Sliders

The cast members of seasons one and two, looking at something awful happening off-camera.

Sliders is a Science Fiction show about four people who try out a device for traveling to Alternate Universes, then get lost and spend the remainder of the series trying to get back to their world of origin. It started out an extremely fun Adventure Series revolving around the "What If...?, scenarios offered by alternate worlds ("What if the US lost World War 2? What if dinosaurs didn't go extinct? What if you were born the opposite sex?" etc.), but when Fox executives took over, putting in their own man and reducing the original producers to "executive consultant" level (and apparently not consulting them much) the series steadily self-destructed, most of its episodes being ripoffs of movies that were popular at the time, and becoming dark and mean-spirited, dumping most of the characters (via death or worse) and developing a Myth Arc about a race of killer-ape-descended villains called 'Kromaggs' which eventually took over the show.

The surprisingly competent final episode ended with a Cliff Hanger meant to try and push Sci Fi into giving them a 6th season: it had been clear from the start of production on S5 that Sci Fi intended to cancel it, having picked it up to get its viewers to watch their new shows. (Which failed. Season 5's ratings actually were good enough to normally get it renewed, but Sci Fi had committed to other shows already.)

Over the years, the series has been slowly released on DVD. Season 5 is scheduled to be released January 2012.

Trope-based episodes:

Tropes used in Sliders include:
  • Aborted Arc: With maybe one or two exceptions, none of the multi-episode arcs this show started were ever resolved.
  • Actor Allusion: In "The Guardian," Arturo tells his younger friends, "Your generation thinks nothing of seeing Indiana Jones thirteen times. Well, I happen to feel the same way about Mozart." John Rhys-Davies, of course, played Sallah in the first and third movies.
  • Action Girl: Maggie, former soldier.
  • Adventure Towns
  • Agent Scully: Arturo
  • Alien Non-Interference Clause: Largely averted. Occasionally Arturo reminds the others that things would at least be simpler for them if they didn't try to save the world every week.
    • Lampshaded in "Lipchitz Live" after a supposed interdimensional traveler lambasts Quinn for averting this trope.

Quinn: There's no prime directive!

  • Alien Sky
  • Alliterative Name: Wade Wells.
  • Alternate History: Most of the worlds visited fall into this category.
  • Alternate Universe: For all the show's flaws, it is the most extensive exploration of this trope on American TV.
  • Exclusively Evil: The Kromaggs.
    • There were a few exceptions, like that disgraced Kromagg leader who was in charge of the human atomizer thing in "Common Ground."
  • Amazing Freaking Grace
  • And I Must Scream - the altered "Eddies" in the 4th season episode "California Reich."
  • And Starring: John Rhys-Davies as Arturo.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: In "The Alternateville Horror," Colin claims to have seen a ghost, but is laughed off by the others for even thinking such a thing. They are no ghosts, just doubles of the Sliders trapped on another plane as a result of a sliding mishap. Aside from the many strange things they've seen in their journeys, this is particularly ridiculous when you consider that Quinn himself was rendered ghost-like in Season 2's "Gillian of the Spirits" and could only be seen by one person. Considering that, Quinn and Rembrandt should've been more receptive to what Colin was talking about.
    • Arturo seemed to run on this trope. Being a college professor, he was always intent on suggesting a simple, logical explanation to strange incidents.
    • Played with in "The Other Slide of Darkness," where both Rembrandt and Maggie express disbelief in the superstitious beliefs expressed by the locals. Rembrandt's disbelief stems from a personal tragedy. Maggie's, however, is played straight - which gets her snapped at by the more experienced Wade.
    • Lampshaded by Rembrandt in Season 5's "Please Press One":

"Sliders Rule #11: Never rule out the obvious no matter how weird."

  • Baby Factory: On some worlds women (or men) are forced into this trope due to population problems.
  • Better Than Sex: In the first episode, Wade claimed that sliding is better than sex.

Arturo: Well, I wouldn't go that far...

  • Big Bad: Rickman in Season 3, the Kromaggs in the fourth and fifth seasons.
  • Big No
  • Blatant Lies: "We're from Canada."
  • California Collapse: In one episode, they slide into a world where California has broken up into islands.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Season 3's "The Other Slide of Darkness" stated that Quinn's double from the first episode gave the Kromaggs the sliding equation and is responsible for the Dynasty's activities. Season 4 onward ignored this development, which some felt didn't fit into established continuity in the first place.
  • Captain's Log: Wade's diary, Quinn's videotapes.
  • Celebrity Paradox: On the episode "Data World", Rembrandt has said "What is this, Scream 3?" and guess which one of his co-stars got killed (in character) in Scream 2?
  • Changeling Fantasy: RetConned into the fourth season. See Jump the Shark.
  • Channel Hop: Fox to Sci-Fi.
  • Character Development: Rembrandt. He goes from a Dirty Coward concerned only with himself to an everyman who cares for his surrogate family to team leader over the course of five seasons.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Quinn
  • Crapsack World: As the sliders visit many worlds, they encountered quite a few of these, beginning with the Ice Age world in the pilot episode.
  • City of Adventure: For the first two seasons, San Francisco, in nearly all of the worlds, is somehow majorly relevant to the world at large.
  • Comic Book Adaptation: Circa Season 3, Acclaim Comics produced ten issues with various creative teams (with the eighth, Narcotica, being written by Jerry O'Connell). A script for an eleventh issue (plus several pages of artwork) was completed and several future ideas (including a Quantum Leap Crossover) were being developed, but declining sales led to cancellation.
  • Conspicuous CG
  • Creative Differences: You bet.
  • Critical Research Failure: In one episode they travel to a universe where the American Revolution failed. The people were unfamiliar with the concept of democracy, which has been around since Athens, and the British Empire was entirely ruled by Nobles, despite Parliament long predating the American Revolution!
  • Cut Short: They actually don't go home again. Or beat the bad guys, either.
  • Dead Guy, Junior: If dialogue that implies Maggie Beckett is Samuel Beckett's niece is taken seriously, this makes her a Dead Guy, Junior. Maggie was the name of a news reporter who died on a mission in Vietnam while working with Sam's brother, Tom.
  • Deadly Euphemism
  • Directed by Cast Member: Jerry O'Connell helmed five episodes - "Stoker," "Slidecage," "Lipschitz Live!," "Data World" and "Roads Taken."
  • Downer Ending: "The Breeder," which has the doctor being overtaken by the symbiote creature. As they have no time, the Sliders choose to slide out with a weakened Maggie rather than try to help. With the Sliders gone and the doctor overtaken, the symbiote is free to continue its goals unimpeded.
    • "The Dying Fields": The sympathetic Humagg soldier is murdered by her lover for betraying the Kromaggs. Worse, the Sliders aren't able to save the remaining human captives and the camp stays open - meaning business will continue as usual.
    • "Applied Physics": Diana attempts to make her double's life better with Geiger's help, but - among other changes - she winds up erasing her double's daughter from existence. The team has to slide before she can to set things right.
    • "Strangers and Comrades": Rembrandt learns the quest to find Michael Mallory's anti-Kromagg weapon was all for nothing. Turns out the weapon trashed Kromagg Prime's environment a month after it was used, and it would do the same to Earth Prime. Rembrandt is left lamenting that he's run out of chances.
  • Dramatic Shattering
  • The Drifter
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Almost everybody, eventually. See also Put on a Bus.
  • Dropped a Bridget On Him: Happens in "To Catch a Slider," where Mallory expresses interest in an actress that turns out to be a man. It's somewhat subverted in that this was public knowledge. It's just that none of the Sliders could've possibly known because they had just recently arrived.
  • Dystopia
  • Electric Torture
  • The Empire: The Kromagg Dynasty.
  • Erudite Stoner: Conrad Bennish, Jr.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Jerry O'Connell may've always been this, but in Seasons 3 and 4, production found more reasons for him to go shirtless.
  • Everyone Meets Everyone
  • Evil Counterpart: Rickman. Would've been Logan if not for Executive Meddling; also a semi-evil quartet of Sliders who stole our team's portal device to force them to repair theirs and get them home.
    • They weren't really evil; they had just been stuck in-between worlds as basically ghosts for three years. Not too bad unless you've seen the episode, then you'll understand that three years with that Quinn is hell.
  • Evil Twin: Numerous evil doubles. For some reason, Arturo's doubles were almost always bad news.
    • Rule 63: Logan St. Clair is a female double of Quinn in "Double Cross."
  • Executive Meddling: The main reason why the show lost its politically- and philosophically-charged plotlines, in favor of "Movie Rip-Off of the Week."
    • Oh, and also "Hire My Brother."
    • In a fun subversion, though, Tormé was once able to pull this trope off to his advantage. His bosses were completely opposed to "Invasion," but Tormé so wanted to do it that he went over their heads to their boss (John Matoian). Matoian liked the story, so he overruled the people that had been overruling Tormé. Oh, and unsurprisingly, "Invasion" became an instant fan-favorite.
  • Eye Scream: Kromaggs really love human eyeballs.
  • Failure Is the Only Option
  • Fakeout Escape: Attempted unsuccessfully in a Western-themed episode. It turns out that Kromaggs have their own westerns.
  • Fan Service: Replacing John Rhys-Davies and Jerry O'Connell with Kari Wuhrer and Tembi Locke.
  • Fatal Method Acting: Real Life example. Guest star Ken Steadman was killed on set when he flipped a dune buggy.
  • Final Season Casting: While the show had already substituted two characters by that point, it lost half of its main cast including the main protagonist between seasons 4 and 5.
  • Follow the Leader
  • For Want of a Nail
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble
  • Gave Up Too Soon: In the episode "Into the Mystic", the characters only have a few seconds to decide whether or not to stay on the latest parallel Earth they've landed on. To see if it's their home or not, Quinn tries a fence, knowing it is always squeaky (something he does in the pilot), and it doesn't squeak. After they leave, a gardener with an oil can comes into view.
    • In their defense, didn't they also see a Newspaper headline about a Sports Team winning a championship; a team which in reality had moved to a new city since the start of the series or was that a different episode.
      • And since they had been gone O.J. Simpson had been arrested and was still on trial, they had trouble believing that the world could have changed so much in just two years.
  • Giant Spider: In the episode "Summer of Love," the Sliders first land on a world where the United States has been mostly devastated by these. A mix of a spider and wasp (yes, flying spiders the size of your head), they were genetically engineered for pest control--namely the actual killer bees... And ironically enough, a few queens escaped from the labs and suddenly the cure became a lot worse than the plague.
    • In "Rules of the Game," one of the death traps sees Rembrandt stuck to a metal web and being threatened by three robotic spiders.
  • Girl of the Week
  • Girls with Moustaches: In one episode, the characters travel to a world where women have mustaches. Rembrandt complains about how it feels to kiss a woman with a mustache and Wade comments that now he knows how women feel.
  • Glory Days: Rembrandt used to be a singer in a Motown band, who dumped him once they got famous. He's in the middle of staging his "big comeback" when he gets accidentally sucked into a wormhole along with the rest of the team. For the first season, he refers to himself as "The Crying Man," a nickname he acquired from his one hit song, though this becomes less and less as the show goes on due to Character Development.
  • Good-Looking Privates: Yup, Maggie was quite the looker.
    • CAPTAIN Maggie Beckett.
  • Government Drug Enforcement: In one of the Planet of Hats worlds they visit, because Einstein had been a neuro-chemist instead of a physicist, the government mandates psychotropic drug use by everyone, and the alternate Quinn is a leader of an anti-drug resistance.
    • Mention is also made in the episode that Sigmund Freud discovered lithium while working on psychotherapy, and quickly ditched the latter in favor of the former.
  • Half Human Hybrids: The Humaggs in "The Dying Fields."
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Arturo in "The Exodus, Part 2" (a very debatable one given the circumstances), Wade in "Requiem."
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Julie Benz of Dexter, Angel and No Ordinary Family appeared in "Electric Twister Acid Test."
  • Hidden Depths: Arturo, Rembrandt, Conrad Bennish Jr., Maggie.
  • Hollywood History: whenever the team visited a dimension in which the US Constitution didn't happen to have been written, nobody in the world seemed to have even heard of the concept of democracy.
  • Hollywood Nerd: Quinn
  • Homemade Inventions
  • The Homeward Journey: The show's premise.
  • Honor Before Reason: For "Requiem," voice-overs from Wade were a necessary part of the story, but production had no qualms about resorting to The Other Darrin. Of course, Sabrina Lloyd left the series on bad terms, so expecting her to return just like that would indeed be foolish. Regardless, Cleavant Derricks thought it was absolutely essential that Lloyd be involved in Wade's final episode, so he pressured production to agree and personally asked her to return.
  • Hot Amazon: Maggie
  • Hot Scientist: Diane, supposedly. Smarts are supposed to be part of the appeal, but Tembi Locke was obviously, as they say, not a rocket scientist.
  • Humans Are Ugly: Or so the Kromaggs think.
  • Hurricane of Aphorisms
  • Impersonating the Evil Twin
  • Interdimensional Travel Device
  • I Want You to Meet An Old Friend of Mine: Jason Gaffney (Bennish) is a good friend of Tracy Tormé's.
    • Jerry's Stand by Me co-star Corey Feldman appears as Reed in "Electric Twister Acid Test." In a Shout-Out, Quinn and Reed even perform a handshake from the movie - apparently at the actors' suggestion.
  • In Spite of a Nail
  • Interdimensional Travel Device: The "Timer", several of which were actually used by the main characters (the original, the one from Egyptian World, and Colonel Rickman's Timer). The Timer's job was to open wormholes between universes, and also to malfunction or get stolen, providing half the series' plots.
  • It Got Worse: You may think Kari Wuhrer was just hired as eye candy, but her contributions are positively Shakespearean compared to those of any of the zombie-like regulars who came on later.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Arturo, though most of his counterparts were just plain jerkasses.
  • Kick the Dog: If you think John Rhys-Davies being fired for criticizing Season 3's writers (basically saying what all the fans were thinking) and the way Arturo's death was handled were bad, read this interview with Cleavant Derricks. Turns out that after "Paradise Lost" wrapped filming, a producer told Rhys-Davies that he was fired... casually... in public... in front of the rest of the cast and crew.
  • Kid From the Future: Thomas Mallory in "Roads Taken."
  • Kirk's Rock: Featured in the episode "Electric Twister Acid Test"
  • La Résistance: Whenever they're on a Planet of Hats, there's usually a heroic La Résistance that's opposed to wearing the hat.
    • This is Lampshaded in an early Season 4 episode, as characters ask and acknowledge that "there's always a resistance."
  • Lead In
  • Left Hanging
  • Making Use of the Twin
  • Manchurian Agent: Rembrandt in "Slidecage."
  • Manly Tears: Rembrandt takes pride in his ability to cry on command.
  • Mars Needs Women: The Kromaggs.
  • Matriarchy: One Universe, as a Patriarchy Flip.
  • McLeaned: Arturo, Wade, Quinn. Their actors all left the show on bad terms (not surprising, given the aforementioned behind-the-scenes turmoil), and their characters paid the price.
  • Misblamed: While there's a lot to blame producer David Peckinpah for, the trend of movie rip-offs in Season 3 isn't one of them. The real culprits were the FOX executives that he answered to.
  • Mister Seahorse: Rembrandt in "The Prince of Slides"
  • Motorcycle Jousting: An episode features this as part of a parallel universe that seems heavily inspired by Mad Max.
  • Mouthful of Pi
  • The Multiverse: Well, duh.
  • Myth Arc
  • Noodle Incident: The characters frequently mention worlds they've slid to that are never shown (for example, the world where everyone was naked, which we only saw their arrival: "So do you think that we're home?" "Ah, I don't think so, Rembrandt, I'm pretty sure on our earth, the mailmen wear clothes.")
  • Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Rickman, the highest-ranking Englishman in the US army.
  • Not So Different: In "The Other Slide of Darkness," Quinn encounters his double from the first episode. A much more bitter and amoral person than before, Quinn's double invokes this trope.

"Strip your friends away, slide alone like I have - you'd be just like me. Here I am, the undeniably horrible, the unimaginably disgusting proof that I'm you without your friends."

  • The Nth Doctor: Mallory replacing Quinn.
  • Old Shame: Writer Paul Jackson has very little positive to say about his last episode, "Slither."
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist
  • Once an Episode
  • Opening Narration: The network agreed that explaining the weird concept of Alternate Universes to new viewers at the beginning of each show was pretty important.
  • Our Wormholes Are Different: In order to generate a wormhole, you would have to convert the entire mass of the planet Jupiter into energy. I don't think you can do that with a TV remote[1], a cell phone [2], or a Sega Genesis controller[3].
    • But it's a really small wormhole. And maybe he stole plutonium from the Libyans.
      • Good news! The same theorists that came up with the 'mass of jupiter' equation have also postulated how much power it would take if you used Dark Energy as the source of negative pressure. Being a much more abundant energy source, you would now require the "mere" output of several megaton nuclear warheads to get a decent size hole in the universe going.
  • Out of Order: And how!
  • Picky People Eater: Rickman
  • Planet of Hats: Several of the universes visited.
  • Platonic Life Partners: Rembrandt with first Wade and then Maggie.
  • Plot Tumor
  • Portal Slam
  • Put on a Bus to Hell: This depends on a viewer's point-of-view. In "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome", on a world almost exactly like Earth Prime, Arturo and his less-ethical double have a fight as the wormhole opens and only one makes it through. Fans have debated heavily over which Arturo slid, but if the wrong one did, then the real Arturo is trapped on a world not his own and separated from his friends.
    • Later, Colin became "unstuck," meaning that he would involuntarily travel from one dimension to the next for the rest of his life. Dr. Geiger (a character who has experienced this before but found an "anchor") has compared this experience to being caught in a violent storm.
      • Finally, Logan St. Clair, Quinn's Evil Half Identical Twin from another world, who was pushed into an unstable portal, and never seen again.
  • Real Life Relative: Charlie O'Connell as Colin Mallory.
    • Mel Tormé As Himself in "Greatfellas."
      • In the same episode, Tracy Tormé's wife appears as a bridesmaid.
    • Any time Rembrandt met one of his doubles, they didn't have to resort to fancy camera tricks, as one or the other Rembrandt would be played by Cleavant Derricks' twin brother Clinton.
  • Recurring Extra: Alternates of various folks would sometimes crop on different worlds.
  • Recycled in Space: One of the most persistent complaints of Season 3. The vast majority of the episodes ripped off a number of movies, including Tremors, Twister, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Species, Anaconda and The Island of Doctor Moreau.
  • Recycled Set: A common complaint of later seasons, as diminishing budgets meant heavily re-using the standing sets (such as the Chandler).
    • "Slidecage" reuses the futuristic standing sets from the short-lived Time Cop TV series, which had been cancelled shortly into Season 4's filming. Writer Marc Scott Zicree has stated he wrote the episode to make use of the great sets that were going to be torn down.
  • Retro Universe
  • Rubber Forehead Aliens: Justified this time, as the Kromaggs are supposed to share recent common ancestors with normal human beings.
    • Don't forget the Humaggs in Season Four's "The Dying Fields."
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers
  • Screwed by the Network: Good God...
  • Single-Episode Handicap
  • Skyward Scream
  • Slow Motion Drop
  • The Smart Guy: Arturo. Also Quinn to a lesser degree.
  • Smart People Know Latin: In one episode, the protagonists end up in a world where being smart and well-educated is cool (they pass a punk on the street with a boombox blasting classical music). The episode's Big Bad is a mobster who constantly likes to quote phrases in Latin and gets annoyed when the others have no idea what he said. At the end of the episode, right before sliding, Quinn turns around and spouts a phrase in Latin, which turns out to be an insult.
  • Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying
  • Sorry I Left the BGM On
  • So What Do We Do Now?: The last line of the series.
  • Spiritual Successor: Sliders is a Spiritual Successor to Quantum Leap. The shows share a similar episode forumula, Sliders was advertised at least once as "Quantum Leap with an edge," and dialogue in a later episode implies that Maggie Beckett may be Sam Beckett's niece.
  • Spot the Impostor
  • Springtime for Hitler: In "The Weaker Sex" Arturo tries to throw an election by weeping in front of the camera, but it backfires and his approval ratings go up.
  • Stargate City: Seasons 1 and 2 are filmed in Vancouver. Standing in for San Francisco.
  • Teen Genius: Quinn
  • This Was His True Form
  • Tim Taylor Technology: "MORE POWER, MR. MALLORY!"
  • Time Paradox: In one universe, time flows backwards. The Sliders still go forwards in time, however, and Quinn ends up stopping something that put him in jail, after he started out there. The result is.. Not pretty.
  • Troubled Production: The production of this show has quite a story. The first two seasons had many episodes broadcast Out of Order, along with the show being "cancelled" at the end of both seasons before fan petitions kept bringing it back. Then came the third season, with an Out of Order pilot, the head producer(Tracy Tormé) leaving and getting replaced, and the show taking a new direction into more action-oriented episodes. Then, in the middle of the season, John Rhys-Davis was fired and his character was replaced with a Ms. Fanservice Action Girl. The show got cancelled yet again, and stayed off the air for a year before its Channel Hop to the Sci Fi Channel. During this time, Sabrina Lloyd quit (rumors say she had a feud with Kari Wuhrer, but nobody know for sure why). The Sci Fi channel executives wanted more of a focus on the Kromaggs, leading the show even further from its original premise. Then came the aforementioned "Hire My Brother" decision, with Jerry O'Connell also taking over more of the writing and changing his character to more of an Action Hero. However, the Sci Fi executives eventually started letting the show get back to its original premise, and it was becoming decent in the late fourth season. Then, the O'Connell brothers quit for the fifth season. This, combined with the budget going down to almost No Budget, doomed the show to cancellation after less than a month from the fifth season premiere.
  • Unlimited Wardrobe
  • Unpredictable Results: Their own "sliding" device, about the only thing consistent is that it drops them in a location somewhere close to the entrance point between the two dimensions they travel between. Later seasons gave them the ability to at least control when they are going to travel and which dimension they are going to. But since they don't know their home destination they still have to travel to different dimensions sequentially to find it.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension
  • Unwanted Revival: No, not Season 4.
  • Utopia
  • Viewers are Morons: Suffice to say, with all the Executive Meddling this show suffered, this trope could run rampant. In "Slither," for example, snakes somehow knock down a door. This was so idiotic that Cleavant Derricks said he interrupted a script reading to ask how such an action was even remotely possible. A producer responded that the snakes possessed some kind of force - which suggests the producer (incorrectly) thought Derricks was a moron.
  • Walking the Earth: Or "Earths" in this case.
  • Wasteland Elder: They ran into quite a few, and every so often an alternate of the main cast would be a local leader.
  • We Have Forgotten the Phlebotinum
  • Wham! Episode: "Genesis." The Kromaggs have conquered Earth Prime, Rembrandt has been their prisoner for months, Wade is missing, Quinn learns of his secret past - including a long lost brother, and the Sliders have a new goal of searching for an anti-Kromagg weapon.
  • Wham! Line: From "Invasion":

Quinn: Wade, the Kromaggs - they're Sliders!

    • "Double Cross":

Logan: (to Quinn) You're my double.

  • What Could Have Been: Oh, so many possible examples, which may be appropriate given the premise.
    • The major arc of Season 4 had a far different ending in mind. Originally, the team was supposed to make it to Kromagg Prime, where it would be revealed that Colin was unknowingly The Mole, an altered clone of Quinn created by the Kromaggs. The Sliders' Season 4 quest would have been a Kromagg deception to re-conquer their home Earth, with it also being revealed that Earth Prime had never been conquered at all. The Kromagg plot was hinted at several times, but the plot was largely dropped due to resistance from David Peckinpah. With the final resolution aborted, the arc was altered and the related loose ends fizzled.
    • Tracy Tormé intended Ryan to be apart of the team for a few Season 2 episodes, creating a love triangle with Quinn and Wade.
    • John Rhys-Davies was contracted for the entire third season and would've stayed if not for the behind-the-scene bitnerness. Scripts for "Sole Survivors," "The Other Slide of Darkness" and "The Breeder" were being worked out before his departure. A script for "Sole Survivors" with Arturo is available here.
    • Logan St. Clair was intended as a recurring nemesis.
    • "In Dino Veritas" was conceived as a mere Bottle Episode, but Jerry O'Connell was allowed to film his part in Jerry Maguire and the special effects proved to be more elaborate than at first thought.
    • Production intended to bring back Bennish for Season 5, but the cost of flying Jason Gaffney in and out of Canada was deemed too large.
    • ABC was contemplating a version of this show called "Doorways" before a shuffling of upper management caused its main champions to jump ship (and, evidently, end up at FOX). The guy developing the pilot for them? George R. R. Martin. (source: here)
    • Even after it was a given that Jerry O'Connell wouldn't be back as a regular for Season 5, he was willing to return for guest appearances to allow Quinn to be written out effectively. Reportedly, the deal was for six episodes, but a sticking point for Jerry was Charlie. It boiled down to Jerry wanting his brother in for all of Season 5 and production refusing - so the deal fell apart.
    • After Sci-Fi picked up the series for a fourth season, Tracy Tormé made a play to return as executive producer. (Fellow co-creator Robert K. Weiss was also interested in getting back in the game.) This didn't happen because the studio was contractually obligated to keeping David Peckinpah onboard. Tormé couldn't stand the thought of working with Peckinpah again and couldn't convince the higher-ups to remove him. This interview features some ideas Tormé had in mind for Season 4, as well as other parts of the show's run.
    • The idea was thrown around of revealing that Maggie's biological parents were Colonel Rickman and her universe's version of Wade (this would have meant Maggie's universe was in the future compared to ours).
    • There was a proposed episode that would have shown what happened to Wade after she was taken to a Kromagg breeding camp without Sabrina Lloyd having to return to the show, via the gang coming upon a device that made them experience past events from the perspective of other people. Maggie would have been Wade, Diana would have been Mrs. Mallory, Mallory would have been a Humagg soldier in love with Wade, and Rembrandt would have been a sympathetic Kromagg scientist.
    • Fox wanted to renew the series for a fourth season but it would just feature Quinn and Maggie alone. This is why season three ended on the cliffhanger where Rembrandt and Wade slide back home with Quinn and Maggie following but ending up in a different dimension. This plan ended when Sci Fi decided to pick up the show.
  • What If
  • White Dwarf Starlet: Rembrandt
  • Word of God / What Could Have Been: The creator has gone on record stating that the world mentioned in You Can't Go Home Again was actually the group's homeworld. He has also stated that the plot from Season 4 with Quin being from an alternate Earth was up until the season finale going to turn out to be a hoax by the Kromaggs. This concept was abandoned when the budget dried up and the intended master reveal of Colin turning on the group due to his status as a sleeper-agent-modified-clone-of-Quinn and wormholes opening with dozens of Kromagg ships pouring onto Earth Prime due to Quinn opening the Slidecage was no longer feasible to film. Several fanfics have taken this original plot and run with it.
    • It's also been stated that the wrong Arturo slid and that there were several hints placed that showed this.
    • Confirmed by Tormé himself, after over a decade of keeping silent on the matter, he considers the "Wrong-Arturo" from Earth-Double-Prime to have been the one who slid with the regular Sliders, thus the reason for the horrified "Oh my God" from the Aturo left behind.
    • If he hadn't left the show, Rhys-Davies probably wouldn't have been available for the Lord of the Rings films.
  • Written by Cast Member: John Rhys-Davies has story credit on "The Exodus, Part 1" (the episode where Arturo is killed off), though note that he had no input into the script. His original story bore very little resemblance in details and execution to the finished product. Played straight with "Way Out West," where the story originated from Jerry O'Connell (who by then was a producer).
  • You Can't Go Home Again: Subverted when they actually make it back to their home Earth, but only have a few seconds to decide to stay or not. They leave after Quinn tries a fence, knowing it is always squeaky, and it doesn't squeak. After they leave, you see a gardener with an oil can.
    • Averted in "Genesis", but the sliders leave because the kromaggs conquered Earth Prime.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real
  • Your Universe or Mine?
  • You Fail Biology Forever: Every monster in Season Three.
  • You Fail History Forever: Most of the early episodes deal with an alternate Earth where one or two things are different but human civilization is otherwise identical to our late 20th century. Many of these differences are rather drastic (the atomic bomb was never invented; the Soviet Union conquered the USA; penicillin was never discovered; the American Revolution failed; etc.) and would have had profound effects on later events. Most of these can probably be excused by Bellisario's Maxim, though.
    • Its implied a few times that the Timer is purposely directing them to realities that are close to its home dimension, possibly explaining why apart from huge historical changes, the world remains fairly similar to Earth-Prime. The implications of the Multiverse mean that these sorts of eventualities would exist.
    • The above and this cross over in the episode (or was there more than one?) where it's stated that Dinosaurs never died off. Not only did dinosaurs remain recognizable in their original species and forms over the ensuing millions of years, and not only did humans still evolve just as normal, but human society proceeded exactly like ours did to the point of dinosaurs being put on the endangered species list. Yes, that's right, in a world where we developed alongside giant, carnivorous, almost impossible to contain and almost certainly impossible to domesticate creatures, humanity would still view wiping them out as a bad thing.
      • If dinosaurs had only survived in the Americas, human society could develop in Eurasia similarly to how it developed in OTL.
  • You Fail Economics Forever: This show is full of Alternate Histories written by people who usually write, y'know, sitcoms and stuff.
  1. ↑ Egyptian timer
  2. ↑ original timer
  3. ↑ Rickman's Timer
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