As The Dresden Files is a novel series of over seventeen books and counting narrated by a whole cast of Deadpan Snarkers, there's naturally several Running Gags to have cropped up, some being restricted to only one novel, some being found more in the first few books before being moved past along with the rest of the series' Early-Installment Weirdness, and others being series-wide.
WARNING! Unmarked Spoilers BELOW! You have been warned!
Series-Wide
- Harry Dresden's constant dated pop-culture and movie references. Initially Murphy always had something to say about them, but by the later books they exist primarily to confuse the bad guys, who don't have any idea what he's talking about.Harry: [to the centuries-old vessel of a fallen angel, who didn't get the reference] Some people wouldn't know a pop culture reference if it jumped up and planted an embryo in their esophagus.
- Harry has a whole grab-bag of jokes about the massive size of both Mister and Mouse, usually related to their eating habits and/or breeding.
- Bob's obsession with sex, and Harry's frequent use of pornography as a bribe. There's also the utter bafflement of first Harry and later Thomas with Bob being able to convey certain emotions/sounds/facial expressions despite just being a glowing skull.
- Harry blows up and/or burns down buildings. A lot. So much so that the opening line of Blood Rites is "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault."
- It's gotten to the point that as of White Night, "Gentleman" John Marcone instructs all his various businesses/clubs to treat Dresden nicely, hopefully lessening the chance of the place winding up as rubble.
- The tabletop RPG takes this running gag up to eleven and makes the above quote from Blood Rites one of Harry's aspects (defining character elements) along with repeatedly mentioning the joke in the margin comments.
- By the time of Cold Days, Harry himself is a bit astonished that he hasn't burned down a building in quite a while.
- Harry's inability to speak Latin very well whenever he tries to speak it on his own. Stupid Latin correspondence course. "Stupid" lots of things, really.
- Harry always getting the utter crap kicked out of him. This one even makes it into the comments in the RPG sourcebooks, one of the sidebars comments between Billy the Werewolf and Harry is as follows:Harry: How come most of the pictures of me show me beat to crap, Billy?
Will: Are you on a case right now, Harry?
Harry: Yeah.
Will: Then you're beat to crap?
Harry: Oh. Right. - Harry's narration starting with "Two things happened."
- MacAnally's Pub, the most-commonly used neutral ground for the series' supernatural community, is operated by "Mac", a fellow who brews his own beer. It is served warm (which offends American drinking sensibilities) but everyone who tries it for the first time goes through a virtually identical routine: a dubious look at the bottle, a small sip for politeness's sake, a surprised stare at the bottle (often followed by an equally surprised stare at Mac), and a considerably larger pull from the bottle.
- Mac then goes on to one-up himself in Small Favor by producing three bottles of what is obviously his private reserve. The contents are apparently as far above his usual brew as they themselves are above fill-in-the-name-of-your-least-favorite-mega-brew-here.
- The Blue Beetle (Harry's beloved car) being The Alleged Car turned up to eleven.
- Harry calling people he doesn't like "jerks". This even gets lampshaded in the RPG where Jerks has it's own entry in the appendix.
- Harry engaging in a lot of Parenthetical Swearing when around Michael.
- A bit of in/out universe example — on every single cover Harry is depicted wearing a hat, despite never having one in the books. It goes to the point where Harry usually, about once per book, make mention of how he should get a hat like everyone keeps telling him to.
- Everyone mistaking Harry and Thomas for gay lovers.
- Various characters responding to backhanded or misfired compliments with "...Um, thank you?"
- The phrase "Damn, I'm good" being used by various characters. It started out with Harry getting cornered right after thinking it to himself, and being on the receiving end of an Ironic Echo.
- Supernaturally-inclined baddies having an Oh, Crap! reaction when Harry pulls out a revolver, with some of the more prominent examples being Fool Moon, "Day Off", and Skin Game.
- Detective Rudolph being called "Rudolph the Brown-Nosed Reindeer" by Harry.
- Beginning in Dead Beat, Mouse frequently turns up with sauce on his jowls from whatever human food he's been scarfing down, either because Thomas left his dirty dishes out or the Carpenter kids have been slipping him treats.
- Starting with Proven Guilty, Harry claims that keeping his allies Locked Out of the Loop is "like heroin for wizards." And related to this, Harry simply saying "Wizard" as an explanation for whenever someone asks him about magical shenanigans going down and he doesn't know the cause either.
- First starting with Small Favor, some characters and Harry in particular refer to Nicodemus Archleone and the Denarians as "Nicky and the Nickelheads."
- Harry's particular method of becoming the Winter Knight in Changes, and people who are aware of it. Among other things, he slept with Mab, and she made sure all of Faerie saw it happen. He's understandably embarrassed about it.
Individual Novels/Short Stories
- One that's mostly confined to Summer Knight. In that book, Harry has to fight a plant monster, but realizes that it needs a better name, so he calls it a "chlorofiend". The naming proves pointless, as the standard exchange shows:Harry: A chlorofiend.
[Other Character]: What?
Harry: A plant monster.
[Other Character]: Oh. Right.- Another one specific to Summer Knight: Various characters remarking on Harry needing a haircut. (Lea eventually gets in on the action: she thinks he looks like a dandylion. That needs a haircut.)
- In Death Masks, after Anna Valmont steals it from him around the middle of the second act, people keep asking Harry what happened to his Badass Longcoat with a confused "What happened to your coat?"
- In Small Favor, everyone says Harry (who gets two black eyes and a broken nose early on) looks like a raccoon. This list of people eventually includes Harry himself.
- From Turn Coat, there's:
- Harry making recurring references to the fact that visiting the White Council is just like going to Disneyland.
- Every time Harry comes back to his apartment, he finds Morgan and Molly (and occasionally another participant) in the middle of some sort of Mexican Standoff, with Mouse keeping the peace, usually by sitting on someone. However, the third time this happens it's a decidedly somber and depressing affair.
- In Ghost Story, Harry is continually complaining about how much he hates being "the new guy" concerning ghost-iness.
- Throughout all of Cold Days, Harry and Thomas have a "Nice," "Thanks," routine concerning various quips or innuendoes they're making.
- Whenever Harry jumps over something in Skin Game, he shouts "Parkour!"
- The same aforementioned book also has Binder telling off-color stories, with Harry never being in the room to hear the whole joke and only coming in right when the punchline is being delivered.
Earlier Novels (i.e., Storm Front to Blood Rites)
- No matter how many times Harry's told them he doesn't have electricity, he still gets junk mail from electronics retailers.
- The long-running lawsuit from a Captain Ersatz of Jerry Springer.
- In the first three books, there's the recurring situation of Harry ending up either naked or dressed in borrowed and/or scavenged clothing, which was always something humiliating or bizarre such as a shirt with a peculiar slogan (Storm Front), purple sweatpants (Fool Moon) or yellow duck boxers (Grave Peril). It comes back in Cold Days when he gets all of his clothes literally burned off of his body and with no other options, Harry basically creates a censor blur around his privates with a crummy veil.
- Similarly, in the first few books he'd usually end up in handcuffs at some point, and ends up wearing them on one wrist for a good portion of the book. It gets to the point where Murphy asks if he has some sort of fascination with them.
- Whenever Harry asks someone what's wrong with his Badass Longcoat, they always say the exact same thing: "It belongs on the set of El Dorado." Cops, Knights of the Cross, little girls, everyone.
