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Whenever a throwaway character is introduced, he will often be labeled as someone from the "Accounting department", usually to serve as the straight-man for a joke. Said character's name will also tend to be common and monosyllabic, such as Bob or Bill or Ted or Steve, altogether creating an impression of a [[Flat Character|staid and two-dimensional]] person.

Sometimes said person will betray this impression and be wacky or very unusual in some way, creating humor via contrast. Alternatively, the person may be from human resources or some other department that most companies have, especially one not known for its personality.

Once their function in the joke has been fulfilled, they will [[Ascended Extra|usually]] never be mentioned again.

{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* From a TV ad for ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'': "The goblin's out sick? Well, send in Bob. From accounting." Bob From Accounting was actually considered for a card in the joke set ''Unhinged''.
* A recent{{when}} commercial for some sort of microwaveable noodle dish. The mascot in question is a miniaturized stereotypical Chinese man, who apparently works in accounting.
* A series of [[Radio]] ads for the temp service AccounTemps during the early 2010s featured conversations between a boss and his underling revolving around how much better run the business would be if only the underling had called Bob from AccounTemps.

== [[Film]] ==
* In the movie version of ''[[Horton Hears a Who!]]'', Mayor Ned, not believing that Horton's "voice from the drainpipe" is real, asks if the whole thing is a prank by "Burt, from Accounting". We actually see Burt from Accounting later in the film, though.
* In ''[[Inception]]'', Cobb introduces himself this way when setting up the Mr. Charles gambit.
* ''[[The Incredibles]]'' invokes this trope ''deliberately'' - and then almost immediately subverts it, because Bob from Accounting is '''[[The Hero|MR. INCREDIBLE]], DAMMIT.''' It gets even funnier when you realize that his last name, Parr, sounds similar to the word "par", meaning "average" or "ordinary." Therefore, Bob Parr's name is ''SUPPOSED'' to sound generic, [[Non-Indicative Name|even though the rest of him... isn't.]]

== [[Literature]] ==
* Ron's family in ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' is all wizards and witches, except for one of his mum's distant cousins who is an accountant. ("[[Black Sheep|We don't talk about him much]].")
* One of the [[Our Vampires Are Different|Vampyr]] youth in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel ''Carpe Jugulum'' "pretends to be an accountant". It's the Vampire equivalent of being one of those people who congregate in dark basements and drink cow's blood.
* ''The Atrocity Archive'' gives our hero Bob from IT an archnemesis: Fred from Accounting.
** Not for long, though... Actually, the protagonist seems to fit this trope in the beginning... only to subvert it with the vengeance.
** Also the Accounting department should not be confused with Accounts. The former does accounting, the latter ''settles'' accounts by [[Kill It with Fire|rather]] [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|extreme]] methods. See also "Pimpf" by [[Charles Stross]]

== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* In the season two episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' where the hospital organised a charity poker tournament, Wilson finally won by beating "Berman from accounting".
** House also cracks jokes about 'Debbie from accounting', Wilson's supposed romantic interest.
*** From the same episode with a poker tournament:
{{quote|House: ''"Anything lower, you wouldn't sound so excited. Jacks or higher, your voice sounds like Debbie from accounting is sitting in your lap."''}}
* Early episodes of ''[[Just Shoot Me]]'' features mentions of Baxter from Accounting.
* A lot of Chandler's workmates from ''[[Friends]]'' get this treatment, including "Financial Services Lowell" and "Brian from Payroll".
* From ''[[NCIS]]'': Tony's misadventures with female coworkers tend to have names like "Alice from Evidence," etc.
* ''[[Scrubs]]'' does this with 'X from the gift shop' and 'Y from paediatrics'.
* On ''[[News Radio]]'', they usually mention various people in Ad Sales. 
* John Stossel did a report on taxes, and he showed an elderly man whom he introduced as Bob, his accountant.
* ''[[Monty Python]]'' loved accountant characters—for example, there's a ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus|Flying Circus]]'' sketch about one who wanted to become a lion tamer despite his aptitude test showing that he was in no way suited to anything that exciting.
** Also, in the sketch where people are simply falling off a building past a window, one of the two office workers recognized one of them as "Wilkins from Finance".
*** Oh no, that was Robertson.
**** Wilkins!
*** Robertson!
**** ''*Another body falls past*'' Well that was Wilkins.
* Subverted in ''[[Sherlock]]'', when "Jim from IT" turns out to be {{spoiler|Moriarty}}.

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* ''[[Dilbert]]'' has a character Scott Adams refers to as Ted the Generic Guy, who usually fills this role.
** And wasn't Bob from Accounting the only demon from Heck that wasn't at lunch in one strip?
** Actually, his name was Ed.

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* [[Christian]] mentioned a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcXc-koqcPI "Bob from accounting"] during his recent feud with Randy Orton.

== [[Stand Up Comedy]] ==
* This trope forms the core of one of [[Eddie Izzard]]'s ''[[Star Trek]]'' routines. Stevens from Accounts decides to go on an away mission to figure out why a landing party consisting of Kirk, Spock and McCoy routinely expenses several hundred packed lunches. Things look bad for Stevens as the Captain points out he's wearing a [[Red Shirt|red jumper]].

== [[Web Comics]] ==
* This is the central gag of the new webcomic from [[Brian Clevinger]], ''[[Warbot in Accounting]]''.
* The political webcomic [http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/war81/ Get Your War On] features only office workers illustrated by clip-art images—basically blank templates of [[White Collar Worker]]s. In the [https://web.archive.org/web/20090204031008/http://www.236.com/tag/Get+Your+War+On animated videos], consisting of phone calls between two main characters, they identify themselves/each other simply as Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable.
* Mentioned among the victims of the anglerfish attack in ''[[What the Fu (webcomic)|What the Fu]]''.
* [http://chainsawsuit.com/2012/01/09/butt-shazam/ This] ''[[Chainsawsuit]]''.

== Web Original ==
* Parodied in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'':
{{quote|'''Croquet''': Yeah... everyone involved with the production of the [[Artifact of Doom|Egyptian God Cards]] was killed.
'''Pegasus''': What!? Even Chad from Accounting?
''[Cut to a man being thrown through a skyscraper window]''
'''Croquet''': [[Especially Zoidberg|Especially Chad from Accounting!]] }}
** This was turned into Bill from Accounting when the joke was used in [[Naruto the Abridged Series]] and LK (not understanding why it was changed) concluded that it's Bill in the Naruto-verse and Chad in the Yu-Gi-Oh-verse. So he uses it in [[Naruto the Abridged Comedy Spoof Series Show]], using the same clip mind.
*** Not only that, but it seems to happen every time someone says "Bill from Accounting".

== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Sealab 2021]]'': a character from the never-before-or-after-mentioned Accounting department serves as an additional foil to Murphy's inane scheme.
* In the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Make Love, Not [[Warcraft]]," one of the programmers tells the prophecy of the Sword of A Thousand Truths to his colleagues. The leader asks who foretold the prophecy and the programmer says it was Saltzman from Accounting.
* Booberella, from ''[[The Simpsons]]'', is the daughter of Bill, an accountant at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.
* Donna From Accounting from ''[[King of the Hill]]''. Note, she's never called just Donna, always Donna From Accounting.

== [[Real Life]] ==
* Bob Newhart was actually an accountant prior to going into comedy.
* [[John Major]], legendarily dull British prime minister, was the son of an ex-trapeze artist and had an early career in banking, prompting the joke that he was the only man ever to run away from the circus to become an accountant.

{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:Bob From Accounting]]
[[Category:White Collar Tropes]]