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    Jake Hurwitz 

Jacob Pencooper "Jake" Hurwitz

    Amir Blumenfeld 

Amir Blumenfeld

  • Abhorrent Admirer: To Jake, full stop. Amir is obsessed with earning his affection, by any means. At some points, Jake will throw him a bone out of sheer sympathy from how pathetic Amir is when he goes about it.
  • Abusive Parents: His father has aided schoolyard bullies in berating him ("Powder"), forced Amir into a life debt to repay a suicide debt he himself chickened out of ("Double Date"), faked his own death three times and gave away the names of his comrades during the Vietnam War ("30th Birthday"), thrown skillets at Amir ("Break"), regularly messages Amir to bully him even in adulthood, has tried to kill him ("Road Trip"), and frickin' moved.
  • Adaptational Name Change: His middle name, 'Valerie' in the Collegehumor run, becomes 'Shmuel' in the Headgum run.
  • Affluent Ascetic: Amir becomes rich on several occasions, and some of it even sticks, but he loves Jake too much to ever leave his shitty office job.
  • Afraid of Needles: 'Blood Donation' mentions this, as every time he sees one after waking up he bursts into tears.
  • All Jews Are Cheapskates: Amir has taken it as far as demanding to be paid back for a single stick of gum or an 80-cent bag of sandwich cookies shared between four people. Inverted with his personal spending, which tends to be unwise to the tune of dropping 40k on a vacation with someone who never agreed to go.
  • Always Late: Amir almost never comes to work on time, preferring to drop in whenever he feels like it, and usually after some grand adventure has happened off screen for him to recount to Jake.
  • Ambiguously Bi: He's dated several girls, and clearly shows an attraction to women, but his obsession with Jake and various offhand remarks (As well as owning a Grindr in 'Dating Apps') make it seem like he's probably not straight. Then again, it's often unclear if those are a consequence of him having No Social Skills and/or not understanding what he's saying. Not to mention he could also just be lying on occasion.
    Amir [quoting Brokeback Mountain]: I wish I knew how to quit you.
    Jake: Are you gay, man? I have to ask.
    Amir: What? I don't even know what I said, let alone what "gay" means.
  • Apologetic Attacker: When he punches Jake in 'Airline Scam', he immediately apologizes, one of the few times he ever does.
  • Asshole Victim: Almost everything awful that happens to him is the result of his own dickishness. His humiliation in 'Feminist' comes entirely from crashing a feminist meeting and insulting all of them.
  • Ass Shove: In 'Beeper' he tells a story about shoving a doctor's beeper up his ass to gank it for his own purposes.
  • Attack Hello: 'The Godfather' shows Amir leaping on Jake to greet him, turning into a full on brawl in the middle of the hallway. This image, of Amir on a surprised Jake's back, would later be adopted as a logo for the series (Seen on the trope page).
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: His themed lists tend to include whatever unrelated subject matter pops into his head during the process of composition. 'Diseases' explicitly states that he has ADD and ADHD.
  • Attention Whore: Amir needs to be seen, not just by Jake, but by everyone. An easy way to drive him nuts is to make him think he's being ignored, or to not laugh at his jokes.
  • Ax-Crazy: Amir turns to violence with whatever is on hand on the turn of a dime, and brings weapons to the office several times.
  • Bad People Abuse Animals:
    • He explains his pet in 'Dog' is so vicious because he belittled it, locked it in his basement for weeks, fed her live rabbits, and beat her viciously.
    • He offers Jake a rabbit in 'Bread', encouraging him to spread it like jam on bread with a knife.
    • He strangles an Iguana in 'Fur' and carries it around in his pocket.
  • Bait the Dog:
    • He brings bagels to everyone in work in 'Bagels', only to demand payment for them later. And they were poisoned.
    • He offers to buy sandwiches for the group in another episode, only to immediately demand they give him money for it.
  • Been There, Shaped History: He's stated to be the true identity of Qanon, an account he ran as a joke without realizing how seriously people took it.
  • Big Eater: He orders, on a whim, one of every single item from a diner in 'Breakfast'. When he can't finish it that day, he takes it all to work the next and continues to eat it throughout the day.
  • Bizarre Taste in Food: His ventures outside the fast food realm have included tuna with cracked pepper and vinegar on chocolate croissants, cream-filled hot dogs and undiluted Coke syrup. He's less amenable to fruits and vegetables, particularly yams.
  • Bloodlust: He tears out Jake's drip in 'Blood Donation' to drink from it like a tap.
  • Boomerang Bigot: Amir claims in 'Donald Trump' that he's against immigration of all kind, despite having not been born in America himself.
  • Born Lucky: Despite everything, Amir consistently stumbles into good fortune.
    • In 'One Almond', he buys a website domain name that just happens to coincide with the name of a street that a luxury high rise is being built on. Realtors call him up, offering to buy the title for ludicrous amounts of money, all of which he turns down.
    • He gets 100,000 dollars from his uncle in 'Business Ideas', which he throws away immediately.
  • Can't Take Criticism: Which doesn't stop him from constantly asking for feedback from other people, even leaving a suggestion box on his desk. Anytime Jake brings up the obvious logical flaws in his plans, he either lashes out in anger, goes ahead anyway, or aborts it entirely on the spot.
  • Chronic Pet Killer: Claims to have killed ten owls over the space of a year.
  • Class Clown: He's declared himself this at the office, though his brand of humor is not very well-received.
  • Closet Sublet: Spent a period of time living in Jake's closet without his knowledge.
  • Clothing Reflects Personality: Many of Amir's outfits throughout the series are shirts Jake wore previously, even despite Jake being vehemently against Coordinated Clothes in 'New Shirt'.
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right: Numerous times. On top of his Living Lie Detector instances above, many of the idiotic theories or beliefs he hold turn out to be correct in some way or another.
  • Cloudcuckoolanguage: His verbal and vocal tics are numerous and distinctive.
  • Comedic Sociopath: Amir seems to be dubiously capable of feeling emotion for anyone. Even Jake, his beloved, gets on the receiving end of this in 'Tongue' when Amir kicks him in the jaw, making him bite his own tongue off and then stands around laughing at him, even frenching his removed tongue.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: He believes that phones spy on their users ('iPhone 6').
  • Cool Shades: A Running Gag features Amir being weirdly good at putting on sunglasses, incredibly fast.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Hand in hand with Overly Prepared Gag. He spends the entirety of 'New Shirt' begging Jake to tell him where he got his shirt, only to reveal at the end Amir already knew and bought one for himself to wear beforehand.
  • Creepy Cross Dresser: Wears skirts, dresses, and makeup, which Jake is often vehemently opposed to.
  • Creepy Long Arms: He can reach Jake across both their desks when necessary.
  • Cruella to Animals: The entire premise of 'Fur', where he becomes obsessed with killing animals and wearing them as clothing.
  • Cuckoosnarker: As bizarre as he is, he still gets some good snarks in occasionally.
  • Desperately Craves Affection: He admits to Jake that hearing him laugh at one of his own jokes makes an entire awful weekend worth it, only to be told the laugh wasn't directed at him. Similarly, in 'Copier' he continues with a practical joke even after getting his ass horribly mutilated, considering it worth it to see Pat give a small chuckle at the results.
    • 'My Boy' opens with Amir having a dream where Jake congratulates him on a trick he did, then waking up and trying to replicate it.
  • Dirty Coward: When the chips are down, Amir always folds, especially when he got himself into this situation. He nearly breaks down in tears when Jake feigns a punch at him in 'Dating Apps', after he had already done the same thing.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: Jake comments on this tendency in 'Oil Spill', saying "I hate it when you're accidentally right".
    • Will points out in 'Pizza' that Amir's theory about Peyton Manning loving Papa John's may be true, because at the time Peyton Manning really did own several restaurants at the time.
  • Easily Embarrassed Youngster: Of the Manchild persuasion, with his unseen parents.
  • Embarrassing Middle Name: Over the original run on CollegeHumor, "Valerie." Yet he seems to be really proud of it.
    Jake: You know you can change your middle name?
  • Entitled Bastard: One of the entries on his bucket list is simply 'You don't owe the world a fucking dime'. In 'Grill' he claims that he truly does believe the world revolves around him.
  • Everyone Is Christian at Christmas: It's Lampshaded by Jake when he enlists his help with a threatening letter he's writing to Santa Claus.
  • Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: After kicking off Jake's tongue in 'Tongue', he feigns making out with it as a joke, all while Jake bleeds out and screams on the floor.
  • Evil Luddite: Zig-zagged. Amir states on two separate occasions that he distrusts modern tech ('Online Shopping' and 'iPhone 6'), but clearly doesn't care enough to stop buying it.
  • Extreme Omnivore: He regales Jake with his story of eating multiple expired foodstuffs in 'Baby', and 'Breakfast' is all about his journey to eat one of every meal from a nearby breakfast diner.
  • Fear of Thunder: "Storm" has him hiding out under a table in his boss's office during a thunderstorm.
  • Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: He's always changing hobbies and interests while pursuing them with such passion (even if not doing it remotely correctly), but tends to drop them frequently. In one episode, he does it three times.
    Jake: You're so fast at being dumb.
  • A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Any time he comes into money, like 'Business Ideas', he will lose it before the end of the episode (or before it even starts).
  • Forgetful Jones: Tends to forget his point in mid-conversation and has left his shoes (and, in one case, his socks) at home when going out.
  • Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Amir is never seen without his glasses, and is the most reprehensible character in his own show.
  • Freudian Excuse: His father horrifically abused him throughout his childhood.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: On two separate occasions when it's announced that he's leaving the office, everybody except Jake immediately throws a party.
  • The Glomp: Amir will sometimes greet Jake by leaping on him, demonstrated in the series logo.
  • Greedy Jew: Downplayed. Amir is Jewish, but that facet and his greed are never connected. He also flip-flops between not wanting to risk losing a cent to an employee in 'Printer' and throwing away massive amounts of money in other episodes like 'Breakfast'.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: Along with other Mood-Swinger traits. When it isn't begging, his go-to response to people contradicting him or things not going his way is physical violence or threats thereof.
  • Hated by All: Everybody in the office, and frequently the world, despises him.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: He's tried to force this with Jake (who he refers to as his "partner in life" at one point) by just plain following him everywhere. It's kind of worked, if only due to Stockholm Syndrome.
    Amir: Okay, so you just gave me keys to your apartment...for what?
    Jake: I didn't give you keys to my apartment!
    Amir: Okay, but you haven't changed your locks yet...for what?
  • Hidden Depths: Quite a few.
    • In 'Rubix Cube', he manages to solve a Rubix effortlessly without paying attention to it, all the while holding a conversation with Jake. When he tosses it back to Jake, the latter is stunned to realize he was doing it at all.
    • In "Valentine's Day" he writes a love poem so moving that Jake openly tears up.
  • Hilariously Abusive Childhood: The fact that he's still alive is kind of a miracle. It would be more horrifying if Amir wasn't such a horrible person.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Constant.
  • Idiot Savant: Has genuine writing talent (when not writing scripts), claims to have graduated at the top of his class at a performing arts conservatory in Italy, and can solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: Despite the above mentioned Entitled Bastard traits. Jake suggests in 'Grill' that he actually hates himself, and constantly gets new hobbies and personalities to try and become someone different, but always returns back to who he really is.
  • Innocent Bigot: Generally not, but at least towards Homophobia; he believes, until Jake corrects him, that gay marriage is bad because straight people are being forced into it. When he's corrected, he grows confused and wonders why else someone could hate it.
  • Insane Equals Violent
  • Insane Troll Logic: Much (if not most) of his logic falls into this category.
  • Insufferable Imbecile: Amir is painfully, painfully stupid, and any attempts to teach him will always fall flat on their face. His confidently incorrect assertions are among many things that piss Jake off.
  • Instant Costume Change: A Running Gag with his character, the most frequently commented-on variation being that he can put on sunglasses really fast.
  • In Touch with His Feminine Side: Wears skirts ("Brownie") and puts on makeup ("Powder") among various other effeminite mannerisms. This in contrast to Jake's obsession with masculinity, which occasionally makes him the loser of the episode instead of Amir.
  • It's Cuban: 'One Almond' opens with him in a tux and sporting a cuban cigar, which he tries to light inside an office building.
  • I Reject Your Reality: Amir will flat-out ignore things that inconvenience him, which brings far less problems to his life than he should.
  • It Amused Me: The mechanism behind most of his actions.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Sarah agrees with him on one instance that Jake has an annoying habit of interrupting people in their conversation.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Constantly disappoints Jake's efforts to nudge him into better behavior.
  • Jewish Complaining: Jewish, and many of the episodes begin with him simply complaining about something that happened, deserved or not.
  • Kavorka Man: Downplayed in that he can't seem to hold on to any of the girls he dates, but he picked up Diana, Hallie and Lerona with very little effort, which is pretty good for a guy who's barely potty-trained. On the whole he's considered more attractive than Jake, with several girls Jake has flirted with openly preferring Amir, including one that Jake was on a date with at the time. That's not even getting into his "10 for 10" Grindr record.
    • In 'Girls', he's regarded by strangers as the more attractive of the two.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Amir considers himself very smart. He's constantly coming up with ideas for new movies, videogames, apps, and the like, all of which he records on scrolls to read to Jake. When he's called out for his lack of foresight into them, he often responds with anger.
  • Living Lie Detector: He's very good at calling highly plausible bluffs, which, combined with Cassandra Truth, nobody ever believes him on. He's right that Rosie faked needing to go to therapy in 'Rosie's Appointment', that the employee was lying about her pregnancy in 'CEO', and that Pat was making up his excuse for the titular bake sale in that episode.
  • Lethal Chef: He burns his meal in 'Headshots', and his attempt to make bread in 'Bread' results in a stone-hard loaf with the consistency of chalk.
  • "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Amir is awful at spelling, and sincerely believes Jake is spelled 'Jjkae'.
  • Lonely Rich Kid: It's implied that his father is wealthy and frequently supplements his income, despite his generally terrible relationship with his family.
  • Loony Fan: His relationship with Jake has definite shades of this. He's also this to Mike Fink, an intern he's convinced is Shia LaBeouf.
  • Made of Iron: For the amount of punishment he has gone through in his past and throughout the series, it's a miracle that he's even still alive let alone ends up functioning normally (physically, at least). It's rare to see the physical consequenses of this punishment last longer than an episode or two.
    Jake: You should be dead!
  • The Mad Hatter: He owns up to his insanity several times.
  • Manchild: Amir will break into tears for being denied a turn at a videogame, tells jokes and pulls pranks far below his maturity level, and Still Believes in Santa.
  • Missing Child: According to 'Cousins', Amir was kidnapped at an early age and only returned to his family five years later, with no indication of what he was doing in that timespan. Amir claims it was the 'best five years of his life'.
  • Mistaken for Gay: Pat and Sarah speculate on his relationship with Jake in 'The Godfather', speculating that the two of them may be gay. At other times, it's Jake who flip-flops on thinking him gay or straight.
  • Mister Seahorse: Becomes convinced he's pregnant in 'Baby', which the episode revolves around.
  • Money Dumb: Amir has no concept of the value of money, throwing away cash on idiotic ideas and often buying things on a whim or for a joke.
  • Mood-Swinger: Will go from laughing and arrogant to crying uncontrollably to violently angry and back again in the span of a single 2-3 minute episode.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Many of his backstories directly contradict eachother (Especially of note the one where he claims to have missed most of his childhood after being kidnapped), but all of them feature his dad being a horribly abusive asshole, which can be assumed correct judging from everything about Amir.
  • The Münchausen: Half of all Jake and Amir videos are Amir telling some wildly outlandish story about something that happened to him, which often leaves Jake incredulous. Naturally, most of them are proven to be true by the end.
  • Neologizer: Very frequently. A few of his made up words, such as 'Bullspit', come to be adopted by Jake simply by hearing them so often.
  • Never My Fault: Notwithstanding his constant trolling, his explanation for why he's hated by everybody on Reddit is that every other user of the site is a "circlejerking diva."
  • No Indoor Voice: Especially considering most episodes take place in an office, Amir talks extremely loudly when he's not straight up screaming. 'Fired' lampshades this by showing a pan around the office during a standard Jake and Amir argument, showing how bothered everyone else is by their volume.
  • No One Should Survive That!: Amir is constantly said to have awful health, bordering on fatal, but somehow remains alive against all odds.
    • In 'Beeper' he tells a story where he bit a glass of orange juice as hard as he could at a party, resulting in the glass exploding in his mouth and needing stitches to fix it up. And then leaving the hospital before they can finish.
    • 'Blood Donation' reveals he has six different blood diseases.
    • 'Hotel Room' features a story where doctors X-Ray him and find several batteries inside his rectum, sawing into him while he's still awake and cracking jokes.
    • Cuts his finger off in 'Knives', leaving it dangling by a string, and continues with his attempt at selling said knives.
    • Sits on a printer in 'Printer', shattering the glass and tearing a wound on his ass.
  • No Sense of Personal Space: Mostly with Jake. He frequently invades Jake's space, cuddling up next to him or shoving his hands in his face, such as in 'One Almond'.
    • 'Kobayashi' opens with Amir greeting Jake by suddenly sitting down on his lap.
    • 'Resume' begins with him worming his way to sit between Jake and the couch arm, rather than the empty space right next to him.
  • No Social Skills: Particularly exemplified in "Celebration" where he can't even express joy properly.
  • Obliquely Obfuscated Occupation: Even he doesn't know what his job is.
  • Obsessed Are the Listmakers: He's constantly reading off pages of ideas and Top Ten Lists to an unwilling Jake.
  • Offscreen Reality Warp: A Running Gag is his ability to put on and off sunglasses instantaneously when the camera leaves him. Similarly, some entries like 'Carbs' and 'Pizza' feature him holding a different object every time the camera changes back to him.
    Hoodie: You're gonna have to teach me that one day, 'cuz I'm pretty impressed.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: He enters the scene in 'Diseases' by simply appearing, scaring everyone else in the room.
  • Once Done, Never Forgotten: For good reason. Amir's two most heinous acts in the series (Stabbing Jake and kicking his tongue off) are brought up many times when Jake needs to shut him down instantly, or at least try to.
  • Other Me Annoys Me: In the "Hallie" series he lets out a Big "SHUT UP!" after Jake starts acting like him.
  • Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Often becomes sweaty for seemingly no reason. 'Videos' has him becoming more and more sweaty and frantic as he tries to explain 'the crux of the short' to Jake.
  • Overly Pre-Prepared Gag:
    • 'Blood Donation' features him wearing four shirts on top of each other, each one with a message responding to something he somehow knew Jake would say.
    • 'Headshots' has him bringing in silverware just so he can make an 'eating your words' joke.
  • Parental Abandonment: His father apparently wants nothing to do with him.
  • Pathetically Weak: Amir's fight with Jake in 'Airline Scam' is pathetic to watch, and he breaks his arm trying to do one parkour stunt in 'Parkour'.
  • Ping Pong Naïveté: His regard for social situations goes up in episodes where he switches Straight Man with Jake. In these episodes, Jake is often physically and verbally abusive to him, but Amir continues to believe the two are best friends.
  • Pet the Dog
    • 'Homeland' opens with Jake and Amir having a conversation over lunch, one of the few moments they seem to actually enjoy talking, until Amir ruins it.
    • 'Mothers Day' features him giving Jake a gift card as a present to Jake's mother. Subverted in that it turns out to be expired.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Almost never performs any actual work at his job, which is lampshaded time and time again. It gets to the point that he sometimes won't even bring his computer. To make things worse, he consistently keeps Jake from working too. In certain episodes like 'Headshots', he doesn't even bother to bring his computer in.
  • Piss-Take Rap: Amir considers himself a rapper, but is shown time and time again to be painfully awful at it. Averted in the 'Rap Tutor' series, where he's taught by the titular and becomes actually competent, even getting radio play.
  • Pixellation: According to him in 'Headshots', he grows naturally blurry pubes, explaining the censorship whenever he's nude.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: He's displayed casual sexism and racism toward just about every minority, including Jews. He also refers to nearly every woman as a 'bitch'.
  • Pretty Fly for a White Guy: His slang usage and occasional freestyling.
  • Prone to Tears: Inelegant Blubbering too. Amir cries easily, which he refers to as 'beefing tears of soy'. Jake points out in 'Beeper' that some of these are deliberate childish ploys to get his way from people.
  • Properly Paranoid: In "Instagram." Also in "Swine Flu" and "Ebola," where it turns out that he has excellent reasons to be concerned that he's contracted said diseases, even if no one else does.
  • Psycho Knife Nut: Pulls a knife and stabs Jake out of nowhere in 'Karate',
  • Psychopathic Manchild: What he evolved into from a regular Manchild. While he commits various acts of casual cruelty, he's also overly emotional and a known crybaby when people start making fun of him.
  • Pungeon Master
  • Rabble Rouser: Despite being disliked by pretty much everyone, he has a bizarre knack for bending a crowd to his will.
  • Reckless Gun Usage: Throws around a loaded gun in 'Ransom', even pointing it at Jake at one point.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: A recurring element of his speech pattern. His freestyle rapping in 'Rap Coach' and all of his scrolls show a surprising ability to rhyme on the fly. Downplayed in other episodes, such as 'Gay Marriage', where he balks halfway through and Jake has to tell him to talk normally.
  • Sad Clown: He regards Jake as "the one bright spot in [his] otherwise dismal life."
  • The Schizophrenia Conspiracy: In "Amnesia" Jake describes him as a "paranoid schizophrenic," and "Instagram" and "iPhone 6" show that he harbors some particularly bizarre conspiracy theories about big tech, though in the former he's completely right. In "Question" he talks about having been institutionalized for three months in order to be cured of a delusion that aliens were trying to kill him.
  • Shadow Archetype: Just about everything Jake hates about Amir is also something he hates about himself.
  • Self-Serving Memory: 'Explanation' features him recounting a flashback with everyone acting out of character, up to and past the current moment.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: Despite ocassionally going on dates with women, Amir is never shown to possess interest in anybody but Jake, to an unhealthy degree.
  • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Amir is incredibly crass, and rarely gets a sentence out without swearing.
  • Soapbox Sadie: Some episodes, like 'Fur', feature him getting up in arms about a particular matter that bothers him this week, like thinking fur is murder (while wearing fur).
  • Social Climber: He fancies himself one, formulating a plan to insinuate himself into LA society by dating a celebrity.
  • Sore Loser: 'Monopoly' ends with his throwing the entire board over, making everyone else give up and leave in disgust.
  • Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Admits to putting others down in an effort to feel better about himself.
    Jake: I'm depressed that you get it, but you still wanna do it.
  • Stalker with a Crush / Stalker without a Crush: Made a somewhat Ambiguous Situation by Amir's constant confusion about how normal interpersonal relationships are supposed to work.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: An expert.
  • Sticky Fingers: He's stolen beepers from doctors ('Beeper'), babies from parents ('Baby Bjorn'), croissants from bake sales ('Dog'), and iPads from the Apple Store ('Online Shopping'), to name a few.
  • Stepford Smiler: Amir occasionally lets loose that he hates himself and has an awful life, which tends to make Jake feel sympathetic towards him.
  • Stop Trick: 'Business Ideas' opens with him frictionlessly sliding across the couch accomplished by one of these.
  • Still Believes in Santa: As seen in 'Santa'. Jake is dismayed to discover him writing an angry letter to Santa, despite being an adult and Jewish.
  • Strange-Syntax Speaker: He speaks simultaneously in strange riddles, half thoughts, similes and turns of phrases that don't make sense, and insults. Sometimes he tries to ape things Jake has said to him to sound smarter or more normal, but always manages to screw them up or deliver them at the wrong time.
  • Stronger Than They Look
  • Suddenly Always Knew That: To make a joke land he will sometimes pull new skills out of his ass on the fly. 'Headshots' has him revealing he knows how to paint, bake, and make origami swans in quick succession.
  • Sudden Name Change: His middle name is "Valerie" during the original run on CollegeHumor. As of the revival of the series in 2021, it's been changed to "Shmuel," the same as his real-life counterpart.
  • Sycophantic Servant: To Jake from time to time. When Jake innocuously asks him to 'Do me a favor' in 'Kobayashi', Amir immediately begins listing possible massages he'd be willing to give.
  • Talks Like a Simile
  • Thin-Skinned Bully: He can dish it out, but he really can't take it.
    "How is this fair? I was the one making fun of other people, and now...like, they're making fun of me!"
  • Too Dumb to Live: To the point where Plot Armor is the only real way to account for his being alive at all. Among other things, he has fallen out of a high office window, eaten tampons and shoes, deliberately taunted a starving snake by covering his body in dead mice, made out with a sick pig during the swine flu epidemic and walked to work on a busy freeway while talking on the phone.
  • Took a Level in Dumbass: Jake contends that this is happening to Amir in later episodes: "How are you getting dumber?"
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: While his bent for Comedic Sociopathy was pronounced from the beginning, earlier on it was more a case of high impulsivity and Ambiguous Innocence. He becomes far more calculatedly cruel as the series continues.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Chicken McNuggets, on which he solely subsisted for a good chunk of his life.
  • Troll: He frequently spams Jake, the CollegeHumor staff, and Jake's relatives on social media. One episode had him Rick Rolling an email thread about an upcoming funeral.
  • Troubled Abuser: Nearly any time Jake begins to get vehemently opposed to Amir, he's given a harsh reminder of how awful Amir's life actually is, and ends up feeling bad enough to let it slide.
  • Ultimate Job Security: Somehow never fired, despite doing no work and harassing many employees. Some episodes, like 'Opposite Day' and 'CEO' feature him very nearly fired, only to worm his way out of it.
  • Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: His lack of personal hygene becomes more notable as he becomes more troublesome.
  • The Unfavorite: He's one of three siblings, and the other two are doctors. In "Driving Home," his family has Thanksgiving dinner without him and refuses to tell him where they are.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: When Jake tries to be kind to him, he usually demands more immediately.
    "I deserve...so much more than this."
  • Unplanned Crossdressing: Several times. One episode mentions that his favorite clothing store is Talbots.
  • Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist
  • Ultimate Job Security: No matter how many times he shows up late for work (or not at all), assaults co-workers, flashes co-workers, causes scenes at meetings, or publicly confesses to crimes, he never seems in danger of being fired, or even disciplined. At least until the finale. Even in Fired, which explores a situation in which Amir gets fired while Jake stays on, the company's new CEO leaves the hiring/firing decision up to Jake. The episode "Cousins" implies that Amir's cousin Linford has pulled some strings to ensure that he'll stay hired.
  • Villain Holds the Leash: 'Dog' features the aftermath of him bringing a (presumably trained) attack dog into the office, who goes on the loose and begins eating other animals.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Despite berating Jake, ruining his life, and physically maiming him a few times, Amir is still somehow best friends with Jake.
  • Voice Changeling: A gag in 'One Almond' features him mimicking Jake's previous line perfectly, with the same voice and intonation. Jake only glances at him, not asking.
  • Waxing Lyrical: All the time.
  • Weak-Willed: In "Horoscope," Jake hypnotizes him by accident when he points out how suggestible he is. Subverted in that he manages to resist Jake's post-hypnotic suggestion.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: He's desperate to gain the affection of his abusive father.
  • Wild Child: He was kidnapped from a shopping mall at the age of six and returned five years later having completely forgotten how to speak. It shows.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Claims to have shot a child on purpose in 'Ice Breakers'.
  • Yes-Man: Even in episodes where Jake is insecure or straight up abusive to him, Amir is always willing to go along with him and back him up.
  • You Are Fat: A common sticking point of his against Streeter, making up bizarre insults towards his weight.
    Streeter: My favorite food-
    Amir: Is everything.
    Streeter: Alright, I walked into that one.

    Pat Cassels 

Patrick "Pat" Cassels

    Brian "Murph" Murphy 

Brian "Murph" Murphy

    Emily Wayne Dolphin 

Emily Wayne Dolphin

    Penis Anthony "Doobs" Doubineaux 

Penis Anthony "Doobs" Doubineaux

    Dr. Blumenfeld 

Dr. Blumenfeld (Amir's dad)

    Mickey 

Mickey

    Ben Schwartz 

Ben Schwartz (various personas)


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