13 Is Unlucky

"Florida is 13th in education, 13th in tourism, 13th in cleanliness. It is the worst state in the union."

— Creed Bratton, The Office (US)

Similar to how Four Is Death and 108 is Mystical, the number thirteen is often considered an unlucky number in the western world.

There is some debate over the source of fear towards the number thirteen, though the writer Nathaniel Lachenmeyer has argued that the original 'unlucky thirteen' superstition was the 19th century belief that if thirteen people sat at a dinner table one would die before the end of the year. (Presumably he hadn't read the Greek myth using the trope.) Certainly it was established by the early 20th century when the word triskaidekaphobia was coined to describe an irrational fear of the number thirteen, a fear which has become so prevalent that many buildings in America will not have a 13th floor. If it is not particularly subtle it's the writers beating you over the head with symbolism.

Some will cite thirteen as being the number of Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve Disciples of Jesus in The Bible and the one who betrayed him, leading to his death on a Friday (he was replaced by Matthias; who became the new 12th Disciple, thus making Judas number 13).

Another myth was that Loki, the Norse god of trickery who betrayed all the others, was the 13th of the Aesir (battle gods). Friday the 13th was unlucky because Friday means "Freyja's Day", and Freyja (the goddess of love [and war and death]) was known to be hot-tempered and had a grudge against Loki. Another story says that The Knights Templar were wiped out on a Friday the 13th.

Often writers will associate someone or something to the number thirteen to show that they are dark, evil, unnatural, or just unlucky. Maybe the Butt-Monkey or the Cosmic Plaything was born on the 13th.

Friday the 13th is believed to be a particularly unlucky day, and has even spawned a movie franchise. Weirdly the idea that Friday the 13th is especially unlucky apparently appeared relatively late — in the 19th century both thirteen and Friday were separately unlucky (compare this to the Spanish-speaking countries, where the especially unlucky day is Tuesday the 13th, combining the previously existing independent superstitions about the number 13 itself and the medieval-Spain one about Tuesday).

Another theory about the miasma attached to 13 places its roots in numerology. Twelve is a multiple of several important numbers — two, three, and four (six only having significance as two times three). The number thirteen, however, is prime. A number with no connections at all after such a divisible one? That couldn't have been good!

And it's related to Four Is Death, as the two numbers that make up 13, 1 and 3, add up to 4.

Note: This is not a repository for every time the number thirteen just happened to appear in history (Apollo XIII and the thirteen stripes on the United States flag being the best examples), nor for when bad things coincidentally happen in the thirteenth episode, in the thirteenth installment, to the thirteenth person to be introduced, etc. This is for when writers intentionally and unambiguously use the number thirteen to denote something bad, supernatural or just really unusual.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Played for Laughs, possibly unintentionally, in an old cyber-security commercial where security is alerted to an intruder in Sector 12. They chase him through the building only to stop and proudly proclaim "Sector 12 now secure" as he flees ... into Sector 13.

Anime & Manga

• In Akuma no Riddle, Haru Ichinose is #13 on the class roster, and is targeted by the twelve assassins who make up the rest of her class.
• In Attack on Titan, the Curse of Ymir slowly kills Titan Shifters 13 years after they acquire their powers.
• Bleach:
  • The 13th Division of the Gotei 13 has a history of terrible things happening to it. A few decades before the start of the story, its lieutenant, Kaien Shiba, dies in battle with a hollow, an incident that traumatizes much of the squad and results in it taking a long time to replace him as lieutenant. At the start of the series, Rukia Kuchiki, a member of the squad, is fored to transfer her Soul Reaper powers to Ichigo Kurosaki, an illegal act that ends with her getting arrested and nearly executed as part of Aizen's evil plan to steal the MacGuffin inside of her. Much later in the series, Squad 13 Captain Jushiro Ukitake is forced to sacrifice himself.
  • The Gotei 13 themselves as well. In the Soul Society arc, three of its captains, the Big Bad Aizen, and his Co-Dragons, Gin and Tosen betray and declare war on Soul Society, for the majority of the series the Gotei 13 has had ten captains, until the post timeskip half where they once again have Thirteen captains.
• Train from Black Cat has the number 13 etched on the side of his custom-made gun. Like Golgo 13, it's usually bad luck for the person fighting him (he can even use his gun to deflect bullets). He also has the number 13 tattooed on his collar. Not to mention that his catch phrase is "I'm here to bring some bad luck."
• In Death Note:
  • Light Yagami was trying to invoke this trope when he had Ryuk add a fake rule to the Death Note's directions. The "thirteen day rule" stated that anyone who wrote a name in the Death Note and did not keep writing names would die after thirteen days. This retroactively "proved" Light's and Misa's innocence after their confinement, and Light was noticeably angered when Mello disproved it. In the films, Light considers it critical enough that he was willing to murder his own father to preserve the illusion.
  • Thirteen also figures prominently again in the Light Novel Another Note, as part of Beyond Birthday's Murder-Suicide plot.
• Dragon Ball:
  • The Demon King Piccolo announces his ascent at the top of his Villain World on May 9th, "nine" being considered an unlucky number in Japanese culture. In the English version, it's changed to the 13th, to preserve the sinister nature.
  • The Big Bad of the seventh DBZ movie is Android #13, who then transforms into Super Android #13. He also lampshades this trope when fighting Goku.
    Android 13: Number 13... That's your unlucky number. And I ain't talkin' about no silly superstition, city-boy. I'm talkin' about yours truly; Big 13!
  • In the 11th DBZ movie, the tank that contains Bio-Broly is assigned with the number 13.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) has "The Mystery of Warehouse 13" — which turns out to be a misreading of Warehouse B. It is a very bad place.
• The eponymous Golgo 13 has a Mysterious Past, but is not unlucky himself. He is bad luck for whoever his target is.
• Gundam:
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Treize Khushrenada, the closest thing the show has to a Big Bad, is named for the French word for thirteen. It's also probably not a coincidence that he's the only major character to die. Also, the model numbers for OZ's mobile suits are as follows: the Gundam Epyon (OZ-13MS), the Vayeate (OZ-13MSX1), and the Mercurius (OZ-13MSX2).
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Rau Le Creuset's designation number for his Providence Gundam is ZGMF-X13A.
• Hellsing has a secret Vatican organization known as Section XIII: Iscariot. They're a creepy bunch.
• Done in a meta way in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, where resident Butt-Monkey Maki is on the cover of Volume 13.
• This trope is invoked in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The Alliance's 13th Fleet, under the control of Yang Wenli, is a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, originally only half the size of other fleets and composed of raw recruits and remnants of devastated forces. However, they're anything but unlucky due to Wenli's tactical genius.
• In Natsume's Book of Friends, Taki's curse involved the owners of the last 13 names she said being killed (to which Nyanko comments it to be a merciless number).
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the 13th Angel, Bardiel, is a Knight of Cerebus who cripples Toji and is partly responsible for the show getting even darker than it already was.
• In Rent-A-Girlfriend, when Chizuru has the misfortune of being hired by Kazuya's ex-girlfriend Mami, who intends to play mind games with her, they go to karaoke together, and her client takes her to booth 13. Also worth noting is the client's birthday is November 13.
• Serial Killer Reincarnated In Another World: The Isekai Killer was convicted of murdering thirteen people before his execution and was the thirteenth person reincarnated by the Goddess with the mission to kill the other twelve reincarnators.
• In Steins;Gate, Mayuri is murdered on Friday the 13th and every time Okabe tries to prevent it she ends up dying in a different way regardless of how much he tries to stop it.
• In the Sword Art Online : Aria of A Starless Night Motion Picture, the exact fateful moment that Asuna logs into and becomes trapped in the epynomous online game, where dying in-game kills you in real life, is shown on her HUD to be 13 Minutes Past 1. Or more ominously in 24-hour-time, 13:13 Hours.
• Tokyo Ghoul uses this quite often, usually in combination with Tarot Motifs. Yamori and Juuzou are both associated with the number '13', and both are noted for their exceptionally violent tendencies. The 13th Ward is also noted to be an extremely violent area, with many dangerous Ghouls including Yamori and (in the Prequel) Serial Killer Lantern.
• Ataru Moroboshi of Urusei Yatsura was born on Friday the 13th, in the middle of an earthquake, on Butsumetsu (the day Buddha died), considered the unluckiest day in the Japanese calendar. Expectedly, a lot of misfortune befalls him, either it be due to his own acts or because of things outside of his control.

Board Games

• Milton Bradley skipped over thirteenth editions of their home versions of Concentration, Jeopardy! and Password.
• 13 Dead End Drive is a game where the heirs to a fortune try to bump each other off.

Card Games

• In Chrononauts, it's The End of the World as We Know It if thirteen paradoxes are ever active.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The horror-themed Innistrad expansion has a "Thirteen" motif, with the number 13 appearing on lots of cards to intentionally evoke this trope.
  • The Shadows over Innistrad block continues the theme, including a card called Triskaidekaphobia, which turns a player having 13 life at the beginning of a turn into an Instant Loss Condition for both players. Also, the block's antagonist, the Eldrazi titan Emrakul, has 13 power and toughness, and costs 13 Mana to cast (minus 1 for each card type among cards in your graveyard).
  • The Innistrad: Midnight Hunt set revisits and inverts the trope, as Triskaidekaphile lets you win if you have exactly 13 cards in hand.
• Of the Number series of XYZ monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh!, Number 13 goes to the demonic Embodiment of Crime (called Cain's Devil in Japan). When paired with its counterpart Number 31: Embodiment of Punishment, the two can force the opponent's monsters to attack them and redirect the resulting damage to the opponent.

Comedy

• George Carlin joked about how he'd been on airplanes that didn't have rows numbered thirteen. He said that knowing the airplanes' designers had been so superstitious they thought that might save someone's life didn't make him feel all that safer. In another bit, he wonders how the word "shit" got associated with the number 2.
  Why didn't they call it 13? That'd be easy to remember. "13 means shit and bad luck. Right. I got it!"
• Mitch Hedberg:
  • He had a bit poking fun at the superstition of some buildings leaving off the 13th floor:
  The hotel I'm staying in doesn't have a thirteenth floor because of superstition. But people on the fourteenth floor — you know what floor you're really on. "What room are you in?" "1401." "No, you're not! Jump out the window, and you will die earlier!"
  • He then goes on to say:
    If 13 is unlucky, then so should the letter B be, because B looks like a scrunched-together 13. "Hello. What's your name?" "Bob." "Get the hell away!"

Comic Books

• 13 was a Golden Age superhero (later revived in Project Superpowers) who always had spectacularly bad luck whenever he had anything to do the number 13. He ultimately adopted 13 as his crime-fighting alias and sought to bring bad luck to evil doers.
• ABC Warriors: During the Volgan War arc, Volkhan recruits thirteen (well, twelve plus Mek-Quake) disciples.
• Batman: An early issue has a group focused on debunking superstitions, named "The 13 Club". The Joker wants to join the club as the 13th member, and instead they induct Batman for protection. As revenge, the Joker plots a series of murders based around the superstition that each member debunked.
• Captain America: Steve Rogers' sometime love interest Sharon Carter was known as Agent 13 during her time with S.H.I.E.L.D.. She was presumed killed during an investigation of a white-supremacist group called The National Force, but later discovered to be alive and involved in a deep-cover assignment for SHIELD, held prisoner by a dictator and after escaping became a mercenary.
• Captain Britain: Captain Britain and his teammates in Excalibur occasionally worked with the British Government's paranormal investigative branch, MI-13. Eventually, after Excalibur disbanded, MI-13 became a super-team in their own right in Captain Britain and MI13.
• The DCU: Doctor Thirteen is a paranormal investigator. His daughter Traci Thirteen is a sorceress. Neither one is a particularly bad sort, though Doctor Thirteen is a Flat-Earth Atheist suffering from Arbitrary Skepticism.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Along with Donald Duck being pursued by the number (most notably, his car with the plate 313), the Beagle Boys have the Born Unlucky 1313.
  • In one strip, Donald is queuing for a movie and there’s only one ticket left. The man in front of Donald refuses the ticket because it’s for seat #13. Donald buys the ticket instead and feels smug, only to find that seat #13 is right behind a column.
• Green Lantern: A notable planet that got destroyed, Xanshi, was in designated Sector 1313.
• Fables: All the witches from fables live on the thirteenth floor of the Bullfinch building in Fabletown. They're not entirely evil, more Chaotic Neutral.
• House of Mystery:
  • In DC Comics' original House of Mystery, a horror anthology series, the 13th page of every issue always broke from whatever story was being told to foretell some gruesome event in the reader's future/fake a misprinted page because "that's just what happens when you try to print something on page 13."
  • In homage to this, the 2008 series made #13 an "Aniversary Issue" with three "13" related stories (reflecting its anthology roots), and an activity page by Sergio Aragones (returning to Cain and Abel some 23 years after Plop!). The latter was supposed to be page 13, as a direct homage, but they couldn't get it to work, so instead they numbered every page 13.
• The Multiversity: Earth-13 is a Vertigo-y Dark Fantasy world where the greatest superheroes are Super-Demon and Hellblazer.
• Spirou: The magazine hasn't had a page 13 since 1995. It has a page 12, 12bis, and it goes on to 14.
• SpyBoy: The comic skipped the 13th issue, but eventually it appeared as a miniseries that is numbered as 13.1, 13.2 and 13.3. Very bad things happen to a cast member on it.
• Sweet Chastity: Vincent, 13th baron von Frankenstein. 'nuff said.
• Thomas & Friends: A comic story had an engine named "Unlucky No.13" who constantly had bad luck. Actually subverted, as his luck turns around after he has a new firebox fitted, meaning that his number wasn't the cause of his misfortune after all.
• XIII: The comic book series is about a man with amnesia, the number XIII tattooed on his back, and a knack for using weapons.

Comic Strips

• As everyone knows, Garfield hates Mondays. Slightly less known is the fact that he hates February. One strip had him take Jon's announcement that it was February and Monday in stride... only to scream when Jon points out that it was also the 13th.
• In Lucky Luke vs Phil Wire, Luke finds out that Phil is superstitious and so sets up a number of contrived occurrences to unnerve him, including a calendar that makes the date out to be Friday the 13th.
• If the 13th of a month fell on, say, a Tuesday, Albert Alligator in Pogo would quip "Friday the 13th come on a Tuesday this month!"
• The Thirteenth Floor was a strip in the British anthology comics Scream! and Eagle, which was set in a high-tech tower block with a hidden thirteenth floor that was home to a supercomputer named Max that was programmed to protect the tenants, and did so by becoming a Poetic Serial Killer to anyone it percieved as a threat. In the much later comic Vigilant, the thirteenth floor is the headquarters of a superhero team, which has apparently come to an agreement with Max.

Fan Works

• This is frequent in Infinity Train: Blossomverse:
  • Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: After going in circles over a spiteful rant of everything that is awaiting Chloe all stemming from how she didn't conform to the normal that is her world and having three other Trainers help get rid of this toxic bias, her number settles at a 13. Sure enough she ends up dying by the claws of Destruction — a transformed Simon Laurent — and would've stayed that way had Tuba not told Atticus to resurrect the girl with the Pendant of Life.
  • Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: In the Lumberjack Car, Tiffany of the Apex gets separated from the group and meets a boy who has a number that reads 13. But in reality the boy's hand was bandaged, hiding that the number was 20135 and he's part of a villain team called Elipzo which kidnaps and later drugs her to be brainwashed because she's carrying a special gem heart that is the form of Specter's former denizen partner Lampetia.
  • Infinity Train: Crown of Thorns's main character, Acerola, is turned into the 13th Acerola of her family, as every queen prior to her also bore the name. Needless to say, her terrible luck (from being peer pressured by her ancestors to continue the family legacy to said ancestors becoming tangible) leads her into the Infinity Train.
• Lucky Number Thirteen: As referenced in the title, Sharon was Christian's thirteenth sub and the one who came out of it rather seriously injured. On the other hand, she ended the relationship right away and so avoided any further physical and emotional harm, and manages to save Ana from a similar fate.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Combined with Number of the Beast, Hunter J's offshore bank account has the number "1366613".
• In The Roboutian Heresy, the Arch-Traitor Primarch Roboute Guilliman is number 13 amongst the Primarchs.
• Vision of Escaflowne Abridged: Dryden and Millerna's wedding takes place on Friday the 13th of the thirteenth month of the Asturian calendar, in the year 1313 at 1313 military time.
• In Where Talent Goes to Die, Inoue, who's a bit superstitious, notes that he's glad that there are sixteen students, rather than thirteen, because he has this belief. On the thirteenth night in the school, Hoshino's murder of Yuuki and Akasaka takes place.
• In the Encanto fanfic Couch Surfers, Stefanie mentions that she always gets her period on the week of the 13th.
• The works of A.A. Pessimal: When Rebecka Smith-Rhodes moves to Rimwards Howondaland on the Discworld to work as a stealth Witch, she is given the services of a black orderly to help out in her surgery and infirmary. At first she wonders why he is universally known as Dertein — "Thirteen". Then she is told he has an accident-prone streak. Thirteen is a nickname; it has stuck so closely she never gets to know what he's really called.
  ʼn man van twaalf ambagte en dertien ongelukke ^note A man of twelve talents and thirteen accidents''

Films — Animation

• In Frozen (2013), Prince Hans is the thirteenth son of the King of the Southern Isles, and has been mistreated by his father and older brothers. He's also the villain, referencing his status as thirteenth child as proof that he'll never get the throne, and Anna having fallen for him is very bad luck for her.
• Overlaps with Number of the Beast in Hey Arnold! The Movie where the zip code for FutureTech Industries is 66613.
• In The Rescuers movie, Bernard is afraid of the number thirteen, especially when it comes to the number of steps on a ladder or stairs. He's also afraid of flying, especially when the flight is number 13. The movie also ended on a Friday the 13th, if you look at the calendar shown.
• Wreck-It Ralph: The Sugar Rush racer Gloyd Orangeboar has a Halloween theme and so fittingly, his kart is numbered 13.

Films — Live-Action

• Zig-zagged in 13 Tzameti and the 2011 American remake 13. The protagonist is forced to take part in a Deadly Game of Russian Roulette. The players are only known by a number, his being 13. He survives the game through sheer luck, only to be killed afterwards.
• 1408. The movie takes place on the thirteenth floor, and the titular room numbers add up to thirteen. In fact every number in the movie adds up to 13. The room's key lock has "6214" etched into it, the first death was in the year 1912, the hotel is mentioned to be at 2254 Lexington Street in New York City, "this is 5" then "this is 8", Mike opens the room's Bible at random to Chapter 11 of book Samuel 2, and the movie was released in the US in June 22, 2007. The normal DVD version's runtime is 104 minutes, 8 seconds. The director's cut is 112 minutes (1 + 12...)
• In The Avenging Eagle, the League of Eagle Assassins has 13 members, one which is the film's protagonist. They're ruthless killers known for their widespread massacres, and when the hero tries to leave after gaining a conscience he ends up being pursued by the other 12.
• Apollo 13: Both the movie and the real mission went badly. However, the film actually deconstructs this trope twice before the mission takes place.
  • First, Marilyn's reaction upon hearing that Jim has been bumped up is to note that it's number 13. Jim tells her that it comes after twelve.
  • Second, while being interviewed by the media, Jim, Fred and Ken joke about having a black cat walk across a broken mirror under the lunar module ladder. Considering how things turned out...
  • NASA itself wasn't going to be scared off by this superstition at first. The launch occurred at 1:13 PM ET (13:13 hours, military) on April 11, 1970 (4+1+1+7+0 = 13). The CSM/LM spacecraft were in lunar gravity influence on the day of the accident, April 13.
  • Notably, while a lot of things went wrong, a lot of things also went right enough that they survived. For instance, the astronauts were damn lucky the explosion happened in the beginning of the mission when they had a full complement of supplies and equipment; they would have had no chance if it occurred at the moon or on the trip back.
  • It's interesting to note that NASA has not had a 13 mission since. Even the STS-# designations for the shuttle missions leaves off at STS-9 and goes to a different designation system before picking back up at STS-26.
• Bataan starts with 13 American soldiers placed to Hold the Line against a Japanese army. None are left by the end of the film.
• El Camino: The encyclopedia book that Todd's cleaning lady tried to read and gets her killed (it's where he hid his stolen money) happens to be the thirteenth volume in the series.
• Captain America: Civil War is the 13th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and ends with Zemo succeeding in dividing the Avengers, with one half ending up as fugitives on the run.
• Carry On Constable: Constable Constable hears the sound of a fierce row from flat 13, and in spite of being incredibly superstitious, he goes to investigate; but all he had heard was the radio.
• Convict 13, in which an innocent man is mistaken for an escaped felon.
• The Da Vinci Code: The origin of Friday the 13th as an unlucky day is discussed, attributing it to the fact that it's the day the Knight Templars were wiped out by the Catholic Church. (In reality, this is not the origin of the superstition, although it's safe to assume it didn't alleviate it.)
• Dementia 13 seems to be named purely to sound creepy, as it has absolutely nothing to do with the number 13 (or dementia, for that matter).
• District 13 is a very crapsack place filled with heavily armed gangs, drug dealers, and poor people that the president would rather nuke it than deal with it. Also doubles as a pun, since a stenciled B resembles a 13. The sequel ditched the B.
• The Draughtsman's Contract: When Mr. Neville returns to the estate to make a thirteenth drawing, he is murdered.
• The Fog: Nick picks up Elizabeth as a hitchhiker. She asks if Nick is weird, then says that he is her thirteenth ride since she began hitchhiking. Nick says "Great, weird and unlucky".
• As stated before, the movie franchise Friday the 13th, which is about Jason Voorhees (who drowned on Friday the 13th) coming back on Friday the 13th to murder teenagers.
• Gervaise: Apparently, 13 was considered so unlucky in 19th century France that, when exactly thirteen people sit at the table for Gervaise's name day party, her husband gets up and goes to find a 14th guest.
• In the 2009 horror movie Ghost Town, a gang of Satanic cultists wiped out an Old West town and then committed ritual suicide. The town then vanished into a pocket dimension. Every thirteen years, on Friday the 13th, the town reappears and traps any travelers who wander in, then the ghosts of the cultists terrorize and kill them For the Evulz. According to notes left by previous victims, if the travelers can't escape or break the curse by morning, the town will vanish, leaving them trapped for thirteen years and most likely killed by the ghosts long before the town reappears.
• Halloweentown: A witch's 13th Halloween should mark the end of their witch training; if she doesn't at least start her training until the end of then, she will lose her powers forever.
• In the movie adaptation of Hostile Waters, the fatal sequence of events starts in missile silo #13. (In reality, it started in silo #6)
• James Bond plays with this trope on two occasions:
  • In From Russia with Love, when he and Tatianna break into the Russian embassy to steal the Lektor (a day early, because Bond thinks it's an Obvious Trap):
    Tatianna: I thought this was for tomorrow. Today is the thirteenth, isn't it?
    Bond: This is a hell of a time to be superstitious.
  • In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, James Bond runs from Draco's goons and finds himself in Draco's office with a knife in his hand. When Draco greets Bond, Bond throws the knife at Draco's calendar. Draco looks at the date where the knife landed and quips, "The fourteenth, Mister Bond? Today's the thirteenth." Bond answers, "I'm superstitious."
• Labyrinth has Jareth give Sarah a time limit of 13 hours in which to rescue her baby half-brother.
• Lady in the Water: The critic, who lives in apartment 13B, dies when the Scrunt corners him alone while everybody else is at a party.
• The direct-to-DVD horror/suspense anthology movie Locker 13 deals with the terrible things that happen to several people who've used a locker with that number on it.
• No Retreat, No Surrender 2 does this with it's inciting incident, Scott's girlfriend Sulin being abducted by political dissidants and Scott setting off on a perilous rescue mission. Said abduction happens in Room 13 of a sleazy motel Scott rented, with the camera lingering on the number for... reasons.
• A Zig-Zagging Trope with Rocket Raccoon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His designation while living a hellish life of being constantly ripped apart and pulled back together without anesthetics was 89P13 ; and yet he was the only subject among Batch 89 to have survived the purge at the guns of The High Evolutionary. Yet he being the Sole Survivor among his first friends left him with deep lifelong emotional scars and Survivor Guilt that turned him from a sweet and innocent raccoon kit into the foul mouthed and cynical curmudgeon we meet him as in the first Volume of Guardians of The Galaxy.
• First mate Bilson in The Mystery Of Mary Celeste is unhappy that there are a total of thirteen people onboard the brig. What's worse, there's also a woman onboard and a black cat too.
• In One Week, the newlyweds' housewarming party is held on Friday the 13th.
• In Roll Bounce, Junior is wearing a shirt with the number "13" on it. Then he has the unlucky happenstance of being pantsed by Sweetness' two lackeys, revealing his purple underwear and getting him laughed at by a bunch of other skaters and onlookers.
• In Sherlock, Jr., the exploding pool ball is numbered 13.
• The movie Thir13en Ghosts is about a machine powered by ghosts to see into the future. The number of ghosts needed was probably not a coincidence.
• The Thirteenth Chair: As all the guests sit down for the Spooky Séance, one of them realizes that there are thirteen in the party and objects, but they sit down anyway. Edward Wales, the last person to sit down (aka the man in the "13th chair"), is murdered during the seance.
• The Thirteenth Year: Merpeople can live amongst the humans until their 13th birthday, where they will steadily transform until their aquatic forms over time.
• In the 2016 movie Tô Ryca, a Gender Flipped adaptation of Brewster's Millions, Selminha tries to lose $100,000 on the roulette by placing that money on 13. She wins.

Gamebooks

• In Trapped in the Circus of Fear, depending on your choices you may have your lucky baseball cap with you, causing you to get overconfident and attempt to walk the tightrope. However, this occurs on page 13, where the unlucky page number cancels out the lucky cap and results in you falling to your death.
• In the Sagas of the Demonspawn series by J. H. Brennan, whenever Fire*Wolf is killed, you have to go to paragraph 13 of the book for instructions on how to resume the game from the start.

Jokes

• A children's riddle:
  "What time is it when the clock strikes 13? Time to fix the clock."
• Two burglars are in the middle of ransacking an apartment when suddenly they hear police sirens.
  Burglar 1: Quick, jump out of the window!
  Burglar 2: We can’t do that, this is the 13th floor!
  Burglar 1: You idiot, this is no time for superstition!
• What do people fear the most on Friday the 13th? Monday the 16th.

Let's Play

• Referenced by Chuggaaconroy in his playthrough of Super Paper Mario, where he notes that in the Overthere Stair section, cloud #13 is significantly smaller than the others. Whether or not this was intended within the game itself is unclear.
• In ProtonJon’s "Fortune Cookie: One Last Hurrah Edition" stream, he plays randomly picked Super Mario Maker levels submitted by his viewers. Jon decides to choose "lucky number thirteen" and by complete coincidence this turns out to be a port of a level from the infamously hard Kaizo Mario World.
  Jon: I should have known that picking thirteen would be bad…

Literature

• In 13 Reasons Why, Hannah Baker, a classmate who committed suicide, leaves behind thirteen tapes detailing how thirteen people (including the main protagonist) led to her depression and eventual suicide. The name "Baker" was chosen for its connection to the number 13 through a "baker's dozen".
• The room number in 1408 totals 13. The room is on the 14th floor, but only because the 13th was skipped due to superstition.
• At the beginning of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the clock strikes thirteen, which is an early indication of just how wrong the world has gone. An obvious hand-wave is that they've just changed the way people (and chiming clocks) tell the time so that afternoon hours keep adding up from twelve to twenty-four, but (a) such a change to such a mundane aspect of everyday life hints at a pervasive change to society at large (compare Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It), and (b) the choice of thirteen rather than, say, fourteen is not a coincidence; the creepy significance is almost certainly deliberate.
• Adrian Mole:
  • Adrian sometimes notes that Friday 13th is unlucky. On one occasion, Pandora no longer sits next to him at school, and on another, she tells him that she is not going to marry him aged sixteen; she intends to have a career instead.
  • Although luck is not mentioned, when a specific room or house number is mentioned, it is sometimes 13. Rosie is born in hospital room 13, and the bully Barry Kent lives at number 13.
• Zigzagged in Colony, where Gordon, "with a scientist's disdain for superstition", wins three times in a row by betting on 13 on the roulette wheel. Eddie follows suit for the first two bets, but chickens out before the third. This ends up being unlucky for Eddie though, because not only does he not make enough to pay off his debts, he can't even collect his winnings because Gordon has broken the bank.
• In his book Complications, Dr. Atul Gawande says that doctors tend not to be very superstitious, but there are a few exceptions. During his residency, none of his fellow residents wanted to work in the Emergency Room on Friday the 13th or on nights with a full Moon. They particularly dreaded doing ER shifts when the two things occurred at the same time.
• In The Da Vinci Code, reference is made to the Knights Templar being targeted by a conspiracy between the king of France and the Church which accused them of heresy, bestiality, and other deplorable acts, for which the order was disbanded, all possessions confiscated, and every member they could get their hands on was burned at the stake. It is claimed that this took place on Friday the 13th and is thus the origin of the superstition.
• The Dark Tower series contains Maerlyn's Rainbow, a multi-colored set of thirteen crystal balls that allow their possessor to divine various actions depending on the specific ball. None of them are terribly nice—the pink one, for example, only allows its user to see people at their absolute worst and eats away at their life—but the most dangerous of the lot is the Black Thirteen itself, which is said to allow the local Satan figure to look out of it. The protagonists wind up leaving it at the World Trade Center, implying that it helped cause the September 11th attacks.
• Deltora Quest: The Evil Sorceress Thaegan has thirteen monstrous children.
• Don't You Just Hate That?: Entry #12 is "Apartment buildings that don't have a thirteenth floor because of superstitious people." It’s followed directly by entry #14.
• The Dresden Files: McAnally's, the pub used as a meeting ground by Chicago's supernatural community, is said to have thirteen columns and thirteen tables as a way of dispersing magical energies. While not unlucky per se, it does rely on thirteen being a number intrinsically adversed to the workings of magic.
• Inverted in Emily the Strange as thirteen is Emily's favorite number, her lists always number thirteen.
• Encyclopedia Brown has a friend nicknamed Trisk (short for Triskaidekaphobia), who is terribly superstitious, particularly about his namesake.
• Ghost In the Noonday Sun: When three of the sixteen people aboard the Bloody Hand are washed overboard in a storm, everyone except Oliver and Second Mate Jack o' Lantern is so alarmed at the prospect of sailing on a ship with thirteen men that they agree to maroon one of their number. They draw doubloons (one of which is marked with an x) to determine who will be marooned, while making sure to keep seven doubloons in one bag and six in the other so they don't have thirteen coins together. Captain Scratch cheats by palming his coin before the drawing starts. Jack draws the unlucky doubloon, but bribes the men assigned to maroon him to sneak him back onboard.
• In The Goldfish Boy, fear of the number 13 is one of the symptoms of Matthew's OCD. He refers to the number as "tenplusthree," and if he sees it, he counts to seven in his head to neutralize it by turning it into twenty.
• In the Harry Potter books:
  • Professor Trelawney has a fear of thirteen, and in Prisoner of Azkaban she mentions the superstition that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise from the table will be the first to die. This comes true in two instances (possibly three):
    • Since Peter Pettigrew (in rat form) is in Ron's pocket at the time Trelawney mentions the superstition, there are already thirteen people seated at the table when she believes the number to be twelve. Dumbledore rises to greet her when she enters the Great Hall. As Harry, Ron, and Pettigrew later leave the table at the same time, the number seated drops from 14 to 11. In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore becomes the first to die of that particular group of thirteen.
    • In Order of the Phoenix, thirteen people have dinner together and Sirius gets up first. He dies at the end of the book.
    • In Deathly Hallows, Thirteen people are sitting down and have just drank to Moody's death. Lupin is the first to rise and might have been the first to die during the final battle.
  • In Deathly Hallows, There were thirteen people who came to Harry's house to help to bring him to safety. One of them dies.
  • Voldemort returns to power after 13 years pass since his downfall in the Potters' House.
  • In what could be played with, Harry's altered Potions book in Half-Blood Prince corrects the instructions for the Draught of the Living Dead from 12 sophoporic beans to 13. In part because of this, Harry makes a perfect batch and wins a vial of Liquid Luck.
• The Haunting Of Cassie Palmer by Vivien Alcock begins with the protagonist's family having a run of bad luck on a Friday the 13th shortly after her 13th birthday.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: In Mostly Harmless, the evil Guide-bird was being kept on floor thirteen. Maybe lampshaded because Ford notices that the elevator doesn't have a thirteenth button, and he thinks that's weird because only humans have a fear of 13, and that's how he figures out the bird-thing was being kept there. It was The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Mk II, created by the Vogons as part of a multidimensional plot to finally and completely destroy Earth and put that final tick in the box and file the paperwork. It was only shaped like a bird for reasons not explained.
• The Hobbit has a group of thirteen Dwarves who want to reclaim their homeland and defeat Smaug. Part of the reason that they shanghai Bilbo, the titular hobbit, into coming is so that they can avert the unlucky number.
• The Hunger Games:
  • District 13 is the odd district out, especially after it got destroyed by the Capitol prior to the events of the series — or so Katniss and most of the country has been told. A portion of the district has been quietly surviving underground, having enough nuclear weapons to keep itself and the Capital locked into an uneasy truce out of fear of a nuclear war. Still, they're cut off from most of the world.
  • The youngest victor was Finneck Odair, who was 14 when he won his games. That meant every tribute 13 years old or younger reaped didn't make it out of thier arenas alive.
• Land of Oz: Ojo was born on Friday the 13th, which is one of the reasons he's called Ojo the Unlucky. Around the climax of his debut book, the Tin Woodman explains why it's silly to think of himself as unlucky just because of the day he was born. In the end, Ojo drops the "Un" from his title.
• Played with in Margaret Owen's retelling of "The Goose Girl", Little Thieves. Vanja, who stole her former mistress and best friend's identity as a princess, is the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child. People assert that this means she's cursed (including her mother, who abandoned her at the crossroads as a child, and Vanja herself in her lower moments), and she certainly runs into more than her fair share of trouble. However, it's pretty clear, as her love interest basically spells out, that Vanja's "unluckiness" is actually the result of living in a crushingly unequal society and being failed by every adult who was supposed to look after her.
• Midnighters:
  • Inverted: 13 is an extremely lucky number — for humans, anyways. Seeing 13 of anything (or even hearing a 13-letter word) is a Brown Note for slithers, and one of the few ways to keep them from killing you if they catch you.
  • Played straight when the Darklings try to turn Rex into one of them. Although they are mostly unsuccessful, he finds that he is now repulsed and weakened by the number 13, just like the Darklings, though not as strongly because he is still mostly human.
• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Monster Men, Professor Maxon is convinced that Number 13 will be his successful experiment.
• The Name Of This Book Is Secret does not have a Chapter 13, with the number on the chapter page being scribbled out and replaced with a 14. The Lemony Narrator says "Of course, I don't really believe that the number 13 is bad luck, but under the circumstances why not play it safe?"
• The Necklace Of Princess Fiorimonde: The eponymous Villainous Princess becomes the thirteenth bead on her own necklace, and, for her punishment, she is the only one left to remain as a bead forever while her twelve captives are set free.
• In Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, as befits its odd ways of doing everything, the circus's anniversery party is held not in the tenth year but the thirteenth.
• In Montague Rhodes James' "Number 13", Anderson stays in a hotel that doesn’t have a room #13… Except that it does, and it’s haunted.
• The Origin of Laughing Jack: Laughing Jack, Isaac's magical friend, was abandoned by him for 13 years and lost his color and emotion as a result. Then Isaac's dad is hung for beating his wife to death, and Isaac returns after inheriting the house. Laughing Jack is exposed to Isaac's newfound penchant for violence and becomes a Monster Clown.
• In Replica, the thirteenth Amy clone (who was not supposed to exist and accidentally off from the twelfth) is the only Amy who does not have the clone perfection.
• Roys Bedoys: In "It’s Friday the 13th, Roys Bedoys!", Roy experiences a series of misfortunes, including losing his shirt, stepping in cat poop, and then finding that the lunch lady is out of chocolate milk. Roy believes the day to be cursed, but his friends reassure him that it was only coincidence and invite him to a pizza party.
• A Sailor of Austria by John Biggins. When the submarine crew is assigned to U13 people start making bets on how long they will last until the submarine is struck by a torpedo that fails to explode.
• The Scholomance: Zigzagged. Angel Torres, who came in thirteenth in the class rankings, hasn't done well enough to make it into an enclave. However, his luck picks up when he gets a promised enclave spot in exchange for participating in the repair mission and then proceeds to survive that mission.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events has thirteen books, which would fit with its macabre nature. Each book has thirteen chapters. Subverted in that the 13th book contains the 14th book, which is one chapter; lampshaded in that it's called Chapter Fourteen.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the thirteenth commander of the Night's Watch, known only as "Night's King", enslaved the Watch with sorcery after marrying a "pale, unholy woman" and was the cause of atrocities for thirteen years before he was killed.
• Ogden Nash's deliciously spooky "A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor" embodies this trope to a 'T'.
• Patricia C. Wrede's Thirteenth Child. Though Eff's actual problem is that people expect a thirteenth child to turn out bad. (She's also the seventh daughter, as other characters point out.)
• The War Against the Chtorr. When the protagonist first encounters the Uncle Ira Group, they take him to the Missing Floor of a hotel (which is naturally on the 13th floor) and put him in Room 1313. He doesn't Have A Bad Feeling About This until he finds the door locked and his access to a terminal cut off. When the Uncle Ira Group does let him out, it's because they've decided to set him up to be killed.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • The Dark One's most dreaded servants are the Forsaken: thirteen powerful channelers of the One Power who have survived from the Age of Legends and serve as Co-Dragons until one gets promoted over the others.
  • A circle of thirteen channelers and thirteen Myrddraal Humanoid Abominations can overwrite a channeler's soul and remake them as a minion of the Shadow.
• Warrior Cats: The thirteenth law in the warrior code (that a Clan leader's word must be unchallenged by his Clanmates) is easily the most controversial and the one that has led to the most trouble, since it can be twisted to mean that a tyrant is allowed to rule unchallenged.
• The Zodiac Series has Ophiuchus, Original Guardian of the Thirteenth House. Let's see...betrayed by the love of his life, executed for a crime he never committed, trapped between life and death for three millennia, had to watch both his House die and the survivors be marginalized, and was brought back to life only to be sacrificed to open the portal to Earth. Talk about unlucky.

Live-Action TV

• All That: A Good Burger sketch had the workers frightened of Saturday the 14th due to a haunting.
• Battlestar Galactica: Twelve tribes of man who founded the Twelve Colonies... plus one that "got lost" and inspired the survivors to go on a wild goose chase IN SPACE! to find a planet called Earth. Twelve Lords (gods) of Kobol... plus one who became the Cylon God. Also there are 13 human-like Cylons — five "originals" and their eight creations (numbered 1-8) — however only twelve survived long enough to be considered important, since #1 killed the #7s and then programed the others to ignore the gap between 6 and 8.
• The Brittas Empire: The flashbacks in “The Trial”, which ended with the deaths of seven gangsters as well as several elderly women being seriously hurt, is noted to have taken place on Friday the 13th.
• In Charmed, Barbas the demon of fear required the death of thirteen witches on Friday the 13th in order to gain his full power.
• CHiPs: The episode "Trick or Trick" has Ponch dealing with a run of bad luck. It starts off with him encountering 13 black cats and goes downhill from there.
• Corner Gas: In "Super Sensitive", Brent jinxes himself twice by trying to disprove various superstitions. Hank panics when he realises that a guy will be coming to refill the gas tanks on Friday the 13th, because “Brent's third thing, do the math, carry the two equals boom!” Lacey tells him that it’s Thursday that’s the 13th, Friday is the 14th.
• Deal or No Deal: The case numbered 13 (held by the model Leyla) often contained large amounts of cash, usually those close to the one million amount. A teaser for one episode even showcased such.
• Dexter has Lumen Pierce, also known as No. 13, the victim of a group of a murdering rapist/torturers. Who leads to the destruction of the entire gang after being rescued by Dexter when he kills one of the members right before she would have ended up as the thirteenth Barrel Girl.
• Doctor Who:
  • A Time Lord who is dying can regenerate into a new body. They can do this twelve times, but the thirteenth time, they'll die for good. Of course, there have been some exceptions to this rule.
  • At the end of "Twice Upon a Time", the Thirteenth Doctor makes her debut by being thrown out of an exploding TARDIS thousands of feet above the surface of the Earth.
  • Putting it further for the 13th Doctor, "The Timeless Child" retcons over 60 years of DW lore by revealing that not only was the 13th Doctor not the first female Doctor, but the regeneration of the Time Lords was actually stolen from her by killing her over and over again so that she would regenerate continuously, making the ability that was unique to them literally Powered by a Forsaken Child. This was the episode that massively broke the fandom, truly making the 13th Doctor unlucky. It is worth mentioning, that DW continuity is already notoriously contradictary and weird and other stories implied that there were other incarnations, so whether this is a retcon or retconning a retcon is debatable.
• In Game of Thrones, the Council of Thirteen of Qarth, who prove less than helpful to Daenerys. Things don't end well for them, eleven of them were killed by the warlock who was one of them, leaving Daxos as King of Qarth. Then the warlock gets killed by Daenerys's dragons, and Daxos is locked up in his own vault.
• Agent 13 on Get Smart is a character who always gets terrible assignments, that often go hilariously wrong, and usually involving him being crammed into uncomfortable spaces as part of his disguise.
• House has a character commonly known as Thirteen who has Huntington's Disease. The moniker comes from House needing to hire a new team. He starts with a larger group he assigns numbers to. Subverted in that Thirteen is one of the four chosen. However the other three all become known by their real names. Two of the four die before the end of the series. So Thirteen outlives them.
• The iCarly episode "iScream on Halloween" revolves around a haunted apartment. The apartment number? 13-B.
• Inside No. 9: As the title suggests, the episode "Paraskevidekatriaphobia" centres on a man's fear of Friday the 13th.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Ryuki and Kamen Rider Dragon Knight involved thirteen Riders, and in Ryuki they're all trying to kill each other because There Can Be Only One. There are two good candidates for being the unlucky 13th one: Odin/Wrath, who is the most powerful and under direct control of the Big Bad; and Ryuga/Onyx, an unintended addition to the original twelve and Evil Twin of The Hero (though played with in Dragon Knight, as the Evil Twin takes over the title role instead and the Good Twin gets the Onyx gear in response).
  • Kamen Rider Shin is the official 13th Kamen Rider. Not only is his design more monster-like than the other Riders, but his story is also dark, violent, and ends tragically. There was supposed to be a sequel where he would have a more traditionally Kamen Rider storyline, but it never took off. Poor Shin.
• In Lexx:
  • Category 13 biohazards and Type 13 planets are among the most dangerous kinds of each.
  • In the final episode, the particle accelerator determining the mass of the Higgs Boson finally gives the result as 131313.
• Masters of Horror and Fear Itself (both horror anthology shows) had 13 episodes per season.
• Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Defied with King Friday XIII, who had a birthday on every Friday the 13th. He was named specifically so that children would have positive associations with the date rather than being afraid of it.
• The Munsters live at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.
• Odd Squad: The episode "Bad Luck Bears" focuses on the Burly Bears basketball team, who has had a string of bad luck in both games and among the team itself. Olive and Otto eventually chalk it up to the players' jersey numbers totaling 13, and Olive is encouraged by Otto to join a game against the Rambunctious Rams by wearing her hand-stitched jersey marked with the number 99 in order to skew the total and restore good luck to the team again.
• Only Connect references the superstition in the first episode of series 13. This starts off a Running Gag of all the episodes in that series starting with some sort of spooky theme.
• On The Price Is Right, there is a game called Half Off, where is hidden in one of sixteen numbered boxes. To date, the cash has been hidden in fifteen of those boxes several times, but it has not once been placed in box #13.
• Psych did an episode spoofing summer camp horror films, titled "Tuesday the 17th". It was aired on a Friday the 13th. This appears to be a Shout-Out to the episode of Ren & Stimpy below.
• Robot Wars
  • 13 Black had 2 huge spinning discs for massive destructive potential, and yet, it never lived up to its capabilities. Their motto was "unlucky for some..."
  • In season four, 13th seed Gravedigger coincidentally went out in the first round. This was lampshaded by pit reporter Julia Reed as being "unlucky for some, eh?"
• Rome shows why 13 is unlucky... to people not Roman. Legio XII Gemina, the 13th Legion was Caesar's Legion that crossed the Rubicon.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sarah Jane Smith lives at 13 Bannerman Road, but is not really that unlucky. Her life is just weird.
• Shining Time Station: In “Bad Luck Day at Shining Time Station”, it’s Friday the 13th and Schemee takes the opportunity to con people into buying his fake good luck charms by preying on their superstitions surrounding the date.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Skin Of Evil", Troi was returning to the Enterprise aboard Shuttlecraft 13 when it malfunctions and crashes onto Vagra II, where the vile being Armus was exiled ages ago.
• Supernatural:
  • The tagline for Supernatural's 13th season is "Thirteen is their lucky number."
  • Samuel Colt created only thirteen bullets for his Colt revolver that can kill any supernatural being. One assumes the number was used for its magical association, rather than because it was unlucky (except for the demons who got shot with it, of course).
• Take Your Pick: Played with, in that there are prize boxes numbered 1 to 10; and a box 13. The host does not know what is in the first ten boxes, but he does know what is in box 13, which could be good, could be not so good.
• Warehouse 13 has the title warehouse, which does contain all sorts of magical artifacts.
• Wizards vs. Aliens had an episode called "The Thirteenth Floor", about an office building that follows the "skip from 12 to 14" superstition. The thing is, there actually is a thirteenth floor, in that the elevator can sometimes spit you out in the Neverside.

Music

• Some artists intentionally "skip" track 13 on albums (usually by making track 13 a few seconds of silence). Or make the thirteenth an unlisted Hidden Track. Examples include:
  • Alan Jackson's Who I Am skips from 12 to 14 by way of a silent track 13. Alan lampshades this trope on the liner notes, which say "That's right folks, I am just a bit superstitious."
  • Similarly, the first disc of Garth Brooks' Double Live album uses a few seconds of applause as a "phantom" track 13, so that the track listing can skip from 12 to 14. His 2020 album Fun does likewise.
  • Fly by The Chicks skips from 12 ("Heartbreak Town") to 14 ("Let Her Fly"). Depending on the pressing, track 13 is either a second of silence (listed as "ain't no thang but a chickin' wang" in the booklet), or just the last couple seconds of "Heartbreak Town". This may be due to this trope, or the fact that the album as a Cut Song — it was originally slated to be a duet with Deryl Dodd on "Wherever You Are", but he came down with encephalitis and was unable to re-record the track to his liking so it became a Cut Song.
  • Fantômas' self-titled album and The Director's Cut both have short silences as track 13. So far Suspended Animation is their only album to have an actual song on track thirteen, although Delirium Cordia was just indexed as one long track anyway.
  • The back cover of Hot Hot Heat's Elevator runs with the theme of the title — not only does the track listing start with number 15 and end with 1, like an elevator's floor buttons would, but there's no 13th track mentioned, since buildings with that many floors tend to skip 13. On the album itself, the 13th track is just the last few seconds of the ending of the previous song.

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• The Birthday Massacre: The video for "Looking Glass" shows doll number 13 having her head filled with nails, causing her to cry Tears of Blood.
• '70s musical icons Chicago titled their albums according to the order they were issued, starting with the third album (Chicago III, Chicago IV, Chicago V etc). They subverted this trope by naming their twelfth album Hot Streets, and reverting to the numerical system with Chicago 13. 13 played the trope straight however, proving to be a commercial and critical failure, and the first album by the band to produce no significant hit singles.
• Color Theory's Concept Album "Lucky Ago" is themed around various superstitions, with "Phobiac" being about triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13.
  Thirteen steps up the gallows stairs
  The thirteenth guest will die in the year
  Thirteen knots in a hangman’s noose
  Thirteen cards all share the same suit
  Thirteen feet which the guillotine falls
  Thirteen witches in a coven enthral
  Thirteen letters in your name
  You’re bound to have devil’s luck
• King Angus McFife XIII of Dundee from Gloryhammer sees Earth destroyed in battle between his army and an Eldritch Abomination, and during a time-travel mission to fix it in the past, he is stabbed through the heart by a Knife of Evil (read as "Morgûl Blade"), requiring him to leap into a volcano to avoid becoming a Deathknight.
• Korn's third studio album, Follow the Leader, actually begins with the thirteenth song, aptly named "It's On!" after 12 songs of five-second silence. The album has a grand total of 25 songs, yet ironically, if the first 12 songs were omitted, the album itself would be reduced to 13 songs. It seems the band must have double subverted this trope.
• Mushroomhead's 2003 studio album is titled XIII and, appropriately enough, has 13 songs. To top it off, the thirteenth and final song is even named "Thirteen".
• German comedian/chansonnier Reinhard Mey has "Ankomme Freitag den 13.", where the preparations for the arrival of his girlfriend go polar south. But note that the whole song is actually a subversion. After the narrator has been buried under a heap of Disaster Dominoes, he finally realizes it's only Thursday 12th yet.
• Songdrops: "The 13 Nights of Halloween" parodies "The 12 Days of Christmas", with the singer getting an increasing number of spooky items each night.
• Steely Dan's "Black Friday" has a rather clever example of this:
  When Black Friday comes
  I'll stand down by the door
  And watch the grey men when they dive from the fourteenth floor...
• Inverted with Taylor Swift to the point of being her personal Arc Number (she was born on December 13).
• Wax actually added three silent tracks to an album with ten songs on it, just so they could somewhat justify calling it 13 Unlucky Numbers.
• Zucchero: Inverted with the song "13 Buoni Regioni" (13 Good Reasons). He frequently sings in the chorus that he can think of 13 good reasons (and sometimes he instead sings 13 holy reasons) to prefer drinking a beer and eating a salami sandwich over dating someone like the woman he's unflatteringly describing. The song's video shows the woman flirting with a stranger despite being accompanied by her boyfriend (who is not Zucchero himself, thus hinting that he used to be his former partner until a breakup), so it makes sense.

Myths & Religion

• The Bible:
  • In the Book of Genesis, Jacob's 13th child (and only daughter) is raped by a Schechemite prince. Her brothers avenge her by killing not only her rapist, but every adult male in his village, and then taking the Schechemite women and children as plunder.
  • In The New Testament, as noted on the intro, there were 13 people in the Last Supper. The next day, a Friday (the supposed origin of combining weekday and number into bad luck), Jesus was executed. Then, Judas, the traitor who hanged himself in guilt, was replaced, but they're still called The Twelve Apostles.
• Classical Mythology: The mythological backstory for the Trojan War starts with a banquet of the gods... they only have 12 golden place settings, but Eris, goddess of Chaos, shows up uninvited with the Golden Apple. The source story for Sleeping Beauty^note Hawthorne Rose, from the Brothers Grimm starts with a similar dinner, replacing gods with fairies.
• Most of the legends about The Jersey Devil claim it was Mother Leeds's thirteenth child.
• Ironically, for Jews thirteen is a lucky number. For instance, it is considered the age of spiritual adulthood.
• In Tarot, XIII is Death in the Major Arcana. While it usually does not mean physical death, it usually implies the end of something (relationship or interest). Some older decks, such as the Marseilles decks, leave the name off this card either out of superstition or to allude to the name not being literal.
• Some versions of the "one for sorrow, two for joy" magpie rhyme continue up to "thirteen beware, it's the devil himself".

Podcast

• Red Panda Adventures: In "Thirteen at Table" the Red Panda is put in charge of training and organizing a group of rookie superheroes, the Danger Federation, recruited to replace the previous group, the Home Team, after they were almost all killed. Because of the fate of the Home Team, the Red Panda is apalled to note the first meeting of the Danger Federation has thirteen attendees and demands to know whose idea that was... only to be told it was his because he insisted the Flying Squirrel come.
  Red Panda: Given what happened to the last organized group of masked heroes in this country, who decided there should be thirteen of us!?
  Flying Squirrel: You did.
  Red Panda: When?
  Flying Squirrel: When you said "I'm not going to do this if you don't come with me."
  Red Panda: Ah... touché.
• A Discussed Trope on Well There's Your Problem, with the hosts mentioning that engineering projects sometimes avoid adding the number thirteen (such as in version or model numbers, floors on buildings, etc) out of belief in this trope. The podcast itself has no episode '13' only episodes '12' and '12A'.

Pro Wrestling

• During his WWE tenure, Tazz wore the number 13 on his gear, symbolizing the bad luck that brought his opponent face-to-face with an unstoppable rage machine like him.

Puppet Shows

• Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
  • In the episode of where the eponymous hero gets fired, the reason as to why was because he lost all his money whilst gambling, his last act being to put them all on no. 13 (you can guess how that turned out).
  • An earlier episode featured Big Ben striking 13 (apparently due to the distance you are from it). At the end Scarlet says he considers it his "lucky number".
• In one episode of Sesame Street, Telly is trying to count from 1 to 13, but every time he tries it starts to rain and he has to go inside. Telly starts to believe that saying saying "13" causes it to rain and starts a protest against the number. Gina and Bob explain that it's just a coincidence and that 13 is just like any other number. Double Subverted when at the end of the episode, Telly presents the the number of the day. After revealing the "very regular, ordinary, nothing-special-or-weird-about number 13" the number comes to life and runs away laughing, and it immediately starts to rain.

Sports

• In Cricket, especially in Australia, a score of 87 (thirteen short of 100) is considered unlucky.
• Curve 13 at the Whistler Sliding Center at the Vancouver Olympics is nicknamed "50-50", because the first time people went on it there was a 50% chance of crashing, although the American bobsled driver who named it now wants to call it "100-100" because he and his team completely owned it to win gold.
• Formula One has always been suspicious of the number thirteen, and not without reason:
  • Before 1926 it was issued like any other number, until Paul Torchy and Giulio Masetti were both involved in fatal accidents just 7 months apart, both while driving car #13. This spooked people so much that the number was no longer allocated to drivers, though it was still available on request.
  • Since then, only a couple of people have used #13 and never with good results. Moises Solana used the number in the 1963 Mexican Grand Prix and his car failed 8 laps from the finish line. Though he continued to race, he never used the number again. Thirteen years later, Divina Galica attempted to qualify for her first Grand Prix in car #13, and failed.
  • In 2014, the system was changed so that drivers would have a permanent number of their choosing, rather than being allocated one based on the previous year's standings. Pastor Maldonado started driving a car with that number starting in the season; Maldonado is Venezuelan, a country where thirteen is considered a lucky number. Unfortunately for him, the end result became rather catastrophic. Things only worsened to Maldonado in 2015 season. Despite Lotus having the best engine (Mercedes), the car was so fragile and combined with a good amount of more bad luck (and a bit of mistakes), made him lose a lot of points (he almost finished in the 13th position in the drivers standings, however). In 2016, before the start of the season Lotus was bought by Renault after struggling to survive and become a works team again. Everything was going right and the expectations are high for the upcoming years, but he was fired by the team, despite being under contract for racing in 2016, due a conflict between Renault and his sponsor. With no place to go and his sponsor (PDVSA) becoming nearly bankrupt due to the Venezuelan economy crisis, he was forced to take a sabbatical year and maybe never return to racing in F1.
• IndyCar has had a similarly troubled history with the number:
  • Back in 1911, at the first Indy 500 car #13 was already being euphemistically referred to as "12 1/2". Not that it mattered much, since it never even turned up for the race. The number was next adopted by George Mason in 1914, who managed to actually enter the race but broke down in the middle of it. Next Wallace Reid was set to compete with #13 in 1922, but was forced to withdraw and then died less than a year later. Herbert Scheel then failed to qualify with his #13 car in 1923, then Tom Alley tried in 1924, but his car wasn't completed in time. He tried again next year, and failed to qualify. Finally, the officials decided that they'd had enough and outright banned the number 13, even on request.
  • Despite all this, Louis Schneider was determined to use #13 on his car. He requested it in 1932 and was told that it was against the rules (fittingly enough, he was given the news on Friday the 13th of May). However, Schneider wasn't going to take "no" for an answer. Next year, he decided to take matters into his own hands and turned up for practice in a car already numbered 13. Predictably, the race officials were not pleased about this and forced Schneider to change his number to 22.
• Goalkeeper Nick Hammond was given the number 13 shirt when he signed for Swindon Town... then broke his leg. Twice. Ahead of the 1993/94 season, he switched to the number 23 shirt, stopped breaking his leg, and no Swindon Town player has worn the number 13 since.
  • On a broader note, since the number 13 shirt is traditionally given to the second-choice goalkeeper, one could say that any keeper who receives that shirt is inherently unlucky.
• Brazilian soccer coach Mario Jorge Lobo Zagallo is known for believing thirteen is lucky.
• German soccer player Michael Ballack is probably more known for the trophies he missed out on than what he won, all while wearing the number 13. In 2002, his club Bayer Leverkusen lost out on the Bundesliga title by one point and finished runners-up in the German Cup and the UEFA Champions League and on international duty that summer, he was part of the Germany squad which lost to Brazil in the FIFA World Cup Final. In 2008, his new club Chelsea lost out on the Premier League on the final day and were also runners-up in the League Cup and Champions League that season, he was also captain of Germany as they were the losing finalists at UEFA Euro 2008
• The iconic Hall-of-fame quarterback Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins is easily regarded as one of the best to play the position in the NFL for the 16 years he has played, setting all kinds passing records and setting the Single season Passing touchdown record in 1984 (Since surpassed by Peyton Manning in 2004). Unfortunately, he is also known and regarded as one of the best players to never win a Super Bowl, only reaching the Super Bowl with the Dolphins once in his career (1984 Season) and falling short many times afterward until he retired after the 1999 NFL season. What was his jersey number? 13 of course.
  • On the other hand, during the 1985 season, Marino helped them end the Chicago Bears' undefeated season, delivering their only defeat during week 13.
• Spanish Grand Prix motorcyclist Ángel Nieto was famously triskaidekaphobic ever since an accident on the 13th of November 1977, when his brakes failed and he ran over 5 people. He hated the number so much he refused to say it out loud, always referring to it as 12+1 instead. Even after his death, fans still refer to his 13 World Championship victories as "12+1" as a mark of respect.

Tabletop Games

• In British bingo, each number has a "call" which is a phrase announced by the bingo caller when that number is drawn. The call used for thirteen is "unlucky for some", which has become a widespread phrase even outside of bingo and the UK equivalent to the US's "lucky thirteen".
• The Dark Eye's religion (the most popular) features twelve good gods and the thirteenth Nameless One. And oh boy, you better not go around mentioning that guy unless you want to get serious trouble.
• In the Mad City of Don't Rest Your Head, every twelfth hour brings a thirteenth hour, in which the characters can not leave the city and the Nightmares go hunting...
• A recurring pattern in Eberron is to have 13 of something, with one of them lost or destroyed. This is a play on a "Baker's Dozen" (12 + 1), named after the setting designer, Keith Baker.
  • There are 13 Outer Planes, one of which was cut off from the cosmology (and with good reason).
  • 13 moons, one of which disappeared.
  • There are currently 12 calendar months (named after the moons), but it is implied that there used to be 13 months.
  • 13 nations on Khorvaire, one of which was destroyed in a magical catastrophe.
  • 13 Dragonmarks, but the Mark of Death was destroyed (save for one sole survivor who still bears that mark) during the War of the Mark.
  • Of the 12 remaining Dragonmarks, there are 13 Dragonmarked Houses because one of the original twelve houses split into two after a bloody internal conflict.
  • In an odd coincidence, the Artificer class, originally created for Eberron, is the 13th class in 5e, and the only one outside the Player's Handbook.
• In Exalted, the Neverborn's chief servants are the thirteen Deathlords, who are somewhat reminiscent of The Wheel of Time's Forsaken, except undead and indestructible.
• The GURPS adventure Flight 13 thrusts the characters into a Space/Horror setting, regardless of what their original destination was.
• Old World of Darkness has various thirteen things, like thirteen vampire clans and thirteen werewolf tribes, to fit in with its whole Crapsack World. In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the Wyrm has Thirteen Urges which form the heads of the hydra, each of which is served by a Maeljin Incarna, who might as well be called the Thirteen Horseman of the Apocalypse. In Vampire: The Masquerade, the thirteen vampire clans were founded by the thirteen Antediluvians.
• In Warhammer, the evil, rat-like race the Skaven worship the number thirteen. Their strongest spell (one of the strongest non-storm of magic spells) is even called "The dreaded 13th spell".
• In Warhammer 40,000, the thirteenth Black Crusade was by far the most damaging to the Imperium, destroying Cadia and allowing the Eye of Terror to grow unchecked.

Theatre

• Despite its title, 13 is an aversion. The characters aren't unlucky, they're just 13-year-olds. And it sucks to be 13.
• Inverted in Once Upon a Mattress, where there are thirteen princess who wanted to marry Prince Dauntless. The first twelve princess failed the Queen's test; the twelfth is even said to have failed due to bad luck. Winnifred is the thirteenth princess, and she gets the Prince.
• The French play Treize à table is entirely about a superstitious housemistress trying her damnedest to avoid having thirteen people around the dinner table for Christmas Eve.
• The Wild Duck. Used as a Brick Joke. It is stated that the dinner party at the beginning of the play has thirteen guests, and it is handled as an ominous sign. At the end of the play, Gregers Werle muses that he was the thirteenth guest.

Theme Parks

• The roller coaster Th13teen at Alton Towers is named for this trope, in keeping with its Don't Go in the Woods theme.
• The "Icons" of Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream event in 2013 was a sinister group known as "The 13", each member consisting of a different type of horror monster.
• "The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror" amongst the Disney Theme Park Resorts, where the elevator vehicle drops guests 13 stories. The clock in the lobby has stopped at the time 8:05, the official backstory being the lightning struck the hotel at this time; eight plus five equals thirteen.
• The spooky grandfather clock in The Haunted Mansion prominently displays a 13 at the top in place of the usual 12.

Toys

• GoBots
  • Although all non-monster GoBots are good guys, that didn't stop Tonka from keeping 13 off the side of good. Hans Cuff (Patrol Car Robo) was marked MR-13 in Japan, but in America, he was reassigned to #12 as he was one of the Guardians... leaving #13 to a Renegade Gobot, Fly Trap (a recoloured Sanitation Robo MR-26)
  • The Revenge of Cronos reissues assigned another designated Renegade, Tank MRB-13.
• There are several rulers available called 'Lucky Rulers', which miss out the number thirteen.
• Such an unlucky number is featured on jerseys of top athletes in any toyline based on Creatures of the Night, Like Mad Balls and Monster High.
• Transformers: The original Big Bad, Megatron, was originally Micro Change figure #13.

Video Games

• Inverted in 7th Dragon. Come the final installment, the new group of dragonslayers that's recruited to fight against the True Dragons are given the title of Unit 13 because that was the Murakumo unit that did the best in the previous installments.
• Ace Combat:
  • Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation has the Strigon Squad, a Rival Ace Squad to the player in the game. It is noted in Toscha Mijasik's (a.k.a. Strigon 12) Assault record that he retained the team's number 12 since the prelude because of his Triskaidekaphobia (aka a fear of 13). Ironically, the person he looked up to was killed and the city they occupied since day one was liberated on Mission 13!
  • In Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, combining this trope with Four Is Death: Among the Erusean pilots, Yellow 4 and Yellow 13 are constant companions, both in the skies and (implied) off-duty. During the course of the game, the player shoots down and kills Yellow 4, leaving Yellow 13 heartbroken.
• In Ai to Yuuki to Kashiwa Mochi, on the 13th playthrough the title screen will change to show Yuuki as a skeleton. Failing the game 13 times will result in an ending where Yuuki takes Ai away permanently, removing her from the game's title screen and cutscenes.
• BlazBlue: Nu-13 causes the End Of The World repeatedly when awakened underneath the 13th Hierarchical City, Kagutsuchi.
• On the 13th of April in Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, Dina announces that there will be no dinner that night because she lost all her money betting on racehorse #13.
• Inverted in Cookie Clicker, where the Lucky Grandmas upgrade causes your luck-powered Chancemakers to become 1% more efficient per every 13 grandmas you have.
• Creep TV: The poltergeists' TV show, The Ghostly Quiz Show, is on Channel 13.
• In The Darkside Detective, the episode selection screen is in the form of a set of Detective McQueen's case files labeled as "Vol. 13".
• In the sequel, The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark, Detective McQueen visits a black market selling dangerous magical objects, which is located at Pier 13.
• The Japanese subtitle of Eternal Darkness translates as "The 13 Guests". Strangely, there's only 12 playable characters; it's possible the 13th is supposed to be the player.
• Fallout:
  • Subverted in the original Fallout game; the population of Vault 13 turns out to be one of the luckier of the series of 122 long-term nuclear fallout shelters in the continental U.S., given the outcome of most of the other vaults which range from grisly to Fate Worse than Death. It's also the home of the main character of the first game, the ancestral home of the second's main and the number 13 has become iconic in the Fallout series.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, you find your would-be murderer Benny on the thirteenth floor of the Tops Casino.
  • Also, in New Vegas: Honest Hearts, it's revealed that Salt Lake City, the home of Randall Dean Clark, a significant character in the backstory was hit by 13 nukes and completely destroyed.
• Final Fantasy VII: Thanks to being one of Hojo's intended recipients of Jenova cells, and therefore (presumably) a future Sephiroth-clone, Nanaki was given the tattoo "XIII" and even called Red XIII. He is also apparently the last (or next-to-last) of his race; had his father petrified while facing off with the Gi; was held prisoner by Shinra, experimented upon, and was slated for interracial breeding with Aeris; and loses his grandfather during the course of the story. On the other hand, at least he lives all the way through, is still around 500 years later, and is one of the party's better balances between magic-user and brawler, if properly equipped and leveled. And he certainly seems to bear his misfortunes with dignity and fortitude. On the other hand he's a flea-ridden dog thing, so...
• King Ashnard from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is the 13th King of the Daein Kingdom. While it's not known how the previous Kings behaved (other than that they never allowed commoners to become military officers), Ashnard ignites a world-wide war just to awaken a Dark Goddess and shape the world into a Social Darwinist philosophy and wrecked havoc on both neighboring kingdoms and his own kingdom.
• The Wii version of Fortune Street has a number of cards you can draw with various effects if you land on a Suit space. Card 13 is one of the worst in the game — it reduces the value of every property you own by 13%. Annoying if drawn in the early game, devastating if drawn late. It's also the only card to play an ominous theme when drawn.
• God of War III: Hercules takes on Kratos, declaring his defeat of the Ghost of Sparta to be his thirteenth labor. Kratos ends up turning the tables on him and smashing his face in with the Nemean Cestus.
• The Death Arcarum boss in Granblue Fantasy will inflict the "Death Sentence" debuff on your team which, when not cleared, will instantly kill all affected party members after 13 turns.
• Harvest Festival 64: The titular Harvest Festival takes place on Friday the 13th. Predictably, once it starts things go horribly wrong when three of the harvest goers are found dead, then another commits suicide by drowning, and the player finds themself infected.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: The Mad Sun-King Jaran, who started a war to raid all surrounding tribes for Human Sacrifices in a completely doomed attempt to appease the Sun God, was the 13th Sun-King. His son had to kill him and usurp the throne just to keep him from destroying himself and the nation. Note that the culture has no negative association with the number 13 (though they might develop one now).
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Organization XIII consists of thirteen members who like to walk around in Black Cloaks and do nasty things, which is ambiguously justifiable in that they lost their hearts and are trying to reclaim them. The means of trying to reclaim their hearts, however, involves the distortion of the heart of all worlds. Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] reveals that the Organization's true purpose is to serve as vessels to Xehanort, who seeks to reforge the χ-blade by pitting thirteen darknesses against seven lights (the Princesses of Heart). But with Sora foiling his goals, Xehanort is trying again with a second Organization.
  • Sora is described in the Grid as Combatant 13, Foreshadowing Xehanort's plan to use him as his thirteenth vessel.
  • Castle Oblivion, which is used as a base by members of the aforementioned Organization, has thirteen floors.
• You have to look for it, but since the creator of Kingdom of Loathing avoids the number 13 and has gone out of his way to code the various numbering systems to skip it over. (Read more about Kol and 13 here.) 13 is also the minimum level you have to be to take on the Naughty Sorceress, the final quest you get before reincarnating.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: Joshua is revealed to be the former Enforcer No. XIII of Ouroboros. Befitting his Dark and Troubled Past with his home-village Hamel was razed to the ground, he killed a rogue mercenary after the man murdered his sister and Loewe's lover Karin, and he was a puppet of Weissman until being rescued by Cassius.
• Subverted in The Longest Journey where 13 pops up continuously until you learn that it's actually a lucky number in the setting. And an Arc Number, to boot.
• Inverted with the Black Cat in Luck be a Landlord, which gives you 6 coins if you gain a multiple of 13 from a spin, in addition to doubling the value of all Cat symbols. The Essence version of the item self-destructs when there are at least 13 Cats and multiplies their value by 13.
• Minecraft: C418's "13", a music disc that can be obtained, is a sequence of ominous music and the most iconically nightmarish part of the entire game (alongside the cave noises).
• Inverted in Minigore. The player collects Four Leaf Clovers to gain brief spells of invincibility, the first of which always appears when the player's score reaches 13.
• Octopath Traveler: According to the creation myth presented at the beginning of Ophilia's Chapter 1, there were originally 13 creator gods. However, the thirteenth god, Galdera, is the local Satanic Archetype who betrayed the others and was sealed away after a battle, serving as the Greater-Scope Villain of the series.
• In Octopath Traveler II, Kaldena of Night has 13 shield points likely because of her association with shadow magic.
• Pokémon: In several main series games, Absol (a Pokémon that heralds disasters) is found on routes containing the number 13.
• Progressbar 95: 13 acts as a red segment in Progressbar XL. Stepping on a cell with it (or having it reach your position) gives a BSoD.
• In Punch-Out!! for Wii, Mr. Sandman has references to number 13 and its connotation of bad luck. He manages to beat twelve boxers from the WVBA and becomes World champion. Little Mac, the 13th opponent, beats him and not only takes away his hard-earned belt, but also renders his victory track imperfect.^note From the point of view of Mac, the 13th defeated opponent is what nets him the world title. Also, Little Mac has 13 hearts of stamina in both fights against Sandman (the rematch is in Title Defense mode, where the latter is once again the 13th opponent), one of the lowest amounts provided in a fight in the game. Sandman's Contender introduction cutscene is 13 images long (the other boxers only have four-image-long cutscenes), he has to be hit 13 times (in case Star Punches aren't used) after the Berserker Rage is over to be definitely defeated, and even his stats (age, fight record, height) provide nods to number thirteen as well. Something interesting to note is that he, during his World title hold, has the highest rank in the World Circuit, while Aran Ryan (who embodies the Lucky Seven trope) is the lowest in the same circuit.
• The events of Radiant Silvergun occur on July 13th, 2521.
• The unlockable 13-Ship Mode in RayStorm gives you thirteen ships for one credit. Basically, you cycle through four different ship types — if you lose three of one type, you go on to the next. Ship thirteen... is the prototype, bereft of super attacks. And if you destroy Yggdrasil in this mode...well, Secelia's no longer a threat. But Earth was destroyed anyway. (At least the other colonies can go on.) Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that if they sent the inferior prototype, then Earth must have sent all its R-Grays to Secelia. Leaving nobody to stop another fleet's Hannibal from causing an Earth-Shattering Kaboom...
• Inverted in Resident Evil: Project W test subject No. 013, whom we know as Albert Wesker, was one of two subjects (from hundreds), who (kind of) survived the experiment. And got superpowers.
• Ridge Racer series has Soldat Crinale, one of the notorious machines whose number is 13. It's also nicknamed "13th Racing" for that reason. A badass-looking matte black Le Mans Prototype with a frightfully tremendous top speed, but it is very punishing to drive. Those who are able to control it, however, can easily make the competitors eat the dust.
• SHADES of Manhattan, a fighting game created with M.U.G.E.N, features a villain named Thirteen. He was an extremely unlucky man, born on a Friday 13, convicted of a rape he didn't commit, taken from the prison to be a lab rat for Project SHADE as prisoner 13 and has one of the most unfortunate powers: can grow spikes from his hands, feet, elbows and one eye, but they actually produce pain for him. This caused him to grow mad and his main purpose is to inflict as much pain as possible on anyone he sees, specially the game's Big Bad and the cause of his misfortune.
• In the beginning of Shade: Wrath of Angels, you're supposed to meet your brother in room 13 of a hotel. And then you realize the hotel — and the entire town — is deserted, and after exiting room 13 you're attacked by zombies.
• Skullgirls has Idiosyncratic Combo Levels with different lines for certain numbers, the line for a 13-hit combo is "unfortunate".
• A rom hack of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, based on the "Sonic.exe" meme, plays like a regular Sonic game at first. Once thirteen seconds elapse, however, the level Sonic is in will turn into a hellscape with invincible enemies. About thirteen more seconds afterwards, Sonic gets chased by a flying demonic clone.
• SOS happens to be set on September 13, 1921, in which the Lady Crithania is swept in a tidal wave during a violent storm.
• In Super Mario 63, once you get 13 star coins, the game will tell you that a time paradox has set your Shine Sprite total to -3. Subverted as it then says that it was only joking, and instead you've unlocked the Cave tileset.
• In Super Paper Mario, Dorguy the First appears in the underworld and asks a question referencing significant numbers: "Shayde B buys 667 pens for 13 coins each and buys 108 notebooks for 42 coins each. He needs more money, so he takes out 3756 coins from the bank and spends it all. Those are the facts! Now... What is my name?"
• Terranigma has a symbolic clock whose face is numbered to 13:
  "If earth's history is likened to a clock, the hour hand points to 13. A time that cannot exist... No, a time that must not exist."
• In Tokimeki Memorial 4, you need to ask out Okura Miyako on a date 13 times before unlocking her route, at which point she shows her true, dark side that will stalk you, chase her Robbie the Rabbit doll after you if you ''dare'' to go out with another girl and overall proves to be quite... unstable...
• The Upturned: The first floor of the Hell Hotel the game takes place in is Floor 13, which is filled with various superstitions relating to bad luck. You walk underneath ladders at a few points, there is salt spilled on the ground, you can find an open umbrella in a dark corner of the floor and as you go to leave after grabbing the fuse, the mirrors behind you shatter.
• Reila of Valkyria Chronicles III has had her name erased from the records and replaced with the title "Number 13". This number was likely chosen because she is the Sole Survivor of several army squads and is viewed as The Jinx.
• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School takes places on March 13th, on the night before White Day — a holiday similar to Valentine's Day in Western countries — and the protagonist enters the school in the dead of night to deliver candy to a girl he likes. Cue the entire school becoming more and more of a hellish nightmare.

Webcomics

• Erma: The titular character was born on October 13th, with the comic showing this coming out Friday the 13th October 2017. As for why it's unlucky, well Erma is an Apocalypse Maiden.
• Sleepless Domain: This is referenced and inverted on Chapter 13, Page 13, in which Zoe narrowly manages to save Rue's life in Big Damn Hero fashion. The Alt Text notes that evidently, the two thirteens cancel out to make a very lucky double negative.

Web Original

• On Day 13 of Ashens' 2019 advent calendar series, he opens the door to find nothing at all.
  Ashens: Fucking hell, unlucky for some!
• The thirteenth song in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog? Everything You Ever : A lament on Penny's death and Dr. Horrible's Start of Darkness.
• Inverted in Epithet Erased: The character Giovanni has an ability where every 13th hit he lands is stronger. It's played straight if you're on the opposite side of the hit, though.
• It's parodied to some extent in the Mystic Island series. Sam complains that it's "real bad luck" to have 13 people on an island together, to which Dennis responds by saying, "Well, you can't just kill one of them, it'd be bad for morale." Norm then comes up with a solution: killing the thirteenth survivor and carving his head into a festive jack-o-lantern, which he believes will offset any reduction to morale.
• SCP Foundation:
  • There's a funny story; originally, there were twelve overseers, but Clef's SCP-001 proposal had a secret O5-13 in charge of monitoring it, with the purpose of alerting the Foundation to the imminent end of the world. However, other contributors started referring to a thirteen-member O5 council because that let there be a tiebreaker vote, so Clef changed the reference to O5-14.
  • There's the fate of Site-13. In the baseline reality, it was just a scrapped project plan, but then a destroyed Alternate Universe version of it, crawling with all kinds of uncontained deadly entities, suddenly appeared. Exploration of the site quickly reveals that something very, very bad had led to its current state.
  • SCP-87 is an eldritch, seemingly endless stairwell where each flight of stairs contains exactly 13 steps.
  • SCP-261 is a pan-dimensional vending machine that gives different snacks depending on the amount of money inserted into it. Giving it 13 yen resulted in a box of stale "Unlucky Charms".
• Survival of the Fittest v4: Reiko Ishida is Female Student no. 13. She's also a Psycho Lesbian and multi-murderer.
• Unus Annus was deliberately scheduled so that it would end on a Friday the 13th, to reflect the channel's theme of death and mortality.
• In We're Alive, the Tower has no thirteenth floor because of this.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: Anne Boonchuy was teleported by the Calamity Box to Amphibia on her 13th birthday.
• Arthur: In "Friday the 13th", Brain gets frustrated at everyone’s belief in superstitions and tries to prove that they aren’t real. Afterwards, he experiences several days of bad luck, making him too afraid to leave the house on Friday the 13th without a bag full of lucky charms.
• An episode of The Care Bears Family centered around Friday The 13th being a day of bad luck.
• Codename: Kids Next Door
  • Numbuh 13 is a ridiculously unlucky person who always gave trouble for anyone under his proximity. Indeed he is loathed so much by the Kids Next Door that when he gets tagged to become the Supreme Leader, everyone dogpiled him so as not to let him become the leader, despite them not being keen on the idea of becoming their Supreme Leader.
  • 13 is the age when a kid becomes a teenager. In this series, if a KND member becomes 13, they are to be decommissioned and must go through a Laser-Guided Amnesia process, forgetting that they ever joined the team. This is bad because afterwards, the teen will most likely go through a Start of Darkness, and join other teens to fight against the Kids Next Door. At best they become apathetic and oblivious to the ongoing conflict. Unless the operative with outstanding achievments, like Maurice, in which case the decomission is a farce and the agent works as an undercover teen.
• Johnny "13" first appears in the thirteenth episode of Danny Phantom, and fittingly enough the episode's title is "13". He claims to have a "reputation for being unlucky." He can also summon a Living Shadow that is also unlucky. Johnny's bad luck also seems to affect his Biker Chick girlfriend, Kitty.
• The number 13 has popped up a few times in Detentionaire. For example, Wing 13 of the Green Apple Splat factory is a creepy, dark, seemingly haunter corridor, and it's where the survivors of the old factory's meltdown were kept, since they all went insane because of the fumes. Of course, the protagonists have to go through it to escape the second meltdown. Also, students are periodically called down to Room 113 B, which actually leads to the underground brainwashing rooms.
• Donald Duck:
  • Donald's car is the "313" — it's known for being extremely unreliable. (It's also the area code for Detroit.)
  • Donald Duck was also born on Friday the 13th, according to some sources. Notably, in The Three Caballeros, Donald's birthday gift from South America notes his birthday as "Friday the 13th". Subverted in this case as his birthday gift that year was a magical tour of Mexico and South America. A bit trippy, but not anything unlucky or unpleasant at all.
  • One cartoon, Donald's Lucky Day, has a very superstitious Donald delivering a package on Friday the 13th to 1313 13th Street. Naturally, the package is a bomb.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Anti-Fairies escape to cause bad luck on Friday the 13th.
• Rock Bottom from the Felix the Cat TV cartoons is a mean cuss but he's also superstitious. It's Friday the 13th (from the cartoon of the same name) and whatever can go wrong for Rock does go wrong, which he blames on Felix (what being a black cat and all).
• Hey Arnold!:
  • Eugene, The Chew Toy and resident jinx, was born on a Friday the 13th.
  • One episode, aptly named "Friday the 13th", revolved around this: Arnold and Gerald are convinced they are cursed with seven years of bad luck after they break a mirror, but every bad thing that happened to them was actually perpetrated by the fifth grade bullies, Wolfgang and Edmund. It is after they find Edmund's purple gum on Gerald's fake garlic chain after outrunning a swarm of bees do they catch on and exact revenge on the bullies.
• Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: In the episode Cursed! Ami and Yumi find that they have given themselves 100 years of good luck by breaking both of their instruments at the same time. However, a series of unlucky events occur over the episode, such as Yumi breaking a mirror and both girls being given rice with the chopsticks sticking straight up in the bowl. This cancels out the good luck, leaving them with just one year left. The camera then pans over to a calendar which shows that the date is Friday the 13th, presumably cancelling out their final year of good luck. As well as this, it’s possible to see in a Freeze-Frame Bonus that the bill for Ami and Yumi’s cursed rice comes to exactly $13.00.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Experiment #113, also known as Shoe, is a creature who is capable of causing either good or bad luck. Lilo initially believes that he can only cause misfortune, but she finds that by pointing his horns upwards that he can create good luck instead. Shoe’s number and luck-manipulating powers are a likely reference to the superstitions surrounding the number 13.
• The Little King: In Sultan Pepper, the titular Sultan and his harem come to stay with the Little King. When they all sit down to dinner the Sultan notices that there are thirteen people, so he then takes one of the women and shoots her, all because "Thirteen at the table is bad luck."
• Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies:
  • In "Claws for Alarm", Porky and Sylvester check into a decrepit hotel, where Porky is blissfully unaware of a group of mice that are trying to off him. The room they spend the night in is numbered 13.
  • In "Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas", Yosemite Sam directs Bugs Bunny to a slot machine marked "unlucky" which, among other things, has the 7s replaced with 13s. Bugs manages to win at it anyway due to his Lucky Rabbit's Feet.
  • In "Plane Daffy", Pigeon 13 is The Ditz who ends up spilling war secrets to the Nazis. When he realises what he's done, he tries to shoot himself... And misses.
  • In "Porky's Railroad", Porky's outdated train has the number 13 1/2.
  • In "Thugs With Dirty Mugs", Killer Diller robs every National Bank except the 13th due to superstition.
  • In "Wholly Smoke", the villainous Nick O'Teen lives at 1313 Tobacco Road.
• Jinxy Jenkins & Lucky Lou: Jinxy Jenkins was Born Unlucky. When we first see him, he is walking out of his house, whose street number is 13.
• Kim Possible: The cabin Ron stayed in during his many nightmarish summers at Camp Wannaweep: Cabin 13.
• The 13th short of Love, Death & Robots is fittingly called "Lucky 13", and is about a drop ship that is considered unlucky because its serial number is 13-02313; not only does that number begin and end in 13, all the digits also add up to 13.
• Megas XLR: In "Rearview Mirror, Mirror", Evil Coop's mecha's number is 13; MEGAS, driven by the real Coop, bears the number 12.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Dungeons and Discords", Discord makes his big entrance wearing a #13 basketball jersey, foreshadowing how badly the Guys' Night will start out.
• Noveltoons: In the short “The Stupidstitious Cat”, Buzzy the Crow mocks the titular cat for his superstitions, only to panic himself when he realises that the date is Friday the 13th.
• Thirteen from Numberblocks is so unlucky that he splits into Ten and Three every time he hears his name. Twenty-Six, being a multiple of Thirteen, also splits when he hears his name.
• A classic Popeye short had Bluto ripping a leaf from Olive Oyl's calendar so she'd think it was "Fri 13" instead of "Thur 12".
• Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown: Things usually go wrong for poor Charlie Brown even without extra help from bad luck charms, but naturally when the Peanuts gang goes to summer camp, Charlie Brown and the other boys are assigned to tent 13.
• In Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters, the thirteenth floor of Hotel Sedgwick is reserved for dwelling ghosts and their guests.
• Parodied in The Ren & Stimpy Show. Ren was born on Tuesday the 17 (which would follow a Friday the 13th) and is, as a result, extremely unlucky.
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • In one episode, Rocko and Heffer board a plane with flight number 1313. All kinds of misfortune occur on their flight.
  • In "Gutter Balls", Filburt is anxious about bowling on lane #13, saying that it's "terribly unlucky".
• Ruby Gloom features a character named Misery who is known to be extremely unlucky, to the point where she is often struck by lightning. An episode dealing with Friday the 13th ends up being her luckiest day ever, though she is explicitly annoyed by it, while her friends adapt to their own string of bad luck. When the episode ends, the day is over and Misery is unlucky again, much to her relief.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: The series is about Scooby and Scrappy Doo, Daphne, Shaggy and the newest member of Mystery Inc., Flim Flam, releasing the thirteen most terrifying ghosts ever from the Chest of Demons and trying to put them all back. Among those ghosts from said chest is the Reflector Spector, otherwise known as a Mirror Demon, from the episode "Reflections in a Ghoulish Eye", who resides in a cursed mirror in a hotel room in Marrakesh, Morocco, aptly numbered 1313. The really unlucky thing though was that we never got a chance to see them finish the job, as the show coincidentally only lasted thirteen episodes. However, over 30 years after the show aired, the TV movie Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost served as the series' belated conclusion.
• The Simpsons:
  • The Treehouse of Horror story "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" starts "on the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteenth month" with a meeting to discuss the misprinted calendars bought by the town.^note "Lousy Smarch weather..."
  • In "Realty Bites", the Murder House has the residential ID "1313".
• South Park: In "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" and "The Losing Edge" Kenny's player number is 13, in reference to his many deaths.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Sailor Mouth", where SpongeBob, Patrick and Mr. Krabs learn about the dangers of using swear words, there are thirteen cuss words they try to refrain from using, but end up using them anyway. Each of the thirteen curse words are censored out with nautical sounds, with the main curse word, Number 11, represented by a dolphin's cackle.
  Squidward: Don't you mean there are only seven?
  Mr. Krabs: Not if you're a sailor. (laughs)
• Stunt Dawgs: While the heroes really suffered bad luck in that day, Lucky, who's usually unlucky, was extremely lucky that day.
• Superfriends: In Challenge of the Superfriends, the Legion of Doom has thirteen members.
• It is revealed in the TaleSpin episode, "The Balooest of the Bluebloods" that Baloo is the 13th successor to the Bruinwald family and the latest heir to the family castle. However, ever since he stayed there, there had been many attempts at his life by the ones who would inherit the estate once all the Bruinwalds are gone. It's slightly averted since Baloo managed to survive unlike his predecessors, but then played straight again since he also loses the castle due to the family's back tax delinquency and it is repossessed to pay it all off. To add insult to injury, he still owes $1.89.
• The Top Cat episode "Rafeefleas" has T.C. collecting money for a pizza from the gang (as part of a scheme to get free pizzas for each of them), and Brain has thirteen cents.
  T.C.: Thirteen is an unlucky number. Get rid of that hoodoo! (Brain drops the money in T.C.'s hat)
• Transformers: The thirteenth original Transformer is Megatronus Prime, who actually betrays his twelve brothers to serve Unicron, hence his new title, The Fallen.
• In a song sequence from U.S. Acres, Orson jumps on the numbers 11, 12, 13, and 14 while singing "Don't be suspicious, it's all fictitious!", and once Orson is done walking, Wade hops over the number 13, thinking it's bad luck.
• In Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death, twelve bakers have been murdered, and Wallace appears destined to be the thirteenth victim. Especially since his new fiancee Piella is the murderer.
• One episode of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? took place on Friday the 13th. It starts off with Zack losing his lucky rabbit's foot and things go downhill from there.
• Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!: In "Mr. Unlucky", Wubbzy notices he and Daizy are on 13th street and knows everyone thinks 13 is an unlucky number.
• In Young Justice (2010), the Justice League gives authorized designation numbers to anyone using their Zeta Tube transports or who needs to get into one of their hideouts. There are separate subcategories for the League (no prefix), the Team (B-), Authorized Guests (A-), and pets (C-). The pet subcategory doesn't go up to 13 yet, the League's 13 is unremarkably Black Canary, and A-13 is the similarly unremarkable retired original Flash, Jay Garrick. However, the Team's B-13 is the second Robin, Jason Todd, who is implicitly the first member of the team to die. Metatextually, Jason is famous in the original comic books for being disliked enough that DC staged a publicity stunt where readers got to vote on whether or not The Joker killed him — and the pro-death side won.

Real Life

• The first Canadian cabinet had thirteen cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. Out of respect for the superstition that thirteen could not sit down at a table, twelve sat at the cabinet table while the remaining member sat at a small table off at the side. The original cabinet room is maintained the way it was, and is shown on tours of the East Block of the Parliament Buildings.
• The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose contains multiple thirteens: thirteen steps, thirteen candles in a candelabra, and so forth. Since Sarah Winchester built (and built, and built...) the house to confound the spirits of those killed by the Winchester Rifle, perhaps the multiple thirteens were meant as bad luck for ghosts.
• This is inverted in Italy, where 13 is the lucky number. There is an expression in Italian, "Fare trédici", which means "to get lucky".
• The Madrid Metro Network names its lines after numbers (Line 1, Line 2, Line 3, etc.), except for one, Line R. For decades, it stood in the third place in the network list between L2 and L3, as it was the third line to be ever built, back in 1925, as a branch of Line 2. That is, until a Line 12 was finished and plans for a new line arose — then, Line R was immediately demoted to the 13th place in the list, and the new one was given the name of "Line 14", making 13 the only number not represented in the network..
• Each modern version of Microsoft Office, prior to being titled with its year of release, is codenamed by its technical version number. For example, Office 2010 (version 14.0.4760.1000) was codenamed 'Office 14' while in development. However, there was never an 'Office 13'. Office 2007, the version prior to 2010, was version 12 and codenamed 'Office 12'. Microsoft have even stated this was for superstitious reasons. This might be a Hand Wave, since Office 2010 is actually the 14th iteration of Microsoft Office, if you include the Mac editions. Office 2008 for Mac was the 13th iteration. But it doesn't help that Microsoft started weird numbering conventions; the first version of Office for Windows, for instance, was 3.0.
• Irish car number plating went by year (eg. 09, 10, 11, etc) until 2013. In 2013, the government decided to change this method in 2013 to 131 and 132. Of course, the official reason was "to boost car sales mid-year", but the government admitted fear of the trope driving buyers away.
• British hospital wards never have a Bed 13; either the numbers skip from 12 to 14, or the ward has beds "12a" and "12b."
• Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem was afraid of the number 13, so all his manuscripts labeled the 13th page "12a." He died on May 13; popular legend says that his gravestone lists it as "12a," but in actuality the dates are given by the Hebrew calendar, making his death date Iyar 10.
• Back in the days when television stations would broadcast over the UHF band, stations that broadcast on channel 13 sometimes used a black cat as their mascot, conspicuously displaying the number 13, to make fun of their status as the "unlucky" channel.
• Because of the superstition about thirteen people at the dinner table, in Paris, France, a quatorzième is a professional dinner guest whose job is simply to sit in and add a fourteenth person just to avoid this trope.
• German composer Arnold Schoenberg was extremely superstitious about the number thirteen, even going so far as to entitle one of his operas Moses und Aron because the correct spelling "Aaron" would have given the title thirteen letters. All his life he had a fear that he would die during a year that was a multiple of thirteen, and consequently he was very relieved when he made it past his 65th birthday. But when he turned 76, someone pointed out that 7 + 6 = 13, which had not occured to Schoenberg to worry about before. On Friday, July 13 that year, the anxiety proved too much for him, and he took to his bed and ultimately had a fatal heart attack... about 13 minutes before midnight.
• Apollo 13 is the only NASA mission to be so numbered. Mercury missions were named rather than numbered, Gemini missions only went up to 12, and Space Shuttle mission designators were changed after STS-9 (and not changed back until after the Challenger disaster) so that what would have been STS-13 was actually called STS-41C.
• The Savoy Hotel in London uses a sculpture of a cat, named "Kaspar" to occupy a chair to ensure that no table in any of the hotel's refreshment venues will ever have 13 at it.
• Garry Kasparov inverted this, claiming 13 as his lucky number. He was, after all, the 13th World Chess Champion, born on April 13, 1963.
• The RMS Titanic did not have any cabins with the number 13. However, it did have a lifeboat with such number. During the sinking, Lifeboat No. 15 was almost lowered on top of No. 13. Thankfully, someone used a knife to cut the ropes to No. 13 before No. 15 could reach the water.
• USS Fletcher is an inversion, as her crew were known to consider 13 lucky. Her hull number was DD-445 (adds up to 13), she was originally part of Task Force 67 (also adds up to 13) and participated in the naval battle of Guadalcanal on Friday, November 13, as the 13th ship in a 13-ship line of battle. Fletcher would escape said battle unscathed, unlike almost every other destroyer present (the only other undamaged ship being fellow Fletcher-class O'Bannon) and continued to serve until 1969.
• When the logo of Brussels Airlines was first revealed, it just so happened to contain 13 dots. The company received so many complaints from superstitious passengers that they had to redesign the logo to add an extra dot.
• Funnily enough, in number theory, 13 is both a lucky number and a fortunate number. Of course this doesn't mean that the number is actually considered to be lucky — for the former, "lucky" refers to the number surviving the sieving process, while the latter was named after Reo Fortune.
• San Francisco is conspicuously missing a 13th avenue, with Funston Avenue (named after Frederick Funston) occupying the space between 12th and 14th.

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