Characters / Arrested Development - The Bluths

Tropes pertaining to the members of the central Bluth family in Arrested Development. Characters are listed in the order their actors are credited in the opening. Click here to return to the main index.

The Bluths | Recurring Characters | One-Shot Characters

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In General

• Abusive Parents: Lucile and George Sr. neglect, emotionally manipulate and verbally abuse their kids. (See Hilariously Abusive Childhood below) GOB, Lindsey and Tobias are completely indifferent to their children's existence and while Michael is probably the most loving parent in the show, he constantly puts pressure on George-Michael to succeed, which has made him a Nervous Wreck and an Extreme Doormat.
• Ambiguously Jewish: According to creator Mitchell Hurwitz, "we can't quite decide if the Bluths are Jewish or not." Given the Germanic/Ashkenazic origins of the name "Bluth" and George Sr.'s religious conversion in jail, it seems likely that they're at least half-Jewish on his side. However, they're also very WASP-y.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Um, yes. They seem pathologically incapable of staying well behaved, and even the nicest of them, George Michael, is a bit of a creep regarding his cousin.
• Butt-Monkey: Seriously, the Bluths can't catch a break. They've been humiliated on TV, physically beaten, have a horrible track record when it comes to relationships, and their company can't seem to stay afloat even when it looks like it'll pull through.
• Consummate Liar: The narrator implies that this skill is in In the Blood amongst the Bluths.
  Gob: We did have sex, and I'm not a great liar.
  Narrator: Both things he just said were lies.
• Catchphrase: "I’ve made a huge mistake", alternatively: "I need a favor!"
  • "Well, that was a freebie."
• Clingy Jealous Girl: A recurring problem. Michael with George Michael (in a nonsexual way), he seems to be particularly jealous of George Michael's girlfriend, Ann Veal, for taking his son away from him.
  • Her?
• Dysfunctional Family: It's a Justified Title.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Michael and his siblings were subjected to cruel lessons courtesy of J. Walter Weatherman.
  • Also George videotaping and selling Boy Fights between GOB and Michael.
  • And Michael being forced to work in the banana stand during heatwaves.
• Family Business: The Bluth Corporation
• Incompetence, Inc.: What Michael tries to prevent, in spite of the rest of his family altogether.
• It's All About Me: All of the Bluths have very self-centered world views, even the comparatively good-natured Michael. George Michael was the notable exception to this prior to season 4, where he also began showing off his selfish side.
• Money Dumb: The family has so much money that they don't actually need to know how to manage it for the largest part of their lives, and refuse to be aware of their expending and manage their funds even when their access to the family fortune is cut. Michael is the only one trying to oversee and control expenses, while Lindsay and Gob are useless with money, unable to keep a job or understand that they need to make a living and are both huge drains on the family fund even before they were cut off from it.
• Not Blood Siblings: So many of the show's pairings, mostly one-sided, involve this trope. There's George Michael/Maeby, Steve Holt/Maeby, Annyong/Maeby, Michael/Lindsay, and GOB/Lindsay. There’s even a brief tease of George Michael/Lindsay due to a wacky misunderstanding.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: The Bluth children not going by their legal names is a Running Gag. GOB is George Oscar, Buster is Byron, Michael is actually legally "Nichael", Lindsay was born Nellie (and is also Lucille's half-sister, not daughter) and Annyong's actual name is really Hel-loh.
• Parental Incest: One-sided; Buster seems to have a heavy fixation on his mother, Lucille. As a child, he even appeared on a magazine cover with her under the headline "Why I Want to Marry My Mother", which Stan Sitwell will never let them live down.
• Pride: Most Bluths suffer from this Fatal Flaw to some degree.
• Shared Family Quirks: Greed and lying, mainly.

Main Characters

Michael Bluth

Michael Bluth

Played by: Jason Bateman

^{Click here} to see Michael in Season 4.

"You've gotta put family first. That's the stupid thing that I believe."

The main protagonist of the first three seasons, Michael Bluth is a Nice Guy and the only adult in the family to seem to have any morals.

In Season 4, he is only one of many of the characters who are focused on. Michael spends years finishing Sudden Valley as a pet project after leaving the family for good after the incident aboard the Queen Mary, and racks up $700,000 in debt to Lucille 2. After the death of his mailman, he temporarily lives in his son's college dorm room before getting "mistakenly" kicked out in a vote and moving to Phoenix. In Phoenix, Michael meets with Ron Howard and puts into production a movie about his family. ^{Spoiler Information}He also falls for Ron Howard's daughter (although he believes it's Ron's girlfriend), Rebel Alley. Throughout the series, Michael's character grows out of the Nice Guy archetype and becomes much more cynical, even rejecting his family and kicking them out of the movie (except for Buster).

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• Aesop Amnesia: Michael's lesson to be learned at the end of the day is almost always that he suffocates his son too much and puts too much pressure on him, but he never seems to fully learn this, and needs to learn it again.
• Audience Surrogate: He's the embodiment of the normal guy lumped together with a quirky group of amoral and flawed people (though he himself is not without his flaws). Mitch Hurwitz even calls him the audience's "point of entry".
• Being Good Sucks: Especially when everyone else is so immoral. It's toyed with throughout the series (most notably in "Storming the Castle"), but this is what spurs his Character Development in Season 4.
• Benevolent Boss: He’s an honest and reasonable boss, though it has been mentioned that he works his employees too hard and doesn't know how to delegate authority.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Season 4 implies that, after a series of injuries and degradation, he murdered Lucille Austero. Knowing the series, there may be more to it than that, but at the very least he does threaten her. Subverted in Season 5 where he is proven innocent.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While undoubtedly a much better person than most of the rest of his family, he's regularly shown to share the family traits of being a shallow, self-absorbed liar whenever he's around other more "normal" characters. This becomes most pronounced in season 4, which he spends most of away from the rest of the Bluths and shows him at his absolute worst.
• Can't Believe I Said That: He often does this before the other party has even left the room, mouthing “What is wrong with me?” while the other person’s eyes are diverted for some reason.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: While this was an element of his relationship with his family in the show's original run, Season 4 plays it particularly hard by indicating that he might be worse off without them.
• Catchphrase: In Season 4, "you're out of the movie!"
• Character Development: At first he's a straight-up Nice Guy, but as the series goes on, he becomes a slightly more flawed character. In Season 4, this is ramped up, and by the chronological end of the season, he's almost nothing like he was before.
• The Comically Serious: He often doesn't react to the weirdest of situations which makes it even more funny.
• Control Freak: While you can't exactly blame him, since the rest of the Bluths are so incompetent and unpredictable that they have to be kept on a short leash at all times for anything to be accomplished, Michael is very controlling of other people's lives. This is best shown in his relationship with George Michael, where his well-intentioned attempts at making his son an accomplished go-getter have resulted in George Michael becoming a timid social outcast under far more pressure than any teenager should be.
• Cool Uncle: Makes an effort to be this for Meaby and Steve Holt which they appreciate since their own parents ignore them.
• Covert Pervert: While Michael getting along with women - generally better than his brothers, at least - is noted by several characters, he briefly admits to Marta that he was also attracted to her hair, face and breasts.^note But mainly her sense of right and wrong.
• Dating Catwoman: His relationship with Amoral Attorney Maggie Lizer.
• Deadpan Snarker: It would be impossible to suffer his family without a sense of humor.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Dutiful Son. While he steps up and takes charge of the family business after it falls into financial ruin, it's repeatedly shown that he'd be much better off if he'd simply cut off all ties from them like he was originally planning to. Later episodes also heavily suggest that his primary reason for sticking around is to confirm his own perceived superiority over the rest of the family by saving the company, rather than out of any sort of familial devotion.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe, when Tobias jokes about Michael's wife being dead - though the look on his face does seem as if he's struggling to hold in a laugh.
• Genre Blind: He seems to think he's in an inspirational family movie, with his role being that of The Smart Guy and The Dutiful Son, and behaves like it. Instead, he's in a story more akin to a Fatal Flaw "Groundhog Day" Loop (with some Black Comedy thrown in), so all of his efforts are for naught.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Very often the case for Michael. Try as he might, he'll never be able to restore the Bluth Company's success or find happiness for himself.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The longer he stays with the family that he hates, the more he begins to stoop to their lows.
• Holier Than Thou: Sometimes comes across as this. While it's generally justified, considering the rest of his family, he has a bad habit of completely disregarding the occasions when one of them actually makes a legitimate point.
• Honest Corporate Executive: For the most part, although he occasionally slips up. It’s especially admirable in contrast to how his (now imprisoned) father handled the position.
• Honor Before Reason: Played With; he really should have left years ago and let his family flounder on their own, but chooses to stay because "family first." In actuality, he stays because he wants to show up his family, particularly his father, and his selfish motivations are in large part the reason why he continually fails. This issue is exacerbated greatly in seasons 4 and 5, when he forces George Michael to rip up a check gifted by George and Lucille simply out of stubbornness, and then purchases Fakeblock to spite his parents without investigating its logistics, respectively.
• Hopeless with Tech: Has small shades of this in Season 4, likely due to living without internet at Sudden Valley for several years, but it's really exacerbated when George Michael establishes Fakeblock as a proper company in Season 5 - because Michael knows so little about tech, he doesn't bother to vet Fakeblock and therefore doesn't realize it's a bogus company, causing him to squander $3 million on a useless product.
• Hypocrite: His own actions often don't line up with the things he judges the rest of his family for doing.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Though Michael is genuinely competent when it comes to baseline management of the family's assets, his ability to make actual business decisions is almost nonexistent. He purchases land from his uncle Oscar that ends up being useless, spends an undisclosed - but apparently sizable - amount of the company's limited funds on whistles just to make a point, and ignores his employees' suggestions on how to improve the company simply so he can do it himself. This is due in large part to his Fatal Flaw; see Narcissist below.
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: A Running Gag has characters (Usually Gob) teasing Michael for only having sex with four women in his life, with the implication his sexual inexperience makes him a bad lover and a loser.
  GOB: For some reason, women feel safe around you. Maybe because you've only had sex four times.
  Michael: Four women, not four times, and they talk to me because I talk to them.
• Love Triangle: Of a sort; he and George Michael are both dating Rebel Alley, and while both know that she is seeing another man, neither one knows who, as George Michael is using the name George Maharis. Michael finds out first and decides to break things off with Rebel, but runs into George Michael on the way there, who believes that Michael knew and was courting her on purpose, leading to him punching his father in the face.
• Narcissist: He might want to save the Bluth company and his family, but he wants to rub it in his family's face even more. This is a large part of why he never moves out (until Season 4, when the family and company are both beyond saving), and is the primary cause of most of his strife with George Michael, especially as he gets older in Seasons 4 and 5.
• Nice Guy: He's one of the nicest and most moral characters in the show. Completely deconstructed over the course of Season 4, when he becomes much more of a cynical Jerkass.
• Not So Above It All: The stress of being in a family like the Bluths can make even a Nice Guy like Michael slip up. Whenever his son mentions his girlfriend Ann, his reactions are always either unawareness or apprehensiveness, and he makes constant hints and suggestions that he’d rather George Michael spent time with himself and drop her altogether. Once he hits a rough patch in Season 4, combined with a increasingly strained relationship with his son, the lack of the rest of his family constantly surrounding him makes his own flaws much clearer.
• Only Sane Employee: Unless you count the occasions where George Michael helps out at the company part time, Michael is the only employee of the Bluth Corporation that seems intent on getting anything done.
• Only Sane Man: Michael is the only Bluth adult without any immediate glaring character flaws. At the beginning of the series, only he, his son, and his niece are considered "normal." Even after his own issues start manifesting, he remains the most rational Bluth (with the exception of his son), and is clearly still a good guy until the end of Season 4.
• Papa Wolf: Gets extremely aggressive when he feels that his son is being threatened.
• Parental Obliviousness: As attached as he is to his son he's incapable of picking up on his emotional state, notably George Michael has confessed his Kissing Cousins relationship with Meaby to him three times and was ignored all three times.
• Parents as People: It is frequently make clear that Michael tries his level best to be a better and more involved parent to George-Michael than Lucille and George Sr. ever were to him, but at the same time, Michael's only real frame of reference for being a parent is Lucille and George Sr.'s quite crappy parenting, and as a result many of his decisions as a parent aren't the healthiest. As a result, he is probably the most loving parent in the show, but that doesn't make him a totally great one either, as his constant pressure for George-Michael to succeed has taken a toll in the boy's psyche, making a lonely, nervous wreck, which he realizes many, many times. It's even lampshaded early on that he is, in essence, doing the same to his son that his father did to him.
• Really Gets Around: By the start of the series, he has slept with four women (according to GOB), but over the course of the series he also sleeps with Marta ("Beef Consommé"), Mrs. Baerly ("Shock and Aww"), Maggie Lizer ("Altar Egos", "Justice is Blind", "Hand to God") and Rebel Alley ("Blockheads").
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Whenever he thinks the family has hit rock bottom, he claims that he will take his son and leave, however, he comes back every single time he does this, to the point that the family doesn't consider this a threat anymore. The only time they actually feared it was in Season 2's premiere, and even then, it's because he was able to hide the fact he couldn't leave and stayed after being asked to. Becomes a running gag in Seasons 4 and 5, with the phrase "Michael always comes back" often being used to describe him, to the point that even he knows his threats are hollow.
  Michael: Goodbye forever.
  Lucille: See you tonight!
  Tobias: See you tonight!
  Michael: (walking out) See you tonight.
• Selective Enforcement: Almost everyone else can be horrible but the moment he does anything immoral, they condemn him for it. To add to it, these ‘immoral’ actions include not letting Gob have free frozen bananas, trying to seduce Gob’s girlfriend whom he frequently neglected and cheated on, and firing an incompetent assistant who was openly disrespectful of him.
• Slipping a Mickey: GOB roofies Michael after he discovers his affair with Tony Wonder, causing him to lose a day and to forget everything that happened the day before.
• Small Name, Big Ego: In season 4, after he becomes a movie producer (of a movie that hadn't yet, and likely didn't ever, get made).
• Straight Man: Michael is the king of this trope; he's more reasonable than the rest of his family, and not naive like his son.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Generally the only remotely competent and reasonable person in the room at any given time.
• Token Good Teammate: Comparatively, at least. He frowns upon his family's shifty business practices and genuinely wants a better life for his son. He doesn't always uphold the morals he professes, however...
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Throughout the whole series, as a result of dealing with his dysfunctional and highly amoral family, he becomes a little less focussed on being "Mr. Moral", and even tries to abandon his family a few times. He finally does in the Season 3 finale, and perhaps as a result, ends up becomes a complete Jerkass by the end of Season 4.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He has little to no respect for his father and doesn’t particularly care if he gets any from him. On the other hand, he does seek validation from the rest of his family as a whole for being the sanest and most competent of them, and never ever gets it.
• White Sheep: Explicitly designated into this role by his family. Subverted HARD in Season 4. Let's just say the huge mistakes kept piling up and it finally drove him to be just as bad as the rest of his family.

Lindsay Fünke

Lindsay Bluth Fünke/Cindy Featherbottom

Played by: Portia de Rossi

^{Click here} to see Lindsay in Season 4.

"'Lindsay’s a combative, entitled princess'?! I should hire someone to kick your ass for that!"

Lindsay, Michael's twin sister, is a materialistic charity worker whose relationship with her husband is rocky at best. She can act like a Jerkass at times, especially when neglecting her teenage daughter Maeby, but she has a heart of gold. ^{Spoiler Information}She was actually adopted by the Bluths as an infant to stick it to their long-time rival Stan Sitwell, who was planning on adopting her first. Then it turns out she was actually adopted because she's Lucille's half-sister, not her daughter.

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• Blonde Republican Sex Kitten: Ends up becoming this in Season 4 after abandoning her liberal ideals.
• Bourgeois Bohemian: Grew up in an extremely wealthy family, wears the finest and most expensive clothing, all while preaching liberal values.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Comes onto Michael after discovering that they are Not Blood Siblings. And still technically averted because Season 5 reveals she's actually his aunt.
• Call-Back: The surname she chooses as Love's prostitute in Season 4 is "Featherbottom", a reference to Tobias' alter-ego in Season 2.
  • Season 4 also shows her struggling to cry while talking to Lucille, a reference to the pilot episode.
• Casanova Wannabe: A rare female example. Lindsay considers herself to be irresistible to men, but her track record for successfully seducing any is pretty terrible, with the few she manages to land being complete weirdos, and none of them stick too long. The Narrator suggests that this due in large part to her low self-esteem.
• The Confidant: Michael often consults her for advice, as in spite of her vanity, she is still one of the most level-headed and reasonable members of the family.
• Crocodile Tears: Parodied in the pilot episode where she attempts this a couple times but is unable to do it.
• Evil Costume Switch: In Season 4's "Red Hairing". See Generation Xerox.
• Face–Heel Turn: She abandons Marky and her liberal views to run for Congress in Love's place at the end of her Season 4 storyline.
• French Maid: She dresses as one at the end of "Forget-Me-Now" at Bob Loblaw (whom she was courting)'s request, believing that the costume was for fanservice, but he was actually just asking for her to act as a housemaid.
• Generation Xerox: At the end of her Season 4 storyline, Lindsay’s abandoned her liberal ideals to become the Republican candidate for Congress in place of the now-comatose Herbert Love. After she makes this decision, she changes her appearance and even her mannerisms to resemble Lucille after she points out, "You're a blonde, WASPy, Orange County princess".
• '80s Hair: In flashbacks. She even won "Best Hair" at school.
• Hands-Off Parenting: Taken to its logical conclusion. In Season 4, she repeatedly forgets that she even HAS a daughter, and completely abandons her in Season 5 following her disappearance.
• Hypocritical Humor: Makes up a good chunk of her jokes, her page-quote in particular.
• Important Haircut: In season 4, she haphazardly chops off her locks in an attempt to say goodbye to her glamorous former lifestyle when she moves in with a new hippie boyfriend. To her consternation, the bob she ends up with is even cuter than her long hair.
• Jerkass Has a Point/Dumbass Has a Point: Some of her comments about Michael's behavior (namely that he isn't as much of a White Sheep as he thinks he is) aren’t entirely that far off.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Compared to the other less savory members of the Bluth family, Lindsay has the highest tendency of showing genuine compassion. Michael even seems to hold her in a higher regard than most of the family because of this.
• Lazy Bum: She tends to avoid working constantly. In fact, she literally becomes a bum in Season 4 after hooking up with Marky Bark.
• Lethal Chef: Literally lethal: Lindsay manages to make chicken without cooking it, and then dips it in the defrost water. Soup!
• Ms. Fanservice: A mild example compared to most, but she tends to be shown in provocative clothing and frequently tries (and fails) to seduce men with sultry behavior.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Using up the $100,000 retainer Michael bought the family for Bob Loblaw's representation in Season 3.
• Oblivious Adoption: She was actually adopted by the George and Lucille at age three.
• Older Than They Look: She's actually three years older than she's been led to believe her whole life.
• Parental Neglect: Is extremely neglectful towards Maeby.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: At the climax of her Season 4 storyline, she ends up demanding “PUT! UP! THIS! WALL!”
• Put on a Bus: In season 5, thanks to Portia de Rossi's retirement from acting, she only makes appearances at either end of the season. She walks out on the family when she finally gets the kind words from Lucille she's been seeking her entire life, realizes that she didn't really want it after all, and goes off to find her blood relatives instead.Then she comes back when she learns Lucille is her blood relative. Just not the one she thought she was.
• Really Gets Around: She tries to, but only seems successful at bedding Tobias, and that’s saying something. As of Season 4, she finally succeeds with Marky Bark and Herbert Love.
• Revenge Romance: She dated Tobias to make an ex-boyfriend jealous, and married him because she knew it’d drive her parents crazy.
• Sexless Marriage: Due to Tobias being a Never Nude and very possibly closeted homosexual. At the very least, she believes the latter point.
• The Slacker: Despite being an activist, she barely does anything active. She also detests employment.
• Soapbox Sadie: Parodied. She is in the habit of espousing about causes only to feel superior.
• Spoiled Brat: Though often transparently posing as a Granola Girl.
• Straw Feminist: Played With a handful of times, but ultimately averted:
  • When she protests against the production of Girl with Low Self-Esteem, at no point does the show treat her as wrong or her complaints treated as selfish. When two characters do accuse her of having selfish reasons (namely Gob and the host of the show, who accuse her of only objecting because she's jealous), the show instead presents them as being chauvanistic and, in the latter's case, a hypocrite as they object to sexualizing men in the same way and is revealed to be a Never-Nude.
  • When Michael is upset about Lucille sleeping with Warden Gentles, it's Lindsay who points out the hypocrisy of Michael considering this morally wrong while feeling comfortable with his father's constant cheating over the years.
  • Additionaly, George attributes his sending Lindsay to a "new-age feel-gooderie" to poisoning her with such ideals, only to cut to her lecturing him for his lack of respect toward women as he's in the middle of cheating on Lucille... again. Once more, Lindsay is not stated to be in the wrong.

GOB Bluth

George Oscar "GOB" Bluth II/Getaway

Played by: Will Arnett

^{Click here} to see GOB in Season 4.

"... I've made a huge mistake."

Michael's older brother, "GOB", short for George Oscar Bluth, is a terrible magician, and the founding member of the Alliance of Magicians. ^{Spoiler Information}In Season 2, he becomes President of the Bluth Company, although hands the position back over to Michael after a brief stint working for Sitwell. He also has a son, Steve Holt, whom he often neglects. At the end of Season 3, his "religious girlfriend" is revealed to be none other than Ann Veal.

In Season 4, GOB gets mistakenly engaged to Ann, but leaves her on the altar as a result of a sabotaged trick. He eventually falls in with the teen singer Mark Cherry and his entourage, acting as their limo driver, "Getaway". However, as a result of his failed bee colonies, they are sent to rehab, and he is left without anyone in the world who cares about him (besides his boss, Steve Holt, whom he continues to ignore). Desperate and addicted to roofies, he attempts to get revenge on Tony Wonder and sabotage his career, but ends up forming romantic feelings for him.

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• Accidental Marriage: To a woman who sells trained seals during a drunken one-night stand and an escalating series of dares.
• Accidental Misnaming: Gob is often hit with this, due to his name being an abbreviation of his full name. It is supposed to be pronounced like the name of biblical Job (or, to put it in phonetic terms, /dʒoʊb/), but other people tend to pronounce with a hard G and a short O (like /ɡɒb/). This later becomes a Brick Joke, when Gob actually discusses the biblical story of Job with a bartender, but being unable to remember the name of the titular character, and when the bartender tries to correct him, he is confused because he thinks the bartender is constantly saying his name.
• Ambiguously Bi: Develops romantic and sexual feelings for rival magician Tony Wonder in Season Four. Although the entire situation begins as a revenge scheme with both men believing themselves to be straight, they end up genuinely falling for each other and even spend a night together after a succession of increasingly elaborate misunderstandings leads to confusion about their respective identities. Although their first sexual encounter occurs under false pretenses, Gob seems to be genuinely in love with Tony afterward, and the end of the season suggests that their relationship might continue.
• Answers to the Name of God: Or "Answers to the Name of Job". In "Colony Collapse", Gob refers to the Biblical figure Job... and pronounces the name wrong. When someone tries to correct him, he thinks he’s being addressed.
• Bad Boss: During his brief time as president of the Bluth Company, he treats pretty much everyone under him like shit, even firing the entire office for making and laughing at what he saw as jokes about him.
• Big Brother Bully: To Buster when they were kids.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When he tells Michael to date his girlfriend but only because he thinks it wont work out and gets mad when he finds out that Michael banged her.
• Blasphemous Boast: "I am the Amazing Jesus!"
• Butt-Monkey: He’s been beaten up, tazered, stabbed multiple times, thrown into the ocean, had two of his fingers cut off at one point, and spend two weeks handcuffed and trapped in a storage lock-up as the result of one of his acts going haywire. Not to mention he's The Unfavorite of the family and practically everything he tries to do ends in complete failure.
• Catchphrase: "I've made a huge mistake" and "Come on!". Also his chicken noise, done in conjunction with his chicken impression.
• The Charmer: According to Lindsay, when summing up the children, George Sr. says that Michael has the brains, Lindsay the looks, and Gob the charm—both struggle to think of a positive attribute of Buster’s. It does seem to be largely true, as Gob is, by far, the most successful in the family with the opposite sex, at least in short-term relationships.
• Chewing the Scenery: To be expected when he’s doing illusions. Less so when he’s just hanging around the house.
• Comically Missing the Point: Very often but one particular gem is when Marc Cherry makes a diss song called "Getaway" that Gob loves and makes his ringtone. Borders on Too Dumb to Live if you listen to the entire song.
• The Dandy: Memorably, in “Afternoon Delight,” he continually launches onto rants about his expensive suits.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Occasionally refered to as "GOB Bluth", as in "George Oscar Bluth Bluth".
• Drama Queen: Even when he's not attempting to punctuate his statements with magic tricks.
• Dude, He's Like, in a Coma!: In "Righteous Brothers", he kisses his father while the latter was under the effects of the ether he had laced Franklin's lips with.
  GOB: And guess what else. Dad kissed me!
  Michael: How? He looked pretty unconscious in that picture.
  GOB: ... I didn't say he was totally into it!
• Epic Fail: His illusions. The more spectacular they're supposed to be, the worse they end up going. At least he managed to make the yacht disappear by sinking it in "Missing Kitty".
• Fingore: In "Sword of Destiny", Buster ends up slicing off his fingers with the titular sword. He gets them replaced, but with the index and middle fingers swapped.
• Friendless Background: At least according to the narrator in S4.
• Gayngst: Parodied, for the most part in Season 5. Notably, to try and suppress his feelings for Tony Wonder, he looks for "conversion therapy", only to instead find himself in a closet conversion store.
• Genius Ditz: For someone who's legitimately a total airhead most of the time, GOB definitely has his moments of surprising insight, and is often the first character to figure out something important. For example, in "My Mother the Car" he's the only member of the family to work out that Lucille framed Michael for her car accident, made more impressive by the fact that he figures the whole thing out just from hearing Michael describe his injuries over the phone. In fact, even in the pilot, he's the first Bluth to realise that the police boats are coming after them, and his attempts to hide George Sr in the Aztec Tomb might actually have been successful if not for the police dogs.
  • George Sr. also admits at points that GOB does have some use, such as being the charmer out of his kids and being an asset to their company softball games. He's also second in command of family dirty work after Michael, though this is likely due to Buster and Lindsay being a bastard half-child and adopted, respectively.
• Handsome Lech: Of the Jerkass variety.
• Hidden Depths: He's capable of surprising intelligence on occasion. He also reveals in private that he is much more insecure and is desperate to be respected by his family, particularly his dad and Michael.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He founded the Alliance of Magicians, a guild whose members blackball any illusionist who reveals their secrets. In the first episode, he gets blackballed because the local Fox affiliate reveals the secret behind the Aztec Tomb trick, in which he had hidden George Sr.
  • GOB falls prey to this quite often, notably again in Season 4 when his plan to make Tony Wonder fall in love with him (and subsequently break his heart) instead results in GOB falling in love with Tony Wonder.
• Incest Subtext: A little bit with Michael; he sings "Everything I Do"(a romantic love song) to him, and when Michael finds out he had sex with a man, his response is to force a roofie down his throat and stroke his hair while lulling him to sleep.
• Iconic Item: His signature is the Segway scooter he rides around on.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He's incredibly cocky and full of himself but extremely insecure underneath it, desperate for the approval of his father and brother.
• Insistent Terminology: GOB does not do "tricks," as he sets out in the first words he says on the show.
  "Illusions, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money. [sees children standing behind him] Or candy!"
  • It is also how Michael figures out that the pimp who has been threatening him over the phone was GOB (well, technically Franklin), due to a slip of his tongue that causes him to say that the prostitute he is working with "turns illusions for money." GOB quickly corrects it to "tricks", but does so too late.
• Jerkass: For the most part, he treats his family members terribly and his girlfriends even worse.
• Kick the Dog: To his son Steve Holt in Seasons 3 and 4.
• The Lancer: As much as they don't get along, he and Michael end up teaming up for a number of schemes and plans. In terms of lifestyle, GOB contrasts Michael as the irresponsible playboy to Michael's overprotective widower.
• Large Ham: He hams it up considerably as a performer and he's often pretty dramatic just in everyday life as well.
• Leit Motif:
  • During his magic shows: It’s the Fi-nal Count-doowwwwn...
  • Throughout Season 4, the first line of "The Sound of Silence" (Hello darkness, my old friend...) plays nearly every time something goes wrong in Gob's life, while the camera zooms in on his vacant face.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: It transpires that he fathered Steve Holt in high school.
• Malaproper: He is quite prone to this.
  Gob: But I'm the oldest. The matriarch if you will!
  Michael: (amused) Sure, I will.
• Manchild: Not to the same degree as his brother Buster, but he’s extremely childish and emotionally immature.
• Manipulative Bastard: Not that he’s very good at it.
• Meaningful Name: While he, to some degree, deserves it, his constant suffering draws parallels between him and his namesake Job. Lampshaded in season 4.
• Mood-Swinger
• Narcissist:
  • In Season 1, Marta implies that he prefers to have sex while listening to a recording of himself.
  • Made more explicit in "Motherboy XXX", when GOB is trying to remember his wife:
    Michael: You don't remember her at all, do you?
    GOB: Hey, it was one night of wild passion!
    Michael: And yet, you didn't notice her body.
    GOB: I like to look in the mirror...
  • In Season 4, when he hooks up with Tony Wonder, he rationalizes it as not gay by having Tony wear a GOB mask.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Many times, including:
  • In “Top Banana,” he was tasked by Michael to mail a letter; in an act of defiance, he dramatically threw it into the sea (after many attempts). It turns out that the letter was an insurance claim for the frozen banana stand, which Michael and George Michael ignited towards the end of the episode.
  • In "Queen for a Day", notably because Michael had already solved all of the problems and Lucille 2 had agreed to relinquish ownership of her shares in the company stock. Unfortunately, GOB then managed to convince her otherwise, completely nullifying all of Michael's efforts.
  • In "Spring Breakout" when he accidentally drops a cooler full of vital evidence into a swimming pool.
  • In Season 4: Filling Sudden Valley with sex offenders. Somewhat subverted as, while it's not the best PR look, he still managed to do what Michael couldn't - actually sell the homes.
• Odd Friendship: Him and Tobias get along together arguably better than they do with any other family member, likely because they're both pariahs of the family who chase impossible dreams. When GOB is looking for a friend, Tobias offers up dinner plans after GOB Has already left. Not to mention they started GOBias Industries together. The only reason we don't see it develop is because it's funnier to watch everyone on the show be miserable.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Justified, to differentiate him from his father George Sr and his nephew George-Michael.
• Pet the Dog: He has some moments of kindness, mostly in regards to George Michael who he does make an effort to be a good uncle to.
• Really Gets Around: Over the course of the series, he's slept with numerous main characters, including Marta, Kitty ("Visiting Ours"), Nazhgalia and Mrs. Whitehead ("Shock and Aww"), Lucille 2 ("Queen for a Day"), his wife ("Motherboy XXX"), Ann Veal ("Colony Collapse") and Tony Wonder ("A New Attitude").
• Sad Clown: He’s usually one of the most brash and humorous members of the family, but as the series goes on it becomes increasingly evident how insecure and emotionally unstable he really is.
• Serious Business: He takes being a magician very seriously. His group “The Alliance of Magicians” even has the slogan: “We demand to be taken seriously”. It’s just too bad he’s not very good at it.
  • Speaking of the Alliance, heaven help anyone who reveals the secrets of their illusions: they’re good at keeping non-Alliance magicians from finding work.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Always acts like a big shot (particularly during his stint as president of The Bluth Company where he constantly tells everyone else that he's wearing thousand dollar suits) but no one ever respects him.
• Smug Snake: GOB is cocky and superficially confident, but has no skills whatsoever besides being a third-rate magician.
• Stage Magician: A hilariously incompetent one, but nonetheless.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: The lynchpin of his relationship with Tony Wonder in Season 4.
• Stylistic Suck: Takes magic very seriously but is absolutely terrible at it, unable to pull off even simple card tricks.
• The Unfavorite: George Sr. and Lucille treat all their kids like crap, but GOB gets the worst of it by far. While Lindsay and Buster are their respective favorites, both are well aware of how much they count on Michael and are even, occasionally, proud of him and express genuine love for him. They both just consider Gob a nightmare (though in the first two seasons George Sr. occasionally gets moments with GOB that imply he cares about him to a small degree, and loves him more than Buster, who isn't even his child). It probably puts it into perspective how badly he's treated when Lucille claims she treats Lindsay better—the one she calls fat at least twice an episode.
  Lucille: If you're saying I play favorites, you're wrong. I love all my children equally!
  (flashback to earlier that day)
  Lucille: I don't care for GOB.
  • At George Sr.'s court meeting:
    George Sr.: Where the hell is everybody?!
    GOB: I'm here, dad.
    George Sr.: I can't believe no one showed up!
  • When trying to rationalise keeping Lindsay's adoption a secret to Michael:
    Lucille: And we loved her as much as any of you "normal" kids... more than Gob!
  • Funnily enough, while George Sr. is, at his best, neutral towards GOB, his brother Oscar genuinely believes GOB is a good magician, and is confused as to why Lucille doesn't want GOB and Michael on good terms in Season 4.
  • In Season 5, as Lucille is explaining Michael the truth about the beach house:
    Lucille: And we didn't want to bring out those bad old memories. Besides, this place already has enough bad ones for me: My mother died here... GOB was born here.
• Theme Song Reveal: At the end of "The Immaculate Election", when Steve Holt discovers who his father is, an organ version of "The Final Countdown" begins to play.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: George Sr. finally plays a game of catch with his son when they're both in prison, and have a good time of it until GOB is shanked. Season 4, while seeing him at his lowest, also shows him making a genuine friend, and likely falling in love with, Tony Wonder, as well as managing to inadvertently side-step his parents' casual scheme of making him the scapegoat of their wall building escapade.
• Too Dumb to Live: When he and Michael went down to Mexico in the past, he did his "chicken dance", which resulted in him getting beaten up by the locals due to it being seen as an insult. He does it again the next time he goes back and gets tackled again (although this time it happened to be his mother's private eye disguised as a local).
  • Happens again when he has himself incarcerated for an elaborate prison break illusion, only to realize that the only toilets are in-cell ones - and he can't pass the key he swallowed without privacy. His solution is to try and escape by using Michael to break his fall.
• Unknowingly in Love: He is confused when the realization that Steve Holt is his son makes him experience an emotion that he can't identify as "envy" or "hungry".
  Michael: Could it be love?
  Gob: (annoyed) No, I know what an erection feels like, Michael! No, it's the opposite. It's... it's like my heart is getting hard.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Increasingly desperate for this from his dad as the series progressed.
  • He also shows this trait with his more mature younger brother.

George Michael Bluth

George Michael Bluth

Played by: Michael Cera

^{Click here} to see him in Season 4.

"They are grown-ups, they are allowed to have fun whenever they want. We're kids, we're supposed to be working!"

Michael's beloved son, George Michael is a dorky child who follows in his father's footsteps. He spends most of Season 1 with a hopeless crush on his cousin, Maeby. He starts a relationship with Ann in Season 1's final episode, which continues into Season 2.

In Season 4, he works on some groundbreaking privacy/anti-piracy software called "Fakeblock". ^{Spoiler Information}The software was only meant to be a simple woodblock-simulation app sold for iPhones, but when he lied about it to his father (whom he feared would not respect his career in music, nor his own privacy), who told Maeby, the lie spiralled out of control. He also begins to date Rebel Alley under the name "George Maharis" (inspired by Maeby's mispronunciation of the word "heiress"), and the relationship between him and his father is seemingly irreparably damaged in the process.

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• Accidental Marriage: With Maeby in the Season 3 episode "Fakin' It". They didn't know the priest was real (and the priest wasn't told it was a mock wedding).
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • In "Development Arrested", he punches GOB in the face upon realising that he has been dating Ann behind his back.
  • In "Blockheads", he punches his father for the same reason what he realises that he was aware that the two were both dating Rebel.
• The Big Damn Kiss: With Maeby at the end of Season 2, and again at the end of Season 5.
• The Comically Serious: He tries to be an outstanding man, but his nerdiness and shyness makes it fall flat.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: He turns it into an art form in Season 4; he initially lies about the "privacy software" he's making to his father, who then tells Maeby, who takes the ball and runs with it by finding investors and hiring a whole staff so that she can get in at the ground floor, thereby requiring him to actually produce the software. He exacerbates it himself after meeting Rebel Alley and talks up Fakeblock to impress her, leading to her investing in the company, and making it impossible for him to back out. Season 5 sees the fruition of all of these issues; George Michael, now at the center of major fraud, struggles to find a way out by selling the company, but refuses to tell his father the truth about his lie. This leads to Michael purchasing the company and attaching it to the Bluth company, further locking him in, and once Fakeblock is connected to the wall being financed by Chinese investors, the risk becomes not just of his freedom, but of his family's lives. All this because he didn't want to tell the truth to begin with.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Towards Maeby. This is part of why he can't stop her from promoting Fakeblock and getting investors on board until it's too late.
• Good Is Not Dumb: He's probably the most likable character and he is an excellent student in school. Until season four, when he finally breaks out of his shell, and in the process becomes lying, cunning, and starts sleeping with his father's girlfriend.
• Horrible Judge of Character: At least Michael seems to think so, as his son seems genuinely fond of his family and doesn't want to separate from them.
• Kissing Cousins: With Maeby, whom he develops a crush on.
• Love Triangle: Of a sort; he and Michael are both dating Rebel Alley, and while both know that she is seeing another man, neither one knows who, as George Michael is using the name George Maharis. Michael finds out first and decides to break things off with Rebel, but runs into George Michael on the way there, who believes that Michael knew and was courting her on purpose, leading to him punching his father in the face.
  • Also has one with Steve Holt in early seasons, though Steve exits the triangle on his own once he finds out that GOB is his father, making both George Michael and Maeby his cousins.
• Missing Mom: Died of cancer two years before the series began.
• Morality Pet: Michael treasures his son quite a lot. When Michael is feeling particularly vindictive towards his family, George Michael tends to try to steer him back. This is fascinatingly Zig-Zagged when George Michael discovers that Michael was knowingly dating his girlfriend (somewhat - see Love Triangle above), and before he can utter an excuse, punches him square in the face.
• Nice Guy: The only Bluth not to do anything horrible over the series. Until Season 4 when he finally lies to his father and starts building a fake company from that lie.
• Not So Above It All: His Bluth traits start to show during his storyline in Season 4, most notably the power of lying. It's even implied that, much like his Uncle GOB, George Michael even likely has his own illegitimate kid during his stay in Spain.
• Only Sane Man: Compared to most of his family besides his father, and at first, his cousin.
• Snowball Lie: His Season 4 storyline. What started with him wanting to make a woodblock simulator app ends with him running a massive political scam and being targeted by Anonymous.
• Token Good Teammate: Even more so than his father. George Michael is a sweet and goodhearted kid who always tries to do the right thing and, unlike Michael, doesn't resent the rest of his family for their poor behavior. Subverted in season 4, where he begins to show that he too inherited the family traits of being a lying schemer, it just took him longer to come into them.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Season 4, thanks to the classic college experience and his father's continuous need to hang around with him. He's rude and entitled around his friends, and isn't much nicer to his father. Then there's the Fakeblock storyline, which ends with him committing massive fraud.
• White Sheep: Unless you count crushing on his cousin against him (and trying to start a relationship with her), he’s by far the nicest, most decent, and most normal of the Bluths. Less so in Season 4 and 5, where after a lot of pushing, his natural Bluth dishonesty starts to come out.

Maeby Fünke

Mae "Maeby" Fünke/Surely Fünke/Annette Austero

Played by: Alia Shawkat

^{Click here} to see Maeby in Season 4.

"Marry me!"

Michael's niece, Maeby is the daughter of Lindsay and Tobias. A Book Dumb and materialistic girl as a result of her upbringing and neglect as a child. At one point she pretends to be a wheelchair-bound ill girl named Surely Fünke (the supposed twin sister of Maeby herself) as a way to cheat on tests and better her grades. In Season 2, she eventually cons her way into a job as a movie producer, despite still being a teenager at the time.

In Season 4, she still yearns for her parents' attention, but still remains neglected. ^{Spoiler Information}This led to her repeating her senior year five times in the hopes they would notice. She also travelled to India, where she disguised herself a shaman to give advice to her mother. Upon returning home, she started a relationship with Lucille 2's Mexican foster child, Perfecto Telles, whom she discovers is an undercover cop. Because she doesn't want to be found out as being 23 in a high school, she tries to blackmail him by getting incriminating evidence of him sleeping with her. Unfortunately, he turns out to have been lying about being a cop, which makers her a sex offender, and she is arrested by Rocky Richter.

---

• Ambiguously Brown: By extension of her father being so (see above).
• Bavarian Fire Drill: A frequent perpetrator of these.
• Book Dumb: In her twenties, she doesn't understand what "solve for X" is even asking, let alone how to do it. In "Pier Pressure", she and her mother are proud of her getting a C minus on a test.
  Maeby: C minus! C, M-I-N-E-S!
  Lindsay: Did you even study?
  Maeby: No. I didn't.
  Lindsay: Wow. How impressive is that!
• Becoming the Mask: Spends most of Season 5 living as retiree "Annette" in the Spotted Palm. George Michael is shocked when he realises the persona she as thinking of "killing off" was Maeby and not Annette,and she confesses she occasionally forgets which one she really is.
• Broken Masquerade: Her job as a movie producer comes to a close when George Michael sends her colleagues invitations to her 16th birthday party.
• Character Catchphrase: "Marry me!" as a standard deflection, particularly when she illicitly becomes a film executive, or "That was a freebie..." for unusual luck.
• Characterization Marches On: In earlier episodes, Maeby seemed more childish; the second episode showing her jumping on the bed and singing "Oops I Did It Again" in the shower. This aspect was quietly dropped to focus on how much more ‘adult’ she was than George Michael.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed, but when George-Michael begins dating Ann (her?), it's pretty obvious she's jealous and makes several attempts to make him notice her again. This causes a bit of confusion for her, but it does eventually help her come to terms with her crush on him.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: In Season 4, she curses repeatedly in an awards acceptance speech.
• Consummate Liar: Even by Bluth standards, Maeby is a standout.
• Deadpan Snarker: She's good at quipping, generally at the expense of her parents.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Every aspect of her character is taken apart and examined in the fourth season, and she goes from one of the more successful and well-adjusted Bluth relatives to one of the more pathetic and stranded members.
• Easily Forgiven: Season 5 showed she genuinely harbored no resentment for George-Micheal firing her, only interfering with his relationship with Rebel because It Amused Me.
• Fatal Flaw: For all her independence and intelligence, her need for her parents’ attention cripples her severely. This gets really bad in Season 4: She repeats senior year multiple times and even follows Lindsay to India because she's so desperate for her parents to notice her.
• Failure Hero: For all her desire to be rebellious, it either blows up in her face or doesn't go as planned.
• Future Loser: A major part of her character deconstruction in season 4. The same qualities that made her a Wise Beyond Their Years, precocious and cool rebel as a teen end up making her come across as a pathetic, stunted Womanchild as an adult.
• Gaslighting: As Annette Austero she made Stan Sitwell think he had Alzheimer's to try and get him out her home.
• Generation Xerox: She inherited Lindsey's tendency to make decisions just to get a reaction from their parents that ultimately screw them over in the long run (e.g., marrying Tobias, failing high-school four times).
  • At the end of season 3 it came about that Lindsey had a crush on Michael even though the final season revealed she was actually his aunt, similar to Maeby's relationship with George Michael.
• High-School Hustler: Engages in rather elaborate cons to get ahead or avoid doing work throughout her high school career. It reaches a point where, by season 4, she successfully conned her high school into allowing her to continue attending it into her twenties.
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: On a number of occasion in Season 1 and 2 does she say things to George Michael that could be taken for affection while it had nothing to do with it.
• Invented Individual: Her Running Gag. She scams money as "Surely" Fünke, then she lives a double life as a movie producer. And in Season 5 she moves into a retirement community as "Annette".
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's a snarky, self-centered and untrustworthy delinquent, but she's also one of the only members of the family consistently shown to have a good heart and is generally always presented fairly sympathetically.
• Killed Off for Real: Invoked by Maeby, who plans to kill off Surely near the end of high school so the other students will be depressed at the school prom. She invokes this again in Season 5 by killing off Annette Austero - she was gored to death in the Running Of The Bulls, apparently - though she was actually planning to kill off Maeby originally and continue living as Annette.
• Kissing Cousins: With George Michael.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In season 4, tries to seduce a man who she thinks is an undercover cop into sleeping with her so she can blackmail him for statutory rape. However, it turns out that he's really only 17 (his bracelet indicated his membership in an anti-bullying organization) and since she's 23 is arrested and taken to jail by a real undercover cop for being a sexual predator.
• Master of the Mixed Message: To George Michael, especially in early episodes.
  • Lampshaded by the Narrator in one episode where she's gushing about how much she likes Steve Holt to cover up her feelings for George-Michael.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Maeby shows shades of this, especially in early episodes. Season 4 then heavily deconstructs it; she tries so hard to draw George Michael out of a shell that no longer exists that he decides to part ways with her because all she accomplishes is putting a ridiculously unwarranted amount of pressure on him. Her 'manic pixie'-dom makes it impossible for her to listen to George Michael's objections until he has to forcibly fire her from his 'company'.
• Manipulative Bastard: Not above taking advantage of others' good will for her own benefit.
• Older Than They Look: In Season 4 she managed to redo senior year in high school for five years by posing as 17. Not that anyone isn't suspicious. Rumor around the school is there is an undercover cop among them. Of course Maeby is suspected by a couple of girls because at 23, its getting harder for her to pass as 17.
• One-Hit Wonder: In-universe, "Gangie", the horror movie she made about Lucille, is the only film of hers known to be a success. Ironically, before Lucille was cast it nearly got her fired.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Her actual name, Mae, has never been said on-camera, and is only mentioned in her introductory scene. In fact, it's pretty easy to forget that it's a nickname.
• Only Sane Man: Compared to her parents. Compared to most of her extended family, really, rivaled by only her uncle and cousin: She and Michael are the only ones to hold steady jobs (and ironically the one with the best public image; and that's not saying much when aside from Gangie, all her movies were flops), and she is smart enough to not get involved with the family's general craziness. Then she gets a job as a movie executive...
• Out of Focus: Of the nine main characters, Maeby generally receives the least amount of focus.
• Punny Name: You could make a drinking game out of it, but then it would be medically unsound to marathon the whole series.
• Quirky Curls: Her hair is very curly.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: While she starts off liking Steve Holt (who isn't a jerk but is the boistrous jock type), she begins to seriously fall for the sweet, timid George-Michael, despite the whole "cousin" thing.
• The Sociopath: Far more pronounced in the revival than the original run. A combination of Bluth genetics, neglectful parents, and being chewed up and spit out in a cutthroat entertainment industry make her much more uncaring about the feelings and well-being of others. At one point, after George Michael fires her, she gets revenge on him not because she was mad, but because she was bored.
  Maeby: Stop having feelings for [Rebel].
  George Michael: What do you mean? Is that something you can do with people?
  Maeby: Yeah. Once I learned how to do it with my parents, it was easy with everyone else. Like a heart switch. Click: I love you! Click: I love you not! Can't you do that?
  George Michael: No, but in my defense, I'm not a sociopath.
  (Maeby stares tellingly at George Michael for a moment.)
  Maeby: Click.
• Tuckerization: Mitch Hurwitz's daughters are named Maisie and Phoebe, making her name an amalgamation of theirs.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: It's a wonder how Maeby manages to be as good-looking as she is with Tobias as a father. This helps fuel the ongoing discussion of whether or not he really is her father. He is.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In Season 4. Her insistence on breaking George Michael out of his shell and promoting Fakeblock, which she only did because she wanted to help, will probably get him, and possibly her, indicted for fraud.
  • She only leased the model home to "To Entrap A Local Predator" because she needed the money, and it seemed harmless at the time since she assumed it'd be empty, but Tobias ends up as a registered sex offender when he comes to visit.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: She's much savvier than you'd expect a teenage delinquent to be, to the point of being able to successfully moonlight as a major film executive for several years. However, that wisdom becomes stunted as she grows older, but not out of her more childish personality traits - see Womanchild below.
• Womanchild: Becomes one in season 4. Despite now being an adult woman, she's still dead set on acting out to earn her parents' attention, to the point of deliberately staying in high school well after she was legally allowed to in the hope of them noticing and saying something about it to her.
• Younger Than They Look: Managed to land a job as a producer by acting older than she was.
  • She manages to top herself in season 5 by successfully posing as a 75-year-old in order to live in a high-class retirement home.

Buster Bluth

Byron "Buster" Bluth

Played by: Tony Hale

^{Click here} to see Buster in Season 4.

"Hey, brother..."

Michael's brother, Buster is an adult man who often acts like a child. He has severe Mommy Issues, and has a relationship with his mother's best friend Lucille Austero. ^{Spoiler Information}In Season 2, Lucille enlists him in the army to make herself look good to a Michael Moore lookalike. He escapes Army duty when his hand is bitten off by a loose seal in "Out on a Limb"/"Hand to God" and he gets a hook replacement. His real father is Oscar, not George.

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• Abandoned Catchphrase: "Hey [brother / uncle / nephew / x]" appears to have been left behind in the show's original run.
• Accidental Murder: Ends up killing a considerable number of people for the army, due to his lack of knowledge that the drone was not a simulation. He is horrified upon learning the truth.
• Alliterative Name: Byron "Buster" Bluth.
• An Arm and a Leg: Loses his hand when a loose seal bites it off.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: How GOB, Michael and Lindsay see Buster. While the other three, for all their faults, are capable of at least having adult conversations with each other, Buster’s arrival is like that of a helpless child showing up.
• Artificial Limbs: Wears a Hook Hand after losing his real one to a seal. The army later gives him a freakishly large bionic hand in Season 4, then a skinless Terminator-esque hand in Season 5.
• Basement-Dweller: Still lives with his mother while in his thirties.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He puts Herbert Love in a coma at the Cinco de Cuatro party after being continually treated like dirt by him. Season 5 further reveals that he killed both his grandmother (as a child) and Lucille Austero.
• Character Catchphrase: "Hey, brother/hermano/nephew/etc. ..."
  • After he loses his hand and requires a hook prosthetic: "I'm a monster!"
• Cloudcuckoolander: Buster's easily the most educated of the Bluth kids, but at the start of the show has almost zero real world experience, making him think that the army gives out plush dolls for accomplishments.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Several in "Bringing Up Buster", when he's letting his siblings know how he really feels about Lucille.
• Creepy Uncle: To George Michael occasionally.
• A Degree in Useless: Instead of getting a real job, Buster has spent most of his adulthood bouncing between graduate degrees in fields like Archeology, Cartography, Native American Tribal Ceremonies and 18th Century Agrarian Business.
• Drunk on Milk: Lucille 2 gets him in a drunken state with juice box fruit drinks.
• Graceful Loser: He's surprisingly calm and accepting of his fate when it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he killed Lucille Austero and tried to hide the body.
• Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: "Why I want to marry my mother, by Buster Bluth, age 10."
• Hook Hand: He gets one after a seal bites off his hand in Season 2, and again in Season 4, this time jewel-encrusted.
• Hidden Depths: Despite his childish, and rather innocent behavior, his attempts to be funny and witty often comes across as highly disturbing and suggest an extremely concerning mentality. The narrator also implies that he is actually more intelligent than both Gob and Lindsay.
  • This is born out by his characterization and backstory. Notably, he is the only Bluth who's graduated college (albeit with useless degrees), and tends to screw up due to a lack of real world experience, not intelligence. With Michael, he's also the only Bluth to have some idea of what a chicken is.
  • Buster's backstory as revealed by Season 5 explains it all - Lucille was always overly protective of him, but after Buster inadvertently killed his grandmother, he was essentially hypnotized by Lucille and Tobias to believe that Lucille had killed her, but that Buster had to take the fall for her by telling the police he did it, as he was "just a boy" and therefore wouldn't be held accountable. This was done in order to prevent Buster from thinking of himself as a murderer. Although it was successful in that regard, it also led to Buster's mental instability and overdependence on his mother, including both his fairly incestuous attachment to her and his almost violent resentment toward her. All of these things culminated and likely caused the breaking point which led to him murdering Lucille 2.
• Incest Subtext:
  • With his mother. His relationships with Lucille 2 and Ophelia Love fall apart because he wants them to mother him, rather than be his girlfriend.
  • When Lindsay and him start bonding in season three, he remarks "Sister is my new mother, mother. And is it me, or is she looking sexier, too?"
• Just a Stupid Accent: Buster thinks that Spanish is English with a Mexican accent.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: Note the Leitmotif whenever Buster talks to Oscar in season two.
• Manchild: Downplayed in that it's heavily implied he hates being stuck with Lucille and wants to escape her controlling tendencies, but simply does not have the social awareness necessary to do so successfully. Part of him might want to get away from Lucille, but he's so desperate for a mother figure that he'd rather stay with her than be alone.
• May–December Romance: With Lucille "Lucille Two" Austero.
• Meet My Good Friends Lefty and Righty: Season 4 gives us "Light Drizzle" and "Thunder," his remaining hand and his oversized prosthetic, respectively.
  "You see, Light Drizzle will just annoy you, but Thunder will eff you up."
• Momma's Boy: With a vengeance. They've even attended the Motherboy pageant every year since his childhood.
• Nervous Wreck: He suffers from frequent panic attacks, and has since childhood. They seem to dissipate the further he gets away from his mother's influence, but returns in a big way in Season 4, when he realizes the piloting "game" he's playing was actually piloting a real drone in Afghanistan, and he has been killing real people the entire time.
• Nice Guy: Consistently the only Bluth to do the right thing and to support his siblings unequivocally - he helps GOB with his illusions frequently despite GOB's constant mistreatment of him, is the only family member to not sell his stock on Michael's request, and takes care of Lucille 2 during her many dizzy spells. However, most family members don't appreciate this and just consider him a Nervous Wreck.
• Odd Name Out: He's the only male Bluth we meet not named Michael, Oscar, George or some combination thereof.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: People who have only seen a few episodes probably had no idea that Buster wasn’t his actual name, since Byron is only ever mentioned in the caption text of his introductory scene in the pilot. (Although it is seen again in season 3's "Spring Breakout" on a bottle of his medication that Lucille took.)
• Out of Focus: In season four; reality interfered to make it so. Tony Hale's cumbersome schedule during the filming of season 4 is the reason for his character arc being mostly divorced from the rest of the family members'.
• Parental Incest: Played with.
  Lucille: You know, [Buster's] damaged goods. He was born with a hole in his heart.
  Lucille 2: Well listen, Lucille, I’m gonna fill that hole, 'cause we're in love!
  Lucille: Oh, please! You're no more in love with him than I am!
  Buster: (quickly) Okay, we're all saying some things we're going to regret.
  • When arguing about dating Lucille 2 with his mother:
    Buster: I saw [GOB] last night at the Playtime Pizza Theater, on my date. Of which I have another one tonight, and I'm going to continue dating, Mom!
    Michael: Heh, sounded a little bit like "dating Mom".
    Buster: Yeah, it's starting to feel a little like it...
  • And when Lindsay starts taking care of him in Season 3:
    Buster: Sister's my new mother, Mother! And is it just me or is she looking hotter?
• Psychopathic Manchild:
  • His untapped wellspring of violent anger toward his mother has been a part of his character from his first focus episode, Season 1's "Bringing Up Buster," and in "The One Where Michael Leaves" Michael takes him fairly seriously when he hints that he might kill her ("Maybe Buster killed her already"). In "Good Grief" we find out that the family has been lying to keep him happy since childhood because of the destruction he can wreak when especially upset. The show is not oblivious to the risk inherent in arming such an unstable person with a hook or an oversized prosthetic, his breakdown in Season 4 was an obvious homage to Psycho, and by the end of the season he has not only beaten Herbert Love badly enough to put him in a coma but is the prime suspect in the murder of Lucille Austero, whom he blames for turning Lucille against him.
  • Downplayed, then subverted. In his Season 4 focus episode, "Off the Hook," Buster gets a job as a drone pilot for the army, and takes great glee as he gets to fly out and shoot people and places up, including weddings and hospitals. But then he finds out that the drone-controls are not a video game and that he has been shooting at real people the whole time. He reacts to this new knowledge with shock and disgust before going all out in a violent panic attack.
  • Ultimately played straight by the Season 5 finale, where it's revealed that not only did he kill his own grandmother (albeit in childhood and by accident), but also Lucille Austero.
• Sanity Slippage: After Lucille is sent to prison in Season 4.
• Start of Darkness: Season 5 reveals he murdered his grandmother in cold blood over a simple misunderstanding, and Lucille's reaction was to hypnotize him into believing Lucille murdered her and Buster is just taking the blame to protect her, allowing him to contextualize himself as a hero rather than a killer. Her intentions may have been good, but the end result was a sharp increase to their already unhealthily-close relationship, and a very unstable man.
• White Sheep: For all his flaws, Buster is the only Bluth who is never actively malevolent, exploitive, or manipulative, and he is notably less selfish than the rest of the family. For instance he is the only family member who follows Michael's order to not sell their stock, and he is shocked when he finds out that the drone has been controlling was not a video game. In fact, by the end of Season 4, he's the only Bluth who can really be considered this, due to his nephew finally starting to lie. Averted by the end of Season 5, with the revelation that he killed both his own grandmother and Lucille 2.

Tobias Fünke

Tobias Onyango Fünke/Mrs. Featherbottom

Played by: David Cross

^{Click here} to see Tobias in Season 4.

"... I didn’t get into this business to please "sophomore Tracy Schwartzman", so... onward and upward! On-... (cut to Tobias crying in the shower) Why, Tracy?! WHY?!"

Michael's brother-in-law, Tobias is Lindsay's husband. An ex-psychiatrist who was drummed out of the profession following his license being revoked as a result of misinterpreting what he thought was a heart attack. He then decides that his true calling is acting, even though he is terrible at it. He has trouble bonding with his daughter, and constantly makes homosexual innuendos in his speech, even though he insists he isn't gay. He is also a "Never Nude", a condition that prevents him from ever being fully naked. ^{Spoiler Information}While he gets temporarily cured from this in "Marta Complex", he turns back to his cutoffs when a picture of his scrotum, taken by accident on GOB's phone and uploaded to the Bluths email servers, is mistaken for a Iraq landscape and a crucial piece of evidence in the ongoing trial against George Sr, and is broadcast on international television. Throughout Season 2, he and Lindsay are in an open marriage, and he starts to try out for the Blue Man Group. When he finally does get to audition at the end of the season after the group drops their cease-and-desist, he flies to Reno with Kitty only to find out that George Sr had taken the position instead.

In Season 4, he becomes romantically involved with a former actress and methadone addict named DeBrie Bardeaux. ^{Spoiler Information}Tobias looks to make a new start in life (symbolised by his new license plate, "ANUSTART") after his trip to India. He is sent to prison as a registered sex offender after a run-in with John Beard, and ends up co-ordinating a Fantastic Four musical with Argyle Austero. He was last seen in Marky Bark's boat, with both of them getting caught in an explosion.

---

• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: For Maeby.
• Ambiguously Brown: while David Cross is white, there is a Running Gag that Tobias is actually a light skinned black man.
  • "Afternoon Delight" has two big ones: when he enters Lucille’s penthouse while painted blue, she describes him as "a colored man in her house," and when Lindsay says that the name Tobias makes everyone think of a "big, black guy", Tobias admits that he is "not a big guy."
  • In "Good Grief", Tobias expresses surprise that Lindsay is chasing a black bounty hunter named Ice, "somebody so close to [his] own type."
  • "Red Hairing" has Lindsay falling in love with Herbert Love, a black, bespectacled, bald politician, specifically because he reminds her of Tobias back when they started dating.
  • His middle name, Onyango, is a Kenyan surname.
• Ambiguously Bi: Word of God says Tobias thinks he's straight, and he did elope with Kitty, but it's hard to ignore his constant gay innuendos and detailed knowledge of gay culture.
  • In late Season 3, he's adamant that "Girl Michael", his date, is in fact, a woman, even though he's very obviously a man.
  • Even his relationship with the washed-up actress DeBrie Bardeaux is put into question when a doctor at a hospital mistakenly thinks she is an elderly man.
  • On the other hand, season 5 reveals he has a son he conceived prior to his marriage to Lindsay.
• The Artifact: Played for Laughs in season 5. Tobias is not a Bluth and, throughout most of the series, is only considered a part of the family through his marriage with Lindsay. By season 5, Lindsay is set on divorcing him, he generally forgets that his daughter Maeby even exists, and Lucille, his main connection to the Bluths in season 4, no longer accepts him as her therapist. Throughout the season, he clings desperately to whatever meager role he can to remain a part of the family, mostly by (poorly) impersonating one of the actual Bluths when they're not around.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Any of his attempts at acting.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In season 4. As the narrator notices, Tobias does finally get a starring role in a TV show like he always wanted. Unfortunately, this is John Beard's To Entrap a Local Predator.
• Beware the Nice Ones: In one episode, Tobias enters the same prison as George Sr. Tobias uses his therapist training and counselling skills to unintentionally convince the most powerful inmate to kill himself, and then heads a new prison gang centered around Wizard of Oz imagery, whose members were called "Friends of Dorothy".
• Breakout Character: He was originally planned to have a smaller role, but was bumped up to main character due to his actors' performance.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He's skilled as a psychiatrist and a physician but is too obsessed with the delusion that he was meant to be an actor to ever function as a breadwinner. Even George, who hates his guts, admits he is good.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's legitimately skilled as both a psychiatrist and a physician, but is far more focused on his hopeless acting career and is very camp.
• But Thou Must!: Happens in Season 4 after Tobias saves Lucille 2 from an ostrich - she offers him a job at her rehab center which pays six figures, which he turns down. Not long after, after he is arrested as a sex offender, part of his sentencing is to do community service at the same rehab clinic, but without pay this time.
• Butt-Monkey: He has been run over by a car on several separate occasions, had his hair plugs reject his body (resulting in a near fatal condition), and to add insult to injuries, his wife constantly attempts to have an affair.
• Camp Straight: Whatever his sexual orientation, Tobias has a taste for fashion and theater, things typically associated with Camp Gay men.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: The most divorced from reality of the whole Bluth family, which is saying a lot. Even Buster takes a few pot shots at him on occasion.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: He often gives out psychiatric advice to other characters while failing to realize that same advice is applicable to him, such as when Lucille refuses to accept Buster being sent out with the army:
  Tobias: You know, Mother Lucille, there's a psychological concept known as "denial" that I believe you're evincing. It's when a thought is so hateful that the mind literally rejects it.
  Lucille: You are a worse psychiatrist than you are a son-in-law, and you will never get work as an actor, because you have no talent.
  Tobias: (beat) ...Well, if she's not going to say anything, I certainly can't help her. (walks off-screen)
• Creepy Uncle: To George Michael occasionally, though as always with Tobias, it's unintentional.
• Delusions of Eloquence: Often talks in a very stilted, overly clever way, and puts a lot of confidence into his near-non-existent abilities as a therapist and actor.
• Determinator: Deconstructed in seasons 4 and 5. Tobias desperately believe he must keep his dream alive and he will succeed if he keeps trying hard and don't budge, however, he soon crosses the line between positive thinking and delusion as it's clear to everyone else that he is ruining his own life (especially since he is implied to actually be a rather good therapist) by pursuing a career he has no chance to succeed on against the advice of his friends and family. Season 5 takes it further by having him degrade not only his life, but the lives of his new girlfriend De Brie and his son Murphybrown, by forcing them to live in increasingly uncomfortable and unsafe circumstances and refusing to allow either of them to work jobs he doesn't consider "fulfilling." They eventually leave him as a result.]]
• Disguised in Drag: Parodied. In Season Two, he dons a fat suit, wig, and fake nose and adopts the disguise of "Mrs. Featherbottom", a matronly, whimsical old English housekeeper, to reconnect with his daughter and convince his wife he has what it takes to be an actor, in what the narrator describes as mostly Mrs. Doubtfire with a little Mary Poppins thrown in. Everyone immediately knows it's him but keep the charade going because he's working for free, and Tobias, exhausted, soon starts to "slip up" by neglecting to shave in the hopes that they'll "discover" him.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-universe in "¡Amigos!":
  Tobias: And second-of-ly, I know you're the big marriage expert! Oh, I'm sorry — I forgot, your wife is dead! (long pause) ...I'm sorry. That was 100% inappropriate, and I do apologize profusely... I'm... Ohhh...
• Everyone Knew Already: Mrs. Featherbottom. He's the only one who doesn't realize this.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: He’s a Never-Nude, which is just what it sounds like.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Season 5 has him discover he has a son named Murphybrown who he is eager to groom into a version of himself, which technically makes Tobias a Reality Forbidding Father.
  Tobias: I want to hear about your dreams.
  Murphybrown: I don't know, I'm really good at computers. It's fun too, kind of like the only time I feel alive.
  Tobias: No, no, your dreams. Not what you think will make you rich, your passion.
  Murphybrown: Oh, maybe also like maybe being a doctor for animals, or their dogs. Cause sometimes if I look at an animal there's like a special connection
  Tobias: DREAMS! Dreams! I didn't ask what part of an animal you want to touch!
• Genius Ditz: He is clueless about anything other than psychology, where he is surprisingly competent.
• Giftedly Bad: Despite the fact that he could make a very decent living for himself and his family as a doctor, he continues to desperately try to fulfill his dream of being an actor, a field he has absolutely no talent in. It gets a deconstructive twist that shows just how deep his delusion is in Season 4 as he utterly ruins the recovering drug addict DeBrie's life by dragging her along in his pursuit of his hopeless fantasy.
• G-Rated Drug: Justified in Season 4. He begins to regularly visit a methadone clinic, convinced it is an acting clinic called "Method One", and begins ingesting methadone samples, which he calls "acting juice".
• Hands-Off Parenting
• Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut: His last name "Fünke". "Funke" (Spark) is a common German name but "Fünke" is unheard of. Seems like the writers wanted to give Tobias an obvious German background.
• Informed Ability: According to Lindsay, he was a passionate human rights activist when she first met him but this has since faded. Not once do we ever get to see him take a remote interest in human rights.
• Innocent Innuendo: This is a big part of his character. Practically every other line of his is a homosexual innuendo, and as confirmed in Season 4, he legitimately has no idea that his dialogue sounds incriminating. In Season 4, reality finally bites back when his innuendo leads a team of newscasters to mistake him for a pedophile, which eventually gets him sent to prison.
• Innocently Insensitive: Tobias comes off as well meaning most of the time, but his decision to prioritize his nonexistent acting career over all of his loved ones ends up constantly making things worse for the rest of the family.
• Irony: David Cross, a very talented actor, portrays a man who cannot act for his life.
• Kavorka Man: He did land Lindsay. But to be fair, she did marry him only to spite her parents.
• Keet: Always ridiculously chipper no matter how bad of a hand life (or more accurately, his actions) deals him.
• Large Ham: When he gets acting roles, he really gets overemotional.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Tobias, in his usual bumbling fashion, manages to accidentally get involved in John Beard's To Catch a Predator ripoff. And, not realizing what he has gotten himself into and bumbling further along, he inadvertently digs himself deeper by saying things like “Is there a little girl alone here?” and, equally incriminating, “Daddy needs to get his rocks off.” (It Makes Sense in Context.) As a result he is arrested and registered as a sex offender.
• Naked People Are Funny: After being cured as a Never Nude in "Marta Complex", he overcompensates by coming down to the kitchen table at breakfast completely naked.
• Parental Neglect: Is extremely neglectful towards Maeby. Much less so with his illegitimate son, with whom he reconnects during season 5, much to Maeby's disgust.
• Phrase Catcher: In season 4, "anus tart", due in part to his Vanity License Plate ("A NU START"... without spaces). Lucille calls him this without having seen it.
• The Problem with Pen Island:
  • He is an analyst and a therapist; therefore, his business cards say "analrapist". For which he was almost arrested. He admits that the cards were a mistake and even adjusts the portmanteau to "theralyst" when his credentials are brought up in season 4.
  • In season 4 as he decides to try for a new start, he celebrates the occasion by having a Vanity License Plate with the words "A NU START" made. It doesn't look too good without the spaces either.
  • Also his T-shirt during the season 5 finale, supposed to be about the environment, simply says "USE LESS" in all caps and a very small space between the words.
• Shower of Angst: A Running Gag has Tobias weeping loudly in the shower whenever something upsets him.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He truly believes that he's a gifted actor, despite all evidence saying otherwise.
• That Came Out Wrong: Subverted in that he is seemingly oblivious and the other characters rarely acknowledge it. Lindsay usually reacts by rolling her eyes in resignation, while Michael attempts to point this out a few times but even when taking his advice and recording himself, Tobias is unsurprisingly unable to see what's wrong.
  "We need to talk. Man on man."
  • They might not explain what he’s saying, just for the rule of Don't Explain the Joke. Or because they're happy to laugh about him behind his back.
  • Though in Season 4, he finally realizes about the way he speaks, when he refers himself as a "theralyst" instead of an "analrapist".
• Transparent Closet: Even the family in-universe snickers behind his back about it. Lindsay actually has to tell him this straight to his face in season 4.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Balding, unattractive glasses, and refuses to be naked.
• The Unfettered: The quality that makes him as unsympathetic as the rest of the family. While comparatively kind and well meaning, Tobias' ignorant refusal to accept that he has no acting talent and put his actual skills to use to earn a considerable amount of money for the family ends up making him come off as a selfish idiot. It gets even worse in season 4, where he singlehandidly destroys a woman's life in pursuit of his dream.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Parodied. When standing up from a sofa, getting onto a stage, attempting to evade a blind woman whose house he's just broken into at close quarters... Tobias is extremely fond of these. Unfortunately, they're incredibly awkward and usually land wrong, so he more often than not ends up lying on his side rather than coming back to upright. But you have to hand it to the guy, he is agile, and silent as a cat!
• Wholesome Crossdresser: His stint as Mrs. Featherbottom, and a later attempt to impersonate Lucille, were done to reconnect with Maeby and help Buster, respectively.

George Bluth Sr.

George Oscar Bluth, Sr./Father B.

Played by: Jeffrey Tambor, Seth Rogen (Young George)

^{Click here} to see George in Season 4.

"... I got the worst (beep)ing attorneys."

Michael's father, George Sr. is an abusive father and the initial head of the Bluth company. While he is sent to prison for embezzling investors in the first episode, he continues to run the company from prison. ^{Spoiler Information}He escapes from prison at the end of Season 1, and after a death scare and funeral in Mexico, is a harboured fugitive and remains in the model home's attic. He sends his twin brother to prison in Season 3 in his place, and escapes to become a member of the Blue Man Group. Near the start of Season 3, Michael convinces the authorities to place him under house arrest in Lucille's penthouse at Bamboa Towers, and he makes repeated attempts to escape throughout the season. It eventually comes to light that he really was a patsy, both for the CIA and for Saddam Hussein, but their control over him didn't even come close to the real Man Behind the Man, Lucille Bluth.

In Season 4, he moves to Oscar's property on the border of Mexico and the US in order to construct "the Wall", a wall across the border to keep out immigrants. He also sets up a get-rich-quick scheme, which he dubs the "Sweat and Squeeze", and goes by the name Father B. ^{Spoiler Information}Eventually, George discovers that the property wasn't on the border, but was fifty feet from it, and he is left without the property on which to build it. He also discovers that his testosterone levels are extraordinarily low, but his oestrogen levels are unnaturally high, and he begins to live life as a woman.

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• Abusive Parents: Is emotionally abusive to all his children, and physical with all but Lindsay.
• Affably Evil: He's a lot less openly hostile than Lucille and even sometimes manages to come off as caring, but is still an abusive father and a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
• Affectionate Nickname: His grandchildren call him "Pop-Pop", which is subverted in some contexts where it means or is perceived to be a sexual euphemism instead.
• And Starring: With Jeffrey Tambor.
• The Bad Guy Wins: At the end of Season 2. Just after he "turns himself in", it's revealed that he sent Oscar to prison in his place, and the real George Sr has escaped and become part of the Blue Man Group.
• Badass Decay: Happens over the course of Seasons 4 and 5 as he gets more involved with the sweat & squeeze lodge and building of the wall; he goes from commanding, powerful, and domineering to very gentle and sensitive, unable to even boss around his usually-timid brother Oscar anymore. This ends up being the result of Lucille deliberately swapping out his pills with estrogen, lowering his testosterone levels dangerously low. Season 5 sees his downward trend continue, as Lucille has lost all attraction to him and has moved on to a younger man, causing George to attempt suicide in Michael's electric car.
• Big Bad: He's ultimately the antagonist of the show, Affably Evil as he may be. Subverted in Season 3, as he really was being controlled, not only by the CIA and Saddam Hussein, but also by the real Big Bad, Lucille Bluth.
• Big "NO!": In "Making a Stand", when GOB throws Michael over the edge of the balcony (as part of a Gambit Pileup).
• Breakout Character: George Sr. was originally planned to have a smaller role, but was bumped up to main character due to his actors' performance.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's absurdly buffoonish and more than a little crazy, but his scams have a distressingly high success rate, and only tend to fail due to his family's meddling.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • His claims that he was set up turn out to be true - the CIA set him up to make the model home in Iraq though a British building company.
  • He claimed that he though Saddam Hussein was the Soup Nazi. Considering Achmed (the real Saddam Hussein) is played by Larry Thomas, who plays the Soup Nazi, he can hardly be blamed.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive
• Decoy Leader: George might have been the acting CEO of the Bluth Company, but Lucille was the one who pulled his strings.
• Dirty Old Man: His adultery is an open secret within the family, and he even had money stored away for his prostitute habit.
• Disney Death: Briefly at the end of Season 1, when the Bluth family is led to believe that he died of his heart attack, when in fact he escaped through the window.
• Even Evil Has Standards: There are things that he feels are legitimately wrong like Gob giving George Michael an illegal job to do or Michael apparently falling to his death. He also puts his foot down with regard to Michael wanting to scare George Michael to teach a lesson, and when Michael asserts that George had always made use of "lessons" before, George point blank states that it was wrong of him to do so.
• Faking the Dead: After his escape to Mexico, he bribes the local authorities to stage his funeral in order to escape from Kitty.
• Grandparent Favoritism: He's a much better grandfather than a father, which is admittedly not saying much, and he draws the line at involving them in his schemes or treating them as he did his kids.
• Hidden Depths: Letting out a Big "NO!" and showing genuine horror when Michael is seemingly thrown to his death due to George's manipulating him and GOB in "Making a Stand" shows that he cares about his children more than he lets on.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Meat the Veals", it was his idea to coat Franklin's lips in ether. This is used against him by GOB in "Righteous Brothers".
• Is This Thing Still On?: A variant in "The Ocean Walker": George, thinking aloud from the penthouse bedroom, reveals his and Lucille's plans, not realising Larry, his surrogate, was still repeating what he was saying.
  George and Larry: Yeah, with the exception of the retard thing. (beat) Oh, God. Tell me you didn't just say that.
• Jerkass: In just about every way imaginable. He's selfish, greedy, controlling, and manipulative, as well as a serial cheater and an abusive parent. He is also more than happy to lie to his family and toss them to the wolves to avoid the consequences of his own actions.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In spite of his many terrible traits, however, he does occasionally show that he cares about his kids and grandchildren:
  • When Lindsay visits the prison in "My Mother, the Car", he bribes the other prisoners with gold bars to prevent them from cat-calling her.
  • He flies into a fury when GOB he reveals that he has outsourced a fairly illegal task that George wanted him to do to the underage George Michael.
  • He defends George Michael when Michael believes that he is on drugs, and encourages Michael to talk to him directly instead of making assumptions. He also decries his usage of scare-tactic "lessons" in their childhood, saying it was wrong (though this doesn't stop him from using said scare-tactic once more to discourage Michael from doing it again).
  • When Lucille is courting Warden Gentles and decides to sleep with him, George - who, up until that point, wanted nothing more than to get out of house arrest with Lucille - rushes to the prison to stop her and declare his love for her.
• Kick the Dog: Many of his scenes with his kids have him do this and he even made a point of deliberately doing this to Michael during their time working together, dismissing every idea or suggestion, even good ones, in an insulting way to keep him looking for approval.
• Leitmotif: An oriental tune is playing whenever he appears on screen.
• Manipulative Bastard: Completely willing to manipulate his children and grandchildren for his own benefit, though even he has his limits.
• Mean Boss:
  • During his time as the CEO of the Bluth company, he treated many of his employees poorly. Case in point, the way he treats Ira Gilligan in "Best Man for the GOB". Or the fact that he once fired an employee for roasting him at a Bluth Christmas party. Or the fact that in "Family Ties", it's shown that he once held what he called "Black Fridays", where he fired all of the employees at once (but only after safely securing all valuables from the office, with the employees' help).
  • He also cruelly shot down every idea Michael suggested just to keep him looking for approval, even when he admits the idea (changing the name of Sudden Valley) was good.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Poisoned two of Michael's teachers when he received failing grades, and attempts to do it again to Donny Richter.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Just when it seems like he's doing something to benefit the family and help them out by turning himself in and showing genuine kindness for his brother in "Righteous Brothers", it's revealed that it was all part of a plan to send Oscar to prison in his place.
• Papa Wolf: Or Pop-Pop Wolf, as one does not mess with George Michael.
• Parental Favoritism: He favours Lindsay, Michael and even GOB over Buster. Of course, it turns out that Buster isn't actually his son, but Oscar's, so this makes perfect sense. Best seen in a flashback to the morning of the boat party in "Justice is Blind", when he actually strangles Buster with his tie.
  George: Hey, enjoy yourself tonight because you are out of here. (tightens Buster's tie) I'm not going to spend my retirement watching you wipe your nose on your sleeve.
  Buster: (choking) I can't breathe, Dad!
  George: Neither can I.
• Sanity Slippage: During Season 2, he gets pretty stir crazy from being trapped in Michael’s attic for too long.
• Smug Snake: Is quite corrupt but not at all smart about it (case in point—he chooses an appropriately Amoral Attorney who is a complete incompetent).
• Time-Shifted Actor: In Season 4, Young George is played by Seth Rogen in flashbacks.
• Too Dumb to Live: His legal counsel is constantly feeding him bad advice and George realizes it after it's too late. Then we get to see said legal counsel (Barry Zuckerkorn) and we can see that his legal counsel is indeed horrible. George insists on sticking with him anyway, even rehiring him back in time for Season 4 after Michael fires him in the Season 3 premiere.
• Turn to Religion: Parodied when George Sr converts to Judaism and later, Christianity. He doesn't take these conversions seriously enough to actually, er, learn anything about either faith.
• Twin Switch: Very fond of doing this with Oscar, especially to move the plot along. This ends up taken quite literally in Season 4, where George Sr. starts acting like Oscar, and Oscar starts acting like George Sr. It's implied that ingesting maca root reversed the brothers' testosterone and estrogen levels, causing them to slowly take on the other's characteristics over time.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Exploited. He deliberately keeps shooting down both GOB and Michael's ideas and play them out against each others because it motivates them to work harder and cheaper to get his approval. Michael grows out of it, GOB not so much.

Lucille Bluth

Lucille Bluth

Played by: Jessica Walter, Kristen Wiig (Young Lucille)

^{Click here} to see Lucille in Season 4.

"If that's a thinly-veiled criticism of me, I won't hear it, and I won't respond to it."

Michael's mother, Lucille is the Evil Matriarch of the family. She manipulates all of her children and grandchildren, and is having marital trouble with George Sr. ^{Spoiler Information}She had an affair with his brother Oscar, which resulted in Buster's conception, and rekindles her love with him over the course of Season 2. The Season 3 finale reveals that she is the one who has been controlling George since day one, and was behind all of the corruption in the Bluth family. When the SEC interrupts the boat party, Lucille steals the Queen Mary.

In Season 4, she is held trial for stealing the Queen Mary, and because none of her family showed up, gets sent to a "country-club style" prison. In an attempt to get out of prison, she becomes the main villain in Tobias' musical.

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• Abusive Parents: Is emotionally abusive to all her children.
• Affectionate Nickname: Is called "Gangie" by her grandchildren, which becomes a bit less sweet when Maeby appropriates it for the horror-movie antagonist also based on her.
• Alcoholic Parent: She certainly falls into the Functional Addict category, being of completely sound mind and body, but she is rarely seen without a drink in her hand, goes straight from a drinking contest with Kitty back to rehab without complaint, and apparently keeps enough alcohol at home to supply an entire office party. She seems to be aware of her habit too, as she doesn't even protest when Michael suggests that she apparently starts drinking as soon as she wakes up.
• And Starring: And Jessica Walter.
• Being Evil Sucks: Comes to the conclusion of this at the end of season 4. Upon realizing how her children despise her and how alone she feels, after everything she had to go through during those five years, Tobias accidentally gives her a Rousing Speech on how she pushes people away and hides herself to avoid hurting herself, which leads her to admit she is tired of it. She does mellow down a bit in Season 5, primarily targeting her crueler tendencies at her soon-to-be-ex-husband George, but is still very much the same, embittered Lucille.
  Lucille: I'm so tired of being the villain.
• Big Bad: In "Development Arrested", we discover that she is behind all of the corruption in the Bluth company, and had been The Man Behind the Man for George for years. She's competing for the role with Saddam Hussein himself, and still manages to overtake him as the primary antagonist.
• Break the Haughty: Lucille's five years between season 3 and 4 made her go through a lot. She realized all her children already had divided her things for when she was away, literally no one of her family showed up at her trial, when she made new friends in prison, they soon turned on her and tried to kill her with uncooked noodles and learns she is the inspiration for the "Gangie" franchise. In Cinco de Quatro, she also realizes her husband lied to her again just to not spend time with her and the other man she liked cheated on her. Although it takes a while, the stress eventually gets to her and starts breaking her to realize that Being Evil Sucks.
  Lucille: I was about to cry for the first time in sixty years.
• Character Development: Receive this at the end of her season 4 storyline after Tobias tells her she isn't the villain but the "invisible girl". Most notably her act of committing herself to rehab and try to apologize to Lucille 2, though by season 5 she still drinks in spite of the former.
• The Chessmaster: All of the manipulation and deceit in the company is in large part thanks to her. And she's been doing this for years.
• Control Freak: She revels in keeping her kids in line, even as adults.
• Cool Old Lady: Regarded as this by the college students who witness her drinking Kitty under the table in "Spring Breakout."
  Waiter: Will there be anything else?
  Lucille: No thanks. I have to get back to rehab.
  Frat Boy: (excitedly) She's in rehab!
• Disproportionate Retribution: When he was in school, Michael once came home crying that a teacher had failed him, and now his life was ruined. His mother promised to take care of it. The teacher was never heard from again.
• Dragon-in-Chief: She's second-in-command to George... and has been pulling his strings the whole time, acting as The Man Behind the Man, and controlling his actions from the very start.
• Drama Queen: She has a penchant for calling Michael and hollering about the most mundane of things (mostly related to things that Buster is doing that aren't pleasing her). She usually drags him away from something that would be more demanding of his attention otherwise.
  "Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant, it just makes me want to set myself on fire."
• Drives Like Crazy: Was featured on the show World's Worst Drivers and has no qualms about running down someone she thinks is one of her kids to "give [him] a little scare."
• Establishing Character Moment: Has a fantastic one in the pilot that shows her self-serving tendencies, cruelty toward her family, and frequent alcohol consumption all in one go.
  Lucille: (to Michael) If you're saying I play favorites, you're wrong. I love all my children equally.
  (Gilligan Cut to earlier in the day)
  Lucille, apropos of nothing: I don't care for GOB.
• Evil Is Petty: Starts up the "Cinco de Cuatro" holiday so there would be no party supplies left for the Hispanic community to celebrate Cinco de Mayo the next day.
• Evil Matriarch: After her reveal to be the second-in-command to George.
• Evil Old Folks: An elderly woman without an ounce of decency inside herself.
• Fur and Loathing: Promotional photos show her with a mink coat draped over her shoulders (which might seem like Pretty in Mink out of context), and in addition to her attitude, one episode she wears a fox scarf and says that PETA complained because her dog needed some air.
• Glamorous Wartime Singer: In Vietnam.
• Lady Drunk: Though, according to Michael in "Spring Breakout", Lucille is still verbally abusive to her children when she's sober.
• Lady Macbeth: Revealed to be the second-in-command to George behind the whole company illegal deal and is the mastermind behind the Wall storyline of Seasons 4 and 5.
• Living Emotional Crutch: For her son Buster.
• Mama Bear: She may not be nurturing, but when Michael was wrongfully suspended, his algebra teacher (who got him in trouble) mysteriously disappeared. She also comforted him after he made a bad investment in "Whistler's Mother," and again in "Courting Disasters" when Michael believes he's Lucille 2's killer.
• Manipulative Bitch: She is called out for being this in My Mother, the Car since she uses every opportunity to play her children against another and will even do them physical harm if it means they'll do what she wants.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Lucille seems to be stronger than she looks; she can break through a barricaded door with little difficulty, and lifts a bag full to the brim with gold bars with only minor difficulty.
• My Beloved Smother: Mainly to Buster, though she shows a bit of this with Michael as well after his car accident.
• Racist Grandma: Especially toward her housekeepers, Luz and Lupe.
• Rich Bitch: Oh yes, and she enjoys being rich.
• Smug Snake: She tends to be this, especially towards Lucille Austero, when she wants to look more impressive.
• The Sociopath: A fairly textbook example; she freely lies, manipulates, uses, steals from, and even physically harms her family members for her own purposes. When confronted about this repeated manipulation, her response is, of course, to make her kids feel guilty so they'll comfort her.
• Time-Shifted Actor: In Season 4, Young Lucille is played by Kristen Wiig in flashbacks.
• Unknown Rival: Towards her friend and neighbor Lucille Austero, who seems to be completely oblivious towards their rivalry (especially in the first three seasons). She seems to have figured it out by Season 4, though.
• Villain Protagonist: In Season 4, she has already been outed as the Big Bad, and the one who had been manipulating George from the start, but she remains a main character, getting her own story arc like the others. She's not a Token Evil Teammate though, because the family has already gone their separate ways at this point.
• The Woman Behind the Man: The majority of George Sr.'s truly despicable business actions were at her insistence; she even went so low as to steal the idea for frozen bananas from a local businessman, and when the man found out and threatened to sue, Lucille had him deported.
• Zip Me Up: Said verbatim to Buster on more than one occasion, and once to George Michael. She stops requesting this after Buster loses his hand, though.

Other Bluth Family Members

Annyong

Hel-loh "Annyong" Bluth

Played by: Justin Lee

"Annyong!"

Michael's adopted brother, Annyong is a Korean boy adopted by Lucille late into Season 1 to teach Buster a lesson. "Annyong" is actually the Korean word for "hello", which Lucille (and subsequently, the rest of the family) assume is his name. He is Put on a Bus in Season 2, when Lucille sends him to boarding school.^{Spoiler Information}He is actually an SEC mole who has spent months hiding in the walls of Lucille's penthouse, gathering evidence against Lucille to avenge his grandfather's frozen banana business, which the Bluths stole. He returns briefly in Season 4, only to be deported.

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• Annyong Younger Sibling: To Buster; Lucille deliberately allows Annyong to do things Buster was never allowed to do in order to get under his skin.
• Best Served Cold:
  • Spends months living with the Bluths, and later hiding in the walls, waiting for his chance to get revenge on the Bluths for destroying his grandfather's business.
  • Gets a piece of this himself on Season 4 when he's footed with a $700 bill for using the Bluths' membership card, and gets deported. "Goodbye, Annyong."
• Chekhov's Gunman: He is all but forgotten about by the family after he is Put on a Bus, but ends up causing Lucille's eventual downfall aboard the Queen Mary.
• Foreshadowing: In Season 2 he can be seen wearing a mole t-shirt.
• Funny Foreigner: Oh, those Koreans!
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures: In-Universe. In an episode, he proudly proclaims that he has gotten a big role in the school play; the guy who orders the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• Kilroy Was Here: In a clever bit of foreshadowing in Season 2, when the banana stand is retrieved from the ocean, a message can be seen on it, which reads: "I'll get u Bluths - Hello". It's not until Season 3 that we discover that he's actually a mole for the SEC and his real name is Hel-loh.
• Older Than He Looks: He's actually 18 in Season 1, a fact which is only known by Lupe and makes him eligible to take the money from his trust fund.
• Pokémon Speak: Inverted. Everybody assumes that he's continually saying his name, but "annyong" is actually just the Korean word for "hello". His real name is Hel-loh, which loosely translates to "one day". This is illustrated when Michael takes a date to a Korean restaurant, and when he walks in the door, everyone says "Annyong!" Presumably he understands them, because he waves back to them. Why he never explained this to the rest of the family is a mystery, but perhaps he was just snickering behind their backs.
• Put on a Bus: Lucille mentions she sent him off to a boarding school. He was actually hiding in the walls to gather evidence to exact revenge on the Bluth family.
• Who's on First?: The Korean words "Annyong" ("Hello") and later "Hel-loh" ("one day") lead to funny conversations.

Oscar Bluth

Oscar George Bluth

Played by: Jeffrey Tambor

"I'm Oscar! ...dot com!"

Michael's uncle, Oscar is George's identical twin brother. ^{Spoiler Information}He is also Buster's real father. He rekindles his old affair with Lucille while George Sr. is a fugitive, but is eventually tricked by his brother into being sent to prison in his place at the end of Season 2.

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• Butt-Monkey: Constantly gets mistaken for George Sr. by the cops, and is the victim of three Twin Switches by George Sr. so the latter can avoid prison.
• Character Check: In Season 5, being away from maca root brings him back to his usual personality..
• Important Haircut:
  • Very important, as his hair is the only thing distinguishing him from George Sr. George Sr cuts Oscar's hair while he is unconscious in the Season 2 finale, and Oscar is sent to prison in George's place because of this. Due to the effects of stress, which George had previously theorised about, it didn't grow back.
  • However, after escaping from prison in "Prison Break-In", it did grow back, but George shaves it again in that episode. In "Development Arrested", George pays for him to get another haircut and puts him in his place aboard the Queen Mary. This one stays permanent.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: Believes he is Buster's father and is a crusader for this idea through the show. He's right.
• Out-of-Character Alert: How he convinces Michael that he is actually not George Sr. after being the victim of yet another Twin Switch. When Michael tells him that he doesn't believe that he is Oscar, and has no time for his mindgames as he going on a vacation with George Michael, Oscar simply sincerely tells him that he understands, because your child is always more important than anything else. This makes Michael instantly realize that he is talking to Oscar.
• Polar Opposite Twins: With his twin brother, George; he is gentle, friendly, and kind, if a bit of a drifter, while George is aggressive, mean, and greedy. It's clear to see where Buster gets his more soft-hearted tendencies from.
• Running Gag: His constant semi-cryptic (to eventually blatantly-obvious) messages implying he is Buster's true father.
• Sibling Triangle: He once had an affair with Lucille behind his twin's back, and the two of them has an on-off relationship whenever George Sr. is in prison.
• The Sixth Ranger: Introduced in season 2 after never being mentioned prior, but becomes a fairly consistent presence within the family afterwards.
• The Stoner: He is constantly either in a state of being high or looking for ways to getting high.
• Took a Level in Badass: Becomes much more assertive and commanding in Season 4, to the point that he fools everyone when he pretends to be George Sr.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Over the course of "Borderline Personalities" after a full year of working the sweat lodge and the sudden discovery that George Sr had only bought the land to build the Wall, he gets fed up with George Sr.'s Twin Switch act, and exploits it for his own ends instead. He also rekindles his affair with Lucille, but starts one with Lucille 2 at the same time.
• Twin Switch: Frequently a very unwilling victim of this, whenever George Sr. needs to get out of a legal jam. Unfortunately for him, convincing the authorities that they got "the wrong twin" is pretty much a fool's errand.
  • George Sr. cons him into taking his place in prison in "Righteous Brothers".
  • He does it again in "Making a Stand", when Oscar returns to the penthouse to grab a box of marijuana he had left there (which Buster's turtle had since eaten).
  • George does it again in "Development Arrested", where he pays for Oscar to get a haircut and then "invites" him to the boat party aboard the Queen Mary while he escaped to his house in Cabo, Mexico.
  • George Sr. later pulls it again as a part of his Sweat and Squeeze scheme in "Borderline Personalities", forcing Oscar to sit in the sweat lodge while he cons the executives with lemonade. However, once Oscar learns that George had only bought the property on the border of America and Mexico to build the Wall, he turns the tables on George Sr and exploits this for all its worth.

Franklin

Franklin Delano Bluth

Played In-Universe by: GOB, George Sr and Buster

"I don't want no part of your tight-ass country club, ya freak bitch!"

GOB's politcally incorrect puppet, first brought in to "hip up" his magic act in "Meat the Veals". In "Righteous Brothers", GOB convinces Michael to invest in a Franklin CD, "Franklin Comes Alive" to break down racial barriers.

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• Demonic Dummy: A comically racist variation of this.
• Jive Turkey: Talks like this, no matter who puppeteers him.
• Leitmotif: "Franklin's Brown Sugar", a little funk-esque track.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Takes his name from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
• No Indoor Voice: He also talks this no matter who puppeteers him.
• Race Lift: invoked Temporarily. When GOB puts Franklin in a washing machine at a laundromat to remove the ether from his lips, he accidentally bleaches him and has to have him re-dyed.
  Franklin, by GOB: (in British accent) You've ruined the act, GOB.
• Remember the New Guy?: In "Meat the Veals". Possibly Justified, as he was only known to any of the Bluths (besides GOB) from one family party, which ended poorly for everyone, so it makes sense they'd try to forget about Franklin.
• Unwitting Pawn: When George Sr. coerces GOB to cover his lips in ether to knock out Lucille and kidnap her.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: One of the few characters/Running Gags to not return in Season 4 & 5.

Tracey Bluth

Tracey Bluth

Played by: Maria Thayer

Michael's deceased wife and George Michael's mother.

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• The Ghost: She never makes an on-screen appearance during the first three seasons. She finally makes a brief appearance in Season 4, where she and an infant George Michael participates in a 1992 advertisement for George Bluth's "Babytock!" product.
• Has a Type: Michael has a tendency to fall for redheads as they remind him of Tracey.
• High-School Sweethearts: Michael had been in love with her since high school, and married her in his sophomore year of college.
• The Lost Lenore: To Michael. Her death is the main reason why he is so protective towards and possessive of George Michael.
• Loved by All: Surprisingly, the rest of the family really liked Tracey.
• Posthumous Character: She was already dead before the series started.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: A somewhat inverse example is a Running Gag. The other Bluths were all apparently very fond of her while she was alive and have nothing but positive things to say about her, but they are also very insensitive towards Michael regarding her death.
  Lindsay: You're one to talk. You haven't had a serious relationship since your wife. And you guys weren't even speaking toward the end.
  Michael: ...Lot of that was the coma.
  Lindsay: Yeah, I've heard your side of it.
  
  Michael: We need to speak to you about getting a divorce for Gob.
  Barry: Oh! Well, I got Michael out of his marriage, didn't I? (holds his hand up for a high-five)
  Michael: ...Actually, she died.
  Barry: You're kidding me. I've been taking credit for that for years!
  
  Lucille: You're the only child who chose a spouse I liked, and she's the one who had to die!
  Michael: I know, that's - that's rough for you.
  
  

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