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Stargate SG-1 provides examples of the following tropes:

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  • MacGuffin Delivery Service: At the climax of "Wormhole X-Treme!", Teal'c rescues O'Neill and Martin from Tanner and the three of them return to the studio to retrieve the control that Martin had hidden... which was exactly why Tanner had left them unguarded for Teal'c to save.
  • MacGyvering:
    • In the pilot episode, Carter refers to control computers for the Earth Stargate as a MacGyvered device, which was something that actress Amanda Tapping had ad-libbed during her audition. Sadly, it was removed in "Children of the Gods Recut".
    • When O'Neill, the original, has advanced Ancient knowledge transplanted into his brain he builds many advanced devices out of equipment he finds lying around the base, without even knowing what he is building.
    • When the descended Ancient Orlin crashes at Carter's place, he builds a way to make precious gems and a functioning Baby Stargate from household parts and some special order supplies. Apparently building your own Stargate requires parts from a toaster.
    • Extra meta in that the series stars MacGyver himself, Richard Dean Anderson. Behind the scenes footage shows many outtakes explicitly referencing this.
  • Magical Defibrillator:
    • Averted generally. In almost every usage the patient either heals on their own before the paddles are applied, heals on their own after the paddles have failed, or simply does not heal at all and dies. Only once (in "Prophecy"), does the use of a defibrillator restart somebody's heart after it has stopped.
    • In "Bane", when they needed to keep Teal'c's symbiote alive outside his pouch, O'Neill lampshades this trope by wishing they could just shock the Goa'uld to keep it alive. This led Dr. Fraiser to realize the stasis tank the symbiote was in was lacking a small electrical charge. Once added, it keeps the symbiont alive.
  • Mainlining the Monster: In an episode, a civilization keeps a Goa'uld queen (actually the dying Tok'ra queen) captive in a tank so they can harvest her symbiotes to make an elixir that can cure any illness.
  • Mama Bear: When Cassandra is in danger, Dr. Fraiser becomes somebody you do not want to mess with. In one episode, Nirrti is being held at gunpoint by her to help Cassandra, and refuses — until General Hammond points out the Doc's relationship with the girl.
  • Mandatory Line: In "Flesh and Blood", General Landry has only two scenes, both of which amount to him saying that there is nothing he can do to impact the events in any way.
  • Married in the Future: In "There But for the Grace of God" and "Point of View", Alt!Jack and Alt!Sam are engaged and married respectively. In "The Road Not Taken", Alt!Sam married Rodney McKay at one point but they divorced.
  • Masquerade: The World Is Not Ready. At several points in the series different factors prompt the government to decide that it is time to reveal the truth, only to change their mind once the situation changes.
    • In "Small Victories", when Thor's Replicator-infested ship is about to descend into Earth's atmosphere, it is said that the President is going to reveal the existence of aliens and the Stargate to the world if they can't shoot it down.
    • When the Stargate Program is revealed to the UN Security Council they explain that they are going to reveal the truth, but decide to hold off when Thor arrives and explains what a good job the SGC has done.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
    • In "Abyss" it is neither confirmed or denied that an ascended Daniel gave Carter and Teal'c breaths of inspiration, little nudges that could push then into discovering where the Tok'ra-possessed O'Neill went and how to save him from his imprisonment. After all, members of SG-1 are smart and known for spur of the moment inspiration. But then again Daniel did tell Jack he was working since the last time he was taken to be tortured.
    • In "Grace", Carter spends the episode conversing with hallucinations of the members of SG-1, her father, and a mysterious young girl; at different points the hallucinations say they might be a manifestation of the nebula that might be sentient and trying to comunicate with Carter, or they might just be normal hallucinations caused by her head wound and lack of sleep. The episode ends with no concrete explanation either way.
  • The McCoy: Jack would often drop the sarcasm to be genuinely concerned about the episode's moral plight... or bug Sam and Daniel incessantly about why they could not be Big Damn Heroes this episode.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • "Prometheus". The Greek Titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to man; the Prometheus project used technology stolen from the Goa'uld to create Earth's first battlecruiser. The Prometheus itself is destroyed in the episode "Ethon", which is the name of the eagle that ate Prometheus' liver every night in some versions of the Greek myth.
    • The planet where Janet Fraiser is killed is identified as P3X-666.
    • The names of the Tau'ri SG-1 members;
      • Jonathan "Jack" = God has given
      • Samantha = name of God/God has heard
      • Daniel = God is my judge
      • Cameron = Crooked/bent nose
    • Teal'c mentions that his name means "Strength".
  • The Meaning of Life: The Replicators found the question very easy.
    First: I managed to stop the machine before it activated and eventually used it to suit our purpose.
    Jonas: Which is?
    First: To increase our number. That has never changed.
  • Mechanical Abomination: The Replicators, being an insect-like Grey Goo (or, rather, blocks) working to consume as much material as possible to replicate. They're powerful enough to bring the Asgard civilization to the brink of extinction, and have nearly conquered multiple galaxies.
  • Medieval Stasis: Some of the Transplanted Humans have developed their own unique societies, culture and technology descended from the peoples they were before being taken off Earth, but more planets have remained completely unchanged from their technological and cultural status five thousand years ago. The Asgard Protected Planets Treaty addresses this point with regards to planets that the Goa'uld have agreed not to conquer, deliberately limiting their development so they do not become a threat.
  • Medium-Shift Gag: A segment in the season ten episode "200" humorously re-imagined bits of the movie and the show's first episode with the entire cast replaced by marionettes.
    Walter: I feel so stupid.
  • Meet the New Boss: The Ori, the replacement Big Bad after the defeat of the Goa'uld in season eight and the Retool of the show for season nine, replicate the modus operandi of the Goa'uld: the impersonation of gods in order to inspire worship and subservience. The difference is simply one of scale: the Goa'uld used advanced technology for their masquerade, whereas the Ori really do have god-like powers.
  • Mega-Corp: In "Space Race", the Tech Con Group on the planet Hebridan makes a wide variety of products, sponsors the eponymous starship race, owns the planet's main TV station, and runs a lottery. They're never indicated as evil, and in fact the trope is pretty heavily played for laughs: the Tech Con Group apparently does everything from engine parts to funeral arrangements.
  • Men Are the Expendable Gender: In "The Tomb", three of four Russians sent offworld are killed, with the only survivor being the single female officer.
  • The Men in Black: NID, who start out as a sometimes-antagonistic, sometimes-allied "The Ends Justify The Means" civilian counterpart to the SGC, but later lose the antagonistic aspects once the shady leaders, after being exposed, go underground to form a different group.
  • Mental Story:
    • "Avatar" takes place in a virtual-reality scenario that's effectively going on inside Teal'c's head.
    • In "The Changeling", Teal'c imagines himself as T, a human firefighter, while suffering from symbiote withdrawal.
  • Mercy Kill: The Tok'ra consider killing a Goa'uld's host to be this due to the host likely being addled from centuries of sarcophagus abuse, and advise the SGC to consider similarly.
  • Me's a Crowd:
    • Ba'al developed cloning technology in season nine, creating dozens of other Ba'als to help him reclaim his power after the overthrow of the Goa'uld.
    • In "Ripple Effect", they decide to throw a "room full of Carters" at the problem of how to return everyone to their proper realities.
  • Mesopotamian Monstrosity: Several Goa'uld used Mesopotamian deities as their God Guise. Also, in one episode, an alien captures Daniel Jackson, convinced that Daniel knows something about his mate, and after some risky memory probing, Daniel recalls reading that she was a minor Babylonian hero who died fighting the Goa'uld.
  • Metaphorgotten: Dr. Lee tries to think up a clever analogy for how hard it will be to develop an anti-Prior weapon, but cannot even start before he trails off into Buffy Speak. He and Carter laugh at his failed attempt, and he explains that he has not had a chance to sleep recently.
  • Mildly Military: Present in every show in the Stargate-verse to some degree. However, according to General Michael E. Ryan, Chief of Staff for the Air Force (the real Chief of Staff for the real Air Force), when asked by Richard Dean Anderson if he had subordinates who were as bad as O'Neill, he remarked that he actually had subordinates who were much worse.
  • Mile-Long Ship: Ori warships are 1.1 km long according to the magazine Stargate SG-1: The DVD Collection.
  • Mind Probe:
    • The Goa'uld have a memory recall device that can read a person's mind and portray their memories on a screen for others to see, and it can help the subject recall suppressed or forgotten memories. However, its use in interrogation is (relatively) limited since it can only display memories that the subject wants displayed. This forces the Goa'uld to go through the standard methods of torture and questions before they can bring up the desired memories.
    • When Anubis appears in season five, he brings advanced technology that allows him to download knowledge from a being's mind directly into his ships computer, bypassing the slow and ineffective torture preferred by most Goa'uld. Unfortunately for Anubis, the first being he tries this on is Thor of the Asgard, whose brain is so powerful that he manages to take control of the ship through his link to the computer.
  • Mind Rape:
    • In the season 1 episode "Fire and Water", SG-1 is implanted with a fake, traumatizing memory of Daniel Jackson's horrific death.
    • The human form Replicators explore human minds to learn their secrets in an excruciating process, and Fifth does it purely to cause pain.
  • Mistaken for Gay: Briefly in the opening to "Crusade"; before the body-swap is explained, Mitchell notices Daniel ogling him wearing only a towel in the locker room and asks if there is something he should know.
  • Mistaken for Terrorist: In the season 10 episode "Bad Guys", SG-1 goes through a stargate that turns out to be housed inside a museum with a party going on in the main lobby. The guests immediately think the heavily armed heroes are part of a terror group on their planet, and they end up having to take everyone hostage until they can figure out a way to get back home.
  • Monster Threat Expiration:
    • Jaffa armor could initially withstand automatic weapons fire for a decent amount of time before a bullet got through. As the series wears on, Jaffa armor resilience decreases, eventually reaching the point where they may as well be wearing nothing. Potentially justified as the SGC switches from the MP5 to the P90. Its smaller round and higher velocity means it (theoretically) has superior armor-piercing capabilities to other off-the-shelf SMGs. Prior to that, the SGC likely spent a lot of money on armor-piercing ammunition, which also makes the P90 switch make more sense from an economical standpoint.
    • A straight example is the Goa'uld. In the first season, they are nearly Immune to Bullets, requiring A LOT of firepower to take down permanently, and have Super Strength. On multiple occasions, a single Goa'uld is capable of giving the SGC a run for its money. By the 2nd season, with a few exception they are as vulnerable as any human if you can get them away from that shield generator of theirs.
    • And a more literal example appears in the Season 8 episode "Avatar". Before Teal'c gets a turn, the training simulation which forms the basis of the episode's plot had only been tested by Dr. Lee and his team. Because the simulation runs on an adaptive difficulty system which adjusts based on the memories and experiences of its prior users — which the noncombatant scientists don't have — Teal'c finds it almost insultingly easy to plow through the normally nigh-invulnerable "Anubis Drones" as though they were the regular Jaffa rank-and-file. It's Teal'c and Jack's pushing for the scientists to make it more difficult that causes all the problems in the first place.
  • Monstrous Cannibalism: The Goa'uld sometimes engage in ritual cannibalism of other Goa'uld (which are really parasitic snakes possessing humans) to show them as Always Chaotic Evil.
  • Moment Killer: Kvasir, who interrupts a moment between Sam and an alternate-reality Martouf.
  • Mook–Face Turn: Teal'c, and eventually the entire Jaffa race do a Heel–Race Turn into La Résistance and gain independence.
  • Mook Horror Show: When SG-1 is attacking the Jaffa guarding the Stargate in "The Other Guys", O'Neill, Carter and Jonas use the standard "shoot them with zats" approach, but Teal'c instead waits for a Jaffa to run past him and erupts out of a lake and drags the Jaffa down into the water.
  • Moral Dissonance: Mixes with Fantastic Racism, when Jack and the rest of the SGC distrust the Tok'ra purely because they are a mix of symbiote and host, judging their actions as either amoral or morally ambiguous. Even though, unlike the humans, the Tok'ra are a resistance force who are sacrificing their very lives to stop the Goa'uld, and hence need to be extremely careful with the information they give in case it compromises one of their operatives. In fairness, the SGC seems to be slowly understanding their mistake after they realize the Tok'ra are a Dying Race.
  • Motor Mouth: Daniel, especially when delivering reams of exposition. It got a lampshade in the pilot for Stargate Atlantis when Jack asked Daniel to skip to the part where he starts "talking real fast."
  • Mr. Exposition:
    • Daniel for the culture and Carter for the science. Whenever one of them is missing, the other tends to fill in anyway: any bit of Imported Alien Phlebotinum will have both "Goa'uld language" and "strange radiation".
    • Jonas is a physicist (with a Photographic Memory) who has studied every single one of Daniel's notes, so he can be either too, though Jonas is usually The Watson during briefings.
    • Even Teal'c can fill this role (though more often in the early seasons), usually in a context of "Yes, I encountered this race/weapon/artifact/person while serving as First Prime to Apophis, and I will now tell you all about it."
  • Mr. Fanservice:
    • Teal'c spends much of his screen time in practically sprayed on sleeveless T-shirts.
    • In later seasons, Daniel manages a few Shirtless Scenes that show just how much he has benefited from all his physical activity.
  • Mud Wrestling: In "Ascension", O'Neill and Teal'c head to Carter's place with pizza and a movie, and when they learn that she has company they leave her the pizza and decide to have their own fun. Teal'c comments that he has heard of place "where humans do battle in a ring of jello," and O'Neill tells him to call Daniel.
  • Mundane Object Amazement: When Jonas Quinn comes to earth, he is fascinated by the Weather Channel and the way it provides the weather for the whole planet, and explains that the five-day forecast feels like predicting the future.
  • Mundane Solution: Often Carter or Jackson will start talking about complicated phlebotinum-related reasons why its absolutely impossible to achieve something, only for Jack to toss explosives at it.
  • Mundane Utility:
    • Stargates are one of the most advanced technological devices in existence, able to create a stable, people-safe wormhole across a galaxy or even to other galaxies. In the "Groundhog Day" Loop episode "Window of Opportunity", Teal'c and Jack hit golf balls through the gate, which the writers had wanted to do for the entire series.
    • The Asgard's teleportation technology can transport anything from anywhere to anywhere else. It has been proven to be able to dematerialize enemy structures and platoons of Jaffa in seconds the first time they are shown. The Asgard use this in lieu of walking, simply teleporting themselves and the chair they sit in to the relevant destination. No wonder they have no muscle tone.
  • Murder by Cremation: This seems to be how Jaffa baby girls in the Goa'uld Moloc's domain are killed immediately after birth.
  • Murderous Thighs: Vala tries this on Daniel during one of their fights in "Prometheus Unbound".
  • My Greatest Failure: Colonel Mitchell has two past mistakes which still haunt him.
    • In "Collateral Damage", Mitchell reveals that he once bombed a refugee convoy on Earth after he was told by his commanding officer that it contained enemy combatants; the order to abort the mission came seconds after he had released his payload.
    • In "Stronghold", though the precise details are never revealed, it shows that before Mitchell joined the F-302 program he did something extremely reckless that another pilot, and close friend, had to rescue him from. The other pilot was wounded by shrapnel during the rescue and was therefore disqualified from joining the F-302 program, and Mitchell was granted his spot in his place. Mitchell believes that he is unfairly living the other pilot's life, and blames himself for the life-threatening (and eventually fatal) aneurysm that threatened the other pilot since he was wounded.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The Tok'ra, renegade Goa'uld who do not use the sarcophagi and thus avoid becoming Always Chaotic Evil.
    • The Tok'ra also only take willing hosts (they will die rather than take an unwilling host), and coexist in a voluntary symbiosis with them, unlike the Goa'uld who forcibly take hosts, take full control, leaving the host in an And I Must Scream state. It should be noted that, as they are the same species as the Goa'uld, they have the ability to take over a host by force, they just choose not to. Tok'ra call the process "blending". A blended human will have nearly twice the lifespan of a normal human, perfect health, and a Healing Factor thanks to the symbiote. Tok'ra hosts consider this to be worth sharing their body.
  • Mystical Pregnancy: Vala's impregnation by the Ori.
  • Myth Arc: Stargate Command had a mission statement, enumerated in the pilot episode: to defend Earth from aggressive aliens, explore space, and acquire alien technology. In almost every season they made tangible progress toward those goals. At the end of the first season they had recruited Teal'c, befriended his mentor Bra'tac and discovered vague information about several other potential allies out there; by the end of the fourth they had made permanent allies of the Tok'ra and Asgard and claimed enough Goa'uld hand weapons to outfit their own teams; and by the end of the sixth season they had stolen, discovered or reverse-engineered enough technology to build an interstellar spaceship on Earth. And by the end of it all, they had acquired what is among the most powerful military technology in the known universe for their spaceships thanks to the Asgard, as well as absorbed vast amount of Ancient technology, including the giant city-ship Atlantis.
  • Mythology Gag: In Season 1's "Fire and Water," O'Neill reads from Daniel's journal of the original mission to Abydos: "Col. O'Neill thinks I'm a geek. I have no idea how to get us back. I'll never get paid." This recalls Daniel listening to his tape recorder in Stargate where he ends a lament on his lack of progress in figuring out the symbols with, "I'm never gonna get paid."

  • Nasty Party: Ba'al, the only System Lord who survived the demise of the Goa'uld Empire, had himself cloned multiple times over afterwards. Later on, as part of a plot to pull a Grand Theft Me on the current Big Bad Adria, he gathered all of his remaining clones for a meeting and had them killed off with anti-Goa'uld poison gas. Although, with Ba'al's paranoia, it's little surprise that several of them didn't show (including the original) and continued to wreck havoc in later episodes.
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name: In "The Other Side", the Eurondans are white supremacist eugenicists who have gone so far as to poison the entire surface of their planet in attempted ethnic cleansing. SG-1 royally throws a wrench into the works.
  • Neck Lift: In the episode "Metamorphosis", Wodan uses a telekinetic version of this on Nirrti and her two Jaffas. And then...
  • Neck Snap: In the episode "Metamorphosis", Nirrti is killed by Wodan (a mutant with Psychic Powers she herself created) with a telekinetic Neck Snap.
  • Neglectful Precursors: The Ancients left a lot of their technology lying around when they left the Milky Way, including some weapons and society-shaking devices, without any adequate instructions or explanations. The technology which is the instructions, the Repository of the Ancients which has all their knowledge, does not have any labels for itself. It is only identified as "The Place of Our Legacy", and without using it (and potentially dying from its use) there is no way to determine what that means. Of course, considering they "left" the Milky Way by dying en masse, with the survivors fleeing a wide-spread plague, it might be a bit much to expect them to have left a notebook behind. Hell, they have their own damn folder on that trope's page.
  • Nepharious Pharaoh: Like in the Stargate movie, the series uses the general imagery for the Goa'uld, at least the first ones encountered.
  • Nerdy Inhaler: Robert Rothman is seen using one in "The First Ones".
  • Never Sleep Again:
    • In "Grace", the hallucination (maybe) of Teal'c explains to Carter that she is suffering from a concussion and that if she goes to sleep she will die. Throughout the episode her perception of time is radically skewed, and she has suffered a blow to the head, so she struggles to stay awake over what seems like weeks.
    • The episode "Morpheus" involves a microscopic insect (not a bacteria) that causes the human body to produce high levels of melatonin, causing an almost irresistible urge to go to sleep, and once asleep to keep you asleep. Once you are asleep the insect gorges itself on the melatonin, growing in size until it kills by causing a brain aneurysm.
  • Neuro-Vault: Quite frequently.
    • Carter carrying the memories of Jolinar.
    • O'Neill getting an Ancients' database downloaded into his brain, twice, after which he subconsciously builds things and goes places without understanding why.
    • In "Secrets", they learn that a Goa'uld that inhabits a pregnant woman remains dormant so as not to cause a miscarriage, and the host can access the knowledge of the symbiote during this time.
  • Never Heard That One Before: When Dr. Weir is about to make a Yu-related pun in "New Order", Daniel explains that every possible variation of the joke has already been done.
  • New Rules as the Plot Demands: The eponymous Stargate has a few simple rules laid out at the beginning of the series: wormholes can only terminate at another Stargate, wormholes can only transmit matter in one direction (for some reason, though this does prevent the base from flooding when they dial a gate that's at the ocean floor), wormholes can only stay open for 38 minutes (never really explained in universe and none of the writers have said why), and nothing can come through the wormhole if there's something directly in front of the wormhole event horizon. Hardly an episode goes by where someone doesn't come along and tac an "unless" onto one of these rules. The 38-minute time limit is broken several times, and Carter is always surprised by this for some reason.
  • Nice Guy: Daniel Jackson, who's probably the most outwardly friendly of the main SG-1 team and is usually the first one to encourage diplomacy before any military actions are taken.
  • Nice Hat:
    • Teal'c has a variety of classic headwear that he wears on Earth when trying to obscure his Apophis symbol.
    • O'Neill also manages to make a nondescript greenish-brown baseball cap look incredibly badass, mostly because he's the only one often shown to sport it instead of a helmet.
    • On the "Jayne Cobb's knitted hat" end of the trope, there's the absurd headdress the minor Goa'uld Zipacna wears in his first appearance in "Pretense".
    • Several Goa'uld sport fancy headdresses on numerous occasions, some of which are absurdly huge. As mentioned above, however, Zipacna's takes the cake for sheer ridiculousness.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Depressingly common in this series.
    • In the climax of "Thor's Hammer", the team destroys the title device in order to save Teal'c's life; in the follow-up episode "Thor's Chariot" the planet has been invaded by Heru'ur because it now lacks any defense.
    • In "Red Sky" they have trouble establishing a lock on their destination, so Carter uses the dialing computer to override a safety feature in the gate system. The resulting wormhole ends up going through the sun of the planet they are gating to, altering its nuclear reaction and threatening all life on the planet. When they go to ask the Asgard for help, Freyr (who protects that particular planet) actually tells them the gate system usually prevents that sort of thing from happening, and Carter has to guiltily explain that she broke it.
    • The Tok'ra interpretation of humanity's influence on the Goa'uld balance of power. By killing off important System Lords, the Tau'ri have systematically allowed more dangerous Goa'uld to usurp the power vacuum, including Sokar, Anubis and Ba'al. The Tau'ri, O'Neill in particular, shoots right back with the point that the Tok'ra, over a period of thousands of years, have done comparatively nothing. The closest thing the Tok'ra have to a good comeback for this is that they're fighting against the Goa'uld across an entire galaxy and so must be incredibly cautious against such powerful enemies.
    • In the spin-off novels A Matter of Honor and The Cost of Honor, Jack's attempt to rescue SG-10 using anti-gravity technology from the Kinahhi results in the Kinahhi basically taking control of the SGC for three months through an alliance with Senator Kinsey, said alliance being formed because SG-1 weren't there to object to it.
    • In the beginning of Season 8, Thor and the SGC finally gain a weapon that is effective against the Replicators on a large scale. In "Gemini", they study RepliCarter and inadvertently let her near the weapon long enough for her to learn how it works and develop a countermeasure to the device. Carter spends much of "Reckoning" blaming herself for the Replicators' subsequent invasion of the Milky Way.
    • In "Icon", the nations of Rand and Caledonia had been locked in a Cold War for years, but when the SGC makes contact with the planet the balance is disrupted by religious extremists who manage to gain power when the activation of the Stargate "proves" that their religious views were correct. Their attempt to seize control of the Rand Protectorate sparked off the long-feared war with the Caledonia Federation, decimating the entire planet, and many blame the SGC for sparking the conflict. In the end, Jared Kane admits that SG-1 was, more or less, just the spark that lit the powder keg, and if not them then something would have brought the powers to war eventually.
    • The Ori arc in season nine begins when Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran inform the Ori that there are humans in the Milky Way that have been shielded from them by the Ascended Ancients. Daniel in particular realizes that they have potentially just doomed the galaxy to subjugation by the Ori, and that it is their fault.
    • At the end of "Avalon Part 3", Harrid and Sallis, the two villagers who Daniel and Vala were inhabiting in the Ori Galaxy find themselves returned to their own bodies, seconds away from being burned alive for heresy.
    • In "Uninvited", the SGC discovers that it was their modifications to the Sodan armbands that created the giant, vicious creatures that have begun killing innocent people on three planets (including Earth).
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: In the spin-off novel Apocalypse trilogy, the Goa'uld Hestia is able to kill SG-1 and basically take control of the Milky Way, but then finds herself facing the threat of the Wraith, who retrieved Atlantis when it rose to the surface and discovered the way back to this galaxy. In an attempt to prevent this, Hestia went back in time and changed her plan to send SG-1 into the future so that she could use Jack's Ancient gene as part of her plan to counter the Wraith, which allowed SG-1 to not only kill Hestia and convince the Wraith to return to their galaxy, but also create a new timeline where they were never sent into the future and thus restore the true timeline (although the Bad Future depicted still exists for SG-1 to return to it).
  • No Biochemical Barriers:
    • The trope is generally played straight, as Earth humans and their descendants have no trouble eating various fruits, vegetables and meats from alien planets, breathing their air, and humans even interbreed with the Serrakin.
    • The Goa'uld are able to infest and control numerous different species from different planets, and even of drastically different physiology. It is noted that, prior to the Jaffa (who are engineered as living incubators), Goa'uld bonding with humans had a much lower success rate. Their original hosts were the Unas, which they evolved alongside with on the same planet.
  • Noble Demon:
    • The System Lord Yu. His main base of power is one of the furthest from Earth, so they aren't quite antagonistic neighbors. He gives them respect when they save his life and, like Ba'al, would work with them if their interests align.
    • Ba'al, at least when his goals and SG-1's are aligned.
  • No Budget: An In-Universe example with Wormhole X-Treme!, and like everything else surrounding it almost certainly a deliberate parody. The actor playing Jack's expy in WXT asks show creator Martin Lloyd what color Slow Laser his gun shoots. Martin tells him they can't afford a beam so they're just using sound effects.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Orlin got a particularly raw deal when he descended to a mortal form in order to provide valuable intel on the Ori and helped to develop a cure for the Prior plague. For his troubles, he not only became trapped in his mortal form, but also suffered permanent brain damage, consigning him to spend the rest of his life (which is considerable, as he came back as a 12-year-old boy) in a sanitarium.
  • No Gravity for You: Does not appear in the show proper, but rather the Show Within a Show that is made about the Stargate crew. Such elaborate tactics are unnecessary in the regular series since they, you know, have guns.
  • Nom de Guerre: Cameron Mitchell was given the call-sign "Shaft" when he was an F-302 pilot stationed aboard the Prometheus. Off Carter's look, he explained that it came from the term "camshaft", which is a mechanical part that resembles the shortening of his first name.
  • No Name Given: The Ancients. While they are given many epithets during the series, such as the Ancients, the Ancestors, the Gate-Builders, the Lanteans, etc., we never find out what the species' true name was. In season nine we learn they were once named "The Alterans", but even that equates to "The Others", which is what they were to the Ori, whom they broke away from.
  • Noodle Implements: In "The Ties That Bind", part of Vala's Chain of Deals involves the exchange of an old plasma coil from a obsolete cargo ship for an old necklace. She needed to return the necklace to the man she stole it from, but she had no idea why the man who had it wanted that plasma coil.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • In "Emancipation", the first "regular" episode of the series after the pilot and follow-up episode, O'Neill referred to an incident where Captain Carter drank something which made her take off her... something. We never do hear the full story.
    • In "Thor's Hammer", Teal'c claims that all Jaffa are taught the gate address of the planet Cimmeria so that no Goa'uld will go there, even by accident. "Something transpired there that no Goa'uld will speak of." Granted, we know that Cimmeria is an Asgard-protected planet so one can assume at least one Goa'uld suffered a great defeat there, but we never do get to hear the details.
    • Daniel asked Jack a question before the start of "Window of Opportunity", and his asking Jack's opinion of the question is repeated numerous times throughout the episode, but not even Jack himself can remember what he was actually talking about.
    • Anubis was originally expelled from the System Lords for crimes that even the Goa'uld found unspeakable. Considering that the Goa'uld are not just okay with, but routinely practice torture, slavery and genocide, the specifics of something horrifying them was probably too much for the writers to actually think up. One of the sourcebooks for the RPG strongly implies that this was actually pure propaganda: Anubis was just an old enemy of Ra whom the latter had defeated and exiled (twice) at the dawn of the Goa'uld Empire.
    • In "Stronghold", Mitchell and an old friend of his discuss a misadventure from before Mitchell joined the F-302 program where Mitchell did something reckless that required the other pilot to rescue him, during which he was wounded by shrapnel. What this was and where it took place were never revealed.
    • "200" mentions, and includes brief "flashbacks" to, an incident that left O'Neill invisible, although the canonicity of the entire episode is debatable.
    • Everything Vala ever mentions about her past.
    • In "Prisoners", Jack heavily implies that he's done time. No mention is made of where he was incarcerated or why, and it never gets brought up again on the show.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Practically the motto of the SGC, particularly O'Neill, who was left behind by his team during the First Gulf War and spent several months in an Iraqi prison because of it. It comes back to bite him when he bonds with a Tok'ra symbiote and it feels compelled to use him to go back for someone it used to spy on Ba'al because the Tok'ra was now judging itself against O'Neill's values, and we all know how that relationship is defined.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Most Goa'uld technology.
    Daniel: You'd think a race advanced enough to fly around in spaceships would be smart enough to have seatbelts.
  • No Party Given:
    • The President of the United States from the show's first seven seasons, 1997-2004, was never seen, and his party was never given.
    • The seventh season took place in the lead up to the 2004 Presidential Elections, with recurring villain Senator Robert Kinsey as the Vice-Presidential candidate with running-mate Henry Hayes. The ticket they were running on was never revealed, with the only information given about the election returns that Kinsey helped them win Florida.
  • No Pronunciation Guide: "Goa'uld" has been pronounced predominantly three different ways. Hammond prefers "Goold". Teal'c pronounces it "Go-a-uld" Thor's been heard saying it "Gaow-uld".
  • No-Sell:
    • In "The Serpent's Lair", Apophis' Ha'taks weather direct hits from a pair of 1 gigaton naquadah-enhanced nukes with no apparent ill effects.
    • In "Deadman Switch", Aris Boch's species (Ilempiri according to the RPG) are invulnerable to Goa'uld infestation. The snakes elected to wipe most of them out and enslave the rest.
    • Ori deflector shields can repel every ship-to-ship weapon in the series apart from the Asgard plasma beams fitted to the Odyssey in the series finale.
  • No Sense of Humor:
    • O'Neill declares this of the Aschen, describing them as being like an entire planet of accountants. He also states this is why he does not trust them.
    • Colonel O'Neill once tells a reporter that his name is spelled with two Ls because there is another Col. O'Neil with one L and Jack does not want to be mistaken for him because he has No Sense of Humor.
  • No Such Agency:
    • Fifteen years into the project, Stargate Command remains a secret known only to cleared members of the participating militaries and the highest government officials of the 50 nations that are signatories to the Antarctic Treaty System. The latter were only read into it because there's an Ancient outpost underneath the continent. The project was supposed to go public in the third Stargate SG-1 movie, Revolution (partly because the number of people involved is in the thousands at this point, making keeping the secret increasingly difficult), but the plans for the movie were derailed by MGM's bankruptcy.
    • The NID is also portrayed in this manner. Indeed, it was originally supposed to be referred to as NRD, standing for No Real Department. However, this sounded too awkward and so was changed to NID.
  • No Such Thing as Space Jesus: Only brought up once. On finding a medieval-European style town on a planet, complete with church, cross, and witch-burning minister, Teal'c says that he knows of no Goa'uld that is capable of the love and compassion displayed by the Christian god. Turns out that episode's Goa'uld was impersonating Satan instead.
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore: In the season six episode "Disclosure", the Stargate program and all related information is revealed to the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (The United Kingdom, France and China. Russia was already aware of the Stargate) for the first time. For the rest of the series, and continuing into Stargate Atlantis, international political pressure is a frequent concern of the SGC.
  • Nothing Personal: Richard Woolsey is working to get the command staff of the SGC removed, and perhaps even brought up on charges, because he honestly believes that they are doing a poor job of defending the planet, not because he has anything against them on a personal level. When asked if he believes that O'Neill and Carter are engaged in some sort of inappropriate relationship he begins to deny it, only to be interrupted by Vice-President Kinsey who insists that they are. Woolsey is flustered by the unwarranted personal attack.
  • Not Me This Time: After Carter has been kidnapped, Maybourne recommends that O'Neill look into Colonel Simmons at the NID. Simmons, however, explains that he had no part in this, and points out that Maybourne might have been part of the operation himself. Simmons does get involved at the end of the episode.
  • Not Now, Kiddo: Played for Drama in the backstory episode "The Gamekeeper". The revisiting of events happens the same way as the original because Daniel's parents will not listen to him.
  • Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying over You: Defied when O'Neill refuses to have a funeral for "someone who isn't dead" after Daniel's second death and ascension. Apparently O'Neill wants to avoid an instance of this trope (and, given Daniel's repeated cases of Death Is Cheap, he is right).
  • Not Where They Thought: In the episode "Solitudes", O'Neill and Carter believe that the Stargate malfunctioned and sent them to a deserted ice planet. It turns out that the wormhole jumped to the previously unknown second Earth Stargate, inside a glacier in Antarctica.
  • No Woman's Land:
    • The first season episode "Emancipation", the first episode after the initial plot of the pilot, took place on a world where descendants of the Mongols have created a complicated system of laws restricting women's freedoms, ostensibly to protect them by keeping them hidden from the Goa'uld. They are forbidden from unveiling their faces or speaking outside of their tents, and are subject to stoning if they break the laws. The episode was criticized for its generally inaccurate depiction of Mongol society, although it did get some points for having Shang Tsung as the villain. That, and it was shameless Recycled Script by the author of "Code of Honour", her previous work for Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was similarly criticised for being offensive to women, other ethnicities and those possessing the gift of sight and hearing.
    • The Goa'uld Moloc decreed prior to the start of the series that only male Jaffa in his domain would be allowed to live, sacrificing all female children born in order to make sure that his society is solely devoted to giving him soldiers in his war with the other Goa'uld. The Jaffa as a whole have a heavily patriarchal society; women, though trained in combat, are forbidden from actually serving in the army of their ruling Goa'uld and are viewed as subservient to their husband. These traditions, referred to as the "old ways", are maintained even after the overthrow of the Goa'uld, and multiple episodes deal with Teal'c and other progressive Jaffa attempting to reform Jaffa society into greater equality.
  • The Nth Doctor:
    • Anubis was portrayed by a total of five actors over the course of the show, reflecting different hosts that he possessed and his incorporeal form. These were David Palfy (who provided the voice and body of the robe-shrouded incorporeal Anubis up to "Lost City"), Gavin Hood (who portrayed Russian Colonel Alexi Vaselov, whose body was possessed by Anubis), Dean Aylesworth (a nameless host), Rik Kiviaho (a nameless host) and George Dzunda (who portrayed "Jim", the form Anubis took when speaking to Daniel Jackson in the Astral Diner).
    • When Orlin descended for a second time in season nine, he took the form of a young boy instead of a grown man in order to retain his Ascended memories for a little bit longer.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: The episode "Icon" and its sequel "Ethon" takes place on a world where the two main powers, Rand and Caledonia, are locked in a state of Cold War technologically equal to 1950's Earth. Though both episodes eventually descend into full-scale war between the two powers, with the complete destruction of all infrastructure and the decimation of the planets population, none of the weapons are ever referred to as "nuclear". They are instead just called "missiles" and "bombs", without any specifics.
  • Number of the Beast: P3X-666, which tellingly is the planet where Dr. Janet Fraiser is Killed Off for Real.

  • The Oathbreaker: In "Ethon" on Tegalus when Rand President Nadal agrees to allow his enemies the use of the gate to leave the planet if they won't worship the Ori, provided attempts to destroy the Ori-requested orbital satellite is stopped. They are, but then he breaks his word and plans to use the weapon on the enemy nation. His second in command Commander Pernaux shoots him for violating his oath and an international treaty, but is shot back. Before he dies, he orders the depowering of the satellite and fulfillment of the treaty.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: O'Neill constantly makes snide comments, is obsessed with The Simpsons, and has little to no patience for technical jargon. However, several characters over the course of the series outright make the observation that he is smarter than he pretends to be. It seems to be more that, as a career military man, he simply wants to know what the dangerous piece of alien technology will do and not how it will do it. O'Neill (with two L) is an Air Force colonel with expertise in commando tactics and a pilot with all the necessary technical knowledge. He has also proven to be able to host and use Ancient knowledge twice. There is no way he could have below average intelligence. And when you spend most of your time with people like Sam Carter and Daniel Jackson, it's hard not to look like the dumb one of the band.
  • Oblivious Astronomers: The massive asteroid about to hit Earth was only noticed by an amateur astronomer. Justified, as it wasn't passing through the ecliptic. As it was launched deliberately at Earth, it's likely this was intentional.
  • Obstructionist Pacifist: The Nox practice philosophy of absolute pacifism and non-violence that is so strict that they refuse even to defend themselves when threatened. This policy is so strict that others within their domain are forced to obey their rules of policy of pacifism when necessary. Should visitors attempt to employ violence against one another, the Nox remove their weapons as part of their rules.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: Several. Senator Kinsey eventually became a villain; most others are merely well-meaning but misguided. Woolsey even becomes a valuable ally once he realizes the true extent of the threats to Earth and depths to which Kinsey is willing to sink, though he remains a stickler for the rules.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Parodied in "200" in one of the Imagine Spots. SG-1 makes a run for the gate only to come on top of a hill to see a Jaffa army on par with Zipacna's deployment in "Last Stand" between them and the Stargate. Cut to them nonchalantly coming through the gate in the SGC and making some kinda remark about how "that was rough." Then cut to real life and SG-1 telling Martin that was ridiculous.
  • Off to See the Wizard: "200" included a complete retelling of The Wizard of Oz with Vala as Dorothy, a "lovely, fair-haired Tok'ra" (Carter) as Glinda, a wise Ascended being (Landry) as Oz, and Mitchell, Daniel and Teal'c as the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man (respectively). Martin Lloyd, who the story is being told to, immediately points out that it just is the original movie with Stargate names replacing the originals.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Heru'ur when Apophis' cloaked fleet of Ha'taks uncloaks near the end of "The Serpent's Venom".
    • Daniel when shooting Vala in a Kull warrior suit does not do any damage.
    • When Daniel manages to get the anti-Prior device working, the expression on the Prior's face is about what you would expect when somebody feels that they have just been personally and directly abandoned by their gods.
    • Teal'c has this moment when he throws C4 into a dragon's mouth in the episode "The Quest, Part 2", and when Carter blows it up, it does nothing. The look on Teal'c's face is absolutely priceless and Mitchell sums it up in one very succinct sentence.
    • In "Thor's Chariot", the look on all of the Jaffa's faces when the Beliskner descends over Cimmeria.
    • In "Message in a Bottle", Hammond's reaction when Carter informs him that the Wildfire Protocol won't work because since the organism feeds on energy, the nuclear self-destruct will spread it across the entire planet.
    • In "Failsafe", upon finding a small boulder on the bomb that they planted on the asteroid, O'Neill utters this, probably foreseeing the inevitable Wire Dilemma that follows.
    • In "2001", Mollem's face when he realises that Borren has just inadvertently given away the Aschen's plans for Earth, by innocently translating a word for them, which they'd found on an old local newspaper, "Aschen cure causes Sterility".
    • In "Enemies", Apophis has this (complete with a Big "NO!") upon realizing his Replicator-infested ship is on a collision course with Delmak, his new seat of power. Fitting, as he doesn't come back from this one.
    • He also gets a few more earlier in the episode, in the span of about a minute: First, when he finds he and his Jaffa are surrounded by Replicators. Second, when he makes a swift exit onto the ship's bridge and shuts the doors, while listening to his Jaffa screaming and dying. And thirdly, when the Replicators manage to eat their way into the room.
    • O'Neill, Carter and Daniel all get this (with O'Neill even mentioning the trope by name) when they discover the huge Replicator. "Enemies" may as well be titled "Oh, Crap!: The Episode".
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Michael Shanks occasionally has problems with words ending in "out". He often pronounces "about" as "a-boat".
  • Ominous Floating Spaceship: Frequently. A few highlights:
    • The first several appearances of Goa'uld Ha'tak-class motherships.
    • Asgard Beliskner-type motherships invert it in "Thor's Chariot" and "Point of View", among others.
    • The terraforming vessel in "Scorched Earth".
    • Anubis' mothership over Kelowna's capital city in "Homecoming".
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: In the episode "Demons", to go with the Space Catholics vs. Space Satan and Space Demons theme.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: The ultimate goal of Anubis? To wipe out all the life in the galaxy so he can start all over again as a true god. Wow.
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
    • Unless it is a question of archeology or linguistics (Daniel Jackson's area), advanced medicine (the unit's medical staff handle most of that) or midwifery (... that would be Daniel again), Samantha Carter has it covered on science.
    • Dr. Bill Lee, the SGC's second-fiddle scientist after Carter, seems to have studied every field. He is consulted on matters of physics, electrical engineering, botany and even entomology (the study of insects). He is rarely competent during these consultations, since his character is slight comic relief that is often Entertainingly Wrong, but he apparently has some training therein.
    • Daniel Jackson could count too, even if he's not a scientist per se. He's an expert in archeology, history, ethnology, and linguistic, he's fluent in three dozen of languages and can translate anything if he has a point of reference.
    • Jonas Quinn counts too, since he's Daniel replacement on the team.
  • Ominous Message from the Future: The whole episode of "2010" builds up to sending the message, which is promptly understood and obeyed. It takes place in a seemingly idyllic future where allies the SGC met were able to single-handedly win the war with the Goa'uld, only for SG-1 to learn they secretly have made mankind sterile and plan to subjugate the world, leading SG-1 to sacrifice themselves to send a note to the past warning the SGC against going to the planet where they met the allies. Though Hammond instantly obeys the note, a few years later the SGC unknowingly makes contact with those same aliens on a separate planet.
  • One Character, Multiple Lives: In "The Changeling", Teal'c alternates between his life at Stargate Command and another life where he and the other SG-1 members are firefighters. Both seem equally real. In truth, neither is real. He's hallucinating due to sharing his symbiote with Bra'tac after they were both shot during an ambush by Anubis' forces.
  • Only a Flesh Wound: Teal'c, frequently. In fact just about any wound Teal'c suffers is brushed off, lampshaded or not. Justified early, because he has a Goa'uld symbiote to heal his wounds at a rapid rate. However once the symbiote is removed and he survives on Tretonin, it is simply because Teal'c is that tough, apparently.
    • Subverted in one episode, where his increased recovery time from a wound he would have shrugged off with a symbiote becomes a moment of character development for him, fighting against the feeling that, without a prim'ta, he's become a liability to his friends.
  • Only Good People May Pass: Zigzagged Trope in "The Quest", when the team goes looking for a MacGuffin that can defeat the evil godlike Ori, but are forced to team up with the Ori's field general Adria and the former Goa'uld System Lord Ba'al to safely traverse the maze leading to the treasure. The final doorway is through a Stargate that automatically refuses entry to Adria, but lets Ba'al through. Daniel Jackson points out that the Ancients who designed the Gate probably didn't see the Goa'uld as a real threat compared to the much more powerful Ori.
  • Only Mostly Dead: The Ancients, Asgard, Nox and Goa'uld have the ability to resurrect people from death, provided they reach the body soon enough and there is not sufficient damage to make brain reconstruction unfeasible.
  • Only One Name:
    • Teal'c, and apparently all other Jaffa, are known only by a single name (the word "Teal'c" itself means "strength"). To identify Jaffa within a larger context, they are also identified by their place of origin. Over the course of the show Teal'c goes from "Teal'c of Chulak" to "Teal'c of the Tau'ri", identifying him not with his place of origin but with his current affiliation.
    • Most Goa'uld and all named Asgard, which makes sense as most impersonate deities from Earth mythology.
    • The Nox.
    • Also most offworld-born humans. Vala Mal Doran and the Hebridians, Langarans, and Tegalans are exceptions to this.
  • Only Smart People May Pass / Only the Knowledgable May Pass / Only the Worthy May Pass:
    • The Asgard place testing sites on the planets that they protect in order to determine when the inhabitants are capable of understanding that they are aliens, not gods, and can interact with them on equal footing. These sites judge their selflessness and courage, but also require that they have a knowledge of pi (the ratio of a circle's radius to its circumference) to indicate that their society has developed a knowledge of mathematics and geometry.
    • The doorway to Marduk's ruined temple in "The Tomb" has a puzzle lock consisting of panels inscribed with the Babylonian creation myth, with the combination taking the form of strategically placed errors that theoretically only Marduk's priests would know about. The designer didn't count on Tau'ri archaeology, and Daniel is able to crack the puzzle after studying it for about half an hour.
    • Another puzzle lock, this one Ancient in origin, guards the entryway to the Dakara superweapon in "Reckoning, Part 2". You have to spot the nonsense phrases and turn them upside down so they make logical sense, which requires knowledge of written Ancient.
    • Merlin arranged for several tests before somebody can gain access to Avalon, the hidden chamber beneath the Glastonbury Tor where riches and Ancient technology is hidden. The tests determine the applicants knowledge of Ancient philosophy and their language, their ability to solve logic puzzles and their trustworthiness.
    • In "The Quest" one must be virtuous, pure of spirit, and smart enough to pass the multitude of tests along the way in order to reach the Sangraal. As a result, Adria (correctly) deduces that she will not be able to retrieve the Sangraal but suggests that Daniel, as a former ascended being, is a perfect candidate.
  • On the Next: Used at the end of almost every episode — and recorded as part of the episode itself, so these bits are seen in the reruns, too! Often has Trailers Always Spoil potential, made somewhat better by the show's tendency to play with and subvert common tropes (so even if the audience knows a particular twist is coming in the next episode, they might not know exactly how it will be played).
  • Open the Iris: Actually about eyes, so the frequently heard line is only the Trope Namer, not an example. However, the title sequence for seasons 1-5 uses this image, with the wormhole swirl superimposed on O'Neill's iris.
  • Operation: Jealousy: Alternate Carter: "I'm kind of attracted to Daniel."
  • Oppressive States of America: In the Alternate Universe featured in "The Road Not Taken", the Stargate Program went public after Anubis' attack on Antarctica. Rampant civil unrest ensued and President Hank Landry has declared martial law. Furthermore, Landry is not above using F302's to eliminate dissenters, including those in other countries, cutting loose people who are no longer useful to him and censoring the press. Overall, it's become a major Crapsack World all around.
  • Orbital Bombardment:
    • The Goa'uld primarily use this as a terror tactic, though "There But for the Grace of God" shows Apophis methodically destroying Earth's population with orbital strikes.
    • Ori motherships are also seen using their Wave Motion Guns on ground targets such as the Dakara superweapon.
    • Finally, "Family Ties" has the Odyssey use an orbit-to-surface missile attack to destroy a cloaked tel'tak carrying naquadah bombs intended for use on Earth.
  • Our Humans Are Different: After humanity discovers the Stargate, they learn that Earth was originally colonized by the Ancients, who later left the cosmos when they ascended. "Humans" as we know them are descended from the remnants of those who did not ascend. After a timeskip, it is discovered that humans eventually regain the old technology that the Ancients used, and end up with a similar society, although it is not clear whether they choose to ascend this time.
  • Our Presidents Are Different: Depending on the universe and timeline.
  • Our Wormholes Are Different: The most prominent being the ones connecting Stargates, of course.
  • Out of Order: According to executive producer Joseph Mallozi, season 8's "Affinity" and "Covenant" should have aired in the opposite order. This creates a minor continuity hiccup when Daniel identifies the people who kidnapped him in "Affinity" as agents of the Trust, whom he shouldn't know about yet.
  • Outside-Context Problem:
    • Initially, the Goa'uld themselves. The Earthers thought the one they'd killed in the movie was the Last of His Kind and that they'd eliminated any threat to Earth when they took it out. Not so much...
    • The Replicators, an extragalactic, mechanical Horde of Alien Locusts who make all kinds of trouble for SG-1 and its allies and eventually invade the Milky Way. By then SG-1 has some experience with them, but the Goa'uld still see them as this trope.
    • Anubis, whom the System Lords thought had died eons ago after his banishment. Turns out he was Not Quite Dead. His return in Season 5 forces both the System Lords and the Earth/Tok'ra/Free Jaffa alliance to shift their priorities from each other to the new enemy.
    • The Ori in the last two seasons. For nearly a decade the heroes have been fighting the Goa'uld, whose modus operandi is to use technology to trick primitives into thinking they're gods. Now they have to fight aliens who by almost any definition are gods.
    • And, of course, Stargate Command and the Tau'ri (Earth humans) in general are this to the Goa'uld. They had a nice little system set up where they could squabble with one another, had a treaty with the Asgard to keep them off their backs, run their own little kingdoms as they wanted... and then a small group of primitives from a long-forgotten world shows up and proceeds to kick their asses so hard that a system that survived millennia goes down in under a decade.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: If the Harsesis Child is still alive then he has certainly fallen into this, as whilst possessing all of the knowledge of the Goa'uld is still both impressive and dangerous in the wrong hands, he really is quite the irrelevance to Earth now that they have access to both the Asgard and Ancient databases.
  • Overt Rendezvous:
    • In "Touchstone", General Hammond meets with a contact he has in order to track down the missing Stargate. They met in a park and the contact suggests they go for a walk to make it harder for parabolic microphones to listen in.
    • Sam's park-bench meeting with Agent Barrett in "Smoke and Mirrors" after he warns her that his office is bugged.
  • Overused Running Gag: The show had a habit of making Fun with Homophones jokes using the System Lord Yu. In "The New Order" newcomer Elizabeth Weir found out about Yu and started to make one, but was stopped by Daniel:
    Daniel: Don't. Every joke, every pun, done to death. Seriously.

  • Paintball Episode: A couple of them, involving the Goa'uld intar training weapon instead of paintball guns.
  • Palette-Swapped Alien Food: Played straight in season 4's "Beneath the Surface"; lampshaded the following season, in "Wormhole X-Treme!"
  • Panspermia: The Ancients lived on Earth millions of years before humanity evolved, and when they left for the Pegasus Galaxy they re-seeded life throughout the Milky Way and caused a "second evolution" of their form. In season nine, it was revealed that they had not originally evolved on Earth themselves, but had traveled there millions of years before that from their home galaxy.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: In the alternate timeline of "2010" Carter, Daniel, and Jack invade the SGC (by then a museum) by sneaking in with a tour group wearing hats and sunglasses. At that point, the members of SG-1 are arguably the most famous people on the planet for their role in ending the alien wars. The tour group walks right past a giant photograph of SG-1 and Daniel even speaks up and draws attention to Carter and himself, but nobody recognizes them.
  • Parody Episode:
  • Path of Inspiration: "Hallowed are the Ori."
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: The Aschen are a race that conquer by slowly sterilising their allies. Because of this, the list of Stargate Addresses they gave them start with a Black Hole and get progressively worse.
  • Perfect Pacifist People: The Nox. One of them borders on Technical Pacifist, however. In "Pretense", Lya helps Teal'c to conceal one of the Tollans' ion cannons from Jaffa saboteurs painting them as targets for an orbiting Ha'tak. In response to Sam's query, Lya replies:
  • Pet the Dog: Apophis gets a very brief Pet the Dog moment while he is dying in Stargate Command's medical ward, calling for his beloved queen in his final moments. He reverts to evil form when brought Back from the Dead.
  • Permission to Speak Freely: When it comes to comedic instances of this, Jack O'Neill is the one — unsurprisingly — doing the honors.
    Jack O'Neill: General Hammond, request permission to beat the crap outta this man.
  • Pet's Homage Name: Carter owns a cat named Schrödinger in some of the later seasons.
  • Phlebotinum Dependence: Several examples, all the Goa'uld's fault in one way or another.
  • Phlebotinum-Handling Requirements:
    • A lot of Goa'uld technology (the kara kesh and the healing device, for instance) requires blood-borne naquadah to activate. Hence why Sam can use it after hosting Jolinar on "In the Line of Duty".
    • The fact that Jack has the ATA gene and can thus activate certain Ancient devices (the knowledge repositories and a Puddle Jumper, for instance) is an occasional plot point.
  • Physical God: The Goa'uld would very much like their subjects to believe this, when they're really just Sufficiently Advanced Aliens pretending to be gods. The Goa'uld Anubis (who's also the most evil) on the other hand fits this completely, having become a "half-ascended" upper-dimensional Energy Being who manifests in the lower realms to continue being venerated as a divine Evil Overlord.
  • Pinned to the Wall:
    • An alien device once pinned Jack O'Neill to the wall of the SGC through his shoulder.
    • Another time, Baal pinned Jack to a wall with Artificial Gravity and tossed knives (or acid, depending on how he felt like torturing Jack to death that day) at his chest.
  • Planetary Nation: Usually played straight, although in most cases this is because there's really only one or two settlements of note (blame the Goa'uld). Two exceptions are Langara, which has at least three major powers, and Tegalus, which has two, and in both cases each are in a Space Cold War with their neighbors.
  • Planet of Hats: Many, often remaining identical to their culture of origin from when they were abducted off Earth thousands of years ago.
  • Playing Pictionary: Played with. Daniel and Sam are presented with a thermal image of the symbiote inside of Teal'c, and they play dumb:
    Daniel: Oh, that's very good! Did you draw that yourself?
    Sam: What is it?
    Daniel: That... That's a duck, isn't it?
  • Point That Somewhere Else: In the two-parter opening of season 7, SG-1 is captured by Anubis' First Prime, Her'ak, who announces they'll be publicly executed. When O'Neill ponders if it's a necessity for this to be in public, Her'ak puts the tip of his staff weapon under his nose, and asks if he'd rather be killed right there. To which O'Neill answers that he's fine with a public execution, while gently pushing away the weapon head — and then he rubs his fingers, since touching the tip of an activated serpent staff barehanded is unadvised.
  • Popcultural Osmosis Failure:
    • Teal'c in the early seasons. The third episode, "Emancipation", famously ended on the line "What is an Oprah?"
    • Vala, who never did get the opportunity that Teal'c did to assimilate and learn about Earth culture, and asked the rest of SG-1 to stop using cultural expressions that she would not understand.
    • Daniel Jackson, despite being the one actually from Earth, did not understand what Colonel Mitchell meant when he said they were dealing with a John McClane, and Teal'c had to explain that it was a reference to Die Hard.
  • Population Control: There's an episode where SG-1 visits a planet where the whole population has been herded into a Domed City with the rest of the world outside being a Death World similar to Venus. The entire population is also linked to a central computer through neural implants so they can instantly receive new information. When people start disappearing one by one and instantly fade from the collective memory of every other citizen (including the wife of a happily married scientist who chillingly doesn't even know who SG-1 are talking about), it turns out that the computer has been selecting people to sacrifice themselves by leaving the dome because the energy supply of the dome has been decreasing for a while, causing the dome to shrink. At the end SG-1 figures out that the city used to support a population of 100,000; when they first arrive on the planet there are only 1,000 people left.
  • Portal Cut: Objects are only sent through the gate in one piece; when only part of an object is past the event horizon it is held in a hyperspace buffer until the rest of the object enters the gate and the entire thing is transported to the next gate. If the gate were to shut down with part of an object in the buffer that part is lost forever; Major Kawalsky is killed this way in the first season.
  • Portal Slam: The Stargate is open as long as the directors say, so it is not unusual for characters to miss the wormhole. Also, when the iris is closed on the receiving end of a wormhole anything that attempts to travel through it suffers a "bugs on a windshield" death. O'Neill coldly orders this done to the character played by Rene Auberjonois, but to be fair he was a white supremacist leader.
  • Possession Burnout: Whenever Anubis possesses a host.
  • Post-Mortem Comeback: An episode in one of the later seasons featured a villain of the week named Khalek. He's not only revealed to be a Goa'uld-Human hybrid, but a clone of Anubis, the Big Bad of season 5 to 8 and the most evil Go'uld who ever lived. Anubis had built him as a backup plan with Genetic Memory from his "father" in the event that he was taken out for good himself.
  • Power of Trust: In "Icon", Daniel spends several months recuperating in the home of Jared Kane and his wife Leda. Over the months, Leda became infatuated with Daniel, particularly since Jared had spent progressively less time at home over the past few years as his political responsibilities grew. When Daniel is trying to get Jared to launch a joint military assault in combination with the SGC, he asks Leda to help persuade him, but Jared has noticed their relationship and demands that Leda answer if she loves Daniel. She hesitates for a moment, then explains that she trusts him.
  • Power Parasite: The Goa'uld are a literal version. Sometimes, as Ba'al/Adria demonstrated, the hosts' abilities are too powerful for the Goa'uld to handle, and the possession does not work as a result. By contrast, when they take Unas as hosts, they do so because the Unas are far tougher than humans, but their bodies are more difficult to control and repair.
  • Power Perversion Potential: When O'Neill became invisible in the of-doubtful-canonicity episode "200", he spied on Carter while she was taking a shower. Carter knew something was up and asked if he was watching her... he replied "No."
  • Power Walk: SG-1 frequently enters the Stargate (and exits the other side) in this manner. In fact, the times they do not Power Walk usually indicate that something is wrong. Subverted early on, as shortcomings in Earth's dialing program cause them to be tossed somewhat violently out the other side. Then they improve the program, and it never happens again until they override a safety protocol that they really should not have.
  • Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Precision Crash: Referenced, but averted "Failsafe". Carter exposits how a 137-kilometer asteroid is on a collision course with Earth.
    Jack: I've seen this movie. It hits Paris.
    Sam: Actually sir, it will strike somewhere in the Arctic Circle. Probably Greenland or the Barents Sea.
  • Precision F-Strike:
    • In "A Hundred Days":
      Jack: Teal'c, you are one stubborn son of a bitch!
    • Jack also calls the entire clergy of the medieval planet ("Demons") sons of bitches when they go to drown Teal'c to see if he's a witch.
    • In "Within the Serpent's Grasp":
      Klorel: Nothing of the host survives.
      Jack: That's bullshit!
    • In "Menace", Daniel angrily calls Jack a "stupid son of a bitch" after the latter shoots Reese.
  • Precursor Killers: Starting with season four's "Window of Opportunity", the SGC learned that the Ancients suffered from a plague towards the end of their civilization. As the seasons progressed the details were gradually revealed, with the ultimate discovery that the Ori inflicted the plague on the Ancients, inspiring many of them to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, killing the majority of the remaining population and forcing the survivors to flee to the Pegasus Galaxy aboard Atlantis.
  • Precursors: Probably holds a record for the most precursors, with three confirmed Precursor races and the implication of many more.
    • The Ancients preceded all other life, built the Stargates, and had an undefined relationship with Ancient Rome, potentially teaching them how to effectively build roads and speak Latin. They are either benevolent or neglectful, depending on your point of view and perspective on self-determination (typically they land in benevolent by intention, neglectful through bouts of Lawful Stupid, but this can vary depending on which specific group of Ancients in which specific time frame you're looking at).
    • The Goa'uld ruled the Earth for approximately five thousand years and introduced the oldest writing systems and organized living, essentially creating human civilization. However, they brutally oppressed humanity during their reign and have done their best to make sure that nobody would build atop the foundation that they left.
    • The Asgard preceded human evolution and inspired the Norse pantheon. They did not advance or manipulate human development, but did protect them from the Goa'uld when they could to give humans a chance to make something of themselves.
    • The Oannes of "Fire and Water" and the GIANT ALIENS!note  (for full effect, say it with a Dutch accent) of "Crystal Skull" have some sort of connection with Babylon and the Maya, respectively, but whether they shaped those societies or simply encountered them was never revealed.
  • Precursor Worship: See above.
  • Premature Encapsulation: "Tangent" should have been called "Failsafe", and "Failsafe" should have been called "Point of No Return".
  • Prepositions Are Not to End Sentences With: Jack apparently considers Her'ak's abuse of the English language a worse torture than the Rod of Anguish.
    Her'ak: No matter what you have endured, you have never experienced the likes of what Anubis is capable of!
    O'Neill: You ended that sentence with a preposition. Bastard!
  • President Evil:
    • Kinsey clearly plans to become one. He possibly achieved it in the Alternate Universe featured in "Moebius", as well as the one in "2010".
    • Landry in the reality of "The Road Not Taken". Made worse in that he doesn't act any different to the regular Landry.
  • Pride: The Tollan are utterly convinced that they are invulnerable, due to their vast technological superiority that is even beyond that of the Goa'uld. Their arrogance eventually lead them to being wiped out, since they never considered that the Goa'uld might eventually find some way to circumvent their technology.
  • Prison Ship: An episode centers on the team finding a crashed prison spaceship.
  • Product Placement:
    • The early seasons used NEC monitors for desktop computers.
    • Samantha Carter uses a Dell Inspiron laptop in the first eight seasons of the show. Though it could have originally been considered as a Red Stapler effect, her switching to a Dell XPS in season nine sealed the deal.invoked
    • In one episode in season nine, Col. Mitchell and another Col. Mitchell from another universe are seen sitting at a table drinking Aquafina-brand bottled water.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Teal'c of Chulak, First Prime of Apophis. The Jaffa have lived as a warrior society for so long that they use the same word ("kek") for both "weakness" and "death", since if one is weak they might as well be dead. The Jaffa are a surprisingly well-justified version of this concept. Historically they could afford to be a Proud Warrior Race because the Goa'uld filled other necessary social functions, from scientific to spiritual castes. It take a lot of work for the Jaffa to build a purely Jaffa society.
  • Proverbial Wisdom: Oma Desala and the Kheb monk.
  • Psychic Powers: "Rite of Passage", "Metamorphosis", "Prophecy", "Prototype". Also, the Priors of the Ori are given telekinetic powers.
  • Public Domain Artifact: Everything from the Sword In The Stone to Thor's Hammer. Usually Imported Alien Phlebotinum of some sort.
  • Public Domain Character: Season nine reveals that Merlin was an Ascended Ancient who descended to mortality in order to build a weapon to use against the Ori. In his first life he was Moros, who was the last High Chancellor of Atlantis, and after he returned to mortality he was known as Myrddin, the name of the Welsh wizard that much of Merlin's mythology is based on.
  • Pulled from Your Day Off: In "Nemesis" the team gets some leave courtesy of Daniel (and his actor) coming down with appendicitis. Teal'c goes offworld to visit his family, Carter is fiddling with a naquadah reactor, and Jack is about to leave to go fishing when out of nowhere Thor arrives in orbit and beams him up to his ship to fight Replicators.
  • Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: Done deliberately by Daniel in "The Devil You Know". About to be led away from a chamber after being tortured, he punches one of the Jaffa in the gut (which only annoys the Jaffa), who slugs Daniel into the table across the room... which lets Daniel pick up a comlink he had spotted there a moment before.
  • Pūnct'uatìon Sh'akër: Lots of Jaffa's names. And Ba'al.
  • The Punishment: Stargate SG-1 backstory: To punish Anubis for tricking Oma Desala into ascending him, the Ancients partially descended him, allowing him to keep some but not all of the Ancient knowledge. The latter was punished by allowing him to wander free so she could witness the destructive power she gave him. She ended this by eventually taking matters into their own hands and fighting the former in eternal battle.
  • Puppeteer Parasite: The Goa'uld, obviously.
  • Putting the Band Back Together: Season nine starts with SG-1 effectively decommissioned as its three remaining members moved on to new positions following the defeat of the Goa'uld: Teal'c had left Earth to help form the new Free Jaffa Nation government, Daniel Jackson was going to Atlantis aboard the Daedalus, and Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter had been reassigned to Area 51 for research and development. Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, SG-1's new commander, decided to reunite its former members as opposed to building a whole new team.

  • Quote-to-Quote Combat:
    • A comedic example in The Teaser of "Urgo" when the MALP sends back an image of a tropical beach.
      Sam: P4X-884 looks like an untouched paradise, Sir.
      Teal'c: Appearances may be deceiving.
      Jack: One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
      Daniel: A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
      Jack: Never run with... scissors?
    • Another comedic example in "Fallen" when Jack tries to convince a parable- and proverb-loving village elder that the Tau'ri are trustworthy.
      Elder: No one can be a friend if you know not whether to trust them.
      Jack: Don't judge a book by its cover.
      Elder: Enemies' promises were made to be broken.
      Jack: And yet, honesty is the best policy.
      Elder: He who has too many friends has none.
      Jack: Ahh, but, birds of a feather.
      Elder: I'm unfamiliar with that story. What lesson does it teach?
      Jack: It has to do with flocking, and togetherness, and to be honest I'm not so familiar with the particulars myself.
    • Daniel has a habit of countering the Ori Priors' dramatic quoting of the Book of Origin with yet more quotes from the same document. A more serious instance happens after the Supergate opens in "Camelot" and the Ori warships arrive. They send a text-only message to the allied fleet gathered to stop them, a quote from the Book of Origin that basically translates to "And those who are prideful and refuse to bow down shall be laid low and made onto dust." Daniel shoots back with, "Then did Tileus say to the people of the low plains: 'seek not wickedness amongst your neighbors lest it find purchase in your own house.'" Unfortunately this battle is decided by firepower rather than quotes.
    • Cam does something similar on occasion, except he uses The Bible instead of the Book of Origin.

  • Race Lift: When the current host of a Goa'uld does not match the race that inhabited their original Earth domain, the show often documents the chain of events that lead the symbiote to change its human body. However, Zipacna, a Mayan deity, is portrayed by Caucasian Kevin Durand with no explanation.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Strictly against the Ori, but they are clearly a thinly-disguised version of a popular real-life religion. Although after defeated, people admit the teachings are not bad, it was the soul-stealing it was used for. Oh and the burning people alive. That was probably bad too.
  • Rage Helm: Many of the helmets worn by high-ranking Jaffa.
  • Ragnarök Proofing:
    • Ancient technology still works after being abandoned for a million years. They just don't make 'em like they used to.
    • Goa'uld technology is quite long-lasting too, but then again most of it was ripped off from the Ancients.
  • Ramming Always Works: Bra'tac attempts to ram an Ori mothership with a Goa'uld ha'tak once it becomes clear that their traditional weapons will not be able to penetrate the shields. The shields of the Ori ship hold and the mothership disintegrates in a fireball.
  • Real After All: Rothman originally appears in an episode that is All Just a Dream, and so is revealed at the end to never have "really" been in the show at all, but he appeared in later episodes as an actual character.
  • Real Award, Fictional Character: In "Secrets", Jack and Sam are each awarded the Air Medal for destroying two of Apophis' motherships that tried to invade Earth at the season 1/season 2 changeover. (Daniel and Teal'c were there, too, but they're civilians and aren't eligible.) The cover story is that they got the medal for their work in "deep-space satellite telemetry" (though General Jacob Carter, Sam's father, more or less calls bullshit).
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: General Hammond was Put on a Bus to Homeworld Command after season 7 because of Don S. Davis' health problems. Sadly this would continue until The Character Died with Him several years later.
  • Really 700 Years Old:
    • The Goa'uld grant their hosts increased longevity, which can be supplemented by the use of a sarcophagus, so the various System Lords and minor Goa'uld encountered over the course of the series are hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old. Apophis' host was actually a scribe in an Egyptian temple before the overthrow of the Goa'uld on Earth, making him at least five thousand years old.
    • Since the Tok'ra do not use sarcophagi because they are unwilling to accept the resultant mental degradation, their hosts "only" live to be a couple hundred years old. The exception to this is their queen, Egeria, who was imprisoned in a stasis jar at some point in her life, making her thousands of years old. The goa'uld Osiris survived into the modern day through a similar imprisonment.
    • The Jaffa have a life-span much greater than humans; Bra'tac was 133 in the first-season episode episode "Bloodlines," and Teal'c was 101 in the fourth-season episode "The Light".
  • Real Trailer, Fake Movie: In the midst of all the half-scenes of "200" was one completed trailer for a series starring Teal'c as a Private Investigator. It appeared right at the opening of act four, right at the end of the real commercials, to increase the chance of it being mistaken for an actual production.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: General Hammond and General Landry.
  • Recut: "Children of the Gods", the two-hour premiere of the series, was recut and re-released in 2009 as a DVD-film. It included new footage, composed of new CGI and a deleted scene, a re-score of the soundtrack, and the removal of the full-frontal nudity that was forced to be added to mark the show as "adult".
  • Red Shirt:
    • Assorted SGC personnel appear in order to make first (violent) contact with the enemy before SG-1 comes in to save the day, particularly in the early seasons.
    • Virtually every Russian character that stepped through a Stargate, which the Russian officers disgustedly point out.
    • When a pair of scientists decide to tag along and rescue SG-1 in "The Other Guys", Coombs points out that they "might as well be wearing red shirts." Soon after he says this, Khonsu, who is dressed all in red, is killed.
  • Red Shirt Army: Or Navy in this case. When Anubis launches his attack on Earth, his first attack is against a U.S. carrier battle group in the Pacific. Carrier battle groups are more powerful then most countries, but Anubis manages to destroy the Nimitz and her escorts without them even being able to see their attackers.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: The show leans on Like Reality, Unless Noted; while it several times alludes to slowly introducing alien technologies to the general populace, there are few outright signs of this shown on the show. The episode "Bounty" explores this trope a little bit, as Carter and Dr. Lee are attending a technology symposium and Lee complains about how he has to deliberately sabotage his own presentation in order to not appear too advanced. Carter remarks that they need to make it look like there is a natural development process for these technologies, with a lot of trial-and-error and bugs along the way, before the final product is revealed to the public.
  • Relationship Reset Button:
    • Jack and Sam in "Window of Opportunity".
    • Possibly Teal'c and Sam in "Unending".invoked
  • Relationship Upgrade: Daniel and Vala in the series finale, though it gets undone by the time reversal.
  • Religion Is Magic:
    • Subverted by the Goa'uld, who pose as gods but simply use advanced technology to appear supernatural to their subjects.
    • Played straight by the Ori, who gift their priests (Priors) with an array of superpowers such as levitation, telekinesis, healing powers, and a Staff of Authority that can shoot energy.
  • Religion of Evil: Origin is a religion invented by a banished group of Ascended Alterans known as the Ori. The Ori want to destroy the Ancients and figure out that they can feed off the belief of un-Ascended beings. They twist the history of the Alterans, making themselves out to be the good guys and encase their version of history within a Holy Book. Their gospel is spread by evangelical priests known as Priors who bear the powers that advanced humans close to achieving Ascension display. As the formidable power of the Ori is genuine, people accept the truth of the Ori gospel and convert. Those that resist are conquered; they are forcibly converted by violence, and if even that fails, they are destroyed. If anyone does manage to kill a Prior, the believer's death makes the Ori that much more powerful. For countless millennia, this was a win-win situation for the Ori... until they take on the Tau'ri.
  • Relocating the Explosion:
    • "Redemption, Part 2", where O'Neill had to use the X-302 Space Fighter prototype to fly the stargate away from the Earth because Anubis had a device that turned it into a bomb with an explosion large enough to destroy the entire planet.
    • "Ex Deus Machina" saw Ba'al hold earth to ransom by filling a skyscraper full of naquadah and turning it into a bomb with a yield probably well beyond the city-buster range. Since the Prometheus was on station, once Carter tracked down the bomb she just had them beam the whole building into orbit.
  • Reluctant Gift: In the last season 6 episode, "Final Circle", both SG-1 and Anubis' Jaffa are after the Eye of Ra. When SG-1, being cornered, finally agree to surrender the MacGuffin (rather than destroy it) in exchange for leaving the planet safely, O'Neill reluctantly cede the artifact to First Prime He'rak... although not without clinging to it a bit.
  • Reluctant Warrior: Daniel Jackson.
  • Remember the New Guy?:
    • In "The Sentinel", Colonel Sean Grieves and Lt. Kershaw are introduced as members of the rogue NID team that was captured by the SGC in "Shades of Grey." However, neither character appeared in the prior episode, and the "Previously On..." opening of "The Sentinel" edited them into the older footage.
    • Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell became the lead character in season nine, introduced as the new senior officer of SG-1 after the promotion or reassignment of all its former members. Cameron is described as a former F-302 pilot who fought against Anubis in the battle over Antarctica during "Lost City", and several scenes were shot that took place during that episodes time-frame to show other members of SG-1 interacting with him.
  • Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: Trope Namer. Samantha Carter blew up a sun. Several of them.
  • Renegade Splinter Faction:
    • The rogue NID for Earth, trying to defend Earth by any (often criminal) means necessary. The group would later fully splinter into The Trust. And ultimately subverted when The Trust is infiltrated by the Goa'uld.
    • The Re'tu (invisible spider-like aliens) that are threatening the SGC are a split terrorist faction. They believe they can fight the Goa'uld by attrition of their human hosts — a divergent, extremist opinion from the rest of their species.
  • Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: In season 4 "Window of Opportunity", Jack and Teal'c get stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. On an early cycle, he tries to prove to Sam and General Hammond that that is what's going on by predicting that another SG team will come back early because one of them fell and broke his ankle. Jack's guess was about a minute early and he used this trope when it didn't happen when he said it would.
  • Reset Button: Used very rarely (except in time-travel episodes), and then usually not without some kind of repercussions for using the button itself. In the series finale, though, there was a literal reset button... which still had a somewhat drastic repercussion for one of the characters.
  • Reset Button Suicide Mission:
    • In the episode "2010", the heroes attempt to flee backward through time to prevent the covert sterilization of humanity by what were believed to be friendly aliens. None of them make it, but they manage to send back a cryptic clue which eventually prevents involvement with the aliens, and thus the timeline that lead to their deaths.
    • In the final episode "Unending" the titular SG-1 are trapped between two Ori battleships. Samantha Carter freezes time outside of the ship. They grow old on board and eventually Carter works out a way to escape — the twist being, they use the projectiles as an energy source to go back in time (or something like that), but one of them has to stay old. They choose Teal'c, the Token Non-Human, since he ages very slowly, and the ship is blown up by the laser. Luckily, it works, so Teal'c is sent back in time to put in a special program Carter wrote, allowing them to escape.
  • La Résistance: Season five's "The Warrior" saw the formation of an official, organized Jaffa resistance to the Goa'uld, founded by K'tano, former First Prime of the minor Goa'uld Imhotep that killed his ruler after he was inspired by Teal'c's example. K'tano was eventually revealed to be Imhotep, and was killed by Teal'c in ritual combat for leadership of the rebellion, but the organization continued and eventually become the Free Jaffa Nation after the overthrow of the Goa'uld in season eight.
  • Ret-Gone:
    • In "Revisions", there's a community of people living under a shield dome on an otherwise hellish planet: they all had devices on their heads which wired them into a central mainframe to retrieve knowledge from it. However, the shield was losing power, so the computer slowly shrank it over the years, controlling the excess population in their sleep and sending them out to die in the poisoned atmosphere outside, and then editing the remaining people's memories so they thought the town had always been that size and didn't remember the dead ones.
    • In Continuum, Cameron Mitchell didn't exist because the man Ba'al killed to stop the Stargate from reaching North America was his grandfather.
  • Retirony: While filming his documentary of the SGC, Emmett Bregman recounts a story he heard from a journalist who was in Vietnam who, two days before he was going back to the US, was shoved out of the path of a bullet by a lieutenant who was killed by that shot.
  • Retool: Season eight was intended to be the final season of the show, and saw the conclusion of almost all ongoing storylines: The Goa'uld were overthrown, the Jaffa gained their freedom, the Replicators were destroyed, and there were hints that Jack and Sam were finally going to resolve their sexual tension. When the series was renewed for season nine they introduced two new main characters (Colonel Mitchell and General Landry), removed Jack from the series, and introduced the Ori as the new Big Bad.
  • Returning Big Bad: The Goa'uld Apophis served as the Big Bad for the first two seasons, even attempting an invasion of Earth that destroyed much of his Fleet. By season 3 his position was usurped by his rival Sokar, who killed Apophis and resurrected him several times before dumping him on a moon made to resemble Fire and Brimstone Hell. However, eventually Apophis managed to turn the tables, taking over Sokar's entire Fleet after the latter's death and became the Big Bad once again for season 4.
  • Revenge by Proxy: Bra'tac believes that Teal'c thinks that Arkad, a cowardly Jaffa that Teal'c had defeated in battle while serving as Apophis' First Prime, killed Teal'c's mother in revenge for his defeat. In "Talion", Arkad himself confirms this, explaining that it was revenge for Teal'c killing his own parents and sister during their conflict. Afterwards, however, Teal'c tells Bra'tac that if Arkad was responsible then he was too much of a coward to do it himself, since Teal'c had tracked down and killed the actual murderer years ago.
  • Reverse Grip: In "Emancipation", Sam wields her KA-BAR knife this way against the Space Mongol chieftain Turghan.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder:
    • When Carter is first introduced to the SGC and explains how excited she is to go through the Stargate, Major Kawalsky condescendingly asks her if she has ever pulled out of a simulated bombing run in an F-16 at eight-plus g's. Her only response is a calm "yes," after which Kawalsky has to pause and look around the table before covering himself by mumbling that the experience is even worse.
    • When Her'ak, First Prime of Khonsu, captures SG-1 and comes to gloat, O'Neill sardonically asks if he has a resume, and Her'ak points out that he captured them. O'Neill has to pause for a second before he can think up a response. Of course, SG-1 allowed themselves to be captured, but Her'ak knew that and captured them for real later.
  • Right Makes Might: In season nine's "The Scourge", Mitchell asks Teal'c if he ever doubted that the Goa'uld would be overthrown since they had vastly superior technology and resources compared to Earth. Teal'c explains that he never doubted that the Goa'uld would eventually be defeated, even if it did not necessarily happen in his own lifetime, since Earth and the Free Jaffa had something much more important: a just cause.
  • The Right of a Superior Species: In "Pretense", the Goa'uld Zipacna justifies the taking of human hosts by claiming superiority to humanity and comparing the practice to the hunting and fishing practiced by humans.
  • Road Runner vs. Coyote: "Bounty"
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Teal'c in "Talion".
  • Robo Cam: Replicator vision.
  • Robotic Psychopath: Many human-form Replicators have a Lack of Empathy and delight in torturing humans. Fifth is the only exception, since he was created with emotions. He only becomes a Psychopathic Manchild after the heroes betray him. Though the stand-out example is the copy that Fifth created of Samantha Carter, who manipulated both the heroes and Fifth before killing him and then invading the Milky Way in a genocidal war of conquest.
  • Robot War: The fight against the Replicators, a robotic bug race made of nanobots. They don't have anything against organic beings, or even care about them much, just as long as they don't get in the way of consuming all metal and metal ores in the galaxy.
  • Rock Beats Laser: Earth's conventional firearms and other conventional weapons are usually quite adequate, or even superior, against the supposedly more advanced enemy alien armies they fight.
    • Goa'uld personal shields can easily deflect fast-moving bullets and energy blasts, but they're powerless to stop relatively slow-moving arrows, thrown knives, or in one memorable case, Teal'c simply putting the enemy in a chokehold.
    • Human-made bullets are more useful than Asgardian high-tech weapons against Replicators: they absorb the energy of rays or blasts, but bullets blow them apart (although they can reform if enough intact blocks are left). Later subverted when human-form replicators are created, who are immune to bullets, forcing the Asgard and Humans to create a brand new high-tech weapon to fight them.
    • It was lampshaded in one episode, when the team mentioned that the Goa'uld staff weapons are not meant to be effective so much as flashy and impressive, the better to intimidate conquered populations. The "sidearm" zat'nik'tel pistols are the weapon of choice for savvy Jaffa.
      Colonel O'Neill: This [staff weapon] is a weapon of terror: it's made to intimidate the enemy. This [an FNP90] is a weapon of war: it's made to kill the enemy.
  • Rock Bottom: In "Avalon, Part 1", Vala and Daniel are trapped in a stone room with an Ancient philosophy puzzle, and Vala refuses to wait for Daniel to figure it out. When he angrily tells her to stop so he can think, she responds "we're already trapped in here, how much worse can it get?" When the ceiling begins to descend she says that she knew it was a mistake the moment she said it.
  • Rookie Red Ranger: "Most powerful" may be up for debate, but otherwise this basically applies to Cameron Mitchell after he becomes the new leader of SG-1. That said, thanks to a liberal dose of Remember the New Guy? and the personalities of the original characters, he is accepted into the group immediately. It should also be noted that Mitchell was initially appointed to and expected to assemble a completely new SG-1 after the original team chose to "retire" and pursue other career paths after the downfall of the Goa'uld; he only became the leader of the original team (or at least of Sam, Daniel and Teal'c) when they were all recalled to action to face the new threat of the Ori.
  • Roswell That Ends Well: Spoofed in "Prometheus". Sam tells a press crew touring the title battlecruiser that parts of the ship were reverse-engineered from an alien crash outside Fairbanks, Alaska.
    Jonas: Fairbanks?
    Sam: It sounded better than Roswell.
  • Rousing Speech: Subverted in "The Serpent's Lair":
    O'Neill: And I suppose now is the time for me to say something profound. (*Beat*) Nothing comes to mind. Let's do it.
  • Royal "We": Hathor speaks like this.
  • Running Gag:
    • O'Neill inviting the rest of SG-1 to go fishing and the various ways they uncomfortably refuse. He even asked Thor to go fishing once. The offer is made across multiple seasons, and even continues after he has left the show when General Landry invites SG-1 to visit O'Neill's cabin.
    • This particular running gag actually migrated over to SG-1's sister show Atlantis. Specifically in the episode "Sunday", where Dr. Beckett kept asking people to go on a fishing trip with him, only to be turned down every time.
    • O'Neill making frequent references to "memos", usually to explain that he had not seen the latest memo that explained what would be occurring in that episode.
    • O'Neill asking a question, usually to Daniel or Carter, and them giving a long, overly technical explanation, with O'Neill getting annoyed because all he wanted was a "Yes" or "No".
    • Mary Steenburgen, a Real Life actress, is frequently mentioned as either O'Neill's favorite actress or his sexual fantasy.
    • Fun with Homophones jokes using Yu (You) and Ba'al (Ball).
    • Daniel being declared KIA or MIA and then reappearing (see Death Is Cheap).
    • In any episode directed by Martin Wood, look closely for the following Funny Background Event: Wood in SGC coveralls, talking to Sgt. Siler. One of them carrying a crescent wrench that's gotta be a meter long.
    • The show discussed a Running Gag from the Stargate-verse as a whole in "Wormhole X-Treme!" when a network exec vetoes a part of the script where Jack's expy Col. Danforth becomes weightless to get past a Giant Mook. Martin complains that now there's no way to get past the mook, and Jack suggests Danforth Just Shoot Him.
    • Thor frequently beams people and objects from the SGC to his ship without asking for permission or giving warning. He also has a habit of overdoing it. Need weapons? Beam up the entire armory. Need some food for a long trip? Take the entire base's food supply (without taking refrigeration into consideration). This behavior has caused some to suspect that Thor isn't a Grey, but in fact a Troll.
    • On multiple occasions, Daniel has to bluff an enemy into believing he is some kind of unsavory character, and proves to be quite bad at it. At various times he's been forced to pretend to be a Goa'uld, a bounty hunter, and a political terrorist.
    • Carter blowing up a sun is something no-one is ever going to let her forget.
  • Russian Reversal:
    Carter: I love what they've done with the place.
    O'Neill: [noticing the people in pods] I love what the place has done with them.


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