Dilbert/Characters

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Dilbert's home

Dilbert

An Unlucky Everydude who would be the Only Sane Employee if he hadn't stopped caring about his work years ago. Failure Is the Only Option when it comes to his attempts at dating.

• Bungling Inventor: Especially in earlier strips, but this attribute occasionally shows up later on as well.
• George Jetson Job Security
• Hollywood Dateless
• Jerkass: What his character has become. He's learned what his coworkers are like and will openly call out their failings to let them know he's factored them into his plans.
• Literal-Minded: At times, especially while dating.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Dilbert has killed about half a dozen people, and crushed a microscopic inhabited planet, all by accident.
• Nerd Glasses
• No Mouth: Though the cartoon establishes that his mouth appears only when he's using it (and it has made an appearance in the occasional strip as well).
• No Name Given: His last name (if he has one is never given).
  • Or maybe "Dilbert" is his last name and it's his first name that's never mentioned. Who knows.
• Unlucky Everydude
• White Collar Worker: Along with all the other characters who work at the company.

Dogbert

Dilbert's anthropomorphic dog and Foil. An Evil Genius, Heroic Comedic Sociopath and The Barnum who constantly exploits everyone with consummate ease. He is bent on Taking Over The World and succeeded a few times, but relinquished his power because Victory Is Boring.

• Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other: Word of God: "Ultimately, Dogbert will always rescue Dilbert."
• The Barnum
• The Chessmaster
• Deadpan Snarker
• Funny Animal
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath
• Insult Backfire: If you call him "cynical", "superficial", etc.
• Manipulative Bastard
• No Mouth
• Noble Demon: On occasion.
• Odd Job Gods: Thor showed up to give him the position of God of Velcro in an early strip, although he hasn't actually done anything with the title since.
• Puss in Boots
• Uncatty Resemblance: To Dilbert.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Dilbert.

Ratbert

Rat adopted by Dilbert who just wants to be loved. Demoted to Extra after the strip started focusing on Dilbert's workplace.

• The Ditz
• The Pollyanna

Bob the Dinosaur

The Artifact from before the strip began devoting itself to office humor. Used to have a mate named Dawn and a son named Rex, but they fell prey to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.

• The Artifact
• The Ditz
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Scott Adams has admitted that he was operating on this principle.
• Laser-Guided Karma: His job at the office is to give people wedgies. Sometimes, they really deserve it.

Dilbert's company

Pointy-Haired Boss

His own namesake trope pretty much sums it up. Dilbert's nameless boss is dumb, sometimes descending to ditz levels, and borderline utterly sociopathic.

• Bad Boss
• The Ditz
• Does Not Understand Sarcasm
• Dumbass Has a Point: He's only an idiot when managing his subordinates. When dealing with other departments and upper management he's actually the straight man undermined by Dilbert's social ineptitude and bluntness.
• Mean Boss: Mostly in earlier strips and the TV series.
• No Name Given
  • Not that they ain't trying. People just tend to end up interrupted or start screaming before they manage to utter the name.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat
• Pointy-Haired Boss: The Trope Namer.
• Stupid Boss
• Turing Test: He has failed at least three of them.
• Ultimate Job Security

Wally

The poster child for Dismotivation, Wally is The Slacker and happily exploits his Ultimate Job Security to the fullest extent.

• Ascended Extra: Wally - or at least, his physical appearance - originally started out as a model for generic employees (akin to Ted, or perhaps Barney Calhoun), and several of Dilbert's co-workers in the early years of the strip bore his appearance. Slowly, however, the individual character emerged, eventually giving form to Wally.
  • Fridge Brilliance: In one strip, the PHB mentions that he's fired 3 people that week just because he thought they were Wally. The all-time total is at least 9.
• Brilliant but Lazy: His schemes to get out of doing work are sometimes convoluted enough to qualify him for Magnificent Bastard consideration... he's obviously a very intelligent guy, just not very motivated.
• Cynical Mentor: To Asok.
• Dismotivation
• Establishing Character Moment: This strip.
• Gas Hole: If there's a flatulance joke, he's the source.
• Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: In an episode of the TV series, Wally appeared with hair in a flashback to his days as a young engineer.
• Jerkass
• Lazy Bum
• Must Have Caffeine
• Professional Slacker
• The Slacker
• Ultimate Job Security: And he knows it.
• Wants the Work Done for Them: Wally is a master of wanting people to do his work for him. Alice lampshades his attitude in this strip when she mentions "all of your ideas make everyone but you work harder."

Alice

Workaholic who responds to the hopelessly clueless of the workplace with her "Fist of Death".

• Ascended Extra: Much like Wally, Alice started off as a generic employee. Her name fluctuated for a few years.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Just wants recognition for all her hard work
• Hair-Trigger Temper
• Honor Before Reason: Alice largely refuses to game the system like Dilbert and Wally despite the utter futility of actually trying to do their jobs.
• Megaton Punch
• Workaholic

Asok

An intern from India, Asok is The Pollyanna and a Bollywood Nerd. Basically, he has genius-level IQ (and psychic powers), but is naïve when it comes to the company's bureaucracy and incompetence.

• Bollywood Nerd: Possibly the Trope Codifier, at least for American audiences.
• The Intern
• Naive Newcomer: Was introduced as one.
• The Pollyanna
• Psychic Powers: In the Noughties a Running Gag developed that his time at the Indian Institute of Technology had left him with telekinesis and the ability to make people's heads explode by thinking about it.
• Token Minority: Adams has said Asok was an attempt at an aversion - he worried that adding any ethnic minority character would provoke backlash because all his characters have amusing flaws and people might regard those flaws as being a stereotype - so Asok's flaw was 'inexperience', which was obviously temporary. Naturally, due to Fan Dumb, he was still blasted as a negative stereotype to start with.

Catbert

The evil Director of Human Resources.

• Arch Enemy: Wally's.
• Card-Carrying Villain
• Cats Are Mean
• Cute Is Evil: His cuteness is actually one of the reasons he was hired.
• Fan Nickname: The character had no name when he first appeared, but letters poured in asking for more Catbert. Scott Adams later said, "If hundreds of people spontaneously give a character the same name, it's a keeper."
• Faux Affably Evil
• For the Evulz:

Alice: How many of your policies are designed solely to satisfy your own sadistic tendencies? Catbert: All of them. Some are just more obvious than others.

• Obviously Evil: He's always called "the evil H.R. director" by everybody.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: On the TV show.

Carol

Not so much a Sassy Secretary as a Bitter Secretary Who Hates The World, Everyone In It And The PHB In Particular. Constantly messes with the PHB, sometimes plotting to kill him, while doing her job in the most haphazard way possible.

• The Archer: Was temporarily armed with a crossbow in a few strips.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Nearly every sane person in the strip is this (it's justified), but Carol is the most outstanding example.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Whenever an employee asks her for anything, she will be as unhelpful as possible out of pure spite. How dare they ask her to do her job! Can't they see she's busy wasting time?
  • Her Obstructive Bureaucrat status was lampshaded right from the get-go... in earlier strips, before she was given the name Carol, characters referred to her as "Miss Cerberus".
• Sassy Secretary
• Ultimate Job Security: Justified. She's the only one who knows how to fill out termination paperwork, so the PHB can't fire her without her help.

Loud Howard

A minor character appearing in a few strips he became an Ascended Extra in the TV Show. His main distinguishing feature was that he was extremely loud.

• Ascended Extra: In the TV adaptation
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: His sole distinguishing characteristic is that he is extremely loud.
• No Indoor Voice

Tina the Tech Writer

Introduced as a Straw Feminist (her introductory strips literally dared readers to become as offended as possible), she is now mostly played as simply The Chick, in contrast to Alice.

• The Chick
• Foil: For Alice.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Her main schtick, especially in earlier strips.
• Insistent Terminology: Tina will tell anyone who regards her as an Office Lady (that's pretty much everyone, by the way) that she's an "experienced technical writer".
• Straw Feminist

Ted The Generic Guy

A personality-less employee used in situations which would otherwise require a one-off character. Has thus been fired and killed a number of times, but it never sticks. Scott Adams has joked that there must be more than one Ted in the company.

Other

Phil the Prince of Insufficient Light

An Odd Job God who rules Heck and punishes minor sins. Also the PHB's brother.

• The Artifact: He generally had more to do before office humor took over.
• Ascended Fanon: Fans used to ask if Phil and the PHB were related because they looked similar. Adams liked the idea and made them brothers.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Has done this to people many times. One of his crueller punishments to people at Dilbert's company is to do nothing whatsoever.
• Executive Meddling: Adams wanted to add the Devil to the cast as an annoying character, but his editors vetoed that idea, so he came up with Phil. Adams would later admit that Phil is a much funnier concept than what he originally had in mind.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck: "I Darn you to Heck."
• Odd Job Gods

The World's Smartest Garbageman

An extremely intelligent man who seems to be something of a mentor to Dilbert.

• Almighty Janitor
• Mentors: He appears every time that Dilbert needs some kind of help.

The CEO

A guy with a tall bald head who makes the PHB seem like a kind person in comparison. There have been several different CEOs in the series with the same appearance and personality, so either he is an upper-management version of Ted or he repeatedly retakes power off-screen.