Sandbox / The Office Dwight Schrute

Main Character Index | Main Characters (Michael Scott, Dwight Scrute) | Secondary Characters | Recurring Characters | Threat Level Midnight Characters

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Dwight Kurt Schrute III

"Nothing stresses me out. Except having to seek the approval of my inferiors."

Played by: Rainn Wilson
Seasons: 1-9
"Last week I gave a fire-safety talk, and nobody paid any attention. It's my own fault for using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is boring. People learn in lots of different ways, but experience is the best teacher."

Sales Representative/Assistant (to the) Regional Manager/Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton.

UK counterpart: Gareth Keenan.

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A-M

• Affectionate Nickname: Called "possum" and "D" by Angela.
• Agent Mulder: Dwight seems to be the most willing of the office to believe in cryptids, including vampires, zombies, and Sasquatch.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: While Dwight's eccentricities are likely just a product of his very strange upbringing, he’s easily distracted on random topics and turns minor issues into Serious Business, he is The Paranoiac and a Cloudcuckoolander displaying symptoms of many disorders, possibly being anywhere on the Autism spectrum.
• Ambiguously Christian: The Schrute family has Amish roots, but the few times Dwight expresses any religious sentiments, they're very eclectic and hard to pin down. In fact, judging from his claim in "Crime Aid" that Angela introduced him to monotheism, and the deleted scene in "Drug Testing" where he considers praying to Thor to help him find the employee who left the joint in the parking lot, the Schrutes may practice some kind of Neo-Paganism.
• Ambition Is Evil: He's infamously ruthless, ambitious and power-hungry. Every time Dwight's in authority, he behaves like an unfeeling dictator and this isolates from his co-workers who don't desire to be his employees due to how obnoxious and egotistical he is. This hits him hard in the Season 7 finale when he does get to be interim manager, only to prove himself a liability when word gets out that he tried to intimidate his employees by firing a gun in the office. Luckily by the end, he develops a more amiable demeanor as he finally becomes branch manager of Dunder Mifflin.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed, but a lot of what keeps Jim's fondness for pranking him from seeming too mean is that, initially at least, he's often just taking Dwight down a peg or two; most of his pranks come after moments where Dwight has been particularly arrogant, insufferable or abrasive.
• Babies Ever After: By the series finale it's revealed that Angela's son Phillip was conceived with Dwight and they become a loving family.
• Bad Liar: Dwight has many impressive skills. Deception is not one of them. In "The Coup", even ultra-dense Michael can easily figure out that Dwight is lying about skipping work for an emergency dental appointment with "Dr. Crentist".
• Bears Are Bad News: A firm believer in this trope. If Dwight's not preparing for a terrorist attack to spontaneously strike the workplace, odds are he's preparing for a bear attack.
• Berserk Button: If you value your life, don't ever talk badly about Angela in his presence.
• Big Eater: In "The Coup", he orders a meal large enough to feed an entire family.
• Birds of a Feather: Dwight and Angela are both very quirky, overly serious, and obnoxious egomaniacs who love being controlling of others.
• Brutal Honesty: In "Pam's Replacement", Pam even starts taking advice from Dwight because he's the only one she knows for sure is being honest with her.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Dwight's the most-successful active salesman at Dunder-Mifflin, and yet his quirks are far more pronounced than Michael's. He's also competent enough at farmwork that the combined income from both jobs left him wealthy enough to buy the building.
• Butt-Monkey: Exemplified in the penultimate episode of season four, when Michael leaves the office. Dwight (accurately) announces that he is in charge of the office for the day. Stanley simply stands up and leaves. Over the course of the episode, so does every other employee except Angela.
• Catchphrase: "Idiot." Also begins countless sentences with "Question...", "Fact..." or "False..."
• Characterization Marches On: Dwight used to be an almost blind worshipper of Michael, eagerly doing all his requests, but in later seasons he grew increasingly dedicated to surpassing and taking the Regional Manager job for himself.
• Character Development: In Seasons 8 and 9 Dwight learns to appreciate his coworkers more. Examples:
  • When he's putting together a team to go to Tallahassee and gets saddled with his least favorite people in the office, but soon recognizes that even they have traits that he can appreciate.
  • When he tries to hire one of his personal friends to pick up Jim's slack (as he is busy starting another business), and when he finds out that none of them would be even remotely competent, he realizes that he holds his coworkers to a far higher standard than his friends.
  • By the time he is appointed Regional Manager again near Season 9's end, everyone in the office is actually happy for him, and among his final words in the series is him admitting that he does get along with his subordinates.
  • By the second half of the final season, Dwight actually considers Pam and Jim his close friends, and they are both happy to admit the same (even if they are still prone to pranking him). Dwight, without pause, tells Pam he thinks Jim would be best choice for Regional Manager, and Jim says this of Dwight to David Wallace. After Dwight's promotion, he immediately asks Jim to be his number two.
  • In the finale, he even asks Jim to be his best man over Mose and any other family members present.
• The Chew Toy: Dwight's relationship with both Jim and Michael.
  • Jim has next to no respect for Dwight, so Mr. Schrute routinely finds himself to be the go-to guy when Jim is bored and in a pranking mood (though he does, it has to be said, tend to bring much of it upon himself). Dwight does, on rare occasion, get his own back.
  • With Michael, it's love-hate; he loves Dwight's obsession/idol worship of him and does everything he can to keep it, but he hates the kiss-ass sycophancy that comes with it and so dismisses Dwight as a friend and any of his attempts to gain authority, real or imagined.
• Chronic Pet Killer: Euthanized Angela's cat Sprinkles because it was weak. Dwight really thought he was doing both the cat and Angela a favor, though. He also shot a "werewolf" that turned back into the neighbour's dog. And while volunteering at the animal hospital, Dwight euthanized over 150 pets by himself.
  • Angela had asked him to take care of her cat because he was the only one she trusted. He decided that Sprinkles' quality of life was too low and put her in Angela's freezer - while she was still alive. Sprinkles then proceeded to throw up her medication, choke on the vomit and die.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Dwight is someone who, while his behavior is mostly predictable, seems to have motivations and an internal monologue that indicate that he is one of these.
• The Comically Serious: Everything is Serious Business for him and this is often, if not always, Played for Laughs.
• Competition Freak: Dwight went as far as taking on a computer (which he thought was sentient, by the way) in a contest who could get the most sales before the end of the day. Somehow, Dwight won. Near the end of the series, Dwight becomes Regional Manager, and Jim becomes the Assistant to the Regional Manager. When Jim decides to take on his own assistant and hold a competition to determine who it would be, Dwight eventually can't help but compete and win.
• Consistent Clothing Style: Dwight's office attire generally consists of brown/tan suits with short sleeve button down shirts in various earth tone colors and a matching tie. When made to wear white long sleeve button shirts by Charles Miner, he expresses serious discomfort with the change. He does wear the occasional tuxedo for formal occasions such as his aunt's funeral and his wedding.
• Control Freak: He greatly dislikes letting anyone share his status or have more authority than him, not even letting his girlfriend Angela share it when they plan for Dwight to take over the branch.
• Crazy-Prepared: He has a large amount of weapons hidden around the office in case of attack. Also, he has a wig for every person in the office, because "you never know when you need to bear a passing resemblance to someone."
• Determinator: In "Tallahasee" he tries to make it through a Sabre seminar even though he's in pain from an appendicitis. Later in the day he still tries to give a presentation just a few hours after having an emergency appendectomy.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Played with. Dwight likes to think he's the "hidden badass" part of the trope, but the joke is often that there's a gulf between his true abilities and his perception of his true abilities, meaning he's often more just the "crouching moron" part. He is often shown to tout his martial arts prowess and the fact that he's Crazy-Prepared for any eventuality — however, on several occasions it's shown that his abilities in both are less impressive than he wants others to think. He memorably gets defeated by Michael, a complete novice, in karate on one occasion, and his preparations for violent conflict (most notably by hiding a massive arsenal of weapons around the office) are massively out of proportion for the actual likelihood of such conflict occurring within the regional branch of a mid-level paper company. While he does rise to the occasion on at least one occasion by using his pepper spray to deter Roy from beating up Jim, this is played more as a stopped clock being right for once rather than Dwight being the actual badass he has deluded himself into believing he is. This trope actually does come into play (albeit on a much-smaller scale than he wants to think) with regards to his sales abilities, however, which despite almost everything else about him are genuinely impressive.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Dwight tends to fall into this in his reactions to a lot of Jim's pranks; many of them would probably be unsuccessful, or at least less successful, if he were able to just roll with the punch and walk away, or even genuinely laugh it off. But he usually makes things worse for himself due to both his gullibility and his utter lack of a sense of humor about himself and Dunder-Mifflin, leading to him getting more engaged with and entangled with worse outcomes.
• Ditzy Genius: While he is an intelligent salesman, he's still a naive, impulsive and socially oblivious Manchild that's gullible to many of Jim (and Pam)'s classic pranks.
• Dumb, but Diligent: In contrast to Jim, who is Brilliant, but Lazy, Dwight, while not unintelligent, is very socially inept, gullible and lacks both social and self-awareness. Nevertheless, he manages to make a success of his career simply through his tendency to never give up or accept "No" for an answer. His interpersonal skills are inappropriate, sometimes even illegal, but he has a high level of passion for everything he does.
• Encyclopaedic Knowledge: Dwight is an expert on "bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica". He knows the company's paper stock like the back of his hand and acculumates whatever intel he can find on people to an invasive degree.
• Enemy Mine: Prior to befriending Jim, there were a few things that would make him enter into this with Jim - the opportunity for a major sale (when Robert California closed the Binghamton Branch while drunk, for example) or Todd Packer being the most notable.
  "Jim is my enemy, but it turns out Jim is also his own worst enemy. And the enemy of my enemy if my friend, so Jim is actually my friend. But because he is his own worst enemy, the enemy of my friend is my enemy. So actually, Jim is my enemy. But..."
• Even Evil Has Standards: After initially hazing Ryan, he takes him on a sales call, in which Ryan not only loses the sale, but apparently gets told that they didn't like him rather harshly. Dwight consoles Ryan by saying honestly "they didn't have to say it to your face". He's then more than happy to join in when Ryan throws eggs at the building in frustration.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Dwight has never heard the phrase "Live and Let Live" before and doesn't understand what it means when he does.
• Fire-Forged Friends: He and Jim go from rivals to friends in the final season, to the point that Dwight makes Jim his Best Man at his wedding.
  • Dwight and Andy also didn't get along for the first few years. It wasn't until they realised Angela was cuckolding both of them that they put aside their differences and eventually grew to like each other.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Fits the bill for Proximity and Supervision. Dwight is easily the least liked person in the office, with even friend hungry Michael trying to avoid him if he can help it. Most of Jim's pranks work largely due to nobody in the office being willing to support Dwight if he catches on or keeping quiet so he doesn't figure it out. Ironically, Jim and Pam seems to be about the only ones in the office willing to treat Dwight as a friend.
• Germanic Efficiency: He's German-American, and prides himself on his work ethic, productivity, and no-nonsense attitude.
• A God Am I: Dwight calls himself "the King of Kings" of sales because thinks of himself as Jesus, something reinforced when he does a Tableau of The Last Supper so he can play Christ in the center.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: While he's not touchy as Andy, Dwight's not the type of person most people would like to upset due to his Hot-Blooded personality and a stubborn and a rather intense attitude that he displays with others.
• Happily Married: With Angela as of The Finale.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Dwight loves putting on a show of having reforemd, only to later confide in the cameras that he's learned nothing and will eventually betray everyone when they least expect it. Subverted in that everyone knows this is how he acts, but he's often so poor at it they just brush it off.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He is an able entrepreneur. His antics aside, his farm and motel are actually well-managed.
  • To say nothing of adding becoming owner of the office complex to the mix. He juggles this, the above two jobs, and being the most effective salesman in Dunder-Mifflin with seemingly no trouble at all.
  • He's pretty good at basketball, yet not so good in martial arts (despite his boasts). He does obtain a black belt near the end of the series, so he may well have improved, or is better than his onscreen attempts to show off his skills make him seem.
  • Despite turning the office into a near living hell for his "subordinates" whenever he's Regional Manager, it's pointed out that the office as a whole runs very well under Dwight's watch. When he becomes Regional Manager at the end of the series after learning to respect his coworkers, he manages to bring that efficiency without sacrificing morale (he even brings back Devon!)
  • While Dwight can be seen as off-putting by a lot of people, he's surprisingly good with and quite fond of children and babies, including Jim and Pam's baby, Cece. This is best seen in the episode "Viewing Party" where Cece keeps crying and Dwight takes her from Pam and does a simple hand motion that stops her crying and causes her to fall asleep within seconds. Pam even notes that she "loves him" much to Jim's despair.
  • It's implied in a few episodes that he's fully aware that Jim's having him on, but he just goes with it for whatever reason.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Some of the things he says about his childhood are pretty horrifying, including years of being shunned (starting when he was four- because he forgot to save the excess oil from a tuna can) and performing his own circumcision (okay, you can uncross your legs now).
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: With Angela who stands 5'1 next to his 6'3.
• Hypocrite:
  • He is irritated when Jim dresses like Dwight and imitates him mockingly in one episode, he also tells Jim that "Identity theft is not a joke!" only for the episode to end with Dwight trying to impersonate Jim. In a later episode Dwight pretends to be Andy in order to annoy him, similar to what Jim did to him earlier, and in "Scott's Tots" part of his plan to get Jim fired is posing as Kevin, Stanley and Toby in phone calls to David Wallace.
  • He tells Meredith's son that he does not have games on his office computer because that would be inappropriate. But in a later episode, he plays Second Life during work. However he himself doesn't consider it a "game." He later sets aside an entire desk just for gaming when he creates Mega Desk while Jim and Pam are away on paternity and maternity leave.
  • In general he is a stickler for rules and an enthusiastic authoritarian... right up until the point where the rules start constraining his interests and the authority figure is someone he dislikes or disapproves of.
• Hypocritical Humor: During "Niagra", Dwight talks with a group of kids about how he believes Jim only got the co-manager position due to "kissing the boss-man's butt". Kind of a dubious argument for Dwight to be making, considering his being a Professional Butt-Kisser to Michael is one of the strongest aspects of his character.
• Idiot Houdini: He has done numerous things over the course of the show that would have gotten him fired at best and is not only never disciplined for them but ends the show as the office's regional manager.
  • There's honestly no logical explanation for why corporate didn't fire him (or why Stanley didn't sue him, or why the police didn't arrest him) in "Stress Relief" (other than Status Quo Is God, of course). First, he intentionally started a fire in the office that not only led to people damaging corporate property in the panic, but almost killed Stanley, who has a heart attack from the stress. Then, after inexplicably not being fired, he costs corporate 3,500 dollars a day or two later when he deliberately destroys a CPR dummy. And he's still not fired. Top salesman or not, you've got to expect that he'd be fired and sued immediately in Real Life.
  • He also somehow failed to suffer any consequences whatsoever for assaulting (and then subsequently terrorizing) Jim to the point of drawing blood in "Classy Christmas." In fact, Michael and Holly wind up reprimanding Jim for the whole thing (granted, this was after he accidentally broke a window in the office trying to lob a snowball at Dwight with a lacrosse stick. Not cool- but nowhere NEAR as bad as what Dwight did to him.)!
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Showing off a family heirloom holster and an antique revolver he hopes will impress Jo, Dwight displays staggering incompetence with a gun for a man with Crazy Survivalist tendencies. He accidentally discharges the firearm in the office; thankfully, the damage is limited to bursting Andy's eardrum and putting a small hole in the floor.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Frequently insists that his coworkers be referred to as his subordinates, even when that's not really the case and this fact is pointed out to him.
  • In the earlier seasons he always referred to himself as "Assistant Regional Manager" despite others- frequently Michael, the actual Regional Manager- reminding him that his actual title is "Assistant to the Regional Manager". In both cases, his concern seems to be less about accuracy and more I Reject Your Reality, trying to pretend he has more authority than he does until everyone just accepts it.
• Insufferable Genius: Downplayed; he's a great salesman with a gigantic ego. However, he considers himself to be a genius in other ways which are far from the case, meaning he's mostly just the 'insufferable' part.
• Jerkass: Dwight's default mood is being harsh and rude to everyone he interacts with, except Michael, in which case he is a suck up. Due to his Brutal Honesty and lack of social skills, he comes across as aggressive, hostile and difficult. Several moments in the series show that Dwight enjoys playing the evil genius when the opportunity comes, so he's defnintely not a jerkass by accident.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While Dwight may deserve a few of Jim's pranks when they act as Laser-Guided Karma for his rude behavior to his coworkers, "Conflict Resolution" has Jim himself realize that the sheer number and excess of many of them is uncalled for and Dwight has a right to be angry about them.
  • Dwight thinks he's this with regards to his insanely dangerous fire drill. However, while he does have a bit of a point in that his co-workers failed to cover themselves in glory at the time, an objective reading of the situation clearly demonstrates that this was mainly because he stacked the decks against them from the start. The scenario he set up would likely be near-impossible for them to survive had it been real, and was full of secret - and at times contradictory - little traps that were almost unavoidable (note that at one point he mocks everyone for not trying to call the fire department — despite Pam having attempted to do so, revealing that he's sabotaged the phone lines and that they can't phone the fire department). Furthermore, while he claims he was trying to give everyone instructions on how to get out, that was mainly in the form of unhelpful quiz questions, and he ultimately spent most of the drill strutting, mocking and crowing about their ineptitude rather than taking charge of the situation and maintaining calm, which was his actual job in the situation as safety manager. Any point he might have is ultimately minor compared to the "jerkass" part of what he was doing.
  • Dwight isn't afraid to fat-shame some of the more overweight staff. Then again, their workplace is above ground floor and the elevator has broken down at least once, so keeping the staff fit enough to climb the stairs isn't the most ludicrous demand he's made of them.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Occasionally. Though his compassion isn't seen by any characters (just the audience), its effects are obvious. Almost the entirety of Dwight's relationship with Angela shows this, especially getting fired (temporarily, though he didn't know it) due to respecting her wish to keep their love a secret. He also cares a great deal about Jim and Pam (even choosing the former as his best man and referring to the latter as his "best friend" by the end of the series).
• Karma Houdini: Between his impeccable sales record, his unrivalled work ethic and general pity, there's always something keeping the rest of the office and their superiors from seriously reprimanding Dwight. See his entry on the main page under this trope.
• Kavorka Man: Despite his rather questionable fashion sense, behavior and general ethics, Dwight easily scores a one-night-stand with one of Pam's attractive friends. Said friend even came back for more, only to find Dwight talking with another woman the following day, again quite successfully from the looks of it. And then there was that entire women's basketball team in "Night Out", alongside a farm girl named Esther that reciprocated Dwight's bizarre courtship ritual.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: While he's not exactly stupid, he does have an over-inflated impression of exactly how intelligent and knowledgeable he is. Furthermore, despite his posturing there are some significant gaps in what he considers to be his areas of expertise (for example, as noted elsewhere for a supposed survivalist his knowledge of proper gun handling appears to be somewhat lacking, and when he's strutting around doing a drug investigation as a volunteer sheriff's deputy he fails to spot Creed referring to the specific strain of marijuana used in a joint). Furthermore, even those areas of knowledge he does possess are usually not very applicable to his actual circumstances or he doesn't know how to use the knowledge he has that is relevant appropriately, making him look foolish; for one example, his knowledge of military strategy, survival skills and animal behavior is less relevant in a white-collar mid-level suburban paper company than he seems to think.
  • This is largely evident in Dwight's gun handling skills. For a guy who has a lot of survivalist tendencies and loves to brag how proficient he is with weaponry, his gun safety knowledge is shockingly low. No real artillery expert would ever assume a gun not to be loaded, or have their finger on a trigger when they don't intend to fire, both things that Dwight has done.
• Large Ham: He often talks and acts in ways that are bizarrely over-the-top.
• Lawful Stupid: Treats even the most trivial rules with the utmost importance. A joint at the parking lot is enough to have him don his (voluntary) sheriff uniform and subject the entire office to interrogations and drug tests. Another time, Jim tells Dwight that wasting valuable office time is against the rules and Dwight goes as far as peeing in a coke bottle at his desk and sneeze with his eyes open, simply not to waste time. Justified since he is actually a Competition and Control Freak and his extreme emphasis on the rules is as much about intentionally undermining or irritating others to advance his own agenda as it is any actual Uber-respect for the rules; notably, he quickly finds himself chafing against the same rules he pompously insists others should follow the moment they start constraining him.
• Lethally Stupid: He always thinks he's doing the right thing, but his actions are often dangerous to other people around him. Examples:
  • Killing Angela's cat because she was in pain.
  • Bringing various weapons to the office (such as crossbows, mace and large knives) and hiding them in random places.
  • Firing a Smith & Wesson revolver instead of a starter's gun for a fun run.
    • Backs even that up later by firing another gun. In the office. Resulting in Andy's temporary hearing loss.
  • Shooting Stanley with a bull tranquilizer.
• Like Brother and Sister: There are moments with Pam where Dwight actually tries to be as supportive as possible towards her. By the end of the series, the two are pretty much like siblings. It gets to the point where Dwight struggles to see why anyone finds Pam attractive.
• Manchild: At his worst, he behaves like an impulsive, stubborn and petulant child when he's angry.
• Manipulative Bastard: On occasion. One of his schemes to sabotage Jim in season 6 actually succeeds, and spends much of that season trying to get Jim fired or make him look bad.
• Munchkin: In the episode "Murder," he and everyone else in the office play a murder mystery dinner party game set in Savannah, Georgia. He draws the Butler character but immediately abandons it to play a hardass detective.

N-Y

• Nazi Grandpa: Repeatedly hinted that his grandfather was a German war criminal, to the point that the Shoah Foundation protested Dwight's visa to visit him in Argentina.
• Nerd Glasses: Has both the glasses and the look.
• Nerd in Evil's Helmet: If Dwight has a chance to perform for the camera or make a pop culture reference it will often be something villainous, and he will invariably take it way too far- case in point, his homage to Silence of the Lambs when he pretends to be Hannibal Lecter by skinning the face off a resuscitation dummy and wearing it as his own!
• No Sense of Humor: Everything is Serious Business for him, which makes him a perfect target for Jim's pranks. The major exception is in "The Injury", when part of his Not Himself behavior after his concussion is that he starts telling jokes, even beating Michael to a That's What She Said quip.
• No Social Skills: Comes with being raised on a beet farm, far away from society with a family that shunned him for two years (starting when he was four years old) for not saving excess oil from a can of tuna, just to name something. This is what he has to say about Angela:
  Dwight: She introduced me to so many things. Pasteurized milk. Sheets. Monotheism. Presents on your birthday. Preventative medicine.
  • When Dwight demonstrates his people skills on Nellie, his choice of words borders on sexual harrassment, with Nellie pointing out that Dwight sounds like he's a serial killer.
• Number Two: To Michael, but noticeably refused to be Deangelo's number two by season seven.
• Not So Above It All: As much as he tries to avoid doing so, he does occasionally find himself involved in the antics of his fellow employees - among other things, he was a part of the Lip Dub of "Nepotism", he was one of the many people trying to see what Stanley would notice, and he was willing to help Jim and Pam trick Michael into believing he'd slept the entire day after the latter had eaten an entire chicken pot pie (mostly because he had to bring one of his horses to the vet and needed to leave early).
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Occasionally. In "Office Olympics", when Michael offers to rent his spare room to Dwight, Dwight intentionally annoys Michael into withdrawing the offer because he doesn't want to have to say no.
• The Paranoiac: Dwight tends to believe that everyone else in the office has (or even, should have) just as much of a Chronic Backstabbing Disorder as he does and acts accordingly, plotting against others in the workplace and assuming that they are plotting against him; he is a security freak to the point that he doesn't let anyone walk behind him for fear of being attacked from behind, and hides numerous weapons around the office in case someone actually does; he is a Professional Butt-Kisser of the highest order yet mostly so he can abuse his power and further his own career, and ultimately plots to replace his own boss; he entertains numerous crazy fantasies and conspiracy theories whilst simultaneously pointing out the (perceived) stupidity of other peoples' more mundane ideas; and, like many paranoids, his behaviour and attitude becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as it just leads to almost everyone in the company disliking, undermining and pulling pranks on him.
• Paste Eater: In "A.A.R.M." it's revealed that he snacks on Dunder Mifflin paper enough to know which stocks are the most flavorful, with the fact that Angela's son eats Dwight's preferred paper being one of the things that makes Dwight think he's the father (which, of course, he is).
• Perpetual Frowner: "I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life."
  • When Pam tells him that he should smile more when doing in-person sales calls, Dwight gives the most psychotic smile imaginable.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Was this until "The Coup", and then it was on and off until the Michael Scott Paper Company arc, where it seems he lost all of the respect he had for Michael.
• Properly Paranoid: Downplayed. As mentioned above, Dwight keeps numerous weapons hidden around the office in the event of an assault. In "The Negotiation" when an enraged Roy enters the office and attacks Jim, Dwight stops him with the pepper spray. This leads Dwight to smugly ask Who's Laughing Now? when he notes that his coworkers mocked him for carrying pepper spray around. However, it should be noted that this is pretty much the only violent altercation in the show's run where one of Dwight's weapons actually comes in useful, and the sheer amount of weaponry and contingency plans for incredibly unlikely scenarios he has make this more a case of a stopped clock being right for once rather than an indication that Dwight's paranoia is actually based on sound principles.
• Psycho for Hire: Whenever Dwight is given a personal task, he'll be sure to turn it into some complicated action-plot.
  • When Angela suspects that her husband is cheating on her and wants to hire a private eye, Dwight puts her in contact with one of his unhinged friends. Said friend came dangerously close to bludgeoning Oscar with a pipe.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Dwight and firearms seem to be a bad combination. In "Survivor Man" he watches Michael through the scope of his hunting rifle- with the safety off (only when the camera crew apparently question him about what he's doing does he actually think to check it). And then there's the accidentally-discharging-a-gun-in-the-office incident mentioned above.
• Refuge in Audacity: For example, sending the entire office into a panic by tricking them into thinking there was a fire for the sole purpose of running a realistic fire drill.
• Relationship Revolving Door: With Angela. They had a secretive relationship in Seasons 2 and 3. Dwight torpedoed it in Season 4 when he killed her cat, only for the two of them to go back to having a secret affair by the end of the season. In Season 5 Dwight puts an end to it when he finds out Angela had slept wih Andy at least twice. In Season 6 Dwight considers restarting the relationship, but is quickly distracted by Pam's friend, whom he notes is better girlfriend material. Angela marries Senator Lipton in between Seasons 7 and 8, effectively putting an end to her and Dwight, only for Dwight to notice their baby looks a lot like him. Towards the end of Season 9 Angela divorces the senator and admits she's still in love with Dwight, who cancels his own engagement to be with her. The finale revolves around their wedding.
• The Rival: Jim. Andy, initially, but they become good friends in season 5.
• Rules Lawyer: He has a tendency to come up with ridiculous, pedantic and arbitrary workplace rules and demand that they be followed to the letter. Which often backfires on him in his rivalry with Jim, since Jim is quick-witted enough to turn them on Dwight in a way that Dwight feels compelled to follow even if they're to his detriment.
• Serious Business:
  • Dwight treats everything in his life with absolute seriousness, especially his job.
  • Never ever disparage Battlestar Galactica in his presence.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Even more than Michael.
• Smug Snake: Being number two for the boss and having the highest sales in the branch has contributed to Dwight's egomania. Granted, the rest of the sales team are too lazy to compete with Dwight.
• The Social Darwinist: Dwight tends to view practically everything in his life - from his career to his relationships to his dealings with the world at large - as if every interaction is a vicious zero-sum dog-eat-dog competition in which there are no rules, no quarter can be given or expected and from which only one survivor can emerge triumphant, and as if he is locked in constant combat with those around him.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Dwight feels this way about anything that "elevates" women to the status of men.
• The Starscream: Starting from "The Coup", when Angela demands that he take over.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: He and Angela. Both have ridiculously conservative values, don't get along with anyone who is their equal or inferior and barely tolerate their superiors. Dwight also has moments of this with Andy, Kevin and Creed.
• Super Gullible: He apparently suffers from Aesop Amnesia every time Jim pulls a prank on him, and always falls for Jim's tricks and ridiculous lies.
  • At least one episode subverts this when Jim flat-out tells Dwight he's about to punk him, to which Dwight gives a resigned "I know" and takes the prank on the chin.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Dwight and Jim occasionally have to work together when faced with someone who annoys them more than each other (such as Todd Packer and Deangelo Vickers). It's also shown that they actually make a very effective sales team despite their personal animosity.
• Took a Level in Kindness: For most of the show, he's a selfish, power-hungry Jerkass with occasional Pet the Dog moments. In the final season, he evolves into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who genuinely cares about his co-workers and is open about his friendship bond with Jim and Pam.
• Tsundere: To Angela.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: The few times Dwight was given control of the office, he demonstrates how authoritarian he is by imposing the most inane rules imaginable. It goes from silly to shocking when Dwight fires a gun in the office, causing corporate to effectively blacklist him from ever taking a management position (though Dwight's refusal to take no for an answer impresses Jo enough to let him interview for the job, if only out of pity). When Dwight gets offered the manager position once more, he still imposes some bizarre rules on the branch (such as setting up a password-encrypted security system), but this time he's making the effort to treat his staff like people rather than drones.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: He's quite average and a bit dorky-looking compared to his later wife - the petite, pretty blonde Angela.
• Ultimate Job Security: He even fired a gun in the office, and the worst punishment he got was being barred from the Regional Manager position, and Jo even lifted that when she saw how dedicated he was to getting the job. The fact that he owns the building the office is located in adds into the situation. Even earlier, in season 5, he deliberately started a fire and blocked all the exits (except for one) and all he had as punishment was to get everyone to sign a piece of paper (which he tricks everybody into doing).
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Back and forth with Angela. Andy, Senator Lipton, Isabel and Esther all get suckered into being romantic false leads. Dwight also tries seducing Nellie, though he doesn't have any intent on following through.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Dwight's relationship with Jim is... complicated, to say the very least. On the one hand, the two are always feuding and annoying one another that can cause problems in the workspace. On the other hand, the two can actually be an effective team when they can put their differences aside. However, the two of them eventually manage to become good friends as the show progresses, with Dwight even having Jim as his best man during him and Angela's wedding.
• Worthy Opponent: With Jim. When Dwight suspects his sperm count has dropped due to an electromagnetic leak in the office, Jim tells Dwight that he just made him beleive that as a joke. Not getting what jim was saying, Dwight assumes Jim concocted an elaborate scheme to keep Dwight from reproducing, to which Dwight praises Jim for his deviousness.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Dwight treats real life as if it were a different genre of fiction. He treats the threat of layoffs as if he were participating in a competitive reality TV show like Survivor, keeps a variety of weapons in strategic hiding places throughout the office as though violent attacks were imminent, and at one point describes a detailed robbery plan that would be Genre Savvy if he existed in a crime thriller.
  • In general, he seems to view his life and interactions with those around him as if he's the protagonist in a story which somehow combines a 1980s greed-is-good business thriller in which he must ruthlessly betray, crush and annihilate all competition in order to secure the powerful corporate position (which isn't even as powerful as he thinks it is) and a kind of nineteenth century pre-industrialisation rural survivalist narrative in which man must battle the elements of nature. As opposed to being, well, a low-level white collar employee of a slowly failing mid-level paper company in a comfortable twenty-first century industrial urban city.
• Yes-Man: To Michael in the first seasons. This stems from a mix of Hero Worship and a desire for authority, which he thinks being Michael's Yes-Man gives him. Later seasons, he loses this trait as he finds that being a sycophant would get him nowhere in his career and behaves more rebelliously.
• You Are in Command Now: He's been given command of the office a few times (though none of them have stuck), such as when Michael left for the New York job and when Michael leaves for good but is almost immediately removed because of the aforementioned gun incident and two years later the new CEO David Wallace gave him another chance by promoting him after Andy's departure, and this time Dwight didn't screw it up.

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