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Quinn Mallory
- Played by: Jerry O'Connell
- Affectionate Nickname: Rembrandt calls him "Q-Ball".
- Basement-Dweller: He still lived with his mother while finishing college. He still had his own room, but converted his basement into a makeshift laboratory and spent most of his free time down there.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: In the pilot, he passes up the chance to correctly answer a difficult question (despite Arturo yelling at him) because it didn't interest him. On the other hand, he took the time to read Arturo's papers that weren't assigned for the class because their contents did.
- Child Prodigy: Was skipped ahead two grades when he was 11.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: If anyone was ever in need of help, Quinn would be the first one to jump in. "El Sid" deconstructs the trope, as the group has to deal with the fallout of his actions.
- Didn't See That Coming: He was originally trying to invent anti-gravity, but accidentally created a wormhole to a parallel world instead.
- Disappeared Dad: His father died in an automobile accident when he was very young.
- Gadgeteer Genius: He built the timer, for starters.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Rembrandt.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: He resented his intelligence for years because it made him different from everyone else (being skipped ahead and thus smaller than his classmates didn't help).
- Meaningful Name: Quinn is Irish for "wisdom, reason, intelligence" and Mallory means "unlucky". Pretty fitting for a smart guy who ends up being merged with his Alternate Universe duplicate.
- Misery Builds Character: Discussed in "The Other Slide of Darkness". His double blames himself for the Kromaggs and wants Quinn to kill him to "turn things around."Quinn: Killing you won't change anything.
Alt-Quinn: It will change you, make you strong like them—strong enough to get home, to protect it, to protect the ones you love...like I couldn't. - Mr. Fanservice: The show frequently has Quinn shirtless.
- My Greatest Failure: Getting the others lost among dimensions. His guilt gets worse when people start to suffer as a result of sliding. From "The Breeder" after getting into an argument with Wade:"It's all my fault. The Professor, this man, Maggie's next victim—all because I lost control of something I didn't know enough about. So, please, go ahead tell me what you were thinking because I think about it every minute of every day."
- The Nth Doctor: Played by Jerry O'Connell for the first four seasons, then briefly by an unknown actor in the Season 5 premiere before being replaced by Robert Floyd.
- Really Gets Around: Had Ship Teases with Wade and Maggie, as well as plenty of one-off love interests.
- Team Dad: Becomes this after Arturo dies in late Season 3. Lampshaded in "Slither", where Quinn laments that, without Arturo, "It's all on me, and I'm flying blind."
- Took a Level in Badass: In Season 3.
- Two First Names: Quinn and Mallory can be either first names or surnames.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Downplayed in the Pilot Movie. Quinn deeply admires Arturo and goes to him first with his discovery, but he doesn't fall over himself in class to try to impress him.
Wade Welles
- Played by: Sabrina Lloyd
- Agent Mulder: She has an interest in the occult, so she always believes in the most fantastical possibilities.
- Alliterative Name: Wade Welles.
- Back for the Dead: In Season 5's "Requiem".
- Break the Cutie: Three years of sliding takes a toll on her; Arturo's death is the moment that finally breaks her. A line from "Slither" sums it up (though Quinn insinuates she's addressing him when she was really just making a general observation)."You know, when I first started sliding, all I saw was adventure. Now all I seem to see is death."
- Devoted to You: EVERY male character in EVERY dimension falls in love with her.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In Season 5's "Requiem", she sacrifices herself to save the other Sliders and stop the Kromaggs from acting on their plan to attack Kromagg Prime.
- Honor Before Reason: Frequently, much to the others' occasional irritation.
- Inconsistent Spelling: "Welles" or "Wells".
Word of God admitted to inconsistency within scripts, making it Depending on the Writer. - Ms. Fanservice: Although she dresses conservatively in the first two seasons, once Maggie joins the cast, Wade's outfits become tighter and more revealing.
- Platonic Life-Partners: With Rembrandt.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: With Maggie in Season 3. Wade is the Girly Girl of the pair.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Arturo. They frequently squabbled, but she deeply cared about him. She was the most devastated by his death.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In "Rules of the Game", she says she has a problem with being on airplanes.Quinn: Sliding between parallel worlds doesn't bother you, but flying does?
Wade: You have no idea how much.- "The Dream Masters" reveals she was once robbed at knife-point, giving her a fear of knives and of being cut. The same episode shows she has a problem with snakes, though she apparently got over it by the time of "Slither".
Rembrandt Brown
- Played by: Cleavant Derricks
- As the Good Book Says...: He admits in "Last Days" that he had a fairly religious upbringing. After that episode, he quotes the Bible on occasion ("The Breeder" being a prominent example). He's not The Fundamentalist though, by any means, and when confronted with alternate Earths where California is run by those, he's usually quick to point out how these groups tend to think their interpretation of religion is the only valid one.
- Beware the Nice Ones: After he Took a Level in Badass. He's always friendly and affable, but he'd kick ass to protect his friends.
- Break the Cutie: He spent months in a Kromagg prison between Seasons 3 and 4.
- Butt-Monkey: He tended to suffer more than his fair share of misfortune, though he was still a distant second to Arturo.
- Conspiracy Theorist: "The Return of Maggie Beckett" reveals that Remmy always believed aliens landed at Roswell.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Starting in Season 2. As freaked-out as he'd be by some strange sights, he'd still kick ass.
- Deadpan Snarker: Due to him being the Only Sane Man.
- Expy: Basically Lionel Richie if he was a dimension hopping adventurer. His band, "The Spinning Tops" was a Captain Ersatz of the Four Tops.
- The Everyman: One of the reasons his character was originally put in the show was so Quinn and Arturo could explain the science to him.
- The Heart: Easily the most emotional of the group.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Quinn.
- Hidden Depths: In "Eggheads", he recognizes a classical composer after hearing only a few seconds of a piece."If you're gonna play the game, ya gotta appreciate the greats."
- It's All About Me: He was prone to this a lot in Season 1. He gets over it, though.
- Lovable Coward: In Season 1. He's quite easily spooked and intimidated, but he retains the audience's sympathy since he doesn't put his safety at the others' expense.
- Manchurian Agent: Revealed as one in Season 4's "Slidecage".
- Manly Tears: His nickname is "Crying Man", after all.
- My Greatest Failure: In Seasons 4 and 5, he blames himself for Wade being taken away by the Kromaggs.Rembrandt: What happened to Wade, I live with that every day!
- The Nicknamer: But only to the Mallory brothers—"Q-Ball" (Quinn), "Farm Boy" (Colin), and "Fog Boy" (Mallory).
- Odd Friendship: With Arturo.
- Only Sane Man: He's usually the first one to point out the craziness of a given situation.
- Platonic Life-Partners: With Wade. Starting in Season 4, also with Maggie.
- Real Men Cook: In "Paradise Lost", it's stated he was a cook while serving in the Navy.
- Small Name, Big Ego: He has a lot of these moments in the first two seasons.
- Team Dad: In Season 5.
- Took a Level in Badass: At the start of the series, he was easily spooked by dangers on parallel worlds. By Season 4, he gladly fights Kromaggs hand-to-hand and mocks them to their faces.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In "Slither", of snakes themselves.
Maximillian Arturo
- Played by: John Rhys-Davies
- Agent Scully: Arturo always looked for the most rational and logical explanation to whatever the group encountered.
- Catchphrase: The number of times he called someone a "blistering idiot" and yelled "Incoming!" at the end of a slide borders on this.
- Cool Old Guy: When you get past the gruff egotism.
- Deadpan Snarker: Tends to react to things around him with either blustering anger or dry sarcasm. One example from the pilot, where everyone's shock at finding themselves in a Soviet-dominated parallel America is interrupted by the Professor's desire for lunch:Quinn: Professor, how can you eat at a time like this?!
Arturo: My stomach has no political preference. - Disappeared Dad: According to "Into the Mystic", he's actually this to his son back on Earth Prime.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Had some brain fluid sucked out, was shot, and then left on a world that was destroyed by pulsars moments later.
- Embarrassing First Name: In the novelization only (covering the pilot episode), he notes that he doesn't care for his first name.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The others almost always address him as "Professor".
- Heroic Sacrifice: He takes a bullet for Quinn in "The Exodus, Part 2".
- Hidden Depths: Lampshaded in "Eggheads", as he talks about his dead wife and how encountering her double is stirring old feelings.Wade: I had no idea that you were such a romantic.
Arturo: And I had no idea that I would have the opportunity. - I Just Want to Be Special: Season 2 introduced the idea that he resented Quinn for inventing sliding by accident.Fortune Teller: You resent the boy because it comes so easily to him. You are Salieri to his Mozart, yes?
- Irony: The one person who completely respects him and his work is Quinn, the guy Arturo worries about being overshadowed by.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: But virtually every single double encountered was a Jerkass.
- Last-Name Basis: If the others don't address him as "Professor", then they do this.
- Like a Son to Me: He expresses this sentiment about Quinn in "Slide Like an Egyptian" after Quinn is believed dead. The fortune teller in "Into the Mystic" also suggests that Quinn reminds Arturo of his actual son.
- Missing Mom: According to "Season's Greedings", his mother died during a World War II bombing. While Word of God confirms that the Arturo that said this was the double from "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome", their two worlds were described as so similar that the real Arturo likely experienced similar events.
- Mister Exposition: If an alt-history or scientific matter needed to be explained, the task usually fell to him.
- Odd Friendship: With Rembrandt.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Along with being a professor of cosmology and ontology, he has working knowledge of sciences outside of his field (as shown as early as in "Fever") and is well-versed in history.
- Parental Substitute: To Quinn.
- The Professor: Well, obviously.
- Redemption Equals Death: See Spot the Imposter below. The unscrupulous fake Arturo from "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome" ended up taking a bullet for Quinn.
- Secretly Dying: Introduced in "The Guardian", where Quinn finds out and is sworn to secrecy. Rembrandt finds out in "The Last of Eden".
- Small Name, Big Ego: Indeed. Played for Drama in some Season 2 episodes.
- So Proud of You: He's not one to get emotional, but his admiration for Quinn always came through.Arturo: Every teacher goes through life hoping just once he'll have a student like you.
- Spot the Imposter: In "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome", the Sliders find themselves faced with two Arturoes each claiming to be theirs. The Sliders themselves have trouble figuring out who is who and Word of God ultimately confirmed what fans long suspected: The wrong one slides with them.
- Taking the Bullet: He dies putting himself in-between Quinn and Rickman.
- Team Dad: Seasons 1-3.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Wade. He had no problem picking a fight or argument, but as he once told her, he adores her.
Maggie Beckett
- Played by: Kari Wührer
- Daddy Issues: Highlighted in "The Return of Maggie Beckett".
- Defrosting Ice Queen: She shows a softer side over the course of her Season 3 appearances.
- The Heart: In Season 5.
- Jerkass: Her original characterization had her butt heads with the rest of the team, showing her to lack any sort of tact (such as flat-out telling Wade her mourning the Professor made no sense, since they weren't related) . Not to mention the lack of any visible grief for her husband, who was killed in her introductory episode. By the time Season 4 comes, she grows out of it.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: She wants revenge on Rickman for Steven's death, but she's never shown mourning him. Season 4 shows private moments where she has actually been holding back considerable grief.
- Ms. Fanservice: In her Season 3 appearances, she wore very revealing outfits, and the episode "The Breeder" pretty much speaks for itself. She slowly grew out of this in Season 4 and stopped being this completely in Season 5.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: Her joining the team late Season 3 wasn't exactly warmly embraced, especially by Wade. Rembrandt points this attitude out in "The Other Slide of Darkness".
- Platonic Life-Partners: With Rembrandt, starting in Season 4.
- Same Character, But Different: Her personality was retooled between Seasons 3 and 4. Lampshaded in the Season 4 premiere with a character with a personality of the Season 3 Maggie.
- Satellite Love Interest: Was dangerously close to being this in late Season 3 and beyond, when the production team thought of continuing the show with only Quinn and Maggie.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Averted at first, as she was nothing like Arturo. Her Season 4 onward depiction does bear some similarity to Wade's, though.
- Team Mom: In Season 4-5.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: With Wade and later Diana. Maggie is the Tomboy of the pair.
Colin Mallory
- Played by: Charlie O Connell
- All of the Other Reindeer: On his adoptive world, the Amish-like residents treated him badly because of his inventions.
- Convenient Replacement Character: The only new character to avert this tropenote .
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Possibly. See below.
- Fish out of Water: After spending most his life living in an Amish paradise, he has a little trouble adapting to more advanced universes for a while.
- Gadgeteer Genius: He built his own hang glider, for one.
- Put on a Bus to Hell: In "The Unstuck Man", Colin was made unstuck and left involuntarily sliding from one dimension to the next. At first, there was concern that Colin didn't survive, but he was generally treated as still alive and in need of help. By the end of the season, however, the characters acknowledged that Colin may really be dead, but it was nonetheless left ambiguous.
- Smarter Than You Look: Colin is rather naive, but only because he came from a less-advanced world. He is nonetheless quite intelligent, adapting rather well to modern technology and figuring things out for himself.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: As seen in "California Reich" and "My Brother's Keeper"."You don't hurt someone to help yourself... at least, you're not supposed to."
Quinn "Mallory" Mallory
- Played by: Robert Floyd
- Anti-Hero Substitute: More selfish and less scrupulous than Quinn.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Geiger's experiments and combining him with Quinn allowed Mallory to walk again.
- The Charmer: He can blend in with pretty much any social group; all it takes is a smile and telling an interesting story. He also tends to fall in love on a regular basis.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Including Parental Abandonment, a criminal past, and suffering from muscular dystrophy.
- Flip Personality: Mallory emerged as the dominant personality, but in "The Unstuck Man" and "Applied Physics", Quinn's personality and memories periodically broke through. By the end of "New Gods for Old", however, Mallory could no longer feel Quinn.
- Honor Before Reason: He agrees to the attempt to restore Quinn in "Eye of the Storm" despite what could happen to himself.
- I Owe You My Life: He is wary of Dr. Geiger, but acknowledges that, without him, he'd still be in a wheelchair.
- Last-Name Basis: Mainly because Maggie was incapable of calling him "Quinn", and then everybody picked it up. Even Diana, who knew him before Season 5's events.
- Loveable Rogue: He is a charmer with a criminal past.
- The Nth Doctor: When Jerry O'Connell left the show after season 4, season 5 opened with Quinn being fused into Mallory - his non-identical counterpart from the universe they slid into - due to Oberon Geiger's experiments in sliding and fusing alternates together.
- Parental Abandonment: His parents died when he was very young.
- Sharing a Body: With Quinn.
- Split Personality: In his first appearance, the original Quinn Mallory would sometimes resurface and talk through him. But after a few episodes, Quinn faded away, and Mallory was the only personality left.
Diana Davis
- Played by: Tembi Locke
- Alliterative Name: Diana Davis.
- Black and Nerdy: She's black, and a scientist.
- Break the Cutie: She is admittedly spoiled and comes from a wealthy family. Back-to-back episodes "Applied Physics", where's she is led to do a horrible thing to the world the Sliders are visiting, and "Strangers and Comrades", in which she lands in the middle of a war, both break her optimism.
- Ditzy Genius: While she is Book Smart (if her "Dr" title is anything to go by) , her past as a sheltered rich child left her with little in terms of street smarts.
- Heel–Face Turn: In the episode where she's introduced.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: While the show generally does not emphasize her looks, she stuns Mallory and Rembrandt when she dresses up in "To Catch a Slider".
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: She takes over the role of the resident science expert from the original Quinn Mallory.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: With Maggie. Diana is the Girly Girl of the pair, taking Wade's place in Season 5.
Colonel Angus Rickman
- Played by: Roger Daltrey, Neil Dickson
- Big Bad: In Season 3.
- Book Ends: His first and last appearance.
- Disney Villain Death: His arc ends rather ignobly when he misses a slide at the edge of a cliff.
- Faux Affably Evil: He often speaks to Quinn and Maggie with a faux politeness.
- Jerkass: Rickman was a grade-A scumbag with no respect for anyone else.
- Killing for a Tissue Sample: Along with a dose of Our Vampires Are Different, Rickman needs specimens to combat a brain parasite.
- Large Ham: He chews up a lot of scenery, but he's a bad guy, so it's forgivable.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: As the main page points out, he's the highest-ranking Englishman in the U.S. Army.
- Picky People Eater: He needs brain tissue from matching donors to stay alive. He can get buy with mismatches, but it eventually begins to take a toll.
- The Nth Doctor: Injecting brain fluid gave his face a brief morphing effect. The writers used this to explain why his face changes.
- Sinister Minister: In "Stoker", he poses as a priest to find brain fluid donors.
- Sociopathic Soldier: He was an army colonel, and very clearly insane.
Gomez Calhoun
- Played by: Will Sasso, Israel Juarbe
- Identical Stranger: Sort of. He's the hotel clerk in most of the worlds the group visits in Season 1 and 2. Averted in Seasons 4 and 5, when the character is played by a different actor.
- The Mole: He's a double agent on the world featured in "Time Again and World".
- Momma's Boy: In the first two seasons.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: He doesn't appear in Season 3 because the show moved production to Los Angeles, leaving all the Vancouver-based actors behind. Sasso was living in L.A. by the time of Season 4 and was approached to make some guest appearances, but talks broke down over money.
- Recurring Character: Throughout most of the series. His doubles were shown at three of the Sliders' resting spots: The Motel 12, the Dominion Hotel, and the Chandler.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: During Season 3 before he was recast in Season 4, he was replaced by Elston Diggs, a waiter at the Royal Chancellor Hotel.
Conrad Bennish, Jr.
- Played by: Jason Gaffney
- Erudite Stoner: A SoCal hippie type.
- Eye Scream: His double in "Invasion" suffered this at the hands of the Kromaggs.
- Hidden Depths: Despite his outward appearance and laid-back approach, he's highly intelligent; the first time we see him is in Quinn's (and Arturo's) college physics class.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Executive Meddling prevented the writers from bringing him back. Tracy Tormé had to sneak him into "Invasion".
- Recurring Character: Arguably the show's most beloved example.
