Ham and Deadpan Duo

The hammiest and most exuberant shinobi ever and his Eternal Rival, the laziest and snarkiest shinobi in existence.

A pair of characters, either lifelong partners or just met up, in which one is a ham of decent size and the other speaks in a deadpan tone. The juxtaposition of the two, along with each of them on their own, is a common source of comedy for the audience.

Can overlap with a few Duo Tropes:

• When combined with Straight Man and Wise Guy and Boke and Tsukkomi Routine, usually the straight man/tsukkomi is the deadpan and the wise guy/boke is the hammy one.
• A subtrope of Red Oni, Blue Oni, where the ham is the red one, and the deadpan is the blue.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl brings gender to the mix: The Savvy Guy is deadpan and the Energetic Girl is hammy.
• Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing which contrasts their positive and negative emotions.
• The Super-Trope to Hammy Villain, Serious Hero, where the ham is the villain and the deadpan the hero.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The commercials for Icelandic Mountain Vodka star Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as a relentlessly, obnoxiously cheerful and overbearing spokesman for the brand, and his Beleaguered Assistant Einarr, who never gets anything right and lives in fear of his boss.
  EINARR! It's too small!

Anime and Manga

• Hiyo and Vivid!: Ayamorin is an outgoing, cheerful Wu-tuber who tries to make Hiyo smile, while Hiyo is physically incapable of smiling despite being Ayamorin's biggest fan.
• Lupin III has the flamboyant titular thief and his sullen gunman Jigen as well as stoic samurai Goemon.
• My Hero Academia: Loud, bombastic, fun-loving Present Mic and deadpan, stoic, often gloomy Eraser Head. Eraser Head also has this dynamic with the loud, flashy, energetic All Might.
• Naruto has the hammy and exuberant Might Guy and his slouchy and snarky Eternal Rival Kakashi Hatake.
• One Piece gives us:
  • The very shouty, energetic, over-the-top Luffy when paired with one of his crewmates or allies who are The Stoic and The Comically Serious, like his Number Two Zoro and Deadpan Snarker ally Law.
  • The loud, constantly-posing Franky and the subdued and stoic Nico Robin.
• Nick & Lever: Nick is a loud and flashy Large Ham, whereas Lever is more deadpan and subdued. Unlike most examples where the deadpan half of the duo is snarky and gloomy, Lever is just as cheerful and optimistic as Nick.

Comic Books

• Cable & Deadpool has a whole series built on this — the Straight Man and Wise Guy variant, naturally. Cable is the rough, militant deadpan to Deadpool's over-the-top hamminess. If Cable is not available, he's usually swapped out for Wolverine.
• Batman is the Comically Serious Terror Hero deadpan, and Robin (Dick Grayson) is the Large Ham Technicolor Ninja Hurricane of Puns quipmaster.
• Superman/Batman again has the Dark Knight as the deadpan, while the Man of Steel is the large ham.
• The Mask: Anyone wearing the magical mask becomes Big Head, an evil cartoon character complete with wacky attitude and impossible physics. The downside? They're frequently targeted by Walter, an inhumanly strong, stoic and silent brute who wants the mask for himself.

Creators

• Of the Penn & Teller duo, Penn is very loud and opinionated, while Teller is pretty much a mime.
• Laurel and Hardy. Ollie is pretty hammy while Stan is mild-mannered. However, Ollie more often plays the Straight Man who attempts to approach the situation seriously, and it's Stan's tomfoolery that gets them into "a fine mess". This is a rare example of the Ham being the Straight Man and the Wise Guy being the Deadpan.
• Jeff Dunham has two puppets that are frequently seen together: hyperactive Keet Peanut and the quieter José Jalapeño onna Steek.

Fan Works

• Soul Eater: Troubled Souls:
  • Tsuji is the brash, wisecracking Ham to Marcellus's cool Deadpan.
  • Claudia is the theatric Ham to Caius's restrained Deadpan.

Films — Animation

• A villainous example occurs with Darla Dimple and her manservant Max in Mark Dindal's Cats Don't Dance. Darla is the spoiled prima donna of Mammoth Studios and lives for giving over-the-top performances. Hulking giant Max, however, maintains the dispassionate demeanor of The Stoic, crushing upstarts without qualm or mercy.
  Max: Will that be all, Miss Dimple?
  Darla: For the moment. Thank you, Max. [pats his hairless head]

Films — Live-Action

• In The Addams Family, with Raúl Juliá and Christopher Lloyd sharing a screen, there is ham in abundance. Gomez and Fester are balanced out by Morticia and Wednesday who are far more subdued, sometimes wrapping all the way around to Cold Ham.
• In The Fifth Element, Korben Dallas, the serious Action Hero, is the Deadpan; and Ruby Rhod, the Camp Straight Jive Turkey Non-Action Guy is the Ham.
• Jay and Silent Bob from Kevin Smith's movies, with Jay being the Large Ham and Bob being the Silent Snarker.
• In Batman (1989), Batman is a serious Deadpan Snarker, making jokes while keeping a serious tone. Joker is a glorious Ham, living life to the fullest and showing the full gambit of Emotions while doing things that seem funny to him. It helps contrast the two and show that, while they may both be functioning Sociopaths (more so in Batman's case) and/or Psychopaths (more so in Joker's case), they handle their game and life overall differently.
• Men in Black has Agent J, a hammy sassy black man, and Agent K, a stoic grizzled veteran who is so deadpan it's hilarious.

Literature

• In Dust of Dreams, book nine of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, there are Draconus and Ublala Pung, of all people. One is a millennia-old Elder God, the other a giant man-child. While they wander the prairie, Ublala is being his usual cheerfully boisterous self and Draconus remains the reserved Deadpan Snarker.
  Ublala Pung: I've met gods before. They collect chickens.
  Draconus: We possess mysterious ways indeed.

Live-Action TV

• In Star Trek: The Original Series, Captain Kirk (while he is not always this way and can in fact be a Deadpan Snarker at times) is "a man of deep feelings" which tend to express themselves hammily whenever he's excited or trying to make a point. Spock is required to be The Stoic by cultural tradition, so his expressions (unless something is wrong) tend to be very deadpan. And if Kirk isn't around, Doctor "Bones" McCoy serves up the cranky ham in response to the "green-blooded hobgoblin".

Video Games

• Crash Bandicoot racing games have Chick and Stew, two anthropomorphic roosters introduced in Crash Tag Team Racing who are in Motorworld for a sports report: Chick is the serious commenter and Stew the wacky one. They come back in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled where they present the DLC content to the players before becoming playable themselves and with default stats which fit their respective personalities.
• Dawn of War has Lord Bale and Sindri Myr, a Chaos Lord and Sorcerer respectively. Bale's role is to go around making loud noises, while Sindri's is to be an increasingly obvious plotting betrayer speaking in relatively measured tones — the only time he goes into true Large Ham mode himself is his ascension to Daemon Prince.
• Devil May Cry: Sparda's twin sons form this dynamic; Dante is prone to bouts of hamminess (although he clearly plays it for amusement, shits and giggles) while Vergil is completely straight-laced.
• In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, in the Shivering Isles expansion, we have Sheogorath and Haskill. The first is a god of madness, who tends to spend half of the time yelling everything he says and making all sorts of non-sequiturs. The other is his chamberlain, who is completely stoic about absolutely everything and tends to be quite snarky in his conversations with the player.
• Genshin Impact has Fischl von Luftschloss Narfidort, the hammy Prinzessin der Verurteilung who speaks in a quasi-Elizabethan manner; and Ozvaldo von Hrafnavins, her loyal raven familiar who not only "translates" Fischl's manner of speech but also sasses back at her every now and then.
• Junkrat and Roadhog in Overwatch are a downplayed example, in that Roadhog isn't always deadpan, but he's definitely The Quiet One and does get some snarky lines, while Junkrat is manic and rubbery, an irrepressible font of energy. It even extends to their motions in things like the "Junkertown: The Plan" short: Roadhog is relatively controlled and slow, while Junkrat bounces around like a post-apocalyptic take on The Joker.
• McBurn and Duvalie, members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad from The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. McBurn is Brilliant, but Lazy to the Nth degree and rarely shows emotion, while Duvalie is a Tsundere who frequently, and loudly, voices her annoyance with him. Amusingly, she sees herself as the Only Sane Man of the duo when she really isn't one to talk.
• The Ratchet & Clank series gives us hammy mad scientist Dr. Nefarious and his snarky butler Lawrence.

Visual Novels

• The protagonist of Daughter for Dessert is deadpan at times, while Mortelli is a ham.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Ren is quiet, thoughtful, and prone to expressing his wit in deadpan and sarcastic ways, such as when he's asked to distract the sniper during the tournament, despite being the one with no shield, and his response is an understated "Sure, why not". His lifelong partner Nora is expressive, energetic, and loud. During the same tournament fight, when Jaune asks her to finish the fight with a single hit, she grins broadly, leaps in the air with her power needlessly flaring everywhere just for effect, and hits all four opponents with an exaggerated hammer swing. When Nora is telling Yang a story about her dream, she exaggerates the adventure for mood and suspense, while Ren quietly interjects with the actual, more boring, facts of the dream, deadpanning her enthusiasm.

Western Animation

• Droopy is always the Deadpan pitted against a Large Ham antagonist (Wolfie the wolf, or Spike the bulldog).
• Green Eggs and Ham pairs the BADGUYS: hammy rookie Gluntz with deadpan old-timer Mc Winkle.
• In the Merrie Melodies cartoon The Lion's Busy, Beaky Buzzard, the deadpan bird speaking in Creepy Monotone, follows around Leo, the hammy lion, waiting for him to die so that Beaky can eat him.
• Superman: The Animated Series: During the three-part "World' Finest," Joker comes to Metropolis to make an alliance with Lex. Joker remains his hammy, over-the-top self, while Lex is stoic and only barely tolerant of his new partner.◊
• Hanna-Barbera Studios' 2 Stupid Dogs are composed of the Keet dachshund Little Dog paired with The Stoic sheepdog Big Dog. Little Dog is full of cockamamie ideas and Insane Troll Logic, which routinely kick off the pair's adventures. Big Dog goes along, having no better idea. Thus, a loud idiot leads a quiet moron, and Hilarity Ensues.
• The energetic Pinkie Pie and her deadpan sister Maud Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
• In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, The Comically Serious Batman is often paired with Boisterous Bruiser Aquaman.
• From Animaniacs and their own spin-off series, there's Pinky and the Brain. Brain, the Evil Genius, mostly behaves in a deadpan manner (bar the occasional exclamation of "Yes!"), while the energetic Pinky is constantly jumping around and involuntarily spouting Verbal Tics.

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