to feel this. This is sex, and I am cash."
• That Satisfying "Crunch!": Amir reflexively attacks things and people in response to the emotions of the moment. In "Drawer" when he walks into the open drawer of a filing cabinet, Jake tries to talk him into laughing it off. He tries it for about three seconds and then starts attacking the cabinet with a baseball bat.
  Amir: (suddenly realizing that Jake is still watching him) ...What's up? Uh—
• That Was Not a Dream: In "Karate" Amir, after stabbing Jake, wakes up at his desk and starts to tell Jake about the weird dream he had, only to find him being treated by paramedics.
  Dave: How could you have possibly fallen asleep during all of this?
• There Is Only One Bed: Invoked by Amir in April Fools, when Amir follows Jake to L.A. and insists on sleeping in Jake's hotel room (which has only one bed). This has also apparently been the end result of Amir's tendency to break into Jake's house uninvited.
• There Will Be Toilet Paper: Shaving exaggerates this, as Amir cuts himself so deeply and so frequently that he passes out from blood loss at the end.
• Tears of Blood: In a teleplay Amir writes about how he hopes Jake will react to his gift of a Rolex watch, he repeatedly uses the phrase "tears of soy." It's not a typo.
• Tear Off Your Face: Implied in one of the spoken intros:
  Amir: You're watching Me and Amir.
  Jake: You are Amir.
  Amir: Not for long!
  Jake: Oww, my face!
• Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him:
  • In "Interpreters" Amir circumvents Jake's order not to speak to him for the rest of the day by getting Sam to talk to Jake for him. Jake counters by enlisting Sarah to talk to Amir for him, only to insult her repeatedly while trying to deny that he's interested in her until she utilizes Sam to tell him not to speak to her again.
  • Taken to heights of absurdity by Amir in "Silent Treatment" when he tries to have an entire conversation with Jake through Sarah, only to fight with her, extend the silent treatment to her and continue trying to negotiate the conversation:
    Amir: Jake, will you ask Sarah if she heard a draft?
    Jake: You're talking to me again.
    Amir: Sheesh Loueesh! Okay, Pat, will you let Jake know that Sarah is now suffering my silent wrath, and that you'll be the one who—
    Jake: Pat's not here.
    Amir: Oh, fine! Uhhh, Quincy, will you let Pat know that if he's not gonna be here anymore, then he should tell me because—
    Sarah: There's no one here named "Quincy," Amir.
• Terrible Pickup Lines: "The Club" and "Girls." In the latter, Amir uses one that actually makes sense ("Are you Enterprise? 'Cause I'll pick you up!") before using several others based on advertising slogans that are less relevant ("Are you a Volkswagen? 'Cause drivers wanted!") He blames his lack of success on "this DVR culture that we live in."
  Jake: Hey, why don't you dump your iPhone boyfriend and go out with this Mandroid?
  Girl: Oh my god, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
  Jake: Oh my god! Stop being mean to me!
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-universe example. Amir feels this way about the Facebook redesign.
  Amir: It's different. Which means it's bad. Which means I'm pissed.
  • "Hey, you're watching Jake and Amir, even though the old videos used to be funnier. Why don't you just watch the old ones?"
• They Just Dont Get It: When Amir gets transferred to LA, it takes him a while to internalize what that will mean for his relationship with Jake.
  Amir: Just 'cause I'm gonna be in LA doesn't mean that we're not gonna work together anymore.
  Jake: Yes it does!
  Amir: How frickin' so?
  Jake: How not? You're moving across the country. You're gonna be in a different office.
  Amir: (shouting) I know! But we're still gonna be in the same office!
• Thin-Skinned Bully: Amir, very much so.
  Jake: By the way, you name-call a lot for someone who doesn't like it!
  Amir: I hate it when it's used on me. I like it when it's used on other people...dillweed!
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Amir uses this frequently. Jake gets in on it from time to time.
• Tongue Trauma: "Tongue."
• Took a Level in Dumbass:
  • Jake with the development of his "insecure" persona.
  • Lampshaded by Jake with regard to Amir in some of the later videos.
    Jake: How are you getting dumber?
  • Amir's cousin Linford makes only two appearances and is far goofier in the second one, after being more of a Straight Man in the first.
• Too Kinky to Torture: In "iPhone Case," Jake watches a video of Amir getting mobbed on the subway after trying to steal a passenger's phone:
  Jake: ... Eight people are carrying you to the front of the train right now, laying you at the feet of the woman that you robbed, making you not only return her phone, but...God, lick the bottom of her shoes, which...you almost seem too willing to do.
  Amir: Kinky.
  Jake: It's not kinky!
• Too Much Alike: This is Jake's analysis of the Sitcom Arch-Nemesis relationship between Amir and Doobs.
  Jake: Okay, you know what? Maybe you guys don't hate each other because you're so different, but you, in fact, hate each other because you're actually really—
  Amir and Doobs: (Start repeating the word "no" in increasingly weird cadences)
• Too Much Information: A staple of Amir's attempts at social interaction.
• Top Ten List: Amir's ongoing efforts in this vein are notable for prioritizing rhyme scheme over subject matter, containing items that don't fit the theme, and being written on scrolls.
• Tough Love: Although Jake has no issue with being mean to Amir for its own sake, some of their interaction is clearly this, with Jake pointing out his faults in an effort to make him improve.
• Tough Room: Notwithstanding Corpsing from Jake Hurwitz, the only character who ever laughs at Amir's antics is Murph.
  Vincent: Hey guys, thanks for coming. Let's start the table read.
  Amir: Oh, you mean the anal bead.
  (Long silence.)
  Murph: (Suddenly bursts out laughing, then whispers to Emily) It rhymed.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Amir is mostly known for eating Chicken McNuggets. In fact, he claims to have spent five years of his childhood living on nothing but chicken nuggets. However, the accuracy of this statement is dubious, and in later episodes, this gag was dropped entirely.
• Translator Buddy: Jake is occasionally exasperated by his own capacity to serve as this to Amir. Particularly evident in "Pictionary."
  Pat: He's drawn a picture.
  Jake: Nah, those are words. "Jake: can nay find markers. Got hot. Thought I'd take a snooze. Wake me up pre-Hercules on TNT premiere."
  Pat: How did you read that?
  Jake: I don't know.
• Trivial Title: Several episodes, such as "Gross Websites," "Water," "The Godfather" and "Homeland," open with a fleeting conversation about the subject matter indicated before immediately veering into something unrelated.
• Troll: Amir.
• Trolling Translator: Amir in "Translator."
• Troubled Fetal Position: Rosie in "Crazy" after a story that Amir tells offscreen.
• Trust-Building Blunder: Trust Fall, in which Amir spontaneously tries a trust fall in front of Jake, and Jake fails to catch him. It got a sequel five years later with "Trust Fall 2," with Murph getting involved.
• Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Amir, to horrifying levels.
  Jake: ... We don't want your apology, we want you to take a shower.
  Amir: Okay, this is catching me way off-guard.
  Jake: Is it really? Because last week a bunch of people chased you with a hose and soap.
  Amir: I thought that was a goof!
  Jake: Why would that be a goof? You whispered something to Sarah and she got an ear infection!
• The Unfavorite: Amir is this in his family. In "Bucket List" he mentions that both his siblings are doctors.
• Unfazed Everyman: When Ben Schwartz appears As Himself in the finale, he turns out to be a legitimately normal guy. Then it's revealed that all the absurd characters he played throughout the series are his roommates, and he's completely unbothered by their weird behavior.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Amir. Particularly evident in the "Road Trip" series.
• Unplanned Crossdressing: Amir, several times.
• Unprovoked Pervert Payback: Jake has no interest in Emily, but Murph violently lashes out at him for everything from being cast as her boyfriend in a skit (written by Amir) to Emily's own attempts to hit on him.
• Unreliable Narrator: Amir. Particularly highlighted by "Amir Faces the Harsh Reality of Dating," which depicts the type of incident that we'd typically only get through Secondhand Storytelling and shows how Amir changes it after the fact. Still, the bizarreness of a story is no metric as several have proved completely factual despite Jake's skepticism.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: When Amir and Hallie get together, Jake becomes the obsessive one who wants Amir's attention. Naturally, as soon as he gets it again he defaults to pushing him away.
• Unseen No More: In the finale, Mickey is played by Ed Helms.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Jake any time he achieves even a nominal victory.
  Jake: (shouting after his retreating ping-pong opponent) Hey! Bow to me! Bow—come on! Hey!
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Both title characters qualify.
• Unusual Dysphemism: Amir is given to this. In "Double Date" he and Murph go into a lurid description of how Jake "raw-dogged" them by failing to warn them about his blind date's dietary needs, while Jake is standing right there.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Almost everything that occurs in the series happens in broad daylight in the middle of a busy office. This includes (but is not limited to) a crazed milkman walking in singing and pushing people over before getting loudly denounced as a rapist by one of the employees.
• Verbal Backpedaling: In the recent episodes Amir does this often, Jake calls Amir out on this in Jacuzzi.
• Verbal Tic:
  • Amir has many, including frequent rhyming, use of puns, stammering demonstrative pronouns ("this, this, this, this") and (especially in earlier episodes) using the word "sauce" for emphasis ("Sorry for the lie-sauce"), ending sentences with "so," muttering the word "stupid," and saying "nay" in lieu of "not" or "no" ("I did nay"). These tendencies are picked up by Jake any time the roles are reversed. He's also in the habit of describing something as "more than [adjective]" for emphasis, even where the end result is nonsensical (i.e. describing a door as "more than locked"). Jake acknowledges it (before doing it a bunch of times himself) in the "Road Trip" series.
    Jake: You know, not everything has to be more than something just to drive your point past home.
  • Jake frequently uses short sentences beginning with "Bad" to refer to anything Amir is saying, doing or wearing ("Bad joke," "Bad vest"), finishes Amir's dialogue with him, or acknowledges Amir's effort with the word "Nice." He also ends many of his assertions with a question, right?
• Verbed Title: Fired. Also, a few episodes including "Notified" and "Restricted."
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Jake's precise reaction to Amir varies anywhere from acknowledging and treating him as a friend to trying to murder him in cold blood. It's discussed at length by Sarah and Pat in "The Godfather."
    Pat: You know, it seems like they hate each other, but I think recently it's like, they're like, legit best friends.
    Sarah: I don't know, I mean, Jake still gets really annoyed.
    Pat: Yeah, but—yeah, I mean, there's definitely an underlying respect that they have for each other. I sense it.
    Sarah: That's true, and I mean...Amir, like, sleeps over Jake's house constantly.
    Pat: Yes, and then—remember Christmas? They went home together!
  • Murph and Jake. Jake is mortally terrified of Murph's Hair-Trigger Temper, and Murph constantly targets Jake as the object of his wrath, even when it should more reasonably be directed at somebody else. They still consider each other friends, to the point of Murph having Jake over to back him up when he intended to propose to his girlfriend, and even Murph's bullying sometimes turns out to have been a bizarre Trust-Building Blunder on his part. See "Trust Fall 2":
    Murph: I will always catch you, Jake!
    Jake: What the fu—
• Voice Changeling: Amir can do a very good impression of Jake, see 0.55-1.10 of Friend Quiz.
• Vomit Chain Reaction: In "Road Trip Part 4 (New Mexico)."
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • Quite a few instances throughout the series, with Amir being the most frequent offender.
  • Jake's (real) vomiting can be found in "Ace and Jocelyn Episode 4."
• Voodoo Shark:
  • When Amir says he has no cousins because both of his parents are only children, Jake brings up Amir's cousin Leron only to be told that he was adopted. ("By who?")
  • In "Barbershop Quartet" Jake finally gets to ask one of Amir's friends Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?, which clears up absolutely nothing.
    Jake: Sorry, who named you "Larence?"
    Larence: A fisherman found me when I was nineteen years old. He named me "Larence," and he raised me.
    Jake: You know, by nineteen you really should have been pretty much raised.
    Larence: Yeah, but...
    Jake: ...And named.
    Larence: That's fair. That's more than fair!
  • On the further subject of Leron, Jake is flabbergasted to find out that seven of his nine children are the same age.
    Jake: He had—that's septuplets.
    Amir: Seven different moms, ya idiot. They choreographed.
    Jake: That seems less likely!
• Waking Non Sequitur: We actually get the context for one in "Away Message":
  Amir: "Brown babies" is mine.
  Jake: What are you talking about? It's 9:30, go home.
• Wall Pin of Love: Amir does this to Jake in "Wingman" and slams Pat's arm against the wall when he gets too close.
• Waxing Lyrical: Lampshaded in "Master Cleanse":
  Amir: Keep on hating, J. Witz, because what you say strengthens my resolve, okay? Thanks for making me a fighter.
  Jake: That's Christina Aguilera lyrics.
  Amir: Naaaaah.
  • Amir does this enough that it almost qualifies as a Verbal Tic. One of the more memorable examples occurs in "Couch For Sale" as Mickey trashes his apartment while they're still on the phone:
    Amir: (distressed) ... What are you doing, Mickey? Don't do anything you can't take back, Mickey! Oh, Mickey, I'm begging you!
    Jake: You say "Mickey" so much when you talk to him, it's crazy.
    Amir: (still distressed) Mickey! Oh, Mickey, you're so fine! You're so fine, you blow my mind! Hey, Mickey!
  • In "I.M's" we see this exchange in response to a particularly intense instant message from Amir:
    Jake: please tell me thats a song lyric
    Amir: it is.
    Jake: good
    Amir: But it's a song I recorded about you.
  • "Milk Man Part 1":
    Jake: What are you even doing here, man? Milkmen don't exist anymore.
    Charles Crooshtoost: How dare you? Remember the milkman, the paper boy, the evening TV?
    Jake: That song's about how they don't exist anymore.
    Charles Crooshtoost: What song? I haven't heard a song in my life.
• Weak-Willed: Amir is so suggestible that Jake hypnotizes him by accident while talking about how suggestible he is. Subverted in that he nonetheless resists Jake's post-hypnotic suggestion.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Amir is desperate for his father's approval. The "Brother" series shows that Jake is also this with regard to his older brother Kumail.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Played straight in "Last Night," but invoked and subverted in "Last Night (The Prequel)," where Jake convinces Amir that he got blackout drunk the night before and tells an elaborate story about the insane night they had, the upshot of which is that Amir owes Jake money. Amir forks over the cash without question.
• What Does She See in Him?: Jake's reaction to meeting Amir's girlfriend Lerona.
• What the Hell Are You?: in Poster Ideas, Amir just appears in a chair next to Jake at the beginning, leading Jake to ask this.
• What's a Henway?: Done by Amir sometimes, but subverted in "Headshots":
  Jake: Sorry, did Terry Richardson take these?
  Amir: Actually, they were taken by a Brazilian photographer. Nunya? Ever heard of him?
  Jake: "Nunya Business"?
  Amir: No, Nunya Luiz Ricardio. He's actually pretty famous in Rio.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: The Running Gag that Amir's friends have bizarre names has caused Jake to ask some variation on this question more than once. Also a trademark of Ben Schwartz's personas (Carrot Slat, Sulu Candles, Cherry Dude et al.)
• Who's on First?:
  • Invoked by Amir in "Election":
    Amir: I mean honestly I'm leaning towards voting for both.
    Jake: Can't do that.
    Amir: Michael Both. The Libertarian candidate.
    Jake: Is that—is that a real guy?
    Amir: I don't—I don't know, I don't know what I just said.
  • "Fashion Blog":
    Amir: Widely agreed that that was the best slogan I ever came up with.
    Jake: Who agreed with that?
    Amir: My friend Widely.
  • "Mountain Hiker Part 2":
    Jake: I haven't seen which way he went, but he's dragging a net, he couldn't have gone far.
    Stanley: Who is Annette, by the way?
    Jake: No, not the name, he's dragging a net.
    Stanley: Yeah, and I'm asking you who's Annette, 'cause I would love to meet her. I don't have a girlfriend right now.
  • In "Meeting Invitation," Amir, who doesn't understand that Jake is on the phone and not talking to him, is further thrown off when he mistakes the words "I'm here" for his own name.
  • In "Frat" when Jake reveals that he has the initials of his fraternity Upsilon Upsilon Upsilon burned into his arm Slave Brand-style:
    Amir: Y-Y-Y!
    Jake: Why not?
  • "Poster Ideas":
    Amir: So it's a poster so shiny and reflective that it shows you a mirror image of yourself when you stare at it.
    Jake: A mirror.
    Amir: Yes, Jake?
    Jake: I didn't say your name. You're pitching me a mirror.
    Amir: ...Yes, Jake?
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: In New Website Amir creates a website about him and Jake, and, as Jake puts it, "it just seems really boring."
  • Both Fired and the finale end with an exchange between Jake and Amir in which Jake dismisses the premise of their own web series as not very good.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: In The Stinger of "Bathroom Break", Amir seems to go straight from questioning his behavior to actually questioning the way his character is written.
  Amir: It just doesn't—I don't buy it, man. I'm sorry, it doesn't make sense. Why would I—why would I do this? Like, it doesn't, it—it doesn't help. You don't like me! It just drives you away even more, and then we're all in the—in the bathroom? That's so—it's cold, man. This is a waste of time.
• Why Did It Have To Be Puppets: See Puppet Part 2, where it’s revealed that Jake is deathly afraid of puppets.
• Wild Card Excuse: Attempted in "Bucket List".
  Amir: Ever heard of "because I was carsick"?
  Jake: Yeah, you said it like minute ago and it didn't make sense. Maybe that's an excuse that worked once before, and you just keep using it?
  Amir: Just pull over, man.
• Wild Child: According to his cousin Linford, Amir was kidnapped at the age of six and returned five years later completely unable to speak, having apparently been fed nothing but chicken nuggets in the interim. It explains a lot.
• Wimp Fight: In "Airline Scam," Jake has a Lame Pun Reaction that compels him to challenge Amir to a fistfight even though neither of them is really up for it.
  Jake: Put up your dukes, I guess!
• With Friends Like These...: Literally all of Amir's interactions with his "friend" Mickey consist of extensive and unprovoked Kick the Dog antics on Amir's part. It's lampshaded at the end of the first episode referencing the character, when he and Amir get in a spat after Amir scammed him on eBay:
  Jake: Why even pick up the phone?
  Amir: Because it's Mickey, I wanna talk to him.
  Jake: But why answer it?
  Amir: Because he's my friend!
• The Wonka: Alan Avery in Fired is a parody of the type, and a massive subversion too since he's embezzling the company.
• Word-Salad Humor: Already frequent enough with Amir, but in Ben Schwartz's presence it tends to become the entire script.
• Word Salad Philosophy: "Create your own reality, and don't wait for happiness. It is only by creating that that that that that that that joy that you can be in the zone."
• Work Com: One of the few to take place at the actual workplace of the actors involved.
• Worse with Context: Often, usually with Jake providing the context.
  Amir: Okay, you know what, I don't get it. Because "stay-at-home mom" is the politically correct term.
  Jake: Right, but you yelled "Stay at home, mom!", and you were talking to my mom.
• Worthy Opponent: Despite their (equivalent levels of) absurdity and ineptitude, Amir and his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Doobs take each other highly seriously, overreacting to each other's lame comebacks and respecting one another to the point where Amir will defend Doobs against Jake's scorn. It borders on Friendly Enemy at times.
• Would Hit a Girl: Amir, as demonstrated in "Hilary." In "Birfday" his birthday coupon book for Jake includes a coupon for a free punch in the face delivered to the victim of Jake's choosing, "females allowed/encouraged," which he quickly alters to "females only" when Jake tries to cash the coupon against Murph.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Amir tries this in "Split Pea Soup," severely burning himself on purpose in an attempt to get invited to stay at Jake's house so Jake can nurse him back to health. It doesn't work until he admits to the ploy, which makes Jake pity him enough to actually invite him over.
• Wrong Restaurant:
  • In "April Fools II," Amir is furious at Jake for describing In-N-Out as being "like McDonald's," which got him laughed at by the staff when he tried to order McNuggets.
  • In "Coupons," Amir thinks every restaurant in the city has a one-time-only deal where "you order something that they don't have on the menu but they'll still give it to you if you openly weep and you, like, throw a fit."
  • In "Thanksgiving Scroll," Amir suggests getting "a Whopper from Wendy's and Dunkaroos from the D's."
• Yawn and Reach:
  • Amir attempts this in "Snack Attack" while trying to take Jake's cookie before abandoning the pretense and grabbing it.
    Amir: You know, I'm just gonna straight-up eat this.
  • A more standard example with Amir pretending to be stretching after Jake rejects his hug in "Costumes Part 2."
• "YEAH!" Shot:
  • Amir and Jake high-fiving each other with the "rock on" hand gesture in "Song."
  • Performed and then discussed in "High Five". The camera freezes right before the high five while “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia plays in the background, and afterward Jake asks why Amir chose such a depressing song for the moment.
  • "Grandma" ends with one between Jake, Amir, Rosie and Murph.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: Amir tosses off an "Oy vey iz mir!" in "Milk Man Part 2."
• You Are Fat: Amir is constantly doing this to Streeter.
• You're Just Jealous: A frequent response by Amir to Jake's criticism. He's sometimes even right.
• Your Mom: "Thanksgiving Scroll" has Amir read a (rhyming) list of the top ten alternatives to turkey on Thanksgiving. Item number four? “Dave’s mom’s a whore!"
  • In "I.T. Guy," the I.T. guy takes Amir's abuse for a while before mildly replying "Your mom?", sending him plummeting directly over the edge.
• Your Other Left: In "Girls" this causes Amir to turn in a full circle in an attempt to see the girl that Jake is trying to point out to him.

——