This is a list of characters from the comic strip Dilbert.
Dilbert
Dilbert is the main character in the comic strip. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an Electrical Engineering diploma and is an engineer. Although his ideas are typically sensible and revolutionary, they are seldom carried out because of his powerlessness. He is easily frustrated by the incompetence of his coworkers — most often the Pointy-Haired Boss — and is often sarcastic and snide. He is usually single as a result of his poor social skills.
Dilbert usually has no visible mouth or eyes, and in all but the early strips his tie usually curves upward. While Adams has offered no definitive explanation for this, he has explained the tie at least as a further example of Dilbert's lack of power over his environment. A second explanation given by Adams in the Dilbert FAQ is that he is just glad to see you. Adams has also hinted that the tie may be displaying an aversion to him. In more recent strips the mouth has been drawn on many occasions when Dilbert is eating, surprised, furious, or nervous, and in the TV series his mouth is drawn when he is speaking. Many of the other "-berts" look very much like he does, with glasses and no mouth (with the exception of Ratbert).
Dogbert
Although he is Dilbert's pet dog, Dogbert rarely acts like a pet. He is a megalomaniac and one of his dreams is to conquer the world and enslave all humans, and he has achieved this status several times through methods such as hypnosis and masquerading. However, he often quickly relinquishes his post due to boredom, someone foiling his chance, his conviction that people do not deserve to have him as leader due to the ongoing peace that results, or his desire to go nap on a soft pillow.
Despite this dislike for humans, he is known to protect and help Dilbert when he falls victim to sinister motives. For example, he has saved him from Mr. Tidy, the robber-disguised-as-a-cleaning-man, by having the dinosaurs flush Mr. Tidy down the toilet, and rescued Dilbert from the trolls in accounting several times.
Dogbert has made many ventures into the business world, often as a consultant who hypes new trends to the Pointy-Haired Boss. In these positions, he typically takes advantage of stupidity and gullibility. For instance, when hired as a consultant to create a new company logo, Dogbert proposed using a piece of paper with a circular stain from his coffee cup as the Brown Ring of Quality, and then charged a large consultancy fee. (The ring may have borne a certain sneaky similarity to the Lucent logo.)
An alter-ego of Dogbert is Saint Dogbert, the patron saint of technology, and Dogbert's religious form. Dogbert created this form as a method to eliminate the "demons of stupidity", a group that includes "buzzword-spewers", "clueless morons" and "people who press an extra button to do the job" (Ctrl-Alt-F4-Del, instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del, the soft reboot, for example). Saint Dogbert wears a miter and carries a scepter in his left paw. His right paw heals broken technology, and the scepter exorcises the "demons of stupidity."
Another alter-ego is Nostradogbert, a parody of Nostradamus. Here, he is a psychic, albeit an evil one. For example, he created a chain e-mail curse that, if read and sent to others, would turn both the reader and sender into a dog, but if that letter wasn't read, the person would die (most people chose the curse over death). His nemesis is John Stossel.
There was a series of unaired strips Scott Adams made that involved Dogbert having a rival, Bingo. But, Adams never aired the strips for he didn't want it to become a "cartoonist cartoon". The "Origin Strips" can be found here.
Before the strip was syndicated, Dogbert's name was "Dildog". Editors noted that any printing error obliterating the g in that name would wreak havoc, and the name was changed to Dogbert.
He often walks in the park with Dilbert, generally stealing the girls Dilbert is trying to attract.
Ratbert
Ratbert (or to his scientist master in the early scripts, XP-39C²) was not originally intended to be a regular, instead being part of a series of strips featuring a lab scientist's cruel experiments. Ratbert soon realized that he was the subject of a hideous macaroni and cheese experiment (the scientist made him eat huge amounts of it; he writes in his notebook that it causes paranoia in rats) and escaped, eventually finding a refuge in Dilbert's house. He was not initially accepted by the residents, especially Dilbert, who was highly prejudiced and closed-minded against rats. However, he finally allowed Ratbert to become a permanent member of the household.
As a simple rat, and having been specially bred to be susceptible to peer pressure, Ratbert is very gullible and innocent, although optimistic. Sometimes, his actions can become quite annoying. Like Dogbert, he has made inroads into business, once working as an intern, a concierge, a consultant (with an external brain-pack tied to his torso) and vice-president of marketing. He also became CEO after a cause-and-effect series of strips that involved the previous CEO jumping into a volcano. He was fired for varnishing employees.
Ratbert's biggest ambition in life is to become loved and accepted. He tries to impress those he considers his friends on various occasions, and nearly always fails miserably. Just like Dogbert protects Dilbert on numerous occasions despite his contempt for him, so do Ratbert's friends and family. Ratbert is also good friends with the garbage man, who tries—and fails—to enlighten Ratbert on the complexities of the universe.
Catbert
As with Ratbert, Catbert was not a planned regular. In this case, he was introduced for a series involving an attack on Ratbert, who was acting as an optimist. When the two got home (and after Bob shows his stupidity by stomping on Ratbert's head instead of Catbert), Catbert rebooted Dilbert's computer. Dogbert eventually forced him to leave.
Readers of Dilbert enjoyed the character so much that they spontaneously named him "Catbert", encouraging Adams to bring him back. He was reintroduced as the "evil director" of human resources, and in a parody of typical cat behavior he "plays" with his "prey", coming up with sadistic and illogical policies to enforce on the employees. He often works in tandem with the PHB.
Catbert officially entered the strip in March 1995, when Dogbert hired him to the company to handle "the downsizing". Indeed, downsizing is Catbert's greatest joy, and he has numerous binders on this subject (and one that says, "hire losers").
Pointy-Haired Boss
The Pointy Haired Boss (often abbreviated to just "PHB") is notable for his gross incompetence and unawareness of his surroundings, yet still retaining power in the workplace. In the Dilbert TV series, he was notably smarter and more actively evil.
The PHB's real name is not known, although in one episode of the TV series (The Return) he signs for a package using his line dancing pseudonym, "Eunice". Later on in that episode, he has two other aliases, which are posted on the "Most Wanted" board in the post office (yet he thinks that is because they like him). Adams has said that this is because it is easier to imagine the PHB as one's own boss when he is not given a name.
The Pointy Haired Boss is mostly bald, except for a fringe of hair across the back of the head, and sideburns that rise up in points. Scott Adams has admitted that the Boss's odd hair was inspired by devil horns. He used to have jowls at first because Scott wanted the character to look gruff, but the boss ended up looking dumb instead.
In early strips, when he was simply "balding", the Boss was very cruel and uncaring (shocking people with electric belts or wanting them to work 178 hours a week, although there are only 168 hours in a week — he expected the employees' families to contribute a few hours). However, when the hair reached its current state of outright pointiness, he became a complete imbecile. The Boss is childish, immature, ignorant, and rude, yet also annoyingly cheerful and oblivious to his own actions.
The boss made his most significant change in appearance during one month in the fall of 1991. The last confirmed sighting of the jowly boss was in the strip dated 1991-09-20, although he may also have been in the strip of 1991-09-26, seen from the back. He went unseen for several weeks during a protracted series about Elbonia, then reappeared on 1991-10-21, without the jowls and with the pointed hair.
The Boss's family sometimes makes an appearance in the strips, and are frequently presented as being as incompetent as him. In 1998, the Boss's son, who hid in the attic for four years instead of attending college, was hired for the company and made VP of marketing due to his complete lack of knowledge. Years later, the Boss's wife was hired as a receptionist for the company. Both the Boss's wife and son share his trademarked hairstyle, as do many managers in the comic strips. The Pointy-Haired Boss finds pointy hair as a positive and attractive feature, and often judges people based on the pointyness of their hair, such as when he promoted an employee named Ted because of a pointy "beard" that was growing on top of his head, or when he became attracted to Alice because she styled her hair like his.
The term "pointy-haired boss", or "PHB", has become a generic term for managers who do not understand what their employees do for a living, but try to pretend they do.
Within Dilbert's company the Boss represents middle management. The corporate CEOs and vice presidents of the firm are constantly changing and are usually minor characters without developed personalities. The strip is seldom particularly shy about killing members of upper management.
There is an unspoken but subtle running joke in the Dilbert chronicle. While the boss is "clueless", it is the boss who has a social life and family, while the "smart" ones who work for him have no social skills to speak of, and appear destined never to reproduce.
Wally
Inspired by a coworker of Adams at Pacific Bell, Wally is a lazy employee always trying to work the system, although he is very capable at his occupation. In Seven Years of Highly Defective People, Adams explained that his co-worker at Pacific Bell wanted to avail of the generous severance packages being offered by the company during a period of downsizing, which were actually better than a potential retirement package; he thus embarked on a mission to get fired. Adams was inspired by this co-worker's serious dedication towards this goal, and the concept of a completely shameless employee with no sense of loyalty became Wally.
In the animated series, we discover that Wally was once a great programmer. He is used later in the episode to solve the Y2K bug while being hypnotized.
Due to his obsession with coffee, Wally's idea of "work" is simply carrying around a cup of the beverage, of which he drinks hundreds of cups a day. He also has a notable lack of hygiene. There is, in fact, a group of people that look like him, which led to Wally once being arrested for impersonating a dead man (and, since he gave the police a fake name, also caused Asok's career to go down the tube). Wally has no feelings for other people around him, so to him, it's okay to irritate people, ask poor Asok for frivolous things during budget requests, and do things at work that are forbidden by policy. For example, he got rid of Dilbert's monitor when company policy asked the employees to get rid of office equipment they never used, and once turned his cubicle into a pool.
Wally enjoys viewing pornographic web sites, as indicated in a couple of strips. He was married at least four times but is now single and has no children (his last attempt at reproduction was at the cellular level). His personal life is a bit odd, such as having a veterinarian for a doctor.
Alice
Alice is a hard-working engineer who works with Dilbert. She has long curly hair, which transformed into a large and distinctive triangular hairstyle when the character became a regular.
Alice is rarely rewarded for her hard work, although she was for a time the highest paid engineer in the company. She stands in contrast with Wally, who does no work and is rewarded nearly the same. Alice also suffers all the problems of being a female engineer. She has no tolerance for the discrimination she experiences.
Alice has a short temper. Her anger is frequently expressed in physical violence, and she is known for her "fist of death". In the past she has, among other things, kicked an Elbonian into his own hat, stuffed Asok into his shirt sleeve, and once slapped a man so hard he travelled forward in time. Alice has also thrown the PHB a fairly long distance as a result of her annual performance review; Dilbert and Wally have noted that her distance improves every year.She occasionally claims to have superpowers, and has used the 'Fist of Death' more than once.
Alice is fractionally more successful in her social life than fellow employees. She has dated numerous times. She was almost into a committed relationship with an emotionally supportive man but turned him down at the last minute, as it was more cost advantageous to train monkeys to do similar work for Alice.
The women in the strip, in general, tend to be aggressive and sometimes violent, whereas the men are mostly meek and mild. Some observers might see this as a modern incarnation of the ancient sitcom staple of the henpecked husband. However, it may also be that it is politically safer to let women do violence. Adams is one of many cartoonists who admired Charles Schulz. In the Peanuts strip, Lucy was often violent, either "slugging" Linus or threatening to. As Schulz once explained, "Girls hitting boys is funny. Boys hitting girls is not funny". That same philosophy seems to apply in "Dilbert".
Asok
Asok (pronounced "Ah-shook" in the Dilbert universe, but actual pronunciation of name is "Ah-shoke") is a brilliant graduate from India Institute of Technology (parody of the real IIT) and an intern in Dilbert's company. The character is named after a friend and co-worker of Adams' at Pacific Bell. "Asok" is a common Indian name, though it is usually spelled "Ashok". The name is an English variation of the name of an ancient king of India, Ashoka. Asok himself is Indian, but was initially never mentioned in the strip. Adams says in Seven Years of Highly Defective People that this is because "I only like characters who have huge, gaping character flaws. The world is far too sensitive to let me get away with a highly flawed minority member."
Asok often solves difficult problems in a few keystrokes, but he is still naïve to the cruelties and politics of the business world. As a result, he often ends up being the scapegoat for his coworkers' antics. Despite the fact that he has completed six years as an intern (as of 2005) and performed the functions of a senior engineer, Asok has been denied permission to be a regular employee and the usage of company resources for his work.
It has been mentioned that Asok once lived in the handicapped stall; he later moved to a storage facility (but was only allowed an hour leave by the Pointy-Haired Boss). Asok is also trained to sleep only on national holidays, a trait that he allegedly carried over from his alma mater. In addition, he is able to perform telekinesis, using it once to vaporize an obnoxious Texan.
Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light
Phil serves as ruler of heck and punishes people for minor infractions not worthy of damnation in hell, such as using copier paper for the printer or stealing a chair from another cubicle (both of which Dilbert has done). He also serves as manager of limbo, which in the strip is a subsidiary of heck. He is the PHB's younger brother, though this is rarely mentioned (twice, with a recent strip involving Phil outsourcing sinners who partake of carbohydrates to the PHB worker's cubicles).
Originally, Scott Adams planned to have Satan become a regular member of the Dilbert cast, but eventually softened the character after suggestions by his editor. Instead of a pitchfork, he carries an enormous spoon, and he has a tail with a rounded end (although Adams has "forgotten" about this once or twice). Instead of damning people to eternal flames he darns them, as in "I darn you to heck". On occasion, he also wears a cape (which Adams forgot he wasn't supposed to have).
Elbonians
The Elbonians are the residents of a fictional fourth-world country that appears in the comic strip, named Elbonia. The country is said to be a newly developing nation which — like the real country of Albania — has only recently embraced capitalism. Its neighbour and enemy which it has threatened with a catapult launched nuclear weapon is called Kneebonia. Most of the nation is covered with waist-deep mud, although in "Seven Years Of Highly Defective People", Adams admitted a lot of people thought the country was covered with snow — either way, the effect was the same and both options were fine with him. Adams created the country in order to allow for a "foreign" aspect in Dilbert without using any specific ___location, in order to avoid a backlash by readers who may be from that region. Dilbert's company often uses Elbonia as a source of cheap labor and general outsourcing.
Almost all of the Elbonians have beards (even the women and babies), tall hats, and mittens. Their technology is very outdated: "phones" are actually cans attached to the ends of strings and the means of "air transportation" (Air Elbonia) is flinging people from a giant slingshot (something Dilbert hates to do because he loses his luggage and gets head-deep into mud). Elbonians are commonly portrayed as idiotic and backward, yet the PHB seems to approve of outsourcing programming or documentation tasks to them. For many years the country has been mired in a civil war between the left- and right-handed Elbonians.
Dogbert once became their ruler for a while, but then he and Dilbert (who acted as his adviser) fled the palace when they mistook the Elbonians' coming to them bearing farm tools as an uprising. It turned out they were calling him to preside over a farm holiday. In fact, this was the protracted series during which the "jowly" boss was replaced by the Pointy Haired Boss.
Some strips reference a "North Elbonia" which is Communist and appears to be loosely based on North Korea. North Elbonia was destroyed when they used a machine manufactured by Dilbert's employer; the manual had been made by Tina out of anger on how women in North Elbonia are mistreated (at least according to Dilbert).
A spinoff comic strip called Plop follows the life of an Elbonian with no hair, which is a rare trait.
Elbonia might be either a conscious or coincidental parallel to one of the venues in Al Capp's long-running strip Li'l Abner: a nation called Lower Slobovia (based on Siberia), whose citizens were perpetually seen in waist deep snow and ice.
Other characters
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