Most of the Dropout actors play fictionalized versions of themselves along with various alter-egos, so on this page they are sorted by actor first name in alphabetical order. Tropes and comments in the list below refer to the fictionalization of each actor, unless otherwise stated.
Cast Members
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Adam Conover
Adam Conover
- Insufferable Genius: Even before his show, he had traits of this.
- Serious Business: In "Sensual Harassment"
, his tendency toward public aesthetically and artistically sensual gestures (soft-focus photography of himself, strawberries dipped in melted chocolate, scented candles, tai-chi in a kimono, reading poetry on a bearskin rug surrounded by rose petals) are treated by Amy Schumer as though he were committing sexual harassment. - Silent Scapegoat: Becomes one in "Fart Martyr".
Ally Beardsley
Ally Beardsley
- Casual Kink:
- A contact in their phone is named "Daddy", and it's not their dad.
- They also had the "Sexy Selfie" in which they were wearing a diaper because "I'm tired of always being the 'Mommy'."
- Along with Grant and Rekha, they celebrate "Daddy's day" rather than father's day, in which they lament having a Disappeared Dad(dy), leaving them at a loss on how to be someone else's Daddy.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Repeatedly when they run into their ex.
- The Pig-Pen: Judging by their car.
- Ret-Gone: Suffers a bad case of this in “Everyone’s Favorite New Cast Member”.
- You Know I'm Black, Right?: In "Sleepovers When You're Gay", their friends seem unaware that Ally is a lesbian (or even that lesbianism exists) and engage in oblivious erasure, despite their attempts to express themself.
Amir Blumenfeld
Amir Blumenfeld
- See the character sheet for Jake and Amir.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Brennan Lee Mulligan
- Berserk Button: On one episode of Make Some Noise, Brennan is given the prompt of "an old-time prospector getting into crypto." By the end of the skit, he's broken character completely and is just ranting about what a stupid idea he finds cryptocurrency to be.
- The Cassandra: His Tide CEO character laments that he keeps pointing out the obvious issues with Tide's design choices, but is ignored every time.
- Character Catchphrase:
- When he appears on "Um, Actually" whenever his more pedantic answers aren't accepted, he asks the audience to "get in the comments," to argue on his behalf.
- On Make some Noise, he always responds to Sam's question if they have seen the prompts before by insisting that he can't know if he has until he sees them for the first time.
- Competition Freak: Plays one in "The Guy Who Has To Win Everything." He is this in real life too, which is frequently joked about on shows he is a contestant on. Several episodes of Game Changer is specifically about making him lose for the entertainment value of watching him grow more and more furious.
- Ignored Epiphany: In the Venmo sketch. He comes to the realization that the reason people don't use Venmo like Facebook is that every post needs to be accompanied by a transaction... and then dismisses the thought.
- Only Sane Man: Plays this in most of the CEO sketches, though occasionally a Bunny-Ears Lawyer instead.
- Serious Business: Takes coming into work very seriously
- Suddenly Shouting: Particularly prone to this, never more so than on the Survivor episode of Game Changer.YOU THINK I'M GONNA FUCKIN ROLL OVER? YOU LOOK ME IN THE EYES, BEARDSLEY, AND SAY BRENNAN I THINK IT'S YOUR FUCKIN TIME. IT'LL BE A COLD DAY IN HELL WHEN I GO OUT LIKE A FUCKIN CHUMP!
Brian "Murph" Murphy
Brian "Murph" Murphy
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Often his defining trait, especially in Jake and Amir.
- No Social Skills: His alter-ego, Tedward from IT, has never seen or heard of anything. Not even Game of Thrones.
- Official Couple: With Emily, to the point where they're married in real life.
- Suddenly Shouting: Often. In "Lady Macbething" Owen even lampshades it by commenting that he's been typecast as a "shouting idiot."
- Testosterone Poisoning: In "Hot Date", he is obsessed with proving his masculinity, insisting on drinking bloody marys that he hates and having a breakdown when Emily implies that his penis isn't huge.
Caldwell Tanner
Caldwell Tanner
- The Cameo: After his departure, he shows up briefly to comment on the return of Blake, a ficticious castmember played by Zac.Heyyy, Blake's back! What a fun cameo.
- Suicide by Sea: His departure from CollegeHumor was marked by a sketch in which he walked into the ocean to die.
- The Unintelligible: The main characteristic of his alter-ego, Sethany from IT.
Cynthia Kao
Cynthia Kao
- Casual Kink: Her pitching of a "Fifty Shades of Dildos" sketch (which Mike Trapp shoots down) is a mere passing mention at the beginning of this video.
- Disproportionate Retribution: She's on the receiving end of this when she sneezes three times in a row (though she gets up to five sneezes before her coworkers start attacking her). She also tries to dull it out when someone microwaves fish in the office.
- Embarrassingly Painful Sunburn: But don’t worry, it will turn into a tan.
- Extreme Doormat: She literally can’t say no to anyone or anything.
- Serious Business: Suffers from this at the hands of the other cast members when she has the effrontery to sneeze four times.
- Taken for Granite: Freezes into an ice statue at the end of "Why Summer is Women's Winter".
Dan Gurewitch
Dan Gurewitch
- Cloudcuckoolander:
- "Dan Does His Own Thing."
- He's also presented this way in Full Benefits.Dan: I was raised on a duck farm!
- Cool Teacher: Parodied with his "Cool English Teacher" persona.
- Hot-Blooded: Defines himself this way in "Average Night Out.""I'm a man of passion and extremes, don't you see? I am a PAPA BEAR!"
- Fiery Redhead
- Lethal Chef: Exaggerated; his family recipe "Beef Gurewitch" is an edible Eldritch Abomination that becomes a source of severe Body Horror when consumed, and he still insists on making it and serving it to his friends during three different All-Nighters.
- Stepford Smiler: As the Cool English Teacher, who's been dumped by his wife, divorced by his son, and fired from his high school teaching position after embezzling the PTA in a failed effort to win his wife back.
David Young
David Young
- Friends with Benefits: Full Benefits presents him and Sarah as colleagues in a "situationship".
Emily Axford
Emily Axford
- It's All About Me: Bordering on Lack of Empathy. In several sketches from the "Hot Date", she displays an utter lack of care for Murph's feelings, such as posting extremely embarassing photos of him and refusing to remove them when he requests her to, or taking home a kitten after he specifically tells her that he's extremely allergic, then would rather have him move out than give away the kitten.
- Official Couple: With Murph, whom she's married to in real life.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: She is unable to conceive of her friends' financial limitations in "Your rich friend who travels all the time".
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: In "The Person At Your Party Who Never Leaves".
Grant O'Brien
Grant O'Brien
- Aroused by Their Voice: In “The Skinny Bitch Diet Menu”, Grant played a soft-and-sensually-spoken "dom-daddy" waiter who had this effect on many viewers of both genders, judging by the comments on the video.
- The Bartender: His role on Dirty Laundry, providing the guests with drink and occasionally being the subject of a secret. The series even has special episodes that are just Grant explaining how to mix drinks.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Grant lampshades his resemblance to Keith Habersberger from The Try Guys on several occasions, including one in which he laments the supposed failure of Lenjamin’s promise that buying new glasses would make him look just like him. The gag is taken to a new level when Grant and Keith appear in a sketch together.
- Coming-Out Story: He comes out to his fellow cast members, and is confused when they show no reaction. At first, that is.
- Demonic Possession: He's apparently possessed by one of the eight kings of hell, but is too lazy to go to church to fix it.
- Eat the Rich:
- He dips into this view in "5 Tips for People Who Don't Understand Taxes".
Grant: If thisnote applies to you, you're part of the problem motherfucker, and when the revolution comes, I'm coming for you."- Oddly enough, he expressed the exact opposite view in "Everyone's a Republican on Tax Day," in which he expressed support for right-wing efforts to lower taxes and encouraged Lily to join the Republican Party.
- He dips into this view in "5 Tips for People Who Don't Understand Taxes
- Extreme Omnisexual: Already known as bisexual, his proclivities are shown to go even beyond humans as disturbingly shown at the end of this video.
- A Friend in Need: He's the only one to stick around to help Katie and take her to the hospital when she remains delusionally oblivious to the embarrassment of her public Potty Failure, offering his jacket to cover it up, after Zac and Trapp have both left in revulsion.
- The Hyena: He's notorious for laughing and breaking character during filming, and has been the loser in two episodes of the "No Laugh Newsroom Challenge".
- The Klutz: Plays this both for comedy and for horror.
- Last Stand: Attempts one to protect his friends and himself from being made into pie. Sadly, it's just a minor annoyance for the giant, who crushes him to death. Good thing that Death Is Cheap in the CollegeHumor universe...
- Nice Guy: In a twist on the last two, the third episode of "True Facts About Grant Anthony O'Brien" is about him being praised for being a good friend, mentioning a lot of specific instances where he would go out of his way to help his friends, be kind and supportive, and all around a great guy.
- Really Gets Around: In "True Facts About Grant Anthony O'Brien 2", he has his Social Security Number read aloud by Brennan, who is playing a character named after the amount of people Grant once gave oral sex to in one night in 2012.Brennan: (shocked) Hello, I'm... 50?! That can't be right!
Grant: There was a party that I went to... They had parties underneath the supermarket in Brooklyn. ...I guess that's the end of the sentence!
Brennan: Let's say every blowjob took a minute and a half...
Grant: They weren't all to completion. - Ridiculous Procrastinator: He and Raph are both too lazy to fix up their lives. Grant has his foot stuck in a beartrap but doesn't want to call animal control (or a doctor), carries around a cursed idol but there's too much beach trafic to throw it into the sea, and is possessed by one of the eight kings of hell but doesn't want to remember all the songs in church.
- Sizeshifter: In "How Tall is Grant?". Maybe.
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: Exhibits shades of this in "Why It Sucks When Your Friend Becomes Successful".
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Grant is terrified of bees and wasps. His coworkers use this to fuck with him as often as possible.
Jake Hurwitz
Jake Hurwitz
- See the character sheet for Jake and Amir.
Jeff Rubin
Jeff Rubin
Jessica Ross
Jessica Ross
Josh Ruben
Josh Ruben
Kassia Miller
Kassia Miller
- The Alcoholic: Whenever one of her friends has a minor mishap or frustration, she invites them to get drunk with her in "Best Friends In Rom Coms Are All Alcoholics".
- Napoleon Delusion: Comes close to this when she seriously believes that abstaining from restaurant bread ''once'' will grant her Gisele's body.
Katie Marovitch
Katie Marovitch
- The Barnum: Pretends to be one during her closing speech.Katie: (smiling) "And if you want access to CollegeHumor's secret site, make sure you send your social security number, your credit card information, and your Mother's maiden name in a private message to me."
- Beneath the Mask: She engages in some quite tragic Self-Deprecation in “These Sketch Pitches are Too Personal”, while denying that she’s doing it and insisting that she’s just pitching sketches.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: In
"Porn but for Crying", she considers sentimental glurge to be more morally reprehensible than actual porn. - Casanova Wannabe: Zigzagged. She doesn't flirt directly, but she tries to get everyone else to flirt with her.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Although most of the actors play these kinds of parts, Katie is probably the queen of this trope. For example, she not only doesn’t see race, but also pretty much any other distinguishing feature in humans.
- Disproportionate Retribution: She shot Raph in the mouth over a donut.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Plays a Shrinking Violet of a vampire who is extremely hesitant to accept Rekha's invitation to enter her apartment.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: In terms of her role in the cast, she's something of a spiritual successor to Amir Blumenfeld.
- Functional Addict: Likes cocaine, but the mountains of it she consumes never seems to have any lasting effect upon her.
- Hate Sink: She really has fun playing a lot of these, though the actor obviously isn't one.
- Hipster: She is proud of how little she knows about anything that is popular so that she can claim she has better taste than anyone who likes something popular. Claims that anything popular is 'stupid and bad' and brings up things she knows nothing about (claiming someone else brought them up) so she can brag about how little she knows.
- Hypocrite: After an earthquake, she complains that her coworkers are phone addicts because they are glued to their phones after a catastrophe. Said coworkers are actually trying to contact emergency services, let loved ones know they're okay, and trying to find out what to do. Turns out that her phone was broken, and she just doesn't want to be the only one not on her phone. When she gets it to work, she immediately logs onto social media.
- It's All About Me: She is convinced that the entire office want to get into her pants, and take anything they do as flirting.
- Overly Long Gag: Invokes one surrounding cheerleaders, in an attempt to be "part of the group". It backfires.
- Potty Failure: Suffers a bad - and incongrous - case of this in “Wow, everyone’s flirting with me”.
- Running Gag: She REALLY likes cocaine.
- Also, she's convinced that everyone is flirting with her all the time.
- She frequently shits her pants.
- The Stoic: She is legendary for keeping a straight face under pressure. In all the years that Breaking News has been produced, she has only
corpsed a total of 14 times across all of her appearances. - What Does She See in Him?: The answer will surprise you.
- Woman Scorned: Acts this way with very little pretext in “Wow, everyone’s flirting with Ally”.
Kevin Corrigan
Kevin Corrigan
Lily Du
Lily Du
Mike Trapp
Mike Trapp
- Addled Addict: "You Have GOT to Try Heroin."
- Axe-Crazy / Disproportionate Retribution: Tries to kill all his coworkers in revenge for their failing to come up with any sketch ideas.
- Berserk Button: Being called a boy by Katie.
- Brutal Honesty: While everyone is directing backhanded compliments against an absent co-worker, he is the first one to be overtly insulting.
- Cannot Spit It Out: After hitting his head, he spends an entire sketch unable to answer a question about who the US president is in 2017 because he has dismissed his first (correct) impulse as too insane to be true.
- Clone by Conversion: He's somehow turned into a doppelganger of Grant during "Is Grant Keith from BuzzFeed?".Trapp: Whoever the fuck this guy is, I've never seen him before in my life!Grant: Trapp, that's a mirror. (Reflection shows that Trapp now looks like Grant)Trapp!Grant: No. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
- It's All About Me: In the "Who got me sick?" sketch, he claims that there is no victim more undeserving of getting sick than him.Grant: Didn't you kill Pat?Trapp: Allegedly.
- Last-Name Basis: While most other cast members are on First-Name Basis, he's generally referred to as "Trapp".
- Murder Makes You Crazy: Viewers of "How Tall is Grant?" suggested that this was Trapp's guilt-induced hallucination after murdering Pat Cassels.
- No Listening Skills: His alter-ego, Ronathan from IT, demonstrates this to a T, as the guy who listens by interrupting you and finishes your sentences.
- Not Listening to Me, Are You?: Elicits this reaction as Ronathan from IT.
- No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: He's implied to have murdered Pat Cassels based on this belief.
- Pretentious Pronunciation: Puts this on as “The Guy who Overpronounces Foreign Words”. It is telling that even Adam is infuriated by this.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Is accused by an Asian panel of illegitimately presenting himself as an authority on various Asian phenomena without being Asian.
Owen Parsons
Owen Parsons
Pat Cassels
Pat Cassels
- Butt-Monkey: Don't be like Pat Cassels.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: In "The Guy Who's Definitely Not Keeping Your Secret", although he is not the only one.
- Disney Death: He is murdered, probably by Mike Trapp, in 2015; however, he is later revealed to be Not Quite Dead and returns for more sketches. Or perhaps it's just Death Is Cheap in action.
- Embarrassing Middle Name: In "Phantom Society," his middle name is "Eleanor."
- Harem Seeker: "My Two True Loves."
- Nice Guy: His typical persona is innocent, polite and well-intentioned. In "New Guy" he willingly subjects himself to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown at the hands of an Ax-Crazy new programmer because it's the guy's first day and he needs support.
- Only Sane Man: In “Coming out as trans-everything”, in which everyone else is a Cloud Cuckoolander.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: An episode of The CollegeHumor Show implied that he's this.
- Yandere: In "My Bloody Valentine", he's so obsessed with Sarah that he murders everyone in the office.
Raphael Chestang
Raphael Chestang
- Condescending Compassion: In “I’m Black, Not Poor”, he cops a ton of this from his co-workers, as well as from a homeless woman who gives him her food.
- Don't Celebrate Just Yet: He takes this mindset to an absurd extreme in “Don't Jinx Anything by Celebrating”, even as he moves from strength to strength, eventually refusing to celebrate his Oscar-victory because he's not married to his girlfriend yet.
- Dysfunctional Family: So much so that he is compelled to rush around in a protective suit during Thanksgiving dinner to physically disarm the conversational landmines before any major fight breaks out.
- Easily Impressed: Exaggerated by his character, Lenjamin from IT, in “The Guy who Overhypes Everything”.
- Evil Twin: He apparently has one, but is putting of killing him. They're always anticipating each other's every move, it's a whole thing.
- Fake Interactivity: In his closing speech, he pretends to take a message from the audience, responding accordingly:Raphael: And click here to leave a detailed message... uh-huh... what, you what?... you didn't!... I'd-a-done the same thing.
- Gift-Giving Gaffe: Commits an increasingly ridiculous and implausible series of them at Christmas time, making it painfully obvious to his co-workers that the gifts he supposedly bought them are really for himself.
- Hipster: In "The Guy Who's a Total Rap Snob," his extreme Nostalgia Filter has led him to become this.Ally: What about games? Do you like Fortnite?Raph: I prefer Pong.Ally: Favorite basketball player?Raph: Dr. J, before he started all that dunking.Ally: Smartphone.Raph: I'm a Chirp man.
- It Seemed Trivial: He tells sensational stories while leaving out the important details that make them sensational.
- Literal-Minded: Mistakes a magic show for an instance of theft.
- Living a Double Life: In "Different Friends to Different People", Raphael completely changes his act depending on his company.
- Miscarriage of Justice: He's apparently accused of being the Son of Sam, though he's too late to exonerate himself.
- Parody Sue: The universe bends to his will in “Everyone’s Favorite New Cast Member”, to the consternation of Ally.
- Ridiculous Procrastinator: He refuses to fix anything about his life, no matter how trivial, because it's too much effort. Among other things, he's too lazy to fix his air conditioner, find new pants after he sat in glue, exonerate himself after he was mistakenly identified as the serial killer the Son of Sam, and kill his evil twin.
- Stopped Caring: Is quite happy to Watch the World Die until realising that it would stop him from being able to watch the new ''Star Wars'' movie.
Ricky Van Veen
Ricky Van Veen]]
Rekha Shankar
Rekha Shankar
- Cloudcuckoolander: In "You're too sad to argue with", she has a long list of very strange and unusual beliefs, many of which are based on weird superstition and plain don't make sense, such as that God grants one genie-like wish when you enter heaven, and only one because there are infinite people in the world, and God can't grant double infinite wishes. She also believes that people go to different heavens depending on where they died, such as people who die in car accidents going to "car heaven."
- Dispense with the Pleasantries: Gets more than she asks for when she demands her coworkers stop being so polite to her because she’s new.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Finishes her novel, but doesn't think she deserves anything nice as a reward in "No, I Don't Deserve Nice Things".
- I Can't Hear You: She struggles to make sense of what everyone is talking about in "Sorry, What'd You Say Again?".
- Mellow Fellow: Her character of Bluronica is an extreme female example.
- Quiet Cry for Help: She does one in her closing speech, while maintaining a broad smile.Rekha: I love my job, and I'm definitely not trapped in this video. (She breathes to create condensation in front of her, in which she writes "Help" with her finger) Things are great!
- Skewed Priorities: She refuses to give up anything from her backpack to save her life, no matter how unimportant or irrelevant those things are. The only thing she's willing to throw of a cliff is a puppy.
Sam Reich
Sam Reich
- Author Filibuster: The "Dropout America" series of Breaking News is based on the gag that he's actually a chest-thumping conservative who uses Dropout to convey his radical right news.
- Bad Boss: He's not this, but his employees frequently joke that he is, such as accusing him of not having installed smoke alarms because "if [they] burn to death [he'll] just get some new ones."
- Character Catchphrase: "I've been here the whole time."
- Forgotten First Meeting: The premise of We've Met Before Breaking Newsroom, as punishment for losing he has to recount when he believes he actually first met his fellow cast members (Katie Marovitch, Mike Trapp, and Brennen Lee Mulligan), and is wrong on each count, including forgetting that he and Katie are Cousins.
- Limited Wardrobe: Invariably wears the same blue pinstripe suit when he hosts Game Changer only switching out the tie. His wardrobe is more varied when hosting Make Some Noise or appearing in Breaking Newsroom.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Rapidly becoming this to Brennan, as the latter's "Game Changer" appearances become ever more contentious.Sam: There is just something about making that man mad. It's just Grade A content.
Sarah Schneider
Sarah Schneider
- Friends with Benefits: Full Benefits presents her and David as colleagues in a "situationship".
- The Smurfette Principle: She's the only female cast member in the earliest sketches, so she would often get sorted into the "Token Female" role.
Siobhan Thompson
Siobhan Thompson
- The Friends Who Never Hang: She only appears sporadically, which is often lampshaded.
- It's All About Me: She only thinks about fatal tragedies in terms of how they affect her, and only considers previous decades in terms of how cool she could have been in them.
Streeter Seidell
Streeter Seidell
- Big Fun
- The Big Guy
- Emotional Bruiser
- Friendly Enemy: He and Amir Blumenfeld tended to be characterized this way, particularly in the Prank War series, which often made it into Dude, Not Funny! territory (and was entirely staged).
Tao Yang
Tao Yang
- Bad Liar: He's a horrible liar, which actually works to his benefit in Secret Samta. Since the name of the game is to lie about the contents of present to keep good gifts and trick people into stealing punishments, Raph and Carolyn can tell he's lying, but not if he's lying to keep or to give away.
Zac Oyama
Zac Oyama
- The Big Guy: Surprisingly despite looking rather scrawny. In one episode of Make Some Noise, both minigames require strength to do right. In the first game, both his competitors use clever solutions to get around it, while Zac does the game exactly as intended with no issue. In the second, he solves his problem first and the other two both hand over theirs for him to solve.
- The Bore: "The Guy Who Always Talks About Hot Girls" and "I Got NO Sleep Last Night."
- Casanova Wannabe: As Pat's dysfunctional brother in "The Guy Who Always Talks About Hot Girls".
- Dismissing a Compliment: In "The Guy Who Deflects Compliments".
- Enlightenment Superpowers: His character Blake manages to get this just by deleting his facebook profile "just for a little while".
- Entitled Bastard: Acts as a royally-attired one in "If People Asked Questions Like They Do On Facebook".
- Excuse Me While I Multitask: Continues to relate how he got no sleep last night while fighting off and defeating all the other cast members who are attacking him because of his gall in telling this story.
- Forbidden Fruit: In his case, eating the laundry pods.
- Higher-Tech Species: One of his characters is Lagell, a blue-skinned being who can't understand why his human friends don't want to come to his place, which isn't so far away - only two dimensions, a quick ride on the Flankor Energy Ribbon!
- Murder by Mistake: He subverts this trope in "Every Hitman's Worst Nightmare".
- The Stool Pigeon: Quite blatantly in "Someone is Leaking CollegeHumor's Secrets".
