Creed Bratton

Creed Bratton

Creed Bratton (real name: William Charles Schneider) is a secondary character and protagonist villain from the US version of The Office portrayed as a fictionalized version of actor and musician Creed Bratton.

Up until the 9th season finale, Creed was the Quality Control Representative at the Scranton branch of paper distribution company Dunder Mifflin, working under Michael Scott. He is notable for being a mysterious figure, one who is prone to making bizarre or confusing statements on a regular basis, much to the chagrin of others. As a result of previous drug addiction during his music career in the 1960s, combined with clear signs of mental illness, Creed has a consistently and phenomenally poor memory, which leads him to not remember whether the tasks he did were actually bad or not. He is never shown to have been doing any actual work at the office, though occasionally takes extreme measures to ensure his job security. 

Biography

When first introduced, Creed's job was unspecified, but the others in the office seemed to have known for a long time that he was clearly unstable.

In a deleted scene from the 3rd season episode "The Convict", it is revealed that Creed has been in prison many times, not remembering what it was for or what it was like.

In the 4th season episode "Fun Run", he admitted to having run cults in the past, and to following multiple at the moment, and in the 5th season episode "Frame Toby"  he is shown to be extremely dishonest towards law enforcement, with details emerging of his many scams and previous drug problems.

During the 9th season, it is revealed that Creed's main desire in life is to go scuba diving. 

In the final episode of the 7th season, when Dwight Schrute is made temporary regional manager but is quickly fired when the company's new owner, Jo Bennett, discovers that he negligently fired a gun in the office. She then decides to put the person who has been with the company the longest in charge while a search committee interviews candidates for a permanent replacement. This turns out to be Creed, and he is still in charge as of the end of the season, thus making him the regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton Branch. Between the events of the seventh and eighth seasons, he was replaced by Robert California. After Robert drove down to Sabre headquarters in Florida, and convinced Jo to give him her job as CEO, he was replaced as manager by his coworker Andy Bernard.

Trivia

• Creed has a habit of not remembering the names of his coworkers, such as calling Angela "Andrea", Meredith "Mary Beth", Darryl "Darnell", and Jim "Tall Guy" or "James".
• Creed is one of the main suspects in fan theories of the Scranton Strangler's identity.