Characters / Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Raymond Holt

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Main Characters (Jake Peralta, Raymond Holt) | Other Government Employees | Family Members | Other Characters

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Capt. Raymond Jacob "Ray" Holt

Played By: Andre Braugher, Seth Carr (young)

"I have zero interest in food. If it were feasible, my diet would consist entirely of flavorless beige smoothies containing all the nutrients required by the human animal."

The new commanding officer of the 99th Precinct, which is his first command. Holt is an extremely stern, serious and rules-conscious man who is unimpressed by Peralta's antics. Although an extremely gifted detective, he has been denied his own command for years, which he attributes to both his racial identity and open homosexuality, thus making him determined to distinguish himself and the 99th Precinct — and even more determined to rein in Peralta while doing so.

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A-H

• The Ace: This man can do pretty much anything. To put it in context, for every impressive feat that the rest of the 99 have accomplished, he has probably done it all before becoming Captain.
• Actually Pretty Funny: There are occasions where Peralta's jokes and antics make him laugh like when Jake moves the briefing podium half an inch or when he jokes that Kevin needs people to know how intelligent he is.
• Aesop Amnesia: No matter how often it is pointed out to him that his feud with Deputy Chief Wuntch is silly, pointless, and a distraction from more serious matters, it never seems to sink in. He doesn't really realize what she means to him until after she dies.
• Almighty Janitor: Despite his age and his position as a paper pusher, because he has been active since the late 70s, Holt is a bigger badass than the rest of the team combined.
• Antagonist in Mourning: A recurrent trait of Holt's, though it doesn't reach the levels of Alas, Poor Villain because he mourns his antagonists for being his antagonists, such as the Disco Strangler (though he actually was still alive) and Wuntch, although they all did use to be friends.
• At the Opera Tonight: Holt loves opera and is frequently shown attending or about to go there, such as in "The Box."
• Awesomeness by Analysis: He's apparently a huge fan. When watching Moneyball, their use of math and numbers to win games was so impressive it almost brought him to tears.
• Badass Bookworm: Overlapping with Genius Bruiser, Holt is a skilled police officer and detective right alongside being an accomplished scholar in multiple academic fields such as music theory, mathematics, and philosophy. Hell, the password unlock question on his laptop is "What is God?" to boot!
• Bait-and-Switch Tyrant: This gets addressed and out of the way in the pilot.
• The Beastmaster: A downplayed, humorous example; he tends to use his dog, Cheddar, as an ally in the various "Halloween" heists.
• Berserk Button:
  • Oddly enough? The idea that only medical doctors have a claim to the word 'doctor' as opposed to those with doctorates or PhDs makes him erupt. Likely a result of the fact that his husband, Dr. Kevin Cozner, is a college professor with a PhD.
    Philip: It's not like we're college professors calling ourselves "doctors.”
    Holt: Not the same thing, my friend.
    Philip: Well, sure it is. When someone has a heart attack on a plane, do they yell out, "Yo, does anybody here have an Art History PhD?"
    Holt: A PhD is a doctorate. It's literally describing a doctor.
    Jake: Maybe let's refocus.
    Holt: [increasingly livid] No! The problem here is that medical practitioners have co-opted the word "doctor.”
    Jake: Okay, Captain —
    Holt: I know we live in a world where aaaaaanyything can mean anything, AND NOBODY EVEN CARES ABOUT ETYMOLO-
    [smashcut to Holt and Jake back in the break room]
    Holt: Apparently that was a trigger for me.
  • When Rosa tells him he and Kevin should 'bone' just to clear the air between him and his husband, he spends half an hour either reading her the riot act or screaming "BONE" while holding his office doorway.
  • Nothing will save you from his wrath should you in any way threaten his dog, Cheddar. He will bring forth a shitstorm that will rain down on you. When he finally hunts down his dog's kidnapper in "Ransom" he ends up delivering a beatdown which is — for this series at least — rather brutal.
• Big Brother Instinct: Though he finds his younger sister Debbie annoying, he clearly cares about her, and offers to let her vent after he finds out her husband cheated on her.
• Big Damn Kiss: Holt and Kevin's idea of PDA is a firm handshake, so when they finally kiss, in the middle of the pouring rain no less, after being separated for several months, it's a really, really, really big deal.
• Birds of a Feather:
  • Kevin is just as stoic as him. So are all of Holt's previous love interests.
  • A platonic version with Rosa. She and Holt clearly have lots of similarities, at least in terms of how stoic and seemingly unemotional they can be. By Season 7, this has progressed into a true instance of this trope, where Rosa is explicitly Holt's favorite of the main cast.
• Black and Nerdy: He can easily get lost in the intricacies of a problem and tends to be Hoist by His Own Petard by overthinking a situation. The statistical analysis of Moneyball was enough to move him to tears. He also finds the use of extremely obscure historical references to be both clever and hilarious.
• Blood Knight: Very minor example of this, but when he was mugged in "The Wednesday Incident" he responded with brutal violence instead of taking the mature way out and complying with the muggers. He also deeply regretted doing it and felt shame about the consequences of his actions.
• Breaking the Glass Ceiling: He's the first (openly) gay man to reach the rank of captain. While the fact that he's both gay and black has exposed him to a fair bit of prejudice, his "rarity value" can still cause him problems even when people aren't being hostile — his long, unwanted spell in Public Relations was at least partly because the department thought he was a good way to show off their strides towards diversity.
• But Not Too Gay: Subverted to the point that it's basically a parody. He's the epitome of Straight Gay, the least emotional character in the entire series (and has a history of exclusively dating like-minded guys) and the relationship with his husband is extremely subdued (their most prominent PDA in the series prior to Season 8 is a firm handshake). Yet the fact that he is gay is never treated as some shameful secret or something that's kept on the down-low — he just happens to be a gay emotionless robot.
• By-the-Book Cop: He's older, more experienced, and a stickler for the rules than most of the cast.
• The Captain: Of the 99. He is first command and he wants to show he's earned the position.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • This trope is the reason why Holt comfortably tells Peralta — and only Peralta — the real explanation behind his wrist injury:
    Holt: I was hula-hooping. Kevin and I attend a class for fitness and for fun.
    Peralta: [overjoyed] Oh my God!
    Holt: I've mastered all the moves. [produces his phone and shows pictures to Peralta] The Pizza Toss... the Tornado... The Scorpion, the Oopsie-Doodle...
    Peralta: Why are you telling me this?!
    Holt: [evilly] Because no one... will ever believe you.
    [Holt deletes the photos and smirks triumphantly at Peralta]
    Peralta: [genuinely furious] You sick son of a bitch!
  • It happens again when Holt wins a dance contest and Jake misses the opportunity to record it.
• Celebrity Paradox: The Marvel Cinematic Universe is referenced a number of times in the show. Seth Carr played both a young Holt and a young Erik Killmonger in Black Panther.
• Challenge Seeker: Holt loves challenges, even to the point of overcomplicating them when they're simple, and he admits that a lot of his No Yay with Wuntch comes from the fact that she is his Worthy Opponent, and that he never felt "more alive" than when she challenged him. It kind of makes sense that he loves gambling.
• Character Development:
  • Holt's still a serious, stoic By-the-Book Cop, but in later seasons he's much more willing to have fun with the precinct and is more prone to being a bit of a goofball, himself. This can make watching early episodes a bit odd. For instance, in the Cold Open for "Skyfire Circle" (Season 4), when Jake does the "full bullpen" (sliding across the waxed floor of the precinct in his socks, from Holt's office to the elevator), and crashes into Holt in the process, Holt's response is to lift Jake's arm into the air and gleefully declare, "THE FULL BULLPEN!" This is something Season 1 Holt would've never done.
  • The turning point comes in the "Beach House" episode of Season 2, in which Holt is wounded that the team lied to him about having a getaway to let off some steam. He understood why they would need such a trip without him, but it felt as if his team would always treat him as a captain, never as a colleague or friend. The group brings him in with a game of "Real Ray or Fake Ray" (in which the players must discern if a quote attributed to Holt is real or not) and from there, he is more participatory in the games and pranks with his team.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • In the first season, he has an interest in food — e.g. he causally mentions reading Boyle's pizza rankings in the "Sal's Pizza" episode because "it's the only one that measures mouth-feel". Later seasons made a Running Gag about how bland he likes things, especially food — e.g. he declares he has "zero interest in food" in the "The Road Trip" and talking about how much he hates pizza in the "Halloween IV" episode.
  • In the first season, he shows that he can very much turn on the charm in front of women. Later seasons show that he is incredibly awkward when pretending to be heterosexual and only gets away with it because he bulldozes from awkward topic to awkward topic so that whomever he's talking to can't get a word in edgewise.
• The Chessmaster: The second Halloween episode, good grief, the SECOND HALLOWEEN EPISODE!!! He manages to well surpass Jake's efforts the previous years, and perfectly engineer everything that occurs. He also started planning for Peralta's retribution three months before.
• Chewing the Scenery: Whenever he's not being stoic and serious, he tends to do this a lot, such as when yelling "VINDICATION", and during the rant when Rosa said he and Kevin needed to bone.
• Cold Ham: He is normally very stoic and dignified (to the point of being The Comically Serious), but his formal and serious way of expressing himself gives everything he says extra dramatic gravitas. And he does have, in his own words, a "flair for the dramatic."
• The Comically Serious:
  • In contrast to Peralta's jovial attitude. He's definitely got a sense of humor, but he's such a rock-hard professional that it never rises above the deadpan. A Running Gag is that, even though Holt never changes his deadpan, flat delivery style, people from outside the precinct tend to find him utterly hilarious, much to the confusion of the people he works with.
    Holt: What's this I hear about you being on administrative leave?
    Jeffords: A year ago, my wife and I had twin baby girls, Cagney and Lacey.
    [Jeffords shows Holt a photo of his daughters]
    Holt: [emotionless cop voice] They have adorable chubby cheeks.
  • "The Tagger."
    Peralta: Has anyone ever told you you look exactly like a statue?
    Holt: Yes.
  • In "The Slump", Holt tells Peralta a story about an unlucky detective named Smitty and gives him a Lucky Rabbit's Foot. At the end of the episode, Holt tells Peralta he was just messing with him, in the same deadpan tone.
  • And explored in the "M.E. Time", where all the other cops relate their experiences with Holt relating what should be either incredibly good news (going on holiday with his husband) or incredibly bad news (a fire which damaged several precious heirlooms) in the same flat monotone, making it impossible to determine what his mood is at any given moment. It's also subverted in the same episode, as when the cops are telling their stories, Scully pitches in with one. We then cut to a flashback which involves Holt, clearly very pissed off, tearing Scully a new one:
    Holt: [screaming] This is the most incompetent, worthless report I have ever read in my life! [slams the report on his desk] Get your act together or so help me God, you won't live to see retirement!
    [cut back to present]
    Scully: It's like, "What's that guy thinking?"
  • There's also this classic Cutaway Gag:
    Rosa: [talking to Amy] The guy's impossible to read. Don't even try.
    Holt: [on the phone, completely emotionless] That is without question the funniest story I've ever heard.
  • In "The Party", we meet Holt's husband Kevin, an equally sober and serious man who apparently considers Holt to be the funny one in the relationship. Furthering this belief are the guests at the party who proclaim Holt as incredibly hilarious.
    Holt: "... no, no, I said, milli--meter."
    [guests laugh uproariously as Peralta looks on, puzzled]
    Guest: Okay, I could choke from laughter. You're too funny!
  • The followup episode, "Full Boyle", also shows him thinking of an opening joke for a crowd:
    Holt: "Do you know what the toughest part of being a black, gay police officer is? ... The discrimination." ... I believe that's what you call observational humor.
    Gina: Probably.
  • He repeats it to a crowd of African-American gay and lesbian police officers later in the episode and they crack up. Meanwhile, Gina looks on with a Flat "What" and a perplexed expression similar to Peralta's.
  • "Undercover" reveals that he was apparently just as serious and stuffy when he was a little boy:
    Holt: [on Jeffords impersonating a 7-year-old] Feel free to consult the script I prepared for you.
    Jeffords: Okay, but it's a little stilted. "I am feeling trepidation at the prospect of a parentless existence"? No kid talks like that.
    Holt: Those lines were lifted verbatim from my boyhood diary.
• Competition Freak: For all his professionalism, if Holt gets invested in something he will become this.
  Amy: You're just as competitive as we are!
  Holt: Absurd. I'm more competitive.
• Consummate Professional: Very serious, and always on-task in the precinct.
• Cowboy Cop: It's implied that in his youth he was one of these. And he still sometimes slips into his renegade ways when his emotions are thoroughly riled.
• Cultured Badass: Is a tough, competent police officer who knows enough about classical music to have a personal preference in flautists ^note Holt admires classical flautist Frans Brüggen. Most people who enjoy classical music like individual pieces, more serious music lovers like the music of individual composers or periods, but only really serious fans have preferences for one performer over another, wears monogrammed pajamas, uses the Abyssinian Civil War as a reference point in arguments and is married to a classics professor.
• Da Chief: Of the 99 precinct.
• Deadpan Snarker: Overlapping with The Comically Serious. Basically a straight-faced rock in a uniform, he's exceedingly deadpan and knows the best way to deal with Peralta is through snarkiness. His husband Kevin, an equally stoic man, seems to view him as "the funny one" in the relationship.
• Defrosting Ice King:
  • Gradually warming up to the precinct. He even did a group pop-and-lock with Peralta at the end of "Christmas", and "The Party" revealed that it wasn't his husband who invited them as they thought, but rather Holt insisted and even told his husband that he likes them.
  • In the second season episode "Jake and Sofia", Holt sternly demands to know why no one is working. They reveal that they are waiting to see what has made perfectionist Santiago a whole minute late. In the first season, he would have barked at them to act like police officers and get to work. However, this time he asks if he can play, too, and lets out an overjoyed "HOT DAMN!" when his guess (she was held up at the bank) turns out to be correct.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: In "The Bet", every single time Holt tries to apologize for something he tells Jeffords' wife, he gets Jeffords into more trouble.
  Holt: Oh, I've caused a problem. ...I think I am getting a text message. [not even trying to hide it] Bloop. Ah, there it is.
  Holt: Perhaps I should stop talking to your wife.
  Holt: Oh, no. Oh, goodness. I shouldn't have said that. I feel I may have made things worse.
• Exact Words: Twice.
  • When he approached the other officers to start an organisation for gay, black, and lesbian police officers, they laughed at his attempts. Holt began one anyway because although they laughed, they never said no and he did it himself.
    Holt: I'd like to request discretionary funds to start an organisation supporting Black, gay and lesbian police officers.
    [Mass laughter]
    Holt: They never actually said no so I just went ahead and did it.
  • Holt said he never threw Frederick's wooden duck in the garbage and the two broke up over it. Holt was actually telling the truth, he didn't throw it in the trash, he threw it in the river.
• A Father to His Men: He very much is the father figure to the precinct, especially Peralta.
• First-Episode Twist: The fact that he's gay is treated as a surprise reveal in the pilot episode, but is naturally referred to frequently in later episodes.
• Food Pills: One of Holt's oddities is that a variation of this is his preferred type of food:
  Holt: If it were feasible, my diet would consist entirely of flavorless beige smoothies containing all the nutrients required by the human animal.
• G-Rated Sex: One could easily interpret Holt's handshakes with his husband Kevin to be the equivalent of a heavy make-out session. They are very passionate handshakes.
• The Gadfly: He loves messing with Peralta and Santiago.
• The Gambling Addict: In his back story he had a gambling problem, particularly with regards to horse racing. In "Bad Beat", we see him fall Off the Wagon when he helps Jake to go undercover at a high-stakes poker game. Given a typically nerdy twist for him, however, when it turns out that he's not even that good of or invested a gambler, really — he's more obsessed with the math behind many of the games that typically involve gambling (such as card games) than the gamers themselves.
• Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand: The "firm hand" to Terry's "gentle touch".
• Graceful Loser: Played With and Subverted. When Peralta outwits him in "Halloween", he seems almost impressed, and later concedes defeat (and the amount of paperwork he now has to do) with good humor. The next Halloween, however, it's revealed that Holt became absolutely furious after watching Peralta spend the rest of the evening immaturely gloating and planned his revenge for an entire year and was already working on beating Jake the next year as well.
• Happily Married: Despite not talking about his home life very often, he and his husband Kevin are very much in love and devoted to one another. Unfortunately, in the first episode of Season 8, Holt reveals that they separated due to the various stresses that came with the year 2020 causing Holt to neglect their marriage. Thankfully, they get back together at the end of the very next episode, with the two of them agreeing to attend couples counciling.
• Hates Small Talk: Not as much as Rosa, but close.
  Rosa: We talked about emotions for twenty minutes.
  Holt: Dear God.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?:
  • When he goes into witness protection, he hides his homosexuality from his new Florida neighbors by constantly mentioning just how much he loves the "big, weighty breasts" of women.
  • In "The Big House Pt. 2", Holt distracts a prison guard by pretending to be a straight man visiting his incarcerated girlfriend. He comes up with a backstory involving cheating on her with another woman, named Jamie-Lynn, whose body he awkwardly describes in unnecessary detail.
    Guard: It just seems like you wanna be with Jamie-Lynn. I mean, you keep talking about her thigh gap.
    Holt: That's my favorite part of a woman. There's nothing more intoxicating than the clear absence of a penis.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Holt adores his pet Corgi, Cheddar.
• Heroic Safe Mode: 2020 was, to put it simply, an awful year to be a black, gay police chief, and Holt was pushed beyond his physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual limits while still trying to do his job. On the outside he seemed to still be Holt, but secretly he had been separated from Kevin, and he is desperately trying to conceal the fact that he has long since gone past his breaking point.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Subverted, while in the 99 he's considered a no-nonsense, inscrutable, excessively serious Cultured Badass/Genius Bruiser, outside of work and particularly regarding his husband's acquaintances he's considered an absolutely hilarious Brainless Beauty. The subversion comes from the fact that it isn't hidden at all, his behavior is the same, it's just that his social acquaintances are so absurdly serious and intellectual that he's "the funny bimbo" by comparison.
  • He's also shown to be an amazing ballroom dancer in "Charges and Specs".
  • He and his husband attend a hula-hoop class, where Holt has mastered all the moves.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: At the end of Season 6, while getting too into Snark-to-Snark Combat with Wuntch, Holt lets slip that he was once promoted faster than regulation allowed, resulting in Wuntch demoting him to a beat cop to "rectify the situation" the instant she has the power to do so.

I-W

• Incredibly Lame Fun: He enjoys pedantic pursuits and is amused to uncontrolled laughter when Jake "pranks" him by moving the briefing room podium by half an inch.
• Innocently Insensitive: Holt is not a cruel man by any stretch, and always tries to be polite to almost everyone. Unfortunately, he also has No Social Skills whatsoever. This often leads to him upsetting people, offending them, making them uncomfortable, or unintentionally making an unpleasant situation worse — and often not realizing he's done this until another character points it out (and if he does notice, he'll often fail to grasp why he had this effect).
• Jerkass to One: Holt is a nice and good man, but Wuntch makes him into an almost cartoonishly petty, vindictive man. In fairness, she returns it in full.
• Jock Dad, Nerd Son: He used to be the Nerd Son to his Jock Dad. According to him: "My father never saw my potential. In grade school, I wanted to spend all my free time drawing graphs and charts, but he insisted I play basketball."
• Jumped at the Call: Rather than just doing this once, Holt does this every single time he is placed in a challenging situation.
• Kicked Upstairs: During the Season 2 finale, he's forcibly promoted back to Public Relations against his wishes, by Wuntch.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": A massive fan of John Weichselbraun. He describes himself as a Weichselbrauniac and got kicked out during a concert due to gasping too loud in the front row. This has also turned into a recurring theme as he feels the same way about Dr. Yee.
• Large Ham: He can get very dramatic from time to time... and yet still somehow manages to combine this with The Stoic.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: A prime example of one. Over the course of the series, Captain Holt has learned to loosen up quite a bit. As noted above, his stiff, stoic behavior is often combined with his haminess that shows more as the show progresses. He goes from a strict, "No tomfoolery allowed" boss to a boss that sometimes even participates in his friends loony-antics.
• Manipulative Bastard: He may at first seem like a robot in disguise, but the man does, on several occasions, know some very specific buttons to push in order to get his underlings and superiors to do what he wants.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Holt gets his leg impaled with a pipe in "Coral Palms Part 2" (4.02) and acts like it's just a scratch. Jake is horrified, however. Holt is also stabbed ("lightly stabbed") by a would-be robber in "The Wednesday Incident", and although it causes him pain, he declines to mention it to even his husband.
• Mean Boss: He's mostly a Reasonable Authority Figure but he can touch on this from time to time, particularly with Peralta and Santiago. With Peralta, it's more justified since Peralta tends to bring it on himself with his immaturity and flippant attitude to his job, but for all her sucking up Holt can be a bit nastier to Santiago than is perhaps necessary. For example, he spends most of "M.E. Time" taking his worrying over the precinct stats for his first month as commander out on her quite harshly, and in "The Apartment" Jeffords calls him out for only being interested in playing mind games with Santiago during her evaluation when she's one of his best detectives and is only trying to improve herself.
• Meaningful Name: "Holt" is an Old English word for "wood"^note As in "forest" or "grove", to be exact. Fitting, since he typically shows about as much emotion as wood.
• Mentor Archetype: Holt is gradually becoming this for Peralta. Santiago desperately wishes Holt was becoming this for her, and he confirms that he was this for her in Season 4, where he admits he's been mentoring her since she entered the Nine-Nine, but secretly.
• Mirror Character:
  • The flashbacks we see of 1970s!Holt imply that he was more similar to Peralta than contemporary surface appearances would suggest.
    Peralta: Wow, I think I really would have gotten along with young Ray Holt.
    Holt: Yes, that's why I decided to change everything about my life.
  • He can be just as childish, petty and vindictive when it comes to his feud with Wuntch as she is with him.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: Peralta notices that Holt's pajamas are monogrammed with the initials R. J. H. and he keeps trying to guess what the J stands for.
  Holt: My middle name... is Jacob.
• N-Word Privileges: Implied when Peralta says he can't sing along to his favorite "very explicit" rap songs when Captain Holt is in the car with him.
• Nice Guy: He may have No Social Skills, but Holt is a very good man and dedicated police officer who truly believes in letting his team be themselves because it makes the world a better place.
• No Social Skills: His robotic, stoic nature frequently suggests that he barely seems to understand how humans work at times.
• Not So Above It All: Holt has an imposing demeanor, but he has as many foibles as the rest of the cast: for example, his temporary obsession with a Candy Crush copy game.
  • He also claims to have gotten a tattoo at one point, but he refuses to tell anyone about it ever again (until the series finale, that is).
  • As much as he tells Peralta off for his behavior, several times he engages in the same sort of thing — e.g. pranking Jake and making bets with him every Halloween.
• Not So Stoic: Beneath that robotic surface lies an incredibly emotional, compassionate, thoughtful man. He just has very little experience or use for visibly emoting, but is fully capable of crying, smiling, and getting angry.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Holt acting with any sort of overt emotion is so out of character that the entire precinct will stop all activity because no one knows how to react.
  • Played for Laughs in "Thanksgiving": Holt reacts with typical weariness when Peralta eagerly suggests that they role-play as "Barley and Jimes", but when one of the suspects they're following gets embroiled in an out-of-control family argument he ends up drawing upon the backstory Peralta gave 'Jimes' to stop them fighting:
    Holt: [shouting dramatically] MY WIFE WAS MURDERED BY A MAN IN A YELLOW SWEATER! IT'S THE ONE CASE I CAN'T SOLVE! Don't fight with family; it can all go away so quickly. [back to deadpan] Sign this?
  • He gets increasingly competitive and invested in the annual Halloween heists, to the point where even Jake is taken aback.
  • Holt making small talk with Amy is enough to clue her in that something is wrong during the first episode Season 8. While she initially thinks it means their relationship has changed it turns out that it's because he's been trying to hide the fact that he and Kevin have separated.
  • When he loses his patience with O'Sullivan, he lets a stream of (heavily censored) profanity rather then his normal highly intellectual insults.
• Old Shame: In-Universe, the younger Raymond Holt was apparently a much different person — brash, cocky, an obsessive gambler, prone to taking unnecessary risks — and he is very much not proud of the person he used to be.
• Only Sane Employee:
  • As Da Chief, wrangling his subordinates is actually his job on paper. Played with, in that the series gradually reveals that he's not without his own goofy eccentricities; he's just very stoic about them.
  • This also happened when he was assistant manager at an arcade, since the rest of the employees apparently find it acceptable to come later than opening hours.
• Outranking Your Job: As the Nine-Nine's commander, he shouldn't be as closely involved in the detectives' investigations as he is. That's technically Terry's job.
• Papa Wolf: He's quite protective of his precinct, even if the people threatening them are his direct superiors.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Holt gradually becomes one for Peralta. In the opening for "The Apartment", Peralta accidentally calls Holt "dad", for which everyone mocks him. Made pretty clear in "Captain Peralta". As time goes on, it becomes more and more clear that Holt does see Jake as the son he never had. He would never admit it, but their relationship, especially when off the clock, turns almost familial.
  • He's also one to both Amy and Rosa. While Amy has a good relationship with her own father, she looks up to Holt as a role model and has also accidentally called him "father" before. Rosa, being similarly Stoic and the only other queer person in the team, has a unique relationship with him since they are both able to emotionally connect with each other, and she is explicitly Raymond's favorite.
• Passing the Torch: Passes leadership of the organization for gay and lesbian African-American police officers to a younger cop, symbolizing how far they've come as a group (Holt was the sole founding member).
• Perpetual Frowner: He rarely expresses any other emotion, and he has a hard face when he says he's happy.
• Plain Palate: As noted in his quote, he has no interest in food as an experience, and eats solely for sustenance with no regard for flavors. That said, his favorite memory is food-based (sharing a croque-monsieur with his husband in Paris).
• Pull the Thread:
  • Holt tends to do this with Santiago when she's in ass-kissing mode with him to reveal the holes in logic, false modesty, or insincerity that she's tying herself in while doing so:
    Holt: The D.A wanted me to personally thank you for your work on the James Street drug bust.
    Santiago: [modestly] It's why we do this, sir.
    Holt: ... For praise?
    Santiago: [cornered] Uhhh...
  • When Holt's life is threatened in the episode "Christmas" and Peralta gets bodyguard duty instead of Santiago.
    Holt: Okay, the next time someone threatens to kill me, I'll come straight to you.
    Santiago: Thank you sir. I can't wait.
    [Beat]
    Santiago: [cornered] Uhhh...
• Rainbow Motif: As seen with his binders.◊ There's also a pride flag usually visible in his pen holder.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking:
  • The captain of the Nine-Nine, who proves more than capable on the occasions he leads the squad into the field himself. In "The Wednesday Incident", he takes down three armed muggers offscreen and receives only a "light stabbing" in return, and in "Ransom" he completely demolishes a much younger perp in a fistfight.
  • "Suicide Squad" also provides indications of Rank Scales with Asskicking; apparently, he was promoted from beat cop earlier than usual due to his sheer competence. And at the end of the episode, new acting Commissioner Wuntch takes advantage of this discrepancy to demote him back down to a patrol officer.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite his sternness and strictness, he's a very fair, reasonable commanding officer.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: He carries a .38 Special with a four-inch barrel rather than a 9mm semiautomatic like the rest of the squad. Shown Their Work/Truth in Television Justified Trope as Holt has been with the department before their 1994 switchover to 9mm semiautos and consequently is allowed to keep it.
• Right Behind Me: Holt appears behind Peralta several times in the pilot.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: He's the strict and stoic Manly Man while Terry is the emotional, yogurt-loving Sensitive Team Mom.
• Serious Business: Takes any competition extremely seriously. Best shown during a cold open where the others are making playful guesses as to why Amy is late. He guesses she was held up at the bank and deadpans, "This is fun." When Amy dodges the question, he angrily orders her to answer. She says there was a line at the bank. Holt gives an arm pump and shouts in victory.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: He's the exact opposite of his extremely lively and outgoing younger sister.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He has an open rivalry with Deputy Chief Wuntch that goes back decades. She is one of the few people in the world who can get him to break his usual stoicism and openly show anger and frustration.
• Stealth Mentor: Holt acts this way towards Peralta and Santiago:
  • His by-the-book strictness is gradually forcing Peralta to take his job seriously and become a better cop and better person. Lampshaded by Wuntch, who sneeringly refers to Peralta as Holt's "pet project".
  • It's more subtle with Santiago, since he on the surface resolutely refuses to act anything like a mentor to her. But this is gradually having the effect of helping her develop confidence and belief in herself rather than a need to rely on someone else's advice and good opinion. He eventually reveals that he was mentoring Amy in secret and had an intricate years-long plan to mold her into a better cop.
  • Takes this role with Sgt. Jeffords in a couple of episodes. He pretends to need instruction with firearms, and brings Gina along so that his obsession with details and Gina's incompetence will force Terry into taking several shots himself; this is to get Terry on the road to reinstatement in the field, as hitting the target a set number of times is a prerequisite. When Terry is considering leaving the Nine-Nine for a private security job, Holt's Mean Boss behavior by making him digitize his old case files seems likely to drive him away; in fact, he's doing it because he knows reviewing his old cases will remind Terry of how important his job is and convince him to stay.
• The Stoic: Basically an impassive statue come to life.
  • In the fourth episode of the first season, several characters comment on how hard it is to read him, with two Cutaway Gags, one showing Santiago asking him if he had a rough weekend, to which he responds he went to Barbados with his husband and has never been happier, and another with Terry asking him if he had a fun weekend, to which he responds his apartment went up in flames and he lost several photo albums, which has left him devastated. Holt's expression and demeanor are identical in both clips.
  • Subverted in one encounter with Scully, who once wrote a report that was so bad, Holt went berserk. Scully, however, reacted as if Holt was stoic through the whole thing.
    Scully: He’s impossible to read.
• Straight Gay: The revelation of his sexuality is a surprise moment at the end of the first episode. Although he's not in the closet and doesn't try to hide it, several detectives throughout the series don't realize he's gay (although several of these particular detectives aren't exactly exemplars of the profession, it should be noted) and he generally displays very few characteristics that would otherwise code him as such. It is also Played With here, in that Holt does have several features of stereotypical Camp Gay characters, they're just harder to notice because he is so reserved. He is fussy, neat, and cultured, for example, and is an amazing ballroom dancer. In the French dub, he has a slight lisp.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: When tweeting, he tries to be as efficient as possible, due to the character limit, and creates posts that use a bizarre contraction system familiar only to himself and, perhaps, Kevin. Twitter automatically locks his account because of this, due to the site's algorithms flagging him as a bot.
• Team Dad: He acts as the strict parental figure to the precinct, getting every member to reach their potential through discipline, and he is willing to put his team first in every decision he makes.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Played for laughs — his extreme stoicism means that he often has to spell out exactly what he's feeling or thinking because otherwise, his colleagues are completely unable to tell.
  Holt: Both of you have done exemplary work, which I appreciate.
  Peralta: And I can tell that from the absolutely no indicators on your face.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: He uses "punk" instead of "bitch".
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Heavily downplayed, but he's considerably snarkier in Season 7 following his demotion to beat cop.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Soup is the only food he is seen eating regularly and with any sort of variety. Otherwise, he views food merely as fuel and considers "Flavorless Nutrition Bricks" to be perfectly fine snacks.
  • Considers toasted bread to be his favorite breakfast meal, but whether it's out of preference or convenience is up in the air.
  • He also likes peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches due to how pragmatic they are.
    Holt: Their components have a long shelf life, they're cost-effective, and they're so simple, a child could make them.
  • He enjoys Monte Cristo sandwiches for sentimental reasons; he and Kevin shared one during a rainy day in Paris, which is one of his most treasured memories.
• Troll: More frequently towards Jake and on occasion toward Terry and Amy.
• Twofer Token Minority: Within the NYPD. He's black and gay, and as is frequently noted throughout the series he's had to face prejudice both because of his skin color and his sexuality. Part of the reason why he was promoted up the ranks was because the NYPD was eager to show that they were becoming more and more progressive. Unfortunately for Holt, though, that meant being assigned to Public Relations so that the public could see a black gay officer in a public role when all he really wanted was to be a cop and command his own precinct. He's also the founding member of an organization for African American gay and lesbian police officers, with about 50 members.
• Underestimating Badassery: For a given value of 'badass', anyway; in the early episodes particularly, he tends to underestimate Peralta and think that his surface goofiness is all that there is to him. For example:
  • In the first "Halloween" heist, he clearly did not expect Jake to be resourceful enough to figure out a way to beat him, or cooperative enough to enlist the rest of the team to do so.
  • In the Christmas episode, he thought Jake would blow off his bodyguard responsibilities, but the latter follows through on the job (admittedly part of it was Jake wanting to get back at Holt for being hard on him the past four months, but the point still stands).
  • This can still be a problem in later seasons; in "The Box", he offends Jake when he arranges for Jake to play the "dumb" cop in an interrogation so that he can play the "smart" cop, in a way which implies he doesn't think much of Jake's actual intelligence.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In-Universe, he fondly remembers an old partner who was "homophobic but not racist, back then that was pretty good."
  • Also discussed later on as an unavoidable part of his position. He says he himself sacrificed to get ahead in a racist, homophobic world, so he'll often encourage others to do the same (specifically Terry in "Moo Moo") even though he knows it isn't "right". A heartfelt discussion with Terry allows him to realize that times have changed, and now that Holt is in a position of power, he has the responsibility to use that power to effect change and protect the people under his care.
• Victory Is Boring: As Holt is The Ace, he often feels like this, with the Halloween Heists being a notable subversion. He mourns Wuntch and even the capture of the Disco Strangler because he enjoys fighting worthy adversaries.
• Volleying Insults: Constantly with his two professional rivals, Olivia Crawford and Madeleine Wuntch.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: He refuses to lie, insisting that integrity is the right solution to any problem. His only exceptions are when children under the age of eight ask about Santa Claus — he rambles about the impossibility of proving a negative, which he feels is meaningless but keeps the kids happy — and when he apologizes to his OB-GYN ex-boyfriend for throwing said ex-boyfriend's antique duck decoy into the trash, when in fact he didn't throw it into the trash, but off a bridge. He also lies to Scully and Hitchcock in one episode, but that might just be because it's Scully and Hitchcock.
  • A more serious O.O.C. Is Serious Business type aversion happened during the events of "The Wednesday Incident", where it turned out he'd been lying to his husband about going to his fencing classes because he was hiding the fact he'd been (lightly) stabbed during an attempted mugging. Kevin was very immediately upset by that revelation.

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