text:
"If a radio landed in the hands of Thomas Jefferson, do you know what Jefferson would do? He would just lock it up, until he figured out it wasn't going to kill him. And that's exactly what we do here: take the unexplained, and safely tuck it away."
Warehouse 13 (2009-2014) is a television series. After an ancient artifact turns a museum employee into a Manchurian Agent that allegedly tries to kill the president, two Secret Service agents who came too close to knowing the truth (and have special skills that allowed them to do so), Pete Lattimer and Myka Bering, get transferred to South Dakota. Their new job? Find magical artifacts that have a tendency towards unintended consequences and stow them away in the Secret Government Warehouse to end all Secret Government Warehouses.There have been 12 prior incarnations of the Warehouse that stretches back into Ancient Egypt. The Warehouse itself has a Omniscient Council Of Vagueness, between its Agents, Caretaker and Regents, but there are individuals who have an eye on unlocking its secrets for their own means. Outside of hunting down the new artifacts, there is always a dilemma cooking up back at the warehouse where one of the miscellaneous items is being experimented on, stupidly misused or otherwise going haywire.In many respects it's a more comedic, fantasy oriented version of The X-Files, with a generous side helping of Steampunk. Their standard sidearm Stun Guns are called Tesla's (actually created by Tesla) and utilize vacuum tubes in their design. The emphasis here is also almost entirely on magic; free energy devices are not mentioned, which is a marked divergence from warehouses of this type that are believed to exist by Real Life conspiracy theorists.Warehouse 13 is part of the "Syfy-verse," existing in the same fictional universe as Eureka and Alphas. Crossovers have happened, however, there is a case of You Look Familiar where some actors who play certain characters in one show guest-star as completely different characters on Warehouse 13.Note: In real life, the term "Warehouse 13" is used on some software systems that failed to have a means to mark inventory as lost, misplaced or stolen, so, in order to make the books balance, anything missing was listed as being in "warehouse 13." Probably a play on "file 13," the nickname for throwing something in a wastebasket.— Artie, from the pilot episode
This series provides examples of:
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- Absurdly Sharp Blade:
- Shown in "Implosion", the Masamune sword is so sharp that it can cleave rays of light, effectively making its holder invisible. This is explicitly a magical effect, though, as the sword needs to be intact (blade, handle, guard) for that effect to work. Used as a weapon (aside, of course, from MacPherson stabbing Artie with it), it's shown in "The Greatest Gift" to cut through a computer monitor with one swing.
- The recurring dagger in season 4, finally coming into focus in "We All Fall Down", apparently has the power to kill or destroy anything by "casting it out", from impenetrable barriers to an Enemy Within (without killing the host). It's later explained to separate good from evil in "The Living and the Dead".
- Accidental Misnaming: Artie keeps calling Fargo "Bismarck" in "13.1".
- Achilles' Heel: The arrow that downed the man himself is in the Warehouse. It apparently has the power to kill anything, which is suggested as a means of killing Paracelcus. They never get to test it, though.
- Action Bomb: Seen in "The Ones You Love", a box made from the skin of Ignacy Hryniewiecki (assassin of Tsar Alexander II of Russia by suicide bombing) turns the one it attaches to into a walking bomb if someone touches the tattoo on the box with their skin. On the plus side, this fact also lets someone put it back on the box to render it harmless... if they knew that the box is made of leather, which is technically skin.
- The Ageless:
- Mrs. Frederic hasn't aged a day for at least a century or so, thanks to her connection to the Warehouse. The finale shows that Claudia gets it too.
- The Count De Saint-Germain, his wife, and her son apparently gained similar immortality through the Philosopher's Stone, with the added benefit of a Healing Factor that takes care of things like poison or broken necks.
- A.I. is a Crapshoot:
- The Warehouse's autovac, seen in "Breakdown", is apparently intelligent, but its clumsiness nearly killed Claudia.
- Shown in "13.1", Hugo One, at least at first. It turns out that the "AI" is actually the creator himself, or rather the left side of his brain downloaded into the computer. Without the other half, the program takes everything too logically.
- Alas, Poor Villain: When MacPherson is dying, and Artie tells him that death may not be so bad after all, MacPherson apologizes for everything he's done.
- Also, HG Wells's death, although by then she'd undergone a full HeelFace Turn and the Reset Button gets hit next season anyway.
- All Gays Are Promiscuous: Subverted. When Jinks reveals his orientation to Pete and Myka in "Love Sick", Pete's immediate reaction is to take his shirt off, since he believes Jinks will appreciate his chiseled abs. Jinks just averts his eyes and urges Pete to put his shirt back on.
- In "Runaway", Myka briefly tries to convince Jinks' ex that Steve is incredibly sexually active. Liam sees right through it.
- All Myths Are True: Probably. And probably not the way you think they'd be.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
- In "Stand", Sykes activates the Warehouse's portal link to the old Regent refuge in order to infiltrate it and both steal the Colodi bracelet and kill Jane Lattimer. This fails, but he has the backup plan of bringing an Artifact WMD to completely destroy the Warehouse (requiring a Reset Button the following season).
- In "The Truth Hurts", Paracelsus allows himself to be captured as part of a Batman Gambit to completely usurp Mrs. Fredric's position as Caretaker and seize control of the Warehouse. This leads to a horrifying scene of the team being chased out of the Warehouse by lightning strikes and collapsing shelves.
Paracelsus: This is my house now!- Kicked up a notch in the next episode, where Paracelsus meddles with time and makes himself the sole proprietor of the Warehouse starting from the day he was bronzed. Not only does he control the Warehouse, but he's spent 500 years turning it into his own personal laboratory/house of horrors where human experimentation is the go-to method of testing pretty much anything.
- Almighty Janitor: Seems to be the standard operating procedure for the Regents (who outrank and can overrule the agents).
- At least one of them (Theodora Stanton) works as a cafe waitress.
- Another one, Pete's mother is an elementary school teacher. She claims that Regents are picked based on their areas of expertise; in her case, her insight on children (but she shares Pete's ability to sense vibes, so a twofer).
- While they are all chosen for their unique insights, the more mundane jobs they get as a cover tend to be this. As noted Theodora Stanton is a waitress, but was probably chosen for other skills (she serves as the scribe at least). The Regent from "Emily Lake" was chosen because he has a Masters degree in American history, but works as a grocery store manager.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: Of Steve Jackson Games' GURPS Warehouse 23, a roleplaying supplement first published in the 90s, and the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Always Save the Girl: Pete tends to do this with regard to Myka, prominently shown off in "Burnout" and "The Truth Hurts"/"Endless Terror".
- Amulet of Dependency:
- Seen in "Duped", the future-telling coin which was created from a fire in a casino, which burns the user's hand with each use.
- In the season 1 finale, Artie, Pete and Myka encounter Timothy Leary's reading glasses, which give its user a sort of drug-influenced view of the world around him. After wearing it enables the three of them to find MacPherson's trail, Artie realizes that the glasses they were using were just a replica; apparently anyone who put on the original pair never wanted to take them off.
- Featured in "There's Always a Downside", Bobby Fischer's marbles give the user intense focus and determination, at the cost of provoking violent tendencies and eventually overworking the user's heart.
- Ancient Conspiracy: Warehouse 2 was active in ancient Egypt, showing that the conspiracy stretches back even further. This series is also notable in that the conspiracy is benevolent and the protagonists are active members trying to maintain it.
- And I Must Scream: People who are "bronzed" are still self-aware, according to H.G. Wells in the season 2 premiere. This is also affirmed by Artie. Though it does seem that at the very least Year Outside, Hour Inside may be involved, as when Steve was accidentally bronzed he didn't seem to notice any time passing when unbronzed.Pete: You know, for somebody who's been unconscious for a hundred years, you've really held on to some anger.
Helena: Not unconscious... just immobile.
Pete: Oh, right... (pauses to think) What, while you're bronzed, you're awake?
(Helena looks away)
Myka: We didn't know that.
Helena: Offers a lady time to think.- In "Fractures", the girl whom Alice Liddell first inhabits after breaking out of Lewis Carroll's mirror describes the feeling of being trapped in there:
Kristen: Like the whole world just disappeared... and all that was left was cold, and darkness and—
Myka: Silence. - And This Is For...: Delivered bone-chillingly by Claudia during the season 3 finale. Probably also a double meaning, as she may have also been referring to using the same artifact which kept Marcus alive to revive Jinks.Claudia: That was for Steve.
- Angst Coma: In "The Living and the Dead", Artie goes into this after his Enemy Within kills Leena.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Many of the Artifacts seem to be at least a little aware. Most of the artifacts in the Dark Vault in particular seem to move or make sounds whenever someone is looking at them.
- Lampshaded by Pete in "Fractures" when he and Myka encounter Lewis Carroll's mirror outside of the Warehouse. Only Artie knows exactly why it's gone from the Warehouse, though, so Pete guesses:
Pete: What, artifacts can walk now? - Apathetic Citizens: The killer in "An Evil Within" targets people who refused to help his wife after she was trampled during a basketball game riot. The cameras show his specific targets playing a part in him being unable to help her.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: The Warehouse fills several stadiums worth of reality and physics bending items, but Myka is always questioning the legitimacy of any urban legend.
- In "Time Will Tell" Myka has the nerve to proclaim that there's no such thing as cavorite (an Anti Gravity metal from an H. G. Wells story) while she and Pete are stuck to the ceiling due to a gadget made by H.G. Wells.
Pete: Myka, in this job there's no such thing as "no such thing." We just met the female H.G. Wells, for crying out loud.- She also does it in "Beyond Our Control":
Artie: Somehow, light and matter coalesced, and a 3D-projected Sherman tank became solid enough to shell the crowd.
Myka: How is that even possible?
Pete: You're still asking that question?
Myka: I'm still hoping for an answer.- In "Insatiable", she does so in a conversation about the living dead. In fairness, there was an artifact responsible and they weren't zombies.
- Pete does this in "3...2...1", laughing at the idea that H.G. Wells could have made a rocket in the 1800s. She immediately points out that he's used a time-machine she made in the 1800s. Of course, he pretty much hates her at the time, so he disregards everything she says.
- Lampshaded when Artie is dismissive about the idea that Jack's magic beans might be an artifact (after confirming that Paul Bunyan's axe and David's sling are). Pete says "Okay, good to know where we draw the line."
- Arch-Enemy: It's stated that Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison were this. It is true that they were professional rivals.
- Arc Words:
- "Endless Wonder"
- "There's always a downside."
- "...smells like fudge."
- "I smell apples!"
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: From "Endless Wonder":Claudia: ...Did it perhaps occur to you that maybe we don't need protecting?
Steve: I was ATF. I raided heavily-armed compounds for a living; not to mention that I've already died on this job.
Claudia: Yeah, and I was body-jacked by Alice because of this.
Steve: Really? You're gonna compare that to dying? - Artifact Collection Agency: While not all of the artifacts are inherently dangerous or even evil, many are, and the rest are or still can be dangerous if misused or if they fall into the wrong hands, thus necessitating sealing them away to protect the world.
- Artifact of Attraction: First seen in "Shadows", Collodi's bracelet. Thankfully, its attraction is limited to someone who has worn it; namely, Walter Sykes.
- Artifacts of Doom
- Specifically, pretty much everything is a Happy Fun Ball. Dodgeballs that hit you when you're not looking (and multiply with every hit!), locust-summoning whistles, hair combs that hypnotize people into becoming murderers... Warehouse 13 is full of dangerous crap that looks completely innocent. Particularly things in the Dark Vault, which include, among other things, Sylvia Plath's typewriter (which destroys your will to live) and the Aztec bloodstone (the artifact that turned the museum worker in the pilot episode into a Manchurian Agent). They're so dangerous that they have to be kept in individual containment fields with their own backup generators.
- Lampshaded in the holiday episode ("Secret Santa") where Claudia makes everyone personalized t-shirts depicting an artifact that nearly killed each of them.
- Lampshaded again in "The New Guy" by this sentence from Myka to Jinks:
Myka: Congratulations. You were almost killed by an artifact; you are now officially a Warehouse agent.- In the season 4 premiere, the astrolabe also counts as this, of a sort. The downside to reverting the previous 24 hours is the creation of "an evil of your own making; an evil that will live with you the rest of your days." And if the user tells anyone of its use, that person would be "in grave danger." As revealed in "The Ones You Love", that last part turns out to be a lie, though. The evil is an Enemy Within, and it manifests in the form of Brother Adrian to deliberately isolate him from everyone. Him telling people is exactly what it doesn't want.
- The description of the downside ends up being pretty accurate, when Artie kills Leena, who had come the closest to figuring out what was wrong; her death at his hands is the evil he'll have to live with.
- Also from the season 4 premiere, Pandora's Box is kind of an inversion; as without it, humanity itself loses hope. Without another emotion to hold back the lack of hope (anger for instance), people lose the will to live.
- Artistic License Linguistics: Warehouse 2 in Alexandria is inexplicably covered in Demotic phrases rendered in Hieroglyphics as opposed to, well, Demotic.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: In "13.1," the Babel Stones allow one to understand anyone else holding a Babel Stone or otherwise; meanwhile, your own speech sounds like gibberish to anyone without a Babel Stone. The gibberish sounds a bit like playing speech backwards.
- Attack Reflector: Seen in the season 2 finale "Reset", the Corsican vest, worn by the Corsican twins who felt each other's pain, does this. Artie finds out the hard way when he tries to stop H.G. Wells from using the Minoan trident by shooting her with a gun.
- Auction of Evil: In the season 1 finale, it was part of a Batman Gambit by MacPherson to enter the Warehouse.
- Ax-Crazy:
- In "Magnetism", an artifact-whammied police officer threatens to blow up a church with people inside just to get rid of Pete and Myka.
- In the season 2 finale, Lizzie Borden's compact turns Pete's girlfriend Kelly into this.
- The villain in "No Pain, No Gain" holds Myka hostage with an axe.
- "We All Fall Down" shows just how much Artie (influenced by the astrolabe's evil) embodies this trope, being willing to unleash a deadly plague on millions of people just to justify his re-using the astrolabe. And earlier in the episode, he uses a hangman's noose artifact which hangs several people by their necks just to shake off Pete and Myka.
- Back for the Finale: HG Wells and Leena have small cameos in the series finale, albeit as flashbacks.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Fargo and Claudia in "13.1". With only one weapon, which they pass back and forth as needed.
- Badass Boast:
- In the episode "Around the Bend", while Pete is under the influence of a delusion caused by an artifact:
Pete: Here's what's clear, pal. You tell me I have something you want, and then you threaten my friends. So you are going down. Game on. *hangs up* Game on!- In "There's Always a Downside", when Artie refuses to undo his use of the astrolabe, Brother Adrian throws down the gauntlet:
Brother Adrian: You came into my house and stole from me, dismantled my life's work... and I will respond in kind. Things have already been set in motion. And unlike your Regents, we follow no rules. We do whatever has to be done. - Bad Future: In "Endless Terror", Paracelsus travels back in time to the day he was bronzed and kills the Regents. Immortal and with no oversight, he turns the Warehouse into a research laboratory which liberally tests artifacts on humans.
- The Bad Guy Wins:
- Season 1. MacPherson escapes containment, frames Claudia as The Mole, and blows Artie up.
- Topped by Season 3, where even though Sykes is killed, he still succeeds in destroying the Warehouse and killing Mrs. Frederic, along with H.G. in the Warehouse explosion and Steve earlier. May be subverted, depending on what MacPherson's watch really does...Pete: That was his plan: to destroy the entire Warehouse. We lost, Artie... we lost.
Artie: (holding MacPherson's watch in his hand) Not yet.- Subverted as of the season 4 premiere "A New Hope", when Artie uses the Reset Button artifact to go back to the moments before Sykes is killed in the portal.
- In "We All Fall Down", Artie is saved from the evil unleashed by the astrolabe... but is left to watch helplessly as a deadly plague is unleashed on millions of people, including himself, Pete, Myka, Steve and Claudia.
- "The Truth Hurts": Paracelsus lets himself be captured by the team, so that he can trick Pete into helping him completely usurp Mrs. Fredric's Caretaker position, at which point he seizes control of the Warehouse and chases the team out.
- Bag of Holding: Implied with Artie's bag, in "Lost & Found".Pete: Hey how come that bag always has exactly-
Artie: Ah ah ah! You'll jinx it. - Bait-and-Switch Comparison: In "No Pain, No Gain", when Claudia and Myka bring back a giant stuffed teddy-bear from Japan, Claudia catches Artie cuddling it when he thinks everyone has left the room.Claudia: Awww, he's so soft and fuzzy; the bear too!
- Batman Gambit:
- MacPherson's plan to enter the Warehouse and put Artie through the same soul-crushing experience he had in his Start of Darkness.
- In "Implosion", Artie gets stabbed with the samurai sword by MacPherson, who is unable to pull it back out before having to flee. Artie planned on this, saying it was the only thing he could think of to get the sword away from him.
- In "Fractures", Brother Adrian's plot to use Alice to threaten Artie can count as this, considering the unstable and unpredictable nature of Alice.
- In "The Big Snag", Artie pulls off a very risky one to stop a car thief, by intentionally charging his car straight towards that of the thief. This may be a Xanatos Gambit as Artie believed he deserved to be punished for killing Leena, so no matter what happens he gets what he wants.
- Be Yourself:
- Artie's advice for Claudia's coffee date in "Age Before Beauty". It goes... interestingly.
- Also played straight in "For the Team," when Myka tells Claudia that trying to imitate Myka's interrogation style is a bad tactic. Claudia calls Myka out on the pep talk, but does much better when she goes about it her own way.
- When Artie goes out on a date with Dr. Calder in "Fractures", Claudia shouts after him, "Don't be yourself!"
- Beam-O-War: Between two opposingly-colored Tesla stun-guns in "Implosion".
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy:
- Not an alien spy, but he probably made an artifact that is now in the Warehouse. He and Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Tubman, H. G. Wells, Alice Liddell, and on and on.
- H.G. Wells is a woman and a Warehouse Agent.
- The Big Bad of Series 4, Paracelsus, not only discovered the secret of immortality using the Philosopher's Stone, but perfected the bronzing technique (ironically getting bronzed himself for his crimes), in addition to being the former Caretaker of Warehouse 9.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension:
- In season 2, this occurs between Pete and Kelly, a veterinarian working in Univille who first appears in "Beyond Our Control". They constantly bicker throughout a few episodes until Pete gathers the courage to ask her out at the end of "For the Team".
- In "Where and When", apparently this was what happened between Jack Secord and Rebecca St. Clair. They were apparently mean to one another, until they blacked out and Pete and Myka used H.G. Wells's time machine to inhabit their bodies. The tension between them is resolved later when Rebecca (from the future) uses the same machine to mentally time-travel back to her old self and kiss Jack.
- In "No Pain, No Gain", this happens to a lesser extent with Myka and Mike, a hockey player from Toronto. Unlike with Pete, the progression of events from insulting each other to kissing takes up less than half the episode, and they don't go beyond kissing.
- One could make the argument this is part of the reason Pete really hates H.G. Wells, as their first encounter had them making out shortly after meeting, only for her to use the opportunity to snag his Tesla and hold him hostage.
- Berserk Button:
- The telegraph artifact in "Around the Bend" drives anyone who taps it violently insane.
- Shown in "Personal Effects", Bobby Jones's golf clubs drive the user to flip out over the slightest annoyance. When Artie gets a hold of it, he almost blurts out his secret to Leena.
- Bi the Way: H.G. Wells, explicitly. It's strongly implied that Myka has romantic feelings for her, despite having a history of heterosexual relationships. The actresses have said they played it this way.
- Big Bad:
- Season 1: James MacPherson
- Season 2: H. G. Wells
- Season 3: Walter Sykes
- Season 4.0: Brother Adrian , which is actually Artie's Split Personality/Enemy Within manifesting as a hallucination of Adrian
- Season 4.5: Paracelsus
- Season 5 technically has the Benedict Valda from Paracelsus' Alternate Timeline, though due to the shortened nature of the Finale Season, he only shows up in two episodes, and is only the main threat in the second.
- Bigger on the Inside: The titular Warehouse, which was designed by Edison, Tesla, and Escher. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary warehouse built near a mountain. It actually extends at least a mile into the mountain, and branches off into two more side paths that look just as large. "Instinct" reveals that it's actually designed to grow larger by converting energy into matter.
- Big "NO!":
- Pete has one while trying to resist an artifact.
- In the Season 3 finale, Claudia gives a heartbreaking one when she discovers Steve's body.
- Played for Laughs in the Christmas Episode with the Wonderful Life plot. At the end of the episode, everyone sits down to watch a Christmas movie. As soon as he finds out he's watching It's a Wonderful Life, Pete lets out one of these.
- Artie also has one at the end of "There's Always a Downside" when he realizes that artifacts which he has previously snagged are being stolen from the Warehouse by the Brotherhood.
- Bittersweet Ending: Season 4 mid-season finale. Good? Claudia has apparently saved Artie from his Enemy Within. Bad? Said Enemy Within unleashed a deadly plague which will kill anyone it infects in 24 hours. This includes the main cast and a large portion of the world's population. Oh, and said plague is magical. In addition, Leena's still dead.
- Bizarrchitecture: The Escher room, appropriately enough, first shown in the season 2 premiere.
- Black Box: The artifacts.
- Bland-Name Product: The "Giggy" search engine, with a logo somewhat reminiscent of the one Google uses for the Chrome browser. This makes an appearance in "Vendetta" when Todd attempts to find out the truth about Claudia.
- Blatant Lies: The agents sometimes use "bad mushrooms" as a cover story for artifact weirdness, among many other bizarre excuses.Pete: Next thing you know, Tattoo's covered in molten lava?Witness: Yeah, how the heck...Pete: Global Warming
- Bluff the Impostor: Used by Artie in "Duped" to confirm that Myka is currently Alice Liddell.
- Body Surf:
- First seen in "Duped", Alice can swap bodies with anyone who looks into the mirror, provided it's been activated by a sufficiently powerful burst of light. Taken up a notch in "Fractures" where she smashes the mirror after escaping again and can use a shard to swap instantly with anyone. Strangely, beyond the first swap after which she proceeds to break the mirror, she doesn't seem to require a lot of light anymore, going through a fair share of bodies in the nighttime.
- Myka's predicament in "Duped" is sort of a special case. The effect of Lewis Carroll's mirror is complicated by the mirrors of the Studio 54 disco ball, and as a result, only a part of Myka's psyche is trapped in the mirror. Notably, while Alice is in Myka's body, she manages to make use of most of Myka's knowledge as a Warehouse agent, as well as her combat expertise. On the other hand, when Alice breaks out of the mirror again in "Fractures", Myka is able to tell when Alice has left a woman's body when the victim refers to a person whose name Alice didn't know.
- Bound and Gagged:
- Well, more chained than bound. And gagged by a nuclear device with a mouth-localised blast radius. Happens to Artie, when MacPherson catches him at the Auction of Evil in the S1 finale.
- Also happens to Pete in the S2 finale (without the nuclear gag), when Kelly is under the influence of Lizzie Borden's compact.
- Brainwash Residue: After Leena is saved from being brainwashed by MacPherson, an image of what she saw while being brainwashed remains in her mind, which, in the season 2 finale, turns out to be half of the Minoan trident, which H.G. Wells planned to use to destroy the world.
- Brass Balls/Getting Crap Past the Radar: From one episode in Season Two, when Pete gets stuck on top of a chain-link fence:Myka: Don't damage what Kelly's been looking forward to!Pete: Nah, Little Pete's made of steel!
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Played for bathos in "Claudia"; Invoked by Artie to bring a quick end to some bickering between Claudia and Joshua.Claudia: You took me to the inter-dimensional space? You were supposed to get him out, d-bag!
Joshua: No, he was supposed to destroy it; clearly he's insane.
Artie: Children, don't fight, please. I can be both a d-bag and insane. - Breaking Speech: In "We All Fall Down", Evil!Artie passes these out whenever he can.
- Brick Joke:
- At the end of the pilot episode, Pete throws an artifact football into the sky. At the start of the second episode, the football comes back down, and pops Myka in the head.
Pete: If you'll excuse me, I have a date with a forward pass; where's Myka?
Artie: She's outside, on her phone.
Pete: Oh, jeez...
(Pete exits the Warehouse and sees Myka still talking on the phone, with the football approaching fast)
Pete: (shouting to Myka) Heads up!
Myka: What?
(the football bounces off the outside wall, hitting Myka on the back of her head)
Myka: (exasperated) What is it with men and their balls?- When invited to the Warehouse in the first episode, Pete is told "Pack light. We'll ship what you need and store the rest." In season two, he complains about his stuff still not arriving.
- The scarab that appears in the first season opening shows up in the third season opener as one of the artifacts from Warehouse 2. It promptly burrows into the floor. Several episodes later, in "Past Imperfect", it ends up distracting a dog Artie was interrogating (long story) and the dog finally catches it.
- Bring My Brown Pants: From "Beyond Our Control", after Pete and Myka are suddenly caught in the crossfire between a bunch of cowboys shooting at each other who have been made real by an artifact:Myka: Are you hit?
Pete: No, but I think my underwear is shot. - Brown Note:
- A record in the episode "Resonance" causes intense serenity in its listeners.
- Two finger cymbals used by MacPherson in "Nevermore" release a deadly sonic pulse.
- A goblet artifact in the season 1 finale emits a very deafening sound when rubbed, or smashed.
- One of the artifacts Artie uses to snap Pete out of his delusion in "Around the Bend" is the original studio master of the song Oye Como Va by Santana. Combined with an amplified Tesla blast from behind a car windshield, Pete's sanity is finally restored.
- The Horn of Jericho in "3...2...1" literally disintegrates whatever happens to be in front of it when someone blows into it.
- Busman's Holiday: "Merge With Caution", where Pete and Myka get whammied by an artifact after they've taken their respective vacations. Pete cuts his vacation short to help Myka retrieve the other artifact.
- But Thou Must!: Used, like other Video Game Tropes, in "Don't Hate The Player".
- Buxom Is Better: In "Don't Hate the Player", apparently Fargo went ahead and gave Leena and Claudia cup-upgrades for his game.Pete: (speaking of Leena) How does she get off the ground with those things?
Claudia: They're wings.
Pete: Yeah, the wings probably help.
Claudia: (speaking of her NPC counterpart) What are those things on my chest?
Fargo: Freckles?
- Cain and Abel: In "The Ones You Love", a rope artifact which was used to commit fratricide causes this. There's also an artifact related to the actual Cain and Abel which apparently has a similar effect, in addition to several other Sibling Rivalry artifacts.
- California Doubling: A particularly blatant example (there are others): One of the first season episodes is set in Chicago, yet there are streetcar tracks and a sign for York Avenue visible in the background.
- Call Back:
- In the Season 2 Christmas episode "Secret Santa", Claudia gives each of the team T-shirts with descriptions of the artifiacts that had previously almost killed them: the telegraph that induces insanity in "Around the Bend" for Pete; Man Ray's camera from "Age Before Beauty" for Myka; the ladle used in "For the Team" is on Claudia's shirt; and Rheticus's compass from Claudia's introductory episode is shown on Joshua's. Also seen (but not with their respective characters) are T-shirts for Artie and Leena, featuring Mata Hari's stockings and the Pearl of Wisdom for each of them respectively.
- The first episode of Season 3 has a lot of references to the pilot, with Jinks in the place of Pete and Myka, and Claudia taking over most of Artie's lines, including Artie's take on the Warehouse as "America's attic". As the camera performs the Astronomic Zoom out from the office when Artie says "Welcome to Warehouse 13", it suddenly zooms back into the group, with Artie saying "Okay, that's all we have time for; we have work to do".
- In the season 4 premiere, the three survivors of the destruction of the Warehouse recall separate events from the past. Pete sees the melted teapot of Beatrix Potter and flashes back to him and Myka storing it at the end of "Don't Hate the Player". Myka recalls the grappling-hook gun that H.G. Wells left for her, as well as when H.G. used it to save the both of them back in "For the Team". Artie reminisces introducing Pete and Myka to the Warehouse back in the pilot episode.
- A subtle one in "No Pain, No Gain": Claudia's hairstyle when she meets Mrs. Frederic over lunch resembles the way her hair looked back in "Buried" when she came close to taking over Mrs. Frederic's role as the Warehouse's caretaker.
- "Endless Wonder" has a few references to the pilot. When Pete introduces the Warehouse to Deb, he complains that he can't do it as dramatically as Artie; the camera doesn't even zoom out to show the immensity of the Warehouse, as it usually does whenever Artie does it. Later, one of the Regents shows a business executive and a senator an intentionally whimsical and childish-looking version of the Warehouse (with the zoom-out that doesn't occur during Pete's scene) to throw them off their suspicions of the real Warehouse's existence. The episode also makes a reference to the season 2 finale; when Brother Adrian asks Artie if he's fine with shooting himself (Adrian having used Harriet Tubman's thimble to look like Artie), Artie simply replies, "Wouldn't be the first time", a reference to when the Corsican vest that H.G. Wells wore caused Artie to inadvertently hurt himself when he tried to shoot her with a gun.
- In the episode "Instinct", after getting the Union-Pacific spike out of the joints, Claudia mentions that she smells apples, a reference to when HG was first introduced to Warehouse 12 her and her mentor noted that that meant the Warehouse liked her.]] There's another reference to this in the Series Finale "Endless", when Artie rants that the Warehouse has never showed any gratitude for all he's done for it, and an actual apple rolls across the floor to him.
- Calling the Old Man Out:
- After being relentlessly grilled by the Regents in "Breakdown" regarding his methods of going after MacPherson, Artie snaps and calls out the Regents on the uselessness of the interrogation:
Artie: Mr. Valda, he knows the rules. He knows that I am forced to follow them, don't you see that? And if I am gonna take MacPherson and I am, then rules have to be broken! That's the only thing that's gonna work; you know what's not gonna work? Reining in the one person that can stop him before it's too late. Look at all of you; you know, you're not out in the field! You're here, hiding in plain sight. What are you doing? You're judging me, judging my methods, because... (Artie pauses for a moment, then realizes) You're afraid of him! Tell me I'm wrong.
Mrs. Frederic: Arthur—
Artie: No, no. Mr. Valda, you look at me. Tell me, right to my face, tell me I'm wrong. (Valda looks away) Yeah, well... Either fire me, or kill me... or let me do my job.- After Steve is killed in the season 3 finale, Claudia calls the Regents (particularly Jane) out for their cowardice and letting their agents take all the risk. This later leads to the events in "An Evil Within" where Jane allows Claudia to use the metronome on Steve without Mr. Kosan's consent.
Claudia: You know, I see you and the Regents for what you really are: cowards. Steve was worth a thousand of you. - Camp Gay: Jinks is briefly split into two people thanks to an artifact, one of whom is a ridiculously hardcore Knight Templar cop, the other of which is this trope.
- Cannot Spit It Out:
- In the Season 5 premiere, Pete doesn't seem able to tell Myka (or anyone else) that the reason he screwed up and helped Paracelsus in the Season 4 finale is because Paracelsus promised to help save Myka from dying of cancer. Myka overhears him accusing Paracelsus of lying to him, and confronts Pete when everything is back to normal.
- Can't Live Without You:
- The Warehouse needs to have a caretaker to link to, which keeps it alive. This may also work in reverse, but it's not clear. At the very least, the implication is that Mrs. Frederic, the caretaker of Warehouse 13, has lived as long as she has thanks to the bond. Proven to be true in the season 3 finale; when the Warehouse goes up in flames, she dies and decays on the spot.
- The metronome keeps the user alive so long as it's kept in motion, and if shut off kills the revived person in under a minute, as first seen in the season 3 finale. As Steve discovers when it's used on him, it also affects the person who performed the revival.
- Cassandra Truth:
- Often with Pete and Myka's Secret Service cover.
- In Claudia's introductory episode, Artie keeps insisting that her brother is dead despite her claims that he's not... until he actually does pay a visit to the two of them.
- Pete gets this in a bad way in "Around the Bend" when he can't convince the others that Valda has turned coat and kidnapped Mrs. Frederic
- When Pete and Myka retrieve an artifact in "Merge With Caution", Pete complains about hurting his knee, which Myka downplays (see World's Smallest Violin below). When they end up switching bodies later, Myka comments, "You really did hurt your knee."
- Inverted in the Season 3 premiere with Jinks, who can always tell when a person is lying. He quickly discards the easily acceptable lies Claudia and Artie offer up and readily believes the truth about the Artifacts of Doom.
- Catchphrase: H.G. Wells' "Righty-ho (then)" and Pete's "Hey hey hey!" Pete even uses this as a reminder to Deb when he thinks Mr. Kosan is about to erase her memory in "Endless Wonder".
- Celebrity Paradox: In "Endless Wonder", Pete refers to a hypochondriac as "Commander Data", which becomes hilarious considering Brent Spiner appears in the same episode as Brother Adrian. And despite many other constant Shout Outs to Star Trek, there are still a slew of other actors from its various shows playing different characters on Warehouse 13. See Shout Outs section below.
- Pete's ex and mother are Seven of Nine and Captain Janeway respectively.
- Characterization Marches On:
- Artie starts to lose his computer skills when Claudia arrives. Justifed however in that he is mentioned as having been one of the people who worked on the mainframe system in the Warehouse, which in itself is one of the most advanced systems on the planet, and is repeatedly shown as being someone who is firmly set in his ways. Since Claudia constantly tinkers and upgrades everything, he's simply never bothered to learn her new systems.
- H.G. Wells escapes the Bronze Sector, steals something from the Escher Vault, kills MacPherson, and leaves us hanging with an ominous mumbling. Over the season, her characterization switches from another Big Bad to a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to bring her daughter back to life, and then switches back to Big Bad, albeit one who is genuinely apologetic for having to betray Myka's trust after earning it to gain access to what she wants. And now, in season 3, she (or at least her holographic image) is presumably to be trusted again.
- Charles Atlas Superpower:
- Literally - his trunks, featured in "Mild Mannered", grant the ability to manipulate the wearer's density.
- As do Bruce Lee's punching bag, Jack Kirby's belt, Samson's Jawbone and Babe Ruth's baseball bat; all mentioned in the same episode.
- Chekhov's Gun: Many, many variations.
- Under a dozen or so lines into the episode "Burnout", Pete makes a passing remark, "that's a big-ass generator", before dealing with an artifact with a weakness to... guess what.
- The episode "Duped" has many Chekhov's guns. One of them is Myka's non-verbal indicator that she's mad at Artie, at first parodied by Pete, which later convinces Artie that she really was trapped in Lewis Carroll's mirror. Another is the name Myka gave to her ferret from the pilot episode, which tips Leena, Claudia and Artie off that it was Alice who was in Myka's body. The most significant one of course is the mirror, which Pete uses to play ping-pong several episodes before it becomes plot-relevant.
- The snowglobe artifact in "Breakdown", which Claudia uses to cool her drink early in the episode, ends up saving her and Myka later.
- Taken Up to Eleven in season 2. Remember the quick ad spot where Artie, Pete, and Myka throw a football in the room which looks like M.C. Escher's Relativity lithograph (the crazy stairs one)? That's an actual room in the Warehouse, specifically another vault.
- In the pilot, one of the many questions which Pete and Myka believe to be stupid asks whether or not the subject has recently smelled fudge. A season later, it turns out that that's the only way to detect chameleon bombs.
- The image stuck in Leena's mind after being freed from MacPherson's brainwashing, first seen in "Beyond Our Control", is later revealed in the season 2 finale to be part of the Minoan trident.
- In "Beyond Our Control", Claudia first meets Todd working at a hardware store where she's ordered some parts. Those same parts end up being used later to save the town from a doomsday device.
- A literal case, Chekhov's Grappling Gun: After it's given to Myka in "For the Team", she uses it in the season 3 episode "The 40th Floor" to save her, Artie, and three Regents from a sabotaged elevator.
- And now MacPherson's watch, which Artie finds in MacPherson's B&B room in "Mild Mannered". In the season 4 premiere, it's revealed to be part of a time travel failsafe that is used to restore the Warehouse after its destruction.
- The artifact football, from the pilot episode, returns in the season 4 premiere, turning out to be an artifact scanner, which both is responsible for Artie's "pings" and is a backup in case the Warehouse computer system is ever destroyed.
- In the pilot episode, Artie mentions that they have Pandora's Box in the Warehouse. "Empty, of course". In the season 4 premiere, it turns out he was lying about it being empty and it's location. It held Hope and was near the office of the Warehouse instead of being in an aisle.
- "We All Fall Down" has Evil!Artie using a few artifacts which have appeared in prior episodes: the barometer artifact from "Past Imperfect" as well as the finger cymbals from "Nevermore".
- At the beginning of "Parks and Rehabilitation", the first thing Pete notices in the crime scene is the ATV the park ranger uses to arrive at the scene. He and Claudia use ATVs later to make their way to their suspect.
- Christmas Episode
- "Secret Santa", which aired between seasons 2 and 3, involves a Badass Santa and a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming between Artie and his estranged father.
- "The Greatest Gift" aired between Seasons 3 and 4; an It's a Wonderful Plot by way of artifact for Pete.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The neutralizing goo is a particular shade of purple. That purple shows up throughout the series when something is supposed to be safe from artifact influence, from the gloves to certain rooms.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
- Inverted in a game of Battleship between Artie and Hugo One in "13.1".
- Played straight in "Don't Hate The Player". Although, since the video game exploits the players' fears, the monster — who is actually the girlfriend of one of the players — is only "defeated" when the guy finally gathers the courage to tell her how he feels. So it's not necessarily cheating (although given the circumstances, Pete doesn't really see it that way.)
Pete: Cheater! - Conspicuous CG: The CG effects can be really bad at times, but seems to be improving a bit from the third season onwards.
- Continuity Drift: When Claudia is first introduced, she's just discharged herself from a rather unassuming psychiatric hospital, with the implication she checked herself in voluntarily for a few months to get her head together. Later flashbacks show her locked up in Bedlam House.
- In the first episode, Artie says that being zapped with the Tesla erases short-term memory. This effect is not referenced or used past the first episode. Moreover, later episodes directly contradict it, such as Jinks remembering everything that happened right before Artie zapped him in his introductory episode.
- Continuity Nod:
- In "Beyond Our Control", when Valda attempts to find what MacPherson left behind in Leena's subconscious after her brainwashing, Leena repeats some of MacPherson's lines from previous episodes: his comment to Artie about the new Warehouse agents in "Implosion", his remark to Mrs. Frederic in the season 1 finale, and some of his last words in the season 2 premiere.
- In "No Pain, No Gain", Artie finds out that some of the artifacts which he has snagged over the years has been stolen from the Warehouse. With the help of Steve, Artie is able to retrieve most of those artifacts, some of which have been featured in previous episodes, such as: Mata Hari's stockings, snagged in "Merge With Caution"; Van Gogh's Stormy Night, seen in "Don't Hate the Player"; and Masamune's sword, first featured in "Implosion".
- "Endless Wonder" has a doctor referring to some events from previous episodes; specifically, the sudden muscle growths of varsity wrestlers in "For the Team", as well as the rapidly-aging models from "Age Before Beauty". Later, when the doctor is granted access to the Warehouse and is being shown around by Pete, the latter points to the butcher knife artifact which was previously seen in "Trials" as an example of an artifact with a downside. The zoetrope from "13.1" is also seen inside the Warehouse.
- In "Instinct", Artie and the others go to check on the FISH, an UFO-like cloaking system for the warehouse. Artie is wearing the same clothes (hat, sunglasses, scarf over his mouth) and holds the same staff/gun/emitter thingy he was seen with when he first met Pete and Myka outside the warehouse in the pilot episode.
- In "All the Time in the World", Pete and Myka use the Durational Spectrometer they first got to use in the first season episode "Claudia". Pete also gets to use his lip reading skills again.
- Continuity Snarl:
- Multiple contradicting dates are given for H.G. Wells' time as a Warehouse 12 agent.
- Myka, Claudia, and Mrs. Frederic are all shown to have sisters later in the show, despite never once even implying that they had sisters.
- Artie is revealed to have a son in the series finale. This completely contradicts his established backstory and character development.
- The penultimate episode introduces an artifact which is used when the Warehouse relocates. This artifact teleports all the other artifacts from the old Warehouse to the new one. Earlier episodes show that the artifacts are moved manually.
- Convection Schmonvection: In full force with the lava-spewing urn from Pompeii in "Runaway". Only the lava itself is dangerous. Myka goes so far as to close the jug while it's active without so much as a burn. Even people buried in lava by it have perfectly identifiable skin in the places they weren't covered.
- Conversational Troping:
- In "Burnout", Claudia starts up her projector by smacking it, then she looks at Artie and says, "Percussive Maintenance."
- Pete actually says "Video Game Tropes" in "Don't Hate The Player".
- The first thing Claudia says after snagging the sunglasses artifact in "Personal Effects" is "Cool shades."
- Cool Big Sis: Jinks mentions his in "Queen for a Day", saying Claudia reminds him of the way she used to stand up for him.
- Cool Shades:
- Most every member of the regular cast has Cool Shades of some description.
- MacPherson even has a special pair he puts on when he wins - specifically in the season 1 finale after he leaves the Warehouse and activates the bombs in the umbilicus.
- The sunglasses worn by the pilot who first developed Ray-Bans, in "Personal Effects", has the ability to make the wearer invisible to the naked eye. However, they don't work against cameras and strike the wearer blind for twice as long as they were worn. Pete's blindness seems to last a lot longer than it should have (he was wearing them for a couple of minutes at most), but Rule of Funny probably applies here.
- In "The Ones You Love", Mrs. Frederic wears a pair of neutralizer-tinted glasses to protect her from a painting whose frame gives it the ability to suck in anyone who looks at it.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: In "For the Team", the CEO of a sports drink company is set up to look like the culprit... only for it to turn out to be the lead scientist in charge of the formula. The scientist had a massive stake in the company merger, and so tried to keep the problems with the product (that included Spontaneous Combustion) under wraps until he could cash in. On the other hand, Hank Siskel in "Second Chance" is every bit as skuzzy as he seems, though he's not actually the villain of the episode.
- Also Reconstructed in the form of Deb's boss in "Endless Wonder." He doesn't come across as a villain, or even someone who is entirely uninterested in altruism and moral considerations - it's just that he's clearly more interested in making money than in either of those things. As Pete points out, putting the bottom line first is kind of his job.
- The Corruption: Certain artifacts have a chance of infecting your soul with darkness as their downside. This was the Start of Darkness for the Season 3 Big Bad.
- It is also the side effect of the Astrolabe.
- Couch Gag:
- There are three different versions of the season three opening, each with a different set of artifacts on the floor of the warehouse - a fleet of sports cars, a trio of jet fighters, and a group of objects under tarps.
- Seasons 4 and 5 show a different building, sculpture or other large-size object in the foreground of the Warehouse flyby. Each object relates to that episode in some way. "Personal Effects" features some dinosaur skeletons, while "Savage Seduction" featured Mayan pyramids, with a mariachi band on top performing a revamped theme tune.
- CPR Clean Pretty Reliable:
- In "Burnout", after Pete is freed from the Spine of Saracen, Myka uses this to revive him. He starts breathing again after she beats his chest.
- In "The New Guy", while Jinks is suffocating from an artifact, Myka keeps him breathing with this long enough for him to say the words he needed to avert his death.
- In "The Big Snag", Myka uses this again on Pete when he's knocked unconscious while they're stuck in the 40's.
- Creepy Child: Alice Liddell, first seen in "Duped". She returns with a vengeance in "Fractures".
- Creepy Doll: In "Breakdown", a doll in the Dark Vault scares Pete enough to make him back into... Sylvia Plath's typewriter.
- Crossover:
- With Eureka and vice-versa. Douglas Fargo makes an appearance in the Warehouse 13 episode "13.1", while Claudia appears in the aptly titled "Crossing Over" in Eureka.
- At Comic-Con 2010, the casts of both shows held out hope for a whole cast crossover perhaps in the form of a special movie. They also pitched the idea at DragonCon's Eureka/Warehouse 13 panel as well.
- Dr. Calder, the Warehouse's doctor and Artie's love interest, also appeared on the fifth episode of season one of Alphas.
- Fargo returns in "Don't Hate The Player".
- Crippling Overspecialization: The Remati Shackle, as explained in the season 3 finale, is a last resort defense system for the Warehouse, which seals the building in a force field. However, it is also triggered by threats inside the Warehouse, and the force field doesn't dissipate until the threat is over, which would essentially trap anyone in the Warehouse inside with the threat.
- Crossover Ship: Clargo (Fargo x Claudia) are a rare in-universe example.
- Cryo Prison: The Bronze Sector is similar, except it turns out that they're still conscious while turned into bronze statues.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: In "13.1", even though Hugo was missing half of his mind, some of the things he said make sense.
- Curse Cut Short: Shown in "Magnetism", graffiti spray-painted by a grandma. Artie pauses the security video before the C is finished.
- Darker and Edgier: Each season finale has gotten progressively darker.
- From The S3 Finale onward: first Steve dies, then HG, then the Warehouse is destroyed, then Artie becomes evil. Then it gets bad.
- Dastardly Whiplash: In "The Living and the Dead", upon meeting a manifestation of MacPherson in Artie's subconscious, Jinks comments that he always pictured him with a mustache.
- Death Ray: Featured in "Shadows", the binoculars used by the pilot of the Enola Gay. They absorb ambient energy to fire radiation. The aftermath is sketchy reminiscent of a localized nuclear bombing.
- Death Is Cheap: Situations vary but tend to settle on Death-is-expensive. Artie is brought back to life but doing so causes the death of a Red Shirt. Steve is brought back to life but the artifact that does it has negative consequences which take a few episodes to resolve and nearly kill Claudia and his mother. Pete is brought back to life through a time reversal artifact, it takes half a season to fix the evil it creates and nearly ends in the world's destruction. There's always a downside but it's rare for a named character to stay dead.
- Death Traps: As shown in "Buried", back in the old days before alarm systems, Warehouse security, specifically Warehouse 2, used these instead. It follows a simple mental, physical, and spiritual pattern. The Durable Deathtrap is implicitly justified through the use of artifacts. The floor magically regenerates in one trap once the puzzle is solved.
- Descending Ceiling: The mind portion of the test. The participants have to complete a triangular peg solitaire game before the ceiling crushes them. It doesn't help that the pegs are almost needlessly heavy.
- Death Course: The physical challenge. It's a long hallway with blades coming out of the floor and pits that spew fire. The wall writings indicate that some ancient form of martial arts holds the timing to get past. The team instead uses H.G. Wells' grappling hook to slide over all the death. Then again, the Regent with them fulfilling the Someone Has to Die prophecy might have had something to do with it, too.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The spiritual portion involves a Medusa head which, rather than the predictable Taken for Granite effect, traps those nearby in a happy illusion while the floor crumbles beneath them. An obvious red light in the dream hints that it's not real.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit:
- In "Implosion", Artie goads MacPherson, who is holding a samurai sword, into stabbing him in the chest, and then holds on to it so that MacPherson will have to run and abandon the sword, a valuable Artifact. Artie survives, but is injured for several episodes.
- In "No Pain, No Gain", Pete, Myka and Mike attempt this during Mike's hockey game so they can figure out who's healing Mike's wounds. Their plan takes a bizarre turn when Pete inadvertently gets a hold of the artifact, resulting in Myka suddenly getting very pregnant.
- Denser and Wackier: While the show was never afraid to be serious, some of the artifacts got gradually wackier as the show went on.
- Despair Event Horizon:
- As shown in "Breakdown", Sylvia Plath's typewriter is kept in the Dark Vault, with a neutralizer containment field to keep anyone from approaching it. Pete finds out the consequence of crossing the field; he instantly loses the will to live. If not for Myka pushing him out of the containment field, he would have stayed there, staring at nothing until he died.
- In the season 4 premiere, after the Warehouse is destroyed, the remaining cast is understandably distraught. When Artie sees the ruins of Pandora's Box, however, he reveals that the loss of that particular artifact also affects the entire human race, which has all lost hope along with the box.
Myka: "And in the bottom of Pandora's box, all that remained... was hope."
Claudia: So when the Warehouse was destroyed...
Artie: The world lost hope. - Deus ex Machina: Artie's handbag always has at least one artifact that is useful in some manner, though rarely is it capable of fixing the problem on its own. Pete lampshades this at one point, and is warned by Artie not to "jinx it".
- Disaster Dominoes: The season 1 episode "Breakdown", where the "gooery" (the part of the Warehouse responsible for manufacturing and distributing the neutralizer goo) malfunctions in a series of events — instigated by, of all things, a stray automatic vacuum cleaner that wasn't even an artifact.
- The novel "A Touch of Fever" has one, in which Johnny Appleseed's tin pot starts a chain of artifact activity that frees a highly destructive totem pole.
- "Parks and Rehabilitation" features a minor case of this in the Warehouse, instigated when Artie, in an attempt to assume Leena's duties at the Warehouse, stores an artifact in the wrong location.
- Dishing Out Dirt: A lantern in "Parks and Rehabilitation" causes the ground it's shined at to collapse. It can also bury people alive.
- Disintegrator Ray: Joshua's Horn of Jericho through sonic frequencies. The episode "3..2..1" involves a misguided attempt to use it to attack aliens, inadvertently making it into a WMD.
- Disposable Pilot: Mrs. Frederic's bodyguard is the person killed when Artie survives an explosion by using the Phoenix artifact in the season 2 premiere.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Appears to have happened to Jinks in "The 40th Floor" after the confrontation with Mrs. Frederic that got him fired, which, in the season 3 finale, was revealed to be a ploy to help him infiltrate the Big Bad's organization.
- Distant Finale: The final scene of "Endless", the series finale, is set several decades ahead. Claudia has taken over as caretaker of the Warehouse, which despite the main events of the episode, is still in South Dakota.
- Distracted by the Sexy:
- Claudia, normally an ocean of confidence, is so embarrassed to be in a room of handsome, half-naked wrestlers in "For The Team" that she can't even make eye contact.
- In "An Evil Within", Claudia sneaks into a building owned by the Regents by dressing up as a secretary and being sweet on the security guard.
- In "Fractures", Alice Liddell — inhabiting a beautiful woman — tricks a male nurse into loosening her restraints, after which she knocks the guy out and escapes from the hospital.
- Downer Ending: Every season so far has ended this way, but it's usually fixed during the premiere of the next season:
- Season 1 ends with Artie supposedly being blown up. He is shown to survive in season 2 thanks to an artifact.
- Season 2 ends with Myka quitting her job at the warehouse. She rejoins in season 3. This one is more of a Bittersweet Ending, as it's the only one so far to avert The Bad Guy Wins in the finale rather than the next season's premiere.
- Season 3 ends with the Warehouse being blown up along with Helena, and Mrs. Frederic dying and decaying. Thanks to a Reset Button in season 4, this is fixed.
- Season 4 enters a mid-season break with an orchid artifact releasing a poisonous disease across the entire world before the Warehouse agents can neutralize it.
- The actual end of the season isn't much better, as Paracelsus completely usurps Mrs. Frederic's connection with the Warehouse and chasing the team out, with only Claudia left to fight him. And on top of that, Myka's cancer is apparently worse than she let on, and it's unclear if she'll recover.
- The Dragon: Marcus to Sykes is the only real clear cut example, though MacPherson had the brainwashed Leena for a while.
- Dwindling Party: Season 4 opens with the search for a Reset Button artifact to undo the destruction of the Warehouse. Claudia, Myka, and Pete are trapped/arrested/killed (respectively) during the search, and brought back once the artifact is used.
- Early Installment Weirdness: For most of the first season all artifacts didn't seem to spark when neutralizer was poured on them, this was shown when Pete and Myka would think they found the artifact and prepare to leave only for something else to happen. By the end of the season sparks were an indicator that they got the right object.
- There was also more of an effort in the early episodes to explain how the artifacts worked, with technobabble like "harmonic resonance" and "ionised metals". After a few episodes they just accept that artifacts affect things because they're artifacts.
- Easy Amnesia: The artifact in "Trials" causes an extreme version of this when not used correctly. The tie clip extracts memories while the cuff links restore them, giving the user enhanced interrogation abilities. Using only the former causes accelerated memory regression in the victim until they lose involuntary body functions.
- Endless Corridor:
- Pete complains about this trope (even calling it a trope) in "Don't Hate The Player".
- Pete and Myka get trapped in what appears to be one in the season 3 Christmas episode "The Greatest Gift". They beat it by running in opposite directions, overtaxing the elastic effect which causes it.
- Enhance Button: Of course Claudia can do this. She's a super-hacker, remember?
- Enemy Mine: Myka and H.G. Wells in "For the Team". Later, at the end of "Vendetta", she is reinstated as a Warehouse agent.
- Engaging Conversation: In "13.1", Claudia, to Fargo, after they combine a Eureka-tech laser cutting torch with an Amplifier Artifact to make a lightsaber and use it to destroy some Mecha-Mooks.
- Equivalent Exchange: A common theme among artifacts, to the point that it's rare for them not to have one.
- The coin in "Duped", which was created from a fire in a casino, allows the user to see a few seconds into the future, but also burns the user's hand progressively with each use. In the same episode, when Myka is trapped in Lewis Carroll's mirror, Artie says that she can't just be taken out of it; someone has to go back in.
- The Phoenix charm, introduced in the season 1 finale, protects the user from fire, but burns someone else (or several people) alive in exchange.MacPherson: Cause and effect, gentlemen, cause and effect. Even anomalies are bound by their own laws of nature.
- In "Age Before Beauty", Man Ray's camera can reverse aging, but only by stealing youth from another person.
- The butcher knife artifact in "Trials" allows the user to transfer one person's sickness to another. A father makes use of this to cure his son of leukemia and give it to himself.
- One of Mr. Kosan's theories in "An Evil Within" regarding the downside of the metronome is that the ones whom the revived person has touched are now slowly dying. It's revealed in "Personal Effects" that any wound inflicted on the revived person is felt by the user of the metronome. "Second Chance" also reveals that it may also drive the one it's used on insane.
- The first pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, seen in "Personal Effects", grant the power of invisibility, but the user goes blind for twice as long as they were worn upon removing them. Neutralizing the sunglasses doesn't fix it, either.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Everything that's stashed in the Warehouse seems to be this way. Indeed, things such as old swords, combs, and creepy paintings might do some weird things, but then you realize that old typewriters, dodgeballs, silly string, lusty disco balls, and creepy things in mirrors are somewhat out for your blood, you know things don't look too good...
- Claudia is made to believe this in "Insatiable", when she encounters a fortune-telling artifact which warns her of impending death. After several close calls, Leena later tells her that the artifact wasn't that of a fortune-teller, but of a hypnotist.
- Evil Counterpart: The effect of the astrolabe essentially turns the person into their own evil counterpart, as revealed in "The Ones You Love". Their desire for using the artifact is twisted, turning them against the very thing they used it to protect.
- Explosive Overclocking: The artifact in "For the Team" does this, causing people to rapidly develop muscle mass until they literally combust from the heat.
- Express Delivery: In "No Pain, No Gain", Pete's unintentional use of an artifact instantly makes Myka nine months pregnant.
- Eye Cast A Spell: A handful of artifacts are activated by eye contact. Explored in "Love Sick" when Artie and Hugo have a short discussion about eyes acting as a coaxial cable to allow downloading and alteration of DNA.
- Failsafe Failure: The Warehouse can generate an impenetrable shield to protect itself if attacked, which will not deactivate until the danger has passed. Cue everyone realising how screwed they are, when they discover Sykes planted a artifact-enhanced bomb inside of the Warehouse.
- This is less of a failure and more of a secondary purpose, to protect the world from the Warehouse. The shield will ensure that the destruction of the Warehouse (and all the artifacts) won't damage the rest of the world. Anyone who is still inside when it goes off is just acceptable losses.
- Fake-Out Make-Out:
- In "Duped", Alice disguised as Myka with Pete. This tips off Pete that it's Alice who was controlling Myka's body, saying, "Myka would never kiss me."
- It doesn't really tip him off, he just thought of the first OOC thing that Alice did to make sure that she didn't know that ARTIE tipped him off.
- Done to a lesser extent in "Vendetta", when Pete insists on a cheek kiss to complete his incredibly awkward ruse to trick someone he suspects is following them.
- In "Duped", Alice disguised as Myka with Pete. This tips off Pete that it's Alice who was controlling Myka's body, saying, "Myka would never kiss me."
- Fanservice:
- Pete taking his shirt off in "Mild Mannered", as well as Myka in the DARPA GEK Suit with those heels.
- Done blatantly in "Age Before Beauty" with Myka and many of the models in the changing room.
- Played straight in the locker room scene and Gary in "For the Team", and later averted in the same episode, at least for those with a female muscle growth fetish. Despite being dunked in a vat of artifact-influenced muscle-enhancing drink, Claudia exhibits no visible symptoms other than a rash and a slight rippling of her facial skin. No She-Hulk here, sorry...
- Wells dressed as Lara Croft in "Buried".
- In "Love Sick", Pete and Myka waking up together naked in Artie's bed with Artie's toothbrush.
- The - ah, enhanced - VR versions of Leena "and her two humongous...wings" and Claudia in "Don't Hate The Player" (the latter even meriting a crash-zoom and a distinctly Russ Meyer-esque "BOING!" sound effect).
- In the season 3 finale, Myka and H.G. Honestly, there was zero legitimate reason for Myka and HG to get tied up by a magic rope that forces them to effectively spoon against each other for a a bit.
- From the episode "An Evil Within": Claudia, dressed as a secretary, hair tied in a bun and wearing stockings and high heels; changing clothes in an elevator (with a brief shot of her in a bra); then reappearing as a scrub nurse. And all in less than five minutes.
- The opener of "No Pain, No Gain" shows both Claudia and Myka in Japanese geisha disguises when they set out to snag an artifact in Kyoto.
- In "Fractures", when Alice inhabits the body of a beautiful woman, she uses it to her advantage, suddenly acting very flirtatious. She even tells herself to "show some skin" before a truck smashes into her vehicle. And even after being restrained in a hospital bed, she arches her back and lets her bra peek out a bit when she seduces a male nurse.
- In "Endless Wonder", the outfit that Deb wears when she first encounters Pete appears a little bit too gratuitous with prominently displaying her cleavage.
- "Endless": Future!Claudia...er, sorry, Miss Donovan in a short black leather dress, doing her best mysterious advisor bit.
- Fantastic Nuke: A tile from the British House of Commons which absorbed the concentrated explosive force of the entire German Luftwaffe is used in an attempt to destroy the Warehouse. It's later clarified to actually contain the concentrated hatred of the entire Nazi regime, which is why is was so absurdly powerful. Gandhi's cloak (an item of pure peace) is used in attempt to disarm it before they realize it must be used on the person who armed it, and do so successfully.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink:
- Lampshaded in "Duped" when Claudia states that Bloody Mary is just an urban legend, and realizes that "of course it isn't" after getting a look from Artie. Pete sums it up in the season two premiere: "There's no such thing as no such thing."
- But apparently there are no ghosts, just entities mistaken for them, as Artie insists in "Mild Mannered" despite having hallucinations of MacPherson.
- The opener of "Age Before Beauty" explains which aspects of the King Arthur myth were actually real:Myka: As soon as the blade came into contact with the rock that was laced with the same metal, it—
Artie: Then the sword went out of phase and allowed it to pass right through solid matter.
Pete: Preventing today's pub special from being Myka meat pie.
Artie: You realize that's how King Arthur pulled the sword from the stone?
Pete: Oh, nice Artie, you sure know how to take the fun out of believing in legends.
Artie: No no no, some legends can have a bit of truth to them.
Pete: So there was a real Merlin the magician?
Artie: Fiction.
Pete: Knights of the Round Table?
Artie: Bedtime story.
Pete: Holy Grail?
(Artie doesn't answer and changes the subject; Pete and Myka grin at each other) - According to "3... 2... 1," aliens are out as well.
- Lampshaded again by Artie in "No Pain, No Gain" in discussing the possibility of keeping Steve alive without the metronome:Artie: In Warehouse 13, anything is possible... umm, sometimes.
- Another clarification is added in "Endless Wonder" when Myka and Pete theorize about the unexplained growth spurts of various people:Myka: So, what about, um, Paul Bunyan's axe, or David's slingshot—
Pete: Or how about a magical bag of beans?
Artie: We got the axe, we got the slingshot. The beans? Please, that's just a fairy tale.
Pete: Well, it's good to know where we draw the line.
- Femme Fatale: Shown in "Merge With Caution", Mata Hari's stockings turn a woman into this. She uses them to seduce wealthy businessmen and make them do whatever she says. Unfortunately, the artifact also turns the men into dangerous stalkers.
- Fish Out of Temporal Water: Agent Wells after being in suspended animation for about a century.
- However it's mostly culture shock. The technology doesn't faze her since she predicted most of it!
- Flight: Daedalus' wings, featured in "Reset", attract wind, giving them lift disproportionate to their size. Pete acknowledges the awesomeness of this.
- In "The Sky's the Limit", St. Joseph of Cupertino's medal causes anyone the user chooses to levitate whenever it's activated. Once it's no longer in use, however, well, gravity takes over from there...
- Foreshadowing:
- Pete's vibes can set this up. As in the S1 finale, when he has a very bad feeling about Artie. Who is then caught in the explosion at the end of the episode.
- In the season 2 premiere, when Pete and Myka head to London to try and find H.G. Wells, they debate whether they should've had the H.G. Wells Museum locked down. Pete comments, "That'd be like shooting off a big flare, 'Hey, H.G. Wells, lookee here, we're waiting for you!'" Guess who the first person who walks past them turns out to be.
- The postal worker in Univille is first seen in "Mild Mannered" watching television. An episode later, in "Beyond Our Control", her TV-watching habits, combined with a stolen artifact and a microwave cooking popcorn every few minutes, end up almost destroying the entire town.
- Season 4 has a few hints as to the true nature of the season's Big Bad. The episode where the evil unleashed by the astrolabe is first elaborated is titled "An Evil Within". Artie's outburst at the end of "Fractures" gives a glimpse of how he eventually realizes what's really been going on in "The Ones You Love". The heaviest hint is in "Endless Wonder" when Artie confronts Brother Adrian, who's using Harriet Tubman's thimble to look like Artie:
Brother Adrian: Do you have it in you to shoot yourself, Agent Nielsen?- At the beginning of Season 3, Pete tells Steve that "the only way you leave the Warehouse is feet first." By the end of the series, Helena is the only former-agent to go on to lead a normal life...and she had died in an alternate timeline.
- Forgot About His Powers: Jinks, who is supposed to be able to detect when people are lying to him. Soon he begins to get lied to as much as the other characters without detecting anything. This ends up getting him killed, although he gets better.
- The season 2 finale has a nice subversion. H.G. Wells betrays the team, the kind of thing Pete's vibes should have picked up on as they have before. Myka later confronts him about it, and realizes that he did have such vibes, but didn't voice them because Myka trusted H.G. Wells.
- For Want of a Nail: If the events of the season 3 Christmas episode "The Greatest Gift" are to be believed, if Pete wasn't born, Artie would have been arrested trying to snag the Bloodstone, Myka would have remained a Secret Service Agent, her father would have died, MacPherson would have convinced the Regents to let him run the Warehouse, and Claudia would have remained stuck in a mental hospital unable to save her brother.
- Fountain of Youth: Man Ray's camera in "Age Before Beauty" has the ability to steal the youth of one person and give it to another.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: The artifact in "Merge With Caution" causes this as a side effect... until the two bodies try to occupy the same space, with very disastrous results.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The small screens in the Warehouse's storage shelves identify the artifacts housed there and give additional information on them, including their persons of origin as well as their capabilities and hazards. However, they are often only visible for a few moments before the scene shifts away from them, so a curious viewer would have to pause at the right moment to be able to read them. Even plot-relevant artifacts are sometimes not given enough detail; for example, the rope artifact in "The Ones You Love" (which affects Myka's sister Tracy) is only identified when Leena fixes the artifact database in the Warehouse and detects it as stolen.
- Claudia's first on-screen appearance in the series actually occurs two episodes before her introductory episode, in "Resonance", when Artie uses Dickinson's computer to trace the hacker and sees various images flash before his eyes.
- One scene transition in "We All Fall Down" features an information board which appears to be from Warehouse 12. This can be inferred from the list of names of Warehouse agents, where the current agents' names are tacked over other names — the name "Neilsen" appears to be obscuring Catarunga's name, "Lattimer" is tacked over "Woolcott", and the only uncovered name is "Wells".
- Full-Body Disguise: As seen in the season 1 finale, Harriet Tubman's thimble. This is used again in "Endless Wonder" by Brother Adrian.
- Gambit Roulette:
- H.G. Wells does this, with a plan that took nearly a century to execute which she still managed to pull off.
- Sykes' plan in Season 3 was worked on for decades; he stayed one step ahead of the Warehouse team and the Regents the entire season, and in the end, even though he dies, he still manages to destroy the Warehouse.
- "What Matters Most" - at the end it's revealed that the kid getting in with the Warehouse crew is part of some elaborate plot... one that requires Claudia being sent to that particular ping AND Jinks (aka, the Human Lie Detector), her normal partner, not going with her AND Artie not refusing to let some random kid come along to the super secret warehouse full of dangerous magic artifacts.
- Genius Loci:
- The Warehouse is hinted to be one in the earlier episodes, and confirmed as such in "Buried":
Artie: I think they must have broken the seal on the door, and that activated—
Mrs. Frederic: The defense mechanism.
Artie: And that's what caused them later to desiccate.
H.G. Wells: Which is when Warehouse 2 woke up.
Pete: Woke up? You guys talk about it like it's alive.
Mrs. Frederic: Surely you know by now, Agent Lattimer, that the Warehouse is more organic than your average structure.- The season 3 finale reaffirms this in a flashback of H.G. Wells's beginnings as an agent of Warehouse 12. When she comments on smelling apples when she first arrives at the Warehouse, Catarunga tells her that the scent of apples is a sign that the Warehouse likes her. Her last words before Warehouse 13 is blown up are "I smell apples."
Catarunga: Ms. Wells, what do you smell?
Helena: Apples?
Catarunga: Yes, you do! Most people do not smell the apples; the Warehouse likes you.
Helena: Buildings do not have personal affinities, sir.
Catarunga: This is not, as you will discover, just a building, Ms. Wells. Welcome to Warehouse 12.- Outright confirmed in season 4 episode "Instinct" where the Warehouse continually zaps Claudia to get her attention.
- Genre Savvy:
- One of Myka's main areas of expertise is her extensive knowledge of history and literature, a result of her upbringing as a bookstore owner's daughter. Meanwhile, Pete is more competent when it comes to pop-culture trivia and television shows. Claudia's scope, to a certain extent, lies somewhere in the middle. Each of their respective strengths have a hand in keeping them able to do their duties as Warehouse agents, including figuring out an artifact's true nature, saving other people's lives, and occasionally, saving themselves.
- In "Nevermore", it's a good thing Claudia and Pete had read the Cask Of Amontillado...
- Subverted in the season 3 finale when Myka only belatedly figures out the significance of the Regents naming their classified file on H.G. Wells "Atlas-66":
Myka: H.G. Wells was born in Atlas house in 1866; I can't believe that I missed that!- By the time season 4 starts, everyone is painfully aware that the usage of artifacts often have dire consequences. One of the first questions Myka asks Artie regarding MacPherson's watch is "What's the downside?" Only Artie finds out exactly what it is.
- H.G. Wells's prior experience with time travel (having invented a machine allowing the mental kind, as shown in "When and Where") tips her off in "Endless Wonder" that it explains Artie's actions, particularly his knowledge of the bomb in Sykes's wheelchair when he returns to that event in the season 4 premiere.
- In "The Big Snag", Myka's love of books helps her and Pete while they're stuck in a 1940's novel in the making.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar:
- From "13.1" When Pete sees board games in the computer lab: "Looks like he played with himself a lot".
- From "Reset":
Artie: Sorry. I thought, you know, handling some ancient spears would trigger a notion, but...
Claudia: Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you while you're handling your ancient spear.- This scene from "No Pain, No Gain":
Myka: Mozart's Magic Flute! You know opera?
Mike: Yeah. Don't tell my teammates, cause, you never know.
Pete: Hey! Can we get going? Uhh, you can play Mike's magic flute later.
Myka: (to Mike) I have to go kill him now, so I'm just gonna... - Girl Friday: When Pete and Myka get trapped in a 1940's detective novel, Pete is made the detective and when he claims she is his secretary Myka insists she is his gal friday .
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: In this case, the goggles protect your eyes against the purple sparks produced by dipping something into "neutralizer". Seen in "Regrets", Volta's goggles complete his lab coat artifact to produce an ever-expanding magnetic field. And in the season 2 premiere, goggles are also used in the Escher vault to navigate the otherwise impossible-to-predict paths.
- In "MacPherson", Timothy Leary's Glasses are shown to cause the wearer to see the world as though it were an LSD trip.
- Grail in the Garbage: The show's whole premise, more or less. What's better, the grail actually exists in this universe, as implied by Artie in "Age Before Beauty".
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: First shown in "For the Team", H.G. Wells has one, self-built, which is later passed on to Myka.
- Gratuitous Ninja: In the series finale when Myka records her most defining moment as a Warehouse agent. An artifact turned five women into ninja thieves and Myka and Pete fight them off.
- Grimmification: The show seems to be fond of this. It seems that most fairy tales have some basis in reality, but the truth is often related to an Artifact of Doom and hence much darker.
- Alice Liddell, featured in "Duped", was a psychopath trapped in the Looking Glass.
- In "Age Before Beauty", it turns out that King Arthur never had a round table or knights and used a cheap trick to get the sword out of the stone (the Grail does exist, though).
- "When and Where" reveals that Cinderella actually murdered her sisters by turning them into glass.
- Hannibal Lecture:
- In the season 1 finale, according to MacPherson, he and Pete are not so different. Turns into Shut Up, Hannibal! when Pete points out that trying to recruit someone after putting a nuclear bomb into a friend's mouth isn't the best idea.
- The killer in "An Evil Within" has a short one when he is caught by Pete and Myka. When the killer is taken away, Myka says that she could understand how the killer ended up doing what he did.
- Happy Fun Ball: A good 95% of the artifacts look completely innocent. Even down to their listed labels.
- In one episode, someone reads a few off, and they have powers like "makes doves line up and dance," which makes the character wonder what they're doing in the Warehouse. Another character quickly informs him that if they're in the Warehouse, there's a reason for it, usually having to do with the artifact having an evil streak.
- Some of the seemingly innocuously artifacts include a can of red herrings and the original can of worms (which Leena warns Pete not to open).
- Harmful to Touch:
- To a lesser extent, the coin artifact in "Duped" is this. It burns the user's hand progressively, after allowing them to see a few seconds into the future.
- The doorknob artifact, first seen in "Past Imperfect" is this, taken Up to Eleven. It burns through Jinks's purple-gloved hand when he finds it among a box full of other normal doorknobs (remember, the gloves are supposed to prevent this kind of thing). Later, in "The 40th Floor", Sally Stukowski uses it to torture a Regent, Theodora Stanton, whose skin starts melting after a few seconds with it on her hand. After Sally gets the information she wanted, she leaves the doorknob in Theodora's hands; after a few excruciating seconds, she goes up in flames.
- Heart in the Wrong Place: Averted when Artie gets stabbed through the chest by a sword it goes though where most people think is the placement of the heart. While he is seriously injured, he makes a very rapid recovery, but does get knocked out of action for several episodes.
- Heh Heh, You Said "X": From "Breakdown":Claudia: (reading Artie's list of chores) "Tighten and lubricate zipline"? (smirks) Sounds kinda dirty when you say it like that.
- From an interesting exchange in "Endless Wonder":
Deb: Do you have a subpoena? (Pete smirks) I know, "subpoena", it's kind of a funny word, right?
Pete: It just sounds like—
Myka: Pete!
Deb: It's okay, I grew up with three brothers.
Pete: Penis. It sounds like penis. - Heroic Sacrifice:
- In "Burnout", Pete and Myka find the corpse of a former Warehouse agent, Jack Secord, in a sealed basement. It's later revealed that he locked himself there because an artifact which electrocuted people had attached itself to his spine, and he wanted to protect other people from it. Pete almost has to resort to this trope when the Spine latches onto him, but is thankfully saved by Rebecca.
- Double Subverted with H. G. Wells in the Season 3 finale. She's willing to let Pete destroy the artifact containing her mind in order to stop Sykes from getting information from her, but is captured by his agents before this can happen. Then at the end, she seals Pete, Myka and Artie in a force field in order to save them from the exploding warehouse; she couldn't place herself in the force field, and is killed in the blast.
- And then triple subverted in the Season 4 premiere when the Reset Button gets hit and the Warehouse never blows up, so Helena's sacrifice is prevented. Artie alludes to the averted scenario, being careful to avoid mentioning what he did, when he is forced to justify her rehabilitation by Mr. Kosan and Mrs. Frederic.
Artie: I think, under an extreme circumstance, I can see Ms. Wells behaving quite... heroically. I mean, if it came to it.- In "Personal Effects", the user of the weather-controlling pipe strikes himself with lightning to give his sick brother a heart (being the only compatible donor around).
- In "No Pain, No Gain", Mrs. Frederic reveals to Claudia that events like this trope are what give birth to artifacts. As an example, she shows Claudia how a woman's heroic act of jumping in a bullet's path to save a baby results in the woman's bracelet becoming an artifact.
- "Second Chance" reveals that this is the only way for someone who's been revived with the metronome to be freed from it. When Jinks's mother's life is threatened by Claudia inadvertently activating the metronome while she's holding it, Jinks destroys the metronome, risking his own life to free his mother from the artifact.
- Heroic B.S.O.D.: Claudia gets one at the end of "Emily Lake" and arguably is still in it as of the end of season 3 given her refusal to give up the metronome that can bring Steve back to life.
- Artie has one after killing Leena under the influence of the Astrolabe.
- Hidden in Plain Sight:
- As Pete points out, this appears to be the Regents' preferred method of operating.
- Alice Liddell attempts to blend in with a crowd of people in "Fractures". Strangely enough, no one from the team notices that despite her ability to inhabit another person's body, she can't help twirling her hair around her finger, even when she's inside a balding middle-aged man and isn't catching any hair on her finger at all...
- Historical In-Joke: Numerous historical events were either caused by, or the cause of, many of the artifacts.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- In "Age Before Beauty", the guy who used Man Ray's youth-stealing camera becomes the victim of it.
- And in "When and Where", the person turning women into glass statues in the 60's left behind a beautiful glass corpse.
- Hollywood Pudgy: A running joke in "Age Before Beauty" is fashion industry employees referring to the very fit Myka as fat. This is explicitly because she has actual muscle tone, while they "get winded hitting an elevator call button".
- Human Popsicle:
- An interesting variety. People too dangerous to be left roaming the Earth are cryogenically frozen, then encased in bronze. MacPherson is "bronzed" in the S1 finale. Of course, that doesn't last too long and it's subverted by The Mole setting him free. H.G. Wells was also bronzed, also freed by The Mole.
- A scroll in "The Ones You Love" encases the one who touches it in amber. They're kept alive, but the properties of the artifact have the unfortunate problem of encasing the artifact with the user, making it that much harder to remove. Claudia has to take a blowtorch to the victim's hand to get it free (she burned him slightly, but the amber absorbed most of the heat).
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Myka becomes one to Pete in "The Big Snag," when the two of them get trapped in a 1940s detective novel, with Pete as the detective and Myka as his secretary. Myka however is better at being a detective and so ends up taking the lead on the investigation
- Hypocritical Humor: Crops up occasionally.
- From "Vendetta":
Pete: Let's all grow up a little, shall we?
(Pete's cell phone starts ringing)
Pete's ringtone: C is for cookie, that's good enough for me...- In "Queen For a Day", when Steve and Claudia neutralize Ulysses Grant's flask while going undercover in a Civil War reenactment, a soldier manages to see the purple sparks emitted by the neutralizer pouch:
Soldier: Damn Trekkies. Always crashing the party, pretending they're time travelers. (walks away, shaking his head)
Claudia: (to Steve) What a nerd.- From the season 4 premiere:
Artie: (reading aloud) "In hoc signo vinces" —
Myka: "By this sign we conquer."
Artie: It's a Templar motto. I hate running into heads with the Templars; they're always so dense and overly devoted to whatever kooky task they've been given.
Pete: (smirking at Artie) Yeah. That would be annoying.- In "Endless Wonder", Pete is warned to be careful when he tries bagging various robot toys to find an artifact. He replies "We're always careful!" right before two of the toys fall to the floor.
- In "The Living and the Dead", in what is presumably a bit of self-deprecation on James Marsters part, Sutton repeatedly comments on the supposed largeness of Pete's forehead.
- It's worse than that; Given that Spike's actor had already dismissed vampires as being for teen girls (thus snarking on his previous role as the aforementioned), he then proceeds to comment on foreheads, one of Spike's favorite insults for/about Angel.
- I Can See My House from Here:
- Said by Claudia while climbing about in the Warehouse in "Regrets".
- Later made humorously literal by the revelation in "Breakdown" that there is an exact copy of Leena's bed & breakfast stored in the Warehouse.
- There also exists a vault that stores each agent's b&b room upon their death/departure, first seen in "Burnout".
- I Did What I Had to Do: In "There's Always a Downside", this is how Artie justifies using the astrolabe, and his refusal to undo what he did. Surprisingly, Adrian feels that using the astrolabe and the resulting evil it creates is somehow worse than the worldwide loss of hope from the destruction of Pandora's Box. Then again, Adrian may simply not believe Artie's story. Or he's overestimating the "evil of [Artie's] own making".
- As it turns out, "The Ones You Love" reveals that Adrian is an evil split personality created by the Astrolabe. It wants Artie to undo what he did, because that would be the greatest possible evil in the situation, so Artie did what was right, but the Astrolabe's evil wants to undo it.
- At the end of "Parks and Rehabilitation", Claudia says this word-for-word to Artie as she comes to terms with what it took to save him.
- Idiosyncratic Wipes:
- Scenes inside the Warehouse often end with a wipe of a crate slamming shut; scenes out in the field, with a wipe of a Farnsworth shutting off.
- Another wipe is a zoom-out featuring various vault-like doors closing on one another, stopping at a door with "Warehouse 13" written beside it, which is sometimes played backwards after the commercial break.
- Other wipes have the last frame being manipulated in various ways: being put into an artifact pouch and sealed; turning into a painting, then zooming out from the Warehouse art gallery (which is also occasionally played backwards); becoming a reflection from the goo inside a neutralizer bucket; among others.
- Aside from the transitions to and from commercial breaks, the scene locations are occasionally played with as well, being featured in uniquely humorous ways based on the name of the place.
- In "Vendetta", after King Charles II's croquet ball is sent ricocheting in a room with Artie, Pete and Myka, the scene cuts to commercial break when the ball hits and breaks the camera.
- The season 4 premiere plays with this; the wipes throughout the episode reflect the current condition of the Warehouse.
- In "Personal Effects", when the team splits up to snag six artifacts formerly in Walter Sykes's possession, the transitions between the scenes feature a list of the artifacts, marked according to the team's progress.
- "Fractures" introduces a new wipe: in one scene near the end, Artie in the last frame is suddenly imprisoned in the Bronze Sector and bronzed.
- I'd Tell You But Then He'd Have To Kill You: Artie's reply to someone asking who Mrs. Frederic is, referencing Mrs. Frederic's bodyguard.
- Ignore the Fanservice: In "Personal Effects", whilst tracking down a Covert Pervert who is using invisibility glasses to peek at women undressing, a store employee points out that it's against company policy for people to watch the security cameras. Jinks replies that he's allowed to because he's a secret service agent... and he also happens to be gay.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Close to it. In "Parks and Rehabilitation", Pete is sprayed with mace by a suspect. As he instinctively goes to wipe his eyes, Claudia has to stop him when he points the barrel of the gun he's holding right to his eye.
- I Know You Know I Know: From the season 1 finale, when Artie tries to figure out MacPherson's plan:Artie: Obviously, it's a trap of some sort. But he would know that I know it's a trap. So what is he planning, knowing that I know he knows?
- Claudia has to think like this when trying to find Evil!Artie in "We All Fall Down," knowing that he knows the way the team thinks.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
- Inverted when Pete is fighting the Spine of Sarecen in "Burnout". He's actually winning the fight... but that's exactly why he's doing what he's doing.
- In "We All Fall Down", Claudia tries this with Evil!Artie. Though it fails at first, at the end Artie seems to regain enough control so Claudia can banish the evil from him. Pete and Myka try this, too, but throughout the episode it's Claudia who gives him pause multiple times.
- Claudia does this with her sister in "Cangku Shisi", who is being affected by a mind control artifact. She manages to get through and break its control.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Discussed in "Love Sick" when Jinks is having trouble aiming the Tesla, complaining that ray guns in the movies look much easier to aim. Pete points out that Stormtroopers can never manage to hit their targets with ray guns.Steve: Firing a ray gun isn't as easy as it looks in the movies.
Pete: No. Hey, no, it is very hard to fire ray guns in the movies. How many times do you see a Stormtrooper hit what he's firing at?
Steve: Not once. - Improbable Aiming Skills: In "We All Fall Down", Pete manages to use a thrown battle axe to cut an artifact noose while said noose is hanging him from a couple of meters away (its effect creates invisible nooses to choke everyone in the room). He uses an awkward underhand throw to throw it hard enough that it gets embedded 5 cm in a wooden beam.
- Immortality Immorality: Paracelsus' technique for achieving immortality involves healing sick people... so he can then use the Philosopher's Stone to steal their life force for himself. And he views that as acceptable losses.
- Incompatible Orientation: In "Trials", Claudia initially assumes that Steve Jinks is hitting on her and strokes her ego while telling him why it's not a good idea for him to try an office romance, then is left completely mortified when he tells her that he's gay.
- Infant Immortality: The pet variation. When the Warehouse is destroyed in the season 3 finale, Trailer the dog is shown to have survived in the following season opener. Mind you, Trailer almost exclusively lives at the Warehouse, and the speed at which he returns suggests he must have been nearby when it went up.
- The Internet Is for Porn: In "Runaway", Claudia has to do a search for a bust that was broken off of Ludwig van Beethoven's clock. She notes to Artie that she had to remember to turn on SafeSearch after the first attempt.
- Intimidating Revenue Service:
- Everyone in Univille, the town near the Warehouse, hates Pete and Myka because they believe the Warehouse is an IRS storage facility. note
- Syfy's website sums it up wonderfully:
For the first time, the Regents chose to find a stealth cover for the Warehouse and for what is kept there. Searching for the most innocuous and repulsive occupation that would cause people to shun the very structure - and finding one unique to American political ingenuity - word was covertly spread that Warehouse 13 was the place where all Income Tax Return Forms were stored from every citizen in the United States. This insured that no one would ever want to cross its threshold, and its safety has been guaranteed ever since. - Insistent Terminology: Un-i-ville, not U-ni-ville.
- Emphasizing its ''Un-importance''.
- Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons: In "Don't Hate The Player", Fargo has specifically added dragons to his VR game, and even says when asked why, "Dragons are awesome!"
- Ironic Echo:
- In her introductory episode in season 1, after handcuffing an unconscious Artie, Claudia reveals herself as the hacker breaking into the Warehouse with the words "Knock knock!" Later, in "Merge With Caution", when she finds herself handcuffed and unable to free herself, Artie leaves her to her own devices, saying the same words as he closes the door on her.
- It's lampshaded in "Merge With Caution" before that, as Claudia has handcuffed Artie earlier in the episode and her comment on finding herself in the same situation was "Fastest Karma Ever!" The aforementioned stunt by Artie was therefore a double whammy.
- In "The 40th Floor", Jinks warns Mrs. Frederic that actions have consequences, as a protest to her torture of Sally. When Sally escapes, Mrs. Frederic repeats that back to him just before firing him.
- When Artie tries to give Claudia advice on her first date with Todd in "Age Before Beauty", he tells her to "be yourself." In "Fractures", when Artie is headed to a dinner with Vanessa, Claudia remarks, "Don't be yourself!"
- In her introductory episode in season 1, after handcuffing an unconscious Artie, Claudia reveals herself as the hacker breaking into the Warehouse with the words "Knock knock!" Later, in "Merge With Caution", when she finds herself handcuffed and unable to free herself, Artie leaves her to her own devices, saying the same words as he closes the door on her.
- I See Dead People:
- In "Mild Mannered", Artie sees visions of MacPherson after he is killed by H.G. Wells, which he suspects is a result of the Phoenix.
- In "We All Fall Down", Pete sees visions of Leena, which leads him to H.G. Wells's research on the dagger artifact.
- It Is Beyond Saving: H.G. Wells' opinion of humanity and her reasoning for attempting to start a new Ice Age using the Minoan Trident in the season 2 finale.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: The 2011 Christmas episode, caused by an artifact belonging to the author of the inspiration of the Trope Namer. Just to hammer it home, the episode ends on the group watching It's a Wonderful Life, eliciting a Big "NO!" from Pete.
- Interestingly Pete, though giddily excited not to be forced into a shopping trip with his mom, did not make any wish relating to this plot as what usually happens.
- It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Faced with Brother Adrian targeting his loved ones, Artie tries to break it off with Vanessa Calder in "Fractures". She doesn't buy his reasoning and tells him to call her once he realizes how foolish he's being.
- Jack the Ripper: His lantern is an artifact, its light paralyzing anyone it shines on. The series finale reveals that it was H. G. Wells who snagged it for Warehouse 12 (and captured Jack himself in the process).
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: In "The Living and the Dead", Claudia and Steve enter Artie's subconscious using a clock owned by Sigmund Freud to save Artie from wallowing in his memories of Leena.
- Jurisdiction Friction: Warehouse agents encounter this very often with most of the authorities they come into contact with. It some times helps, especially with civilians, that many of them are also government agents; Pete and Myka who are members of the Secret Service, Jinks is an ATF agent, and Artie was NSA.
- Justified Criminal: Jesse, the primary antagonist of "Personal Effects", is stealing to finance his brother's operation. However, it's also made clear he has severe anger issues, and having a Weather-Control Machine artifact doesn't help in that department.
- Karma Houdini:
- The clients in "Age Before Beauty" who knowingly paid a photographer to steal innocent women's youth for their use. At the end of the episode, they're still young and they've suffered no consequences for their actions.
- Averted with the dogtag artifact in "No Pain, No Gain". Once the artifact has been neutralized, all the wishes are undone, including Myka's pregnancy, as well as the healing of Mike's many broken bones.
- Kill Him Already!: Oh damn, yes. In "Nevermore", Pete has MacPherson cornered in an alley, has his Tesla (strictly a stun gun/deneuralyzer and not at lethal) trained on him, and... tells him to surrender, instead of shooting him and cuffing him. This allows MacPherson to slowly reach for and use an artifact (that com chatter makes clear they know the dangers of and that they know he has) to immobilize Pete and kill two unlucky cops. Very slightly justified as he may have been hesitating because of the cops' presence, but since they died for their secrecy, I think they'd rather he had fired.
- Not to mention the bronzing. They have all those people there, bronzed, in a room that's too big a risk to even put in the manual for Warehouse agents. MacPherson already has a chemical in his blood which will literally vaporize him should he ever enter the Warehouse. Yet they give him a necklace to counteract this effect so they can bring him in and bronze him, when they know that there's been a mole in the Warehouse for how long and they have no idea if they found everything she did. Sure enough, he's escaped inside an hour.
- Kill It with Ice:
- Used as a security lock-down by Hugo 1 in "13.1" to kill off the agents.
- In "Vendetta," a remnant of the Titanic can cause you to die of hypothermia regardless of the ambient temperature.
- Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand: Myka talks down H. G. Wells by doing this in the season 2 finale.
- Knight Templar: Brother Adrian, and by extension the whole Brotherhood, who are absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their actions. And for bonus points, they apparently started out as an offshoot of the actual Templars.
- Laser Blade: In "13.1", Claudia and Fargo make a working lightsaber out of a laser cutter and Ben Franklin's ring.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- In "Merge With Caution", Claudia makes a remark to this effect when she winds up cuffed to a rail, after having done the same thing to an Artifact-whammied Artie. After the artifact is destroyed, Artie still leaves Claudia to free herself on her own, even taunting her with "Knock knock!"
Claudia: Fastest-working karma, ever!- In "An Evil Within", the killer's victims were people who he believes had a hand in killing his lover when she is trampled to death during a basketball game. He regards them as monsters, so as payback, he uses an artifact which makes them appear to be monsters to other people.
- The salt mask artifact in "What Matters Most" is essentially this trope condensed into artifact form. The salt, from the original Wretched Hive Sodom, causes anyone who ingests it to suffer the effects of a sin they refuse to speak of. A security guard who pulled a fire insurance scam gets burned, a former soldier who used toxic gas is forced to breathe it, two adulterers are fused together, a district attorney who landed an innocent man on death row gets the effects of lethal injection, and Pete ends up with two broken legs from a drunk driving incident which crippled his friend. Fortunately, repenting that sin undoes its effects, at least if you live through it.
- Last Minute Hookup: Pete and Myka in the finale.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In "Beyond Our Control", the Artifact of the Week projects Hard Light holograms, and it's gotten its wires crossed with a movie marathon channel. At the end of the episode, the Mad Scientist gets ready to push the Big Red Button for the Town Shattering Kaboom when he's interrupted by a commercial break.Myka: Oh, good, we've got another three minutes.
Pete: Unless someone fast-forwards through the commercials.
Myka: Don't even joke about that!
(goes to commercial break) - Let Me Get This Straight: Used in Season 4's "Insight". Granted, it was newcomer Abigail spouting most of it, with the rest of the cast amazed she could keep up with the Warehouse's idiosyncrasies on her second visit. It turns out Abigail's not exactly a newcomer: she's the Warehouse's Keeper
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again:
- Mrs. Frederic, on Pete hugging her in "The Greatest Gift", the third season Christmas special.
- At the end of "Personal Effects", the team decides to never mention Sykes again.
- Lighter and Softer: When compared to... that other thing...
- It's also the whimsical-but-dramatic midpoint between the lighthearted nerdy goofballery of Eureka, which could be described as Twin Peaks meets Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and the serious, understated and very dark Alphas, which regularly featured themes of serious social conflict, punctuated by acts of Mind Rape and Cold-Blooded Torture perpetrated by the protagonists as well as by the villains.
- Most of the time. "The 40th Floor" had many graphic deaths, and a large helping of torture.
- Lightning Can Do Anything: Electrical surges can jack the power of most artifacts Up to Eleven, though at least one could be disabled by a sufficiently powerful shock, namely the Spine of Saracen, seen in "Burnout".
- Like Brother and Sister:
- Most of Pete and Myka's interaction is like this, and stated outright in the season 2 finale.
- Explicitly stated by Steve in "Queen for a Day" about Claudia, regarding how much she reminds him of his dead big sister. Culminates in the season 3 finale with him working undercover with Sykes to protect her which leads to his...first death.
- Liquid Assets: The artifact in "Age Before Beauty" sucks the youth out of its victims, eventually killing them.
- Literal Split Personality: The double-ended candle in "Savage Seduction" splits a person into their fun-loving and serious sides.
- Little "No": Pete's reaction to Steve's death in "Emily Lake".Pete: Lets get back to the car...Claudia: What's wrong?Pete: Claudia! I said GET BACK TO THE CAR!Claudia: Pete? What is it?Pete: (Quietly) Please get back to the car...
- Living Lie Detector: Jinks's schtick.
- Lock Down: Of the Warehouse.
- Initiated by MacPherson at the end of the S1 finale. Doesn't last very long, and isn't even treated all that serious. Happens again in "13.1", initiated by Hugo One, and is taken much more seriously because it includes a Kill It with Ice protocol.
- The activation of the Remati Shackle in the season 3 finale does this, rendering Pete, Myka, Artie and H.G. unable to escape the artifact which blows up the Warehouse.
- Locked Out of the Loop:
- When Artie discovers that MacPherson is on the loose, he locks Myka, Pete and Claudia out of the loop for their own safety. In the season 1 finale, Mrs. Frederic unlocks it because she trusts them.
- Mr. Kosan and Jane discuss this in the season 3 finale, regarding the Regents' plan in dealing with Walter Sykes.
- Lost Superweapon: The Minoan Trident, featured in the season 2 finale, is one of the few artifacts explicitly referred to as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. The first Weapon of Mass Destruction in fact.
- The blue orchid artifact from Warehouse 8, seen in "We All Fall Down", counts as this.
- Love Cannot Overcome: In the season 2 finale, Pete is about to reveal the true nature of his work to Kelly, but having just had a small sample of that dangerous world, she breaks it up with him and leaves.
- Ludicrous Gibs: The Artifact in "Merge With Caution" causes this. If the two people sharing the same space don't unmerge after a certain period, they blow up in a very gory way.
- MacGuffin Delivery Service: In "Nevermore", MacPherson with Edgar Allan Poe's pen and notebook. Pete and Myka finally neutralize the two artifacts together at the end... only to be forced to give them up when MacPherson holds Myka's parents hostage using another artifact.
- MacGyvering: In "Merge With Caution", Artie improvises an electromagnet out of an iron while handcuffed inside a closet.Artie: ...and I was doing this stuff while MacGyver was still escaping from his crib!
- Magic A Is Magic A: Along with a Meta Origin of sorts, they talk about a unifying principle within all artifacts in that they have an emotional connection to someone. They don't understand exactly what causes it, but they've made it into their own form of science.
- Magnetic Plot Device: The whole point of the show is the weird stuff that happens around the Warehouse.
- Pete and Myka Do Everything: In "We All Fall Down", Jinks complains to Claudia that they never get the interesting assignments.Jinks: Pete and Myka get a dagger and we get a plague?! When do we stop being the B-Team?Claudia: We are not the B-Team! Fool, we're the second A-Team!
- Make It Look Like an Accident: When Marcus kills people, he uses a poison that makes it look like a heart defect, first seen at the end of "The 40th Floor".
- Make the Dog Testify: Played with in "Past Imperfect"; Artie uses a mind-switching artifact on a dog to find out a license plate number.
- Make Way for the New Villains: MacPherson being killed by H.G. at the beginning of the season 2.
- Male Gaze: Pete can't stop staring at the NPC!Leena's chest in "Don't Hate The Player", so we're treated to a cleavage shot.
- Man, I Feel Like a Woman: In "Merge With Caution", Pete and Myka are hit by a "Freaky Friday" Flip, so he takes the opportunity. Genre Savvy Myka immediately calls him on it when they phone each other.Myka: Pete! Get your hands off my breasts!
Pete: (wide-eyed) Myka, how'd you know that?
Myka: Because you're still you and I'm still me, even though we're in different bodies. - The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: According to Mrs. Frederic in "Buried", agents are allowed to tell ONE person outside of the Warehouse the truth about their job (referred to as "their One"). If said One passes on, they're allowed to choose another One. Kelly leaves Univille and Pete by the end of the season because she wants a "simple life" and her interaction with an artifact in the season finale proved that Pete cannot give her that
- Meanwhile, in the Future...: Justified by...
- Mental Time Travel: H.G. Wells' actual time machine, shown in "When and Where" does this; physically traveling through time is impossible, but her machine can allow one to inhabit the body of someone else in the past. However, it only works for 22 hours and 19 minutes, and can't actually change the past (or rather, has already done so by virtue of its use). Also while time-traveling your body is basically comatose for those 22 hours and 19 minutes, justifying above trope.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Averted. Men and women alike tend to be fair game. Though, comparatively, there isn't a death in every episode.
- The Men in Black: Though played very lightly compared to other versions, W13 agents are basically this. Although some elements are subverted, their primary goal is to retrieve artifacts and not strictly keep The Masquerade going. So while they are sniffing around bizarre events, they tend to be polite and sneak the artifact away as soon as they can. In "An Evil Within", Pete actually agrees when someone asks him and Myka if they are "Men in Black".
- Minovsky Physics: As explained by Artie in the pilot, the purple goo and any derivatives thereof neutralizes or protects against artifacts. That's it. That's all it does.Artie: Don't ask me how it works, because I have no idea. And it doesn't always work.
- The Other Wiki notes that the goo is made by Global Dynamics. But considering how much 'impossible' stuff Jack points out over there, it's still mysterious.
- The Mole:
- In the season 1 finale, it's believed that Claudia has been controlled by MacPherson the whole time. Subverted in that it's actually Leena, who has disguised herself as Claudia using Harriet Tubman's thimble, which makes the wearer look like whoever they want to. Subverted again when it was revealed that she was being controlled by MacPherson using an artifact.
- In the season 3 finale, it's revealed that Jinks was working for the Regents, infiltrating Sykes's group to find out his endgame. However, he is killed before they find out.
- Mood Dissonance:
- In "Around the Bend", while Pete's delusion is causing him to grow more agitated and violent, it's pretty jarring to hear Artie playing the original studio master of Oye Como Va in an attempt to snap Pete out of it.
- Artie's recurring nightmare in season 4. While Claudia relentlessly chases Artie and then corners him, holds up a dagger in her two hands, and wears a vicious look on her face before stabbing him, she can also be heard screaming his name in an anguished, desperate tone of voice in the background.
- Mood Whiplash:
- In the season 2 premiere, after Artie comes back from the umbilicus explosion, Pete, Myka and Artie realize that someone else has to die if Artie was revived by the Phoenix. Pete then starts coughing repeatedly... and then catches his breath after a few tense seconds.
Pete: No; I'm okay. I was choking... it's dust or something.
Artie: You're okay?
Pete: Yeah, I'm just— oh God... Was I choking on you, Artie?- The entirety of Steve's last conversation with Claudia in the season 3 finale. They're friends again and out to get the enemy, he's doing it for her most of all and then Steve is brutally murdered about five minutes later. You can hear something coming with the music that begins to play, but you're praying it's not what you think it is.
- Whenever Pete has a brush with death, he can't seem to stop making jokes, which is apparently his personal coping mechanism, according to his ex-wife. However, it does have a tendency to induce this trope. An example of this occurs in "The Ones You Love", where he is affected by a tattoo which is about to make him explode. Realizing that the box it came with is leather, and that the tattoo transfers from skin to skin, he tries to touch the tattoo with the box, but is unable to reach it:
Myka: What's wrong?
Pete: I do too many pull-ups, when I should've done yoga... (the tattoo heats Pete up further) Myka, please don't let my last words be "I should've done yoga"! - Mundane Utility: Not all artifacts have downsides, and sometimes, the agents make use of this fact to help them retrieve other artifacts which do have consequences.
- First seen in "Resonance", Pete playing ping-pong against a doppelganger of himself inside Lewis Carroll's mirror. Subverted in "Duped" after they learn the true purpose of the mirror and deal with it properly.
- In "Breakdown", when Pete is caught within the vicinity of Sylvia Plath's typewriter and loses the will to live, Myka pushes him out of the artifact's containment field using, of all things, a broom.
- Artie gets in on the action, at least in a minor way. There's a self-guiding vacuum (no, not a modern one) in his office. He also keeps a handbag full of artifacts, but in his defense those are genuinely life-saving in many situations and don't have negative side-effects.
- Claudia loves this. In "Regrets", she tries to change a light bulb by using a magnetic artifact to scale the Warehouse's steel girders. Subverted when it is revealed that each time the artifact comes into contact with something metal, the power doubles, threatening to collapse the entire Warehouse. Played straight with a snowglobe that releases quick-freezing snow (she uses it to cool drinks in "Breakdown") and Benjamin Franklin's electricity-amplifying ring (which she uses to turn her hand into a flashlight in "13.1"). One of the things she plays with most frequently are the Teslas; she constantly innovates on it, making a mini-Tesla, a Tesla grenade and rifle, even a fake ID Tesla which shoots when it's rubbed.
- Musical Assassin: Pretty much any musical instrument, recording, or studio equipment (like the Studio 54 Disco ball, seen in "Duped") in the Warehouse is most likely the tool of such a person.
- Napoleon's violin, featured in "Personal Effects", can incite an entire town to violence if its user plays a G# note, according to Artie. Most other notes cause the instrument to shoot out what looks like little balls of flame, as seen when a kid gets a hold of it and plays it in her music lessons.
- My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Gender-inverted with Pete. In "No Pain, No Gain", he expresses his desire for a family, a prospect which seems unlikely given his current occupation. Myka, on the other hand, is not the least bit concerned with having children any time soon.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Part of H.G. Wells' backstory. During her time at the Warehouse, her daughter was murdered. Seeking some way to bring her back, she began combing the shelves for an Artifact that would do the trick. She ended up getting another agent killed, and so asked to be bronzed. Subverted in the finale, when it's revealed that was all part of the plan.
- Happens to Myka in the season 2 finale. When H.G. Wells embraces her Big Bad role, Myka realizes that Pete has been having vibes to that effect the entire time, but didn't say anything because he trusted Myka's judgment.
- Artie seems to be having this reaction as the end of the Season 4 premiere, when he begins to realize the consequences of turning back time to save the Warehouse.
- Walter Sykes reacts as such when exposed to Gandhi's cloth, which radiates pure peace. Now free of the darkness that was driving him, he can finally see the monster he's become and apologizes for it.
- Artie invokes this trope almost word-for-word when he wakes up in "The Living and the Dead".
- My God, You Are Serious: When Pete tells Steve that "the only way out of the Warehouse is feet first", Steve thinks it's another of Pete's attempts at a joke.note The serious look on Pete's face is enough to tell Steve that he wasn't joking.
- My Little Panzer: Many of the artifacts in the warehouse are otherwise innocuous objects that became artifacts through extreme circumstances, including things that could be considered children's playthings. Among these are a bottomless can of sticky string a dodgeball that bludgeons people to death, a bracelet made from marionette strings that destroys its wearer's soul, pair of croquet balls that becomes lethal ricocheting projectiles, and a set of jacks.
- Mysterious Backer: In Eureka.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: Artie explicitly compares Paracelsus' time travel altered Warehouse to stories his parents told him about Nazi concentration camps, specifically their scientific experiments.
- Neglectful Precursors: All iterations of the Warehouse seem to suffer this, leading to some having been destroyed or lost. Given the stuff we see often getting put into the Warehouse, you can understand why some ended up destroyed and why it's probably better that some of them remained lost.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Philosopher's Stone. When used with the pair of Egyptian bowls, it can either bestow immortality on someone, or remove it from them. Unless it's used inside the Warehouse, on someone who is a Caretaker, in which case it greatly strengthens their connection to the Warehouse. You can hardly blame Pete for not guessing that one.
- Nice Hat: Artie's straw hat in the first episode. Claudia apparently stole it sometime between seasons two and three, as she is seen wearing it in the season 3 premiere.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
- In "The 40th Floor", Jinks holds Mrs. Frederic at gunpoint to stop her from torturing Sally. This provides the crucial distraction necessary for Sally to free herself and escape, costing the Warehouse their only lead. Naturally, Frederic fires him for it. Subverted in the season 3 finale when it's revealed that Jinks's mutiny and subsequent blacklisting are actually a ruse in an attempt to place him undercover in the Big Bad's employ.
- Artie's actions in "A New Hope", while restoring the Warehouse by turning back time, result in what the artifact's keeper states to be "an evil of your own making... that will live with you the rest of your days." From "An Evil Within" onwards, he is almost desperate to find out who that evil is; although there are many heavy hints pointing to it being Claudia, whom Artie dreams will eventually kill him using a dagger.
- Pete was tricked by Paracelsus into giving him control of the Warehouse at the end of season 4.
- No Hugging, No Kissing: The relationship between Pete and Myka, at least for now, and the one between Claudia and Steve, most likely permanently.
- No Immortal Inertia: In the season 3 finale, Marcus and Mrs. Frederic not only die instantly when the things keeping them alive are shut down/destroyed, but age accordingly. Marcus thus becomes a slightly decayed corpse, while Mrs. Frederic shrivels into a near-skeletal state.
- Noir Episode: "The Big Snag".Pete: (pretty much committing to the bit) "Nobody finds your artifacts like we do, dollface."
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: In the season 3 finale, Pete reasons that since Walter Skyes needs H.G. Wells' Soul Jar, specifically the Janus coin to complete his plan, destroying it would derail his efforts. After much deliberation, Claudia and Myka let him go through with, only for Marcus to stop him using the riding crop artifact.
- Noodle Implements: Most of the questions in the official form for people who might have come into contact with an artifact.
- Noodle Incident:
- From the episode "Claudia": "Next time, if there's an artifact in a zoo, WE LEAVE IT THERE!"Pete: Tell him about the cheetahs!Myka: No! I don't wanna think about the cheetahs!
- The events of the episode "Breakdown" end with the Warehouse coming close to exploding and Pete, Myka and Claudia barely averting disaster by about 30 seconds. After Artie finds this out, he tells about how close he came to the same catastrophe, in his case by 17 seconds.
- In the first episode of Season 3, Pete tells Jinks about a time he tried on Abraham Lincoln's hat and was overcome with the desire to "free" Mrs. Frederic. And don't think that didn't get him into trouble.
- Also in that episode, Artie wants to get out of an observatory because the plants are freaking him out and one of them is staring at him. Given what we know about Artie's past, it's likely that this cryptic phrase refers to something that really did happen.
- In "Queen for a Day", when Pete's ex-wife mentions that Pete was kicked out of the boy scouts, he hastily protests that he "did not start that fire."
- In "Personal Effects", the team has to locate six artifacts collected by Walter Sykes. Only five of the six are actually seen in the episode; Claudia only briefly mentions the sixth one (a waffle iron which makes your skin melt) as an aside.
- In "Elements" Artie makes an offhand comment about how when it comes to artifact detection he's never wrong, except for one time in June 1987. Myka immediately demands details but Artie shuffles them out the door. We may never know the truth...
- In "Endless", there are flashbacks to each agent's "defining moment" during their tenure. All of them are scenes we haven't seen before, and Myka and Steve's moments involve this trope. Mrs. Frederic also shows Steve some moments she was involved in when the two are alone.Steve: "Wow, that's Mr. Frederic?"
- From the episode "Claudia": "Next time, if there's an artifact in a zoo, WE LEAVE IT THERE!"
- No Ontological Inertia: Artifacts — once they're neutralized, everyone who was affected by them instantly goes back to normal. Doesn't always hold true, especially when there's more than one artifact.
- Defied in "A Touch of Fever". Myka hopes that neutralizing Clara Barton's gloves will remove their effect on Pete. The narration even mentions that most artifacts work like that. Not this time.
- No OSHA Compliance:
- Mentioned word for word about the Warehouse. But when you have a whole vault in the Warehouse designed by MC Escher, what do you expect?
- From "Breakdown":Artie: How long did you have before the Warehouse was gonna explode?
Pete: Under a minute.
Claudia: More like 30 seconds. - On the other hand, they do exercise caution. Artifacts are stored in a way that they won't activate, away from ones they'd clash with, and the super dangerous ones are quarantined. The agents know not to touch them, and the Warehouse itself is isolated enough that civilians won't wonder into it.
- "Fractures" features the most inexcusably unsafe gas station ever. The villain of the episode is able to casually spray gasoline everywhere (you can only do this with a diesel pump, which she is not using), and the shutoff valve is a ridiculously hard to turn wheel, instead of the very simple and faster button which all modern stations use.
- In "Second Chance", Myka mentions the OSHA along with a few other agencies when she threatens a steel mill owner known for his unscrupulous business practices.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: In "Insatiable", a glass jar used by the Donner party shows up as an artifact. Anyone who puts money into it is stricken with hypothermia and severe hunger (eventually for human flesh), before eventually dying from cold.
- No Transhumanism Allowed: In "13.1", Hugo One wanted the rest of his/Hugo's original "soul" incorporated into his programming, and the Warehouse crew thought it would be an extremely bad idea. Justified, as the real Hugo wasn't rational enough to understand the situation, and the transfer to Hugo One would be powered by an artifact. Not to mention the fact that they couldn't very well have an AI running the Warehouse.
- Noble Bird of Prey: Before the purple goo, the Warehouse used a giant purple bird named Isabella.
- Odd Couple:
- Invoked by Artie, who points out that Myka's eye for detail complements Pete's intuitiveness perfectly.
- Also invoked in a previous Warehouse agent pairing, suggesting that such pairings are more intentional than happenstance.
- Oddly Small Organization: The Warehouse, which contains arguably the most dangerous items known to mankind, is directly managed by five people, and that's using a rather loose definition. Add on the bureaucracy, and the grand total moves up to about 18. Justified in that the people who run the place deliberately want as little involvement as possible; if it were made into a larger organization, it would be taken apart piece by piece by the government to exploit it.
- In the past, it's seen that there's a slightly larger crew, maybe 10 or so people, but it's unclear how many of them are just filers and whatnot that were replaced by computers.
- This still doesn't explain who's maintaining the place. By all logic just keeping the place as clean as it is should take a force of hundreds, much less keeping all the unique technologies they use in working order and the periodic attempts by the artifacts to escape under control. In the beginning of the series the entire maintenance crew, mechanical division, IT division, mission control, and field agent force is... Artie.
- Offscreen Teleportation:
- Mrs. Frederic is the absolute freaking master of this trope. She never visibly breaks any laws of physics; she's just very good at suddenly being in the same place you are, at the moment you least expect it. Her exits are usually mundane, but at one point she leaves through an open doorway and somehow vanishes in the five seconds it takes Artie to walk over and look through it. Her usage of this is in fact so much a part of her character that Artie and Steve believe that something is seriously wrong when she doesn't do it.
Artie: How does she do that?- In "Breakdown", there's a wide shot of Artie sitting outside a restaurant. Without warning, the scene cuts to a close-up of Artie, with Mrs. Frederic suddenly standing behind him, with a slight whooshing sound.
- It seems, as of season 2, that all of the Regents can do this. Valda certainly can. Called attention to in that Taka, a non-regent agent seen in "Beyond Our Control", is shown walking into the very same room that Valda just teleported into.
- Artie seems to be learning the trick too in the season 3 finale when he busts Claudia trying to hack the Atlas-66 file.Claudia: Did you just Mrs. Frederic me?
- Mrs. Frederic does this again in "The Ones You Love" with Jinks. When they first see the Vatican library, she's standing behind him; a few moments later, she's already on the other side of the room.
- Near the end of Season 4, it's the fact that Mrs. Frederic suddenly isn't doing this that alerts the others to the fact that something is seriously wrong with her and the Warehouse.
- By the time of the Distant Finale, Claudia's started doing it too.
- Off the Wagon: Several episodes keep drawing attention to the fact that Pete is a recovering alcoholic by stating it in the recap opening, but they subvert it by making the characters simply think he has when the truth is far weirder.
- Played somewhat straight in "Merge With Caution," where Pete immediately starts to panic that he might fall off the wagon, when he body-swaps with Myka, who had been drinking at the time.
- He mentions in "Love Sick" that he's tired of encountering Artifacts that he has to explain at his AA meetings. This is after he's exposed to W.C. Fields's juggling balls, an artifact which actually makes you act drunk.Pete: How come every other artifact makes me have to call my sponsor?
- Oh, Crap!:
- This look crosses Claudia's face in "When and Where" when H.G. Wells talks about what she did to the people who killed her daughter.
- And the look on Artie's face in the season 3 finale when Walter Sykes enters Warehouse 13 via portal with Pete as his slave.
- And the look on Steve's face at the end of "Personal Effects" when he realizes the downside of the metronome.
- Artie gets this at the end of "There's Always a Downside" when he realizes that the bag of marbles Pete snagged was stolen from the Warehouse by Brother Adrian's people.
- Myka has this in "No Pain, No Gain" after she becomes very pregnant all of a sudden.
- Artie gets two in "Endless Wonder". First, when he realizes that Adrian's left a booby trap for Claudia and Steve, and then at the end when H.G. reveals that she's deduced that he's time traveled and that she has told Mrs. Frederic.
- Older Than They Look:
- Mrs. Frederic. The point gets hammered home in "No Pain, No Gain", when we find that she has a grandson living in a retirement home who looks even older than her.
- The female H. G. Wells via Human Popsicle effect.
- The photographer using Man Ray's camera in "Age Before Beauty". The fact that he refers to the original owner as "Manny" tips Artie off.
- Lampshaded hilariously by the Count of St. Germain in "The Living and the Dead":
Myka: So you're, like, 300 years old! That's amazing!
Sutton: Five hundred and nineteen, actually. I moisturize.- Claudia's brother Joshua, to a lesser extent than the others - but he didn't age during his twelve years in an interdimensional space.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness:
- The Regents, first shown in "Breakdown", as Valda explains to Artie:
Valda: What exactly were you expecting, Agent Nielsen? Hooded, cloaked figures standing in half-light around a perpetually burning flame?
Regent: You've seen too many movies.- In "An Evil Within", the keeper of the astrolabe refers to the Vatican as this, when he casually mentions the Warehouse.Brother Adrian: As I said before, I work for the Vatican. We know an awful lot of things about... an awful lot of things.
- In "Endless Wonder", Mr. Kosan refers to him and the Regents as a "civilian oversight board".
- Once More, with Clarity!:
- In the season 2 episode "Around the Bend", Pete sees the renegade regent he's trailing kill a policewoman. Then Myka meets up with the policewoman and they watch CCTV footage of Pete's supposed meeting with her. He's talking to himself under the influence of a paranoia inducing artifact.
- In the season 4 episode "The Ones You Love", we see a flashback to Artie doing all the things Brother Adrian is supposed to have done, including using Harriet Tubman's thimble to appear to the others as Brother Adrian (rather than the other way around, which was how it was presented at the time), once he learns the enemy he unleashed by using the astolabe is himself.
- 108: How many years the Warehouse's light bulbs last, as Claudia finds out in "Regrets". Truth in Television, as there are a number of existing light bulbs from that time period that still work. See the Centennial Light, which has been running for 109 years thanks to its low wattage, near-continuous use, and dedicated power supply.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Justified in that the Count and Countess of Saint-Germaine are immortal. They're kinda used to healing from mortal wounds. Played for Laughs after the Count becomes mortal. The first time he gets shot after that point, he complains that "mortal bodies suck."
- Only Barely Renewed: Syfy didn't plan on renewing Warehouse 13 for a fifth season, but after a massive fan campaign they relented.
- Out-of-Character Alert: What's the first sign that something's wrong with Mrs. Frederic in "All the Time In the World"? She leaves the room. By walking.
- Out of Focus: After Season 1, it's very easy to forget that Leena is supposed to be a main character.
- Out of Order: The Christmas Episodes - a result of the seasons being aired during summer and the episodes behind held over for December airings.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: In Season 3 Episode 3, Love Sick an ex-worker for computer store "Tiger Electronics" broke through the system and communicated with the workers and customers, unknowingly infecting them with the computer virus he used to gain access to unknowing user's webcams, via Judah Loew ben Belazel's Amulet.
- Parental Substitute: Artie is this for Claudia. Artie affirms it himself in "Age Before Beauty":Artie: I just sometimes forget that underneath the talented computer programmer and fearless junior Warehouse agent, there beats the heart of a teenage girl, who deserves, well, someone better than me, for... um...
Claudia: A father figure?
Artie: (sighing) Oh my God...
Claudia: (laughing) You're not doing so bad.
Artie: Well, I could do better. You know? I could do better.
Claudia: Sometimes you are so cute! (pinches Artie's cheek) - Percussive Maintenance:
- Lampshaded by Leena in "Resonance" when she walks in on Artie smacking his malfunctioning computer monitors. Subverted shortly afterwards when the monitors revert to normal, apparently after Artie resorts to verbal abuse.
Leena: Does corporal punishment work on computers?
Artie: They're old, they're very old, these monitors; they've been acting up all morning. I found out there's another robbery in Chicago; I can't even access— You know what? (pointing at the monitors) I'm gonna recycle you both for parts! (the monitors are suddenly fixed) How about that?- Claudia names the trope in "Burnout," when her hologram projector doesn't cooperate at first.
- In the episode "When and Where", H.G. Wells's time machine threatens to shut down just as Pete and Myka are almost about to wake up. After exhausting every possible option, H.G., Claudia, Artie and Rebecca all look at one another before simultaneously smacking the machine, which gets it back on again.
Rebecca: Back in the old days, when things didn't work—
Helena: Mine too.
Artie: Works for me.
(along with Claudia, the three of them smack the time machine) - Person as Verb: Claudia to Artie in Season 3 finale, when he catches her hacking the encrypted Regents file.Claudia: Did you just Mrs. Frederic me?
- People Puppets:
- Cecil B. DeMille's riding crop has this power, giving the one who bends it control over the body of whoever they want. Both Marcus and Walter Sykes make extensive use of this in the season 3 finale, as well as MacPherson in the season 3 Christmas episode.
- First shown in "Shadows", Collodi's bracelet is an odd version. It essentially is this to the user themselves, allowing the user to puppet their own disabled limbs and functionally regain mobility, at the cost of eventually darkening their soul, rendering them incapable of love.
- After he gains the ability to control the Warehouse, Paraceulsus is able to control Claudia through her connection to the Warehouse.
- Philosopher's Stone: Was used by Paraceulsus to make the Count Saint Germaine and his family immortal.
- Phlebotinum-Handling Equipment: In the course of retrieving artifacts, Warehouse agents use purple gloves for handling them, as well as the neutralizer goo to negate their effects. The latter is used in various ways: a pouch coated with it for bagging small artifacts; a bucket full of it to contain bigger items; a shower head and hose, inside the Warehouse, used for in-house artifact disturbances. Starting around season 3, the team sometimes uses a neutralizer spray can.
- Plausible Deniability: The people responsible for the Warehouse operate under the auspices of the Secret Service, but frequently clash with any authorities they assist.
- Plot Armor:
- In the season 1 finale, Artie is killed when MacPherson blows up the entrance to the Warehouse... then comes back to life in the season 2 premiere, having been saved by the Phoenix artifact which MacPherson slipped into his pocket.
- In the season three finale, Steve, HG, and Mrs. Frederic are killed, the first via injection, and the latter two by an explosion of the Warehouse. The Reset Button is pushed on all of them...eventually. The first person who died takes awhile to get back and not without consequences.
- In the season 4 premiere, Pete gets killed in the quest to find the parts of the Reset Button artifact. After said artifact is used, he comes back.Pete: I'm not gonna remember...
Artie: Remember what?
Pete: Remember... dying?
Artie: No... no, Pete, you won't remember. (Pete dies) But I will... I will. - Appears to be subverted at the end of "The Ones You Love" when the evil unleashed by the astrolabe completely overtakes Artie, resulting in him shooting Leena. As of "We All Fall Down", Leena has been Killed Off for Real.
- Plot Tailored to the Party: Majorly averted. In the season 2 episode "Buried" H.G. Wells, Myka, and Pete well, and Valda too before he has to sacrifice himself in the "body" challenge are faced with three challenges inside Warehouse 2: Mind, Body, and Soul. Pete immediately solves the mind challenge, H.G. comes up with a clever solution for body, Myka overcomes the soul challenge, and then, Pete figures out the final riddle of how to shut the security system off. None of these achievements are reflections of their usual strengths.
- Played straight in the Season 3 Christmas episode "The Greatest Gift" with Pete — stuck in his non-existent alternate universe — recruiting Myka, Artie and Claudia to help him break into the Warehouse. Artie leads them to the back entrance of the Warehouse, Myka unlocks the first barrier with her knowledge of "open sesame" in Arabic, Claudia hacks an electronic door behind the barrier, and Pete picks the correct door out of a set of three using his vibes.
- Pocket Protector: Averted in the episode "Regrets". Near the end of the episode, a prisoner is shot by a warden under the influence of a hallucination. The bullet is hampered by a Bible in his shirt pocket, but he dies anyway.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis: Pete, in spades. Shows up more and more as the series goes on and in this world knowledge of a B-movie actors entire filmography can literally save the world.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Myka thought Spider-man worked out of a cave and The Rolling Stones sang 'Stairway to Heaven'. She does however have encyclopedic knowledge of literature from H.G Wells to Shakespeare.
- Portal Cut: In the season 3 finale, Walter Sykes dies when Pete cuts the power to a portal connecting Hong Kong and the Warehouse as he passes through it. Only his hand makes it to the other side, and promptly disintegrates, conveniently leaving the Artifact he had stolen unharmed.
- Posthumous Character: After Leena dies, the following episodes have enough new-footage flashbacks to actually put her in more consecutive episodes than she was ever in before.
- Portmanteau Couple Name: In-universe example from "Merge With Caution", when Artie brings Claudia along on a field mission:Claudia: Well, we're a team! Claudia and Artie! Clartie. Ardia?
- The Power of Love:
- Horribly played straight in "Reset" with Lizzie Borden's compact, which gives the person who looks at it an uncontrollable urge to kill the one they love.
- The dogtag artifact in "No Pain, No Gain" allows the user to essentially warp reality for a person, but only if they love the person in question; a fact which saves Pete's life, as well as reveals his true feelings for Myka.
- As revealed in "Second Chance", the love between a mother and her child is the key to releasing someone from the effect of the metronome without killing them. Steve makes up with his mother regarding his sister's death, which frees him from its influence. It nearly kills her in response, but destroying it saves her.
- The Power of Rock:
- As shown in the season 3 premiere, Jimi Hendrix's guitar has enough power to shut down the entire eastern seaboard if left unchecked, and is naturally activated by being played.
- The guitar Hendrix burned at Finsbury Park in 1967 was already in the warehouse, and its effects are unknown.
- Power Perversion Potential: As seen in "Personal Effects", the first pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses turn the user invisible. Jinks and Claudia find that they have wound up in the hands of a storeroom worker at a clothing shop. When Jinks questions what the guy could be doing with them, a woman dashes out of the changing room half-dressed and complaining about a ghost. He suddenly realizes the answer.
- Product Placement:
- Myka starts off the series stating firmly that she doesn't eat sugar, but is suddenly made into a 'Twizzlers Girl' in the second season. Twizzlers is a sponsor of the show by promotional material in the DVD. Lampshaded at the table scene at the end of "Trials", when Leena tells Jinks about how Myka used to avoid sugar, only to have Myka claim not to remember that.
- And then there's the Prius in the third season opener. Claudia's detailed run-down of what an awesome car it is and why you, yes you, should bicycle out to your nearest dealer right now somehow manages to be in character, probably because she's basically geeking out over technology while trying to be super-casual in front of the new guy.
- Pete takes a moment to show Myka the awesomeness of his Toyota's GPS in "Personal Effects".
- Parodied in "No Pain, No Gain" when Steve borrows the Prius to help Artie on a search. He points out some of the features, only for Artie to snap at how useless they are in their current task.Steve: Hey, have you checked out this car's in-tune system? It's got Bing and Pandora—
Artie: Oh, what a relief! That way, if we can't find the missing artifact, we can customize your music station. - And parodied again in "Parks and Rehabilitation", when Pete asks if Claudia's car can jump a chasm. She snarks that while they'd never make it, at least they could use Bing to find the depth of the chasm before they hit bottom.
- In "Savage Seduction" Steve gets in on the act and takes time out of the episode to brag about his car.
- Prongs of Poseidon: The Minoan Trident, shown in "Reset", the season 2 finale.
- Prophecy Twist: In season 4, Artie has a recurring vision of Claudia stabbing him with a unique dagger. In the mid-season finale, Claudia follows through, but the dagger is an artifact that has the power to "cast out" whatever it is used to stab, in this case the evil influence within Artie.
- Psychological Torment Zone: In "Regrets", a prison built above a quartz mine with artifact properties becomes this, making the prisoners and everyone else inside hallucinate their deepest regrets; specifically visions of people whom they've lost or killed. An impending thunderstorm amplifies this effect, causing riots and apparent suicides. The hallucinations themselves are epiphanic prisons, wherein the only way to make the hallucination disappear is for the person to have an epiphany which allows them to confront their guilt and let go of their regrets.
- Put Them All Out of My Misery: Helena's apparent motivation.
- Rapid Aging: "Age Before Beauty."
- Rasputinian Death: Averted. In "Mild Mannered", Artie debunks the Trope Namer's death as nonsense. In this universe, Rasputin really did die on the first attempt, but his followers used an artifact to project an image of him to others for the additional deaths, which is why people think it took so much to kill him.
- Read the Freaking Manual: Myka says this to Pete.
- Reality Retcon:
- H.G. Wells was/is a woman and Warehouse agent, as revealed in her first appearance in "Time Will Tell".
- According to Artie in "13.1", Hugo Miller was the one who pitted Bill Gates and Steve Jobs against each other by making them pursue different directions.
- The episodes "Duped" and "Fractures" give various alternative interpretations of Lewis Carroll's stories. Artie says in "Duped" that the author's publicized writings were Warehouse fabrications to hide the truth about the mirror. "Fractures" reveals that the descriptions of the characters in the stories, particularly the Mad Hatter and the hookah-smoking caterpillar, were references to artifacts which existed along with the mirror.
- In "An Evil Within", the keeper of the astrolabe says that it has been used once, resulting in Robespierre's "Reign of Terror" around the time of the French Revolution.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Regents will do anything to protect the Warehouse, including homicide, memory wiping, and destroying credibility/lives. That said, they have a host of other options that they try to exercise first. For instance, if a well-meaning person tries to reveal the fragments they know, explaining to them why artifacts are a double-edged sword that can do more harm than good is given a try first. This extends to the agents, too; they're willing to forgive even major breaches of protocol, considering it a lesson learned.
- Most notably, after Evil!Artie murdered Leena the Regents flat-out refused to punish him in any way because it was perfectly obvious he was under the thrall of the evil from the Astrolabe.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: What Pete and Myka think has happened in the first episode. Subverted, in that their job now is awesome.
- Steve Jinks also has this impression at first.
- Red Herring: There's a can of them (the original one!) in the Warehouse. Pete jokes the case must have been hard to solve.
- Red Shirt: Myka becomes concerned in "Implosion" that this is how Artie may view her and Pete, even naming the trope.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Justified, given that the bulk of the Warehouse's contents aren't understood well enough to use safely or duplicate. The few that are safe are generally kept secret in the interest of giving the team an advantage.
- Pete lampshades this in "Endless Wonder", that just because they could use some of the artifacts for good purposes, they often have a downside that mean it simply wouldn't be worth it. Want to cure something like Parkinson's disease? Sure, there's an artifact that can do that... but you'd have to transfer the effects onto someone else.
- And even when the artifacts aren't inherently dangerous they usually lend themselves very easily to abuse. Pete points this out as well in the same episode, asking who in the world could possibly be trusted with this kind of power.
- Paracelsus is a walking example of why this trope is in play. He was a genius that could combine and even duplicate artifacts, but also a complete sociopath who sacrificed as many lives as was necessary to do so. He thus proves that while the wonders of the Warehouse could potentially be exploited for good, it could only be done by someone with no moral constraints.
- Pete lampshades this in "Endless Wonder", that just because they could use some of the artifacts for good purposes, they often have a downside that mean it simply wouldn't be worth it. Want to cure something like Parkinson's disease? Sure, there's an artifact that can do that... but you'd have to transfer the effects onto someone else.
- Refugee from TV Land: As seen in "Beyond Our Control", Philo Farnsworth invented a 3D hologram projector that (unintentionally) creates physical matter, literally bringing TV to life. Combine this with a disgruntled postal worker stealing it from the unsorted mail bin after she's forced into retirement and using it to play through an action movie marathon...
- Reinventing the Telephone: Teslapunk video phones, tasers, golf carts, computers, hologram projectors (oh wait)...
- Reset Button: Hit in the Season 4 premiere, turning time back 24 hours to save the Warehouse, Mrs. Frederic, H.G., Claudia, and Pete.
- Reset Button Suicide Mission: At the end of Season 3 the Warehouse is destroyed, important supporting characters were all dead, and the world was coming to an end. At the start of Season 4 the heroes can rewind time by 24 hours if they get the right magical goodies, but a secret society takes exception to it. The heroes drop like flies, but no problem, it'll all be fixed in the rewind.
- Restored My Faith in Humanity: Myka (and later Pete and the rest of the Warehouse crew) seem to have done this for H.G., which, in the season 3 finale, leads to her Heroic Sacrifice.
- Retcon:
- It was established early on that Myka was an only-child, and that Claudia's only sibling was her brother Joshua. Both of them are later shown to have sisters that were never mentioned before. Particularly glaring in Claudia's case considering her backstory.
- When Claudia is first introduced, she's just checked out of a pleasant-looking mental institute on her own recognizance, and the implication is she went in voluntarily to get her head together. In later episodes, she was locked up in Bedlam House for years.
- Ret Gone: Benedict Valda from the alternate timeline is taken out this way, via Pete neutralizing the Ripple Effect-Proof Memory fork which was sustaining him.
- Retired Badass:
- Rebecca St. Clair, a former Warehouse agent, introduced in "Burnout".
- "Shadows" reveals that Jane Lattimer was a former Regent for at least a decade before rejoining the organization.
- Revealing Hug: In "Reset", Claudia is rather put-off by the notion that the people running the Warehouse have some sort of plan for her future, but Artie assures her that she will always have the ability to choose her destiny. However, when she hugs him in gratitude, it's clear Artie knows more about this situation than he's letting on.
- Revenge: Season 3 Big Bad's motivation.
- Reverse Mole: As revealed in the season 3 finale, Jinks. His firing was part of an elaborate ruse to figure out Sykes' endgame.
- Revision: In season 1, the episode "Regrets" elaborates on the incident which killed Myka's previous partner/lover Sam, where he headed towards his killer "too early" while Myka was still coordinating their attack. The season 3 episode "Past Imperfect" has Myka revisiting the case, where it's revealed that what looked like Sam being "too early" was actually Myka being affected by an artifact which allowed its user to time-lock the area around him by 47 seconds.
- Revival Loophole: Pete uses it to get an artifact off his back in "Burnout".
- Ripple Effect-Proof Memory:
- Artie in "A New Hope".
- The entire team in "Endless Terror", courtesy of a set of forks which protect the holders from temporal changes. Benedict Valda of the Bad Future uses one to hitch a ride into the proper timeline.
- Harvey Korman's cufflinks in "Savage Seduction" provide a very specific version of this. The Trapped in TV Land artifact not only sucks people into a television show, but forces them to assume the roles of the characters they replace. Since Harvey never could stay in character, the cufflinks block this effect and give the user control.
- Room Full of Crazy:
- Claudia has one, seen in her introductory episode when Pete and Myka visit the house where she stayed before she started tracking Artie down.
- And also in the season 3 Christmas episode "The Greatest Gift", in the alternate universe where Pete was never born, complete with multiple references to how much she hates Artie.
- Rotoscoping: The video game sequences in "Don't Hate The Player".
- RPG Episode: "Don't Hate The Player".
- Running Gag:
- From the season 2 finale ("Reset"):
H.G. Wells is a bad guy!
I/We know!- Claudia joking about Artie being ancient. Steve tries to join in on the ridicule in "There's Always a Downside", only to be shot down by Artie. Apparently, he's not allowed to do that.
- Pete: "Good game." (slaps the guy's butt)
- When someone gets whammied by an artifact, the cover story is often "wild mushrooms".
- Didn't eat any wild mushrooms? Wild mushrooms in the water supply!
- Pete never reading the manual. Steve and Artie start to fall behind on their reading as well, with Artie, at the start of Season 5, citing turning evil and trying to destroy the world in Season 4 as his excuse. Pete and Steve agree it's a better one than theirs.
- Artie's Big Ol' Eyebrows.
- San Dimas Time: H.G. Wells' Time Machine works this way.
- Sarcastic Confession: From "Beyond Our Control":Todd: Do you really work for the IRS?
Claudia: Actually, I work for a top-secret organization that tracks down mysterious and powerful artifacts.
Todd: (after a long pause) You're going to audit me, aren't you?
Claudia: Maybe. - Scenery Gorn: In the season 3 finale, the Warehouse is blown up from the inside by an artifact. There's an extended sequence where the explosion rips through the place.
- Schmuck Bait: In "Fractures", Lewis Carroll's mirror has a flashbulb next to it, with a note saying "CLICK ME". The first person to fall for it ends up swapping bodies with Alice Liddell. Later, Pete can't resist it either, although luckily he is only temporarily blinded for doing so.
- Screams Like a Little Girl:
- Invoked by Pete in the season 2 premiere when they try to use the durational spectrometer to retrace MacPherson's steps. Pete is startled when he sees a rat projected on the floor:
Myka: You okay?
Pete: Yeah, I am now. Five hours ago, I would've screamed like a little girl.- In the season 3 finale, it's revealed that while H.G. Wells's soul is in the sphere, her body has a different identity as an American schoolteacher named Emily Lake. When Pete, Myka and Claudia explain it to her, Pete comments that she has "a really girly scream."
- Sealed Evil in a Can:
- In "Duped", Alice Liddell, trapped in Lewis Carrol's mirror.
- The entire Bronze Sector, first seen in the season 1 finale, which houses people so evil that they could have "become the next Hitler." The female H. G. Wells escaped from here, though she claims to be not so much evil as very depressed at the time.
- Also the Sealed Evil In a Can Of Sardines from "Merge With Caution."
- Seen in "We All Fall Down", the blue orchid artifact, which unleashes a deadly plague that can kill in 24 hours, is sealed in an impenetrable container.
- Second Episode Introduction: Claudia doesn't appear in person until the fourth episode, but the idea is the same.
- Claudia actually appears in the second episode ("Resonance") — albeit for only one frame — when various images flash before Artie's eyes after he uses Dickinson's computer to trace the hacker attempting to access the Warehouse.
- Secret Government Warehouse
- Secret Keeper: In the season 4 premiere, Artie is forced to become this, as the downside of using the astrolabe to avert the previous 24 hours. Revealing his secret will put the one he tells in grave danger.
- Subverted later at the end of "Endless Wonder". When H.G. Wells deduces his secret, time travel being an area of expertise she's intimately familiar with, she doesn't even give Artie the chance to try to keep her quiet. She's already ratted him out to Mrs. Frederic and just dropped by to tell him.
- "We All Fall Down" features the Steinbrück family, who have been entrusted with the location of the blue orchid artifact from Warehouse 8.
- Secret Test of Character:
- In Claudia's introductory episode, she kidnaps Artie and takes him to her brother's lab. When Pete and Myka find out that he's missing, they become desperate to find him despite both Artie's insistence that he's fine, and Mrs. Frederic's orders. After they discover more information regarding the artifact which Claudia's brother Joshua tried to use, Mrs. Frederic implies that she knew all along where Artie was; she only wanted Pete and Myka to learn what Joshua didn't know during his experiment so that he could be saved and Claudia would let Artie go.
- In "There's Always a Downside", Brother Adrian brings Artie a spur from a famous bounty hunter, which he says should be able to track the astrolabe. Since Artie has it and can't reveal that fact, he covertly destroys the spur. Adrian reveals that he bought the spur at a local store, having suspected Artie had the astrolabe and would sabotage any attempt to find it.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Averted the first time, when the entire Warehouse was about to blow up. The second time, at the end of the S1 finale, MacPherson escapes from the Warehouse and activates the explosive bolts installed in the Warehouse entrance. Artie is trapped in there and caught up in the blast. He got better.
- Semper Fi: Subverted. Pete is a retired Marine, but otherwise does not conform to any of the Serious Business/Blood Knight stereotypes about them.
- Serial Escalation:
- Every season finale so far has ended disastrously for the main cast, and the ramifications of each cataclysm grow bigger with every season.
- Season 1 ended with MacPherson, a rogue Warehouse agent, escaping the Warehouse and blowing up the umbilicus with Artie inside.
- Season 2 has H.G. Wells coming close to starting a new Ice Age; after the disaster is averted, Myka's confidence is shaken and she decides to leave the Warehouse.
- Season 3 ended with the success of Walter Sykes's decade-long revenge plot against the Regents, specifically Jane, resulting in the destruction of the Warehouse and the deaths of Jinks, H.G. Wells, and Mrs. Frederic.
- The Season 4 mid-season finale has Leena being killed off by Artie (who has been overtaken by an evil split-personality) and ends with the unleashing of a deadly plague on millions of people, including Claudia, Pete, Myka, Steve and Artie himself.
- In the tie-in book A Touch of Fever, it turns out that the Warehouse, in addition to storing sources of other idioms such as the original hot potato, the original can of worms, and the original case of red herrings, holds the fish that got away.
- Every season finale so far has ended disastrously for the main cast, and the ramifications of each cataclysm grow bigger with every season.
- Sixth Ranger: Claudia, later Steve.
- Shared Universe: With Eureka and Alphas. Doctor Calder appears in an episode of Alphas.
- Sharing a Body: The artifact in "Merge With Caution" causes an extreme version of this. The two sharing a body actually share the same space with both bodies: the dominant personality manifests their body when speaking.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend:
- Inverted with Claudia when Myka teases her about Todd in "Age Before Beauty".
- Played straight with Artie in "Fractures" when he gets grilled again by the team regarding his relationship with Vanessa:Claudia: Oh, come on, I think it's so cute; you officially have a girlfriend.
Artie: She's not my girlfriend.
Claudia: Uh, are you seeing anyone else?
Artie: No.
Claudia: Do you want to?
Artie: No.
Claudia: She's your girlfriend.
- Ship Sinking:
- Both of Pete's in the episode "Reset":
- Pete/Myka via Like Brother and Sister reference in her "going away" letter. However, Eddie McClintock seems to believe they will be together when "the end of the show" happens, so it's possible the writers are playing the long game with it. A season 3 episode ("Love Sick") involved them becoming drunk because of an artifact and, fearful that they wouldn't remember what they had done the next morning, get into bed naked because they knew they would never sleep together and it would prompt them to find out what they had done the previous night.
- Pete/Kelly via her getting weirded out at, you know, almost killing Pete.
- Claudia/Jinks in "Trials", torpedoed right as Claudia was about to bring up what she thought was their Unresolved Sexual Tension by Jinks and his Have I Mentioned I am Gay? moment.
- Shirtless Scene: Pete. All the damn time.
- Shoot the Dog: In "Burnout", Myka can't bring herself to electrocute Pete to destroy a particularly dangerous artifact, so Rebecca does it for her.
- Shout-Out:
- H.G. Wells' Mental Time Travel machine in "When and Where" seems to be powered by a device that looks strikingly like a flux capacitor.
- The first episode of season 4 is called A New Hope.
- And in that episode, Claudia says "Never give up, never surrender!".
- An episode featured a copy of John Ringo's Eye of the Storm in the background. Ringo repaid the nod with a cameo in Queen of Wands for Artie and Claudia.
- "No Pain, No Gain" has Pete refer to the Stalker with a Crush as "Misery".
- The artifact of the week in "Second Chance" is an old shard of armor from the Peloponnesian War, specifically from the Spartans' stand against the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae. Pete and Myka find it in the chest of a former Marine, thought to be shrapnel from an explosion he survived in Baghdad. However, the shard is lodged next to his heart, and removing it would kill him.
- At one point, Claudia tells Jinks "Chante, you stay!"
- The webisode "Grand Designs" features 2 prominent shout-outs to Rush fans. The title of the webisode is a song from their "Power Windows" album, and the artifact of the day is on aisle YYZ-2112 - YYZ being an instrumental song on their "Moving Pictures" album, and 2112 being the title of their 4th album, considered to be a masterpiece.
- Too many to count in "Mild Mannered" but this one sticks out because its one of the few not comic book related ones:
Claudia: Allons y!- In "Mild Mannered", one scene at the end has the camera pans to Charlie Atlas' pants. Careful observation of the panning sequence will reveal that the Warehouse also possesses what appears to be Wonder Woman's lasso, the Penguin's umbrella, Green Arrow's bow and... Thor's Hammer.
- Also in "Mild Mannered," the couple running the cafe are Simon and Kaylee!
- Pete also tells himself to "Get your ass to Mars!" like in Total Recall (1990) and he and Claudia shout out the Wyld Stallyns with an Air Guitar duet.
- During an expedition to Egypt, H.G. Wells dresses up like Lara Croft. Complete with Lampshade Hanging!Helena: What? This is what the modern British archaeologist wears, isn't it?
Myka: No, it's what American film producers think the modern British archaeologist wears. - In "Reset", Captain Robau actually says the words "Prime Directive".
- In the third season premier, Pete signs off from the Farnsworth calling himself Kirk, and has his new partner do the "live long and prosper" gesture.
- He was signing off as Kirk as early as Season 1 episode 8.wor
- In the episode "Trials", one of the doctors preforming an operation used the line "Ok kids, this is where it gets interesting."
- In the season 3 intro sequence, you can see, among other things, a full wing of Harrier jets, the Wright Flyer, and the Trojan Horse. Between this and other tropes here, it's safe to say that W13 holds any major artifact of historical and/or cultural significance along side the harmful harmless objects.
- Warehouse 13 has a purple goo that neutralizes objects with paranormal powers and gives people giddy feelings if they touch it. In Ghostbusters II, the team finds a river of pink goo that imbues objects with paranormal powers and gives people angry feelings if they touch it.
- In the episode 'There's Always a Downside', Claudia has the following perfect line to a group of cheerleaders:"'Claudia"': Alright, Heathers, very nice. Heather, Heather, Heather, and Heather, let's not have a brain tumour for breakfast - everybody out this way...
- In "The Living and the Dead", MacPherson: Oly Oly Oxen Free!
- Dr. Vanessa Calder's (Lindasy Wagner) Farnsworth ringtone is the Bionic Sound Effect. Lindsay Wagner was The Bionic Woman.
- Tons and tons to Star Trek:
- Artie is played by Saul Rubinek, who appeared as the villain in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Other actors who have appeared on the show (a few of them recurring): Armin Shimerman and Rene Auberjonois (Quark and Odo), Brent Spiner (Commander Data), Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan (Captain Janeway and 7 of 9), just to name a few.
- Pete's mom is named Jane(way).
- At one point, Pete complains that it's like both of them are treated like Red Shirts, and then says it's so cool that Myka gets that reference.
- In another episode, it shows the inside of a diner where two geeks are arguing over which is stronger, Vulcans or Klingons. Turns out it's Vulcans, by 47%.
- Pete once ended a conversation by saying "Kirk out."
- The music from 'Amok Time' shows up, as well as some of the fight choreography, in 'Don't Hate the Player.'
- From "Endless Terror": (Referring to the eyepieces alt-Valda is using) They have Borg here?
- The number of times the phrase "All good things..." is said in the final episode "Endless" can't be anything but a shout-out to the final TNG episode given the number of Star Trek references in this show.
- Sixth Ranger Traitor: H. G. Wells.
- Slapstic Knows No Gender: The show delights in putting the main cast through physical comedy and Amusing Injuries, and the female cast don't get saved because they're girls. Notably, Claudia is probably the biggest target.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism:
- Artie starts out with a very cynical perspective of people, keeping them at arm's length from him. Myka calls him out on it when she's trapped in Lewis Carroll's mirror in "Duped", after which he begins to trust the agents more.
- In season 2, H.G. Wells comes back from being bronzed slightly optimistic about the future, but later reverts to extreme misanthropy, coming close to starting a new Ice Age and killing millions of people using an artifact. Her faith in humanity is later restored over the course of season 3, culminating in the season 3 finale with a Heroic Sacrifice where she saves Pete, Myka and Artie from an artifact which blows up the Warehouse.
- Smart People Play Chess: Artie and Claudia particularly. Particularly in Season 1.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Artie and Claudia particularly.
- From the season 4 premiere:
Claudia: That's why it's a 24-hour stopwatch; because Magellan was the first one to sail all the way around the world!
Artie: Oh, so you actually paid attention in fifth grade?
Claudia: Yes. Now think back to your youth and try to remember what he said to you on deck the night he crossed the International Date Line.
Artie: I never tire of those comments. - Soap Within a Show: In "Savage Seduction" there's "Seducción Salvaje" (Savage Seduction), which hits about 20+ of the points on the trope page, starting with the fact that it's a Spanish-language telenovela, and using such plot elements as a Love Triangle, two of the characters being unknowingly related (as revealed by a Long-Lost Relative), one of the women in the Love Triangle being pregnant, a character long thought dead turning up in a mental hospital, Pete as a roguish, Troubled, but Cute hunk that all of the women want (Sadly, no Eyepatch of Power). The list really goes on.
- Soft Glass:
- In "Breakdown", Pete attempts to escape a artifact house via defenestration, and ends up coming back in via the same method (the house is a recursive space and every exit leads back in).
- In "Love Sick", Artie uses an artifact which allows an object to pass through glass to retrieve another artifact which is causing people to turn into golems.
- Someone Has to Die: Valda sacrifices himself to fulfill this trope in "Buried".
- Soul Jar: In the season 3 premiere, H.G. Wells, following her imprisonment, has her mind trapped in what looks like a modified magic 8-ball which can project her as a hologram. In the season 3 finale, it's revealed that her body, meanwhile, continues to live as a schoolteacher in Wyoming named Emily Lake.
- Special Edition Title: A Christmas/winter themed one for "Secret Santa".
- "We All Fall Down", the season 4 mid-season finale, simply features the title, without the wide shots of the Warehouse, in keeping with the dark mood of the episode.
- "The Big Snag" has both the title and the theme song rendered in a 1940's style.
- Spider-Sense: Pete's vibes. The episode "Shadows" reveals he inherited it from his mom.
- Spin-Off: The producer, Jack Kenny, has pitched a spinoff revolving around HG Wells and Warehouse 12 set in the 1800s. If accepted, it would run alongside Warehouse 13.
- Spiritual Successor: To quite a few shows with similar premises, like the SCP Foundation, Friday the 13th: The Series without the emphasis on horror, GURPS Warehouse 23: The Series. It's also been called The Warehouse from Indiana Jones: The Series.
- Split-Personality Takeover: In "The Ones You Love", this happens to Artie. The evil created by the astrolabe is Artie himself, which manifests in the form of Brother Adrian. The real Adrian was trapped, along with the rest of the Brotherhood, by Artie himself. Artie has been chasing his Enemy Within the entire time. When he finally realizes this, it takes him over completely. Fortunately, there's a little leeway between the takeover and the complete death of the original, allowing Claudia to save him.
- Spoiler Opening: Thanks to the season 3 opener, it's no surprise Myka rejoins the team.
- Spontaneous Human Combustion:
- As seen in the season 1 finale, the Phoenix causes this in others in exchange for protecting the user from any source of fire (or outright reconstructing them from ashes, as seen in the season 2 premiere).
- The muscle-growth artifact in "For the Team" causes this when the heat from the accelerated growth is too much for the body to handle.
- Spooky Painting: In "Breakdown", one of these causes Myka, Pete, and Claudia to be stuck in a replica of Leena's Bed and Breakfast stored in the Warehouse.
- According to Mrs. Frederic in "The Ones You Love", there's a reason why Rembrandt's depictions of people were so lifelike in appearance: his framer gave the paintings the ability to suck in anyone looking at them. Jinks gets trapped inside one of those paintings until Mrs. Frederic removes it from its frame, freeing the people trapped inside... one of whom turns out to be the real Brother Adrian.
- Stable Time Loop: See You Already Changed the Past. Rebecca St. Clair and her partner Jack fell in love when they found themselves kissing in an orchard, with no memory of the previous day. Fifty years later, Rebecca uses H.G. Wells' Time Machine in the episode "When and Where" to transfer her consciousness into her past self so she can share one last kiss (the First Kiss) with Jack. H.G. Wells also built the time machine in the first place after realizing that she did so in the future and used it.
- Stalker with a Crush:
- In "Shadows", an art major that a cheerleader barely knew in high school uses an artifact to get rid of people who make her angry. He follows her when she moves to a new town.
- A female hockey fan in "No Pain, No Gain" is this to a hometown hockey player, which is amplified by an artifact that essentially grants wishes.
- Standard Female Grab Area: In the season 2 finale, Claudia does this to Kelly when she's taken over by Lizzie Borden's artifact.
- The Starscream: H.G. Wells in the season 2 premiere. She needs to work with MacPherson in order to retrieve some personal effects, but kills him the first chance she gets. A rare case where The Starscream succeeds.
- Start of Darkness:
- As shown in a flashback in the season 1 finale, MacPherson's came when he used the Phoenix to save his lover. By "dying" temporarily, he saw the afterlife, which from his point of view was nothing but darkness. He assumed there was nothing after life, and so all that matters is now. He attempts to expose Artie to this in order to make him act the same, but it backfires since Artie sees light and hope.
- The death of H.G. Wells' daughter was this for her. From then on she saw people for their worst traits, and it quickly went downhill.
- As revealed in "Shadows", Walter Sykes was corrupted as a child by an artifact which gave him the ability to walk. The artifact was then collected by Warehouse agents (namely, Pete's mother). Everything he's done since then was to get that artifact back. And more.
- In season 4, the use of the astrolabe is this for its user. "We All Fall Down" further elaborates that it causes the user to turn against his very motive for using it in the first place.
- Stealth Hi/Bye:
- Claudia is one of the few people who do this walking through a perfectly ordinary door. Artie pulls it on Pete and Myka later. Mrs. Frederic and to a lesser extent her bodyguard manage it on a regular basis.
- Mrs. Frederic manages to do it in extremely creepy ways. In the S3 opener, you can see her in the background of a dark room (before she's apparently in the room), messes with a phone message to say "Turn on the lights" and when Jinks turns on the light, suddenly she's there. Yeesh.
- Steampunk:
- Warehouse 13 was designed by Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and M.C. Escher. The Farnsworths were invented by... well... Philo Farnsworth. In terms of time periods, Edison and Tesla are borderline between Steampunk and Dieselpunk, and Farnsworth is squarely and comfortably in Dieselpunk. However, technologically speaking, Edison and Tesla in real life mark the end of steam technology, and the beginning of electrical technology, which indicates Dieselpunk. So it's from the moment of transition from one period to the other.
- In the season 2 premiere, Pete describes H.G. Wells's Imperceptor Vest as a "cool, iron, steampunk-y vest thing".
- "3...2...1" features flashbacks to HG's time at Warehouse 12, where we get to see a steampunk gun and rocket.
- It's easier just to view the H.G. Wells character in this series as a literal walking avatar of Steam Punk, although it is made better by the fact that except for the Hand Wave which establishes her presence in the first place, it isn't gratuitous. Yes, she has a strong English accent, uses a grappling hook, is an apparent polymath with seemingly limitless knowledge of electrical engineering, and is seen in period dress during her flashbacks to the 1890s, but it still never really feels excessive or forced. It's just who she is.
- Straw Feminist: H.G. Wells; slightly justified due to times she lived in.
- Straight Gay: Agent Jinks. His sexual preference is so far in the background that in "Trials", Claudia initially thought they had a quiet flirtation-thing going until he had to explictly spell it out for her that she was not his type.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Myka and Claudia are hoping that Artie didn't get a clown for Claudia's 21st birthday.
- Stupid Sacrifice: Valda, in "Buried". You have to question the logic of a security system that is designed to kill bona fide Warehouse agents. Whose brilliant idea was it to make it so that if people who had every right to be there came in, one must die?
- There are a few lines of dialog that Warehouse 2 was not emptied because they had to quickly shut it down to hide it from invading Romans. This would imply that the "one must die" requirement was not a standard part of its operation but implemented after it was 'abandoned' to discourage thieves.
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Shown in "13.1", Fargo's MARA repair drones inexplicably come equipped with net launchers, flamethrowers, and saw blades.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: H.G. Wells, of all people. In this case, the man known as H.G. Wells is actually her brother, used as a proxy since she wouldn't be accepted as an author in her time.
- Tailor-Made Prison:
- First seen in the season 1 finale, the Bronze Sector, a section of Warehouse where the worst people in the world, people whose removal from society had to be absolutely certain, are held. People like Hitler, Mussolini, and Michael Vick, or rather people who would have become like them except the Warehouse got to them first. The best part? It seems as if this is on the low end of potential punishments. They actually have things that are worse and that Warehouse agents are better off not knowing about. "Buried" also reveals that the Warehouse management compile lengthy records on how to kill various agents.
- The sphere where H.G. Wells's soul is stored, first shown in the season 3 premiere, also counts as this, of a sort. Jane explains it in the season 3 finale as a way to punish her, while still being able to use her as a resource.
- Taken for Granite:
- "When and Where" has a variation using Cinderella's knife, which turns people into glass. Apparently those slippers weren't hers, and weren't the only glass things to be found that day.
- "Love Sick" has people being turned into clay by an artifact-enhanced computer virus, the originating artifact being the one responsible for the myth of the golem. It takes hours for the victims to turn fully.
- A scroll in "The Ones You Love" ends up encasing Claudia's brother in amber, along with the scroll in his hand.
- Take That!: In "Personal Effects", as Myka and Pete are headed to a pawnshop to look for artifacts, Pete calls out the show Pawn Stars (naming the channel it's on, not the show itself) on how it portrays pawnshops. When Claudia enters the pawnshop later, she reveals how her impressions of pawnshops were influenced by said show.Pete: You know, the History Channel has got to stop glamorizing the pawn industry.
(later, when Claudia, Artie, Leena and Jinks arrive at the blown-up pawnshop)
Claudia: Wow.
Pete: Yeah, blew out the whole window.
Claudia: No, I mean this pawnshop doesn't look anything like the one on that TV show.
Pete: See? That's what I've been saying! - Take Up My Sword:
- In "Buried", when it seems as if Mrs. Frederic is going to die, and therefore Warehouse 13 would die with her, Claudia is nearly made to take her place to keep Warehouse 13 safe. She doesn't have to go through with it, though it's suggested that sooner or later she will.
- "No Pain, No Gain" has Mrs. Frederic apparently grooming Claudia for this eventuality. Claudia discovers that she can sense the imminent creation of an artifact, and later meets Mrs. Frederic's grandson, who actually looks older than his grandmother. This was most probably prompted by Mrs. Frederic's graying hair; after Claudia sees her grandson, she tells Claudia, "Not all wonder is endless."
- Talent Double: A flashback to an incident where the entire cast tap-dances via an artifact uses actual dancers for leg shots. Saul Rubinek is clearly faking dancing in a few shots. Averted when Claudia is shown tap dancing in heels in full-body shots.
- Talkative Loon: Hugo Miller from "13.1". At least, the part of him that's still attached to his body. Taken Up to Eleven in "There's Always a Downside" when Pete and Claudia help him retrieve Bobby Fischer's marbles. He keeps rambling so often that Claudia has to constantly keep him in check; although it can be justified due to his nervousness with his nephew's life being in danger.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: In "The Ones You Love," Tracy tries to give her sister Myka coffee spiked with drain cleaner while under the influence of an artifact.
- Taxonomic Term Confusion: In "An Evil Within", Myka mentions her phobia of anything with tentacles, such as octopi, squids, and jellyfish. However, she lumps them all under the category of cnidarians. While Cnidaria does include jellyfish, octopi and squids belong to an entirely different phylum - Mollusca. The monsters generated by the episode's artifact drew heavy inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft, which makes mentioning cnidarians and not cephalopods even more bizarre.
- Technobabble: In "Vendetta", this is revealed to be Claudia's personal turn-on, first when Todd's admission of being a techie makes her fall for him, and later when she makes Todd discuss in detail his preferred method of hacking before kissing him.
- Television Geography:
- The Warehouse is in the middle of nowhere, but many plot important places are somehow within close driving distance and getting across the globe in a day apparently isn't a major issue.
- Time is of the essence to unite two artifacts in the episode "Nevermore", with one agent in Colorado and the other in Oregon (about 900 miles apart.) However, Pete comes rushing into Colorado with the artifact seemingly a very short time after getting it in Oregon.
- Tempting Fate:
- In "Breakdown", Claudia comments that the backup containment fields for the Artifacts in the Dark Vault should hold up long enough to do what they need to do. Notably, the containment fields fail before she even finishes her sentence, after which she does finish, just not in the way she had originally intended.Claudia: Don't worry; they should hold up long enough for us to—(the containment fields shut down)Claudia: —realize my karma sucks.
- Happens again in "Buried" when the team needs to infiltrate Warehouse 2. After passing the first entrance test, they come across a long hallway. The Regent, Valda, accompanying them declares that they just might make it after all. Cue saw blades springing from the floor. Pete then has the nerve to say "It could be worse." Cue fire.Valda: (deadpan snarking) Thanks for that.
- In the season 4 premiere, when Pete, Myka, Artie and Claudia are in France searching for one half of the Reset Button artifact, Pete points out the two brotherhood men following them, and complains at how obvious they were. Later, when they encounter a group of the brotherhood, Myka asks if getting through them was a challenge enough for Pete, and he agrees.Pete: Well, they could have at least made it challenging. You know, professional courtesy?(later, when they see a group of brotherhood men in their way)Myka: (gesturing towards the men) Okay, is that enough of a challenge for you?
Pete: Yes. Much better, thank you. - In "Personal Effects", Myka and Pete talk about their task of finding a bunch of artifacts used by Walter Sykes. Later, Claudia claims it would be easy to track down the artifacts, which unnerves Pete.Myka: We bag the artifacts; we'll be back in time for dinner.(the pawnshop window explodes)Pete: I think we're gonna be late for dinner.(Claudia, Jinks, Artie and Leena meet them inside the blown-up pawnshop, where Myka finds a list of credit card payments for the artifacts)Claudia: So in a few minutes, we'll have names and addresses; what could be easier?
Pete: (worried) Ah, ah, no... Don't say "easy", we'll miss dinner completely.
- In "Breakdown", Claudia comments that the backup containment fields for the Artifacts in the Dark Vault should hold up long enough to do what they need to do. Notably, the containment fields fail before she even finishes her sentence, after which she does finish, just not in the way she had originally intended.
- 10-Minute Retirement: In the season 3 premiere, Myka... oh don't act surprised.
- That Man Is Dead: In "We All Fall Down", Evil!Artie says that Artie is dead.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Non-human version. While some artifacts visibly stand out, others are commonplace objects and as such, easily overlooked. The cause of a would-be Zombie Apocalypse, for instance, was a simple glass jar.
- 13 Is Unlucky: The Warehouse is currently in its 13th incarnation, and regularly suffers calamities. This, however, is probably because of its function, and what led to the destruction of Warehouses 1-12.
- Subverted; in this case, Warehouse 13 is the luckiest one so far. Syfy's website has short histories on all 13 Warehouses. The others did not have the lovely IRS cover that this one does.
- Through the Eyes of Madness:
- Pete in "Around the Bend."
- Played with in "An Evil Within," in which the villain of the week uses H.P. Lovecraft's silver key to make other people see the person touched by the key as an Eldritch Abomination.
- In "The Ones You Love", it turns out that this has been happening to Artie ever since he used the astrolabe, with all of his confrontations with Brother Adrian being hallucinatory manifestations of his Enemy Within.
- This Is My Human: After psychically linking with a dog in "Past Imperfect", Artie claims their bond is too strong and that it owns him now. He also mentions that cats are prisoners.
- Torture Always Works:
- In "The 40th Floor", Jinks tries to claim this trope doesn't work in real life, which is ridiculous because his mere presence ensures the perp can't successfully mislead the interrogator. Sally and Mrs. Frederic both manage to torture accurate information out of their victims, even if Jinks stopped Mrs. Frederic from getting a complete confession.
- Jinks's presence ensures the perp can't lie; it doesn't stop her from simply saying nothing at all. Or from saying something they believe to be true (which doesn't ping to him as lying, as revealed in "Emily Lake").
- Torture Is Ineffective: When Mrs. Frederick resorts to "Enhanced Interrogation" to get information out of Sally on how to prevent the destruction of a building the Regents are trapped within, Agent Jinks pauses to remind Mrs. F that is has been statistically proven that torture never yields viable information. Jinks apparently forgot the fact that the only reason Sally is in that situation to begin is that she successfully tortured one Regent until said Regent revealed the location of the others. Or he said that deliberately as part of a plan to infiltrate the enemy group.
- Trademark Favorite Food:
- Myka is a Twizzlers girl, as of "Mild Mannered".
- Pete freaking loves pancakes. So much so that he forced a pancake house to discontinue that peg-in-a-hole game contest they had every week because he mastered it for free pancakes... which ends up saving his life in "Buried".
- He's also rather fond of cookies, to the point that in the pilot when Artie mentions he made some, Pete immediately opts to go in the Warehouse when he was just moments before very wary of it.
- Trapped in TV Land:
- In "The Big Snag", Pete and Myka are trapped in an unfinished 1940s crime novel.
- In "Savage Seduction", an artifact sucks Kelly, her grandmother, Pete, Myka, Artie, and the family cat into a telenovela. In addition, without Harvey Korman's cufflinks Artie brings in, people taken by the artifact become the characters they replace.
- Travelling at the Speed of Plot: Transportation gets a few occasional references, and that's it. Somehow the agents get from Nowhere, Midwest to wherever the action is, in what's sometimes implied to be a matter of minutes.
- Trojan Horse:
- In "Don't Hate the Player", Van Gogh's Stormy Night painting, which Artie and Jinks have to retrieve with the help of FBI agent Sally (who's secretly working against them). She steals it in a moment of confusion and replaces it with a lookalike hiding a swarm of tiny insect robots, which she then returns so they'll put it in the Warehouse.
- Also, what is presumed to be the original Trojan Horse can be seen in some of the Warehouse wide shots.
- True Companions: Artie, Myka, Pete, Claudia, Steve and Leena are basically one big happy artifact hunting family. Pete and Myka, Pete and Claudia, and Claudia and Steve are particularly Like Brother and Sister, and Artie is basically a father figure to everyone. This makes events like Steve's temporary death and Leena's permanent one all the more likely to launch a paralyzing Heroic B.S.O.D..
- Try Not to Die: In "Breakdown", Mrs. Frederic says this to Artie upon giving him permission to go after MacPherson.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Every episode in the third season and sometimes in the earlier ones. Most of the season 4 episodes so far play out this way as well, particularly after Steve is revived.
- Unbelievable Source Plot: Averted with Agent Steve Jinks, formerly of the ATF, who has an unexplainable ability to always know when he's being lied to. But rather than keep this a secret because it can't be explained, he openly uses it, even on cases, and everyone who knows him for any length of time is aware of it. If a new acquaintance is skeptical, he demonstrates by letting them test him until they believe him.
- Undercover Model: Myka in "Age Before Beauty."
- Under the Mistletoe: In the season 2 Christmas episode "Secret Santa", the Warehouse has the "original mistletoe", which causes anyone who wanders beneath it to kiss the nearest person. Myka is kept from making this mistake while Pete's under it. Artie, however, is not so lucky while Joshua is trying to take it down...
- Unfortunate Name: Pete lampshades bringing in a new agent by the name of Jinks in the season 3 premiere.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Lots, real and imagined.
- Unpredictable Results: They are very careful when it comes to mixing effects from different artifacts. Their individual abilities are known, but it takes some guess work to figure out how one would interact with another, such as the Studi 54 disco ball and Lewis Carrol's mirror.
- Values Dissonance: Multiple In-Universe examples.
- Most examples come from Artie's Expospeak about the times in history that various artifacts came from.
- Artie himself invokes this when explaining why, before he was recruited into the Warehouse, he had traded artifacts to the KGB in exchange for his extended family members' freedom.
- In the test of "The Body", Warehouse 2 demands the sacrifice of a life to allow the rest of the agents to pass.
Benedict Valda: "One must die." This is as it must be. Now go! - Variations on a Theme Song: The theme is changed for Christmas specials
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: In "Queen for a Day", Claudia pulls a mini-Tesla, a glove and an evidence bag out of the dress she is borrowing to fit in with a Civil War re-enactment. She also claims to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in there.
- Video Phone: Teslapunk videophones, no less, invented by Philo Farnsworth. They work pretty much everywhere, have a large or limitless charge (long enough that one failing is never an issue), and use signals that can't be intercepted without knowledge of how they work. The only downside is no color picture.
- Voices Are Mental: Beautifully averted in "Merge With Caution". When Pete and Myka switch bodies, their voices and mannerisms change accordingly.
- Weapon of Mass Destruction: Shown in the season 2 finale, the Minoan Trident (also known as Poseidon's Trident), which when stabbed into the ground three times opens the fault lines below. Among other things, it's capable of triggering volcanoes, even supervolcanoes. Doesn't help that it's, y'know, a trident. In fact, it's referred to as "The first Weapon of Mass Destruction."
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Paracelsus is willing to killing hundreds of people, if not more, for the sake of scientific advancement.
- We Named the Monkey "Jack": Myka names her ferret after Pete because "they're both cute and annoying."
- Wham Line: At the end of "The 40th Floor", Myka goes to introduce Pete to a Regent she just saved. His reaction? "Mom?"
- Wham Episode: "The Ones You Love". Artie is Brother Adrian, or more specifically the Brother Adrian he's been seeing is a manifestation of his own subconscious. Ever since he used Magellan's Astrolabe, he's been suffering a gradual Split-Personality Takeover. The Adrian personality takes over and steals artifacts, then Artie tries to stop him. Once Artie is confronted with evidence of this, the Adrian personality completely overtakes him, and he kills Leena before beginning his search for the astrolabe to undo what he's done.
- "We All Fall Down": Leena is confirmed dead, Evil!Artie reveals his resentments with the Warehouse, Pete, Myka and Claudia, and despite Artie being freed from his evil split personality, a deadly plague is still unleashed on millions of people, including himself, Claudia, Pete, Myka and Steve.
- "The Truth Hurts": Paracelsus steals control of the Warehouse from Mrs. Frederic and throws the team out, except for Claudia, who stays behind to fight him; Myka's cancer is worse than she let on and she might not recover; and Claudia's sister is apparently alive, locked up somewhere by the Regents for being deemed dangerous.
- Wham Line: "What Hurts The Most" ends on a fairly high note (aside from the reveal of a mole now in their midsts)... then cuts to Myka at their medical exam:Doctor: I think we might be looking at ovarian cancer.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: In "Don't Hate the Player", the program, enhanced by a drink from Beatrix Potter's teapot, uses the characters' fears, from the mundane, like hair loss, to the reasonable, like drowning (both of which are shared by Pete and Fargo). After learning of it, Pete makes the mistake of thinking about what would make the game scarier, resulting in communication breakdown. Claudia's worst fear is revealed to be that she's still in the asylum, about to be given electroshock therapy, and that the Warehouse was all a delusion.
- When Things Spin, Science Happens: The Time Machine in "Where and When."
- Whole Plot Reference: "The Greatest Gift" to the titular story, the basis of "It's a Wonderful Life."
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The Countess Saint-Germaine's motivation. She and her family were made immortal by Paracelsus; they unbronzed him to make him reverse the effect.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
- Pete allows MacPherson to escape by not adhering to this trope, and has no excuse.
- Double Subverted. In the season 2 finale, when H.G. Wells tries to start another ice age, Artie pulls out a gun and shoots her... but she's got an artifact that transfers the wound to Artie.
- Played straight earlier when H.G. threatens to shoot her lawyer if he doesn't stand in a miniature, portable tar pit... Which would kill him eventually but also leave enough time for Pete and Myka to save him. It's incredibly Bond-esque. Justified as she only needed to delay Pete and Myka.
- Multiple times with Sykes in the season 3 finale. Jinks knows he only has two henchmen, and could easily have taken both of them and Sykes out before they left for Hong Kong. Then after that when Myka and Pete find Sykes with HG and the hacker at the Chess Lock, they should have just shot him in the head before he figured out they were there.
- Justified with Jinks, as he was undercover and needed to remain so.
- Also justified by one of Sykes' two henchmen being Made of Iron.
- Artie has Brother Adrian at gunpoint, and instead of capturing him, which would be nothing but beneficial, he instead lets Adrian lead him into a long conversation, long enough for his booby trap to spring on Jinks and Claudia, providing a crucial distraction and allowing Adrian to literally walk away. This too is justified, as Brother Adrian was just a figment of his imagination.
- In "We All Fall Down" Evil Artie spends lots of time giving evil armor piercing monologues with the Warehouse crew and buys himself enough time to use several different artifacts to shake them off. If the team would just shoot him with the Tesla (if they didn't want to shoot him with a gun) they could have ended the episode much earlier as opposed to trying to reason with someone under the influence of the astrolabe's evil. It's justified since the point of Artie's monologues, was to distract them and buy himself time, as well as the fact that Artie knows precisely which buttons to push with them.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: As revealed in "An Evil Within", Myka has a phobia for anything that has tentacles. Heck, even hearing the word unnerves her, much to Pete's amusement. He even mentions the Trope Namer:Pete: There's something about the tentacles—
Myka: Would you please stop saying that word?
Pete: (grinning) Man, it's like Indiana Jones with snakes.
Myka: Yes, it is! I don't know what that means, but it is, okay? I hate octopi or jellyfish or squid or anything that's a form of cnidarian, okay? It's a phobia, so just don't. - Will Not Tell a Lie: Jinks seems to have this problem, probably as a result of his ability. He automatically defaults to the truth when asked a question, and at best seems to be able to just refuse to speak of it. When he tries to lie, he sucks at it.
- Wimp Fight: Done with guns / teslas in the episode "Vendetta." Claudia and Todd suspect each other of being a warehouse infiltrator and a mob agent respectively. When they confront each other about these suspicions, they spend a good five seconds fumbling with their pockets in order to draw a weapon on the other.
- Win to Exit: In "The Big Snag", Pete and Myka have to play out an unfinished crime novel to escape from it.
- Witness Protection: Claudia's occasional boyfriend Todd, as revealed in "Vendetta."
- The World Is Just Awesome: The overpowering emotion that was tied to the creation of the Norge Porthole artifact was "indescribable beauty", from the crew witnessing the Northern Lights.
- World's Smallest Violin: This exchange in "Merge With Caution" after the Warehouse agents just jumped out through a window and Pete is complaining about his knee:Pete: I just hurt my knee, okay, and my shoulder; I'm probably gonna have a huge bruise on my— (sees Myka rubbing her gloved thumb and index finger together) What is that?
Myka: That is the world's smallest purple violin.
Pete: You know, one day you're gonna make some lucky guy a very sarcastic wife. - Wrap It Up: Due to the final season only having six episodes, several story threads had to be heavily compressed or abandoned entirely. For example, the story arc of Paracelsus taking control of the Warehouse is abruptly tied up in a single episode.
- Xanatos Gambit:
- Though it's more obviously a Batman Gambit, MacPherson's plan to get at the Warehouse's Artifacts has Xanatos elements as well. The way he engineered his own capture was pure Batman, but how he dealt with individual artifacts, (i.e., he benefited whether or not he managed to acquire them) was more Xanatos.
- And not only that, but he manages to disguise his real plan with successful Gambits, in increasingly awesome acts.
- In Season 3 Sykes pulls off one to destroy the Warehouse. Marcus fires Black Barty's cannon at the Warehouse, which Artie says could destroy it. Jane activates a shield which protects them from it, but also seals them in. Sykes leaves his wheelchair in the Warehouse once he can walk again, because it has the artifact equivalent to a nuke in it. With the shield still up, no one can escape. Whether it was the cannon or the bomb, Sykes was guaranteed to destroy the Warehouse and kill everyone inside. H.G. Wells manages to save everyone else via Heroic Sacrifice, but the Warehouse is still destroyed. The Reset Button that they use to fix it was so dangerous that it bordered on Godzilla Threshold.
- Yandere:
- Lizzie Borden's compact, shown in the season 2 finale, causes its victim (Kelly) to become this.
- The hockey player's stalker in "No Pain, No Gain" is this, with a wish-fulfillment artifact that allows her to heal his injuries... Or inflict them again when he doesn't return her affections.
- You Already Changed the Past:
- The stipulation to H.G. Wells' time machine in "When and Where"; time can't be changed because by virtue of using the machine you've already changed it. People who died in the past can't be saved because you already failed to do it.Helena: Eventually, I constructed the machine to attempt to alter the course of events. But the ink with which our lives are inscribed is indelible.
- Subverted in the season 4 premiere. Artie successfully stops the execution of Sykes's plan by using the Reset Button artifact; however, it's implied that his actions have other, more dire consequences.
- Subverted again in season 5. Paracelsus goes back in time becomes the caretaker for 700+ years. And a second time when Artie, Pete, and Myka then undo it. Then again, after all that, did anything really change?
- The stipulation to H.G. Wells' time machine in "When and Where"; time can't be changed because by virtue of using the machine you've already changed it. People who died in the past can't be saved because you already failed to do it.
- You Got Murder:
- In "Nevermore", Bobby's preferred method of revenge, thanks to Edgar Allan Poe's pen. "Words have power..."
- The Lost Folio in the first episode of season 3 has this power. The first person to touch a page from it will die in the same way as the character depicted in it, being wounded in a similar manner, assuming the pose, and reciting the character's last words, unless the victim says the last words on their own before the page burns out.
- You Have Failed Me:
- In the first episode of the third season, the man who planted the Lost Folio is killed after unsuccessfully trying to kill the new Warehouse agent Jinks.
- In "The 40th Floor", FBI Agent Sally, who's secretly been stealing artifacts and killing regents, gets this, after she fails to kill the Warehouse Guardian and accompanying Regents. Marcus makes it look like a heart defect killed her.
- You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: In "Personal Effects" Pete uses this to try and convince Jesse to give up the artifact. His reply?Jesse: Really? Cause I think it's a magic pipe that lets me control the weather.Pete: ... Okay maybe you do know what you're dealing with.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
- In "Implosion," after finally putting together the components of the Masamune sword with the help of a Japanese consul, MacPherson then uses the sword to become invisible and decapitates the man in front of Artie.
- In the Season 2 premiere, MacPherson himself becomes the victim of it in the second season after H.G. Wells is through with him. Though a good portion of it is also that he threatens to reveal the plan.
- In the Season 3 finale, this might be why Sykes has Marcus take the metronome with him when he ambushes Leena in the B&B, not knowing that that very artifact was keeping him alive.
- You Look Familiar:
- Since the crossover with Eureka and Alphas mean they are officially set in the same universe, should you watch a lot of old episodes, you suddenly realize that a lot of people must have doppelgangers running about.
- Joe Morton plays a prisoner in the episode "Regrets", but is also Henry Deacon in Eureka, which is canonically in the same universe. So apparently Henry had a long lost twin brother.
- Erica Cerra and Niall Matter play Jo and Zane respectively in the show Eureka. As with Henry, they also have doppelgangers in Warehouse 13; in this case a couple who are misusing an artifact in "Duped."
- The most egregious example is with Saul Rubinek who plays Artie in Warehouse 13. He also appeared in a season 1 episode of Eureka as Dr. Carlson, a biologist who makes a connection with the Artifact.
- Brent Spiner has appeared as different characters in both Alphas and Warehouse 13, with his appearances taking place after the crossover was established. To clarify: the fifth episode of the first season of Alphas (which aired along with season 3 of Warehouse 13) features Dr. Calder, establishing the crossover. Four episodes later, Brent Spiner appears as Dr. Kerns, an Alpha with sonar abilities, who is killed at the end of the episode. Then in the fourth season of Warehouse 13, Brent Spiner plays the recurring character Brother Adrian.
- Your Worst Nightmare: In "Don't Hate the Player", Beatrix Potter's tea set brings out nightmares in those who drink from it. When combined with Fargo's new mental interface video game system, the results are lethal.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: In the season 2 finale, Myka does this to H.G. Wells, knowing that in the end she wasn't so disillusioned with humanity that she could kill an innocent in cold blood, much less someone she respected as much as Myka.
- Zeerust:
- The Farnsworth has many of the abilities of... an iPhone 4 with better coverage.
- The Farnsworth is a subversion. It has its own dedicated frequencies that can't be bugged, traced, etc. by normal means and thus is more secure to use than a cellphone, retro tech or not; the wet dream of cell phone users.
- The Farnsworth has many of the abilities of... an iPhone 4 with better coverage.