Characters / The Try Guys

The Try Guys

General Tropes

"What will we try next?"

• Ascended Extra: All of them were originally just some of the many employees at BuzzFeed. Years later and they're some of the biggest stars on the internet.
• Breakout Character: Became this while working at BuzzFeed, which led to the modern-day success of the Try Guys.
• Character Development: By the basis of their status as the Try Guys, every episode they try something new. In the process, they actually learn more about themselves and develop their opinions and thoughts.
  • After five episodes of doing traditionally female/feminine things, by the end of The Try Guys Try Drag For The First Time, they've notably come to be a lot more accepting of their feminine sides.
  • The Try Guys Shoot Guns For The First Time: At the beginning of the episode, Ned is pro-guns while Zach is less than comfortable and accepting of them. By the end of it though, their roles have mostly switched, with Zach coming to understand why people enjoy them, while Ned is actually really uncomfortable with the idea of owning them by the end of the episode, especially due to the fact he was going to be a father someday.
• Crossdresser: Their main gimmick as a group in the first few episodes was that they were men wearing female clothing or trying to replicate a female in some way. Since then they've dived back into it every once and a while.
• Fire-Forged Friends: As revealed in Glamour's interview, The Try Guys Explain How They Met, the guys did not like each other at all when they first met at BuzzFeed. However, after working together for so long, bonding over shared experiences, and coming to understand each other, they've practically become inseparably close.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Three of the four guys are dog-owners with varying years of experience. Keith grew up with dogs, but he admits that he finds them pretty overwhelming and isn’t keen on having one as a pet just yet.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners/Vitriolic Best Buds: All four of the guys are clearly very close to each other and have become really good friends through making the videos, but at the same time, the guys can also get super competitive with each other, especially in the case of Ned and Eugene, who're both much more aggressive and competitive than Keith and Zach.
  • While all four guys are very close to each other, Keith and Zach seem somewhat closer to each other while Ned and Eugene, despite their competitiveness, seem somewhat closer to each other.
• Mistaken for Gay Romance: According to Eugene in the video where the Try Guys answer the most searched questions about themselves (both as individuals and as a group), Keith and Zach have been mistaken for a couple by quite a few people.
• Nice Guy: While they all have their moments, they're overall very genuine, kind people.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Many of their videos have them exploring/subverting gender stereotypes, such as trying on women’s clothing, performing in drag, getting nail extensions, etc.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ned and Eugene are the Red Onis to Keith and Zach's Blue Onis. One clear example of this is at the beginning of Try Guys Try Not to Die Alone, where the former pair's first instinct is to race against each other as soon as the challenge started, while the other two share a hug.
• Shameless Fanservice Guy: With the amount of times they’ve stripped naked (or at least down to the underwear), put on suggestive outfits, and even wrestled (totally naked) in the mud together ancient Olympics style, they’re certainly not shy about putting their bodies on display.
• Strong Family Resemblance: As shown in the Fatherhood series (from their BuzzFeed days), all of them look remarkably like their fathers when they were their age. Ned’s dad, Jim, in particular looks and sounds like an older version of Ned.
• True Companions: While they can be competitive and snarky towards each other, it's never even debatable how close they truly are.

Current

Keith

Keith Habersberger

Full name: Keith Douglas Habersberger
Birthday: 18 June 1987 (Carthage, Tennessee)

The tallest of the Try Guys, noted for his love of puns, eating and musical talent.

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• Attention Whore: Loves the spotlight and it’s even mentioned at times by the group themselves.
  • One of his personal pranks for the group was even to hire a bunch of actors who looked like him to mess around with everyone.
• Awesome Ego: Keith is the most outwardly confident of the Try Guys, and when asked during his lie detector if he was better than the other three, he gave a Blunt "Yes".
• Badass Decay: The first two Without a Recipe episodes had Keith perform relatively well, scoring second in the bread episode and first in the pie episode, only to completely plummet to an overall last place finish in the following 4-episode season. (He's managed to bounce back somewhat in Season 2, however, even managing to place first in the pizza episode and the cheesecake episode.)
• Berserk Button:
  • He does not take losing Without a Recipe well, to put it very mildly, although this has become such a Running Gag over the years that he will often downplay or avert it entirely.
  • In the live Eat With Keith videos, he tends to freak out when the camera cuts to an awkward/unprofessional angle, unintentionally or not.
• Big Eater: He's often shown eating or at least talking about food (especially fried chicken) in various videos. Most of the food-videos that the group has done are usually hosted by Keith, and in his "Eat the Menu" series, he's eaten one of everything on the menus from McDonald's, Taco Bell, KFC, Burger King, Panda Express, Olive Garden, Arby's, and Pizza Hut, to name a few. However, he doesn't go through these videos completely unfazed.
  Keith: I feel like my other organs are doing stomach responsibility right now.
• Big Fun: Keith's the tallest of the Try Guys, a bit on the pudgy side and is normally the most fun to be around. Even the rest of the Try Guys admit that he's their personal favorite of the group.
• Birds of a Feather: As shown in the Try Wives videos as well as some of their old BuzzFeed content, Becky's also shown to be a snarker and a bit of a prankster.
• Born Lucky: In The Try Guys Try Not to Die Alone, Keith has absurd luck, finding his own shelter and a multitude of other helpful items throughout the video, to a point he barely had to do any work.
• Deadpan Snarker: Keith is known to usually have something witty to say.
• Fire-Breathing Diner: The editors seem to loving creating this effect in videos where Keith eats something especially spicy. So far it's popped up most in videos where he eats Korean food, specifically Korean corndogs and fried chicken.
• Food Coma: Part of the hilarity of his Eat the Menu videos comes as he suffers the effects of this while still trying to make it through. Especially noteworthy in the Chipotle and Jack in the Box episodes.
• Friend to All Children: Keith loves kids; it says something when during a babysitting challenge, while the other guys were tasked with just one kid, Keith either volunteered to or was chosen to watch over three. He was also the most excited about meeting Ned's son, Wesley, and totally fawns over him.
• Fun Personified:
  • Keith generally makes loads of funny quips and jokes, and he genuinely seems like a funny guy to be around.
  • Also, his Twitter is hilarious.
• Gentle Giant: The tallest of the Try Guys and a very kind person who loves children, his wife, and his friends (especially Zach, who Keith seems to be the closest to of the other three Try Guys).
• Happy Dance: Has a special one he does when he wins Without A Recipe, specifically in the pie, cheesecake, and churro episodes.
• Happily Married: As of September 2017, Keith's very happily married to his wife, Becky. The vlog showing their wedding day really shows how much they love each other—Becky even promised to save half of her fried chicken for Keith!
• The Heart: Downplayed; while all the Try Guys get along great with each other, it should be noted that each of them ranked him as their favorite of the group, and in general he seems to keep them together.
• Hidden Depths: Studied puppetry in college, and is a skilled singer and French horn player, as seen in his work with his comedy band Lewberger.
• Iconic Outfit: At least half of what he wears is blue gingham shirts or flannels (actually inspired by Becky's old work uniform at Crosby's Kitchen). He even styled his nails with blue squares!
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: During the COVID-19-induced lockdown, he and Becky adopted a piebald rescue cat named Alfred.
• Large Ham: Loud, goofy, and often shamelessly mugging to the camera.
• Limited Wardrobe: Justified since the guys are, well, regular guys and not TV/film characters, but Keith has a navy blue sweater with red intersecting lines that he wears often (it shows up at least Once a Season on Without a Recipe, but it appears in other videos too).
• Loved by All: Each of the other Try Guys ranked Keith as their favorite, and Ariel said he was her favourite aside from Ned. A survey from one of their old BuzzFeed videos showed that while their co-workers thought Eugene was the most attractive, they also favored Keith as the best boyfriend material.
• Mistaken Identity: As Keith confirms in WIRED's The Try Guys Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions video, many people believe that Keith was actually the former bassist of Twenty One Pilots.
• Pungeon Master: Keith loves puns. He's constantly making puns.
• Rage Breaking Point: The birthday cakes episode of Without a Recipe, which ended with him taking last place in a series he engineered so that he could win. He managed to scare off the entire panel of judges as he smashed every single cake (including his) on the table.
  • He gives an encore performance in the ice cream cakes episode:
  Keith: Are you fuckin' crazy? I sought. To make. Something. NEWWWWWWWWWW!
• Real Men Hate Sugar: Zig-zagged. It's true that Keith dresses like a dad (and did even before he was one) and often states that he wishes he could replace dessert with another serving of dinner. Some of his "Without a Recipe" dishes have tried to cram savory flavors into sweets (such as grilled cheese macarons or a chacuterie gingerbread house) to mixed results. However, as with all the Try Guys, he's hardly traditionally macho and is comfortable wearing women's clothes, expressing emotion, and transgressing gender norms. He certainly doesn't seem to believe this trope literally, and there are plenty of desserts he's enjoyed eating.
• Sore Loser: To a discordant degree. He sometimes gets so angry when he loses that he screams with frustration at the judges (including a child). It got to the point where a judge on the birthday cake episode of Without a Recipe is too scared to announce which cake (Keith's) got last place.
  • Keith also acknowledges this fact about himself (even as he continues to play it up for the cameras and express comedic levels of frustration when he loses). In the Guys' collective memoir, he labels his behavior after losing the bread competition in the first Without a Recipe episode as his most epic failure.
• Southern-Fried Genius: A downplayed example in that he's from Tennessee and is clearly quite intelligent in Real Life, but often plays the fool and doesn't have a pronounced accent. Within the videos, Ned tends to fit this trope more.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: As a musician and improviser, it's no surprise that Keith will often make up songs on the spot, especially when his Lewberger bandmates are around.
• Trademark Favourite Food: While he doesn't seem like a Picky Eater in the least, fried chicken certainly seems to be Keith's favorite food.
• Uke: Invoked. In The Try Guys Recreate Fanfiction, one of the featured fics starts as a smutty office AU with Keith being promoted to Eugene’s "personal assistant".

Zach

Zach Kornfeld

Full name: Zachary Andrew Kornfeld
Birthday: 26 July 1990 (Scarsdale, New York)

The shortest and youngest of the Try Guys and oftentimes the Butt-Monkey of the group.

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• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Korndiddy.
  • Also, Sandy Andy in the dune buggy video.
• All Jews Are Ashkenazi: In the video where the Try Guys take an ancestry DNA test from 23andMe, Zach discovers that he's 88.7% Ashkenazi Jewish.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Obviously not literally, but he's both the youngest and the smallest of the Try Guys.
• Berserk Button: One of Zach's biggest pet peeves is having his name misspelled, which can happen in a number of ways (Zak Cornfelld, Zack Cornfield, etc).
• Butt-Monkey: The Try Guys love to make fun of Zach and he tends to get the short end of the stick during a lot of their videos.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: The Try Guys Test The Legal Alcohol Limit has them all drinking the same amount of alcohol, but Zach is over twice as affected by it than the others.
  • Hangover Sensitivity: The morning after he has a horrible hangover, despite drinking half the number of drinks the others did, all of which wake up fine.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Is the biggest offender of this in the Without A Recipe series due to his lack of impulse control, throwing together a hodgepodge of his favorite confections in a dish as opposed to focusing on a single flavor. Subverted in the Brownie episode.
• The Cutie: He’s prone to Cuteness Proximity when it comes to cats (kittens especially), and loves things that make him cute. For example, he practically Squeed when he was presented with the option of decking his nail extensions with pink butterflies.
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • During the The Try Guys Race Dune Buggies • Dirty Tour: Part 1 video, Zach reveals that his middle name to be Andrew. Combine that with the sandy environment and you get...Sandy Andy!
  • Continues in the sequel video, The Try Guys Race Swamp Boats • Dirty Tour: Part 2, where Sandy Andy is changed to Fanny. Viewers from other parts of the world, like the UK and Australia, might get certain associations.
• Happily Married: Married Maggie in February 2023 after several years of dating (and after a month in-and-out of the hospital when a freak accident led to an infection in his leg).
• Heroes Love Dogs/Kindhearted Cat Lover: Zach's definitely a cat person (his personalized distraction during a driving test was a box full of adorable kittens and he was also once in a BuzzFeed video where cat lovers get surprised with a box of kittens), but he also seems to like dogs as well. In fact, it is mentioned at the end of the Try Guys' last BuzzFeed video (which involved the guys doing a dog-sled race in Alaska) that Zach ended up getting a puppy (specifically a miniature Australian Shepherd that he named Bowie). He still maintains that he's a cat person, and that he only likes very specific dogs (like his own dog). He also finally bonds with Ned's dog Bean in Try Guys Swap Pets For A Day after a few initial hiccups.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: While all the other Try Guys are some of his closest friends, he seems closer to Keith than he does to Ned or Eugene. Keith even officiated Zach and Maggie's wedding.
• Hidden Depths: He actually gets comically mad when learning how boring the Google results for him are in WIRED's The Try Guys Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions video, going on to detail how they could be instead searching why he was arrested once, how he almost lost a testicle, or how he was on Saturday Night Live.
• Large Ham: Is often the most out-there and bizarre of the group, which is really saying something.
• Lethal Chef: Zach really isn't very good at cooking and has admitted that he doesn't even cook that much for himself (he often just orders take-out). In the Without a Recipe series, Zach usually doesn't do that well. In fact, him coming in last is more often than not expected.
• Manchild: Discussed in the documentary Behind the Try. Eugene mentions that this was cemented as Zach's schtick early on and that Zach finds it somewhat limiting.
• Musical Theme Naming: All his dishes in Without A Recipe: Summer Edition are named after and themed around popular songs from 2021 (the "Songs of the Summer"). His Sour Muffins were lemon with pieces of sour candy, his Peaches Donut was, well, a peach donut with bourbon glaze and spice on top (to represent Bieber’s volatile, "bad boy" nature), and his Smooth Like Butter Ice Cream Cake used buttercream icing, has seven layers for the seven members of BTS, used flavors that BTS members have been said to like, and had the band’s logo on the top of the cake.
• Nice Guy: Is easily the nicest of the Try Guys, to a point where he's so affectionate that it helps him to win Last to Leave Handcuffs Wins $10,000.
• Nightmare Fetishist: He loves horror movies. In fact, a few of his dishes in Without a Recipe have been themed around spooky things, such as his Cookies and Scream ice cream or his Necronomicon illusion cake.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Is rather melancholy and unhappy throughout the beginning of The Try Guys Shoot Guns For The First Time. He starts cheering up after Keith gives him a hug.
• The Prankster: Often showcases a benevolently mischievous, Trollish streak.
• The Short Guy with Glasses: He's the shortest of the Try Guys at 5'7" and was originally distinguished in the early days of the Try Guys for wearing glasses (often being referred to either as "Short Guy with Glasses" and "Tiny Nerd").
• The Smart Guy: Downplayed; while he doesn't seem to be any smarter than anyone else in the group, Zach tends to be the most likely member to pull out actual strategy in videos. Even if more often than not it doesn't go well.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Loves a nice cup of hot tea.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Zach has a fear of fish, even tiny fish. One of Eugene’s pranks in The Try Guys Prank Each Other involved Zach having to take his glasses out of a bowl full of them. Ironically, in the video where he and the guys swim with sharks, it was actually Ned who was the most freaked out rather than Zach (though all four of the guys were still pretty freaked by the experience).
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Played to chilling effect in The Try Guys Get Kidnapped, where Zach plays to the cliches of a kidnapping/interrogation scenario and annoys his captors while refusing to sell anyone out. In the post-video he congratulates himself for these things, immediately followed by the simulation kidnappers admitting that had it been a real kidnapping they would have killed him as an example to the rest of the group.

Eugene

Eugene Lee Yang

Full name: Eugene Lee Yang
Birthday: 18 January 1986 (Pflugerville, Texas)

The oldest of the Try Guys; openly gay and excels in just about everything he does.

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• The Ace:
  • Eugene's great at a multitude of things—in fact, in almost all the videos that he and the other guys do, he usually ends up doing the best (at least by comparison). To name just one example, a video that the guys did (when they were still at BuzzFeed) was make bread without recipes, and while none of the bread the guys made was good (with Zach's bread being deemed to be the worst), Eugene's bread was deemed the best ("best" meaning "the least horrible").
  • Broken Ace: Eugene admits in Why I'm Coming Out As Gay that one of the reasons he tries so hard to be the best is because he is deeply afraid of failure.
• The Alcoholic: To almost parody-level proportions; Eugene loves drinking and does it basically every chance he can, even ranking cheap beer, tasting the sampled drinks of the 50 states, and including it heavily in just about every Without a Recipe episode. Despite this, he barely gets affected at all by it.
• Asian and Nerdy: More pop culture-savvy than nerdy, but he’s an avid cosplayer come Halloween time (examples include Russell, Ash Ketchum and Mulan), he’s the most familiar with anime out of all of the guys, and he easily held a conversation with a little girl about their favorite pony (his least favorite is Applejack).
• Attractive Bent-Gender: And freaking HOW.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • He absolutely rocks the six-inch dagger heels that he wore as part of the Try Guys Wear Heels video. He starts the night by damaging the floor of his own apartment from puncturing it with the shoes. By the end of the night, he's visibly exhausted and his feet were in immense pain.
  • His recipes for Without a Recipe basically come down to him winging it with an experimental blend of ingredients and copious amounts of alcohol, and he puts the most care into making the presentation of his dishes unique and eye-catching. Most of the time, it somehow works.
• Better with Non-Human Company: Eugene is generally grouchy and averse to affection. However, around animals, he's an absolute sweetheart and is very affectionate. He's said that the reason he prefers animals to people is because animals don't judge him because of his race.
• Child Hater: A very downplayed example—Eugene is, self-admittedly, the least paternal of the Try Guys and is typically seen as being very uncomfortable around children and babies, but he really doesn't seem to "hate" children. In videos where the guys spend time with children, Eugene actually seems pretty good with kids. In a video where Eugene babysits Ned and Ariel's son Wesley for a few hours, Eugene admits at the end of the video that while he's not sure if he feels more connected to Wes, he definitely feels very protective of him (also, throughout the video, Eugene consistently puts Wes's needs and comfort above his own). Also, in the video where the guys take a lie detector test, it turns out that Eugene apparently wants to have kids of his own some day.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Seen frequently during Without a Recipe, where he will combine clashing ingredients (including multiple types of alcohol) with abandon. In his "Evil Eugene" persona, he used ingredients like pig blood, bull testicles, and insects in his dishes deliberately. However, the bloody cinammon buns ended up winning him first place, subverting this trope.
• Death Glare: Infamously during the crew's explanation video of the Ned situation, Eugene spends most of it not even attempting to hide how angry he is.
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Jack Daniels: Eugene himself states that when he is drunk, he becomes one of ten distinct personalities: Sexually Agressive Eugene, Childlike Wonder Eugene, Politically Argumentative Eugene, Escapist Ghost Eugene, Sleepy Time Eugene, Dancing Maniac Eugene, Klepto Criminal Eugene, K-Rage Fighting Eugene, Existentially Depressed Eugene, and Hostess with the Mostest Eugene.
• Drunken Master: In The Try Guys Bake Bread Without A Recipe, Eugene grabs beer as one of his ingredients, drinks most of that beer, is drunk on said beer throughout the baking process, and puts beer in his bread—and still ends up winning.
• Eagleland: The taco episode of Without a Recipe introduced "Good Eugene", a ridiculously all-American persona who loved God, bombs, and oil, and based all of his dishes around those topics. Evil Eugene returns in the Illusion Cake episode and apparently merges to form "Eugene Prime" for the live finale.
• Everything is Big in Texas: He’s from Austin, Texas, and is very proud of his home state and its culture. Often times, he’ll play up his Texan roots and exaggerate them for comedic purposes. In the dumplings episode of Without a Recipe, he made dumplings based on Texas barbecue (with braised beef, refried beans, potatoes, collard greens, and barbecue sauce for dipping) instead of the more traditional Asian recipe the judges would have expected from him, and as "Good Eugene", he adopted a Good Ol' Boy persona, theming his dishes around things like Americana, the Bible, war, and the oil industry.
• Evil Counterpart: The fourth season of Without a Recipe saw him adopt the persona of "Evil Eugene", complete with red eye shadow, in which he intentionally used unsavory ingredients to try and gross out the judges. Despite this, he ended up winning half of the episodes, including the finale of the season.
• Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: As Evil Eugene.
• The Fashionista: He has a great style game. It really shines through in their video about style makeovers, as Eugene gets 2 makeover looks, one exploring androgyny and the other being very...avant-garde, to say the least. In the same video, Zach names Eugene's wardrobe as the type of fashion he'd try if he were more confident.
• Friend to All Living Things: Has openly stated that he connects more with animals than he does with humans. He owns three rescue dogs, used to believe he could talk to birds, and is typically very affectionate with any animal he comes across. Even all his pranks in the prank war video featured a different type of animal for each one.
  • He loves animals so much, in fact, that he started a series called Amazing Animal Facts with Zoogene, where he meets an animal and provides viewers with facts about it while he's obsessing over it.
• Gay Best Friend: Eugene's this to the other Try Guys—he's the only non-heterosexual member of the group and officially came out as gay in June of 2019 (before that, he identified simply as LGBTQ+/"not straight").
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Rare Male Example and a Real Life one too. Eugene is known for drinking a lot and holding his liquor quite well. One video he sampled drinks from each of the 50 states^note Technically 46, as four of the states had very strict drinking laws, so he got water instead.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Eugene adores dogs. He has three rescue dogs, Emma, Pesto, and Kimbop, and he loves them dearly. The Try Guys Race Sled Dogs reveals that he even talks to dogs.
• Home Porn Movie: He brings up having these as a joke in WIRED's The Try Guys Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions.
• I Ate WHAT?!: As “Evil Eugene”, he tried to invoke this, using gross ingredients in order to disgust and creep out the judges.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Eugene's vanity and standoffish behavior often get played up for comedy, but it's clear that he'll put in the effort to connect with others, he loves his friends, and he also has a huge soft spot for animals.
• The Lancer: Downplayed; he's more often than not a direct foil to basically any of the Try Guys depending on the situation, and at that the most likely member to act aloof and unhelpful in team-based scenarios.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Eugene’s absurd good luck when it comes to competitions has led Keith to calling him a wizard. Eugene assures everyone that it’s all skill.
• Momma's Boy: He’s very close to his mom, and unabashedly eggs her to say that he’s her favorite. In fact, in the wedding cake episode of “Without A Recipe”, he makes a cake dedicated to his mom (who had been widowed a couple years prior) to show her that she doesn’t need a husband to be happy.
• Never Gets Drunk: Despite drinking the most of the group, he rarely if ever actually acts drunk.
• Out of Focus: Due to Eugene stepping back from the channel to work on his personal, non Try Guys projects, his prescence on the channel has become extremely limited with him usually only showing up for special occasions.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: In The Try Guys Play Truth Or Dare Roulette, while the other three tend to switch up their strategies, Eugene always bets on black, no matter what.
• Pretty Boy: In spades. Eugene's widely considered to be the most physically attractive of the group (including by the other Try Guys). In fact, in Should the Try Guys Get Plastic Surgery, the plastic surgeon the guys consulted (Dr. Jason Diamond) personally felt that there was nothing wrong with Eugene's face—the most Dr. Diamond would consider doing was a minor alteration to Eugene's nose and some minor facial sculpting along his jawline (but in the before and after shots, it was so unnoticeable that Eugene assumed there was a glitch and he was still being shown the before shot).
• Real Men Hate Affection: Subverted. While Eugene is known to be the most aloof of the group, his psychological profile actually shows that deep down, he craves closeness and intimacy and is afraid of opening up.
• Seme: Invoked. In The Try Guys Recreate Fanfiction, one of the fics casts Eugene as the domineering boss of an erotic office AU.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: He knows he looks good in a suit, though it probably wasn't ideal to wear one while heading over to babysit a six-month-old...
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: None of the guys are really shy about their language, but Eugene definitely swears the most of the four guys. Eugene's also consistently had to catch himself for swearing in front of small children and babies... which tends to lead to even more swearing.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: During Eugene Ranks Every Popular Soda, he says that maybe the reason he created a show where he judged things from an emotional distance (the Rank King) was because he's depressed and his life is in disarray.
• Springtime for Hitler:
  • During The Try Guys Take Lie Detector Tests (Again) he admitted that he tries to mess up his dishes in Without A Recipe on purpose. Despite this, not only did it take until the ninth episode for him to get last place, but his version of bagels was deemed so good that a Belle's Bagels started replicating them to sell to customers for a limited time.
  • In Season 4, he deliberately tries to make his dishes as gross as possible, putting pig blood in his cinnamon rolls, and then bugs in his sausages. When the judges praise the taste of the dishes, Eugene is visibly disappointed both times.
• The Stoic: Eugene's much more introverted and apathetic compared to the other Try Guys, but he still completely cracks up once in a while, especially when he's around the other Try Guys.
• Straight Gay: You wouldn't know he was gay until he outright came out in a video.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Eugene is the second tallest of the group (only surpassed by Keith), has dark hair that can be fashioned in almost any way, and has been proven to be the most physically attractive of all the Try Guys.
• That Came Out Wrong: Has a tendency to make drop dirty analogies while speaking, often unintentionally.
• Token Evil Teammate: Sometimes plays into this, such as when he becomes "Evil Eugene" for Without a Recipe or acts as an "Asian of Chaos".
• Twofer Token Minority: Technically-speaking, Eugene is this—he's both the only non-white member (he's Korean-American) and is also the only non-heterosexual member. However, Eugene's ethnicity and sexuality ultimately have nothing to do with his role in the group—as explained in various YouTube-videos and various articles about the Try Guys, he and the other three guys tried getting more people involved with the videos, but Eugene and the rest of the Try Guys were always the most willing to do what the guys usually do in their videos, as everyone else would basically refuse to do it.
• Unaffected by Spice: He loves spicy food and often adds a variety of spices to his dishes in the Without a Recipe series. Even in desserts. His drag persona is even named Cheyenne Pepper, after cayenne peppers. The fact that his family originates from South Korea (a country whose traditional cuisine uses a lot of spices) and he grew up in Texas (where dishes that use hot peppers, like chili con carne, are commonly consumed) may explain why he likes spicy food so much.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Eugene initially started out with an irrational fear of roller coasters. But, after crash testing a new roller coaster, Eugene became progressively more enthusiastic ride-after-ride—it's safe to say he's conquered his fear.

Former

Ned

Ned Fulmer

Full name: Edward Gallo Fulmer
Birthday: 11 June 1987 (Jacksonville, Florida)

The sportiest of the Try Guys, Ned loves his wife Ariel with a fiery passion.

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• Academic Athlete: Ned's a graduate of Yale University (where he majored in chemistry), and he's also the most passionate about sports of the Try Guys.
• Action Dad: Since becoming a father in 2018, Ned has karate-kicked a piece of wood in half, fired a flamethrower, and participated in reckless driving experiments, among other activities.
• Berserk Button:
  • Do not say bad things about the Jacksonville Jaguars (or Florida in general) or science (he was a chemistry major in college), while this guy is around!
  • Pranks or anything suggestive towards his wife are a close second, although normally Played for Laughs.
• The Big Guy: The most outwardly athletic and intense member of the Try Guys.
• Birds of a Feather: As shown in the Try Wives videos as well as her frequent appearances on the Try Guys, Ariel is very genial and creatively driven (she's an interior designer and her style can be seen all over the Fulmers' current house), and a loving wife and mother.
• Boring, but Practical: In the Without a Recipe series, his creations tend to be general crowd-pleasers, unlike the more experimental flavors that the other guys use. They tend not to win many points for creativity, but as seen in the 2019 Without a Recipe, they are reliable to win him points on execution and taste.
• Catchphrase: "Does this make my butt look good?" and "My wife".
• Does Not Like Guns: He outright states in The Try Guys Shoot Guns For The First Time that the idea of keeping a gun in the house as a father horrifies him, as he knows it's bound to eventually cause an accident of some kind.
• The Generic Guy: Not Ned as a person, of course, but for the early round of proto-Try Guys videos, Ned would superficially be pegged as “A White Guy” by commenters.
  • Eugene even admitted to finding Ned boring when he first met him.
• Good Parents: Ned is a very protective, caring father to his son, Wes.
• Happily Married: In pretty much every single video that Ned's been in (whether or not it's a video for the Try Guys), he mentions his wife Ariel at least once—while it's typically played for laughs, it's clear that Ned adores his wife. There are compilations out there on YouTube revolving around him saying: "My wife...". As of the 2022 scandal that lead to his termination however, not anymore.
• Hartman Hips: A male example; the Try Guys have mentioned many times how proud of his butt Ned seems to be.
• Hot-Blooded: In any video where the Try Guys are competing with or fighting each other, Ned is clearly the most passionate about it. Especially when the person he is competing with is Eugene.
• Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: Out of all the guys, Ned's the most likely to lose his head over horror movies, a fear that stems all the way back to when he was 10 and was traumatized by a made-for-TV Mary-Kate and Ashley Halloween movie.
• No Indoor Voice: Is prone to shouting when he's lost his cool, especially if he's bested in something he thinks he should have won.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When he and the rest of the Try Guys dined at Trump Tower, Ned was so uncharacteristically depressed, he didn't even mention Ariel. Think about that for a second...
• Rambunctious Italian: He’s very proud of his Italian-American heritage, and he’s shown to be the most competitive and Hot-Blooded of the Try Guys.
• Real Men Cook: He’s an avid home cooker, and he and Ariel even had a series of videos titled Night In/Night Out for BuzzFeed where they compared restaurant meals to home-cooked ones.
  • In fact, Ned was the winner of the second season of Without a Recipe.
  • Ned and Ariel wrote a cookbook together in 2021.
• The Reliable One: He brought up in The Try Guys Try Drag For The First Time that he's usually seen as this among the Try Guys, and in his daily life in general.
• Southern-Fried Genius: He's from Jacksonville, Florida (which is located in the part of Florida that is still pretty much the Deep South), and is also a chemist.
• Team Dad: Of the group—he's typically the most mature and level-headed (especially since he was the first of the group to get married and/or have kids), acting as the voice of reason. Lampshaded in the "Four Types of Friends You Have" video, where he plays the "adult" of the group.
• Unperson: Following Ned's ouster from the group, he has become this, with him being edited out of any future content where he plays some sort of role. Any future episodes where Ned could not be edited out were deemed by the Try Guys to be "fully unreleasable" and will never be published as a result.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Easily fits this the most with Eugene. While the two of them have stated that they often fight over dominance, the two of them are just as close as they are with the rest of their friends. In fact, for all their competitiveness, Ned and Eugene seem closer to each other than either of them do to Zach or Keith.
  • Ned even said he would've let Eugene be a sperm donor for him and Ariel.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Ned has a fear of big dogs due to a Doberman jumping on his stroller when he was very little. However, thanks to his Labradoodle, Bean, he’s learned to conquer his fear of dogs in general.
  • He also seems scared of the idea of "bone cracking" since he didn't partake in the "bone cracking" video and watching his reaction of "bone cracking" is him literally being squeamish over "bone cracking".

Staff

Miles

Miles Bonsignore

Camera operator and producer of the TryPod podcast. Left the company in September 2023.

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• The Face: Of the 2nd Try LLC staff, given that he's had the most number of appearances by virtue of being featured in the guys' ongoing podcast.
• The Sixth Ranger: Considered by the guys themselves as the unofficial fifth Try Guy.
• The Straight Man: He's as much of a playful jokester as the official Guys in most of his appearances with them, but he plays this role to Zach's cheerful, eccentric Trickster in Candid Competition.

Nick

Nick Rufca

Chief Operating Officer of 2nd Try LLC.

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• Hidden Depths: In addition to his role as COO, he is also a food writer at Westways magazine.
• Manly Gay: Openly gay, as well as being rather large-sized.

The Food Babies

Alexandria Herring and YB Chang Biste

Duo consisting of Alexandria Herring (Associate Producer) and YB Chang Biste (Senior Video Editor), the two were initially brought in to finish off whatever was leftover from Keith's "Eat the Menu" videos. Eventually, they became popular enough to star as their own duo, taking on various eating challenges set by the guys.

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• Big Eater: Not to Keith's extremes, but they can chow down when need be.
• Breakout Character: Initially their videos were meant as extra content for the Try Guys Patreon, but they soon garnered their own following and segments within the main channel.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Alex left the company sometime in late 2022 and has not been referenced since. YB still appears to eat with Keith in videos such as "Try Guys 401 Dumpling Mukbang" and "Keith Eats Japanese Ramen and Vietnamese Pho."
• Fire-Breathing Diner: In their first official video, Alex makes a loud grunt after eating nearly 70 chicken nuggets, and the editors add a fiery halo effect around her. Late Food Babies videos would reference this as a Call-Back.
  • The Korean Corn Dogs Challenge video features Alex, YB, and Keith all suffering through a real-life Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce, including super-imposed fire effects. Keith is specifically asked to act like he's breathing fire so they can add the flames in post, which he does (and they do).
• Hidden Depths: YB has the ability to lucid dream, and because of that she also minored in psychology during college.
• I Have Many Names: Keith has jokingly given them lots of different alternate names, most of which they hate, including "the Dumpster Divas" and "the Garbage Gals."
• Silk Hiding Steel: In the Try Guys EXTREME Spicy Noodle Challenge video, where the guys and the Food Babies had to eat noodle dishes with an escalating amount of ghost pepper seasoning, YB calmly ate her way through the highest level of spicy noodles that the restaurant offered. Even Eugene was sweating bullets when he had to eat the same dish.
• Those Two Girls: Even outside their starring videos, they'll often appear together.

Rachel

Rachel Ann Cole

Director and executive producer of the show, and co-host of the TryPod sister series "You Can Sit with Us."

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• Hero of Another Story: Rachel's led a varied life before her time at the company. She was a kindergarten teacher, a cancer survivor, Miss Vermont (2007), and a nanny working for Tina Fey.
• Team Mom: She's one of the company's main producers, and manages the guys' antics on-set with soft-spoken but firm admonishments and encouragement. Not only that, she's also a mother to twins.
• Troll: In Producers React, she admitted to occasionally lying about how much time the guys have left to finish their dishes in Without a Recipe. Also prompted Keith to start screaming solely to freak out Jonny Cakes, made Jonny taste-test uncooked clam chowder in Surprising Keith with Soup-Flavored Macarons, and added microphones that broadcast the noises the Guys made out into the main office during Try Guys Get Their Muscles Destroyed.
  Eugene: Rachel, are you a sadist?
  Rachel: For you three.

Tutors

General Tropes

Due to the Try Guys often...Well, trying new things, they're often given tutors to help ease up the process.

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• The Ace: They're all among the best in their respective fields, which makes them having to deal with the Try Guys even funnier in the process.
• Deadpan Snarker: Doesn't matter who they are, they're all sarcastic to some degree, likely thanks to being so experienced in their craft while having to teach a bunch of inexperienced jokesters how it works.
• The Mentor: Their main role in the episodes they appear in. And more often than not, they're really good at it.
• Straight Man: Alongside general mentorship, they all tend to act as a saner, more deadpan source of humor compared to the guys' zaniness.

BuzzFeed-Era Tutors

Drag Queens

Appearances: The Try Guys Try Drag For The First Time

The tutors of The Try Guys Try Drag For The First Time. They go by the stage names of Allusia, Cupcake Canne, Mayhem Miller and Misty Violet.

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• Drag Queen: Though on the wittier side of things more often than not.
• High Heel Hurt: Zach brings up how much they hurt to wear, which Allusia defends with saying that in the end, it's worth it.
• Punny Name: All of them have pretty creative, pun-based names, especially the Try Guys' personas.
• Silly Walk: Ultimately the result of them having the Try Guys try on heels for the first time.
• "Walk on the Wild Side" Episode: Cupcake Canne helps Ned to bring out his wild side throughout the episode.
• Wild Hair: Just look at it!

The Warwick Rowers

Chris Krupke, Laurence Hulse, Oliver Greene, Tom Robinson and Tristan Edwards

Appearances: The Try Guys Try Nude Modeling

The tutors of The Try Guys Try Nude Modeling.

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• Hot Men at Work: In effect even more than usual, since their work is related to being hot.
• Hunk: By and far among the most attractive men to ever be on the show.
• Male Frontal Nudity: Their job is as full-time nude models.
• Mr. Fanservice: Probably the most overt example physically possible.
• Perfection Is Impossible: Zach claims otherwise.
  Zach: Just to be clear, you guys are... athletic, good looking, British and give to a cause? Fuck you guys!
• Shameless Fanservice Guy: Close to nude at all times, and not the least bit shameful about it in the slightest.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Obviously, considering they're nude models.

Mistress Hudsy Hawn

Appearances: The Try Guys Try 'Fifty Shades' Style BDSM

Zach's partner and tutor in The Try Guys Try 'Fifty Shades' Style BDSM.

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• Bondage Is Bad: Inverted; BDSM is treated completely normally as long as all parties involved do so with consent.
• Brains and Bondage: She genuinely knows a lot about BDSM and the general rules of it.
• Dominatrix: Her job.
• Nice Girl: Quite friendly and careful, making sure throughout the entire process that Zach is comfortable with the experience.
• No Sex Allowed: As a professional BDSM dominatrix, she actually explains that as part of the job, she doesn't have sex with her clients.
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual: The three general rules of BDSM, which she goes over with Zach.
• Safe Word: Ultimately Zach's for her ends up being "Mercy".
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Similar to the Warwick Rowers, as it is her job to be sexual to some degree, it's completely expected that she doesn't feel any shame from the activity.

Thomas Coyne

Appearances: The Try Guys Try Not To Die Alone

A survival instructor and all around badass. He teaches the Try Guys how to survive in the wilderness, and later returned to show them how to escape from kidnappings.

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• The Ace: He teaches the Try Guys how to survive a full day in the Wild for a good reason. Ned fully admits that TC is the "hardest, baddest man" he knows.
• Affectionate Nickname: The Try Guys refer to him as "TC".
• The Bus Came Back: After making only one appearance in The Try Guys Try Not To Die Alone, Thomas returns in The Try Guys Get Kidnapped, teaching them how to survive a kidnapping.
• The Comically Serious: A bit downplayed. While he's not without a sense of humor, he takes his job very seriously, seeing how people could die if they don't follow his instructions.
• Cool Shades: He's almost never seen without his shades.
• Deadpan Snarker: Even he isn't one to not make a snappy joke when the moment calls for it.
• Not So Above It All: Every now and then, the Try Guys manage to make him laugh

Independence-Era Tutors

Others

Try Partners

Becky Habersberger, Ariel Fulmer, Matt MacLean and Maggie Kornfeld

Full names: Rebecca Habersberger (née Miller), Ariel Marie Fulmer (née VandeVoorde), Matthew Joseph MacLean, Margaret Angela Bustamante Kornfeld

The significant others of The Try Guys. Formerly called the Try Wives before being renamed to be more inclusive to Eugene's boyfriend Matt.

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• Action Mom: Ariel, who has gone skydiving and horseback riding since having kids.
• Birds of a Feather: They get along really well with their partners with a similar sense of humor and so forth.
• Brutal Honesty: Matt was pretty blunt about what Eugene does, including his baking and cooking tries.
• Family Theme Naming: The Fulmer sons, Wesley and Finley.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Ned and Ariel—by their testimony, Ned proposed to Ariel after nine months of dating and they got married shortly thereafter. By contrast:
  • Becky and Keith dated for around seven years before they finally got married (on top of having a Long-Distance Relationship for at least a year).
  • Zach and Maggie dated for a few years in between moving in together and getting engaged.
  • Matt and Eugene have been together since at least 2012 and while they're not married (at least not yet), they are living together and they had also adopted Pesto and Kimbop together (Eugene had adopted Emma prior to him and Matt getting together).
• Good Parents: Ned and Ariel are this to Wes and Finn.
• Happily Married: Becky and Keith since 2017, and Zach and Maggie since 2023.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: They are close friends. Ariel stated Becky knew Ariel was pregnant when she didn't order any alcohol at a wedding's open bar AKA free booze.
• Meet Cute: The wives' first impressions of their future spouses were basically "they're weird, but we like them."
  • Keith met Becky at Freshman Orientation by her father’s introduction and began dating when she’s a junior in college.
  • Ariel met Ned at a party and despite Ned’s insistence at the Love at First Sight, he actually hit it off with a mutual friend of theirs and she vividly remembered him bringing a half bottle of tequila with shouting.
  • Zach met Maggie at a gay bar, actually making out with her and later taking her out on dates.
  • Eugene and Matt met at a gym, and had actually been eying each other for a year. Matt talked to him first and Eugene immediately asked him out. At the time, Matt had been stung by a bee. Afterward, Eugene had been insistent with his pursuit.
• Secret Relationship: For privacy's sake—Maggie and Matt were slowly unveiled although the latter has been a part of the Try Guys team since he was the one who came up with the name "Try Wives". In one of their podcasts, Becky offhandedly mentions that Eugene got together with his boyfriend, Matt, long before Zach and Maggie had even met.
  • It was later revealed in a podcast that Matt and Eugene's first date was to see Argo, which was released in late 2012.
• Through His Stomach: Matt claims to be an amazing cook and does all the cooking for Eugene, who appreciates it greatly. In the Dumplings episode of “Without a Recipe”, Eugene tried extra hard to make good dumplings after knowing Matt was one of the judges, because he wanted to make something nice for him. Fortunately, he won that episode.

Jonny Cakes

Jonny Manganello

Real name Jonny Manganello, Jonny Cakes is a baker and an Internet personality. Originally brought in as a Without A Recipe judge, Jonny meshed with the Try Team so well that he now has his own series on the channel (“Jonny Bakes”) and participates in non-cooking challenges. His personal channel can be viewed here.

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• Alone Among the Couples: If he’s talking about his romantic life, he’s usually bemoaning how all his friends are getting married. He’s also one of the few regulars on the channel (gay or straight) who doesn’t have a long-term partner.
• Breakout Character: Quickly became a fan favorite and is now commonly seen as a regular member of the Try Guys team.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite all of his self-deprecation and goofing around, Jonny is a very talented and successful baker and cake decorator, something that definitely sets him apart from the main Try Guys.
• The Cast Show Off: He demonstrates how to make something Once a Season on Without A Recipe, partly to counterbalance some of the monstrosities he’s made elsewhere on the Try channel.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Pretty much everything in Surprising Keith With Soup-Flavored Macarons, but the clam chowder macarons are the worst offender.
• Deadpan Snarker: He’s quick with the comebacks and sarcastic remarks.
  Jonny: How big is the bowl?
  Shane Madej: It’s bigger than a baby’s head… uh… It would fit in the microwave!
  Jonny: Yeah, a baby’s head does famously fit in a microwave.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Jonny shows the camera a video of Josh Scherer working out at the beginning of “Surprising Mythical Chef Josh With 100 Lb. Cake Weights.” When Rachel asks if that’s what he’s using as a reference for his barbell, Jonny’s reaction makes it clear he was not looking at the equipment Josh was using.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Jonny had to return to compete on Phoning It In until he finally won an episode. It took four episodes.
• Homophobic Hate Crime: Invoked for Black Comedy when Jonny and Eugene are paired together in the Try Guys Ruin Disney Cakes w/ Pro Chefs episode of Phoning It In. Jonny accuses Keith and Mythical Chef Josh of committing a hate crime for not letting him and Eugene use the oven when they need it and later accuses the judges of hating gay people when he and Eugene lose.
• Intergenerational Friendship: A boy named Auggie declared Jonny his best friend in “Try Guys Try Forest Preschool,” and Jonny mentioned on the You Can Sit With Us podcast that Auggie’s parents invited him to Auggie’s fifth birthday party.
• I Taste Delicious: Invoked. In the Illusion Cakes episode of “Without a Recipe”, Eugene makes a sculpture of Jonny’s head for his illusion cake. When Jonny tastes it, he remarks “For the boys at home watching this, I’m delicious.”
• Running Gag: Jonny competed on and lost both Food Network’s Holiday Wars and Netflix’s Is It Cake? Expect Jonny to list one or both as his "credentials" on Without A Recipe or Phoning It In.
• Self-Deprecating Humor: Jonny’s a common target of his own snarking.
  Jonny: Hey, I’m Jonny Cakes, and I am a hyper-realistic cake artist and not a doctor or a lawyer as my mom and dad wanted me to be.
• Sixth Ranger: Will participate in activities or challenges when the main trio need or want another guy.
• Surrounded by Idiots: On Phoning It In. You can practically see the light leaving his eyes when Kwesi says he didn’t know teaspoons and tablespoons were different things.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Participated in Guys Wear Dresses for a Week and wore a pink princess dress to present his creation in Lifesized Princess Dress Cake ft. Rosanna Pansino.