Sherlock Holmes / Sherlock Holmes - Tropes O to T

This page is for tropes that have appeared in the Sherlock Holmes short stories.

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• Obfuscating Insanity: Holmes himself, in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", pretends to be delirious, rambling about oysters and loose change, in order to catch the villain off guard — or more precisely to convince Watson, who will then convince the villain.
• Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: An unintentional example in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" where a person is found dead with a head wound and a murder is suspected. In reality, he died of a stroke, and hit his head on the fireplace fender while falling.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • Two of the last stories Doyle wrote ("The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" and "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane") are narrated by Holmes, and the latter does not feature Watson at all.
  • "The Mazarin Stone", by virtue of being adapted from a stage play, is written in third person. Watson also barely shows up, as the original stage play didn't feature him.
  • "His Last Bow" is also written in the third person, and is written much more as a spy story rather than a mystery.
  • "How Watson Learned The Trick" was a special publication for a national event, only a few paragraphs long, and also in third person.
• Oh, Crap!: In "The Illustrious Client", Watson has this reaction when he sees the headline "Murderous Attack upon Sherlock Holmes". He's so shocked and horrified he forgets to pay the newspaper vendor.
• Old Friend: After being essentially absent for 6 books, Tobias Gregson treats Holmes like one when they meet up in "The Adventure of the Red Circle".
• On One Condition: In "The Three Garridebs", a will stipulates that a man with the extremely rare surname Garrideb will inherit a property provided that he can find two other people with the same surname. The property will be split between the three of them. However, just two Garridebs would get nothing. The trope turns out to have been purposefully invoked by the villain, who made the whole thing up for his own purposes.
• Only a Flesh Wound:
  • Subverted. Doyle (unsurprisingly given that he was a doctor) accurately treats Watson's wound in Afghanistan as highly physically debilitating. Unfortunately, he could rarely remember exactly where the wound was...
  • And then there's the time in "The Three Garridebs" when it was only a flesh wound, giving us a heartwarming moment when we see Holmes really and truly frightened at the thought of Watson being hurt — and coldly telling the shooter that his own life would have been forfeit if Watson had been killed.
• Only-Child Syndrome: "The Sussex Vampire" has a young boy deal very badly with the birth of his half-brother to the point of trying to murder him with a curare dart, even more so when the baby is perfectly healthy when the older one has a spinal injury.
• Only Friend: Holmes's idiosyncrasies and general lack of interest in other humans except as puzzles ensures that Watson is his entire social circle. In later stories he acquires other contacts that he gets along with, but none so well as Watson.
• Only in It for the Money: Holmes' primary motivation for becoming the King of Bohemia's henchman, in 'A Scandal In Bohemia.' God knows there wasn't a shred of honour in it. Although a later radio adaptation does have Holmes also point out in his defence that a man who's already gone to the lengths the King has tried to get the photo back isn't likely to baulk at eventually deciding on more drastic measures, and at least if he gets involved he can get it back with a minimum of fuss and harm to Miss Adler.
• Opium Den: Watson goes to one in "The Man With the Twisted Lip" to retrieve a friend who has become an opium addict. He then finds Holmes, who is there in a different case.
• Orgy of Evidence: In "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", there is already considerable evidence incriminating the suspect in the eyes of the police, but the clincher is a bloody thumbprint of the suspect on the wall. Holmes finds this suspicious, especially as he had carefully searched that hall the day before, and there had been no bloody thumbprint there, making the clue in his eyes proof that it was a setup.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Watson, who is intelligent and capable in his own right; he just pales in comparison to Holmes.
• Pet Positive Identification: Holmes has solved more than one case by observing the behaviour of pets around their owners and/or the owner's imposter:
  • In Holmes' adventure of Silver Blaze, the stables' guard dog doesn't bark, showing that it was familiar with the man who took the titular horse from his stall: namely, John Straker.
  • Holmes uses a dog to help solve The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place. When released, the dog bounds towards his mistress' carriage, but snaps angrily at her when he gets close. Holmes realizes that the "woman" is an imposter — actually her brother in disguise. The man had given the dog away in order to avoid such a reveal.
• Pinball Protagonist: Holmes and Watson don't really do anything in "The Yellow Face." They listen to a man's story and advise him not to make a move until they can join him. Holmes comes up with a theory, which turns out to be wrong. They join the man and the mystery is solved, but it would have been even if the man had never come to them.
• Pinkerton Detective: In "The Red Circle" one has come from America to catch an Italian criminal.
• Pinned to the Wall: In "The Adventure of Black Peter", the eponymous Black Peter is found pinned to the wall of a shed by a harpoon.
• Pistol-Whipping: Watson subdues Colonel Moran at the end of "The Adventure of the Empty House" by hitting him over the head with his revolver.
• Plucky Girl: Violet Hunter from "Copper Beeches", whose own inquisitiveness uncovers all the clues needed to solve the mystery, and who single-handedly locks Mrs. Toller in the cellar to give Holmes and Watson the opportunity to search the house.
• Police Are Useless: In the early stories, the men of Scotland Yard were a collection of incompetent dullards who'd have trouble catching a cold, much less a criminal. Holmes' dim view of the police was actually Truth in Television at the time, such as fouling up the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders, and as the real-life police took steps to improve their investigative techniques, their depictions in the stories also improved to the point where Inspector Gregson was praised for his courage and Inspector Lestrade was a more thorough investigator who simply lacked Holmes' Hyper-Awareness. The police were also generally portrayed as having their own merits and being capable of solving the everyday cases that were beneath Holmes' notice. However, in "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge", the country detective Baynes is nearly up to Holmes' standard for observation (finding and analysing the crumpled note in the fireplace) and tactical cleverness (the false arrest). Holmes handsomely congratulates him, saying "You will rise high in your profession."
• Poor Communication Kills: The mystery of "The Missing Three-Quarter" could have been cleared up in half the time, and with considerably less effort, were it not that one of the characters leaps to a reasonable but incorrect assumption about the aim of Holmes's investigation, and instead of taking five seconds to ask Holmes what he's doing sets about trying to thwart him as much as possible when really they have the same goals.
• Post-Adventure Adventure: Dr. Watson does this a lot. Many of the stories include references to other cases Holmes solved previously which never actually appear in the canon; such references serve either as this or as a Noodle Incident. (Many of these have since been taken up by pastiche authors.) Holmes himself will also allude to such cases from time to time, such as in this remark he makes in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire":
  "Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson... It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."
• Post-Victory Collapse: Holmes at the beginning of "The Reigate Puzzle", following the wrapping-up of a case that required weeks of unstinting effort, and resulting in the Busman's Holiday that occupies the main plot of the story.
• Prejudice Aesop: The Adventure of the Yellow Face contains a remarkably progressive anti-racist message for its time. The client hires Holmes to find out why his wife keeps asking him for money and not revealing what it is for. He also spies her making visits to a cottage and spots someone with a hideous jaundiced and deformed face from the window. He suspects a blackmailing plot, but when Holmes enters the cottage and confronts the yellow-faced individual, it is revealed to be a young black child wearing a mask. Turns out the wife was previously in an interracial marriage before her husband died, and she has been hiding their child out of fear that her current husband will leave her if he finds out that she was married to a black man. The story ends with the client picking up the child, kissing the young girl, and saying "I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being."
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: In "The Solitary Cyclist", a man in love with Holmes's pretty, young client interrupts the story's villain forcing the girl to marry him.
  Villain: You're too late. She's my wife.
  Admirer: No, she's your widow.
  And then shoots him. Subverted in that the villain survives.
• Private Detective: One of the first to popularize the genre. However, Holmes describes himself as a Consulting Detective, which he claims is different from an ordinary Private Eye— he takes the cases that are too hard for the Police Detectives and Private Investigators.
• Professor Guinea Pig:
  • In "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", Holmes' working hypothesis is that some unusual ashes he discovers become, when burned, a powerful poison. He tests his hypothesis... by burning the ashes while Holmes and Watson sit down and find out if they get poisoned or not. Holmes does take precautions, but even so appears to underestimate the possible potency of the poison, and only quick action by Watson saves both of their lives.
  • The man who introduces Holmes and Watson to each other notes that Holmes would be perfectly willing to inject someone with poison to document its effects... although in fairness, he'd have no problem testing it on himself. Sure enough, at their first meeting Holmes pricks himself without hesitation to have some blood for a forensic test.
• The Profiler: Both Holmes and Watson often fancy themselves to be this, sometimes correct and sometimes not.
• Psycho Serum: In "The Adventure of the Creeping Man", the title character is revealed to be taking a rejuvenating serum derived from monkeys, which as a side effect causes him to take on the attributes of a monkey.
• Public Secret Message: Multiple examples. Conan Doyle seemed to like this one.
  • In "The Adventure of the Red Circle", someone places ads in the London Daily Gazette' "agony column" to send secret messages.
  • "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" also features messages in an agony column as a clue, this time in the Daily Telegraph.
  • In "The Adventure of the Dancing Men", a series of dancing stick figures appeared in several locations visible to anyone who passed by. Holmes decides the figures represent letters and decodes the message.
• Purple Prose: Holmes accuses Watson's writing style of being this. He's forced to admit that writing it in a decidedly more clinical style does in fact make for a less interesting read.
• Put on a Bus: Poor Mary throughout most of The Memoirs. Then, in "The Empty House", we're given an indirect indication that the bus crashed.
• Quivering Lip: in "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box", is able to break in on Watson's thoughts in part because of Watson's quivering lips and Wistful Smile.
  Holmes: Your hand stole towards your own old wound and a smile quivered on your lips, which showed me that the ridiculous side of this method of settling international questions had forced itself upon your mind.
• Rail Enthusiast: Watson can recite the rail schedules off the top of his head.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Mary, Mr Holder's niece in "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet", has dark hair and absolute pallor skin (though that may just be due to the shock from the events that had happened).
• Real Award, Fictional Character: As of "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez" Holmes has a Légion d'honneur, and we are told in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" that he once refused a knighthood.
• Real Fake Wedding: Inverted in "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist", where the groom claims the pastor (and therefore the wedding) was legitimate. Holmes replies that even if the pastor was real (doubtful at best) the forced wedding won't hold up in court.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Of the Spontaneous Eloquent Monologue type. Watson notes that several passages have been edited for clarity to avoid repetitions and hesitations by clients.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: A few morally guilty parties don't face the law, but leave for faraway (though free) positions:
  • In "The Three Students," the cheating student Gilchrist decides to go off to be a police officer in Rhodesia.
  • In "The Priory School," the Duke's illegitimate son James is sent to make his fortune in Australia.
  • In "The Sussex Vampire," Holmes recommends that Ferguson's elder son Jacky be sent away to sea.
  • In "The Devil's Foot," the killer of Mortimer Tregennis is Dr. Sterndale, in revenge for Mortimer's horrible murder of his own sister, with whom Dr. Sterndale was in love. Dr. Sterndale is allowed to depart for Africa.
• Recorded Audio Alibi: "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" contains what is probably the Ur-Example and Trope Maker. Holmes offers the villainous Count Negretto Sylvius and his helper, boxer Sam Merton, freedom if they give up the eponymous jewel, or jail if not. He invites them to discuss the deal while he plays violin in the next room. When the Count decides to double-cross Holmes and takes the stone from his secret pocket to show Sam in window light, the detective springs from the chair in place of his replica and grabs the £100K jewel. His bedroom has a gramophone (to provide the music) and a secret passage to behind the curtain.
• Recursive Canon: Watson and Holmes are both aware in-universe that Watson is writing and publishing stories about Holmes's career. Holmes disapproves of the sensationalistic tone of Watson's stories.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The two main antagonists in "The Solitary Cyclist": Bob Carruthers and Jack Woodley. Carruthers is a soft-spoken, seemingly kind-hearted man (blue) and Woodley is a boastful bully (red).
• Remember the New Guy?: Professor Moriarty is introduced in "The Final Problem", written after two novels and two prior short story collections, as the archnemesis Holmes has been hunting for years.
• Repulsive Ringmaster: In "The Veiled Lodger", ringmaster Mr. Ronder was a drinker and a fiend, whom his battered wife and the circus strongman killed and made it look like the circus lion had attacked. The scheme worked too well and Mrs. Ronder barely survived the lion's attack and was disfigured for life.
• Retcon:
  • Remember that for seven years after "The Final Problem" was published, Holmes was dead, then Arthur Conan Doyle's publishers offered him enough money that he wrote "The Empty House".
  • It is implied that Watson does this all the time to avoid lawsuits.
  • "The Adventure Of The Second Stain" is first mentioned in "The Adventure Of The Naval Treaty". Watson recounts how it involved so many of Britain's highest noble families, and involved Holmes explaining the true solution to the French detective M. Dubuque and the German detective Fritz Von Waldbaum. The version of "The Adventure Of The Second Stain" that is actually published is a completely different story (while French and German characters are named, they're foreign agents living in London and have no bearing on the case).
• Retired Badass: Holmes himself in "The Lion's Mane" and "His Last Bow," both of which take place after he retired to keep bees.
• Revenge via Storytelling: In "The Three Gables", a Mrs. Maberley is being harassed into leaving her home and everything in it. Holmes figures out they're actually after her recently-deceased son's luggage, which contains a manuscript in which an innocent young man is entrapped by a cruel woman. Obviously the story is the author's own with the names changed (Holmes notes that at the climax, the narrator switches to "my" rather than "his"), which he wrote as revenge for getting dumped by Rich Bitch Isadora Klein. Holmes agrees not to press charges against her or cause a scandal (Klein is about to get married to a nobleman almost two decades younger), but in exchange for a large sum which he gives to Mrs. Maberley so she can travel around the world.
• Riches to Rags: Dr. Watson's older (deceased) brother, who inherited a good amount of money, but threw it all away and lived in poverty (with short intervals of prosperity) before dying after turning to drink. Holmes deduces all this by simply looking at Watson's watch, which he inherited from his brother.
• Ripped from the Headlines: A few stories were based on actual crimes, such as "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton".
• Roguish Romani:
  • In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", one of the reasons why Dr Grimesby Roylott has a sinister reputation in the local area is because he is known to associate with wandering gypsies who hang around on the plantation near Stoke Moran. Ultimately the gypsies turn out to be a Red Herring and have nothing to do with the murder, but Holmes admits that he started out on the wrong scent, believing that the ‘speckled band’ referred to the band of gypsies.
  • In "The Priory School," the missing boy's cap is found in a "Gipsy" camp. They are all promptly arrested and we hear nothing more of them, despite that, as it emerges later, they had nothing to do with his disappearance.
  • In "Silver Blaze," local Romani are considered, essentially by default, as possible thieves of the titular horse, but once again turn out to be uninvolved.
• Rule of Drama: Lampshaded — Holmes mildly disapproves of the way Watson relates the cases so as to prioritise their suspense rather than coolly laying out the logic by which they were solved, but they agree to disagree. Once Holmes takes to narrating his own adventures, he's confronted with the same problem.
• Runaway Bride:
  • In "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor", Holmes is approached by Lord Robert St. Simon. He's just been married to Hatty Doran, but she disappeared at the wedding reception and he needs help finding her. It turns out Hatty's previous husband, whom she thought was dead, showed up at the ceremony. She then decided to just run off with him without telling anyone.
  • In "A Case of Identity," Miss Mary Sutherland has been abandoned by her fiancé Hosmer Angel on their wedding day; he got into a carriage to the church and then never showed up. Angel was actually her stepfather, taking advantage of her severe nearsightedness to string her along, prevent a real marriage, and thus keep her living at home so he (as himself) can benefit from her money for as long as possible.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: In the first story, it's revealed that Holmes has no literary knowledge beyond modern crime literature, and when Watson explains the makeup of the solar system to him, he is interested, but immediately comments that he will "do his best to forget it." Why? Because Holmes reasons that there is only so much you can hold in your head, and he needs only what is required for his profession. However, this characterisation was changed from the second story onwards; Holmes quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the original and is familiar with Thomas Carlyle, and discusses some strictly linguistic problems with no possible bearing on any crime whatsoever.
• Scare 'Em Straight: This trope is Lampshaded by Holmes when he lets James Ryder go in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle". Holmes notes that Ryder is already a nervous wreck after everything he's been through, and that he's too scared to ever commit a crime again. Putting Ryder in jail would only make him a jailbird for life, but letting him go after very nearly being ruined will keep him from ever doing wrong again. In any event, the greater good would be served since Holmes would be able to ensure the man Ryder framed would be found innocent of the crime.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Holmes LOVES this trope. Made particularly clear in "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" where he convinces someone to wait for the police (which would take 24 hours to get a warrant) before breaking and entering the house of a conman in search of his kidnapped loved one... only for him and Watson to arrive to the conman's house and hold him at gunpoint while they search for the kidnapped person.
  "Where is your warrant?"
  Holmes half drew a revolver from his pocket. "This will have to serve till a better one comes."
  "Why, you are a common burglar."
  "So you might describe me", said Holmes cheerfully. "My companion is also a dangerous ruffian. And together we are going through your house."
• Secret Compartment:
  • In A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes tricks Irene Adler into revealing the secret compartment where she has concealed a portrait of herself with the King of Bohemia, who has hired the Great Detective to get it back. It's noted that there have been two attempts to steal the portrait from her house already, but the would-be thieves didn't know where to look. Holmes fakes a fire in the house, causing her to immediately rush to collect the portrait from its hiding place — a hidden recess behind a piece of paneling on the wall.
  • The Seven-Per-Cent Solution has Sherlock Holmes pursue Moriarty to Vienna. This journey was actually prearranged by John Watson to get his comrade to meet with Sigmund Freud, in hopes the doctor can treat Holmes for cocaine addiction. While under Freud's care, the two doctors check Holmes's luggage for narcotics. Holmes brought a valise that seems normal but is oddly heavy. It has a false bottom that holds several vials of 7% cocaine solution and a needle.
• Secret Other Family:
  • The expense of maintaining one is the motive in "Silver Blaze".
  • In a rare subversion, this also produces the heartwarming conclusion in "The Yellow Face".
  • Eduardo Lucas maintains one in France. This proves to be his undoing.
• Secret Relationship: This turns out to be at the bottom of "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter"; the missing man is secretly married to a woman of a lower social class, and can't reveal it or his uncle will disinherit him. When she becomes fatally ill, he simply disappears so he can go to her without having to explain.
• Self-Deprecation: "How Watson Learned the Trick" an original short story (very short, 503 words) written by Conan Doyle himself but not generally considered part of the Sherlock Holmes canon. In it, Watson decides to use Holmes's own methods of deductive reasoning against him, employing his own Sherlock Scan to deduce what Holmes is up to based on a single glance while at breakfast. After congratulating him, Holmes ends the story by explaining how Watson is totally wrong.
• Sentenced to Down Under: This is what happened to a character in "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott". However, he and his fellow convicts rebel and seize control of the ship before they reach Australia.
• Separated by a Common Language
  • Whenever an American character shows up, they're sure to to speak in a broad, slangy way, gratuitously larded with unmistakably American idioms, with a weird habit of saying "dollars" where real-life Americans would just say "money."
  • "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" uses this for a plot point. Holmes is able to divine from the spelling of the word "plow" (in British English, "plough") and a couple of vocabulary choices that an advertisement purportedly from an Englishman is actually from an American.
  • Used for humour in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"
    Lord St. Simon: Lady St. Simon said something about ‘jumping a claim.’ She was accustomed to use slang of the kind. I have no idea what she meant.
    Holmes: American slang is very expressive sometimes.^note A "claim" is an area that a gold prospector has staked out for himself to mine or pan; "jumping the claim" refers to an interloper arriving and somehow taking that claim from the miner who got there first.
  • In "His Last Bow", Holmes, who has disguised himself as an Irish-American, expresses his contempt for American vocabulary (according to von Bork, "he seems to have declared war on the King's English as well as the English King").
    Holmes: I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge’s tomorrow as I was before this American stunt — I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled — before this American job came my way.
  • Occasional uses of "outhouse" in the British sense (i.e. a shed, barn, or other subsidiary building) can give American readers a chuckle, imagining fugitives hiding out in, police rigorously searching, or Holmes himself proposing to reach a window by clambering atop an enclosed outdoor toilet.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Sometimes Watson's war wound is in his shoulder, and sometimes it's in his leg.
  • In "The Adventure of the Twisted Lip", Mary Watson calls her husband "James".
  • In "The Final Problem", Watson doesn't know who Moriarty is, so Holmes has to explain it to him. However, in "The Valley of Fear", which was written after "The Final Problem" but takes place before it, Holmes already informs him about Moriarty and his terrible deeds, so Watson should've known about him in "The Final Problem". Of course, since "The Final Problem" is an account by Watson and he knows it will be the reader's first encounter with Moriarty, so there's no reason he couldn't insert a "fictitious" section introducing Moriarty for our benefit.
  • In "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty", Watson refers to another case he hasn't yet written about, "The Adventure of the Second Stain". He mentions some interesting facts about the case, specifically that the case "implicates so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many years it will be impossible to make it public", and that it involved "Monsieur Dubuque of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issue". "The Adventure of the Second Stain" was finally published 11 years later, but it turns out that only one "first family" was implicated in the case, and there's no mention of Dubuque or Waldbaum in the story, nor does it seem very likely that anyone in Paris or Dantzig was ever involved in investigating the case.
• Shared Fate Ultimatum: "The Three Garridebs" has Holmes tell a known killer that if he had killed Watson, he wouldn't have lived, himself. Watson tells the readers it was worth the wound, worth many wounds, to see the depth of Holmes's loyalty and love.
  Holmes: By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Holmes liked to dress well and, as noted above, in the books would never wear countrywear in the city.
• Sherlock Can Read: The Trope Namer - In "The Adventure of the Yellow Face", Sherlock Holmes stuns the client of the day by giving his name before he'd introduced himself.
  Holmes: My dear Mr. Grant Munro—
  Munro: What! You know my name?
  Holmes: If you wish to preserve your incognito, I would suggest that you cease to write your name upon the lining of your hat, or else that you turn the crown towards the person you are addressing.
• Sherlock Scan: The Trope Namer - Sherlock's favourite marketing shtick, a perfect means to impress potential clients as to his skills.
• Shoot the Builder: In "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb," Victor Hatherly is hired to repair a hydraulic press, with his client (a counterfeiter named Fritz) trying to kill him once he's done with the rather suspicious job. Hatherly only escapes due to the intervention of Fritz's less-ruthless accomplices, one of whom references "the last time" and how Fritz promised "it should not [happen] again." After hearing the story, Holmes recalls the disappearance of another engineer who was likely killed by Fritz after either building the press or conducting previous repairs.
• Shipper on Deck: ("The Adventure of the Copper Beeches") Watson has brief hopes for his friend and Violet Hunter, an independent-minded governess with a remarkable knack for observation. He's disappointed when Holmes loses all interest in the woman after the case is solved.
• Shotgun Wedding: A literal one in "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist".
• Shout-Out: Holmes often tosses off a pithy quotation at the end of the early stories. Goethe is a favourite source.
  • In "The Cardboard Box" Holmes mentions a "sketch by Poe" about a detective executing a particularly impressive Sherlock Scan to read the train of thought of his companion by his body language, and goes on to show that he's capable of doing it too. This is a reference to The Murders in the Rue Morgue, often considered the Trope Maker of the detective genre (and, evidently, of the Sherlock Scan).
• Signature Headgear: His deerstalker originated in Sidney Paget's illustrations, and has become a fixture of the character's pop-cultural image, even if he only wore it once. It helps add enigma to his character and its unmistakable design is all people need to see when one wants to refer to him indirectly.
• Signature Instrument: Sherlock is famous for playing the violin. This is one of his more innocuous eccentricities.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: Watson's objections of "just arrest him" are often shot down by Holmes, who point out that the evidence they have is too tenuous, or that arresting the leader of a criminal conspiracy immediately would result in the smaller fry getting away.
• A Sinister Clue: Holmes is able to finger the murderer in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" because the blow to the victim's head was delivered when the murderer was directly behind him, with the blow occuring on the left side of the head.
• Slave to PR: The Duke of Holdernesse in "The Adventure of the Priory School", who would rather leave his young son in the hands of kidnappers than allow his family unhappiness become public.
• Sliding Scale of Continuity: The stories can be read in any order (with a very few notable exceptions like The Final Problem and The Empty House). And after the first few stories, they aren't all set in the order they were written in, anyway. Conan Doyle deliberately wrote them like this so that readers would not quit following the series just because they had missed a story or two.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • Ronald Adair in "The Adventure of the Empty House". It's heavily implied that he caught his card partner Colonel Moran cheating and threatened to expose him unless he resigned his membership. Since Moran relied on his cheating as income, he murdered Adair. The unique circumstances (such as the bullets) tip off Holmes, creating a situation where he could put Moran away for good and return to London, starting off the third set of short stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
  • Eduardo Lucas in "The Second Stain". He was killed the night before the story begins, but he is responsible for the main plot going into motion by blackmailing Lady Hilda into stealing one of her husband's documents.
• Smokescreen Crime:
  • "The Six Napoleons": An unknown man breaks into people's houses, takes out a plaster bust of Napoleon and smashes it to pieces outside. Lestrade thinks it's a maniac when he brings it to Holmes' attention, but it's quickly figured out that the culprit worked in the workshop that made the busts. He was part of a gang of thieves who stole a pearl and then fled his associates, hiding the pearl in a bust moments before being arrested for a different crime.

  • "The Abbey Grange": Three robbers break into a country house, kill the owner, tie his wife to a chair and make off with some silver. Unfortunately for the police, the silver was found in a pond outside and the presumed thieves were arrested in New York the day after supposedly committing the crime in England, meaning they have to look for new culprits. It was actually self-defense, the wife's platonic lover was outside and fought with her abusive husband, killing him. He helped set up the break-in story, and is Let Off by the Detective once Holmes tracks him down.

  • "The Reigate Squire": A country landowner's house is broken into and several Noodle Implements like candlesticks, a book, and a ball of twine are stolen. A few days later another house is robbed and the thief kills the coachman to escape. It was actually a murder: the coachman was blackmailing his employers, whom he'd seen breaking into the first house to try and steal legal documents.
• Snakes Are Evil: Holmes compares Moriarty's shifty gaze to that of a snake. When describing Milverton, a particularly odious blackmailer, he claims he gets the same impression as when looking at the snakes at the zoo.
• Sounding It Out: Inverted: Watson will ask Holmes what a letter says, and rather than tell him, Holmes will hand it over so the full text can appear in Watson's narration.
• Spanner in the Works: "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty" features Joseph Harrison, the brother of Percy Phelps' fiancee stealing an important treaty. He hides it under the floorboards in his bedroom, intending to sell it to the French or Russian Embassies later, but before he can Percy comes home after suffering a nervous breakdown over the treaty's theft. Joseph ends up kicked out of his own room, where Percy goes to rest, and the treaty remains hidden under the floorboards where Joseph can't reach it. This prevents the treaty from being sold long enough for Percy to recover from his fever and enlist the help of Holmes.
• Spicy Latina: Isadora Klein in "The Three Gables" (Spanish), Mrs. Ferguson in "The Sussex Vampire" (Peruvian), and Mrs. Gibson in "Thor Bridge" (Brazilian), are all noted for great beauty and Hot-Blooded personality.
• Spin-Off: Recurring characters Mycroft Holmes, Irene Adler and Lestrade all have their own authorized series of non canonical books, with varying degrees of success.
• Spiteful Suicide: This is the solution to "The Problem of Thor Bridge" — the victim killed herself in such a way as to frame her rival in love for the murder.
• Stab the Picture:
  • In "The Retired Colourman", Holmes's client is a man whose wife ran off with his best friend and his money. Watson observes him violently tearing up a picture of her. It turns out that he murdered her.
  • "The Norwood Builder" mentions a woman's photograph as being "shamefully mutilated" by a jealous ex-fiancé (she'd broken off the engagement on hearing of his shocking cruelty). Sure enough, the man tried to have her son executed for his faked murder.
• Stealth Insult: See Inter-Class Romance above for what Holmes says when the King of Bohemia expresses regret that Irene Adler was a commoner not at his "level".
  • In "The Boscombe Valley Mystery":
  Lestrade: I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies.
  Holmes: You are right, you do find it very hard to tackle the facts.
• A Storm Is Coming: "His Last Bow", which was written in 1917 and set in August 1914 just a few days before Britain's entry into World War I, ends with Holmes anticipating what is to come.
  Holmes: There's an east wind coming, Watson.
  Watson: I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.
  Holmes: Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind has never blown on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.
• Strictly Formula: Not the stories themselves, but Watson notes on reading a newspaper article about a divorce that he already knows what it's about: a drunken husband, who pushes his wife one time too many, and a sympathizing landlady. But in this case, he's Wrong Genre Savvy: Holmes was involved in the case because the husband was in the habit of throwing his false teeth at his wife.
• The Strongman: In "The Veiled Lodger", the wife of a travelling circus ringmaster had an affair with the circus strongman and conspired with him to murder her abusive husband. He made a club that left wounds similar to a lion's paw, the plan being to crush his skull and blame the lion but it all went wrong, the husband was killed and the lion blamed, but the wife ended up horribly disfigured.
• Suicide, Not Murder: In "The Problem of Thor Bridge", a woman is suspected of murdering her employer's wife; it turns out that the wife committed suicide after planting evidence pointing to the woman she considered her rival, and having devised a method for the murder weapon to be removed from the scene after it had done its work.
• Talk About the Weather: Lestrade resorts to this once, where the case is very odd and he's not sure he should tell Holmes.
• Techno Babble: In "The Missing Three-Quarter", the captain of a rugby team rattles off a massive speech of rugby terms that explains why his team is screwed if Holmes doesn't find his missing three-quarter.
• Tear-Apart Tug-of-War: In "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet", Mr Holden's son Arthur and Sir George Burnwell struggles over the coronet, with both tugging at each side of the coronet until a piece of it breaks off.
• Terminally-Ill Criminal:
  • A Study in Scarlet: Jefferson Hope reveals at the end that his heart might give out at any moment, and he was determined to kill the murderers of his beloved Lucy before that happened. He dies shortly after confessing, "as though he had been able in his dying moments to look back upon a useful life, and on work well done".
  • The Boscombe Valley Mystery: John Turner had diabetes (a death sentence before insulin was discovered) in such an advanced state that he decides to kill Charles MacCarthy (who'd been blackmailing him for most of his life), helped by the victim referring to the man's daughter in very crude terms, and the only reason he didn't do it publicly was fear of his daughter finding out. He dies before he can reveal his guilt to exonerate the main suspect (the victim's son), but the evidence supplied by Holmes is enough to ensure the son's acquittal.
• Thanatos Gambit: In "The Problem of Thor Bridge", the wife, jealous of the governess that her husband has fallen in love with, rigs up an elaborate suicide that is intended to frame the governess for murder.
• There Should Be a Law: Holmes' reaction to the perpetrator, who has technically broken no law, in "A Case of Identity."
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Very occasionally, Watson is allowed to figure things out for himself. For instance, in "The Norwood Builder" Holmes performs a Sherlock Scan on their client, and Watson manages to determine how Holmes reached his conclusions before Holmes tells him (McFarlane's untidiness of attire shows he is a bachelor, the sheaf of legal papers confirm his profession, the watch-charm indicates that he is a Freemason, and the breathing reveals that he is asthmatic).
  • "The Adventure of the Second Stain": Lestrade actually catches the right killer without Holmes having to tell him.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: In "The Retired Colourman", the title character's wife has disappeared and is thought to have run away with her lover; Holmes proves that he murdered her (and the supposed lover).
• Time Skip: The skip between "The Final Problem" (set in 1891) and "The Empty House" (set in 1894). Canonically, Holmes spent this period travelling the world.
• Too Clever by Half: Brunton, the butler from "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual".
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Sherlock Holmes pretty famously became a bigger asshole than he ever was before from "The Empty House" and onward. Given that Doyle hadn't wanted to resurrect the character, it's hard not to see this change as a result of his bitterness.
• Total Party Kill: The fate of all the honest crew on the Gloria Scott and then a second time shortly afterwards, with the mutineers, as well as the entire ship.
• Treasure Map: "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual". However, given that the map's directions gave the starting point derived from the shadow of one tree when the sun was above a second tree as they were nearly two and a half centuries before the map was used (They would have grown, changing both the angle of the sun and the length of the object casting the shadow - given that they weren't the same kind of tree, they might not have grown at the same rate, further complicating the issue), and the directions were given in the highly inaccurate paces (Holmes has noted that the length of a man's pace is directly related to his height many times, and the idea that Holmes' legs are the same length as the legs of the man who made the map is a bit of a stretch, even if it was noted the man who followed the map was rather tall), the fact that they actually found the treasure is rather surprising.
• Trope Codifier: Sherlock Holmes codified the structure and tropes of the modern detective story; while there were mystery stories before it (such as those written by Edgar Allan Poe), it was Doyle's stories that established it as a proper genre and set its core conventions.
• Truth In Literature:
  • Doyle himself would go on to investigate, Sherlock Holmes style, the cases of two men who had been wrongly imprisoned and found the evidence to set them free.
  • The examination of a victim's clothes for clues and the use of plaster to make impressions of marks on the ground was first done in the stories and later became a real-life procedure.
• TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Vocabulary: In "The Crooked Man", the deceased's wife is heard to shout "David! David!" Turns out the David in question was deceased a little over twenty-eight centuries.
• Turned Off By The Jerkass:
  • In the short story, "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", Mrs McFarlane was once engaged to the titular character, Jonas Oldacre, but broke up with him after being appalled at his cruelty in setting a cat loose in an aviary. He wickedly plotted revenge for this, and retaliated years later by faking his own death and trying to frame her only son for his "murder", but fortunately Holmes put a stop to this.

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