Web Video / Hardly Working

The original cast of Hardly Working.^note Ricky Van Veen (front center) has since begun working at the parent company, and Sarah Schneider (far left) left to join the writing staff of Saturday Night Live

Sarah: Guys! A tiger got loose in the office somehow!
Jeff: Well that doesn't make any se—AHHHHHHH! HE'S EATING ME!

Hardly Working is an online series of shorts taking place in the office from which the CollegeHumor website is run. The series is written by and stars the CH staff. The first shorts were ten-second-long, one-joke bits shot with a cam-corder for fun, but as their popularity grew they expanded into full sketches several minutes long and shot with multiple professional cameras.

Most of the shorts take place in the context of supposed everyday life working at the website's office. The most prominent subseries within Hardly Working is Jake and Amir, a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine between the two titular characters.

See it here.

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This series provides examples of:

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: The Phantom of the Office always pronounces Sarah's name "Sa-RAH."
• Actually Pretty Funny: Ricky's response to the prank shows Amir keeps trying to film at the office in "Soup'd."
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  Pat: I made you this balloon animal.
  Streeter: I made you this bassoon animal.
  Pat: I made you this doubloon animal.
  Dan: No more "words ending in -oon" animals!
  (Streeter drops a spoon animal)
  • "Dilly Dally":
    Dan: If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were dilly-dallying.
    Streeter: Well it's a good thing you do know better, because I haven't dilly-dallied a day in my god-damn DIFE!
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Seen in Amir and Streeter.
• The Alleged Boss: When Ricky gets up the courage to fire an employee, she turns him down like an unwanted date.
  Ricky: I am such a bozo.
  Lindsay: Oh, no, don't say that, you're not—
  Ricky: This whole thing was stupid...
  Lindsay: No, it's—we're, we're fine. We can still be coworkers.
  Ricky: Coworkership is very important to me.
• All Issues Are Political Issues: Taken to absurd levels in "The Social Consequences of Everything", where they shoot down every single idea about how to spend their day off because literally everything is politically incorrect in some way and thus unacceptable in modern society, until they eventually settle on doing literally nothing but sitting in a dark basement and waiting until they have to go back to work.
  Adam: [draws a gun] We could kill ourselves! Just end it all. Have freedom from all social judgment. The terrible awareness that came with the age of information. A return to before, when there were no Upworthy videos reminding you of how your every selfish act orphans a child a world away...
  Emily: [shocked] Jesus Christ, Adam! NO! [Beat] We'd be tacitly supporting the gun lobby.
  Pat: And the energy costs of cremation are astronomical.
  Murph: Don't even get me started on traditional burials. I mean, the hubris!
• All Jews Are Cheapskates: The "Overgrown Guy Girlfriend" accuses Amir of being cheap for this reason.
• Alternate Universe: In "Douchebag Office," the "South side" of the office is populated by "douchebag" versions of the cast, except for Jake, who is the douchebag Jake.
• Always Identical Twins: Averted in "Is Grant Keith from Buzzfeed" where Keith's twin Grant Habersberger is explicitly fraternal even though they look alike. Grant's twin Keith O'Brien isn't specified one way or the other.
• A Man Is Always Eager: In "Sarah's Revenge," Sarah effortlessly tricks most of the male cast into the broom closet by simply telling each of them to meet her there in five minutes with no pants. They don't question it at all.
• Ambiguously Gay: Jake frequently encourages all the guys to kiss each other, or suck each other off. "See Office Fight"
• And a Diet Coke: At the end of "Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants," Streeter, hurt because his friends broke it to him that he's the only guy in the group too big to wear the pants, tearfully follows up his pizza order with a request for a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke.
• And Then I Said: The lead-in to many episodes.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: Parodied in "Ghost Stories" when Amir tells an incriminating story about himself but can't maintain the third person.
  Amir: His car was moving too fast. He felt a jolt and heard a loud crunch that shook me to my very core!
• Answer Cut: In You'll Never Guess:
  Dan: I’m going to the conference room.
  Sam: You’ll never guess what they're doing there.
  Dan: Oh, let me guess. They’re all topless, reenacting the final, climatic scene to A Few Good Men.
  *Cut to conference room*
  Pat: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
• Argentina Is Nazi Land: In "Wolfenstein," Owen is asked if his grandfather is dead, as it becomes clear that he was a member of Hitler's inner circle. Owen cheerfully replies no; his peepaw is healthy as a bull and living in Rio de Janeiro.
• Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: Done twice at the end of "Katie Won't Let This Bit Die."
• Barbaric Bully: The premise of "Bully" is that Streeter unwillingly transforms into one of these every time he hears nu-metal.
• Been There, Shaped History: The Phantom is a recurring character in the videos. He's an all-around Comedic Sociopath and implied immortal, which gives rise to a number of claims.
  Phantom: So, uh...you wanna know what happened to Amelia Earhart?
  Pat: What? (Phantom directs psychic energy into his head.) You!
  Phantom: Flying is a man's game!
• Beyond the Impossible: Tweeting about Twitter being down causes a double take, a 'that's impossi—!' shout and an Earth-Shattering Kaboom. It's ambiguous whether the reaction was about Twitter being down or tweeting about it.
• Bizarro World: "Bizarro Office."
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Jake in Over Realistic Buck Hunter
• The Bluebeard: The Phantom is blatant about the fact that he's burnt multiple wives to death and doesn't understand why Sarah has no interest in being the latest.
• Body Horror: Beef Gurewitch is both an example in itself and a rich source of it, as when consumed it eats you from the inside.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Amir and Jake, respectively.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The Museum of Torture mentioned in the "Final Destination" series has "an exhibition on guns, knives, and gun-firing knife snakes that barf acid."
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In Evil Chair:
  Dan: My lumbar was supported, I saw the exact moment of my death, my shoulders feel like jello!
• Brick Joke: In "Stewie Keychain". It's even lampshaded with a good bit of Breaking the Fourth Wall.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In "Standoff" when a gang member accuses David of having killed his kid sister in a drive-by:
  Sarah: Oh my god! When?!
  David: I don't even remember!
  Gangster: It was yesterday afternoon!
  David: Okay, look, I know we said "no family," and I'm sorry! But I didn't start this war!
• Butter Face: Parodied with a dose of Does This Remind You of Anything? in "She's Such a Butterphone," where a girl is highly attractive in every way except for having a ridiculously outdated phone.
• Butt-Monkey: The whole cast takes pretty equal turns in being the Butt-Monkey. Mostly Pat, though.
• The Cameo: Lin-Manuel Miranda, rapper and Broadway lyricist, shows up in "Rap Battle."
  • Parodied in the episode "Jump the Shark," where Tony Hawk supposedly shows up.
• Camping a Crapper: Apparently, Amir and Dan only play dodgeball when one of them is on the toilet.
• Casual Danger Dialogue:
  • Especially in "Emergency Flirt": A tiger is trying to break down the door and Pat is flirting with a cute animal control operator.
  • "Mothra," complete with Ignored Enemy.
• "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate: In "Mothra," Sarah, Pat and Dan are way less interested in saving themselves from a Moth Menace than they are in debating whether it technically qualifies as a monster. When a scientist shows up armed with an insecticide powerful enough to defeat it, they stop him to make him answer the question once and for all only for him to be Killed Mid-Sentence.
• Censor Suds: Showering With Girls.
• The Charmer: Jake.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Amir is a disturbing example.
  • Dan ventures into this territory as well.
  • Gale Beggy.
  • Katie is the cast's main oddball from 2014 onward.
• Classically-Trained Extra: At the beginning of "Script Meeting," Owen, who's written a sketch with Adam, says he doesn't care who Adam assigns the parts to for the table read. He lashes out at the end when asked to read the stage directions.
  Owen: (Sweeping the Table) Fuck you, you piece of shit! I went to fucking Juliard! I should be "Fat Tips Bomber Man"!
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • In "Jeff Goes Christian Bale."
  • In "3D Glasses," Pat's 3D glasses make all his coworkers appear "deeper." An apparent discussion between Jeff and Amir of the primitive quality of masculine behavior turns out to be just Jeff letting one of these loose while arm-wrestling Amir.
• Competition Freak: "The Guy Who Needs To Win Everything."
• Cool Teacher: Parodied with Dan's "Cool English Teacher" persona, who tries to be this, but is so cliche he just annoys everyone. Also, they're not actually his students.
  Mr. G: So...Hamlet. "To be or not to be," huh? Who cares, right? Uh, prom's coming up. You guys going?
  Streeter: We're 24.
  Mr. G: Okay. Well, that didn't stop me.
• Cradling Your Kill: In "Butt Dial," Murph's butt achieves this by "holding" Josh in the crook of Murph's knees. Yes, Murph's butt was Josh's killer.
• Creator Career Self-Deprecation: "Nobody Younger Than Me Can Be Successful" has most of its era's cast bemoaning the fact that they haven't progressed past their jobs at CollegeHumor at their ages.
  Rekha: Oh my god! I've had one month more than Jess [Clemons] to figure things out, and I'm still stuck in this shithole with these shitbags?!
• Crossover: "Is Grant Keith from Buzzfeed?" features an appearance by Keith from Buzzfeed.
• Crossword Puzzle: In "Evil Crossword," Jake is solving one when he realizes that all the answers are threats directed at him.
• Culture Blind: Jake as a clueless Cult Defector in "Hoagies."
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Parodied in "Five Fingers of Death," when Owen keeps attempting to demonstrate one of these on Pat, but it has no effect. Until he realizes Pat's stance is wrong.
• Dead All Along: Streeter in "Camouflage."
• Deadly Distant Finale: Pretty much any "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, perhaps most memorably "CollegeHumor Goes Hollywood":
  Sam died from smog.
  Owen drowned in the Pacific Ocean.
  Murph drowned in the La Brea Tar Pits.
  Emily drowned in the sink at an In-N-Out Burger.
  Pat was crushed by the second "L" of the Hollywood sign.
  Dan was murdered by Channing Tatum.
• Death as Comedy: Die Hardly Working.
• Defiled Forever: The Phantom's reaction to finding out that Sarah isn't a virgin.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: "Hardly Working: The Golden Years" is full of this, full of casual racism, sexism, anti-catholicism and multiple calls to "stay out of Europe's war".
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • "Dilly Dally": "Yo guys, check out this new online internet World Wide Web viral video."
  • "Bullet Trick":
    Pat: What boy hasn't dreamed of having an apple shot off his head? Well, tonight, I live that dream. Let's just hope it doesn't become...a nightmare dream.
• Depending on the Writer: The personalities of both Amir and Jake in Hardly Working differ somewhat from their characterization in their own series, ironically with Jake frequently being an obnoxious idiot and Amir often as the straight man.
• Description Cut: Done several times in "Box Fort."
  Josh: This battle will not be easy. Box people show no mercy!
  (Cut to Murph, Jake and Jeff inside the box fort dancing in funny hats and cutoff jeans.)
  Josh: Today we invade the box fort. Many of you will not return alive. Know that you have died proudly at the hands of a far superior enemy.
  (Cut to Murph, Jake and Jeff in the fort again, now bumping and grinding.)

• Distinction Without a Difference: Used throughout "The Guy Who's a Total Rap Snob" to contend that the real difference between older and newer rap is the Nostalgia Filter.
  Raph: Take Yeezy. He's too obsessed with his fancy Adidas. Whatever happened to Run–D.M.C., with songs like—
  Ally: "My Adidas"?
  Raph: "My Adidas"! Yes! Timeless!
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In "Fired Up," Ricky attempting to fire an employee is played as if he's asking her out, complete with him being nervous, asking his friends and hers for a second opinion (to which they eagerly encourage him) and finally being gently turned down by his target.
    Amir: Hey, listen, bro. Tonight, we're going out, we're gonna fire as many girls as we can find, and honestly, honestly, honestly, that girl? She's pretty good at her job.
    Sarah: You can do much more incompetent.
  • In "Bully," Streeter was bitten by a bully as a child and now unwillingly transforms into one every time he hears nu-metal.
  • "Bang Bus" plays Dan and Pat breaking it to Jake that the Bang Bus is staged like two parents telling their child that Santa isn't real, complete with a Metaphorgotten moment at the end.
    Dan: Do you think we should tell him?
    Pat: He's still so young.
    Dan: I know, but I just—I feel like all his friends know and I'd rather he hear it from us.
  • In "Hiccups," the office is prejudiced against "hiccuppers," which leads to Pat being shunned, mistreated and finding his desk defaced with water glasses when he's caught hiccupping.
  • "She's Such a Butterphone."
    Murph: Sometimes girls with shitty phones have better personalities because they're not saving all their best jokes for Twitter!
  • "Should We Do a Bitcoin Sketch?" makes the staff's discussion about whether to write a sketch about Bitcoin sound like a typical discussion about Bitcoin itself.
    Pat: I just think it's way too volatile. Uh, look at this chart that I made. (reveals chart) Two months ago, everyone was trading knee-slappers about Bitcoin. Cut to one month ago? Nothing.
    Emily: Trapp could be right, though, I mean, look at how funny it is at its peak.
    Pat: But after Mt. Gox happened, it got so unfunny, it actually made people sad.
    Trapp: That's why we get cheap laughs now so the humor develops over time!
    Pat: ...Wait, how do you think comedy works?
• Dress Code: Parodied in "Casual Friday", then exaggerated with Uptight Monday, Hesitant Tuesday, Coquettish Wednesday, Melodramatic Thursday, Casual Acquaintance Friday, Coming to Work Saturday, Bloody Sunday, and Mariachi Bagpipe Totalitarian Dictator Monday.
• Drinking on Duty: Pat in "Drinking in Public."
• Dude, Not Funny!: When Zac and Trapp suggest prank ideas from various 80s comedies (mostly Revenge of the Nerds), Pat realizes that the majority of them are sex crimes.
  Pat: That's just straight-up rape.
  Trapp: Well, it was funny in Police Academy...
  Pat: Nothing was funny in Police Academy!
• Dwindling Party: "Final Destination," naturally.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: As a result of Murph tweeting about how Twitter is down.
• Egg Sitting: "The Egg," with the twist that the eggs run out and Dan is given a fully-grown man to take care of instead. When Dan finally drops him, he turns out to have been an egg the whole time.
• Eldritch Abomination: Beef Gurewitch. Murph shoots both himself and Emily in the head to escape it. (It appears to be a cross between rotten deli meat and Zalgo.)
• Elevator Escape: Parodied in "Slasher" when Sarah manages to cleanly escape a killer in this fashion only to hold the door for Jake.
• Emancipated Child: "Cool English Teacher 3":
  "Does anybody know anything about divorcing your parents? I'll tell you who knows a lot about it: my son! Well, not my s...Elliot. He's just...he's just Elliot now."
• Embarrassing Middle Name:
  • In "Phantom Society," Patrick Eleanor Cassels. He was born intersex and Eleanor was his original name.
  • "Jinx" revolves around the cast trying to figure out Dan's middle name so they can lift a jinx on him. It's said to be so embarrassing that he made David promise not to tell anyone. It's never revealed, but Sarah's middle name is discovered in the process: Farticus.
• Emotional Bruiser: Streeter.
• Ensemble Cast
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The sketch "Secret Society" involves a secret organization of "lady punchers." One of them is a woman, and uses this trope as an explanation.
• Escalating War: "Desk Toys" and "Check Please."
• Everyone Went to School Together: "High School Dance."
• Evil Counterpart: WaDan does exactly the opposite of anything Dan says or does. After his girlfriend dumps him for WaDan, Dan banishes WaDan from this dimension by declaring that he is going to stay here, forever, so WaDan will declare he'll leave...and does so.
• Evil Is Hammy: The Phantom of the Office.
• Evil Laugh: Sarah has a few, most notably in "Sarah's Revenge." Murph in "Clue."
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: An easy way to tell the difference between the earlier and later eras of Hardly Working at a glance is that post-2014 sketches tend to have titles that summarize the entire premise, i.e. "Killer's Mask Is Inconvenient," "Gifts That Are Clearly For Yourself," and "My New Year's Resolution is to Get My Dick Out of this Toaster."
• Excrement Statement: "SHIT ON YOUR BOOKS! PITCH A LOAF ON THE BARD!!!"
• Expectation Lowerer: In-Universe, Pat in Wishful Thinking.
• Eye Scream: "Darts."
• Fake-Out Opening: "Phantom of the Office Romance" opens like a Jake and Amir episode before the Phantom magically replaces Amir at his desk, startling Jake.
• Feigning Intelligence:
  • The Cool English Teacher uses his "coolness" to cover for the fact that he barely seems to know anything about his subject.
    "Catcher in the Rye. Now what is it really about? Not a hypothetical, I'm asking for a friend. The friend is me. I've never read it. I'm treading water. If I finish this sentence, there will be dead silence and you'll see how woefully unprepared I am, so I'm just gonna list my favorite numbers. One! Two! Three! Five! Ask me about four, it's kind of a funny story!"
  • In "Book Club," Flugson, a self-assured, vaguely British-sounding professorial type who has lead a successful book club at the office for a month and earned the admiration of everyone involved despite being illiterate to the point of inability to recognize letters of the alphabet.
• Felony Misdemeanor: In "Muddy Jake," Jake is fired from his job, dumped by both his girlfriends, has his college diploma revoked and is disinvited from family Christmas because someone photoshopped mud onto his face as a prank.
• Fetishized Abuser: "Obsessive Boyfriends Are SO Romantic!"
• Fish out of Temporal Water:
  • Gale Beggy, the company's middle-aged, tech-challenged director of technology, turns out to be this...specifically, a time-traveler from the year 2551. So if anything you'd expect her knowledge to be more advanced.
  • The "Time Traveler" series has Roderick, a vaguely Victorian-looking character with a permanent case of Mundane Object Amazement. He turns out to be an idiot employee of the actual inventor of time travel—he doesn't act as he does because he's unused to the era but because it's his normal personality.
• Fisticuff-Provoking Comment: Pat earns a punch in the face from Jake when he asserts that Jake's father was a "cold, red dilly-dallier."
  Pat: I deserve that.
• Food Slap: In "Drunk in Public," Sarah deals three times with an intoxicated Patrick by splashing him in the face.
• For Want of a Nail: Time Traveler
• Fountain of Youth: In "Daylight Savings" the cast age themselves back fifteen years while fighting over the wall clock in the office.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Parodied in "Body Swap," in which David and Pat get electrocuted by the same computer charger, convincing David that they've switched bodies even though nothing has happened.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Ironically given his usual role in Jake and Amir, in the context of the ensemble cast Jake is sometimes seen as this. A great example is in "Suspicious Announcements," when no one will listen to his concerns about the increasingly worrying intercom announcements because they all think he's trying to finish his bad joke.
  • What Amir is to the original cast, Katie Marovitch is from 2014 onward.
• Gambit Roulette: In "Office Goofarounds" two different office pranks end with Streeter appearing out of nowhere, picking up the victim and throwing him through a desk before the prank can proceed as expected. Sarah, who witnessed both incidents, thinks the group have designs on her, announces that she won't give them the satisfaction and throws herself through the nearest desk...onto a Whoopee Cushion they left for her, with everything that happened previously being revealed as a ruse to prank Sarah specifically.
• The Game Plays You: "Clue."
• Gender Flip: "Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants."
• George Jetson Job Security: In most of the Hardly Workings with Ricky he's either firing somebody or gets close to. In "Fired Up" he almost fires a girl, who simply says no to him and it's over just like that.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Parodied in "Mothra":
  Dan: Pat! (slaps him) Calm down, you're hysterical!
  Sarah: Dan! (slaps him) Calm down, you're hysterical!
  Pat: Sarah! (slaps Dan) Calm down, Dan's hysterical!
• Gift-Giving Gaffe: "Gifts That Are Clearly For Yourself."
• Gift of the Magi Plot: Spoofed in "Kovert Krampus," which revolves around a reverse Secret Santa in which office members give Cool And Unusual Punishments instead of gifts:
  Kevin: Murph, I want you to know how much I care about you, so I sold my favorite jacket to buy this mace to hit you in the balls with.
  Murph: But...I sold my balls so that I could buy this pillowcase full of fish semen to dunk your favorite jacket in!
  (Applause and chorus of "Awww" as the two hug.)
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: "My Two True Loves":
  True eternal romance lives for moments like this
  So pure, sweet and innocent, now you two kiss
• Glasses Curiosity: Parodied via exaggeration in "Glasses," where Dan's coworkers push him into letting them try on not only his glasses, but his shoes, his clothes, his skin and his bones.
• Glasses Pull: Murph in "Final Destination."
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: In "Consciences."
• Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Jeff in Flash Forward.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Murph.
• Halfway Plot Switch: "You'll Never Guess."
• Hands-On Approach: Parodied to hell and back in "Flirting" when Dan uses this tactic at every opportunity to "help" Sarah play golf, shoot pool, strum a guitar, type, use a vending machine, walk, and finally flirt with, go on a date with and have sex with another guy.
• Happy Birthday to You!: In celebrating Sarah's birthday, nobody remembers the birthday song, which upsets her. Has a hilarious moment where she has a straight face while everyone else joins in the new improvised song.
• Harem Seeker: Pat is looking for his "Two True Loves."
• Here We Go Again!: Subverted in "3D Glasses." Pat declares "No Man Should Have This Power!" and dramatically throws the 3D glasses out the office window. When he leaves the room, they fly back through the window and land at Sarah's feet. She slowly picks them up, opens them to swelling, ominous music, and...
  Sarah: —Oh, gross. These were on the floor. (tosses them away) Ugh.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Amir thinks he and Jake are this. Jake is perpetually disgusted and horrified by him.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: In "Trilogies," Jeff and Pat's discussion of the Back to the Future films causes Dan to flash back to being menaced by his beer-toting, trilogy-hating father for attempting to watch the third movie.
• Historical Rap Sheet: Over the course of the show, the Phantom of the Office has taken responsibility for the Black Plague, the extinction of the dodo bird, and most shockingly, the death of Jesus Christ.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Parodied in "Killing Hitler." The first time they try it, the adult Hitler beats up the time traveller. The second time he does it again, but as an adolescent. The third time traveller attacks him with a rifle when he's a small child. However, Hitler steals it, and then forces the traveller to tell him how to make an atomic bomb. And then kid Hitler travels through the portal into the future.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Pee Prank," Streeter tries to pull the "fingers in hot water while sleeping" prank on Jake, but when he tests the temperature of the water, pees himself.
• Holding the Floor: Amir at least twice: in "Speed 3 - Blabbermouth" when he's rigged with explosives set to go off when he stops explaining the situation, and in "Punctuation Recession" when his proposed solution to the problem is for everyone to talk unceasingly so that no dividers are needed, causing him to demonstrate in the background for most of the skit.
• Hollywood New England: "Federal Maashals" features the College Humor office being raided by two Federal Marshals with incomprehensible Boston accents. The go around the office shouting "GO SAAHX" (Boston Red Sox), humming Dropkick Murphys riffs, asking David and Sarah confusing questions and beating other people up.
• Hong Kong Dub: Parodied in "Five Fingers of Death."
• Honor Before Reason: In "New Guy," a Terminator-esque newcomer to the programming staff starts an inexplicable No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the entire office. A terrified Pat nonetheless insists on emerging from his hiding place to introduce himself, as "it's his first day and he's probably really nervous."
• How Do You Say: Used by Amir (in the role of a Funny Foreigner hijacker) throughout "Airplane."
  Amir: Don't be a, how you say, hero!
  Dan: YOU KNOW HOW TO SAY IT!!!
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Double Subverted in "Dan Does His Own Thing":
  Dan: If I'm feeling really adventurous, I'll spend the night hunting the most dangerous game of all... (Others gasp.) A bargain! (Others sigh in relief.)
  Emily: Like at Kmart.
  Dan: No, no, my high school bully, James Bargain.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: "Only I Can Insult My Mom."
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • "Bane Mugs", where they imitate Tom Hardy's Bane voice by putting coffee mugs over their mouths to muffle their voice.
    Emily: [puts mug to mouth] Now is not the time for fear, doctor. Now is the time [lowers mug, normal voice] to get some real work done.
    Josh: I mean, once we, uh, organize the files, [puts mug to mouth] then you have my permission [lowers mug] to do Bane impressions.
    And then they continue having a conversation and breaking into Bane impressions.
  • The "Punctuation Recession" is full of examples:
    Jake: How the hell do you budget punctuation?
    Sarah: Jake, stop asking stuff! You're gonna cost us all our question marks.
    Ricky: That's the spirit, Sarah.
    Sarah: Thanks!
    Ricky: You just cost us an exclamation mark.
    Pat: Well, Miss Perfect, who's "wasting" punctuation now?
    Jeff: Well at least she didn't cost us two quotation marks, did she, Pat?
  • Which is followed by Amir deciding that the way to not use punctuation is to continue talking without ever ending sentences. Note that he uses commas to break phrases up.
  • In "Wacky Hijinks from 80s Comedies Were Mostly Rape", Pat chews out Trapp and Zac for coming up with pranks to get back at Murph and Emily that qualify as sex crimes and thinking that it's a good idea to do them just because they happened in comedy films from the 1980's. After they agree to instead go with pranks from more recent films, he happily agrees that they will prank Emily and Murphy by having them be tricked into eating eclairs made with dog semen like in Van Wilder, which is still kind of inappropriate to do to people.
• If I Can't Have You…: Pat in "My Bloody Valentine" plays a possessive sociopath who kills Sarah after previously murdering everyone in the office who flirted with her on Valentine's Day. It backfires on him, as she wanted to ask him out before he stabbed her fatally.
• Improbably Predictable: "That's The Thing."
• Incoming Ham:
  Mr. G: Howdy-doody, skinny-ninnies and bony cronies! Mr. G is back and better than Ezra! Think fast! (throws his motorcycle helmet)
• Innocent Inaccurate: Dan as a Manchild business professional in "Business Kids":
  "Well, I'm getting ready to put my parents in a home, right? My daddy pulled me aside, he said that he and our neighbor, Miss Walsh, are more than friends. Mommy caught them yucky-wrestling and now Daddy's moving far, far away where he can't drink angry juice and make Mommy sad. On top of that, my daughter needs braces."
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: Parodied in "Robot Girlfriend," in which Jeff unwittingly dates a robot who keeps inflicting severe pain on Jake. Pat and Dan completely overlook her obviously superhuman strength in favor of mocking Jake:
  Dan: Oh! A girl just made you into a severely nerve-damaged quadroplegic!
  Pat: Yeah she did! (they high-five)
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Comically inverted in "Bomb" when Jeff, Strapped to a Bomb that's close to detonating, insists that his friends stop their futile effort to save his life and instead hang around and let the explosion kill them so he won't have to die alone. He even suggests bringing in his parents and killing them too.
• I Will Wait for You: Parodied (along with a number of other dramatic film clichés) in "Wait!"
• The Internet: Shows up several times, as they work for a website. Once, they even found the source of the Internet.
• Job Song: "My Boss Is A Dick," Murph and Streeter's The Man Is Keeping Us Down ode to Sam Reich, seen in "Insulting The Boss With A Punk Rock Video."
• Jumping the Shark: Parodied by way of exaggeration in the episode "Jump The Shark": A new Spin-Off is introduced, Tony Hawk appears as a Guest Star, two characters get engaged, they move to a new building, Amir gets replaced, and Jeff gives birth to a baby Supreme Court justice. Finally, the whole cast gets replaced at the very end with a younger cast. invoked
• Kubrick Stare: Pat throughout "My Bloody Valentine."
• Lad Ette: Apparently Emily, especially in Jake and Amir — more foulmouthed than most of the guys, flirts with guys other than Murph (her boyfriend), and occasionally outright criminal.
• Lady Macbeth: "Lady Macbething", in which Murph and Owen tried to convince each other to kill Sam.
• Last-Name Basis: Mike Trapp is called "Trapp," presumably due to their being too many Mikes in the world, even though he's the only Mike we see working there.
• Lethal Chef: Exaggerated with Dan and his Body Horror-inducing Eldritch Abomination family recipe "Beef Gurewitch."
• Literal Ass-Kissing:
  • In "Suck It Out," Amir spills food on his jeans and he and his coworkers gang up to convince Pat to suck the stain out of the seat.
  • "Butt Dial" ends with a dramatic Last Kiss between Murph's butt and a dying Josh.
• Literal Metaphor:
  • In "Fired Up," Amir says of Ricky, "He's so boss."
  • Inverted with "3D Glasses," where Pat's 3D glasses make everything he sees "deeper"—in the metaphorical sense, causing his coworkers to appear highly sophisticated and self-aware.
  • "Phantom of the Brainstorm," which has the Phantom crashing a BustedTees think tank to pitch Fun T-Shirt ideas:
    Phantom: The cat's out of the bag!
    Jake: That's a good jumping-off point. You could have, like, a—
    Phantom: (holding empty knapsack) No, I mean the cat I brought in got out of the bag, it's gone. Has anyone seen, like, a really ripe calico around here?
  • Throughout "Average Night Out," the characters use "baby bear" as a synonym for a desirably average (not too good, not too bad) experience. Dan defies this attitude as too safe, saying he'd rather accept life's lows in order to have the highs, so when Murph tries to dissuade him from entering one of the rooms by yelling "Mama bear! Mama bear!" he walks in anyway. Cue growling and agonized screaming.
    Murph: We've gotta start labeling that door better.
  • "Dan Does His Own Thing":
    Dan: I'll meet you guys there. Gotta go paint the toilet brown.
    Emily: Oh, that's fine, if you have to use the bathroom we can wait a couple minutes.
    Dan: Oh no, I'm going home to paint my actual toilet beaver brown. (brandishes bucket of paint) I wanna make it so I can't find my own poops.
  • "Experimenting (Literally) In College."
• LOL, 69: One of their videos had Jake witness two of his male coworkers 96-ing. It's exactly what you think: they're laying with their backs against each other in opposite directions while writhing in pleasure.
• Magic Feather: Discussed with a reference to the Trope Namer:
  David: No, don't you see? He didn't need the magic feather! He could fly the entire time!
  Dan: What'cha guys talkin' bout?
  David: My freshman year roommate.
• Makeover Montage: Parodied. Sarah does one for David and Pat - into an ordinary black gown, which she says is the only thing she has. At the guys' insistence, she goes through the makeover montage. The resulting product in the end is that she looks a lot like Elphaba in a sweater.
  • It doesn't help that midway through they accidentally segue into a Training Montage.
    David: Wait! Guys, this is the wrong type of montage, isn't it?
    Sarah: What are you talking about? I'm finally ready to fight Apollo Creed!...Yeah, that's wrong.
• Manchild: Everyone. Particularly emphasized in a few skits, such as "Business Kids" and "Home Alone."
• Man Hug:
  • Between Dan and Streeter after they "survive" a pretend hijacking in "Airplane."
  • The "Human Wrecking Balls" indulge in one after trashing the entire office.
• The Man Is Keeping Us Down: Parodied in "Insulting The Boss With A Punk Rock Video," where Sam finds Murph and Streeter's Job Song "My Boss Is A Dick" and the two of them claim that the increasingly specific lyrics about him are actually metaphorical references to the American government, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the Holocaust.
  Sam: You said you were starting a pop-punk band to take down the establishment. You did not say that I was the establishment!
• Metaphorgotten: In "Love and Sleep," Dan is irritated when Amir keeps debunking his comparison of love to sleep in Literal-Minded fashion.
  Dan: Ugh! All I'm trying to say is that there are certain emotions and experiences that you can apply to both sleep and love, drawing some poetic similarities between the two, okay? Like grogginess.
  Amir: That's sleep.
  Dan: Dreams.
  Amir: That's sleep.
  Dan: Romance.
  Amir: Love.
  Dan: Rapid eye movement.
  Amir: Oh, that's definitely sleep.
• Mermaid Problem: Spoofed when Dan introduces everyone to his fiance, except the problem is inverted because she's a maidmer with a fish head and a human lower body. The others point out that the Interspecies Romance implications of this variation only makes it worse.
• Mexican Standoff: Parodied in "Mexican Standoff" when Murph, Dan and Sam are excited to have achieved one of these but quickly ruin it when Dan shoots Murph by accident. They proceed to continuously replace people to keep the standoff going and even negotiate with another Mexican standoff going on a few feet away.
• Mind Screw: Often. "Puppet Sarah" has one when you realize that Sarah's puppet has been controlled by a puppet of Amir that is being controlled by Human!!Amir, who has been communicating up until now with Human!!Sarah on a cell phone.
  • From "Trading Lunches:"
    Pat: I will give you that rice krispie treat I ate yesterday.
    Dan: I don't know, didn't you eat that yesterday?
    (Pat spits out a whole Rice Krispie treat)
    Dan: No Thanks.
• Moe Greene Special: "Darts."
• Motor Mouth: Amir in "Speed 3 - Blabbermouth".
• Mundane Object Amazement: Exaggerated in the "Time Traveler" series, in which the title character's Fish out of Temporal Water awe extends not just to iPods and televisions but to glass bottles, pants (despite wearing them himself) and knives.
  Roderick: Don't just stand there, man! Use those advanced fleshy 21st-century claws on the end of your arms!
  Sarah: ...Hands?
• Multiple-Choice Past: Beef Gurewitch has a different bizarre origin story every time it appears.
• Mundane Object Amazement: In "Perpetual Motion Machine," Owen and Murph have apparently never seen a swinging desk toy.
• The Napoleon: In "Insulting The Boss With a Punk Rock Video," Streeter and Murph characterize Sam this way in their "I Hate" Song about him.
• Near-Death Experience: In "Spoiler Alerts", Amir has one (complete with It Is Not Your Time) and gets yelled at by a spoiler-avoidant Streeter and Sarah for describing it:
  Streeter: Thanks a lot, Amir!
  Sarah: Yeah, some of us haven't died yet!
• Neck Snap:
  • Amir does this to Sarah in "Airplane."
  • In "Cracking," Dan accidentally does this to himself. He's fine.
  • "Clue" features a Jumanjiesque game of Cluedo in which Murph, the murderer, starts doing this to the other players whenever they make a wrong guess.
• Negative Continuity: Characters are killed off or change careers all the time, but return immediately in the next video.
  • Inverted by Jake and Amir. So far there has not been any continuity errors and it even has the odd Continuity Nod or two.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Speed 3 - Blabbermouth," Amir is rigged with two bombs that will go off if he stops Holding the Floor. Jake shuts him up so he can tell him how to solve the problem.
• No Man Should Have This Power: In "3D Glasses" and "Billy Crystal."
• Noodle Incident: In "Wolfenstein," Owen ends up attracting a Neo-Nazi gang to the office with his "Wolfenstein merchandise" (his grandfather's SS uniform and such). Turns out this was the third time that Neo-Nazis were accidentally invited to the office.
• Nostalgia Filter: Discussed in "The Guy Who's a Total Rap Snob," when it's quickly obvious to Ally that this is the only thing that actually elevates old-school rap above contemporary rap where Raph is concerned. His other preferences are similarly motivated (his favorite video game is Pong and he still uses a Chirp phone).
  Raph: (eating baby food) ...That does not hold up.
• No Such Thing as H.R.: Pushed to surrealist extremes.
• Not Hyperbole:
  • "Religiously," in which Streeter's casual statement that he didn't watch Boy Meets World "religiously" puts him in contrast with several of his coworkers, who have a Religion of Evil around the show.
  • In "Dan Does His Own Thing," Dan's friends question what he's up to when he's "doing his own thing" and find out that he's referring to highly specific, inexplicable activities that nobody but him would ever engage in, such as pretending to be a wooly mammoth at the Natural History Museum, stocking the shelves of abandoned supermarkets and breaking into other people's houses to brush their teeth.
  • "You Have GOT to Try Heroin" pokes fun at the use of the word "addictive" to describe TV shows by having Trapp enthusiastically "recommend" hard drugs solely based on that quality.
• Not Now, Kiddo: "Suspicious Announcements."
• No, You Hang Up First: Parodied in the opening of "Makeover Montage":
  Sarah: (on the phone, flirtatious) No, you hang up first. (beat) No, you ahh he hung up.
• Obsessive Love Letter: Parodied in the sketch "My Bloody Valentine". Sarah receives a bunch of increasingly disturbing love notes from Pat which contain stuff like "Bee mine?.... THAT WASN'T A QUESTION." Then he kills everyone who flirted with her, and Sarah herself.
• Obviously Evil: Josh's evil chair
• Off to See the Wizard: "Wizard of Oz" pulls off a parody of the Stock Parody itself, as Sarah's coworkers all spend her entire dream arguing about how they've been cast.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Apparently, the staff have magically deaged themselves while changing the clock for Daylight Savings Time twice, accidentally invited Neo-Nazis into the office three times and accidentally moved offices at least twice.
• Oireland: When the "Punctuation Recession" leads to the office having to cut back on punctuation marks, the cutting of hyphens from the budget means that Streeter is downgraded from being Irish-American to simply Irish. Specifically, violent Fighting Irish.
• Older Than They Look: In "Age Hierarchy," Pat reveals that he's 37 years old, having lied about his age because he knew the others would freak out if they realized that his age was a prime number.
• One of the Boys: Sarah.
• One-Woman Wail: Used as a dramatic Leitmotif for Amir in "Overgrown Guy Girlfriend 4."
• Organ Theft: In "Bully II" Streeter somehow manages to steal Dan's liver, and he and Amir play Keep Away with it.
• The Other Darrin: Invoked in "Is Grant Keith from Buzzfeed?" where Grant and Keith from Buzzfeed trade off playing Grant, Keith, Keith's twin brother Grant, and Grant's twin brother Keith practically every camera cut.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Played for laughs when Dan falls in love with a maidmer. That's right, human legs with a fish head on top. It only makes the usual Mermaid Problem even worse, with his coworkers being flat-out disgusted.
• Out with a Bang: Brought up in "Final Destination" when Josh suggests that he and the other remnants of the Dwindling Party engineer themselves a Dying Moment of Awesome.
  Emily, Dan and Owen: Dibs on fucked to death by sexy pleasure robot! Shit! Fucked to death by regular robot!
• Overly-Long Gag:
  • Many of the All-Nighter sketches, "He's Right Behind Me," "Spooning," "Spitballing" and "Perpetual Motion Machine," to name a few.
  • The topless A Few Good Men reenactment in "You'll Never Guess."
  • "Script Meeting."
• Overly Narrow Superlative: In "Perpetual Motion Machine" Owen initially calls the office toy he mistakes for a Perpetual Motion Machine the "greatest invention in history," before emending the statement (as it slows and then stops) to "greatest invention in this room" and finally "greatest invention on my desk" (which he reconsiders upon realizing there's a stapler there too).
• Over-the-Shoulder Carry: Streeter does it to Murph in "Office Goofarounds" before flinging him through a desk.
• Papa Bear: Pat's Step Dad in "Step Dad" sees himself as this, based almost entirely on the fact that he gets Pat extra large cheese pizzas.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In "Puppet Sarah", we see that apparently every single person in the office is totally oblivious to the fact that "Sarah" is actually a puppet on strings being controlled by a puppet of Amir being controlled by the real Amir, who is talking to Sarah on a cell phone.
• The Pen Is Mightier: In "Clue," the other players have to finish a supernatural game of Clue to prevent a murderous Murph from killing everyone. Amir is less than helpful because he didn't take a single note the entire game ("Who doesn't write anything down during a game of Clue?!"), but it ends up working out in his favor when he stabs Murph with his pencil:
  Murph: GAHHH! YOUR PENCIL'S SO SHARP!
  Amir: AHHHHH I NEVER USED IT!!!
• Perky Goth: "Goth Dave Matthews Fan."
• Perpetual Motion Machine: The All-Nighter skit of the same name has Owen and Murph mistake a Newton's Cradle-type office toy for one of these.
• The Pigpen: "Sticky Kids."
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: There's hardly any working in these skits.
  • The Cool English Teacher deserves special mention.
    Girl: When are you gonna teach us English?
    Mr. G: Oh, looks like we've got ourselves a conformist!
  • The "freestyling interns" from Freestyle Love Supreme have truly insane Battle Rapping skills, and that's about it. They're favorites with Ricky but get chewed out by Pat for spending four hours rapping about a broken printer instead of fixing it.
• Pocket Dial: "Butt Dial" parodies the concept by having Murph's butt call Emily and threaten her repeatedly.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The Phantom of the Office, Flugson from "Book Club," the Overgrown Guy Girlfriend and Gunter Granz.
• Polyamory: Parodied in "My Two True Loves", in which Pat sings about his dream to have this sort of relationship.
  Pat: It'll be just you and me!... and her!
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure:
  • Dan explains the Intangible Time Travel in "High School Dance" to Sarah by saying, "Haven't you ever seen A Muppet Christmas Carol?"
  • The punchline of "Lady Macbething," when Murph kisses and then stabs Owen:
    Owen: This doesn't happen in the play!
    Murph: I've never read Mr. Macbeth!
• Pranking Montage: "Soup'd" and "Office Goofarounds."
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Jake, aka "J. Witz."
• Previously on…: Parodied in "Last Week", which shows "previously ons" to numerous previous episodes that never happened.
• Proud to Be a Geek: Everyone.
• Psychic Nosebleed: A common side effect of the Phantom of the Office's dark powers.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Dan throughout "Hangover."
• Pungeon Master: The Cool English Teacher.
  Amir: Did you have a stroke or something?
• Punny Name: The crossword puzzle in "Evil Crossword" is written by a "Cal Edgehummer."
• Raised Hand of Survival: The Stinger of "Box Fort."
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: "Just tweeting about how pissed off I am that Twitter's down."
• Reality-Writing Book: In "The New Girl," Facebook serves this purpose, as Jake's coworkers interfere with his effort to chat up the new girl at the office by editing the profile he's left open on his computer (causing him to act like an 8-year-old when they change his year of birth, spout dialogue from The Notebook when they add it to his list of favorite movies, and so on) until they finally change his relationship status to say he's in a relationship with Streeter, cuing a sobbing Streeter to demand to know who he's talking to.
• Recursive Canon: Varies all over the place from skit to skit. For example, some episodes have the cast writing Hardly Working episodes. Some episodes appear to have overlap with Jake and Amir, others don't. "Daylight Savings" implies that the Jake and Amir skits are fictional in-universe, but that the Phantom of the Office is real (leading to a blank reaction from Streeter when a visiting advertising executive compliments him on his performance as the character).
• Red Shirt: Parodied in the All-Nighter sketch "Red Shirts" with the guest appearance of The Whitest Kids U' Know as Jake's chosen Redshirt Army for a dangerous mission.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • In "Mangina", when the boys demonstrate the illusion of a vagina by tucking their genitals between their legs, Sarah one-ups them with a "reverse mangina", by making her labia look like a penis.
  • Throughout "Wolfenstein" it becomes increasingly clear that Owen's grandfather is not only a former Nazi but a high-ranking member of Hitler's inner circle. Murph and Pat react with Audience Surrogate horror as Owen cheerfully displays the evidence, believing that all the war memorabilia he's found in his attic is Wolfenstein 3D merchandise.
    Owen: Guys, I think my peepaw was the first person to ever beat Wolfenstein 3D! It says right here he had a "final solution"!
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: "Cracking."
• Ridiculously Average Guy: In one video, super-nerd Jeff uses a machine to change his personality to be super cool and suave. When he decides that the only thing cooler than being cool is being yourself and attempts to reverse the process, something goes wrong, resulting in him becoming exactly average.
  Average Geoff: Does anyone wanna play some XBOX? I only have one controller though.
  David: What a totally... average thing to say.
• Right Behind Me: Parodied in All Nighter He's Right Behind Me, with person after person getting revealed until the speaker realizes that he himself is actually the person whom he's been talking about.
• Rousing Speech: Given by Josh in "Box Fort."
• Running Gag:
  • Wanton destruction of office equipment.
  • All the guys in the office are obsessed with the film Jumper.
• Scooby Stack: Parodied and deconstructed in the sketch "Snooping": in that each consecutive person added on top of the stack increases the pressure on the bottom guy until his head explodes.
• Screamer Prank: In "Maze," Amir and Pat prank Jake with the Scary Maze Game only for all three of them to be frightened in turn by Sarah, standing behind them made up like the Creepy Child from the game and screaming.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Dan in "Dodgeball." And "Stomp."
• Secret Circle of Secrets: Parodied in "Religiously," "Phantom Society" and "Secret Society."
• Secret Santa: Spoofed with Black Comedy in "Kovert Krampus," where instead of giving each other gifts, the staff gives each other things to punish them for their lies and transgressions (with a $20 spending limit).
  • Their gifts:
    • First, Owen receives from Jeff his dead cat, killed and put on a neckchain that Owen is supposed to wear around his neck.
    • Anu's gift for Caldwell is a bag of wasps, as she learned from his Facebook page that it was one of his mortal fears. He puts the bag over his head, and it's implied they sting him all over.
    • Pat's gift for Vinny is, aware of Vinny's bragging about crossword puzzles: locking his girlfriend in a tank slowly filling with water at an unknown location. He gives Vinny a photo of her in captivity and a list of instructions on how to find her.
    • Murph and Kevin exchange gifts: Kevin's is a rusty nail bat, and Murph's is a pillowcase full of fish semen.
  • Then Emily, having enough of the graphic gifts, intervenes:
    Emily: No. No. This is beyond fucked up! There's nothing heartwarming about inflicting fish semen on your friends! Or whatever Dan's doing!
    [Cuts to Pat, shirtless, strapped to a torture rack and writhing in pain as Dan blasts a vuvuzela into his ears]
    Dan: REMEMBER WHEN THESE WERE A THING?!
• Serious Business: "Desk Toys," "Box Fort," "Jinx," "Religiously," and "Bad News On A Basketball Phone," to name a few.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Often used as a lead-in to sketches.
• Shallow News Site Satire: "The Epic Bacon Boys: Internet Popularity Consultants" skewers the culture of clickbait-driven sites (with some Self-Deprecation at the end).
• Short-Distance Phone Call: In "Ace Ventura."
• Shout-Out: Loads, usually to popular movies or songs. Some of the memorable ones included a Clue game that turned into something similar to Jumanji.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Ricky is portrayed as this, having a full scale picture of himself in his office and scattered around the office in general. He also is his own favorite employee, as shown in "Ricky's Diary".
• The Smurfette Principle: Sarah is portrayed most of the time as being the only girl in the office, with most of the guys there having a crush on her. Exemplified wonderfully in "Sarah's Revenge".
  • Slightly averted with Emily and Anu. (And now apparently Elaine.)
  • There are several other women visible in the background of many of the videos as well, most often in large shots of the office or in meetings. They are almost never addressed or acknowledged, though. Typically, they have little to no impact in the video (and don't have any lines), but some videos avert this to varying degrees, such as "Sarah's Revenge", "Fired Up", and Jake and Amir's "Dating Coach".
  • Averted with the late 2010s cast, which features a number of women including Katie, Rekha, Lily, Carolyn and Jess.
• Sophisticated as Hell:
  • Much of the humor of the Phantom of the Office comes from hearing a character with the vocal register of a Wicked Cultured villain in the vein of the Phantom of the Opera or James Earl Jones' Darth Vader talk about mundane subjects or toss out Pretty Fly for a White Guy lines.
    Phantom: Anyway, it's SaRAH. She refuses my affections. ... I try and I try, but she won't give way. It's like, can't a brother dip his D in that before he burns her to death?
  • In "Introspective Jake," Jake explains his romantic strategy: "Whenever I want somebody I just stand by a window and I look introspective as f—."
  • In "3D Glasses" Pat realizes that the 3D glasses he took home from a movie make not just the visual effects in the film, but everyone around him, seem more "deep."
    Streeter: Come here, my friend, look! Look what wonders mankind has wrought! We have triumphed over nature! These citadels of cement, a city scaped, a sky scraped!
    Pat: Whoa. Streeter, that's... (Glasses Pull) that's really deep!
    Streeter: Bro, we are up fucking high, dude! We are really high right now! I can see my fucking house! We are like fifty, sixty feet up, minimum! (Pat puts glasses back on.) Nero himself would shed a tear at a wonder such as this! (Pat takes off glasses.) I am gonna puke, bro, I'm getting dizzy!
  • "Business Kids" mixes professional language and concepts with childish terminology and priorities.
    Pat: I am nervous about this presentation tomorrow.
    Dan: What are you, chicken?
    Pat: No, if I don't deliver on this thing, do you have any idea how many millions of dollars this company will lose? (holds up fingers) This many!
  • Raph as a "rap snob," wearing a tweed jacket and gold spectacles and smoking a pipe while speaking in a pseudo-British intonation.
    Raph: Today's rap is empty and meaningless, but when you really break down this lyric: "A hip, hop, a hippie"—and you compare it to "walk it like I talk it," it's like night and day!
• Speak in Unison: Many times. Becomes an Overly-Long Gag in "Nerds and Jocks Both Think They're Underdogs."
• Spin the Bottle: In the 2010 All Nighter sketches, the staff decide to play this but are troubled by the fact that they are all guys. Then Sarah comes along and they basically rope her into playing with them. Of course, the game has to be rigged since Sarah is selected to spin first, and gets David. She kisses him. He spins and lands on her, and has to kiss her for five seconds. The joke continues as they keep landing on each other, with the instructions on what to do getting more and more surreal (the sixth time, Sarah denies having obvious feelings for someone else, and the seventh time, David gets drunk and says something that provokes Sarah into slapping him). When Sarah spins and lands on Sam, she tries to apologize to David for breaking the streak and the others have to restrain David as he lunges at Sam.
• Stalker with a Crush:
  • Amir has a binder with in-depth descriptions of everything Jake has ever worn to work since he's started working there. Jake is understandably disturbed by this.
  • In "Phantom Sarah-nade," the Phantom accidentally admits to breaking into Sarah's apartment to watch her sleep.
• Stalker Without A Crush: "My Mom Is Stalking Me" highlights how actions that would be unsettling coming from anyone else are normal and even expected mom behavior.
  Rekha: You've been talking to her?!
  Raph: I went home for Christmas!
  Rekha: Are you kidding, Raph?! That'll fuel her obsession!
  Raph: Well, how was I supposed to know? I felt bad for her! She was sitting at home alone staring at a box full of my old teeth!
• Stay in the Kitchen: Sarah gets a whirlwind of misogynistic insults in "60's Day". Mainly because she is aiming for the late 60s (Woodstock, Summer of Love), while the guys went for a more Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce theme.
• Stay with Me Until I Die: Played for Laughs in "Bomb," when, since Jeff is Strapped to a Bomb, his friends are somewhat understandably reluctant to accept this proposal.
• Stepford Smiler: The Cool English Teacher was dumped by his wife, divorced by his son, and fired from his high school teaching job after embezzling the PTA in a failed effort to win his wife back.
  "Sometimes, I buy chicken breasts...just to feel...other flesh...against mine."
• Stockholm Syndrome: The sketch "Stockholm Syndrome" parodies the effects wonderfully with Sarah being seduced by Pat saying he'll get a "handsome ransom" out of her.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Almost a Running Gag among the staff, often accompanied by Finish Dialogue in Unison.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: In "Freestyling Interns," Ricky is on a trip and has his interns, members of the improv rap group Freestyle Love Supreme, deliver his employee evaluations. This leads to one, Utkarsh "UTK" Ambudkar, blatantly inserting himself into Ricky's attempt to flirt with Sarah:
  That's right girl, you got me feelin' hot and sticky
  Why don't you ditch these fools and come and chill with UTK?
• Suicide as Comedy: Frequent.
  Pat: Really wish people would stop shooting themselves!
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "One more announcement: today is Stick Towels Under Your Doors Day," where you show your company pride by placing towels in any space smoke could travel through, right after saying "this is a test of the building's alarm system in the event of a widespread fire in the basement. No fires today."
• Take This Job and Shove It: Played straight, then downplayed, then inverted in "Perpetual Motion Machine" as the same script repeats three times with variations:
  Owen: You’re a shitty little dollop of a man. You can take this job and cram it up your dick, 'cause Murph and I got two tickets to the top, baby! Wow!!!
  ...
  Owen: You're a reasonable, medium-sized dollop of a man, so take this job and cram it on Monster.com, 'cause Murph and I got two tickets to a lateral career move, sir! Whoo!
  ...
  Owen: You're a big, handsome dollop of a boss, so take this job and please give it back to me, 'cause I'll do anything, baby, I'll fucking suck your dick, man, seriously, I'll do fucking anything, I'm so sorry! (Inelegant Blubbering.)
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: "Grant Forgets He Sucks."
• Tastes Like Feet:
  • In "Beef Gurewitch," the titular delicacy is described by Sam as smelling "like vagina and paint."
  • In "Soda Prank," Murph believes that his Sprite has been tampered with on the grounds that it tastes "like dick skin." He's right.
• Teacher/Student Romance: The Cool English Teacher keeps coming on to one of the staff members he's designated as his students. He's said to normally teach middle and high school and at the end of the third video Sarah notes that she found him on a sex offender registry.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Gale Beggy.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Becomes an Overly-Long Gag in the "Final Destination" series when Owen walks into the middle of the street unprompted and announces, "I've never felt so alive!," only for a car to drive past behind him. Everyone—including Owen, still standing in the street—starts to chat about how long it's taking the inevitable to occur.
    Dan: Yeah, it's starting to feel like the second we stop talking about it, then it'll happen, y'know?
  • In "The Guy Who Always Talks About Hot Girls," Trapp gets fed up with the guy in question and finally explodes, "I would rather talk about literally anything else!"
    Pat: (appearing) You guys would not believe the size of the shit I just took.
    Trapp: (Beat.) ...How big was it?
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Attempted in "Bug", with the staff deciding to smash Sarah's computer, then her harddrive, and even her monitor in an attempt to kill a fly, which still lives. Then they decide to go get the photocopier. The scene switches to Sam and Ricky having an important meeting in their conference room, with an oblivious Ricky telling Sam that the budget has been blown due to replacing all the broken technology, while Sam watches as the photocopier is thrown into a desk.
• Those Wacky Nazis: In "Wolfenstein", Owen finds a trunk full of Nazi paraphernalia belonging to his grandfather, but mistakenly believes the old man is a Wolfenstein fan. It gets worse when he accidentally invites neo-Nazis, thinking they are an underground Wolfenstein fan club. This being the third time neo-Nazis were invited to the office, HR asks everyone to watch a movie about the Holocaust. At the suggestion of watching the first five minutes of X-Men, Owen (garbed in his grandfather's Schutzstaffel uniform) refuses as the treatment of mutants in the movie is awful.

  Pat: They're so huge!

  Owen: Yeah, they're covered in Wolfenstein tattoos.

• Time-Compression Montage:
  • Parodied in "Basketball Phone":
    Jeff: DK, we need to talk. We've been standing here during all the phone calls you've been getting.
    Dan Klein: Wait—all that stuff with me on the phone didn't happen over the course of the day?
    Jenny: No, no, that was real time.
    Dan Gurewitch: Yeah, it was super weird.
  • Parodied again in "The Egg" when a 30-second montage covering eight months is followed up by Sarah thanking an exhausted videographer for "editing six thousand hours of footage into that very short highlight reel."
• Toilet Horror: Played for Laughs in "Pee On Your Butt."
• Tomato in the Mirror:
  • In "All-Nighter Hardly Working: He's Right Behind Me", Jeff gripes about Dan's disgusting behavior in the office, only to eventually realize that he's actually Dan.
  • In "Is Grant Keith from Buzzfeed?" Trapp complains about all the Grants and Keiths in the office.
    Trapp: Every time I look up there's another one of you identical gangly motherfuckers slumping around the office. I got a Keith O'Brien, a Grant O'Brien, a Keith Habersberger, a Grant Habersberger...Whoever the fuck this guy is, I've never seen him before in my life!
    Grant: Trapp, that's a mirror.
    Cut to Trapp, who is now identical to Grant.
    Trapp: No. Noooooooo!
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Apparently, Emily and Anu, although Anu hasn't gotten much screen time thus far.
• Tonight, Someone Kisses: Parodied in "All-Nighter: Rap Intro" with Lin-Manuel Miranda announcing that Jake and Amir are "finally gonna kiss" (to which they gamely oblige).
• Took a Level in Badass: Everyone in Die Hardly Working.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Between "Time Traveler" and "Time Traveler 2" the time traveler goes from commenting on the genius of "interlocking metal teeth to fasten one's trousers" to being baffled by the concept of pants. This is somewhat explained by "Time Traveler 2"'s retcon that he didn't invent time travel at all and is simply the Cloudcuckoolander janitor of the real inventor.
• Train-Station Goodbye: Parodied in Wait!, where no one can tell who they are saying goodbye to.
• Trauma Button: "Trilogies."
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: At the end of "Slasher" between Jake and a masked killer who just stabbed Sarah.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Constant.
• Verbed Title: In a clear takeoff on Punk'd (and Amir and Streeter's then-current MTV show Pranked), Ricky has to forbid Amir from filming food-based prank shows at the office after he creates Soup'd, Oatmeal'd, Spaghetti Bolognes'd, Mongolian BBQ'd and Salad'd.
• Villainous Crush: The Phantom of the Office, on Sarah.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Amir's "Overgrown Guy Girlfriend". Also counts as The Load.
• Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: Spoofed in "Hangover" when Dan and Jake enthusiastically cheer what they take to be Streeter's hangover from the previous night's partying, even as it becomes clear that something is, in fact, very wrong with him and that he didn't drink at all ("Big Bear got crunked without knocking a single! One! Back!"), until it's revealed that he was bitten by a venomous spider and Dan and Jake cheer his death throes and then his funeral as if they're continued examples of this.
• What Are You: Sam asks the Phantom this in "Too Phantom Too Furious."
• Whole-Plot Reference: The 5-part "Final Destination" series.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: A Cutaway Gag in "How far would you go to hide a zit?", after David gets socked in the jaw by Sarah for the third time:
  David: Who wrote this?!
  (Cut to Sarah typing at her computer while letting out an Evil Laugh.)
• Who's Your Daddy?: Played for Laughs in "The Egg." Sarah assigns all five of the potential dads to eight months of Egg Sitting with the intention of declaring the owner of the last remaining egg the father. When none of the eggs survive, she decides to just take a DNA test.
• Wicked Cultured: Parodied with the Phantom of the Office; he has a catacomb full of priceless art, but it's equally commingled with cheap junk, and he discusses it in his typical Sophisticated as Hell style.
  Phantom: God, is that not beautiful?
  Sarah: Yeah, the technique is just—
  Phantom: It's perfect, isn't it?
  Sarah: Love it.
  Phantom: I can't find a single thing wrong with it.
  Sarah: Me either.
  Phantom: I mean, if I were to make a perfect ass, that's what it would look like. I can't find one flaw, I’ve stared at this for hours.
  Sarah: Hours, really?
  Phantom: I would walk through a mile of her sh—t just to see where it came from, you know what I mean?
• William Telling: Parodied in "Bullet Trick" when Pat and Dan run into so many technical difficulties (Pat's inability to balance the apple, Dan's gun getting jammed) that their audience completely loses interest (until, inevitably, Pat gets shot.)
• World of Weirdness: The building itself.
  Pat: (after watching Murph fade out of existence due to losing a game of Clue) I hate this f—ing office.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: Spoofed in "The Treasure Is Our Friendship," in which Sarah, Pat and Dan make this discovery at the end of a treasure hunt and proceed to fight over the friendship in Gold Fever fashion until an interloper steals it.
  Dan: You guys, he's getting away with our friendship! If we work together, we can stop him!
  Pat: Eh, I'd rather not.
  Sarah: Yeah, me neither.
  Dan: Yeah, f— you guys.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • In "New Guy," the guy impersonating new programmer John Zanussi. Even after he's violently clobbered most of the staff, Sarah banks on the idea that he'll stop at hitting a girl and tries to flirt with him, getting a mop handle to the face for her troubles.
  • In "Age Hierarchy," Amir casually lays out Sarah in one punch.
  • The Lady Punchers in "Secret Society" are an entire Secret Circle of Secrets devoted to this. After Pat hits Sarah by accident, they try to recruit him, to his horror.
• Would Hurt a Child: Parodied in "Man Baby" with Streeter playing Sarah's toddler-aged nephew. Ricky gets fed up with him and hits him in the face, to which Sarah berates him for hurting a child as Streeter hurls Ricky across the room and then carries her out the door.
• Would Rather Suffer: Comically subverted at the end of "Dilly Dally":
  Ricky: Jake, it's either in my office or out that window.
  Jake: (climbs onto the sill and begins to open the window) This is the easiest decision of my entire life! (gets off the sill and closes the window) ...I didn't wanna jump because then I would die. I wouldn't survive that for sure.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In the "Final Destination" series, everyone's fine with overloading Murph with the cinderblocks he's plotting to kill Sam with, assuming that his status as "the psychic main character in this series" will grant him Plot Armor. They must not realize it's a comedy sketch.
• Yandere: In the surprisingly chilling video "My Bloody Valentine," Pat sends Sarah increasingly threatening notes demanding that she be his, murders every other guy in the office who showed an interest in her, then stabs her in the stomach.
• You Can't Handle The Parody: At the end of "You'll Never Guess" some of the staff are re-enacting the iconic scene from A Few Good Men, so the line of course gets said. They're also not wearing shirts while doing it.
• You Meddling Kids: "Phantom After Dark":
  Phantom: And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you pesky kids and your meddling homosexual!
  David: I'm not gay, guys.
  Phantom: Bullshit!

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